111: That Big Ring Underground Somewhere in Europe
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I have no idea what day it is anymore.
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It's still Thursday.
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What week is it?
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The first week of April, is that right? I don't even know.
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Is the watch out yet?
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No it's not. Soon. But not yet.
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Check your wrist.
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Just look at your wrist.
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It's hair o'clock.
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So do we have some follow-up?
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Starting with cooking, apparently.
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Seriously? That's awesome.
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Yeah, this was last week on the toaster episode.
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I was making fun of the temperatures
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making fun of the temperatures printed on the glass door of the toaster saying that
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160 to 170 is not an appropriate temperature for pork despite the fact that it is printed
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on the door of the toaster that I tested last week. And I also blame the government for
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these crazy temperature ratings because they tend to be super conservative to make sure
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you don't get any food borne illnesses. Well, I was told by several people that the government
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had in fact changed their recommended temperature to pork. They changed it in 2011 and when
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people mention this to me I had then recalled reading the story back then but
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anyway the government now recommends a 145 for pork which is a perfectly sane
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temperature for pork and it will make it not taste like cardboard so everybody
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you can say the government says the US government that is that you can safely
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cook your pork to 145 and eat it and not have it taste like cardboard all right
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well I feel better knowing that piece of information I don't know about you guys
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all right so why don't tell us about the f-16 there's another thing last we got
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I think it was a four-touch trackpad.
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The trackpad doesn't move, but it feels like it moves, and it reminded me of the stick
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in the F-16, which doesn't move.
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A couple of people knowledgeable about this stuff wrote in to tell me that the F-16, the
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original F-16 stick, didn't move at all, and the pilots found it disconcerting because
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there was no feedback, and so it was modified so that it moves slightly.
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Some people say fractions of an inch, some people say it moves an inch total.
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I saw a video of it at one point moving.
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It doesn't move much, but it moves a little bit.
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Because there was no feedback, it just felt kind of weird.
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And I wasn't sure about the F-18, and people have already told me that the F-18 stick does
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move, and it actually has a mechanical connection to the flight controls as a backup.
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I remember reading about that years ago, the fly-by-wire thing.
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Before drive-by-wire came to cars, not that we want to turn this into neutral already,
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Fly-by-wire came to planes first, where the controls were not hooked up to the...
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things that you put your hands on were not hooked up to the
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control surfaces of the plane by a mechanical connection,
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but rather just by like you would move the stick and it would figure out what you were trying to do and then it would
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instruct electronics to move the control surfaces of the plane and predictably that freaked out pilots like "oh I got you know,
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I gotta have a direct connection. I don't trust these computers blah blah blah."
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But they made it triply and quadruply redundant. Anyway, in the F-18
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It's fly-by-wire my understanding, but there is a backup system where if the fly-by-wire system fails
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You can still move the surfaces with a stick
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So there you go the f-16 and needed with its unmoving stick needed some haptic feedback as well
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I don't they guess they did decide not to go with vibration and just go with tiny amounts of movement
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But it still seems pretty weird
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That's definitely wonky, but hey whatever works
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Tell us about the current MacBook Pro and how many monitors you can connect to it
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Yeah, the last week talking about the confusion of what would happen if they had two USB C ports on the new MacBook
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But it only supported
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Two monitors so you could only have the intro monitor and one external monitor
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Wouldn't it be confusing that you had this other port that you thought you could hook something into it?
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I said it would not be confusing because you would know that you bought a machine that only supports dual displays you would
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Yeah, and Frank and Frank wrote in to tell me well the current MacBook Pro only supports two external displays
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But it has three places you can plug in monitor
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So those people must just be thoroughly confused when they plug in that third monitor, and it doesn't work alright, so there were two big
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Pieces of follow-up that we got or two pieces of follow-up that we got often
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One of them was everyone getting angry at you for falling into the Steve Jobs said or Steve Jobs did trap
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Would you like to defend yourself John? Yeah, that's not it's one of those things where there's sort of
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shared cultural knowledge of a meme or whatever and it
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All nuance is rung out of that meme and the meme is kind of when when Tim Cook took over Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs died
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Among the Apple nerd community where there were a lot of there was a lot of pushback on the idea
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On the other stories that were coming saying Oh Jobs is gone
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He was the only one who could have led Apple to victory now no matter what Tim Cook does he's doomed without
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jobs Apple can't innovate and everything Tim Cook did it was well Steve Jobs
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would have done it this way well he's no Steve Jobs well Steve Jobs would have
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done that and so the blowback meme in our little circle was always I don't
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want to see anyone comparing anything Tim Cook does to Steve Jobs I don't want
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to see anyone ever saying Steve Jobs would have done this and would have done
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that the spirit it was that meme is developed in was worthwhile and that
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when that transition did take place there were a lot of those hysterical
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stories about how Apple could never possibly succeed without Steve Jobs and
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so on. But it has morphed into "It is now impossible to ever compare and contrast Steve
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Jobs and Tim Cook." And that premise I reject. I think it is perfectly valid to compare and
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contrast Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, whether or not you think one is better than the other
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and whether or not you want to make that particular case. In the last episode, I was comparing
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them directly on things that they had each done with the product line, not saying, "Well,
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what would Steve Jobs have done about the watch or some product that he didn't even
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know about I don't even know about the watch but anyway that type of thing I
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think is not as useful but still I think is a valid line of inquiry as long as
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you're not using it as a cudgel to say like Steve Jobs would never have done
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that therefore what Tim Cook is doing is wrong because Steve Jobs was infallible
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and so on and so forth so anyway I reject that criticism because I think it
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is useful to compare these things and as long as you do it in a thoughtful way
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and not just you know elevate Steve Jobs to godhood and use him as a way to say
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whatever Tim Cook does is bad or to try to support your own opinion by saying
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I think the watch is a dumb idea and Steve Jobs would have agreed with me was he was here
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He's always right therefore. I'm right because I I'm telling you what Steve Jobs would have thought about the watcher
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You know I again
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I don't know if you knew about the watch it would be better if we had an example of a product that we were sure
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The Steve Jobs never knew about a lot of these things have been in the works for a long time
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But anyway, that's that's how I feel about the comparisons to Steve Jobs
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So you stand by your comparison from last week? Yes, totally because I you know, it is not like completely speculative
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I'm not using the ghost of Steve Jobs to sure I support my opinion
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I said I didn't even know which strategy was better than Tim Cook one of the Steve Jobs one and I could go either way
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On it and it's not clear like it's not it. It is completely valid
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Let's wake Marco up and have him tell us about something awesome and then he can go back to sleep for a few more minutes
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It's something going on. We're doing a podcast something like that is the show
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Is this what people tune in for do you want to explain why you're all sleepy because no one's gonna know why you're all sleepy
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When they like you you think that everyone follows your life down to the the tweet on Twitter
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But people are gonna listen to this who haven't been following you on Twitter have no idea why you're out of it
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So why don't you explain that? Thank God. I'm so tired of Twitter. People are so nasty there anyway
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Honestly, I'm I'm pulling away from Twitter I think I
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It's just not worth it. It is simply not worth it. You haven't even been tweeting that much
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What are you that's what I'm talking about. I'm pulling away from Twitter. All right
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Well, maybe we'll save us for the after show and we'll have a therapy session and see what's going on on your Twitter
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All right. Well, it's it isn't anything recent. It's like I'm slowly realizing over the course of time that
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it's a tricky balance between whether it makes your life better or worse overall and
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and I've been questioning what the what the value of it is for me recently and whether it is a net gain or loss and
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Maybe it's probably a net gain still but the ratio there is not as good as it should be
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So I'm really not incredibly happy with it anyway
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And I'm exploring ways to try to fix it. Young man, when you are tired of Twitter
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You are tired of life. Another reference you will not get from a long time ago
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So the reason I sound like this and the reason I'm out of it
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And probably not making any sense is because I have just returned from a trip across the Atlantic Ocean
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To Ireland for the wonderful ool conference and I would I would tell you how amazing it is in great detail
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However, Casey didn't get to go this year
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And it would just be cruel for me for me to tell you how awesome it was
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But suffice to say it was awesome. And I've been awake for approximately 22 hours now. I
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Forget what time my body thinks it is. It doesn't really matter
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But I'm a zombie and I sound like this so I apologize
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In better news. We have a new sponsor this week
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We do our first sponsor this week is Reuters TV
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- All right.
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So I had said earlier that there were two major pieces
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follow-up that that we had got a lot of complaining about via the feedback just
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well this week there were two and the other one had to do with some of the
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statements we made on fabbing ram which in turn were based on some follow-up
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that we had gotten two weeks ago so John do you want to set all this straight
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yeah this was my memory I would which I just asserted as fact the first time I
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of I talked about it that when when using when fabbing silicon chips that
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the first thing they do to work out the kinks in a new process size was fab ram
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because it's simple and very regular and not as complicated as actual full-fledged
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CPU and then we got some feedback that said no no actually D RAM is really
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complicated because they have capacitors they're like they're not like two flat
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plates facing each other it's like a tube within a tube and it's really
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complicated to fab them and actually it's much harder to fab those capacitors
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than just regular planar logic transistors, so that's definitely not the case.
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And I was like, "Alright, well, maybe my data is old, maybe I'm just remembering this from
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when I was a kid and I never revisited maybe when they passed through 32 nanometers, something
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Because things get weird when you start getting really small process sizes, like who knows,
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maybe we only have X-ray lithography, maybe we already have X-ray lithography, that's
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how much I've been keeping up with it, as in not much.
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It's not like it just shrinks, shrinks, shrinks, and it's going to shrink your whole life.
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We should have a whole episode about the end of Moore's Law, by the way, because Moore's
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law has existed for most of our life where it's like, "Oh, you know, they just keep shrinking
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in the process," but like, it doesn't take a genius to figure out you can't keep shrinking
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forever. Eventually you get down to the things that they're slamming together in that big
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ring underground somewhere in Europe, and you run into some problems. But anyway, we're
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not there yet. And so, last week I said, "What the heck was I remembering with this whole
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fabbing RAM first? Am I just crazy, or was it something they used to do but don't do
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anymore, and I got a lot of people who would be in positions to know telling me that what
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I was, it wasn't that they don't fab RAM, it's that they fab SRAM, not DRAM.
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SRAM is the stuff you use to make like the caches and stuff on CPUs.
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It is not the same as DRAM.
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It is much more expensive than DRAM and faster because you need to use way more transistors
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per bit of stored memory.
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But unlike DRAM, it doesn't need to be refreshed every X number of milliseconds.
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Anyway, we'll link to the SRAM Wikipedia page.
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SRAM is not a new thing, but the point is SRAM is not filled with capacitors, it's just
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a bunch of logic gates and it is very regular and that is what they use to test out the
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Kingston New Processes.
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In fact we have someone, Andrew Yang from, oh no he's not the one from Intel, but someone
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else from Intel.
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But anyway, he links to an Anetech story from a while back specifically talking about SRAM.
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The Anetech story says "The good old SRAM test vehicle is a great way to iron out bugs
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in the manufacturing process."
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and he talks about how Intel was demoing in 2007 their 32 nanometer SRAM test chip.
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And Eric, who used to work at Intel until 2006, says that each new process node in SDRAM
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module was fabbed prior to the main production of CPUs.
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I saw someone else, I don't have the notes here, was saying that that measurement of
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like how small were you able to get SRAM is kind of like the yardstick for how you're
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doing on your process size.
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Like oh, we first got SRAM down to this size at this date or whatever.
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So there you go, one letter makes a difference.
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If you don't know the difference between SRAM and DRAM,
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I encourage you to read the Wikipedia pages
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that we will put in the show notes,
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because all RAM is crazy,
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and examining the difference between SRAM and DRAM
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will make you appreciate the stuff
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that's inside your computer
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that you never need to think about.
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And finally, Gordon McGregor sent us a link to a chart
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that shows process size,
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and I didn't quite understand this chart,
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and it seems to contradict some of the things I just said,
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but this chart shows that DRAM
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still leads process development versus logic,
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but the gap is closing over time.
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Did you guys look at this graph here?
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No, it is somewhat confusing it shows logic and then D RAM the NAND flash and I don't know what that other line is there
00:15:23
◼
►
Anyway, I will leave the graph in the show notes
00:15:26
◼
►
Anyone wants to parse that out and figure what it is I'm looking at there
00:15:29
◼
►
But I'm fairly convinced that what I was remembering was s RAM and not D RAM in that first little letter
00:15:33
◼
►
Makes all the difference that took surprisingly little time John. I'm very proud of I tried to trim it down
00:15:39
◼
►
I didn't want it there was some more rehashing of the the new MacBook, but I felt we've covered it
00:15:43
◼
►
Yeah, I think we can definitely never talk about the one port on the MacBook again
00:15:48
◼
►
Oh, no, when Apple sends us all our free sample copies, then we'll talk about it some more. Oh, yeah that yeah
00:15:53
◼
►
Oh, I didn't mention I got I got five of them on my mailbox today. Yes. I said check your wrist
00:15:58
◼
►
You're wearing two Apple watches right now. Oh my god, you're right
00:16:02
◼
►
If it were only that easy, oh damn. It's the sport
00:16:10
◼
►
So it's funny that this is the week that we run through follow-up so quickly because we don't really have any
00:16:15
◼
►
Terribly pressing topics. That's right. Now you where is your follow-up now?
00:16:18
◼
►
All right, so I don't know which one of you guys put this in the show notes
00:16:26
◼
►
But would you like to talk about our max and roadmap rumors? I think we all would I think we should all bring up
00:16:32
◼
►
This page which is from a long time ago and it is a complete the unsubstantiated rumor as far as I can tell
00:16:37
◼
►
- So we ran out of topics, so we're moving
00:16:40
◼
►
from discussing new BS rumors
00:16:42
◼
►
to discussing ancient BS rumors.
00:16:44
◼
►
- Yeah, well, I mean, this BS rumor is a jumping off point.
00:16:48
◼
►
First of all, it's in one of those sub-communities
00:16:51
◼
►
that we don't really travel in,
00:16:53
◼
►
like the whole semiconductor forums,
00:16:56
◼
►
where they're debating, they're really into
00:16:58
◼
►
who's particular process size
00:17:01
◼
►
and what particular technology is getting what contract
00:17:03
◼
►
for what chip and all that stuff.
00:17:07
◼
►
So at the very least, like, anyway, look at the story.
00:17:12
◼
►
It talks about like the A9, the A10, the A9X, the A10X,
00:17:15
◼
►
the S1 and the S2, all names that you could very easily
00:17:18
◼
►
make up based on, you know, Apple's current naming
00:17:20
◼
►
of their chips.
00:17:21
◼
►
And who might get those contracts
00:17:24
◼
►
and what technology they're using
00:17:26
◼
►
and the date they're supposed to start production
00:17:28
◼
►
and contracts that are split over different fabs
00:17:31
◼
►
like Samsung and TSMC and Global Foundry
00:17:33
◼
►
and whether Intel is fabbing anything.
00:17:37
◼
►
And there's a big table showing all this information, most of which is not that big of a deal except
00:17:41
◼
►
from the perspective of Apple, you know, how is Apple managing its relationship with its
00:17:47
◼
►
fiercest competitor Samsung that it is still relying on to fab a lot of its chips?
00:17:51
◼
►
And that's always an uncomfortable situation and we've talked in the past about perhaps
00:17:55
◼
►
getting Intel into the mix here because they are usually at the forefront of process technology,
00:18:01
◼
►
very often far ahead of the rest of the field but so far Apple hasn't been using them for
00:18:05
◼
►
anything but of course Intel has their own chips they want you to use instead of ARM.
00:18:09
◼
►
Anyway, inside this entire story is a one line item showing on the A9X and A10X line,
00:18:17
◼
►
on the A9 and A10 it says those are the iPhone.
00:18:18
◼
►
On the Apple Watch it says of course the S1 and the S2.
00:18:21
◼
►
And then it talks about the baseband chip on the iPhone and iPad.
00:18:24
◼
►
And then the middle item it says A9X, A10X, iPad and Mac.
00:18:29
◼
►
And that is not an exciting part of the story really to the people discussing this because
00:18:33
◼
►
'cause all they care about is who's fabbing
00:18:34
◼
►
and what technology it's on.
00:18:35
◼
►
But it's like, "Oh, we'll just throw that in there."
00:18:37
◼
►
Yeah, of course, the A9X and the A10X,
00:18:38
◼
►
of course there'll be Macs based on those.
00:18:40
◼
►
And this is the eternal ARM-based Mac.
00:18:43
◼
►
Remember that we've talked about at length in the past,
00:18:45
◼
►
I think it was worth revisiting.
00:18:47
◼
►
Do we think anything has changed on the feasibility
00:18:52
◼
►
and likability of ARM-based Macs in light of,
00:18:55
◼
►
let's say, like the new MacBook with its five watt CPU
00:18:59
◼
►
and the very latest iPad Air 2 with its benchmarks
00:19:04
◼
►
versus the existing computers.
00:19:05
◼
►
Do we think now is the time?
00:19:06
◼
►
Do we believe this little table here
00:19:10
◼
►
any more than we did in the past,
00:19:11
◼
►
or is it just still a wait and see attitude?
00:19:14
◼
►
- You know, I actually had an interesting
00:19:16
◼
►
and related realization at work the other day.
00:19:20
◼
►
One of my coworkers who is not a developer,
00:19:22
◼
►
she had just swapped a Dell iPad Air,
00:19:27
◼
►
excuse me, MacBook Air knockoff for a actual MacBook Air.
00:19:31
◼
►
And this MacBook Air happened to be a few years old.
00:19:33
◼
►
I don't recall exactly when it was built.
00:19:36
◼
►
But she didn't have VMware installed.
00:19:41
◼
►
Now, typically when we used to issue Macs to everyone,
00:19:44
◼
►
doesn't matter if you're a developer or not,
00:19:46
◼
►
we would, or our IT department of one,
00:19:49
◼
►
would install VMware Fusion on every single Mac.
00:19:53
◼
►
Because inevitably all of these people,
00:19:55
◼
►
be it business people, developers, whatever,
00:19:58
◼
►
are going to need to do something in Windows
00:20:01
◼
►
that they can't do in OS X.
00:20:02
◼
►
And so our IT guy would just get ahead of the curve
00:20:06
◼
►
and just put VMware Fusion on there.
00:20:09
◼
►
And I went to do something in VMware Fusion on her machine.
00:20:12
◼
►
I can't remember what it was, but it doesn't really matter.
00:20:14
◼
►
And VMware Fusion wasn't there.
00:20:17
◼
►
And that was a little bit odd for me
00:20:20
◼
►
because I thought it was a given that, say,
00:20:23
◼
►
for Visio, if nothing else, that VMware would be on every Mac we hand out in the company.
00:20:29
◼
►
And it isn't. And that relates to this discussion because I have to imagine that virtualizing
00:20:38
◼
►
a Windows installation, unless it was whatever that weirdo version of Windows is that runs
00:20:42
◼
►
on the surface, the ARM surfaces, virtualizing a Windows installation on an ARM Mac would
00:20:48
◼
►
be unbelievably slow. I mean, we've talked about this in the past, but my recollection
00:20:52
◼
►
of Macs before I ever touched a Mac was that they would have like separate daughterboards
00:20:56
◼
►
on some of these old Macs that would basically be a PC on a daughterboard that you would
00:21:01
◼
►
plug into your Mac in order to make emulation of PCs way faster. Do you know what I'm talking
00:21:07
◼
►
They had those, but nobody owned them. Like you would never see one in the wild. They
00:21:10
◼
►
made a couple machines that you can do that with a couple of third parties actual shoulder
00:21:14
◼
►
card, but it was not a thing like virtual PC was the thing. And that was all emulated
00:21:18
◼
►
x86 PC on my power PC Mac and it was super slow.
00:21:23
◼
►
Exactly, exactly.
00:21:24
◼
►
And so that's what that's that's one of the things that I love about my Macs and this
00:21:29
◼
►
is granted directly driven by the fact that I do all of my work on the Microsoft stack.
00:21:34
◼
►
But nonetheless, I love being able to boot into when I don't love being being able to
00:21:39
◼
►
boot into Windows, but I love being able to get my job done by booting into Windows and
00:21:43
◼
►
using Visual Studio and doing all that sort of thing.
00:21:46
◼
►
But it was very interesting to me that someone who isn't a developer apparently doesn't
00:21:51
◼
►
need Windows anymore.
00:21:52
◼
►
And that's a change from just a couple of years back, at least in my workplace.
00:21:56
◼
►
And that is kind of what you were talking about, Jon.
00:21:59
◼
►
Is this more feasible now?
00:22:01
◼
►
Well, I don't know, but certainly could be.
00:22:04
◼
►
I think it's not just Windows, because we always think, "Oh, x86, it's great that
00:22:08
◼
►
we can run Windows software.
00:22:09
◼
►
And now, finally, this divide that existed for so long."
00:22:12
◼
►
It was Mac versus PC, and it was the software compatibility problem.
00:22:15
◼
►
And when Apple went x86, it was cutting the Gordian knot
00:22:18
◼
►
and say, game over, it is not an issue anymore.
00:22:21
◼
►
You can boot Windows on these things.
00:22:23
◼
►
There is no excuse not to get this Mac.
00:22:26
◼
►
You know what I mean?
00:22:27
◼
►
It can do everything.
00:22:28
◼
►
You can kind of look at it as a transitional thing.
00:22:30
◼
►
Like we need to be able to do what the competition can do
00:22:35
◼
►
long enough to defeat the competition
00:22:37
◼
►
and then it doesn't matter anymore.
00:22:38
◼
►
It's not like the Mac is defeating Windows PCs,
00:22:40
◼
►
but what's happening is that the PC is being defeated
00:22:43
◼
►
by mobile, right?
00:22:45
◼
►
And so it becomes less relevant what goes on down here in the PC world.
00:22:50
◼
►
And maybe Windows becomes less relevant, even Microsoft is bringing all of its stuff to
00:22:54
◼
►
be, you know, net-based services and cloud subscriptions and web-based things.
00:22:59
◼
►
And you know, it's just the stakes are a lot lower, you know, the need for Windows is a
00:23:08
◼
►
Within specific applications, like if you really need to use Windows stuff, x86 I think
00:23:12
◼
►
is still indispensable for those things.
00:23:14
◼
►
I don't think it's feasible for Apple to go all ARM for a variety of reasons.
00:23:18
◼
►
And for x86, so the reason I bring up Windows is from my perspective, in my particular job
00:23:24
◼
►
and everyone's varies, Windows, yes, is important, but I feel like Linux is just as important.
00:23:29
◼
►
And you say, "Well, it doesn't matter.
00:23:30
◼
►
Linux runs on everything.
00:23:31
◼
►
Linux doesn't need x86."
00:23:32
◼
►
You're right, Linux does run on everything.
00:23:33
◼
►
I had Linux on my PowerPC Mac.
00:23:35
◼
►
There was lots of different distributions.
00:23:36
◼
►
But practically speaking, it's a lot easier to get binary packages and to work out compilation
00:23:43
◼
►
problems than to just sort out everything you need to sort out on x86/64 Linux.
00:23:48
◼
►
Because that is the sweet spot.
00:23:50
◼
►
That is what everyone's using.
00:23:51
◼
►
That's the common thing.
00:23:52
◼
►
And if you have some exotic CPU like ARM or PowerPC or whatever, you are a little bit
00:23:57
◼
►
off the beaten path.
00:23:58
◼
►
Is that a big deal?
00:23:59
◼
►
No, but it's just a hassle.
00:24:01
◼
►
It's an annoyance.
00:24:03
◼
►
It's the kind of thing that Mac users used to have to deal with.
00:24:05
◼
►
Because they're like, "Oh, I can do that, but I'm a little bit different."
00:24:08
◼
►
It's like OS X in the beginning.
00:24:10
◼
►
try to compile your UNIX software and it'd be like, "You can build it on a Mac, but
00:24:13
◼
►
it's kind of weird.
00:24:14
◼
►
You might have to tweak a Makefile."
00:24:15
◼
►
And it's like, "Why doesn't this just build out of the box?"
00:24:17
◼
►
Luckily, all the people who maintain software packages for UNIX seem to get Macs, because
00:24:23
◼
►
it only took a few years for all those packages to start building, and now you just expect
00:24:26
◼
►
if I get something from the open source world, it will build on the Mac, and if it doesn't,
00:24:32
◼
►
you're angry at somebody.
00:24:33
◼
►
So we've already become entitled, like, "How dare that thing not build on the Mac!"
00:24:39
◼
►
But yeah, I think x86 still serves a role as the sort of common base Windows, Mac, Linux,
00:24:46
◼
►
even though the Mac in the past has run on different platforms, and even though Linux
00:24:49
◼
►
in the present runs on a bazillion different platforms, and even Windows has at various
00:24:53
◼
►
times run on different platforms.
00:24:54
◼
►
There's an ARM version of Windows now, there was a PowerPC version of Windows NT, for people
00:24:57
◼
►
who are really old, remember that one?
00:25:00
◼
►
But x86 is still that commonality.
00:25:02
◼
►
So regardless of what goes on at the low end of ARM, I have to think that Apple would have
00:25:08
◼
►
to keep x86-64 at the very least on the high end for some period of time.
00:25:12
◼
►
And the thing that trips me up about the ARM-based Mac is like, so do you have two different
00:25:17
◼
►
CPUs in Macs for a long period, for multiple years, where you can get both ARM Macs and
00:25:26
◼
►
That seems like more trouble than it's worth to me.
00:25:30
◼
►
Yeah, that seems weird.
00:25:32
◼
►
I mean, that's what Microsoft is doing with the Surface, right?
00:25:35
◼
►
They have the Surface, what is it, RT, which is--
00:25:38
◼
►
Windows RT, yeah.
00:25:40
◼
►
I'm sorry, I'm conflating them.
00:25:42
◼
►
But yeah, there's a Surface that runs ARM, which
00:25:45
◼
►
at least the early ones--
00:25:46
◼
►
I haven't kept up with the later ones,
00:25:48
◼
►
but a few coworkers go to build every year,
00:25:50
◼
►
and that's kind of the Microsoft WWDC, if you will.
00:25:53
◼
►
It's in Moscone, the whole rigmarole.
00:25:55
◼
►
And anyway, unlike Apple, Microsoft
00:25:57
◼
►
gives away all sorts of awesome goodies.
00:26:01
◼
►
I think they got Xbox Ones last year, et cetera.
00:26:04
◼
►
Well, anyways, they got Surface RTs a couple of years ago, and they said that they were
00:26:10
◼
►
great for the three or four or 10 pieces of software that came with it, but they were
00:26:15
◼
►
pieces of crap for anything else.
00:26:18
◼
►
And the chat room is telling me, well, that's not really a thing anymore, but it's still
00:26:22
◼
►
an illustrative example of, well, it makes everything harder when you're not running
00:26:28
◼
►
on the platform that they're not running on the CPU that most of the platform is running
00:26:33
◼
►
just like you said, Jon, over time that would change. But it's weird from a consumer point
00:26:39
◼
►
of view. We've been lamenting, maybe not the three of us as much, but we as a community have
00:26:42
◼
►
been lamenting all the different skews that Apple has now between iPads and certainly the watch and
00:26:51
◼
►
iPhones and Macs. And this would just further complicate things. I don't know. I agree with
00:26:58
◼
►
you for sure, Jon, that it seems really aggressive to get rid of Intel. Even on the low end,
00:27:02
◼
►
even on like the little even on the low end it seems aggressive but i i would believe it because
00:27:08
◼
►
apple is aggressive i hear they're coming out with a computer that only is one port um these very soon
00:27:13
◼
►
don't know warning just acknowledge that the chat room is talking about that the arm-based version
00:27:20
◼
►
of windows has gone around in circles two times oh it's dead it's just going away it's just sleeping
00:27:26
◼
►
you know it is an x version of windows anyway that always struck me as a trial balloon we can
00:27:32
◼
►
make, you know, because it's when they were doing like the original Surface, right?
00:27:35
◼
►
And they were going to have one that was Intel power, but the best chips Intel could give
00:27:37
◼
►
them still required like vents to be on the side of their tablet, and that was kind of
00:27:41
◼
►
like, can we make one that's iPad-like, but still using, you know, like, can we do it?
00:27:47
◼
►
We want to make an iPad, and Intel doesn't have a chip for us, can we still put Windows
00:27:53
◼
►
Because their whole thing was like Windows 8, it's the same everywhere, blah blah blah.
00:27:55
◼
►
Well, we can make an ARM version of Windows, how about that?
00:27:57
◼
►
And if it sold like gangbusters, they would be like full steam ahead on it.
00:28:01
◼
►
But Surface in general didn't sell like gangbusters and the ARM version even less so because just
00:28:05
◼
►
like Casey said, people bought them and either I can imagine people buying one saying "wow
00:28:09
◼
►
this runs Windows, I'll be able to run everything" and being mistaken despite the fact that I'm
00:28:13
◼
►
sure the nice Microsoft sales people tried to emphasize to them that you will not be
00:28:16
◼
►
able to run x86 software on your ARM based Surface.
00:28:20
◼
►
And then it required Microsoft to do the thing that has not been really good at doing lately
00:28:24
◼
►
which is make all the people who make its third party applications also compile an ARM
00:28:28
◼
►
version to make sure your app works on ARM.
00:28:30
◼
►
Like Apple is the king of hurting its developer community through platform transitions, whether
00:28:35
◼
►
it be from one CPU to the next, from desktop to phone, or from PowerPC to Intel.
00:28:41
◼
►
Apple has done that more times and more successfully than any other technology company, and Microsoft
00:28:46
◼
►
has not done a great job of hurting its developer community from one API set to the other, from
00:28:52
◼
►
one CPU architecture to the other.
00:28:54
◼
►
hell, they had a really hard time getting them onto the Windows NT codebase off of the
00:28:57
◼
►
you know, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98 DOS-based codebase.
00:29:02
◼
►
So it could just be different strengths in the company.
00:29:05
◼
►
I totally believe Apple could pull off an ARM/Mac transition, but I'm always looking
00:29:09
◼
►
like aside from the obvious upside that we talk about all the time, Apple wants to own
00:29:13
◼
►
and control every important technology and its products, like that is there.
00:29:16
◼
►
That's the reason we're talking about this at all.
00:29:17
◼
►
It totally fits with everything they want to do, but then you say, "What are you going
00:29:21
◼
►
to do about the Mac Pro?
00:29:22
◼
►
What are you gonna do about the MacBook Pro?
00:29:24
◼
►
Are you gonna become a CPU design powerhouse?"
00:29:27
◼
►
He said, "We already are a CPU design powerhouse.
00:29:29
◼
►
Look at the A8.
00:29:30
◼
►
We're amazing."
00:29:31
◼
►
"Yes, alright, so I believe you could do it, but do you do it in all one big bang?"
00:29:36
◼
►
"Do you say, 'And all the Macs are armed now, and we've got a 12-core arm for our Mac Pros
00:29:41
◼
►
all the way down to the tiniest little arm in our Apple Watch, and we designed them all
00:29:45
◼
►
because now we're the new Intel, and I guess we get Samsung and TSMC to fab them for us
00:29:52
◼
►
a process node that may be a little bit behind Intel? I don't know. It worries me. The whole
00:29:57
◼
►
thing worries me.
00:29:58
◼
►
Well, and also, if we look at, like, did you see there was a benchmark on Geek Banks that
00:30:03
◼
►
has been since taken down, but I saw a screenshot of it earlier. This is a benchmark of the
00:30:11
◼
►
new MacBook, the new slow MacBook. And it's roughly equivalent to the performance of,
00:30:19
◼
►
like 2010 MacBook Airs, like it's in that ballpark.
00:30:23
◼
►
And I have reason to believe,
00:30:25
◼
►
from a few details about the screenshot,
00:30:28
◼
►
it looks legitimate.
00:30:29
◼
►
I think this is a real deal.
00:30:31
◼
►
So we now can see kind of what the CPU performance
00:30:35
◼
►
would be like, I mean what the CPU performance is
00:30:39
◼
►
as Intel tries to go all the way down to ARM level chips.
00:30:43
◼
►
And this is not an Atom chip,
00:30:44
◼
►
this is an actual core series chip,
00:30:47
◼
►
but it's pretty close.
00:30:49
◼
►
And if you think about like, compare this to the speed of the A8X chip in the iPad Air
00:30:55
◼
►
2, which is currently the, I believe currently like the best, the best ARM chip that's kind
00:31:01
◼
►
of in that ballpark for like, you know, wattage and everything like that, right?
00:31:06
◼
►
It's fairly close, you know, it's in the ballpark, it's very similar to what we're seeing in
00:31:10
◼
►
the ARM chips, you know, in the same power envelope roughly.
00:31:14
◼
►
So I think if you look at this, you can kind of see, well, an ARM version of this laptop
00:31:19
◼
►
really wouldn't be that different performance or battery wise like I think
00:31:22
◼
►
it would be certainly in the same ballpark on both of those criteria so
00:31:26
◼
►
then the question is why go through the transition at all like if Intel can with
00:31:31
◼
►
enough pressure and enough technology if Intel can kind of reach down to the
00:31:36
◼
►
power levels of ARM chips to make a very low level chip that still performs okay
00:31:40
◼
►
even though it's not great and if ARM can reach up and try to make a chip that
00:31:44
◼
►
performs as well as Intel but still keeps that that envelope and they're
00:31:47
◼
►
both kind of reaching the same general range by doing that, then why should Apple transition
00:31:54
◼
►
a product line that is so well established on Intel chips and has all these massive transition
00:31:58
◼
►
costs if they were to choose to do it? Why make the jump? It seems like there's not enough
00:32:02
◼
►
gain to be had there.
00:32:04
◼
►
Simon Witte tweeted at us earlier on April 1st. He may have been in the air. He says
00:32:08
◼
►
the iPad Air 2, he just, there's not enough room in the tweet to expand this out, but
00:32:12
◼
►
He says 27.3 watt hours.
00:32:14
◼
►
Is that just the battery capacity?
00:32:16
◼
►
I don't know.
00:32:17
◼
►
Anyway, 1800, 4500 Geekbench.
00:32:19
◼
►
Those are two numbers separated by a slash.
00:32:22
◼
►
And it's at 20 nanometers.
00:32:23
◼
►
And the new MacBook is 39.7 watt hours.
00:32:25
◼
►
Again, I assume that's the battery.
00:32:27
◼
►
1900, 4000 Geekbench.
00:32:29
◼
►
So it's a comparable Geekbench score and it's 14 nanometers.
00:32:33
◼
►
So like you're saying, they're ballpark, you know, close to each other, the iPad Air 2
00:32:37
◼
►
and the new MacBook.
00:32:39
◼
►
But the bottom line of his tweet is Core M is $200 more.
00:32:43
◼
►
Maybe that's retail price or whatever.
00:32:46
◼
►
What can Apple do if they fab their own chips, save money, sell their computers for less
00:32:53
◼
►
money, I guess?
00:32:54
◼
►
I still think it's about owning control and not about we don't want to give a portion
00:32:59
◼
►
of our profits to Intel.
00:33:01
◼
►
But as I've said on many past programs, I really wish Apple and Intel, those two crazy
00:33:05
◼
►
kids to just work this out. You know, I want I want the best I want my Macs and everything
00:33:12
◼
►
to be fab with the best process technology human beings can make. And usually that's
00:33:16
◼
►
Intel has that and the best CPU designs and like just I don't understand why we have to
00:33:21
◼
►
fight Why can't I have both like, anyway,
00:33:24
◼
►
well right now we have competition. That's great. I mean, right now you have like, you
00:33:28
◼
►
know, I'm sure we've all heard that Apple probably has had a an R Mac, like in the labs
00:33:34
◼
►
for testing as a contingency plan for years. I mean, that's not new, right? So, you know,
00:33:39
◼
►
anyone who would agree to that who knows anything about this stuff. So, you know, Apple knows
00:33:44
◼
►
they can make an ARM MacBook whenever they want to. Intel knows that Apple can make an
00:33:49
◼
►
ARM MacBook whenever they want to. And so I think that keeps, you know, that healthy
00:33:54
◼
►
competition there. Like, Intel has a bit of a fire lit under them in the last couple of
00:33:58
◼
►
years to try to get these power needs down to compete with ARM because they have no meaningful
00:34:03
◼
►
mobile presence. They really need a mobile presence if they want to see any more growth
00:34:08
◼
►
ever again. And they certainly can't lose the business they already have in PCs and
00:34:17
◼
►
servers. So they are working really hard and you're right, they do have the best process
00:34:23
◼
►
manufacturing technology in the world most of the time. So I think that competition is
00:34:28
◼
►
is great and I think we will see better results from Intel
00:34:33
◼
►
as long as they are separate,
00:34:34
◼
►
as long as this battle has not been settled yet.
00:34:37
◼
►
As long as there's a threat
00:34:40
◼
►
that Intel might lose their PC business
00:34:43
◼
►
or any part of it to ARM,
00:34:46
◼
►
Intel's gonna keep working really hard.
00:34:48
◼
►
And so is ARM, and that's great.
00:34:49
◼
►
- The semiconductor community site
00:34:51
◼
►
that this rumor thing is on,
00:34:54
◼
►
part of what they talk about in this article
00:34:55
◼
►
is speculating about the idea that for future chips,
00:34:59
◼
►
assuming this little table is correct, for future chips,
00:35:02
◼
►
that Apple is spreading the manufacturing around,
00:35:04
◼
►
not for technical reasons,
00:35:06
◼
►
but just sort of the same reason
00:35:07
◼
►
that the music makers went to Amazon
00:35:10
◼
►
and tried to spread their business around from Apple,
00:35:12
◼
►
just because they don't want to give any one fab
00:35:15
◼
►
more power than the other.
00:35:17
◼
►
So the idea is that Apple makes their own chip designs,
00:35:21
◼
►
they own the intellectual property for the chip designs,
00:35:23
◼
►
and they want to farm out fabbing of those chips
00:35:26
◼
►
to the best company.
00:35:27
◼
►
The same way they do, like who wants to assemble
00:35:30
◼
►
our computers, who wants to make our glass,
00:35:32
◼
►
who wants to, you know, like that's the relationship
00:35:35
◼
►
Apple is comfortable with.
00:35:36
◼
►
We own the intellectual property, we have a competition
00:35:39
◼
►
amongst all these other lower margin businesses
00:35:41
◼
►
to kill each other for our business.
00:35:43
◼
►
Who wants to manufacture the watch?
00:35:45
◼
►
Well, go ahead, you know, fight with each other
00:35:46
◼
►
and we will pick the winner.
00:35:47
◼
►
Like who wants to manufacture our car?
00:35:49
◼
►
Like, you know what I mean?
00:35:50
◼
►
Who wants to fab our chips?
00:35:52
◼
►
And even if one company clearly has the best deal
00:35:55
◼
►
and the best technology for a particular generation,
00:35:57
◼
►
the speculation in this semiconductor,
00:35:59
◼
►
semi wiki.com website is that Apple is saying,
00:36:03
◼
►
if we wanted the best for the best price,
00:36:05
◼
►
we would give all of our business to whoever,
00:36:07
◼
►
Samsung, TSMC or whatever.
00:36:08
◼
►
But long-term wise, it's better for us
00:36:11
◼
►
to kind of spread it around.
00:36:12
◼
►
So maybe give 75% to Samsung and 25% to Global Foundry,
00:36:16
◼
►
just because we don't want to put all our eggs
00:36:18
◼
►
in one basket.
00:36:21
◼
►
Intel as much as Intel is in this fight or whatever like
00:36:24
◼
►
That's the relationship. I feel like Apple once is
00:36:28
◼
►
We just want Intel to be just another fab just like all these other people are
00:36:33
◼
►
And then we will have you all fight amongst yourselves
00:36:36
◼
►
And they would love to have Intel like fabbing some of their chips like we'll give Intel 50% and TSMC
00:36:41
◼
►
25% and like but Intel's just not in it at all
00:36:45
◼
►
Maybe because Intel wants all their business or none of their business or demands that Apple use x86 and its phones
00:36:50
◼
►
I'm sure Intel is showing Apple roadmaps that show
00:36:53
◼
►
What amazing chips they're going to have that could be in an iPhone and the iPhone 7 or 8 like that's how Intel got Apple's
00:37:00
◼
►
Business to begin with they showed them the core lineup and they said I know we have stupid Pentium 4s now
00:37:04
◼
►
And they suck but like netburst is dead
00:37:06
◼
►
Here's what we're gonna make for you in the future and no one can compete with it and Intel was a hundred percent, right?
00:37:10
◼
►
They got Apple's business and they did have by far the fastest most power efficient chips
00:37:14
◼
►
During that first generation when they were you know coming out in Apple's laptop. So
00:37:19
◼
►
I'm sure those meetings are still taking place, but in the meantime Apple is shipping a hell of a lot of armed devices manufactured by
00:37:25
◼
►
nameless, faceless,
00:37:27
◼
►
sometimes very big competitors that we don't know or hear about and that's just the way Apple likes it.
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Jon, you made an interesting observation, or at least I think it was Jon, maybe it was
00:40:21
◼
►
Mark. It's probably Jon. That maybe other people have also realized, but the first
00:40:27
◼
►
place I saw it was here in the show notes, and you had pointed out that the
00:40:30
◼
►
Apple TV is actually cheaper than the VGA adapter for the MacBook that only
00:40:37
◼
►
has one port. Yeah, I'm not the first person to make that analogy, but when
00:40:40
◼
►
Because in the same keynote, they announced the price drop of the Apple TV from $99 to
00:40:48
◼
►
And they also announced the availability, or they announced the product, and did they
00:40:51
◼
►
announce the availability of the adapter?
00:40:54
◼
►
Shortly after the announcement, we all went to the website and looked at the adapters
00:40:57
◼
►
for the OnePort MacBook, and one of those adapters is $79.
00:41:02
◼
►
Oh, they should have called it the MacBook One.
00:41:04
◼
►
What a missed opportunity.
00:41:06
◼
►
There you go, it's like the Xbox One, they'll start over.
00:41:10
◼
►
named it like the 1-1, you know that one? The car, the supercar, the hypercar, sorry,
00:41:16
◼
►
I've lost track of what you're saying. They're still words, but they're not making any sense
00:41:21
◼
►
I believe the chat room will tell me, is it like O-N-E and then the number one or the
00:41:26
◼
►
reverse? You haven't heard of this either, Casey?
00:41:29
◼
►
It's because it wasn't on Top Gear, and that's where you get all your car.
00:41:31
◼
►
Oh, don't even bring it up. I can't handle another week of feedback about that.
00:41:35
◼
►
Anyway, the 1-1 is by the car manufacturer whose name I'm not going to attempt to pronounce,
00:41:40
◼
►
But you know it as the really long one on the Top Gear board.
00:41:43
◼
►
What's the name of that company with the K?
00:41:45
◼
►
Yeah, OK, there you go.
00:41:47
◼
►
They're making a car called the 1-1, spelled in some weird way.
00:41:51
◼
►
And I think it's because it's one horsepower per pound
00:41:54
◼
►
or something.
00:41:54
◼
►
Anyway, it's insane.
00:41:55
◼
►
Go Google the 1-1 and see what the crazy people are
00:41:59
◼
►
making for cars.
00:42:01
◼
►
Apparently, it's O-N-E colon numeral 1.
00:42:04
◼
►
That's not confusing at all.
00:42:05
◼
►
It is a cra-- you have to look at it.
00:42:08
◼
►
The Ferrari love Ferrari.
00:42:10
◼
►
It is way more crazy than that and will probably break after being driven 100 miles.
00:42:14
◼
►
But you know, like anyway.
00:42:15
◼
►
It's, yeah, you just still get the LaFerrari, but this car is crazy.
00:42:20
◼
►
One horsepower per kilogram, sorry, they're in European.
00:42:23
◼
►
It's not one horsepower per man.
00:42:26
◼
►
Anyway, the fact that the new Apple TV is cheaper than the adapter, I don't know what
00:42:32
◼
►
it highlights.
00:42:33
◼
►
Does it highlight the fact that that adapter is too expensive?
00:42:36
◼
►
Does it highlight the fact that that adapter also contains silicon chips?
00:42:39
◼
►
We know that.
00:42:41
◼
►
Are the silicon chips that are in that adapter actually more expensive than the ancient single-core
00:42:46
◼
►
A5 that's in the Apple TV?
00:42:50
◼
►
I don't know, but like the price drop itself, like dropping the Apple TV from $99 to $69
00:42:58
◼
►
all points towards, and the fact that they announced the HBO deal we'll talk about in
00:43:02
◼
►
a second, all points towards the idea that this current Apple TV is finally, blessedly
00:43:08
◼
►
going to not be the best Apple TV you can buy, whether it goes away or continues on
00:43:14
◼
►
in its $69 slot, as many people think it will.
00:43:17
◼
►
Either way, a new Apple TV is coming.
00:43:19
◼
►
It is long overdue, and when the new Apple TV comes, by dropping this one, it leaves
00:43:23
◼
►
room for the new Apple TV to come in at $99 to have an actual decent CPU and to not give
00:43:29
◼
►
me obscure errors when I try to watch television programs.
00:43:32
◼
►
And if I'm really getting greedy here, and I know everyone who has a Roku or some other
00:43:36
◼
►
box that they love is going to tell me this is not a problem there.
00:43:39
◼
►
But all the TV connected thingies that I have, anything that streams video, whether it's
00:43:44
◼
►
streaming from my Synology, streaming from my Mac, streaming onto my Playstation 3, Playstation
00:43:50
◼
►
4, from my TiVo, from my Apple TV, what else do I have connected?
00:43:54
◼
►
All these different devices from my TV itself, streaming from Netflix, all these things,
00:44:00
◼
►
this one elusive piece of technology seems not to exist, which is the ability to scrub
00:44:05
◼
►
around in a television program in anything resembling a reliable, meaningful way.
00:44:10
◼
►
It is just like, fast forward, rewind, to be able to like, it just, sometimes fast forwarding
00:44:16
◼
►
a rewind scan totally screws the stream and you'll have to start from the beginning.
00:44:20
◼
►
Sometimes it kind of moves a little bit and stutters, sometimes a perfectly good stream
00:44:23
◼
►
will stop and just like, I don't know what the problem is with this, like I do it on
00:44:27
◼
►
web pages all the time, I move the little scrubber in YouTube and it actually works,
00:44:30
◼
►
and yet for everything connected to my television, if I ever want to fast forward a rewind scan,
00:44:35
◼
►
In not jump to the beginning not jump to the end but move in either direction at a speed faster than 1x playback
00:44:42
◼
►
These applications these devices throw up their hands and say you're crazy. That's not gonna happen
00:44:48
◼
►
Well, I don't know why you're even bothering now
00:44:50
◼
►
Europe I will punish you with at least a three-minute delay before any picture moves again
00:44:54
◼
►
And you won't know where you are in the stream and you won't be able to get back to where you are
00:44:57
◼
►
And sometimes I'm you know, I'm starting over entirely
00:45:00
◼
►
I'm gonna lose your place and you have to start over from the beginning and by the way
00:45:03
◼
►
You can't get back to where you left off
00:45:04
◼
►
because if you try to fast forward scan,
00:45:06
◼
►
that won't work either.
00:45:07
◼
►
Stream error.
00:45:08
◼
►
Oh, it drives me nuts.
00:45:10
◼
►
- I wonder if any part of it is related
00:45:12
◼
►
to the hardware decoding chips they use
00:45:14
◼
►
for the video codecs.
00:45:16
◼
►
- I don't know what it's related to.
00:45:17
◼
►
- I don't know.
00:45:18
◼
►
I mean, that's probably not the problem.
00:45:19
◼
►
It's probably just because they're sloppy
00:45:21
◼
►
and cheaply made and their software
00:45:23
◼
►
is sloppy and cheaply made.
00:45:24
◼
►
I mean, this is like, I'm really not that into the idea
00:45:29
◼
►
of a new Apple TV right now.
00:45:30
◼
►
Like, I mean, it's fine.
00:45:31
◼
►
I hope they make one and I hope it does well
00:45:33
◼
►
and everything, but I'm not really excited
00:45:35
◼
►
about the idea of a new Apple TV hardware device
00:45:38
◼
►
because the problems I have with the existing Apple TV
00:45:42
◼
►
don't seem hardware related.
00:45:44
◼
►
- Well, that's the thing, that's what people are saying
00:45:45
◼
►
in the chatroom as well, it's like,
00:45:47
◼
►
when something like this happens,
00:45:48
◼
►
like the puck or anything you connect to your TV,
00:45:50
◼
►
you're like, what's the problem?
00:45:52
◼
►
Is the problem that I'm not getting data
00:45:53
◼
►
from the streaming service?
00:45:54
◼
►
Is the problem that the software is crappy?
00:45:56
◼
►
Is the problem that the hardware is crappy?
00:45:58
◼
►
Is it some combination?
00:45:59
◼
►
Sometimes is it one problem, sometimes it's the other.
00:46:01
◼
►
is the problem that my ISP is throttling connection
00:46:04
◼
►
to this thing and if I change my DNS,
00:46:05
◼
►
I'll get a better stream,
00:46:06
◼
►
is the problem that the authentication service
00:46:09
◼
►
for iTunes aren't working and really you would stream fine
00:46:10
◼
►
if only the authentication servers
00:46:12
◼
►
weren't constantly installing
00:46:13
◼
►
when it's trying to re-authenticate while I'm watching.
00:46:15
◼
►
There are so many moving parts and there is so little
00:46:18
◼
►
that you can debug with these closed systems
00:46:19
◼
►
that you're just like, look,
00:46:20
◼
►
it either has to work all the time 100%
00:46:23
◼
►
or I just throw up my hands and I say,
00:46:27
◼
►
I don't know what, you know, you go into Merlin Man mode,
00:46:29
◼
►
you're like, well, I guess I'm rebooting everything I own,
00:46:30
◼
►
I guess I'm unplugging my Apple TV from the power because it's the only way I can get
00:46:33
◼
►
the thing to reboot because even the secret command handshake that you hold down on the
00:46:37
◼
►
remote isn't working because the thing's frozen hard.
00:46:40
◼
►
It is so frustrating not to know where the problem is.
00:46:43
◼
►
Marco, you're diagnosed as saying you think it's not a hardware problem.
00:46:46
◼
►
I think there are problems at every level.
00:46:48
◼
►
And the hardware, because it's old, and the software, because it's so clearly in kind
00:46:53
◼
►
of like maintenance mode, I just hope that all the good people are working on the new
00:46:56
◼
►
version and the new version won't have these problems.
00:47:00
◼
►
But even if they come out with new hardware and new software that's better, I also believe
00:47:03
◼
►
that my streaming connection is crappy because I've heard that Apple uses a different connection
00:47:08
◼
►
for streaming its Netflix than the other Netflix clients.
00:47:10
◼
►
And I think this is mostly borne out by experimentation.
00:47:13
◼
►
When I can't get a stream on Apple TV, Netflix client, I use my TiVo Netflix client and it
00:47:18
◼
►
Or I go to Netflix in a web browser on one of my Macs and it works.
00:47:24
◼
►
The whole interconnected mess of things
00:47:27
◼
►
that have to work correctly and in harmony
00:47:31
◼
►
for me to watch a television program
00:47:32
◼
►
streaming over the internet,
00:47:34
◼
►
it seems like there's always at least one
00:47:36
◼
►
out of the three layers that's screwing up,
00:47:37
◼
►
and usually all three of them are screwing up in some way,
00:47:39
◼
►
and it's very frustrating.
00:47:41
◼
►
- The biggest frustration for me with these things,
00:47:44
◼
►
so I don't know, maybe a month or two ago, two months ago,
00:47:47
◼
►
whatever, I bought both a Roku TV,
00:47:51
◼
►
whatever the newest Roku is,
00:47:52
◼
►
and an Amazon Fire TV, like the big powerful one.
00:47:56
◼
►
'Cause we have two TVs in the house
00:47:58
◼
►
and they both have Apple TVs
00:48:00
◼
►
and the Apple TVs are getting so flaky,
00:48:02
◼
►
I'm like, let me just try something else
00:48:04
◼
►
to see what everyone's talking about.
00:48:05
◼
►
And wanted to check out Amazon Video Service anyway.
00:48:08
◼
►
So they're both just really mediocre.
00:48:12
◼
►
Like they're fine.
00:48:13
◼
►
If I had to pick one that is less crappy,
00:48:17
◼
►
I guess I'd pick the Amazon one.
00:48:18
◼
►
But what's really frustrating is that
00:48:21
◼
►
the Apple TV is still the best one.
00:48:23
◼
►
- That depresses me.
00:48:24
◼
►
I like having the fantasy that the Roku
00:48:26
◼
►
that everyone loves would be better.
00:48:27
◼
►
- That's the problem.
00:48:28
◼
►
I had that fantasy too, and now that I've been using them,
00:48:31
◼
►
like, the Apple TV is still the best one,
00:48:34
◼
►
which a few people on Twitter told me in advance,
00:48:36
◼
►
so I, but I was afraid that they would be right,
00:48:39
◼
►
and unfortunately they are.
00:48:40
◼
►
I mean, just by general, like, just usability,
00:48:43
◼
►
the basic interface, I mean, these other players
00:48:46
◼
►
have had years to rip off the good stuff from Apple,
00:48:49
◼
►
and they just haven't.
00:48:51
◼
►
And I don't know what it is.
00:48:54
◼
►
Maybe they just don't have the kind of sensibilities
00:48:59
◼
►
to develop simple interfaces, I don't know.
00:49:02
◼
►
Maybe they think the way to compete with Apple
00:49:04
◼
►
was by throwing on a whole bunch of stuff.
00:49:06
◼
►
- Well, but that is the, the Roku's leg up
00:49:08
◼
►
is like it's the most flexible, it can run Plex,
00:49:11
◼
►
it's gonna let you do everything, right?
00:49:13
◼
►
That's what it's trying to do.
00:49:14
◼
►
But all of these boxes, the problem is,
00:49:18
◼
►
for all the features and all the UI or whatever,
00:49:21
◼
►
like if I could put some big giant sign
00:49:23
◼
►
like the big old IBM Think pads or the big Think
00:49:27
◼
►
framed poster after that or whatever,
00:49:29
◼
►
but I would put it all, all these people's things
00:49:30
◼
►
is would be much longer and I'd have to come up
00:49:32
◼
►
with a snappy phrasing for it, but the bottom line is,
00:49:35
◼
►
when I wanna watch a program,
00:49:36
◼
►
I want to press a series of buttons and have video play,
00:49:39
◼
►
pretty much immediately.
00:49:41
◼
►
And that has to work, and that has to work every time.
00:49:44
◼
►
Maybe it's because I'm old,
00:49:46
◼
►
because I come from a place where a television,
00:49:48
◼
►
If your television wasn't broken, then you turned it on,
00:49:50
◼
►
you could see moving pictures pretty much instantly,
00:49:53
◼
►
every time, right?
00:49:54
◼
►
- The funny thing is, what you want out of seeking,
00:49:58
◼
►
VCR is offered that perfectly.
00:50:00
◼
►
- Right, exactly.
00:50:01
◼
►
It wasn't great, but you could do it on a VCR,
00:50:04
◼
►
you can do it on DVDs.
00:50:05
◼
►
It was like, wow, I can skip without scrubbing through.
00:50:07
◼
►
You know what I mean?
00:50:08
◼
►
- Yeah, and there wasn't little staticky lines on DVDs
00:50:10
◼
►
when you fast forwarded.
00:50:11
◼
►
- You could pause, you could like, right,
00:50:12
◼
►
we seem to have been making progress,
00:50:13
◼
►
and now streaming, when it works right,
00:50:15
◼
►
it's like, this is what I want, it's magic.
00:50:16
◼
►
I have access to a million shows anytime I want them.
00:50:19
◼
►
I can go to any part of the-- like, it's amazing, right?
00:50:21
◼
►
They're organized by season.
00:50:22
◼
►
Whole season's released at once.
00:50:23
◼
►
Like, all the magic-- but all the magic crumbles into dust
00:50:26
◼
►
as soon as I sit down in front of television,
00:50:27
◼
►
press a series of buttons on my remote,
00:50:29
◼
►
and moving pictures do not start happening.
00:50:32
◼
►
And I either get an error message or something else.
00:50:34
◼
►
And it's like-- and it doesn't happen to happen.
00:50:36
◼
►
Like, 90% of the time, it works, right?
00:50:38
◼
►
But that 10% just destroys the illusion
00:50:40
◼
►
that I'm living in a future where things work.
00:50:44
◼
►
So it's funny that Marco had brought up the Roku and the Fire TV and compared them to
00:50:50
◼
►
the Apple TV because I maybe a month ago got a Fire TV stick, which is the less powerful
00:50:57
◼
►
version of what Marco got. What Marco got is physically, as far as I know, is about
00:51:03
◼
►
the same size as an Apple TV. Is that fair to say?
00:51:05
◼
►
It's like an Apple TV that's been rolled over by a steamroller slightly. So it's like just
00:51:10
◼
►
Same volume roughly, but just flatter and mm-hmm wider
00:51:14
◼
►
So the fire TV stick is more like a chromecast in that it's just a little HDMI dongle and a little power brick to power it
00:51:21
◼
►
And I got it on Dan Morin's recommendation because he had said he had had pretty good luck with fire TV
00:51:27
◼
►
And I don't believe he had said he had ever tried the stick
00:51:29
◼
►
But they're roughly equivalent unless you have a really really nice home theater setup
00:51:34
◼
►
Which I do not so I got this fire TV stick. I believe it's $40 in Amazon
00:51:39
◼
►
And I love it and the reason I love it mostly is because I can use Plex with it natively
00:51:48
◼
►
Basically the only things I tend to do with my Apple TV are
00:51:51
◼
►
airplane mirroring
00:51:54
◼
►
typically video, but not always or
00:51:59
◼
►
the fire TV stick
00:52:01
◼
►
Doesn't natively support a airplane mirroring of course there are apps that you can download and pay for to get airplane mirroring
00:52:08
◼
►
I have bought a couple and they're not very good, which is not surprising, but they're enough in a pinch
00:52:14
◼
►
But it has Netflix and it has Plex and that is easily 90% of what I want out of a
00:52:23
◼
►
Box or dongle connected to my TV and again what makes the fire TV stick so wonderful for me is that the Plex support is?
00:52:31
◼
►
Fantastic rather than airplane from my iPad or my iPhone or yes
00:52:36
◼
►
I'm aware of that god-awful hack you can do with the trailers app on the Apple TV. I'm not going to do that
00:52:41
◼
►
So it's I love it because it works great with Plex you can seek usually with Plex
00:52:47
◼
►
It works pretty darn well with
00:52:50
◼
►
Netflix so I really like it now that being said the user interface is crappy Marco is exactly right that the user interface
00:52:58
◼
►
It's it's different but and too much Android leaks out for my taste like not that I have anything
00:53:05
◼
►
Intrinsically against Android but fiddly bits that I shouldn't have to worry about
00:53:09
◼
►
Yeah, I guess I don't have to worry about them, but they're still there
00:53:13
◼
►
Like do you want to allow sideloading like that? Why is that even an option? No, I don't want that and
00:53:18
◼
►
The way you go and get like apps is a little weird
00:53:22
◼
►
It's just like a generic search which maybe is better
00:53:24
◼
►
But I it's weird to me that when I search for Plex I could be ending up an app so I could be ending up on
00:53:30
◼
►
Audio or whatever the case may be so there are definitely odd bits to the user interface
00:53:35
◼
►
But by and large I like it and the other thing I really like about it that just occurred to me
00:53:40
◼
►
Is that the remote is either Bluetooth or RF or something?
00:53:44
◼
►
so that you do not need to point the remote at the Apple TV, which is really awesome because our Apple TV is
00:53:49
◼
►
Kind of tucked away a little bit and not
00:53:52
◼
►
extraordinarily easy to point a remote at so for all of those reasons
00:53:57
◼
►
I really love my fire TV stick and I definitely recommend it if if you're if you have similar needs from your
00:54:04
◼
►
Device that I do now Marco
00:54:06
◼
►
I think you have very different needs from your device and as far as I recall you get a lot of your media through iTunes
00:54:12
◼
►
Is that right?
00:54:13
◼
►
It's not as much anymore
00:54:15
◼
►
the the the constant
00:54:18
◼
►
DRM errors on authentication trying to play my media that I've bought from iTunes
00:54:22
◼
►
Is really convincing me to try to stop doing that. I actually went when I got these boxes
00:54:27
◼
►
I did start using Plex I installed myself Plex for the very first time
00:54:31
◼
►
Using Plex for me feels a lot like building a gaming PC in the sense that I'm getting a lot of functionality
00:54:38
◼
►
more than I actually really need
00:54:41
◼
►
but also coming at a cost of maintenance and fiddliness that
00:54:47
◼
►
I'm sure I just have settings wrong, but it's just so freaking fiddly.
00:54:54
◼
►
There's nothing, the only fiddly thing about Plex is that you have to use their naming
00:54:58
◼
►
convention which is not my favorite but not so egregious that I can't bend to it.
00:55:05
◼
►
Other than that, everything just works magically.
00:55:08
◼
►
I can watch my media that's stored on my Synology anywhere in the world as long as I have an
00:55:13
◼
►
internet connection.
00:55:14
◼
►
It will automatically transcode on the fly to whatever my speed is as it sees fit.
00:55:19
◼
►
And it will grab all the metadata it needs as long as I name things appropriately.
00:55:23
◼
►
Like I, I could not disagree more.
00:55:25
◼
►
I've had nothing but wonderful experiences with Plex.
00:55:28
◼
►
I've tried to use Plex, but like my problem has always been, I don't have anything attached
00:55:31
◼
►
to my television that can run it.
00:55:33
◼
►
And once the PS4 version of Plex came out, I'm like, now finally, well, now this is when
00:55:38
◼
►
my PS4 was still attached to my television.
00:55:39
◼
►
But anyway, I figured, well, the PS4 version of Plex came out, I should try it.
00:55:45
◼
►
And I did, and it's very bad, and the setup process was super painful, and there's no
00:55:49
◼
►
way a human could have figured out the crap that I had to go through to try to get this
00:55:52
◼
►
thing to work in terms of opening ports on my modem and getting reverse lookups.
00:55:55
◼
►
It was just like insanity, right?
00:55:57
◼
►
But what I'm looking for out of – yeah, that's just because of the PS4.
00:56:01
◼
►
I've used Plex on my Mac before, and it's way nicer.
00:56:03
◼
►
Like the Mac version of Plex – if I could get the Mac version of Plex on my TV, say,
00:56:06
◼
►
by having a Mac Mini or something,
00:56:07
◼
►
it would make a big difference, right?
00:56:10
◼
►
But anyway, what I'm looking for out of Plex,
00:56:12
◼
►
and why probably no one will ever have it,
00:56:14
◼
►
is I think what you're talking about, Casey,
00:56:16
◼
►
that the dream thing,
00:56:17
◼
►
sort of the software-connected box equivalent
00:56:20
◼
►
of the omnivorous box that I was dreaming about
00:56:22
◼
►
way back when, like that someone will make a box
00:56:25
◼
►
that takes video input from everywhere and unifies it
00:56:27
◼
►
so I don't actually care where it comes from,
00:56:29
◼
►
and it would do everything.
00:56:30
◼
►
Like, no one ever made that, and no one ever probably will.
00:56:33
◼
►
The software equivalent of that is like Plex,
00:56:35
◼
►
where it's like, give me your video.
00:56:38
◼
►
Do you have random BitTorrent things
00:56:40
◼
►
that you illegally downloaded?
00:56:41
◼
►
Do you have videos that you rip?
00:56:42
◼
►
Do you have videos of your kid?
00:56:44
◼
►
Do you have Blu-ray extractions that you made with MKV,
00:56:47
◼
►
make MKV from Blu-rays that you own?
00:56:51
◼
►
I don't care where this video came from.
00:56:53
◼
►
You just throw it all into the pit.
00:56:55
◼
►
And I don't care what you name them.
00:56:57
◼
►
I don't care what's in them.
00:56:58
◼
►
I have this crazy crowd-sourced internet-powered database.
00:57:03
◼
►
well I will figure out what the heck these files are,
00:57:05
◼
►
I'll look at the fingerprints of the data,
00:57:09
◼
►
organize it into seasons, give you cover art,
00:57:12
◼
►
give you descriptions of every episode.
00:57:14
◼
►
Plex does a hell of a lot of that.
00:57:17
◼
►
Plex you can more or less throw a bunch of stuff at,
00:57:19
◼
►
like the metadata lookup, the cover art,
00:57:22
◼
►
being able to play a million different crazy formats,
00:57:24
◼
►
transcoding on the fly, doing all that stuff,
00:57:28
◼
►
Plex and various other utilities
00:57:30
◼
►
and other sort of software apps do a lot of that,
00:57:33
◼
►
but they're a little bit flaky,
00:57:36
◼
►
they can't really play every file that you download.
00:57:38
◼
►
Sometimes the device you're running it on
00:57:39
◼
►
can't transcode fast enough to handle this thing.
00:57:42
◼
►
Sometimes you lose the 5.1 track
00:57:44
◼
►
and it mixes it down to something else.
00:57:46
◼
►
You can't see the special features
00:57:47
◼
►
from your DVDs or your Blu-rays.
00:57:48
◼
►
Like the limitations just start stacking up and stacking up.
00:57:52
◼
►
And because no one, like none of the legit people
00:57:55
◼
►
are motivated to be able to take your illegal downloads
00:57:58
◼
►
or your rips of DVDs and figure out what they are and sort them into sessions, Apple's never
00:58:02
◼
►
going to do that.
00:58:03
◼
►
Like, Roku's probably not even going to do that other than running the Plex app, right?
00:58:07
◼
►
And so this is definitely an in-betweeny stage where we are in the transition from broadcast
00:58:13
◼
►
television to streaming television, and there's lots of sort of do-it-yourselfer solutions
00:58:16
◼
►
that work to varying degrees, but I feel like to come over the hump, the non-broadcast television
00:58:25
◼
►
needs to be like the old one in one specific way.
00:58:29
◼
►
When you press play, video has to play.
00:58:31
◼
►
And I don't care where the problem is
00:58:33
◼
►
and neither does anyone else.
00:58:33
◼
►
Is it with the networks?
00:58:34
◼
►
Is it an ISP fighting with Netflix or something?
00:58:39
◼
►
Is it the hardware?
00:58:40
◼
►
Is it my router?
00:58:42
◼
►
Is it jumbo packets?
00:58:43
◼
►
I don't care.
00:58:44
◼
►
I just want video to play.
00:58:47
◼
►
And I have to say, of all this complaining
00:58:49
◼
►
about streaming devices,
00:58:50
◼
►
the one television connected device
00:58:52
◼
►
that I have in my house that is closest
00:58:53
◼
►
the ideal of press play and video plays is the TiVo. Why? Because it's piggybacking on
00:58:59
◼
►
the old cruddy coaxial cable that comes into my house that delivers television, which has,
00:59:04
◼
►
you know, developed over the years to be different than what it was. But, yeah, you know, I have
00:59:11
◼
►
a cable card, the coaxial cable goes into the back of my TV, I pay for all the pay channels,
00:59:16
◼
►
I pay for all the fancy stuff, right? And then there's a hard drive and an incredibly
00:59:20
◼
►
weak CPU and a bunch of video decoding chips that record six of those channels at once
00:59:25
◼
►
onto a hard drive and when I press play it plays the video off that hard drive and when
00:59:29
◼
►
I fast forward and rewind it fast forwards and rewinds and it works every time and it
00:59:34
◼
►
doesn't crash and I don't get authentication errors and that's you know it does have a
00:59:37
◼
►
Netflix client on it which is flaky and it does have all these other streaming clients
00:59:41
◼
►
on it which are flaky but for the core purpose of recording video that's coming over my house
00:59:44
◼
►
through the coaxial cable that I pay for it works and so my vast preference is record
00:59:50
◼
►
Game of Thrones on my TiVo, watch it on my TiVo.
00:59:53
◼
►
Yes, I have HBO Go, yes I have HBO Now, I have blah blah blah blah blah.
00:59:57
◼
►
You know what I know will work?
00:59:58
◼
►
Sit down in front of the TiVo, turn it on, go down to Game of Thrones, hit play, the
01:00:00
◼
►
video will play.
01:00:01
◼
►
Every time it plays.
01:00:03
◼
►
And that, like, that's going to keep me loyal to TiVo and it's going to keep me paying my
01:00:07
◼
►
whatever the heck it is, huge bill for real live old fashioned cable servers until these
01:00:12
◼
►
streaming people can get their acts together to the point where now I can start choosing
01:00:16
◼
►
things based on features or pricing or something like that.
01:00:19
◼
►
but right now I'm choosing based on reliability.
01:00:21
◼
►
- Yeah, I hear that.
01:00:22
◼
►
I mean, it sounds like we all
01:00:24
◼
►
sort of have our own unique needs.
01:00:26
◼
►
Jon apparently boils down to just freaking work.
01:00:29
◼
►
But yeah, I don't know.
01:00:31
◼
►
It's sad that this hasn't been solved,
01:00:35
◼
►
which I know, I think this is where you started, Jon,
01:00:37
◼
►
but it's sad that this is still,
01:00:39
◼
►
that Marco and I both felt like we needed
01:00:43
◼
►
two different manufacturers' boxes
01:00:46
◼
►
in order to fix this problem.
01:00:48
◼
►
And neither of us feels completely satisfied with that fix.
01:00:53
◼
►
- Yeah, all of us have multiple things.
01:00:54
◼
►
Like I have, I watch things from Netflix
01:00:57
◼
►
and I choose the Apple TV to be my Netflix client
01:00:59
◼
►
because it has no fan.
01:01:00
◼
►
I watch things from streaming video.
01:01:01
◼
►
I buy things from iTunes.
01:01:03
◼
►
Like I do all of it, right?
01:01:04
◼
►
But it's like, when I have a choice,
01:01:05
◼
►
sometimes you don't have a choice.
01:01:06
◼
►
Like when I have a choice, TiVo is my go-to.
01:01:08
◼
►
But if I don't, I go down the cascade.
01:01:10
◼
►
Do I wanna try to stream it off my Synology?
01:01:12
◼
►
Do I wanna try to watch it on Apple TV's Netflix client?
01:01:14
◼
►
Do I wanna try my TV's built-in Netflix client?
01:01:16
◼
►
Sometimes I make the rounds until one of them works right.
01:01:18
◼
►
Sometimes my kid wants to watch a movie that I have.
01:01:21
◼
►
I bought it on iTunes.
01:01:22
◼
►
I have an illegally downloaded file.
01:01:24
◼
►
I have the Blu-ray.
01:01:25
◼
►
I have the DVD.
01:01:26
◼
►
This is a very common case.
01:01:27
◼
►
There are movies where I have all those things, right?
01:01:30
◼
►
And it's like, how should we watch that file?
01:01:34
◼
►
Is it important to make pictures moving on the television as fast as possible before
01:01:37
◼
►
the kid gets cranky?
01:01:39
◼
►
Or is it, for me, is it important because it's a family viewing that I'm going to take
01:01:42
◼
►
out the actual Blu-ray disc and put it in because that has the highest fidelity video
01:01:45
◼
►
and sound and that's very important to me. Why I own a big stack of Blu-rays, right?
01:01:49
◼
►
Because movies that I already own and that I already watch, I like to have on Blu-ray
01:01:52
◼
►
if I really care about the movie because it is the best quality. So having to be like
01:01:57
◼
►
a connoisseur of like, "How do I want to watch this today?" and having to pick based on quality
01:02:03
◼
►
and predicted reliability and speed and which one is just going to work, especially with
01:02:08
◼
►
illegal downloads, which thing will actually successfully play this? Let's try it directly
01:02:12
◼
►
from the Synology on my TV. Let's try it through the PlayStation media server. Let's try it
01:02:16
◼
►
through Plex. Let's try transcoding it manually." And it's like, you know, sometimes you just
01:02:20
◼
►
want to watch a movie.
01:02:21
◼
►
Well, and the sad part is, like, I've hired almost nothing, and it still sucks. Like,
01:02:27
◼
►
you can do everything "right." You can totally buy into one of these ecosystems, you know,
01:02:33
◼
►
whether it's the Apple ecosystem, the Amazon, whatever, you can totally buy into it. You
01:02:37
◼
►
can do everything right the way most people do, and it still doesn't work very well.
01:02:42
◼
►
worse because that's a monoculture. You need biological diversity, right? That's why, like,
01:02:46
◼
►
doing illegally has the advantage that there won't be like unskippable FBI warnings at the
01:02:52
◼
►
front of it. You'll be, you won't have to fight through seven layers of menus and downloading new
01:02:56
◼
►
Java updates on your Blu-ray player just to get to the movie. Like, pirating is almost always better,
01:03:00
◼
►
but then like, okay, well now I don't get the, uh, I don't like the way this was transcoded,
01:03:04
◼
►
or it was cropped wrong, or I don't like the the audio tracks that were included in this,
01:03:08
◼
►
or they don't get the director's commentary. There's always trade-offs, but I would say,
01:03:12
◼
►
Overall, illegal gives you a better experience.
01:03:15
◼
►
Like again, even for movies that I own the discs for, sometimes if I just want to watch
01:03:20
◼
►
the thing right now, I will look at either the ripped version of it or the illegally
01:03:23
◼
►
downloaded version of it because I know I'll get to the movie part faster.
01:03:28
◼
►
And that's one of the reasons why I've been ripping all my Blu-rays using Don Melton scripts
01:03:32
◼
►
because like I bought this LG Blu-ray ripper and I have this Mac Mini that's doing this
01:03:37
◼
►
live stream now and when it's not doing live streaming tasks it's doing Plex and Blu-ray
01:03:41
◼
►
ripping and I'm doing all that because I keep having these stupid errors with stuff I've
01:03:45
◼
►
actually bought on iTunes and like yeah like when my kid wants to watch a Pixar movie and
01:03:50
◼
►
we try to play it and it doesn't and I can't get it playing after 10 minutes of fiddling
01:03:53
◼
►
with stuff because of random Apple TV or CDN or service errors it's I want to just have
01:03:59
◼
►
it locally on the LAN and have it play which used to work great but now home sharing sucks
01:04:06
◼
►
And it's like everything sucks.
01:04:08
◼
►
- You should never have turned off jumbo frames, Marco.
01:04:12
◼
►
- Like I really, I don't get, it is so frustrating.
01:04:16
◼
►
And the good thing is I think there is hope in sight.
01:04:21
◼
►
Right now there is kind of this inconvenient hole,
01:04:26
◼
►
or this inconvenient division in the market right now
01:04:28
◼
►
because you can't get all the big stuff in one box basically
01:04:33
◼
►
because the biggest offenders are that Apple,
01:04:36
◼
►
the Apple TV is the problem basically.
01:04:38
◼
►
That the Apple TV is the only thing
01:04:40
◼
►
that can play iTunes stuff,
01:04:41
◼
►
and the Apple TV can't, for the most part,
01:04:43
◼
►
can't do Plex, and it can't play Amazon Instant Video.
01:04:47
◼
►
If there is a future Apple TV coming out soon
01:04:49
◼
►
that offers an app platform,
01:04:51
◼
►
maybe that is how Apple will kind of finally,
01:04:54
◼
►
quietly allow those things to happen on the Apple TV,
01:04:57
◼
►
without having to partner with Amazon,
01:04:59
◼
►
which they really probably wouldn't want to do,
01:05:01
◼
►
and without having to install Plex as a built-in app,
01:05:03
◼
►
which might cause piracy concern,
01:05:06
◼
►
pressure from their content partners, whatever.
01:05:08
◼
►
Like, if there's just another Apple TV
01:05:12
◼
►
that has great hardware and an app platform,
01:05:16
◼
►
and they permit Plex and Amazon TV to build apps for it,
01:05:20
◼
►
which they almost certainly would,
01:05:22
◼
►
then that, I think, will be a really great box, potentially,
01:05:27
◼
►
if it actually works.
01:05:28
◼
►
And maybe by then they will have fixed DiscoveryD,
01:05:31
◼
►
which I assume is probably what's causing
01:05:33
◼
►
all the home sharing issues.
01:05:35
◼
►
- I still feel like the ISP issue is unresolved.
01:05:38
◼
►
Like the battle between the content providers
01:05:41
◼
►
and the content owners, whether it be HBO or Netflix
01:05:43
◼
►
or some combination, and the ISPs who just want
01:05:46
◼
►
a cut of everything and want, you know,
01:05:47
◼
►
like the whole strangling networks that they know
01:05:49
◼
►
that Netflix content comes from and like the whole
01:05:51
◼
►
net neutrality thing, like that needs to sort it out.
01:05:55
◼
►
You know, you need everything to work.
01:05:56
◼
►
Even if all the hardware and software and business deals get worked out on the device
01:06:01
◼
►
connected to your TV, if the ISP is still in a spat with one or more of those people,
01:06:06
◼
►
your experience is going to suck.
01:06:07
◼
►
And there's like nothing you can do about it because you'll do like a speed test and
01:06:10
◼
►
you're like, "You've got 100 megabits down, but you can't watch a video at more than 480p."
01:06:15
◼
►
And even then it stalls sometimes.
01:06:16
◼
►
It's like, "Why am I even paying for this service?"
01:06:19
◼
►
You know, that's I guess the HBO Now deal that was part of the same keynote with the
01:06:24
◼
►
the one port MacBook, right?
01:06:25
◼
►
- It's called the MacBook One now, Jon.
01:06:28
◼
►
- Yes. - That's what we're calling it.
01:06:29
◼
►
- God, all right, but before we do the HBO One stuff,
01:06:32
◼
►
let's thank our last sponsor.
01:06:35
◼
►
- Our last sponsor is Harry's.
01:06:37
◼
►
Go to harrys.com, H-A-R-R-Y-S.com,
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►
and use promo code ATP for five bucks
01:06:43
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off your first purchase.
01:06:44
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Harry's offers high quality razors and blades
01:06:47
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for a fraction of the price of the big razor brands
01:06:50
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you usually see in drugstores.
01:06:52
◼
►
"Hares were started by two guys who wanted a better product without paying an arm and
01:06:56
◼
►
They make their own blades from their own factory."
01:06:58
◼
►
There's actually an old blade factory in Germany that they liked so much that they bought the
01:07:03
◼
►
"These are high quality, high performing German blades crafted by shaving experts."
01:07:07
◼
►
And this is not, you know, I was reading a little up on this for this week.
01:07:11
◼
►
It is surprisingly difficult to make really good disposable razor blades.
01:07:16
◼
►
There's a lot of engineering, a lot of R&D that goes into that.
01:07:19
◼
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This is a long-standing factory, they've been doing this stuff for a very long time and
01:07:22
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they know how to do it.
01:07:24
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And these blades they make give you a better shave that respects your face and your wallet.
01:07:31
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Harry's offers factory direct pricing at a fraction of the big brand prices.
01:07:35
◼
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They are usually about half the price or less compared to something like a Gillette Fusion
01:07:41
◼
►
or something like that.
01:07:42
◼
►
Which I would say the Gillette Fusion is the most direct, the most equivalent rival in
01:07:48
◼
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An eight pack of Harry's blades is just 15 bucks.
01:07:51
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A 16 pack is just 25 bucks.
01:07:54
◼
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For reference, 12 Fusion blades are $41.
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◼
►
12 Harry's blades are just $20.
01:08:01
◼
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So it runs about half the price of the big razor brands.
01:08:05
◼
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Now, the Harry's Starter Set is an amazing deal.
01:08:07
◼
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For 15 bucks, you get a razor, moisturizing shave cream
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or gel, your choice, and three razor blades.
01:08:14
◼
►
Really, this is incredible deal here.
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◼
►
and they have great packaging, they have a great design skill over there. I would say
01:08:21
◼
►
they really have like kind of like the modern hip/madman aesthetic nailed. Like, it's like
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◼
►
this nice like old style but modernized and you know, it still has that classy old look.
01:08:34
◼
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The handles can be like nice and weighty and metal and polished. You know, you don't feel
01:08:38
◼
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like you're using like an Android commercial. Like you feel like you're using something
01:08:42
◼
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like classy that's really designed for modern people and not like you know 80s robots. I
01:08:48
◼
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love their designs love their stuff. With Harry's you get the convenience and ease of
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ordering online high quality blades, a great handle and shaving cream and excellent customer
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and you can use the promo code ATP to save $5 off your first purchase.
01:09:12
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►
Thank you very much to Harry's for sponsoring once again.
01:09:14
◼
►
All right, so back to the HBO deal that came up in the last Apple keynote.
01:09:19
◼
►
Yeah, this is framed as an Apple win, but really it is just the natural evolution of
01:09:27
◼
►
In the past, they were a thing you had to buy as a premium addition to your cable bill.
01:09:32
◼
►
And they had the HBO Go application, which first you could only watch on iOS devices
01:09:37
◼
►
and then eventually they let you stream to your television.
01:09:39
◼
►
But the important point was you couldn't do anything with that iOS app at all unless you
01:09:43
◼
►
had a cable subscription that included HBO.
01:09:47
◼
►
And that frustrated people because they were like, "Come on, HBO.
01:09:50
◼
►
This is the future."
01:09:51
◼
►
The whole point of us watching your content on our streaming Apple TV puck thing or on
01:09:58
◼
►
our iPhone or on our iPad is that we don't want to pay for cable.
01:10:01
◼
►
In fact, we're cable cutters.
01:10:02
◼
►
We don't want to pay for cable at all, except of course for internet access, which we'll
01:10:05
◼
►
never get rid of that.
01:10:06
◼
►
But anyway, we don't want to pay for cable television.
01:10:09
◼
►
We don't watch ESPN or we watch it on their website or we watch things on YouTube or whatever.
01:10:15
◼
►
Divorce your service from the cable television industry.
01:10:17
◼
►
And now finally, HBO is ready to do that.
01:10:20
◼
►
They're not ready to do it themselves because apparently their technology act is not together
01:10:23
◼
►
on the whole HBO Go front, so they're outsourcing it, I believe, to the MLB.TV people, the people
01:10:28
◼
►
who do Major League Baseball television streaming, which by all accounts, despite the silly black
01:10:32
◼
►
out nonsense, the actual streaming part of it works pretty well. So there are high hopes
01:10:36
◼
►
for this business. If you pay them $15 a month, you can watch HBO. You don't need to have
01:10:41
◼
►
a cable subscription. All you need is some device that can do this. And it is exclusive
01:10:45
◼
►
to Apple for how long? Like six months or three months or…?
01:10:49
◼
►
I thought it was three. But I've also heard that it's not really
01:10:53
◼
►
exclusive to Apple. I didn't read up on this because I don't really watch HBO and
01:10:56
◼
►
and I don't have HBO, but I could swear I'd read somewhere recently that it may or may
01:11:02
◼
►
not actually be exclusive.
01:11:03
◼
►
Yeah, well, but the deal is like, you know, so the new season of Game of Thrones is starting,
01:11:08
◼
►
and Apple did just drop the price on its little silly puck thing. So for $69, cord cutters
01:11:14
◼
►
can buy a puck, and $15 a month, they can watch Game of Thrones. They can watch it in
01:11:18
◼
►
theory whenever they want without a cable subscription, without borrowing some borrowing,
01:11:23
◼
►
"someone's HBO Go password" who does subscribe to HBO, which was the past practice, and for
01:11:29
◼
►
a short period of time, which includes the time that the Game of Thrones season will
01:11:33
◼
►
be premiering.
01:11:34
◼
►
The only way to do this, or according to Apple the only way, is on their particular thing.
01:11:37
◼
►
But that will expire and very soon I'm sure HBO Now will be available everywhere and it's
01:11:42
◼
►
exactly what we all wanted out of HBO.
01:11:44
◼
►
And this is the slow crumbling of all the people who are holding out, holding the line
01:11:48
◼
►
and old media going towards, like what Margo said, eventually a potential app platform,
01:11:54
◼
►
kind of like we have on iOS today, where there's a series of applications that you can use
01:11:57
◼
►
to watch, you know, NBA or MLB or maybe, I don't know if the NFL is out there, all these
01:12:03
◼
►
three-letter acronyms for sport things that none of us watch.
01:12:08
◼
►
Do they have an NFL app?
01:12:09
◼
►
You can tell me, maybe.
01:12:10
◼
►
They do, but it only is useful if you get NFL Sunday Ticket, which you can only get
01:12:14
◼
►
if you're a DirecTV subscriber or live in, like, the UK or whatever.
01:12:18
◼
►
Yeah, so those deals, yeah, they're still kind of entrenched, but trying to slowly divorce
01:12:24
◼
►
Like, that I shouldn't have to pay for cable television or satellite television or whatever,
01:12:28
◼
►
I should just be able to a la carte buy the...
01:12:31
◼
►
It's still, you know, it's not the shows you want, you're still buying the channels you
01:12:34
◼
►
want, right?
01:12:35
◼
►
You're buying HBO, you're not buying Game of Thrones.
01:12:38
◼
►
People would rather just be able to get Game of Thrones without buying the season on iTunes
01:12:42
◼
►
after it's already aired or whatever, or the day after it aired.
01:12:45
◼
►
Like, we're narrowing it, getting closer and closer.
01:12:47
◼
►
There used to be you couldn't get a digital version of a television show ever, and then
01:12:51
◼
►
you could get a digital version of a television show much later, and then you could get it
01:12:54
◼
►
the next day, and now you're going to be able to watch it at the same time as the people
01:12:57
◼
►
who subscribe to HBO.
01:12:58
◼
►
Again, in theory, because if their servers are crushed under the weight of all the people
01:13:03
◼
►
trying to do that, I know my TiVo will record it and I'll be able to watch it in real time.
01:13:07
◼
►
That's the great thing about HBO, no commercials.
01:13:11
◼
►
You can watch it in real time because you don't have to wait for the commercials to
01:13:14
◼
►
But anyway, I continue to watch those things on my nice reliable TV, but they're trying to get to the future and I feel like
01:13:19
◼
►
If people go out and get the $69 puck so they can watch it and pay the subscription to HBO
01:13:26
◼
►
So they can watch Game of Thrones finally in you know without borrowing someone's password
01:13:30
◼
►
I'm without having to subscribe to HBO and they plug in the puck and they turn it on
01:13:34
◼
►
They're all excited to watch them and they got their popcorn and maybe there's some friends over and they hit play and it doesn't play
01:13:38
◼
►
They're not gonna be excited about the future of streaming TV
01:13:41
◼
►
They're gonna regret that $69 purchase and when the new Apple TV comes out for $99
01:13:46
◼
►
They're not gonna be enthused about buying that it is so easy to sour a normal person not a geek
01:13:50
◼
►
But like a semi normal person on the experience of TV connected pucks by just having it not work once and them going
01:13:57
◼
►
You know what? I didn't like paying for cable
01:13:59
◼
►
I didn't like paying extra on top of cable for HBO
01:14:01
◼
►
But at least I could watch my show when I wanted to watch my show. I have nothing to add
01:14:05
◼
►
I agree with you completely. I mean, I think you nailed it
01:14:10
◼
►
Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week Reuters TV Squarespace and Harry's and we will see you next week
01:14:16
◼
►
Now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental
01:14:26
◼
►
was accidental
01:14:29
◼
►
John did any research Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental
01:14:36
◼
►
was accidental
01:14:39
◼
►
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM And if you're into Twitter, you can follow
01:14:46
◼
►
them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that's Kasey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
01:14:56
◼
►
Auntie Marco Armin S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse
01:15:06
◼
►
♪ It's accidental ♪
01:15:08
◼
►
♪ Accidental ♪
01:15:10
◼
►
♪ They didn't mean to ♪
01:15:12
◼
►
♪ Accidental ♪
01:15:13
◼
►
♪ Accidental ♪
01:15:14
◼
►
♪ Tech podcast ♪
01:15:16
◼
►
♪ So long ♪
01:15:18
◼
►
- My stories, they call it.
01:15:21
◼
►
Why do I watch my stories?
01:15:22
◼
►
- Wow. - Good God.
01:15:25
◼
►
All right, Marko, we talked a little bit earlier
01:15:29
◼
►
and we told you to save it for the after show
01:15:32
◼
►
about how you're falling out of love with Twitter,
01:15:34
◼
►
which is funny because I feel like you're coming
01:15:37
◼
►
to a conclusion quicker than I am,
01:15:39
◼
►
but I have been having similar feelings about,
01:15:43
◼
►
is really, is Twitter really doing anything positive for me
01:15:48
◼
►
or is it just making me angry all the time?
01:15:51
◼
►
- Well, like the thing that I quoted to you guys before,
01:15:54
◼
►
I put it in the show notes,
01:15:55
◼
►
so maybe you looked it up by now,
01:15:56
◼
►
but did any of you recognize the quote I was referencing
01:15:58
◼
►
when Marco first talked about this?
01:16:00
◼
►
- This is an older quote, it's from 1777.
01:16:03
◼
►
I don't know if you guys remember back that far.
01:16:05
◼
►
- We're not as old as you, Jon.
01:16:06
◼
►
- Yeah, it's from Samuel Johnson,
01:16:08
◼
►
and the well-known part of it is,
01:16:11
◼
►
I'll read the whole thing.
01:16:13
◼
►
You find no man at all intellectual
01:16:15
◼
►
who is willing to leave London.
01:16:16
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►
No, sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life,
01:16:19
◼
►
for there is in London all that life can afford.
01:16:22
◼
►
And that was my way of saying that
01:16:24
◼
►
it's not specifically Twitter that is a tiresome thing,
01:16:28
◼
►
in that I think at this point,
01:16:30
◼
►
Twitter offers all that life can afford, more or less.
01:16:34
◼
►
It is exposure to lots of people, which can happen anywhere on the internet, whether it
01:16:39
◼
►
be in a Usenet group, where the exact same toxic things that Marco is going to discuss,
01:16:43
◼
►
I'm sure, could happen and did happen, or it could be IRC, or it could be web forums,
01:16:51
◼
►
web bulletin boards, AOL chat room news group things, I don't know, there's never an AOL,
01:16:55
◼
►
whatever those things are called.
01:16:58
◼
►
The problem is not the medium.
01:17:00
◼
►
The problem is, and in fact Twitter is probably better than most in the ways that it handles
01:17:04
◼
►
the social interactions and limiting people and having the asymmetrical follow and everything,
01:17:09
◼
►
is being tired of life.
01:17:11
◼
►
And I'm not saying that means he's wrong or anything.
01:17:13
◼
►
I'm saying that we should put the blame where it lies, which is other people suck, right?
01:17:18
◼
►
Or whatever.
01:17:19
◼
►
However you want to deal with it.
01:17:22
◼
►
How are you current feeling?
01:17:23
◼
►
I'm going to put it in video game terms.
01:17:26
◼
►
How are your shields holding up against the current onslaught, right?
01:17:30
◼
►
Are you feeling weak?
01:17:31
◼
►
Are you feeling strong?
01:17:32
◼
►
Do you feel like it's wearing you down and doing something negative?
01:17:34
◼
►
And disengaging is the way you deal with that.
01:17:36
◼
►
Like if your shields are going down and you get bombarded from all sides, you go elsewhere.
01:17:41
◼
►
You pull your ship back, you hide behind a rock and let your ships regen—I don't
01:17:45
◼
►
know, I'm mixing video game metaphors here, but like—
01:17:47
◼
►
Well, you treat it like the Halo thing, so you can step back for a minute and you recharge
01:17:51
◼
►
your things.
01:17:53
◼
►
And what I'm getting at is that it's not so much Twitter specifically, it really could
01:17:57
◼
►
be anything.
01:17:58
◼
►
It could be blog comments, if you have comments on your blog, and one way to fix that might
01:18:00
◼
►
be to turn off comments.
01:18:01
◼
►
It could be people sending you hateful emails.
01:18:03
◼
►
There are many vectors through which people who have any amount of notoriety can be put
01:18:08
◼
►
upon by others and it can start to affect them for a variety of reasons.
01:18:13
◼
►
And I think acknowledging that and dealing with it in a way that were expressed for you
01:18:18
◼
►
My only point with the tired of life thing is that I don't think it's specific to Twitter
01:18:23
◼
►
or any one thing, and I don't think shifting your use to like App.net or Usenet or going
01:18:29
◼
►
back to IRC or whatever, like nothing is going to solve that problem.
01:18:31
◼
►
It is not a technology problem, it's just a like, a thing that you have to deal with
01:18:36
◼
►
that goes in cycles that you have to deal with no matter where it is, and you have to
01:18:39
◼
►
do whatever you need to do to make yourself, you know, be happier essentially.
01:18:44
◼
►
So I actually agree with most of what you just said. The problem I have with Twitter,
01:18:52
◼
►
the problem I'm having is partly my fault. It is partly that it is, and I've talked about
01:18:59
◼
►
it before, like struggles with trying to keep my Twitter usage under control so it's not
01:19:03
◼
►
just constantly sucking away little bits of time throughout the day and just being this
01:19:08
◼
►
massive time suck and distraction suck, which hurts my productivity. And when I see my report
01:19:14
◼
►
from Rescue Time every week and it says I spent X hours in Twitter, I don't feel good
01:19:19
◼
►
about that. So that's part of the problem. And I've always had that problem. And I've
01:19:24
◼
►
tried different techniques over the years to try to minimize that, like only using it
01:19:28
◼
►
on my phone or only using it in a notification center or quitting it during the workday or
01:19:33
◼
►
whatever, and they've all done slight help here and there,
01:19:38
◼
►
but they mostly just kind of move the problem around.
01:19:41
◼
►
They don't really tend to reduce the problem meaningfully.
01:19:44
◼
►
The problem there is just me,
01:19:45
◼
►
that I want to keep engaging and interacting with Twitter.
01:19:48
◼
►
- You're not a Twitter completionist, right?
01:19:50
◼
►
I keep forgetting. - No.
01:19:51
◼
►
- Yeah, so you don't have that problem.
01:19:52
◼
►
If you were, I would say that's one thing
01:19:54
◼
►
you should definitely stop, 'cause that--
01:19:56
◼
►
- And another problem that I have
01:19:58
◼
►
is that I'm not keeping up,
01:19:59
◼
►
because so much is going on on Twitter,
01:20:02
◼
►
I'm missing what my friends are saying.
01:20:05
◼
►
And I recently, a couple weeks ago,
01:20:08
◼
►
I unfollowed about a third of the people I was following.
01:20:10
◼
►
Like I went through and tried to call as much as I could.
01:20:13
◼
►
And I started using mutes here and there,
01:20:15
◼
►
but that's a little too much work for me,
01:20:17
◼
►
so I'm not gonna do much of it.
01:20:19
◼
►
But the problem is that all of my friends,
01:20:24
◼
►
for the most part, are talking to each other on Twitter.
01:20:28
◼
►
And if I wanna keep up with what my friends are doing
01:20:31
◼
►
or talking about or what's going on in the world,
01:20:33
◼
►
I need to be reading that.
01:20:36
◼
►
Right now, I'm already not reading most of it
01:20:38
◼
►
because I'm not a completionist.
01:20:40
◼
►
I can't keep up, so I'm already not reading it,
01:20:42
◼
►
but I'm missing all that, and at the same time,
01:20:44
◼
►
if I want to talk to my friends in that context,
01:20:48
◼
►
if I want to be part of that conversation, we're in public.
01:20:52
◼
►
And so what I need, what I'm looking for
01:20:55
◼
►
is some separation to, you know, in public,
01:20:58
◼
►
somebody, I forget who,
01:21:00
◼
►
somebody about a year ago I heard a talk where they were comparing like having a
01:21:04
◼
►
conversation briefly with your friends on Twitter it's like having a
01:21:08
◼
►
conversation like on your front porch with somebody and there's tons of people
01:21:12
◼
►
walking by in the sidewalk and they yell at you like responses that like that you
01:21:15
◼
►
weren't part of this conversation and they're like yelling butting in like
01:21:19
◼
►
you're a dick it's like what do you like get off my porch like but that's the
01:21:24
◼
►
that's one of the strengths of Twitter as well because if it was only happening
01:21:27
◼
►
in private fewer people would benefit the reason it kind of works the way it
01:21:30
◼
►
does is that groups of people can sort of organically form who like discussing a particular
01:21:36
◼
►
topic and like, you're doing it in public, partially because you want some of the public
01:21:42
◼
►
What you don't want is people going by your porch and yelling at you while you're doing
01:21:45
◼
►
your thing, but you do want, hey, maybe this interested guy who you met once or twice will
01:21:48
◼
►
hear your conversation and join in kind of like at a party, right?
01:21:51
◼
►
Like so the public nature of Twitter is both a strength and a weakness.
01:21:54
◼
►
And how it plays out really depends on how many people are walking by your porch, so
01:22:00
◼
►
agree that that is an important strength of Twitter.
01:22:04
◼
►
I like that that exists.
01:22:06
◼
►
I don't like that that is the far and away dominant place
01:22:10
◼
►
that my friends interact with each other
01:22:14
◼
►
and that I need to interact with my friends.
01:22:16
◼
►
Like, we are always in public.
01:22:19
◼
►
And I think it should be the opposite.
01:22:20
◼
►
I think we should interact in public sometimes
01:22:23
◼
►
and most of the time it would be more pleasant
01:22:26
◼
►
if it was private.
01:22:29
◼
►
And so there's different ways to do that.
01:22:31
◼
►
There's chat rooms and stuff, and Slack,
01:22:34
◼
►
and stuff like that.
01:22:36
◼
►
I think I'd rather spend more time looking
01:22:39
◼
►
at stuff like that these days,
01:22:40
◼
►
because it is so exhausting.
01:22:42
◼
►
It is like, I was just at a conference,
01:22:46
◼
►
and being at a conference was great,
01:22:49
◼
►
but most groups of people on Twitter
01:22:52
◼
►
are not as nice as the attendees of OOL.
01:22:55
◼
►
And it's a much bigger crowd on Twitter.
01:22:59
◼
►
You know, imagine going to a conference
01:23:02
◼
►
where you have tens of thousands of people all around you
01:23:05
◼
►
and listening to everything you say
01:23:07
◼
►
and being ready to butt in.
01:23:09
◼
►
And so you're gonna get a lot of good stuff out of that.
01:23:11
◼
►
You're gonna meet a lot of good people,
01:23:12
◼
►
you're gonna get a lot of good ideas
01:23:14
◼
►
and good conversations out of that.
01:23:17
◼
►
But you're also gonna get a lot of jerks,
01:23:19
◼
►
especially if it's free to enter
01:23:21
◼
►
and nobody knows your name
01:23:22
◼
►
and you don't have to show your face.
01:23:24
◼
►
So it is exhausting after a while to be always partially
01:23:29
◼
►
or fully in public like that when you're really just trying
01:23:32
◼
►
to have everyday interactions with mostly just your friends.
01:23:36
◼
►
And you're welcome, it's like always being at a conference.
01:23:39
◼
►
So there is value in being at a conference sometimes,
01:23:43
◼
►
but there is also, there's a certain level,
01:23:46
◼
►
there's a certain threshold of sanity
01:23:49
◼
►
where you can't be publicly performing all the time
01:23:54
◼
►
and have that be mentally healthy, at least I can't.
01:23:57
◼
►
And so what I'm saying is not that Twitter is bad.
01:24:00
◼
►
And by the way, and a lot of people rightly point out
01:24:04
◼
►
in the chat room, like, much of the problem
01:24:06
◼
►
when people complain about, quote, Twitter,
01:24:08
◼
►
is they're complaining about the group they're following,
01:24:10
◼
►
the group they're paying attention to.
01:24:12
◼
►
I'm aware that social networks are what you make of them
01:24:15
◼
►
with what you choose to follow.
01:24:16
◼
►
However, in a network like Twitter,
01:24:18
◼
►
they are not what you make of them in terms of
01:24:22
◼
►
who talks to you and what you receive, that is mostly up to the public. I mean, you can
01:24:29
◼
►
like, you know, try to avoid talking about certain topics, which is stupid, but you can
01:24:34
◼
►
do stuff like that to try to minimize what you get. But for the most part, once you have
01:24:38
◼
►
a non-trivially sized audience, you're going to have random jerks talking to you all the
01:24:42
◼
►
time in a jerky way, and no matter how much good is interspersed throughout that, it's
01:24:49
◼
►
just really exhausting.
01:24:50
◼
►
Well, the problem is, is that the cost of entry to affecting somebody else's day is
01:24:57
◼
►
almost zero, because you can fire off this 140 character or less message to darn near
01:25:04
◼
►
anyone you want.
01:25:07
◼
►
And that's free.
01:25:08
◼
►
And it takes almost no time.
01:25:11
◼
►
And just like you were saying, John, that's one of the strengths of Twitter is that it's,
01:25:14
◼
►
You can get messages across quickly and easily, and you can have access to almost anyone on
01:25:21
◼
►
the planet if you so desire, like celebrities.
01:25:25
◼
►
And I'm talking about actual celebrities, not us three idiots.
01:25:29
◼
►
But the problem with that is all of these people also have access to you.
01:25:35
◼
►
And the thing that I've been struggling with with regard to Twitter is I feel like maybe
01:25:40
◼
►
I'm just becoming more sensitive.
01:25:42
◼
►
I thought I'd be coming I'd been becoming less sensitive, but I feel like I'm seeing
01:25:46
◼
►
more and more negative or not constructive comments coming my way that bother me.
01:25:55
◼
►
And granted, the easy answer is, well, don't let it bother you, you idiot, but it's hard.
01:26:01
◼
►
I'm not good at just putting up that wall.
01:26:03
◼
►
So like, for example, I had put up a post about Apple Pay and about how I thought it
01:26:08
◼
►
was crummy that when my card had expired, the card didn't update, which I've since found out
01:26:14
◼
►
it is theoretically capable of doing if the bank handles it right. And it also didn't tell me when
01:26:19
◼
►
I went to use it to use the Apple Pay version of the credit card that had expired. It just said,
01:26:25
◼
►
denied. So I wrote a post about that. Well, somebody tweeted, Apple Pay messaging at
01:26:30
◼
►
Casey lists you're being ridiculous. Keep track of your cards
01:26:33
◼
►
Sorry that I made an honest mistake
01:26:37
◼
►
But did you also learn about the fact that your bank if your bank had handled it correctly?
01:26:42
◼
►
That you that wouldn't have happened. Did you also learn about that on Twitter or from some stranger?
01:26:47
◼
►
I learned about it from from some friends, but I also eventually heard about it on Twitter
01:26:54
◼
►
It's the blessing and the curse like you will I mean it with any it's kind of like, you know
01:26:58
◼
►
follow up, but anything we talk about here, if we were wrong, many people will tell us,
01:27:02
◼
►
which I like. I like the fact that that's an advantage of having an audience. Some of
01:27:06
◼
►
the people who tell you what we mean about it, that's the price you pay for having a
01:27:09
◼
►
bunch of people tell you, like, "solve your problems for it." A lot of people who only
01:27:15
◼
►
see the upside would love to do that. They're like, "Boy, it must be good to have a popular
01:27:19
◼
►
tech podcast because you can say, 'Hey, I'm having trouble getting my whozit, working
01:27:22
◼
►
with my whatever.'" And then a million people will tell you how to get them to work together,
01:27:27
◼
►
and some percentage of those people will be right.
01:27:29
◼
►
And you will have your solved problem, right?
01:27:31
◼
►
But then some percentage of the people will be jerks.
01:27:33
◼
►
- Like when I had my jumbo frame issue,
01:27:36
◼
►
I would never have found that problem
01:27:38
◼
►
if I hadn't asked on Twitter and gotten hundreds
01:27:41
◼
►
of responses of what it might be,
01:27:43
◼
►
and like two of them said jumbo frames.
01:27:46
◼
►
And that ended up being right.
01:27:48
◼
►
I am so lucky to have such a big audience on Twitter
01:27:51
◼
►
that I have access to that kind of information.
01:27:54
◼
►
I'm so lucky that I have a big enough audience
01:27:57
◼
►
that I can launch products and write blog posts
01:28:00
◼
►
that get attention.
01:28:01
◼
►
Like the audience, like I have built in attention
01:28:05
◼
►
for anything I do now.
01:28:06
◼
►
That's the problem.
01:28:07
◼
►
That's why I would feel like a jerk
01:28:09
◼
►
just walking away from this.
01:28:10
◼
►
I would feel ungrateful to other people
01:28:14
◼
►
who have been following me.
01:28:16
◼
►
And also I would feel like I was throwing away
01:28:18
◼
►
a giant professional advantage.
01:28:20
◼
►
So I feel like I can't leave Twitter.
01:28:24
◼
►
But that's why I need to find a better balance.
01:28:27
◼
►
- But yeah, that's a skill, like anything else,
01:28:29
◼
►
it's a skill you have to develop.
01:28:31
◼
►
It's like, none of us have experience with this,
01:28:34
◼
►
but can you imagine running a huge company,
01:28:36
◼
►
being the CEO of a company with thousands of employees?
01:28:39
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That is not usually a natural thing
01:28:42
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that most people are used to.
01:28:43
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You're used to just dealing with yourself when you're a kid
01:28:45
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and you learn to gain responsibility.
01:28:47
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But it is, at these extremes of extreme ratios
01:28:51
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of you to other people, it's a skill that you have to learn.
01:28:54
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There are things you can learn about being a manager
01:28:57
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and being a CEO or running a large company
01:28:59
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►
that you just have to figure out, right?
01:29:02
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And you have to research them and learn them.
01:29:04
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And some people are just not cut out for it.
01:29:06
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►
Some people will never be a good CEO
01:29:08
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or a good manager of a lot of people
01:29:09
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because it's just not how they work, right?
01:29:10
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►
So if suddenly you get an audience
01:29:13
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and you have to deal with notoriety and fame
01:29:15
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and a lot of input from other people,
01:29:17
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►
you have to either learn to deal with that
01:29:20
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►
or learn what your limits are.
01:29:21
◼
►
Learn that I don't wanna be the CEO of a big company
01:29:24
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because no matter how good I could possibly get at it,
01:29:26
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doing so doesn't make me happy.
01:29:27
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How big are you comfortable?
01:29:28
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How big, you know, you see a lot with actual celebrities
01:29:30
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who get big because of some talent they have.
01:29:34
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They're in a hit movie, they're a great singer,
01:29:36
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they have a hit song or something.
01:29:38
◼
►
And very often, the prerequisite is to get that fame,
01:29:42
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being very talented, being a good actor,
01:29:44
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being in the right place at the right time,
01:29:46
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some combination of those things,
01:29:47
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are totally unrelated to the ability to deal with the fame
01:29:51
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►
that is going to come with that.
01:29:52
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You know, the ones that stick, the ones that stay are like,
01:29:55
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yes, they're really talented, and also,
01:29:57
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they're able to figure out how to have a successful,
01:30:00
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►
well-balanced life in the face of what must be, you know,
01:30:04
◼
►
the insane onslaught of like real fame, right?
01:30:08
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►
Other people have the talent, get the notoriety,
01:30:10
◼
►
and very clearly can't deal with the onslaught of real fame
01:30:13
◼
►
and have tragic, terrible lives.
01:30:15
◼
►
We are lucky that in our tiny little dose of notoriety here,
01:30:19
◼
►
it's unlikely that Marco is going to, you know,
01:30:21
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►
go on a bender and drive his Tesla off a cliff or something.
01:30:27
◼
►
But I think that's why I think our problem
01:30:29
◼
►
is more relatable because I think everybody has,
01:30:32
◼
►
even if it's just like someone said something mean
01:30:34
◼
►
on your Facebook post, who is like an acquaintance
01:30:37
◼
►
or someone you knew in high school and that ruins your day,
01:30:40
◼
►
that's pretty much the level we're talking about here.
01:30:42
◼
►
It's not like we're getting bombarded
01:30:44
◼
►
with thousands of people hating us,
01:30:45
◼
►
but it doesn't take much.
01:30:46
◼
►
It just takes one person making one mean comment
01:30:49
◼
►
to make you think like, and are you used to that?
01:30:51
◼
►
are used to acquaintances or even strangers perhaps
01:30:55
◼
►
telling you mean things about yourself.
01:30:56
◼
►
Maybe that's not something that happens in your regular life
01:30:58
◼
►
but suddenly it happens on the internet
01:30:59
◼
►
because they have access to you.
01:31:00
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►
And everyone I think,
01:31:01
◼
►
like this is the complaint we get when we talk about this,
01:31:03
◼
►
like would you stop talking about your problems of like,
01:31:05
◼
►
oh you have a lot of Twitter followers.
01:31:06
◼
►
I think everybody, if you have one Twitter follow,
01:31:08
◼
►
if you have 10 people who read your Facebook,
01:31:10
◼
►
everybody has this problem
01:31:11
◼
►
at pretty much exactly the same scale we do
01:31:13
◼
►
because what we're talking about here
01:31:15
◼
►
is handfuls of negative feedback from people.
01:31:21
◼
►
because we're not that big.
01:31:23
◼
►
And I think our handful is within an order of magnitude
01:31:26
◼
►
of your handful, and is really the same type
01:31:29
◼
►
of scope of prog, and I think everybody
01:31:31
◼
►
who has any interaction in any social media
01:31:33
◼
►
or any sort of one-to-many communication medium
01:31:36
◼
►
that's not just like face-to-face has to deal with this
01:31:39
◼
►
and has to figure out what are my limits?
01:31:41
◼
►
How do I feel about this?
01:31:42
◼
►
Am I gonna grow a thicker skin,
01:31:44
◼
►
or am I going to pretend I'm growing a thicker skin
01:31:47
◼
►
when really I'm just internalizing it all
01:31:48
◼
►
and it'll come to a breaking point,
01:31:50
◼
►
I'll like snap at my children and I realize I'm snapping at them because someone said
01:31:53
◼
►
something mean to me on my Facebook post two days ago and I'm still thinking about it,
01:31:59
◼
►
That I couldn't agree more.
01:32:00
◼
►
That's exactly how I feel.
01:32:01
◼
►
That I'm trying to just fabricate a thicker skin, but I don't think I've actually built
01:32:06
◼
►
a thicker skin yet.
01:32:08
◼
►
And it's hard.
01:32:09
◼
►
It's a hard thing to deal with.
01:32:12
◼
►
And I think an ecstasy said a couple things in the chat that I thought were great.
01:32:16
◼
►
Some people are a pleasure to interact with.
01:32:18
◼
►
Others just suck your energy.
01:32:19
◼
►
And I think that's a really good way of putting it.
01:32:21
◼
►
That's that I see this comment like, oh, don't be ridiculous.
01:32:24
◼
►
Keep track of your or you're being ridiculous.
01:32:26
◼
►
Keep track of your cards.
01:32:27
◼
►
And that just kind of like sucks the air out of my day a little bit.
01:32:31
◼
►
No, I should be big enough to realize this is some stranger that I'm never going to interact
01:32:36
◼
►
And that shouldn't bother me.
01:32:38
◼
►
But it does.
01:32:39
◼
►
And the thing I'm struggling with, again, coming back to an ecstasy is in his or her
01:32:43
◼
►
case, I will also say the older I get less tolerance of energy sucking people I become
01:32:47
◼
►
I put up with a lot more crap at 18 than I do at 48. And I feel like even in the last couple of years
01:32:52
◼
►
as I've gained some fame, and I can't say notoriety because I was corrected once that it's not notoriety,
01:32:58
◼
►
it's fame for us because we didn't do bad things. But anyway, as I get more fame, I'm finding that I
01:33:05
◼
►
have less and less tolerance and time for the that kind of energy suck. And I've noticed kind of
01:33:10
◼
►
building on what Marco had said, that I'm getting much more aggressive with the block button and,
01:33:19
◼
►
and, and those sorts of things than I ever have been in the past. And granted, I'm, you know,
01:33:26
◼
►
just freshly 33. And so it's not that I'm getting too old age, but even as I'm getting older at this
01:33:34
◼
►
age, I'm finding that I'm less and less tolerant of it. And, and where we started this conversation
01:33:40
◼
►
is where I'm coming back to now, which is, is it really worth me getting upset over these random
01:33:46
◼
►
strangers on the internet? And I feel like I'm getting more and more upset over time. And in fact,
01:33:53
◼
►
at the end of last year in December, and this is a little bit of a corollary for half or so of
01:33:59
◼
►
December, I kept track every single day of what Twitter was pissed off about, because I felt like
01:34:06
◼
►
Every day there was some unbelievable travesty that Twitter was all fired up about.
01:34:14
◼
►
Every single day.
01:34:15
◼
►
Now that oftentimes it didn't relate to me at all.
01:34:17
◼
►
But that much negativity man, oh my goodness, eventually it just wears on you.
01:34:22
◼
►
And the reason I kept track of this because I intended to post a blog post about it.
01:34:28
◼
►
As it turns out, right around the time that the right I guess was midway through the month,
01:34:34
◼
►
I want to say maybe it was time, but somebody put up a post that had basically done that
01:34:41
◼
►
for an entire year.
01:34:42
◼
►
And so at that point I figured, well, my post wasn't really worth it, but it's just, it's
01:34:48
◼
►
stunning to me how much negativity I've seen on Twitter.
01:34:53
◼
►
And like Marco, I'm trying to evaluate where does that fit in my life?
01:34:59
◼
►
Because I don't want to eliminate it entirely, but I think I'm giving it much more time and
01:35:06
◼
►
too many thought cycles.
01:35:08
◼
►
And I need to back it off a bit, but I'm not sure the right way to do it.
01:35:12
◼
►
And like Marco, I'm a freaking addict, which is not I don't say that with pride.
01:35:16
◼
►
I wish I was less so.
01:35:19
◼
►
But it is it is unbelievably thrilling to get responses from people that you respect,
01:35:25
◼
►
Or even strangers that have good information like the big frames, fat frames, whatever
01:35:29
◼
►
you call it.
01:35:30
◼
►
That is the title, man.
01:35:33
◼
►
Big frames, fat frames.
01:35:37
◼
►
See, now I'm totally derailed myself.
01:35:39
◼
►
But one way or another, there's good things that come from Twitter, but there's also
01:35:44
◼
►
so much bad, and I can't figure out, is the bad outweighing the good these days?
01:35:49
◼
►
For me, anyway.
01:35:50
◼
►
What Marco is doing, like, he's doing all the logical things that you would think to
01:35:54
◼
►
Trim your follow this mute people try to cut down and when you do it don't be a completionist like he's going through he's
01:36:01
◼
►
He's going down the punch list of things you can do to manage this on
01:36:04
◼
►
Somewhere on the punch list for certain people maybe think your way out of it
01:36:08
◼
►
Most people that doesn't work like a little bit Casey
01:36:11
◼
►
It sounds like you're trying to think your way out of it like should I be upset intellectually?
01:36:15
◼
►
Can I can I rationally think about that?
01:36:17
◼
►
I shouldn't be bothered by what strangers that like I
01:36:20
◼
►
Don't know if you can have that conversation with yourself and have it have effect my experience. It is very rare that
01:36:28
◼
►
Can use reason to change their emotions they feel from input from other people?
01:36:33
◼
►
But some people can so it's worth at least giving that a try
01:36:36
◼
►
But you know and curating the follow us
01:36:40
◼
►
I think is probably the first thing you should do because you said like you know what is Twitter upset about today as Marco pointed
01:36:45
◼
►
Out Twitter is who you follow like what is Twitter upset about you have no idea what Twitter is upset about Twitter as an
01:36:50
◼
►
aggregate is probably talking about Justin Bieber. That is not in your headline, right?
01:36:53
◼
►
You know what I mean? Your Twitter is upset about some Apple thing that nobody knows about, except,
01:36:57
◼
►
you know, so changing your follow list. And it can be painful because even for all the asymmetry
01:37:02
◼
►
in Twitter, it can be painful to unfollow people who, you know, you may agree with them. And you
01:37:07
◼
►
may be, it is part of the reason you would unfollow them. Like, they're outraged about
01:37:11
◼
►
Issue X. You 100% agree with them about Issue X, and you are also outraged, and that outrage is a
01:37:15
◼
►
negative feeling. And so you're unfollowing them, not because they're posting things you disagree
01:37:19
◼
►
with but because they're posting because you agree with and you're like now I too
01:37:22
◼
►
am outraged you have transferred your outrage to me because we agree on
01:37:26
◼
►
everything therefore I'm going to unfollow you like you're not unfollowing
01:37:28
◼
►
people because their opinions are the opposite of yours you're following
01:37:31
◼
►
people who you agree with but we seem to be angry all the time that's rubbing off
01:37:35
◼
►
on you you know well and there's also you know to me I feel like there's
01:37:40
◼
►
there's a big difference with with Twitter and a lot of it comes from from
01:37:46
◼
►
the blog world too, which is that with Twitter, there's a very, very, you know, it is who
01:37:51
◼
►
you follow, that's like, you know, what you see in your timeline, but there's still the
01:37:54
◼
►
big problem with all of the, you know, replies from jerks and everything. And, you know,
01:38:00
◼
►
a few weeks ago I mentioned how, you know, like I feel more comfortable saying things
01:38:06
◼
►
in podcasts than I do on my blog, things that might be controversial or that might get people
01:38:12
◼
►
to call me a jerk or whatever. And the reason why is because in blogs and on Twitter it's
01:38:19
◼
►
really really easy to get drive-by rash reactions from people. And so when, and this is, you
01:38:26
◼
►
know, that anger that you see, that you see like bubbling up on Twitter, that's directed
01:38:30
◼
►
at something, that's a mood. It's this drive-by mood where someone sees a few words or a headline
01:38:38
◼
►
that they disagree with and they fit it into their narrative with their confirmation bias
01:38:43
◼
►
of whatever they think those people are like or whatever and they just lash out and yell
01:38:49
◼
►
immediately. They don't look at context, they don't know the people they're talking to,
01:38:54
◼
►
it's just this quick, harsh reaction. With podcasts, you don't really get a lot of that
01:39:01
◼
►
because podcasts are so undiscoverable fundamentally by the format mostly, and I know there's ways
01:39:07
◼
►
we can improve it, but ultimately the format is just pretty undiscoverable compared to
01:39:13
◼
►
text, and I think it always will be that way, relatively speaking, you know, with the exception
01:39:18
◼
►
of minor improvements here and there, but with podcasts, like most people who are hearing
01:39:24
◼
►
what I'm saying right now are subscribed to this show, who hear it on a regular basis,
01:39:29
◼
►
who hear the three of us talking for a couple hours every week, and who have probably heard
01:39:35
◼
►
us for a couple hours every week for a long time. So they, like, you listeners who are
01:39:40
◼
►
hearing me say this, you know us. Like, the vast majority of you know us on some level.
01:39:46
◼
►
You know the context. You know the kind of people we are. You know roughly, you know,
01:39:51
◼
►
the context in which we are saying the things we say, in which we think the things we think.
01:39:56
◼
►
You know, if we say something that's a little bit off, you'll probably give us the benefit
01:39:59
◼
►
doubt because you know who we actually are. And so there are, I think there are way fewer
01:40:06
◼
►
of those drive-by nasty interactions for things you say on podcasts than there are for things
01:40:12
◼
►
you say on Twitter or on blog posts. And for me, and the result is podcast audiences tend
01:40:19
◼
►
to be much smaller than popular blogs, popular, you know, tweets, accounts or whatever, YouTube
01:40:26
◼
►
channels that are a little more accessible to this kind of drive-by-ness. Like, podcast
01:40:30
◼
►
audiences are way smaller, but I get so much less nastiness per capita in podcasts than
01:40:38
◼
►
I do from any other audience, by a long shot. And I'll say things on here that are potentially
01:40:44
◼
►
way riskier to say than I would ever say on my blog, and yet I get almost no crap for
01:40:52
◼
►
It's just too much work to listen to a podcast. Anyone, if someone starts retweeting your
01:40:55
◼
►
tweet around you will get all the crazy drive-bys from people who have no idea who you are and
01:40:58
◼
►
who are angry but it is just so much work. You're like I gotta download a big audio file
01:41:02
◼
►
and then you gotta listen to audio and they don't know overcast exists so they don't know
01:41:05
◼
►
podcast lines exist so they don't know they can listen faster and it's like where is the
01:41:09
◼
►
part where they talked about this? Oh never mind. Whereas anyone can read a tweet in two
01:41:12
◼
►
seconds and get angry. So. Exactly. It is not, not, and even a blog post like when you
01:41:17
◼
►
know like when your blog post goes viral like you're on CNBC or whatever like you're just
01:41:22
◼
►
gonna drive by us for for half a year just because of that one thing right I
01:41:26
◼
►
mean here's like I would love I would absolutely love if Twitter had a setting
01:41:32
◼
►
that would not show me mentions from people who didn't follow me for more
01:41:38
◼
►
than the past week think about that yeah there's a lot Twitter can do for that
01:41:42
◼
►
but that does actually get into that does actually get into the realm of
01:41:47
◼
►
features that would only benefit the people who have a larger than normal
01:41:51
◼
►
a number of followers, but--
01:41:52
◼
►
- But they already have those features.
01:41:54
◼
►
Verified accounts have a setting where you can only see
01:41:56
◼
►
responses from people you follow, right?
01:41:59
◼
►
And that's too aggressive, yeah,
01:42:01
◼
►
'cause then you can't hear from strangers, right?
01:42:03
◼
►
So that's too extreme, but if you look at the trash
01:42:08
◼
►
that you get, if you look at the nastiness,
01:42:11
◼
►
the nasty comments from people on Twitter,
01:42:13
◼
►
the vast majority of them for me
01:42:15
◼
►
are from people who don't follow me,
01:42:17
◼
►
because they saw some retweet somewhere or something,
01:42:20
◼
►
they're like, "Ahh!" and they lash out and they yell at me.
01:42:22
◼
►
And they get nastier when they're eggs, I mean, we can talk to the whole thing.
01:42:25
◼
►
Like, you know, we don't usually get the eggs, but we just get—we get the drive-bys of people
01:42:28
◼
►
who have established Twitter accounts, and they just talk in their circle, and we talk in our
01:42:31
◼
►
circle, and our circles don't interact, but some little thing from our circle lands over in their
01:42:35
◼
►
circle, and they will just come back and yell. But the good thing about them is, for the most part,
01:42:38
◼
►
you'll never see them again. Like, most of them won't make it their mission in life to make your
01:42:43
◼
►
life miserable. Like, my one was, they had that video of the woman being cat-called on the street,
01:42:48
◼
►
and I made one or two tweets about it and they somehow leaked out of our circle because
01:42:53
◼
►
some right-wing site put up one of my tweets on their page and it was just months.
01:42:59
◼
►
Months of random, fairly aggressive hate from people who are totally outside circles who
01:43:06
◼
►
have no idea anything about who I am or that I have a podcast or that I'm just a person.
01:43:15
◼
►
- That was miserable.
01:43:16
◼
►
It was like, I think I said, I tweeted about it.
01:43:18
◼
►
It was like, you know, five millisarkesians worth of hate.
01:43:24
◼
►
But it just goes on forever.
01:43:26
◼
►
Like, and eventually, you know, like, I mean,
01:43:28
◼
►
I deal with things in a different way probably
01:43:30
◼
►
than you two do, but like, it was miserable.
01:43:33
◼
►
And it was like the rainstorm, it doesn't end.
01:43:36
◼
►
Like, you know, I don't know what your CNBC story,
01:43:41
◼
►
you know, the Apple functional high ground stuff is going.
01:43:44
◼
►
I'm assuming you're still getting those,
01:43:46
◼
►
but I'm hoping they're not as hate filled
01:43:49
◼
►
as the things I was getting for this thing.
01:43:51
◼
►
And at the very least, anyone who's gonna be angry
01:43:54
◼
►
about functional high ground probably cares about Apple.
01:43:57
◼
►
And so at least they're somewhere in your circle.
01:43:59
◼
►
In that respect, you may not get rid of them,
01:44:00
◼
►
but when I was getting the random hate from strangers,
01:44:03
◼
►
it helped that I knew these people
01:44:06
◼
►
didn't know anything about me.
01:44:08
◼
►
It helped that I knew that I was never gonna see
01:44:11
◼
►
these people on Twitter again.
01:44:13
◼
►
It helped that it was so outside of the normal things
01:44:16
◼
►
I tweet about, unlike your functional high ground things,
01:44:18
◼
►
which is you're just, you are like cultivating the worst
01:44:22
◼
►
of your actual audience.
01:44:23
◼
►
Like people who care a lot about Apple
01:44:25
◼
►
and you're really angry about you
01:44:26
◼
►
for saying stuff about Apple.
01:44:27
◼
►
Like, you know, if you say something,
01:44:30
◼
►
what I'm saying is I was able to deal with it by saying,
01:44:32
◼
►
by thinking to myself,
01:44:33
◼
►
I'm never gonna see any of these people tweeting again.
01:44:37
◼
►
It's probably not even worth my time to block them
01:44:39
◼
►
because like, if I just simply don't engage with any of them,
01:44:43
◼
►
They'll get it out of their system.
01:44:44
◼
►
They don't know who I am, you know,
01:44:46
◼
►
and it just, and it will blow over
01:44:49
◼
►
in two to three months, right?
01:44:51
◼
►
And so, and it did more or less,
01:44:53
◼
►
I haven't got one of those in a long time.
01:44:55
◼
►
And that was the way I dealt with that one.
01:44:57
◼
►
But you know, having to deal with that
01:45:00
◼
►
for two to three months, like going off Twitter
01:45:02
◼
►
would be another way to deal with that one.
01:45:04
◼
►
Like just say, I'm going to come back from Twitter
01:45:05
◼
►
in two to three months when this is blown over, right?
01:45:08
◼
►
And you just have to do whatever it takes
01:45:11
◼
►
for you to feel okay.
01:45:12
◼
►
and these unfortunate flare ups can happen to anybody.
01:45:15
◼
►
Like, and again, I would say again, this is not a thing,
01:45:17
◼
►
oh, poor you, you got too many followers.
01:45:19
◼
►
Anybody's tweet, not because I had a lot of followers,
01:45:21
◼
►
anybody's tweet can be pulled out
01:45:23
◼
►
and put into the right place on like, you know,
01:45:26
◼
►
some website or forum or bulletin board
01:45:30
◼
►
that has an organized presence that disagrees
01:45:32
◼
►
with whatever it is that you are passionate about.
01:45:35
◼
►
That can happen to anybody, because on the page I was on,
01:45:38
◼
►
there was 50 other people.
01:45:40
◼
►
You know, some of those people had 10 followers, right?
01:45:42
◼
►
they were gonna get the same exact volume of hate mail
01:45:45
◼
►
that I was gonna get,
01:45:46
◼
►
because nobody who's sending hate tweets to those people
01:45:49
◼
►
knows who they are.
01:45:50
◼
►
They just saw their tweets on a page,
01:45:51
◼
►
became enraged and funneled that rage
01:45:53
◼
►
into sending hate in their direction.
01:45:55
◼
►
It can happen to anybody.
01:45:56
◼
►
That's the beauty of the internet.
01:45:58
◼
►
If the Huffington Post grabs your tweet and puts it up
01:46:02
◼
►
and you could get angry, hate-filled email
01:46:05
◼
►
from people for months and you could have 10 followers.
01:46:08
◼
►
That is the beauty and curse of our age, I guess.
01:46:12
◼
►
And so I really think that everyone will eventually
01:46:15
◼
►
have to find their way of dealing with the situation
01:46:20
◼
►
and learning what their limits are.
01:46:22
◼
►
And I think what Casey was talking about before
01:46:23
◼
►
of like not lying to yourself about what your limits are,
01:46:26
◼
►
not thinking because it shouldn't bother me,
01:46:28
◼
►
therefore I will continue to do the thing
01:46:30
◼
►
that I know bothers me because I intellectually believe
01:46:33
◼
►
that it shouldn't bother me.
01:46:34
◼
►
That's probably not a healthy coping mechanism.
01:46:37
◼
►
- Yeah, that's what I've been attempting and failing at.
01:46:40
◼
►
just like Casey's, I've been failing miserably at that
01:46:43
◼
►
for years now and I think for me the ultimate solution
01:46:48
◼
►
is going to be reducing how much I use Twitter
01:46:51
◼
►
because Twitter's not gonna change.
01:46:53
◼
►
Twitter is, as a medium, that setting I just said,
01:46:56
◼
►
no client is ever gonna be able to add that really.
01:47:00
◼
►
They probably aren't even allowed to anymore
01:47:02
◼
►
with the new Twitter rules of the road.
01:47:04
◼
►
- Yeah, that would have to be a Twitter service thing
01:47:06
◼
►
'cause these are the type of features
01:47:08
◼
►
that Twitter as a service can do,
01:47:09
◼
►
and maybe they could think about that,
01:47:12
◼
►
but the fact that Verified is still this rare thing
01:47:15
◼
►
that not everybody can get shows they really have no idea
01:47:17
◼
►
what the hell they're doing in terms of making Twitter
01:47:18
◼
►
a more pleasant place.
01:47:19
◼
►
- Exactly, yeah, and it just seems like
01:47:21
◼
►
the leadership of Twitter has no interest
01:47:25
◼
►
from a product direction perspective
01:47:27
◼
►
in doing much about these kind of problems,
01:47:30
◼
►
and some of them are not problems
01:47:33
◼
►
that Twitter really can solve, and I recognize that.
01:47:36
◼
►
So for me, this is why I really,
01:47:39
◼
►
like the direction I'm going to really try to go now
01:47:42
◼
►
is just taking a lot of my usage
01:47:46
◼
►
that is currently on Twitter and just taking it private.
01:47:49
◼
►
Because being in public for everything I do
01:47:53
◼
►
is just not working, it's just not.
01:47:57
◼
►
- Yeah, it's funny because I have the show on Relay,
01:48:01
◼
►
because I have Analog on Relay,
01:48:03
◼
►
I've been a part of the Relay FM Slack channel,
01:48:06
◼
►
and that has a really awesome group of people in it.
01:48:10
◼
►
And I feel like that's kind of filling,
01:48:14
◼
►
not filling a void necessarily,
01:48:16
◼
►
but I'm getting more positive experiences from that.
01:48:20
◼
►
In fact, they're pretty much universally positive.
01:48:22
◼
►
And I've been, a lot of the little quips
01:48:25
◼
►
that I may throw into Twitter,
01:48:26
◼
►
a lot of times I'll just share with my close friends
01:48:30
◼
►
on the Relay chat or Slack,
01:48:32
◼
►
because I know reliably that they will understand
01:48:37
◼
►
where I'm coming from, get my intention
01:48:39
◼
►
and get what I'm trying to say.
01:48:41
◼
►
Or maybe I'm just whining about something.
01:48:44
◼
►
- They'll only secretly hate you.
01:48:45
◼
►
- Right, and I'm okay with that.
01:48:47
◼
►
I'm okay with them secretly hating me
01:48:49
◼
►
because this way I don't have to know that they hate me.
01:48:52
◼
►
But all kidding aside, I wonder if I sway,
01:48:57
◼
►
let's say the pendulum swings
01:48:58
◼
►
just all the way over to the relay FM slack,
01:49:01
◼
►
and I almost completely stop using Twitter.
01:49:06
◼
►
I think at that point though,
01:49:07
◼
►
I'll miss some of the random interactions.
01:49:10
◼
►
I'll miss hearing about fat frames
01:49:13
◼
►
and I'll miss hearing about,
01:49:15
◼
►
I'll miss hearing about,
01:49:17
◼
►
hearing things from people that I don't know
01:49:19
◼
►
because genuinely as much as we're complaining
01:49:21
◼
►
and moaning or sharing, if nothing else,
01:49:24
◼
►
our experiences with Twitter,
01:49:26
◼
►
both of you have said it and I can't agree more
01:49:28
◼
►
that some unbelievably wonderful, wonderful things happen on Twitter with random people.
01:49:36
◼
►
And some people have sent 140-character messages to me that are just heart-crushingly awesome
01:49:43
◼
►
in the best possible way.
01:49:46
◼
►
And so because of that, I don't think I necessarily want to give up on Twitter.
01:49:49
◼
►
And I'm not saying that either of you are saying that either, but I worry that if I
01:49:53
◼
►
I get into this echo chamber in the Slack chat, that maybe I'll miss out on some of
01:49:58
◼
►
the contrarian opinions that, if I'm honest, I'm probably not getting on Twitter anyway,
01:50:01
◼
►
but I like to think I'm getting on Twitter.
01:50:03
◼
►
Well, that's why it's a balance, right? It's a balance we all need to find. And I think
01:50:09
◼
►
right now, we've, in the last few years, with the rise of all this social stuff and mobile
01:50:14
◼
►
stuff, I think we've gone a little too far in the "everything is public on social networks"
01:50:20
◼
►
and now I think we're gonna start swinging back
01:50:23
◼
►
a little bit, hopefully on that pendulum,
01:50:24
◼
►
with like, okay, not everything needs to be public
01:50:27
◼
►
all the time, and being private can actually be
01:50:32
◼
►
quite peaceful and a relief from always being
01:50:35
◼
►
in public all the time.
01:50:37
◼
►
- Well, there's a gap in the model lineup, so to speak,
01:50:39
◼
►
going back to the MacBook type analogy,
01:50:41
◼
►
where we all have private messages,
01:50:42
◼
►
we all have iMessage, text messages, instant message,
01:50:45
◼
►
one on one or one on, you know,
01:50:48
◼
►
a small circle of people, right?
01:50:50
◼
►
There's that.
01:50:50
◼
►
Then there's the public thing over there on Twitter, right?
01:50:53
◼
►
And then the in-between thing is this,
01:50:55
◼
►
and I think there's a reason the in-between thing
01:50:56
◼
►
is a big gap.
01:50:57
◼
►
I think of things like Slack or Glassboard
01:50:59
◼
►
or like a small group of people, even an IRC channel,
01:51:02
◼
►
a small group of people who know each other.
01:51:05
◼
►
Because you don't wanna talk one-on-one
01:51:06
◼
►
with all your individual friends.
01:51:08
◼
►
You do want a place that's in between.
01:51:09
◼
►
Because if you wanna talk one-on-one,
01:51:10
◼
►
you'll just send people text messages or instant messages.
01:51:13
◼
►
Like, that's fine, that's a solved problem.
01:51:14
◼
►
But sometimes you wanna talk to two or three or four
01:51:16
◼
►
or be in a room or even be someplace as big as OOL
01:51:19
◼
►
with like a whole bunch of people, right?
01:51:20
◼
►
But it's still not public.
01:51:21
◼
►
There's a difference between, you know,
01:51:23
◼
►
even if you were talking to everybody in WWDC,
01:51:25
◼
►
that's only a few thousand people,
01:51:27
◼
►
it's not the entire world of, you know,
01:51:29
◼
►
whatever it is, 7 billion.
01:51:31
◼
►
So why is there that gap there?
01:51:33
◼
►
And I think one of the reasons that gap is there
01:51:35
◼
►
is we used to have, before we had the big public things,
01:51:38
◼
►
all we had were the little places.
01:51:40
◼
►
We had private, which would be like one-to-one email
01:51:42
◼
►
or instant message.
01:51:43
◼
►
we had self-constructed small social groups isolated by obscurity, like a bunch of people
01:51:49
◼
►
on Galapagos Island where you have this little miniature ecosystem, it would be like one
01:51:52
◼
►
Usenet group up in a corner with like 200 regulars and that makes a little community
01:51:58
◼
►
And technically it's in public, but it's protected by the fact that Google doesn't exist yet
01:52:02
◼
►
and there's no way for people to find you and it's like you're hiding on your little
01:52:05
◼
►
island until the boats show up, right?
01:52:07
◼
►
And even things like Slack or whatever, you end up with these little islands and I remember
01:52:11
◼
►
those days and what happened in those days was you ended up with too many islands.
01:52:15
◼
►
Here's where I go to talk about people at Star Wars.
01:52:17
◼
►
Here's where I go to talk to people about computer stuff.
01:52:20
◼
►
Here's where I, you know, talk to my family.
01:52:22
◼
►
And it was like, they were these little private islands at the scale that Marko was looking
01:52:26
◼
►
for but you ended up with 50 of them and you're like, "Geez, I don't like having to go to
01:52:29
◼
►
all these different protocols, all these different places, and sometimes I want to cross-pollinate
01:52:32
◼
►
and I got to check, you know, five different places for it."
01:52:36
◼
►
What happens is either those little places die out or those little places sort of metastasize
01:52:42
◼
►
and become Twitter essentially.
01:52:44
◼
►
That is the life cycle of those places.
01:52:46
◼
►
Things at that scale either just fizzle and die out or become like there's too many of
01:52:52
◼
►
them that you can't go to all the ones.
01:52:53
◼
►
The reason we aren't going back to app.net even if there's like seven people there we
01:52:56
◼
►
know it just doesn't have critical mass.
01:52:58
◼
►
Or they grow.
01:53:00
◼
►
They start just like, "Well, why isn't everybody on Usenet?
01:53:03
◼
►
Now why isn't everybody on Wellandson message?
01:53:06
◼
►
Why isn't everybody in this Slack room?
01:53:07
◼
►
There's some people I wish were in the Slack room
01:53:08
◼
►
who weren't, but the people you wish were in the Slack room
01:53:10
◼
►
were different than the set of people the other person
01:53:12
◼
►
thinks were in the, wishes were in the Slack room.
01:53:13
◼
►
And eventually everybody that you follow on Twitter
01:53:15
◼
►
is in the Slack room, you just recreated Twitter
01:53:16
◼
►
inside your Slack room, right?
01:53:19
◼
►
- It's true, it's true.
01:53:20
◼
►
- That uncomfortable middle part is like,
01:53:22
◼
►
I think it's very difficult for things to live
01:53:25
◼
►
in that middle part because they always move
01:53:28
◼
►
in one direction or another.
01:53:29
◼
►
It's very difficult to find stasis there
01:53:31
◼
►
unless you have a very narrow focus.
01:53:33
◼
►
I think people find that stasis with Facebook,
01:53:35
◼
►
even though Facebook is basically public,
01:53:37
◼
►
because they have the same protection of obscurity,
01:53:39
◼
►
and because they have one axis.
01:53:41
◼
►
They just want to talk to their family and friends.
01:53:43
◼
►
Maybe that's two axes, but it's not like,
01:53:46
◼
►
it's probably you'll wanna say,
01:53:48
◼
►
where are the people I wanna talk about fixing up my car?
01:53:50
◼
►
Where are the people I wanna talk about metalworking?
01:53:51
◼
►
Where are the people I wanna talk about this sports team?
01:53:53
◼
►
Where are the people I wanna talk about that sports team?
01:53:55
◼
►
And then you end up with these little islands again.
01:53:56
◼
►
If you try to do it all at once,
01:53:57
◼
►
then you just end up with Twitter,
01:53:58
◼
►
and it is a difficult balance.
01:54:02
◼
►
Talking to all these people who you don't,
01:54:04
◼
►
who you never see, who live all over the world.
01:54:07
◼
►
- No, I couldn't agree with you more.
01:54:08
◼
►
And the funny thing is I have now dedicated
01:54:11
◼
►
one of the spaces on my work machine
01:54:13
◼
►
to be my communication pane.
01:54:16
◼
►
And accepting Twitter, I have Slack,
01:54:19
◼
►
I have, in like the upper left-hand corner,
01:54:22
◼
►
I have IRC in the upper right-hand corner,
01:54:24
◼
►
I have iMessage and IM in the lower right-hand corner,
01:54:29
◼
►
and I have HipChat for work in the lower left-hand corner.
01:54:32
◼
►
So I have four panes all on the screen at once
01:54:35
◼
►
that are the four different places
01:54:37
◼
►
that I have real-time communication,
01:54:39
◼
►
and then on top of that is Twitter,
01:54:40
◼
►
and on top of that is email.
01:54:42
◼
►
And I already am feeling a bit of exhaustion,
01:54:45
◼
►
but I'd much rather have tiredness
01:54:50
◼
►
than the sadness that I wonder if I'm getting more of
01:54:54
◼
►
than happiness from Twitter.
01:54:56
◼
►
- At least you don't have web forums and Usenet, right?
01:54:58
◼
►
So you're trying to list a little bit.
01:55:00
◼
►
I remember back in the days where most of my communities of this size were web bulletin
01:55:06
◼
►
Like, because Usenet had gone away and the big web hadn't come and there were web bulletin
01:55:09
◼
►
boards that you just cycle through and check all of them.
01:55:11
◼
►
There were little communities in each one.
01:55:14
◼
►
And I don't think that was much better.
01:55:16
◼
►
In fact, I find Twitter freeing because if you're in a web bulletin board community or
01:55:22
◼
►
even a Slack channel and someone's being a jerk, you can't unfollow them or you couldn't
01:55:25
◼
►
back in the day anyway.
01:55:26
◼
►
There was no equivalent of like, "I don't want to see what they have to say again."
01:55:30
◼
►
you know, because other people would reply to them and then you would see their replies.
01:55:34
◼
►
Like Twitter has helped in that regard both by keeping their volume down because they
01:55:37
◼
►
can only post too much and by sort of letting you try to trace the outlines of your own
01:55:42
◼
►
little island by curating your follow list to give yourself a fighting chance.
01:55:47
◼
►
Whereas, you know, if for example in your Slack thing a bunch of people were invited
01:55:50
◼
►
in who you didn't like who didn't like you, you can't participate in that Slack room in
01:55:54
◼
►
an enjoyable way anyway.
01:55:55
◼
►
The tools aren't there for you to do it.
01:55:57
◼
►
It becomes dead to you.
01:55:58
◼
►
You have to just leave.
01:55:59
◼
►
If a bunch of people come on Twitter and are obnoxious to you, or start becoming obnoxious,
01:56:04
◼
►
you can either unfollow them or block them and still have the conversation with the people
01:56:06
◼
►
that you like.
01:56:11
◼
►
I think things are better now in the sense that the big public one is actually viable
01:56:18
◼
►
enough to fool us all into thinking like, "Oh, I don't need that in-between one anymore.
01:56:22
◼
►
The big public one is fine."
01:56:23
◼
►
And for a long time that kind of worked out.
01:56:25
◼
►
That's how good the big public one is now compared to what it was before, but we definitely
01:56:29
◼
►
do need those middle-sized islands of connections.
01:56:33
◼
►
I just don't know the solution to getting a set of those that is stable and satisfactory
01:56:38
◼
►
that don't either disappear or become big things.
01:56:41
◼
►
Oh, we'll see what happens.
01:56:43
◼
►
But it's interesting.
01:56:44
◼
►
It's an interesting conversation.
01:56:46
◼
►
And I love when we get a little touchy-feely on this show.
01:56:49
◼
►
Yeah, we're just stealing all your analog.
01:56:52
◼
►
Oh, I, Mike, is going to be so angry.
01:56:54
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- Oh, I wanna give you a couple more,
01:56:57
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I don't know if they count as tips,
01:56:58
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but things that I've been doing to try to help manage,
01:57:01
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like Twitter, Twitter negative,
01:57:03
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they may or may not work for you.
01:57:05
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But one of the things is like,
01:57:08
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you know how you're talking about
01:57:09
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people don't give us the benefit of the doubt
01:57:10
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and assume the worst about us and everything?
01:57:12
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It goes both ways.
01:57:13
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We do the same thing about them.
01:57:14
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Because it's like, you know,
01:57:16
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it's why smileys were invented.
01:57:17
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Because text is not the best medium.
01:57:18
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When someone types something like, you know,
01:57:20
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with the kids, "Well, you typed okay with a period,
01:57:22
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"that means you're angry," right?
01:57:23
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It is very easy to misread what people are saying
01:57:27
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and in the same way that you do.
01:57:29
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So very often, someone will come at me with something
01:57:32
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that I think that is aggressive.
01:57:34
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And I will do something to try to determine
01:57:37
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whether they were intentionally aggressive
01:57:39
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or whether they were trying and failing to make a joke.
01:57:41
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Because that's the whole thing like Mark was saying,
01:57:43
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these people listen to us and they know us
01:57:44
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and they feel like they're familiar in the same way
01:57:45
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that we can say things to each other that,
01:57:47
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we take for granted that the mean things we say
01:57:49
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to each other are jokes, right?
01:57:51
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And so at the very least, that gives us a leg up
01:57:53
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thinking, "Does he really think that?" Like, well, no, it's obviously a mental joke, but when strangers do it,
01:57:57
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they think they know us, we have no idea who they are,
01:57:59
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totally reads as naked aggression to us, and so I will reply to them in a way
01:58:03
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that will give them an opportunity to basically say,
01:58:08
◼
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in whatever so many words, like,
01:58:12
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"I didn't mean it that way," or like,
01:58:15
◼
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to reveal themselves as being, it was an attempt at good-natured joshing, and they were actually a fan,
01:58:20
◼
►
and they were trying to be nice, and they failed. Like,
01:58:23
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►
trying to give them the benefit of the doubt,
01:58:25
◼
►
especially if they follow me, because I am,
01:58:27
◼
►
unlike, you know, I am more aggressive
01:58:30
◼
►
in my blocking these days, but unlike Markowitz policy,
01:58:33
◼
►
I have not come to the point
01:58:33
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where I will reflexively block people,
01:58:35
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and I feel really bad about blocking anybody who follows me.
01:58:38
◼
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Again, this is just my, how I'm dealing with things,
01:58:40
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but you would think like, okay, fine,
01:58:42
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do that thing where you try to see,
01:58:43
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if they give them the benefit of the doubt,
01:58:45
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all you're gonna do is just make them pissed off more
01:58:47
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and make yourself more miserable,
01:58:48
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►
and I have to admit that does happen sometimes,
01:58:50
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But what I have found is that the one or two times
01:58:53
◼
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that I engage in someone in a way
01:58:56
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that lets them reveal the fact
01:58:57
◼
►
that I should have given them the benefit of that doubt,
01:58:59
◼
►
that it was just like a joke that came off wrong, right,
01:59:02
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or whatever, I feel better.
01:59:04
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►
Like that is a positive lift,
01:59:07
◼
►
more than I think even if they had just come out
01:59:09
◼
►
in the beginning and said something nice.
01:59:10
◼
►
Like I feel that there's a positive lift
01:59:12
◼
►
that like I was able to turn it around,
01:59:14
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►
that what could have turned into a fight
01:59:16
◼
►
didn't turn into one, and we came to an understanding
01:59:18
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►
that someone was misunderstood and that we worked it out,
01:59:21
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and that it gives me faith in humanity
01:59:24
◼
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that not everyone who I think is evil and mean
01:59:27
◼
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is actually evil and mean,
01:59:28
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and sometimes I just make a mistake with what they type.
01:59:31
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And it happens every once in a,
01:59:33
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it doesn't happen a lot, I have to admit.
01:59:35
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It's not gonna, they're not all good,
01:59:37
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but the few times it does happen,
01:59:38
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I think personally it gives me a lift to counteract,
01:59:41
◼
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you know how the one bad comment
01:59:43
◼
►
is disproportionately weighing on you?
01:59:44
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►
The one good thing that happens,
01:59:46
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I find disproportionately lifts me.
01:59:49
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And I also think like, you know,
01:59:51
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the person on the other end of that
01:59:52
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feels better out as well and maybe learn something about,
01:59:55
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you know, not being mean.
01:59:56
◼
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And the way I do this,
01:59:58
◼
►
someone says they just saw me do this on Twitter today.
02:00:01
◼
►
The way I do this is probably doesn't look very nice
02:00:03
◼
►
because very often I do this by coming back at them directly
02:00:07
◼
►
to essentially give them a reply that looks very aggressive,
02:00:10
◼
►
but it lets them know you said something
02:00:11
◼
►
that hurts my feeling and I don't even know who you are
02:00:13
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►
and maybe you didn't mean to do that.
02:00:15
◼
►
And if they are actually mean, I've done a comeback,
02:00:19
◼
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like, you know, I've come back at them
02:00:20
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in the typical way that you argue with somebody.
02:00:23
◼
►
But if they didn't mean to be mean,
02:00:25
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like, I found that rather than trying to engage them
02:00:30
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►
and say, did you really mean that, or blah, blah, blah,
02:00:32
◼
►
if I come back at them in a way
02:00:34
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►
that would make a good person feel shame,
02:00:36
◼
►
they will feel shame and come back with a nice thing.
02:00:37
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►
If I come back at them in a way
02:00:38
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that would make a good person feel shame,
02:00:41
◼
►
and they did intend to hurt my feelings,
02:00:45
◼
►
then I still feel like I've made an aggressive counter move
02:00:49
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►
and then I just block them and move on, right?
02:00:51
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►
I don't know if that's gonna help for you guys.
02:00:53
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►
I don't know if it's ever happened to you,
02:00:54
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►
like you've turned someone around or like you,
02:00:56
◼
►
I mean, we kind of had it with like, you know,
02:00:57
◼
►
someone in the chat room who was, sent us an angry email
02:01:00
◼
►
and we talked about it and like, you know,
02:01:03
◼
►
kind of work things out and turn things around, right?
02:01:06
◼
►
That positive outcome lifts my estimation of humanity
02:01:10
◼
►
and can turn a bad day into a good one.
02:01:13
◼
►
I don't know if you guys wanna take that chance.
02:01:14
◼
►
certainly a lot of work, but I found that that does help me feel better about the whole thing.
02:01:19
◼
►
Yeah, you know, that's another thing I'm working on in that sometimes I'll try to reply with an
02:01:29
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►
equal amount, what I feel is an equal amount of snark for exactly the same reason, John. So,
02:01:35
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►
for example, the person who had tweeted to me, you know, "You're being ridiculous. Keep track
02:01:39
◼
►
of your cards, my reply to that person was, "It was an honest mistake. You're being ridiculous."
02:01:46
◼
►
Which I'm not saying I'm necessarily proud of that, but my thought was I have replied
02:01:54
◼
►
in kind. And the thing that bums me out about it, though, is that looking back on it, I
02:02:02
◼
►
don't think I feel good about that reply. And it's tough because it bothered me enough
02:02:07
◼
►
that I felt like I wanted them to, this person to know that I am bothered, but I don't know
02:02:15
◼
►
that I've gotten enough relief from replying in a snarky way either.
02:02:19
◼
►
Does that—
02:02:20
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►
But I don't think you let them know that you were upset, though.
02:02:22
◼
►
I think you just came back at them in the regular, just arguing way.
02:02:24
◼
►
Like the one from today, I can't remember what it was, but someone was complaining about
02:02:30
◼
►
my pronunciation of "Maria," which happens all the time.
02:02:33
◼
►
Like, that's fine.
02:02:34
◼
►
That happens all the time.
02:02:35
◼
►
in a funny way or you can do that in a mean way, right? And this person did it in sort of a mean
02:02:42
◼
►
condescending way, right? But as far as I knew, they could have been in their mind and could have
02:02:48
◼
►
been exactly the same feeling as all the other people who like, you know, do it in a silly way,
02:02:52
◼
►
right? Like we do it to each other and so like it's a running gag on the show, right? But if
02:02:55
◼
►
someone misfires in an attempt at humor, it can come off seeming really mean. Rather than thinking
02:02:59
◼
►
that person is really mean and getting down about it, what I came back with them was like,
02:03:04
◼
►
you know, using a similar echo of their comments of like,
02:03:07
◼
►
you know, I told them basically like,
02:03:10
◼
►
being condescending, they're sometimes like,
02:03:12
◼
►
"How hard is it not to say the word Mario?"
02:03:14
◼
►
Like, you know, it's a subtle difference in phrasing
02:03:17
◼
►
of just, you know, you pronounce it a weird way,
02:03:20
◼
►
blah, blah, blah, or making a joke, or just saying,
02:03:22
◼
►
"I roll, how hard is it to pronounce this word?"
02:03:26
◼
►
And depending on your mood,
02:03:27
◼
►
and I was in not a particularly good mood at that point,
02:03:29
◼
►
I'm like, "Really, you're gonna come up to me and say,
02:03:30
◼
►
"How hard is it to pronounce?"
02:03:31
◼
►
Like, there are ways to phrase that
02:03:33
◼
►
that are not quite as mean.
02:03:34
◼
►
It wasn't that mean, it's not that mean, but it annoyed me.
02:03:36
◼
►
So I said, "How hard is it not to be condescending
02:03:39
◼
►
"to strangers on Twitter?"
02:03:40
◼
►
Which emphasized a couple of things.
02:03:41
◼
►
One, that I don't even know you,
02:03:43
◼
►
that you are essentially like Marco said,
02:03:44
◼
►
walking by my porch, seeing me have a conversation,
02:03:46
◼
►
not even, because this is like from a podcast,
02:03:48
◼
►
from who knows when, and just yelling at me
02:03:51
◼
►
that you're disappointed that like,
02:03:52
◼
►
how hard is it to do this thing I find so easy?
02:03:54
◼
►
You're a terrible person, right?
02:03:57
◼
►
And my thing comes back at them, it's like,
02:03:59
◼
►
it is kind of a comeback, right?
02:04:01
◼
►
But it also emphasizes the fact that
02:04:03
◼
►
what were you just doing there?
02:04:05
◼
►
You were being condescending to someone
02:04:06
◼
►
you don't even know on Twitter.
02:04:08
◼
►
We have never met, I don't know who you are,
02:04:10
◼
►
I don't even know what you're referring to,
02:04:11
◼
►
and you're opening salvos to be condescending to me
02:04:14
◼
►
about how I pronounce something, right?
02:04:16
◼
►
And the person came back and,
02:04:18
◼
►
I forget what their reply was, but it was like,
02:04:21
◼
►
it was acknowledgement that that's really not
02:04:22
◼
►
how they meant to come across,
02:04:24
◼
►
and they just thought it was funny
02:04:25
◼
►
how it was pronounced or whatever,
02:04:26
◼
►
and then I explained to them it was a regional accent,
02:04:28
◼
►
and whatever, like, you know,
02:04:30
◼
►
it has an effectively a positive result.
02:04:35
◼
►
But the important point was to like,
02:04:37
◼
►
communicate to that, like make them realize
02:04:42
◼
►
how their actions look from my perspective.
02:04:44
◼
►
I don't know if you're saying that like, you know,
02:04:46
◼
►
that you said about the expiring credit cards,
02:04:49
◼
►
let them really communicate to them
02:04:52
◼
►
how you were feeling about it
02:04:53
◼
►
or what it looks like from your perspective.
02:04:55
◼
►
But like I said, sometimes, you know,
02:04:57
◼
►
I think the percentage of this working is really low.
02:04:59
◼
►
Like, and most of the time I don't do anything
02:05:02
◼
►
and I just ignore it and move on.
02:05:03
◼
►
But every once in a while I make a go at that
02:05:06
◼
►
and I'm just so happy and pleasantly surprised
02:05:10
◼
►
and it makes me feel better
02:05:11
◼
►
when it actually does work and someone,
02:05:13
◼
►
and what could have been a conflict
02:05:14
◼
►
turns into not a conflict.
02:05:16
◼
►
- I don't know.
02:05:17
◼
►
I just feel like in retrospect that maybe the right answer.
02:05:21
◼
►
I guess the reason I tweeted and replied
02:05:24
◼
►
was because I wanted some amount of closure,
02:05:26
◼
►
but in retrospect the closure I got
02:05:28
◼
►
was not the closure I wanted.
02:05:29
◼
►
Because if I just ignored it,
02:05:31
◼
►
it would have eaten at the back of my head,
02:05:33
◼
►
like all day long.
02:05:34
◼
►
Like, why was that person such a jerk?
02:05:35
◼
►
What did I ever do to bother them?
02:05:37
◼
►
It was an honest freaking mistake.
02:05:38
◼
►
Why are they so upset?
02:05:39
◼
►
And so that's why I replied
02:05:41
◼
►
because it did get it out of my head,
02:05:44
◼
►
but I am not getting the relief and satisfaction
02:05:47
◼
►
from my tweet that I wanted.
02:05:49
◼
►
And that's probably, it's certainly on me.
02:05:53
◼
►
I mean, I could have said something different
02:05:54
◼
►
like you're saying, John.
02:05:56
◼
►
I could have handled it differently, but I don't know.
02:05:59
◼
►
It's just, it's stuff like that.
02:06:01
◼
►
Like this little one shot thing that really,
02:06:03
◼
►
in the grand scheme of things, is not a big deal.
02:06:05
◼
►
But you get it constantly and it weighs on you.
02:06:10
◼
►
I'm telling you things you already know.
02:06:13
◼
►
It's just, it's constant, I feel.
02:06:15
◼
►
And a lot more constant than it ever used to be.
02:06:17
◼
►
And I think that's in large part because I have more
02:06:19
◼
►
of an audience than I never used to have.
02:06:21
◼
►
But I don't know, it's just, it's tough.
02:06:23
◼
►
It's been tough for me to deal with.
02:06:24
◼
►
And we're very lucky that we're receiving any sort of feedback at all.
02:06:30
◼
►
And we're not just shouting into the abyss, but sometimes the echo you get back is not
02:06:35
◼
►
the echo you want.
02:06:36
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►
[BLANK_AUDIO]