166: Fitness Turd
20 Apr 2016Bleeps and boops, remembering the original iMac, and whether it’s trendy to hate the Apple Watch.
Episode Description:
- Tesla facelift
- Follow-up:
- Superchargers vs. gas stations
- SAE's automated driving levels
- Amazon Echo, Dash Button, and Siri outside the U.S.
- Networking gear
- Ubiquiti's 8-port PoE switch
- Marco's big HP 1810G-24 switch
- Ubiquiti IP camera
- Ubiquiti UniFi Cloud Key instead of installing Java
- More on TextExpander changes
- Bleeps and Bloops
- Apple's 40th and the iMac
- Poor Apple Watch
- Ending theme by Jonathan Mann
- Post-show: macOS proposal
Sponsored by:
- Meh.com: A new deal every day at midnight Eastern.
- Betterment: Investing made better.
- FreshBooks: Online invoicing made easy.
Chapters
- Intro: The Anastasio Dilemma
- Tesla Model S facelift
- Superchargers vs. gas stations
- SAE self-driving car standards
- Amazon sucks outside the US
- Sponsor: Meh.com
- More on networking gear
- TextExpander adjustments
- Ad bleeps and boops
- Sponsor: FreshBooks
- Ad bleeps and boops, cont’d.
- Remembering the original iMac
- Sponsor: Betterment
- Trendy to hate the Apple Watch?
- Ending theme
- Post-show: macOS concept
Intro: The Anastasio Dilemma
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, yeah, yeah, where’s John? Why do we not have John?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m working on it. I don’t can’t get him to connect yet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It might be just you and me my friend God can you imagine the internet revolt
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that would happen?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What do you think? They would hate more two hours of fish or the show without John
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Probably the show without John. I think they would prefer the two hours of fish. I think you’re right. Oh Hey
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John’s here. Oh, hi John. What would you think? think people would dislike
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more? Would people dislike hearing Fish for Two Hours
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more than hearing the show without you, or would people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dislike hearing the show without you and prefer to hear Fish for Two Hours?
⏹️ ▶️ John Matt Stauffer I think they would prefer to hear the Fish.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jeffrey Laflin That’s exactly what we concluded that the internet would find
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and smite, smote Marco and I, if you were not here.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think I’m, I don’t really hear any fish because again, I never listened to the live stream, but the few moments I remember hearing,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, it’s not terrible, right? It’s like this, they play guitars and bass and
⏹️ ▶️ John drums and, you know, and then someone says something for like two, two seconds in the middle. And then,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco if you don’t, even if you don’t like
⏹️ ▶️ John it, It’s not like you’re making people listen to, you know, scream music or something. I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think we’ll be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, to be fair, I think more people like fish than like us. It might not be these people,
Tesla Model S facelift
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is currently the 13th of April. It is a Wednesday night. Uh, we just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey released this week’s episode or Marco did a few hours ago, but because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John is disappearing for a little bit, um, we are going to be where we are obviously recording right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we expect that Apple will buy Nintendo on the 14th of April, and we won’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get a chance to talk about it until I think the 22nd, which is the next time we’ll be recording. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey expect all the juicy and interesting things to happen over the next week. You’re welcome.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, at least my car was made obsolete yesterday.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s true, actually. I completely forgot about that. Yeah, they hit the Tesla with the ugly stick. Come
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I don’t really regret not getting the new one, you know, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they literally just did a facelift yesterday, and my car is something like two and a half weeks old.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the new one I think overall is probably better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It has better headlights, it has a center console, which I had to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy a separate third-party center console to shove in there. It comes with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey one… Oh, I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey realize it was third-party. That’s interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Well, they had a first-party one, but the reviews were terrible. So then they stopped selling it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So there’s a couple of minor improvements, but nothing that really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco makes me unhappy that I bought two and a half weeks ago rather than today.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steven Connelly Yeah, the front kind of grill fascia
⏹️ ▶️ Casey area just, I don’t dig it. And a lot of people were coming after me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and kind of rightfully so, and saying, oh well, you’re just judging it because it doesn’t look like an old
⏹️ ▶️ Casey car, it doesn’t look like something that blows up old plants and dinosaurs, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re just being a stupid old man. Yeah, you know that might be guilty as charged and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe in a few years I won’t need to see a grill up front but sitting here today.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just don’t think it’s pretty and Somebody had tweeted I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey recall who it was, but somebody tweeted and it’s been making the rounds endlessly the picture
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Keanu Reeves as Mr. Anderson and And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when in the first movie, his lips disappear and his face
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just is, you know, it’s all kind of one big flat area. And it is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a very, very similar likeness to the updated Tesla Model
⏹️ ▶️ Casey S and the Model 3 as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the X. Because like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco S, it basically just all started with the X. That’s true. I’d forgotten about that. I mean, ultimately, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think it’s really going to be that big of a deal. I think it’s it’s more just like we are not used to seeing cars that are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco designed this way And that’s why it looks weird because it’s unfamiliar,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John but I think that in a few months
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know once you start seeing these on the road and everything everyone’s just gonna be like okay That’s just how cars look sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John No, no, no, it’s not it. We talked about this last week. It’s like if you forgot everything we talked about
⏹️ ▶️ John The prop the model 3 was the one where the Keanu lip sewing shut Disappearing matrix
⏹️ ▶️ John thing was going around because the model 3 what we’ve seen of it anyway because again who knows what’s final But what we’ve seen
⏹️ ▶️ John with model 3 is there’s nothing there. There’s no Dividing line different color patch
⏹️ ▶️ John different material. It is just one continuous schnoz and
⏹️ ▶️ John And as as we talked about last week like it’s it’s not so much
⏹️ ▶️ John that That we demand to have a grill right
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s that the car looks like it has a place where a grill should go Like they haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ John fully embraced the idea that they don’t need to pull air into that spot They have built a car with a spot
⏹️ ▶️ John where a grill would go but just neglected to put the same reason a face looks weird With a big smooth spot where the mouth
⏹️ ▶️ John should go because we know that’s where the mouth goes if you want to draw Something that doesn’t have a mouth don’t draw
⏹️ ▶️ John the place where the mouth goes and then just erase it, right? The X and the new S,
⏹️ ▶️ John they have a grill They have a little T-shape thing which I think is pretty good for Tesla T You know every brand has some
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of like signature grill shape that they go with and they change it over the years But you know how he’s got that big sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John big mouth trapezoid thing they go with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does look a little bit like a creepy partial mustache like the skinny stache.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John You know it looks
⏹️ ▶️ John It looks a little bit like Alfa Romeo to like it’s not it’s not like every brand you know BMW has the kidneys
⏹️ ▶️ John So that is a pretty big signature there But other brands have changed their shape over the years and sometimes they stick with it
⏹️ ▶️ John for like three or four model generations Then they go the different shape anyway this Tesla thing with a little T with their
⏹️ ▶️ John actual T logo inside it. That’s fine It’s kind of like a grill
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to see this one in person because from some angles the little Little mustache they
⏹️ ▶️ John have there Suffices as far as I’m concerned visually because they put a place for the grill and they put a grill
⏹️ ▶️ John on I mean that basically Is a girl it’s not a big grill But it’s a grill like why else have a big like opening in black air because
⏹️ ▶️ John because other internal combustion engine cars have one The model 3 has the same place for that thing to go,
⏹️ ▶️ John but there’s nothing there so it looks weird And like I said last show
⏹️ ▶️ John If they if they want to go with the no grill on the front because they can fine go for it embrace it
⏹️ ▶️ John make it look But make it look like a car that Never had a grill
⏹️ ▶️ John was never intended to have a grill and they kind of can’t do that with the model s because they decided When Marcos car to put the big
⏹️ ▶️ John giant ball gag thing there, it’s like it looks like a big black grill But it’s just clear plastic like someone
⏹️ ▶️ John shoved a rubber ball into the mouth of the car, and it’s like but That
⏹️ ▶️ John but that you know that they made the decision you can’t really reshape the whole car the other thing that’s a factor is Pedestrian
⏹️ ▶️ John safety and crash standards probably dictate at the very least the minimum height of the front of the car
⏹️ ▶️ John So you can’t really go whole hog into a styling that totally neglects the grill So I’m not entirely sure what to do to resolve
⏹️ ▶️ John this But I know the answer is not what the three did which is make a car with a place for a grill and just failed to put
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, the side view, I’m looking at this post on Jalopnik, which we’ll have in the show notes. If you look
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at it from the side of the car, it actually doesn’t look bad at all. But any sort of front angle
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just looks, it’s just this, this, this vast emptiness. And it just,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I agree with you, John B. It looks like a grill belongs there, but isn’t there, isn’t there. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think I prefer this to the Audi. I will swallow the world grill that’s become
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so trendy for Audi these days, which is just awful.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or the new Lexus ones too. And the new Lexus and Toyota.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Oh, you’re right. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John the next one
⏹️ ▶️ John has the bowtie shape. Yeah, it’s kind of like, uh, goes,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I forgot about that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worse. Yeah. And it’s like the entire front of the car. Yeah. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s efficient, efficient for cooling if they use all that space. But are you talking about, you’re still saying
⏹️ ▶️ John that you don’t like the S because Casey, the S has a grill like that little, the little
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t fill the area. I see there’s a big expanse under it that you feel
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey like is a place where more grill
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco should go and there isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John And they actually exaggerate it because if you look, they actually extend down like the thing that’s around the fog lamps.
⏹️ ▶️ John The material goes down even farther, making room, even more room for the non-existing grill.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep, exactly. I just don’t care for it. Anyway, I’m sure it looks fine. And once I see them in person, which,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, should be any day now, as soon as they start selling them because they’re all over here. I’ll have to
⏹️ ▶️ John render judgment of seeing it in person, but I think it looks better than the three by far.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it does look better than the three.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think so too. And I think of all their, like, including if you look at the X and the S and the three together,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it looks the best out of all three of them out of the current ones they’re producing. Although one concern I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for all three of them is that front area that is body color
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is just going to get full of bugs and chips. Oh, good point. You know, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s always the most damaged area of any car I have because it’s always just covered in… Just put a bra on it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh God, are we starting there again?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, are we going back to this? Oh God. Anyway, so I agree.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I understand that this will probably at some point look
⏹️ ▶️ Casey normal to me, but today I don’t care for it and I think it looks ugly.
Superchargers vs. gas stations
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so let’s not talk about Teslas anymore, and let’s start the follow up. And our first follow
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up item is let’s talk about Teslas and let’s talk about superchargers and charging
⏹️ ▶️ John Now you’re following instructions. This is another thing by the way that
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the chat room was also right
⏹️ ▶️ John about this last show. We just didn’t get a chance to pull them. I meant to do it, but we had moved on by
⏹️ ▶️ John then. In the discussion about how many supercharger stations there are versus how many gas stations
⏹️ ▶️ John and factoring how long it takes to charge and all the other infrastructure needed if we were to convert all of the existing
⏹️ ▶️ John cars to electric with a snap of our fingers and so on and so forth. One point we didn’t bring up, but
⏹️ ▶️ John again, which the chat room did, was that even though superchargers take a long time to charge,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can get, you can fill up your electric car someplace other than
⏹️ ▶️ John the quote-unquote gas station. You know, when you drive it back to your house, you just plug it in. And a lot of people were saying
⏹️ ▶️ John that as long as you don’t drive more than half the range of your car per day,
⏹️ ▶️ John you never need to go to a supercharger unless you’re going on a long trip. So you need far fewer superchargers because just when you go back home, you plug
⏹️ ▶️ John it in. And I was thinking about this when I was discussing the charge
⏹️ ▶️ John of the thing last time. And it’s kind of in the middle because I mean, Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John can tell us but like I recall him saying somewhere on Twitter that it takes like three days to charge his car
⏹️ ▶️ John to full capacity from the plain old wall outlet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. So if you if you only have a plain old wallet, it’s about three days for a full charge. But if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spending this much on a car, I don’t think it’s that much to ask to spend another few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hundred to at most a couple thousand dollars to do whatever it takes to get a high powered outlet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in your garage. If you have a 50 amp outlet, the NEMA 1450 that Tesla recommends, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco charges the entire car in something like seven hours, depending on how big a battery you have.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if you’re buying a 70 or 80,000 or 35,000 dollar car, maybe, but as these things come down in price, like
⏹️ ▶️ John basically I would say if you’re asking people to change their home in some way, they basically become
⏹️ ▶️ John like a little charging station. Like that’s part of the infrastructure. Part of the infrastructure, you don’t have to build gas stations, but every single person
⏹️ ▶️ John that owns one of these cars has to at least have a dryer outlet in their garage or buy one of the big supercharger things or whatever, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is fine, like you said, for people with Model S and the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Model 3. Well, not every person. Like, you know, underscore, our friend, underscore David Smith, he is still,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, he bought the car like in December. He still just only has the regular outlet and he drives
⏹️ ▶️ Marco few enough miles that it doesn’t really matter unless he’s taking a trip, which case using superchargers. So and right now I still have that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too, because electricians in New York take a while to get back to you. So I still have the planar outlet as well. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so far it’s been totally fine because I just I’m not driving hundreds of miles a day. It would only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be a problem if I was driving like, you know, a hundred or more miles a day.
⏹️ ▶️ John What I’m getting at is like that it’s not that the math is not as long as you drive half the range. It’s more like if you drive a
⏹️ ▶️ John third of the range or whatever. And the other thing is that since these are the first round
⏹️ ▶️ John of like minimally viable electric cars to compete with gas They don’t have the same ranges
⏹️ ▶️ John as a long-range gas car, but they’re close enough that you know that it’s fine, right? This is not like the Leaf where it’s intended
⏹️ ▶️ John to be a very short range car I would assume that the capacity of electric cars
⏹️ ▶️ John will go up as batteries become Cheaper not maybe not that much. Maybe they’ll stop around
⏹️ ▶️ John a 300 mile range like an easy 300 mile range for everybody and So that will just only
⏹️ ▶️ John add to charging time so it seems like some necessary part of the infrastructure of the electric car
⏹️ ▶️ John world is is every home to have a little bit better charging capacity. It doesn’t mean they need to have a big
⏹️ ▶️ John supercharger or the $3,000 thing or whatever, probably just an extra dryer outlet. And since most
⏹️ ▶️ John people, I would imagine, go way less than a third of the range of their electric car or even a quarter of the range of their
⏹️ ▶️ John electric car, they’ll probably be fine. And that will definitely save on the supercharger, the number of superchargers
⏹️ ▶️ John needed. The flip side of that though, is the places that need superchargers are gonna need a lot of them. So along
⏹️ ▶️ John Interstate 90, where there’s nobody else in the entire world, Everybody’s stopping somewhere along Interstate 90. If all
⏹️ ▶️ John the cars were electric, no one is going across New York State. You’ve got to stop for your gas somewhere
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re going from Boston to Buffalo or something. And it’s just a giant corridor of a bunch of cars
⏹️ ▶️ John that need to do that. And they’re used to pulling off at one of the service stations, getting gas, and then just continuing
⏹️ ▶️ John on. And if it takes you even just 15 minutes, that’s going to have big backups and
⏹️ ▶️ John snarls, as you can tell if anything at all goes wrong at any of the toll stations along the way that you’re sitting
⏹️ ▶️ John in traffic for hours and hours. So it seems like superchargers are gonna be concentrated along the major thoroughfares.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then in suburban areas, maybe you can have one that covers a tremendous area because only people who are passing through
⏹️ ▶️ John need everyone else to charge at their house.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, also, I think another major problem to tackle is that if you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a house with a garage or a permanent parking spot and a driveway, it’s kind of impractical to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have an electric car because you have, like, you know, so many people live in apartments or in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco street parking only areas where you’re parking your car on the street overnight, you don’t have a drive where you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t have a garage, how do you charge on a regular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basis out there? That’s trickier to solve, I think.
⏹️ ▶️ John Inductive charging, Matthew, to drive your car over the top of it. Those exist. You never know. I know, they’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John just put them in the road when they’re putting the little sensors for these automated cars to also put chargers at every stoplight.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, why not? Marco, what’s the nearest supercharger to you in terms of distance?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, I don’t know. I mean, there’s one in Newburgh, but that’s pretty far off. I mean, it depends on what direction am I headed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the more relevant question. If I’m going upstate, the closest one is Newburgh, which is something like a half hour up or an hour
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up. If I’m going into Pennsylvania, New Jersey area, then I’m sure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a different one. If I’m going through Connecticut, I think there’s a couple over there. So it depends on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where I’m going, really.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, the reason I’m asking is, I see there’s one in Greenwich, Connecticut, which looks to my eye like it’s pretty close to you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s very close. There’s one in Paramus, New Jersey, which also looks fairly close. It looks like Greenwich is probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is. Anyway, what I’m driving at, though, is let’s suppose for the sake of discussion that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you don’t ever do anything to the home and you only have a regular outlet and you would have to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey charge over the span of three days. In a desperation scenario, you could drive what to my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eye looks like half an hour or less to, say, Greenwich, and you could use a supercharger
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there and drive back. That’s what, like probably 20, 30 miles, maybe a little more, maybe a little less.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that would, in a pinch, solve the problem as long as you had an hour to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco charge. I always have an hour for Grinnex. They have amazing watch stores there and a good lunch place. Oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my god. How’s the chicken salad? You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, I haven’t had that yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco But anyway, but you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see what I’m driving at is, you know, maybe— I haven’t been there that many times. Maybe you can avoid doing the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey home modification until the next time you do a demo on the house, which for you seems to be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey every couple of years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But you know, I have one of those situations, like I think like Underscore, where my circuit breaker panel is full,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so the electrician’s quoting me a couple thousand dollars to do like a, I don’t need a panel upgrade, but I need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a sub panel. And then once you throw in the cost of all the local permits and everything else,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the fees for the town and everything, it’s probably gonna be maybe two or three thousand dollars.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that does make you pause and like, well, is it really? Am I really ever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to need that necessarily compared to the regular outlet? And I might not.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s interesting. I find this all fascinating. I don’t suspect that I’m going to have an electric car
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anytime soon. Not necessarily from lack of desire, but because those that are available today don’t really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do it for me, or are exorbitantly expensive, or are the Model 3 that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even if I reserved one now, I won’t get until Declan’s graduating college. So I don’t suspect I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to get an electric car anytime soon, but I am fascinated by all the differences and the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey different thoughts and concerns and worries that one has, like, should I modify my home in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey order to support charging this quicker? It’s so different than what I’m used to thinking about, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just find it very interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, in all fairness, the modification to your home, if your home is at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all modern or new or has modern electric service in it, is usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very minimal. It’s usually a couple hundred dollars to have an electrician install a high-power outlet, usually really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco close to where your breaker was anyway because so many breakers are in garages. So, it’s, you know, for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most homes out there in the country that are fairly young, I think it would be a very inexpensive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco modification. And most people, I don’t think, really think too much about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steve McLaughlin Yeah. All right, moving on. Well, sort of moving on. John, do you want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to tell us about this next item?
SAE self-driving car standards
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes, I meant to look up what SAE stands for, but one of you and or the chat room will do that
⏹️ ▶️ John while I’m addressing one last point on the superchargers. Also brought up by the chat room, also related to SAE, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is connector standards. Tesla’s apparently got its own connector. It’s got like the two
⏹️ ▶️ John little things that have like a T-shape in it. I seem to remember it had like kind of a branding theme.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco But anyway, yeah, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John pins in there. Maybe. Society of Automotive Engineers, SAE stands
⏹️ ▶️ John for. They have a standard connector for electric cars, which is not the same
⏹️ ▶️ John as the Tesla connector. So I mean, we’ll see how this works out in terms of, you know, adapters
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t seem like it’s rocket science if you have any kind of station that can provide electricity to the cars. Obviously, Tesla
⏹️ ▶️ John has its own brand of supercharger stations, they don’t care if you can charge anyone else’s car there, I think, but I see
⏹️ ▶️ John no reason why they couldn’t. I feel like that will work itself out. If it turns out that Tesla builds a million supercharger
⏹️ ▶️ John stations before anybody builds anything, guess what? The standard connector is Tesla’s, not this as a standard.
⏹️ ▶️ John But speaking of as a standards, as he has a standard measurement system
⏹️ ▶️ John for self driving cars, which why wouldn’t they because they’re sitting around all day trying to come up with standards like self driving cars,
⏹️ ▶️ John we can make up standards for things that don’t exist. So they did. Zero, it goes from zero to five, zero
⏹️ ▶️ John is no automation and five is full automation. And they divided into two regions of three each because they start from zero because
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey programmers.
⏹️ ▶️ John Zero one and two is human driver monitors, engagement basically
⏹️ ▶️ John there needs to be a human driver and they need to monitor everything and three four and five is automated driving system
⏹️ ▶️ John monitors driving environment i didn’t read this entire pdf so i’m not quite sure how they break it down much farther
⏹️ ▶️ John um but again my criteria is do i need to know how to drive a car to get into this car i guess you
⏹️ ▶️ John could do it simpler as do i get to sit in the back seat because that boils down to the same thing if you get to sit in the back seat
⏹️ ▶️ John and no one is in the front seat that’s complete self-driving car right all right can i I fall asleep.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you have to sit in the front seat and have to know how to drive a car because you may be called upon to do
⏹️ ▶️ John so, you’re still in the lower range. So that’s that’s really the barrier that I carry. But but it’s good that the Society of Automotive
⏹️ ▶️ John Engineers has decided to come up with a scale for this. And I wonder where they would. I mean, I guess
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess your Tesla is on to which they call partial automation. It’s like no automation, driver assistance,
⏹️ ▶️ John partial automation, conditional automation, high automation, full automation on all standards bodies. Is there anything you
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t standardize? Apparently not. So anyway, be watching for SAE numbers
⏹️ ▶️ John to be quoted on your cars just like the SAE engine power ratings that no one reads.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you. All right. John, do you think and this is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Robin Malhotra that’s asked the asked us this. Do you think john that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple’s new file system or truly autonomous vehicles will come first?
⏹️ ▶️ John Truly autonomous according to my definition just laid out as in you can sit in the backseat and don’t have to drive, Apple’s file system
⏹️ ▶️ John will come first. Easily.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I tend to agree, but you never really know.
Amazon sucks outside the US
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Cameron Palm has written in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and made some interesting points about the Amazon Echo and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Amazon in general. He or she has said, well, I’m sure Amazon Echo and Dash
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Buttons are interesting as products are a couple of key issues. Number one, Amazon is a US thing. It works in the US because of cheap
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shipping. It doesn’t work slash exist in most of the world, including Europe, not in the US sense.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The Echo is also only available in American English. Siri, on the other hand, and he or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she provides a link, is available in many, many, many places. And there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a link that we’ll put in the show notes for future availability for Siri.
⏹️ ▶️ John This happens a lot when we bring up things. I forget, maybe Netflix was another one. A lot of things that we don’t realize are US-centric
⏹️ ▶️ John or US-only. So if there are other people listening in the US and who are just thinking, oh, Amazon,
⏹️ ▶️ John everyone has Amazon, right? Apparently a lot of the stuff Amazon does is really confined to the US
⏹️ ▶️ John in ways that you wouldn’t wouldn’t imagine It would be like is there anything specific about the echo that has to be so us?
⏹️ ▶️ John I seems like I can make one for other kind of other countries, right? Maybe they just don’t have enough server farms over there
⏹️ ▶️ John They don’t have the expertise to do the the translation and the detection different languages either way It’s always seemed
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of weird to me. That’s such a big company like Amazon It seems to have such grand ambitions with the whole, you know EC2
⏹️ ▶️ John and s3 and selling things all over the world I mean, I can understand maybe not being able to sell physical goods all over the world, but for
⏹️ ▶️ John all their electronic products and network services, they should expand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think we’re seeing here a strategy tax at Amazon, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Echo does lots of things that don’t use their storefronts at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all and don’t depend on their storefronts at all. But one of the main reasons that all Amazon hardware exists
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is to get you to buy more content or media or stuff from Amazon.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I bet they don’t want to even bother supporting it in countries and languages where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they also don’t have widespread store coverage for their stores. And Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is historically notoriously US-centric in their storefronts. So that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably the reason, the main reason why, is that the Echo couldn’t do half
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the things that Amazon wants it to be doing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, maybe, but you have to just think long term. Like I said, Amazon is such a long term
⏹️ ▶️ John thinking company. I mean, the CEO is making spaceships and stuff. So long term,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re not selling in China, you’ve got a big problem. Because China has
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of, and India for that matter, China and India, guess what, they have a lot of people and those people
⏹️ ▶️ John are in many cases crawling up into the income
⏹️ ▶️ John class where they can buy your products. countries are they’re not developing countries they’re like
⏹️ ▶️ John developed like you know they’re entering the middle class type of thing they’re ready to buy expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John frivolous electronics right and it’s happening faster and faster so like if you no matter how
⏹️ ▶️ John I put it this way if you know even if Amazon gets 100% of the market for physical goods in the United States
⏹️ ▶️ John if you just fast forward enough years the whoever gets 100% of the market in China
⏹️ ▶️ John and India is going to gobble them up because having 100% of the US is meaningless when when
⏹️ ▶️ John they get billions of people in Asia.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep. All right. Who wants to talk about ubiquities eight port power over ethernet switch probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco our first sponsor this week. Are we
⏹️ ▶️ John really gonna talk about a switch. I am briefly go ahead sponsor you’re fine.
Sponsor: Meh.com
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Our first sponsor this week is Meh.com. This is a new sponsor. It’s Meh.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Am I pronouncing that right? M-E-H? Meh. Meh. I’ve never actually said this
⏹️ ▶️ John word. You have to sound more apathetic. Meh.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s better. That’s better. So, Meh.com. These are the people, long ago, they founded
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a site called Woot.com. And Woot was like a one thing a day, daily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco deal kind of site. And the things were like things that appealed to geeks. So it was, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like cheap, crappy little hardware. And what I was saying last week and the week before, just being blown away by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how cheap hardware is these days, and it especially costs nothing if you get it from a place like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Meh. So what they do is one deal a day, and this is how Amazon ruined it. So Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bought Woot forever ago. The team behind it, the founders behind it, eventually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got fed up because Amazon was ruining it. They made it instead of being one deal a day, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be, oh, now there’s just a whole bunch of deals. And it’s like, well, that’s kind of just Amazon at that point. It kind of lost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco its personality and kind of lost what made it special. So they were all unhappy with this, so they just left. And they went and founded
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a company called Mediocre Labs, which I love, and they made this site called Meh. And I love the attitude
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at this site. If you read their copy, this is like the best copywriting for trying to just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco barely sell a product. For this ad, there’s no coupon code, there’s no tracking URL, I was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco given no script, they just said just wing it. If you see that they sponsored Daring Fireball a lot, you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost barely tell that they are sponsoring. the way they want those posts to be written. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it almost seems like, wait, who’s the sponsor here? They like hide the link. They do like fun, kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quirky stuff like that because this is obviously like laid back people who know that they are selling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really cheap hardware and it’s like surprisingly cheap. So today, the one on there today is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it looks kind of like an Apple Watch shape, but it’s actually a speaker that goes on your wrist. It looks,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s like, who would wear this? And they even say like, who would wear this?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s $8 and that’s today. And it changes every day, it changes at midnight. Once the things sell out, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just gone, that’s it. There’s no like advance notice of like, hey, tomorrow we’re gonna have a Chromebook or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And sometimes they, you know, so they have all this like awesome, like cheap, crappy hardware that you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco believe it’s that cheap and it has anything in it that works. And they also sometimes have good stuff. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they had, last week they had a really impressive home theater receiver that does 3D sound,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which I didn’t even know this was a thing until I read their site. They had Apple Watch on there before. the Apple Watch Sport on there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few weeks back or a few months back. They have some really nice stuff as well. I love their copywriting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more than anything else. I love how they sell these products just barely. The attitude is hilarious.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s, you can like sign up to become a special member which is the very mediocre person, VMP, not VIP. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all sorts of little benefits you can get here. Check it out, it’s meh.com, M-E-H.com,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey meh. That’s pretty much spot on. Okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good. I feel like I need more facial hair to say it correctly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, you just need a lot of indifference. You need to be overflowing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with indifference.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is a hard ad read to do, because usually I’m supposed to sound enthusiastic about the sponsors. Not this time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love the way these people do business. So check it out, meh.com. Thanks for sponsoring.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Meh. There we go, that’s how I’m supposed to say it.
More on networking gear
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So why don’t we talk about this 8-port Power over Ethernet switch.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey edge of my seat. I’m so excited.
⏹️ ▶️ John Last week I was talking about me trying to find just a simple 8-port switch that has no fan, is silent, is reliable,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you know, just sits there. My other requirement, by the way, is that the power and the ports
⏹️ ▶️ John be on the same side. Just because of the way I have these various switches arranged, it’s kind of annoying to have the kind that are meant to be in
⏹️ ▶️ John a rack where the ports are on the front but the power comes in the back. Um, because that’s just not a good arrangement
⏹️ ▶️ John for things that are sitting on the edge of a table or something. Anyway, um, and Marco, uh, brought up
⏹️ ▶️ John and linked to his, uh, the HP thing that he likes. And actually, uh, I saved the bookmark for that. And next time
⏹️ ▶️ John I need one, I’m going to give that one to try. I still have a couple of extras at home waiting for them to dive. Once they die,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that one. Well, also if you just need one big one, I actually use, I forgot to mention, I actually use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a rack mount HP switch in my garage that has it. Cause when I, when we had our big renovations done, I, I had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the house wired for ethernet. So I have something like 12 or 12 or 15 ports
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that all go into this big HP. I think it’s an 1810 something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s probably something like that. It’s some kind of gigabit HP semi managed or managed switch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was a couple hundred dollars and that’s also been rock solid. I’ve never rebooted that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never had a port die, never had any problems with it whatsoever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, if I had it in like a garage or in the basement or someplace like that, I would just get a big rack mount one and just put it wherever the heck
⏹️ ▶️ John I wanted it and who would care as long as it was reliable but unfortunately due to the way I have the wires running I have
⏹️ ▶️ John lots of these little ones around I have an 8 port one on my TV I have an 8 port one in the computer
⏹️ ▶️ John room I have an 8 port one next to my NAS and stuff downstairs and so there’s a bunch of these little
⏹️ ▶️ John ones many of which are in spaces where people have to be so they have to be quiet so the HP one it’s fanless if
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s reliable you know I’ll give it a try that sounds good but I was surprised that Marco didn’t suggest Ubiquiti because we talked
⏹️ ▶️ John about Ubiquiti hardware last week and you were saying how much you loved they make an 8-port switch too. And
⏹️ ▶️ John Ars Technica actually reviewed it recently and it looks weird and enterprise-y and ubiquity
⏹️ ▶️ John and stuff like that but I’m like hey well if it’s solid and reliable is exactly what you’re looking for right this is a fanless one their 8-port one doesn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John any fans in it. It has a bunch of fancy features that I’m not interested in like the
⏹️ ▶️ John you know all these things they can do with traffic shaping and you know management
⏹️ ▶️ John and all sorts of other stuff. But of course, it’s $200. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I pretty much noped out of that once I saw the price. Not that I’m completely unwilling
⏹️ ▶️ John to pay a lot of, you know, most of the time it’s like, all right, well, if this is a good one and it’s reliable, I’ll pay money for it. But
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just so much more than like the 50 bucks I’m used to paying. And it’s like, well, if you keep buying $50 switches,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re gonna get a crappy one and they’re gonna make noise and go dead or whatever. But the thing is, I
⏹️ ▶️ John had these D-Link switches that were attractive and reliable for a really long
⏹️ ▶️ John time, like six years, seven years, no, it’s gotta be longer than that. It’s at least eight years.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s how old my Mac is, and I think I got them before that. I just want that again. You know, maybe I just got lucky, and I found,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, it was, I think I bought them for, like, $35, like, eight years ago. I just want that again. Eight years for $35 is
⏹️ ▶️ John much better than, you know, how long would a $200 thing need to last? So, anyway, I think I am
⏹️ ▶️ John not in the market for these YubiKuti switches, but who knows? Maybe I’ll get burned by enough $30 boxes I will regret
⏹️ ▶️ John not buying this fancy managed eight port switch from the fancy Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And also, you know, a little more follow up on ubiquity before we leave. So we stopped getting email about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apparently, ubiquity also sells IP cameras. And I did look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very briefly into those, but Amazon didn’t stock a lot of them. It looks like they’re transitioning their model line into a new model that’s like out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of stock everywhere right now. So I kind of just missed it. So that’s why I didn’t look into that. They’re also a little more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco money. Also, a few people wrote in to say that they also now have… I was talking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco last week about how there’s this annoying Java 8 wireless access point based
⏹️ ▶️ Marco controller software that you need if you have certain advanced features enabled, which I don’t. You also need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it for initial setup of any of their wireless access points. It turns
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out that they also sell this little kind of like one of those like Intel USB… it looks like a USB stick,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s actually like a whole mini computer in there. You know what I’m talking about? The Nux, is that? Whatever those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are. They sell something that looks just like that and it runs their software in this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco little like mini computer thing. So you don’t need to run it on one of your real computers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you don’t want to. But those things are also sold out everywhere. But when they’re in stock, they’re supposed to only be like 70 or 80 bucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you can pay 70 or 80 bucks to avoid installing Java somewhere, which I would probably do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey name of that product? Do you remember?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco idea. It doesn’t matter because it’s out of stock everywhere. It’s it’s ubiquity is like it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some kind of like cloud controller or something like that Interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ John right, ubiquity makes routers and Wi-Fi access points and IP cameras and switches.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They also make long range Wi-Fi Antennas, so like if you if you want to like beam Wi-Fi
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from one building to a whole different building that might be far away They make a whole bunch of stuff to do that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that also costs suspiciously little but everyone says works very well
⏹️ ▶️ John well. It’s like this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco company is everywhere. Yeah, well I think they, you know, it turns out there’s a pretty big business
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in taking something that’s controlled by a very small number of very high margin
⏹️ ▶️ Marco companies and doing the same thing for a lot less money.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m glad Casey got my joke.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m here for you. Thank you. Thank you.
TextExpander adjustments
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so right after we recorded the last episode, Smile
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Software ended up changing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some of the stuff about the new pricing for TextExpander.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What it basically amounted to was, well, most of the things are the same. We’re going to give you a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey little bit of a discount if you’re already a customer, and we’ll keep the old thing around for some undetermined amount of time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is that a relatively fair summary?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I think the most important thing is that they did something because that was what we were talking about last week.
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, let’s see what they did. Let’s think maybe they meant this. Maybe they meant that blah, blah, blah. But it’s like, all right, well, we
⏹️ ▶️ John see what their their announcement of TechSpanter 6 is doing to the market. Now we wait
⏹️ ▶️ John to see, is this what they wanted to do? Because a lot of the discussion last show was like, well, this is what they did.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it doesn’t seem crazy to expect to have these results come out of it. Surely they must have
⏹️ ▶️ John thought of this. But on the other hand, maybe they’ve made a huge mistake and we’ll find out if
⏹️ ▶️ John they do anything about it like, Oh, no, we hear your feedback. We’re gonna and that’s exactly what I did. It was faster
⏹️ ▶️ John than I ever thought they would. So it’s so clear that whatever it is they thought they were doing. They
⏹️ ▶️ John did not expect the reaction they got because there was was like two days after the announcement one day it was
⏹️ ▶️ John very quickly afterwards they have this post that says no, no, no, no. All right, we heard your feedback, blah, blah, blah. And
⏹️ ▶️ John now we come to the announcement. Did they hear people’s feedback? Yeah, is what they’ve done
⏹️ ▶️ John actually addressing people’s concerns? And I’ll let Marco say because I know he has a pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John strong opinion that they’re not addressing the concerns really.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it’s, you know, I mean, honestly, I don’t care that strongly about this topic in general, because as I said,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not really a tech spender user. And also, I am a developer who sells something that’s subscription priced.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I do sympathize with their economic needs here. However,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what they announced is basically that they moved this product that was a traditionally sold…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You pay $40 or something for this product. Every time you do a major upgrade,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you might get an upgrade, discount, or whatever. But for the most part, you pay a decent amount up front, and then you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use it as long as you want. And then when we make new ones every couple of years or every year, you can choose to upgrade or not.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they moved it from that model to it’s now a web service with a required $5
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a month subscription with these client apps that are now free. And so the people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who used it were very angry for basically two main reasons. Number one, as we discussed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco last episode, a lot of people just don’t like subscription pricing, especially for things that they don’t expect it on or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they don’t see the value in. Whether or not it’s there, you know, it’s what people expect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for pricing models. Whether, you know, like, I don’t want to pay per month for, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a USB hub. It’s just a USB hub. It does its job, right? Why should I need to pay per month for that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Some people view software that way, even though it kind of isn’t in practice. But anyway, so there was that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco complaint. And if you have that complaint, the new announcement, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically, we’re dropping the price on the subscription for people who had the old version, and and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re going to keep the old version updated for an unspecified amount of time. And so,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you had the objection that this thing should not be subscription priced, period,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this will not affect you at all, you will still be upset about this. If you had the opinion that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, I’m upset about this not because it’s subscription priced, but because I will end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up paying a lot more than I did before, then this will probably make you happy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because now it has removed I think most or all of that complaint. I haven’t done all the numbers but it’s something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, I think you’ll end up paying roughly the same that you were paying before if you upgraded every few years. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it will address some of the complaints and the ones that were primarily about just like total price over time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it will not address the people who are really upset that they are moving to this model
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and also they also have these other problem where they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco removed their sync features because one of the ways they’re justifying the new subscription service
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is you can now sync through their web service. In fact, you have to sync through their web service. Before,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco TestExpander, which works by having full keyboard access so it can read every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keystroke it has to read every keystroke you’re typing. So it is functionally a key logger.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And before it didn’t need internet access because before it supported sync through lots of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different means. Basically, it would store its data in a file somewhere, and you could sync that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco file through many different means. I think Dropbox was probably the most common one people used, from people who I know who used
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. So before, this keylogger effectively
⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn’t need network access. Now it does. And so there’s also the concerns about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the security around this. It’s kind of tricky to combine something that has full
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keylogging access with something that has a network connection to third-party servers that you don’t control. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then there’s a question around whether they are encrypting the snippets that you are storing there. And of course, the answer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m pretty sure the answer was is that they’re not, but they’re just relying on the other security measures around just like your login and stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to protect them. So there’s a whole bunch of concerns here that people had a whole bunch of objections that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people had to this new model. And they have addressed one of them, which is the total price
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over time. But that’s all they’ve addressed so far.
⏹️ ▶️ John What about TX5? Their change on that. They said, we will continue this from their press
⏹️ ▶️ John release. We will continue to sell and support TX5 for OS X and TX3 plus custom keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John for iOS for those who need it. And they don’t give any time scales. We will continue to
⏹️ ▶️ John sell and support. Continue for how long? Forever? A year? A month? A week? Five days? When
⏹️ ▶️ John if TX5 is not compatible for the next version of OS X, will it be updated?
⏹️ ▶️ John So many questions that again, I have to think they know these questions like they’ve been getting tons and tons of feedbacks.
⏹️ ▶️ John Huge number of those questions must have said, how long will Texas Finder 5 be supported? Will you update
⏹️ ▶️ John it? How long will you know how long will your old versions that didn’t do the subscription pricing? How long will they be supported?
⏹️ ▶️ John Will you continue to update them? And they just didn’t answer it at all. And you have to think it’s because
⏹️ ▶️ John they think people won’t like the answer not because Oh, it didn’t occur to us to address that question, because they must have got that question thousands
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, because the answer is, you know, if you think about it, just think about it from their point of view. They’re not trying to be like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco greedy or evil or anything. They can’t support an old version of this app forever. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to be, on an infinite time scale, there’s going to be an end to the support for this version
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of this app. So and you know, when are they going to do that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What they’ve said in this post, it really just, I think, honestly makes the problem a little bit worse, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it implies that this will be supported indefinitely. But you know, in practice, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to be an end. And I don’t think we or they know when that end will be yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I think they’re creating an unmaintainable expectation here.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, like, they’ve, if the naive person reading this, someone’s going to read, we will continue
⏹️ ▶️ John to sell and support tech spanner five and be like, Oh, I’m so satisfied. This press release made me feel so much better. Thank you, smile.
⏹️ ▶️ John We love you, right. But what they have in their head is, and I’ll continue to use tech spanner five forever.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco eventually, Texas,
⏹️ ▶️ John Texas matter five will not work. And they’re going to be so angry, then because they’re gonna be like, but you’ve put out this press
⏹️ ▶️ John release that said you will continue to sell and support text matter five. And that’s going to be like, well, we continue to support text matter
⏹️ ▶️ John five. But unfortunately, text matter five is a product that is only compatible with versions x, y and z and blah, blah, blah, blah, like, but you
⏹️ ▶️ John said, and like, people aren’t reading like lawyers, they’re not reading for the nuance, they’re not. And they don’t know, like, why
⏹️ ▶️ John should you expect the customer to understand what is involved in maintaining
⏹️ ▶️ John an application across multiple releases of various OS like there is some especially for like a system or utility
⏹️ ▶️ John like Texas banter, whether it’s on iOS, or an OS 10, there’s always going to be stuff you have to do to maintain it is not as
⏹️ ▶️ John simple as just a standalone application that you just run it and then it quits. Even that needs to be maintained. So I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know if they’re setting themselves up for failure. But like, if I think about how much do I think they’re going to support Texas banner five?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, they don’t want to support two different versions of their product, like who would want like the whole point
⏹️ ▶️ John of the they want to have sustainable development is open to subscription pricing. pricing. You can’t say, okay, now
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re going to have two teams, one that’s just maintaining the old versions and one’s maintaining the new version. Nobody wants to do that. So
⏹️ ▶️ John my gut reaction as someone who’s seen a lot of software is that Texas Banner five and Texas
⏹️ ▶️ John Banner three for iOS, they’ll probably work with this version of OS 10. And the next this version
⏹️ ▶️ John of iOS and the next version probably but when they break, I don’t think smile will invest too much in fixing them because they’ll be like, Look,
⏹️ ▶️ John you had your time. Now it’s it’s time to move on to the other one, to whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John six or seven or whatever they’re up to now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, and in Smile’s defense, this is why I don’t wanna gang up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on them or attribute malice to them, but there are these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problems with every way you choose to take money. If they continue doing the old way of,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here’s a paid app, you buy it once, and then in a couple years, you might buy an upgrade, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco method also has to cut off support for old versions eventually, And when that happens, that also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco angers people. And so no matter what you do, no matter where you choose to take money,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it will anger somebody. And a lot of somebodies, if you have a good customer base, if you have a good size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco customer base, it’s gonna anger a lot of people regardless of what you do. If you don’t charge for anything, that’ll anger
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people who are afraid that you’re gonna sell their data. If you put ads in, that’ll anger people who don’t like ads
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or don’t like what they’re doing. No matter what you do, you’re gonna anger people. I don’t envy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the position that Smiles in here because what they’re clearly saying, if not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco directly, then implying, what they’re clearly saying is, we need to get more money from TextExpander.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, whatever, this isn’t working for us, we need more revenue from it somehow. And the way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re gonna do that is gonna have the short-term pain for somebody. And it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seems like they’re trying to address people’s concerns, but ultimately they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not able to, they can’t, because they have to make money somewhere. So like, there’s always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna be people who are mad about this. And they’re gonna have to choose to make some of them mad. I think the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only two good options here are either that they continue doing the subscription
⏹️ ▶️ Marco model, which honestly, I don’t think is a good idea. It seems deeply flawed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the kind of product it is and the kind of audience that it had, as far as I know. But again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not them, I don’t know who their customers are, so I could be wrong. So that’s one option, is to just go whole hog
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the subscriptions the way they were before, and just be honest like look you know support for five will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco end after next OSN version or something like that you know you set a date or set a version where it will just say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all right it’ll stop after this and then you’re on your own and you got to move to our service now or not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or completely bring back the old model of licensing what you know whether they continue in the subscription
⏹️ ▶️ Marco model also or not I don’t know but you know the the alternative here is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you bring back the old model where okay now you know tech expander six is a regular software
⏹️ ▶️ Marco release that you can buy for $40 or whatever, and you can own it with no monthly fees after
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that until you decide to stop using it or until it breaks with some distant future iOS 10 version.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t see another option here. What they’re doing now is trying to bridge the benefits
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of both. They’re trying to please people who want both without giving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up their subscription idea. Because this is obviously… They’ve obviously invested a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into setting this up, migrating their product over to this kind of system. Somebody’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using it, so if they kill the subscription service now, they’re gonna anger the people who are using it and who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do like it. So like this is not an enviable position to be in. And I don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make light of this because, you know, as I said, like this is all hard stuff. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the current software landscape, it is incredibly difficult to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make a healthy profit selling software today. It’s just hard. And they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a staff, they have to support. And you can argue, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, maybe software should be free, or maybe there’s a lot of competition, or maybe they should lower their costs or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever, but none of those things are easy things to address or easy things to actually follow through on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and often have uncomfortable side effects. So this is not… The solution
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might just be… It’s kind of like when the minimum wage goes up… I’m sorry
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for going political here. Oh, God.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Here we go. When
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the minimum wage goes up, one of the problems that economists cite when that happens is it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically prices out a whole bunch of jobs from being doable. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now, if the minimum I have to pay a legal full-time employee is X, then any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco job that costs less than X, I just can’t pay somebody to do that, really.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or any job that’s only worth something below X. That kind of problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happens now with software, which is like a lot of software that could be created and that could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have value to people just is not going to do well enough in the market or people won’t pay enough
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for it for it to be sustained. So a lot of that software just won’t get created
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or will get created and then get abandoned. So there’s all sorts of like, you know, economic, uncomfortable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco truths about this. However, however you think about software pricing, however you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think things should be priced or whatever you’re willing to pay for them. It’s a very tricky
⏹️ ▶️ Marco area and I don’t envy Smile at all for the position they’re in right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I certainly don’t either.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, like I kind of think of like Adobe when they went through a similar transition of like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I think Adobe was making plenty of money, but they said, you know what, we think it would be better for us financially
⏹️ ▶️ John if you could pay for our applications on a subscription basis rather than us selling you a box with software in it
⏹️ ▶️ John or selling you a download or whatever. the most part they made a transition to that and Microsoft is going through the same thing now
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to sell Office 365 subscriptions and everything like that. Smile
⏹️ ▶️ John obviously is much smaller than Adobe or Microsoft look like it was trying to make a similar transition.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s almost it’s almost like I feel like ripping off the bandaid and just plowing bravely forward.
⏹️ ▶️ John Certainly from the outside, that would be a cleaner situation. But from the inside, it may be like no, that wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John even an option. Like we would have died, the product would not be viable. We tried it. It’s not working.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’re not selling enough subscriptions. We have to immediately do an about-face and so I guess you know better now than
⏹️ ▶️ John six months from now or whatever, but Anyway, this is surely not the way they hope this transition
⏹️ ▶️ John would go and I think their attempt to To fix
⏹️ ▶️ John it with the discount and the vague promise of support for
⏹️ ▶️ John the old versions, I don’t know if it makes it worse, but boy,
⏹️ ▶️ John like I I don’t know if it gives them a higher chance of success either. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I just feel like they’re signing that all they’ve done is deferred the anger to a later period.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Um, the discount I think, I think is,
⏹️ ▶️ John is probably fine because that’s, I think a discount is actually like maybe the mistake they just made was making the subscription
⏹️ ▶️ John price too high that they could, that could have been something they decided to, or we’re getting less angry feedback. We’re not selling enough subscriptions.
⏹️ ▶️ John Again, I’m speculating here. Um, maybe the price is just too high. Like if you told people they could use
⏹️ ▶️ John tech expander, you get it for free and you have to pay a penny a month, everyone’s fine with that. Suddenly it’s not suddenly it’s not some sort of philosophical
⏹️ ▶️ John objection to subscription pricing. I don’t want to pay a penny a month. It’s too much. No, everybody’s fine with that. It’s below
⏹️ ▶️ John their level of concern, right? But $5 a month or whatever it is, was above people’s, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John so the 50% discount for life. If that brings it down below people’s threshold,
⏹️ ▶️ John then then we’ll see like Margo said, Do they really object philosophically to subscriptions period? Or is
⏹️ ▶️ John it merely that price is too high. The promise for TextExpander is like…
⏹️ ▶️ John and also we’re not even really sure the subscription thing is a good idea so you can have this thing for some undefined
⏹️ ▶️ John period of time but probably it will go away but you probably don’t know that and it just makes you depressed but
⏹️ ▶️ John you know anyway we’ll see how it works out for them like Margo said it’s difficult but the final part is you can’t somehow
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t get your way out of a press release without something terrible appearing
⏹️ ▶️ John and I feel like it’s I don’t I’m not a PR person I I don’t know how to do a PR person’s job.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not going to say that I could have written this better. But
⏹️ ▶️ John as someone who reads a lot of press releases, reading this does not make me feel better about the company. And I imagine that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John what press releases are supposed to do. The last part of it was, this is supposed to be like person to person, like
⏹️ ▶️ John have empathy for us, so on and so forth. This was a big change. There were a number of things we could have done better. All right, this sounds
⏹️ ▶️ John like the start of a paragraph where they’re saying basically like acknowledging, OK, our bad. You are angry
⏹️ ▶️ John at us. And we have to, at this point, acknowledge that you are angry at us with reasons. There are things that
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t turn out the way we wanted them to. You know, we’re sorry, you’re mad, we acknowledge
⏹️ ▶️ John your anger, like that, right? Seems like it’s going fine so far. We genuinely want to bring you the best text expander experience
⏹️ ▶️ John we can. Unfortunately, not all of our actions had the intended effects. Still good so far. For example,
⏹️ ▶️ John comma, we staggered our customer emails over three days to ensure a smooth server capacity so that everyone would
⏹️ ▶️ John have a good initial experience with the service. The server held up, but many customers learned of the new text expander from
⏹️ ▶️ John news sites, Twitter or Twitter rather than from smile. That is not an example
⏹️ ▶️ John of the of the bad things that people are yelling at you about, like because they found out the news from
⏹️ ▶️ John a site other than you as if somehow if they found out from you they would have choked it down and it would have been more palatable.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re angry about what happened. Finding out what happened from news sites rather than from you. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a component of that maybe you’re like, why do I got to hear this on Twitter and set it from you directly smile. But subsequently,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re going to pick the thing that people are angry about, that’s not it. This whole press release was addressing their issues, none of which
⏹️ ▶️ John were, I found out about this from Twitter instead of Smile. Don’t end your press release like that. It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, what is your greatest weakness? Oh, I’m a little bit, I’m a hard worker sometimes. Or I’m too honest.
⏹️ ▶️ John They were so close, they were right there. But for example, and the example they gave is not what people are angry.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not even in like the top three that people are angry about. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco close. Yeah, I have a feeling the story is not over.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we’ve heard you and actually it’s going to be 25% of the original price for
⏹️ ▶️ John life and Texas Spanner 5 will be supported indefinitely and we’re canceling Texas Spanner 6 but wait! We heard you Texas
⏹️ ▶️ John Spanner 6 users, you want to keep… Alright, I give them one. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, they’re allowed to… you try something, doesn’t work, you react fast, good.
⏹️ ▶️ John If they come back again with another press release, then we’re just going to have to have a dedicated Texas Spanner podcast I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey god. All right, well we have one more quick piece of follow-up and then we can move
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on to some other stuff. These weren’t the topics? They were.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John We’re in that gray area.
⏹️ ▶️ John not gray area. Texas Matters follow-up. So is Apple.
Ad bleeps and boops
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. John, you finally got your wish. You got your bleeps and bloops. And how’s that going?
⏹️ ▶️ John Not my wish. I wanted a bleeps and bloops theme song that we had in one episode way back when.
⏹️ ▶️ John But Marco took it upon itself to add bleeps and bloops before and after the ads.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think because he listens to too much Hello Internet or some other reason. Anyway, we’ve gotten a lot of feedback
⏹️ ▶️ John about that. And I thought Marco should explain what he’s doing and why.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gotten like three people who don’t like it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s more than that, but man, the people who don’t like it…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean I can say the sky is blue and people and more people will tell me I’m an idiot and wrong than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what we’ve heard about this. Well that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John also true. Well people don’t like change so that’s obvious right but what I’m more interested in is why did you add them? Not why do
⏹️ ▶️ John people not like them but why did you add them?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sure, so first of all you can quibble over the choice of sounds. I chose old Mac sounds.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wanted to do the Windows XP USB device plugged in and unplugged
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sounds but I knew John would not allow that that’s correct John
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t even know that sound but no that would be terrible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway so that’s what I wanted to do and I knew John would would object so I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chose old Mac sounds instead that kind of just the actual origins of them are kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of funny one of them’s a crash and of them to reboot of some old Macs. I didn’t pick based on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what computers they belong to specifically in the old Apple lineup. I just picked based on which ones I thought sounded right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for this purpose. I was thinking about using something like this for a while because it allows me a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more flexibility in editing of when I start the ad and when I end the ad. It also saves
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time in the episode because it removes all the transition
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lead-in from like Casey saying, all right before we cover this, Marco, why don’t you tell me something that’s awesome?”
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, something like that. Like, it removes the need for a lot of that. So it does save time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think. And it also just gives me the flexibility to place the ads wherever I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want, really. Like, wherever there’s a natural break in conversation, even if we didn’t say at that point in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco show, all right, let’s do a sponsor break now. So it allows flexibility in editing, basically, and it makes everything shorter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It also helps differentiate when the ad has begun and when the ad has ended. It forces you to figure that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John which is not always easy. Yes. forces
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it to be like a firmly defined boundary, which I think is better editorially, even though I think we were pretty good about that already. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this does help just a little bit. Like last week, you talked, John, about Blue Apron after
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had finished doing my script. And so if I wanted to integrate that into the ad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco read, I had to move it in. And I did. And so I actually rearranged the ending of the ad to move that into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the ad read, like, explicitly. And then once the sound played, the ad was over. So I think that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco helped also. And And so that’s why I did it. And the reason I started two weeks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ago is because all three live reads, I did that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recording, I hated them all. And so I recorded them all the next morning. And when I do a recording
⏹️ ▶️ Marco after the fact, which I occasionally do if I mess up a read too badly or if I just don’t like the way it turned out, I will of course always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sound slightly different from the way I sounded the night before. Just because people’s voices change throughout the day.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And throughout each day, you might have different voice state than yesterday by just how tired you are, whether you’re sick,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether there’s allergies, whatever. So I didn’t like all three of the ads I did two weeks ago. I replaced them all the morning after
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and decided this would be a good time to use these sounds because it would help people not notice that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I sounded different in the ads. And as far as I know, these did originate, like the idea
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of ad bumper sounds, I first heard it on Hello Internet. I don’t know if they invented
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, but that is certainly where I first
⏹️ ▶️ John heard it. They did not invent it just like Underscore didn’t invent Exploding Dinosaurs, yes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Didn’t I heard it first on Core Intuition, I thought.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s probably from the invention of radio. Yeah, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey within podcasts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, radio, yeah, everyone does it a little bit differently, but the idea of just like kind of like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quick opening and closing sound effect, I first heard that on Hello Internet, so they get full credit because they are awesome and they are still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my favorite podcast. I don’t know, I’m just going to assume they stole something from us at some point and we’ll call it even. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, that’s about it.
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Ad bleeps and boops, cont’d.
⏹️ ▶️ John Unlike Smile, we need to actually wrap up addressing the various complaints
⏹️ ▶️ John of the Bleeps and Bloops. So, collecting the Bleeps and Bloops complaints, one
⏹️ ▶️ John category of complaint is, I don’t like change. That’s like the meta category, which
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t dismiss out of hand, because who wants their thing to, you know, you kind of get used to a certain structure, you
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t like change, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Right, well listen to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco episode one and tell me you don’t like change.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so we’ll put that aside for now. But it is a thing people said. The other
⏹️ ▶️ John one, surprising number of people listen to the podcast,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know how we should take this, while drifting off to sleep or to help them, or just help them get to sleep. Like, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John great. If like, I’m happy to make a product that you enjoy for whatever purpose, you know, you wanna
⏹️ ▶️ John use it for. If that’s how you wanna use it, that’s fine. But apparently the bleeps and bloops are harshing their mellow
⏹️ ▶️ John and jangling them out of the slumber that they were drifting into. So perhaps toning down the volume or
⏹️ ▶️ John picking different sounds could help out there with those people. But again, a surprising number of people said that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that seems to be, I think that’s the only complaint I would consider valid that we’ve received
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so far. And again, like you, I’m not sure how I feel about people complaining that they’re having a hard time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco falling asleep through our podcast, but that is a semi-valid
⏹️ ▶️ John If that’s how they’re using the podcast, then we’re helping make their life better by helping them drift off to sleep.
⏹️ ▶️ John More power to them, so maybe the volume down.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Can you imagine people who hear us as the last thing they hear before they go to sleep? Like what, is that mentally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco healthy? Like that’s fine,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll give them awesome dreams about USB hubs. USB hubs and new Mac Pros.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh God, those are nightmares my friend, not dreams.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, my complaint is I don’t like the sounds. Like I know you went through all the lists of sounds, but because you have
⏹️ ▶️ John no sort of background of what those sounds are, where they came from, it is weird to hear the sounds that you picked
⏹️ ▶️ John in there. So I feel like better sounds could be fine. I like that they’re Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John sounds, but I don’t like that one of them’s a crash sound of all the star beeps you pick you pick that one
⏹️ ▶️ John not not my favorites um so i think there’s an area where we could potentially improve to try
⏹️ ▶️ John to make because you know all the reasons you cited for the sounds sound good to me like i think they’re all good and
⏹️ ▶️ John um we just need to uh tamp down the negatives i feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sure so you know if if the issue is just like the volume of the sounds i thought i had a good balance i did reduce the volume
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on them from like their stock configuration like from like the raw sound um just because it didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco match the levels really well otherwise but if i have to reduce them further that’s fine as for the choice of sounds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s tricky when you’re choosing sound effects for a pie i know this is really inside baseball i’m sorry for everybody who doesn’t care you can just skip over this chapter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco um when you’re when you’re choosing sound effects to go in a podcast i learned this in the early days of neutral because i would use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to to delineate the ads in neutral i would use oh wait a minute that was before hello internet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say they stole everything from us all right so i i we used the bmw
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uh chime from the from like the the e whatever series whatever that yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever the pleasant little chime is when you like leave your door open or start the car or whatever i recorded one of those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from my three series and i used we use that as our ad bumpers and we got complaints from people this is also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why like when i when i bleep the sound effects or when i bleep a swear word
⏹️ ▶️ Marco i don’t use the horn honking sound there was a couple early episodes of neutral where i would use all sorts of car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sounds and i’ve settled on just using a handbrake or a trunk slamming sound because when you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a car and you hear that sound effect You don’t it kind of throws you off. You don’t know whether like is that a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco real horn honking outside like that’s it kind of scares you or or jostles you out of out of what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re supposed to paying attention to
⏹️ ▶️ John is that the sound of my engine or Is that no it’s mp3 never mind nice
⏹️ ▶️ John never get all did you know other car makers doing that now by the way not just BMW I think I read I forget what it was maybe it’s Volkswagen or some
⏹️ ▶️ John other but like just non luxury non fancy brands are doing it Anyway, it’s terrible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco BMW leads the way and lots of things good and bad anyway So so I learned like you got to be careful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not to basically not to use like current sounds So when I chose these sounds I chose
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them specifically So that they wouldn’t sound like the more recent Mac sound
⏹️ ▶️ Marco effects So like I didn’t use the current Mac startup chime, which has actually been in use for quite some time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t use that because it was I Didn’t want people to think that like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the computer behind them was rebooting and they’re like, oh crap did a kernel panic Like, you know, I don’t want I don’t want to like free people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out out, so I had to pick sounds that were not recent. And it would be funny to troll the Windows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco XP users with the USB sounds, and they are also quieter and simpler and they wouldn’t annoy you because they would match each
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not that non-matching, it’s just that I know those sounds from history and life and they, you know, I think everything you
⏹️ ▶️ John said is a good idea not to use modern sounds, don’t use sounds that could be confused with car sounds, like all good, but
⏹️ ▶️ John just these particular ones, they just don’t work for me. Like on Reconcilable Differences,
⏹️ ▶️ John Merlin has a little guitar jangle it as the beginning and end and
⏹️ ▶️ John obviously that’s probably not appropriate for us but on that show it works especially because it fits in with the sort of intro theme
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. Anyway I think we can do better here and here’s the other angle that no one brought up for the people
⏹️ ▶️ John who like don’t like change and stuff. Having things like this
⏹️ ▶️ John no matter what sounds we end up landing on and what volume they’re at or whatever. Having regular
⏹️ ▶️ John features of the show like the song in the middle and the little ringy
⏹️ ▶️ John things and the car door opening and stuff like that, that stuff is incredibly addicting.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like Pavlov with ringing the bell and making the dog salivate, like this is like a literal bell. So for all
⏹️ ▶️ John the people who it’s weird for you because we’re changing it, totally understand that. But for the people who are just starting to listen to the show now
⏹️ ▶️ John or for people a year from now after we’ve been doing this for a while, that will become such an integral part of the show that if we ever
⏹️ ▶️ John took it away, people would flip out because humans are just silly little monkeys. And
⏹️ ▶️ John know, so what I’m saying is hang in there. Eventually, you will come to love the bells, maybe not these particular
⏹️ ▶️ John chimes. So we will get we feel like we will get the kinks work out and version two and three of these sounds or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Eventually you won’t be able to live without them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And I mean, this is that’s one of the reasons we have our theme song. So Jonathan Mann, the author of our theme song,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he we did the first few episodes without a theme song. I forget how many we did before him, but it was a few.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And one time we complained that we didn’t know how to end the show and everything, so he wrote this theme song. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the same time, I had actually asked Merlin Mann like a week or so earlier if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he could write us a theme song because all those musical things, I think that pretty sure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s just him playing guitar or playing on GarageBand or something. Like he is a musician. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, Back to Work, that theme song was like his high school band or whatever. High school band, I hope he’s not listening.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Was it after high school? I don’t know. Anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re a serious band, you know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bought their album. Anyway. It’s Bacon
⏹️ ▶️ John Ray, right? Yeah, I think that one is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. So I actually asked Merlin, before Jonathan wrote what is now our theme
⏹️ ▶️ Marco song, I asked Merlin to write something for us. And then when Jonathan wrote his theme song,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we were like, this is so good. Like, it was getting stuck in all of our heads all day. And we were like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think we have to just use this. It’s too good. We have to use this. It’s so infectious it gets in all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of our heads so much we don’t have a choice we had so I went to Merlin like look I’m sorry like have you if you start
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything please stop and fortunately he hadn’t gotten to it yet so it wasn’t like a huge deal at least I don’t think Merlin
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hates me forever for that because that was like three years ago and I think we’re still friends but yeah like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we we knew like when we when we heard the Jonathan Mann song we knew we had to do it by the way quick plug for Jonathan
⏹️ ▶️ Marco man he is launching a new podcast called song o knots on the truth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the radio topia shows you know the truth It’s a big podcast from radio to be anyway, so look check out song
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or not by Jonathan man, which I think is launching shortly or might have launched by the time we are the show anyway quick plug
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for Jonathan because we like him a lot because he wrote a theme song so anyway that is why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we we do fun stuff like this because it gets in our heads and it becomes part of the personality of the show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I do I like John your statement of basically like I’ll just stop your one and you’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get you should eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco stop your whining
⏹️ ▶️ John is that you will not just get used to it. will come to crave it you will need it to be there will become a comforting
⏹️ ▶️ John regular as any sort of routine as any you know parent of a toddler knows regular you know having a routine this is the
⏹️ ▶️ John time we do this is it is comforting to have a routine to know that no matter what crazy stuff goes on during the show
⏹️ ▶️ John at a certain point there’s going to be these little jingles that demark the ads and there’s going to be a song
⏹️ ▶️ John and maybe there’s going to be a car sound like those regular things be those routines those traditions become
⏹️ ▶️ John comfort you will you will come to love them as long as we don’t pick terrible sounds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as long as we don’t charge you five bucks a month.
Remembering the original iMac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so you want to talk about a topic or do we just want to end here? We have one more sponsor to do if you want.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m kidding. We talked last week, see this is even a great topic. This is like halfway
⏹️ ▶️ Casey between follow-up and not. We talked last week about Apple’s 40th birthday and we went on a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey journey together through our finding the Mac and finding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple. And we didn’t talk much about the iMac or at least not enough for John. So John,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tell us about Apple turning 40 and the iMac.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we were running over in our 40th thing, so I kind of cut that out of where I would have talked about my stuff. But I think it
⏹️ ▶️ John is an important part to acknowledge. And maybe you guys can relate to it because maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John you have opinions on it or looking at it from afar. But so the iMac was 1998 and Steve Jobs
⏹️ ▶️ John had come back to Apple. And that people don’t remember. They usually think of the iPod
⏹️ ▶️ John as the important turnaround product. But the iMac was just as important, if not more important for
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple as a company, not particularly for the industry, because in the end, they’re like, like oh whatever it was just a computer people have made computers
⏹️ ▶️ John before the important thing that the iMac did for Apple is it seemed like
⏹️ ▶️ John from the outside that it gave the entire company like a little measure of pride
⏹️ ▶️ John back like that had made them believe oh yeah we can make cool things that people like that we’re proud of
⏹️ ▶️ John because there was you know especially with Apple being near death in 1997 and
⏹️ ▶️ John going through different CEOs in the years before that and running out of money and having layoffs
⏹️ ▶️ John and having products that people weren’t particularly happy with and not being able to feel the next generation of us and prepare
⏹️ ▶️ John for repeated tries and windows 95 coming and just stomping all over their face
⏹️ ▶️ John and Marco feeling bad for people having Max it was getting harder and
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco harder to be proud
⏹️ ▶️ John to be an employee of Apple and so Steve Jobs and his typical what would become
⏹️ ▶️ John his typical thing of having a secret group work on a secret project that no one knew about and having Johnny I’ve make this
⏹️ ▶️ John amazing design for it that nobody saw including the people who were working on it the rumor mill the macro
⏹️ ▶️ John real which was definitely still a thing back then I remember them thinking it was a set-top box because I think
⏹️ ▶️ John the people working on the hardware they didn’t get to see what case it would go in so to them it just looked like a little
⏹️ ▶️ John flat box and so the rumors that came out was like Apple’s making a television set-top box which by the way
⏹️ ▶️ John they did at one point and and do now but it’s not much of a set-top it’s more of a
⏹️ ▶️ John set-top coaster anyway the segregation of the teams working on this and the big dramatic reveal
⏹️ ▶️ John of we made a new computer all right so what Apple you made a new computer you know you made a new Mac so what there’s a million Macs
⏹️ ▶️ John and it is both minimizing and maximizing us to say that
⏹️ ▶️ John what was most important about it was the way the thing looked it looked weird for a computer it was teal
⏹️ ▶️ John the color of blue was the name of a beach that I’m not going to pronounce after a long flame war on the slack channel I do not
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco want to get involved
⏹️ ▶️ John in but it was a particular kind of blue and it was translucent
⏹️ ▶️ John and it was cute like like the original Mac and it was a super important product both for Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John because it made I feel like it made them proud of themselves again and set them on the road to greatness
⏹️ ▶️ John and also for the entire industry because with that product the fact that there was such a reaction to it when
⏹️ ▶️ John despite the fact that it was mostly just a run-of-the-mill Mac and yet they ditched legacy ports and did other
⏹️ ▶️ John important things for Apple like we’re setting that aside for now but it convinced the world essentially
⏹️ ▶️ John that the way computers look is a factor which sounds so stupid. It’s like saying, Oh, this was the first
⏹️ ▶️ John car that convinced the world that cars should look good. We just everyone accepts the cars have to look good. Everyone accepts their ugly
⏹️ ▶️ John cars and pretty cars. And so many people factor in how a car looks in their car buying decisions and cars cost 1000s
⏹️ ▶️ John and 1000s of dollars more than computers in most cases. And yet somehow we’re always okay with cars having
⏹️ ▶️ John that for our lifetime, right? It took Apple to say, these computers,
⏹️ ▶️ John you should care they look too, because who wants an ugly one. And for years, Apple had been making nice ones. But they were still
⏹️ ▶️ John somewhat constrained by the orthodoxy of the industry in terms of they were off white
⏹️ ▶️ John or black or gray like they weren’t grape color right you know there was there
⏹️ ▶️ John was still within the limits of the computer as defined by by Apple itself in the early days
⏹️ ▶️ John of you know the Apple 2 and everything and and all the other companies that made computers big and small
⏹️ ▶️ John they sort of defined a boring aesthetic and it took Apple to break
⏹️ ▶️ John out of that on the mass scale and say, we think this is cool. And you know what, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John customers will be tickled by the idea of a green computer and we’ll sell them to them and they will buy a green computer
⏹️ ▶️ John and they will love it because it’s green. And it’s just that,
⏹️ ▶️ John that doesn’t sound it sounds like such a stupid thing in the age where we sell everything based on colors and all
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, our phones come in different colors and all sorts of you know, in cases and everything like that. But back then,
⏹️ ▶️ John that was a very important revelation. So in the big timeline of Apple 40 years, you have to credit them along
⏹️ ▶️ John with the the bringing the GUI to the world
⏹️ ▶️ John to the mass market. You have to also credit them. And again, it’s not they weren’t the first one, the only one to ever do this, but they essentially
⏹️ ▶️ John brought the idea to the mass market that it is important how computers look, and people will enjoy
⏹️ ▶️ John our products more if they are if they like how they look, which again, sounds so stupid
⏹️ ▶️ John in retrospect, but was super important for the entire industry and led the way for everything that came after. is the reason you had
⏹️ ▶️ John translucent teal irons and can openers and stuff following the iMac because people have got
⏹️ ▶️ John the wrong idea of like oh we just need to make everything translucent and teal it’s like you’re taking the wrong nice i like that you’re enthusiastic
⏹️ ▶️ John good enthusiasm you may be taking the wrong idea from this or maybe you’re just trying to cash in on the iMac trend
⏹️ ▶️ John either way uh the whole industry of consumer electronics i feel like has circled out
⏹️ ▶️ John uh from rippled out from that iMac and that people are no longer afraid to do interesting
⏹️ ▶️ John things with their hardware, even if everything isn’t as exuberant as lifesavers. Like, obviously, they went to an extreme to make a point,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know. But today, the variety of shapes and textures
⏹️ ▶️ John and yes, even colors of electronics is much greater. Thanks, no small
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I remember, I mean, I was in college from 2000 to 2004. And, you know, it was, you know, it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a full, you know, full time college kind of things. We were in a dorm room and everybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else in the dorm had appliances that they had purchased for their dorm room
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that were you know designed in 99-2000 right after the iMac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco came out and made this big splash and so they were all as you mentioned the translucent plastic microwaves
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and phones and like old you know corded and wireless phones not like cell phones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just any kind of appliance you could buy that was relatively inexpensive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also the other computers I mean the the look of like compact
⏹️ ▶️ Marco towers at the time and oh god e-machines
⏹️ ▶️ John they were just snap they would just snap on a faceplate like I had the same beige box but like all right
⏹️ ▶️ John the one piece of this is plastic can we just mold that piece of plastic out of colored translucent plastic done it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John no it’s a beige box for the thing stuck on the front
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah I mean it was it was really it was like the very first time, I think, in a while
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the entire rest of the industry copied what Apple did at a remarkable pace
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and did so so poorly. As you know, they’re totally missing the point of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why this was good and what parts of it made it good. And everyone else just kind of copied like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco high level design brief.
⏹️ ▶️ John The service details, which is not like I mean, that’s something because it lets them not have to redesign everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John It lets them not have to have a design department like Apple does, right? And it lets them cash in slightly on
⏹️ ▶️ John people who have a vague notion that they saw a cool teal computer and they wander into Best Buy. But
⏹️ ▶️ John in the subsequent years, I think companies are way better now at copying not just Apple, but anyone and
⏹️ ▶️ John everybody. I’m continually impressed by these formerly very, you know, sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of boring and uninteresting and risk averse PC makers,
⏹️ ▶️ John all of which are obviously hiring their own design departments to make
⏹️ ▶️ John interesting computer designs. I mean, I like them, but they are way more interesting than they used to be. Like, the
⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft Surface is interesting with that weird hinge thing, that HP one that’s super slim with the little shiny
⏹️ ▶️ John chrome hinges and everything. There’s no way that the PC industry of the 90s, those companies,
⏹️ ▶️ John would even have a clue how to do that. So they’re not just taking their existing computers and
⏹️ ▶️ John tacking a bunch of faceplates onto them. Even when they were copying Apple by saying, we’re going to make uh
⏹️ ▶️ John silver aluminum laptops that look exactly like apple’s ones they still did a better job of that than they did of copying
⏹️ ▶️ John the the iMac at times the iMac they didn’t know their butt from their elbow they had no
⏹️ ▶️ John idea what they were doing they were just like put something teal on it are we done now i think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was literally just bolted on like like they had they already had the regular mid tower that they were shipping
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they just shoved this giant bulbous face plate on it that had this little translucent section you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could pop out and replace the color if you really wanted to like I wow it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was a really dark time for pcs
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah but at least they got they got the message the message was and it’s not like iMac was selling so much it’s not like the
⏹️ ▶️ John iMac was selling millions and millions and millions more than they were selling they were still selling more than apple especially in those days it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just that they saw the splash it made it’s like why don’t people care about our computer like they care about that are
⏹️ ▶️ John our computers boring do people want their computers to look nice like this strange awakening
⏹️ ▶️ John of again things that sound so stupid and obvious to us now But back then if you didn’t live
⏹️ ▶️ John through it It may seem crazy to think that so many of the most dominant computer makers in the world this
⏹️ ▶️ John this kind of design was not even on their radar and as far as they were concerned a Mac to CI was exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John the same as a PC XT case, which Just was not the case and Mac users
⏹️ ▶️ John could see it, but nobody else could until Apple made something teal and translucent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is a tangentially related but Marco talking about college and people with IMAX
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and not having IMAX and whatnot made me remember that. Marco and I are the same age, so we went to school
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the same time. And when I was at Virginia Tech, they had, and I believe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey still do, a very, very large off-campus computer lab called the Math Emporium.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it was specifically suited for math-related work, but it had at the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time, a gazillion Macs in it. And I remember two things vividly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about the Mac Emporium in terms of the hardware there. Number one, the hockey puck mouse is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the worst mouse that’s ever been created in the history of man. Number two, I vividly remember there being
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a G4 cubes all over it when I was there. Um, there were like hundreds of them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I remember going to this place and thinking, wow, that is a very peculiar design for a computer, but man, that’s kind of cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I remember also VNCing into my full
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tower desktop that I had in my dorm room and I thought I was the coolest kid in the world. Because a guy down the hall
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had shown me what VNC was. And the fact that I could log into my computer from somewhere else, it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mind-blowing. Oh, that was amazing
⏹️ ▶️ John back then. Oh, yeah. You didn’t have the X-Window system on your college campus? No. You
⏹️ ▶️ John could run programs on a different computer and have the result displayed on your computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John like it was a terminal for the X window system. We called it an X term.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I know what you’re saying. And actually, I think that the Math Emporium was largely running on some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sort of Citrix setup, which is a similar idea. But yeah, I just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey remember just a sea of G4 cubes.
⏹️ ▶️ John I wonder where the, I’d never seen a, like I’d seen people who had been suckered into buying a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of various kinds of computers, not suckered, but you know, like a computer that later turned out to not be a
⏹️ ▶️ John particular popular model sort of faded away. like one I remember is that Rose Hellman,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is a small college somewhere that a friend of mine went to, the next salesman visited Rose Hellman
⏹️ ▶️ John and convinced them that NeXT computers were the best thing since sliced bread. And honestly, they were the best thing
⏹️ ▶️ John since sliced bread. They sold NeXT computers to Rose Hellman. They were everywhere. And then NeXT was
⏹️ ▶️ John not so much into selling hardware pretty shortly after that, which must’ve felt bad if you were the one in charge of buying
⏹️ ▶️ John hardware for Rose Hellman. But on the other hand, if you went to Rose Hellman during that time, everybody got to use like NeXT Cubes and NeXT
⏹️ ▶️ John Labs, which is like living in the future really, because even though it was kind of boring and gray and a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John the displays were grayscale instead of full color, Next Step was
⏹️ ▶️ John still pretty amazing. That hardware looked awesome. I got a bunch of it in my attic.
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Trendy to hate the Apple Watch?
⏹️ ▶️ John Think we found bumper sounds But don’t we just have all of us make
⏹️ ▶️ John sounds with their mouth and then parka was put them in it will solve the problem Of like this is too jarring because I just
⏹️ ▶️ John want to hear your voices. This will be our voices It won’t be a familiar sound in a car
⏹️ ▶️ John or of a modern computer And it’s royalty-free, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know. I might run a royalty on mine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John One of us might change our
⏹️ ▶️ John mind now. Yeah now that you’re a recording artist artist, the vocal stylings of Marco Armin.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, does that change the licensing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like how, you know, how we can use clips? Do I have to go through ASCAP or whatever?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s right. So, a few days ago, as we record, actually just a couple days ago, I wrote a post coming to the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey defense of the Apple Watch. The post was entitled Poor Apple Watch. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just feel like lately it’s been very trendy to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey poop all over the Apple Watch. Oh, it’s a piece of crap. It’s so slow. that the software doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do anything useful. I, it’s not cool. Look at me. I’m going to get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey either a mechanical watch or not use a watch at all. And that’s fine. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if that’s fine for you or for Merlin or for Marco, that’s fine. They do what you got to do. But I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feel like nobody was coming to the defense of the Apple watch. And so I thought, you know what?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will come to the defense of the Apple watch. And I just wrote a post saying that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know what? I like my watch. And it is fat and it is slow and the apps
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are pretty much entirely useless. But for me, that’s okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I still like having the smart features of my smartwatch on my wrist.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think a lot of this may come from the fact that, um, I leave the house to go to work
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’m not saying that to be snarky or smug. Um, I’m saying that genuinely that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have appointments and meetings and things that happen throughout my day,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey obligations throughout my day, that have to happen at certain times. And so having my next
⏹️ ▶️ Casey calendar appointment on my watch face is very convenient. Additionally,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t get to leave the building at work and occasionally the house
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if Declan’s awake. I don’t get to leave where I am
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whenever I want, just on a lark. And so having the temperature on my watch face is really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nice. And on top of that, I like having the activity rings, particularly the stand ring, because as we all know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I happen to be a blue ring stud. So yes, there’s a lot to dislike about the Apple Watch, full stop.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I completely agree. The apps are useless. I never use them. I really never use glances for the most part.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wish we had custom watch faces. I would love to be able to do more with complications,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey either have more of them on the screen or maybe have them be more intelligent somehow. I’m not even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sure how but all in all I still really like my Apple watch and I’m looking around
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’m starting to feel like I’m the only one John are you wearing yours?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I I thought we talked about this a while ago But yeah I’ve bailed on using it mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John because I found myself going through entire days without Having any
⏹️ ▶️ John meaningful interaction with it including checking it for the time Which is not a habit I had and I’m not a watch
⏹️ ▶️ John where and it annoys me to have a thing on my wrist So I have I have built in negatives in that anything you put on my
⏹️ ▶️ John wrist has to overcome those my aversion to ever having Anything on my wrist ever and I don’t have any habits built in
⏹️ ▶️ John for watches So I needed a positive to offset that and when the positives evaporated I stopped wearing it
⏹️ ▶️ John And the positives were the positives were like, you know, I like the notifications I like the texts and I like the activity
⏹️ ▶️ John tracking but that wasn’t enough to overcome my desire to not have something on my wrist although now that I’m about
⏹️ ▶️ John to You know travel I’m going to bring my watch with me and probably wear it on a vacation because I’m walking around a different
⏹️ ▶️ John city it is convenient to be able to, for example, set a destination on your phone and then put your phone in your pocket
⏹️ ▶️ John and not have to take it out again and just walk there and have your wrist tell you which way to go. Same thing for driving. I kind of like that,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I don’t need it when I’m going to and from work every day. You know, there’s no directions I need to have, but if you’re in an unfamiliar
⏹️ ▶️ John place driving around, it’s nice to have that. So I still think it has value.
⏹️ ▶️ John I still like it. I still like how it looks. I still don’t like wearing a watch. So
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, that’s pretty much where it is. It spends most of It’s time on my dresser
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you hate having something on your wrist because of your shag carpet arm hair or just because you hate having
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something on your wrist?
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s mostly because of RSI actually like it’s the same reason I stopped wearing my wedding ring is that I’m very
⏹️ ▶️ John sensitive to Have anything in that area as I’m sitting there and typing all day of just everything about it sense of I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John want any pressure On it. I want anything grabbing it I don’t anything rubbing against it even like the wrong kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ John sleeve cuffs when I wear long sleeves can bother me. So So yeah, and that
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t have any ingrained habits of like, I’m always looking at my wrists. I just, again, I think we discussed this before last time
⏹️ ▶️ John I wore a watch, it was like middle school and I just became old enough to have a watch and wanted to try it out. And I wore it for
⏹️ ▶️ John a little while, like some plastic digital watch and decided it wasn’t for me. So I’m just not a watch person.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. All right. So I wanted to save you for last, Marco. Do your worst.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I mean, first of all, I think it’s not a very good argument to say like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, it seems trendy to hate this thing right now. You know, that’s just whoever you’re reading, which includes people like me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who are not, you know, who are cooling or have cooled on the Apple Watch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think what we’re seeing here, I mean, there’s a number of factors here. I don’t question the Apple Watch’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco utility for a lot of people. But, and in fact, you know, I found a lot of utility that when I wore it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as well. It just, you know, the downsides of it just bothered me too much, and I found that I preferred regular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco watches rather than, you know, like I went from no watch to an Apple Watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to, oh, I like watches, turns out, but most of what I do is tell the time, and regular watches
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just do a way better job of that for my purposes, because they’re always on, and you don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to charge them, et cetera. What I found that, I think if you look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of globally, if you step back from what any individual’s personal needs are, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco personal opinions about the Apple Watch are, I think you can step back, and you can see this product as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really a really mixed bag, as a 1.0 product. And there’s a few things that exacerbate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this. One of which is that it’s going more than a year as a 1.0. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as we, I mean, we talked about this before, so I don’t wanna go too far into it, but like, it’s looking like we’re not gonna get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a good successor to it for, you know, at least now, which is now is like a year after it came out,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re at least not getting it now. We might not even get it until the summer or the fall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or even next spring. We don’t actually know when there’s gonna be, you know, a second generation and where the second generation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will be very good, or very much of an improvement in the areas that any person
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thinks that it needs it. So we are still judging this thing on generation one, but generation one is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not only longer than these things usually are, usually they’re a year or less, so it’s not only being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a long generation one, but also I feel like the generation one hardware and software
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were both pretty mediocre on the scale of various Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first gen products. Certainly, not every Apple first-gen product is a great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco product or is a huge hit, but I think as they go, especially in recent years, as they go,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the watch has been a pretty mediocre one in terms of bugs, performance,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco limitations, things like that. What we’re finding with Apple, I’ve talked before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about this issue with the low-hanging fruit has all been picked everywhere, and so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what we have now is the baseline products, products. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Macs, the iPhones, to most of a degree the iPads.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco These things are mature. The innovation on them has slowed, but they’re pretty awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They have great performance, they have great physical
⏹️ ▶️ Marco characteristics, a great balance between size and weight and battery life for the most part,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with very few exceptions. These are all very mature But Apple is a company
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that depends on trying to sell its customers more devices
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and trying to sell devices to more customers. So it is Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco job as a hardware maker to just try stuff in the market to say you know hey you know everybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has a phone a lot of people have computers most people have computers does everybody also need a tablet let’s try
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does everybody also need a watch let’s try does everybody also need a TV box let’s try you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is their job. But all these mature things that are like the core of things, you know, basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the computers and the phones and maybe the tablets, that covers most people’s needs. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we are accustomed to judging Apple and their products based on those products, those core products, mostly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the computer and the phone, which is like, yeah, sure, almost everyone could use those.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so it’s easy to look at that and say, well, if Apple makes a computer or a phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that sucks for me, then that kind of sucks for everybody. And why do they do it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And whether that’s true or not, it’s easy for people to look at it that way. With the watch, I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we went into it with that kind of expectation. And a lot of people bought it based on that expectation of like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a new, high-profile Apple product line. Of course it’s gonna be for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Of course it’s gonna be for everybody. And of course it’s gonna be good. And I think what we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seeing is It’s hard to find new things that are for everybody in technology.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco New things that are going to be potentially as big as phones or computers or tablets or anything else.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco These are hard problems. And the watch, you know, because of the incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco strong demands, the conflicting demands of that kind of product, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have severe size constraints, severe power constraints, it’s really, severe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cost constraints. It’s just very hard to get a good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco smart watch product on the market. It’s just really hard to do. And I think what we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seeing is this is an Apple product that we thought was going to be for everybody,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but just isn’t. It’s just not, you know, it’s just like you can look at any kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco watch and you can know kind of watches for everybody, not even Rolex or Omega, Omega people,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sorry. Not every watch is for everybody. And the Apple Watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has not replaced all watches and has not replaced everybody’s phones or anything like that and never will.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is a product that is going to work for some people, but it’s not a home
⏹️ ▶️ Marco run for everybody or even the people who it works for. It’s not even a home run necessarily for them. It’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco decent maybe, you know, but it’s hard to make new stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is going to be really great anymore because so much of it’s already been made and has already matured in these areas, in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco areas of technology and things like this that people are working on in this industry.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I don’t think it’s bad to say the Apple Watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco isn’t for me, and I don’t think it’s a sign that the watch has failed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if a lot of people think it’s not for them. But I also think that the watch as a 1.0 product
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was really done with a lot of mediocrity, And it is not unfair to criticize
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. These are real shortcomings it has. It has real problems, real
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shortcomings, real design question marks, and missed opportunities,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and weird choices that they made. And all of this will probably be fixed over time. I hope it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And maybe someday I’ll go back to it as a product that I use on a regular basis. Because there are things about it that I do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco miss. I think I mostly miss it while driving. to have the quick glance of,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why did my phone just vibrate in my pocket while I’m driving? Which is probably unsafe, and I probably shouldn’t even look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the watch, but that is when I miss it. Overall, though, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think, again, these are hard problems. We are in an era now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where the new things that Apple makes are not going to be guaranteed to be mass
⏹️ ▶️ Marco market, and that’s probably okay.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the watch was a good bet for mass market though because wearables
⏹️ ▶️ John have a much broader appeal than computing devices because many more people spend more
⏹️ ▶️ John time wearing things during the day than they spend using computers. I’m not saying everybody is a watch wearer but just
⏹️ ▶️ John wearables as a category. Like if you had to pick a category of areas that Apple should get into, they’re kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of on the cusp of like, well, we mostly do computery things and we’re getting to the point where you
⏹️ ▶️ John can have a computery thing that’s part of clothing or jewelry in some way.
⏹️ ▶️ John Does that mean glasses like Google was doing? Does it mean watches? Does it mean like a little fitness turd
⏹️ ▶️ John like Fitbit is doing or something else? As a category I think this was
⏹️ ▶️ John a very smart bet for Apple to get into. Their first entry in the category, you know, they’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John learn, they’ll move on. I hope they don’t abandon it because if you’re looking for another mass-market thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John the categories they’re looking at are all potential winners. Lots of people watch television
⏹️ ▶️ John or watch a video. So something having to do with TV is a good idea. Lots of people have cellphones, that was a good market
⏹️ ▶️ John for them. Lots of people wear things also a good market and as computers get
⏹️ ▶️ John smaller and lighter weight and the power requirements go down and so on and so forth.
⏹️ ▶️ John That that entire category will only become more viable. So if I had to look like
⏹️ ▶️ John broad strokes, long term product strategy, I think it was really smart for Apple to get into wearables.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I really hope they do stick it out and learn their lessons, make better products, keep iterating and innovating,
⏹️ ▶️ John because these type of products play to all their strengths, miniaturization, mass
⏹️ ▶️ John manufacturing of beautiful objects, especially the ability to make things that are appealing to people visually, they were just talking about with
⏹️ ▶️ John the iMac, that’s important when you’re wearing it. And Apple has shown with their watch brands and their watch designs
⏹️ ▶️ John within the constraints of the tech available, they’re actually pretty good at that part of it, too. They just have to figure out how to make
⏹️ ▶️ John the product part of it. And if I think about the first iPod, it was pretty crappy too. It’s just that the first
⏹️ ▶️ John iPod had such a huge positive to outweigh its negatives. And the watch is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it has some positives to outweigh some of its negatives, but net, it is not as compelling a product.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And ultimately, I think what gives me concern about the watch is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the apparent slow pace of progress. And we will see what happens the next time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there is a substantial update to either the hardware or the software. We’ll see. This could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco totally change my tone about it, but right now it appears to be moving pretty slowly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. I don’t outright disagree with anything you just said,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but if we really step back and think about it, first of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all, as someone who works in an office building like John does, I see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so many Fitbit, bracelet-y, watch-y things, I can’t even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey count them. And I concur with what John said that wearables
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are a market that I think it’s going to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be a bigger and bigger market with time. And I think that Apple playing in this market is a wise choice.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Recently, it was a day or two ago, I watched that classic Louis
⏹️ ▶️ Casey C.K. video when he was on Conan about people getting pissed off
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about not having Wi-Fi in their flying tube. People getting all upset about the fact
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that they’re in an airplane and don’t have Wi-Fi. This is not the same as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people getting upset about their watch. At the same time,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have a mini computer on my frigging wrist that can, with limitations,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey connect to almost all the known information on the planet on the internet. That’s pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fricking amazing. And I agree that there’s a lot that’s frustrating about my watch. I never
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use apps for several different reasons. Number one of which it’s so, so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slow to do anything and it’s infuriating.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, but not nevertheless, I have this device that tracks my heartbeat.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It tracks how much I’m standing, how much I’m moving. It tracks when my next appointment
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is like John was saying, if I’m in a city that I’m not familiar with and I’m walking around, I can do so without
⏹️ ▶️ Casey having my phone out screaming, I’m a tourist, please rob me. Um, there’s so many things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for me that I really like about this and that impressed me so deeply about it, especially
⏹️ ▶️ Casey given the unbelievable engineering constraints that this product was made under.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, it it’s to me, it’s such an impressive product and. There is so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much that could be done to make it better. Marco, you’re absolutely right about that. I mean, I can’t argue with, with that at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all, but for me, it’s still, it’s still something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that adds value to my life and I, and I still like it. And I just feel like, I think the thing of it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is, is that it was like a switch flipped and suddenly everyone was talking about how much they don’t want to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wear an Apple watch anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that in and of itself that’s fine, but it just seemed weird to me And I felt bad for the poor little Apple watch and I still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feel bad for the poor little Apple watch It’s a cute little feller and and I feel like somebody needed to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey build it up a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know enough people who are not Tech nerds who have an Apple watch know how
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s playing in the non tech nerd crowd But obviously we’re all talking to other tech nerds and they’re the ones writing things about how they’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John using their watch and whatever and yeah it did kind of all come together because I think people slowly stopped wearing
⏹️ ▶️ John them and And then the people who needed to tell the world that they slowly stopped wearing them had to write stories about
⏹️ ▶️ John it And then other people saw those stories and they felt safe that they could now admit that they slowly stopped wearing them Which is fine. Like that’s how the press
⏹️ ▶️ John cycle goes, but it’s still all within just these sort of tech nerd circles
⏹️ ▶️ John And I’m sure the watch is selling outside tech nerd circles You can tell by the huge spike in sales that they seem to have
⏹️ ▶️ John from everything. We’re able to understand from Apple’s Closely guarded secrets about
⏹️ ▶️ John how much how many watches they’re selling exactly during the holidays Because tech nerds don’t save their
⏹️ ▶️ John spending for the holidays. They buy it as soon as released
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I’ve actually you know, anecdotally I’ve seen since the holidays I’ve seen a lot more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple watches in the real world oftentimes on on you know Non geeks or at least people whose geek
⏹️ ▶️ Marco status is unknown to me
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but I’m saying they must be selling them I just I don’t know those people so I can’t sort of get a read
⏹️ ▶️ John on like none of my My family or friends who are not tech nerds have an Apple Watch, so I would love to
⏹️ ▶️ John know what regular people think of the Apple Watch. It’s just still kind of an unknown to us. Surely Apple knows because it’s their job to
⏹️ ▶️ John know. I can imagine regular people not being as picky about
⏹️ ▶️ John it, but also not becoming eternally addicted to it. Like they were once you started
⏹️ ▶️ John selling iPods to regular people, once it wasn’t a $400 accessory that only worked with Macs, like once you know you had the
⏹️ ▶️ John mini and stuff, people love their iPods, man. They love them. Do people love their Apple Watch
⏹️ ▶️ John or do they say it’s pretty cool and it was a good Christmas present that I got. But I don’t know if
⏹️ ▶️ John they are so incredibly in love with it as they were with their smartphones or their
⏹️ ▶️ John iPods or whatever. So we’ll see next Christmas and how they iterate on this. I’m entirely open
⏹️ ▶️ John to the idea that Apple can try other kinds of wearables, whether it’s a fitness
⏹️ ▶️ John turd or an earring or a ring or something involving
⏹️ ▶️ John glasses. There was a discussion on Twitter today about Apple, CableSouth’s Panic was disappointed
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple wasn’t anywhere on the radar when it came to VR. And if you wanted to do VR,
⏹️ ▶️ John you had to basically build a PC because no Mac, we already discussed this, no Mac you can buy is viable
⏹️ ▶️ John for it, which isn’t entirely true because the Mac’s technically capable of doing a VR experience, but the current VR products, the
⏹️ ▶️ John pioneers of the VR industry are either, you need a game console or you need a PC.
⏹️ ▶️ John And no matter what Mac you have, forget it. And so he was, uh, Cable was concerned that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John is missing out on this, that they are watching this one go by. And again, we’ve talked many times about the supposed
⏹️ ▶️ John rumored VR things that Apple is surely toying with internally. But as far as I’m aware, there’s no,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s no credible rumors about Apple fielding any products in that area. Uh, I
⏹️ ▶️ John think they should be experimenting with it and same thing with wearables. I think they should be experimenting with everything having
⏹️ ▶️ John to do with wearables, not just watches. And some people, some feedback we got recently
⏹️ ▶️ John was like, you guys say that Apple spread too thin. But on the other hand, you’re always saying Apple has to be checking
⏹️ ▶️ John out everything. There’s a difference between fielding a product or platform
⏹️ ▶️ John or investigating like Apple’s job is to try everything to see what you know, not in
⏹️ ▶️ John the market, but like try it out internally, make sure someone is working on VR, make sure someone’s working on this, that maybe not cars,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? But but everything that’s close to their industry. We don’t let it catch you by surprise.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then figure out out of all those things. Is there some place where we can sell a good product? You know, can
⏹️ ▶️ John we can we, you know, make a significant contribution to this market? How big is the potential market like that’s what
⏹️ ▶️ John they should be doing internally. You can’t do is actually say we need to be in every single market
⏹️ ▶️ John like Microsoft in the 90s. We need to make if there’s a technological thing that can run software, we need to make one
⏹️ ▶️ John of them and we need to sell it as a product and we need to support it forever because then you just end up with too much crap. So it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John being spread too thin is when you do more than you can do externally, and then
⏹️ ▶️ John doing due diligence internally is saying we need to be looking at everything. We need to not be caught by surprise.
⏹️ ▶️ John We need to, at the very least, be making an internal determination of it’s not time for us to enter that market,
⏹️ ▶️ John but we’ll continue to look at it. Because it’s so much cheaper to just continue to investigate internally. It gets really expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John once you say, and you know, we’re going to make a product. That’s one of the rumors about the car, by the way, is someone inside decided
⏹️ ▶️ John we can we can innovate in the car space, whether it’s with electric cars, self-driving cars, or whatever they’re gonna do, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And the rumor I heard was that Apple had essentially said they’re willing to spend a billion
⏹️ ▶️ John dollars on development of a car and then walk away from the entire project if it doesn’t look like it’s working out.
⏹️ ▶️ John So that’s like, you know, again, it’s just a rumor, who knows, but that’s the mindset you have to go in with because
⏹️ ▶️ John how do you know whether you can do something good in the car space? You can think about it all you want, but at a certain point, someone
⏹️ ▶️ John has to say, all right, I think we can do something here, let’s give it a try. And if you have budgets the size of Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can say, all right, we’ll put a billion dollars into this and then we’ll revisit. And we’ll say, once we spend a billion dollars, what do we think
⏹️ ▶️ John guys? Is this ready? And gals, this is a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco lifetime of sexist language
⏹️ ▶️ John cemented in my fricking brain. Anyway, what do we think of this? Is this going to be a product worthy
⏹️ ▶️ John of Apple? Should we release it? And that’s where Marco comes and yells at you and says, you know what, maybe the watch wasn’t a product
⏹️ ▶️ John worthy of Apple quite yet. We think wearables are great, but when it’s time to give the go, no go, maybe let
⏹️ ▶️ John it bake a little bit longer. Anyway, um, or maybe it was the wrong approach. Yeah. The, the rumored attitude
⏹️ ▶️ John with the car, I think is the right attitude is get while the getting is good. You’ve got a lot of money. You
⏹️ ▶️ John can invest a lot just because you put a billion dollars into it. Doesn’t mean you actually have to ship
⏹️ ▶️ John a car. You could put a billion dollars in and say, we thought we could do something really interesting here and it turns
⏹️ ▶️ John out we can’t lesson learned. Move on. That’s doing your due diligence. If they’re doing that in VR,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve been looking at VR for two decades. We’ve had people do an AR and VR internally. we’ve been investigating it for as long as we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John been investigating anything, any of the technologies that we actually released, like touchscreens and voice recognition and
⏹️ ▶️ John all these things that we’ve been doing in labs forever and ever and Apple, and it’s time to come out with a product when
⏹️ ▶️ John we feel like we can make a contribution, we will, and until then we won’t. So that’s why we always just assume here on the outside.
⏹️ ▶️ John But of course Apple’s looking to VR and then sometimes in our darker moments, you think, right, right, Apple, you’re at least
⏹️ ▶️ John experimenting with it. And it doesn’t mean you need to feel the product today. It doesn’t mean you must compete with the Oculus Rift today. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s so many questions about VR and it’s still, you know, We still don’t know what’s going to happen there, but we just hope that
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple as the richest technology company in the world, at the very least, is investigating all these avenues
⏹️ ▶️ John and for wearable, same thing. You can wear a lot of technology things on your body,
⏹️ ▶️ John and a lot of people wear things on their body every day. And if Apple could sell them something that makes their lives better,
⏹️ ▶️ John that would be perfect.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, math.com, FreshBooks and Betterment, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we and we’ll see you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn’t let him, Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. And you can find
⏹️ ▶️ John the show notes at atp.fm, And if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Casey M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and T. Marco Armin,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s accidental, they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John mean to Accidental, check podcast
Post-show: macOS concept
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We could talk about that uh that Mac OSS thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco chance to read what are all these what’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco John’s mom who’s Californian what the hell is that it’s been on our show notes for like three years it’s a bike
⏹️ ▶️ John yep it should stay there because I can talk about it sometime but not today why not today cuz I’m not prepared
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the whole you know what the whole purpose of this show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John is I mean it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not like I need to I just need to know that it’s a thing we’re gonna talk about tonight no the Mac OSS thing is
⏹️ ▶️ John good idea because I forgot that was there and I did look at that page.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so I didn’t get a good look at it. I looked at the picture zone. I really liked them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, that’s a lot of it. So yeah, so there’s this blog post by Andrew Ambrosino
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on Medium called MacOS, M-A-C-O-S, the lowercase
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac way that we think they’re going to rename it, colon, it’s time to take the next step. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he basically outlines a number of substantial changes that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he thinks should be done or he proposes might be good to Mac OS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in things like design and interface changes and really kind of making
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it… he was originally responding a little bit to Steve Troughton Smith’s claim
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back in his WBC wish list post a few months or a couple months back or a couple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weeks back that he was saying… Steve Troughton Smith said that he really believes that OS X is a dead platform
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and kind of elaborated on that. So Andrew here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically kind of took that further and was like, well you know, what does OS X need to kind of take the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco next level to remain relevant, to go the next step? And there’s a number… if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could summarize it, he basically makes the interface look a lot more like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS apps that are kind of being windowed in regular in like a regular OS 10 environment.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it basically it’s a significant design refresh around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a more iOS-y style for lots of apps in the system, rather than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what we have now, which is kind of like, you know, mostly AppKit styles, and then some apps like Photos are more iOS-y.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then he proposes a few other things like a new file system thing, and a few other things. So I don’t know, what do you guys think of this?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s really interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it does not look as much like iOS as you think it does. And I also think it doesn’t take much to get
⏹️ ▶️ John a designer’s juices flowing. I think all you need to throw them is the again, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly agreed upon by the people out in the outside world, uh, renaming of the operating
⏹️ ▶️ John system to match iOS and TVOS and watchOS to have a lowercase M on MacOS that we’ve been talking about for months and months.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that’s basically all you need. You could just put that little grain of sand in the mind
⏹️ ▶️ John of designer and they immediately want to design screenshots of what this OS will look like starting like as this one does with
⏹️ ▶️ John the with the about screen because if you don’t think that changing the capitalization
⏹️ ▶️ John and naming of an operating system can lead to a visual design you don’t have much of a designer in you
⏹️ ▶️ John because it doesn’t take much to get that ball rolling and I like these screenshots but they remind me a lot of what
⏹️ ▶️ John I see whenever there is a new Mac operating system coming designers want to say this is how
⏹️ ▶️ John I would make it look and I have to say that most of them I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John are doing a surface treatment. They are re-skinning without rethinking
⏹️ ▶️ John any of the paradigms because they have a dock on the bottom, a menu bar on the top. They have windows
⏹️ ▶️ John with windows widgets and toolbars and search fields and sidebars and master detail views and,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, table views and scrolling lists of thumbnails. And it’s like that’s not rethinking anything. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John exactly what the Mac operating system is now and what it has been for years and years. And just because
⏹️ ▶️ John on your video player, you put a big circle kind of like there is on the iPhone camera does not change the
⏹️ ▶️ John interface of dealing with video on the Mac at all. Like a real paradigm shift
⏹️ ▶️ John would be away from some aspect that has defined the Mac and the basic desktop
⏹️ ▶️ John GUI operating system, whether that’s, you know, in the modern era, the dock, but really just movable,
⏹️ ▶️ John resizable windows with widgets and toolbars and a menu bar on the top of the screen, like when you you come down to it. And I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John not saying that needs to change, but anybody who’s like, this needs to be, we need to have a rethink of
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac because it is stagnating and then they show a reskin type of thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s, there seems to be a disagreement between the spirit of the text
⏹️ ▶️ John and the actuality of the images. Even though I’m sure these images are exciting to the person who drew them and they do look kind of cool even
⏹️ ▶️ John if they do look a little bit like the current look and feel of the system, maybe just dressed up a little bit.
⏹️ ▶️ John If your pitch is in the text that needs a radical rethink, then the screenshot should
⏹️ ▶️ John be a radical rethink, and I don’t think these are. On the other hand, if your pitch is, as we talked
⏹️ ▶️ John about in the past shows, that the Mac should take advantage of its maturity and
⏹️ ▶️ John just decrease the number of bugs and increase performance and stability over and over again until it is just
⏹️ ▶️ John like rock solid, super responsive, like a game console in the olden days
⏹️ ▶️ John when there was no such thing as frame rate drops and just everything happens because the screen can handle it sprites on the screen at
⏹️ ▶️ John the time and they’re always perfect and there’s never any drop in frame rate and everything is perfectly
⏹️ ▶️ John responsive and stable and the thing never crashes because you can’t do a software update because it’s on a cartridge and nothing’s ever going to change.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, I like I’m not that now that it has to be a nostalgic type of thing, but like that is
⏹️ ▶️ John that is another route you can go with the Mac. Not going to radically rethink it, make it the best version of the current
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac operating system that it could possibly be as in the same paradigm, resizable windows, scroll bars, window
⏹️ ▶️ John widgets, menu bars, that is a powerful paradigm that has lasted us a long time and you can do amazing things with
⏹️ ▶️ John it and there’s nothing really particularly broken about it for the current customers of the Mac. Plenty
⏹️ ▶️ John things broken out for the mass market who would much rather use their smartphones. You know, again, setting that aside for now, if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna take the Mac at face value for what it is, who wouldn’t love a Mac that reacted to your
⏹️ ▶️ John input faster, that did everything faster, that never crashed, that never stalled, that never did anything weird.
⏹️ ▶️ John Can you do that it’s easier to do that if you say that’s all we’re gonna do with this thing
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re not going to try to come up with big important features every single time we’re gonna say if there’s a big important feature
⏹️ ▶️ John crying out to be implanted by all means we’ll implement it but if there’s not we will not feel ashamed to spend an entire year
⏹️ ▶️ John just polishing the hell out of the Mac operating system I know I would love that and I know a lot of the existing
⏹️ ▶️ John customers would love that and maybe you could say that defines a dead platform because stability equals death
⏹️ ▶️ John but that is one possible route to go to make the The people who use the Mac now love it even more.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think to extend its life because in order for the Mac to continue to be viable, it has
⏹️ ▶️ John to continue to offer things better than iOS and iOS is getting better all the time. And if the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John operating system is not also getting better, eventually those lines in the graph will cross and there’s no more point
⏹️ ▶️ John for having the Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, I think it really comes down to like, you know, is is the Mac being treated,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, heart platform wise software wise? Is it being treated like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the MacBook Air, which is kind of like, you know, just we’re going to keep selling it for a while until it becomes irrelevant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or dies, and then we’re just going to kind of stop? Or is it an active platform that Apple wants
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to keep going indefinitely? And I think it’s the latter. I think we’ve, you know, we’ve heard comments to that effect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from Craig Federighi and I think maybe even from Phil Schiller. And so, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it does seem like that is the idea, that the Mac is not dead. not just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in maintenance mode until it gets subsumed by iOS, it does seem like they want to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keep moving it forward. It really just needs, you know, maybe the resources to do that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and maybe they’re doing that already. I don’t know. But if they’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keep it going as a platform, I think I’m about to make a John argument here, but like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have to eventually make like massive jumps in certain areas. Like eventually, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever we know as OS 10, there’s going to be like, you know, Mac OS 11 or whatever, whatever it’s going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco called, like, eventually, there’s going to be like the next big jump forward on this platform,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or at least there needs to be if it’s going to remain relevant. And and it doesn’t it’s hard to tell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether it’s getting the resources and the attention it needs internally to be on track for that, or whether
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re mostly focused on iOS right now, but I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, maybe the naming, like, is their way of doing this. I always wonder if they’re gonna reset the version numbers
⏹️ ▶️ John they start from 1.0 this is Mac OS 1.0 instead and under the covers of course they would
⏹️ ▶️ John still be like you know 10 12 whatever just for software backward compatible kind of like how
⏹️ ▶️ John Windows has the crazy versioning number that got skewed off because they continue where they continue the NT versioning numbers
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah anyway I can imagine that they’re doing something like that that’s not the big reset we’re talking about this was
⏹️ ▶️ John the other direction is like all right then radically rethink it radically rethink the Mac operating this and do do another Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John OS X style transition. That can be dangerous too, because you could just be annoying
⏹️ ▶️ John the remaining customers you have and they say forget this and I’m going to go through the big change. I’m just gonna learn how to use an iPad Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, but at the very least, renaming and reskinning can actually go a long way towards getting people
⏹️ ▶️ John excited about a platform again. Even if it’s all service details, if you also do
⏹️ ▶️ John some other things, right? Like that’s another free gimme like, do you want to do a make
⏹️ ▶️ John things faster and fix bugs release, but make people think it’s a feature release, just change how everything looks. They’ll be like, whoa, this new
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac operating system, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John All they did was change graphics and then they spent the whole rest of the time fixing bugs and increasing performance.
⏹️ ▶️ John As someone who writes software and someone who likes software updates, I’m obviously more excited
⏹️ ▶️ John than normal people are about this. I love when a new version of a software product that I use comes out
⏹️ ▶️ John that they tell me something and it is faster. I love that because as a programmer, I love doing that. I love
⏹️ ▶️ John deleting code that no longer has execute on every frame of animation or on every time this thing
⏹️ ▶️ John happens. Like I love better algorithms that scale better with large amounts of content,
⏹️ ▶️ John handles huge numbers of photos better. Like even just something as simple as better responsiveness during
⏹️ ▶️ John scrolling or like loading things or whatever. Like performance, I love
⏹️ ▶️ John things when they get better like that. And regular people don’t really care about that, but they feel it. If you
⏹️ ▶️ John do that consistently, People have sort of this intangible feeling that your product is better
⏹️ ▶️ John than others in ways they can’t explain simply because it reacts. And in the same way that if you give someone the original iPhone and
⏹️ ▶️ John then gave them another touchscreen phone, another contemporary touchscreen phone, everyone could tell you that the iPhone was way
⏹️ ▶️ John better. Even if they don’t know like, oh, I recognize this as a superior product because
⏹️ ▶️ John the hardware is nicer or the stupid thing actually reacts to my finger. Like they don’t have to understand the nuances
⏹️ ▶️ John of finger reaction, but the general public immediately saw that, oh, this is different than the touchscreen
⏹️ ▶️ John I hate on my ATM. This touchscreen is awesome. The ATM touchscreen is terrible. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t I don’t need to tell you the technical reasons why I just recognize it. So if you make a product that is
⏹️ ▶️ John more stable, more reliable, and faster and more responsive, and you keep doing
⏹️ ▶️ John that on a regular basis, customers will react, they will love your product more. And those of us in the know,
⏹️ ▶️ John will also react and not that you know, you don’t you don’t need to win us over. The real win is everyone
⏹️ ▶️ John else who will feel that but boy I love products I just you know that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John and any product that has in their release notes bug fixes are good performance improvements, and I get the feeling
⏹️ ▶️ John speaking of like dead platforms and everything that people seem to think that There’s nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John in the Mac applications. They use a date from day to day or the operating system itself that can
⏹️ ▶️ John get faster Like well This is just how computers are and I just reject that notion entirely everything
⏹️ ▶️ John on my computer can and should be faster Even just on the software side like ignoring that yes, I think they
⏹️ ▶️ John should be faster CPUs faster storage faster graphics card Yes, that should all continue to happen, but you
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple can right? Yeah, but just even within the same hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John There are things you can do to make the software faster So many things can be done like that that poor guy I see
⏹️ ▶️ John on Twitter who just spends all day trying to make a nsu Two defaults faster. I love that guy Just
⏹️ ▶️ John yes, please do spend an entire year making nsu two defaults faster, please You should because you know what that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John used by tons of applications and you make it just a little bit faster you’ll save us a lot of time, my computer will be better.