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ATP

523: I Can't Give Him the Carrot Fast Enough

 

00:00:00   Hey, so John, how's it going?

00:00:02   - I think COVID-19, everyone's favorite disease/germ,

00:00:08   has achieved the ATP hat trick.

00:00:10   (laughing)

00:00:12   Knocked off all three hosts.

00:00:15   - Yep, apparently, so the way I think this has happened,

00:00:18   this is the headcanon, is that I received it from Lex

00:00:23   via your daily Lex, he infected me, that he infected me,

00:00:26   and then I have now infected you,

00:00:29   and hopefully I have not taken down the rest of the people

00:00:32   in your house with you. What's the status there?

00:00:34   - So far, so good.

00:00:36   I mean, so I've been having symptoms since Monday.

00:00:40   I was negative on Monday and Tuesday,

00:00:41   and then I was positive on Wednesday.

00:00:43   - Were you taking evasive maneuvers within the house

00:00:46   on Monday or Tuesday, or were you assuming it was a cold?

00:00:48   - No, because here's why.

00:00:49   People are always having colds in the house,

00:00:51   and whenever someone has a cold, we give them COVID tests

00:00:54   and they come up negative and everything's fine.

00:00:55   So I had a cold and I was giving myself COVID tests

00:00:57   like I do anytime I have a cold

00:00:58   and they're coming up negative.

00:01:00   And then on Wednesday morning, it was positive.

00:01:01   And then I immediately retreated to my room

00:01:03   where I have been hiding since then.

00:01:06   - All right, so what have you been doing to kill time then?

00:01:07   - Well, I mean, for the first three days of this,

00:01:12   I just basically had a fever the whole time.

00:01:14   That's sucky.

00:01:15   I know people had it much worse than I have for sure,

00:01:17   but no one likes having a fever though.

00:01:18   I'm used to fevers breaking and this wasn't breaking.

00:01:21   So that was kind of crappy.

00:01:25   It's not the worst cold I've ever had, but it's a pretty crappy cold.

00:01:29   I did get a Paxilovid prescription and I talked to my doctor and she was like, "Well, you

00:01:35   know, if you don't want to take it, you know, because you don't want any weird side effects

00:01:39   or whatever, if you start getting better, that's fine.

00:01:42   But if I can tell you that, you know, the third day of your symptoms is probably not

00:01:45   the peak, it could get worse.

00:01:48   So do what you want to do."

00:01:49   And after my third day of symptoms, it was not getting better.

00:01:52   It was getting worse.

00:01:53   So I started taking it and that's what I'm on now.

00:01:56   - And so today, how are we feeling this evening?

00:01:58   - I mean, I feel like the fever is mostly gone.

00:02:01   So all you got is stuffiness, headaches, body aches.

00:02:04   It's not a terrible cold.

00:02:07   I do credit some of that to the medicine,

00:02:09   but who knows, honestly.

00:02:10   I just started taking it 'cause I was like,

00:02:11   look, if it got better on its own,

00:02:13   I wouldn't have taken it.

00:02:14   But it wasn't getting better on its own.

00:02:15   I knew I had to do a podcast.

00:02:16   So I did record a podcast on Tuesday,

00:02:18   which at the time I'm sure had COVID, right?

00:02:20   Even though I was still testing negative.

00:02:22   And that was kind of miserable and involving a lot of coughing and sweating and feveriness.

00:02:26   And so, you know, it's part of the grand ATP tradition of all of us podcasting when we are

00:02:31   COVID positive.

00:02:31   Indeed. I mean, that is that is the rule, apparently, amongst the three of us.

00:02:35   The show must go on.

00:02:36   And the great thing about podcasting the way we do it is, despite the earlier joking, is not

00:02:41   transmissible to the other co-hosts.

00:02:43   So let's do some follow up.

00:02:46   What was the context for this?

00:02:48   This is about getting your data, a copy of your data from Apple and for the life of me.

00:02:51   I can't remember when this came up.

00:02:52   - There was an Ask ATP about how to export your messages

00:02:54   or something, I don't know, I remember talking about

00:02:57   Google Takeout, which is Google's version of this.

00:02:59   - That's right, so I presume, John,

00:03:01   somebody put this in the show notes, privacy.apple.com,

00:03:03   where you can get a copy of your data.

00:03:05   And a few years ago now, Zach Whitaker at ZDNet,

00:03:10   back in 2018, did exactly this, and it was funny.

00:03:15   Zach went through all the data he received,

00:03:17   and he said it actually wasn't that much,

00:03:19   which in this context is a good thing,

00:03:21   because it means Apple didn't have that much.

00:03:23   Well, if you trust Apple to be telling the truth.

00:03:25   - No, I think they didn't even give him his messages.

00:03:28   The reason the data's important here is that it's 2018,

00:03:30   is this is before GDPR, I think?

00:03:33   - Right, yes, or it was around the time of--

00:03:34   - And so, I mean, if you're wondering why Apple

00:03:37   is improving this feature,

00:03:38   I'm assuming it's for regulatory compliance.

00:03:40   Because what his download contained was like,

00:03:42   well, here's some metadata about your messages,

00:03:43   but not the actual messages.

00:03:45   And of course, Apple does have that data,

00:03:47   even though it's encrypted.

00:03:47   They could give it to you,

00:03:48   and you could decrypt it with your local machine keys,

00:03:51   but they didn't used to do that,

00:03:52   but I think now it has improved.

00:03:53   So, you know, why is Apple now making this feature better?

00:03:58   Probably for regulatory compliance reasons.

00:04:00   - That is true.

00:04:01   I did think the post was interesting though, nevertheless,

00:04:03   and it's worth a quick read if you're interested.

00:04:05   And then also tell me about iMazing, if you please.

00:04:08   - That was a third party application

00:04:10   that a lot of people recommended.

00:04:11   I think I've either bought or at least downloaded

00:04:13   that application multiple times in the past

00:04:16   to try to use it.

00:04:17   from the old days back when you used to both like mount your iPod as a USB disk

00:04:21   and pull things out of it remember that I believe this software has its origins

00:04:25   in that era of devices obviously we're far from that now but still they have a

00:04:28   thing that lets you go onto your phone and pull stuff off somehow and some

00:04:32   people do use that to pull messages I'm amazed that still works yeah yeah I'm

00:04:37   not quite sure how they're doing it maybe they're secretly jailbreaking for

00:04:39   and I have no idea I don't want to pass dispersions on this thing but anyway

00:04:42   people some people swear by it they say this is how I downloaded my messages for

00:04:45   my phone onto my Mac to get a local copy. So if you're looking for a third-party

00:04:48   application that claims to do that, here's one. Rob Howard writes with regard

00:04:54   to, oh yes, the context here is you, I think it was John, was saying, so it was

00:05:00   kind of slagging on Dolby Pro Logic, you know, the original, one of the original

00:05:04   surround sound systems. I didn't, I was saying systems that tried to take a

00:05:07   stereo sound and put it into back channels, but there's lots of different

00:05:10   ways you can do that, and the specific one that Rob is writing about here is

00:05:14   is one of the better ones.

00:05:16   - Yeah, so I actually, I didn't interrupt you at the time

00:05:18   'cause that was my understanding as well,

00:05:20   is that the system would just kind of make a best guess

00:05:23   as to what was in the rear channel.

00:05:24   So I obviously didn't know much about this,

00:05:27   or certainly less than I thought I did.

00:05:28   So Rob Howard writes, "Old home surround sound systems

00:05:31   "didn't rely on guesswork.

00:05:32   "Dolby systems encoded the rear channels

00:05:35   "into the stereo channels so they could be decoded later.

00:05:38   "Not as good as discrete channels, of course,

00:05:40   "but calling it guesswork probably sells the work

00:05:42   "of Dolby's engineers a little short."

00:05:44   and this is with regard to Dolby Pro Logic,

00:05:46   and building on that, and we'll link to Wikipedia,

00:05:48   a Dolby Pro Logic decoder or processor unfolds,

00:05:51   quote unquote, the soundtrack back into its original

00:05:54   4.0 sound, left and right, center,

00:05:56   and a single limited frequency range mono rear channel,

00:06:00   which was fascinating.

00:06:01   I did not think that Pro Logic was that smart,

00:06:03   but it turns out it is.

00:06:05   - A seven kilohertz low pass filtered mono rear channel

00:06:09   is not ideal, let's say, for a surround,

00:06:11   but at least they have a way of getting the signal out

00:06:13   as opposed to just taking stereo and guessing.

00:06:15   And by the way, the reverse of that is also true.

00:06:17   If you have a multi-channel thing and you're watching stereo,

00:06:20   every receiver and every receiver-like device thing

00:06:23   will have a way to say, well,

00:06:24   I'm only getting two channels of sound,

00:06:26   but I'll figure out a way to spread it over your speakers

00:06:28   in a reasonable way.

00:06:29   I mean, that's a little bit easier

00:06:30   because it's not like you're losing information.

00:06:33   Worst case scenario,

00:06:33   you can just play back the same stereo sounds evenly

00:06:37   throughout the right and left half of the speakers.

00:06:39   But it is true that no matter how many speakers you have,

00:06:42   sometimes you're gonna be watching content

00:06:43   that doesn't match that number of speakers,

00:06:45   and sometimes you might not be able to pick a soundtrack,

00:06:48   especially in the modern age of streaming,

00:06:49   where back in the day when you get a plastic disc,

00:06:52   they'd often have different soundtracks on them,

00:06:54   the stereo mix and a 5.1 mix or whatever.

00:06:57   But with streaming, there's not that much of that.

00:06:59   So you're at the mercy of whatever the audio track is,

00:07:01   and if your number of speakers matches that, great,

00:07:03   and if not, some device somewhere

00:07:05   is gonna be doing something for you.

00:07:07   - Indeed.

00:07:08   I've probably told this story five times on the show

00:07:10   over the last decade, but I remember vividly

00:07:13   when this was probably like '93, '94, something like that,

00:07:18   my dad's favorite party trick in the world,

00:07:21   which says a lot about my dad in many different ways,

00:07:23   was he would put on the top, I almost said top gear,

00:07:27   the top gun laser disc, and we had a laser disc player

00:07:31   in a Dolby surround sound system set up,

00:07:34   and there were times that the plane would pass

00:07:37   from the bottom of the frame to the top of the frame,

00:07:39   and ostensibly it's going over the camera and behind you.

00:07:41   And it sounded like it was going behind you.

00:07:43   And I tell you what, in 1993 or whatever this was,

00:07:46   that blew my mind.

00:07:49   And then it got even better

00:07:51   because we had one of those really ridiculous

00:07:53   remote controls that had a physical jog wheel at the bottom.

00:07:56   So you could go frame by frame on the laserdisc

00:07:58   and that was also like earth shatteringly cool at the time.

00:08:02   It was amazing.

00:08:03   And of course the fidelity of these frames

00:08:06   was straight trash.

00:08:07   I mean it was not quite real player bad,

00:08:09   but it was not great.

00:08:10   It was like basically VHS bad,

00:08:12   and somebody's gonna correct me

00:08:13   and tell me it was actually better than VHS,

00:08:14   it doesn't matter, the point is.

00:08:15   - Laserdisc was better than VHS for sure.

00:08:16   - Yeah, I don't think the resolution was necessarily better.

00:08:21   - But the fidelity is in terms of the reproduction,

00:08:24   not being filled with noise from various things

00:08:27   messing with the magnetic garbage

00:08:29   on a piece of plastic tape.

00:08:30   - And it could freeze frame

00:08:31   without like weird distortion or whatever.

00:08:33   - Right, right, right.

00:08:34   And so that's what he would do,

00:08:35   and it just seemed like the coolest thing

00:08:37   in the frickin' world.

00:08:38   - That's the thing, like back in those days,

00:08:40   like talking about Dolby Pro Logic

00:08:42   and all these different things,

00:08:43   I mean, there were so many amazing, clever hacks done

00:08:46   with these old simple analog formats

00:08:49   to try to cram more data or more channels

00:08:51   or more tricks into them,

00:08:52   and some of them actually worked pretty well,

00:08:55   and many of them were from Dolby, honestly.

00:08:58   But I remember, I also had, for all of my complaining

00:09:02   about how surround sound really isn't super compelling

00:09:05   for me today, we actually had surround sound in the 90s also.

00:09:08   We had it pretty early because at some point

00:09:12   in the mid 90s, my mom bought this 5.1 Bose system.

00:09:17   She basically made like three impulse purchases

00:09:22   throughout my entire childhood and that was one of them.

00:09:25   (laughing)

00:09:25   And so we had this Bose surround sound system

00:09:28   and first it was just from VCRs

00:09:31   and whatever was encoded on those.

00:09:32   Eventually we got a DVD player

00:09:33   and that broadened our horizons a little bit there.

00:09:36   But it was amazing for the time.

00:09:40   Ultimately though, I don't find that compelling now

00:09:44   because to me it is kind of like that 90s trick

00:09:46   that we've made the trick better over the years,

00:09:49   but it's still just kind of like this novelty thing

00:09:51   that when I don't have it, I don't miss it.

00:09:54   So that's why I'm down on it for myself now.

00:09:56   But I don't fault anyone else for caring more than I do,

00:09:58   obviously, I care more than most people do

00:10:00   about lots of things, so I understand what that's like.

00:10:02   and if you care more than I do about this,

00:10:04   more power to you, but all this is to say

00:10:06   that all this crazy surround hack stuff we had in the '90s

00:10:10   was actually pretty decent and worked surprisingly well

00:10:15   considering how little technical sophistication

00:10:20   they had to work with.

00:10:21   - Yeah, yeah, I completely, very emphatically agree.

00:10:25   Speaking of surround systems and hacks,

00:10:28   let's talk about Jon's Sony HT-A9 setup, shall we?

00:10:32   We got a lot of feedback about this.

00:10:34   Personally, I'm just sitting here smug on my Sonos throne, feeling very good about my

00:10:38   world right now.

00:10:39   But to come back to the Sony HTA-9, if you recall, this was, I'm pretty sure Jon brought

00:10:45   this up, it was considered, we considered it a more baller version of the Sonos setup

00:10:50   that I have.

00:10:52   The way it works is there's a box, it's like an Apple TV box, and it communicates via a

00:10:56   proprietary wireless thing to four satellite speakers, and then optionally a subwoofer,

00:11:01   and allegedly it sounds really frickin' good.

00:11:04   Well, a lot of people wrote in to us to say,

00:11:07   "Oh, there's some evidence that this is not as good

00:11:09   "as we thought."

00:11:10   There is a Linus Tech Tips video.

00:11:12   I'm not a Linus fan,

00:11:14   but we will link it in the show notes nonetheless.

00:11:16   - I'm making that expression on my face right now.

00:11:18   That's all of his thumbnails.

00:11:19   (yelps)

00:11:20   (laughing)

00:11:20   - I think that's why a lot of people said this,

00:11:22   because I see he's a popular YouTuber,

00:11:24   and a lot of people have seen that video.

00:11:25   Surely not this many people actually own the HDA9,

00:11:29   but some people who do own it did write in.

00:11:31   - Yeah, exactly.

00:11:32   And so the first bit of follow-up we got was from John Koch.

00:11:37   I don't, I'm gonna try to summarize this

00:11:39   as best I can on the fly.

00:11:40   It was a genuinely fascinating follow-up,

00:11:43   but it was extremely verbose,

00:11:45   and I'm gonna try to do my best here.

00:11:46   So John Koch writes, starts off by writing,

00:11:49   I'm writing to strongly warn you

00:11:51   and the listeners about the HTA-9.

00:11:53   Like you, I took Andrew's recommendation,

00:11:54   found the system on sale for much less than the 2,700,

00:11:57   but still almost $2,000.

00:11:58   The system advertises using five gigahertz wireless,

00:12:01   and it turns out that that's Wi-Fi, 802.11n Wi-Fi.

00:12:04   Yes, a wireless technology from 2009.

00:12:06   It creates its own Wi-Fi network like Sonos,

00:12:08   presumably to bypass contention

00:12:10   with other stations in the user's home.

00:12:12   The problem is it's freaking terrible at it.

00:12:16   It uses a 40-megahertz channel.

00:12:18   The other alternatives they could have chosen.

00:12:21   It's terrible about choosing a channel.

00:12:23   In order to get it to work without dropping out,

00:12:25   I had to reconfigure my own home Wi-Fi

00:12:27   to not use channels that the HT-A9 seemed to like,

00:12:30   which is not great, but okay.

00:12:31   Other Wi-Fi systems may not be so configurable.

00:12:34   The issue for John is that he lives in the townhouse

00:12:36   and, you know, has a lot of other adjacent Wi-Fi

00:12:38   that he can't control, blah, blah, blah.

00:12:41   So John said, "Sometime after I return the system,

00:12:43   put in a traditional AVR surround speaker setup."

00:12:45   Linus Tech Tips posted a video describing an issue

00:12:47   with the system affecting his own Wi-Fi.

00:12:50   And John finishes by saying, "When it does work,

00:12:52   it really is incredible in effect and simplicity,

00:12:54   but unless you have precise control over your own Wi-Fi

00:12:56   and have little external 5 gigahertz Wi-Fi interference,

00:12:58   you should stay away from the system

00:13:00   or at least be very prepared to return it.

00:13:02   Meanwhile, Ian White writes,

00:13:04   "I haven't noticed any Wi-Fi interference,

00:13:05   "but I have a pretty intense mesh Wi-Fi setup

00:13:07   "with four nodes and a 1,500 square foot space,

00:13:10   "so it could be that my overkill system

00:13:12   "can overcome any interference speakers

00:13:13   "might otherwise cause.

00:13:15   "One thing I will say is that I do occasionally

00:13:17   "experience speaker dropouts."

00:13:19   That's not desirable.

00:13:20   It's not common.

00:13:22   It happens maybe once every two or three months,

00:13:24   which, okay, fine, not that big a deal, says Casey,

00:13:27   but it gets better.

00:13:28   and requires me to rerun the built-in RF calibration

00:13:31   to resolve it.

00:13:32   Not good, Bob.

00:13:34   But I still find it irritating, considering the cost.

00:13:37   This is something.

00:13:38   - This is like when you're old iMac,

00:13:39   you're like, it's fine, nothing's wrong with it.

00:13:41   Well, it does randomly power off twice a week, maybe,

00:13:45   and occasionally corrupts the RAM,

00:13:47   and it's like, oh, but it's fine, everything's all right.

00:13:49   - It's fine, don't worry about it.

00:13:50   Don't look behind the curtain.

00:13:51   So he writes, "I still find it irritating,

00:13:54   "consisting the cost in that the little base station

00:13:55   "is not that far from all the speakers

00:13:57   and has line of sight to all of them.

00:13:59   Last, I'll say that I'm no audiophile,

00:14:01   but I think the sound is great and nicely immersive.

00:14:03   I wasn't aware of the smile curve you guys talked about,

00:14:05   but I don't doubt it.

00:14:05   I do sometimes wish it was better bringing the dialogue out.

00:14:08   So yeah, that Sony magic is maybe not so magical.

00:14:11   - Yeah, that's the problem with any kind of wireless system

00:14:13   is if you're gonna have wireless speakers,

00:14:16   they're super convenient, but guess what?

00:14:17   They communicate wirelessly,

00:14:18   and there's only so much bandwidth,

00:14:20   especially if you're in a situation

00:14:21   like you're an apartment or a townhouse

00:14:22   where you have a bunch of neighbors real close to you

00:14:24   and you have no control over their Wi-Fi

00:14:26   and it's bleeding into your space, that can be kind of a mess.

00:14:29   Yeah, this is just like, you know, earlier tonight there was, unbeknownst to me, there

00:14:34   was an Apple Music outage. And what I wanted was to get music playing. I had just gotten

00:14:39   home, we were out of town, I had just gotten home, I was unloading everything, unloading

00:14:43   groceries, had to wash the dishes, I'm like, "Let me just put on some music." So I asked

00:14:47   my HomePods, "Hey, play the Rolling Stones." Never heard of them. Yeah, well, yeah, Siri

00:14:51   had not heard of them. It was giving responses like, "I'm sorry, I don't find any songs by

00:14:56   the Rolling Stones and Apple Music." Hmm, like cool. Was there a contractual dispute?

00:15:01   What like, and eventually, and eventually I just airplayed it from my phone and that worked fine,

00:15:05   but, and eventually I learned there was an outage. But as I was, as I was going through it,

00:15:10   I was thinking like, you know, when our parents came home from a long day and they wanted to put

00:15:15   some music on, what they did was they walked over to the stereo, they maybe took out a record or,

00:15:20   or later on a CD, and then they would put it in the stereo

00:15:25   if it wasn't already there, and they'd hit play,

00:15:27   and it would play.

00:15:28   It wouldn't play 60% of the time.

00:15:30   It wouldn't throw random errors halfway through songs.

00:15:33   One speaker wouldn't occasionally drop out

00:15:35   for a few seconds for no reason.

00:15:36   It would just play, like that was it.

00:15:38   - Sometimes the record would skip.

00:15:40   - Really, I mean really, really.

00:15:41   And then once we went to tapes and CDs,

00:15:43   that stopped being a problem too.

00:15:44   - Well sometimes the machine would need the tape.

00:15:46   - That's very rare.

00:15:48   Every technology has its own problems.

00:15:50   - Yeah, but we have more of them.

00:15:51   - If you walked or jumped near the CD player,

00:15:53   sometimes that would skip as well.

00:15:54   - Yeah, yeah, you gotta go by the one with the big buffer.

00:15:56   - Well, but the point is, I feel like

00:15:58   with our modern ways of doing things,

00:16:00   we've added so much complexity

00:16:03   in the name of convenient features or nice abilities,

00:16:06   and many of those are great.

00:16:07   Many of those features and abilities

00:16:10   we really do use and appreciate,

00:16:12   but it has come with it a lot of complexity.

00:16:14   And so in an area like this, we're like, okay,

00:16:16   If you have a home theater speaker system

00:16:19   that is communicating between the speakers

00:16:22   via a Wi-Fi network or a Wi-Fi like protocol

00:16:25   or whatever it is, there's so many layers

00:16:27   of complexity there, and that's just one part of the stack.

00:16:30   Feeding that is whatever electronic media source

00:16:34   is feeding the TV or receiver or whatever,

00:16:37   so there's another point of failure there.

00:16:38   And it's like, the more complex you make your system,

00:16:41   the more points of failure there are.

00:16:43   And the more technical tricks you play,

00:16:46   oh, we're gonna make this one automatically smart

00:16:49   and have it process the sound in this way

00:16:50   to sense where the speakers are

00:16:51   and have room calibration and wifi.

00:16:54   The more of those things you layer on top,

00:16:57   the more likely it is that you're gonna run

00:16:58   into weird failures or intermittent problems

00:17:01   or bugs in people's implementations.

00:17:03   And electronics manufacturers are not known

00:17:05   for fixing bugs really ever.

00:17:09   this is a recipe for a system overall,

00:17:13   or a setup overall in your living room

00:17:16   that seems really cool and is really great when it works,

00:17:20   but you're just asking for just periodic weirdness

00:17:23   or flakiness or bugs.

00:17:24   And I don't know, increasingly as I get older,

00:17:26   I'm like, get off my lawn with that stuff.

00:17:28   Just give me stuff that works every time.

00:17:30   - I don't know, I think Casey Sonnus shows

00:17:32   that wireless speakers that are vaguely smart

00:17:35   and communicate with each other wirelessly

00:17:36   is not necessarily a recipe for unreliability,

00:17:39   it's just that Sony maybe is not doing as good a job

00:17:42   as Sonos in this area.

00:17:43   And I feel like the Sony system, as I said last time,

00:17:46   it's solving a specific problem

00:17:47   that is not solved by other solutions.

00:17:49   If you have a crap room where you can't put things

00:17:51   in the right place, a regular system's not gonna sound good.

00:17:54   It'll be reliably bad all the time,

00:17:56   because you just can't put the speakers

00:17:58   in the right places, or they'll bounce sound

00:17:59   off of weird places, you need something like this

00:18:02   where you're like, this is literally the only place

00:18:03   I have to put these speakers, I can't run speaker wire,

00:18:06   I need something that's small,

00:18:07   and I have to put them in weird, awkward places.

00:18:09   Can you do something with that?

00:18:10   That's what this product is supposed to do.

00:18:11   It seems like it would be better if it did that job

00:18:15   without as much wireless messiness.

00:18:17   But everyone who's wrote in about it has said

00:18:20   that it does sound really good.

00:18:21   And so I think it is solving the problem.

00:18:22   And that problem can't be solved without this complexity.

00:18:26   So I'm still pro progress.

00:18:28   I don't wanna go back to big, giant speakers

00:18:30   like my parents had that are taller than I was as a toddler,

00:18:33   and there's only two of them,

00:18:34   and they're next to a giant piece of furniture

00:18:36   where the turntable is.

00:18:38   - Right.

00:18:38   No, it's funny listening to Marco talk,

00:18:40   and it's, you know, tell me you're a HomePod user

00:18:43   without telling me you're a HomePod user.

00:18:45   Well, whenever I try it, nothing works

00:18:46   and everything's broken these days.

00:18:48   Yep, well, okay.

00:18:50   Now, to be fair to Marco and your HomePod setup,

00:18:52   I can't shout to the Sonos using Apple Music,

00:18:56   you know, unless I enabled Alexa or something.

00:18:57   I can't shout to the Sonos, you know, go play this.

00:19:00   - That's probably a feature, not a bug.

00:19:01   - Doesn't have its own voice assistant

00:19:03   where you can do Hey Sonos or something?

00:19:04   - You absolutely, no it does have Hey Sonos,

00:19:07   but to the best of my recollection,

00:19:08   that's only about controlling the Sonos.

00:19:10   Like you know, volume up, volume down,

00:19:12   move this to whatever room.

00:19:13   You know, it's a very limited repertoire.

00:19:15   So in the defense of the home pods,

00:19:17   or in the defense of Marco's broken home pods,

00:19:21   you know I can't do quite as much with my Sonos

00:19:22   as he can with his home pods.

00:19:24   But genuinely, it has been,

00:19:26   and it's only been a few months, I'll admit that,

00:19:28   but it has been pretty much bulletproof.

00:19:30   And the thing, I actually did this

00:19:31   just two or three days ago.

00:19:32   I keep my Sonos Roam, which is a little like, you know,

00:19:36   Jambox-esque portable speaker.

00:19:38   I keep that on a base station.

00:19:40   Yeah, right?

00:19:41   God, I love my Jambox so much.

00:19:43   Anyway, I took that off of its base station,

00:19:46   which is in our room,

00:19:47   which is clear on the other side of the house

00:19:49   from the screened-in porch.

00:19:50   And I, you know, mashed down on the play button,

00:19:53   which is Sonos speak for, you know, continue play,

00:19:55   whatever's playing in somewhere else.

00:19:57   Take your best guess as to which one of the speakers

00:19:59   you want to mimic here, which in my case,

00:20:01   there was only one other thing playing,

00:20:03   and start playing it right here, right?

00:20:04   So, you know, something was playing on the porch,

00:20:06   I mashed down the play button for a couple seconds,

00:20:07   then it starts playing whatever was on the porch

00:20:09   here on the speaker, literally in my hand, right?

00:20:12   And I am clear, now we don't have a very big house,

00:20:14   but I'm clear across the house, a floor up.

00:20:17   I go walking downstairs,

00:20:19   I have three different Eero bass stations in the house.

00:20:21   I would assume that if I am on the house wifi,

00:20:24   that I've jumped between Eero bass stations at least once.

00:20:27   I go downstairs, I walk through the living room,

00:20:29   which is playing the same song,

00:20:31   into the porch and I could not hear not a millisecond

00:20:36   of difference between what was coming out of my hand

00:20:39   and what was coming out of the speakers.

00:20:40   As I'm moving between rooms through the house,

00:20:42   it blew my mind because I would have absolutely expected

00:20:46   that there would have been some small,

00:20:49   infinitesimal amounts of latency somewhere

00:20:51   and I heard none.

00:20:53   It was amazing.

00:20:54   I don't know how it works.

00:20:56   - Well, playing back music you can cheat with buffers,

00:20:58   But playing soundtracks to video is much tougher.

00:21:01   Yes, you can buffer the video as well,

00:21:03   but the Sonos system and the other sound systems

00:21:05   don't have complete control over the video

00:21:07   unless they themselves make a receiver,

00:21:09   which is the hack to get that,

00:21:10   or playing video games or whatever.

00:21:11   So the latency issue and sync issues get much harder

00:21:15   as the size of the buffer you're allowed to have shrinks.

00:21:19   - That's fair, that's fair.

00:21:20   - So I think playing back music,

00:21:21   it can just build that sucker up

00:21:23   and make sure everybody's synchronized

00:21:24   and have no underflow problems,

00:21:26   and it doesn't matter if it takes a second or two

00:21:27   to build that up, you're fine.

00:21:29   Whereas if you wanna hit play on a movie

00:21:32   and see audio and video start instantaneously,

00:21:34   your buffer can't be too big.

00:21:36   - Everything you said, I completely agree with.

00:21:37   And it may just be as simple as buffering and timing,

00:21:40   like you said.

00:21:40   And the other thing I wanna very, very briefly mention is,

00:21:42   Sonos does have like true, it's true something or other,

00:21:46   I forget the marketing term they use for it,

00:21:48   but what you can do is, for the home theater stuff,

00:21:51   you can take an iPhone or an iPad,

00:21:53   and actually one thing that's not great about Sonos

00:21:55   is they're not very good about updating this

00:21:57   for new hardware, I presume because they have to get

00:22:00   that hardware in-house and figure out

00:22:01   what the microphones are like and blah, blah, blah.

00:22:03   But one way or another, you can take an iPad or an iPhone,

00:22:06   as long as they're not brand new,

00:22:07   and you can go into the Sonos app

00:22:09   and you walk around your room as it plays different tones,

00:22:12   as you're literally waving the iPad or iPhone

00:22:14   up and down in your arms, you look like a friggin' idiot

00:22:18   when you're doing this, but--

00:22:20   - This is one of those things that's like,

00:22:21   if your spouse walks in on you when you're doing this--

00:22:24   - Oh, it's bad.

00:22:25   so many better things for them to walk in on than this.

00:22:28   - Mm-hmm, yeah, the list of things that are worse

00:22:31   is not very long, but nevertheless,

00:22:33   they do have this True Tone, or whatever,

00:22:35   I forget what it's called, where allegedly,

00:22:38   it will do similar things to the Sony setup

00:22:40   that we've been talking about.

00:22:41   I am not here trying to say that it's the same,

00:22:43   I'm not trying to say that it's better than the Sony,

00:22:45   or even as good as the Sony, but allegedly,

00:22:49   they will do some sort of sound shaping

00:22:51   in order to accommodate your room.

00:22:53   I mean, I did this, and I didn't notice

00:22:54   particularly big difference but who knows. We are sponsored this week by the

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00:24:49   [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:24:53   Mark Johnson writes, with regard to John's woes-- and

00:24:55   it's not just John--

00:24:56   with skipping intro and accidentally mashing on the

00:25:00   touch pad and doing all sorts of various and sundry terrible

00:25:03   things, Mark Johnson writes, when using the Apple TV and

00:25:06   presented with the skip intro prompt on the screen, don't

00:25:08   use the middle button at the top of the remote.

00:25:10   Use the play/pause button instead.

00:25:12   In Netflix and Plex, that button works.

00:25:14   The icon on the screen actually has the play/pause

00:25:16   icon before the skip text.

00:25:19   I didn't know that.

00:25:20   Couple things to this.

00:25:21   So first I did, since complaining about it on the last show, I did actually bite the

00:25:24   bullet and turn off touch sensitivity on my Apple TV remote just to try that for a while

00:25:28   to see if I, you know, and predictably as soon as I do that I try to swipe on the thing

00:25:32   on the main screen to navigate and of course it doesn't work.

00:25:34   But I'm trying that to see if it helps reliability.

00:25:38   In terms of the play/pause button, one of the things I didn't mention when I was complaining

00:25:42   about apps is forget about the touch pad.

00:25:46   Some apps that I use on Apple TV, I'll be watching a show and I will hit the play pause

00:25:50   button to pause the video and then I'll go to do something and then I'll come back and

00:25:54   hit the play pause button again to resume the video and it will start playing five minutes

00:25:57   in either direction.

00:25:58   Really?

00:25:59   Yeah, I feel like that is close to basic functionality fail as you can get with the Apple TV short

00:26:05   of not showing picture or sound, right?

00:26:08   Because it's like there's no touchpad involved here.

00:26:09   This is not a complicated UI.

00:26:11   And again, I don't blame the Apple TV.

00:26:14   Whatever app this is, it's doing something terrible.

00:26:16   It's like the mortal sin of a playback application.

00:26:18   Jump to jump me forward in a show

00:26:20   that I've never seen before, five minutes,

00:26:21   when all I did was hit play/pause,

00:26:23   a non-touch sensitive button on my remote.

00:26:25   So, so angry.

00:26:26   So I really hope Apple TV apps get better with time

00:26:30   because a lot of them are really falling down the job.

00:26:32   - Well, I mean, I don't use that many apps on the Apple TV.

00:26:36   - I do, unfortunately.

00:26:37   That's why I did this tour of all the bad programming

00:26:40   across the industry.

00:26:42   - Because I'm not trying to argue with your experience.

00:26:44   I'm not trying to say you're wrong,

00:26:45   but for me, most of my watching is in Plex, Disney Plus,

00:26:49   or channels, and all three of them,

00:26:52   I can't recall having had this problem.

00:26:54   Maybe I have and I just don't remember,

00:26:55   but certainly not with the frequency that you seem to,

00:26:58   so I don't know if it just so happens

00:26:59   that it's not those three apps

00:27:01   that you're seeing this all the time?

00:27:02   - I don't think, it's usually the more obscure ones,

00:27:05   and I'm counting like Hulu is maybe more obscure

00:27:07   than those things.

00:27:08   Amazon, I think, is the worst, probably.

00:27:10   Amazon is probably the buggiest

00:27:11   in terms of fundamental bugs.

00:27:14   problems with Hulu, the various HBO apps over the years have been of varying quality. The

00:27:21   Apple TV+ one I think is the only one that I've probably never had a problem with. The

00:27:26   problem with that one of course is I can never find what I was watching, but that's a universal

00:27:30   problem.

00:27:31   Just yesterday I sat down to watch the first episode of Ted Lasso to prepare myself for

00:27:35   the new season. I think I'm a day behind already, but this is the time that if you watch one

00:27:39   a day you'll be roughly synced up by the time the new season starts. And for the life of

00:27:44   with me, the information architecture on the Apple TV app

00:27:47   is the biggest pile of garbage.

00:27:49   It is so bad.

00:27:51   Maybe it's just my brain doesn't work the way

00:27:53   that those designers do.

00:27:54   - Just give up and search, 'cause if you have a goal in mind

00:27:57   that UI will fight you every second of the way.

00:27:59   - Yes!

00:28:00   - Their whole point is that they don't want you

00:28:02   to have a goal, they want, says,

00:28:04   don't you try to watch something,

00:28:06   let us tell you what to watch.

00:28:07   And it's like, but what if I already know

00:28:08   what I wanna watch?

00:28:09   It's like, no, sorry, that's wrong, user.

00:28:11   You should not know what you wanna watch.

00:28:13   I know you think you want to watch the next episode on the show you've been watching.

00:28:16   For the past 30 days, all you've been doing every night is watching the show.

00:28:19   You probably want to watch the next episode, but there's no way in hell I'm going to show

00:28:21   that to you.

00:28:22   Try and find it.

00:28:23   Yeah, I could not agree with you more.

00:28:25   It's so bad.

00:28:26   It's so bad.

00:28:27   Anyway, all right, moving along.

00:28:29   Michael McGuire writes, "This is with regards to your Ask ATP segment about IDE updates.

00:28:33   I think your focus on incremental updates of Xcode versus full downloads might have

00:28:36   missed the point of the question.

00:28:37   In almost every other development platform I've used, including Visual Studio, Visual

00:28:40   Studio Code, IntelliJ, and others, there's a separation between the SDK, the build system,

00:28:45   and the editor itself.

00:28:46   Take Android, for instance.

00:28:47   The SDK is a direct download from Android Studio, which uses Gradle for building.

00:28:52   Even the compiler is a separate component that can often be independently upgraded.

00:28:55   With Apple, it's a big gelatinous blob.

00:28:57   When you update Xcode, you're getting a new compiler, build system, SDK, and IDE.

00:29:01   Other than simulators and Swift compiler tool chains, it is an all or nothing affair.

00:29:05   And even with Swift, you can't use compiler outside of the one shipping with Xcode if

00:29:09   if you are deploying to the App Store.

00:29:11   I think that this is perhaps why the writer

00:29:12   of the question is confused.

00:29:13   From the outside, Apple's way of doing things

00:29:15   is completely foreign.

00:29:16   That's a pretty good summary, actually.

00:29:18   - Yeah, I mean, but the explanation for that

00:29:19   is pretty straightforward.

00:29:20   Like, everyone who knows enough to ask this question

00:29:22   knows why Apple does it.

00:29:23   It's more convenient for them.

00:29:24   It's more convenient, it's actually,

00:29:26   you would say it's less convenient for users

00:29:28   'cause you gotta do this big download,

00:29:29   but it has fewer permutations of stuff.

00:29:31   If Apple lets you mix and match,

00:29:32   like they used to let you mix and match more than they do,

00:29:35   but if they let you mix and match,

00:29:37   Debugging problems for Apple and for developers

00:29:40   would be more difficult because it's so much harder

00:29:42   to describe your situation, whereas at least now

00:29:45   you can say I'm using Xcode, whatever, whatever, right?

00:29:47   And that description encapsulates the entirety

00:29:50   of your situation.

00:29:51   If you had to say I'm using this compiler,

00:29:53   with this IDE, with this, you know,

00:29:55   it's more variables, right?

00:29:57   So they ship it all to one unit

00:29:59   because it's just simpler for everybody involved.

00:30:01   It is more limiting, you have less flexibility,

00:30:03   that's true, but I kind of don't fault Apple for this

00:30:06   because they have a fairly complicated thing.

00:30:08   Xcode itself is a very complicated IDE.

00:30:10   Their compiler tool chain is complicated.

00:30:12   They target lots of different devices.

00:30:14   I would not endorse the idea that Apple should,

00:30:16   at this point with their current quality standards

00:30:19   and resourcing, break out their IDE from their tool chain,

00:30:23   from their build system or whatever.

00:30:24   Please continue to ship it as all in one unit.

00:30:26   Just make it work better.

00:30:27   - And frankly, as a developer,

00:30:29   with the disclaimer that my internet connection

00:30:30   is good enough that the download sizes aren't prohibitive,

00:30:34   I actually prefer it this way,

00:30:35   because I don't wanna have to deal with,

00:30:38   oh, this version of this tool is out of date,

00:30:40   but this is conflicting with this thing over here.

00:30:43   You know what it would be like.

00:30:44   We've seen this in other areas of tech

00:30:45   and with these other ideas.

00:30:46   - Tell me you're a CocoaPods developer

00:30:48   without telling me you're a CocoaPods developer.

00:30:50   Holy smokes, it's so bad.

00:30:51   - Right, we know exactly what,

00:30:53   it would be a mess of package installation

00:30:56   and conflicts and dependencies

00:30:58   and tools not working right with each other

00:31:00   or things thinking they're there when they're not.

00:31:02   We know what that world would be like.

00:31:04   I am very happy to have this one area of my life

00:31:07   that I don't want to deal with that.

00:31:08   - Yeah.

00:31:09   William Vibrinskas writes,

00:31:12   the Ford F-150 Lightning Sunroof does kind of

00:31:14   what you explained in the latest ATP.

00:31:16   It's the full length of the roof, slightly tinted,

00:31:18   it fully opens and has a cloth motorized cover.

00:31:21   I am here for Marco driving a pickup.

00:31:24   I cannot imagine what that would look like.

00:31:26   - I'm shocked that something like this exists.

00:31:27   Like it really, I looked at a video,

00:31:29   really does all those things.

00:31:30   You know, it's just a unicorn.

00:31:33   I don't know of any other vehicle in like the past two decades that had all these things

00:31:37   glass on roof with tint with a cloth cover and that also opens.

00:31:40   It's unheard of.

00:31:41   Aaron's does Aaron's it's not as it's not the full length of the roof.

00:31:44   I mean, yeah, that's what I'm saying.

00:31:45   Like in modern sort of modern full glass roof thing, but that also is tinted, but that also

00:31:50   opens but that also has a cloth color like it's everything combined.

00:31:54   It used to be the norm like this when you get all of them back when Sunroofs were these

00:31:58   little rounded wreck portals on top of your car, but now it's the whole roof.

00:32:01   I mean, Aarons is the largest sunroof

00:32:04   that I have had ownership of,

00:32:07   but it is not nearly as big as a lot of these.

00:32:08   - And it doesn't, there's glass between it

00:32:10   and the windshield too, it's not continuous.

00:32:12   - Yes, there's metal between it and the windshield.

00:32:14   - Yeah, I think that's true on the F-150 as well.

00:32:16   It's just the Model X is the full glass thing.

00:32:18   - Yeah, which by the way,

00:32:19   we made all the Model X owners mad and don't care.

00:32:21   - It was more tinted than it is.

00:32:23   It does look more tinted from the outside, that is true.

00:32:26   - We have a little bit of a COVID follow-up.

00:32:27   Let me just start with a disclaimer

00:32:30   that if you are worried about getting advice

00:32:33   regarding COVID, the last three humans on the planet

00:32:37   you should listen to are the three of us.

00:32:38   But-- - I wouldn't say that.

00:32:40   We all have a lot of experience now.

00:32:42   - Yeah, that's true.

00:32:43   We all do. - Also, there's a lot

00:32:44   of way worse advice out there.

00:32:46   - Well, okay, that's also fair.

00:32:47   I'm trying to be self-deprecating here,

00:32:49   but no, you are right.

00:32:50   There may be one of the last. - A lot.

00:32:52   - Well, hey, let me preface this,

00:32:53   because the reason this is important,

00:32:55   the reason I put these links in here,

00:32:57   when I talked about this last time,

00:32:59   I said a bunch of stuff about COVID,

00:33:01   and Mark was like, "Oh, I hadn't heard of that,"

00:33:02   or one of you was like, "Oh, I hadn't heard of that."

00:33:05   If you're not constantly keeping up with all the articles

00:33:07   that come out about COVID and the various studies,

00:33:09   stuff's changing all the time.

00:33:10   So what I had said about multiple COVID infections being,

00:33:14   subsequent COVID infections being worse,

00:33:16   getting worse and worse instead of getting better,

00:33:19   I wasn't just making that up.

00:33:20   It was something that I had read.

00:33:21   And then people said, "Oh, actually,

00:33:23   "there've been more studies,"

00:33:24   and they found out that's not really the case, right?

00:33:25   That's the way science works, right?

00:33:27   But I was like, is that really super outdated information?

00:33:29   Because people ask for like, where did you read this?

00:33:31   I'm like, oh, I've seen this recently enough.

00:33:33   I can pull up the link and I would send it to people.

00:33:35   And the study was like a Washington University study

00:33:37   or something, November, 2022.

00:33:40   That's not that long ago.

00:33:41   - No, it is not. - So November, 2022,

00:33:43   it's like already outdated, right?

00:33:45   Because there are so many people are studying this

00:33:47   as you can imagine, the status quo changes.

00:33:50   And if you haven't looked at the status quo

00:33:52   since like 2020 or 20, if you haven't like read up

00:33:54   about COVID stuff since 2020 or 2021,

00:33:56   So much has changed since then.

00:33:58   So there's a whole class of people who had,

00:33:59   I'd never heard that subsequent COVID infections get worse.

00:34:02   I'd heard about it all over the place,

00:34:03   'cause like, for whatever reason,

00:34:05   in my various news feeds and Twitter feeds

00:34:07   and Macedon feeds, I tend to see these articles.

00:34:09   And there was a big hubbub made about this article

00:34:11   in November 2022.

00:34:12   And that's the last thing I had read about COVID

00:34:15   that had stuck in my mind.

00:34:16   And it wasn't that long ago.

00:34:18   But since then, people have jumped on that and said,

00:34:20   okay, well, we'll try to reproduce this study.

00:34:22   Let's look at this study,

00:34:23   whether there are flaws in it or whatever.

00:34:24   And so the upshot is that subsequent studies have found

00:34:28   that they can't reproduce the results of this other one

00:34:30   and they're not sure it was representative

00:34:34   of average people.

00:34:35   So research continues.

00:34:36   But this is just to drive home the point

00:34:38   that it's hard to stay on top of this stuff

00:34:40   because it is changing like month by month, week by week.

00:34:44   And even when there's a big story

00:34:45   that's across all the big papers and everything,

00:34:46   'cause this Washington University study,

00:34:47   you'll find it in every single big news site,

00:34:49   covered heavily, you have to look and see if they will.

00:34:53   And of course that story gets more coverage

00:34:54   than the followup that says,

00:34:56   actually we couldn't reproduce this,

00:34:57   'cause that's not as exciting a story.

00:34:58   But it is out there.

00:34:59   And there'll be another one at like the recent round

00:35:02   of things are like,

00:35:03   what kind of things you're more susceptible to

00:35:05   after you're infected with COVID?

00:35:06   Oh, five times higher chance of heart disease

00:35:08   and three times higher chance of diabetes or whatever.

00:35:11   And then the followups to those are like,

00:35:12   well, is it give you more of a chance of diabetes?

00:35:15   Are you now going to the doctor

00:35:16   so you're more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes?

00:35:18   Whereas before you weren't going to the doctor

00:35:19   'cause you were quarantining.

00:35:20   And it's like, research continues.

00:35:22   So it's hard to keep up with this treadmill,

00:35:24   but I think it is,

00:35:26   it's not important to be on the treadmill,

00:35:27   but it's also not important to cement your idea of COVID

00:35:30   in 2020 because so much has changed

00:35:32   and since then it will continue to change.

00:35:34   - Yeah, so I really enjoyed Keith's feedback.

00:35:36   I'm gonna try to make this very quick.

00:35:37   As per the proof that your audience is extremely diverse,

00:35:39   I'm a scientist, PhD medicinal chemist

00:35:42   who has worked on viruses for pretty much my whole career,

00:35:44   first as a medicinal chemist and then in other roles.

00:35:48   And Keith has worked on basically anything

00:35:49   you've heard of in the past.

00:35:51   "Reinfection does not lead to increased severity.

00:35:52   Most systematic studies have shown that disease severity

00:35:55   is generally lower or similar on reinfection."

00:35:57   There are tons of references out there,

00:35:59   but they're in, he cites different studies,

00:36:01   would have been the show notes.

00:36:03   And then a more recent publication seems to confirm this

00:36:05   and suggests that reinfection has a similar severity

00:36:06   to the first infection, not worse.

00:36:08   Related, "COVID does not interfere with the immune system

00:36:10   to make subsequent infections worse.

00:36:11   This famously occurs with dengue and likely Zika

00:36:14   through a mechanism called antibody dependent enhancement.

00:36:17   There's no evidence that this occurs with COVID."

00:36:19   Selfishly, I thought this was fascinating.

00:36:21   Keith had commented that if Michaela had been vaccinated

00:36:24   in the last three months, which again,

00:36:25   she was first week in January and we got sick,

00:36:28   what, like two, three weeks ago,

00:36:30   then her antibody levels are likely to be high enough

00:36:32   to prevent infection, and we tested her a handful of times

00:36:35   and she was negative every time.

00:36:37   And then John started sprinkling the links,

00:36:40   which we'll put in the show notes,

00:36:40   to this study that you were referring to

00:36:43   just a moment ago, John, and in a subsequent email to me,

00:36:45   Keith wrote, "I would add that there's a study

00:36:47   "that seems to show worse outcomes on reinfection,"

00:36:49   which I think John may be referring to.

00:36:51   This is a veteran study published late last year,

00:36:53   and it did indeed get a lot of attention.

00:36:55   It is a good paper, and there are no obvious massive flaws.

00:36:57   However, no other publication has shown this,

00:36:59   and most have shown the opposite.

00:37:00   Plus, it somewhat flies in the face of basic immunology

00:37:03   that the immune system learns what infects it

00:37:05   so that it is prepared for future infections.

00:37:08   The study has received some level of criticism

00:37:10   that the study is based to older white males.

00:37:12   Personally, I think there's something odd

00:37:14   about the selection criteria,

00:37:15   i.e. who goes into the control group and who doesn't,

00:37:17   that makes me suspect that there's an underlying bias

00:37:19   that screws things up.

00:37:20   Or perhaps the study is correct,

00:37:22   and old white dudes are getting some payback,

00:37:25   which I thought was quite funny.

00:37:26   So thank you to Keith.

00:37:27   There was a lot more, a lot more that Keith wrote

00:37:29   that I, again, found utterly fascinating,

00:37:31   but that's the TLDR,

00:37:32   which I also thought was very, very interesting.

00:37:35   - Yeah, and part of the people writing about

00:37:37   and trying to study the idea of it

00:37:39   messing with your immune system is the idea

00:37:41   that if subsequent infections get worse and not better,

00:37:43   that flies in the face of what you would expect,

00:37:45   And it only happens in infections that do actually attack your immune system in some

00:37:50   way.

00:37:51   I mentioned measles last time as another example here.

00:37:54   So that's why people study these things.

00:37:55   And that's why when someone does a study, someone follows up on it and tries to figure

00:37:58   out more.

00:37:59   So every day hopefully we're making progress.

00:38:03   But I think it is worth occasionally dipping your toe back into the updated information

00:38:09   on whatever your trusted source is.

00:38:11   not a newspaper, but the big health systems like the CDC in the US or whatever tend to

00:38:17   take a while to get on board, as we saw during the initial wave of COVID. Maybe CDC's advice

00:38:22   lagged behind the best thinking by a significant amount, and maybe is occasionally politically

00:38:27   motivated, which is not great, but wherever you decide to check things out, it's a good

00:38:32   idea to occasionally check back in and see how things have changed.

00:38:35   Well, it's also, you know, quote, "COVID is not just one virus." Like, we've had so many variants

00:38:41   that have become dominant at different times throughout this pandemic that, you know,

00:38:46   whatever variant you get now, you know, you might have different responses to it because it's

00:38:52   actually a different virus than the one you got two years ago. Like, it's not, this is not a,

00:38:57   you know, stationary target that we're talking about here. The virus is also evolving,

00:39:01   conditions are also changing, treatments are changing, people have or don't have vaccines,

00:39:07   and different timings on that, different vaccines they could have gotten, different drugs they

00:39:11   might have taken, there's so many variables here. So yeah, the way to stay on top of things

00:39:18   like this is to be willing to change your mind when new information becomes available.

00:39:22   Yeah, a lot of the subsequent studies are on exactly that. They're like, "Well, we studied

00:39:27   this, and we're pretty happy that everyone was able to reproduce it and we understood

00:39:30   but that was for like the original variant. So now we have to do all those same studies again

00:39:35   with Delta, with Omicron, because they're basically redoing stuff to confirm, "Hey,

00:39:40   does this still apply with the current variant that's out now?" Just like they had to do with

00:39:44   all the science they did about COVID before vaccines, they had to redo all that with vaccines

00:39:49   as to how did the vaccines change, how did they affect it at all? And that's why, even if you

00:39:52   think everything is settled down and it's understood, when new variants come out, they

00:39:57   they have to redo a lot of that stuff

00:39:58   because they have to at the very least confirm

00:40:00   is this also true of whatever the popular variant is now?

00:40:03   So it's tough.

00:40:04   - Yeah.

00:40:05   There are definitely worse people to get the advice from

00:40:08   than the three of us.

00:40:09   I don't know what I was thinking.

00:40:11   This is the danger of speaking extemporaneously.

00:40:14   - We will never tell you to take horse paste.

00:40:16   (laughing)

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00:41:59   Apparently it is the season, 'tis the season for iPhone leaks and rumors, but more leaks.

00:42:07   And we have a report from 9to5Mac, two reports actually, one about the iPhone 15 CAD drawings,

00:42:12   which allegedly reveal a larger 6.2 inch display and a dynamic island and USB-C. And then separately

00:42:19   they also have an exclusive first look at the special edition color for the

00:42:23   iPhone 15 Pro which I believe is coral if I'm not mistaken it's very okay there

00:42:30   you go they just need to pair it with orange and they'll be set and not many

00:42:33   of you understood that joke but power to you if you did go Hokies so anyways this

00:42:38   stands to reason that the iPhone 15 the not Pro is getting the dynamic island

00:42:42   this year getting a slightly larger display USB C is a surprise if that's

00:42:47   real but otherwise this basically makes sense to me.

00:42:50   - I think it is real because I feel like this is basically

00:42:52   iPhone announcement day.

00:42:54   iPhones just reliably leak.

00:42:56   I think this is earlier than normal but once the CAD drawings

00:43:01   as they always call them in these stories,

00:43:02   once that stuff comes out and it's close enough to the date

00:43:05   and enough sort of people corroborated and it starts

00:43:08   appearing around, it might as well be the day

00:43:11   of the iPhone announcement.

00:43:12   We talked about future iPhones all the time in the show

00:43:14   and usually we're just covering the rumors.

00:43:15   Here's what people think it might be, here's what it could

00:43:16   here's what it means technology-wise, right?

00:43:18   But at a certain point, all of that coalesces to be,

00:43:21   here's the new iPhone.

00:43:22   And then when they announce the new iPhone,

00:43:23   they're like, yep, that's exactly what we knew about,

00:43:25   you know, however long ago.

00:43:26   And so if you look at these CAD drawings,

00:43:28   it has eliminated a lot of the things that I was hoping for

00:43:32   and confirmed some things that, you know,

00:43:34   that I was expecting.

00:43:35   So the USB-C on everything, you know,

00:43:38   even though these are just CAD drawings,

00:43:39   we know a USB-C hole when we see it, right?

00:43:42   That's what this is.

00:43:43   I think I've talked about it in the past,

00:43:45   but my desire for less of a camera bump and my hope that the "parascope camera" lens

00:43:51   assembly on future iPhones would make this happen, this is not that year.

00:43:56   The only place there's going to be a periscope camera is in the Pro Max, and they're not

00:44:00   using it to make the bump smaller, they're just using it to get more zoom, right?

00:44:05   These drawings, they look kind of like the existing iPhone 13 or 14 Pro, but with more

00:44:11   rounded edges.

00:44:12   In the same case, it has more of a rounded edge,

00:44:15   it's flat sides, but a little bit more of a rounded edge,

00:44:17   and the pros apparently have a titanium frame,

00:44:18   which will be cool from a materials finish point of view,

00:44:21   if that's even true.

00:44:22   But otherwise, if you look at the CAD drawings,

00:44:26   they look a lot like a 14 Pro.

00:44:28   There's a massive three camera,

00:44:30   gigantic plateau with many, many levels,

00:44:33   and the regular iPhone has just the two cameras

00:44:35   with a smaller plateau.

00:44:37   They have not radically changed the design,

00:44:38   there's not a new camera hump,

00:44:40   they're not slimmer in the camera area,

00:44:42   They're just new iPhones,

00:44:46   which is not disappointing necessarily,

00:44:48   but I mean, I guess it increases my odds

00:44:50   'cause this is not my phone year.

00:44:51   Next year is my phone year.

00:44:52   I guess it increases my odds if that's gonna happen.

00:44:54   Maybe it'll happen the next year, but I don't know.

00:44:56   I just kind of feel like we're stuck with this lump

00:44:58   for a while and it's kind of disappointing.

00:45:00   But the titanium will be exciting.

00:45:01   And the other thing in the story is,

00:45:03   oh, breaking down how it's gonna be between pro and non-pro

00:45:05   and how they're gonna differentiate.

00:45:07   They're already differentiating in this generation

00:45:09   with the good SOC and the pro

00:45:11   and like quote unquote last year's SOC in the non-pro,

00:45:15   that it seems like they're gonna continue to do that

00:45:17   and this MaxTech video that we'll link in the show,

00:45:19   it's had like a little slide that listed

00:45:22   what they thought would be the pro features

00:45:24   to get you to pony up for the fancy one.

00:45:26   ProMotion, I'm assuming that would be there.

00:45:29   They list the screen sizes as well,

00:45:30   but I assume those will be close.

00:45:32   Apparently the pro has a different size screen.

00:45:34   The 15 Pro has a different size screen slightly

00:45:36   than the 14 Pro, which whatever,

00:45:38   it could just be the screen manufacturer.

00:45:41   2.5D glass, which is their way of saying,

00:45:44   kind of like on the Apple Watch,

00:45:45   if you look at it from the side,

00:45:47   the glass bulges out a little bit,

00:45:49   which seems wild to me,

00:45:50   and you can't really see in these CAD drawings,

00:45:52   'cause the CAD drawings are just of the case,

00:45:54   but wouldn't you want the glass of your phone

00:45:56   not to stick out past the edge?

00:45:58   That's what phone cases do.

00:46:00   But on the other hand, kind of like the watch glass,

00:46:03   maybe it does that because it's thicker,

00:46:05   but on the other other hand,

00:46:06   really thick glass would make your finger

00:46:07   not feel like it's touching the things

00:46:09   under the screen as well.

00:46:10   So I don't know what to make of that, but I'm just reading out what's here.

00:46:14   Thinner bezels, if you can even tell that without your calipers out.

00:46:18   Titanium frame, solid state buttons, which we talked about in the past, which is wacky.

00:46:22   Periscope lens on the Pro Max model, the A17, which the regular iPhone 15 won't have presumably,

00:46:27   8 gigs of RAM, Wi-Fi 6E, and Thunderbolt 3.

00:46:32   So the rumor is that the plain iPhone 15 has a USB-C shaped hole, but it is not Thunderbolt.

00:46:37   The rumor was that it's USB 2 speeds, which I guess would definitely be an Apple thing

00:46:43   to do, right?

00:46:44   Put USB-C on the iPhone and not increase the transfer speed.

00:46:46   But the rumor is that the Pro has a USB-C H-shaped hole that does Thunderbolt 3, which

00:46:51   would be a welcome improvement.

00:46:52   So that's actually a lot of advantages for the Pro, mostly achieved by making the non-Pro

00:46:58   crappier, I guess.

00:47:01   But anyway, if you're wondering what the iPhone 15 is going to be, at this point I feel pretty

00:47:05   confident saying that if you follow this Lincoln 9 to 5 Mac and look at the pictures, the only

00:47:09   things you don't know are the things nobody ever knows.

00:47:11   What are they going to call the color?

00:47:12   What are the new colors going to be?

00:47:13   What are the new finishes going to be?

00:47:14   What are the exact prices going to be?

00:47:15   All that stuff basically doesn't leak because you don't need thousands and thousands of

00:47:20   people to know it.

00:47:22   But because you need to manufacture so many of these things and because they're probably

00:47:24   going to start manufacturing them soon, this stuff can and will leak.

00:47:28   And so when we watch these iPhone keynotes, it's like the only thing we're finding out

00:47:31   is seeing the Apple promo videos

00:47:35   and seeing what they're gonna call that coral color.

00:47:38   - This makes me very, very happy overall

00:47:41   because here's the thing, all the things that we don't know,

00:47:44   you know, and there's so many,

00:47:46   every year there's usually some new camera feature

00:47:49   that the new hardware enables

00:47:51   that's only available on the newest phone,

00:47:52   and so there's gonna be some cool camera feature.

00:47:54   We don't know the details about the cameras really

00:47:56   to any degree of credibility.

00:47:58   How good is, if they're gonna do a periscope thing,

00:48:01   How good is that gonna be for the optical zoom or whatever?

00:48:04   How zoomed in is it gonna be?

00:48:06   How compromised is that camera going to be

00:48:09   relative to the One X camera?

00:48:11   There's so many details like that,

00:48:12   but for me, they had me at USBC.

00:48:14   They could change nothing else.

00:48:16   They could make it just switch to USBC charging

00:48:19   and I'd be like sold and I'd buy it instantly.

00:48:21   And to me, the two things I'm most excited about

00:48:24   are USBC, number one, by a mile,

00:48:27   and then a distant number two, titanium.

00:48:30   because ultimately I'm pretty happy with my,

00:48:34   what are we on, 14?

00:48:35   With my 14 Pro. (laughs)

00:48:38   Except it's really frickin' heavy.

00:48:40   And it's not like a deal breaker.

00:48:43   I do wish it was smaller, but I really wish it was lighter.

00:48:47   And it's pretty hard to make a modern smartphone lighter

00:48:51   without giving up a lot of battery life,

00:48:53   'cause batteries are pretty heavy.

00:48:55   And one of the ways they can do it

00:48:57   is they can switch from steel for the outer rim,

00:48:59   which there is no reason to have that,

00:49:02   they can switch to a lighter metal

00:49:04   and titanium is a great option.

00:49:06   And I was like, we see these renders here,

00:49:08   but remember a few days ago,

00:49:10   somebody actually posted like a leaked alleged photo

00:49:13   of the case.

00:49:14   - Oh yeah, yeah.

00:49:15   - And I saw that photo and I saw the kind of

00:49:18   horizontal grained brushed finish

00:49:21   and I was like, "Titanium!"

00:49:22   I was like, "I yelled it."

00:49:23   I was so happy.

00:49:25   You could tell instantly by looking at that,

00:49:27   that's almost certainly titanium

00:49:29   And I was so happy to see that.

00:49:32   - I do wonder if that's an unfinished model,

00:49:34   you know what I mean though?

00:49:35   Like they haven't put the finish on it?

00:49:37   - Yeah, oh yeah, we don't know

00:49:38   what the final finish will be.

00:49:39   It looked like brushed finish titanium,

00:49:42   and it wouldn't surprise me if that is the final finish.

00:49:44   - I wish they would sell one that looked like that,

00:49:46   like the look would be brushed unfinished titanium,

00:49:48   but I have a feeling they're not going to.

00:49:50   - Yeah, well, I mean, I can't even tell you

00:49:51   what the outside of mine looks like,

00:49:52   'cause it's in a case all the time,

00:49:53   because these are too big to hold.

00:49:55   - No, no, you just want it to be lighter.

00:49:56   If you look at the titanium watches,

00:49:59   they have also not looked like unfinished titanium.

00:50:01   They've always kind of had a uniform matte

00:50:04   kind of thing going on.

00:50:05   I'm not sure what that finish is, but it's--

00:50:06   - Well, no, it's interesting.

00:50:08   So the Ultra, which is titanium,

00:50:10   basically has like a uniform sandblasted look to it.

00:50:13   There is no grain on the Ultra,

00:50:16   whereas the previous series up to seven editions

00:50:20   that were titanium have vertical or horizontal graining,

00:50:24   and it looks really nice.

00:50:26   This is, I mean, I still,

00:50:28   My daily driver, Apple Watch, is still a Series 7

00:50:31   because I like titanium so much,

00:50:34   and they took it away with the Series 8.

00:50:36   Again, I really hope they bring this back with the Series 9.

00:50:38   That's like my one wish for the Apple Watch Series 9.

00:50:42   My biggest wish is bring back titanium,

00:50:44   and then my second biggest wish is things like

00:50:46   make the software better, but that's a different story

00:50:49   for a different day, but yeah.

00:50:50   So iPhone 15 rumors, thumbs up from me so far.

00:50:54   I don't have a dire need for USB-C in terms of travel,

00:50:59   which I think is when most people would be interested in it

00:51:02   because I do love my little docking base thing

00:51:05   that I talked about many moons ago.

00:51:07   But I will tell you that we have a single USB-C

00:51:11   Apple charging cable strung from the wall through the couch,

00:51:15   so it's basically available to whoever's sitting

00:51:18   on the couch at the time.

00:51:19   And you know what's great about that is it can charge

00:51:21   Aaron's computer.

00:51:23   It can charge my computer, it can charge the kid iPad,

00:51:26   it can charge my iPad, but you know what it can't

00:51:29   friggin' charge?

00:51:31   My stupid phone.

00:51:32   I would love it.

00:51:33   I mean, I would love to have Thunderbolt in a Pro phone,

00:51:36   but even leaving that aside,

00:51:37   I think this is what you were saying a minute ago, Marco,

00:51:39   like, just give me the connector.

00:51:41   I don't even care if it's USB 2.0 speeds for the most part.

00:51:44   Just give me the damn connector.

00:51:46   And so I can sit on the couch and use the cable

00:51:49   that's right there and actually charge the phone.

00:51:52   Yes, please. I'll take two.

00:51:54   I can only hope.

00:51:56   There was a very interesting release from Mark Gurman this week.

00:52:01   Gurman says that Apple has made major progress on a no-prick blood glucose tracking for its watch.

00:52:09   Apple Inc. has a moonshot-style project underway that dates back to the Steve Jobs era.

00:52:13   Non-invasive and continuous blood glucose monitoring.

00:52:16   The goal of this secret endeavor, dubbed E5,

00:52:18   is to measure how much glucose is in somebody's body

00:52:20   without needing to prick the skin for blood.

00:52:24   After hitting major milestones recently,

00:52:25   the company now believes it could eventually

00:52:28   bring glucose monitoring to market,

00:52:30   according to people familiar with the effort.

00:52:31   I'll be the first to tell you

00:52:32   I don't know very much about all of this,

00:52:34   but my limited understanding is,

00:52:36   and please, one of you jump in whenever you're ready,

00:52:38   is that for those of us who are diabetic,

00:52:41   you need to know what the status of your blood glucose is.

00:52:45   And to do that is kind of a pain,

00:52:47   and there are these continuous monitors that you can get,

00:52:50   but I guess they're very complicated,

00:52:52   and they don't work very well,

00:52:53   and then people will like hack them.

00:52:54   Didn't, what's the guy from Microsoft,

00:52:56   whose name is escaping me right now,

00:52:57   that's done a lot of this.

00:52:58   - Paul Allen?

00:52:59   - No, no, no, no, no, no.

00:53:01   - He's dead?

00:53:02   - No.

00:53:03   - Paul Allen was dead, right?

00:53:04   - No, I didn't think he was.

00:53:05   - Is he?

00:53:05   - Now I gotta look, now we gotta derail everything.

00:53:08   No, the programmer guy, yes, he died in 2018.

00:53:11   - He died in 2018, yeah.

00:53:13   Oh, wow, I didn't know that.

00:53:14   I think I can't say something.

00:53:16   - No, that's too bad.

00:53:17   - Anyways, no, the developer guy,

00:53:19   oh gosh, I'm so mad that I can't think of his name.

00:53:21   - The developer guy, Raymond Chen?

00:53:23   Hanselman, Scott Hanselman?

00:53:24   - Yes, thank you, Hanselman, that's who I'm thinking of.

00:53:27   - I would not have pegged him as the Microsoft guy.

00:53:29   All right.

00:53:30   - Well, he is at Microsoft.

00:53:31   - I know, I get it.

00:53:32   Yeah, you're right, he's a guy at Microsoft.

00:53:35   - Anyway, this is going right off the rails,

00:53:38   and I'm pretty sure it's my fault,

00:53:39   and I'm not the sick one.

00:53:41   But anyways, I believe that he is diabetic

00:53:44   something along those lines and has done a lot of stuff with regard to continuous blood

00:53:48   glucose monitoring. And I guess there's like a whole hobby in not even industry but like

00:53:52   a grassroots thing where people will figure out how to hack like existing blood glucose

00:53:59   monitors to make them work way better and something like that. So all of that is to

00:54:03   say my very limited, mostly ignorant understanding is this is a big frickin' deal. And I can

00:54:11   only imagine how amazing this would be if I were diabetic to have something like this.

00:54:14   Well, the good news is you're now 40% more likely to be diabetic.

00:54:17   Why? Because COVID?

00:54:19   Yeah. This is a March 31st, 2022 story, so I'm sure it's changed since then. But anyway,

00:54:24   lots of people… Again, it's the question, as I was saying before. So, they do these studies,

00:54:28   and it says, you know, people who had COVID-19 were 40% more likely to develop diabetes up to

00:54:32   a year later. But then it's like, okay, but is that just because they went to the doctor?

00:54:36   Right? Because they had… they're getting diagnosed because they made a trip they wouldn't

00:54:40   normally taken to the doctor and so now it's discovered and it would have been there anyway

00:54:44   so it's hard to tell. I'm just making a joke. But anyway, I think that what corrects that is like

00:54:48   10% of the US adult population is diabetic or something. It's not a rare condition, which is why

00:54:54   this story, which by the way as the you know the Germin article notes, this project has been known

00:55:00   outside of Apple as a rumor of course because Apple has been confirming this stuff for just

00:55:04   a long long time and it's kind of like saying yeah we're working on perpetual motion or you know

00:55:09   cold fusion or whatever. It's a thing that if you were to find a way to do it, it is

00:55:14   a big money maker and also it would have a big effect on people's lives. It doesn't sound

00:55:19   like it's a big deal. It's like, "Oh, what's the big deal? You prick your finger, blah,

00:55:21   blah, blah." Imagine if you had to do that every day, sometimes multiple times a day

00:55:25   to plan out how you're eating. It is painful and annoying and inconvenient and it really

00:55:31   messes with people's lives and it affects millions and millions of people. So if you

00:55:35   find a non-invasive way to do that, you can make a lot of people's lives better, which

00:55:39   means you can also make a lot of money.

00:55:41   And there's those things they have now that you sort of slap onto your skin that look

00:55:45   like little stickers, but they have little things that poke into your skin, and they're

00:55:48   not painful, but they hook up to some other meter.

00:55:52   Everyone's always trying to crack this nut, because there's a huge addressable market,

00:55:55   it is a big problem, and current solutions are seemingly barbaric.

00:55:59   I mean, pricking your finger with a piece of metal and putting a drop of blood onto

00:56:02   to a strip of paper is stone age technology from a medical perspective.

00:56:09   If your Apple watch could just tell you, "Boy, wouldn't that have been amazing?

00:56:13   Kind of like if you had a car that could drive itself while you sleep at the wheel, wouldn't

00:56:17   that be amazing?

00:56:18   That would be amazing!"

00:56:19   But also really hard to do.

00:56:21   So the fact that Apple is trying to tackle this, at first it probably seemed like, "Alright,

00:56:26   I get it.

00:56:27   That would make the world a better place.

00:56:28   It would make Apple a lot of money.

00:56:29   it's the intersection of liberal arts and technology,

00:56:31   the intersection of altruism and capitalism,

00:56:34   whatever you want to call it, kind of makes sense,

00:56:36   but why does Apple have to do this?

00:56:37   Apple's not a healthcare company, right?

00:56:39   But on the other hand, as technology advances,

00:56:43   this problem, like the way you're trying

00:56:44   to solve this problem, it's like, okay,

00:56:46   well we need a bunch of sensors

00:56:49   that are attached to your body with a microprocessor

00:56:51   to interpret the results, because it's not straightforward.

00:56:53   Like it's not like, oh, we'll just, you know,

00:56:55   take this measurement and if it's above this value,

00:56:57   It's complicated.

00:56:59   The technology they're talking about, the rumors,

00:57:01   is they fire a bunch of tiny lasers

00:57:04   into your skin and everything,

00:57:05   and look at the scatter back,

00:57:07   and analyze it with this complicated,

00:57:09   like you need a little computer.

00:57:11   And if the idea is you need to have sensors

00:57:14   attached to your skin with a powerful little computer

00:57:16   that people are willing to wear,

00:57:17   suddenly you're like, hmm,

00:57:19   Apple seems actually a pretty good fit for this.

00:57:21   So if Apple can ever figure it out,

00:57:24   they're as well positioned as anybody

00:57:26   to solve this problem in a way that, as they would say,

00:57:30   synergizes with their business.

00:57:31   They're already selling Apple Watches.

00:57:32   Apple Watches' primary purpose is already mostly for fitness

00:57:35   and health-related things.

00:57:37   Lots of people have this health problem.

00:57:39   Being able to sell them an Apple Watch

00:57:41   that would solve this problem,

00:57:42   boy, they would sell so many Apple Watches.

00:57:44   The one bad thing that Apple probably doesn't anticipate

00:57:46   is that if they actually solve this problem,

00:57:48   there will be immediate pressure for them

00:57:50   to sell Apple Watches for less money,

00:57:51   because it is unfair to sort of keep this technology,

00:57:55   you know, it's like, oh, it's Apple patented,

00:57:56   no one else can implement it, and blah, blah, blah,

00:57:59   which is terrible and all.

00:58:01   And the cheapest Apple Watch that has this feature

00:58:03   is like $400.

00:58:04   I mean, people will still pay it,

00:58:05   'cause, you know, they'll find a way to pay it,

00:58:08   'cause it's such a quality of life increase,

00:58:10   but it almost seems-- - It's cheaper than insulin.

00:58:12   - Yeah, well, yeah.

00:58:14   It almost seems ridiculous and unfair

00:58:16   that something that could improve so many people's lives

00:58:18   is under the control of a private company

00:58:20   that, for reasons unrelated to evil,

00:58:23   but just related to their market positioning,

00:58:25   doesn't sort of serve down market.

00:58:27   And even when, you know, you mentioned insulin thing,

00:58:29   like what was it, the person who made the insulin discovery

00:58:32   or got the patent for it or whatever,

00:58:34   intended it to be available for everybody

00:58:35   and never wanted it to be expensive.

00:58:37   But that person died and the rest of the people

00:58:40   took that ball and ran with it

00:58:41   and now insulin costs a bazillion dollars in the US

00:58:44   'cause people found out that other people needed to live

00:58:46   and you can charge them a lot of money,

00:58:47   which is why healthcare should not be

00:58:48   a for-profit enterprise.

00:58:49   Anyway, I guess this is good to hear

00:58:53   oh progress is being made, but at this point,

00:58:56   this is like the original product, Titan.

00:58:58   At this point when I hear stories

00:58:59   about the blood glucose thing, I'm like,

00:59:01   okay, well, when you figure it out, let me know.

00:59:04   I'll just wait another decade here

00:59:05   because it's been going on for so long,

00:59:08   and so far we've got pretty much nothing to show for.

00:59:10   Like Apple does health stuff, and blood pressure,

00:59:13   and ECG or whatever, they do all these health things,

00:59:16   but not once has there been a whiff

00:59:18   of blood glucose anything from Apple.

00:59:20   So obviously they haven't figured it out yet.

00:59:22   So I'm rooting for them, but I really, you know,

00:59:26   I don't think it's a story until it's a story.

00:59:28   And until then it is a very long running money pit

00:59:33   for Apple that I think honestly has more promise

00:59:36   than Project Titan at this point.

00:59:37   - Oh far more.

00:59:39   - It's also been running longer than Project Titan

00:59:41   without results, so I don't know.

00:59:42   - I mean the thing is like other companies make cars

00:59:44   and they're pretty good, which we'll get to

00:59:45   a little bit later.

00:59:46   And so like, you know, it's fun,

00:59:49   like we don't need Apple to make a car.

00:59:51   No one has done this.

00:59:52   And you're right, if they can pull this off,

00:59:57   it's a massive deal.

00:59:58   And so that's why I think hearing even a rumor

01:00:02   from Mark Gurman that this might have made major progress

01:00:06   and that this might be able to become a product

01:00:08   at some point in the future, hearing news about this,

01:00:12   it's not quite on the same level,

01:00:13   but I think it's a similar kind of moonshot as fusion.

01:00:18   It's like, oh my God, when you hear news

01:00:20   that we've made progress, as we actually recently have,

01:00:23   made progress in the area of sustainable fusion energy.

01:00:26   Like that's the kind of moonshot this is.

01:00:28   It's like this is like--

01:00:30   - That would be curing diabetes.

01:00:31   I think it would categorize that.

01:00:33   I'm not just finding a better way to deal with it.

01:00:34   Curing it would be more of that type of,

01:00:36   or maybe curing cancer.

01:00:37   'Cause and fusion, by the way,

01:00:39   so we don't get all the followup on that,

01:00:40   the progress on fusion,

01:00:41   the fusion naysayers are gonna write it

01:00:43   and tell us that it's not as close as you think,

01:00:45   'cause that's the way fusion works.

01:00:46   - I didn't say it was close,

01:00:47   but I said they made progress, which is true.

01:00:48   And I think that's how this is.

01:00:50   - It's hard to tell when you're so far

01:00:52   from the finish line.

01:00:52   - I know, I know, but the point is people care a lot

01:00:55   even when small progress is made

01:00:57   because if we ever pull it off it's such a big deal.

01:01:00   That's how this is.

01:01:03   Any news on this front is a big deal

01:01:05   because if this thing ever actually is workable

01:01:07   as a real product, that's a huge deal.

01:01:10   None of us have diabetes, but my dog does.

01:01:13   And I actually have used on him

01:01:16   one of those continuous monitor things.

01:01:18   and you know, you mentioned, oh yeah, it doesn't hurt, well--

01:01:21   - But dogs don't understand though,

01:01:22   you can't explain to them.

01:01:23   - I know, but like, so here's the thing,

01:01:25   like what you're trying to sample,

01:01:28   and please, actual diabetics out there,

01:01:29   I apologize for if any of these details are wrong,

01:01:32   I only know it through my dog,

01:01:34   but what you're trying to sample is,

01:01:36   you're trying to figure out the curve

01:01:39   of your blood glucose level over time,

01:01:41   and you know, when you eat, that goes up

01:01:43   and then it comes down over time

01:01:44   as the effect of insulin comes in and everything,

01:01:47   And so when you just prick your finger

01:01:50   and get a little sample there,

01:01:52   you're sampling one point on a wave.

01:01:55   You might not necessarily know where on that wave you are.

01:01:59   So while the point sampling has clear value

01:02:03   over no information, continuous data is far more useful.

01:02:07   Way, way, way more useful.

01:02:09   Way more actionable, way more precise.

01:02:12   And in fact, I'm pretty sure,

01:02:14   I don't know the details of this so forgive me,

01:02:15   but I know that the diabetic human world

01:02:18   has long since largely moved to insulin pumps,

01:02:21   which kind of monitor stuff continuously

01:02:22   and give you the right amount of insulin

01:02:24   at any given time is how I understand it,

01:02:25   but instead of just one big shot,

01:02:27   whereas I have to give my dog just two big shots a day,

01:02:30   'cause they don't have those for dogs,

01:02:31   and he's really small anyway, so it wouldn't even fit him.

01:02:33   But anyway, and yes, it's horrible

01:02:36   giving your dog insulin shots, it's heartbreaking.

01:02:37   They let you do it 'cause they let you do anything,

01:02:39   but God, it's heartbreaking for you,

01:02:40   'cause you can't tell them why you're hurting them.

01:02:42   Oh God, I can't give them the carrot fast enough.

01:02:44   Like just, oh God, anyway.

01:02:46   So, it breaks my heart.

01:02:49   But anyway, so when we were first figuring out his diabetes,

01:02:53   we had one of those continuous monitor things.

01:02:55   And it's basically, it looks like,

01:02:56   it's like the size of like,

01:02:58   maybe like two half dollar coins stacked on each other.

01:03:01   But it has about a half inch needle

01:03:04   pointing straight out the back.

01:03:05   It's like sticking a thumbtack into your arm.

01:03:09   And it sits there and it stays there for like a week.

01:03:12   And then after a while, you know,

01:03:13   you gotta like change it and put a new one on it.

01:03:15   And they have these things for humans.

01:03:17   It's the exact same product for dogs.

01:03:19   I forget what it's called,

01:03:20   but it's the exact same product.

01:03:22   It's this Bluetooth thing,

01:03:23   and I was able to go on the app

01:03:24   and see his blood insulin or his blood glucose curve,

01:03:28   and see, okay, well, here's where he's peaking roughly,

01:03:30   so we'll give him the insulin here,

01:03:32   we'll measure it, and we'll see over time how it does,

01:03:34   and here's how it's gonna work,

01:03:35   here's when we need it, all that stuff.

01:03:38   So for diabetics, continuous monitoring is hugely valuable,

01:03:42   And if you can do it on a device that you're already buying

01:03:46   or that you might be buying for a combination

01:03:48   of other reasons, maybe you're buying it for fitness,

01:03:50   notifications, whatever it is you're buying on Apple Watch,

01:03:53   you already have it, then it's there.

01:03:55   And then additionally, there's a huge amount of value

01:03:58   for non-diabetics who would never have a reason

01:04:02   to get a prescription for the thing that you stick

01:04:04   in your arm and have continuous monitoring.

01:04:08   I personally would never, why would I get one of those?

01:04:12   I'm not diabetic, so I don't have any reason

01:04:14   to get one of those and to stick it on my arm

01:04:16   and have this needle sticking to my arm for a week.

01:04:19   But there's huge value in knowing those levels

01:04:23   if you're doing things like paying attention

01:04:24   to your nutrition or maybe trying to avoid

01:04:27   getting type two diabetes in the future

01:04:29   if you're kind of at risk for that,

01:04:31   if you're kind of on the border,

01:04:33   you can start making changes,

01:04:34   you can see what you have to do,

01:04:35   you can maybe see like, hey, you know what,

01:04:37   After I have this one kind of breakfast,

01:04:39   my glucose spike's really high.

01:04:41   Maybe I should think about changing that diet.

01:04:43   There's so much value there,

01:04:45   in the same way that right now the Apple Watch will,

01:04:48   there's settings that I believe that are on by default

01:04:51   where if you're in a super loud environment,

01:04:54   it will tell you, hey, you're above 90 decibels

01:04:57   for the last minute.

01:04:58   This could really hurt your hearing

01:04:59   if you do this all the time.

01:05:00   Everyday people can get that and see, huh,

01:05:02   that's interesting, maybe I shouldn't put my desk

01:05:05   right next to this jet engine.

01:05:07   In the same way, maybe they could have a future feature

01:05:10   where if you have some massive sugar bomb meal

01:05:14   and your blood glucose spikes way too high,

01:05:16   maybe it could tap you in the wrist and say,

01:05:18   hey, your blood sugar's really high right now.

01:05:20   Maybe consider having some fiber or something.

01:05:23   And so even if you can think,

01:05:26   not only would this be life-changing to diabetics probably,

01:05:30   but even just for everyone in the world,

01:05:32   they could build other health-conscious features around it.

01:05:36   And so there is just, and not to mention the fact

01:05:38   that even people, you know, people who aren't paying

01:05:41   attention can get kind of alerts in extreme cases like that.

01:05:44   But people who are paying attention, like,

01:05:46   I would love that because I care a lot about diet

01:05:49   and fitness these days and so I would love to know,

01:05:52   like, to set goals to be like, you know what,

01:05:54   I wanna make sure I'm not gonna, I'm not achieving,

01:05:57   or I'm not exceeding this range of glucose levels

01:06:00   in my day to day life and maybe, like,

01:06:02   maybe I would like to get an alert if I ever do

01:06:04   so I can make changes just for my own,

01:06:07   the same people track their sleep and stuff.

01:06:09   I wanna be able to track that kind of health as well.

01:06:11   So there are huge possible features and benefits

01:06:14   to this kind of thing if they can get it going.

01:06:16   A huge part of the Apple Watch is taking something

01:06:20   that used to be a specialized medical thing,

01:06:23   like the EKG for instance,

01:06:25   taking something like that and bring it to a device

01:06:28   that a lot of people are gonna just have

01:06:29   for other reasons anyway.

01:06:31   And then if they have a weird heart arrhythmia or something,

01:06:36   their watch can tell them,

01:06:37   "Hey, something's a little bit off."

01:06:39   And that is such massive value.

01:06:41   So you have the massive value for the people

01:06:43   who have certain conditions,

01:06:44   like the AFib detection is huge.

01:06:46   If you know anybody who has AFib or if you have AFib,

01:06:49   having the Apple Watch be able to track that

01:06:51   and tell you when you're in AFib is a pretty big deal.

01:06:55   But also it's a big deal for a whole bunch of other people

01:06:58   who don't know that this might be a problem for them,

01:07:01   and then if it starts becoming a problem for them.

01:07:03   Like one of the things I figured out, weirdly,

01:07:06   I know that this is gonna sound really crazy and stupid,

01:07:09   but I've had COVID twice, I think,

01:07:12   and both times I had COVID,

01:07:14   the day before I tested positive,

01:07:18   there was a point in the day,

01:07:19   and I was feeling crappy,

01:07:21   and the Apple Watch gave me that alert that says,

01:07:23   hey, your heart rate's a little bit high,

01:07:25   and you don't seem to be doing anything.

01:07:27   - Alarming.

01:07:28   - Both times I had COVID, that happened to me

01:07:30   the day before I tested positive.

01:07:32   And I've never got that alert any other time.

01:07:35   So it is telling me, hey, your body's, something's wrong.

01:07:39   Like something, like that kind of alert, that helps,

01:07:41   that is actionable for people.

01:07:43   That really has a pretty big benefit to people,

01:07:46   even who don't have whatever kind of certain conditions

01:07:50   might have them get some kind of medical device

01:07:51   in the first place.

01:07:52   So again, this is amazing for diabetics,

01:07:55   But it is not just limited to diabetics and benefit.

01:07:57   This could have huge benefits to everyone.

01:08:00   - Especially hypochondriacs, they love it.

01:08:02   Yeah, that's the dark side of all these things

01:08:03   that sometimes, as Merlyn said,

01:08:05   having more data is not helpful,

01:08:06   especially with people who find it

01:08:08   kind of an attractive nuisance.

01:08:09   But in general, it's a net win to know this stuff.

01:08:11   In particular, especially if our healthcare system

01:08:13   wasn't barbaric and this could, for example,

01:08:15   funnel into your doctor, who is probably more qualified

01:08:18   to know if this is normal for your age and activity for you

01:08:24   or if there's something to be concerned about.

01:08:26   So it'd be great if that could be tied in for them,

01:08:29   not to just ask you how have you been feeling

01:08:30   or to look at your most recent measurements,

01:08:32   but to just, if you're doing continuous monitoring,

01:08:34   it would be great if they could just see that graph

01:08:36   over the past 30 days and say,

01:08:38   looks like you might be a diabetic,

01:08:40   or no, actually, you're fine, don't worry about this,

01:08:42   don't freak out when you see this number,

01:08:43   because for your age and what you ate at that meal,

01:08:46   this is actually fine,

01:08:47   and it's not a thing to be worried about,

01:08:49   because they know whether it's something

01:08:51   to be worried about or not,

01:08:52   whereas you're just looking at a number

01:08:53   saying that seems high on Google and that number shouldn't be that high maybe

01:08:56   I'm dying so it's tricky so don't get too calm that but the difficult thing

01:08:59   with the glucose monitoring I feel like is well it's not difficult for them but

01:09:04   like when you see the story it seems like what they're going for is the brass

01:09:07   ring of like continuous monitoring that you can use instead of breaking your

01:09:11   finger right that's what people want you know no more patch no more finger pricks

01:09:14   just an Apple non-invasive Apple watch the Holy Grail but for all the other

01:09:19   stuff they've done like a fib detection stuff they're really cautious they're

01:09:22   like well took the words right out of my mouth I was gonna bring this up as well

01:09:25   if you if you're if something's really out of whack we'll be like hey we think

01:09:30   this is probably not great but that's not what you want from glucose monitoring

01:09:32   I mean it would be it's better than nothing that's what I'm saying it's

01:09:35   better than nothing we don't have to go for get the brass ring if it just tells

01:09:38   you oh you might you might have missed a shot or something and things are really

01:09:42   bad and it alerts you that is useful but you really don't want that to be the

01:09:46   only functionality you want to be able to have the watch let you know what you

01:09:51   would find out from doing your testing or continuous monitoring with a patch or pricking

01:09:55   your finger or whatever.

01:09:56   So you don't get into the bad situations.

01:09:58   That's what you want.

01:09:59   You want to avoid the extremes.

01:10:00   But with the health measurement stuff, Apple's been so cautious because it's really difficult

01:10:04   to be sure.

01:10:06   And with something like this where someone is making essentially a life or death decision

01:10:09   about weather and how much insulin they should take, it's not like, "Oh, if I get it wrong,

01:10:13   nothing bad will happen."

01:10:14   No, bad things can happen.

01:10:15   And if the pitch is kind of like self-driving cars, if the pitch is this car will drive

01:10:19   of itself and you can go to sleep,

01:10:20   that boy, that better be true.

01:10:22   Because the consequences of it's not are really bad.

01:10:24   And so if they say, oh no, you don't need to measure

01:10:27   with anything else except for the Apple Watch,

01:10:29   they better really have solved that problem.

01:10:32   You know, and again, that doesn't necessarily

01:10:33   have to be the pitch.

01:10:34   They could say, now we have glucose monitoring

01:10:36   the Apple Watch and it will give you an alert

01:10:38   if things are way out of bounds,

01:10:39   but you still have to test normally,

01:10:40   but it's just an insurance mechanism.

01:10:41   That's still useful, still give that a thumbs up.

01:10:43   But when these stories come out,

01:10:44   it's people dreaming that they won't have to do

01:10:46   whatever uncomfortable thing they're doing now.

01:10:49   And the crossing the bar for that, it's really high.

01:10:53   'Cause you have to really be sure

01:10:54   it is literally life and death for millions of people.

01:10:57   It can't be guesswork and if your watch crashes,

01:11:00   there are big consequences and if it gets it wrong,

01:11:02   there are big consequences.

01:11:04   And I don't know how they're gonna handle it.

01:11:06   Kind of like the car, it's one of those type of things

01:11:08   where in general, Apple doesn't have products

01:11:10   where if they get it wrong, people die in short order.

01:11:13   That's true of the car and that's kind of true

01:11:15   of complete replacement glucose monitoring

01:11:18   if that is indeed what they're going after.

01:11:20   - Yeah, I was thinking about,

01:11:22   and then you brought it up,

01:11:23   when they did the EKG thing,

01:11:24   they were very quick to say,

01:11:25   this isn't, this is just a hint, this is just a hint.

01:11:28   And when they did the ovulation tracking

01:11:31   and prediction and whatnot,

01:11:32   oh, well, we're just giving you something else

01:11:34   to think about, you know,

01:11:35   you should still do your own thing,

01:11:37   just something to consider.

01:11:38   And when they, with the AFib stuff,

01:11:41   we don't know if you're having a heart attack,

01:11:43   we don't know that, we just know,

01:11:45   we have an idea about AFib.

01:11:46   and they pump the brakes on everything, which makes sense.

01:11:50   I don't begrudge them, having pumped the brakes,

01:11:52   but yeah, this is, like you said,

01:11:54   it is do or die, literally.

01:11:56   So they can't pump the brakes on this

01:11:59   if they are trying to get that brass ring,

01:12:01   as you referred to it.

01:12:02   And I don't know, I'm not sure how they're gonna handle this

01:12:04   and if I were diabetic, well, I was gonna say,

01:12:08   I don't know if I would trust an Apple Watch to this,

01:12:10   but I would imagine I'd be so miserable

01:12:12   with what I had been doing for years and years

01:12:13   that anything would pee like a cold glass of water in hell.

01:12:16   - Yeah, even if it doesn't solve the problem entirely,

01:12:18   if you just have to have one fewer prick per day

01:12:22   or three fewer per week, still that's an improvement.

01:12:26   It's just a question of what are they

01:12:27   actually able to achieve.

01:12:28   I have no doubt that they will not,

01:12:30   they're only going to announce

01:12:32   what they can actually achieve.

01:12:33   They're not going to over-promise like some other people

01:12:36   you may be familiar with related to self-driving cars.

01:12:39   Whatever they can do, they've been so conservative, right?

01:12:41   They've been so sort of underselling what they've done.

01:12:43   So if they're not able to solve the whole problem,

01:12:46   have full faith that they will not claim to have solved the whole problem. They just say

01:12:48   here's what it can do, here's what it can't do, it can improve your life but you're still going

01:12:52   to have to use the other more invasive methods to supplement your Apple Watch. It will just

01:12:58   maybe help you skip some of those or increase the granularity of the sampling or whatever.

01:13:03   Any improvement is good but this story is always so simplified in its rumor form which is like

01:13:08   they're gonna solve it and you know it's great to think that before they actually announce anything

01:13:11   But as the story notes, this story is so old

01:13:14   that it was around when Steve Jobs

01:13:15   was still running the company.

01:13:16   So it's taken a long time.

01:13:18   - Right.

01:13:19   Oh, blood oxygen was the other thing

01:13:22   I couldn't think of a second ago.

01:13:23   Blood oxygen, they were also like,

01:13:24   "We're not telling you if you have COVID or not.

01:13:25   We're just letting you know."

01:13:26   - Yeah, these numbers may not be accurate, accurate,

01:13:29   but if they're really out of whack,

01:13:30   you might say, "Hey, maybe look into this."

01:13:34   - Yep.

01:13:35   - And blood oxygen, the official thing

01:13:36   they use that in hospitals is very similar to an Apple Watch.

01:13:39   So it's not even that they're far from,

01:13:41   Like that is not new technology.

01:13:42   Shining a light through your skin,

01:13:44   as long as your skin is white,

01:13:45   shining a light through your skin

01:13:46   and getting a blood oxygenation measurement

01:13:48   is long established technology.

01:13:50   And even on that, they're like,

01:13:51   "Well, we do have a light and we do shine it into your skin,

01:13:53   "but we're not gonna make lots of promises

01:13:55   "because it is your wrist and not your fingertip

01:13:56   "and yada yada."

01:13:58   - Thanks to our sponsors this week,

01:14:00   Memberful and the Tech Meme Ride Home podcast.

01:14:03   And thanks to our members who support us directly.

01:14:05   You can join us at ATP.FM/JOIN.

01:14:08   We will talk to you next week.

01:14:11   Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

01:14:18   'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:14:24   John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:14:29   'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:14:34   And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:14:39   And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:14:48   So that's Kasey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:14:52   Auntie Marco Armin S-I-R-A-C

01:14:57   U-S-A-C-R-A-C-Uza

01:15:00   It's accidental (It's accidental)

01:15:03   They didn't mean to, accidental (Accidental)

01:15:08   ♪ Can't protect my cast so long ♪

01:15:12   - I see something fascinating in the show notes

01:15:17   for the after show.

01:15:18   It reads as follows, "Marco drove a Rivian."

01:15:23   Tell me everything.

01:15:26   - But why would he need to do that?

01:15:27   He's already got a perfectly good vehicle

01:15:30   for driving on the sand.

01:15:31   Why would he ever even look at another one?

01:15:33   It performs beautifully, it solves his problem entirely.

01:15:36   he even gave this car a watch.

01:15:38   - Are we really going there?

01:15:39   I was gonna be gentle on you, Marco,

01:15:41   but I am here for laughing about

01:15:44   the poorly constructed British car,

01:15:46   if that's what we wanna do.

01:15:46   - Well, I would love to know the order of events.

01:15:48   Did the car rebel when it heard you were straying,

01:15:50   or did you stray when it rebelled?

01:15:52   (laughing)

01:15:52   - That car rebelled on the way to drive the Rivian.

01:15:55   - Oh, it knows, it's like when you take your dog to the vet.

01:15:58   It knows. - It knew, it knew.

01:16:00   - But I will say, so there's a few relevant details here.

01:16:04   But first, what happened the day before

01:16:07   was I sold the Tesla.

01:16:09   - Oh, you didn't tell us this.

01:16:10   This is genuinely new news.

01:16:11   I'm not putting on an ad here. - Yes, I was saving it

01:16:12   for the show.

01:16:13   - Oh, this is news.

01:16:15   Who or what did you sell it to?

01:16:17   - So, as you know, I've been looking to try to get

01:16:20   just somebody to buy it.

01:16:22   I just wanted to do some kind of trade-in thing.

01:16:24   I didn't wanna go through eBay or Cars and Bids

01:16:27   or anything, 'cause I'm hardly ever there

01:16:30   where this car is, and it's winter.

01:16:32   I don't want to go get it cleaned and take pictures.

01:16:35   - You're perfectly timing this sale

01:16:36   for the peak of the used Tesla market though, not exactly.

01:16:39   - Yeah, exactly.

01:16:40   So anyway, and what kept killing the value of the car,

01:16:45   so whenever you go online you fill out a form of like,

01:16:48   give me a quote for this car,

01:16:50   what would kill it is that officially

01:16:52   in whatever database they're looking at,

01:16:54   it has an accident report.

01:16:56   Because, and I think I said this on the show

01:16:58   when it happened, a couple years ago it got scraped

01:17:00   by a plow in the ferry parking lot.

01:17:02   - We talked about it.

01:17:02   - Yeah, it blew the tire up and everything.

01:17:04   - While it was parked.

01:17:05   - Yes, I wasn't even there.

01:17:07   It was parked, it got scraped on the front bumper panel

01:17:11   or whatever, so it was bad enough that a body shop

01:17:14   had to replace the bumper.

01:17:15   And I went through insurance,

01:17:17   'cause it would have cost like $6,000

01:17:19   because of the way Teslas are made.

01:17:21   So anyway, went through insurance,

01:17:24   and apparently that got reported as quote, an accident.

01:17:28   But there were no details in these databases

01:17:29   of what this accident was.

01:17:30   So whenever I'd go on, whenever I'd like fill out a thing,

01:17:34   I'd be like, alright, model year, model mileage,

01:17:37   and it would tell me, okay, it's worth this.

01:17:40   But then once it got down to like, alright,

01:17:41   give us your license plate or VIN

01:17:43   so we can give you like a firm offer

01:17:44   on your particular car, it would go down like 10 grand

01:17:48   because of that stupid accident report.

01:17:50   Anyway, so I was at my wits end, and I was gonna like,

01:17:53   I'm fine, I'm just gonna, let me just see.

01:17:56   A few people said, try CarMax.

01:17:59   And I hadn't tried CarMax before because they,

01:18:03   for certain cars they won't give you a quote online.

01:18:06   It basically says like, your car is too rare or finicky

01:18:10   in the market value so you need to bring it to our store

01:18:13   and we'll give you a quote in person.

01:18:15   So I was like, I don't wanna deal with that.

01:18:17   But I was on my wits end so I eventually,

01:18:19   I'm like, you know what, let me go see what they have to say

01:18:22   'cause I don't wanna deal with this anymore.

01:18:23   I'm tired of having three cars, it's a pain in the butt.

01:18:26   This car is decreasing in value every day, I don't sell it.

01:18:31   And the last thing I want is to be sitting on this

01:18:33   any longer than I have to.

01:18:35   So it's already gone down enough since last fall.

01:18:38   I wanna sell it, right?

01:18:42   So I went, I drove all the way to the nearest one

01:18:44   which was in New Jersey, it's an hour away.

01:18:47   I'm like, I'm gonna drive an hour for this.

01:18:49   But let me just see.

01:18:50   And honestly, I was a little sad to sell the Tesla

01:18:53   because I loved that car.

01:18:56   But as I was driving there, my back's all hurting

01:19:00   and I'm trying to get the seat in the right spot

01:19:02   so it doesn't irritate sciatic stuff.

01:19:04   And I'm like, since I've been away from this car

01:19:07   for so long, I can't get comfortable in it now.

01:19:09   And I'm sitting on the ground

01:19:12   and everyone's all higher than me.

01:19:14   And I'm like, I'm ready to get rid of it now.

01:19:17   Plus it is driving around in a big red mega hat.

01:19:20   So anyway, I get there and I'm kind of saying

01:19:24   a bite of the car on the way there.

01:19:26   We've had our good times.

01:19:27   I love my cars, not all of them, but many of them.

01:19:30   I love my cars.

01:19:31   But yeah, the comfort thing, it was time.

01:19:34   And it took forever.

01:19:37   You go in there, and everyone there is very nice,

01:19:40   but it's like, oh, we're behind.

01:19:41   It's gonna be like a 45 minute wait

01:19:43   before you even see somebody.

01:19:44   Then you sit down with somebody at,

01:19:46   it basically looks like a car dealership in there.

01:19:48   It's like a bunch of sales desks.

01:19:49   You sit down with somebody and it takes forever

01:19:52   to go through all the different steps in the computer.

01:19:53   and they're very nice about it,

01:19:54   but it's just a very slow process.

01:19:56   I think I was there for like two and a half hours,

01:19:59   but I eventually got a number.

01:20:02   And I was on the way there,

01:20:05   I was like telling myself in my head,

01:20:06   all right, I'm hoping to get this.

01:20:09   Here's the like, you know,

01:20:10   Kelly Blue Book dealer trade in value.

01:20:13   Then here's what I would accept below that.

01:20:17   And then like, you know, another big chunk below that,

01:20:20   here's the minimum I would accept.

01:20:22   And I told myself, I'm like, even though I've driven there,

01:20:25   and I'm gonna be tempted to just,

01:20:26   even if they lowball me, I'm gonna be tempted to take it,

01:20:28   just because I've driven so far and it's been so long,

01:20:30   but I'm like, I'm not gonna take anything below this number.

01:20:33   I tell myself before I get there, right?

01:20:36   So, go through the whole thing, and sure enough,

01:20:38   they're like, well, here's what we're basing the offer on,

01:20:40   here's all these, check, check, check, check,

01:20:41   all these different lists, and then here's,

01:20:43   it says there's an action, and I explained to the guy

01:20:45   like what that was, but I don't think there's any

01:20:47   like human input, really, I think it seemed like

01:20:50   it was all algorithmic and then take it or leave it.

01:20:53   It didn't seem like there was a lot of negotiation

01:20:55   or human adjustment happening there.

01:20:57   - Oh, there is, but keep going.

01:20:59   - Oh, there is, well that's good to know.

01:21:00   - 'Cause I have experience with this

01:21:02   because the BMW almost got sold to CarMax,

01:21:05   and by the way, CarMax based in Richmond,

01:21:07   and I actually did a little work for them

01:21:08   a couple of jobs ago, so I am more familiar

01:21:12   than you would expect with how CarMax works.

01:21:13   - Yeah, you're the reason I originally heard about it.

01:21:16   But anyway, so the offer came back,

01:21:19   and it was right in the middle of what I wanted.

01:21:23   Like it was about 10% less than the Blue Book trade-in value

01:21:28   and a recent Model S recently sold on cars and bids

01:21:33   that had very similar specs, very similar year,

01:21:36   very similar mileage, Model S, unlimited supercharging,

01:21:38   all that stuff and it was very slightly below

01:21:42   what that sold for.

01:21:43   - Nice.

01:21:44   - So I was like, sold.

01:21:45   I'm like, it's yours, take it.

01:21:48   Give me the check right now,

01:21:49   and I am sprinting out of here.

01:21:52   - And that's basically what happened.

01:21:53   It was great, so I can honestly say

01:21:56   I had a pretty good experience with CarMax.

01:21:58   It did take forever, but everybody was very nice,

01:22:01   and the offer was good, and it was way higher.

01:22:04   I would say it was probably maybe 20% higher

01:22:08   than anything else I got from anybody else,

01:22:10   any other office. - That's awesome.

01:22:11   - Did you take two cars there?

01:22:12   Is that how you dropped off the car

01:22:14   and then you got driven back and someone else?

01:22:15   - No, I took a Lyft back.

01:22:17   - An hour?

01:22:18   Oh, that must have been expensive.

01:22:18   - Yeah, you're really cutting into the sale price

01:22:20   of your car with that ride.

01:22:21   - Seriously.

01:22:21   - It was like 60 bucks, it's not that bad.

01:22:23   I mean, you know, considering--

01:22:24   - That's actually much less than I thought.

01:22:25   - Yeah, so anyway, and that was easy, that was fine.

01:22:29   You know, it was New Jersey, that was the hardest part.

01:22:31   You know, I had to turn left and that was the whole thing.

01:22:33   But, you know, we figured it out.

01:22:35   (laughing)

01:22:36   - Good thing you didn't have to pump your own gas, though.

01:22:38   - Yeah, it's true.

01:22:39   - Well, congratulations, congratulations, that's exciting.

01:22:41   - Thank you.

01:22:42   (laughing)

01:22:43   The following morning, a friend of mine has had for a while a Rivian R1T, the truck Rivian,

01:22:51   and he had offered months ago, "Hey, if you ever want to come by, see a test drive, let

01:22:55   me know."

01:22:56   And I was in town, so I'm like, "Hey, you know what?

01:22:58   I would like to do that, yes please!"

01:23:01   So anyway, I get in the Land Rover, as I'm pulling out of my driveway, the dashboard

01:23:08   lights up with a whole lot of lights, the car is like losing power, it's like it was

01:23:12   shifted into neutral. I'm like what happened? What the heck is going on? And it's you know

01:23:19   all the lights in the dashboard are on like all the error lights everything's warning

01:23:22   warning like something's wrong. Did the British national anthem start playing? God Save the

01:23:28   King. I can't even name the song. I joke would have been better if I knew more about it.

01:23:32   God Save the King. Sorry Brits. So anyway I'm like what do I what do I do here? And

01:23:38   I noticed one of the lights that was lit was the battery light and I happened to have plugged

01:23:44   in to one of the little 12 volt ports one of those like big rechargeable lithium batteries

01:23:51   like the kind that has a built in AC inverter.

01:23:53   I bought one of these months ago so that for multiple reasons you know backup power and

01:23:58   stuff like that and I got a small one so that it could go in the car and that way Adam could

01:24:03   use his gaming PC on long car trips so I had this battery and I'm not going to name the

01:24:07   because it's a terrible battery.

01:24:08   It is very buggy, it was supposed to have like USB-C

01:24:12   in and out and it's the buggiest thing I've ever used

01:24:15   in that way, like it's incredibly unreliable.

01:24:17   I have no faith in the reliability of this battery

01:24:21   and I should have gotten a Jackery.

01:24:23   I know it's this ridiculous sounding name.

01:24:25   That's the good brand and I had one of those in the past

01:24:28   and it got water damage at some point

01:24:31   and so I don't have it anymore.

01:24:32   - Oh you don't say?

01:24:33   - It was indoors, okay?

01:24:35   It was, it was.

01:24:36   - By an, like actually indoors?

01:24:38   - It was in the water closet, yeah.

01:24:40   - Yeah, right, actually indoors or indoors-ish?

01:24:42   - It was in the basement water closet.

01:24:44   - Oh, gosh. (laughs)

01:24:45   - Where the water main comes up from the sand

01:24:47   and goes into my house.

01:24:49   - Many rooms in Marco's house are semi-aquatic.

01:24:51   (laughs)

01:24:52   - Yeah, well, it was sitting on sand,

01:24:54   running some heat trace on a pipe

01:24:57   so it wouldn't freeze over Christmas

01:24:58   when we had that massive cold spell

01:25:00   but we were leaving for a few days.

01:25:01   I hook up this backup battery

01:25:03   so that in case we had a big power outage,

01:25:05   our water main would have something like 18 hours

01:25:08   of backup power before it could potentially freeze.

01:25:12   And there was a huge,

01:25:14   the way that massive Christmas storm came through here

01:25:16   was first as a whole bunch of rain.

01:25:18   This backup power thing is sitting

01:25:21   in a boxed-in insulated closet

01:25:23   where the floor of it is sand.

01:25:26   And enough water came up through the sand

01:25:30   to have at least a few inches of water

01:25:31   to the point where when I got home,

01:25:34   I pick up this battery and I hear whoosh, whoosh,

01:25:36   and I'm like, oh no.

01:25:37   - That's not good.

01:25:38   - Batteries do not like to have salt water inside them

01:25:40   in general.

01:25:41   - No, I pick it up and I tilted it

01:25:43   and all this water just pours out.

01:25:45   (laughing)

01:25:46   - Oh, that's very bad.

01:25:47   - Like, oh no.

01:25:49   - If that happens with your car also, also bad.

01:25:51   - Yes.

01:25:52   (laughing)

01:25:53   - You ever tilt your car and salt water comes out?

01:25:54   - Yeah, not good.

01:25:55   - Anyway, so that's how I lost my Jackery

01:25:57   and I should have bought another one,

01:25:58   but instead I tried this other brand that was all like USA

01:26:02   and it's terrible.

01:26:03   Anyway, so I had this other brand's battery

01:26:05   plugged in charging to my car.

01:26:08   And as I am driving, I'm getting all this,

01:26:12   what appears to be power loss,

01:26:14   the engine is cutting off everything.

01:26:17   So I don't know enough about gas-powered cars to know,

01:26:19   but if there's too much draw on the alternator,

01:26:23   is it possible that the engine actually stops

01:26:25   'cause it can't make sparks?

01:26:26   Is that a thing?

01:26:27   - What are you talking about?

01:26:29   You're saying if your battery's dead,

01:26:32   it could undervolt all the electronics,

01:26:33   which could screw with your engine.

01:26:34   - Yeah, so my theory of what happened

01:26:37   is that this crappy battery that I had plugged in

01:26:41   that was charging through the cigarette lighter

01:26:42   kind of plug, maybe it was pulling too much power,

01:26:45   although wouldn't the fuse have tripped?

01:26:47   Like, I don't know.

01:26:48   - Yeah, no, I don't think, I mean,

01:26:50   the only way this should ever happen in a healthy car

01:26:52   is if your battery is no longer holding

01:26:54   a charge sufficiently.

01:26:56   - Right. - That's basically it.

01:26:57   I don't think there's anything you can plug in

01:26:59   that would cause the electricity to be pulled

01:27:02   from the engine to a degree,

01:27:03   or any of the other essential systems.

01:27:05   I don't know, I mean, I would assume

01:27:06   there'd be electronic lockouts, like you said,

01:27:08   a fuse or something similar.

01:27:09   - Yeah. - That doesn't let you

01:27:11   stop the engine computers from functioning

01:27:13   and firing the fuel injectors or whatever.

01:27:15   - Yeah, so anyway, I'm like, what do I do here?

01:27:18   So I just unplugged everything that was plugged in

01:27:20   to any USB port on the car,

01:27:22   and I unplugged that battery thing, and it restarted,

01:27:25   and I had to, as part of getting to my friend's house,

01:27:28   I had to drive up a hill and it started losing power again

01:27:31   going up the hill and I'm like, oh no.

01:27:33   It felt like a transmission problem.

01:27:35   - Now that doesn't feel like,

01:27:36   also here's the thing that's confusing this, right?

01:27:39   So some people in the chat were saying,

01:27:40   well, it's not like you overloaded the battery,

01:27:42   you just, it had just drained the battery,

01:27:44   like leaving your dome light on

01:27:45   for the people who know what a dome light is or what.

01:27:48   And if your battery is drained,

01:27:50   it's not like your battery is bad and has to be replaced,

01:27:52   but you've drained all the electricity out of it

01:27:53   and you end up undervolting something

01:27:55   and it gets screwed up, right?

01:27:56   But then with the whole thing of going up a hill

01:27:57   and you're losing power, it's like, well, it's not an electric car, the battery doesn't

01:28:01   actually drive the wheels, how is that happening? Once you undervolt systems in modern cars

01:28:06   and parts of your dashboard light up, the car may not be happy until it is convinced

01:28:12   that all is well, because as far as it's concerned, all sorts of error codes are happening, not

01:28:17   because parts of the car are necessarily broken, but because they briefly didn't receive enough

01:28:22   electricity to function and are now throwing error codes because they're like, "I don't

01:28:25   what's going on, the world has gone crazy, I as a sensor declare sensor bankruptcy, I

01:28:31   don't know what's going on, and you have to sort of reset all the systems, right?

01:28:35   And that could cause the car to say, like, go into limp mode or not provide power or

01:28:40   whatever, but I'm giving these things because it's the hopeful answer, which is like, don't

01:28:43   worry, just unplug all your stuff, recharge your battery, reset all the codes and you'll

01:28:46   be fine.

01:28:47   But the other possibility that your car is breaking like British cars have for many decades

01:28:52   is much worse.

01:28:54   It felt bad.

01:28:55   Like, I've never felt a car do this before.

01:28:58   It felt really bad.

01:28:59   Anyway, I made it up the hill, I got the rest of the way to my friend's house.

01:29:04   When I was driving back after the Rivian test drive, which I'll get to in a moment, it had

01:29:07   the check engine light on.

01:29:08   I'm like, "Oh, God.

01:29:09   What did I break?"

01:29:11   But then, today, it wasn't on anymore.

01:29:15   And the car worked fine all day today, and I drove it a lot today, and everything was

01:29:19   fine.

01:29:20   It was a temporary battery thing caused by that stupid battery pack that I should never have bought

01:29:26   I should have gotten the Jackery damn it, but I didn't

01:29:28   I should have just gotten the same one again

01:29:31   But I thought I could go smaller and this other brand that that was a mistake anyway

01:29:36   So the land River seems to be fine now, but it well Sunroof accepted. Oh, yeah, the Sunroof is still broken

01:29:41   I consider that a win

01:29:43   He's already got things that he's just

01:29:45   Signing off as well. That doesn't count as being broken anymore. It's just part of the car now

01:29:49   - Yeah, right. (laughs)

01:29:52   Anyway, so, I did get to drive an R1T.

01:29:56   This is not the R1S, the SUV,

01:29:58   that's the one I'm actually waiting for.

01:29:59   I've been on the wait list for the R1S for,

01:30:01   oh God, a long time, and every time I look at my date

01:30:06   for when my R1S reservation is going to come in,

01:30:09   it is a few months later than the last time I looked,

01:30:12   which is very discouraging.

01:30:14   Anyway, I can tell you one thing,

01:30:17   when my landing river was broken yesterday,

01:30:18   I definitely, if there was an easy way for me

01:30:21   to have gotten a Rivian that day, I would have.

01:30:24   (laughing)

01:30:24   Like, I would have sold the Lamb River that day

01:30:27   and traded, like, gotten a Rivian.

01:30:28   Anyway, but you can't get 'em, so.

01:30:30   I did get to drive it, I got to play around with the console,

01:30:32   I got to ask my friend, like, you know,

01:30:33   what he thought of it after months of ownership

01:30:35   and everything, and ultimately,

01:30:38   I am very impressed by Rivian.

01:30:40   And so here's general high-level overview.

01:30:44   It feels a lot like a big Tesla.

01:30:47   And in lots of ways, you know, and you can clearly,

01:30:51   I would almost compare it to like,

01:30:54   Handspring versus Palm back in the 90s

01:30:56   when like, Handspring was a whole bunch of like,

01:30:58   ex-Palm people that like, went off and formed

01:31:00   like a better Palm, basically, and I think

01:31:03   there's a lot of that in Rivian, like I know

01:31:05   they've had some ex-Tesla employees that have joined Rivian,

01:31:08   there's tons of Tesla influence.

01:31:10   If you look at the whole rest of the auto industry

01:31:12   and the way they do things, the way they make cars,

01:31:14   the way they're-- - Like how everybody

01:31:15   - He supports Apple CarPlay and Android Auto,

01:31:17   but not Tesla, but also not Rivian.

01:31:19   - Yep. - Yes.

01:31:20   But if you look at the rest of the industry,

01:31:23   they do things a certain set of ways.

01:31:26   And then you see, oh, and here's how Tesla does things,

01:31:27   and it's very different, better in a lot of ways.

01:31:30   Well, Rivian is in that other group.

01:31:32   They're in the Tesla group of lots of similar stylings

01:31:37   in terms of how the screens are, how the dashboards are,

01:31:41   what's in the screens, what's not in the screens,

01:31:43   the layout of the screens,

01:31:44   the general design, the UI design, the feature sets.

01:31:48   Like there's so much, like one of the biggest things I miss

01:31:51   since having the Land Rover, I really miss dog mode,

01:31:56   which is this mode of Tesla where you could,

01:31:58   like if it's electric, you can keep it running,

01:32:00   you can keep the heat running or air conditioning

01:32:02   whenever you want for a very long time.

01:32:04   And so if we're like on a family trip,

01:32:07   and we're on a road trip and we have to like

01:32:09   go in to have a meal somewhere,

01:32:11   we can leave the dog in the car and have dog mode

01:32:14   keep the climate control running the whole time

01:32:17   and show on the screen, hey, the dog is happy,

01:32:20   it's 70 degrees or whatever,

01:32:22   and so no one's gonna break my windows

01:32:23   and my dog is not in danger.

01:32:24   That's a feature that I don't know how many cars offer that.

01:32:28   Every Tesla does and Rivian does.

01:32:31   And I don't know if anyone else does.

01:32:33   You know, the Land Rover has a remote climate thing

01:32:35   where you can start the car climate remotely,

01:32:38   but it'll only run for 30 minutes.

01:32:40   And then it stops, and it won't do it again

01:32:42   until you go start the car physically, like in person.

01:32:45   So it kind of has that feature, but not

01:32:47   a very good version of it.

01:32:49   There's a whole bunch of features

01:32:50   like that that Rivian and Tesla have, and no one else seems to,

01:32:53   or at least doesn't have a good version of it.

01:32:55   Lots and lots of that kind of stuff on the Rivian.

01:32:57   But the Rivian is like a better Tesla.

01:33:02   They've clearly taken a lot of influence.

01:33:04   They've learned from Tesla's pluses and minuses.

01:33:07   They're basically doing a better version.

01:33:09   It's a lot like if Tesla was run by an adult.

01:33:13   - They have stalks on the steering wheel.

01:33:15   - Yes.

01:33:15   - They have a steering wheel.

01:33:16   - They actually have a steering wheel, yeah.

01:33:18   - Yes, it's a complete circle, or at least close enough.

01:33:20   I think it might have the flat bottom or whatever,

01:33:21   but it's got a flat bottom, otherwise why even bother?

01:33:24   - Right, but yeah, so it's a circular steering wheel.

01:33:27   There's a shifter, like a real shifter.

01:33:30   It's a column shifter, but you know, it's a shifter.

01:33:33   Yeah, there's the stalks and the knobs

01:33:35   and the buttons and everything.

01:33:37   Not a ton, you know, there's still a lot that's on the screen

01:33:39   but the screen is well designed.

01:33:41   - It's like your original Model S,

01:33:43   which used to have stalks and everything like that,

01:33:45   before they decided, no, we're moving all of that.

01:33:47   - Right, and I found the touchscreen to be very responsive.

01:33:51   Like the animations are really smooth, panning around,

01:33:53   and the map is super fast and smooth, almost iPad-like.

01:33:56   Very responsive, I was very impressed by that,

01:33:58   'cause the Tesla's not that responsive.

01:34:00   It's gotten better over time,

01:34:01   like the older Model S's were way slower

01:34:03   than the more modern ones,

01:34:04   but it's still, the Rivian was very good

01:34:07   in the responsiveness.

01:34:08   And I think the quote unquote older Rivians also are worse because a lot of these EV companies

01:34:12   that the day they launch their software is super janky but they rapidly iterate on the

01:34:16   software responsiveness because it's usually at this point not a hardware limitation. It's

01:34:20   just that I don't know why they all have this problem but they always launch with bad responsiveness

01:34:24   on the touch screens and you're like if you're worried if you're a day one owner is it always

01:34:28   going to be like this but you know software updates very often save it so you're getting

01:34:32   to see the Rivian with the 1.0 bugs shaking out a little bit.

01:34:35   - Yeah, but it's still like, I mean,

01:34:37   like for instance, one of the clear benefits here

01:34:42   is like the Rivian is designed for people

01:34:45   who are still driving it.

01:34:46   They're not making these big pronouncements,

01:34:48   oh we're gonna have self-driving cars in two years

01:34:51   or one year, just give us an extra $5,000.

01:34:53   They're not doing that kind of crap.

01:34:55   And they have what Tesla calls autopilot,

01:34:57   which is lane centering with adaptive cruise control.

01:35:00   They have that.

01:35:01   And it's by all reviews, I didn't actually try it,

01:35:04   we didn't go on the highway, but from all reviews

01:35:05   it seems like it's just as good as Tesla Autopilot.

01:35:07   It doesn't do like, you know, lane change and stuff,

01:35:09   but I never did that anyway,

01:35:10   'cause it was really conservative and weird,

01:35:13   and I never really used that feature.

01:35:15   But the regular, like, you know,

01:35:16   lane keeping and adaptive cruise,

01:35:18   I use that all the time,

01:35:20   and I really miss that,

01:35:20   'cause the Land Rover has neither of those things,

01:35:22   and I really miss that. (laughs)

01:35:24   But, you know, this is a car that's designed

01:35:27   to be driven by a human still,

01:35:29   just to have these assistive functionality,

01:35:31   you know, when you want them,

01:35:32   but it still has a steering wheel,

01:35:34   it still has a shifter,

01:35:35   It still has knobs and buttons on stalks,

01:35:37   and you can do a lot on the stalks.

01:35:39   - Can you open the glove box with your hand?

01:35:41   - It doesn't have a glove box.

01:35:43   - Oh, that's right, that's just the big, yeah.

01:35:45   - Yeah, so anyway, I'll get to that in a second.

01:35:46   But for the most part, every Tesla vehicle

01:35:49   has some weird door handle thing.

01:35:52   Rivian doesn't.

01:35:55   There is no pop-out door handle.

01:35:56   There are no gull wing doors.

01:35:58   There is no weird handle that you're not supposed to pull

01:36:01   on the Model 3 where it's like, okay, don't pull this handle

01:36:03   and every time you get in there for the first time,

01:36:04   and you pull it and you're like,

01:36:05   "Oh, you opened the door wrong."

01:36:06   - I did that to underscore his car, I think, twice.

01:36:08   - Yeah, me too. (laughs)

01:36:11   Like, you know, you just operate this car,

01:36:13   it has regular, pretty much, regular door handles,

01:36:16   and on the inside and outside,

01:36:17   like you just operate it like a regular car,

01:36:19   and it just works because it's designed to be

01:36:22   a really good regular car, as opposed to,

01:36:24   Tesla is designed to be some kind of self-driving spaceship

01:36:27   that no one's ever actually supposed to touch,

01:36:29   and you kinda have to work around their constant desire

01:36:32   to be innovative in superficial ways.

01:36:35   The experience of being a Tesla owner is like

01:36:37   a lot of really nice things, very nicely driving cars,

01:36:41   but every car has at least one of those dumb things

01:36:44   that you have to work around and you kind of have to forgive.

01:36:47   Well, they're being very forward looking.

01:36:48   It's like, "Well, this thing is stupid and breaks."

01:36:51   - And it's great as long as you don't want a steering wheel.

01:36:54   - So, by the way, I saw my first one of those in person,

01:36:56   the first half steering wheel Teslas.

01:36:59   It looks super weird when you see it,

01:37:01   especially like when you're sitting in Atlanta River,

01:37:02   like in the sky looking down into a Model S.

01:37:05   That's, it looks really weird.

01:37:07   Anyway, I'm so glad I didn't buy one of those.

01:37:10   So the Rivian, it just, it seems like a really nicely

01:37:13   designed vehicle that's, and it's thoughtfully designed.

01:37:17   Like there's all sorts of functionality in there.

01:37:19   Not just like the regular driving stuff.

01:37:21   I mean, that's one thing, that's a big thing.

01:37:22   That's most of the appeal is like the regular driving stuff

01:37:25   seems really well done.

01:37:27   But also, you know, they have all their cool utility

01:37:28   features, you know, like this is the trucks

01:37:30   It had the gear tunnel and stuff like that,

01:37:32   and there's all sorts of stuff like that.

01:37:34   But it just overall, the feeling I got from driving it

01:37:36   was like, this is a car designed by people

01:37:40   who have learned from all of Tesla's mistakes,

01:37:43   are doing a better job of that style,

01:37:45   and are doing it in a much more utility-centered way,

01:37:49   instead of trying to be too extreme

01:37:51   just for extremity's sake.

01:37:54   There were a few little things that I noticed.

01:37:57   So some things that are, I would say,

01:37:59   not negative, but neutral.

01:38:00   No CarPlay, as you mentioned.

01:38:03   - Oh, that's negative, that ain't neutral, that's negative.

01:38:06   - So, now that I've been using CarPlay full-time

01:38:09   in the Land Rover for whatever it's been, how many months,

01:38:12   I think it's kind of a toss-up, honestly.

01:38:15   - Oh, hard disagree on that.

01:38:16   - Because I'm also using the ProClip USA phone mount

01:38:21   next to it.

01:38:23   I have a dual-screen setup, which is really nice,

01:38:26   'cause I can have, you know, music on one,

01:38:28   and the Waze directions on the big one.

01:38:30   Or I can actually, most of the time,

01:38:32   what I do is I have Waze on both.

01:38:34   'Cause if you run Waze in CarPlay when your phone is on,

01:38:38   in a dock or whatever, on the phone,

01:38:41   it'll show the list of turns.

01:38:43   And then on the CarPlay screen,

01:38:44   it'll show the big map and all the other stuff.

01:38:46   So you actually, it's like having dual monitors.

01:38:48   You have more information available to you.

01:38:50   So it's actually very nice.

01:38:51   But when I was in the Tesla driving to go get rid of it,

01:38:56   That was just using just a car mount for my phone

01:38:59   like I always do in there.

01:39:00   When I don't have CarPlay, I don't miss it.

01:39:04   As long as I can have a way to have my phone screen visible

01:39:08   and have Waze or whatever running on that, that's fine.

01:39:11   And in some ways, it's actually better than CarPlay.

01:39:14   So CarPlay is to me a nice to have.

01:39:17   I hope they add it.

01:39:18   I hope they have a software update in the future

01:39:20   that adds it, but I don't need it.

01:39:22   It's not something that I find a requirement,

01:39:25   a hard requirement.

01:39:26   So it's a nice to have, but not a hard requirement.

01:39:28   - I hear what you're saying, and I strongly disagree,

01:39:33   but I am genuinely glad that you feel that way,

01:39:35   because that leaves you more options,

01:39:37   particularly when it comes to fancy pants, electric cars.

01:39:40   - Yeah.

01:39:41   - I personally find it to be very,

01:39:43   any time I grab my phone, which I don't do often,

01:39:45   I've gotten better about over the years,

01:39:47   but any time I grab my phone, when the car is in motion,

01:39:50   even if I'm in a position where I feel like

01:39:52   it's safe to do it, which it probably isn't,

01:39:54   but that's neither here nor there,

01:39:55   I just feel like whatever I'm doing on that,

01:39:57   whatever I'm doing, it's way less safe than doing,

01:40:01   either waiting or doing a similar thing using CarPlay.

01:40:04   And so for that alone, I find CarPlay is very worth it to me

01:40:07   but again, to each their own and not insisting on it

01:40:12   like I petulantly do is certainly the easier approach.

01:40:16   - Yeah, I mean, certainly I would prefer if it was there

01:40:18   but it's not as big of a negative to not have it

01:40:23   as many people would feel, I think.

01:40:25   - Like me. - Yeah.

01:40:26   So I noticed also the regen braking

01:40:29   was actually way stronger than my Model S,

01:40:32   which I actually consider a good thing

01:40:34   because the other car that we now own

01:40:38   is still Tiff's little i3, we bought that out for her,

01:40:41   and I took a few drives in that when we were back

01:40:43   because I could and it was there,

01:40:45   and it was way more efficient and smaller

01:40:47   than the Giant Land Rover.

01:40:49   So I took a few drives in that

01:40:50   and that car has extreme regen.

01:40:52   You can come to a total stop very easily

01:40:54   with the i3 is regen.

01:40:56   And so, and I actually like that.

01:40:57   I like having very strong regen,

01:40:58   because then I can choose how much of that power to use,

01:41:02   how much of that to capture.

01:41:03   You can actually do the partial one pedal driving

01:41:06   a lot more of the time.

01:41:07   Model S is, it has good regen,

01:41:11   but the Rivian was far stronger, I noticed that instantly.

01:41:15   Some other downsides about it, no sunroof, as mentioned,

01:41:20   although I currently have no sunroof, so here we go.

01:41:24   Only two cup holders in the front.

01:41:25   I know this is like the standard number to have,

01:41:28   but the Model S actually has four,

01:41:30   at least the one I had,

01:41:31   because in the little center console,

01:41:33   you can set up two in there with these little inserts

01:41:36   that they had that were actually a really clever idea.

01:41:38   And then there were also the main two,

01:41:39   like by your elbow in the middle.

01:41:41   Oftentimes, we actually want like three.

01:41:44   It'll be like, me and Tiff will have a coffee,

01:41:46   and then we'll also have a shared water,

01:41:48   or maybe a water for the dog or something.

01:41:51   And so oftentimes, I want three cup holders in the front.

01:41:53   this is a small stupid thing I know,

01:41:55   but two is not enough really if we can have more.

01:41:59   - Regular non-fancy cars, you can put that water

01:42:01   in your door pocket, they have a place for water there.

01:42:04   - I know, I know, but it's not as nice.

01:42:06   Anyway. - I think it is.

01:42:07   I think it's better for like,

01:42:08   that's why we keep the driver's water,

01:42:10   is what you would call it, right?

01:42:11   So drinks go in the cup holders,

01:42:13   our court has I think just two cup holders

01:42:15   and they're pretty big,

01:42:16   but there's also in everybody's door,

01:42:18   there's a place for a pretty big water bottle,

01:42:19   so the kids have theirs in their doors,

01:42:21   I have mine as the driver by my shin in my door, my wife's car is in her door.

01:42:26   It always annoys me when I see these reviews of these $80,000 luxury cars where they show

01:42:30   trying to put even something as tiny as a little like, you know, Poland spring water

01:42:34   bottle and they can't fit it in the stupid door pocket because they made it so skinny

01:42:37   that you have to crush the bottle to get it in.

01:42:39   Total waste.

01:42:40   I think the Rivian has, does it have crappy door pockets?

01:42:43   I forget.

01:42:44   Some of the EVs have like...

01:42:45   They have, you can like pull them out.

01:42:46   Oh that's right, they have the accordion ones, yeah those are not good.

01:42:49   Really?

01:42:50   usually to be pretty good, but--

01:42:51   - No, like what we're talking about is a door pocket

01:42:53   that is a big rigid plastic thing

01:42:55   that holds a gigantic kid's water bottle

01:42:57   and you do not have to open or stretch anything,

01:42:59   like that's-- - Yeah, that's the way

01:43:00   my car goes. - It's not luxurious,

01:43:01   but that's like what the utilitarian like minivans

01:43:04   and Honda Accords have.

01:43:05   - Yeah, I mean that's what the Land Rover has,

01:43:06   just a giant, just giant pocket, yeah.

01:43:09   Anyway, I consider it a bit of a negative to the Rivian

01:43:13   that it has very, very similar to early Model S's.

01:43:17   it has an overly minimal front console and dashboard.

01:43:20   So like, you know, it's, in fact,

01:43:23   exactly the same mistake that old Model S has made.

01:43:25   They have that like flat floor across the front

01:43:28   where you have this giant spot in front of the front,

01:43:31   like between the armrest and the front dashboard area,

01:43:35   there's like a flat floor.

01:43:37   And you can't really put much there.

01:43:38   Like maybe if you have like--

01:43:39   - That's for your purse.

01:43:41   - That's exactly what I was gonna say.

01:43:42   I'm not kidding, that is for your purse.

01:43:44   - But it's way too big for most purses.

01:43:46   I'm not sure you've seen most purses, right?

01:43:48   - Well, and you also, you don't wanna put much there

01:43:51   because it can very easily tip over into your footwell.

01:43:54   And you don't want that.

01:43:55   - Yeah, the better ones put little fencing there.

01:43:57   But that spot actually is really important.

01:43:59   A place to put your gigantic purse

01:44:01   that is not the passenger seat

01:44:02   is actually a big design consideration

01:44:04   for utilitarian family-led cars.

01:44:05   And I think that's what they're going for,

01:44:06   but what they missed is what you're talking about,

01:44:08   which is like, an electric car,

01:44:09   it's easy to make it actually flat,

01:44:11   'cause you're like, hey, there's nothing going through there.

01:44:12   Like, there's no transmission tunnel, right?

01:44:14   It's really easy, right?

01:44:15   but they forget, some of them forget,

01:44:17   that you kinda do need something to,

01:44:19   kinda like a ship at sea,

01:44:21   to sort of hold that giant person in place

01:44:22   so it doesn't roll into anybody's foot well,

01:44:24   and that's why a lot of the better ones have like,

01:44:26   not big fencing there, but like little ridges or whatever

01:44:30   to sort of make it so that if you were to put a soda can

01:44:32   in there for example, it wouldn't actually roll

01:44:34   on your feet, it would just go back and forth.

01:44:35   - Yeah, and it has like, it's like a small little

01:44:37   kind of tray thing on the floor there,

01:44:39   but it's not substantial.

01:44:41   I loved, in my very first model,

01:44:45   I had two Model S's over the years.

01:44:47   The first one had that flat floor thing

01:44:49   and there was just some aftermarket company

01:44:50   that made inserts and I just got an aftermarket insert

01:44:53   that looked like a big regular console

01:44:55   and then when that lease sort of ended

01:44:58   (laughs)

01:44:59   and I got the second one,

01:45:01   the second one basically had that built in from the factory.

01:45:03   Like it was a very similar kind of thing.

01:45:05   They realized, oh, people want this

01:45:07   and they built it in.

01:45:08   So hopefully with Rivian's,

01:45:11   what appears to be pretty clear success,

01:45:14   Hopefully the aftermarket companies will come around

01:45:16   and make--

01:45:17   they might have already made some kind of console insert

01:45:20   for that.

01:45:21   So anyway, compared to the Defender

01:45:23   that I've been driving now for whatever months,

01:45:26   the Defender has a more comfortable ride.

01:45:29   One benefit Land Rover has, they don't work very well.

01:45:32   But when they do work, they're really good.

01:45:34   They are very comfortable.

01:45:35   And the Land Rover was more comfortable.

01:45:37   The Defender also has way more console storage.

01:45:43   There's compartments all over the place with the Defender,

01:45:46   and the Defender ones are also lined with rubber material,

01:45:50   'cause it's made for, made to be an off-roader.

01:45:51   So even the cup holders have those little rubber protrusions

01:45:54   into them so they hold, they squish your bottle

01:45:57   so it stays in place.

01:45:59   The Rivian doesn't, it has a little bit of stuff like that,

01:46:01   but not much.

01:46:02   It's much more minimal, flat surfaces,

01:46:05   not a lot of storage, interior.

01:46:08   The Defender also has the rear view mirror camera,

01:46:12   which I love, like the rear view mirror,

01:46:15   you flip it and it becomes a screen

01:46:17   and there's a camera in like the tail fin thing,

01:46:20   looks like a radio antenna,

01:46:21   there's a camera in that, it looks back

01:46:23   and so you can replace your entire rear view

01:46:25   from an optical mirror thing to a camera

01:46:27   and the screen is so high res and so high frame rate,

01:46:32   you instantly forget it's a screen, you just see better

01:46:35   and it's amazing, like I've never seen as smooth and nice

01:46:39   of a camera and screen as that is, and it's so, so nice.

01:46:43   Rivian doesn't offer that.

01:46:44   - I'm kind of shocked that the big EVs don't have that,

01:46:46   'cause that's becoming more and more common

01:46:47   on just regular cars, like you noted,

01:46:48   like it's a Land Rover and it's not even the latest model

01:46:51   of Land Rover, and a lot of cars have that now

01:46:53   as an option, like with the flips from mirror to screen.

01:46:56   Why wouldn't they put that on all the EVs?

01:46:57   You know they've got the cameras,

01:46:58   you know they've got the computing and the screen tech.

01:47:00   I guess they just figured, oh, we don't need that.

01:47:01   We have the big screen and the dashboard,

01:47:02   but it's the internal combustion engine

01:47:05   that seems to be getting that feature faster

01:47:06   than the fancy EVs do.

01:47:07   - Yeah, and that's like the one thing

01:47:10   that I think Rivian does lag behind in cameras.

01:47:12   Like it has a backup camera

01:47:13   and it's nice and high resolution

01:47:15   and it has that top down view

01:47:17   that most modern cars have now

01:47:19   that have a bunch of cameras on them, which is nice.

01:47:21   But like the Defender still has way more cameras.

01:47:23   Like it has like better like the different views

01:47:27   for the off-roading modes that you can get.

01:47:29   Oh, show me like my front left wheel,

01:47:31   what's going on around that.

01:47:32   Like there's more cameras I think in the Defender.

01:47:35   Certainly it makes better use of them.

01:47:37   And again, that rear view camera is really,

01:47:39   it's such a good feature,

01:47:40   I really hope more people adopt it.

01:47:42   The Defender overall,

01:47:44   the Defender rides higher and everything,

01:47:45   but on the plus side to the Rivian,

01:47:50   the Rivian is electric.

01:47:52   That makes it better in a billion ways.

01:47:54   I miss electric so much

01:47:58   and I cannot wait to go back to it.

01:48:00   It's so much better than gas in every possible way.

01:48:04   The Rivian is way faster, way more responsive.

01:48:08   You have all the benefits of electric,

01:48:09   charging at home, never having to go to a crappy gas station,

01:48:12   the massive environmental savings.

01:48:14   It's so, so nice to be electric.

01:48:17   Also, one little fun benefit.

01:48:20   So one of the different experiments I've done

01:48:24   over the months I've had the Defender is

01:48:27   I keep and occasionally use MaxTrax traction boards.

01:48:33   and these are these giant Australian plastic boards

01:48:37   with all these little teeth on them,

01:48:38   and if you or someone near you is stuck,

01:48:41   you can stick these under the wheels

01:48:43   and basically drive out.

01:48:45   It's kind of miraculous how well they work.

01:48:46   - That'd be a perfect candidate for the gear tunnel.

01:48:49   - Yes, so the downside of Maxtrax is that they're huge,

01:48:54   and also, once you have used them,

01:48:57   they are then covered in sand or mud or whatever,

01:49:00   and you don't really wanna put them back in your vehicle.

01:49:03   So I learned this the hard way.

01:49:06   I have not yet had to pull myself out of anything

01:49:10   with the Maxtrax, but I have occasionally

01:49:12   pulled other people out of situations with Maxtrax,

01:49:14   and it's a wonderful feeling to be able to help somebody.

01:49:18   I love having that capability,

01:49:20   but I had to then put them back in my vehicles.

01:49:23   I first was storing them just in the trunk,

01:49:25   and they're huge, they take up a ton of space in the trunk,

01:49:28   And then getting them out of the trunk is hard

01:49:31   if there's anything in front of them, blocking them in.

01:49:34   And I tried keeping them in a roof box,

01:49:35   but that made my car too tall.

01:49:37   There's all sorts of roof rack mounts you can get for them,

01:49:39   but the Defender is so tall stock

01:49:42   that you don't wanna put anything on the roof.

01:49:43   If you ever wanna go into a garage or anything, you can't.

01:49:46   So any kind of roof mounting option

01:49:48   was out the window for me.

01:49:49   I eventually found a spare tire mount that works,

01:49:52   so they're mounted on my spare tire,

01:49:54   like on the back of the car.

01:49:56   But this has its own challenges.

01:49:57   first of all, it makes the car longer,

01:50:00   which makes it fit less well in garages

01:50:02   in a different dimension.

01:50:04   They're also just out there in the elements,

01:50:05   so they're getting damaged by the sun slowly,

01:50:07   and you have to lock them, so I have a lock

01:50:10   that has to lock them in, I have to get a key

01:50:12   out of the glove box to unlock it

01:50:13   whenever I need to use them, so that's kind of a pain.

01:50:16   So the Rivian, I knew the truck has not only,

01:50:19   of course, a truck bed, but also the gear tunnel,

01:50:21   and the gear tunnel is massive and awesome.

01:50:24   But I thought, hey, you know what?

01:50:26   could you pop the frunk?

01:50:28   MaxTracks are very wide, like they're huge.

01:50:33   They fit in the frunk.

01:50:34   The frunk is so wide.

01:50:36   - The frunk is huge on the R1T.

01:50:38   - It could fit four, I'm telling you off-roaders,

01:50:41   I have MaxTracks Extreme regular size boards.

01:50:45   It fits four of them stacked,

01:50:48   plus it still had enough spare room in there

01:50:51   that I could put all my towing gear,

01:50:52   the Kinetic toe rope, the various like shackles

01:50:55   and all that crap.

01:50:57   I have a shovel, I have so much towing gear

01:50:59   that I carry around the Defender,

01:51:01   and it could fit all of that in the frunk.

01:51:05   Oh my God, I am so, I cannot wait to get my R1S.

01:51:10   I am, like anybody, if you work for Rivian,

01:51:15   if you can like push a button,

01:51:17   oh my God, I'd be so thankful.

01:51:18   Like, I don't ask for much.

01:51:20   But, oh my God, I've been waiting so long for this car,

01:51:25   and now the weight is, now that I've driven one

01:51:28   and seen the utility, it's like, oh my God,

01:51:32   it's the perfect beach car.

01:51:33   Like it is exactly what I need to drive to my house.

01:51:37   Like literally today, I drove to my house.

01:51:41   It involves driving over like two miles of sand,

01:51:43   not like dirty roads, sand with the waves right there

01:51:48   on the national park beach.

01:51:50   That's what I do.

01:51:52   This car is made to do stuff like that.

01:51:55   And oh my God, it's like, I'm very happy with the Defender

01:51:59   as an off-roader.

01:52:00   The Defender is an amazing off-roader.

01:52:01   But I would so much rather have the R1S

01:52:04   as a general all around vehicle.

01:52:06   Like it's such a nicer vehicle in the ways

01:52:09   that I care about.

01:52:10   It has more space inside.

01:52:12   It's again, electric.

01:52:13   It's really good electric too.

01:52:15   Like it's, I would so much rather have an R1S

01:52:17   and I cannot wait.

01:52:20   I'm watching all the resale sites trying to see like,

01:52:24   Honestly, I'm waiting for a yellow one.

01:52:26   No one's selling a yellow one yet?

01:52:27   - No, no, no.

01:52:30   You stop it, you stop it right now.

01:52:32   Absolutely not.

01:52:33   - It looks awesome in the pictures.

01:52:34   - What's wrong with the yellow?

01:52:35   I think it's fine, it's gonna be the beach car, yeah.

01:52:37   - It's either, I either want the blue or the yellow.

01:52:39   Those are my top two.

01:52:40   - God, I'm gonna vomit.

01:52:41   Oh, not yellow.

01:52:43   - The blue looks cool,

01:52:44   but I think the yellow looks even cooler.

01:52:46   So I'm waiting for a yellow, but God, I just want like--

01:52:48   - No, no, no, no, no, no.

01:52:52   Application denied, no.

01:52:54   The green one looks nice too.

01:52:55   Oh, not yellow. Anything but yellow.

01:52:57   A lot of good colors.

01:52:58   You're gonna sit here, wait, you're gonna sit here after ten years of slagging on white cars

01:53:03   and you're gonna sit here like a jackass and say that yellow is the correct answer for something the size of a f*cking bus?

01:53:10   Hell no! Absolutely not!

01:53:13   It's a happy, fun car with little funny eyeballs in the front.

01:53:16   God, I'm so upset with you right now. I was all on board with this. Now.

01:53:19   Now I have to get the yellow.

01:53:21   - The R1S doesn't come with the gear tunnel, you know,

01:53:23   but the good thing is that the car from the A pillars

01:53:25   forward is identical to the R1T, so the frunk is the same.

01:53:28   - That's why I asked about the frunks.

01:53:29   I knew, I'm like, you know, 'cause I was wondering,

01:53:31   like, should I get the truck?

01:53:33   You know, but ultimately I would have more use out of the,

01:53:36   I would have more utility from the SUV.

01:53:38   'Cause I want a lot more interior space,

01:53:41   I don't really need a truck bed for anything else,

01:53:42   and so that's why I was so shocked

01:53:46   that the frunk was as big as it is.

01:53:47   'Cause I thought for sure there's no way

01:53:48   and fit Max Trax in a frunk of anything.

01:53:51   But nope, they fit just fine, and four of them,

01:53:53   and with room to spare.

01:53:55   - The yellow isn't like a Big Bird yellow,

01:53:58   it's like a tan.

01:54:00   It's called Compass Yellow, but it is barely yellow.

01:54:03   You should look it up on the website.

01:54:04   - All right, let me look.

01:54:05   - No, it's basically a metallic tan.

01:54:08   No, if you see like-- - Maybe I overreacted.

01:54:10   - Look at like real life photos of them,

01:54:12   'cause like one of their press cars was yellow,

01:54:14   so there's a few like real life photos of them.

01:54:16   - It's not Honda S2000 yellow.

01:54:19   - That's not-- - Yeah, I think it's closer

01:54:20   to that than beige, but it's hard to tell.

01:54:23   - Where do I find that? - You can't really see them

01:54:25   in person, but if you just do a Google image search

01:54:26   for R1S yellow or something, you'll see,

01:54:29   there's, I mean, it's a yellow, you know?

01:54:32   And this is actually a somewhat popular color now.

01:54:34   Like, if you look, there's a yellow Bronco,

01:54:36   there's yellow Wranglers. - No, I stand by this.

01:54:39   No yellow Wranglers, no yellow Broncos, no yellow Rivians.

01:54:43   - What do you have against fun colors?

01:54:44   - That's the thing, and like, so I have,

01:54:46   I currently have a blue car, and as a fun of a blue

01:54:50   as Land Rover can produce, which is not very fun,

01:54:52   but it's still blue, and it's a nice blue,

01:54:53   a very nice blue, but now I feel like, you know,

01:54:56   for the Rivian, the Rivian has a really nice blue,

01:54:58   they're quote Rivian blue, which is like their bright one,

01:55:01   it's a very nice blue. - It's very nice.

01:55:02   - And if it turns out I can't get yellow,

01:55:04   and I have to get blue, you know, that's--

01:55:05   - You can't get yellow. - That's tempting.

01:55:07   - It turns out you cannot get yellow,

01:55:08   I'm telling you right now. - No, but now I have to

01:55:10   get yellow. - Oh, God.

01:55:12   Look in the slack, Honda S2000 yellow versus Rivian yellow.

01:55:15   Do you see what I'm talking about here?

01:55:16   - Yeah, I see the comparison.

01:55:19   - I think the Rivian looks fine in that color.

01:55:20   I think the green is maybe more fun for the forest.

01:55:24   Let's see, is the blue,

01:55:25   the blue may be a little bit more beachy.

01:55:26   - The blue is way more beachy.

01:55:28   - Oh, and despite what Casey has said in the slack here,

01:55:30   I have a close-up picture of the purse holder

01:55:32   and I declared the walls purse ready.

01:55:34   (laughing)

01:55:36   Look at them, they're pretty deep.

01:55:37   That's like four inches.

01:55:38   - Oh, Marco, this yellow is so bad.

01:55:40   - Just no, no, no, no, no, no.

01:55:44   - I don't know what your objection is.

01:55:45   - I hate yellow for cars. - Now I have to get it.

01:55:47   (laughing)

01:55:48   - By the way, in my neighborhood,

01:55:50   someone in my neighborhood has a white R1S now,

01:55:52   and I think it even looks good in white.

01:55:53   - Yeah, white can just happen to you.

01:55:54   - I would say, I think the white looks decent

01:55:56   if you get the black wheels.

01:55:58   Which I, my intended wheels are the black off-road wheels.

01:56:02   - All-terrain dark?

01:56:03   - That's it. - All-terrain dark.

01:56:04   This is what I want right here.

01:56:05   - God, I cannot wait for this trend

01:56:08   of blacked out wheels to end.

01:56:10   - I'm saying, the rate I buy cars, it'll probably be fine

01:56:12   because it'll probably take about a decade for it to stop

01:56:14   and that's when I buy a new car.

01:56:15   But I know they've been in fashion for many, many years.

01:56:18   Now I cannot wait for it to end.

01:56:20   I hate blacked out wheels so much.

01:56:21   - They occasionally work on like yellow, which never works.

01:56:25   - I don't think I've ever seen,

01:56:26   and I think the closest I've come to working

01:56:28   is on off-road vehicles.

01:56:29   - All right, I'm gonna get the Rivian

01:56:30   with the blacked out wheels in yellow

01:56:32   and piss off both of you.

01:56:33   (laughing)

01:56:35   'Cause that's what I think looks the best.

01:56:36   - I think on off-road vehicles is the closest I've come

01:56:39   to accepting blacked out wheels,

01:56:40   because it just kind of goes with the look of like,

01:56:43   not like military style vehicles,

01:56:44   but like off-road type of utilitarian things,

01:56:46   but like I'm talking about like a sports car,

01:56:48   sports sedans, I just, ugh.

01:56:51   - It looks like a B, it looks good.

01:56:53   - I like wheels to be, they don't have to be shiny chrome,

01:56:56   but you know, I like them to be matte finish,

01:56:58   silver, neutral colored, like I do not want them

01:57:01   to be black, I don't want them to be shiny black,

01:57:02   I don't want them to be matte black.

01:57:03   - Can we go back, it looks like a B, it looks good.

01:57:07   - Yes, because when I want to think of something I want,

01:57:09   I wanna look like an annoying piece of crap insect

01:57:13   that all it does is piss you off and hurt you.

01:57:15   Yes, that sounds wonderful.

01:57:16   - No, people like, no, wasps are the jerks.

01:57:18   People like bees.

01:57:19   - Yeah, yes, yes.

01:57:20   Cue the stripey, buzzy things, whatever that image is

01:57:24   that goes around every spring.

01:57:26   (laughing)

01:57:27   - Did you try the self-leveling thing?

01:57:29   - No.

01:57:30   - I feel like it should be part of dog mode.

01:57:32   Your dog should be comfortable and also level.

01:57:34   - Yeah. (laughing)

01:57:36   Anyway, man, I cannot wait to get this.

01:57:41   There's no doubt in my mind,

01:57:42   looking around the rest of the industry,

01:57:43   there's no doubt in my mind now,

01:57:45   this is gonna be my next car.

01:57:46   It's just a question of how quickly can I get this car?

01:57:49   - The company is struggling a little bit,

01:57:51   so hopefully they're still around by the time,

01:57:54   it's a tough gig.

01:57:55   - And in many ways it feels like early Tesla days

01:57:58   in a lot of good ways, in the sense that they're rolling out

01:58:01   all sorts of great features and software updates

01:58:03   on a regular basis.

01:58:05   My friend said that the servicing story

01:58:07   has been pretty good, that he's only had a couple of issues,

01:58:10   and they were minor, and they came to his house to fix them.

01:58:13   And this is over six or eight months, he's had it a while.

01:58:17   So that's pretty good for a brand new car.

01:58:20   I think, ultimately, first of all,

01:58:25   it would not surprise me if somehow

01:58:31   Tesla bought them or something.

01:58:32   Because, I don't know what--

01:58:34   No, no, I don't like that either.

01:58:35   - I don't want that to happen.

01:58:36   - Please. - I don't say that.

01:58:38   - Don't put that energy in the world.

01:58:39   - You want General Motors to buy them.

01:58:41   - Yeah, I don't want that to happen.

01:58:43   But they're so clearly taking Tesla's playbook

01:58:46   and just doing it better.

01:58:48   I hope they remain independent and succeed like crazy

01:58:52   because they seem to be doing a lot of stuff right.

01:58:55   And God, I'm so, now I almost wish I didn't go drive it

01:59:00   'cause now I want it even more and I'm so impatient.

01:59:03   If anybody was selling a yellow one,

01:59:06   I would probably justify buying it somehow.

01:59:09   - I'm telling you, I was so,

01:59:11   I could not care less about a pickup truck.

01:59:13   I understand that for some people,

01:59:15   they make sense, they're useful, et cetera.

01:59:18   I am not some people in this context.

01:59:21   I could not care less about a pickup truck.

01:59:23   I do care about carplay, but other than that,

01:59:25   this thing blew my mind.

01:59:28   And I'm pretty sure I drove a quad motor,

01:59:30   which was a mistake because oh my good grief,

01:59:34   this thing is so fast.

01:59:35   And it weighs more than the Earth,

01:59:38   but to have it move that quickly is just astonishing.

01:59:42   Do you happen to know if it was a dual or a quad

01:59:43   that you drove?

01:59:44   - I believe they're all quads so far.

01:59:45   I don't think they've-- - Is that right?

01:59:46   I don't know. - Yeah, I don't think

01:59:47   they've actually shipped any duals yet,

01:59:48   'cause the duals are like the lower priced ones.

01:59:50   - You gotta fleece the whales first.

01:59:52   - Yeah, I think all the launch ones are all quads.

01:59:55   - To try to stay in business, yeah.

01:59:56   I mean, both companies that are populated with--

01:59:59   But look, hey, fleece me, I'll pay, I've already like--

02:00:02   - I know.

02:00:03   - I'm not asking for a freebie, I want to buy the car.

02:00:06   Fleece me, I'll even, you know what?

02:00:08   I'll even pay the higher price,

02:00:11   'cause I booked it when it was the lower price

02:00:13   and they're gonna honor it,

02:00:14   but now, if you book it now, it's higher.

02:00:16   I'd pay the higher price if I could get it right now.

02:00:19   I just want, I want my frickin' car.

02:00:21   I miss electric so much and this is so good.

02:00:24   - Yeah, it is, really good.

02:00:25   - Both of the companies that are populated

02:00:26   with ex-Tesla engineers who are trying to do the Tesla playbook but better are also

02:00:31   both financially and struggling with their finances and struggling with their ability

02:00:35   to make enough cars to give to customers.

02:00:37   So is there one Lucid?

02:00:38   Yeah, Lucid, the guy who runs that is the guy who designed the Model S and he basically

02:00:42   made a better Model S and like I said many times Lucid has the best motor technology

02:00:48   in the entire EV industry so if and when they go out of business somebody's going to snap

02:00:51   that up because they have good stuff there and their cars are pretty good even though

02:00:55   you know it's their first car, growing paint, blah blah blah, but boy being a car company

02:00:58   is tough. Especially if you're not funded by an eccentric multi-millionaire at the time

02:01:05   and/or aren't as good at getting government subsidies as Tesla was.

02:01:09   Well, honestly, Lucid I'd be more wary of just because they're selling into a much smaller

02:01:15   market. Whereas Rivian is selling into pickup trucks and SUVs in America. For god's sake,

02:01:20   that's a massive market.

02:01:22   You're no longer in the lucid market though

02:01:25   because you can't stand cars, you need to be in a big SUV.

02:01:28   - Yeah, unfortunately I kinda like the,

02:01:31   it's really nice not having leg problems.

02:01:33   (laughs)

02:01:35   Unfortunately.

02:01:36   (laughs)

02:01:37   No, I mean, I can see myself in the future

02:01:39   if I want something smaller.

02:01:41   Like, I was more comfortable in the i3

02:01:43   'cause it is more of like a crossover height seating position

02:01:47   even though the car itself is tiny,

02:01:49   but it's tiny but kind of tall.

02:01:51   - It's like a golf cart.

02:01:52   - It is like a golf cart.

02:01:53   - Yeah, so I just need to be careful

02:01:55   not to get these super low touring sedans anymore.

02:01:59   Get something a little bit higher.

02:02:01   But even crossover height would be fine with me

02:02:03   for that reason.

02:02:04   But right now, living on the beach,

02:02:06   I still need something that's off-road capable

02:02:08   and there is not a lot on the market

02:02:10   that is electric and off-road capable.

02:02:12   I think this is it.

02:02:14   - Oh, the F-150.

02:02:15   - Oh yeah, I guess that's true.

02:02:17   But yeah, I don't wanna drive one of those.

02:02:20   I wanna drive a Rovian.

02:02:21   - The Hummer EV.

02:02:23   - That wouldn't fit on the roads here.

02:02:25   - That is also true.

02:02:27   Hey, so to go back, if you were to build one,

02:02:29   you said the god-awful vomit-inducing yellow,

02:02:32   the black wheels, which I agree with Jon, not my thing,

02:02:35   but I mean, whatever.

02:02:37   Then for interior, I presume you would be

02:02:40   contractually obligated to choose ocean coast.

02:02:43   - Here's the thing.

02:02:44   I originally had selected ocean coast,

02:02:47   and they kept sending out these updates

02:02:48   basically saying like ocean coast is delayed,

02:02:50   that it's taking a while and if you have Ocean Coast

02:02:53   in your configuration, your date might be softer

02:02:56   and squishier.

02:02:57   So I thought, you know what, I don't really care that much.

02:03:01   I'll switch it to the black one.

02:03:03   And I switch to the black one and what happens

02:03:05   when you change anything about your configuration

02:03:08   is your estimated date disappears

02:03:12   and then like a month or two later,

02:03:14   it refreshes and it's further out.

02:03:16   So that's what happened.

02:03:17   I thought I was gonna get closer by changing it to black

02:03:20   and instead it pushed me out another six months.

02:03:22   - Oh no.

02:03:23   (laughing)

02:03:24   - So I'll take, at this point, the interior could be purple.

02:03:27   I'll take anything, like just.

02:03:29   - Yeah, if they were better on their website,

02:03:30   they'd let you know if those changes had any effect on it,

02:03:32   but it could just be that everybody got pushed out

02:03:34   in six months because again,

02:03:35   the company is struggling a little bit.

02:03:36   - Yeah, and yeah, and that's, you know,

02:03:38   I expect stuff like that, honestly, like it's fine.

02:03:40   As long as they are healthy long-term,

02:03:42   that's ultimately what I want because there's so many

02:03:46   companies that all make very similar vehicles.

02:03:49   If one of them stops making a vehicle

02:03:51   or goes out of business, it isn't that big of a loss.

02:03:53   Whereas if you're a company,

02:03:55   like what Tesla has done for a while,

02:03:57   up until fairly recently,

02:03:59   where you're the only one in a certain role,

02:04:02   or now what Rivian is doing,

02:04:03   they're the only ones doing what they're doing so far

02:04:06   for the most part.

02:04:07   You can get some of what they're offering

02:04:09   in different vehicles, but not all of what they're on,

02:04:11   not this whole package.

02:04:13   No one else is doing this.

02:04:14   So if they go under, we're out of luck

02:04:16   for as long as it takes for the rest of the market

02:04:19   to catch up and do something.

02:04:20   And then when the rest of the market does something,

02:04:22   it might not be as good.

02:04:23   Like they might do things in the more traditional,

02:04:26   badly designed, bad user experience,

02:04:28   no future looking features, all this stuff.

02:04:30   The way that, if you look at like what BMW is doing.

02:04:34   Like first of all, ignore the giant kidney girls for now,

02:04:36   I know, but one of the vehicles I was looking at

02:04:38   was the iX, 'cause the iX I think has a lot going for it.

02:04:41   And the reviews all basically say, yeah, it's hideous,

02:04:44   but it's actually really nice to drive.

02:04:46   So there's a lot going for that,

02:04:47   but there's a lot about that car that I'm like,

02:04:48   you know, ultimately it would be a lot less useful to me.

02:04:52   First of all, it can't go on the beach.

02:04:54   There's not any kind of off-roading capability like that.

02:04:57   It's not made for that.

02:04:59   But even just for day-to-day stuff, it's too small.

02:05:01   It's still a larger vehicle in terms of footprint,

02:05:05   but they put no storage space in it.

02:05:07   They made a bunch of weird decisions with that car.

02:05:09   And then the infotainment system is all this

02:05:12   huge overwrought, you know, BMW complexity there

02:05:17   that like, there's a lot of hits and misses in that.

02:05:19   You know, some of it's good,

02:05:20   a lot of it's really, you know, experimental.

02:05:24   What I ultimately want, I just want R1S.

02:05:26   I just want it now.

02:05:27   And I know that's the stupidest, most impatient thing

02:05:30   to say, like I know that.

02:05:31   I don't feel good saying that,

02:05:33   but that's how I felt after test driving the R1T

02:05:35   and looking around and seeing how much better

02:05:38   it would actually fit my needs.

02:05:39   There are two R1S Launch Editions available,

02:05:43   including one in Katona, sir, on cars and bids right now.

02:05:47   - I have a search alert.

02:05:48   I've been watching them come in for the last few months.

02:05:50   There has not been a single yellow or blue one.

02:05:52   There is a blue one on AutoTrader in New Jersey right now.

02:05:55   - Oh, come off it.

02:05:56   Come off it.

02:05:57   If you want the car, who cares that?

02:06:00   As long as it's not yellow, who cares?

02:06:01   - If he's gonna overpay,

02:06:02   if he's gonna overpay by buying it aftermarket

02:06:04   by somebody who's taking advantage

02:06:05   of the supply and demand imbalance,

02:06:07   he should get the color he wants.

02:06:08   - I mean the good thing is the resale prices

02:06:11   are actually decreasing pretty quickly now

02:06:14   'cause there's a lot more supply than there used to be.

02:06:16   So they're actually coming down to more reasonable levels.

02:06:19   But I think they seem to be making colors

02:06:22   in timed color batches 'cause the ones

02:06:26   that hit the resale sites are all the same groups

02:06:29   of colors at the same times.

02:06:30   So I think they're delivering them,

02:06:32   all right, this week our factory made some black ones,

02:06:34   this week our factory made some gray ones.

02:06:36   That's kinda how it feels.

02:06:37   I don't know if that's actually how it works.

02:06:38   That's kind of how it feels on the resale sites.

02:06:40   I've only seen one blue one for sale.

02:06:43   It's in New Jersey and honestly,

02:06:45   if I had had the title to the Land Rover with me

02:06:48   on that trip, I might have gone and traded it for that.

02:06:52   (laughing)

02:06:54   I was very tempted.

02:06:55   I'm like, this is stupid, I shouldn't do it.

02:06:57   I almost did it.

02:06:58   I was very close.

02:06:59   If I had the title, I probably would have done it.

02:07:02   It'd just been really stupid.

02:07:03   But ultimately, I should just wait for mine.

02:07:07   it would be a lot cheaper and it's the right thing to do,

02:07:09   but I don't know, YOLO, all that stuff.

02:07:13   - I mean, Katona, I forget exactly where Katona is,

02:07:17   I just remember being off the Metro North,

02:07:19   but can't be far from you. - It's not far.

02:07:20   - Yeah, exactly.

02:07:22   - No, if that was a better color.

02:07:24   Also, very few of these have the off-road wheels

02:07:27   that I actually would want,

02:07:28   but the blue in New Jersey does.

02:07:30   So, we'll see, I'm not gonna buy it,

02:07:34   I'm not gonna buy it, I'm not gonna buy it.

02:07:35   God, I want it.

02:07:36   I'm not gonna buy it, I'm not gonna buy it.

02:07:38   - Please buy that one,

02:07:38   'cause at least the blue is very pretty.

02:07:40   It's so pretty.

02:07:41   (sighs)

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