190: The Girl Who Never Came Over
06 Oct 2016Voice-assistant cylinders, Bluetooth headphones, camera contamination, and Casey losing a bet.
Episode Description:
- Follow-up:
- Casey and John's bet
- Compu-blur and Stephen Hackett's brother
- Ceramic iPhone 8??
- Interchangeable-lens camera contamination
- Which Bluetooth headphones to buy?
- Google Pixel phones
- Home automation hubs
- Ending theme by Jonathan Mann
- Post-show: Workplace computer-hardware woes
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Chapters
- Casey loses a bet
- Compu-blur
- Ceramic or all-glass iPhones
- Sponsor: Backblaze
- Ceramics, cont’d.
- Camera contamination
- Which Bluetooth headphones?
- Sponsor: Casper (code ATP)
- Google Pixel phones
- Sponsor: Betterment
- Voice-assistant cylinders
- Ending theme
- Post-show: Casey’s monitor woes
Casey loses a bet
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco John’s here.
⏹️ ▶️ John I missed the beginning of the story.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was really funny. You missed it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it was the funniest thing ever, and you missed it because your Skype isn’t updated.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m told from half of the internet, I’ve measured it, it is exactly half.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That there is a reduced motion option in beta 2. Not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco only is there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a reduced motion option in beta 2, I’m told it works. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey told it works the way John wants it to work. So if you’ll follow along, I have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a little bit of cash. I will… Didn’t you bet like one or $5? $1, so here, this is my $1.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And now, listeners, I will take this box
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of envelopes and I will extract,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was not nearly as loud as I hoped it would be, I will extract one envelope and I will place this dollar in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said envelope. And I will address it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to Mr. John Syracusa, Payne and my hindquarters, 123 Main Street, somewhere outside
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Boston, Massachusetts. And I will send it along.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco That’ll work.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because John, you are correct. In our gentleman’s bet, where we bet one American dollar,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you have proved victorious. And from everything I am told, I’ve not witnessed this myself, so I’m going on faith, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I I am told that your reduced motion plus super ridiculous
⏹️ ▶️ Casey motion and messages is a thing. So congratulations, sir.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was going to say you could wait until it ships because who knows they could pull it before the update.
⏹️ ▶️ John going to say most likely like if they’ve got this far, even if they don’t ship it in this update, it’ll be in the next one
⏹️ ▶️ John or the one after. Indeed. Yeah, I’m kind of trying not to let this this newfound
⏹️ ▶️ John power go to my head, but I always feel like that I should perhaps
⏹️ ▶️ John exercise the magic, the magical phrasing. If I can remember the magic words that I said, I should try something
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco talking about how
⏹️ ▶️ John they haven’t updated the Mac Pro in a really long time and say, this cannot stand and then see what happens.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll bet you a dollar they don’t update the Mac Pro next week.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, no, I think I don’t think it was the betting. I think it was the indignity
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think I said this cannot stand.
⏹️ ▶️ John seem to recall saying
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey incredibly pompous
⏹️ ▶️ John like that. Incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pompous. You know, the funny—all kidding aside—the funny thing about this whole argument was I listened
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the last, I don’t know, 15 episodes of Reconcilable Differences where you talked about this, and listening
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to you and Merlin talk about it, I actually think I was on your side. And I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what was so different about the way you described it then and the way Described it now or we go on this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show. I don’t know if I was in a punch blame Marco. He’s an instigator I think I was instigating
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more than him on this one. Although you are correct Marco is in fact an instigator
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco But anyway in my defense
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I I was kind of not arguing against John’s position of like wanting this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wanting this feature really I was I was more kind of exploring and poking and be like hey You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John why do you think that? poking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John But it wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like an inflammatory matter. I mean like like to me like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just I view almost every one of these little accessibility Additions that were added like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco post ios 7 I view almost all of them as just design failures Because like if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like if the system wasn’t so incredibly heavy with unnecessary motion animations this option wouldn’t need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be there Just like it wasn’t before ios 7 Nobody was complaining about motion sickness before ios 7
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then that came out and rather than fix the design design, you know, they have to add these options. Just like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, the text was too thin and rather than fix the text, they just made a bold text option. Buttons didn’t look like buttons anymore
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and rather than make buttons look like buttons again, they just made an option. So like, it’s, these are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all kind of just papering over design flaws, really, or poor design choices. So I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with you in the sense that, you know, A, obviously, anybody who needs these for what most people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would consider an accessibility reason, you know, that’s kind of a broad definition, But more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco power to you, it’s great that we had these options, but B, I think we shouldn’t even need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these options, because the system should be designed in a way to be more inclusive and usable to begin with.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the fact that it keeps going away from that is kind of a design flaw, in my opinion.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But yeah, it was funny listening to Reconcilable Differences, because I had been a couple episodes behind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when you and I were getting into it, John, and then I caught up and I was listening to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you on rectifs and I was like, wow, actually that makes a lot more sense. And I wish I could, I should have taken notes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or something and tried to pinpoint what about your description made more sense to me then. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I remember leaving that thinking, wow, I think I’m on his side. That’s weird.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re succumbing to peer pressure because I had someone on the show who agreed with me. So you heard two people who
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco same way and you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey like, well, the crowd
⏹️ ▶️ John is doing it. I’m swayed by this. And we recorded that first. That was the Merlin
⏹️ ▶️ John point out this week. That was the first episode and then I talked about it on ATP. It’s just because of the release schedules are different. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I was also less worked up with it. But in general, on our show, when you two both not only disagreed
⏹️ ▶️ John with me, but seemed to think what I was saying was ridiculous. I couldn’t believe that you didn’t see how this was like,
⏹️ ▶️ John just an incredible gap, like that this cannot stand. I said it and
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll say it again. Like it just it just seemed like a thing. That’s why I was willing to do the $1 bet. I mean, you know me, I’m not a big
⏹️ ▶️ John like gambler, right? But it just seemed
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey It seemed like you really, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, I personal $1 not that big a deal, but it was just like they just, they just have to change it. They just have to like, it’s not just like,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, maybe it’s those who just seem like it had to be done. Um, and they’re doing it so good. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John wish I had the beta now, but not enough to actually install a beta. So hopefully the, uh, point release will be out soon.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, and I’ve been using my phone with reduced motion still off. Every time I want to send an effect, I go to settings,
⏹️ ▶️ John turn it back on, send the effect, turn it off.
Compu-blur
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so John, tell me about CompuBlur. This
⏹️ ▶️ John is one more data point in the ongoing discussion of the iPhone 7
⏹️ ▶️ John Plus’s fake background blur thing that it does.
⏹️ ▶️ John Last show, we talked about the confirmation that it was not taking like a fuzzy picture from one camera
⏹️ ▶️ John and combining it with another one, but was instead taking the background, finding it, and then
⏹️ ▶️ John blurring it with a particular algorithm. And we’re talking about about how that didn’t quite look like the same
⏹️ ▶️ John way an optical blur looks, but most people won’t be able to tell and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, a
⏹️ ▶️ John couple of people wrote in with a blog post exploring the various ways you can blur
⏹️ ▶️ John things to try to make them look like an out of focus picture from a lens.
⏹️ ▶️ John So we’ll link to that blog post. I think that’s Stu, how do you pronounce his last name? Mashowitz?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John so. He’s a filmmaker and a photographer, so he knows some stuff about this. And we had someone
⏹️ ▶️ John named Ben Gunsberger write in to say that he has worked on tools that
⏹️ ▶️ John do this for computer animation, like that make the blur of the background that wasn’t actually blurred in the camera, but they
⏹️ ▶️ John want to make it look like it was. And he says that to do it properly is very CPU intensive. They have situations
⏹️ ▶️ John where it would take multiple minutes per frame to calculate the blur. So obviously that’s a non-starter.
⏹️ ▶️ John If it takes multiple minutes on what I assume is pretty beefy hardware in the visual effects world to do the blur
⏹️ ▶️ John the quote unquote right way, if Apple’s gotta do it, and they do it in real time, right? Don’t you get like a preview of the blur
⏹️ ▶️ John in the camera thing? So anyway, multiple minutes per frame is not gonna happen there. So
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple may be currently constrained, not only by the fact that they’re faking it, but by the fact they have to fake it
⏹️ ▶️ John and do it in real time. I mean, the A10 is fast, but it’s not fast enough
⏹️ ▶️ John to take an operation that takes multiple minutes. Nevermind, it’s also multiple minutes on, well, I don’t know what the resolution is,
⏹️ ▶️ John but how many megapixels is the 12 to seven camera? Eight, 12?
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s is that higher res than like 4k film? Probably higher than 2k right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No yeah 4k is just over 8 megapixels.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, whole point is that doing it, faking it the right way is is expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ John So that would explain a little bit of the crappiness. Also some more funny pictures of the blur
⏹️ ▶️ John messing up were posted at various places. Wasn’t it somewhere in the slack where you saw a picture of a person
⏹️ ▶️ John shot from like the knees up standing in front of of something with his arms at his side, and the background
⏹️ ▶️ John was blurred, but the gap between his arms and his body, the camera just didn’t find. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John the background was pin sharp. And when you look between his arms and his body, but the whole rest of the background was blurred, it looks really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that was Stephen Hackett, wasn’t it? It was his brother. And yeah, imagine your arms are at your side, but there’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gap between your arms and your body. And at a glance, especially not like blown
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up full size, I didn’t notice a thing wrong with it. But then as I looked closer,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I think because somebody pointed it out, it turns out that, like John said, the area between
⏹️ ▶️ Casey his brother’s arm and his torso was super sharp, whereas all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the area around his brother was blurred like you would have expected. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was kind of funny to see, and I mean, this is to be expected, and to be fair, it’s portrait
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mode, not entire body mode. And so, you know, it’s not really being
⏹️ ▶️ Casey used as designed, but it was still a funny thing to see and a great example of where it kind of falls on its face today
Ceramic or all-glass iPhones
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, moving on. Let’s talk about the ceramic iPhone 8. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been a, maybe not in the last week or two, but right when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Apple Watch Edition came out, there was a lot of talk of, well, if this works for a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey watch, why wouldn’t this work for a phone? And I think there’s a lot of different conversations
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about this and a lot of different ways this can go. And I think I, for one, am very concerned about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey droppability. Not to say these phones are terribly droppable as it is, but it would a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ceramic case like shatter, how would that work? So where do we see this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going for a potential ceramic iPhone 8?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I mean, it depends. Some of the possible reasons why they would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do this. There was this one big Quora post that I think kind of got this started from somebody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who knows about material sciences much more than we do, so forgive me for the details here. I mean, ceramic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has a lot of advantages over aluminum. One of them is that it’s radio transparent, so that gets rid of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of antenna problems. It’s also incredibly, you know, the kinds of ceramics that you’d
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use in a phone, it can be incredibly scratch resistant and fairly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco strong. You can shatter it. It’s kind of like sapphire. You can shatter it with a very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco strong impact, but it takes a pretty strong impact to do that. Anything less than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is basically invulnerable too. Ceramic can be very, very tough. and you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you can mold it in different shapes and everything, you know, I mean, there’s lots of like manufacturing details of how you would do it and Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has some interesting patents in that area but that they appear to not have really used for anything yet. They probably could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do it. I don’t think any of us know enough about manufacturing to know any of the details beyond that of like that they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could do it. For durability though, I mean like we also heard a rumor recently that they are, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re going back to the steel band around the outside design like what we had with the 4 and 4S. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, they’d have glass on both sides. glass has many of those same properties as ceramic as you know you can make it radio-transparent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you can make it glossy and you can make it pretty scratch-resistant. Obviously there’s some durability
⏹️ ▶️ Marco questions there but I don’t I mean I think Apple’s solution right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now to phone durability to impacts to drops and everything I think their solution right now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is cases and Apple Care like that’s that’s basically it’s like try not to drop your phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re the kind of person you drop your phone frequently get a really strong case for it and if you break it, hopefully
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you bought AppleCare because we’re going to make that easy for you. So, I’m honestly not sure that they really need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do that much more work in the durability department if it’s going to, you know, make the phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco harder to manufacture or less desirable or ugly or like, you know, gross and plasticky. Like, I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Do you think like cases in AppleCare are enough? It’s a hack.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think they do need to work on durability. It’s just like you said, they’re not willing to make the
⏹️ ▶️ John compromises that would require. I mean they can make the phone incredibly durable They just made the whole freaking thing out of plastic But plastic
⏹️ ▶️ John feels gross as a screen like we all want to move our hands across a glass screen because it feels
⏹️ ▶️ John better And so they keep trying to make the glass tougher But there’s only so much they can do and they spent
⏹️ ▶️ John a long time moving away from glass like they did the 4 and the 4s They’re like
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re taking a break from that for a while because the 4 and the 4s had two sides that could break the screen Can break
⏹️ ▶️ John in the front and the back, you know know, and two parts that could shatter, at least one that was all the aluminum designs, the 5,
⏹️ ▶️ John the 5s, 6s, and the 7. That’s a lot of phones. The front could shatter, backs never shatter.
⏹️ ▶️ John Bent a little sometimes, didn’t shatter. Scratched, didn’t shatter, right? So the rumor for
⏹️ ▶️ John the next iPhone is it’s gonna be all glass, as you said. Have they worked on the shattering
⏹️ ▶️ John thing? Do they have stronger, more shatter-resistant glass? I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ John sure. One other property of glass that’s potentially problematic is that it’s not a
⏹️ ▶️ John particularly good conductor of heat compared to say aluminum and so if you’ve got a hot little
⏹️ ▶️ John system on a chip in there you have to get the heat out somewhere maybe it’ll be radiating out of
⏹️ ▶️ John the steel bands or something I don’t know but it’s tougher for it to go through glass than it is an aluminum
⏹️ ▶️ John back the ceramics we’re talking about for the iPhones that’s why it’s difficult to talk about this and you can read
⏹️ ▶️ John that Quora post if we can find a link for it what do you mean by ceramic. Ceramic is not just one thing, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John with all of Apple’s patents with like, well, ceramic mixed with a bunch of other stuff with like fibers
⏹️ ▶️ John between it or reinforcing materials or polymers or laminates or other things to try to make it not
⏹️ ▶️ John be quite so much like ceramic. Because ceramic has, I think the main problem ceramic has is that
⏹️ ▶️ John it is heavy if you make it thick enough to be sturdy. If you make it light then it’s thin. And it has,
⏹️ ▶️ John like glass, catastrophic failure mode. Really good right up to the point where it totally goes
⏹️ ▶️ John kablooey. Anyway, we see the watch, we see that they’ve done the
⏹️ ▶️ John watch in ceramic. The watch is in an easier situation because people aren’t dropping their watches for
⏹️ ▶️ John the most part, but they are banging them into things. But it’s smaller and it’s able to be more sturdy because
⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t have any long, continuous flat areas like the back of the phone. Anyway, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John a ceramic iPhone is totally plausible as a thing that Apple will experiment
⏹️ ▶️ John with. know if they’re gonna get it to the point where where they
⏹️ ▶️ John can ship something there are so many material choices remember we heard all the rumors about carbon fiber for so many years
⏹️ ▶️ John both about Macs and about iOS devices oh yeah I think it’s another situation where oh
⏹️ ▶️ John carbon fiber is you know even better than plastic very light very strong
⏹️ ▶️ John has its failure modes are probably not as good as aluminum but not as bad as ceramic
⏹️ ▶️ John or glass but I think a lot of these decisions come down to how much does it cost to manufacture this can we manufacture
⏹️ ▶️ John it consistently and how ugly is it right because again I think
⏹️ ▶️ John like what’s stopping Apple from making the back of all their phones plastic I it’s like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not gonna say stubbornness but it’s it’s a desire not to ship a product that has
⏹️ ▶️ John plastic on the back because it’s seen as and feels to be you know because it has so much plastic back phone
⏹️ ▶️ John radio-transparent Maybe not good for e-conduction, all right? Very light, very sturdy,
⏹️ ▶️ John really good failure modes, right? Maybe a little bit scratchy, but like talk to someone who has a 5C. I
⏹️ ▶️ John think it holds up pretty well. It’s just not as sort of premium an experience as glass or aluminum
⏹️ ▶️ John or ceramic would be. And so I think they just keep looking for new materials, looking for different materials. The same reason you
⏹️ ▶️ John got glass on the front. Can we have plastic on the front? Sure, it’d be so sturdy. Can you imagine a completely plastic
⏹️ ▶️ John screen iPhone with plastic on the back, lightweight, sturdy, drop it, no problem,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it would not feel like an iPhone. So that’s their struggle. So I’m on the lookout
⏹️ ▶️ John for ceramic, but I’m pretty sure the next one’s, I buy all the glass rumors just because the 4
⏹️ ▶️ John and the 4S design was the one they wanted to make, or at least the one that, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John if Johnny specifically, but it was one of the early designs for like, that’s what the first iPhone was supposed to be and they couldn’t pull it off. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it took them a really long time until they could pull it off. Then they did pull it off and everyone dropped their phones and they shattered front and back and they said,
⏹️ ▶️ John All right, let’s take a break. Let’s take a break from that. Take another run at it. And how many years was
⏹️ ▶️ John it? I counted it off before. Five, five S, six, six S, seven. Five years they waited. And so now
⏹️ ▶️ John after five years of non-glass ones, they’re gonna try it again and I’m ready to see how much they’ve improved it.
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco up something between me and my wife’s computer. I think we’ve got something like six terabytes of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco data to Backblaze and it has been totally fine. We pay five bucks per month per computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we have all this data there. It’s truly unlimited. Go to backblaze.com slash ATP
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to support our show. They will know you came from here. They’ll keep buying ads here. Everybody will be happy. You’ll have online backup.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Everybody’s better off. Once again, Backblaze.com slash ATP. You can get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a 15 day free trial.
Ceramics, cont’d.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you very much to Backblaze, the best online backup, for sponsoring the show.
⏹️ ▶️ John a ceramic thing and bake it and then machine it
⏹️ ▶️ John after it’s baked to make it into the watch case thing? I don’t know we’ll put a link in the show once people can read it and
⏹️ ▶️ John see for themselves but there is a reference to baking it and how much it shrinks during baking and then the reference to
⏹️ ▶️ John machining and polishing and so anyway this watch for all the people who are true believers
⏹️ ▶️ John in the future ceramic iPhone rumor this watch looks to all the world like the original
⏹️ ▶️ John MacBook Air which was the trial run of the unibody construction that would eventually go across the entire product line. So
⏹️ ▶️ John if this watch thing works out and they master this process by selling a small number
⏹️ ▶️ John of these very expensive watches to people, then maybe it will be for the follow-up phone after
⏹️ ▶️ John the all-glass one. But if this is their trial run, it’s too late for this to be the manufacturing technique
⏹️ ▶️ John tapped for next year’s iPhone, which already has to be much farther along.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and also, like, manufacturing this one fairly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco high-end, fairly, you know, small-market Apple Watch model out of this material
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is incredibly different from making the back of every iPhone with it. The difference in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco scale there is immense. I don’t even think this is a good enough test. I think they would have to make all the Apple Watches out of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ceramic to have it be even close to the right kind of test. But obviously, they’re not going to do that yet, so we’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know also building off of this I saw a video that was linked to by
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a friend of the show Ryan Jones that is entitled the iPhone 7
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve been waiting for in the whole video is two and a half minutes and If you want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to see it in its full glory Just pause us for two and a half minutes and go watch you don’t need audio on the on the video
⏹️ ▶️ Casey though If you’re listening to me now, presumably that’s not a problem them. So what happens is this person takes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an iPhone 7 and like saws off all the sides of it such that they’re all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then sands them down and whatever. I want this. I want this a lot because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this matte black iPhone 7 that I have, I love it. I really, really do. The more I use it, the more I like it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I think aesthetically it’s my favorite iPhone yet, but this thing is a darn bar of soap. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would love, I mean, obviously I’ve never Handled this particular gentleman’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phone, but it stands to reason it would be much easier to grip with the flat sides I would love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to have an iPhone like this but in black not not silver So yeah, I want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this please. Can I have one?
⏹️ ▶️ John I think you only want it because you haven’t seen it up close
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, if you notice the video was kind of quick to show the phone once it was all done
⏹️ ▶️ John gotta be a mess because this is not a precision operation. It’s just gotta look like a phone that has been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it didn’t it didn’t look good if you try to look closely The shape looked good, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey did not right. That’s the thing like if this was officially done I think it would be pretty impressive.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that would be neat.
Camera contamination
⏹️ ▶️ John All right, so I talked over my phone on many past episodes and
⏹️ ▶️ John my wife’s going on a cruise, Mediterranean cruise, and she was going to bring the fancy
⏹️ ▶️ John camera and rented lenses and we talked all about that. Anyway, she went, she’s back, she brought the camera back in one
⏹️ ▶️ John piece, did not drop it into the ocean, took a bunch of pictures with it, and when I was going through her pictures
⏹️ ▶️ John getting them sorted into the photos library, after her return I noticed a bunch of them
⏹️ ▶️ John and she noticed too. She said, just wait, there’s something in a bunch of the pictures, you’ll see it soon.
⏹️ ▶️ John A dark line that appears in a bunch of pictures, and the line kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of looks semi-circular, so I’m like, is that like a shadow of a lens or something? But then I
⏹️ ▶️ John noticed some other ones, the line is not perfectly curved like a circle,
⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes it changes the angle, and I’m like, well, okay, a lens aberration wouldn’t do that, because the lenses
⏹️ ▶️ John are all round or, you know, spherical, they’re not, they’re not oddly shape like that and then sometimes it would curve in
⏹️ ▶️ John the opposite direction and it would move around and so I posted on Twitter can anyone tell me what’s causing
⏹️ ▶️ John the vertical curve shadow lines in these pictures and posted a bunch of sample pictures and then everyone commented about
⏹️ ▶️ John where the pictures are from and whether they’ve been there or not but in addition to that
⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of people did have guesses as to what it might be.
⏹️ ▶️ John My guess was that it was maybe something on the lens because it was in so many pictures in so many different environments
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t think it it was what it looks like, which is a hair in front of the lens or something, because, you know, your hair is
⏹️ ▶️ John under control. It wouldn’t constantly be in front of the lens. The lens was a zoom lens. It was pretty far away. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John I inspected the lenses and there was nothing on them. Um, I knew there was stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John on my sensor. I could see there, like you can see in the same pictures, some dots and I could see on the sensor there was some
⏹️ ▶️ John dust that I needed to get rid of, but I’m like, what the hell is this line? And a lot of people have
⏹️ ▶️ John theories and one theory was exactly correct. This is the magic of, uh, of crowdsourcing the magic
⏹️ ▶️ John of Twitter. This theory was it is a hair. The hair is not on the sensor. The
⏹️ ▶️ John hair is not on the lens. The hair is not in between elements in the lens, but rather the hair is caught in the channel
⏹️ ▶️ John that the shutter curtain moves in. And when the shutter curtain comes down it
⏹️ ▶️ John snags or otherwise grabs the hair in the channel and briefly flicks it in front of the sensor as
⏹️ ▶️ John it moves up and down and it appears and it only appears in pictures with a very small
⏹️ ▶️ John aperture because with wide aperture lights coming in from too many angles and it just illuminates all behind it you don’t see it so you see
⏹️ ▶️ John it in pictures of the sky or another you know thing with lots of light where the aperture
⏹️ ▶️ John has to squeeze down really small and then most of the incident light rays are traveling in the same direction then you get a shadow
⏹️ ▶️ John this one little hair and the way I found it after having this theory is looked in the channel and
⏹️ ▶️ John way down in the corner of the channel just kind of peeking out like like on
⏹️ ▶️ John an angle like cutting off off the corner of like the edge, you know, here’s the channel, here’s the bottom, was little tiny
⏹️ ▶️ John hair. And so I went in there super duper carefully with a pair of tweezers and
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey pulled it out and it was about like
⏹️ ▶️ John a centimeter and a half long, very fine, non-human, doesn’t look
⏹️ ▶️ John like a human hair, it looked like a hair from like a rabbit or a squirrel or something. Really small
⏹️ ▶️ John and I got that out of there. I was like, thank God, because so many other theories are like, oh, there’s something wrong with your shutter and
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s dragging something on the thing or whatever, or you just have to bring your camera back. I was so happy to be able to
⏹️ ▶️ John actually extract a hair. I’m like, yes, this is the thing. And then, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John of course I had to go through the rest of the process to get rid of the dust. So I brought one of those sensor cleaning kits.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the way you do this is you take a picture of a blue sky and intentionally crank
⏹️ ▶️ John the aperture down to a very tiny opening, or you can just put an auto if the sky is bright enough. And
⏹️ ▶️ John you take a picture of what you think is blank blue sky, and then you bring it back into your favorite photo application, and you fiddle with the contrast
⏹️ ▶️ John and see if you can see anything that looks like a dot. If you do see something like that, there’s still
⏹️ ▶️ John dust on it, and so I use the sensor cleaning kit Which is a little scary you know like
⏹️ ▶️ John the people gives out you can damage your sense should be super careful But like I bought a thing specifically for that purpose.
⏹️ ▶️ John They made like square on a stick kind of thing Yeah, there’s like disposable single-use swabs.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep. Yep for specifically size for the sensor So you just just one swipe only and then you throw the thing in the
⏹️ ▶️ John garbage or some incredibly wasteful But whatever yep And you have to use two of them one with the little spritz of the stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John on it and one without the spritz of the stuff anyway and a little blower to get most I hope to just use the blower because I didn’t want to touch it at
⏹️ ▶️ John to get all this stuff yeah but the blower didn’t dislodge a couple of stubborn things so
⏹️ ▶️ John I use the thing took a bunch of pictures the sky now my sensor is clean which all which made me think
⏹️ ▶️ John that camera manufacturers could really really help with this problem by just
⏹️ ▶️ John putting something I mean I never had a DSLR but I assume that the mirror doesn’t actually seal
⏹️ ▶️ John up and I know it covers the sensor but doesn’t actually actually like cover it as in keep dust out right no all
⏹️ ▶️ John right so a they should and be mirrorless cameras should
⏹️ ▶️ John have a little door kind of like the shutter but not the shutter that closes before you can take the lens off
⏹️ ▶️ John like why not do that you know I mean you’d still have to clean the sensor sometimes you still have to have a mechanism like you do on
⏹️ ▶️ John an SLR to flip the lens up so you can clean the sensor right but why expose
⏹️ ▶️ John it to the air at all when you’re changing lenses just put it maybe there’s not enough room for a door or whatever not Not the
⏹️ ▶️ John shutter, the shutter is the shutter, fine, I understand it has to be high speed and fancy and so on and so forth. There’s a plain old
⏹️ ▶️ John boring reasonably sealed door that closes and covers the sensor when you change lenses.
⏹️ ▶️ John That would be a good idea camera manufacturers. Anyway, moral of the story is, I did not
⏹️ ▶️ John correctly convey to my wife exactly how careful
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to be when changing lenses. Not that she even changed them, she just, she changed it once. you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John all it takes is once for a little dust, but like, every time I did it on my Long Island vacation, it was like,
⏹️ ▶️ John the lens can only be off the camera for a shortest possible time. I’d have it like staged and set up and never
⏹️ ▶️ John pointed upwards and just like lens off the cap on the lens cap, you know, it’s like it was like trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to diffuse a bomb and again, never do it in a still environment with still
⏹️ ▶️ John air, never point the lenses or the camera like just
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s, you know, It’s it’s nerve-wracking. Um, and you know, she spent a lot of time
⏹️ ▶️ John in her vacation with this hair traveling up and down The channel on the shutter, which is kind of disappointing.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s I mean, it’s it didn’t ruin all her pictures But enough of them have a big dark line in them.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s kind of disappointing Luckily, almost everything indoors doesn’t have this problem because the the
⏹️ ▶️ John aperture is too big
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that stinks I’m sorry to hear that but what a weird problem and you know, I don’t have the person’s name handy but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and gosh only knows if this is true or not, but I’m taking them at face value. Somebody told me that the Micro Four Thirds
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cameras, which is what I have, they all have optical image stabilization or a lot of them, if not all of them,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the body rather than in the lens. And they were saying that, this person was saying that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when you turn the camera on, it will actually use the OIS to like shake off any dust
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that might be on the lens. I have no idea if that’s true or not, but what a cool idea, even if it isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco true. It’s a pretty common feature. It doesn’t it doesn’t actually work perfectly, but it like like our exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, like like our the 5d mark twos that we had it didn’t have stabilization But it just had some kind of like sensor like vibrator
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing that would like try to buzz off the dust every time you turn the camera off and And so to have that just constantly going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like every time the camera turns off we did Occasionally have to blow something off the sensor with the 5ds,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but very rarely I think in the like eight years we use them. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe three or four times total whereas with my Sony when I got it last year,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco literally the first week I had it, I got dust on the sensor. And similar story, just less severe. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was last year, we were at the Beech House. Lots of my pictures had this one big spot, and eventually I took the lens off and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spotted it on the sensor. I was on vacation, so I didn’t have any of the cleaning things, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just kind of tolerated it and just edited it out. It wasn’t too bad to edit out of everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, the camera was like a week old. And it happened immediately.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And yeah, you don’t realize how good those automatically vibrate, the sensor things are,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco until you have a camera that doesn’t do it or doesn’t have it. Like the Sony’s, it has that feature, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it doesn’t do it every time. It does it only on demand. And it only partially works. But I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that feature could help a little bit, but in my case, first of all, it wouldn’t have gotten the hair because the hair’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not even on the sensors.
⏹️ ▶️ John sensor all you want, it’s not gonna help, that would have been there. And for the dust, the
⏹️ ▶️ John pieces that I had to eventually use the mechanical method of actually swabbing them off,
⏹️ ▶️ John the blower, the little, you know, hurricane blower, you know, shoots a very concentrated thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John that couldn’t even remove them. Like they were on there good. Wasn’t just like instant little dust that happened to float it on
⏹️ ▶️ John there. They were so wedged on there that very forcible, very
⏹️ ▶️ John concentrated stream of air could not dislodge them. I actually had to swipe them away. So I have a little faith
⏹️ ▶️ John in a sensor shake would have shaken them off too. Yeah. But again, a door with
⏹️ ▶️ John some kind of reasonable ceiling better than nothing would go a long way towards making
⏹️ ▶️ John changing lenses less nerve wracking.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I do it the same way you do. And I’m sure Marco is the same as well, where everything’s staged, ready to go. The camera’s always
⏹️ ▶️ Casey upside down. I’m not as intent on it being still air, but you know, we do what we can.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, and the whole thought of this happening to me is terrifying. So I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very impressed you were able to get this done without destroying the sensor, which is what I surely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey somehow would have done, knowing me, I’d have poured water on it somehow.
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know how you could, like, people say, oh, it’s so dull, you have to be careful. Like, it looks pretty sturdy down there. I mean, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John swabbing it. When I swabbed across it, it felt like a smooth surface,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the swab, it’s not like it has little snails. Like, I don’t understand how you go about breaking it. I suppose you could scratch
⏹️ ▶️ John it in some way, but the only thing I’m touching it with are these microfiber swabby things that I assume are safe.
⏹️ ▶️ John And yeah, I hope to not have to do that again, but like taking pictures of an empty blue sky and Checking
⏹️ ▶️ John for any little splotches on it You’ll see them like you don’t have to be an expert to be especially if you start filling
⏹️ ▶️ John with a contrast control You will find the spots that are there because I swabbed it and I could see
⏹️ ▶️ John where the spot used to be Was still a little you know, I had actually removed the material I couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John see with my eyeballs anymore, but on the sensor I could see a little spot and that’s what I had to use like the cleaning
⏹️ ▶️ John Stuff and then that got rid of it for good and now I’m just Messing with the controls trying to find any little spec
⏹️ ▶️ John and now it’s like oh, that’s JPEG compression never mind I should do raws I guess but anyway, I’m pretty sure I didn’t destroy my camera
⏹️ ▶️ John still seems to work. No more hair There are no more spots.
Which Bluetooth headphones?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so I have a brief tale of woe and a plea for help.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey On my work computer, I typically use a pair of headphones,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Bluetooth headphones I bought literally five years ago. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bought it— And they’re perfect in every way, as we’ve always heard.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, about that. So I bought them on August 15, 2011, and they’re Arctic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sound P311s. I’ve espoused them numerous times because while they are not perfect, they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accomplish everything satisfactorily in a satisfactory way.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So they are sufficient. You know, how much horsepower does a Rolls-Royce have? Sufficient amounts of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey horsepower. I upgraded to Sierra on my work Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and suddenly they are not sufficient anymore. For whatever reason,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I don’t know why, They sound like hugely,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hugely, hugely compressed. And I ran into this once years ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it ended up that there was like a bit value or something like that, that you could change in the Bluetooth Explorer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey app, which you have to get via Xcode tools now, and that fixed my problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like years ago, I’d noticed that, that, that when this first happened, the symbols were terrible and super compressed and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was just awful. And I was able to fix it. I tried doing the same thing this time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it didn’t make a difference. So I unpair, repair. I’ve done all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sorts of things. I haven’t tried again after having cleared my PRAM
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just for grins and giggles. I’ve done everything except that and I thought, well, maybe just something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey weird is going on there. They’re ancient headphones at this point. Let me just get a new set. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I got the equivalent set that’s newer. And so they came in today, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they are also Arctic Sound, but these are P253, and we will have links to these in the show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey notes. And good news, bad news. Good news is they sound great. Well, as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey great as a $30 set of Bluetooth headphones can sound, but every time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s any audio playing of any sort, the right channel has a buzzing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in them, which in the span of about 45 seconds drove me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey absolutely crazy. It took that long? Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco How did this review possibly start out in any positive way?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I’m returning these headphones
⏹️ ▶️ Casey did you know, like hand on heart, I did not know this, for some, if not all things, you can return it to Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, usually you have to pay return shipping. They’ll leave you off like six bucks from your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco return or something.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that what it does? Okay, because according to them, they were like, here’s your shipping label. and I didn’t cross-compare
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how much the cost of the item was versus how much they were saying they were going to refund me. So maybe that’s what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is. But anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, it’s super awesome. If you ever have to return anything to Amazon, they make it incredibly easy on you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. So I am going to return them, but here’s my predicament.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I want, for better or worse, Bluetooth headphones. I understand that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not everyone wants them. I do. I prefer Bluetooth headphones, and I think the reason I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey prefer them is because convenience is a bigger priority to me than perfect sound fidelity.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, then in that case, just wait for the AirPods. Well, so here’s the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I agree that that’s probably going to be the best answer, but they supposedly only run for five hours
⏹️ ▶️ Casey before they need to charge. And I know that it will charge quickly, but I typically sit at my desk,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey meetings aside, for eight to eight and a half hours in a day. These ancient headphones with their
⏹️ ▶️ Casey five-year-old battery that I love so much used to go like two, two and a half
⏹️ ▶️ Casey days between charges easily and with meetings during the day and whatnot. So it’s not exactly an apples
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to apples comparison, but you get my point. I think the answer is going to be get AirPods,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but is there any, and this is kind of rhetorical, kind of not, especially for you,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, is there any set of Bluetooth headphones that Whether or not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they are perfect audio fidelity, because again, I don’t care. For Marco’s purposes, let’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just assume I never listened to music on them, which is a complete and utter lie, but let’s just,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for your purposes, if you are satisfied with podcast fidelity, that will probably be sufficient
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for my music fidelity for this use case. Are there any headphones, Bluetooth headphones
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that have batteries that last about 10 hours, let’s say that don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey suck and here’s the kicker though, that have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a bar that goes behind the back of your neck rather than over your head. Why, ladies
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and gentlemen, because I am weird and my hair kind of sticks up a little bit and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey poofs. And if I put a bar across the top of my head for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eight hours, it’ll, it’ll, I’ll have like that imprint in my head always, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not advisable. So,
⏹️ ▶️ John um, Why ladies and gentlemen, you could have just said vanity.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yes. Yes, actually that was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco summary. Why?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You don’t want to mess up your hair. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey why. Right. It’s absolutely, hand on heart, no argument, absolutely, absolutely true.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There are some advantages to baldness. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I’m making fun of myself, but I really honestly am asking, and maybe we don’t answer it during the show,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I don’t have anything against earbuds, but I’d rather
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have an over-ear Or like the ones that I had kind of dangled on your ear, which I understand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey makes most people crazy But for me, I like it. It works for me So is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and we’ll put the links to the ones I’m talking about in the show notes Is there any set of Bluetooth headphones that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even vaguely like this? That is not a total piece of garbage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I would not have to charge in the middle of the day if I have to Charge them every night fine. No big deal, but I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have to charge in the middle of the day I think Marco you’re absolutely right What’s gonna end up happening is I’m gonna spend way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more money than I want to and I’m gonna get the ear pods and I’ll Probably love them and it’ll probably be fine and I’ll put them in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the little tic-tac-case during meetings I’ll never know the difference. I suspect that’s going to be the winner. But probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is there any other option? Preferably not buds, but buds
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would maybe entertain Is there anything else that you can think of that doesn’t go over the head?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I I’m going to fill you with hope but ultimately provide no value whatsoever whatsoever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, the problem, and this is honestly, I’ve been considering just stopping reviewing headphones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Oh no, because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I want you to review the Bluetooth headphones, now the Bluetooth is in vogue-ish, kind of.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Here’s the thing. So, basically, like, you know, right now everyone keeps asking me, you know, what they should get for Bluetooth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything. And with Bluetooth, there are so, I mean, the headphone market has grown a lot in the last
⏹️ ▶️ Marco couple years since I started my big review. It is so like there’s so many models
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now and people have so many different needs and the fact is like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it takes a lot of time and a lot of money to buy or somehow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco acquire all these headphones and test them properly in a useful way. That’s why like when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the wire cutter does it they have like a whole team of people doing it and it takes a long time and that’s like their their full-time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco job is to work on stuff like this. And also the headphone market has gotten, basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like as Beats came around a few years ago, a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people took notice of here’s a place we can make a lot of money. So now there are tons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of headphone brands and tons of like allegedly awesome new headphones coming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out on the market all the time. And many of them are very expensive. them are like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know $400 and up basically which is you know for for an audio file that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of normal but for a regular person it’s a very expensive pair of headphones. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there are so many now that almost nobody including the Wirecutter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually reviews a meaningful number of them to be able to give you a useful blanket
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recommendation. Like if you read the Wirecutter they always go through and one of the things they’ll spend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few paragraphs doing is saying like here’s the ones we tested and here’s a whole bunch we didn’t even test because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know the reviews didn’t look good on Amazon or you know whatever other reasons they have because you you basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to rule out large swaths of what’s out there just to have a possible number to review
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and with Bluetooth everything is is even worse now because now there’s like even more factors
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that matter that that before you don’t have to worry about as much things like latency you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the the whether you compare it to multiple devices or not, whether it has decent reception to the phone,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether it supports all these different codecs that are now out there, and then the useful things like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how you control whether there’s buttons on it or some kind of touch gesture controls to control pausing and volume
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and stuff. It is so complicated now. There are so many models from $30
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to $1,000. No reviewer can meaningfully try
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a good number. So here’s what’s going to happen now. now as I speak as people listen as they are writing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you emails telling you what they bought and saying these are the best but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all they can tell you is that’s what they bought because they probably have tried between zero and five other pairs out of a market
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with like hundreds of entries there’s really nothing that most people can tell you that will be very helpful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even on Amazon half the reviews on Amazon these days are fake they’re paid they’re they’re fraud
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it’s so hard to find good information about this kind of stuff so Basically, how did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you find the ones you have now? Was it just, you know, browse online a bit, look at some reviews and just buy them? Yeah, pretty much.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s what you’re going to have to do again. Like that’s when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buying headphones, that’s basically… and not to mention, even if you found a place that reviewed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a bunch of headphones in a way that was useful to you, people have such wildly different taste in headphones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco People have very different preferences. Like the whole list that I made disagreed substantially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of times with the wire cutter and places like that. There are a few big headphone reviewers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out there in the world that I disagree strongly with and some that I agree strongly with. You just kind of never know what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re going to find out there because it’s so subjective. People always think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that there’s some ideal of how headphones should sound, but there isn’t one that everyone agrees on.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s a whole bunch of argument about that, but basically there is no such thing as the best
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way a headphone should sound. That’s widely agreed upon. Basically no one’s going to tell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you anything that is going to be more useful than what you’re going to find by just searching places like Amazon, reading a few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco user reviews, and just picking one. And if it sucks, return it. Otherwise, keep it until it dies.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So all that being said, this is probably a bad time to invest in a pair of Bluetooth headphones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because the AirPods aren’t out yet. And even though I expect them to sound
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really mediocre at best, because Apple has not made a pair of headphones that sounds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good, including all the ones by Beats, they have not made one that sounds good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They can achieve practical, they can achieve good enough for many people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or for many roles. As I mentioned, I listen on my pair of Bluetooth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sennheiser PX210BT’s that sound horrible. They have the worst sound in the world, but I listen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on them because they’re incredibly practical. That I think is going to be the appeal of AirPods.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That they are going to be incredibly practical and nice to use. Although I do have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a very strong concern about the real world
⏹️ ▶️ Marco annoyance of not being able to have like clicker and volume controls on them as we discussed previously.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like to only have Siri or to only be able to map the tap on the thing to like play
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pause and no other commands. That I think is going to be annoying. But that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being said, I think in all other ways, AirPods are probably going to be pretty great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if what you’re valuing is convenience over sound quality.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Which all jokes aside, that is absolutely what I am valuing. For this use case,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would much rather have convenience over sound quality. Now I have a really great set of Beyerdynamics
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I’m listening to right now. I have a really great set of open-ear Sennheisers that admittedly are ancient but still sound phenomenal.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I have a set of Ultimate Ears in-ear earbuds that also sound great. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I understand what good headphones sound like. I get it. It’s just for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me, this is not a time where I am worrying about perfect audio fidelity. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think to your point, Marco, the answer is either going to be the Beats X, which is the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of sporty ones that it’s two earbuds tied together by a loop that goes behind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your neck, which is 150 bucks, or more likely if I’m already in for 150, well, crap, why not do 160, 170, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is for the AirPods. And I suspect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that even though I am sitting here telling you, oh, I’m worried about making it a whole day at work, I have enough meetings
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and general mucking about talking to people during the day that I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sure I can get through the day with just a little bit of charging in the case here and there. And Matt Bischoff
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the chat had asked me, well, don’t you go to lunch at any point? Sometimes yes, but oftentimes I just bring a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sandwich and just eat at my desk. And so that’s not, there’s no guaranteed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time when I’m going to get up and be able to charge, but I suspect that I will be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey able to make it work with AirPods. And for convenience, that’s probably the best option
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I have. But internet, if you have a really good idea, preferably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on or over ear, preferably that doesn’t go over the top of your head because you’re a vain, petty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey idiot, let me know. That would be useful.
⏹️ ▶️ John Morning AirPods and afternoon AirPods. There you go. Nice.
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey So Google had an event. They announced the Google Pixel phones. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a Pixel and Pixel XL, I believe it is, which are effectively the equivalent of the iPhone 7
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and iPhone The phones look good, I guess. I mean, they look kind of iPhone-ish.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They look kind of like somebody described the way an iPhone 6 looks, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over the phone to someone else, and then this is what came out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s a relatively fair characterization. I think they look
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fairly iPhone-ish, but the one thing I will say is the back of them,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh, does that look rough. Because there’s like some areas that looks like it’s plastic, some that looks like it’s glass
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it’s just, woof, no thank you. But generally speaking, outside of that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they seem like they’re good devices. There’s no camera bump, which they made a snarky comment about, and I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t really blame them because the camera bump kind of stinks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I mean, to be fair, they can’t be making snarky remarks about good design
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when they’re presenting that as their phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I don’t think the design is bad with the exception of the back, but I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whatever. Um, it does have a headphone jack, which of course they were super snarky about, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not surprised, but kind of disappointed because it would be really neat if there was a unified front on this issue, but whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, no optical image, no, no physical optical, uh, image stabilization,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I thought there was, um, when I was watching the keynote, but it turns out there was not. Uh, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all in software, which on the one side I’m like, like, they’ll get that right. But then again, I’ve seen,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey um, the Google app that does the live, What is it, motion stills, I think they call it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is the live photo stabilization thing. And by God, that’s the work of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey magic. So it’s possible they’ll get that right. Overall, I mean, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey looks like it’s decent hardware, all told. The presentation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was okay. It was Apple-ish in some good ways and some bad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ways. Way better than Apple in terms of diversity. I do want to call that out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think they did a much better job with that. That being said, the presenters were kind of okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, I don’t think any of them were great. And I mean, not that Apple, every Apple presenter is amazing,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I think by and large Apple presenters do a pretty darn good job. And even some first-time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey presenters like a Bozeman St. John did an amazing job. So there is a high bar in that regard,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but. I mean, all in all, this isn’t bad. Uh, the back is no good. The name of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey colors, there’s very silver, quite black, and really blue.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Seriously? Whatever. Um, yeah, I, I,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can’t even, the, uh, prices are the same as equivalent iPhones, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cool. I mean, I guess that means that that’s apparently the price to hit. Uh, they only come in 32 gigs and 128 gigs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s no a 256 gig option like you can find on an iPhone, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey comes or it’s pre-orderable now, I think it ships in a couple of weeks.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It looks good. But the thing that was most impressive to me about the entire presentation,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is both good and bad, was any Google Photos user, which is presumably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyone who will have this phone, gets free unlimited storage for all the photos and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey video that come off of their Pixel phone. And as someone who is a devout Google
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Photos user, that is amazing. and I am super duper jealous.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We haven’t yet seen why we need to care about Google’s phone releases.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because they’ve made phones for a while under the Nexus brand, and we haven’t needed to care about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those yet. Because historically they’ve been pretty rough with any kind of retail
⏹️ ▶️ Marco presence, any kind of deals with the carriers to get their phones promoted and into stores and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s been not one of their strong points. You know, the Android marketplace has really just been,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the most part, the Samsung marketplace in recent years. The timing of this is interesting, with Samsung
⏹️ ▶️ Marco having a pretty bad time right now with this Note 7 disaster,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Google coming in, and hey, we have an alternative for you if you wanna keep an Android, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe going to the carriers now and saying, hey, you can integrate with us now, we’ll put all your bloatware crap on there, as I saw a story
⏹️ ▶️ Marco earlier that’s saying they’re doing that. So the timing is opportune for Google to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco take back some of the Android inertia from Samsung a little bit, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do think we still have not seen Google really show the world yet that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their first-party hardware products can actually get any traction in retail and in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco marketplace. So if they do, then great. Then we have another strong
⏹️ ▶️ Marco competitor, the industry will be better off, customers will be better off, but I just don’t see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why we need to care about this yet. is based on their past,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the chances of this really taking off, I don’t think are guaranteed.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think for the first time they have a couple of pitches and an ad campaign that have a
⏹️ ▶️ John chance of resonating with iOS users. We mentioned on a couple shows
⏹️ ▶️ John ago the whole thing of like making fun of the iPhone where you take a picture and it shows you’re out of storage, touting the whole,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, Google, we take your pictures and then throw them up to the cloud and our crap actually works type of angle. And
⏹️ ▶️ John then this is just one step further along the same lines for saying, you get this phone. Not only does
⏹️ ▶️ John our stuff work to put your stuff in the cloud, but we don’t charge you some big monthly fee
⏹️ ▶️ John for your storage. Get this phone. Don’t worry about storage anymore. Really don’t worry about
⏹️ ▶️ John it. You have unlimited storage in our cloud and so on and so forth. And there’s an article in the Verge
⏹️ ▶️ John talking about this saying
⏹️ ▶️ John see, Apple, see what you have to do. Why don’t you give people cloud storage equal to the size of their phone, which was the other thing
⏹️ ▶️ John we used to talk about. Why doesn’t Apple just do this? I mean, the answer is obvious because Google
⏹️ ▶️ John monetizes the stuff that you upload into the cloud. Google anonymizes
⏹️ ▶️ John and looks at your crap and uses it for machine learning or advertising. But
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re not as privacy focused as Apple is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but that’s kind of a bad example though. Because people say, Google can afford
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do this because they’re making money off your privacy. Apple can’t do this. But that’s not true. Apple makes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco money too. make tons of money off the hardware. I would bet Apple’s making more per phone than Google
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I know, but it’s the same business though. They’re both, like, you can say which company is able
⏹️ ▶️ John to make more money off things, but in the end, there’s Apple to Apple. They’re both
⏹️ ▶️ John making phones somehow. They’re both making the operating system somehow. They’re both running the cloud
⏹️ ▶️ John services stores your photos somehow, right? And if Apple’s able to make more money on hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John and less money on services and Google’s reverse, that’s all well and good, but Google has one big thing that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t have that there’s no Apple’s to Apple’s comparison for, which is we have a search engine
⏹️ ▶️ John that brings us huge amounts of money through advertising and huge amounts of data to feed
⏹️ ▶️ John into our analytical engine to figure out like, you know, anything you can imagine wanting to do with machine learning,
⏹️ ▶️ John Google has so many inputs into that system that Apple has no,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, no comparison to us. So even if Apple wanted to do everything that Google does in terms of monetizing your data,
⏹️ ▶️ John They can’t because they don’t have as much input into the system. It’s not as valuable to them. So
⏹️ ▶️ John what? We have your pictures. What can we do with that? Well, you can use it to feed your engines to figure out how to sell search
⏹️ ▶️ John ads. What do you mean search ads? We don’t have a search engine, right? So Google still has that big strength in terms of monetizing
⏹️ ▶️ John your stuff. And you’re right that you’re saying, well, Apple’s got a lot of money in the bank. Apple could give free unlimited
⏹️ ▶️ John cloud and video storage to all of its customers for the next 150 years and only cut like a tiny sliver
⏹️ ▶️ John off the mountain of cash they have, right? That is all true.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I’m not even talking about like cash, like cash reserves.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know, using the profit margins on the hardware, right? They make more money on the hardware than Google does.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, like the Google model is, we’re gonna somehow get you this phone and then we’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make money on you over time as you use our stuff with ads. Apple model is, we’re gonna make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco money on this phone up front. And by the way, they’re still gonna make money off everybody with their 30% cut from the App Store
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything else. But you know, even if they only make money from the phone hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from somebody and then after that point, that person is just a cost center as they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get all their iCloud stuff hosted for free or whatever else if they launch a plan like this. You’re still making money somewhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and there’s plenty of profit on a phone that’s priced the way these phones are priced. They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could, if they wanted to, just give people cloud storage in a way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would probably not have that significant of an impact on their margins. They just don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do it because they like making that extra little five bucks a month from the very small number of people who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are gonna buy iCloud storage or whatever. But it’s setting aside how you pay for it, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, both companies can pay for it in their own ways. Apple doesn’t have to become
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this crazy ad company that invades all your privacy to have enough profit margin on an iPhone to host your photos for a couple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years. Google does that anyway, but even they don’t, if they’re selling their hardware now, even they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need to necessarily do that if they didn’t want to. But so assuming both companies have ways to pay for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, because they both do without changing their business models. They both have ways to pay for it. Then I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Google’s approach of giving you more of that like hosting, that is a much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more customer friendly approach. It is a much more likely approach to succeed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in terms of getting people to use all these photo uploads, getting people to actually have their photos backed up to the cloud
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somehow. And I wish Apple would do it. That being said, that isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco today’s Apple style. That’s not, that’s not like a Tim Cook or even a Steve Jobs Apple style. I don’t see them doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that anytime for the foreseeable future. But I think that’s a shame because I think not only could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they afford to do it without becoming a privacy invasive company, just using the margins they already have, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it makes for a way better customer experience to just know that whatever photos you take on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your phone, they’re just backed up because storage is really, really cheap these days, especially at the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of scale that Apple and Google are working out with their data centers and everything and their web services contracts. So like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not like they can’t afford it. It’s not like it’s even a big cost. It’s just Apple is using that additional photo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco storage as a potential center for profit from service revenue.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And Google is saying, for these people who buy our phone, we’re just not gonna have that as a way to make money. We’re gonna do it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some other way. And it’s a difference of opinion, of what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a reasonable place to make money from people? Where do you want to nickel and dime them versus give them a bunch of stuff for free? And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, both companies can do this, but only one of them is doing it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, Apple has been breaking down its margins, dividing
⏹️ ▶️ John out services separately. So if Apple was to do this, it would take the
⏹️ ▶️ John one part of their business that they keep using to try to distract you from the fact that their phone business isn’t growing like it used to,
⏹️ ▶️ John the services part. Hey, look at our year over year service growth. And it will take a bite out of it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And even though you can say, oh, well, they’ll just pay for that with their hardware margins. The way that becomes visible
⏹️ ▶️ John in an earnings call is service revenue was up, you know, 40% year over year, but
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, now we did this free storage for everyone plan and service revenue is only up 5% this year, or it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John down 5% or something like that. And it’s like, oh, that was supposed to be the bright spot in your earnings call because
⏹️ ▶️ John your other businesses are stagnant or not growing as fast as they used to be. And now even your services
⏹️ ▶️ John one is taking a hit. That would not be good because like, you know, it’s like, oh, well, you, the same thing with the cash.
⏹️ ▶️ John If we just said, oh, we’re giving away storage and the way we’re gonna pay for it are just going to burn cash to do it. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John these are all things that are possible numerically, but don’t look good
⏹️ ▶️ John to the outside world of like, do you have a sustainable business? Whereas Google,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, all of its cost centers and running all that stuff. It’s like, it’s all under the same umbrella of get
⏹️ ▶️ John more people, get more of those people’s information that feeds the beast that, you know, that we make money off of. And
⏹️ ▶️ John the complaint about Google is you’re not making enough money off of your users. You have so many users, you have all this data.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple makes so much more money off of every one of its users than you do. You need to find a way to monetize them
⏹️ ▶️ John better. And that’s a persistent complaint about Google. But this is just more of the same with them.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was like, OK, well, we heard your complaint, but we’re going to keep doing that thing we do, which we try to get everyone’s data as much as possible and getting
⏹️ ▶️ John you getting to use all our services. And the more data we have and the more users we have, the more money we make, even
⏹️ ▶️ John if our margins aren’t that big. And in theory, like like Casey said, this phone
⏹️ ▶️ John is these phones of the same price as iPhones. They’re made of the same materials. They’re, you know, like
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re probably cheaper materials in the grand scheme of things because Google is not as obsessive about manufacturing
⏹️ ▶️ John and tolerances and they didn’t have to design their own chips. They’re buying it off the shelf from Qualcomm, which means they have to pay Qualcomm
⏹️ ▶️ John a margin. By the other hand, they don’t have to pay for all the R and D to develop the chip and the, you know, anyway, in
⏹️ ▶️ John theory, Google could be making similar margins to Apple. They’re just not as good at this business.
⏹️ ▶️ John They don’t make enough phones. They’re not as good at it as Apple, so they don’t make as big of margins. And similarly,
⏹️ ▶️ John for the server-side component, Apple’s not as good at Google as this. I’m sure Apple stuff costs more to them
⏹️ ▶️ John because they’re not as good at doing server-side stuff. It’s less reliable, less performant, less scalable,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it probably costs Apple more than it costs Google because Google is really good at this stuff and has a much bigger scale. And
⏹️ ▶️ John they have a much bigger scale because they don’t just run a service that stores people’s photos. They run the world’s biggest search
⏹️ ▶️ John engine and tons of other crap. And they have a lot of servers and a lot of storage and a lot of in-house hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John and software and know-how to make this work. So this is definitely
⏹️ ▶️ John asymmetrical warfare here. And anything having to do with cloud services, Google’s just so much better
⏹️ ▶️ John at than Apple. This is a perfect move. I mean, when I started this thing, this is a perfect move to try to actually
⏹️ ▶️ John get people who were iPhone users to look at the other side of the fence.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not even so much like, oh, don’t buy a Samsung because they catch on fire. Buy our phones.
⏹️ ▶️ John What about iOS people? All those things that you hated iOS, those are the things we’re great about. And of course, they’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna talk in the commercials about the things that Apple is better at, but like, we’ll give you cloud storage, ours will
⏹️ ▶️ John work, ours will be fast, and ours will be free. And I honestly think that A, Apple should respond,
⏹️ ▶️ John but B, Apple doesn’t have a really good way to respond. Like, again, if they just did it and say we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John paying for it out of our hardware margins, that, you know, that would be good for consumers, but that would be bad
⏹️ ▶️ John for Apple. Like, those would be some tough earning calls. Would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it? What do you think is worse for Apple? Losing a potential iPhone customer to the Google phone?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or paying for that customer’s photo storage? Like, they make way more money selling another iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than they do selling a couple of iCloud storage accounts for somebody for a couple years. Like, if they offered unlimited
⏹️ ▶️ Marco storage for photos and videos, just like Google does, that would remove one of the Google Pixel’s largest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco selling points. It would just totally evaporate. I bet right now Apple probably thinks, like I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco said at the beginning of this segment, that Google’s first party hardware has never gone anywhere really, so we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably don’t have to worry about it, right? But what if it does?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I don’t think these are gonna, again, it’s a trailing indicator. You have to wait to see, oh, are
⏹️ ▶️ John we actually losing customers because of this thing? Or is it just a thing that makes people look elsewhere, but they never actually switch because
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re too trapped into the Apple ecosystem or whatever? If Apple was to offer this
⏹️ ▶️ John immediately, rather than just say, just lowering the prices, which they’ve done already a couple times,
⏹️ ▶️ John offer free for everything. That would be seen as like, like why are you reacting to this?
⏹️ ▶️ John Why are you reacting to a phone that sells in such small volumes? Why do you even care about the phone? Do you really think it’s gonna pull away
⏹️ ▶️ John customers? Wait until it actually does start to pull away customers and then react to it, rather than
⏹️ ▶️ John giving away a bunch of money, right? From the services division that is your growth darling in the
⏹️ ▶️ John absence of anything else. We’ve talked about storage sizes for phones and storage sizes
⏹️ ▶️ John for cloud and how Apple has not historically been very competitive there and they’ve been adjusting their prices to try to be
⏹️ ▶️ John more competitive. Google is doing the thing that Google is able to do. Enough about how
⏹️ ▶️ John much your storage tiers cost, enough about Dropbox costs this much, and iCloud Drive costs that much, and you
⏹️ ▶️ John have to pay for this, and your photos don’t count, but then your iCloud backups count, enough of that. Everything
⏹️ ▶️ John free for everybody. Like, there’s not even Beyond a Backblaze where it’s $5 unlimited. They’re just like, everything unlimited
⏹️ ▶️ John free. And I feel like the reason Google is offering it on these phones is because they
⏹️ ▶️ John are selling them for iPhone prices. I think a lot of this storage is being subsized by the fact that you bought this really
⏹️ ▶️ John expensive phone. You know, as far as I’m aware, this deal is not being offered
⏹️ ▶️ John generically on the cheapest Android phone you can find. You have to buy the Pixel, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it isn’t any Android phone. It’s specifically the Pixel phones.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, which is a super expensive phone. So I think Google is actually funding this with a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ John of the margins from, granted, probably not as high as Apple, but a little bit of the margins from this very expensive phone. we’ve all
⏹️ ▶️ John learned painfully unlimited. I mean, it’s unlimited as long as it’s unlimited until it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not unlimited anymore. Usually by terms of the contract that say we can end this deal
⏹️ ▶️ John at any time or the company going out of business as in picture life or the one whose name I’ve already forgotten.
⏹️ ▶️ John Ever picks? Ever picks. Yeah, it wasn’t very ever was it?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think people really care about like, you know, oh, it’s not really limited. Like get while the getting’s good.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like by all means, you know, if If anyone offers this, I’m not going to turn up my nose at it and say, Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want it on your limited storage because I know it’s not limited forever. Who cares if it’s limited for a year? It’s worthwhile. It’s limited for
⏹️ ▶️ John two years or three years. You just take it while you can get it. Don’t be like, I refuse to commit
⏹️ ▶️ John to this free product unless I’m guaranteed that it will outlast me and my descendants. Like whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just yeah, no, nothing is forever. Just take the deal.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, I I’m not sure Apple will react to this. I
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple needs to get better at doing cloud service. They need to have their photo storage work better. In theory, iCloud
⏹️ ▶️ John photo library with plenty of room should do all the things that Google’s photos does, but it doesn’t. And people are frustrated
⏹️ ▶️ John by it. So they need to get better at it. They need to be able to do it cheaper. They need to adjust their pricing because whether
⏹️ ▶️ John Google sells a lot of these phones or not, they are, you know, they’re moving the market. They’re saying
⏹️ ▶️ John this is the new bar. If you can’t meet this bar, you will forever be seen as more competitive than if I
⏹️ ▶️ John just bought a Google Pixel More expensive than ever just about a Google pixel So does Apple lower
⏹️ ▶️ John their prices do they go free? History has shown that it will take Apple a long time
⏹️ ▶️ John to be able to Go free on its storage considering how long it’s taken them
⏹️ ▶️ John to offer no new storage tiers and to lower their prices They seem pretty stubborn about that. Can we all blame us on
⏹️ ▶️ John that? Do you again? Sure. Why not? Let’s do that It’s fun pastime. But uh, yeah
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, either way this is this in theory this phone is hitting
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple where it hurts and Hopefully someone Apple’s paying attention
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah I also love that They mentioned during the keynote and it’s on the site if you scroll down a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ways about halfway down the page That they include a section that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey switch in three simple steps connect sign in and transfer Connect to your old iPhone or Android device
⏹️ ▶️ Casey device, or connect your old iPhone or Android device to your new Pixel with the quick switch adapter, which apparently is USB
⏹️ ▶️ Casey B, whatever the normal USB receptacle is to USB C, which is what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the phone uses. Sign into your Google account on your Pixel or create a new one and then transfer,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey choose what you want to move like contacts, calendar events, photos, videos, music, SMS messages, iMessages,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not really sure how that’s working, and more. Then sit back and let the Pixel do the work. And this little adapter is in every
⏹️ ▶️ Casey single box. So they’re getting aggressive, and I think that’s good. And I think it was Stephen Hackett, amongst
⏹️ ▶️ Casey others, that said, you know, this is healthy for both companies. When Apple is doing well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which hopefully they are, I mean, I guess it depends on when you ask us, and if Google’s doing well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then that’s a good thing because this competition keeps—makes both of our products better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I’m curious to see if this really sells in any volume. I can tell you that of the four
⏹️ ▶️ Casey developers on the Android team—five developers on the the Android team at my office. Two of them bought the phone while
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they were in the keynote, or while we were watching the keynote, which by the way, was at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like 1230, one o’clock in the afternoon. They sat there and mashed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the refresh button for like a minute and a half. I was super jealous. And yes, I tweeted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about this and yes, most people were like, oh yeah, well, you know, they have five people buying these phones. Well, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey care. It’s still not in the middle of the night. And so I’m very jealous of that. But we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see. I’m anxious to see these devices when they come in for my co to my coworkers so I can see what I think of them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I’m I’m cautiously optimistic like this isn’t a phone for me, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it could be if I wanted to jump to the other side of the fence.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, one more thing on the pixel. I didn’t see the entire video presentation, I
⏹️ ▶️ John saw parts of it. And one part that I was particularly interested in is the daydream VR thing that they’re doing.
⏹️ ▶️ John one of these situations where you take your phone and you shove it into a headset and then half the phone screen shows
⏹️ ▶️ John what your left eye is supposed to see and half the phone screen shows what your right eye is supposed to see and you wear a pair of goggles that makes that
⏹️ ▶️ John all focus and work out reasonably well and you try to have a little miniature portable
⏹️ ▶️ John VR experience. Which is, boy, it’s something considering, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John no serious VR development involves Macs in any way and yet we’re able to do it on these crappy
⏹️ ▶️ John phones that are not as powerful as Apple’s. Obviously, the VR experience compared to a PC
⏹️ ▶️ John is very different on a phone. You are not gonna have the same type of thing you have on HTC
⏹️ ▶️ John Vive or Vive, depending on how you wanna say it, or Oculus Rift or even the PS4
⏹️ ▶️ John VR. But this is the thing they’re doing, and I think the most
⏹️ ▶️ John interesting part of this is their headset, which there have been a lot of these headsets, including
⏹️ ▶️ John the Google Cardboard thing, which is the most primitive. but this is another set of goggles that you strap to your head that you shove
⏹️ ▶️ John your phone into. And they spent a while trying to talk about the design
⏹️ ▶️ John of it, like the external design. They’ve made it out of fabric. I don’t think they mention this specifically,
⏹️ ▶️ John they mostly just said, oh, what do we wear on our bodies? Well, we wear soft things and fabrics, right? So instead of making it
⏹️ ▶️ John out of shiny black plastic so you look all nerdy, you know, how are you gonna make a VR headset not
⏹️ ▶️ John look nerdy? We made it out of fabric
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco because that’s what you wear.
⏹️ ▶️ John And when I look at it, I always thought of those sleep masks, you know, if you put like one of those, Yeah, things to help you sleep
⏹️ ▶️ John at night. It’s not made out of like velvety material, but it’s just made of fabric it looks like a sleep mask, but I think
⏹️ ▶️ John this is a Smart thing to do and I think other VR goggle
⏹️ ▶️ John Vendors should take note. You don’t have to always look like a giant robot when
⏹️ ▶️ John you wear the thing It doesn’t have to be all angles and hard shiny plastic doesn’t have to look like one of those droid
⏹️ ▶️ John ads You know those original droid ads where everything is a transformer you are putting it
⏹️ ▶️ John on your body and around your head, and why not make it something soft and comfortable? It’s not like, for example,
⏹️ ▶️ John headphones. They’re not made out of pointy, angular plastic, unless maybe they’re made by Sony.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, right. Like the ear cup, they have paddy things on the ears, like squishy things,
⏹️ ▶️ John because they go on your head and you don’t want something that’s not squishy. So these goggles, granted, the outside
⏹️ ▶️ John of it doesn’t touch you, but they’re trying to convey, like, these are squishy and comfortable
⏹️ ▶️ John and not like welding a laptop to your forehead, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think that’s a really good idea. And this type of casual VR, where it’s like low resolution, low
⏹️ ▶️ John frame rate, probably not even that good, right? I think this is a
⏹️ ▶️ John good place to get a foothold into the idea of like a few people will try it, because hey, everyone’s got a phone,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you know, physical probably cost too much. But you know, people who are interested, who wouldn’t buy a full fledged gaming
⏹️ ▶️ John PC and the whole setup and the whole gear, will buy maybe this thing that you that you shove your phone
⏹️ ▶️ John into and try it out and have a pleasant experience and start to associate Google
⏹️ ▶️ John with VR or whatever. Now I don’t give this thing great hopes of doing anything, especially since
⏹️ ▶️ John who’s going to develop software for this thing? It’s a market within a market within a market. I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John But as someone who still has yet to even try VR, I find it intriguing that Google is
⏹️ ▶️ John plowing bravely forward with some interesting ideas, whereas Google, Apple is still
⏹️ ▶️ John sitting this one out and Tim Cook is talking about augmented reality rather than VR,
⏹️ ▶️ John all the while leaving its own customers without either one of those things, except for that app that you hold up
⏹️ ▶️ John and translate signs in is really cool. But anyway, I think these goggles are neat. I have no idea
⏹️ ▶️ John how good they actually are, but I’m encouraged by the steady advancement in the world
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So if they’re anything like Google Cardboard, which it looks like they’re very, very similar actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you should not try them.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, because low resolution and motion sickness?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I got to try one of those actually twice now and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wow, not good. I mean, I also got to try a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Vive and that was substantially better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for motion sickness purposes.
⏹️ ▶️ John It better be for like the tremendous extra cost that is. Yeah. You just need a gaming PC and
⏹️ ▶️ John this and a room and these things you can hold and walk around in. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I mean the vibe, the problem with the Vive is that you just have wires everywhere. It’s just wires as far as I can see. Tripping
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over wires, having to move the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s kind of unfortunate, but I’m sure over time we will work these things out.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m thinking even for these headphones, even if you just use them to watch video, which sounds like, why would I ever do that? Why wouldn’t I just hold
⏹️ ▶️ John my phone in front of my face? Like, this is generation zero type products
⏹️ ▶️ John here. You know, it’s gonna get better. The resolution will get better, eventually a phone will have enough power to not
⏹️ ▶️ John be embarrassing in VR. I’m not looking on this as like,
⏹️ ▶️ John wow, this is a game changer. I’m looking on this as, this could potentially be
⏹️ ▶️ John a way, many years down the line, an accepted way to just
⏹️ ▶️ John veg out and watch some video or play some casual games. Not like, I’m in a full immersive VR experience
⏹️ ▶️ John and I feel like I’m really there. that’s gonna be longer or still require a gaming PC or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John but I don’t know it just seems like I guess I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna say why does Apple do this you know why Apple isn’t doing it they’re not gonna release a half-assed product like this and say well it’s kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John neat why don’t you try it guys tell us what you think right that’s not gonna happen but
⏹️ ▶️ John if Apple doesn’t figure out what his play is here soon it’s just gonna pass them by it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of like Microsoft trying to figure out what its play was in the world of mobile and then just everyone else went out ahead of them.
⏹️ ▶️ John They said, wait up and they never did catch up.
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t have an Amazon Echo, Alexa, whatever it’s called,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing. A friend of the show, iMike, just got one and he is pretty much in love with it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, you guys have at least one, last I heard, and last I heard you guys really like it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I grew up with a dad who was big into home automation in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the late 90s, which is to say, controlling your lights from all over the place. This was X10
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the time, which was a home automation protocol. I actually put an X10
⏹️ ▶️ Casey receiver in my dorm room and had rope lights wired to it. And I even had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco mode that I set up.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh no, it gets better. I even had a movie mode set up. So it would like dim the rope lights and turn on the TV and whatnot, which would have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been awesome for the girl that never ever came over.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is worse than my carpeuter. Yeah, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty bad. Because that’s what girls are impressed by. Automatically controlled lights, they’re just like,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is the man for me. Right?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I mean, how can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you go wrong? It’s perfect. No, but anyway, I like the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey idea of home automation, although I’ve only barely dipped my toes into
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. And like I said, I don’t have any of these automated assistant things outside of Siri when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she decides to work properly. So I am not that jazzed by
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Google Home. I’m not that jazzed by Alexa. I’m not that jazzed by
⏹️ ▶️ Casey these rumors about Apple’s home automation hub. I suspect that most of that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is my own ignorance. And once I see like a really nice setup or, or once I see one of these things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in use, then the light bulb will go off and I’ll say, by God, I need this in my life. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do I guess, do either of you care about these home automation hub rumors? Like, is this interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to you? What are you looking for from this? What do you think?
⏹️ ▶️ John I care about the actual announced one. I know that you’re reading the next item and the things about this, a home automation
⏹️ ▶️ John helper remote from Apple, but Google is following through on its original announcement of this, whatever, Google Home
⏹️ ▶️ John little Weeble thing that they’ll sell you, which looks like a squat little counterpart to the
⏹️ ▶️ John tube-shaped thing that keeps calling to the whales in Star Trek 4
⏹️ ▶️ John that Amazon makes. and the reason I didn’t buy echo, I know a lot of people with echo, I’ve tried
⏹️ ▶️ John them, like I understand the value proposition there, but I never quite wanted to get one, mostly because I figured, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, that’s fine and all, but Amazon is not really that good at this type of
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff. I mean, they’re not bad, but it’s not really their strength. So let me wait until
⏹️ ▶️ John see what Apple or Google have. And the knock against Amazon is like, oh, you can get all these skills
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re good at integrating with third parties, but it’s so specific and it’s so primitive and it’s like you gotta know
⏹️ ▶️ John what you can have it do and you gotta know the specific skills and it’s very fixed whereas
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s always telling with Siri oh we’re intelligent machine learning we’ll figure out what you mean or whatever but of course we know when
⏹️ ▶️ John you actually use Siri it’s embarrassingly bad a lot of the time. Google
⏹️ ▶️ John when I think of the company that I can just sort of throw words at
⏹️ ▶️ John written or otherwise and have it do what I mean is the best at that. Very often I’m I want to do something
⏹️ ▶️ John and you can try it in Siri and you could try asking Amazon Echo about it, and you can try
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever things you have to think of to find something, but very often the answer is,
⏹️ ▶️ John write your actual question into a text box on google.com. Like, don’t overthink it, don’t try
⏹️ ▶️ John to write it into query language, just do the simplest thing. One of my favorite activities is like in chat
⏹️ ▶️ John rooms and stuff like that where someone will ask, sometimes even a fairly technical person, how
⏹️ ▶️ John do you do the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like ask some very complicated involved question, and then they’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John say, I tried Googling, but I couldn’t find anything. Then what you do is you take their original question that
⏹️ ▶️ John they typed to you in the message, you copy it, you paste it into the Google search box, and the number one hit is the thing they
⏹️ ▶️ John were looking for. Because what they were doing is thinking like a programmer and going like, you know, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John it is, like node file sync not working. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re just typing, they’re using like a query engine, whereas the sentence that they just sent you
⏹️ ▶️ John gets them the number one hit, because that’s what people put into Google. So when I think about, is there some cylinder in my house that I can
⏹️ ▶️ John talk into the air and have the cylinder do what I want? I think the highest chance of it
⏹️ ▶️ John understanding what I mean and doing something useful is for that cylinder to be made by and connected to everything
⏹️ ▶️ John having to do with Google. So when they announced the home thing, I’m like, that’s the first thing
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I might buy to try because I’m assuming it will be better than the Amazon Echo.
⏹️ ▶️ John Better at like, you know, understanding what I mean and doing useful things. Maybe not better audio wise
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, or maybe not, maybe Amazon Echo would be better at ordering paper towels than the Google
⏹️ ▶️ John thing is, but maybe the Google thing would be better about answering complicated questions. Or maybe the Google thing would be better
⏹️ ▶️ John about projecting things on my TV if I buy a little dinky Chromecast and shove it into one of my side HDMI
⏹️ ▶️ John ports that I’m not currently using, right? Versus Amazon trying to integrate
⏹️ ▶️ John with their Firepuck and all that other stuff. Anyway, and Apple just continuing to be a non-combatant
⏹️ ▶️ John in this entire market despite the rumors. So I am very interested in this home device. The
⏹️ ▶️ John only caveat for most people that I don’t really mind that much is yes, of course, everything that I say will be uploaded to Google and
⏹️ ▶️ John all my information will belong to Google, but I already have all my mail on Google. Like I’m willing to give Google this information
⏹️ ▶️ John in exchange for extra convenience in my life. I’m willing to give this a try. So I think
⏹️ ▶️ John I might actually get one of these.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m very curious to hear what you think of it when that comes in. I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not sure what I would pick between Amazon and theoretically Apple and Google. But,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, my mail is Google Apps, my photos are in Google, my music is Spotify,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I’m sure will not jive well with Apple stuff. Jive well, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the word is I’m looking for. I don’t know, we’ll see. Marco, what’s your intention, just going all in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I mean, I’m not really committed. We have the Echo in the kitchen. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good at a lot of things. A lot of times I will ask it a question that I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think it’ll answer just to see like you know, can it do this? Can it find this information? And a lot of times it does.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if I ask Siri the same question, I get, I can search the web for, you know, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I get a useless answer from Siri for many of these same questions. But a lot of people have said the opposite. You know, a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people have the opposite reaction where like the things they ask Siri work out well and the things they ask the Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco assistant don’t. It’s not really consistent between one or the other whether you can see like this one is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco universally the best one or this one is universally not. It really depends on how you’re using it, what you’re using it for,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how it integrates with various things. I will say though that this is the kind of problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I don’t expect Apple’s product to be very good at. To make a product like this really good,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you need incredibly strong AI skills, you need a huge data set to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be developing that from, you need constant updates, constant add-ons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and new abilities and refinements to that data set. So you basically need a really massive, solid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AI web service behind it. Apple’s not good at those things. Apple can do big web services, they can do minor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AI things, but they so far are still not good at large-scale, advanced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AI service kind of things. And then secondarily, you need the ability to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really be able to connect to lots of different things. This is where the Echo does really well. They have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tons of integrations with all sorts of services, hardware, developer stuff through
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their API, tons of integrations. For Apple to do that, they would basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to relax the requirements for HomeKit, and they would have to really be a lot more open and permissive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with developers than they are now, and do things like open up the Siri API much further than it is right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I just don’t see them doing that. So they could prove me wrong, who knows. But if I look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at what these companies are good at now, and the way they seem to be going, I’m guessing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s version of this, if it exists, whenever it would ship, I’m guessing it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to be as good as the other two. I think Amazon’s going to own this market for the market
⏹️ ▶️ Marco share wise, but I think the Google one’s probably going to end up being the best one.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or the Google one could be canceled. Then they have a previous one called OnHub or something, and then they had a sphere-shaped
⏹️ ▶️ John entertainment thing that never went anywhere. Google has tried many
⏹️ ▶️ John in-home products that have not gone anywhere. Maybe this one will be a flop too, but what they have going for them, like you said,
⏹️ ▶️ John is they have the backend. Like when Apple does stuff with Siri, they just,
⏹️ ▶️ John if they don’t know exactly what to do, they’re passing it on to another service, whether it be Wolfram Alpha or Bing
⏹️ ▶️ John or Google. Like, that’s not them. They’re like, well, we can’t make Heads or Tails of this, so we’re gonna send
⏹️ ▶️ John it to a different company that’s good at this stuff, and maybe they can figure out what to do with it, which is not
⏹️ ▶️ John really a strong move. The other factor about all these cylinders in your home that you talk
⏹️ ▶️ John to that apparently, from everyone who I’ve ever spoken to in my own personal experience, got right, and that I can
⏹️ ▶️ John imagine both Apple and Google perhaps forgetting about, is the
⏹️ ▶️ John Echo is surprisingly good at hearing you and understanding what the hell you said.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now, after that, maybe they can’t do anything with your words, maybe they’re bad, you know, they don’t have good, you know, you have to phrase
⏹️ ▶️ John things in a certain way, whatever, forget about that. but they’re good at hearing you and getting your words. And that
⏹️ ▶️ John is so important. How often have we tried to speak into our phones an inch from our face and how to get a word wrong?
⏹️ ▶️ John Whereas Amazon Echo, again, because probably because of constrained vocabulary, like those phone trees that you do,
⏹️ ▶️ John but also because they have tons of microphones and good like noise cancellation and beam forming or whatever the hell
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re doing, I think a lot of the time for that stupid cylinder was spent figuring out how
⏹️ ▶️ John to hear people separate their voice from the background noise and understand what they said. And that is incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ John important. It’s like responsiveness on the original iPhone. It’s like, oh yeah, and you can tap things and they move around, it’s fine. It’s like, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you don’t understand. The difference between you can tap things and slide it around and it’s fine, and it really feels
⏹️ ▶️ John like it’s sticking to my finger. You may think you’ve checked the same check boxes. Yep, we have a touch screen. Yep, you
⏹️ ▶️ John move things around by scrolling your finger. Yep, you tap buttons. It’s not check boxes. It’s like, yes, you
⏹️ ▶️ John both do the same thing, but this aspect of the product is so important that you really have to get it right.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Amazon has gotten it pretty right. Like, who hasn’t been in a house with an Echo
⏹️ ▶️ John and said something in a way that you think a human wouldn’t have been able to understand you. You mumble it from a room away, facing the wrong
⏹️ ▶️ John direction, and the Echo still tells you what the score of a game is or what the weather’s gonna be. And you’re like, how
⏹️ ▶️ John the hell did it hear that? Yeah, that’s what you have to do with these things. So I hope the Cylinder, the Google
⏹️ ▶️ John Home thing, does it as well. And if Apple ever comes up with a product, I hope they spend tons of time figuring
⏹️ ▶️ John out how the heck to hear everybody. And don’t be like, well, Johnny, I’ve said we don’t have a lot of room for the microphone, so we can only have these two here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is what I’m saying, if Apple really devoted, if they really set their minds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to it, if they really prioritize these services and these product priorities and things,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they could probably make a pretty good one, but I see this being like an accessory release. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see Apple taking this very seriously as a product category. So what it’s probably gonna end up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being is a relatively low priority, relatively low effort product if it exists.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And because of that, it’s gonna be like, is gonna have no meaningful service changes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco behind it to Siri. Siri’s not gonna become an order of magnitude better because of this product.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If they’re gonna do that, they’re gonna do it for the phones, not for this. And they’ve had lots of reasons to do that recently
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they kind of haven’t really done enough. And this is probably gonna be a product that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco updated maybe every three years, hardware-wise, two or three years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But basically on an Apple TV kind of schedule where Amazon and Google are gonna be updating theirs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every year or even more often. I mean, Amazon is relentless.
⏹️ ▶️ John Every 15 minutes, yeah. Speaking of Apple TV, that’s a great example of
⏹️ ▶️ John a home device that people talk to, granted they talk into the remote and not the device and the rumors
⏹️ ▶️ John are that originally you were supposed to just talk to the Apple TV but the remote came with better sound, which kind of makes sense and you gotta have the
⏹️ ▶️ John remote. Anyway, the experience of speaking to your Apple TV,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is exactly what I was saying, like the phone trees. There’s a fairly constrained vocabulary. Mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John you could you know you’re mostly you’re talking about video that you want to watch I mean, it’s a little bit broader than that, but if they wanted to
⏹️ ▶️ John constrain it They could say look we don’t have to understand everything in the world We have a limited
⏹️ ▶️ John problem domain Let’s use our machine learning and the idea that we think they’re gonna watch a video and
⏹️ ▶️ John granted. It’s still a hard problem, right? and try to figure out what they mean and
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’ve ever spoken to the remote of an Apple TV and and tried to say something reasonable
⏹️ ▶️ John to it, you realize how badly the Apple TV falls down on basic functionality.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like trying to get it to watch episode five, season
⏹️ ▶️ John two of some show, or show me whatever, and it’s like, I’m sorry, I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John any shows named Orange is the New Black, and on the screen behind it is Orange is the New Black floating,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you know what I mean?
⏹️ ▶️ John We’ve all seen these Siri things on the phone where it makes for great screenshots, where it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m sorry, I can’t launch the app store. Try looking for it in the app store. Like, we’ve all seen that screenshot and stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Like, Siri does
⏹️ ▶️ John weird stuff like that on the phone, and it’s funny because you can see it, but on the Apple TV, when it works, you feel like, this
⏹️ ▶️ John is amazing. It’s a little friend that I can talk to who shows me the video I want. And when it doesn’t work, it’s like, what was wrong
⏹️ ▶️ John with that? Especially since you see the text being translated. You’re like, it is understanding every word I’m saying, and there isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John really any ambiguity, but sometimes it’s like, I can’t do that for you, or is there something else I can help you with?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, no, just do the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s inconsistent.
⏹️ ▶️ John Incredible, yeah, that’s incredibly frustrating. You don’t know why it didn’t do it. Did it fail on a server connection
⏹️ ▶️ John or is it just confused about something or has it lost context? And it’s not really that responsive. Whereas again, Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ John Echo, completely faceless, no UI, if it didn’t work, there’s nothing you can do to fix it. And yet when you
⏹️ ▶️ John say things to it, it in pretty short order does the thing that you said in a way that makes you think,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s pretty neat and miraculous. And yeah, it falls down sometimes too, but that’s why people are impressed
⏹️ ▶️ John by the cylinder because they, you know, they thought the Amazon Echo would be a funny gimmick, but it’ll be like Siri where it only works half the time
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’ll never use it. But because it is responsive and hears you and generally
⏹️ ▶️ John does what you ask in a timely fashion, people start to trust it and appreciate the fact that it
⏹️ ▶️ John does work. And Siri has not yet passed that bar. I don’t think Siri or whatever branding
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple wants to put into a thing that you can talk to in any of its product has endeared itself to
⏹️ ▶️ John anybody to the degree where they’re like, I am much more interested in buying this product because it comes with Siri and
⏹️ ▶️ John I love Siri. I just haven’t seen that yet. Whereas the stupid black plastic cylinder has done
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Amazon. And the thing is, if you see over time, what’s changing in this market over time?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco How’s everyone getting better? How’s everything gonna develop? Apple has had a very long time to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make Siri reliable and better. And they have improved it over time, but just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not enough. It is still very inconsistent. And you can ask it the same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco question two days in a row, and you’ll get different answers, or one of them will fail and the next day it’ll succeed.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is so inconsistent and it’s very frustrating when that happens to you. With the Echo,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t use it constantly all day every day, but I use it, I tell it something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every day. Usually it’s controlling lights around the house. Every night when I go to bed, I tell it to turn
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off everything. It’s usually stuff like that. Occasionally music queries or timers, Tiff uses it all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think we’ve had it for something like four or five months now. I think in that entire time, we’ve had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one time where it returned some kind of server error response, basically, like I can’t figure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that out right now, or something like that. One time that happened in months of using it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco With Siri, that happens every fourth or fifth time, if you use it infrequently like I do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, where these things are going, I can see the market playing out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the most likely way already in my head. Apple, if they enter it, they’re gonna enter it with, again, some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of like too infrequently updated, probably too expensive,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe too Johnny Ivey design-y product that won’t be very competitive in the marketplace for things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like capabilities, price, integrations, and they’ll have it backed by the Siri service, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just won’t be consistent enough, it won’t be solid enough, it won’t be smart enough. Then you’ll have Google
⏹️ ▶️ Marco making theirs, selling Google hardware where they always sell it, which is, it’s gonna have probably the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most amazing AI behind it, the most amazing service behind it, but they’re gonna have major problems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting it sold at retail basically, getting it really into people’s hands. They’re gonna have major problems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco promoting it and selling it and supporting it. Amazon is gonna be relentless
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about pushing the crap out of the Echo line of products on their front page, all the holiday
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seasons, selling them relentlessly, not selling Apple’s thing, not selling Google’s thing. Like, they’re going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco relentless and they are a massive retailer and they have a huge head start with developers,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with users, with the public. So I really think that Amazon’s really gonna own this space.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And Google’s, again, Google I think is gonna have what many geeks will consider the best product, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it won’t be the most successful. I think the most successful is gonna be Amazon by a long shot with this. And Apple, if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they enter this market at all, they will enter it with something that I don’t see being very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco competitive, really. I think, and people will buy it, some people will buy it, certainly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I don’t see it being nearly as good as the other two.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m still waiting for the next minor advancement in what people call machine
⏹️ ▶️ John learning, which I don’t like the sound of, but I like it better than AI, which is ridiculous, for the level of things that are going
⏹️ ▶️ John on here. But just, you know, these things are slightly context aware,
⏹️ ▶️ John but more of that. Like very often I’ll be driving in the car and I’ll hear my phone ding with a text message. And you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John read the text message in the car, but I would like the phone to read me what the text message is, And there’s probably some way to do
⏹️ ▶️ John that on the phone. There is. But I don’t know the way. And I know enough
⏹️ ▶️ John about Siri to know that if I don’t know the way, it will just be an exercise in frustration for me to try to guess.
⏹️ ▶️ John What I’d like to say is, can you read me that text message that just came in? But I know that won’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey work. That’s close. It’s close. It’s a Hoyt telephone, read my messages.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. But I don’t know that. And so I’m just like, if I just start this conversation with the phone, it’s going to
⏹️ ▶️ John try to do a Google search on having something to do with messages or get confused. So this is based on my frustration with the one thing
⏹️ ▶️ John I try to use my, you know, Siri works for simple things. But then what I my stumbling
⏹️ ▶️ John block was I kept trying to use it to add items to lists and reminders. And it was just friggin impossible because it’s confused
⏹️ ▶️ John about which list I’m trying to add it to or whether wants to create a list by that name. It’s like, Oh, God, you don’t understand me. You
⏹️ ▶️ John do not understand me. Like just a human would get this and it’s not that complicated. It’s a limited domain.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m telling you about reminders and list items and don’t ask me to create a list. I wanted to say no,
⏹️ ▶️ John no, no. I know you misunderstood me the first time, but forget it. I’m not trying to create a list. Take that thing and
⏹️ ▶️ John put a reminder for it because anyway, it’s very frustrating and it makes me not want to use it
⏹️ ▶️ John for things that it can probably already do because I know that if I don’t know how to do it, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John no way I can have a conversation with it and get it done. Whereas I think Google is at the point now,
⏹️ ▶️ John whereas, you know, in best case with this Google Home thing, I could ask it to do
⏹️ ▶️ John something, I’m hoping, and have it not understand what I mean, but have us work out through
⏹️ ▶️ John a back and forth eventually come to an understanding about what I want to happen where. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like the next smaller step again limited vocabulary simpler things that you can do but just limited
⏹️ ▶️ John context awareness to understand that we’re trying to accomplish a goal here and to
⏹️ ▶️ John come closer to making it happen without requiring the user to know things. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just one more tiny baby step in making something that I could do with my fingers
⏹️ ▶️ John happen across the room with my voice. We’re not asking it to be my pal or to be
⏹️ ▶️ John intelligent or any way or to really do anything useful other than let me do something I can do with a
⏹️ ▶️ John remote but without a remote control. But even that step, no one has really gotten there. Not
⏹️ ▶️ John Amazon, not Google, not Apple. And I have hopes that Google will be the first one to do it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks to our three sponsors this week, Backblaze, Casper, and Betterment. And we’ll We’ll see you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even mean to begin, Cause it was accidental, oh it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental. John didn’t do any research, Margo
⏹️ ▶️ John and Casey wouldn’t let him, Cause it was accidental, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental. And you can find
⏹️ ▶️ John the show notes at atp.fm, And if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and T. Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John mean to. Accidental, check the podcast so long.
Post-show: Casey’s monitor woes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey At work, I have two, I think they’re 1080 monitors, they’re Lenovo monitors, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really super shitty. I have been begging for at least one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 4K monitor. Finally, I have won the fight.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The head of IT has said, all right, we will get you the Dell 24 something, something, something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 4K monitor. I forget the exact model name, but basically this is the monitor that all the Mac users,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Mac notebook users have said, this is the one to get if you want 4k and the equivalent Dell is the one you want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get if you want 5k, the 5k one is $1,500. The 4k one is like $400.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we get it in speaking of Amazon and things, uh, we get it in today.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I take down my two Lenovo’s to put this at my desk. I’m happy as a pig in sheep. I turn it on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it turns on and turns right back off. Hmm. So I unplug it, plug it back
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in, turn it on, turns on, turns right back off. It was DOA. Sadness. So much
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sadness. So that is also getting returned to Amazon. Although not by me, because I didn’t pay for it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But we do have an LG 4K monitor that’s 27 inches that I think is too big for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the DPI that it is, but it’s still super nice. And by the way, did you guys know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you can only get a 30-hertz refresh rate on an HDMI cable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco At any resolution or just at the 4K resolution?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so how do you get the higher ones is it just like through beneath through Thunderbolt slash mini DisplayPort
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mm-hmm mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, don’t connect don’t connect monitors to computer with HDMI That’s the wrong tool for the job. Yeah, it just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so what? Well, no, but why I’m not mad about this, but out of curiosity. Why do you say that?
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s a TV HMS for TV standard. It’s not a monitor thing that the connector is
⏹️ ▶️ John big It’s made for television resolutions Whereas computers you always want to have a higher resolution than that if you possibly
⏹️ ▶️ John can It’s just not the right tool and you know and refresh rates. You just got you know, like television
⏹️ ▶️ John Does not come in at 120 Hertz or even 60 from most cases So
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, not if you have an option don’t use it I have the only thing I have a connected HDMI
⏹️ ▶️ John is my gaming monitor because that’s what the the PlayStation puts out and so I’ve Got a monitor that takes that in because it’s kind of like a little miniature TV.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s fair. I had no idea that that was a thing until today when we connected this LG, which is a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very nice monitor. I really, really like it. Again, I think it’s a few inches too big,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I like it all in all. And actually we’re ordering a 22 or 24 inch 4K equivalent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey LG monitor to replace the DOA Dell one. If
⏹️ ▶️ Casey only Apple had an external monitor, if only, That would be amazing,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but no. So anyway, so yeah, I had no idea that you couldn’t get 60 hertz
⏹️ ▶️ Casey off HDMI coming off a Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John laptop. I think with the newer HDMI standards you can. Again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your timing here is terrible. It is very likely, I mean, you know, obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t believe it until we see it, but I would say it is at least moderately likely that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re going to have new laptops with a new monitor by the end of the month. Now that being said, you probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can’t drive it with your current laptop.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, yeah, you can if it has you can if it has a graphics card on the inside
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John But I mean we’ll get that we’ll get that right after we get the
⏹️ ▶️ John Are you really expecting a monitor like I’m not I don’t even have that in my dimmest hopes I’m like just feel nice to freaking laptops,
⏹️ ▶️ John please like that’s it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would guess that the 5k monitor comes with the new laptops
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think they’re gonna wait for the Mac Pro if they
⏹️ ▶️ John there really is a 5k monitor without the Mac Pro It’s like I guess you can hook these up to your laptop.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you think Apple gives a s*** about the Mac Pro anymore? I think it’s very clear. They don’t right. I mean
⏹️ ▶️ John on. It’s just so absurd so absurd
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am NOT particularly convinced that we will get an external monitor this month however
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If we do get it I absolutely agree with Marco that it will come with the laptops and the Mac Pro will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be a fart in the wind
⏹️ ▶️ John I know I’m just saying it is so it’s so weird I mean, I guess that they’re selling
⏹️ ▶️ John the GPU and it’s like oh your wimpy laptop can’t drive this mighty monitor But it’s got a GPU in it. So
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s your solution
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, it’s it’s a little bit of a hack but I don’t think it’s weird to target the laptop as the primary consumer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for this monitor because nobody buys Mac pros and when those
⏹️ ▶️ John like it’s weird to hook up such a massive monitor for such a high relation to your laptop Like I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t I don’t know why you say that because most people in I haven’t used a desktop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey computer at work since since 2008-ish, seven-ish, something
⏹️ ▶️ John like that. Right, but do you need a 5K monitor, right? It’s so like a 4K, yeah, by all
⏹️ ▶️ John means. Like that’s kind of the standard fancy monitor for your fancy laptop. And the big thing in my office
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway is multiple monitors. Multiple smaller monitors, right? But just
⏹️ ▶️ John one big massive one, especially since this monitor’s probably gonna cost more than any of their laptops, the
⏹️ ▶️ John base price anyway, right? It’s the most expensive thing in your desk is not the computer, but the display. It just seems like
⏹️ ▶️ John a display made for the highest of the high end, the most expensive, the biggest single
⏹️ ▶️ John screen, and two slightly smaller screens. And that all says Mac Pro to me, but I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, and I think that what you’re not realizing is that, like my entire company, nobody
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has a desktop. Everyone has laptops, either Lenovo’s.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, no, everyone has laptops in my work, too. I’m the only desktop in the company. Except you. Yeah, it was great.
⏹️ ▶️ John My work was asking me about, I don’t know, some of their terrible spyware stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John was not correctly reporting back or whatever. And they’re like, we have records
⏹️ ▶️ John that there is a Mac Mini with this serial number. Do you happen to have that? I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John have a Mac Mini, but I’ll check the serial number. And it was the serial number of my gigantic cheese grater.
⏹️ ▶️ John So apparently someone came to my
⏹️ ▶️ John to catalog this and to put the little stickers on it or whatever and wrote down my serial number and decided that this thing
⏹️ ▶️ John the size of a refrigerator is a Mac Mini. Nice. That’s what I’m saying. They don’t even know what it
⏹️ ▶️ John is. They don’t even know what this is. They know it’s a Mac because it’s got a giant Apple logo on the side of it, but they have no idea what the hell it is because
⏹️ ▶️ John everything else is laptops.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So the reason that this became relevant and the reason I was able to sell this to the IT department was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because on these 1080 monitors, if I try to use the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPhone simulator full size because it’s all pixel doubled or whatever the term is, you know, it’s retina,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can see like half of it on screen. I actually sent the IT guy a screenshot, admittedly it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of a plus, like a 6S Plus simulator, and I could see like the dock
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my 1080 monitor and that was about it.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s going to run in non-native res like those iPhone 6S users. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean that’s what I used to do, or well still do right now, is I would run it at like half size
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or whatever. But then what ended up happening was, especially when doing UI work, it was a total pain in the butt
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I would like drop the single pixel border between table view cells
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or things along those lines. And so I’m not even seeing like a terribly accurate representation of the screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so that’s why I said, hey, listen, I’d really like to get a retina external monitor. And eventually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my complaining and moaning finally got heard slash he didn’t want to hear it anymore. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so that’s when they ordered this Dell and unfortunately the thing was DOA. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, I mean, I would love to have like a couple of 22
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to 24 inch 4K monitors. And that’s what I have now is a couple of 1080
⏹️ ▶️ Casey monitors, but there’s just not enough resolution these days. Do
⏹️ ▶️ John you have multi-monitor problems at your office? Is there like one person
⏹️ ▶️ John in the office who has like six monitors?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, but one of the reasons that I had to complain and moan a lot to get this monitor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was because the IT dude knew full well that once I get this new hotness,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people will start smelling blood in the water and everyone will start saying, well, I want that. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from his perspective, it makes perfect sense that he needs to be able to justify this added expenditure over the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cost of a 1080 monitor. And so now he’s gonna have these people coming out of the woodwork saying,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh, me too, me too, me too. And in reality, the only people it really makes sense for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is designers possibly, most likely, and iOS developers. And I was actually talking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to one of our Android developers about all this, and he was like, yeah, I have no need for that whatsoever. I’d like it, but I have no
⏹️ ▶️ John Crappy 17-inch non-retina Dell monitors kind of litter our hallways. You step on them like leaves
⏹️ ▶️ John in the fall, just walking around the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco office. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John some people who like, it’s kind of like people who, you know, materials were scarce during the
⏹️ ▶️ John Depression, so they become older and they just always save their cans or whatever, right? These people must have lived through a
⏹️ ▶️ John monitor drought. And so now
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco they’re in the land of monitor plenty.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they just scoop up greedily all the crappy 17-inch Dell monitors and
⏹️ ▶️ John put them all on their desk. So I think the biggest one I’ve seen is someone who has an arrangement of six.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s three over three. Or
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it’s two by three.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, crazy monitor arms. And these are six of the worst monitors you’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John ever seen. These are not good monitors, not a good viewing angle. But there are six of them. I think someone might have broken
⏹️ ▶️ John that record before and had them in a more haphazard arrangement, but the 6 is the most impressive because it kind of curves around
⏹️ ▶️ John and the thing that holds the 6 monitors is incredibly impressive looking.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it is 3 high, that’s why it looks, you know, because it’s taller. But who would, like, that’s for
⏹️ ▶️ John a computer that you see in the movies. Who would actually want to look at six 17-inch Dell monitors,
⏹️ ▶️ John craning your neck around and trying, like, especially since all these people use light text on a dark background in their
⏹️ ▶️ John terminal windows, with a non-IPS display, with those viewing angles,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t read anything on those. You’d have to get a stool and get head on to
⏹️ ▶️ John the upper left corner monitor to see anything on it. Anyway, those people are punishing themselves. It’s a reverse
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of, monitors, monitors everywhere, I have so many monitors. I have two monitors, well I have three monitors. I’m a power
⏹️ ▶️ John user, well I have four monitors. It’s just, it’s a crazy arms race, doesn’t make any sense to me.
⏹️ ▶️ John And here I am sitting with my single, very small, non-retina monitor, But I still think it looks better
⏹️ ▶️ John than those other things.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They just need a JP setup and they’ll be good to go. That’s a reference.
⏹️ ▶️ John And speaking of work hardware, I’ve now broken my second keyboard. I’ll be keeping
⏹️ ▶️ John track. This is a 2009 Mac Pro. I use the keyboard that came with it, which I like. It’s the current keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John that I use at home as well. It’s the Apple aluminum extended keyboard. I like it because it has low key press
⏹️ ▶️ John effort required. It’s good for my RSI. I don’t like the half-size function keys, but it has real arrow keys. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John I like this keyboard. I broke one of them three or four years into it, got a new
⏹️ ▶️ John replacement. Today a D key stopped working, which is a surprisingly commonly used key. So for
⏹️ ▶️ John half the day today I was copying and pasting a D from elsewhere.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I’m writing variable
⏹️ ▶️ John names and I’m getting good at writing like product, P-R-O, Command-V,