catatp.fm Unofficial Accidental Tech Podcast transcripts (generated by computer, so expect errors).

201: Volume Micromanager

Super Mario Run, AirPods, tabs vs. apps, and Cook on desktops.

Episode Description:

Sponsored by:

  • CocoaConf: A technical conference for Apple developers and designers. Get 15% off tickets for Yosemite (March 20–23) and Chicago (April 21–22) with code ATP.
  • SQLPro: A simple, powerful database manager for macOS. Use code ATP20 for 20% off.
  • Wesell Socks: Awesome socks delivered monthly. Put your best foot forward.

MP3 Header

Transcribed using Whisper large_v2 (transcription) + WAV2VEC2_ASR_LARGE_LV60K_960H (alignment) + Pyannote (speaker diaritization).

Chapters

  1. The Tabs of Siracusa County
  2. Follow-up
  3. Super Mario Run review(s)
  4. Sponsor: Wesell Socks
  5. AirPods review
  6. Sponsor: SQL Pro (code ATP20)
  7. Tim Cook on desktops 🖼️
  8. Sponsor: CocoaConf (code ATP)
  9. Software development on iOS?
  10. Ending theme
  11. Post-show 🖼️

The Tabs of Siracusa County

⏹️ ▶️ Casey The correct title for this episode is John Syracuse was wrong about something.

⏹️ ▶️ John You two. You two love, love, love, love just

⏹️ ▶️ John listening and jumping on something you think is wrong. Both at once. Well, it’s not that we think it’s wrong.

⏹️ ▶️ John It is wrong. Oh, no, you think. You think. Are you saying this is only children? Now

⏹️ ▶️ John it takes me ten minutes to explain what I actually said. But, you know, it’s a thing. No, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco were wrong. Where’s that window? I have so many windows open I can’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco find it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Actually, it’s funny you say that. I have one, two, three, four, five, six

⏹️ ▶️ Casey different desktops running, which is more than I usually do, and they’re not in the places I usually leave them,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is a problem of my own creation. I have three,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what is it, spaces is the official macOS term, virtual desktops. I have three of them,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey like a maniac. I have probably 15 open across all my browsers. This

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is ridiculous, I tell

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco you. 15,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John. I have 15 tabs across probably well I guess I can figure this out. How many browser windows?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Three browser windows and I have like maybe 15 tabs open. Maybe. You might have more tabs open

⏹️ ▶️ Casey than I do. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco unmanageable, I tell you. Tell you what, listening back to the Windows of Syracuse Accounting last

⏹️ ▶️ Marco week during

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey the edit. Oh, so good. So good.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I kept listening after the clip I pasted and man, it just it holds up. Like it yeah I mean

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Casey and I sound like garbage because we have terrible microphones and like we like recording at the bottom of a well

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like everything’s all echoey and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John sound terrible.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco John had his good microphone by then so he sounds perfect for chorus because he sounds frustratingly good but the most difficult to use microphone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of all of us and naturally but if you if you get past the audio quality oh my god that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco holds up so well.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s probably my favorite episode of ATP that has ever happened.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh god so good. The best part was And I think it’s kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey like Top Gear at its finest, which was, it was completely

⏹️ ▶️ Casey genuine. Like genuinely, we had no idea where this conversation was going.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the two of us, like my recollection, Mark, I haven’t listened to it outside of what you put in the show.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey The two of us, Marco and I, were just completely stupefied, dumbfounded,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey flabbergasted that what was unfolding in front of us was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey real life. I could not believe John and still can’t that you feel

⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that was an acceptable way to manage your windows and browsers and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John tabs and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey whatnot.

⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t you realize that it’s only a matter of time before both of you eventually adopt that

⏹️ ▶️ John the quantities so ludicrously discussed. I can’t believe these numbers

⏹️ ▶️ John are so big. It’s blowing my mind. It’s only a matter of time before I mean, you’re getting close already. You were making jokes

⏹️ ▶️ John about 15 tabs. I mean, I don’t how many tabs do I have an open Chrome right now? I have two Chrome windows

⏹️ ▶️ John open with one, two, three, four, five, six. I have 12. 12 tabs, two windows, six tabs each.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honestly, I’d be surprised if both the Mac and the web

⏹️ ▶️ Marco last long enough for us to get to that point.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, here

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco we

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John go.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s the Marco we know and love.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Welcome back.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco One of those

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John is going to… I mean, come

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on. Like, what are the chances, really? Let’s be realistic

⏹️ ▶️ John here. But tabs will live forever. Hopefully not in multiple rows, Windows style, because that was ridiculous.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I don’t know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco will tabs live forever? Do you think there’s a future? Honest question. So everyone around

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this part of the commentosphere seems to have some idea of what the future of computing is like.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The future of computing so far does not seem to contain tabs much, if at

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all. What do you think about

⏹️ ▶️ John that? Sure it does. They’re in Safari on the iPad, so they’re safe for the future, but I really

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco want to put a

⏹️ ▶️ John pin in the commentosphere thing, a big pin, a pin that fatally wounds that

⏹️ ▶️ John word and cause it to die and never escape from where it is pinned down.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Would you rather I start a vlog, John? Is that

⏹️ ▶️ John better?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco A V-log?

⏹️ ▶️ John I just feel like you don’t need to go to Commentosphere.

⏹️ ▶️ John You could pick something, anything else. Blogosphere?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s just as bad.

⏹️ ▶️ John No, Blogosphere is better.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It’s still bad, but it’s better.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, honestly, though, so you mentioned, like, okay, there’s obviously tabs in web browsers even

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on iPads and stuff. Well, how much of computing these days is happening in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco web browsers? And how much of the web browser part of it is happening

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on mobile, which is where the future apparently is? Like, the future… Like, if I’m using the Amazon

⏹️ ▶️ Marco app, I can’t do crap with tabs. I can’t do anything. If I’m using some other app, like, if I’m working

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in an app, it’s up to each individual app to support tabs. Like, there was this relatively briefly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco brief span in computer history where we did a whole bunch of stuff in PC based

⏹️ ▶️ Marco web browsers. So there was this time that I think is is pretty clearly fading

⏹️ ▶️ Marco where we could have the amount of ridiculous tabs that John had and we could have all

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this stuff open and different you know everything was a URL and we could have multiple windows to everything we

⏹️ ▶️ Marco did because everything was basically a web app. That time is clearly fading away and we’re moving

⏹️ ▶️ Marco towards and and very much already in this other thing with custom apps for almost everything,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of them on phones. And in that era, in the current

⏹️ ▶️ Marco paradigm that we have here, I don’t actually think that we’re gonna get to a point where the type of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco keeping all this stuff open, that type of multitasking is really not gonna be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco possible in this world for the foreseeable future.

⏹️ ▶️ John People love tabs, you can’t stop tabs. They might not be on web browsers, they might be on the future mobile

⏹️ ▶️ John Facebook app that it will have tabs, but people love tabs. Until something comes to replace tabs,

⏹️ ▶️ John tabs will be a thing. It doesn’t mean that their tabs have to be what they are on PCs today, which is like

⏹️ ▶️ John the document model, but instead of multiple windows, you have a single window with multiple tabs and they’re interchangeable. That doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John mean that they have to be that. I’m just talking about like tabs, like little things that when you hit them, switch

⏹️ ▶️ John it. I mean, you could just call it the segmented control in OS X. That counts as tabs too, because they actually used to be

⏹️ ▶️ John tabs back in the, where you guys never used Macs back on those were actual tabs, right? No, no, no.

⏹️ ▶️ John I remember when they were tabs. Yeah, that’s what I’m saying, but like if you go to like system preferences now and go, what is it called,

⏹️ ▶️ John Marco? You don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco The segmented control? I need

⏹️ ▶️ John one of your Mac programmers. Yeah, the segmented control used to be tabs. It used to be rendered as tabs and they changed it to

⏹️ ▶️ John this big long capsule. Somewhere around 10.3, 10.4, I forget when they switched it.

⏹️ ▶️ John Weird. Go find it. They were big, shiny,

⏹️ ▶️ John glossy, aqua tabs. They were like the the the aquaest tabs

⏹️ ▶️ John you have ever seen.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know it would be really cool if there was some sort of resource that existed that we could go to to see lots of screenshots

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and intense discussion about old versions of Mac OS or excuse me OS 10.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Man that would be awesome wouldn’t it?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No but honestly like I really do wonder how this the way that we like to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco work with all with tons of windows and tabs and of course John takes to a whole other level. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is Is there room in what we know today as the iOS and mobile paradigm,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and what everyone says is the future of computing, and what Apple seems to be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not only saying is the future, but also allocating resources in order to basically force it to be our only

⏹️ ▶️ Marco choice for the future, is there room in that for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of power

⏹️ ▶️ Casey users? I don’t know. I think that tabs are the easiest

⏹️ ▶️ Casey way to punt on like Having multiple things open at once,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, you don’t need to do a full-on windowing system You just have a little tab control at the top

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the bottom and I mean think about UI tab bar in iOS I mean, that’s those are still tabs strictly speaking.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Well,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco no, that’s like that’s different like tabs the way we’re talking about are like are not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way a segmented controller or a tab bar would would like separate out different functions of the same app. That’s just how

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you arrange one Windows interface. I’m talking about the way what browser tabs are and then what

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sierra

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John introduced

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as kind of for any document-based app, where you can basically spawn as many tabs as you want, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco each one is like an independent document or window for that application. And the problem is, on iOS,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps are not designed to have multiple windows at all. So you can’t even simulate this easily

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for all apps. apps. Basically, all apps would have to be rewritten to support multiple Windows on iOS,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not to mention whatever kind of complexity the iOS UI itself

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would have to add for people to manage their Windows, which I’m sure would not be good enough for John.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wonder, is the idea of having all these things open

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a relic of the past that’s going to die with the Mac, which might be sooner rather than later? I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco know

⏹️ ▶️ John what to be clear. I was actually just talking about them as again Not as like browser tabs or a separate organs,

⏹️ ▶️ John but as just the plain old UI control so the iOS ones would count as in a Horizontal strip that

⏹️ ▶️ John has a bunch of things in it and when you hit one of the things a larger area above or below it Changes to reflect

⏹️ ▶️ John the thing that you hit and only one of them can be selected at a time So that’s totally what I was talking about if you’re talking about specifically

⏹️ ▶️ John the idea that it’s user-controlled Arbitrary in which case like a tab bar wouldn’t count and that’s a different thing

⏹️ ▶️ John But I’m just saying people like the idea of a strip where you can hit a thing

⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s always visible. It’s like radio buttons basically. You can only pick one of them, only one can be active at once, and when you pick it,

⏹️ ▶️ John the whole rest of some large area changes to reflect the thing that you picked. Tabs, people love them.

⏹️ ▶️ John I pasted a bunch of ones in there. I think I got up to what, 10, 10-2?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh, wow, pinstripes. I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John know if it’s 10-3. Look at those tabs though. Are those not the tabbiest tabs? That same control. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John change they changed the appearance in I think 10-5 ish I haven’t gotten up to that to look like segmented

⏹️ ▶️ John control So it was like your same code all of a sudden would go from that to what you see today more or less

⏹️ ▶️ John with the segmented controls

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it isn’t it isn’t just the the Bar of words the top is it the whole

⏹️ ▶️ Marco frame there that makes it the whole card Thing around it.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s it’s exactly the same as the segmented control Like so if you look at this look at one of these things and then just go

⏹️ ▶️ John to like system preferences today if you just took this code and were able to run it today, it would look like

⏹️ ▶️ John it does with the little recessed well. I think I had a graphic because the cool thing was like, they would change the original

⏹️ ▶️ John implementation, they would change the texture of the well, like the inset period, or

⏹️ ▶️ John inset area, to be darker. So if you nested a bunch of them, it would just get darker and darker and darker and darker. It was fun.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, Windows did that too.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Oh, Windows did the double row of tabs, which was just.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, but Windows had, I believe they called it frames, but it was like a, it was the similar kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing where you’d have the inset area with a label or tab row at the top.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But of course Windows did it uglier, but more affordably.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, that reminds me, I’ll use this to segue into follow-up.

Follow-up

⏹️ ▶️ Casey We had a handful of people write in and say that they are Microsoft employees that listen to the show

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Woof, I’m sorry

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco turns out there are some not.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I’m not sorry. You’re a Microsoft employee I’m just sorry that well for basically anything we’ve ever said about

⏹️ ▶️ Casey anything Microsoft product except apparently the surface

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m sure we said we say nice things about Microsoft products all the time

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah And I from what I understand from from what I hear from people who work there or have worked there It actually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sounds like it’s a pretty good place to work. Is that right?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I don’t know that. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah. I’ve always, I’ve only ever heard good things about the Microsoft

⏹️ ▶️ Marco work environment and just like the kind of place it is to work.

⏹️ ▶️ John You never had Microsoft or learned about stack ranking and stuff like that.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco There’s bad things about Microsoft, believe me.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But when they’re being ranked, they’d be in a really nice office.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, goodness. In any case, so I just wanted to thank those of you who have written in that are Microsoft employees.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey all were quick to point out that they were not in the Surface Studio Group and they didn’t know anyone from the Surface Studio

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Group, which was unfortunate. However, it was still nice of them to write in, so thank you for that. Secondly,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John’s extraordinarily nerdy and fiddly wish for a battery burndown chart.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Guess where it exists, kids? It exists in Android, because why wouldn’t it?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I didn’t know what a burndown chart was, as you correctly predicted during the show, but I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco did of course find that afterwards from all the people telling us Android has it and showing us what they look like. And yeah, that actually looks pretty useful. I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would love that. And I think now the door is open for people

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make that for the Mac as a little battery widget for the menu bar. Honestly, it probably already exists.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I probably just don’t know about it. But that would be… I believe the market for that on the Mac

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is now very real. And I hope that either it already exists and it’s good or that somebody makes a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco good one.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so there’s that.

Super Mario Run review(s)

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mario Run is now a thing. It’s out. I personally have yet to try it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve been extremely busy, but it’s out It’s a thing And if you’re John Syracuse,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s Mario run. So John, how do you like Mario run?

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s what I thought it would be. I mean, we’ve all seen the videos it plays like it plays. It’s fine You

⏹️ ▶️ John know, the online thing is annoying the the UI that they put in there is is weird

⏹️ ▶️ John the first run experience is cruddy, but As I said last week,

⏹️ ▶️ John they get the first one for free because there’s just so much pent-up demand for a Nintendo game on iOS

⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s a popular property. And so the first thing in the show notes was like, oh, it’s been downloaded 2.8 million times

⏹️ ▶️ John the first day. And then we have updated numbers 40 million times in the first four days.

⏹️ ▶️ John And Phil Schiller made a statement, Nintendo made a statement. as this is the

⏹️ ▶️ John fastest selling, fastest downloaded game, not fastest selling, fastest downloaded game

⏹️ ▶️ John ever. And then these various companies try to estimate how many people are actually buying it based on the top

⏹️ ▶️ John charts and all of that other stuff, guessing that maybe 4%

⏹️ ▶️ John of the people who downloaded it actually paid for it at its astronomical $10 price. And so

⏹️ ▶️ John that means it made like $16 million, which is, you know, it’s pretty darn good. I’m not I’m not going to sneeze that money.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if it has already made back the amount of money it costs to develop it, considering they use a third-party

⏹️ ▶️ John engine for it and had another developer, I think, help them actually do the dev

⏹️ ▶️ John work. Yeah, so it’s going well.

⏹️ ▶️ John Their second game that they release, I guess they’ll probably still do okay on the second game because it’ll be a different property or whatever. But

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a lot of people who are sending feedback saying, or sending me reviews that saying that

⏹️ ▶️ John this shows that Nintendo or whoever helped them develop this game really understands

⏹️ ▶️ John the mobile platform because it’s a great mobile game and it’s good it’s fine it’s a good mobile game but I still feel

⏹️ ▶️ John like it is taking an existing game a 2d Mario game you

⏹️ ▶️ John go run from left to right with Mario and you jump and stuff taking that and finding a way to make it

⏹️ ▶️ John work on mobile which is different than starting from scratch and finding a good

⏹️ ▶️ John mobile game idea and it’s It’s different in subtle ways. I keep

⏹️ ▶️ John comparing it to Alto’s Adventure. Isn’t Alto’s Adventure exactly the same thing? You just go from left to right and you press a button

⏹️ ▶️ John to do some stuff. I would argue that it is not quite the same thing because Alto’s Adventure

⏹️ ▶️ John is not an established franchise skiing

⏹️ ▶️ John platformer ported to single button press thing. It’s conceived from the beginning to be

⏹️ ▶️ John a game for mobile. I find it more pleasing than a Mario game, partially because

⏹️ ▶️ John when I see him running from left to right, I have certain expectations

⏹️ ▶️ John of gameplay and realizing that they had to subvert that and find a way, and

⏹️ ▶️ John to their credit they did, but find a way to make it interesting, novel, and fun while

⏹️ ▶️ John taking away freedoms that you expect when you see a static screenshot.

⏹️ ▶️ John expect to be able to stop and run left and I expect to run into a Goomba and

⏹️ ▶️ John die instead of automatically vaulting over him. Like, changing his expectations, like, you’re getting a lot of praise. So

⏹️ ▶️ John isn’t that clever? They chose just the right balance of things to make the game different and fun

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. It’s like, but you are taking a different kind of game and dressing it up and cosplaying it

⏹️ ▶️ John as a Mario game. And I think it’s a good game and people should totally get it. It’s well worth

⏹️ ▶️ John the $10 you pay for it. It is I’m not saying this to say it’s not a good

⏹️ ▶️ John game, and you shouldn’t buy it But I think Nintendo has not yet made

⏹️ ▶️ John a game conceived for the Mobile platform like

⏹️ ▶️ John I would be fine if I had their mascots and everything But just like don’t in the same way that Mario plays soccer. He

⏹️ ▶️ John plays baseball. He plays I don’t know forget every sport he plays he drives around and Go cars and stuff

⏹️ ▶️ John in the same way that you can take that property and put it on a different genre They have not

⏹️ ▶️ John yet taken that property and put it on a genre or a style of game made

⏹️ ▶️ John for mobile first instead they’ve taken an existing game style, which is the 2d platformer

⏹️ ▶️ John and Modified it to work better in this environment that I find And I

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think that’s a sustainable Business for them. It was just a way to get people into larger franchises. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ John fine but I’m still looking forward to the day where they come up with a

⏹️ ▶️ John game concept and idea that is for mobile first

⏹️ ▶️ John and Truly plays to the strengths of that platform in the way the Pokemon go did basically But you

⏹️ ▶️ John know not not that specific franchise like for a mare or whatever and then put whatever IP on

⏹️ ▶️ John it You want call it Metroid pinball? I don’t care whatever you you know whatever Graphics you have to put on it to make it palatable

⏹️ ▶️ John make people buy it fine But they aren’t quite there yet, so I continue to view this as them dipping

⏹️ ▶️ John their toes in making some money making some mistakes by making it online only and doing

⏹️ ▶️ John silly things on first launch like making people pick their country from a really long list instead of using location services

⏹️ ▶️ John and so on and so forth but if you know but this is only a way to

⏹️ ▶️ John get people on to their other platforms which by the way even though these numbers look big

⏹️ ▶️ John they still make more money selling one of their other games on their own platforms because every single person who buys one of those

⏹️ ▶️ John games pays for it whereas this 40 million downloads those aren’t all paying $10 for things. So

⏹️ ▶️ John right now it still looks like a hedge. And if they’re going to commit to it,

⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll be able to tell when they start getting serious about the game’s development for these platforms. Right now

⏹️ ▶️ John it still seems like they’re going for the Switch. And so we’ll see how that turns out for them.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, have you played

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this at all? Of course I have. It’s my job to stay current on the world of video games.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s a no? I honestly have. I honestly have enjoyed this game. It is currently on my home screen.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know how long it will stay there, but it is currently there and I use it as a fun diversion.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think they did overall a really good job with it. There are areas of it that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco drive me nuts. The internet connection thing hasn’t hit me yet because I don’t have a real job anymore,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it will hit me next week when I’m traveling and when I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in areas with poor reception, it will definitely hit me then. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco overall, it’s a really fun game. I really enjoy it. I like, like what I’m doing is, rather

⏹️ ▶️ Marco than just blowing through all the levels, I’m not moving on until I’ve gotten

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least the first two coin colors, the pink and the purple, in each level.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so like, what I like about this game is that, while I’m probably playing it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wrong by whatever John would say I’m supposed to play it, This game allows

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you to play it kind of however you want. You can go through everything you can do. Like I haven’t even done

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Toad’s Racetrack or whatever that is. I haven’t built anything. I haven’t redeemed any of the various currencies

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve been earning or whatever. All I’ve been doing is playing the levels to get the coins, that’s it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’ve currently gotten through only World 1 doing it this way. I haven’t even gotten

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the second row yet because I’m not very good at video games, turns out. But it’s fun.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I like this, this allows you, I don’t like how much overhead there is, like in waiting

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for menus and stuff and waiting for loading screens. I’m not crazy about that. There’s like, to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco me, like an iOS game like this is something that you should be able to play while waiting online for something quickly.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they have, there’s a lot of friction involved in like getting started with this game. And that’s,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know if Nintendo is just incapable of not doing it that way, or if they just think it’s the right thing to do. I don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, I just like it. It’s fun. I am not analyzing it too deeply, I’m just having fun with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, because I’ve always been more of a casual Nintendo fan, I’m not like a super diehard Nintendo

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fan, or a diehard gamer for that matter. So, I’m having fun with it, it’s nice, I bought the Unlock,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not gonna give it a one star review, and that’s it. I’m having

⏹️ ▶️ John fun with it. Yeah, that phenomenon was the other story about this, the fact that Nintendo released what

⏹️ ▶️ John I think anyone would have to say is a really good iOS game, like despite whatever stumbles in the first

⏹️ ▶️ John launch, but it’s a good game, it’s a fun game, people enjoy playing it and their reviews are being massacred

⏹️ ▶️ John by people who don’t want to pay money. Mostly by people who say this game is so fun

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s so mean of you to ask me for money for it. Why couldn’t you give me this game that’s… I love this game.

⏹️ ▶️ John Isn’t my loving this game enough for me to get it for free? Huge number of reviews saying

⏹️ ▶️ John not worth $10. I love the people who are like I would pay seven but not ten. It’s like

⏹️ ▶️ John come on

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco people. Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John welcome to the App Store. There’s so many things wrong with the App Store and I always wonder

⏹️ ▶️ John who reads those reviews hoping to find out. In many ways, this game is review proof

⏹️ ▶️ John because if people are actually able to confirm that it is actually a Nintendo game

⏹️ ▶️ John and not a scam, which is a topic that we keep pushing down on the show, and maybe we’ll get to in a future show,

⏹️ ▶️ John if they’re able to make that determination, no one’s reading the reviews saying, this is the one and only Mario game on the App

⏹️ ▶️ John Store. Let me read the reviews first. The reviews on the app store, maybe people read reviews on their

⏹️ ▶️ John favorite like tech site if they really care, but people know whether they want a Mario game, especially since it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John free to download, just get it. The only people who are taking to the review section after,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I want to play this game but I can’t spend ten dollars, I have to think most of those people

⏹️ ▶️ John are younger people, children who literally

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have ten dollars to spend. I just can’t imagine someone getting angry about $10 for

⏹️ ▶️ John Nintendo games and taking to the reviews about it. Being angry or not signing up to buy it, fine. Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco John. You have never had an app in the App

⏹️ ▶️ John Store. For Nintendo games specifically, I’m thinking, because, you know… No,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it doesn’t matter. I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John think it matters. It doesn’t matter at all. Someone who is angry about their note-taking app or whatever, I can

⏹️ ▶️ John understand them going to it because those are adults, but these have to be children.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco John, when you tell me what it’s like to have a real job, I’m telling you what it’s like to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have an

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John app in the app store. You’ve

⏹️ ▶️ John never put a Nintendo game on the app, so obviously if you’re creating an app for adults. It

⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t matter, John. That’s the thing, it doesn’t matter. How many people, how many of those, you know, okay, so first

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of all, they’ve had, what is this, 40 million downloads? So it doesn’t take a lot, a high percentage of those

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to result in tons of

⏹️ ▶️ John reviews.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Right.

⏹️ ▶️ John So that’s why I think most of those one-star reviews complaining about the price are young

⏹️ ▶️ John people or children, because it doesn’t take a lot of them to, you know, to do the top 50 reviews.

⏹️ ▶️ John There’s 40 million people, 50 of them, the 50 cranky children. You know, who spends the time

⏹️ ▶️ John to write a review for a Nintendo game? Like, again, it’s review-proof.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like a Star Wars movie.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t understand why you’re hanging your hat… Why are you hanging your hat on Nintendo? Nobody gives a crap that it’s Nintendo.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Bingo.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All they care about is that it’s a game that they want to play, but they have to pay for it and they’re pissed off.

⏹️ ▶️ John But, but, no, but adults understand that no one is going to look at reviews for a Nintendo

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey game.

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey no. Oh, they

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco really don’t.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Trust me, they don’t. If

⏹️ ▶️ John you are an adult who left an angry review about a $10 game, about this

⏹️ ▶️ John specific $10 game, please write in to us and tell us why you think it was a good idea for you to

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco spend your time writing

⏹️ ▶️ John a review for a Nintendo game, for the one and only, the first Nintendo game.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey You don’t understand.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You are getting clouded by your own love of Nintendo. You are so out of touch on this one.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And your own faith in adults, apparently.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not about love of Nintendo. It’s about the idea I can’t imagine in an adult Wasting

⏹️ ▶️ John the time for to write an angry review about it the one and only Nintendo game on the App Store

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Just feel free

⏹️ ▶️ John to hate it feel free to not spend $10 on it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco There are a lot of angry naive children of all ages

⏹️ ▶️ John I know I agree with that, but I feel like those people are writing angry reviews about a $2 note-taking app They’re

⏹️ ▶️ John not writing angry reviews about a $10 Mario game. They very much

⏹️ ▶️ Casey are oh you are so wrong John

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey So let me put it to you differently. Well, first of all, most of you don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John know that because there’s no ages attached to this thing and neither one of you have written the one and only Nintendo game or the App Store. So

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not arguing whether there are adults sending angry reviews about note-taking apps. Of course there are. You can

⏹️ ▶️ John tell that there are adults writing angry reviews about a $2 note-taking app. I know they’re out there. But for the Nintendo

⏹️ ▶️ John game, I feel like it’s gotta be young people. It

⏹️ ▶️ Casey doesn’t matter, John. It doesn’t matter if it’s Nintendo or Vesper or Your

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mom or 123 Notetaker. It doesn’t matter. The fact of the matter is, it’s $10 they don’t want to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey spend. Let me give you an example. Just today I was at Target and I realized that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Captain America Civil War is out. And whether or not you, collective you, liked that movie, I enjoyed

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it and I wanted to buy it on Blu-ray. It was $15. So it was $15 for me to legally purchase a movie.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Think about the incredible hoops adults go through. Adults who

⏹️ ▶️ Casey make over $100,000 a year go through in order to rip off a $15

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Blu-ray. Think of all the trucks that they look in to see if

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the back has come off of them to save $15 on a movie. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you think that they’re going to say, oh, well, this is Nintendo. They’re okay. They get a buy.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hell

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John no.

⏹️ ▶️ John No, you’re misunderstanding what I’m saying. Those people are not writing angry reviews. They’re not going to

⏹️ ▶️ John Best Buy and going to the bottom of the Best Buy store section where you buy Civil War and saying, this movie

⏹️ ▶️ John isn’t worth $15. I would maybe pay $10 for it, but $15 is too much, one star. Have you seen Amazon reviews? Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey come on.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John There’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of people out there who will complain about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John anything. No, they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John not. They’re just because they’re just going to go get the movie another way. And it’s not because they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John laying off because it’s Nintendo. It’s because they realize that nothing they can say in the comment section

⏹️ ▶️ John of a Nintendo game has any relevance to anybody. No one is reading the comment section to decide whether they want a Mario game

⏹️ ▶️ John or not.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s where this is the flaw in your logic, John. These people who leave one-star

⏹️ ▶️ Marco reviews think they have power. They think this will hurt their sales. They

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think that people will be forced to read this, that people will respond to it somehow. They think they’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco voting with their one star. They really do think they are powerful and they are gonna

⏹️ ▶️ Marco register their complaint and it’s going to make a difference and someone’s gonna have to face them. Yeah, but that’s true

⏹️ ▶️ John on note-taking apps because people do read reviews on note-taking apps because they have to find which one of the 8,000 note-taking apps

⏹️ ▶️ John is any good. So they actually do have power on the note-taking apps because by millions of people leaving credit

⏹️ ▶️ John reviews, people will sort, you know, try to find ones that have high

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey star ratings.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You are so confusing logic with emotion. No, this is so

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco wrong. There

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is no logic in App Store reviewers.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I

⏹️ ▶️ John understand about venting. I understand all those things. Look, look, we don’t have demographics, so nobody

⏹️ ▶️ John actually knows the ages of these people leaving reviews. You can try to surmise the ages by the grammar and punctuation,

⏹️ ▶️ John but

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey that is… I’m not so

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco sure you can. No, that doesn’t work

⏹️ ▶️ John either. You know, but it gives you something to hang your hat on. Like, that’s all we’ve got to go on.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the record show on the 21st of December in the year 2016, John Syracuse was finally

⏹️ ▶️ Casey wrong about something. John

⏹️ ▶️ John Sarkisian You have no idea who was right or wrong because we don’t have the demographics. You’re just assuming. John Sarkisian No, we know you’re wrong.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I

⏹️ ▶️ John would love to see the demo on this. John Sarkisian It’s kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like John Sarkisian There’s 40 million people. It’s all the demographics, John. Come on. John

⏹️ ▶️ John Sarkisian Yeah, exactly. John Sarkisian Yeah, there’s 40 million people. But do you think the 40 million people are evenly distributed

⏹️ ▶️ John and the people who write reviews, like demographically speaking, there’s an even distribution?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey John Sarkisian No, of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey course not. I don’t think it’s a bell curve hovering around 10 year olds though.

⏹️ ▶️ John Alright, here, let’s put it this way. Let’s say distribution-wise for gender,

⏹️ ▶️ John what do you think the distribution is of gender of people who write angry reviews as compared to the purchasers? So let’s say the purchasers

⏹️ ▶️ John are 50-50. What do you think the distribution is of angry commenters? Probably a little

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bit more male, but probably not as much as you think. A little bit more? I’m going

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John to go like 98-2% male. I

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey would agree with John on that one. I would agree with John on that. 98-2% male.

⏹️ ▶️ John This is an example of how the demographics of commenters can be wildly out

⏹️ ▶️ John of line with demographics of downloaders or purchasers. Oh

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sure, however, there is absolutely no way that the people commenting

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on this are only children because the adults know that it doesn’t matter. I

⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t say only, I said mostly. I said mostly, I didn’t say only.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I still disagree. How many children do you know that have iPhones? I know it’s a lot, but still, come on.

⏹️ ▶️ John I include young adults. Like I said, young

⏹️ ▶️ Casey people. Oh, oh, oh, that changes everything.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco These are people of all ages who want to get their satisfaction and want to be heard and want to send a message

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to those greedy, money-grabbing people at Nintendo

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco trust me, this is the App Store. I haven’t read my App Store reviews for Overcast

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in probably two years, and I have been so much more mentally healthy as a result of that,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because for years I would worry, what would the reviewers say? With every change

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I made, with everything I did or didn’t do, I was constantly worried with my apps, like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco will I get more one stars for this? And you know what? It doesn’t matter at all

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the vast majority of the time. If you have any number, if you basically have anybody

⏹️ ▶️ Marco looking for your app for any other reason, if they heard about it somewhere, if they know it by

⏹️ ▶️ Marco name, whatever else, if you have any number of people seeking out your app, the reviews don’t matter.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if you don’t have any number of people seeking out your app, you’re gonna fail anyway. So really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it kind of doesn’t matter. And I can urge all developers

⏹️ ▶️ Marco out there, please, if you read your iTunes reviews, your App Store reviews, same thing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for podcasters, I don’t read those either, take six months and don’t read them and see what happens.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Are you happier? Is anything different? Are your sales any different? Probably not.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it’s so true. So there’s a feedback form within the app

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I work on at work. And it emails a mailing list that’s internal to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the office and all of the developers, iOS and Android, get all of the feedback from both

⏹️ ▶️ Casey iOS and Android. And you would not believe the amount of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey four letter words and demands that we get. Just the other day, I was stunned.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Somebody wrote in, such and such thing doesn’t work. I expect this to be fixed immediately.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like this is just some random schmo writing into the ether. They have no idea who this is going

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to. I expect this to be fixed immediately.” What? And it was clearly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey an adult. This was not a child.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John This was an adult.

⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t have to convince me that adults send angry emails and random feedback about

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey applications they want to use. But

⏹️ ▶️ John not to Nintendo. No, it doesn’t have to… Look, all I’m saying is this specific game, I would say the reviews are

⏹️ ▶️ John skew way more male than the purchasers and skew way younger than the purchasers. Not just

⏹️ ▶️ John by a percentage or two, but hugely. Way more male and way younger.

⏹️ ▶️ John And I would say that if you took the top 10 or 20 angriest one-star reviews complaining

⏹️ ▶️ John solely about price, those are going to be dudes, and they’re going to be between the ages of young enough to be

⏹️ ▶️ John able to write into a review and like 25. I’m not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so convinced. I mean, you might be right. I don’t know. But I doubt

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John it.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s not that they’re all children. It’s not that adults don’t write in angry things to other applications. It’s not that reviews kill other

⏹️ ▶️ John applications. All those things are not things that I said. I said that I have to think that these are mostly children, which

⏹️ ▶️ John nailed down into more concrete terms that these reviewers skew more younger and more male and the more male

⏹️ ▶️ John I think you can both get on board with because

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco honestly

⏹️ ▶️ John like men are terrible like just you know that it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s a gimme right and and and not because people not because men

⏹️ ▶️ John refuse to buy things more than women or anything it’s just that they’re going to tell you about it right uh and and then

⏹️ ▶️ John young people like old people don’t have time for that crap right so it’s just a question of

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco how it’s compared

⏹️ ▶️ John how it skews

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco compared to the demographics

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right the the male part I agree with the youth I agree with I believe these are both like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know It does skew that direction. It’s not all men. It’s not all young people I would write but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but

⏹️ ▶️ John compared to that compared to the purchasers because I think the purchasers It’s probably even gender split from Mario

⏹️ ▶️ John like it’s a popular You

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco know, but I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco will say it is all ages and it doesn’t matter whether they’ve heard of Nintendo or not. Everyone’s heard of Nintendo

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Heard of Nintendo but no, but I think your affection for Nintendo is deeply clouding your perspective

⏹️ ▶️ Casey here We were

⏹️ ▶️ John it has nothing to do with affection It has to do with it with an understanding that the older you get the more you realize what Marco

⏹️ ▶️ John just said That no one reads those reviews to find out whether they’re gonna download a game and all you have left

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco is venting about it And people don’t learn that

⏹️ ▶️ John Eventually give up on venting because they realize

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey oh,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey no, they do not. Are you kidding?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco What do you have you ever been around an old person?

⏹️ ▶️ John All they do is then well, they’re writing to their congressman and sending angry letters to the diner because their soup was cold That’s

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey a

⏹️ ▶️ John different, that’s a different, they find different outlets. Oh

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco no sir.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s a personality type that like, that they, they need to get their satisfaction and they need to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco make their voice heard about every minor complaint in their life. I mean, I can’t, I can’t really talk that much

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about this. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John this personality type,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this does not change over time. This does not, they don’t like grow out of that. That stays

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with people forever, their entire lives, all ages. That stays

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John with

⏹️ ▶️ John people. Well, maybe we have to wait until the generation that grew up with the App Store gets to that age, but they’re not that age yet.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, we’re going in circles on this. Let’s move on. But let the record show.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Anyway, Apple, all you

⏹️ ▶️ John need to do, Apple, is put demographic information attached to all the comments so we

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey can just

⏹️ ▶️ John scroll down there and say, oh, male 18, male 22, male 25. Oh, what a surprise. Oh my god.

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh my

⏹️ ▶️ Casey god. Oh my god.

⏹️ ▶️ John Although, by the way, if you go to like… Let’s try to think of the application that has the audience that

⏹️ ▶️ John skews the oldest. So what the oldest part I guess it’s probably like health related like

⏹️ ▶️ John blood pressure things or like health monitoring

⏹️ ▶️ Marco some broadcast TV apps like an NBC app or something

⏹️ ▶️ John maybe I bet that’s probably broader than you think but no maybe the CBS app. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ John pretty old right.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And I have trouble because

⏹️ ▶️ John those people who are that age didn’t grow up with the app store I have trouble thinking how many of them

⏹️ ▶️ John realize that leaving a review is a thing you can do even oh they know. Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John I agree. They know. I think in small numbers. But anyway.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, John, your innocence is beautiful.

⏹️ ▶️ John I would love to read the angry reviews of the application whose customers

⏹️ ▶️ John skew the oldest. Maybe the AARP app or something. Facebook? Because I think they would look…

⏹️ ▶️ John And comparing them, like sentence structure-wise, like the things they’re angry about, how they express themselves

⏹️ ▶️ John to the angry marriage reviews. I think you could feed the text through one of those like, guess the

⏹️ ▶️ John age and educational level and the year they were born based on the words and sentence structure they use, I

⏹️ ▶️ John think the incredibly angry AARP app reviews would look materially different

⏹️ ▶️ John than the incredibly angry Mario Run reviews. Wow.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we actually have a new sponsor this week. It is called We Sell Socks.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s at wesellsocks.com. And the guy who runs this, it’s a one person operation.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco He’s a fan of the show and he said, I was wondering if I could request that Marco, John and Casey critique the site

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the service, negative and positive on first glance, instead of doing a regular

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ad read. That is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a bold, bold maneuver. My goodness. Terrible idea.

⏹️ ▶️ John John’s critique

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco originally. Has he

⏹️ ▶️ John never listened to the show? It’s a good thing I’m not riled up today. Oh God.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I think we should probably save John for last. Casey, do you want to go first or should I?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Opening hero image, good. Not a movie, good. $14 a month. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a little aggressive depending on how many socks you get and how fancy they are. Scrolling

⏹️ ▶️ Casey down, pretty good calls to action, pretty simple poll quote, good

⏹️ ▶️ Casey FAQs. No, the site looks good. And I don’t, I’m not clear on how many pairs of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey socks you get for $14 a month, but the socks look nice. They’re colorful.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t know. It seems good to me.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I also was not sure. So $14 a month, it says $14 a month delivered worldwide. And I got clarification

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s actually $14 Canadian, which is about $10 US, but there’s a $5 shipping

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in charge on top of that, I believe, and so that ends up being fourteen

⏹️ ▶️ Marco dollars and fifteen cents US including the shipping, so it ends up working out about the same.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So anyway, worldwide shipping, that’s good, and they also do a cool thing where for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco every pair that he sells, and I’m pretty sure I also didn’t know how many pairs you get, I’m pretty sure it’s one pair

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for that, because it’s like these like fancy socks. It’s not like a it isn’t like a pack of Hanes, it’s like these like fancy the designer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco socks like that like people who who are cooler than us would usually wear. Although honestly, I have been thinking

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about whether I want to get into the world of fun socks. Because right now I wear very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey boring things.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco What,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you’re a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John man that wears the same black T-shirt

⏹️ ▶️ Casey every single

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John day.

⏹️ ▶️ John Jeans and black T-shirts, but every day, socks are different.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly. Oh my God, you two are out of control. I need to start drinking, holy crap.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so anyway, and he also does this cool thing where for every pair he sells, he donates a pair

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to a local shelter for people in need.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Oh, that’s pretty cool.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s not like, it doesn’t donate like a crappy pair, he donates a good pair along with the pair that you buy.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, that’s awesome. So it’s a cool mission. I think the site could communicate this better because the thing about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco how that’s $14 a month Canadian and that it’s one pair of socks, I think there needs to be clarification on that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But otherwise, I think it’s pretty cool. I know there are other sock subscription services

⏹️ ▶️ Marco out there, but I would try this one first, honestly. I’ve always, I will reveal a secret to you guys,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have always had a dream of getting a sock subscription service where I could wear

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a pair of brand new socks every day.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Of course, of course. Because the feeling

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of new socks is so awesome, you know. And the reason why I’ve never done this is because it just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco obviously sounds incredibly wasteful. And because what do you do with socks that were worn once, like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for one day? Like you can’t just throw that away. That’s terrible. And nobody really wants used

⏹️ ▶️ Marco socks. So I haven’t ever done this or started this business or patronize any such businesses

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because that would just seem ridiculous. But I feel like one pair of cool new

⏹️ ▶️ Marco socks a month might be a nice compromise. You are the

⏹️ ▶️ John clothing equivalent of the billionaire who smokes a cigarette once and then puts it away.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything about cigarettes, but sure. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I know what you’re referring to. All right.

⏹️ ▶️ John All right. So I did look at ahead time. I had the same question. I think it needs to be clearer how many

⏹️ ▶️ John things you get. Maybe I would throw in some

⏹️ ▶️ John more reassuring text about like if you want to bail you just cancel like

⏹️ ▶️ John stuff like that because you want to overcome people’s you want to tell people what the deal is quickly

⏹️ ▶️ John and overcome people’s anxiety about getting roped into something. As for the concept,

⏹️ ▶️ John Marco aside, which still seems like a little

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey bit of a stretch

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco to me,

⏹️ ▶️ John This is a thing that I have seen, like the idea that interesting socks is part

⏹️ ▶️ John of your look and I can imagine if that was part of something you do just to have

⏹️ ▶️ John fun with your clothing. It’s not that easy to find interesting socks

⏹️ ▶️ John and also you never quite know, like if you’re presented with, if you just go on Etsy and see like

⏹️ ▶️ John billions and billions of weird socks, which one should I get now or whatever, the aspect of having

⏹️ ▶️ John someone do the picking for you and just like, you know, having it be a surprise each day, like

⏹️ ▶️ John you take, you know, whatever you arrives, that’s what you’re going to take. That is both freeing

⏹️ ▶️ John and a little bit interesting and exciting. So I can imagine people not Marco doing

⏹️ ▶️ John this and getting a kick out of it. The website,

⏹️ ▶️ John my only real complaint of them, the whatever those non loading images are is I hate when they do

⏹️ ▶️ John the little cutaway with the, you know, the position fixed background as you scroll things above it so that the picture

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey of the signs in the

⏹️ ▶️ John back when you scroll I don’t like that. I don’t like things that break the physical metaphor of the scrolling page.

⏹️ ▶️ John I know

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey kids like that

⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s not for me. Yeah and I think there’s a lot of space taken

⏹️ ▶️ John up by stuff that is not the most important

⏹️ ▶️ John three paragraphs. I mean they have the three paragraphs on the thing but I feel like information density could be better.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah I can see that. Other than that, yeah, it’s not for me, it’s probably not for Marco, but

⏹️ ▶️ John I have seen people in real life who are into fancy socks and I subscribe to the

⏹️ ▶️ John idea of putting that into someone else’s hands.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So anyway, I think it’s a cool service. I think, John, I agree with you that if I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco were to be a fancy sock person, I would want someone else who is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco more fashionable and into sock choices than me to be choosing them for me

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s what this would offer and I think I might do something crazy like this because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know for basically like half of the days of my life when I when I put on my outfit which is the same

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing every day about half the time I put on the socks and I think wouldn’t it be great

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if all of my socks were exactly the same and I wouldn’t have to match up the subtle difference

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John between

⏹️ ▶️ Marco these like minor black pattern variations. It solves the problem in a different way right?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right and then the other half of the mornings I think you know maybe I could try some fun socks sometime

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because everything else I wear is boring and I like it that way I like to keep it that way but I’m always wearing a nice watch

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I wouldn’t mind always wearing cool socks so I have thought about this before and I might

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I might do it. I

⏹️ ▶️ John also like the idea that inevitably you’ll get some socks that you that you think are

⏹️ ▶️ John hideous in the same way with like jelly bellies when there’s like a bad flavor I think that is part of the fun that you

⏹️ ▶️ John know the whole idea of letting someone just send you a bunch of socks is you’re gonna have some ones that are like exciting and cool and fun that Maybe you

⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t have picked that for yourself, and you’re going to have some that are hideous, and that is part of the fun. That’s true, yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ John Or I just send those to you. Well, you know, you should still wear them. Like, do a thing of like, even when they come and they’re hideous,

⏹️ ▶️ John in the same way that you end up eating, like, the Jelly Belly flavor you don’t like, or like, you put them all aside, but then when you’re done, you

⏹️ ▶️ John still want more jelly beans, so you just eat all the black ones anyway. Black ones are the worst.

AirPods review

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, thanks to We Sell Socks for sponsoring our show. And check it out. Thanks,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We Sell Socks.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Did you guys get your AirPods? I did.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John John did too, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John I got my little clicky case right here.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, fancy. Nice. And what do you think?

⏹️ ▶️ John Which one? You have to address one of us. Hosting 101. Hosting 101.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco So this is the one,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is the one time, this is the one time that the two of you don’t jump in and you wait

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for me to give you the- This is the first time that’s ever happened. I know, I’m stupefied.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well no, because I would have gone, I would have gone for it, but I wanted to, I want to go back to this. The

⏹️ ▶️ John item I had for the AirPods before we had received ours, so this was last week, is about why

⏹️ ▶️ John they were delayed. You know, they were expected, I forget when it was, they said they were going to come about October or something and it’s like

⏹️ ▶️ John where are the AirPods and it’s like oh there’s some sort of delay and Apple had to scrap its entire first production

⏹️ ▶️ John run of the things and remake a whole bunch and now they’re in short supply and there’s a bunch of stories about that

⏹️ ▶️ John and whatever they’re shipping now and it was difficult to get them before Christmas and even in the new year it’ll be difficult and

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple stores are getting tiny shipments but what I’m interested in is the

⏹️ ▶️ John idea of the delay because a lot of people were upset about just because people want what they want

⏹️ ▶️ John but also oh Apple’s supposed to be good at making things why did they do this? And I think this is

⏹️ ▶️ John a situation where anyone who thinks

⏹️ ▶️ John this delay is indicative of something bad about Apple or a problem

⏹️ ▶️ John has things backwards. It’s disappointing, like, you know, obviously Apple would

⏹️ ▶️ John have liked to have gotten them out sooner and someone made a mistake somewhere or whatever, but

⏹️ ▶️ John the fact that there’s a delay is exactly what we want Apple to be doing, especially in light of like Samsung

⏹️ ▶️ John Galaxy Note, you know, batteries exploding or whatever it is, the Note 7 batteries exploding. Like

⏹️ ▶️ John the most important thing Apple can do is make sure that whatever it is they ship meets their standards

⏹️ ▶️ John for whatever aesthetics, reliability, safety, so on and so forth.

⏹️ ▶️ John Whatever this problem was that caused them to have to delay the thing, that’s exactly

⏹️ ▶️ John what we want them to do. Like obviously, ideally that you don’t mess up, right? But if you do mess up, you have to do

⏹️ ▶️ John the right thing. And I just can’t, I can’t, you know, think about

⏹️ ▶️ John people being angry at Apple for delaying. It’s like, this is exactly what we if anything

⏹️ ▶️ John ever goes wrong, they say, Well, why did you ship it? If it wasn’t ready? Don’t ship it. If it’s not, we say that about software all the time.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like quadruply true about hardware. So I don’t know what the problem was.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t really care what the problem was. I would much rather have a product that is ready to be released

⏹️ ▶️ John than one that is rushed out and has some sort of problem. Because who wants to get AirPods and find out

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s some little flaw in some, you know, if even 2% of the people have to end up going back to the Apple store, that’s terrible. No one wants to go back to

⏹️ ▶️ John the Apple store. I’ll wait an extra two months, ship it when it’s done. So I’m not gonna say I applaud the delay

⏹️ ▶️ John because no one likes a delay. And again, ideally, whatever the problem was, Apple would have caught earlier and fixed it. And you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John this is not exactly a good thing. But this is exactly what I want a

⏹️ ▶️ John company to do when they do make a mistake, which happens companies made of people, people make stakes when they do make

⏹️ ▶️ John a mistake and do the right thing about it. And it seems like that’s what they did here.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cool. I’m a little bummed that there was a delay just because he seemed like they’re super cool. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I completely agree with you that that if you’re going to roll the dice, you I’d

⏹️ ▶️ Casey err on the side of caution. And gosh only knows what the delay was. I think it was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey iFixit said that there were some dubious tolerances or something like that in the case,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which they somehow extrapolated to mean that maybe there was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey some build quality issues. I don’t know about that one way or the other.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that didn’t read right to me. That read a lot more like completely baseless

⏹️ ▶️ Marco speculation than anything real.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I agree. Yep. That’s how I read it too, which is why I was kind of confused by it. But anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I don’t know that we’ll ever know why why there was a delay, but it’s certainly I like you said, John,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ll take the delay and they did eat get in by the end of the year and I’ll take the delay over some sort of flawed

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John product.

⏹️ ▶️ John If anything, I’m hoping at this point that they didn’t do anything silly to rush it out just to get something ready

⏹️ ▶️ John for the holiday season. If anything, I’m hoping that like it really was ready to ship and there wasn’t some immense

⏹️ ▶️ John pressure because obviously there’s there’s immense pressure to ship in time for the holidays, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s exactly what causes a company to say, well, under normal circumstances,

⏹️ ▶️ John I wouldn’t do it, but because we have to make the holiday season, everybody’s under a huge amount of pressure to

⏹️ ▶️ John just make it happen, even if they’re not quite up to where they want them to be. And I haven’t heard any stories yet,

⏹️ ▶️ John and I guess we’ll find out in a couple of months if all our AirPods die or whatever, but I’m hoping that they

⏹️ ▶️ John waited long enough. honestly, like that’s the right move for the company is like your reputation

⏹️ ▶️ John as Apple as a company, you know, just ask Samsung again, your reputation for reliability

⏹️ ▶️ John and, uh, and doing the right thing and only shipping products that are

⏹️ ▶️ John of the standard people expect, especially for hardware where you can’t ship a patch, right? You can’t, you can’t fix it

⏹️ ▶️ John in the point release. Um, that is so much more important than even hitting a holiday season, especially if our company

⏹️ ▶️ John was much money in the bank as Apple, do you have to miss the holiday season, miss the holiday season. You’ll get dinged for

⏹️ ▶️ John it and you’ll say, hey, you tried to hit the holiday season with your product and you didn’t and that’s bad and you have made a mistake, but

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s still a lesser mistake than shipping people ear pods that blow up in their ears or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And for whatever it’s worth, ATP tipster in the chat is saying that the issue was not blowing up in your ears. It

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was a manufacturing problem initially related to the Bluetooth hardware that it was not performing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco well and it was using excessive battery during operation. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that could be true. Any of those

⏹️ ▶️ John things like, oh, I got my AirPods and they don’t connect, or the battery runs out too quickly. And

⏹️ ▶️ John again, Apple can’t patch it if it’s a hardware problem.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it does seem like the basic operation, I mean, most people have had them for one or two days

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so far, but it does seem like they work well. And with a few exceptions,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few people have had interference problems or connection problems with them, but with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco those few exceptions that I’ve seen, almost everyone who has them seems very happy with them. So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey are you guys starting with Marco?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John There

⏹️ ▶️ John you go. One more item, one

⏹️ ▶️ Casey more item. Oh God, that was the perfect segue. We are not beholden to the damn notes,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John. But okay, John,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John tell me. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John are,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John are. You are the worst.

⏹️ ▶️ John You’re beholden to the passage of time, the earlier things, and then they’re followed by later things.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh God, John.

⏹️ ▶️ John The earlier item is,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey well, first of all,

⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll turn this, Marco, have you lost any of your AirPods yet?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know, Tiff has them right now, but when I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John gave them to her an hour ago… I was gonna say

⏹️ ▶️ John no. Last time you saw them, they were both there, right? Yes. Alright, I haven’t lost mine either. But if I did,

⏹️ ▶️ John I was asked on the last show, what would we do about it? You can apparently replace one for 70 bucks.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did have one fall out of my ear during the first two hours of using

⏹️ ▶️ John it. Alright, well now we can shift into Mark telling us what he thinks of them. I just wanted to get the… because that was

⏹️ ▶️ John the question on the last show, what happens if you lose one? Answer, 70 bucks. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so… and that’s honestly not bad, you know, for what they’ve cost, that’s fine.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco good that they will sell you individual ones at all. You know, because they could have just very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco well said, well, you just got to buy a new pair. Oh, well. And, you know, so to have to have an option at all to buy individual ones

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to replace lost or broken ones is nice. Yeah. So my impressions

⏹️ ▶️ Marco overall, as you know, I’m reviewing all the headphones in the universe. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically my concerns before this were I’ve never had an Apple ear pod or any ear pod

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or any earbud or any in-ear canal phone that fit me comfortably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and well. That both was comfortable and would stay in. I’ve never found

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. My ears are just weird, I guess. And I was concerned the AirPods

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would fit me just as well as the earpods do, which is with mediocrity,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with some discomfort, and they fall out. And I was also concerned about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the lack of of controls on the ear pod on the air pods excuse me

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that’s common sake this week

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey and anyway it is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John yeah so like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I you know the lack of of like volume and play pause and and seek back seek forward

⏹️ ▶️ Marco which are very commonly used in podcasts like I had one person on Twitter I’m sorry I forgot the name there’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one person Twitter said I’ve heard more ads on overcast this week than I ever have before with the AirPods.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But anyway, thanks to our sponsors. So you know, they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco only have either Siri or PlayPause with the double tap gesture. We’ve gone over this before.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So anyway, when they arrived, those were my concerns and they are exactly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I thought they would be in good and bad ways. So in all the good ways, the pairing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco process is awesome. The case, the battery charging, all that stuff is awesome. The case is a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco little bit thick for pocket use. It fits okay

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in that little change pocket on top of your jeans right pocket. It fits okay in there.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, I didn’t think about that. But otherwise, they’re great. They actually,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, I’m not a huge fan of earbuds for sound purposes,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but these sound pretty good if you hold them in especially. the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco amount of bass that earbuds have depends entirely on how well they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco seal snugly inside of your ear. If they seal well, if they can really rest in there and really get

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and really like lodge themselves in there, you will get great bass and they will stay in and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you are not me they might even be comfortable. Yeah

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I couldn’t agree with you more. I’m sorry for jumping in but I have a pair of Ultimate Ears. I don’t know

⏹️ ▶️ Casey how they’re classified but they’re They’re basically earphones and I could not agree

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with you more that when I have them seated just right, they are probably the best

⏹️ ▶️ Casey sounding speakers that I own. And I have a couple of pretty decent pairs of headphones,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not Marco Crazy good, but decent pairs of headphones. And I actually think the stereo in my car

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is really darn good as well. But these Ultimate Ears are phenomenal as long as they’re seated properly.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the moment they get even the teensy weensiest bit unseated, it’s a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey totally different scenario.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so that’s the AirPods are exactly the same. When they are very well seated, so that you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco get good bass out of them, the sound quality is very good. Because when they’re that seated, the harshness

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like antinnyness of the mid range and the highs that you often get if they’re out a little more, that gets

⏹️ ▶️ Marco softened and rolled off and muted a little bit. So it’s actually a very well balanced sound. and for $160, a properly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sealed AirPod is a really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco good deal in the headphone world. It’s not the best, but it’s really good,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially for something that small. So when they are well sealed, they sound good. When they are not well sealed, like how they sit in my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ears, they sit a little loose, like I can’t get them to seal because whatever, my ears suck.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The bass suffers tremendously, but the rest of the sound actually isn’t too bad.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The mid-range gets a little bit accentuated, and so it sounds a little bit more harsh,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but overall, I’m very pleasantly surprised by how good they sound. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really wish they fit me better because I would use them a lot more. Unfortunately,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they don’t. They fall out of my ears, even if I’m just like, like I wore them yesterday while I was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wrapping gifts. I’m like walking around the table, bending over here and there, and they fell out.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco One of them fell out after a few minutes. Fortunately, I kind of felt it happening, so I caught it. the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco other day area yesterday whenever it was I took my dog for a walk also

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and had to bend over to pick up something that you have to do when you take your dog for a walk

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco God the worst almost happened oh God it didn’t it missed by

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a few inches

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you almost spent seventy dollars at the Apple Store that text

⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t buy a new one you can clean that off come on you clean that off but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah so if

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John you have a kid

⏹️ ▶️ John you know it’s like everything in your house is covered with poop don’t pretend it isn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not putting in my ear so you are you don’t know it but you are so yeah

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John man’s conjecture

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they they don’t and yeah and that actually happened to Jason Snell as well he mentioned an upgrade this week

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so yeah I they don’t fit me well and it’s unfortunate because because it is really nice

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have something that small. The double tap to play pause, I have found to be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fairly unreliable. You have to tap it pretty firmly to get it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to work reliably, and that’s not good, because it’s kind of uncomfortable.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Why would you do that rather than just pulling one of the earbuds out?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you could do that too. So basically, I’m just saying, for reference, the gesture of either

⏹️ ▶️ Marco invoking Siri or doing play pause, depending on your preference, it is a little inconsistent

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a little tricky to do reliably, so that’s unfortunate. But other than that,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re fine. The sound is better than I expected. They are small and light,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they almost fit in my pocket comfortably with the charging case, and without it, of course, you could do whatever you want with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco them. They do, unfortunately, fall out of my ears, and so I’m not gonna return

⏹️ ▶️ Marco them. They’re nice to have around, but I think they’ll be more like something I keep in my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco backpack for in case I forgot big headphones and I’m on a trip. Or if I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to the city, maybe I’d bring them, at least something like that, where I’m not gonna be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bending over much. If I’m gonna be sitting on a train or a bus for a while, that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be better for that. But I don’t know, so I’m gonna keep them. I’m glad I have them, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m probably not gonna use them heavily because they just are physically incompatible with me in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a pretty big way, unfortunately.

⏹️ ▶️ John Also, I’ve found if you have a winter hat over them, it could help hold them in,

⏹️ ▶️ John because the

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey winter coat will cover

⏹️ ▶️ John your ears. And then, you know, like, not too tight, but like, it’ll basically, they won’t fall, they basically, it’s impossible for them to

⏹️ ▶️ John fall out with my big, heavy winter hat down over my ears.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I’ll try that next, actually, because walking with like bigger headphones is not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco great in the winter, but yeah, so I’ll try that.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So John, what do you think about yours?

⏹️ ▶️ John I agree with most of the things Marco said, But the ear thing, ear pods do stay in my

⏹️ ▶️ John ears, like the plain old ear pods do, and so do the AirPods, because I keep reading reviews of like, whether

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re shaped differently. Even Jason Snell said he thought they were shaped differently, and I looked at my, you know, the ones that

⏹️ ▶️ John came with my iPhone 7 and these, and as far as my eyeballs can

⏹️ ▶️ John tell, without a micrometer, they are identically shaped. But anyway, they stay in my ears just fine, just like

⏹️ ▶️ John all the other ones have, and I’ve been using them for a long time now. So that’s not a problem for me.

⏹️ ▶️ John I was interested to see how they would change the way, you know, I listen to stuff

⏹️ ▶️ John because I do listen during my commute and the commute is Bluetooth in the car, obviously, but walking to

⏹️ ▶️ John my car, you know, which is not a long walk, but even just, you know, walking around the house in the morning and then I go out to my car

⏹️ ▶️ John and then I get into my car and then it comes over Bluetooth and I take out my headphones and I drive to work. Then when I get out of my car from

⏹️ ▶️ John the umpteenth floor of the parking garage, I put my headphones back in and I walk all through the parking garage in the building, you know, so

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m using my headphones for the walking part of my commute.

⏹️ ▶️ John Um, and I also wear them a lot when I am doing dishes or when I am cooking,

⏹️ ▶️ John uh, dinner at night and stuff like that. Just other or just folding laundry or whatever. Just doing mindless

⏹️ ▶️ John work by myself and not using like Bluetooth speakers sometimes because I don’t want to disturb other

⏹️ ▶️ John people in my house. Other times it’s just, you know, you just want to have your own thing. So I thought these would be ideal because I

⏹️ ▶️ John wanted somebody else for a long time. I was talking about it as many, know like six months ago or a year ago and about

⏹️ ▶️ John wireless earbuds and they mostly work the

⏹️ ▶️ John way I thought they would glad that they you know they pair with the phone sound comes

⏹️ ▶️ John out of them no real problems the taking the thing out of your ear to pause and putting it back in actually works

⏹️ ▶️ John for the most part exactly as advertised the construction of them looks

⏹️ ▶️ John good they sound more or less the same as I’m not picky about the earbuds I’m just like in the podcast or whatever

⏹️ ▶️ John as the other ear pods. Here are the things that surprised me though.

⏹️ ▶️ John I knew this was a thing that I did but this really hammered on how much I do it. Apparently I adjust

⏹️ ▶️ John the volume a lot on my wired earbuds.

⏹️ ▶️ John In all sorts of circumstances, why would I be adjusting the volume a lot when I’m making dinner alone in the kitchen

⏹️ ▶️ John by myself? Well, because sometimes the little overhead fan is on and sometimes you’re running the garbage disposal and sometimes

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a uh… up and sizzling and some you know apparently i’m in just like i’m a climate

⏹️ ▶️ John micro adjuster you know am i cryo climate

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco micromanager in the car

⏹️ ▶️ John i’m a volume micromanager with listening to podcasts i’m shocked at

⏹️ ▶️ John that if you and me as well i tried going with can i squeeze the little volume

⏹️ ▶️ John buttons for the thing in my pocket like in my jeans pocket or my jacket pocket as i’m walking to the walking like in the parking garage

⏹️ ▶️ John is noisy as a car goes past him and you get down the street, it’s not as noisy, but then the UPS truck is driving past and you gain it

⏹️ ▶️ John your podcast again. So you need to pause it or make it louder again. Taking them out of year is not an option when you have a big

⏹️ ▶️ John thick glove on. Anyway, volume adjustment

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco is

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a no go. But I think I would probably tolerate that I think I would probably just put it at a louder volume

⏹️ ▶️ John and just tolerate it and just try to learn to it if it wasn’t for the second thing, which is,

⏹️ ▶️ John I paused the podcast a surprising amount of time, specifically when I am in the kitchen

⏹️ ▶️ John cooking. Because my wife will come in and ask me something and go back out, or I’ll want to ask her

⏹️ ▶️ John something, or one of my kids will come in and say something, I pause and play, and pause and play a huge

⏹️ ▶️ John amount. Taking out is not really an option because then I have to have

⏹️ ▶️ John some place to hold it and maybe my fingers are gross enough, you know, like too gross to be grabbing the earbud,

⏹️ ▶️ John but just gross enough for me to use just my pinky and my thumb to press the little butt, I don’t know, but like,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, taking it out just didn’t feel, I was afraid I was going to drop it down the disposal or not keep track of where

⏹️ ▶️ John it is, or then I’m occupying one hand because if I have to pause it to help do something else,

⏹️ ▶️ John and often actually I will pause when I need to concentrate on the important part of the Blue Apron recipe that I’m doing because

⏹️ ▶️ John I have to read the instructions and I want to pay attention to the instructions and not gloss over it or whatever, so sometimes I’ll

⏹️ ▶️ John pause when I’m alone in there just because I need to concentrate slightly more and I’m an active listener who wants to listen to what

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re doing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You don’t have to pay that much attention. Season with salt and pepper. Wash and dry the fresh produce.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John like well you

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s easy to miss the fact that they said only fry up a quarter of the noodles not all of them because

⏹️ ▶️ John the fry ones are just to put on top and you’re supposed to boil the you know so

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco yeah

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you fried all the noodles and in the in the chicken katsu a soup

⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t but someone we both know did because I followed instructions and pause during went during that part but I’m just saying

⏹️ ▶️ John it is possible to not know and goodness you know anyway so I’m pausing

⏹️ ▶️ John and resuming now what about the double tap here’s the here’s the other thing that surprised me i was like all right fine whatever i

⏹️ ▶️ John have to pause or whatever i’ll just do the double tap the double tap reliability wise i found like

⏹️ ▶️ John marco that it’s not 100 reliable but i think i can live with that you know it’s not as 100 percent reliable as pinching

⏹️ ▶️ John the little thing but whatever it’ll get by but i find it to be incredibly physically

⏹️ ▶️ John unpleasant yes to tap that thing that’s in my ear incredibly unpleasant like

⏹️ ▶️ John shockingly like i didn’t even occur to me to think about how unpleasant this would be you know you know how unpleasant it is to get earbuds

⏹️ ▶️ John yanked out of your ear by the wires which will never happen again with earbuds it’s like that but you’re doing it to yourself

⏹️ ▶️ John you have to hit it surprisingly hard and if you have to do it four times instead of two I’m like no

⏹️ ▶️ John if someone was doing this to me I would punch them but I’m doing it to myself

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John tapping the thing that’s lodged into my ear it is terrible feeling and I just can’t

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco have it so

⏹️ ▶️ John in the kitchen now I’m back to using my wired earbuds because pressing the little play pause

⏹️ ▶️ John button is way more pleasant and way faster. And just,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, and I also have volume control. So the the AirPods are banished from the kitchen.

⏹️ ▶️ John For other environments, if I’m going out for a walk, or just, you know, anything that

⏹️ ▶️ John is like out and about in the world, including mostly commuting, you know, walking

⏹️ ▶️ John through the parking garage and down and across the campus and up the like, AirPods, I think are mostly still good

⏹️ ▶️ John for that and I will still use them for that. But for basically for non-exercise

⏹️ ▶️ John or non-mobile things in the house, the wired earpods have beaten them out.

⏹️ ▶️ John For me personally, I’m not saying this is going to be for you because everyone is different. I’m going to say like as a review

⏹️ ▶️ John of the product, I think the product works as advertised and does exactly what everyone says it does and you can read the reviews and see the feature set

⏹️ ▶️ John and so on and so forth. You’ll know there’s no volume control, right? But for me personally, the

⏹️ ▶️ John wired ones win for the house.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I got to tell you, in my personal opinion, I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey love these things. As it turns out, a listener

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the show who lives in Richmond, Matt Wallin, wrote me two nights ago,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey two nights ago and said, Hey, I bought two pairs, one for my wife, one for me. And my wife said,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, pass things. Do you want them?” And I said, well, yes,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey yes, I do. And so I met Matt at a local Starbucks, sorry, Marco, and he was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a very nice guy and it happens. He was a very nice guy and I gave him a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey very sketchy looking wad of $20 bills and he gave me a completely sealed

⏹️ ▶️ Casey AirPods. So I do have AirPods as it turns out, and I love these things. There

⏹️ ▶️ Casey There are problems for sure. I personally have not run into the double tap thing because I find that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m never ever ever double tapping the AirPod. If I want to pause, I’ll just pull

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of them out of my ear and I don’t, I haven’t even thought to use Siri

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for anything. The pairing process, as you said, was phenomenally easy.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey They showed up on my iMac pretty much immediately, although it was a little wonky

⏹️ ▶️ Casey getting them to attach, I don’t want to say pair, because they were paired

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the iMac, but getting them active on the iMac, and we’ll come back to that in a second. It

⏹️ ▶️ Casey took a reboot to get them to show up on my work computer, but my work computer has odd firewalls and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey security restrictions and big business, yada, yada, yada. But after reboot, that did work just fine.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I use them off and on today at work. I use them as much as

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would use my traditional Bluetooth headphones. And at the end of the day,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the earbuds or the AirPods were pretty much entirely charged because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the handful of times that I would go and use the restroom or have a chat with somebody or,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, go downstairs to nuke my lunch, I would put them back in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the case and that would top them up. And the case was down to about 52%. Now, I did

⏹️ ▶️ Casey leave work early today. I left work at about one o’clock, and so this isn’t a perfect

⏹️ ▶️ Casey exemplar of a normal eight to nine hour work day. But having

⏹️ ▶️ Casey worked over half a day, the case was at 52% and the earbuds were

⏹️ ▶️ Casey basically completely charged. I didn’t have any grumbling

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or I didn’t find it frustrating to not have any sort of playback controls because most

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the day I spent with them active on my work computer where I have my keyboard with play

⏹️ ▶️ Casey pause and all that other stuff right there waiting for me. The handful of other times I use them throughout the day, they were

⏹️ ▶️ Casey attached to my iPhone, which was attached to me. I can absolutely see how it could be annoying. And John, I totally understand

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what you’re saying. And I can totally see why that would be frustrating, but that’s not something that has bothered

⏹️ ▶️ Casey me yet. Erin, every time she sees me with them in my ears

⏹️ ▶️ Casey very casually and very politely reminds me how much of a moron I am, or at least how much what

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a moron I look like,” which I think she’s kind of right about that. They do look a little goofy. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I love these things. The one complaint I have is that I haven’t quite figured out

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the right dance in order to get them to mate, if

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you will. That’s probably not a good word for it either, but whatever. Mate with a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey laptop or desktop as opposed to the phone, because the phone is pretty pretty much always near me. And even if the phone is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey off in the sense that it’s not, the display is not on and it’s just sitting there idly,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it seems like they really want to connect to the phone first, which I think I understand,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I’ll start playing like a podcast or music or what have you on say my work laptop. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that doesn’t seem to be enough. Now, maybe this is user error and I just haven’t like broken the code on the right

⏹️ ▶️ Casey sequence of events to do, but it wasn’t until I went to the Bluetooth menu item and then

⏹️ ▶️ Casey went to my AirPods and then said connect that they would wake up and start

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to connect to my work computer. It was also very briefly discerning or

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John it was just weird.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Thank you. That’s what I was looking for. That I would hear audio out of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the right ear first consistently and then the left ear. Now it was for a flash, just barely enough

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for me to tell that there was a difference and then they never got out of sync after that. But that was a little weird.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But all in all, I love these things. And I think a large

⏹️ ▶️ Casey part of the reason that I love these things is because it reminds me of the idealized

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple that we all love. And I think we’re probably going to talk about the other kind of Apple that might be the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple of today here in a few minutes. But the Apple that shipped these, the Apple of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey today that shipped these AirPods is the Apple that I love the most. and the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one that is whimsical and has soul and has energy and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey has fun. And God, I love these things. And just doing the little flip.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know if that’s coming through on the mic, but oh God, just doing that. I’m gonna break this damn case from doing that constantly.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s so satisfying. It’s so satisfying. And then the magnets that kind of like suck the AirPods

⏹️ ▶️ Casey into the case, super satisfying. So good. I love these things. I do think $160 is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty steep. way. I’m not saying it’s not fair. Honestly,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for what you’re getting in the competitive landscape of decent

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Bluetooth earbuds, especially separate ones, because the level of complexity to make them

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not have a wire that goes between them is very… That’s a very cutting

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John edge thing. Very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco few other things in the market can do that right now. And they all have massive challenges

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in making that happen and making it work well because of the way Bluetooth works, basically. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for what you’re getting here, I think they’re actually well-priced. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not like a bargain basement, like, you know, going to blow the doors off with pricing only kind of thing, but it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a fair price for what you’re getting. Steven

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Poyer Yeah, and that’s fair. I’m not saying it’s not a fair price. It’s just $160 is a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey lot of money for what appears to be physically not that much. Now, in reality, you’re exactly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John right,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that there’s a lot there. And in fact, getting it so small is a big freaking deal. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I love these things. I am surprised how much I like, I mean, I knew I was gonna like them, but I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey really like them a lot. And there’s a little, you know, there’s a rough spot here and there, like you guys were saying about double tapping.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Again, maybe it’s user error, but I haven’t really gotten the sync between computer and phone working quite right.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But have like the Bluetooth headphones that I use at work, which I’ve talked about incessantly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the entire run of this show, they’re terrible headphones, but they work consistently.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey However, they work consistently in part because I only ever have them paired to one

⏹️ ▶️ Casey computer at a time. These AirPods are paired to a work computer in iMac, an iPhone,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and an iPad, and don’t blink an eye, and I only had to really do the pairing once.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that is freaking magic. And for that, that alone makes

⏹️ ▶️ Casey me super enthusiastic. And I know that’s silly. I recognize how silly that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is. But just having the flexibility to use these things with whatever I want,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey basically no more difficult, in a way that’s no more difficult than unplugging, replugging a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey cable, that’s just awesome. So I love them, I really do.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and there are other Bluetooth headphones on the market that support being paired to multiple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco devices at the same time and having some way to choose between them or to be simultaneously connected.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That does exist in other headphones, but none of them do it quite to this level. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have like this, especially like the way they basically sync the pairing to all of your other iCloud devices. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, if you have an Apple Watch, it’ll just show up as like an AirPlay output device, like the same

⏹️ ▶️ Marco way an AirPlay device would show up. It shows up on your other devices like that. And it’s like, if you have, if you’re sharing it between, as you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco said, like, you know, laptop and phone, or phone and iPad, or all of the above, like it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is way easier with the AirPods than with anything else I’ve ever used for to have it on more than

⏹️ ▶️ Marco two devices.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so two thumbs up. I know I’m one person in a week. Did you see that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey feedback we got way back when that one person can’t say two thumbs up? But anyway, two thumbs up for me anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that’s how much I like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco them. Yeah, fair enough.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Any other thoughts on AirPods from either of you two before we move on?

⏹️ ▶️ John About the hardware, I was thinking about how, you know, how these things are so

⏹️ ▶️ John close to being. Just take the regular AirPods and cut off the wires. And like if we had seen

⏹️ ▶️ John this exact thing in like a 90s sci-fi movie, we’d have been like, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John so fake.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Because we

⏹️ ▶️ John are like, they’ve done such an incredible job of not having

⏹️ ▶️ John this look like a thing that plays audio plus a big blob that has the electronics in it.

⏹️ ▶️ John Right? Like, and because it’s an object that we’ve seen so often, these white ear pods that have been

⏹️ ▶️ John on the market for a long time just like a slightly thicker thicker skin it just appears to be magic that’s part

⏹️ ▶️ John of what we’re responding to like that is a magical I mean it’s it’s low-level magic you know it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not you know you know levitate a mountain magic but it

⏹️ ▶️ John is low-level magic like we you know it it is surprising that it works and very quickly you get used

⏹️ ▶️ John to it but it’s it’s very impressive in terms of this this is the magic

⏹️ ▶️ John of design of like making a thing that looks boring and simple but then like if you look at the I think it

⏹️ ▶️ John tear down and realize what they shoved in there and what it manages to do and just

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s it’s fairly incredible that even the basics work I think they made sacrifices

⏹️ ▶️ John to do that like by not having a wire you sacrifice the ability to have a little dongle by making

⏹️ ▶️ John them so small and perfect you sacrifice the ability to have like a little touch area you slide your finger up and down for volume control like

⏹️ ▶️ John it wouldn’t be the same magic with that I still would like a a little extra dongle

⏹️ ▶️ John that would maybe let me use these that I could, you know, play pause or whatever, like I clip it to my belt or something, who knows what the hell

⏹️ ▶️ John I would do with it. And yes, we’ve seen the ones that are on the market like that. I wish

⏹️ ▶️ John more of them had buttons that I could feel without looking instead of being a uniform circle or whatever. But anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John hardware wise, this is a pretty big home run, I think. Other minor details,

⏹️ ▶️ John a couple of people in the chat room were talking about my, how I didn’t like tapping it in my ear. Doesn’t matter

⏹️ ▶️ John where I tap it. I tried every location you could tap the thing. I tried tapping, you know, the stem part, the end,

⏹️ ▶️ John the middle, the part that’s in my ear. I tried tapping light, heavy, tapping next to it, not actually

⏹️ ▶️ John tapping, like every combination that actually causes it to play pause or to activate

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, I immediately changed it to play pause. I didn’t even bother with the Siri thing. But anyway, at any location,

⏹️ ▶️ John I find it very unpleasant. The other thing that my wife pointed out

⏹️ ▶️ John after, you know, for me giving these a trial run is that the signal

⏹️ ▶️ John that you send other people, if they try to talk to you and you turn to look at them

⏹️ ▶️ John and double tap your ear, it’s kind of like you’re saying, uh-huh, I’m listening to something here,

⏹️ ▶️ John like as you

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey point to your own

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco ear, hello, hello, see the thing in my ear? Which is exactly

⏹️ ▶️ John the signal you do not wanna send because it seems like, you know, because you do turn to face them and then

⏹️ ▶️ John you double tap your ear like you’re pointing to it, especially if you have to do it four times, you go one, two, three, four,

⏹️ ▶️ John It seems like you’re saying, you know, you see the ear pod, don’t try to talk to me, which let me tell

⏹️ ▶️ John you, doesn’t go over big. I’m like, no, I’m just trying to play pause. So I’m not

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco quite sure.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think obviously you’re meant to just remove one from your ear, which does the same, which also pauses it. Like, that’s obviously

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the more common thing you’re supposed to do.

⏹️ ▶️ John Right, right, yeah. But I’m, the removing is just a non-starter for me, like in that

⏹️ ▶️ John environment. Like, even if only because then that means I have to reseat them and I’m grabbing that thing with my grubby fingers.

⏹️ ▶️ John again, I’m much better at tapping little thing. Um, one thing that

⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of us who just received our ear pods, notice the similar story of receiving them, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John a couple of days ago, uh, in the Northeast anyway, it’s very cold and you get the package,

⏹️ ▶️ John uh, you know, and you open it up and you want to try them out. And because they’re so cold and they have these tiny little batteries that are frozen and lithium

⏹️ ▶️ John ion batteries do not do well when they’re frozen. Uh, I got them and it’s like, Oh, these things need to be charged.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like they’re not, you know, I, I opened up immediately and it started to pair, but then it was like, you know, low battery or

⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. I’m like, Oh, you know, I just got out of the box. Maybe they don’t have a charge. I should charge them. So I went to plug them in

⏹️ ▶️ John and the time it took me to take them over to the other room and find a lightning cable and plug it in. Like all

⏹️ ▶️ John of a sudden there were, you know, they appeared as on my phone, which I was bringing with me as like, Oh, they’re almost already charged. Really?

⏹️ ▶️ John It was just the batteries thawing out. Like, so if you do get these and it’s cold

⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re anxious to open up the package, like give them five minutes to warm up. Like they usually do come

⏹️ ▶️ John with some amount of charge in them. It’s not as if they charged in five seconds, they didn’t, they just thawed out. So

⏹️ ▶️ John chill when you’re, the reverse of chill. Let them un-chill when you get them, and you’ll be happier.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Warm out for a while. Which by the

⏹️ ▶️ John way, may be a factor for people who run in the cold. This is what I’m thinking about. Like, these are the exercise

⏹️ ▶️ Marco AirPods. Well, now if it’s in your ears, your ears are gonna keep them warm. The bigger issue would be if you like leave them in your

⏹️ ▶️ Marco car all day, and your car’s parked outside, and you come back to your car, and they’ve been there, and they’re frozen. That’s gonna be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the bigger issue.

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t leave them in your car. But I was thinking like for these seems like they’d be ideal for exercise as well, especially

⏹️ ▶️ John I know there I don’t want to go into things that are probably not public yet. But anyway, I would love to

⏹️ ▶️ John be able to play podcasts from my watch locally on to my ear pods,

⏹️ ▶️ John went out for like a run or something and not have my phone with me at all for a lightweight way to

⏹️ ▶️ John do this without wires. That is very appealing to me. I’m looking forward to something like that this summer

⏹️ ▶️ John if possible. What’s

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that? If it’s possible, we could talk. I’m not entirely convinced

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco possible.

⏹️ ▶️ John I know. I know. I

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco didn’t want to… I might not

⏹️ ▶️ John want to talk. Anyway, you can talk

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco about that later. The final thing is the case is awesome. Flicking the little thing is awesome. Pulling the ear pods out of the case is sometimes less than awesome because they are held in there by weak magnets, but there’s not really a good place for you to grab.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s fair. And guess what? Guess what you can do? You can just grab it and put it in your ear. You can

⏹️ ▶️ John just put it in your ear. You can just put it in your ear. You can just put it in your ear. You can just put it in your ear. held in there

⏹️ ▶️ John by weak magnets, but there’s not really a good place for you to grab

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it. Yeah, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John fair. And guess what is on ear pods eventually? Ear wax. Mm-hmm, which

⏹️ ▶️ John can be kind of slippery. If you’re a greasy Italian like me,

⏹️ ▶️ John I make the ear pods

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey greasy.

⏹️ ▶️ John And sometimes I’m trying to remove a greasy ear pod from a tiny little case, and it’s slippery

⏹️ ▶️ John and sometimes it’s a little bit difficult to get them out, is all I’m saying.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, yeah, like, and I, in closing, I agree with Casey.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, this, these are such a good product. This is Apple at its best. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is the kind of thing that most people don’t do as well as Apple. It’s them tackling

⏹️ ▶️ Marco an incredibly complicated problem. Both, it’s a, it’s a serious technology challenge

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a serious design challenge. And I don’t mean that in just the way it looks. I mean, a lot of design

⏹️ ▶️ Marco choices that go into it. This is a serious challenge. And Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really did a really good job with it. I wish they fit me. They don’t. But for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco people who they fit, you should really consider picking these up because they’re really, really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco quite good.

⏹️ ▶️ John Another fit thing, by the way, I’m trying to think about, you know, because there are people who just don’t fit ears. Everyone’s ears are

⏹️ ▶️ John different, right? There’s not much you can do about it because Apple only sells one shape. Do you think

⏹️ ▶️ John it would, would it help you, do you think, if they sold them like three sizes, like standard and then like a smaller

⏹️ ▶️ John and a bigger? Or like, I don’t know if the problem is that they’re too big or too small or shaped wrong or whatever, but like,

⏹️ ▶️ John obviously Apple did that whole big thing when they first came out with the ear pods, the wired ones a long time ago. We measured a million ears

⏹️ ▶️ John and they try to go for the, you know, the shape that will fit the most ears. And they probably did, they probably nailed

⏹️ ▶️ John it. This is a shape that fits the most possible ears with a single shape. But

⏹️ ▶️ John with a single shape, you’re never going to fit all the ears. Do you think they could eventually expand

⏹️ ▶️ John to have two or three different sizes? And if they did, do you think that would help your fit? Because I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John know exactly what the problem is. But I would imagine that if it’s falling out, it’s probably either

⏹️ ▶️ John too small so it’s not gripping against the edges, or too big that you can’t really get it wedged

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in there. Right. I mean, I also don’t know what the problem is. But assuming that that would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be a problem that they could address that way, I don’t think they would. I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t think it would be their style to sell ear pods in three different sizes. I’d

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sell the watch in two sizes. Especially because think about when somebody returns an ear pod,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they cannot do anything with that. They can’t resell it. They can probably refurbish

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it if they can get all the crap out, but they probably can’t. It’s probably not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John worth it. They’re going to refurbish

⏹️ ▶️ John it, guaranteed. When you pay your 70 bucks, I guarantee you’re getting somebody else’s ear pod.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe. But because it’s been in somebody’s ear, there’s a lot of Issues

⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway, so like they have to totally refurbish that if they sold them in three different sizes They’d get

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so many more returns from people who they didn’t fit and they think you know what this is the wrong size

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Let me try this other size now, and they get then you got it then and then they know that turns out That doesn’t fit me either. It’s like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would be problematic

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco also. They

⏹️ ▶️ John gotta have they have try-ons in the store They should have like little inert plugs that they like douse in alcohol

⏹️ ▶️ John between you

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco know

⏹️ ▶️ John like you know what I mean I mean they wipe down all that they wipe down all the stuff in the

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco store That’s not Apple style. But no, they do that

⏹️ ▶️ John for all the phones and everything. First of all, those are just germ transference devices anyway. And they

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco do wipe down.

⏹️ ▶️ John The phones, sure. Yeah. They wipe them down with these disinfecting wipes, like, I don’t know, all day long, and also when the

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco stove closes and everything like that. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but they’re not going to open a little drawer under the table that you’re not supposed to know exists and pull out a tray of ear plugs and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be like, here. That’s not, no. They would rather take the return end. They let you try on watches to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco see

⏹️ ▶️ John which size fits you. They do have two different sizes of watch.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, but that’s not putting something inside of you.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Yeah, and you can see it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think most of the time, you can just know by trying it on for a second, and they can

⏹️ ▶️ Marco reuse that one that you tried on. But yeah, that’s very different.

⏹️ ▶️ John The chat room says they do AirPod try-ons, and then they wipe them down. Really? Ew. Already.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, so the other thing is I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really see today’s Apple as caring a whole

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot about edge cases. And so anything that they consider

⏹️ ▶️ Marco an edge case, they kind of, by their actions or lack thereof,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have been giving the middle finger to recently. So I can’t imagine that they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would

⏹️ ▶️ John care. Because it really matters what percentage they hit. Because again, their whole thing is like we measure thousands of years, and

⏹️ ▶️ John we try to find one shape that would fit the largest number of them. If that number is like 95%, no, they’re never

⏹️ ▶️ John gonna do anything for the 5%. But if it’s 70%, I think eventually they could be convinced

⏹️ ▶️ John that 70% is too low. And so we either change the shape of the one that we’re selling

⏹️ ▶️ John to try to get to 80 or 90, or if you can’t, then, you know, I’m sure they gather this information of like

⏹️ ▶️ John people who buy these things and then fill out a survey or complain, because they do do that. Like every time you buy something, it

⏹️ ▶️ John seems like every time I buy something, I get one of the surveys and they ask you very pointed questions about stuff like And

⏹️ ▶️ John if they ask anyone any questions about ear pods or air pods, guaranteed, one of the questions would be, do you find that it falls

⏹️ ▶️ John out? Do you feel like it fits well? Is it comfortable? Like, this is one of the pillar

⏹️ ▶️ John items of this product is they want to know, you know, can people put it

⏹️ ▶️ John in their ears and does it do the job of, you know, playing the music reliably and staying in their ears and doing what it’s supposed to do.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it seems like it seems to me anecdotally that I think they already are getting a really high percentage. you’re right

⏹️ ▶️ John that they’re probably not ever gonna do anything about that. Um, but if, if

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m wrong and they’re really a little low percentage, I would say high as like 80 or 90 and low is 70 or lower. If

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m wrong and they are low, I think they will do something to try to address that because 70% is not, is not

⏹️ ▶️ John a high enough. I, I, I think they would like to sell, uh, products like this to more than 70%

⏹️ ▶️ John of their customers. And granted, they’re like, you know, by beats, by whatever, like it’s, you know, it’s third party ecosystem, so on and so forth.

⏹️ ▶️ John As long as it does Bluetooth or has a lightning connector, ha ha, it’ll be fine.

⏹️ ▶️ John But, and also like, when a product is really mature, then, and you have nothing left to do, that’s when you start diversifying.

⏹️ ▶️ John So, we’ll give it a few years, but I think the first thing they would try is maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John tweaking the design, and they would say, oh, now the all new AirPods three years from now,

⏹️ ▶️ John with a slightly different shape that we think fits a wider variety of ears.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, maybe.

⏹️ ▶️ John Not Marcos,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco though.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John No, it’ll never fit my,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you know I don’t really hold it against them in this particular case

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John like because why can you do yeah?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I don’t because I don’t even know what the problem is you know so it’s you know that’s that’s fine

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m I’m perfectly fine with other headphones I would be happy with air pods But I also do like having

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of good controls on my headphones and a little more isolation sometimes so yeah, that’s nice

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, I’m reviewing a bunch. You’ll you’ll hear about them later

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Just to avoid the feedback that we’ll get What do you make of this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey theory that these were originally supposed to charge via USB-C based on the size

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and shape of the receptacle, the Lightning receptacle, and then at the last second they said,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh, just kidding, let’s use Lightning. I personally don’t really buy it. I have plugged an official

⏹️ ▶️ Casey first party cable into my AirPods case right now. Yes, it does,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it does look ever so slightly bigger, the receptacle does, but, and I don’t have a USB-C

⏹️ ▶️ Casey connector handy, but this seems like a really weak argument to me. What do you think,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John?

⏹️ ▶️ John No, I don’t buy that one. Mostly because if you remember we talked

⏹️ ▶️ John about the fat lightning connector that I didn’t like plugging into the bottom of my iPhone 7,

⏹️ ▶️ John the larger one that has the chip in it because it has the DAC and everything like that. If you plug that into

⏹️ ▶️ John the case, which admittedly makes no sense because it’s a headphone, right? But if you plug that into the case, it perfectly

⏹️ ▶️ John covers the opening. Like it looks perfect. It looks exactly like it was made to plug in there,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? If you plug in one of the older ones, or if you plug in the lightning cable that is hidden at the bottom

⏹️ ▶️ John of your box that you may not have found, if you have air pods, by

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the way, look

⏹️ ▶️ John in the bottom of the box, it comes with a lightning cable for charging, which as Marco points out, has a USB-A connector

⏹️ ▶️ John on the end. Courage. Yep. That one

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco does

⏹️ ▶️ John not cover the ends of the connector and you can see these little parts peeking out and it looks weird. like what’s the deal

⏹️ ▶️ John Johnny Ive but I have like here’s here’s the main reason I don’t think it was USB

⏹️ ▶️ John C but Apple charges stuff with lightning

⏹️ ▶️ John connectors all of its iOS devices charge with lightning connectors everybody who has Apple crap has

⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of lightning connectors to charge stuff what in the world would they make this one thing

⏹️ ▶️ John charge not with a lightning connector so I think you know and the only thing I can think

⏹️ ▶️ John of is like well does that mean that every lightning connector is going to be like these fat ones even if they don’t have the DAC

⏹️ ▶️ John chips in them? Like will the plain old charging cables be fat? I hope not because I don’t like the fat

⏹️ ▶️ John ones, I like the skinny ones. So I don’t really have a good explanation but I have a hard time thinking of

⏹️ ▶️ John any reason that this one particular peripheral would charge with USB-C. Unless they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John going to go to USB-C everywhere which seems entirely unlikely because it’s still bigger and so on and so forth. But

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, it’s an interesting theory. I would love to know the actual explanation.

⏹️ ▶️ John And I guess if we wait a year and every single lightning cable now comes with a fat connector, there’s your explanation

⏹️ ▶️ John because it looks perfect on this thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, what do you think?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco John covered it well. Basically, like, yes, there is this weird gap that is kind of un-Apple-like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have this weird looking mismatch. It’s extra weird that the cable that comes in the box

⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t fill the gap properly. But I also would think it would be very strange to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have this charge via USB-C given the current lineup because all of their other accessories

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that are this size and in this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John area. Even the pen. Yeah. Pencil, sorry.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and that’s its own weird charging thing. But like everything

⏹️ ▶️ Marco else charges by lightning that’s like this in the Apple world. So yeah, I would be very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco surprised if it didn’t. And it would actually be, I think, less convenient for most

⏹️ ▶️ Marco people if it charged via USB-C. Because if you are using these, you’re almost

⏹️ ▶️ Marco certainly using them with an iPhone. And you are going to have little lightning cables all

⏹️ ▶️ Marco over your house or car or work or all of the above to charge your phone wherever you are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in most cases. So you’re always gonna have the ability to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco charge something that charges via lightning if you own the AirPods. So it makes total

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sense to have these also charged by lightning. And it would not make a lot of sense

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in real world use for who’s actually buying these and how they’re actually using them to have that BUSBC port.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’re also sponsored this week by another new sponsor. It is SQL Pro. This

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a Mac app at SQLProStudio.com. I’m so happy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they actually told me how to pronounce SQL, because otherwise I would have had to guess and I’d be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very, very worried that I’d guess wrong. Anyway, SQL Pro supports many of the most popular database

⏹️ ▶️ Marco platforms, such as Postgres, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, or is it MySQL? I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, MySQL, and Oracle. SQL Pro also offers an intuitive interface

⏹️ ▶️ Marco where the most basic to advanced database needs are very easily accessible. This includes features such as

⏹️ ▶️ Marco auto complete syntax highlighting and support for multiple result sets. And of course,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all sorts of other advanced features, some of which include support for cloud providers such as Amazon RDS,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Microsoft Azure and Heroku. You can check it all out today with a seven day free trial

⏹️ ▶️ Marco available at SQL Pro studio Studio.com and you can save 20% off

⏹️ ▶️ Marco purchases by using the promo code ATP20. And if you’re a student, there are also student discounts

⏹️ ▶️ Marco available. If you contact the author, Kyle, at Hankinsoft.com for details,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco student discounts are available for students. So check it out today, SQLPro at SQLProStudio.com

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you can get 20% off your purchase by using the promo code ATP20.

Tim Cook on desktops

Chapter Tim Cook on desktops image.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Once again, sqlprostudio.com, code ATB20 for 20% off. Thank you very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco much to SQL Pro for the Mac for sponsoring our show.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, I’m bracing myself for impact. Over the last couple of days,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s been a little bit of chatter about the state of the Mac. This

⏹️ ▶️ Casey started, at least as far as I’m aware, by a back

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and forth, a Q&A, some sort of thing that happened on some sort of internal Apple message board

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, of course, got leaked. And it has Tim Cook discussing

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the future of the Mac. And I don’t have the exact quote in front of me,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but he says basically, hey, the iMac is great. Oh, okay.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Would you mind jumping

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in then, please?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. So the question from, I guess, an employee was, we had a big MacBook Pro launch in October and powerful

⏹️ ▶️ Marco upgrade to the MacBook back in the spring are Mac desktops strategic for us.”

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so Tim Cook basically says, I’ll summarize a little bit, he says, the desktop is very strategic for us, it’s unique compared to the notebook,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco blah, blah, blah, blah. Then he says, the current generation iMac is the best desktop we’ve ever made and it’s beautiful

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Retina 5K display is the best desktop display in the world. Some folks in the media have raised the question about whether we’re committed

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to desktops. If there’s any doubt about that with our teams, let me be very clear, we have great desktops

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in our roadmap. Nobody should worry about that. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this…

⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, I mean, here’s the thing… That was a very Trumpian answer, I have to say.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, well, it wasn’t that bad, let’s be honest, but it wasn’t that much better. Here’s the thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco This was an opportunity that Tim Cook chose to take to reassure

⏹️ ▶️ Marco people who really care about Macs, and specifically Mac desktops, to reassure

⏹️ ▶️ Marco them that Apple still has their needs covered and plans to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco keep covering their needs. And Tim basically gave an informationless answer that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco committed to nothing that had even less hope than the last time somebody asked him about this that resulted in the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco 2013 Mac Pro where he said like, we have something for our Pro customers coming later next year, whenever that was, 2012 probably.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco If he had anything positive to say about any Mac desktop other than the iMac,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think he probably would have made a stronger implication about that or would have used some different wording. Tim Cook chooses

⏹️ ▶️ Marco his words very carefully. He knew by writing this, he knew that somebody would leak it, so he was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco obviously writing it with that in mind, because he’s a smart person, he knows how these things work. And again, he chooses

⏹️ ▶️ Marco his words very carefully. If he had anything more reassuring to say about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac desktops, he would have said it. So the fact that he didn’t is actually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little unsettling, even more unsettling than I think that if we didn’t have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this interaction with Tim. If we had no information, I’d be a little more

⏹️ ▶️ Marco confident with that than what we have here which is basically him saying,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we have desktops covered with the iMac. That’s basically what he’s saying here. And,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t, and look, I’m talking to you from an iMac. I have an iMac right here.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I sold an underperforming, older generation processor Mac Pro

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get this iMac because the iMac outperformed it. That’s not a problem, like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the problem there is not that Mac Pros are terrible, it’s that the Mac Pros we have right

⏹️ ▶️ Marco now are not competitive and are not a very good buy and are not being kept up to date.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wrote months ago now like, why I care about the Mac Pro so much and why

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it needs to remain in the lineup and remain good and remain up to date. None of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco those things have changed. The Mac Pro still does things that iMacs can’t do. Not to mention

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple also sells this other desktop called the Mac Mini, which is even more neglected most

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the time than the Mac Pro, which is saying a lot. The last update to it was not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco only many years ago, but made it worse. So, it’s like, you know, there

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are these two desktops that a lot of people use and in many cases depend on.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And Apple is, Apple has a lot of customers who depend on these machines

⏹️ ▶️ Marco who are basically begging them for some sign that their needs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco will continue to be covered in the future. And Apple is responding with, most

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the time, silence and inaction. And then this statement here

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not only not better than silence, but is actually worse, I think,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because the way you can read it very easily really does seem like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the only desktop that Tim Cook thinks people need is is the iMac and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I there are other ways to read it I’m not saying that’s the only way to read it but I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s the implication here and I think it’s pretty clear

⏹️ ▶️ John I have a different take on it that Marco in the terms of being unsettled by it because

⏹️ ▶️ John first of all I it could have been way worse I know that’s you know damning

⏹️ ▶️ John the fame praise but if he had been asked this question and it said I know

⏹️ ▶️ John desktops have been an important part of our business but really we really believe that the future is laptops only and our

⏹️ ▶️ John laptops actually now are almost as powerful as the desktops that we never update and so

⏹️ ▶️ John actually we think that having a laptop with the amazing Thunderbolt

⏹️ ▶️ John ports that could connect to these these wonderful LG displays that are totally not delayed and that we’ve discounted

⏹️ ▶️ John like they could have given an answer that said actually the day of the desktop

⏹️ ▶️ John is done he didn’t give that answer instead as vague as it was he said we believe

⏹️ ▶️ John desktop is really important blah blah blah we have great desktops coming blah blah he felt compelled to give an answer that

⏹️ ▶️ John is in the direction of attempting to reassure people that yes Apple still does care

⏹️ ▶️ John about the desktop despite recent and not so recent events so

⏹️ ▶️ John and that doesn’t change anything because that’s where the direction I thought they were going in anyway the only information

⏹️ ▶️ John in this statement is for people who were afraid that Apple was going to cancel the iMac

⏹️ ▶️ John This statement would reassure the people who were afraid that Apple was going to cancel the iMac.

⏹️ ▶️ John It did nothing to reassure people who were hoping that he would say something about the Mac Pro and the Mac Mini because he didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John and you know it’s totally clear you know we think the desktop is important hey have you seen the

⏹️ ▶️ John iMac because when we say desktop here at Apple it basically means iMac at this point it’s a really great desktop

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s the best desktop we ever made look at that screen it’s great iMac iMac iMac and then

⏹️ ▶️ John one vague statement we have great desktops coming one of which is an iMac with a better GPU, right? Whatever you

⏹️ ▶️ John want to read into it. It could be, we have great desktops coming, including an amazing new Mac Pro, an amazing new

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Mini, or something you’ve never heard of, and we’ll cancel both those lines and replace it. Who knows? You could read anything

⏹️ ▶️ John you want into that statement. So I feel like this entire exchange is a reaffirmation

⏹️ ▶️ John of the status quo that we on this show, at least, have had

⏹️ ▶️ John consensus on, that basically the iMac is Apple’s vision

⏹️ ▶️ John of the desktop. the only thing they’re updating. It’s the one that we all think is the best one to buy because the

⏹️ ▶️ John other ones are so terrible. And they reaffirmed that and only if you were afraid

⏹️ ▶️ John that they were going to go laptop only, would you be reassured by this? Otherwise, it’s just, you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, business as usual.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t I don’t feel good about the Mac right now.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And and I that is very painful for me. I don’t want to get into it because we’re already

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re happy for the most part tonight so I want to say that way and talking with the Mac makes me sad because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it seems like I care about it a lot more than Apple does and and that’s scary.

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh so we should save since we have we have a scheduling thing and we want to we’re gonna have another we’re

⏹️ ▶️ John gonna record another show very soon after this one so I think I want to save

⏹️ ▶️ John the the German Mac malaise article

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey as it

⏹️ ▶️ John is called in the show that’s here.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Which made me

⏹️ ▶️ John very happy by the way that was very well done. For the next episode but there is one thing on a slightly lighter

⏹️ ▶️ John note that I don’t want to throw in on the Tim Cook thing although it’s actually more related to the Mac Malaise. Someone

⏹️ ▶️ John wrote in whose name I’m removing to protect the innocent.

⏹️ ▶️ John A listener wrote in about the idea of us complaining about the Mac Pro and

⏹️ ▶️ John everything and they were giving us some information that they thought we might not

⏹️ ▶️ John have and this person said I wondered if you’d mentioned that

⏹️ ▶️ John back in 2010 they took two years to make a minor silent update to the Mac Pro and then the day after the

⏹️ ▶️ John silent update Tim Cook has said he’d get a better update the following year but then it took 18 months to get this better update.

⏹️ ▶️ John So Apple’s taking its sweet time giving the update to the Mac Pro before. Just wondering if we we were aware of that.

⏹️ ▶️ John And what he basically did in those two sentences is summarize the first year and a half to two years of ATP. For

⏹️ ▶️ John the

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco people who

⏹️ ▶️ John haven’t listened to the show in the beginning, our logo was the old cheese grater

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pro with a sarcastic new badge on it. That was about the silent

⏹️ ▶️ John update after WWDC keynote. It was like, yeah, we updated the Mac Pro, but it’s such a minor update

⏹️ ▶️ John that it’s not even worth talking about and they’re not really new and it’s not a good update, but we have more stuff coming and

⏹️ ▶️ John then we still had to wait a long time for it. And then it was the trash can can’t innovate.

⏹️ ▶️ John What was it? Can’t innovate my ass or whatever it was supposed to be.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Can’t innovate anymore my ass.

⏹️ ▶️ John And then they didn’t update it for three years. So yes, dear new sweet listener, we are

⏹️ ▶️ John indeed aware of this history of the Mac Pro. And it is kind of one of the foundational

⏹️ ▶️ John building blocks. I don’t know what you’d call it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s really one of the running themes of our show.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yes, yes. I’m trying to think of it. It’s one of the axes that we grind, our main grinding

⏹️ ▶️ John axes. It is the axe that we grind.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, or at least

⏹️ ▶️ John two out of three of us anyway, and then we grinded in case he rolls his eyes and moans

⏹️ ▶️ John and drinks.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That was only once. Thank you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John very much.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But nonetheless, I’m not as worked up about it is as you guys are for sure, because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I, whether or not I would be better served by a Mac

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro, which presumably I would, I don’t personally feel like I have a need for one.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so because of that I’m not as worked up about it. I am, however, worked up

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about the future of the Mac in general. It seems clear that the kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Macs that I would buy, which is either a MacBook Pro or a 5K iMac, I don’t think

⏹️ ▶️ Casey those are going away anytime soon. But I do think that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey there will come a time that these machines are either going to be even

⏹️ ▶️ Casey more neglected than they are today, or perhaps non-existent at all. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that my canary in the coal mine, to some degree,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is going to be, when does Swift Playgrounds become more

⏹️ ▶️ Casey than just Playgrounds? Because the most obvious reason to keep the Mac around

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is to make iOS apps. And if suddenly it’s possible

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do that on an iPad, iPad, that makes things

⏹️ ▶️ Casey interesting and potentially very bad for someone like me who genuinely

⏹️ ▶️ Casey prefers the Mac. Because if I have a choice to do anything other

⏹️ ▶️ Casey than like, you know, browse Twitter or whatever, even oftentimes ordering something

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on Amazon, if I have the choice, I’d rather go to my 5K iMac or perhaps my MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro than an iPad or a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John phone. Because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you

⏹️ ▶️ John want to open up a lot of tabs,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right? No, truly,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John yeah. That’s exactly right. I was

⏹️ ▶️ John not being sarcastic.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I was just

⏹️ ▶️ John slowly I’m just showing you how you are going down the slippery slope towards me or rising up

⏹️ ▶️ John to Mount Olympus to be with me.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, listen to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey this guy. Oh my God. Oh, Jesus. I think my

⏹️ ▶️ Casey eyes just rolled right

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John out of my head.

⏹️ ▶️ John You can choose whether I’m dragging you down into hell or

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey up to the heights.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I plead the fifth, your honor.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but the point being, I still very, very deeply care about the Mac.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would like to think just as much as the two of you guys do. The difference is I don’t personally

⏹️ ▶️ Casey need a Mac Pro in my life where I think that you guys do.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I’m scared. I’m scared about where this is all going, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not—I don’t think the sky is falling quite yet, but it certainly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey looks like it’s getting a little closer, and that’s scary.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I fundamentally have a major problem with the perception

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that many people have, and I’m not saying this to attack you Casey, but this is not just you, this is far from

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you, many people seem to be under the impression that the main

⏹️ ▶️ Marco role that the Mac serves is as a legacy support platform for the creation

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of iOS apps, and that is just complete and utter bulls**t.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is nowhere close to reality. That being said, that is not necessarily

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to say that Apple doesn’t think this or that some people inside of Apple don’t think this. I don’t think everyone in Apple thinks that,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I do think that there is a strong risk that Tim Cook might think that. I don’t know that for sure, obviously.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know Tim Cook. We don’t hang out. But I do worry about that perception

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, A, the assumption that the Mac is a legacy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco platform, that it is on its way out, that it is not the future, and then B, that its main

⏹️ ▶️ Marco reason for continued existence now is as an iOS app creation platform and then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco see that iOS will become a better app creation platform. Because I would actually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco argue that all three of those are wrong.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have thoughts about this, but before we do that, why don’t we go through our last sponsor.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’re sponsored tonight by Coco Con.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Go to cococonf.com. Coco-Conf is a technical conference for Apple developers

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and designers. And next year, from March 20th through 23rd, Coco-Conf is returning

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to Yosemite National Park for its third Yosemite event. It is held, once again, they’ve

⏹️ ▶️ Marco done this for three years now, at the Yosemite Lodge at the Falls. It is a beautiful

⏹️ ▶️ Marco location. This is one of those things where, if you want an excuse to just be in a beautiful place,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is a conference. Your work will pay for this. You need

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to go to this conference. If you’re going to have work pay for a conference, you want it to be this one

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because, my God, what a beautiful venue they have there. Speakers this year also include

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ashley Nelson Hornstein, Brent Simmons, Daniel Steinberg, underscore David Smith, Georgia Dow, Jamie Newberry,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Matt Drance, and Sebastian DeWitt. These are all great people, very smart, top of their

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fields, who are excellent speakers. I’ve actually seen most of them speak. They are excellent people. highly recommend

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this lineup. There’s also guided hikes and a photo walk led by Ted photographer James

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Duncan Davidson, also excellent. And there’s music by James Dempsey and the breakpoints and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Jonathan man who sings the song of day and who sings our theme song.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve also seen both the musical acts. They’re excellent. So basically, I’ve seen almost everyone putting

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on this conference. And this is an incredible lineup, highly, highly recommended and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the venue you cannot find a better conference venue. So check it out at Cocoa conf.com.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can use code ATP to save 15% on tickets for Yosemite and Cocoa

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Conf Chicago also is running on in April 21st through 22nd. So once again,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cocoa Conf.com March 28th to 23rd in Yosemite, and they have a Chicago event,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco April 21 and 22, use code ATP to save 15% off tickets for those two events.

Software development on iOS?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you very much to Cocoa Con for sponsoring our show once again.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, Marco, a second ago, you had taken me to task, and fairly, that, you know, it’s kind of BS

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that everyone looks at iOS apps as the only reason the Mac exists. And I think

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you’re right to take issue with that. If I’m allowed

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to spend a moment and expand my thoughts a little bit, I think the thing to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey me is, if I try to put myself in Apple’s shoes, Apple may not have

⏹️ ▶️ Casey an answer. Like, the chat room is talking about having hundreds of gigabytes of photos that they’d like to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey process on their Macs. Okay, that’s totally fair. But Apple may not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey care about people who have hundreds of gigabytes of photos that they need to process. They could

⏹️ ▶️ Casey just say, you know what, buy a damn PC. I’m not saying that’s factual. I’m just saying it’s a possibility.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey The thing that Apple cannot get around there is no two ways around it is if they

⏹️ ▶️ Casey want their strongest and most profitable Platform to continue to exist which is iOS

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if they want that to continue to exist They need third-party developers and those developers in turn

⏹️ ▶️ Casey need Macs They I don’t think that Apple wants to tell photo professionals or video professionals

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or any other professional to go away, but they could

⏹️ ▶️ Casey whereas they can’t tell iOS developers to go away unless suddenly Xcode is running on a PC,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I guess weirder things have happened, but that’d be really freaking weird. And that’s why I’m hanging my hat

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on this iOS app thing. It’s not because—it’s just because that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me is the one thing that is non-negotiable. And if that goes away, if

⏹️ ▶️ Casey suddenly you are capable of building an iOS app on an iPad, which I think would be preposterous

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and frankly strikes me is a friggin’ terrible idea. But who knows,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if that works. Oh, I think it’s coming, but I just don’t think it would be particularly efficient at all,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or a lot of fun. But that being said, look at what Steve Trout and Smith has been doing, and there’s an argument

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for it. But anyway, if that becomes possible, if you can submit

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the App Store from an iPad, then suddenly the Mac isn’t non-negotiable

⏹️ ▶️ Casey anymore, and suddenly Apple has options that involve killing the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mac. And that’s what I’m saying. Does that make any more sense?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I understand why you say that. I understand why lots of people say that. I understand why people think that developing full

⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps on iOS is gonna be a thing. And I think it will be a thing for some people.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I also think that I’ve heard that argument almost entirely from non-developers,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and there’s a reason for that. Modern app development involves the integration a lot

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of small tools everyone has a slightly different set of. It is kind

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of, in many ways, you know, it isn’t just Xcode. You know, there’s lots of, like, if you just port Xcode

⏹️ ▶️ Marco over, that’s not enough. That’s enough for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John some apps,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but not enough for, like, complex apps, not enough for most good apps.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The way developers work with the computer itself,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the apps, with the file system, with the tools, the various tool chains,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all these different integrations and plugins and custom scripts and custom builds. The

⏹️ ▶️ Marco way developers work in practice, professional, real developers, does not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco translate well to iOS’s software ecosystem or to the OS itself

⏹️ ▶️ Marco right now. The machines, like the iPad is powerful enough that you could, like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is a computer of sorts And you could, the hardware could do this,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the OS is completely wrong for most

⏹️ ▶️ Marco developers, for most development tasks and most development needs. And this is true

⏹️ ▶️ Marco needs, not like, you know, I need this chair to be purple, like a need, like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco no, if I don’t have this capability, I can’t do this. Or it would suffer so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco much that I would never want to do it that way. The way software

⏹️ ▶️ Marco development happens in practice, for that to move to iOS in a meaningful

⏹️ ▶️ Marco way would require so many changes to iOS that I think are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco either unlikely to happen market-wise or that Apple would probably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco never do and probably shouldn’t do to iOS because it would in many ways ruin a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of what makes iOS great. So development of software, I always

⏹️ ▶️ Marco see as needing a more PC-like operating system. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether that is the Mac or Windows or Linux—God, I hope it’s still the Mac.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And out of that list, I think my second choice would be Linux. But I really don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco see professional software development moving to iOS,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not only for the next few years, but possibly ever, just because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the way iOS works, the way it’s limited, the whole way of iOS being like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a collection of not like small apps that do one thing and not people’s little scripts

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they wrote for the most part. I know it’s possible, but that’s not the common case and there

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are many limitations there. But iOS is the world of maximized

⏹️ ▶️ Marco full screen apps. I know again, not always, but it is the world of like big, complex

⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps where you do everything inside of this one app and Xcode could be one of those apps.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But most developers who I know working in software development use way more than just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Xcode to get their job done. And it all integrates in these weird little custom ways and every

⏹️ ▶️ Marco single thing, like every developer has something in there that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple, excusers would call an edge case. And each one is an

⏹️ ▶️ Marco edge case, but everyone has at least one of those. So,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in order to accommodate that style of use, that style of tool chain and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco workflow, you need something more like the PC operating system

⏹️ ▶️ Marco than like iOS. In the way you can have tons of different tiny little apps working together,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tons of Windows, on tons of like you know different things that integrate and plug in and aren’t all

⏹️ ▶️ Marco firewall often sandbox all from each other this is what developers need to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco work this is not negotiable this is the way things actually work in the real world

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for all developers I don’t see how iOS gets to that ever

⏹️ ▶️ Marco unless it basically gets ruined and becomes just like a weird

⏹️ ▶️ Marco re-implementation of Mac OS which could happen but I don’t think that should happen and I don’t think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that will happen.

⏹️ ▶️ John So on that particular point when you said it before and you just reiterate it again the idea that you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John not gonna be doing development in iOS unless iOS you know on iOS as it currently

⏹️ ▶️ John exists unless iOS changes in a way that allows you to to do that because right now it doesn’t have the facilities

⏹️ ▶️ John right. The other option obviously and I think the one that Apple thus far has shown

⏹️ ▶️ John the most inclination to pursue is not to change iOS so that it is able to support development,

⏹️ ▶️ John but to change development so that it is able to be done on iOS. And so if you look at Playgrounds, obviously

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s no Xcode, right? But the idea that what it takes to develop software

⏹️ ▶️ John could be changed. Rather than changing iOS so that it can support what it currently takes to develop software,

⏹️ ▶️ John change what it takes to develop software so that it fits into some semblance of the shape of

⏹️ ▶️ John iOS. And I totally think making applications for iOS on iOS

⏹️ ▶️ John is going to come if iOS itself exists long enough. I would say within the next

⏹️ ▶️ John decade or two, you’re going to be able to make iOS applications probably sooner for

⏹️ ▶️ John toy applications, but for real full fledged applications, I think it’s coming. And I don’t think it will come from

⏹️ ▶️ John iOS changing to be more like the Mac. I think it will come from the process of developing software

⏹️ ▶️ John changing to fit into iOS. And I don’t think Marco will like it or anybody who has developed software

⏹️ ▶️ John in this current age because it will be different and more limited and crappier in a whole bunch of ways.

⏹️ ▶️ John But I think that’s coming now. I don’t I don’t want to belabor this more because we do have another whole show to record tomorrow.

⏹️ ▶️ John And I want to talk more about the the German Mac malaise story and different angles

⏹️ ▶️ John and that but from the specific issue of development, I would say that all the things I just said,

⏹️ ▶️ John possible for a lot to happen. And the Mac is still being a concern. But as Casey points out, he

⏹️ ▶️ John I think mostly what Casey’s point is, this is a prerequisite, if you ever want to ditch the Mac, you got to do something about

⏹️ ▶️ John the

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco development. And all the

⏹️ ▶️ John options are like, well, chuck them to PC, and have them do the development there, or whatever, or bring

⏹️ ▶️ John it into iOS. And I think all those options, all those prerequisites to ditching the Mac

⏹️ ▶️ John are difficult to do, like they’ll take a long time, it’ll certainly take a long time to

⏹️ ▶️ John try to, it would take a long time to do a Marco was suggesting like change iOS to basically ruin it and make it more like the

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac. Not that I think Apple would do that, but that would certainly take a long time. It would take a long time to change software

⏹️ ▶️ John development so that fits in within an iOS shape to make you be able to make serious apps. That would take a hell

⏹️ ▶️ John of a long time. And it would take a long time to boot people to PC to say, Oh, we’re going to port Xcode to PC,

⏹️ ▶️ John all those options would take a long time. And most of them sound like bad ideas, and would actually be bad ideas

⏹️ ▶️ John for anybody who is currently developing top tier iOS applications today.

⏹️ ▶️ John So what does that mean about the future of the Mac? Tune in next week slash tomorrow live

⏹️ ▶️ John listeners.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cliffhanger into it’s our style right?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on that bombshell, thanks to three sponsors this week, we sell socks, SQL Pro Studio

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Cocoa Conf. and we will see you next week.

Ending theme

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, Cause

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him, Cause

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you can find the show notes at

⏹️ ▶️ John atp.fm And if you’re into Twitter,

⏹️ ▶️ John you can follow them At C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that’s Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

⏹️ ▶️ Casey A-N-T Marco Armin

⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse It’s accidental

⏹️ ▶️ Casey They didn’t mean to ♪ Are you accidental? ♪ ♪ Accidental! ♪

⏹️ ▶️ John Tech Podcasts

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So long

Post-show

Chapter Post-show image.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we have an extremely important

⏹️ ▶️ Casey bit of after-show follow-up that I’ve been really really excited to talk

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about for easily hours now.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco how’s your snowblower?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have used it and I’m pretty sure I know how to start it now.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right!

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it turns out that wireless snow blowers are awesome.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I forgot that you were actually

⏹️ ▶️ John trying to

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey use them.

⏹️ ▶️ John I

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey used them for years.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco You

⏹️ ▶️ Marco guys got snow? Yeah, yeah. We got, you know, maybe like six inches and it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was really wet and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John so I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco knew that if I didn’t clear it, it would just turn into a block of ice, which everyone else who hasn’t cleared it has done exactly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. So yeah, and I’ve had

⏹️ ▶️ Marco electric ones in the past and they work okay,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but they tend to die after about two seasons, maybe three if you’re lucky.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And every electric snow clearing appliance I had a power solar before, they all had the same problem. They all

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would just work for a little while, they’d be okay, and then they would die. And having to drag

⏹️ ▶️ Marco around a 100-foot 15-amp extension cord as you go is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco both limiting and annoying. So I now finally have a wireless snowblower.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is powered by old dinosaurs. I know, please don’t tell me it’s actually old plants. I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very aware. And I thought this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the first gas-powered non-car I’ve ever had.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve never had a gas-powered lawnmower or anything like that. I was worried

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it would be a huge pain in the butt, and maybe as it gets older, it will be.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But right now, as it’s brand new and I get fancy gas from TruFuel, it is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco awesome. It turns out it’s really heavy, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s about the only… Oh, it’s pretty loud too. Those are the only downsides. wise

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s kind of amazing to not be tethered by a cord. I got to go, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, because I’m no longer tethered to my house by a hundred foot cord, I got to do the entire sidewalk

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for like the three houses adjacent to mine because they never do it themselves and it’s always

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very hard to walk around here. So I had to be like, finally I can just clear this whole sidewalk myself, damn

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it! And it was everything I hoped it would be. It was easier than

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I expected, less hassle than I expected, and overall now

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I kind of see after, admittedly, one use with no problems, but now

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I kind of see why most of these appliances are gas powered. And yes, I do know that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wireless electric ones do exist, but I’ve never been brave enough to try them because not only are they almost

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as expensive as the gas ones, but I would expect that to not have as much

⏹️ ▶️ Marco power as the electric ones or as the quartered ones do. And the quartered ones have even less power

⏹️ ▶️ Marco than the gas ones and so yeah, that’s no good.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m very proud of you. We have the same amount of snow but I don’t have a brand new snowblower so I had no reason to use

⏹️ ▶️ John the snowblower, we just shoveled it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You also have a lot less square footage to shovel than I do.

⏹️ ▶️ John I know but like six inches or eight inches even is not snow, it’s not worthy of me getting out

⏹️ ▶️ John of the snow. is worse like environmentally, both environmentally as in for

⏹️ ▶️ John the environment, but also environmentally as in the area around the snowblower, because it’s two cycle

⏹️ ▶️ John and it is old and is incredibly noisy and it makes everything smell and it’s gross. And so

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a high barrier for me to taking that thing out in

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco six

⏹️ ▶️ John to

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco eight

⏹️ ▶️ John inches. We actually shoveled twice. We shoveled once when it was a couple inches and once more when it was a couple more inches.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Six to eight inches and we shut down for a week. Because you guys don’t have plows Right. Well,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey we do but certainly not to the extent that you guys

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I said plows plural you have one plow

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Our

⏹️ ▶️ John plows were waiting for but the plows did not come by our house until for a long time and and we did I did

⏹️ ▶️ John We always do our sidewalk because we’re good suburban people and

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco like

⏹️ ▶️ John these demons are that live in Marco’s neighborhood Don’t shovel their sidewalks, but we have a

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey lot

⏹️ ▶️ John of sidewalk to shovel and I shovel the whole sidewalk twice, too

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, did you take your Tesla out and go hooning? Go what? Acting like a hooligan.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Another southern thing, I think.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Hooning? No. Nevermind. Sounds like a southern

⏹️ ▶️ John thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s not a southern thing. Is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John it a college football thing?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, it’s probably the… what is that god awful WRX forum? North American

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Subaru Impreza owners club? Nazi oak or whatever?

⏹️ ▶️ John Is it a rally car thing?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I don’t know. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey just the act of being a hooning top definition on Urban Dictionary. The

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John act of being a hooner

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or driving recklessly, racing, doing burnouts, etc. I’ve never

⏹️ ▶️ John heard that in my life. Hooning is Australian, the chat room says. It’s Australian, huh? It’s Australian from beer, mate.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, have you gone out driving like a moron, apologies,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in your Tesla in the snow?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, but by the time I got on the road, it was all it was raining.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey snow is all gone.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So speaking of cars, the actual thing I really did want to talk about, but I was hoping to bait and switch John

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with this. There’s been a new arrival in the Syracuse family just today.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Finally got your Ferrari,

⏹️ ▶️ John right?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, it’s red.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s the car we’ve been talking about for a while. I finally got, this is my wife’s car. She finally, he replaced her old Accord

⏹️ ▶️ John with a new Accord. It was very difficult for us to get a stick shift Accord Sport

⏹️ ▶️ John Special Edition because apparently nobody in the entire world or at least in the entire US wants to buy that car so

⏹️ ▶️ John they had to make it for us and then ship it out to us and now we’ve got it

⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s nice and it is currently unscratched and undented and un-acorn dented

⏹️ ▶️ John and had seven miles on it and it’s got the new car smell and it’s got seat heaters and

⏹️ ▶️ John we’re all very happy. Congratulations that’s awesome. Yeah and I think they might have added some options

⏹️ ▶️ John to the infotainment system which is still terrible but I saw a Couple like

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I

⏹️ ▶️ John found the option to remove Pandora which I never use so it’s not on the source list anymore So I got to check my car

⏹️ ▶️ John to see if that option was always there and I just missed it And a couple other nice things there and and

⏹️ ▶️ John fine and you can one of the few options the invote a man system has is you? Can change like the color scheme for it

⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s a red color scheme and we’re gonna keep it on that because it matches the car

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s that’s adorable. I gotta say looks great really aggressive wheels, which we covered

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on I don’t know if it ever even made it in the posted version of the show But we did talk about it on the show

⏹️ ▶️ Casey at one point or another It looked really really good. I’m the wheels particularly. I really liked

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it’s a sharp-looking car So what what year was the one that you just replaced?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey 2006 maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John okay, and this is a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey 2017 yeah, we

⏹️ ▶️ John keep our cars for about 10 years for the most part

⏹️ ▶️ Casey god that is 10 years isn’t it my word? I didn’t even put that together It didn’t seem like 2006 doesn’t seem

⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that long ago to me, but yeah, you’re right Wow

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and those aggressive wheels by the way, those aren’t as aggressive as they look they

⏹️ ▶️ John look like Marcos m5 wheels But they’re not Marcos m files We have five wheels were like five spoke

⏹️ ▶️ John and each of the spokes was these two little skinny things and you know So these look like that but only because

⏹️ ▶️ John they have it’s it’s you know, it’s it’s an ally wheel and everything It’s all it’s you know, but then they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John big openings You can see the the brake discs and the caliper and stuff like that, but it doesn’t have these little skinny

⏹️ ▶️ John spokes What it has is big thick spokes most of which are painted black Leaving the shiny

⏹️ ▶️ John silver parts that look like Marcos wheels did so it is cheaper than you think

⏹️ ▶️ John it is But it is still pretty cool. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s it’s cheating, but it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey fine Is your wife happy that’s really the only thing that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John matters.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so far

⏹️ ▶️ Casey fair enough What are the kids at all enthused or were they completely? did not care about it.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think they care. My daughter, to be contrary, because that’s who she is, said she likes

⏹️ ▶️ John that car better than my car. But honestly, I don’t know if they.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco She couldn’t actually believe

⏹️ ▶️ John that. Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey That would be

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco unheard

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey of.

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, from her perspective in the back seat, they’re practically identical.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think only a car person would notice a difference between these two. I mean, I can tell that they’re different model years. But it’s the same generation

⏹️ ▶️ John of

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco car. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John brand new. It’s red. It has cool wheels. I know, well, they don’t care about the wheels,

⏹️ ▶️ John believe me. They don’t care about the wheels. The leather seats, I tried to point out, this is, the Entry Notice seats are leather and they’re different.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think they noticed they’re different. I don’t know if they, if they said, which one is this, is this the leather one or the not

⏹️ ▶️ John leather one? I don’t think they know what leather is. I don’t know. Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey they seem to be fine with it. So you had sent us a picture of, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the outgoing car, you sent two pictures of the new car, And then you’d

⏹️ ▶️ Casey also sent a picture of the stick shift, which made me deeply, deeply happy. I was very enthused to see that.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey However, I noticed that this is one of the, I think

⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty much standard configurations where reverse is down into the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right. So away from the driver and laterally and toward

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the driver vertically. That is so ancient looking

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me because my legacy, My Subaru had that same arrangement, although it was a five-speed.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But now I’ve been ruined in the good way, I guess, by going in toward

⏹️ ▶️ Casey me and forward, which I actually really like as having reverse all the way to the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey left and up, which is the German way of doing things. I believe Volkswagens do it this way.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can’t speak for Audi. Obviously, BMWs do it this way. Mercedes hasn’t built a car

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with a stick shift in 50 years, so who knows? But in any case

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I I really prefer it there And it was like a flash from the past blast in the past to see

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it back into the right It’s weird.

⏹️ ▶️ John I Think I would like reverse in that position you described I think it probably actually makes a little bit more sense there

⏹️ ▶️ John The only thing back into the right has going for it is that it feels reversi like you’re pushing

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it. Yeah, that’s true

⏹️ ▶️ John but other than that like I mean, I think the strongest argument for being next to first

⏹️ ▶️ John is I I mean, especially in the age before lockouts, which everything has now.

⏹️ ▶️ John If you’re reaching for reverse, your car is stopped. And the only time you’re reaching for first

⏹️ ▶️ John is also when your car is stopped. So the two gears you reach for when your car is stopped are right next to each other. Whereas if you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John reaching for sixth and get reversed, which obviously you can’t because there’s a lockout. But if you were, and there was no lockout,

⏹️ ▶️ John that would be very bad. And in the days before lockouts, that would actually be bad. So I can see

⏹️ ▶️ John the argument for it being up there. But Hondas are all like that, where it’s back. And you just kind

⏹️ ▶️ John of get used to going back. And then you’re going to go first forward, and then whatever. It’s what you’re used to.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s totally what you’re used to. But I quite like having the two things that I’m most likely to do from a stop

⏹️ ▶️ Casey be close to each other. But I mean, but then again, you could also confuse them. So there’s an argument either way.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But no, congratulations to your lovely wife. This is very exciting. I’m glad she chose the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey correct transmission. This is probably the last time that the two of you will buy a car with that transmission. So I hope you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey can keep it running forever. You and your gears. Yes, yes, yes.

⏹️ ▶️ John I know.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So barbaric.

⏹️ ▶️ John You’ve got gears, you just can’t change the ratio.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I have forward and reverse. That’s it.

⏹️ ▶️ John I know, but you have gears. You just can’t change the gear ratio.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, okay. I have one gear of each direction. No,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John no, no. I understand what John is saying.

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, like actual gears, as in wheels

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco with teeth on them.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do I? Yes, you do. I’m not so sure. I’m not so

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco sure that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey he does. I understand your point, John, and I would guess that he does, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I’m not as entirely convinced. I’m guessing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there is literally one gear ratio on each axle, and that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. That’s what

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m saying. You have gears, you just can’t change the ratio. That’s all I said. Captain

⏹️ ▶️ Casey pedantic, everyone. It’s not pedantic. I’m using

⏹️ ▶️ John the most precise words I can.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s not like I’m trying to get off on a technicality. I’m not trying to trick you. This

⏹️ ▶️ John is not a trick. Oh, God, I love you guys.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I’m not trying to trick you, this is not a trick!

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh god, I love you guys.