0:00:00I didn't see you out there swimming in the waves. In fact, I've never seen you swimming in them.
0:00:06There's a reason for that.
0:00:07That's the next level of your beach education, learning how to swim in the ocean.
0:00:10Yeah, that's unlikely. Because the ocean is full of things that eat you and stuff.
0:00:14They're not going to eat you, it's fine. Don't you see all the people playing? They live, they go back to their homes, it's fine.
0:00:20Most of them.
0:00:21Yeah, every day, every day. The jellyfish are just taking people.
0:00:28So we haven't spoken to each other in like a week and a half, two weeks, something like that.
0:00:32But we are back together again, back on the normal schedule.
0:00:35We'll be back on the normal schedule, as far as we know, for at least a little while.
0:00:38Probably until the holidays start picking up.
0:00:40And, you know, if things are gonna go back to normal, we have to do what we always do.
0:00:44And that is your favorite segment, and mine, and especially Jon's.
0:00:48-Ask ATP? -Yeah, that's it.
0:00:51No, it's follow-up.
0:00:52So, we are starting with the streaming music iPod shuffle-like thing, which is apparently
0:00:59something that Spotify—I don't know if it's—is it First Party?
0:01:04I don't know.
0:01:05Anyway, it's a thing that's for Spotify that's called Mighty, which is a peculiar name, that
0:01:10is basically an iPod shuffle, but for Spotify, from what I've gathered.
0:01:13So John, can you tell me a little more about this?
0:01:15Everybody sent us links to this thing, and eventually The Verge picked it up, too, so
0:01:20That's what we'll link in the show notes because we're talking about placing the market for
0:01:26something like an iPod shuffle.
0:01:28But this doesn't really qualify because first of all it's not 50 bucks, it's 85.
0:01:33Second it does not have cell data access, it only has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
0:01:38So you know we're saying last show, was it last show?
0:01:41Maybe the show before.
0:01:43Eventually you'll be able to make one of these for 50 bucks that can just stream music.
0:01:46We're not there yet, but this one definitely looks like
0:01:49Doesn't look like an iPod shuffle. It looks like a
0:01:52Fisher Price version
0:01:55It's probably better
0:01:56This is the thing I was annoying about the shuffles that it's so minimal and you needed to like
0:02:01Feel your hand on it to do like a volume up or down or next previous track, right?
0:02:06You could find the middle button pretty well
0:02:07But because it was a circle trying to make sure that you're hitting up on the circle instead of right or left
0:02:15Which could be very bad if you're in the middle of a podcast especially before they got the software updated or if your track got
0:02:20Rude wasn't marked as a podcast and iTunes and it was just a song and you hit the button and just lose your place entirely
0:02:25You couldn't feel with your finger. What is up and what is down?
0:02:29This was a little bit better because the center thing is a square so you could feel the flat edge anyway
0:02:33It's just another coincidence of a product that is kind of like what we're talking about but not really like it
0:02:41So we'll come back in ten years
0:02:43(laughing)
0:02:45- All right, Marco, tell me about audio bit depth,
0:02:48because apparently we got that ever so slightly wrong.
0:02:51- Well, I wouldn't say that.
0:02:52(laughing)
0:02:53- Oh, here we go.
0:02:55- So last year we had some discussion about
0:02:57whether Apple should or ever will sell
0:03:00higher resolution music, you know,
0:03:02so like the audiophile world loves high bit rate,
0:03:05high sample rate music like 24, 192, and stuff like that.
0:03:08So Amaya Matra writes in to say,
0:03:11"Well, I understand high resolution audio
0:03:12"and for everybody, I was disappointed that you guys
0:03:14"get the basic terminology wrong.
0:03:15"Given the technical bias of your show and audience,
0:03:17"a follow-up item addressing the difference
0:03:18"between bit depth and bit rate would be appreciated."
0:03:22So bit rate is how many bits an encoding scheme
0:03:29is using usually per second to encode the total music.
0:03:32So in a lossy scheme, this basically, like MP3,
0:03:35there would be like 128 kilobits per second.
0:03:38And that is just like the quality level
0:03:40of the music that you're getting.
0:03:41it's how many bits it will allocate to representing it,
0:03:44and usually the more bits you allocate to it,
0:03:46the higher quality you can achieve
0:03:47and the less you have to throw away.
0:03:49Bit depth is basically talking about
0:03:52how precise the samples are.
0:03:54You know, everybody can kind of picture
0:03:56what a wave looks like, you know,
0:03:58that's how sound waves come in
0:03:59and are represented in the uncompressed form.
0:04:01This actually doesn't apply to things like MP3
0:04:04quite the same way because the way
0:04:06the sound is represented is different,
0:04:08but basically when you're looking at just a pure waveform,
0:04:11and the way that's represented in like a lossless file
0:04:14or a wave or AIFF.
0:04:17Every sample of audio, so you have a sample rate
0:04:20of like 44,100 samples per second
0:04:22or whatever else represented as hertz,
0:04:24every one of those samples, it's representing
0:04:26the amplitude of that wave as a number.
0:04:30And the bit depth is the precision of those numbers.
0:04:33So if it's 16-bit like CDs, then that is represented
0:04:36by a 16-bit signed integer.
0:04:38If it's 24-bit, you have more bits.
0:04:40if it's usually, I think a 24, or I think beyond 24,
0:04:44I think it's always float,
0:04:45and you have floating point representations.
0:04:48And the reason these matter is that
0:04:51as you're encoding the music to these samples,
0:04:54you have to fit a number, the value that you're getting
0:04:58from the analog or whatever,
0:05:00you have to fit the value of that into this many bits
0:05:03of a number per sample.
0:05:05And so there's a certain degree of rounding that happens,
0:05:08and a certain degree of error that's introduced
0:05:10as part of that rounding.
0:05:12If you only have 16 bits, then that kinda limits
0:05:15your resolution of how precise of a number
0:05:18you can represent there.
0:05:20And so there's all sorts of complicated things
0:05:21that go on in DAX and ADCs about basically
0:05:25how you round the numbers in such a way
0:05:28to minimize the error or to hide the error
0:05:31in different noise patterns and everything else.
0:05:34As you increase the error rate,
0:05:37you increase the noise floor.
0:05:39So you reduce the signal to noise ratio,
0:05:42that's the difference between the loudest sound you can hear
0:05:44and the quietest sound that can be represented,
0:05:46but you know, below the noise floor.
0:05:47So you basically increase like the hiss level
0:05:49at the very bottom of the track.
0:05:51The reason why audio files freak out about this
0:05:54is because when you go from 16 bit to 24 bit,
0:05:57which is where they usually go,
0:05:59the noise floor does drop considerably.
0:06:01There's a great Wikipedia article titled
0:06:02Audio Bit Depth, you should check it out.
0:06:05Basically the noise floor at 24 bits for bit depth
0:06:10is 144 decibels, and at 16 bits, the regular CD standard,
0:06:14it's only 96.
0:06:15So that's a pretty big difference.
0:06:18However, the reason this doesn't really matter
0:06:21for the most part is that 96 decibels
0:06:24of signal to noise ratio covers the human audible
0:06:27hearing range pretty well.
0:06:29The actual human audible hearing range
0:06:30is something like 120 decibels.
0:06:32It varies per person a little bit,
0:06:33but it's around 120 decibels.
0:06:35So it actually isn't representing
0:06:36the entire human audible hearing range,
0:06:40but it's like you don't want to turn your speakers up
0:06:43so loud that you're actually damaging your eardrums.
0:06:47Like the human hearing range can go much higher in volume
0:06:51than what you actually should ever be listening to
0:06:53on a sustained basis.
0:06:54Like that's like a rock concert
0:06:56or a jet airplane flying overhead or things like that.
0:06:59If you listen at any reasonable length
0:07:02to something that loud, you're gonna damage your hearing
0:07:04pretty quickly, permanently.
0:07:06So, 96 decibels of signal to noise ratio,
0:07:09which is what you get from CD quality 16-bit audio,
0:07:13is good enough upon listening.
0:07:15Where it matters is if you are editing,
0:07:19if you're recording, like I record my end of the show
0:07:22as 24-bit, I record audio as 24-bit whenever I can,
0:07:25or as float even, whenever I can,
0:07:26which is 32-bit usually, because when you're editing,
0:07:29you're changing the numbers, you're processing the audio.
0:07:31And so if you have rounding error, over time that could add
0:07:34up after you apply a certain number of like filters
0:07:37or adjustments or anything like that.
0:07:39And then that 96 decibels of noise floor that was in the
0:07:41original signal, once you process it a few times
0:07:44and you're rounding off the numbers a few more times,
0:07:46you might actually have more error in the signal than that.
0:07:49And the noise floor might start to become audible.
0:07:52So where higher bit rate audio makes sense is in mastering
0:07:56and editing and recording.
0:07:58But the final shift version that you release to the public
0:08:01or the version that you, the listener, are listening to
0:08:04doesn't need to be more than 16-bit
0:08:06for almost any reason whatsoever.
0:08:08- All right.
0:08:10- Sorry. - Well, that solves that.
0:08:11(laughing)
0:08:13It's as though, Marco, that you really care about audio.
0:08:17I don't understand where this comes from.
0:08:18- If you want, also, there's a wonderful video
0:08:21that explains a lot of this.
0:08:23There's a guy, Monty, I think his full name
0:08:24is Chris Montgomery.
0:08:25He is either the guy or one of the people
0:08:28who invented the Ogg Vorbis audio codec.
0:08:30and he has a lot of great explainers out there
0:08:34about basically like why you don't need
0:08:36higher than CD quality audio as a listener.
0:08:39And explains a lot of that stuff.
0:08:40I learned a lot from that and some other research,
0:08:42but we'll put both these links in the show notes,
0:08:44both that video and the Wikipedia article
0:08:46on audio bit depth.
0:08:48- Excellent.
0:08:49So we had a couple of thoughts,
0:08:51or listeners had a couple of thoughts
0:08:53about the iPhone Pro Notch.
0:08:56And I'm embarrassed to admit that there's one thought
0:08:59that I didn't consider. So I'm in the camp that I think, not having seen anything of course,
0:09:05that it makes the most sense to kind of hide the notch. So hypothetically, the area adjacent to the
0:09:12notch would be all black, so it would all kind of blend together and it would just look like
0:09:15empty screen in the center, and it would look not too dissimilar from the way a phone looks today.
0:09:20But somebody, maybe it was one of you guys, thought, "Well, okay smart guy, what happens
0:09:25when you go landscape?
0:09:27And I don't have a good answer for that.
0:09:29So I'm really ashamed of myself
0:09:33that I didn't even think about this
0:09:34until I saw this in the show notes.
0:09:35So Marco, what do you think about what happens
0:09:38when you put this supposed phone in landscape?
0:09:42- So obviously it depends on like
0:09:43how they handle the notch in the UI.
0:09:45If the notch is basically hidden
0:09:47and you just have like status bar black on left and right
0:09:50and then you have like a square window below it
0:09:52that takes up the rest of the screen,
0:09:54which as I mentioned previously,
0:09:55that's what I kinda hope they do.
0:09:57If that's what they do, then I think it's pretty easy.
0:10:00In landscape, you just leave those little strips black
0:10:04and you don't use them at all.
0:10:07That's probably not what they will do.
0:10:08I have a feeling what they actually will do is
0:10:11shove translucent UI under those
0:10:13and have ways to actually use it
0:10:16in a way that might be kind of awkward.
0:10:18Now in landscape, the only reason I think anybody
0:10:21used their phones in landscape,
0:10:23I think probably the big ones are watching video,
0:10:26although even that, a lot of people watch it
0:10:28in portrait anyway, just because that's how they are used
0:10:31to holding their phones.
0:10:32Also, certain games play in landscape,
0:10:35although again, I think the most successful ones
0:10:36play in portrait on the phone.
0:10:38And then the other thing is, I guess,
0:10:40when you're taking video or shooting with the camera,
0:10:42you might rotate it.
0:10:43So all those things could, they could make ways
0:10:46to use the notch in a few clever ways,
0:10:50like maybe a game could show some controls in there,
0:10:53maybe the camera can shove some controls in there.
0:10:55But I have a feeling most of what we're gonna see
0:10:57is basically going to be in landscape,
0:10:59the notch just becomes black and you don't see it at all.
0:11:03- Yeah, I think you can't do anything
0:11:05with the notch in landscape
0:11:08because anything that you would think of doing
0:11:10would represent data loss to the content.
0:11:13In portrait, the status bar is not your content,
0:11:16it's part of the UI.
0:11:17So you can do whatever dance you wanna do
0:11:19with the status bar, whether it hides in there
0:11:21or the status bar is below or whatever, but if you're in landscape and you're doing video
0:11:27or something, even if the OS lets you go edge to edge and use the notches, what if you want
0:11:32to see what's under the camera things?
0:11:34It's like, oh, something's in my way.
0:11:35I can't see what the camera's shooting there.
0:11:38Maybe that's not important.
0:11:39What was it?
0:11:40There was something that I was angry about.
0:11:42Oh, I think it was like QuickTime Player many years ago, maybe still now.
0:11:47I don't know.
0:11:48I still use QuickTime Player 7.
0:11:49At one point, Apple, I believe Apple, released a video player, I think it was the QuickTime
0:11:55player, that would show video in a window with rounded corners.
0:12:01And it was like, "Don't chop off the corners, there's video in those corners."
0:12:05Well, not that there's a lot of video, but there is video there.
0:12:08And you're just like, "No, you don't need to see that, because it's more important for
0:12:11this window to have rounded corners than for you to see the video that's in that corner."
0:12:16And I know it's a small thing, but just on the principle, it's like, if you do that,
0:12:21I don't even have the option to see what's under the notch, right?
0:12:26So I think you have to just when you go into landscape, I feel like the OS should just
0:12:32enforce entirely.
0:12:33Maybe games can come up with something clever to do, like little men climb on the notch,
0:12:36right?
0:12:37Or the notch is like a little gun turd or something.
0:12:38But beyond that, that'd be awesome.
0:12:40I mean, yeah, because you can incorporate it and be fun, but it would only work in this
0:12:44one model of phone.
0:12:45It's just so much safer to say when it goes in landscape.
0:12:47Forget about the notch.
0:12:48We don't light up the pixels on either side of it.
0:12:50The thing is just, you know, it's just a straight line
0:12:53down the edge.
0:12:54I also saw, by the way, another mock-up image a while ago
0:12:59showing screen real estate-wise, what do you
0:13:02get with the edge-to-edge phone.
0:13:03And I know this can't be true because this one's
0:13:05got to be wider than the iPhone 7 II,
0:13:06but it was like basically trying to say you don't really
0:13:10get any new space because all the new pixels on the bottom
0:13:13are taken up essentially with the home button area
0:13:15and whatever they're gonna do there.
0:13:17And this thing was assuming that like the UI nav bar
0:13:20wasn't gonna throw stuff there.
0:13:21And at the top, you've got the notch
0:13:23and then you got a little sliver of space
0:13:27and then you've got the normal iPhone size screen
0:13:29in between those two things.
0:13:30And a little sliver of space was like,
0:13:33look like a little status bar.
0:13:34So the idea was that,
0:13:36I guess if you had a non optimized
0:13:38for iPhone pro application,
0:13:42it would show its status bar below the notch
0:13:44in the traditional way,
0:13:45because between the bottom of the notch
0:13:47and the top of the software home button area
0:13:50would be a screen that is the same resolution
0:13:52as some existing iPhone.
0:13:54Anyway, that's the impression I got from this image.
0:13:56But the more I think about it,
0:13:57the more I think that can't possibly be the case
0:13:59because at the very least it should be wider
0:14:00than the other stuff.
0:14:01But it would be weird if there was like
0:14:04a backward compatibility mode for unmodified apps
0:14:08that were not like notch savvy.
0:14:11You know what I mean?
0:14:12Like, they could, they,
0:14:13'cause they, you know, and he was like,
0:14:15Apple wouldn't do that, it's inelegant.
0:14:16They took, they, you know, phone apps run at 2X
0:14:18on your iPad to this day, and it looks terrible.
0:14:20And they zoom things that have not been updated
0:14:23for the iPhone 5 form, but like,
0:14:26in the past they've done that,
0:14:28and it's been a good choice, because like,
0:14:29look, if people don't update their apps,
0:14:31we'll make them run as close as possible
0:14:32to the way they used to run.
0:14:34So the app has no idea that it's running
0:14:35on a totally new, weird phone.
0:14:37It just looks a little bit strange,
0:14:39but it's completely compatible,
0:14:40because we don't do anything weird.
0:14:41And I can imagine that happening with this new phone,
0:14:45which will be bad, but I guess it'll motivate people
0:14:49to incorporate the notch into their applications.
0:14:52- Fair enough.
0:14:55Now why bother having the notch in the first place?
0:14:57- Again, this is one of my thoughts.
0:15:00Why are we doing this?
0:15:03We have a notch, like the edge to edge screen.
0:15:06All right, yeah, we want to have an edge to edge screen,
0:15:07but why do we have to have a notch to that?
0:15:09You can go all the way to the left edge,
0:15:11all the way to the right edge,
0:15:12and all the way to the bottom edge.
0:15:14All you had to do is not go all the way to the top edge.
0:15:16Instead of having a notch,
0:15:18you have a presumably very thin little forehead.
0:15:22It would still be a quote unquote edge to edge screen
0:15:25as compared to all iPhones previously
0:15:28which had very large chins and foreheads, right?
0:15:31The notch is asymmetrical
0:15:33and so would the skinny little forehead version.
0:15:37but it's less asymmetrical, John, the notch, I mean.
0:15:41- Well, but the whole point is there's something on top
0:15:45that's not on the bottom,
0:15:46whether it's a skinny thing that's on top, anyway.
0:15:49And it would just eliminate an entire class
0:15:52of weird solver problems.
0:15:53So presumably Apple has done a lot of work in the OS
0:15:56and in the frameworks, figuring out the answers
0:15:58to all these questions that we're just guessing at now.
0:16:00They've figured out answers to all of these.
0:16:02They've decided what they're gonna do
0:16:03in all these different cases, tested applications,
0:16:06test the new API so you can be notch savvy
0:16:08and do all this stuff, right?
0:16:10All of that work would go away
0:16:11if they just made the notch go from edge to edge,
0:16:14but I guess the phone wouldn't look as cool.
0:16:16And then, you know, I don't know,
0:16:18like does anyone else have a notch?
0:16:19Is Apple gonna be the first notch?
0:16:21I know there are phones out there
0:16:22that already look like edge to edge screen,
0:16:24but with a little skinny forehead.
0:16:25So maybe Apple just didn't wanna look like that.
0:16:26- Can't innovate anymore, my ass.
0:16:29- This would be one of those things where
0:16:31if Apple was like other companies
0:16:35And like, you could, they have like interviews
0:16:38with the designers, like you get the whole team
0:16:40that designed the new iPhone and they'd have to do
0:16:42a big article and like wired or something and be like,
0:16:44tell me about your motivation for designing that.
0:16:46And they would like explain why they went with the notch.
0:16:49Right? But we never get those reasons.
0:16:50Just like, this is the phone, here it is.
0:16:52Maybe there's a sentence and a keynote about it,
0:16:55which Apple will never ever elaborate on.
0:16:57And like, so we just, we just have to wait 20 years
0:17:01for the tell all books, but it's a bit of a head scratcher
0:17:04for me because I think it looks cool with the notch.
0:17:07I think there's gonna be some interesting possibilities
0:17:09there, but it is a heck of a lot of work.
0:17:11And it seems like a stop gap.
0:17:14Like are we gonna have notches forever?
0:17:16Presumably whatever tech issues necessitate the notch
0:17:20will diminish over time.
0:17:22Either you're able to embed those sensors someplace else,
0:17:24or you'll be able to make such a skinny forehead
0:17:26that it won't even be a forehead,
0:17:27and it'll just be like the thing goes to edge to edge.
0:17:29I don't know, this is not the permanent state of all,
0:17:32Like will all future iPhones have notches
0:17:35for the next seven years?
0:17:36There's just gonna be notches from here to there,
0:17:37but they're doing all this work with the OS and everything.
0:17:40It would seem like a waste if it's just like,
0:17:43remember that time we rejiggered all the frameworks
0:17:46in the OS for this one phone,
0:17:47and it was the only one that ended up having a notch?
0:17:49I don't know.
0:17:51We'll find out in the fall, I guess.
0:17:53- Yeah, this is why what I want to happen,
0:17:56although I don't think this is what will happen again,
0:17:58but what I want to happen here is
0:18:01I want the notch to basically be invisible in the software.
0:18:05Like, I want it to just have a status bar on left and right.
0:18:08Then you get the extra 20 point height
0:18:11that the status bar would have taken up in the main screen.
0:18:13You can shove that up into this little side area
0:18:16where there is no center, but you can rearrange status bar,
0:18:19and the application frame is just everything below that.
0:18:22I would love that that was the solution.
0:18:24I don't want, as a user and as a programmer of apps
0:18:27for this thing, and as a designer of the app,
0:18:29I do not want to have to deal with the notch.
0:18:31I think it will be clunky and weird
0:18:34and I think it will look weird as a user.
0:18:35I'm not looking forward to that at all
0:18:36and I do think it looks like an inelegant hack
0:18:40and if Samsung would have released that notch
0:18:43and Apple didn't, we'd make fun of them for it.
0:18:45That's exactly the kind of thing where we'd be like,
0:18:47oh, you guys are bad at design, look at this stupid notch.
0:18:49Just like the flat tire Moto 360 watch.
0:18:52We made fun of that relentlessly.
0:18:54Everyone in Apple World did
0:18:56because that was like a bad design hack
0:18:59to get around a physical shortcoming.
0:19:01I don't see how the notch is any different.
0:19:03That looks like a bad design hack
0:19:04to get around a physical shortcoming to me.
0:19:06Again, we'll see what happens
0:19:07when we see the final software,
0:19:09but I really do not want the UI in any way
0:19:13to wrap around that except the status bar
0:19:16in a way that you barely even notice.
0:19:18But because of that leaked image from the HomeBot firmware
0:19:21showing that notch as like the recognizable iconic shape
0:19:25of this phone, that's the reason I'm concerned
0:19:28that they're not doing it that way.
0:19:29- That would just be the lock screen, like you said.
0:19:31- It may, yeah, maybe just the lock screen.
0:19:32That wouldn't be too bad.
0:19:34But if it's any other parts of the UI,
0:19:36like if they scroll translucent bars under there
0:19:38or anything like that, I really,
0:19:40I don't think I'm going to like that.
0:19:42Again, that seems like a bad design hack, not good design.
0:19:47- So people in the chat room are posting pictures
0:19:49of, of course, Android phones
0:19:51that have their own little notches.
0:19:53The one they're showing here is a very tiny notch
0:19:55It just wraps around one little front-facing camera because obviously the, you know, why
0:19:59does the new phone supposedly have a notch instead of just this little tiny button-like
0:20:04cutout?
0:20:05Because it's got to have more than just a camera there.
0:20:07Maybe it'll have two front-facing cameras.
0:20:08Certainly it's got the IR sensor for depth of the face stuff.
0:20:10Like who knows what's in that notch.
0:20:12But it can't be as small as this.
0:20:13But anyway, as in all things, Android phones have done it first.
0:20:19So I think actually Simpsons did it first, Jon.
0:20:21Then Opera.
0:20:22Then Opera.
0:20:23That's right.
0:20:24"Did it" is the line. "Opera did it first" is that joke, so I think Opera wins this one.
0:20:30Thank you. Did you really just well actually me?
0:20:33You sure did. The sad part is he's right.
0:20:37We are sponsored this week by Eero. Go to Eero.com and use code ATP for free overnight
0:20:43shipping. Wi-Fi, when you only have one router, just doesn't cover houses very well. Because
0:20:48Wi-Fi waves don't go through walls as well as they go through open spaces and you get
0:20:52these dead zones and everything else.
0:20:54Eero is designed to solve that problem.
0:20:56Because businesses and schools and campuses
0:20:59have done this for a long time,
0:21:01they use multiple access points.
0:21:02And if you did this for your home,
0:21:04it was very, very complicated before Eero.
0:21:06Eero makes it incredibly easy to have
0:21:09a distributed Wi-Fi system, enterprise-grade Wi-Fi,
0:21:13in your home with the easiest setup
0:21:15of any system I've ever seen.
0:21:17All you do, you plug it in, you use their app
0:21:19on your iPhone or your Android phone,
0:21:21and it sets it up and you have to do literally almost nothing.
0:21:24So you get the one main unit.
0:21:26And they've actually just updated their hardware.
0:21:28The old ones are great too, but they just
0:21:30did the Generation 2 system.
0:21:32So this has the main unit, which is now tri-band and twice
0:21:36as fast as the first one.
0:21:37Has a whole other radio.
0:21:39You have now these secondary units.
0:21:41They used to be the same as the main unit.
0:21:43Now they have these little ones called beacons.
0:21:45And they are even smaller, even simpler.
0:21:47They look like kind of just slightly larger
0:21:49than a nightlight.
0:21:50and you just plug it in and it sits flush in your outlet.
0:21:52It looks amazing, it's tiny, it's unobtrusive.
0:21:54They even actually have night lights
0:21:56in the bottom of the beacons, which is pretty cool.
0:21:59So if you put it like in a hallway or anything.
0:22:00And it makes it so easy to place anywhere.
0:22:02And that covers the whole house.
0:22:04And they don't have to be wired to each other.
0:22:06Only the first one has to be wired
0:22:08to your home's internet connection.
0:22:09And the other ones, they distribute the wifi
0:22:13with a mesh network between themselves.
0:22:15So you don't have to worry about running ethernet wires
0:22:17to your access points or anything else.
0:22:19It's super, super easy.
0:22:21With the new second generation and the Eero Beacon,
0:22:23performance is even better, the looks are even nicer,
0:22:26and it's even smaller.
0:22:27What you need is this kind of system.
0:22:29Single routers are not good enough anymore.
0:22:31They don't cover houses, we all know that.
0:22:33We've all done that for years.
0:22:34No matter how many antennas you put on one,
0:22:36it doesn't cover everything.
0:22:37And Eero is by far the easiest way to do this
0:22:39I've ever seen.
0:22:40So check it out, they have great support if you need it.
0:22:42They have great pricing.
0:22:43Go to Eero.com and use promo code ATP
0:22:47to get free overnight shipping.
0:22:49Thanks to Eero for sponsoring our show.
0:22:51(upbeat music)
0:22:54- Anyway, Rustam Karimov of 1Password,
0:22:58I believe a co-founder if I'm not mistaken,
0:23:00has written a blog post to say among other things,
0:23:021Password 7th Windows will be getting support
0:23:04for standalone vaults,
0:23:05which is the thing that started the big kerfuffle
0:23:07a few weeks ago.
0:23:09Also WLAN sync and different license related information.
0:23:14John, any other thoughts you wanna add on this?
0:23:17No, just that this is another in the pattern we've seen for a couple of years now, like
0:23:23a company will change some part of its product, either the features or the business model
0:23:28or both, and then a bunch of people get angry about it, and then there's always the follow-up
0:23:33where they've incorporated the feedback from their customers.
0:23:36They were taken by surprise by how angry people were about a particular thing, and they were
0:23:42like, "All right, well, we can change that."
0:23:43reassure people that like we're not gonna you know the description thing is
0:23:46not going to take away your ability to have all your stuff locally you don't
0:23:49have to use the cloud so on and so forth so looks like they are doing the right
0:23:53things yeah I saw a lot of feedback about this a lot of people talked about
0:24:00well if if everything goes subscription then I'm not gonna have any money for
0:24:06anything anymore and I don't know I feel like we should address that perhaps
0:24:11again. I don't know, did we talk about this before? I think Marco covered it the last time we talked
0:24:16about it. I agree. It's fresh in my memory because I listened to those shows just recently to catch
0:24:22up on them. But yeah, like, I mean, it's kind of a slippery slope argument, but so far it hasn't
0:24:26happened. And there's a natural counterbalance, which is, well, if people don't like it, they
0:24:31won't buy it. And if they don't buy it, people won't do it. Like, so it's, you know, there's,
0:24:34there aren't many forces in the mix here that are going to cause this dystopia to
0:24:41happen despite the fact that users don't want it. Like it's possible for there to
0:24:46be countervailing forces for example if Apple said hey guess what the only way
0:24:50you could sell applications in the app course is subscription but that that's
0:24:53not the way things are so it's not not time to be worried about it now. Don't
0:24:58like it don't buy it. Exactly exactly what I was gonna say if something if
0:25:02If something that you like but don't love suddenly becomes subscription, then guess
0:25:06what?
0:25:07You have an option, which is not to get a subscription.
0:25:10That's okay.
0:25:11The one thing I will say, though, is that if an app goes from not subscription to subscription,
0:25:17there's no way around that that's going to happen from time to time.
0:25:21And that is tough, right?
0:25:22Because here it is, you thought you paid for something in some cases that you would have
0:25:26for a while, although you should not have expected that you have it forever.
0:25:29And then the cost changes.
0:25:31And that's a bummer like I don't mean to be sarcastic at all about that that really is a bummer
0:25:36But there's different trade-offs to like that one person who said like what if I lose my job
0:25:40I don't want to also lose all my programs because I can't afford to pay their monthly bills anymore
0:25:44Well, you know that's the smile I wait for lose my job
0:25:47I don't want to lose cable TV because I can't afford the bill anymore
0:25:49Well, you know I was like well
0:25:50I need the software to do my job like there presumably every single application in an entire category won't be subscription
0:25:57Right, or even if it is maybe they'll have varying subscriptions and right now the subscriptions are like three bucks a month
0:26:03So I feel like if you can't script either three dollars a month
0:26:05You have much bigger problems than not being able to use your graphics program to produce spec work
0:26:10Which you shouldn't be doing anyway to get your next job. So anyway
0:26:13You know
0:26:15In times of hardship many things are difficult
0:26:18From paying your rent to your food your health insurance
0:26:21Your software licenses are just another one of those potential things that could be a problem
0:26:27But, you know, if there's a need for this, and if this is a real problem, someone will
0:26:31fill it by selling a program for a fixed price and, you know, selling upgrades in the traditional
0:26:37way or going out of business because they can't sustain their one application.
0:26:41But hey, you've got it until it stops working.
0:26:43I mean, there's always options, too.
0:26:44Like, you know, look at what, like, high school kids and college kids and people in developing
0:26:49countries, like, there's a lot of markets of people who can't afford a bunch of software
0:26:53licenses or subscriptions, and they find other options.
0:26:57Piracy maybe is not the best option,
0:26:59but it's certainly a widespread one.
0:27:01A much better option is free software alternatives.
0:27:04Almost every kind of task you can do in a computer today
0:27:07has some kind of free software alternative
0:27:09to the big name one.
0:27:10Photoshop, Illustrator, audio processing stuff,
0:27:14almost all these big creative apps or productivity apps,
0:27:18they almost all have freeware alternatives,
0:27:20free open source, if not just free alternatives.
0:27:24And not to mention, all the stuff built into the OS
0:27:27these days or doing things on iOS and Android where the apps cost very, very little money
0:27:33usually and usually you buy it once if anything and it's free and you can do a lot of free
0:27:39stuff there or do a lot of inexpensive stuff there with tools that are really good these
0:27:43days. There's lots of options now. I think the "I can't afford all my software subscriptions"
0:27:51is mostly a complaint from people who very much
0:27:55can afford them and are just looking for a reason
0:27:58to be upset about a pricing change.
0:28:00Because when you change the business model,
0:28:02that's when people get upset.
0:28:04It matters a lot less what you change it to
0:28:06than the fact that you changed it and people feel
0:28:09maybe surprised or caught off guard by that
0:28:12or feel like they're being taken advantage of
0:28:14like after the fact you're changing the deal,
0:28:16you know, after the fact, you know, I know,
0:28:17pray you don't answer it further, et cetera.
0:28:20Again, I don't think this is a real issue.
0:28:22I don't think this is something that anybody
0:28:24is actually facing hardship over in any real numbers.
0:28:28This is people complaining who very much can't afford it
0:28:31and are just mad.
0:28:33And for the people who truly can't afford it,
0:28:34there's lots of great options out there
0:28:36that are either inexpensive or free.
0:28:39And many of them are built into the OS you already have
0:28:42and whatever isn't, you can get in your app store of choice
0:28:45or your online repository of software of choice
0:28:49for very little money or nothing usually.
0:28:51Because this is not like, people have used computers
0:28:54without paying for things on them for a very long time.
0:28:57And this is a solved problem in so many ways.
0:29:01- All right, Giaro wants to know,
0:29:03is there any reason not to use
0:29:04the built-in calibration tools on the Apple TV?
0:29:07You can get to that from the Apple TV settings,
0:29:09audio and video calibrate.
0:29:11- You can use them, but they're terrible.
0:29:13I mean, like they're,
0:29:14(laughing)
0:29:15- Of course you can. - They're not terrible,
0:29:16they're limited.
0:29:17I think that all it does is like screen bounds and maybe like one other thing.
0:29:23Like it doesn't do all the color, white balance, grayscale, brightness, contrast, you know,
0:29:30it doesn't do all that stuff.
0:29:31If they want to improve that in the future versions of UEOS it would be great, but the
0:29:35current one and I believe the one in the betas is still just very limited.
0:29:40It's better than nothing so by all means do it and so you can see if you're in a casey
0:29:43like situation where you're missing half the pixels on your screen because not half,
0:29:47but some portion of the pixels on your screen because you have your thing in overscan mode.
0:29:50And that may make you sad to know that, but beyond that you still need a calibration app.
0:29:55Fine, fine.
0:29:57All right, apparently Samir Mizrahi listens to our show, or at least that's what I'm going
0:30:02to claim, because mere weeks, maybe even a few days after we had discussed how frustrating
0:30:10it is to hear the first song in your library every time you reconnect via Bluetooth, this
0:30:16individual has released a single on iTunes called A A A A A Very Good Song. And it is
0:30:25a little less than 10 minutes of silence because apparently any more than 10 minutes and iTunes
0:30:29charges you for a whole album. And the idea is because it's a space, a space, a space,
0:30:34a space, a space, very good song, it is very likely to be the very first song in your library.
0:30:40So every time you plug in your phone
0:30:43or start Bluetooth or what have you,
0:30:45you don't hear the same, in my case,
0:30:48track by Aliyah every single time.
0:30:50So this is an absolutely brilliant solution
0:30:53to a problem that none of us should really have.
0:30:56- My favorite thing about this is
0:30:57how far up the charts it was climbing.
0:31:00Like, we saw some articles about it here and there.
0:31:03I don't have anything handy, unfortunately,
0:31:05'cause I'm a slacker on vacation.
0:31:06But it was noticeably ranking
0:31:10the iTunes top singles chart somewhere.
0:31:12Why do you not allowed to start with like a space or you know a punctuation character
0:31:19or a number all the other things that would have sorted before the A's because I feel
0:31:23like now now this is now you've started a war now for who can be the earliest right
0:31:27no don't get that AA track you need my track which is one one one oh don't get mine it's
0:31:32it's space space space exclamation point anyway um well I feel like that's kind of like a
0:31:37like a million dollar homepage problem.
0:31:40Like anybody else who tries the same thing is not going to get anywhere.
0:31:44Yeah, I'm just saying for sorting purposes, not for like actually selling the thing.
0:31:50But you know, everyone sent us this obviously, but it doesn't solve the problem at all.
0:31:53In fact, I think it makes it worse.
0:31:55The fact that it's silent makes it worse because if I had this track, I would be like waiting
0:32:02and thinking, "Am I hearing the silent track or is it just taking a long time to start
0:32:06playing?
0:32:07overcast in the background. And like, you know, the problem is not I keep hearing the first,
0:32:13you know, few notes of a song, because the alphabetically first song in my playlist I like,
0:32:18it's a good song, and I'm not sick of it because I never listened to the whole thing. I'm frustrated
0:32:22by the fact that it has picked the wrong source. And by the way, after I said like, "Oh, most of
0:32:27the time it does the right thing, maybe 15% of the time I get the wrong thing," this thing has taken
0:32:31revenge on me in my last like 50 trips in the car. 100% of the time it has started playing
0:32:37music even if I was just playing. I don't know if it's the overcast beta is crashing or I don't know
0:32:42what the hell's going on but anyway it's really bad for me. Wait there is no current beta you
0:32:46should be using the app store version. Well maybe that's the problem do I have a little dot next to
0:32:50overcast on my phone? Let me see. That's a bug dot right now. I do have a dot next to it. Oh get rid
0:32:55of that. All right anyway maybe that's my problem but either way this this track would not solve my
0:33:01problem and I mean what it should really be is a voice that says it happened again.
0:33:07You thought different audio would be playing but instead it's playing the song from your
0:33:10playlist.
0:33:11Pull over safely and then fiddle with your phone.
0:33:14Don't try to do it while you're driving because you'll run somebody over or you'll die.
0:33:18But then you'd be sick of hearing that.
0:33:20Bottom line is there is no safe track to put there and I don't think the silent one solves
0:33:22the problem.
0:33:23I think it makes it worse.
0:33:24But more power to this person for selling people the sounds of silence.
0:33:28All right, A, I don't know how to sell music on iTunes, but can we cut that out and actually
0:33:31try this?
0:33:32And then B, the way to solve this, I know we have some listeners inside of Apple.
0:33:38I don't know how high up they go, but the way to solve this is to somehow get a hold
0:33:43of Johnny Ives or Tim Cook's iPhone and sync a single track to it that is a renamed version
0:33:50of some very annoying song that is renamed to be like A-A-A-A-A.
0:33:55I don't know the the the possibilities are endless of what's on this could be
0:33:59[MUSIC PLAYING]
0:34:28You know, something that would really drive the most.
0:34:31This problem will get solved in the next version of iOS.
0:34:35- Phil's car will just be,
0:34:35"Can't innovate more of my ass on a loop."
0:34:37(laughing)
0:34:40- Oh, my word.
0:34:42So we actually did get some feedback about this,
0:34:44and this individual wrote to say,
0:34:47"Bluetooth has two major ways to start playback in a car.
0:34:50"The good old simple play command
0:34:51"and a newer set of advanced browsing commands
0:34:53"that allows the car to control the apps
0:34:55"and navigate the media library on the phone.
0:34:57With a play command, the active media player is chosen by the phone, and that from time
0:35:02to time gets a little buggy.
0:35:05According to this person, it is quite likely that this whole little subsystem was written
0:35:08by one person who may have then been moved somewhere else within Apple, and who even
0:35:13knows.
0:35:14But with the new browsing stuff, then the car can decide how it wants to select, you
0:35:19know, like the active media player and a playlist and an album and blah blah blah.
0:35:23And so now you're letting the car make choices that it probably shouldn't be making.
0:35:29And so that makes everything a little bit dodgy.
0:35:32So this is surely in part Apple's fault, but it is not by necessity entirely Apple's fault,
0:35:39depending on the car, depending on how it's connecting, etc. etc. etc.
0:35:45We're sponsored this week by Aftershokz Bone Conduction Headphones.
0:35:48Go to ATP.Aftershokz.com to learn more.
0:35:53Aftershocks headphones work by bone conduction.
0:35:55So these small transducers rest in front of your ears,
0:35:58not inside or around them like most headphones,
0:36:00and they send mini vibrations through your cheekbones
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0:36:05It totally bypasses your ears and your eardrums.
0:36:08So unlike every other kind of headphone,
0:36:10bone conduction leaves your ears completely open
0:36:13with nothing in them.
0:36:14So for a lot of people like me,
0:36:16we can't wear earbuds or in-ear monitors
0:36:18'cause they get physically uncomfortable in our ear canals.
0:36:21Aftershocks don't have this problem because nothing is sitting in your ear and because they don't cover your ear
0:36:27I find them far less sweaty than regular headphones in the summertime
0:36:31And they're even IP IP 55 certified for water-resistant
0:36:34So you can you can run with them in the rain or you can just sweat all over them all gross and it's totally fine
0:36:39I have found that I use these more than any other headphones in the summertime
0:36:44In fact, I'm on vacation right now for a few weeks and I brought only these headphones for walking
0:36:50All other portable headphones I've left at home because I will I only want to use these here because I'm walking a lot
0:36:55I'm using these multiple hours a day. I'm sweating a lot
0:36:58I'm sometimes using them in the rain and it's totally fine
0:37:00And the great thing about it is that because nothing blocks your ears at all
0:37:04You hear the whole world around you so you can be walking or you know
0:37:08Maybe cycling or running where you really want to hear the world around you for safety reasons or just to enjoy it and you need
0:37:15Something that doesn't block your ear and that's what bone conduction is great at
0:37:18It's also great if you want to listen around the house, you know
0:37:21If you want to like take a phone call because you know
0:37:23These are obviously bluetooth they can do phone calls if you want to take a phone call with them
0:37:26And maybe you want to hear if anything happens in your house in the process you can do that, too
0:37:30And so if I'm honest the downsides here are they're not the best for sound quality and they don't get very loud if you're in
0:37:35A very loud environment because they're so open to the world if you're in like a lot like a subway station
0:37:41These wouldn't be the pick for you
0:37:42But they're amazing for walking around outside, for any kind of exercise use, for around the house,
0:37:48and anywhere, anything you want, you want to hear the world around you. That's where the
0:37:52Aftershocks are great. And again, they're so awesome for minimizing sweatiness too.
0:37:56So the Aftershocks Trex titanium that I use here retails for 130 bucks. Listeners can get
0:38:01a pair for yourself for just $100, 99.95 by visiting ATP.aftershocks.com. That is
0:38:07atp.aftershocks.com. Thanks to Aftershocks for sponsoring our show.
0:38:14Apparently Ask ATP is really a thing. John, I think you said you wanted it to be a thing
0:38:21and Marco you might have said the same. Apparently it's a thing.
0:38:24Well the question is where does it go? Does it go after follow up or does it go after
0:38:27topics? Or does it go in the after show? Where does it go?
0:38:29No, I think it goes after follow up. Yeah, that sounds good.
0:38:32I think that was right. Don't you feel like it's going to... you always
0:38:36don't want to keep us away from our topics if we have long ask ATP we're even less likely
0:38:40to get to topics.
0:38:41You know what we could do, Jon? Now stick with me here, I know this is wild, but we
0:38:45could have a little bit less follow-up.
0:38:48We just did. We just did do that.
0:38:51Are you sure? We've been recording 45 minutes.
0:38:54I didn't add an item about talking about bit depth for 20 minutes. That was Margot.
0:38:58That wasn't 20 minutes. Anyway, Cain asks, "How do you guys sync your home directories
0:39:02between your Macs, and I will go first, I don't.
0:39:05I use Dropbox for a handful of things, but generally speaking, it's all in the cloud,
0:39:10man, so who cares.
0:39:11Same.
0:39:12Yeah, I don't sync my home directories, that's not a thing.
0:39:16I doubt many people do that.
0:39:18I think there used to be a way to...
0:39:19No, I'm thinking of the server thing, never mind.
0:39:22Anyway, what people do is they just use cloud stuff, whether it's iCloud Drive or Dropbox,
0:39:27and that's the stuff that syncs, but they don't sync their entire home directories,
0:39:30And it probably wouldn't be a good idea to sync your entire home directories, because
0:39:33probably in the library directory and your home directory, there's crap that is machine-specific,
0:39:37somewhere lurking in there, so you probably don't want to do a naive full sync of your
0:39:40entire home directory.
0:39:42And in general, sync is really hard to get right, and don't try to set up something yourself
0:39:45to do it, because you'll just end up hosing yourself and you'll be sad.
0:39:50Fair enough.
0:39:51This is a truly great question, which, outside of the obvious, I don't have a really good
0:39:56answer to.
0:39:57is from, let me get a full name if I can, Peter Cam. Peter Cam asks, "What's one piece of old tech
0:40:05that is still in use, not hidden in an attic, and I think he's really talking to you, Jon,
0:40:11due to superior qualities or retro joy? So for example, CRT TV, old video game consoles, iPods,
0:40:19etc. I will start again. The obvious answer to this is that I have a turntable that I still use
0:40:25almost daily. However, I just received that turntable as a Christmas present and it was
0:40:30brand new at the time. So it is old technology, however it is a new device. In terms of old
0:40:37technology that's still in use, I can't think of anything offhand. I'm sure there's something. I'm
0:40:43not debating that I have something barbaric and old that I still use, but darn if I can think of
0:40:48what it would be. So Marco went first last time. John, anything old that's outside of your attic?
0:40:54Was gonna say my plasma TV, but it's not superior quality anymore. It's not retro joy
0:40:59So I guess that's probably just the example of something old my consoles are probably it. I have a bunch of old consoles hooked up
0:41:05Journey on ps4 helps me not have to use my ps3 for that
0:41:09But if I want to play ego or shadow of the Colossus, I still have to use the ps3
0:41:12So it is still connected to my TV
0:41:14There's gonna be a ps4 port of shadow of the Colossus leaving only ego like my ps3 is hanging on
0:41:22Same thing with my Wii which is basically used to play GameCube games most of the time
0:41:26Almost all my old consoles are still hooked up
0:41:29It's kind of gonna be a shame when I eventually get a 4k TV because I doubt the 4k TV will have
0:41:34component video input to which I can connect my GameCube so I have to buy some kind of adapter and then I'd probably go and
0:41:40Don't even bother right same thing with the Wii. I have we is got component video going into my TV
0:41:46I would have to buy an adapter for that as well
0:41:49But for now, yeah, I got a lot of old consoles hooked up.
0:41:53- You know, I should point out that Marco
0:41:55is probably going to say the same thing I forgot about,
0:41:58which is I do have a mechanical watch
0:41:59that is also not terribly old,
0:42:01but I do like using it when I'm dressing up
0:42:04for something special.
0:42:05So now that I've stolen your thunder, Marco, what about you?
0:42:08- Honestly, that was what I was thinking of
0:42:11as the best thing I could say here.
0:42:14Most of the things that I use are,
0:42:18The things that I use that are actually quote old
0:42:20in tech terms are not old enough to be interesting.
0:42:23So I'll have an old speaker ramp for my desk or something,
0:42:28but that's an old desktop computer speaker ramp
0:42:33being like six years old.
0:42:35Or for a while I was using my first Fujitsu
0:42:39ScanSnap scanner, which I got about nine years ago,
0:42:44but I actually replaced that about last year
0:42:46because I was tired of replacing the rollers
0:42:48and the new ones were super fast
0:42:49and so I just got a new one.
0:42:51Yeah, for me, I think the best answer here
0:42:53is mechanical watches.
0:42:56It's not a very interesting answer
0:42:58and it's not a new answer
0:42:59for people who have heard me talk ever.
0:43:01So that's why I kinda wanted,
0:43:03I wanted to go with something better
0:43:05but I was not able to.
0:43:06I do have mechanical watches that are somewhat old.
0:43:11My oldest one is from 1968, so that's fairly old.
0:43:14So I guess that counts.
0:43:15Awesome. And that's the end of Ask ATP for this week. So let's move on to some topics.
0:43:21Johnny, are you really going to let me get away with this?
0:43:24So fast. It's a really quick one. It's a really quick one. That's another question.
0:43:28How many questions did we do? I just did three because that's how many I could put before I ran out of time before the show.
0:43:32So Chris Johnson, thank you Chris, writes in blah blah destiny two blah blah blah.
0:43:39Try again.
0:43:40Which destiny two class and subclass will you start with?
0:43:43with. Marco, you want to take that? How about NSObject and Subclass would be...
0:43:53How about NSMutableSet? I like that one a lot. You need to get on with the Swift Foundation classes here.
0:44:00Yeah, they dropped the NS prefix a while ago, man. Come on. So I'm going to do... I was a
0:44:06Warlock main in Destiny 1. I barely... I had a Titan that my son played and a
0:44:11Hunter that I barely played. I did level the Titan and Hunter up so they will be ported
0:44:16over to Destiny 2 along with my Warlock, but I'm going to be Warlock main in Destiny
0:44:192 and I'm probably going to start with Dawnblade because it's the new one.
0:44:23Was any of that English? Because it didn't sound like it.
0:44:26People know. First episode of Ask ATP, a rousing success.
0:44:34No one else remembered about the thing and I had to rush to get the things in there in
0:44:38between trying to get my kids and my dog settled down before the show. Feel free to—I'm
0:44:42pulling from that same sheet—feel free to pull your own questions in there and throw
0:44:46them in the little section.
0:44:47You know, the right answer—which will never work—but the rightest answer is for each
0:44:52of us to pull our favorite question each week. But I guarantee Marco will forget and/or not
0:44:56care. And I give myself one chance in three of actually remembering.
0:45:00No, in the absence of anybody else, I will pull questions and throw them in there. But,
0:45:04You know, we wouldn't have the section at all if I hadn't remembered it, so.
0:45:09It's true.
0:45:10Oh, where would we be without you, Jon?
0:45:12And speaking of, Jon, tell us about this kerfuffle with Google and this diversity memo, which
0:45:18I'm not sure is even the right way to describe it.
0:45:20Yeah, this is old, kind of old news by now, but we haven't recorded it in a long time.
0:45:25And there, in the world of politics and discrimination, there is newer news, but it is not really
0:45:34tech related but this certainly is tech related it's a story that everybody probably knows by now
0:45:39the google employee wrote i don't know why they call it a memo i guess the old parlance wrote a
0:45:45big thing sort of talking to google internally saying we're all googlers here here's what i
0:45:52think about what the company's doing and here's my opinion on it so on and so forth and it caused a
0:45:56big stink we will put a link to the document in the show notes on the off chance that you haven't
0:46:02already read it it's not that long if you like oh it's 10 pages and the grand
0:46:06scheme of things it's not that long because we don't have pages in the web
0:46:08you just scroll and also what we'll have in the show notes are what I think are
0:46:15some of the best responses to the Google thing so anyway the game back to the
0:46:22story here being a chief summarized in chief and in the case of doing this the
0:46:29The upshot is that the person who wrote this was fired because it contained, I forget what
0:46:35the phrasing was, but it contained a bunch of ideas and opinions that are counter to
0:46:41the way Google operates and then people are angry that the person got fired and people
0:46:45argued on the internet about it and so on and so forth.
0:46:48Again, this is a well-covered story and I feel like if you don't know what we're talking
0:46:52about or don't or have only read one or two things about it, just read the five links
0:46:57that we put in there, I feel like you will have covered
0:46:59the range of how people are reacting to it.
0:47:01But on this show, what I wanted to talk about,
0:47:04you guys can feel free to take whatever angle
0:47:06you want on this thing, is the idea that people dismissed
0:47:11the memo, that people like read it and just didn't address
0:47:21it at all, didn't take it seriously,
0:47:26They just dismissed it out of hand.
0:47:27And a lot of people were angry about that, that like,
0:47:31why won't you engage with this?
0:47:33Why won't you talk about the idea?
0:47:35There's lots of yelling about like,
0:47:37someone said something bad about it,
0:47:38but you didn't even talk about any of the points
0:47:40that are in the memo.
0:47:42Like, why are you being so dismissive?
0:47:44And I understand where people are coming from with that,
0:47:47but I think there is an explanation,
0:47:49and it's a frustrating explanation,
0:47:51but it's something you encounter again and again.
0:47:54When I read that memo, nothing in it was new because I'd seen every idea put forward in
0:48:01the memo many, many times before because there weren't a lot of new ideas, there weren't
0:48:06any new ideas in there.
0:48:08Everything in there is something that someone else has said in a very similar form many,
0:48:12many, many, many, many times in the past.
0:48:16And if you enter any field, whatever it is, whether it's woodworking, programming, diversity,
0:48:25whatever it is, and you lay out all your opinions, but you are not an expert in the field, chance,
0:48:34especially if you say something controversial or you're addressing some point that is a
0:48:36point of contention, chances are very good that the people who have been arguing about
0:48:41this same topic and who have studied this topic and are just like are well versed in
0:48:46this topic, chances are very good that they've heard everything you're going to say before
0:48:51and they've argued about it amongst themselves for years and years and years.
0:48:55And so when you come out with this thing and they roll their eyes and dismiss you, it's
0:49:01because to them it's like the 900th time someone is saying these exact same things and they've
0:49:07already been discussed.
0:49:08it from the outside. It's like, why are you not addressing my points? I feel like I have
0:49:12important things to say here, and how can you just dismiss me? It's not a valid argument,
0:49:18obviously. Maybe I'm right and you're just afraid to address my blah blah blah. This
0:49:23is going to happen no matter what the topic is. And in some ways you have to recognize
0:49:32where you are in the range of knowledge about this topic. Do I have a PhD in this topic?
0:49:37I study this topic for 50 years and well versed in all the literature and like or am I just somebody who thought about this
0:49:43for the past year or two and has some ideas like
0:49:45You're never you know
0:49:47And maybe you say they shouldn't dismiss me and what they should do is if someone is a novice and says something that's been said
0:49:53Before then, please tell me point by laborious point
0:49:57Bring me up to speed on the state of the art in this area of study
0:50:01That's not a reasonable request because then it's like everybody who stumbles into a math forum and says I just think I
0:50:07I've you know, what about this and have you guys ever thought of that?
0:50:11They got to teach you all the math you need to know to get to the point
0:50:14You realize the thing that you're saying has been discussed many times before and like either proven or disproven or here the different, you know
0:50:19like it's
0:50:21That's not a valid position
0:50:22I know a little bit about something and I have an opinion and here's this thing and they're like, oh well
0:50:28we've seen people say that thing a
0:50:30Million times we've already discussed it amongst ourselves and we already know what everyone else in the field thinks about this
0:50:34We don't have time to bring you up to speed on this entire field of study and that feels like you're being dismissed
0:50:41And so I understand why people are angry the guy who wrote it's angry about being dismissed people who?
0:50:45Sympathize with what is in the thing are angry that that this thing is dismissed. They feel like you know, you know, whatever
0:50:52It's being silenced. No one's taking him seriously, whatever now first of all, that's like that's an initial reaction
0:50:58But second all these links in the show notes show that that's not true that some
0:51:01some poor people
0:51:04went there and just went point by laborious point and tried mightily to explain, and these
0:51:10aren't even experts in the field for the most part.
0:51:12These are just people who happen to know a little bit more or have a little bit clearer,
0:51:16you know, train of thinking about this.
0:51:19Or really just even if they have no expertise in the field but have been around the block
0:51:23a few times and have argued on the internet a few times, they can say, "Listen, I don't
0:51:26even know anything about this subject, but I can tell you, Memo writer, that you have
0:51:30no idea what you're doing."
0:51:32You know, that even without knowing anything about this topic, I can see that your points
0:51:37don't connect and you're doing a bad job arguing this.
0:51:40And again, if you argued on Usenet in the 90s, if you argued in person in college campuses
0:51:46in the 80s and 70s and 60s, you know the person who wrote this memo.
0:51:51You know their thinking, you know what they're saying, you recognize their enthusiasm and
0:51:59And fervor and like it just, this is the thing about getting old.
0:52:03Like everything slows down and your hearing goes bad and your eyes get worse and just
0:52:08all sorts of bad things happen.
0:52:09But there's something to that wisdom thing.
0:52:11I mean, not wisdom, maybe it's just experience.
0:52:13Like that's why in all sorts of sci-fi things when there's some really old creature, like
0:52:17they're always just like, "Ugh."
0:52:18It's like you've seen it all, right?
0:52:21And I know that's like the worst thing.
0:52:23It's like, you know, that itself is a logical fallacy.
0:52:26Like you know, appeal to authority.
0:52:28You should trust me because I know a lot about this topic, but it's not what it is.
0:52:31It's more like just exhaustion.
0:52:34If pressed, if the fate of the universe depended on it, experts in the field could take this
0:52:39person into a room and over the course of the next 20 years educate them to the point
0:52:42where they understand what is wrong with this memo, right?
0:52:46And I feel like that should be the goal of a lot of, you know, if you trust that this
0:52:50is the case, and I'm not just like blowing smoke beer, but that the goal should be like,
0:52:56If you read this memo and you think that there are some good, solid points in there, your
0:53:01goal should be to learn more about it until you get on the same page with everyone else
0:53:08who sees this for what it is.
0:53:11Or learn so much about it that you actually reveal the real truth of it that nobody knows.
0:53:16But I can tell you this memo is not the real truth of it that nobody knows because this
0:53:20memo are the same tired ideas that have been discussed again and again and again by people
0:53:24and every single field related to this, right?
0:53:26And that, like, again, this is the meta point
0:53:32and people like, they don't wanna hear it
0:53:34and there's no way to convince them of it.
0:53:35And I'm not really here to convince people
0:53:37that this is the case, but like,
0:53:38that's why people get angry about it.
0:53:40That's why it feels frustrating.
0:53:42And I want, I'm trying to stay away from the topic itself
0:53:44because I want people to understand this is gonna be true
0:53:47when you come in and tell people
0:53:48about a particular kind of glue
0:53:50we're putting together remote control boats.
0:53:52And the remote control boat builders
0:53:54had discussions about this kind of glue 50 years ago,
0:53:57and they just roll their eyes and be like,
0:53:59"Look, I know it seems like that kind of glue
0:54:01is the kind of glue you wanna use.
0:54:02I know you have a lot of information
0:54:03that you think supports your idea
0:54:05that that kind of glue is the, trust me.
0:54:06We've been debating this glue for 50 years,
0:54:09and 25 years ago, we all came to this conclusion,
0:54:11and we revisit this topic from time to time
0:54:13to see if things have changed, but they haven't,
0:54:15and you're wrong, and we don't have time
0:54:16to explain to you laborious."
0:54:18And again, glue for model boats
0:54:20is much simpler than this topic, right?
0:54:23So that's my reaction as a tired old person who is beaten down by even worse things happening in the world, right?
0:54:29That I see this, I see the young person who is writing it, I know where that person is coming from,
0:54:36I know that person and I've seen, you know, these exact arguments on these exact specific topics and it is depressing
0:54:44to have to have this argument again. It's depressing that these tired ideas get any kind of traction and yet
0:54:51people go out of their way to do the hard work to explain to this person and to anybody who reads
0:54:58this and you know like to explain to the world like you know isn't that your job to educate me
0:55:03about blup not really but we're gonna do it anyway because we know it's you know it's it's
0:55:07we have to do something we can't just let it stand as it is so many many people did you know
0:55:12tried to explain what's wrong with this and i'm not going to try to explain it here because i feel
0:55:16like the problem with this topic a lot of times on the show is and any kind of haggis like this is
0:55:21I think what I described in the hypercritical days as having a slow-motion argument with the internet,
0:55:25a one-sided slow-motion argument with the internet where you'll say a bunch of stuff,
0:55:28but there's no one on the show who actually is there to disagree with you, so you can't
0:55:31actually have a debate. So you have to debate the hypothetical person who's out there, and then you
0:55:36put the podcast out into the world, and then you wait a week, and a bunch of people reply and say,
0:55:40"That's not what I think at all. Actually, I think X, Y, and Z." And then you
0:55:42debate those people's feedback, but then what about people who don't care about that topic
0:55:47anymore, it's just impossible to have a slow-motion debate with a hypothetical person.
0:55:51So that's why I'm trying to take this meta.
0:55:54And also because, like I said, I think there's some really good articles about this.
0:55:57And to be clear, this manifesto is totally bogus.
0:56:02The ideas embodied in it are not the right ideas.
0:56:06They are just, you know, explicable by all of the sort of—they're explicable by the
0:56:16experiences and the biases that the person who wrote it is bound to have had. And so I think this
0:56:21is a learning opportunity for everybody involved. Why did he get fired? Do you think you should have
0:56:24been fired? That's the, I guess the controversy thing. Yeah, I don't see how you can't fire him,
0:56:29because how can you have an employee in your company who thinks women on average are genetically
0:56:33less capable than men to do the job? Like, how can you have that person doing performance reviews or
0:56:39leading a team of people? Like, how can you have that? Like, if that's in people's secret hearts,
0:56:42and you don't know about it, fine.
0:56:44But if someone comes out and says,
0:56:45this is what I believe, you can't have that person
0:56:47doing performance reviews for women,
0:56:48what are you gonna do, have a segregated company
0:56:50and then segregate by everybody's biases?
0:56:52And nevermind that these are all at will employees,
0:56:54they can be fired for pretty much any reason,
0:56:57and misogyny is not a protected class, it's an idea.
0:57:00(laughing)
0:57:01It's not like he's being fired
0:57:02because he's a pregnant woman, right?
0:57:05Yeah, guess what?
0:57:06If you call your boss a jerk every day
0:57:10and give him the finger, you're also gonna get fired.
0:57:12because people who call their boss a jerk
0:57:14and give him the finger are not a protected class.
0:57:16Like there are so many things you can do to get fired.
0:57:19This of all the things that Lisa's like pretty high minded
0:57:22in terms of things you're getting fired for, believe me,
0:57:24you can get fired for way stupider stuff
0:57:27because that's the way employment works.
0:57:29And so, but yeah, like there's, yeah, you have to fire it.
0:57:32And in fact, it probably should have been fired faster
0:57:35but I'm sure you gotta go through all the legal things
0:57:36or whatever.
0:57:39So anyway, I think I'm starting to get into the realm
0:57:42of where I'm gonna start having a slow motion argument
0:57:44with the internet, and I don't wanna do that.
0:57:47What do you two have to say about this?
0:57:49- I have very little to add,
0:57:50because you just did a really good job of covering it,
0:57:52and I also don't wanna get into the slow motion argument
0:57:54with the internet.
0:57:56The common people's grasp on what free speech
0:58:01protects them from is about as good as their grasp
0:58:05on fair use and copyright, which is not that good.
0:58:09- No copy intended?
0:58:10- No copyright intended, Marco.
0:58:11(laughing)
0:58:12- So, yeah, I would, before making an argument
0:58:16about free speech, I would investigate
0:58:19with some basic research what free speech actually gets you
0:58:23and what is actually an assurance of what it actually means
0:58:27and what it doesn't mean.
0:58:28And yeah, Jon, I think he coded very well.
0:58:30I have to admit, I did not fully read James's memo
0:58:37or whatever it was, manifesto, whatever it was.
0:58:39You know, life is short, and I could tell pretty soon
0:58:42into it that this was not going to be worth the time
0:58:45that I was going to spend reading it, so I didn't.
0:58:47I decided to do anything else with my time,
0:58:48just had to read this, honestly, rear-end openings memo
0:58:53on what he thinks about people.
0:58:56So I decided not to.
0:58:58- Yep, same here.
0:58:59- He provided a summary at the top,
0:59:01although he called it a TLDR because he's an millennial.
0:59:04But yeah, the summary at the top,
0:59:05like you don't have to read the 10 pages.
0:59:06read the five, six point summary or whatever.
0:59:09It is a, I mean he wrote the summary himself.
0:59:11It is a fair encapsulation of the points made in the thing.
0:59:15You can look at only the summary and see,
0:59:17yep, no, I've seen this idiot before.
0:59:19Yep, I understand where he's coming from.
0:59:21- Yeah, no, I got about that far and then I was like,
0:59:23yeah, this is, and then once, I thought that was the memo.
0:59:27And then once I saw that was simply the summary,
0:59:29I was like, oh my God, close tab.
0:59:31That's it, I'm done.
0:59:32(laughing)
0:59:33And I would also say that I think it's worth,
0:59:37it's worth Google doing some introspection here
0:59:40about their own culture and about what is it
0:59:43about Google's culture that would hire somebody
0:59:48who holds these ideas, that would foster
0:59:51someone's intellectual development who would hold
0:59:52these ideas, and that would make somebody think
0:59:55that it would be a good idea and would not get them fired
0:59:59to actually write this and circulate this
1:00:01within the company.
1:00:02That reveals, I think, cultural problems in that company.
1:00:06Which should be a surprise to nobody, but.
1:00:08- It should reveal some good aspects of culture too,
1:00:11because the fact that he felt like he could say this
1:00:14shows that they have a culture where people feel like
1:00:16they can express themselves.
1:00:18Now, again, a culture where you can express yourselves
1:00:21doesn't mean you could say, you know what?
1:00:24I think we should eat babies and be surprised
1:00:26by people like gasp, right?
1:00:28You're gonna have to give them back to the baby eating.
1:00:30It's good to have an open culture,
1:00:32but you also have to be aware of, you know,
1:00:36what people might think of what you say, right?
1:00:38And a lot of companies, people would be afraid to say
1:00:43anything remotely about, controversial about,
1:00:46like any HR policy, like even the HR policy is like,
1:00:48for example, imagine Apple getting the Apple Park thing,
1:00:50like, oh, people aren't gonna have as many offices, right?
1:00:53If Apple had a culture where everybody was terrified
1:00:56to make any kind of complaint about,
1:00:58hey, I kind of wish we still had offices,
1:00:59I don't wanna be in open office space, right?
1:01:01that would be a bad company culture.
1:01:03You want to have a company culture
1:01:04where if people are super pissed about not having an office,
1:01:06they feel like they can say,
1:01:08hey, I don't want to lose my office, Apple.
1:01:11I don't like the new Apple Park and complain, right?
1:01:13'Cause that, and just being a general adult in the world,
1:01:17you could understand if you do it in a constructive way,
1:01:20this is a reasonable avenue of feedback within the company.
1:01:23And a good company culture encourages people to do that.
1:01:26'Cause you don't want them to be secretly hating you
1:01:28and then quitting like you want.
1:01:29You want to hear what the employees have to say.
1:01:31But if their complaint is,
1:01:32I don't want to work next to a woman,
1:01:35you should at least be aware enough to know,
1:01:37if you say that, they're gonna get rid of you,
1:01:39because you can't have an employee like that.
1:01:42It's like, how is it any different from offices?
1:01:44If you can't see the difference, like start there.
1:01:47What's different about saying,
1:01:48I prefer offices to cubicles versus,
1:01:51I can't be next to a woman when I work?
1:01:53Like figure it out, like work on it.
1:01:54Like I feel, you know,
1:01:55those are my first and only comments about this,
1:01:59which is snarky granted,
1:02:00you know, I'm allowed some snark on Twitter, was like the irony of someone at Google writing this memo,
1:02:07who so clearly has not even done the most cursory Google search on the topic. It's like, "No, he's done
1:02:11Google searches, look at all these things he's citing." Like, no, I mean actually, you know,
1:02:16actually learning about the topic. Like, because Google is right there. You can Google yourself
1:02:20every one of these points and find, you know, everything about them and why they're BS, like
1:02:26everywhere. Instead, the only thing he googled for was cherry-picked things that he thinks
1:02:31supports his ideas and that he can string together into this completely broken chain
1:02:36of logic. Anyway, I don't want to go there. You can read the links to one of our other
1:02:40stuff. But it's right there. No time has it been easier for you to educate yourself about
1:02:44this topic without having to be led by the nose by people more versed in the field. Everything's
1:02:49right there. The person works for Google. That just blew my mind.
1:02:55The incuriosity and being content, as the economist's response that one of the links
1:03:01will put in there, the motivated reasoning, that no amount of access to the world's
1:03:05information can avoid that.
1:03:06Yeah, the thing that struck me about this was the little bit of feedback we got about
1:03:12it, which was a couple of people saying, "Please don't talk about this, but here's some
1:03:18anonymous feedback about why I think this guy was on the money."
1:03:22This was amazing to me.
1:03:24We actually got multiple pieces of feedback
1:03:27from people who were basically yelling at us
1:03:30in support of this James hole
1:03:33before we ever talked about it.
1:03:34- Right, right, it just happened,
1:03:35and they knew in the future
1:03:37there would be an episode of ATP recorded,
1:03:38and people said, "I know you're gonna wanna talk about this,
1:03:40"but don't."
1:03:41Well, we did, sorry.
1:03:43(laughing)
1:03:44- You don't talk about this, but here's what I think,
1:03:48and if anyone thinks otherwise,
1:03:51that's them silencing us, yada, yada, yada, blah, blah.
1:03:54It was more than, well, the thing was, if it was just one individual, okay, fine.
1:04:01But this happened two or three times and it was the same thing both times.
1:04:07Please guys, don't talk about this.
1:04:09But if you do, you should consider the following.
1:04:13And by the way, to be clear, my example of like a difference between I like offices instead
1:04:17of cubes versus I can't work next to a woman.
1:04:19Neither one of those things in the memo.
1:04:21I'm giving hypothetical examples to understand different classes of things that you might
1:04:24want feedback.
1:04:25Yeah.
1:04:26But actually getting back to Marco's point, I think the fact that this person felt free
1:04:30to say this is a good reflection on Google's culture of letting people feel like they are
1:04:35free to give feedback.
1:04:37The fact that this particular, to have open discussions, the content of this shows, it
1:04:43doesn't reflect poorly on Google other than their hiring practices or not being aware
1:04:47that this is happening.
1:04:50This is on the person who wrote the thing, not so much on Google.
1:04:52If you want to place blame on it, it's not the culture that let him post the memo, because
1:04:57that is more of just sort of like lack of self-awareness, not understanding that other
1:05:03people exist in the world and how they might react to what you have to say, right?
1:05:08But this is true of a lot of tech companies.
1:05:10If the interview was all coding on a whiteboard and solving brain teasers and making sure
1:05:19you had a good education and making sure you are reasonably personable and polite and then most critically
1:05:23Making sure that the people who you interview with say oh, yeah, I could work with this person. Yeah, it seems like a person because
1:05:30You'll people will say oh I could work this person. He's just like me. Yeah, I'm
1:05:35I'm a dude who is a CS major who likes video games and blah blah
1:05:40yeah, not like if that's all the reason your interview is technical stuff and and
1:05:45Brain teasers and education and work history and do you feel like you could work with this person?
1:05:51It's very easy to get into you know, speaking of echo chamber, which is one of the complaints thing
1:05:55It's very easy to get into a situation where people hire other people that they're comfortable with
1:05:58And so you may never dig deeper to say oh and by the way again, this is not in the memo
1:06:04This is my silly example that's supposed to make you you know realize anyway
1:06:07Would you have a for any problem working on a team with a woman? I
1:06:11Maybe you can't ask that legally. I don't even know like there's all sorts of weird things about hiring
1:06:15you can and can't ask. But figuring that out, like if the person says, "Oh, I would never
1:06:21work on a team with a woman," don't hire that person, right? Don't hire that person.
1:06:26And if you never figure out that that's, again, that's not what this person said. I'm trying to
1:06:32give an extreme example. I know people get confused by that. Like there's a hypothetical extreme
1:06:36example, right? If you're not figuring that out, if you don't have an interview process that weeds
1:06:40that out, you'll never have a chance of weeding out the much more subtle things, which is like,
1:06:44like maybe this person has some slightly less well-examined ideas about gender and diversity.
1:06:52And again, like, I don't think this person is super terrible. I heard they were vaguely
1:06:56involved in Gamergate, but who knows, I haven't been following this. But anyway, I think the
1:07:01ideas in this memo are ideas that a lot of smart white dudes, basically, who have never
1:07:09faced any sort of oppression based on their gender or race end up having. Not because
1:07:17they're bad people or they're evil or whatever, but it's like, again, there's a reason all
1:07:21these ideas have come up before. It's not a logical conclusion, but it's like you find
1:07:27yourself going down these alleys, you find yourself having these thoughts, you find yourself
1:07:30coming to these conclusions. And especially if you have a slightly rebellious bent, there
1:07:36is something for you to rebel against, which is all these diversity ideas. There's a reason
1:07:42it's common. I don't think this person is an aberration or a terrible person. It's just
1:07:48they have some things to learn. They have some living to do. They have some experience to gain.
1:07:55And you are able to get that experience and live that life and learn and change. Because most
1:08:00people who are on the other side of this started out somewhere more like this memo writer and
1:08:07changed and learned things like that. They're not born like, "Oh, I'm a perfect angel from
1:08:11the beginning and I know everything and I don't have any prejudices and biases." No,
1:08:14especially if they have similar backgrounds to this person. They had to walk that same
1:08:18road and figure things out and stick their foot in the mouth and do stupid stuff and
1:08:24learn things the hard way, right? No, we're not super enlightened, wonderful, we know
1:08:27everything in the beginning, like my hope for this person is that he grows and evolves and,
1:08:34you know, comes, you know, that the people have to mean to say that he grows up, but like that's part
1:08:40it's not he's already an adult, but you know, just you don't stop growing up when you become
1:08:44quote unquote an adult. You keep growing up throughout your whole life, hopefully.
1:08:48And that's that's my hope for this person.
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1:10:54(upbeat music)
1:10:56Apple apparently has said they're budgeting a billion dollars,
1:11:01that's B, one billion, for original TV shows and movies
1:11:05because apparently that's a thing we need.
1:11:09So I'm not sure what to make of this.
1:11:12Like in and of itself, I have no issues with Apple
1:11:15trying to get into the content business, excuse me.
1:11:18But so far they have not shown us
1:11:23that they're terribly good at doing this sort of thing.
1:11:26So, I don't know.
1:11:27Marco, what do you think about this?
1:11:32- So, with the actual budget and how it compares
1:11:36to other services and everything,
1:11:38people have commentary on whether this is enough money,
1:11:40whether it's a lot, whether it's little.
1:11:42I don't know enough about the business
1:11:44of TV and movie production to even know what this buys you.
1:11:47All I do know is that so far,
1:11:49Apple's original content for video,
1:11:52which for some reason appears on Apple Music,
1:11:54is bizarre at best and mostly pretty bad.
1:11:58Whatever has caused them to produce
1:12:01what they've produced so far,
1:12:04I think is the same thing that caused them to do
1:12:06the whole like, you know, U2 finger touch thing
1:12:09and then shoving Songs of Innocence
1:12:10into everyone's libraries and, you know,
1:12:12it's like they seem to have this like,
1:12:15most of what they make is pretty cool
1:12:19and is pretty well considered
1:12:21And then there's like the certain like blind spot
1:12:23that they get around certain types of content
1:12:26or celebrity things, which everything they make
1:12:29seems to be profoundly uncool and just fall on its face.
1:12:32A lot of the various like you know,
1:12:34celebrity tie-ins they've done,
1:12:36much of the efforts they've tried to do around Apple Music,
1:12:39sometimes like the weird intro videos to the conferences,
1:12:42stuff like that, like a lot of the stuff
1:12:45just seems profoundly uncool and just flops.
1:12:48Certainly I think Planet of the Apps qualifies big time
1:12:52for that list, and I suspect the Carpool Karaoke version
1:12:55they're doing, while I haven't seen it,
1:12:58the early impressions of it are similarly not very positive.
1:13:02So whatever is causing these things to be greenlit
1:13:07and to then be terrible, I hope they figure this out
1:13:11and fix that.
1:13:12For Apple to become a company that represents bad content,
1:13:16I think that hurts the whole brand.
1:13:18So it's a big risk they're taking here,
1:13:20and so far it seems like it's not paying off at all.
1:13:23So far it seems like it's actually harming them.
1:13:26If they do it right, it could be great.
1:13:28They could be, they could produce things
1:13:30as good as what Netflix and Amazon and HBO are making.
1:13:33Like they could make great original content,
1:13:35but they've made such bad original content so far
1:13:37that it's just kind of hard to see
1:13:40how they get from here to there.
1:13:42- I think the last time we talked about this,
1:13:44I made the same point because I found it occurring
1:13:46to me again, I'm like, oh, I think I talked about that
1:13:47But like if you if you fund content
1:13:50You shouldn't like other than some vague sort of overarching
1:13:56Theme like Disney in general makes kind of family-friendly stuff
1:14:01You shouldn't be influencing the things that you make so everything that Apple makes doesn't have to be an applet thing obviously
1:14:08Planet of the Apps is super aptly
1:14:10Carpool karaoke not really aptly so that's that's an okay one
1:14:14But you know HBO makes all sorts of shows make Western sci-fi fantasy drama like just comedies
1:14:21stand-up comedy specials documentaries like
1:14:23You know insofar as there is an HBO brand the brand is
1:14:28Good television for adults right Disney is like family-friendly stuff Marvel is you know?
1:14:35Yeah, superhero movies like start the Star Wars like just like there are overarching brands for things, but in general you don't want
1:14:43Apple to make like Apple stuff and that that is something they have to get out from under because almost everything Apple does is an Apple
1:14:50thing and if you're making content you have to
1:14:52Basically just be the money people. Here's a big bucket of money then get a bunch of people who know how to
1:14:59Find talent and you know develop the shows and that's what they're doing
1:15:04They hired a bunch of people who had previously
1:15:06Done this same job for for other people like they hired the guy from Sony
1:15:10television or something that has had a bunch of things under his belt and they hurt somebody
1:15:14else like it's a different kind of business and it's not an easy business because it's
1:15:19like how you know how do I know what's the next Breaking Bad and what's the next planet
1:15:25of the apps like can I tell the difference between those two when they're being pitched
1:15:28to me right if I get a pitch for the next Breaking Bad can I actually develop it give
1:15:33them the right amount of money and get the right talent involved like you know this was
1:15:37said about the phone business. Apple's not just going to walk in. The entertainment business
1:15:41is a similarly difficult problem, but it's much farther from Apple's wheelhouse. And
1:15:47Apple can't use all its old tricks of, "We're going to build every show like we do an Apple
1:15:51product." Nope, nope. The shows can't be an Apple product. Some shows have to be the opposite
1:15:56of an Apple product. They have to be intense and involve sex and violence, or they have
1:16:02have to be goofy comedies, you know, or like things that just don't fit in the Apple way.
1:16:10And again, you can have a brand, you can be, you know, like Disney or like Pixar and have
1:16:16a brand and put everything under that umbrella, but its competitors brands are in general
1:16:22content that wouldn't air network television, expensive television made for adults.
1:16:28So that's kind of what Amazon and Netflix and HBO have been doing.
1:16:34They're all spending more money on it than Apple still, which is fine.
1:16:36Apple's just getting started.
1:16:38Netflix's budget is $7 billion compared to Apple's budget of $1 billion.
1:16:41I think that's fine.
1:16:43Apple should not be putting $7 billion towards something it doesn't know how to do yet.
1:16:45So you're going to figure out how to do it.
1:16:48Amazon's $4.5 billion.
1:16:49These are mostly estimates from this article we'll link in the show notes.
1:16:52And HBO is $2 billion.
1:16:54HBO's got a lot of bang for its buck because they apparently really know how to do it.
1:16:58develop shows. They don't make a lot of shows, but the ones they make have a pretty good
1:17:02hit ratio and their hits are really big hits.
1:17:04I mean, they've been doing it for quite some time. They developed the skill over a very
1:17:07long time.
1:17:08Yeah. And it's people. It sets different people who know different people who know how to
1:17:15get things developed, know what to buy, what not to buy, know how to make sure that the
1:17:19things produced in the same way that Apple knows how to like, "Oh, I have an idea for
1:17:24a product, but how do I make that product? What people do I need to make that product
1:17:27a reality so that it actually works and what partners do I have to do it like
1:17:31it's a difficult business um getting back to the the broader issue of this
1:17:35thing like the reason apple is doing this as we've discussed in the past is
1:17:39if apple wants to be in this business of selling you video over the internet
1:17:44everybody else is doing it uh it is an important differentiator
1:17:47like eventually if everybody else has original content like this is why i get
1:17:51hulu this is why i get netflix like because
1:17:54of these specific shows and Apple doesn't have any of those, it has no more differentiator.
1:18:00Like other than, oh, I bought a bunch of movies on iTunes and unless I go and remove the D
1:18:06around them, I need an Apple TV to view them.
1:18:11Very quickly, these streaming services have stopped being differentiated by the fact that,
1:18:16wow, I can watch a video over the internet because they can all do that.
1:18:19And they all have clients, this is another thing, they all have clients everywhere.
1:18:21This is a question someone had on Twitter. I think maybe directed us or maybe someone else
1:18:25It's like am I gonna need an Apple TV to watch this original TV content or will I be able to watch it?
1:18:30Not on an Apple TV. Could I watch it in a web browser?
1:18:33Could I you know could I watch it?
1:18:36Is it built into my television and the answer so far as albums Apple's been like well
1:18:40No, you can watch on your iPad your iPhone and your Apple TV
1:18:42No place else. Can you watch it's not built into your TV. You can't watch from a web browser
1:18:46You can't watch it in Windows and it's like
1:18:48What nobody else is doing that if you want to watch Netflix you can watch it everywhere you go
1:18:53I can it flex on your on your wristwatch on you know, it's it's everywhere. Nothing doesn't have Netflix on it
1:18:58That's the strategy and you do if you want to compete so
1:19:00That's the other thing I'm looking for is will Apple go iPod on this and say yes, we're gonna make the iPod for Windows
1:19:07Yes, we're gonna let you watch
1:19:08Whatever they're gonna and I have to divorce her from Apple music obviously too because it's silly to continue with that charade, right?
1:19:15If they really want to play with their big competitors, Netflix, Amazon, HBO, Hulu, everybody
1:19:22else who's got some kind of -- is funding some kind of original content, table stakes
1:19:26is, I can view it anywhere I want, and the original content is actually worth getting
1:19:30the service for, and they've got a long way to go to get there.
1:19:33Someone pointed out that maybe you can watch it on iTunes and Windows.
1:19:37Probably true, but iTunes and Windows is probably not the ideal viewing experience, and we're
1:19:41all rooting for iTunes to die anyway, right?
1:19:44I feel like this is one of those things too,
1:19:45like for this to succeed,
1:19:49you have to really go all in on it.
1:19:51You have to, like you were saying,
1:19:53right now it seems like these original content efforts
1:19:57are just these kind of like side projects
1:20:00that are a little bit promoted, a little bit funded,
1:20:04a little bit prioritized, and they're kind of these things
1:20:07that are made to try to boost Apple Music,
1:20:10Buzz, and subscriptions, which is totally wrong.
1:20:12Like that's not how you compete in the music space.
1:20:15You don't compete there with video services
1:20:16that with two or three original content lines.
1:20:20Like that's not at all how that works.
1:20:22But I feel like if Apple really wants to do this,
1:20:24really do it.
1:20:25Like really go all in, make it a big thing,
1:20:28maybe buy somebody like Netflix or HBO or something.
1:20:31Like really go all out and really do it.
1:20:34I just, I don't see the value in kind of half butting it
1:20:38like they've been doing seemingly so far.
1:20:40Like why do a little bit of this kind of buried in this product that no one's looking for video in?
1:20:45Either don't do it or do it, right?
1:20:47Maybe like a slow start like I don't know what the budget was before
1:20:51But again 1 billion is a smaller budget like there
1:20:53They're obviously getting serious about it and hot trying to hire more of the right people, but it's a slow start
1:20:57Like they're not they're not coming in on day one and said we got we're gonna put 10 billion dollars because they just blow it
1:21:03They blow that 10 billion. They have no idea what to do with that money
1:21:05Like it's not so I mean the slow start would be better if the few little things they made were actually good
1:21:10Even if they're weird appended just Apple music, but I mean the Apple music thing
1:21:15I think it's a learning experience. Who knows maybe the carpool karaoke is gonna be insanely popular
1:21:19Just because we don't watch it. Like I know what carpool karaoke is people seem to like it
1:21:23It's you know, even if it's not my particular thing
1:21:26sometimes they're amusing right and the reality show was a flop but like
1:21:30You know reality some reality shows are hit some aren't it wasn't it wasn't a crazy idea
1:21:35They just blew it. They didn't make something that people really want to watch.
1:21:38Probably, again, because I feel like they want to have some kind of Apple. "We're Apple. What
1:21:43kind of synergy do we have?" Like, no, no. You don't need any synergy. Breaking Bad has no
1:21:47synergy with the people who fund it. It's just a good show. You just need to make stuff that people
1:21:54want to watch. And it's really, really hard. And I can't help you with it. I don't know how to do
1:21:57it either. But hiring people who have done it in the past is a good start. That's the difficulty
1:22:02about a lot of these things like again with Apple, very small teams, small numbers of people.
1:22:07The one or two or three people you have in charge of this with the most power are going to have
1:22:12a big influence and if you end up hiring the wrong people, you know, then that's bad. Like you get a
1:22:21paper message situation or even if you just get like a four stall can't get along with Ive and
1:22:27you have to can one of them, it's you know, these are big companies with a lot of money at stake
1:22:32but in the end it comes down to just a small number of people.
1:22:35So Marco, you blogged for the first time in forever recently. I'm very proud of you.
1:22:40This is very exciting.
1:22:42Does it really count?
1:22:43Yeah, it counts. It turns out that Marco.org is still a thing.
1:22:48It hadn't been a thing for almost three months, but it is still a thing.
1:22:53However, Marco giveth and Marco taketh away.
1:22:56What happened to Send to Watch and Overcast?
1:22:59Basically I had to pull it.
1:23:01I've already covered this pretty well
1:23:02both in the blog post and in Under the Radar
1:23:05about two weeks ago, so I don't wanna cover it
1:23:07too much here, but basically I was using a crazy hack
1:23:12that would allow me to use good audio APIs
1:23:15on the Apple Watch.
1:23:16In watchOS 4 that doesn't work anymore.
1:23:19So now the only way to write this feature
1:23:20is to stop using the good audio APIs
1:23:23that allow my process to keep running
1:23:25and monitoring with AV audio player.
1:23:28And the only way to make this happen now
1:23:29is to use the old WK Audio File Player Watch Playback API,
1:23:34which basically is used in practice
1:23:40by I think almost nothing.
1:23:41Apple doesn't seem to use it for anything,
1:23:44which is probably why it's so incomplete and buggy.
1:23:47And it's a much larger, more complex pile of hacks
1:23:52because it involves transferring control
1:23:54of the playback to the system
1:23:56and your app stops running in the background.
1:23:58And then the system will wake you up occasionally, maybe,
1:24:02if you are lucky when things happen like the queue runs out
1:24:06or the track is over or something else,
1:24:07but that's about it.
1:24:08It forces a certain type of interaction
1:24:10with the now playing glance
1:24:12that does not work at all for podcasts.
1:24:14It makes a very bad experience for podcasts.
1:24:16So things like if you hit the seek forward button,
1:24:20it immediately stops playing the current podcast
1:24:23and either moves to the next one if there is one
1:24:25or just stops.
1:24:26Instead of like skipping forward 15 seconds
1:24:29or whatever you actually want.
1:24:31Things like that, there's all sorts
1:24:32of little shortcomings like that.
1:24:34This API was designed for music.
1:24:37It was clearly designed so that somebody,
1:24:40you know, somebody like a Spotify or something
1:24:42could make a sync to Apple Watch feature
1:24:44and have the Apple Watch play a playlist of music.
1:24:47When you apply the same API to podcasts,
1:24:49there are so many shortcomings and bugs
1:24:51and weird behaviors with the system
1:24:52that are just not at all what podcast listeners
1:24:54want or need, that it makes for a very bad experience.
1:24:57So early on when I was developing the send to watch feature,
1:25:01I was basing it on this API,
1:25:03'cause this seemed to be the only way to do it.
1:25:05And I actually decided to not ship it.
1:25:08Like I spent months on it.
1:25:10And after fighting with this API over and over again,
1:25:13I decided it was so bad I can't ship this feature.
1:25:16So I didn't.
1:25:17I filed a bunch of bugs.
1:25:18I talked to people in Apple to make sure
1:25:20they knew about them and everything.
1:25:21And how many apps are using this?
1:25:23of all the needs that watchOS has.
1:25:26This might satisfy like 10 apps maybe,
1:25:29like almost nobody needs this feature.
1:25:31So I can understand why this doesn't seem to be a priority
1:25:33for them to really improve audio playback APIs on the watch.
1:25:37Especially because this one probably works okay enough
1:25:40for music syncing, so it's really only podcasts
1:25:43and audiobook and other long form audio syncing
1:25:45that would actually need this.
1:25:47My hack that allowed me to use AV audio player
1:25:51allowed me to ship a version of this feature
1:25:53that was minimally acceptable.
1:25:57It still wasn't good.
1:25:59There's still lots of other problems with the feature,
1:26:00like how long it takes to transfer data,
1:26:03how I as the, basically as the programmer
1:26:07and that therefore you as the user
1:26:10don't have any indication of whether a transfer
1:26:12is in progress or how long it's going to take.
1:26:15Like the reason that's not exposed in the UI
1:26:17is that I don't have that information.
1:26:18The API doesn't provide that information.
1:26:21So there's all sorts of shortcomings in the APIs
1:26:24and the technical limitations of these platforms.
1:26:28Most of which are very understandable
1:26:29because most of which are like, yeah, you know what,
1:26:31the watch is a low power device.
1:26:33It needs to squeeze every bit of power it can
1:26:35out of the tiny little parts and batteries that it has.
1:26:39Most of these are very understandable things.
1:26:41But the reality is it was barely possible
1:26:45to make a barely acceptable version of this feature.
1:26:48And now that the audio API has changed
1:26:49and has forced me to go back to the old one
1:26:52that I deemed unshippable probably nine months ago
1:26:55when I first tried to do this,
1:26:57that has now made this feature unshippable again.
1:27:01Unfortunately, I've already shipped it.
1:27:03So I had to remove this feature, and that's never easy.
1:27:07That's never an easy decision to make.
1:27:09It's not a very popular thing to do.
1:27:13I'm getting a good number of one-star reviews from it,
1:27:15which I expected.
1:27:16That was part of the calculus to do it.
1:27:18I had to weigh that, but I removed the feature now,
1:27:21and if I can bring it back in the future,
1:27:25as the APIs and the hardware mature,
1:27:28I would love to do that, 'cause I already wrote
1:27:30most of the hard stuff to do this.
1:27:32But there is simply no good way to play podcasts
1:27:37in the background on the Apple Watch in watchOS 4.
1:27:40And hopefully that'll change over time.
1:27:42- Do you have any hopes of them changing it?
1:27:46Maybe if Apple ads offline and watch playback of podcasts
1:27:49to their podcast app, do you know, do you have any info
1:27:53like, oh, you know, not this release,
1:27:54this release you're stuck, but next year
1:27:58they'll be updating all these APIs to be podcast savvy
1:28:00because podcasts are not, you know, not obscure.
1:28:03Like it seems not, they're obviously not as important
1:28:04as music, right?
1:28:05But in this release, they did the thing that lets you
1:28:08mess with the music during your workout in an easier way.
1:28:10So they understand that people are controlling
1:28:13audio playback on their watches.
1:28:14So do you think next year, you know,
1:28:17do you have expectations at WWBC,
1:28:19but like, oh, new APIs that make it possible
1:28:21to do this again, or are you just like,
1:28:23have no real hope of them addressing this
1:28:25because it doesn't seem like a thing they care about?
1:28:28- Well, there's still a lot of technical limitations.
1:28:30So with the new like music syncing,
1:28:33there's been, in watchOS 4, they demoed during the keynote
1:28:35that there's this kind of like new automatic
1:28:37music syncing kind of thing,
1:28:39where it just kind of automatically can like sync a playlist
1:28:43based on what you like, based on what you've sliced it,
1:28:45or whatever else.
1:28:46And so, I think the way this seems to work
1:28:51is overnight, while it's charging on the charger,
1:28:54it's doing these data transfers that can be large
1:28:56and time consuming.
1:28:57So that way it doesn't have to worry about speed being low
1:29:00or about using too much power.
1:29:02For a podcast-like feature to work,
1:29:06that's probably how it really has to be.
1:29:07Because problem number one, which I never solved,
1:29:10was it's too slow to transfer data to the watch.
1:29:13And I did all sorts of crazy hacks,
1:29:14like I wrote a whole transcoding engine
1:29:17that would transcode to a lower bit rate and then send it,
1:29:19because that was actually faster
1:29:21than just sending it to begin with,
1:29:23at its original size.
1:29:24So solving that speed problem, that's a huge problem,
1:29:28and it's going to take, I think,
1:29:30multiple generations probably of the hardware
1:29:33being improved before that's no longer a big problem.
1:29:36So as long as data transfer to the watch is still slow,
1:29:40syncing podcasts to it is always going to be awkward
1:29:43or clunky because podcasts don't work the same way as music.
1:29:46With music, you can sync a playlist overnight
1:29:48and that's it, you're done.
1:29:50You're probably not going to want to change that
1:29:54in the middle of the day by sending all of a sudden
1:29:5760 megs of new information to it
1:29:59that you really want to be available
1:30:00right this second right now.
1:30:02Whereas with podcasts, that happens.
1:30:04An episode comes, if this works the same way
1:30:07that it worked in the iPod days,
1:30:08back when podcasts first came out a decade ago,
1:30:11the idea of an episode coming out
1:30:13and then you having to wait till you got home
1:30:15to sync it to your iPod and listen to it maybe the next day,
1:30:19that was how we did things back then.
1:30:21But now things are better.
1:30:22Now we don't live in the stone age anymore.
1:30:25Now, when a new episode comes out,
1:30:27you expect to be able to hit play immediately
1:30:29and start playing it.
1:30:31And so to have that kind of experience
1:30:33with the watch with podcasts,
1:30:37You can't wait for it to sync overnight.
1:30:39You can't wait for like, oh, next time I plug in the watch,
1:30:41I'll have some kind of system to automatically sync stuff
1:30:43over while charging overnight.
1:30:44Like that's not a good enough experience.
1:30:46What you need is something that you can say,
1:30:47I wanna listen to this right now, go,
1:30:49and have it be not a significant amount of time
1:30:52before you can do that.
1:30:53I think long term, the way this is solved is
1:30:56the watch becomes a full-blown client of the app
1:30:59with its own downloads and its own sync to the servers
1:31:02and is no longer tethered to the phone app
1:31:05as much as it is now.
1:31:07Long term, that is probably the right solution.
1:31:09But that requires large advances in the hardware
1:31:13and software before that's possible.
1:31:14That would require, first of all,
1:31:16the rumored cellular watch,
1:31:18or at least more frequent WiFi connectivity,
1:31:20or whatever, that would require things
1:31:22that we don't have today, really,
1:31:23to do that very well.
1:31:25The other thing is, on the software side,
1:31:27I don't know the fine details of this,
1:31:29in fact, I bet Steve Trouton Smith
1:31:31probably knows a lot more about this than I do.
1:31:33When you write apps for the iPhone,
1:31:36most of the APIs you're using
1:31:38are the exact same APIs that Apple uses.
1:31:41The incentive is pretty strong
1:31:43for Apple to keep those things up to date
1:31:45because they use them too.
1:31:46So if there's like a bug in UIKit,
1:31:49it's probably gonna affect Apple also
1:31:51in their own apps and their own development.
1:31:53So they have a pretty strong incentive to fix that.
1:31:55Whereas on the watch,
1:31:57developers have only had access to WatchKit.
1:32:01We don't have straight UIKit.
1:32:03It seems, I think, I'm not positive on this,
1:32:06but I think Apple is using lower level APIs.
1:32:09Apple seems to be using something like UIKit
1:32:11to make their apps on the watch.
1:32:13But we developers are using this kind of subset
1:32:16that we're kind of being forced to use,
1:32:18and we can't use like the real APIs on the watch.
1:32:21And so what we are using, Apple doesn't seem to have
1:32:25a very strong incentive to fix what we use,
1:32:29because I don't think they're using it.
1:32:32And especially like the audio playback APIs,
1:32:36what I have seen so far with the limitations
1:32:41and bugs that they have,
1:32:43I don't think Apple uses any of them
1:32:45on the watch that we use.
1:32:47I honestly don't, like Apple is probably using
1:32:50AV Foundation directly on the watch,
1:32:53but we don't have access to that in any kind of way
1:32:55that we can actually background on the watch.
1:32:57We only have foreground access to some of those things
1:33:00and background access to this awful WK audio file player
1:33:03thing that has all the bugs.
1:33:05So until that changes, like until Apple's using
1:33:09the same things we are using on the watch,
1:33:11I don't think it's ever gonna be an amazing
1:33:14development platform to make advanced type of apps
1:33:17like a podcast player.
1:33:18I hope that changes, I really do.
1:33:21But so far, it seems like we are using these kind of
1:33:26baby APIs, these training wheel APIs on the watch,
1:33:29that existed at first because it was just so limited
1:33:32and so low powered and the first watch kit
1:33:34was this huge hack that were the thing around the phone
1:33:36and was kind of beamed over.
1:33:37So it made sense then a little bit,
1:33:40but now I want real API access on the watch.
1:33:43I want low level UI frameworks
1:33:47and full blown audio frameworks
1:33:49and exactly what we have on the phone
1:33:51in regards to what I mentioned earlier about how,
1:33:56When the watch crazy API, if a user hits next track
1:33:59or forward, it just stops a podcast if it's playing
1:34:02in the background and like the podcast player on the watch
1:34:06can't do what we've done on iOS for ages,
1:34:08which is interpret the remote control event manually.
1:34:11Interpret the event that is sent from a headphone clicker
1:34:14or the lock screen or your car Bluetooth or whatever
1:34:17that says next track and instead of doing next track
1:34:20on iOS, we can say oh, we'll just move it forward
1:34:2215 seconds or we can respond however we want to that.
1:34:25on the watch, none of those APIs are there.
1:34:27We have no way to interact with the remote controls.
1:34:30We have no way to set what appears
1:34:32on the now playing screen besides a very, very limited thing
1:34:36with this crazy audio player API.
1:34:39You can kind of set it, but then it's kind of unreliable.
1:34:42Even basic stuff I found, like, if you hit pause,
1:34:46it doesn't pause.
1:34:47Like, it's half the time, like,
1:34:49two seconds after you hit play or pause,
1:34:51the button flips over back the other way.
1:34:53It's like crazy stuff that just doesn't work.
1:34:56Every time I've worked against those APIs,
1:34:58I have felt like I'm the first person
1:35:00to ever have used them.
1:35:01So to answer the actual question
1:35:04you asked me 25 minutes ago,
1:35:06I think it will eventually, hopefully become possible
1:35:08to write a good standalone podcast player on the watch,
1:35:13but I don't think that's coming soon,
1:35:15because too much has to mature.
1:35:17We need hardware advancements for battery
1:35:20and power and data transfer speeds,
1:35:23we need all those things to improve,
1:35:24we need the ability for apps to actually stay running
1:35:27in the background as they're playing audio,
1:35:29not just do what watchOS tries to do now
1:35:32and kill us in the background
1:35:34and leave this weird standalone file player
1:35:36that's run by the system.
1:35:37No, we need what we have on the phone, basically.
1:35:39The phone had this a very long time ago,
1:35:41so maybe we weren't that far off, who knows?
1:35:43But whatever it is, we need API parity
1:35:48in a lot of these areas between the watch and the phone.
1:35:50And not only do we not have that,
1:35:52but it almost feels like Apple doesn't want
1:35:54to do that on the watch.
1:35:55It seems like they think that this is all the audio exposure
1:35:59we need right now, and I don't know
1:36:01if that's an ideological thing,
1:36:02or if that's reacting to limitations of the current hardware.
1:36:05Either way, that has to change, and that's a big change,
1:36:09so I don't expect for it to be soon.
1:36:11- So if you got, I'm trying to think of the minimal stuff
1:36:16that you would need for this,
1:36:17because it's gonna be a while before you get like full access to the
1:36:20APIs that OWL has, if ever. If you just got cell data and the ability to run in
1:36:28the background, at the very least you could make a very simple streaming only
1:36:35player that communicates with, that pulls the data from wherever the
1:36:40podcast is and that communicates with your server in a lightweight way to keep
1:36:44sort of the timestamp updated, right? Because that's not heavy background work. You're like,
1:36:49you know, pulling data for this podcast, you know, you have plenty of time to slurp it up when your
1:36:54connection is good and then just sleep for a while, you know, whatever. So the input of the
1:36:58audio data is fine and you kind of communicate with your server a little bit every, you know,
1:37:02you can do it every minute, who knows? Like just say, oh, update the play position, update the play
1:37:06position or whatever. And then I guess minimal interface to the controls to understand what you,
1:37:12you know, how to have control over when you hit the next and previous to do something different than
1:37:16doing something ridiculous. And that, I think, you know, I know this is, this entire section is
1:37:21about offline watch playback, but this I think would fulfill all the needs. Like, I don't need
1:37:26to bring my phone with me, I can just wear my watch and I can listen to my podcast. And,
1:37:30but what I was mostly getting at with that, with the question about do you have any expectations,
1:37:34A, if you had any inside information about it, but presumably Apple will eventually,
1:37:40on its list of things that we want to add to the watch get to the point where people like yeah
1:37:43people do like to listen to music on their watch they also would like to probably listen to podcasts
1:37:47on their watch they know how many people listen to podcasts they have their stats for the podcast app
1:37:51that comes bundled with your phone podcasts are a thing again not as big as music eventually i think
1:37:57apple will get around to the idea of like oh it's silly that you can't listen to podcasts on your
1:38:01watch without your phone with you especially now that we have the second generation of this watch
1:38:05with cell date access right so they will get to it eventually so i feel like there's hope for you
1:38:09You're not just like swinging in the wind where like they're just never going to get
1:38:12to me.
1:38:13But I don't know what the timeline looks like on that.
1:38:14It's very difficult to tell how much Apple cares about podcasts sometimes.
1:38:19Well, it's also, this is the kind of feature that, believe me, I've run into lots of these.
1:38:25If you ask people if they want this feature, a certain number of them will say, "Yes, of
1:38:31course I want that feature."
1:38:32Or a certain number of them will email you without you even asking, saying, "Please,
1:38:35I want this feature."
1:38:36But then if you actually give it to them,
1:38:39the number of people who actually use it
1:38:41is usually, or not usually, often,
1:38:44for some of these features, way, way lower
1:38:46than what they thought before they had it.
1:38:49- It's also the usability.
1:38:51I remember when I tried to send it to the watch,
1:38:53it's not easy to just figure out even how to do it.
1:38:55And then when you do figure out how to do it,
1:38:57the fact that it doesn't work that well
1:38:59will discourage people from using it.
1:39:01- Sure, and I think a lot of people
1:39:02had that same experience with playing music on the watch
1:39:05through Apple's apps.
1:39:07The reason they had to do this kind of overnight
1:39:09automatic syncing thing with watchOS 4
1:39:12is because before that when you had to kind of manually
1:39:14pick stuff to sync over and then wait forever for transfer,
1:39:17that was terrible.
1:39:18It was so bad most people didn't do it.
1:39:20Even now on the watch I find the playback experience,
1:39:23even if you can get the data there,
1:39:26the playback and control experience on the watch
1:39:29is really rough compared to what you have on the phone.
1:39:32Again, this goes back to my thing of never bet
1:39:33against the smartphone.
1:39:34The smartphone is really good at this stuff.
1:39:37It is very rare that I do something on my watch
1:39:42to interact with a podcast that is at all non-trivial
1:39:45that I don't regret not just taking out my phone
1:39:48and doing it there.
1:39:49If you're doing something like,
1:39:51skip to the next chapter, fine.
1:39:53Take out the watch app, do it there, it's fast.
1:39:55If you're walking with me, that's fine.
1:39:58But for anything non-trivial,
1:40:01I find it very hard to do anything on the watch.
1:40:04not even just with audio in general.
1:40:06And so, and there have been lots of other overcast features
1:40:08where people have asked for it or wanted it.
1:40:12Some of the things I haven't even released
1:40:13because, for example, the Sonos integration.
1:40:17Right now there's, as I mentioned,
1:40:20I think somewhere on Twitter or something,
1:40:22there's an API limitation that basically makes it,
1:40:23in my opinion, not good enough to ship.
1:40:25Sound familiar?
1:40:26So I'm not shipping it.
1:40:28But I found in my testing of the Sonos integration,
1:40:33it was not a very good experience.
1:40:35And I mostly just preferred to have podcasts playing
1:40:40through my phone speaker sitting on the counter,
1:40:42or eventually upgraded to an iPad Pro
1:40:44with big speakers in it, so that's the way,
1:40:46and so an iPad Pro on the counter is by far
1:40:49the best way to play podcasts out in the open at home,
1:40:52by a long shot.
1:40:53It's way better than Sonos, way better than Echo,
1:40:55it's just a way better experience.
1:40:57Because you don't listen to podcasts
1:40:59the same way you listen to music.
1:41:01There's a lot more interaction involved,
1:41:03and you have different, like you wanna look at,
1:41:06if somebody mentions a link,
1:41:07you wanna look at the show notes.
1:41:08If, you know, you might wanna seek around a little bit,
1:41:10or look at a chap list, or skip ahead,
1:41:12or skip commercials, or whatever else,
1:41:14like there's much more interaction with podcasts
1:41:16than when you have with music.
1:41:17So like, these systems that are designed for music playback,
1:41:21when you try to play a podcast with them,
1:41:22it sounds like a good idea,
1:41:23and it sounds like it'd be awesome,
1:41:25but trust me, when you actually get it,
1:41:27it's not nearly as good as just using your phone,
1:41:29or using an iPad that's, you know, sitting up on a counter.
1:41:32So there's a lot of these features,
1:41:34and I think watch playback is just one of these things
1:41:37that the nature of interacting with the watch,
1:41:40it's so limited, the software is so limited,
1:41:42the hardware, the ergonomics, they're so limited
1:41:45because it's such a tiny little device.
1:41:47I don't think it's ever gonna be a great experience
1:41:50to play and manage podcasts on the watch.
1:41:53It's gonna be something that people will ask for forever,
1:41:56and some people will use it, no question.
1:41:59I'm not saying nobody will use it,
1:42:01But I'm saying very few people will,
1:42:03even if it's done well,
1:42:04like even if I do everything right,
1:42:07and even if the hardware gets a little bit better,
1:42:08and things get a little bit faster,
1:42:10I still don't think it's going to be a very good experience
1:42:13compared to just taking out your phone and doing it there.
1:42:16- You know, you said something earlier, Marco,
1:42:18about the potential for an LTE-equipped watch.
1:42:22And I was on Clockwise earlier today,
1:42:25and that was actually the question I brought up,
1:42:26is hey, would you be interested in an LTE-equipped watch?
1:42:30and why or why not.
1:42:31And not to rehash that too much,
1:42:34but what I was saying was,
1:42:37I've been running a few times a week lately
1:42:38and we'll see how long that sticks,
1:42:40but it's been sticking for a while now,
1:42:42it's been a couple of months.
1:42:43And it occurred to me recently that
1:42:46part of the reason I bring my phone when I run
1:42:49is because if I were to somehow really injure myself,
1:42:53I'd really wanna be able to call like Aaron
1:42:56or an ambulance if it really was that bad.
1:42:59And if I had a watch that had the mechanism by which I could do that,
1:43:04you know, presumably, you know, with LTE,
1:43:06although I saw some rumblings earlier today saying that maybe it would be data only and not permit phone calls,
1:43:12but either way, if I had a watch that could call for help some way somehow,
1:43:18then maybe I wouldn't need to bring my phone with me,
1:43:20which would be nice that I wouldn't have to, you know, because currently I carry it.
1:43:23I don't have one of those peculiar armbands or anything.
1:43:26And it occurred to me, wow, you know,
1:43:28it would be really great to be able to listen to my podcasts on my--oh, crap.
1:43:32So I definitely am not one that had used the "send to watch" feature in Overcast while
1:43:39it was there, but I am on a Series 0 watch, and I think I'll probably upgrade this year.
1:43:45And yeah, it would be pretty cool if that came back.
1:43:47So Count Me In is one of those people that's looking forward to somehow figuring out a
1:43:51way to make this work again, presumably with API changes.
1:43:55By the way, Steve Trout and Smith actually gave us the name of the thing that Apple's
1:44:02apps use on the watch in the tradition of weird internal Apple names.
1:44:06I mean, Springboard's kind of weird too.
1:44:09The weird code names like what is the watch, like the code name Gizmo or something.
1:44:12Anyway, WatchKit runs on top of Pepper UI Core, like, you know, Black Pepper.
1:44:19And Pepper UI Core runs on top of UIKit.
1:44:21How do you know it isn't about bell peppers?
1:44:24I don't know what it's about.
1:44:26Maybe Chris Pepper.
1:44:27Yeah, could be. It corrects your typos for you.
1:44:30[laughs]
1:44:32Joke with an audience of seven people. Yay!
1:44:35Thanks for our sponsors this week.
1:44:37Fracture, Eero, and Aftershocks.
1:44:39And we will see you next week.
1:44:41[music]
1:44:43Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin
1:44:48'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental
1:44:53John didn't do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn't let him
1:44:58'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental
1:45:04And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm
1:45:09And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them
1:45:14@C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
1:45:18So that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
1:45:23Auntie Marco Arment S-I-R-A-C
1:45:28USA, Syracuse, it's accidental
1:45:33They didn't mean to, accidental
1:45:38♪ I've had no tech broadcast so long ♪
1:45:43- I have some bike follow-up.
1:45:46- Ah, excellent.
1:45:47Let's talk about bikes.
1:45:48- I saw your bike, or Tif's bike,
1:45:51and I couldn't figure out if that was your,
1:45:53I'm gonna buy the bike and if I don't like it,
1:45:54I'm gonna give it to Tif,
1:45:55or if it was an entirely separate dedicated Tif bike.
1:46:00- So, well, it was the bike that I was buying
1:46:02for probably Tif, but I was gonna see if I liked it.
1:46:05And so that's kinda why I bought it first.
1:46:08I was going to use my opinion of that
1:46:09to inform what I was going to get for myself.
1:46:12And that bike was the Priority Coast.
1:46:16Priority, they seem to be a pretty good bike company.
1:46:18They're a New York based company,
1:46:20they started on Kickstarter,
1:46:22and they do all belt drive bikes.
1:46:25I mentioned last show that I like the belt drive
1:46:28for the lack of maintenance and better everything.
1:46:32So I like the belt drive, and that's what I wanted.
1:46:37The Priority Coast is their beach cruiser model.
1:46:41I got it kind of thinking,
1:46:43I don't think I wanted beach cruiser.
1:46:44I think I wanted like a little bit more
1:46:46like a forward position.
1:46:47Like I've, I always enjoyed mountain bikes
1:46:50more than most other thing,
1:46:51most other bike shapes, I guess.
1:46:54And you know, that kind of like,
1:46:55the kind of forward position with the straight bars
1:46:57and the hand brakes and everything like that.
1:46:58I just like that better, I think.
1:47:00But you know, this is a beach town
1:47:03and every, literally every other bike in town,
1:47:06except for the cop bikes are beach cruisers.
1:47:09Even one of the cops has a beach cruiser.
1:47:11The rest have mountain bikes, but anyway.
1:47:13So, I thought that I should probably try that.
1:47:16So we did, and it is a little bit big for me,
1:47:19which I kind of expected going into it,
1:47:21so it's a little bit big,
1:47:22and I really don't like the coaster brake.
1:47:26It seems like a beach cruiser thing
1:47:27that all beach cruisers have,
1:47:29where you pedal backwards to brake, the coaster brakes.
1:47:32I just, I was not, I've taken that bike out a few times,
1:47:36and I just could not get into the coaster brake.
1:47:38It also, it has, the coaster brake seemingly has
1:47:41like the main brake, and then it also has
1:47:43a front only hand brake.
1:47:46And that to me was very confusing.
1:47:48I think if this was gonna be my bike,
1:47:50I would actually remove the front hand brake.
1:47:53Because to have like half of one method of braking,
1:47:57but the main method of braking be the other thing,
1:47:59like it was just very confusing.
1:48:00Like I wanted--
1:48:01- They have that on there because coaster brakes suck,
1:48:03and if you need to stop at an emergency,
1:48:05I don't want you to die because the coaster brakes
1:48:07can't stop you, you know?
1:48:08- Right.
1:48:09- I mean, really it's just friction.
1:48:10Even if the coaster brakes could lock up the back wheel,
1:48:13you will stop faster if you could also do something
1:48:15to stop the front wheel.
1:48:16So that would be a bad idea to get a bike
1:48:18with coaster brakes and remove.
1:48:20I've actually seen bikes with hand brakes
1:48:22that only have the back hand brake.
1:48:23Like you need, you want something pinching
1:48:25both the front and the back wheels
1:48:26because you need both contact patches
1:48:28to stop you in an emergency.
1:48:29So don't do that.
1:48:30- All right, well, and you know,
1:48:31my needs here are lower because again,
1:48:33because they're all like sidewalks full of people
1:48:35that you're riding on, like there's no roads,
1:48:37there's like these broad sidewalks
1:48:39and they're all full of people and wagons and stuff.
1:48:40So like you actually can't go that fast most of the time.
1:48:43- You're gonna hit a deer.
1:48:45- Yeah, that actually is a concern, or a fox, or--
1:48:48- Or a deer's gonna hit you.
1:48:49- Yeah, that's more like it.
1:48:51Anyway, so that was fine.
1:48:54I then, after lots of research and waffling,
1:48:56as you know I'm prone to do, I decided to finally--
1:49:00- You? - Yeah, right?
1:49:01So I am now driving a CVT, just for Jon.
1:49:04- Oh my God, oh my God, what happened?
1:49:06- So what brand is this?
1:49:08- It is another, it's also a priority.
1:49:10It's their Continuum Onyx model.
1:49:13It's basically their high-end road bike.
1:49:16I have some issues with it.
1:49:18- It's not a road bike, like a road bike, it's like a--
1:49:20- It's a commuter bike, so it's not like a racing,
1:49:24like the handlebars don't have those dip-down U shapes.
1:49:27- Road bike is a term of art.
1:49:28- Sorry.
1:49:29It's like a 10-speed type thing,
1:49:31but not the ones with the really skinny tires.
1:49:33- Yeah, it's a commuter bike.
1:49:35I have some issues with it.
1:49:37Their fenders are pretty low quality on both of the bikes,
1:49:40and they rattle a little bit,
1:49:41and even when they're tightened and everything.
1:49:44The fenders are also slightly asymmetrical,
1:49:46which is, I can't tell if it's intentional or not.
1:49:49Like, they look just kind of crooked.
1:49:50So I'm probably actually gonna remove the fenders,
1:49:52'cause they just kind of are annoying me,
1:49:53and I think in retrospect,
1:49:56this was a bad choice for a beach town,
1:49:59because it has these really skinny high pressure tires.
1:50:02And while that might be great on a well-paved road
1:50:06when you're commuting to work,
1:50:08I guess there's a reason why every other bike
1:50:10that I pass in the beach town
1:50:12has these two inch wide cruiser tires.
1:50:15There's a reason for that.
1:50:17(laughs)
1:50:18And so when you're riding along these walks
1:50:20that are all old concrete,
1:50:22it's like riding on an old sidewalk.
1:50:23So you're going,
1:50:24(imitates bike engine)
1:50:25as you go, you just hit your feeling every bump
1:50:28and on these tires you feel it a lot.
1:50:30So I'm actually, I think I might go to the bike guy in town
1:50:34and see if he can like, see if he has any larger tires
1:50:36that would still fit these rims
1:50:38to not make it too big of a project, but.
1:50:41And the seat is like sitting on a rock.
1:50:44Like, they call it the priority comfort seat,
1:50:47or saddle I think they call them.
1:50:48Bike people call them saddles for some reason.
1:50:50I don't know what part of this is comfortable exactly,
1:50:53but it's certainly not the part that my butt is sitting on.
1:50:56So I have to fix that as well.
1:50:58Fortunately, that's an easy fix.
1:50:59There's lots of--
1:51:00- Make sure you get a prostate friendly one.
1:51:03- I was not aware there was a difference.
1:51:04- The one you have is like,
1:51:06you're distinguishing by like there being a big split
1:51:09in the middle, you're like,
1:51:10why is this seat split in half?
1:51:12- Yeah, yeah, it has like a little hole in the middle.
1:51:14- Right, so sometimes they just give a suggestion
1:51:17of a crease there, which I feel like doesn't help.
1:51:19And sometimes there's actually an air gap there.
1:51:22But anyway, you want something like that.
1:51:24- Okay, good, noted.
1:51:25So I have that.
1:51:27- You probably want for your sensitive tushy
1:51:28like a gel seat or some other thing that's squishy.
1:51:31- Yeah, like the old rusted out mountain bike
1:51:34I thought I was riding here beforehand
1:51:35that only technically has like three gears left if it's 21.
1:51:39That one has like an aftermarket gel seat on it
1:51:41and that was always fine for me.
1:51:42So I ordered someone on Amazon that was well reviewed.
1:51:46We'll see how it goes when it gets here in three years
1:51:49because getting things here from Amazon is tricky.
1:51:51Anyway, so replacing the seat, otherwise it's very nice.
1:51:55I really love disc brakes.
1:51:57This is my first time I've ever ridden a bike
1:51:59that has disc brakes.
1:52:00It's such a massive difference over the regular
1:52:02like V style calipers that go on the rim.
1:52:05It stops like on a dime, it's amazing.
1:52:08So big fan of that.
1:52:09Big fan of generally the handling of the shape of the bike,
1:52:14although again the tires are way too skinny
1:52:15so I'm gonna work on that too.
1:52:17And the CVT is amazing.
1:52:20Like it shouldn't be as good as it is,
1:52:23but it's just really, really nice.
1:52:26You know, one of the advances,
1:52:28and there are gear hubs that do this too,
1:52:31you can shift at, you know, even when you're at a stop,
1:52:33you can still shift.
1:52:34So if you like, are going in a high gear,
1:52:37have to stop really fast, and don't have time to like,
1:52:39you know, shift all the way back down,
1:52:41doesn't matter, just twist the handle here
1:52:42in the low gear, you just go.
1:52:44Because it's a CVT, and because you can just kinda twist
1:52:46as often as you like on that gear,
1:52:48in any interval you like, I find myself shifting way more
1:52:52than I would on a derailleur style bike.
1:52:55I wouldn't say it's necessary,
1:52:56like I'd be fine with a geared setup
1:52:58or even with a fixed gear for most of the time I ride here.
1:53:01But it's really nice to have this,
1:53:02that way you can like,
1:53:03if I'm slowing down for a turn or something,
1:53:06I just kind of, I've automatically kind of started
1:53:09going into the lower gears and then moving back out
1:53:11as I go, as I pedal, going back up, it's really cool.
1:53:15- Make sure you do rev matching.
1:53:16- Yeah.
1:53:17(laughing)
1:53:19- Downshifting for the corner.
1:53:20- Flip the pedal, literally.
1:53:22- Yeah, so anyway.
1:53:23It was probably not the best bike to get for the beach
1:53:27because of its incredibly hard ride
1:53:29that's obviously designed for smooth roads and not sidewalks.
1:53:32- No shocks on this one, right?
1:53:33- Yeah, no shocks.
1:53:34It seems like shocks are passe in fancy bikes.
1:53:37It seems like nobody wants to build shocks anymore.
1:53:39- Well, for mountain bikes you need them,
1:53:40or anything that's on uneven terrain you need it.
1:53:43Not just for comfort, but also for control.
1:53:46- I also, it's been, so since we recorded it,
1:53:49I also got curious about sand bikes or fat bikes,
1:53:52as bike people seem to call them.
1:53:54The ones that have like five inch wide giant sand tires.
1:53:58Those, you occasionally see those around here,
1:54:00and I thought, that could be interesting.
1:54:03Then I could ride past the crazy point of woods fence,
1:54:06and I could expand my horizons in the direction
1:54:09so I could like, I could get more distance
1:54:10if I can ride on the sand.
1:54:12So I spent, since we last recorded about two weeks ago,
1:54:16I spent this time researching fat bikes
1:54:19and looking around for places that I could maybe rent one
1:54:23or try one and it wasn't until about two days ago
1:54:27that I learned that my neighbor has one
1:54:29and he let me borrow it and showed me how to use it
1:54:32on the sand.
1:54:33Have you ever ridden on sand?
1:54:35- I've run on sand, you ever run on sand?
1:54:38- Yeah, that's not fun either.
1:54:40- I knew it would be challenging.
1:54:42I did not realize to what degree it would be challenging.
1:54:45So I get out there and this is like, it's a perfect setup.
1:54:48Like it's pretty low tide.
1:54:50He's showing me exactly where on the sand to ride.
1:54:52Like so it's like optionally packed down,
1:54:55slightly damp but not like super wet sand, you know.
1:54:58So you're, and the bike has like these large
1:55:01five inch low pressure tires.
1:55:03So you know, so it's the ideal setup really.
1:55:06Like it would be hard to find a better setup
1:55:08than the setup I had.
1:55:09And so I first started going
1:55:12and for about the first 30 feet or so,
1:55:15I'm like, this is easy.
1:55:17What was I so concerned about?
1:55:18This is nothing.
1:55:20And then after, as you keep going,
1:55:24you're like, wait a minute,
1:55:25I have to maintain this level of resistance indefinitely.
1:55:30It's not like a quick hill where you go up the hill
1:55:33and then you're flat for a while,
1:55:34then you can coast for a while,
1:55:35you have low resistance.
1:55:36No, it's like, to keep moving,
1:55:39it's like you're going up a pretty sizable hill
1:55:42all the time.
1:55:43(laughing)
1:55:45So I lasted something like two or 300 feet
1:55:49before I was like, all right, I'm done.
1:55:50Like I can't do any more of these.
1:55:52(laughing)
1:55:54Turned around, went back to heaven,
1:55:55I'm like, all right, thanks.
1:55:57I'm like, this ride is either gonna save me
1:56:00a $50 rental fee from the place in town
1:56:03or it's gonna cost me $1,000 to buy one of these bikes.
1:56:06For the first time ever, I didn't buy the thing.
1:56:09(laughing)
1:56:10- Oh, now you're researching e-sand bikes though.
1:56:13- Of course I researched e-sand bikes,
1:56:15'cause those were only about 1,500, but I--
1:56:18- Only.
1:56:20- Honestly, compared to the price of e-bikes
1:56:23and the price of sand bikes,
1:56:24that actually is a really good price.
1:56:26But anyway, my issue with those is like,
1:56:29what's the point then?
1:56:30The whole reason I'm riding is for exercise
1:56:33and getting myself, and the challenge of it.
1:56:37The e-bike thing I think makes more sense
1:56:41if you're doing commuting or if there's some other reasons
1:56:46why you're doing this besides just the exercise value.
1:56:49If you were a delivery person using a bike
1:56:52or if you had to ride between these towns
1:56:55and you had to go on the beach to ride
1:56:56between certain ones for your job or something,
1:57:00that'd be a different story.
1:57:01Then that would make more sense.
1:57:02But for my purposes as this is mainly for exercise,
1:57:05An e-bike is, it kinda misses the point, I think.
1:57:08- Well, what about exploring?
1:57:09Is it this point that you wanted to explore
1:57:10beyond a certain point that you hadn't gone beyond before?
1:57:13You wanna find new places to get Lyme disease?
1:57:15You should, you know, you could use the e-bike for that,
1:57:18to let you go exploring in areas where previously
1:57:20you would've been too tired to get to.
1:57:23- I think a more responsible thing to do
1:57:25is to just keep biking until I'm strong enough
1:57:29to do the sand bike thing.
1:57:30Like, that is what I should do.
1:57:33It probably isn't what I will do,
1:57:34But that is what I should do.
1:57:37- You can just walk, you can just walk on the beach,
1:57:39you can just walk on the sand, feet work really well.
1:57:41- No, that's, what are you, crazy?
1:57:43No.
1:57:44- So somehow we go up and down beaches on Long Island
1:57:48and we have no bikes, just our feet.
1:57:50Make sure you bring shoes, sand is hot.
1:57:53- It is pretty frustrating though,
1:57:54like when you will occasionally see somebody
1:57:57with an e-sand bike drive by as you're on the beach,
1:57:59you're like, "Damn it."
1:58:02- Yeah, so anyway, what I ideally still want is,
1:58:07basically what I mentioned last time is my high-end option,
1:58:09the Budnits bicycle, the Model 3 or Number 3,
1:58:13I keep getting their names confused with Tesla's names,
1:58:16'cause they have some that begin with Model
1:58:17and some that begin with Number.
1:58:19Anyway, I want the Budnits Number 3,
1:58:21and I will probably end up ordering one of those for home,
1:58:26and then maybe next summer I'll get one for the beach,
1:58:28but we'll see, 'cause this summer's almost over,
1:58:30and you can't get 'em, like they're made,
1:58:32They're made to order, so it takes a few weeks to get them,
1:58:35so it's too late for the summer anyway.
1:58:37But I think that's what I want here,
1:58:40is basically a high spec bike that also has wide tires,
1:58:45but not quite sand tire wide.
1:58:48- Where are you gonna ride it at home, on streets,
1:58:50or are there paths you can go on?
1:58:52- Mostly streets, but there also is,
1:58:55I live near the old Croton Aqueduct Trail.
1:58:58I would probably ride on that, lots of people do.
1:59:00There's also nearby bike trails,
1:59:02then I have to become the person who puts their bike
1:59:04on their car and brings it places.
1:59:06I might get there sometime, I don't know,
1:59:09but I don't know anything about that world yet,
1:59:11and so I'm a little resistant to that.
1:59:13But one thing I think I might get into this is that
1:59:18this is actually, I've only told you about two
1:59:21of the three bikes that I've bought since we last talked.
1:59:24The third one was the tiny version,
1:59:27which I bought for my son,
1:59:28'cause they also sell, Priority also sells
1:59:31the Priority Start, which is a tiny belt drive
1:59:35fancy bike made by hipsters in New York.
1:59:37- I'm sure he appreciates all the nuances
1:59:42of this very expensive fancy bike.
1:59:44- First of all, compared to other well-rated kids' bikes,
1:59:48it was surprisingly inexpensive.
1:59:50The bike that everyone else told us to get,
1:59:53which was the Isla or Isla bike, or Isla bike,
1:59:56however you pronounce that, that's like 400 bucks.
1:59:59This was 250.
2:00:01So compared to those, that's actually not that bad.
2:00:03I could also get this quickly.
2:00:05- That's pretty cheap for a kid bike.
2:00:07Although this is real, I mean the problem
2:00:08with these kids bikes is a throwaway bike.
2:00:10He's gonna grow three inches in the next two weeks
2:00:12and it's like, oh, now he's too big for that bike
2:00:14'cause it's like kids clothes.
2:00:15- Yeah, well fortunately we got the 16 inch size
2:00:18and he is like, he's barely tall enough to make it now
2:00:20so that way he has the most time to actually use it
2:00:23before he gets too tall for it.
2:00:25And it's a pretty well specced bike.
2:00:27Like it has dual hand brakes, like real V-brakes
2:00:31on both wheels, not a coaster brake.
2:00:33And it has the carbon belt instead of the chain,
2:00:35'cause once he saw Tiff's and then mine,
2:00:38and he asked about why those were there,
2:00:40and I explained why it's superior,
2:00:42and so of course he wanted one.
2:00:44So now we have three people riding priority bikes.
2:00:48He hasn't quite gotten it yet,
2:00:50but I bet within the next few days
2:00:52he'll be pretty good on it.
2:00:54- Do you have the training wheels on or off?
2:00:55- Off.
2:00:56- Yeah, he'll be doing it in two minutes.
2:00:59Another thing you can periscope.
2:01:01I don't know how to ride.
2:01:02Just run behind him and hold the seat
2:01:04and then you let go, that's how you do it.
2:01:05- Yeah, me and Tiff were doing that today earlier.
2:01:08It was the very first time we tried it,
2:01:10so we got slightly far, but we didn't quite get far enough
2:01:14today to fully let go for more than a second or two.
2:01:17So I think we'll practice over the next few days
2:01:19and probably by next week, he should be riding a bike.
2:01:23- Actually, I was mostly joking.
2:01:24That's not how you should have your head do it.
2:01:26way my father did it to me but that's like the worst way to do it. The way it should
2:01:29be done is the way you're already doing it. You give him the scoot bike so he learns how
2:01:32to balance and he'll do it on his own. Yeah, so he's, I think he's basically all set. He
2:01:36just uses this like a scoot bike but then picks both his feet up and puts them on the
2:01:40pedals instead of just holding them up in the air, then starts pedaling, he's off to
2:01:43the races. Yeah, we're getting there. This Bud Knits bike is weird. Which one, the number
2:01:49three? Yeah, the frame is weird. Well, they're actually known for their like cool artistic
2:01:55frame.
2:01:56Yeah, I don't need my friend to be artistic.
2:01:59And it's not, no CVT, you're going to be spoiled by the CVT and then you're going to come to
2:02:02this and it's like 11 gears?
2:02:04That's not enough.
2:02:05Actually I already asked them and they actually would do a CVT if I wanted it, but yeah.
2:02:09No, I mean it's because it seems like it, what I actually want is a road version of
2:02:16a mountain bike.
2:02:17Yeah, that's what this looks like except for the roofy frame.
2:02:22And so this gives me high-end parts,
2:02:26like it has good brakes, good gearing options,
2:02:29the carbon belt, nice stuff,
2:02:32and a slightly mountain bikey, slightly roady
2:02:37kind of hybrid riding position, and wide tire support.
2:02:41And it looks cool.
2:02:43Oh, and it also has the other things I like,
2:02:44like minimal branding.
2:02:45Like so many of these bikes have just giant names
2:02:49all over the place and it's just ugly as hell.
2:02:52So, you know, stuff like that.
2:02:53Like, they do some pretty good work.
2:02:55- So the way you feel about sand bike tires
2:02:57is the way I feel about tires
2:02:58that are the width of this thing.
2:02:59Like, I feel like it's just huge amounts
2:03:02of unnecessary friction.
2:03:03As soon as I stop pedaling, it's like,
2:03:05oh, these tires are slowing me down.
2:03:07Like, regenerative braking.
2:03:08(laughing)
2:03:09- They actually had, the Model E actually is
2:03:12one of the more interesting e-bikes I've ever seen, too.
2:03:15It's all in the rear hub.
2:03:17Like, there's no battery on the frame or anything.
2:03:20Like it's just all, it's just a rear hub
2:03:22that happens to include like a radial battery
2:03:25around the center.
2:03:26- There are things, do you see the thing
2:03:27that you can add to just any bike
2:03:29and just slap it on the wheel?
2:03:30There's lots of clever--
2:03:31- Yeah, the Helvetica one, what was that called?
2:03:34- I think it was a bunch of them.
2:03:35- C something wheel.
2:03:36Anyway, honestly, I thought that was hideous,
2:03:38the thing you could just add to any of them.
2:03:40- Yeah, well.
2:03:41- But, no, again, like, if I get an e-bike,
2:03:44it would definitely be for home, not for here,
2:03:46because that's the place where like,
2:03:47there are giant hills in my neighborhood.
2:03:49and one of the reasons I have not gotten a bike yet at home
2:03:53is that I assumed there's no way to reasonably ride a bike
2:03:57in my neighborhood because there's so many hills.
2:03:59- There is, come on.
2:04:00I should show you, I don't think any hill
2:04:02in your neighborhood is as big as the hills near
2:04:05where I was growing up and I went up them in a bike
2:04:06with no gears.
2:04:07Couldn't change gears down to first gear
2:04:09to get up the hill.
2:04:10You had one gear in the Mongoose and that was it
2:04:12and I powered my way up those hills all the time
2:04:14'cause that's how you got to your friend's house.
2:04:15- One gear, both ways.
2:04:17- Yeah, that's how you got to your friend's house.
2:04:18the worst part, there's more dangers going down the hills.
2:04:22I wish I could have topology in Google Maps.
2:04:25- Sometimes it's weird.
2:04:27- Let's see if I could find.
2:04:29- The other thing is like, as my kid gets into biking,
2:04:33I suspect that a good thing to do will be
2:04:35for me to go with him biking, even at home, year round.
2:04:38So like to have something at home
2:04:40that could do that pretty well is probably a good idea.
2:04:43- No, no topology, why don't you go 3D?
2:04:46- 3D, that's not very 3D.
2:04:48What the hell?
2:04:49It's like I look like this road is flat,
2:04:50this road is not flat.
2:04:52- Every time I see a mongoose around town,
2:04:54I think of you, John.
2:04:55- No, it's a different company now.
2:04:57- And they actually have what seems like
2:04:59a really popular fat tire bike too.
2:05:02I'm not talking about the button sized tire,
2:05:04I'm talking about the sand bike sized tires.
2:05:07I see there's a lot of the sand bikes around town
2:05:09or the ones that are kind of,
2:05:11there seems to be a class of bike around here that,
2:05:14They're not quite wide enough or not knobby enough
2:05:17to be sand tires, but they're just ridiculous.
2:05:19They're like three and a half inch wide,
2:05:22but just like flat rubber tires on bikes
2:05:25that look like they might've cost $2
2:05:27out of the Walmart discount bin.
2:05:29It's very, very strange, but I kinda wanna ride one.
2:05:32'Cause it looks like it's probably a lot of fun.
2:05:34(laughs)
2:05:35- Oh my God, I'm looking at these roads on Google Maps
2:05:38and I see what these terrible people did
2:05:42to my childhood home.
2:05:44'cause I could see it from the air,
2:05:45they cut down all the trees,
2:05:46they put this hideous swimming pool,
2:05:48like taking up the entire backyard,
2:05:49just giant hideous swimming pool,
2:05:51like literally the whole backyard is paved over
2:05:53with this terrible swimming pool in it.
2:05:55Hate these people.
2:05:56(laughing)
2:05:58- You know, that should be your retirement plan.
2:06:00Buy back your old house and fix it.
2:06:03- It's not that great of a house.
2:06:05And I can't replace all the trees.
2:06:07They cut down so many trees, so many big full grown trees.
2:06:10At least they still have them in the back,
2:06:11but just they cut down so many trees.
2:06:13- Oh, you can.
2:06:14I mean, if you save enough money,
2:06:15you totally can buy full-grown trees.
2:06:18I know because there's the guy Shaw,
2:06:21there's some guy named Shaw
2:06:23who invented the hedge fund or something,
2:06:25and he's building a large house down,
2:06:29basically at the edge of my neighborhood.
2:06:31They've actually trucked in full-sized trees.
2:06:34Have you ever seen a tree on a flatbed truck?
2:06:36- Yeah, 'cause that's what Apple did
2:06:38for the Apple Park thing.
2:06:39- Yeah, yeah, exactly.
2:06:41I would love to know how much it costs
2:06:44to get a full-size tree shipped to your house and planted.
2:06:47I'm guessing it has to be like 100 grand or something.
2:06:49Like there's-- - Nah.
2:06:51Maybe $5,000 a pop.
2:06:53No, all right, maybe 10K a pop.
2:06:55- 'Cause this is, it's not on one like regular flatbed,
2:06:57it's on like the oversized load trucks they bring houses on.
2:07:01- Yeah, they got the big spade thing
2:07:03that's containing the root ball and all the dirt, yeah.
2:07:05- Yeah, it's a giant root ball.
2:07:08Like I can't like, I can't even imagine.
2:07:10- You don't see them take it out?
2:07:12It's like a thing from like a portal, not portal,
2:07:16Half Life 2 with like City 17,
2:07:18these giant metal things go in,
2:07:19chink, chink, chink, and they all go underneath the thing
2:07:21and they all go down and meet in the middle
2:07:23and it tears up the tree.
2:07:24It's cool.
2:07:25- Yeah.
2:07:26(laughs)
2:07:27I didn't see that part,
2:07:28but even just seeing the truck go down
2:07:31like the main thoroughfare in our town
2:07:33and park next to this giant construction project
2:07:35with this giant tree lying down on the back of it,
2:07:38Like, that's, wow.
2:07:42So anyway, you totally can replace this trace,
2:07:44but maybe plan for like 100 grand each
2:07:46as the possible cost. (laughs)
2:07:50- Well, it's just such a shame.
2:07:52I mean, I don't understand why people,
2:07:54you don't wanna have a backyard,
2:07:55you want your entire backyard to be brick in a swimming pool.
2:07:58It's just, it's awkwardly shaped.
2:08:01It's not the right place.
2:08:03It's a house on the corner, and their swimming pool is,
2:08:06Like instead of being tucked away from where people are,
2:08:09it's like right up against the driveway and the road.
2:08:12Like you want some privacy in your swimming pool.
2:08:14It's just, I don't know what they're thinking.
2:08:16- Telling you, this is what you gotta do.
2:08:18- Who knows what the inside of the house looks like now.
2:08:19I mean, maybe they didn't change that that much.
2:08:21I don't know.
2:08:22If they sell it and they ever have an open house,
2:08:24I should go down there
2:08:25and look at what the heck they're doing.
2:08:26Oh, totally.
2:08:27- No, God, it will drive you insane
2:08:30knowing the things that they've done.
2:08:33The only way that ends well for you
2:08:34If you don't have any idea. They haven't changed the outside of the house
2:08:38They've kept all the gross 80s deck and like the little abbreviated deck that my dad
2:08:42But maybe they maybe they fixed the walk when I did the driveway
2:08:45Just just terrible don't like it
2:08:49[BEEPING]