ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► You know what those are? Those are free-to-play dogs.

00:00:03 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:00:05 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:07 ◼   ► We got some feedback with regard to my maybe, maybe not, no I guess it is definitely ailing, but we don't know why, iMac.

00:00:15 ◼   ► An anonymous Apple Genius wrote in, and I'd like to read, this is pretty much their entire email, they said,

00:00:21 ◼   ► "I see failure is exactly like the one you were describing, the hanging after waking from sleep, after swapping the stock RAM back in,

00:00:27 ◼   ► not the reboots, the reboots were almost certainly OWC RAM,

00:00:30 ◼   ► that do track back to the GPU for sure,

00:00:33 ◼   ► but much more frequently it is just Apple

00:00:35 ◼   ► not having its stuff together software-wise.

00:00:37 ◼   ► Also nothing makes me sadder

00:00:39 ◼   ► than someone dropping off a machine

00:00:40 ◼   ► that's experiencing an intermittent issue

00:00:42 ◼   ► and it just sits there for a week

00:00:43 ◼   ► running stress testing or diagnostics,

00:00:45 ◼   ► and we have to give it back with a shrug

00:00:47 ◼   ► when we find nothing.

00:00:48 ◼   ► Or worse, when people are so utterly convinced as Marco

00:00:51 ◼   ► that a problem is quote, "definitely hardware," quote,

00:00:54 ◼   ► that we get bullied into replacing parts

00:00:56 ◼   ► Anyway for customer appeasement slash theater for a failure that can't be replicated and then have that person pick up the machine

00:01:03 ◼   ► And it's still having the same issue because that issue is never the hardware in the first place

00:01:07 ◼   ► Don't jump the gun be sure it's hardware before you come in and we'll be able to get it right the first time

00:01:12 ◼   ► Signed Apple genius best of luck

00:01:14 ◼   ► And don't listen to Marco

00:01:17 ◼   ► Sunglasses emoji that is actually part of the email which made me laugh. So yeah, so this particular genius said it could I

00:01:25 ◼   ► may, may not be crazy. And I have gotten a lot of feedback about the iMac and I am happy

00:01:32 ◼   ► to report that it was split about right down the middle. Half the people said I was insane

00:01:36 ◼   ► for not bringing it in and half the people said I totally feel you and you're doing the

00:01:40 ◼   ► right thing.

00:01:41 ◼   ► Oh, we should clarify, you know this because you made a pie chart.

00:01:44 ◼   ► I did. I went full business on this because I was curious how this was going to play out

00:01:51 ◼   ► because...

00:01:52 ◼   ► Can I share this pie chart?

00:01:53 ◼   ► Yeah, if you want. I mean, you can like dropler it or something.

00:01:56 ◼   ► Yeah, it was a spreadsheet, right? You just made it. It's a spreadsheet, and then the graph is from

00:01:59 ◼   ► the spreadsheet. Is it a Google Sheets thing or whatever it's called?

00:02:02 ◼   ► It is a Google Sheet, yeah. So I probably could drop this sheet in if I really felt like it,

00:02:06 ◼   ► but I probably won't because it's mostly irrelevant. But suffice to say,

00:02:11 ◼   ► I have tracked just line items, or I've tracked feedback as line items. I've split it into four

00:02:19 ◼   ► categories. ProCasey, AntiCasey, Jokes, which at the beginning I thought were going to be

00:02:24 ◼   ► far more frequent than they were. It ended up being only three of them. But like, "Oh,

00:02:28 ◼   ► did you spill water on it again? Haha!" And that was basically all three of them. And

00:02:32 ◼   ► then Neutral Posts, which were sometimes people saying like, "Oh, I can understand you not

00:02:38 ◼   ► wanting to bring it in, but maybe you should." Or, "Oh, have you tried using this memory

00:02:42 ◼   ► testing tool, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

00:02:47 ◼   ► And so it has been 49.5 percent, as per my fancy little spreadsheet, that have been in

00:02:53 ◼   ► the ProCasey camp.

00:02:55 ◼   ► And between the anti-Casey and neutral posts, that's another 47.7 percent.

00:03:05 ◼   ► So there you go.

00:03:06 ◼   ► So I have to ask the obvious question, which is, has your RMAc had any problems since

00:03:12 ◼   ► a week ago. It has indeed, but I can explain these away as well, don't you worry. So as it turns out,

00:03:18 ◼   ► it has rebooted itself twice, but I am... hold on, hold on. With the stock RAM in it? Yes,

00:03:23 ◼   ► hold on though. That is because... hold on. That's because I've had power failures both times,

00:03:29 ◼   ► and that is... and the iMac is not connected to my UPS. All right, well that's not rebooting itself.

00:03:33 ◼   ► That's a different thing. Yeah, that doesn't count. That's why I said it's... it's not... it's... it has

00:03:38 ◼   ► had an issue but it's not its fault so that's not an issue well I mean I don't

00:03:42 ◼   ► want it to reboot itself but I mean when the powers are yanked there's nothing

00:03:45 ◼   ► you can do so perhaps the best reason for you to bring this in for what may be

00:03:50 ◼   ► one of several frustrating visits to the Apple Store is that if you don't every

00:03:54 ◼   ► single week on the show we're gonna ask you how is the you know any new issues

00:04:00 ◼   ► because it's been on kind of like a week interval right so every week there's a

00:04:04 ◼   ► potential that something can happen that's correct although like these power

00:04:07 ◼   ► routers are really messing with whatever the interval was.

00:04:10 ◼   ► Oh, I know. It's the worst. Okay, so a follow-up question, because this

00:04:15 ◼   ► is the follow-up section of the show. You have a $3,000 high-end computer that uses

00:04:20 ◼   ► your primary computer at home. You have a UPS. Why is this computer not plugged into

00:04:26 ◼   ► the UPS? Well, so it's plugged into the non-battery

00:04:29 ◼   ► portion of the UPS because the priority is the Synology and associated paraphernalia

00:04:36 ◼   ► like my ERO and my router and all that other stuff. And it's not that big a deal to me

00:04:42 ◼   ► if this thing just croaks while it's on, as we've already demonstrated.

00:04:46 ◼   ► HFS Plus, it's a big deal.

00:04:49 ◼   ► Hmm, touche. I actually do intend, it's funny you bring this up because I had intended to

00:04:53 ◼   ► move it over to the battery side, I just haven't had the chance yet. And we almost never lose

00:04:57 ◼   ► lose power here, we've just had a couple of really, really crummy summer thunderstorms

00:05:03 ◼   ► and it's just so happened that we've lost power long enough for, you know, it's been

00:05:06 ◼   ► more than just a flash, it's been long enough for this thing to get upset.

00:05:10 ◼   ► Yeah, so it's on my to-do list to move it to the other side of the power strip thing.

00:05:16 ◼   ► Do you have enough power left in your thingy? Like whatever size the UPS is?

00:05:20 ◼   ► Yeah, you know, that was the reason why I wasn't there already is because I wanted to

00:05:24 ◼   ► give as much time as possible to the Synology because my hypothetical here is that I'm going

00:05:29 ◼   ► to be in a situation where I don't have the ability to turn the Synology off.

00:05:33 ◼   ► And this actually came up when we were in San Francisco together.

00:05:36 ◼   ► We were all Jason Snell's and my watch started going berserk because I was getting push notifications

00:05:41 ◼   ► from the Synology that the power was going on and off and on and off and on and off and

00:05:45 ◼   ► on and off.

00:05:46 ◼   ► And I actually asked Jason if he wouldn't mind if I used his 5K iMac to log into the

00:05:52 ◼   ► the Synology and shut itself down, because I didn't want it to, you know, violently die

00:05:58 ◼   ► if the power had stayed off long enough.

00:06:01 ◼   ► And so that's why I have the Synology on the UPS, but I kept the iMac off of it because

00:06:08 ◼   ► I wanted all available power to go to the Synology so it can hang on as long as possible

00:06:12 ◼   ► in the event of a power outage.

00:06:13 ◼   ► And like I said, this has been very peculiar, because generally we don't have any issues

00:06:17 ◼   ► with power here.

00:06:18 ◼   ► I mean, we used to have them relatively frequently,

00:06:22 ◼   ► but there was a tree branch on the lines

00:06:25 ◼   ► right outside my neighborhood,

00:06:26 ◼   ► and everything's in ground in the neighborhood.

00:06:28 ◼   ► And that tree branch was cut back by the power company

00:06:31 ◼   ► a year or two ago for exactly this reason,

00:06:33 ◼   ► to prevent this from happening.

00:06:34 ◼   ► It's just been peculiar lately that I've lost power a lot.

00:06:37 ◼   ► So on my to-do list, just to move the iMac over

00:06:39 ◼   ► to the battery side of the UPS,

00:06:41 ◼   ► I just haven't had the chance yet.

00:06:42 ◼   ► - Why don't I just unplug it right now,

00:06:44 ◼   ► 'cause it doesn't seem to matter.

00:06:46 ◼   ► - What are you worried about with the violent death?

00:06:48 ◼   ► The thing was that the Synology will shut itself down when the UPS battery gets closer.

00:06:51 ◼   ► That's true.

00:06:52 ◼   ► Actually, I'm glad you brought that up because you're absolutely right.

00:06:54 ◼   ► I've never actually tested that, and so I don't know, I'm just scared.

00:06:58 ◼   ► I've tested it, unintentionally.

00:07:00 ◼   ► And also, instead of getting push notifications, I get emails.

00:07:03 ◼   ► Every time we vacuum in the basement, the Synology sends me email about going to UPS

00:07:09 ◼   ► and then going back to power because it's like a flicker when you fire up the vacuum

00:07:14 ◼   ► on the same circuit as the...

00:07:17 ◼   ► My house is under, the panel on my house is undersized for the things we have in it.

00:07:21 ◼   ► But anyway, I've tested it many times where we've lost power for long enough and it sends

00:07:26 ◼   ► me the emails, then I think it also sends you the email, it's like, "Well, I'm shutting

00:07:29 ◼   ► down, bye," and then when it comes back on, I forget if you get the goodbye email, but

00:07:33 ◼   ► you certainly get the turning back on one, and yeah, there's a setting in the thing where

00:07:36 ◼   ► you can tell it what percentage shut down or whatever.

00:07:39 ◼   ► Yeah, and I have that turned on.

00:07:40 ◼   ► Like I said, I was just scared of it.

00:07:42 ◼   ► And I should add, just for interest sake, that the way I got push notifications was

00:07:47 ◼   ► by an app called PushOver, which—I'm sure there's other ones like this—but basically

00:07:51 ◼   ► I get a unique email from the PushOver company that I have the Synology send emails to, and

00:07:58 ◼   ► then that gets forwarded—actually, if this and that probably does something like this—that

00:08:03 ◼   ► email gets forwarded to my iPhone and then to my watch.

00:08:08 ◼   ► So the push notification I'm getting is really just that same email that you're getting.

00:08:12 ◼   ► I'm having it forwarded on to a service

00:08:14 ◼   ► that will send the push notification.

00:08:16 ◼   ► So just pro tip.

00:08:18 ◼   ► But yeah, I should definitely move this over

00:08:20 ◼   ► to the battery side for sure.

00:08:23 ◼   ► I wanted to talk a little bit more about Pokemon.

00:08:26 ◼   ► After we recorded last week,

00:08:28 ◼   ► there were a couple of interest,

00:08:29 ◼   ► or well, there was one trend I noticed,

00:08:32 ◼   ► which I just thought was fascinating.

00:08:33 ◼   ► And I noticed two local,

00:08:36 ◼   ► well, one's a museum, one's a park.

00:08:39 ◼   ► The Science Museum of Virginia, which is here in Richmond,

00:08:42 ◼   ► had posted on their Facebook page,

00:08:45 ◼   ► I feel like such an old person when I say that,

00:08:46 ◼   ► but I think that is the proper vernacular.

00:08:49 ◼   ► Looking to catch some rare Pokemon

00:08:50 ◼   ► while seeing some pretty incredible #science.

00:08:53 ◼   ► This weekend, the museum's PokeStops

00:08:55 ◼   ► will have #lure modules planted to attract wild #Pokemon

00:08:59 ◼   ► while our exhibits are filled with yada yada yada.

00:09:02 ◼   ► So I'm so surprised to say the museum,

00:09:05 ◼   ► the Science Museum of Virginia had taken it upon themselves

00:09:08 ◼   ► install lures in the PokeStops that are one or more PokeStops that's at the

00:09:14 ◼   ► Science Museum to try to attract people to come visit, which I thought was really

00:09:19 ◼   ► interesting. And then Maymont Park, which is a park also here in Richmond and

00:09:23 ◼   ► that's actually where where Aaron and I got engaged. Pokemon Go! Catch 'em all at

00:09:29 ◼   ► Maymont! And there's a clearly photoshopped picture of a family

00:09:35 ◼   ► looking at one of the Pokemon, um, Pokemen, Pokemans, etc. Whatever it's called. Anyway,

00:09:41 ◼   ► the point being, they did an After Hours exclusive event where for $10 a person, you can go to

00:09:50 ◼   ► Maymont Park, which is beautiful, and it's free generally, but it's absolutely worth going to.

00:09:54 ◼   ► Join us for an exclusive After Hours Pokemon Go event as we activate Lores in the app and

00:10:00 ◼   ► explore the grounds in search of mysterious creatures that only come out at night. $10

00:10:04 ◼   ► a person, five if you're a member, adults must accompany children ages 15 and under.

00:10:08 ◼   ► Tickets are limited to the first 300 registrants.

00:10:10 ◼   ► Oh, actually that's happening a week from tomorrow, as it turns out.

00:10:14 ◼   ► So I just thought that this was really interesting that these local businesses and, you know,

00:10:21 ◼   ► museums and parks, which I don't know, I have the perception of being slightly stodgy to

00:10:24 ◼   ► me, even the science museum, have gotten on this bandwagon of getting people to spend

00:10:29 ◼   ► actual money playing this game.

00:10:32 ◼   ► But the money they're spending isn't on the game, it's with these venues.

00:10:35 ◼   ► I just thought it was a really, really clever idea.

00:10:37 ◼   ► Not unique to Richmond, but it just popped up on my radar because these are local places.

00:10:42 ◼   ► I thought it was cool.

00:10:43 ◼   ► What do you think the chances are that the game's servers will actually, you know, number

00:10:47 ◼   ► one, hold up in that area, and number two, work properly, so like everybody would actually

00:10:51 ◼   ► see the lures and everything?

00:10:53 ◼   ► A week from now, who knows.

00:10:55 ◼   ► Right now, the frustration in my household is the servers are always down.

00:11:00 ◼   ► My wife and children have taken up the game, by the way.

00:11:02 ◼   ► Ah, and what do you think having been in the proximity of the game now?

00:11:06 ◼   ► I mean, I went on walks with them.

00:11:08 ◼   ► I used my wife's phone to catch some for her.

00:11:11 ◼   ► She's into it, they're into it, it's a good excuse to walk around.

00:11:13 ◼   ► In fact, I think they're probably still out now, even though it's, like, dark, because

00:11:16 ◼   ► the servers were down.

00:11:17 ◼   ► They were all going to go on a walk to catch Pokémon, but the servers have been down until

00:11:21 ◼   ► very recently tonight, so they're basically down anytime you'd want to do it.

00:11:24 ◼   ► "Hey, everyone's home from work, the kids are home from camp or whatever, let's go hunting

00:11:28 ◼   ► for Pokemon and that's exactly when the servers are down.

00:11:31 ◼   ► And I guess enough kids went to bed that the servers are back up.

00:11:34 ◼   ► Anyway, it's frustrating.

00:11:35 ◼   ► The most heartwarming story I read about Pokemon, which is on the internet so it must be true,

00:11:41 ◼   ► is that an animal shelter had a posting that says basically if you want to play Pokemon

00:11:46 ◼   ► but you're embarrassed to let people see you playing, which you shouldn't be, but you know,

00:11:50 ◼   ► if you're embarrassed to see people playing Pokemon, come to our dog shelter and for $5

00:11:56 ◼   ► an hour you can rent one of our dogs and walk it. So it will look like you're walking a

00:12:02 ◼   ► dog when really you're hunting for Pokémon. So here are the results of this. They now

00:12:06 ◼   ► have a waiting list of people who want to pay for the privilege of walking a dog. They've

00:12:10 ◼   ► made so much money on rental fees for the dogs that they've waived the adoption fees.

00:12:14 ◼   ► When people renting dogs are out walking, they post pictures of themselves playing the

00:12:17 ◼   ► game on Facebook and Instagram. People are then coming to the shelter asking to adopt

00:12:21 ◼   ► the specific dogs they saw in the pictures. On at least two occasions people have called

00:12:24 ◼   ► the shelter and said, "Hey, I didn't think I really wanted a dog, but me and this dog

00:12:28 ◼   ► get along really well, so I'm not bringing them back." And this shelter currently has

00:12:31 ◼   ► no dogs available to rent, and there's a waiting list, because all the dogs have been adopted.

00:12:35 ◼   ► They're bringing in dogs from other shelters.

00:12:37 ◼   ► That's amazing.

00:12:38 ◼   ► Oh, that's great. Even if that's only half true, that's still great. And I hope it's

00:12:42 ◼   ► all true.

00:12:43 ◼   ► Yeah, I completely agree.

00:12:44 ◼   ► Like, the idea—the best part of that, again, if it's true, is that instead of paying people

00:12:48 ◼   ► to walk—like, the shelter's like, "We have all these dogs, and we don't have enough staff

00:12:51 ◼   ► members to walk them, maybe we give people a couple bucks to walk them, reversing the

00:12:55 ◼   ► cash flow. Come to us, pay us to walk our dog. It's like...

00:12:59 ◼   ► Like usually like begging for volunteers to come do it for free.

00:13:02 ◼   ► Right, and then all the dogs get adopted away because of the magic of social media. The

00:13:07 ◼   ► dog shelter is empty, they have to pull from other dog shelters.

00:13:10 ◼   ► Well it's also like, you know, so often people come up with the idea, "Oh, wouldn't it be

00:13:13 ◼   ► great if you could rent puppies?" And puppy rental is a really cool sounding idea for

00:13:18 ◼   ► for about four seconds until you think about the reality

00:13:22 ◼   ► of what that business would actually be like

00:13:23 ◼   ► and you're like, "Oh, that's horrible."

00:13:26 ◼   ► But grown dog rental from a shelter

00:13:31 ◼   ► where these dogs have nobody else and really need people,

00:13:35 ◼   ► that flips it around completely.

00:13:37 ◼   ► That takes this great sounding for a second

00:13:40 ◼   ► but ultimately terrible idea and makes it

00:13:43 ◼   ► into something endearing and positive and overall pleasant.

00:13:46 ◼   ► I honestly really hope it was real.

00:13:49 ◼   ► I have my doubts, but I really hope it's real.

00:13:51 ◼   ► - You know what those are?

00:13:52 ◼   ► Those are free-to-play dogs.

00:13:54 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:13:56 ◼   ► You can get the dog for free 'cause they're like,

00:13:58 ◼   ► you know what, I really like this dog.

00:13:59 ◼   ► I want it without them.

00:14:01 ◼   ► And then you've essentially done an in-app purchase

00:14:03 ◼   ► for a dozen years of paying for vet bills and dog food

00:14:07 ◼   ► and all the other things you have to pay for.

00:14:09 ◼   ► It's free to play, it's free to walk the dog,

00:14:11 ◼   ► but it's a trap because they know, based on human nature,

00:14:14 ◼   ► the dogs are adorable and people are going to fall in love with them and then they get

00:14:18 ◼   ► the big bucks. Yeah, and the final delightful thing is that apparently this bubble has boosted

00:14:24 ◼   ► Nintendo's stock price so much that their market cap is now bigger than Sony.

00:14:31 ◼   ► So I do wonder, do you guys think that Pokémon Go is actually going to still be relevant

00:14:36 ◼   ► even in a week? You know, basically to what degree do you think this is just like a big

00:14:40 ◼   ► spike followed by a big crash that's just a fad or do you think it's going to actually

00:14:44 ◼   ► stick around as like a game people play for a pretty long time.

00:14:47 ◼   ► Well that was my question last week, it was like net new trainers.

00:14:50 ◼   ► Because Pokemon has always been popular.

00:14:52 ◼   ► Every time a new Pokemon game comes out, all the people who are rabid Pokemon fans who

00:14:55 ◼   ► buy every single game buy it.

00:14:57 ◼   ► The question is, how many more of those people does this make?

00:15:00 ◼   ► Because yeah, there's gonna be a drop off of like, "Oh I played this when it was really

00:15:03 ◼   ► popular but I wasn't into it enough to become a dedicated fan of the franchise."

00:15:08 ◼   ► So when the next game comes out, you see how many of those people come back.

00:15:11 ◼   ► And I think it it has to add more fans like just because it's got so much exposure to people who've never played

00:15:16 ◼   ► Pokemon games before it has to add more. I'm not sure how much more certainly

00:15:20 ◼   ► This spike is an aberration and I don't expect

00:15:25 ◼   ► An intent to keep every single one of the people who are playing now as long-term

00:15:30 ◼   ► Dedicated players of the franchise, you know to put things in perspective

00:15:36 ◼   ► It I think as recently as a couple of weeks ago

00:15:39 ◼   ► I was visiting with my parents and they were still playing Words with Friends

00:15:43 ◼   ► So they mean these things can be sticky and I think this is going to be at least in part a flash in the pan

00:15:51 ◼   ► Flash in the pan, but I think it given the Pokemon

00:15:55 ◼   ► You know the backstory and and how many people have enjoyed it so much in the past

00:16:00 ◼   ► I think it'll be a lot stickier than most of these other things like for example

00:16:05 ◼   ► Draw something which was oh, this is amazing. Okay. Nobody cares. Yeah

00:16:09 ◼   ► Draw something is a higher bar to enter like your parents still playing that same game

00:16:13 ◼   ► It's not really helping the words

00:16:14 ◼   ► It's not really helping Zingo or whatever unless they're dumping more money into it, right?

00:16:17 ◼   ► The whole question for the games like Pokemon is when we come out with the inevitable improved sequel

00:16:23 ◼   ► Will you do that one too? And also like I said last week

00:16:26 ◼   ► All right. Have you ever put any money into this or is all your money going to rent dogs to walk?

00:16:33 ◼   ► Like where is the money going? Like obviously there are people who are putting money into this game

00:16:36 ◼   ► It's gonna make money for all the people involved

00:16:39 ◼   ► But it's the money is coming from a small number of people who spend a lot and almost everybody else

00:16:45 ◼   ► It seems like you're spending nothing so far. No one in my family has spent anything either

00:16:48 ◼   ► Yep, I just I'm really fascinated by

00:16:53 ◼   ► The way in which the the real world and the you know

00:16:59 ◼   ► this electronic, this entertainment world have collided.

00:17:02 ◼   ► And I've been, I mean, there's been some crummy stories

00:17:05 ◼   ► coming out of it because humans are terrible.

00:17:07 ◼   ► But I've just been, I thought it was so neat

00:17:10 ◼   ► and I still think it's so neat and such an interesting,

00:17:13 ◼   ► an interesting investigation into how these things

00:17:16 ◼   ► kind of come together and an interesting case study,

00:17:19 ◼   ► if you'll permit me to use that terrible business term.

00:17:21 ◼   ► It's just been fascinating to watch.

00:17:23 ◼   ► So very cool stuff.

00:17:26 ◼   ► Our first sponsor tonight is Betterment.

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00:18:41 ◼   ► - SoftBank, which is a Japanese company,

00:18:48 ◼   ► are they a cell phone carrier,

00:18:49 ◼   ► or I don't know much about them.

00:18:51 ◼   ► - They're like a holding company, I think.

00:18:52 ◼   ► They do have a, they're a telecommunication company, they do have like a cell phone wing.

00:18:56 ◼   ► Okay, well, regardless, they have bought ARM for $32 billion.

00:19:02 ◼   ► Haven't bought, want to buy, or are in the process of trying to buy.

00:19:06 ◼   ► I think the deal is not yet finalized.

00:19:08 ◼   ► What do we think about this?

00:19:10 ◼   ► This is, I'm not so much interested in the details of like ARM or the history of ARM,

00:19:15 ◼   ► especially, you know, like you can read a lot of stories about its origins with the

00:19:19 ◼   ► Newton and where this whole effort came from and all that other business. I'm mostly interested in

00:19:24 ◼   ► terms of thinking about how Apple implements its famous "we want to own and control the major

00:19:33 ◼   ► technologies" and I forget whatever that Tim Cook quote is. Like they want to own and control the

00:19:37 ◼   ► technologies that go into their products, right? They do that selectively. Like they do it according

00:19:45 ◼   ► to their own definition. So I was thinking of an example. They don't own the companies

00:19:53 ◼   ► that make the really tough glass that goes on top of iPhones. They don't own Dow Corning

00:19:58 ◼   ► or whoever makes the Gorilla Glass or the variants or whatever. They don't own Foxconn

00:20:03 ◼   ► or the companies that assemble their products. Are those the core technologies or whatever

00:20:11 ◼   ► the specific wording that was used in that quote? I guess not, right? They do own the

00:20:17 ◼   ► operating system, they do own like the hardware designs and you know the whole like the product

00:20:23 ◼   ► and all the other stuff, but some parts of it they always consider to be like "oh we'll

00:20:29 ◼   ► pay somebody else to do that" and it doesn't really matter that much because if we can't

00:20:35 ◼   ► get this glass from this company we'll try to get it from this other one or if this company

00:20:38 ◼   ► won't assemble our phones, like we'll pit suppliers against each other, like they end

00:20:41 ◼   ► up being just being a supplier. So the question for ARM, ARM which makes the, doesn't make

00:20:46 ◼   ► the chips, but ARM which owns the intellectual property to the instruction set and some of

00:20:51 ◼   ► the architectural details and many many patents and so on and so forth for the CPUs that are

00:20:55 ◼   ► in all of Apple's iOS devices, is that just another supplier or is that something that

00:21:02 ◼   ► Apple needs to own and control? And the reason that comes up is, again as far as I'm aware

00:21:05 ◼   ► as we record this, this deal is not finalized, should Apple be concerned that some company

00:21:12 ◼   ► that's not them and is not whoever, you know, the current ARM, people who are running ARM,

00:21:18 ◼   ► is going to buy the company that I feel like not that they rely on, but that is an integral

00:21:25 ◼   ► part of their most important products.

00:21:28 ◼   ► Should they care?

00:21:29 ◼   ► Are they like, "Oh, well, whatever, you guys do whatever you want as long as you continue

00:21:32 ◼   ► to give us the ARM architecture license that lets us essentially build and design our own

00:21:37 ◼   ► CPUs with your intellectual property as core, we're fine.

00:21:40 ◼   ► I don't really care who owns ARM.

00:21:42 ◼   ► Or should they be like, "Someone get out the checkbook.

00:21:45 ◼   ► We've got $32 billion between couch cushions.

00:21:47 ◼   ► We should just outbid them."

00:21:49 ◼   ► It's hard to say without the details of the deal that they have with ARM, but this intellectual

00:21:53 ◼   ► property is super, super important.

00:21:55 ◼   ► I mean, this is what all the A-series chips run on, right?

00:21:57 ◼   ► So I'm so torn.

00:22:00 ◼   ► I would say it is not important for them to own ARM

00:22:03 ◼   ► as long as they have, as close as they can get

00:22:07 ◼   ► to an in perpetuity license

00:22:09 ◼   ► for whatever IP they currently have.

00:22:12 ◼   ► - I mean, and there's also, like there's,

00:22:13 ◼   ► if you look at what Apple buys and what they don't buy,

00:22:17 ◼   ► they tend not to buy component manufacturers

00:22:20 ◼   ► that also supply the entire rest

00:22:22 ◼   ► of the computing industry with parts.

00:22:24 ◼   ► So like, they don't buy Intel,

00:22:26 ◼   ► you don't see them buying AMD or Nvidia,

00:22:28 ◼   ► they don't buy like a flash ram manufacturer

00:22:30 ◼   ► or attempt to buy Samsung,

00:22:32 ◼   ► 'cause half their components come from Samsung.

00:22:33 ◼   ► Like, there are lots of these component suppliers

00:22:37 ◼   ► that make all sorts of parts that go in multiple kinds

00:22:42 ◼   ► of computers or phones or whatever else, not just Apples.

00:22:46 ◼   ► And Apple, you could make an argument that Apple

00:22:48 ◼   ► should maybe buy Intel or something like that.

00:22:51 ◼   ► You know, if we ever talk about the Mac lineup

00:22:54 ◼   ► being so stale, again, this episode,

00:22:56 ◼   ► 'cause we talk about it every episode

00:22:57 ◼   ► because it's a really big problem.

00:22:59 ◼   ► You know, you could look at that and be like,

00:23:00 ◼   ► well maybe Apple should just buy Intel

00:23:01 ◼   ► and run that company in their own interest.

00:23:04 ◼   ► But, you know, there's a reason why they don't,

00:23:06 ◼   ► there's lots of reasons why they don't.

00:23:08 ◼   ► First of all, Apple tends to not buy companies at that large

00:23:11 ◼   ► because they tend not to need to.

00:23:14 ◼   ► I would imagine they have some kind of deal

00:23:17 ◼   ► with the ARM license that they have,

00:23:19 ◼   ► 'cause they have a special license

00:23:20 ◼   ► to be able to do their own chip designs with that.

00:23:23 ◼   ► I don't know the details of that,

00:23:24 ◼   ► we'll probably hear about it from our readers,

00:23:26 ◼   ► but basically I would imagine they have ways

00:23:29 ◼   ► to not get locked out of that forever,

00:23:31 ◼   ► so they kinda don't need to buy ARM.

00:23:32 ◼   ► And if they did ever try to buy one of these companies

00:23:34 ◼   ► that also supplies the rest of the industry

00:23:36 ◼   ► with major important parts, like Intel or ARM,

00:23:40 ◼   ► there would probably be regulatory issues with that.

00:23:43 ◼   ► That would probably not be great for them

00:23:45 ◼   ► with the Justice Department and with the FTC maybe,

00:23:48 ◼   ► or whoever does that kind of regulatory management.

00:23:51 ◼   ► There'd be political problems with that,

00:23:53 ◼   ► there might be justice problems, antitrust problems.

00:23:55 ◼   ► So there's lots of reasons for them not to buy these companies that also supply everybody

00:23:59 ◼   ► else with stuff.

00:24:00 ◼   ► What I think about is not so much who the companies supply, but could Apple get that

00:24:06 ◼   ► same thing from somewhere else?

00:24:08 ◼   ► And most things I can think of, like Intel, it's like, "Oh, you can't get x86 CPUs anywhere

00:24:12 ◼   ► else."

00:24:13 ◼   ► Well, you can't.

00:24:14 ◼   ► You can get them from AMD.

00:24:15 ◼   ► It's not a lot of choices, but there is at least one other choice out there.

00:24:18 ◼   ► For flash RAM, other things like that, even the glass stuff, you could argue that no one

00:24:24 ◼   ► has the specific kind of glass that they want except for corning or whatever but like you

00:24:29 ◼   ► can get glass from somewhere else but because what Arm supplies Arm doesn't make anything

00:24:35 ◼   ► what all Arm supplies is intellectual property essentially licensing like they don't you

00:24:39 ◼   ► know they license out designs and the right to use this instruction set and all that stuff

00:24:45 ◼   ► I don't think you can get that anywhere else there is no alternate supplier for that so

00:24:49 ◼   ► if for example Softbank buys Arm and slowly transitions the company away not that they're

00:24:54 ◼   ► going to do this, but like decides that Arm is going to become a company that does augmented

00:24:58 ◼   ► reality games where you collect monsters because it seems like a more lucrative future.

00:25:01 ◼   ► Apple can't, I don't think Apple, no matter what contracts they have, the best they could hope for

00:25:07 ◼   ► is like you can continue to make chips according to the designs that you've already licensed,

00:25:11 ◼   ► but there will be no new designs, and by the way, you can't make your own designs without licensing

00:25:16 ◼   ► these patents from us or without otherwise buying the intellectual property that underlies that.

00:25:20 ◼   ► Like because of the weird accidents of history that x86 and AMD being able to make x86 compatible chips

00:25:26 ◼   ► I don't think there's any equivalent for that arm

00:25:28 ◼   ► And I'm sure people will send it in send us in corrections if that's not the case

00:25:32 ◼   ► I'm off follow up on the next show, but I I keep thinking about it in terms of

00:25:38 ◼   ► Is there an alternate supplier like how how important is armed Apple and what are their alternatives if something?

00:25:45 ◼   ► Weird starts to happen there and I also think about this and speaking of Macs a lot of questions

00:25:49 ◼   ► we've gotten about this with the ARM deals, like, does this make it more or less likely

00:25:53 ◼   ► that ARM Macs are going to come out?

00:25:55 ◼   ► Did WWC, like, do any of these announcements indicate ARM Macs?

00:25:59 ◼   ► Why haven't we already seen ARM Macs?

00:26:00 ◼   ► And me thinking about ARM Macs for a while again, I thought, like, x86 Macs, again, worst

00:26:07 ◼   ► case scenario, you have two suppliers that you could convince to make you x86 CPUs.

00:26:14 ◼   ► I guess if you have enough money, anything's possible.

00:26:16 ◼   ► You're like, all right. Well, someone will license us the ability to make our own arm check

00:26:20 ◼   ► Someone will license us the ability to make our own XA like we'll just buy the intellectual property like we're never stuck

00:26:24 ◼   ► Because huge piles of money is a get out of jail free card

00:26:27 ◼   ► So it doesn't really matter what happens over there until there are problems. Don't worry about it. But like for the arm max like

00:26:34 ◼   ► Is it Apple spends a lot of money?

00:26:37 ◼   ► Making the a you know, I'm gonna say X or whatever the the a followed by a digit system on a chip things that are in

00:26:45 ◼   ► all their devices. They hired a lot of people, they bought a lot of companies, they do a

00:26:49 ◼   ► lot of work on their own, their chips are not like, "Oh, we'll just license a design

00:26:53 ◼   ► from Arm and pay someone to manufacture it." They do their own chip design, their own integration.

00:26:59 ◼   ► It's very expensive, very complicated. It's a part of Apple's competitive advantage.

00:27:03 ◼   ► Is the Mac line, which we're about to talk about the ongoing stagnation, is the Mac line

00:27:08 ◼   ► worth doing an equal or possibly even greater investment in chip design to essentially do

00:27:16 ◼   ► what Intel and AMD and NVIDIA or whoever, you know, all the parts that make up the parts that

00:27:22 ◼   ► go into a Mac, they're not simple parts. They're complicated. They're higher performance things

00:27:27 ◼   ► that go into phones. They are generally bigger. They have more transistors. If you are going to

00:27:33 ◼   ► sign up, say, we're going to do our Macs because we can own and control the CPUs that go into them

00:27:36 ◼   ► and we can make them just the way we want them.

00:27:38 ◼   ► That is a big investment,

00:27:40 ◼   ► probably equal to the investment they're putting

00:27:42 ◼   ► into the iPhone system on chips for a line of business

00:27:45 ◼   ► that is nowhere near the size of the iOS line.

00:27:48 ◼   ► So maybe the thing that's keeping our Macs away

00:27:49 ◼   ► is not that Apple would like to get away from Intel,

00:27:52 ◼   ► who's delaying their products and it's kind of annoying,

00:27:54 ◼   ► but just because it would cost so much money

00:27:56 ◼   ► for Apple to make a,

00:27:58 ◼   ► like we spent a lot of past shows talking about,

00:28:00 ◼   ► can Apple make an ARM chip that's competitive Intel?

00:28:02 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe, but it would cost a lot of money.

00:28:06 ◼   ► It's not easy to do that.

00:28:07 ◼   ► What Intel does is not simple,

00:28:08 ◼   ► and I'm not quite sure that Apple thinks

00:28:11 ◼   ► the Mac hardware line is worth it, is worth the investment.

00:28:14 ◼   ► - And you could also argue that things with Intel

00:28:18 ◼   ► aren't bad enough yet.

00:28:19 ◼   ► This is gonna bleed into our next topic a lot,

00:28:22 ◼   ► but in order for Apple to switch from PowerPC to Intel,

00:28:27 ◼   ► things had to get pretty bad with PowerPC for a while,

00:28:31 ◼   ► and Intel was way better.

00:28:35 ◼   ► there had to be this massive delta between the status quo of them using PowerPC and being,

00:28:40 ◼   ► you know, really having a problematic roadmap and pretty bad neglect and becoming very much

00:28:45 ◼   ► uncompetitive with the other side, and then having the other side being Intel be really

00:28:50 ◼   ► compelling and have very few downsides to switching to it, and just these massive upsides.

00:28:56 ◼   ► And I think right now if you look at like, you know, what they have with Intel versus

00:28:59 ◼   ► what a possible future with ARM Macs would be, I don't think the delta between those

00:29:03 ◼   ► those two was nearly as large as it used to be,

00:29:06 ◼   ► between PowerPC and Intel.

00:29:08 ◼   ► The delta now is like, well Intel,

00:29:10 ◼   ► yeah Intel is really slow to make new chips,

00:29:13 ◼   ► but their chips that they do release, mostly,

00:29:16 ◼   ► are really good.

00:29:17 ◼   ► Like there are occasional problems,

00:29:19 ◼   ► but for the most part, they are very competitive.

00:29:22 ◼   ► That's one of the reasons why Apple doesn't use AMD CPUs.

00:29:25 ◼   ► As you know, they could use,

00:29:27 ◼   ► what are AMD CPUs even called these days?

00:29:30 ◼   ► Are they still Opterons and stuff or?

00:29:32 ◼   ► I don't even know.

00:29:33 ◼   ► What, you know, AMD CPUs aren't very competitive

00:29:36 ◼   ► with Intel CPUs and haven't been for some time

00:29:38 ◼   ► in most markets that Apple would ship computers in.

00:29:41 ◼   ► Intel CPUs are just really good.

00:29:43 ◼   ► Yeah, they have dramatically slowed down

00:29:46 ◼   ► their rate of improvement and new releases

00:29:48 ◼   ► and all these new releases always keep getting delayed

00:29:50 ◼   ► and everything, but they still use them

00:29:52 ◼   ► because for the most part they're really good.

00:29:55 ◼   ► And it's using all these proven platforms,

00:29:57 ◼   ► you know, as John said, like all the parts

00:29:59 ◼   ► that go into a full computer, I mean, yeah,

00:30:01 ◼   ► they do some degree of it on the phones

00:30:04 ◼   ► and on the A-series system on chips there,

00:30:07 ◼   ► but computers have all these different ports

00:30:09 ◼   ► and standards they have to do and everything.

00:30:11 ◼   ► On a phone, Apple can't delete ports fast enough.

00:30:13 ◼   ► Like, they're just, "Oh yeah, we started out with two,

00:30:15 ◼   ► "we're gonna have one now."

00:30:17 ◼   ► Like, "Oh, and it'll be ours that we design."

00:30:18 ◼   ► Like, computers have to have like four USB ports

00:30:21 ◼   ► and have all these video out standards and all this.

00:30:24 ◼   ► Computers have to have, I mean, well, most computers,

00:30:26 ◼   ► I guess the MacBook One doesn't, but most computers,

00:30:29 ◼   ► you have to have all these standards

00:30:30 ◼   ► that the computing industry uses.

00:30:31 ◼   ► all these disk interfaces and IO interfaces

00:30:36 ◼   ► and all this stuff that you don't really have to think

00:30:39 ◼   ► about much when you're just designing iPhones and iPads

00:30:41 ◼   ► because they don't use them or they don't need

00:30:43 ◼   ► to interoperate with most of these devices.

00:30:46 ◼   ► So there's all this stuff that a computer needs

00:30:49 ◼   ► and all this competitiveness that Intel offers

00:30:51 ◼   ► that the difference between Intel now

00:30:55 ◼   ► having a slow release cycle but providing quite a lot

00:30:59 ◼   ► when they do finally release it,

00:31:01 ◼   ► versus what you'd have to do

00:31:03 ◼   ► to build up an entire computer line using ARM CPUs.

00:31:08 ◼   ► The amount of work on the other side is so tremendous,

00:31:11 ◼   ► and the gain probably wouldn't be that big.

00:31:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, and on top of that,

00:31:15 ◼   ► I feel like Apple and Intel have

00:31:17 ◼   ► at least an okay relationship, right?

00:31:19 ◼   ► Because it wasn't that long ago

00:31:21 ◼   ► that I think it was the first MacBook Air

00:31:24 ◼   ► Intel created this completely one-off chip,

00:31:27 ◼   ► the CPU for the MacBook Air.

00:31:29 ◼   ► Am I crazy in thinking that?

00:31:30 ◼   ► Do you remember this?

00:31:31 ◼   ► - Well, it was a one-off packaging.

00:31:34 ◼   ► They didn't create a whole custom chip design,

00:31:36 ◼   ► but they created a custom socket and package for the chips

00:31:41 ◼   ► to make the whole socket small.

00:31:43 ◼   ► - Sure, I still count it.

00:31:44 ◼   ► My point is just that they were able to ask Intel

00:31:48 ◼   ► or tell Intel, whatever the situation may be,

00:31:51 ◼   ► "Hey, we need this thing completely custom to us.

00:31:54 ◼   ► "We're cool, right?"

00:31:55 ◼   ► And turns out they're cool, and Intel did it.

00:31:58 ◼   ► and everyone was happy except the people who bought

00:32:01 ◼   ► that MacBook Air because it was a total turd.

00:32:02 ◼   ► Hi Marco.

00:32:03 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:32:06 ◼   ► The question is, as we've been dancing around,

00:32:11 ◼   ► is this hardware stagnation that we really need

00:32:14 ◼   ► to talk about again, because we do need to talk about it,

00:32:17 ◼   ► is this hardware stagnation really Intel's fault

00:32:19 ◼   ► or is it Apple's fault?

00:32:20 ◼   ► - Before we move on to that,

00:32:22 ◼   ► a few more points on ARM versus Intel.

00:32:24 ◼   ► We've talked before about the performance delta

00:32:26 ◼   ► and how it needs to be big enough to be worthwhile

00:32:28 ◼   ► And then in past conversations, it also brought up this point, which I'll bring up again,

00:32:31 ◼   ► which is really it's not about the performance delta.

00:32:33 ◼   ► The reason Apple will be doing it is for increased control.

00:32:37 ◼   ► So I think the real question to ask, other than the cost thing, which I just brought

00:32:39 ◼   ► up for ARM versus Intel, is how much more control does moving Macs to ARM give Apple

00:32:47 ◼   ► than it currently has with Intel?

00:32:48 ◼   ► And as Casey just pointed out, it's a pretty high bar because it's like, well, if Apple

00:32:54 ◼   ► did their own chips, they could control everything.

00:32:56 ◼   ► They would control the schedule.

00:32:57 ◼   ► They would control the features.

00:32:58 ◼   ► control, everything that they possibly do. But it seemed like for the past many years,

00:33:02 ◼   ► Apple controls an awful lot about what Intel does in terms of, I don't know, forcing them,

00:33:07 ◼   ► but really strongly suggesting that they improve the embedded GPUs in their CPUs and making

00:33:12 ◼   ► like this whole line of products, the ones that Apple buys with the Iris graphics and

00:33:16 ◼   ► everything, that whole product line just smells like Apple saying, "Intel, for the next several

00:33:21 ◼   ► generations of chips, here's what we want out of your chips." And then Intel essentially

00:33:23 ◼   ► doing it because Apple is, I would imagine, the biggest and in some cases perhaps the

00:33:28 ◼   ► only customer for these weird chips because all the cheaper x86 windows laptop type things

00:33:35 ◼   ► or whatever are just like, well, maybe we'll have a top of the line thing, but our bread

00:33:39 ◼   ► and butter will be those middle of the road ones, which is another reason that Apple has

00:33:42 ◼   ► to wait a lot.

00:33:43 ◼   ► So certainly Apple would have more control with ARM, but it would cost them a ton of

00:33:47 ◼   ► money to make ARM chips for the Mac.

00:33:49 ◼   ► And Intel thus far seems pretty willing to do essentially whatever Apple wants with the

00:33:53 ◼   ► chips it's just a question of delivery and Apple could say well the increased control we would have

00:33:58 ◼   ► is even though Intel is pretty nice to us and we have a good relationship and they're pretty much

00:34:02 ◼   ► willing to do the kinds of things we asked for they take a long time and sometimes they screw up

00:34:06 ◼   ► and we feel like if we did it ourselves we would do a better job and the second aspect of this is

00:34:12 ◼   ► like for the performance delta and waiting for things to catch up another possible strategy again

00:34:18 ◼   ► possibly mentioned on past shows is you don't have to worry about it costing so much money to make an

00:34:23 ◼   ► an ARM chip for your Mac, all you gotta do is wait until the iPad Pro is faster than

00:34:28 ◼   ► all the existing Macs, and then just use that chip that you've already made for your bread

00:34:32 ◼   ► and butter iOS devices, use that in Macs too. Because at that point, like if those lines

00:34:38 ◼   ► ever cross and it's like, well, and they're getting close, like the top end iPad Pro and

00:34:43 ◼   ► the bottom end MacBook, we looked at those numbers in the past, like eventually if things,

00:34:50 ◼   ► the rate of change keeps going the way they are, and the system-mounted chips that are

00:34:55 ◼   ► in iOS devices keep adding more power with a similar power envelope, assuming battery

00:35:01 ◼   ► technology is only increasing like 5 or 10 percent per year or whatever, and that the

00:35:05 ◼   ► Mac ones, their rate of performance increase is not going up that fast, those lines can

00:35:12 ◼   ► end up crossing, and it's like, "Oh, finally, we don't have to do some weird extra investment

00:35:16 ◼   ► to end up with ARM chips that we can use in our laptop Macs.

00:35:19 ◼   ► We already do that investment for our phones

00:35:21 ◼   ► and iPads and whatever.

00:35:23 ◼   ► And it's kind of the same way that the iPads

00:35:25 ◼   ► have these chips.

00:35:25 ◼   ► Like the only reason they have those chips

00:35:26 ◼   ► is because they need them for the phones.

00:35:27 ◼   ► 'Cause certainly on the iPad

00:35:28 ◼   ► is not making the iPhone kind of money.

00:35:30 ◼   ► So the rising tide of the iPhone

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00:37:54 ◼   ► - So MacRumors has a really lovely buyer's guide

00:38:02 ◼   ► where they go through the hardware

00:38:05 ◼   ► in all the different hardware lines, product lines,

00:38:07 ◼   ► and they say, "Hey, you probably shouldn't get this

00:38:09 ◼   ► "right now because they're probably gonna release,

00:38:12 ◼   ► "Apple's probably gonna release a new one soon."

00:38:14 ◼   ► And so, you know, coming up on the fall, as we are,

00:38:18 ◼   ► the iPhone, for example, is labeled as caution.

00:38:21 ◼   ► The iPad Pro, neutral, yeah, it's probably okay.

00:38:24 ◼   ► - We should clarify, this is based on actual, like,

00:38:26 ◼   ► data from past generations, I mean, this,

00:38:29 ◼   ► the MacRumors buying guide has been running,

00:38:31 ◼   ► it's, you know how, like, you know,

00:38:33 ◼   ► in whatever the biggest, well-known,

00:38:36 ◼   ► oldest steak restaurant in your town,

00:38:38 ◼   ► and people say, "Oh, that place is an institution."

00:38:41 ◼   ► The MacRumors buying guide is an institution

00:38:44 ◼   ► in the MacNurdery circles.

00:38:46 ◼   ► - All right, all right, noobs, all right.

00:38:48 ◼   ► - Okay, yeah.

00:38:49 ◼   ► All right, grandpa. - Yes, oh, man.

00:38:51 ◼   ► Yes, how would you like to correct us?

00:38:52 ◼   ► - Let me tell you about Mac in touch, okay?

00:38:54 ◼   ► No, go on. (laughs)

00:38:55 ◼   ► - And so this is based on,

00:38:58 ◼   ► they look at how often these products are updated,

00:39:01 ◼   ► And so they know, okay, well the MacBook Pro, say,

00:39:04 ◼   ► is updated on average every 400 days or whatever it is.

00:39:08 ◼   ► They look back on history and they know

00:39:10 ◼   ► for every product line, what is the average interval

00:39:12 ◼   ► between updates?

00:39:13 ◼   ► And that's how they can tell you with a reasonable degree

00:39:16 ◼   ► of approximate surety that like, okay, well,

00:39:21 ◼   ► the Mac Mini is usually updated every,

00:39:25 ◼   ► what is it, like 800 days or whatever.

00:39:27 ◼   ► I don't even know what the average is for the Mac Mini.

00:39:29 ◼   ► and it's been 700 days since the last one,

00:39:32 ◼   ► so you probably shouldn't buy one now.

00:39:33 ◼   ► It's that kind of thing.

00:39:34 ◼   ► - Yep, the average for the Mac mini, 438 days.

00:39:37 ◼   ► We are currently running at 643.

00:39:39 ◼   ► - There you go.

00:39:40 ◼   ► - So, yeah, there you go.

00:39:41 ◼   ► - That's lower than I would have guessed, honestly.

00:39:43 ◼   ► - Well, so this website, this webpage, by the way,

00:39:45 ◼   ► which I encourage everyone to go to,

00:39:47 ◼   ► and let me put it in the notes,

00:39:48 ◼   ► must be the most infuriating webpage

00:39:52 ◼   ► to Apple executives and probably Phil Schiller in particular,

00:39:55 ◼   ► because, look at that, because at the top of this page,

00:39:58 ◼   ► especially when you hit the Mac tab,

00:40:00 ◼   ► which we'll give you the link to.

00:40:01 ◼   ► It shows the picture of all Apple's current Mac products,

00:40:03 ◼   ► the name of them, and underneath it, like you said,

00:40:06 ◼   ► they have these things like,

00:40:07 ◼   ► "Oh, you should buy Neutral or don't buy."

00:40:08 ◼   ► And the Mac thing shows their products right next to it

00:40:11 ◼   ► with a red button saying, "Don't buy, don't buy, don't buy."

00:40:14 ◼   ► This is exactly the opposite message

00:40:16 ◼   ► that Apple wants anywhere on the internet.

00:40:18 ◼   ► All of its products are arrayed in a big line

00:40:20 ◼   ► with red things that say, "Don't buy."

00:40:22 ◼   ► Can you imagine a more sort of viscerally upsetting web page

00:40:27 ◼   ► people whose job it is to sell Macs and I guess you got the green one on the

00:40:30 ◼   ► MacBook that says buy now but it's just it's such a weird thing to see Apple's

00:40:34 ◼   ► product photography next to huge red buttons that say don't buy it's harsh but

00:40:40 ◼   ► harsh but fair it's a good time for the Mac bone so there's that yeah this is

00:40:46 ◼   ► really sad so everything they everything except the MacBook one the air the pro

00:40:51 ◼   ► the MacBook Pro the retina MacBook Pro god I forgot that there's a distinction

00:40:54 ◼   ► there. The iMac, the Mac Mini, the Mac Pro. That's 945 days since the last release, December 2013.

00:41:03 ◼   ► And you guys were so excited. Remember those days? Anyway, all of this says don't buy. And it's

00:41:08 ◼   ► getting, I don't know, it's getting a little bit ridiculous, right? On the one side, why does one

00:41:16 ◼   ► need a brand new computer? Like, let's suppose that the CPU was modern, which it's not really

00:41:23 ◼   ► these days. But I mean the industrial design, it's this unibody setup has been around for

00:41:28 ◼   ► a few years. Like Stephen Hackett's video review of the kind of history of modern Apple

00:41:35 ◼   ► laptops goes through this. And you know, they don't look that different than they have ever

00:41:39 ◼   ► used to. They've, you know, upgraded the internals, made it a little thinner, you know, improved

00:41:43 ◼   ► battery life actually. Wouldn't be nice to get that on the iOS side. But, you know, what

00:41:48 ◼   ► do you really need from a brand new computer? Like if it wasn't for the fact that these

00:41:52 ◼   ► chips are all getting a little bit long in the tooth, I don't think this would be that egregious.

00:41:56 ◼   ► I'm not looking for a brand new form factor in my work MacBook Pro. Now, remind me of that when they

00:42:01 ◼   ► do something amazing and I must have it. But... In like two months. Yeah, exactly. But I tell you

00:42:07 ◼   ► what, man, this is sad times. And it's just, it's gotten to the point, I mean, looking at these

00:42:13 ◼   ► numbers, 281 days, 428 days, 499 days, 643 days, 945 days, like these, we're measuring in years.

00:42:21 ◼   ► It's unreal. Like what are they doing? How is this okay?

00:42:26 ◼   ► You know to some degree this isn't just like Santa Claus like, you know, Santa/Apple

00:42:31 ◼   ► We we just deserve new things because it's time, you know

00:42:34 ◼   ► There has to be something that they update the internals to like, you know that and so you have to again

00:42:39 ◼   ► Look at that supply chain. Look at Intel especially because that's that's where a lot of this is based. You have to say alright

00:42:44 ◼   ► well, is there something else that they could be updating to that they're just not like Apple doesn't just

00:42:50 ◼   ► arbitrarily decide, you know what, next month,

00:42:54 ◼   ► we're gonna give them a MacBook Pro update.

00:42:56 ◼   ► You know, like it's based on the schedules

00:42:58 ◼   ► of the components that go into it

00:42:59 ◼   ► and what they could update the components to.

00:43:02 ◼   ► In recent years, Intel has had a lot of problems

00:43:05 ◼   ► and delays getting their new stuff out

00:43:08 ◼   ► and so much of this is based on that.

00:43:09 ◼   ► And we've talked about this before,

00:43:11 ◼   ► so I'm gonna try not to repeat too much ground here.

00:43:13 ◼   ► So a lot of these things are just,

00:43:15 ◼   ► the newest Intel chips are what's holding this up

00:43:17 ◼   ► and they aren't available yet

00:43:18 ◼   ► or they're not available in quantity yet

00:43:20 ◼   ► or the ones that Apple would use aren't available

00:43:22 ◼   ► even though the rest of the family might be.

00:43:24 ◼   ► And that's the case with a lot of these.

00:43:26 ◼   ► The products that tend to sell in very high volumes,

00:43:29 ◼   ► the new MacBook, the Retina MacBook Pro, and the iMac,

00:43:33 ◼   ► tend to be kept up to date fairly responsibly.

00:43:36 ◼   ► If Intel has released a new generation of CPUs

00:43:40 ◼   ► that is the appropriate size and cost

00:43:43 ◼   ► and heat and power needs for these certain lines,

00:43:47 ◼   ► Apple tends to update to them in a reasonable amount of time.

00:43:50 ◼   ► So if you're buying like an iMac,

00:43:53 ◼   ► I mean the iMac has not been neglected at all.

00:43:55 ◼   ► The iMac has really been very solidly updated

00:43:58 ◼   ► I think for a long time now.

00:44:00 ◼   ► It's been pretty competitive.

00:44:01 ◼   ► The MacBook Pro usually has been.

00:44:03 ◼   ► We've had some problems recently but usually has been.

00:44:06 ◼   ► And again those problems are often Intel's fault.

00:44:09 ◼   ► Where it really becomes a problem

00:44:11 ◼   ► is when Apple gets neglectful of the lines

00:44:15 ◼   ► that are more specialized,

00:44:16 ◼   ► that presumably don't sell in very high volumes.

00:44:19 ◼   ► And that's things like the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro.

00:44:22 ◼   ► And it also becomes a problem on the lines

00:44:24 ◼   ► that Apple is kind of slowly phasing out

00:44:26 ◼   ► because they've made better lines.

00:44:28 ◼   ► That includes things like the MacBook Air

00:44:29 ◼   ► and the non-retina MacBook Pro.

00:44:31 ◼   ► In these kind of areas, Apple doesn't use every generation

00:44:35 ◼   ► of new stuff that becomes available from Intel.

00:44:38 ◼   ► This is what I think frustrates a lot of people is,

00:44:40 ◼   ► you know, in the case of the Mac Pro,

00:44:42 ◼   ► which is one of the more egregious examples of this,

00:44:45 ◼   ► new Xeons that are appropriate for use in the Mac Pro

00:44:48 ◼   ► only come out about every 18 months.

00:44:51 ◼   ► The problem comes that if Apple decides

00:44:53 ◼   ► to skip a generation of those,

00:44:54 ◼   ► if a new generation of Xeons comes out

00:44:56 ◼   ► and Apple decides for whatever reason,

00:44:59 ◼   ► you know, it's not worth us updating the Mac Pro

00:45:02 ◼   ► to this new generation.

00:45:03 ◼   ► Not only has it probably already been like 18 months

00:45:05 ◼   ► since the last update,

00:45:06 ◼   ► but now they're signing themselves up

00:45:08 ◼   ► for another 18 months with no update, basically.

00:45:11 ◼   ► And it could be longer if there's any delay in Intel side,

00:45:13 ◼   ► which again, has been happening with increasing frequency

00:45:15 ◼   ► in recent years.

00:45:17 ◼   ► When they choose to just say, you know,

00:45:18 ◼   ► it's not worth updating to this,

00:45:19 ◼   ► that is really a position of hubris

00:45:22 ◼   ► and of arrogance and neglect of these products

00:45:25 ◼   ► and that is what irritates me about it.

00:45:27 ◼   ► If Intel has a problem and it holds up the release

00:45:29 ◼   ► of something that has the last generation chips in it,

00:45:32 ◼   ► like the iMac, it doesn't really bother me as much

00:45:34 ◼   ► because I know it's not really Apple's fault.

00:45:36 ◼   ► But when it comes to things like the Mac Mini

00:45:37 ◼   ► and the Mac Pro, where Apple could be updating these things,

00:45:40 ◼   ► there were chips they could have used

00:45:42 ◼   ► and they just skipped them because they just don't care.

00:45:45 ◼   ► That is infuriating and it really shows a level of disdain for your customers.

00:45:50 ◼   ► It takes a certain degree of shamelessness and of arrogance and hubris to be still selling

00:45:57 ◼   ► the same Mac Pro today.

00:45:59 ◼   ► If you walk into the Apple store you can still buy the same Mac Pro today that you could

00:46:03 ◼   ► order in December of 2013.

00:46:05 ◼   ► The price is exactly the same.

00:46:07 ◼   ► The configurations are exactly the same.

00:46:09 ◼   ► There have been no new options for this.

00:46:10 ◼   ► this computer that you said, we're betting the future

00:46:13 ◼   ► on high GPU power, and then we're not gonna update

00:46:18 ◼   ► the GPUs for three years, or make them upgradeable

00:46:21 ◼   ► aftermarket?

00:46:21 ◼   ► - You finally got to my pet issue.

00:46:23 ◼   ► You keep saying, oh, there's no new CPUs.

00:46:25 ◼   ► Who cares about the CPU?

00:46:26 ◼   ► There are new GPUs every single year.

00:46:28 ◼   ► There are new GPUs.

00:46:29 ◼   ► So you're gonna like, well, you would update it,

00:46:31 ◼   ► but there's no new Intel CPUs.

00:46:33 ◼   ► First of all, you can upgrade to higher clock speeds.

00:46:36 ◼   ► Even though there's no CPU designs,

00:46:37 ◼   ► maybe it's easier to get the ones that are binned

00:46:38 ◼   ► for higher clock speeds.

00:46:39 ◼   ► all, every year, almost every year, you can upgrade GPUs. But that doesn't even count.

00:46:44 ◼   ► Like, it's not even a consideration. And like, you're right, it's the most absurd on the

00:46:47 ◼   ► GPU festooned Mac Pro machine. I think it's also absurd on just every other line of computers.

00:46:54 ◼   ► Like, even if there is absolutely no new CPU, either lower the price or put a new GPU in

00:46:59 ◼   ► it or update the chipset from, you know, in the olden days, USB 2 to 3 or 3 to 3.1. Or

00:47:05 ◼   ► like, there are things that you can do. I mean, if you want to see the things that you

00:47:07 ◼   ► do you do? What can you do to update a computer that often? Just look at every single PC manufacturer.

00:47:12 ◼   ► They always find some way to bump the specs little by little. I'm not saying Apple should

00:47:16 ◼   ► do it like what Dell does, but the idea that there's nothing you can improve in the hardware

00:47:20 ◼   ► if Intel doesn't release a brand new CPU design, either a shrink or a new architecture, I don't

00:47:25 ◼   ► even buy that. But I'm willing to say, I'm willing to accept that cadence if the CPU

00:47:30 ◼   ► cadence is reasonable. But once the CPU cadence starts going on 18 months, like I said for

00:47:33 ◼   ► the Mac Pro, not only should you not skip generations, you shouldn't even wait for the

00:47:37 ◼   ► the next generation to give it bumps.

00:47:39 ◼   ► - Exactly, and especially, again, for a machine

00:47:41 ◼   ► where you're gonna say, this is all about GPU power,

00:47:44 ◼   ► and you're gonna design it to always have two GPUs,

00:47:46 ◼   ► you're not even going to allow people to buy one GPU,

00:47:49 ◼   ► and you're gonna put in these kind of half-covered

00:47:51 ◼   ► on Asterisk workstation class GPUs on them,

00:47:53 ◼   ► and then to not update the GPUs for three years

00:47:57 ◼   ► and still be selling them at the same price,

00:47:59 ◼   ► and to not make them upgradable.

00:48:01 ◼   ► If you're really gonna say, the Mac Pro

00:48:04 ◼   ► is all about GPU power.

00:48:06 ◼   ► They have to be upgradable aftermarket, period.

00:48:10 ◼   ► And if for some reason you really insist

00:48:13 ◼   ► on making them not upgradable,

00:48:15 ◼   ► you have to be updating them on a regular basis.

00:48:17 ◼   ► Every nine to 12 months, there has to be a GPU,

00:48:20 ◼   ► 'cause that's what's competitive in the GPU world.

00:48:23 ◼   ► And for that not to be happening on the Mac Pro,

00:48:26 ◼   ► Phil Schiller stood up there

00:48:27 ◼   ► and told us about his ass innovation.

00:48:29 ◼   ► - Can't innovate anymore, my ass.

00:48:31 ◼   ► - Now there's just been nothing, it's embarrassing.

00:48:33 ◼   ► And it really, again, I can't understate how much this,

00:48:37 ◼   ► it looks like Apple just giving a middle finger

00:48:39 ◼   ► to its customers on these things.

00:48:41 ◼   ► If you're a Mac Pro buyer, if you're a Mac Mini buyer,

00:48:44 ◼   ► if you're a MacBook Air buyer,

00:48:46 ◼   ► Apple is just giving us the giant finger on these things

00:48:49 ◼   ► for the last few years.

00:48:50 ◼   ► And the Mac Mini is, as I mentioned last time,

00:48:53 ◼   ► the Mac Mini is also especially bad

00:48:55 ◼   ► because the previous update, which itself was very late,

00:48:59 ◼   ► in many ways made the product worse.

00:49:01 ◼   ► And so like if you actually measure by days

00:49:03 ◼   ► since the Mac Mini has gotten universally better,

00:49:06 ◼   ► it's a much longer number.

00:49:09 ◼   ► But it really is a problem here.

00:49:11 ◼   ► And John, I think you're right.

00:49:13 ◼   ► They have to find ways that they can update the computers

00:49:16 ◼   ► without waiting for Intel

00:49:18 ◼   ► if they're gonna be skipping generations.

00:49:19 ◼   ► And honestly, they have to just stop skipping generations.

00:49:23 ◼   ► Because the Mac Mini, yeah, it's a low-end computer for them

00:49:28 ◼   ► but it isn't a low-end computer for the people who buy it.

00:49:30 ◼   ► It's like $1,000 at least for a well-configured one.

00:49:33 ◼   ► Generally, if you're buying the Mac Mini,

00:49:35 ◼   ► unless you have some kind of special role for it,

00:49:38 ◼   ► like buying it to be a server or something else,

00:49:40 ◼   ► but if you're buying it to be your Mac,

00:49:42 ◼   ► that is a low-end Mac, you're probably buying it

00:49:44 ◼   ► because you need that value,

00:49:47 ◼   ► the money matters a lot to you

00:49:48 ◼   ► and you're kind of stretching to buy it.

00:49:50 ◼   ► To have the customer experience of wanting to get into a Mac

00:49:54 ◼   ► and just barely being able to afford one

00:49:56 ◼   ► and having to choose the Mac Mini

00:49:57 ◼   ► or wanting to choose the Mac Mini for your needs

00:49:59 ◼   ► and then to have this neglected insulting machine

00:50:04 ◼   ► be the one that Apple will sell you,

00:50:06 ◼   ► that is not a way to get more people to buy Macs.

00:50:08 ◼   ► That is not a way to get people to be happy about buying Macs.

00:50:10 ◼   ► That's going to hurt customer sat,

00:50:11 ◼   ► Tim's wonderful customer sat.

00:50:13 ◼   ► It's a position of arrogance that plays

00:50:16 ◼   ► into all the negative stereotypes about Apple

00:50:18 ◼   ► that people have had since the '90s

00:50:20 ◼   ► that we keep trying to convince the world,

00:50:23 ◼   ► as Mac owners, no, it's not like that,

00:50:25 ◼   ► these really are great computers,

00:50:26 ◼   ► they're great values, they're not overpriced.

00:50:28 ◼   ► Apple's not helping us at all here

00:50:29 ◼   ► because they're showing this incredible neglect

00:50:32 ◼   ► and selling these ancient computers

00:50:35 ◼   ► that they could have updated.

00:50:36 ◼   ► Like, again, I'm not talking about the ones

00:50:37 ◼   ► where they're waiting on Intel.

00:50:38 ◼   ► I'm talking about the ones

00:50:39 ◼   ► that they've skipped generations forever.

00:50:41 ◼   ► They just, they have to stop skipping these generations

00:50:44 ◼   ► for every product line, because you know what?

00:50:46 ◼   ► If it isn't worth updating the Mac Pro

00:50:49 ◼   ► for a Xeon generation that comes out every 18 months,

00:50:52 ◼   ► this is like a 3,000 plus dollar computer,

00:50:56 ◼   ► if it isn't worth updating that,

00:50:57 ◼   ► then discontinue the thing.

00:50:59 ◼   ► You know, don't even, don't sell computers that you are not willing to maintain to a

00:51:04 ◼   ► basic level of maintenance here.

00:51:06 ◼   ► That is just insulting.

00:51:07 ◼   ► And by the way, one more quick thing before I forget.

00:51:10 ◼   ► Right now, there's a whole bunch of very high-end buyers that are building high-end computers

00:51:16 ◼   ► with lots of GPU power because they want to use VR.

00:51:21 ◼   ► When was the last time that people really wanted to buy, in large numbers, very high-end

00:51:27 ◼   ► desktop computers with lots of GPU power.

00:51:29 ◼   ► I mean, yes, there's always been PC gamers,

00:51:31 ◼   ► but that's always been a pretty narrow market

00:51:34 ◼   ► relative to the entire PC market as a whole.

00:51:36 ◼   ► Right now, there is a surge of people

00:51:40 ◼   ► who want to buy high-end desktop-class hardware

00:51:43 ◼   ► and big GPUs, and Apple is completely missing out on this.

00:51:47 ◼   ► Some of those people might have bought Mac Pros

00:51:49 ◼   ► if they were competitive, but they're not.

00:51:51 ◼   ► Apple's totally missing out on this wave of people

00:51:53 ◼   ► buying high-end stuff, and yeah,

00:51:55 ◼   ► their numbers might not be very big,

00:51:56 ◼   ► but they're very, very profitable.

00:51:58 ◼   ► This market is extremely profitable.

00:52:00 ◼   ► And Apple's just completely blowing it.

00:52:01 ◼   ► They have blown this opportunity

00:52:03 ◼   ► that only comes around maybe every 10 years.

00:52:05 ◼   ► Or there's a lot of people who actually need

00:52:07 ◼   ► high-end hardware.

00:52:09 ◼   ► You know, for years we keep saying like,

00:52:10 ◼   ► oh well, you know, I can get away just fine

00:52:12 ◼   ► with my four-year-old, you know, 13 inch MacBook Pro,

00:52:15 ◼   ► because most needs on your computer

00:52:17 ◼   ► are pretty basic these days with modern hardware.

00:52:20 ◼   ► VR needs every bit of power it can get.

00:52:23 ◼   ► And again, these opportunities don't come very often

00:52:25 ◼   ► in the market where people actually need high-end hardware

00:52:28 ◼   ► and are willing to buy it in substantial numbers,

00:52:32 ◼   ► and Apple just missed it.

00:52:34 ◼   ► 'Cause they just don't care, and that's really unfortunate.

00:52:36 ◼   ► And it pains me, as a fan of this company,

00:52:39 ◼   ► and as a fan of high-end hardware,

00:52:40 ◼   ► it really pains me to see the level of neglect

00:52:44 ◼   ► and arrogance here that Apple has shown its pro customers,

00:52:48 ◼   ► and all of its customers, honestly.

00:52:51 ◼   ► - So let's assume for a second,

00:52:53 ◼   ► I know you've talked a lot about how a lot of these are not Intel's fault.

00:52:59 ◼   ► And I agree with you there.

00:53:00 ◼   ► But let's assume for a second that some of these are.

00:53:03 ◼   ► Don't you think—let me change how I phrase that.

00:53:08 ◼   ► Isn't there a way that Apple could kind of hint subversively, could kind of, you know,

00:53:13 ◼   ► do one of their—people familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal that this

00:53:16 ◼   ► is all Intel's fault?

00:53:17 ◼   ► Like why has—why isn't Apple some way somehow blamed Intel for this?

00:53:23 ◼   ► even quietly, if that makes any sense.

00:53:25 ◼   ► - That's not something that Apple does.

00:53:26 ◼   ► It's not an Apple move in general.

00:53:28 ◼   ► Like if they have problems with suppliers,

00:53:30 ◼   ► which they have all the time,

00:53:31 ◼   ► they find alternate suppliers,

00:53:32 ◼   ► but they don't,

00:53:33 ◼   ► they're not gonna throw the suppliers under the bus.

00:53:34 ◼   ► They don't even want us to know the suppliers exist.

00:53:36 ◼   ► And yes, we all know Intel exists,

00:53:37 ◼   ► but I, if it was Steve Jobs, maybe,

00:53:41 ◼   ► and especially if they had a new supplier lined up,

00:53:43 ◼   ► like as soon as they switched to Intel,

00:53:44 ◼   ► then it was all about throw PowerPC, IBM under the bus.

00:53:48 ◼   ► But right up until that point,

00:53:51 ◼   ► It was like IBM, G5, everything is great and they're going to have it in 3 GHz in 12 months

00:53:58 ◼   ► or whatever that promise was that he made on stage.

00:54:01 ◼   ► I really don't think it's an Apple-style move to shift the blame.

00:54:06 ◼   ► Apple accepts responsibility.

00:54:07 ◼   ► They're the ones that control their product lines.

00:54:09 ◼   ► They're not going to blame a manufacturer.

00:54:12 ◼   ► Remember whatever that Quartz plant was that was supposed to make them Quartz things for

00:54:15 ◼   ► some reason and that whole thing imploded and went bankrupt or whatever?

00:54:19 ◼   ► Yeah, Sapphire, whatever.

00:54:22 ◼   ► That happened, and we know about it because it was public news, but it's not as if Apple

00:54:26 ◼   ► is putting out — it's not an Apple move to put out a press release that blames other

00:54:31 ◼   ► companies for Apple's failure to deliver its products.

00:54:34 ◼   ► The closest you'll get is thoughts on Flash, where it's like, "Well, we ship products.

00:54:40 ◼   ► This isn't stopping us from shipping our products or changing our products, but we think this

00:54:43 ◼   ► technology is crappy for everybody."

00:54:45 ◼   ► I think that's the closest I've seen in the modern Apple era.

00:54:49 ◼   ► - And also, Apple is not going to want to admit

00:54:53 ◼   ► in any kind of public way,

00:54:54 ◼   ► even if it's through unofficial channels like that,

00:54:56 ◼   ► they're not going to even suggest the possibility

00:55:00 ◼   ► that the Mac line is old and stale and it's a problem.

00:55:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.

00:55:04 ◼   ► - They don't have those status bars on their website.

00:55:06 ◼   ► That's the best thing.

00:55:07 ◼   ► How long has this, and that's the worst.

00:55:09 ◼   ► We know it's a smart move, it's an Apple move

00:55:11 ◼   ► to not drop the price on your products

00:55:13 ◼   ► because it's all about perceived value.

00:55:15 ◼   ► Not driving the price for the whole year,

00:55:18 ◼   ► That's what separates Apple from Dell.

00:55:20 ◼   ► Dell, if they're making the same thing

00:55:22 ◼   ► and there are costs of goods savings,

00:55:23 ◼   ► they will lower the price to get more enterprise sales

00:55:25 ◼   ► and whatever, blah, blah, blah, and Apple won't, right?

00:55:28 ◼   ► Not dropping the price for three years,

00:55:30 ◼   ► like who are you kidding now?

00:55:31 ◼   ► Like that stops being, we're preserving value

00:55:34 ◼   ► and it starts being just like Margo said,

00:55:36 ◼   ► punitive to your customers and you're not fooling anybody.

00:55:39 ◼   ► No one who knows anything thinks that 2013 Mac Pro

00:55:42 ◼   ► that they're still selling for the same price

00:55:44 ◼   ► is worth anything close to that price.

00:55:46 ◼   ► It is ridiculous.

00:55:47 ◼   ► I'm very curious to see what happens this fall, because all signs are pointing to this

00:55:53 ◼   ► fall being when they write these wrongs.

00:55:57 ◼   ► I can't imagine the complete meltdown that all of us are going to have.

00:56:02 ◼   ► I would say the pundits, but I think we will all melt down, the three of us will, if there's

00:56:08 ◼   ► either nothing new or extremely underwhelming things this fall.

00:56:13 ◼   ► On the flip side, is all forgiven if something at least moderately exciting happens this

00:56:19 ◼   ► fall?

00:56:20 ◼   ► I mean, we all have very, very short memories and even shorter attention spans.

00:56:23 ◼   ► If they do this fancy function row OLED screen thing that was talked about a couple of months

00:56:30 ◼   ► back or something else that's new and fancy, are they forgiven?

00:56:35 ◼   ► Is that it?

00:56:36 ◼   ► We're done?

00:56:37 ◼   ► We're good here?

00:56:38 ◼   ► Yeah, it depends on the product line that they do it to and whether that's the one you've

00:56:41 ◼   ► been waiting for as a customer or not.

00:56:43 ◼   ► By making a major upgrade to the MacBook Pro,

00:56:47 ◼   ► that's good, they should be doing that.

00:56:49 ◼   ► The MacBook Pro is probably one of their

00:56:52 ◼   ► most commonly selling models.

00:56:54 ◼   ► Certainly it's probably their highest profile model,

00:56:56 ◼   ► or the most common model among high profile buyers.

00:56:59 ◼   ► You know, the MacBook Pro is a very important product

00:57:01 ◼   ► and that's great and they should be on that.

00:57:03 ◼   ► They really should.

00:57:05 ◼   ► But if you're one of the people who's been sitting around

00:57:07 ◼   ► waiting for a Mac Pro or Mac Mini or MacBook Air update,

00:57:10 ◼   ► then that's not gonna be very satisfying to you.

00:57:12 ◼   ► Because it's like, well, okay, that's nice.

00:57:15 ◼   ► MacBook Air, maybe not as much,

00:57:16 ◼   ► 'cause the new one is probably gonna be closer to it

00:57:18 ◼   ► in size and weight, but if you're a desktop user,

00:57:20 ◼   ► you're sitting around waiting for a Mac Mini or a Mac Pro,

00:57:23 ◼   ► whether they update the MacBook Pro or not

00:57:24 ◼   ► is not incredibly relevant to you

00:57:26 ◼   ► and how happy you are with the lineup.

00:57:28 ◼   ► And by the way, I would expect neither a Mac Mini

00:57:31 ◼   ► nor a Mac Pro this fall.

00:57:33 ◼   ► Mac Mini simply because they don't care

00:57:35 ◼   ► and they hate their customers.

00:57:36 ◼   ► Mac Pro because it's falling inconveniently

00:57:38 ◼   ► between Broadwell-E and Skylake-E,

00:57:40 ◼   ► and I think they've waited this long,

00:57:41 ◼   ► they're probably gonna go straight to Skylake,

00:57:43 ◼   ► which is not a bad plan.

00:57:45 ◼   ► If there's not a Mac Pro out now,

00:57:48 ◼   ► with Broadwell-E, then you might as well

00:57:50 ◼   ► wait for Skylake-E, because it's a major upgrade,

00:57:52 ◼   ► and you already missed the Broadwell wave,

00:57:54 ◼   ► and what they should be doing

00:57:57 ◼   ► is releasing them every generation,

00:57:58 ◼   ► but if you find yourself in late 2016,

00:58:03 ◼   ► and you still haven't made a Mac Pro update,

00:58:05 ◼   ► don't make one now with Broadwell,

00:58:07 ◼   ► make one with Skylake.

00:58:08 ◼   ► I wouldn't give that advice, because like you're talking about, in case you're saying

00:58:10 ◼   ► it's all forgiven, I think it's more about regaining trust.

00:58:12 ◼   ► And what would bring some trust back is not just saying, "Oh, hey, we finally updated

00:58:18 ◼   ► the MacBooks," because you know they're going to, right?

00:58:20 ◼   ► And it's going to be good, and people are going to buy a lot of them, and everyone's

00:58:23 ◼   ► going to be happy.

00:58:24 ◼   ► You know they're going to do that.

00:58:25 ◼   ► But that doesn't regain any trust, because what you're looking for is a new pattern of

00:58:30 ◼   ► behavior, not merely, "Oh, we didn't update these computers for a really long time, and

00:58:34 ◼   ► everyone was sad, but hey, here's a new update.

00:58:35 ◼   ► Everything's great."

00:58:36 ◼   ► What you want to see is a new update followed by another new timely update, maybe followed

00:58:41 ◼   ► by another one, and then you would have your faith restored.

00:58:44 ◼   ► And to restore faith in something of the Mac Pro situation, I think what you'd have to

00:58:47 ◼   ► do is, at the very least, put out a new Mac Pro with the same CPUs but better GPUs, or

00:58:52 ◼   ► put out a Broadwell eMac Pro that you already spent time developing internally, even though

00:58:57 ◼   ► you know you're going to replace it with a Skylake, and also in the Broadwell you want

00:59:00 ◼   ► to have a new GPU.

00:59:01 ◼   ► It's like, and it's like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, that's such a big change."

00:59:03 ◼   ► you can regain that trust as quickly as possible by saying,

00:59:06 ◼   ► "Broadwell Mac Pro with new GPUs,

00:59:09 ◼   ► "Skylike Mac Pro with new GPUs."

00:59:11 ◼   ► Those two releases would be like,

00:59:13 ◼   ► "Oh, hey, I guess Apple's updating this computer again

00:59:15 ◼   ► "and now it's safe to buy and it's no longer embarrassing."

00:59:17 ◼   ► And that's such a turn from the current thing

00:59:20 ◼   ► of like skip a generation, maybe skip one more

00:59:23 ◼   ► 'cause by this point, the new ones are gonna come out.

00:59:25 ◼   ► It's like, you can always say it's like,

00:59:26 ◼   ► "We've waited so long."

00:59:27 ◼   ► - That's a good point. - The new ones

00:59:28 ◼   ► are gonna come out too and it's like,

00:59:29 ◼   ► "Well, the Skylike ones, we're not really ready

00:59:31 ◼   ► "to do that now, let's work on those."

00:59:33 ◼   ► and then you're working on the Skylake one,

00:59:34 ◼   ► it's like, well, maybe wait another year

00:59:36 ◼   ► for Thunderbolt 4 to come out.

00:59:37 ◼   ► It's like, you can always wait.

00:59:38 ◼   ► You have to release new versions of the product.

00:59:41 ◼   ► And the way to regain trust is to show

00:59:44 ◼   ► a new pattern of behavior.

00:59:46 ◼   ► And one data point does not make a line.

00:59:48 ◼   ► You need to have multiple data points to say,

00:59:50 ◼   ► not only have they revised this computer again,

00:59:52 ◼   ► but because if you were to tell them,

00:59:54 ◼   ► new Mac Pros are gonna come out

00:59:55 ◼   ► at the beginning of next year,

00:59:56 ◼   ► and there won't be another new Mac Pro for three years,

00:59:59 ◼   ► would you invest in this line of computers?

01:00:01 ◼   ► It's like I don't I don't want that cadence

01:00:04 ◼   ► I don't like that even if I buy all my computers now

01:00:06 ◼   ► Like if I get a new employee in a year do I have to buy them a year old Mac Pro if I get

01:00:11 ◼   ► A new employee in two years do I have to buy them a two year old Mac Pro like the three year cadence is not acceptable

01:00:15 ◼   ► So they have to establish a new pattern of behavior and the way to most quickly establish a new pattern behaviors rapid-fire releases and for

01:00:22 ◼   ► The Mac Pro it's right in front of them new GPUs Broadwell then Skylake

01:00:26 ◼   ► And new GPUs and all those things you could do three new revisions of the Mac Pro between now and the skylight one and that

01:00:32 ◼   ► Would go a long way to show I mean that's kind of ridiculous

01:00:34 ◼   ► But that would go a long way although Dell would do it to showing that you are

01:00:37 ◼   ► Dedicated to this product line again and for the other ones because they are kind of like on an annual cycle

01:00:43 ◼   ► Like the Mac Mini has never had the trust so you're not losing the trust there other than the crappy revision that took away the cores

01:00:48 ◼   ► Right, but it was never really there, but for the Mac books and stuffs like really that your your laptops

01:00:54 ◼   ► Those are your most portable Macs and even those are getting long in the tooth. This it's not a not a good look

01:00:59 ◼   ► So I it's I wish they showed on that page not just the gaps and everything but like a graphs where you could see

01:01:05 ◼   ► That they were kind of in a steady kind of pattern then here's this new aberration from the pattern and you have to

01:01:10 ◼   ► Restore that pattern to restore the faith in the product line

01:01:14 ◼   ► Well, if you scroll down to each of the individual like details

01:01:17 ◼   ► It shows recent releases and there's individual like bar charts for each release

01:01:23 ◼   ► So you can get you can get a sort of

01:01:26 ◼   ► Hint as to what what the normal is so you can see for the iMac for example the May 2011 update

01:01:34 ◼   ► was

01:01:35 ◼   ► 577 days since the prior one

01:01:37 ◼   ► But every other one looks like it was about

01:01:41 ◼   ► 200 to 300 days you see what I mean so yeah you can get you can get a rough guess

01:01:46 ◼   ► Just by looking at these graphs yeah

01:01:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, and a lot of these, I mean, it's kind of sad

01:01:51 ◼   ► how much seemed to stop in 2012.

01:01:54 ◼   ► This makes me so sad.

01:01:57 ◼   ► Honestly, I know it's kind of improper

01:02:01 ◼   ► to talk this simply and broadly,

01:02:04 ◼   ► but it looks like Tim Cook just doesn't like

01:02:05 ◼   ► the Mac very much.

01:02:07 ◼   ► And I hope that's not it.

01:02:08 ◼   ► I hope that's not the reason for all this,

01:02:10 ◼   ► and I hope that's not true.

01:02:11 ◼   ► But that's how it looks.

01:02:12 ◼   ► It looks like Tim Cook doesn't care about the Mac.

01:02:15 ◼   ► - He does use an iPad to do his work.

01:02:16 ◼   ► - I know.

01:02:17 ◼   ► - The iPad is the future of computing.

01:02:19 ◼   ► But like, not as if that's what he's making decisions based on, or even that's his decisions.

01:02:23 ◼   ► If he was making decisions based on this, it would be purely based on how much money

01:02:26 ◼   ► they cost to developers, how much money they bring in for the company, and how much potential

01:02:29 ◼   ► future revenue and blah blah blah.

01:02:30 ◼   ► I really don't think he's making decisions based on what computers he likes, because

01:02:33 ◼   ► that just doesn't seem like his role in the company.

01:02:36 ◼   ► But bottom line number stuff was his bag before he became CEO, and I would imagine that any

01:02:43 ◼   ► influence he does have in this would be related to that.

01:02:45 ◼   ► but more likely these decisions are made

01:02:49 ◼   ► down at a level below him and he just gives an okay on it.

01:02:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, but it is kind of like the Tim Cook way

01:02:56 ◼   ► to just keep old stuff around, just keep selling it,

01:02:59 ◼   ► you know, 'cause that still makes good enough money,

01:03:02 ◼   ► and that's how the whole Mac lineup looks right now.

01:03:04 ◼   ► And again, some of these families, that's Intel's fault,

01:03:08 ◼   ► but a lot of them it's not.

01:03:09 ◼   ► It looks like Apple has made the calculus to say,

01:03:11 ◼   ► you know, we don't really need to update the Mac very often,

01:03:14 ◼   ► They still sell anyway, and so we just won't.

01:03:17 ◼   ► We'll just let it sit there.

01:03:19 ◼   ► But he knows that's not true.

01:03:21 ◼   ► This last quarter of MaxAils was dismal, and he knew that was happening before it was happening.

01:03:24 ◼   ► This is—that's not true.

01:03:26 ◼   ► Did he?

01:03:28 ◼   ► He knows it's not true.

01:03:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:03:30 ◼   ► They know the numbers before they announce them to us.

01:03:31 ◼   ► That's the whole thing is they do projections, they have estimations, they see they're

01:03:35 ◼   ► not going to hit their numbers.

01:03:36 ◼   ► We find out in their earnings calls what they know well before that, and that is the point

01:03:39 ◼   ► where maybe they have strategic planning or replanting meetings and saying, "Look,

01:03:43 ◼   ► We're not going to even come close to hitting our expected numbers for Macs.

01:03:46 ◼   ► It's going to look bad.

01:03:47 ◼   ► What do we want to do?"

01:03:48 ◼   ► And that's where they say, "Can this product line revise this one, move this project up,

01:03:51 ◼   ► add more funding to that?"

01:03:52 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:03:53 ◼   ► I'm fantasizing about how things are done inside Apple, but the idea that anyone in

01:04:00 ◼   ► the company thinks that you can just neglect these lines and nothing will happen, we all

01:04:03 ◼   ► know that's not true by now, and Apple knew it way before we did.

01:04:07 ◼   ► Do you think they knew it 18 months ago and they decided to skip a generation of these

01:04:10 ◼   ► various CPUs and stuff?

01:04:11 ◼   ► The lead time is so huge that yeah, like there's you know, it's a it's a trailing indicator her whether yeah

01:04:17 ◼   ► I'm using it right

01:04:17 ◼   ► I think where you find out long after the decisions that led to it have been made and the new decisions you make now aren't

01:04:23 ◼   ► going to manifest for a while, so

01:04:25 ◼   ► That's just the nature of the beast here. But yeah, I mean I guess about regaining

01:04:30 ◼   ► Trust we know that even if they made the decision a year ago

01:04:35 ◼   ► We're not going to see the results of those decisions for a long time

01:04:37 ◼   ► So now we just sit back and wait and you know show us with your actions that you know

01:04:42 ◼   ► Which product lines you care about which ones are quote-unquote safe to buy safe to invest in

01:04:47 ◼   ► For individual users is less important because for individual users

01:04:50 ◼   ► It's like you just buy as soon as they're revised like you wait a little bit to make sure they're not lemons

01:04:54 ◼   ► And there's no systemic problems with the things and then you buy it and as far as an individual is concerned

01:04:59 ◼   ► You're fine as long as

01:05:01 ◼   ► When you decide to buy a new computer that actually is a new one for you to buy that is different than the one you already

01:05:06 ◼   ► bought. But for institutions or people that buy a lot of them, like I said, with a company

01:05:10 ◼   ► with a bunch of people doing like Maya on their Mac Pros, and they staff up for a big project,

01:05:16 ◼   ► they have an occasion to buy new computers and they will be sad if they're buying the same

01:05:22 ◼   ► computers they bought a year or two years or three years ago for the same price.

01:05:26 ◼   ► It just doesn't seem right technologically speaking. It's like, oh, well, you know,

01:05:30 ◼   ► it's been three years since I bought my computer. You new employee will have such a fancy computer,

01:05:35 ◼   ► it'll be great, like we can't afford to revise

01:05:37 ◼   ► all of our computers every year,

01:05:38 ◼   ► but when we bring in new employees, they get a new one.

01:05:40 ◼   ► Oh, you got the same exact computer I did.

01:05:42 ◼   ► That's great.

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01:07:53 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:07:56 ◼   ► I have a question specifically for Marco.

01:08:00 ◼   ► You had written probably like a year ago,

01:08:03 ◼   ► a tool that will take several audio files,

01:08:07 ◼   ► say from your co-host and your own,

01:08:09 ◼   ► and stitch them together, or not stitch them together,

01:08:11 ◼   ► but line them up so we're not on different parts

01:08:14 ◼   ► of the episode at the same moment, right?

01:08:16 ◼   ► So-- - Yeah, they're synced up.

01:08:18 ◼   ► Sync them up time-wise.

01:08:19 ◼   ► - I was thinking about this a week or two ago.

01:08:22 ◼   ► How the hell are you doing that?

01:08:24 ◼   ► because we don't all hit the record button

01:08:27 ◼   ► at the same moment.

01:08:29 ◼   ► And I was debating with myself,

01:08:31 ◼   ► okay, well, how is he doing it?

01:08:33 ◼   ► Is he just looking for, and it's all algorithmic,

01:08:36 ◼   ► and so is he just looking for some peak in one

01:08:39 ◼   ► and then trying to find the same peak in the other?

01:08:41 ◼   ► And I wasn't sure how this worked.

01:08:43 ◼   ► And so what is this tool, and how the hell did you do it?

01:08:47 ◼   ► - Before Marco explains, we should also say

01:08:49 ◼   ► that we don't do that embarrassing clap thing

01:08:50 ◼   ► that some other podcasts do.

01:08:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:08:53 ◼   ► I'm not naming any names here, but...

01:08:55 ◼   ► Yeah, so for what it's worth, a lot of shows, when you're on the show, they'll count down

01:09:01 ◼   ► and say, "Okay, we're all going to clap one, two, three," and then everyone claps, and

01:09:04 ◼   ► that's their peak that the editor uses to line up the two or more sides.

01:09:09 ◼   ► Which is bogus because of audio drift, which Marco will explain soon.

01:09:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:09:12 ◼   ► So I just—I was really curious, because this is a fascinating technical problem, and

01:09:16 ◼   ► yeah, it's a little inside baseball, but it's a fascinating technical problem to solve,

01:09:20 ◼   ► regardless of the fact that it happens to relate to podcasting.

01:09:23 ◼   ► So how'd you solve it?

01:09:24 ◼   ► - I should clarify before I start here

01:09:26 ◼   ► that I didn't do any research, of course.

01:09:29 ◼   ► ♪ How does it matter ♪

01:09:31 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:09:32 ◼   ► I didn't do any research beforehand

01:09:33 ◼   ► on how this problem should be solved,

01:09:36 ◼   ► how other things solve this problem.

01:09:38 ◼   ► There are very few audio tools that do solve this problem,

01:09:41 ◼   ► but it's pretty common on high-end video recording apps,

01:09:44 ◼   ► 'cause the idea is if you're on a video shoot,

01:09:48 ◼   ► you probably are recording audio off-camera.

01:09:51 ◼   ► You're probably recording audio

01:09:52 ◼   ► through some other device, an audio recorder or a mixer,

01:09:55 ◼   ► whatever else, so you need to then sync up the audio

01:09:57 ◼   ► with the video, or you need to sync multiple cameras video

01:10:01 ◼   ► in editing so you can switch between the cameras

01:10:03 ◼   ► and sync it all up to the master audio track.

01:10:05 ◼   ► So video apps have had, like Final Cut does this,

01:10:09 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure, I don't know that much about video,

01:10:10 ◼   ► but video apps have had ways to do this for a long time

01:10:13 ◼   ► where they will take in, they will use audio

01:10:15 ◼   ► and they will be able to sync audio and video

01:10:17 ◼   ► between multiple tracks and everything.

01:10:19 ◼   ► What I wanted was a very basic command line tool

01:10:21 ◼   ► to do this so that I could put it in as part of my shell

01:10:25 ◼   ► script to process all your files through FFmpeg

01:10:27 ◼   ► and whatever else to normalize the formats

01:10:28 ◼   ► and get them all and basically take your

01:10:30 ◼   ► inconvenient call recorder files and whatever else

01:10:34 ◼   ► and output a set of fully synced and undrifted WAV files

01:10:39 ◼   ► that I can just import into Logic and edit.

01:10:42 ◼   ► This is something that podcasters,

01:10:44 ◼   ► if you're just recording Skype from your computer

01:10:47 ◼   ► and that's it and you use those as the tracks,

01:10:50 ◼   ► you don't really need to do this

01:10:51 ◼   ► 'cause everything is all synced up.

01:10:52 ◼   ► But if you're doing what's called a double ender method,

01:10:56 ◼   ► where each end of the, each person on the call

01:11:00 ◼   ► records their own track locally like we do,

01:11:02 ◼   ► it sounds way better and it affords you

01:11:05 ◼   ► a great deal of flexibility in editing

01:11:06 ◼   ► for shows that have more than two people on them.

01:11:08 ◼   ► But this is a problem you have,

01:11:09 ◼   ► where then you have to sync up everybody's files, okay.

01:11:11 ◼   ► Drift is another problem.

01:11:13 ◼   ► This is really down in the weeds,

01:11:15 ◼   ► and I'm sorry if this is boring to anybody,

01:11:16 ◼   ► so I'll try to be quick.

01:11:17 ◼   ► Basically, your audio interface,

01:11:19 ◼   ► whatever's recording you, whether it's the mic

01:11:21 ◼   ► or sound card or whatever, your audio interface

01:11:24 ◼   ► records a certain number of samples per second.

01:11:27 ◼   ► So you might have seen the numbers, 44 kilohertz,

01:11:30 ◼   ► 44.1 kilohertz, that's the number of samples per second

01:11:33 ◼   ► that it's recording into your WAV file.

01:11:35 ◼   ► The problem is that computers are not perfect.

01:11:38 ◼   ► These all come down to these little analog

01:11:41 ◼   ► electronic components and nothing is perfect

01:11:44 ◼   ► because everything has to be cheap and amazing

01:11:46 ◼   ► and work all the time.

01:11:47 ◼   ► And so what the computer thinks is x times per second

01:11:52 ◼   ► will actually vary very slightly between different devices,

01:11:56 ◼   ► between different computers,

01:11:58 ◼   ► whatever's generated in that clock signal to say,

01:12:01 ◼   ► I'm taking 44,100 samples per second.

01:12:04 ◼   ► Every computer's clock is gonna be very slightly different.

01:12:07 ◼   ► And it might be like .001% off of yours,

01:12:12 ◼   ► but over the course of a two-hour podcast,

01:12:15 ◼   ► you could be off by like a full second by the end.

01:12:19 ◼   ► And so if you sync up the tracks at the beginning,

01:12:22 ◼   ► if you say, all right, everyone clap,

01:12:24 ◼   ► and then we'll sync up those claps,

01:12:26 ◼   ► go an hour later in the podcast,

01:12:28 ◼   ► and you will hear that people

01:12:31 ◼   ► are no longer lined up properly.

01:12:32 ◼   ► They'll be like a second off or something.

01:12:34 ◼   ► And that's because of this difference in clocks,

01:12:37 ◼   ► in the actual analog hardware,

01:12:39 ◼   ► like the thing that is generating that clock signal,

01:12:42 ◼   ► times per second is just .001% off of what yours was.

01:12:47 ◼   ► My tool was designed to solve both of these problems.

01:12:51 ◼   ► Make something that fixes drift,

01:12:55 ◼   ► that basically syncs the file throughout the whole file.

01:12:58 ◼   ► It syncs everything up and then just outputs

01:13:00 ◼   ► these WAV files I can just import into my editor

01:13:02 ◼   ► and then do nothing else to in that way

01:13:05 ◼   ► and move on to the content editing.

01:13:08 ◼   ► Because I want the podcasts that I produce

01:13:10 ◼   ► to sound as great as they possibly can sound.

01:13:13 ◼   ► I want them to have incredible high production values

01:13:15 ◼   ► because basically I value the listeners,

01:13:18 ◼   ► I value your time, I value your attention,

01:13:21 ◼   ► and I wanna make sure the show sounds good

01:13:22 ◼   ► so it's easiest as possible

01:13:24 ◼   ► and most pleasant for you to listen to.

01:13:26 ◼   ► Making this double ender recording method work well

01:13:30 ◼   ► and quickly for me was very important.

01:13:32 ◼   ► So I set out to make this thing

01:13:33 ◼   ► that would line up all the tracks.

01:13:35 ◼   ► It slices up the file into,

01:13:38 ◼   ► it looks at a whole bunch of points throughout the file,

01:13:39 ◼   ► but it first starts out just in the middle,

01:13:41 ◼   ► and it tries to line up the middles,

01:13:43 ◼   ► so it can just get an approximate line up

01:13:44 ◼   ► for the whole file.

01:13:46 ◼   ► And it does this not by finding peaks necessarily,

01:13:49 ◼   ► but it's a little more involved than that.

01:13:51 ◼   ► It uses the Fast Fourier Transform, FFT,

01:13:55 ◼   ► to break the audio into frequencies,

01:13:58 ◼   ► rather than just like the up and down wave

01:14:00 ◼   ► that you see like in a wave editor.

01:14:01 ◼   ► It breaks it down into frequencies for each segment,

01:14:03 ◼   ► so it'll take like a certain number of milliseconds

01:14:05 ◼   ► and say, "What is the frequency breakdown of this?" For every little slice it takes,

01:14:12 ◼   ► it makes a little hash of this chunk of the file to say, "For this little millisecond

01:14:18 ◼   ► slice, what is the dominant frequency?" And if you think about, suppose it translates

01:14:26 ◼   ► into ASCII for simplicity's sake. You can say, "Alright, well, this second of audio

01:14:32 ◼   ► had the frequency like A, F, G,

01:14:35 ◼   ► for every little slice it takes in that second,

01:14:39 ◼   ► it can basically build like a string and say,

01:14:41 ◼   ► "All right, well this is the dominant frequency

01:14:44 ◼   ► "of this slice of audio."

01:14:45 ◼   ► And then if you can imagine just sliding that up and down

01:14:49 ◼   ► across a window of time, so if you can say

01:14:51 ◼   ► these files are probably lined up within 15 minutes,

01:14:55 ◼   ► like did we probably hit record

01:14:57 ◼   ► within 15 minutes of each other?

01:14:58 ◼   ► Yes.

01:15:00 ◼   ► it defines a window and it says,

01:15:02 ◼   ► "Alright, well within this window,

01:15:04 ◼   ► "just literally slide this around,

01:15:06 ◼   ► "slide this hash that I've made

01:15:07 ◼   ► "of this little bit of audio here,

01:15:10 ◼   ► "slide this around until you find

01:15:12 ◼   ► "the point in this range that it is the least different

01:15:17 ◼   ► "from a reference track."

01:15:19 ◼   ► And the reference track is simply,

01:15:22 ◼   ► it's the Skype recording basically.

01:15:23 ◼   ► It is the recording of all of us talking.

01:15:26 ◼   ► So the reference track,

01:15:27 ◼   ► so rather than trying to take these random files

01:15:29 ◼   ► and say, you know, sync this to your ear,

01:15:31 ◼   ► just figure out what sounds right.

01:15:33 ◼   ► All of this is, it's based on,

01:15:36 ◼   ► take all these input files from each of our microphones

01:15:39 ◼   ► and sync them to the reference track that contains all of us

01:15:42 ◼   ► and then just delete the reference track

01:15:44 ◼   ► because then you'll have the pristine, awesome version

01:15:46 ◼   ► of all of us from our microphones

01:15:48 ◼   ► instead of the crappy Skype version of all of us.

01:15:50 ◼   ► And that's, so it basically uses this FFT

01:15:54 ◼   ► to just like slide around, build these little hashes

01:15:57 ◼   ► of each segment of audio and find out where they line up.

01:16:00 ◼   ► So first it lines up the middle

01:16:02 ◼   ► with very, very high precision.

01:16:04 ◼   ► And then it goes throughout the whole rest of the file.

01:16:07 ◼   ► And it goes, I think right now I have it doing it

01:16:10 ◼   ► in like 10, just like 10% increments,

01:16:12 ◼   ► like you know, there's like, so there's nine other ones.

01:16:14 ◼   ► After the middle is lined up, go to the beginning

01:16:17 ◼   ► and go to the end and go to the steps in the middle.

01:16:19 ◼   ► How far off is the synchronization at those points?

01:16:23 ◼   ► Because the thing about drift

01:16:25 ◼   ► is it tends to be fairly constant.

01:16:27 ◼   ► Your clock variation in how fast your computer's clock

01:16:32 ◼   ► measures that time slice, that tends to be fixed

01:16:35 ◼   ► or close enough to fix during a two hour podcast.

01:16:38 ◼   ► It then, it goes to the ends of this scale.

01:16:41 ◼   ► And it says, all right, well in the middle

01:16:42 ◼   ► we're perfectly lined up now.

01:16:43 ◼   ► At the beginning, we are like .5 seconds off,

01:16:47 ◼   ► negative, you know, negative .5 seconds.

01:16:49 ◼   ► At the end, we are .5 seconds ahead.

01:16:53 ◼   ► So that means that in this time span,

01:16:55 ◼   ► We've gone from negative five to plus,

01:16:56 ◼   ► or negative .5 to plus .5,

01:16:58 ◼   ► so that it basically builds,

01:17:00 ◼   ► based on looking at the whole file,

01:17:02 ◼   ► looking at these averages of this rate,

01:17:04 ◼   ► it interpolates an average drift for the whole file,

01:17:07 ◼   ► and it says, all right, well,

01:17:08 ◼   ► this looks like we are gaining .1 seconds of drift per hour,

01:17:13 ◼   ► or whatever the rate is,

01:17:15 ◼   ► based on looking at all those different points in the file

01:17:17 ◼   ► once the middle is aligned.

01:17:19 ◼   ► So then it just goes to the beginning,

01:17:20 ◼   ► it says, all right, well, at the beginning, we'll fix that,

01:17:22 ◼   ► and then throughout the file,

01:17:24 ◼   ► So we know how many seconds per hour or whatever

01:17:28 ◼   ► we have to insert or remove to sync this up properly.

01:17:32 ◼   ► So it uses basic audio stuff to find periods of silence

01:17:36 ◼   ► and use, I'm pretty good at dealing with silence now,

01:17:41 ◼   ► use the silence to insert or remove padding

01:17:44 ◼   ► at opportune times where you won't notice.

01:17:48 ◼   ► And that is how it undrifts the files.

01:17:51 ◼   ► - That's smart as hell.

01:17:52 ◼   ► and the vast majority of the time it works.

01:17:55 ◼   ► And because it is using dominant frequencies

01:17:59 ◼   ► as the way to tell whether things are similar,

01:18:01 ◼   ► it is fairly immune to the volume differences,

01:18:05 ◼   ► 'cause the Skype track is gonna have

01:18:06 ◼   ► a very different volume level

01:18:07 ◼   ► than whatever microphone file you give me.

01:18:09 ◼   ► It's also gonna be way lower fidelity.

01:18:12 ◼   ► It's gonna be weird and possibly distorted

01:18:16 ◼   ► in some subtle ways, but dominant frequencies

01:18:18 ◼   ► tend to be the same, regardless of how

01:18:22 ◼   ► because that's what you're hearing.

01:18:23 ◼   ► Like if it sounds roughly the same,

01:18:24 ◼   ► it's gonna match up pretty closely in the file,

01:18:29 ◼   ► in the frequency hashing thing.

01:18:31 ◼   ► And because it's like,

01:18:35 ◼   ► I'm not necessarily looking for that exact match,

01:18:37 ◼   ► you give me a window and I'm likely to find this

01:18:39 ◼   ► and I will find the closest match,

01:18:41 ◼   ► and then I use confidence ratings and all this stuff.

01:18:45 ◼   ► So that's how it works.

01:18:46 ◼   ► I wrote this, I don't know, two years ago maybe?

01:18:49 ◼   ► I did it a while ago,

01:18:51 ◼   ► and I've basically not touched it.

01:18:53 ◼   ► And a few friends of ours,

01:18:55 ◼   ► it's kind of in like a private alpha,

01:18:57 ◼   ► a few friends of ours use it to edit their shows,

01:18:59 ◼   ► and I have almost never had to touch the algorithm

01:19:02 ◼   ► since writing it.

01:19:02 ◼   ► The only, the main reasons I have not released this yet

01:19:06 ◼   ► are that there are a few bugs,

01:19:08 ◼   ► but it's not usually bugs in finding, in lining it up.

01:19:12 ◼   ► In fact, the rate at which it properly lines things up

01:19:16 ◼   ► is shockingly good.

01:19:18 ◼   ► The main bugs are around things like,

01:19:20 ◼   ► well if one file is like 30 minutes shorter

01:19:23 ◼   ► than the other one, it might not line it up,

01:19:26 ◼   ► or it might not un-drift properly,

01:19:27 ◼   ► 'cause it tries to interpolate a value

01:19:29 ◼   ► from part of the file that doesn't need to.

01:19:30 ◼   ► So there's some cleanup work needed to be done

01:19:33 ◼   ► to make this a general usefulness releasable tool.

01:19:37 ◼   ► It would also be nice if it had a GUI,

01:19:40 ◼   ► because most people want a graphical interface

01:19:42 ◼   ► for their applications, most people don't wanna have

01:19:45 ◼   ► binaries that you can use from a shell script.

01:19:47 ◼   ► So that's why this is not out yet.

01:19:51 ◼   ► And the market for such a thing is extremely small

01:19:54 ◼   ► because it's a tool for podcasters

01:19:56 ◼   ► and so it's hard to charge money

01:19:57 ◼   ► and make any money from that.

01:19:59 ◼   ► So I don't know how that'll go.

01:20:01 ◼   ► We'll figure that out later, I guess.

01:20:03 ◼   ► But I do eventually plan to release this

01:20:05 ◼   ► because it is an incredibly useful tool

01:20:08 ◼   ► for anybody who does double-ending podcasting

01:20:11 ◼   ► where you're recording local tracks from people.

01:20:14 ◼   ► And I think the world of podcasting

01:20:15 ◼   ► would be better off if more people did that.

01:20:18 ◼   ► And making that easier is therefore working

01:20:20 ◼   ► towards that goal.

01:20:21 ◼   ► Because one thing I really don't like as a podcast listener

01:20:26 ◼   ► is I should never know that your podcast

01:20:31 ◼   ► is recorded with Skype.

01:20:33 ◼   ► And what that means is I should never hear you

01:20:35 ◼   ► talking about Skype.

01:20:36 ◼   ► I should never hear a Skype dropout.

01:20:38 ◼   ► If there's a Skype dropout and you have to work through it,

01:20:40 ◼   ► that needs to be cut from the show.

01:20:42 ◼   ► All discussion of Skype should be cut from the show.

01:20:44 ◼   ► I should never know as a listener that you use Skype.

01:20:47 ◼   ► And I also shouldn't be hearing Skype artifacts

01:20:50 ◼   ► when somebody's connection is going a little wonky

01:20:53 ◼   ► or Skype's going a little wonky

01:20:54 ◼   ► and they start degrading the bit rate down,

01:20:56 ◼   ► they start sounding a little bit worse,

01:20:57 ◼   ► a little more telephonic,

01:20:58 ◼   ► they start going worse and worse and worse

01:21:00 ◼   ► and then you hear upgrading get better and better and better.

01:21:03 ◼   ► That was fine five years ago.

01:21:05 ◼   ► Now we've moved on, we know how to do things better now.

01:21:08 ◼   ► So podcasting should now be,

01:21:12 ◼   ► I want to raise the bar.

01:21:13 ◼   ► Like, the local recording should be the norm now in most cases.

01:21:18 ◼   ► And yes, there are some cases where you need to use Skype for more practical reasons.

01:21:22 ◼   ► Things like if you have a guest call-in show where you're having a different guest every

01:21:25 ◼   ► week, like getting people microphones is already a big pain and it's hard enough dealing

01:21:29 ◼   ► with that.

01:21:30 ◼   ► So, you know, there's certain exceptions to this, but for the most part, if you're

01:21:35 ◼   ► doing the same show every week with the same people, I should never, ever know that you

01:21:39 ◼   ► use Skype.

01:21:40 ◼   ► So, that's why I made this tool.

01:21:41 ◼   ► why I made it to save myself time. Hopefully it'll save more people time in the future,

01:21:45 ◼   ► make podcasting better, which is kind of my overall goal for everything I do these days.

01:21:50 ◼   ► But it's going to be a lot of work before this is in a releasable state.

01:21:53 ◼   ► You know, it's funny what you said about never knowing that Skype was used, because I feel

01:21:58 ◼   ► like we do a really good job of that. Unless my iMac that I swear isn't broken breaks,

01:22:03 ◼   ► in which case that's exactly why we had to use, I guess it was your recording of me for

01:22:11 ◼   ► for the first half of that show.

01:22:13 ◼   ► - Exactly.

01:22:14 ◼   ► - And people justifiably were fairly either confused

01:22:17 ◼   ► or perturbed by it, and I don't blame them.

01:22:19 ◼   ► It sounded like garbage,

01:22:20 ◼   ► and I still feel terribly guilty about that.

01:22:23 ◼   ► And that is exactly what we're trying to avoid.

01:22:25 ◼   ► - It's all your fault, Casey.

01:22:27 ◼   ► - Well, I do feel bad about it.

01:22:29 ◼   ► - No, it's fine.

01:22:30 ◼   ► It was like the first 20 minutes.

01:22:32 ◼   ► If it happened every week, I'd be mad,

01:22:34 ◼   ► but if it happens once in a three-year run of a show,

01:22:37 ◼   ► it's not that ridiculous.

01:22:39 ◼   ► - No, that's really, really interesting.

01:22:41 ◼   ► What was this written in, is this C or?

01:22:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, it uses Objective-C, it's an Objective-C binary

01:22:49 ◼   ► that you access via terminal, so it has access

01:22:51 ◼   ► to Foundation and everything, but all the core logic,

01:22:56 ◼   ► and it uses the Accelerate framework,

01:22:57 ◼   ► it uses all the cool VDSP functions for FFTs and everything,

01:23:02 ◼   ► and of course, it runs in parallel,

01:23:04 ◼   ► so this is one of the reasons I like using computers

01:23:07 ◼   ► with lots of cores, because a lot of tools

01:23:09 ◼   ► that I either use or make and use,

01:23:11 ◼   ► use Grand Central Dispatch to work in parallel

01:23:14 ◼   ► very, very effectively.

01:23:15 ◼   ► And this is the perfect problem to parallelize,

01:23:18 ◼   ► 'cause it's like, all right, well,

01:23:19 ◼   ► take this one input file and just analyze

01:23:21 ◼   ► all these different chunks, and then at the end,

01:23:23 ◼   ► figure out which one had the best score.

01:23:25 ◼   ► That's so easy to parallelize.

01:23:27 ◼   ► So of course it does, and it makes all my fans run up,

01:23:30 ◼   ► and it's just awesome.

01:23:32 ◼   ► - No, this is really, really cool.

01:23:33 ◼   ► And as someone who works on

01:23:38 ◼   ► kind of regular software, both in past jobs

01:23:41 ◼   ► and in my current job, I definitely get to solve

01:23:44 ◼   ► cool problems, but not this kind of cool.

01:23:46 ◼   ► That's super, super interesting and super neat.

01:23:48 ◼   ► So your long-term plan, you're still kicking the tires

01:23:53 ◼   ► on releasing, I mean, I know you said you want to release it,

01:23:56 ◼   ► but is that like, is that in the next month,

01:23:59 ◼   ► in the next six months, in the next six years,

01:24:01 ◼   ► what do you think?

01:24:02 ◼   ► - It is incredibly unlikely to be in the next month.

01:24:05 ◼   ► I would say six months, maybe.

01:24:08 ◼   ► year more likely, but I don't know.

01:24:10 ◼   ► It depends on what else I'm doing really.

01:24:13 ◼   ► I'm already working on my other, my production tool

01:24:17 ◼   ► for putting in chapters and stuff.

01:24:19 ◼   ► That's a different, this is not that app,

01:24:20 ◼   ► this is a different app.

01:24:22 ◼   ► So there's that and I have this collection of shell scripts

01:24:26 ◼   ► that does all sorts of other useful things

01:24:27 ◼   ► like compress and decompress logic projects.

01:24:30 ◼   ► There's all sorts of crazy stuff that I have

01:24:32 ◼   ► for making podcasting easier.

01:24:34 ◼   ► And so there's always this kind of debate of like,

01:24:36 ◼   ► which of these things could I or should I make

01:24:38 ◼   ► into a product and which of these things

01:24:40 ◼   ► should just stay a shell script that I use

01:24:42 ◼   ► and maybe give a couple of friends.

01:24:44 ◼   ► 'Cause there's a lot of work involved

01:24:46 ◼   ► to make something a product and it probably isn't worth it

01:24:48 ◼   ► for a lot of these.

01:24:49 ◼   ► So, you know, time will tell,

01:24:51 ◼   ► but I'll probably release this thing someday.

01:24:54 ◼   ► - You should release like the Marco Arment podcast kit.

01:24:57 ◼   ► - Honestly, that's kind of what I was thinking

01:24:59 ◼   ► that I might do someday, but, you know,

01:25:01 ◼   ► 'cause like you could argue maybe, you know,

01:25:04 ◼   ► I can just make one grand app that incorporates

01:25:08 ◼   ► all this stuff and I don't think that's right

01:25:12 ◼   ► or at least that one grand app would have to also

01:25:14 ◼   ► be the editor and while someday that might be cool,

01:25:18 ◼   ► I'm certainly nowhere near ready to tackle

01:25:20 ◼   ► that kind of problem right now.

01:25:22 ◼   ► So eventually there might be one grand app

01:25:26 ◼   ► that it is the editor and the encoder and the recorder

01:25:30 ◼   ► and all this stuff, that'd be fine.

01:25:33 ◼   ► but we are not there today.

01:25:34 ◼   ► So it would probably be a collection of small apps

01:25:37 ◼   ► maybe sold as a pack or something, I don't even know.

01:25:40 ◼   ► But we'll see.

01:25:42 ◼   ► This whole iOS app thing,

01:25:43 ◼   ► it's kinda hard to make money these days,

01:25:44 ◼   ► so maybe I'll switch over to this kind of stuff.

01:25:46 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:25:48 ◼   ► - Good luck, my friend.

01:25:49 ◼   ► - Thank you.

01:25:50 ◼   ► - I think we're good.

01:25:51 ◼   ► - All right, thanks to our sponsors this week,

01:25:52 ◼   ► Betterment, Tracker, and Indochino,

01:25:55 ◼   ► and we will see you next week.

01:25:57 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:26:00 ◼   ► ♪ Now the show is over ♪

01:26:02 ◼   ► They didn't even mean to begin, 'cause it was accidental.

01:26:06 ◼   ► (Accidental)

01:26:07 ◼   ► Oh, it was accidental.

01:26:09 ◼   ► (Accidental)

01:26:10 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him, 'cause it was accidental.

01:26:16 ◼   ► (Accidental)

01:26:17 ◼   ► Oh, it was accidental.

01:26:19 ◼   ► (Accidental)

01:26:20 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm.

01:26:25 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:26:30 ◼   ► @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:26:34 ◼   ► So that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:26:39 ◼   ► Auntie Marco Arment S-I-R-A-C

01:26:44 ◼   ► USA, Syracuse, it's accidental

01:26:48 ◼   ► It's accidental

01:26:50 ◼   ► They didn't mean to

01:26:52 ◼   ► Accidental

01:26:53 ◼   ► Accidental

01:26:54 ◼   ► So long.

01:26:55 ◼   ► What we should talk about now is the whole "there's nothing new happening in the news"

01:27:04 ◼   ► and why you guys are cranky about it.

01:27:06 ◼   ► All right.

01:27:07 ◼   ► So, to recap, a couple of weeks ago or last week, whenever it was, I made a flippant remark,

01:27:13 ◼   ► I think it was me, saying, "There's no other news this week," or something like

01:27:17 ◼   ► that.

01:27:18 ◼   ► And this was during a week where there was a lot of world news and political news and

01:27:24 ◼   ► you know, the news, you know, things like police shootings,

01:27:27 ◼   ► and there was a lot of, like, you know, news,

01:27:32 ◼   ► but I was really just saying there wasn't tech news,

01:27:35 ◼   ► but I said it was a slow news week.

01:27:36 ◼   ► I didn't say it was a slow tech news week.

01:27:38 ◼   ► So, you know, a few people were understandably,

01:27:40 ◼   ► you know, concerned about that or disagreed

01:27:42 ◼   ► or were offended by that, and I think this is first

01:27:45 ◼   ► and foremost a tech show, and there's all sorts

01:27:48 ◼   ► of horrible things that happen in the world,

01:27:50 ◼   ► and sometimes we do cover things that are not,

01:27:53 ◼   ► directly like what Apple has released this week

01:27:57 ◼   ► or whatever else.

01:27:58 ◼   ► We've covered subjects such as women in technology

01:28:02 ◼   ► and online harassment, things like this

01:28:04 ◼   ► that are partly tech issues,

01:28:06 ◼   ► but also are partly societal issues or other issues.

01:28:10 ◼   ► In general, though, we do focus mostly on the geeky stuff.

01:28:15 ◼   ► In a world where there is so much horribleness

01:28:18 ◼   ► that happens in the real world,

01:28:21 ◼   ► And this stuff gets to me in real life.

01:28:24 ◼   ► And the world of tech is a vacation from that.

01:28:28 ◼   ► It's a break from that.

01:28:30 ◼   ► It is this nice little world where we can pretend

01:28:33 ◼   ► like all that matters in the world is how long it's been

01:28:37 ◼   ► since the Mac Pro was updated.

01:28:39 ◼   ► And if we don't cover other things,

01:28:41 ◼   ► like horrible things that are going on in the world,

01:28:44 ◼   ► I consider that a feature, not a bug,

01:28:46 ◼   ► for the most part, most of the time.

01:28:48 ◼   ► Because not only do I need that,

01:28:51 ◼   ► and you guys, you can speak for yourselves in a minute here.

01:28:53 ◼   ► - Oh definitely.

01:28:54 ◼   ► - Not only do I need that as a human being,

01:28:58 ◼   ► but I feel like it's important that our listeners

01:29:00 ◼   ► also get a break from that too if they want to,

01:29:02 ◼   ► because there's so many other places

01:29:03 ◼   ► that you can get coverage of major world news

01:29:06 ◼   ► and political news and horrible tragedies

01:29:08 ◼   ► and everything else, and I think it's important

01:29:10 ◼   ► that people have something that's not that,

01:29:14 ◼   ► when all this stuff is going on in the world,

01:29:16 ◼   ► that there has to be some relief from that,

01:29:19 ◼   ► some break from that, some safe place

01:29:21 ◼   ► can go and not hear horrible news every week.

01:29:24 ◼   ► >> BRIAN KARDELL Alright, I'm going to give the flip side of that, which, although I agree

01:29:27 ◼   ► with some of the things you said, I'm going to present the opposing argument and then

01:29:32 ◼   ► explain the meta issue of why it's difficult to address this period.

01:29:36 ◼   ► So, like you said, we know what the show is about.

01:29:39 ◼   ► Just look at the past history of topics.

01:29:41 ◼   ► I think everyone would agree.

01:29:42 ◼   ► To figure out how this works, you just go to extremes and see what the endpoints are.

01:29:46 ◼   ► One extreme would be a nuclear bomb goes off in Manhattan.

01:29:49 ◼   ► If we had a show that week, assuming Marco's still alive, which he probably wouldn't be.

01:29:54 ◼   ► That problem would solve itself.

01:29:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:29:56 ◼   ► But anyway, if we had a show that week and didn't mention it, it would seem really weird.

01:30:00 ◼   ► Right?

01:30:01 ◼   ► Like that's one extreme, right?

01:30:02 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh yeah, I know this is a tech podcast and that's why we're not going to

01:30:04 ◼   ► mention a nuclear bomb, though.

01:30:05 ◼   ► One of them in Manhattan, because it's not a tech topic, right?

01:30:08 ◼   ► And so we won't talk about it."

01:30:10 ◼   ► Everybody, including us, would find that super weird and nonsensical and it would stand out

01:30:15 ◼   ► like a sore thumb.

01:30:16 ◼   ► So there's one extreme.

01:30:17 ◼   ► Extreme is like, you know, bunch of people spray painted

01:30:22 ◼   ► swastikas on the elementary school in my hometown, right?

01:30:25 ◼   ► Most of the listeners probably don't care about that.

01:30:28 ◼   ► It is not a tech issue, but you know,

01:30:32 ◼   ► I would care about it deeply, right?

01:30:34 ◼   ► So here's an issue that I would care about deeply

01:30:36 ◼   ► 'cause my kids go to that school

01:30:37 ◼   ► and I'm super concerned about it

01:30:38 ◼   ► and I'm up at night thinking about it

01:30:39 ◼   ► and it's really concerning, right?

01:30:42 ◼   ► But it still doesn't pass muster to be on the podcast

01:30:45 ◼   ► 'cause lots of other people.

01:30:46 ◼   ► those are the two ends of the chain. Things that we, you know, both of them are things we care

01:30:51 ◼   ► deeply about, because we would all care deeply about nuking Manhattan, and I would care deeply

01:30:55 ◼   ► about people spray painting swastikas on my kid's elementary school, right? But one of those things,

01:31:01 ◼   ► I think we would all agree, it's like, well, that's not fodder for ADP. And the other one,

01:31:05 ◼   ► I think everyone listening would agree that it would be super weird if we didn't mention it,

01:31:10 ◼   ► right? And so the trick about this thing is figuring out that along this spectrum

01:31:15 ◼   ► between the nuke and like the local issue that you know whatever along the spectrum of issues that

01:31:20 ◼   ► we're going to presume that like you know like marco said it and i'm assuming casing as well

01:31:23 ◼   ► that we all really do personally care about and think about a lot or whatever there are many

01:31:27 ◼   ► issues along the spectrum and the question is when does it become weird that we don't say anything

01:31:33 ◼   ► all right the secondary question is all right we have not saying anything and everyone can pick

01:31:38 ◼   ► their line along that spectrum like oh i feel like it's weird you didn't say anything about the nuke

01:31:41 ◼   ► but i don't i don't even care about your local elementary school because i got my own issues

01:31:44 ◼   ► right? Second thing is, what if you don't just not say anything, but in fact you say, as Marco did,

01:31:51 ◼   ► you know, because he's spoken in tech, you say, you assert that this thing doesn't exist,

01:31:58 ◼   ► where you say, "Oh, well, there is no news this week." Right now, obviously that's not what Marco

01:32:01 ◼   ► went, meant. In context, I think it's very clear what he meant, but you could hear it and interpret

01:32:07 ◼   ► it the other way, right? You know, we all misspeak on podcasts all the time, and sometimes it's not

01:32:10 ◼   ► even misspeaking, it's just like assuming a context that is not shared with the audience, right?

01:32:13 ◼   ► But positively asserting the absence of something gets into the realm of what everyone calls erasure,

01:32:21 ◼   ► where you're intentionally—most of the time erasure is like intentionally,

01:32:27 ◼   ► but intentionally or unintentionally creating an environment where people sort of soaking in it,

01:32:32 ◼   ► it supports a worldview where this thing is not an issue or is not a problem or doesn't exist.

01:32:40 ◼   ► So by positively asserting that nothing was going on,

01:32:43 ◼   ► it is a form of erasing the struggle

01:32:46 ◼   ► of like Black Lives Matter or whatever things

01:32:48 ◼   ► that we may care deeply about.

01:32:50 ◼   ► But like for the people listening,

01:32:51 ◼   ► it's like I'm providing a safe space for you to pretend

01:32:54 ◼   ► that Black Lives Matter doesn't exist, right?

01:32:56 ◼   ► And there's a flip side to that is what Marco says.

01:32:58 ◼   ► Like, well, sometimes you don't wanna hear

01:32:59 ◼   ► about the crappy things in the world.

01:33:00 ◼   ► You just wanna hear us talk about Casey's Mac or whatever.

01:33:03 ◼   ► Like there is a flip side to that.

01:33:04 ◼   ► But erasure is a real thing and it happens all the time.

01:33:07 ◼   ► And so when the combination of like not being clear enough about this, like there's no new

01:33:14 ◼   ► tech news and really saying there's no news that reads exactly like erasure.

01:33:18 ◼   ► And I think for a lot of people, although Black Lives Matter and police shootings and

01:33:23 ◼   ► stuff is not a nuke on Manhattan, it is close enough to the threshold of things that should

01:33:28 ◼   ► be important enough that that should come up on ATP for people to think, oh, I think it

01:33:32 ◼   ► should have been included. Now, that judgment, I feel like is, you know, that that's

01:33:36 ◼   ► definitely a judgment call whether you think it's appropriate to add, but once you start

01:33:39 ◼   ► positively asserting it starts looking like erasure, that's a problem as well. And then

01:33:44 ◼   ► the meta problem, like I said, is say this happens, say all three of us who I presume

01:33:48 ◼   ► all care deeply about these issues that we didn't mention on the show, as we do about

01:33:52 ◼   ► many issues that we don't mention on the show for a variety of reasons, and all of us basically

01:33:54 ◼   ► made the judgment that this is not going to be a topic we were going to discuss on ATP,

01:33:59 ◼   ► just like there are so many topics that we all care about that we don't discuss on ATP

01:34:02 ◼   ► various reasons that Marco outlined. When we end up with a show that some people hear

01:34:08 ◼   ► and it's like, "Oh, you're not only not discussing this, but you're making it seem like it doesn't

01:34:12 ◼   ► happen and that's bad because it happens all the time," and complains to us about it, the

01:34:18 ◼   ► natural reaction is to say, "But it sounds like they're impugning our motivations." "Oh,

01:34:22 ◼   ► but we have to say, 'But we do care about that. In fact, not only do we care about that,

01:34:26 ◼   ► but we're on the same side as you and it's an important issue to us and here are the

01:34:30 ◼   ► reasons I didn't want to talk about it and so on and so forth you get defensive essentially.

01:34:34 ◼   ► And so to have a show where you come back on and have to talk about it in any way, it's

01:34:38 ◼   ► very difficult not to feel like you're under attack.

01:34:40 ◼   ► When you feel like you're defending yourself for something you didn't do because you totally

01:34:43 ◼   ► agree with them but at the same time there's no way to like, you can't go back and add

01:34:48 ◼   ► the words that you didn't put there and you can't control how people interpret things

01:34:51 ◼   ► because it does read like erasure to many people and some people you're just going to

01:34:55 ◼   ► disagree with about what meets the threshold from the spray paint on the school and the

01:35:00 ◼   ► New King of Manhattan, you might have disagreements on where that line is. But the debate becomes

01:35:04 ◼   ► about are you a good person who cares about the issues that I care about? Don't you care

01:35:07 ◼   ► about this or are you actively trying to erase this? And so it's really difficult to come

01:35:11 ◼   ► on the show on a follow-up type thing and talk about it in a way that isn't immediately

01:35:17 ◼   ► defensive regardless of how everyone falls on the various issues. And so I think rather

01:35:22 ◼   ► than delving into the specifics of the issue, which, you know, we have new news with another

01:35:26 ◼   ► topic that we didn't talk about and don't plan to like the Republican National Convention

01:35:29 ◼   ► all that stuff, rather than actually delving into those topics, but I still feel like are

01:35:32 ◼   ► not appropriate for the show. I think it was more important to talk about the meta issue

01:35:38 ◼   ► of being aware that even though you may agree and may think things are important, there

01:35:44 ◼   ► are things you can do either accidentally or on purpose that can create an environment

01:35:48 ◼   ► that makes it seem like those issues are less important than they are or gives people sort

01:35:52 ◼   ► of a place where they can, a safe haven away from those things in a bad way. Marco talked

01:35:57 ◼   ► about the good way. It's like we all care about them. We all know about them. It makes

01:36:00 ◼   ► us sad. But sometimes I just want to have, you know, escape and play Pokemon Go. Like

01:36:05 ◼   ► that's definitely a role things should play. But the other aspect of it is that I don't

01:36:10 ◼   ► think those are actually important. And it's a shame that they're even on the news and

01:36:14 ◼   ► It's not even newsworthy and those people should just stop complaining and thank goodness

01:36:18 ◼   ► I can listen to a podcast that agrees with me that those things are beneath concern because nothing interesting is happening in the news

01:36:24 ◼   ► Right, which is obviously not what any of us meant, but it can read like that from the outside. So

01:36:28 ◼   ► It all you know, what what should we do differently? What should we do better?

01:36:32 ◼   ► If you're just aware of that issue like the next time, you know, someone you know

01:36:37 ◼   ► One of us says something like that add the context. I think that's all that's needed

01:36:40 ◼   ► and

01:36:42 ◼   ► And then I guess the secondary thing is,

01:36:46 ◼   ► even though it feels terrible to think and talk about it

01:36:48 ◼   ► on the next show, do it anyway,

01:36:50 ◼   ► because it's better than,

01:36:51 ◼   ► if we were to just not say anything on this show about it,

01:36:54 ◼   ► I think that would be worse,

01:36:55 ◼   ► 'cause that would be like doubling down.

01:36:57 ◼   ► That would be like, well, I didn't know what erasure was

01:36:59 ◼   ► and definitely wasn't doing it on purpose,

01:37:01 ◼   ► but now that you mentioned it, I'm gonna do it.

01:37:03 ◼   ► Like I'm gonna pretend that nobody complained,

01:37:05 ◼   ► like just being spiteful about it.

01:37:07 ◼   ► And so, that's what we do in ATP,

01:37:09 ◼   ► is the most painful thing possible,

01:37:12 ◼   ► and then we screw it up, but that's our way.

01:37:14 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:37:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I naturally agree

01:37:17 ◼   ► with pretty much everything both of you guys said.

01:37:19 ◼   ► I don't know, I absolutely felt attacked

01:37:22 ◼   ► when I saw this feedback,

01:37:24 ◼   ► and it was from somebody I feel like I know,

01:37:27 ◼   ► and definitely respect, and that almost made it worse,

01:37:30 ◼   ► because I felt like it was coming from a person,

01:37:34 ◼   ► an individual that I felt should have known the context,

01:37:39 ◼   ► and I felt the context was pretty obvious.

01:37:41 ◼   ► I actually thought for a long time I was the one who had said it, and I think you might

01:37:44 ◼   ► be right, Marco.

01:37:45 ◼   ► I think it might have been you, but…

01:37:46 ◼   ► It was Marco, and also Tiff, and she also got defensive about it.

01:37:49 ◼   ► Like, it's totally natural to get defensive about it, but you're getting defensive about

01:37:52 ◼   ► the wrong thing.

01:37:53 ◼   ► Like, the person is not impugning your motivations.

01:37:55 ◼   ► Like, everybody involved knows that they care about things.

01:37:58 ◼   ► It's all about, like, "All right, your motivations are one thing."