198: Puppy Game Boy
01 Dec 2016John talks about the Nintendo Switch for a long time.
Episode Description:
- Casey learns Scala and Akka
- Shouty Visual Studio
- Programming language genealogy
- Follow up:
- John's EarPods
- The Grand Tour downloads
- Episode 2 mini-review
- Netflix allowing downloads
- New MacBook Pro power bricks
- People love Apple's Wi-Fi routers
- Nintendo Switch
- Ending theme by Jonathan Mann
- Post-show: Marco posts to YouTube
Sponsored by:
Chapters
- Pre-show: AAA
- Casey learns Scala
- John’s EarPods
- Sponsor: Backblaze
- Downloading The Grand Tour
- MacBook Pro power bricks
- Sponsor: Eero (code ATP)
- Downside of Tim Cook’s Apple
- Follow-up: AirPorts were good
- Sponsor: MailRoute
- Nintendo Switch
- Ending theme
- Post-show: Marco’s YouTube career
Pre-show: AAA
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So can you explain something to me John or Casey, but both of you are sports people compared to me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh god, why are the highest end video games called triple-a games?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But in baseball the triple-a teams are kind of like the minor leagues
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just the same. It’s the same word using two different contexts. Don’t try to connect them
⏹️ ▶️ John terrible answer. That’s not even an answer. That’s the answer It’s like it’s like, you know, like why
⏹️ ▶️ John do we park on the driveway and drive in the parkway? Whatever, like it’s, yes, it’s the same word and it’s spelled the same way.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you’ve got three A’s. Why is it the people that come when you have a flat tire? Why is that triple
⏹️ ▶️ John A? It’s just the same set of letters, but it’s not the same thing. Don’t get confused about it.
Casey learns Scala
⏹️ ▶️ Casey At work this week I am learning to use Scala,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the programming language, and Akka, which is… How you’re learning to pronounce it too? Is it Scala,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John whatever? I don’t know. I’m asking you. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one learning it. Everyone seems to be saying Scala. I’m sure to a New Yorker it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Scala. I always assumed it was Scala, like scaling, you know? But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve literally never heard anybody ever mention it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John in person until now. Verbally. Yeah, this seems
⏹️ ▶️ John like definitely one of the first things that you should learn about a languages. How to say it?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s pronounced Bazel, John. Anyway, so the point is I’m learning Scala Scala Scala,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it’s weird. It’s super weird. And I presume
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that neither of you two have really touched it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The little bit I’ve seen makes it very obvious that not only does it look weird,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it seems like only weird people use it. It’s one of those esoteric languages like Erlang that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the really out there programmers use, but most people don’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it’s not as, I don’t know, esoteric as my understanding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of say like Haskell is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey example. But you know, I’ve seen some go and although it looks peculiar,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like I can get the general gist of what’s happening if I look in an arbitrary go program.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like even before I could read Objective-C and you know, see through the matrix
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you will, I could at least understand vaguely what was happening in Objective-C.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And before I started to really understand Swift, it was very easy to at least generally understand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what was happening in a Swift app. This crap is out of control though. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think, you know how, um, how anyone who has ever written any C++ ever in their lives
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is broken forever. Well, that, and has this like tremendous utter fear of operator
⏹️ ▶️ Casey overloading. My admittedly ignorant impression of Scala is that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s operator overloading and functional programming gone crazy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so like what was it that we were doing? We were doing something that was not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Scala itself. I think was something related to ACA which is like a, I don’t know, it’s a weirdo
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like networking framework. That’s a terrible summary but we’ll just go with it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Everything about this is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey weird. Yeah it’s so weird. Well they, by overloading operators and and doing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey weirdo functions and the way that you can like, well, encouraged functions and the way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you can like leave out crap. And that’s valid Scala syntax. It’s as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey though you have an entirely different language, like visually, it looks like an entirely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey different language, even though it’s all completely valid Scala, because they went nuts with operator
⏹️ ▶️ Casey overloading and weirdo like shortcuts and whatnot. It is the most peculiar
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing I’ve ever seen. And beyond that, using IntelliJ as an IDE is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a visual assault on my eyeballs. Like it’s a decent IDE and it does a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things and it’s very powerful, but my goodness, it’s hideous. It’s even worse
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than the shouty version of Visual Studio that said, FILE.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey VIEW. You know, when it was, when all the menus were all caps for some reason. Wait, I didn’t know about this one. Was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco this? Yes. Yes. Was this like in DOS? 2010, 2012. No, no, no. This is like 2010, 2012, something like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Why? I forget exactly when it was, but you know, the typical windows
⏹️ ▶️ Casey menu, you know, the same menu that you have in the Mac, but it’s, it’s on each window in windows. Well, anyways,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was all caps for like one or two generations of visual studio for no good reason. So it wasn’t file
⏹️ ▶️ Casey edit view as file edit view. It was like a wrestler shouting at you constantly. Wow.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway. So in summary, Scala is super duper weird and I don’t know what to make
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of it. And I don’t think I like it. And I, and I can’t tell if that’s just because I’m ignorant
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’m still learning it and I can’t see the matrix, if you will, or see through the matrix, I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But man, is it weird. And you know what, in summary, I guess this is what being a Perl programmer feels
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco if you had been a
⏹️ ▶️ John Perl programmer, you would have been introduced to all the concepts that you’re encountering in
⏹️ ▶️ John the language that you choose to call Scala. They wouldn’t be alien to you. You’d just
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco be like, oh, I guess that’s just syntax for that in this
⏹️ ▶️ John language. It’s the advantage of hanging out in a multi-paradigm
⏹️ ▶️ John programming languages.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, thank God. Other languages
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t seem that weird. I mean, everyone’s got their own syntax. The same reason that you felt comfortable with like Go
⏹️ ▶️ John and Swift is because you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve seen structures and classes and methods and types
⏹️ ▶️ John and inheritance before. I’ve seen all that before. I just thought this was just a different syntax for doing that type of stuff. And I’ve seen, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John exceptions and case statements and, you know, maybe optionals were a little new, but you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John one new concept is not too hard for you to swallow. But
⏹️ ▶️ John if Scala has a whole bunch of stuff that you haven’t seen before, you get the weird syntax, also weird syntax
⏹️ ▶️ John for a thing that you haven’t even done in a different syntax before that you can like map it to, you know?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, and that’s the thing is that, you know, as I’ve said many times in the past, I think Swift is kind of,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everyone can look at Swift and see their preferred programming language.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like you as a Perl programmer, John, could look at Swift and say, oh yeah, they totally stole that from us.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And Marco, as someone who does whatever you do with PHP, you can look at that and say, oh yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s how this should have worked in PHP, but doesn’t. And as a C-sharp developer, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco as an Objective-C developer, you can see that stuff in Swift. Whereas in Scala, I can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see some of the same stuff. I can see when you do very,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess I don’t know if rudimentary is the word I’m looking for but like basic Scala I can see oh, yes Swift took
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that from Scala like optionals way optionals work is a great example Like that
⏹️ ▶️ John take it from Scala like all these like you got to do the family tree It’s like for example There’s almost nothing in PHP that
⏹️ ▶️ John wasn’t you know It didn’t come from pearl or shell or something else before like so there’s a big family tree of things just depends on like
⏹️ ▶️ John this Is the first language you encounter this stuff forever? You will think oh that’s from Scala, but really it’s totally not
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like something from Lisp or whatever. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. No, that’s totally fair But you see what I’m driving at, right? Is that basic Scala,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where things make sense and it’s like written for noobs, that I can understand, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But then you start getting this crazy crap where… So as an example, Akka, which is again this like…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m going to summarize it as like a networking client-server framework. That’s completely unfair,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I can’t come up with a better way to summarize it. So the way you send a message
⏹️ ▶️ Casey using Akka within Scala is you do either the client
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or the server. So the line of code would read, for example, server, paren, paren, because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey server is a function, exclamation point, message. So exclamation point
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has been presumably operator overloaded to send a message that you define on the right-hand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey side of the line to the destination defined on the left-hand side of the line. I know this is really hard to do verbally. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was gonna say, like, source code on podcasts is kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is not going well for me. But you see, like, it’s just, imagine it’s a function
⏹️ ▶️ Casey call, an exclamation point, and then a variable. Like, what? What the hell is happening here?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And again, I think a lot of this is probably my problem. And if this makes it in the show, we’re gonna get all the Scala
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people yelling at me about how I just don’t know what I’m talking about, which is accurate. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as someone who’s new to it, but has been writing code professionally for over a decade
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and casually for 20 years now, man, is it weird and different. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot of this, it comes down to almost every programming language I’ve done looks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or I think traces itself back to C. And yes, on the surface Scala does too, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like there’s the family tree diverged and took like, like hung a right on the way to Scala
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where most of the other stuff, even Swift kind of just marched down the line the way it was supposed to,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you will, with scare quotes. I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I think a lot of what you’re seeing, too, is just like languages have certain cultures and communities around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them based on their attributes and their existing communities.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco instance, like you don’t see a lot of cleverness in PHP code that you find
⏹️ ▶️ Marco online. You’re lucky if it works. And the reason why is because PHP is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used by people pragmatically for the most part. It’s used by people who are at all skill levels,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, bottom to top. And there’s a lot of people on the bottom, of course, because it’s an easy language to learn if you’re a newbie. So there’s a lot of that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then even the people who are good at using it, they tend to pick PHP because it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is pragmatic and it helps them get some kind of job done. And then as you get the languages that become more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dynamic and have all sorts of weird little syntax sugar that’s possible with them. I mean, Perl
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the king of this, but also, you know, obviously you see this in other languages. Ruby was a big one for a while. And of course,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then once you go functional languages, then all bets are off. Functional people are like living on another planet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so as you get like more more esoteric and with more clever languages,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not only do the languages make a lot of like crazy, complex, unreadable, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cool things possible, but also generally way more skilled
⏹️ ▶️ Marco programmers are the ones who choose to use those languages, or people who are language nerds, who really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco love the weird things you can do with these different languages, that you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco easily or at all do in other languages, right? So you will see people using an obscure language
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like Scala or Haskell in a way that like they’re almost showing off
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what they can do because it’s fun because you whatever that whatever crazy thing they’re doing they enjoy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing that because they can’t do that in Objective-C or PHP.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah I know it’s weird it’s not and again none of this is really bad it’s just peculiar and and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think what’s frustrating to me is as an experienced developer by no means an expert but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as an experienced developer, it’s, it’s very frustrating for me because I feel like I’m not catching
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on as quickly as I’d like. And I feel like Scala is not as approachable to someone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that happens to have my background as other languages have been. It doesn’t make Scala worse
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or bad or wrong, but it’s just, I have not, even objective C, I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was easier for me to pick up than this. And it’s just, it’s weird, man. Super weird.
John’s EarPods
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, tell me what’s going on with your earbuds, ear pods, excuse me.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is on my new iPhone 7 that I was talking about last week. I’ve got a new complaint.
⏹️ ▶️ John I talked about the fat lightning connector last time. That still annoys me.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I figured I’d get over that. But one thing that I was accustomed to with the old headphone jack
⏹️ ▶️ John on my iPhone 6, and all my iPod Touches before that, and all my iPod Shuffles before that,
⏹️ ▶️ John was that if it was playing audio and I put the earbuds in my ears
⏹️ ▶️ John and then I plugged in the headphone the audio would change to coming out of the headphones
⏹️ ▶️ John and the other thing I took for granted is if I have my headphones plugged in and audio was playing and
⏹️ ▶️ John I hit the little remote thing it would stop the audio from playing or started depending on whether it was stopped or started and these
⏹️ ▶️ John sound like basic functions both of them have failed multiple times today
⏹️ ▶️ John on my thing and you know I haven’t quite gotten to the point where I’m plug in headphones it is at play and out
⏹️ ▶️ John playing to the speaker for two seconds I plug in the headphones just keeps playing with the speakers unplug the headphones
⏹️ ▶️ John plug back in just keeps playing through the speakers what
⏹️ ▶️ John man you know pause the thing plug it in again hit play now play through the headphones
⏹️ ▶️ John playing through the headphones you know I’m doing dishes my wife says something to me I want to stop the thing so I can hear
⏹️ ▶️ John hit the remote it doesn’t stop playing hit the remote again nope not stopping playing at the remote again nope not stopping playing
⏹️ ▶️ John this is no good I can’t have that you gotta it’s got to do the basics when I plug in the headphones
⏹️ ▶️ John the audio should start coming over the headphones like and I’m I’m assuming this is a software thing so there’s hope
⏹️ ▶️ John of it being fixed like I don’t think it’s I have bad hardware or anything because it fixes itself
⏹️ ▶️ John if I wait a few seconds or plug the thing back in a few times
⏹️ ▶️ John or you know hit play pause and the thing or whatever I don’t like it I give it a big thumbs down I hope this
⏹️ ▶️ John goes away in a point update to iOS. It won’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I haven’t had this, had this experience, but to be honest, I’ve only used the lightning ear pods a handful of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey times and they have worked outside of that original software issue that, um, Scott McNulty,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that right? The guy who did dash super nice guy anyway, that he had, um, discovered where after
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it would like time out and it wouldn’t listen to the remote anywhere anymore, but that apparently has been fixed. Other than
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, I haven’t had any problems. Have you, Marco, have you even really used the, the, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ear pods? I haven’t used the ear pods at all the the only head was I’ve used are either Bluetooth ones for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco walking or the adapter to the old headphone jack for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plain headphones and and the and I’ve Bluetooth is as mediocre
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and inconsistent as it always has been and the lightning adapter sucks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It functions, but I’m angry every time it functions especially as my phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco discharges itself and I have this stupid dongle to keep track of now and it really is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of a cheap piece of crap that I’m worried is going to snap in any moment because the cable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is about as thick as a human hair so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it’s fine I yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so far we know with with the lack of airpods being existing yet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the whole story about removing the headphone jack has kind of fallen its face because it’s like all right well we remove the headphone jack
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and now we have well the same mediocrity we had before with some things that got worse.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’re sponsored tonight by Backblaze. Go to backblaze.com.
Sponsor: Backblaze
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco a sponsor. It protects you from a whole class of problems that local backup alone can’t protect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you from. Things like environmental factors, fires, floods, power surges, theft.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s all sorts of problems where a cloud backup solution will really save your behind.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And Backblaze is the one that you want because here’s how this works. Unlimited unthrottled
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uploads. So unlimited disk space really means unlimited here. Anything that’s connected to your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computer physically. So it doesn’t do network drives but it will do any external drive and any internal drive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That external drive can be as big as you want it to be and Backblaze will back it up if it is connected
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to your computer. And all this is for the flat price of just five bucks a month per computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So if you have two computers it’s ten bucks a month. If you have one computer with 6TB of drives connected to it, that’s $5 a month. It
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco also very important here. I had problems with other providers with that. With Backblaze, you don’t have to worry about that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s fast uploads. It can take it as quickly as you’re willing to send it. They also have all sorts of restore options,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from basic web restore. You can even restore just one file. So if you’re somewhere on vacation and you want to get a file off
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your home computer, you can go to Backblaze and pull it off. Or if disaster strikes, not only can you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco download things online, but you can have them if you have some ridiculously large amount of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco files that you need to restore and it’s going to take too long to do it online, you can have them mail you a hard drive. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you can send it back within 30 days, they refund the price of it. So Backblaze is great. It is by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco far my favorite online backup. It’s the one I use personally and have used for years, even before they were a sponsor.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I don’t get a discount. I pay for it just like everyone else. I highly recommend Backblaze. Check it
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Downloading The Grand Tour
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Once again, backblaze.com slash ATP for the best online cloud backup. Thanks a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to Backblaze for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Most of the internet has written in to tell us that you can indeed download the Grand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tour. Asterisk. Yeah, that is slightly accurate. So I thought it was pretty obvious, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I did listen back to what we were saying, and I thought it was fairly obvious that for me anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what I was trying to say was I would like a copy on my computer. I don’t want a copy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my phone. I don’t want a copy on my iPad. I want a copy on my computer. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it would be neat if that copy didn’t have to fall off the back of a truck. That does not exist.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So for all of you that said, you idiots, you could have downloaded grand tour. Well, yes, that’s true, but it doesn’t help
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Casey. However, being able to download it and keep
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it in app might have, might have helped John because John, I believe you were saying that you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t want it to buffer and you want it to make sure it was full res, et cetera, et cetera. So in principle, that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would have helped you.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was looking for it to mostly to say like I demand 10 80 download as much as you have to, so that I can start watching
⏹️ ▶️ John it. You know what I mean? I guess I suppose I could just say download the whole thing first, but that’s. You know, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John going to the event when you sit down to watch a thing, especially if it’s getting the crappy version,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want to have to say, Oh, it’s going to be downloaded in 15 minutes. So come back in 15 minutes. I want it to buffer up as much as
⏹️ ▶️ John it needs to buffer, maybe buffer for five minutes or something. You know, I basically I wanted to say don’t give me the stream
⏹️ ▶️ John if you can’t give me 1080. If you can’t give me 1080, then just keep trickling in the 1080 until
⏹️ ▶️ John you have enough that you think you can start showing it to me in real time. Maybe that would have to wait 15 minutes or something. Maybe it would be just
⏹️ ▶️ John as bad. I don’t know. Anyway, I’ll try it next time. I haven’t watched episode two because I
⏹️ ▶️ John heard all you guys say bad things about it. So
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I’m motivated to watch it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. sidebar we have to bring it up and I was going to bring it up anyway. Wow, episode 2 is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey rough. Did you watch it yet, Marco? No,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I haven’t yet. I don’t want to spoil it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have, I keep hearing though that it is a kind of a step backwards in quality. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will just summarize my thoughts by saying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey our hosts seem to have forgotten that they are not actors.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And yeah. Oof. Oh, it was bad. It was not good. It’s worth seeing,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like, so here’s the thing like again no spoilers I definitely laughed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a fair bit so in that sense it was successful but half of that was laughing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey through the cringing and half of it was true laughter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Would you have laughed if you were watching it alone?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I understand the question I would say yes but not nearly as emphatically.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s worth your time, but unlike the first episode, I wouldn’t rush
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to watch it. You might even want to wait until the series is O-season, whatever they’re calling
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. Is it a season now since it’s kind of an American show? Anyway, wait until it’s over and then go back
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to episode two. But yikes. Coming back around,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we should also mention that breaking news as of a few hours ago, actually.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apparently, Netflix is allowing you to download stuff onto your devices as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t look into this very much. I would guess that this is not onto a computer, but just onto
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a iOS or perhaps Android device. But this never used to be a thing. There was no mechanism
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for Netflix to be able to, or for you to be able to download Netflix
⏹️ ▶️ Casey movies and TV shows and and whatnot. Now apparently you can, which is exciting.
MacBook Pro power bricks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There were a few thoughts about the lack of the arms or ears or whatever you’d
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like to call them on the PowerBrick on the new MacBook Pros.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A lot of people thought that this was a deliberate choice because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the existing cables—and do we cover this? The existing cable on the prior version with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey MagSafe, oftentimes when you would bend that cable in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey order to wrap it around those arms or ears or whatever we’re calling them, you would put a pretty extreme
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bend on the very, very end of that cable, the end that attaches to the power brick. And apparently that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was just a tremendous point of failure across a gazillion people’s power
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bricks. And so perhaps the reason they got rid of the little ears
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is to prevent that from happening.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I agree with you that I don’t think that’s what it’s about.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John But a lot of –
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Michael Mann Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John it wasn’t just the part where it comes out of the brick. A lot of the people’s theory was that the ears, even if you were very
⏹️ ▶️ John gentle with that merely wrapping it around the little ears that come out. That bend radius
⏹️ ▶️ John was too sharp for the wire. And I don’t, well, I don’t buy
⏹️ ▶️ John this theory for a couple reasons. Well, first of all, many people have used those ears for years
⏹️ ▶️ John and not had a problem with it. If it was actually below the threshold, you’d feel like there would be many more failures. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve seen all the failures of the point where it comes out of the brick, and that is just, you know, you’re wrapping it too hard or whatever. But
⏹️ ▶️ John if you are gentle with it and wrap it around the little ears, I feel like it is sustainable. But either way,
⏹️ ▶️ John if people want to wrap it, they’re gonna wrap it. As evidenced in Marco’s video
⏹️ ▶️ John that we’ll talk about in the after show, you just wrap it around the brick like it’s the same radius as the
⏹️ ▶️ John ears. I mean I guess maybe maybe it’s a little… no it’s it’s I guess yeah maybe it’s a little
⏹️ ▶️ John bit broader because the ears were not the same width as the block. But either way, if people want to wrap that cable, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna wrap that cable. And the people who wrap it tight are gonna wrap it tight. Apple’s job
⏹️ ▶️ John is to make an adapter that will withstand what people do to it. If you’re gonna make an adapter
⏹️ ▶️ John that will not make people need to wrap up the cable, like the cable magically zips back into it or something, by all means do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if you’re gonna make an adapter that most people, when they pack it in their bag, want to wrap the cable around something
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’ve got the square thing that they like to wrap it around, you better make that cable so people can wrap it around the square
⏹️ ▶️ John thing without breaking it. And I think for the most part they did that with the old adapters. Yes, Everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John breaks every cable that they own you know there it’s like sponge cutters, which I think we’ve talked about in the kitchen
⏹️ ▶️ John Some people are just cable breakers They eventually destroy all the cables and other people don’t and
⏹️ ▶️ John apples cables Need to be more durable and the string relief needs to be more robust But in general
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think apples square power bricks that have existed for many many years have
⏹️ ▶️ John a reputation as being Fatally flawed like I feel like that is a workable design
⏹️ ▶️ John that they should concentrate on making better instead of you know if the idea was these ears cause people to wrap things
⏹️ ▶️ John and therefore the cable breaks removing the ears doesn’t solve that problem the the cable breakers are
⏹️ ▶️ John still just gonna break their cable so I don’t think that was the reason if it was I would imagine Apple would have cited
⏹️ ▶️ John it at some point but and if it was the reason I would say Apple your job is to make the
⏹️ ▶️ John cable not break not take away the thing that you think people are gonna wrap it around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s the thing too, like, you know, the argument here is, and before I get into this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, another kind of argument we heard was that now it isn’t just carrying power. Now the cable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a full USB-C 3.1 cable, so it has more wires inside
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it. And so, and that’s why the new power cable is actually noticeably thicker and less
⏹️ ▶️ Marco flexible than the old one. And to that, my answer is, it didn’t need to be necessarily.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, this is a cable that the vast majority of people using it the vast majority of the time are going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to use as the power cable to the laptop. It’s going to be effectively a dedicated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco power cable. Most people are not going to be like swapping in and out between different cables all the time like you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know between using this cable as a power cable and then unplugging it from the power brick and using it to plug in a hard drive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a few minutes. Like no in practice most people are going to use this cable as the power cable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for its entire useful lifetime.
⏹️ ▶️ John You could solve that the Apple way. The way they used to solve that is make the end that connects to the brick
⏹️ ▶️ John not a USB-C connector and then you just make it a straight-up power connector does not work as a USB connector
⏹️ ▶️ John because only one end is USB-C and the other end is some weird thing the one thing that used to do that with is the keyboard remember the old
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple keyboards that supported the power button the connector that went to the keyboard end had a kink in it and you couldn’t put
⏹️ ▶️ John a regular USB in there this is before our time anyway yeah so that
⏹️ ▶️ John it used to be that there was a the power button to turn on your Mac was on the keyboard and to support that to basically
⏹️ ▶️ John to support turning on a a turned off computer by pressing a thing on the keyboard. They had a special cable with a special whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the USB type A connector had a little V-shaped like groove in it. And
⏹️ ▶️ John so did the end where it went into the keyboard. So if you tried to stick a regular USB type A connector, it wouldn’t go in because the little
⏹️ ▶️ John rectangle would hit the little triangle shaped divot that was down there. And that was your signal that, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t just take this cable and use it. This is not a regular USB cable, it’s a special one. So for
⏹️ ▶️ John their power brick, and I bet people would have complained about this, but they have two options. they could have permanently affixed the end to
⏹️ ▶️ John the power brick like the old one, although that has disadvantages too because of that part breaks, right? And the second is
⏹️ ▶️ John make it a power only cable with a big thick heavy gauge, you know, wire
⏹️ ▶️ John for the power and no wires for data, have a USB-C looking connector on one end, and
⏹️ ▶️ John have whatever the hell connector you want to put on the other end but that definitely isn’t USB-C so there would like
⏹️ ▶️ John basically be a proprietary power cable or whatever. Many solutions to this,
⏹️ ▶️ John deciding that the power cable for your laptop like is it has to be a fully functional
⏹️ ▶️ John USB C cable that you hey you can take it off and use it on a hard drive that you want to keep six feet away from your Mac for some reason
⏹️ ▶️ John hey I don’t even know if that’s true mark Marco can try it out and see if it is a I don’t even know if that’s true and be
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not a useful application if it is true like that’s that’s not a useful thing to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah exactly and and I feel like to to penalize all other mainstream
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use of this computer for the fraction of people who either want to keep a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hard drive six feet away from their computer and occasionally plug it in without having power or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are going to break other cables all the time. I feel like that’s not a good trade-off.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The solution to some people fray this wire is not,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, let’s make it suck for everybody. No, that is not the right solution here. The right solution here, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple, I think, used to be good at doing, is find a better design if you need to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and do the thing that functions best for most people most of the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Every defense of this power brick design basically rests on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco removing the usefulness of it for most people to accommodate some edge cases. I simply don’t agree with that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think you’re right. Coming back around to what do you do to prevent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this from breaking or what happens if it breaks, one of the advantages of this new power supply,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I don’t know if we brought this up last time or not, but a lot of people have said, you know, one of the advantages of this new power supply is, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey let’s assume you destroy that cable by whatever mechanism, doesn’t really matter how. It’s a regular USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cable. So instead of buying a new $80 brick, you can just buy a presumably maybe 10 or 20
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or 30 or even $40 USB-C cable and your brick is still fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so, and that’s really awesome. Additionally,
⏹️ ▶️ John $40 for USB-C cable. I hope not.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have the faintest idea. Well, but this, this is Like, these are high power USB cables that can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco carry the much higher wattages of the 13 and 15 inch MacBook Pros compared
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to like the little skinny ones that could maybe charge the MacBook One. So, the idea that we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can get third party replacements here, I think for the most part, it’s gonna be pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much only Apple making these cables for a long time, if, it might be forever, you know?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The PC industry could decide to go a different direction with these things, we don’t know. In all likelihood, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably going to be, if this cable breaks, you can either buy one from Amazon that will melt
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or catch fire or not charge your laptop at full speed, or you can go and buy Apples for 40 bucks. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably gonna be the answer here. And so, I think the third-party
⏹️ ▶️ Marco potential as a counter-argument here is kind of made less significant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by, you can look around the USB-C ecosystem and you can see all the stuff that’s been out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the MacBook One so far, which is now almost two years old. So that’s had a while now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was very clear from the beginning.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, but it’s a niche product. Niche, niche, whatever, however you pronounce that word. Well, not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really. And so anyway, you can look at the ecosystem of things that have become available for that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so far from third parties. And what you basically have is a mess of hubs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and port splitters, some of which are okay, most of which are crap, and it’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of hard to tell which is which. And then you have a very small number of external
⏹️ ▶️ Marco batteries and external chargers and third-party charging cables, a very small number of those,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of which are of questionable quality, I would say. So even after two years,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the third-party ecosystem for USB-C in the realm of high-powered things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like laptops has barely materialized. And so to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco assume that anything meaningful will come out for a 15-inch, which needs 85
⏹️ ▶️ Marco watts, like, in the next couple years, I don’t see it being very likely. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s more likely is we just lost features and when things break,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we still have to pay Apple for the replacement, we just might have to pay them less money depending on which part or parts
⏹️ ▶️ John Making a removable is a good idea, though. I like the idea of the removable. It’s much better to be able to buy a replacement cable. I
⏹️ ▶️ John just don’t care about buying, like, oh, and when you buy a replacement cable, it’s just the USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ John cable. It was like Marco said a it’s not just a USB Z able to special ones and firepower and be Just make
⏹️ ▶️ John it proprietary on one end like I’ll pay Apple the the 20 bucks for a replacement if I’m a wire killer
⏹️ ▶️ John And I killed the thing it’s much better than buying an $80 brick right and removable cable You know thumbs up everybody likes
⏹️ ▶️ John it like it was an opportunity to take an existing
⏹️ ▶️ John design and Fix some of the things that are wrong with it. Just like making the iPhone 6s
⏹️ ▶️ John less slippery or whatever like you got the bricks I mean you could read it on them entirely and reimagine it and come
⏹️ ▶️ John up with something way better But if you don’t have the time or budget to do that Then just take the one you have and make it a little better and making
⏹️ ▶️ John it removable cable does make it a little bit better But removing the ears and making it removable
⏹️ ▶️ John but making it a big thick USB-C cable. That’s not easy to wrap I mean, that’s the other thing people suggested like
⏹️ ▶️ John cook don’t wrap it around anything Just disconnect it entirely coil it into a circle with a nice bend radius
⏹️ ▶️ John And now you have a circle that’s about the same size as the square and you just I don’t know stick
⏹️ ▶️ John them together with a rubber band or something and there you go. I think that is what you should do instead of trying to
⏹️ ▶️ John wrap it around the brick to be clear. But people are going to do what they’re going to do. I’m not sure if people are going to take advantage
⏹️ ▶️ John of that. And that cable, I didn’t realize how thick it was until I saw Marco’s video. It’s, it’s, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. Yep. So the replacement USB C charge cable that’s specifically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the product information noted to be for the MacBook Pros and the MacBook Adorable, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey six foot two meter version is $19 from Apple. So when I said $40 earlier,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just had no idea. And the chat room has provided a link. We’ll put it in the show notes. It’s $20 from Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s, again, two meters. A one-meter or three-foot equivalent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cable from Anker is $15. And this one from Anker is specifically noted in the product
⏹️ ▶️ Casey description to carry up to 100 watts. So it’s not terribly expensive to replace
⏹️ ▶️ Casey these. And it’s a heck of a lot less expensive, like I said earlier than replacing an $80 brick, which is awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Additionally, and I think, John, you just alluded to this, you can just disconnect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. And I think part of the reason that I lamented losing the ears was because I wanted some way to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wrap up that part of the cable that used to be attached, permanently attached to the brick. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it didn’t occur to me when I was talking about it last episode that, oh, I can just pop the darn thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out and, like you said, John, coil it up by whatever mechanism I feel appropriate, and then I don’t need those ears anymore
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at all. So I’ve been really bummed in principle about the lack of ears and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am standing down from that. I think that was me not thinking the problem through.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am still a bit bummed by MagSafe and I know that there’s the Belkin or Griffin or whatever it is thing that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can kind of hack MagSafe back in. I don’t really care for that but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I understand why it’s not MagSafe. I think it was probably the right decision overall but I am bummed about the loss.
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco So if you happen to break both pieces of your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco power adapter, or if you want a second power adapter, it appears that the new one is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more expensive than the old one. What a surprise! Is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey it really? I didn’t know that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The old, the 85 watt, assuming you have a 15 inch, The 85 watt, actually it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looks like it’s true for the 13s as well. The 85 watt MagSafe 2 power adapter,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which includes, not only does it include the MagSafe cable and brick obviously, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think it even includes that extension cable, doesn’t it? That’s $19? Anyway, even if you, so that is $79.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s what it was, right? Yeah, $79 for the old adapter, for the old 15 inch. Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talking about the new one, my apologies.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The new one is $79 just for the brick part.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh wow. So if you want to match what you got before,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have to spend another $19 for the USB-C cable and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco optionally another $19 for the actual 3-prong extension cable that used to come with the old one.
⏹️ ▶️ John I gotta check if I ordered that. When I ordered my adapters for my work thing, I don’t know if I took that into
⏹️ ▶️ John account because I ordered a second power brick like for homes. I don’t have to bring the power brick back and forth, but I don’t know if I ordered the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Probably not. So actually what we have here is a price hike by either $20 or $40, depending on whether
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you need the extra long three-prong cable or not. Fun! Thanks, Tim!
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yet another accessories price hike. Add it to the dongles, add it to the now two-sided iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cases. Keep adding it up, Tim. Thanks a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tim Cynova Yeah, and there was some article that flew around, it doesn’t matter where it was, but I read somewhere somebody saying, you know, a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of these things I can justify, like we were just talking about with the MagSafe, you know, the loss of MagSafe. Yeah, it sucks,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I can justify it. And yeah, losing the ears sucks, but you can justify it. But man, these
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sorts of price hikes, maybe they’re a lot more complex on the inside, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not aware of it, and I’m not giving it due credit. But golly, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hard for this not to just seem like gouging or nickel and diming for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the sake of doing so. Like, when did Apple become Porsche?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In many ways, Tim has continued Apple doing things that we think are right, but there There are going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be changes on a big scale when the operations guy who’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really good at profit and operations takes over the company from the product visionary.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s not to say that Steve didn’t care about profit. He very much would charge outrageous amounts for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever he felt like because he thought he could. And sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you have the operations guy take over the company, there are going to be changes like this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s inevitable. Tim Cook, he means well. I think he means well for the product
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and for Apple, but he is very much numbers and profit driven. That shows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a lot of things Apple has done in the last five years. It really, really shows.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, as I mentioned last show, like with a lot of Apple changes, you can kind of take like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the charitable explanation, or you can realize like, you know, well, there’s also this other side
⏹️ ▶️ Marco effect, which is Apple makes more money now, or things got more expensive with this progress
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we made or things like that, right? These kind of changes are inevitable with Tim Cook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco running the company. It’s going to keep happening. We’re going to keep seeing things get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cut. We’re gonna see features that get cut. We’re gonna see accessories that used to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco included that now cost money. We’re just gonna keep seeing this because the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way Tim Cook operates is to find profit and extract it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is what he’s really good at. and it’s going to keep happening. As long as Tim Cook is the CEO,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I don’t have any reason to believe it’s going to end anytime soon, as long as Tim Cook is the CEO of Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s going to keep going down this path, but things are going to get more pared down and more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expensive, and it’s gonna somehow result in giving Apple more money
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the kinds of things that we used to not have to give them that much money for. That’s just how, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s going to happen. It is happening, it has been happening, and it will continue to happen. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, I don’t know. Again, there may be perfectly valid reasons for all these things, but golly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey looking from the sidelines, it’s hard for me to see what they are. Not everything, but a lot of them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and some of these things do have valid reasons also, but it’s really hard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to ignore that they, wow, there are a few justifications for this change,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but then also, Apple now makes 40 bucks more every time you buy. It’s like, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have to look at both sides of that. It’s important to at least try to figure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out a good reason why they might have done something, but it’s also important not to be foolish, you know, to realize,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, oh, also, they did this for the profit.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah, and I think the perfect example to me is that extension cable that goes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the three-prong connector, and I don’t know how that works in other countries, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here in the States, you have the little receptacle that goes on the power brick, and then it’s like this two or three,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess like a three or four-foot cable that goes into the wall and it has a ground on it because not all of our plugs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey need grounds. Yes, I know that’s barbaric if you’re British, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
⏹️ ▶️ John But- British people cannot complain about our plugs. Their plug is the size of a Buick.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, don’t even get me started. It’s absurd, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very safe. We can safely walk around our house at night with bare feet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In any case, the point I’m driving at, though, is that it is hard for me to understand why
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is that that $20 cable is no longer included in this $2,000 to $5,000 laptop.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s just hard for me to understand why that could be. Maybe there’s a reason.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not only does Tim just, is he really good at profitability
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and increasing that, but look, a lot of Apple’s numbers are not doing so well recently. If you look at their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco earnings, their Wall Street results, their sales figures, they have a lot of pressure on them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to increase profitability. And obviously, one way you do that is by selling more units.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Another way you do it is by making more money from each one. And so the pressure is very strong
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on Tim Cook personally, because that’s the kind of thing, like if that starts going south for a while, you tend to want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to replace the CEO. So the pressure’s very strong at the top to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco increase those revenue numbers, to increase those margins, to keep, to basically combat
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s actually happening in the market, which is kind of this general cooling of a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the markets that Apple’s in, right? You know, you have iPad sales kind of, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not going great, you have the Mac kind of slowing, you have the iPhone kind of, you know, leveling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off a little bit. Apple has a lot of pressure on it now to make more money somehow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it used to be not, you know, not easy in absolute terms, but it used to be easier.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They could, well, they just keep selling more of these things, that’s great, everything’s going well. But now, with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the cooling off of their numbers in the market, there’s tons of pressure for them to just increase profitability. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re seeing the screws tighten all over the product line, the services,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the screws are tightening because they have to keep making more money. And they have to do it from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any way they can now because otherwise these numbers are gonna start maybe getting worse. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re gonna keep seeing this. There’s a reason why, we’re going to keep seeing products that give
⏹️ ▶️ Marco us, that are somehow, you know, a little bit cheaper to make maybe, or at least
⏹️ ▶️ Marco include less without paying extra. We’re not gonna see massive increases
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in like iCloud storage for free or anything like that. Apple needs more money
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from us, and that’s gonna keep happening.
Follow-up: AirPorts were good
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Final bit of follow-up for today. Apple is out of the Wi-Fi business, which we knew,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but we had an email from an anonymous employee of a major company that makes products
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that integrate with Wi-Fi routers. And this individual said, we’re sad that Apple is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not making Wi-Fi routers anymore because out of all the equipment that we deal with worldwide, the airports had the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fewest problems and the two problems that we had seem to have gotten themselves
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fixed some way, somehow. And that’s a pretty glowing recommendation from someone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who presumably is in the know. Additionally, JD Power and Associates apparently rated Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey routers as having the highest or best or what have you customer satisfaction,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or if you’re Tim Cook, customer sat of all available Wi Fi routers. So
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, the customer sat thing is kind of funny because there’s, you know, that you’ve got the endowment effect or whatever the hell it’s called. When you
⏹️ ▶️ John buy something expensive, you’re more inclined to say that it’s good because you don’t want to be a fool for making the purchase. And so Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John routers are very expensive and therefore people who buy them are more likely to say that they’re good.
⏹️ ▶️ John And also it’s got the Apple brand where even if your Wi-Fi router is the
⏹️ ▶️ John same or worse than other ones because it’s the Apple brand and because it looks nice and because it matches your other Apple stuff, you’re also
⏹️ ▶️ John inclined to say that it’s better. So those two things are working towards it. I mean, we know empirically
⏹️ ▶️ John performance wise, Apple’s Wi-Fi routers are not the best you can buy, but that’s just,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it’s, it’s another, another data point for Apple to consider is that they were selling
⏹️ ▶️ John an outdated product that doesn’t perform as well as the competition and cost more and people were still
⏹️ ▶️ John satisfied with it essentially if this is to be believed that you know there people were willing to do it
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re willing to pay more money for a less good on paper product that
⏹️ ▶️ John in my experience was actually reliable so you know most companies would like to have a product like that
⏹️ ▶️ John but Apple it’s not it’s It’s not along the critical path for Apple these days. So, oh well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. All right, we are out of follow-up and the topic list
⏹️ ▶️ Casey says that the next thing we need to talk about is the Nintendo Switch. So Marco, do you wanna talk about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey scam apps in the Mac App Store? I’m just kidding.
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Nintendo Switch
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey ♪ MailRoute ♪ John, tell us about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Nintendo Switch.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I should ask you two. It’s been so long since Nintendo Switch was announced.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Do you guys remember what it is? Did you watch the video when it came out? I did. Yeah, it’s the Game
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Boy Puppy, right? Yeah. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John well, that’s the only reason you know
⏹️ ▶️ John is because Stiff thinks it looks like a puppy. Yeah, or so do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey many other people. Yeah, so I don’t feel like, even though I’m the official summarizer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in chief, or the chief summarizer in chief, I don’t feel like I’m the best person to summarize this because I don’t really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey care for video game consoles. But what I remember from the video was, it was pretty people in pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apartments playing with this thing that could either be a handheld or could be connected
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to your TV. And it seemed to also facilitate using like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two controllers if you’re playing by yourself, so you have like one in each hand, or if you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had a game that supported it, You could give one of the controllers to a friend
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and hold on to the other. And when tilted from portrait to landscape, I guess they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey effectively the same thing. And so you could play a two-player game with what is really two halves
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of one controller, and that was pretty cool. And it just, I mean, it seemed like a very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey compelling, very different and interesting take on a video game console. But truth be told,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I haven’t owned a video game console since the original Wii. and I got that console for all the reasons that all the people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who don’t play video games got it was because it looked interesting and exciting and different. So, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, Marco, let me start with you. Anything you want to add to that? And then John, why don’t you learn us as to what we should think about this?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, so I have a slightly different condition in that my wife, Tiff,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does play video game consoles and not frequently, but there’s usually like one or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two great games that she wants to play so badly on each system that we end up buying it anyway. and then usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it sits around collecting dust forever and we feel bad about it afterwards. So these systems are in my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco house. I could play them. Occasionally I have, but it’s basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not a part of my life. I’m basically not a gamer. I used to be and I would like to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Same here. But every time the opportunity comes up to play a game,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I instead look at my computer and I’m like, wow, I could do this instead. And I just I always want to do other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things instead. I’m kind of an aspirational gamer I would like to be a gamer but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in practice I never choose to
⏹️ ▶️ John not counting desert golf I guess because that’s a game and I’m not sure if you know that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did put that for a while but I haven’t played it recently because
⏹️ ▶️ John but you did sink a lot of time it’s usually the way it works with games people don’t play a game with the exception of people who play MMOs
⏹️ ▶️ John people don’t play games forever and ever like a game comes out they play it for a while and then they stop when desert golf
⏹️ ▶️ John came out you were you were the most heavily into it of any person I actually know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well I was I was also kind of using it as like Twitter methadone.
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, did you see that thing I sent you, by the way, that Desert Golf ends and someone found the end?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s almost at the 16-bit limit, but not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so basically, the Nintendo Switch looks really interesting to me because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of the things that I think are appealing are appealing to people like me. So things like, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Wii, it is kind of the casual gaming system. It is not like the hardcore
⏹️ ▶️ Marco PS7 VR Plus Pro Like I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John don’t care about most of that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff. I know even if I like if I got the PS5 for Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco VR, I know I would use it like once and I would never use it again. So I’m not probably gonna get that unless
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tiffany wants it for some reason. So like all like the high end video game stuff. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tend to shy away from because I just don’t I know I won’t use it and I just don’t care
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and all the game people want to play on those systems are all like everyone shooting each other and calling them racist
⏹️ ▶️ Marco names and it’s just like I don’t want that. you know that’s yeah most of like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco modern mainstream gaming is really not for me for a number of reasons so anyway
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I like about the Nintendo approach in general is it tends to focus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on just the fun gameplay and the general playability and quality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the games themselves not just having the most detailed graphics when you’re playing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an uber realistic well when you’re playing an army simulation that its players think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is realistic, and simulating killing people in the modern world.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that doesn’t do anything for me. But the idea of racing around a rainbow racetrack, shooting turtle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shells at my friends, that’s fun. Like, I like that, you know, that sounds fun. And so I like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the theory of what Nintendo does, and maybe what they used to do. In practice,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco while I’ve had very little experience with it, and almost all of which was at John’s house a couple years ago for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco his birthday, playing the Wii U. It seems like Nintendo’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recent efforts are so much more complex than they used to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that for somebody like me, it doesn’t really pull me in anymore. I would love,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I could just go buy a Nintendo system and bring it home and have it be just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as nice and simple and playable and accessible as their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco older games were, like in the NES and Super Nintendo era, but just new games,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco instead of just playing the same old ones over and over again, like, I would love that. I would gladly go out and pay for that and enjoy it with my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco family. That would be fun. But in practice, the games now are so complex because they’ve just had so many years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to accumulate crap. So like Mario Kart has like 50 characters now and all these different crazy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things happening all over the track. I’m like, it’s hard for me to even keep up. It’s kind of manic. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of like they’ve advanced even past this my level of casual gaming so when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I see the switch and it was when I see the video of the sort of the promo video of the switch with all the pretty young people who have nothing to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apparently playing the video games all day I’m sorry young people when I see that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it looks appealing it looks like I would love to have this little puppy game boy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and be able to take the controllers and have two-player local multiplayer anywhere I take this that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco awesome like little two-player that is so great to have two-player local multiplayer in a portable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this, that’s fantastic. I hope they really do well with that and I hope they really use it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But if I look at the games they’ve made recently it’s all stuff that I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will like unless I try it and then I realize, oh this yeah I don’t I don’t know this is too much for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me I don’t I don’t care for this. So it’s the kind of thing where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in theory I might really enjoy this thing but in practice I probably won’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So John what do you think?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I am a console gamer and I do
⏹️ ▶️ John like gaming consoles and I’ve had a whole bunch of them. What have I had? I have in my house now
⏹️ ▶️ John the PS3, 4 and 4 Pro and the Nintendo 64,
⏹️ ▶️ John Gamecube, Wii, Wii U. Did I skip one? Anyway
⏹️ ▶️ John I got a bunch of different consoles no Microsoft one sorry and
⏹️ ▶️ John when the Wii came out I was disappointed that Nintendo had
⏹️ ▶️ John given up the race for console power
⏹️ ▶️ John that they were no longer pursuing that they were content to produce a console
⏹️ ▶️ John that was basically previous generation hardware and I was disappointed in that because I I
⏹️ ▶️ John knew what that would mean for the games that are produced, and I knew what it would mean for the software support, and
⏹️ ▶️ John it eventually did. Like, very quickly, games would be out for
⏹️ ▶️ John PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC. That was a list of supported platforms
⏹️ ▶️ John you would see all the time on games. The most popular games were out for those platforms. The bestsellers,
⏹️ ▶️ John the AAA games, as they called them. them. I was going to call them PlayStation 3, Xbox 360,
⏹️ ▶️ John PC. Never a Wii port. If there was a Wii port, in the rare case, it
⏹️ ▶️ John looked terrible, it played terrible, it had disadvantages because you just can’t make a cross-platform
⏹️ ▶️ John game targeting three platforms that are sort of on the same level
⏹️ ▶️ John and then one platform that is an entire generation behind. That didn’t end up hurting the Wii
⏹️ ▶️ John because the Wii appealed to all the cases of the world who were like, I want a waggler and boat around and bowl too. And it was fun,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And it was cool and interesting and got tons more people to buy a Nintendo console
⏹️ ▶️ John and buy Nintendo console games and play them and have a good time. And so the Wii was a
⏹️ ▶️ John success as a product. But for me, who was just a plain old boring console gamer
⏹️ ▶️ John of the old Stripe, not of the new, I’m gonna bowl in my living room Stripe, but the old style,
⏹️ ▶️ John it was interesting. I mostly liked the fact that I could play GameCube games on it still because
⏹️ ▶️ John it was nice to have backward compatibility which you know didn’t get on the PS3 or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I enjoyed those games too and I enjoyed the Nintendo exclusive games
⏹️ ▶️ John as the first party games as I always do because they were all very good you know Nintendo does a good job with that software. They’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John too complex for me so I was I liked the the expansion of those
⏹️ ▶️ John games into the new platform although I did play Zelda on the GameCube instead of the Wii on purpose
⏹️ ▶️ John because the controls are better on the GameCube one than on the Wii version. But I give that
⏹️ ▶️ John one a pass, because like, all right, well, if you have to do this, if it’s going to be a successful product, I’d rather Nintendo have a successful product
⏹️ ▶️ John than an unsuccessful one, because I want them to be successful so they continue making the games I like, and I did like the games that
⏹️ ▶️ John they made. The Wii U was a similar thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Previous generation hardware, right, so it’s better than the Wii, but there’s still basically one entire generation
⏹️ ▶️ John behind if you want to measure it in terms of performance. going to get the ports for all the
⏹️ ▶️ John PS4 and Xbox One games, which are its supposed contemporaries more or less. So you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John still going to see games that were PS4, Xbox One, and PC. That’s all you’re going to see.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it had a novelty factor with the second screen, and also supported all the Wii’s motion control
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff on top of that. In fact, there was so many different control options, probably too many,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it wasn’t as successful as the Wii. People weren’t as interested in the novelty this time.
⏹️ ▶️ John The Wii stuff wasn’t interesting to them because they had already seen all that, and if they had been like Casey,
⏹️ ▶️ John bought it, seen it, played it, and then, you know, it goes away. They want something new, and the new thing of the second screen
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t appeal to them because it was, like Marco said, it seemed more complicated, even more
⏹️ ▶️ John complicated than just using a controller. You know, the Wii seemed less complicated than you just stand in front of the TV with a thing that looks like
⏹️ ▶️ John a remote and wave your hands around like an idiot, right? That, but this was now, I hold this thing with all these buttons
⏹️ ▶️ John and there’s a screen here but there’s also a screen there but sometimes they’re combined it was too much.
⏹️ ▶️ John The first party games for Wii U have been really good. Nintendo’s games are really good. I think Mario Kart 8 is
⏹️ ▶️ John one of the best entries in the Mario Kart series. I don’t think it’s too manic. I think it’s about
⏹️ ▶️ John equally manic as the Nintendo 64 version that Marco probably liked but
⏹️ ▶️ John you know it’s I think it’s a great entry in the series. I think almost all the Nintendo first party games for Wii
⏹️ ▶️ John U are really good, especially the ones that sort of harken back to the 2D Mario’s where they’re technically 3D but their
⏹️ ▶️ John the freedom of motion is decreased so it’s a simpler game to get into than you know a quote-unquote
⏹️ ▶️ John full-fledged Mario like you know Sunshine or Galaxy or Mario 64
⏹️ ▶️ John but it wasn’t a success the Wii U was not a success it was they stopped manufacturing it stopped selling it
⏹️ ▶️ John way before the normal active lifetime of a console so the Wii U is no
⏹️ ▶️ John more if you can find it cheap it is if you really can find it cheap. The first party
⏹️ ▶️ John games are absolutely worth playing and you should get them, but I would say the Wii U is a failure of a console,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, almost as much of a failure as the Wii was a success. And so the successor to that,
⏹️ ▶️ John the hastily readied successor, because if you’re going to can the Wii U you have to have something to replace
⏹️ ▶️ John it, is the Switch thing. And the rumors were for long before
⏹️ ▶️ John even the Wii U was cancelled that Nintendo’s next console was going to be some kind of hybrid thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John was both portable and regular and as soon as those rumors came out you’re like well for the third time
⏹️ ▶️ John in a row nintendo is not going to try to make a gaming console whose power
⏹️ ▶️ John is comparable to the current generation of consoles which at this point are
⏹️ ▶️ John the like the 0.5 releases so you got the ps4 pro which is not really the next generation
⏹️ ▶️ John playstation it’s not the playstation 5 but it’s more powerful than the plain old playstation 4 and xbox has that
⏹️ ▶️ John scorpio thing I forget if it has an official name yet. It’s coming out next year or whenever That’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John be even more powerful than the Xbox one, but backward compatible, you know So that the other console makers
⏹️ ▶️ John are doing this half generation thing But either way the switch is not going to be there contemporary in
⏹️ ▶️ John terms of power So they’re interesting. It is a hybrid if it’s hybrid and portable. How
⏹️ ▶️ John can it be? How can it be comparable in power to something that you plug into the wall and that stays plugged in the whole time?
⏹️ ▶️ John And that is the size of a lunchbox. This is small. It’s portable. The screen is right in it is going
⏹️ ▶️ John to be under power. This thing uses an NVIDIA Tegra processor which is a mobile thing. I think it will be
⏹️ ▶️ John more powerful than the Wii U because it would be pretty hard not to be, but I don’t think it’s even
⏹️ ▶️ John up to the power level of the PlayStation 4. What does that mean? For the third generation there will
⏹️ ▶️ John be games that are available for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 Pro for Xbox One and the Scorpio thing
⏹️ ▶️ John for PC and you won’t see the Nintendo Switch on that list. So it will continue to
⏹️ ▶️ John operate in the world where it doesn’t get the first, the triple
⏹️ ▶️ John A titles from the big third party vendors. The multi-platform big titles are in general not going to
⏹️ ▶️ John be in all of them. If they are, it’s going to be a cut down version.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but isn’t that kind of like a feature, not a bug? Like to me, it’s like, you know, if you want to have like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco call of desensitized violence 17, like, is that really the kind of game that you want to play on a switch?
⏹️ ▶️ John I think your view of the console game world is very narrow compared to the
⏹️ ▶️ John actuality of it. For example, I would say one of the games that if Tiff hasn’t already played, I think she will enjoy,
⏹️ ▶️ John is Uncharted 4, which is very, very far from
⏹️ ▶️ John that have a bunch of 12-year-olds call you racist names while you shoot people with realistic military guns
⏹️ ▶️ John stereotype that you are putting in. Even though it is a multi-million dollar triple-a game with huge
⏹️ ▶️ John budgets. It’s not cross-platform in this case. It’s a platform exclusive. We
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might actually have that. Which game came in the bundle that we bought the PS4 with so that Tiff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could play Fallout?
⏹️ ▶️ John You probably have Uncharted 4, but if you sit and watch her play through it, I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco think you will…
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s still in the wrapping. I think you will… If she decides to play through it and you watch her play through it, I think you’ll be thoroughly convinced
⏹️ ▶️ John that despite having the trappings of, you know, in movie parlance, a big budget movie, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John got all… It costs a lot of money to make. It’s got super realistic graphics. Everything, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, it’s that type of game. exactly that type, but I think content wise
⏹️ ▶️ John is not what you expect it to be. And that’s not even going into considering the games that are in genres that you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not even thinking about and weird Japanese things that are, you know, like anyway, I think is much more diverse than you think
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco for someone who is a real
⏹️ ▶️ Marco follow up ATP tipster who knows everything. Apparently, he says that I have the collection
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not for one, two and three.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco anyway, all the games
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I’m getting a rumor about my own game collection for me to be tipster, which is probably
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know what bundle you bought. I haven’t been to your house to see which thing you have, but
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco there’s much more variety
⏹️ ▶️ John there. But either way, I like to have available to me
⏹️ ▶️ John the menu of the best games. And I don’t play war games either. I don’t play any realistic
⏹️ ▶️ John shooters. I don’t play any military shooters. I also don’t play any sports games. And you know, like I have genres that I like too,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I would prefer to have the menu of all the big important cross-platform
⏹️ ▶️ John games, which is one of the reasons I have a PlayStation. Also, as I’ve brought this up many times,
⏹️ ▶️ John power, console power, you know, computing power, is not just like, oh I’m just going to make them look prettier and it’s totally pointless and
⏹️ ▶️ John I wish they would concentrate on the gameplay. More power gives the ability to make different types of games.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can, there are gameplay advances that are only possible due to power. 3D is one
⏹️ ▶️ John of them. If you don’t have, if you kept making 2D hardware and just let it control more and more sprites, you never get Mario 64.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you never crank up the computing power and you know, programmable shaders
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything, you don’t get a game that looks like Ico or Shadow of the Colossus. If you can’t do large crowds, you don’t get Dead
⏹️ ▶️ John Rising. Like, it affects gameplay. And like making things thinner, you’re like, well, do I need something that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John incrementally more powerful? Does it make it, it’s not that big of a deal. Well, who do I care if I can, I get like slightly
⏹️ ▶️ John bigger crowds or slightly longer draw distance. If you opt out of that or are always lagging behind, you
⏹️ ▶️ John won’t be you won’t be able to make that next leap like so Nintendo is always one behind on what they can
⏹️ ▶️ John do I always at this point you know as we’re talking about in the last show some people have been fantasizing
⏹️ ▶️ John about what it would be like if clone makers could make Macs because like boy if someone
⏹️ ▶️ John you know if someone was willing and able to make like the Mac of your dreams with the features that you want or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John and Apple will let them do it for many years now basically since the introduction of the Wii I’ve been thinking about
⏹️ ▶️ John can you imagine what a Zelda game would be like in the ps4 Pro Can you you know same developers like
⏹️ ▶️ John it made by Nintendo because they know how to make great Zelda games that I enjoy people who like Zelda games they you know, right
⏹️ ▶️ John but having available to them the console power and it used to be well you can’t do that because
⏹️ ▶️ John Nintendo Makes its games in harmony with the control schemes,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is still true But at this point if they’re always gonna like behind hardware, it’s like I’m almost willing
⏹️ ▶️ John to sacrifice some of their control innovation Especially after something like the Wii U where their control innovation
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t really work out that way like Star Fox on the Wii U. That’s an interesting
⏹️ ▶️ John control scheme but I’m not sure it makes Star Fox better. And even on the Wii for
⏹️ ▶️ John traditional types of game like Zelda I preferred to play it on the GameCube, although Skyward Sword obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John was a thing that would only work on the Wii and I’m glad I played that game even though it has some issues.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, so the Switch, not pursuing that. In exchange for not pursuing it, it
⏹️ ▶️ John has more than the Wii U does. The Wii U did not pursue power, did not have a novelty to get people
⏹️ ▶️ John to buy it, but it didn’t it didn’t have anything… the only thing I had to offer was, hey, you’ve got
⏹️ ▶️ John a second screen, there’s these lots of different control screens, which I think was interesting, but ultimately wasn’t enough. The Switch has something
⏹️ ▶️ John to offer, which, like you said, Marco, is you can take it away from your TV and carry it with you. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John that is a pretty big selling point, and if Nintendo is going to opt out of the console
⏹️ ▶️ John war as they, you know, the console power war, to basically to be in their own market, like, we are not selling
⏹️ ▶️ John a thing that’s the same as the Xbox and the PlayStation. We’re selling a different thing. And you can tell it’s different because you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John pick those up and walk away with them. They don’t have a screen on them, right? It is a different thing. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John then you don’t have an expectation that a multi-platform game is going to be on all of them.
⏹️ ▶️ John And now the question is, where do they find, do they find a place in the gaming market
⏹️ ▶️ John where they can fit that is not competing with Microsoft and Sony over there making the consoles,
⏹️ ▶️ John not competing with the PC gamers also not competing for the phone and tablet games
⏹️ ▶️ John is there a place somewhere like that’s not one of those places that’s making games
⏹️ ▶️ John that you can use portably but also on your TV but aren’t console games and aren’t fancy
⏹️ ▶️ John like PC games but also aren’t casual like mobile games it’s a strange place
⏹️ ▶️ John and I think I think the switch has the ability to potentially carve out
⏹️ ▶️ John that appeal. And I think actually the thing that gives it the power to find a market is
⏹️ ▶️ John both that it has an advantage the customers can see but also because it’s less powerful. And this was true of the Wii U
⏹️ ▶️ John and the Wii and it was enough to save them. But because it’s less powerful, there is the potential to
⏹️ ▶️ John attract games that are I don’t know if there’s a word for it, but like
⏹️ ▶️ John not triple A, but how about double A games are just a games basically games made on a much smaller budget
⏹️ ▶️ John because the assets will be you know, fewer polygons, lower resolution textures, like, it’s still,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re still high definition, right? But in theory, so the theory goes, you can make a game
⏹️ ▶️ John more cheaply for the Switch than you can for the PlayStation 4 or the Xbox
⏹️ ▶️ John One, because there is lower fidelity and lower cost to art and the assets and all that other stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so if there’s an interesting game idea that doesn’t, that can never get the multi-million
⏹️ ▶️ John dollar budget behind it, maybe that will appear on the Switch. Why wouldn’t that game appear
⏹️ ▶️ John on iOS? Maybe it would, and that’s bad for Nintendo, but maybe also it’s a type of game that
⏹️ ▶️ John really expects a traditional controller and you can’t put a game on iOS that demands the controller.
⏹️ ▶️ John And apparently you can do it on Apple TV now, but no one cares, because no one games on Apple TV. And you know, honestly, Nintendo Switch
⏹️ ▶️ John is gonna probably be more powerful and more capable and a much better gaming system than the Apple TV or any other TV connected box.
⏹️ ▶️ John So, I’m not optimistic about the Switch’s chances, but I’m not as
⏹️ ▶️ John pessimistic as I was about the Wii U. if Nintendo’s gonna do anything, it was either come back and try to compete with
⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft and Sony, and they’re not doing that, and then to be clear, that would be very dangerous and difficult, and I kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of understand why they didn’t do it, or find a new market, and this is their attempt to find a new market, and just
⏹️ ▶️ John staring at it, like, it’s not up to me what I think of it, and it’s not up to Marco what he thinks of it, it’s en masse, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, you have to see,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco is this a thing that people, yeah, yeah, right.
⏹️ ▶️ John It really is, though, is this a thing that people wanna buy, right? Because people already have, they can already play Desert Golf, they can
⏹️ ▶️ John already play Angry Birds on their phones, right, and they already have those other consoles and they already have PCs.
⏹️ ▶️ John Is, you know, is Nintendo slowly becoming
⏹️ ▶️ John the company that sells products only to people who want to play first party Nintendo games? And if so,
⏹️ ▶️ John is that a viable business? And if it’s a viable business, is it a viable business that supports the creation
⏹️ ▶️ John of hardware or will they inevitably end up merely being
⏹️ ▶️ John a game developer for other people’s hardware, which no one wants to see happen. But as the Nintendo that we knew seems
⏹️ ▶️ John to be fading from view and as Nintendo is forced to I’m not gonna say pimp out its properties, but
⏹️ ▶️ John forced to expand its intellectual property into new realms by you know
⏹️ ▶️ John making mobile games like Mario run and having and Pokemon go by teaming up with Universal to
⏹️ ▶️ John make a theme park doing things that it previously hadn’t done because look they have very valuable intellectual property
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you want to make some money You can make money by giving Universal your characters and having them make in the theme park
⏹️ ▶️ John You can make money by making a mobile version of Mario because it’s gonna sell a lot of copies just based on the name
⏹️ ▶️ John But as they do that the Nintendo that was the Nintendo that made Mario 64 and the controller
⏹️ ▶️ John and that whole console You know to usher in a new age of 3d gaming
⏹️ ▶️ John all the piece hardware and software You know in gameplay all together that one is
⏹️ ▶️ John fading from view and it makes me just think more and more about the idea of Nintendo
⏹️ ▶️ John making a Zelda game for PS4 and stop selling its own hardware entirely. Like, if they keep trying, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, if they have one success and one failure, the third one will kind of be the tiebreaker. If they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do it with this one, what’s the next generation move? Is the next generation to say, no more hardware entirely,
⏹️ ▶️ John or do they go back to fighting with Microsoft and Nintendo with real full-power consoles, or
⏹️ ▶️ John has that ship sailed? I don’t know. But anyway, I’m buying a Nintendo Switch because
⏹️ ▶️ John I want to play the next Mario and Zelda game as I always do and whatever other weird game surprises me because there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John always one for each Nintendo platform. And when I buy a console and play only two or three games on it,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t feel bad or guilty. I feel like it’s money well spent because, you know, that’s the amount of time I have to invest
⏹️ ▶️ John and I’m totally willing to buy a console. In fact, I’ve bought two consoles now,
⏹️ ▶️ John two PlayStation 4 consoles, the vast majority of which have been playing a single game,
⏹️ ▶️ John Destiny, although they did play Uncharted 4 and a few other things on it. And I’m fine with that, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t really matter. I’m not the customer Apple is going for, and neither is Marco. I think Nintendo
⏹️ ▶️ John continues to go for Casey, which is someone who’s not really into games, but maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John they’ll buy this thing just because it looks cool. And we’ll see. We’ll see what
⏹️ ▶️ John the sales numbers look like. We’ll see what the third-party software support looks like, because the third-party software support for the Wii
⏹️ ▶️ John U just basically disappeared after everyone realized that no one was buying them and you can’t port your existing titles and
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not worth making a custom title because there’s not enough of them out in the wild and no one knows what to do with that controller
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not buying one of these. Doesn’t Nintendo, I mean John you know better than I do, doesn’t Nintendo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still do well in portables?
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s something I don’t know because I haven’t been following this closely. The question is do they continue to sell the 3DS?
⏹️ ▶️ John Or do they not? A lot of the stories I see about the Switch is like oh this is great because Nintendo being a small company had difficulty
⏹️ ▶️ John making software like you know for example for the Wii U is a long wait between first party titles and third parties were not filling
⏹️ ▶️ John the gap and that’s you know if Nintendo didn’t have to spend some of its resources making 3DS games and
⏹️ ▶️ John some of its resources making Wii U games instead they had teams just making games for their
⏹️ ▶️ John one and only platform that happens to be portable as well as television connected won’t that solve that problem but on
⏹️ ▶️ John the other hand I you know I haven’t seen any official announcement that they’re gonna stop selling the 2DS and 3DS
⏹️ ▶️ John and those Those are still lower powered devices that are going to get way better battery life in this thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John As far as I’ve been able to determine, and I admit that I have not been following this closely, I’m sure we’ll get follow up about it, I think they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going to sell the Switch and continue to sell the 3DS. At least for some period of time. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t see that they’re going to get the big win where it’s like concentrate everything on just this one console. In theory they could.
⏹️ ▶️ John In theory they could say, this is it. From now on it’s Nintendo Switch and all other console lines will fade
⏹️ ▶️ John out and we will put all our wood behind this one arrow. But you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t I’m not sure that’s advisable at this point. And you know, what if this switch is
⏹️ ▶️ John a dud and you are fading out on the 3DS, then what have you
⏹️ ▶️ John even got left? So I don’t think that’s going to happen. I haven’t read about it happening. And if it is, someone will send
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, maybe maybe this is the hedge, right? Like maybe, maybe the switch is maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right now they plan to launch the switch, keep 3DS around as kind of like a fallback
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plan, and then if the Switch does well, then you basically replace the 3DS. Then you discontinue
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 3DS and move everybody over to the Switch. To me, if you look at what Nintendo is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good at, where they succeed, and if you look at what holes exist in the marketplace today,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think you’re right. It is worth questioning. Does a hole exist for a portable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco system that isn’t a tablet, that also is not a 3DS, and also is not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like an Xbox or PS4? And I think the answer there is maybe because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the tablet gaming has basically shown that a whole lot of people want something approximately
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that size to play games on either for themselves or for their kids and actual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like computing tablets of what we think of today basically iPads and occasionally cheap Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Android tablets that somehow cost less than a cable from Apple they used to be really good for gaming, well the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Amazon ones kind of never were, but the Apple ones used to be good for gaming until App Store economics
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of ruined iOS games on a pretty grand scale. And it’s to the point now where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is very, very hard to find games that I want my kid to play on iOS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that aren’t full of ads or in-app purchase garbage. And I’m willing to pay, but it doesn’t matter because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not even an option anymore. So basically, I can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see a potential market here where this is the system that you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy either for yourself or for your kids if you slash they want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a really good portable gaming experience because console games, that’s kind of like desktop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computers. That’s like the high end of the market. You’re going to have the real enthusiasts going to like the big TV
⏹️ ▶️ Marco connected consoles and that’s fine. But I think almost everyone else just wants a handheld thing and I think tablets have proven
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. The 3DS, obviously, as far as I know, the great success that line has had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also helps to prove this. But basically, people want handheld gaming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now, for the most part. Most people want that. But it’s really hard to get good quality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco games on the App Store and on the Play Store and whatever Amazon’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco garbage store is named. And so, the way console markets are set up, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way Nintendo would be set up for this, you could actually have good games because you could actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco charge like 40, 50 bucks for them and it wouldn’t be a market where when you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco release a game two weeks later, a billion people have cloned your game and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stealing all your sales for free because that isn’t even how console licensing works. Like people can’t even do things that quickly and you can’t get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to market that quickly. And like, so the way consoles are set up is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more amenable, I guess, or more facilitating of higher quality games.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they don’t have to rely on gambling mechanics, they don’t have to rely on tricks and psychology
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get you to pay for in-app purchases over and over again. It isn’t that kind of game. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a much higher quality experience. And so, if people want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good games in handheld systems, Nintendo, I think, has a pretty good shot with this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And ultimately, I think people do want that. And I think the tablet world and the mobile world
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have largely failed that in recent years as the economics have gotten so brutal that everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is forced to make really crappy games for the most part.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t really see how this could ever really work. And the reason is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that, so we talk a lot, if not the three of us, then our industry
⏹️ ▶️ Casey talks a lot about how the PC, as we think of it, is going away. Not just a Windows machine,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey any sort of computer that sits on a desktop is going away. The three of us don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that to happen and it probably won’t ever truly happen. But for an average
⏹️ ▶️ Casey consumer, the desktop is going away. And even the laptop, I mean, Aaron has a Mac book air that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yes, has had water spilled on it, but he’s running right now and she barely uses it compared to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey her phone and that’s just one data point. But I think that’s one of many that are similar. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if we treat the traditional consoles of like the PlayStations and the Xboxes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the world as you know The the PCs or perhaps even like the
⏹️ ▶️ John PC is the PC of gaming, you know Like you keep mentioning the markers of the same thing Oh the high end of gaming is
⏹️ ▶️ John consoles all the PC gamers to just rolling their eyes. But anyway continue.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John No, that’s a fair point That’s a fair
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well that I’m not even gonna go there but let’s just take that as an aside
⏹️ ▶️ Casey side, because it’s going to ruin my whole point here. The point I’m driving at is, you know, the,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the super hardcore will perhaps have a PC game that the reasonably hardcore will have like an Xbox
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or PlayStation. Everyone else will probably have their phones and their tablets, probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey their phones. I don’t feel like I understand that. Yes, this is unique and it’s a different
⏹️ ▶️ Casey spot than either a phone or a PC or a traditional console,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but there’s no freaking way that this is going to work. I mean, how well is the surface book really working?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think it’s working that well. And I feel like the switch is like the surface book or the surface in general of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the video gaming industry. And, and I will give you guys a chance for a few that, but another thing I wanted to ask,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess, John, more than anyone, or maybe Marco, since this used to be your bag, um, what, how do we feel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sega has done since they abandoned hardware and has, and are now
⏹️ ▶️ John the cautionary tale that everyone says, no Nintendo don’t do that because just look at Sega. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t you know Sega did not have the kind of IP and talent that Nintendo has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Say Sega had one good successful system. That was well-timed and well planned in the market.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was the Genesis
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Every other Sega hardware release had some kind of massive flaw whether
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was bad market timing a weird architecture Too much complexity too expensive like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco literally every other Sega platform, they all, yes, even your beloved Dreamcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people, that was bad market timing. Everything that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sega, every piece of hardware Sega ever released was badly timed or had some other major
⏹️ ▶️ Marco flaw that held it back from succeeding, except the Genesis. That was the only time it ever worked.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I don’t consider Sega a great example because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s almost like they just kind of lucked out with the Genesis and that kind of fueled them the rest of way but everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else they did was like hamfisted and wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah I see I see what you’re pointing at. If you ditch hardware what makes you think you’re not going to end up like the next
⏹️ ▶️ John Sega? Because regardless of how good their hardware was eventually they stopped making it because like
⏹️ ▶️ John basically consolidation and they were the weakest player and you know so on and so forth when they became software only
⏹️ ▶️ John because Sega made good games you know Dreamcast had really good games which is one of the reasons people always say that it was a good console
⏹️ ▶️ John even though it totally wasn’t because the controller was gross but they’ve made lots of good games and even
⏹️ ▶️ John you know for super monkey ball even for nintendo’s consoles like it’s not like they they lost the ability
⏹️ ▶️ John to make good software um it’s just that they they’re a pale shadow of what they want to when they
⏹️ ▶️ John were one of the platforms it was like you’re in there you’re in the race you’re you know even if you’re in third place or whatever you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re in the mix right and when you’re just a software maker you live and die based on your software things and it becomes more like a hit driven
⏹️ ▶️ John business and they just didn’t have the solid
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of It’s like, you know, it’s like the Star Wars franchise. Like it would, it takes,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it would take a lot to screw that up. You can make three, just hypothetically, three excretable movies
⏹️ ▶️ John and still the Star Wars brand is very strong and is worth a lot of money, right? Sega
⏹️ ▶️ John and Nintendo has, has Mario, has Zelda, has Metroid, has so many franchises, so many franchises
⏹️ ▶️ John that have enough great games and enough goodwill and enough consistency in the games. Even though it’s a stinker every
⏹️ ▶️ John once in a while, like Other M, Metroid, which really was outsourced to, who was it, Team Ninja? Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John so many franchises to lean on that if they just cranked on those
⏹️ ▶️ John as a software only vendor, they could last for a long time just making the next good
⏹️ ▶️ John 3D Mario game, the next Zelda game, the next Metroid game, the next Pokemon game, the next
⏹️ ▶️ John Smash Brothers game. Like, they have just so much intellectual property whereas Sega, well, they
⏹️ ▶️ John tried making the next Sonic game for a long, long time and just their average went way way down and there are other
⏹️ ▶️ John things you know you’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John making garbage that wasn’t really a game I know well you got you got Shenmue you got you know all the
⏹️ ▶️ John the virtuous you know you all they have lots of franchises do but none of them I played
⏹️ ▶️ John ball John Sonic spin well they may Metroid pinball too you know so there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a lot of free anyway I feel like Nintendo has a stronger stable and they have more consistency
⏹️ ▶️ John making those games now giving up hardware is a big deal though because that means you’re never going to have
⏹️ ▶️ John the ability to do a hardware software synergy on the level of the Wii
⏹️ ▶️ John or and Wii Sports or Nintendo 64 and Mario 64 like all those things that you could
⏹️ ▶️ John do or I would argue the awesome Gamecube controller and all the games that they work with that like
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, you won’t be able to do that if you’re not a hardware maker so it’s a big sacrifice, but I think the reason Nintendo
⏹️ ▶️ John won’t be another Sega is is they’re better at making games and they have more
⏹️ ▶️ John bankable properties that even if they mess up a few of them the property in the same way that Star Wars is still bankable
⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of stinker Mario games are not going to make it so that you know that
⏹️ ▶️ John a Nintendo loses the ability to make that and be they’re not gonna sell so poorly the people will stop buying Mario games like because
⏹️ ▶️ John there have been stinker Mario games like are ones that people like less than loved ones and same thing with Metroid and all the other
⏹️ ▶️ John franchises and arguably even Zelda not stinker but like less less beloved let’s say
⏹️ ▶️ John and yet still people clamor for the next one because the average is high enough
⏹️ ▶️ John now the thing that Marco is getting with switch in the app store I was thinking when he was talking about that is that
⏹️ ▶️ John console games are more apple like in the old
⏹️ ▶️ John all senses of the world than the app store because the app store like you said is filled with crap and junk and scams
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco things are locked
⏹️ ▶️ John down in 40 bucks and things here and things that are you know things that are not
⏹️ ▶️ John like they’re not nice like normally the whole thing was apples like you pay more money for a nicer experience
⏹️ ▶️ John and the app store is the opposite of that you pay less money for a worse experience and consoles games are like you pay more money 60
⏹️ ▶️ John bucks for a nicer experience it’s not festing with ads and in-app purchases and you know I mean
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s creeping into the console world with downloadable content as they call it and micro transactions
⏹️ ▶️ John and stuff like that, but in general, if you had to compare them, which one of these is more like the Apple experience, it’s the one where
⏹️ ▶️ John you pay more for, like you said, the proprietary, you know, thing, but that you
⏹️ ▶️ John get a nicer experience. But the Switch, here’s the problem the Switch has in terms of trying to
⏹️ ▶️ John tread that middle ground. First of all, even though this is totally not finished hardware,
⏹️ ▶️ John the Switch is almost certain to be the Atari Lynx of portable gaming systems, in that that battery cannot last a long
⏹️ ▶️ John time as compared to a 3DS because come on that’s a big screen it is way more powerful
⏹️ ▶️ John power hungry processor in there this thing is not going to last as long as as a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean I don’t know how long the 3DS lasts but like there it looks like it’s basically like a souped up tablet right so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you look at like what can a what can an iPad get if especially if you made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it a little bit thicker
⏹️ ▶️ John it is thicker but it’s playing games constantly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah but I I think it wouldn’t surprise me a battery life was better than you expect.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, anyway, it’s got the battery life problem. But the more serious thing is, the switch is
⏹️ ▶️ John like if you’re looking for something in between the two, this is not the problem of the switch. This
⏹️ ▶️ John is the advantage of the switch people like me, the games that are available on the switch are,
⏹️ ▶️ John for the most part, going to be full fledged console games. The only difference being
⏹️ ▶️ John is that you can’t do anything that couldn’t be run in last generation hardware. So they keep showing Zelda on the switch.
⏹️ ▶️ John Zelda is not a casual gamer game. It is a big, sprawling, complicated game
⏹️ ▶️ John that probably it would help if you have played other Zelda games in the past. The people who are waiting for that game, the
⏹️ ▶️ John millions of people who are gonna pay for it, know what they’re getting. And what they’re getting is more complicated than almost
⏹️ ▶️ John any iOS game that ever been made. And I know there are Zelda clones for iOS, but in general, tablet games
⏹️ ▶️ John do not have the wherewithal or budgets or inclination to be
⏹️ ▶️ John that complicated, if only because you can’t sell them for 60 bucks, right? Almost every game on the Switch,
⏹️ ▶️ John even the simpler ones, are more complicated because they can be. Like, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John more like console games than they are like phone or tablet games. So you’ve got this thing that looks like, you know, saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, this is a better version of tablet gaming. But I think there will be very few games
⏹️ ▶️ John that are, like, you’re not gonna see cut the rope for the Switch for 60 bucks. Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ll see cut the rope for the Switch, like literally cut the rope for the Switch, from their little downloadable
⏹️ ▶️ John store, which by the way, Nintendo was terrible at selling things electronically through the downloadable stores.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe you’ll see that. But I don’t think that that type of thing is going to support this.
⏹️ ▶️ John This thing is going to play essentially console games. And one of its selling points is, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John quote unquote, full fledged console games on the go. And that is totally aimed
⏹️ ▶️ John at the market of people who might buy a console, but you know, this will
⏹️ ▶️ John be cheaper than them, right. And you know, but are intrigued by this. And I don’t think it’s going to pull people from
⏹️ ▶️ John the tablet and phone gaming world because they just want desert golfing, or cut the rope or Angry Birds or
⏹️ ▶️ John something that is way simpler or Flappy Birds or crying out loud. Something is way simpler than
⏹️ ▶️ John like, if someone gets intended to switch thinking it’s like, you know, the thing and they see like Zelda advertised and they get Zelda,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re going to be in so far over their head, they’re gonna be like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, I just I don’t understand
⏹️ ▶️ John even how to make forward progress in this game. And how it’s just, that is too much for them. That is because
⏹️ ▶️ John that is going to be, that’s the experience the Switch is providing. And that’s its appeal
⏹️ ▶️ John to all the customers. So I still think they’re shopping amongst the people who, maybe you already have an Xbox, and maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John you already have a PlayStation 4, but you’re looking for a second console. Nintendo
⏹️ ▶️ John has been staking out the second console market for three generations now. Okay, you’ve got your real console, but wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John you like something fun and quirky and has the ability to play the first party properties that you come to know and love? And in general,
⏹️ ▶️ John Mario Kart is just as fun as you imagined it has always been. And if you’re into Zelda, we have one of those too. And Mario games
⏹️ ▶️ John are, you know, the plain old Mario platformers are fun. Like, that’s what I think they’re staking out with
⏹️ ▶️ John this. And the new appeal is, you’ve got one console, but you can’t pick that one up and bring it with you. So if you’re a console
⏹️ ▶️ John gamer, buy this one, and now you can play console games on the go, and by the way, get a bunch of unique properties. I have
⏹️ ▶️ John a hard time seeing them pulling people from the app store, even though, as Marco said, the
⏹️ ▶️ John experience is so much better than the app store games, where it’s just filled with scams and traps and in-app purchases and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t see how this is going to change Nintendo’s fate in any way, shape or form. And, and I mean, the, the, what was it? The
⏹️ ▶️ Casey PlayStation Vita, whatever that portable one was that I’ve seen like three of them in my life. They made like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a phone, if memory serves that had like a quasi PlayStation branding that, that played
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like these video games, I just, I don’t know. I admire it. I definitely think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clever and I think it’s very Nintendo and I admire it, but I I don’t see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how this is going to be a blockbuster because it serves a non-existent market. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to serve the hardcore gamers. It’s not going to serve the people who have a pretty darn
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fine video gaming platform in their pocket. Do they? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you don’t think that an iOS device? I always
⏹️ ▶️ John say that. Like the games are cruddy or infilled with in-app purchases and they’re not as sophisticated.
⏹️ ▶️ John One of the things you can do with this type of thing is bring people over who, like say say someone who grew up playing
⏹️ ▶️ John phone games and never really considered themselves a gamer but buys this thing on a locker because it’s popular
⏹️ ▶️ John or has some traction in the market and finds that they had never been presented
⏹️ ▶️ John with a more sophisticated game like a Zelda or a full-fledged Mario and it turns out they actually kind of like that
⏹️ ▶️ John type of game. This is a smoother slope into it because it will be cheaper than the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John the Pro versions, right? And it does have a knowledge factor and they can carry it around with them and everything. So there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John some hope that you can get new people on board with this. Like that, being,
⏹️ ▶️ John or being a second console. You’ve got one of the other consoles, this one is cheaper and
⏹️ ▶️ John interesting in a way that those aren’t, and you kind of like Nintendo games anyway because you remember playing them on your SNES
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever the hell, and you just decide to get it. Like, you mentioned this not changing Nintendo’s fate.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, through the Wii, Wii U, and this thing, Nintendo has
⏹️ ▶️ John had its ups and downs. is up and the Wii U is down, but it’s not going out of business. They have a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of money. They’ve been on the upswing since even mentioning that they’re going to field some of their properties on iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John because people assume they’re going to sell a billion copies of that and they probably will just based on the strength of the
⏹️ ▶️ John IP. But the strength of that IP, the reason they’re going to sell a billion copies of Mario Run or whatever the hell
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s called for iOS, is because people love and recognize Mario, right? And people
⏹️ ▶️ John love and recognize Mario because he was a star of a long running series of games all which were really,
⏹️ ▶️ John really good and fun. And that means they, to sustain that, you
⏹️ ▶️ John have to continue to make really, really good, fun things with those properties, otherwise they stop being valuable.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the Switch is the continuation of that. Does it mean that it’s going to reverse Nintendo’s fortunes? Like, what if they just
⏹️ ▶️ John continue along the same as they’ve been for the entire life of the Wii U? There’s been ups, there’s been downs,
⏹️ ▶️ John profits been up, profits been down, the company’s not going out of business, but it’s also not growing like gangbusters. Is that
⏹️ ▶️ John the end of the world? Is that enough to sustain the It is probably because the ups and downs
⏹️ ▶️ John even out over the long haul and you continued being the Nintendo that you are It’s just that
⏹️ ▶️ John nobody likes that. No one wants to see Nintendo Limp along its subsistence levels.
⏹️ ▶️ John They want to see it Occasionally be more successful than that. They want to see where is the next
⏹️ ▶️ John Wii coming from? Where is the next? Platform or game that you know and and arguably
⏹️ ▶️ John Pokemon go was a glimpse of them climbing back up But I don’t think the switch is going to be a similar type
⏹️ ▶️ John of hit I mean, maybe I’m wrong. We’ll see but if it just merely sustains them like Casey said
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like I don’t see this the Nintendo switch changing their fortunes if their fortunes remain the same
⏹️ ▶️ John Then they’re basically still okay And we get to you know We hit the way out a generation Play some really fun
⏹️ ▶️ John games and see if they have a different idea the next time and that’s one of the great things about Nintendo
⏹️ ▶️ John People are excited about the PlayStation 5 and Xbox whatever the hell they’re gonna stupid name. They’re gonna give to it
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s going to be the generation after this assuming they don’t continue to just rev this generation when back to compatible
⏹️ ▶️ John more powerful upgrades But with Nintendo you never know what the hell They’re going to do like they are
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re more of a wild card the Wii and the Wii U and the switch are way weirder
⏹️ ▶️ John Than the Xbox Xbox 360 Xbox one ps2 ps3 ps4 Both in name and
⏹️ ▶️ John and in form and in the games that are available on it Nintendo is obviously the most interesting
⏹️ ▶️ John player in this field and so I would never want to see them go away and if if what it takes is you know this is
⏹️ ▶️ John another failed experiment But nevertheless the company stays afloat based
⏹️ ▶️ John on you know a partnership with Universal Studios and selling a billion iOS people a fairly
⏹️ ▶️ John cruddy Infinite rudder starring your favorite plumber. I’m fine with that
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause
⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause
⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental And you can find the
⏹️ ▶️ John show notes at atp.fm And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ 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, tech podcasts so long.
Post-show: Marco’s YouTube career
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So breaking news Actually, there’s two pieces of breaking news one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apparently Pebble has been bought by Fitbit, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey interesting. I guess bought
⏹️ ▶️ John scraped off the sidewalk.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah That’s screams
⏹️ ▶️ Marco aqua higher like they even said in the tweet that the pebble brand will not continue
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that’s unsetting it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah I think it has long since fallen off the edge of the earth and is well below the horizon now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. But other breaking news that happened shortly before we started recording, so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shortly before that I didn’t get a chance to take a look at it, Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has started vlogging.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco That’s not what I know! That’s not a vlog!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m kidding, I’m kidding, I’m kidding.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Bats aren’t bugs!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my goodness. But you did post something to YouTube.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I posted something to YouTube, that’s right. My YouTube account has existed for something like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco six years or something or longer even and I’ve posted something like six videos to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it in that time none of which were anything substantial really.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got more videos than that on my channel. Probably yeah yeah so I decided to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do a video review of the new MacBook Pro as kind of my testing the waters
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of being a YouTube person. There are a number of reasons for this. YouTube
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a a massive place where everyone lives. It is kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unwise business to ignore such a massive place. I can say the same thing about Facebook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I don’t have a presence there either and I can say the same thing about Snapchat and I don’t have a presence there either but I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feel like I had to get into one of these things. Like you can’t ignore all of them. You have to be you have to have a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco presence in something. You don’t have to you don’t have to do all of them just pick at least one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it was easier for me to turn my office into a video studio than to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco log into Facebook or figure out what Snapchat is. So that’s the one I chose. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I decided to start now in particular because I wanted to review the new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook Pro and I had more thoughts, you know, I talked briefly about it last week,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I had more thoughts about it than would fit or make sense in this podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s kind of like there are certain things that I wanted to actually show in video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or picture form. There are certain like wordings that I wanted to actually write in advance so I wouldn’t mess them up and so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d express myself properly in how I wanted to explain myself. And there were certain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it just it would have felt weird to just monologue here for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 15, 20 minutes like about even though I do that sometimes accidentally, but I try not to do here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because that’s not really what a podcast is and that that’s kind of that’s not really our format here. So it would kind of be weird
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I was sitting here just doing all the talking with this big script I was reading for 20 minutes about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the MacBook Pro. Basically I had some more things to say about it. I wanted to say them somewhere else.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It made sense to have some kind of visual component, so my choices were either I could make a video or I could make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a blog post. And I don’t feel great about the future of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco blog posts right now, and YouTube is the kind of thing that I’ve wanted to get into for quite some time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So much of my success in business depends on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a steady trickle in of new audience growth. And I feel like I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco done well with blogging in the past, but not really so much currently. I’ve done
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well with podcasting and I’ve done well with app things, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wasn’t expanding anywhere. I wasn’t getting new people in from anywhere, really.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And a lot of the things I was doing, like blogging, were kind of like contracting. And podcasting is growing, but very, very slowly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I feel like it will help all of my other things if I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some place where I can reach a new audience, where I can get new people in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the, you know, Marco Folio or whatever. God,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco You’re going to hurry up and get
⏹️ ▶️ John a million subscribers so we can release our podcast on YouTube with a bunch of stupid images in front of it and
⏹️ ▶️ John get millions of views. So hurry up and build that channel.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have thought about ways to do that, actually. It’s probably not going to happen anytime soon, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have actually thought about doing an ATP YouTube channel. I mean, it’s some work, but it’s not a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco massive amount of work. But it’s pointless
⏹️ ▶️ John built your YouTube audience of a million people, so get on that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. So basically, I wanted to have some participation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this massive thing that I know very little about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so far. I feel like because of the businesses I’m in, it’s almost irresponsible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not to know about it. It is, again, I ignore Facebook. I ignore a lot of things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I shouldn’t ignore. You should ignore Facebook. Yeah, probably. I think also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this also builds on skills I already have. I already had almost all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the equipment required to make videos. And
⏹️ ▶️ John equipment you don’t have, you would love to buy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bought a couple like LED lights for like 40 bucks at like just like a little battery powered ones like so I got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like these two lights and then that that was basically all I needed like I already had everything else
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you know I already know some things about shooting video not much but I know some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things about it I know a decent amount more about photography and there’s a lot of overlap and I know about sound recording
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s part of video and so like I already had a lot of the skills and tool set necessary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and kind of the vocabulary necessary to do this. It was way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco easier to do this than it would have been to figure out Facebook or to spend any time on there and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just want to escape. But anyway, I really don’t like Facebook.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I decided to do this and I think, you know, I don’t know how much I’m going to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, But I think if I’m going to invest my time creating reviews
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of products, I think YouTube is the better place for that now than my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco blog. It’s not necessarily less work. It’s actually somewhat
⏹️ ▶️ Marco similar. YouTube might actually… It’s less in certain ways. Like, you can kind of riff somewhat
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the script part of it, and so you can save some time on the writing. Not a lot, but some.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And shooting video you can kind of show a few quick things like with the product in your hand that’s faster than shooting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a whole bunch of different like perfect photos and editing the photos afterwards would be perfect and getting all the dust specks off the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco objects and everything like there are some things that are faster than doing a blog post. Overall it’s going to be a similar amount of work though
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think and it might even be take longer who knows but ultimately I think it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the best move for my career right now to expand into YouTube
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and also for the type for the format of things I do I realize like I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even read people’s long blog articles anymore about almost anything. If I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looking for product reviews, I hardly ever read a long-form review. I almost always just look at YouTube for a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quick video review. If there’s a big review for some new product, like on The Verge or something,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it has a video at the top, I will almost always just watch the video and maybe skim the article at best.
⏹️ ▶️ John on the topic though, because you still read a big giant thing on DPReview about the new camera, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it? Uh, yes, but I buy a new camera like every eight years. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that’s just saying, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John just saying it really depends on the topic. If you only have a casual interest, you want the video. But if you really want to know if
⏹️ ▶️ John you, if you want to find out if the five D mark for like, is it worth buying? You’re going to read
⏹️ ▶️ John the whole DP review thing and seven other giant reviews about it to find out is this, you know, is it worth buying
⏹️ ▶️ John in a way that the mark three wasn’t or whatever?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. So anyway, for the most part though, I think I and I think the numbers prove
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many other people choose to get a lot of this information now on video rather than reading blog posts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and there’s lots of things about this that are that are obvious downsides to me you know videos
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are less skimmable they are locked to this proprietary platform for the most part I mean yes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can put a video wherever you want but nobody will see it if it is on YouTube or Facebook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but anyway I’m sure if I get good on a Facebook or just freeboot my videos so it won’t even matter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will automatically be on Facebook. Uh, you know, so, again, I don’t have like incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco concrete plans yet. I’m gonna basically feel around, do some experimentation, and see what I want to be doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here. So far, it’s gone surprisingly well. This video took a few days
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worth of note-taking about what I wanted to say, a day of figuring out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the handful of things I had to buy to make this happen well, and then I shot,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco edited, and posted that video entirely today. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel like if I get good enough, it is certainly possible. Obviously, everyone who’s ever produced video knows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is very possible for video production to basically eat any amount of time and money that it’s given.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can go completely off the deep end and have incredible production values. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people do, and that’s great. I know that as a mostly one-person team
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here, I’m not going to have the time or resources or patience to do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s the kind of thing that tends to require a lot more people and time than what I can give to this project. So instead,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my goal is gonna basically try to be like finding the right balance of what I should do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and what I don’t really have to do to make decent videos about certain things sometimes that people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will enjoy. And I don’t even care that much about money about the videos yet, it’s more about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco audience building. I don’t really intend probably ever to run YouTube’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco terrible ads. You know, I might eventually do like at the end where they say this episode is sponsored by Hover
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever, like I might do something like that eventually. But in the early stages at least, my primary goal here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is reaching new people. And so we’ll see how this goes. It’s all about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco brand. Can I tell you everything you did wrong now? Yeah, please do. There’s lots, and look,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of the things I did wrong, I know I did wrong, but it was like, well, I could fix this, but it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would require an entire reshoot of this whole segment, which would require resetting up all this stuff, and it’s like, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just wanna get this done. Because again, I don’t want this to be something that blows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a huge hole in my schedule every time I wanna say something about a MacBook Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Before you go through the list of grievances, do you wanna, Marco, quickly run
⏹️ ▶️ Casey through the equipment, both hardware and software, that you used to do this, because you know you’re gonna get asked, so you might
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as well just quickly list it if you can.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, sure, the camera I’m using doesn’t matter, and the software I’m using is Final Cut Pro, which barely matters,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I was using some cheapo Neewer, Neewer, Neewer, however that brand is pronounced,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using their cheapo LED light boxes, and yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s fine. And what mic? For the mic, my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sound setup is in Flux. I used the Rode Wireless Lavalier mic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it’s one of the pair that I bought when Tiffany and I snuck into Starbucks to do Top Four, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re discreet. It was, it’s not, I didn’t sound very good. I did try, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a little Sennheiser shotgun mic that I tried mounting on top of the camera and using that instead,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but with microphones generally, being close to your mouth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is way, way more important than having like a really good microphone that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco five feet away. You know, like if you can get any microphone to your mouth, that is generally a better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco idea than a better mic that’s far. And so the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nicer shotgun mic mounted on the camera still sounded like garbage and the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lavalier sounded substantially better. It didn’t sound good, but I think it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might sound good enough. So yeah, we’ll see. In the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco future I definitely intend to do a little bit more of the B-roll shots. I had very little B-roll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because actually I had a bit of a hardware failure on the MacBook halfway through
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my B-roll shooting, which I had to look into that tomorrow. But yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so there’s lots of things I would do differently, but I just didn’t want to spend the time to have a whole other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco day or half day of reshoots and different things. So John, list them all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco List all the problems. All
⏹️ ▶️ John right. So, keep in mind that I have made zero YouTube videos of this kind.
⏹️ ▶️ John All my YouTube videos are Destiny videos, which are awesome, but not the same thing. So this is coming
⏹️ ▶️ John entirely from a position of someone who doesn’t actually know what it takes to make one of these things. But I have watched
⏹️ ▶️ John a fair number of these videos, and just based on watching them, this is my advice, and you should totally talk to
⏹️ ▶️ John all your YouTuber friends to get the real advice. But this is the casual stuff. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John you already mentioned if you’re going to do a video review of this kind, you need
⏹️ ▶️ John to do the things that you can only do in a video review, which is pretty much every time you’re talking about
⏹️ ▶️ John anything, show it to me every single time. Not that I don’t want to look at your face, but, and by the way, that’s the other
⏹️ ▶️ John thing you’ve done wrong. Be much younger and much more attractive. Can you work on that? Anyway, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John nothing you can do about it, unfortunately, but seriously, that is like a big, big factor. So if there’s any way you could age
⏹️ ▶️ John backwards and become more attractive, that would be awesome. Anyway, show like,
⏹️ ▶️ John not that I don’t want to see you talking. But if you’re talking about anything, you have to show it like that’s what you can do
⏹️ ▶️ John in video. If you watch another video, like watching MKBHD or any other thing, 90% of
⏹️ ▶️ John the time, you’re hearing the person’s voice but not seeing them speak because they’re you’re hearing
⏹️ ▶️ John them talk while their hands manipulate the thing while they zoom in. So and it’s a pain because you got to do
⏹️ ▶️ John all these stupid setups and have all the different angles and get the figure out a way to get the camera on it and without
⏹️ ▶️ John breaking your trackpad and like and get all those shots but that’s what it is that’s what it’s all
⏹️ ▶️ John about um and also lengthwise i know you did some script
⏹️ ▶️ John in there but like i think you could have cut this thing in half by yeah saying what you wanted to say in one
⏹️ ▶️ John concise way in like one or two sentences without it felt more like a podcast
⏹️ ▶️ John where you were talking around the thing because you know you’re being extemporaneous and just coming out like condense
⏹️ ▶️ John you could’ve got all that same info out in half the amount of time with way more close up shots
⏹️ ▶️ John and way less of you sitting in front of your cute sleeping dog. Don’t do your videos with a window behind
⏹️ ▶️ John you. Backlighting is a challenging situation. I know you want to show off that you have a cool camera, but it seems like a bad deal. Don’t wear
⏹️ ▶️ John entirely black because you disappear into a giant black hole. Like, I know that’s your outfit, but you gotta come up with something that reads
⏹️ ▶️ John well. Just like, you know, don’t wear stripes and polka dots and other things that you get like the crazy pattern thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John It does hide the mic well, though. Yeah. occasionally.
⏹️ ▶️ John He’s cute but if he sleeps the whole time it’s boring so it’s fun to see him running around and doing stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John And yeah that’s basically it. Like every time you were there trying to show me something on a laptop that you were holding
⏹️ ▶️ John in your hand seven feet from the camera it’s like not working. So like those those are the main points way more close up
⏹️ ▶️ John shots of everything fewer shots of you talking. Yeah. Different outfits
⏹️ ▶️ John and condensed definitely could have been half length. I think you could do the the same video over again, cut the
⏹️ ▶️ John length in half and put like five times as much close up shots of products in it
⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s what you’re going for.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I completely agree. Like, that’s all very good feedback, thank you. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco totally agree that I could, like as I was editing it I’m like, you know, should I spend another like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hour to just re-record this whole thing and make it tighter and redo all the segments that I didn’t quite do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exactly right and again, it’s a matter of, What I have to find is the balance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco between amount of time I have to put into these things versus what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is it worth doing. Because-
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re falling into my trap, where you want to get every single point out. That’s what podcasts are for. Or that’s what like 100 page
⏹️ ▶️ John show is intended for. I know you have all these points. Like I know they’re there, but when I watch a video
⏹️ ▶️ John review, the sense I get is very often, you’ve said the simplest
⏹️ ▶️ John and highest level thing that you can say about this without going into any detail. And you have to do that to get
⏹️ ▶️ John out of the video in a reasonable amount of time, right? Like they’ll have one sentence about the fact
⏹️ ▶️ John that there are no ports except for a thunderbolt on it one sentence You’re like really you’re gonna have one sentence on this major
⏹️ ▶️ John thing I need to talk for 10 minutes about just that Doesn’t have any other other kinds of ports on it. You don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t do that. You don’t have time Like that’s the format again. You can make your own format you don’t have to do it like everybody else
⏹️ ▶️ John does but when I saw that video, it seems like if you’re going for a a Verge style
⏹️ ▶️ John or MKBHD style or any of those other styles, if you’re going for that type of thing and you want it to be small and punchy,
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t get to say a lot about the fact that there are only four Thunderbolt ports and there’s no magsafe and
⏹️ ▶️ John one of your things could be taken by a power port and all the little nuance points you have to make, you just can’t make them, because
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s no time. You’ve got to have one sentence that you should probably write beforehand that you’re going to read while showing
⏹️ ▶️ John close-up footage of the ports that were shot separately. And that’s that’s that that’s that format if you want to go
⏹️ ▶️ John with the more The rambly one or like the the more complicated in-depth one you
⏹️ ▶️ John can do that too But then the only videos I’ve seen that have been successful of that are way more structured where like
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah They are 15 minutes long But there’s a structure to them and they go into detail and there’s segments
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s things to hang your hat on basically the visual version of of like h2 h3 You know
⏹️ ▶️ John like the visual version of indenting on a table of contents the beginning of my OS 10 phase you need It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John as if I wrote an OS X review, but it was just paragraph after paragraph of text with no section headings and no hierarchy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What you’re saying is correct if I want to be like one of these popular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco vloggers and popular tech YouTubers. I’m not sure that’s what I want. I’m not sure that I even can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do that. I think what I need to find is the balance between who I am
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and what is popular on YouTube. I just try to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MKBHD, I’m going to fail because I’m not MKBHD. Like if I try to be if I try to make a verge video,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m going to fail because I’m not spending as much time and resources on it as the verges.
⏹️ ▶️ John But you want the advantages that they have. You said you don’t want it. You don’t want to spend you don’t want it to be that long,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? You want it to be more compact, you want it to be like, somewhat pre written, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And you want it to presumably take advantage of the things that are in video. And also, you want
⏹️ ▶️ John to build an audience and The things that have been proven to build an audience are those type. It
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t mean you have to be that style. You can pick your own style. And in fact, you could be the entire opposite style where you make seven hour videos
⏹️ ▶️ John that are going to incredible depth. I just don’t think the audience is that big for that. You can do whatever you want, but it seems
⏹️ ▶️ John like you’re actually very close to those types of videos now with this video that you made
⏹️ ▶️ John and the parts where you diverge. If you were to bring them closer, it would
⏹️ ▶️ John also be closer to your desires for this video, which is to do something that you can’t do in a podcast
⏹️ ▶️ John in a blog, you know, to take less time to be more concise, the type of video that you would watch
⏹️ ▶️ John instead of reading the big long verge article. You haven’t quite made that, but you’re close.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Yeah. Ultimately, I think you’re right. Again, it’s a matter of finding my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco natural fit on this continuum somewhere. And I obviously I don’t I didn’t expect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to find it with my very first video that I’ve ever made in this kind of capacity or style at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I think I think I it’ll take me a while to find that that balance.
⏹️ ▶️ John You should have tipped to your wardrobe. She would love it. She should make you clothes for if
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a link out to fit you. Wow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m just spitballing here. If I can figure out the microphone thing, then I’ll put on whatever shirt I want.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, right now it’s it’s convenient to hide my little crappy black lavalier.
⏹️ ▶️ John You could totally like that’s your look the black thing is your look I just think I don’t know what you have to do to make
⏹️ ▶️ John that work camera wise but it wasn’t and I think the backlight from the window is not helping it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like to make a black completely black outfit a black shirt with a black hoodie to make that read on camera
⏹️ ▶️ John some video person will tell you what you have to do but I don’t but you know whatever it is needs to be something.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I also think you are grossly overestimating how important it is to hide your mic I really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, if I wanted to not have the mic, I would just bring a podcasting mic over from the boom arm and actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey No, no, no, no, no, no.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s different. That’s different. I think having something that’s occluding the view of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you is one thing. Being able to see a lavalier mic that we’ve seen on every television talk
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show for 30 years, that’s a totally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John different thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John But you’re not going to be on camera most of the time anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey time it’s going
⏹️ ▶️ John to be you talking over other footage that you shot. It’s true. really, I really like it’s not like it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John a question of you being like those other things is a question of what do people want to look at and like I said, you know, it would help if you were younger and
⏹️ ▶️ John more attractive, but in general, no one wants to see someone just sit there and talk, they want to show
⏹️ ▶️ John what in a program, you just show me the product like the whole freaking time, talk by all means talk to me, tell me
⏹️ ▶️ John about what you have to see. But just seeing you talk, like that should be
⏹️ ▶️ John the smallest proportion of the video. And so if during that time, we can see a little black mic on
⏹️ ▶️ John your thing, like Casey said, we’ve seen that on TV for years and it’s fine and the audio quality was fine like whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think you need to do anything to make the audio better and not really make the video but like you said you did it
⏹️ ▶️ John in 1080 instead of 4k like the video looks fine like your shirt didn’t read well and you know it is challenging
⏹️ ▶️ John with the backlighting but everything about it was fine it’s just because the MacBook was too far away from the camera
⏹️ ▶️ John so anytime you’re trying to show me anything it’s like well that I can’t see that so forget
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it I I think what I’d like to in the future is, again, a lot more B-roll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shots. So like a lot more of the close-ups and everything of the computer doing things that I’m talking about, things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I’m showing. Again, this was kind of rushed at the end because I was trying to get it all done today.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And again, I got to find that part of the balance between finding out what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of style of video I want to produce and what content it should be.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of that balance is also figured into the rest of my life because I’m also a podcaster and I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also a software developer and I’m also lazy and and so I have to I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to find I have to figure out the schedule of where does this project
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fit in my life how much time can I really devote to this and again these are all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things we have to figure out over time but overall I do agree like I think future videos will be like less
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of just me talking and more of showing the things that I’m talking about. That being said,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was surprised how many responses I got already so far
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with people pointing out, people who noticed that I made very few cuts in the video,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it’s mostly just me talking with only a few cuts here and there. A lot of people complimented that. A lot of people said,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is kind of a relief from the more highly produced videos that are cut in like every four seconds. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pro video usually makes tons of cuts. It’s like watching a movie trailer. Just cut, cut, cut,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cut. It’s just constant, right? And the more amateur you get, I think the less cuts you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tend to make. And a lot of people actually said they liked that. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, this is all gonna depend on what is my style? What are my goals here? What do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want to do? When I say audience growth, I’m not saying I’m gonna try to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do whatever it takes to get 10 million subscribers or whatever. That would be nice. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expect that to happen. I mean, I never even had that big of an audience on my blog at its peak, so I wouldn’t expect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that to happen on YouTube. But I want to find people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who are compatible with me. And so to some degree, I do have to kind of come on the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco terms of the medium and do it, you know, quote, correctly. But also to some degree, I don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to like totally change who I am for this medium. So like some of the comments also pointed out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how they were happy to see me talk about things that other people weren’t talking about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about this machine. And I think that’s kind of because I’m a rambling podcaster who wants to talk about in great detail
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I’m not going to cut out the big long section about the power brick. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John why you can do the long sequences without cuts is
⏹️ ▶️ John spilling out your thoughts in a long sequence. That’s true. Without cuts, essentially.
⏹️ ▶️ John Even in the podcast, like this podcast is edited, but it’s not as if you’re taking any of our soliloquies
⏹️ ▶️ John and Chopping it up into a thousand pieces and piecing it together. That’s not how it’s not how it works at all I mean some
⏹️ ▶️ John shows are like that, but the show is not So you’re used to doing that and whether
⏹️ ▶️ John The current YouTube stars are used to do that or not The fact is they don’t like they will you know Two sentences
⏹️ ▶️ John about this cut two sentences about this cut two sentences about and often those cuts are because they’re showing you the things
⏹️ ▶️ John But I think they didn’t even say those in sequence I think it’s a they are assembling they are creating their
⏹️ ▶️ John their thing in the editing room for the most part Which is yeah, you know a perfectly valid way to work But it is not the way
⏹️ ▶️ John this podcast or I think even even something like top four It’s not how that works as far as I’m able to tell
⏹️ ▶️ John as a listener So I think you’re coming at it from that perspective and that is a difference that will be