179: Free-to-Play Dogs
21 Jul 2016ARM Macs, the ancient Mac lineup, dog rental, and an algorithm for syncing audio tracks and correcting drift.
Episode Description:
- Follow-up:
- SoftBank to buy ARM
- Apple hardware stagnation
- How does Marco's Sidetrack work?
- Ending theme by Jonathan Mann
- Post-show: What's appropriate to talk about on ATP?
Sponsored by:
- Indochino: Finely crafted, exceptionally priced menswear. Get any custom-made suit for just $399 with code ATP.
- TrackR: Find lost items in seconds. Get 30% off your entire order with code ATP.
- Betterment: Investing made better.
Chapters
- Follow-up: Casey’s iMac 🖼️
- Follow-up: Pokemon Go
- Sponsor: Betterment
- Softbank to buy ARM
- Possibility of ARM Macs
- Sponsor: TrackR
- The ancient Mac lineup 🖼️
- Sponsor: Indochino (code ATP)
- Marco’s track-sync/undrift tool
- Ending theme
- Post-show: Non-tech erasure
Follow-up: Casey’s iMac
⏹️ ▶️ John You know what those are? Those are free-to-play dogs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We got some feedback with regard to my maybe, maybe not, no I guess it is definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ailing, but we don’t know why iMac. An anonymous Apple genius wrote in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’d like to read, this is pretty much their entire email. They said, I see failures exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like the one you’re describing the hanging after waking from sleep after swapping the stock RAM back in, not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the reboots, the reboots were almost certainly OWC RAM. That do track back to the GPU
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for sure, but much more frequently it is just Apple not having it stuffed together software-wise.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Also, nothing makes me sadder than someone dropping off a machine that’s experiencing an intermittent issue and it just sits there for a week,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey running stress testing or diagnostics, and we have to give it back with a shrug when we find nothing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Or worse, when people are so utterly convinced as Marco that a problem is, quote, definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hardware, quote, that we get bullied into replacing parts anyway for customer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey appeasement slash theater for a failure that can’t be replicated and Then have that person pick up the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey machine and it’s still having the same issue because that issue was never the hardware in the first Place don’t jump the gun
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be sure it’s hardware before you come in and we’ll be able to get it right the first time Signed Apple genius
⏹️ ▶️ Casey best of luck And don’t listen to Marco sunglasses emoji. That is actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey part of the email, which made me laugh. So yeah, so this particular genius said,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it could, I may, may not be crazy. And I have gotten a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of feedback about the iMac. And I am happy to report that it was split about right down the middle.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Half the people said I was insane for not bringing it in. And half the people said I totally feel you and you’re doing the right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, we should clarify. You know this because you made a pie chart.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I did. I went full business on this because I was curious
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how this was going to play out because… Can I share this pie chart? Yeah, if you want. I mean, you can like droplet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John It was a spreadsheet,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? You just made it. It’s a spreadsheet and then the graph is from the spreadsheet. Is it a Google Sheets thing or whatever?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is a Google Sheet. Yeah. So I probably could drop the sheet in if I really felt like it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I probably won’t because it’s mostly irrelevant. But suffice to say, I have tracked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just line items, and I’ve tracked feedback as line items. I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey split it into four categories. Pro Casey, anti Casey, jokes, which at the beginning
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought were going to be far more frequent than they were, it ended up being only three of them. But like, oh, just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey spill water on it again. Ha ha. And that was basically all three of them. And then neutral posts,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which were sometimes people saying like, oh, I can understand you not wanting to bring
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it in, but maybe you should, or, oh, have tried using this memory testing tool,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey etc., etc., etc. And so it has been 49.5% as per my fancy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey little spreadsheet that have been in the Pro Casey camp.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And between the anti-Casey and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey neutral posts, that’s another 47.7%. So there you go.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I have to ask the obvious question, which is, has your iMac had any problems since a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It has indeed, but I can explain these away as well, don’t you worry. So as it turns out, it has rebooted itself
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Hold on, hold on. With the stock RAM in it?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John on though. That is because…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hold on. That’s because I’ve had power failures both times, and the iMac is not connected
⏹️ ▶️ John All right, well that’s not rebooting itself. That’s a different thing. Yeah, that doesn’t count.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s why I said it’s not, it has had an issue, but it’s not its fault. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that’s not an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey issue. Well, I mean, I don’t want it to reboot itself, but I mean, when the power is yanked, there’s nothing you can do.
⏹️ ▶️ John perhaps the best reason for you to bring this in for what may be one of several frustrating
⏹️ ▶️ John visits to the Apple store is that if you don’t, every single week on the show,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco me and Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey are going to ask
⏹️ ▶️ John you how is the, you know, any, any new issues? Because it’s been on kind of like a week interval, right? So
⏹️ ▶️ John every week there’s a potential that something can happen.
⏹️ ▶️ John Although like these power outages are really messing with the with whatever the interval was.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I know it’s it’s the worst.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so a follow up question, because this is the follow up section of the show. You have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a you know, a $3,000 high end computer that uses your primary computer at home. You have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a UPS. Why is this computer not plugged into the UPS?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, so it’s plugged into the non-battery portion of the UPS because the priority
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the Synology and associated paraphernalia like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my Eero and my router and all that other stuff. And it’s not that big a deal to me if this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing just croaks while it’s on, as we’ve already demonstrated. HFS+, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a big deal. Touche. I actually do intend, it’s funny you bring this up because I had intended
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to move it over to the battery side. I just haven’t had the chance yet. And we almost never lose power here. We’ve just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had a couple of really, really crummy summer thunderstorms,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it’s just so happened that we’ve lost power long enough for—you know, it’s been more than just a flash. It’s been long enough
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for this thing to get upset. Yeah, so it’s on my to-do list to move it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the other side of the power strip thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Do you have enough
⏹️ ▶️ John power left in your thingy? Like whatever size the UPS
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey is to do everything?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, you know, that was the reason why I wasn’t there already, is because I wanted to give as much time as possible to the Synology
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because my hypothetical here is that I’m going to be in a situation where I don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the ability to turn the Synology off. And this actually came up when we were in San Francisco together. We were all Jason
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Snells and my watch started going berserk because I was getting push notifications from the Synology
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that the power was going on and off and on and off and on and off and on and off. And I actually asked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jason if he wouldn’t mind if I used his 5K iMac to log into
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the the Synology and shut itself down because I didn’t want it to violently die
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if the power had stayed off long enough. And so that’s why I have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Synology on the UPS, but I kept the iMac off of it because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wanted all available power to go to the Synology so it can hang on as long as possible in the event of a power outage. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like I said, this has been very peculiar because generally we don’t have any issues with power here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And we used to have them relatively frequently, but there was a tree
⏹️ ▶️ Casey branch on the lines right outside my neighborhood, and everything’s in ground in the neighborhood. And that tree branch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was cut back by the power company a year or two ago for exactly this reason to prevent this from happening.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s just been peculiar lately that I’ve lost power a lot. So on my to-do list is to move the iMac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over to the battery side of the UPS. I just haven’t had the chance yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Why don’t you just unplug it right now, because it doesn’t seem to matter.
⏹️ ▶️ John What are you worried about with the violent death? The thing was the Synology will shut itself down when the UPS battery
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey gets to a certain level.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s true. Actually, I’m glad you brought that up because you’re absolutely right. I’ve never actually tested that and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so, I don’t know, I’m just scared.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve tested it unintentionally. And also, I get, instead of getting push notifications, I get emails.
⏹️ ▶️ John Every time we vacuum in the basement, the Synology sends me an email about
⏹️ ▶️ John going to UPS and then going back to power because it’s like a flicker when you
⏹️ ▶️ John up the vacuum on the same circuit as the, yeah, my house
⏹️ ▶️ John is under, the panel on my house is undersized for the things we have in it. But anyway, I’ve tested it many
⏹️ ▶️ John times where we’ve lost power for long enough and it sends me the emails. Then I think it also sends you an email
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s like, well, I’m shutting down, bye. And then when it comes back on, I forget if you get the goodbye email, but you certainly
⏹️ ▶️ John get the turning back on one. And yeah, there’s a setting in the thing where you can tell it when, what percentage shut
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and I have that turned on. Like I said, I was just scared of it. And I should add, just for interest’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sake, that the way I got push notifications was by an app called Pushover, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m sure there’s other ones like this, but basically I get a unique email from the Pushover company
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I have the Synology send emails to, and then that gets forwarded— actually, if this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and that probably does something like this—that email gets forwarded to my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPhone and then to my watch. So the push notification I’m getting is really just that same email that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you’re getting, I’m having it forwarded on to a service that will send the push notification.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So just pro tip. But yeah, I should definitely move this over to the battery side. shore.
Follow-up: Pokemon Go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wanted to talk a little bit more about Pokemon. After we recorded last week,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there were a couple of interests, or well there was one trend I noticed, which I just thought was fascinating. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I noticed two local, well one’s a museum, one’s a park.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The Science Museum of Virginia, which is here in Richmond, had posted on their Facebook
⏹️ ▶️ Casey page, I feel like such an old person when I say that, but I think that is the proper vernacular, looking to catch some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey rare Pokemon while seeing some pretty incredible hashtag science. This weekend, the museum’s PokéStops
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will have hashtag lure modules planted to attract wild hashtag Pokémon while our exhibits are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey filled with yada yada yada. So, so, suffice to say, the museum,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Science Museum of Virginia, had taken it upon themselves to install lures
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the PokéStops that are, or one or more PokéStops that’s at the Science Museum
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to try to attract people to come visit, which I thought was really interesting. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Maymont Park, which is a park also here in Richmond, and that’s actually where where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Aaron and I got engaged. Pokemon Go! Catch them all at Maymont! And there’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clearly photoshopped picture of a family looking at one of the Pokemon,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pokemen, Pokemans, etc. Whatever it’s called. Anyway, the point being they did
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an after-hours Exclusive event where for $10 a person
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can go to Maymont Park, which is beautiful and it’s free generally But it’s absolutely worth going to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah Join us for an exclusive after-hours Pokemon go event as we activate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lords in the app and explore the grounds in search of mysterious creatures That only come out at night $10 a person
⏹️ ▶️ Casey five if you remember adults must accompany children ages 15 and under and let tickets are limited to the first 300 registrants
⏹️ ▶️ Casey registrants, oh, actually that’s happening a week from tomorrow, as it turns out. So I just thought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that this was really interesting that these local businesses and, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey museums and parks, which I don’t know, I have the perception of being slightly stodgy to me, even the science museum, have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gotten on this bandwagon of getting people to spend actual money playing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this game, but the money they’re spending isn’t on the game, it’s with these venues. I just, I thought it was a really, really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clever idea and not unique to Richmond but it just popped up on my radar because these are local
⏹️ ▶️ Casey places. I thought it was cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What do you think the chances are that the game’s servers will actually, you know, number one hold up in that area
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and number two work properly so like everybody would actually see the lores and everything?
⏹️ ▶️ John A week from now, who knows? Right now the frustration in my household is the servers are always down.
⏹️ ▶️ John My wife and children have taken up the game by the way.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And what do you think having been in the proximity of the game now?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I went on walks with them. I used I used my wife’s phone to catch some for her. She’s into
⏹️ ▶️ John it. They’re into it. It’s good excuse to walk around. In fact, I think they’re probably still out now, even though it’s like dark because the servers
⏹️ ▶️ John were down there. We’re going to go on a walk to catch Pokemon, but the servers have been down until very recently
⏹️ ▶️ John tonight. So they’re basically down anytime you’d want to do it. Hey, everyone’s home from work and kids are home from camp or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Let’s go hunting for Pokemon. And that’s exactly when the servers are down. And I guess enough
⏹️ ▶️ John kids went to bed. The servers are back up anyway. It’s frustrating. The most heartwarming story
⏹️ ▶️ John I read about Pokemon, which is on the internet so it must be true, is that an animal shelter
⏹️ ▶️ John had a posting that says basically if you want to play Pokemon but you’re embarrassed to let people
⏹️ ▶️ John see you playing, which you shouldn’t be, but if you’re embarrassed to see people see you playing Pokemon, come to our
⏹️ ▶️ John dog shelter and for $5 an hour you can rent one of our dogs and walk
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it will look like
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re walking a dog when really you’re hunting for Pokemon. So here are the results of this. They
⏹️ ▶️ John now have a waiting list of people who want to pay for the privilege of walking a dog. They’ve made so much money on rental
⏹️ ▶️ John fees for the dogs that they’ve waived the adoption fees. When people renting dogs are out walking, they post pictures
⏹️ ▶️ John of themselves playing the game on Facebook and Instagram. People are then coming to the shelter asking to adopt the specific dogs
⏹️ ▶️ John they saw in the pictures. On at least two occasions, people have called the shelter and said, hey, I didn’t think I really wanted
⏹️ ▶️ John a dog but me and this dog get along really well so I’m not bringing him back and this shelter currently has no dogs available
⏹️ ▶️ John to rent and there’s a waiting list because all the dogs have been adopted they’re bringing in dogs from other shelters.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh that’s great. If even if even if that’s only half true that’s still great and I hope it’s all true. Yeah I completely
⏹️ ▶️ John agree. The idea the best part of that again if it’s true is that instead of paying people to like the
⏹️ ▶️ John shelters like we have all these dogs and we don’t have enough staff members to walk them maybe we give people a couple bucks they would walk those reversing
⏹️ ▶️ John the cash flow. to us pay us to walk our dog it’s like like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually like begging for volunteers to come do it for free
⏹️ ▶️ John and that all the dogs get adopted away because of the magic of social media that the dog dog shelter is
⏹️ ▶️ John empty you have to pull from other dog
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shelters well it’s also like you know so often people come up with the idea oh wouldn’t it be great if you could rent puppies
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and puppy rental is a really cool sounding idea for about four seconds until
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you think about the reality of what that business would actually be like and you’re like oh oh that’s horrible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but grown dog rental from like a shelter where these dogs have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nobody else and really need people that flips it around completely like that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that takes this great sounding for a second but ultimately terrible idea
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and make it into something endearing and positive and overall pleasant I I honestly really hope
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was real yeah I have my doubts but I really hope it’s real. You know what those
⏹️ ▶️ John are? Those are free-to-play dogs. You can get the dog
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco for free because they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey like, you know
⏹️ ▶️ John what? I really like this dog. I want it without them. And then you’ve essentially done an in-app purchase for,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, a dozen years of paying for vet bills and dog food and all the other things you have to pay for. You
⏹️ ▶️ John just, it’s free to play. It’s free to walk the dog, but it’s a trap because they
⏹️ ▶️ John based on human nature that dogs are adorable and people are going to fall in love with with them and then they get the
⏹️ ▶️ John big bucks. Yeah, and the final delightful thing is that apparently this bubble
⏹️ ▶️ John has boosted Nintendo’s stock price so much that their market cap is now bigger than Sony.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s good. So I do wonder, do you guys think that Pokemon Go is actually gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still be relevant even in a week? Basically, to what degree do you think this is just a big spike
⏹️ ▶️ Marco followed by a big crash that’s just a fad or do you think it’s gonna actually stick around like a game
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people play for a pretty long time.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well that was my question last week it was like net new trainers because Pokemon has always been popular every time a new Pokemon
⏹️ ▶️ John game comes out all the people who are rabid Pokemon fans who buy every single game buy it. The question is
⏹️ ▶️ John how many more of those people does this make because yeah there’s gonna be a drop-off of like oh I play this when it
⏹️ ▶️ John was really popular but I wasn’t into it enough to become a dedicated fan of the franchise
⏹️ ▶️ John so when the next game comes out you see how many of those people come back and I think it it has to add
⏹️ ▶️ John more fans like just because it’s got so much exposure to people who’ve never played Pokemon games before. It has to add more.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not sure how much more. Certainly this spike is an aberration
⏹️ ▶️ John and I don’t expect Nintendo to keep every single one of the people who are playing now
⏹️ ▶️ John as long-term dedicated players of the franchise.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, to put things in perspective, I think as recently as a couple of weeks ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was visiting with my parents and they were still playing Words with Friends. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, these things can be sticky. And I think this is going to be, at least in part,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a flash in the pan. But I think, given the Pokemon,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the back story and how many people have enjoyed it so much in the past, I think it’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be a lot stickier than most of these other things. Like, for example, Draw Something, which was,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh, this is amazing. OK, nobody cares.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Draw Something has a higher bar to entry. But your parents still playing that same game not really helping the word it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not really helping zingo or whatever unless they’re dumping more money into it right the whole question for the
⏹️ ▶️ John games like pokemon is when we come out with the inevitable improved sequel will you
⏹️ ▶️ John do that one too and also like i said last week all right have you ever put any money into this or is all your money
⏹️ ▶️ John going to rent dogs to walk like like where is the money going like obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John there are people who are putting money into this game it’s going to make money for all the people involved but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the money is coming from a small number of people who spend a lot and almost everybody else
⏹️ ▶️ John it seems like you’re spending nothing so far no one in my family has spent anything either
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yep i just i i’m really fascinated by
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the way in which the the real world and the uh you know this this electronic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this entertainment world have collided and i’ve been i mean there’s been some crummy stories coming out of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it because humans are terrible But I’ve just been—I thought it was so neat,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I still think it’s so neat. And such an interesting investigation into how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey these things kind of come together, and an interesting case study, if you’ll permit me to use that terrible business
⏹️ ▶️ Casey term. It’s just been fascinating to watch. So, very cool stuff. get
Sponsor: Betterment
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Betterment is investing made better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now, it’s never too late to start saving for retirement or your other financial goals. And the financial services
⏹️ ▶️ Marco industry has embraced technology with the entry of automated investing services. Now, investing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can often bring very high fees and a lot of complexity and having to go meet with people. With Betterment,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s all out the window. Betterment is the largest independent automated investing service out there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You might have heard about him recently on TechCrunch, The Wall Street Journal, and other big news outlets. Betterment makes it easier,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more straightforward, and less expensive to invest. It’s built on smarter, cutting-edge technology to bring you sophisticated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco investing and financial advice, all at much lower costs than more traditional financial services.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco More than 150,000 customers choose Betterment’s advanced advice algorithms and beautiful user interface
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to manage over $4 billion of their dollars. This is the perfect time to get started with Betterment right now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco today, and start saving for your retirement or other financial goals. Because ATP listeners can get up to six
⏹️ ▶️ Marco months of no fees whatsoever. And by the way, their regular rate is pretty great. But up to six months
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of no fees by going to Betterment.com That’s Betterment.com.
Softbank to buy ARM
⏹️ ▶️ Marco P.P. Betterment, investing made better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What do you think about this?
⏹️ ▶️ John This is, I’m not so much interested in the details of like Arm or the history of Arm,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially, you know, like you can read a lot of stories about its origins with the Newton and
⏹️ ▶️ John where this whole effort came from and all that other business. I’m mostly interested in terms of
⏹️ ▶️ John thinking about how Apple implements its
⏹️ ▶️ John famous, we want to own and control the major technologies and I figure whatever that Tim Cook quote is like they
⏹️ ▶️ John want to own and control the technologies that go into their products, right? They do that selectively,
⏹️ ▶️ John like they do it according to their own definition.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I was thinking of an example, they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John own the companies that make the really tough glass that goes on top of iPhones, right? They don’t own Dow
⏹️ ▶️ John Corning or whoever makes like the Gorilla Glass or the variants or whatever. They don’t own
⏹️ ▶️ John Foxconn or the companies that assemble their products.
⏹️ ▶️ John Are those the core technologies or whatever the specific wording was used in that quote?
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess not, right? They do own the operating system. They do own
⏹️ ▶️ John the hardware designs and the whole product and all the other stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John But some parts of it they always consider to be like, oh, we’ll pay somebody else to do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John really matter that much because if we can’t get this glass from this company we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John try to get it from this other one or if this company won’t assemble our phones like we’ll pit suppliers against each other like they end up being just
⏹️ ▶️ John being a supplier so the question for arm arm which makes the doesn’t make the
⏹️ ▶️ John chips but arm which owns the intellectual property to the instruction set and some of the
⏹️ ▶️ John architectural details and many many patents and so on and so forth for the CPUs that are in all of Apple’s iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John devices is that just another supplier or is that something
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple needs to own and control? And the reason that comes up is again as far as I’m aware as we record this this deal
⏹️ ▶️ John is not finalized. Should Apple be concerned that some company that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not them and there’s not whoever you know the current arm people who are running arm
⏹️ ▶️ John is going to buy the company that I feel like not
⏹️ ▶️ John that they rely on but that is an integral part of their most important products.
⏹️ ▶️ John Should they care? Are they like, oh, well, whatever, you guys do whatever you want as long as you continue to give us the ARM
⏹️ ▶️ John architecture license that lets us essentially build and design our own CPUs with your
⏹️ ▶️ John intellectual property as core, we’re fine. I don’t care, really care who owns ARM. Or should they be like,
⏹️ ▶️ John someone get out the checkbook, we’ve got $32 billion between couch cushions, we should just outbid them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s hard to say without the details of the deal that they have with ARM, But this intellectual property is super,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey super important. I mean, this is what all the A-series chips run on, right? So,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m so torn. I would say it is not important for them to own ARM as long as they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have as close as they can get to an in-perpetuity license for whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey IP they currently have.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, and there’s also, if you look at what Apple buys and what they don’t buy, they tend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not to buy component manufacturers that also supply the entire rest of the computing industry
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with parts. So like, they don’t buy Intel, you don’t see them buying AMD or NVIDIA,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they don’t buy like a flash RAM manufacturer or attempt to buy Samsung because half the components come from Samsung. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there are lots of these, you know, component suppliers that that make all sorts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of, you know, parts that go in multiple kinds of computers or phones or whatever else, not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just Apple’s. And you could make an argument that Apple should maybe buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Intel or something like that. If we ever talk about the Mac lineup being so stale, again, this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco episode, because we talk about it in every episode because it’s a really big problem, you could look at that and be like, maybe Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should just buy Intel and run that company in their own interest. But there’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reason why they don’t. There’s lots of reasons why they don’t. First of all, Apple tends to not buy companies that large
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because they tend not to need to. I would imagine they have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some kind of deal with the ARM license that they have, because they have a special license to be able to do their own chip designs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with that. I don’t know the details of that. We’ll probably hear about it from our readers, but basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would imagine they have ways to not get locked out of that forever, so they don’t need to buy ARM. And if they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did ever try to buy one of these companies that also supplies the rest of the industry with major important parts,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like Intel or ARM, there would probably be regulatory issues with that. That would probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not be great for them with the Justice Department and with the FTC, maybe, or whoever does that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of regulatory management. There would be political problems with that. There might be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco justice problems, antitrust problems. So there’s lots of reasons for them not to buy these companies that also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco supply everybody else with stuff.
Possibility of ARM Macs
⏹️ ▶️ John What I think about is not so much who the companies supply but
⏹️ ▶️ John could Apple get that same thing from somewhere else and most things I can think of like Intel’s like oh you
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t get x86 CPUs anywhere else well you can you get them from AMD it’s not a lot of choices but there is at least
⏹️ ▶️ John one other choice out there for flash RAM other things like
⏹️ ▶️ John that even the glass stuff you could argue that no one has the specific
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of glass that they want except for Corning or whatever whatever, but like you can get glass from somewhere
⏹️ ▶️ John else. But because what arm supplies arm doesn’t make anything, what all
⏹️ ▶️ John arm supplies is intellectual property, a sense of licensing. Like they don’t, you know, they, they license out
⏹️ ▶️ John designs and the right to use this instruction set and all that stuff. I don’t think you can get that anywhere
⏹️ ▶️ John else. There is no alternate supplier for that. So if, for example, soft bank buys arm
⏹️ ▶️ John and slowly transitions the company away, not that they’re going to do this, but like decides that they’re, you know, arm is going to become
⏹️ ▶️ John a company that does augmented reality games where you collect monsters because it seems like a more lucrative future.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple can’t, I don’t think Apple, no matter what contracts they have, the best they could hope for is like you can continue
⏹️ ▶️ John to make chips according to the designs that you’ve already licensed but there will be no new designs and by the way
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t make your own designs without licensing these patents from us or without otherwise buying the intellectual
⏹️ ▶️ John property that underlies that. Because of the weird accidents of history that x86 and AMD
⏹️ ▶️ John being able to make x86 compatible chips. I don’t think there’s any equivalent for that arm. And I’m sure people will send
⏹️ ▶️ John it in, send us in corrections. If that’s not the case, I’m gonna follow up on the next show. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I keep thinking about it in terms of, uh, is there an alternate supplier?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like how, how important is armed apple and what are their alternatives? If something weird
⏹️ ▶️ John starts to happen there. And I also think about this and speaking of max, a lot of questions we’ve gotten about this with the
⏹️ ▶️ John arm deals, like, does this make it more or less likely that arms max are going to come out WWC like
⏹️ ▶️ John do any of these announcements indicate ARM Max? Why haven’t we already seen ARM Max? And me thinking about
⏹️ ▶️ John ARM Max for a while again and I thought like x86 Max again
⏹️ ▶️ John worst case scenario you have two suppliers that you could convince to make you x86
⏹️ ▶️ John CPUs. I guess if you have enough money anything’s possible you’re like all right well someone will
⏹️ ▶️ John license us the ability to make our own ARM chicks someone will license us the ability to make our own x86 Like we’ll just buy the intellectual
⏹️ ▶️ John property like we’re never stuck Because huge piles of money as I get out of jail free card
⏹️ ▶️ John So it doesn’t really matter what happens over there until there are problems. Don’t worry about it, but like for the arm
⏹️ ▶️ John max Mike Is it Apple spends a lot of money? Making
⏹️ ▶️ John the a you know I don’t say acts or whatever the the a followed by a digit System on a
⏹️ ▶️ John chip things that are in all their devices. They hired a lot of people they bought a lot of companies They do
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of work on their own their chips are not like oh We’ll just license a design from from
⏹️ ▶️ John arm and pay someone to manufacture it they do their own chip design their own integration It’s very expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John very complicated. It’s a part of Apple’s competitive advantage Is the Mac line which
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re about to talk about the the ongoing stagnation is the Mac line worth?
⏹️ ▶️ John doing an equal or possibly even greater investment in chip design to essentially
⏹️ ▶️ John do what Intel and AMD and Nvidia or whoever,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, all the parts that make up the parts that go into a Mac, they’re not simple parts. They’re complicated.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re higher performance things that go into phones. They are generally bigger. They have
⏹️ ▶️ John more transistors. If you are going to sign up, say we’re going to do our Macs because we can own and control the CPUs
⏹️ ▶️ John that go into them and we can make them just the way we want them. That is a big investment, probably equal
⏹️ ▶️ John to the investment they’re putting into the iPhone this amount of chips for a line of business that is nowhere near
⏹️ ▶️ John the size of the iOS line. So maybe the thing that’s keeping our Macs away is not that Apple would like
⏹️ ▶️ John to get away from Intel who’s doing their products and it’s kind of annoying, but just because it would cost so much money for Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John to make a like we spent a lot of pressure was talking about can Apple make a an arm trip that’s competitive
⏹️ ▶️ John Intel? Yeah, maybe but it will cost a lot of money. It’s not easy to do that. What Intel does
⏹️ ▶️ John is not simple. And I’m not quite sure that Apple thinks the Mac hardware line
⏹️ ▶️ John is worth it, is worth the investment.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I mean, you could also argue that like things with Intel aren’t bad enough yet, you know, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and yeah, this is going to bleed into our next topic a lot. But, you know, you if in order for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for app for Apple to switch from power PC to Intel, things had to get pretty bad with power
⏹️ ▶️ Marco PC for a while. And Intel was way better. Like it, there had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be this massive delta between the status quo of them using PowerPC and really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco having a problematic roadmap and pretty bad neglect and becoming very much uncompetitive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the other side, and then having the other side, being Intel, be really compelling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and have very few downsides to switching to it, and just these massive upsides. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right now, if you look at what they have with Intel versus what a possible future with Arm Max would be,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think the Delta between those two is nearly as large as it used to be you know between between power PC and Intel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Delta now is like well Intel yeah Intel is really slow to make new chips but their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chips that they do release mostly are really good like they their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco occasional problems but for the most part like they are very competitive that’s one of the reasons why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple doesn’t use AMD CPUs as you know they could use whatever a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco BCP even called these days. Are they still Optrons and stuff? I don’t even know. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AMD CPUs aren’t very competitive with Intel CPUs and haven’t been for some time in most markets that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would ship computers in. Intel CPUs are just really good. Yeah, they have dramatically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slowed down their rate of improvement and new releases and all these new releases always keep getting delayed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything, but they still use them because for the most part, they’re really good. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using all these proven platforms. As John said, all the parts that go into a full computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, yeah, they do some degree of it on the phones and on the A series, System on a Chip’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there, but computers have all these different ports and standards they have to do and everything. On a phone,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple can’t delete ports fast enough. Like, they’re just, oh yeah, we started out with two, we’re gonna have one now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, oh, and it’ll be ours that we design. Like, computers have to have four USB ports and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have all these video out standards and all this. Computers have to have, I mean, well, most computers. I guess the MacBook One
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t, but most computers, You have to have all these standards that the computing industry uses. You have to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all these disk interfaces and I.O. interfaces and all this stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you don’t really have to think about much when you’re just designing iPhones and iPads because they don’t use them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or they don’t need to interoperate with most of these devices. So there’s all this stuff that a computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needs and all this competitiveness that Intel offers that the difference
⏹️ ▶️ Marco between Intel now having a slow release cycle but providing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quite a lot when they do finally release it, versus what you’d have to do to build up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an entire computer line using ARM CPUs. The amount of work
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the other side is so tremendous, and the gain probably wouldn’t be that big.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and on top of that, I feel like Apple and Intel have at least an okay relationship,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right? Because it wasn’t that long ago that I think it was the first MacBook Air, Intel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey created this completely one-off chip, the CPU, for the MacBook Air. Am I crazy in thinking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that? Do you remember this?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it was a one-off packaging. They didn’t create a whole custom chip
⏹️ ▶️ Marco design, but they created a custom socket and package for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chip to make the whole socket small.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sure, I still count it. My point is just that they were able to ask Intel or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tell Intel, whatever the situation may be, hey, we need this thing completely customed to us. We’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cool, right? And turns out they’re cool. And Intel did it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everyone was happy except the people who bought that MacBook Air because it was a total turd. Hi, Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. I think this, the question is, as we’ve been dancing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey around, is this hardware stagnation that we really need to talk about again,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because we do need to talk about it, is this hardware stagnation really Intel’s fault or is it Apple’s fault?
⏹️ ▶️ John Before we move on to that, a few more points on ARM versus Intel. like we’ve talked before about like the performance
⏹️ ▶️ John delta and how it needs to be big enough to be worthwhile. And then in past conversations also brought up this point, which I’ll bring up again, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is really, it’s not about the performance delta. The reason Apple will be doing it before is for increased control.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I think the real question to ask, other than the cost thing, which I just brought up, um, for arm versus Intel
⏹️ ▶️ John is how much more control does moving max arm give Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John than it currently has with Intel. And as Casey just pointed out, it’s a pretty high bar because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, well, if Apple did their own chips, they could control everything. And they would control the schedule, they control the features, they
⏹️ ▶️ John would control everything that they possibly do. But it seemed like for the past many years, Apple controls an
⏹️ ▶️ John awful lot about what Intel does in terms of, I don’t know, forcing them, but really strongly
⏹️ ▶️ John suggesting that they improve the embedded GPUs in their CPUs and making like this, this whole
⏹️ ▶️ John line of products, the ones that Apple buys with the Iris graphics and everything, that whole product line just smells like
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple saying Intel for the next several generations of chips. Here’s what we want out of your chips. And then Intel
⏹️ ▶️ John essentially doing it because Apple is, I would imagine the biggest and in some cases perhaps
⏹️ ▶️ John the only customer for these weird chips because all the cheaper, uh, x 86 windows
⏹️ ▶️ John laptop type things or whatever, just like, well, maybe we’ll have a top of the line thing, but our bread and butter will be those
⏹️ ▶️ John middle of the road ones, which is another reason that Apple has to wait a lot. So certainly Apple would have more control
⏹️ ▶️ John with arm, uh, But it would cost them a ton of money to make ARM chips for the Mac and Intel
⏹️ ▶️ John thus far seems pretty willing to do Essentially whatever Apple wants with the chips is just a question of delivery
⏹️ ▶️ John and Apple could say well The increased control we would have is even though Intel is pretty nice to us and we have a good relationship
⏹️ ▶️ John And they’re pretty much willing to do the kinds of things we asked for They take a long time and sometimes they screw
⏹️ ▶️ John up and we feel like if we did it ourselves We would do a better job. And the
⏹️ ▶️ John second aspect of this is like for the performance delta and waiting for things to catch up.
⏹️ ▶️ John Another possible strategy, again, possibly mentioned on past shows is, you don’t have to worry about it costing
⏹️ ▶️ John so much money to make an ARM chip for your Mac. All you gotta do is wait until the iPad Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John is faster than all the existing Macs, and then
⏹️ ▶️ John use that chip that you’ve already made for your bread and butter iOS devices, use that in Macs
⏹️ ▶️ John too. Because at that point, if those lines ever cross, and it’s like, well, and
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re getting close, like the top end iPad Pro and the bottom end MacBook, we looked at those numbers
⏹️ ▶️ John in the past, like eventually, if the rate
⏹️ ▶️ John of change keeps going the way they are, and the system on a chips that are in
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS devices keep adding more power with a similar power envelope, assuming battery
⏹️ ▶️ John technology is only increasing like five or 10% per year or whatever, and that the Mac ones,
⏹️ ▶️ John their rate of performance increase is not going up that fast, those lines can end up
⏹️ ▶️ John crossing. And it’s like, oh, finally, we don’t have to do some weird extra investment to end up with ARM chips that we can
⏹️ ▶️ John use in our laptop Macs. We already do that investment for our phones and iPads and whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s kind of the same way that the iPads have these chips. Like the only reason they have those chips is because they need them for the phones. Because certainly the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John is not making the iPhone kind of money. So the rising tide of the iPhone, it’s like anything developed
⏹️ ▶️ John for the iPhone that is possibly useful elsewhere, even if slightly modified, you get
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of bang for the buck by reusing that huge investment.
Sponsor: TrackR
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tracker makes losing things a thing of the past. Go to thetracker.com right now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and use code ATP for 30% off your entire order. So the tracker
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, or just tracker, is this little like disc thing. And when I saw these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things, I was amazed how small it is. It’s this little coin-sized device and you can attach
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it to keys, wallets, bags, computers, anything, any kind of object that you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might lose around the house often. you can just attach it to it, you connect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it to your smartphone, and then you can find the location of the object that you attach the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tracker to with the tap of a button on the phone. It’s very, very easy. And it goes the other way too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you find the tracker object and you can’t find your phone, you can push the button on the tracker
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and your phone will make a noise to let you find it, even if your phone’s on silent. Now, this is a really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cool device. You will never lose anything again. You can, again, attach the tracker to so many different objects,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know keys and wallets are like the obvious one you know bag computers if you like lose your your your backpacker
⏹️ ▶️ Marco briefcase or whatever that you mean you turn around the door there are so many reasons to have this or if you just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco misplace your phone all the time you don’t want to have an apple watch you know you have a have a tracker in the house
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and just hit the button your phone beeps so easy they’ve sold over 1.5 million
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of these things so far they have the largest crowd GPS network in the world so your lost item
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can even show up on a map even if it’s miles away. So never lose anything again
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with Tracker. The hardest thing you’ll ever have to find is really just their website. Once you find the website everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else is fine because the website is the tracker.com even the products called tracker. Good thing is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can spell tracker either way. The product name does not have the E because it’s cool and it’s on the internet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but if you spell it with the E or without the E in tracker either way the domain works. So go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to thetracker.com and enter promo code
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ATP for 30% off your entire order. Once again, it’s thetracker.com
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right now. promo code ATP for 30% off your order.
The ancient Mac lineup
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks a lot to Tracker for sponsoring our show. Never lose anything again.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So MacRumors has a really lovely buyer’s guide where they go through the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hardware and all the different hardware lines, product lines, and they say, hey, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably shouldn’t get this right now because they’re probably going to release, Apple’s probably going to release a new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one soon. And so, you know, coming up on the fall, as we are,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the iPhone, for example, is labeled as caution. The iPad Pro, neutral. Yeah, it’s probably okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We should clarify, this is based on actual, like, data from past generations.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The MacRumors Buying Guide has been running. You know how, like, in whatever, like, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco biggest, like, well-known, oldest steak restaurant in your town, and people say, oh, that place is an institution.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Mac Rumor’s Buying Guide is an institution in the Mac nerdery.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John All right, noobs. All right. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey a smart man. Yes. How would you like to correct us? Let me tell you about Macintouch, okay?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so this is based on just like they look at how often these products are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco updated and so they know, okay, well, the MacBook Pro, say, is updated on average every 400
⏹️ ▶️ Marco days or whatever it is. They look back in history and they know for every product line,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what is the average interval between updates? And that’s how they can tell you with a reasonable degree
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of approximate surety that, okay, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Mac Mini is usually updated every, what is it, like 800 days or whatever?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t even know what the average is for the Mac Mini. And it’s been 700 days since the last one, so you probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shouldn’t buy one now. It’s that kind of thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, the average for the Mac Mini 438 days. We are currently running at 643. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s lower than I would have guessed, honestly. Also, this website, this web page, by the way, which I encourage everyone
⏹️ ▶️ John to go to, let me put it in the notes, must be the most infuriating
⏹️ ▶️ John web page to like Apple executives and probably Phil Schiller in particular, because
⏹️ ▶️ John at the top of this page, especially when you hit like the Mac tab, which we’ll give you the link to, it shows the picture of all
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s current Mac products, the name of them, and underneath it, like you said, they have these things like, oh, you should buy,
⏹️ ▶️ John neutral, or don’t buy. And the Mac thing shows their products right next to it with a red button that says, don’t buy,
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t buy, don’t buy. This is exactly the opposite message that Apple wants anywhere on the internet.
⏹️ ▶️ John All of its products are arrayed in a big line with red things that say, don’t buy. Can you imagine
⏹️ ▶️ John a more sort of like viscerally upsetting webpage to people whose job it is to
⏹️ ▶️ John sell Macs? And I guess you got the green one on the MacBook that says, buy now. But it’s just, it’s such a weird
⏹️ ▶️ John thing to see Apple’s product photography next to huge red
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco buttons that say don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John harsh, but harsh, but fair.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s a good time for the Mac bone. So there’s that. Yeah, this is really sad. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everything, everything except the MacBook one, the Air, the Pro, the MacBook Pro, the Retina MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro, God, I forgot that there’s a distinction there. The iMac, the Mac Mini, the Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 945 days since the last release, December, 2013. Oh, and you guys were so excited.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Remember those days? Anyway, all of this says don’t buy and it’s getting,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. It’s getting a little bit ridiculous, right? On the one side, it, why
⏹️ ▶️ Casey does one need a brand new computer? Like let’s suppose that the, the CPU
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was modern, which it’s not really these days, but I mean, the industrial design
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s, it’s this unibody setup has been around for a few years, like Stephen Hackett’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey video review of the kind of history of modern Apple laptops goes through
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this. And they don’t look that different than they’ve ever used to. They’ve, you know, upgraded the internals, made it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a little thinner, you know, improved battery life actually. It wouldn’t be nice to get that on the iOS side.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But what do you really need from a brand new computer? Like if it wasn’t for the fact that these
⏹️ ▶️ Casey chips are all getting a little bit long in the tooth, I don’t think this would be that egregious. I’m not looking for a brand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new form factor in my work MacBook Pro. Now remind me of that when they do something amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I must have it, but. In like two months. Yeah, exactly. But, but I tell you what, man, this,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is sad times and it’s just, it’s gotten to the point, I mean, looking at these
⏹️ ▶️ Casey numbers, 281 days, 428 days, 499 days, 643 days, 945 days, like these we’re measuring in years, it’s unreal.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like what are they doing? How is this okay?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, to some degree this isn’t just like Santa Claus, like, you know, Santa Apple, we just deserve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new things because it’s time. You know, there has to be something that they update the internals to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so you have to, again, look at that supply chain, look at Intel especially, because that’s where a lot of this is based. You have to say, all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right, well, is there something else that they could be updating to that they’re just not? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple doesn’t just arbitrarily decide, And you know what, next month we’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco give them a MacBook Pro update. It’s based on the schedules of the components that go into it and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what they could update the components to. In recent years, Intel has had a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of problems and delays getting their new stuff out. And so much of this is based on that. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ve talked about this before, so I’m going to try not to repeat too much ground here. So a lot of these things are just,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the newest Intel chips are what’s holding this up and they aren’t available yet, or they’re not available in quantity yet,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or the ones that Apple would use aren’t available even though the rest of the family might be. And that’s the case with a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of these. The products that tend to sell in very high volumes, the new MacBook,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Retina MacBook Pro, and the iMac, tend to be kept up to date fairly responsibly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If Intel has released a new generation of CPUs that is the the appropriate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco size and cost and heat and power needs for these certain lines,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple tends to update to them in a reasonable amount of time. So, you know, if you’re buying like an iMac,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, the iMac has not been neglected at all. The iMac has really been very solidly updated,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think for a long time now. It’s been pretty competitive. The MacBook Pro usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has been. We’ve had some problems recently, but usually has been. And again, those problems are often Intel’s fault.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Where it really becomes a problem is when Apple gets neglectful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the lines that are more specialized, that presumably don’t sell in very high volumes. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things like the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro. And it also becomes a problem on the lines that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple is kind of slowly phasing out because they’ve made better lines. That includes things like the MacBook Air
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the non-Retina MacBook Pro. In these kind of areas, Apple doesn’t use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every generation of new stuff that becomes available from Intel. This is what I think frustrates a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people is in the case of the Mac Pro, which is one of the more egregious examples of this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new Xeons that are appropriate for use in the Mac Pro only come out about every 18 months.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The problem comes that if Apple decides to skip a generation of those, if a new generation of Xeons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco comes out, and Apple decides for whatever reason, you know, it’s not worth us updating the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro to this new generation. Not only has it probably already been like 18 months since the last update,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but now they’re signing themselves up for another 18 months with no update, basically. And it could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be longer if there’s any delay on Intel’s side, which again has been happening with increasing frequency in recent years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When they choose to just say, you know, it’s not worth updating to this, that is really a position of hubris
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and of arrogance and neglect of these products. And that is what irritates me about it. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, if Intel has a problem and it holds up the release of something that has the last generation chips in it, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iMac, it doesn’t really bother me as much because I know it’s not really Apple’s fault. But when it comes to things like the Mac mini and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Mac Pro, where Apple could be updating these things. There were chips they could have used and they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just skipped them because they just don’t care. That is infuriating and it really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shows a level of disdain for your customers. It takes a certain degree of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shamelessness and of arrogance and hubris to be still selling the same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac Pro today. If you walk into the Apple Store, you can still buy the same Mac Pro today that you could order
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in December of 2013. The price is exactly the same, the configurations are exactly the same,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there have been no new options for this this computer that you said we’re you know we’re betting the future on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco high GPU power and then we’re not gonna update the GPUs for three
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years or make them upgradeable aftermarket
⏹️ ▶️ John you finally got to my pet issue you keep saying oh there’s no new CPUs who cares about CPU there are new GPUs
⏹️ ▶️ John every single year there are new GPUs so if you’re like well you would update it but there’s no new Intel
⏹️ ▶️ John CPUs first of all you can upgrade it to higher clock speeds even there’s no CPU designs maybe it’s easier
⏹️ ▶️ John to get the guns that have been for our clock speed. Second of all, every year, almost every year, you can upgrade
⏹️ ▶️ John GPUs. But that doesn’t even count. Like, it’s not even a consideration. And like, you’re right, it’s the most absurd on the
⏹️ ▶️ John GPU festooned Mac Pro machine. But I think it’s also absurd on just
⏹️ ▶️ John every other line of computers. Like, even if there is absolutely no new CPU, either lower the price
⏹️ ▶️ John or put a new GPU in it or update the chipset from, you know, in the olden days, USB 2 to 3 or 3 to 3.1 or
⏹️ ▶️ John like, there are things that you can do. I mean, if you want to see the things that you can you do? What can you do to update a computer
⏹️ ▶️ John that often? Just look at every single PC manufacturer. They always find some way to bump the specs little by
⏹️ ▶️ John little. I’m not saying Apple should do it like what Dell does, but the idea that there’s nothing you can improve
⏹️ ▶️ John in the hardware if Intel doesn’t release a brand new CPU design, either a shrink or a new architecture, I don’t I don’t even
⏹️ ▶️ John buy that. But I’m willing to say, I’m willing to accept that cadence if the CPU cadence
⏹️ ▶️ John is reasonable. But once the CPU cadence starts going on 18 months, like I said for the Mac Pro, not only should you not
⏹️ ▶️ John skip generations, you shouldn’t even wait for the next generation to give it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bumps. Exactly, and especially for a machine where you’re going to say, this is all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about GPU power and you’re going to design it to always have two GPUs. You’re not even going to allow people to buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one GPU and you’re going to put in these half covered on asterisk workstation class GPUs on them,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then to not update the GPUs for three years and still be selling them at the same price, and to not make them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco upgradeable. If you’re really going to say the Mac Pro is all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about GPU power, they have to be upgradable aftermarket, period.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if for some reason you really insist on making them not upgradable, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to be updating them on a regular basis. Every 9-12 months, there has to be a GPU, because that’s what’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco competitive in the GPU world. And for that not to be happening on the Mac Pro, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Phil Schiller stood up there and told us about his ass innovation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Can’t innovate anymore my ass.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now there’s just been nothing. It’s embarrassing. And it really, again, I can’t understate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how much this, it looks like Apple is just giving a middle finger to its customers on these things. If
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re a Mac Pro buyer, if you’re a Mac Mini buyer, if you’re a MacBook Air buyer, Apple is just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco giving us the giant finger on these things for the last few years. And the Mac Mini is, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I mentioned last episode, the Mac Mini is also especially bad because the previous update,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which itself was very late, in many ways made the product So like if you actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco measure by days since the Mac Mini has gotten universally better, it’s a much longer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco number. But you know it really is a problem here and and John I think you’re right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They have to find ways that they can update the computers without waiting for Intel if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re going to be skipping generations and honestly they have to just stop skipping generations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because you know the Mac Mini you know yeah it’s a low-end computer for them but it isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a low-end computer for the people who buy it. It’s like a thousand dollars at least for a well-configured one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Generally, if you’re buying the Mac Mini, unless you have some kind of like special, you know, role for it, like buying it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be a server or something else, but if you’re buying it to be your Mac, that is a low-end Mac, you’re probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buying it because you need that value, you know, that the money matters a lot to you and you’re kind of stretching
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to buy it. To have the customer experience of wanting to get into a Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and just barely being able to afford one and having to choose the Mac Mini or wanting to choose the Mac Mini for your needs, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then to have this neglected, insulting machine be the one that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple will sell you, that is not a way to get more people to buy Macs. That is not a way to get people to be happy about buying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Macs. That’s going to hurt customer sat, Tim’s wonderful customer sat. It’s a position of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco arrogance that plays into all the negative stereotypes about Apple that people have had since the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 90s that we keep trying to convince the world, as Mac owners, no, it’s not like that, these really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are great computers, they’re great values, they’re not overpriced. Apple’s not helping us at all here because they’re showing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this incredible neglect and selling these ancient computers that they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could have updated. Like, again, I’m not talking about the ones where they’re waiting on Intel. I’m talking about the ones that they’ve skipped generations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forever. They just, they have to stop skipping these generations for every product line. Because you know what?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If it isn’t worth updating the Mac Pro for a Xeon generation that comes out every 18 months,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is like a $3,000 plus computer, if it isn’t worth updating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, then discontinue the thing. You know, like, don’t even sell computers that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you are not willing to maintain to a basic level of maintenance here. That is just insulting. And,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by the way, one more quick thing before I forget. Right now, there’s a whole bunch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of very high-end buyers that are building high-end computers with lots of GPU
⏹️ ▶️ Marco power because they want to use VR. When was the last time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that people really wanted to buy, in large numbers, Very high-end desktop computers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with lots of GPU power. I mean, yes, there’s always been PC gamers, but that’s always been a pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco narrow market relative to the entire PC market as a whole. Right now, there is a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco surge of people who want to buy high-end desktop class hardware and big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco GPUs, and Apple is completely missing out on this. Some of those people might
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have bought Mac Pros if they were competitive, but they’re not. Apple’s totally missing out on this wave of people buying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco high-end stuff, and yeah, Their numbers might not be very big, but they’re very, very profitable. This market is extremely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco profitable. And Apple’s just completely blowing it. They have blown this opportunity that only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco comes around maybe every 10 years, or there’s a lot of people who actually need high-end hardware. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, for years we keep saying, oh, well, I can get away just fine with my four-year-old
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 13-inch MacBook Pro, because most needs on your computer are pretty basic these days
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with modern hardware. VR needs every bit of power it can get. And again, these opportunities don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco come very often in the market where people actually need high-end hardware and are willing to buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it in substantial numbers, and Apple just missed it. Because they just don’t care,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s really unfortunate. And it pains me, as a fan of this company, and as a fan of high-end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardware, it really pains me to see the level of neglect and arrogance here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Apple has shown its pro customers, and all of its customers, honestly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So let’s assume for a second, I know you’ve talked a lot about how a lot of these
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are not Intel’s fault and I agree with you there, but let’s assume for a second that some of these
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are. Don’t you think, let me change
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how I phrase that, isn’t there a way that Apple could kind of hint subversively, could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of do one of their people familiar with the matter told Wall Street Journal that this is all Intel’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fault. Like, why has, why isn’t Apple someway somehow blamed Intel for this?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Even quietly, if that makes any sense.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s not something that Apple does. It’s not an Apple move in general. Like if they have problems with suppliers, which they have
⏹️ ▶️ John all the time, they find alternate suppliers, but they don’t, they’re not going to throw their suppliers under the bus. They don’t even want us to know the suppliers
⏹️ ▶️ John exist. And yes, we all know Intel exists, but I, if it was Steve Jobs, maybe,
⏹️ ▶️ John and especially if they had a new supplier lined up, like as soon as they switched to Intel then it was all about throw PowerPC,
⏹️ ▶️ John IBM under the bus. But right up until that point it was like IBM,
⏹️ ▶️ John G5, everything is great and you know they’re going to have it in 3 GHz in 12
⏹️ ▶️ John months or whatever that promise was that he made on stage and it never happened. I really don’t think it’s an Apple style
⏹️ ▶️ John move to shift the blame. Apple accepts responsibility. They’re the ones that
⏹️ ▶️ John control their product lines. they’re not going to blame a manufacturer. Even like, remember whatever that quartz plants
⏹️ ▶️ John was that was supposed to make them quartz things for some reason and that whole thing imploded and
⏹️ ▶️ John went bankrupt or whatever? Sapphire. Yeah, or sapphire, whatever. That happened
⏹️ ▶️ John and we know about it because it was public news, but it’s not as if Apple is putting out, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not an Apple move to put out a press release that blames other companies for Apple’s failure to deliver its products.
⏹️ ▶️ John The closest you’ll get is thoughts on Flash, where it’s like, well, we
⏹️ ▶️ John ship products, like this isn’t stopping us from shipping a product or changing our products, but we think this technology is
⏹️ ▶️ John crappy for everybody. I think that’s the closest I’ve seen in the modern Apple era.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And also, Apple is not going to want to admit in any kind of public way,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even if it’s through unofficial channels like that, they’re not going to even suggest the possibility
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the Mac line is old and stale and it’s a problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, that’s a good point. They don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have those status bars on their website. Hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco how long has this been? And that’s the worst.
⏹️ ▶️ John We know it’s a smart move, it’s an Apple move to not drop the price on your products because it’s all about perceived value.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not dropping the price for the whole year, that’s what separates Apple from Dell. Dell, if they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John making the same thing and there are cost of goods savings, they will lower the price to get more enterprise sales and whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John blah, blah, blah, and Apple won’t. Not dropping the price for three years is like, who are you kidding?
⏹️ ▶️ John That stops being we’re preserving value and it starts being just like Marco said, punitive to your customers
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re not fooling anybody. No one who knows anything thinks that 2013 Mac Pro that they’re still
⏹️ ▶️ John selling for the same price is worth anything close to that price. It is ridiculous.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m very curious to see what happens this fall because all signs are pointing to this fall being when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they write these wrongs. I cannot, I can’t imagine the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey complete meltdown that all of us are going to have. I would say the pundits, but I think we will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all melt down. The three of us will. If there’s either nothing new or extremely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey underwhelming things this fall. On the flip side, is all forgiven
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if something at least moderately exciting happens this fall? I mean, we all have very, very short
⏹️ ▶️ Casey memories and even shorter attention spans. If they do this fancy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey function row OLED screen thing that was talked about a couple of months back
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or something else that’s new and fancy, are they forgiven? Is that it? We’re done? We’re good here?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it depends on the product line that they do it to and whether that’s the one you’ve been waiting for as a customer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or not. By making a major upgrade to the MacBook Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s good. They should be doing that. MacBook Pro is probably one of their most commonly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco selling models. Certainly it’s probably their highest profile model or the most common model
⏹️ ▶️ Marco among high profile buyers. The MacBook Pro is a very important product and that’s great and they should be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on that. They really should. But if you’re one of the people who’s been sitting around waiting for a Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or Mac Mini or MacBook Air update, then that’s not going to be very satisfying to you because it’s like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay, that’s nice. MacBook Air maybe not as much because the new one is probably going to be closer to to it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in size and weight, but if you’re a desktop user, you’re sitting around waiting for a Mac Mini or a Mac Pro, whether
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they update the MacBook Pro or not is not incredibly relevant to you and how happy you are with the lineup.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And by the way, I would expect neither a Mac Mini nor a Mac Pro this fall. Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mini simply because they don’t care, they hate their customers. Mac Pro because it’s falling inconveniently between
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Broadwell E and Skylake E, and I think they’ve waited this long, they’re probably gonna go straight to Skylake, which is not a bad plan.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If there’s not a Mac Pro out now, like with broad well e then you might as well wait for sky
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you because it’s a major upgrade and you already missed the broad well wave and you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what they what they should be doing is releasing them every generation but if if you’re gonna if you find yourself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in in you know late 2016 and you still haven’t made a Mac Pro update don’t make one now with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco broad well make one with sky like
⏹️ ▶️ John I wouldn’t give that advice was like a talk about what case you’re saying like it’s all forgiven I think it’s all more about regaining trust and what would
⏹️ ▶️ John what make you know what would bring some trust back is not just saying oh hey, we finally updated
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac books because you know, they’re going to write
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s going to be good and people are going to buy a lot of them and you know, everyone’s gonna be happy. You know, they’re going to do that. But that doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John regain any trust because what you’re looking for is a new pattern or behavior
⏹️ ▶️ John not merely Oh, we didn’t update these computers for a long time and everyone was sad. But hey, here’s a new update. Everything’s great.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, what you want to see is a new update, followed by another new timely update,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe followed by another one, and then you would have your faith restored. And to restore faith in something in the Mac Pro situation,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think what you’d have to do is, at the very least, put out a new Mac Pro with the same CPUs,
⏹️ ▶️ John but better GPUs, or put out a Broadwell eMac Pro that you already spent time developing internally,
⏹️ ▶️ John even though you know you’re gonna replace it with a Skylake and also in the Broadwell eOne have new GPUs. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa, that’s such a big change. You can regain that trust as quickly as possible by saying Broadwell
⏹️ ▶️ John MacBook, Broadwell Mac Pro with new GPUs, Skylake Mac Pro with new GPUs. Those
⏹️ ▶️ John two releases would be like, oh, hey, I guess Apple’s updating this computer again and now it’s safe to buy and it’s no longer embarrassing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s such a turn from their current thing of like skip a generation, maybe skip one
⏹️ ▶️ John more because by this point, the new ones are gonna come out. It’s like, you can always say, it’s like, we’ve waited so long. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco a good point.
⏹️ ▶️ John The new ones are gonna come out too. And it’s like, well, the Skylake ones, we’re not really ready to do that now. Let’s work on those.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then you’re working on the Skylake one. It’s like, well, maybe wait another year for Thunderbolt 4 to come out. It’s like, you can always wait.
⏹️ ▶️ John You have to release new versions of the product. And the way to regain trust is to
⏹️ ▶️ John show a new pattern of behavior and one data point does not make a line. You need to have multiple data
⏹️ ▶️ John points to say, not only have they revised this computer again, but because if you were to tell them, new
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pros are gonna come out at the beginning of next year and there won’t be another new Mac Pro for three years, would you invest
⏹️ ▶️ John in this line of computers? It’s like, I don’t want that cadence. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John like that. Even if I buy all my computers now, like if I get a new employee in a year, Do I have to
⏹️ ▶️ John buy them a year old Mac Pro? If I get a new employee in two years, do I have to buy them a two year old Mac Pro? Like the three year
⏹️ ▶️ John cadence is not acceptable. So they have to establish a new pattern of behavior. And the way to most quickly establish
⏹️ ▶️ John a new pattern of behavior is rapid fire releases. And for the Mac Pro, it’s right in front of them. New GPUs, Broadwell,
⏹️ ▶️ John then Skylake, and new GPUs and all those things. You could do three new revisions of the Mac Pro between
⏹️ ▶️ John now and the Skylake one. And that would go a long way to show, I mean, that’s kind of ridiculous, but that would go a long way, although Dell
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco to showing that you are
⏹️ ▶️ John dedicated to this product line again. And for the other ones, because they are kind of like on an annual
⏹️ ▶️ John cycle, like the Mac mini has never had the trust. So you’re not losing the trust there other than the crappy revision
⏹️ ▶️ John that took away the cores, right? But it was never really there. But for the Mac books and stuff, it’s like, really?
⏹️ ▶️ John That your laptops, those are your most portable Macs. And even those are getting long in the tooth. This
⏹️ ▶️ John is not a good look. So I wish they showed on that page not just the gaps and everything, but like
⏹️ ▶️ John a graph so where you could see that they were kind of in a steady kind of pattern, then here’s this new aberration
⏹️ ▶️ John from the pattern. And you have to restore that pattern to restore the faith in the product
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Well, if you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey scroll down to each of the individual details, it shows recent releases, and there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey individual bar charts for each release. So you can get a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sort of hint as to what the normal is. So you can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see for the iMac, for example, The May 2011 update was 577 days since the prior one,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but every other one looks like it was about 200 to 300 days. Do you see what I mean? So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can get a rough
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just by looking at these graphs. Yeah, and a lot of these, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s kind of sad how much seemed to stop in 2012. This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco makes me so sad. Honestly, I know it’s kind of improper
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talk this simply and broadly, but it looks like Tim Cook just doesn’t like the Mac very much.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I hope that’s not it. I hope that’s not the reason for all this, and I hope that’s not true. But that’s how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it looks. It looks like Tim Cook doesn’t care about the Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ John He does use an iPad to do his work. I know! The iPad is the future of computing. Not as
⏹️ ▶️ John if that’s what he’s making decisions based on, or even that’s his decision. If he was making decisions based on this, it
⏹️ ▶️ John would be purely based on how much money they cost to developers, how much money they bring in for the company, and how much potential future revenue
⏹️ ▶️ John and blah blah blah I really don’t think he’s making decisions based on what computers he likes because that just doesn’t seem like his role in the company
⏹️ ▶️ John but bottom line number stuff was his bag before he became CEO and I
⏹️ ▶️ John would imagine that it you know any influence he does have in this would be related to that but
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m I more more likely these decisions are made down at a level below him and he just gives an okay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah but but it is it is kind of like the Tim cook away to just keep old stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around, just keep selling it, you know, because that still makes good enough money. And that’s how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the whole Mac lineup looks right now. And again, some of these families, that’s Intel’s fault,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but a lot of them it’s not. It looks like Apple has made the calculus to say, you know, we don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really need to update the Mac very often. They still sell anyway. And so we just won’t. We’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just let it sit there.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but he knows that’s not true. Like this, this last quarter of Mac sales was dismal and he knew that was happening before it was happening. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John this is, this is, uh, it’s like, that’s not true. He knows it’s not true. Yeah. I was like,
⏹️ ▶️ John they know the numbers before they announce it. And it’s us that that’s the whole thing is they do projections. They have estimations. They see they’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John going to hit their numbers. We find out in the earnings calls where they know well before that. And that is the point where maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John they have strategic planning or replanning meetings and saying, look, we’re not going to even come close to hitting our expected
⏹️ ▶️ John numbers for Max. It’s going to look bad. What do we want to do? And that’s where they say, can this product line revise
⏹️ ▶️ John this one, move this project up, add more funding to that, I don’t know. I’m fantasizing about how things are done inside Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the idea that anyone
⏹️ ▶️ John in the company thinks that you can just neglect these lines and nothing will happen, we all know that’s not true by now, and Apple knew it way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Do you think they knew it 18 months ago when they decided to skip a generation of these various CPUs and
⏹️ ▶️ John The lead time is so huge that, yeah, it’s a trailing indicator, or
⏹️ ▶️ John whether I’m using it right I think where you find out long after the decisions that led to it have been made
⏹️ ▶️ John and the new decisions you make now aren’t going to manifest for a while so that’s just the nature of
⏹️ ▶️ John the beast here but yeah I mean I guess about regaining trust
⏹️ ▶️ John we know that even if they made the decision a year ago we’re not going to see the results of those decisions for a long
⏹️ ▶️ John time so now we just sit back and wait and you know show us with your actions that you know which
⏹️ ▶️ John product lines you care about which ones are quote-unquote safe to buy, safe to invest in.
⏹️ ▶️ John For individual users, this is less important, because for individual users, it’s like you just buy as soon as they’re revised. Like you wait a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ John to make sure they’re not lemons and there’s no systemic problems with the things, and then you buy it. As far
⏹️ ▶️ John as an individual is concerned, you’re fine as long as when you decide to buy a new computer,
⏹️ ▶️ John there actually is a new one for you to buy that is different than the one you already bought. But for institutions or people
⏹️ ▶️ John that buy a lot of them, like I said, with a company with a bunch of people doing like Maya on their Mac Pros
⏹️ ▶️ John and they staff up for a big project, they have an occasion to
⏹️ ▶️ John buy new computers and they will be sad if they’re buying the same computers they bought a year or two years or
⏹️ ▶️ John three years ago for the same price. It just doesn’t seem right technologically speaking. It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, well, you know, it’s been three years since I bought my computer. You new employee will have such
⏹️ ▶️ John a fancy computer. It will be great. Like we can’t afford to revise all of our computers every year, but when we bring in new employees, they get a new
⏹️ ▶️ John one. Oh, you got the same as that computer I did. That’s great.
Sponsor: Indochino (code ATP)
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for any premium suit, for just $3.99 and free shipping. Indochino,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your look, your way. Now Indochino makes made-to-measure suits available to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco masses and affordable to the masses. Last time I had to buy a suit, I went to a big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chain suit store that you probably all have heard of, and I just went in and I talked to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some salesperson for a few minutes and I walked out with a suit. There was no tailoring,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there was no made-to-measure, no custom-making, anything like that, because I didn’t have that much money. I only could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dedicate a few hundred dollars to this at this point in my life and that’s it and I haven’t really had one made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco since then. You know, I always have to assume made-to-order suits are a thing that only fancy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people get. Well Indochino sells made-to-order suits
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for less money than what I paid at that big retailer. I think I paid something like five or six hundred
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dollars for that mediocre suit I got there. Indochino sells you one-of-a-kind made-to-measure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco suits customized with details that you want, own lining choice, your lapels,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can get a personal monogram and more. 14 unique measurements go into making
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this suit that fits you perfectly. It is the best suit you will ever own, made to measure specifically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for you. It’s so important to get suits that fit you right, because when they don’t fit you right,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they don’t look good. You don’t look good in them. They look all sloppy or baggy in weird areas or tight in weird areas.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It just doesn’t look right. When you look good in a made-to-order suit, you feel more confident,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you have this great one-of-a-kind suit that fits you perfectly. 100% merino wool for these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco suits and they also have dress shirts and men’s accessories and a money-back guarantee if you don’t like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Now, on the price. That suit I bought at the big retailer was about $500 or $600. Go to Indochina.com,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use promo code ATP. You can get any premium suit for just $399 with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco free shipping. So it’s even cheaper than what I paid at the big box store for a way worse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Go to Indochina.com, use promo code ATP for a custom suit for $399 with free shipping.
Marco’s track-sync/undrift tool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Indochino, your look, your way.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have a question specifically for Marco. You had written, probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like a year ago, a tool that will take several audio files, say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from your co-hosts and your own, and stitch them together, or not stitch them together, but line
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them up so we’re not on different parts of the episode at the same moment, right? Yeah, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey synced up. Sync them up time-wise. I was thinking about this a week or two ago. How
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the hell are you doing that? Because we don’t all hit the record button
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the same moment. And I was, I was debating with myself, okay, well, how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is he doing it? Is he just looking for it? And it’s all, you know, algorithmic. And so is he just looking for like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some peak in one and then trying to find the same peak in the other? And I wasn’t sure
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how this worked. And so what is this tool and how the hell did you do it?
⏹️ ▶️ John Before Marco explains we should also say that we don’t do that embarrassing clap thing that some other podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For what it’s worth a lot of shows when you’re on the show They’ll count down and say okay We’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all gonna clap one two three and then everyone claps and that’s their peak that the editor uses to line up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the the two Or more sides
⏹️ ▶️ John which is bogus because of audio drift which Marco will explain soon
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so I just I was really curious because this is a fascinating technical problem and yeah, it’s a little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey inside baseball, but it’s a fascinating technical problem to solve, regardless of the fact that it happens
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to relate to podcasting, so how’d you solve it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I should clarify before I start here that I didn’t do any research, of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco course. ♪ I’m a disaster ♪ I didn’t do any research beforehand on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how this problem should be solved, how other things solve this problem. There are very few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco audio tools that do solve this problem, but it’s pretty common on high-end video recording apps, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the idea is, if you’re on a video shoot, you probably are recording audio
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off camera. You’re probably recording audio through some other device, an audio recorder, or a mixer, or whatever else. So you need to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then sync up the audio with the video, or you need to sync multiple cameras’ video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in editing so you can switch between the cameras and sync it all up to the master audio track. So video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps have had, like Final Cut does this, I’m pretty sure, I don’t know that much about video, but video apps have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had ways to do this for a long time where they will use audio and they will be able to sync audio
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and video between multiple tracks and everything. What I wanted was a very basic command line tool to do this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that I could put it in as part of my shell script to process all your files through FFmpeg and whatever else to normalize
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the formats and get them all, and basically take your inconvenient call recorder
⏹️ ▶️ Marco files and whatever else and output a set of fully
⏹️ ▶️ Marco synced and undrifted WAV files that I can just import into Logic and edit. This is something that podcasters
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re doing if you’re just recording Skype from your computer And that’s it and that’s you use those of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the tracks You don’t really need to do this because everything is all synced up But if you if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing what’s called like a double ender method where like each each end of the each person
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the call Records their own track locally like we do it sounds way better And you it affords you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a great deal of flexibility and editing for shows it to more than two people on them But this is a problem you have really then you have to think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of everybody’s files, okay? Drift is another problem. This is really down in the weeds and I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sorry if this is boring anybody so I’ll try to be quick. Basically your audio interface, you know, whatever is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recording you, whether it’s the mic or you know sound card or whatever, your audio interface records a certain number
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of samples per second. So you might have seen the numbers 44 kilohertz, you know, 44.1 kilohertz,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that’s the number of samples per second that is recording into your WAV file.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The problem is that computers are not perfect. These are not, you know, these all come down to these little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco analog electronic components and nothing is perfect because everything has to be cheap and amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and work all the time and so what what the computer thinks is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know X times per second will actually vary very slightly between different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco devices between different computers you know whatever whatever is generating that clock signal to say this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m taking 44,100 samples per second every computer’s clock is gonna be very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slightly different and it might be like 0.001% off of yours
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but over the course of a two-hour podcast you could be off by like a full
⏹️ ▶️ Marco second by the end and so it would if you sync up the tracks at the beginning if you say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all right everyone clap and then we’ll sync up those claps go to go an hour later in the podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you will hear that people are no longer lined up properly there they’ll be like a second off or something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s because of this of this of this difference in clocks in the actual like analog
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardware, like the thing that is generating that clock signal x times per second is just, you know, point 001%
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off of what yours was. My tool was designed to solve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco both of these problems, make something that is that is that fixes drift. And that you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, basically, it basically syncs the file throughout the whole file, like it syncs everything up, and then just outputs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these these wave files, I can just import into my editor and then do nothing else to in that way and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco move on to the content editing because I want the podcast that I produce to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sound as great as they possibly can sound I want them to have incredibly incredible high production values because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically I value you know the listeners I value your time I value your attention and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want to make sure the show sounds good so it’s easiest as possible and most pleasant for you to listen to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know making making this double under recording method work well and quickly for me was very important
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I started make this thing that would line up all the tracks. It slices up the file
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into, you know, it looks at a whole bunch of points throughout the file but it first starts out just in the middle and it tries to line up the middles
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so we can just get an approximate lineup for the whole file. And it does this not by finding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco peaks necessarily but it’s a little more involved than that. It uses the fast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Fourier transform, FFT, to break the audio into frequencies
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rather than just like the up-and-down wave that you see like in a wave editor. It breaks it down into frequencies for each segment. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’ll take like a certain number of milliseconds and say what is the frequency breakdown
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of this? For every little slice it takes, it kind of it makes a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco little like hash of this chunk of the file to say for this little millisecond slice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what is the dominant frequency? And if you think about like you know it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco suppose it translates into ASCII for simplicity’s sake, you can say all right well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this second of audio had the frequency like you know a FG you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it has it for every little slice it takes in that second it can basically build like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a string and say all right well this is the dominant frequency of this slice of audio
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then if you can imagine just sliding that up and down across a window of time so if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can say these files are probably lined up within 15 minutes like did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we probably hit record within 15 minutes of each other? Yes. So there’s a… it defines a window
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it says, alright well within this window just literally slide this around, slide
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this hash that I’ve made of this little bit of audio here, slide this around until
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you find the point in this range that it is the least different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from a reference track. And the reference track is simply…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s the Skype recording basically. It is the recording of all of us talking. So the reference track is a rather
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than trying to take these random files and say, you know, sync this to your ear, just figure out what sounds right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All of this is it’s based on take all these input files from each of our microphones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and sync them to the reference track that contains all of us and then just delete the reference track
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because then you’ll have the the pristine awesome version of all of us from microphones instead of the crappy Skype version
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of all of us. And that’s so it basically uses this FFT to just like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slide around and build these little hashes of each segment of audio and find out where they line
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up. So, first it lines up the middle with very, very high precision. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it goes throughout the whole rest of the file. And it goes, I think right now I have it doing it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in like 10, just like 10% increments, like you know, there’s like, so there’s nine other ones. After the middle is lined up,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go to the beginning and go to the end and go to the steps in the middle. How far off is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the synchronization at those points? Because the thing about drift is that it tends to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fairly constant. Your clock variation in how fast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your computer’s clock measures that time slice, that tends to be fixed or close enough to fix
⏹️ ▶️ Marco during a two-hour podcast. Then it goes to the ends of this scale and it says, all right,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, in the middle we’re perfectly lined up now. At the beginning, we are like 0.5 seconds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off, negative 0.5 seconds. At the end, we are 0.5 seconds ahead.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that means that in this time span we’ve gone from negative 0.5 to plus 0.5 so that it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically builds, you know, based on looking at the whole file, looking at these averages of this rate,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it interpolates an average drift for the whole file and it says, alright, well, this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looks like we are gaining 0.1 seconds of drift per hour or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever the rate is based on looking at all those different points in the file once the middle is aligned.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So then it just goes to the beginning and says, alright, well, at the beginning we’ll fix that and then throughout the file we know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we know how many seconds per hour or whatever we have to insert or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco remove to sync this up properly so in it uses you know basic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco audio stuff to find periods of silence and use I’m pretty good at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dealing with silence now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use the silence to insert or remove padding at opportune times where you won’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco notice and that is how it’s it that’s how it undrifts the files. That’s smart as hell.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the vast majority of the time it works and because it is using dominant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco frequencies as like the way to tell whether things are similar it is fairly immune
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the volume differences because like the Skype track is gonna have a very different volume level than whatever microphone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco file you give me. It’s also gonna be way lower fidelity it’s gonna have it’s gonna be like you know weird
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and possibly distorted in in some subtle ways, but dominant frequencies tend to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be the same regardless of how it was recorded, because that’s what you’re hearing. If it sounds roughly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same, it’s going to match up pretty closely in the file and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the frequency hashing thing. Because I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco necessarily looking for that exact match, you give me a window in which I’m likely to find this, and I will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco find the closest match. Then I use confidence ratings and all this stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s how it works. I wrote this two years ago, maybe? I did it a while ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I’ve basically not touched it. A few friends of ours use it to edit their shows, and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have almost never had to touch the algorithm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco since writing it. The main reasons I have not released this yet are that there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are a few bugs, but it’s not usually bugs in lining it up.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In fact, the rate at which it properly lines things up is shockingly good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The main bugs are around things like, if one file is 30 minutes shorter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than the other one, it might not line it up or it might not under draft properly because it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tries to interpolate a value from part of the file. There’s some cleanup work needed to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco done to make this a general usefulness releasable tool. It would also be nice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it had a GUI, because most people want a graphical interface for their applications. Most people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t want to have binaries that you can use from a shell script. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s why this is not out yet. The market for such a thing is extremely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco small, because it’s a tool for podcasters. It’s hard to charge money and make any money from that. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know how that will go. We’ll figure that out later, I guess. But I do eventually plan to release this because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is an incredibly useful tool for anybody who does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco double-ending podcasting where you’re recording local tracks from people. And I think the world of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco podcasting would be better off if more people did that. And making that easier is therefore working
⏹️ ▶️ Marco towards that goal. Because one thing I really don’t like as a podcast listener
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is I should never know that your podcast is recorded
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with Skype. And what that means is I should never hear you talking about Skype. I should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never hear a Skype dropout. If there’s a Skype dropout and you have to work through it, that needs to be cut from the show.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All discussion of Skype should be cut from the show. I should never know as a listener that you use Skype. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I also shouldn’t be hearing Skype artifacts when somebody’s connection
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is going a little wonky or Skype is going a little wonky and they start degrading the bit rate down. They start sounding a little bit worse, a little more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco telephonic. They start going worse and worse and worse. And then you hear upgrading get better and better and better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That was fine five years ago. Now we’ve moved on. We know how to do things better now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So podcasting should now be… I want to raise the bar.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The local recording should be the norm now in most cases. And yes, there are some cases
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where you need to use Skype for more practical reasons. Things like if you have a guest call-in show where you’re having a different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco guest every week. Getting people microphones is already a big pain. It’s hard enough dealing with that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s certain exceptions to this, but for the most part, if you’re doing the same show every week with the same people,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I should never, ever know that you use Skype. So that’s why I made this tool. That’s why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I made it to save myself time. Hopefully, it’ll save more people time in the future and make podcasting better, which is kind of my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overall goal for everything I do these days. But it’s going to be a lot of work before this is in a releasable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, it’s funny what you said about never knowing that Skype was used, because I feel like we do a really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good job of that. Unless my iMac that I swear isn’t broken breaks.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In which case, that’s exactly why we had to use, I guess it was your recording
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of me for the first half of that show. And people justifiably were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fairly either confused or perturbed by it. And I don’t blame them. It sounded like garbage.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I still feel terribly guilty about that. And that is exactly what we’re trying to avoid. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all your fault, Casey. Well, I do feel bad about it. That’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the first 20 minutes. If it happened every week, I’d be mad. But, you know, if it happens
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once in like a three-year run of a show, it’s not that ridiculous.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, that’s really, really interesting. What was this written in? Is this C or…?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s it uses Objective-C. It’s an Objective-C binary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you access by the terminal. So like it has access to foundation and everything, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the core logic and it uses the accelerate framework. It uses all the all the cool VDSP
⏹️ ▶️ Marco functions for FFTs and everything. And of course it runs in parallel. So it you know this is one of the reasons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I like using computers with lots of cores because a lot of tools that I either use or make and use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use Grand to dispatch to work in parallel very, very effectively. And this is the perfect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem to parallelize because it’s like, all right, well, take this one input file and just analyze all these different chunks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then at the end, figure out which one had the best score. That’s so easy to parallelize. So of course
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it does and it makes all my fans run up and it’s just awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, this is really, really cool. And as someone who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey works on kind of regular software, both in past jobs and my current job.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I definitely get to solve cool problems, but not this kind of cool. That’s super, super interesting and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey super neat. So your long-term plan, you’re still kicking the tires
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on releasing? I mean, I know you said you want to release it, but is that in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey next month, in the next six months, in the next six years? What do you think?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is incredibly unlikely to be in the next month. I would say six months, maybe.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Year, likely, but I don’t know. It depends on what else I’m doing, really.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m already working on my other production tool for putting in chapters and stuff. This is not that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app. This is a different app. So there’s that. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have this collection of shell scripts that does all sorts of other useful things like compress and decompress logic projects.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s all sorts of crazy stuff that I have for making podcasting easier. And so there’s always this kind of debate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like you know which of these things could I or should I make into a product and which of these things should just stay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a shell script that I that I use and maybe give a couple of friends because you know there’s a lot of work involved make something a product
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it probably isn’t worth it for a lot of these so you know time will tell but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll probably release this thing someday.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You should release like the Marco Arment podcast kit.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honestly that’s kind of what I was thinking that I might do someday but you know because like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you could argue maybe you know I can just make one grand app that that like incorporates
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all this stuff and I don’t think that’s right or at least that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one grand app would have to also be the editor and while someday that might be cool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m certainly nowhere near ready to tackle that kind of problem right now so eventually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there might be one grand app that you know it it is the editor and the encoder and the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recorder and you know and all this stuff. That’d be fine. But that we are not there today.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it would probably be a collection of small apps, maybe sold as a pack or something. I don’t even know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But we’ll see. You know, this whole iOS app thing, it’s kind of hard to make money these days. So maybe I’ll switch over to this kind of stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Good luck, my friend. Thank you. I think we’re good. All right. Thanks to our sponsors this week, Betterment,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tracker, and Indochino. And we will see you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they didn’t even mean to begin, cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. John didn’t do any research, Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Casey wouldn’t let him,
⏹️ ▶️ John cause it was accidental, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental. You can find the show notes
⏹️ ▶️ John at atp.fm And if you’re into Twitter,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can follow them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that’s Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John mean to, accidental Check the podcast, it’s so long
Post-show: Non-tech erasure
⏹️ ▶️ John We should talk about now is the whole there’s nothing new happening in the news
⏹️ ▶️ John and why you guys are cranky about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right. So, to recap, a couple of weeks ago or last week, whenever it was,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I made a flippant remark, I think it was me, saying, there’s no other news this week or something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that. And this was during a week where there was a lot of world news
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and political news and news, you know, things like police shootings
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and there was a lot of, like, you know, news, but I was really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just saying there wasn’t tech news, but I said it was a slow news week. I didn’t say it was a slow tech news week. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, a few people were understandably concerned about that or disagreed or were offended by that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I think this is first and foremost a tech show, and there’s all sorts of horrible things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that happen in the world. And sometimes we do cover things that are not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco directly like what Apple has released this week or whatever else. We’ve covered things,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco subjects such as women in technology and online harassment, things like this that that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are partly tech issues but also are partly like societal issues or other issues. In
⏹️ ▶️ Marco general though, we do focus mostly on the geeky stuff. In
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a world where there is so much horribleness that happens in the real world.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this stuff gets to me in real life. And the world of tech is a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco vacation from that. It’s a break from that. It is this nice little world where we can pretend like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all that matters in the world is how long it’s been since the Mac Pro was updated.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if we don’t cover other things, horrible things that are going on in the world,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I consider that a feature, not a bug, for the most part, most of the time, because not only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do I need that, and you guys, you can speak for yourselves in a minute here. Oh, definitely.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only do I need that as a human being, but I feel like it’s important that our
⏹️ ▶️ Marco listeners also get a break from that too if they want to, because there’s so many other places that you can get coverage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of major world news and political news and horrible tragedies and everything else. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s important that people have something that’s not that, you know, when all this stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is going on in the world. That it, you know, there has to be some relief from that, some break from that, somewhere,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some safe place you can go and not hear horrible news every week.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right, I’m going to give the flip side of that, which although I agree with some of the things you said, like I’m going to present
⏹️ ▶️ John the opposing argument and then explain like the meta issue of like why it’s difficult to address this period.
⏹️ ▶️ John So like you said, know, we know what the show is about. You just look at the past history of topics. I think everyone would agree, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John to figure out, like, how this works, you just go to extremes and see, like, what the end points are. So, like, one extreme would be,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, a nuclear bomb goes off in Manhattan, right? If we had a show that week, assuming Marco is still alive, which
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco probably wouldn’t be.
⏹️ ▶️ John That problem would solve
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. But anyway, if we had a show that week and didn’t mention it, it would seem really weird, right? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s one extreme, right? It’s like, oh, yeah, I know this is a tech podcast, and that’s why we’re not going to mention a nuclear bomb that went
⏹️ ▶️ John off in Manhattan, it’s not a tech topic, right? And so we won’t talk about it. Everybody,
⏹️ ▶️ John including us, would find that super weird and nonsensical, and it would stand out like a sore thumb.
⏹️ ▶️ John So there’s one extreme. The other extreme is like, you know, bunch of people spray
⏹️ ▶️ John spray painted swastikas on the elementary school in my hometown, right? Most of the listeners
⏹️ ▶️ John probably don’t care about that. It is not a tech issue. But
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I would care about it deeply, right? So here’s an issue that I would care about deeply because my kids go to that school and I’m super
⏹️ ▶️ John concerned about it. I’m up at night thinking about it and it’s really concerning, right? But
⏹️ ▶️ John it still doesn’t pass muster to be on the podcast with lots of other people. So I feel like those are the two ends of the of the
⏹️ ▶️ John of the chain. Things that we, you know, both of them are things we care deeply about because we would all care deeply
⏹️ ▶️ John about New King Manhattan and I would care deeply about people spray, spray painting swastikas
⏹️ ▶️ John on my kids elementary school, right? But one of those things I think we would all agree. It’s like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not fodder for ATP. And the other one, I think everyone listening would agree that it would be super
⏹️ ▶️ John weird if we didn’t mention it, right? And so the trick about this thing is figuring out
⏹️ ▶️ John that along this spectrum between the nuke and like the local issue that, you know, whatever, along
⏹️ ▶️ John the spectrum of issues that we’re going to presume that like, you know, like Marco said it, and I’m assuming Casey as well, that we all
⏹️ ▶️ John really do personally care about and think about a lot or whatever. There are many issues along the spectrum. And
⏹️ ▶️ John the question is, when does it become weird that we don’t say anything?
⏹️ ▶️ John Secondary question is, all right, we have not saying anything. And everyone can pick their line along that spectrum. Like, oh, I feel like it’s weird
⏹️ ▶️ John you didn’t say anything about the nuke, but I don’t even care about your local elementary school because I got my own issues, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Second thing is, what if you don’t just not say anything, but in fact, you say,
⏹️ ▶️ John as Marco did, you know, because he misspoken, but tech, you say, you assert that
⏹️ ▶️ John this thing doesn’t exist, where you say, oh, well, there is no news this week right now. Obviously, that’s not what Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John went meant. We in context, I think it’s very clear what he meant. But you could hear
⏹️ ▶️ John it and interpret it the other way, right? We all misspeak on podcasts all the time. And sometimes it’s not even misspeaking. It’s just like assuming
⏹️ ▶️ John a context that is not shared with the audience, right? But positively asserting
⏹️ ▶️ John the absence of something gets into the realm of what everyone calls erasure, where
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re intentionally, most of the time, erasure is like intentionally. intentionally or unintentionally,
⏹️ ▶️ John creating an environment where people sort of soaking in it can
⏹️ ▶️ John have can it supports a worldview where this thing is not an issue or is
⏹️ ▶️ John not a problem or doesn’t exist. So by positively asserting that nothing was going on, it is
⏹️ ▶️ John a form of erasing the struggle of like Black Lives Matter or whatever things that you know that
⏹️ ▶️ John we may care deeply about. But like, for the people listening, it’s like, I’m providing a safe space for you to pretend that Black Lives
⏹️ ▶️ John Matter doesn’t exist. Right? a flip side to that is what Marco said. It’s like, well, sometimes you don’t want to hear about the crappy
⏹️ ▶️ John things in the world. You just want to hear us talk about Casey’s Mac or whatever, right? There is a flip side to that. But
⏹️ ▶️ John erasure is a real thing and it happens all the time. And so when the
⏹️ ▶️ John combination of like not being clear enough about this, like there’s no new tech news and really saying
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s no news that reads exactly like erasure. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ John for a lot of people, although Black Lives Matter and police shootings and stuff is not a nuke
⏹️ ▶️ John on Manhattan, it is close enough to the threshold of things that should be important enough that that should come up
⏹️ ▶️ John on ATP for people to think, oh, I think it should have been included. Now, that judgment, I feel like is, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John that that’s definitely a judgment call, whether you think it’s appropriate to add, but once you start positively asserting it starts looking like erasure, that’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John problem as well. And then the meta problem, like I said, is, say this happens,
⏹️ ▶️ John say all three of us who I presume all care deeply about these issues that we didn’t mention on the show, as we do about
⏹️ ▶️ John many issues that we don’t mention on the show for a variety of reasons, and all of us basically made the the judgment without you know that there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not going to be a topic we were going to discuss an ATP just like there are so many topics that we all care about that we don’t discuss an ATP for various
⏹️ ▶️ John reasons that Marco outlined. When we end up with a show
⏹️ ▶️ John that some people here and it’s like, oh, you know, you’re not only not discussing this, but you’re making it seem like it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John happen. And that’s bad because it happens all the time and complains to us about it.
⏹️ ▶️ John The natural reaction is to say, but you know, it sounds like they’re impugning our motivations. Oh, but
⏹️ ▶️ John we have to say, but we do care about that. In fact, not only do we care about that, but we’re on the same side as you.
⏹️ ▶️ John And like, it’s an important issue to us. And here are the reasons I didn’t want to talk about it. And so on and so forth. You get defensive,
⏹️ ▶️ John essentially. And so to have a show where you come back on and have to talk about it in any way, it’s very
⏹️ ▶️ John difficult not to feel like you’re under attack when you feel like you’re defending yourself for something you didn’t do because you totally
⏹️ ▶️ John agree with them. But at the same time, there’s there’s no way to like, you can’t go back and add the words
⏹️ ▶️ John that you didn’t put there and you can’t control how people interpret things because It does read like erasure to many people,
⏹️ ▶️ John and some people you’re just going to disagree with about what what meets the threshold from, you know, the the spray
⏹️ ▶️ John paint on the school and the New King Manhattan. You might just have disagreements on where that line is. But the debate becomes
⏹️ ▶️ John about are you a good person who cares about the issues that I care about? Don’t you care about this? Or are you actively trying to erase this?
⏹️ ▶️ John And so it’s really difficult to come on the show on a follow up type thing and talk about
⏹️ ▶️ John it in a way that isn’t immediately defensive, Right, regardless of how everyone falls on the various
⏹️ ▶️ John issues. And so I think rather than delving into the specifics of the issue, which, you know, we
⏹️ ▶️ John have new news with another topic that we didn’t talk about and don’t plan to like the Republican National Convention, all that stuff, rather than
⏹️ ▶️ John actually delving into those topics, which I still feel like are not appropriate for the show, I think it was more important
⏹️ ▶️ John to talk about the meta issue of being aware that
⏹️ ▶️ John even though you may agree and may think things are important, there are things you can do either accidentally or on purpose
⏹️ ▶️ John that can create an environment that makes it seem like those issues are less important than they are or gives people
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of a place where they can, a safe haven away from those things in a bad way. Marco talked
⏹️ ▶️ John about the good way. It’s like we all care about them, we all know about them, it makes us sad, but sometimes I just want to
⏹️ ▶️ John have, you know, escape and play Pokemon Go. Like that’s definitely a role things should play. But the other aspect
⏹️ ▶️ John of it is that I don’t think those are actually important and it’s It’s a shame that they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John even on the news and it’s not even newsworthy and those people should just stop complaining and thank
⏹️ ▶️ John goodness I can listen to a podcast that agrees with me that those things are beneath concern because nothing interesting
⏹️ ▶️ John is happening in the news, right? Which is obviously not what any of us meant, but it can read like that from the outside. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it all, you know, what, what should we do differently? What should we do better? If you’re just aware of
⏹️ ▶️ John that issue, like the next time, you know, someone, you know, one of us says something like that, add
⏹️ ▶️ John the context. I think that’s all that’s needed. Um, and, and then I guess the secondary
⏹️ ▶️ John thing is even though it feels terrible to think and talk about it on the next show,
⏹️ ▶️ John do it anyway, because it’s better than like, if we, if we were to just not say anything on this show about it, I think that
⏹️ ▶️ John would be worse because that would be like doubling down. That would be like, well, I didn’t know what a racer was and definitely
⏹️ ▶️ John wasn’t doing it on purpose. But now that you mentioned I’m going to do it, like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I’m going to pretend you know, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John going to pretend that nobody complained, like just being spiteful about it. And so, you know, that’s what we an ATP as
⏹️ ▶️ John the most painful thing possible, and then we screw it up. But that’s our way.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. I mean, I naturally agree with pretty much everything both of you guys said. I don’t know. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey absolutely felt attacked when I saw this feedback, and it was from somebody
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like I know and definitely respect. That almost made it worse because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I felt like it was coming from a person, an individual that I felt
⏹️ ▶️ Casey should have known the context, and I felt the context was pretty obvious. I actually thought for a long
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time I was the one who had said it, and I think you might be right, Marco. I think it might have been you, but.
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco, and also Tiff, and she also got defensive about it. It’s totally natural to get defensive about it, but
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re getting defensive about the wrong thing. The person is not impugning your motivations. Everybody involved
⏹️ ▶️ John knows that they care about things. It’s all about, all right, your motivations are one thing. It’s the whole, we judge ourselves
⏹️ ▶️ John by our motivations, but others by their actions. You’re being judged by your actions, even your unintentional actions or even Marco’s unintentional
⏹️ ▶️ John actions like it’s like doesn’t matter what you were thinking it only matters what you said and how it might be interpreted by people
⏹️ ▶️ John who are predisposed to look for a place where they where someone is positively asserting you
⏹️ ▶️ John know that these people don’t matter you know what I mean like that’s and that is a tough way to
⏹️ ▶️ John be judged and it has nothing to do with motivations and it can totally feel like you’re being attacked but if you’re not aware that that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John even a thing it’s hard to understand like what’s the big deal like you know and I know we
⏹️ ▶️ John all know together that we care about this isn’t caring enough. And you know, I didn’t do this
⏹️ ▶️ John on purpose and you know the context and it should be clear to people listening. All that is we can all
⏹️ ▶️ John agree on that and still say, yeah, but not everyone is on that same page
⏹️ ▶️ John and not everyone understands your motivations and knows you as well as I do. And all we’re left with is your
⏹️ ▶️ John actions and your actions can have a small harmful effect. And just letting you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, maybe that’s something to be careful about or think about or at least talk about on a following show,
⏹️ ▶️ John which I feel like we’re doing, and that’s the right thing to do, despite the fact that we all feel like defensive
⏹️ ▶️ John and immediately about it. It’s just human nature.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, yeah, I was extremely ragey when this was flying by on Twitter. It was the angriest
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve gotten at something I’ve seen on Twitter that that affected me personally
⏹️ ▶️ John Really? You thought people were saying you were a bad person, basically.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And just like you’ve said, John, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Just because I didn’t bring it up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doesn’t mean I don’t care. And I think it’s abundantly obvious to anyone who has ever listened
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the show that the assumed context for Marko’s statement was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in technology. And I think it’s unfair of me to assume
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that anyone else is coming from the same point. But I was deeply bothered by
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. And I still am pretty fired up about it. I feel…
⏹️ ▶️ John I could all my big explanation didn’t help you get a hand on this because you should totally like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean like I think Explanation was was very good And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco made a lot of sense to me also and I and I I agree with you like you know the thing about it being A spectrum of like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know to say if you if you said like yeah But like John said like if you said nothing happened this week
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you meant in tech, but a new could come off from Manhattan that week like that would be really outrageous
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s gonna be more. There’s no historical issue of a ratio of nuclear bombs going off in
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco But there is
⏹️ ▶️ John there is a long there is a context for specific issues of like Not caring about it when
⏹️ ▶️ John when black people get shot by police officers like and the idea that you know That that’s that it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John systemic issue that there is specific Context to this and that doing it in this context even
⏹️ ▶️ John accidentally is so much more worse So much worse than doing it in the context of a new going
⏹️ ▶️ John off because it would just seem super weird I was using that as an extreme. Yeah, but there’s no history of erasure. There’s no systemic prejudice
⏹️ ▶️ John against talking about that There’s no history of devaluing that and saying it’s not as important
⏹️ ▶️ John as other stories You know what I mean? Like there’s so much baggage and weight behind this and and
⏹️ ▶️ John I think all of us are just you know I mean at least I know I was following all this stuff on Twitter and reading about it and it is depressing
⏹️ ▶️ John and it is upsetting and that could be a conscious decision not to talk about it, but like if you accidentally end
⏹️ ▶️ John up saying something It could be read as erasure I Understand by people be like even if they personally know that
⏹️ ▶️ John you didn’t mean it as erasure It doesn’t matter what you mean All that matters is what you ended up saying and how it might be interpreted.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then you are adding a tiny pebble to this gigantic wall in the context of this issue.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s very difficult when you do something that could have negative consequences, none of which you intended
⏹️ ▶️ John or might not even understand, right? And so you totally would feel attacked because like, how can I have done something
⏹️ ▶️ John wrong when I didn’t mean to do anything wrong? And I don’t even understand the wrongness that I did. It’s still
⏹️ ▶️ John possible. It’s still totally possible to do something ever
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco so slightly wrong,
⏹️ ▶️ John but not have meant anything wrong, be totally in agreement with the people who are identifying the wrong thing that you did.
⏹️ ▶️ John And like, like that is possible. It’s hard to square that. And so like, so I think Casey, you’re still holding on to the idea that someone
⏹️ ▶️ John is calling you a bad person, like nobody is right. Nobody’s saying that they’re just disappointed that we just
⏹️ ▶️ John that we, you know, that we fumbled and made a mistake. And maybe they’re being more harsh on us than you
⏹️ ▶️ John think they should. But like, if you spend your time trying to defend your motivations, you’re never going to think about your
⏹️ ▶️ John actions in a broader context. And it’s like, it’s counterproductive, Like, you’re only gonna go
⏹️ ▶️ John more distant that way, rather than trying to figure out how to come
⏹️ ▶️ John closer together or whatever. And people are gonna be upset. They have the right to be upset, but
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s no reason to say, well, now I’m going to double down on my unintentional mistake
⏹️ ▶️ John by trying to make intentional ones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. It’s like if you learned that a word that you used
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was actually racist, and you didn’t know that. Oh yeah, totally. Same thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s worth knowing that, it’s worth learning that, it’s worth somebody telling you that. And even though you didn’t mean
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be racist or you don’t have those feelings.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because you didn’t even know the origins.
⏹️ ▶️ John just, right? But it’s still, you still shouldn’t use it. And so it’s like, you know, the
⏹️ ▶️ John most well-adjusted thing is to thank the person for telling you, but the human thing is to be like, are you saying I’m a racist?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like that’s how everyone feels.
⏹️ ▶️ John should know I’m not, you know me, that’s absurd and now, you know, like.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The ultimate example of this is the word spaz which in American English is not or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to any any circle I’ve ever traveled in any way. It’s not derogatory. Whereas in British English,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s Hugely derogatory
⏹️ ▶️ John derogatory name is ableist in English
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It’s a problematic,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know It’s like like when I was mentioning a few like like lame or gimp like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John sure these horribly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco named open-source project
⏹️ ▶️ John things that Many people have never thought about including me until fairly recently
⏹️ ▶️ John you just you just didn’t know but yeah like someone pointing it out to you it You know depending
⏹️ ▶️ John on how they do it or whatever like it’s it’s not on them to like break it to you gently It’s on you to
⏹️ ▶️ John figure out how to separate your feelings about are you saying I you know? I I hate disabled
⏹️ ▶️ John people from the idea that this thing that you’ve been doing unintentionally Has an effect on other
⏹️ ▶️ John people that you might not have realized So incorporate that into your decisions about whether you’re gonna do that going forward,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right? And that’s why I’ve tried to remove that word from my vernacular, because I don’t want to be offensive.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey as we all know, trying to
⏹️ ▶️ John remove things from our vernacular, I just hear myself doing them all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you know, trying. Like, we know we’re trying, but all people know is what we say. So it’s kind of be like, when
⏹️ ▶️ John someone says, you accidentally let something slip, you’re like, well, I’m trying, man. I mean, that’s true. But-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, if you’re trying, it’s still right for somebody to call you out every time you mess up.
⏹️ ▶️ John Exactly. You just have to separate constructive criticism as a two-way
⏹️ ▶️ John street. People can criticize you in an unconstructive way and you can take constructive things from it
⏹️ ▶️ John and people can criticize you in a constructive way and you can not handle
⏹️ ▶️ John it well and not take it in a constructive manner. It
⏹️ ▶️ John helps if it’s constructive coming in, but either way, you can mess it up on your end by
⏹️ ▶️ John deciding that your hurt feelings are more important than whatever the
⏹️ ▶️ John issue is that’s being highlighted.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I think that’s exactly the pit I fell into is I personally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t think that the complaint that was lodged terribly constructively, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I absolutely agree with you that I did and to some degree still am letting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my emotions get in the way of the bigger picture, which is we should have phrased things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey better and or corrected each other after having misphrased them. And the reason I didn’t notice was because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have that assumed context that not everyone does. But what also made it even worse was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this was someone I feel like I know, and I felt like a bazooka was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey used when it wasn’t absolutely necessary, which here again is feelings.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I mean like, you know, to me like, you know, the fact that a friend of ours said it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Is almost irrelevant, you know, if anything… That’s what friends are for, start singing the song.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, like if anything, like if a random person who I didn’t know had called us out on it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I might not have taken it as seriously as I did But I didn’t take it in a hurtful way. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was surprised, but I was it was more just like, huh I didn’t think about it that way at all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and And yeah, it’s like when you’re called on unintentional racism or something. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, I wasn’t thinking along those lines at all, but now that you mention it, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t really say that very well. And so again, it’s worth being told
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a way that you will notice and it’s worth correcting it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s why you should do this to your friends because people do take it more seriously from their friends. The bad side of that
⏹️ ▶️ John is that many people, when a friend does it, like that’s the end of the friendship and we’re at war now and I hate that person and I’m never speaking to
⏹️ ▶️ John them again. That is not taking construction like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco those people are jerks.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can deliver that badly on one end and it can be taken badly on the other and you can do one or like it
⏹️ ▶️ John can end badly in many different ways. But it’s it’s difficult but you like this is what you want your friends to do
⏹️ ▶️ John because again if a stranger lots of things that strangers say you just let roll off your back because like that’s especially
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s just a skill you have to have because strangers will say all sorts of awful things to you. But this is what your
⏹️ ▶️ John friends are there to do for you. And if you don’t have that kind of relationship with your friends in either direction
⏹️ ▶️ John like if you hang out with your friends and your friends are constantly making racist jokes and you do a fake laugh but you don’t believe
⏹️ ▶️ John any of that like it’s not on the same you’re not on the same page with that but you feel like you can’t call them on it like
⏹️ ▶️ John i don’t know i feel like that’s a that’s a bad situation to be in you know it’s it like
⏹️ ▶️ John express yourself uh explain how it makes you feel when your friend makes racist jokes
⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s the end of the friendship like i feel like that’s the appropriate course of events rather than to just
⏹️ ▶️ John you know eat that down because if you soak in that environment long enough, you will become normalized. And you’ll be like, oh, it’s not a big deal.
⏹️ ▶️ John I have this person who is a great person, loves his kids. And yeah, he makes racist jokes sometimes, but who cares? It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s how we end up where we are. You can’t end up with that stuff being normalized.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and several years ago now, I watched this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing that ended up becoming very popular. It was Randy Pausch’s last lecture. And I’ve probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey brought it up in the past. And it was a professor from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Carnegie Mellon, and actually I believe had been an instructor at UVA as well, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he did this lecture. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer and did this thing that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was supposed to be a last lecture, really, for his kids. He talked about, in that last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lecture, to your point that when people stop correcting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you, that’s a really crummy place to be. And as ragey as I was over this entire
⏹️ ▶️ Casey exchange, I do agree with what you said. And I am thankful for the correction, even if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wish it had been delivered differently and I wish I had responded differently.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, me too. Although I have less of a problem with how it was delivered and I didn’t respond.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John other words,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it a lot better than I did.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you responded now. Yeah, I didn’t respond in the moment either, also because I missed the moment
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too, actually, yeah. I was like, I didn’t even have Twitter open while all this was going on. and then I’ve caught up like an hour later,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m like, oh, well, this happened. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, sometimes not responding in the moment is the right thing to do to give yourself time to digest it and get distance before
⏹️ ▶️ John you say things that you’ll regret, more things that you’ll regret. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I mean? Anyway. Oh yeah, I highly recommend using an app on your Mac to automatically quit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Twitter on a frequent basis. It really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does help quite a lot in a lot of ways in life.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m waiting for it to be available on the Mac App Store.