103: An Atheist or a Howard Stern Fan
06 Feb 2015Handwriting recognition, net neutrality, hosting Overcast, and a special post-show Neutral.
Episode Description:
- Using Safari's Inspector into the iOS Simulator
- Follow-up:
- Handwriting recognition
- Marco hates everyone and their email
- FCC and Net Neutrality
- Apple sensor cars
- Running Overcast
- Family Sharing woes
- Post-show:
- More Destiny woes
- John's Destiny TV
- UI issues
- John teases Marco
- Toaster judging criteria
- Neutral:
- Casey drove an M4
- The referenced Car and Driver article is on page 24 of the March 2015 issue
- Elon Musk's tweet
- P85D launch reactions (NSFW)
- Cayman GT4
- Maintaining old supercars
- Car and Driver Ferrari 355 ownership article appears on page 112 of the March 2015 issue
- Ferrari 488
- More Destiny woes
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Transcript start
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Everyone should pull
⏹️ ▶️ John up pictures of the Ferrari 488 for the after show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We actually are probably going to do an after show neutral because I have… What did you say? 488? Ooh, first
⏹️ ▶️ John Interesting. You’re just hearing this news now? You didn’t look at it? Drance was tweeting about it and I was going back and forth with you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John attention. I was watching. I
⏹️ ▶️ John was watching. You guys don’t deserve Ferraris. Forget it. No Ferrari for either one of you. That’s it. Did
⏹️ ▶️ John any of you guys add anything good to the topics list? Because I don’t see anything exciting on there. I had one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is gonna be a boring show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey everyone. This is gonna be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey great show.
⏹️ ▶️ John I just realized that I hadn’t added anything other than one little measly item
⏹️ ▶️ John and I guess we have some leftovers from before.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh yeah, so here’s my crappy story I wanted to tell. It was either today or yesterday.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was fiddling with the CSS for my website and you have to understand if you think of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the person in your life that claims to be a developer but is the worst
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you can possibly be at CSS. I’m like five times worse than that person. So anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so I’m fiddling with CSS trying to do a media query, which is pretty bitchin’ for my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey god-awful skill level. And I remembered that you can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually have Safari reach into whatever the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iOS simulator Safari app is to do the… The inspector.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Thank you, the inspector on what’s being shown in the iOS simulator, which I thought was freaking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cool. And I know this is not new news, but that was the first occasion I had to actually use it, and I thought it was amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ John it works. Last time I read last time I used it was like two years ago. But boy, was it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco flaky. It works. I mean, I’ve I’ve used it a lot and it’s always worked great recently. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it came out in iOS six.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think I was using it when it was brand new. I was so excited I was able to do it like this is going to make everything so much easier.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it does, but it would lose its connection to the remote browser thing all the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, now it’s pretty solid. I use it all the time. And it works with any web view in the app, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not just mobile Safari.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Oh, is that right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s one of the great things about it. Like, if you have a web view in your app, it’ll list all the active web views that are currently attached to the window.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you can DOM inspect your web views, which is really handy. I’m pretty sure that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the main reason it’s there. And it’s so useful.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s extremely cool. Yeah, so like I said, it’s kind of a silly story. But I just thought it was neat. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go try that if you’re a web developer and or terrible at CSS like I am.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and for those of you who don’t know where it is, if you’re running the simulator,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go back to Safari. And then under the debug menu, it’ll list any web views that are found in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco running simulator. So in the Safari developer or debug menu, whatever it’s called.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s desktop Safari, just to be absolutely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s called oh, it’s called develop. Okay. Yeah, so if you go to develop it’s listed there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Alright any other crappy stories before we get into follow-up?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can tell you about some dreams I’ve had recently maybe maybe some some travel stories
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve heard that that Boston’s gotten a wee bit of snow you and your beloved winters.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’re not talking about snow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It sounds like we are hey you love winter did anything happen in the industry that we can actually talk about No, not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really. It doesn’t seem like it was that big of a news
⏹️ ▶️ John week. We have follow up first. We’re not on the topics yet. Although I didn’t put either one of these follow up
⏹️ ▶️ John items. I think it was all you, Casey. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey let’s do some follow up. Daniel Sherson has said, about handwriting recognition, text input is still kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of hacky for languages with more than 30-ish letters. And that was a tweet that he
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had posted. We’ll put that in the show notes. I just thought it was an interesting point because I can imagine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in a situation where you have 11 gazillion characters, that may be kind of difficult. difficult.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That being said, hot off the presses earlier today, on Wednesday,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my friend Will Haynes, who I believe I brought up on the last episode or if not an episode or two ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey put together a about five minute video of how you can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enter text in iOS 8 in various different languages. So again, Will is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Australian born, but lives in Tokyo and has for a while now. And so he put together
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this video and it doesn’t require audio, which is kind of nice if you want to be listening to like music or something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey else. But what he talks about is the various ways that you can type in both Japanese
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and actually Chinese as well. And that includes the Romaji keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m probably pronouncing it wrong. I’m sorry. Try. So do you know the actual pronunciation?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, but I always say Romaji. Okay, well, there you go. Like Jumanji?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Yeah, that’s exactly what I was going to say.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I could be wrong too. So apparently the way that works is you basically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use what I would call an English keyboard in order to start typing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the English language equivalent of Japanese words. I’m already probably going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey terribly wrong. I’m so sorry. And then he also showed a couple of the other keyboards, one of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is set up like a numeric keypad, which is kind of interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And apparently because Japanese specifically only has but so many sounds, that kind of works and it’s a combination
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of typing and swiping, which is what he had actually shown me at the beer bash at WWDC. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had confused my own story and I had thought he had shown me a handwriting recognition
⏹️ ▶️ Casey keyboard, which he didn’t. But in this video, he does take the liberty of showing you how a handwriting recognition
⏹️ ▶️ Casey keyboard would work for Chinese. So you don’t have to watch the entire video. Well, obviously you don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to watch any of it, but I thought it was a fascinating and very succinct look at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how you can enter these very different languages
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or type in these very different languages in really wild and different ways than the traditional keyboard that we’re all used
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to. And I just thought it was really neat. Did either of you guys watch this? I assume that Marco, you did not because you don’t believe in homework.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m actually very heavily medicated right now, fighting off a horrible cold. So I did almost nothing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to prepare for this show. I literally, I printed out my little three pages here of sponsorship reads.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’ll talk about your printouts later.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s literally all I did. I just opened up Chrome after I started this call to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look at the notes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Excellent. John, did you happen to watch this video?
⏹️ ▶️ John Main thing I came away from our feedback about this is that people all over the map. Some people were
⏹️ ▶️ John like, nobody uses handwriting recognition. Everyone’s just used to typing it in.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or only old people would ever use handwriting recognition. Other people were like, handwriting
⏹️ ▶️ John recognition is so much better. In fact, it’s better than it is in Western languages
⏹️ ▶️ John because there’s an order that you’re supposed to do the strokes and a direction and everything. It’s very regimented.
⏹️ ▶️ John And everybody learns the same way, unlike letters in the English language
⏹️ ▶️ John that different people draw in all sorts of crazy different ways and in different orders and everything. So I really
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know what to think. In fact, one of the weird things, I guess this isn’t weird, but I think it seemed like the majority
⏹️ ▶️ John of the feedback we got were from people who were not from the region. Like I’m from
⏹️ ▶️ John Australia or the UK or Germany, and I moved to the Far East. And I guess they’re giving
⏹️ ▶️ John a Westerner’s impression. And then I would imagine all the people who were born there can’t understand a word we’re saying because
⏹️ ▶️ John most of them don’t know English. So I don’t know. Oh, yeah, and a lot of people were showing us
⏹️ ▶️ John the built-in handwriting recognition that’s in iOS now under the accessibility things and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John And saying, well, Apple doesn’t need to do anything. It’s already built in there. Yeah, I I remember back
⏹️ ▶️ John in 2002, I think it was when Apple added handwriting recognition to OS 10. Do either one
⏹️ ▶️ John of you guys remember that? No. Yeah, I put it in my review because I got to show off my terrible
⏹️ ▶️ John handwriting. I tried to write Hello World like seven times, and then I showed what what OS 10 thought I was
⏹️ ▶️ John writing. Well, sometimes it gets correctly. Hello World. Other times it was way off. But in all these
⏹️ ▶️ John cases, it’s like this is sort of an optional extra buried in
⏹️ ▶️ John some. You know, it’s not universal like When Apple added speech recognition pretty much any place you
⏹️ ▶️ John have a text input field if you can bring up the standard keyboard There’s a little you know microphone
⏹️ ▶️ John and you can use it there handwrecking handwriting recognition has not been raised that level mostly because Apple doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John ship any devices with a stylus and doesn’t really You know have its own styles that it supports or anything. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that’s what we’re all waiting for regarding the the styles in the iPad will Apple do
⏹️ ▶️ John for handwriting recognition what it has already done for texting over the keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John and for audio input speech-to-text.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cool. So is this even still in OS X now?
⏹️ ▶️ John I think so. I mean I should pull out my tablet and connect it and see if it happens. So they called it ink or something. You don’t see
⏹️ ▶️ John the inkwell. Yeah you don’t see the preference pane unless you actually attach a tablet that it you know
⏹️ ▶️ John so until you do that it doesn’t appear. I I guess you could just go into the preference panes directory and look to see if you see the handwriting
⏹️ ▶️ John recognition or ink thing in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there. I have a Wacom tablet in the closet I could probably try with this week and report back next
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s what I used for the review. I think I borrowed a tablet and just plugged it in and boop, the little thing appeared.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll find that link for the show notes at some point.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Eschatologist is in the chat saying to us that it’s still there, so we’ll assume
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that that’s the case.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, you know, I have been looking for ways to slow down my computer input and make it less efficient and more annoying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and take up more desk space. So I’m looking forward to trying this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s a designer at work and he has a Wacom, Wacom,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wackit, whatever it’s called, tablet-y thing. And not only that, but he also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has a Magic Trackpad and I believe he also uses a mouse. So he has all three
⏹️ ▶️ Casey manners of pointing devices on his desk at all times, which I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a little bit crazy, but designers are kind of a little bit crazy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, he currently has the same number of input methods on his desk as I have headphone amps on my desk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I can’t I can’t really complain or say anything about that fair enough
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, any other? Follow-up that we have or are we good to go on that?
⏹️ ▶️ John Feel like we’re forgetting something, but I don’t know what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well Yeah, you’re freeing to follow up on my email people complaining about yeah, we could talk about that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, no, that was a bad reference and never mind
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway reminded me of last week when Marco told everybody that he hates them and
⏹️ ▶️ John angry email from the people who are whose feelings are hurt by Marco’s email policy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh yeah there were a lot of hurt feelings were there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because from from with the responses that actually got to me via Twitter and email
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was overwhelmingly positive there were certainly some people who were like yeah that you probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shouldn’t be doing that or I’m personally offended you should not even be in business. One guy got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really bent out of shape, but it for the most part, it’s the response
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was not nearly as bad as I expected. It was overall mostly in agreement
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or at least understanding.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that is fair. I think even the people who were angry understood. They were just like,
⏹️ ▶️ John the people who are angry didn’t like the idea that your policy
⏹️ ▶️ John left some people feeling bad, like especially if it was them. Like they would
⏹️ ▶️ John say, I understand the effects of your policy in terms of how you
⏹️ ▶️ John allocate your time and return on investments, like the business type things,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they would say, but I think overall it’s not a good strategy because it leaves
⏹️ ▶️ John some of your customers feeling bad. And sometimes they would say they were one of the customers who
⏹️ ▶️ John felt bad and some of them would say, I don’t personally mind but I can imagine that some customers feel bad. So
⏹️ ▶️ John therefore the overall effect of your strategy is negative or could be better
⏹️ ▶️ John if you did suggestions X, Y, and Z.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What I thought was interesting is that I actually heard from a handful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of other people with some degree of internet fame or some sizable audience
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who also have similar quick skimming and very little replying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco policies. Or some of them, you don’t even read the emails anymore. So I heard from a number
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of people, a few people, who were in a similar situation and who did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically the same thing. But you can’t really come out and say that publicly a lot of the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s kind of like saying you’re an atheist or a Howard Stern fan. JASON LOWE There’s a lot of them out there,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but no one’s talking about it, really. Because it can be politically unwise to say this in public to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everybody all the time. But you’d be surprised how many people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do the exact same policy or a very similar one, or an even more ruthless one.
⏹️ ▶️ John You have to. Otherwise, like you said, you’ll spend a very large amount of your time conversing
⏹️ ▶️ John with people. And a lot of the people who thought it was an overall bad policy, because
⏹️ ▶️ John despite the good parts of it, which they would acknowledge in terms of how you manage giving you more time to do other things, they would say, here
⏹️ ▶️ John are the bad parts, and here’s why it doesn’t balance out. They would suggest alternatives like
⏹️ ▶️ John it was the same thing you get with feature request. If only you would just if only you would just
⏹️ ▶️ John and then whatever. And all the if only you would just
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t seem like they would solve the problem. Like if only you would just would solve that person’s problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John If only you would just tweet about the problems, which, by the way, I do. I
⏹️ ▶️ John But although you’ve done more recently than in the past, if only you would just have a blog about the problem, If only
⏹️ ▶️ John you would just have a mailing list, if only you would just have a public book tracker, if only you would just have
⏹️ ▶️ John a blog, right? But each one of those things, this person would be like, well, I don’t I don’t use Twitter. So you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John tweeting about doesn’t help me at all. I don’t want any more email. So mailing list is going to help you. I would never join up. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John like to I would never find your blog or I don’t like to read your blog. So if you put updates there, it’s not going to, you know, that’s what
⏹️ ▶️ John it comes down to with all of these sort of centralized places where you can
⏹️ ▶️ John communicate to your users, because everybody has something they do
⏹️ ▶️ John or don’t want to do. I don’t want to email, I don’t read Twitter, I don’t want to read more blogs, I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to do that, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John To get them all, you would have to have all of those things. A Usenet group, a mailing list, a set of forums,
⏹️ ▶️ John a Twitter account that’s kept up to date, a separate blog for it, like, and even then someone would be like, oh, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John use any of those things, do you have an RSS feed? Oh, I don’t use an R, like, you will forever chase the individual people who
⏹️ ▶️ John have like, who have their specific needs of how you’re going to communicate with them. And at that point, it’s like, Well, now this is taking more time
⏹️ ▶️ John than just replying to the email. Like there is it’s like the person who wants a feature
⏹️ ▶️ John in a piece of software. Like I don’t need all the features in this program. You can cut every single feature, except for these three. And then everyone picks a different three
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco and there’s, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, 3000 pictures in it. So it’s. A lot of people were
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to say, from your perspective, I see how this works out, but from my perspective, an individual user, it sucks. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John see that. But it’s like, if you look at the other side of it, you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John make it not suck for everybody. It’s always going to suck for somebody and sometimes that somebody is going to be
⏹️ ▶️ John you or you or you you know what I mean? and so it’s It’s not like a no-win situation,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I like people looking for a solution. It’s going to make everybody happy. I just don’t think it exists
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This the alternatives that people suggest Those all take time and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and if it comes to like support tools You know any kind of CRM
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing anything any kind of like support service where it sorts your emails into like threads for you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Has multiple people working on it and stuff like that like any kind of like you know email ticketing system Those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all take work to plow through like you’re just moving the work to something else forums
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bug trackers public pages of any kind Somebody recommended github
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tracking that’s crazy because regular people have no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco github, and I don’t blame them You should
⏹️ ▶️ John have a Facebook group.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do have a Facebook group. I posted zero times to it. And Facebook keeps telling me how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people are engaging with it and that they want me to pay them to let them engage more or something. I don’t know. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco terrible. I don’t know how to use Facebook. I even have a Pinterest group. I don’t know how to use that either. But, you know, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have these channels. The only one I really use is Twitter to communicate with the users. I don’t even have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an Overcast blog. And if I had one, nobody would read it. If I have I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Twitter account and I will tweet things in the Twitter account of current status updates things I’m working
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on known bugs, and then I’ll have people Tweet at me so I know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re using Twitter. I know they know about the account I’ll have them tweeted the account like three hours later
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as If they had not seen what I posted three hours ago because they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John because they don’t read their whole timeline So could you just could you repeat your tweets on the hour every hour? but not so much of
⏹️ ▶️ John the people who do read their timelines are annoyed by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them? Exactly. So Twitter is not a good medium for keeping people updated. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything else that’s out there would take more time. It would be one more thing to do, two more things to do,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more things to update, and overall, probably more work. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there would still be hundreds of people who would blow right by that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not see it. I mean, look, on the part of the app where it lets you email me. It is surrounded
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by reasons why you don’t need to email me anymore. Here’s FAQs. Here’s what’s coming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up in the next version. Here’s what’s in this version. Here’s the bug fixes. Here’s the known bugs. That’s all right there on that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco page. No one reads it. And everyone just clicks the email and emails me things I already know about. That is…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s the reality. No matter what you do, no one’s going to read everything you put out there. No one’s going to be aware
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of everything you put out there. No one is going to be able to look and say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, oh well I have now checked all the official overcast communication channels
⏹️ ▶️ Marco read back in the history by a few weeks to know everything there is to know it’s currently going on now I will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco email them. No that doesn’t happen and I don’t expect people to do that. That’s ridiculous. So no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco matter what you do you are always going to get support email and there are things I can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do to reduce the amount of support email. Number one thing you can do to reduce the amount of support email is to get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rid of the bugs they’re complaining about. That’s what I’m doing. By a long shot,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is the best thing you can do to reduce support email. Get rid of the problems they’re talking about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and give people ways to help themselves. Now, the latter is worth discussing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So give people ways to help themselves. Password resets. Make that easy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Any kind of basic account management thing that they would have to email you for. Make that easy. And I still have a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bit of ways to go on that. I don’t currently have a way to change your password
⏹️ ▶️ Marco except by resetting it. I don’t currently have a way to change your registered email address. I just haven’t built them yet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and hardly anybody ever asks so it’s kind of a low priority compared to other stuff I have to fix.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So there’s things like that that I get occasional emails about. Then there’s the big stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hey, there’s a sync bug! Or hey, you should really give me a delete preference.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s the stuff I need to tackle. time is so much better spent doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that than setting up a support ticketing system and a knowledge base and a forum and a public
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bug tracker and all these and letting people vote on bugs like that’s crazy that’s just so much more work
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and overhead and more things to manage and maintain that’s not really helping.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well that goes back to like the value of those things a couple of the people who
⏹️ ▶️ John were upset basically said, it takes it takes me time and effort
⏹️ ▶️ John to isolate these bugs, to screenshot them, to find out how to report them,
⏹️ ▶️ John to make a bug report and to send it. And then I spend all that time and effort doing what is essentially
⏹️ ▶️ John help. I’m helping you, Marco. I’m spending my time to help you. And then you’re not even going to send a reply.
⏹️ ▶️ John It makes me think that your time is more valuable. You’re saying your time is more valuable than mine.
⏹️ ▶️ John And, you know, The fact of life is the amount of effort you put into something does not
⏹️ ▶️ John equate to its value. You can put a tremendous amount of effort into something and it just turns up not being valuable.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, you could try really hard to make a fancy meal and you
⏹️ ▶️ John just burn the whole thing. It’s like, but I worked so hard. It’s like, yes, but the end result is just a burned thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if you work really hard to make an awesome bug report, unprompted by the way, it’s not like you’re demanding people send you bug reports, but you
⏹️ ▶️ John do this. You are really, you work really hard to make an awesome bug report. You send it. you
⏹️ ▶️ John are the 900th person to send that exact bug report, the value of your bug report is very small, it is really
⏹️ ▶️ John just sort of a tick up on a counter. So Marco knows a lot of people are seeing this problem, you put a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of work into it, maybe if you were the first one, there would be value. But it was, you know, when you start multiplying
⏹️ ▶️ John it out, it’s like, if you want, if you want any, you’re never gonna get a commensurate reply,
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco is never going to spend as much time responding to yours as you spent sending it, because it’s not just a one on one relationship
⏹️ ▶️ John between the you know, one person makes a software and one person uses it. It’s one person makes it and lots of people use
⏹️ ▶️ John it, right? So you can’t Marco doesn’t get 10,000 days to reply to the
⏹️ ▶️ John email that 10,000 users send in one day. Right? And then your value of your of your
⏹️ ▶️ John email, it really depends. Like maybe it is super valuable. And I bet if it was super valuable, like, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve never, I never could reproduce this bug. And I didn’t understand what people are seeing. And now you sending me all this stuff. Let’s repeat
⏹️ ▶️ John it. I bet Marco would reply to that, even though he says he doesn’t reply to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco email. No, I said I don’t reply to most email. I do reply to things like that. And so I’ve been doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this beta test this past week, where I have about 800 beta testers through Apple’s TestFlight thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’m getting tons of email from those testers. And I’m answering as many as I possibly can to that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco group. Because I know that’s like a separate group. That’s like, I ask people to beta test, they are taking the time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to install a relatively untested version on their device.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they are writing up bug reports and sending them to me and I am actually doing a lot of responding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on those. It’s way above my my regular rate of responses on that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s probably over 50% that I’m responding to on those and I honestly feel bad about the ones I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not responding to out of the beta group because that that seems like it should have a higher standard. But that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like 800 people but when you did the beta on Glassport it was like you know I don’t know 20 people
⏹️ ▶️ John and and you were responding to all of them because you kind of could 20 to one, right? And right, the value
⏹️ ▶️ John of the first 20 people ever to use the application besides Marco, their reports are much more valuable than
⏹️ ▶️ John the 700th person to send the sync bug, right? It doesn’t mean there’s no
⏹️ ▶️ John value to that thing. But it’s never, you’re never going to get a reply that makes you
⏹️ ▶️ John makes you feel like the effort you spent wasn’t in some ways wasted, because in some ways it was wasted.
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t know whether it’s going to be wasted. You don’t know if you were the very first person to send this bug report or the 900th.
⏹️ ▶️ John How can you know that you don’t know what other people are sending? Right? So I don’t think you can have expectations about this
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of many to one relationship because you don’t know what’s going on on the other end of it. And it feels bad when you send a bug
⏹️ ▶️ John report that you worked hard on, you don’t get any kind of reply at all, which is why people are begging for like just something, anything, an automated
⏹️ ▶️ John reply, just like they’re not asking you to spend the amount of time they did, but they just want something like they’re just desperate
⏹️ ▶️ John for something. Of course, if you gave them that something, they would say, I just need something a little bit more like this
⏹️ ▶️ John automated reply makes me feel like you don’t care about my about my email. Maybe just a personal note because
⏹️ ▶️ John I spent so much time on this. And just I think that relationship is never going to work out where you want
⏹️ ▶️ John a response that that makes you feel good about the effort you spent. And it’s like, well, then fine. I won’t report bugs
⏹️ ▶️ John like that’s a problem. Marco has to deal with. If suddenly no one reports bugs anymore or he gets only bad
⏹️ ▶️ John bug reports, then he will actually have to take time to address it. But that’s you don’t know what’s happening on the side.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can’t say that Marco has to do that. It seems like he’s getting enough bug reports and feedback.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, you know, I already lost the exact words you used, but you said something along the lines
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of you can’t have expectations for what Marco did and the relationship between you and Marco is just some random,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, bug reporter. And I think that’s absolutely true. And one of the things that one of the more common
⏹️ ▶️ Casey themes that was angry that I saw of the feedback that all of us got was how could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you not respond to this? It only takes a moment to fire off an email, be it automated or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And what I don’t think people understand, and this was the point in me bringing up that story about me going to New York
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and me not understanding why Marco didn’t remember having read that email I sent him, was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t understand the sheer volume of email that someone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in Marco’s position can get. And it wasn’t until I got a lot of email through
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this show that I started to understand it. And maybe some of these people that wrote us very angry about this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do understand it, But I suspect that unless you’re in a position where you’re getting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hundreds of unsolicited emails a day that are not outright spam, they’re emails that you should
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably be reading, then it’s hard to pass judgment on what any
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of us, particularly Marco, should do. Because I find it challenging to keep up with just ATP
⏹️ ▶️ Casey email, and that’s a drop in the bucket compared to what Marco is getting from Overcast.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I think you’re absolutely right, John. In any case, we should talk about something that’s awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And if I’m not mistaken, this is a particularly awesome Something That’s Awesome. Is that right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This episode is sponsored by Cards Against Humanity. Now they didn’t want us to read a typical sponsor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ad. What they did instead was send John a toaster.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is really happening. I cannot believe this is really happening.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So John, all they wanted to do for this ad read was for you to review this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco toaster compared to your, you know, the toaster.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, hold on, hold on. Can we set the stage here since this is the first one? What
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the toaster and what is the particular
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s already not enough time for me to review this toaster in a typical ad read slot. So I don’t think we can go too much
⏹️ ▶️ John into context. So I think I save for the after show. I will
⏹️ ▶️ John more about this toaster.
⏹️ ▶️ John the context is that I did a podcast a while ago called Hypercritical. One episode, I talked about
⏹️ ▶️ John my difficulty finding a toaster that I found satisfying. In response to that episode,
⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of nice people got me as a sort of joke gift at WWDC a fancy toaster
⏹️ ▶️ John that I probably would not have bought myself. And that’s the one I’m using right now. That’s the context
⏹️ ▶️ John of it. That’s why it’s funny to apparently send me toasters to review. So I have received
⏹️ ▶️ John a toaster. It is the Black and Decker, uh, T
⏹️ ▶️ John capital O one three zero three S B. I just want to note that
⏹️ ▶️ John both the model number has both a capital O and a zero in it.
⏹️ ▶️ John four slice toaster. And by the way, these are all toaster ovens. Please do not send me things about.
⏹️ ▶️ John I should get a slot toaster. I know about slot toasters again. on the episodes. Yes, I know all about them. Slot
⏹️ ▶️ John toasters do not double as ovens. I’m only interested in toaster ovens. You may be interested in slot toasters.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s great. Get a slot toaster. They’re really nice. Anyway, toaster ovens. This one. Let’s talk
⏹️ ▶️ John about the good things first. It toast bread reasonably evenly.
⏹️ ▶️ John is a big thing because a lot of them have like hot spots and you’d get, you know, one side is pale and one side is over
⏹️ ▶️ John toasted. It toasts them in about the same speed as my fancy toaster. We’ll have the model number of my fancy toaster and a
⏹️ ▶️ John link to it in the show notes as well. So speed wise, it’s good. Capacity
⏹️ ▶️ John wise, it is a smaller toaster, but you know, size like it’s that’s not a fault for it takes up less room on
⏹️ ▶️ John the countertop. It’s also small on the inside. That’s fine. It is relatively quiet. You’d
⏹️ ▶️ John be surprised that the noises toasters make, particularly when you just turn them on, they make kind of like a transformer
⏹️ ▶️ John whine, kind of like, man,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco is that what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is? Because, yeah, they all kind of like have that buzz.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not someone Dr. Drangon right isn’t tells what it is. I don’t know, maybe it’s an inverter or something, whatever it is. The sound
⏹️ ▶️ John the sound gets lower as the thing heats up. So it’s only the beginning of this one is admirably quiet. This one does have
⏹️ ▶️ John a thing that ticks sort of a ticking countdown thing until it gets to the end like a bomb.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, basically like that. You know, you listen to the hypercritical episode of me complaining about the
⏹️ ▶️ John ticking thing. But this is at least is a very quiet tick, right? That’s and you know, the oven
⏹️ ▶️ John I use this thing for toast and for warming stuff up and for cooking things. The oven part seems to work fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John Overall it’s pretty good, but the bad things about it are some of the same bad things about most modern toasters.
⏹️ ▶️ John This thing has three dials on the front of it and to toast anything you have to put the top dial to toast,
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to put the middle dial to toast, and you have to put the bottom dial to the amount that you want to toast it. And dials…
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, these are not good dials. Dials… These dials are are
⏹️ ▶️ John completely smooth and have like a little, you know, a thing showing you where it’s supposed to be pointing on the top
⏹️ ▶️ John of the dial But they’re raised like an inch off so you can’t tell where quite where it’s aiming and that’s important because anything with a dial
⏹️ ▶️ John You have to turn it to a degree that you memorize 36 degrees 37 degrees 38 Whatever it is that the
⏹️ ▶️ John amount that exactly toast the bread to the darkness that you want And every time you toast a piece of bread
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to turn the dial that exact amount if you’re off by a little bit It won’t be toasted enough or it’ll be toasted too much before
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing goes off This is a terrible design for toasters They’ll remember where they used to be when we were
⏹️ ▶️ John kids You would have a darkness knob that you could set and then you’d press a little thing down And then it would pop
⏹️ ▶️ John up when it’s done right like the little little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yes You could you could set the do it the way you liked it and be repeatable
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And then it’s just like one after there down down down down on this this thing with the knob It’s just not
⏹️ ▶️ John good at all and then having to set the other three knobs if you have the top knob set to the wrong Thing or the middle knob set to the wrong thing
⏹️ ▶️ John you can turn that toasting to the right degree But it won’t do the right thing because all you didn’t realize it was on bake or something and if you want to
⏹️ ▶️ John use The bake thing you’ve got to turn the bottom dial to the stay on setting and then do the top two It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, how fricking complicated can you make this? They only have a little bit of an area for UI.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, I don’t know how you can go this far wrong with the toaster interface.
⏹️ ▶️ John So performance-wise, this toaster gets the job done. In fact, I was really nicely surprised
⏹️ ▶️ John by how well it did all the jobs as well as my big fancy toaster. But user interface-wise, this
⏹️ ▶️ John is not good at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s worth pointing out, too, that this is, on Amazon currently, it’s $43, which is very inexpensive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a toaster oven brand new. You know, the fancy ones like the one you have are about $200. So for $43,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s a pretty good buy. Yeah, and I would say the build quality of this $50
⏹️ ▶️ John toaster embarrasses my $200 toaster in some areas.
⏹️ ▶️ John So Black & Decker does make very solid, like even the dials, which I don’t like because they’re smooth and
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have a way for you to tell like where you’re pointing because the pointing thing is so far off the surface. The dials on
⏹️ ▶️ John this one feel better than the dials on my $200 toaster, which I complained about when I talked about that toaster. Right. They’re just
⏹️ ▶️ John they just shouldn’t be this many dials. And it shouldn’t be this complicated to use this thing. What’s your final verdict?
⏹️ ▶️ John He loved it. Uh, I mean, how many toasters have I had in my life? I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ John the wire cutter here. I’ve had my old toast. I’ve had my old toaster that I replaced with the fancy toaster.
⏹️ ▶️ John I like my fancy toaster better than this. But my fancy toaster is like four times the price. So damn well better be better than this.
⏹️ ▶️ John My fancy toaster is probably not four times better than this. But, you know, of all the toasters I’ve used in
⏹️ ▶️ John my life, this is the second best. But the interface is still terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, thank you very much to Cards Against Humanity. This is this is entirely their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco idea. Thank you very much to Cards Against Humanity for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, God, such a funny idea. Well, I don’t even know where to go from here. Are we done? Is
⏹️ ▶️ John that should have been the sweet home, not the wire cutter. Sorry, I’m not good in my brand. Real time
⏹️ ▶️ John follow. Yeah, good grief.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey No one in the chat room
⏹️ ▶️ John caught it. Someone in the chat room did say, I don’t understand why he’s not using a slot toaster for crying out loud. How much of a
⏹️ ▶️ John preamble do I have to give for people not to… I understand what a slot toaster is. I know all
⏹️ ▶️ John about it. We’re not talking about… I just… I can’t… You cannot get… The slot toaster people are just
⏹️ ▶️ John unstoppable. Why would you want a slot toaster? I don’t even understand. But they’re fine
⏹️ ▶️ John if you want a slot toaster. It’s good, but you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, they’re terrible. They’re worse at everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re not… No, they’re better at toast.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No. They’re better…
⏹️ ▶️ John You can toast faster, and they have a thing that you press down. Like, you just want to make toast. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John slot toasters are better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And as long as you never want to toast anything that is crumbly or thick or non-symmetrical on both sides, you know, yes,
⏹️ ▶️ John you would have to have a toaster oven as well. But if you have a very large kitchen and with a lot of counter space, you know, then you can have
⏹️ ▶️ John a toaster oven, a slot toaster, a convection oven, a microwave oven,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco dual ovens in the walls, whatever. I do not have that kitchen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Seven ovens, various shapes and sizes, many different knob types on the front.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I love that all these people in the chat room are going berserk about the slot toasters. Yes, they may be plainly superior for toasting,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like John said, but I still I will. I will concede
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point. Well, I’m not saying that’s true, but if let’s let’s take it as writ that that is true.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Even if that is true, there’s so many gazillions of things you can do with a toaster oven that you can’t do with a
⏹️ ▶️ John If I had a big kitchen, I would have both, but I do not have a big kitchen, so I don’t have both.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s it. Oh, man, this show took a turn that I wasn’t expecting.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Do we do we have any actual topics for the
⏹️ ▶️ John Who just added this? Did you just add the neutrality thing? Marco did. I hope one of you knows something about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I just have an incredibly under-informed opinion like usual. Oh, well, nothing changes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the FCC released an announcement of some kind of… What exactly did they do?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Just an announcement of what they want to do, or…
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s why I didn’t pay enough attention to it, because, like, A, I still cynically assume that we’re being
⏹️ ▶️ John screwed just now in a more hard-to-detect way, And B, I didn’t think this announcement
⏹️ ▶️ John had anything to do with like, we would really like this to happen and then the political realities will kick in and nothing will actually happen. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So basically, to give some very under-informed background on this topic,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the FCC, which is responsible for regulating US telecom and broadband and stuff like that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have previously classified broadband as a, I think it’s a data
⏹️ ▶️ Marco service, rather than a telecom service, something like that. Basically,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for telecom services, like the phone lines to your house, there are much more strict regulations over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how much control the carriers are allowed to exert over that, how much they’re allowed to basically screw people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and put limits and controls and interfere with what’s being telegraphed over the lines, things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that. Internet service, by almost any kind of common sense definition,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sounds like that. If you ask people, should internet service be regulated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like phone service in these ways, most people would say, yes, that makes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sense. Of course it should be. And it hasn’t been yet. The FCC has tried a couple of little things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to half-dicksen a little bit, like to say, well, we want you to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have net neutrality most of the time, but we’re not going to go all the way and classify you as this. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then they get sued by the ISPs, and then they have to roll that back. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco generally speaking, the FCC has been very weak on this. And even like six months ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recently, the chairman, Tom Wheeler, basically came out and said that he didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think they need to reclassify it the way phone lines are. A few weeks after that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco President Obama made some statement about it, about how he was basically opposing the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco FCC chairman, who I think, ostensibly, he appointed, right? Sounds right. basically,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco politically overrode… Not legally, but he politically said, I think differently
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on this very publicly. And then, of course, the geek population like us
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is very strongly against the FCC’s previous position. We want it to be regulated the way phone services.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Title II is… I don’t know all the details of what parts of Title II,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of it, none of it. But anyway, so you had the situation where the FCC says one thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Obama a few weeks or months later says another thing. And then it came up again in the State of the Union address
⏹️ ▶️ Marco last month, where Obama talked about again how he was on the side of net neutrality, which was directly contradicting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the FCC’s most recent statements. This week, FCC
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Chairman Tom Wheeler comes out and says, Oh, I changed my mind. We’re going to seek this classification now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this guy, he has previous ties to the cable industry, and it’s up for debate to what degree that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, but he does have some previous ties to the cable industry. Wasn’t he a lobbyist
⏹️ ▶️ Marco industry? Something… It was a little bit less severe than that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in practice, but there’s some kind of connection there. So he comes from the cable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco industry. So having him be the head of the FCC is kind of suspect. Well, why wouldn’t he just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fight for the rights of the people who previously employed him and will probably employ him in the future? So anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s the whole revolving door thing. That’s a big problem. The problem is, he says
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one thing last year or whenever, all of a sudden the president says, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco disagree. A few months later, oh, the FCC is now seeking something else. This feels a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot like just posturing and just empty promises. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Obama said that, whether he believes it or not, he said it because it was popular among his base. He kind of had to say it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco He had to probably put pressure on Tom Wheeler to kind of get in line with him and his party
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything. Because that’s weird if your appointed FCC chairman is directly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco disagreeing with the president and his policies. That’s kind of weak. So it feels like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco posturing. It feels like putting on a good show for the voters. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s going to happen… Nothing’s going to change tomorrow. What’s going to happen is the FCC
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might pursue this in some way. It’s going to be going back and forth for months, if not years,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of drafting what the rules will even be, and then trying to put them in place.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then Verizon, Comcast, all the big ISPs are probably going to sue the FCC
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or sue the government to try to get these rules overturned. And that’s going to go through courts for months or for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years and possibly go to the Supreme Court eventually. This is going to be a long process. This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is how the legal system works with this kind of stuff. it’s going to be a very long process. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he can say whatever he wants today. He can say, oh, we’re going to seek this. We’re going to seek
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these rules. But over time, those are going to be negotiated and weakened and possibly overturned by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco court decisions. So it’s hard to say this really means a lot right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This might turn into something good down the road, but it’s going to be a very long time before,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in all likelihood, before anything really can come of it if anything comes of it at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And what will probably happen, which is what happens most of the time with these kind of moves, is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’ll probably be watered down or completely thrown out before it ever takes effect, and the public won’t notice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because we would have moved on to some other stupid PR thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So you’re looking forward to it and you’re sure it’s going to work.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s it. I’m so cynical about these things because, like, just even if you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know any of the details, else, the broad strokes are in your thing
⏹️ ▶️ John are roughly, you know, are roughly correct, like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John The person Obama appointed to the FCC chairperson did not.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like he campaigned on the idea of like, don’t you know, it was against the revolving door. Don’t take people
⏹️ ▶️ John from industries and then appoint them to regulate the industries that they came from and are going back to. That’s a bad thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s the anti pattern to use our lingo. We shouldn’t do that. and then did that ostensibly
⏹️ ▶️ John did that same thing with the FCC chairman, although MTW in
⏹️ ▶️ John the chat room says that this is not the case at all. And I don’t know what we’re getting wrong about that, but
⏹️ ▶️ John like it was industry person, right? Doesn’t mean all people who are in the industry are bad or evil or whatever. It just means like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s kind of one of the things like if there’s an appearance of impropriety, like try to avoid even the appearance rather
⏹️ ▶️ John than, you know, going on an individual basis, like just, you know, you know, I mean, like so,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, that you want to use the optics of this for bad. You took someone from the industry and you and you put them in charge of something
⏹️ ▶️ John that has a big influence on the industry. You say, well, this person is upstanding. They’re not going to be influenced. And even if they do go back to work,
⏹️ ▶️ John the industry doesn’t make a difference. Like just the appearance of it is not good. Right. So that starts off on the wrong foot.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then to see that person say things in that position that make the
⏹️ ▶️ John telecom and, you know, cable industries happy. Like if you are regulating an
⏹️ ▶️ John industry, if you’re doing things that make the industry you’re regulating happy, you’re probably
⏹️ ▶️ John doing your job wrong, no matter what it is. Like if you are in charge of regulating the
⏹️ ▶️ John the food safety industry, if you’re in charge of regulating trucking, if you’re anything like no matter
⏹️ ▶️ John what you are in charge of regulating, if the things if the companies or the industries you’re regulating are
⏹️ ▶️ John happy about what you’re doing, it is almost certainly the wrong thing to do. Unless maybe you’re rolling back another
⏹️ ▶️ John regulation that was like went too far or whatever, but if they’re happy,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially with these giant industries that have near monopolies like telecom,
⏹️ ▶️ John if they are happy, something is wrong because they are never happy about things that help consumers. They’re always
⏹️ ▶️ John happy about things that make them more powerful and that screw consumers. So
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t even need to get into nitpicky details and theories about the free market or whatever. All you have to do is say,
⏹️ ▶️ John is Verizon happy? Is AT&T happy? Do they love this?
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s almost certainly the wrong thing to do. Now you have to balance it. You say like, well, you’re not gonna make them miserable,
⏹️ ▶️ John but like, you know, you can’t just regulate them to death and strangle the industries, but believe me, no one
⏹️ ▶️ John is strangling telecom. Like now we can’t have any telecom companies. All telecom companies have closed
⏹️ ▶️ John up shop. They’re just leaving their wires hanging in the trees and just no one’s gonna use them anymore because it’s overregulated.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, the direction everything has been going in this country has been decreasing regulation, which has good
⏹️ ▶️ John size and bad size. And again, you can you can talk about the details. But just as a general rule of thumb,
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t even need to look at consumers don’t say our consumers happy consumers don’t know what’s going on. These things all happen behind
⏹️ ▶️ John closed doors. Consumers have no idea that it’s happened. Consumers have no idea what the effects are, but if the industry loves it,
⏹️ ▶️ John stop, stop and look and say, Wait a second, they love this. What the hell are we doing? Our job is what they should hate us
⏹️ ▶️ John our job. It’s like being the principal at a school, like are the assistant principal, like if everybody loves you,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re not imposing enough discipline, right? Now, everybody doesn’t have to hate you. But if everyone’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, yeah, everything you do is awesome. Whoo. Like, you know, that’s that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John a regular same, you know, or parenting. Like if your kids love every decision you make, you’re probably
⏹️ ▶️ John failing them as a parent or you have a perfect child, which could happen.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, that’s how I feel about this thing. So that’s why I don’t get too caught up in the details. And maybe I’m too cynical
⏹️ ▶️ John about it. I think I did. You know, every time this comes up, I do do whatever things
⏹️ ▶️ John they have online to like, oh, send a letter to your congressperson, send put a comment
⏹️ ▶️ John on the, you know, request for comments. I do all that stuff. So I’m not so cynical that I think I can’t participate in the process
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything. And of course, you know, I vote and the people I vote for are as close
⏹️ ▶️ John as possible to being in agreement with me on positions like this. But it’s in many cases, it’s just simply impossible
⏹️ ▶️ John because of our stupid two party system to find any candidate who agrees with you even remotely on some
⏹️ ▶️ John issues like this. But you do what you can. But anyway, I don’t know. I guess
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll just wait and see.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so let’s move on real quick. We hear that Apple may or may not be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey involved in a mapping service. Do you want to talk about this, John?
⏹️ ▶️ John I put it in there because it was on Loop Insight and
⏹️ ▶️ John it wasn’t Dalrymple that said it. But like, so when I saw these stories, it’s like, oh, someone has some random spy
⏹️ ▶️ John shot of a van with crap on top of it and they say it’s from Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then I saw that story, I’m like, yeah, whatever. I don’t you know, I don’t really pay attention.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then I saw that the loop had it and I went to it hoping it would be Dalrymple
⏹️ ▶️ John giving one of his yepper nopes. And I was expecting it to be a nope because I don’t think Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John working on self-driving cars, but he didn’t even write it. So there’s no there’s no thing one way or the other. But I
⏹️ ▶️ John feel like he would want to write that. Was that Sean King that did that one? I feel like if you knew he would have grabbed that one and thrown
⏹️ ▶️ John in a note, but he didn’t. Um, and but the story did point out, and I think it is a much more
⏹️ ▶️ John plausible theory. This is not Apple self-driving cars. This is just Apple’s answer to street view, which we’ve talked about
⏹️ ▶️ John in many past shows, the episode numbers of which I absolutely cannot remember about
⏹️ ▶️ John things that Apple’s bad at. And one of them is the audacity to do something like Google Street View, where it’s like, we
⏹️ ▶️ John have overhead maps and everything, but wouldn’t it be great if we could have street level views of stuff?
⏹️ ▶️ John And like, well, how are you going to get street level views or anything? Well, what if we just put cameras on top of cars and drive them on every road in the entire
⏹️ ▶️ John United States? And that’s something that would come up in a Google meeting. They would say, all right, let’s do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John And by the way, it’s scan every book in existence. But anyway, get those cars on the road and drive it. You know, whereas
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, Apple is not an organization that does things like that,
⏹️ ▶️ John that conceives of things like that and that executes them. But when they took
⏹️ ▶️ John on the job of doing maps, it’s like, well, It’s going to take you a long time to catch up to Google Maps if you
⏹️ ▶️ John ever do. And you don’t have anything like Street View. And if you want something like Street View, Google’s not going to give it to you. You’re going to have to do what
⏹️ ▶️ John they did, which is really hard. So I desperately hope that that is an Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John equivalent of Street View car piloting a program that’s going to use some of that $178 billion
⏹️ ▶️ John to drive on every road in the United States, and eventually every road in the world, taking pictures of everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that their pictures will be higher resolution than Google’s because they do it later with better technology and all that stuff. I desperately
⏹️ ▶️ John hope that’s what it is, and not just some cleaning van with weird stuff on the roof.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, me too, because it’s unfortunate that there are these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco handful of major areas where Apple and Apple’s customers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are still really dependent on Google for things. And obviously, Apple does not really want it to be that way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they can help it. And some of these web search, general purpose web search of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco find this phrase on the entire internet, I don’t think Apple’s going to tackle that. Like somebody posted there was a job posting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for Apple Search on some Apple job site.
⏹️ ▶️ John want you to be able to find a game on the App Store
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco instead of keywords spammers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, like, you know, I don’t think the Apple Search thing was about web search. I think it’s just like searching other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things that Apple needs to be searchable. But, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, the certain areas of maps and Street View is probably the biggest one. You know, the mapping data is pretty close now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, obviously, this will vary depending where you live, but I have found Apple’s mapping data
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be pretty good. The biggest problems I have with Apple Maps that still exist
⏹️ ▶️ Marco today are lack of street view and that the business listings are pretty weak compared to Google’s.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Google’s are not perfect. A lot of people say, like, Oh, well, Apple’s business listings
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once brought me to some terrible out-of-date listing of this thing that didn’t exist anymore or wasn’t there,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had moved or whatever. Google’s business data is not perfect either. This is kind of like when people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco try a different cellular carrier and they forget how bad their other one was, or how spotty or inconsistent it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was in certain areas. And they run back and then forget about how bad it was. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of like grass is always greener, but with a little bit longer term memory involved. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just like no cellular carrier, including your beloved Verizon, everybody is actually consistently
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great everywhere. Similar to that, no mapping data for many of these services
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is consistently perfect. And no business place name data is consistently perfect from these places.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Certainly, I think Google’s is still better. Again, neither of these are perfect.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Google’s is still better. And anything Apple can do to close that gap with the business data and to provide the missing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco features like Street View, that is very beneficial to them. strategically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco long term, I think they need to do things like that. They need to get total independence
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the need for Google services on their devices. And they’ve come very far. They’re almost there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in many areas, but there’s still a few things that they’re really kind of stuck with.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think Street View and good business place data is probably up there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you think that the people who are zealots about slot-loaded toasters
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are the same Verizon people that won’t shut up? You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, people with slot-loaded toasters are so bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can’t reheat a slice of pizza worth anything in there. Yeah, that’s so true. Why don’t you tell us about something that’s cool?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Our second sponsor this week is Fracture. Fracture prints your photo in vivid color
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. I have fractures all over the office. I really do. I have, let’s see, five.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I have five within view right now. These are great prints. So they’re a photo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco printer, and they print the photos on these squares or rectangles of glass, and it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just mounts directly to your wall, however you want, or it can sit on a desk or whatever. They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco include even the wall anchor for you, or the little desk stand, whatever you ordered. They include everything you need in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the box. Print quality is great. It looks fantastic. And my favorite part is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it doesn’t need a frame or anything. If you’re an adult and you’re decorating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a room as an adult, you don’t want to just pin a poster on the wall. You want it to look nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So generally, the way you do that is by putting it in a frame. You can do custom frame. That’s very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expensive. And with Fracture, this is great. prints like they’re borderless,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it goes edge to edge with the picture printed on the back on the back side of this like thin piece of glass and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then mounted on cardboard. Anyway, so it looks like the picture is just right there on the glass because it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is literally printed on the back side of the glass. So fracture prints look so good you don’t need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have them framed. In fact, I don’t even know if you could. And for the price of the print
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for what you’re getting for that, it’s an incredibly good deal compared to a nice game. Very,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very good deal and it includes the print and it’s all right there in the box. Everything you need.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It looks clean. It looks modern. It looks great. I get so many compliments on these prints. I really
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco my app icon prints, which I mentioned before. So I actually for the icons or icons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the apps I’ve worked on, I have little Fracture 5x5 five inch prints of those hanging on the wall. It’s like this little like
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I just want to pipe in real quickly that we talk so often about the five by five sized ones,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but we’ve gotten a couple of the I think they call them regular size.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s pretty wide. I’d say like a foot, foot and a half wide and maybe a foot tall. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey those look beautiful as well. It’s not just the tiny ones. So don’t don’t feel like you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey limiting. You should limit yourself just to those. But they really do look amazing, like Marco said.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, the big ones. I have two of the big ones above my monitor. Love them. I just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them. Oh, that’s true. I forgot those were fractures. Yeah, that’s a good call. All right. So we had a question from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey listener Ben, which I thought was kind of interesting. And he said, would really like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to hear more about the Overcast backend someday as an example of what it takes to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey run a modern app beyond what you upload to the App Store. There’s a lot of places to learn about how to design
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and code an app, but most examples are standalone and Overcast has some really interesting infrastructure behind it. It seems
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like it could be a good example. For example, where do you host the VPSs and why? How
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much will the Go switch end up saving? Although I think you’ve talked about that a bit. And what other tools
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, I don’t want to go too far into this. It’s probably gonna be boring. But I host at Linode.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’ve used a lot of web hosts over the years. A lot. I mean, I’ve been hosting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff on web hosts since 2000. So it’s over the years, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco web hosting business has a lot, a lot of companies come and go. Technology changes over time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve probably been at 10, 15 hosts over that time. Through big and small, through
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my own personal site, all the way up to Tumblr scale, and a lot of things in between, Linode is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overall the best host I’ve used. There are certain areas in which other hosts are better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But Linode, this past fall, they did a major hardware upgrade where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they upgraded the speeds of all their base systems and their networking and they changed their plans a little bit.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it is now an incredibly good deal for the power that you get.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Before that, it was a decent deal, but it wasn’t amazing. Now it’s really a very strong value.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So Linode, compared to other kinds of hostings, Linode is VPSs only. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think they’re all unmanaged. I don’t know if they offer unmanaged servers. It doesn’t matter. I use unmanaged, so it doesn’t matter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey meaning that it’s all on you to take care of everything, whereas managed means there’s people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey monitoring it and trying to do a kind of first-level troubleshooting. Is that all correct?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And so for a while, in the early days of Davidville and Tumblr, we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had managed servers at Rackspace. And Rackspace at the time, I mean, this was 2006, 2007,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I don’t know how it is now. At the time, they were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really considered like the best of the business for managed servers. And I I think they only sold managed servers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the time. So they were very expensive. It was like 800 bucks a month for a server, for a mid-range server, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is very expensive. Even back then, it was very expensive. We had managed that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And what I found overall, what it promises is things like, well, if your disks fill
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up, we’ll notice that. We’ll go in there and clean it up. Or if your database is being hammered by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some runaway process or some terrible query on something, we can go in and optimize it for you and fix it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And in practice, that was spotty. That was very inconsistent. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quality of service we got from that was inconsistent. Most of the time, it was ultimately
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on us to fix the problem. You know, it was like, well, they could tell us, Oh, well, your problem is you have a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of requests coming in. It’s like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey yeah, thanks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, so most of the time, it wasn’t particularly useful. And maybe that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just because we were programmers. So like we knew we knew how to do the basics of system administration. We didn’t need them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to install Apache for us. Stuff like that. We could figure that out on our own.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it depends on what skill level you need. These days, if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you need more handholding from them and you need them to do more things for you, these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco days, you’re probably not looking at servers at all. You’re probably looking at managed cloud services, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have higher abstraction and everything else. That’s kind of another story. The industry is very different these days
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as it it was in 2006. But basically, I use Linode because it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has a very, very good value and a surprisingly good control panel.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Man, web hosting control panels are kind of like non-igloo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco intranets. Oh, my God. Web hosting control
⏹️ ▶️ Marco panels are usually so awful. And it seems like every web host in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the world is just totally incapable of making one that is remotely usable and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even has ever been slightly thought out of how people actually use it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with a very small number of exceptions, and Linode is one of them. DigitalOcean is decent, but Linode is still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by far more fully functional. I’ve tried other things. I’ve tried DigitalOcean. I’ve tried a couple of other ones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I keep coming back to Linode because it is just a really fantastic value for what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is, which is unmanaged VPSs. So if you need some other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of server, some other kind of service, some other kind of hosting that’s not an unmanaged VPS,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t really help you because I haven’t bought those. I don’t really know what the market
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is like for those. The reason I do what I do is because I know enough about system administration that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can run my own servers. I know how to do it in a way that does not put a lot of burden on me. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very low maintenance. I’m not being woken up in the middle of the night to deal with a server problem. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know how to do it now so that doesn’t happen. Honestly, it isn’t that hard these days because servers are so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco freaking fast these days. I use old boring tools like MySQL. MySQL,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for all the crap it gets, I have never had a problem that was MySQL’s fault, ever, in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of Tumblr, all of Instapaper, everything I’ve done on the side between then, since then, and now all of Overcast.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have used MySQL so—and I’ve said this before on the show—I’ve used MySQL so heavily in so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many different configurations. I’ve never had a problem that was MySQL’s fault. I’ve never had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MySQL wake me up in the middle of the night. I’ve never even had it crash in use. I’ve never seen the MySQL
⏹️ ▶️ Marco process crash. Like, that’s… it’s incredible. So if you are fairly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco conservative with your tools, if you use boring stuff like CentOS Linux and MySQL
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and PHP or Python, like, you know, some kind of like boring language that’s been around for a while,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can be pretty good. You can be pretty safe and it can be pretty low involvement
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over time. You have some time to set it up and then you’re done. And modern VPSs have these great tools for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco making custom setup images, cloning, point in time backups, and branching, and recovery, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all this crazy stuff you can do now with all these cool virtualized services. It’s way better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than it used to be. It’s way easier than it used to be. And it’s way, way cheaper than it used to be. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the reason I do it, But even though there are all these cloud services that are also available now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for that cost is that I send my own push notifications. If I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had a service that sent push notifications, it would cost thousands of dollars a month for the volume I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sent. Thousands! Like, so much! For me to do it online, it would cost like $40
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a month worth of server time, maybe, at most. Probably less than that. I mean, it’s a massive deal. took
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me a day to figure out how to send them and code myself.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It wasn’t that big of a deal. So much of the stuff I feel like people shy away
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from because… And these are developers. You’re able to make an app, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not easy. It’s easy in the grand scheme of things. It’s easier than doing manual labor all day.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s easier than solving cryptos or whatever. But But in the grand scheme of things, if you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco figure out how to make software of any kind, you can administer basic stuff on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a server. It’s really not that hard. It might just be unfamiliar to you. But just like any language
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or platform or new API, you can learn it. It’s not that big of a deal. You can save so much money
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you can do so many powerful things once you are open to the idea of, you know what?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe I will let myself run a web service. doors it opens for you,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to me, are usually, the vast majority of the time, usually worth it for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the time and stress and expense of running your own servers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have nothing to add to that. That’s pretty straightforward. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would you mind recapping what the Go savings
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were when you changed the feed crawler to Go?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it was like a couple hundred bucks a month.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s significant for sure.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, my total line-o-ed bill is… I gotta look. I’m still moving stuff around with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco images and everything. So one thing I do with Overcast is… Because every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco podcast has the album artwork image that it defines in its feed.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iTunes wants those to be 1400 pixels square. So they’re huge. And because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m dealing with arbitrary podcasts from arbitrary people, people,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many podcast producers, don’t particularly optimize that file. So you might have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this album artwork that’s a meg or it’s like it’s a PNG
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when it’s actually the photo so it compresses very badly or you know something like that or they or it’s a JPEG
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they just saved on 12 quality and you know so sometimes you have these massive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco files and in the context of overcast I don’t really need those I need them only really as the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad artwork and in every other context. Things like search results, even just downloading
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things, you don’t need the files to be that big. And a lot of times, people who subscribe to a lot of podcasts, they might have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hundreds of megs worth of album artwork to download, and that’s no good. So what I do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as part of my hosting is I proxy and serve all album art images
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in Overcast through my own infrastructure. I resize the images to correct
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sizes that are actually needed by the app and I serve them through a CDN. So that’s why when you search
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Overcast, if you do a search for like ad podcast, type in a keyword, those thumbnails will load incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quickly. Way faster than if I was pulling in like the full size, mostly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uncompressed versions from all the different feeds. I’m doing all that just to make things better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, and again, this is another advantage I have by having some kind of infrastructure in place. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can do that. So right now, I’m in the process of moving some stuff around like that that used to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on my own servers. Now I’m trying out ImageX, but it’s costing me a fortune, so I’m moving it to something else and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably back on my own servers soon. So my costs are all in flux. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco generally speaking, the Go transition saved me a lot of money. And my next attempt for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the image resizing is actually going to be based in Go and using this library called Vips,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which I don’t know anything about, but apparently it like destroys everything else in image resizing performance.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So if anybody knows anything about the VIPs library for resizing images, let me know.
⏹️ ▶️ John Fair enough. You’re not going to try to install image magic?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Image magic is just it is fine. I’ve used it a lot in the past.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I built most of Tumblr stuff against image magic for the second revision when I added the when we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco added the ping and gif support. It’s okay. Image magic is okay. Modern GD is okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There are some bindings in PHP, some bindings in Go. You know, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco OK. But overall, ImageMagick is just not very fast. That’s the biggest problem. And VIPS promises to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really, really fast. Like, I’ve seen a few benchmarks, and it seems amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I don’t know what the trade-offs are. Maybe it’s terrible quality. I don’t know yet. I’m looking into it.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s because it’s not ImageMagick or GD. Both of those things are like, forgetting how
⏹️ ▶️ John well they work when you use them, just getting them installed, It’s just like
⏹️ ▶️ John such a nightmare and it never got better over the decades of me having to install those two things You’re like
⏹️ ▶️ John well, they’ll work it out and it’ll be oh so painful so painful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t know if this is still the case, but we at tumblr We had a lot of issues with like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco image magic would increment the version in some minor way And then all of a sudden it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be ten times slower in Certain cases because they were like playing with multi threading and things and something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wouldn’t work right there would lock things weirdly and it was unstable for a while there. It’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better now. But anyway, this is pretty boring. Our final sponsor, Harry’s.
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco So Harry’s blades run, by my math, roughly half the price of the big brands.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And plus, you don’t have to actually go to the drugstore to buy them. You can just order them online. They ship them directly to your door
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for free. You don’t have to deal with going to the drugstores, getting that out of the shoplifting case, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all that stuff. It’s just so much easier to just order online. So they have the starter set. Starter set’s an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco amazing deal. For $15, you get a razor, moisturizing shave cream or gel, your pick,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and three razor blades. When you need more blades, they run about $2 each or less, depending on how many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you buy. So an 8-pack is $15, a 16-pack is $25. They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sent me a sample a while back. I tried it. I went through the whole thing. So I would say they are very comparable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the Gillette Fusion blades without the ProGlide strips. So the ProGlide strips
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are a little bit smoother if you like that. But overall, the Harry’s blades, I would say, gave exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same quality shave as the Gillette Fusion non-ProGlide blades. And the best price I can find on Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for those Fusion blades right now is a 12-pack for about $41. 12 Harry’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco blades are $20 so it’s less than half the price for what I would say is exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same shave quality. So they have also amazing packaging,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very classy designs, and what I like about Harry’s too, they have this nice heavy razor blade, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean razor handle. So like it’s this like classy like metal thing it’s kind of looks like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like Mad Men era, or like at least what we what we like to romanticize Mad Men era as being.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Really nice like this nice metal like shiny or chrome blades or I mean handles these nice quality
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you want to talk about family sharing,
⏹️ ▶️ John John? That was a David Sparks thing that we’ve had in the notes in forever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Mm hmm. Yeah. He has a lot of complaints about family sharing. My expectations, I guess, were just way
⏹️ ▶️ John lower. What I was looking for for family sharing is.
⏹️ ▶️ John An officially sanctioned acknowledgment from Apple of the structure of our family unit, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is more or less gave. I talked about the caveats in my Yosemite article where it’s like, well, What if you
⏹️ ▶️ John had already sort of kind of given your kids Apple IDs, even though they weren’t supposed
⏹️ ▶️ John to have them because they’re too young? Which I did. They introduced this way
⏹️ ▶️ John for you to add like child’s Apple IDs. And I said, well, my kids already have Apple IDs.
⏹️ ▶️ John Can I convert them to child Apple IDs? And Apple said, well, so you can’t actually
⏹️ ▶️ John convert an Apple. You can’t merge Apple IDs. You can’t convert them. And so I have to give my kids fake ages and
⏹️ ▶️ John wait until whatever. Like, that’s annoying. But at least I can have. If you know an organizer
⏹️ ▶️ John of the family and another adult in the family and two children in the family. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John just having Apple, having me be able to input that information in some place where Apple knows
⏹️ ▶️ John it gives me hope that future applications, future services,
⏹️ ▶️ John other future things that Apple does, maybe even third party things that they expose that. Could
⏹️ ▶️ John recognize the structure of my family and use that to do non-stupid things like
⏹️ ▶️ John working the way that we would want the applications to work for our family. I have dim hopes that Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John photo stuff was going to do this, but whatever. And the second thing I wanted out of it
⏹️ ▶️ John was I wanted my kids to be able to buy things on the App Store with their own
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple IDs with me having some control over what they buy. So then they could have their own, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John if people get them iTunes gift cards for their stocking or something that can go into their own Apple ID. It’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John be their own money. They can spend it on the games that they want to spend it on. And then I can still see what they’re doing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And this feature has worked spottily, which you would expect for most of these
⏹️ ▶️ John features. But sometimes it works. It’s like it’s better than this feature not existing. Now, all
⏹️ ▶️ John the complaints about this is like, well, what if they download an application that you bought on your Apple ID,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the but the in-app purchase doesn’t transfer over there. So they have to redo the in-app purchase. A lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of the the the annoyances of family sharing cause many people, including me occasionally,
⏹️ ▶️ John to go back to what we were all doing before, which is just designating a member of the family as the designated,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, App Store, Apple ID person. And then everybody is signed in with that Apple ID to the iTunes
⏹️ ▶️ John store. And I’ve said this before to Apple’s credit, despite the fact that they’re so terrible at recognizing how
⏹️ ▶️ John families work, they have made it relatively easy to have different Apple IDs for all the
⏹️ ▶️ John different things. can be signed into one Apple ID and iCloud to a different Apple ID in the App
⏹️ ▶️ John Store. And I think even to a different Apple ID in Game Center and maybe a different Apple ID in my message. I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John But there’s a whole bunch of different places where you can Apple IDs. If it was all one thing, nothing would work because that
⏹️ ▶️ John would just totally have wouldn’t allow people to even do workarounds. But the workaround everybody I know
⏹️ ▶️ John does is Oh, that’s the Apple ID we buy everything on everybody in the family gets to use it, which is nice from the bad
⏹️ ▶️ John old world of like, you had to get a license for each seat and If you had two computers, you can only use the software
⏹️ ▶️ John on one or whatever. So now, you know, in the yesteryear, you would spend $200 on a program
⏹️ ▶️ John and you had to spend another $200 if someone else wanted to use it. Now you spend 99 cents and your whole family can
⏹️ ▶️ John use it. So maybe we’re all spoiled by that. But whatever the policy is, we
⏹️ ▶️ John all have a workaround, which is just use the same Apple ID for everything. And the quote unquote correct way to do
⏹️ ▶️ John it with family sharing, even if it doesn’t work and even if it has limitations and even if like iTunes matches
⏹️ ▶️ John and integrated with it and everything, It is a start and I’ve waited so long for them to have any kind of start I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John like finally they realized we have family so maybe in another decade Everyone in the family
⏹️ ▶️ John will be able to take pictures and put them into one big family photos pool and not have to Have one computer
⏹️ ▶️ John designated as the iPhoto computer or one Apple ID designated as the one family Apple ID But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, I mean for whatever it’s worth I’ve now set up Apple family sharing on two families on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on me, my wife, and my son, and then also on Tiff’s parents. So they together
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can each be their own people and have their own iPads and share purchases. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for both of those cases, we didn’t do it the way everyone else did it before, where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we didn’t have one account that we just bought things from, and then we’d have our own accounts. No,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we were always separate before, because Tiff and I just don’t buy a lot of the same things. It was never really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a big problem. And Tiff’s mom just got an iPad this Christmas, so it was after family sharing existed. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we could start kind of clean on those. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for us, using it the way it’s intended, you know, the clean way that Apple thinks everyone does,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even though almost no one does except us. But using it that way, it has worked incredibly well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think we’ve had a single issue with it. It has really been flawless. I think the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco challenges people are having are migrating between the old way of having one shared account
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you were doing that which you’re right a lot of people do migrating from that into this new system
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but if you if you kind of come to the system on its own terms and do it the way Apple thinks you should be doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things today then it works very well
⏹️ ▶️ John then you have separate pools of photos
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s true yeah the photos are not really a soft thing
⏹️ ▶️ John yet and you know and Adams not old enough to buying his own things on the App Store, but soon he will be.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, no, but that actually works. So we have it set up like he has his own little iPhone that’s an old iPhone of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mine, and he has these games on it, and we set him up his own child
⏹️ ▶️ Marco account through the new child account system. So it has his real age in it, you don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to pretend he’s 13 or whatever. It has the actual real age in it, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco his purchases are charge to my account. And then me or Tiff have to authorize
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those purchases before they are made. And it pops up. It works great. And on Tiff’s mom,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we had hers doing what you were saying with the cards. Whereas, we gave her the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we gave her an iTunes card to start it up with. And Tiff’s dad has had one for years, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he has all this existing stuff, and his payment information is already in his account. And we made them a family account,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we added the prepaid card only to hers and it separates it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out. So whichever member of the family adds a prepaid card, it gives them that credit,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not the first person or the owner or whatever of the family. And so everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else’s purchases don’t draw from one person in the family’s credit account.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it actually does the right thing there. It works very well.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the reason I said it works spottily is because I’ve had other people in my family set up their family things
⏹️ ▶️ John and then just never be able to get the notification. You know, the thing that says, do you want to approve this thing? And
⏹️ ▶️ John as with so many other iCloud problems, once you confirm that the setup is correct. Yep. You’ve got a family. Yep.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s structured correctly. Yep. People are signing in with the right Apple IDs for all the various things. All right. Now make a purchase or
⏹️ ▶️ John try to make a purchase. And now you should see a notification on your thing. Nope. Don’t see it. Yeah, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John nothing you can do. Right. And then you got to do that. OK, well, I guess we all sign out of our Apple IDs. We wipe our devices. We
⏹️ ▶️ John do this. would you just do the silly dance and just if it doesn’t work you’re like I don’t know and so that
⏹️ ▶️ John still happens and it’s it annoys me that that happens
⏹️ ▶️ John every time it does happen you just feel like powerless and it’s like look see they got to work or
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s got to be a way for me to debug it and debugging it doesn’t mean doing the only things
⏹️ ▶️ John that have buttons sign out sound back in delete all data restore data and just it’s very frustrating
⏹️ ▶️ John you know I’ve had good luck with it here, but I’ve seen it not work. Actually, I think the first
⏹️ ▶️ John time I tried it didn’t work for me either. But then it did start working. What changed between the time it didn’t work and it didn’t? But I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, it’s I still find that pressure. But like, really, the thing I’m most excited
⏹️ ▶️ John about is the fact they have that metadata, because I hope that once they have that metadata, that it can be useful
⏹️ ▶️ John for something, that it will encourage them to. Because if you think about it, like anyone designing some kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of application or service inside Apple, If it’s like, you know, oh, we can do this thing for
⏹️ ▶️ John families, like, oh, but I don’t want to set up a thing where people have to sign up their family. I just want to make an app. No one wants to do the infrastructure,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? But someone eventually, the infrastructure finally did get done as a separate thing. Family sharing is a separate
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. So now that infrastructure is there, anybody making an application, at least with an Apple for now,
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t have to be like, oh, we can do this cool thing with, oh, but I don’t want to have a thing where people have to enter their families
⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s not part of my application really or whatever. It’s like, no, wait, we’ve already got that. It’s already, you know, that information
⏹️ ▶️ John is there and presumably there’s some way for us to get it. Then we can leverage that in kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John the same way. Like I hope they leverage it more like, you know, the little VIP things. Oh, when you’re on phone is on, do not disturb, allow calls
⏹️ ▶️ John from VIPs and mail has VIPs and stuff like that. Now that it knows who the family members are, you can
⏹️ ▶️ John say things like allow calls from my family, you know, or automatically put things
⏹️ ▶️ John from my family in a separate bin in Apple mail instead of just the VIP thing. Like, you know, and this is just
⏹️ ▶️ John immediate family. They can go to extended family and you can like they can slowly start to model
⏹️ ▶️ John the real world so we can do things with in the same way that Siri can say, you know, call my wife, like
⏹️ ▶️ John the relationship, trying to map the relationship between you and other people and having sort of the smart
⏹️ ▶️ John assistants in there that are that are aware of these relationships in more than just like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know how you how do you do the spouse arrangements and and think, is there a field in context where you say what their
⏹️ ▶️ John relation is or is just a note field or. No, there’s a field in context relationship, I believe. But is it
⏹️ ▶️ John like free form? Like you can write any text there you want, or is there some like is it’s complicated an option?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. Like, you know, to give some kind of metadata that is not just arbitrary
⏹️ ▶️ John key value pairs, but that has meaning and that the meaning is understood by the program so they can
⏹️ ▶️ John so that, you know, even just even it’s just like quickly doing something like pulling up a picker
⏹️ ▶️ John where everything is just like your most recent context or your most recent whatever, but there’s some kind of picker where
⏹️ ▶️ John it makes sense for you to have the spouse as being the default thing or have immediate
⏹️ ▶️ John family as being the default or trying to make reservations and it guesses that you want your whole family.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, I don’t know, like there’s lots of things that you can do. And I don’t get into sort of a creepy like, oh, Google, they know too much about
⏹️ ▶️ John me or whatever. I’m just like, this is information that I enter. And I want like my photo management application to know
⏹️ ▶️ John about my family, who the members are, how I might want things shared and stuff like that. So
⏹️ ▶️ John this is just the very first step to the possibility of doing that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Real time follow up. I am not seeing a relationship field after all. I could swear it was there,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I am not seeing it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, like the information has got to be in there, but like in the family sharing, you don’t set relationships like that. You just say like this
⏹️ ▶️ John is a family. There’s an organizer and there’s adults and there’s children, which is fine. Like I don’t you don’t need to be prescriptive
⏹️ ▶️ John about like the structure of a family or whatever. Just like I just want to connect the lines and say here it here
⏹️ ▶️ John is the structure and here is the hierarchy adults children, you know, like
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever just. And that information, I can imagine being so useful, but nobody
⏹️ ▶️ John who would wants to write an application that would take advantage of that information also wants to sign up for gathering,
⏹️ ▶️ John storing and managing that information. So it’s an infrastructure thing that Apple needs to be doing and now is finally doing,
⏹️ ▶️ John but apparently not particularly well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Cards Against Humanity, Fracture and Harry’s, and we will see
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even mean to begin Cause it was accidental, oh it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental John didn’t do any research, Margo and
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey wouldn’t let him Cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental And you can find the
⏹️ ▶️ John show notes at ATP.FM And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and T-Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s accidental, they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean to Accidental tech podcast so long.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We have a lot of important stuff to talk about and it looks like we need to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get through some BS first. Isn’t that the usual formula for our show?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s a very, very good point. So to weed through this BS as quickly as possible,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can we talk about your PS4 setup and Destiny UI woes?
⏹️ ▶️ John I I ordered that monitor so I could play Destiny on it instead of on my television And
⏹️ ▶️ John it got delayed by two snowstorms, so it was kind of frustrating for all involved Eventually it did arrive.
⏹️ ▶️ John I set it up. I’ve been playing it now. I had to do My son hasn’t learned trigonometry
⏹️ ▶️ John yet So I tried to give him sort of the approximated version of trigonometry can to convince him that a 23 inch monitor
⏹️ ▶️ John the distance He’s sitting from it is actually Twice as big in his field of vision as the 55 inch television
⏹️ ▶️ John of the distance. He was sitting from it Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John God. I was just doing that as a ratio of distance to width of the screen rather than going through like the
⏹️ ▶️ John angles in the field of view or whatever. I think he mostly bought it.
⏹️ ▶️ John old is he? How old is he? Ten.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I mean, like
⏹️ ▶️ John if you don’t even try to gloss over and say, all you need to know is the ratio, like how far anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John He found it fairly convincing. Hooking it up and playing it like that. It’s it’s nice. The one thing
⏹️ ▶️ John I realized, which kind of makes me sad, is that the black levels on this display are nowhere near as good as they are on my
⏹️ ▶️ John TV. I mean, I knew this like I knew I’m getting it’s like a super cheap LCD screen,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s just it’s shocking to me how non
⏹️ ▶️ John everything is on this screen coming off of my TV. But what can you do? But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John I am, you know, it does feel more of my field division makes it easier to get headshots. I’ve been
⏹️ ▶️ John trying out a little bit of hand cannon stuff because everyone tells me it’s good. I’m not a total convert, but I’ve been
⏹️ ▶️ John using a little bit. Anyway, the other thing I want to talk about with Destiny is the UI.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like the toaster, there are some UI problems in Destiny. Most of the UI in Destiny is actually you can tell
⏹️ ▶️ John that they play tested it a lot because the things that people do frequently in Destiny usually have nice ways to do
⏹️ ▶️ John them. So it shows there must have been a really long play testing period where they made can be like you have a lot of crap to manage.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you ever played a game that makes a management difficult, you’re just going through screens and menus and back and forward. And it’s super difficult.
⏹️ ▶️ John This system seems weird at first, but you use it for a while, you realize it’s very efficient. Lots
⏹️ ▶️ John of things are done on mouseover. Lots of things you do frequently, like comparing the equipped weapon
⏹️ ▶️ John to another one can be done easily with a nice, you know, the UI is actually a great lesson in how to make a game UI
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s efficient for the things that people do when they’re playing the game. But there’s one area where I think they fell down.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that led me to my other sad destiny thing. I was in this little vendor trying to
⏹️ ▶️ John look at different things that I was thinking of buying and I pretty much decided which thing I was going to buy a particular helmet but I
⏹️ ▶️ John just wanted to check one more time back at the other one and I went over to the other one to hit what I thought was the button for details
⏹️ ▶️ John which is triangle to say let me just look at this one more time to be sure that I’m buying the right one with the right perks or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John and I accidentally hit x instead of triangle and that immediately purchased the item. Spending
⏹️ ▶️ John things in game which I don’t want to get into that take a really long time to get. I had spent a long time building
⏹️ ▶️ John up this currency and there is no undo. Like I’m still in as far as I know, no one to call
⏹️ ▶️ John tweeted at me to correct me. There is no undo. There is no going back. It’s like, but, but I’m, you know, I
⏹️ ▶️ John haven’t used it. I haven’t equipped it. I haven’t, I just bought it immediately. I just want to immediately say undo, unpurchase,
⏹️ ▶️ John refund, go back. It’s like the app store, like, sorry, all sales are final. And it was so disappointed.
⏹️ ▶️ John I bought the wrong helmet. And so some purchases make you hold down the button as does dismantling.
⏹️ ▶️ John And in fact, if you dismantle something super valuable like an exotic, it will make you hold it down even longer.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like that’s good UI to make it so you don’t accidentally do something. One little tap of the X button, boom,
⏹️ ▶️ John like three weeks of work to build up what it took to buy this thing gone.
⏹️ ▶️ John I found that very sad. So now I have an ugly helmet with the wrong perks.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have no idea what any of that means, but I am sorry for your loss.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you know, it’s just general general design things like if if a an action has large
⏹️ ▶️ John consequences make some kind of undo for it or even just like sell
⏹️ ▶️ John back. And I understand that it’s like, I actually, I understand that it’s really hard to do that. Like I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ John this is a trivial change. This is a massively multiplayer game where there actually are stocks
⏹️ ▶️ John for the vendors and other people buy things like it’s not as simple as like it is really complicated undo
⏹️ ▶️ John they have to kind of build it in from the beginning because you can use it for exploits. You know, you can imagine all sorts of ways that being
⏹️ ▶️ John able to buy something and immediately refund it can be used to break the game and can screw with like
⏹️ ▶️ John keeping track of what inventory is there and like just it’s super hard to do which gives me almost no hope that it
⏹️ ▶️ John will ever be done. I guess the best thing they can do instead of undo is just make it a long press to buy
⏹️ ▶️ John things but then people are annoyed because like every time I buy something I got to hold down the button so I don’t know I think they just need to do something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and that’s the extent of your destiny woes for this week.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah that the fact that I never get any time to play and my son is way ahead of me because he has more time to play.
⏹️ ▶️ John want to do raids I need to send in shards please send a sentence shards I need like 20
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them I mean do you want me to like rescue this conversation by talking my headphone amp some more I mean no we got it
⏹️ ▶️ John we got to move on to your printouts now what’s wrong with my printouts why are you printing things on paper
⏹️ ▶️ John to read first what’s your reads you were sitting in front of a computer with a screen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all right a few reasons a I have a printer and a lot of paper
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what What else am I supposed to do with it?
⏹️ ▶️ John You’ve got paper burning a hole in your virtual pocket. I need to spend it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s true. I mean, I have this laser printer that I bought when paper still mattered slightly more than it does now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it can print like thousands of pages before running out of toner. And so, hey, what else am I going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do with it? That’s part of it. Also that my microphone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is angled. I can’t actually talk ideally, optimally, directly into the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mic while looking at my computer screen without having it not be perfectly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, not be as well isolated against echoes and stuff like that in my setup that I have here. Why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t you move your mic? I mean I could do that, but it just like, it works better this way for me right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then mostly it’s just because my computer screen is full of windows,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey way you think I work.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know you think I have one window and then I close it and I open up another one I
⏹️ ▶️ John that I retweeted that guy who was like oh Marco can’t have it on a screen because there’d be too many windows you’d Feel overwhelmed,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna move on from that so I didn’t tweet it someone else did I just retweeted It’s it’s just it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco easier for me to manage it for me to see it for me to read from it And for me to keep track of which which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ones I have to do and which ones I Which ones have been done and then at the end to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be able to glance at all three and be able to read them back As the thanks to these sponsors. We’ll see you next week like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s just easier for me to do that all on paper right now. I thought about maybe doing it on an iPad, because that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has a lot of the same benefits, where I could hold it right in front of my face, behind the mic here, and stuff like that, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just haven’t gotten around to trying that. I mean, it’s no big deal to do it on paper. It’s really not a big deal.
⏹️ ▶️ John The main reason I actually wanted to talk about this is because this, not because
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s kind of silly, but on the other hand, it reveals something that I’m constantly complaining about, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John people are, you know, are have the ability to deal with things,
⏹️ ▶️ John to deal with real things in their hands, uh, in ways that they can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do on a computer screen. And if you want to take advantage of those skills, like the fact that you can manage those three
⏹️ ▶️ John pieces of paper, you can look at them, you know where they are and everything. It’s not that you have to approximate the real
⏹️ ▶️ John world, but you have to leverage those same abilities. Like it shouldn’t, it shouldn’t feel so much more comfortable
⏹️ ▶️ John for it. It’s not just you. tons of people have this. It shouldn’t feel so much more comfortable to deal with a physical thing than it does in the computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s always gonna feel a little bit more comfortable and on the other hand there’s always gonna be things you can do on a computer screen that you can’t do in the real world
⏹️ ▶️ John but anytime I see someone saying well I could do that
⏹️ ▶️ John on the computer screen but it feels better to do it in real life and it’s something that
⏹️ ▶️ John like isn’t does not seem you know that seems like a reasonable thing for a computer to do like say show a screen
⏹️ ▶️ John full of text like it’s not you know obviously like like kneading dough or something. Obviously you need to do that in the physical
⏹️ ▶️ John world. It’s harder to do on a computer, right? That’s like a failure of the interface. And whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John it is, it’s a failure of like, is the interface too complicated? Is the
⏹️ ▶️ John mouse not as good as grabbing a piece of paper for you? Is, to
⏹️ ▶️ John keep track of things, do you like, you ever see people who take notes in meetings with a notebook, even though, like an actual
⏹️ ▶️ John paper and pen, even though they have a laptop and an iPad and everything like that? Is it just old habits because people are,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, grew up doing it a certain way. Like, it’s difficult to suss out exactly what the problem is, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I think there is still an element of computers feeling sort of less tangible,
⏹️ ▶️ John which sounds stupid, because obviously it’s just a bunch of little lights on a screen, but like less tangible in the figurative sense
⏹️ ▶️ John instead of the literal sense that they can’t get a handle on something unless they have it literally in their hand
⏹️ ▶️ John and it feels better. So anyway, that’s like, I think no one is immune
⏹️ ▶️ John to that. Even people who use computers all day to do complicated things that occasionally, is just more convenient, even
⏹️ ▶️ John if it’s just simply like out of band. Like I know these are separate, like there’s the show and then the sponsors and the sponsors are separate.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, they’ll never actually get mixed in with my other windows and I’ll never lose them and I’ll always have them available.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. And I can always tell in the corner of my eye, like how many more sponsors do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have for the show? Like, how many do I have to do? Whereas if they were windows, I think I think they might get lost a little more easily.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. If you had blue index cards, you could throw them behind you through a window that doesn’t have any glass in it. They can make
⏹️ ▶️ John a glass crashing sound. Nobody, you guys are too young
⏹️ ▶️ John to stay up that late. All right, that’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. We have more BS to go through,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey although I have a feeling this might be worth it. And then I’d really like to talk about cars for a few minutes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So tell us, John, a little more about this toaster that you were given.
⏹️ ▶️ John So things to know about toasters, like
⏹️ ▶️ John how I’m sort of rating them. because again I haven’t had a million toasters but I sort of know the rough outlines of
⏹️ ▶️ John the features that they may or may not have and the way I like I always look at toasters in the stores I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John buy them but I look at them a few things that I think most toasters get wrong especially
⏹️ ▶️ John the cheap ones the things that make the toaster hot the heating elements if they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have anything covering them that’s just asking for trouble because no matter how careful you are with your toaster you always
⏹️ ▶️ John end up getting something in there and it like drips a little piece of melted cheese or whatever you know You’re not really supposed to put
⏹️ ▶️ John things in there that are drippy, but everybody always does eventually You do not want that dripping directly on the element because
⏹️ ▶️ John it burns and it’s just awful. There should be some kind of other
⏹️ ▶️ John guard above the element sometimes that guard gets almost as hot as the element and sometimes the guard has openings in
⏹️ ▶️ John it that let stuff get down to the element anyway, and Sometimes those guards can block the heat from the element
⏹️ ▶️ John if it doesn’t have a reflective thing of load like there’s it’s difficult to get the balance right between the elements in the guard. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John I look for that. If I see bare elements on the bottom, I think it’s not great. Mine has that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well, if I see only one little skinny element in a gigantic toaster, I’m thinking that
⏹️ ▶️ John one element’s not going to be able to heat things up enough or it’s not going to have even heating. So if it’s a really big toaster, I want to see two elements,
⏹️ ▶️ John top and bottom. The plugs, nobody seems to care about this and maybe it’s just my old ancient crappy
⏹️ ▶️ John kitchen, but they give you these plugs that are like three prong plugs, heavy duty,
⏹️ ▶️ John and They stick out like an inch. They’re just huge plugs. And if you have the type of kitchen where the plugs are down at
⏹️ ▶️ John the same level as the toaster and you only have a little tiny spot where you can put the toaster and the plug is right behind it. And
⏹️ ▶️ John the toaster has a tremendous depth because they’re all made to put giant deep dish pizzas inside them or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John the hell they’re made for these days. If you plug in the toaster, you can’t push it up against the wall
⏹️ ▶️ John because the plug sticks out from it. And if you jam it right against the plug, A, you’re kinking the cord and B, the
⏹️ ▶️ John hot back of the toaster is pressing against the, You’re gonna melt the little rubber coating on the back of the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think every toaster should come with a low profile plug that sits flush against the wall so that you can shove
⏹️ ▶️ John the toaster right back up against it and it should have little stops in the back of it that keep you from pressing the hot back of the toaster against the
⏹️ ▶️ John cord and melting through it and electrocuting you and your whole family. So that’s an area I think all toasters could get
⏹️ ▶️ John better. Even my toaster doesn’t have that, the fancy one. I bought a low profile plug extension
⏹️ ▶️ John cord and did this little thing to make it all work. Otherwise I couldn’t even have a toaster there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mine does have the standoffs prevent you from putting it right against the wall. And it only has a two prong plug, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is a regular straight plug, not a corner plug.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. They usually have some kind of standouts for safety reasons. But when the plug sticks out, it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John standouts don’t hit. The plug hits first.
⏹️ ▶️ John guess maybe people have the plugs that are either higher up. I don’t even know what code dictates it. All I know is that my plugs are way down
⏹️ ▶️ John low, and I have very little space. And the plugs are right behind where I need to put both of these toasters, in fact.
⏹️ ▶️ John How hot does the toaster get on the outside? Some toasters get absurdly hot on the outside. and people stack all sorts of
⏹️ ▶️ John crap on top of their toasters like I wouldn’t put anything on top of a toaster because I
⏹️ ▶️ John know it gets hot up there but people do put things up there but some of them get so hot like you’re basically cooking stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John on the outside of toaster or even if you just have like something next to it like within an inch of it and it slowly like
⏹️ ▶️ John bakes that over time that’s not great this used to be a standard feature that seems to be only
⏹️ ▶️ John on the super high-end ones now and I don’t understand why so all you need is a freaking metal hook but when you open
⏹️ ▶️ John the door the little thing that pulls the tray out a little bit, that’s convenient. Everyone should do that. Why do they not do
⏹️ ▶️ John it? It’s two little metal hooks, just do it. You know, some of them use magnets, some of them use fancy things.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the final element is, that I see all the time, is how robust are the things inside it? Like the little
⏹️ ▶️ John wire thing that you put the toast on. Sometimes that wire is like as thin as a hair. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, what are you trying to save money on? Give me a nice, big, thick, you know, it doesn’t need to be
⏹️ ▶️ John so thick that the heat can’t get through it, but it shouldn’t be easily bent or like
⏹️ ▶️ John the type of thing where it will slowly deteriorate and just crack or
⏹️ ▶️ John like just the heat will work its way. You know, it should be it should not feel cheap. It shouldn’t bend easily. The tray that
⏹️ ▶️ John you put stuff in shouldn’t be like the thinnest possible metal you can get so that it slowly bends and warps and dents.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just again, it doesn’t cause you know, there is a difference between a cheap toaster and a good one. Just make those things a little
⏹️ ▶️ John bit thicker. So that’s that’s how I’m going to be judging any toaster that comes into my life.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s amazing. Can we talk about cars for a few minutes?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. I drove an M4. Wow, that’s great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So yeah, what’s that about? So a friend of mine, Keith, he
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just traded his E92 M3 for a brand new M4,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I drove. It is the DCT, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is not my preference, but I have to admit it’s pretty damn nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I probably would not order one with the DCT.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey However, it’s really nice. And oh my goodness, the M4 was so nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like I don’t mean this in a genuine sense, but my car is ruined.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The M4 was loud, which was surprising. And then, of course, Keith pointed out, as we’re driving around, I don’t know how much
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of that is the speakers and how much of that is the car.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, the M cars are all loud. They’re intentionally loud. Although, I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still not seen an M4 in real life except for a few seconds on the highway going the other way. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from what I’ve seen in videos and from those few seconds on the highway, it did seem louder than usual for M cars.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it was surprisingly loud. A little bit of turbo lag, which I was surprised by because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my car has virtually none. And this had a little bit, which I guess makes sense if you have a bigger turbo
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or pushing more boost or whatever. But, um, it certainly surprised me that, that the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey number was more than zero. The interior was bigger than I expected, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is probably silly because it’s a three series. Well, so to speak, yeah, obviously it’s an M four, but my point
⏹️ ▶️ Casey being that it’s, you know, the same size as your average three series just with one less or two less doors, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was bigger inside than I expected. The the driving experience, though,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was just amazing. God, it was so good. And it was extremely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey quick. I feel like it was and I haven’t crunched numbers or anything,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I feel like the power to weight ratio of your car, Marco, in this car were approximately
⏹️ ▶️ Casey equivalent insofar as you stand on the gas and you are hurdled forward at an uncomfortable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey rate of speed. And he was well within breaking. I think the car like 300 miles on it or something like that. So I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was coming off throttle at, you know, 5000 RPM or something like that. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh, my goodness. The thing was amazing. And now I kind of want an M3. Well, not that I didn’t before,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I really I want one again.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey What color was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it? I forget the name of the blue, but the bright, bright, bright blue, which is not my favorite and was not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey his favorite either. but it looked better in person. Not too dissimilar from the orange
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 1M. I forget what actual color that is. Marco probably knows. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was Valencia orange. I prefer the Sakhir orange. It’s on the newer cars.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But because the Valencia orange, I think it’s still on the X1, or at least it was on the X1 before.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s very pale in person. The Sakhir orange is almost red.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a nice, bold, darker. So I prefer that one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, to be fair, there are no good colors on the modern M3s. I can’t speak for the M5. I haven’t looked in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a long time, but the M3 and the M4 have no good colors. There’s black, there’s white, and then there’s a bunch of crap.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve seen the M4 and the dog vomit color. There’s one of them around here that I see a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ John one? Yeah. Oh, it’s so bad. Is that is I’ve only had one
⏹️ ▶️ John dog, but that’s that’s what color dog vomit is. Always kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yellowish, right? Mine’s a little more orange. Yeah. Yeah. Mine’s closer to the secure orange color. It’s actually more like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Valencia orange color.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. And Kyle Cronin points out in the chat, and I believe he’s right. It’s Yas Marina blue is the blue I’m talking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about. I mean, it was OK. I’ve lamented numerous times that I actually did not want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get a white three thirty five. I preferred to get a LeMans blue three thirty five.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And this and I was reminded of how much I should have gotten that color when we were at WWDC
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this past year and a jury had driven by. And I am almost
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sure that his 335D is in fact Le Mans blue, which is really annoying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because it’s freaking beautiful. But anyway, the M4 was amazing. I kind of want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one. I’m going to sell the two of you in order to buy one. It’s been great working with you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So a few questions. First of all, which do you think is a worse color collection
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overall? The colors available for the M4 or the colors available for iPad cases?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would actually say the M4 probably, but it is a tight race.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, the M4 definitely, because things like iPad cases you can have in kind of fanciful
⏹️ ▶️ John colors and it’s not a big deal. But the car boy, that’s a lot of color. Like it’s a big thing. It’s a big
⏹️ ▶️ John expensive thing. And especially in the case of BMWs, where like the non white and black paints are
⏹️ ▶️ John like magic and have fairy dust in them and cost $10 bajillion. That’s that’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John way more important thing to worry about the color of than an iPad case. I bet cases like you could
⏹️ ▶️ John have two iPad cases in different colors. You could swap them like this is an intrinsic part of a super expensive thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that you’re, you know, investing a lot of your yourself and your image and your desires. And so it’s much
⏹️ ▶️ John worse for cars to have bad color selections.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, like I love this secure orange color. It’s it was available on the M5.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I chickened out because for the same for it’s like I would love this color for, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, a couple of days, a month. And then the rest of the time I’d be like, oh, like I, it would feel like too
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much. also just it’s a big car. It would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ridiculous. Like if I ever got like a small fun car again, I would be much more likely to pick a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco color like that on a small fun occasional driver, but not like my daily driver, my big four door sedan.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m probably going to just want that to be black most of the time or something close to black, like one of those dark rays or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because like for free for like your everyday car for the city, this thing you’re going to have for years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it’s you’re right like I I’m not willing to take a risk on some kind of like bright out there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco color I don’t know it I think it’s it’s made for people who will take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that risk but that’s not us
⏹️ ▶️ John I forgot one toaster thing before we move on to that with the actual toaster I reviewed the crumb
⏹️ ▶️ John tray doesn’t slide out horizontally
⏹️ ▶️ John like you know it you can’t just pull it straight out you have to tilt it and then get it out
⏹️ ▶️ John and of course when you tilt it there’s a chance the crumbs that are on the crumb tray will go skittering off the
⏹️ ▶️ John crumb tray into the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to take them out of. So
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey that is not a good design. That
⏹️ ▶️ Casey delightful. All right, Mark, are you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to ask me? So a couple more questions on the M4. Did you feel any slippage?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, was the car putting out more power than what you could reasonably put on the road?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t when I kept the car pointed in a straight line.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so as you and I learned at M school, you should really only be getting on the gas with any sort of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey urgency, and especially I learned at the M school coming off the skid pad, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey should only be getting on the gas with any sort of urgency when your wheels, your front wheels are pointed straight ahead.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And when that happened, when I did kind of stand on it, when the wheels were pointed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey straight ahead, I did not notice any slippage. But to be fair,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was giving it a whole bunch of throttle for very little blips at a time, typically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not in the lowest possible gear because this car is brand new. It’s not out
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of break in, etc. It’s not yours. It’s not mine. I have a feeling that if I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were to put myself in a situation where I wanted to move forward with the utmost of urgency,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then yes, it would probably slip. That being said, I did take a sweeping right hand 90 degree
⏹️ ▶️ Casey turn with some serious quickness and I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gave it some gas probably before I should have. And I did not notice
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the traction control cutting in by way of obvious loss of power. Like it was clear that I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not moving forward as quick as I wanted to, but it wasn’t one of those situations where all of a sudden the car hits a brick
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wall, so to speak. However, I did see the traction control light going berserk
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the dashboard. So it clearly was not happy with me that I was getting on the gas
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with urgency coming out of a 90 degree turn. And as much as I also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey did not want my 335 to be all-wheel drive, I would have preferred a rear-wheel drive one. The nice thing about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey having an all-wheel drive car is that I can, within reason,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just stand on the gas with the wheels pointed in any direction in just about any conditions,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I will move forward with a particular urgency. And that is not the case
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the M4, and certainly not the case in your car, as I realized when when I went harpooning
⏹️ ▶️ Casey off the course in the borrowed M5 at the M school. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exactly. And this is the reason why I’m very excited about the prospect of an all-wheel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco drive M5. A lot of the purists are really upset about this. I really want that because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these cars put out so much low-end torque ever since they’ve been turbocharged. They put it so much low-end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco torque that they can’t put the power to the road. They are too powerful to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just rear-wheel drive and to be able to use most of that power.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and you and I have gone back and forth about this, and I still find it a little weird,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the thought of having an all-wheel drive M car. But as I just said and as you just said, there are absolutely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey advantages to it without question.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, and Mercedes has them, Audi has them. This is not a new concept. Just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco BMW is the one holdout that refuses to make all-wheel drive versions of their super sport cars.
⏹️ ▶️ John Let me get Porsche and I think Lamborghini too, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Porsche does have the GT3. Porsche has the Carrera 4.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but I think Lamborghini has one. Isn’t the Aventador four-wheel drive?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Most Lamborghinis are four-wheel drive. The Turbo, to your point, was always four-wheel drive. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the GT3 was always, wasn’t it the turbo motor but without four-wheel drive? I’m probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey getting that wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ John Four-wheel drive, I don’t think, is necessary, as evidenced by all of the two-wheel drive supercars.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if you are, if your driving skills are not up to
⏹️ ▶️ John that task, Four-wheel drive is certainly more kind of point and shoot. Like, it is more forgiving. So for a consumer
⏹️ ▶️ John car, it’s probably a better trade-off to spend some weight making it four-wheel drive just so the
⏹️ ▶️ John average person can drive it without constantly breaking the rear end loose, have a higher chance of doing it. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ John they can break all four tires loose, and that’s hard to do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I completely agree. And as I’ve said numerous times in the past, perhaps my favorite point
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and shoot car that I’ve ever driven was my friend Brian’s Volkswagen R32.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it had a absolutely terrible dual clutch transmission. However,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you stood on the gas at any speed with the wheels pointed in any direction in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey any gear, and you were going to move with a quickness in the direction the car is pointing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that was nice. You didn’t have to think about it. You could be completely ham-fisted,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the car will sort itself out, which was pretty neat.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you won a GTR then. Yeah, kind of.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we have to address the steering question. So to introduce this topic,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of the recent 3 Series and M3s and M4s have electric power steering.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this is different from the old hydraulic systems, which everyone knew. And they’re more efficient.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The main complaint about electric power steering in general is that you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feel the road really anymore. And it kind of has to artificially simulate it to some degree.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’re not feeling the direct pressures that the tires are feeling the vibrations the tires
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are giving back to you and so it doesn’t feel natural and and you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot less feedback of what the tires are doing. Different EPS systems have come out over the last
⏹️ ▶️ Marco few years that all claim to be improving in this regard. They all claim to be better and more precise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and giving more feedback back to the driver. I have never heard anybody though say that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the that the EPS system in a car they drove was as good as hydraulic steering or better.
⏹️ ▶️ John There was one recent review on Car and Driver where they said that they preferred the electric steering over
⏹️ ▶️ John the one with the hydraulic. I tried to remember when you tweeted that and I couldn’t remember what the car was. It was a couple of months ago and
⏹️ ▶️ John actually in the most current issue of Car and Driver they have an entire multi-page spread talking about the different
⏹️ ▶️ John kinds of electronic assist for power steering. I haven’t read it yet but I wish I could remember what that car was. But
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s basically, what you’re saying is right in generalities but I think there was at least one in
⏹️ ▶️ John one car comparison. said this one even though this one has electric steering it has better feeling steering than the other one that has hydraulic
⏹️ ▶️ John but that is we’re just getting to the point now where I think very few of the very latest
⏹️ ▶️ John electronic systems start to approach that of the hydraulic system
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and for it and the one in in tips 3 series GT that one is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really not good I that is that is the biggest thing that would keep me from buying a current 3
⏹️ ▶️ Marco series is I really really hate the current 3-series EPS. It’s really bad. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does not… it feels incredibly just numb and disconnected. It does not feel natural.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It… this isn’t… this isn’t just a sports car driver complaint.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, every driver can feel the difference in this, and a lot of people don’t like it, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it doesn’t feel like… it doesn’t feel like previous cars. Like, it has a very different feel and the way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it feeds back, and it’s generally not… it doesn’t feel the way you expect a steering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wheel to feel and use. So all that is to say, so the EPS system in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the new M3 and M4 is allegedly supposed to be a good one. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the reviews on it have been generally positive, but slightly mixed. Casey,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what did you think of it?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So the most clear and direct way for me to answer this question is to tell you I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t think about it until Keith asked me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s good. That’s similar to when you asked me about how the engine noise simulation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was in the M5. I said the same thing, which is like, when I was driving it, I didn’t even notice or think about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it until the end of the trip when I remembered, oh, yeah, it has fake engine noise.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I haven’t noticed it this whole time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. So to be clear, I took the car out on surface
⏹️ ▶️ Casey roads. So I was accelerating from almost not moving to probably a smidge
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more than legal speeds Very very quickly, but I wasn’t exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know going around a track or anything like that Furthermore, you know I was getting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey off the gas quickly and with regard to turns there were always cars in front of me So the best I could do is slow
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up a bit and then take the turn at probably You know either the speed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey limit or a hair above it And I wish I could tell you that I’m just saying that so don’t get myself in trouble
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But that really was the case so in other words. I didn’t get the chance to like really beat on the car are.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I didn’t notice any issues with the steering. I thought it felt heavy, which isn’t by necessity
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a bad thing, especially on a sports car like that. I don’t recall the specifics
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of what steering mode it was in. I know I was in the most fierce
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gear shift on the DCT. There’s a term for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, so you were in S3, and then whether you were in Comfort
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or Sport or Sport Plus on the steering is a different story. Generally, the pro move is Sport Plus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on everything except steering, where you put that in comfort.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right, and what I did end up doing very briefly toward the end of the trip is hitting the M button. But I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey notice any discernible difference in the way the steering felt. But I can’t stress enough
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you should take this with two silos full of salt, because I was in the car
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for maybe 10 minutes or something like that. And again, it was on surface roads, suburban roads. It was not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a particularly wonderful test. But I didn’t notice it. The one thing I did notice, however, speaking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the gearbox was, man, when you have that thing on S3 or whatever the most furious
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shifting mode is, that thing shifts hard, like surprisingly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hard. Not to the point that I would say it was like uncomfortable, but it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey quick and it was rough. There was no slippage whatsoever. Additionally,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve programmed myself over the years that when I’m driving a car that has only two pedals,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I come off the brake, it will roll forward. That doesn’t happen in these cars.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, that’s why I like DCTs, because they behave like sticks.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But that’s so, like, I’m not saying it’s bad. And I think once I got used to it, I would absolutely prefer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. But having driven my car like two hours prior to come to work, and then my friend
⏹️ ▶️ Casey met me at work, we just drove around real quick, to go from that, from my car,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which, you know, is a normal clutched car, to this car, which, because I see only two pedals,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think of as an automatic. When I took my foot off the brake,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m waiting for it to creep and it didn’t. And it, and it took me a second to realize what the crap was going on. At first I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thought I was in neutral, but Hey, but, um, but I, it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as soon as I realized, oh, wait, this is a DCT car. It’s probably not, you know, disengaging the clutch, re-engaging the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clutch. I always get that backwards, but it’s not, you know, manipulating the clutch until I give it a little bit of gas.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it was reasonably smooth. It did stop and go traffic kind of speeds,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just like your car is. I mean, this is nothing that particularly different. Might even be the same box. It very well could be.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was seven speed. Is yours a seven speed? Yeah. Oh, OK. But yeah, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey love the car. I thought it was excellent. As time goes on,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I still think if I were to hypothetically buy an M3 tomorrow, I would take
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the six MT, you know, give me the clutch gear, a checkbox. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that being said, if what’s the Simpsons line? You know, I, for one, welcome our
⏹️ ▶️ Casey DCT future DCT overlords or whatever it is. I’m sorry, John. I’m sure I butchered that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, totally. That was that was part of that quote, wasn’t it? Because it was like ants coming in to take over the world
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or something. Anyway, that was the sign behind him. Just go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey OK. So the point being, If if if my future is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dual clutch transmissions because the traditional clutch transmission goes away,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ll be sad, but I think I’ll be OK overall. I think it’ll I think it’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John You should get ready for one one pedal driving. I wish I had a chance to try that. I was a passenger
⏹️ ▶️ John when someone was doing that. But that that is the future that just as you get used to dual clutch transmissions,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s going to be one pedal driving.
⏹️ ▶️ John talking about like a Tesla. You can basically drive the car with one pedal in most conditions if you’re careful because
⏹️ ▶️ John not only does, you know, not… it doesn’t creep forward like an automatic, but
⏹️ ▶️ John when you take your foot off the gas it acts like it’s braking. Like as you as you let up on the
⏹️ ▶️ John accelerator it goes into regenerative braking and everything, so it’s like… so you can literally drive it
⏹️ ▶️ John with one foot most of the time and you only need to actually use the brake brakes that pinch little discs inside
⏹️ ▶️ John the wheels for stopping, you know, not just emergency stopping, but stopping
⏹️ ▶️ John faster than you would normally want to stop probably.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But that’s been true for as long as the Jeep Wrangler has been around, because I assure you, you put a Jeep Wrangler at 60, 70, 80 miles
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an hour at highway speeds, you take your foot off the gas and that box is going to stop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or it’s going to roll over and explode.
⏹️ ▶️ John not talking about like, yeah, you get a minivan. The wind resistance will slow you down. But yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Did you see, by the way, that Elon Musk tweeted like a week or two ago that they were increasing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the zero to 60 time of, I believe, the P85 by doing an over the air update? Did you see
⏹️ ▶️ John the videos of people’s reactions as passengers?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey god. That was fantastic.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, because that’s seriously fast. I mean, it’s what, 3.2 seconds, 3.1 now? I think the most shocking thing about it
⏹️ ▶️ John is that it feels more like an amusement ride, because it’s not accompanied
⏹️ ▶️ John by, first of all, the torque curve is different than on any kind of gas engine. The second is it’s not accompanied
⏹️ ▶️ John by any clamor, any sort of roaring engine or any of the car noises. So
⏹️ ▶️ John the best analogy I can think of is those amusement park rides that have a thing that accelerates
⏹️ ▶️ John the entire roller coaster from a dead stop up to high speed. And it’s not an engine. You know, it’s something else. It’s just kind of like,
⏹️ ▶️ John vroom. And so, yeah, it would seem like it would be shocking. But I would prefer the
⏹️ ▶️ John sound of an engine in a sporty car.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and that’s like, the Tesla, especially with the P85D now, the all-wheel drive crazy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one, I’m really, I would love to drive one of those. Just, I’ve never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco driven a Tesla. I’m curious if I’m gonna drive one. That’s the one I want to drive, of course, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m just I would love to try that out sometime It’s not really possible to because like they like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is it still the case where it’s test drive when you have to give them five Grand to get on the waiting list. I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have heard that story But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway, so I I am really curious to drive that just to see how it is How it compares to like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a really sporty gas car Ultimately though like I totally get the appeal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like keeping your sporting needs basic and and to that end I was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I spent a lot of time in the couch this week because I’ve been really sick and so I started looking into the Porsche
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cayman and so the GT4 was announced today right or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so but even I actually been looking at Cayman stuff a couple days ago because they meant to have it on that top gear
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing and and I know I know our friend Matt Panzerino likes it and a bunch of our
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bunch of our car friends think well of the Porsche Cayman Porsche, Porsche? What am I supposed to be saying here? Porsche.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’ll find out if you buy one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I’ve also never driven a mid-engine car. I think if I was going to buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a small fun car again, which I probably shouldn’t because last time it was a pain in the ass, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I was going to buy a small fun car again, I think what I would buy would be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the previous generation of Cayman. And I think even just the S, not like the super
⏹️ ▶️ Marco crazy gts whatever i don’t know much about their lineups and how the differentiation goes but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what i would want would be a six speed with hydraulic power steering and a relatively
⏹️ ▶️ Marco simple lightweight car with a good amount of power and i think the the like 2010 to 2012
⏹️ ▶️ Marco came in s is that like i think if you’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a small sporty fun car going like the purest route with just rear
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wheel drive six speed mid engine. I think that’s a really powerful combination. That’s why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone loves it so much. I think I think that would be the way to go. Not like super technical
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like like the new M3 M4 not even really the new modern came ins that are that have like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know the EPS they have more advanced everything more you know more expensive of course
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but just like everything more electronic more advanced like just the old style just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco six speed, a real physical parking brake. You know, like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s a lot of appeal to that, I think. What would you guys do?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. That’s a tough call. On paper, that’s probably the right answer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve always fancied an S2000, which is, you know, lower class than what you’re talking about, but I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey always liked them. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John still very widely regarded, though. That is a Marco sized car.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, I can’t buy an S2000, neither can you, Casey. Have you ever tried to sit in one? I’ve driven one. Like they’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John size for us there. It’s like being in a car, a half size too small for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you. That’s very true. But I do like them. I, you know, I wasn’t prepared for this question. I’d have to think about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. You know, the, I have a few friends, um, like the guy who owned the R 32.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey He still has an E 36 M three, which with not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot of work can be a phenomenal track car or just that sort
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of car. If, even if you don’t, you know, turn it into a track queen, just With a little bit of work it can be reasonably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey quick and And just handle unbelievably well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, there’s something to be said for the Toyota Beru They’re absurdly slow woefully
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slow like Almost so slow that I wouldn’t ever be able to drive one slow
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what I was gonna say about even his choice of the Cayman like it’s kind of weird for your fun car to be slower
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the car seat in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. That’s a good point. Yeah In practice, I would probably never actually get another car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I don’t like having multiple cars. I like having one good all-arounder
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rather than having family, boring car, and small fun car. I’d much rather have the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one all-arounder. Especially if they make an all-wheel drive version of the M5, then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s it. That’s it. Unless… What I’m basically hedging against is if they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ruin everything. So like you know if they bring in the new EPS system the next generation m5
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which they will almost certainly do you know do I have to have a terrible EPS system to get this fun
⏹️ ▶️ Marco car That’s all will drive like if so it would be a lot less satisfying to me pop in most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco likely So I’m always worried that like that all the new stuff is gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ruin everything I liked about the old stuff So I better get get an old one quickly and you know be able to save it for forever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Which of course doesn’t really work.
⏹️ ▶️ John I put the picture of the Cayman that I thought Marco was talking about I it’s just the kind of weird to me too But like
⏹️ ▶️ John the model I think the Cayman is a good idea like in that sort of range
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s you know, it’s the the simple mid-engine sort of pure sports car thing
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re just ridiculously expensive. But the the one I would get is the generation I don’t know if
⏹️ ▶️ John this is like the first generation that took the rear little spoiler thing and pulled it into
⏹️ ▶️ John the headlights as you can see in that picture, like where that little thing is sticking out of the end
⏹️ ▶️ John of the car, and it actually goes into the headlights, and it’s also like a little ridge on the headlights themselves. The first generation
⏹️ ▶️ John they did that, that’s the one I would get. I think that’s the one Marco was talking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I read this good article on Jalopnik. I just put it in the show notes, titled, how much better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the new Porsche Cayman than the old one? And they compare the new one, which is the model 981, versus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the old one, which is the model 987. yes the numbers go backwards it’s weird
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that’s what I’m talking about the 987 is the one that actually like the way they’re describing it and how it looks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and how simple and traditional it is that appeals to me whereas the new one really
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t oh so you want the one where the little the spoiler does not go into the headlights maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah that’s that’s the black one that’s the black one in this article I think yeah I don’t I don’t like how that one looks quite as much
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know about the other attributes of it I think you did the But either one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do you mean the taillights?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s the taillights.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, that makes a lot more sense. Yeah
⏹️ ▶️ John I was also confused for a second there was I saying headlights the whole time? Yes I’m looking at the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the car I mean, I don’t think the back of either of them look very good to be honest
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m just saying like this is this is just how I’m choosing to identify the generate when they redid the styling for the new
⏹️ ▶️ John generation That is the most distinguishing feature of the easiest way to tell the new one from the old one because you could tell from
⏹️ ▶️ John the You can tell from the whole car, right? But the easiest way to say is, just look at the taillights. Does the spoiler
⏹️ ▶️ John go into them, or does it not?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, and the one I like is the older one, where the spoiler does not go into the taillights. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t like the styling of that one as much. Not that I love the spoiler going into the taillights, but that’s, again,
⏹️ ▶️ John just my signifier for the overall car. But I don’t know. It’s a test-drive. But they’re both good choices. But like I said, it
⏹️ ▶️ John would be weird to buy. This isn’t small enough and
⏹️ ▶️ John fun enough to be an excuse. if you wanted to get something like, that’s more like a go-kart,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you know, I don’t know if you’re gonna say Ariel, Adam, but because I think that actually is faster than your M5. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John very much so. Because there’s not really a car there. I know, but I’m just saying, like, it’s just like an engine and a seat.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you’re going to get something slower than your M5, it should be significantly lighter, significantly
⏹️ ▶️ John smaller, significantly different experience. Whereas I think the Cayman starts to push up into like, well, it is
⏹️ ▶️ John actually kind of luxurious inside, and it is actually not as light as, you know, even something
⏹️ ▶️ John like, obviously, the Ariel Atom. But I think the-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Alpha 4C is interesting, right? But all the reviews say that it’s a lot of fun, but that the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco interior really sucks.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s also ugly as sin.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it has its bad days.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I would test drive the Caymans and see how much fun you think it is and how much more tossable
⏹️ ▶️ John and small and nimble it feels. Because it’s also a pretty wide car, too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, again, the reality is I’m not really looking to buy another car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right now. I’m perfectly happy with the setup I have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now. Well, that actually begs one of the questions I wanted to ask you, which is, you are 2 3rds of the way through
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your lease, is that right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, yeah. I mean, I got to pick out something new this winter, this coming winter, in almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a year, or decide to buy this one out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So sitting here now, and obviously a lot can change in a year, even in the car industry,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what do you think you would do?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve said in the past, and I will continue say that if I had to replace my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco car today for whatever reason, if it’s like stolen or something, if I had to replace it today, I would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get basically the exact same thing. I would tweak some of the options, but I would get basically the exact same car.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love this car. I don’t have any reason to look at anything else.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Every other car I’ve ever owned, all of them, even the 1M, every other car I’ve ever owned,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I’ve owned it, I’ve looked at other cars and been like, I would really like that instead or I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would like to upgrade to that. There was always something about it that really… something about every car I’ve owned, there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was always something about it that I wasn’t really happy with. With this car, that’s not the case. This is the first time and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, God, it better be, right? This is the first time where I have no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco major complaints. I even have very few minor complaints. My current idea
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is absent any new information about when an all-wheel-drive version might become available,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would probably just get another one just like it, except, you know, change a couple the options but that’s really it like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I I don’t I don’t I’m not motivated at all to to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look around at other models and you know change up the situation here it’s just an it’s a it’s a freaking amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco car it’s it’s perfect in every way that I really need it to be and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even the all-wheel drive like I don’t really need the all-wheel drive I’m doing fine without it I should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably just buy this one out. The M cars used and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maintaining an M car out of warranty is not a great use of money.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I remember looking into getting an extended service plan for my car.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I talked to the BMW dealer about it. And they had a really helpful
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whiteboard sitting on a chair in the finance manager’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey office. And it was a plot, if you will, I guess, a table of here’s all the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey regular maintenance services one would need, you know, brakes, oil,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clutch, etc, etc, etc. And, and I remember vividly that for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey each of these line items, and I’m making up numbers now, it would say oil $150, M 300 clutch, $2,000, M 4000, or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whatever the numbers may be. And it was in saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John so a new feature they have in car and driver these days is showing you used cars, how much
⏹️ ▶️ John they’ve come down in price, and what things to look out for. Like, oh, in this car, the struts always crack, and check
⏹️ ▶️ John for this, and check that it doesn’t have, you know. And so the one in the back of the most recent issue was a
⏹️ ▶️ John Ferrari 355. And they give kind of the maintenance numbers of
⏹️ ▶️ John what you can expect to pay. Those are
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the worst. For
⏹️ ▶️ John that thing. So you have BMW, then you have the M car. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John you have these super It’s just like another another doubling of the price of
⏹️ ▶️ John everything forget about oil changes everything But this is just as ridiculous as you might think then it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, the tires are expensive fun. These tires last, you know 5,000 miles there 700
⏹️ ▶️ John bucks each whatever. It’s a high-performance tire. You understand that by the way You can’t get them changed on regular things because regular tire
⏹️ ▶️ John changing equipment will damage the magnesium wheels
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco so you have to come
⏹️ ▶️ John done just it’s a Ferrari dealer and And everything cost a million dollars. And
⏹️ ▶️ John the one that really got me is, they were talking to an owner, how much money should you set aside for this, what is it now, 10, 15-year-old
⏹️ ▶️ John car, 20? I don’t even want to know how old it is. How much money should you set aside for yearly maintenance?
⏹️ ▶️ John He said, just set aside $5,000 a year. And you’re like, oh, that’s not so bad, I guess, $5,000 a year.
⏹️ ▶️ John But then one of the line items at the bottom was, every three years, you need to change the timing belt, and it’s $7,000. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John god. Because they have to pull the whole engine out of the car.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey To change the timing
⏹️ ▶️ John belt? Yes, every three years. And by the way, some of them had brass valves. And if they had
⏹️ ▶️ John brass valves, that caused the manifolds to overheat. And those were like $900 each. And it was
⏹️ ▶️ John like, nothing on this car is under $500. Well, the floor mats are always over $500.
⏹️ ▶️ John And every three years, seven grand thing, in addition to the five grand you set aside per year for an
⏹️ ▶️ John ancient Ferrari. So you’re going to have a lot of money on one of these cars.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and the supercars. Like, you’re not getting 100,000 miles out of that clutch. Oh, yeah. So the wheels, like the front
⏹️ ▶️ John wheels, will last 15,000. The back wheels will last about 5,000. And each wheel is $700. And so enjoy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I mean, M cars are not nearly that bad. They’re much closer to regular cars.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you don’t have to pull the engine out of the car to do maintenance on it. Like, that’s the thing with the mid-engine cars. That’s where you have to look out for the Cayman.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a lot of things that a lot of regular maintenance does have a
⏹️ ▶️ John lot more labor, just because it’s so damn hard to get at the engine. Yeah. We should talk about
⏹️ ▶️ John my car now before we go.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right. Bring us back down to earth.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I mean my Ferrari. Oh.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Eyes on the prize
⏹️ ▶️ John here. So yeah, your turbo Ferrari. What is this? My car is always the sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of entry level mid-engine Ferrari. And it started with a 348, and I’ve sort of followed it through
⏹️ ▶️ John the whole range of things as it’s gone with threes and changing to fours and so on and so forth. And as I
⏹️ ▶️ John mentioned to Drance on Twitter, Every time they introduce a new one, starting from
⏹️ ▶️ John the 348, and the 335 comes out, the 360, the 430, like the whole way up the chain, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John always something weird about the styling of the car that when I first go and I see it, I go, ooh, what did they do
⏹️ ▶️ John with whatever it is? And then it always ends up growing on me. And so here is the Ferrari 488,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is replacing the 458. It looks a lot like a 458, just like the, you know, it’s less
⏹️ ▶️ John of a departure than the 458 was from the 430. But it’s got some weird stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John in it. Did you, here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honestly, this looks pretty good to me. I’m looking at the Wired article on it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, so the shape of the car is great. I have no qualms about the overall shape of the car. That’s why I always
⏹️ ▶️ John like this car. That’s why I like it better than the front engine, the current thing is the F12 and the 599.
⏹️ ▶️ John I like it better than the supercars, like the F50, F40, LaFerrari, because
⏹️ ▶️ John they always kind of look alien. This is the car I like because it’s the balance between, you know, I like
⏹️ ▶️ John the mid-engine shape, and I like the fact that it’s not super duper exotical, I do always
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of admire the super top-end Ferrari cars, which is why I want to see LaFerrari on Top Gear
⏹️ ▶️ John But the weird aspect on this one I think is the little the little hip inlet treatment
⏹️ ▶️ John and that seems weird to me and again these cars Always look so different in person sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John for the better sometimes for the worse So I think I’ll have to wait until I see one of these in person But I do really like
⏹️ ▶️ John this overall shape I think I like the overall shape even better than the 458 But I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John about those little shoulder in let the hip in let whatever you want to call above the rear wheels
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it works for me and and I and overall the front end and the back end I think are both very good as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say overall. This is one of the better-looking Ferraris I’ve seen in the last decade Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I I have not liked most of the way they the way most of them look I most of them to me have looked either bland
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or completely ridiculous and this one I think kind of falls in the middle like it looks like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco normal nice fast car And it has some some strong accents, but it doesn’t look totally ridiculous
⏹️ ▶️ John I would agree It’s going a little bit into Lamborghini territory where it starts to look more masculine
⏹️ ▶️ John than feminine, you know and So like that’s what I’ve always loved about the Ferrari cars is they always
⏹️ ▶️ John are kind of like smooth and nicely Sculpted and they don’t do the thing where they want to feel they feel like that look like a transformer,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? That’s why you know Little kids bedrooms that Lamborghinis on the wall because they look like crazy
⏹️ ▶️ John They look like, you know, a Gillette Razor handle,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco right? They’re always, you know, crazy
⏹️ ▶️ John fins and slats and stuff like that, whereas the Ferrari ones were always much more elegant. Like even if you just look
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you know, the Testarossa or the 348, yeah, they have the whole side strakes and everything, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a more elegant treatment than, you know, like the Aventador, which totally looks like a Transformer, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And this one has a little element of the sort of techno-futurist Transformer
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of things, even more than I think the LaFerrari does. Ferrari is a little bit smoother than this. But the
⏹️ ▶️ John overall shape and proportions, where the wheels are, where the overall shape of the car, if you just draped the whole car and
⏹️ ▶️ John covered all the inlets, I really do like that. I like how they’ve refined the front end of it. Look now,
⏹️ ▶️ John the turbo engine, that’s another one of those end of the era, like when they got rid
⏹️ ▶️ John of the big ball shifter with the metal gate on it, right? You know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the time comes and goes. And I understand, can’t deny the turbo.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I assume if you look at the things that Ferrari concentrates on
⏹️ ▶️ John in its cars, it seems one of the things they’re not willing to compromise thus far is that it has to sound
⏹️ ▶️ John like a Ferrari. And I can imagine quite a lot of the things Ferrari does go towards. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John but this sounds better, right? Cause that’s part of the whole experience of owning the car.
⏹️ ▶️ John The turbo is going to change how the car sounds, but I’m hoping if any manufacturer is going to have
⏹️ ▶️ John a interesting, nice stirring engine noise from an engine with a turbo,
⏹️ ▶️ John Ferrari will figure out a way to do it, but this may be the end of that sound
⏹️ ▶️ John I love to hear that makes my head turn whenever I’m driving around here. I can pick it out from a mile away, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the sound of a Ferrari engine, naturally aspirated V8 just revving up some crazy person,
⏹️ ▶️ John whether they’re behind me, in front of me, or in oncoming traffic, I always hear it before I see it, And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the sound I want when I get mine, which will never actually happen
⏹️ ▶️ John Buy me a separate house that I can keep my Ferrari
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John take down the damn tree
⏹️ ▶️ John and a staff to uh to maintain it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, you gotta like you gotta like also buy a dealer to put next to your house
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, because you can’t just take it to anybody. Yeah, and everything cost everything cost a bazillion dollars That’s why people don’t drive these friggin things
⏹️ ▶️ John like don’t you realize if I drive it? I’m getting inching closer to the next scheduled 10 grand maintenance on my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s like like you can take it to the grocery store, and that’s like you know total cost of ownership of a thousand dollars For
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that trip. You know it’s crazy.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s it’s as consumable like everything in it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the whole car Yeah, I mean, you know every car is consumable, but they take it to another level in the supercar
⏹️ ▶️ John like the wheels are like well. You know they’re they’re gonna be gone shortly and
⏹️ ▶️ John each wheel is super expensive I wonder if you can get a Ferrari like will they sell it to you with like all-season
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe a cargo net for the Hood trunk wherever that is is there even any cargo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco space? Yeah, the front it be but they’ve scooped it down to make these big like you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like like a Viper almost he’s big like
⏹️ ▶️ John Done for error reasons. I’m sure there’s a fitted set of luggage you can buy another 10 grand Every
⏹️ ▶️ John supercar has a fitted leather luggage that goes into the little cubbies that they give you for…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh god. This is ultimately why I don’t fantasize about owning a supercar, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco none of that sounds appealing to me at all. I thought it was even too annoying to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 1M in the 3 Series.
⏹️ ▶️ John But this would be your fun car. If you were wanting to get a fun runabout car, this
⏹️ ▶️ John would not feel intimidated by
⏹️ ▶️ John It would be like, yeah, the M5 is my regular kind of boring car. And then when
⏹️ ▶️ John I want to have fun, I hop in this, and I only do that, like, I put 500 miles on it a year. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but see, the whole reason why I like the M5 is because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is a really amped up version of a normal family sedan.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so my thing is, I don’t really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do anything unique or fun with my cars. I don’t go to tracks. I’m not like driving along
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mountain roads or anything, for the most part. I’m doing very boring things. I’m driving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around the suburbs going grocery shopping.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but but even just doing boring things in this would be different than doing boring things in your M5.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The reason I like the M5 is because I my my life is doing extremely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco boring things in a way that’s really fun to me. And so that like the M5 is is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love doing boring things in that car. If I had like a supercar like the Ferrari
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would I would first of all feel Infinite stress about
⏹️ ▶️ John it. This Ferrari is not really a supercar the law Ferrari is the super car I know they want to call it a hyper
⏹️ ▶️ John car and that these are supercars But I think we should not allow this name inflation to take place
⏹️ ▶️ John the entry-level Ferrari If I guess you’re gonna call it California the entry
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this like 240 grand or something? I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know, but it’s not I would say this is this is not a super car. I beg to
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I don’t know about that John the McLaren put it this way the McLaren p1 is a supercar the
⏹️ ▶️ John mp12 whatever C thing is not a super
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not a supercar with p1 is
⏹️ ▶️ John Like the top of the line of the supercars they kept trying to change the name of like oh those are hypercars What is every
⏹️ ▶️ John Ferrari supercar no? I don’t think I buy your argument anyway. Yes, it’s very expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John But like it’s the same thing as like if you got a convertible like if you got a convertible you get a convertible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I can’t. I’m bald and I burn easily.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know, but like that would be a different driving experience. Like the experience of driving is even if you drive it in the same way, the
⏹️ ▶️ John sensations and sounds of driving the exact same distance and speed in this car would be so different, not
⏹️ ▶️ John to mention the whole idea of like the thing that you like, the view out of this thing and the view behind this thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And like, just it’s a different experience driving this car than it is driving something. It
⏹️ ▶️ John feels like a different type of, you know, like that’s what you’re looking for.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Is there a view behind you? Can you see anything out the rear? Barely,
⏹️ ▶️ John but that’s that’s part of the experience I get it will feel different and it’s kind of the same way you had the
⏹️ ▶️ John the 1m like that That it’s giving you a different experience That’s why like I think a super cheap convertible
⏹️ ▶️ John anything would be different enough from your m5 that you may consider it the fun car And then you could say well yes, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John half the speed of my m5, but it’s a convertible that makes it very different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s fair This is like that’s why like you know like like the the slightly older Cayman is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an interesting option to me because so it’s smaller lighter mid-engined lower whereas something like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I think the problem like when I had the 1m the problem was I never wanted to drive 328 anymore like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it what I didn’t I couldn’t balance it like I only wanted to drive the 1m but because I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know family obligations and space reasons and I was stressed out about ever getting a single little scratch on it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it was this irreplaceable unique limited edition car like it stressed me out too much to own it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I it was always kind of a struggle to balance that that’s why I I think my my ultimate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco best choice is to just keep buying really nice four-door sedans Plus I never like sitting like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically on the ground
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you already are on the ground. No
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talking about Marcos height know any any of these include including most likely the Caymans You know any of these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you’re basically sitting on the street
⏹️ ▶️ John You just get to get a phone book and you can sit on this one books delivered to your house now you have a reason to