200: I Had a Dream About the Mac Pro
15 Dec 2016Our 200th-episode spectacular!
Episode Description:
- Our 200th-episode spectacular! 🎉
- Pre-show: PC 99 standard
- Holiday clip show:
- Follow up:
- AirPods are now for sale
- Casey's Aftershokz Trekz Titanium bone-conducting headphones
- Marco's discontinued Sennheiser PX 210 BT, succeeded by the MM 400-X
- Marco tried a Surface Studio
- Super Mario Run is online-only
- macOS 10.12.2 removes battery-time-remaining estimate
- Ending theme by Jonathan Mann
- Post-show Neutral:
- Grand Tour update
- Marco tries to use an internal combustion engine
Sponsored by:
- Betterment: Investing made better.
- Hover: The best way to buy and manage domain names. Use coupon code AIRPODS for 10% off your first purchase.
- Squarespace: Build it beautiful. Use code ATP for 10% off your first order.
Chapters
- PC 99
- 200th Episode Spectacular
- Follow-up
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- AirPods for sale
- Sponsor: Hover (code AIRPODS)
- Marco goes to Microsoft 🖼️
- Sponsor: Betterment
- Super Mario Run online-only
- Apple removes battery-time estimate
- Ending theme
- Post-show: Neutral
PC 99
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I think even today’s PCs, they can’t be that bad.
⏹️ ▶️ John Ethernet on a card. I remember the battle days when you’d get a USB card. You’d be like, oh, you’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John got USB. Yeah, but I only take up one of my PCI. I have six PCI slots, so it’s not a big deal.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, you would have a card for the fast. You’d have a USB 2.0 card with two USB 2.0 slots on it. And then on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your motherboard’s little riser thing, where all the other ports were. You’d have a 1.1 for your keyboard and mouse.
⏹️ ▶️ John then you’d have the slow ports. And then plus the PS2 port, right? Because that’s probably what your keyboard and mouse connective you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had a Dell yeah you have two ps2 ports and they’d be color-coded hopefully with the
⏹️ ▶️ John right the teal one for the mouse and the lime green one for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what was that standard called the standard that gave all the gave him all those ugly colors in the late 90s you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with a p the ps2 port like the mouse was purple
⏹️ ▶️ John they were color-coded they were like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pastel yeah when they got colored it was like around 1998 or so and and that’s that like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there was a standard released by the PC group of whoever they all agreed to use these colors. And they were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ugly colors. Oh horrendous and they’re still in use today. I think the colors have not changed. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the ports have changed somewhat but like I’m pretty sure it’s still the exact same colors.
⏹️ ▶️ John PC-97 introduced color code for PS2 keyboard, purple and mouse green. Yeah
⏹️ ▶️ John think that’s it. PC system design guide.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Were there more though? Because like there were all sorts of there was like the sound one oh yeah here we are yeah color coding scheme.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Perhaps the most end-user visible and lasting impact of PC99 was that it introduced a color
⏹️ ▶️ Casey code for various standard types of plugs and connectors used on PCs.
⏹️ ▶️ John Sky blue is USB 3.0 super speed. Oh good. Burgundy is parallel port.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco serial port. I think the sound ones are the ugliest like the the pink light blue lime
⏹️ ▶️ Marco green like those are always like the ugliest ones on the back of a case.
⏹️ ▶️ John It made every PC extra ugly because no matter how tasteful you made your case you’d like they’d put the little plastic ring around
⏹️ ▶️ John all the little audio things were just like a rainbow of ugly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pastel oh my god and then and then the the audio plugs that there would be on the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco end of the cables would also be those colors so you can easily line them up oh my god so like this is just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a library of horrible 90s colors right here
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like a tasteless person’s idea of solving a problem that users don’t know where stuff plug into on the back
⏹️ ▶️ John of their PCs let’s color color code them all is problem number one. Problem number two is if we’re gonna color code them
⏹️ ▶️ John all, let’s make them all ugly colors that all clash with each other and will never match any tasteful PC ever made.
200th Episode Spectacular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is our 200th episode spectacular
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Before we go totally off the rails I like to have a touchy-feely moment since I am well I used to be the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey touchy-feely person in chief But since reconcilable differences is a thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know if I am anymore, but I do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John want to say mean
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That you guys that reconcilable differences is like analog But with people who actually know what they’re talking about with all respect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to Mike Hurley whom I love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Wait, are you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco suggesting though because you’re talking about the three of us? Are you suggesting that John is the touchy-feely one on that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John is the dark horse touchy-feely one, I’d say. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyway, we’re getting sidetracked again in typical ATP style. This is the 200th episode,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I’ve ever heard it. No, but I wanted to take a moment and genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, thank
⏹️ ▶️ Casey every single one of our listeners, past, present, future, every single one of you, those crazy people who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go all the way back in time to listen from the beginning when they discover the show later in the run.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For the 13 of you that listened to Neutral, I’m sure that was sufficiently painful,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I apologize on behalf of all three of us. But truly and genuinely,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey being a part of the show has been a tremendous highlight of my life and has afforded
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my family some things that we may not have been able to do otherwise, and it’s thanks to all of the listeners.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Even the ones who write us cranky emails, We appreciate you. The ones who write us lovely emails, we really appreciate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you. And even if you listen and don’t write in, we appreciate you too. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thank you from all of us to all of you for being you and for listening to the show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And also on a somber note, if I can’t remember my Gmail password, oh, there we go. This is going to be a short
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show because I can’t see the damn show notes, but I just remembered it. So we’re good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Steven So what is it that makes somebody buy a white car exactly?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go again. God, you’re such a dick. Anyway, it’s funny, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey looking back on that very first episode of Neutral, had I known that that was going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be the first released episode, I probably would have started with a better
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phrase. My introductory phrase to the world would have been something better than,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What is it that makes somebody buy a white car?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, you’re a dick.
⏹️ ▶️ John That seems about right. What are you complaining about? That’s like, oh man. I mean, are we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really that different now?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, but I would have had I had I had I known better at the time, I would have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey chosen a better introductory phrase because if you think about it, I mean, that was my very first appearance
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on any podcast ever. And my first appearance was was getting grumpy at you, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey again, maybe is fitting. In
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco retrospect. It’s the same. Now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we just sound better, but it’s the same, we’re the same people doing basically the same show. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco true. Now just we sound better and the car stuff tends to wait till the end of the show. Yeah, that is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But it is wild to me to think, and actually I was just talking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to a friend of mine at work at lunch today. You know, he was reflecting on the time when the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two of us were jackals in the 5x5 chat room and here it is, I’m talking with you guys every single
⏹️ ▶️ Casey week, which is crazy. bananas and I’m very thankful for it. And again, I’m thankful
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for all our listeners. And this touchy-feely moment is going to end in a moment, but it is important
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me anyway, and I think I speak for the other two guys. It’s important to all of us that you guys know that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we appreciate you despite the fish that we play before the live stream every week.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We all like you, even John.
⏹️ ▶️ John Especially the people who go back and listen from the beginning, because those are the best people. Not that it’s a competition.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s such so much important continuity that you’ll be missing
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t do that and it’s becoming increasingly hard to do that as time passes So better hurry
⏹️ ▶️ John up and go through that back catalog. Those people are the best.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s the thing I mean because these aren’t 200 short shows No,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well the first like five were wasn’t the first episode like 15 minutes or something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was like the after show of neutral that we just recorded one night and threw up on SoundCloud It was
⏹️ ▶️ John an inversion with the after show became the show and the show became the after show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh man, but I mean to think that that it was you know, what was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it something like March of 2013 that we formally announced that this was a thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and here it is it’s it’s December of 2016 and with the exception of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the one crossover episode all three of us have been on every single episode for 200 episodes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey every single week without fail and and you know In the grand scheme of things, it’s not a difficult thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to talk to your buddies at home in front of your own computer for a couple hours each week. But you’d
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be surprised how challenging it can become, especially with holiday schedules as we’re coming into.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I appreciate the two of you guys sticking with me, and I appreciate all the listeners sticking with us. With that touchy-feely moment
⏹️ ▶️ Casey done, unless you guys have something to add, we can go on to a normal, completely accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco will insert some kind of celebratory 200 episode sound at this point in the podcast. No
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pressure. We could just make this a clip show. You just let you know just all the all the wonderful clips
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from times past. It is the holiday season.
⏹️ ▶️ John Next up let’s talk about file systems. All right.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s more work than doing a regular show though. Yeah it actually is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I mean if I could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just sit here and bullshit with you guys for a couple hours that’s way easier actually going back and pulling clips
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just 19 Safari windows oh
⏹️ ▶️ John Chrome windows do I have open
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh my god I didn’t think about that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey course is multiple browsers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John of course 12 Chrome windows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John my god in addition to the to the 19 I run
⏹️ ▶️ John Safari on Chrome all the time oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey why why on God’s green earth do you need more than 30 web
⏹️ ▶️ Casey browser windows open. Why is that necessary? How many fricking tabs are in all 30
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John these web browsers?
⏹️ ▶️ John I can close them now. I can close the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey thing I’m making web browsers secure that we just looked at. I can
⏹️ ▶️ John close like four of them. I can close the pages with the dates of, the super clock
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dates in it. What’s the average number of tabs per window, you think?
⏹️ ▶️ John So you can still see the titles, like usually, you know. So like eight? No, that’s too many. One, two, three, four,
⏹️ ▶️ John like five or six. Like for example, when I was looking up, I wanted to look up the dates for Super Clock. I had one window
⏹️ ▶️ John dedicated to looking up the date that Super Clock was released. One window looking
⏹️ ▶️ John up the date that System 7.5 was released. And within those windows, I have the Google
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, and then I have tabs for the Google search results that I thought would be likely. And then one
⏹️ ▶️ John of the tabs eventually led to the answer. That window is done, off to the side. Next window.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Why is it off to the side, and why is it not
⏹️ ▶️ John closed? So I could refer to it when I just discussed this and did the math in my head about what the dates were. Oh
Follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So let’s do some follow-up as we always should. And John, why don’t you tell us
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about an LG 4K HDR monitor?
⏹️ ▶️ John Fun! Back when I was buying the new monitor for my new PlayStation,
⏹️ ▶️ John I was lamenting the fact that it didn’t seem to be anyplace you could
⏹️ ▶️ John buy a 4K monitor with HDR support. You could buy
⏹️ ▶️ John 4K televisions with HDR, but not monitors, not like reasonable-sized small things you’d put on
⏹️ ▶️ John a desk and LG just pre-announced slash announced that they’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ John have a 4k 32 ish or something inch HDR capable monitor
⏹️ ▶️ John that they’ll be showing it see yes or something so you know you’re welcome all
⏹️ ▶️ John I had to do was buy a monitor hey can you buy a new Mac Pro John oh
⏹️ ▶️ John haven’t pulled that trigger yet although I had a dream about the Mac Pro last night speaking of the Mac Pro. Of
⏹️ ▶️ John course you did. I wish I had I should have written it down or told it to an ancient bird uh
⏹️ ▶️ John Merlin style because I’m something is fading from memory but it’s something like so
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple had introduced a new Mac Pro that looked kind from the front it looked kind of like the trash can Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John uh the name of it didn’t make any sense to me in the dream it didn’t make any sense and I kept asking anybody everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John who would listen in the dream why is it called this and I believe the name was something like, it was like a browsing
⏹️ ▶️ John computer, like web browsing. Like, why are you calling it a browsing computer? This doesn’t make any sense.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is supposed to be the new Mac Pro, the replacement of the Mac Pro. What does that have to do with web browsing anyway? That’s what it was called.
⏹️ ▶️ John And when you rotated around the back of it, instead of it looking like the current one, on the back of the
⏹️ ▶️ John trashcan cylinder was a section that was just cut out flat. And what it looked like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John what did the flattened place look like? It was like the back of an old PC, you know, with the PCI slots with the little covers
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey on them. You know, the little sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John what it looked like on the back. Just steel, like a big flat section that was steel and had like the graphics card
⏹️ ▶️ John with a little port picking out of it and then two PCI slots, which didn’t make any sense because it’s a cylinder in there. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s what it looked like. It was gross. I wasn’t happy with it. And it was named after something having to do with browsing, which didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco See, normally I cannot stand to hear about someone else’s brain taking a dump in their dreams.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, I just, I cannot stand dream recollections because they make no
⏹️ ▶️ John tried to make it concise like there was way
⏹️ ▶️ John but I had the highlights,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I will you know for whatever reason I will tolerate dream recollections
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the Mac Pro because I’m just that desperate for anything about the Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John You wouldn’t want this one just like I’m still having like flashbacks of the back of this thing like a back of a PC
⏹️ ▶️ John shoved into the back of a trash can it was some and there was some crap about like oh, I guess
⏹️ ▶️ John the old back with like the little you know the little light up things and everything and the
⏹️ ▶️ John ports being on a little curve, that was just too expensive. So they’re just going with like the back of a PC XT
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But you know that I would still buy it and you would still not buy it. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know. Who knows what I’ll do in the future.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is if Apple releases something that they call a Mac Pro, even if it is only
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slightly what John is interested in, John, if you don’t buy one, I’m gonna buy a frigging one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for you. So this way I don’t have to continue to hear you lament about how you have a Mac Pro that’s older
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than my child by quite a long stretch, I should add. Your Mac Pro is like four times older than my child.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s older than both of our children combined. That’s true. Good grief. All
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, let’s move on before I have to go find a bottle of vodka and start drinking. I wasn’t planning on this being a holiday
⏹️ ▶️ Casey spectacular. The headphone port slash jack audio source bugs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it was Marco that talked about this an episode or two ago. And the way it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was pitched, given the information we had at our disposal at the time, was that it was perhaps
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something with the Lightning headphones where… Oh no, I’m sorry, it was John that brought this up, wasn’t it? Regardless,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when you plug in Lightning headphones, sometimes the audio doesn’t go to the headphones. When you unplug them, sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey weird things happen. And I guess we’ve gotten word that this may be an iOS 10 thing and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not necessarily a Lightning headphones thing. So do either of you want to build on that? That
⏹️ ▶️ John was the feedback that started coming in because my report was like look I got this new iPhone 7 and this new thing is happening
⏹️ ▶️ John to me And I’m gonna blame it on the new headphone thing because it never happened with my old headphones And the first set
⏹️ ▶️ John of reports I got were people saying hey I’ve got an older iPhone that has a plain old headphone jack and it’s happening to me, too
⏹️ ▶️ John So I guess it must be iOS 10 related not hardware related and then eventually More
⏹️ ▶️ John reports started coming and saying nope happens on iOS 9 too So I’m gonna say that I was
⏹️ ▶️ John just lucky up until this point that I had never run into this bug And I just happen to see it coinciding
⏹️ ▶️ John with my lightning headphones because so many people have said they’ve seen this on iOS 9 and with plain old headphones,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right fair enough So we also just spoke about my Safari
⏹️ ▶️ Casey back in forward swipe issue and brief recap
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Occasionally and this used to happen constantly years ago I would use on my magic mouse or perhaps on the mat on the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey trackpad on my laptops I would do on the Magic Mouse a one-finger swipe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the laptop, so it’s a two-finger swipe, and I would attempt to go, say, back
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or forward a page, and the page would start to animate,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say, back, so from left to right, and then it would get stuck, and Safari would be effectively locked.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I thought that I was just a unicorn in the bad way, and that I was one of the few people this happened to.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I got a lot of people, I can’t put a number on it, but more than
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I expected people tweeting at me saying, oh my God, I thought I was the only one. It turns out there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more of us than, than just me. A lot of people have said that they had this problem. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and we did get a handful of people that said, and I haven’t had a chance to try this myself, that when you, when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Safari freezes, when swiping back, you need to restore the page to the original position
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by swiping the other direction and then Safari will continue working. You don’t have to like quit Safari or reboot or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the case may be. Um, I again, haven’t, haven’t corroborated that myself, but I saw that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mentioned a couple of different times. So it’s, it’s worth trying if you’re one of those sad unicorns,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like I am. Moving on. Uh, Andrew Bucky writes in to say, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m a controls engineer working primarily in automotive powertrain, and I am based in the Detroit area. Uh, just for your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey info, the machine in the video that we mentioned last week is usually referred to as a mill turn as it can do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey milling straight cuts and drilling done by a mill, and turning, which is done by a lathe.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the important piece here is that we were talking about how this is a very fancy crankshaft and how wild that is. He
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said, cranks are not usually produced like this. That was either a prototype part or a crank
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for a race car engine or quote-unquote hypercar. Usually the crank is cast in the rough shape of the crank
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and only a few millimeters of material needs to be removed. Some surfaces are not even touched by the cutter. In most
⏹️ ▶️ Casey every case except low volume parts, the machining process is progressive with the part passing through around 10
⏹️ ▶️ Casey different mil turn lathes, a balancer, a polisher, and a high pressure washer, which is 5000 psi water, for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey deburring and cleaning before a finished part pops out. So this is not a normal
⏹️ ▶️ Casey procedure, but man was it cool to watch.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that makes sense because you’re saying like, if this is how this is what it takes to make every crankshaft, this seems,
⏹️ ▶️ John this seems excessive. Seems like not, not a mass producing and not a process by which you’d
⏹️ ▶️ John make a lot of anything because it just looks I mean, you know, you’re only making one of those things at
⏹️ ▶️ John a time and the machine is the size of a truck And so it just doesn’t work out as a mass production type of thing
⏹️ ▶️ John Jake Robb also added something that and he says I don’t know if a single production car with a billet crank That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, these are these are a machine from a steel billet So they’ll call it billet crank Ferrari McLaren Kona seg
⏹️ ▶️ John all use forged to billet is for custom race engines So it’s not even even hyper cars
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t use it It’s like only if you are making an engine for an actual custom racing car like for f1 or something how you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going to do this. If you’re making a hypercar to sell to consumers, even that doesn’t give you enough money to
⏹️ ▶️ John occupy a gigantic truck size computer controlled milling machine for God knows how
⏹️ ▶️ John long it takes to make one of those things.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed. We also had a conversation via email with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an anonymous Amazon employee who has tried Amazon Go and this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey email chain, I wish I could publish it because it was fascinating And I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey being silly. I’m being genuine. I thought it was really, really interesting. And so this particular individual,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they said that they were on the queue to get in the beta but weren’t there yet. And then just like the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey next day, they said, oh my goodness, I’m in the beta. And then the following day, they said, OK, I’ve been and here’s the situation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so to quote them, I just got back from my first visit. No RFID, no slanted shelves
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to push product up front, no clear weight pads on the shelves, though all shelves are set up to be connected to a network.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So it’s possible the entire shelf is being weighed and not a single aisle.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They got their receipt about five minutes after they left, so no door clustering.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It had everything I grabbed, including the Starbucks I pulled from the back of the stack. I thought of you, John,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said our anonymous writer. The entire ceiling is an array of wireless sensors and cameras. I think they may be taking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey full radar of the store to track people and product. How freaking cool is that? I would love to see this in person.
⏹️ ▶️ John five minutes for your receipt is like, they just have hard that are the servers just slow?
⏹️ ▶️ John Or is it always going to be five minutes? Yeah, that does stop people from clustering, but also stops you if you got accidentally
⏹️ ▶️ John charged for 99 bottles of something you bought one bottle of finding that out
⏹️ ▶️ John five minutes later, you could be driving away and I have to circle back. So that’s kind of crappy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, no, because maybe this was a private email just to me because I exchanged a couple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with with this individual. But they said that if you look at the special app that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you have to put on your phone in order to use Amazon Go, once you get your receipt, you can just do a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey delete swipe, you know, so that’s a right to left swipe, and it will immediately remove that charge or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey refund you that item or whatever the case may be. I’m assuming since it’s all Amazon employees right now, it’s kind of honor
⏹️ ▶️ John but… Yeah, or just leave the store and then just delete swipe everything you just bought. This is a great system.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I mean, according to this individual it was very accurate and there was no obvious
⏹️ ▶️ Casey witchcraft about it other than the ceiling array of sensors. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very cool stuff. I’m really curious to see if this goes anywhere, but very neat.
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey Geller Was it yesterday as we record? We’re recording on Wednesday the 14th. I think it was yesterday,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or maybe this morning sometime. It’s been a blur for me at work lately. Apple finally allowed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us to give them $180 of our money and order AirPods right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the end of the year. By an hour after it went on sale, the date had slipped to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey after Christmas and within just a couple hours after that, the date had slipped to well
⏹️ ▶️ Casey after Christmas and well into the new year. I haven’t looked lately at what the date is. I would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just like to say a personal thank you you to Apple that they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had decided to do this based on the one true time zone, which is Eastern time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that makes me extremely happy because those jerks make us stay up till three in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the morning or wake up at three in the morning to order our darn iPhones. And it was lovely. Well, it would have been lovely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had I ordered some to be able to just casually say, yes, I’d like one of these, please. I’ve been awake
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for an hour or two and I am prepared to make this kind of decision. Meanwhile, I should add
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a certain little someone whose name might rhyme with smell is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sending me a picture of him listening to our show in ear pods. Excuse me air pods right now
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that big jerk. So hi Mason smell it’s good to see that you’re listening
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on your fancy pants air pods. It takes solace in the fact that is right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hurts Did either of you guys order a pair Marco I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know you did so I guess I shouldn’t ask you John did you order a pair?
⏹️ ▶️ John I did. I was excited to. Really? I was, I also, I’m glad they did it in the right time zone because I
⏹️ ▶️ John was awake and near a computer at the time everyone said AirPods are available
⏹️ ▶️ John and so people said AirPods are available and I went click click click click click order and mine are supposed to be delivered
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yep same deal same with me I’m looking forward to how much they’re gonna hurt my ears but I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey really hope they don’t. I’ll listen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to you too. No, no honestly like all of Apple’s earbuds and all all earbuds have always hurt my ears
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough that I really can’t ever use them. I’m hoping these will be different because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the immense convenience of them is…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t care how crappy they sound, if they are comfortable at all, I want to wear them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a regular basis to listen to podcasts while on the go. That will be awesome and it’ll be extra awesome to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just like… their case is so small that you can bring them like in a… like all earbuds people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have always known forever, you can bring them like in a pocket or a bag that would otherwise be too small for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most other kinds of headphones. So you can kind of always have them with you and that’s something that I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wished for since I started carrying portable music devices basically. To
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just always have it with you so that if you find yourself in a situation where you need it or where you’d like to listen to something you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can just take your headphones out of your pocket and listen and I’ve never had headphones that small before because they don’t fit my ears
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I’m gonna really try to make these work because I really want that convenience for everyday walking around.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why don’t you try whittling them down or something? You have like a carving knife? He carved it himself
⏹️ ▶️ John from a bigger ear pod.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The other thing too, as I have used my iPhone 7
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more without its real headphone jack, basically the more I live with the iPhone 7,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the less I ever want to use wired headphones with it again. It’s not that you can’t do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. know we can do it with the nine dollar dongle but it is such a clunky experience
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and such a limiting experience like if you want to charge your phone on a plane I really do not intend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to ever buy another pair of wired headphones that isn’t intended for my desk ever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So how amazing would it be like this is this is Casey’s fantasy tonight is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco gets a set of AirPods and puts them in his ears and realizes hmm you know these don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this earbud thing ain’t so bad and in typical Marco style fast-forward two
⏹️ ▶️ Casey months you know what Casey have you ever heard of getting your ears poured and getting like in-ear
⏹️ ▶️ Casey monitors these things are
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not the same thing your mods are not the same as
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey oh no I know you know
⏹️ ▶️ John steady eel going into your ear canal these are
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey outside you know I think there’s a long distance
⏹️ ▶️ John to go from can Marcos weird shape ears tolerate tolerate plain old ear buds,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is what I would call these things, to can I get some crap shoved right up in
⏹️ ▶️ John my ear? That’s a whole different thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, also, like in your monitors, I respect them as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco category. I’ve never been able to wear them myself. I’ve tried. I’ve tried a couple and I got like the fancy comply tips
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and all those things and yeah, none of them really ever worked for me. But they also are very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different in the way they function. I mean, first of all, there are very few, if if any, wireless ones. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I said, I’m right now for my needs away from my desk, I’m only interested
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in wireless from this point forward. And the other problem is that they isolate really, really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well. They really block out all outside sound. And most of the time when I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using my portable headphones, that’s actually not what I want. If I’m like walking around my town,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco walking my dog or walking from the city or if I’m walking through an airport alone. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will use these headphones in all those times where I really don’t want that much isolation from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the outside world. So, in-ear monitors are great for lots
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of people and use cases that I don’t have.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, that’s fair. In case listeners, you weren’t aware, I’ve been beating Marco up for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably a year or two now that my dad has a set of custom in-ear monitors
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that he had done a a couple of years back where you go to some sort of special ear doctor,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m sure there’s a term for it. Audiologist. Oh yeah, or an audiologist or whatever the case may be, and you get a mold
⏹️ ▶️ Casey made of your ear canal and then you send that mold to a company that will make a set of ear
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phones, I guess they would be called, that is molded for your ear specifically. And I keep saying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to Marco, oh my God, imagine how amazing it would be to have a speaker or a series of speakers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey millimeters away from your eardrums or whatever the receptacle is that you need to listen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to things. And every time Marco said, yes, but anything that goes in my ears is evil and doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey work. And so that is the source of my fantasy is what if this was the way to get Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to try in-ear monitors and realize that this headphone business is just a bunch of waste. It’s a total waste of time. We’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Time will tell listeners, time will tell. Anyway, in any case, I am actually hopeful
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I will at some point receive a set of AirPods. I didn’t buy them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey only because I don’t have an urgent need for them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, the holidays are coming up, but I don’t expect to receive them for the holidays. But my birthday…
⏹️ ▶️ John I was going to say, did you expect… Did you not order them yourself, or did you casually send the URL
⏹️ ▶️ John to Aaron or something?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey No, no, no. I thought about it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I didn’t. I didn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a good plan for something like that. Yeah, probably not. Plus, Aaron has been going on and on about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how this is going to be a great Christmas and Hanukkah for me, and I got to tell you the truth. I did not do as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well for her this year, so I’m already feeling pretty guilty. Um, but anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco second. Expectations.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So in any case, um, I, I figured my birthday’s in March, so maybe I’ll, I’ll get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a set pair or whatever for my birthday. Um, but I definitely want to try them. I am super intrigued
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by them. I think they look really, really awesome. And I, and I think it’s, it’s a very Apple-y way.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like this to me is the Apple that the three of us love. And I hope this doesn’t take a negative turn, but this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is Apple taking a thing. that was annoying, but we all, well, most of us lived with, like the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey traditional Bluetooth, I am a proponent and defender of it, but I cannot sit here and say it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey perfect and it’s flawless, it’s sufficient. And for me, the trade-offs are worth it. But this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey W1 chip and all the fancy Bluetooth stuff that they’re doing, this just looks awesome and is solving a problem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the most aptly, best possible way. And I’m really looking forward to at least trying AirPods at some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point, if not getting my own set. And I agree with you, Marco, that as much as I’m giving you a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hard time, in-ear monitors are not the right answer for like walking around or anything like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had sent to me a set of bone conducting headphones. I will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey put a link in the show notes for the life of me. I can’t remember the name of them and I apologize because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s right on the tip of my tongue. But anyway, we’ll put a link in the show notes. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know what you’re talking about. I’ve actually been meaning to try those myself, but haven’t quite gotten
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, well, if you remind me, we’re gonna see each other in a few weeks and I’ll bring
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They are not the greatest for music. It’s a bit tinny, which makes sense, because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you’re not familiar with bone-conducting headphones, the way it works is there’s nothing over your ear itself. They go kind of around
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your ears and press, I guess it’s your cheekbones, that are the bones that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of stick out where your cheeks are. Well, anyways, so they vibrate your cheekbones, which kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey somehow vibrates the inner ear. That sounds really scary and sketchy, but actually it works really well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And my word, for podcasting, they are, or for listening to podcasts,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I should say, they are phenomenal. And what’s great about it is you can have them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in and still be completely and totally aware of what’s going on around you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The Aftershocks Trex Titanium is the name of the headphones. I’ll put
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a link in the show notes. If all you’re doing is listening to podcasts, I cannot recommend these
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enough. And I think that the AirPods are going to fill a similar gap, except
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they’ll probably be far better for music. Now they’ll probably have a little more isolation, which is both good and bad, but they’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably be far better for music. So I’m really anxious to try AirPods. Hopefully
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you guys will bring a set and I’ll bring some like disinfecting wipes or something so after I try
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them I can disinfect them. But I would love to try them when we see each other in a few weeks. I am super
⏹️ ▶️ Casey amped to see how these are and see what the real world says once they’re out in the wild.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The one concern I have, and I’m remembering now why I didn’t rush to order the bone conduction ones,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the main issue I have with so many Bluetooth headphones is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lack of easy or good or any controls for volume, seek
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back, seek forward, play, pause. Regularly with the wired ones you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the clicker and the clicker has its own set of challenges of the various multi-click
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gestures, doing those reliably is always a little bit tricky and everything but the reason I’ve stuck with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my ugly Sennheiser PX210BT for so long is because it has just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these big plastic buttons on the right ear cup and like right now it’s getting cold outside
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so on a lot of my walks now I’m wearing gloves and I can feel and accurately
⏹️ ▶️ Marco push these giant plastic buttons through gloves even and it’s you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one click for back, one click for forward, you know click up and down for volume, middle for pause like it’s so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco convenient and almost every good bluetooth headphone does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not have good controls like almost all the other ones the ones the ones that are on your over ear
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they get all fancy with like touch gestures and those are all believe me I’ve tried so many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are all awful they’re just the worst like it’s like oh make a little swirl motion with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your hand to turn the volume up yeah that works really precisely like it’s just oh my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco god and there’s delay and you got to tap again and oh it’s there they’re so unreliable they’re so annoying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s always a challenge with bluetooth headphones and you know you got to figure it’s kind of a physical design problem like where do you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco put the controls on some of these and the airpods from the from you know what we know so far
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they only have one control gesture which is it’s either a tap or double tap I forget you know remember which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one but anyway whatever it is it’s by default it toggles Siri
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you can apparently change it in the preferences to instead be a play pause button. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s it. And so I do worry about that. And I worry about that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I said with all Bluetooth headphones because most of them have either bad to no controls. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I think is going to be frustrating to only have play pause control or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can ask Siri to play and pause your stuff but that’s I don’t think that would be good for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me to remain positive about Apple stuff. So I think I’m not going to configure mine that way. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I assume the design assumption here is that maybe you’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want to control things either all through Siri, which is probably not great, or through
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Apple Watch, or through your phone by taking it out of your pocket and everything. And those are all okay answers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco None of them are as good as having actual physical controls that are near or on the headphones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But we’ll see how that works in practice. I think the AirPods overall will be so incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco convenient that we’ll probably be willing to overlook the annoyance of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the lack of physical controls on them, even though that will be a big annoyance, but I think the convenience will just be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so great that we’ll overlook that.
⏹️ ▶️ John They just need another wireless dongle to be the controller, right? So you got the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey because, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey concerned, it’s not. You mean like an Apple Watch?
⏹️ ▶️ John I would probably take that. In fact, I did wear my Apple Watch recently just to take advantage of it.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Congratulations give it a Me
⏹️ ▶️ John Like I just don’t want the wire connecting because that gets caught on things and it’s annoying so if and also like
⏹️ ▶️ John Reaching into my pocket to try to find the volume on my phone I can probably pull that off, but I don’t think there’s any hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John button I can hit on my phone that will advance or go back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John funny thing I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually I prototyped a while ago with overcast I used the accelerometer on the phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco during playback to try to detect if you would just tap the phone in your pocket Like if you just hit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the back foot with your finger and try to interpret tap gestures the same way you do it on a remote clicker
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I almost got it working it you can actually do it and it works Okay, but it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work reliably enough it like I get to be good for maybe like two-thirds of the time But that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not that’s nowhere close to how the reliable it has to be to make it actually You like usable without wanting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to throw your phone out the window But, I actually, I wanted to solve this exact problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, I want a remote control in my pocket and just go tap, tap, you know, or whatever it is. Just tapping the back of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your phone in your pocket, like as you’re walking. You don’t want to tap something.
⏹️ ▶️ John I want buttons. I want buttons that I can feel. Buttons you can feel with gloves on, even. But you can tap it with gloves on, too. It doesn’t matter.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, tapping is not the way to, plus your app would have to be front-most,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? No, if it’s playing audio, it can be continuous. All right, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, I don’t want to tap anything. I’m gonna buy anything bought sold on a manufacturer anything
⏹️ ▶️ John sold or processed That’s the second one you guys missed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No. Well I get that that is a reference I forget what it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reference from it’s always on back to work. That’s that’s all
⏹️ ▶️ John movie You haven’t seen that’s what it’s a reference to like so many things in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well. That’s that’s every movie right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey real-time follow-up from Mason smell It is double tap and you can choose
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to either have that engage Siri play, pause, or do nothing at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Also, Mason Smell would like to tell John Syracuse that it was say anything that you were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John referencing. I know Jason knows.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or you can have it do nothing at all. It’s a great
⏹️ ▶️ Casey option. Excuse me, it’s Mason that we’re speaking with. Thank you very much.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m impressed that you’re keeping this straight. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey trying real hard. You have no idea. In any case, so yeah. So in summary, we’re all amped for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey our new headphones, or ear pods, whatever we’re calling them, headphones things.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can’t keep that straight. Before I move on from AirPods, if they if Apple sold
⏹️ ▶️ John like Apple care plus for AirPods for like 30 to $50, would you buy it? Would it cover?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, cover like if you lose one of them, or if it falls and you step on it or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John like instead of having to buy a whole because I’m assuming your only option now say one of them falls out of your ears or you get knocked down
⏹️ ▶️ John and you step on it and it breaks is your only option $160 out of pocket to buy an entire new set. You can’t just
⏹️ ▶️ John buy one, right? So the AppleCare thing would be like 30 to 50 bucks where you get, you know, if
⏹️ ▶️ John you damage them or lose them in any way, you get a replacement for another 50 or some crap like that. Would you buy that?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think I would, but I’m cheap as hell. So
⏹️ ▶️ John everyone trying to gauge is like, do you predict that you’re going to have problems either losing or breaking these things? I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco? My policy with buying extended warranties most of the time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is to not buy them. And then if in my life I end up having to pay out of pocket for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so many repairs that it would have been more expensive than buying all these things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up to that point, then I will start buying the extended warranties from that point forward.
⏹️ ▶️ John Your policy is close the barn door after the horse is gone. No,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco but my policy is basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, let me take the risk and see if in my life I need to pay this kind of insurance premium
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or not. And so far in my life, in my entire adult life of owning
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expensive gadgets, I have almost never bought the extended warranty and have also almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never needed one. So I’m coming out way ahead, basically. Steven
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Powell Have you thought about insuring your watches for either theft or damage? I’m genuinely asking.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not trying to be snarky. Jared
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Polin No, I have. I mean, it’s smart. When you have homeowner’s insurance, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a different thing. And so, yeah, we have our jewelry items covered
⏹️ ▶️ Marco under the homeowner’s insurance, specifically under a rider for them. But that’s very different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and way cheaper than $350 for every laptop I buy. Mad Fientist Sure, sure. Is it $350 for laptops? Is that
⏹️ ▶️ John how much it is? Steve Oliver I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 15-inch, I think it’s $300 to $350. Mad Fientist Glad I don’t buy laptops. Steve Oliver And so with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple, the price of the warranty does not take into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco account the price of the options when you buy it. So the warranty for the base
⏹️ ▶️ Marco model Mac Pro that’s $3,000 is the exact same price as if you spec
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it all up and make it like $9,000. So if I’m buying like so for my iMac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually did buy the extended warranty because my iMac was something like a $4,400
⏹️ ▶️ Marco configuration. It’s like as much as you could put into an iMac when I bought it two years ago and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the end it was priced at something like 200 bucks for the for the extended warranty. So I did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy it for that figuring like this is a large thing with everything inside and this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a really a very small percentage of the cost based on the cost of the whole item.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I figured like you know the risk reward ratio there was different.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But on almost everything else I don’t get it because on almost everything else it doesn’t make any sense.
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Marco goes to Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hover, domain names for your ideas.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco had an experience today, or recently anyway. Would you like to tell us
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about that? Oh, I went to a Microsoft store. I’m so sorry. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really, how was it? So yeah, I was in the mall recently. I had some time to kill while my wife and kid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did something else. So I went to the Microsoft store and amazingly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there was nobody there. Really? so crowded. So I got to play with the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big Surface Studio they had on display.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So snark aside, I’m genuinely interested to hear how you thought of this because at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a glance this thing does look pretty damn cool and we talked about this a few episodes ago. I’m curious,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so did you play with the tilt? Did you play with the little dongle-y thing? Tell us all about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I did. I played with everything. So first of all, the base is way too light. Like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The base of it, they use laptop components. People accuse the iMac of being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptop components, but the iMac is kind of a combination of desktop and laptop components, mostly desktop parts really.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Surface Studio is really laptop components, and the base of it is very small
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and light. It’s a lot smaller than you’d think, and kind of unnecessarily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so. One of the issues I had with it was while tilting it, it would kind of wobble
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sometimes because it just like the screen is so much heavier than the base that it kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know it I don’t know why they had to make the base so so tight and so tiny and take all the trade-offs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of lower power components to do that I think that was probably a mistake but oh well
⏹️ ▶️ John well I think part of their advertising pitch is that it’s supposed to be easy to move around like it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John supposed to feel like it is rooted in whatever place it is because as you can imagine having it set up when it’s vertical
⏹️ ▶️ John like a screen it would be positioned differently than when it’s the other way so I think I think they I actually have like a lazy Susan
⏹️ ▶️ John on the bottom type of thing so it can rotate and I think it’s supposed to be light enough that you don’t feel like it is anchored
⏹️ ▶️ John to the desk at the place where it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco put. That’s fair. Okay. And I mean it does feel light. Like you move it around freely and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it really does feel light. It feels like a giant tablet. It does not feel like a desktop computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I got to play with the whatever they call their stylus and whatever they call the big knob.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The Surface Style and I’m not sure what the pen is called but the Surface Style is the knob.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cool. So I got to play with the big knob. Well, I got to feel the big knob.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco However, none of the apps that I tried, which was like something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I already forgot what it was, and then I spent a lot of time in Lightroom, and Lightroom did not support the big knob,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I did not get to use it for anything really. So I put the big knob down, and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just played with the stylus and the touch screen. And this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the first time I’ve, I think, I’ve never played with a touchscreen Windows PC. Oh no, no, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco played with a Windows 8 one back in the day. Anyway, so I have very little experience with touchscreen Windows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco PCs, and I never use like a mod book or anything, so I’ve never tried it on a Mac OS either. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do have a lot of experience in Lightroom, and so I figured, let me try Lightroom. It’s a program I already know how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to use. Let me see how it works on this thing. I gotta say, I really liked it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there are things that I didn’t like about it, But overall, it was surprisingly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good. Like, even using touch control in a desktop OS,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which everyone says is a terrible thing, honestly, I suggest you try it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because, again, I’m not entirely sure I’d want to do it full-time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but to have the option, it was kind of cool to be able to control
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Lightroom, this program I already know how to use pretty well, and to be able to do things like, You know, when you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using a touchscreen, you effectively have multiple pointing devices simultaneously. So, you know, when you’re sitting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here on a desktop using a mouse, you’re controlling one mouse cursor. And even if you get all fancy like I do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you have a trackpad on the left and a mouse on the right, you have two pointing devices, you’re still only controlling one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mouse pointer and there’s only one thing at a time that can have that mouse pointer, you know. You can only point to one thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at a time. You can only click on one thing at a time. When you have a touchscreen, even in this desktop environment, you effectively
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have like multiple input points at any given time. can use your different fingers and different hands. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it actually was really easy to work in Lightroom very quickly on this thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I can see, it would have been a lot better if it was designed for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, and I guess this is the case for just big iPads, because they are designed for it right from the start.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But, it was pretty cool. And of course, I leaned the whole thing down. I did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the almost flat on the desk screen arrangement to do most of this. It wasn’t up. If it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco straight up vertical, then touching it makes no sense, I agree with that. But when it’s kind of like drafting table angle,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it actually worked surprisingly well. And I still really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn’t like any part of Windows at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wasn’t confused by it really. Like, you know, I’ve used Windows long enough, I have a rough idea of the Windows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco vocabulary of how to do things, because most of it’s still the same from how it was back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I was a Windows expert. So, you know, the core of it is still the same.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, you know, most of Windows I still don’t like. However, if you were buying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a computer whose main purpose was to be like a creative workstation to run a particular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app, like Lightroom, or Photoshop, or like a video editor, if that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app runs on Windows without any kind of massive downsides, this could be a really compelling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco option. So like, really, if I, and so, because Microsoft is positioning it that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way, They’re positioning this as like a creative thing you put in a studio that where you’re basically buying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a workstation You know for the purpose of running like one or two creative apps like as your main thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as your main role for that computer This is actually pretty compelling. I I can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really see like Basically if what you’re doing doesn’t really If it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really matter that I was running on Windows like if it’s one of the Adobe apps It’s it’s kind of cool,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and I did have issues with like you know You know, like Lightroom has a lot of very tiny
⏹️ ▶️ Marco interface elements, like little tiny sliders and everything. And they were a little hard to hit with the pen sometimes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it wouldn’t take a lot of adjustment if Adobe really wanted to put any effort into this to make that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really awesome. Also, Windows, like, I don’t know what the deal is with Windows High DPI mode.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know it’s a mess, but basically, like, you know, with Apple, you just 2X’d everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with Retina and everything kinda just worked and developers had to do a little bit of work, but not much, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was great. With Windows, I guess they have their high DPI modes where they can scale to any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco number of pixels, and they kind of scale some interface elements, but not all of them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I had ridiculously tiny little text and tiny little check boxes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the middle of giant blown up interfaces. It was very strange. So obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco that’s another.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I tried to run my VM that I was working in a few weeks ago. I tried to run that in high DPI
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mode, And it was really, really bad. Like some things were tiny,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like you said, some things were the size I expected them to be. The fonts were just not built for high
⏹️ ▶️ Casey DPI. Like it was just a really crummy experience as compared to the Mac where I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not trying to be funny, but everything really does just work.
⏹️ ▶️ John The Mac was gonna be that the way you describe Windows as for a long time. Like, I think I remember
⏹️ ▶️ John WWDC 2007-ish where they were saying come 2008 resolution independence as they called it then we’ll be here.
⏹️ ▶️ John So prepare your apps and then 2008 came and went and they didn’t they used to be a little slider in the resolution
⏹️ ▶️ John You go 1x 1.5 x 2x 3x and you can just move that slide around and watch every interface
⏹️ ▶️ John on your computer break Essentially you got pixel cracks. You got things that are not scaling in the right
⏹️ ▶️ John size. You got ugly crap It was so smart of them to just spend an extra few years to figure
⏹️ ▶️ John out how to make like that They weren’t gonna ship it in a state where somebody could configure their Mac to look this
⏹️ ▶️ John gross And so eventually the solution they came up with as we all know is it’s 2x or it’s nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John And even that was hard enough to get everyone on board with but at least when that works it works
⏹️ ▶️ John right and predictably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah that that Apple definitely bet on the right side of history in that one that and because Windows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is very much suffering from this but anyway So yeah, there’s issues with Windows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for sure And again, I wouldn’t be interested at all in this computer if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wanted to be a general purpose computer or my main computer. But again, if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I were building a computer whose sole purpose was to be a photo editing workstation, I would really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco give this serious consideration because it really was surprisingly good. And I went in there all thinking,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh, let me take a bunch of mental notes on how much everything sucks so I can be funny on the show. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no, it actually is good. I wouldn’t say it was terrible if it wasn’t,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and here I am saying it’s not terrible. It really, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you can tolerate Windows in general, it’s a really cool computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John So what was the pen latency like? Did you do any drawing in any of the drawing? I know a lot of that is app dependent,
⏹️ ▶️ John as it is in the iPad, for example, how notes on the iPad is perfect, and many drawing apps like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, like Procreate or Paper, a lot of those, depending on what brush you’re using, are laggy. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John one of the complaints I heard about the Surface Studio is that the parallax was a little bit off,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, because the, I guess, the distance between the glass that you touch and the place where the pixels
⏹️ ▶️ John are was enough to make it feel weird, and also that some people said it feels laggy in certain situations.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The parallax glass gap thing is a real problem. I didn’t use it for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any kind of drawing app. I really only used it for, like, some app I launched for, like, two seconds that I couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco figure out, and then I just went to Lightroom because I knew how to use that. So I was mainly using the pen to drag
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around sliders and stuff. So for that, basically using it as a precision mouse pointer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s great. And in fact, I really enjoyed doing that because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the same hand that I had the pen in, here I have all these fingers doing nothing, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so if I wanted to do one of the pink gestures with my other fingers, it mostly worked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great. And palm recognition was great. Distinguishing between pen and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco touch was great. I don’t think in my, I don’t know, I probably used it for 10
⏹️ ▶️ Marco minutes, I don’t think there was a single time when it misinterpreted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of my inputs. Like, it seemed like it was really, really quite good at that. For
⏹️ ▶️ Marco latency’s tough to judge, because remember when the iPad Pro came out with the Pencil, latency
⏹️ ▶️ Marco varies a lot by the application. You know, it really depends a lot on what you’re doing in the app. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was easy with the Apple Pencil to, you know, to be like, oh, you can measure it with notes, because Apple did a lot of work to make notes really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fast, and with the notes sketching thing. You could also go and look at one of the fancier art apps. Their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco brushes were way slower and way laggier on the same hardware at the same time, just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because their app wasn’t as optimized or it was doing way more complex rendering. And so I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can’t really judge the Surface Studio in that way. All I can judge is how the pen was as a mouse pointer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to adjust sliders in Lightroom. And it was great. And it was also really nice to have the pen doing a slider in my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right hand, and then using my left hand to pinch and zoom and pan
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around the photo that I was editing as I was dragging the slider. I mean, again, like to have that kind of multiple input,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, multitouch, having multiple pointing devices is really compelling when it’s done well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I have never felt that productive on an iPad mostly because like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the kind of apps I use for high-end creative needs aren’t really on the iPad. Yes, there is lightroom
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the iPad, but it’s kind of crappy. It’s not really the same thing. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also, the hardware is not quite up to speed to manage giant photos
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and stuff like that. So iPads don’t get this kind of use from me and from, I think, most people who are dealing with this high-end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco creative use right now. But in the future, if there is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a huge iPad that’s even bigger than 12.9, like now I finally get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why you would want a giant iPad, like even bigger than a 12.9, like why you’d want a 27-inch iPad, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco finally understand that now. it would be a desktop and it would be fine. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I totally get it. So overall, without drawing this out too much longer, I really just, yeah, I just wanted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to say like, I was blown away by how good it was. And I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna go out and buy one because I don’t really have a need in my life for a like single purpose
⏹️ ▶️ Marco workstation computer that’s like a Lightroom station. Like I don’t need that. But if I needed that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d probably buy one of these.
⏹️ ▶️ John All my arguing over so many episodes so many hours. And the thing that convinced
⏹️ ▶️ John you is going to a Microsoft Store and using one and not even drawing on it.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I understand you go to the Microsoft Store, I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey can’t draw a
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. And you say, you know what I want to do, I want to I want to use the pen as a mouse
⏹️ ▶️ John cursor in Lightroom, an application that’s not even optimized for touch. But hey, whatever works for you, whatever works
⏹️ ▶️ John for you. I guess I just wasn’t convincing. I guess I should have pitched it. Think of it this way, Mark. Imagine if using Lightroom,
⏹️ ▶️ John a non touch optimized app and use the pen as a mouse. Now would you buy one? Yeah, now I
⏹️ ▶️ John find that convincing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, honestly, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I, you know, it’s very tactile until I actually did it and used it and tried
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and especially because I was using an app that I already knew how to use and was already fast with, I was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco able to really see how much this kind of interaction can help because I wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just trying to figure out a brand new app for the first time where I’m stumbling around going all slow and oh this is this is novel like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no I was actually like, you know, going through things that I do in this app, things I already know how to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and workflows that I have. Oh, I drag this, then do this, then do this. Like, I could get an idea
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of, like, is this actually more productive? Is this doable? What are the upsides?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What are the downsides? And honestly, I had a hard time finding downsides. The only downside was Windows.
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re going to make your audio editor application for Windows now for the Surface Studio because
⏹️ ▶️ John imagine how awesome
⏹️ ▶️ John be, as I’ve said many times. Your audio editing application on a big giant touchscreen?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have actually thought about like… So I’ve done no work on the audio editor so far.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I have a bunch of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco concepts in my head, yeah, but I’ve done no actual coding. So the options are totally open of where I would actually do this if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I ever choose to do it. And my main debate point in my head was like, should I do this on the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or on the Mac? And I’ve been leaning towards Mac, but I got to say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the appeal of doing this kind of thing with multi-touch is something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And maybe the touch bar on the Mac would be enough, I don’t know. But I do think it is worth,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for all of us in the Mac commentosphere, who, I apologize,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who have written off the idea of touch screens on the desktop.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, you know, it’s easy to just kind of like repeat the kind of the company line or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the party line of like, no, that’s a bad idea. You shouldn’t, like, we don’t need that. The desktop is to remain the desktop.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needs a touchscreen PC. I think that is a bad assumption.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is possible to do this well and Microsoft already almost has.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If the software ecosystem was better on Windows it would be incredible. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because and the software ecosystem is the kind of thing that doesn’t you know that doesn’t turn on a dime. It doesn’t all of a sudden
⏹️ ▶️ Marco become perfect you know in in six months just because Microsoft releases one desktop that very few people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will probably buy. But I don’t think we can say with confidence
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Apple should never do something like the Surface Studio. Interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ John You could just say I’m right. That’s all right. You can just shortcut this. Hashtag John was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right. John was right again. Go ahead. It’s fine. So how funny would it be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if it ends up that during the run of this show, like Neutral had the arc of you deciding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey upon purchasing and and receiving an M5. Is the arc of the Accidental Tech
⏹️ ▶️ Casey podcast for me to finally abandon.NET and Windows only to have you go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey crawling back to Windows and then suddenly becoming a.NET developer? Because that would be funny.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would say if Microsoft wants to send review units, my nine-year-old daughter who loves to draw would love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, because I’m sure so many Microsoft employees listen to this show.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, a lot of nine-year-olds have $3,000 28-inch tablet computers. That’s what I heard all the kids have these days.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The other thing is like if I were to buy it like if I wanted one for for my stated by stated idea
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like having it be a light room workstation, I would want a more powerful computer for it like I would I would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the surface studio pro right like I would much rather have the the monitor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part just be a monitor that I could plug into any PC and then buy like a ridiculous zion
⏹️ ▶️ Marco workstation with like twelve cores and and have that be my crazy importer and processor because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Lightroom is very well parallelized for a lot of its operations and would actually use that power and really needs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco extra speed. So that’s that is it’s one it’s a little odd that they don’t have like a standalone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco option yet, but but I would imagine like if for some reason a lot of people buy this thing, maybe they’ll go that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco direction and release that as a product. But and you know, the good thing about the Windows ecosystem is that other people could basically do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it would probably be alright.
⏹️ ▶️ John So what you need is a Xeon a PC Xeon workstation that comes in a case that looks identical
⏹️ ▶️ John to one of your weird German amplifier thingamabobbers that you’ve already got on your desk. So your
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey desk wouldn’t look any different.
⏹️ ▶️ John The only difference is you just take your screen and tilt it down and whack some KVM with your toe
⏹️ ▶️ John or something and all of a sudden you’re running off of your aluminum amplifier tube thing that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John really a PC. Yeah, maybe.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So question for you, having experienced this touchscreen PC, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it is important to note that if it’s pitched the way an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iMac is pitched, you said that you didn’t really care for the touchscreen features that way, only when it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in kind of easel mode or drafting table mode. Is that fair?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay. So that being said, now that you’ve seen a touchscreen PC and said, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe it’s not so bad, does that change your opinion on the touch bar for better, for worse, or otherwise?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I still think it’s way too early to say.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It also very much depends on the app and what they’re using the Touch Bar for.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In my YouTube review, like, comment, subscribe, my main focus on the Touch Bar is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is not good as a row of buttons. If I have to look at it, I have failed. The Touch Bar
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is best as a sliding or panning surface. It does support multi-touch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You could do a pinch gesture on it, but you could also just do it on the trackpad right below. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know how, again, it depends on the app, I don’t know what makes sense to do on the touch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bar versus just using the trackpad. If some apps, as I mentioned, it’s nice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have multiple simultaneous touch input surfaces. So one thing you could do is have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your left hand on the touch bar and have your right hand on the trackpad and have that be two different inputs. For things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like panning a timeline versus moving the play head, like stuff like that. There’s all sorts of stuff you could do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in creative pro apps and lots of apps to make use of that. It’s way too early to tell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for sure now what works and what doesn’t long-term, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco certainly my immediate upfront impression, my early use impression of the Touch Bar
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is if it’s a row of buttons, I never use it. But when it’s used as some kind of big slider,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is nice. So we’ll see. We are sponsored this week
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by Betterment. Good.
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Super Mario Run online-only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Betterment, investing made better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So it’s tomorrow, which means by the time you’re listening to this today
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or perhaps yesterday that Super Mario Run has been released to the App Store.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I hope you’re not getting on an airplane because you won’t be able to play it because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is online only. You must maintain a connection to the internet in order to play. What?
⏹️ ▶️ John about? So the theories about what that’s about are copy protection
⏹️ ▶️ John You know So everything is pirated on the app stores and the theory goes that it is
⏹️ ▶️ John slightly harder to pirate it when you have to also Deal with a phone home feature that
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to bypass in addition to cracking the whatever, you know to get it Illegally,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not entirely sure if I buy that I mean historically Nintendo has been really not
⏹️ ▶️ John smart about copy protection in that they will do things that they think are saving them from piracy
⏹️ ▶️ John when really like The decrease in piracy is not
⏹️ ▶️ John a good match for the pain that they put regular users through like Nintendo makes really bad trade-offs They’re historically
⏹️ ▶️ John so you can’t entirely discount that theory even though practically speaking Doesn’t seem like it would do
⏹️ ▶️ John anything except to make it slightly more difficult to pirate it And I think there’s a lot of motivation
⏹️ ▶️ John to pirate this thing because it’s gonna be popular second one You can’t really
⏹️ ▶️ John discount is just plain not gonna say incompetence, but like
⏹️ ▶️ John There is an online component to the game just having it be online all the time as a simplification
⏹️ ▶️ John for development And it could have just been maybe they didn’t think it would be a big deal
⏹️ ▶️ John and they miscalculated Calculated and it’s simpler to do this way anyway, and they will you know this is one
⏹️ ▶️ John of the situations where? If it’s not some Wrong-headed misguided
⏹️ ▶️ John notion about piracy that they will update the game eventually to allow offline play Maybe you know it’s like six months to
⏹️ ▶️ John a year from now that they will update it when they get around to it They just didn’t get around to it, and they’ll you know
⏹️ ▶️ John they will do a slow-motion Reconsideration and say yeah, we messed up I
⏹️ ▶️ John guess what what is the third option
⏹️ ▶️ John any third explanation for online only besides incompetence and
⏹️ ▶️ John Wrongheaded ideas about piracy analytics,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I guess Dynamic content
⏹️ ▶️ John always do that periodically.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean anyway the bottom line is it’s I don’t think it will affect The game because people are gonna buy it based
⏹️ ▶️ John on the brand it may affect How satisfied people are with the game so that when Nintendo
⏹️ ▶️ John comes out with its second game? They will have to emphasize the fact that you’re able to run it offline
⏹️ ▶️ John But yeah, it does not seem like a Nintendo very often find some way
⏹️ ▶️ John to do something silly With every one of the things that should be sort of a pure
⏹️ ▶️ John win So I don’t think it will affect The fortunes of this game just because there’s so much
⏹️ ▶️ John pent-up demand for something Nintendo Besides Pokemon and you know something Mario
⏹️ ▶️ John on on iOS, so I think they’ll sell ton of these I think what is the price gonna be 10 bucks? I believe so. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John so I think they’ll do just fine with it But it but yeah, it’s pretty It’s not a good idea
⏹️ ▶️ John to have this thing be online only that’s just Just gonna annoy people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah and there was a great discussion about this on connected this week and and one of the things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Mike was saying was like it pointing out like this is a huge thing like These kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco casual quick play one-handed play games for four phones are are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really often used for people who are commuting, like on a subway underground,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or who are flying on a plane. Like it’s very often used while traveling or commuting. And there’s gonna be so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many times where people would play this game, like in an everyday subway commute,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where you’re underground, you got no connection, and you just can’t play it. And that’s really unfortunate.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I wonder if it’s gonna be, I wonder, you know, will it like not launch, or
⏹️ ▶️ John does it want to phone home periodically and you can play it for some period of time, then eventually it will complain to you that
⏹️ ▶️ John it hasn’t phoned home in a while. I don’t know what the mechanism is gonna be like. Because it’s, I have
⏹️ ▶️ John a hard time believing that the game won’t even launch without a connection, but who knows? I mean, it’s Nintendo’s first try
⏹️ ▶️ John at this, and maybe they just totally messed it up by thinking the entire world is as connected
⏹️ ▶️ John as Japan is or something. I don’t know. It just definitely seems like a miscalculation, especially since this is not a paid
⏹️ ▶️ John up front game. So it’s not as if it’s like, well, you’ve got your money. They don’t. They want you to buy the unlock,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re not gonna buy the unlock if the first two times you try to play it, it says, sorry, can’t play it because you’re offline.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m anxious to try it. I mean, back in the day, I know Marco that you were a Sega kind of guy,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I was a Nintendo kind of guy when I was a kid and had everything from the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey original NES all the way through the Nintendo 64 and then eventually a Wii. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is something that should appeal to me. And so I’m anxious to try it, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t expect that this online only thing really gonna bother me much but I do think it’s a bummer and I would not put it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey past Nintendo like you said John to just be silly about this decision and just not realizing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that this is more harm than good but easy for me to say
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to say that Nintendo doesn’t feel like they have
⏹️ ▶️ John I was gonna say mastery but I would say they don’t even have a handle on a mobile gaming yet
⏹️ ▶️ John because all they have is you know the one game that they partner they didn’t even develop that Niantic or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John the Pokemon Go thing which is a second cut at an idea that they’ve already tried once
⏹️ ▶️ John and it does take advantage of things that are uniquely mobile like the fact that you walk around with it and stuff like that so Pokemon
⏹️ ▶️ John Go is a pretty good job and takes advantage of some unique things but this game itself was a
⏹️ ▶️ John little bit buggy and sketchy in the beginning and anyway that was a Nintendo and this I
⏹️ ▶️ John forget is Nintendo doing this in-house or is that this also outsourced to to somebody
⏹️ ▶️ John but either way this game what it looks like
⏹️ ▶️ John know it’s got Nintendo’s graphics it’s got Nintendo’s IP I’m sure it will play well but in terms of what
⏹️ ▶️ John it is it’s one of those you know tap the screen Meyer is running all on his own you’re tapping the screen to make him
⏹️ ▶️ John jump and stuff like that which is fine as far as it goes but when I find myself thinking about
⏹️ ▶️ John when I think about games that have stood out to me on iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t you know Super Mario Run is not is not
⏹️ ▶️ John in the top tier. I think of something from a developer that really really seemed to understand both
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the context of mobile gaming and the things that you know playing
⏹️ ▶️ John to its strengths avoiding its weaknesses. I think of things like
⏹️ ▶️ John you know Alto’s Adventure which on the surface seems similar it’s always not the same thing this thing
⏹️ ▶️ John just goes and you tap a button to make a thing happen it’s like a single tap gaming type experience
⏹️ ▶️ John and maybe it’s because Nintendo doesn’t have any IP that fit with that type of thing but out those adventure is just
⏹️ ▶️ John a so much stronger statement on understanding what’s good about iOS gaming
⏹️ ▶️ John or even something like What is the one with Ida walking around
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco on the thing in
⏹️ ▶️ John Valley? Yeah, Monument Valley that one taking the idea that one of the things that
⏹️ ▶️ John That mobile gaming has is that you’re holding this little world in your hand So if you just put a mostly static screen on there like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a little diorama and it’s like a little world of ants and you’re moving things around that’s also a different context whereas Nintendo
⏹️ ▶️ John putting Mario running horizontally in the 2D world it’s like that’s the old context like that may be
⏹️ ▶️ John okay even the real infinite runners take more advantage of mobile
⏹️ ▶️ John that are more sort of mobile native than this like so Nintendo taking its existing properties
⏹️ ▶️ John and finding a way that you can play them by putting one finger on the screen periodically that’s all well and good,
⏹️ ▶️ John but where is the Nintendo equivalent of Outdoor Adventure or even, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, the Nintendo equivalent of Year Walk or whatever? Just like, I feel like there are,
⏹️ ▶️ John they haven’t mastered the platform yet and if they’re ever going to make a truly great iOS game,
⏹️ ▶️ John they have to start developing for it, not as like a come-on
⏹️ ▶️ John for you to buy the real Nintendo games, which is what these currently are at this point, but,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, getting their their developers to really understand this platform and producing something that will
⏹️ ▶️ John last in our collective memory and be as well regarded as the best iOS games.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Agreed. Fair enough.
Apple removes battery-time estimate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, let’s try to not take this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to too negative a place, but Apple’s made a curious choice with the new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sierra update for laptops, for every laptop.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apparently, the battery life meter has never been accurate.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We didn’t realize this until people were dissatisfied with not reaching
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the claimed battery capacity or length on their brand new MacBook Pros. But suddenly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey surely it’s not because of that, but suddenly it’s turned out that the battery life
⏹️ ▶️ Casey meter is totally inaccurate and it’s been removed. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know what to make of this. My initial inclination is, oh, we’re just trying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to sweep under the rug the fact that these computers don’t get the battery life we said they did. My second thought of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is, well, you know, battery life is just a guess,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right? And I mean, we don’t see on an iOS device how much time remaining we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have on our battery. We see a percentage for sure, but we don’t see a time estimate.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey land in a place where this is not, I don’t know if nefarious is really the word I’m looking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for, but it’s the best word I can come up with, that it’s not nefarious. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really feel like the Apple community and maybe just geeks in general tend to land
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the nefarious point of view a little too easily. But golly, I’m struggling to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey figure out a way where this is not just trying to sweep a different problem under the rug.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John So I’m— I’m feeling
⏹️ ▶️ John nefarious if you think that this is a sneaky evil thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that someone would but but like I in encompassed in the word if nefarious
⏹️ ▶️ John is a certain effectiveness that I think is not inherent in this solution in other words like A nefarious scheme
⏹️ ▶️ John to steal the jewels should end with you having the jewels if this is a nefarious
⏹️ ▶️ John address concerns about battery life it is not particularly nefarious because it’s not it like
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, PR wise, I’m just gonna say for all of 2016, let’s just say Apple has
⏹️ ▶️ John not covered itself in glory in terms of product introductions and everything,
⏹️ ▶️ John And this move, I don’t see how there is a positive
⏹️ ▶️ John outcome for this for Apple, regardless of the motivation. Say the motivation, it has nothing to do with
⏹️ ▶️ John the new laptops. It just seems like a net negative no matter how I slice it.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if it was if it is a change meant to address a customer concern no matter
⏹️ ▶️ John what that customer concern is I? honestly don’t see how Getting
⏹️ ▶️ John rid of it will help now. I understand it and a kind of naive sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John Just very sort of One-sided view of the world and that the
⏹️ ▶️ John battery meter is not accurate the holidays are coming. We don’t have time to fix it
⏹️ ▶️ John to stop people from seeing inaccurate information remove
⏹️ ▶️ John it with the idea that we’ll fix it and put it back but we don’t have time now but
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think you can you would think about that solution for any period of time until you realize
⏹️ ▶️ John that doesn’t really help like that that makes things worse probably like if it’s not working
⏹️ ▶️ John and we’re gonna fix it then fix it if you don’t have time to fix it now fix it later if you don’t want to fix it later because
⏹️ ▶️ John people are upset now, issue a statement, but removing it, especially since that information
⏹️ ▶️ John is available elsewhere in the US and through third-party apps anyway, it just seems like
⏹️ ▶️ John not a good move PR-wise. Again, regardless of the motivation, even the motivations are entirely pure of like, we
⏹️ ▶️ John realize there’s a problem with the Numax and that meter and it’s showing bad information, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because it doesn’t solve a problem that customers have. It might solve a problem Apple has in terms of support requests
⏹️ ▶️ John and Apple might think it solves the perception problem although I really doubt it does but does it solve
⏹️ ▶️ John a customer problem I guess maybe the customer problem might be solving is like Marcos insistence on not having
⏹️ ▶️ John badges on his applications to tell you about how many things you haven’t done in them to remove anxiety
⏹️ ▶️ John but it really depends because unlike notifications to tell you how many unread things you have
⏹️ ▶️ John in Instapaper or whatever if you hide the the time remaining
⏹️ ▶️ John for someone who’s used to constantly looking up to see the time remaining, all you’ve done is replaced one anxiety with another.
⏹️ ▶️ John The new anxiety is I have no idea how much time I have remaining. Normally I know how much time I have
⏹️ ▶️ John remaining. Really they don’t. They’re just looking at a number that’s like a random guess, or not random, but that is
⏹️ ▶️ John an estimate based on current whatever. But it’s not removing anxiety because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not as if when they glance up there and don’t see the time remaining, they’re going to relax and say, oh, I guess I don’t have to worry about it anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, they’re going to be like, but what is the time remaining? Let me launch activity monitor and check.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not a wise decision, Apple, I think. And the best thing for them
⏹️ ▶️ John to do is if the number is misleading or inaccurate
⏹️ ▶️ John or problematic in some way, make it better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, this there are a number of separate issues here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think if we we need to be careful to talk about them separately and to not like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco let them bleed into each other where they don’t need to because that’s a quick way to just lose a discussion and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and get sidetracked. So there’s multiple problems here. Problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco number one is that the battery estimate meter can be and sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is inaccurate. But I have actually found
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it you know I’ve been using Apple laptops for more than a decade now and I have found the battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco meter to be a pretty good rough estimate.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not like it says you get two hours and you actually get ten. It’s not off by that much.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It usually gives you a pretty good estimate of the number of hours
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you will roughly get if you continue using the computer the way you’re using it right now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or and the way you’ve have been using it for the last few minutes. So
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the but that mental model that you just described I don’t know if everyone else has the same mental model.
⏹️ ▶️ John What you described is how most you know, longtime Mac users use it, which is like it would just do you said you look up at that
⏹️ ▶️ John number. And then where the number is trying to tell you because it’s not an instantaneous measurement, the number is trying to tell you is,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you keep doing what you’ve been doing in the recent past, we think this is what you’re going to get. And you
⏹️ ▶️ John and I and most people use that number to say, Oh, I better not keep doing whatever the hell I’m doing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because my time like, in other words, we are never surprised when that number goes up, right? Because we understand
⏹️ ▶️ John why it goes up. So it’s because I quit that application, or I stopped that render or whatever I was doing, of course, the number is going
⏹️ ▶️ John to go up. I think regular people, when they look at that number, and it says x,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then half an hour later, they look at the number and it says x plus 50 minutes,
⏹️ ▶️ John are perplexed, and don’t understand how that could be the case and start thinking that it’s not right. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the number is, I think that readout is, it’s not conveying
⏹️ ▶️ John the mental, your mental model happens to match the way it works, but I don’t think the number itself on its own
⏹️ ▶️ John conveys that to people. So I think the number is problematic. It is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it’s problematic as it was displayed before,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it’s treated as fact. So, for example, it’s problematic to give minute-level
⏹️ ▶️ Marco precision on that estimate because it isn’t that accurate. It isn’t going to tell you, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh, your laptop is going to die in exactly six hours than 37 minutes. Like, no, that’s not what’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to happen. But the value that it had before in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco giving you a rough estimate of what you have left, again, like, even if the granularity is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco number of hours you have left, that is actually pretty accurate for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of people’s uses. And so we have a number of problems combining
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here to make Apple decide to take action here. One of them is, I think pretty clearly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the reviews have all been stating, have all basically agreed, and the customers, you know, not just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco crazy reviewers, but actual customers have all kind of seen like, you know, I’m not really getting more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than like five to seven hours of battery life on this 10-hour battery life laptop.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s been a pretty common thing people have said. My personal experience matches
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that pretty well. The other problem is, as I mentioned before, modern laptops,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the main ways they’ve gotten more efficient is by reducing the amount of power they use when they’re not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing much. And when they’re really doing a lot, or when the GPU’s on or whatever else,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the top of that power range they can reach has actually not moved very much.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they’ve gotten smaller and lighter by shrinking the batteries by assuming a bunch of idle power, or a bunch of idle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time. But again, if you push them, if you make them do anything, they’re still using as much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco power as they used to. So basically, as we keep making these advancements and making idle power lower and lower
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and lower, but keeping active power kind of the same, what we’re seeing is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an increasing difference in real world battery life, depending on what you’re doing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it used to be, like, you know, back in the olden days of like, you know, the Core Duo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the G4 and everything, back in those early days, when we hadn’t made all these advances in idle power
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reduction, The difference in how much battery life your computer would get if you were pushing it hard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco versus if you were just browsing the web was a pretty small difference, relatively speaking, to today. Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you were really gentle on it, you might get like 50% or 75% or 100% more battery life. Whereas today, if you’re like using the CPU hard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or if you’re playing a game versus if you’re browsing the web and doing nothing else in the background,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that difference could be the difference between 90 minutes and 11 hours of battery life.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s so ridiculous, but you’re right. Those are real numbers. That’s actually what happens. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco surprising. The difference is vast now, depending on what you’re doing. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that factor has, over time, made the battery meter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco less accurate. So there is… Because as what you do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco changes… If you have just spent three hours browsing the web in Safari
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with no pages that triggered WebGL, then great, you’re all set. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then if you go and somebody sends you a message effect and the GPU turns on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and something else tries to keep the GPU on for some other reason, and then at the same time like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a time machine backup starts and Photos decides to analyze some photos for you, then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you could… Your estimate for the last three hours, none of this stuff was happening, might have told you had five more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hours left. But now all of a sudden because your computer started doing things that use way more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco power than what you were using before, you might only have one hour left.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s why the fixing it, like the idea of like, oh, if the number is bad, fix it. Fixing it doesn’t mean just make it
⏹️ ▶️ John put a better number because there is no better number because it can’t predict the future. Fixing it probably means
⏹️ ▶️ John changing it from something that tells you a supposed amount of time remaining to something that graphically displays
⏹️ ▶️ John memory like as a like a burndown graph or usage over time like you have to you’d like to see
⏹️ ▶️ John your representation lets you know you were using energy at this rate here’s your total energy
⏹️ ▶️ John that you have you were using at this rate then more recently you’d be using at this rate and therefore like
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s the rest of the time remaining like some kind of graph or something yeah some other representation that probably doesn’t fit
⏹️ ▶️ John in the menu bar maybe you can do it as a sparkline but then you click on it I get a bigger thing because that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John you know like you said, with this, with this chain, with this increase in the difference
⏹️ ▶️ John between idle and active power, there’s ever increasing difference,
⏹️ ▶️ John it becomes almost impossible to ever put a single number up there that’s representative because the variability is too much suit
⏹️ ▶️ John by fixing it. I mean, give the people using the customer problem is,
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to know how long I have left. And should I do something differently to change that, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And, and also, like, people don’t know what they should do differently, right? So you need to give them feedback.
⏹️ ▶️ John Did quitting that app help it or let me go look, click the menu bar icon and see the graph and see like
⏹️ ▶️ John some line level out or something or not. Like that’s, that’s the customer problem is
⏹️ ▶️ John I gotta know how long I have. And if I, if I need to stretch it, if I need to, you know, get a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ John more time out of it, I’m going to try a bunch of random crap. Hopefully the, the energy saver menu
⏹️ ▶️ John will tell me like which apps are using a lot of energy, like that feature they had in Mavericks or whatever, hopefully I’ll take some
⏹️ ▶️ John action based on that and then have confirmation from this thing that tells me oh yes you’ve you’ve now
⏹️ ▶️ John changed things so that it looks like you’re you’re back on track and doing that with a single number
⏹️ ▶️ John that fluctuates up and down I think is not as useful as some other thing that gives a historic forward
⏹️ ▶️ John and backward perspective on uh on things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey john only you would want to burn down chart for your battery power
⏹️ ▶️ John marco doesn’t even know what that is nope not even not at all it’s all right it’s fine it’s in the parking lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah no so like so basically I see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the line of thinking that could lead Apple to think we should just get rid of this meter because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not very accurate anymore, but it has a lot of value
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so to to completely get rid of it you because like if you just look at a percentage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all you know is where my battery is right now, but on something that gets one and a half
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to 12 hours of battery life, that percentage is not very useful.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John You know, like it’s… You gotta do the graph in your head. You have to be like, okay, I
⏹️ ▶️ John looked at it five minutes ago and it was this number, and I looked at it now, it’s this number, and so if I make the slope of that line, like you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John doing the graph in your head.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. And so it is very, very helpful, and this is not just a geek thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t want to hear from people saying, well, regular people don’t need the estimate. No. Anybody who uses a laptop on battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco power and wants it to last a whole flight or a whole day or a whole span, often needs to know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco am I going to make it given what I’m doing? Is my battery enough? That is the problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the modern age, is my battery going to make it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is a real problem for a lot of people in a lot of situations. To have something that can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco indicate whether your battery is going to make it is very useful. While the time estimate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has never been perfect, and as discussed, is actually getting less perfect over time, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is something and they replaced it with nothing. The percentage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco meter does not replace the need for you to know, am I probably going to make it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or not? It doesn’t. It is not good enough. And it’s different with laptops versus phones because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phones are so easy to carry extra batteries for. Laptops really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco aren’t. You know, the whole USB-C future that will eventually be here where we can have a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of extra batteries for our laptops, that’s really only true for the 12-inch MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and only just barely. Because that has very low power draw, it’s in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the realm of big tablet power draw. So you can get a battery pack for those that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco small and outputs like 15 watts and that’s enough. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never going to get a battery pack that’s going to be small and light and can power your 15-inch MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro for a meaningful amount of time. that can recharge it quickly so you can get back to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using it. Like, it’s just too much power. Batteries are big and heavy. That’s not going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happen in a compelling package for a very long time, if ever. So it is very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco important for you to know when you’re using your flagship 15-inch professional
⏹️ ▶️ Marco grade laptop that has this nice big 75-watt-hour battery in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it and that can possibly draw up to 87 watts at full load, it’s very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nice to know whether you’re going to make it without to charge or not to what you have to do at the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco end of the flight or day or whatever. Because if you mess up that estimate,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re basically out of luck. You’re basically just not going to have a computer for a few hours because you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just plug in a little lipstick battery from Amazon that was $4 and charge it up again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It doesn’t work that way. So to treat it like a big phone is not a good analogy. It just doesn’t work.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, there is one phone feature that you could use, though. You’re thinking more fixes to this thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John like a big phone made me think of like what do you do on your iPhone like say you’re on your iPhone and you’re in a cross-country flight
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re you want to be doing stuff on your phone and you there’s no time remaining on the iPhone but you look at the percentage
⏹️ ▶️ John and you kind of know how long your phone usually lasts and you’re like it’s not gonna make it what would you do well I plug it in
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah I shoot the hostage yeah plug it plug in I guess that
⏹️ ▶️ John is an option because like I said the phone is but low power mode I was thinking of low power mode right so
⏹️ ▶️ John on the phone the phone first of the phone itself will go into low power mode but you can turn it on yourself manually at
⏹️ ▶️ John any time and you’re hoping what that will do is like you don’t know it’s just switching preferences or and I think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John in is it in control center now I forget a low power mode will you know you
⏹️ ▶️ John basically say go into like camel mode just try to like not do stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John and and be more calm a low power mode for Mac OS but
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s as simple as a switch would solve the customer problem better than
⏹️ ▶️ John the very geeky, silly solution I was suggesting of like graphs and everything, which would be totally cool
⏹️ ▶️ John and would convey the information. But again, the customer problem is like you said, am I going to make it?
⏹️ ▶️ John And so in this respect, treating it like a phone having a low power mode switch, I think is
⏹️ ▶️ John one possible viable solution. And maybe Apple’s got that planned and maybe ditching this is, you know, an ill
⏹️ ▶️ John devised transition where they get rid of this and replace it with low power mode is
⏹️ ▶️ John and I’m hoping low power mode doesn’t already exist in Mac OS and I just don’t know that because I haven’t reviewed the last two versions.
⏹️ ▶️ John But you guys can confirm.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Slacker. So, and this leads to another problem too, which is, you know, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco small laptops, the Escape and the 13 inch Touch Bar, and the MacBook One,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these all suffer from moderate battery life because they’re so small.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s generally part of the trade off of getting a very, very small laptop is usually battery life isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very good because batteries are big and heavy. So to get something very small, you know, you got to take a smaller
⏹️ ▶️ Marco battery life. That’s okay. On the bigger ones like the 15-inch, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco typically you get pretty good battery life, you know, and this hasn’t always been the case, but you know, generally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco speaking, that’s, you know, it’s supposed to be pretty good. However, on the 15-inch, as I mentioned in previous
⏹️ ▶️ Marco episodes, there used to be an option to not get a discrete GPU on the base model. That option is no longer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco present on the current line. So every 15-inch comes with a discrete GPU that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is dynamically switched to. So it has both the integrated GPU that uses almost no power and then the discrete GPU the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big AMD or ATI whatever it is AMD one that it switches to whenever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it feels that it needs more graphics horsepower and this is automatic switching and there’s an option
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in settings to lock on the discrete GPU so to not automatically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco switch almost no one should ever enable that option because that just locks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the very high power draw very hot external GPU. However, there is no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco option to only lock on and to only use the low power
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the first thing in low power mode would do, obviously.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. So so basically, so and there’s a there’s a utility by Cody Creaker called graphics card status
⏹️ ▶️ Marco GFX card status that shows you which one is in use at any given time. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I even, when I’ve been doing my testing, I have it, it can even show notifications
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when the discrete one turns on. So you can kind of tell like why it turned on, it could be based on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what you just did. And it can tell you of course which apps are holding it on as well, because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco held by an app basis. So you can tell kind of if apps are misbehaving or if something’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using it that you don’t really think you need to be doing right now, you can turn it off to say battery life. because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the battery usage when the discrete GPU is active is substantially higher, and you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get substantially noticeably worse battery life when that high-powered GPU is on.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco However, as I said, there’s no option to say, whatever you do, do not turn that GPU
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on. And I would love to know from people in the know with the engineering,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe ATP Tipster, is there a hardware reason, is there some reason
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why there can’t be an option that says only use the integrated GPU right now, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would make a huge difference in battery power. Like I’ve heard various times that like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, sometimes it’s required when if you have an external display plugged in, because like the way it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco integrated in. And that would be understandable, because most people, when they’re using an external display, are plugged
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re the iMac and Panera Bread
⏹️ ▶️ John something’s powering the display, so obviously. Someone should do that though. bring an external
⏹️ ▶️ John display with you on your flight, and just put it on the tray next to you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, but anyway, I would like to know why that option isn’t there. And there might be a good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reason, but if there isn’t a good reason, that option needs to be there. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we know that the integrated GPU is good enough for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of things. It is not a great GPU. It is not a high-powered GPU. We have a different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco high-powered GPU for those needs. But if I’m using the laptop and I need to eke out every bit of power from it if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m on some kind of long plane trip or something. And as you said, this is low power mode, right? If you want your laptop to go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in low power mode, you have to make sure that discrete GPU never turns on. And there’s currently
⏹️ ▶️ Marco literally no way to prevent that. You can’t, like some utility, like Cody Krieger’s graphics card
⏹️ ▶️ Marco status, on older computers, it would be able to actually block the switching
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and lock it on integrated only. But on the more modern Macs, that doesn’t happen anymore. It can try,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but then what happens as the discrete one turns on anyway. So it’s whatever, it isn’t, however it works,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it seemingly isn’t able to override the system behavior now. I would love to have that option be there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We also know, like, you know, in the last generation, they had, as I mentioned, they had the option without,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get a 15-inch without getting a discrete GPU at all. If that option, I’ve heard from various people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the current Skylake CPU generation from Intel, that the GPUs aren’t very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good. And that would be a plausible reason why Apple wouldn’t offer that option, that like basically like they’re too slow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to offer that as like a good computer. But I would love the option to opt into that sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I really need the battery power. So that would be great. If Apple wants to wants to address
⏹️ ▶️ Marco its battery issues with the 15 inch MacBook Pro, the smaller ones, they have different issues they have mostly because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they just have really small batteries, because that’s how they’re so that’s how they’re so than in light, but the 15 inch,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the biggest issues is that GPU switching. And if I have if I a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way to disable that this laptop will last a lot longer.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll put a link in the show notes to Ars Technica’s review of the Touch Bar laptop.
⏹️ ▶️ John So in their battery test, this is their sort of light Wi-Fi, you know, web browsing battery test
⏹️ ▶️ John and they did a test with the discrete GPU on and one with it off. And the one with it off, they got 15
⏹️ ▶️ John hours of battery life. This is out of the 2016 15 inch MacBook Pro and with a
⏹️ ▶️ John discrete GPU on seven hours. So I mean, this is still light usage. seven hours is still pretty good, but they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John just web browsing. But that’s that’s a two X difference doing the exact same activity. You know, the
⏹️ ▶️ John only difference is the discrete GPU is on or off. So a low power mode that I mean, that’s that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John gimme like turn off the discrete GPU and accept that you’re you know, you’re not going to play any game because your graphics are terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ John But think of all the other things you could do. Marco’s favorite thing, you know, photos, analyzing his pictures in the background,
⏹️ ▶️ John time machine backups like just so everything that the phone does in low power mode it stops as many
⏹️ ▶️ John optional background activity type things that it can possibly stop, you know, or, you know, just pause
⏹️ ▶️ John them or delays them or whatever, just don’t do that stuff. Clock down the processor, do like whatever you
⏹️ ▶️ John have to do to, because that’s, you know, when you go into low power mode, whether you’re automatically, because your, your
⏹️ ▶️ John battery is getting low, which would be a good idea, or just, you know, at the beginning of your flight, do it. But it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John Xcode will run fine in low power mode. Like your compiles might take longer, but the typing part will
⏹️ ▶️ John be fine. Like it’s not you’re not doing anything that aggressively intensive and it’s not like they have no GPU.
⏹️ ▶️ John There is a wimpy crappy GPU built into the you know the integrated GPU is not
⏹️ ▶️ John as may not be as good as it was in the past but it will get you by and you know
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Another thing we’ll put in the show notes is a link to this big explanation of
⏹️ ▶️ John how Mac developers can make their applications better behaved because there are many
⏹️ ▶️ John things that system frameworks and your own application might do to unknowingly turn on the discrete GPU.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not as if there’s some like call that you make that says, Hey, I would like to turn on the discrete GPU. The whole point is it’s automatic,
⏹️ ▶️ John automatically turns it on when it needs it and it doesn’t use it when it doesn’t. But apparently
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s an opt in type of thing. And if you don’t opt into it, your application will not automatically switch between integrated
⏹️ ▶️ John and discrete. And the default is just use the discrete all the time. If you do any of these sort of activities
⏹️ ▶️ John that think they might need it at some point in your application. So there could be a software
⏹️ ▶️ John factor here where people just need to update their applications to be nicer. But that’s, that’s an
⏹️ ▶️ John I wouldn’t look for that to save anyone’s bacon unless there’s some specific application that you’re using all the time that’s going to benefit
⏹️ ▶️ John from this because Apple has been preaching this for years and years and years about how to make your applications energy efficient.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they have a lot of great tools and a lot of great ideas. But the bottom line is, over the past
⏹️ ▶️ John five to 10 years, it It seems like application developers have not prioritized the energy efficiency
⏹️ ▶️ John of their application very highly. Like they’ll spend more time on performance and bugs
⏹️ ▶️ John and features, rightly so, probably than energy efficiency. Apple itself has probably been
⏹️ ▶️ John one of the best companies in terms of making their applications use less power. Just look at how much power
⏹️ ▶️ John Safari uses compared to Chrome to see how seriously they take this. So Apple is highly motivated to do it because
⏹️ ▶️ John they make the hardware. vendors seem to be less inclined to do that and
⏹️ ▶️ John that leads to the other solution which we have talked about so many times in the past to this problem
⏹️ ▶️ John you know you’ve got low power mode you’ve got improving the way that people see the information
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ve also got sorry for the umpteenth time make the laptop two millimeters thicker and put
⏹️ ▶️ John more battery in it because if you make the battery life good enough that people like
⏹️ ▶️ John get through the day ish or it seems is about the same or better than the previous one,
⏹️ ▶️ John then there is way, way less fretting about oh, we need a new way to present this information to
⏹️ ▶️ John the user that’s accurate or blah blah blah. Like, it just stops being a concern. The same way that
⏹️ ▶️ John battery life on iPads mostly stopped being a concern for the first
⏹️ ▶️ John one, but the fact that it was 10 hours is like oh, well, you know, from iPad to iPad,
⏹️ ▶️ John when it fluctuates from like I used to get 10 on the previous one and I get 8 on this one or nine or 11 and bet
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s long enough that it’s not a big deal right whereas it seems like the 15-inch laptops
⏹️ ▶️ John in particular have been existing on the border where it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John not enough to get you through a whole day of hard work maybe enough to get you through a cross-country flight
⏹️ ▶️ John of medium work and so fluctuations like this especially when there can be a 2x range between discrete
⏹️ ▶️ John and integrated GPUs it’s well within the you know discomfort
⏹️ ▶️ John range so So if you could add an hour or two so that basically that it seems like for the most part
⏹️ ▶️ John in regular usage, your 2016 15-inch MacBook Pro gets about the same
⏹️ ▶️ John battery life as your 2015, then all of a sudden, all these concerns that we were talking
⏹️ ▶️ John about become much less urgent in exchange for you having a thicker laptop. So I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know if Apple’s ever planning on pursuing that, but it’s not like they don’t have the option. They do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. Now, Marco, your post that you put up about this, I have to ask,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like you’re trying to give a subliminal message here, but I just can’t put my finger on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John what it is. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not subliminal when the picture is like the giant, it’s like bigger than the text.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, there’s a little bit of inception going on here. I just had to congratulate you, because at first,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t understand where you were going with this. How? And it took, well, no, no, no, like I looked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the first picture and I was like, okay, and then I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John looked at the second picture. Why is
⏹️ ▶️ John there a picture of a cow?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John not understand what you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey driving at until like, I think the third picture, then I was like, oh, and then my favorite was figuring out what the relevance
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the last picture was. So no, that was well done. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are you, all kidding aside, your post anyway, seems
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be a pretty clear statement that you think that this is a poor choice. How would you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phrase it now? Like what do you think about this? Is this a good idea? Is this a bad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So again, there are multiple issues here, right? So one of the issues is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is this battery meter accurate? A second issue is, is it worth removing it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because it does serve a lot of useful purposes for people, right? And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to remove it with no replacement that can serve those purposes of like basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gauging whether you’re going to make it or not, that is not great, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then another issue is, are they doing this in response to criticism that the battery life
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of these machines is not great? So I think the answer to question number
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of like, is the battery meter accurate? The answer is, well, sometimes,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I think it’s accurate often enough to be useful. And I wouldn’t necessarily remove it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for that. I might reduce its precision and drop it down to just hours and not show minutes, but that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just me. I don’t work for Apple. there’s a reason. Okay. Question number two of like, is it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a good idea to make this removal with nothing that can replace it? And I’d say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no, it isn’t. Fortunately, those of us who care, we can install third
⏹️ ▶️ Marco party utilities or just look in activity monitor because it’s like I set menus has it activity monitor has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a coconut battery has it because all these things are querying the low the low level IO kit framework
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I okay it’s given the same estimate. So not only can third party apps provide their own estimates, but they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using the same data source, I think in most cases. They’re using the same data source that is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the thing that was driving that menu bar. So it’s not like you’re even getting a different estimate. You’re getting the same underlying framework
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s reporting these numbers, just in a different UI. So that’s cool. I personally use iStatMenus for that, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I like iStatMenus quite a bit. So go check that out. So basically, question
⏹️ ▶️ Marco number one, Apple had a maybe okay answer for that one. Question number two, removing it without having
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any replacement for this function, I don’t think Apple has a good answer for that. And question number three,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is this actually just a response to try to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe cover up the battery problem a little bit? And I don’t think Apple would have a good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco response to that either, at least one that would be believable. So basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to me, this reads poorly. This reads like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a PR bandaid on what is a legitimate product shortcoming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I hope Apple addresses. And not a successful
⏹️ ▶️ John band-aid, not even a good band-aid. Right. This is what I’m saying. It’s not only nefarious if it’s a clever way to
⏹️ ▶️ John keep people quiet. This will have the opposite
⏹️ ▶️ Marco effect. Right. So now the interesting footnote to this is that the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco early reports of this OS update are that it actually improves battery life
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of course making this more complicated and kind of hilarious. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apparently there were some issues with the GPU management.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You don’t say. And apparently some of these issues have been fixed in the.2 release.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I personally am seeing with my now illicit tools to show me a battery estimate,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m now seeing estimates of more like 12 hours under my idle usage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I haven’t I mean I’ve only had this update installed now for a few hours, so I really can’t give
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a real report yet But Mac rumors already has a thing about it saying like they’re hearing from people to like it seems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this might be a real Thing that this update actually does improve battery life noticeably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on this on this computer at least at idle I’m guessing
⏹️ ▶️ John how much of this is the end of your first run experience
⏹️ ▶️ Marco jobs you talking about like the you know ending like the photo library stuff Spotlight
⏹️ ▶️ John photo library all the crap that you know on a fresh Mac. That’s newly signed into your iCloud
⏹️ ▶️ John And you know doing all the stuff that happens after you’re doing install and put all your apps on and you’re mentioning How
⏹️ ▶️ John like it was taking forever for for photos to be done doing whatever the hell was doing maybe it’s done now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Nowhere close no photos. I’m honestly thinking about just Leaving foot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I called photo library and just moving on because the the the Mac app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I first of all I I think I don’t want to make this a complaining show about Apple because I actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have been very positive episode so far for the most part, however, the the photos for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac app I it has so much potential
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I would say almost all of its potential is unrealized. That’s the nicest way I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can put it. Well done. So and I do think that the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the decision that Apple did this summer to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their photo object recognition basically be done on device and then to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not sync that across all the devices. So basically every device you set up has to do its own
⏹️ ▶️ Marco image and object recognition and face recognition in the Photos app. I think that that was
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not really a decision based on the talk show live where this very issue was brought up. It was so clear
⏹️ ▶️ John from I think it was Craig answering the question that the only reason that’s the case is because they didn’t have time to do the better solution.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s a decision then. It was their decision to ship it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I know, but like I think it was the right decision to ship it instead of waiting till they got that. Like I think they made the right
⏹️ ▶️ John call there. Like you either delay until you get this solution. I mean, so there’s three options. Or, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the other option is like do it like Google does and do it all server-side. Apple doesn’t want to do that for privacy. Don’t ship it
⏹️ ▶️ John or ship it with the less sufficient thing. I think they picked the right option. It’s a shame. It’s a shame that it didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have it worked out and it’s a shame on you for your battery that it has to do this on every single one of your Macs but
⏹️ ▶️ John definitely I wouldn’t want to wait a whole extra year for this application
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well well but you were you weren’t waiting for the application you were only waiting for the the search
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah I appreciate the object search enough that I’m willing to I mean a grant I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have laptops right but I’m totally I will pay the price for and I minded the same thing by the way
⏹️ ▶️ John the same likes or when is this ever gonna finish and is there a way I can make it go and let me leave my computer on and set
⏹️ ▶️ John it not to go to sleep I did all the same things you did so I had all the same frustrations and yet still I would say
⏹️ ▶️ John that the benefit I gets from being able to type something in and find photos is worth it to me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I’ve had I’ve had this laptop now for I mean this this one I’ve had for over a week
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it is less than halfway done scanning my photo library
⏹️ ▶️ John is it making any progress that’s the key mine for a long time didn’t look like it was making any progress.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s making very slow progress. So like I’m keeping track to is like I just like screenshot the the people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tab where it shows you the actual
⏹️ ▶️ John numbers because you can’t memorize it and do the graph in your head right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right exactly right there you go yeah and and like it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know how to make it go but anyway it doesn’t it seems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the the photo indexing is not mostly a battery problem because when it’s on battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it doesn’t seem to do it. It seems to be smart about that. When you plug it in,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the photos agent will require the discrete GPU and we’ll start doing the indexing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I believe it’s GPU based or at least GPU assisted, which is nice.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s one of the things by the way, WWDC that they’ve emphasized for years and years, being having all sorts
⏹️ ▶️ John of power assertions and being aware of the context that you’re in. And if you’re on battery life, like that’s, that’s what they
⏹️ ▶️ John want to happen. Instead of having like a big low power mode button or anything like that. They just want applications to be smart and understand
⏹️ ▶️ John what the deal is and you know behave like Apple’s things like oh use super low priority IO and don’t even
⏹️ ▶️ John run this at all if you’re on battery and do all they have API’s for all this stuff but a like I said it’s low down
⏹️ ▶️ John on developers prior to us and B even though they have all that stuff on a platform like
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS it is still both useful and I think recommended to have a low power mode that comes on automatically
⏹️ ▶️ John when you’re really low and that the user can put on at any time they want because that is that is the right granularity.
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like one switch somewhere easily accessible with some visual indication that it’s on with like the yellow
⏹️ ▶️ John battery meter or whatever iOS shows. I still think that’s a feature they should totally add to Mac OS.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I agree and and and on iOS like I actually do in overcast. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have like whenever I have any kind of like sync activity, the choice I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of choices about like, how much do I wait and coalesce all these sync updates before I actually make a network
⏹️ ▶️ Marco request to my server. And you know, as you listen to a show, like, how often do I report to the server?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What timestamp you’ve listened up to so that it can sync to your other devices reliably? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have all sorts of like, you know, call less delays and granularity delays and things like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I run them all through a function that applies multipliers based
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the current power state, whether you’re on Wi Fi or cellular, whether your batteries above certain thresholds,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and whether the low power modes activated. So like, when low power was activated, I believe I just multiply everything by like four or something,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is like make everything really spaced out. And so like, and I actually dynamically adjust all of those,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, based on all those different factors of like, you know, basically, how much power do you have to spare? And how much power will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this take right now? So like, if you’re on Wi Fi, I give I do things more often. If you’re on cellular, I don’t if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, so all these, I have all these different multipliers in there. And it really helps a lot to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco control my battery usage. But I did all that because it matters on iOS it matters a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot and it has mattered since the beginning of iOS. On the Mac, for so long I think developers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weren’t needing to do really much of that because it didn’t really matter. Like how much would that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually affect people’s battery lives in the past? But you know, as we’ve moved towards this now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco massive delta between when the processor is active and when it’s idle, this now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco massive delta of battery life, now it matters a lot more. And so I hope Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco developers are conscientious of this, as many Mac developers use 15-inch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook Pros. I hope that they are conscientious to this and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will actively work to reduce their app center usage now that the Macs that people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually run their software on, basically now it matters a lot more whether their apps are responsible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or not. Because again, before it didn’t matter much at all, and now it matters a lot. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as time goes on, it’s very clear that you know we’ve been on this on this path for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a while now that we are going to continue to make idle power savings
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and continue to not really lower the ceiling very much of maximum power. So this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco issue is only going to get worse. This delta is only going to get larger over time as we make these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco further advancements in power efficiency. So it will only become more important
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over time for everyone to really optimize their power usage when you’re on battery. And so I hope people do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I hope the Mac developer ecosystem is healthy enough that people have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the motivation and resources to update their apps that much. I hope that they are conscientious
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough to do it and I look forward to seeing if they do.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the future is desktop computers though, don’t you think?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks so much for our three sponsors this week, Fetterment, Hover, and Squarespace and we will see you next
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause 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,
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, they didn’t mean to
⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental, check podcast so
Post-show: Neutral
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Have you been watching any more Grand Tour kids? No
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone says it sucks so I’ve just decided…
⏹️ ▶️ John left watching it Casey.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of seemed like based on you know Casey based on what you wrote and what I’ve seen a few other people say as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well it really does seem like I got the best of all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worlds by watching episode one and then stopping.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know if that’s entirely true I stand by skip episode two but or come back to it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well after the fact. I do still like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the show, but man I don’t love it like I used to. Well, I mean admittedly that was a different show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you want to be pedantic about it, but you know what I’m driving at. I’m curious to see what this week
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not having seen all of the ones past episode one that everyone says are horrible, even just seeing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco episode one, even though I enjoyed it, I could see this path of, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we We talked about it here, this path of like, you know, this seems like they’re pushing a little hard on these certain areas that don’t work.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And even, you know, honestly, even in the last couple seasons of the BBC Top Gear show,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with them on it, you know, that version of it, you could tell that it was starting to go in some directions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that were cringe-worthy. And it was starting to lose, you know, some of the bits were getting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little more contrived, and it was starting to lose some of its charm in a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of it, as it got like seemingly more contrived seeming less raw, I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well that’s the thing is that I’m pretty good at being able to watch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a film or a TV show and not pick apart how it was made
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or what was real and what wasn’t. But where in Top
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Gear, I could watch most of them and feel like it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a contrived situation that they just let play out. Let’s race to Verbier
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and see what happens. And yes, there are probably more efficient ways to go than—I forget how that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one went, but like bus to train to plane to train to bus to running, etc.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s probably a more efficient way, but that should take around the same amount of time as it takes Jeremy to drive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. So let’s set it up so that it should be interesting and then let it play out. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so there’s a lot of that that was probably staged and deliberate, and I think a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it that wasn’t. Whereas in Grand Tour, it seems like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey way heavy on staging everything to the point that it’s obvious. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as we discussed, I think last time, I think the three hosts have forgotten that they’re not actors, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is troubling. And so the second episode was, was very self-indulgent and very much
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them trying to act. The third episode I actually thought was pretty good. Uh, I liked that one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then this last episode, some was good, some was not. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, I’m curious to see where this goes. I think if I understand it right, this is a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like 12 episode run, I thought, although I might be wrong about maybe that maybe there’s only a couple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more. Either way, I’m curious to see how this plays out. Now, John, you also have not been watching.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s mostly just because I haven’t had time to watch anything. I have been sitting
⏹️ ▶️ John there with my iPad, which is where I usually watch this thing and thinking, oh, I should catch a few minutes. I almost watched. It’s not like
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m against ever watching it again, but I will probably be leaning pretty heavily
⏹️ ▶️ John on the skip button to get to the part that has to do with cars. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which man, you’re gonna be doing a lot of skipping.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John A lot of skipping, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe. Or maybe I’ll just have it on the background when I’m doing something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah, Top Gear never really used to be a second screen kind of show for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I never used to really look at Twitter while I was watching Top Gear, and I caught myself
⏹️ ▶️ Casey barely paying attention during, I don’t know, like the second or maybe fourth episode. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey okay though, it’s okay. Now, Marco, in a semi-related note, is this your first winter with the Tesla?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, yeah, because I got it like in March or April, so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah. Anything interesting come of that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, we haven’t had any snow yet, really. It snowed for like five minutes one night and that was it, so we haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really had winter weather to deal with it yet. Did you change tires? I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco planning on doing it this year. I will see how it works, because I have all seasons now. With the M5, I had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically flat balls of rubber on there for the summer times. Its stock
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tires were comically ineffective in any kind of slippery or cold weather. So I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used winter tires seasonally for that, because I kind of had to to make it useful.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Tesla’s all-wheel drive, as I mentioned, when I did the test drive, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was last February on a really cold day with a whole bunch of like, you know, mud and crap and gravel all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over the roads, I was blown away by how good the all-wheel drive system was. I know that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco battery range is gonna be less in the winter because a combination of just batteries
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being less effective at very cold temperatures and also using the heaters
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will reduce the range a lot. So I expect that and that’s you know, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know that going in, that’s fine. We’ll see how it goes in practice but I’m not concerned really. I’m looking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forward to the all-wheel drive. I’m looking forward to seeing how it performs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in horrible conditions. And yeah, that’s it. I had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to start up my snowblower recently, which was interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Did you end up with a gas one or an electric one? I don’t recall.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I ended up with a gas one. It was delivered about a day after the last snow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of last season. Naturally. So, it was, so the guy who delivered it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco started it up for me to show me how to do it, and then put it in the garage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and waited for snow, which never came. So at the end of the season, various people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who knew about such things… Because I’ve never owned a gas-powered lawn appliance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of any sort, so I had no idea how to take care of them. So I asked some friends and did some research
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the internet and asked the company who made it, did their support thing. And basically, the recommended
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing that they said was like, you know, to basically drain the engine, like to run it dry.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I had to start it up once like in April to do this, to just run it dry
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the little bit of gas that they delivered it with. Took me a very long time to figure out how to start it up, even though it has electric start.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what your Tesla has done to you. You don’t even know how to start an internal combustion engine anymore. Exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And, you know, it has like, you know, like the choke squishy thing and there’s all sorts of stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on there and I’m like I don’t know how to do this. The squishy thing, that is a technical
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah. And so then that was like April and I put it away all summer. And then so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just like two weeks ago or last week I had to finally take it out again because everyone says
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you should like start it up, make sure it starts, you know, gas it up before the big snowstorm, which okay that makes sense.
⏹️ ▶️ John I never do that. I know you’re totally not supposed to and they’re right. I just I thought about that
⏹️ ▶️ John earlier like at the same time you were probably thinking about it. I had that same thought. And I said, you know what? I’ve never done that before,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I’m probably not going to do it again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. So, you know, I put gas in it. And of course, because A,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m me, and B, I don’t want to deal with it. I’m using the expensive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco special gas that comes in like broke spray-sized cans that has the premixed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco treatments and everything. So it’s optimized for this engine. So basically, I don’t have to use any kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco preserver, and it’s stable. And you could order it by mail for some reason. I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how that’s legal, but you can. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I put in a little bit of my fancy gas, and I wish
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was video recording myself trying to start this up again, because of course I completely forgot the procedure.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And also, of course, I was too lazy to go find the instruction book. In case he wasn’t there to read
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly. I did eventually get it. Well, in case you would have needed it, because like a real person who’s operated gas things before.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not one of these people.
⏹️ ▶️ John Was it really any more complicated than flipping a switch, pumping a few things,
⏹️ ▶️ John and hitting the starter, and maybe moving a choke lever? Was there really more to it? Am I not
⏹️ ▶️ John grasping the full complexity of this?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that ended up being right. Okay, so somehow I got it started eventually. I pushed a bunch of things,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and turned a bunch of things, and twisted a bunch of things, and pulled some things, and eventually it worked. And then eventually I’m like, why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is it sputtering so much oh I got to turn this thing from start to go and so yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it was I wish I wish you were there to laugh at me during this process
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wish I was there to laugh at
⏹️ ▶️ John you like a friendly neighbor to come over to put you out of your misery
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I mean you’re right the fact that I had an
⏹️ ▶️ John electrical starter really dampens the the comedy effect because if it had a pull start
⏹️ ▶️ John that would have been way more fun to watch you do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well I couldn’t get the electric start to work I eventually and but I eventually pulled it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it started up upon pulling it with such ease
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I don’t know if that’s because it’s new or because maybe the electric start like assisted it upon pulling it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because when I was trying to those shirt like there’s a button next to where the plug goes in it’s unlabeled
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I plugged it in and I push it and just did like nothing happened no response at all so I don’t know if the electric
⏹️ ▶️ Marco start is broken or if I just I need to read the manual but story of your life
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I did end up pull starting it and it was super easy like I was picturing like you know when you see somebody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like trying to pull for a really old lawnmower and they’re like the pulling like with all their bodily
⏹️ ▶️ John brand new and they have like you know modern things are way easier
⏹️ ▶️ John to pull start than they used to be first of all second of all the thing is brand new of course it better pull it better be firing before you even
⏹️ ▶️ John get through the first pull
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s yeah I mean I had to pull once and I was like oh now it’s going like okay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so yeah I did eventually figure this out it was comical I do wish you guys were there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because you would have had a ball making fun of me and I do wish it was on video but unfortunately I was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not planning ahead. You
⏹️ ▶️ John all fun making fun of me when for when I this will be the year that my snowblower my snowblower
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s what 16 years old or whatever that I do zero maintenance on that should have died like a decade
⏹️ ▶️ John ago this will be the year that it dies. Yeah it’s old as your Mac Pro. Yeah it’s older than my Mac Pro and I take less
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey and every year I think this is
⏹️ ▶️ John this is gonna be the year this thing doesn’t start and And every year it’s like, nope, still going, but we’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. And I always wait until there’s four feet of snow in front of my garage. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John when I say, well, I wonder if this thing’s gonna start this year.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t start it ahead of time. The only preparation I do is I usually make sure I have fuel for it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I do that because you can’t really get out to get fuel when there’s four feet of snow. You can have fancy
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, this is not
⏹️ ▶️ John fancy gas. This is the opposite, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the opposite of fancy gas is, this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One of the main reasons I went with fancy gas besides that I’m you know I didn’t want to deal with like stabilizers in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the winter or in the summer and also I don’t think I’m gonna really use a lot of gas in this so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I you know I don’t think it’s gonna matter really but if you’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John run it dry anyway before you put it away like yeah whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wanted to be doubly sure anyway but I was also like one of the reasons also is like I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t like the idea of driving to a gas station in my Tesla and filling up a gas can and putting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it in the back best
⏹️ ▶️ John like when people ask you questions about You’re like this car is so fuel-efficient. All I need is this one gallon
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s no tanks like no you don’t need a tank with a Tesla you just fill up a little tub this this will last me all week
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey totally believe you I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Actually saw a Model X today, which we I see Model S’s Reasonably often
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in Richmond, but I saw a Model X today. It was very surprising still not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sure if I like the look It’s not gross. It’s not Actively offensive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me, but I don’t think I terribly like it either.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, the X, it looks a lot like a minivan. It really does. It doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John minivan. It looks like a crappy SUV crossover turd thing. That’s a minivan.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, a minivan is a minivan. A minivan looks better than the Model X. I like the minivan shape. It’s even a more
⏹️ ▶️ John honest loaf of bread for transporting kids than these things, which are like…
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m a Jeep Cherokee that’s been squeezed out of somebody’s butt. Wow! My word.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that’s like… I do not like
⏹️ ▶️ John it. The closest I think I’ve come to ever liking one of those is like, some of the big Mercedes
⏹️ ▶️ John SUV shape things are not embarrassing looking, and a couple of the Land Rover ones
⏹️ ▶️ John might have a reasonable shape if their service details weren’t that bad, but the X is gross.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will say, X6, not bad. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t like the pony, though.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey X6 oh yeah, God adjust your eyeballs sir.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s it’s it’s kind of like it’s kind of like tie-iced tea You know the first if you first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see it you’re like oh, that’s weird, but then you’re like okay I kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get it like I kind of like I don’t I know I tie-iced tea more You know I don’t I don’t think I would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever want an x6 for any reason But if I were forced to drive one I’d be like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all right. Yeah, I could deal with this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, no no no no no vetoed, application denied, no.