catatp.fm Unofficial Accidental Tech Podcast transcripts (generated by computer, so expect errors).

42: The Ultimate Vanity Search

PrimeSense and Topsy, Apple’s engineering talent and web services, reversible USB plugs, renewed hope for desktop Retina displays for the new Mac Pro, and Texas.

Episode Description:
  • FU on PrimeSense.
  • Apple's acquisition of Topsy and speculation on why.
  • Apple's possible difficulty in getting and keeping enough engineering talent, and how they might make bigger strides in web services.
  • Which group wears the pants in a company?
  • Marco's embarrassing FiOS support calls.
  • How Apple's release and marketing schedule affects their web services.
  • Methodologies and vocabularies.
  • USB spec group will add a reversible connector, the history of terrible USB connectors (see also: Hypercritical #5 from around 45 minutes, Hypercritical #6 from around 9 minutes, and the entire rest of the series, too), Lightning epitomizing Apple.
  • Dell renews hope for desktop Retina with the new Mac Pro, single big monitors vs. dual smaller ones, and higher-than-native resolution scaling on the Retina MacBook Pro (see also: Eye-Friendly).
  • Waiting for a new technology to fully mature before switching, or adopting it earlier with tradeoffs and hacks.
  • Texas.

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Transcribed using Whisper large_v2 (transcription) + WAV2VEC2_ASR_LARGE_LV60K_960H (alignment) + Pyannote (speaker diaritization).

Transcript start

⏹️ ▶️ Casey We should probably start the show, shouldn’t we? What show? Yeah, that thing that we accidentally made when we were

⏹️ ▶️ Casey talking about cars. We had a lot of really, really, really,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey really awesome feedback about the last episode. And I don’t say that to self-congratulate.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey What I mean is a lot of listeners wrote in in various forms and tweets and emails and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey all sorts of things to say not only that, you know, they like all of us

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and that they They also enjoy the show, in particular they enjoyed the end of the last show. And I don’t know that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey us having group therapy sessions is really going to be entertaining on a regular basis, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really appreciate, and I think I speak for the two of you guys as well, I really appreciate everyone that wrote in and said,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey keep on keeping on. So that was very kind of every single one of you, and I tried to reply to pretty much everyone

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I saw, but if I missed you, my apologies, and thanks so much for having written in.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That was really cool.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, definitely. We got a lot of great feedback about that because I think a lot of people don’t talk about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this stuff in public on the internet because it doesn’t fit into the topic of your site or your podcast.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is true of lots of various human factors. We just don’t really get enough coverage.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The few times where you can get people to show you their more human side, usually they’re pretty well received.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We didn’t do it to solicit or fish for compliments. We got a lot of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco compliments, and I’m very thankful for that. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey you know— I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was going to say, it worked well that way, but that wasn’t the point.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. That wasn’t the intention. But we do appreciate everyone’s feedback, and it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was very nice. So thank you.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. A lot of people also said that even though we said this really isn’t on topic for the podcast

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco like,

⏹️ ▶️ John oh, well, you know, but you should talk about it anyway because—and the same point a lot of them made was that in particular,

⏹️ ▶️ John the technology market has difficulties with a lot of the issues we discussed, both

⏹️ ▶️ John personalities and technology taking and receiving criticism and the whole

⏹️ ▶️ John angle and workplace problems and gender

⏹️ ▶️ John relations and the whole nine yards. It’s true that that is a problem

⏹️ ▶️ John in particular in the tech industry. I’m still entirely sure it’s on topic for a tech podcast. So I

⏹️ ▶️ John know people are like, oh, then you should start a different podcast, talk about these things or whatever, but I think it’s good to do once in

⏹️ ▶️ John a while, and I think that there is an angle on it, like if something related to those topics happens in the industry, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John how we find ourselves talking about it. We started off talking about the Penny Arcade thing, it just kind of drifted from there, and I think that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John fine, but I’m not sure it should be like a, you know, it really is going off the rails if you

⏹️ ▶️ John start making your podcast about that. That would be a perfectly good topic for another podcast, but we’ve all got enough

⏹️ ▶️ John podcasts

⏹️ ▶️ Marco here. Well, plus, you know, if it isn’t immediately clear to everybody, the three of us could talk about anything.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, you know, it doesn’t like we could go off the rails in any possible direction very easily. So it’s important that we

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least try to keep ourselves somewhat on top on at least one topic per or at least one genre

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of show while we’re actually recording that show.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Something like that. All right. So, yes. So thanks again to everyone that wrote in. That was very kind of you. And even if you didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey write in, thanks for indulging us while we talked about. Now, John, you seem to have I’m assuming this was you,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, a lot of feedback about Prime Sense.

⏹️ ▶️ John Last week we talked about Apple buying PrimeSense, which is a company that makes Kinect-like sensors

⏹️ ▶️ John like the Xbox Kinect. I still don’t even bother. I didn’t do any research. Margot

⏹️ ▶️ John and Casey wouldn’t let him. Didn’t bother looking up what their relationship to

⏹️ ▶️ John the original Kinect was, whether they were the company that made the sensor or whether they sold it to them. I don’t know. But anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John they make a Kinect-like sensor and Apple bought them. week I said that, uh,

⏹️ ▶️ John the obvious idea would be that, oh, there are Apple bought them and that means they’re going

⏹️ ▶️ John to use something like the Microsoft connect on whatever their crazy TV thing is. And I said, uh,

⏹️ ▶️ John what about if they use that same technology in an iOS device to do something less impressive? Uh,

⏹️ ▶️ John I said that not knowing that if you had just simply gone to the prime sense website, you would have seen on their listing of products

⏹️ ▶️ John that one of the products they offer is something that’s sized meant to fit inside a tablet. So there you

⏹️ ▶️ John go. Not it’s not a stretch. It’s an existing product that is very small and could fit inside

⏹️ ▶️ John a tablet. And, and who knows what Apple bought them for? Like, but it’s clear that

⏹️ ▶️ John this company could offer a lot of things to both Apple’s current product lines and product

⏹️ ▶️ John lines that we all speculate that Apple may or may not even put, put something like that in a watch or whatever. Um, and then

⏹️ ▶️ John I have some more info on the issues of this kind of technology In particular,

⏹️ ▶️ John if and this is a big if if you just look at what prime sense prime sense of sensors are like and

⏹️ ▶️ John what connect sensors are like and say, could Apple use that type of thing in a television or

⏹️ ▶️ John in an iOS device? The problem with the iOS device angle is that

⏹️ ▶️ John both of the approaches that prime sense and the existing connect sensors use don’t work very well

⏹️ ▶️ John outdoors and iOS devices have to be able to. know what percentage of time they spend indoors

⏹️ ▶️ John and outdoors but enough time that if you have something that only works indoors it’s probably not viable

⏹️ ▶️ John for any iOS devices that Apple sells and the problem doing it outdoors is they both use infrared

⏹️ ▶️ John and infrared outdoors can get washed out if it’s sunny day because the Sun is gonna have way more IR than

⏹️ ▶️ John anything that’s put out by one of these devices or sensors and one way to get around it is to really crank

⏹️ ▶️ John up the IR on the device but that burns battery and blind people if you shut you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, shine it in their face. So it’s not it’s not a great solution there. And there’s also the problem of

⏹️ ▶️ John what is the stereo distance between the sensors, you have to kind of pick Do you want it to be able to

⏹️ ▶️ John get depth information about things that are really close, like your finger on an iPad or something? Or do you want it to be able to get stuff that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John farther away, and there’s some difficult trade offs there. So anything that uses this kind of

⏹️ ▶️ John technology is probably going to be focused on indoor application. But that’s not to say

⏹️ ▶️ John that anything Apple is going to make with this company is going to have anything to do with any technology that we’ve already seen. This is just looking at

⏹️ ▶️ John what they have done. Who knows what they’re going to do? And it’s perfectly feasible that Apple might have bought

⏹️ ▶️ John them based on some technology that they had in the works that nobody’s seen yet. So I

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know, it’s a company you watch. It’s like PA Semi, because it’s interesting and exciting

⏹️ ▶️ John from a hardware angle. And software is a little bit more mutable. We’ll talk about that a little bit later, I think.

⏹️ ▶️ John But when Apple buys a hardware company, you have to think that they bought them because they want

⏹️ ▶️ John to do something similar to what this company has done in hardware. They’re not just buying it to get, oh, well, you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, you might buy a company to get a bunch of software developers so we could put these guys to work at iOS.

⏹️ ▶️ John But if you buy people who make this kind of a sensor, you got to think they were doing something with some kind of weird sensor, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m excited by the possibilities of putting any kind of weird Kinect-like sensor in anything that Apple makes.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it should be interesting, although certainly I can’t conceive of what they’re going to do with this. But that, just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey like you said, that’s the beauty of it. Any other follow-up you or Marco or Marco do you just want to tell us about something?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s awesome

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⏹️ ▶️ Marco minutes at the end of that slogan or am I thinking of something else?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t recall.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it used to be in minutes. Anyway, it’s really fast and

⏹️ ▶️ John easy Anything longer than a minute is in technically in minutes, right?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I mean, even I think anything that’s not exactly one minute could be minutes.

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⏹️ ▶️ John or maybe, or it doesn’t have to be a business that you like, but anything that, some like your

⏹️ ▶️ John barber or your landscaper or whatever, and you see that they have a website but it’s terrible,

⏹️ ▶️ John a new business idea is to fix people’s terrible websites. They pay you

⏹️ ▶️ John and then you take some of the money they paid you and pay it to Squarespace to just give them a Squarespace site, which takes

⏹️ ▶️ John you like 10 seconds of clicking. You’re basically becoming like a Squarespace value added reseller

⏹️ ▶️ John for people because I always wonder why these people have such terrible websites when like for pocket change,

⏹️ ▶️ John like I know how much these landscapers make, they make they make plenty of money. Or you know, anybody,

⏹️ ▶️ John if you have enough money for any website, it’s just these people’s website are terrible because they’re not web designers. They don’t know what they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John doing. The websites like they were made in 1992. and a little animated men under, men working

⏹️ ▶️ John construction, the image at the bottom of it and a website

⏹️ ▶️ John hit counter. It’s like, geez, just get a Squarespace site. It’s so easy and it would look better and everyone will be happier. And if you

⏹️ ▶️ John can facilitate that, then that’s maybe a viable business.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is like, you know, back in the late 90s and early 2000s, there was this whole business, I guess

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there still is, this whole business of web hosting resellers. Like this is, like things like cPanel and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff were developed not for one person running one server for themselves, but were developed

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for people who ran tons of sites on tons of different servers or tons of sites on one server for clients

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and charged them a big premium for that. And it seems like Squarespace has really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of made that entire industry half obsolete. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John because nobody wants to use a cPanel for interface. That is not anything that a regular,

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s what kept regular people away and they would pay some teenager to make their website and that teenager would

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco go away and they’d

⏹️ ▶️ John be stuck with this website and they can never change. It’s terrible and never gets any better. And yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So speaking of acquisitions, Apple is still up in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey buying things and they bought Topsy, which I had never heard of before.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’d heard the name before, but I didn’t know what they did until I read the articles. Like, first

⏹️ ▶️ John of all, how does a company, I mean, I guess I understand how a company like this, but

⏹️ ▶️ John what did they get bought for? 200 million, something like that?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I believe that’s right.

⏹️ ▶️ John So this is a company that none of us have really heard of, or maybe we heard the name or whatever. This company apparently

⏹️ ▶️ John existed as a way to mine data from the Twitter stream. So they would absorb

⏹️ ▶️ John all the tweets, and they would sort of index them and allow, I guess, allow people to do searches to

⏹️ ▶️ John find out what’s going on on Twitter and stuff. And I guess they resell this to people, like advertisers,

⏹️ ▶️ John who want to see what’s trending. Or like, it’s a business. It’s like B2B. It’s not a consumer-level

⏹️ ▶️ John business, because these people, as far as I know, did not make a company worth $200 million to Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John by selling services to individual customers. Right.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I believe that’s right. I mean, from what very, very little I know about it, because I didn’t do any research,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but everything I think that’s right.

⏹️ ▶️ John But the fact that they’re so Twitter focused is mysterious because why why would Apple buy a company?

⏹️ ▶️ John So focused on a service they don’t own. Right. It’s not like they bought a mapping company to help them

⏹️ ▶️ John with their maps. They don’t have a Twitter equivalent. So what does a company that has expertise

⏹️ ▶️ John in mining the Twitter stream going to do for them? Do they have some other stream that they would like to point topsy at

⏹️ ▶️ John and say, we would like you to extract information from this? Are they going to be collecting metrics from people wandering

⏹️ ▶️ John through the App Store? I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know. I mean, the price tag was a little high to be an acqua hire, but I think, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, Facebook and Google buy all sorts of crazy crap just to get talent in the door.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, really, they’re just buying the staff. That’s the acquihire phenomenon. Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has a big problem. They have a real need for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really good staff. We can see a lot of the areas in which they are clearly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco short-staffed. We see a lot of the applications.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve said recently that I think their hardware is better than it’s ever been right now, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco their services have never been great and are still not great. their software is really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco starting to go into disrepair in a lot of different areas. I think the OS level stuff is rock solid.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think whoever they have working on the OS level teams, they clearly have great people and enough of them,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think. But it seems like the applications teams are really strained.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s why you have all these years of iWork 09

⏹️ ▶️ Marco followed by this new release of iWork that is really obviously

⏹️ ▶️ Marco unfinished. That was rushed out the door for other reasons, probably lining it up

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the marketing of the new iPads and et cetera. But clearly Apple needs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco more people. They need more engineers. They need more staff. And they also

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a bit of a retention problem because from what I understand, this is purely anecdotal, but from what

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I understand, they lose a lot of really good people because there’s this whole world of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps and startups happening around them, around their own ecosystem that they’ve created, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco their own employees can’t participate in that while they’re working for Apple. And so it’s very tempting for their

⏹️ ▶️ Marco employees to be like, you know, now that I’ve been working, you know, supporting UIKit or apps or whatever

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for all these years, maybe I wanna actually go make my app. And Apple has

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a pretty good policy about if you wanna leave and then come back within a certain amount of time, you can like retain all

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your seniority and stuff. So like, they have a problem getting people and retaining people.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steven Connelly Even more than going and making an app, imagine if you wanted to do independent consulting and you have

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple on your resume.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Michael

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Morgan Oh, yeah. Steven Connelly That pretty much is the only entry you need on your resume if you’re going to do

⏹️ ▶️ Casey either iOS or OS X development and consulting.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, what makes you think that you’re so special and you’re good at this? I used to work for Apple. Where do

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I sign? You know what I mean? Michael Morgan Right. Steven Connelly It really opens a lot of doors having

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that on your resume. I wrote iPhoto. You know? Maxfield Exactly. This

⏹️ ▶️ Marco API that everyone’s coding against, I wrote the API. So for Apple to buy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a company like this, where it doesn’t seem obvious to us what part of the company’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco product they might want, $200 million is a lot of money for an acquihire. But maybe

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they had some really good people. Most acquihires are in the $10-50 million range.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But if they had a bunch of really good people, maybe that’s worth it to them. And this is a large

⏹️ ▶️ Marco web service that was consuming the live Twitter feed, or the live Twitter fire hose, as they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco call it, which is kind of gross. But they were consuming that. That’s a large-scale

⏹️ ▶️ Marco web service operation. Apple needs a lot of help in large-scale web service operations.

⏹️ ▶️ John Did you follow the second link I put underneath? Of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco course not. I didn’t do any research.

⏹️ ▶️ John So the second link is a…

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, the Dalton one. Yeah, I did read that.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. I don’t know if this is true or not, but Dalton of app.net fame

⏹️ ▶️ John says that as far as he knows, Topsy is a Perl company, as he calls it, meaning

⏹️ ▶️ John that they implement their web service in Perl. And for the most part, Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John does not know their Perl from their elbow. And so the expertise that

⏹️ ▶️ John the programmers in those companies might have in writing server side applications in Perl,

⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t imagine Apple thinking those particular technical skills are

⏹️ ▶️ John worth anything to them.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, that doesn’t matter. When you’re dealing with the scale that Topsy was dealing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with, or the scale that Apple is dealing with or needs to be dealing with, the actual

⏹️ ▶️ Marco language that you’re writing your application in really does not matter one bit. It’s really much

⏹️ ▶️ Marco more about how you write it, how you use the resources of things like the database,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the network, the cache layer, stuff like that. such a bigger picture thing than just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the language you it’s like, like, it doesn’t matter what text editor you use to write a shell script, like it matters

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what it’s doing. Similar, you know, when you get to a scale, like what they’re doing, you can do it in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco any language, really.

⏹️ ▶️ John But when they do acqua hires, I have to imagine like, if they do aqua hires of people who they know they want to put on the iOS

⏹️ ▶️ John team, they want the people that hire they could be app developers or whatever, but they want them to be Objective C programmers, because

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re going to put you deep in the guts of Objective C, or if they’re hiring someone for the core OS group, they want to know C

⏹️ ▶️ John and BSD API specifically, because that’s where they’re going to be. Then I’m just like, well, you’ve written, you’ve worked on

⏹️ ▶️ John some operating system. Like I have to think that the technical skills are relevant when in particular doing aqua hires.

⏹️ ▶️ John It seems to me that topsy has from the outside. It looks like topsy has

⏹️ ▶️ John abilities that apple wishes it had, like they consume the Twitter fire hose and they

⏹️ ▶️ John get something out of it. And I think apple has a very specific thing in mind, some big giant stream of

⏹️ ▶️ John data that that they want to feed into something and get useful information out of it. And it’s high volume,

⏹️ ▶️ John and they need a company that can take a high volume stream of data and do something with it. So

⏹️ ▶️ John that seems like the most likely thing. I just can’t think of exactly which stream it is. I mean, there’s many possible streams. They

⏹️ ▶️ John have all this activity of customers doing things, buying things in stores, rating applications, all that stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ John Hell, it could even be map data, someone to handle all of the feedback that we’ve all been putting into Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John Maps to say this thing is in the wrong place or frustrated that it doesn’t result in action, you know, quickly, I don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ John This also, I think, may be hard to tell. Like with with the,

⏹️ ▶️ John with a sensor purpose, it’ll pretty be it’ll be pretty obvious when we see something with some crap or crazy sensor on it will be like,

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, that was probably that crazy sensor company bought by with topsy, it may be hard for us to tell

⏹️ ▶️ John what, you know, there may be no obvious moment we said, Oh, there must have been. Well, that’s why the higher

⏹️ ▶️ John topsy to do this, it might not be it might not be obvious at all. In In fact, it might be entirely for internally

⏹️ ▶️ John facing tools they do for their own metrics that they never show anybody. So this is mysterious.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, going back a half step to the web service thing, Apple’s web services

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are still, in the grand scheme of things, young. And a lot of them are compartmentalized

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or outsourced. So if Apple wanted to build up a big service presence

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in-house, there’s still a lot of room to start that, not quite from scratch, but close.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like to really like get in on the ground floor and and do that. They need to do that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. And so if they, you know, just because these people built a really big volume web

⏹️ ▶️ Marco service using Pearl that consumes the Twitter stream to get certain things out,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple really might be using this just to like start another department or bring something that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was outsourced in-house, you know, from some big thing they’re already doing with a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fresh new start, a fresh new team or not having an app store for the first time.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s a lot of potential even for that. And we’ve been saying every third week

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Apple sucks at web services and needs to really take

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it to the next level and take it a lot more seriously and make it a bigger priority in the company. Maybe something like this is the start

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of that.

⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe they could aqua hire Microsoft to get the Azure team. Is that possible? Do we have to wait a couple more

⏹️ ▶️ John years?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think just a couple.

⏹️ ▶️ John I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t know how many. We’ll see. Just hire Elop as the CEO, and then he’ll make it really cheap for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco him.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, exactly.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I wonder, though, if Topsy is about… What

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if it’s about consuming Twitter data about Apple and not allowing

⏹️ ▶️ Casey competitors to use the same technology to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John look

⏹️ ▶️ John at… It’s the ultimate vanity search. Apple needs to know what they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey saying about us on

⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Topsy, tell us! That’s actually exactly what I’m talking about. To be honest, my first thought,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I’m a little mad at you, John, because you stole it from me before I had a chance to say it, was for internal use

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about like maybe the App Store or something like that, which you said a moment ago. But what if it is about the ultimate vanity

⏹️ ▶️ Casey search to see what Tim Cook loves his customer sat, which that abbreviation

⏹️ ▶️ Casey infuriates me.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco To be fair, I think he stopped saying that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey recently. Well, whatever. The customer satisfaction numbers, I mean, Tim Cook loves his customer satisfaction

⏹️ ▶️ Casey numbers.

⏹️ ▶️ John But they’re already getting those numbers. I have to think that there is nothing that Apple cares about

⏹️ ▶️ John what its customers thinks $200 million worth. Like, seriously. Like, that’s always been the attitude

⏹️ ▶️ John of the company is, we accept feedback from customers to get a feel for what’s out there. But in general, they

⏹️ ▶️ John think it’s their job to show us what it is

⏹️ ▶️ John that we want, rather than just asking what we want and trying to build that. That’s always been the company’s MO. And that’s what we like

⏹️ ▶️ John about them. So I can’t imagine an entirely like, Oh, we need to

⏹️ ▶️ John figure out what’s out there about Apple or about Apple customers. $200 million worth like this.

⏹️ ▶️ John The Twitter fire hose is way more volume than you just need to sample users. Right. Whereas if you

⏹️ ▶️ John want to get, I don’t think they’re sampling the fire hose. I think they’re consuming it all and indexing it and all that stuff, which

⏹️ ▶️ John is very different than surveying customers and seeing how your satisfaction is. I have to think all they have things

⏹️ ▶️ John in place for all of the. sort of market research feedback about what’s needing to get

⏹️ ▶️ John repair, what are people unsatisfied about, all that stuff like that has to already be in place. It doesn’t seem like

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a problem area for Apple.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well also that’s not incredibly unique to Topsy. Like there have been multiple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco companies that have over the last you know five years, multiple people who have come up who

⏹️ ▶️ Marco take the Twitter firehose and parse stuff out of it. I mean it’s that’s it’s not an easy thing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do but it’s not it’s certainly not unique to this one particular company that no one else

⏹️ ▶️ Marco will ever be able to do it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John again.

⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter bought one of them, didn’t they? Didn’t they buy Summly or something? Not the other. There was some

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco other. Summize

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is what you’re talking about. That was a long time ago. And that is what became Twitter search.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I know, but that was always funny though because like Twitter was creating the data and they had to buy an

⏹️ ▶️ John outside company to be able to search that. Remember when Twitter search sucked? Twitter is actually a

⏹️ ▶️ John good success story for a company that didn’t know how to make wide-scale web services and figured it out.

⏹️ ▶️ John Because Twitter in the beginning, had an idea, they had Ruby on Rails, they had, I’m assuming,

⏹️ ▶️ John hipsters in San Francisco or whatever it is they need. But then they ran into

⏹️ ▶️ John the giant avalanche of users, and then they had problems and problems and

⏹️ ▶️ John problems. And they figured, you know, I mean, that’s kind of the natural arc of any startup. Like you try to build something,

⏹️ ▶️ John you really hope somebody likes it, then all of a sudden the users come and you’re like excited, then more users come and you’re a little bit scared,

⏹️ ▶️ John and then you basically have to figure it out. And they did, barely. I would say Twitter came the closest to

⏹️ ▶️ John a company that was crushed by its own success in terms of not being able to handle the traffic. If they had

⏹️ ▶️ John anything close to a viable competitor that had the mind share they had,

⏹️ ▶️ John they could have just as easily gone down as a footnote of that company that we thought was going

⏹️ ▶️ John to be big but couldn’t keep their stuff together and some other company installed their bacon. But it turns

⏹️ ▶️ John out they ended up getting enough mind share soon enough that we all just tolerated their terrible problems.

⏹️ ▶️ John And now they’ve come out of it and they’re so much bigger, handling volumes that would have made the

⏹️ ▶️ John head spin back in the 2006, 2007 days. So if Twitter can do

⏹️ ▶️ John it, coming from essentially nothing to a world-class web service that does incredible volumes,

⏹️ ▶️ John surely Apple can, right? And when you say this, it seems like they have. They’ve got all the money in the world.

⏹️ ▶️ John Why can’t they get their stuff together? I don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. And it’s really about priorities, I think, and culture. They’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco such a big company that they need to make significant changes from

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the top to the bottom. They need somebody at the senior VP level

⏹️ ▶️ Marco whose only job it is to do stuff like this. Isn’t that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco half of somebody’s job up there? Is it Eddy Cue?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought so.

⏹️ ▶️ John Eddy Cue is in charge of services or something like that. Some umbrella term like that. He’s basically in charge

⏹️ ▶️ John of the iTunes store and I think all of their web service-y type things.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Do you think he needs to be replaced?

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s hard. You can’t, you can’t play politics

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with that. Is it not his problem? Is it, is it like, you know, is it that he’s, does he have an impossible

⏹️ ▶️ Marco job?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Isn’t Q in charge of, uh, scoring licensing deals and things of that nature? Didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey he kind of become the de facto guy to do that?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think so. That that’s certainly what we’ve heard.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. He’s, he’s always been like the iTunes store. He was part of the content deals and everything like that, but right.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. So maybe the problem is he has too much to do.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s exactly what I was driving at is maybe he’s so busy working on content deals, perhaps for the Apple TV

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or whatever. One way or another, perhaps he’s too busy worrying about all of that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and he doesn’t have enough time to worry about services or not as much time as he’d like.

⏹️ ▶️ John Every company I’ve been in, there’s one group in the company that sort of wears the pants and a lot of times

⏹️ ▶️ John but not always, it’s the group that originally made the thing that made the company

⏹️ ▶️ John successful and you know, made the company what it is today. And Apple, it seems

⏹️ ▶️ John like the group that has that power is, I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know what the balance is between hardware and software. It is basically the people who work directly on whatever the flagship

⏹️ ▶️ John product is. So you made the operating system for the Macintosh, you made the hardware for the Macintosh. That is the,

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the tail that wags the dog. And there’s tons of other people in the company, but they’re more or less running the show.

⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s fine when your company makes devices with hardware and software. Shouldn’t the people putting running the show who make all the great hardware

⏹️ ▶️ John and software that makes your company successful. But now you throw the services thing into the mix. And I have to think

⏹️ ▶️ John that they are sort of the, you know, redheaded stepchild of the company where

⏹️ ▶️ John we’re writing software too, but your software is not. I was, your software is not always 10. Your software

⏹️ ▶️ John is just something that runs on a server. And we only care about you when you screw up. There’s no glory in your job. Just

⏹️ ▶️ John get it done. You’re about as important to our company as the people keep our mail servers running. Right. And that

⏹️ ▶️ John that culture that they’re the B team and they’re not as important to the company

⏹️ ▶️ John is really difficult to overcome. Even with leadership the top saying we’re rededicating to services iCloud is a big deal.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if they can get the best people the most money, the priorities,

⏹️ ▶️ John the attention from everybody because everyone is so focused on what’s the next iPhone, what’s the next version of iOS, iOS 7

⏹️ ▶️ John and the iPhone 5s, right? Whole companies focused on that launch, launch, launch. And by the way, the service

⏹️ ▶️ John is better work, but we don’t want to hear about it. Like again, this is all from the outside. I don’t know

⏹️ ▶️ John if this is true, but it’s very difficult to change that internal culture that the iOS and

⏹️ ▶️ John the hardware and software guys who make the flagship product are that those are the glory

⏹️ ▶️ John jobs. And at Google, the glory jobs are the guys who run the search engine, right? Who run the web

⏹️ ▶️ John services, who index the entire web every 10 seconds or whatever the heck they’re up to now.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, the guys who serve the ads, at least.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the glory job of Google, yeah. Or yeah, or the ad, the thing that serves the ads, right? That makes

⏹️ ▶️ John the money for the company. But it’s not the glory teams at Google are

⏹️ ▶️ John not the teams that make, I think it’s not even teams that make Android or the Android devices this way.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s the web services. And I think the real heart, if you dig down, the real heart of Google are

⏹️ ▶️ John the people who run the infrastructure that run all their services. Those are the real sort of the little Yodas

⏹️ ▶️ John inside Google, the people with the most respect and clout and

⏹️ ▶️ John power, the ability to say no to your project and yes to your project indirectly by, I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ John they make the services to make everything run. And that is a very different location in the heart

⏹️ ▶️ John of Apple’s company, which is probably like a couple of people in Johnny Ives’ industrial design

⏹️ ▶️ John team and the people who really run the core OS and who decide, I guess, probably the compiler team and maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John the frameworks team for UIKit. That’s the tiny little heart of Apple. And it is so distant

⏹️ ▶️ John from the heart of Google. And I don’t know how, if you can have two hearts or if you could spread the company

⏹️ ▶️ John out or sounds complicated. Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s timey wimey.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey If you’re one of the iOS or OS 10 engineers, and you know enough about Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to know that you are currently in the chosen one position, you’re working on UI kit, you know, you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey have your future paved ahead of you in a good way. Well, you’re not going to be volunteering

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for going to work on iCloud. So anyone who’s already there that’s proven

⏹️ ▶️ Casey themselves probably is going to try to dodge the services bullet. Maybe that’s what this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Topsy thing is all about, and I’m reaching quite a bit here, but maybe the answer is you get a group that’s really

⏹️ ▶️ Casey good at services. And again, Topsy is a dodgy example, but get a group that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey really good at services, say Dropbox three or four years ago when it was even reasonable that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey they would be bought, have them come in and they’re not as bitter and jaded about not being

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on UIKit yet. And maybe that’s what it takes to get services to be at

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a position that it’s not a piece of crap.

⏹️ ▶️ John You missed the most important part about this Topsy acquisition, which is that if they hire

⏹️ ▶️ John this company and do not immediately throw away all of their technology, like that’s not their plan,

⏹️ ▶️ John finally there is a job inside Apple that I might be qualified for.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So let me know when you send your application in. I’ll be a reference for you, John.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. No, I can only imagine interviewing

⏹️ ▶️ John there.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But you would have to move. You wouldn’t move away from the greater Boston area, would you?

⏹️ ▶️ John No, that I think is part of their hiring problem, actually. Because so many companies are flexible

⏹️ ▶️ John about remote workers now. And Apple historically has not been the most flexible company about remote

⏹️ ▶️ John work. And I guess Yahoo is going in the other direction as well, trying to lock things down there. But it’s really

⏹️ ▶️ John difficult if like, we would like to hire you, but that would mean you would have to move to one of the most expensive places to live

⏹️ ▶️ John in the country and maybe your family’s not near here. And that sort of not artificially limits, it’s kind of a natural

⏹️ ▶️ John limit. But it’s difficult when you’re, you know, the biggest or second biggest company in the world that your requirement is

⏹️ ▶️ John everyone who works for me has to live around here, you’re going to miss out on tons and tons of good people.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. And anecdotally, I’ve heard at least a couple of stories about people who

⏹️ ▶️ Casey have interviewed at Apple, perhaps even been offered a job at Apple, but have had to say,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, I really can’t or won’t move to California, at which point the conversation’s over.

⏹️ ▶️ John And there are other places like Google has offices, Google has an office in Boston, they have a big office in New York

⏹️ ▶️ John City, Amazon has offices, and not just in Seattle, they have on the East Coast as well.

⏹️ ▶️ John And Apple, I think, does have some offices in Austin, and that one guy who makes all the money in Ireland. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John they have remote locations, but the heart is really the giant flying saucer thing that they’re building in

⏹️ ▶️ John one infinite loop. So that is a possible way forward for Apple,

⏹️ ▶️ John and I think that they are looking at that, to have a substantial presence, like to not say that

⏹️ ▶️ John everything has to happen in California for our important products, of course. And maybe that’s a way for the server-side

⏹️ ▶️ John group to get some freedom from that, is make the server-side groups based in Texas or

⏹️ ▶️ John on the East Coast somewhere. So just so they can be independent. And then maybe you can build

⏹️ ▶️ John up a group there that sort of has its own pride and reputation and isn’t constantly overshadowed by iOS

⏹️ ▶️ John and Johnny Ives hardware and all that stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco This episode is also brought to you by our friends at Igloo Software. This is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco great. So if you go to igloosoftware.com slash ATP, you’ll see this new landing page they made.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And a couple episodes ago, we were talking about enterprise software and how awful it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is. and John’s enterprise software assumptions and how

⏹️ ▶️ Marco John had such an ordeal with the Cisco VPN stuff on Mavericks.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Igloo, because they actually listen to our cool stuff and actually are fans

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and support us for a very long time now, Igloo has made a page in response

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to John’s myths about enterprise software. It’s pretty great.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Go to igloosoftware.com slash ATP to see.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have not seen this yet up until just this very moment and this is utterly fantastic.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Isn’t it great? Usually on their landing pages they’ll sneak in an inside reference or two,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’ll catch them subtly. This time they went all out. It’s pretty great. So, Igloo’s latest cloud

⏹️ ▶️ Marco update, Tinsel, arrives this Friday, which is probably going to be the release date of this show, so let’s say

⏹️ ▶️ Marco today. It’s a free update for every customer. When you log into your Igloo, the new features are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco immediately available starting this Friday. With Tinsel, Igloo is making it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco easier than ever for you to get started. Some company, oh we should point out before I do this, they didn’t tell me to say this, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I probably should tell you what Igloo actually is before I go on about their latest update. Igloo

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a hosted, enterprise-ready, intranet software platform that doesn’t actually suck.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s not their official tagline, that’s my tagline for them, but it’s basically an intranet that doesn’t suck.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they have great design and they have things like Twitter-like things, microblogs,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wikis, sorts of components that they can use for your company to use internally

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they’re all private and encrypted and secure and everything. But you know, so they aren’t out there on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the public Internet. So you know, that’s very nice for companies, but it also is not horrible, ugly,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco clunky feature-limited enterprise software from the 90s. With Tencel, it’s making it easier than ever

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for you to get started. Some companies don’t need a full Internet. Now you can start

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your igloo with just one of their web apps. Like for example, if you just need file sharing or you just need micro-blogs by

⏹️ ▶️ Marco themselves. The best part is, you can still add additional apps into your igloo,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco expanding it later as your needs grow. So if you start with file sharing to replace Dropbox for instance,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can add an internal blog and shared calendars later, all in one place. Tinsel also

⏹️ ▶️ Marco adds a health check dashboard for your intranet. It gives you detailed analytics into easy to read these charts

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the people, content, and social activity happening in your intranet. When your internet falls

⏹️ ▶️ Marco below igloo’s benchmark data, suggestions appear in the health check dashboard to improve your performance.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s also great new features like content templates, color-coded channels, new widgets, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco more. So start building your igloo today. It’s free to use with up to 10 people and very affordable

⏹️ ▶️ Marco after that. So go to igloosoftware.com.at to see those great pigs they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco made for us and to sign up. Thanks a lot to igloo for sponsoring our show.

⏹️ ▶️ John This is a great landing page and I immediately scroll to the bottom to see if they were going to do item

⏹️ ▶️ John number four, because it was my I forget what they called it enterprise software

⏹️ ▶️ Marco assumptions, I think.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, yeah, basically. And the first three were easy. It’s like, you know, when a new version of OS 10

⏹️ ▶️ John comes out, assume your enterprise software won’t work. So they’re going to contradict that and say, well, it will work, right, and so on and so forth. But

⏹️ ▶️ John the fourth one was actually, despite all the terribleness of enterprise software, sometimes it’s your fault.

⏹️ ▶️ John And I’m like, well, how are they going to spin that one? So they say, despite all the terrible things that are terrible about enterprise software, it’s at least

⏹️ ▶️ John partially your fault, and then they add it in parentheses, but we’ll help you fix it.” So they turned it into a

⏹️ ▶️ John customer service angle. If you screw up, Igloo is there to help you out. So that’s very clever. And

⏹️ ▶️ John the little paragraphs of text they wrote underneath each one of these things, it’s very nice. And I totally agree with it, because

⏹️ ▶️ John Igloo is the internet that I wish I could use, but don’t.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I have to point out just a couple of quick items here. the bottom of number one and just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for John flash is optional and there are zero apps required.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Zero Java apps required.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sorry, yes, sorry. And the quote and just for John part quote I pulled directly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey off the page which is pretty awesome. And then I also enjoy way towards the bottom,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey collaboration doesn’t have to be craziness, watch our sandwich videos and save yourself from SharePoint.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Which is pretty awesome and that’s dear to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco my heart.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, these guys really get it. So So thanks a lot to Igloo. Mence, speaking of it’s sometimes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your problem, about a week ago I, for the second time,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you would think this would only happen to a geek like me once, but no. For the second time,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I called Verizon Fios to report an outage, and the problem was that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had to reboot my own Apple Airport Extreme.

⏹️ ▶️ John Did they tell you to do the thing where I just plug it and unplug it in case any dust settled on it in

⏹️ ▶️ John the Merlin powerhuts.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, they didn’t make up any kind, you know, merciful reasons

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make me do that. They just, they’re like, oh, have you tried rebooting it? And of course, immediately I’m like, oh yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think I’ve tried that. I must’ve tried that. And then I’m like, you know what? Let me go try it just in case.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this actually happened like six months ago also. I was so embarrassed. Because I,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco our Fios has not been that reliable. Actually, about two days ago, it had a real outage, like all

⏹️ ▶️ Marco night. and it was pretty rough. So I’ve called them like over the course of having it for the last three years,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve called them maybe five times about outages. And two of them have been, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just needed to reboot my own router that I use arrogantly, not using theirs.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m really terrified to replace my Apple AirPort. I have like an AirPort Extreme, like when they were the flat pancake

⏹️ ▶️ John thing and actually a much older model. And it’s not good. It doesn’t have good wifi range, but it

⏹️ ▶️ John is rock solid. Like I have had to plug it and unplug it. Sometimes

⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll go away for vacation or something, but maybe two times a year I have to do that. And it doesn’t crash, it

⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t reboot, it just runs and runs and runs. And every other router that I read about, it’s like, oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John I have to reboot it once a week, or it’s flaky, or sometimes it just stops sending data

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. And that’s why I’m so, and also I’m using it, instead of using any Fios hardware, I go right from the

⏹️ ▶️ John ONT into my thing. And I’m afraid I’m not gonna be able to get it to release the IP address, so when I plug in the new one,

⏹️ ▶️ John it won’t be able to get like.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh yeah, you have to call them to do that. There’s all these tricks on the internet about, oh, well, if you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hold down the buttons on the ONT and make it do a real full reset, and it never works. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s held for, I think, at least a few hours on the server end.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m willing to wait a few hours. When I did the switchover, the guy who did my install was good, and I told

⏹️ ▶️ John him what I was planning on doing. And he, of course, has to hook up the Verizon whatever. And he just basically said,

⏹️ ▶️ John you should go to the admin interface to this router, and you can issue a command to have it release the IP. So issue

⏹️ ▶️ John the command to have it release the IP, and disconnect that router, and then the next router you connect, it will give the IP. And so I didn’t have

⏹️ ▶️ John to wait an hour for it. But yeah, I’m so scared to get rid of this router, even though it has such terrible range. Because

⏹️ ▶️ John A, because I hate the stupid, giant, TARDIS-looking thing from Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John that it has the fan inside it, which I don’t want. And B, and the other choice that I have, I’m terrified that it’s going

⏹️ ▶️ John to be flaky and reboot all the time.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m just surprised that you got asked to do all those sorts of things, because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t remember if I talked about this on the show and cut me off if I did. But a week or two ago, we had an outage. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey long story short, it was because of a power spike. And the box that’s in the garage, which isn’t the ONT,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s like the power station that powers the ONT, ended up getting fried. But I called them

⏹️ ▶️ Casey at like 9 o’clock at night. And I called Verizon. I said, hey, I have an outage, and here’s what I’ve discovered.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That not only is the internet out, but the phone and the TV are out. And the only slightly weird

⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing they had me do was unplug this little power station, as I call it. I know that’s not the right term.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and plug in anything else into that outlet just to make sure the outlet was alive, which I thought was completely

⏹️ ▶️ Casey reasonable. And that was the only thing. Never asked about a router, never asked about anything else. That was the only thing they did.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then, sure enough, at 8.30 the next morning, somebody arrived to fix it,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and by no later than nine o’clock, it was already fixed. And that was the only, that was the second time

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve had somebody to the house about my file service since 2008.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will say also, like, they, I’ve had amazing luck with the people that you get

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you call them for tech support. They’re really consistently really good people. And they do.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think you got the effect of this. They do pick up pretty quickly whether you’re a geek or not.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John don’t have to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco try to convince them, yes, I know what I’m talking about generally, although I haven’t tried rebooting my router.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You don’t usually have to jump through hoops, yes, okay, I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco plugging it in now. You don’t have to do that. can just tell them, hey, you know, my ONT is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco failing. And like, the fact that you know what it’s called will probably get them to immediately say, okay, here,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you do this, this, and this, and then that’s it. They’re really good. They’re very geek-friendly.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. As soon as I said ONT, I think that flipped the switch into, this person must at least know slightly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what they’re talking about. This person at least read a forum once. Right, exactly. So this episode is sponsored

⏹️ ▶️ Casey by Verizon.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Going back a minute, back to Apple and their potential woes with services and the respect

⏹️ ▶️ Marco within the company. How much of this do you think is a problem with the release

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and marketing schedule? So when most people do web services, Google

⏹️ ▶️ Marco included, everyone, you know, Facebook, Twitter, everything, they don’t usually have big press

⏹️ ▶️ Marco events to announce feature updates. You know, new products maybe, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco generally like a feature update or like, you know, a a medium scale improvement

⏹️ ▶️ Marco won’t really get a big event, and they won’t hold it for a big event. Whereas Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost always does that. Like their web services seem to almost be versioned and fixed in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco time as if they were OSs, or the OS updates that we get, where

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they will hold back certain features or fixes or tweaks until

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the next marketing event to lump it all in. And part of that is, I think,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco necessary because Apple has been battling this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco image that they’re not innovating anymore. So they probably feel pressure to pump up

⏹️ ▶️ Marco their events with as much crap as they can cram in there with all this cool stuff they’ve been doing. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that ultimately is really dysfunctional for web services and web

⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps, because that’s not how the rest of the world works. That’s not how the web works. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco how much of their problem stuff in this area do you think is related to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that forced product marketing schedule that both the public and Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco forces on itself?

⏹️ ▶️ John The good and the bad part of it is that web services are not held in high enough esteem to be

⏹️ ▶️ John deemed worthy of holding back for the thing. Remember they’re doing the iCloud beta website,

⏹️ ▶️ John iWork for iCloud or whatever the hell those terrible web services were. they put that out

⏹️ ▶️ John and they revised it and they improved it and it was like up for beta and then they rolled it out to everybody

⏹️ ▶️ John and like they’ll do because it’s not a big deal. They don’t think it’s going to be that flashy and they did though they did demo it at the recent

⏹️ ▶️ John event. Uh, they had been making changes and improvements to it. I mean, just think of the whole history of that,

⏹️ ▶️ John that interface that they’ve had that’s supposed to look like Apple mail. They changed that and improve that off cycle, like not

⏹️ ▶️ John during events, because it’s like, well, they don’t, they don’t think it’s high enough priority

⏹️ ▶️ John for an event because it’s not going be impressive or it’s not their bread and butter. I know they do want to have

⏹️ ▶️ John a big bang and tied in with the new versions of the iLife applications, but it’s like they get to be

⏹️ ▶️ John in the presentation only because they’re tied to one of the real products that Apple makes. And the rest of the time, they’ll willingly

⏹️ ▶️ John update it and tweak it and do stuff to it. I mean, it seems like

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re better for not being tied to that schedule, but inevitably for all of their products, they’re going to

⏹️ ▶️ John have to, they do a pretty good job dealing with it. of hardware, they’re going to have to get used

⏹️ ▶️ John to putting out products on a less monolithic kind of

⏹️ ▶️ John schedule and more kind of dribs and drabs. I think they are getting better about that. When they have to, for example,

⏹️ ▶️ John the mail update to work with the Gmail stuff, you got to do what you got to do. That didn’t come in 10.91. The old Apple would have

⏹️ ▶️ John held that for 10.91, but in the new era of people trying to use

⏹️ ▶️ John web services and Gmail to get their work done, you can’t hold that for 10.91. 10.91 is not ready to come out.

⏹️ ▶️ John coming, but they can’t hold the mail fix, so it has to come out. And same thing if there was a secure Safari

⏹️ ▶️ John error or whatever, you just got to keep pushing these updates. And I think the change in Mavericks to having optionally

⏹️ ▶️ John automatic updates of all applications on the OS is all part of that. Hardware is different because

⏹️ ▶️ John you have to make millions of these hardware devices in the months leading up to your launch. And it’s kind of hard

⏹️ ▶️ John to kind of hard to avoid a big run up to a big bang and then sell a couple

⏹️ ▶️ John million on a weekend. You can’t let that out by drips and drabs. So I think the hardware stuff

⏹️ ▶️ John will still be on that schedule. And as long as any hardware stuff is on that kind of schedule, which I think makes sense if you want to have

⏹️ ▶️ John a big sort of opening weekend and movie parlance, there’s some software that’s tied to that hardware too.

⏹️ ▶️ John And there’s no avoiding tying something to it. But the web services for good or for ill seem

⏹️ ▶️ John less tied to the hardware and more likely to be updated off cycle.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey This kind of reminds me in a weird way of companies

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that say they use agile processes but don’t.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And Marco, you will know nothing about this because you don’t have a real job. You are correct. But John,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you might actually know something about this. So I’ve worked at a couple of different places and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for most of my career, I’ve done consulting. And the place in which I work now actually

⏹️ ▶️ Casey does do legitimate, honest to goodness agile development and there’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not an overabundance of planning up front. There’s just enough to get by. And generally

⏹️ ▶️ Casey speaking, we manage all of our, all of our projects in terms of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey sprints. We use pivotal tracker, everything gets assigned points. Points are used as currency.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, we cooperate with product owners about what to schedule, when to schedule it, et cetera, et cetera. And it actually works

⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty well. And when, when everyone is on the same page,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey when the product owner is invested when the product owner understands what a point is and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what it represents, it works really, really, really, really well.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But if anyone, if there’s any weak link in that system, if for example,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the product owner, which is typically at the client, uh, if the product owner doesn’t have the time to invest

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or doesn’t really care or doesn’t want to learn to understand, then

⏹️ ▶️ Casey suddenly everything stops working well. And I kind of wonder,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to bring this back to Apple, if even if the web services teams

⏹️ ▶️ Casey were behaving in such a way that they could do incremental releases regularly,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wonder if the superiors just kind of find that prohibitive and I guess, Marco,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is kind of what you were saying as well, but even if they themselves were prepped for really

⏹️ ▶️ Casey frequent releases, I don’t know that even if the higher ups in Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Casey wanted them to do those more frequent releases because so much of the company is based on

⏹️ ▶️ Casey annual or semi-annual releases, I don’t know that it will ever really work because it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of like trying to force Agile on a situation where Agile just doesn’t really fit.

⏹️ ▶️ John It made me depressed about Agile methodologies and other methodologies that are used

⏹️ ▶️ John in jobs. jobs, we should put that on topic lists for future podcasts because that stuff makes me sad.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wait, the fact that you don’t use agile?

⏹️ ▶️ John No, all those kind of like, here’s the way, here’s a set of rules. And if you apply these

⏹️ ▶️ John rules, it will make you be able to develop software.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Can I make a slight confession?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Sure.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have never used a methodology.

⏹️ ▶️ John You’re using one. It just doesn’t have a name. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John exactly. Isn’t that effective?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wouldn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John recommend my methodology. Most importantly, you’re not using one imposed on you by somebody else. That is, no matter

⏹️ ▶️ John what methodology you’re using, if you got to pick it, well, then, you know, it’s very different than if

⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of other people have decided this is the way we are going to develop software. And then you come

⏹️ ▶️ John into that environment and have the rules applied to you. That is a very different, whatever the rules are, that is very different.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, John, does your company self describe as

⏹️ ▶️ Casey adhering to any particular methodology?

⏹️ ▶️ John We use a lot of the words from agile methodology.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But hold on. So you self describe as agile. I’m not asking what you are.

⏹️ ▶️ John No, no, I don’t. I don’t think so. I don’t think the company would say we use because every time you know, in interviews

⏹️ ▶️ John and stuff is it be used aspects of an agile system. And I would modify that to say we

⏹️ ▶️ John use vocabulary from Which is what it devolves to,

⏹️ ▶️ John but again, I think that’s… I’m gonna put that on the topic list for another

⏹️ ▶️ John day, because I think it’s a big, long thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We would never start a big, long topic an hour into a show.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, definitely not. All right, so I will let you slide on this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one, but we will add it to the show notes that don’t exist.

⏹️ ▶️ John Type it in the notes file,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah. All right, do you want to talk about this boring USB plug instead of interesting things like Agile?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco This, honestly, this thing is pretty funny. So the USB 3.0 mini plug

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a disaster, as we’ve talked about before. I still, so I have that card

⏹️ ▶️ Marco reader, that one, my one USB 3 device, I still insert the plug wrong every time.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, it’s so weird to get that stupid mini 3 connector. Anyway, so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the news is that the USB standards group or whatever

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has agreed to make a new connector that they haven’t actually shown yet, but it’s gonna be a new connector

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, like the Apple Lightning connector, will finally be reversible.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this will come out, if all goes to plan, which of course rarely happens with committees,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if all goes to plan, devices that use this will come out in about 2016. Did I get that right?

⏹️ ▶️ John If you were looking at the notes file, you would know.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s in the

⏹️ ▶️ John different tab.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Give me a break. I thought it was 2015. The

⏹️ ▶️ John final specification is expected to be published by the middle of 2014. That’s when the spec will be done. And then it presumably

⏹️ ▶️ John divides. But the thing is, with a lot of these specs, kind of like the 802.11 specs,

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a possibility that manufacturers will start building things to the

⏹️ ▶️ John not technically ratified or whatever approved spec, like they

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco always do. Like the draft

⏹️ ▶️ Marco N.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, they can always upgrade the firmware. But a lot of times, they don’t even have to do that. With controllers, it might, with

⏹️ ▶️ John connectors, it might be a little bit more dangerous. But I don’t know. But anyway, I would expect that

⏹️ ▶️ John the MO for the group that handles USB seems to be to make sure that whatever crap they

⏹️ ▶️ John come up with, you can make it as cheaply as possible. And that seems to be their one and only criteria for success,

⏹️ ▶️ John because they sure as hell don’t care about making a good connector. And so this would be a change in methodology,

⏹️ ▶️ John but their audience is still the same group of people saying, how many pennies can we save by making a piece of crap connector?

⏹️ ▶️ John Can I bend a piece of metal into a shoebox shape? Good. Ship it. Done. piece of plastic in the middle of

⏹️ ▶️ John a bent piece of metal.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and to some extent, they should be concerned about that because that’s one of the things that has made USB

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so, you know, to reuse part of its acronym, so universal, that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when USB first came out, you had like USB versus, you know, the old stuff, serial, parallel, but then FireWire

⏹️ ▶️ Marco came out, I think soon afterwards or right before, and USB was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco always way cheaper to implement than FireWire. And part of this is the controller chips

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and how that’s arranged, but USB was always the cheap way to go. And so it caught

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on like crazy because it was just the cheapest. And same thing now, Thunderbolt

⏹️ ▶️ Marco comes, FireWire 800 comes out, USB 2.0 comes out. Thunderbolt comes out, USB 3.0 comes out.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco In every one of these generations, USB has dominated in one and been

⏹️ ▶️ Marco way more universal and supported than the other thing because it’s just cheap and it’s simpler.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s cheaper for everyone, cheaper to implement, cheaper to host, etc. So that actually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco does matter here. And I don’t know how much of the total cost of implementation is like the bits on the connector

⏹️ ▶️ Marco versus the controller chips and the logic inside. But I would imagine a reversible connector

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with enough pins to support these kind of rates and everything else they have to support in the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco physical cable, a reversible connector is definitely going to be more expensive and more complicated to implement.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not saying that cheapness is not something they should go for. They just got the balance way off. Because it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John getting back to the last show, Pennywise, Pound Foolish. Oh, we can save tiny pennies by

⏹️ ▶️ John making our connector really crappy and cheap and easy to construct. The big win

⏹️ ▶️ John was over Firewire and stuff like that was that the smarts had to be in the computer. You didn’t have to have a complicated controller

⏹️ ▶️ John chip. Whereas Firewire interfaces were smart enough to talk amongst themselves without a controlling computer. That’s where

⏹️ ▶️ John all the money went. But they were like, oh, but the mindset is just squeeze every

⏹️ ▶️ John penny you can out of these stupid connectors and ignore everything else and just shift that a little bit to say

⏹️ ▶️ John make them cheap that’s good right but it’s like it’s like optimizing something you have to profile it find

⏹️ ▶️ John out where most of the time is being spent optimize that part so profiling USB is like where’s all the money being spent well

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s stupid silicon chips in the controller we can’t afford a big expensive controller like the firewire things we want to make

⏹️ ▶️ John it cheap control that’s easy to make that can come from tons of manufacturers that’s good once you’ve done that don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John worry so much about the connector because what portion of the price is the connector? You know, maybe it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John an increasing portion as the silicon price goes to zero as we keep shrinking things. I don’t know, but it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just such an incredible mistake. I always talk about that. You know, the USB connector guy saying, how does he know whether he did a good job? If any of

⏹️ ▶️ John us were making a connector, we would spend 10 minutes thinking about what makes a good connector. And surely we would come upon things

⏹️ ▶️ John like hard to put it. Can’t put it in the wrong way. Not externally symmetrical, internally asymmetrical.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like those would come up if you just thought about it for a minute. And it’s it’s such a like on the one hand, you can

⏹️ ▶️ John say, well, if I save one penny, I end up saving $5 billion over the life of a thing because so many USB connectors,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? But on the other hand, if you annoy people for one second, you annoy people for 5 billion seconds

⏹️ ▶️ John of the life, you know, it’s, it’s just a different way of looking at it. So this, this gives me hope. And

⏹️ ▶️ John what, what I would like to see out of this, which I think would be hilarious is if this new USB connector of which

⏹️ ▶️ John there are no pictures or design drawings, as far as I’ve been able to find, if this connector looks exactly

⏹️ ▶️ John like a lightning connector, but like slightly different, like a little bit wider or like has a bulge in it or something. Because

⏹️ ▶️ John think about it, what other kind of form factors can you get for a small connector that’s not that giant wide floppy

⏹️ ▶️ John USB micro thing that’s not even very micro? It has to be small. It’s the whole point of the thing because devices

⏹️ ▶️ John are getting smaller. And you want something small and reversible. It’s very difficult to do something sturdy at that

⏹️ ▶️ John size. You know, just look at the existing like the ones that go into your cameras, whatever the hell

⏹️ ▶️ John those connectors are, they’re terrible. The micro USB. Yeah, there’s lots of different ones. There’s one that looks kind of like

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s got a wide angled sort of triangular trapezoid thing on the bottom and then a rectangle and

⏹️ ▶️ John then there’s the one that’s just skinny and it looks almost like it’s just exactly rectangular but it’s got like little, the corners

⏹️ ▶️ John chopped off of it. I believe you’re talking about mini and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco micro USB respectively.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know what the names are, they’re both very small. But those are, they’re metal, they’re metal, bent metal things and inside

⏹️ ▶️ John the metal it’s like hollow and there’s pins in there whereas the lightning is reversed. It’s like a solid piece of, well not

⏹️ ▶️ John really solid, but it’s solid and then the connectors are on, the contacts are on the outside of the solid thing. And I think that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John the only way, really, to make a sturdy, very small reversible connector. Because you can’t

⏹️ ▶️ John have anything go inside the tiny little thing. That’s what makes the Micro and Mini so annoying,

⏹️ ▶️ John that there’s that hollow spot that stuff has to go into. And you could make that reversible, I suppose, but I

⏹️ ▶️ John really, really hope that they basically just copy Lightning and say, reverse it, conducts on outside,

⏹️ ▶️ John solid metal-ish thing. Because then you can make that solid metal thing pretty thin and still be sturdy,

⏹️ ▶️ John and still be reversible. So we’ll see.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the problem with lightning—and by the way, there was a great post

⏹️ ▶️ Marco John Gruber wrote on Daring Fireball about this thing. Today, we’ll link to it in the show notes.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Lightning is what makes Apple, Apple, and it’s everything that people love and hate about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple. It’s fantastic. But in order to do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this, you have to give up substantial

⏹️ ▶️ Marco concessions to complexity and cost. To make something reversible, it is going to be more expensive.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is going to be much more complex. And you’re going to have like, you know, the dollar cables

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from Monoprice might actually suck or might not work. There’s going to be problems.

⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t need as many contacts. Lightning is expensive because it’s meant to do more than just be USB. Like if it was just

⏹️ ▶️ John USB, they would just be running USB over it. Lightning does not just run USB over it. Like Lightning is Apple’s expansion plan

⏹️ ▶️ John for their iOS devices So that you know it’s part of their what how can we evolve our hardware

⏹️ ▶️ John without having to change this connector again? It’s very flexible very complicated. They just basically need to run USB

⏹️ ▶️ John over a cable with a different connector

⏹️ ▶️ Marco well But I think well physically I’m pretty sure that the lightning cable has like just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco barely enough contacts To run USB 3 over it and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and pull that off

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah But it’s like this flexible arrangement where it can change what the pins do and they sent each other like it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco way more expensive

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s way more expensive than USB is going to be. But I think, just

⏹️ ▶️ John physically speaking, ignore what’s going over the wires and what’s talking amongst them. Just look at the

⏹️ ▶️ John little metal thing that you plug into some other thing. I think the USB group can come up

⏹️ ▶️ John with a connector that’s more expensive than any of their existing connectors, but is not outrageously so.

⏹️ ▶️ John And then down the line, continue. As the wires connect, they connect to a USB 3 hub, and they have

⏹️ ▶️ John all the same cost constraints that they always have there. I hope they can pull it off.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love too how this is, this is one of those things like, about half the articles about it, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of the comments that some of the reporters are getting from the various USB spec people and from

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Intel and everything like that, it’s so funny how they try to avoid talking about Apple or giving Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco any credit whatsoever in starting this thing. It’s like, they’ll try, they’ll

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be like, well, we’re designing this for emerging product categories.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think they’ve already emerged a couple of years ago, actually. I

⏹️ ▶️ John mean, and the worst thing about it is that USB was way out ahead in making connectors for very tiny devices.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like all those two terrible camera connectors that we were just talking about, those existed way before lightning. Like

⏹️ ▶️ John the USB group saw people want to connect their cameras or they’re very small, I don’t know if they had tablets or smartphones

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever charger. Like they said, they saw the need for small connectors way before Apple did.

⏹️ ▶️ John took so long with that stupid giant, you know, 30 pin connector. They just, the

⏹️ ▶️ John USB group just made a series of terrible small connectors, right? And like, they were, they

⏹️ ▶️ John had all the advantages of the old world PC. We can move fast. We can fill needs as soon as we see them.

⏹️ ▶️ John And they just did a bad job on every single one of them. And so now they’ve sort of been embarrassed into, into this

⏹️ ▶️ John press release by Apple, taking forever to come up with anything. But when they came up with it, it’s fantastic,

⏹️ ▶️ John at least for Apple’s purposes, obviously, wouldn’t be fantastic for their group, for the expensive lightning interface that

⏹️ ▶️ John connects to it. And so that’s why it’s so hard to envision this new USB thing being anything other

⏹️ ▶️ John than looking a lot like the lightning connector, unless it’s terrible. Because if they

⏹️ ▶️ John just make something that’s like micro USB but a slightly different shape and reversible, I don’t think that’s a win.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, would you rather plug in… Say you took micro USB and now it’s reversible. Would you still…

⏹️ ▶️ John Would you enjoy plugging that in? I sure as heck wouldn’t. And I hate plugging that thing into my camera. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John not a good experience. And so this is a test of whatever this is, the USB

⏹️ ▶️ John IF. I don’t know what the IF stands for. But we’ll see if they got their act together

⏹️ ▶️ John by what this connector looks like when it comes out.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I’m very curious, honestly. And I would love for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco them to do this on both ends of the cable. And I don’t know if they would ever do that. USB has never had a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco symmetrical cable like that. But I would love to see that, because certainly,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the computer end of the cables is just as frustrating to insert

⏹️ ▶️ Marco upside down and everything. It’s just as bad.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s one of the things they say in the thing. Usability enhancements. Users will no

⏹️ ▶️ John longer need to be concerned with plug orientation slash cable direction. Oh, good. Making it easier to

⏹️ ▶️ John plug in. That would be fantastic. And this will affect all of our lives, because even though we have Apple devices,

⏹️ ▶️ John we have cameras and stuff, too. and they will have whatever this connector is in a couple years, you have to assume, right?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the Apple laptops and Apple computers that have USB, which is all of them, those

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ports can get smaller too.

⏹️ ▶️ John That may wait several more years. Remember how long it took Apple to get USB 3. That’s true. Maybe

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in 17 years, the Mac Pro will finally support these connectors.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s where we’re gonna connect our Retina displays to our Mac Pros with this new USB connector, because

⏹️ ▶️ John DisplayPort will never carry appropriate resolutions.

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⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, another use for hover, Archagon in the chat said, I subscribe to hover because I’m lonely.

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⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s fantastic.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is pretty awesome. All right, so I’m gonna make a big mistake and ask you to tell me where

⏹️ ▶️ Casey your Mac Pros are.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s under my desk right now.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey No, you know what

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean. You know what I mean. Where are your trash can Mac Pros? Because isn’t it supposed to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey be before the end of the year? Did I make that up?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey know.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, they say December. Now, we have to consider Yes, when Apple says

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just a month for a product, it often comes like the last day of the month But also Apple tends to be closed

⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually for a large part of the company tends to be closed For the last two weeks of December.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I think if it’s going to come in December it’s probably gonna be within the next week and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco my theory is that I think retina displays might not be totally

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ruled out for this launch keep up alive

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John like me with the last guardian they could have them it could happen

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hey 10.10 might have a new file system so you’re secretly hoping you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John know

⏹️ ▶️ John with with your idea of like that you were gonna wait and only buy on red now that is having a new appeal to me

⏹️ ▶️ John now as I sit here and I think about like if they came out with them today would I be rushing to buy one I’d probably rush to configure them

⏹️ ▶️ John to see the pricing oh me too I don’t know if I would rush to buy them maybe it maybe you and I will hold strong together

⏹️ ▶️ John and just say nope we’re not buying trash cans until we can get a retina display with it because I am NOT buying a Dell I don’t even know how

⏹️ ▶️ John you sit in front of those Dell displays or whatever you got your setup there I’m not buying a Dell display

⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh I I have moved on from my mediocre Dell displays now I have a Mediocre HP display

⏹️ ▶️ Marco some ugly black thing. I know it’s really bad actually it has transformer wine, and it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John Inverter wine

⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually whatever it is it has it has a high-pitched wine that occasionally. It’s not even regular. It’s occasional

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s really obnoxious and and the the the signaling

⏹️ ▶️ Marco interface to it is or either either its signaling interface or my Mac Pro

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is The video card is buggy in some way so that that mini DisplayPort

⏹️ ▶️ Marco no longer works reliably. The picture will just cut out after a while. I’ve tried different cables, they’re out. So now I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco using DVI, which is a giant thick cable running behind my computer. And if I move my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco feet the wrong way, the screen flickers or turns off because something is like slightly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the edge of being connected somewhere within the cable or the two connectors. So I’m just like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually, I’ve decided that I really kind of can’t and shouldn’t the new Mac Pro as

⏹️ ▶️ Marco long as I’m using this monitor because I’ll have to involve another adapter

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in that chain because it’ll have only mini display ports, or Thunderbolt, so I’ll have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have the adapter to this flaky cable, to this flaky monitor, and God knows

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if that’ll even work or if that’ll have problems. That’s yet another reason why I should wait until a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Retina display before buying this thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John I was not excited by the whatever those rumors were of like a Dell 24 inch retina-ish

⏹️ ▶️ John display because the, what would you call it, logical resolution? Like once

⏹️ ▶️ John you go in high DPI mode, the resolution was too low. Despite the fact, you know, it’s also an ugly monitor

⏹️ ▶️ John and you know.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well hold on, the resolution was too low on the big one, but on the 23 inch or 24

⏹️ ▶️ Marco inch one, it’s exactly right. What was the logical resolution?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco 1920 by 1200. Or by 1080, sorry. No,

⏹️ ▶️ John I gotta get bigger. I gotta go bigger than that. I can’t stand being stuck in that. I’ve been stuck

⏹️ ▶️ John in 1920 by 1200 since I guess the 22 inch Apple cinema display and I need bigger

⏹️ ▶️ John my wife has a 27 inch and it does not that much bigger in terms of resolution But it’s bigger enough. I can’t I cannot

⏹️ ▶️ John be in 1920 by 1200 anymore.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well two things one Uh, so I’ve for all of tumblr. I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco used two 24 inch monitors So I had I had two side-by-side monitors of that resolution

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now, I have one big 30-inch. I like the 30-inch better,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but not by a massive margin. It’s not that different. The 24s give you, I believe,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually more real estate, but the 30, of course, is a little more useful because you can have one giant window

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you really want to. I’d say it’s kind of a toss-up between the two. Having two 24s or having one 30

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or 27 is roughly the same amount of usefulness.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m monitor monogamous. Well, I do like having the one big one because it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco makes the desk arrangement a lot easier. Like I can fit my speakers on my desk and I, yes,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John anyway.

⏹️ ▶️ John Not on the on-screen. Yeah, no, I use tons of windows and the bigger area I have to spread those

⏹️ ▶️ John windows. It’s like having a big gigantic desk where you spread all your papers out. That’s how I treat my screen.

⏹️ ▶️ John And I have had multiple displays at various points. It’s not that I dislike it so much, but I would much rather have one

⏹️ ▶️ John big screen than two, even though the total area of the two might be much greater.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’re so wrong. You’re so wrong. I totally prefer having two screens Absolutely without

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a shadow of a doubt

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, but you’re more recent Windows user. Maybe that’s it

⏹️ ▶️ John Who had multiple displays first I was running two displays back when your PC had CGA graphics

⏹️ ▶️ John and everything was teal and purple so I don’t Want to hear about multi monitors. I’ve been there and done that I

⏹️ ▶️ John just it’s just the way I work It’s better with one with one monitor,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so the other thing to consider is on the retina screens they have those different scaling modes. Now,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, I’ve used this thing a lot, I’ve gotten a lot of work done on it, so now

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m pretty comfortable knowing that the native 2X resolution is,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as measured in points, it’s 1440 by 900, which is like a step below what you’d

⏹️ ▶️ Marco expect for a 15-inch laptop. But you can tell the display to run in 1680 by 1050 times two and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it just scales it to fit the actual physical pixels. and so that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s how i use it most of the time and it works just fine like it it doesn’t look bad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco i would say it’s perfectly fine so if they release a twenty seven inch monitor that only

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has the logical nineteen twenty by ten eighty times two uh… which is what

⏹️ ▶️ Marco these rumors all point to uh… if they do that resolution at twenty seven inches

⏹️ ▶️ Marco i assume it would offer the same kind of scaling mode where you could simulate the twenty five sixty by fourteen forty of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the real twenty seven inch now uh… I would just do that and it would look, I’m sure at that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco size and at that distance, I’m sure you wouldn’t even be able to tell the difference.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. Non-native res is impressive that it looks as good as it does on the 15 inch, but I

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t want that on my desktop. I’ll know it’s there even if I can’t see it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, unfortunately, if they’re going to go retina, I think it’s almost certain that’s how they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would do it. I think they would release a 27-inch at 3840 by whatever, like at double 1920

⏹️ ▶️ Marco by 1080.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I mean, I keep coming back to the resolution of those desktop images that are included in Mavericks.

⏹️ ▶️ John They are on the nose exactly four times the number of pixels as on the existing 27-inch

⏹️ ▶️ John display. And I can’t think that’s a coincidence. Like, why would you do it?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think you’re right. However, the way that the Retina MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro scales it, is it renders its own virtual resolution at 2X,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then down samples that image to fit the physical pixel. So, if the highest

⏹️ ▶️ Marco virtual resolution it offered was double 2560 by 1440, it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would need a wallpaper that size to be native, and then it would scale it down to 3840 by whatever. Wow,

⏹️ ▶️ John the whole rest of the screen isn’t like that. They just would just scale it up to fit the humble res, and then they would scale it back

⏹️ ▶️ John down. It’s the same thing that they do with any other drawing. It doesn’t fill the screen entirely. I have to think

⏹️ ▶️ John that they’re going for, I mean, maybe not, maybe the first one will be that kind of scale thing, but I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John like that. Who wants to run non-native res? It’s gross.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m telling you, on my 15-inch Retina, I’ve run it all the time, and you can’t even tell.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve seen it. It does look impressively good. It looks nice enough that I wouldn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John mind running it like that on a laptop, which is like a compromised machine, but on a desktop where I’ve got this

⏹️ ▶️ John gigantic thing with this amazing GPU power, like what’s the point of it if I can’t have, you know, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John the whole reason you’re buying this thing with all this power is I want to have actual real native Retina desktop

⏹️ ▶️ John display. Maybe I can’t afford that this year. Maybe they come out with it at $4,000. Fine, I’ll wait, you know, and maybe I’ll

⏹️ ▶️ John have to buy one of those non-native Res ones in between to get through, but out there,

⏹️ ▶️ John in my future, is 4X a 27-inch display native?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So here’s a question that will probably come up then. Suppose they launch the monitor I think they’re going to launch, which

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is 3840 at 27 inches. So it’s going to be, you know, you’d have to scale it up to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco get that kind of real estate. Do you buy it and just be upset about it and angry for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few years? Or do you hold back and still use 1X monitors with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the new Mac Pro? Or do you not buy either? Do you not buy the new Mac Pro and you don’t buy the new monitor

⏹️ ▶️ Marco until it has the resolution you want, which might never happen?

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, it will happen. You know, of course it will happen eventually. It’s just a question of how long. I would seriously

⏹️ ▶️ John consider buying, trying to get like fire sale prices on the existing 27 inch

⏹️ ▶️ John and just running 1X for a few more years. Oh man,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco see I would so much rather run scaled 2X than

⏹️ ▶️ Marco run real 1X. And

⏹️ ▶️ John it wouldn’t be because the non-native thing, it would just be because the logical resolution of the 1X 27 inch would be higher, you know what I mean?

⏹️ ▶️ John Like the real estate, I’m trading the ability to have more space on my desk to spread my crap out

⏹️ ▶️ John for that crap looking super sharp. So, but I would have to say, like what, 1920 by,

⏹️ ▶️ John logical resolution of like, if it’s 1080 in the short dimension, that’s, I would want it

⏹️ ▶️ John to be at least 1200, because I’m not gonna go down. I’m not gonna go from 1920 by 1200, which is what I’m looking at now, logical resolution,

⏹️ ▶️ John to a lower logical resolution.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like an animal?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, that’s part of the problem that I’ve, well, part of the way I’ve justified not getting a Retina MacBook Pro is,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey since I have the old school, high-res anti-glare MacBook Pro.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey What is this running at?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Let me see. 1680 by 1050. Yep, 1680

⏹️ ▶️ Casey by 1050. And what is your 15 run at if you’re in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey like retinified? 1440 by 900. Right, that’s terrible.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s atrocious. Well, right, but you can just toggle it. Yes, yes, yes,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John yes.

⏹️ ▶️ John He runs the non-native to get more stuff on the screen.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do. Let me run, I can tell you, there’s this great utility, by the way, I wanna plug this. It’s called iFriendly, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I spelled E-Y-E. High-friendly it’s this awesome like five buck thing in the Mac App Store that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it lets you assign those resolution scaling things to hotkeys on Retina MacBook Pros, which

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is really really nice So I have like if you smash all three modifiers and hit up or down arrow I have that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco toggle through the modes It’s really really cool Yeah, I don’t know I’d be fine with the scale like if that’s what I have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do to get retina in the next five Years, that’s what I’ll do

⏹️ ▶️ Casey wait, but I don’t understand and I’m really being serious I’m not trying to poke the bear here. If the whole

⏹️ ▶️ Casey point in a retina screen is getting everything to look as pretty as it does on iOS,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey where you’ve got double the density for the same effective space.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Doesn’t scaling defeat the whole point of that? Yeah, you get a lot more real estate, but isn’t that kind

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of defeating the whole point of the retina screen in the first place? Or am I just totally missing something here?

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like one and a half scale where you, when things get fuzzy around the edges, cause it’s a non-native resolution,

⏹️ ▶️ John but the pixels are so small that non-native resolution it doesn’t look as blurry as maybe we

⏹️ ▶️ John all make fun of people who run non-native on their you know 800 by 600 iBook and they would change

⏹️ ▶️ John to non-native res to make everything bigger and it look terrible. At that size everything is so small that it just

⏹️ ▶️ John looks a little bit softer. I find that I think retina is more important

⏹️ ▶️ John to me on an iPad or an iPhone because I think I just close hold it closer to my face that I could

⏹️ ▶️ John see I could see the pixels if they were there on a desktop and because

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m using it for work and stuff, I really want more space to move stuff around. And I also want it to be red, and

⏹️ ▶️ John I want everything. If I have to trade one for the other, I really have to see what the logical res is and just

⏹️ ▶️ John stare at it for a while in a store and see, could I tolerate using this at a non-native res in the 1.5x mode?

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So this is kind of like one of those computer philosophy things. It’s like, you’re still running hard drives on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your desktop, right? At home, yeah. So there were a lot of people that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco refused to use SSDs and might still, because they were waiting until they could just buy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a two terabyte one for 300 bucks, something like that, which actually we’re not that far off from. But for years,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s like you had these people who were crazy like me, who would buy a small SSD and then a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco big hard drive and jump through the hoops you need to make that be reasonably good. Just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it was so good to even have an SSD at all, that it was worth the kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hack to get it earlier than when you can go all SSD. So now

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wonder if that’s going to be like you with Retina. You seem like the kind of person, you will on principle, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco will wait and not get this until you can have the exact

⏹️ ▶️ Marco resolution you want. Whereas I will jump in sooner, and I’m willing to tolerate a little bit of hackiness to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco get this massive, what I perceive as a massive upgrade, that I really want very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco badly earlier.

⏹️ ▶️ John But I really want the extra real estate almost as badly as the Retina. That’s the problem. Like, the

⏹️ ▶️ John thing that will change my life the most will be having more room on my screen to put stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ John And I was hoping not to have to go backwards and hoping, you know, to get

⏹️ ▶️ John retina I wouldn’t have to sacrifice space. I would also get a small bump in space or whatever. So that’s the other

⏹️ ▶️ John change that I’m looking for. And for the SSD hard drive thing, Fusion Drive nicely takes care of that. I don’t think there’s an equivalent, though,

⏹️ ▶️ John of Fusion Drive unless it’s that 1.5x mode. But Fusion Drive has almost none of the disadvantages

⏹️ ▶️ John of spinning disks. at almost all the advantages of retina. And I’m not sure that’s true of the non-native

⏹️ ▶️ John res retina screen. I guess it also depends on how dense it is, because I think the 15-inch

⏹️ ▶️ John MacBook Air is gonna end up being more dots per inch, native dots per inch, than the

⏹️ ▶️ John retina desktop display. So it might look different than your laptop does in non-native.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s actually a good point. Yeah, yeah, I bet you’re right about that. I hadn’t considered that, but I’m also sitting much further away. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you are right that I think it will be significantly lower density. because the Retina

⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook Pro is already 2880 by whatever. So it’s already like at 15 inches, it’s most of that resolution

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to 4K. It’s like three quarters of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the horizontal resolution. So yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John maybe. If we learned anything from the past couple of years, it’s that waiting for Apple to rev its displays

⏹️ ▶️ John is like technology version of the crying game. Not

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco in the way you think.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Because I just,

⏹️ ▶️ John so many of my past Mac purchases have been like, either

⏹️ ▶️ John based on, well surely we’ll update the displays, or I shouldn’t buy a display now because this display

⏹️ ▶️ John is really old and surely they’ll revise it soon and you just wait. And you wait, and it’s just sadness all around,

⏹️ ▶️ John waiting for them, I don’t know why they take so long to revise their displays, but they do, and we should just expect it, and now

⏹️ ▶️ John Who knows how long it will be before they pair a display worthy of their black trash cans.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But there was that one exception where when they released the first 27-inch

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iMac, that was like a revolution in displays for that time where

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the time you could get 30-inch displays for over $2,000 or you could

⏹️ ▶️ Marco get a 27-inch iMac with a better quality, more dense panel of the same

⏹️ ▶️ Marco resolution with a free computer stuck to the back of it for like $1500. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they were the first ones to have those panels in any kind of quantity and for a long time the only way to get that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco panel was to buy an iMac. That’s what I’m saying, they didn’t put them, they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh where’s the monitor that’s just like that but without the iMac attached? What do you mean it doesn’t exist?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, but I’m hoping they pull something like that with Retina, you know, obviously… They’ll attach

⏹️ ▶️ John it to the new Mac Pro. Just glue the garbage can to the back of the monitor.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it would almost certainly require Thunderbolt 2. And so you can pretty much only

⏹️ ▶️ Marco use the new Retina MacBook Pro and the new Mac Pro, which makes a lot of sense. I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco obviously, we’ve talked about it before. At least I’ve talked about this endlessly every episode.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’ve talked a lot about how all the pieces are in place. It’s very obvious that they’re planning for a Thunderbolt 2

⏹️ ▶️ Marco display that will be Retina, that will work only with the new MacBook Pro and Mac Pro.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The only question is when that’s going to be available and whether it will be at launch. For whatever reason,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Mac Pros were seemingly slated to come out earlier

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the fall originally and this feels like a delay to me to come out in quote

⏹️ ▶️ Marco December. And I could be wrong, but it feels like they were supposed to come out at the November event and they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn’t. And all the things they use, the CPUs from Intel are already shipping

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in volume to everybody else. The GPUs are not new, they’re a little customized for Apple but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not a new part so they’re they’re probably not having yield issues. So I have to wonder, what’s the holdup

⏹️ ▶️ Marco here? What are they holding this back for?

⏹️ ▶️ John The US manufacturing plant getting that up online.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It could be. But I would imagine that that happened a long time ago.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like at this point, it’s like, why even bother releasing it this year? Like I’m sure they’ll just release it when it’s ready because they don’t care.

⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s not as if the holiday season has anything to do with Mac Pro purchases, right? So it’s like, what kind

⏹️ ▶️ John of company puts a new product up for sale in December? It’s nothing to do with the holidays. They’ll probably just

⏹️ ▶️ John put it out. If it’s ready, they’ll ship it and so what, but it’s like, you know, people going on vacation

⏹️ ▶️ John and stuff, if they wait until January, is the world going to end? No. If it’s ready December 16th or whatever that rumor URL

⏹️ ▶️ John just flew through, then fine, they’ll ship it then. But, you know, I’m not holding my breath for it. And like

⏹️ ▶️ John I said, even when it comes out, you’re not going to buy right away. I’m going to go and fiddle with the configuration right away and then just

⏹️ ▶️ John see what I think.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, if it comes out with a Retina display, I will buy it right away. That’s the only thing that would make me buy it right away.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No question. I’d order it that day. The eight core with probably 32 gigs of RAM,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one terabyte SSD, and probably the mid-range video card. I did some research on the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco video cards. It looks like the mid-range one is substantially better than the low-end one, and the high-end one is not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that much better than the mid-range one. So yeah, I tell you right now, that’s the configuration I would get, sight unseen.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Eight core, middle video card, one terabyte SSD, and 32 gigs of RAM,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s it.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’ll be $6,000, please. Yeah, probably.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You

⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, D. Sheehy in the chat asked a very important question. Marco, are you going to choose pick up from Amazon’s German,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or excuse me, Apple’s German factory option when you buy your Mac Pro?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Where, where, do we know where the factory is? Is it, is it like somewhere weird?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought it was outside Austin. No.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could go. Yeah. I could go to Austin. They have good barbecue there.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey They have very good barbecue there.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Breakfast tacos. I mean, breakfast tacos are an awesome invention of the world. Like you gotta,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I have ever since South by Southwest started sucking, I haven’t gone there and there’s I can visit Dan Benjamin

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could eat barbecue let’s do it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you want to road trip it no

⏹️ ▶️ Marco definitely not doing that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey you know you don’t want to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey do this I know John definitely would like to road trip from Boston to Austin

⏹️ ▶️ John I think they stop BMWs at the border of Texas at least

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Democrats

⏹️ ▶️ John to fix the giant steer horns to the front and then you’re allowed to continue.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Clearly, you haven’t spent a lot of time in Texas, John. There’s more to

⏹️ ▶️ John Texas. Well, it’s Austin. It’s not really Texas.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s exactly right.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and keep in mind, the border of Texas is going to be substantially more rural

⏹️ ▶️ Marco than Austin.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, man. All right. So I think… Are we good? Is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco that a sign? Yeah, we should

⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably cut it off there. Thanks a lot to our sponsors this week, Hover, Glue and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Squarespace and we will see you next week.

⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re into Twitter, you can follow them at

⏹️ ▶️ John C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Auntie Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A

⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse. It’s always another time.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it now. I’ve got lots of little

⏹️ ▶️ John items. You know, I’m still on the first tank of gas in that car. Seriously?

⏹️ ▶️ John The tank of gas that came from the dealer. Wow. It shows both how little driving I do and also, I guess, how fuel efficient it is. Well, I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John not getting great mileage because I’m, you know, stop and go traffic all the time to work. It’s much better to go highway

⏹️ ▶️ John miles.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, is that a five speed or six speed?

⏹️ ▶️ John Six.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But the Civic was five?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this is my first six speed car.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I

⏹️ ▶️ John was about to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey ask. See, the BMW is my first six speed car.

⏹️ ▶️ John I have not entered six gear yet, though. I was about to ask.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was just about to ask.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve been in fifth, but not sixth.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. So how do you like it?

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m still babying the car. Like, well, I don’t even look in. I haven’t finished going through the owner’s manual. Like, what do they tell

⏹️ ▶️ John you these days for engine braking?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Between 1,000 and 1,500, usually. Yeah, so

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s going to be a long time before I can wind this thing out to see what it can do.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Can that wind out?

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, it winds out.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, that’s terrible. And you know, if you buy an M5 or lease an M5 and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey get it in Germany, apparently, braking just doesn’t matter.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, there is braking, just that the limits are so ridiculous.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a leased car. He’s not keeping that engine long term.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, I digress. So tell me, what do you like and what do you not like about the Accord?

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m going to go with this. I have a big list of things I don’t like.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You? Somehow I am not at all surprised by

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I like, so this is my third Honda Accord, and it’s my fifth

⏹️ ▶️ John Honda, and I’ve only ever owned Hondas, although I’ve driven Mazdas and Volvos and other things that my parents have owned and stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ John And so part of the problem is like, I guess when you have multiple kids, always comparing it to the past ones

⏹️ ▶️ John like well in my old Honda this was like that and now it’s different and so

⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of the the past models have the advantage of familiarity in my mind and

⏹️ ▶️ John I imagine a lot of my complaints about the new one will fade as I become more familiar with it in fact after

⏹️ ▶️ John only driving it for a few weeks or whatever had it now I’ve seen that start to happen where the things that seem weird at first you just

⏹️ ▶️ John kind of start getting used to and you realize it’s it wasn’t that it was worse it was just different than the car you’re used to.

⏹️ ▶️ John Because a lot of the things about driving cars are like sense

⏹️ ▶️ John memory of where things are and how things feel inside the car and how the car moves

⏹️ ▶️ John and everything. And it feels weird and alien at first, but then eventually you start settling and you start

⏹️ ▶️ John knowing where everything is. But some things are clearly regressions from past Hondas and that’s just

⏹️ ▶️ John such a shame.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Such as?

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, so let’s start with the key fob.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, is it massive like all the modern ones?

⏹️ ▶️ John They have been getting bigger, right? But in exchange, like, you know, the first

⏹️ ▶️ John Accord I got was the first car that had something on the key fob where you could press a button to unlock the doors, and that’s good, I like that feature, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s big. Obviously, you’d prefer it to be like the BMW magical little thing where there’s no key part,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just the fob, and you have little buttons, but that’s not the kind of car this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is. That being said, the BMW one is, in my opinion, way too big.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, yours is enormous compared to mine, and yes, I’m talking about key fobs.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, the F30, the new 3 Series is the same size as the one I have, so for reference.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John really?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they get bigger. They keep getting bigger.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I don’t understand why they’re so big. Is it like battery life or something?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have no idea.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So genuine question, though, John, your key situation in the Accord, it is not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a proximity key, and you actually do have to insert a metal object into the steering column in order to start the car?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and that was one of the things that like seem weird at first, but you start to get used to. And I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John know why they change things like this, but when you have a metal key that goes into a slot to start your car,

⏹️ ▶️ John the angle that that slot is is something you may not think about until it changes. So all the other

⏹️ ▶️ John Hondas that we’ve had, the angle was… I don’t know what angle it is, but I just kind of know, like, when you grab the key in your hand and you reach

⏹️ ▶️ John around the side of the steering wheel to stick it in the slot, you kind of know what angle you have

⏹️ ▶️ John to put it at. And it’s a more vertical angle, and in this new Accord, it’s much closer to horizontal, which

⏹️ ▶️ John is very weird to do, you know, the twisting the key. But that’s not why I complain about the fob. My complaint about the fob is

⏹️ ▶️ John the old one had had three buttons on it in a triangle type arrangement and

⏹️ ▶️ John the buttons were two different sizes, two different textures. One was concave, one was convex, one had a ring with

⏹️ ▶️ John little studs around it. If you felt that thing in your pocket, you could tell of those three buttons. They were

⏹️ ▶️ John differentiated in every way you could differentiate them except for they were all circles. It was way easier to fish

⏹️ ▶️ John around there and figure this is unlocked, this is locked, this is open the trunk, right? You could feel it. but the new FOB is

⏹️ ▶️ John like a rectangle cut into thirds, and the thing that divides it into thirds

⏹️ ▶️ John is at the same level as everything else, so it just feels like one big smooth continuous rectangle. And you have to kind

⏹️ ▶️ John of feel your way along, go, okay, the middle one is unlock, and the top one is lock,

⏹️ ▶️ John and the bottom one, which is a little bit concave, is like open the trunk or whatever. And so it’s so hard to feel around in your pocket

⏹️ ▶️ John to find the unlock button for that thing. You always have to end up taking it out, and really concentrating on feeling where that little ridge

⏹️ ▶️ John is, And that’s a regression. I don’t I don’t know why you would take a design You had three distinct widely separated buttons in a triangle

⏹️ ▶️ John pattern that have different textures and and make one button That’s sliced into three parts bad

⏹️ ▶️ John As another one in the minor complaint department these are all minor I guess This

⏹️ ▶️ John is not really entirely Honda’s fault, but kind of their fault so you know about NHTSA

⏹️ ▶️ John National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve heard of

⏹️ ▶️ John it. Is that how you say it? Yeah? Well, that’s all yeah My first job was at car talk and we did the stuff

⏹️ ▶️ John with NHTSA data I don’t know if that’s how you say it. That’s how I say it. That’s how everyone at Car Talks said it. That’s fair. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ John authoritative. Well, not the show, the website. So we could have all just been saying it wrong. But it’s like gif gif. Anyway, NHTSA

⏹️ ▶️ John has new requirements for headrests. Not new, but like new since last time I bought a car 11 years ago or

⏹️ ▶️ John whatever, that limits the distance between the back of your head and the headrest,

⏹️ ▶️ John because they found that there was less injury if that distance was smaller. And so the new rules are

⏹️ ▶️ John that to accommodate people sitting in the weird positions they sit in, the headrests have to be closer

⏹️ ▶️ John to your head. And sure enough, in this new Accord, if you were looking at the seat back, and the seat back

⏹️ ▶️ John was up perpendicular to the ground, which it never is, because no one sits bolt upright in their seat, but if

⏹️ ▶️ John you were to put it like that, the headrest is tilted forward, way forward, to try to minimize the

⏹️ ▶️ John distance between your head and the headrest. So much so that if you actually had the seat

⏹️ ▶️ John in a right angle, which again, nobody ever does, you could, like, this headrest would be shoving your head down. And

⏹️ ▶️ John what people actually do is they tilt the seat way back, and at that point then the headrest starts to become closer to vertical.

⏹️ ▶️ John But it is a way different experience of the headrest. It looks like the headrest is like reaching back and and hitting your head

⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re like, stop, leave me alone. You want the headrest to go back and it’s, if you Google for like, 2014

⏹️ ▶️ John Honda Accord headrest complaints, you’ll find people complaining about this and it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John partially Honda’s fault for making a headrest that’s so far forward like that and it’s not adjustable or whatever I guess,

⏹️ ▶️ John but It’s I think they’re doing it to comply with regulations that the new regulations are that you

⏹️ ▶️ John have to have a smaller distance between Your head and the headrest. This is one of the things I’m kind of getting used to once you realize that it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John kind of there It’s it actually fits my head a little bit better than the old headrest when it’s adjusted correctly

⏹️ ▶️ John But it is closer than I think it needs to because I would like to have my seat a little bit more upright than I Actually

⏹️ ▶️ John do but I have to tilt it back just to get a reasonable That’s the headrest doesn’t poke me in the back of the head constantly

⏹️ ▶️ John I There’s one more before we get off this topic is I have a very long list and what we should come back to it each

⏹️ ▶️ John Weekend The stocks, you know the stocks for like

⏹️ ▶️ John the blinkers and the wipers and everything I Can’t tell for sure without actually seeing in accord with flappy paddles

⏹️ ▶️ John because they do have they do have like Pretty sure they have accords with flappy paddles. I think they put the flappy paddles

⏹️ ▶️ John on like the CVT version It’s some ungodly transmission that I don’t even want to think about but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey how does that even make sense? There’s not even gears.

⏹️ ▶️ John It doesn’t. It doesn’t make any sense. But they do it. Tons of car companies do this. They put CVTs in them

⏹️ ▶️ John because they’re cheap and everything. And they also put flappy paddles on them just to make people have fun flapping and make them feel like they

⏹️ ▶️ John have expensive stuff. But my theory is that the stocks

⏹️ ▶️ John are way higher than they used to be. Like, you know, instead of being exactly horizontal, they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John up on an angle, like 45 degrees. And I think they’re way higher and actually mounted higher on the steering

⏹️ ▶️ John column to make room for the flappy paddles that I don’t have in my car. So when I go for

⏹️ ▶️ John the stalks with my fingers, you know, reach around from behind the rim of the steering wheel to reach where the stalks are,

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re way higher than I expect them to be, because on all my other Hondas, they were lower down. It could be that it just Honda decided the stalks

⏹️ ▶️ John should be higher up, and they’re just higher up in all their cars. But my theory is that the empty space below them where I have nothing

⏹️ ▶️ John is where the flappy paddles would go, and they didn’t want to make two versions of the steering column with stalks in different positions. So that’s a

⏹️ ▶️ John little bit annoying.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But overall, you still do like the car.

⏹️ ▶️ John I have a list of 80 more complaints, but I think that’s enough for today. But yeah, so far, car’s been treating

⏹️ ▶️ John me well. I’ve been trying to keep it in the garage to see how long I can go acorn dent free. Nice.

⏹️ ▶️ John So far, so good there. No scratches, no dings. It’s getting a little bit dirty, but

⏹️ ▶️ John you know. So when I walk up to it in the parking lot, I’m still excited to see it with its big shiny

⏹️ ▶️ John wheels and its undented bodywork. It’s the little things. get into

⏹️ ▶️ John it in its leather-wrapped steering wheel, which is nice even though it’s not heated, and play with all my various

⏹️ ▶️ John AV connections. And I’m getting into a good rhythm with the iPods that I connect. I connect my Shuffle to it a lot to listen

⏹️ ▶️ John to podcasts on, and then I take the Shuffle out of the car with me, you know, so I can listen on my way up the

⏹️ ▶️ John stairs, out of the parking garage and everything. So that’s working out pretty well. And one of my iPods has a permanent home

⏹️ ▶️ John in the car connected to the actual iPod connector with the, you know, the integration with the steering wheel controls and everything.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what I use to listen to music. So it’s going pretty well.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’re like the worst friend to have when thinking about beta testing a podcast app.

⏹️ ▶️ John I gotta have the physical buttons. I cannot look at a screen to pause the podcast.

⏹️ ▶️ John And why do I have to pause the podcast? Because the kids are asking me a question. Because my wife is calling me. Because something, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John I want to be able to just reach a button without looking and pause. And I can do that with steering wheel controls and I can do that with

⏹️ ▶️ John an iPod Shuffle. Can’t do it with an iOS iPod app.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well you can with a clicker if you have the headphone clicker.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but I’m wearing headphones It’s going over the speakers in the car. It’s all point of the integration. I want to have sound in the car So

⏹️ ▶️ John you use the wheel controls?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco What’s wrong with that?

⏹️ ▶️ John Wheel controls can’t pause. Can you just tap the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco off button to pause?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, we went through this on Twitter, didn’t we?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah We even just like queuing up the podcast like I I like the shuffle Again,

⏹️ ▶️ John because I want to listen to it I want to listen to it when I’m Getting ready in the morning when I’m getting out of my

⏹️ ▶️ John car going out of the parking garage going up the stairs to the building And on the way back down, you wouldn’t think that would make a difference, but that’s, you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, five, 10 minutes a day when I want to have the podcast with me. That’s fair. So, and during

⏹️ ▶️ John that time, I also don’t want to be fumbling with something in my pocket or accidentally hitting, I’m, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John going to be difficult to get me to use an iOS, uh, iPod, uh, podcast application.

⏹️ ▶️ John If Apple would just stop making the shuffle, then that’ll do it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And what are the kids think? Do they, do they even have an opinion?

⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, I don’t think they

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey care. Are they allowed in the car?

⏹️ ▶️ John They know about new car smell. They said, what’s that smell? This is the first new car smell. So they’re excited about

⏹️ ▶️ John that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Oh, yeah, because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re both a lot younger than your previous car.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, wow, that’s true.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John They

⏹️ ▶️ John were too young. When we got the 2006 Accord, they were alive, but they were too young to care about that.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m excited because now they’re both old enough and big enough to only be in boosters.

⏹️ ▶️ John They don’t have to be in the big seats that destroy your car. Nice. And so hopefully the seats in this

⏹️ ▶️ John car will not be destroyed by the gigantic car seat strapping Mechanisms

⏹️ ▶️ John that destroy cars

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for whatever it’s worth so far. I’ve gotten away, okay with that like for it I don’t know if it like I have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this one like little pad It’s a little skinny like pad that sits between the two But for the most part

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I have those things tight as hell and and I’ve been fine Well leather

⏹️ ▶️ John is probably more durable than than cloth in terms of resisting the compression everything and also you’re not supposed to have anything

⏹️ ▶️ John Under the car seat if you go to the local fire department They’ll yell at you about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the cop who installed the first one didn’t complain about the thing I had because you could still get it so ridiculously

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tight that like if you like shake the top it doesn’t even budge It’s like it’s that tight. You know it’s like it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it’s so locked down that I Don’t think anybody could really complain about

⏹️ ▶️ John it. Is he still rear-facing?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s we’re to the point now where he he doesn’t need to be rear-facing But like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the the current wisdom is that which makes sense is that you should rear face Pretty much

⏹️ ▶️ Marco until they can’t fit rear-facing anymore like until like their knees are at their chin

⏹️ ▶️ Marco rear-facing, then you have to turn it around.

⏹️ ▶️ John You’re not supposed to get it too long because their little legs can get caught between the seat and the thing, so there is a leg length limit for

⏹️ ▶️ John rear-facing. But yeah, the real seat destruction doesn’t happen until you go front-facing. You’ll see when you get like a, when

⏹️ ▶️ John you get a gigantic…

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Where they can, where they can kick the back of the…

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s part of it. Yes, they get their stupid feet all over the back of your seats, but no, the ones, the ones that…

⏹️ ▶️ John the big seats that strap in end up just pressing down into the,

⏹️ ▶️ John into the foam of your seat, and like four points of wherever the seat hits, the car

⏹️ ▶️ John seat hits your seats, that really destroys it because you have to crank it down with the seat belt and it’s not, like the rear-facing

⏹️ ▶️ John has the advantage of kind of being pulled into the little wedge of your seat, like you’re taking the car seat and pulling

⏹️ ▶️ John that thing into the wedge of the seat, whereas the front-facing one has got to kind of be pulled down into

⏹️ ▶️ John the seat. You’ll see when you get one. Plus they weigh more and they have more scratchy things

⏹️ ▶️ John and there’s a much heavier kid sitting in them.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well the one I have now is both that you can reverse it, but I mean there’s no seatbelt involved in where now It’s all latch.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well. Yeah, what model do you have I hate latch?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Give me a second I couldn’t even tell you Tiff would know it’s Give me a second talk about something else with Casey

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for two minutes while I’m looking up on Amazon

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Going through your order history

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, all right. I’ll pull out another complaint the pedals are too close in the record

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s the Britax marathon 70 g3 Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John Marathon, I know that one.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s pretty, the one we had before, the infant car seat we had was the Graco, whatever,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco snug ride, whatever, whatever. It was a piece of crap. Like it was, every time I had to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco remove or mount that car seat, I wanted to burn down the world. It was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just a total piece of crap, like the latch, like the, horrible.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Britax Marathon has been fantastic so far. night and day difference in like installation

⏹️ ▶️ Marco qualities views, massive difference.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if we had a marathon I think we might have had a similar but this is still like a little kid

⏹️ ▶️ John seat once you get the big kid seats are just just brutal like if you can look at the little

⏹️ ▶️ John the part that contacts the bottom that little sort of the foot of the thing that is a much

⏹️ ▶️ John that is a much gentler foot than the big ones to start just

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah And the other thing is the food. Oh, God, the food that they grinds into the thing that’s underneath it as they

⏹️ ▶️ John throw their food out. And then it goes underneath there. And then the sticky candy gets in there. And then the seat is grinding

⏹️ ▶️ John it into the, it’s just, it’s disgusting. Kids are disgusting. So no,

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m really excited about that I don’t have to have those giant seats

⏹️ ▶️ John in there anymore. No more latch, no more belting the seatbelt in,

⏹️ ▶️ John doing the little clicky ratcheting thing, no more of that. Just boosters? Just boosters, yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So you said you still have the first tank of gas. And presumably, the range on one of those

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is somewhere around 400 miles on a tank? I

⏹️ ▶️ John think it’s less than that. I think it’s like 300 and something.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey OK.

⏹️ ▶️ John Small tanks. They put small tanks in them.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So at that rate, if you’ve had the car, what, three or four weeks now?

⏹️ ▶️ John Something like that, yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So if you call it a month, that says it’s going to take you another three months to just get out of braking.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s in the honeymoon period. Well, when we go on our summer trip to Long Island, this will be the car we take, so that

⏹️ ▶️ John may be its first long trip.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because Long Island never has any traffic or anything. You’ll be fine. Well, we don’t go the traffic-y

⏹️ ▶️ Casey way. You sound like somebody from D.C. Yeah, you know, it’s the same thing in D.C. Oh, D.C. traffic is terrible.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, no, it’s not. It’s not terrible at all. And so, like, the housemans, who I know

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco is friendly with, Stephanie had said, oh, you know, the traffic is fine

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in D.C. as long as you know where you’re going. Oh, no. Just today, she tweets a picture of her on 95 or 495

⏹️ ▶️ Casey God knows what, stopped because DC traffic is terrible. And I think Marco was going

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to say, Long Island’s the same way.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and like, everyone always thinks they have like their own little secret way that they can go that won’t have traffic. And then the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem is, there’s like, you know, millions of people who all have the same idea.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Everyone thinks they have, it’s like the AT&T store on iPhone launch.

⏹️ ▶️ John My way is not secret, but it actually avoids traffic. Sure.

⏹️ ▶️ John You just don’t go on roads, you go on a boat. If you go from New London

⏹️ ▶️ John to Orient Point, there’s no traffic. Hey, I solved the problem. That’s what we do when we go

⏹️ ▶️ John down there. We go, we take the New London ferry to Orient Point. On that boat trip, there is no traffic.

⏹️ ▶️ John There’s, I guess there’s boat traffic, but they don’t get in your way. And then once you go from Orient down to where

⏹️ ▶️ John we stay, you’re going in the North Fork. You know, it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John against or with traffic. There’s just nobody there. Like, we don’t get close to the city, so yeah, that’s how you avoid traffic.

⏹️ ▶️ John Take boats. Going down to New London is usually not that bad. It could be a couple, I mean, it

⏹️ ▶️ John depends on what day we leave, but that’ll be enough highway miles to get out. I used to drive around,

⏹️ ▶️ John and then, I mean, it’s not terrible. There’s always a little bit of traffic around the city, but

⏹️ ▶️ John you would actually end up getting, depending on where you’re driving, it’s very possible that you could get there faster by driving around

⏹️ ▶️ John than you would by taking a ferry, because the ferry, you gotta wait for the ferry to show up, and the ferry is actually kind of slow, but you’re not driving

⏹️ ▶️ John during that time, time so it’s better.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Turns out boats full of cars are slower than cars.

⏹️ ▶️ John They are but it feels faster because you get a break. Unless you’re like me and can’t stand boats

⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s a testament to how unwilling I am

⏹️ ▶️ John to drive around or how unwilling my whole family is to drive around these days that I’m actually willing to get on a boat. Although

⏹️ ▶️ John I dread it every time.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Are there any transport methods that you enjoy?

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m driving my car, I’m more or less fine with that, but no one likes to be stuck

⏹️ ▶️ John in traffic I guess. I’m okay with teleportation, anyone wants to

⏹️ ▶️ John work on that?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would love to hear John go hypercritical on teleportation. I can only imagine

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what that would feel

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John like.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve read too many bad sci-fi stories about the dangers of teleportation that I imagine it wouldn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John go well.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It doesn’t seem

⏹️ ▶️ John worth the risk. Seriously. I wouldn’t go first, let someone else go first, you know.