165: Time Was…
12 Apr 2016Early Apple memories, self-driving cars, and duck surveillance.
Episode Description:
- Follow-up: Tesla model naming
- Today's Tesla Autopilot, tomorrow's self-driving cars?
- Marco's surveillance camera
- Recalling our early Apple memories as Apple turns 40
- Ending theme by Jonathan Mann
- Post-show: TextEdit Woes
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Chapters
- Intro: On Assignment
- Follow-up: Tesla model names
- Self-driving cars today
- Follow-up: TextExpander at Apple
- Sponsor: Hover (code ALEXAPLAYPHISH)
- Ducks and Ubiquiti
- Sponsor: Blue Apron
- Celebrating Apple, 1976–1997
- Sponsor: Betterment
- Celebrating Apple, 1998–present
- Ending theme
- Post-show: Cannot save Untitled
Intro: On Assignment
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We should briefly discuss that it is earlier
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the week. We have some interesting travel arrangements between the three of us coming up in the next couple of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey weeks. And so we’re trying to get ahead of everything. Additionally, we should note that John is coming
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to us on assignment from an undisclosed location. So if he sounds a little bit peculiar,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you hear slightly more background noise than usual, that’s not his fault. That’s what being on assignment
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is all about. So please bear with us.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not much of an assignment. My internet went out of my house, so I had to make other arrangements. But yeah, this
⏹️ ▶️ John is my Fios box from, I don’t know, how
⏹️ ▶️ John years ago? 10 years ago? 12? It’s really old, and I think it’s finally
⏹️ ▶️ John given up the ghost, which is a shame. And of course, it does it now at the most inconvenient time
⏹️ ▶️ John when we have two podcasts during this week, and I’m about to leave somewhere to go on vacation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what can you do? Well, you know, things happen. But we appreciate you not only
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going on assignment like that, but also admitting to the fact that on assignment just means you have internet problems. I was trying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to build you up and make it sound super exciting, and then you had to go and ruin it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I’ve also got my little cup of water on the same level as my MacBook Air. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John totally channeling you. You
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey know, I hear
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s a bad idea. I hear that’s very dangerous.
⏹️ ▶️ John Again, limited options in my undisclosed location.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well Godspeed. Oh my God, it would be so funny if you spilled it. I really don’t want you to but I either do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John not it would be good.
⏹️ ▶️ John careful as you would imagine.
Follow-up: Tesla model names
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my goodness. All right. So we should start with some follow-up. The internet has written in to tell
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us about the Tesla model name scheme. Now I didn’t really, I knew this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I think you guys did too, but none of us, or at least I didn’t really want to bring it up because I didn’t think it was relevant
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and nobody was 100% sure at the time that we recorded whether this was a clever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like backronym or if this was a good theory or what. But the internet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has written in to tell us that the intention for the Tesla model names, which are S, X, 3,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Y. The original intention was for them to be S, X, E, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Y, which you jumble that around a little bit and that becomes S, E, X, Y, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is then the word sexy and ha ha ha, look at how clever Elon Musk is. So this is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey our way of acknowledging that yes, we are aware of this. And in fact, we were aware of this, we just didn’t really wanna
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bring it up and now we have been compelled to bring it up. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually not quite true. One of us did bring it up and I actually edited it out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I thought it sounded so juvenile and implausible. I’m like, that’s probably not true.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t want to have that in the show. So I just edited it out. So you
⏹️ ▶️ John actually did cover it. You got to read more articles about Elon Musk. Maybe I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t. I think I’m better off not reading more articles about Elon
⏹️ ▶️ John Musk. Yeah, I didn’t go back and look at the master plan thing, but during the presentation
⏹️ ▶️ John for the Model 3, he said the master plan was three cars. So at best, best case, the original plan could have been for
⏹️ ▶️ John SEX. know, with the four models now and the whole thing with the Y and
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. Anyway, it sounds silly. It is silly. And it doesn’t work because it’s called the three
⏹️ ▶️ John and there’s no Y and the X came before the three. It’s just a mess. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but everyone thought that we were not aware of this because whether or not we brought it up on the original
⏹️ ▶️ Casey version of the show wasn’t on the released version like Marco just said, but we are aware I whatever. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think this is as amusing as everyone else does. Like I don’t want whatever. It It doesn’t really matter to me.
Self-driving cars today
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But since we brought up the Tesla, any other thoughts on the Tesla from Marco? Same old stuff? Still love it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Still awesome. I really am just enjoying it a ton. The thought of going back to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a gas car now, or as underscore David Smith calls it, an exploding dinosaur car,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it just seems like the past. It seems like a step back to think about it, and there’s no gas car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the market that I’m interested in.
⏹️ ▶️ John And by the way, sorry underscore, but I’m not gonna give you credit for the exploding dinosaurs thing. He claimed in Slack the
⏹️ ▶️ John other day that he had coined that term and I’m gonna say no on that one. Have you found prior art? I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John when he claims to have coined it, but I’ve heard it for a long, long, long time. Google searches for
⏹️ ▶️ John it go back pretty far. He could have coined it when he was 15. I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s, yeah, it’s pretty old.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m giving it to him. I hadn’t heard that exact combination. I’ve heard dino juice in reference to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey regular traditional motor oil instead of synthetic, but I had not heard this particular combination.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That being said, we will put this link in the show notes. This is underscore David Smith’s, a nerd’s review of the Tesla
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Model S. And it was really great. I really, really enjoyed it. And it is exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what it says on the tin. It’s his review from the nerd’s perspective. Now, Marco, have you been in the 3GT
⏹️ ▶️ Casey since you’ve owned the Tesla?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Only to move it in and out of the garage when doing some driver rearrangement. And so only very briefly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s fine. It’s still a great car for what it is, But this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, this is why Tesla is so interesting, because really once you drive an all-electric
⏹️ ▶️ Marco car, it really does make all other gas cars feel like obsolete
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things from the past. It’s hard to describe, it’s just a feeling that you get.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And yeah, it’s just great. I do have a little bit more experience now with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the automatic steering. I did a couple of highway drives the other day, and so I used it for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of them. I agree mostly with what Underscore says about it, which is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it really is more like an advanced cruise control. It’s not the kind of thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where you want to stop paying attention or even can safely stop paying attention,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I would barely call it self-driving because basic things will throw it off,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like if you’re driving in the highway lane and the lane you’re in splits,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and part of it was like the continue on this road fork and the other part of it is like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get ready to exit off somewhere else or the highway split again too. Whether it chooses to follow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the right side of the split, if you’re like, if you should be staying left, is kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inconsistent and vague. And there were a couple of times where it was steering me, I thought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little too close to like walls on the side, like barriers on the side and everything. So I got a little freaked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out a couple of times. So basically, I wouldn’t necessarily say this is like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco massively useful you can’t stop paying attention you can’t even take your hands off the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wheel you’re basically left loosely holding the steering wheel because it turns
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for you you know like by it by the car so you’re you’re basically left loosely gripping the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco steering wheel still holding your hands up at least one hand and so it’s kind of like well what’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really the benefit of it if you have to if you have to do all that so I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know I’m a little torn on the value of autopilot and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can now see firsthand just how incredibly complicated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the idea of self-driving cars really is in practice. If this is like the current
⏹️ ▶️ Marco generation of what regular consumers can get today, we still have a lot of work to do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you know, it is very impressive compared to nothing, but it is really still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in its very early days. I would not expect fully autonomous self-driving cars
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the next few years. I think we’re further away on that than a lot of people might think, just because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco driving is so complicated. These are such hard AI problems and such hard technical problems to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco solve. After that, it’ll be such a hard human problem to solve that I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re still a while off on that. But I do think we’re heading in that direction. It’s just a question of like, you know, how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quickly and maybe not so quickly. I
⏹️ ▶️ John actually I want to I agree with Marco and that I want to talk a little bit about self driving cars. I should have put that in the topic
⏹️ ▶️ John list is something I want to talk about for a while because of all the press with the Tesla stuff. But I just want to chime in briefly and
⏹️ ▶️ John say that I found a reference to exploring dinosaurs from 10 years ago, more than 10 years ago. So
⏹️ ▶️ John underscore, I just found a forum post quoting something. This is a December 27 2005.
⏹️ ▶️ John saying just remember that your car is propelled by exploding dinosaurs. Anyway, it’s a really old saying.
⏹️ ▶️ John Again, underscore was alive in 2005. We did. He never claimed when he coined it, but I’m going to say no. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say yes. I think he’s in his thirties like us. So, you know, pretty sure.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Well, like two of
⏹️ ▶️ John us, I you got to keep going backwards and Google and keep finding it. But anyway, 2005 is the earliest I found in two seconds
⏹️ ▶️ John worth of Google you’ve done here. So with the self driving car things, you hear about
⏹️ ▶️ John it because of the Tesla autopilot. You hear about it because all the other car makers that are showing their self-driving cars. Just today
⏹️ ▶️ John I saw a news story about the, did you see this, about the convoy of self-driving trucks that went
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No. I saw the headline, but I didn’t see anything else. Had like
⏹️ ▶️ John a human-powered one in the front and then like two or three, these are like big, you know, semi trucks, two or three behind, they were following
⏹️ ▶️ John along. Looks terrifying. I think the press
⏹️ ▶️ John and the public has, and even car magazines, have really jumped the gun on this one because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s clear we have a nice progression from cruise control to radar cruise control to things that
⏹️ ▶️ John will try to steer for you and so on and so forth. But to make that final leap to actual
⏹️ ▶️ John self-driving cars with, you know, with all the sci-fi pictures where you see someone reading a magazine while they’re in the car.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, I think we are a ways away from that, especially since
⏹️ ▶️ John the most successful version of this, which I think is the Google self-driving cars
⏹️ ▶️ John that tool around their campus and have been driving, you know, with the hundreds of thousands of miles. Like that’s, That’s the one that the press stories
⏹️ ▶️ John love to cite, like however many thousands upon thousands of miles these Google self-driving cars have
⏹️ ▶️ John driven just, you know, and they’ve had like, you know, one accident or something that was a human’s fault or whatever, like
⏹️ ▶️ John the amazing driving record and the amazing technology like, wow, well, if that’s happening in the magic of Silicon Valley,
⏹️ ▶️ John surely it will only be a couple of years before I’m able to go to work in a self-driving car.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it just comes down to the, you know, the difference between like the conditions
⏹️ ▶️ John and the way the things are done. So the Google self-driving cars, they mapped out every inch of those friggin’ roads.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the cars know not just where the roads are, like a GPS-style map, but I think
⏹️ ▶️ John they have 3D terrain maps of every inch of the roads. And they have a lack of weather, and they have lines
⏹️ ▶️ John painted on the road, and they have other things that, it’s California, if we’re crying out loud. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John the cars are always on vacation. Yeah, people don’t live in those environments. And Google has not mapped,
⏹️ ▶️ John 3D laser mapped every inch of pavement everywhere. And I know there are plenty of cars that can drive without that. Marco’s got one
⏹️ ▶️ John now. It will stay in the lane as much as it can. If it can figure out where the lanes are
⏹️ ▶️ John and there’s not snow covering the road and all these other factors. But he can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John read a magazine because it hasn’t gone that last little bit, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And the last little bit is killer. You can make increasingly sophisticated, essentially smart cruise
⏹️ ▶️ John control, but to get over that hurdle where you don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John to pay attention anymore in the same way you don’t have to pay attention when you take the train, because you’re not driving the train,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? That is going to take a really, really long time. And I’m gonna say probably
⏹️ ▶️ John not within our lifetimes on existing roads. Wow. Because,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, special roads, sure. Specially mapped roads, maybe. But like when I mean existing roads as in like
⏹️ ▶️ John a road that a human could drive on right now that’s not specially prepared, that hasn’t been carefully mapped out, that
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t have things embedded in the pavement, like all those things you can do. Like, you know, it’s not saying you can’t have this. I mean, they could, they
⏹️ ▶️ John could do that to every single road and all of Manhattan. And then you just know that if you go into Manhattan, there’s no more
⏹️ ▶️ John taxis. You just get there and you get a self-driving car because it’s a grid and they can do whatever they want and they can make it work right
⏹️ ▶️ John in limited circumstances, it can work. But in general, I think it’s so far
⏹️ ▶️ John off. Uh, cause it’s, it’s just so much harder problem than winning Jeopardy
⏹️ ▶️ John or playing go or anything like that, because the possible inputs are so incredibly varied.
⏹️ ▶️ John Humans have difficulty sometimes finding where the hell the road is. And we’re pretty good at looking at
⏹️ ▶️ John the world and figuring out what the hell it is we’re looking at. So I think full self-driving cars and
⏹️ ▶️ John the way that people imagine it is really, really far off.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I don’t think it’s that far off. I would say most likely within our lifetimes. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, I think most people are thinking this is going to come in like two to five years and I think it’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more like 10 to 20.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s hard for me to say more than 20. I was saying our lifetimes, like, I think we’d be pretty darn old because you
⏹️ ▶️ John need you just need so much and it’s not just the tech Like even if the tech gets there in 25 30 years
⏹️ ▶️ John Then you need all the legislation and then you need all the other like I Think it’ll be fine
⏹️ ▶️ John though. Like it will have arrived as far as people are concerned if it works in limited circumstance So if all of London
⏹️ ▶️ John has self-driving cars people like see you didn’t think self-driving cars are gonna come but they’re totally there It’s like sure. They’re in all of London. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John in Manhattan. They’re over there in Disney Parks like they’re there wherever they are They’re all over Silicon Valley, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean like a car dropping on any road in the United States And it drives and is
⏹️ ▶️ John able to successfully get from point A to point B And maybe you don’t need to get all the way there But I think people
⏹️ ▶️ John envision a such a quick ramp from controlled circumstances laser-mapped roads
⏹️ ▶️ John And then fast forward a couple years and any road and I just don’t see that happening
⏹️ ▶️ John just because like we you know, I don’t think we have the We
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have the technology for that yet. I mean, just look at those DARPA challenges where they have those vehicles try to, they’ve come
⏹️ ▶️ John so far, but it’s kind of like AI where when I was a kid, it was like computers can answer
⏹️ ▶️ John simple questions now and maybe they’re about as smart as a cockroach. And if we extrapolate from current trends,
⏹️ ▶️ John by the time you’re an adult, computers will be super geniuses and they’re not. AI is really, really
⏹️ ▶️ John hard and we don’t understand even how our own minds work. It’s not easy to, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s unlike all the other situations like games like chess and Go and Jeopardy. It’s not a controlled
⏹️ ▶️ John situation. It’s the real world. And our problem is synthesizing sensor input
⏹️ ▶️ John and processing it. And we don’t even know how our own freaking brains do that. We don’t even have a good model to work off of. So should
⏹️ ▶️ John we be working off our brain model? Should we be doing something different? We’re trying the best we can, but I think
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a much harder problem than the news media thinks it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do we know when the, and bear with me for a second here, do we know when the Tesla superchargers started getting installed?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That was like a couple of years ago, right? And maybe three or four years ago. Right. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of the things that I’ve always thought about electric cars being completely not feasible
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that how could they possibly create enough charging stations to make it feasible?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And one company, as of the time we record, is claiming 613 supercharger stations.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m looking at this map and it’s all over the United States and there’s some in Europe and some in Asia as well. And there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are 3,628 superchargers across those 613 stations.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so this is surely not the coverage that gas stations have, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is a tremendous amount of coverage in the United States, which is not a small country.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I think about that and I think, well, they really did kind of fix this problem. And then I think to myself, well, let’s assume
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for a second that in order to get totally self-driving cars, you need to put sensors on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the sides of each road and in between each lane or what have you. And admittedly, there are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey many gazillions of miles of roadway in the United States,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but what if we just said, hey, on any federally recognized interstate, we’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey put the sensors necessary to get self-driving cars on there? If we can put a whole bunch of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey superchargers out there in the span of about four years since the Model S, we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey might be able to do this thing that I sitting here now that seems just completely implausible. But I thought that the superchargers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or what is now the superchargers was implausible. And that seems to have worked all right. So you never really know.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I think you’re overestimating the superchargers because first of all, if you think the supercharger map
⏹️ ▶️ John looks impressive until you were to put it side by side with a map of gas stations.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, sure. Because it takes a certain amount of
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, in gas stations, you fill up pretty quick, I guess stations, you’re not there at the pump for very long, So
⏹️ ▶️ John do the math on you know if we converted all the cars to electric coming out is there enough superchargers to?
⏹️ ▶️ John Support the existing Tesla’s maybe but charging the Tesla’s takes so much longer that you would need
⏹️ ▶️ John more superchargers stations not fewer to support the number of Cars if they
⏹️ ▶️ John were eventually to become all electric So I’m not saying it’s you know It’s an amazing feat and it’s surely enough for long car trips for the number
⏹️ ▶️ John of people who have Tesla’s right now, right? But it’s so far from you know
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s a fairly easy problem in the grand scheme of it. You just keep making more of these stations, and you keep selling more of the cars, and the cars
⏹️ ▶️ John fund the stations, and it should all work out. So I think that’s totally feasible, as would be
⏹️ ▶️ John putting things in the roads or doing what you need to do, especially in limited scopes, just New York City, just London,
⏹️ ▶️ John or regions of the country, especially ones with not a lot of weather. But then you look at how the United
⏹️ ▶️ John States government spends money, and we can’t even keep our bridges from falling into rivers. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John we can’t fill the potholes that are covering every street. So
⏹️ ▶️ John in the past couple of decades, the US has not been really good about infrastructure spending. So that
⏹️ ▶️ John is definitely technologically possible. A lot of people in the chat room are trying to send me videos. Have you seen this video? Have you seen this video? Like things that
⏹️ ▶️ John look impressive in controlled circumstances don’t necessarily translate
⏹️ ▶️ John to the test of drop this car onto any road in the entire United States, and
⏹️ ▶️ John it can drive you to anywhere else in the United States. It’s a very complicated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem. Well the thing is too, these are very infrastructure heavy problems.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you start getting into fixing the roads or improving the roads to be more friendly toward self-driving.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The reason why superchargers could get built and cover a big portion of the country in a useful way is because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you don’t have to put one under every square foot of road. You can kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of cherry pick where they go and they serve wide areas. Whereas anything that involves
⏹️ ▶️ Marco modifying the roads themselves or just even as Johnson, they just bring the roads
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up to standards of like basic maintenance and like
⏹️ ▶️ John painting lines on them. Yeah, it’s like the lines on the road. We tend not to paint those so much in
⏹️ ▶️ John this country. Exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So like basic things like that. It’s easy. You wouldn’t need to put advanced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sensors and everything on the highways because the highways are easy for self-driving cars to navigate.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, my Tesla can do that already fairly well. The highway is the easy part.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The hard part is all the other roads. And as John said, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco such a hard problem because the roads that cover our country and other countries,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I think ours in particular, especially near where me and John live in the Northeast where weather
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is severe, everything is ancient, and there’s no budget to fix anything, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just a really hard problem that the roads that I encounter every day
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are filled with weird little edge cases and weird conditions and non-ideal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco conditions, unmaintained portions or vague things like, wait, am I supposed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be in that lane to go over there or not? It’s hard even for humans to navigate. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so to make AI algorithms to navigate these things is just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really hard. And I do think, as a settler, I do think it is possible. And I do think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we are making progress in that area. And I do expect to see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco meaningful progress in that area within 10 to 20 years. But I really think it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as close as a lot of people think, just because it is so hard. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that last mile of making sure we can go on 95% of the roads is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a heck of a lot easier than making sure that you can self-drive on 100% of the roads.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then parking lots. Think of parking lots, for crying out loud. how to find your way into the parking lots, which way you
⏹️ ▶️ John go in and out like you know, like they have this little miniature road signs that aren’t real road signs and the lines they paint
⏹️ ▶️ John in parking lots are almost meaningless. And where do you go? And you know, it’s not that they would
⏹️ ▶️ John suddenly kill people in parking lots, it would be more like electric car gridlock as they all are paralyzed
⏹️ ▶️ John by indecision about what the hell they’re supposed to do, where they’re supposed to go and thinking they arrive like, because again, what I’m thinking of is
⏹️ ▶️ John not the situation where the car can do the driving for you for a certain portion of time, but the idea where you don’t have to have a driver’s
⏹️ ▶️ John license to get from place to place in a car. You don’t need a driver’s license to get on the subway and get places, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s public transportation that’s truly driverless as far as the passenger is concerned or a bus or whatever. Granted,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s somebody driving those in most cases, although not always in trains because you can make trains driverless a lot easier
⏹️ ▶️ John because they have tracks and everything. But it’s like to get to get the
⏹️ ▶️ John big win of saying we are a society where I just type tap something on my phone and a magic
⏹️ ▶️ John personless vehicle comes and I get in and the vehicle doesn’t care whether I have a license or have ever driven.
⏹️ ▶️ John That just seems so close to some people like three to five years away, surely. And it just it just seems so incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ John far away to me because think of it. You can do the extrapolation thing like in the sci-fi movies where they’ll have a
⏹️ ▶️ John premise for a sci-fi movie that’s for the purposes of the movie. Like this thing is possible, but they never say well if it’s possible
⏹️ ▶️ John to do this say making, you know, robots that look just like humans that fool humans
⏹️ ▶️ John if it’s possible to do that. What else must be possible given that technology? Like, what
⏹️ ▶️ John does it mean to have that technology? So, self-driving cars. If you’re able to
⏹️ ▶️ John get a car that can drive anywhere as well as a pretty good human, what else
⏹️ ▶️ John must that mean in terms of the technology available? Like, would it be slavery to make
⏹️ ▶️ John that kind of intelligence, drive a car, if it truly is able to? Is there a way to do that without being conscious
⏹️ ▶️ John and intelligent as a human
⏹️ ▶️ John saying like it’s anyway don’t hold your breath that but you can have
⏹️ ▶️ John really awesome cruise control and can maybe take your hands off the wheel on the highway for a long time and maybe if you live
⏹️ ▶️ John in a major metropolitan area or silicon valley you won’t have to have a license at all within city limits
⏹️ ▶️ John all perfectly possible but I would still bother to get your
⏹️ ▶️ John license because it will give you more freedom than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the alternative until then I can temporarily take my hands off the wheel for three seconds while on a straight highway
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to uncap a tightly cap drink.
Follow-up: TextExpander at Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Really quick to finish our follow up, an anonymous AppleCare senior advisor wrote in to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tell us that AppleCare uses TextExpander. That was the impression I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey got from this email. That’s what you guys had gotten from it, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It seemed like it was maybe not necessarily the official tool that they use, but that it was widely
⏹️ ▶️ John used. And so that comes up in terms of enterprise software, people using it in big
⏹️ ▶️ John call centers, so on and so forth. And the other point this anonymous person brought up was
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple care prohibits the use of any third party sync service that could contain confidential or internal
⏹️ ▶️ John or customer data. Now, I don’t know if Texas Spander Sync Service that qualifies for it was
⏹️ ▶️ John obviously customer data wouldn’t be in there, but maybe internal data, like maybe part
⏹️ ▶️ John of your little snippets are contain internal proprietary data or whatever. So this is the tricky bit with enterprise
⏹️ ▶️ John software that a lot of people brought up is like, Oh, if Texas Spanner ever wants to go enterprise, one of their first hurdles is going
⏹️ ▶️ John to be that enterprise it people always want to have everything in house. So I want to run my own sync server,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll buy a piece of hardware, and I’ll put a server on it. But I don’t want my company’s data
⏹️ ▶️ John going to your servers, tech expander, because I have no idea what’s going on in your servers. And for compliance reasons, and so on and so
⏹️ ▶️ John forth. It has to all be internal. So tech expander, will you please sell me an internal tech expander
⏹️ ▶️ John sync server that I will run. And tech expander, as far as I know, has not gone that far down
⏹️ ▶️ John the enterprise rabbit hole, but if they want to keep customers like AppleCare
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re going to force everyone to use syncing because that’s their premier feature for enterprises,
⏹️ ▶️ John they may end up having to do that.
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey trolliest of all the trolls.
Ducks and Ubiquiti
⏹️ ▶️ Casey By the way, we are getting some real-time follow-up from several different sources that says
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple does have a site license for TaxExpander, so it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is at least partially blessed from what I’m told. In any case, Marco, why don’t you tell
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us in your quest for more home automation or excuses to get more home automation sort of things,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tell us about your surveillance camera. What are you surveilling exactly? Ducks!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, anything else you’d like to add?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, so yeah, so last year we had a duck that was laying eggs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and nesting in our backyard and then the ducklings all hatched and they all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got to the nearby Hudson River and we actually found them a few months later. We found the kind of where they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco live. It’s near a park that we sometimes go to and yeah, they all seem to survive and it’s pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great. So the duck came back this year to lay eggs in the same spot again. I guess this is a thing ducks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do once they find a good spot. able to come back the next year and lay more eggs there. I ordered a whole bunch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of home camera equipment, IP camera equipment, to watch the duck and to check
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the duck. And then, if I can figure out a decent way to do it, to possibly live broadcast the duck. This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is kind of another part of my recent discovery that everything outside the Apple ecosystem costs nothing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Technology is amazing these days. There’s just like tons of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ridiculously capable, cheap hardware out there to do things that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used to be really complicated or impossible. So the way I have this working, first of all,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my Wi-Fi doesn’t reach the backyard very well. So the first thing I did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was I ordered another wireless access point from Ubiquiti. And I don’t think I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talked about my Ubiquiti gear on the show yet. Have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not to my recollection. So a couple of, maybe a year and a half, two years ago now, something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that, my Apple AirPort Extreme started becoming flaky. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this makes me sad. AirPort Extremes used to be rock solid. They used to be like the best routers you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get. And these days, not only have they fallen behind on a lot of the features, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean they were never amazing on the features, but they were at least, I think, more competitive in the past. But also,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve had only mixed success with their reliability in the last maybe five years
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re talking about the one that you gave me you’re saying that’s the one you had trouble with I think so Great. Yep
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean well You know so far I should say that but like My previous flat one
⏹️ ▶️ John lasted a really long time and I think what turned out to be wrong with it was this stupid power brick Which really isn’t the
⏹️ ▶️ John fault of the overall thing and it wasn’t plugged into a surge strip So it’s probably nobody’s fault So
⏹️ ▶️ John I I’ve had very good luck with with the airports and the one that you gave me So if I mean I haven’t had it long
⏹️ ▶️ John enough to say one way or the other but so far it’s been just as solid as all the other ones. And I remember when you were talking about getting
⏹️ ▶️ John this ubiquity gear, I’m like, oh, Marcos found some way to spend more money on computer equipment than he previously
⏹️ ▶️ John had that worked. So surprise there. But actually less money. Oh, yeah, maybe. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m interested in it kind of, but I think the reason I keep coming back to the airport ones is because
⏹️ ▶️ John of all the integrations that I have with them. And every time I look up how to do those integration with
⏹️ ▶️ John other things, it just seems ever so slightly more complicated, not much more complicated. of like, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John I have, you know, I want to hook my printer up to it to USB. This one doesn’t have a USB port, but you can
⏹️ ▶️ John buy a little dongle for five dollars. It lets you do that. And I’m sure that will work fine. But if it doesn’t, you might have to try a different dongle.
⏹️ ▶️ John And, you know, how do I connect to it? Do I have to bring up some weird web UI
⏹️ ▶️ John or do I get to use the shiny Apple airport, whatever thing? So I’m still
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly open to the idea of sort of more reliable
⏹️ ▶️ John enterprise caliber router type equipment, but I guess I need the
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple stuff to be crappier first. Like I needed to really start to really start flaking out on me. But
⏹️ ▶️ John so far I think I’ve had like three of them in my life and they’ve all lasted just
⏹️ ▶️ John until they really need to be replaced anyway. And so far your tall one’s doing
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty well too. Good!
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Enjoy it with its fan.
⏹️ ▶️ John Silent! Silent fan! Or I’m old enough now that I can’t hear it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I guess either way you win. Yeah. So the thing with Ubiquiti gear is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first of all a huge warning there’s a bit of a learning curve and there’s some weird Java based
⏹️ ▶️ Marco software that you have to install when you first set up a WAP a wireless access point not the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco router the router can all be done web-based but the router does not include a WAP these are separate components like they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco originally long long ago used to always be so ubiquity stuff the components are all separate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and there is a learning curve I would not recommend that you like you know tell your non-technical friends
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or relatives, oh just go out and buy this ubiquity gear. No, do not do that. But if you’re listening to this show, you could probably handle it. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could probably figure it out. And I didn’t have any trouble with it. And I’m not, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m a computer nerd, I’m a programmer, but I’m not like a networking gear expert. There’s a lot of things that it can do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I just don’t enable and don’t do. The Java software that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco manages the installation of the laps, if you don’t do a lot of crazy features,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you don’t need to run that software continuously. Wait, wait, where are you
⏹️ ▶️ John running it? Do you run it on, where would it run continuously? On one of your clients,
⏹️ ▶️ John on the router, on the access point? I don’t understand where it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco running. Any computer. So it’s Java based, there’s a Mac version. So when I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco install it, I have it on my laptop because I don’t want to put Java on my desktop. So I have it on my laptop where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I put software that I don’t necessarily trust, like crazy Chinese jailbreak apps and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Java, which are categorized together. And so anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some people run it on like Linux cloud servers. You can like run it on a line interpreter. It doesn’t even have to be in your network necessarily.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I haven’t gotten that advanced with it, but it doesn’t really matter. Anyway, so you set the stuff up and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once you set it up, you basically don’t have to touch it. And also once you set it up, things like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because of this duck camera setup thing, I wanted to expand my wifi
⏹️ ▶️ Marco coverage to more than one access point. And Apple made this easy in the past too. You know, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recognize that, but Ubiquiti makes it possibly even easier that you basically plug in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco access point and you just add it to the network with like two clicks and then it’s just part of the network and it brought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so any change you make to the Wi-Fi network to if you want to change the password or anything, it propagates
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it. You just have to manage one network and it applies to all the access points that are on it. Really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco advanced features here. It features that I am not even qualified to describe because as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I said, I’m not a pro network engineer. So I don’t know everything these things can do,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I don’t appreciate everything these things can do, but I do know that they compete apparently very well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco against high-end Cisco routers and other super high-end enterprise-grade stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it’s really surprisingly cheap. So a Wi-Fi access point is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually around $100, depending on which one you get. It’s in that range. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the router is just this dedicated little box that doesn’t have wireless itself. It’s just a router. The router
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I get, I have the ER-Lite 3, the Edge Router Lite 3, and I think that’s like $80
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or $90. So you’re looking at a total of about $200 to get a router
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plus a decent access point, and it is just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco awesome. It is solid, the gear so far I’ve had no problems, I’ve never had to reboot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. I have once or twice rebooted it because I thought it might
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be the cause of a problem, it just wasn’t like I rebooted it and then it came back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up and the problem is something I was like oh that’s right it was a Fios problem so it’s so I there has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco literally never been a problem that I have traced to this routing gear and there’s never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been a problem that rebooting fixed it’s it is just rock solid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I know I’m not the only one because you look at the reviews of all the Ubiquiti gear and it all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it’s all just stellar people love this stuff and and the only complaint people have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is learning curve and that Java software to set up the labs and that’s it. If you can get past those things,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is just awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ethernet ports on the Edge router? It’s not really made to be like a built-in switch because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s like if you ever set up like a PF sense router or anything like that, I think it has three or four ports on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, maybe three, but they’re all separate interfaces. So you can have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two inbound connections and you can bridge them or you can load bounds between them and stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can kind of configure it how you want, but for most cases, you’re only gonna wanna use one in, one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out. And then I have a separate little HP switch sitting next to it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s the other category of software, or hardware, that we talked about USB hubs, and how
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s hard to find good ones, or like drive enclosures or whatever. My latest,
⏹️ ▶️ John not a white whale, or my latest thing to battle is network switches.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco HP, done. I’m telling you, HP switches are awesome. do they
⏹️ ▶️ John make a big thing is heat and power supply noise, believe it or not.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The one I have, I’ll find the link in the show. It’s a little tiny eight port gigabit one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is not like a full size one. I don’t think there’s any fan and I don’t think there’s room for one. The HP Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco curve 1410 dash eight g. Now that I’ve switched to all this stuff like maybe a year
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a half, two years ago, and I’ve really just had zero problems with the network since then. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really cannot recommend ubiquity gear enough. If you are geek enough to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be willing to set that up.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we somehow ended up on this in talking about the cameras. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey started looking into broadcasting the duck to the Internet and you decided to abandon that, or at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey least temporarily abandon it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I wanted to have some kind of live webcam kind of thing, IP camera
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of thing, looking at the duck nest area, both for potential future live broadcasting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to nobody on the internet and also just for like me and Tiff to be like, you know, take out our phones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and check, oh, is the duck outside? Because if the duck’s outside, you know, maybe we won’t let the dog out yet. Or we just want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to know like, when has the duck come last night? When, when was the duck here? Did any raccoons try to eat
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the duck? So I set up this camera, you know, you go on Amazon, you try to find an IP camera
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and there’s just a billion of them. it is really hard to figure out like what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco makes a good IP camera. All right. So the one I got is the, is a tri vision on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Amazon. It was very highly rated. It’s okay. The colors on it suck, but the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco resolution is decent. Uh, it has built in wifi and built in web server and all this crazy garbage like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco FTP server and SD card slot and you can upload to a NAS if you want it to. And it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it just crazy. And it’s of course outdoor capable. And what makes these things super easy is not only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does it support wifi, which is one of the reasons I was trying to extend my WiFi network by buying more ubiquity gear,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is how we got on that topic in the first place.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yes, yes, yes, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right. So one of the reasons I picked this camera was that it has WiFi. Most of them only have power
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over Ethernet, or even worse, just Ethernet and power separately.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But this one has all of those things. You can do PoE, and power over Ethernet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is also very awesome. You have Ethernet in, and you have a little AC adapter,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then out you have just Ethernet with power on the unused pins of it. It allows you to run
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just one cable to things that need, that can take the power of Ethernet,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then that can then supply power and data to them. So it’s often used for IP cameras, it’s also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco often used for wireless access points, and all of Ubiquiti’s wireless access points do this, and they usually come with a little injector that you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need. You can have a wireless access point somewhere in a ceiling or up on a wall or whatever, and you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only run one cable, and that cable can be as long or short as an ethernet cable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needs to be and can be. So you can have a very long cable that you just have run one thing to and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have power and data in that one cable, it’s great. So that’s what I did with the camera. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco originally ran it over Wi-Fi. It was kind of cutting out and it wasn’t quite great because I didn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the second access point yet. It was, there was a shipping delay on it because everybody’s buying these things all at once. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I ran power over ethernet to it using a power line adapter kit to get outside
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the first place. So this is this is all this massive pile of complex technology, home power line
⏹️ ▶️ Marco networking, running into a power of power over ethernet injector that spans
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the internet cable across my patio, then into a camera that is showing a picture of my duck live
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to my desktop and recording it when there’s motion. All this stuff was like a total of a couple hundred
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dollars. And it does these amazing things of showing me live video of a duck in my backyard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco without a whole lot of wiring, without a whole lot of effort, and in pretty impressive quality.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, what are you using to do the motion detection and recording?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That part is less pleasant. The area of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco surveillance-type software, like any kind of software that can display
⏹️ ▶️ Marco IP camera feeds and record them and possibly detect motion on them and and save
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them in certain conditions. This is not a great area of software. There’s very few choices.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The choices that are out there seem not amazing. And I’m not gonna name names in case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco someone listens who writes one. You can just assume I didn’t find yours. They’re not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great. These are not great software packages. And then I briefly looked into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what would I do if I wanted to stream this to the internet? And one way to do it is the camera itself has a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco built-in or something MP whatever protocol is like the the streaming protocol for this video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has a built-in server for that but a I don’t think it can really take a whole bunch of connections at once
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and be I don’t really want to have everybody hitting my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco home IP directly I’d rather like relay it through a server somewhere and then that provides both a level
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of indirection for the home IP as well as a capacity like to you know similar to how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when we broadcast the show live, I’m bouncing this off of my web server, my market.org
⏹️ ▶️ Marco web server, because that way that is connected to this giant internet backbone that relays the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco audio to everybody in a way higher capacity method than what I can do from my house.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The options to do that for video seem pretty slim,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and usually have enterprise pricing. Call us, and if you need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more than one live viewer time you need to call us or, oh, that’ll be $3,000 please or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some crazy money to do these things. Many of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them are like entire video platforms where if you want to translate from your R
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever MP video stream to a video feed online that people can just go to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and see, oh, that’ll use this crazy software package and cost thousands of dollars and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco call us for pricing. It’s kind of a mess. I did find YouTube
⏹️ ▶️ Marco live streaming. It’s kind of like Periscope in that you can do a live broadcast,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but then it wants to then save that as a video on your account. So it probably doesn’t want the live broadcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be a month long. That probably won’t work. And then to get to YouTube is another pile of hacks where you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to use the open broadcasting, whatever, what’s that server called?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco OBS, yeah, the open broadcasting server like all the gamers use. We have to use OBS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to window capture something that’s viewing the IP camera, like in a browser window
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or something, and then rebroadcast to YouTube Live. So this is like, if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m going to do this, if I’m going to actually live broadcast this, it’s going to basically require like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a computer dedicated to this task 24-7, or as long as it’s live broadcasting. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just, I don’t want to do that. I don’t, I don’t have a lot of extra computers to dedicate to that. And I just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t, I don’t know, it doesn’t seem worth it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now did you look into that this has nothing to do with live broadcasting but just for your own
⏹️ ▶️ Casey viewing did you look into? surveillance station on your sonology
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did but the the the list of cameras that it takes did not include the one I got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Do not include any any of the ones that seemed highly rated on Amazon right now and also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My sonology the only I use almost none of the software on it because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the only drive, the only volume I have formatted on the Synology in its own native format
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is my Time Machine volume. Because the Synology Time Machine server is awesome. It’s way more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco solid, in my experience, than any Apple Time Machine implementation.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think there’s some kind of open source Time Machine thing that they built into that. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is way more solid than a Direct Attach disk has ever been for me, and way more solid than a Time Machine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco server running on a Mac Mini or a Time Machine external disk running on an Airport Extreme. Whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco package Synology uses for their Time Machine server, I never hit problems with like, oh, it ran out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of space and I have to format the whole thing to actually make Time Machine resume. It never errors out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It just works. And I have disk quota set so that me and Tiff share one volume. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco amazed it works as well as it does, given my experience with other Time Machine options. But it works
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great. Anyway, my Synology is formatted such that The time machine volume on there is the only native one. All
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the rest of it is one giant iSCSI volume. So the Synology can’t see it. It’s just like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dumb blocks to the Synology. So that, I can’t, I don’t really want to devote my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time machine space to this, so I haven’t done that yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I ask because my dad set up an IP camera with power over
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ethernet at his house to point at his driveway and has an ancient
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPad just sitting there streaming it in his office so he can see if people are coming
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up to the house. And he uses a surveillance station on the iPad, you know, the app for the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPad. He uses it on the Synology and really,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really has had wonderful things to say about it. I’ve seen it, although I’ve not played with it, and it looks really solid
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me. And it’ll even like send emails when it detects motion with like a screen capture. It looks really,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really good. If it doesn’t work with your camera, then there’s nothing you can really do about that. And obviously you’ve made
⏹️ ▶️ Casey different choices with regard to your volume setup. But if anyone else is listening and has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a Synology, I’ve heard very, very good things about surveillance station.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also just kind of sounds creepy. You know, I’m gonna set up a surveillance station in my house.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, there’s that. You don’t respect the privacy of your ducks. No. Who knows what they could be
⏹️ ▶️ John doing there. You’re gonna be filming them 24 hours a day.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco To be fair, it’s only one duck and so far four potential future ducks.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think the live broadcast, now that you’ve talked all this up, like well I can’t wait to look at Marco’s duck cam and
⏹️ ▶️ John now just sounds like there’s not gonna be a duck cam so I guess what people are gonna have to settle for is like the highlights like when
⏹️ ▶️ John something eventful happens like the the eggs hatch or something and if you catch that then you can pull that clip
⏹️ ▶️ John and then put that up on YouTube and then say here the hit here’s the the exciting part with the eggs
⏹️ ▶️ John hatched or the exciting part when the raccoon comes and eats them by the way hops doesn’t bother the eggs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hops is is a terrible hunter if if you give him a treat and it falls between
⏹️ ▶️ Marco his legs or behind him he can’t find it his
⏹️ ▶️ John brain is the size of a walnut give him a break
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and he has little short shih tzu nodes so like you know he’s not he doesn’t have the greatest sense of smell
⏹️ ▶️ John does he look at you and say you did this to me selective breeding I used to be a wolf now look at me
⏹️ ▶️ John a furry sausage he was never a wolf
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever hops came from me he’s never he’s not a wolf
⏹️ ▶️ John long ago So his ancestors.
Sponsor: Blue Apron
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s BlueApron.com.atp. And I’d like to say personally, we’ve been in Blue Apron customers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for many months before they sponsored our show. I think we’ve been with them for about a year now. And we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are still with them and we don’t get it for free. We pay for it because our account
⏹️ ▶️ Marco started before the sponsorship. We pay for it. It’s great and we’re going to keep doing it because not only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is it great to not have to decide what to cook every night for the family, but it also really is making us
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better cooks. We have them three nights a week and for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other nights of the week now, I’m a way better cook than I was before we started. Way better and I have techniques
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve never done before. I’m more comfortable cooking ingredients and cuisines that I was never comfortable with before.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we’ve really had a good time with Blue Apron.
⏹️ ▶️ John I just had Blue Apron tonight too. We did get a free trial as part of the sponsorship, but then the free trial ended
⏹️ ▶️ John and I kept paying for it. Now I’m just a regular customer. Yep. Same here.
⏹️ ▶️ John The most exciting thing for me still is there’s a different meal. I guess they repeat after a year
⏹️ ▶️ John because Marco’s been in it for more of the year and they start to repeat, but I have had zero repeats. It’s a different
⏹️ ▶️ John meal every single time, which for someone who’s old and tired like I am like you eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John get a repertoire of meals that you like or that your family likes or whatever. And just the excitement
⏹️ ▶️ John to have a different thing every single time, which sometimes we’ve made repeats. By
⏹️ ▶️ John the way, you get to keep the recipe card. Sometimes I’ll have one that I like, and we will make that on our own just by the ingredients ourselves.
⏹️ ▶️ John So we’ve like manually done repeats. But just to know that it’s you know, it’s always something different and we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not particularly adventurous eater. So this kind of forces us to be slightly adventurous. We still didn’t you know, you get
⏹️ ▶️ John to pick what your preferences are. So We still didn’t pick any weird stuff that we know we’re not going to like, but anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John it hasn’t worn off and it’s nice to be surprised every week about what’s going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to come. So check it out, BlueApron.com slash ATP. Blue Apron, a better way to cook.
Celebrating Apple, 1976–1997
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so it was last week that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple turned 40, if I have my chronology right, whenever it may have been,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple turned 40. And John, you had some thoughts about this. Would you like to share?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we missed it by two weeks, I think. But yeah, Apple, I think April 1st, it was founded because they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John just a bunch of jokesters, those two Steves. And a lot of people did Apple at 40 stories talking about
⏹️ ▶️ John their history of Apple or whatever. And it’s such a big topic. I didn’t really know how to address it,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially with you two Maccy-come-latelys or whatever you want to call you, if you
⏹️ ▶️ John came on board later. But I think it’s worth, 40 is a nice round number, I think it’s worth
⏹️ ▶️ John at least reflecting on the first 40 years of Apple and any kind of sort of,
⏹️ ▶️ John like when you look at it, what stands out in your memory as important, whether you were involved in Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John or not. And if all your memories are only from like 2004 on, that’s fine, but I figured it’s worth
⏹️ ▶️ John taking this time to look back and think about, uh, you know, what,
⏹️ ▶️ John what important things Apple has done. It’s kind of like when, this is a grim way to put it, but like when you, like a celebrity
⏹️ ▶️ John or something dies and they have their obituary, like the first couple of sentences of the obituary, uh, you know, kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of have the highlights. And so Apple’s not dead and we’re not trying to write an obituary for it, but we can look
⏹️ ▶️ John back on the first 40 years and say, what were the most important things that happened there to you personally?
⏹️ ▶️ John Not just like, we’re not going to say like, well, you know, it’s important for the history of computing X, Y, and Z. But to you personally, what
⏹️ ▶️ John do you think was, uh, what weighs heavily in your mind when you think of the first 40 years of Apple?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, my experience with Apple was probably very similar to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey many people my age in that I experienced it, uh, Max and I guess the Apple II
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at school and that was it until much later in my life.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so my earliest memories of Apple were playing Oregon Trail like so many
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kids my age did. I also vividly remember
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I was in, I believe, middle school, I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey already showing an affinity and a love for computers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I ended up being like kind of a volunteer like peon
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the computer lab administrator and they were running some flavor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Mac. I’m sorry, John and Stephen Hackett, I couldn’t tell you what kind of Mac it was, but they were running
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Macs. And I remember vividly like being able to help out. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think I had like some super secret like administrative password that they trusted with a middle schooler for some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stupid reason. And I couldn’t really do much with it, but I thought I was so cool because of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the thing that sticks out in my mind, even to this day, like 20 years later, is we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all had to like buy a floppy disk or one of the three and a half
⏹️ ▶️ Casey inch disks. So it wasn’t even floppy. But anyway, we ought to buy a floppy disk and we would store all of our
⏹️ ▶️ Casey school documents on it because that was more than enough room for years with school documents. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I remember someone had shown me, or somehow I figured out how to set the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey icon for the disc. So when you put the disc into the Mac, in any Mac, it would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like, instead of being a regular gray icon or whatever it was by default, mine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would be like really bright blue or something like that. Or maybe it was an entirely different icon altogether.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Yeah, right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly. And so I remember figuring out how to do that. And oh my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey god, I thought I was hot stuff because my disc when it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the desktop looked different than everyone else’s. Aren’t I a badass? And I just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey remember that so vividly. And I have some other memories, but they’re more of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like modern era. So Marco, let me give you and then John as well a chance to kind of cover the,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey let’s call it the pre-2000s era. era.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, before you move on, what does your hard disk icon look like right now on your Mac?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, it’s not on my desktop in the one in finders, whatever the default is. What
⏹️ ▶️ John happened? You were you were there, you were a blue disk stud. And the same exact you couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do the same feature has lived on through the various versions of the Mac operating system to
⏹️ ▶️ John today where you can do it probably in an even easier way than you did back then, depending on how far actually
⏹️ ▶️ John it was probably the same way because you’re not that old.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about the same way it was like a get info and then you just drag
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John the image you just copy and paste right yeah maybe that’s what it was
⏹️ ▶️ John it used to be more difficult they added that the copy and paste feature in a later version of that company so either way um
⏹️ ▶️ John i’m excited that you did that like that that’s definitely a mac user kind of thing to do like that you want your thing to look
⏹️ ▶️ John nice and you can do it and as you noted it’s not as if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well i wouldn’t say it looked nice i’m sure it was god-awful hideous but it was
⏹️ ▶️ John mine and and as you noted uh it’s not as if that was was just a change on your computer. If you brought
⏹️ ▶️ John that disc to any Mac, they would honor it. You should be doing that today. All of my hard
⏹️ ▶️ John drives have been named fancifully and have had custom icons. I did the
⏹️ ▶️ John same thing for most of my folders back in the day, although now that the Finder is my enemy, that doesn’t work so well.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey But the discs, I still
⏹️ ▶️ John battle in this way.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There are many like it, but this one is mine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I also rock the standard disc and it also isn’t on my desktop. Oh goodness.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so Marco, what was your,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey let’s say, up until high school experience with the Mac?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It actually wasn’t the Mac, it was the Apple II. Fair enough, fair enough. And this might sound
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more impressive than it was, because my first experience with the Apple II was around 1990,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe? So it was already,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what, 12 years old or something by then, right? So it my experience
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was I was I went to a very poor and not very like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco scientifically advanced elementary school so the the computers they had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they did have computers they had one computer lab that had maybe I don’t know 15 computers in it and they were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all old donated Apple twos by the time I was in maybe fifth sixth grade
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so what is that like if I was born in 82 when is that like 91, 92, something like that? Yeah, roughly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I just played games on them, like, did you say Oregon Trail?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not gonna try to say my version of how to pronounce that state name, because I know I’m gonna get it wrong also, but I, I,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I, Pronounce Worcester.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah, Worcester Trail.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s, it’s either Oregon or Oregon is the only two ways I’ve ever heard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. I’m gonna use neither of those. Anyway, so, Oh God. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I played that, you know, and other, you know, math munchers, and other games that were supposed to be educational that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weren’t really. And had fun with that. In seventh
⏹️ ▶️ Marco grade, my friend and I, he was a Mac nerd at the time, and this was in 1995 or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something, he had a laptop in class
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the time as a seventh grader. So there was some kind of arrangement he had with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the school, with his parents in the school, that he was allowed to have a laptop for a learning
⏹️ ▶️ Marco disability of some kind. I don’t know the details. Anyway, he had a laptop and we would program
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on that and then I kind of learned BASIC and then there was this Apple II in the back of the room and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco his laptop would just goof around because it was some kind of whatever Mac laptop would have been somewhat current
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in 1995. It was gray. I don’t know. We would play on that and he had real BASIC
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on there. We’d play real BASIC on that and then in the back of the room there was this ancient Apple II that no one else
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the class knew what to do with except me and him. So we would do stupid things like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we would write a four loop to play a sound and just leave. Or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like infinite loops and try to show little graphics on there and stuff and just kind of mess around with it. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco after that I kind of didn’t use Apple computers for a long time because I never had one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for that whole time and it wasn’t until after college that I got one. And that whole time Apple computers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were seen as kind of a tragedy if you had one because it was like oh
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re you know all of us were over here like playing our awesome PC games and everything and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh that guy oh he he just has he has a Mac and it was kind of like oh he can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco play any good games and we kind of feel bad for him because he has the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s your memory about bullet it was a tragedy if you had one and that you played with the Apple 2
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah before before I got my own in in 2004 yeah
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean I guess that makes more sense than Casey story where he saw the, the max and
⏹️ ▶️ John the cool disc icons. And yet you didn’t really, they didn’t make enough of an impression on you
⏹️ ▶️ John to, for you to pursue. I mean, I guess you had your, your IBM father that was really
⏹️ ▶️ John going to prevent you from ever getting into max until.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes. No, I, it wasn’t, I don’t think he ever would have necessarily actively prevented
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, but there were always think pads just hanging out around the house.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I had a laptop or a desktop since I can remember. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey granted, they were all typically very old and out of date, but they were mine and I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey share them with anyone. And so I grew up on predominantly ThinkPads
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and nothing about the Mac ever really called to me. Like I respected that, that little bit of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey customization. I thought that was cool. I remember vaguely trying to like skin windows XP to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey look like a Mac from time to time, like I would get this, this kick, I would get on this kick to,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to try to fake like the Apple menu at the top of the screen and some of the icons to make
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them look like a Mac just because I thought it looked good. And inevitably, I would always regret that because it just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was a total utter hack. But no, it wasn’t until far later, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we can get to when we get to the 2000s or to the noughts,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I really started thinking about the Mac again.
⏹️ ▶️ John You too, two people I probably would not have been able to convince that the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John was the amazing thing that it was because you were just so
⏹️ ▶️ John content with your weird worlds of PCs. No, so the early Apple for me, like I mean I used
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple IIs and stuff like that. Apple IIs were not that exciting for me. They didn’t seem,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean having come up on like Commodores and stuff like that, the Apple II just seemed like a natural progression there and it was
⏹️ ▶️ John fine but did not make much of an impression on me, especially probably because most
⏹️ ▶️ John of the Apple IIs we had at school were like monochrome display,
⏹️ ▶️ John just character mode programs, maybe a couple
⏹️ ▶️ John of games if you could even call them that. Eventually there was like 2GS and stuff. By the time 2GS was in
⏹️ ▶️ John play in the schools, the Mac had already come. But no, so the big thing about the Mac for me that
⏹️ ▶️ John people who missed this era don’t understand is that it was the computer
⏹️ ▶️ John that made the statement that graphical interface, the GUI,
⏹️ ▶️ John was the way that we should use computers. It wasn’t the first GUI, but it was
⏹️ ▶️ John so far and away the best one ever sold in a computer that regular people could buy,
⏹️ ▶️ John or ever sold to anyone really. And its big statement was, hey guys,
⏹️ ▶️ John stop typing at command prompts, do this instead. And the entirety of
⏹️ ▶️ John the computer world said, no. We don’t want that. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not a real computer. That’s stupid. You can’t do anything with it. It
⏹️ ▶️ John looks ugly. It’s pointless. You need to have a command prompt. I don’t know what the hell you’re doing
⏹️ ▶️ John over there, Apple. And even though this was a short period of time, historically speaking,
⏹️ ▶️ John for the transition for the whole world to figure it out, when we were in the middle of it,
⏹️ ▶️ John it seemed like the battle of the century with the people on the good, light
⏹️ ▶️ John side, the Mac users, not being able to understand how anyone could
⏹️ ▶️ John argue against this. It wasn’t as if they were arguing Windows is better or some
⏹️ ▶️ John other GUI is better. Their argument was the GUI is dumb. That you should not
⏹️ ▶️ John use a GUI. It’s a waste of computing resources. It makes the computer less powerful. It
⏹️ ▶️ John will never catch on. It is a pointless diversion. It’s a fad. And
⏹️ ▶️ John you should feel bad about using that computer and stop distracting me. And you have to get your own magazines.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m never going to hook up a mouse to my computer and all that other stuff. Uh, and
⏹️ ▶️ John to grow up in that environment, kind of like if you grew up in the sort of the, the Sagan Nintendo console wars, it
⏹️ ▶️ John was just such a huge dividing line in this, in the same way that I imagined for people who are not
⏹️ ▶️ John computer nerds, it’s sports teams might be a dividing line. If you grew up in like Mets versus Yankees or whatever your, your sports
⏹️ ▶️ John rivalry is, um, is just imprinted in your DNA as a super
⏹️ ▶️ John important thing. And eventually it transitioned to, Okay, fine, so GUIs are a reasonable
⏹️ ▶️ John idea, but now Windows is better than the Mac or whatever. And that became the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John versus PC thing, which was another form of tragedy. But my original abiding memory
⏹️ ▶️ John of the Mac is essentially trying to convince other computer nerdy people, kids and adults,
⏹️ ▶️ John that the GUI itself was a good idea. And that, just try convincing
⏹️ ▶️ John someone. No one has that argument anymore because no one ever argues against it because it seems ridiculous.
⏹️ ▶️ John I thought it was ridiculous then too, And yet people had arguments against it and you could not convince them because all they
⏹️ ▶️ John knew was the command line. And they had what they thought were really
⏹️ ▶️ John solid arguments about like how much more efficient it is to memorize the commands in WordStar than it is to like bring your mouse
⏹️ ▶️ John up to a menu. And it’s like, you’re not getting it. It’s not a micro level thing. A macro level thing is
⏹️ ▶️ John in this helps people use computers. Like the idea that every computer was going to work this way
⏹️ ▶️ John inevitably and there’s nothing you could do about it. And they were like, every computer, are you kidding me? Ah,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, so that is my, sort of my core memory in the inside out
⏹️ ▶️ John parlance of earliest core memory of Apple was this GUI, and I would say
⏹️ ▶️ John to this day, the sort of cohesiveness
⏹️ ▶️ John of the original Mac GUI, the only thing it has been matched by, I think, are probably
⏹️ ▶️ John appliance-like devices and iOS, because there’s never been another personal computer and
⏹️ ▶️ John operating system, including Mac OS X, that has so fully
⏹️ ▶️ John committed to the graphical user interface, to providing sort of a
⏹️ ▶️ John coherent, consistent world of the computer, in which it wasn’t an
⏹️ ▶️ John abstraction or a shell on top of something, that as far as the user was concerned, there was nothing underneath.
⏹️ ▶️ John There was no way to get underneath. There was no terminal. There was no command line.
⏹️ ▶️ John There were no file system paths visible anywhere in the user interface.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, if you asked a Mac user what the path separator was on
⏹️ ▶️ John their operating system, first of all, they don’t know what a path separator is. If you were to explain it to them, they would have no idea that the colon was
⏹️ ▶️ John used internally because you just never, ever saw it. Same thing with the files and folders and
⏹️ ▶️ John icons. The idea that files and folders are represented, you know, this little picture represents your file and this little picture
⏹️ ▶️ John represents a directory. None of those things represented anything. They were the thing. There was no indirection.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was just so incredibly consistent in the same way that if you were to ask someone, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John where is the Instagram app? Like, oh, this little icon represents the Instagram. No, they said, no,
⏹️ ▶️ John that is the Instagram app. When I delete that, Instagram app is gone. And when it’s there, I have the Instagram app. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John that is so solid. And there is no command line on iOS, and there is no way
⏹️ ▶️ John you can see file paths on iOS unless they’re exposed. And I guess URLs kind of came and screwed
⏹️ ▶️ John that up for everybody. But anyway, that was an important
⏹️ ▶️ John point in computing history, and that was the most important point in my computing history
⏹️ ▶️ John as it relates to Apple or any other company. That’s just sad that you guys missed it, I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey My journey in computers began with trying to get stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to work in DOS, and I believe it was PC DOS. It was IBM’s version of DOS,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even when MS-DOS was a thing. And I was annoying my dad constantly asking,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how do I do this? How do I do that? How do I do this? How do that? And he just got exasperated and said, well, just read the manual. And even though
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was like eight years old, he said it kind of sarcastically, and I took him
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at his word and I read the manual. And so I remember trying Windows 3.1 and just thinking this is a piece
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of crap and I don’t know why anyone would use this. It’s terrible. I wanna go back to DOS. And then when Windows 95
⏹️ ▶️ Casey came around, it was like, oh yeah, this thing all those Mac users were all excited about. Now I get it. now this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ain’t so bad. And look, we have a recycle bin instead of a trash because we’re better than they are.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But it wasn’t until Windows 95 that I really understood what the point of it. Well, that’s not entirely true. I was an OS2
⏹️ ▶️ Casey warp user for a while, and then I understood the GUI. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it wasn’t really much of a thing as early as it was for Mac users. And I never really got that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey involved in the debate because I didn’t really know any Mac users at the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Any other thoughts on the pre 2000s? And then let’s cover the 2000s. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re gonna jump right from the pre 2000s. Like there’s some like almost of my Apple histories in the pre
⏹️ ▶️ John 2000s. I just gave you my earliest one because you guys were going for your earliest runs. And obviously, it’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John And there’s just so much stuff before the 2000s. That’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey don’t let me rush you old man. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
⏹️ ▶️ John no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, turns into let me reminisce about my earliest memory of Apple is
⏹️ ▶️ John I was trying to think of like when I think back on Apple, like the sort of milestones
⏹️ ▶️ John and so the the Mac GUI, the Mac itself, that computer that GUI, that is the first
⏹️ ▶️ John big gigantic tentpole when I think back of the first 40 years and Apple such an important thing. And
⏹️ ▶️ John probably people feel like I’m giving the Apple too short shrift because that’s so important in the history of Apple’s the company.
⏹️ ▶️ John But again, I’m not going with like what was important to the company or whatever I’m going like, when I look back on the first 40 years
⏹️ ▶️ John of Apple, The first big tent pole I see is that Mac. And I feel like that tent pole,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a through line from that tent pole all the way through to the iPhone. Whereas I don’t think there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a very solid through line from the Apple II with expansion cards and a command line. And
⏹️ ▶️ John really, there’s very little about the Apple II. Like the Apple II was Steve Wozniak’s machine.
⏹️ ▶️ John The Mac was Jobs’ machine, right? And Jobs is the through line
⏹️ ▶️ John through all the history of Apple. and for better or for worse, the Apple II
⏹️ ▶️ John was kind of an aberration of that entire line in that it was like the company didn’t become
⏹️ ▶️ John Steve Wozniak’s company, it became Steve Jobs’ company. He left, he came back, he brought
⏹️ ▶️ John it back in line, but even when he was gone, the people who were there in his
⏹️ ▶️ John stead making computers, they were much more Jobs-like than Woz-like, although I’m sure Jobs
⏹️ ▶️ John found them unsatisfying as well. So that’s the first big tenfold I see.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then you could say and then fast-forward and it’s just like iPod iPhone all right I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t really see that I see a lot of significant advancements in the middle there sort of like the heart of the
⏹️ ▶️ John the snow white design era of Macs where they were all kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John Platinum colored I guess and had slats in them and had a little rainbow logo on them
⏹️ ▶️ John And no one else was paying attention to them and Marco felt bad for anyone who had one But
⏹️ ▶️ John he shouldn’t have felt bad because there were some amazing computers that none of his friends were going to have because they were like $10,000 in the 80s, like, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, 1989, actual $10,000 for a computer. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John nobody, like regular people did not have these computers, which is part of the reasons I lusted after them. Like they even look
⏹️ ▶️ John like Ferraris with the side slats on them and everything. Like you don’t know anyone who owns a Ferrari. Just look at pictures of my magazines.
⏹️ ▶️ John That was like what the Mac II FX was like to me. I’m actually never going to meet anyone who has actually even touched
⏹️ ▶️ John one of these computers, but I know it’s out there and it exists and boy is it amazing and I would kill to have that computer,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it cost, maybe it wasn’t 10,000, I think it was like $8,000 in 1988, 89. Might as well have been 10,000.
⏹️ ▶️ John There was no way in hell I was ever gonna get one. And there
⏹️ ▶️ John was no equivalent for that to me in any other line of computers. Forget about the
⏹️ ▶️ John GUI and everything like that, like that this was like a Ferrari in that it wasn’t like
⏹️ ▶️ John a muscle car, which you could say, oh, I could buy a beefed up PC and build it myself and it
⏹️ ▶️ John will have better specs than that Mac 2FX if you’re lucky, right? That might have been possible, but that’s not a Ferrari.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can’t build a Ferrari yourself in your garage out of spare parts. You can’t buy a stock Mustang
⏹️ ▶️ John and replace the engine and do custom suspension. Like, oh, I’ve got my own Ferrari. You do not. You do not have your own Ferrari.
⏹️ ▶️ John The high-end Macs were like Ferraris in that they were technical marvels, they
⏹️ ▶️ John were ridiculously expensive, and they were beautifully designed and they were products,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? The whole thing that we love about Apple products today, that was something
⏹️ ▶️ John they had back then as well. They came with beautiful manuals, their accessories, their keyboards, their mice, the monitors
⏹️ ▶️ John they came with. They had Trinitron displays when no one else was bothering with those things and
⏹️ ▶️ John the case was beautifully matched to the computer and the power cords and just
⏹️ ▶️ John everything about them. They were just magical. I do have a 2FX now, by the way. I finally got one.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it cost me $5. So depreciation, boy, it’s tough. But I just
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t quite have my Ferrari yet, but maybe someday I will. But anyway, I guess that’s like the second tent pole is
⏹️ ▶️ John that whole era of Macs when everybody else thought Macs sucked because the operating system was still great. Windows
⏹️ ▶️ John had not caught up because they never really understood what was truly magical about the Mac, like the fact that there were no file
⏹️ ▶️ John paths, that there was no command line, there was no any files and bat files
⏹️ ▶️ John and IRQs and anything like that or drivers or any of that crap.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You had your own series of hacks
⏹️ ▶️ John though. But all of them involved the abstraction. We would drag things in and out of the system folder.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like physically, you know, pull this out of the system folder, put it into the system folder, put it in the control panels folder, put it in the control panels
⏹️ ▶️ John disabled folder, but take it out of the extensions folder and reboot. Like it was all done on top of that
⏹️ ▶️ John abstraction. Like there was no command line. Like there was no underneath. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, obviously you can get into the debugger and start poking at memory addresses and stuff. but the abstraction was
⏹️ ▶️ John so total, eventually to the detriment of the Mac, obviously. Like, I love Mac OS X, like I love Unix, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But it was just such a different age of computing. An age
⏹️ ▶️ John I think needs to come back eventually and has sort of come back in iOS, because iOS takes away
⏹️ ▶️ John all that stuff from the user’s perspective. It’s still there under the covers, much more visible even from the developer’s perspective than it
⏹️ ▶️ John was in the Mac, but from the user’s perspective, iOS has continued to remove.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I truly feel like iOS is the natural successor to the original Mac operating system, much more so
⏹️ ▶️ John than Mac OS X is, despite the fact that, of course, being a modern Unix head, I love Mac OS X.
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Celebrating Apple, 1998–present
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so I will start with my next memory and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t remember where this is in the chronology, so if I’m skipping to the end of the 2000s,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, I don’t think I am, but no, actually I do remember. It was roughly 2005.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had heard about iPods.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had seen them. I had perhaps used one from time to time. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I never really was that into them. I had a Diamond Rio way back when, I think before an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPod was a thing. But then the iPod Nano came out
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and holy crap did I want one something awful. And I eventually got one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think Aaron got it for me. This was right after we started dating. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I eventually got an iPad Nano, which I still have. Or I think that’s what it was.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Whatever the one was that had the screen and a click wheel. but it was super, super thin.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I just wanted one so hard. And that was the first time I was really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey interested in an Apple product that I can remember. And that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was, I think, the beginning of the end for me when it came, or the beginning of the beginning, actually,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I should say, when it came to Apple stuff, was looking at that iPod Nano and just thinking,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey holy crap, I must have that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, that was… I think the iPod got a lot of people into Apple, honestly. The iPod as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a whole, obviously, got a lot of people in, but that first Nano and then the continuation of the Nano line,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, really played a large part in it because it was so compelling. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco full-size iPods were always a lot more expensive, and they were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco amazing for the time, but I just feel like the mini first and then the Nano
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just took get to another level.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I agree. The magic of flash storage. I mean, that was not the flash wasn’t on other
⏹️ ▶️ John people’s radar, but if you were an apple fan at that time as well, like the
⏹️ ▶️ John progression from that, you know, the whole iPod line was made possible by that tiny little whatever it was like
⏹️ ▶️ John inch and a quarter or one inch or whatever it was, this tiny little hard drives, which are such a ridiculous hacks like
⏹️ ▶️ John doll furniture for your computer, right? You know, but it works. It’s a real working hard drive, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Jumping from that to no moving parts and much smaller made
⏹️ ▶️ John the shocking, you know, the Steve Jobs famous intro, but he had it in that little, in like the little change pocket in
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey your pants that no
⏹️ ▶️ John one knows what that pocket does. He pulled it out of that pocket and it was, it was such a leap. And especially
⏹️ ▶️ John for something that involves miniaturization, it’s so weird to have a popular product line
⏹️ ▶️ John that, that really hinges on miniaturization to have become popular before flash
⏹️ ▶️ John memory was ubiquitous, which allowed that big jump because you would think it would be impossible to even popularize
⏹️ ▶️ John a music player when they’re all the size of a deck of cards. That card isn’t big, but again, it’s kind of ridiculous when you think
⏹️ ▶️ John about it. And so unlike cell phones and so many other things, uh, or smartphones
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, that were born in the era of flash storage, we’re never going to get another, another leap like that until we
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever the next technological breakthrough is that allows, like, I imagine again if you if within
⏹️ ▶️ John one phone generation it had the same drop in volume as from the mini to the nano
⏹️ ▶️ John we would our jaws would be on the floor like
⏹️ ▶️ John would it would almost be the credit card iphone you know what i mean it would go like well we haven’t just
⏹️ ▶️ John it like half as thin and half as narrow but like it would you know someone should do the
⏹️ ▶️ John math on what the volume difference was between the mini and the nano but it was just viscerally
⏹️ ▶️ John when you hold it in your hand it was just shocking you’re like how could this be possible? This is a magic candy bar that does
⏹️ ▶️ John everything that the mini did, but it’s so much smaller and it looks like the future and scratches like
⏹️ ▶️ John crazy because the plastic was really soft. Oops! But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco they fixed that. Minor details.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Minor details. No, I mean, so I got into Apple stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really in the 2000s, in the early 2000s, because I was leaving college in 2004
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I was about to start a new job and I was ready for a new computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I was ready for my first laptop. And at the time, looking around the PC laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco area, I had always ventured into the Apple room at Micro Center here and there to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just look around. As OS X got off the ground and started getting a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bit of attention and started getting good in the early 2000s, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would occasionally look in there and I just kept thinking, man, OS X looks really nice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and these Apple laptops are really nice. because this is the area of the PowerBook G4.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I was seeing these Apple laptops look so good, at the same time I was in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco market for a laptop, the PC laptops at the time were just not doing anything for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I wanted something really good, and because I was curious about this platform, I was like, you know what, this seems like the right time. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m going to try it, because I really just want that basic 15-inch PowerBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco G4 that the current MacBook Pro doesn’t still look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that different from. I just wanted that so badly. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so once I finished college, I scraped together the graduation money I had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gotten from here and there and various savings here and there and spent something like $2,400
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on PowerBook G4, 15-inch PowerBook G4. At first,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was using it, I got into it But slowly, I first started figuring out how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this works, transfer over some of the things I do onto this. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over the next year or two, around 2005 or so, over that next
⏹️ ▶️ Marco year or two, I just stopped wanting to use my Windows PCs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because OS X was just so much better in so many ways. And in most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of those ways, I think it still is better. Just design considerations, the way things work, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco technical advancements of things, the respect it shows for users and their time and their attention,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and just the overall quality of good third-party software on the platform. It was just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much better than Windows, and in my opinion, again, still is. It got to the point where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I was at work one day, I worked at a company that was developing search
⏹️ ▶️ Marco web apps, like search-based enterprise web apps. So all I had to do was write code in C.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It didn’t really matter what platform I used to write that code in. I needed a terminal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco window that can run Vim on Linux servers that we were logging into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do development on, and a web browser, and an email client. That’s all I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needed. So all those things I could get on the Mac. In fact, the terminal is actually easier on the Mac. I was using stupid SIGWIN setups
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at work and that sucked.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Steven Buzwicki Oh, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Michael Morgan Exactly. So one day at work, it was when Windows XP Service Pack 2
⏹️ ▶️ Marco came out. This was somewhere around 2005. I remember this very specifically. Service Pack 2
⏹️ ▶️ Marco introduced a feature if there was an update to be installed from Windows Update,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which there always was, it would show boxes saying, hey, this update is ready to go. You want to reboot now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or later? And if you didn’t click reboot later, after a certain amount of time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe a couple hours or whatever, it would just reboot for you. And it would force close everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All windows you had open, it would just force close them all and forcefully reboot the computer if you didn’t respond to this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco box within a certain number of hours. So one day I had a ton of terminal windows open, tons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of stuff open on my computer, and I went home for the night because it was my work computer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I came back the next morning and it had forcefully rebooted the computer. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was so mad that I just unplugged the monitor, plugged into my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac that I was bringing with me every day anyway to run iTunes and stuff, plugged into my Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco took the keyboard and mouse, plugged them into my Mac, and just turned off my work computer and just never used
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Windows work computer again. After a small amount of time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did the same thing at home. I had this gaming PC I built at home, basically only to play Half-Life 2,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I eventually just stopped wanting to use that for anything too. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I just started using my Mac full-time because I just didn’t want to use Windows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anymore. It had annoyed me for so many years with its mediocrity.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had some good times on Windows, but those times were over. And it was very, very clear from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 2005-ish forward that those times were completely over. Steven
⏹️ ▶️ Casey McLaughlin You know, I had a very similar journey into the Mac. So I think it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was in school maybe, or shortly after I graduated, I started running Ubuntu
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my ThinkPad and that was what I was using full-time at home. I was on Windows at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey work and Ubuntu at home and that was working pretty well for the most part. This was fairly early in Ubuntu’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey history and I was doing a distro upgrade from like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Gutsy Given to Hardy Heron or something like that. I forget exactly when it was, but I was doing an upgrade and I think it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was like X Windows just completely crapped the bed and I couldn’t get my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ThinkPad to work anymore without without like reinstalling everything. And I didn’t wanna go back to Windows because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had left Windows on purpose. And even though Linux on the desktop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was and remains a disaster, it was less of a disaster than Windows. But now in a similar
⏹️ ▶️ Casey way to what you had experienced on Windows, Marco, where it just kind of rebooted on you and didn’t tell you or didn’t give you the chance
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not to. Well, I tried to do this upgrade and it just failed miserably. And meanwhile,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had you among others, Marco, whispering in my ear, figuratively speaking, should get a Mac, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey should get a Mac, you should get a Mac, you should get a Mac. And I vividly remember
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was the WWDC keynote, I believe it was 2008, I’m almost sure of that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was WWDC 2008. I listened to it or followed along, I guess, to make sure
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they didn’t introduce new Macs. And then that evening, I went to the Apple store and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bought myself my first Mac, which was a polycarbonate MacBook or Polybook, as I like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to call it. And that was in 2008, and I haven’t bought a PC since.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you started in Intel.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah. The same way that John can’t stand how late I started, I look at your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco start that way, even though the difference between when John
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey started and when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I started was like 20 years, and between when I started and when you started was like two years.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah, that really is accurate. But I can understand why you would feel like it was a lifetime difference. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I was on Leopard. I think I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey after Tiger when I bought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco my machine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, mine started on whatever 10.3 was called.
⏹️ ▶️ John I keep forgetting that you guys never read any of my iOS 10 reviews in real time as they were released.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, if you were to ever look at them, it would only be like looking backwards.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What you said about Windows feeling wrong for you, I think what crystallized
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it for me was the overall feeling from using Windows at the time, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know the last version of Windows I used extensively was Windows XP
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I which grants many people are still using but but I don’t know how it’s been since
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then in anything more than just occasional uses here and there but the impression
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got from windows up to that point was just that this was Microsoft’s computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I was along for the ride
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so the computer would just like you know if the windows is like hey you know what we’re gonna reboot now okay and just go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and oh wait wait I was doing something no we’re gonna reboot now sorry and then you boot back up and it’s like hey you want to take a tour
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no I want to do my work like it’s it just always felt like Windows treats the computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it’s theirs and that they are put they’re putting on a little show for you and they’re gonna do what they’re gonna do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco without regard to any respect for you and what you’re doing and the work you need to do whereas
⏹️ ▶️ Marco max and they still hold this advantage although not as much but they still do hold this advantage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Mac respected you as the user. Things got out of your way. There were like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things like, for instance, on Windows, it was a common occurrence for some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco background application to put up a box that would steal the focus from the foreground application.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so you’d be just typing all of a sudden you’d be in a different app like, wait, what the hell happened? And it was just some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things showed a system modal box and took over the focus. And on Max, that wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco impossible, but it happened just way less often. And just in general, Max
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gave you the impression and the design that really left
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you in control of your computer and respected your time and your attention. It wouldn’t just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco drag you along into different things. Oh, hey, we gotta go do this new thing now. Hey, you wanna get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spammed by this new offer that we have, this new cool feature? Here’s more balloons to pop up from the system tray
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to tell you all about things and if you click on the blue they don’t go away they pop new windows so you’ve got to figure out where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to click on them and make them go away which might not exist. It was just the difference in overall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco attitude towards the user and the experience of being a user of both these platforms at the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The difference could not have been more striking and I do still think that that difference exists today and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know if it’s wider or narrower but it’s still there as far as I know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I think I think OS 10 soon to be renamed Mac OS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still has the the advantage there by it by a significant margin and that’s why I still use it and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is why like I am such a fan of the Mac I I know it’s less cool these days
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be a fan of the Mac because not only does everybody have them but now the future of computing is not the Mac according to everybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just don’t buy that because I’m such a huge fan of the Mac I love the Mac so much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I still love it to this day and And this is all one of the reasons why I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco am so critical when things with the Mac don’t go well. When, you know, if I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco start seeing things slipping or things getting worse, this is why I’m critical. Because everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do for work, for hobbies, for entertainment,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost everything I do involves using a computer. And I do not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want that computer to be anything else but a Mac. I’ve tried Windows. I fortunately
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never ran Linux on the desktop, on my main desktop. I used it here and there at work and school sometimes, but I never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ran it on my main computer because I’m not crazy. Please email Casey. But everyone, please,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know that Windows is going to have this new Linux subsystem. We will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talk about it if it ever becomes relevant to us. I think it’s still a little early, but I know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Windows is adding this. Please, please don’t email us about this. We know. Thank you very much. We will talk about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it when the time comes. But I do not want to switch back to Windows.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think if Mac OS X ever got so bad that I couldn’t use it anymore, I would switch to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Linux. Because I really did run fleeing from Windows. And as much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as Microsoft has done things in recent years that are interesting to people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like us, you know, we always say, oh, this is interesting. Windows 8, this new thing was interesting. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Windows 10, these new things are doing, they’re interesting. And the new Linux subsystem, that’s interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco These are all interesting when you’re not using them, and they’re interesting because we are at a distance.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And people who use them every day, they’re probably a lot less interesting. And from what I hear from people,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the reviews from all these things are so mixed, and there’s so many gotchas and trade-offs and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco negatives associated with them, that it sounds to me like Windows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is roughly the same that it’s always been. Where my entire time using Windows,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had a love-hate relationship with it. It was always fine. I put up with it. I tolerated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, but it had all these annoyances and shortcomings, and it sounds like that’s still what it is. You know, just the things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have shifted around a little bit. There’s different annoyances. Some of them have been fixed. Some have been added. It sounds like Windows, from what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone uses it tells me, it sounds like it’s still about the same. Just you know, things are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different, but the same. But the Mac, I really feel protective of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it is my entire computing life, and I don’t I neither want that to change
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nor do I want the Mac to get worse. I only want the Mac to get better. And that is why,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, every time I say anything negative about Apple on the show, we hear criticism for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. People complain to us all the time that we’re too negative towards Apple or that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we criticize Apple too much or they’re tired of hearing it, blah, blah, blah, especially focused towards me. But this is why I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do it, because I love this platform so much. I depend on this platform so much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and nothing else out there is good enough for me.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, you mentioned when you were talking about the computer, like respecting the user and you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John not feeling like you were using someone else’s computer and like the Microsoft was in control
⏹️ ▶️ John of the computer and you were just happened to be there and it would tolerate your recipient of time. It’s once again reminded of
⏹️ ▶️ John how sad. Well, it’s probably your age, but also partly both of you were alive and using computers
⏹️ ▶️ John during the age when the Mac was even more like this. The first thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that popped in my mind, I mean, you gave your original example of the computer not respecting
⏹️ ▶️ John what you were doing or whatever, it’s like, old man voice, time was when
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey name your files
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever you wanted. I mean, you guys never, you lived through it, but you didn’t live through it as a user. There are when,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, there were still files and folders, right? But you could name files whatever you wanted. and most
⏹️ ▶️ John of the computing world has never lived on a system where that’s true.
⏹️ ▶️ John That the file the file name was you just type stuff there right sentences
⏹️ ▶️ John spaces punctuation no colons it would just substitute a hyphen most people didn’t notice that one but you could put slashes
⏹️ ▶️ John you if you wanted to put dates whatever you wanted except for this one special character yeah yeah well that’s the whole
⏹️ ▶️ John thing they wouldn’t it wouldn’t beep at you it would just silently turn it into a hyphen and and you know but mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John what i remember putting dates like you you do, you know, month, day, year, and the, you know, typical US date type thing with slashes and stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, most of the time you’re just typing words there, but the whole point is that the file name
⏹️ ▶️ John was entirely the user’s domain. You could name your hard drives whatever you wanted, you could name
⏹️ ▶️ John your files whatever you wanted, and I did. I named my hard drives whatever I wanted to call them,
⏹️ ▶️ John I named my files and folders in sentences with capital letters in each word and spaces between
⏹️ ▶️ John them and punctuation, And that was a freedom
⏹️ ▶️ John that essentially we had for this brief moment in time. There’s mostly gone now.
⏹️ ▶️ John In any system that forces us to deal with files at all. I mean, I guess the freedom in iOS is like, oh, you don’t have files at all. Now you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John free, don’t you feel better? But that got taken away because it was
⏹️ ▶️ John one of the things that didn’t carry over from classic Mac to Mac OS X.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s one of the things that has never existed in Windows or Linux or anything like that. Yeah, anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John you guys missed it. It was great. It was glorious. And I don’t know if I’ll ever, I don’t know if I’ll ever live to see
⏹️ ▶️ John it again. When will I have, when will someone rediscover that?
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess maybe they only rediscover it in the context where files are no longer a thing. I don’t know. That’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John the jury’s still out on that one. We’ve talked about it so much about how iOS does this wonderful thing of
⏹️ ▶️ John hiding the file system from people. And yet the file system is such a flexible way, files and folders,
⏹️ ▶️ John to solve so many problems that you either have to end up recreating the file system in the
⏹️ ▶️ John form of a new abstraction that isn’t actually directly backed by the file system, but just gives it people
⏹️ ▶️ John to, you know, like Springboard is a great example. Folders, you know, they call them folders just for historical
⏹️ ▶️ John reasons. If you were to plop someone down in 2007 or whenever they added
⏹️ ▶️ John folders to Springboard, not 2007, I guess, they, why do they call those folders? They don’t look anything like
⏹️ ▶️ John folders and they don’t really behave anything like that. So you got to explain desktop metaphor, files
⏹️ ▶️ John folders anyway. Yeah you’re recreating something like that but it’s not quite the
⏹️ ▶️ John same thing. It doesn’t have the same flexibility of being able to name things and save them somewhere
⏹️ ▶️ John and organize them and pull them back up. So it could be that no one
⏹️ ▶️ John ever has occasion to use that but if it turns out that that type of arrangement really
⏹️ ▶️ John is the best way we come up with for people to arbitrarily arrange
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff on their computing device maybe it’ll come back again, but boy,
⏹️ ▶️ John it was great. And I still think about it every time I see like a, a hidden file name extension comes
⏹️ ▶️ John out and scares me or an incorrect file name extension causes an icon to have, it causes a file to have the wrong
⏹️ ▶️ John icon or close it to launch in the wrong application. Boy, what a mess.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So does it annoy you, John, like all kidding aside that that Marco and I, especially, especially me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are so new to the platform. Like, does that frustrate you because we don’t have that that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we didn’t go through the crappy time like you did?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, it’s mostly I tried the thing that bothers me the most is the time when you guys were
⏹️ ▶️ John alive and using computers But weren’t using Mac all the things All the things that you
⏹️ ▶️ John like about max were true and perhaps like I said perhaps even more true Then and yet
⏹️ ▶️ John you weren’t like it’s like wasted time like you could have been using max But you weren’t for a bunch of silly reasons, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s fair. It’s fair. Although I don’t know if you would put put, you know, 10
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or 12 year old me in front of a Mac at home, like not at school, because I enjoyed using him at school. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was a, it was a neat little diversion, but if you’d put me in front of one of those at home,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think I would have appreciated it. Like even, you know, an equivalently aged
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you was like, I don’t, I don’t want to do the math in my head, but however old you were when the Mac was new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was young as far as I remember, as far as I’m aware. And so you appreciated even as a younger age,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or at a younger age, you appreciated much better than I think I would have if I were in your shoes.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think you would. I think you both had and have the
⏹️ ▶️ John sensibilities to appreciate it. I mean, speaking more realistically,
⏹️ ▶️ John my experience has been whenever I had someone over my house who was a hardcore PC
⏹️ ▶️ John user, like a friend or whatever, who was totally into PCs and and thought Macs were junk. I could blow
⏹️ ▶️ John their mind with the things I did with my computer. Even my computer was black and white. The fact that the
⏹️ ▶️ John pixels were so freaking micro, it was the retina screen of the day. They had never seen a computer screen with pixels this small or this sharp.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, I would blow their mind with black and white games. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ John games on the Mac, what are you talking about? How could you blow their mind with a game? They’re playing Doom, right? The pixels were the size of boulders,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? I would blow their mind by having multiple screens and arranging them with like the displays control panel. Like, there were so many things I could
⏹️ ▶️ John do that would just make their heads explode. And they would, their jaws would drop, it was just so much farther
⏹️ ▶️ John ahead of anything we had ever seen. Did that mean they were going to go home and buy a Mac? No, because the Macs were
⏹️ ▶️ John Macs were a bajillion dollars. There’s no avoiding this, like they were just so much more expensive. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of like, you know, computers themselves are so much more expensive back then. It’s not like you had each
⏹️ ▶️ John kid had their own computer, like the family had one computer and was like a car, you know, it wasn’t like you just bought a new one every year
⏹️ ▶️ John or something. This was before the upgrade cycle and the internet and all this other stuff. So realistically
⏹️ ▶️ John speaking, no matter how amazed somebody was by my Mac, they’re not going to go home and say, Hey, mom, can we buy a $3,000
⏹️ ▶️ John in 1980s money computer? They were like, What are you talking about? It was, you know, so really,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m speaking of a position of massive privilege having had the original, you know, Macintosh, the 128k
⏹️ ▶️ John Macintosh, and a series of Macs, like, you just couldn’t afford them. Because that was one thing that was true back
⏹️ ▶️ John in the you know, the slam against the Macs, they’re more expensive. My God, were they more expensive, everything about
⏹️ ▶️ John them. But the keyboard was $200 for I’m crying out loud. Again, the 1980s money, right? Good, good. Wow. Fantastic.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was an awesome keyboard, though. Ask Gruber. I think he’s still using it. And so, realistically
⏹️ ▶️ John speaking, that’s one of the reasons. And that was also one of the reasons that you couldn’t convince people, because they would come
⏹️ ▶️ John over, and I would blow them away with my amazing Macintosh. But they had to go back home and
⏹️ ▶️ John retrench on the PC, because there’s no way they could get a Mac. Like, it was never going
⏹️ ▶️ John to happen, right? I mean, they would have had to turn around and try to convince their parents to get
⏹️ ▶️ John a Mac and they would not be successful because their parents wouldn’t be as impressed by whatever thing that I showed them.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it was it was an uphill battle and but I believe both of you
⏹️ ▶️ John would have also been impressed by the things I mean even even when I got my color one 24-bit color it’s not 24-bit
⏹️ ▶️ John color on people no one again all my PC using friends had never even seen a screen with 16.8 million
⏹️ ▶️ John colors they had no idea like they were you know VGA 256 they were just amazed and then you
⏹️ ▶️ John go 640 by 480 it’s like you don’t even I know what you’re talking about, guys. Let me show you. You know, like a Trantron
⏹️ ▶️ John screen, high-res Trantron screen with 24-bit color attached
⏹️ ▶️ John to my Mac SE30, arranged with a black and white screen. I would
⏹️ ▶️ John drag a window half on the black and white screen, half on the color screen, and move it around. Just their little brains would
⏹️ ▶️ John explode. And, you know, and that computer setup was like $6,000.
⏹️ ▶️ John So, I don’t know, those were the days, man.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I mean, there are explicable reasons, but I feel like you two would have appreciated what
⏹️ ▶️ John you were seeing. Because you appreciate, I mean, you appreciate nice things, like that look nice. You appreciate the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John aesthetic, like all the sort of things that make a Ferrari different than a muscle car.
⏹️ ▶️ John I believe you both could have appreciated then because you do appreciate it. Now it’s the same reason, Casey, you made
⏹️ ▶️ John your disc icon look different. That is a Mac user thing to do, right? PC users
⏹️ ▶️ John have drive letters.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I see. I don’t know. I think it was just me wanting to be cooler than my peers. I appreciate everything you just said.
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac was cooler, though. Was it? I mean, Yeah, no, it was.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, but to you, because you appreciated these things, whereas to Marco and I, and I’m putting words in Marco’s mouth,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think we would have been like, you know, that is really cool that you have all these colors. And yeah, that does look nice. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey remind me again why I can’t play Doom or whatever the, you know, the game of the week was.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think I would have cared.
⏹️ ▶️ John Games was the thing that you could pull out of the PC, but it
⏹️ ▶️ John seemed like it was old hat. Like, Doom was everywhere. Doom was not a differentiator. Everybody had Doom.
⏹️ ▶️ John You could play Doom on any old computer. It wasn’t technically impressive after the first
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. And then, same thing with the PlayStation, and once the 3D game console started coming
⏹️ ▶️ John out, a lot of the gaming shifted to that. PC gaming, there was
⏹️ ▶️ John always gonna be something that the PC was gonna do better, and the Mac never came close in gaming. So that was
⏹️ ▶️ John just, it was just a complete write-off. But that’s why I said it was amazing that I could impress my friends with Mac games because what in the world could you
⏹️ ▶️ John impress them with? Like they had every game in the world, right? Didn’t they have every game in the world? What could a Mac possibly do with games?
⏹️ ▶️ John And I would show them games that didn’t even exist on the PC, so that’s like opening their eyes up to a whole
⏹️ ▶️ John world of quirky games and be high-res games. Like there are certain genres of games. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John why Syndicate was so amazing. Syndicate was 640 by 480. You could actually see the little people on your PC. It was like
⏹️ ▶️ John one of the only PC games, like when I was playing Cyndi with my friends in their PC, I’m like, see, the reason you like this
⏹️ ▶️ John game is the reason why people care anything about the Mac games, because the Mac has no games, and most of the games are terrible,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the ones that it has are all beautiful and high res and have nice colors and are interesting or whatever. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John no, I definitely think the Mac was cooler in the same way that Steve Jobs was cooler than Bill Gates. Like, that’s basically
⏹️ ▶️ John the human embodiment of why Apple and the Mac was cooler.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco First of all, I think there might be the age gap here showing that. Like, I think, John, you’re talking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the difference between Macs and PCs for gaming and stuff, I think, at an earlier time span than what was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mostly relevant to me and Casey. Whereas, like, for us, like, we were comparing Macs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in, like, you know, 1994 through 1999, like that, like that era, like comparing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those Macs to the Pentium One, the 486 and, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco SVGA graphics cards.
⏹️ ▶️ John no, that’s you comparing the Apple going down the toilet drain, like Apple going out of business, like
⏹️ ▶️ John the pre-Steve Jobs. 1997 is like the low point of Apple. So if you’re any of the mid
⏹️ ▶️ John to late 90s, yeah, that was the worst Apple would ever be. That’s why I’m saying that it
⏹️ ▶️ John was a shame that you had missed out on Apple for all those years when you could have been using it, when it wasn’t even on your
⏹️ ▶️ John radar, right? Because Apple was not as bad then, especially in comparison.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, I got my first computer in 1994. So it was by the time I got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a computer, Apple was already on the decline. And at that point, you say me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Casey, we appreciate good things. I don’t know about Casey, but when I was in middle school
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and high school, I didn’t appreciate nice things. I just wanted to play games. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s what every middle schooler or high schooler wants to do with their computers, play games. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, I can type a paper on it, cool. Let me finish that so I can go back to playing Doom. Like that, it was,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and by the way, every other game, because at the time, yes you could play games on Macs, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not most of them, and usually not when they were new on PCs.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think you could play Doom on the Mac in the 90s actually. A terrible, terrible Mac version
⏹️ ▶️ John of Doom. Boy, that was grim.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but see, and gaming on the Mac was always a second class citizen compared to gaming on the PC in the 90s.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, and honestly still today, but less so today. You guys don’t know how good you have it today.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it may be worse today. It was like back even in the 90s. If I had showed you a black and white
⏹️ ▶️ John version of Dark Castle, you would have been impressed because there was nothing like that on the PC because there
⏹️ ▶️ John was it was a Mac only game and it just looked and played
⏹️ ▶️ John so much differently than anything you would have seen on the PC. You would have still said that Doom was better because
⏹️ ▶️ John Doom was better, but it was interesting and impressive and
⏹️ ▶️ John novel in a way that made the Mac, that differentiated the Mac. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John there was no way the Mac was gonna compete by saying, whatever popular game you like in your PC, we have that
⏹️ ▶️ John on the Mac. Because what was the point? Even if it exactly duplicated it, it’s like, well, but I already had that. The
⏹️ ▶️ John only way the Mac could be meaningful in any way was to have something different. And that’s how you would impress
⏹️ ▶️ John a jaded, diehard PC user. You can’t impress them by showing them Doom and Quake. They already have those games.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, even if they ran perfectly, so what? They already have that. It has to be something different.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s what Mac gaming had. Again, they’re not gonna say, okay, well now I need to get a Mac. But plenty of PC
⏹️ ▶️ John using friends would be like, I would never give up my PC for a Mac, but can we go over to your house and play that weird Mac game that
⏹️ ▶️ John we were playing? It
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco would happen all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and that was the thing too, like back then computers were, as you said, they’re so expensive. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not only did, like most people didn’t even have one. So to have one at all was a luxury. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also, you wouldn’t have been exposed to many of them during that time. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco total number of computers that I played on during my entire childhood, was probably,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco including at friends’ houses, was probably less than 10. So you weren’t exposed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to many computers. If you had one, you were very lucky. And the upgrade cycle was pretty long,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially when you’re a kid. Three years or five years feels like forever when you’re a kid. That could be like a third of your childhood,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least the part you remember. So whatever you got, the sense of what is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now called fanboyism, and the sense of trying to defend your purchase, trying to never let the thought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into your head that something else is out there that’s better than what you got. PC people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had no chance of appreciating anything the Mac had that was better because they were PC people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco already and they couldn’t just buy a Mac next month. No, you were stuck with that PC you got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for all of middle school or more. So whatever you had, you had to be happy
⏹️ ▶️ John And they probably couldn’t buy a Mac next year either because then they were so expensive. when it came time to replace your PC, there’s no way you
⏹️ ▶️ John were gonna replace it with a computer that costs literally twice as much or
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco three times as much.
⏹️ ▶️ John But again, the things you appreciate, the type of person who would see just the hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John on a Mac, like what the case looks like, how it’s designed, and how it doesn’t look like
⏹️ ▶️ John IBM PC XT case or like Gateway or all that, there was just aesthetically a difference
⏹️ ▶️ John in both the hardware and the software that you would appreciate as sort of like a nicer thing. It’s kind of like if you got into
⏹️ ▶️ John your friend’s Mercedes. Like we never had fancy cars, but I had friends who had Mercedes and their
⏹️ ▶️ John parents would come and pick me up and I would sit in them over like, wow, like this is a different, this is a different
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of car. Everything in this car is nicer. The door handles, the seats, the dashboard,
⏹️ ▶️ John the headliner, the little carpet that’s under my feet, everything about it is just nicer
⏹️ ▶️ John and cleaner. And like, and the Mac did that with the little pixels on the screen that everything was like classy and tasteful
⏹️ ▶️ John and nicely drawn. If you, again, if you’d like that particular style, the Mac appeals to you. I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John both of you do like that particular style because Apple style today when both its hardware and its software is not that Different
⏹️ ▶️ John from that and so again, it doesn’t mean that you would run out and buy one But then you would see it and go this
⏹️ ▶️ John is a nice This is a nice thing here this
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey ridiculously
⏹️ ▶️ John expensive computer I can kind of see where the $6,000 went someone paid some designer to make this
⏹️ ▶️ John case to look nice So it looks good from all sorts of angles and everything kind of matches and it’s really nice and everything I
⏹️ ▶️ John see in the screen is nice to like tip the keyboard sucks Yeah, some people some people can appreciate it. But all they
⏹️ ▶️ John would see is like the lack of a command line or you know, if they’re a Unix nerd, like the lack of, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, Emax or Vim or whatever, like, it depends on what you see. But because the fact
⏹️ ▶️ John that you two are Mac users today, I feel confident that you would have that attraction
⏹️ ▶️ John could have been fostered in younger versions of yourself. And so you did so your first Apple experiences weren’t like,
⏹️ ▶️ John when Apple what is the lowest point it would ever be in the history of the company and it had the worst products it would ever have in
⏹️ ▶️ John the history of the company. Probably not a good entry point for you to get into Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. I agree with Marco that I think in that era, I don’t know that I had the eye
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for it, but who knows? You can never really tell. One thing though that I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feel like you might have missed out on, at least my perception of how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ordering a Mac worked back in the day, I remember fretting with my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey father for days, sometimes weeks, trying to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey figure out the exact right build to make of our Gateway 2000 computer and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then eventually our Dell computers. And in many ways, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not a good thing that we had that much choice, that there were that many options, that we had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to figure this all out. Oftentimes you had to call somebody because the internet was either not a thing or brand new.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you would eventually place the order over the phone and you would have to quadruple check it to make sure they got it right. And you’d
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have to get catalogs and blah, blah, blah. But so much of that was so intense.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And for me, it was such a bonding moment with my dad that we had to figure out the exact
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right computer that both of us could agree on. And we had so many choices arrayed in front of us and so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey many different decisions we had to make. And although I’m so glad today
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I don’t have to do those sorts of things that that my That I have maybe two
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or three options within the brand the kind of computer. I want I’m still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m thankful for that time because it was Really really awesome
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at that moment and such an exciting time to be into PCs was when?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You had so many options could customize so much But I don’t know, maybe for you, John,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you would have just found that deplorable.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, then when you were done, you got a PC at the end. So it’s kind of…
⏹️ ▶️ John I know. I remember because I would go to the… You guys probably went to these things too. Maybe a little before your time. You would
⏹️ ▶️ John go to like computer fairs or like flea market type things where people would sell all the components
⏹️ ▶️ John to build your PC. That’s how I built the first PC I built. Right. And you know, that
⏹️ ▶️ John was… I guess it was kind of like maybe before CompUSA and the super stores
⏹️ ▶️ John came like this is where you would go to pillage your PC and we’re just people people have cases and drives and motherboards
⏹️ ▶️ John and just all the different components and it was just maybe around around the 386 486 errors I remember these being
⏹️ ▶️ John big before like by the time the pen team was around I feel like the super stores has started to come on and you would go there you just
⏹️ ▶️ John go to fries or something and get your pieces but these are more sort of low rent people setting up tables
⏹️ ▶️ John buying parts from the Far East and just selling them to you know I bought a Pentium two and one of those you could
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah you could go there if you know what you were looking for you could go there and build yourself a PC at all sorts of parts
⏹️ ▶️ John and again that was you know one of the big rallying cries was like I can build this amazing computer that can run
⏹️ ▶️ John Quake and this that and the other thing and look how cheaply I could do it and of course what you would end up with this is terrible mongrel
⏹️ ▶️ John that looks like it was made assembled from pizzas that you bought at a computer fair which is exactly what it was.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh come on it wasn’t it was just in the same Nlite 7237 that everybody else had.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was lots of different popular cases. I remember I was still going to the computer growers when full height towers
⏹️ ▶️ John were a thing. Did you ever get a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco full height? Yeah, actually, the first one I built was indeed a full height tower because I wanted all those drive bays.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, you could live in there like you can
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco make a little
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey house like hops. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John How huge is computers? I think the only time I had excitement about the phenomena is I would go there with my friends and watch them
⏹️ ▶️ John assemble their crap PCs with the part they bought. The only part that I was excited about was I was excited
⏹️ ▶️ John to help them build their PC because I will say I want to go over their house and play PC games on it. Right. Um, but
⏹️ ▶️ John also, uh, it later, a little bit later, I guess this was in the superstore when the dawning
⏹️ ▶️ John of the Linux age minutes before that and Linux, that was exciting because, all right, everyone
⏹️ ▶️ John knows you can build a PC, but you can build a Unix computer from the same
⏹️ ▶️ John pieces. That was a novel concept because before that, the only way you got a Unix computer was like
⏹️ ▶️ John in a university and like, you know, Sun would sell it to you for even more than a Mac or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now it’s like, these same parts of the same flea market, I can make a computer and run
⏹️ ▶️ John Linux on it. And so now I’m not building a crappy PC, I’m running a Linux server that’s going to connect to the internet.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s going to be amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, goodness. Any other thoughts? Marco, let’s start with you on Apple’s 40th.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey don’t know. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco such a big company now. They’ve come so far. It’s kind of like saying, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, the history of like GE. Like they’re so big that it’s kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hard to sum it up and to see what’s going to happen next. I just, I hope
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they continue to be Apple, to continue
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be Apple-y, to not lose their personality and I hope there’s a very strong
⏹️ ▶️ Marco future for the Mac because almost everything we’ve talked about so far tonight
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this celebration of their history was not just the history of Apple but the history of specifically the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and now Apple does a lot more things and I really hope the Mac doesn’t get lost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or neglected because it is so great and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco while there is obviously tons of room for people to be doing their computing on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS and other things I do still think that these devices
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are not killing the Mac and they’re not replacing the Mac it’s just they’re just a new thing it’s it’s another
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing that you could do in addition to or instead of if you want to but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Mac itself I think is the core of all this stuff it’s it’s the home base it is the hub as they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used to sell as they used to sell it by and and I really hope the Mac has a bright
⏹️ ▶️ Marco future and I think it will and and I look forward to what that includes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I agree. It’s funny. You’re, you’re right in saying that we haven’t really talked about iOS much. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s because I associate so much of like older Apple with the Mac because naturally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey these things weren’t existent. But, you know, I have I have stories about the iPad, I have stories about the iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But man, I really like using this as an opportunity to think about the Mac. I don’t know, john,
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we didn’t really get to the other pillars. I mean, they’re kind of obvious, they give maybe they’re too close to home, but
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe I put in the notes, maybe I’ll talk about the iMac a little bit next week. But then obviously after that, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John you mentioned the iPod and then of course you got the iPhone where in the obituary of Apple, if it was to die
⏹️ ▶️ John today, the young age of 40 iPhone is line one, right? I mean, it is such
⏹️ ▶️ John a, so much a larger, much more successful revolution of the same kind as the
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac in that what Apple Apple said is here’s the way the phones are going to work and
⏹️ ▶️ John this time the world was much faster to go. Oh, yeah, you’re totally right. That’s it. That’s that’s that’s what
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re going to do. Then you see all the pictures of like phones before and after the iPhone. Again Apple’s not first
⏹️ ▶️ John with the touchscreen phone, not even first with the mostly screen touchscreen phone, but such a huge revolution. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like it’s the Mac. Maybe the iPod and then the
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone. years of computing, most companies don’t even
⏹️ ▶️ John get one hit on the caliber, not hit, not even just like popular product, but
⏹️ ▶️ John one sort of revolution where it is a dividing line between what did computers
⏹️ ▶️ John look like before they had GUIs and what did it look like after and what was responsible for that transition?
⏹️ ▶️ John What did phones look like before the iPhone and what did they look like after? And
⏹️ ▶️ John iPod, what the digital musical players act like before and after maybe sort of popularized
⏹️ ▶️ John digital music player. But again, most companies don’t even have a single one of those. The biggest
⏹️ ▶️ John companies in the world might have one. Apple has two, which is phenomenal to maybe two point five.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s what I think defines Apple. Its first 40 years that it proved that it’s the company. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John you could even put the Apple two in there. You know, the line used to put in there, press the bottom of the press releases. Apple ignited the personal
⏹️ ▶️ John computer revolution, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And yeah, the Apple two was important. But you
⏹️ ▶️ John could say that if the if the Apple two didn’t happen, then maybe the IBM PC might have it where they
⏹️ ▶️ John really that different but the Mac really made something happen that I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ John if the Mac didn’t exist we would have to wait much longer for the first big Google computer and the same thing with the smartphone if the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t exist we probably would have eventually gotten to a similar place but it would have taken way longer just look at what I Android look like
⏹️ ▶️ John in the days before the iPhone and what look like after so Apple is defined as this company that
⏹️ ▶️ John has done this miraculous thing multiple times and therefore takes this
⏹️ ▶️ John magical place in our minds and our memories that it is not just a bunch of people who are in the right place at the right time
⏹️ ▶️ John and got lucky once that they somehow have figured out a way a
⏹️ ▶️ John system for you know a system for greatness and then same way as similar to Pixar or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John if that system was Steve Jobs I guess we’ll find out in 30 years when we say you know what it wasn’t really a system for greatness it was really just as
⏹️ ▶️ John one amazing guy but I feel like there’s been enough things that have happened and enough
⏹️ ▶️ John promise has been shown that it’s not out of the question for Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John to have another iPhone like product revolution somewhere in our
⏹️ ▶️ John lifetimes. Unlike self-driving cars, I’m pretty confident that is a feasible
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that could happen. But if not, if Apple goes out of business today,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’d still say you would stand it up as one of the great companies ever to be on the face of
⏹️ ▶️ John the earth in all terms you could possibly measure financial success, customer
⏹️ ▶️ John satisfaction, which Tim loves, and just an impact on the world.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like if you were to, you know, they ever do one of those montages of the, you know, the years
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple has existed, a lot of things that Apple did would appear in that montage, not because it would
⏹️ ▶️ John be glorifying Apple, but because they changed the way all of us live and
⏹️ ▶️ John work. That’s a hell of a thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks for watching my three sponsors this week. Hover, Blue Apron, and Betterment. and we will see you next time.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even mean to begin, cause it was accidental, oh it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental. John didn’t do any research, Marco and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Casey wouldn’t let him, cause it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. It’s accidental And you can find the
⏹️ ▶️ John show notes at atp.fm And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter, you can follow them At C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M N-T
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Syracuse, it’s accidental They didn’t mean to, accidental, check
Post-show: Cannot save Untitled
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What is this ongoing iCloud Drive pages text edit failures?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s something quick that we can just use as an after show. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s a quickie because it’s just complaining. But I talked to this before.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really want to follow up that with complaining about Apple failures? That’s a fair
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s just a minor update on this thing. Remember I talked about it before, doing stuff in pages
⏹️ ▶️ John and it wouldn’t let me save? It’s not me. It’s my daughter. She wants to write things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it was some kind of sync conflict, right? Yeah, and
⏹️ ▶️ John I just, she just wants to write plain text more or less or styled text. And I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John why I keep encouraging her to do this. So the pages is in the doc. I say, Oh, just launch pages and do that. And
⏹️ ▶️ John then it wasn’t even like I was trying to have her edit on her iPad anymore as I gave up on that. But this,
⏹️ ▶️ John just a Mac, just a single Mac opened a document and she typed
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff. She likes to write things. So she’s got a bunch of writing programs. She typed a bunch of stuff. Um, and it was time for
⏹️ ▶️ John dinner to get off the computer or something else. She’d save before you go, and she couldn’t save. You
⏹️ ▶️ John command S and it gave some error. And I’m like, really? It’s a new untitled document created on a
⏹️ ▶️ John single computer with no syncing involved whatsoever, and I can’t save. And
⏹️ ▶️ John at that point, I’m like, all right, just go and do your thing. Daddy will take care of this. I couldn’t take care of it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I couldn’t save this document. This is an untitled document. I could not save it. I had to copy and paste the
⏹️ ▶️ John text out of it, put it into TextEdit, and save it someplace else.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I don’t know what the moral of the story is, but I just, it’s slowly teaching me
⏹️ ▶️ John an important lesson. I feel like Marco unplugging his PC and reconnecting up the Mac. That just, just
⏹️ ▶️ John never use anything that touches iCloud or Pages or just, I don’t know what it’s teaching you. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John teaching me to be sad and, and it’s making me unsuccessful
⏹️ ▶️ John at showing my daughter anything about computers. It’s like new document, type words, hit save.
⏹️ ▶️ John Complete utter failure. She just has to leave the room. And when she comes back, I have to say,
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t use that program anymore. Don’t ask daddy why. It’s too sad for words.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I had her use Microsoft Word, that’s what I did. Because you know what, when you make a new document
⏹️ ▶️ John in Microsoft Word and you type words in it and you save, it saves the document. Pretty much every time, I’m pretty sure.
⏹️ ▶️ John Saves, document, local disk. Anyway, that’s it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ay-yi-yi. It’s one of the problems with like, as as we’ve gotten so much more advanced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the technology. It’s also gotten so much more complicated that the basics
⏹️ ▶️ Marco often don’t work as reliably as they used to.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because it’s not as basically you think it’s basic, you think I’m just saving a document to the local disk. But
⏹️ ▶️ John somehow, like, I mean, if I want to put on my computer hat for a second, I’m pretty sure what happened
⏹️ ▶️ John is a lot of documents even text edit, when you make a new document,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like auto save enabled, it will make the new document in your iCloud drive, like by default, or maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John if that’s the last place you saved or whatever. So unbeknownst to you, you think you’re typing in a document that has not yet be saved, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it has been saved, it’s been saved in iCloud drive. And, you know, like
⏹️ ▶️ John I said, text that has been doing that since like the very first cloud enabled version, you just open it up, you take a new document
⏹️ ▶️ John and you don’t know but it’s just it’s put in iCloud drive and something is wrong with her specific iCloud drive connected to her
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple ID. So again, I don’t even think this is a systemic problem or a bug. I think like something server side
⏹️ ▶️ John in her iCloud drive is hosed and like it poisons anything you put there. And at that point,
⏹️ ▶️ John like that new document that she created was already essentially sort of auto save
⏹️ ▶️ John created in her iCloud drive and trying to save it and give it a name gave some weird error, like
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t open untitled. Like it was trying to sort of, I don’t know,
⏹️ ▶️ John open the document and then re-save it under a new name, but it was already iCloud like drive infected. So if I had opened pages
⏹️ ▶️ John and made a new document such that it auto saved to her desktop, I think everything would have been fine. But it was too late. I
⏹️ ▶️ John had a single window called untitled one or whatever was called and it had the words in it and there was no action
⏹️ ▶️ John I could take other than copying and pasting the content out of that window to get that thing saved into a file on disk like literally
⏹️ ▶️ John nothing. This is a single computer, no syncing involved. And so I can kind of understand how it didn’t work. But like you said, Margaret,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, the basics should work. It’s not basic. cloud a cloud connected drive synced by a background
⏹️ ▶️ John demon running on the thing with the you know document ubiquity and all these that’s not basic at all it’s far
⏹️ ▶️ John from it looks the basic but it’s not it’s not it’s just it’s fiendishly complicated if it works
⏹️ ▶️ John fine but if it doesn’t regular people can’t be expected to understand that all they know is I had saved and
⏹️ ▶️ John it gave me an error dialog box and put me back into a window that was still unsaved and
⏹️ ▶️ John window call Untitled you know you should have done. I don’t know