ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► We didn't even address rose gold is what we forgot. Rose gold or no?

00:00:03 ◼   ► What about it?

00:00:04 ◼   ► Is there going to be rose gold?

00:00:06 ◼   ► Why wouldn't there be?

00:00:07 ◼   ► It's allegedly now that like pink copper color.

00:00:09 ◼   ► Is it going to be like space gray where they just keep calling this 20 different colors rose gold

00:00:13 ◼   ► despite the fact that they look nothing like each other?

00:00:15 ◼   ► It's rose gold, right?

00:00:17 ◼   ► It's like just, I don't care. I don't buy those phones.

00:00:20 ◼   ► We have a lot to talk about and we should start immediately as we always do with follow-up.

00:00:26 ◼   ► Richard Anderson writes in, "If you use all the Apple things, isn't iCloud pretty close

00:00:31 ◼   ► to offering full Mac backup?

00:00:33 ◼   ► Desktop and Docs and iCloud Drive, Photos and iCloud Photo Library, Music and iCloud

00:00:36 ◼   ► Music Library," or whatever it's called, iTunes Match I guess.

00:00:39 ◼   ► "One extra thing offered by Backblaze is backup of other folders in user home, and with storage

00:00:44 ◼   ► sharing in the new OSs, the 2TB plan is a good option."

00:00:48 ◼   ► I'm assuming they mean 2TB iCloud, but whatever, it doesn't really matter.

00:00:51 ◼   ► More for Apple to do, but that's a lot of Mac backup they're offering.

00:00:56 ◼   ► So why is that not sufficient?

00:00:58 ◼   ► I will speak for me first in saying I do not use all the Apple things.

00:01:03 ◼   ► I very much like iTunes Match.

00:01:06 ◼   ► I have never tried iCloud Photo Library.

00:01:08 ◼   ► Don't trust it.

00:01:09 ◼   ► Don't plan to use it.

00:01:10 ◼   ► I have used iCloud Drive only for things like Solver, for example, where it's just easier

00:01:18 ◼   ► to save those documents to iCloud Drive.

00:01:19 ◼   ► But I don't use it as like a Dropbox replacement where I'm just putting random crap in there.

00:01:25 ◼   ► And I think that was most of what they said.

00:01:27 ◼   ► So for me, I don't trust Apple to do those things as well as the long-standing people

00:01:34 ◼   ► have done it, so I don't use Apple for all the things.

00:01:38 ◼   ► Although I understand Richard's point, and I do think he is onto something.

00:01:42 ◼   ► So Marco, how do you treat all this stuff?

00:01:44 ◼   ► Would this be sufficient for you?

00:01:45 ◼   ► - I mean, obviously not.

00:01:47 ◼   ► I mean, we're all nerds, so we're all gonna have different types of data that's gonna

00:01:50 ◼   ► be different folders and everything else.

00:01:52 ◼   ► So it's probably not gonna really help nerds very much.

00:01:55 ◼   ► But I think it's basically Apple hitting the big things first, picking the low-hanging

00:02:01 ◼   ► fruit. So photos are a big one. What do people, you know, you gotta look at what people store

00:02:06 ◼   ► on their computers. Where is most of the stuff they store and what is the stuff that is hardest

00:02:11 ◼   ► to, that is basically hardest to lose? Stuff that, if your computer was wiped out, what

00:02:17 ◼   ► would most people freak out about losing the most? So photos are a huge one. That's probably

00:02:22 ◼   ► the number one on that scale.

00:02:25 ◼   ► So they have a service now to do that.

00:02:27 ◼   ► And it's built into the phone, it's built into the Mac,

00:02:29 ◼   ► it's built into, you know, it's like,

00:02:30 ◼   ► they cover photos really well.

00:02:33 ◼   ► They added the documents folder and desktop folder in Sierra.

00:02:38 ◼   ► I still have not been brave enough

00:02:40 ◼   ► to actually try to use that feature.

00:02:42 ◼   ► However, that's also, you know, two big spots.

00:02:45 ◼   ► Basically where most people store most stuff

00:02:47 ◼   ► is either in the documents folder

00:02:49 ◼   ► where every app in history has defaulted to saving

00:02:53 ◼   ► because that's where they think you should put your documents

00:02:57 ◼   ► or the desktop, which is where people actually

00:03:00 ◼   ► put all their documents.

00:03:01 ◼   ► So it's great they hit those two big ones.

00:03:05 ◼   ► But music, that's another big one,

00:03:07 ◼   ► and a lot of movement and streaming anyway.

00:03:10 ◼   ► So they're doing it piecemeal so far.

00:03:13 ◼   ► That's nice.

00:03:14 ◼   ► That is better than not doing it at all.

00:03:16 ◼   ► And that has probably saved literally millions

00:03:18 ◼   ► of people's data loss from being worse

00:03:21 ◼   ► than it could have been.

00:03:22 ◼   ► So that's a great thing to do,

00:03:25 ◼   ► but that's not full backup of a computer.

00:03:27 ◼   ► That's a separate type of product,

00:03:29 ◼   ► separate type of design and decisions

00:03:33 ◼   ► and implementation details that has to work out.

00:03:35 ◼   ► So no, that is not enough to be a full backup.

00:03:39 ◼   ► It is enough for many people,

00:03:42 ◼   ► or it's close to enough for many people,

00:03:44 ◼   ► but many people are not all people,

00:03:46 ◼   ► and that's not a full backup.

00:03:48 ◼   ► So it's not just that it's not a full backup. The problem is that it's not a backup. That's the real problem.

00:03:54 ◼   ► So if you're going through like, "Oh, aren't they creeping up on a full backup solution by backing up bits and bits?"

00:03:59 ◼   ► Those aren't backups. Those are just cloud storage of stuff. It's like calling a Dropbox a backup.

00:04:03 ◼   ► Dropbox is not a backup, right? A backup is, first of all, completely service agnostic.

00:04:09 ◼   ► Backblaze doesn't care what I use to store my photos. Backblaze doesn't care if I use Dropbox, Google Drive, anything like that.

00:04:15 ◼   ► that it's not application connected and backplays makes a separate copy of my stuff, right?

00:04:21 ◼   ► And I know Dropbox, you've got your local files and they've got your cloud versions

00:04:24 ◼   ► and you've got local files and all your other computers.

00:04:26 ◼   ► You can kind of sort of view it as a backup and the same thing with iCloud Drive or iCloud

00:04:30 ◼   ► Photo Library, but they're just fundamentally not backups.

00:04:33 ◼   ► So for example, if in iCloud Photo Library you accidentally delete all your photos and

00:04:37 ◼   ► that syncs to all of your things, I know they go into recently deleted and yada yada, but

00:04:41 ◼   ► stay with me here. Like if you actually legitimately deleted them, you can't

00:04:45 ◼   ► restore them from your backup. It's like, "Oh, iCloud photo library is my backup."

00:04:49 ◼   ► No, it's not. It is a cloud synced representation of your current data.

00:04:54 ◼   ► If you totally wipe out your photos or delete everything from your Dropbox or

00:04:59 ◼   ► do something else that actually deletes them, deletes them for realsies, realsies,

00:05:01 ◼   ► out of the recently deleted, out of the trash or whatever, and you go to Backblaze

00:05:07 ◼   ► to restore from backup, Backblaze will still have them because Backblaze doesn't

00:05:10 ◼   ► what the hell you do with iCloud photo library, right?

00:05:13 ◼   ► It's going to still have those photos

00:05:15 ◼   ► or whatever your actual backup solution is.

00:05:17 ◼   ► So the key part of a backup solution is

00:05:19 ◼   ► it is a separate copy that is disconnected

00:05:22 ◼   ► from the programs that created that stuff.

00:05:24 ◼   ► Same thing with iCloud backup for your phone, right?

00:05:26 ◼   ► If you delete everything off your phone,

00:05:28 ◼   ► your previous iCloud backup of your phone

00:05:31 ◼   ► still has that stuff on it.

00:05:32 ◼   ► So if you're like, oh, I've made a terrible mistake,

00:05:33 ◼   ► reset my phone, restore from cloud backup,

00:05:36 ◼   ► I think they still give you,

00:05:37 ◼   ► I haven't done this in a while,

00:05:38 ◼   ► but don't they give you like a date,

00:05:40 ◼   ► a series of backup dates where you can restore

00:05:42 ◼   ► from your most recent backup,

00:05:43 ◼   ► second most recent, third most recent, right?

00:05:44 ◼   ► I don't know what the retention policy is.

00:05:46 ◼   ► And that's a point of contention

00:05:48 ◼   ► of a lot of these backup services,

00:05:49 ◼   ► but the nature of a backup is it is a separate thing.

00:05:52 ◼   ► So Cloud Sync is great,

00:05:55 ◼   ► and I use it in addition to my backups,

00:05:56 ◼   ► but it should never be confused with an actual backup

00:05:58 ◼   ► because it's a separate job.

00:06:00 ◼   ► And you want both.

00:06:01 ◼   ► I want iCloud Photo Library.

00:06:03 ◼   ► In fact, I have my photos in two cloud libraries,

00:06:05 ◼   ► but I also have multiple actual backups of my photos.

00:06:08 ◼   ► So backups are different than Cloud Sync.

00:06:11 ◼   ► - All right, Marco, you have some quick follow-up

00:06:14 ◼   ► on your requirement that you spend $1,000

00:06:18 ◼   ► to take good pictures, which clearly,

00:06:21 ◼   ► I mean, all snark aside, to me,

00:06:23 ◼   ► I totally understood what you were driving at

00:06:25 ◼   ► and that I don't think that was intended to be a literal,

00:06:27 ◼   ► like it is impossible to take good pictures

00:06:29 ◼   ► with less than $1,000 spent,

00:06:31 ◼   ► but seemingly your sarcasm was not well received

00:06:35 ◼   ► or understood, so can you clarify for us please?

00:06:37 ◼   ► - Sure, yeah, so last episode we talked about,

00:06:40 ◼   ► one of the Ask ATP questions was about beginner camera

00:06:42 ◼   ► advice and some setup advice, and I had said something

00:06:46 ◼   ► on the lines of you probably need to spend at least

00:06:49 ◼   ► a thousand dollars in order to get pictures

00:06:53 ◼   ► that are significantly better than a recent iPhone's camera,

00:06:58 ◼   ► because the cameras in smartphones are so good these days

00:07:00 ◼   ► that it doesn't just take a mid-range point and shoot

00:07:04 ◼   ► to be better than an iPhone in a lot of conditions.

00:07:07 ◼   ► A lot of times you have to be better,

00:07:07 ◼   ► you have to go even higher than that.

00:07:09 ◼   ► A lot of times you have to go to a mirrorless

00:07:11 ◼   ► or a high-end compact to really be better.

00:07:14 ◼   ► So I had thrown out the number of roughly $1,000

00:07:16 ◼   ► as an approximate minimum.

00:07:18 ◼   ► A number of people wrote in,

00:07:20 ◼   ► "Most of the contention seemed to be

00:07:22 ◼   ► "that I was prioritizing the price of the camera body

00:07:26 ◼   ► "over the price of the lenses."

00:07:28 ◼   ► I don't think I actually said that,

00:07:30 ◼   ► But I left it ambiguous and that was my fault.

00:07:33 ◼   ► What I really meant to convey with that estimate

00:07:36 ◼   ► was the cost of the whole setup, body and lenses.

00:07:40 ◼   ► You know, and I'm not even including in that

00:07:42 ◼   ► like an amazing high quality set of primes or zooms.

00:07:46 ◼   ► I'm thinking like, you know, what most people do

00:07:47 ◼   ► which is you get the kit lens,

00:07:49 ◼   ► or you know, if it has a kit lens,

00:07:50 ◼   ► you get the kit lens for like kind of general use

00:07:52 ◼   ► and maybe you get like a 50 millimeter equivalent prime

00:07:55 ◼   ► because those are usually really inexpensive

00:07:56 ◼   ► and really high quality.

00:07:57 ◼   ► Something like that, like one good prime

00:08:00 ◼   ► with whatever general purpose lens you're gonna use on it.

00:08:03 ◼   ► And usually that's gonna put you over $1,000

00:08:05 ◼   ► with almost any decent setup.

00:08:08 ◼   ► So that's kinda where I got that from.

00:08:10 ◼   ► Again, this is a ballpark, this is meant to be an estimate,

00:08:13 ◼   ► this is not, these are all squishy, vague things,

00:08:17 ◼   ► and it's also all very subjective.

00:08:20 ◼   ► The other thing I wanted to talk about

00:08:21 ◼   ► with camera follow-up is we,

00:08:24 ◼   ► John mentioned that I had told him at one point

00:08:27 ◼   ► that the secret to, or no, Casey, one of you mentioned

00:08:30 ◼   ► that I had told you at one point

00:08:32 ◼   ► that the secret to photography was don't use the flash

00:08:34 ◼   ► and take lots of pictures.

00:08:36 ◼   ► And we got a number of people who wrote in

00:08:38 ◼   ► who took offense to this because they thought

00:08:42 ◼   ► that either we should learn how to use the flash properly

00:08:45 ◼   ► or that it is not necessary to take lots of pictures

00:08:47 ◼   ► to take good pictures, that in fact many people

00:08:49 ◼   ► can take great pictures and as they get better,

00:08:51 ◼   ► they take fewer.

00:08:52 ◼   ► That's true.

00:08:54 ◼   ► And that's great advice if you have,

00:08:57 ◼   ► If you've already developed a good eye

00:08:59 ◼   ► and a good proficiency with the technical side of things,

00:09:02 ◼   ► that is not true of most beginners.

00:09:05 ◼   ► It's not true of me when I was a beginner.

00:09:07 ◼   ► It's not true of me now.

00:09:08 ◼   ► If you can shoot fewer pictures

00:09:12 ◼   ► and get the same number of hits, that's great.

00:09:15 ◼   ► That means you're getting better at it.

00:09:17 ◼   ► But for beginners, it helps to take a lot

00:09:19 ◼   ► and then you can kinda see where you go wrong

00:09:22 ◼   ► on some of them and you have a better chance

00:09:23 ◼   ► of having caught something almost accidentally

00:09:26 ◼   ► instead of having to get it exactly right

00:09:28 ◼   ► the very first time.

00:09:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, I thought your advice was good,

00:09:31 ◼   ► which is why I brought it up.

00:09:32 ◼   ► And I stand by your advice for, like you said,

00:09:36 ◼   ► the general purpose person, which is exactly what I was.

00:09:39 ◼   ► I was a complete novice, I was a noob,

00:09:41 ◼   ► and I wanted some basic guidance

00:09:43 ◼   ► on how to take a decent shot.

00:09:44 ◼   ► And to me, I concur that avoiding the flash

00:09:48 ◼   ► and just trying not to just drown it out

00:09:52 ◼   ► with too much light is the right answer.

00:09:54 ◼   ► Now, one of the things that somebody wrote in to say

00:09:56 ◼   ► was, "No, no, no, no, no, no, you need to think about where the light is." Well, okay,

00:09:59 ◼   ► sure, but that to me is like step two, or whatever. The first step is just trying to

00:10:04 ◼   ► take a decent picture that isn't just blown out to smithereens. And any normal camera,

00:10:09 ◼   ► particularly, you told me this in like 2007 or 8 or something like that, so, you know,

00:10:15 ◼   ► your average camera was a point-and-shoot, which probably had a flash that was always

00:10:19 ◼   ► ready to rock and on 90% of the time. So, it made perfect sense, and I stick with it

00:10:25 ◼   ► didn't stand by it on and I think you were right to say it.

00:10:28 ◼   ► So don't let the haters get you.

00:10:30 ◼   ► But speaking of photos, we had a little bit

00:10:32 ◼   ► of interesting feedback about printing photos.

00:10:33 ◼   ► John, do you wanna tell us about this?

00:10:35 ◼   ► - I mentioned it last show, like as a diversity of backup,

00:10:38 ◼   ► but also to like print your photos

00:10:40 ◼   ► so you actually look at them every day

00:10:41 ◼   ► and get to enjoy them.

00:10:42 ◼   ► So the enjoyment thing, everyone's all on board with that,

00:10:45 ◼   ► but the diversity of backup,

00:10:46 ◼   ► a lot of people want it to point out that

00:10:48 ◼   ► many modern processes for printing photos

00:10:51 ◼   ► will not stand the test of time.

00:10:53 ◼   ► They won't even last as long as the photos printed from like your childhood in the 70s,

00:10:58 ◼   ► right?

00:10:59 ◼   ► Because of the differences in chemical composition of developed photos or, God forbid, if you're

00:11:05 ◼   ► printing them on your inkjet printer, those are going to be, and putting them somewhere

00:11:10 ◼   ► in sunlight, those will be dead in like a week and a half, right?

00:11:14 ◼   ► So if you are actually trying to make hard copies of your photos for the purposes of

00:11:20 ◼   ► diversity of backup you'll have to go and find someone who's going to print them on

00:11:25 ◼   ► like acid-free paper with a process that's not gonna you know fade or one of the colors

00:11:29 ◼   ► isn't gonna go all wonky or whatever.

00:11:31 ◼   ► I confess I have no idea what those processes might be.

00:11:35 ◼   ► Digital is my backup for the most part but even if you're just even if you just have

00:11:40 ◼   ► a bunch of prints that will last like even just a few years you don't have to last 100

00:11:44 ◼   ► years so they'll last a few years and if they're spread around or if you have some sort of

00:11:48 ◼   ► digital disaster and all you've got left are the prints, it is possible to recover,

00:11:52 ◼   ► you know, you can scan those prints back in. Now it's not going to be great, but scanning prints

00:11:57 ◼   ► back in is way better than losing your pictures entirely. Like we have our wedding photos for a

00:12:03 ◼   ► while, you know, they were, we got married before the digital camera age, so they were taken on film

00:12:07 ◼   ► and we had prints of them and I have no idea how high quality those prints are, but anyway, we scanned

00:12:12 ◼   ► the prints and scanning the prints didn't come out great, but it was reassuring to have the photos

00:12:18 ◼   ► on our computer and backed up a bazillion times, right?

00:12:22 ◼   ► And eventually many years later,

00:12:24 ◼   ► we went through the process of scanning the negatives

00:12:26 ◼   ► and that came up way better

00:12:28 ◼   ► because we still have the negatives, right?

00:12:30 ◼   ► And so now we have digital copies of our wedding photos

00:12:32 ◼   ► in addition to, you know, ones that are in it.

00:12:34 ◼   ► We have a wedding album,

00:12:35 ◼   ► we have things in frames on the wall.

00:12:38 ◼   ► So I feel like we have a pretty big diversity

00:12:40 ◼   ► of wedding photo backups.

00:12:42 ◼   ► You know, all the digital versions, the negatives,

00:12:45 ◼   ► pictures in frames and pictures in albums.

00:12:48 ◼   ► And so that's what you're going for.

00:12:50 ◼   ► But like I said, if you're interested in making prints

00:12:53 ◼   ► for archival purposes or to pass on

00:12:55 ◼   ► to your children or grandchildren,

00:12:57 ◼   ► be sure that you just can't go to a Walgreens

00:13:00 ◼   ► and get a print.

00:13:01 ◼   ► You have no idea how long it's gonna last.

00:13:02 ◼   ► You have to do some research on this.

00:13:04 ◼   ► - Alrighty.

00:13:07 ◼   ► And do you wanna talk to me

00:13:08 ◼   ► about the plateau of photo resolution?

00:13:10 ◼   ► - Couple of people wanted to talk about this.

00:13:14 ◼   ► I listened back to the show.

00:13:15 ◼   ► I thought I had said more about it,

00:13:16 ◼   ► but apparently I just thought some of it and said less.

00:13:20 ◼   ► This was about the idea that photos get bigger every year.

00:13:24 ◼   ► And I was saying that that'll level off

00:13:28 ◼   ► because you get diminishing returns at a certain point.

00:13:32 ◼   ► And you can argue what that point may be.

00:13:34 ◼   ► A lot of people said, well, you know,

00:13:36 ◼   ► it may not be useful to have a thousand megapixel image

00:13:39 ◼   ► because like, you know, you don't need that many pixels

00:13:42 ◼   ► for normal sizes that you're gonna print it,

00:13:44 ◼   ► but now all of a sudden you have the ability

00:13:45 ◼   ► crop subsections of the image and stuff like that. But even in terms of cropping and everything,

00:13:51 ◼   ► they will reach a point of diminishing returns. Is it 100 megapixels? Is it a thousand? Is it

00:13:56 ◼   ► 10,000? You're not going to have a 10 billion megapixel image. Like, it's just not going to

00:14:01 ◼   ► happen. It's not a useful thing unless you're NASA. Like, taking pictures of the surface of

00:14:05 ◼   ► a planet. And even those are a series of other pictures stuck together, right? But this is all

00:14:10 ◼   ► talking about plain old 2D pictures. Nothing else in them, just, you know, colors and pixels

00:14:18 ◼   ► in a big matrix, right? As soon as you start considering other things, like photos with

00:14:25 ◼   ► depth or light field photos or things that are not simply 2D images or photos with like

00:14:30 ◼   ► live picture photos or photos where you can, 360 degree photos where you can move around

00:14:34 ◼   ► or change the focal depth and all these other technologies that are different than plain

00:14:38 ◼   ► old 2D photos, those can potentially be very large.

00:14:43 ◼   ► It remains to be seen if those will take the place of plain 2D photos.

00:14:46 ◼   ► I have to think that plain 2D photos will still have a place in the world, and that

00:14:52 ◼   ► those will be capped in the same way that audio is essentially capped.

00:14:56 ◼   ► We have two ears, and yes, you can have multi-channel audio, and yes, you could go up in higher

00:15:00 ◼   ► bit depths and resolutions, but at a certain point, and we may already be at that point,

00:15:05 ◼   ► digital audio files are not going to get any bigger than today's biggest, highest resolution,

00:15:12 ◼   ► totally uncompressed audio.

00:15:15 ◼   ► Because there's no point.

00:15:16 ◼   ► There's no point in taking 100,000 times more space than flak.

00:15:19 ◼   ► You know, 75 channel flak and 196 kilohertz or whatever, the max values that we're able

00:15:27 ◼   ► to do, there's no point in going much bigger than that because the limits of human hearing,

00:15:33 ◼   ► right?

00:15:34 ◼   ► once you go out of the realm of 2D photography into the realm of like VR or like a scene you could travel around in or

00:15:42 ◼   ► Depth maps or other things like that then you start to go up on the curve again

00:15:47 ◼   ► I have to think that that will eventually level off too because again our eyeballs can only see so much and

00:15:52 ◼   ► there's eventually a limit to

00:15:54 ◼   ► You know just even in a 3D world how much you want to move around but that's a different graph

00:15:58 ◼   ► But I but photo resolution like I think in our lifetime photo resolution or playing 2d photos

00:16:04 ◼   ► Will level off and if I had to guess what the number is

00:16:08 ◼   ► I would guess that it is going to be under a thousand megapixels

00:16:12 ◼   ► so

00:16:13 ◼   ► Probably some number of hundreds of megapixels maybe as low as one or two hundred and that will be like the point at which people

00:16:20 ◼   ► in the same way mp3 is like it seems almost like

00:16:22 ◼   ► 256 kilobit

00:16:25 ◼   ► lossy compressed

00:16:27 ◼   ► Files are like yeah, we can do better than that. But at this point consumers are fine with it. So we'll just stick with that

00:16:34 ◼   ► So I think that will happen

00:16:36 ◼   ► So don't worry about storing, you know, if storage sizes keep going up, you know

00:16:41 ◼   ► It was the current trends because we always have more stuff to store like video and you know

00:16:46 ◼   ► All the other things we have hell pretty soon

00:16:49 ◼   ► Each game is going to be a hundred times the size of like the biggest hard drive. I could have imagined like ten years ago

00:16:55 ◼   ► We'll have plenty of room for generation upon generation of photos in our storage

00:16:59 ◼   ► speaking of the size of games I was

00:17:03 ◼   ► Looking through some old files that I have and I noticed that

00:17:08 ◼   ► Super Nintendo

00:17:10 ◼   ► Games are like under a meg

00:17:13 ◼   ► That's a small smaller than a Mac OS icon. Yeah

00:17:17 ◼   ► It's insane like I understand it like it conceptually makes sense

00:17:23 ◼   ► But it's hard for me to reason through it.

00:17:26 ◼   ► Or, you know, when you think about it without really reasoning through it,

00:17:29 ◼   ► is I guess what I'm trying to say, it's just like, wait, how can that possibly be so small?

00:17:34 ◼   ► There was so many hours of gameplay I got from that. How can that be so small?

00:17:39 ◼   ► But, I mean, again, once you start thinking about it, it does make sense.

00:17:41 ◼   ► But, wow, did that really kind of freak me out when I saw that.

00:17:45 ◼   ► [Music]

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00:19:50 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:19:53 ◼   ► - Anyway, let's do some Ask ATP.

00:19:56 ◼   ► Thomas Holliday writes in to say,

00:19:58 ◼   ► "Apple distributes not a lot of WWDC tickets with a lottery.

00:20:02 ◼   ► "If Apple reused its WWDC ticket system

00:20:04 ◼   ► "to allocate first day iPhone whatever shipments,

00:20:07 ◼   ► "would that be better or worse than what they do now,

00:20:09 ◼   ► "which is a screen refresh click fest?"

00:20:13 ◼   ► After the iPhones are up for sale, presumably next week sometime, I will tell you our secret

00:20:21 ◼   ► to how to avoid the screen refresh click fest, which really means Marco or Jon is about to

00:20:26 ◼   ► tell you the secret to avoid the screen refresh click fest.

00:20:28 ◼   ► >> John B.

00:20:28 ◼   ► - Force quitting the app and using the app?

00:20:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, basically.

00:20:31 ◼   ► Just use the app on your phone.

00:20:33 ◼   ► That's the way to do it.

00:20:34 ◼   ► - Well, but the reality is, like,

00:20:35 ◼   ► no matter what method you pick,

00:20:36 ◼   ► whether it is refreshing the store page in a web browser

00:20:40 ◼   ► or whether it is using the Apple Store app,

00:20:41 ◼   ► which is definitely the method I recommend,

00:20:43 ◼   ► and even if you take all the shortcuts,

00:20:45 ◼   ► like if you first set it up as a favorite

00:20:47 ◼   ► after it's been announced before it ships,

00:20:49 ◼   ► then you can go in and just go right to your favorites

00:20:51 ◼   ► and order from there in the app.

00:20:52 ◼   ► Like, there are ways to make this faster.

00:20:54 ◼   ► However, the way the store has worked in the last few years

00:20:58 ◼   ► different areas, I don't know whether it's because of

00:21:01 ◼   ► CDN caching or different region caching,

00:21:04 ◼   ► it seems like there's something about caching or going live,

00:21:08 ◼   ► not every region goes live at the same time.

00:21:11 ◼   ► And so, no matter what, if you are not one of the lucky few

00:21:15 ◼   ► whose region goes up the very first,

00:21:18 ◼   ► whatever you're loading from might go up five minutes later

00:21:22 ◼   ► than some other people's.

00:21:24 ◼   ► And so you're already backordered.

00:21:26 ◼   ► Or like, you're gonna only be able to get

00:21:28 ◼   ► the least desirable color in the largest size for T-Mobile

00:21:32 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:21:34 ◼   ► It's gonna be back ordered like crazy.

00:21:35 ◼   ► And if the various rumors of low volumes

00:21:39 ◼   ► and low availability due to low yields

00:21:44 ◼   ► or low production numbers, if that's all true

00:21:47 ◼   ► or if it's even half true, it's gonna be a crazy mess

00:21:52 ◼   ► of scalpers buying them, having to get them off of eBay

00:21:56 ◼   ► or Craigslist or everyone trying to like sneak in

00:22:00 ◼   ► through the business reps.

00:22:01 ◼   ► Like it's gonna be a huge mess

00:22:02 ◼   ► of trying to get these phones.

00:22:04 ◼   ► I would say probably until January.

00:22:07 ◼   ► Maybe even longer than that.

00:22:09 ◼   ► So just expect going into it

00:22:11 ◼   ► that almost no one's gonna have these on day one

00:22:14 ◼   ► unless you are willing to pay a large premium

00:22:17 ◼   ► or you get very, very lucky.

00:22:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I actually wrote up a blog post

00:22:22 ◼   ► on all this last year.

00:22:25 ◼   ► And we'll put a link in the show notes.

00:22:26 ◼   ► It's called iPhone Pre-Order Lessons Learned, and basically it's exactly what you described,

00:22:29 ◼   ► Marco.

00:22:30 ◼   ► Set up your favorite in the Apple Store app, get your Apple Pay settings squared away in

00:22:34 ◼   ► advance, make sure your shipping stuff is squared away, etc.

00:22:39 ◼   ► It ended up that, according to this post, that my pre-order went through at 3.11 in

00:22:44 ◼   ► the morning.

00:22:45 ◼   ► If you recall, the pre-orders in years past have always started at midnight Pacific, because

00:22:50 ◼   ► apparently the world revolves around California.

00:22:52 ◼   ► Anyway, so they went up at three or so our time, and then it's never actually on time,

00:22:58 ◼   ► because besides caching, California is not exactly a punctual area of the world.

00:23:02 ◼   ► Don't @ me.

00:23:03 ◼   ► You can email Marco about that.

00:23:05 ◼   ► Hey, don't hate me.

00:23:07 ◼   ► It's true.

00:23:08 ◼   ► But anyways.

00:23:09 ◼   ► Even on vacation at midnight.

00:23:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:23:11 ◼   ► Even on vacation at midnight, they're still not punctual.

00:23:13 ◼   ► It drives me bananas.

00:23:14 ◼   ► But anyway, the point is that 3.11 was when I finally got it through, and what I ended

00:23:18 ◼   ► up doing was just what Marco said, you know, force quitting the Apple Store app, trying

00:23:21 ◼   ► again, force quitting the app, trying again, etc., etc.

00:23:24 ◼   ► And that is—and I've tried just about every mechanism for buying iPhones over the

00:23:28 ◼   ► last few years, and that is the one I do recommend.

00:23:31 ◼   ► It may not work this year, it may not work for you, but that is what I recommend.

00:23:35 ◼   ► John, what are your thoughts on this?

00:23:37 ◼   ► I'll have to actually answer this question.

00:23:39 ◼   ► Would it be better if they used the lottery?

00:23:42 ◼   ► No, it would not be better if they used the lottery.

00:23:44 ◼   ► It would be worse if they used the lottery.

00:23:46 ◼   ► The difference between WWC tickets and iPhones is that iPhones, they make more of them, right?

00:23:53 ◼   ► So you may not get it as soon as other people, but you're going to get an iPhone if you want

00:23:58 ◼   ► one eventually.

00:23:59 ◼   ► Whereas WWDC tickets, if you don't get one of them, that's it until next year, right?

00:24:04 ◼   ► So a lottery would be worse because that's just more bookkeeping and the added bit of

00:24:10 ◼   ► randomness and like I said with WWDC tickets when we talked about WWDC lottery, I kind

00:24:15 ◼   ► of like the idea that people who are willing to stay up at three in the morning and have

00:24:18 ◼   ► these elaborate systems put more effort into it showing they care more about getting in

00:24:22 ◼   ► on day one and they're rewarded for that.

00:24:24 ◼   ► Whereas a lottery is like, oh, well, everybody's equal in the eyes of the lottery and it's

00:24:28 ◼   ► just totally random.

00:24:29 ◼   ► And so I like the idea that there's something people can do to try to get an iPhone sooner.

00:24:34 ◼   ► But like I said, unlike WWC tickets, if you don't get one, that doesn't mean you can never

00:24:38 ◼   ► have one of these iPhones.

00:24:39 ◼   ► You just have to wait a little bit longer.

00:24:40 ◼   ► Rest assured, Apple will sell you one unless it's like the white iPhone 4 and then in which

00:24:44 ◼   ► case you might have to wait a really, really long time, but you'll get one eventually.

00:24:48 ◼   ► So lottery would be worse.

00:24:49 ◼   ► All right, Monte Thomas writes in, "Is there a perceptible difference under normal viewing

00:24:54 ◼   ► conditions between 4K UHD and 1080p HD?

00:24:58 ◼   ► If so, is that difference substantial enough to justify TV and Blu-ray upgrades?

00:25:02 ◼   ► Recently I've been reading some articles that Steve Yedlin, the director of photography

00:25:07 ◼   ► of The Last Jedi, has written on the topic of 4K.

00:25:09 ◼   ► He argues that 4K is used by TV manufacturers and others as a marketing gimmick and is not

00:25:14 ◼   ► a valuable feature in itself. This seems to be a compelling position that I've seen little

00:25:18 ◼   ► meaningful counterarguments against. I don't really know anything about this, so I'm going

00:25:22 ◼   ► to throw in my two cents so I can feel smart and then give it to Jon. But my understanding

00:25:27 ◼   ► is that it's HDR that's the real good stuff, and that 4K, in most cases until you get just

00:25:32 ◼   ► a comically large TV, really isn't that great. So Jon, what's the reality?

00:25:37 ◼   ► So there are plenty of meaningful counterarguments, because as you noted, first of all, 4K, when

00:25:43 ◼   ► you see like that on a television it represents a set of industry standards that people have

00:25:48 ◼   ► all agreed on.

00:25:49 ◼   ► Only one aspect of which is the increased resolution.

00:25:53 ◼   ► There are other aspects to it.

00:25:55 ◼   ► Setting aside HDR, which you're right is probably a much bigger deal than 4K.

00:25:59 ◼   ► The plain old 4K standards have different bit depths, different frame rates, and all

00:26:06 ◼   ► sorts of other things, different color profiles, right?

00:26:10 ◼   ► Also other things that make the picture better.

00:26:12 ◼   ► Now as for the resolution itself, there are, you know,

00:26:15 ◼   ► I tried to find a good one for the show,

00:26:16 ◼   ► and this one I found is reasonable.

00:26:19 ◼   ► There are calculators you can put in to say,

00:26:22 ◼   ► how big is my TV?

00:26:23 ◼   ► How far away do I sit from it?

00:26:25 ◼   ► And at what point does the increased resolution

00:26:28 ◼   ► become meaningless?

00:26:28 ◼   ► Now, the question of become meaningless is tricky

00:26:32 ◼   ► because a lot of these things use like,

00:26:33 ◼   ► oh, the eye is no longer able to resolve anything,

00:26:37 ◼   ► you know, smaller than this particular size or whatever.

00:26:40 ◼   ► That's not necessarily the point at which

00:26:42 ◼   ► the picture is indistinguishable because you're not trying to resolve individual pixels or

00:26:48 ◼   ► lines distinct from each other. I can still perceive increased detail even if it can't

00:26:54 ◼   ► perceive the boundaries between the pixels, right? But nevertheless, there is a point

00:26:58 ◼   ► at which your distance from the television combined with the size of the television means

00:27:01 ◼   ► that 4K is completely indistinguishable from 1080, 1080 is indistinguishable from 720,

00:27:06 ◼   ► so on and so forth. So a lot of these charts have things that show your screen size and

00:27:09 ◼   ► your distance and a bunch of lines and you can, you know, plot the things and find out

00:27:13 ◼   ► where you lie and they show a region of the graph where it's like if you're in this region

00:27:17 ◼   ► of the graph, it doesn't matter if you have 1080 or 4K or 720 because they all look the

00:27:22 ◼   ► same to you.

00:27:23 ◼   ► So use one of these viewing distance calculators, one of which we will put in the show notes,

00:27:27 ◼   ► to see if it makes a difference in your setup.

00:27:29 ◼   ► But like I said, keep in mind that 4K resolution is just one aspect of 4K and not even the

00:27:35 ◼   ► most important aspect for most people in most setups.

00:27:38 ◼   ► HDR is, I don't know if it's part of the 4K standards, but anyway, HDR comes in modern

00:27:42 ◼   ► TVs and that is more important than 4K resolution and the color profiles and bit depth are also

00:27:49 ◼   ► probably more important than the resolution.

00:27:52 ◼   ► So yes, 4K TVs are probably worth it and bottom line is, like so many things before, you don't

00:28:00 ◼   ► have a choice.

00:28:01 ◼   ► Eventually you won't even be able to buy a non-4K TV, so don't sweat it too much and

00:28:05 ◼   ► rest assured that it is not just a marketing gimmick.

00:28:07 ◼   ► It does, you know, modern TVs, 4K, UHD, HDR,

00:28:11 ◼   ► or capable TVs have better picture than 1080 TVs,

00:28:15 ◼   ► even if you can't see the resolution difference.

00:28:18 ◼   ► - So let me ask a dumb question now.

00:28:20 ◼   ► My understanding of HDR comes from

00:28:23 ◼   ► when it was added to the iPhone.

00:28:25 ◼   ► And my understanding is it's a way of saying,

00:28:28 ◼   ► well, you're taking a portrait of somebody

00:28:31 ◼   ► like at the edge of a mountain, for example,

00:28:33 ◼   ► and you want the people to be exposed properly,

00:28:37 ◼   ► but you also want the perhaps comparatively much brighter landscape in the background

00:28:43 ◼   ► to also be exposed properly.

00:28:45 ◼   ► And so my understanding of how the iPhone works is that it'll like take two or three

00:28:49 ◼   ► shots at different exposure levels or what have you and kind of stitch them together

00:28:53 ◼   ► to make one shot that's exposed properly at a wide range of distances.

00:28:59 ◼   ► Is assuming that's the case, why is this on the presentation side?

00:29:05 ◼   ► Like what makes that, that to me is a capture time issue.

00:29:08 ◼   ► What makes it a display time issue?

00:29:11 ◼   ► - So yeah, you're looking at it at the opposite end.

00:29:13 ◼   ► You're looking at it at capture,

00:29:15 ◼   ► what you're trying to do is

00:29:17 ◼   ► like your sensor has a certain dynamic range.

00:29:19 ◼   ► You know what this is like if you're taking a picture

00:29:21 ◼   ► with a film camera or any kind of camera,

00:29:23 ◼   ► depending on how you have your camera set up

00:29:26 ◼   ► in terms of what's the aperture or shutter speed,

00:29:29 ◼   ► the speed of the film in the old days,

00:29:31 ◼   ► your sensor, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:29:32 ◼   ► The bottom line is certain areas below a certain darkness are 100% black and areas above a certain

00:29:37 ◼   ► brightness are 100% white that represents a dynamic range of your current setup of taking a picture, right and

00:29:44 ◼   ► if you have an image that you see with your eyeballs or you know out in the world where the brightest part is really really

00:29:50 ◼   ► Bright and the darkest part is really really dark and that that range is way bigger than the dynamic range of your capturing equipment

00:29:57 ◼   ► The way they cheat this with HDR photos and the iPhone is they will take multiple pictures at different exposures

00:30:03 ◼   ► so they will say

00:30:03 ◼   ► I'm going to take that out of range of the camera and shift it way over to the left and take one picture over there

00:30:08 ◼   ► And then put it in the middle take one picture there and put it at the other end take one picture there

00:30:12 ◼   ► And then I combine them all so I can't so instead of

00:30:14 ◼   ► The the shadowy part of the picture being a hundred percent black and the bright part being a hundred percent white

00:30:19 ◼   ► I will take those three different pictures with three different exposure settings essentially and

00:30:23 ◼   ► Combine them all into a singer picture and I really hope nothing in between because it'll be all blurry and gross, right?

00:30:27 ◼   ► That is making that trying to fake the dynamic range of your sensor to make it wider now on the display side

00:30:33 ◼   ► assuming your content was either captured with the higher dynamic range by like a much fancier camera than the ones in our phones or

00:30:40 ◼   ► Manipulated in some way in a computer to add more dynamicism

00:30:44 ◼   ► Back in it to say that the bright parts are really bright in the dark parts are really dark

00:30:48 ◼   ► Now the display has the capability to show that range. Usually this manifests in the bright parts being much brighter than you thought

00:30:55 ◼   ► but it's the same thing like if you

00:30:58 ◼   ► If you take your television like crank down the brightness or whatever all of a sudden the shadowy areas just become 100% black and you

00:31:04 ◼   ► Can't see anything and the same thing if you crank up the brightness you lose all detail in the light areas

00:31:08 ◼   ► Right a screen with the higher dynamic range can show details in those shadows while also

00:31:13 ◼   ► Not washing out everything at the bright end and like I said this usually meant TVs are good at but

00:31:18 ◼   ► Pretty good at showing shadow detail, but if you want the brights to be really really bright

00:31:24 ◼   ► You will destroy all the shadow detail on a TV with a cylinder deck range

00:31:28 ◼   ► So high dynamic range TVs when you watch them it feels doesn't feel like looking out a window obviously

00:31:33 ◼   ► It's not like the Sun burning your eyeballs out from your television

00:31:36 ◼   ► But they go much brighter than regular televisions and when they go brighter like that, it doesn't wash out the bright the blacks

00:31:42 ◼   ► So that's high dynamic range in

00:31:44 ◼   ► the display tech

00:31:47 ◼   ► So when I watch an HDR TV

00:31:49 ◼   ► Do I have to put like a little pinhole in a box and look in the box and all that just like now?

00:31:54 ◼   ► This is how it works

00:31:55 ◼   ► I think I haven't been keeping up with this recently, but I'm pretty sure no television you can buy

00:32:00 ◼   ► Maxes out the range of like the the highest dynamic range standard like to be compliant

00:32:06 ◼   ► You just have to I fit this some fudge factor of like you just have to be like within this range

00:32:10 ◼   ► But the HDR standards go like to super super bright

00:32:14 ◼   ► And I don't think any television for sale today can hit the max limit of the HDR standard with the highest range

00:32:21 ◼   ► Maybe it's Dolby Vision

00:32:22 ◼   ► I forget

00:32:22 ◼   ► Because if you were to crank any current panels to that level it would wash out the dark so they have a much higher dynamic

00:32:28 ◼   ► Range than I don't know what you call the regular televisions TVs without HDR right much much higher than that

00:32:34 ◼   ► But there's still even had room in current standards, but no you won't need to burn your eyes out

00:32:38 ◼   ► Although I imagine if you're watching it in a really dark room and a movie a poorly

00:32:42 ◼   ► Mastered movie switches from a really dark scene to a really bright scene. You're gonna squint

00:32:47 ◼   ► I've had that happen with my night

00:32:48 ◼   ► She our TV ever watched like a movie in the dark and it switches from a dark

00:32:50 ◼   ► They've been in a dark scene for a long time then it switches to bright sunlight and you squint

00:32:54 ◼   ► I've had that happen with my extremely dim by standards of HDR or even terrible LED backlit LCDs

00:33:02 ◼   ► I've had that happen with my plasma. So I imagine that'll happen even more so with HDR

00:33:08 ◼   ► Finally, for Ask ATP, you know, these previous two were really long.

00:33:12 ◼   ► Are you accepting Ask ATP via email?

00:33:13 ◼   ► Because that was not part of the agreement.

00:33:16 ◼   ► Those were tweets.

00:33:17 ◼   ► Mmm.

00:33:18 ◼   ► I'm just getting to all of them.

00:33:19 ◼   ► Tweet storms!

00:33:20 ◼   ► That's what people do instead of blogging.

00:33:21 ◼   ► I was going to blog this, but how about I write it a sentence at a time?

00:33:24 ◼   ► With numbers at the end of it.

00:33:26 ◼   ► Every time I read that, I just think, "What happened to blogging?"

00:33:28 ◼   ► All you've got to do is do one tweet with a link to a blog.

00:33:31 ◼   ► That's it.

00:33:32 ◼   ► But people don't want to click through the link, so they'd much rather read what you

00:33:35 ◼   ► write one tiny paragraph at a time.

00:33:37 ◼   ► In some ways it makes people convince their thoughts and say, you know, so they don't

00:33:42 ◼   ► just ramble on and on and on.

00:33:44 ◼   ► But the other way, it's like, too many damn tweets.

00:33:47 ◼   ► Anyway, this was like three tweets.

00:33:48 ◼   ► I accept that.

00:33:49 ◼   ► Well, it's better than tweet shots at least.

00:33:50 ◼   ► Oh, amen, brother.

00:33:52 ◼   ► I hated tweet shots.

00:33:53 ◼   ► What are tweet shots?

00:33:54 ◼   ► When you would take a picture of it or take a screenshot of the thing you're trying to

00:34:00 ◼   ► talk about.

00:34:01 ◼   ► And you'd like write it in notes?

00:34:02 ◼   ► And then highlight, yeah, and like highlight the section.

00:34:04 ◼   ► Oh, God.

00:34:05 ◼   ► That's like a feature of the medium site.

00:34:07 ◼   ► Isn't it that they manufacture those pings

00:34:09 ◼   ► programmatically for you or whatever and upload them?

00:34:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, what was it?

00:34:12 ◼   ► Like OneShot or something was an app that used to do it

00:34:14 ◼   ► and was really popular for like two months or something?

00:34:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, you say it's better, but honestly,

00:34:19 ◼   ► I would rather click on one of those stupid images

00:34:21 ◼   ► and read it than have to scroll through 75 tweets.

00:34:24 ◼   ► - In any case, just to let the record show

00:34:28 ◼   ► that if you're writing a tweet storm,

00:34:29 ◼   ► your question is probably too long.

00:34:32 ◼   ► Matt Sullivan writes in one tweet, an obscenely short amount of characters, and I commend

00:34:36 ◼   ► you for it, "What would you..." or let me try that again, "Would you discuss why and

00:34:41 ◼   ► how y'all use Plex Media Server?"

00:34:43 ◼   ► I would love to, because I love talking about Plex.

00:34:47 ◼   ► So this, you know, we might not have time for the iPhone announcement predictions, because

00:34:50 ◼   ► this is going to take a while.

00:34:54 ◼   ► What I use Plex for is a front end to any sort of video media that I have.

00:34:59 ◼   ► So that's TV shows, it's movies, it's a collection of music videos that I tend to like to watch

00:35:04 ◼   ► from time to time, it's concerts that I have.

00:35:08 ◼   ► It is to some degree home movies, although I don't have a lot of those split out right

00:35:11 ◼   ► now.

00:35:13 ◼   ► But Plex is an unbelievable front end to basically any kind of media.

00:35:16 ◼   ► It does do music, although I don't think it's particularly fantastic.

00:35:23 ◼   ► It does do photos, which is okay, but to me video is where it's really at.

00:35:29 ◼   ► And what's great about Plex is if you can suffer through their very opinionated naming

00:35:35 ◼   ► structure and their very opinionated way of how they want you to name things, then it

00:35:43 ◼   ► will find all the metadata for your stuff automatically.

00:35:48 ◼   ► So if you name the file for the movie that you're trying to put into Plex, I don't know,

00:35:53 ◼   ► the rundown space, paren 2000 paren, or whatever the year it came out, it will go to, not IMDB,

00:36:01 ◼   ► but an equivalent thereof, and it will grab the poster, it'll grab the cast, it'll grab

00:36:08 ◼   ► all sorts of stuff.

00:36:09 ◼   ► And so the Apple TV app, as an example, is a really phenomenal front end.

00:36:15 ◼   ► The Plex Apple TV app is a really phenomenal front end to all your media.

00:36:18 ◼   ► What's also great about Plex is if it's being run on a machine that is even reasonably powerful,

00:36:25 ◼   ► it will transcode that media on the fly.

00:36:28 ◼   ► So say something fell off the back of a truck, and let's say for example it's an MKV, it's

00:36:33 ◼   ► a Matroska file.

00:36:36 ◼   ► That isn't something the Apple TV can natively pick up or read.

00:36:41 ◼   ► I'm sure someone will well actually me on this one, but let's just go with it for now.

00:36:45 ◼   ► So it can't read in MKV natively.

00:36:48 ◼   ► Plex is smart enough to see, "Oh, the client that's trying to play this is the Apple TV

00:36:53 ◼   ► or an iPhone or an iPad.

00:36:55 ◼   ► It really needs to be H.264, etc., etc.

00:36:58 ◼   ► So I will either repackage it so that it's being presented in an MP4 container, or I

00:37:04 ◼   ► will actually transcode the darn thing so it is H.264."

00:37:07 ◼   ► And it does it all on the fly, all transparently.

00:37:11 ◼   ► You don't have to think about it.

00:37:12 ◼   ► The other phenomenal thing about Plex is if you expose a couple of ports in your router,

00:37:17 ◼   ► you can access all of your data, all of your media remotely.

00:37:21 ◼   ► So as an example, when we were at the beach a few weeks ago, we wanted to listen to music

00:37:27 ◼   ► or put on a movie or what have you.

00:37:30 ◼   ► And what we would do is we would hook up my Fire TV stick.

00:37:35 ◼   ► It has a Plex client.

00:37:37 ◼   ► And we would connect to my Plex server at my house.

00:37:39 ◼   ► So we were in North Carolina, obviously the house is still in Richmond, and we would connect

00:37:43 ◼   ► to Plex and we would play our movies remotely from North Carolina, which is really awesome.

00:37:49 ◼   ► And then what's even greater, which people don't talk about that often, is if you have

00:37:55 ◼   ► really close friends that you're willing to share your media with, you can become Plex

00:37:59 ◼   ► Pals.

00:38:00 ◼   ► That's my word.

00:38:01 ◼   ► I just came up with that.

00:38:02 ◼   ► I really like it.

00:38:03 ◼   ► Plex Pals.

00:38:04 ◼   ► Bulk bag.

00:38:05 ◼   ► Anyway, so you can become friends on Plex.

00:38:07 ◼   ► And that means that you can stream from each other's libraries.

00:38:10 ◼   ► So as an example, all three of us are friends on Plex, and so if I ever wanted to watch

00:38:17 ◼   ► something that I don't have but Marco has or that Jon has, I can just go to their Plex

00:38:22 ◼   ► servers from my house and stream right off their servers.

00:38:27 ◼   ► And similarly, if Marco ever wants to watch Top Gear or The Grand Tour or what have you,

00:38:31 ◼   ► I mean, if I hypothetically had those on my Plex server, that is, then he can just stream

00:38:36 ◼   ► Direct for me and in fact if you're a PlexPass member and this is where the you would start having to pay for it

00:38:43 ◼   ► Actually, I think the iOS app might be paid but there's no recurring fees PlexPass does have a recurring fee

00:38:48 ◼   ► And if you are a PlexPass member you can actually download

00:38:52 ◼   ► This media onto your devices

00:38:54 ◼   ► So I can download stuff from my server onto my device if say I'm going on a plane or something like that

00:39:00 ◼   ► and then furthermore if I want to

00:39:03 ◼   ► I could

00:39:05 ◼   ► give Marco or John the ability to download from my server. So by default you can only stream,

00:39:10 ◼   ► but I can go and say, "No, Marco and John can download from me."

00:39:15 ◼   ► And I think I have actually, but anyway, Marco and John can download from me, and so they can download

00:39:19 ◼   ► my source files onto their devices. So it's a really good kind of omnivorous.

00:39:25 ◼   ► It will consume anything, it will spit it out in any way you need it.

00:39:29 ◼   ► It's on darn near every platform, and it's really, really great if you can suffer through

00:39:35 ◼   ► through naming your files in a particular way that makes Plex happy.

00:39:41 ◼   ► I don't find that way terribly egregious.

00:39:42 ◼   ► I know a lot of people that think it's absurd and completely unintelligible.

00:39:47 ◼   ► I have a couple of blog posts I've written about this in the past.

00:39:49 ◼   ► I'll put links in the show notes.

00:39:51 ◼   ► But it really isn't that bad.

00:39:53 ◼   ► For TV shows, you make a folder with the name of the TV show, The Grand Tour.

00:39:57 ◼   ► In there, you make a folder per season, season 01.

00:40:00 ◼   ► In there, it's the grandtor space hyphen space S01E01 dot whatever.

00:40:06 ◼   ► That's it.

00:40:07 ◼   ► That's the whole thing.

00:40:08 ◼   ► So it's really not that bad.

00:40:09 ◼   ► I've talked a lot.

00:40:11 ◼   ► Marco, John, thoughts?

00:40:13 ◼   ► I have none.

00:40:14 ◼   ► John?

00:40:15 ◼   ► Well, you kind of got it why you use Plex and how.

00:40:20 ◼   ► I mean, how do we use it to watch video, right?

00:40:23 ◼   ► So that's how we use it for, I'm pretty sure.

00:40:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:40:27 ◼   ► The only thing I have to add is like I have this video from all sorts of places like as

00:40:32 ◼   ► we've established on Pat shows I can't even remember all the subscription services I subscribe

00:40:37 ◼   ► to.

00:40:38 ◼   ► I think it's probably all of them at this point.

00:40:41 ◼   ► And I have a TiVo and the clients for all the streaming services are some of them are

00:40:46 ◼   ► on my television, some of them are on my TiVo, some of them are on Apple TV like they're

00:40:48 ◼   ► all over the place like in the PlayStation and everything else is hooked up to it.

00:40:54 ◼   ► So I don't have all my video in one place.

00:40:56 ◼   ► A lot of people use Plexad as their clearinghouse, but I don't.

00:41:00 ◼   ► I have plastic discs with a video on them of various kinds, Blu-rays and DVDs.

00:41:05 ◼   ► I have movies saved on my TiVo that are marked not to delete that it's just convenient to

00:41:09 ◼   ► watch them in that way.

00:41:11 ◼   ► And it really depends on -- I mean, it's kind of annoying, like, how do you know where your

00:41:16 ◼   ► thing is?

00:41:17 ◼   ► I just know because I put them all there, but like, the big fancy movies that I care

00:41:20 ◼   ► about, like, I just watched Blade Runner for when we did the Mike of the Movies Revisit

00:41:25 ◼   ► thing.

00:41:26 ◼   ► off my Blu-ray, the actual plastic disc, because that is the highest quality version of that

00:41:30 ◼   ► movie that I have and I wanted to see it in really nice quality.

00:41:33 ◼   ► Other movies that we play for the kids a lot, we have the plastic discs for them but I don't

00:41:39 ◼   ► want to take out the disc and I don't want them touching the discs and it's just a mess

00:41:42 ◼   ► and it takes a long time or whatever.

00:41:44 ◼   ► So we have a lot of those ripped and they're sitting on my flex server.

00:41:47 ◼   ► Why?

00:41:48 ◼   ► Because I didn't buy them on Apple TV, I bought like the Pixar, you know, Blu-ray, whatever,

00:41:53 ◼   ► right?

00:41:54 ◼   ► I don't care about the Blu-ray quality for when the kids are showing it.

00:41:57 ◼   ► So sometimes Blu-rays come with a digital copy, but if they don't, I will rip the Blu-ray

00:42:01 ◼   ► and re-encode it as smaller H.264 and put it on my Plex server, and so now they have

00:42:06 ◼   ► a way to watch a movie immediately.

00:42:10 ◼   ► I don't know how they keep track of where everything is, but eventually they just learn

00:42:12 ◼   ► like, "Hey, Moana's on the Plex, you don't have to get the disc, right?

00:42:15 ◼   ► Just play it from there."

00:42:17 ◼   ► And we do buy things on iTunes and they just keep track of, "Oh, the Hunger Games movies,

00:42:20 ◼   ► we bought those on iTunes, so if you want to watch those, they're there."

00:42:23 ◼   ► And kids are adaptable and they learn.

00:42:24 ◼   ► So I use it as just another place to hold video that's convenient to play from.

00:42:30 ◼   ► Because Plex is very convenient.

00:42:31 ◼   ► It looks nice.

00:42:32 ◼   ► Like Casey said, it will get the cover images.

00:42:34 ◼   ► You can change them if you don't like them, which I appreciate because I always pick alternate

00:42:36 ◼   ► covers.

00:42:37 ◼   ► You would.

00:42:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:42:39 ◼   ► And it's pretty good about matching up the metadata.

00:42:42 ◼   ► And it presents a nice interface.

00:42:43 ◼   ► And I have clients on lots of different places on iOS devices and on my television.

00:42:49 ◼   ► So that's why I use it.

00:42:52 ◼   ► That's why, despite all the things I already have in my life that I just listed, I found

00:42:57 ◼   ► room for one more thing, which is a convenient place to play video that's not on a plastic

00:43:04 ◼   ► disk or purchased in DRM encumbered from some other service.

00:43:07 ◼   ► Or streaming, obviously.

00:43:08 ◼   ► Or recorded from TV.

00:43:09 ◼   ► I have a lot of video in my house.

00:43:12 ◼   ► Yeah, and to be fair, I do have a bunch of plastic disks, but generally speaking I will

00:43:17 ◼   ► rip them.

00:43:18 ◼   ► in a lossy way, which I know offends Jon, but to me it's fine.

00:43:22 ◼   ► But I will go and buy the plastic disc and rip it so I don't have to worry about being

00:43:26 ◼   ► DRM encumbered.

00:43:27 ◼   ► I almost never buy anything video on iTunes because I want it to end up in Plex, and I

00:43:33 ◼   ► don't want it to be DRMed.

00:43:35 ◼   ► But I did kind of skip over the how, and we've talked about this I think semi-recently on

00:43:38 ◼   ► the show, but very, very briefly, all of my media is on the Synology, but the Plex server

00:43:44 ◼   ► software is on the iMac.

00:43:45 ◼   ► The iMac and the Synology are both on always.

00:43:48 ◼   ► And so the iMac looks at the Synology via network share and crunches all the media off

00:43:54 ◼   ► of that.

00:43:56 ◼   ► Synologies do run Plex natively.

00:43:58 ◼   ► There's been conflicting experiences even within the three of us, whether or not our

00:44:04 ◼   ► Synologies are fast enough, good enough, strong enough, quick enough, etc. to transcode things

00:44:09 ◼   ► on the fly.

00:44:11 ◼   ► In my experience, it very much was not, but I think the media that I was asking to transcode

00:44:15 ◼   ► was not already H.264. Now that I've been doing a very, very good job of curating what enters my

00:44:22 ◼   ► Plex server and making sure it is always transcoded to H.264 before Plex gets to it,

00:44:27 ◼   ► now I wonder if it wouldn't be so bad. But I haven't done any further tests since then.

00:44:31 ◼   ► You got to change the quality to original. Like, don't, like, the remote quality or whatever,

00:44:36 ◼   ► change it to, well, there's two qualities, local and remote. Change, at the very least,

00:44:39 ◼   ► change the local quality to original. Even on your iOS devices, I will tell it,

00:44:43 ◼   ► if it already is in the right codec do not attempt to down sample it to a lower resolution and that

00:44:49 ◼   ► will go a long way towards making your streaming from your plain old Synology work fine. I do the

00:44:54 ◼   ► same thing as Casey but I also have Flex running on my actual Synology pointing to the exact same

00:44:59 ◼   ► media. They have separate libraries which is a little bit annoying to keep in sync but I mostly

00:45:04 ◼   ► go from the Synology because my iMac isn't always awake it's my wife's computer sometimes it's asleep

00:45:09 ◼   ► and the Synology is, you know, far away and I don't have to know what I'm doing into it by streaming movies.

00:45:15 ◼   ► I don't hear it. It's in the basement.

00:45:17 ◼   ► That's my ideal. If it doesn't work on the Synology in the rare case, then I

00:45:21 ◼   ► tried from the iMac.

00:45:24 ◼   ► Yeah, the only problem with doing it original is if you have something that is truly big,

00:45:28 ◼   ► then

00:45:30 ◼   ► your downstream connection may not be able to handle it. So as an example,

00:45:35 ◼   ► Normally at the beach, we have truly terrible internet connections via Wi-Fi, and streaming

00:45:40 ◼   ► video is not the sort of thing you would want to do over tethering.

00:45:43 ◼   ► So a lot of times, including this past beach vacation where we had better Wi-Fi than we've

00:45:48 ◼   ► ever had, it was still too slow to get a lot of like 1080 stuff without any sort of downsampling

00:45:53 ◼   ► or anything like that.

00:45:54 ◼   ► So I agree with what you said in principle that, you know, doing it where it's just blindly

00:45:59 ◼   ► dumping stuff across the internet will make it a lot easier on the Synology, but that

00:46:03 ◼   ► may be overloading your internet connection if you're outside of the house. Within the

00:46:07 ◼   ► house, oh absolutely, you should be fine. Also, the chat room is asking, "Do I have

00:46:12 ◼   ► my Plex library backed up to CrashPlan?" Yes, I do. Yes, I understand, given last week's

00:46:17 ◼   ► discussion, that some of that is redundant, especially since I just said a lot of this

00:46:20 ◼   ► I have on Blu-ray. But I prefer it that way because to separate out what is redundant

00:46:25 ◼   ► and what isn't would be a nightmare. And also being asked in the chat room, "What do I use

00:46:30 ◼   ► to transcode every incoming file. Either Don Melton's video transcoding script is what I

00:46:36 ◼   ► typically use and if not I'm using FFmpeg and I'll put links to both of those in the chat or in the

00:46:43 ◼   ► show notes excuse me. Just to be clear Plex has separate preferences for when you're on a LAN

00:46:48 ◼   ► versus when you're on the internet. Oh you know that's true I forgot about that. Like I said set

00:46:51 ◼   ► your local connection to original because I have gigabit ethernet between all these devices like

00:46:55 ◼   ► wired nothing none of this is on wi-fi everything is wired so it's like no problem whatsoever.

00:46:59 ◼   ► and remote is where you have to pick what kind of quality downgrade you want.

00:47:03 ◼   ► But you can change that setting from the clients. You could say, "Let me try original."

00:47:06 ◼   ► Nope, not going to happen. Let me try transcoding and you know you keep downgrading it until you get it.

00:47:11 ◼   ► Yep, that's exactly what happened at the beach was I was like, "Oh yeah, we'll just use original."

00:47:15 ◼   ► Oh, that didn't work for beans. All right, well, let's try it slightly down.

00:47:19 ◼   ► I think, you know, let's crank it back but still keep it 1080. Oh, that didn't work.

00:47:22 ◼   ► All right, let's crank it back to 720. Oh, I think we're almost there.

00:47:26 ◼   ► let's crank it back to crappier 720. Ah okay there it is finally we've got it. And by the way within

00:47:31 ◼   ► the house like I said I don't have any devices that will play these things back at correct 24

00:47:35 ◼   ► frames per second cadence. You may have a different box that is able to do that but

00:47:39 ◼   ► you can do multi-channel audio like so if you have if you rip something rip it with 5.1 like

00:47:45 ◼   ► or I always make sure I rip it with 5.1 because it will stream the you know original quality which

00:47:50 ◼   ► obviously is a downgrade from what was on the blu-ray because I'm not doing 50 gig rips if I

00:47:55 ◼   ► I can help it. And it will also stream the multichannel audio as well, and that will

00:48:00 ◼   ► be the same as it was on the disk. So it makes for some pretty big files, but within the

00:48:04 ◼   ► house it is a perfectly acceptable way for the kids to watch movies so they don't have

00:48:08 ◼   ► to get a disk out.

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00:50:12 ◼   ► John, tell me about your work computing situation

00:50:17 ◼   ► because I hear it's just recently changed.

00:50:20 ◼   ► Yeah, so my 2009 Mac Pro that I've been using since 2009, it worked.

00:50:27 ◼   ► It was the first Mac our company ever bought.

00:50:31 ◼   ► And I'll be sad to see it go.

00:50:32 ◼   ► It's been a true, but it still works fine.

00:50:35 ◼   ► But I do now have a 2017 Mac Pro.

00:50:39 ◼   ► They got space gray.

00:50:40 ◼   ► I think they got space gray for everybody.

00:50:41 ◼   ► MacBook Pro, you mean?

00:50:42 ◼   ► Yeah, MacBook Pro, sorry.

00:50:44 ◼   ► Wishful thinking.

00:50:45 ◼   ► Small difference.

00:50:46 ◼   ► Anyway, yes, yes.

00:50:48 ◼   ► So now I have that and I know, you know, Marcos had 17 of them and Casey has one and you've

00:50:53 ◼   ► all are giving your impressions about all these things, but now I have one so I have

00:50:59 ◼   ► some actual hands-on impressions with it aside from my sadness of trying to retire my other

00:51:05 ◼   ► computer.

00:51:06 ◼   ► So first the computer itself, like no surprises I'd seen them in person or whatever, but actually

00:51:13 ◼   ► using one for real at work very quickly let me know in practical terms which things bother

00:51:23 ◼   ► me and which don't.

00:51:24 ◼   ► First the keyboard, you know, I've typed on a million times in the store.

00:51:27 ◼   ► I've even typed on 2017 ones with a different damping and stuff, right?

00:51:30 ◼   ► Like it's not a surprise, but again you do a day of work in it and it is different than

00:51:35 ◼   ► when you're in the store just playing.

00:51:37 ◼   ► I think I mostly like the keyboard.

00:51:40 ◼   ► All right.

00:51:42 ◼   ► I'm not sure if I would choose a desktop keyboard with this, but as far as laptop keyboards

00:51:46 ◼   ► go, it mostly agrees with me.

00:51:50 ◼   ► I like the fact that it is quieter.

00:51:53 ◼   ► I feel like I can type fairly efficiently on it.

00:51:56 ◼   ► If I have one complaint about the keyboard, it's that I think I may be pressing harder

00:52:01 ◼   ► than I need to, which is weird because the travel is so low, you'd think I'd be pressing

00:52:06 ◼   ► less hard, but I don't know.

00:52:08 ◼   ► I feel like I'm more gentle on the Apple aluminum extended

00:52:11 ◼   ► And I use the I use the keyboard for only a couple of days for reasons

00:52:16 ◼   ► I'll get into later before I switch back to my Apple extended aluminum

00:52:19 ◼   ► So obviously I don't want to use like that

00:52:21 ◼   ► Tiny cramped up keyboard without home and end and full-size arrow keys and all the other things that I hate about laptop keyboards, right?

00:52:27 ◼   ► I am using in clamshell mode by the way, I

00:52:30 ◼   ► Really like touch ID because my work computer I have to enter my password every single time

00:52:35 ◼   ► I come back to the desk every every single time and my password is long and complicated for stupid security reasons. I

00:52:41 ◼   ► Was like touch ID this will finally save me from it

00:52:44 ◼   ► But because I'm in clamshell mode I and I'm so good at typing my password that

00:52:48 ◼   ► It's faster for me to type my password than it is for me to open the case put my finger on touch ID and close

00:52:53 ◼   ► It touch ID is not as fast as on the phone, right?

00:52:56 ◼   ► The thing about the laptop as a laptop setting it aside, you know

00:53:01 ◼   ► Connecting it as my sort of clamshell desktop machine that I was very surprised at how I cannot handle is

00:53:08 ◼   ► The escape key in the touch bar. I cannot handle it in real life when I have to press that key

00:53:14 ◼   ► I just can't do it

00:53:16 ◼   ► Like I don't like I don't even like VI to begin with but the added insecurity of knowing

00:53:20 ◼   ► Did I actually go get out of it get into command mode?

00:53:24 ◼   ► Did I actually hit the escape keepers?

00:53:26 ◼   ► I have no way of knowing if I hit this I almost wish the computer beeped when I successfully hit the escape key because I

00:53:31 ◼   ► Just don't know I reach my finger up there to hit escape instinctively and I land on an unmoving slab of whatever that stuff is

00:53:37 ◼   ► Like plastic or glass or whatever. No, my whole body revolts. I cannot handle it

00:53:41 ◼   ► Just that one key and who hits escape. I apparently I had escaped all day long like whether it's you know

00:53:47 ◼   ► Escape X and Emacs or I'm stuck on a machine that has VI and I'm hitting escape. No, no, no

00:53:53 ◼   ► No, and like I'm just totally surprised because I went in the store

00:53:56 ◼   ► It's like oh, yeah

00:53:56 ◼   ► I can hit it now it activates fine like but when you're doing it for real like doing real work and you just

00:54:01 ◼   ► expect to be able to hit the escape key with your pinky or whatever and that thing is there,

00:54:05 ◼   ► I don't like it.

00:54:06 ◼   ► I do not like it at all.

00:54:09 ◼   ► As much as I love Touch ID, I would be with Marco in the MacBook escape camp, I need an

00:54:14 ◼   ► escape key.

00:54:15 ◼   ► Now, all the other keys in the touch bar, I could take or leave.

00:54:19 ◼   ► It bothers me a little bit that there's a thing with flashing lights under there, like

00:54:23 ◼   ► it's another screen kind of flashing on my face, but some of the more annoying things

00:54:25 ◼   ► you could turn off, like the auto suggestions as you're typing and crap like that, I could

00:54:29 ◼   ► mostly take or leave it. I think if I had the choice and they gave me one with regular keys,

00:54:35 ◼   ► I would leave it, even setting aside the escape thing. So not a touch bar fan, but the escape key

00:54:41 ◼   ► is my big evil thing. Haven't had a lot of accidental input. I don't mind the trackpad

00:54:45 ◼   ► any more than I mind other trackpads. I still, I think I'm getting worse at trackpads in my old age.

00:54:50 ◼   ► I've never been good with trackpads. I've always hated them. And now I think I'm getting worse,

00:54:54 ◼   ► especially with force touch because when I'm getting worse with the trackpad and I'm just

00:54:58 ◼   ► just like in the middle of a drag operation or some crap and I got to move

00:55:01 ◼   ► my fingers around I end up pushing too hard in it and going through to force

00:55:03 ◼   ► touch and then I just like disable it or in that application so force touch

00:55:07 ◼   ► doesn't mean anything anymore I don't like track pads but anyway I got

00:55:10 ◼   ► those things closed I'm not using it as a laptop if I can it'll help because I

00:55:14 ◼   ► don't like laptops so then I'm faced with a challenge of how I connect my 2009

00:55:19 ◼   ► peripherals right these are all you know well they're not all 2009 but the screen

00:55:25 ◼   ► is from 2009, came with the computer. It's a 24 inch LED Apple Cinema display. I think

00:55:31 ◼   ► it was their first LED backlit monitor. Yeah, it was one that looks just like the

00:55:36 ◼   ► Thunderbolt display and has a mini DisplayPort connector but is not actually a Thunderbolt.

00:55:40 ◼   ► It came out right before Thunderbolt came out.

00:55:42 ◼   ► Yep, and it was the first of that style. What I'm staring at right now is a 23 inch Apple

00:55:47 ◼   ► Cinema display which has a matte screen, had white on the side, it was aluminum with curved

00:55:51 ◼   ► things on it and was not LED backlit right so this was the one after that 24

00:55:56 ◼   ► inch LED backlit and it's many display port the this this display I got it with

00:56:04 ◼   ► my Mac I don't remember what I got I think it was my only real choice because

00:56:07 ◼   ► the Apple we were but his monitors it comes with a very very short cord that

00:56:13 ◼   ► goes out into like a three prong rat tail thing so it's like this little a

00:56:18 ◼   ► cord like the size of a power cord and then it splits into three separate

00:56:21 ◼   ► things one is magsafe I think it's magsafe one it is yeah which I've never

00:56:27 ◼   ► used and still can't use it just it's there being annoying and magnetic two is

00:56:32 ◼   ► the mini DisplayPort connector which as Marco said is actual mini DisplayPort

00:56:37 ◼   ► not Thunderbolt of any stripe whatsoever and the third cable coming out of there

00:56:41 ◼   ► is USB and the USB connects the monitors speakers microphone and camera that are

00:56:47 ◼   ► all built into the monitor. So that's my monitor and I want to keep using that monitor. The

00:56:53 ◼   ► reason I want to keep using that monitor is 24 inches. It's small, right? It's 1920 by

00:56:58 ◼   ► 1200. The reason I want to keep using it, this was part of my plan, is because I hate

00:57:01 ◼   ► laptops and because I hate anyone to move my windows, I was going to take this 15 inch

00:57:06 ◼   ► MacBook Pro, put it into scaled resolution at 1920 by 1200 and put it into mirroring

00:57:11 ◼   ► mode. So when I open and close my laptop and disconnect it from the screen, nothing moves

00:57:16 ◼   ► because the resolution of my big screen is exactly the same as far as the computer is

00:57:19 ◼   ► concerned as the resolution of my small screen. Plus or minus the retina, right? But it handles

00:57:25 ◼   ► that. It figures it out, right? And that part works. But for that to work, I was faced with

00:57:31 ◼   ► the problem of how do I connect this thing I just described to my computer? And I also

00:57:37 ◼   ► have an Apple aluminum extended keyboard, which, you know, post dates 2009, whenever

00:57:42 ◼   ► that came out I got that. And I have an ancient USB mouse that I use at work. Right? My challenge

00:57:48 ◼   ► was how do you get all these things connected to your laptop? And I had I thought every

00:57:52 ◼   ► adapter that you could possibly need, but I was wrong. And also work gave me like this

00:57:56 ◼   ► little docking station thing. The docking station, I don't know what brand it is, but

00:57:59 ◼   ► it's a thing that plugs into the two Thunderbolt ports on the side, like it takes both of them

00:58:03 ◼   ► up. It's sturdy, like it goes in both ports, so it doesn't like twist or anything like

00:58:07 ◼   ► but then it hogs both ports and what it has on it is two USB-C, I think that both may

00:58:14 ◼   ► be PowerPaster or maybe just one of them is, two USB-A, an SD card, and HDMI. None of those

00:58:22 ◼   ► are helping me with my monitor and it would be hogging two ports so that's out the window,

00:58:25 ◼   ► I can't use that at all, or I didn't think I was going to be able to use that. So I have

00:58:29 ◼   ► a bunch of adapters. First thing I did was like, "Right, I do have USB to plug in, I

00:58:32 ◼   ► have USB from my keyboard and my mouse is plugged into my keyboard because my keyboard

00:58:36 ◼   ► serves as like a hub and the mouse is attached there, right?

00:58:39 ◼   ► So why don't I connect the keyboard, why don't I try this stupid docking station thing, plug

00:58:43 ◼   ► it in, use one of its two USB-A ports for my mouse and keyboard, use the second USB-A

00:58:48 ◼   ► port for my monitor.

00:58:49 ◼   ► But that doesn't work because the monitor rat tail can't reach the USB on that side

00:58:53 ◼   ► because the mini display port would have to be on the other side, so it doesn't physically

00:58:57 ◼   ► reach.

00:58:58 ◼   ► Then I plug my keyboard into the USB thing, I'll just use the mouse and keyboard.

00:59:01 ◼   ► Nothing.

00:59:02 ◼   ► Keyboard does not work, mouse does not move, nothing.

00:59:05 ◼   ► Tried it in the other port, took it in, took it out.

00:59:07 ◼   ► I was like, "Does this keyboard not work with a 2017 Mac Pro?"

00:59:12 ◼   ► I could not for the life of me figure it out.

00:59:15 ◼   ► Look, I Googled for it.

00:59:17 ◼   ► Some people think it's a bug.

00:59:19 ◼   ► Some people said, "Oh, you have to use an extension cable," which I have, which was

00:59:22 ◼   ► frustrating to find.

00:59:23 ◼   ► The answer is just use the extension cable that came with the thing.

00:59:25 ◼   ► And I'm using the extension cable, so I tried not using the extension cable.

00:59:27 ◼   ► It didn't make any difference, but that didn't work.

00:59:30 ◼   ► Monitor wise, I had to buy an adapter that is mini-displayport to Thunderbolt whatever

00:59:36 ◼   ► that has a power pass through so I don't have to hog the power port for that.

00:59:42 ◼   ► Then I have C to A connector on one side for the monitor's camera, speakers, and microphone.

00:59:51 ◼   ► And then on the other side I had a C to A connector for my keyboard.

00:59:55 ◼   ► The plain old straight through Apple C to A connector does work with my keyboard and

00:59:58 ◼   ► mouse 50% of the time.

01:00:00 ◼   ► Sometimes you plug it in, the keyboard doesn't work.

01:00:01 ◼   ► You just unplug it and plug it back in and that does work.

01:00:03 ◼   ► Very disconcerting.

01:00:05 ◼   ► The docking station is completely dead to me.

01:00:07 ◼   ► And then I had a USB-C to ethernet adapter,

01:00:11 ◼   ► which I need for a variety of gross reasons

01:00:14 ◼   ► to get files from my 2009 Mac Pro onto this laptop.

01:00:18 ◼   ► They're on separate networks.

01:00:20 ◼   ► They can't see each other's IP addresses at work at all.

01:00:23 ◼   ► So I had to disconnect them both from network

01:00:26 ◼   ► and then do an ethernet cable,

01:00:27 ◼   ► like a patch cable directly from the laptop

01:00:29 ◼   ► the computer and just communicate over self-assigned IP addresses to transfer the files, which

01:00:33 ◼   ► is fun.

01:00:34 ◼   ► Oh my god.

01:00:35 ◼   ► What is this, 2003?

01:00:37 ◼   ► They're on different networks.

01:00:39 ◼   ► It's a security thing.

01:00:40 ◼   ► Like, and the thing is, the networks, as far as I'm aware, the work, like the networks

01:00:44 ◼   ► are based on my MAC address, all caps MAC, you know, the medium access control address,

01:00:49 ◼   ► not the capital M lowercase AC address.

01:00:51 ◼   ► Not the MAC store!

01:00:52 ◼   ► Yes.

01:00:53 ◼   ► That's how it must be.

01:00:54 ◼   ► I assume this is the case, because how does it know to give my MAC Pro this IP?

01:00:58 ◼   ► It's gotta be, you know, "Oh, you come in the network, you recognize your MAC address,

01:01:00 ◼   ► I'm gonna put you on this network."

01:01:03 ◼   ► Right?

01:01:04 ◼   ► So I said, "Okay, well my MAC Pro has two Ethernet ports.

01:01:07 ◼   ► Surely they only entered the MAC address of one of them, like it has two separate interfaces."

01:01:11 ◼   ► But apparently they entered them both, so that didn't help me.

01:01:13 ◼   ► So yeah, my only way that these things communicate with each other in two ways.

01:01:17 ◼   ► One, I could put things in Dropbox, but we can't do that for security reasons because

01:01:20 ◼   ► we're not supposed to have any of our work files like outside of our network.

01:01:23 ◼   ► So I can't do that, and I wouldn't be able to do that anyway because I just have too

01:01:25 ◼   ► many damn files and they're too big and it would blow my Dropbox space.

01:01:29 ◼   ► I could have tried to use Google Drive for the work thing but I thought it would have

01:01:32 ◼   ► taken forever to upload and download.

01:01:33 ◼   ► So the picture I sent to Slack the other day was my laptop in clamshell mode with all these

01:01:40 ◼   ► adapters sticking out of it and I think it was basically all four ports filled up just

01:01:46 ◼   ► to be in the same state I was with essentially no, you know, with, well certainly with none

01:01:53 ◼   ► of the front ports filled on my Mac Pro because I just have a keyboard and a mouse and a monitor

01:01:58 ◼   ► and I'm using my computer and almost every port was filled depending on whether or not

01:02:02 ◼   ► I had the ethernet patch cable in to pull things from the other thing in there.

01:02:06 ◼   ► Which means every time I want to leave the desk I have to yank out all these cables carefully

01:02:09 ◼   ► and you know if I want to bring my laptop with me which I tend not to want to.

01:02:13 ◼   ► And then I did the thing where I wanted to play some music or something and I picked

01:02:18 ◼   ► up my headphones and put them on and I'm cranking the volume like "why is this not working?"

01:02:21 ◼   ► And then I heard sound coming out of some other place, like, "What?

01:02:23 ◼   ► It's not coming out of my…"

01:02:24 ◼   ► My headphones were still plugged into my Mac Pro.

01:02:25 ◼   ► And then I realized, "Oh, I have to plug my headphones into this stupid laptop now,

01:02:29 ◼   ► too."

01:02:30 ◼   ► So I had to snake the cable around and shove it into the little headphone port, which is

01:02:33 ◼   ► totally in the wrong place for my desk.

01:02:34 ◼   ► And I started thinking about casing his Bluetooth headphones and how I don't want to have yet

01:02:38 ◼   ► another cable that I need to plug and unplug from my stupid laptop.

01:02:42 ◼   ► But anyway, that's my not-too-brief impressions of my 2017 MacBook Pro.

01:02:49 ◼   ► have much to add other than I can't handle the escape key and laptop plus dongles does

01:02:56 ◼   ► not make a desktop computer user happy, especially one with eight-year-old peripherals, which

01:03:00 ◼   ► is mostly my fault, but I didn't have an option to get a laptop, so it kind of works well

01:03:05 ◼   ► too, or option to get a desktop.

01:03:08 ◼   ► So there you have it.

01:03:10 ◼   ► Before you get a billion emails, are you looking to upgrade your peripherals or try newer peripherals?

01:03:18 ◼   ► Can you try Bluetooth for keyboard and mouse, for example?

01:03:21 ◼   ► I know you have like a 30-year-old mouse, but are there no other keyboards and/or mice

01:03:26 ◼   ► that you're willing to entertain that are perhaps Bluetooth?

01:03:29 ◼   ► I thought about getting the new wireless one with the key switches you like, you know,

01:03:32 ◼   ► the Apple extended wireless thing.

01:03:34 ◼   ► I thought about that, but then I said, "Well, then where am I going to connect my mouse?"

01:03:37 ◼   ► Right?

01:03:38 ◼   ► And basically, I have to get USB-A into this computer somehow.

01:03:41 ◼   ► And I guess I could get a Bluetooth mouse too eventually, but it's like, how much money

01:03:44 ◼   ► am I spending here, or how much of my desk budget do I have left to buy peripherals that

01:03:50 ◼   ► replacing perfectly good working peripherals.

01:03:53 ◼   ► And I like my mouse, and I like my keyboard.

01:03:56 ◼   ► And I'm pretty sure I would like the one with the keyswitches you'd like too.

01:03:59 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure I would like that.

01:04:00 ◼   ► It's got full-size function keys on it instead of the half-size things.

01:04:02 ◼   ► I think I would like that keyboard.

01:04:04 ◼   ► But it's serving as the USB connection point for my mouse, which means I don't have a mouse

01:04:09 ◼   ► cord that's dangling all over the place.

01:04:11 ◼   ► I know Corded My Search, so, you know, weird for people,

01:04:14 ◼   ► but remember, I'm the person who searched eBay

01:04:16 ◼   ► to buy this exact, like 1990s model.

01:04:20 ◼   ► It's like the Logitech USB wheel mouse is the name of it.

01:04:22 ◼   ► It's before they started adding letters and numbers.

01:04:24 ◼   ► It's not like the MX anything or the G anything.

01:04:27 ◼   ► It is just Logitech USB wheel mouse.

01:04:29 ◼   ► It is really, really old, and when my work one died,

01:04:32 ◼   ► I went on eBay and found another one.

01:04:33 ◼   ► So I really like my mouse.

01:04:34 ◼   ► I don't wanna change it.

01:04:36 ◼   ► My mouse needs to connect to my keyboard.

01:04:37 ◼   ► Bluetooth keyboards don't have a place to connect USB,

01:04:40 ◼   ► So it's all one big chain that leads back to me having crap plugged into the thing.

01:04:43 ◼   ► As for monitors, I have a 27-inch Thunderbolt display at home, and I do have a Thunderbolt

01:04:48 ◼   ► 3-2 adapter that would let me use it with my laptop, but I can't match a screen res

01:04:52 ◼   ► and I can't handle my windows moving, so I don't think I'm going to do that.

01:04:56 ◼   ► So much of this you're doing.

01:04:57 ◼   ► Can we just put it on record that, okay, yes, being in dongle town totally sucks.

01:05:01 ◼   ► I totally get that it totally sucks.

01:05:03 ◼   ► But so much of this you're doing to yourself.

01:05:05 ◼   ► By insisting on using an ancient mouse, you're kind of doing this to yourself.

01:05:08 ◼   ► by being unwilling to have your windows ever move on you.

01:05:11 ◼   ► You're doing it to yourself.

01:05:12 ◼   ► I'm not saying that's unreasonable.

01:05:14 ◼   ► - Who wants their windows to move?

01:05:15 ◼   ► Who wants that?

01:05:16 ◼   ► Nobody likes that.

01:05:17 ◼   ► - Who cares?

01:05:18 ◼   ► Or run some stuff full screen.

01:05:20 ◼   ► If you didn't have 85 tiles on your one desktop,

01:05:24 ◼   ► this is why you need to embrace spaces.

01:05:25 ◼   ► - Full screen, come on, come on.

01:05:28 ◼   ► So I can have one window at a time, that's great.

01:05:31 ◼   ► No, I--

01:05:31 ◼   ► - Oh, you can have two.

01:05:33 ◼   ► - You know about my windows.

01:05:34 ◼   ► I need to have them, they need to be arranged.

01:05:36 ◼   ► I don't want them to move.

01:05:38 ◼   ► Now the possible solution is never let my laptop

01:05:43 ◼   ► leave my desk.

01:05:44 ◼   ► And I may come to that because the 27 inch screen

01:05:46 ◼   ► is bigger and nicer than what I have.

01:05:47 ◼   ► And it would mean fewer and less crazy dongles, right?

01:05:51 ◼   ► 'Cause I can go from two dongles to one

01:05:53 ◼   ► because right now I have two dongles just for the monitor.

01:05:55 ◼   ► And one of the dongles is the crazy thing

01:05:57 ◼   ► with the power pass through, right?

01:05:58 ◼   ► So I could switch to one very simple dongle

01:06:01 ◼   ► because the Thunderbolt display does the camera

01:06:04 ◼   ► and the microphone and the speakers

01:06:07 ◼   ► through the one adapter. So I'm tempted to do that just to have a bigger screen at work and also to

01:06:13 ◼   ► have fewer dongles. And I may bite that bullet, but if I do that I'm just never going to open the lid

01:06:18 ◼   ► of that laptop. Which means I'll never get to use touch id, which is sad, or I won't use it in mirror

01:06:23 ◼   ► mode. I'll just use it in dual screen mode and just find something to do with that other screen

01:06:26 ◼   ► or whatever. But I don't know. I'm still mulling it over. This is just week one with the new computer.

01:06:32 ◼   ► Thought it would feel like super duper faster than my old one, and I guess it does

01:06:37 ◼   ► 2009 Mac Pro is still a champ obviously I upgraded with an SSD long ago, right?

01:06:42 ◼   ► And that made it tolerable and not you know disgusting right?

01:06:47 ◼   ► But still it's still a champ

01:06:49 ◼   ► I switched back to it today earlier

01:06:50 ◼   ► And I was like because I have essentially perfectly cloned the setup

01:06:55 ◼   ► Down to the position of all the windows the desktop background the order of the items in the dock all the software that's running on

01:07:00 ◼   ► It you know in my way that I do

01:07:02 ◼   ► Unplugging mini display port from one and plug it into another it was like like manual KVM

01:07:08 ◼   ► And I was like what I know if someone switched this on me and didn't tell me

01:07:11 ◼   ► Would I notice that I'm using the 2009 Mac Pro instead of the MacBook Pro?

01:07:15 ◼   ► maybe

01:07:17 ◼   ► But it's still pretty good. It's still it's such a good computer

01:07:21 ◼   ► So why'd why move on then if you don't absolutely have to move on to the Mac cuz I first of all I fear this

01:07:27 ◼   ► thing dying and

01:07:29 ◼   ► Second of all, I like I do want to have a faster computer and nicer things

01:07:34 ◼   ► And I thought I wanted to have retina until I realized I'm not gonna be looking at the screen

01:07:37 ◼   ► So it doesn't matter and it's just it's just more it's been eight years. I think every eight years

01:07:41 ◼   ► It's okay to get a new computer at work. Can I get widespread agreement on that?

01:07:44 ◼   ► Right time to do our I think our replacement interval is 18 months or some some absurdly short thing

01:07:51 ◼   ► And I remember hearing a couple years ago. It's like if your computer is older than how many months you can get a new one

01:07:57 ◼   ► So anyway, I made it eight years. It's still on my desk officially

01:08:00 ◼   ► It doesn't I'm not gonna stop the clock until it leaves my desk and that will be a sad day when I have to call

01:08:05 ◼   ► The IT people and say please come table

01:08:07 ◼   ► Take away the computer that is listed in your inventory system as a Mac mini because you have no idea what Macs are

01:08:12 ◼   ► It is listed as if someone came to my desk at some point in the inventory system and said

01:08:19 ◼   ► This is a Mac mini and that's what they wrote like they had to see it in person to write that down because if they

01:08:24 ◼   ► Were taking the information programmatically they would have got the correct

01:08:27 ◼   ► Model on it so I will enjoy seeing them come to retrieve my Mac Mini and then learn how painful it is to carry a 50

01:08:33 ◼   ► Pound block of metal with sharp edged handles quote-unquote handles on the top of it

01:08:37 ◼   ► Hey, so for the record listeners if you have not heard ATP number 96

01:08:44 ◼   ► Which is entitled the windows of, Syracuse County

01:08:46 ◼   ► Marco and I think John begrudgingly and myself

01:08:50 ◼   ► Allowed for that episode to be tight to use the of, Syracuse County title

01:08:55 ◼   ► which is something that we swore we would never allow.

01:08:58 ◼   ► And we allowed it in this episode

01:09:00 ◼   ► because I will only speak for myself in saying

01:09:02 ◼   ► I am pretty sure that is my favorite episode

01:09:04 ◼   ► that we have ever recorded of ATP.

01:09:06 ◼   ► And the discussion about John's window management,

01:09:10 ◼   ► I was literally in tears laughing so hard

01:09:14 ◼   ► at how absurd John's window management

01:09:16 ◼   ► quote unquote setup is.

01:09:19 ◼   ► - And by absurd you mean the one true way of course.

01:09:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, and management I think is a loose term.

01:09:24 ◼   ► - Yes. - Oh, it's management.

01:09:26 ◼   ► I'm managing the hell out of those windows.

01:09:29 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:09:30 ◼   ► I mean, you don't do everything full screen, right, Casey?

01:09:33 ◼   ► Like, do you have--

01:09:34 ◼   ► - No, I don't, no, I don't.

01:09:35 ◼   ► - So do you get annoyed by the screen flippy, switchy,

01:09:39 ◼   ► gathering together crap when you unplug?

01:09:42 ◼   ► - As both friends and co-hosts,

01:09:44 ◼   ► it is my obligation to make merciless fun of you for this.

01:09:47 ◼   ► However, if I take off that hat

01:09:50 ◼   ► and just be honest with you,

01:09:52 ◼   ► Yeah, it does bother me, but it doesn't drive me nuts.

01:09:56 ◼   ► And to be honest with you, when I'm going to a meeting and bringing in the laptop, it's

01:10:01 ◼   ► typical that I'm doing something in one of the apps that's either half-screen.

01:10:06 ◼   ► So in the, I don't remember when this started, but in Mac OS you can either do one window

01:10:12 ◼   ► full screen or you can do two tiled side-by-side.

01:10:16 ◼   ► So they're not full screen, but they're in that full screen mode, if that makes any sense.

01:10:20 ◼   ► So in any case, typically if I'm in a meeting, I'm going to be looking at Slack, which I

01:10:25 ◼   ► happen to have sharing full screen mode with messages.

01:10:29 ◼   ► Or I'm using Google Chrome because that's my work email.

01:10:34 ◼   ► We're all in on Google Apps at work.

01:10:35 ◼   ► So I use Chrome as like my work quarantine where Gmail and Google Calendar and all that

01:10:42 ◼   ► jazz is.

01:10:43 ◼   ► And so if I'm in a meeting, I'm typically working with one of those windows, which is

01:10:46 ◼   ► in that full screen mode.

01:10:47 ◼   ► If I'm at my desk, I'm usually writing code.

01:10:49 ◼   ► And that is a combination of Xcode, taking up most of the screen, a terminal window in

01:10:55 ◼   ► the upper right, and managed so that it's just so, just like John.

01:11:00 ◼   ► And then the iOS simulator in the bottom right, again, managed so that it's just so.

01:11:06 ◼   ► And that screen, that virtual desktop, absolutely gets rejiggered every time I unplug and reopen

01:11:12 ◼   ► the computer.

01:11:13 ◼   ► But it takes me all of three seconds to get it back to where it is.

01:11:15 ◼   ► So it annoys me, but it doesn't bother me.

01:11:18 ◼   ► It's usually only got three windows to arrange.

01:11:21 ◼   ► It's annoying to rearrange three windows.

01:11:22 ◼   ► Now imagine that you had 30.

01:11:24 ◼   ► It gets way more annoying.

01:11:25 ◼   ► And at a certain point, you're not going to put 30 windows back.

01:11:27 ◼   ► And you're just going to surrender to the--

01:11:30 ◼   ► The problem, John, definitely isn't the 30 windows.

01:11:32 ◼   ► Definitely not the problem.

01:11:33 ◼   ► No, I got 30 things to do.

01:11:35 ◼   ► You can use more than one desktop, John.

01:11:37 ◼   ► And I'm pretty sure you're not doing 30 things at once.

01:11:38 ◼   ► No, I don't use multiple desktops.

01:11:40 ◼   ► That's where I partly--

01:11:41 ◼   ► That's the problem.

01:11:41 ◼   ► No, it's not the problem.

01:11:42 ◼   ► It's a solution.

01:11:43 ◼   ► I hate multiple desktops.

01:11:44 ◼   ► I hate multiple desktops.

01:11:46 ◼   ► I hate spaces.

01:11:47 ◼   ► I love that we're talking about this an hour into the show, the week before the iPhone.

01:11:53 ◼   ► As foretold by the tweet of somebody earlier in the day. Well, I think they used two hours,

01:11:57 ◼   ► but we'll allow for exaggeration. Yeah, I mean, and I will say one quick thought.

01:12:04 ◼   ► I bet you will. Yeah, I'm sure this will be quick. Really quickly, though, Marco, do you

01:12:10 ◼   ► believe in multiple spaces, or are you a one-space-only kind of guy?

01:12:14 ◼   ► - No, I tried Spaces briefly and I even for a long time,

01:12:18 ◼   ► I did multiple monitors instead of doing Spaces.

01:12:20 ◼   ► I figured like now here's just two physical Spaces.

01:12:23 ◼   ► And I've come to know that I'm a one large monitor

01:12:28 ◼   ► and one space kind of person.

01:12:30 ◼   ► - Oh, you monsters. - That's the way to go.

01:12:32 ◼   ► - You monsters.

01:12:33 ◼   ► - Just wait until he gets one 8K display,

01:12:35 ◼   ► then he'll be living large.

01:12:37 ◼   ► - I know, well, yeah, I have predictions about that,

01:12:40 ◼   ► probably for the Mac Pro next year, anyway.

01:12:42 ◼   ► - Well, so go ahead with your quick thought.

01:12:44 ◼   ► - My very quick thought about the toggle town.

01:12:48 ◼   ► - Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.

01:12:50 ◼   ► - Of the 2017 inch MacBook Pro, or 2017 MacBook Pros.

01:12:55 ◼   ► So my summer of using the MacBook Pro

01:12:59 ◼   ► as my primary computer has concluded,

01:13:01 ◼   ► and using it in clamshell mode with the LG 5K,

01:13:06 ◼   ► doing all my regular work.

01:13:07 ◼   ► If you can get over the keyboard, which I can't,

01:13:09 ◼   ► but if you can get over the keyboard,

01:13:11 ◼   ► and you can get over the touch bars,

01:13:13 ◼   ► just kind of floppiness in the way that it is a flop,

01:13:17 ◼   ► and not that it is flexible.

01:13:19 ◼   ► If you can get over all that,

01:13:21 ◼   ► the ports still really irritate me,

01:13:24 ◼   ► and not just in the way that,

01:13:26 ◼   ► "Oh no, I have to buy dongles."

01:13:27 ◼   ► That's kind of a secondary concern.

01:13:30 ◼   ► The biggest problem for me in using this computer

01:13:33 ◼   ► is that the USB-C ecosystem

01:13:35 ◼   ► still can't produce reliable hardware.

01:13:38 ◼   ► Like, there isn't a lot of it.

01:13:40 ◼   ► The hardware that's out there is weird and limited,

01:13:42 ◼   ► and it's just not reliable.

01:13:44 ◼   ► So thank God I had four ports on this,

01:13:47 ◼   ► because one of them's going to the monitor,

01:13:49 ◼   ► one of them had to be my Ethernet adapter,

01:13:52 ◼   ► which is the Apple Ethernet adapter,

01:13:54 ◼   ► which is actually made by Belkin,

01:13:55 ◼   ► but it's the one Apple officially sells,

01:13:57 ◼   ► it's the only one they sell.

01:13:59 ◼   ► It would drop packets if it was plugged into

01:14:01 ◼   ► the Thunderbolt display, or any hub of any kind.

01:14:04 ◼   ► So you have to plug that into one of the four ports

01:14:06 ◼   ► that you have if you're lucky.

01:14:08 ◼   ► If you're unlucky, you might only have two of them,

01:14:09 ◼   ► or one of them.

01:14:10 ◼   ► So you have to plug the ethernet cable

01:14:13 ◼   ► or the ethernet adapter into one of the four on the computer.

01:14:17 ◼   ► I also had problems with my keyboard.

01:14:20 ◼   ► I don't know if John had the same problem.

01:14:22 ◼   ► I don't know if this is a keyboard thing,

01:14:23 ◼   ► but my keyboard USB adapter,

01:14:25 ◼   ► the little wireless receiver for the Microsoft Sculpt,

01:14:28 ◼   ► it would only work reliably when plugged into

01:14:31 ◼   ► one of the ports on the computer

01:14:32 ◼   ► through Apple's USB A to C adapter.

01:14:36 ◼   ► it would not work reliably in any other place in this setup,

01:14:40 ◼   ► either in another USB A to C kind of hub or splitter thing,

01:14:44 ◼   ► or directly into the LG 5K's ports on the back of it.

01:14:48 ◼   ► So that's now two things that require to be plugged in

01:14:52 ◼   ► to the ports on the computer.

01:14:53 ◼   ► Plus, the 5K monitor itself, that's number three,

01:14:57 ◼   ► which has left me only one port on the computer

01:15:00 ◼   ► that could be used for high reliability needs devices.

01:15:04 ◼   ► Now in my case, I considered my audio interface

01:15:06 ◼   ► one of those when podcasting,

01:15:08 ◼   ► 'cause the last thing I want is to have weird stuff

01:15:09 ◼   ► happen to a USB device while I'm using it to record a show.

01:15:13 ◼   ► So that goes into the fourth one, I'm full, that's it.

01:15:17 ◼   ► And they were, it just, the USB-C ecosystem is so crappy,

01:15:22 ◼   ► and Apple is so insistent on relying on it heavily,

01:15:26 ◼   ► that what we have here is that even on the highest

01:15:28 ◼   ► end computers, you have now a port situation

01:15:31 ◼   ► that is way less flexible and way less reliable

01:15:35 ◼   ► than what we had before.

01:15:36 ◼   ► You know, the USB-C way, the USB-C promise,

01:15:40 ◼   ► is that you have these ports that are versatile

01:15:42 ◼   ► that can do anything, and that's a great idea.

01:15:45 ◼   ► I hope we get there someday, but we're so far from it now.

01:15:49 ◼   ► And USB-C is not that new anymore,

01:15:52 ◼   ► and I'm starting to wonder, you know,

01:15:54 ◼   ► will we ever get there?

01:15:55 ◼   ► And in the meantime, what are we supposed to do

01:15:57 ◼   ► with these pro computers that are just increasingly

01:16:00 ◼   ► difficult to use in pro contexts. You know what pros need? They need reliable hardware.

01:16:07 ◼   ► They need reliable ports and as many of them as you can give them. That's what pros actually

01:16:12 ◼   ► need. We have unreliable keyboards. We have unreliable ports. We have unreliable peripherals,

01:16:17 ◼   ► unreliable dongles. Good luck. If you ever want to have an HDMI output, read the reviews

01:16:23 ◼   ► of every HDMI adapter out there for USB-C, it's a disaster zone. And you know, video

01:16:30 ◼   ► out is not an uncommon thing. This entire ecosystem is really crappy. And it is totally

01:16:38 ◼   ► not sufficient enough, not reliable enough, and unbefitting of the pro name to rely solely

01:16:44 ◼   ► on this ecosystem of crap hardware plugged into this way fewer ports than we had before

01:16:49 ◼   ► on these laptops.

01:16:51 ◼   ► And the only ways I can see Apple really meaningfully

01:16:53 ◼   ► helping the situation are either give us our ports back,

01:16:56 ◼   ► which will never happen,

01:16:58 ◼   ► or actually make high quality USB-C dongles and hubs

01:17:03 ◼   ► and adapters and docking stations and everything else,

01:17:05 ◼   ► 'cause no one else obviously is or can.

01:17:08 ◼   ► So Apple shipped that weird hub that Tipster rumored

01:17:12 ◼   ► for us forever ago.

01:17:13 ◼   ► - Oh, here we go.

01:17:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

01:17:16 ◼   ► The foundational ATV Tipster rumor, we made fun of it,

01:17:18 ◼   ► but now we're begging for the hub, aren't we?

01:17:20 ◼   ► We're begging for it.

01:17:21 ◼   ► - Yes, 'cause look, you can't rely on the rest of the,

01:17:25 ◼   ► it's just like the monitors.

01:17:26 ◼   ► Apple tried to rely on third parties to make good monitors.

01:17:30 ◼   ► LG tried, it sucks.

01:17:32 ◼   ► So Apple's getting back into the game

01:17:33 ◼   ► because they realized, or they saw,

01:17:35 ◼   ► that the third party world just didn't

01:17:38 ◼   ► and seemingly couldn't deliver.

01:17:40 ◼   ► Deliver on USB-C hubs,

01:17:41 ◼   ► because that's what all of your pro users

01:17:44 ◼   ► buying these pro laptops actually need.

01:17:46 ◼   ► We need reliable, useful, many ported USB hubs.

01:17:50 ◼   ► And those don't exist right now in USB-C.

01:17:55 ◼   ► So please, for the love of God, Apple, fix this problem

01:17:58 ◼   ► because it makes it very, very hard to use your laptops

01:18:02 ◼   ► the way you market them to be used if things aren't reliable.

01:18:06 ◼   ► - My adorable work's great.

01:18:10 ◼   ► It's out of my Bluetooth accessories.

01:18:11 ◼   ► I just wanted to let you know.

01:18:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, but you also, like your iMac was turning itself off

01:18:16 ◼   ► intermittently for like three months before you told us about it and you're

01:18:19 ◼   ► like it's not a big deal. Well actually to that end to that end I meant to

01:18:23 ◼   ► mention that the the infinitesimally small or infinitely small piece of dust

01:18:28 ◼   ► that has been migrating around my adorable keyboard definitely made its

01:18:32 ◼   ► way under the spacebar briefly until I blew it out with some compressed air.

01:18:35 ◼   ► So who uses the spacebar? I don't think you blew it out. You're gonna stop saying that you blew it out. You're just

01:18:39 ◼   ► moving it around in there it seems like. Yeah exactly, well that's true that's true.

01:18:43 ◼   ► You love this keyboard though, it's great, right?

01:18:45 ◼   ► No, I do. I know you're being silly, but also serious.

01:18:48 ◼   ► I do love the keyboard, but I will absolutely concede after a few months use that it is not tolerant enough to having any sort of dust getting under--

01:18:58 ◼   ► I'm assuming that's what the problem was, but any sort of debris getting under the keys.

01:19:03 ◼   ► I do love it in every other way. I still prefer the Magic Keyboard ever so slightly, but that's the current gen external keyboards.

01:19:11 ◼   ► But I do love this keyboard, but it is not tolerant enough of the real world.

01:19:16 ◼   ► And as much as I'm poking fun at you guys for not liking your MacBook Pros,

01:19:20 ◼   ► I think part of the reason I love my Adorable so much and can suffer through it having only one port

01:19:24 ◼   ► is because it's an accessory computer, which is a totally ridiculous thing to say, but it's the truth.

01:19:29 ◼   ► If I really want to get something done, I either have my work, you know, pre-USB-C MacBook Pro,

01:19:36 ◼   ► or I have my iMac and I don't have port issues on either of those computers.

01:19:41 ◼   ► And although the USB-C peripherals that I've bought have been perfectly fine,

01:19:47 ◼   ► I'm not in a position where I'm relying them for my livelihood like you guys are.

01:19:53 ◼   ► So as much as I'm joking and poking fun, it's really not an apples-to-apples comparison.

01:19:58 ◼   ► It's not fair of me.

01:19:59 ◼   ► I think Marco and I have the same problem in that to varying degrees,

01:20:03 ◼   ► we are attempting to connect quote-unquote legacy peripherals to a modern computer like Marco has his weird Microsoft keyboard

01:20:10 ◼   ► Which doesn't is not Bluetooth and doesn't know anything about USB C and I have my weird ancient

01:20:16 ◼   ► Discontinued mere months ago Apple extended aluminum keyboard which used to be the most modern extended keyboard

01:20:24 ◼   ► They sold until they changed to the Bluetooth one and I have my totally

01:20:27 ◼   ► Ancient USB C Belkin Ethernet adapter sold on Apple stores as of last year. Yeah

01:20:31 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a separate thing.

01:20:34 ◼   ► Ethernet is legacy.

01:20:36 ◼   ► Everything is wireless now.

01:20:37 ◼   ► But yeah, the keyboard thing just really blew me away.

01:20:38 ◼   ► Because you just assume, like keyboard and mice,

01:20:40 ◼   ► they are the most boring peripherals.

01:20:43 ◼   ► How could they not work?

01:20:44 ◼   ► If anything is going to work connected

01:20:46 ◼   ► to any kind of adapter that makes a USB,

01:20:49 ◼   ► surely the keyboard will.

01:20:50 ◼   ► That's not a demanding application.

01:20:52 ◼   ► And you said you had reliability problems with it.

01:20:55 ◼   ► As far as I'm able to tell, it never works with that adapter.

01:20:59 ◼   ► so there's there's this that you know the dock thing that had the plugs into both the ports that has two USB a ports on

01:21:04 ◼   ► It and the keyboard plugged in with or without an extension cable on both sides of thing plug it unplugged 50 times

01:21:10 ◼   ► Just nothing just like there was nothing there and even the mini DisplayPort adapter if I unplug it and plug it back in

01:21:17 ◼   ► Very often it won't work and I will have to unplug them in DisplayPort from the adapter

01:21:22 ◼   ► Unplug the power from the adapter plug them both back in and then plug the thing back in to get it to just I don't

01:21:27 ◼   ► I don't even that's some weird off-brand thing

01:21:29 ◼   ► But I agree that the ecosystem is bad.

01:21:31 ◼   ► If we use Bluetooth everything and had modern peripherals,

01:21:34 ◼   ► things would be better,

01:21:35 ◼   ► but that doesn't help with the ethernet situation

01:21:37 ◼   ► and the lack of hubs.

01:21:38 ◼   ► So not looking great,

01:21:41 ◼   ► but I'm sure my new Mac Pro will solve all these problems.

01:21:44 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

01:21:44 ◼   ► You know, to be fair, I would argue,

01:21:47 ◼   ► just to play devil's advocate,

01:21:49 ◼   ► that I would argue that ethernet is also legacy.

01:21:51 ◼   ► Like just ethernet as a thing.

01:21:54 ◼   ► Hold on, hold on.

01:21:55 ◼   ► I absolutely love ethernet.

01:21:56 ◼   ► I have pretty much all of my devices on Ethernet. I'm playing devil's advocate here, but the

01:22:02 ◼   ► future, hypothetically, is wireless. And just a few weeks ago, I was transferring something

01:22:07 ◼   ► mammoth between computers. I forget exactly what it was, but I was reminded how much faster

01:22:14 ◼   ► Ethernet is than any wireless I've ever used. And I completely agree with you guys that

01:22:20 ◼   ► given the choice Ethernet all day, every day. But you could argue, you could make the argument

01:22:25 ◼   ► that just the fact that you want to plug in Ethernet is just as legacy as using a USB-A keyboard.

01:22:29 ◼   ► Yeah, reliability is legacy.

01:22:31 ◼   ► Well, the USB—I'll give you this—the Ethernet connector is ridiculous, right? RJ45 or whatever

01:22:37 ◼   ► the hell that thing is, that is ridiculous, and that is totally a legacy connector, which is why

01:22:40 ◼   ► it's not on computers anymore, unless they're giant desktops in which case you'd still be there.

01:22:44 ◼   ► And also, modern wireless standards are faster than gigabit Ethernet. They have faster than

01:22:48 ◼   ► gigabit wireless things. They don't have faster than 10 gigabit because you have 10 gig Ethernet

01:22:54 ◼   ► on super fancy enterprise hardware.

01:22:56 ◼   ► And of course, the new Mac Pro will have 10 gig ethernet,

01:22:58 ◼   ► 'cause why wouldn't it?

01:22:59 ◼   ► With the 8K display, you'll have five 10K ethernet ports.

01:23:03 ◼   ► - The iMac Pro has it.

01:23:04 ◼   ► - Seven USB 3.1 ports with A connectors.

01:23:07 ◼   ► Boy, this fantasy Mac Pro is looking better all the time.

01:23:10 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:23:11 ◼   ► - Wow.

01:23:12 ◼   ► - Like that mock-up that guy made,

01:23:13 ◼   ► remember like six months ago?

01:23:14 ◼   ► With like, it just had like 15,000 ports on the back of it.

01:23:17 ◼   ► - Right.

01:23:18 ◼   ► It's got an ADB port in case we're gonna hook up,

01:23:21 ◼   ► an ADB port in case,

01:23:22 ◼   ► So, Grubber can hook up his Apple Extended too without an adapter.

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01:24:42 ◼   ► That's Betterment.com/ATP.

01:24:44 ◼   ► Betterment.

01:24:46 ◼   ► Rethink what your money can do.

01:24:51 ◼   ► There's an event next week, but before we talk about what we hope and want to see an

01:24:57 ◼   ► hour and a half on the show for the event, let's talk about Marco's self-described crazy

01:25:04 ◼   ► topic idea.

01:25:05 ◼   ► And if I'm reading this right, I actually think this is a really good idea.

01:25:08 ◼   ► So tell me, Marco, what's going on?

01:25:10 ◼   ► So I kind of felt like this would be a good time.

01:25:13 ◼   ► It's always hard to know, like, after the event to objectively look back on the phones

01:25:18 ◼   ► we've had for the last year and to really judge them or to know, like, to look back

01:25:23 ◼   ► and say, you know, what did we really need versus what was delivered by the new phone.

01:25:28 ◼   ► And so I kind of wanted to have what I'm calling here the iPhone 7 exit interview. And I know

01:25:33 ◼   ► you think I've never had a job before, but I actually have done a couple of exit interviews

01:25:37 ◼   ► because one thing I'm good at is leaving jobs.

01:25:39 ◼   ► I was just thinking to myself, does he really know what this is? I'll just let it go and

01:25:44 ◼   ► then sure enough, he'll run down.

01:25:45 ◼   ► - And many of them.

01:25:46 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:25:47 ◼   ► So basically I wanted to kind of like,

01:25:49 ◼   ► you know, looking back now at the iPhone 7,

01:25:52 ◼   ► that it is a year old, how has it been for us?

01:25:56 ◼   ► What are things that we were concerned about

01:25:57 ◼   ► that ended up not being a problem?

01:25:59 ◼   ► And what do we really want from the next phone

01:26:02 ◼   ► to solve shortcomings or things that we would like

01:26:05 ◼   ► to be improved in the iPhone 7?

01:26:06 ◼   ► - I wish I had prepared more for this,

01:26:10 ◼   ► because I saw you adding this like 20 minutes ago

01:26:14 ◼   ► the show notes but I really like this topic. I think this is a really great idea and off the top

01:26:19 ◼   ► my head just some immediate ideas. I think, well let me remind everyone I have an iPhone 7. I do

01:26:26 ◼   ► not have the plus because I am not a giant. I do not have the jet black model and because of that

01:26:34 ◼   ► I feel like I don't care for the fact that this thing is still one of the most slippery devices

01:26:41 ◼   ► I've ever held in my entire life. However, it is visually, aesthetically, one of my favorite

01:26:49 ◼   ► looking devices. I have the matte black, and I think this color is just beautiful. And

01:26:55 ◼   ► I love the way it looks. I wish it was tackier, stickier is maybe not the right word for it,

01:27:02 ◼   ► but I wish it had that feel and that grip of the jet black. But I love the way this

01:27:10 ◼   ► thing looks, with the exception of the camera bump.

01:27:12 ◼   ► I like the fact that they embraced the camera bump this time, rather than in the 6s, and

01:27:18 ◼   ► maybe the 6s as well, where it was kind of like a piece of metal that was not part of

01:27:23 ◼   ► the case.

01:27:24 ◼   ► This feels to be a part of the aluminum was kind of blown out to make the camera bump.

01:27:32 ◼   ► I don't care for the camera bump, I really wish that would go away.

01:27:35 ◼   ► I think the battery life on the 7 has gotten to the point that it is no longer frustrating

01:27:40 ◼   ► on a regular basis.

01:27:42 ◼   ► If I go to WWDC or something like that, where I'm on my phone constantly, I'm fighting thousands

01:27:47 ◼   ► of other people for cell coverage, then I will need a battery pack or something like

01:27:54 ◼   ► that.

01:27:55 ◼   ► But for my use anyway, day to day, I think this battery is fine.

01:27:58 ◼   ► I am sure there is a listener, and it might be you, listening to this right now, saying,

01:28:02 ◼   ► "Oh my gosh, Casey is crazy.

01:28:04 ◼   ► This battery is nowhere near fine.

01:28:06 ◼   ► And for you, that very well may be true.

01:28:08 ◼   ► But for me, this is the first phone that it's very rare that I end the day concerned with

01:28:14 ◼   ► how low my battery is.

01:28:16 ◼   ► So I do very much approve of the battery life.

01:28:20 ◼   ► I still want for more.

01:28:21 ◼   ► I wish I had an additional 20 to 50 percent more than I do at the end of the day.

01:28:27 ◼   ► But because thin trumps everything with Apple, I don't expect to have that.

01:28:31 ◼   ► for all I know it might even get worse with this new phone with its even bigger display.

01:28:37 ◼   ► The lack of headphone jack doesn't bother me because I am freaking in love with my AirPods.

01:28:43 ◼   ► There's been like twice that I've really needed to plug something into this and I think both

01:28:47 ◼   ► times I had the little adapter thing with me, unlike John on his flight to London.

01:28:52 ◼   ► But overall, I think this is a damn good phone.

01:28:55 ◼   ► It doesn't mean it can't be improved, but I do think this is a really, really, really

01:29:01 ◼   ► good phone and I'm really really happy with it. And that said it's about to be ruined

01:29:05 ◼   ► when Apple tells me about the new phone and this is going to be an utter piece of garbage

01:29:09 ◼   ► which is exactly why we're doing this today like Marco said instead of in a week from

01:29:13 ◼   ► now. John?

01:29:15 ◼   ► I think when we were listening like our maybe the end of last year like our favorite Apple

01:29:19 ◼   ► products I think I listed my iPhone 7. I've got the JetBlue Black iPhone 7 in the Apple

01:29:24 ◼   ► leather case and I said I liked it then and I really like it now. This is by far my favorite

01:29:29 ◼   ► iPhone I've ever phone which is not not saying much because I've owned two iPhones I had

01:29:32 ◼   ► a six and now I have a seven so I do not have a long history of phones but I like this better

01:29:38 ◼   ► than any of my touches I feel like because like so even just in the moment like I'm you

01:29:45 ◼   ► know adjusting for you know obviously it's better than now but even like back when I

01:29:49 ◼   ► got them because I think as I think I said on a past show the non moving home button

01:29:53 ◼   ► I have become a super fan of now just as they're gonna ditch it of course right yeah I love

01:29:58 ◼   ► it. The leather case which I lasted like you know 24 hours with it and not in a case and I couldn't

01:30:03 ◼   ► handle it so I bought the leather case. The leather case is so much better than my iPhone 6 other case

01:30:07 ◼   ► it's just the Apple leather case, black Apple leather case. I love the volume controls on it.

01:30:12 ◼   ► I'm good enough now that I can hit the volume controls when my phone isn't in my front in my

01:30:15 ◼   ► front or in my back pocket. Why do I have to do that? Because the damn AirPods don't have volume

01:30:19 ◼   ► control on it. So I've learned this skill but they're very reliable, they feel good, I can find

01:30:24 ◼   ► them. It has not steered me wrong. Battery life is sufficient for my needs, more than

01:30:31 ◼   ► sufficient for my needs. Even the WWDC I feel like it's okay. I would probably go with the

01:30:37 ◼   ► silly hump battery pack if I had, you know, if I did a WWDC like thing more often, but

01:30:42 ◼   ► I don't so it's fine the way it is. I like the fact that it's grippy, it's been very

01:30:46 ◼   ► reliable, it's felt fast the whole time. The lack of a headphone port burned me twice maybe,

01:30:53 ◼   ► once in a big way on a six hour flight to the UK and once in a small way where I just

01:31:00 ◼   ► you know couldn't listen to something when I wanted to.

01:31:03 ◼   ► But in the end it was not a big deal in my life.

01:31:06 ◼   ► Like it doesn't, day to day it doesn't bother me.

01:31:09 ◼   ► I have not encountered situations where I wanted to use headphones and also charge because

01:31:13 ◼   ► I'm in the post AirPod age now and I super duper love my AirPods.

01:31:16 ◼   ► Maybe the AirPods help cover for the lack of headphone jack but in the end even when

01:31:22 ◼   ► When I was using the wired ones, I thought it was multi-fined.

01:31:25 ◼   ► I think I would be more cranky about it if AirPods didn't exist, let's put it that way,

01:31:30 ◼   ► but it didn't bother me.

01:31:31 ◼   ► But yeah, I think it's been great.

01:31:33 ◼   ► I really like the product.

01:31:34 ◼   ► I like the camera.

01:31:35 ◼   ► I like the case.

01:31:36 ◼   ► I like how it fits into my life.

01:31:38 ◼   ► It is better than the 6.

01:31:39 ◼   ► All right, Marco.

01:31:40 ◼   ► Take us home.

01:31:41 ◼   ► Overall, I am way happier with the 7 than I expected to be at its launch.

01:31:48 ◼   ► that I thought would be a problem,

01:31:51 ◼   ► the home button being all weird,

01:31:53 ◼   ► like John, I thought it was weird

01:31:54 ◼   ► for like the first couple days,

01:31:55 ◼   ► and now I actually like it.

01:31:56 ◼   ► Like I actually have converted to it,

01:31:58 ◼   ► and now other home buttons feel inferior.

01:32:01 ◼   ► I don't know why, it doesn't make sense,

01:32:02 ◼   ► but that's how it is.

01:32:04 ◼   ► The jet black finish that we were all concerned

01:32:07 ◼   ► about all the scratches,

01:32:09 ◼   ► it turns out I never look at the back of my phone.

01:32:12 ◼   ► So while it is indeed all scratched up at the bottom,

01:32:15 ◼   ► you really only see it at like a certain angle

01:32:17 ◼   ► where the light reflects on the scratches anyway.

01:32:20 ◼   ► And it just is not a problem in real world use for me.

01:32:24 ◼   ► I just don't ever look at that.

01:32:26 ◼   ► And the JetBlack finish, because it is a little bit tacky,

01:32:29 ◼   ► like you were mentioning earlier, Casey,

01:32:31 ◼   ► it allows me to use this phone with no case,

01:32:34 ◼   ► with no grippy stickers or decals or vinyl wraps,

01:32:37 ◼   ► for the first time in the entire,

01:32:39 ◼   ► in this whole design era from the six forward

01:32:41 ◼   ► with the shape of phone.

01:32:43 ◼   ► It allows me to use it caseless,

01:32:44 ◼   ► and it has always been very secure in my hand.

01:32:47 ◼   ► I've never even come close to dropping it.

01:32:48 ◼   ► So I'm incredibly happy with the physical parts of it.

01:32:52 ◼   ► The size is great.

01:32:54 ◼   ► I would like the larger screen and better cameras

01:32:57 ◼   ► of the plus size, but ultimately the size of this

01:33:01 ◼   ► just works very, very well for me

01:33:02 ◼   ► of just the regular size seven.

01:33:04 ◼   ► So I'm very, very happy with that.

01:33:06 ◼   ► The camera is amazing.

01:33:08 ◼   ► Having the optical image stabilization

01:33:10 ◼   ► has made a huge difference, especially in video.

01:33:12 ◼   ► - Oh, good point, good point.

01:33:13 ◼   ► I mean, and this is one of the things that I really want

01:33:17 ◼   ► from the next iPhone,

01:33:20 ◼   ► hopefully we're gonna get that next week.

01:33:21 ◼   ► I saw a brief rumor about it, so we'll see,

01:33:23 ◼   ► but one thing I really want is for the video camera

01:33:26 ◼   ► to not make me choose between 4K and 60 frames per second.

01:33:29 ◼   ► I want to be able to shoot in 4K at 60 frames per second,

01:33:32 ◼   ► and that's a big ask.

01:33:35 ◼   ► If you look around the rest of the video camera world,

01:33:38 ◼   ► very few things shoot at 4K 60.

01:33:42 ◼   ► that is incredibly uncommon.

01:33:44 ◼   ► Even among very high-end video cameras,

01:33:47 ◼   ► that's still pretty uncommon.

01:33:49 ◼   ► But the iPhone, especially with the 7,

01:33:52 ◼   ► adding the stabilization and everything,

01:33:55 ◼   ► it has made it very clear to me in practical usage

01:33:59 ◼   ► that the iPhone is the best video camera in the world

01:34:02 ◼   ► for almost anything.

01:34:03 ◼   ► Obviously not if you're shooting professionally

01:34:06 ◼   ► for movies or TV or things like that,

01:34:09 ◼   ► but if you are just a regular person shooting video

01:34:12 ◼   ► for your family, yourself, even lower end creative projects,

01:34:17 ◼   ► I would say the iPhone camera as a video camera

01:34:22 ◼   ► is world class in practice.

01:34:25 ◼   ► It is incredibly easy to use.

01:34:28 ◼   ► You don't have to really worry too much about focus

01:34:30 ◼   ► or audio, both of which are massive pains in the butt

01:34:34 ◼   ► on a regular video camera, even good ones.

01:34:37 ◼   ► It's just really, really good as being a video camera

01:34:41 ◼   ► and it built in stabilization, that helps too,

01:34:43 ◼   ► everything else.

01:34:44 ◼   ► So, overall, I am very, very happy with camera,

01:34:48 ◼   ► with the physical form factor.

01:34:50 ◼   ► The battery has been pretty good for me,

01:34:53 ◼   ► better than I thought, and by far,

01:34:55 ◼   ► probably the best iPhone battery I've ever had.

01:34:59 ◼   ► Still not enough for me most of the time,

01:35:01 ◼   ► but I would say actually before the iOS 11 beta in June,

01:35:06 ◼   ► it was enough for me most days.

01:35:08 ◼   ► So ever since the beta, that has not been true anymore,

01:35:11 ◼   ► unfortunately, and that could just be weird beta weirdness,

01:35:13 ◼   ► but even now that we're at the very, very late beta stages

01:35:16 ◼   ► and the build we have now is probably the GM,

01:35:19 ◼   ► the battery still is not good enough,

01:35:20 ◼   ► but it's at least not that far off.

01:35:23 ◼   ► Like Casey, an extra 20 to 50% would probably do it for me.

01:35:28 ◼   ► Headphone jack, it was a real pain in the butt

01:35:31 ◼   ► when I was on an airplane.

01:35:33 ◼   ► Like Jon, airplanes I think are when

01:35:35 ◼   ► a lot of people hit that problem.

01:35:37 ◼   ► Or if there was a situation in which you listen

01:35:41 ◼   ► a lot while charging like at work or in various other places. Or like in cars if you use the

01:35:48 ◼   ► little plug adapters for it instead of a Bluetooth adapter, things like that. The only thing

01:35:52 ◼   ► out of those that really applied to me in my life was airplane usage, so on flights

01:35:57 ◼   ► I hated it. But I eventually have figured out Bluetooth headphones that aren't so bad

01:36:02 ◼   ► for planes so I switched to those begrudgingly giving up my awesome wired pair. For portable

01:36:09 ◼   ► walking use around town, I was already on Bluetooth,

01:36:11 ◼   ► so that didn't matter.

01:36:12 ◼   ► AirPods don't fit my ears, unfortunately,

01:36:14 ◼   ► but that solved the problem for a lot of other people,

01:36:16 ◼   ► although also not on planes,

01:36:18 ◼   ► 'cause they just leave too much sound in

01:36:19 ◼   ► and you can't hear anything.

01:36:20 ◼   ► Anyway, so overall, pretty good.

01:36:23 ◼   ► One thing also that doesn't get a lot of attention

01:36:24 ◼   ► with the iPhone 7 that we might have already forgotten about

01:36:27 ◼   ► the speaker's got a lot better,

01:36:28 ◼   ► and it used the earpiece as a second speaker.

01:36:31 ◼   ► That helps a lot.

01:36:32 ◼   ► It helps especially when you're watching video on the phone,

01:36:35 ◼   ► you don't have to cup your hand around the bottom

01:36:36 ◼   ► to try to reflect the sound into your face,

01:36:38 ◼   ► like it's just coming out the front now

01:36:40 ◼   ► from the ear speaker, so that helped a lot

01:36:42 ◼   ► and it also just got louder when using it

01:36:44 ◼   ► like on a table or windowsill as a podcast speaker.

01:36:48 ◼   ► It gets louder for that, so speaker improvement

01:36:51 ◼   ► was a pretty major upgrade.

01:36:53 ◼   ► The one thing I'm hoping that we get with the new phones,

01:36:58 ◼   ► you know, we already are pretty sure

01:36:59 ◼   ► that we're gonna get big screen in a small body.

01:37:02 ◼   ► That's awesome and huge, and I'm willing to tolerate

01:37:06 ◼   ► a lot to get that, as I said last episode.

01:37:07 ◼   ► The camera is where I have a lot of these

01:37:10 ◼   ► wish list items still.

01:37:11 ◼   ► I mentioned earlier, 4K at 60 frames a second would be great.

01:37:14 ◼   ► I know artistically a lot of people don't like

01:37:16 ◼   ► 60 frames per second, but I want that when capturing

01:37:19 ◼   ► family videos and to have more resolution would be nice.

01:37:22 ◼   ► So anyway, that's great.

01:37:25 ◼   ► I would also like to see on the camera front,

01:37:29 ◼   ► make it so that live photos, so that more of the frames

01:37:33 ◼   ► in a live photo are full quality than just the middle frame.

01:37:37 ◼   ► This is a similar problem to 4K60 in that it requires dumping a lot of data off the

01:37:43 ◼   ► camera sensor very quickly and that's usually hardware limited by whatever the sensor can

01:37:48 ◼   ► push out or retain or whatever.

01:37:50 ◼   ► That's not an easy problem but I bet Apple could do it.

01:37:54 ◼   ► Also I would love, you know, in the two camera system that the 7S, or sorry, the 7 Plus got,

01:38:01 ◼   ► The 2X zoomed in camera is significantly worse optically than the wide angle camera.

01:38:08 ◼   ► And that kind of harmed a lot of its usefulness or it reduced the coolness of that feature

01:38:14 ◼   ► for me.

01:38:15 ◼   ► The zoomed in camera lets in less light so it's more noisy and it is not optically stabilized.

01:38:21 ◼   ► I would love for those problems to be improved upon or eliminated in the next one.

01:38:25 ◼   ► So it looks like we're going to get two camera systems again.

01:38:29 ◼   ► Anything they can do to reduce the quality difference between the two cameras would be

01:38:33 ◼   ► very very welcome.

01:38:36 ◼   ► Stabilization would be the most helpful and if they can't do that, let more light in.

01:38:40 ◼   ► Other than that though, I don't really know, my wish list is fairly common with everyone

01:38:47 ◼   ► else's.

01:38:48 ◼   ► Sure yeah, make it faster, make the camera better and you know.

01:38:51 ◼   ► And more battery life because the room is already going to be thicker.

01:38:55 ◼   ► Yeah exactly.

01:38:56 ◼   ► - All right, so we can transition to predictions now.

01:39:00 ◼   ► - Some of which you've already given.

01:39:02 ◼   ► - Yep, exactly.

01:39:02 ◼   ► - So what are we, so on the iPhone front,

01:39:05 ◼   ► they have really kept a remarkable lid on secrecy

01:39:09 ◼   ► of the physical devices and of the software.

01:39:13 ◼   ► Software is usually kept secret pretty well, so that's nice.

01:39:16 ◼   ► But how this phone will use the screen

01:39:19 ◼   ► and the weird notch on top is still so unknown.

01:39:24 ◼   ► That's very interesting to me.

01:39:25 ◼   ► And in fact, I have done very little work on Overcast's UI

01:39:30 ◼   ► for iOS 11 so far.

01:39:31 ◼   ► I've been mostly doing under the hood things

01:39:33 ◼   ► and fixing table view stuff and stuff like that

01:39:35 ◼   ► because I don't want to do any UI design

01:39:39 ◼   ► until I use this phone.

01:39:41 ◼   ► Because for me, this could be a dramatic change

01:39:44 ◼   ► in how apps are laid out,

01:39:46 ◼   ► what kind of gestures they should respond to,

01:39:49 ◼   ► what kind of gestures they shouldn't respond to

01:39:50 ◼   ► or that don't work very well.

01:39:53 ◼   ► I'm very concerned about this swipe up home button thing,

01:39:57 ◼   ► that that's going to basically make my now playing card

01:39:59 ◼   ► far less useful, so I might have to relay that out

01:40:03 ◼   ► or reconsider how that's done.

01:40:05 ◼   ► I think it's wise for developers to wait a little bit

01:40:10 ◼   ► before you make any major UI decisions for iOS 11,

01:40:13 ◼   ► because again, we have no idea how this phone's

01:40:16 ◼   ► gonna use that screen, so that's very interesting to me.

01:40:19 ◼   ► And we're gonna learn part of that at the event,

01:40:21 ◼   ► But we're not gonna really learn a lot of it

01:40:23 ◼   ► until we get our hands on these phones,

01:40:24 ◼   ► as our primary phones, and just figure them out

01:40:27 ◼   ► and feel them and use them every day.

01:40:30 ◼   ► So that'll be interesting.

01:40:31 ◼   ► But otherwise, I do think, again, it's wonderful

01:40:34 ◼   ► that we really don't know a lot of the major details here.

01:40:39 ◼   ► As much as we learn from rumors and leaks

01:40:41 ◼   ► and everything else, the major details,

01:40:44 ◼   ► there's still a lot of holes in that picture.

01:40:46 ◼   ► So that's pretty cool, I think.

01:40:47 ◼   ► Especially so close to the event

01:40:49 ◼   ► we haven't seen credible parts leaks or fully assembled phones or anything like that. Compared

01:40:56 ◼   ► to previous years, we know not that much.

01:40:58 ◼   ► - The major details like jumbo shrimp, we know it's gonna be an edge-to-edge screen

01:41:04 ◼   ► with a notch on top of an OLED screen with stainless steel. We know so much about it.

01:41:08 ◼   ► We know the dimensions, we know the, we have guesses at the screen res. We just don't know

01:41:12 ◼   ► how the software's gonna work, as you noted. But I feel like we know the same amount as

01:41:14 ◼   ► normal. All these mock-ups that you see, the reason they're able to make these mock-ups

01:41:19 ◼   ► is even if they're all just fake like we built something they have the specs down to the

01:41:24 ◼   ► millimeter for this thing and they just might not have the surface details right so I feel

01:41:28 ◼   ► like we know the same amount as we normally do and it is more exciting stuff this year

01:41:32 ◼   ► because it's like oh it's actually a different phone and you know with with the notch and

01:41:36 ◼   ► the size and stuff like that but I think for the the one bit that I haven't been keeping

01:41:41 ◼   ► up the rumors so I so maybe we're just gonna sound dumb or I'm gonna sound dumb by saying

01:41:44 ◼   ► if you're just gonna keep it like rumors you know the answer to this but do you all want

01:41:48 ◼   ► to make a prediction about whether this thing will have touch ID on the back or not.

01:41:54 ◼   ► I don't know what the current rumor is.

01:41:55 ◼   ► Is everyone just saying that it's not a thing anymore or is it definitely a thing?

01:41:58 ◼   ► But what do you think?

01:41:59 ◼   ► Will this have – regardless of whether – oh, I don't think it will have touch ID.

01:42:01 ◼   ► Just this one question, will it have touch ID on the back of this phone or not?

01:42:05 ◼   ► No.

01:42:06 ◼   ► No.

01:42:07 ◼   ► Is that because the rumors all say no?

01:42:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:42:10 ◼   ► No.

01:42:11 ◼   ► Do they?

01:42:12 ◼   ► I haven't kept up as much as – okay.

01:42:14 ◼   ► I was going to guess no just based on the possibilities of the rumors about the software

01:42:21 ◼   ► swipe up and stuff because if they're going to do stuff like that and they have face recognition

01:42:26 ◼   ► like it's so clear they're all in on the front of the phone and honestly I really don't want

01:42:32 ◼   ► there to be touching in the back because I'm a case user and as we discussed before I don't

01:42:34 ◼   ► want to have a lint filled belly button to poke my finger into in the back.

01:42:37 ◼   ► So I'm going to say no both because I hope it and because most of the moccasins I've

01:42:43 ◼   ► seen haven't had it either.

01:42:44 ◼   ► So that makes me kind of sad because I really like Touch ID and the face stuff is still

01:42:49 ◼   ► a big question mark, but it seems like we're all thinking about it.

01:42:52 ◼   ► So slow down, slow down, let's talk about that.

01:42:55 ◼   ► So in my opinion, the only way that the Face ID or whatever it's called, I think Pearl

01:43:01 ◼   ► is like the internal code name, we'll call it Face ID for now, the only way that Face

01:43:06 ◼   ► ID is going to be okay in my book is if it's at least as reliable and fast as touch ID.

01:43:15 ◼   ► So similar to John's question a minute ago, yes or no, do you think starting with Marco,

01:43:21 ◼   ► do you think that this face ID thing will be as good and as fast and as reliable as

01:43:27 ◼   ► touch ID to the point that you will not end up missing touch ID? Yes or no?

01:43:32 ◼   ► I think it will be at least close enough that we won't care.

01:43:35 ◼   ► - That's a cop out, but I'll allow it.

01:43:37 ◼   ► - It might not be at least as good or better

01:43:39 ◼   ► in all those metrics, but anything that it is worse at,

01:43:43 ◼   ► I bet it'll still be close enough that we won't care.

01:43:45 ◼   ► - So this question is supposing that they haven't done

01:43:48 ◼   ► Touch ID under the screen, right?

01:43:50 ◼   ► Like this phone not only won't have it on the back,

01:43:52 ◼   ► but now we're saying won't have it at all,

01:43:54 ◼   ► and the only thing it will have is face.

01:43:55 ◼   ► - That is how I meant it, yeah.

01:43:57 ◼   ► - All right, so I don't think that any face thing

01:44:02 ◼   ► have will be, I can't imagine a situation where it will be as fast and convenient as

01:44:07 ◼   ► current touch ID.

01:44:08 ◼   ► Because current touch ID is really really fast, I can have my thumb on it before I get

01:44:12 ◼   ► it out of my pocket, at what point the cameras are useless, right?

01:44:16 ◼   ► So no matter how fast it is, it's already unlocked by the time the camera sees my face

01:44:20 ◼   ► in, right now, right?

01:44:21 ◼   ► So nothing can beat that in terms of actual efficiency.

01:44:24 ◼   ► As Marco said though, alright fine, but is it less efficient?

01:44:29 ◼   ► Do you care?

01:44:30 ◼   ► that it is a little bit slower, because there's a trade-off there.

01:44:33 ◼   ► Like, okay, well it's a little bit slower, but you don't have to fish around for the

01:44:36 ◼   ► button in your pocket.

01:44:37 ◼   ► And there is some utility to that as well.

01:44:39 ◼   ► So I 100% believe that Apple can make Face ID so that I don't care about the lack of

01:44:46 ◼   ► Touch ID, but I don't think it's possible to be as efficient as Touch ID.

01:44:52 ◼   ► And I have my doubts that their first crack at face ID will be good enough that I don't

01:45:00 ◼   ► miss touch ID because like this is going against the second generation or is it third?

01:45:04 ◼   ► I forget.

01:45:05 ◼   ► But second generation of touch ID that is phenomenally good.

01:45:09 ◼   ► Like that's one of the reasons I love, I think I mentioned one in that show where I said

01:45:12 ◼   ► the iPhone 7 was my favorite Apple device of the year.

01:45:15 ◼   ► I love the fast touch ID.

01:45:17 ◼   ► I love it to pieces, right?

01:45:19 ◼   ► And so it makes me – and that's one of the reasons I don't like the Touch ID on

01:45:24 ◼   ► my 2017 MacBook Pro.

01:45:25 ◼   ► It's not as fast as it is on my phone, right?

01:45:28 ◼   ► So I think it is possible that in their first crack at Face ID, it will – I will feel

01:45:35 ◼   ► the loss of Touch ID if Touch ID isn't there.

01:45:37 ◼   ► I hope it's not true.

01:45:38 ◼   ► But anyway, I totally believe by their second crack at Face ID, I'll be in the Marco Zone

01:45:42 ◼   ► where it's like, "Nah, it's a wash."

01:45:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I will say, I think Marco nailed it, that it will be sufficient that it won't drive

01:45:51 ◼   ► us bananas, but we may still miss it.

01:45:54 ◼   ► Miss Touch ID, that is, and Face ID will be sufficient.

01:45:57 ◼   ► But I'm very curious and slightly nervous.

01:46:01 ◼   ► If I hadn't learned from my past and Apple's past, I would absolutely be going on a tirade

01:46:07 ◼   ► right now about how, "Oh, there's no way that Face ID could be even near as good as Touch

01:46:11 ◼   ► ID."

01:46:12 ◼   ► If there's anything I've learned over the years is that just because I don't understand

01:46:16 ◼   ► how something could possibly be as good as what it replaces doesn't mean that Apple also

01:46:21 ◼   ► doesn't understand it.

01:46:23 ◼   ► Typically Apple does something to amaze me and stupefy me with these sorts of moments.

01:46:30 ◼   ► So I have faith, but I am slightly nervous.

01:46:34 ◼   ► So before we get off of this whole topic, prediction on will there be touch ID anywhere

01:46:39 ◼   ► on this phone, just to nail down a prediction?

01:46:42 ◼   ► - I would say no, but I think the rumors are going to,

01:46:46 ◼   ► are saying yes right now.

01:46:48 ◼   ► I personally say no, and somebody mentioned that ATP,

01:46:51 ◼   ► Tipster in the chat had mentioned that it is still there.

01:46:54 ◼   ► I didn't personally see that.

01:46:56 ◼   ► I don't think it'll be there,

01:46:57 ◼   ► but I am not terribly confident about that.

01:47:02 ◼   ► - I mean, Tipster in the chat,

01:47:03 ◼   ► I think is the only person I'm seeing

01:47:05 ◼   ► who is still saying that it's there.

01:47:07 ◼   ► Everyone else, I think, has assumed

01:47:09 ◼   ► or has actually said no, it's gone.

01:47:12 ◼   ► I hope it's still there, but I bet it isn't.

01:47:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm with Marco.

01:47:17 ◼   ► I really, really hope it's still,

01:47:18 ◼   ► I really hope they figured out a way

01:47:20 ◼   ► to get it to work under the screen, something like that.

01:47:23 ◼   ► But if I had to put money, I would say,

01:47:25 ◼   ► I lean slightly towards it's not gonna be on the phone.

01:47:28 ◼   ► - I do hope they do a promotion

01:47:30 ◼   ► or whatever they're gonna call

01:47:31 ◼   ► if they do 120 hertz refresh rate.

01:47:33 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, I would be 100, I think it's gotta have that.

01:47:36 ◼   ► It's gotta have promotion.

01:47:37 ◼   ► - Is OLED good enough to do that?

01:47:38 ◼   ► I don't actually know.

01:47:40 ◼   ► Can you get an OLED screen of that size