142: Hateful Game of Frogger
05 Nov 2015Experiences with the Apple TV so far, the best toaster yet, and an after-show Neutral.
Episode Description:
- Follow-out*:
- Marco and _David Smith's new show, Under the Radar
- Follow-up:
- Facebook's ineptitude
- Spotlight indexing for NAS drives
- Why do Google Play Music and Stitcher re-host podcasts?
- Apple TV
- Post show:
- Follow-up on TV audio and sound bars
- Casey reads the manual for Marco's car
Sponsored by:
- Cards Against Humanity: A free party game for horrible people.
- Harry's: An exceptional shave at a fraction of the price. Use code ATP for $5 off your first purchase.
- Backblaze: Online backup for $5/month. Native. Unlimited. Unthrottled. Uncomplicated.
* This use of the term "follow-out" has not been approved by John Siracusa and does not constitute an endorsement of the phrase.
Chapters
- Introduction
- Under the Radar
- Follow-up: Facebook audio bug
- Follow-up: Spotlight indexing NAS
- Why Google re-hosts podcast files
- Sponsor: Cards Against Humanity
- Apple TV experiences so far
- Sponsor: Harry’s
- More thoughts on Apple TV
- Sponsor: Backblaze
- Apple TV gaming
- Post-show: TV audio
- Post-show: Neutral
Introduction
⏹️ ▶️ John at the bottom of my window with Slack, you know, the little, like the column of icons, I’m pretty much almost full there. Like all
⏹️ ▶️ John the different Slacks you’re on? Yep.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m in three Destiny Slacks alone. Ha! Just for Destiny. Even before you drove, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John podcast, tech, friend, my work has one now. I think my work has multiple
⏹️ ▶️ John ones, but only in one of them. Slack proliferation is a thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you aren’t in all the ones for work, but you are in multiple Destiny Slacks?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep. I’m not in all the Destiny Slacks that exist, I’m just, yeah, people can get their acts together with
⏹️ ▶️ John the Destiny Slacks.
Under the Radar
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so we want to actually talk about something that’s relevant tonight.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not really what is relevant? Yeah Important follow-up. That’s not really follow up. I guess we could even call
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it follow out You have a new show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John No, we couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Yeah, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I started a new developer podcast with our friend underscore David Smith Who is the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the app developer and podcast indexer extraordinaire? He and I talked about it last summer at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco WBD. So this summer at WBC I talked about doing it and then just you know life got in the way for both of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco us and now we finally got it together and are doing it and we published our first episode today
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so so far it’s doing well check it out it’s called under the radar and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically you know he had his show developing perspective and he is now basically ended it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do this this is kind of the successor to that I back in the day did build and analyze
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so this is kind of the combination of those two shows it is kind of like the successor to build and analyze
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and developing perspective, it’s really a developer-focused show. This show is kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more general Apple tech world. That show is really developers, and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco limited to only 30 minutes. So it’s a quick, you know, 30 minutes a week, so it’s not too
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time-costly to subscribe, so go check it out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s excellent. It’s for developers, developers, developers. So at this point,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is unequivocal that all of us have shows on Real AFM.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, I know you had top four before this. And so this is…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What point do we join Relay? I mean, at this point, we’re pretty much there. People have asked.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honestly, it’s worth talking about briefly, if anybody actually cares about the answer. The answer basically is that we didn’t start on Relay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there’s not real… As much as we love Relay, we don’t really have a lot of reason
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to move ATP there, because it’s already going on its own. It’s already independent. We already have our
⏹️ ▶️ Marco own ad sales and hosting and everything set up already, so there’s just not much reason to move it in. But starting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a new show, David and I, we didn’t even question. Of course, we’re going to start it on Relay, just because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s—and I’ve talked about podcast networks before, and I’ve been against them in certain ways and for them in certain others.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the reality is a podcast network is a trade-off. You lose control, you lose
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of the money, and you lose some of the branding. But what you get is you have to do a lot less work to make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the shows. And so depending on what you need the show to do and what your priorities are and how much time you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have, that can determine kind of where you fall on that. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for this new show, given where we were, we decided a network was the right move for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco our needs right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That makes sense. And folks at Relay are really awesome. And they’re all good friends of ours.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We really enjoy them. So yep, I mean, I think if ATP were to start tomorrow, it probably would be on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Relay. But at this point, don’t fix what ain’t broke. Yep. All right, so now that we’re done
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with follow-out, asterisk not hierarchically approved, let’s do some follow-up.
Follow-up: Facebook audio bug
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Somebody wrote in, Dusto, that’s got to be pronounced wrong because there’s a fancy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey strike through the O. Masterson wrote in to us. It’s Dust Zero. Dust Zero,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s true. That is actually how I write zeros. Anyways, this individual said, another thing about the Facebook
⏹️ ▶️ Casey app thing, it auto-plays videos in your timeline and even muted videos take over iOS’s audio.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is, if you remember, because Facebook claims that, oh, it was just an accidental bug
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that we had videos that played and never released the audio session and that’s why
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we were backgrounded for forever. That still strikes me as a little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey weird and a little aggressive for them to autoplay videos, but I don’t know. It seems like everyone’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of starting to believe that this is really their ineptitude and not nefarious actions. Is that what the going theory
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, the fact that they autoplay, that was brought up by a couple of people. I just put this one in there because like, like, hey, I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John watch a video on the Facebook app and it’s still eating my battery. Well you didn’t probably watch
⏹️ ▶️ John a video, as in intentionally tap on a little play button, but if you just launch Facebook apparently and scroll through
⏹️ ▶️ John your timeline it, you know, it considers it will start playing it, it will grab the audio session
⏹️ ▶️ John even if, I guess, even if you just scroll past it or whatever. So a lot of people are sort of unknowingly
⏹️ ▶️ John implicitly playing videos merely by launching the app and scrolling through a timeline, Which would further explain why,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, this audio session bug thing is biting lots of people, even people who
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have any recollection of ever watching a video.
Follow-up: Spotlight indexing NAS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Jeff Strobel wrote in and told us that he knows how to have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Spotlight index his Synology 1815+. I don’t remember which one of us was talking about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that because it wasn’t me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was. Yeah, because I was saying how one of the reasons why I like Direct Attached or iSCSI over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco regular network shares is that regular network shares don’t have the Spotlight integration,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they don’t have system integration, and I just hate how slow it is to connect to and browse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco network shares still in 2015 even over wired gigabit networks.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. So Jeff has the appropriate commands that are sitting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in our show notes which are not helpful to the listeners and reading this out will also be not helpful so we will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey link to something some way somehow that explains this.
⏹️ ▶️ John A fascinating question that answers this. I remember doing it back when Spotlight was first introduced like one of the bragging rights is oh we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John even index your network. This was back in the AFP days. We’ll even index your network shares.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know what the status of that is, like if it doesn’t do it by default anymore or whatever, but it’s bottom
⏹️ ▶️ John line is this command line tools where you can force it to. There’s the mdutil command line and the mdimport command line. If you just
⏹️ ▶️ John read the man pages for them, you can figure it out. We’ll try to put a link to the stack exchange question
⏹️ ▶️ John in the show notes so you can follow through it and figure out how to enable it yourself. I don’t know what
⏹️ ▶️ John it will be like. I’m not even sure how it keeps up keeps track of what has been updated there. Does it periodically rescan the whole
⏹️ ▶️ John drive? anyway. Maybe you just have to run it on a schedule to rescan the drive,
⏹️ ▶️ John but if this is something you want to do, you can try it.
Why Google re-hosts podcast files
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, and Rich Knight wrote in to ask us some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey questions about Google and Stitcher. He says, it seems that the biggest issue that you guys have with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey these apps applies equally to Google and Stitcher is that they rehost your files. That impacts your stats
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and you lose control over quality, making changes, etc. My question is, why do they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bother? Let’s imagine Google built the exact same app but without rehosting. If they want to inject ads
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the beginning or at the end, they can still do it client side. interesting things like full-text search
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that John had mentioned, by simply downloading your file once to index it, it wouldn’t tick off the publishers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who would still have control over their files and download stats, bandwidth costs shift back to the publishers,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey etc., etc., etc. This is all good for them. So what’s the big benefit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of rehosting in the first place?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Douglas Goldstein So this is again the podcast thing specifically, Google’s podcast thing with Google Play
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Music they announced and Stitcher the podcast thing, people’s podcast files before serving them and then therefore
⏹️ ▶️ Marco requiring publisher approval and denying publisher stats and everything else. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco main benefits are really, it comes down to control and consistency. If
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you re-host the files yourself as the intermediary service provider, you can first of all, you can guarantee that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they will be there and they will load quickly. Because if you just rely, you know, Overcast doesn’t work the way,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Overcast and most podcast apps, they get the files directly from the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco publisher’s server, which could be a terrible little web hosting box, it could be a nice CDN,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it could be something very far away or very geographically close. So there’s a wide variety
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in transfer speeds, download speeds for podcast files that just come directly from publishers. So if you’re running a service
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like Google Play Music or Stitcher, you want some kind of big integrated experience, you don’t want to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco take the risk of wondering whether someone else a server will actually be able to serve you the file
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the moment that that user requests it. So that that’s the biggest reason and and you don’t know how quickly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they will serve it to. So that’s the biggest reason why they want to do this. There’s also you know there’s other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco additional things you can do for instance like like you know Rich mentioned that Google
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is most certainly going to do the transcription thing that it does YouTube videos for search and you could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco indeed fetch the file once do you know transcribe it and then continue
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to send people to the original to download it, but then you have to manage, do I still have the most up-to-date copy?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You have to pull it periodically to make sure you still have the most up-to-date copy. Then you have to update it if it changed, and you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never quite can be sure necessarily if the people are going to get the exact version you got. Additionally,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and this is actually one thing that might be a problem for PlayMusic, one thing that’s really taking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off big time in big podcasting, and the public radio kind shows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the big name shows that we get lots of downloads and stuff is a dynamic ad insertion
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where every copy of the file they serve has a different set of ads in it and the idea
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here is they want to capture so you know suppose they sell an ad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a certain number of downloads they want to make sure that once those downloads have happened
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they can put a different ad in there they’ve sold separately and for lots of reasons I honestly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t think this is a very good idea. But regardless of what I think, people are doing it. This is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where a lot of the market is moving. And so if you make some secret requests to the same file on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of these big networks, you will get actually different copies of the file with different ads that might even be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slightly different lengths. So you can’t even link to a timestamp in the middle of the file because it might be a different timestamp
⏹️ ▶️ Marco depending on who downloads it. Anyway, all of that is kind of messed up by systems like this that cache
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the file and everything. But it also kind of throws a wrench in anything like Overcast that assumes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the file will be generally the same if you go to fetch it a second time. So there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco justification on both sides for why you would rehost the files as a service provider versus why you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would want to pass them through. Neither side is perfect. As a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco publisher, I greatly prefer that they pass them through to us,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that is not necessarily their goal.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it makes sense. Speaking of ad insertion, Have you heard about people who put different ads
⏹️ ▶️ John into their archive shows? Like they’ll put their archive shows up and then like a year later they’ll go through and change all
⏹️ ▶️ John the ads in the year old shows.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s exactly the same platform. Yeah, exactly the same thing. And that’s one of the ways they can justify it. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco our show doesn’t, we don’t really do a lot of archive downloads because we are a topical news show most of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time. So, but there’s a lot of shows out there, kind of like the magazine style, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco human interest kind of shows, that are fairly timeless. And so those shows tend to get way more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco archive downloads than a show like ours. Sometimes those are even the majority of their downloads
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for certain kinds of shows. So they have different needs really. Like if they tell an advertiser,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, we generally get this number of downloads, you wanna sponsor episode 200 or whatever. And then episode 200 ends
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up in the archives getting five times as many downloads as usual because it has longevity there,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then those publishers want to get more value out of that. I honestly think this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a bad idea because I think that those surpluses that happen here and there are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually already priced in to the premium CPM rate that we are able to get as podcasters
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compared to other media. So I think this is actually a terrible idea that this surplus has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco already been priced in and that we are actually eroding that by doing systems like this. And therefore,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it will almost certainly result in a noticeable drop in podcast ad CPMs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But that’s just me.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think about people listening to old episodes of Hypercritical and I wonder like, are some of those companies that we had ads for still
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco know, eventually that’s gonna be the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, and they aren’t always, you know? There’s obviously, there is an argument to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco made that you should be kind of re-monetizing, ooh, that sounds terrible, re-monetizing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these old episodes after a certain number of views or after a certain amount of time. You can make that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco argument, but I think it will have negative effects that I’m not sure people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are fully thinking through. But it doesn’t really matter because if enough of the market does this, it will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco erode the CPMs anyway. And so even if you aren’t doing it, it will be affecting you,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so you might as well do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I like the idea of like, when you watch old television programs, like the most fun is watching the
⏹️ ▶️ John period-appropriate ads that run on them. Eventually people are gonna be going back,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, remember Squarespace? Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Gosh, that’d be crazy. All right, any other follow-up that we need to talk about?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, do you have any other follow-out that you’d like to cover? Don’t even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what you’re talking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, why don’t you save me and tell me about something that’s awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, we’re back to John because our first sponsor this week is Cards Against Humanity. And rather than doing a sponsor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco read, they asked John to review another toaster oven.
Sponsor: Cards Against Humanity
⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse are talking about toasters, more exciting than a roller
⏹️ ▶️ John coaster. Will it fit on his countertop? I hope the reviews never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So John, what is this week’s toaster oven?
⏹️ ▶️ John This toaster oven is… this week’s toaster is something. This is the… I think Nostalgia
⏹️ ▶️ John is actually the name brand, but anyway. It’s the Nostalgia Electrics BSET 300.
⏹️ ▶️ John The retro red variant three-in-one breakfast
⏹️ ▶️ John station before I continue with this I’m gonna put the link in the show notes or in the chat room You two should look
⏹️ ▶️ John at it so I don’t have to try to paint you a word picture of this monstrosity.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Holy mother Alright, so my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey god Amazing. All right If you are if you’re listening
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to this and you are not Driving or not in a situation where you will put people in danger
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by taking a moment to look at this picture Then please take a moment to look at this picture because this is amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ John god So it’s like it’s like a toaster oven and it’s red I like the idea of these
⏹️ ▶️ John things being Interesting colors because they’re boring when they’re gray or black so this one is a nice kind of fire
⏹️ ▶️ John engine red The toaster oven part of this thing is actually pretty small. They showed two
⏹️ ▶️ John slices of bread in it That’s kind of optimistic again miniature bread for the pictures but that’s not all there
⏹️ ▶️ John is to this thing because the toaster oven part is is
⏹️ ▶️ John in like the right side of the thing. Above the toaster oven is a nonstick
⏹️ ▶️ John griddle, or what they call a nonstick griddle, I’ll get to that in a little bit.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey In the picture they show eggs
⏹️ ▶️ John cooking on it and sausage cooking on it. To the left of the toaster oven, again this is all one unit, these are not three
⏹️ ▶️ John separate things, it’s just like a Steve Jobs iPhone intro, is
⏹️ ▶️ John a coffee maker, like a filter drip coffee maker with a little coffee thing in it. So
⏹️ ▶️ John in the same appliance. Yes. The idea is that in this one thing, you can toast your bread, make
⏹️ ▶️ John your coffee, cook your eggs, and your sausages. That’s why it is a three-in-one breakfast station.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey The first thing to point out about
⏹️ ▶️ John this is when you look at the picture, it looks crazy. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I know they put things in the picture, like the miniature bread and the eggs and the sausage. But there’s really no sense of scale
⏹️ ▶️ John here. If you think that coffee, that drip coffee mug, It looks like, you know, a typical like
⏹️ ▶️ John 80s kind of office drip coffee thing before everyone had the K cups and everything. It is not a full size
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. It’s like a doll’s coffee thing that that container holds maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John like a cup and a half, two cups of hot water or coffee in it.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is not a full size thing. So it’s very and I guess this is good because if it was a full size coffee maker, the thing would be huge, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And same thing with the griddle, all very small. So it’s strange. And it’s like maybe if you live alone and you just wanna
⏹️ ▶️ John make yourself coffee and you wanna make yourself drip coffee with like little filters and everything,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s what you can do with this thing here. So the controls, it’s got, if with all this functionality, this is the one toaster
⏹️ ▶️ John that said, you know what, we don’t need three knobs, two knobs is plenty. So there’s a switch on the bottom
⏹️ ▶️ John and the switch on the bottom, it’s like a toggle switch and that just turns the coffee thing on or off. It’s like basically do
⏹️ ▶️ John you want me to heat up the heating element that heats the water for the coffee or do you not? So that’s independent.
⏹️ ▶️ John The top dial is a thing that lets you turn on and off the elements. The thing’s got
⏹️ ▶️ John four guarded elements, two on the bottom, two on the top. You can say only bottom, only top, or top and bottom
⏹️ ▶️ John are off. Those are your settings there. And then the second knob is temperature.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the temperature knob is fairly hilarious. If you can zoom in on the Amazon thing, you can see that
⏹️ ▶️ John the light, medium, and dark settings for toast are within like three degrees of each other on the dial.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like the whole rest
⏹️ ▶️ John is for all the other stuff. But let, and this is not an accurate dial. Like if this was a surgical instrument,
⏹️ ▶️ John you could say, am I between medium and dark? There’s so much slop in the dial, like the three dots are within the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey like the slop on the dial.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right. But here’s the biggest problem with this device. And I actually, I don’t drink coffee, so I just
⏹️ ▶️ John made hot water. But. So sad. Of course. Well, what am I gonna do? I don’t want to dirty
⏹️ ▶️ John up with the filters and everything. But the idea behind this seems to be
⏹️ ▶️ John that rather than, you know, for space savings and to have like all your stuff happening in one spot,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you have like a small kitchen or you just wanna do like, why waste all this space? You know, you can do this thing, right? There’s a lot of problems with
⏹️ ▶️ John that theory. First is, there’s not a lot of room on top of a toaster, depending on how low your cabinets are. The distance from the
⏹️ ▶️ John top of this toaster to the bottom of your cabinets may not be that big. And you really don’t want anything that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna put off steam or like spatter from sausages. Or
⏹️ ▶️ John it really just like, there’s a reason they have vents on top of your cooking surfaces. You don’t want there to be like an
⏹️ ▶️ John eight inch or a one foot gap between your cooking sausages and the bottom of your counters because it’s gonna coat them with grease.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it turns out that’s not that big of a problem because the way this thing works is,
⏹️ ▶️ John like there’s no separate control. You just pick like which elements do you want to turn on? So if you want all the elements on, the top and the
⏹️ ▶️ John bottom ones, and you turn the dial to turn it on, those four heating elements, that’s it except for the coffee
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. And they have to fulfill the job of toasting the bread and also
⏹️ ▶️ John heating the griddle on top. They’re not up to that task. Wow. You blow a fuse?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, that didn’t blow a fuse. They’re just not up to the task. Basically, my bread that I put in to get toast out
⏹️ ▶️ John came out as baked bread because it’s just too slow. And it just slowly heats and
⏹️ ▶️ John dries and heats and dries the bread and eventually kind of sort of browns it. And by the time you get them out, they’re like little bricks.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not a good toaster. Takes a really long time. And they don’t toast.
⏹️ ▶️ John You want them to be toasted and crispy on the outside, but not totally dehydrated. And the second problem is
⏹️ ▶️ John the only things that are heating the griddle part are the top two elements. And they’re not enough. They just, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the instruction guide’s like, oh, you should preheat it for five minutes. I don’t wanna preheat, if I’m doing that, I’m losing the whole convenience
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. So I cooked an egg on top of this thing, and it was the worst. Like, it just did not get hot enough to really cook
⏹️ ▶️ John the egg. And by the way, the surface on top of this is like, pillowed, like a pillowed quilt,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, like a bunch of little rounded rectangle lumps all over it. I don’t understand what the pillowing is there for. All it does is make it
⏹️ ▶️ John more likely that your egg is gonna stick, because it has more sort of nooks and crannies to go into. Maybe it’s for the grease from your sausages
⏹️ ▶️ John to drain out or something. Anyway, terrible for cooking eggs. Just does not get hot enough fast enough,
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t get hot enough, period. And I don’t see any extra convenience. And the coffee
⏹️ ▶️ John maker thing is totally disconnected from the toaster and the griddle. It might as well be separate because it’s just like, well, this is a very small, low-capacity
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that heats hot water for drip coffee. So just like the thing that was a slot
⏹️ ▶️ John toaster in the toaster oven, this multi-function device does none of its
⏹️ ▶️ John functions well. Maybe, I’m not gonna say maybe it does the coffee thing well. Maybe it is a good single serving drip coffee
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, but- I really doubt it. All I can say is that it does boil the water in a reasonably timely fashion, because hey, it’s only boiling
⏹️ ▶️ John like one cup of water. Probably isn’t boiling, go ahead. Yeah, and it did, well, yeah, probably not. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it did, it didn’t blow a circuit or anything, but it really should have, because if you wanna-
⏹️ ▶️ John It just was not getting hot enough. The top, if you’re wondering how the hell you wash this thing, the griddle top thing comes
⏹️ ▶️ John right off, which seems weird to me, because if you take it off and turn the toaster on, you’ve got hot heating elements on it, opens the air. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John it comes off and you can clean it easily. That’s about the only good thing I can say about this. The door. And
⏹️ ▶️ John the other thing I say about it is that it’s cute. Like this is a cute nostalgia thing. The fact that it’s red and it
⏹️ ▶️ John looks kind of like I don’t know. I thought it was this was a cute appliance, so it would look good in the background of a
⏹️ ▶️ John of a movie or sitcom, but don’t actually use it to heat up any of your food to make it better to eat.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even at its bargain price for three different appliances. the combination of only $70 doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seem that ridiculous.
⏹️ ▶️ John I wouldn’t spend $70 on this because you can get a good toaster for less money than that.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is not a good toaster. It’s not good at anything. So if I had this in my house, I don’t know what I would use it for.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would use it for nothing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If I paid you $70 to keep it on your counter, would you? No, I don’t have that kind of counter
⏹️ ▶️ John and I forgot to mention, there’s also a lid that goes on the griddle thing on the top and I only can
⏹️ ▶️ John only assume that’s like look we know this thing doesn’t get hot enough but if you put the lid on it will steam your eggs at least and they’ll actually kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco question on this is this is from this brand called nostalgia electronics and they appear to have a whole different line
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of things but was this kind of thing ever a thing that people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use like it kind of implies that this is an old appliance that they’re bringing back hence
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nostalgia but was this kind of appliance ever really used by anybody ever?
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I assume the the nostalgia brand is only loosely connected with the theme of actual
⏹️ ▶️ John nostalgia and I’m guessing based on the appearance that just the idea is
⏹️ ▶️ John make it look like appliances look to them not that there was a specific appliance like this and it does
⏹️ ▶️ John like with the script lettering and the red metal and everything it does look like a little bit of a throwback but it’s got this big plastic
⏹️ ▶️ John thing on top of the coffee maker that doesn’t quite look right but it does kind of fit in with the sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John 50s 60s sci-fi like the kitchen of the future automation
⏹️ ▶️ John and you know it does fit in even if they never made one of these things it totally fits with that theme especially
⏹️ ▶️ John with the the fact that it doesn’t work worth a damn just like every one of the kitchen of the future things they made up in
⏹️ ▶️ John the 50s and 60s they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should have just called it sad electrics because I think like there is no way to use this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and not be sad somehow. Either just you’re using it because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your life situation somehow led you to buy and own one of these things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or you are sad because its performance is so bad that you are sitting there eating your baked bread
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and undercooked sausage and just makes you sad.
⏹️ ▶️ John People in the chatroom are posting the positive and negative Amazon reviews. I can’t believe there
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey positive ones. They must be like shills from the manufacturer. I
⏹️ ▶️ John just cannot believe anyone would find any part of the satisfactory except like I said maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John I Wanted a drip coffee maker that only made enough coffee for one and a half people and finally I found
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, you know a Keurig isn’t sufficient. They really want that drip coffee
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, I did not know what toaster this was gonna be before the show started and I am glad I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because that Is magnificent.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, yeah, and before before we before we wrap up the toaster things two things in this one I
⏹️ ▶️ John finally people have been asking me and have been asking for this entire run of ads What do I do with all the old
⏹️ ▶️ John toast old toasters and my answer for a long time had been nothing We don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have any plans to do anything with the old toasters Eventually got to the point where I had just too many gigantic toaster boxes
⏹️ ▶️ John of my house I needed them to go away. And so now the toasters have gone away I don’t know where they went
⏹️ ▶️ John but a nice person came to my house and took ten toasters Jammed
⏹️ ▶️ John into a giant truck and took them away from my house. So they are gone I no longer have them
⏹️ ▶️ John when I was taking these ten toasters and sending them away. I found this box
⏹️ ▶️ John Unopened I hadn’t realized that I had an extra unopened box. This is like finding the strange
⏹️ ▶️ John treasure Like wait a second. This one’s still sealed up Did I never open this one and I opened it and this is the unholy thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that came out? So I don’t even know when I got this toaster Maybe it got filed away with the rest of the toasters,
⏹️ ▶️ John like the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Indiana Jones. The Temple of Doom, Jesus. At the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, which
⏹️ ▶️ John does not have an Indiana Jones prefix. See what you’ve done to me, Steven Spielberg?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Now by any chance,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did you have a coffee maker box near them? I’m thinking maybe there was some Hanky Panky going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on and this came out. Wow.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, so this is the second to last toaster of this run. We’ve got one more left this year, I think.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I’ll have to get rid of these toasters. So that’s where they go. go away from my house so I can fit my car in the driveway.
Apple TV experiences so far
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t even know where to go from here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thanks to Cards Against Humanity for sponsoring our show once again. Wow.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Should we just end here? I mean, we have other things to talk about. We have other sponsors, but where do we go?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, it’s all going to go downhill from here. How do we top that? What can we really do?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right. So, we do have things to talk about, and most specifically, we have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some Apple TV things to talk about. And I don’t know how much I can contribute to this because I’m holding strong
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and not buying the Apple TV that I’m sure I’m going to buy sometime between now and Christmas.
⏹️ ▶️ John You didn’t even order it? I thought you would find out you would have surely ordered it at least.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I think I’m going to try to hold out for a Christmas slash Hanukkah gift, but we’ll see how it goes.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the Plex app is out, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, Plex is out, which is why I am not really holding too strong
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on this. And I’ve heard it’s really good, which is not helping me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Keep in mind also that the way Apple’s product release cycle and pricing works
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that you’re You’re not gaining anything by waiting. If you’re going to buy this model of Apple TV
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever, you should buy it now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, you’re right. But I mean, I don’t know. I figure, like I said, it’s holiday time coming up and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is the sort of thing that I do kind of want, but I really don’t feel like spending money on, in part because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really don’t want to mess with my audio setup that we went through last week. And yes, there are options like the little Kooky
⏹️ ▶️ Casey box that we found last week, but I don’t want to mess with my setup. A lot of people, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is completely reasonable and I’m a weirdo, but a lot of of people wrote to me via Twitter and were like, dude, just leave your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey old Apple TV exactly where it is. I’m like, well, I don’t have to do that, man. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t just say the thing where you can, where you can use your old Apple TV as an airplay speaker for your new one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s exactly what they’re saying. And I’m just like, why? That seems so crazy to me that that’s the best course
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of action is to leave this old Apple TV that I really will almost never
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use anymore, leave that plugged in because that’s the best scenario. I’m not saying it’s unreasonable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for Apple to take away my optical connection, which is the thing that I’m all upset about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They probably did the right thing here It’s probably silly to leave that optical connection on the new Apple TV, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s why they pulled it So I’m not I hope I don’t sound like one of those people that’s like oh well They changed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that one thing I needed and they’re wrong. No, they’re not wrong. They’re right I’m the one that’s crazy, but I’m crazy,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I like having my optical connection so in any case I’m sure I will get an Apple TV I’m sure it will be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in 2015 and we’ll see if I end up paying for it myself or just getting it as a gift
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You gotta stand strong with the Sony Phillips digital interface
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly. Is that what SPDI?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. I didn’t know that’s what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it stood for. You ever see it written s slash PDIF
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah, yeah, I did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only slash Phillips digital interface.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I did not know that was the Acronym there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, cuz Sony and Phillips they work together and all sort like the CD and all sorts of like digital audio stuff and so they standardized this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing forever ago, it’s really old and And yeah, so Sony Philips digital interface.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Today I learned. Anyway, so what do we have to talk about with this? Or what do you guys have to talk about
⏹️ ▶️ John I got my Apple TV today, actually. So I unpacked it and set it up in a bit of a hurry
⏹️ ▶️ John before the show. But, and I also had seen it in the Apple store before that. So I actually have some real world experience
⏹️ ▶️ John with this thing. And I have to say, after reading everybody’s stories and listening to what they had to say about
⏹️ ▶️ John the Apple TV, specifically the setup experience, I was prepared for the worst. I was prepared for like
⏹️ ▶️ John Wii to Wii U migration level of nightmare setup. So one of the things
⏹️ ▶️ John this thing does, I don’t know if the old one did it as well, I don’t remember, is when you take it out of the box and plug
⏹️ ▶️ John it in, it wants you to bring your iPhone near it and make sure Bluetooth is on on your iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John and just hold it near the thing and it will sort of figure out what Wi-Fi network your phone
⏹️ ▶️ John is on and connect to the same Wi-Fi network and use the same password and all that other stuff so the
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple TV can get on the same network. And that part worked for me. I plugged the Apple TV in, I brought my
⏹️ ▶️ John phone over to it, I unlocked my phone, waited a couple seconds, tapped a little dialogue box
⏹️ ▶️ John on the phone, and it found my network. Which doesn’t really matter because I had mine plugged into ethernet anyway, so it seemed like kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John a waste. But anyway, that part worked. And then at some
⏹️ ▶️ John point I signed in with my Apple ID password, and I had to use the terrible keyboard that everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John hates, which is not so much a keyboard as a key line because it’s got
⏹️ ▶️ John a through z in a single horizontal strip and then there’s another row of punctuation
⏹️ ▶️ John another row with switch to capital or lowercase and by the way if you hold down the button on the remote you can get capital letters without
⏹️ ▶️ John having to switch from capital lowercase that is very painful to use i’m not entirely sure if
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s more painful than the old way where you had to hit like because you have a swipey pad you can swipe quickly from
⏹️ ▶️ John left to the to the right and skip multiple letters instead of having to go A, B, C, D, E, F. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John you can go swipe once and go be all the way to like J or R or whatever. So I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t, I think the touch pad is useful for that.
⏹️ ▶️ John understand why they made it a strip. It’s not like there’s not enough room on the screen. They got the whole rest of the screen there. Maybe with the rest of the
⏹️ ▶️ John UI and apps, it was better that way. Anyway, because I only had to enter my Apple ID, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John I had to enter it a couple of times, but not an obscene number of times. It didn’t seem that ridiculous
⏹️ ▶️ John to me. So I entered my Apple ID, I went to Netflix, I had to sign in with my Netflix ID. It’s kind of a shame that it
⏹️ ▶️ John couldn’t get all this information from the previous Apple ID or from iCloud Keychain or from any other place that in the
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple ecosystem that supposedly has secure storage or username and password. This, it seems like, is the main thing people were complaining about. Like, I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John asked about their passwords too often, that the passwords are hard to enter, and if you haven’t read these articles, you
⏹️ ▶️ John may be wondering, why don’t they just use the iOS remote app? That doesn’t work. The iOS remote app
⏹️ ▶️ John does not work with the new Apple TV. Does it not work yet? Are they gonna make it work? I don’t know. work now so it
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t help you if you’re setting up your Apple TV now and that’s a legit complaint like it’s a regression
⏹️ ▶️ John from the old version of the product it’s a pain to use any kind of on-screen screen
⏹️ ▶️ John keyboard and the on-screen keyboard they have seems pretty stupid I find with
⏹️ ▶️ John a little swipy remote it’s hard for me to swipe up and down I don’t know why it’s not registering it just
⏹️ ▶️ John it takes it as if I’m going across like when I want to swipe down to the next row of things or something for the punctuation
⏹️ ▶️ John it just doesn’t you know it feels like it’s stuck a lot you can also by the way if you have the new
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple TV you can tap on it like it’s a d-pad not press it all the way down so it physically clicks but just tap
⏹️ ▶️ John like touch the surface as if it’s a virtual d-pad and that works as well in most places and the
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple TV there’s a little bit of a learning curve I feel like with the Apple TV I spent a while with the remote and tried
⏹️ ▶️ John to discover all the possible sort of combinations where you click on the left side of the remote and click
⏹️ ▶️ John on the right side tap on the left tap on the right swipe up swipe down swipe from the top, swipe from the bottom,
⏹️ ▶️ John a surprising number of interesting inputs all hampered by the fact that remote is really too small
⏹️ ▶️ John and awkwardly shaped and not the best thing in the world to hold on to. But all this is to say that my
⏹️ ▶️ John setup experience wasn’t that bad and I was mostly pleasantly surprised by
⏹️ ▶️ John the variety of ways that you can interface with this thing. The speed it felt faster to me
⏹️ ▶️ John to navigate around than my old Apple TV. That could just be because it didn’t have to use IR and Bluetooth
⏹️ ▶️ John has less latency than that. It could just be because it’s much faster CPU or whatever, but it
⏹️ ▶️ John felt pretty good to me. I, maybe I was like primed to like with all the better views, I was expecting
⏹️ ▶️ John the worst, but I gotta say, I would much rather have this than my previous Apple TV any day of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hmm. Well, that’s, that’s a much more positive review than a lot of what I’ve heard. I haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey read any to my recollection, but, um, I listened to this week’s talk show with, um,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John and, and guy English, and they seemed like, eh, it’s, it’s good, but it’s got a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of problems. Um, this week’s upgrade with, um, with Jason Snell
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Mike Hurley and Joe Steel, they were in various levels
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of frustrated to furious, I’d say. And I don’t know, it just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey looking at it from an outsider’s point of view, in the sense that I don’t have one, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey haven’t done hours of research into the specifics of what it offers, because really the only thing I care about for the most part is Plex.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like I saw an inordinate amount of grumbling
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on Twitter and it seemed like everyone, everyone was really,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really grumbly about it. Maybe that’s my own biases that are surfacing and maybe it’s not that bad,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but Jesse Char earlier today was saying that it’s really a great device and everyone’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just being a bunch of curmudgeons and that very well could be. But I don’t know, from the outside, it seemed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like with the watch release, everyone was hey this is cool, you know it’s got some issues but it’s cool and with this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it seemed like oh man this is nothing but issues to almost everyone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well I wouldn’t say that I mean this is different so we’ve all you know many of us
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people who have been fans of the Apple TV so far we’ve been using the Apple TV for years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s been pretty much the same like most of it has not really changed much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least since the introduction of the second gen one and a lot of it even from before that it’s you know it’s been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really the solid thing And like for me, the Apple TV is by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco far the most common device that we use for the TV. It is our TV.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, because we don’t have cable or cable cutters or those annoying people. We don’t like, the Apple TV is our
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything. Like I have an Amazon Fire TV on the front TV and I have a Roku on the back TV
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we never actually switch to those for almost any purpose except the Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one we’ll switch to to use Plex so far. Now we won’t need to do that anymore. But the fact is it’s different.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The remote I think has some issues. It is unquestionably more capable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in general. It can do more things. And some of the big ones obviously are Siri
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the volume control. But it also has accelerometers, it has the touchpad which can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be more different levels of input and more different kinds or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco directions of input than just a regular D-pad could be. But I do feel like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in my opinion, it is a step back from a D-pad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in general usability of the things we’ve used the TV for so far. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who knows where the apps and stuff will go in the future? You know, we don’t really know that yet. Time will tell whether
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps will take advantage of it being a touchpad and not just a directional control. But today,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using the Apple TV the way you’ve always used it before, it feels very imprecise.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And one of the problems with the key line text input is when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re typing on this keyboard, there’s a high cost to mistyping anything because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have to then go find the delete key or if you hold it down there’s one on the hold down menu but it’s kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hard to do, especially if you’re new to the control. So you need to be very precise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on that keyboard because the cost of making an error is annoying.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But that’s the first thing you really need to do when setting this up is type in your password a few times
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that is the time when you have the least experience with the new remote. So your very first interaction
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with this thing is set up to make you basically hate the remote and hate inputting text into it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And who knows what they could have done to fix that. I think obviously better integration with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an iPhone to let you use the iPhone keyboard like the old remote app did would have been nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I hope they do something like that in the future. It’s not there now and that is unfortunate. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for me so far, when you pick up the remote, let’s say the remote falls on the couch,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you pick it up, it is incredibly hard to pick it up without accidentally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seeking the video that you’re in. Because you pick it up and if your finger brushes that touch pad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco area at all, you seek the video that you’re watching. And so there’s little issues like that of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like accidental input, there’s issues with the key line and navigation of just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco imprecision because it’s a touchpad. Honestly, if they made this remote
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with a regular up, down, left, right, D-pad kind of buttons like the old one as an option in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that top area instead of the touchpad, I would choose that option, no question. And maybe, again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe in the future, if apps start really needing the touchpad and taking good advantage of it, that might change. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right now, I think everything with the new remote that you think of as things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you do on an Apple TV, things like navigating things like Netflix and iTunes and everything. Those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of things, in my opinion, are made worse by the touchpad, not better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Have you tried to use your old Apple TV remotes with the new Apple TV? Because my understanding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is it does have an IR receiver and that does work.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey you can, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And which is nice, because we have a universal Logitech Harmony thing, and so that can control it also, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’ll accept the old kind of input from all the old remotes. So that’s nice. But then you don’t have things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like Siri. So like you kind of miss out on some of the new features. So again, time will tell how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this all shakes out. Chances are we’re probably all just gonna get used to it and it’ll probably blow over.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I don’t think that takes away from that there are downsides. You know, it’s very similar in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so many ways, very similar to the Force Touch trackpad, which I finally got to try the full-size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one yesterday in the Apple store. And it actually was not as bad as I expected and neither was the keyboard. I actually like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the keyboard better than the trackpad. And if that’s the future keyboard of Apple laptops, which I assume it will be,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then that’s not that bad. And the trackpad though, like all the force touch stuff, it’s always like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost good enough, but in my opinion, as I’ve said many times before, it’s not quite there. So it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of a step backwards in reliability and precision, and I think the touch feel sucks on the force touch trackpad,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the full size one, no different. I tried all the different settings in the Apple Store. It feels, in my opinion,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the click feels awful on it. Even worse than the laptops, I think. It’s a terrible feeling click.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But, they’ve made this thing thinner, more advanced, more complicated, and they’ve achieved
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something that is almost as good as the old one. I think that’s probably what’s going to happen with the TouchPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco remote, is that they’ve added all these capabilities by making it a TouchPad,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even though it isn’t Force Touch, I don’t want to confuse those two, but they’ve added all these capabilities by making it a TouchPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco instead of just up, down, left, right buttons, but the basics of,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you’re operating this thing imprecisely, often in the dark, often without
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looking at it, it’s less reliable. And that, I think, is always going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have a baseline level of slight frustration for a lot of people and more frustration
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for geeks like me who are very picky about such things, even though it will offer us more capabilities.
⏹️ ▶️ John On the previous shows I complained about all the things that are still wrong with this remote before I had laid eyes on it or before I touched it.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s all still true. It shouldn’t be shaped the way it is. It’s way too small. It’s not made for it to be easy
⏹️ ▶️ John to grip. Marco talked about accidentally touching the touchpad. It’s symmetrical,
⏹️ ▶️ John more or less. It’s symmetrical, you know, but the buttons are kind of in the middle, so you can’t even feel
⏹️ ▶️ John your way to which way is the right way to pick it up. And if you try to feel which side is right by
⏹️ ▶️ John perhaps feeling the different texture of the touchpad and the other thing, if you happen to feel around and it’s the touchpad side,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, you’re gonna move the video. All that stuff is stupid. It shouldn’t be shaped like this. It should be bigger, it should be something
⏹️ ▶️ John that acknowledges that people are going to grab it with their hands. The buttons should be different sizes and shapes and
⏹️ ▶️ John textures and positions and all that is true. But specifically on the issue of the touchpad versus
⏹️ ▶️ John the d-pad thing, like I said I have trouble, I don’t understand why this is, maybe it’s just because of the way I’m moving
⏹️ ▶️ John my thumb, I have trouble doing up-down. Left and right I can mostly get it to do it every time but up-down I have a little bit trouble. But
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s the here’s the reason I think it’s better than a d-pad, or better than the previous Apple remote let’s say. First
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, the previous Apple remote did not have a d-pad in the Nintendo sense. It had a circle and
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I hated that damn circle because
⏹️ ▶️ John I could never feel my way towards what was exactly up and left and down and right. And yeah, so you’re like, well, you’re feeling
⏹️ ▶️ John the edges of the remotes. Don’t you know that left is perpendicular to the left edge and right is, you know, like
⏹️ ▶️ John very often it just didn’t feel secure to me as an actual d-pad. The actual d-pad that’s a cross, a cross-shaped
⏹️ ▶️ John piece of plastic, you can feel where the left, where the right, as long as you make the d-pad big enough, not like the stupid tiny
⏹️ ▶️ John one on the GameCube controller, which was impossible to tell which direction you’re pressing even though it was a cross. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t like that circle. But setting that aside, even if you’re comparing it to a full-size good
⏹️ ▶️ John d-pad, the most important thing this this touchpad has, despite the fact that the remote is the wrong shape, despite
⏹️ ▶️ John the fact that it’s kind of hard to like reach to the touchpad area over all the buttons and everything and safely
⏹️ ▶️ John and safely get to it without accidentally swiping when you pick it up, the most important thing it has is
⏹️ ▶️ John gets you out of the the nightmare realm of controlling anything
⏹️ ▶️ John on your television which It used to be right up on Apple TV and on your actual television,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I’ve never used the Roku remotes or anything like that, so I don’t know what they’re like. But for the longest time, doing anything on your television,
⏹️ ▶️ John all you had was button presses. And so anytime you were faced with anything that had a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff on the screen and you wanted to go through it, but you wanted to be able to select any one of those things, whether it’s letters
⏹️ ▶️ John in the alphabet, list items in a big list or anything like that, you don’t have to go next, next, next,
⏹️ ▶️ John next, next, right, right, up, up, down, down, left, left for you to do the contra code to try to get to the thing that you want
⏹️ ▶️ John on your screen. You never had a way to go more than one thing. And so, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John on the TiVo, they did smart things like, hey, if on this menu, it’s such a pain to go, you know, through the whole list, use channel
⏹️ ▶️ John up and channel down to go a page at a time. But even that was like discrete. It’s discrete versus continuous. Having a touchpad
⏹️ ▶️ John and adding a little bit of momentum is incredibly freeing because if you see something that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John at the very top or the very left or the very right, you can flick over to it. And yeah, it’s not gonna be precise, But it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John so much better than having to go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
⏹️ ▶️ John Mentally, even if not speed-wise, even if you were to stop watching me and it was actually slower, Mentally speaking,
⏹️ ▶️ John it feels better to me not to be stuck in this like hateful game of Frogger or Crossy
⏹️ ▶️ John Road where you can always go hop, hop, hop, hop, hop. Now, the touchpad they chose to do it on, the shape of the
⏹️ ▶️ John touchpad, the fact that it like bends down, the fact that the whole top of the remote is made of glass, the feel of
⏹️ ▶️ John the physical click and everything, all that is bad. I can but I’m here to defend
⏹️ ▶️ John the concept of Finally divorcing the television from a discrete single step
⏹️ ▶️ John or a single page at a time interface because you finally have more than just buttons And the
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of advanced things that I was talking about Marco you should try this it doesn’t help with the accidental swiping for a scrubbing because that’s all terrible,
⏹️ ▶️ John but Use it like a d-pad don’t try to do the swiping eventually I gave up on getting
⏹️ ▶️ John my thumb to correctly swipe up and down and to get the to the Apple TV to register it. Just use it as if it’s a D-pad.
⏹️ ▶️ John I like it because you don’t have to press all the way down because I really don’t like that click, like trying to play Crossy Road, speaking
⏹️ ▶️ John of on the thing, or Alto’s Adventure. I didn’t like having to press down and all the way click. I wish these game developers
⏹️ ▶️ John had accepted a tap instead of a click because I don’t like hearing click, click, click, click. It’s pretty noisy
⏹️ ▶️ John and it doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel good as a game controller at all. It feels laggy and it doesn’t, you know, I don’t like it. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John just touch the touchpad on the left go left touch the touchpad on the right to go right touch the top of the touchpad to go
⏹️ ▶️ John up touch the bottom of the touchpad to go down don’t click it just touch it if you
⏹️ ▶️ John if you want to go I rather go right right right down down down you can do that much faster
⏹️ ▶️ John if you don’t have to actually physically depress a button so I am pro
⏹️ ▶️ John having something I can swipe to navigate and I am pro having something that registers my touch
⏹️ ▶️ John to do interesting things the particular implementation on this remote is not ideal
⏹️ ▶️ John but I would still rather use this remote than the old one. It’s not a humongous win but
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a big enough win that I would never like because you know I still have my regular Apple TV remote with
⏹️ ▶️ John the circle on it which I’d never use. I would never swap that for this one and I probably wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John swap the TiVo remote that I was using with my old Apple TV with this one because you know like
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco said you’re missing the Siri button but even just I just I just enjoy not being in the business of
⏹️ ▶️ John hitting a button repeatedly to go an integer number of screen items away
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can’t wait for all the tweets and emails you get about the Konami code being referred
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to as the Contra code.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, that’s a valid alternate name for it in the…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but you know the nerds are going to come out and they’re going to be angry.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Our second sponsor this week is
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More thoughts on Apple TV
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right So any other thoughts on the Apple TV?
⏹️ ▶️ John I do have more so many thoughts from just an hour of using this thing
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I am surprised a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John people have asked me about the video scrubbing I’ve talked about my anger with how
⏹️ ▶️ John video scrubbing works in most television Attached devices and these days also with many things
⏹️ ▶️ John that are in web pages or on iPhones and I have heard
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of good reports about the Apple TV and I have you say they all seem to be true. This does scrubbing exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John the way I wanted it always wanted it to be done and and this is another instance where the little swipey
⏹️ ▶️ John pad comes in handy. One of the worst things about video scrubbing it with with if you just have
⏹️ ▶️ John buttons is you know like if you go to the end of the movie and you’re like what was that scene
⏹️ ▶️ John in the middle I want to look at that thing again all you can do is perhaps press the you know
⏹️ ▶️ John rewind button multiple times to go like 1x speed 10x speed 20x speed and then it’s going really
⏹️ ▶️ John fast then you have to hit the pause button so you don’t overshoot it or you try to slow it down like it’s difficult to
⏹️ ▶️ John drive the little the play head in that way with it with a series of buttons
⏹️ ▶️ John and the other difficulty I was complained about is if you want to go to the middle of the thing or jump back half
⏹️ ▶️ John an hour or something like that very often attempting to navigate at all just causes
⏹️ ▶️ John the whole thing to freeze and essentially do the television app equivalent of beach ball where it’s trying to load the
⏹️ ▶️ John video or the thumbnail or wants to show you a frame of video and you’re like just go to 30 minutes in you
⏹️ ▶️ John feel like you wish you could have someplace where you could just type three zero colon zero zero go to that
⏹️ ▶️ John offset now don’t do anything else don’t try to show me the video sliding past I don’t care what you do
⏹️ ▶️ John I just want you to move that little playhead to 30 minutes and the Apple TV
⏹️ ▶️ John at least playing like all the things that I tried mostly like television shows and movies from iTunes maybe it’s up to other apps to
⏹️ ▶️ John do the same thing I I think I tried HBO and Showtime and Netflix as well, and they seem to do similarly well. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John certainly for the Apple things, while you’re playing, as Marco found out, if you swipe the
⏹️ ▶️ John little touch pad, it moves the playhead, and it moves the playhead no matter what
⏹️ ▶️ John immediately. If it has video to show you, it will change to the little thumbnails and stuff. If it doesn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John video to show you, the thumbnail will be whatever the last frame was, but it moves the playhead. It does not wait.
⏹️ ▶️ John It does not beach ball. It just goes where you want it. It shows you the time offset, and it is glorious. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, finally, finally, they understood that that is the most important thing. All the other stuff, I don’t care.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, if you can do it, fine, because I did, I loaded like an episode of Legend of Korra or something to get all the,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, a small episode. So it had all the things. It will show you live thumbnails as you scrub around if it can, but if it can’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John it always prioritizes moving the thumbnail. And then when you hit the button to play from that position, maybe it takes a little
⏹️ ▶️ John while for it to get the video and start playing it at that position. It’s fine, whatever. When you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John watching, you can tap the, you can click the left side of the touchpad.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is another good UI type thing. If you rest your thumb on the left side of the touchpad, it puts a little 10-second
⏹️ ▶️ John rewind icon on the screen letting you know, hey, if you were to press here it would go back 10
⏹️ ▶️ John seconds. You haven’t actually done the back 10 seconds yet, but it’s telling you. And same thing if you would just lay your thumb on the right side of the touchpad,
⏹️ ▶️ John it says you can go forward 30. I wish those numbers were adjustable. I’m not sure if they are. But anyway, if you tap those
⏹️ ▶️ John buttons you can go forward and back 30 seconds. Of course we’ve all seen the cool Siri demos of what did he say, and then it goes
⏹️ ▶️ John back some amount of seconds, turns on subtitles, shows you what you just saw,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then turns the subtitles off automatically, which I think is a very clever feature. The only difficulty of it is
⏹️ ▶️ John if you miss an entire conversation. I don’t know how it picks how far to go back. I don’t know how it picks when to turn the subtitles off.
⏹️ ▶️ John They had to make a compromise there. It seems like a reasonable compromise. But anyway, you can swipe down from the top to
⏹️ ▶️ John pull the menu item down to turn on and off the subtitles. Another thing that was a little bit annoying to do if you didn’t know the secret shortcuts
⏹️ ▶️ John with the old Apple TV. You can fast forward and rewind scan. It’s still not as
⏹️ ▶️ John capable at fast forward rewind scanning as like a PlayStation 3 is where you have from like
⏹️ ▶️ John 1.5X with pitch adjusted audio still playing to all the way up to like 120X. The reason the PlayStation 3 needs 120X
⏹️ ▶️ John is because it doesn’t have flicks scrubbing through the whole thing. That’s not a problem on the Apple TV. I
⏹️ ▶️ John can go right to the middle of something or right to the end or right to three quarters through very easily, whereas in the
⏹️ ▶️ John PlayStation I would have to go to 120X mode and move over to it or whatever. But anyway, big thumbs up
⏹️ ▶️ John on the video scrubbing. They finally did it right as far as I can tell. If applications do it wrong,
⏹️ ▶️ John I will at least know that it is not the fault of the hardware or the OS. It’s only the fault of the people influencing
⏹️ ▶️ John those applications, not doing it the way Apple does it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m impressed. I really thought you were gonna find something to dislike about this, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sounds like we’re good to go. That’s excellent.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I mean, really, I’ve heard only, I haven’t done much video scrubbing with it myself I’m not much of a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco scrubber, I guess, but I’ve heard only great things from people who care
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more about these things or use it more than I do, like John. I mean, I think that is one thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Almost everybody has agreed that the setup process can be very bumpy with the number of times
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have to enter passwords on that terrible key line, but almost everyone also agrees that the video-seeking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco behavior and all that whole engine that is in there is incredibly good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And also, I mean, this is just good hardware. You know, this has the A8, it has two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gigs of RAM, it’s fast. I am optimistic for the future of this platform
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just because of what everyone else is going to do with it. You know, what Apple does with it is still a big question mark,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Apple’s stuff recently has been inconsistent, I would say. Like, some stuff they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nail pretty well, some stuff is pretty half-baked, even well after launch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So Apple’s stuff, I think, will be less consistent. But third-party stuff, I think there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot here to do. There’s a lot of hardware to use. And we’ll talk about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gaming in a sec, maybe after the next sponsor break, because there’s a lot to talk about here. But I do think there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of potential here for developers. I mean, I did start, I don’t know if I’m gonna actually finish and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco release such a thing, but I did actually start porting Overcast to it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just to see how much work will this take? Do I have to really make a lot of special cases? Is it going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to need a whole lot of work to do, or will it need relatively little? And so I’ve been playing with the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco SDK and playing with the hardware a little bit, and it is really, really nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, interface challenges are gonna certainly be there, but it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really nice to develop for because it is basically iOS minus some stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it is very, most of iOS is there, and the hardware is very capable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this is the baseline. And in five years from now, developers will be complaining they have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go all the way back and support the A8. But right now, a new hardware line where the A8
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the minimum is pretty nice. And also, it has AC power.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you can be as power inefficient as you want. So you can do things that really crank that CPU
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hard. So it is going to be a really, really nice developer platform.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do have concerns about whether it will be worth developers doing a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for it so soon. And that I think remains to be seen.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the app, I went to the app store, first thing to, you know, I was surprised when you load the thing up, like it looks empty. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John where are all the icons? Because the old Apple TV, it would just start off with like tons of icons on your screen and
⏹️ ▶️ John new icons would appear whether you wanted them or not. You’d have to turn on like the, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John parental controls to make them disappear and stuff. This thing comes out and there’s the Apple icons for the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff and settings and search and that’s it. So immediately the first stop is always, oh, I gotta go to Netflix,
⏹️ ▶️ John gotta go to HBO, Showtime, you know, all these other different apps that it, and I went in to get
⏹️ ▶️ John those and, you know, I don’t know if this was just the top list or whatever, but
⏹️ ▶️ John on the first screen, first screen or screen or two in the App Store was all the things I
⏹️ ▶️ John wanted. I got, you know, Alto’s Adventure, Crossy Road, Netflix, HBO,
⏹️ ▶️ John Showtime, FX, USA, ABC, NBC, CBS, like they’re all there, the
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of base, to restore my Apple TV to its previous level of functionality, including only
⏹️ ▶️ John the apps that I actually use or that the kids use, was pretty easy to do. When I went
⏹️ ▶️ John to download this, I think this is the second time it asked me for my Apple ID, password, and I entered it in once,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it asked me, do you want to have to enter that? Like, do you want to have to enter this every time you make a purchase?
⏹️ ▶️ John and I said no, because I really don’t want to enter it every time I make a purchase.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I accidentally clicked the yes on that because I just misused the trackpad. It was another one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of my many errors. So I had to go dig around in settings, enter it again.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and I’m a little bit wary about that because I mean, really, it should have integration with Touch ID, really, the
⏹️ ▶️ John remote should have a Touch ID sensor. There’s so many gimmies here. That’s, by the way, the negativity about this, all
⏹️ ▶️ John the people complaining about the setup process, they’re right, it’s bad, and it’s like, it feels like an unforced error.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was like, come on, Apple, you know how to do this. This is not your first Apple TV. You have name brand
⏹️ ▶️ John technologies across your whole product line that solve all of these problems. You had an existing iOS app that worked with
⏹️ ▶️ John the old one that gave you a keyboard. You’ve got Touch ID, you’ve got iCloud Keychain, you’ve got all, you’ve got, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John iCloud Photo Library. You’ve got all these things, they’re all just sitting there and that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John why it feels so bad. It’s like this setup experience is worse than the Apple norm for
⏹️ ▶️ John what seems like no good reasons. Theories I’ve heard, I think Jason Snell feel this theory, like that the Apple TV was
⏹️ ▶️ John actually done a long time ago and wasn’t launched because the, they were waiting for the content deals. And eventually they said, well, content
⏹️ ▶️ John deal, schmontent deal, we’re shipping it. And so that’s why it doesn’t have support
⏹️ ▶️ John for technologies and things that are old hat as far as we’re concerned, but they weren’t old hat when this work was actually
⏹️ ▶️ John done on the Apple TV team. And that the Apple TV team was more or less disbanded and sent to do other things while the Apple TV just
⏹️ ▶️ John stood there. I don’t know if there’s any truth behind that, but that’s what it feels like. So that’s why people are complaining
⏹️ ▶️ John because it can be really bad. like it was for Jason where he’s gotta accept the 10 new terms and conditions and he’s gotta do that on his Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re entering your stupid long password a million times with that terrible keyboard and the whole time you’re just grumbling why
⏹️ ▶️ John won’t I let you use the iOS app. That is all terrible and that’s definitely worthy of complaining about.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if you power through that crap, kind of like I powered through that stuff with my Wii U to Wii U transfer
⏹️ ▶️ John experience, and you come out the other side, you’re left with a product that I think is
⏹️ ▶️ John clearly better than the old Apple TV in many, many ways and that shows promise and like,
⏹️ ▶️ John and the promise is frustrating too. Like you talk about, I love the fact that there’s a touchpad on the remote. I hate pretty much everything else about the
⏹️ ▶️ John remote. Like I would like a good remote with a touchpad. And one of the thing I would throw him with a touchpad
⏹️ ▶️ John on the remote, when you go to the app switcher, which by the way, people might not know it’s there. You double tap
⏹️ ▶️ John the home button, which looks like a big picture of a TV on your remote. It will bring up an iOS like app switcher,
⏹️ ▶️ John which that shows all your apps, like kind of like the old style app switcher, the iOS eight app switcher, shows each screen
⏹️ ▶️ John next to each other. When you go between them, you have to basically do the equivalent of a
⏹️ ▶️ John D-pad input. Swipe, swipe, or tap, tap. I would love it if I could
⏹️ ▶️ John touch my thumb to the touchpad, and as I move my thumb, things move on the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John tracking my thumb. You know what I mean? Like, in other words, more like an iOS scrolling type thing, where, yeah, you can flick, but if you
⏹️ ▶️ John flick, you’re flicking like you’re flicking the screen in iOS, as opposed to what this thing looks like it’s doing is,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m waiting to get a gesture that I interpret as go left 1. And it’s not quite that, you can
⏹️ ▶️ John swipe past more than one of them at a time I think, but anyway, it just feels a little bit off to me. A lot of that
⏹️ ▶️ John is because the touchpad is too darn small. But anyway, yeah, a lot of negativity about the setup
⏹️ ▶️ John process, all of which I agree with, all of which should be complained about, and all of which we’re just really angry at Apple because they just
⏹️ ▶️ John seem like unforced errors.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, once you have it set up, it seems like a pretty nice device. But again, we’re all hitting this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right now, and there’s going to be a lot of people who are hitting this season as they get their their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first new Apple TV possibly their first Apple TV ever and I do think that that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it seems like they rushed it out to make this holiday season but it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seem like it’s ready like there’s so many little exceptions it really does seem like it could have used six more months of
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not like the features that are there aren’t polished they just aren’t there like why the hell can you not enter text
⏹️ ▶️ John on my phone like that’s not a polish. That’s just a that’s just a plain feature thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the maybe the other things you could say is polish like oh, if you because Apple recently updated the terms
⏹️ ▶️ John and conditions for the app store. If you haven’t agreed to those or if your credit card is expired
⏹️ ▶️ John or you have to enter your credit card code again or some anything involving purchasing from Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John that is messed up. The television doesn’t have a way to do it for you to fix that apparently you have to
⏹️ ▶️ John go back to your Mac and try to do it in iTunes which feels really weird. Kind of the same
⏹️ ▶️ John thing with this is not Apple’s fault entirely. But like activating the HBO Go app,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re a subscriber to HBO, like I am, they all have a thing that says like, Oh, go to your web browser and go to HBO go.com
⏹️ ▶️ John slash activate and enter this six letter code and you try to and you go to the HBO Go website
⏹️ ▶️ John and wants you to log in with your cable providers, login credentials, and it pops up a little iframe.
⏹️ ▶️ John And now you have Verizon iframed inside HBO Go, which is all to try to get your Apple TV to work.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that is all gross and is going to confuse many a person
⏹️ ▶️ John on Christmas morning or whenever during the holidays. Um, there’s only so much
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple can do to fix that, but surely Apple can fix the equivalent of those experiences in its own ecosystem.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so that maybe is an area of polish, but yeah, just like I felt like
⏹️ ▶️ John if, if this, the story of them having it done and then disbanding the team or waiting for content deals,
⏹️ ▶️ John if that seemed remotely true, that’s silly because they just should have left those people on it and said, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John just maintain this and keep pace. And so when we introduce a new technology or a new thing, um, make
⏹️ ▶️ John sure it’s integrated. And by the way, while you’re there, find those corner cases for the people who haven’t agreed to the new iTunes terms and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the thing or whatever. I mean, if I had to guess, I’m guessing that the biggest reason why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this, why there’s so many rough edges around entering your password, logging into the store, different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco store issues is because this crosses departments with an This goes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the engineering department into the EdEQ-led store infrastructure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco area. Crossing those lines has always been very messy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the products. That’s always where people hit a lot of issues and errors and bad user experiences.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve heard so many things from various people inside and outside of Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of which conflict, but most of which tend to agree, anytime the other teams
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need something from the store team, it’s hard to get, or it’s a problem in some way,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or it takes too long, or something. There seems to be a lot of friction there, and I don’t know whose fault it is. It doesn’t really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco matter. The result is that when the products reach us, the consumers,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we see that friction. In the same way that, as Microsoft was so famous for infighting back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the day—I don’t know how bad it is now, but back in the day, they were famous for it, between Windows and Office and a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of times those infights would affect customers negatively and really affect the whole company
⏹️ ▶️ Marco negatively as a result. We see that in Apple in the way that the software products
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to interact with the store back end and anything that uses the store back end. And again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who knows? I’m sure there are lots of smart people working on that, but whatever the cause, things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that need to interact with that tend to work worse worse than the rest of the stack. And the Apple TV
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a product depends so heavily on the store backend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I think that is really causing a lot of this friction. And there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might be tons of well-meaning teams and people inside of Apple who are trying to fix this, but even simply
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through the way these teams are organized and divided between each other, it just might be really hard to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and just therefore just doesn’t happen or doesn’t happen well enough in practice.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s not all aspects of the story either. It just seems to be the things that have to do with like account management. So for
⏹️ ▶️ John example, once I entered my password, and I was downloading all those apps, when I tap them a little install
⏹️ ▶️ John or get icon, I don’t know why sometimes it said install, sometimes it said get or whatever. Anyway, they downloaded really
⏹️ ▶️ John fast. Like I was just basically going through tap, tap, tap, like, it felt fast, a
⏹️ ▶️ John little circle progress indicator filled really fast and all the maybe they’re all tiny apps, because they’re all TV ML, and they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John just tiny little bit, but everything about that felt fast. And yet, when you had to deal with anything
⏹️ ▶️ John having to do with, hey, am I signed into my account? Have I done any sort of administrative bookkeeping stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John related to my account? Do I need to enter the little three digit code from the back of my credit card again? Is there a UI to
⏹️ ▶️ John do that in here? All that just felt like it was lacking. And they just punted that and said, Well, there’s 17 other ways for you to do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can’t do that on your Apple TV, we’re just going to throw up something in front of your face that says go do this someplace else and then
⏹️ ▶️ John come back here and everything will work. And even with the weird sign and stuff, like going to the
⏹️ ▶️ John HBO thing and signing in through Verizon and all that other stuff, it’s like, okay, well, your
⏹️ ▶️ John device is activated now. Go back to your TV and it should be activated. And I always walk into the next
⏹️ ▶️ John room to go back to my TV, dreading the fact that I’m going to look at the TV and it’s just going to be sitting there saying, please sign it. You
⏹️ ▶️ John know, like that it won’t, that the dots won’t connect. If that happens, like what the hell do you do?
⏹️ ▶️ John You just go back and try it again. every time I did it, it actually worked. And maybe I just lucked out on it. But that
⏹️ ▶️ John that is not a seamless experience. Dealing with Apple’s own store is still not a seamless experience. But some aspects of
⏹️ ▶️ John it are good. The video downloads fast, the apps download fast, the apps launch fast. If this thing
⏹️ ▶️ John feels faster than my Tivo, which is ridiculous, considering my Tivo costs like five times as much literally.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it feels faster and things everything about it. Like I can kind of tell that it has two gigs of RAM because
⏹️ ▶️ John I like I went to the app switcher and I went back to a game that I had played like a half an hour ago and the game was still in memory sitting
⏹️ ▶️ John in the place where I left off. That is a sort of premium quality
⏹️ ▶️ John TV box experience. So, you know, it felt good. But yeah, it’s just embarrassing.
⏹️ ▶️ John The setup stuff is just embarrassing. And I still think the remote is kind of embarrassing because I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John imagine, like, maybe people will eventually come to appreciate what I
⏹️ ▶️ John was just describing the swipiness versus the tapping. But that may maybe more of just a personal thing where
⏹️ ▶️ John I hate waiting for the machine to do anything and I hate the fact that I have to I know I’m going to have to
⏹️ ▶️ John depress and release this little rubberized button to to operate a mechanical switch seven times to get
⏹️ ▶️ John to the seventh item that probably doesn’t annoy other people as much as it annoys me. In fact, other people probably feel
⏹️ ▶️ John more comfortable feeling that physical click seven times to get from place to place. So I don’t think they’re going to pick
⏹️ ▶️ John up on those. You know, the things that appeal to me about the remote may not be the things that appeal to other people and everything
⏹️ ▶️ John else about this remote is just terrible as discussed in previous shows. It’s just too small. It’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John wrong shape. It’s it doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t look good. It doesn’t light up. It’s not easy to find it falls down couch
⏹️ ▶️ John cushions. If you dig for it, you’re gonna accidentally scrub your video and be pissed off.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Our final sponsor this week is Backblaze. Go to backblaze.com slash ATP
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so between me and my wife, we have, I think about six terabytes now, or five terabytes.
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco loss, you need to do a full restore from your backup, of course they have you covered there. You can download it from their website,
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco a USB hard drive with your data on it. So they really have you covered there. I’ve tried other backup
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco Online backup is awesome. Do it today. So let’s talk about Apple TV gaming.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay. Wow, that was a long pause. So John, I’m assuming that your gaming experience
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has been limited in the short time you’ve had it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, here’s what I played. I played Crossy Road, I played Alto’s Adventure. Two games that I was already familiar
⏹️ ▶️ John with. I thought Crossy Road was, well, I thought Alto’s Adventure was the best test because it
⏹️ ▶️ John only has one button, modulo the wingsuit activation and some other stuff. But for the most part,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re just tapping a button. And that’s why I said before that I think
⏹️ ▶️ John that the remote isn’t like the touchpad that you press,
⏹️ ▶️ John it actually, the touchpad actually bends, like it bends, the tip of it goes down. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not a good button. Like if that’s gonna be the main button you press, like to start doing a flip or jump or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John in Alto’s Adventure, it just doesn’t feel good as a button. does not feel like a controller button.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is, I mean, it’s big, it’s easy to find. It’s not like, you know, it’s good to be the primary button. It’s just doesn’t feel
⏹️ ▶️ John good. It’s a pretty loud click. It feels more like, I don’t know what it feels like.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe, maybe clicking a mouse button. It’s as if every time you wanna make Mario jump,
⏹️ ▶️ John you click an old style mouse button. It’s just doesn’t, it doesn’t feel like an A button essentially,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Yeah, and this seems like a lot of travel on it. And it just, it feels kind of like there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit of lag. I know there probably isn’t lag. I don’t know what I’m feeling. Maybe I’m feeling like the fact that my
⏹️ ▶️ John thumb has to go through a lot of travel. I don’t know. I’ve spent a lot of time using all sorts of controllers. This
⏹️ ▶️ John A doesn’t feel like a controller and B doesn’t feel good, which is kind of a shame.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s why I was wishing like if they just did tap or whatever. Crossy road, similar. Crossy road I feel like is a
⏹️ ▶️ John little bit better because it’s kind of more deliberate, I guess, where you’re going hop, hop, hop, but even that.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then crossy road, of course, you have to do the side swipe and the up swipe to do the directional changes. I found that the directional
⏹️ ▶️ John change is frustratingly inaccurate in the iOS games where you’re swiping on the screen I don’t know if it’s because I’m trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to it’s kind of like playing zaxxon You guys don’t remember that but no sort of isometric view of a game
⏹️ ▶️ John Where I could never quite my my hand I coordination connection
⏹️ ▶️ John could never quite get on the same page in terms of okay So am I am I pressing
⏹️ ▶️ John up to the left like Northwest? to try to make my zaxxon shift go
⏹️ ▶️ John left in ship space or am I pressing directly west like
⏹️ ▶️ John is it is a relative or absolute control from the perspective of the ship or from the perspective I’m looking at the screen it’s very often
⏹️ ▶️ John in crossy road I will swipe what looks like left along the ground but it wants me to swipe
⏹️ ▶️ John left with respect to the screen anyway those problems seemed lessened somewhat
⏹️ ▶️ John by using the swipy remote for the television I don’t know why I did Like on my first couple runs
⏹️ ▶️ John on Crossy Road, I hadn’t played in a very long time, I did really well with the television, so I guess the control scheme is pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John okay for that, but the button is still pretty terrible. Performance-wise, it performs like an A8, so, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, and those games are not challenging. The games launch fast, they launch faster on a lot of our iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John devices, because I don’t have many iOS devices that are as fast as an A8 in the house.
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t imagine playing a quote-unquote real console game with that remote. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John even like playing with the Wii remote sideways, and that has a real deep head on it. So,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. Gaming-wise, the kids seem interested in it because they play a lot of iOS games and they’re excited to play them on the
⏹️ ▶️ John TV. We played two-player Crossy Road and that was a little fun twist as well. I don’t know if I’ll do
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of gaming on it. I guess it depends on what games come out, but I know I would
⏹️ ▶️ John be more inclined to take it seriously as a gaming device for my gaming needs
⏹️ ▶️ John if it had what we know Marco already bought which is a third-party control that looks like a console controller.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah so about that controller I haven’t used it yet it’s it’s it’s charging up on my desk and I’m probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna try it out tomorrow night but it feels you know it’s 50 bucks which I guess
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is in the realm I mean what is like a ps4 controller cost like 40?
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re more expensive than you think. Right. 50 bucks is is reasonable a reasonable
⏹️ ▶️ John price is this what you should say what make and model this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is? It’s the Steelcase Nimbus which is this the only one so far? I think it might be.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can use any, I think you use any made-for-iPhone controller with it. Okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so anyway, it’s not a great feeling controller. We’ll see how it goes in practice, but just like pushing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the buttons just without it being plugged into anything, the D-pad does not feel very good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The buttons don’t feel very good. It feels kind of like, you know, like back in the day,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know what the current market for these things would be, but back when I had a Sega Genesis
⏹️ ▶️ Marco growing up, you’d occasionally be at a friend’s house where they didn’t want to spend the full $12
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get the the name-brand Sega controller as their player 2
⏹️ ▶️ Marco controller so you’d be player 2 and you’d have like the like not the $12
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nice one but the $7 crappy one and it was like a third-party kind of cheap
⏹️ ▶️ Marco knockoff that tried to be as good as the as the real Sega one but never was this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feels like one of those like compared to the other compared to like you know real Sony
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or Microsoft or Nintendo controllers that are actually good. This just feels like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a third party knockoff kind of controller. And it doesn’t feel terrible, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just doesn’t feel good. So all that aside, and there was a great article,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I put this link in the show notes that I wanted to bring up. There was a great article on Polygon, today I think that came out,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was all about what are the best games on Apple TV and it talks about how many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of them actually change noticeably if you’re using this controller versus just using the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Siri remote. And like Rayman, it becomes, like a lot of these games,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like in Rayman, they give the case where apparently, normally if you just use the Apple TV remote,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the player kind of just runs at a fixed speed and you’re just controlling jumping and stuff. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you plug in a controller, then you have full control over the player. So it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the games change in pretty substantial ways if you use one of these controllers. But in general,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think there’s gonna be two main problems that this faces. Number one, these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco aren’t going to be AAA quality games, just because the economics are not gonna work
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out for people for a while, if ever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, they could be Shovelware. Rayman, we talked about, I’m pretty sure is Shovelware. Like that is
⏹️ ▶️ John a high-profile, multi-platform console game that they ported to iOS and now Apple TV.
⏹️ ▶️ John If it’s the game, it’s Rayman Legends, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s Rayman something, I don’t know. I haven’t played it yet. But it doesn’t matter. So there’s gonna be obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of shovelware from iPad and iPhone games, of course, because it’s easy. But yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so there’s gonna be issues of like, you know, the games aren’t gonna be that great from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just like the budget perspective, because they’re not gonna be able to make that much money. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compared to like selling it for 60 bucks on a console, they’re not gonna make as much money on this device
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you’re lucky if you can get 10 bucks up front for a game or do some kind of terrible in-app purchase
⏹️ ▶️ Marco scheme and the installed base for the Apple TV is gonna be smaller than the game consoles
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a while. Probably in the long term, it’ll eventually surpass them, but for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least a few years, it’s probably gonna be smaller. So we’ll see what happens there. To me,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think what we’re gonna see here, I think it’s kind of like YouTube versus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco HBO of games, if that makes some sense. The big budget AAA games,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s like the HBO in this analogy, those are gonna go to the consoles and the PCs because that’s where they can charge the most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco money and really reach the most hardcore enthusiasts who are willing to pay a premium to play those games
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and to really get into them and to appeal to game enthusiasts and everything. Whereas YouTube is kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, well, anybody can throw some stuff up here and most of it’s gonna be garbage and some of it’s gonna be good. That, I think, is gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be more like what the Apple TV gaming scene becomes, where it’s gonna be a lot of garbage, some good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff. It’s probably never gonna be the quality that you’d get out of a AAA studio, AAA
⏹️ ▶️ Marco release on a console, But there’s gonna be a lot more stuff and it’s a lot more casual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the bar’s a lot lower. And because programming for iOS is easy and distribution, despite all of our complaints
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the App Store, is still way easier than trying to ship a console game. So, you know, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think it’s gonna be more like that. And that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s just different. This is never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to be a competitive gaming console in what we think of as a gaming console.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it might be a thing that people play games on, if that makes sense.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, real time follow up. Apparently, Rayman Legends is not on iOS. It’s called Rayman Adventures. I’m not sure
⏹️ ▶️ John how much it shares, but Rayman Legends is on PlayStation 3 and 4 and Wii
⏹️ ▶️ John U and 360 and Xbox One and NVIDIA and Windows, but not on iOS. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I like I, I have some hope for the people who are good at making iOS games will
⏹️ ▶️ John become good at making Apple TV games. I’m really disappointed about the rules surrounding controllers.
⏹️ ▶️ John disappointed Apple doesn’t make a first party controller. What you said about third party controllers is still entirely
⏹️ ▶️ John true with the one possible exception of controllers made for eSports, which costs
⏹️ ▶️ John more and are presumably higher quality and better feeling. But the consumer third party controllers
⏹️ ▶️ John always gross like even as recently as I think the last one I actually bought
⏹️ ▶️ John was maybe for the GameCube, but I always play with them in stores, you would think how going to be that much worse like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just it’s a pad with buttons. And And if you look at pictures of them, you’re like, actually, the third-party ones look better. Like, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John better shaped, they’re better suited to my hands, they’re a different shape, I like what they did with the controls, and yet you
⏹️ ▶️ John just press the buttons, and you’re like, what have you guys done? What did you do? It’s just a button, how can you screw it up? Why does it
⏹️ ▶️ John feel so different or bad?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, like a Super Nintendo controller would feel better than this.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and I don’t know what magic first-party controllers have, or just, you know, you could say,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just that you’re used to the first-party controller. You get the thing, you use the player one controller for a long time, then you cheap
⏹️ ▶️ John out, get third of everyone and it feels different and you don’t like it but there is no first party controller with the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John TV there’s just that silly remote so it’s not like you’re comparing the Nimbus Steelcase thing to Apple’s first party
⏹️ ▶️ John control that feels really good you’re comparing it to nothing and you still find it doesn’t you know feel good
⏹️ ▶️ John to your hands so I totally believe that I don’t know what it is that makes first party controllers
⏹️ ▶️ John so much better although I have to say that I’m still you know I’ve been playing destiny in my PS4
⏹️ ▶️ John controller for a long time and the L2 and R2 triggers squeak when I hold them down and it bothers
⏹️ ▶️ John me a little bit. Have I destroyed it by playing 500 hours of Destiny? Maybe. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t feel like I’m being that rough on the thing. I just feel like it’s not up to Nintendo’s quality standard. I guess the GameCube
⏹️ ▶️ John triggers did squeak a little bit too, but compare it to the Wii U Pro controller which feels as solid as a rock
⏹️ ▶️ John even though the thumbsticks are in the wrong place. Anyway, I may be interested enough to buy
⏹️ ▶️ John a real controller for my Apple TV depending on how much my kids get into playing
⏹️ ▶️ John it and how much I get into playing it but your review so far of the Steelcase
⏹️ ▶️ John Nimbus is not making me run out and buy that particular model so maybe I’ll just wait.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean honestly I wouldn’t expect there to be a lot of these I honestly wouldn’t I don’t think the market can really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco support a lot of them I think it can support one to two really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and only because like if this wasn’t sold in the Apple Store I wouldn’t even considered it but I was there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get a second Apple TV because I I wanted one for for my desk to develop on so I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I can use the nice remote and not have to use the terrible simulator remote So I wanted so anyway I was there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I got one kind of impulse buying but if they weren’t in the store I don’t think I don’t think I would
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple could be doing the wait-and-see thing to like hey if people really start making console quality games There’s no
⏹️ ▶️ John reason the Apple can’t make a first-party controller and ship it with the next Apple TV other than the fact that it would destroy
⏹️ ▶️ John You know the poor people who design the packaging they’d be like I have to put
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey this in the box It destroys
⏹️ ▶️ John my whole box design It’s supposed to be a cute little Apple TV and it’s a little cubby with the remote and and the wire
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything fits So neatly and now you got to give me this control. It’s bigger that entire box combined I got a run someplace to put this
⏹️ ▶️ John it just seems like a shame like that part of me thinks it’s like half the reason they don’t want to sell a controller is because
⏹️ ▶️ John it necessarily would have to be so much larger and Everything about all their packaging their products is like how
⏹️ ▶️ John small can we make the box? How many of these can we fit in a shipping container? How little waste can we make environmentally
⏹️ ▶️ John speaking and there’s just no getting around the fact that if you want something for adults to hold With two hands
⏹️ ▶️ John it has to be a certain size and you have to make a bigger rocks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, honestly, I think that that is probably a really big part of the reason why they don’t make one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They they seem to do a lot like I think this is kind of like what I mentioned last week about how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel like Johnny Ives influence is slightly too strong in the organization
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there used to be some some adjustment there I feel like the the influence of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco packaging size is so strong right now that they do things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that that like it’s optimizing for the size of the box when it actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has noticeable ramifications on the product so there’s some things that I could use I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some rebalancing but regardless yeah I wouldn’t expect Apple to make a a game controller
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s any good, even if they did make one for themselves, because for all the same reasons, everything that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is making Apple’s products compelling and good today, hardware-wise, of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco making these thin, sleek things that are, by the way, did I mention thin? By the way, it’s really thin. What
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is required to make a good game controller goes totally against Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardware design in recent years. I don’t think they are capable of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shipping one that is good. It would never get out the door.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, because it’s the same reason, you know, the remote is the best example. If they could make a good controller, they
⏹️ ▶️ John would have made a good remote. Exactly. It just doesn’t, and I kind of like, packaging is kind of silly
⏹️ ▶️ John because there are like legit reasons for the packaging to, you know, to make a minimal packaging, regardless of the size of the product. You do want to make a minimal packaging
⏹️ ▶️ John for economics and for environmental reasons, both of which are good to go. But
⏹️ ▶️ John you just look at the Apple TV and the size of the remote, and you have to think these two were designed as a pair
⏹️ ▶️ John and they are in scale with each other. And it’s ignoring the fact that human beings are not in scale with the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John TV. I don’t care how big the puck is. Don’t size the remote based on the size of the puck.
⏹️ ▶️ John Size it based on hands. Shape it and size it based on hands. And there’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John too many things that Apple makes that you grip in that way. Obviously the phones and
⏹️ ▶️ John the pads and stuff, they just wanna be as thin as light as
⏹️ ▶️ John possible until it becomes a non-issue when you’re holding like a completely clear piece of
⏹️ ▶️ John Lexan that weighs almost nothing, that magically has an image
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey appear on the screen. Apple would
⏹️ ▶️ John be all for that, right? But they make keyboards that you touch and those they’ve been trying to shrink down, but at least the keycaps
⏹️ ▶️ John are still full size. They make the Sushi Mouse, which you touch but in a weird way, and maybe if you hold it
⏹️ ▶️ John that way it’s good, but if you don’t hold it that way, tough luck. I still like it.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah, me too.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they don’t, I mean it’s fine if you use it that way, but they don’t make many things that you kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of grip and hold and use in the same way you would grip and hold a remote
⏹️ ▶️ John or a game controller because there’s nothing on the remote or the game controller that you look at, the Wii U gamepad aside,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s purely a thing that you hold with buttons on it that you’re not staring at when you use. So it has to be sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John tactile and you have to be able to tell which way is what way and where the buttons
⏹️ ▶️ John are and yeah there’s not there’s not much like that they make and their their aesthetic doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John lend itself well to that because you know the negative space formed by the gripping human hand
⏹️ ▶️ John is ugly and there’s no getting around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. Ergonomics are ugly like things that are well designed ergonomically are not gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be as visually attractive as a thin bar of soap remote that they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can make but you know it might not work as well but they are willing to make that trade-off.
⏹️ ▶️ John Specifically things that you grip because like a grip in this type of way because you can make a very ergonomic
⏹️ ▶️ John and beautiful door handle right or a lever
⏹️ ▶️ John or shift knob in a car or steering wheel or anything like that those can be
⏹️ ▶️ John both beautiful and ergonomic but once you’re wrapping your hand entirely around something
⏹️ ▶️ John like a controller that you’re gripping with two hands or remote that you’re gripping entirely with one hand then you’re just
⏹️ ▶️ John all around the thing and it’s like you can’t get around the fact that that hands don’t want to to go around a rectangular
⏹️ ▶️ John solid. They don’t want then it’s hard if it’s a little tiny sliver of a thing, it’s hard to kind of grip that at the same
⏹️ ▶️ John time as manipulating the top surface. What are you even holding on to the little edges of the like? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like the people from Oxo need to parachute into the industrial design headquarters at
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Apple and go. All
⏹️ ▶️ John listen, everybody on the floor, you know, just like strap them to their chairs
⏹️ ▶️ John and just go over. Although Oxo discontinued the goods cheese grater to so maybe they’re losing their way as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So going back a sec, so I said that there were two challenges that I see for Apple TV games, and I only named
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. The other big one is, it’s what I always say, never go against the smartphone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All the Apple TV games so far, again, I assume this will change, hopefully
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quickly, and hopefully to such a degree that the statement sounds ridiculous in retrospect. But so far,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I haven’t seen anything on the Apple TV game-wise that was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco substantially better than just running that same game on an iPhone or an iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s going to be a problem for a lot of games. Everyone who’s developing iOS games so far,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and mobile games so far, has been doing it on these platforms where certain things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apply. We know all these SDKs and everything. People who are making games that can be played nicely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a TV with a controller have not really been in this business because this business has not really allowed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them to thrive. So we need to either attract those kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco games into the business or we need to have our game developers start making games
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that actually make sense on TVs more than they make sense on just running it on an iPad or an iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ John I wouldn’t say they’re not substantially but it all depends on how you qualify substantially because I think even these
⏹️ ▶️ John two games that are totally iOS games like you know Alta’s Adventure and and Crossy Road, both designed
⏹️ ▶️ John with the control scheme of a smartphone or a touchscreen in mind. It’s a very, you know, Alto is like, how can
⏹️ ▶️ John I make a fun game with very minimal controls? Most of the, you just tap anywhere on the screen, right? Same thing with Crossy
⏹️ ▶️ John Road. Mostly you just tap anywhere with a little bit of swipes. They’re totally designed for the very limited, very
⏹️ ▶️ John primitive input precision and style of a
⏹️ ▶️ John touchscreen device. But I think both of those games benefit enormously from
⏹️ ▶️ John being on a TV screen. for the first reason that your hands aren’t blocking any part of the screen, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John for console gamers, part of the thing that annoys about iOS games is that if it doesn’t have an interface that totally
⏹️ ▶️ John demands touch, like flight control, where it’s like, okay, that’s not working anywhere else. You know, it’s gotta be a finger or a mouse,
⏹️ ▶️ John and the finger kinda makes it more fun. But those type of games, I like not having my hand blocking the screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John The reason I always play Alto on my iPad is I don’t like how much of the screen my two thumbs potentially
⏹️ ▶️ John block when playing Alto on my iPhone 6, or even worse on a four inch iOS device. I like
⏹️ ▶️ John seeing the whole screen. Games that look good, and I think Alto does look pretty good, or even Crossy
⏹️ ▶️ John Road, they look really good on a big TV. Big, bright, beautiful colors. Again, none of it blocked
⏹️ ▶️ John by your fingers. I think that is a big enough win that I like,
⏹️ ▶️ John if I was going for a high score in Crossy Road or Alto, I would now do it on my television. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John I would not try to do it on my iPad or on my iPhone, because I feel like I would do
⏹️ ▶️ John better. It’s like it’s better suited to even this really super simple kind of game. It’s not like I’m saying, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a game that takes advantage, full advantage of a controller and you couldn’t play it at all on an iOS device.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that’s a win. Now, is that a big enough win that people care? They’re like, oh, cross your heart, I’ve already got them on my phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John Probably not, because from what I’ve seen with my kids, they’re fine playing that. Like they experienced
⏹️ ▶️ John those games for the first time on their iOS devices. They’re fine playing them there. I don’t think they would
⏹️ ▶️ John feel the same way I do about getting my fingers the hell away from the screen so I can see what’s going on.
⏹️ ▶️ John But we’ll see, like my son is now, he downloaded some first person shooter for iOS, and I’m like,
⏹️ ▶️ John for like a phone size device? Who in the world is trying to play a first person shooter on a phone screen? Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John he’s doing it, he seems to be enjoying it. It’s not like he doesn’t know the other experience. He plays Minecraft on the
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac, so we’ve got the mouse and keyboard controls there. He plays Destiny
⏹️ ▶️ John on the PS4, so he knows what it’s like for console control, and here he is tilting the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John and shoving his little fingers into different parts of the screen to try and make the guy walk forward and jump and shoot. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m like, oh, that’s no way to live, but he seems fine with it. So you may be right, the market as
⏹️ ▶️ John a whole is not going to see a significant differentiator for these same games on the television.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I certainly do. So at least maybe for old people who
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco know what it’s like to be able to see the whole
⏹️ ▶️ John screen, there is an upside.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The other thing too is like TV screens are way worse than modern smartphone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and tablet screens. the graphics that you see on TV, the resolution, anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco involving text, and I totally agree with Joe Steele on Upgrade this past week about how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s so many blurs that use these gradients between colors, and you see noticeable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco banding on my TV and on probably many TVs, to the point where it doesn’t seem like this interface was designed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for TVs. You guys gotta get better TVs. Anyway, so,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in many ways, when you’re used to gaming when you’re used to gaming on iOS, gaming on a TV
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again is a step down in many ways. And I totally agree. There are so many kinds of games where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a controller with real D-pad and real buttons, or real analog sticks, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your case may be, a controller with physical buttons is so much better than touch controls
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for so many kinds of games.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all, but so many kinds of games. And yet, playing games on a TV,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once you are used to casual gaming on iOS devices, it really does feel like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big step backwards.
⏹️ ▶️ John Another type of game like this is this is one of the games that was in the top was presented to me on the first screen of apps
⏹️ ▶️ John and I almost bought it is a game that I never bought on iOS because I looked at the game
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m like, Oh, well, that’s a console game. There’s no way I’d want to play that on iOS device. What is it called someone in the
⏹️ ▶️ John chat room will tell me Oceanhorn or something like that. It’s a Zelda clone. Basically, it’s a it’s Zelda,
⏹️ ▶️ John but not without Zelda IP. And that’s a traditional console
⏹️ ▶️ John game. Yeah, the chat room says Oceanhorn. You run around and you do Zelda-like things with a character
⏹️ ▶️ John who is totally not named Link. And I assume
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey there’s a princess who is
⏹️ ▶️ John not named Zelda. And beautiful graphics and it looks nice, but I’m like, I don’t wanna play
⏹️ ▶️ John that kind of, again, maybe it’s because I’m old. I don’t wanna play that kind of game on a console
⏹️ ▶️ John or on a phone or iPad. I wanna play that on my television holding a controller. because I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do that I’m never gonna buy it now when I saw it come up on my Apple TV screen I’m like you know what maybe I would play that
⏹️ ▶️ John I maybe it’s just again with the context that I feel like certain types of games
⏹️ ▶️ John that you’re gonna spend hours and hours going on like a quest and a game with continuity and saves and adventure and
⏹️ ▶️ John inventory that I would just rather do that on a television I don’t know if that’s the the common
⏹️ ▶️ John case for people who grew up with iOS devices but I definitely
⏹️ ▶️ John felt that when I saw that icon that same game that I know is a quality game that I’ve seen lots of things about that I would never
⏹️ ▶️ John in a million years would buy and play on my iPad or iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John I was tempted to buy on the television.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was just thinking also one thing that this would be awesome for that would make my gamepad purchase worthwhile is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if good emulators exist like for old you know NES
⏹️ ▶️ John We haven’t had a good NES or MAME breach in the App Store in a while.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah there was that one like there There is some somebody open-sourced one back when the dev kits first shipped out, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have it bookmarked somewhere In one of my many tabs in my many Chrome windows John
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, just kidding. I think I’m pin board somewhere anyway So I wanted to try to run
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that because this really could be a really nice emulator machine, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Getting the software on there through the App Store stuff is probably gonna be a problem
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think my last NES emulator probably crashes on launch now and iOS 9 which is kind of a shame game,
⏹️ ▶️ John my main one might still run I don’t. But in the early days of the App Store, people who weren’t around back then,
⏹️ ▶️ John very frequently, someone would manage to get some kind of game emulator onto the App Store
⏹️ ▶️ John briefly before Apple would pull it. So if you purchased and downloaded it during that window of time,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple wouldn’t remove it from your device, even though it’s gone from the store. So a lot of us have these emulators from like
⏹️ ▶️ John the iOS three or four days still sitting around. Of course, they’re not maintained and the developer can’t release
⏹️ ▶️ John updates. So eventually, a lot of them just start crashing and launch and don’t work but some of them still do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco real-time follow-up thanks to jellybean soup which sounds disgusting in the chat I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know you want to talk Mike and Ike man the emulator that I was referring to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for Apple TV is called provenance and as we’ll link that in the show notes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will try it somewhere I have like a DVD are a DVD sorry a DVD plus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco our disc with like the entire Nintendo and Genesis
⏹️ ▶️ Marco catalogs on it and ROMs but who knows I gotta dig this out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah that could be really cool and that could be like a fun thing to do with my kid who’s now like getting into games you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know because he’s almost four so yeah that could that could be fun and if that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if that does work well then I will not regret the purchase of this controller at all.
⏹️ ▶️ John So one final thing on Apple TV and you’ll notice if you’ve seen any of the screenshots the
⏹️ ▶️ John old Apple TV appearance was basically a black background with light
⏹️ ▶️ John colored things on a lot of the icons were also kind of dark but anyway the background of the whole thing
⏹️ ▶️ John was black. I like that for a lot of reasons I don’t like bright white screens in my face
⏹️ ▶️ John but also because I have a plasma television that does not like to show a full white screen and
⏹️ ▶️ John also because I have a plasma television with various regions of the screen with burn-in
⏹️ ▶️ John and other image retention artifacts on it from the kids watching Cartoon Network and the stupid CN logo burning into the side
⏹️ ▶️ John and the Destiny HUD burning into the left and so on and so forth Obviously this is a problem only for
⏹️ ▶️ John me and the seven other people who still own plasmas. But I bet if you own a plasma,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I’ve heard from a couple people who already have done this, and you think you don’t have any image retention, launching
⏹️ ▶️ John something like, say, Cricey Road and having a big giant uniform teal background
⏹️ ▶️ John when the hipster whale comes up, you will notice, hey, wait a second, that big giant teal background is not uniform.
⏹️ ▶️ John I can see the logo of the channel I watch all the time in the corner. I didn’t know that was there before. And same
⏹️ ▶️ John thing with the menu screens, where it’s like, you just have this big sea of icons on a big, it’s not pure
⏹️ ▶️ John white, but on a big light colored background that’s supposed to be uniform. But then you start
⏹️ ▶️ John seeing the little things burned in. That makes me feel sad. I don’t think it’s a reason for Apple not to do
⏹️ ▶️ John it, except the only argument for Apple to go back to a black background is just in general, staring at a television with a white
⏹️ ▶️ John background is not fun on your eyeballs. Especially if you don’t have a plasma,
⏹️ ▶️ John you have an LED backlit LCD, Those can go really bright and having a full bright screen
⏹️ ▶️ John even if the room is not dark having a full white screen with icons On it not great for television so I
⏹️ ▶️ John wish both for selfish reasons and a few minor practical reasons that they would tone it down a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ John and Go back to Black background with light icons on it instead of the other way around
⏹️ ▶️ John it and it also kind of feels more TV I think Plexus UI is like that case. You can tell me if I’m wrong
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, Plexus UI in general tends to be, I don’t know, it is TV-ish,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I’ve not seen it on the new Apple TV. I’ve not, I’ve not even used the new Apple TV yet. So beats me in that
⏹️ ▶️ John So you think that it’s conceivable that that would also be a light background with dark text on it instead of
⏹️ ▶️ John what I’m used to seeing, which is black background with light text?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The pictures I’ve seen, I thought it looked very much like the home screen of the Apple TV and that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was like a very gray background with like white-ish text on it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, well they’re using a lot of the layout templates that you get from TVML, so it does appear that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s going to be like a general light theme. And I’m with you, John. Honestly, I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco realize, like I had forgotten what this looked like in the event. So when I got it and plugged it in, I’m like, oh, everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is really bright. And I also have a plasma, even though it’s an ancient one, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco admit I would prefer a dark theme for TV stuff. It just kind of feels
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that is the the color scheme for TV is black with you know color where necessary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rather than what we have with this which is just everything is just bright and full of banded gradients
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all over the place.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well they do vibrancy too that’s that’s the thing I actually do think kind of works they do a vibrancy effect where like the
⏹️ ▶️ John new app fades to the foreground or sometimes when you’re on like a setting screen you can see behind it this sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of like you can an iOS where they put a sheet up over it and you really can’t see through it but there’s kind of these weird colored
⏹️ ▶️ John blobs it’s not straight translucent it’s vibrancy like it’s that effect that you’ve seen everyone else they do in the television and
⏹️ ▶️ John that I don’t mind so much because it does tend to be darker at least but
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s it’s the thing that it’s covering up that having a darker gray thing over some icons looks okay but when it goes
⏹️ ▶️ John it slides away again and you’re like light gray icons on light gray or white
⏹️ ▶️ John it just it just doesn’t doesn’t feel right to me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah well there’s different vibrancy modes. One of them is super light and one of them is middle.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One of them is dark. So it’s really up to developers to choose. But I think by default
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and kind of like the norm on the platform is going to be things that are fairly light.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I agree with you that’s probably a mistake.
⏹️ ▶️ John so you can look at these screenshots of the Plex app. We’ll put in the show notes. It looks like it does the vibrancy thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And like for example, they’re showing a thing from Louis here. Is this just the Plex app or is this
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco everything else?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s that’s Louis app. It’s it’s again, it’s using all the built in templates from TV ml.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, yeah. Anyway, since Louis has a picture of Louis ck with like a blue
⏹️ ▶️ John sky and some clouds, the whole background of the page is kind of like a blurred,
⏹️ ▶️ John smeared version of the you know, it’s it does auto color theming, right? Like Breaking
⏹️ ▶️ John Bad is like, greenish gray. And so the whole background is greenish gray. And that
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple Music does similar things like Apple’s been doing this for a long time trying to sort of have algorithmically
⏹️ ▶️ John generated color schemes that match the thing you’re seeing, but still find a way to make the text
⏹️ ▶️ John legible on it is very difficult to do and they seem super determined to be able to do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think they do a pretty good job here. I like the fact that every one of these screens isn’t completely
⏹️ ▶️ John black with white text on it like it used to be on the old Apple TV. Sometimes you get a bum color scheme sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John things are hard to read. So maybe you could say hey, Apple, like just pick one theme that looks nice
⏹️ ▶️ John that you can read text on. But I am not as vehemently anti-vibrancy as some
⏹️ ▶️ John other people. I think they go too far with it. I think it’s a little bit silly. But for a television
⏹️ ▶️ John interface I think this gives Apple a branding because they’re the only company that’s gonna go through these kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John pains to stick to this what seems like a very stupid idea for how to color
⏹️ ▶️ John theme things algorithmically. And they’re just gonna keep working at it until they get it to work. And you know they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John done it and it makes it look different than everything else. It’s when you go all the way back to the menu screen where it’s like, well, now you’re at the bottom
⏹️ ▶️ John and all there is is a very light gray background with some drop shadows on it. That that still feels wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. I think we’re good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week. Harry’s cars against humanity and backblaze and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we will see you next week.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re into Twitter, you can follow them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and T. Marco Armin,
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t mean to ♪ Two accidental, accidental ♪ Check
Post-show: TV audio
⏹️ ▶️ John When you get your Apple TV, you will have things to talk about too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well honestly Casey, now you have to get one so you can tell us about Plex on it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve learned enough about myself to know that I’m going to get one. It’s just a matter of will I hold out for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the holidays or not. And I don’t know, I probably… I’m really… this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey optical thing is really chapping my a**. And it’s stupid, like conceptually I know it’s stupid
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I know it’s not that big a deal and I can get over it, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John really… Just get one of those $30 boxes. It’s not worth the spreading. The $30 box might break,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it might not. If it breaks, so what? Return it, get a different one. If it doesn’t break, problem solved. You can
⏹️ ▶️ John get two of them for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cost of the game control.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s true. It’s all I know. I’m being crazy. Like I said earlier, there’s no doubt in my mind. This is a Casey
⏹️ ▶️ Casey issue, and I’m just being weird. But I don’t know. It really grinds my gears that that that’s the way that that
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Shouldn’t bother you
⏹️ ▶️ John that much, because like you said, it makes total sense to drop that optical.
⏹️ ▶️ John optical anymore? You just need to get a new receiver and you don’t have the same excuse to Marco does where you’re not allowed to get one that’s above
⏹️ ▶️ John a certain height. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco interesting follow-up about that, by the way. It turns out, so to recap,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my issue that I brought up last time was that I really want dynamic range compression
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in my audio for my TV, but due to household balance issues,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not allowed to have a big receiver that does not fit in this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really, really narrow spot in our TV stand. and I have not found any receiver
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is short enough height-wise to actually fit in here. Even the Marant slimline ones, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are almost there, but not quite. And then I also, later on, asked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what the heck a soundbar was, because I keep seeing soundbars everywhere, and they seem to be the new cool thing, and I wondered what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the heck is a soundbar, why do people keep buying what appears to be a big row of tiny little speakers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And turns out the answer to what I want probably is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a sound bar. Because many of them include range compression
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a feature of the sound bar, which is a wide, skinny speaker
⏹️ ▶️ Marco array that can fit pretty much anywhere in the kind of shaped
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shelf that I have our TV
⏹️ ▶️ John Like we said, everything comes with it. The Apple TV comes with it. Everything has it. Everything except for your television and your current
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, and so it turns out the Apple TV does in fact have built-in range compression, so that is also going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something that will be a possible answer. But I’ve actually,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a very kind manufacturer of audio equipment has actually sent me a sound bar to test
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that arrived today. I haven’t had time to hook it up yet.
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know if you’re gonna like it, because like I said, it does sound different than stereo. And it’s trying to
⏹️ ▶️ John find a middle ground. It’s not gonna sound like stereo, but like, you know, better sounding. going to
⏹️ ▶️ John sound different because it’s trying to say trying to be like it’s just like a 5.1 system so it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John going to do crap by bouncing sound around your room that you may find weird so it’ll be interesting to
⏹️ ▶️ John see how you how this if it actually is pleasing enough for you to keep using it or if you
⏹️ ▶️ John say you know what that’s just too weird i’d rather have either just plain stereo or a 5.1 than this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah i’ll have to look at the same and there’s probably like different modes and and like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco settings of like if i can like tell it to just try to make it sound 2D and like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to not boost up the depth simulation as much. Maybe it won’t sound weird. I don’t know. I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco let you know how it goes.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well that’s the other thing with the surround systems is one of the reasons that people tend not to like them
⏹️ ▶️ John is pretty much every receiver comes with like all these weird modes like pretend
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you’re in an opera
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey hall or you’re in
⏹️ ▶️ John a stadium or you’re whatever like, just do not ever use any of those. They’re pointless. I don’t know. I guess they’re there
⏹️ ▶️ John to wow people in showrooms or something, pretend they don’t exist. And so with the soundbar, I think what
⏹️ ▶️ John you what you’re probably gonna end up wanting is, please just play the center channel out of your center speakers, the right
⏹️ ▶️ John out of there, the left out of there, and like, just have it go straight. But even that can sound weird if
⏹️ ▶️ John the speakers are angled behind the grill in weird ways, because a lot of time they try to bounce the back channels off of like the sidewall
⏹️ ▶️ John and the back wall to kind of you know
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey what I mean?
⏹️ ▶️ John And if they’re if they’re in an angle like that, they’re never going to be going right at you. Like I feel like I was saying before
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t run a 5.1 mix out of less than 5.1 speakers because some sounds are only
⏹️ ▶️ John on a Certain channel and you will literally not hear them and so you won’t understand what someone is replying to it’s like you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not hearing The whole movie so you have to play those speakers But you just want them to play Like
⏹️ ▶️ John just play the sound like if they could reroute them to the left and the right channel or just play the sound straight
⏹️ ▶️ John At me because I’m not interested in feel like I feel like I’m surrounded I just want all of the sound
⏹️ ▶️ John coming straight from me anyway well I can’t wait to hear your review of the soundbar. Thanks.
⏹️ ▶️ John Does it even fit though? That’s another thing I would love for you to unpack this thing and realize it doesn’t fit either.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I measured and it should fit but yeah should is is different from does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in practice. We’ll see.
Post-show: Neutral
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And FYI, I have my car back for a week until it goes into the body shop.
⏹️ ▶️ John Wait, why does it need to go to the body shop?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So the area in which my house is, and in between my house and work,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s a landfill. Don’t be creepy. And one of the main access roads
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the landfill is one of the roads I drive on.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s probably more than one landfill in Virginia, Casey.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, in the Richmond area, I genuinely don’t know how many there are that are accessible to the public. What happens
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is people who perhaps live in like extraordinarily rural sections
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of this area, which there are some but they’re relatively far out, or if you just don’t feel like paying for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a trash service, you can bring your trash to the landfill and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can dump it yourself. Well, the problem is nobody actually secures their trash as they’re driving up this main
⏹️ ▶️ Casey access road. One day I was driving to work and apparently it was daydreaming. I wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my phone, hand on heart. I wasn’t on my phone. I wasn’t fiddling with the radio. I was just apparently not paying enough attention
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the road. And I must’ve clipped like a piece of wood or something. And I heard this tremendous like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey crash or bang or something. And, um, and I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey discovered a day or two later, cause I went looking around the car, didn’t see anything. And I discovered a day or two later that I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had apparently kicked it up with my rear passenger tire
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it impacted on the fender, like on the very edge of the fender. And so there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like this really bad like impact on the fender. So it’s going into the body
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shop next week for apparently a week’s worth of body repair just for that one fender issue to the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tune of a thousand dollars. So thankfully insurance has already paid for. But yeah. Yikes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. And then you have had some car problems as well. I hear.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes. So fortunately I have an appointment to go get my my snow tires installed and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get whatever BS I’m supposed to get at this mileage next week
⏹️ ▶️ Marco already but so yesterday My trunk stopped
⏹️ ▶️ Marco opening so I don’t have a trunk For the time being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well just use your oh wait never mind And there is literally no way to open it. So it’s one of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those electric lifting trunk gate things. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there is no mechanical way to open the trunk. You have to invoke the electric motor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that controls it somehow. And there’s like three different ways to do it. You can do it on the key fob, you can grip
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the button that’s under the trunk lid, like where anyone else would have put a latch. There’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco button there that you just push and it opens. there’s a button in the driver’s side footwell.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco None of those work. They all, like, you just pull them and it just does nothing. And I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can get to it from the cabin, because I think the whole point of, like, those various locks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that are on the fold-down seats in the back, I think the whole point is that you aren’t supposed to have access to the trunk without going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through the trunk.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, if you had, if it was mechanical, in mechanical cars, you have a key thing very often in the back seats.
⏹️ ▶️ John You put the key, actual physical key, which you, do you even have it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh you know yeah it’s buried in the key fob I think I actually might have one of those little key slots in late in like the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco yeah exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John and and then if you get to that what you can do is get to the one that they they have to put in there probably by
⏹️ ▶️ John law for like if you get trapped in the trunk you have a way to get out you know that little thing yep yep yep yeah a little pull
⏹️ ▶️ John handle thing yeah so if you send Adam in
⏹️ ▶️ John through the ski thing and say okay Adam pulled a little red handle he says daddy I’m scared and then you say just pull it
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway you’ll eventually you’ll open up the the trunk but this this i think the first
⏹️ ▶️ John car i ever saw that did this was agri-cl i remember looking at it and
⏹️ ▶️ John noticing that the trunk lid had no no place to put a key in and no handles
⏹️ ▶️ John whatsoever on it like i think they did it for aesthetics like oh it looks so smooth and sleek just to have this trunk thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that comes down and you don’t have any of these silly key openings or handles or whatever i
⏹️ ▶️ John assume it was still mechanical and you’d pull the little thingy in the you know the driver’s foot well or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John But what I thought was, well, that’s stupid. It’s like Johnny Ive type move. Purely
⏹️ ▶️ John for aesthetics, you don’t provide a mechanical latch or a place for stick your key in. Margo’s thing is more like,
⏹️ ▶️ John we want little tiny electric motors and circuits that will fail because apparently
⏹️ ▶️ John electronics and cars are an impossibility instead of having a latch. But on your car, there’s a place like
⏹️ ▶️ John you said, that would be where you would put the latch. You wouldn’t see it. It would be fine. It would work, but they say you know it
⏹️ ▶️ John No, all all motors, and if the motors fail just forget about whatever’s in the trunk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah and this is one thing like so I Got the electric trunk because it was part of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a package and I kind of had to get it if I wanted a bunch of other cool stuff Since the beginning
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of having this I have said this is stupid and I would prefer the car to not have this if given the option to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just delete that because everything about an electric trunk is worse than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a manual trunk. There is literally nothing, there is no benefit. So first of all it has like the the cool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feature where you can just wave your foot under the bumper and the trunk opens. Yeah, you know how often that works?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, you’re just standing there doing the BMW
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco dance. Waving your foot, yeah, waving your foot under the bumper and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cursing at your trunk because it’s not opening. Like that’s the kind of thing you try like twice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe and you’re like, alright I’m never doing this again. So that’s problem number Number one, those things just don’t work. They work frequently
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough that you can tell it’s not broken, but infrequently enough that you never want to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do it. So that’s problem number one. Problem number two is that the electric,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever mechanism raises and lowers this, is kind of permanently engaged so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that if you want to manually close the trunk, there’s so much resistance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you actually kind of can’t do it, or you have to push really hard and it goes really slowly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It isn’t like a bike gear where it disengages when it’s not applying pressure. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is just always engaged. You’re pushing down really hard to try to manually close it if you ever need to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s no good. So you kind of always have to use the motor, which is probably my problem right now. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reason I can’t open it is because something has failed and there is no manual way to open it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So there’s also no manual way to close it. So that’s annoying. And it’s slow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have a regular trunk lid a regular mechanical trunk lid you can close
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it and open it way faster than the people with these stupid electric ones like me
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the one advantage of it is that you can’t slam your hand in the electric one because it goes so damn slow and presumably has
⏹️ ▶️ John a back off thing that if
⏹️ ▶️ John was stuck in it would be like whoa I’m getting too much resistance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s true it does but I mean I’ve I’ve been driving a long time I’ve never had that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happen have you ever had that happen
⏹️ ▶️ John the only place well it’s for like like little kids, they get in their hands, cause the only place electric
⏹️ ▶️ John thing makes any kind of sense is for minivans where very often the
⏹️ ▶️ John lift, the lift gate in the back is so high that short people can’t even reach it to close it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you can reach it, it’s sometimes difficult to get enough weight or leverage. If you are a small or lightweight person
⏹️ ▶️ John to pull that giant lid all the way down, that’s and it’s the same thing on minivans with the sliding
⏹️ ▶️ John doors with kids getting in and out of it as a big, you know, getting your hand caught threat. So those are electric as well,
⏹️ ▶️ John because it may be hard for a kid to pull that big heavy door closed, and it’s very
⏹️ ▶️ John easy for people to get their hands caught because kids are stupid and fight around doors and shove their
⏹️ ▶️ John hands in gaps to try to stop doors, whatever, and the electric one solves that problem and those things. And the final
⏹️ ▶️ John reason that it makes sense for minivans is a lot more minivans are sold than
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey And any type
⏹️ ▶️ John of thing like this, any kind of car-related technology, We talked about this with the
⏹️ ▶️ John Tesla Model X gullwing door things or whatever. You do not want
⏹️ ▶️ John this feature to only be on a low volume car. You want this to be the 900th
⏹️ ▶️ John iteration of this feature that sells thousands and thousands of copies every single year so they can get the kinks
⏹️ ▶️ John worked out of it. Regular trunk lids and that they put on like a Honda Accord
⏹️ ▶️ John or a Toyota Camry or a Toyota Corolla, you can be damn sure that
⏹️ ▶️ John if there’s anything wrong with that trunk closing mechanism in the next revision of the Camry, they will work on it. And you repeat that process
⏹️ ▶️ John for 15, 20 years, they pretty much have the stupid welded gooseneck manual trunk lid
⏹️ ▶️ John things and latch down to that point. How many, I think the electric closing
⏹️ ▶️ John thing in your BMW M5 trunk lid is probably a beautiful bespoke mechanism made only for this year’s
⏹️ ▶️ John M5. And the total number of electric closing BMW trunk lids sold
⏹️ ▶️ John in the history of BMW is probably less than the number of Camry sold this year.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Bruce S. in the chat pointed something out to me, or to us, which got me thinking. And so a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey little bit of real-time follow-up. Well, let me start by reading page 39 of your owner’s manual.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Manual operation. This makes one of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey read it, by the way.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sure. In fact, I think I cracked the soap the PDF version opened before we went to Germany, just because I’m that much of a nerd.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco anyway. You did.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Manual operation. In the event of an electrical fault, manually operate the unlocked trunk lid slowly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and smoothly. close it completely push the trunk lid down lightly it is closed automatically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what does that even mean that kind of makes it sound like if it’s stuck open you can close it carefully
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very weird anyway but to continue on the thing that Bruce has brought up which I had forgotten
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about in my glove box but apparently in your center armrest there is actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a segregated lock switch specifically for the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey trunk so you might want to run to your car feel free to do that now if you’d like we’ll hold on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey run to the car and just double check that this switch is flicked the appropriate direction
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I might actually before you go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey let me just send you a screenshot of the relevant portion because I want to make sure you see what I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey talking about now I’m not gonna be able to put this in the chat room because I don’t use like dropler or anything like that but I’ll put it in our little robot
⏹️ ▶️ John he’s have a little GoPro on his head so we see the Marco cam I see he goes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s right I think I’ve seen that all right Let me try it. Hold on, I’ll be right back.
⏹️ ▶️ John What kind of person doesn’t read the manual for their car?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Who knows? Oh my god, thank you. I don’t get it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because you’ll never discover. The UI is so bad, you’ll never discover, oh, if you press and hold this button, it does some feature
⏹️ ▶️ John that you always wanted on your car. I guess it’s better to be easier with onscreen controls, I found with my Accord, even for as terrible
⏹️ ▶️ John as the infotainment system is. At the very least, it was menus. So I could find, oh, there is an option
⏹️ ▶️ John to make it so you only have to press the remote once to lock all four doors instead of having to do it twice or
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey whatever. Right, right, right. or unlock all four doors instead of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do it twice. I’m with you though. I’ve read my manual at least once cover to cover.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. You can just see the hilarious things that they tell you about engine break in and stuff. Like seriously, that’s never gonna happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Any car I’ve owned, if memory serves, they’re like, do not engine break. That’s what the brakes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are for. And I always engine break.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I mean, break in, not. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You don’t, did your manual say no engine breaking?
⏹️ ▶️ John I still do it. They do it because I always felt like they’re telling you to do it because they want you to go through your brake pads faster. I’m like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I think the thing is, if you’re going to put pressure on anything, why not put pressure on the thing that’s easy to replace?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But with that said, I still engine brake constantly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it’s a calculus. You put pressure on the engine if you’re leasing.
⏹️ ▶️ John The pressure on the engine, maybe it’s for more finicky cars, but I
⏹️ ▶️ John keep my cars for 10 years plus, engine brake all the time, all the manual, never any
⏹️ ▶️ John engine problems that could conceivably be attributed to engine braking, unless engine braking causes
⏹️ ▶️ John my radiators to rust out and my water pump to die, which always happens
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey around 60,000 miles.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I feel like what’s going to happen? Your head gas is going to blow? Like, what are they afraid? It’s going to mess with the valve train?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I’m with you. I, well, my valve train is now brand new. I’m with you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Oh, by the way, apparently,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is actually fun, and I want to get to what Marco discovered, but when they did my valve train, they said
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I should get the sheet out. It doesn’t matter. But suffice to say, when they were pulling the injectors, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apparently was part of this process, they had to apply too much torque to get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the injectors out. Yeah, I
⏹️ ▶️ John saw that. That’s just fancy language for them that they broke something. That’s all
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re saying. They were trying to pull something out, it’s hard to do, and it goes whoop whoop, and then, well, you broke it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, you very well could be right, but according to the service advisor, who I do actually trust,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they apparently pitched all six injectors and gave me new ones, which I thought was interesting. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, what did you discover?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now this is annoying because you’re the one that’s going to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John do this edit and we will no
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one will ever hear this so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey listeners this is this is a pact between all of us that you you can remind Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John anytime you want.
⏹️ ▶️ John That he doesn’t know how to work his own car because he didn’t read the manual. Yep. Who reads the manual? Both
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey of us. I was
⏹️ ▶️ John just discussing that while you were gone. I always do like because otherwise I was saying to Casey otherwise you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John find these uh old, these obscure features in your car because the UI is so bad you would never guess
⏹️ ▶️ John that you have to press this button or hold this button or whatever activates this thing. Better with on-screen
⏹️ ▶️ John controls because you can read stuff, but if you don’t read the manual you just won’t know how your car works. You won’t know where all these little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I certainly, I mean it was right in the center armrest thing which I have, you know, there’s like chains
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in there, there’s a tin of Altoids, there’s an iPhone battery. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John so who’s, yeah, so who’s going in there? Did you basically accidentally bump it with your tin of Altoids or whatever?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is most likely what happened. Yeah, like I mean, I don’t know but it is that is most likely, you know accidental
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bumping of the switch which is right in
⏹️ ▶️ John We saved you an embarrassing trip to the dealer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah well it was a combination of us and Bruce s actually because I’d forgotten about that and as soon as Bruce has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said all that thing in The glove box. I was like, yes, that’s right I completely forgot and then
⏹️ ▶️ John the last time we were looking in the manual for Marco was to try to find his battery another
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Other people
⏹️ ▶️ John are reading Marcos cars manual but him not so much