ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► We should briefly discuss that it is earlier in the week.

00:00:05 ◼   ► We have some interesting travel arrangements between the three of us coming up in the next couple of weeks.

00:00:10 ◼   ► And so we're trying to get ahead of everything.

00:00:11 ◼   ► Additionally, we should note that Jon is coming to us on assignment from an undisclosed location.

00:00:18 ◼   ► So if he sounds a little bit peculiar, if you hear slightly more background noise than usual, that's not his fault.

00:00:24 ◼   ► That's what being on assignment is all about.

00:00:26 ◼   ► So please bear with us.

00:00:28 ◼   ► Not much of an assignment.

00:00:29 ◼   ► My internet went out of my house,

00:00:30 ◼   ► so I had to make other arrangements.

00:00:32 ◼   ► But yeah, this is my Fios box from, I don't know,

00:00:35 ◼   ► how many years ago?

00:00:37 ◼   ► 10 years ago?

00:00:38 ◼   ► 12?

00:00:39 ◼   ► It's really old.

00:00:40 ◼   ► And I think it's finally given up the ghost, which is a shame.

00:00:43 ◼   ► And of course, it does it now at the most inconvenient time.

00:00:46 ◼   ► And we have two podcasts during this week.

00:00:48 ◼   ► And I'm about to leave somewhere to go on vacation.

00:00:51 ◼   ► So what can you do?

00:00:53 ◼   ► Well, things happen.

00:00:54 ◼   ► but we appreciate you not only going on assignment like that

00:00:58 ◼   ► but also admitting to the fact that on assignment

00:01:00 ◼   ► just means you have internet problems.

00:01:02 ◼   ► I was trying to build you up

00:01:03 ◼   ► and make it sound super exciting

00:01:04 ◼   ► and then you had to go and ruin it.

00:01:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've also got my little cup of water

00:01:08 ◼   ► on the same level as my MacBook Air.

00:01:10 ◼   ► I'm totally channeling you.

00:01:12 ◼   ► - You know, I hear that's a bad idea.

00:01:14 ◼   ► I hear that's very dangerous.

00:01:16 ◼   ► - Again, limited options in my undisclosed location.

00:01:19 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:21 ◼   ► - Well, Godspeed.

00:01:22 ◼   ► - Oh my God, it would be so funny if you spilled it.

00:01:24 ◼   ► I really don't want you to, but…

00:01:25 ◼   ► Neither do I, but god, it would be funny.

00:01:28 ◼   ► I'm going to be pretty careful, as you would imagine.

00:01:30 ◼   ► Oh my goodness, all right, so we should start with some follow-up.

00:01:35 ◼   ► The internet has written in to tell us about the Tesla model name scheme.

00:01:40 ◼   ► Now I didn't really…

00:01:41 ◼   ► I knew this, and I think you guys did too, but none of us, or at least I didn't really

00:01:45 ◼   ► want to bring it up because I didn't think it was relevant, and nobody was 100% sure

00:01:48 ◼   ► at the time that we recorded, whether this was a clever-like backronym or if this was

00:01:54 ◼   ► a good theory or what.

00:01:56 ◼   ► But the internet has written in to tell us that the intention for the Tesla model names,

00:02:01 ◼   ► which are S, X, 3, and Y, the original intention was for them to be S, X, E, and Y, which you

00:02:09 ◼   ► jumble that around a little bit and that becomes S, E, X, Y, which is then the word "sexy"

00:02:15 ◼   ► and "hahaha, look at how clever Elon Musk is."

00:02:18 ◼   ► So this is our way of acknowledging that yes, we are aware of this, and in fact we were

00:02:22 ◼   ► aware of this, we just didn't really want to bring it up, and now we have been compelled

00:02:25 ◼   ► to bring it up.

00:02:26 ◼   ► That's actually not quite true.

00:02:28 ◼   ► One of us did bring it up, and I actually edited it out.

00:02:31 ◼   ► I thought it sounded so juvenile and implausible.

00:02:34 ◼   ► I'm like, "That's probably not true.

00:02:36 ◼   ► I don't want to have that in the show."

00:02:38 ◼   ► So I just edited it out.

00:02:40 ◼   ► So you actually did cover it.

00:02:41 ◼   ► You gotta read more articles about Elon Musk.

00:02:44 ◼   ► Maybe I don't.

00:02:45 ◼   ► I think I'm better off not reading more articles of any kind of mask.

00:02:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I didn't go back and look at the master plan thing, but during the presentation for

00:02:52 ◼   ► the Model 3, he said the master plan was three cars.

00:02:54 ◼   ► So at best, best case, the original plan could have been for S-E-X.

00:02:59 ◼   ► With the four models now and the whole thing with the Y and whatever, I don't know.

00:03:03 ◼   ► Anyway, it sounds silly.

00:03:04 ◼   ► It is silly.

00:03:06 ◼   ► And it doesn't work because it's called the 3 and there's no Y and the X came before the

00:03:09 ◼   ► 3.

00:03:10 ◼   ► It's just a mess.

00:03:11 ◼   ► But everyone thought that we were not aware of this because whether or not we brought it up on the original version of the show wasn't on the released version like Marco just said.

00:03:19 ◼   ► But we are aware. I, whatever, I don't think this is as amusing as everyone else does. Like, I don't, whatever. It doesn't really matter to me.

00:03:27 ◼   ► But since we brought up the Tesla, any other thoughts on the Tesla from Marco? Same old stuff? Still love it?

00:03:32 ◼   ► - Still love it, still awesome.

00:03:35 ◼   ► I really am just enjoying it a ton.

00:03:37 ◼   ► The thought of going back to a gas car now,

00:03:40 ◼   ► or as underscore David Smith calls it,

00:03:41 ◼   ► an exploding dinosaur car,

00:03:43 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:03:45 ◼   ► it just seems like the past,

00:03:46 ◼   ► it seems like a step back to think about it,

00:03:48 ◼   ► and there's no gas car on the market

00:03:51 ◼   ► that I'm interested in.

00:03:52 ◼   ► - And by the way, sorry underscore,

00:03:53 ◼   ► but I'm not gonna give you credit

00:03:54 ◼   ► for the exploding dinosaurs thing.

00:03:56 ◼   ► He claimed in Slack the other day

00:03:57 ◼   ► that he had coined that term,

00:03:58 ◼   ► and I'm gonna say no on that one.

00:04:00 ◼   ► - Have you found prior art?

00:04:02 ◼   ► I don't know when he claims to have coined it, but I've heard it for a long, long, long

00:04:06 ◼   ► time.

00:04:07 ◼   ► Google searches for it go back pretty far.

00:04:09 ◼   ► He could have coined it when he was 15.

00:04:11 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:04:12 ◼   ► But it's pretty old.

00:04:13 ◼   ► I'm giving it to him.

00:04:15 ◼   ► I hadn't heard that exact combination.

00:04:17 ◼   ► I've heard "dino juice" in reference to regular traditional motor oil instead of synthetic,

00:04:23 ◼   ► but I had not heard this particular combination.

00:04:26 ◼   ► That being said, we will put this link in the show notes.

00:04:27 ◼   ► This is _DavidSmith's, a nerds review of the Tesla Model S.

00:04:32 ◼   ► And it was really great.

00:04:33 ◼   ► I really, really enjoyed it.

00:04:35 ◼   ► And it is exactly what it says on the tin.

00:04:36 ◼   ► It's his review from the nerds perspective.

00:04:39 ◼   ► Now, Marco, have you been in the 3GT

00:04:41 ◼   ► since you've owned the Tesla?

00:04:44 ◼   ► - Only to move it in and out of the garage

00:04:46 ◼   ► when doing some driver rearrangement.

00:04:48 ◼   ► And so only very briefly, but it's fine.

00:04:51 ◼   ► It's still a great car for what it is.

00:04:53 ◼   ► But again, this is why Tesla is so interesting

00:04:57 ◼   ► because really once you drive an all electric car,

00:05:00 ◼   ► it really does make all other gas cars feel

00:05:04 ◼   ► like obsolete things from the past.

00:05:06 ◼   ► It's hard to describe, it's just a feeling that you get.

00:05:11 ◼   ► And it's, yeah, it's just great.

00:05:13 ◼   ► I did, I do have a little bit more experience now

00:05:16 ◼   ► with autopilot, with the automatic steering.

00:05:19 ◼   ► I did a couple of highway drives the other day

00:05:21 ◼   ► and so I used it for a lot of them.

00:05:25 ◼   ► I agree mostly with what Underscore says about it, which is that it really is more like an

00:05:30 ◼   ► advanced cruise control. It's not the kind of thing where you want to stop paying attention

00:05:36 ◼   ► or even can safely stop paying attention. And I would barely call it self-driving because

00:05:42 ◼   ► basic things will throw it off. Like if you're driving in the highway lane and the lane you're

00:05:49 ◼   ► in splits and part of it was like the continue on this road fork and the other part of it

00:05:54 ◼   ► is like the get ready to exit off somewhere else or the highway split again too. Whether

00:05:59 ◼   ► it chooses to follow the right side of the split, if you're like, if you should be staying

00:06:03 ◼   ► left is kind of inconsistent and vague. And there were a couple of times where it was

00:06:09 ◼   ► steering me, I thought a little too close to like walls on the side, like barriers on

00:06:14 ◼   ► the side and everything. So I got a little freaked out a couple of times. So basically

00:06:18 ◼   ► I wouldn't necessarily say that this is like massively useful. You can't stop paying attention

00:06:24 ◼   ► you can't even take your hands off the wheel. You're basically left loosely holding the

00:06:29 ◼   ► steering wheel because it turns for you, you know, like by the car. So you're basically

00:06:35 ◼   ► left loosely gripping the steering wheel, still holding your hands up, at least one

00:06:39 ◼   ► hand. And so it's kind of like, well, what's really the benefit of it if you have to do

00:06:45 ◼   ► all that? So I don't know. I'm a little torn on the value of autopilot and I can now see

00:06:53 ◼   ► first hand just how incredibly complicated the idea of self-driving cars really is in

00:07:00 ◼   ► practice. If this is like the current generation of what regular consumers can get today, we

00:07:06 ◼   ► still have a lot of work to do. And it is very impressive compared to nothing, but it

00:07:12 ◼   ► is really still in its very early days. And I would not expect fully autonomous self-driving

00:07:18 ◼   ► cars in the next few years. I think we're further away on that than a lot of people

00:07:23 ◼   ► might think, just because driving is so complicated,

00:07:26 ◼   ► and these are such hard AI problems

00:07:27 ◼   ► and such hard technical problems to solve that,

00:07:31 ◼   ► and then after that, it'll be such a hard human problem

00:07:33 ◼   ► to solve that I think we're still a while off on that.

00:07:36 ◼   ► But I do think we're heading in that direction,

00:07:38 ◼   ► it's just a question of how quickly,

00:07:40 ◼   ► and maybe not so quickly.

00:07:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, actually, I agree with Marco on that.

00:07:45 ◼   ► I wanna talk a little bit about self-driving cars.

00:07:47 ◼   ► I should've put that in the topic list,

00:07:49 ◼   ► 'cause it's something I wanted to talk about for a while

00:07:50 ◼   ► because of all the press with the Tesla stuff,

00:07:52 ◼   ► But I just want to chime in briefly and say that I found a reference to exploring dinosaurs from ten years ago more than ten

00:07:58 ◼   ► years ago, so

00:07:59 ◼   ► Where again underscore? I just found a forum post quoting something. This is a December 27 2005

00:08:05 ◼   ► Someone's saying just remember that your car is propelled by exploding dinosaurs. Anyway, it's a really old saying again underscore was alive in 2005

00:08:12 ◼   ► We did he never claimed when he coined it, but I'm gonna say no anyway, I'm gonna say yes

00:08:16 ◼   ► I think he's in his 30s like us. So, you know pretty sure

00:08:18 ◼   ► Well like two of us

00:08:21 ◼   ► You got to keep going backwards in Google and keep finding into it anyway

00:08:23 ◼   ► 2005 is the earliest I found in two seconds worth of Google you've done here

00:08:27 ◼   ► So with the self-driving car things you hear about it because of the Tesla autopilot you hear about it because all the other car makers

00:08:33 ◼   ► That are showing their self-driving cars. That's just today

00:08:35 ◼   ► I saw a new story about the did you see this about the convoy of self-driving trucks that went across Europe?

00:08:41 ◼   ► No, I saw the headline

00:08:43 ◼   ► But I didn't see anything else had like a human-powered one on the front and then like two or three

00:08:47 ◼   ► These are like big semi trucks, two or three behind.

00:08:49 ◼   ► They were following along.

00:08:50 ◼   ► It looks terrifying.

00:08:53 ◼   ► I think the press and the public has--

00:08:56 ◼   ► and even car magazines-- have really

00:08:58 ◼   ► jumped the gun on this one.

00:08:59 ◼   ► Because it's clear we have a nice progression from cruise

00:09:03 ◼   ► control to radar cruise control to things

00:09:05 ◼   ► that will try to steer for you and so on and so forth.

00:09:08 ◼   ► But to make that final leap to actual self-driving cars

00:09:12 ◼   ► with all the sci-fi pictures where

00:09:13 ◼   ► you see someone reading a magazine

00:09:15 ◼   ► while they're in the car.

00:09:17 ◼   ► I think we are a ways away from that, especially

00:09:21 ◼   ► since the most successful version of this, which I think

00:09:26 ◼   ► is the Google self-driving cars that tool around their campus

00:09:29 ◼   ► and have been driving hundreds of thousands of miles.

00:09:31 ◼   ► That's the one that the press stories love to cite.

00:09:34 ◼   ► However many thousands upon thousands of miles

00:09:36 ◼   ► these Google self-driving cars have driven,

00:09:39 ◼   ► and they've had one accident or something,

00:09:42 ◼   ► it was a human's fault or whatever,

00:09:43 ◼   ► The amazing driving record and the amazing technology,

00:09:46 ◼   ► like, wow, well, if that's happening

00:09:47 ◼   ► in the magic of Silicon Valley, surely it

00:09:50 ◼   ► will only be a couple of years before I'm

00:09:52 ◼   ► able to go to work in a self-driving car.

00:09:55 ◼   ► And it just comes down to the difference

00:09:58 ◼   ► between the conditions and the way the things are done.

00:10:02 ◼   ► So the Google self-driving cars, they

00:10:03 ◼   ► mapped out every inch of those friggin' roads.

00:10:06 ◼   ► And the cars know not just where the roads are,

00:10:10 ◼   ► like a GPS-style map, but I think

00:10:11 ◼   ► They have like 3d terrain maps of every inch of the roads and they have

00:10:14 ◼   ► You know a lack of weather and they have lines painted on the road and they have other things that you know

00:10:20 ◼   ► It's it's California for crying out loud. Yeah, the cars are always on vacation

00:10:23 ◼   ► Yeah

00:10:23 ◼   ► People don't live in those environments and Google has not mapped 3d laser mapped every inch of pavement everywhere

00:10:29 ◼   ► And another plenty cars they can drive without their Marcos got one now. It'll stay in the lane as much as it can

00:10:34 ◼   ► If it can figure out where the lanes are and you know, there's not snow covering the road and all is it?

00:10:39 ◼   ► you know, all these other factors,

00:10:40 ◼   ► but he can't read a magazine because it's not,

00:10:44 ◼   ► it doesn't, hasn't gone that last,

00:10:46 ◼   ► the last little bit, right?

00:10:48 ◼   ► And the last little bit is killer.

00:10:49 ◼   ► You can make increasingly sophisticated,

00:10:52 ◼   ► essentially smart cruise control,

00:10:54 ◼   ► but to get over that hurdle

00:10:57 ◼   ► where you don't have to pay attention anymore

00:10:59 ◼   ► in the same way you don't have to pay attention

00:11:01 ◼   ► when you take the train,

00:11:02 ◼   ► because you're not driving the train, right?

00:11:05 ◼   ► That is going to take a really, really long time.

00:11:07 ◼   ► I'm gonna say probably not within our lifetimes on existing roads Wow

00:11:13 ◼   ► Because I mean special roads sure especially mapped roads

00:11:16 ◼   ► Maybe but like when I mean the existing roads as in like a road that a human could drive on right now

00:11:22 ◼   ► That's not specially prepared that hasn't been carefully mapped out that doesn't have things embedded in the pavement

00:11:26 ◼   ► Like all the things you can do like, you know

00:11:28 ◼   ► It's not saying you can't have this I mean they could they could do that to every single road and all of Manhattan

00:11:33 ◼   ► And then you just know that if you go into Manhattan, there's no more taxis

00:11:35 ◼   ► You just get there and you get a self-driving car because it's a grid and they can do whatever they want and they can make

00:11:39 ◼   ► It work right in limited circumstances. It can work but in general, I think it's so far off

00:11:45 ◼   ► because it's just

00:11:48 ◼   ► so much harder problem than winning jeopardy or playing go or anything like that because the

00:11:53 ◼   ► Possible inputs are so incredibly varied humans have difficulty sometimes finding where the hell the road is

00:11:59 ◼   ► And we're pretty good at looking at the world and figuring out what the hell it is. We're looking at so I think

00:12:05 ◼   ► Full self-driving cars and the way that people imagine it is really really far off. Yeah, I don't think it's that far off

00:12:11 ◼   ► I would say most likely within our lifetimes

00:12:14 ◼   ► But you know

00:12:15 ◼   ► I think most people are thinking this is gonna come in like two to five years and I think it's probably more like 10 to 20

00:12:21 ◼   ► It's hard for me to say more than 20 other saying our lifetimes like I think we pretty darn old because you need

00:12:27 ◼   ► You just need so much and it's not just the tech like even if the tech gets there in

00:12:32 ◼   ► 25 30 years then you need all the legislation and then you need all the other like I

00:12:36 ◼   ► Think it'll be fine that like it will have arrived as far as people are concerned if it works in limited circumstance

00:12:42 ◼   ► So if all of London has self-driving cars people like see you didn't seek self-driving cars are gonna come but they're totally there

00:12:47 ◼   ► It's like sure they're in all of London. They're in Manhattan. They're over there in Disney parks like they're there wherever they are

00:12:51 ◼   ► They're all over Silicon Valley

00:12:53 ◼   ► But I mean like a car dropping on any road in the United States and it drives and is able to successfully get from point

00:13:00 ◼   ► A to point B

00:13:01 ◼   ► And maybe you don't need to get all the way there

00:13:03 ◼   ► But I think people envision a such a quick ramp from controlled circumstances laser-mapped roads

00:13:09 ◼   ► And then fast forward a couple years and any road

00:13:12 ◼   ► and I just don't see that happening just because like we you know I don't think we have the

00:13:18 ◼   ► We don't have you don't have the technology for that yet

00:13:21 ◼   ► I mean just look at those DARPA challenges where they have those vehicles try to they've come so far

00:13:25 ◼   ► But it's it's kind of like AI where when I was a kid

00:13:28 ◼   ► it was like computers can answer simple questions now and

00:13:31 ◼   ► Maybe they're about as smart as a cockroach and if we extrapolate from current trends by the time you're an adult

00:13:36 ◼   ► Computers will be super geniuses and they're not AI is really really hard and we don't understand even how our own minds work

00:13:43 ◼   ► And it's not easy to you know, it's unlike all the other situations like games like chess and go and jeopardy

00:13:50 ◼   ► It's not a controlled situation. It's the real world and our problem is

00:13:55 ◼   ► synthesizing sensor input and

00:13:57 ◼   ► Processing it and we don't even know how our own freaking brains do that

00:13:59 ◼   ► We don't even have a good model to work off of so we should we were working off our brain mouth

00:14:03 ◼   ► Should we be doing something different? We're trying the best we can but I think it's a much harder problem than

00:14:08 ◼   ► The news media thinks it is do we know when the and bear with me for a second here?

00:14:13 ◼   ► Do we know when the Tesla Superchargers started getting installed that was like a couple of years ago, right?

00:14:18 ◼   ► Maybe three or four years ago, right?

00:14:20 ◼   ► So one of the things that I've always thought about electric cars being completely not feasible is

00:14:27 ◼   ► that how could they possibly create enough charging stations to make it feasible and

00:14:33 ◼   ► One company as of the time we record is claiming

00:14:37 ◼   ► 613 supercharger stations and I'm looking at this map and it's all over the United States and there's some in Europe and some in Asia

00:14:43 ◼   ► as well and there are

00:14:46 ◼   ► 628 superchargers across those 613 stations and so

00:14:50 ◼   ► this is surely not the coverage that gas stations have but it is a

00:14:56 ◼   ► Tremendous amount of coverage in the United States, which is not a small country

00:15:00 ◼   ► And so I think about that and I think well they really did kind of fix this problem and then I think to myself

00:15:05 ◼   ► Well, let's assume for a second that in order to get totally self-driving cars

00:15:08 ◼   ► You need to put you know sensors on the on the sides of each road and in between each lane or what-have-you and admittedly

00:15:15 ◼   ► there are many gazillions of miles of roadway in the United States, but what if we just

00:15:22 ◼   ► said, "Hey, on any federally recognized interstate, we're going to put the sensors necessary to

00:15:28 ◼   ► get self-driving cars on there."

00:15:30 ◼   ► If we can put a whole bunch of superchargers out there in the span of about four years

00:15:34 ◼   ► since the Model S, we might be able to do this thing that I, sitting here now, that

00:15:39 ◼   ► seems just completely implausible, but I thought that the superchargers, or what is now the

00:15:43 ◼   ► the superchargers was implausible.

00:15:44 ◼   ► And that seems to have worked all right.

00:15:46 ◼   ► So you never really know.

00:15:47 ◼   ► Well, I think you're overestimating

00:15:49 ◼   ► the superchargers because, first of all,

00:15:52 ◼   ► the supercharger map looks impressive

00:15:53 ◼   ► until you were to put it side by side with a map of gas

00:15:56 ◼   ► stations.

00:15:56 ◼   ► Oh, sure.

00:15:57 ◼   ► Because it takes a certain amount of-- I mean,

00:15:59 ◼   ► in gas stations, you fill up pretty quick.

00:16:01 ◼   ► In gas stations, you're not there at the pump for very long,

00:16:03 ◼   ► right?

00:16:03 ◼   ► So do the math on if we converted all the cars

00:16:07 ◼   ► to electric coming down.

00:16:08 ◼   ► Is there enough superchargers to support the existing Teslas?

00:16:11 ◼   ► maybe, but charging the Teslas takes so much longer that you would need more superchargers

00:16:16 ◼   ► at these stations, not fewer, to support the number of cars if they were eventually to

00:16:21 ◼   ► become all electric.

00:16:22 ◼   ► So I'm not saying it's an amazing feat, and it's surely enough for long car trips for

00:16:25 ◼   ► the number of people who have Teslas right now, right?

00:16:28 ◼   ► But it's so far from, you know, and that's a fairly easy problem in the grand scheme,

00:16:33 ◼   ► is you just keep making more of these stations, and you keep selling more of the cars, and

00:16:35 ◼   ► the cars fund the stations, and you know, it should all work out.

00:16:38 ◼   ► So I think that's totally feasible, as would be putting things in the roads or doing what

00:16:42 ◼   ► you need to do, especially in limited scopes, just New York City, just London, or regions

00:16:47 ◼   ► of the country, especially ones with not a lot of weather.

00:16:50 ◼   ► But then you look at how the United States government spends money, and we can't even

00:16:53 ◼   ► keep our bridges from falling into rivers.

00:16:56 ◼   ► We can't fill the potholes that are covering every street.

00:17:00 ◼   ► So in the past couple decades, the U.S. has not been really good about infrastructure

00:17:06 ◼   ► spending.

00:17:07 ◼   ► That is definitely technologically possible.

00:17:08 ◼   ► A lot of people in the chatroom

00:17:09 ◼   ► are trying to send me videos.

00:17:10 ◼   ► Have you seen this video?

00:17:11 ◼   ► Have you seen this video?

00:17:12 ◼   ► Things that look impressive in controlled circumstances

00:17:15 ◼   ► don't necessarily translate to the test of

00:17:20 ◼   ► drop this car onto any road in the entire United States

00:17:23 ◼   ► and it can drive you to anywhere else in the United States.

00:17:26 ◼   ► It's a very complicated problem.

00:17:28 ◼   ► - Well, the thing is too,

00:17:29 ◼   ► these are very infrastructure heavy problems.

00:17:32 ◼   ► If you start getting into fixing the roads

00:17:36 ◼   ► or improving the roads to be more friendly

00:17:38 ◼   ► towards self-driving.

00:17:38 ◼   ► Like, the reason why superchargers could get built

00:17:41 ◼   ► and cover a big portion of the country in a useful way

00:17:44 ◼   ► is because you don't have to put one

00:17:46 ◼   ► under every square foot of road.

00:17:50 ◼   ► You can kind of cherry pick where they go

00:17:52 ◼   ► and they serve wide areas.

00:17:53 ◼   ► Whereas anything that involves modifying

00:17:56 ◼   ► the roads themselves or just even as John said,

00:17:59 ◼   ► like just bring the roads up to standards

00:18:02 ◼   ► of like basic maintenance and--

00:18:04 ◼   ► - Like painting lines on them?

00:18:06 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:18:06 ◼   ► - Cars like the lines on the road,

00:18:08 ◼   ► we tend not to paint those so much in this country.

00:18:10 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:18:11 ◼   ► So like, basic things like that, it's easy.

00:18:15 ◼   ► You wouldn't need to put advanced sensors

00:18:17 ◼   ► and everything on the highways,

00:18:19 ◼   ► because the highways are easy

00:18:21 ◼   ► for self-driving cars to navigate.

00:18:23 ◼   ► I mean, my Tesla can do that already fairly well.

00:18:26 ◼   ► Like the highway is the easy part.

00:18:28 ◼   ► The hard part is all the other roads.

00:18:32 ◼   ► And as John said, it's such a hard problem

00:18:35 ◼   ► because the roads that cover our country

00:18:38 ◼   ► and other countries, but I think ours in particular,

00:18:41 ◼   ► especially near where me and John live in the Northeast

00:18:43 ◼   ► where weather is severe, everything is ancient,

00:18:47 ◼   ► and there's no budget to fix anything,

00:18:49 ◼   ► it's just a really hard problem that the roads

00:18:53 ◼   ► that I encounter every day are filled

00:18:56 ◼   ► with weird little edge cases and weird conditions

00:18:59 ◼   ► and non-ideal conditions, un-maintained portions

00:19:02 ◼   ► or like vague things like, wait, am I supposed to be

00:19:05 ◼   ► in that lane to go over there or not?

00:19:08 ◼   ► It's hard even for humans to navigate.

00:19:10 ◼   ► And so to make AI algorithms to navigate these things

00:19:15 ◼   ► is just really hard.

00:19:16 ◼   ► And I do think, you know, I do think it is possible.

00:19:20 ◼   ► And I do think that we are making progress in that area.

00:19:23 ◼   ► And I do expect to see meaningful progress in that area

00:19:27 ◼   ► within 10 to 20 years.

00:19:29 ◼   ► But I really think it's not as close as a lot of people

00:19:34 ◼   ► think, just because it is so hard.

00:19:36 ◼   ► And that last mile of making sure we can go on 95%

00:19:40 ◼   ► of the roads is a heck of a lot easier

00:19:43 ◼   ► than making sure that you can self-drive

00:19:45 ◼   ► on 100% of the roads.

00:19:46 ◼   ► - And then parking lots, think of parking lots,

00:19:48 ◼   ► for crying out loud.

00:19:49 ◼   ► How to find your way into the parking lots,

00:19:51 ◼   ► which way you go in and out.

00:19:52 ◼   ► Like, you know, there's little miniature road signs

00:19:54 ◼   ► that aren't real road signs, and the lines they paint

00:19:56 ◼   ► and parking lots are almost meaningless,

00:19:58 ◼   ► and where do you go, and you know.

00:20:00 ◼   ► It's not that they would suddenly kill people

00:20:02 ◼   ► in parking lots, it would be more like

00:20:04 ◼   ► electric car gridlock as they all are paralyzed

00:20:07 ◼   ► by indecision about what the hell they're supposed to do,

00:20:09 ◼   ► where they're supposed to go, and thinking they arrive.

00:20:10 ◼   ► 'Cause again, what I'm thinking of is not the situation

00:20:13 ◼   ► where the car can do the driving for you

00:20:14 ◼   ► for a certain portion of time,

00:20:16 ◼   ► but the idea where you don't have to have

00:20:17 ◼   ► a driver's license to get from place to place in a car.

00:20:19 ◼   ► You don't need a driver's license to get on the subway

00:20:21 ◼   ► and get places, right?

00:20:22 ◼   ► That's public transportation that's truly driverless

00:20:25 ◼   ► as far as the passenger is concerned, or a bus or whatever.

00:20:27 ◼   ► Granted, there's somebody driving those in most cases,

00:20:29 ◼   ► although not always in trains,

00:20:30 ◼   ► 'cause you can make trains driverless a lot easier,

00:20:33 ◼   ► 'cause they have tracks and everything.

00:20:34 ◼   ► But it's like to get the big win of saying

00:20:39 ◼   ► we are a society where I just tap something on my phone

00:20:42 ◼   ► and a magic personless vehicle comes and I get in

00:20:45 ◼   ► and the vehicle doesn't care whether I have a license

00:20:48 ◼   ► or have ever driven.

00:20:49 ◼   ► That just seems so close to some people,

00:20:53 ◼   ► like three to five years away, surely,

00:20:54 ◼   ► And it just it just seems so incredibly far away to me because think of it you can do the extrapolation thing like in the sci-fi

00:20:59 ◼   ► Movies where they'll have a premise for a sci-fi movie that's for the purposes of the movie like this thing is possible

00:21:05 ◼   ► But they never say well if it's possible to do this say

00:21:07 ◼   ► Making you know robots that look just like humans that fool humans if it's possible to do that

00:21:13 ◼   ► What else must be possible given that technology like what does it mean to have that type of technology so self-driving cars?

00:21:20 ◼   ► If you're able to get a car that can drive

00:21:24 ◼   ► Anywhere as well as a pretty good human what else must that mean in terms of the technology available like?

00:21:30 ◼   ► Would it be slavery to make that kind of intelligence drive a car?

00:21:34 ◼   ► If it truly is able to is there a way to do that without being conscious and intelligent as a human okay gray

00:21:40 ◼   ► Saying like it's

00:21:44 ◼   ► anyway

00:21:45 ◼   ► Don't hold your breath that but you can have really awesome cruise control and can maybe take your hands off the wheel on the highway

00:21:50 ◼   ► for a long time. And maybe if you live in a major metropolitan area or Silicon Valley,

00:21:55 ◼   ► you won't have to have a license at all within city limits. All perfectly possible, but I

00:22:01 ◼   ► would still bother to get your license because it will give you more freedom than the alternative.

00:22:08 ◼   ► Until then, I can temporarily take my hands off the wheel for three seconds while on a

00:22:11 ◼   ► straight highway to uncap a tightly capped drink.

00:22:16 ◼   ► You know, you say that, but that is a pretty nice change.

00:22:19 ◼   ► Yeah, I did.

00:22:20 ◼   ► done the squeeze between your thighs and hope you don't spill approach numerous times.

00:22:26 ◼   ► Given my history, I can tell you about how well that works out.

00:22:30 ◼   ► Really quick to finish our follow-up, an anonymous AppleCare senior advisor wrote in to tell

00:22:35 ◼   ► us that AppleCare uses TextExpander.

00:22:39 ◼   ► That was the impression I got from this email.

00:22:41 ◼   ► That's what you guys had gotten from it, right?

00:22:43 ◼   ► It seemed like it was maybe not necessarily the official tool that they used, but that

00:22:47 ◼   ► it was widely used.

00:22:49 ◼   ► And so that comes up in terms of enterprise software,

00:22:52 ◼   ► people using it in big call centers, so on and so forth.

00:22:54 ◼   ► And the other point that this anonymous person brought up

00:22:57 ◼   ► was that AppleCare prohibits the use of any third party sync

00:23:01 ◼   ► service that could contain confidential or internal

00:23:04 ◼   ► or customer data.

00:23:04 ◼   ► Now, I don't know if text expand or sync

00:23:06 ◼   ► service that qualifies for it.

00:23:08 ◼   ► It was obviously customer data wouldn't be in there,

00:23:10 ◼   ► but maybe internal data, like maybe

00:23:14 ◼   ► part of your little snippets contain

00:23:16 ◼   ► internal proprietary data or whatever.

00:23:17 ◼   ► this is the tricky bit with enterprise software that a lot of people brought up

00:23:20 ◼   ► is like oh Texas Spanner ever wants to go enterprise one of their first hurdles

00:23:24 ◼   ► is going to be that enterprise IT people always want to have everything in house

00:23:28 ◼   ► so I want to run my own sync server I'll buy a piece of hardware and I'll put a

00:23:31 ◼   ► server on it but I don't want my company's data going to your servers

00:23:36 ◼   ► Texas Spanner because I have no idea what's going on in your servers and for

00:23:39 ◼   ► compliance reasons and so on and so forth it has to all be internal so Texas

00:23:42 ◼   ► Spanner will you please sell me an internal Texas Spanner sync server that

00:23:46 ◼   ► will run. And Texas Band Air, as far as I know, has not gone that far down the enterprise

00:23:51 ◼   ► rabbit hole. But if they want to keep customers like AppleCare and they're going to force

00:23:57 ◼   ► everyone to use syncing, because that's their, you know, premier feature for enterprises,

00:24:01 ◼   ► they may have, they may end up having to do that.

00:24:05 ◼   ► Our first sponsor tonight is Hover. Hover is the best way to buy and manage domain names.

00:24:10 ◼   ► Go to hover.com and use promo code "AlexaPlayFish" for 10% off your first purchase.

00:24:16 ◼   ► When you have a great idea, you want a great domain name that's catchy and memorable.

00:24:20 ◼   ► Hover gives you exactly what you need to find the perfect domain for your idea, so you can

00:24:23 ◼   ► get started actually working on it.

00:24:25 ◼   ► Hover gives you easy to use powerful tools to buy and manage domains so anyone can do

00:24:29 ◼   ► it, and the support team is always ready if you need a hand.

00:24:31 ◼   ► Hover's known for their no-wait, no-hold, no-transfer phone service, so when you call,

00:24:35 ◼   ► a real live human being is ready to help.

00:24:37 ◼   ► Plus, they've got great online tutorials and email support if you hate the phone like

00:24:41 ◼   ► me.

00:24:42 ◼   ► Now, in less than five minutes, you can find the domain name you want and get it up and

00:24:45 ◼   ► running with Hover. All you have to do is search for a few keywords and Hover will show

00:24:49 ◼   ► you the best available options across all the crazy domain extensions out there. Now

00:24:53 ◼   ► if you've ever registered a domain anywhere else, you know that this can be a very unpleasant

00:24:57 ◼   ► experience at other registrars. They make it very complicated or it's maybe a little

00:25:02 ◼   ► bit scammy feeling and you just want to get what you need and get out of there. They try

00:25:06 ◼   ► to upsell you with crazy stuff that you're not really sure that you need. They make you

00:25:09 ◼   ► pay extra for things to upgrade that you think should come for free, things like who is privacy.

00:25:14 ◼   ► does not believe any of this stuff.

00:25:16 ◼   ► They don't believe in heavy-handed upselling,

00:25:18 ◼   ► and they don't believe in crappy design

00:25:19 ◼   ► or making you feel scammed.

00:25:21 ◼   ► Instead of charging you for something that should be there,

00:25:23 ◼   ► they just include everything you need with your domain name.

00:25:26 ◼   ► You get a smart control panel,

00:25:27 ◼   ► who is privacy always for free,

00:25:29 ◼   ► and they even offer a free Valley transfer service.

00:25:31 ◼   ► You can skip the hassle trying to move

00:25:33 ◼   ► a whole bunch of domains over there at once

00:25:34 ◼   ► if you have a whole bunch.

00:25:36 ◼   ► They will actually, if you want them to,

00:25:37 ◼   ► they will take your login information

00:25:39 ◼   ► for your old registrar and do the entire transfer for you

00:25:42 ◼   ► and make sure that they get all the DNS and everything

00:25:44 ◼   ► so you don't accidentally break anything.

00:25:46 ◼   ► So check it out today, Hover is great.

00:25:48 ◼   ► They have email hosting if you need that.

00:25:50 ◼   ► Very reasonable prices.

00:25:51 ◼   ► They are 20 bucks a year,

00:25:53 ◼   ► gets you a fully functional email account.

00:25:54 ◼   ► You'd remain with 10 gigs of storage.

00:25:56 ◼   ► You can pay more, 29 bucks a year for the big mailbox,

00:25:59 ◼   ► which is a full terabyte of storage.

00:26:01 ◼   ► And if you want just email forwarding,

00:26:02 ◼   ► that's just five bucks a year.

00:26:04 ◼   ► Check all this out today.

00:26:05 ◼   ► Go to hover.com and use promo code AlexaPlayFish

00:26:09 ◼   ► for 10% off your first purchase.

00:26:11 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to Hover for sponsoring our show.

00:26:13 ◼   ► You are the trolliest of all the trolls.

00:26:15 ◼   ► (guitar strum)

00:26:17 ◼   ► By the way, we are getting some real-time follow-up

00:26:19 ◼   ► from several different sources that says Apple

00:26:22 ◼   ► does have a site license for TextExpander.

00:26:26 ◼   ► So it is at least partially blessed, from what I'm told.

00:26:29 ◼   ► In any case, Marco, why don't you tell us

00:26:31 ◼   ► in your quest for more home automation,

00:26:33 ◼   ► or excuses to get more home automation sort of things,

00:26:36 ◼   ► tell us about your surveillance camera.

00:26:38 ◼   ► What are you surveilling exactly?

00:26:40 ◼   ► - Ducks.

00:26:41 ◼   ► OK. Anything else you'd like to add?

00:26:45 ◼   ► So last year we had a duck that was laying eggs and nesting in our backyard, and then

00:26:53 ◼   ► the ducklings all hatched, and they all got to the nearby Hudson River, and we actually

00:26:59 ◼   ► found them a few months later. We found kind of where they live. It's near a park that

00:27:02 ◼   ► we sometimes go to. And yeah, they all seem to survive, and it's pretty great. So the

00:27:07 ◼   ► duck came back this year to lay eggs in the same spot again. I guess this is a thing ducks

00:27:10 ◼   ► do once they find a good spot, they will come back the next year and lay more eggs there.

00:27:14 ◼   ► I ordered a whole bunch of home camera equipment, IP camera equipment, to watch the duck and

00:27:20 ◼   ► to check on the duck and then if I can figure out a decent way to do it, to possibly live

00:27:24 ◼   ► broadcast the duck. So this is kind of another part of my recent discovery that everything

00:27:29 ◼   ► outside the Apple ecosystem costs nothing and technology is amazing these days. There's

00:27:36 ◼   ► There's just like tons of ridiculously capable,

00:27:39 ◼   ► cheap hardware out there to do things

00:27:43 ◼   ► that used to be really complicated or impossible.

00:27:45 ◼   ► So the way I have this working,

00:27:47 ◼   ► first of all, my Wi-Fi doesn't reach the backyard very well.

00:27:52 ◼   ► So the first thing I did was I ordered

00:27:54 ◼   ► another wireless access point from Ubiquiti.

00:27:57 ◼   ► And I don't think I've talked about

00:27:59 ◼   ► my Ubiquiti gear on this show yet, have I?

00:28:02 ◼   ► - Not to my recollection.

00:28:03 ◼   ► So a couple of, maybe a year and a half, two years ago now,

00:28:07 ◼   ► something like that, my Apple Airport Extreme

00:28:10 ◼   ► started becoming flaky, and this makes me sad.

00:28:14 ◼   ► Airport Extremes used to be rock solid.

00:28:16 ◼   ► They used to be like the best routers you can get.

00:28:18 ◼   ► And these days, not only have they fallen behind

00:28:21 ◼   ► on a lot of the features, and they were never amazing

00:28:24 ◼   ► on the features, but they were at least, I think,

00:28:26 ◼   ► more competitive in the past, but also,

00:28:28 ◼   ► I've had only mixed success with their reliability

00:28:31 ◼   ► in the last maybe five years or so.

00:28:34 ◼   ► - You're talking about the one that you gave me?

00:28:35 ◼   ► You're saying that's the one you had trouble with?

00:28:37 ◼   ► - I think so.

00:28:38 ◼   ► - Great. - Yep.

00:28:39 ◼   ► - I mean, well, you know, so far, I hate to say that,

00:28:42 ◼   ► but like my previous flat one lasted a really long time,

00:28:45 ◼   ► and I think what turned out to be wrong with it

00:28:47 ◼   ► was the stupid power brick,

00:28:48 ◼   ► which really isn't the fault of the overall thing,

00:28:51 ◼   ► and it wasn't plugged into a surge strip,

00:28:53 ◼   ► so it's probably nobody's fault.

00:28:54 ◼   ► So I've had very good luck with the airports,

00:28:57 ◼   ► and the one that you gave me, so far,

00:28:59 ◼   ► I mean, I haven't had it long enough

00:29:00 ◼   ► to say one way or the other,

00:29:01 ◼   ► But so far, it's been just as solid as all the other ones.

00:29:03 ◼   ► And I remember when you were talking

00:29:04 ◼   ► about getting this ubiquity gear, I'm like, oh,

00:29:06 ◼   ► Marco's found some way to spend more money on computer

00:29:09 ◼   ► equipment than he previously had that worked.

00:29:11 ◼   ► So surprise there.

00:29:12 ◼   ► But--

00:29:12 ◼   ► It's actually less money.

00:29:14 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, maybe.

00:29:15 ◼   ► And I'm interested in it, kind of.

00:29:17 ◼   ► But I think the reason I keep coming back to the airport ones

00:29:20 ◼   ► is because of all the integrations

00:29:22 ◼   ► that I have with them.

00:29:23 ◼   ► And every time I look up how to do those integration

00:29:26 ◼   ► with other things, it just seems ever so slightly more

00:29:29 ◼   ► complicated.

00:29:29 ◼   ► much more complicated like oh I have you know I want to hook my printer up to it to USB this

00:29:35 ◼   ► one doesn't have a USB port but you can buy a little dongle for five dollars that lets you do

00:29:38 ◼   ► that I'm sure that will work fine but if it doesn't you might have to try a different dongle and

00:29:41 ◼   ► you know does how do I connect to it do I have to bring up some weird web UI or do I get to use the

00:29:47 ◼   ► shiny Apple airport whatever thing so I'm still mostly open to the idea of sort of more reliable

00:29:57 ◼   ► enterprise caliber router type equipment but I guess I need the Apple stuff to be

00:30:03 ◼   ► crappier first like I needed to really start to really start flaking out on me

00:30:07 ◼   ► but so far I think I've had like three of them in my life and they've all

00:30:11 ◼   ► lasted just until they really need to be replaced anyway and so far you're tall

00:30:17 ◼   ► ones doing pretty well too good enjoy it with its fan silence I want fan or I'm

00:30:23 ◼   ► I'm old enough now that I can't hear it.

00:30:25 ◼   ► - I guess either way you win.

00:30:27 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:30:28 ◼   ► - So the thing with Ubiquiti Gear is that,

00:30:30 ◼   ► first of all, a huge warning,

00:30:31 ◼   ► there's a bit of a learning curve

00:30:33 ◼   ► and there's some weird Java-based software

00:30:35 ◼   ► that you have to install when you first set up a WAP,

00:30:38 ◼   ► a wireless access point.

00:30:39 ◼   ► Not the router, the router can all be done web-based.

00:30:42 ◼   ► But the router does not include a WAP.

00:30:43 ◼   ► These are separate components,

00:30:45 ◼   ► like they originally, long, long ago, used to always be.

00:30:48 ◼   ► So Ubiquiti stuff, the components are all separate

00:30:50 ◼   ► and there is a learning curve.

00:30:53 ◼   ► I would not recommend that you tell your non-technical

00:30:56 ◼   ► friends or relatives, oh, just go out and buy

00:30:57 ◼   ► this Ubiquiti gear.

00:30:58 ◼   ► No, do not do that.

00:30:59 ◼   ► But if you're listening to this show,

00:31:00 ◼   ► you could probably handle it.

00:31:01 ◼   ► You could probably figure it out.

00:31:02 ◼   ► And I didn't have any trouble with it,

00:31:05 ◼   ► and I'm not, I'm a computer nerd, and I'm a programmer,

00:31:07 ◼   ► but I'm not a networking gear expert.

00:31:10 ◼   ► There's a lot of things that it can do

00:31:11 ◼   ► that I just don't enable and don't do.

00:31:13 ◼   ► The Java software that manages the installation of the WAPs,

00:31:19 ◼   ► if you don't do a lot of crazy features,

00:31:22 ◼   ► You don't need to run that software continuously.

00:31:24 ◼   ► - Wait, wait, where are you running it?

00:31:25 ◼   ► Do you run it on, where would it run continuously?

00:31:28 ◼   ► On one of your clients, on the router, on the access point?

00:31:32 ◼   ► I don't understand where it's running.

00:31:33 ◼   ► - Any computer.

00:31:34 ◼   ► So it's Java-based, there's a Mac version,

00:31:37 ◼   ► so when I install it, I have it on my laptop,

00:31:39 ◼   ► 'cause I don't wanna put Java on my desktop.

00:31:41 ◼   ► So I have it on my laptop where I put software

00:31:43 ◼   ► that I don't necessarily trust,

00:31:45 ◼   ► like crazy Chinese jailbreak apps and Java,

00:31:49 ◼   ► which are categorized together.

00:31:51 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:31:52 ◼   ► And so anyway, some people run it on Linux cloud servers.

00:31:56 ◼   ► You can run it on a Linux server,

00:31:57 ◼   ► it doesn't even have to be in your network necessarily.

00:31:59 ◼   ► I haven't gotten that advanced with it,

00:32:01 ◼   ► but it doesn't really matter.

00:32:03 ◼   ► Anyway, so you set this stuff up,

00:32:05 ◼   ► and once you set it up,

00:32:06 ◼   ► you basically don't have to touch it.

00:32:08 ◼   ► And also, once you set it up,

00:32:09 ◼   ► things like, because of this duck camera setup thing,

00:32:13 ◼   ► I wanted to expand my WiFi coverage

00:32:16 ◼   ► to more than one access point.

00:32:18 ◼   ► And Apple made this easy in the past too.

00:32:21 ◼   ► I recognize that, but Ubiquiti makes it possibly even easier

00:32:25 ◼   ► that you basically plug in the access point

00:32:26 ◼   ► and you just add it to the network with like two clicks

00:32:29 ◼   ► and then it's just part of the network.

00:32:31 ◼   ► And so any change you make to the WiFi network,

00:32:34 ◼   ► if you wanna change the password or anything,

00:32:36 ◼   ► it propagates, you just have to manage one network

00:32:39 ◼   ► and it applies to all the access points that are on it.

00:32:42 ◼   ► Really advanced features here,

00:32:44 ◼   ► features that I am not even qualified to describe

00:32:47 ◼   ► because as I said, I'm not a pro network engineer.

00:32:50 ◼   ► So I don't know everything these things can do,

00:32:52 ◼   ► and I don't appreciate everything these things can do,

00:32:54 ◼   ► but I do know that they compete apparently very well

00:32:58 ◼   ► against high-end Cisco routers and other like,

00:33:00 ◼   ► super high-end enterprise grade stuff.

00:33:02 ◼   ► But it's really surprisingly cheap.

00:33:05 ◼   ► So a WiFi access point is usually around 100 bucks,

00:33:09 ◼   ► depending on which one you get, it's in that range.

00:33:13 ◼   ► And the router is just this dedicated little box

00:33:16 ◼   ► that doesn't have wireless itself, it's just a router.

00:33:18 ◼   ► The router that I get, I have the ER Lite 3,

00:33:22 ◼   ► the Edge Router Lite 3,

00:33:23 ◼   ► and I think that's like 80 or 90 bucks.

00:33:25 ◼   ► So you're looking at total of about 200 bucks

00:33:28 ◼   ► to get a router plus a decent access point,

00:33:32 ◼   ► and it is just awesome.

00:33:35 ◼   ► It is solid.

00:33:37 ◼   ► The gear, so far, I've had no problems.

00:33:39 ◼   ► I've never had to reboot it.

00:33:41 ◼   ► I have once or twice rebooted it

00:33:44 ◼   ► because I thought it might be the cause of a problem,

00:33:48 ◼   ► but it just wasn't.

00:33:49 ◼   ► I rebooted it and then it came back up

00:33:50 ◼   ► and the problem is like, oh, that's right,

00:33:52 ◼   ► it was a Fios problem.

00:33:53 ◼   ► So there has literally never been a problem

00:33:57 ◼   ► that I have traced to this routing gear.

00:34:00 ◼   ► And there's never been a problem that rebooting fixed.

00:34:04 ◼   ► It's just rock solid.

00:34:06 ◼   ► And I know I'm not the only one

00:34:08 ◼   ► because you look at the reviews of all the Ubiquiti gear

00:34:11 ◼   ► and it's all just stellar.

00:34:14 ◼   ► People love this stuff.

00:34:15 ◼   ► And the only complaint people have is learning curve

00:34:18 ◼   ► and that Java software to set up the WAPs, and that's it.

00:34:21 ◼   ► If you can get past those things, it is just awesome.

00:34:24 ◼   ► - How many ethernet ports on the Edge router?

00:34:27 ◼   ► - It's not really made to be like a built-in switch,

00:34:29 ◼   ► 'cause it's like, if you ever set up a PFSense router

00:34:33 ◼   ► or anything like that, I think it has three or four ports

00:34:35 ◼   ► on it, maybe three, but they're all separate interfaces,

00:34:39 ◼   ► so you can have two inbound connections,

00:34:42 ◼   ► and you can bridge them, or you can load balance

00:34:45 ◼   ► between them and stuff, you can kind of configure it

00:34:47 ◼   ► how you want, but for most cases,

00:34:48 ◼   ► you're only gonna wanna use one in, one out.

00:34:51 ◼   ► And then I have a separate little HP switch

00:34:53 ◼   ► sitting next to it.

00:34:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's the other category of software,

00:34:57 ◼   ► or hardware that I, we talked about USB hubs,

00:34:59 ◼   ► and how it's hard to find good ones,

00:35:01 ◼   ► or like, drive enclosures or whatever.

00:35:03 ◼   ► My latest, not a white whale,

00:35:06 ◼   ► or my latest thing to battle is network switches.

00:35:11 ◼   ► - HP, done.

00:35:12 ◼   ► I'm telling you, HP switches are awesome.

00:35:14 ◼   ► Do they make, my big thing is heat

00:35:17 ◼   ► and power supply noise, believe it or not.

00:35:19 ◼   ► - The one I have, I'll find the link in the show notes,

00:35:21 ◼   ► it's a little tiny eight port gigabit one.

00:35:24 ◼   ► It is not like a full-size one.

00:35:26 ◼   ► I don't think there's any fan in it.

00:35:27 ◼   ► I don't think there's room for one.

00:35:28 ◼   ► The HP Pro Curve 1410-8G.

00:35:32 ◼   ► Now that I've switched to all this stuff

00:35:34 ◼   ► like maybe a year and a half, two years ago,

00:35:36 ◼   ► and I've really just had zero problems

00:35:38 ◼   ► with the network since then.

00:35:39 ◼   ► And I really cannot recommend Ubiquiti Gear enough

00:35:43 ◼   ► if you are a geek enough to be willing to set that up.

00:35:48 ◼   ► - So, we somehow ended up on this

00:35:51 ◼   ► in talking about the camera.

00:35:52 ◼   ► So, you said you had started looking into,

00:35:55 ◼   ► you had started looking into broadcasting the duck

00:35:59 ◼   ► to the internet and you decided to abandon that,

00:36:02 ◼   ► or at least temporarily abandon it?

00:36:04 ◼   ► - So, I wanted to have some kind of live webcam

00:36:08 ◼   ► kind of thing, IP camera kind of thing,

00:36:10 ◼   ► looking at the duck nest area,

00:36:12 ◼   ► both for potential future live broadcasting to nobody on the internet and also just for

00:36:17 ◼   ► like me and Tif. You know, take out our phones and check, "Oh, is the duck outside?"

00:36:21 ◼   ► Because if the duck's outside, you know, maybe we won't let the dog out yet or we

00:36:24 ◼   ► just want to know like when has the duck come last night? When was the duck here? Did any

00:36:29 ◼   ► raccoons try to eat the duck? So I set up this camera. You know, you go on Amazon, you

00:36:33 ◼   ► try to find an IP camera and there's just a billion of them. It is really hard to figure

00:36:39 ◼   ► out what makes a good IP camera.

00:36:42 ◼   ► Alright, so the one I got is a TriVision on Amazon.

00:36:45 ◼   ► It was very highly rated.

00:36:47 ◼   ► It's okay, the colors on it suck,

00:36:50 ◼   ► but the resolution is decent.

00:36:52 ◼   ► It has built-in WiFi and built-in web server

00:36:53 ◼   ► and all this crazy garbage like FTP server

00:36:56 ◼   ► and SD card slot and you can upload to a NAS

00:36:58 ◼   ► if you want it to and it's just crazy

00:37:01 ◼   ► and it's of course outdoor capable.

00:37:03 ◼   ► And what makes these things super easy is

00:37:05 ◼   ► not only does it support WiFi,

00:37:07 ◼   ► which is one of the reasons I was trying

00:37:08 ◼   ► I was trying to extend my wifi network

00:37:09 ◼   ► by buying more Ubiquiti gear,

00:37:11 ◼   ► which is how we got on that topic in the first place.

00:37:14 ◼   ► - Ah, yes, yes, yes, that's right.

00:37:16 ◼   ► - So one of the reasons I picked this camera

00:37:18 ◼   ► was that it has wifi.

00:37:19 ◼   ► Most of them only have power over ethernet,

00:37:22 ◼   ► or even worse, just ethernet and power separately.

00:37:26 ◼   ► But this one has all of those things.

00:37:27 ◼   ► You can do PoE, and power over ethernet is also very awesome.

00:37:32 ◼   ► You have ethernet in, and you have a little AC adapter,

00:37:36 ◼   ► And then out you have just Ethernet with power on the unused pins of it.

00:37:40 ◼   ► It allows you to run just one cable to things that need, that can take the power of Ethernet

00:37:47 ◼   ► and then that can supply power and data to them.

00:37:49 ◼   ► So it's often used for IP cameras, it's also often used for wireless access points.

00:37:54 ◼   ► And all of you can use wireless access points to do this and they usually come with a little

00:37:56 ◼   ► injector that you need.

00:37:58 ◼   ► You can have a wireless access point somewhere in a ceiling or up on a wall or whatever and

00:38:02 ◼   ► and you only run one cable, and that cable can be

00:38:05 ◼   ► as long or short as an ethernet cable needs to be,

00:38:09 ◼   ► and can be, so you can have a very long cable

00:38:11 ◼   ► that you just have run one thing to,

00:38:13 ◼   ► and you have power and data in that one cable, it's great.

00:38:15 ◼   ► So that's what I did with the camera.

00:38:18 ◼   ► I originally ran it over Wi-Fi,

00:38:20 ◼   ► it was kinda cutting out and wasn't quite great

00:38:22 ◼   ► because I didn't have the second access point yet,

00:38:25 ◼   ► there was a shipping delay on it

00:38:26 ◼   ► 'cause everybody's buying these things all at once.

00:38:28 ◼   ► So I ran power of ethernet to it

00:38:30 ◼   ► using a power line adapter kit

00:38:32 ◼   ► to get outside in the first place.

00:38:35 ◼   ► So this is all this massive pile of complex technology,

00:38:38 ◼   ► home power line networking,

00:38:40 ◼   ► running into a power over ethernet injector

00:38:43 ◼   ► that spans the ethernet cable across my patio,

00:38:47 ◼   ► then into a camera that is showing a picture of my duck

00:38:49 ◼   ► live to my desktop and recording it when there's motion.

00:38:52 ◼   ► All this stuff was like a total of a couple hundred dollars

00:38:56 ◼   ► and it does these amazing things

00:38:58 ◼   ► of showing me live video of a duck in my backyard

00:39:00 ◼   ► without a whole lot of wiring,

00:39:02 ◼   ► without a whole lot of effort,

00:39:03 ◼   ► and in pretty impressive quality.

00:39:06 ◼   ► - Now what are you using to do the motion detection

00:39:08 ◼   ► and recording?

00:39:09 ◼   ► - That part is less pleasant.

00:39:13 ◼   ► The area of surveillance type software,

00:39:18 ◼   ► like any kind of software that can display IP camera feeds

00:39:23 ◼   ► and record them and possibly detect motion on them

00:39:26 ◼   ► and save them in certain conditions,

00:39:28 ◼   ► this is not a great area of software.

00:39:30 ◼   ► There's very few choices.

00:39:32 ◼   ► The choices that are out there seem not amazing.

00:39:36 ◼   ► And I'm not gonna name names in case someone listens

00:39:38 ◼   ► who writes one.

00:39:39 ◼   ► You can just assume I didn't find yours.

00:39:41 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:39:42 ◼   ► They're not great.

00:39:44 ◼   ► These are not great software packages.

00:39:46 ◼   ► And then I briefly looked into what would I do

00:39:50 ◼   ► if I wanted to stream this to the internet.

00:39:52 ◼   ► And one way to do it is the camera itself

00:39:54 ◼   ► has a built-in R something MP, whatever protocol

00:39:58 ◼   ► is like the streaming protocol for this video.

00:40:00 ◼   ► It has a built-in server for that,

00:40:02 ◼   ► but A, I don't think it can really take

00:40:04 ◼   ► a whole bunch of connections at once,

00:40:06 ◼   ► and B, I don't really want to have everybody

00:40:11 ◼   ► hitting my home IP directly.

00:40:12 ◼   ► I'd rather relay it through a server somewhere,

00:40:15 ◼   ► and then that provides both a level of indirection

00:40:17 ◼   ► for the home IP as well as a capacity,

00:40:21 ◼   ► similar to how when we broadcast the show live,

00:40:24 ◼   ► I'm bouncing this off of my web server,

00:40:27 ◼   ► my marker.org web server because that way that is connected to this giant internet backbone

00:40:32 ◼   ► that relays the audio to everybody in a way higher capacity method than what I can do

00:40:37 ◼   ► from my house. The options to do that for video seem pretty slim and usually have enterprise

00:40:45 ◼   ► pricing. Call us and if you need more than one live viewer at a time you need to call

00:40:51 ◼   ► or, "Oh, that'll be $3,000, please,"

00:40:54 ◼   ► or some crazy money to do these things.

00:40:58 ◼   ► Many of them are like entire video platforms

00:41:02 ◼   ► where if you want to translate from your R whatever MP

00:41:06 ◼   ► video stream to a video feed online

00:41:10 ◼   ► that people can just go to and see,

00:41:11 ◼   ► "Oh, that'll use this crazy software package

00:41:14 ◼   ► "and cost thousands of dollars and call us for pricing,"

00:41:17 ◼   ► it's kind of a mess.

00:41:19 ◼   ► I did find YouTube live streaming,

00:41:22 ◼   ► it's kinda like Periscope in that you can do

00:41:25 ◼   ► a live broadcast, but then it wants to then save that

00:41:28 ◼   ► as a video on your account.

00:41:30 ◼   ► So it probably doesn't want the live broadcast

00:41:31 ◼   ► to be like a month long, that probably won't work.

00:41:34 ◼   ► And then to get to YouTube is another pile of hacks

00:41:36 ◼   ► where you have to use the open broadcasting,

00:41:39 ◼   ► whatever, what's that server called?

00:41:41 ◼   ► The OBS, yeah, the open broadcasting server

00:41:43 ◼   ► that all the gamers use.

00:41:45 ◼   ► You have to use OBS to window capture

00:41:48 ◼   ► something that's viewing the IP camera

00:41:51 ◼   ► like in a browser window or something.

00:41:53 ◼   ► And then rebroadcast to YouTube Live.

00:41:55 ◼   ► So this is like, if I'm gonna do this,

00:41:58 ◼   ► if I'm gonna actually live broadcast this,

00:42:00 ◼   ► it's gonna basically require like a computer

00:42:03 ◼   ► dedicated to this task 24/7

00:42:05 ◼   ► or as long as it's live broadcasting.

00:42:07 ◼   ► And I just, I don't wanna do that.

00:42:08 ◼   ► I don't have a lot of extra computers to dedicate to that

00:42:11 ◼   ► and I just don't, I don't know, it doesn't seem worth it.

00:42:15 ◼   ► Did you look into, this has nothing to do with live broadcasting, but just for your

00:42:19 ◼   ► own viewing, did you look into surveillance station on your Synology?

00:42:24 ◼   ► I did, but the list of cameras that it takes did not include the one I got, and did not

00:42:30 ◼   ► include any of the ones that seemed highly rated on Amazon right now, and also, my Synology,

00:42:36 ◼   ► the only, I use almost none of the software on it, because the only drive, or the only

00:42:42 ◼   ► The only volume I have formatted on the Synology

00:42:44 ◼   ► in its own native format is my Time Machine volume.

00:42:48 ◼   ► 'Cause the Synology Time Machine server is awesome.

00:42:50 ◼   ► It's way more solid in my experience

00:42:53 ◼   ► than any Apple Time Machine implementation.

00:42:56 ◼   ► And it just uses, I think there's some kind of open source

00:42:58 ◼   ► Time Machine thing that they built into that.

00:43:01 ◼   ► But it is way more solid than a direct-detached disk

00:43:03 ◼   ► has ever been for me, and way more solid

00:43:05 ◼   ► than a Time Machine server running on a Mac Mini

00:43:08 ◼   ► or a Time Machine external disk

00:43:10 ◼   ► running on an Airport Extreme.

00:43:11 ◼   ► whatever package Synology uses for their time machine server,

00:43:15 ◼   ► I never hit problems with like, oh, it ran out of space

00:43:18 ◼   ► and I have to format the whole thing

00:43:19 ◼   ► to actually make time machine resume.

00:43:21 ◼   ► It never errors out.

00:43:23 ◼   ► It is just, it just works.

00:43:24 ◼   ► And I have disk quota set so that me and TIFF share

00:43:26 ◼   ► one volume, it's, I'm amazed it works as well as it does

00:43:30 ◼   ► given my experience with other time machine options.

00:43:33 ◼   ► But it works great.

00:43:33 ◼   ► Anyway, my Synology was formatted such that

00:43:36 ◼   ► the time machine volume on there is the only native one.

00:43:38 ◼   ► All the rest of it is one giant iSCSI volume.

00:43:41 ◼   ► So the sinology can't see it.

00:43:43 ◼   ► It's just like dumb blocks to the sinology.

00:43:45 ◼   ► So I don't really want to devote my time machine space

00:43:49 ◼   ► to this, so I haven't done that yet.

00:43:51 ◼   ► - Well, I ask because my dad set up an IP camera

00:43:55 ◼   ► with Power over Ethernet at his house

00:43:57 ◼   ► to point at his driveway and has an ancient iPad

00:44:02 ◼   ► just sitting there streaming it in his office

00:44:04 ◼   ► so he can see if people are coming up to the house.

00:44:07 ◼   ► And he uses a surveillance station on the iPad,

00:44:10 ◼   ► the app for the iPad. He uses it on the Synology and really, really has had wonderful things

00:44:18 ◼   ► to say about it. I've seen it, although I've not played with it, and it looks really solid

00:44:22 ◼   ► to me. And it'll even send emails when it detects motion with a screen capture. It looks

00:44:26 ◼   ► really, really good. If it doesn't work with your camera, then there's nothing you can

00:44:29 ◼   ► really do about that. And obviously, you've made different choices with regard to your

00:44:33 ◼   ► volume setup. But if anyone else is listening and has a Synology, I've heard very, very

00:44:39 ◼   ► good things about Surveillance Station.

00:44:40 ◼   ► Also, it just kind of sounds creepy.

00:44:42 ◼   ► You know, "Oh, I'm going to set up Surveillance Station in my house."

00:44:45 ◼   ► Well, there's that.

00:44:48 ◼   ► You don't respect the privacy of your ducks.

00:44:49 ◼   ► No.

00:44:50 ◼   ► Who knows what they could be doing there?

00:44:52 ◼   ► You're going to be filming them 24 hours a day.

00:44:54 ◼   ► To be fair, it's only one duck and, so far, four potential future ducks.

00:44:59 ◼   ► Yeah, I think the live broadcast now that you've talked all this up, you're like,

00:45:02 ◼   ► "Well, I can't wait to look at Marco's duck cam," and now it just sounds like there's

00:45:05 ◼   ► not going to be a duck cam, so I guess what people are going to have to settle for is

00:45:08 ◼   ► like the highlights, like when something eventful happens, like the eggs hatch or something,

00:45:12 ◼   ► and if you catch that, then you can pull that clip and then put that up on YouTube and then

00:45:16 ◼   ► say here's the exciting part where the eggs hatch, or the exciting part when the raccoon

00:45:22 ◼   ► comes and eats some eggs.

00:45:23 ◼   ► By the way, Hopps doesn't bother the eggs?

00:45:25 ◼   ► Hopps is a terrible hunter.

00:45:28 ◼   ► If you give him a treat and it falls between his legs or behind him, he can't find it.

00:45:34 ◼   ► His brain is the size of a walnut, give him a break.

00:45:36 ◼   ► He's a little short and shit to nodes so like he's you know

00:45:38 ◼   ► He's not he doesn't have the greatest sense of smell

00:45:41 ◼   ► Does he look at you and say you did this to me selective breeding? I used to be a wolf now look at me

00:45:46 ◼   ► Furry sausage. He was never a wolf

00:45:49 ◼   ► Whatever whatever hops came from me he's never who's not a wolf

00:45:55 ◼   ► Long ago his ancestors very sausage. Oh my goodness

00:46:03 ◼   ► We are sponsored tonight by Blue Apron. Go to BlueApron.com/ATP to get your first two meals for free.

00:46:09 ◼   ► You need to know how to cook. And not only should you know your way around your kitchen,

00:46:13 ◼   ► but cooking at home means eating healthier and saving money instead of ordering expensive unhealthy takeout every night.

00:46:19 ◼   ► Where do you start? Blue Apron has you covered. For less than $10 per meal, Blue Apron delivers all the fresh ingredients

00:46:25 ◼   ► you need to create home-cooked meals. Just follow the easy step-by-step instructions for each recipe,

00:46:29 ◼   ► with pictures of every step right on the recipe cards,

00:46:32 ◼   ► and many more online how-to videos

00:46:34 ◼   ► to teach you any fundamentals and techniques

00:46:35 ◼   ► you may not be familiar with.

00:46:37 ◼   ► Each meal can be prepared in 40 minutes or less,

00:46:39 ◼   ► and comes with exactly the ingredients you need.

00:46:42 ◼   ► No trips to the grocery store, no rotting leftovers,

00:46:44 ◼   ► and no more sad takeout.

00:46:46 ◼   ► And regardless of your dietary preferences,

00:46:48 ◼   ► they make it a breeze to discover and prepare dishes

00:46:51 ◼   ► right in your kitchen.

00:46:52 ◼   ► So this week we have things like fish piccata

00:46:54 ◼   ► with fresh pasta and pink lemon,

00:46:56 ◼   ► and teriyaki steak with peanut dipping sauce,

00:46:58 ◼   ► Jasmine Rice and Baby Bok Choy.

00:47:00 ◼   ► Blue Apron's recipes are between 500 and 700 calories

00:47:02 ◼   ► per portion, so they're delicious and good for you.

00:47:05 ◼   ► Right now you can get your first two meals for free

00:47:07 ◼   ► at blueapron.com/atp.

00:47:10 ◼   ► That's blueapron.com/atp.

00:47:13 ◼   ► And I'd like to say personally,

00:47:14 ◼   ► we've been in Blue Apron customers for many months

00:47:17 ◼   ► before they sponsored our show.

00:47:18 ◼   ► I think we've been with them for about a year now.

00:47:20 ◼   ► And we are still with them, and we don't get it for free.

00:47:24 ◼   ► Like we pay for it because our accounts

00:47:26 ◼   ► started before the sponsorship.

00:47:28 ◼   ► We pay for it, it's great, and we're gonna keep doing it

00:47:30 ◼   ► because not only is it great to not have to decide

00:47:33 ◼   ► what to cook every night for the family,

00:47:35 ◼   ► but it also really is making us better cooks.

00:47:37 ◼   ► Like now, even, we have them three nights a week.

00:47:41 ◼   ► And for the other nights of the week now,

00:47:43 ◼   ► I'm a way better cook than I was before we started.

00:47:45 ◼   ► Way better, and I have techniques I've never done before.

00:47:48 ◼   ► I'm more comfortable cooking ingredients and cuisines

00:47:50 ◼   ► that I was never comfortable with before.

00:47:52 ◼   ► So we've really had a good time with Blue Apron.

00:47:55 ◼   ► - Let's have Blue Apron tonight too.

00:47:57 ◼   ► We did get like a free trial as part of the sponsorship,

00:47:59 ◼   ► but then the free trial ended and I kept paying for it.

00:48:03 ◼   ► Like now I'm just a regular customer.

00:48:05 ◼   ► - Yep, same here.

00:48:06 ◼   ► - The most exciting thing for me still is

00:48:08 ◼   ► there's a different meal.

00:48:10 ◼   ► I guess they repeat after a year

00:48:11 ◼   ► 'cause Marco's been in it for more than a year

00:48:13 ◼   ► and they start to repeat, but I have had zero repeats.

00:48:15 ◼   ► Like it's a different meal every single time,

00:48:18 ◼   ► which for someone who's old and tired like I am,

00:48:21 ◼   ► like you eventually get a repertoire of meals that you like

00:48:23 ◼   ► or that your family likes or whatever.

00:48:26 ◼   ► just the excitement to have a different thing every single time.

00:48:30 ◼   ► Which sometimes, we've made repeats by the way, you get to keep the recipe cards, sometimes

00:48:33 ◼   ► I'll have one that I like and we will make that on our own just by the ingredients ourselves.

00:48:37 ◼   ► So we've like manually done repeats, but just to know that it's, you know, it's always something

00:48:42 ◼   ► different and we're not particularly adventurous eaters so this kind of forces us to be slightly

00:48:46 ◼   ► adventurous.

00:48:47 ◼   ► We still didn't, you know, you get to pick what your preferences are so we still didn't

00:48:49 ◼   ► pick any weird stuff that we know we're not going to like but anyway, it hasn't worn off

00:48:54 ◼   ► and it's nice to be surprised every week

00:48:57 ◼   ► about what's gonna come.

00:48:58 ◼   ► - So check it out, blueapron.com/atp.

00:49:00 ◼   ► Blue Apron, a better way to cook.

00:49:02 ◼   ► (guitar strum)

00:49:04 ◼   ► - All right, so it was last week that Apple turned 40,

00:49:09 ◼   ► if I have my chronology right,

00:49:12 ◼   ► whenever it may have been, Apple turned 40.

00:49:15 ◼   ► And John, you had some thoughts about this.

00:49:17 ◼   ► Would you like to share?

00:49:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, we missed it by two weeks, I think.

00:49:21 ◼   ► Yeah, Apple, I think April 1st it was founded

00:49:23 ◼   ► because they're just a bunch of jokesters, those two Steves.

00:49:26 ◼   ► And a lot of people did.

00:49:27 ◼   ► Apple at 40 stories talking about their history of Apple

00:49:30 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:49:30 ◼   ► And it's such a big topic.

00:49:32 ◼   ► I didn't really know how to address it,

00:49:34 ◼   ► especially with you two Mackey-come-latelys

00:49:37 ◼   ► or whatever you want to call you if you came on board later.

00:49:40 ◼   ► But I think it's worth-- 40 is a nice round number.

00:49:44 ◼   ► I think it's worth at least reflecting

00:49:45 ◼   ► on the first 40 years of Apple and any kind of sort of--

00:49:50 ◼   ► Like when you look at it, what stands out in your memory

00:49:53 ◼   ► as important, whether you were involved in Apple or not?

00:49:56 ◼   ► And if all your memories are only from like 2004 on,

00:49:58 ◼   ► that's fine.

00:49:59 ◼   ► But I figured it's worth taking this time to look back and think

00:50:03 ◼   ► about what important things Apple has done.

00:50:07 ◼   ► It's kind of like when-- this is a grim way to put it--

00:50:10 ◼   ► but like when a celebrity or something dies

00:50:12 ◼   ► and they have their obituary, like the first couple

00:50:14 ◼   ► sentences of the obituary kind of have the highlights.

00:50:17 ◼   ► And so Apple's not dead, and we're not

00:50:20 ◼   ► trying to write an obituary for it,

00:50:21 ◼   ► but we can look back on the first 40 years and say,

00:50:24 ◼   ► what were the most important things that happened there?

00:50:26 ◼   ► To you personally, not just like,

00:50:27 ◼   ► we're not gonna say like, well, you know,

00:50:29 ◼   ► it's important for the history of computing X, Y, and Z,

00:50:30 ◼   ► but to you personally, what do you think was,

00:50:34 ◼   ► what weighs heavily in your mind

00:50:35 ◼   ► when you think of the first 40 years of Apple?

00:50:38 ◼   ► - You know, my experience with Apple

00:50:41 ◼   ► was probably very similar to many people my age

00:50:44 ◼   ► in that I experienced it at Macs,

00:50:47 ◼   ► and I guess the Apple II at school, and that was it until much later in my life.

00:50:55 ◼   ► And so my earliest memories of Apple were playing Oregon Trail like so many kids my

00:51:00 ◼   ► age did.

00:51:02 ◼   ► I also vividly remember when I was in, I believe, middle school, I was already showing an affinity

00:51:12 ◼   ► and a love for computers.

00:51:17 ◼   ► And I ended up being like kind of a volunteer like peon for the computer lab administrator,

00:51:25 ◼   ► and they were running some flavor of Mac.

00:51:27 ◼   ► I'm sorry, John and Stephen Hackett, I couldn't tell you what kind of Mac it was.

00:51:31 ◼   ► But they were running Macs, and I remember vividly like being able to help out, and I

00:51:37 ◼   ► think I had like some super secret like administrative password that they trusted with a middle schooler

00:51:42 ◼   ► for some stupid reason.

00:51:44 ◼   ► And I couldn't really do much with it, but I thought I was so cool because of it.

00:51:47 ◼   ► And the thing that sticks out in my mind, even to this day, like 20 years later, is

00:51:52 ◼   ► we all had to like buy a floppy disk, or one of the three and a half inch disks, so it

00:51:59 ◼   ► wasn't even floppy.

00:52:00 ◼   ► But anyway, we all had to buy a floppy disk and we would store all of our school documents

00:52:05 ◼   ► on it, because that was more than enough room for years worth of school documents.

00:52:09 ◼   ► And I remember someone had shown me, or somehow I figured out how to set the icon for the

00:52:16 ◼   ► disc.

00:52:17 ◼   ► So when you put the disc into the Mac, in any Mac, it would like, instead of being a

00:52:22 ◼   ► regular gray icon or whatever it was by default, mine would be like really bright blue or something

00:52:28 ◼   ► like that.

00:52:29 ◼   ► Or maybe it was an entirely different icon altogether.

00:52:30 ◼   ► Blue disc stud.

00:52:31 ◼   ► Yeah, right?

00:52:32 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:52:33 ◼   ► And so I remember figuring out how to do that.

00:52:36 ◼   ► and oh my God, I thought I was hot stuff

00:52:40 ◼   ► because my disk, when it was on the desktop,

00:52:43 ◼   ► looked different than everyone else's.

00:52:45 ◼   ► Aren't I a badass?

00:52:47 ◼   ► And I just remember that so vividly.

00:52:51 ◼   ► And I have some other memories,

00:52:52 ◼   ► but they're more of like modern era.

00:52:54 ◼   ► So Marco, let me give you, and then John as well,

00:52:57 ◼   ► a chance to kind of cover the,

00:53:00 ◼   ► let's call it the pre-2000s era.

00:53:02 ◼   ► - Right, before you move on,

00:53:04 ◼   ► What does your hard disk icon look like right now on your Mac?

00:53:07 ◼   ► Oh, it's not on my desktop in the one in finders, whatever the default is.

00:53:12 ◼   ► What happened?

00:53:13 ◼   ► You were there.

00:53:14 ◼   ► You were a blue disk stud and the same feature has lived on through the various versions

00:53:21 ◼   ► of the Mac operating system to today where you can do it probably in an even easier way

00:53:25 ◼   ► than you did back then, depending on how far.

00:53:27 ◼   ► Actually, it was probably the same way because you're not that old.

00:53:29 ◼   ► I think it was about the same way.

00:53:31 ◼   ► It was like a get info and then you just dragged the image.

00:53:33 ◼   ► You're just copy and paste, right?

00:53:35 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe that's what it was.

00:53:36 ◼   ► It used to be more difficult. They

00:53:37 ◼   ► added the copy and paste feature in a later version

00:53:39 ◼   ► of the Mac conference.

00:53:40 ◼   ► Either way, I'm excited that you did that.

00:53:43 ◼   ► Like, that's definitely a Mac user kind of thing to do.

00:53:46 ◼   ► Like, that you want your thing to look nice,

00:53:47 ◼   ► and you can do it.

00:53:49 ◼   ► And as you noted, it's not as if--

00:53:50 ◼   ► Whoa, whoa, whoa.

00:53:51 ◼   ► I wouldn't say it looked nice.

00:53:52 ◼   ► I'm sure it was god awful hideous, but it was mine.

00:53:55 ◼   ► And as you noted, it's not as if that was just

00:53:58 ◼   ► a change on your computer.

00:53:59 ◼   ► If you brought that just to any Mac, they would honor it.

00:54:03 ◼   ► You should be doing that today. All of my hard drives have been named fancifully and

00:54:07 ◼   ► have had custom icons. I did the same thing for most of my folders back in the day, although

00:54:12 ◼   ► now that the Finder is my enemy, that doesn't work so well. But the disks, I still battle

00:54:15 ◼   ► in this way.

00:54:17 ◼   ► There are many like it, but this one is mine.

00:54:19 ◼   ► I also rock the standard disk, and it also is not my desktop.

00:54:24 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:54:26 ◼   ► - Oh goodness, all right, so Marco, what was your like,

00:54:30 ◼   ► let's say, up until high school experience with the Mac?

00:54:34 ◼   ► - It actually wasn't the Mac, it was the Apple II.

00:54:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, fair enough, fair enough.

00:54:39 ◼   ► - And this might sound more impressive than it was,

00:54:41 ◼   ► because my first experience with the Apple II

00:54:44 ◼   ► was around 1990, maybe. (laughing)

00:54:48 ◼   ► So it was already, what, 12 years old,

00:54:52 ◼   ► or something by then, right?

00:54:53 ◼   ► - Nice.

00:54:54 ◼   ► - So my experience was, I went to a very poor

00:54:59 ◼   ► and not very scientifically advanced elementary school.

00:55:03 ◼   ► So the computers they had, they did have computers.

00:55:06 ◼   ► They had one computer lab that had maybe,

00:55:08 ◼   ► I don't know, 15 computers in it.

00:55:10 ◼   ► And they were all old donated Apple IIs.

00:55:13 ◼   ► By the time I was in maybe fifth, sixth grade,

00:55:16 ◼   ► so what is that, like if I was born in '82,

00:55:19 ◼   ► when is that, like '91, '92, something like that?

00:55:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, roughly.

00:55:23 ◼   ► And I just played games on them, like,

00:55:27 ◼   ► did you say Oregon Trail?

00:55:29 ◼   ► I'm not gonna try to say my version

00:55:30 ◼   ► of how to pronounce that state name,

00:55:32 ◼   ► 'cause I know I'm gonna get it wrong also, but I--

00:55:34 ◼   ► - It's pronounced Wooster.

00:55:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, Wooster Trail.

00:55:37 ◼   ► - It's either Oregon or Oregon

00:55:40 ◼   ► is the only two ways I've ever heard it.

00:55:42 ◼   ► - I'm gonna use either of those.

00:55:43 ◼   ► Anyway, so-- - Oh, God.

00:55:45 ◼   ► - So I played that, you know, and other math munchers

00:55:48 ◼   ► and other games that were supposed to be educational

00:55:51 ◼   ► that weren't really.

00:55:53 ◼   ► and had fun with that.

00:55:55 ◼   ► In seventh grade, my friend and I,

00:55:58 ◼   ► he was a Mac nerd at the time,

00:56:00 ◼   ► and this was in like 1995 or something,

00:56:05 ◼   ► he had a laptop in class all the time as a seventh grader.

00:56:09 ◼   ► - What?

00:56:10 ◼   ► - So there was some kind of arrangement he had

00:56:12 ◼   ► with the school, with his parents and the school

00:56:14 ◼   ► that he was allowed to have a laptop

00:56:16 ◼   ► for a learning disability of some kind.

00:56:18 ◼   ► I don't know the details.

00:56:19 ◼   ► Anyway, he had a laptop and we would program on that,

00:56:23 ◼   ► and then I kind of learned basic,

00:56:24 ◼   ► and then there was this Apple II in the back of the room,

00:56:27 ◼   ► and his laptop would just goof around,

00:56:29 ◼   ► 'cause it was some kind of, whatever Mac laptop

00:56:31 ◼   ► would have been somewhat current in 1995.

00:56:35 ◼   ► It was gray, I don't know.

00:56:36 ◼   ► We would play on that, and he had real basic on there.

00:56:38 ◼   ► We'd play real basic on that,

00:56:40 ◼   ► and then in the back of the room,

00:56:41 ◼   ► there was this ancient Apple II

00:56:42 ◼   ► that no one else in the class knew what to do with

00:56:45 ◼   ► except me and him.

00:56:46 ◼   ► So we would do stupid things,

00:56:48 ◼   ► like we would write a for loop to play a sound

00:56:51 ◼   ► and then just leave.

00:56:52 ◼   ► - Or like infinite loops and try to show little graphics

00:56:56 ◼   ► on there and stuff and just kind of mess around with it.

00:56:58 ◼   ► And then after that I kind of didn't use Apple computers

00:57:03 ◼   ► for a long time because I never had one for that whole time

00:57:07 ◼   ► and it wasn't until after college that I got one.

00:57:10 ◼   ► And that whole time Apple computers were seen as like

00:57:14 ◼   ► kind of a tragedy if you had one because it was like,

00:57:16 ◼   ► oh all of us were over here playing our awesome PC games

00:57:20 ◼   ► everything and then oh that guy oh he he just has he has a Mac and it was kind of

00:57:25 ◼   ► like oh he can't play any good games and we kind of feel bad for him because he

00:57:30 ◼   ► has the Mac that's your memory of Apple that it was a tragedy if you had one and

00:57:35 ◼   ► that you played with the Apple - yeah before before I got my own in in 2004

00:57:41 ◼   ► yes I got I mean I guess it makes more sense than Casey's story where he saw

00:57:45 ◼   ► the the max and the cool disk icons and yet you didn't really they didn't make enough of an impression on you to for you to

00:57:53 ◼   ► Persuade me. I guess you had your your IBM father. That was really gonna prevent you from ever getting into max and so

00:58:00 ◼   ► Yes, no, it wasn't I don't think he ever would have necessarily actively prevented it but

00:58:07 ◼   ► there were always think pads just hanging out around the house and I

00:58:13 ◼   ► Had a laptop or desktop since I can remember now granted

00:58:17 ◼   ► They were all typically very old and out of date, but they were mine and and I didn't share them with anyone

00:58:23 ◼   ► and so I grew up on predominantly think pads and

00:58:27 ◼   ► Nothing about the Mac ever really called to me like I respected that that little bit of customization. I thought that was cool

00:58:33 ◼   ► I remember vaguely trying to like skin Windows XP to look like a Mac from time to time like I would get this this

00:58:40 ◼   ► kick I would get on this kick to to try to fake like the Apple menu at the top of the screen and

00:58:45 ◼   ► some of the icons to make them look like a Mac just because I thought it looked good and

00:58:50 ◼   ► Inevitably, I would always regret that because it just was a total utter hack

00:58:54 ◼   ► But no, it wasn't until far later which we can get to

00:58:58 ◼   ► When we get to the 2000s or to the knots that I really started thinking about the Mac again

00:59:05 ◼   ► You two are two people I probably would not have been able to convince that the Mac was the amazing thing that

00:59:12 ◼   ► That it was because you were just so

00:59:15 ◼   ► content with your weird worlds of BCs now so the early early Apple for me like I mean

00:59:21 ◼   ► I did use Apple twos and stuff like that Apple twos were not that exciting for me

00:59:25 ◼   ► They didn't seem I mean having come up on like

00:59:28 ◼   ► Commodores and stuff like that that the Apple to just seemed like a natural progression there and it was fine

00:59:33 ◼   ► but did not make much of an impression especially probably because

00:59:36 ◼   ► Most of the Apple twos we had at school or like monochrome display

00:59:41 ◼   ► Just you know character mode

00:59:45 ◼   ► Programs maybe a couple of games if you could even call them that

00:59:49 ◼   ► Eventually there was like 2GS and stuff about time 2GS was in play in the schools

00:59:54 ◼   ► I the Mac had already come but now so the big thing about the Mac for me that

00:59:58 ◼   ► people who missed this era don't

01:00:01 ◼   ► Understand is that it was the computer that made the statement that

01:00:05 ◼   ► graphical interface the GUI was

01:00:09 ◼   ► The way that we should use computers

01:00:12 ◼   ► It wasn't the first GUI

01:00:13 ◼   ► But it was so far and away the best one ever sold in a computer that regular people could buy

01:00:19 ◼   ► Or ever sold to anyone really and it's its big statement was hey guys

01:00:25 ◼   ► Stop typing at command prompts do this instead and the entirety of the computer world said no

01:00:31 ◼   ► We don't want that that's not a real computer. That's stupid

01:00:38 ◼   ► If you can't do anything with it. It looks ugly. It's pointless. You need to have a command prompt

01:00:44 ◼   ► I don't know what the hell you're doing over there Apple and

01:00:46 ◼   ► Even though this was a short period of time historically speaking for the transition for the whole world to figure it out

01:00:54 ◼   ► When we were in the middle of it it seemed like the Battle of the Century with the people on the good light side

01:01:01 ◼   ► The Mac users not being able to understand how anyone could argue against this it wasn't as if they were arguing

01:01:09 ◼   ► Windows is better or some other gooey is better their argument was the gooey is dumb

01:01:15 ◼   ► That you should not use a gooey is a waste of computing resources. It makes the computer less powerful

01:01:21 ◼   ► It will never catch on it is a pointless diversion. It's a fad

01:01:25 ◼   ► And you should feel bad about using that computer and stop distracting me

01:01:30 ◼   ► And you have to get your own magazines, and I'm never gonna hook up a mouse to my computer and all that other stuff

01:01:35 ◼   ► and

01:01:38 ◼   ► To grow up in that environment kind of like if you grew up in the sort of the the Sega Nintendo console wars

01:01:43 ◼   ► It was just such a huge dividing line in this in the same way that I imagined for

01:01:48 ◼   ► People who are not computer nerds its sports teams might be a dividing line if you grew up in like Mets vs

01:01:52 ◼   ► Yankees or whatever your your sports a rivalry is

01:01:54 ◼   ► It's just imprinted in your DNA as a super important thing and

01:02:00 ◼   ► Eventually it transitioned to okay fine so gooey is there a reasonable idea, but now Windows is better than the Mac or whatever and

01:02:07 ◼   ► That became you know the Mac versus PC thing which was another form of tragedy, but my original abiding memory of the Mac is

01:02:16 ◼   ► essentially trying to convince other computer nerdy people kids and adults that the GUI itself was a good idea and

01:02:22 ◼   ► In that you know just try convincing sound like you know one has that argument anymore because no one ever argues against it because it seems

01:02:29 ◼   ► ridiculous I

01:02:30 ◼   ► Thought it was ridiculous then too and yet people had arguments against it

01:02:33 ◼   ► and you could not convince them because all they knew was the command line and

01:02:37 ◼   ► They had what they thought were really solid arguments about like how much more efficient

01:02:42 ◼   ► it is to memorize the commands in WordStar than it is to bring your mouse up to a menu.

01:02:46 ◼   ► It's like, you're not getting it.

01:02:48 ◼   ► It's not a micro-level thing.

01:02:49 ◼   ► A macro-level thing as in this helps people use computers.

01:02:53 ◼   ► Like, the idea that every computer was going to work this way inevitably and there was

01:02:56 ◼   ► nothing you could do about it and they were like, "Every computer?

01:02:59 ◼   ► Are you kidding me?"

01:03:00 ◼   ► Yeah, so that is my core memory in the inside-out parlance of, earliest core memory of Apple

01:03:10 ◼   ► was this GUI.

01:03:11 ◼   ► To this day, the sort of cohesiveness

01:03:17 ◼   ► of the original Mac GUI, the only thing

01:03:20 ◼   ► it has been matched by, I think, are probably

01:03:22 ◼   ► appliance-like devices and iOS.

01:03:25 ◼   ► Because there's never been another personal computer

01:03:27 ◼   ► and operating system, including Mac OS X,

01:03:30 ◼   ► that has so fully committed to the graphical user interface,

01:03:36 ◼   ► to providing sort of a coherent, consistent world

01:03:40 ◼   ► the computer in which it wasn't an abstraction or a shell on top of something that as far

01:03:46 ◼   ► as the user was concerned there was nothing underneath.

01:03:50 ◼   ► There was no way to get underneath.

01:03:51 ◼   ► There was no terminal.

01:03:52 ◼   ► There was no command line.

01:03:55 ◼   ► There were no file system paths visible anywhere in the user interface.

01:04:02 ◼   ► If you asked a Mac user what the path separator was on their operating system, first of all

01:04:07 ◼   ► they don't know what a path separator is.

01:04:08 ◼   ► If you were to explain it to them,

01:04:09 ◼   ► they would have no idea that the colon was used internally

01:04:11 ◼   ► because you just never ever saw it.

01:04:14 ◼   ► Same thing with the files and folders and icons.

01:04:17 ◼   ► The idea that files and folders are represented.

01:04:19 ◼   ► You know, this little picture represents your file

01:04:20 ◼   ► and this little picture represents a directory.

01:04:22 ◼   ► None of those things represented anything.

01:04:24 ◼   ► They were the thing.

01:04:25 ◼   ► There was no indirection.

01:04:26 ◼   ► It was just so incredibly consistent in the same way

01:04:30 ◼   ► that if you were to ask someone like,

01:04:32 ◼   ► where is the Instagram app?

01:04:35 ◼   ► Like, oh, this little icon represents the Instagram.

01:04:36 ◼   ► No, that is the Instagram app.

01:04:38 ◼   ► When I delete that, Instagram app is gone.

01:04:40 ◼   ► And when it's there, I have the Instagram app

01:04:43 ◼   ► that is so solid and there is no command line on iOS

01:04:47 ◼   ► and there is no way you can see file paths on iOS

01:04:50 ◼   ► unless they're exposed and I guess URLs kind of came

01:04:52 ◼   ► and screwed that up for everybody.

01:04:53 ◼   ► But anyway, that was an important point

01:04:58 ◼   ► in computing history and that was the most important point

01:05:02 ◼   ► in my computing history as it relates to Apple

01:05:04 ◼   ► or any other company.

01:05:06 ◼   ► It's just sad that you guys missed it, I guess.

01:05:09 ◼   ► - My journey in computers began with

01:05:12 ◼   ► trying to get stuff to work in DOS,

01:05:16 ◼   ► and I believe it was PC-DOS, it was IBM's version of DOS,

01:05:20 ◼   ► even when MS-DOS was a thing.

01:05:22 ◼   ► And I was annoying my dad, constantly asking,

01:05:25 ◼   ► how do I do this, how do I do that,

01:05:27 ◼   ► how do I do this, how do I do that?

01:05:28 ◼   ► And he just got exasperated and said,

01:05:29 ◼   ► well, just read the manual.

01:05:30 ◼   ► And even though I was like eight years old,

01:05:31 ◼   ► he said it kind of sarcastically.

01:05:35 ◼   ► and I took him at his word and I read the manual.

01:05:37 ◼   ► And so I remember trying Windows 3.1

01:05:40 ◼   ► and just thinking this is a piece of crap

01:05:42 ◼   ► and I don't know why anyone would use this.

01:05:43 ◼   ► It's terrible.

01:05:44 ◼   ► I want to go back to DOS.

01:05:45 ◼   ► And then when Windows 95 came around, it was like,

01:05:48 ◼   ► oh yeah, this thing, all those Mac users

01:05:50 ◼   ► were all excited about.

01:05:51 ◼   ► Now I get it.

01:05:51 ◼   ► Now this ain't so bad.

01:05:53 ◼   ► And look, we have a recycle bin instead of a trash

01:05:55 ◼   ► 'cause we're better than they are.

01:05:56 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:05:58 ◼   ► But it wasn't until Windows 95

01:06:00 ◼   ► that I really understood what the point of it.

01:06:01 ◼   ► Well, that's not entirely true.

01:06:02 ◼   ► I was an OS/2 warp user for a while, and then I understood the GUI, but

01:06:06 ◼   ► But anyway, it wasn't really much of a thing as early as it was for Mac users

01:06:12 ◼   ► And I never really got that involved in the debate because I didn't really know any Mac users at the time

01:06:18 ◼   ► Any other thoughts on the pre-2000s, and then let's cover the 2000s.

01:06:23 ◼   ► I think you could write from the pre-2000s

01:06:26 ◼   ► Like there's some like almost of my Apple histories in the pre-2000s

01:06:28 ◼   ► I just gave you my earliest one because you guys were going for your earliest runs

01:06:31 ◼   ► and always is gonna be older.

01:06:32 ◼   ► Man, there's just so much stuff before the 2000s.

01:06:35 ◼   ► That's like--

01:06:37 ◼   ► - Don't let me rush you, old man.

01:06:38 ◼   ► No, no, no, don't let me rush you.

01:06:39 ◼   ► - No, I'm really, even though you guys turned this into,

01:06:42 ◼   ► let me reminisce about one of my earliest memories of Apple,

01:06:44 ◼   ► is I was trying to think of like,

01:06:47 ◼   ► when I think back on Apple, like the sort of milestones.

01:06:50 ◼   ► And so the Mac GUI, the Mac itself, that computer, that GUI,

01:06:54 ◼   ► that is the first big gigantic tent pole

01:06:56 ◼   ► when I think back of the first 40 years in Apple.

01:06:58 ◼   ► Such an important thing.

01:07:00 ◼   ► And probably people feel like I'm giving the Apple II short shrift because that's so important in the history of Apple as a company

01:07:05 ◼   ► But again, I'm not going with like what was important to the company or whatever

01:07:08 ◼   ► I'm good

01:07:08 ◼   ► Like when I look back on the first 40 years of Apple the first big tent pole I see is that Mac and I feel

01:07:13 ◼   ► like that

01:07:14 ◼   ► that tent pole

01:07:16 ◼   ► There's a through line from that tent pole all the way through to the iPhone

01:07:20 ◼   ► Whereas I don't think there's a very solid through line from the Apple II with expansion cards and a command line and all and you know

01:07:27 ◼   ► And really like there's very little about the Apple to like the Apple to was Steve Wozniak's machine

01:07:33 ◼   ► The Mac was Jobs's machine. All right, and

01:07:35 ◼   ► Jobs is the through line

01:07:37 ◼   ► Through the all the history of Apple and for for better or worse the Apple to

01:07:42 ◼   ► was kind of an aberration of that entire line and that it was like

01:07:46 ◼   ► The company didn't become Steve Wozniak's company. It became Steve Jobs's company, you know, he left he came back

01:07:52 ◼   ► he brought it back in line, you know, but like

01:07:56 ◼   ► Even when he was gone the people who were there in his stead making computers

01:08:00 ◼   ► They were much more jobs like than was like although. I'm sure jobs found them unsatisfying as well

01:08:06 ◼   ► but so that's the first big tent pull I see and

01:08:09 ◼   ► Then you could say and then fast forward and it's just like iPod iPhone all right

01:08:14 ◼   ► I don't I don't really see that I see a lot of significant advancements in the middle

01:08:18 ◼   ► they're sort of like the heart of the the snow white design era of

01:08:22 ◼   ► Macs where they were all kind of

01:08:25 ◼   ► Platinum colored I guess and had slats in them and had a little rainbow logo on them

01:08:30 ◼   ► And no one else was paying attention to them and Marco felt bad for anyone who had one

01:08:35 ◼   ► But he shouldn't have felt bad because there were some

01:08:38 ◼   ► Amazing computers that none of his friends were gonna have because they were like ten thousand dollars in the 80s like you know

01:08:44 ◼   ► 1989 actual ten thousand dollars for a computer like nobody like regular people did not have these computers

01:08:51 ◼   ► Which is part of the reasons I lusted after like they even look like Ferraris with the the side slats on them and everything

01:08:56 ◼   ► Like you don't know anyone who owns before you just look at pictures of my magazines

01:08:59 ◼   ► I was like them but the Mac 2 FX was like to me

01:09:01 ◼   ► I'm not actually never gonna meet anyone who was actually even touched one of these computers

01:09:05 ◼   ► But I know it's out there and it exists and boys that amazing and I would kill to have that computer

01:09:09 ◼   ► But it cost it maybe wasn't 10,000. It was like $8,000 in

01:09:12 ◼   ► 1988 89

01:09:14 ◼   ► Might as well have been 10,000. It was no and how I was ever gonna get one

01:09:18 ◼   ► And there was no equivalent for that to me and any other line of computers forget about the GUI and everything like that

01:09:26 ◼   ► like that this was

01:09:28 ◼   ► Like a Ferrari in that it wasn't like a muscle car which you could say

01:09:31 ◼   ► Oh, I could I could buy a beefed up PC and built it myself and it will you know

01:09:35 ◼   ► Have better specs than that Mac 2 FX if you're lucky, right?

01:09:38 ◼   ► That might have been possible, but that's not a Ferrari

01:09:41 ◼   ► You can't build a Ferrari yourself in your garage out of spare parts

01:09:44 ◼   ► You can't buy like a stock Mustang and replace the engine and do custom suspension

01:09:48 ◼   ► "Oh, I've got my own Ferrari." You do not. You do not have your own Ferrari.

01:09:51 ◼   ► The high-end Macs were like Ferraris. They were technical marvels, they were ridiculously

01:09:58 ◼   ► expensive, and they were beautifully designed. And they were products, right? The whole thing

01:10:04 ◼   ► that we love about Apple products today, that was something they had back then as well. They

01:10:09 ◼   ► came with beautiful manuals, their accessories, their keyboards, their mice, the monitors they

01:10:13 ◼   ► came with, you know, they had trantron displays when no one else was bothering with those

01:10:17 ◼   ► things and the case was beautifully matched to the computer and the power cords and just

01:10:22 ◼   ► like everything about them, they were just magical.

01:10:26 ◼   ► I do have a 2FX now by the way, I finally got one.

01:10:28 ◼   ► I think it cost me $5.

01:10:30 ◼   ► So depreciation is boy it's tough but I just needed to own one.

01:10:35 ◼   ► I don't quite have my Ferrari yet but maybe someday I will.

01:10:37 ◼   ► But anyway I guess that's like the second tent pole is that whole era of Max when everybody

01:10:42 ◼   ► else thought Macs sucked because the operating system was still great. Windows had not caught

01:10:46 ◼   ► up because they never really understood what was truly magical about the Mac, like the

01:10:49 ◼   ► fact that there were no file paths, that there was no command line, there was no any files

01:10:55 ◼   ► and bat files and IRQs and anything like that or drivers or any of that crap.

01:11:01 ◼   ► You had your own series of hacks though. But all of them involved the abstraction. We would

01:11:05 ◼   ► drag things in and out of the system folder. Like physically, you know, pull this out of

01:11:09 ◼   ► the system folder, put it into the system folder, put it in control panels folder, put

01:11:12 ◼   ► it in the control panels disabled folder, but take it out of the extensions folder and

01:11:16 ◼   ► reboot like it was all done on top of that abstraction like there was no command line,

01:11:22 ◼   ► there was no underneath like you know obviously you can get into the debugger and start poking

01:11:26 ◼   ► in memory addresses and stuff but the abstraction was so total eventually the detriment of the

01:11:31 ◼   ► Mac obviously like I love Mac OS 10 like I love Unix right but it was just such a different

01:11:38 ◼   ► age of computing, and age I think needs to come back eventually and has sort of come

01:11:43 ◼   ► back in iOS, because iOS takes away all that stuff from the user's perspective.

01:11:47 ◼   ► It's still there under the covers, much more visible even from the developer's perspective

01:11:50 ◼   ► than it was in the Mac, but from the user's perspective iOS has continued to remove.

01:11:56 ◼   ► So I truly feel like iOS is the natural successor to the original Mac operating system, much

01:12:00 ◼   ► more so than Mac OS X is, despite the fact that of course being a modern Unix head I

01:12:04 ◼   ► love Mac OS X.

01:12:06 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:12:08 ◼   ► Our last sponsor tonight is Betterment.

01:12:09 ◼   ► Betterment is the largest independent

01:12:11 ◼   ► automated investing service out there.

01:12:13 ◼   ► Go to betterment.com/atp.

01:12:16 ◼   ► It is never too late to start saving for retirement

01:12:19 ◼   ► or to meet your other financial goals.

01:12:21 ◼   ► Now the financial services industry has embraced technology

01:12:23 ◼   ► with the entry of automated investing services

01:12:25 ◼   ► like Betterment and they're the largest.

01:12:27 ◼   ► You've probably been hearing a lot about Betterment

01:12:29 ◼   ► in TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal,

01:12:30 ◼   ► and other big news outlets.

01:12:32 ◼   ► Betterment makes it easier, more straightforward,

01:12:34 ◼   ► and less expensive to invest.

01:12:36 ◼   ► Betterment's built on smarter, cutting edge technology

01:12:38 ◼   ► to bring you sophisticated investing and financial advice

01:12:41 ◼   ► all at a lower cost than more traditional financial services

01:12:44 ◼   ► and I can personally vouch for that.

01:12:46 ◼   ► The fees that they offer that are so much lower,

01:12:50 ◼   ► an order of magnitude lower than most of the fees

01:12:53 ◼   ► that I've seen in my personal investing experience

01:12:55 ◼   ► before this, you really cannot beat these fees.

01:12:58 ◼   ► They're so low and that really adds up over time.

01:13:02 ◼   ► Now more than 150,000 customers choose Betterment's

01:13:04 ◼   ► advanced advice algorithms and beautiful user interface

01:13:07 ◼   ► to manage over four billion of their dollars.

01:13:10 ◼   ► This is the perfect time to get started with Betterment

01:13:12 ◼   ► and saving for your retirement or other financial goals.

01:13:15 ◼   ► Because ATP listeners can get up to six months of no fees.

01:13:19 ◼   ► Learn how at betterment.com/ATP.

01:13:22 ◼   ► That's betterment.com/ATP.

01:13:25 ◼   ► Betterment, investing made better.

01:13:27 ◼   ► (guitar strum)

01:13:29 ◼   ► - All right, so I will start with my next memory

01:13:33 ◼   ► That I don't remember where this is in the chronology. So if I'm skipping to the end of the 2000s

01:13:38 ◼   ► well, I I don't think I am but I

01:13:40 ◼   ► Know actually I do remember it was roughly

01:13:43 ◼   ► 2005 I

01:13:46 ◼   ► had heard about

01:13:49 ◼   ► iPods I had seen them I had perhaps used one from time to time and

01:13:55 ◼   ► I never really was that into them

01:13:58 ◼   ► I had a diamond Rio way back when I think before an iPod was a thing

01:14:02 ◼   ► but then the iPod nano came out and

01:14:06 ◼   ► Holy crap did I want one something awful, and I eventually got one. I think Aaron got it for me

01:14:13 ◼   ► And this was right after we started dating

01:14:15 ◼   ► But I got it. I eventually got an iPad iPod nano which I still have or I think that's what it was

01:14:22 ◼   ► Whatever the one was that had the screen and a click wheel, but it was super super thin

01:14:28 ◼   ► And I just wanted one so hard and that was the first time I was really interested in an Apple product

01:14:35 ◼   ► that I can remember and

01:14:38 ◼   ► That was I think the beginning of the end for me when it came or the beginning of the beginning actually

01:14:44 ◼   ► I should say when it came to Apple stuff was looking at that iPod nano and just thinking

01:14:49 ◼   ► Holy crap. I must have that

01:14:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean that was I think the iPad now got a lot of people into Apple

01:14:56 ◼   ► honestly, I mean, you know, the iPod as a whole,

01:14:59 ◼   ► obviously got a lot of people in,

01:15:00 ◼   ► but that first Nano and then the continuation

01:15:03 ◼   ► of the Nano line I think really played a large part in it

01:15:06 ◼   ► because it was so compelling.

01:15:07 ◼   ► You know, the full-size iPods were always

01:15:11 ◼   ► a lot more expensive, and you know,

01:15:13 ◼   ► they were amazing for the time,

01:15:17 ◼   ► but I just feel like the Mini first

01:15:19 ◼   ► and then the Nano just took it to another level.

01:15:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree.

01:15:23 ◼   ► - The magic of flash storage, I mean,

01:15:25 ◼   ► That was not the flash wasn't on other people's radar,

01:15:27 ◼   ► but if you were an Apple fan at that time as well,

01:15:32 ◼   ► the progression from that-- the whole iPod line

01:15:34 ◼   ► was made possible by that tiny little whatever it was,

01:15:37 ◼   ► like inch and a quarter or one inch

01:15:38 ◼   ► or whatever it was, those tiny little hard drives, which

01:15:41 ◼   ► are such a ridiculous hack.

01:15:42 ◼   ► It's like doll furniture for your computer.

01:15:45 ◼   ► But it works.

01:15:46 ◼   ► It's a real working hard drive.

01:15:48 ◼   ► Jumping from that to no moving parts and much smaller

01:15:53 ◼   ► made the shocking, you know, the Steve Jobs famous intro,

01:15:55 ◼   ► but he had it in that little,

01:15:56 ◼   ► in like the little change pocket in your pants

01:15:58 ◼   ► that no one knows what that pocket does.

01:16:00 ◼   ► He pulled that out of that pocket and it was,

01:16:02 ◼   ► it was such a leap.

01:16:03 ◼   ► And especially for something that involves miniaturization,

01:16:06 ◼   ► it's so weird to have a popular product line

01:16:09 ◼   ► that really hinges on miniaturization

01:16:12 ◼   ► to have become popular before Flash Memory was ubiquitous,

01:16:16 ◼   ► which allowed that big jump

01:16:17 ◼   ► because you would think it would be impossible

01:16:19 ◼   ► to even popularize a music player

01:16:21 ◼   ► when they're all the size of a deck of cards.

01:16:22 ◼   ► card isn't big but again it's kind of ridiculous when you think about it and so unlike cell phones

01:16:28 ◼   ► and so many other things uh or smartphones anyway that were born in the era of flash storage we're

01:16:33 ◼   ► never going to get another another leap like that until we get to some you know whatever the next

01:16:37 ◼   ► technological breakthrough is that allows like imagine again if you if within one phone generation

01:16:44 ◼   ► it had the same drop in volume as from the mini to the nano we would our draws would be on the floor

01:16:49 ◼   ► Like it would it would almost be the credit card iPhone. You know what I mean? It would go like well

01:16:53 ◼   ► We haven't just made it like half as thin and half as narrow

01:16:56 ◼   ► But like it would you know someone should do the math on what the volume difference was between the mini and the nano

01:17:02 ◼   ► But it was just viscerally when you hold it in your hand. It was just shocking. You're like, how could this be possible?

01:17:07 ◼   ► This is a magic candy bar that does everything that the mini did but it's so much smaller and it looks like the future and

01:17:13 ◼   ► Scratches like crazy because the plastic was really soft. Oops. But anyway

01:17:18 ◼   ► that.

01:17:19 ◼   ► - Minor details, minor details.

01:17:20 ◼   ► No, I mean, so I got into Apple stuff really in the 2000s, in the early 2000s, because

01:17:27 ◼   ► I was leaving college in 2004, and I was about to start a new job, and I was ready for a

01:17:34 ◼   ► new computer, and I was ready for my first laptop.

01:17:38 ◼   ► And at the time, you know, looking around the PC laptop area, I had always like ventured

01:17:42 ◼   ► into like the Apple room at Micro Center here and there to just like kind of look around,

01:17:47 ◼   ► as OS X kinda got off the ground and started getting a little bit of attention and started

01:17:52 ◼   ► getting good in the early 2000s, I would occasionally look in there and I just kept thinking like,

01:17:59 ◼   ► "Man, OS X looks really nice and these Apple laptops are really nice." This was the area

01:18:04 ◼   ► of the PowerBook G4. And so I was seeing these Apple laptops look so good, at the same time

01:18:12 ◼   ► I was in the market for a laptop, the PC laptops at the time were just not doing anything for

01:18:17 ◼   ► for me and I wanted something really good

01:18:19 ◼   ► and because I was curious about this platform,

01:18:20 ◼   ► I was like, you know what, this seems like the right time.

01:18:23 ◼   ► I think I'm gonna try it 'cause I really just want

01:18:25 ◼   ► that, you know, the basic 15-inch PowerBook G4

01:18:29 ◼   ► that the current MacBook Pro doesn't still look

01:18:33 ◼   ► that different from. (laughs)

01:18:36 ◼   ► I just wanted that so badly and so I,

01:18:40 ◼   ► once I finished college, I scraped together

01:18:42 ◼   ► the graduation money I had gotten from here and there

01:18:44 ◼   ► and various savings here and there

01:18:46 ◼   ► and spent something like $2400 on PowerBook G4,

01:18:51 ◼   ► 15 inch PowerBook G4.

01:18:53 ◼   ► At first I was using it, I got into it slowly.

01:18:57 ◼   ► I first started using it on my client,

01:18:59 ◼   ► let me figure out how this works,

01:19:00 ◼   ► transfer over some of the things I do onto this.

01:19:04 ◼   ► And then over the next, I don't know, year or two,

01:19:08 ◼   ► around 2005 or so, over that next year or two,

01:19:10 ◼   ► I just stopped wanting to use my Windows PCs.

01:19:15 ◼   ► because OS X was just so much better in so many ways,

01:19:20 ◼   ► and in most of those ways, I think it still is better.

01:19:23 ◼   ► Just design considerations, the way things work,

01:19:26 ◼   ► the technical advancements of things,

01:19:28 ◼   ► the respect it shows for users and their time

01:19:30 ◼   ► and their attention, and just the overall quality

01:19:32 ◼   ► of good third-party software on the platform.

01:19:35 ◼   ► It was just so much better than Windows,

01:19:39 ◼   ► and in my opinion, again, still is.

01:19:41 ◼   ► It got to the point where I was,

01:19:43 ◼   ► when I was at work one day,

01:19:45 ◼   ► I worked at a company that was developing search web apps,

01:19:49 ◼   ► like search-based enterprise web apps.

01:19:50 ◼   ► So all I had to do was write code in C.

01:19:54 ◼   ► It didn't really matter what platform I used

01:19:57 ◼   ► to write that code in.

01:19:57 ◼   ► I needed a terminal window that can run VI,

01:20:02 ◼   ► or Vim, excuse me, a terminal window that can run Vim

01:20:05 ◼   ► on Linux servers that we were logging into

01:20:07 ◼   ► to do development on, and a web browser,

01:20:09 ◼   ► and an email client, that's all I needed.

01:20:10 ◼   ► So all those things I could get on the Mac.

01:20:12 ◼   ► In fact, the terminal, it's actually easier on the Mac.

01:20:14 ◼   ► I was using stupid Sigwin setups at work and that sucked.

01:20:16 ◼   ► - Oh, yeah. - Exactly.

01:20:18 ◼   ► So one day at work, it was when Windows XP

01:20:22 ◼   ► Service Pack 2 came out.

01:20:24 ◼   ► So this was somewhere around 2005.

01:20:26 ◼   ► I remember this very specifically.

01:20:27 ◼   ► Service Pack 2 introduced a feature

01:20:31 ◼   ► if there was an update to be installed

01:20:33 ◼   ► from Windows Update, which there always was.

01:20:35 ◼   ► It would show boxes saying,

01:20:37 ◼   ► "Hey, this update's ready to go.

01:20:37 ◼   ► "You wanna reboot now or later?"

01:20:40 ◼   ► And if you didn't click reboot later,

01:20:42 ◼   ► after a certain amount of time,

01:20:44 ◼   ► maybe a couple hours or whatever,

01:20:45 ◼   ► it would just reboot for you.

01:20:47 ◼   ► And it would force close everything,

01:20:49 ◼   ► all windows you had open,

01:20:50 ◼   ► it would just force close them all

01:20:51 ◼   ► and forcefully reboot the computer

01:20:53 ◼   ► if you didn't respond to this box

01:20:54 ◼   ► in a certain number of hours.

01:20:56 ◼   ► So one day I had a ton of terminal windows open,

01:20:59 ◼   ► tons of stuff open on my computer,

01:21:01 ◼   ► and I went home for the night,

01:21:03 ◼   ► 'cause it was my work computer,

01:21:04 ◼   ► and I came back the next morning

01:21:06 ◼   ► and I had just forcefully rebooted the computer.

01:21:09 ◼   ► And I was so mad that I just unplugged the monitor,

01:21:14 ◼   ► plugged it into my Mac, that I was bringing with me

01:21:16 ◼   ► every day anyway to like run iTunes and stuff,

01:21:18 ◼   ► plugged it into my Mac, took the keyboard in my house,

01:21:20 ◼   ► plugged it into my Mac, and just turned off my work computer

01:21:23 ◼   ► and just never used that Windows work computer again.

01:21:27 ◼   ► After a small amount of time, I did the same thing at home.

01:21:31 ◼   ► I had this gaming PC I built at home,

01:21:34 ◼   ► basically only to play Half-Life 2,

01:21:36 ◼   ► And I eventually just stopped wanting to use that

01:21:39 ◼   ► for anything too.

01:21:41 ◼   ► And so I just started using my Mac full time

01:21:44 ◼   ► because I just, I didn't want to use Windows anymore.

01:21:47 ◼   ► It had annoyed me for so many years with its mediocrity.

01:21:51 ◼   ► You know, I had some good times on Windows,

01:21:53 ◼   ► but those times were over.

01:21:54 ◼   ► And it was very, very clear from 2005-ish forward

01:21:58 ◼   ► that those times were completely over.

01:22:00 ◼   ► - You know, I had a very similar journey into the Mac.

01:22:03 ◼   ► So I think it was in school maybe,

01:22:07 ◼   ► or shortly after I graduated,

01:22:09 ◼   ► I started running Ubuntu on my ThinkPad.

01:22:12 ◼   ► And that was what I was using full-time at home.

01:22:14 ◼   ► I was on Windows at work and Ubuntu at home,

01:22:17 ◼   ► and that was working pretty well for the most part.

01:22:19 ◼   ► This was fairly early in Ubuntu's history.

01:22:22 ◼   ► And I was doing a distro upgrade from like,

01:22:25 ◼   ► Gutsy given to Hardy Heron or something like that.

01:22:28 ◼   ► I forget exactly when it was, but I was doing an upgrade

01:22:31 ◼   ► I think it was like X windows just completely crapped the bed and I

01:22:34 ◼   ► couldn't get my

01:22:37 ◼   ► ThinkPad to work anymore without like reinstalling everything and

01:22:40 ◼   ► I didn't want to go back to Windows because I had left Windows on purpose and even though you know

01:22:46 ◼   ► Linux on the desktop was and remains a disaster

01:22:50 ◼   ► It was less of a disaster than Windows

01:22:52 ◼   ► But now in a similar way to what you had experienced on Windows Marco were just kind of rebooted on you and didn't tell you

01:22:57 ◼   ► Or didn't give you the chance not to well

01:23:00 ◼   ► I tried to do this upgrade and it just failed miserably and meanwhile I had you among others Marco whispering in my ear

01:23:07 ◼   ► Figuratively speaking. You should get a Mac. You should get a Mac. You should get a Mac. You should get a Mac and I

01:23:12 ◼   ► Vividly remember it was the WWDC keynote. I believe was 2008. I'm almost sure of that

01:23:19 ◼   ► It was WWDC 2008. I listened to it or followed along

01:23:24 ◼   ► I guess to make sure they didn't introduce new Macs and then that evening

01:23:28 ◼   ► I went to the Apple store and bought myself my first Mac,

01:23:32 ◼   ► which was a polycarbonate MacBook, or polybook,

01:23:35 ◼   ► as I like to call it.

01:23:36 ◼   ► And that was in 2008, and I haven't bought a PC since.

01:23:40 ◼   ► - And you started in Intel.

01:23:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:23:43 ◼   ► - The same way that Jon can't stand how late I started,

01:23:47 ◼   ► I look at your start that way,

01:23:49 ◼   ► even though the difference between when Jon started

01:23:51 ◼   ► and when I started was like 20 years,

01:23:53 ◼   ► and between when I started and when you started

01:23:54 ◼   ► was like two years.

01:23:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, that really is accurate.

01:23:57 ◼   ► But I can understand why you would feel like

01:23:59 ◼   ► it was a lifetime difference.

01:24:00 ◼   ► I mean, I think I was on Leopard.

01:24:03 ◼   ► I think I was after Tiger when I bought my machine.

01:24:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, mine started on whatever 10.3 was called.

01:24:10 ◼   ► - I keep forgetting that you guys never read

01:24:12 ◼   ► any of my OS X reviews in real time as they were released.

01:24:15 ◼   ► If you would ever look at them,

01:24:16 ◼   ► it would only be looking backwards.

01:24:19 ◼   ► - What you said about Windows feeling wrong for you,

01:24:23 ◼   ► I think what crystallized it for me was

01:24:26 ◼   ► The overall feeling from using Windows at the time,

01:24:29 ◼   ► which I don't know, the last version of Windows I used

01:24:33 ◼   ► extensively was Windows XP,

01:24:35 ◼   ► so I, which, granted, many people are still using,

01:24:38 ◼   ► but I don't know how it's been since then,

01:24:41 ◼   ► in anything more than just occasional uses here and there.

01:24:44 ◼   ► But the impression I got from Windows up to that point

01:24:47 ◼   ► was just that this was Microsoft's computer

01:24:51 ◼   ► and I was along for the ride.

01:24:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:24:54 ◼   ► Literally.

01:24:55 ◼   ► would just like, Windows is like,

01:24:56 ◼   ► "Hey, you know what, we're gonna reboot now."

01:24:58 ◼   ► "Okay."

01:24:59 ◼   ► And just go, "Oh wait, wait, I was doing something."

01:25:00 ◼   ► "No, we're gonna reboot now, sorry."

01:25:02 ◼   ► And then you boot back up and it's like,

01:25:03 ◼   ► "Hey, you wanna take a tour?"

01:25:05 ◼   ► "No, I wanna do my work."

01:25:06 ◼   ► Like it just always felt like Windows treats the computer

01:25:10 ◼   ► like it's theirs and that they're putting on

01:25:13 ◼   ► a little show for you and they're gonna do

01:25:15 ◼   ► what they're gonna do without regard to any respect for you

01:25:18 ◼   ► and what you're doing and the work you need to do.

01:25:21 ◼   ► Whereas Macs, and they still hold this advantage,

01:25:24 ◼   ► although not as much, but they still do hold this advantage,

01:25:27 ◼   ► the Mac respected you as the user.

01:25:30 ◼   ► Things got out of your way.

01:25:32 ◼   ► Things like, for instance, on Windows,

01:25:34 ◼   ► it was a common occurrence for some background application

01:25:38 ◼   ► to put up a box that would steal the focus

01:25:41 ◼   ► from the foreground application.

01:25:43 ◼   ► And so you'd be just typing,

01:25:44 ◼   ► all of a sudden you'd be in a different app.

01:25:45 ◼   ► Like, wait, what the hell happened?

01:25:47 ◼   ► And it was just some things showed a system modal box

01:25:50 ◼   ► and took over the focus.

01:25:51 ◼   ► And on Macs, that wasn't impossible,

01:25:53 ◼   ► but it happened just way less often.

01:25:57 ◼   ► And just in general, Max gave you the impression

01:26:00 ◼   ► and the design that really left you in control

01:26:04 ◼   ► of your computer and respected your time and your attention.

01:26:07 ◼   ► It wouldn't just like drag you along into different things.

01:26:10 ◼   ► Oh, hey, we gotta go do this new thing now.

01:26:12 ◼   ► Hey, you wanna get spammed by this new offer that we have,

01:26:16 ◼   ► this new cool feature?

01:26:17 ◼   ► Here's more balloons to pop up from the system tray

01:26:19 ◼   ► to tell you all about things.

01:26:20 ◼   ► And if you click on the balloon, they don't go away.

01:26:22 ◼   ► "Oh, hey, they popped up new windows,

01:26:23 ◼   ► "so you gotta figure out where to click on them

01:26:25 ◼   ► "to make them go away, which might not exist."

01:26:26 ◼   ► It was just the difference in overall attitude

01:26:30 ◼   ► towards the user and the experience of being a user

01:26:33 ◼   ► of both these platforms at the time.

01:26:35 ◼   ► The difference could not have been more striking.

01:26:37 ◼   ► And I do still think that that difference exists today.

01:26:39 ◼   ► And I don't know if it's wider or narrower,

01:26:42 ◼   ► but it's still there as far as I know.

01:26:45 ◼   ► And I think OS X, soon to be renamed Mac OS,

01:26:51 ◼   ► still has the advantage there by a significant market.

01:26:55 ◼   ► And that's why I still use it.

01:26:56 ◼   ► And this is why I am such a fan of the Mac.

01:26:59 ◼   ► I know it's less cool these days to be a fan of the Mac

01:27:03 ◼   ► because not only does everybody have them,

01:27:04 ◼   ► but now the future of computing is not the Mac

01:27:06 ◼   ► according to everybody.

01:27:07 ◼   ► I just don't buy that

01:27:09 ◼   ► because I'm such a huge fan of the Mac.

01:27:10 ◼   ► I love the Mac so much.

01:27:13 ◼   ► I still love it to this day.

01:27:15 ◼   ► And this is all one of the reasons why I am so critical

01:27:20 ◼   ► when things with the Mac don't go well.

01:27:22 ◼   ► When, you know, if I start seeing things slipping

01:27:25 ◼   ► or things getting worse, this is why I'm critical

01:27:27 ◼   ► because everything I do for work, for hobbies,

01:27:32 ◼   ► for entertainment, almost everything I do

01:27:35 ◼   ► involves using a computer.

01:27:37 ◼   ► And I do not want that computer to be anything else

01:27:40 ◼   ► but a Mac.

01:27:42 ◼   ► I've tried Windows.

01:27:44 ◼   ► I fortunately never ran Linux on the desktop,

01:27:46 ◼   ► on my main desktop.

01:27:46 ◼   ► I used it here and there like at work and school sometimes,

01:27:49 ◼   ► but I never ran it on my main computer

01:27:50 ◼   ► because I'm not crazy.

01:27:52 ◼   ► Please email Casey.

01:27:53 ◼   ► But everyone, please, I know that Windows

01:27:57 ◼   ► is gonna have this new Linux subsystem.

01:27:59 ◼   ► We will talk about it if it ever becomes relevant to us.

01:28:02 ◼   ► I think it's still a little early,

01:28:04 ◼   ► but I know Windows is adding this.

01:28:06 ◼   ► Please, please don't email us about this.

01:28:08 ◼   ► We know, thank you very much.

01:28:09 ◼   ► We will talk about it when the time comes.

01:28:12 ◼   ► But I do not want to switch back to Windows.

01:28:15 ◼   ► And I think if Mac OS X ever got so bad

01:28:18 ◼   ► that I couldn't use it anymore, I would switch to Linux

01:28:21 ◼   ► because I really did run fleeing from Windows.

01:28:24 ◼   ► And as much as Microsoft has done things in recent years

01:28:29 ◼   ► that are interesting to people like us,

01:28:31 ◼   ► we always say, oh, this is interesting,

01:28:33 ◼   ► Windows 8, this new thing was interesting,

01:28:35 ◼   ► and Windows 10, these new things are doing,

01:28:37 ◼   ► they're interesting, the new Linux subsystem,

01:28:39 ◼   ► that's interesting.

01:28:41 ◼   ► These are all interesting when you're not using them,

01:28:44 ◼   ► and they're interesting because we are at a distance.

01:28:47 ◼   ► and people who use them every day,

01:28:49 ◼   ► they're probably a lot less interesting.

01:28:50 ◼   ► And from what I hear from people,

01:28:52 ◼   ► the reviews from all these things are so mixed,

01:28:55 ◼   ► and there's so many gotchas and trade-offs

01:28:57 ◼   ► and negatives associated with them,

01:28:59 ◼   ► that it sounds to me like Windows is roughly the same

01:29:04 ◼   ► that it's always been.

01:29:05 ◼   ► Where my entire time using Windows,

01:29:07 ◼   ► I had a love-hate relationship with it.

01:29:10 ◼   ► It was always fine, I put up with it, I tolerated it,

01:29:13 ◼   ► but it had all these annoyances and shortcomings.

01:29:15 ◼   ► and it sounds like that's still what it is.

01:29:17 ◼   ► Just the things have shifted around a little bit,

01:29:19 ◼   ► there's different annoyances, some of them have been fixed,

01:29:21 ◼   ► some of them have been added.

01:29:22 ◼   ► Sounds like Windows from what everyone tells me,

01:29:24 ◼   ► it sounds like it's still about the same.

01:29:27 ◼   ► Just, you know, things are different but the same.

01:29:30 ◼   ► But the Mac, I really feel protective of

01:29:34 ◼   ► because it is my entire computing life.

01:29:36 ◼   ► And I neither want that to change,

01:29:39 ◼   ► nor do I want the Mac to get worse.

01:29:42 ◼   ► I only want the Mac to get better.

01:29:43 ◼   ► And that is why every time I say anything negative

01:29:47 ◼   ► about Apple on this show, we hear criticism for it.

01:29:50 ◼   ► People complain to us all the time

01:29:53 ◼   ► that we're too negative towards Apple

01:29:55 ◼   ► or that we criticize Apple too much

01:29:56 ◼   ► or they're tired of hearing it, blah, blah, blah,

01:29:57 ◼   ► especially focused towards me.

01:29:59 ◼   ► But this is why I do it,

01:30:00 ◼   ► because I love this platform so much,

01:30:04 ◼   ► I depend on this platform so much,

01:30:06 ◼   ► and nothing else out there is good enough for me.

01:30:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, you mentioned when you were talking

01:30:11 ◼   ► about the computer respecting the user

01:30:14 ◼   ► and not feeling like you were using someone else's computer

01:30:18 ◼   ► and Microsoft was in control of the computer

01:30:20 ◼   ► and you just happened to be there

01:30:21 ◼   ► and it would tolerate you for some period of time.

01:30:24 ◼   ► It's once again reminded of how sad-- well,

01:30:26 ◼   ► it's partly your age, but also partly both of you

01:30:29 ◼   ► were alive and using computers during the age when the Mac was

01:30:32 ◼   ► even more like this.

01:30:34 ◼   ► For the first thing that popped into my mind

01:30:36 ◼   ► when you gave your original example of the computer

01:30:40 ◼   ► not respecting what you were doing or whatever,

01:30:42 ◼   ► it's like, old man voice,

01:30:45 ◼   ► time was when you could name your files

01:30:48 ◼   ► whatever you wanted.

01:30:49 ◼   ► I mean, you guys never, you lived through it,

01:30:51 ◼   ► but you didn't live through it as a user.

01:30:52 ◼   ► The error when, I mean,

01:30:54 ◼   ► there was still files and folders, right?

01:30:56 ◼   ► But you could name files whatever you wanted.

01:30:58 ◼   ► And most of the computing world has never lived on a system

01:31:02 ◼   ► where that's true.

01:31:02 ◼   ► That the file, the file name was,

01:31:07 ◼   ► you just type stuff there, right?

01:31:09 ◼   ► Sentences spaces punctuation no colons that would just substitute a hyphen most people didn't notice that one

01:31:14 ◼   ► But you put slashes you if you wanted to put dates whatever you wanted except for this one special character. Yeah

01:31:19 ◼   ► Yeah, well that's the whole thing they wouldn't it wouldn't beep at you

01:31:22 ◼   ► It would just silently turn it into a hyphen and and you know

01:31:25 ◼   ► But mostly what I remember putting dates like you do, you know month a year and the you know

01:31:28 ◼   ► Typically us date type thing with slashes and stuff. Anyway, most of the time you're just typing words there

01:31:33 ◼   ► But the whole point is that the file name was entirely the users domain

01:31:38 ◼   ► You could you can name your hard drives whatever you wanted you can name your files whatever you wanted and I did I named my

01:31:43 ◼   ► Hard drives whatever I wanted to call them. I named my files and folders in

01:31:48 ◼   ► sentences with capital letters in each word and spaces between them and punctuation and

01:31:52 ◼   ► That was a freedom that essentially we had for this brief moment in time

01:31:59 ◼   ► There's mostly gone now in any system that forces us to deal with the files at all

01:32:04 ◼   ► I mean, I guess the freedom and iOS is like oh you don't have files at all now

01:32:07 ◼   ► You're free or don't you feel better?

01:32:09 ◼   ► But that got taken away because it was one of the things that didn't carry over from

01:32:15 ◼   ► Classic Mac to Mac OS X. It's one of the things that has never existed in Windows or Linux or anything like that

01:32:21 ◼   ► Yeah, anyway, you guys missed it. It was great. It was glorious, and I don't know if I don't know if I'll ever

01:32:26 ◼   ► I don't know if I'll ever live to see it again. When will I have when will someone rediscover that?

01:32:32 ◼   ► that i'd guess maybe the only rediscovered in the context where files

01:32:37 ◼   ► are no longer a thing and that's the jury still out on that we've talked about

01:32:40 ◼   ► so much about how

01:32:41 ◼   ► i was does this wonderful thing of

01:32:43 ◼   ► hiding the file system from people and yet the file system is such a flexible

01:32:47 ◼   ► way

01:32:48 ◼   ► files and folders to solve so many problems that you either have to end up

01:32:51 ◼   ► recreating

01:32:52 ◼   ► the file system in the form of a new abstraction that isn't actually directly

01:32:56 ◼   ► backed by the file system but just

01:32:58 ◼   ► gives the people to a you know like springboard is a great example

01:33:02 ◼   ► Folders, you know, they call them folders just for historical reasons if you were to plop someone down in 2007

01:33:07 ◼   ► Whenever they added folders to springboard not 2007, I guess they why do they call those folders?

01:33:13 ◼   ► They don't look anything like folders and they don't really behave anything like that's all you got to explain desktop metaphor files folders anyway

01:33:20 ◼   ► Yeah, you're recreating something like that, but it's not quite the same thing

01:33:25 ◼   ► it doesn't have the same flexibility of being able to name things and save them somewhere and organize them and

01:33:31 ◼   ► and pull them back up.

01:33:33 ◼   ► So it could be that no one ever has occasion to use that,

01:33:37 ◼   ► but if it turns out that that type of arrangement

01:33:40 ◼   ► really is the best way we come up with

01:33:43 ◼   ► for people to arbitrarily arrange stuff

01:33:46 ◼   ► on their computing device, maybe it'll come back again.

01:33:49 ◼   ► But boy, it was great, and I still think about it

01:33:52 ◼   ► every time I see like a hidden file name extension

01:33:55 ◼   ► comes out and scares me, or an incorrect file name extension

01:33:58 ◼   ► causes an icon to have, causes a file to have the wrong icon,

01:34:01 ◼   ► or causes it to launch in the wrong application.

01:34:03 ◼   ► Boy, what a mess.

01:34:05 ◼   ► - So does it annoy you, Jon, like all kidding aside,

01:34:07 ◼   ► that Marco and I, especially me,

01:34:10 ◼   ► are so new to the platform?

01:34:12 ◼   ► Like, does that frustrate you because we don't have that,

01:34:16 ◼   ► we didn't go through the crappy time like you did?

01:34:18 ◼   ► - No, it's mostly, I tried,

01:34:21 ◼   ► the thing that bothers me the most is the time

01:34:22 ◼   ► when you guys were alive and using computers,

01:34:25 ◼   ► but weren't using Macs,

01:34:26 ◼   ► All the things that you like about Macs were true and perhaps, like I said, perhaps even

01:34:32 ◼   ► more true then, and yet you weren't, like, it's like wasted time.

01:34:35 ◼   ► Like, you could have been using Macs, but you weren't for a bunch of silly reasons,

01:34:38 ◼   ► right?

01:34:39 ◼   ► That's fair.

01:34:40 ◼   ► That's fair.

01:34:41 ◼   ► Although, I don't know.

01:34:42 ◼   ► If you had put, you know, 10 or 12-year-old me in front of a Mac at home, like, not at

01:34:48 ◼   ► school, because I enjoyed using them at school.

01:34:49 ◼   ► I mean, it was a neat little diversion.

01:34:52 ◼   ► But if you had put me in front of one of those at home, I don't think I would have appreciated

01:34:56 ◼   ► it like even, you know, an equivalently aged you was. Like, I don't want to do the math in my head,

01:35:03 ◼   ► but however old you were when the Mac was new was young as far as I remember, as far as I'm aware,

01:35:09 ◼   ► and so you appreciated, even at a younger age, you appreciated much better than I think I would

01:35:15 ◼   ► have if I were in your shoes. No, I think you would. I think you both had and have the, like,

01:35:23 ◼   ► the

01:35:24 ◼   ► Sensibilities to appreciate it. I mean speaking more realistically

01:35:28 ◼   ► Like this my experience has been whenever I had someone over my house who was a hardcore PC user like a friend or whatever

01:35:36 ◼   ► Who was totally into PCs and thought Macs were junk I could blow their mind with the things I did with my computer

01:35:42 ◼   ► Even my computer was black and white the fact that the pixels were so friggin micro

01:35:46 ◼   ► It was the retina screen of the day

01:35:47 ◼   ► They had never seen a computer screen with pixels this small or this sharp like I

01:35:51 ◼   ► I would blow their mind with black and white games.

01:35:54 ◼   ► You know, games on the Mac, what are you talking about?

01:35:56 ◼   ► How could you blow their mind with the game?

01:35:57 ◼   ► They're playing Doom, right?

01:35:58 ◼   ► The pixels are the size of boulders, right?

01:36:00 ◼   ► I would blow their mind by having multiple screens and arranging them with like the displays,

01:36:04 ◼   ► control panel.

01:36:05 ◼   ► Like there were so many things I could do that would just make their heads explode and

01:36:07 ◼   ► they would, their jaws would drop.

01:36:09 ◼   ► It was just so much farther ahead of anything we had ever seen.

01:36:12 ◼   ► Did that mean they were going to go home and buy a Mac?

01:36:14 ◼   ► No, because the Macs were a bajillion dollars.

01:36:17 ◼   ► There's no avoiding this.

01:36:18 ◼   ► Like they were just so much more expensive.

01:36:20 ◼   ► And it's kind of like, computers themselves were so much more expensive back then.

01:36:25 ◼   ► It's not like you had each kid have their own computer.

01:36:27 ◼   ► The family had one computer and it was like a car.

01:36:29 ◼   ► It wasn't like you just bought a new one every year or something.

01:36:31 ◼   ► This was before the upgrade cycle and the internet and all this other stuff.

01:36:35 ◼   ► So realistically speaking, no matter how amazed somebody was by my Mac, they're not

01:36:39 ◼   ► going to go home and say, "Hey, Mom, can we buy a $3,000 in 1980s money computer?"

01:36:44 ◼   ► They'd be like, "What are you talking about?"

01:36:46 ◼   ► So really, I'm speaking of a position of massive privilege, having had the original Macintosh,

01:36:50 ◼   ► the 128K Macintosh, and a series of Macs.

01:36:54 ◼   ► You just couldn't afford them, because that was one thing that was true back in the slam

01:36:58 ◼   ► against the Macs.

01:36:59 ◼   ► They were more expensive.

01:37:00 ◼   ► My god, were they more expensive.

01:37:02 ◼   ► Everything about them.

01:37:03 ◼   ► But the keyboard was $200, for crying out loud.

01:37:04 ◼   ► Again, in 1980s money.

01:37:06 ◼   ► Good.

01:37:07 ◼   ► Wow.

01:37:08 ◼   ► Fantastic.

01:37:09 ◼   ► It was an awesome keyboard, though.

01:37:10 ◼   ► Ask Gruber.

01:37:11 ◼   ► I think he's still using it.

01:37:12 ◼   ► So, realistically speaking, that's one of the reasons.

01:37:15 ◼   ► And that was also one of the reasons that you couldn't convince people, because they

01:37:17 ◼   ► would come over and I would blow them away with my amazing Macintosh.

01:37:21 ◼   ► But they had to go back home and retrench on the PC, because there's no way they could

01:37:26 ◼   ► get a Mac.

01:37:27 ◼   ► Like, it was never going to happen, right?

01:37:30 ◼   ► They would have had to turn around and try to convince their parents to get a Mac, and

01:37:34 ◼   ► they would not be successful, because their parents wouldn't be as impressed by whatever

01:37:37 ◼   ► thing that I showed them.

01:37:39 ◼   ► So it was an uphill battle, but I believe both of you would have also been impressed

01:37:46 ◼   ► by the things.

01:37:47 ◼   ► I mean, even when I got my color one, 24-bit color, there's no 24-bit color on PC.

01:37:51 ◼   ► Again, all my PC-using friends had never even seen a screen with 16.8 million colors.

01:37:56 ◼   ► They had no idea.

01:37:57 ◼   ► Like, they were, you know, VGA 256, they were just amazed, and then you would go 640 by

01:38:01 ◼   ► 480.

01:38:02 ◼   ► It's like, you don't even know what you're talking about, guys.

01:38:04 ◼   ► Let me show you.

01:38:05 ◼   ► I have a TranTron screen, high-res TranTron screen

01:38:08 ◼   ► with 24-bit color attached to my Mac SE30,

01:38:13 ◼   ► arranged with a black and white screen.

01:38:16 ◼   ► I would drag a window half on the black and white screen,

01:38:19 ◼   ► half on the color screen, and move it around.

01:38:20 ◼   ► Just, their little brains would explode.

01:38:22 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:38:24 ◼   ► And that computer setup was like $6,000, right?