43: Brilliance Enhancer
13 Dec 2013John buys a TV.
Episode Description:
- Accidental Fountain Screenplay: The Case of Liss by Joe Steel. (And Bionic.)
- Desktop 4K/Retina resolutions hitting bandwidth limitations of Thunderbolt 2 and DisplayPort 1.2, and the Sharp/Apple non-news.
- John's Squarespace-reseller idea already exists.
- Why aren't iOS App Store purchases available for purchasing and management in the App Store app on the Mac?
- John's new TV:
- Technological progression from CRT to plasma and LCD, and the many hacky tricks used by modern TVs to overcome limitations and look better in stores. See also: Hypercritical 16: The Soap Opera Effect.
- The new John Siracusa TV.
- John's TV-calibration regimen.
- Why we're not talking about the iOS notification sync in OS X that never shipped.
- Merlin's response to our criticism discussion, and how Casey reacts to little worms.
- After-show Neutral: the new M3/M4 and John's dead pedal.
Sponsored by:
- Pixelmator: Full-featured image editing app for the Mac.
- Transporter: A private cloud storage drive that you own and control.
End-of-the-year sale: Use code ATP30 for $30 off any Transporter before midnight on December 31, 2013! - Squarespace: Everything you need to create an exceptional website. Use promo code ATP12 for 10% off.
Transcript start
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s no way this is going on the show. I know. This is not nearly exciting enough.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, it was embarrassing for me, so I thought there was a pretty good shot you’d wanted in there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, we have a little bit of follow-up. The first thing is, and I’m a little disappointed that this has gotten
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a little bit of publicity because I was hoping to wow everyone with revealing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this on the show, but there is a listener who wrote far and away
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my favorite thing I’ve ever read on the Internet. His name is Joe Steele, if I’m not mistaken,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and he wrote a screenplay review of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Accidental Tech podcast. And as it turns out, I didn’t realize this at the time, as it turns out, he’s actually done
⏹️ ▶️ Casey several of these. And he even has a little Tumblr where he posts them. So he’s done one, he did one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for The Prompt, which is falsely advertised as the greatest podcast in the world. He
⏹️ ▶️ Casey did one for Bionic, which I actually thought was quite funny. And he’s done it for several others. The Incomparable, he
⏹️ ▶️ Casey did one, and I forget what the other ones are. But they’re really, really, really funny.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I absolutely adored ours. I thought it was hysterical. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey many thanks to Joe Steele for writing that inventive and hilarious review.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And if you ever wanted to trick us into mentioning your name on the show, that’s how you do it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is by writing an awesome review that’s hysterical.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s not a trick. That’s a legitimate way to do it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Speaking of Bionic, have you guys heard Bionic since the beginning?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I only started listening a handful of episodes back, but don’t tell Mike or Matt about that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I always assumed it was about comics, so I didn’t listen to it. And then when Merlin was on as a guest host,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I listened to that one, and I kept listening after that. And I don’t know what’s going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on in that show. Neither do I. However, I couldn’t tell you what it’s about. I heard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them say that it used to be about ecosystems, so that’s as good of an explanation as any.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I like it, it’s really weird, but it’s funny. You can tell that you’re walking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in on what’s clearly a long-running series of inside jokes, but they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco manage to make it funny, even if you don’t know the backstory. You can figure out enough that you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can laugh with it. And then there’s occasionally actual tech discussion. So it’s pretty cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually really like Bionic now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I agree. I also didn’t listen to it because I thought I was way too
⏹️ ▶️ Casey late in the inside joke category, which is to some degree one of the excuses
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I use for you look nice today and you don’t have to lecture me. I know I need to listen to it. It’s on the list. But yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so I never jumped into Bionic until, I don’t know, maybe five-ish episodes ago, like I said, and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually quite entertaining. I’m not sure I understand what’s going on ever, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco it nevertheless.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I can pretty much say the same thing. Well, that’s good. We also had some follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the Retina display. We talked at the end of last episode about possibilities
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for what Apple could release or what anybody could release for that matter in regards to a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Retina desktop display. We looked at the new Dell ones that are coming out. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco John brought up in his Mavericks review or somewhere that, right John? When did you bring up the wallpaper size?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Mavericks review?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it was in the Mavericks review.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you brought up there about how the wallpaper that comes with the system is available
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in exactly 5120 by 2880, which is exactly double the, double
⏹️ ▶️ Marco each dimension of the current 27 inch cinema display. And that would be awesome
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have that as a retina screen. We haven’t seen any monitors come out with that resolution
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the highest we’ve seen is 4k 3840 by 2160 and we had talked at the end of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco last episode what if Apple releases that resolution 3840 wide
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as the retina display rather than like the full retina 27-inch which would be 5120 wide and that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we got a number of people pointing out that actually the current versions of even Thunderbolt 2
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and DisplayPort 1.2 the two current you know ways to connect a monitor to a video card.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Those don’t support enough bandwidth to run 5120 wide at 60 frames a second. They just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can’t do it. That takes roughly 28 gigabits per second and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they both top out at about 20. And so we’re actually pretty far from that. DisplayPort 1.3
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the next upcoming version of DisplayPort. That will support up to 8k resolution at 60 Hertz because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it raises the bandwidth, but that’s not available yet.
⏹️ ▶️ John Where are you getting the DisplayPort 1.2 bandwidth from? I looked up on Wikipedia and it said
⏹️ ▶️ John like 17 something and you have it here as 21 in the notes file.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was unclear to me exactly what it was but it says in this little sidebar that you can have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up to 4 channels at whatever that divided by 4 is so I just multiplied that and said that’s probably the theoretical max but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco either way it’s neither Thunderbolt 2 nor DisplayPort 1.2 which is the current
⏹️ ▶️ Marco best version of both of those things, neither of those can drive display of the size that
⏹️ ▶️ John And for the 5120x2880, how many bits per pixel is that, assuming? That was at 32, however it also doesn’t work at 24. Why would it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know, that’s how everyone else was calculating it, so I did that, but even at 24 bits per pixel it still isn’t, it’s still too much.
⏹️ ▶️ John At 24 bits per pixel it’s like 21 or something gigabits, which is still over the 17-ish that 1.2 puts out, but yeah, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, you have to wait a little bit longer. It’s sad. Either
⏹️ ▶️ John it so I mean that like this possibilities that you can have resolutions in between there but who the hell knows like it
⏹️ ▶️ John always bothers me that 4k doesn’t isn’t really 4000 of anything but I think 4k is kind of an umbrella
⏹️ ▶️ John term doesn’t apply to any specific resolution it’s one of those BS things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right there’s like four or five different ones that all are kind of considered 4k yeah
⏹️ ▶️ John the link I threw in there was the many stories about the sharp 4k display appearing in some European
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple store briefly before disappearing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah I don’t really think that indicates anything useful you know People obviously send that to all of us
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot when it came out when the news hit a few days ago and I mean Apple has sold
⏹️ ▶️ Marco third-party monitors and stuff before in their store So it’s it. I don’t think it indicates
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything whether Apple released their own or not I really don’t think it says anything,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it was another 3840 2160. Yeah exactly like so I mean
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really think that’s what we’re gonna be sticking with for you know the next few years I think that’s gonna be the highest resolution you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get because nothing can drive anything better than that and I’m guessing you still think Apple will make one of these though.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think they will. I’m not necessarily sure when
⏹️ ▶️ John they’ll make it. We’ll see on the iMac first and then at the end of next year.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well Dell’s making one now.
⏹️ ▶️ John The fact that they put the Mac Pro up there and said and it can drive three 4k display are they really
⏹️ ▶️ John expecting us to buy those 4k displays from someone other than them because just the margins are too low on
⏹️ ▶️ John on these displays and they don’t care because it’s just maybe pros would never use the Apple displays
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway because they have their specialty I don’t I don’t quite understand that it’s kind of like when Apple discontinued
⏹️ ▶️ John the XR raid and said oh just buy these other ugly purple weird plasticky raid things instead that
⏹️ ▶️ John was not a very Apple like thing to do it’s very strange seeing them do that do you remember that time oh yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean I really think what we’re in for here is Dell’s gonna release theirs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it is not it’s not already out I don’t think but I think it’s coming soon like very soon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so So Dell’s gonna release theirs, I think they said it was what, $1500, $1400, something like that for the 24-inch one?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that’s gonna be the new hotness for nerds like us. Assuming that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it can be driven by the new Mac Pro and new Retina MacBook Pros at that resolution and be treated as 2X.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think people are gonna buy that. A lot of Apple doesn’t make their own. If Apple releases a 27-inch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco version of that, and the Dell one works fine at 24 inches, I really might go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the Dell one. I don’t know. I mean, I’ve had Dell displays before. They’ve been fine. They’ve been, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, like, they’ve always, like, the plastic around them is crap. The stand is crap. The buttons always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco flake and fall off or spin around and stop working. I mean, they’re built like crap, but the panels
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are always really good. Like, it’s always really good image quality for a really good price and usually with tons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of inputs and card readers and USB hubs and all that other stuff. So I’ve been,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve had perfectly fine experiences with Dell displays. I’ve actually never had an Apple display. I’ve always used third party displays.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I would be fine with that. But if Apple makes one at the right size, like if Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco makes a 24, which I don’t honestly think they would, if they made a 24, I’d buy that, no question.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But if the Dell one and the Apple one will end up working the same, like if I can use the Dell one at retina,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like being treated as a retina monitor by the computer with no like really horrible flaky
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hacks that fail constantly, I don’t see a lot of reason not to do
⏹️ ▶️ John that. High DPI mode is not that much of a flaky hack though the fact that it’s you know
⏹️ ▶️ John You have to use a dev tool to enable it is not that big a deal as far as I can tell it’s the same Code path everywhere
⏹️ ▶️ John as if you had a retina display hooked up like all the software running is outputting You know a double resolution
⏹️ ▶️ John just like it would be if it was displayed at that resolution And I don’t think there’s any additional
⏹️ ▶️ John weirdness about it except for maybe unlike the login screens I do a lot on my OS 10 testing especially
⏹️ ▶️ John for Maverick since all the screenshots are retina and I don’t have a random Mac had to be done in this mode
⏹️ ▶️ John and once you put it in this mode even the login screen will be in this mode too and it’s kind of weird then when you go to
⏹️ ▶️ John the login screen you log into someone’s account who doesn’t have that setting set or log out of one and back
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a little bit weird there but if you just kept it in that mode the whole time I think it would be okay
⏹️ ▶️ John and and you would imagine that a point update of OS 10 would recognize
⏹️ ▶️ John a Dell or some other 4k ish display and treat it like a retina
⏹️ ▶️ John screen you know like you wouldn’t have to do that hack like why would Apple make you do that it’s not a big deal for them to to
⏹️ ▶️ John just show those supported resolutions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know I bet they would make you do that hack honestly but but like I mean there’s like a million like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know I mentioned I friendly last week that the utility to swap the resolutions on the MacBook Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bet I I bet all those utilities and defaults right tricks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and all those system preference tricks that let you enable modes that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple doesn’t officially think that your monitor can support, I bet those same tricks will work
⏹️ ▶️ John to do this. But if Apple doesn’t have their own displays, if their solution is like it was for the XServe RAID, oh, just buy
⏹️ ▶️ John this third party monitor. They can’t tell you to buy the third party monitor then also expect you to Google for
⏹️ ▶️ John how to get the graphics tools out of the Xcode package run the quartz debug thing
⏹️ ▶️ John and flip the little option like if they’re gonna go third-party it’s got to support the third parties if they
⏹️ ▶️ John have their own first party one yeah then maybe you’ll have to enable this mode manually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco until the Mac Pro actually comes out and Apple doesn’t have this monitor available
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m still gonna keep believing there’s hope for it but again but now that this Dell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one is out which and I I’m pretty sure Apple so you know now that now that we have this info about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bandwidth limits. I’m positive that Apple will not release one that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the full 5120W. I’m also not positive, but I’m fairly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sure that if they did release a 4k monitor it would be probably 27 inches. I don’t see them releasing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a smaller monitor than that because it’s just it’s not that big of a market for them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So since we can’t have the super retina resolution resolution at 27 inches, what’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better? Two 1920s? Two 3840 resolution ones that are treated as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 1920s at 24 inches? That might be better. As we said
⏹️ ▶️ Marco last show, but obviously I know John you are a monitor monogamist.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I still think no monitors this year. Macro will come out. There might be some third party
⏹️ ▶️ John options, but no monitors. Because I don’t understand why they would keep
⏹️ ▶️ John the monitors so secret for so long and then just say, oh, By the way, the Mac Pro is out and here’s these new Apple monitors, but I just
⏹️ ▶️ John see no monitors is here from Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you think that we’re going to get a Mac Pro before the end of the year? I know they said December and I know December isn’t over but we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey running out of time
⏹️ ▶️ John if it’s ready They’ll ship it like who is someone’s that we said last show that it doesn’t matter for the holidays because
⏹️ ▶️ John this is not a seasonal item But someone said that it would matter for like their q4 sales
⏹️ ▶️ John or something I don’t even think it would matter there because I think the volumes are so low that it wouldn’t make a difference
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think iPads and iPhones, and especially iPhones, that matters for their Q4
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sales. I don’t think what’s probably the lowest-selling Mac is going to make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a drop in the bucket.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey One other piece of follow-up, or I believe this is follow-up, and I think, John, that you added to this,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to these show notes. Do you want to briefly talk about Squarespace?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this is not actually a sponsor break, but I mentioned on a couple of shows back a business plan based
⏹️ ▶️ John on implementing Squarespace sites for people who have terrible websites and don’t realize that they could have a nice website
⏹️ ▶️ John if they’d spend five minutes on Squarespace and pay a couple bucks. If they don’t want to go through that, why not
⏹️ ▶️ John start a business as a facilitator of that where you charge somebody presumably a lot more than
⏹️ ▶️ John Squarespace charges and for the money you set up a Squarespace site for somebody. Obviously, you
⏹️ ▶️ John design work and content and everything else. Apparently, there’s a page at Squarespace that somebody sent me that I did not keep
⏹️ ▶️ John track of. It’s at specialists.squarespace.com that lists
⏹️ ▶️ John a pretty small list of people who do, or people or companies who do exactly this.
⏹️ ▶️ John You engage with them as a business and they use Squarespace to set up your site.
⏹️ ▶️ John So basically they’re like design firms. They don’t have to do any of the programming or any of the annoying other stuff and they will set you up. I bet that
⏹️ ▶️ John these people will probably also set you up a commerce site or whatever because Squarespace can do that as well, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep, sure can. So anyway, Squarespace is out ahead of this apparently. They’re already
⏹️ ▶️ John cultivating this group of… I wondered actually if Squarespace didn’t want you reselling their services or whatever, but apparently
⏹️ ▶️ John they think this is a good thing, and they’ve already got a site set up for it. And if you’re one of those people who does
⏹️ ▶️ John this for a living, a couple of people have contacted me and said, oh, I’ve set up three different clients already all using Squarespace.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is a thing that Squarespace does, so check it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out. And now it is a sponsor break. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, shockingly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website or online portfolio.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco For a free trial and 10% off your first purchase, go to squarespace.com and use offer code
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ATP12 to help support our show. Squarespace is constantly improving their platform
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with new features, new designs, and even better support. They have beautiful designs for you to start with,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and all the style options you need to create a unique website for you or your business. Or apparently this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco guy’s business, or all these people’s businesses. Square Design automatically includes a unique mobile
⏹️ ▶️ Marco responsive design experience that matches the overall style of your site. Your content will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look great on every device, every time. Squarespace is incredibly easy to use, but if you want some help,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have an amazing support team. They work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, right here in New
⏹️ ▶️ Marco York City. Over 70 Squarespace employees are on the customer care team here in New York.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Squarespace starts at just $8 a month and includes a free domain name if you sign up for a year in advance.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The best thing is you can start a free trial with no credit card required. You know, it’s not like one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of those crap free trials that a lot of places do where it’s like, well, free trial if you enter all your information for billing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we know you’re probably going to forget. And if you actually want to cancel, you got to like talk to one of those chat bot things and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’ll probably fail and probably bill you anyway. It’s not one of those. With Squarespace, it’s a real free trial,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no credit card required. You can just sign up right away and start building your website today.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When you do decide to sign up, make sure you use our offer code ATP12. As I said earlier, ATP12 will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get you 10% off your initial purchase and to support our show. Squarespace is everything you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need to create an exceptional website. Thank you very much for your support, Squarespace.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So in the spirit of random musings from Geek Friday or IRL
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Talk, I had a random musing of my own the other day. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t know if there’s much to be said here, but I was on my Mac and for whatever reason
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wanted to buy Some iOS app and I forget which one it was and it doesn’t really matter but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my initial inclination was okay Well, I’ll go to the App Store to buy that app it wait. No
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No I have to go to iTunes to do that and it occurred to me why is it that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of the iOS app purchases aren’t in the App Store because Because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to my subconscious apparently, as well as to I would imagine most normal people,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the app store is the app store is the app store. It doesn’t matter if you’re buying Mac or iOS, you’re just trying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to buy an app and you should do that in the app store. And I thought it was just a little wonky that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that was all happening on iTunes. And naturally, there’s a million logical and obvious
⏹️ ▶️ Casey explanations. It’s always been in iTunes. It started in iTunes. It would muddy up the Mac app store, et cetera, et cetera.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I just thought it was really, really weird. And I didn’t really, maybe I missed it, but I haven’t really seen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyone talking about this. I don’t know if you guys had any input, and if not, we can just move along. But I don’t know, what do you think?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, certainly one problem would be that, you know, like you see on the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app store, one of the problems is if you sell an app on the iPad, if you also have a separate iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco version, a lot of people will mistakenly buy the iPhone one who want to run it on an iPad. And then that’s a crappy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco support experience, it’s a crappy customer experience, like, because things are blended together.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Obviously, if they did that on the Mac, if they integrated everything in, it would be a little easier in that they could at least,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know, talk to iTunes and figure out if you have an iPhone or iPad and not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even show those results if you don’t, something like that. But for the most part,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would still be a weird experience. You’d still have a lot of people who would buy the wrong thing. It kind of clutters up the store.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think Apple would ever do this, but I think it would actually be a way better experience
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the iPad if it didn’t show iPhone-only apps at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all in the store. Like, you know, maybe you could download them from your purchase tab or something else, but if it made it really,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really hard to find them or if it just hid them completely, first of all, developers would be more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forced to make iPad versions of their apps, even if they sucked. They would still have to customize
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it somewhat rather than showing it just in the little 2x window for the double up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone mode. But I think it’ll be way better because when you blend the stores
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that, it just creates problems.
⏹️ ▶️ John Doesn’t it already do that? Doesn’t the iOS app store not show you iPhone apps by default?
⏹️ ▶️ John I never find myself seeing phone apps in the store when I’m on my iPad, but maybe I’m just not searching for hybrid.
⏹️ ▶️ John They show you the ones with the little pluses that work on both, but don’t they hide the iPhone apps?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I believe it will, I think there’s a filter or toggle at the top that you can say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John everything or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show me iPad only. I’m pretty sure that’s right.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was going to say before, the reason all these things are on the Mac is another one of those stupid iTunes legacy things where
⏹️ ▶️ John that used to be how you did everything is you do it on your Mac and you connect your thing with the USB cable and you, you know, the whole nine yards.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s annoying to me mostly because of the reset that
⏹️ ▶️ John SSDs did to storage space. Because if you have a bunch of 32
⏹️ ▶️ John or 64 gigabyte iOS devices, and they’re all filled with crap,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you actually sync them with iTunes, that means when you get Infinity Blade 2 or 3 or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John the heck they’re up to, it’s like a gigabyte game, that’s sitting on your Mac’s hard drive taking up space for no good reason.
⏹️ ▶️ John Same thing with all the other stuff you have, and it adds up. The podcast that you download with the podcast
⏹️ ▶️ John syncing, that kind of syncing, where instead of the stuff being in the cloud, which is so dumb, because Apple knows what you bought, Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John knows what you own. It doesn’t, there’s no reason that that data has to be on your Mac and on your thing so it can sync around and
⏹️ ▶️ John everything like that. So that is, that’s one of those legacy things that that’s another reason a lot of people go to,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, I’m not going to hook up my iOS device, my Mac anymore. And there are so many benefits to that. And one of them is you get a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ John of hard drive space back. Uh, you have to pay for iCloud backup if you’re, you know, if you’re over the limit for
⏹️ ▶️ John your whatever disposable, uh, data that you have to back up the iCloud. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll be glad when all that stuff finally leaves iTunes and we don’t have to have our
⏹️ ▶️ John data duplicated in multiple places and have to deal with a lot of stuff. And the worst part is that if you just manage
⏹️ ▶️ John your device from iOS, you can kind of sort of feel like you have control over it. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John if for some reason you have to hook it up to your Mac because you want to do a file copy into the documents
⏹️ ▶️ John folder on a Kindle or something, you want to do something that only iTunes can do or that only iTunes
⏹️ ▶️ John can do easily. You would think that it wouldn’t mess with anything else, but it does. Inevitably, new icons
⏹️ ▶️ John appear on your home screens because it syncs them. I don’t understand how it decides
⏹️ ▶️ John how to blend the state of things that are on your Mac with state of things in your iOS device, but it always pisses me off when it does.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you should also consider that if you back up your device to iTunes, even selectively,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey those backups, or at least in my experience, tend to be quite big, like gigabytes big. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to your point, John, if you don’t sync, or specifically if you don’t back up against your iTunes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey library, you’re saving gigabytes that way as well. I mean, it all adds up really, really fast.
⏹️ ▶️ John Someone in the chat room asked, what about backing up the data of apps? Not every app backs up the iCloud. When you do iCloud backups, it backs
⏹️ ▶️ John up all your data. It’s not up to the applications to back up the iCloud. When you do iCloud backups of your
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS device, it basically just wanders through all the document containers and pulls out all the documents. That’s right, Marco, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well yeah, there’s this weird thing with temp folder versus document folders where it won’t back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up things that are in temp folders but it will also wipe them randomly so so then it’s up to developers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like like for me I’m writing this podcast app and a podcast you know you wouldn’t want that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be in the temp folder because you wouldn’t want the system to randomly come by and delete it if it’s the one space because then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people would launch your app thinking they have all the stuff downloaded and see oh all my stuff’s gone that’s bad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you also don’t want I you don’t want iCloud to back that up because it would take up everyone’s iCloud space and it would have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco retransmit everything up and So it’s up to the developers to set a don’t back up flag
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on anything outside of the temp folders. Some developers do it right and as you can expect, many don’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John Does that mean that the iTunes backup is still safer because it just copies everything or does the iTunes backup also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The iTunes backup will copy over those files which is nice because then if you have to do a restore
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on your phone, if you get it repaired or if it messes up, they will be copied back over on a restore
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is nice and you don’t have to redownload everything. then there’s also on your hard drive. So it’s kind of a mixed bag.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s another. So this is another case where if we got rid of the iTunes aspect of this, it would kind of force developers
⏹️ ▶️ John to manage their data in the correct way. Otherwise, they’d have disgruntled customers. Whereas now they get
⏹️ ▶️ John some percentage of disgruntled customers. Because if they’re doing it wrong and someone had an iCloud backup, and then they restore from the iCloud
⏹️ ▶️ John backup, and the restore for that app didn’t work right, they’re pissed off at probably at Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John but maybe at the app developer too. Whereas all the people who use iTunes for it are fine because they backed up everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John Does iCloud backup save your passwords? Because I know on iTunes you have to encrypt your backup to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No. No, it doesn’t. Well, I can’t say that authoritatively. It didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when it launched. I can tell you that. I don’t know if there’s an option now to do it. I’m guessing not, though.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But that’s… Yeah. Because Apple, the iTunes engineers, like I talked to some of them at WWDC
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about what would be appropriate to store in iCloud for. They say don’t store,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you’re a developer, they say don’t store passwords in iCloud. Okay, how about a login token?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Does that count? Login cookie? Auth token? OAuth tokens? And they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were a little iffy on that. You could tell that they really don’t want to be responsible for that. They really don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want you storing any kind of sensitive stuff in iCloud. And you can kind of see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how they’re approaching iCloud keychain, and they really want you to have the passcode and have all that encrypted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything and have that be very secure and controlled and limited. So I’m guessing it doesn’t simply
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because, can anybody confirm that? I’m guessing it doesn’t just because they seem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very reluctant to take on password storage.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it probably is encrypted, but it’s just that it’s so easy to pull that data down that you know, they
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t want to. Like you said, I think iCloud Keychain is the one place that they’re willing to put
⏹️ ▶️ John passwords and other type of information. With the advent of that, there should be a way for you to take all that information that you would have,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, those OAuth tokens and stuff that you would have put someplace else and maybe shove them into iCloud Keychain where Apple says you’re allowed to put
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. They’re on, they’re on authentic, speaking of that, are there authenticated iPod podcast feeds?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There are. I’m not supporting them, but there are. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John because someone asked about that on Twitter. I’m like, I haven’t run across one of those. I used to have an authenticated RSS feed
⏹️ ▶️ John back in the day when the Daring Fireball feed was like that, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And for all of the reasons why John Gruber stopped doing that, it’s, it’s pretty hard for podcasts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also. It’s very hard to support that in an app because like I’m doing server-side crawling, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything revolves around this. And there’s pretty much no good way. I’m not going to ask everyone for their passwords to an auth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feed. That’s crazy. There’s so many reasons why that’s a terrible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco idea. So I’m not going to support that. Although I think if I think downcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does support that, I’m pretty sure it does. So if you need that, use downcast.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, I hear Christmas came early at your house.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not really Christmas. It happens to coincide with Christmas, but this has been in the works
⏹️ ▶️ John as soon as it became clear that Panasonic was probably going to stop making plasma TVs.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that was like a year ago that they were rumbling about that and then Panasonic would say something and they
⏹️ ▶️ John would say, oh no, we still have plans and blah, but it was clear the writing was on the wall. And then I think like, but a couple
⏹️ ▶️ John months ago, six months ago, they made the official announcement they’re not going to make plasma TVs anymore. So then I had to make a decision.
⏹️ ▶️ John I knew I was going to have to, which is do I just keep using the TV I have or do I
⏹️ ▶️ John buy one of the last Panasonic plasmas before they go away for good? And
⏹️ ▶️ John the reason I was thinking about this has to do with the still terrible state of television
⏹️ ▶️ John technology. I should have written down the show number and here I didn’t, but I talked about TV tech on an old hypercritical.
⏹️ ▶️ John Any of you remember the episode number? Anyway, that was several years ago. I think it
⏹️ ▶️ John was like 2011. I actually bought my TV in 2009, and I was
⏹️ ▶️ John just talking about it in 2011, hypercritical. And the problem with TV tech is, after
⏹️ ▶️ John the CRT era, the kids ask your parents, the big giant, very
⏹️ ▶️ John deep glass tubes with a little electron gun in the back of it that scans a little line across these little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The things that you see on everyone’s curb, sitting there for weeks, getting rained on, and nobody wants them, and nobody will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John even take them for free.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Exactly. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John they can’t throw them in the garbage, because they have lead in them. You have to get the special people to come and pick them up and those things that
⏹️ ▶️ John technology was around for a long time. And I wouldn’t say it was perfected because it always had problems. But
⏹️ ▶️ John it was clear that if you bought a TV, you were going to get a cathode ray tube for a long time. This was clear.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they made them pretty darn good. Like the Sony Trinitron was was sort of the premier
⏹️ ▶️ John consumer brand for good televisions at first because they only curved
⏹️ ▶️ John in one direction. So they were like cylindrical instead of being like bubble shaped. and then eventually they became entirely
⏹️ ▶️ John flat. And they had disadvantages and advantages, but there weren’t that many options.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re like, well, this is the best TV I can get is the best CRT I can get. And then the waters started
⏹️ ▶️ John to get muddied when they came out with DLP and other stuff like that. But you don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John to remember the DLP stuff with the projection TVs. They always had terrible disadvantages versus the CRT.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it was still clear that if you cared about the best looking TV, just get a CRT. Get the best CRT you can get, which is probably a Sony
⏹️ ▶️ John Turnitron. Projection might be bigger, but it’s just so dim off angle and the colors are all messed
⏹️ ▶️ John up and all sorts of compromises that made you think, unless I need one of the special
⏹️ ▶️ John features like giant size, for example. If I want just a television television, I’m getting a CRT.
⏹️ ▶️ John The chat room looked it up and it was episode 16. We’ll put that in the show. It’s episode 16 of Hypercritical.
⏹️ ▶️ John So when high definition television came out, that just made things very confusing
⏹️ ▶️ John because they did make a couple of high definition CRTs, But CRT was on its way out and the new flat screens were in
⏹️ ▶️ John first DLP and other fit You know rear projection things that were not as deep as
⏹️ ▶️ John a CRT Because if I had one of those giant CRTs and if you got a CRT that was over 30 years Or you know 35
⏹️ ▶️ John or 34 inches or whatever that was super deep and really heavy Whereas you could make a not quite as
⏹️ ▶️ John deep projection television that size so very quickly We got into the quote-unquote flat screens which
⏹️ ▶️ John were either LCD or plasma I think plasmas came first because LCDs were too expensive of that size
⏹️ ▶️ John and That’s where all the crap started because both LCD and plasma have compromises
⏹️ ▶️ John that CRTs didn’t have I guess the one compromise that CRTs had of course the flat screens didn’t was that
⏹️ ▶️ John they were gigantic and heavy But that was it like People would find a room
⏹️ ▶️ John in their house for you know They used to make it put build them into pieces of furniture CRTs were gigantic, but you’d find a place
⏹️ ▶️ John for it every other part of them was fine. Wait, but I can’t let
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that go Convergence, aperture grill weirdness,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the various analog artifacts that could show up.
⏹️ ▶️ John they were only showing, I’m talking about for standard depth, they’re only showing standard depth, so you didn’t care about all the, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re not missing, it was always gonna be fuzzy. It was low resolution, right? And so, in the fuzz, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John towards the end, the Trinitrons, in terms of convergence and everything like that, were amazingly good. Like, as good as you could
⏹️ ▶️ John hope with a cruddy analog signal. signal and in fact the fuzziness kind of helped it blend together
⏹️ ▶️ John because if you’ve got something that was just a series of square pixels the size you know the number of lines on a
⏹️ ▶️ John CRT that would look gross like CRTs sort of had a distinctive look and
⏹️ ▶️ John again they weren’t perfected perfected but they were pretty solid but it didn’t have all the crazy compromises that
⏹️ ▶️ John plasmas and LCD had. Plasmas in the beginning were super hot and
⏹️ ▶️ John powerful and like you know build up tons of and didn’t look that good and
⏹️ ▶️ John you know had this weird a lot of weird artifacts in them and LCDs were even worse because they
⏹️ ▶️ John the way LCD works is you’ve got a light shining through this liquid crystal
⏹️ ▶️ John and the crystal turns on and off and lets light through or not and the problem was when you
⏹️ ▶️ John turn them all off and said don’t let any light through you’d still had that big backlight back there trying to get through
⏹️ ▶️ John and a little bit of it would leak through and so your black screen if you just put made an LCD entirely black would not
⏹️ ▶️ John actually be black. In fact, you could light up a room with a black screen, especially in the beginning and LCDs.
⏹️ ▶️ John So they had to come up with, you know, ways to fix that. We’re like, okay, well, we won’t leave the backlight on all the time. If they make an entirely black
⏹️ ▶️ John screen, we’ll just turn the backlight off. Isn’t that awesome? Well, it’s great until you have a bunch of white words in the middle
⏹️ ▶️ John of say, rolling the credits for a movie. Well, you need the words to be white on the black background. So we need to turn on
⏹️ ▶️ John the backlight behind the white words. But the backlight wasn’t like one backlight per pixel.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was like one backlight per four square inches, or at least a square inch or whatever, so you’d have to turn on some
⏹️ ▶️ John chunky subset of the backlight to make the white words show up and that white backlight would make
⏹️ ▶️ John all the black around the white words glow, like the previous glowing black display
⏹️ ▶️ John that wasn’t really black. This is all black level stuff. The LCDs had compromises as well.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so none of these technologies were as a no-brainer a buy for if you
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t want a projection screen, didn’t need something gigantic or whatever, you just wanted a really good nice looking TV
⏹️ ▶️ John you couldn’t get plasma or LCD because they both had compromises and they jockeyed
⏹️ ▶️ John for position in the market eventually LCD won because everything else in the world uses LCD and it became cheaper
⏹️ ▶️ John even though the picture quality of LCD was never as good as plasma still isn’t as good as plasma again
⏹️ ▶️ John getting back to the black level stuff and the dynamic back lights turned out to be too expensive and complicated and they
⏹️ ▶️ John decided the consumers didn’t care about black levels anyway so they just went to edge lit where the LCDs where they don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John an array of back lights behind the monitor that can turn on and off in different sectors instead of, ah, just light the whole thing up and
⏹️ ▶️ John it’ll be fine. And use mirrors to bounce it off the edge because then we can make them super thin. I don’t understand this obsession. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John once they get to be like one inch or a half an inch thick, is it really important to go, oh, this is 0.75
⏹️ ▶️ John inches thick. It’s like an Apple style obsession. And unlike handheld things where I think the thinness does have
⏹️ ▶️ John a big payoff down the line when your thing is like the size of a credit card. And maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John when you can paint your TV on your wall, it pays off. But going to Edge Lit this early
⏹️ ▶️ John seems weird to me. That they’re, you know, oh, look, it’s a way to sell your thing in the store. Look how thin it is.
⏹️ ▶️ John Ooh, ah, you never look at it from the side. If it was an inch thick, would you say, turn up your nose at it because it looks gross?
⏹️ ▶️ John So this is 0.75 inches thick, that it’s nicer. The compromises they did on LCDs, TVs
⏹️ ▶️ John in particular, in terms of picture quality, just to get them another quarter inch thinner,
⏹️ ▶️ John I do not understand. But that’s the way the market went. And that’s why the plasma started to go out, because
⏹️ ▶️ John everybody wanted LCD. The other problem plasma has is burn-in, and CRT’s had this to some degree as well,
⏹️ ▶️ John where if you leave the same image on the screen a long time, eventually when you put it on a different image, you’ll still
⏹️ ▶️ John be able to see that other image. You see it a lot in, actually you see it in LCDs as well occasionally,
⏹️ ▶️ John where there’ll be a cash register or a point of sale system or something, and there’ll be some banner that was on there,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it will change to another screen, you’ll still see that banner there, or you still see the stock ticker on some TV
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s been showing financial news 24 hours a day for six months.
⏹️ ▶️ John Plasmas have that burn-in problem. So you can’t leave the same image on the screen for a long time. Otherwise, you will get what they call image
⏹️ ▶️ John retention instead of burn-in.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, let me interrupt real quick. So you described the technology behind LCD. So what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey makes plasma plasma, then?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know the details. And I’m pretty sure it’s like excited particles going from the back of something and
⏹️ ▶️ John hitting up against a material glows only it’s like it’s not like a bunch of tiny little
⏹️ ▶️ John CRTs but it’s similar in concept to that and that it’s it’s not a backlight shining
⏹️ ▶️ John through a thing that lets light through or not it’s particles being excited and
⏹️ ▶️ John going from the back of something to the front of something and hitting it and that emits light uh i don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John the details beyond that but it’s close enough that they both have that you know CRTs
⏹️ ▶️ John and plasmas both have burn-in issues uh and that requires more power than an LCD because
⏹️ ▶️ John with the LCDs you can have the LED backlights and LEDs are very power efficient and they’re very bright and stuff like that. That’s another
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. LCD televisions with LED backlights can be much brighter than plasma televisions and that’s important
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’ve got a bright room where you want things to be bright. So all these are compromises. All the current
⏹️ ▶️ John technologies for high-definition televisions are compromises that have problems. And I was killing myself
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to see what I didn’t buy HDTV for so long because I’m like I’ll just wait until the good technology comes
⏹️ ▶️ John out. whether it be like there’s something called SED or OLED becomes inexpensive or
⏹️ ▶️ John some other technology that’s supposed to not have all the compromises of both plasma and LCD. And eventually I couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John wait any longer. In 2009, I bought myself a plasma television. And you can listen to episode 16 of Hypercritical
⏹️ ▶️ John to hear how that went, because I originally went in trying to look for an LCD television because everything’s LCD,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And I ended up coming out with a plasma because it was cheaper and had a better picture quality.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you were willing to to accept all the other compromises of plasma, more power, thicker, heavier possibility
⏹️ ▶️ John of burn in if you’re not careful. You got better picture for less money for a plasma and it seemed
⏹️ ▶️ John like a no brainer to me. Well, so now they’re getting rid of the plasmas if they got rid of the plasmas
⏹️ ▶️ John and I kept my current TV. I would have to like what would I do if my current TV broke
⏹️ ▶️ John or I wanted to get a new one? There will be nothing on the market for me to buy because the number of people making plasma
⏹️ ▶️ John television is just going down to zero Samsung still makes them, but Samsung’s hard is really an LCD
⏹️ ▶️ John like everybody else and everybody’s eventually going to OLED, but I didn’t want to be stuck
⏹️ ▶️ John With an older television that I can’t replace because nothing on the market that I want to buy and the second issue is that the television I bought despite
⏹️ ▶️ John Extensively researching and everything turns out to have a problem where the black level got worse after the first
⏹️ ▶️ John year that you used it This is a problem I guess but you know Back then and still now new TVs come out
⏹️ ▶️ John every year and you can read a review Oh, here’s the new crop of TVs for 2014 and I’ll read all the reviews and I’ll do all the
⏹️ ▶️ John research and I’ll look at Them the showrooms inside which one I want Well, if any one of them has a problem that doesn’t show up until
⏹️ ▶️ John a year later You’re not gonna know about that because by next year the new TVs will out it will be out and if you bought one
⏹️ ▶️ John this year You’re gonna end up with what stuck with one So I had one of those televisions where the black level that started out as being
⏹️ ▶️ John amazingly good became mediocre Later in the life of the television
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I’m like even if somebody did a long-term review to tell you that it wouldn’t be useful to anybody because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they’re telling you I bought this TV a year and a half ago and it’s still great you can’t go buy that TV anymore
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah they go off the market it’s a you know it’s very difficult to find and the other problem I have with the television that I
⏹️ ▶️ John bought and this is something I didn’t even think to check it wasn’t even on my radar
⏹️ ▶️ John was does this television have fans inside it we’re just not something I mean I
⏹️ ▶️ John never owned a CRT that I fan I guess DLP’s had a fan because of the one light source we could get really hot
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’d have fans of them occasionally, but I didn’t even think to check that. And so I got into my house and there are four
⏹️ ▶️ John gigantic fans in the back. And why are there fans in the back? Because plazas take a lot of power and run really hot. And the
⏹️ ▶️ John fancier the plasma, the more likely you were to have fans in it. The cheap ones didn’t have fans, but the fancy one that I got did
⏹️ ▶️ John have fans. So I kept that TV for four years and I really liked it. Did everything I asked of it. I
⏹️ ▶️ John never had any problems with burning because I was careful with it. I assume, uh, you know, I didn’t let
⏹️ ▶️ John my kids leave a television show paused on the plasma. The rule was, if we call you in for dinner,
⏹️ ▶️ John hit the pause button and then also hit the power button. It’s not that hard to do. Managed to do it with two little kids. No
⏹️ ▶️ John burn-in on the screen at all. It’s perfect. Black levels are not what they were when it was new, but I still think it looks really good.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I just kept thinking, look, I paid all this money for this fancy TV. It’s four years old now. At this point,
⏹️ ▶️ John I could buy a much cheaper television that has better picture quality. And if I’m going to do so, I better
⏹️ ▶️ John do so now before Plasma exits the business. Before Panasonic exits the Plasma
⏹️ ▶️ John business. And then my only choices will be an LCD television or maybe a Samsung plasma, none of which I particularly
⏹️ ▶️ John like. So that was the situation I found myself in. And this entire year I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John been thinking about whether I’m going to do it. At many points during the year, I got up to the purchase stage
⏹️ ▶️ John in Amazon and didn’t click on the button. Months ago, I did that. And then three months before that, I
⏹️ ▶️ John did that. And I’d bail out at the last minute. I was
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco just driving
⏹️ ▶️ John myself crazy. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m just really like just like agonizing like your hands like hovering above the mouse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Really with your finger pointing down ready. Just click and I can’t do it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m picturing Federico like the first Federico presentation when he was all nervous and shaky
⏹️ ▶️ Casey trying to do the mouse gestures I’m picturing you with like that that shaking nervous hand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wondering should I do it? I can’t I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll tell you what was preventing me from doing it, but we should probably do a sponsor break
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I was just about to say why don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we hear yeah? Why don’t we hear about something else? That’s awesome
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Alright this episode. This is the first time sponsor for us although not for podcasting in general because they’re awesome
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This episode is also sponsored by Pixelmator or is it pixel mature?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco alright, I’ll go I’ll go with pixelmator Pixelmator is a full-featured image editing app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the Mac I mean, they don’t tell you it’s like Photoshop, because I guess
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not cool to mention your competitors like that, but it’s basically like Photoshop, but 30
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bucks and better in a lot of ways. And so, it’s 30
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bucks in the Mac App Store. I’ll say that right now. Pixelmator, go to the Mac App Store. It’s frequently featured, it shouldn’t be hard to find,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or you can go to pixelmator.com. Now, Pixelmator, you look at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what it can do, and first of all, if you go to their site, it’s a fantastically designed site,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it shows off a lot of the cool features. You can see all sorts of stuff they have. They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have everything from image editing down to drawing and even vector drawing tools
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all in one app. And it’s kept very much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the modern Mac ways of doing everything right. It seems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like they are like geniuses at optimizing for the Mac and keeping everything up to date. So not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only are they already optimized for Mavericks, but they already use OpenCL, they use the Accelerate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco framework to use a lot of the vectorizing functions and they have amazing performance on Mac, everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is very Mac-like. It’s everything that you wished pro editing apps were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in regards to being super Mac-like and friendly, but unfortunately the other ones usually aren’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they recently released a big update and it’s pretty impressive. It’s called Pixelmator 3.0 FX.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a major upgrade featuring a lot of new tools to play with, including non-destructive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco layer styles, a very advanced feature, a liquify tool, and an all-new image
⏹️ ▶️ Marco editing engine that using all these cool things, Grand Central Dispatch, parallelization,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco multiple thread support, everything else, OpenCL, all these GPU acceleration support,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the new engine is almost twice as fast as the old engine, and the old engine was pretty fast already, that’s saying a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They fully support Mavericks with tags, multiple displays, they’re good power citizens,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they use AppNap and everything else. And Pixelmator 3.0 FX is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a free upgrade to all existing Pixelmator customers. Actually in their script they wrote the word
⏹️ ▶️ Marco costumers here, or maybe Lex wrote that. I’m going to blame Lex. So whether
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re an existing Pixelmator costumer or an existing Pixelmator customer, it’s a free upgrade.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s only $30 if you’re not. And this is not the first free upgrade they’ve done.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think I got upgraded one to two for free. Anyway, they’re really great to support. And you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco beat this price point. $30 for an app with this amount of power. It almost seems unreal.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So check it out. Pixelmator.com. It’s a full-featured image editing app for the Mac. Very Mac-like.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Very awesome. And this great new 3.0 FX upgrade is really impressive. So thanks a lot to Pixelmator
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for sponsoring the show.
⏹️ ▶️ John You guys probably don’t remember this, but back in the the 8 bit days, 8 bit graphic
⏹️ ▶️ John days, there was a whole suite of Mac applications that you do, you know, graphics in 256 colors.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they were pretty expensive. There were way more than 30 bucks each, right? And then the 32 bit error
⏹️ ▶️ John where, you know, 24 by 32 bit error. There was, of course, Adobe Photoshop, which eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John became the big dog. But there were also other things like what I’m calling live picture or something and a couple
⏹️ ▶️ John other ones. And to play in that game, to play in the 8-bit space, a lot of people could play there because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s 256 colors, you can make a little pixel editor. But to play in the Photoshop realm of
⏹️ ▶️ John true color images, you had to write your own graphics engine and that was a difficult
⏹️ ▶️ John thing to do. And a lot of the market was like, well, I can’t just do what Photoshop did, I have to do something different. So Live
⏹️ ▶️ John Picture was like, not resolution independent or non-destructive, but a similar type of thing
⏹️ ▶️ John where their image engine was very different than Photoshop’s. And it turns out that the Photoshop style image engine won.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then for a long time, it was just Photoshop, and that’s all there was, with a couple other minor competitors. It never really got
⏹️ ▶️ John a foothold. But nowadays, it’s amazing that Apple has improved the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John platform enough. And just the Mac platform, as you don’t see this as much on Windows and stuff, to the point where
⏹️ ▶️ John a small developer can make an amazing high-performance application without having to
⏹️ ▶️ John make their own graphics engine, but simply by taking advantage of all the graphics technologies that Apple provides
⏹️ ▶️ John and combining them into a nice friendly application, and offered for 30 bucks as compared to hundreds of
⏹️ ▶️ John dollars that Photoshop costs or that Photoshop competitors didn’t use to cost. Every time I see a Pixelmator,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think of them as like the poster child for, look at what Apple helps you
⏹️ ▶️ John do if you write apps on their platform. Like all the APIs they give you at every WWDC, it’s like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John who’s using all these things? Well, Pixelmator is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, and I was going to say that I love that they know the audience to know that we should
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mention in the read OpenCL, Grand Central Dispatch, and AppNAP because our
⏹️ ▶️ Casey audience is going to know what all those things mean.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean if you look at their site it looks like an Apple page like it looks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this is the page for Apple’s new image editor. Like if you read the site
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it uses Apple’s styling, it’s very well designed like Apple sites, it uses a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco modern HTML tricks and stuff like animations and transitions and you know as you scroll things move
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and stuff like that like it’s really very modern variable design page for it even and so it really does look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this is Apple’s pro image editing app that they never actually made yeah those remember
⏹️ ▶️ John those rumors maybe you don’t like that Apple’s made Apple’s making a Photoshop competitor I think iPhoto some of the game
⏹️ ▶️ John of telephone rumors about iPhoto before it was released was that Apple’s making a Photoshop killer application and aperture
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah yeah every time they do anything in graphics like well Apple’s finally gonna make a Photoshop killer Well, they should
⏹️ ▶️ John just buy a Pixelmator.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, they shouldn’t. Pixelmator should stay exactly as it is. Because, I mean, look at how Apple treats Aperture.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And iPhoto, for that matter. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, at this point, I don’t think Apple needs more major applications to take care of.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. Well, thanks again to Pixelmator slash Pixelmator for sponsoring.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So, John, we interrupted you, or you sort of interrupted yourself during your talk about your TV
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so your hand is hovering over the mouse on Amazon you’re ready to buy and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then you finally click the button so what did you get?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well no before we get to that I say why I wasn’t buying all those other times why was I not buying what was my hesitation
⏹️ ▶️ John and the hesitation was for you know knowing everything I know now people in the chat room
⏹️ ▶️ John are amazed that I didn’t know to ask about fans like I I didn’t even think it was a thing I should look for and
⏹️ ▶️ John when I saw the televisions in person in the store you can’t hear a thing in like a retail store because it’s just a background white
⏹️ ▶️ John noise, right? And so you don’t hear anything in there. I just did not even think to look for them.
⏹️ ▶️ John But now I know all these things, right? So the television I wanted to buy,
⏹️ ▶️ John like the sort of equivalent in the model line television from the one I bought before
⏹️ ▶️ John had fans and I knew it had fans. And I would read all I would do is spend all day reading through
⏹️ ▶️ John old style form entries, page after page after page of people saying, I bought this fancy in your TV and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John got fans and they are super loud and it’s driving me insane. And you know, just like 117
⏹️ ▶️ John old style forum pages, you know, one after the other in different forums, hundreds of pages of people
⏹️ ▶️ John having these fancy TVs and telling their stories about I tried this and I bolted this to the back of my TV
⏹️ ▶️ John and I had Panasonic come in, they were supposed to do a fix, but they did the fix and I think it’s better and no
⏹️ ▶️ John one says they did the fix and it didn’t help at all. And the people like it’s placebo effect, you think it helped, but it really didn’t. And it really
⏹️ ▶️ John shouldn’t make any noise at all. And just, you know what it’s like? It’s like looking for symptoms on WebMD and everything
⏹️ ▶️ John leads to cancer, right? If you read these forums enough, you think that
⏹️ ▶️ John these televisions just all sound like leaf blowers in your living room. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I would keep going through the threads going, OK, well, these people got the very first model. So maybe Panasonic fixed something
⏹️ ▶️ John about them. People are like, oh, what’s the build date on yours? And people say, I got one that was built six months after yours, and it still
⏹️ ▶️ John sounds terrible, and I’m returning it. And Panasonic took three weeks to come out, and the guy they sent was a gorilla, and he
⏹️ ▶️ John scratched up my TV trying to open it up, and it didn’t help anyway, and
⏹️ ▶️ John like, how could I, I can’t buy that, right? So I started looking down, well, let me find the cheap Panasonic
⏹️ ▶️ John Plasmas that don’t have fans. But the problem is the current crop of cheap Panasonic Plasmas that don’t have fans have terrible
⏹️ ▶️ John input lag, which is another thing that I did know about on my past TV, but it was impossible to find. Input
⏹️ ▶️ John lag is when you’re playing a video game and you do something on the video game system,
⏹️ ▶️ John like press the fire button, how long does it take for you to see the gun fire on your
⏹️ ▶️ John television screen? And you would think that it would have to do with the game system, and it does, but the television itself can also
⏹️ ▶️ John introduce some amount of lag. Like, the video game system can put out the image over its HDMI port of that gun
⏹️ ▶️ John firing, and it takes some number of milliseconds for the television to take the signal that it just got off
⏹️ ▶️ John the HDMI from that frame and display it as little lights on the screen. And the reason the delay
⏹️ ▶️ John is there is because of, like, image processing and other stuff that televisions do to make a nice picture, And the higher end of the television,
⏹️ ▶️ John you could potentially have more image processing. But also the higher end of the television, you could have faster
⏹️ ▶️ John processors to process the image more quickly than the cheap television. So you never know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the more expensive televisions have better input lag or worse. And back in 2009, I knew all about input
⏹️ ▶️ John lag, but nobody who was reviewing televisions ever mentioned input lag. It was just a bunch of gamers sitting there with
⏹️ ▶️ John complicated camera setups, filming like little microsecond clocks, and going frame by
⏹️ ▶️ John frame, and trying to figure out what the input lag was. Well, fast forward four years, and now finally,
⏹️ ▶️ John most television review sites will give you input lag measurements, which vary wildly from site to site, but presumably within
⏹️ ▶️ John a single site. And within a single site, they use the same methodologies you can compare within a site.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I would look up the input lag numbers, and the input lag of the cheap, fanless
⏹️ ▶️ John Panasonic Plasma is terrible. And it used to be great, like two or three model years ago, the cheap
⏹️ ▶️ John one had awesome input lag. But now it’s super terrible. And the stupid
⏹️ ▶️ John plasma with the fans had significantly better input lag. So my choice is, do I care
⏹️ ▶️ John about fans more or input lag? And also, by the way, the cheaper plasma has worse image quality. Like the fancier one has better
⏹️ ▶️ John image quality as well. And so every time I would almost buy, I would just take another stroll through
⏹️ ▶️ John the form entries with the fan noise and go, no, I can’t do it. And every time I would almost buy the cheap one,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’d be like, no, I can’t do the input lag. And then I’d say, what do you care? You’ll never notice that input lag anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t play fighting games, it’s not like it’s going to defect. And I’d be like, but why? Why would I buy a worse television? This is supposed to be
⏹️ ▶️ John getting a better television, you know, because my old television had pretty good input lag because it was expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John and it had fast processes in it and it had better input lag than the current cheap Panasonic.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I just did that for a year, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
⏹️ ▶️ John And eventually, one of the things that put me over the edge was Casey’s friend who got this very same television that I was looking
⏹️ ▶️ John at. And Casey’s friend says, fans are silent, can’t hear him at all. Right. You can tell me what
⏹️ ▶️ John he was saying. It’s like that it was just totally a non-issue. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that, that, that is pretty much accurate. This is my friend, Brian, who, who had gotten the same TV. And so I was talking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to John after I was talking to Brian saying, oh, my friend just got this Panasonic. Is this what you wanted? Oh yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ask him about the fans. Ask him about the fans.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now see, I w I have a Panasonic plasma. Uh, that does have fans and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t hear them, but I would never be brave enough to tell john, well, mine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are mine are silent. So go ahead and buy it. I would never in a million years say that because he’d hear them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s funny you say that because immediately after Brian said, Oh, you can’t hear him. I mean, I’ll listen again, but you can’t hear
⏹️ ▶️ Casey him. The first thing I said to think both john and Brian was well, Brian
⏹️ ▶️ Casey says that he can’t hear them. But we both know that john is not going to believe
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, how could you it was like, it’s so difficult to the The best example was my old television,
⏹️ ▶️ John which had four gigantic fans in it that didn’t make an annoying sound. It was, they’re very big fans, so it makes a
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of a low volume, kind of rushing air sound. They’re not asymmetrical. That would have been nice. But
⏹️ ▶️ John my wife claims that either she couldn’t hear them or they don’t bother her. And it’s like, well, if you can’t hear that, because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, it’s like night and day, you know, as far as I’m concerned, it’s just like, if you can’t hear those four fans,
⏹️ ▶️ John then obviously an individual person sitting in front of a television has a very different experience of whether they can or can’t hear fans or whether
⏹️ ▶️ John they bother them or not. And again, I had this television with the four giant fans for four years. I just decided
⏹️ ▶️ John to live with it because it wasn’t that bad. And when you’re listening with audio on, it’s not like, you know, it’s you get used to
⏹️ ▶️ John it. The picture quality made up for it, all the other aspects of television, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know. And what was I going to do at that point? I had the same problem. If I returned it, I would have to get a one with worse image quality without
⏹️ ▶️ John fans or something. And the other the other thing about Plasma, by the way, since they use so much more power
⏹️ ▶️ John than LCDs and since apparently the analog electronics industry does not care about ambient noise, which drives
⏹️ ▶️ John me insane, see also my big rant about my Power Mac G5’s power supply which chirped.
⏹️ ▶️ John Transformers and other analog components that actually move, as in
⏹️ ▶️ John vibrate, can make noise because moving things make noise. And sometimes that noise is amplified
⏹️ ▶️ John through the printed circuit board that these little components are attached to, acting like a big speaker type thing making
⏹️ ▶️ John a terrible noise. Well, plasmas use a lot of power, have transformers on printed circuit boards,
⏹️ ▶️ John and they make a buzzing sound, an audible buzzing sound, people call it the plasma buzz. I think there’s no reason for that stupid buzzing
⏹️ ▶️ John sound to exist. If Apple designed one of these things, they could design it, and I say that after the Turbine
⏹️ ▶️ John G5 power supply, but anyway, it is possible to design these analog electronics in such a
⏹️ ▶️ John way that they do not make a noise that is audible to the person watching the television. And yet no television manufacturer
⏹️ ▶️ John does that because nobody cares, or they’re inside entertainment centers or they’re up against the wall or some other thing that muffles
⏹️ ▶️ John them, or people can’t hear them, but you can totally hear Transform buzz on almost any plasma
⏹️ ▶️ John television if you go into a completely silent room, make the entire screen white, you will hear a
⏹️ ▶️ John buzz, then change it to black, the buzz goes down or off, then change it back to white, and it goes up. That’s in addition
⏹️ ▶️ John to the fan noise, right? So I knew that was there as well. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John aware of all the noises that televisions make at this point. And people had problems with Panasonic plasmas and
⏹️ ▶️ John other plasmas where the Transform would crack and make a super terrible buzzing noise and people would make YouTube videos
⏹️ ▶️ John of it. The problem with these ubiquitous cameras that everyone has on their phones now is that those cameras are designed
⏹️ ▶️ John to remove background noise so people can hear you talking on the phone. So that’s absolutely the worst camera
⏹️ ▶️ John to ever use to try to record background noise. So a lot of people have videos where they would say, here’s my
⏹️ ▶️ John new television and do you hear that noise of the fan or the buzzing? And you didn’t because the phones
⏹️ ▶️ John cancel the noise out. But they’d bring the phone around to the back of the television with the camera video recording and they put
⏹️ ▶️ John it right next to the fan and then you could hear at least the sound quality of the fan. But then they go, oh, look, I’m backing
⏹️ ▶️ John away here, and you can’t hear it at all. It’s like, well, of course you can’t hear it at all. The phone is removing that noise. And that’s how I felt about
⏹️ ▶️ John individual people’s reports of, oh, I can’t hear the fan. Well, maybe your high-frequency hearing
⏹️ ▶️ John is gone because you’re 50 years old. Or maybe there’s a giant fan blowing in the room because you’re hot all the time,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you don’t like air conditioning. Or maybe your air conditioning is on, and you can’t, who knows why you can’t hear the fan. But I knew if there was something
⏹️ ▶️ John spinning, moving air in the back of that thing, I’d be able to hear it. But enough people,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, Casey’s friend, other people who own them on forums and stuff like that, said
⏹️ ▶️ John that it’s an overblown problem. And yes, if you read these hundred page threads about people who have televisions
⏹️ ▶️ John make too much noise, maybe they have some sort of problematic unit there, or maybe they’re blowing it
⏹️ ▶️ John over. But I figured I just have to make a decision. It’s almost the end of the year. These models are going to go away.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll buy it. I’ll make sure I have a 30 day return window and it’s too loud. I’ll return it. So I actually clicked the button to
⏹️ ▶️ John get the thing delivered out of it from Amazon, which I’d never done with the big TV before. I’d bought my last one
⏹️ ▶️ John from Best Buy, mostly because I wanted Best Buy to haul away my 350-pound CRT thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they did, and they took it away for free, and that was more than worth the price of buying it at Best Buy. And
⏹️ ▶️ John Amazon has sales tax now as well, so there’s not even an advantage of buying it at Amazon to get rid of the sales tax. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I did it. I had a pretty good delivery experience to the people who brought the television in, although the Styrofoam in the box
⏹️ ▶️ John was cracked. I wonder, like, how high did this television have to be dropped from
⏹️ ▶️ John for the Styrofoam surrounding it to crack. Because these are not small pieces of styrofoam. These are big, giant blocks
⏹️ ▶️ John of styrofoam cracked almost all the way through. But the television itself is entirely undamaged. They unpacked
⏹️ ▶️ John it before they left and before I signed anything to it. They inspected the television, they plugged it in, turned it on, made sure it actually
⏹️ ▶️ John worked, everything looked good. I hooked it up. It has fans in it. It has two fans instead
⏹️ ▶️ John of four. I can hear them. But the thing is, and I didn’t think about this before
⏹️ ▶️ John I was thinking about the television, it’s not so much that I don’t want to be able to hear the fans,
⏹️ ▶️ John just that they were quieter than my old television’s fans. And that as well, it’s still an upgrade.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s still quieter than it was. And these fans are significantly quieter than my old television’s fans, so much so
⏹️ ▶️ John that now I can hear the Transformer buzz way better than I could on my old television.
⏹️ ▶️ John The old fans were so overwhelming that they totally blanked out
⏹️ ▶️ John the Transformer buzz. But now the fans are so quiet that I can hear the transformer buzz better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s wonderful. That’s just truly fantastic.
⏹️ ▶️ John But you know, I haven’t made a final decision yet, but I’ve pretty much decided that I’m going to keep it, mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John because it is so much better than my old television in all ways. Like it has fan noise,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the fan noise is quieter. It has transformer buzz, but it’s probably about the same as my old TV. The picture quality is
⏹️ ▶️ John so much better because in four years, things have just gotten better. It’s thinner than my old television. It’s fancier looking.
⏹️ ▶️ John The only major disadvantage it has over my old television, and this is true of all televisions these days, and
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know why, but it’s probably just cost cutting, is it has fewer inputs. My old television had four
⏹️ ▶️ John HDMI inputs, a bunch of S-video that I was never going to use, and two component inputs. And I had stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John hooked up to all those inputs, and I was basically out of inputs. If I got a PS4, I would have had no place to put it. This
⏹️ ▶️ John one has three HDMI, so I lose an HDMI here, only one component, and of course no S-video or any of the other stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I don’t understand why high-end televisions have been losing inputs. Low-end
⏹️ ▶️ John televisions, sure, give it one, two HDMI ports, but high-end televisions just have like ten HDMI ports back there. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess the philosophy is that if you buy a high-end television, you really only need one HDMI point because you’re going to have an
⏹️ ▶️ John AV receiver that does all your switching for you and all that stuff. And that’s probably my next purchase
⏹️ ▶️ John decision thing that I have to deal with, which is a whole other topic entirely. I can’t wait to hear about that.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yes. But I’ve got
⏹️ ▶️ John the TV. It looks really good. of trapped in calibration hell which
⏹️ ▶️ John is the place you go when you buy a fancy television and realize that it has a million adjustments
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re obsessive compulsive like me and you try to keep adjusting them to get the picture you want without paying somebody 300
⏹️ ▶️ John bucks to come to your house and do it with $10,000 worth of video equipment because then you just feel like Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ John Nice. Did you ever get your television professionally calibrated, Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ John I did. Yeah, I also didn’t oh, it’s a it’s a thing It is a definitely a thing and the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John is the calibration like if you had the equipment to do the calibration I feel like you could
⏹️ ▶️ John probably do it yourself because the software they have that that uh Works with it is I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, it’s probably complicated but I get a couple tries you play football but the equipment is expensive because you need like
⏹️ ▶️ John a computer hooked up to a light meter that attaches to your screen that puts out a known signal and measures it and does all
⏹️ ▶️ John of this stuff. And it’s sufficiently complicated that it’s difficult to do at home. But mostly, I’m just trying to pin down
⏹️ ▶️ John the basic stuff of black levels, light levels, contrast, and
⏹️ ▶️ John the other basics. Oh, and one more thing before we get off the television thing. I didn’t even talk about this, but the
⏹️ ▶️ John other reason I didn’t want to buy an LCD is because they don’t do well with motion. They used to be terrible with motion.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now they’re a little bit better. But remember the old days when your
⏹️ ▶️ John cursor on your crappy PC laptop would have trails behind it.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That was a feature.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not that not the cursor trails, not the intentional ones that Windows put in but the accidental ones where
⏹️ ▶️ John everything all right. That was way way way back in the beginning days of LCD.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s gone now, but LCD still don’t show motion as well as plasmas do for a variety
⏹️ ▶️ John of reasons and what LCD televisions do to try to make things look more natural
⏹️ ▶️ John is that they will Put frames that didn’t exist in the source material in between so if your video is 24
⏹️ ▶️ John frames per second But your LCDs refresh is 60 frames per second Instead of just showing the same
⏹️ ▶️ John frame a whole bunch of times and showing the next frame a whole bunch of times and showing the Next frame a whole bunch of times if you do that on a modern
⏹️ ▶️ John LCD. It looks weird. It doesn’t look right it looks stuttery and jerky and Strange for
⏹️ ▶️ John reasons for reasons having to do with visual perception that I don’t entirely understand, but that you can google and find
⏹️ ▶️ John out and That’s not a problem on plasmids because they’re more like CRTs because
⏹️ ▶️ John they they I guess I think it’s because they pulse the the The output and it’s kind of like a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ John of bright lights Punctuated by periods of no light if you slow down viewing of a screen
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s more like a CRT and it looks more natural to you So plasmas don’t have to do this this motion interpolation
⏹️ ▶️ John But LCDs all do it and they do it like crazy and there’s it If you look at an LCD television
⏹️ ▶️ John is doing motion interpolation There’s a thing they call the soap opera effect because it makes all the the shows you’re watching look like they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John shot like a soap opera I don’t know if you ever watch television and then you flip through the channels and you come across
⏹️ ▶️ John a soap opera and you can tell like just because of the lighting and the sets and stuff you can just tell that’s a soap opera
⏹️ ▶️ John versus like oh that’s a movie like they look different to you I don’t think the soap opera effects looks like
⏹️ ▶️ John soap operas but it looks weird and even regular people notice that my parents recently asked me
⏹️ ▶️ John you know years after I’d tried to explain this to them they probably half remembered and they said I’m looking at television and the people look
⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit weird like they’re moving strangely that’s motion interpolation every LCD television does it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s on by default and LCD televisions and plasmas don’t have the problem at all, which is why they’re quote unquote, better for sports.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you care about motion, that you should just buy a plasma television because they don’t have to do all this weird stuff to affect
⏹️ ▶️ John the video signal. Well, this plasma television that I got actually had a setting for motion
⏹️ ▶️ John interpolation, and it was on by default, I couldn’t believe it. Like, why would you do this? Like, poor
⏹️ ▶️ John people are buying these plasmas, leaving that setting on and thinking that’s the way the video is supposed to look. Because I was sitting there right
⏹️ ▶️ John in front of the television after I just set it up and I pulled the menus down and I saw the video moving behind the menus and it looked
⏹️ ▶️ John all weird to me. I’m like, what the hell’s going on there? Did the menu slow down the video on this television? And
⏹️ ▶️ John I found the motion interpolation settings. I couldn’t believe it. Why would this setting even exist? So I immediately turned that off and
⏹️ ▶️ John there were like 75 other settings that this television does, all of which everybody should turn
⏹️ ▶️ John off. Brilliance enhancer, black extension, automatic gamma
⏹️ ▶️ John correction, digital remaster, like there’s a million settings in this thing, they should
⏹️ ▶️ John all be off. Like, this is why calibration should be anything. If you buy a fancy television, do not leave it the way it
⏹️ ▶️ John is, because they have like tons of settings that basically screw with the picture to try to make it look better and show
⏹️ ▶️ John it like a brilliance enhancer? What the hell is that supposed to do? Makes things sparkly and bright, you know, it
⏹️ ▶️ John just, it just screws up your picture. Turn all those off. And it probably also had input lag, not that
⏹️ ▶️ John it matters because like game mode usually turns all of them off anyway. So part of my calibration exercise is going
⏹️ ▶️ John through these extensive menus and turning off every single one of these stupid features that has some crazy made up marketing
⏹️ ▶️ John name. Same thing for sound, you know, with like fake surround sound and stuff. Turn all that crap off.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe the only one that I would allow a little bit is like noise reduction and put that one on low, but
⏹️ ▶️ John even that is iffy. So if you have a fancy new television, whether it’s LCD or plasma,
⏹️ ▶️ John turn off all those crazy settings. Try to, you don’t have to get calibrated by somebody, but you can at least do like the the
⏹️ ▶️ John self calibration things where you sit there and look at a test image and follow the instructions, you can get pretty close
⏹️ ▶️ John to not a correct image, but an image doesn’t look like the crap that things come
⏹️ ▶️ John out of the box looking like or that they look like in the showroom. So that’s my advice for
⏹️ ▶️ John if you get a television and I and people say, what salvage and I buy, I can’t advise that you get a plasma. I just told you all the
⏹️ ▶️ John things about it. Burn in fans, power, transformer, buzz, LCDs, terrible black
⏹️ ▶️ John levels, weird motion, Opera effect. I think the colors are not quite as
⏹️ ▶️ John nice and natural looking as they are on Plasma, so they have gotten a lot better. There’s no good television to buy,
⏹️ ▶️ John so you have to make your own choices with those compromises.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But if one were to get the television that you just bought, what would one be buying?
⏹️ ▶️ John I bought a Panasonic VT60, they call it short for the internet, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like TCP and then the screen size and then the letters
⏹️ ▶️ John and numbers. And Panasonic’s V series has been their fancy Mine was the old one was the TCP 50
⏹️ ▶️ John v10 and they added the T at some point back I think around the VT 50 they added it
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway this year’s models are TCP 55 VT 60 or 65 VT 60 I think 55 is
⏹️ ▶️ John the small size as television comes in yeah What that what the heck is that about what they don’t come
⏹️ ▶️ John small they look on smaller than 55 Yeah, no that’s what I’m saying when I bought a television for upstairs I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John like I need a small television for my bedroom I don’t want it to be this is you know have room in a bedroom for a gigantic television I could not
⏹️ ▶️ John find a plasma that I was willing to buy that was below 50 inches. And I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John not putting a 50-inch television in it, it’s just too big. I didn’t have room for that. So I had to buy an LCD television for upstairs,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it was crushing to me. But, you know, like, what can you do? And yeah, the fancier the TV,
⏹️ ▶️ John they don’t come in the small sizes. Like 50 was the small size I could get my old TV in. It actually, well, actually,
⏹️ ▶️ John no, I think it came in a 42. But yeah, 55 is the smallest for this one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I’m sorry, so yours is 65, though, the one you actually ended up with?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, 55. The 50-inch television I had barely fit in the place that I had it. And the nice
⏹️ ▶️ John thing about the March of Progress is the 55-inch television, its external dimensions are almost identical to my
⏹️ ▶️ John 50-inch, they just made the bezel smaller, right? So that’s nice, you know, that
⏹️ ▶️ John the new television I have has more screen area, but takes up about the same amount in my house. And the reason I got
⏹️ ▶️ John the VT60 instead of, there’s actually a model up from that, they added a Z series, the
⏹️ ▶️ John ZT60. And the only difference with the ZT60 is that it has slightly better image quality
⏹️ ▶️ John in exchange for slightly reduced brightness, but it doesn’t have the nice speakers that this has. And it’s like, who cares about
⏹️ ▶️ John the speakers that are built into the television? Well, I do, because I’m still sorting out the surround sound situation,
⏹️ ▶️ John which again is another topic for another show. And so I actually care about the built-in speakers, and I like them to be high quality. And the
⏹️ ▶️ John VT had like this stupid built-in camera, which is terrible, and who cares about that?
⏹️ ▶️ John And it was cheaper. Like why am I gonna buy the more expensive TV with fewer features?
⏹️ ▶️ John I went with the VT instead of the ZT.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right So anything you’d like to add John about the TV
⏹️ ▶️ John I Can talk about the software on the television, but I’ll do save that for another show because I think that’s a whole other that’s that’s gets back
⏹️ ▶️ John to my Hypercritical that co blog post of the worst products through software and that is
⏹️ ▶️ John totally the case with televisions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Marco, is there anything else that’s awesome that we should share
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there is there is one more in fact, it is our friend’s return sponsor,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is Transporter. Transporter is a special external hard drive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you own and control like any other external hard drive, but with secure private cloud sharing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and sync features built in. So like Dropbox, with Transporter you can access your files
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from any of your computers or your iOS or Android devices. All your Transporter’s files are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco available from anywhere that you are with internet access. You can also share individual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco files or folders with web accessible share links, no matter how large they are. You know, like a lot of times, if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco try to put like, you know, a 5 gig file on Dropbox, that might not work very well. With this, you can send
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somebody a link to a file or even a whole folder. You can share your whole photo collection with somebody else
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you really want to. Just careful what’s in there. But, you know, you can share everything with, you know, with anybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you want and it doesn’t matter how big it is. There’s no size limits. As long as it fits on the transporter,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can share it. Also multiple transporters can replicate from each other and can sync.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So this is a really good way to add something like an offsite backup service. You can have one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco transporter at home, one transporter at work, or at your parents’ house, or your friend’s house, or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somewhere else, and then you can have automatic replication between them so that you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a constant replication and offsite backup. You can also selectively sync
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just one folder so that, let’s say you and a friend or a co-worker who has a transporter,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can collaborate on a project together and you can have one folder that is your shared folder, your working files for that project,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you and your coworker can have everything totally in sync the whole time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco With transporter, your data is always secure. It’s never stored on anybody else’s cloud servers or theirs, for that matter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They don’t have any. Data is transferred directly between transporter devices. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always transmitted with end-to-end encryption. So Transporter prices start at just 500 gigs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for 200 bucks, 1 terabyte for, new price drop here, 1 terabyte for $250, 2 terabytes for $350, and there’s also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this new option called
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Transporter Sync, which is this little puck-shaped thing, it’s 100 bucks, and it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has a USB port, and you can plug in any USB hard drive, and it’ll just use that as its drive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And geeks like us, chances are you probably have a USB hard drive sitting around that you’re either not currently using or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that maybe you could buy an upgrade and plug that into the transporter. So it’s like USB
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on one side, gigabit on the other, it’s very, very simple. So you can also take an extra 10%
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off any of these prices with coupon code ATP. So I verified this before the show, you can get 2 terabytes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for like 320 after shipping, which is really great. It’s even, like I looked at these prices
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are way cheaper than on Amazon even, like this is really great prices. go to FileTransporter.com
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to learn more. And what’s really great about this is that you buy the drive up front, like any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other drive, and then there’s no monthly fees, no matter how much data
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you store. So if you look, for example, if you try to store like 2 terabytes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of data on Dropbox or similar kinds of services like that, it’s going to cost you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quite a bit every month. With Transporter, it’s a hard drive sitting in your house, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it just allows you to access it through clever software and clever networking stuff. And so you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t have to pay these monthly fees that other people charge to have it on their cloud servers. It’s your drive,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you own it, you control it, you secure it, and there’s no monthly fees. It’s always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco available, always syncs to any of the transporters, to any of the people, etc. Really great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco deal. So go to FileTransporter.com to learn more, and don’t forget to use code
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ATP for 10% off any transporter from their store. Thanks a lot to Transporter for sponsoring the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco show. Once again, it’s a really cool product that I’m pretty sure is unmatched and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really great. So thanks a lot to Transporter.
⏹️ ▶️ John Also no fans in the Transporter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is correct. They’re really small too. They’re impressively small. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re worried about adding something big to your house or to your setup, you don’t have to worry about it. It’s very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco small because they use two and a half inch hard drives. So they’re very, very small.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it just power and Ethernet. Yep. Very simple.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, apparently there’s something that nobody’s talking about that we should be talking about
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, I I added that and I didn’t I didn’t add it for the reasons you think I added it This is a tweet.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is a tweet from somebody who I’m not gonna name because it’s not I’m not gonna I’m gonna say things about
⏹️ ▶️ John this tweet, but I’m not trying to slam this person
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco because it’s not about the
⏹️ ▶️ John verge No, this is a phenomenon that I see all the time and I thought
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s worth talking about. I just saw it today All right, so this tweet has a bunch of at names at the
⏹️ ▶️ John front of it, including me, daring fireball, Marco, Josh, Polsky, not about the verge.
⏹️ ▶️ John So that this this right away is a pattern. I’m sure Marco’s seen this because he gets he’s on a lot of these same things
⏹️ ▶️ John where it’s at this person at that person at that person at that person and then and then like a question
⏹️ ▶️ John or a statement and you look at the list of like like the two lists effectively for this tweet and like
⏹️ ▶️ John what what is it that made this person to try to address all these people at once? that
⏹️ ▶️ John if you send an email, at least the email has to have a, you know, you can put a bunch of people into it, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like an email sent to five people. No one feels the responsibility to actually respond to it. And it’s like shotgun blasting.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re shotgun blasting a bunch of people that are only vaguely related, like I’m on a podcast with Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John during fireball is not John Gruber’s account, but it’s his website’s account, but I know him and I know the website, Josh
⏹️ ▶️ John Tepolsky runs the verge or is involved with the version some way, which is also a tech site,
⏹️ ▶️ John but there’s just basically a bunch of vaguely tech related people. So it’s kind of like saying, Hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John people whose name I know on Twitter who are involved in technology, hear me. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John and then you say something, right? And the thing that they said, that the first bit is just
⏹️ ▶️ John an aside of like, if you’re trying to effectively communicate on Twitter, don’t add mention a whole bunch of people who
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t know, who are just vaguely related to the topic in general, because you’re not going to get a reply, because every person that chain doesn’t feel
⏹️ ▶️ John a responsibility, they have to reply, right. And so like, either everybody ignores it,
⏹️ ▶️ John or even even if you think it needs to have a reply, you’re like, well, I don’t feel like it’s my responsibility
⏹️ ▶️ John to reply. One of the other guys will surely reply. And then what ends up is nobody replies. So this is not an effective strategy. But the
⏹️ ▶️ John second part is the question. And the question is, why isn’t anybody talking about the iOS notification sync
⏹️ ▶️ John in OS 10 that never shipped? And I think this is a great,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is a great example of, I don’t know, when I see things like this, I don’t know if,
⏹️ ▶️ John I actually want to engage in it. did try to engage in this a little bit. It didn’t have the effect that I thought it would
⏹️ ▶️ John because it never does. Like, when you engage with people, I’m trying to… Casey
⏹️ ▶️ John knows about this, and so does Marco probably, too. You know, the five whys thing that they tell you in corporate speak?
⏹️ ▶️ John MARK MANDEL – I’ve only heard it from you. JAYME CONTOS – Yeah. Well, anyway, it’s like another
⏹️ ▶️ John one of those… And in a future show we’ll talk about work methodologies and stuff like that. But it’s another one of those… MARK MANDEL –
⏹️ ▶️ John Fun. JAYME CONTOS – Games that they try to play to teach you critical thinking.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so what What I replied to this person was what I feel like replying to so many people
⏹️ ▶️ John when they say things. When they say, why isn’t anybody talking about this new feature that Apple said was going to ship, it didn’t ship, or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John I said, you tell me. And what I’m trying to get them to do is answer their own question.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because I feel like if you could think about it for, like, if you thought about it for a little while,
⏹️ ▶️ John surely you can come up with just as good an answer as anybody who put the thing up. Because, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John what you’re looking for, the sensational version, is there’s a conspiracy theory here, like, you know, they pulled
⏹️ ▶️ John the guards away from the embassy just before the terrorists came and it’s a big conspiracy
⏹️ ▶️ John and they don’t want you to know. I’m not getting political again. Anyway, like, the conspiracy theory is one angle. Why
⏹️ ▶️ John is nobody talking about this? Surely everybody’s been paid off by Apple or there’s a conspiracy against this
⏹️ ▶️ John feature or whatever. That’s the crazy version and you can’t, like, this is not implied and there’s nothing in this message that implies
⏹️ ▶️ John this person thinks it’s a conspiracy theory. But that’s one way you one reason someone would direct this
⏹️ ▶️ John type of question like you guys should be talking about it and you’re not and the extreme version is it’s because you’ve all
⏹️ ▶️ John been paid off by Apple. That’s why you’re not talking about this topic. Never mind that only a couple people in this thing have
⏹️ ▶️ John websites where they get paid to talk about tech. Don’t forget
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the F word. What’s that? We’re all fanboys with an eye on the end because that makes it worse somehow.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, yeah, but I don’t I mean, I don’t think that’s in this question as well. But like a lot of the questions that are like this is
⏹️ ▶️ John like, why? Why isn’t anybody talking about? a leading question, right? But the like, assume that’s not the case. Assume this
⏹️ ▶️ John person is not a crazy conspiracy theorist, and he’s looking for some sort of like, we’re all colluding with each other not to talk about this. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John really a terrible shame. And he’s the only person who sees through the facade of
⏹️ ▶️ John fanboys who are on the take from Apple, like that’s, that’s ridiculous, right? So assuming we put aside that ridiculous thing, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And say, what’s left there? I mean, I’ll post it to YouTube. Like, what is what do you think? I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John none of us actually knows, right? Because none of us works at Apple. And if we did, we couldn’t say none of us actually knows the the answer. Surely the person
⏹️ ▶️ John asking this question knows that none of us work at Apple, and if we did, we couldn’t say. So all he’s looking for is
⏹️ ▶️ John for us to provide an answer that he thinks we’re more able to provide than he is. And I don’t think we’re any
⏹️ ▶️ John more able to provide this answer. And I’m going to ask you two, what do you think is the answer to this question? Why isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John anybody talking about the iOS notification sync in OS 10 that never shipped? Either one of you want to take it?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I’m not allowed to talk about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. I can’t. My take would get removed or something.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m serious. But either one of you, but why, what is your best guess at the answer to that question?
⏹️ ▶️ John Why isn’t anybody talking about it? I forgot.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For whatever reason, it got, it got deprioritized. Well, the why is it, why hasn’t it happened? It got deprioritized
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or isn’t done. Why isn’t anyone talking about it? Just like Marco said, I completely forgot that was a thing or going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a thing, I should say.
⏹️ ▶️ John more or less the answer I would give, because sometimes features don’t make it into software,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s not a feature that anyone really cared about that much anyway. So the answer to why isn’t anybody talking about this feature
⏹️ ▶️ John that didn’t ship is because features don’t ship in software all the time, and this wasn’t a particularly highly anticipated
⏹️ ▶️ John feature anyway. Like, that’s the answer. Like, I don’t know 100% certainty, but that is the literal
⏹️ ▶️ John answer to why isn’t anybody talking about obscure features that didn’t ship. Because not a conspiracy
⏹️ ▶️ John theory, features don’t ship all the time, and not a lot of people care about it.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s pretty much the answer. And I feel like the person who asked that question
⏹️ ▶️ John could have arrived at that very same answer if they had looked inward instead of outward with
⏹️ ▶️ John this question, like merely asked themselves, why is it that no one is talking about that? And
⏹️ ▶️ John if the answer they arrive at is, it’s a conspiracy theory, well then I can’t help them unless they have some evidence
⏹️ ▶️ John that that’s the case. But like it has the most is this worth sending to five
⏹️ ▶️ John people this question that you would answer yourself like it’s a boring answer no one wants to hear it but I really think that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the answer and this this model of I get my
⏹️ ▶️ John tech information or information about the you know the latest and greatest cars or drum sets or whatever from
⏹️ ▶️ John these set of people who know more about the topic like that only goes so far
⏹️ ▶️ John at a certain point you have to have to sort engaged your own critical thinking and see if you can come up with something on
⏹️ ▶️ John your own because all the other people you’re asking are doing is the exact same thing you could do. Like sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John you have inside information or inside a historical context, but in very specific instances like this, it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John no one cares about it. That’s why no one’s talking about it. And it didn’t ship because sometimes things don’t ship. And maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not true. Maybe this person knows something that I don’t, that there was a big dramatic
⏹️ ▶️ John fight with Apple executives and they demanded this thing not ship. And who knows? But I don’t know that.
⏹️ ▶️ John And surely this group of five people is not expecting those details either. And that’s the only reason I include this.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not to yell at the person for asking it because you’re not supposed to ask questions because people ask, you know, whatever. Everyone does it. I
⏹️ ▶️ John at mention random celebrities and say things all the time and then they respond like, we all do it, right? But
⏹️ ▶️ John I just thought it was a good example of ineffective at mentioning and
⏹️ ▶️ John asking a question that they themselves I feel like could have answered just as well as we could.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have nothing to add to that because you pretty much nailed it. Marco, do you have anything?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I’m pretty much the same. I think this is probably a really boring story.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s probably like, oh, you know, either we couldn’t get it in time and it wasn’t that important, so,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, we’ll work on it for the next release or for, you know, a point something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or, they could have figured out something, you know, between when it was announced and when it was shipped.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They could have figured out, you know, know, oh, actually it has this really weird, horrible problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that makes it a really bad idea to do at all. You know, I mean, I find stuff like that all the time, which is one of the reasons I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually pre-announce features. It’s like, I’ll have some feature I’ll work on, I’m like, oh, this is going to be great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then I like 90% through with it and I realize, oh, wait a minute.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is actually impossible to be good or even shippable because of this particular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco condition or problem or edge case or anything else. And so maybe they hit something like that, you know, at the scale they’re working
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on They probably have a little time
⏹️ ▶️ John and I think the questions like this are actually a kind of a trap getting back to the stuff we talked about and I think 41 or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever we’re talking about like online criticism and stuff leading questions like this that seem like vaguely accusatory
⏹️ ▶️ John for no reason directed at multiple people seeking some kind of engagement on a topic where there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John no real engagement. We have it’s very easy to get into a pointless flame war over nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John by responding to these type of questions because again, maybe the person’s intent is not, you know, the feeling
⏹️ ▶️ John that we get reading that is probably very different from the intent of the person asking it. But the way it’s phrased is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John all you random people, I demand to know why x, y and z.
⏹️ ▶️ John And none of us actually know. And all we can give is the same exact answer that he can give himself.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you try to say anything back, like if, like, try, try imagining to walk the line in Twitter of trying to
⏹️ ▶️ John say what I said in big long rambling version back to this person on Twitter and say, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John it, you know, features don’t ship in software all the time, because they don’t make the shipping deadline.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it wasn’t as highly anticipated and demanded and important enough
⏹️ ▶️ John to be worth reporting on the fact that it didn’t ship. If you could fit that into a tweet
⏹️ ▶️ John and reply, that’s like you’ve started an argument. Well, this is important. You don’t don’t you understand how many people
⏹️ ▶️ John want this feature? It’s super important. And let me tell you why you’re going to argue with the person about why you think it’s important. It’s like doesn’t matter
⏹️ ▶️ John if you think it’s I’m telling you why I think it didn’t ship is like it only matters if People
⏹️ ▶️ John who run websites and blogs think is important and doesn’t matter if an individual person thinks it’s important It matters in aggregate did
⏹️ ▶️ John most people did a majority people did enough people that it’s noticeable. Did anybody write about this? Well now I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John googling and I found one guy who did write about it and he’s like like you just get into this giant rat Hole, so what are we even arguing
⏹️ ▶️ John about in which I was much rather when it be engaged people at all It’s like you tell me the answer
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, so many people send me Twitter messages and emails where I feel like, I don’t want to answer this,
⏹️ ▶️ John I want you to arrive at the answer yourself. Even if it’s a different answer than I would give, because I have no extra
⏹️ ▶️ John knowledge about this than you do. It’s kind of like the tech support thing, which is a whole other topic that I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John want to get into now. And again, I don’t want to make it seem like, you know, I feel put upon by these things, because I have no problem just not responding
⏹️ ▶️ John to these tweets when they come, especially when they have a million at names in them. And I assume everybody else in these giant threads
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t respond, Occasionally I check and I see like Marco will answer these people and I don’t understand why he’s doing it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think he’s bad. I am such a sucker for these sorts of things I I always bite if there’s a little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey little worm in front of me. I’m always biting
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I have no problems. I have no problem just not responding to them But so many times I just
⏹️ ▶️ John want to I want to call them up on the phone and say why do you think? And
⏹️ ▶️ John I and I want them just to you know to think about it themselves and give me like they don’t want it. They
⏹️ ▶️ John like well that like they’re trying to anticipate like like I said, like I’m now I’m doing a leading question like well,
⏹️ ▶️ John what do you think? Like they think I have an answer in mind and I’m trying to trigger them to say it. I’m just I just
⏹️ ▶️ John want them to focus their thought process on it and come up with an answer. Like I
⏹️ ▶️ John would like to turn it around and say this is an area where we both have equal and very little knowledge.
⏹️ ▶️ John I have a theory. Do you have a theory? Let’s share our theories with each other and done like not not, Not, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John not turn into an argument
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So next time that you want to ask all of us including John one of those questions on Twitter include a phone number
⏹️ ▶️ John You never know so many times like we talk about all the online stuff that’s part of podcasting
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like I feel like the the bandwidth the sort of expressive bandwidth not
⏹️ ▶️ John data bandwidth of instant message email and stuff like that is still so much less than
⏹️ ▶️ John voice communication that so many times, whether it’s in an argument or trying to help somebody,
⏹️ ▶️ John like trying to help my parents get something working on their computer or whatever, I just immediately want to run to the higher
⏹️ ▶️ John bandwidth connection. Just let me talk to you on the phone. I can talk to you, although it’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of hard. Do you see a box on the screen? Is it a gray box? Does it have a… Tech support
⏹️ ▶️ John is difficult. But for arguments or we have a disagreement or whatever, especially when you’re constrained by Twitter,
⏹️ ▶️ John I just want to call this person I feel like we could settle this in 10 minutes. Can’t do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I hear you. And to go back just a quick step, you mentioned episode 41, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is where we were talking about online criticism and things like that. This week’s Back to Work, which was episode 149,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Merlin had a typically awesome, and I mean that with no sarcasm, Merlin, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t know if I’d call it a rant, but a monologue about, kind of, sort of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey vaguely inspired by what we had said on episode 41. It’s really, really good. So if you haven’t heard that even if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not a normal listener, you should check that out because it’s very very very good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, we’ll link it up in the show notes and With that let’s wrap it up for this week. Thanks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot to our three sponsors this week Pixelmator slash pixel mature file transporter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Squarespace and we will see you next week
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now the show is over they didn’t even mean to begin because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental Oh, it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research. Marco and Casey wouldn’t let
⏹️ ▶️ John him. Because it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was accidental. And you can find the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes at atp.fm. And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey list and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and T Marco are men. SIR AC
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I hope you guys don’t want to go to bed for a while because we got a lot of neutral to get through. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not only do I want to hear about your car, John, a little more about that, but the M3 and M4 were quasi-officially announced
⏹️ ▶️ Casey today. And oh my goodness, does the M3 look good.
⏹️ ▶️ John The M4 is still that banana color. That’s so bad. That moldy, metallic,
⏹️ ▶️ John rotten banana color. I can’t get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s only available in that color.
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t get over it. I don’t know what’s going on over there in Germany that they think this is acceptable.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But oh, god, did you see the M3? It looks so good.
⏹️ ▶️ John I still think that like that the M Not the m5 the regular 5-series still
⏹️ ▶️ John by far the most attractive car the BMW makes in this generation and they’re kind of obsession with
⏹️ ▶️ John Putting these they look kind of like skin flaps like their styling architecture of like oh We’re gonna make the
⏹️ ▶️ John the more aggressive looking body cladding and front fascia and everything and it does look more aggressive And it mostly looks
⏹️ ▶️ John good, but the whole the whole skin flappy design where it’s kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John organic curves overlapping and stuff I find less appealing than a more mechanical
⏹️ ▶️ John or or I’m on the other side of the spectrum more sort of sculptural type of thing like a Ferrari inlet
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m I’m not entirely happy with the basically the plastic bolt-on bits that they put on the M’s
⏹️ ▶️ John in a lot of cases the M’s still do look much better and more aggressive than the regulars but then in
⏹️ ▶️ John the minute details of the front and rear I’m a little bit iffy on. Not that this will
⏹️ ▶️ John affect my life too much, because I’m not getting any one of those cars.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The M5, compared to the regular 5 Series that you like so much, there’s actually, if you put
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the M Sport option on the 5 Series, I think it’s almost identical externally. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very, very few differences. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s like the Carrera 4S, where they get the turbo bodywork, but not the
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the thing is, the 5 Series has good bones, kind of. The structure,
⏹️ ▶️ John the proportions, where the headlights are, Like everything about it is nicely, it’s all, you know, and it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John in the little details where you can screw up a little bit. I think the M5 for the more aggressive front and rear plastic bolt-on
⏹️ ▶️ John thing looks a little bit fussy for me, whereas the regular five looks sort of more
⏹️ ▶️ John stately and subdued and fitting with the car. But the M3 and M4, it’s the same type of thing. Like the M4,
⏹️ ▶️ John I like the shape of it, the coupe shape. They really, you know, it looks nice and aggressive. But then in the details around
⏹️ ▶️ John the bumpers and sort of the haunches, it gets a little bit fussy and weird for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The front air dam on the very, very, very extreme outsides, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has kind of Ferrari-ish, kind of like in the out, the upper part
⏹️ ▶️ Casey comes down and around, but the inner part doesn’t meet up with it. It’s like, I don’t know, like a lips almost,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not ellipse, but a set of lips. And then on the back, it has like a similar, like quasi
⏹️ ▶️ Casey L shape on the very extreme edges. That I’m not in love with. I kind of wish it was a little simpler, like my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey era. Skin flaps. Yeah, they are kind of skinny. Yeah, you’re right. Skin flap is a very good way to describe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. But generally, overall, I just think the M3 particularly looks incredible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I want one so hard. And I don’t think I could ever afford my car
⏹️ ▶️ Casey brand new. I mean, we’ve talked about this ad nauseum. It was like $55,000 or something like that new.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This, I forget what the starting price is going to be. But I’m sure it’s going to be insane and just stupid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What about $70,000, you think?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think they, I thought they announced it, perhaps not in US dollars, but anyway, it doesn’t matter. The point is it’ll probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be, I would say, 70-ish, certainly 70 to 75 option the way you would want. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so Panda19 in the chat just asked, well, when am I getting one? I’ll get one when it’s actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey affordable as a used car, which is like a decade from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now. I’m guessing you’ll have one in four years. Get it in black though.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will not get it in black. Actually, to be honest, I was discussing with the same friend, Brian, that we were talking TVs with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I forget what the name of the silver was maybe silver stone You would get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, no, so here’s the thing I the blue that they have in the press shots was in Mola.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is that right? I forget
⏹️ ▶️ John the blue the light blue It’s iPad smart cover blue. Yeah, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I like it, but I don’t love it However, the silver that I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey speaking of it’s a silver but with like this weird bluish hue to it that I actually kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of like. I don’t think I would get it white. If I could, if I could ever find one, I would definitely,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or if I were to be able to afford one brand new, I’d get it individualed with Le
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mans blue if such a thing was affordable and possible. But if not that, I’d probably get it Silverstone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or Silverstone or whatever it is. But oh man, it looks so good. It was like what, 450-ish horsepower? I’m trying to find
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the stats. 425. 425 and like 400 pound-feet of torque from about 2
⏹️ ▶️ Casey RPM. And yet the fuel economy is actually up quite
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a bit. Again, I don’t have numbers in front of me, but whatever it was, it was very, very, very good. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mean, for an M3 anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John What do you think about the little Chrysler-esque things up behind the little vents
⏹️ ▶️ John behind the front wheels with the little chrome?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Before Marco jumps in, what do you think of them, John?
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m kind of okay with doing those details on just on the M series, but the actual
⏹️ ▶️ John execution of this particular detail, I think the chrome thing coming out of it is too much and I don’t think the scoop
⏹️ ▶️ John fits in with the rest of the bodywork. It looks a little bit like a little bit tacked on kind of.
⏹️ ▶️ John I do like the little M symbol on the brake pad, like brake caliper rather.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually agree with you on the on the side vent. I think and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the side vent is In general, it is one of my favorite little features of the M cars,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it annoys me that you can go and see it on every Ford Taurus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and crappy Kia rip-off, that they totally ripped that styling off of the M cars.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m pretty sure the M cars did that a long time before anyone else. Not from the M
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco been doing that for more
⏹️ ▶️ John On racing cars and other high-performance cars, on many of them, it’s a functional thing. Yes, on the American
⏹️ ▶️ John ones it’s usually not functional, it’s just a service detail, but the BMW did not vent whatever that vent is that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John behind the front wheel.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but like with the little chrome accent, like it looks very, like when other people do it, it looks very BMW-ish.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But anyway, I love that little vent, and that’s one of the reasons I got the M5, is I love that little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco vent so much. I will say on this new M3 and M4, I don’t love it as much. I agree that it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really fit in that well. It’s not, like the way that little chrome piece
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is just kind of stuck on there, like It’s like the way the way it’s done on the five. It’s it’s actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like wrapped like the vent itself is Trimmed in chrome and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that’s it. This is like the vent itself It’s just made of metal and they like stuck a chrome thing right in the middle of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it instead I don’t know. I’m not I also I’m not a big fan of that. I don’t think it makes the car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look worse But I don’t think it makes it look better.
⏹️ ▶️ John They should bring back the stealth style that BMW used to have where their fast cars
⏹️ ▶️ John and Mercedes had this you know back in the late 80s early 90s where the high-performance versions
⏹️ ▶️ John of the cars looked very similar to the regular ones and you know you couldn’t tell you the blend in with traffic
⏹️ ▶️ John like basically take this m3 and pop off those plastic bits and put the boring plastic bits
⏹️ ▶️ John back on but still have a BNM 3 underneath right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see and what you’re describing in my personal opinion is the e39 m5 which is the early
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 2000s, which, and I was discussing this with somebody on Twitter earlier today, it is the pinnacle
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of understated power, you know, the kind of sleeper approach, which was there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were a couple of places where you could tell it was an M5. The front air dam is a great example. It was quad exhaust,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which you never saw and still don’t really see on BMWs unless it’s an M car. But by and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey large, it didn’t have like 350 M badges on it. And even though I really do enjoy Marco’s car, and I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s a fantastic automobile, has M’s everywhere and it’s kind of ridiculous. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the E39 M5 was not like that. And to this day, every great
⏹️ ▶️ Casey once in a while, I’ll go poking through AutoTrader telling myself I’m going to get one and then I wuss out because they are so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey old now and so expensive to keep on the road. But, oh man, it was the best.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I also did, speaking of too many M logos everywhere, I saw one of these posts last night. Has it been confirmed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that apparently there’s a feature where there’s M logos on the back of the seats
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah I’ve read that I haven’t seen a picture and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John then they play engine noise out of them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean that if that’s a real feature that’s pretty bad like that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can do worse they have a so there’s launch control which is that thing on your car that you’ve never
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right but there’s also they have and I’m gonna get the name wrong but it’s something as lame as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey smoky burnout mode yeah what is
⏹️ ▶️ John that it’s like launch control, but they do not try to get traction.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Precisely. No, I’m not kidding. That is exactly it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So this way, if you want to do like a, if you want to be a total hooligan and do and show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey off a little bit and, you know, roast your $1,500 tires or whatever they are, you can put it in smoky
⏹️ ▶️ Casey burnout mode and it will let you do a burnout of some magnitude.
⏹️ ▶️ John Can’t you just turn off the traction control and stomp on the gas? Isn’t that effectively the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey same thing? One would think, especially in a stick, you can just, you know, dump the clutch when the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey engine’s at 2,000 RPM, which is like 8 million torques. But, um.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, it works in a DCT, too.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, that’s true. Well, in reverse, as we found out on the snow. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, so there’s a smoky burnout mode. And it was funny, because I believe Ford just announced this for the Mustang. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so BMW has also come out with this.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s appropriate for the Mustang. The Mustang’s supposed to do a smoky burnout.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. But anyway, I just wanted to bring it up, because I think. Those are tacky features. They kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of are. Launch control I can understand because in the same Brian, in his R32,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he had launch control which he had done a launch control launch, if that’s not redundant,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey once or twice with me in the car. And so the R32 was this Volkswagen with a V6
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in it and a Haldex all-wheel drive system. And I tell you what, when he did a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey launch control launch, it was something incredible. I mean, you were getting shot out of a cannon because it was all-wheel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey drive and it had a decent amount of torque. It wasn’t stupidly heavy and so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was quick. But I should go back a step and mention that the smoky burnout mode in every spelling I’ve seen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s S-M-O-K-E-Y, which just makes it even worse.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe they mean the bear.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, who knows? I don’t know. It’s just terrible. But anyway, but all in all, the M3
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in principle, having never seen one in real life, having only read things on the internets gets two very enthusiastic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thumbs up from me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Do we know, has anybody reviewed the steering yet? Because it has electric power steering and everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hates electric power steering so far and they say that in this one they fixed it and now it’s like, now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has enough feedback and responsiveness. But I don’t think a reviewer has actually driven one and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco evaluated that yet.
⏹️ ▶️ John car driver drove the M4. I don’t remember they said anything significant about the steering but I think they said
⏹️ ▶️ John that Overall, they liked it. But it was just a first impression thing. But that’s how you’ll know, because Car and Driver has just been
⏹️ ▶️ John slamming the electric power steering in BMWs in particular, like a scorned lover.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because Car and Driver has been the magazine that for decades has been like, oh, BMW wins every comparison. And just in this
⏹️ ▶️ John current generation, when they brought out the electrical power steering everywhere, that they’ve been all pissy about it. So I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John let you know when I get that Car and Driver, if they finally brought them back around. But
⏹️ ▶️ John right now, they’re very cranky about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve never driven an EPS system that was good. Like, and I love,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my current car does not have that. And my current car has hydraulic steering. And all the other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco five series have EPS. The M5 does not, it still has hydraulic.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Car and driver hates your
⏹️ ▶️ John car for other reasons though.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s true, that’s fine. And some of them, I agree with them, most of them I don’t. But, so I’m like holding,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m like, this is gonna be like my John Gruber keyboard. Like I’m gonna hold onto this forever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco until somebody makes one that’s actually, that matches this somehow, which might never happen.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, you would think, if not the second generation, by the third try, all the car makers will
⏹️ ▶️ John have gotten it by their third try, I assume. Because it’s all the same, they all use ZF transmissions.
⏹️ ▶️ John Whoever is supplying these electrical power assist things, plus whatever program they figure out, they’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John figure out, just take a couple generations.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, does Tiff’s new car, does that have electric steering? It does, doesn’t it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not only does it have it, But she noticed it on the very first drive, on the drive home from the dealership.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco After taking that drive, she asked me, she’s like, you know, the steering feels kind of weird. It’s like it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco taking any effort, and it doesn’t really quite feel right. It feels like it’s steering like almost too much around certain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tight corners, because you’re like just instantly there, and it doesn’t feel right.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just wait until they do drive by wire, because Nissan, I think, has a drive by wire system. A couple of makers have
⏹️ ▶️ John drive by wire things. That’s going to be even weirder. So that’s a problem. It’s like they’ll probably get the electrical assisted power steering working
⏹️ ▶️ John OK, but then everyone will switch over again to drive by wire, and then we’ll have to go through another three generations of that feeling weird.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyway, so yeah, so I just wanted to bring it up. I think it’s really awesome. Now, Marco, you had briefly said
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you might consider an M3 as your next car. Obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s a few years out, but just hypothetically, are you still thinking that’s the case based on what little you know so far?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would really have to drive one first to really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now that i think i’ve seen like it so i’ve been tips car tips just got her three gt and it’s it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fantastic for everything that we need a car to be and she loves it and and it’s it’s really nice and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and i will say i’m very jealous of two features that it has that were not available on my car uh… the automatic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco high beam thing and uh… and radar cruise control both of those i thought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might be gimmicky and useless turns out they’re both awesome and i wish i had them and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco figures were not available on the m five and which is unfortunate so that being said
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uh… so you know going ahead having driven a five series for all these months and going back to the three series
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a couple drives we’ve taken with her car together actually missed a lot of the five series
⏹️ ▶️ Marco luxuries and i did i didn’t think i would uh… but the five series is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more substantial more luxurious in a few ways and i i i really did miss that difference when i when i was driving her car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and uh… it was that it’s still a very nice car and and compared to almost anything else on the road it’s fantastic and very luxurious
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but there is a difference and I would it would in some ways
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be a step down you know it’s like John stepping down his monitor size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so so that would be that would that would hurt a little bit the big thing though is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m just so incredibly happy with the m5 I really am like I I was telling this privately but I’ll sell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it for the air because I didn’t say it yet that you know the M cars like most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco BMWs and like many cars are on like a seven year generation life cycle roughly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so if I, so I have this on a three year lease. At the end of the lease,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not going to be the new generation yet. It’s still going to be like two years before the generation switchover probably.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I don’t know what to do at the end of this lease. I’m like, if I, it would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be stupid to just get a new one just like the one I have. Like that would be incredibly wasteful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and costly and you know, it just wouldn’t really make sense. I’m probably just gonna buy this one out at the end of the lease
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then wait until the new one comes out and then trade it in into a new lease because I like it so much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it really is perfect for me and and I have no major complaints at all.
⏹️ ▶️ John Unless the new one is ugly that’s the other thing you know the new one could be ugly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s true it very well could be but and I’m betting the next M5
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has all-wheel drive I would I’d be almost certain it will have it I I don’t think it’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be standard, but I bet it will be available. Hmm. Yeah, you say that, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco watch. Just watch.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’ll weigh 5,000 pounds. It already does.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s not 5,000, is it? It’s like 44
⏹️ ▶️ John or something. It’s 43. I was going to say, my car’s over 3,500.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is like, they don’t use a lot. I don’t even know if they use any carbon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fiber in the M5 today. The new M3 makes extensive use of carbon fiber in lots
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of different places. So that’s like they were focused on weight savings for the new m3
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now they’re in they’re developing the new 7 series, which is also using all this weight saving stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco after that I bet the readers on the 5 series with the same weight saving stuff and then they do the m5
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it’s I’m guessing they’re gonna focus that’s gonna be one of their focuses for the new one is saving a bunch of weight
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and You know, maybe it won’t be like, you know, it’s not gonna be a thousand pounds, but maybe it’ll be two or three hundred
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, it’s going to be enough to make a difference. And I think they have to add all-wheel drive because already
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has more power than it can really put down on the road at low speed. Like they need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more places to put this power. The engine’s generating so much power, like it just can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use it all properly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, with that said, you had the car out at least in the driveway in the snow. Did you take it past the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey end of the driveway?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did, yeah. I did. discussed on Neutral this situation where I got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuck in the 1M a year ago where I tried taking it out in like really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slippery like packed slush ice conditions and I got stuck in a grocery store parking lot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well this year I have the M5 and I have snow tires for the very first time. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 1M had its all season, sorry, its summer tires on that not only were they summer tires were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also pretty bald by that point so they were like really worn down summer times and they had like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no grip at all. So I got stuck in this parking lot and couldn’t move and it was awful.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I went out with my winter tires for the first time in this car and in our first snowfall we’ve only gotten like two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inches of snow but I went out at like the worst of it to try to test this out to see how bad is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. So I I went out I took my car down to the exact same grocery store parking lot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was similar conditions but not as bad. Like there was tons of slush
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and like icy slush all over the parking lot but you would still be hitting pavement most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the time. So I can’t say for sure if it’s a huge difference yet but I tried lots of things. I tried stopping
⏹️ ▶️ Marco short. I tried turning tightly. I tried pushing the gas a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too aggressively to see if I’d spin around at all or at least you know trigger the traction control light
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it was just like driving on dry pavement. It was shockingly good. It was a massive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco difference compared to the bald summer tires.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Having brand new winter tires on a car with a more advanced differential and a little better balance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a lot more weight made a huge difference. So far, I’m pretty confident this is actually going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to work out pretty well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m going to choose not to be smug about this yet because I believe you and I went back and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey forth about this forever. like you always end up convincing me and I always end up being glad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you did. So far it sounds like I might have convinced you the right way, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t want to count my chickens quite yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think you’re right. I think, you know, let’s wait until the rest of the winter happens and like wait till I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to deal with way worse conditions than that to see if really for sure like, you know, was this a huge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mistake to not get all-wheel drive? But so far, I’m very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pleased with them. But again, there was only one snowstorm, and it was fairly mild. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s hard to say yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So after much delay, because I had to be a total BMW fan
⏹️ ▶️ Casey boy with an eye, John, what’s some more Accord complaints? We talked about, what,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey key fobs last time. What else did we talk about? I don’t recall.
⏹️ ▶️ John The stocks, the headrests, yeah. Here’s a question that I hadn’t thought about until I got the new car.
⏹️ ▶️ John Where in the in the car should the dead pedal be?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is there an option it should be all the way on the left Right probably against
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the side of the car And it should be flat and it should be about the size
⏹️ ▶️ John how far away should it be?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey From the clutch. I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I don’t mean I don’t mean horizontally I mean distance from like from the seat
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It should be it should be like you should be able to rest on it as if you were resting on the pedal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But not pressed at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would agree with that
⏹️ ▶️ John See the my previous accord and I think the previous civics as well Had
⏹️ ▶️ John the dead pedal at the distance from you where the clutch is like partially depressed So it was basically
⏹️ ▶️ John if the clutch is that totally up the dead pedal is past Where it is and I found that much more comfortable because I
⏹️ ▶️ John have long legs to rest my foot on something that’s not that that’s farther back
⏹️ ▶️ John than the totally untouched clutch pedal and the new Accord the dead pedal is as you described it it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John basically the same distance from from the seat as the the untouched clutch or the brake
⏹️ ▶️ John pad or whatever kind of in that same plane of pedals and that feels way too close to me and part of that is
⏹️ ▶️ John that all the pedals feel too close they’re not adjustable and the steering wheel doesn’t telescope so
⏹️ ▶️ John my my choices and plus I have the seat back lean back and everything I feel like I’m my knees
⏹️ ▶️ John are squished up a little bit because if I move the seat back so that my knees aren’t squished up like that, then I feel like the steering wheel is too
⏹️ ▶️ John far away, because the seat back is pushed back so much. I’m, I mean, these cars are not made I mean, they’re made for
⏹️ ▶️ John big Americans, maybe they’re not made for six to people or whatever. But the dead pedal in particular, and the
⏹️ ▶️ John pedal is probably not the bed with a dead pedal in particular just feels way too close. And it’s because of what I’m used to, I’m used to all my other
⏹️ ▶️ John Hondas with a dead pedal was farther back than the untouched clutch pedal. So it’s not the end of the world,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s there. And, you know, I feel like it could have been fixed either with adjustable pedals, which a lot of American cars
⏹️ ▶️ John are offering, which I think are a great idea, because then you can make it’s ergonomically better to have adjustable pedals
⏹️ ▶️ John and adjustable steering columns so then small people and big people can find a good position. Or at the very least, a
⏹️ ▶️ John telescoping wheel. But I don’t have it. It is a tilting wheel. And I will give Honda props for
⏹️ ▶️ John finally making a car where I can adjust the steering wheel so that I can see all the gauges
⏹️ ▶️ John through the little half moon shape that the steering wheel makes. Because if you’re very tall, inevitably,
⏹️ ▶️ John The steering wheel cuts off the top of the speedometer or whatever thing is at the top. This
⏹️ ▶️ John one, I can see all the gauges exactly through the thing when I tilt the wheel to the correct position. So that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, Marco and I learned, well, Marco, you probably learned this at your first event. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco and Underscore and I learned at the BMW thing we went to that the correct distance from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the wheel is that if you put your arms straight out and you rest your wrists
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the top of the steering wheel, you should be able to flop your hands down.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know if that was the best way of describing it, but basically you should be able to put your wrists on the top of the wheel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey without being terribly uncomfortable, and that’s how far away you should be from the wheel.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and the seat back, see the thing is I’m already farther away than that, and a lot of it has to
⏹️ ▶️ John do with the seat back position, because I have to tilt it back because of the headrest, and also because if I
⏹️ ▶️ John start sitting more upright, my head starts to get closer to the ceiling and all that other stuff. So I think
⏹️ ▶️ John my hands are already farther away than that. If I put my shoulder blades against the back of the seat, and I push my shoulders
⏹️ ▶️ John back and say, OK, now I’m fully in the seat, put my hands forward, I’ll have to measure it in the car tomorrow.
⏹️ ▶️ John The driving position, it feels OK. It’s just the pedals feel a little bit close. And the clutch also feels a little
⏹️ ▶️ John bit light, which I don’t notice until I go into the old Accord, and it feels heavier. But that’s, again, just what
⏹️ ▶️ John you get used to. It doesn’t feel unpleasingly light. In fact, it feels pretty good, because of course,
⏹️ ▶️ John the stick shifts slowly deteriorate as you use the car, and they start feeling a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ John notchier and more gross. And the steel feels like a new car stick shift and a new car clutch, which is nice.
⏹️ ▶️ John We talked about the iPod playback last time with no pause button. Oh, God.
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess the final one for today is, I’ll talk more about the screens
⏹️ ▶️ John in another show and the on-screen displays and everything. I think this Honda does a reasonable job
⏹️ ▶️ John of striking a balance between physical controls and screen controls, partly because I didn’t get the
⏹️ ▶️ John option that has like the fancy screen with navigation and everything because I didn’t want to pay for it. And
⏹️ ▶️ John honestly, I prefer the physical controls because when they put that screen in there, it’s actually a second screen in this Honda.
⏹️ ▶️ John When they put that screen in, it takes the place of lots of physical controls. So my car has physical controls for fan
⏹️ ▶️ John speed, vent position, auto climate control on, off, and
⏹️ ▶️ John the different temperatures for the passenger. It has physical controls. But the physical controls they
⏹️ ▶️ John chose to use were a bunch of buttons that are all flush with each other. You know, right up against
⏹️ ▶️ John each other with nothing in between them except a thin gap of, you know, there’s not even a little plastic flange
⏹️ ▶️ John with them. It’s just like button, button, button on all in one smooth continuous thing. They are impossible to find
⏹️ ▶️ John and hit without touching. And it’s like dials, people, dials. I can reach for a dial and,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, you can feel the five positions. Maybe if you just memorize the end points, crank all the way
⏹️ ▶️ John to the left, crank all the way to the right, heat all the way up, heat all the way down. I don’t want a button to go up, up, up, down, down, down. I have to look
⏹️ ▶️ John at the digital display. I don’t want to have to search around this smooth featureless expanse of buttons
⏹️ ▶️ John feeling the seams to try to guess which one of these Like the fan speed up and down buttons are Next to each
⏹️ ▶️ John other and is left one down and the right one up or the right one down left never mind They’re in the middle of a series of identical
⏹️ ▶️ John buttons all completely smooth It’s terrible what I wouldn’t give for a couple of dials like I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John Like it’s good that they provide a physical control so I don’t have to such a screen to deal with this stuff But dials people it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John so easy one dial for fan speed one dial for air position And they had it for generations, for decades.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, like they got out of it in the gauge consoles where they used to have the numbers and they said, oh, people like dials better. You
⏹️ ▶️ John know, you can actually look at the angle of the thing without reading the numbers. Same thing on the dashboard. I wish they would put
⏹️ ▶️ John more dials, more physical dials and fewer identical buttons.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey One of the things I like about my BMW, and this is true of Marco’s as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, is that there There are a lot of physical buttons for things, and they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey differentiable without having to look down or by glancing down at most. And the iDrive,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as we talked about quite a long time in the actual Neutral episodes, having a tactile
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feedback or tactile control input is to me a whole
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lot better. And a friend of mine has an early 2000s Honda Pilot with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a touchscreen navigation system, which I just don’t care for at all. even as a passenger, if I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey try to operate that as I’m going down the road, it’s just impossible to have any sort of accuracy. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I totally agree with you. And I also like, as much as I nostalgically enjoy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the all-digital dashes of like the Corvettes of the 80s, for example, late 80s,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s so much easier to just get a vague notion of where you are in a gauge by looking down
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at a needle rather than having to read and compute what your speed is, for example.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Although, I guess to be fair, that didn’t bother me as much on Marco’s fancy pants heads up display.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, if it’s in your field of vision, that’s bad. But like, but dials, I would absentmindedly fiddle. And even though this car does have automatic
⏹️ ▶️ John climate control, I still find that I want to micromanage my fan speed, just because I do. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I can absentmindedly micromanage fan speed with a dial without even thinking about it. It’s like, it’s as automatic
⏹️ ▶️ John as driving for me in my other cars. It’d be constantly adjusting the fan speed or the temperature with dials.
⏹️ ▶️ John And now that they both have buttons and like digital readouts it’s so much worse. can’t even find the fan
⏹️ ▶️ John speed buttons absent mindedly, let alone adjusted absent mindedly. It’s just not a gesture
⏹️ ▶️ John like find the up button, hit it three times to go up three degrees or fan speed up
⏹️ ▶️ John to the one of the eight positions like dials, dials. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t take it. It’s as if I mean, I was gonna say it’s as if they gave you no one has really had the
⏹️ ▶️ John gut so far as far as I know, to not have a volume dial, like they’ll have the up and down volume buttons
⏹️ ▶️ John on the steering wheel, and that’s better because you’re hitting them with your thumb, like you don’t want a dial on the steering wheel, you want like the little
⏹️ ▶️ John pads, and the steering wheel controls are good, they’re like little D-pads, or five way switches
⏹️ ▶️ John where there’s a center button and then a four way thing, and the volume is up and down, so I can absentmindedly adjust the volume
⏹️ ▶️ John with my left thumb, no problem. Although I still find myself occasionally adjusting it with a dial anyway
⏹️ ▶️ John just because I like dials better, but forget about adjusting fan speed or even temperature with these things, like it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John I would challenge the kind of people who design this, put a blindfold on of them and say, find the fan speed up button.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you hit any button other than the fan speed up button, we will give you an electrical shock. And all those people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like. What is it, Operation?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s impossible to do. Impossible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s like the old game Operation, where you zap yourself if you hit the side of the
⏹️ ▶️ John My daughter asked that for Christmas, actually. So they must still be running ads on it somewhere. And she must have somehow seen one of these ads.
⏹️ ▶️ John I occasionally find her watching commercials on the TiVo. And I say, no, we skipped commercials in this house. I have to remind her.
⏹️ ▶️ John Commercials are insidious, man. because she’ll start seeing one of them play after a show because she hasn’t gotten to the remote fast
⏹️ ▶️ John enough and she’ll become mesmerized. And it’s like, no! No advertising! 30 seconds