202: Something Has Gone Wrong
29 Dec 2016The future of the Mac, and our first listener Q&A.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Back Channel
- Follow up: Ryan Jones on the AirPods charging port
- Gurman on Mac Malaise
- Q&A
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Chapters
- Intro
- Follow-up, somehow
- Gurman’s Mac article
- The Mac
- Sponsor: CocoaConf (code ATP)
- The Mac, cont’d.
- Sponsor: Audible
- Q&A
- Sponsor: Casper (code ATP)
- Q&A, cont’d.
- Ending theme
- Post-show: Neutral
- Post-show: AirPods
Intro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not only did we just talk last night because we’re recording this episode a week ahead of time for the holiday
⏹️ ▶️ Marco break. It was barely yesterday. Not only that but I’ve heard you guys in my headphones all day.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was editing last night’s show fast enough so I can get it published today because I’m leaving town tomorrow. Right. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah that was so I basically it’s like I’m just living with you now which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey kind of cool. You know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re my friend so it works out well but yeah I certainly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco heard a lot of you in the last 24 hours. I’m so sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, Craig, Syracuse. I have received 158 friggin’ emails
⏹️ ▶️ Casey today thanks to your tweet.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, thanks a lot, John. First of all, I told you both I was going to do this. And
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey second, you both said, yeah, it’s a good idea.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But you never said that you were going to solicit this feedback via frickin’ email. I was hoping it would be via Twitter.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, so here, I told you I was going to solicit the feedback. Marko was like, oh, we can do it five minutes before,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I know you couldn’t do it five minutes before. We’ve got to collect the stuff. do was use this piece of software
⏹️ ▶️ John called back channel. It’s like back Chan dot NL, which I thought was like a domain and I’ll just go to back
⏹️ ▶️ John Chan dot NL and just use it right the same way use like SurveyMonkey or the million other
⏹️ ▶️ John places where you can go to do some, you know, single purpose thing with a web app or I would just point people
⏹️ ▶️ John to a weird URL and say, hey, go here and enter your questions and let’s people vote the questions up. You know what I mean? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what is this URL? That BACKCHAN dot
⏹️ ▶️ John NL dot NL, But it’s not a URL. I thought it was a URL
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey because I was just remembering. Oh, I
⏹️ ▶️ John was going to say, because this doesn’t work. What it is actually is a software project. It’s a PHP thing, I think. And there’s no way I was going to install a PHP thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. But anyway, what I was looking for is a simple way for people to enter questions and other people
⏹️ ▶️ John to upvote them with some reasonable controls. So a Google Sheet wouldn’t do it because then
⏹️ ▶️ John people would just put whatever number they wanted in the votes column, and then we’d have to go back through the history to see who did it, and it’s all pointless.
⏹️ ▶️ John Reddit would have worked, but we know how I feel about that.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Jonathan Mann And so I said,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, short notice, I’m just going to tweet it, and we’ll just use the feedback form, which will
⏹️ ▶️ John provide some semblance of uniformity, and that we’re hoping most of you
⏹️ ▶️ John will come through that, and that people will read all the stuff that says we’re going to read your name on the air, and blah, blah,
⏹️ ▶️ John blah, blah. And I think it worked out pretty well. Well, we’ll find out how well it worked tomorrow
⏹️ ▶️ John if they followed the very important all-caps instruction, which was today only. Tomorrow,
⏹️ ▶️ John if we get another hundred questions, then, you know, well, my bad. Right now, go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco delete that tweet. I’m telling you. There’s no…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey That’s actually a very good idea.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco People will find it like in three weeks and still be telling us things. Today?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Because they’ll be like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Jonathan Mann well, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey just saw it today. Today? Yeah. All right. Go delete it. That’s the only thing you can do. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to delete it. That is the smartest thing, Marco, I think you’ve ever said in your entire life. After I want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an M5 or you should go with me to pick up my M5. Those are also high on the list.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Actually, Tiff just got a new car like an hour ago. Oh, really? Yeah, because the lease was up and we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just got the same thing again, the 340 GT. Yeah, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t realize you had actually ordered it. I remember you being in conversation with the dealer, but I didn’t know you had pulled the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The best thing about this, I can finally close like four browser tabs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s the best feeling ever, isn’t it? Oh, yeah. Right, John? Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John that whole window. Yeah, close the whole window with those tabs in it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hey, in the interest of full disclosure, I did go on a Tacky Light tour tonight. I have had a holiday
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gathering. I would not say I’ve had a holiday party. So just let me know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have a small holiday get-together on my desk as well. We’ll see how this goes It’s from
⏹️ ▶️ John Belgium. I had a glass of water in a dogfish ale glass today
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, so you must be hammered That was we were out at a restaurant and I guess all their cups for dogfish head ale
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever that company is that Marco Likes the the beer from
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco yep, dogfish head. Yep.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and I don’t know if they sponsor the place or whatever But yeah, that was those were their water glasses You couldn’t at
⏹️ ▶️ John least gotten a sprite John. I deleted that tweet so the world is safe. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thank you I’m looking at my red badge on mail that app 109 you damn
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, I’ve I gotta be honest I have read almost none of the questions that came in by email because I’ve been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve had such a busy day That I didn’t have time to read 150 new emails in addition to
⏹️ ▶️ John normally get right We’ll get to that portion of the show eventually and I will re-explain it or explain
⏹️ ▶️ John it as the case may be To both of you in the audience.
Follow-up, somehow
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s get started. So let’s start with some follow-up a friend of the show. Ryan Jones has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Corroborated what we had theorized on the last episode He says no, I’m quoting air
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pod lightning port is exactly the same as the iPhone port. Everybody chill
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you know the iPhone 7 that’s shown in this picture Comes with the big fat cable that covers over
⏹️ ▶️ John the whole thing Just like we discussed that show like the fat one actually does cover it, you know For the headphones
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, I guess for the charging thing. It doesn’t I think it’s a little bit more noticeable on the
⏹️ ▶️ John air pods because everything is all white shiny plastic And you’re plugging a white shiny plastic thing into it, and then there’s just a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ John poking out on a regular iPhone I imagine people haven’t noticed this before You know that the little I just
⏹️ ▶️ John poke out past the thing but of course internet being what it is This picture which
⏹️ ▶️ John many people have posted similar things didn’t stop people they said well You know what that means that means
⏹️ ▶️ John the iPhone 7 was supposed to be USB C2 and they change their mind
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey mind. So you
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t stop the conspiracy theorists. Anyway, it just looks like this is what lighting
⏹️ ▶️ John ports look like people and sometimes the plastic part doesn’t extend all the way to the end of the little opening.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Also, I’d like to acknowledge that we have we finished recording the last episode 26
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hours ago, 25 hours ago, something like that. And we did indeed have one piece of follow up.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, they’re fast. I mean, it could have been real time follow up if we were a little but you know this was 11 August
⏹️ ▶️ John it was 11 44 a.m. today but I’m sure somebody in the chat room said this during
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing and we missed it indeed
Gurman’s Mac article
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving on. Are we going to talk? I guess, John and Marco, you really want to talk about the Mark
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Erman article, don’t you? So do you. Everybody does. Who doesn’t? I slightly do. All
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right. Let me sit back, get comfortable. Maybe invite over another party. Yeah, right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Let’s get started. So Mark Erman wrote a post on Bloomberg,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is obviously where he works now. It’s entitled, How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And whether Whether or not you agree with the premise of the article, whether or not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you like the article, the premise of the article is, if you look at the situation here,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Mac is kind of an also-ran. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the tag-along in Apple’s portfolio, and it’s becoming more and more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clear that it’s of less importance to Apple than it ever has been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the past. There’s some interesting factoids, which I’m sure we’ll get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into about why the Mac does or does not matter. There’s some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey interesting facts that actually may not be accurate as told to us by some little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey birdies about whether or not the software teams were realigned or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey misaligned or just generally differently aligned in the effort to make the things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the Mac better or worse. It’s an interesting article and it is worth reading. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not sure what to make of it, but I’m curious to hear what the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two of you have to say. So since I’ve learned from the last episode, let’s start with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John. John, what did you think about this?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think you have to do it for this particular topic.
⏹️ ▶️ John think there’s only one piece of newish rumor. I’m not going to say new information,
⏹️ ▶️ John but new information, a new rumor. the only thing as far as I can recall
⏹️ ▶️ John having read this thing a couple days ago now that was in here and that was the story about how the new MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John Pros one of the things that Apple looked into was having differently shaped batteries
⏹️ ▶️ John to basically find more places to shove battery in the thing and it doesn’t mean that the same
⏹️ ▶️ John as the scalped batteries because that wouldn’t make sense because it’s not it’s not tapered but instead of just having a couple
⏹️ ▶️ John rectangles that fit into the nice rectangle parts having more oddly shaped batteries they can fill more nooks and crannies
⏹️ ▶️ John with battery and that didn’t work out for whatever reason according to this article
⏹️ ▶️ John and so they went with the more boring shape battery which meant less battery which meant less battery life
⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s a new presentation of some new information literally everything else in this article I think
⏹️ ▶️ John is just a summary and reiteration
⏹️ ▶️ John of all of the cranky Mac user stuff that has been going on the internet
⏹️ ▶️ John and on this podcast for a long period of time, including the bit that a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John people I think that was in this article a lot of people are going on like that that Apple was this this article that Apple doesn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John a dedicated Mac OS group anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it says that about about software at least not about hardware.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. And that’s unless I’m missing some detail that is not in this article. And again, it would help
⏹️ ▶️ John if this article acknowledge the thing I’m about to say and clarified it for me. But Apple unified
⏹️ ▶️ John software under Craig a long time ago. Like there used to be someone who ran
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS and someone who ran Mac OS, what was then called Mac OS 10 and then eventually OS 10 and now Mac OS.
⏹️ ▶️ John Those were separate and then they were combined, right? And so it’s not, that’s not news now
⏹️ ▶️ John if they mean, okay, so that happened, but now I actually really, even within the organization, there’s not a bifurcation.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the article should have acknowledged the past thing and said, now I know what you’re thinking. Didn’t they already do that when they put the cranky Federico and
⏹️ ▶️ John tried to everything? No, even then they were still too separate. The article doesn’t say that. So I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know quite what to think there. But either way, I don’t see that as a big deal because unifying all software and all OS
⏹️ ▶️ John efforts under a single group makes sense to me more than having them be walled
⏹️ ▶️ John off from each other because the core OS is essentially the same plus or minus, you know, differences
⏹️ ▶️ John needed for each individual platform. And there’s so much share between them and so many APIs and things that go between them like
⏹️ ▶️ John the extension mechanism, XPC and just it makes perfect sense to not have them
⏹️ ▶️ John walled off into like, this is the iOS group and this is the Mac OS 10 group and occasionally they cooperate.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey So I don’t see that
⏹️ ▶️ John as a particularly newsworthy either. And I also don’t understand what it means that most of the team is iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John first. I mean, they’re working on iOS, I can imagine there are more people working on it, because it is the more important operating system.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s also the younger one. And that has the hardware that changes that is changing the most and
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, like, but what does it mean to be iOS versus if the entire most of them are iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John first? I don’t know. It’s just not enough information to get worked up about.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so unless there’s some other nuance that we’re missing here that wasn’t included in the article, I’m going to say, yeah, so
⏹️ ▶️ John the groups are combined. That’s fine. And that’s not a big deal. Um, I’ll let Marco say
⏹️ ▶️ John what he thinks about this first, but there is one reason I wanted to talk about this. That is, it
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t have to do with the specifics of the article, except to say that this is a thing now that every publication feels
⏹️ ▶️ John like they need to have a Mac malaise article where they talk about either cranky Mac users
⏹️ ▶️ John or Apple failing those Mac users or both and some story about how the Mac is fading and stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John So that is the season for that kind of article. And this was sure one of them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, I honestly don’t have a lot to say about this specific article. I do obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as we all know, have a lot to say about the topic of the state of the Mac and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Apple seemingly neglecting things that I care about. But this particular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco article, as is typical with Mark Gurman articles, contains a few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco solid new, you know, stated facts, whether they’re true or not, we don’t know, but stated as facts, you know, a few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new information bits. But then this whole narrative around it that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is questionable and of a lot less credibility. You know, Gurman has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very good sources for facts, but he often gets the story
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the narrative wrong or the reasons wrong. So we have to take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything that everything in this that’s about reasons or people’s feelings or what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they you know what they think or why they do things, take all that with a grain of salt
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because that you know that could all be completely bogus or or at least misleading
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or or or not or missing some kind of subtle distinction or detail. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what we have to work with here, you know, john john nailed it like there’s not a lot of new stuff here and and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the stuff that is new like that they that they tried potentially terrorist batteries in the in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in 2016 on macbook pro. Yeah, that’s not that interesting. If they would have crammed more battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into it, it would have been heavier. Batteries are heavy, empty gaps around the square
⏹️ ▶️ Marco batteries are very lightweight. So if they would have like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the reasons this laptop is so pleasant to use is that it is noticeably lighter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than the previous one. If it was less lighter than the previous one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then it wouldn’t be as good of an update. So that’s kind of a non-story
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with that they tried these there’s different kind of battery in it and you know they try lots of things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and there’s a reason why not everything ships. You know that isn’t that important.
⏹️ ▶️ John That was another one of the stories they had was about the MacBook, that they had a bigger one and a heavier one and they went with the skinnier one.
⏹️ ▶️ John But again, the conclusion, they picked the lighter one and
⏹️ ▶️ John then the engineers had less time to figure out how to cram all the electronics into the thin one. The idea that
⏹️ ▶️ John the way the company is working is try a bunch of different approaches, then eventually pick one. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John the narrative that this leaves the engineer scrambling to get the final one done. Well, welcome to Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that approach of trying multiple ideas, like, first of all, I don’t think that’s new. Like, look underneath
⏹️ ▶️ John all Johnny Ives’ black cloths and his thing’s got tons of, you know, they try tons of stuff, and then eventually you pick one,
⏹️ ▶️ John and there’s lots of time pressure to do it, and so on and so forth. But, like, again, if they’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John make this argument, you have to add more. It has to be like, this is a thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, in the past, they did X, and the results were Y, and now they’re doing Z, and the results
⏹️ ▶️ John are Q. Like, you need something to tie it together instead of just saying they did this thing and this is what happened.
⏹️ ▶️ John Is that any different than literally every other piece of hardware they’ve made in the past 10 years? Or is
⏹️ ▶️ John it the same? The article isn’t saying one way or the other. We’re led to believe this is a nefarious, terrible thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John two possible approaches to a product were done and one of them didn’t work out and they picked one and then it was a it was a difficult
⏹️ ▶️ John task to get that one done in time. We’re led to believe that that is a sign that I don’t know that they
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t care about the Mac. I mean, if anything, they care about it more because they’re doing twice the work and throwing half of it away.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. This article is so confused.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. I feel like, I feel like Gurman really, he got a few good facts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and he really wanted to tell this story and so he kind of shoved the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco facts into the story he wanted to tell, but it doesn’t all make good sense. It is not, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, it isn’t a great fit in some cases and this is honestly, you know, not to pick
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on Gurman too much because pretty much every journalist I’ve ever had any dealings with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has done exactly the same kind of thing. You know, the story is usually decided up front and then the facts are found
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to support it. And, you know, I have my own theory about what the narrative is for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the problems that the Mac is having inside of Apple, and a lot of it lines up with this. So like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want to agree with this, I want to believe it, but the fact is there’s very few facts here to support the story,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and especially very few new facts.
The Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so the larger point I wanted to make about this whole topic is something I keep
⏹️ ▶️ John in mind every time we discuss it and in general is, and I think I brought it up before,
⏹️ ▶️ John imagine for a second that we
⏹️ ▶️ John fast forward 20 years and look back and realize that what’s actually happening during this period
⏹️ ▶️ John is that PC and desktop computing is slowly fading away as a thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you are a fan of that type of thing, as we are,
⏹️ ▶️ John during the time when it was fading away, I’m not sure it would feel any
⏹️ ▶️ John differently than we feel about Apple doing this stuff now, as in like, can we can we tell the difference
⏹️ ▶️ John between Apple not prioritizing the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John and that being the wrong thing to do, and us being, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John indignant and angry and telling Apple, you should be doing this, but you’re doing that instead,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re making a mistake, and it’s really important for you to do this for all these reasons, you know, so on and so forth. Kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ John why Apple should have a Mac Pro, which I wrote a thing about, and so did Marco more recently, and you know, what
⏹️ ▶️ John the needs of pro users are, whatever. I don’t think it would feel any
⏹️ ▶️ John different from our perspective if we’re right or if we’re wrong. Like, it feels the same either way.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I keep that in mind because it’s like, I mean, it doesn’t really change how I feel. I still wish they would pay more attention to the Mac, but
⏹️ ▶️ John every once in a while I have a moment of clarity and say, well, say Apple is doing exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John the right thing and we are yelling and screaming and trying to tell them to do the wrong thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s difficult for me to distinguish those two scenarios. Now, I mostly disagree
⏹️ ▶️ John that they are doing the right thing. I think they’re doing the wrong thing. But setting that aside for a second, the other part I
⏹️ ▶️ John take, you know, that thought experiment, leave it over there and then say, Okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John let’s say Apple is right. And this is a technology that a product in a style
⏹️ ▶️ John of working and everything that is fading from view, it will die with us because we were the last group of people who ever going to care about this
⏹️ ▶️ John crap. And actually, the right thing for Apple to do is to get rid of it. In that case, I still have one
⏹️ ▶️ John One more thing left to complain about Apple, complain to Apple about, and that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John that if they really believe that, they should be honest about it. They should, they should
⏹️ ▶️ John hasten the transition. They shouldn’t string us along with a series of platitudes like we
⏹️ ▶️ John talked about last time, like we’ve got great desktops and the iMac is the best desktop and we’re really dedicated to the Mac and we love the
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac. And I think it’s complicated by the fact that Apple doesn’t speak with one voice. It is, you know, especially after
⏹️ ▶️ John Jobs is gone. a company made up of a bunch of people and I think there are people inside Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John probably Phil Schiller, probably even Craig Federighi, who feel the same way about the Mac as we do, only they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John inside the company, right? So when they make statements like, oh, we think the Mac is really important and we’re really dedicated to
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac and blah, blah, blah, I think that’s the truth and they believe it, right? And to the extent
⏹️ ▶️ John that their power exists inside Apple, they’re trying to make that happen. But it could
⏹️ ▶️ John be that that opinion is not universal throughout the company and may not be the position
⏹️ ▶️ John that eventually wins. So we end up with is a company that perhaps is has rightly
⏹️ ▶️ John like in the worst case scenario for us, the company has rightly seen that
⏹️ ▶️ John this this product in this way of computing is a relic and it needs to go away. But
⏹️ ▶️ John instead of saying that instead of saying like I said last time, instead of saying, oh, laptops of the future, there’s no more desktops
⏹️ ▶️ John and the Mac is going to be no more pretty soon. It’s a legacy platform, as many of the scary articles have said
⏹️ ▶️ John the future is iOS we know this painful but it’s gonna happen sorry instead of saying that
⏹️ ▶️ John every time there’s any crankiness about it from their customers they
⏹️ ▶️ John say reassuring things they say oh don’t worry like I know it seems like we don’t care about them like
⏹️ ▶️ John what we totally do it’s super important we love the Mac blah blah blah blah blah and then they proceed to
⏹️ ▶️ John you know their actions don’t back that up time and again their actions you know give us something throw
⏹️ ▶️ John a little crumb our way and then leave us hanging early you know the Mac Pro the
⏹️ ▶️ John trash can like they did this amazing thing and then left us hanging for three years
⏹️ ▶️ John and now we’re not getting much of anything from the Mac these days very far less
⏹️ ▶️ John frequent updates updates that aren’t as satisfying to traditional Mac users and we just
⏹️ ▶️ John get some you know random platitudes so I think that even
⏹️ ▶️ John if we are dinosaurs and we are the last generation of people that’s ever gonna care about
⏹️ ▶️ John this type of computing and it will fade away with us Apple is not handling
⏹️ ▶️ John it the right way and if it turns out that actually this way of computing is not going away then Apple is definitely
⏹️ ▶️ John not hailing in the right way as discussed many times in the past but anyway that’s that’s the point I wanted to
⏹️ ▶️ John make about these type of articles is that if like us you are upset about the Mac you always
⏹️ ▶️ John have to think that it could be that you are a relic, that you are the Apple II user saying
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac is never going to be the future, you can’t get real work done on the Mac, Apple II forever, or any
⏹️ ▶️ John other thing you can think of for any other analogy, buggy whip salesman, horse versus automobile,
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever you want to, even radio versus television, movies,
⏹️ ▶️ John the internet versus everything that came before it basically. you’re in that group
⏹️ ▶️ John that is being left behind. And if you are, it looks and
⏹️ ▶️ John feels exactly the same as if the whole rest of the world is doing something terribly wrong and you’re the
⏹️ ▶️ John only one who knows about it. And unfortunately, it’s difficult to say which way things are going
⏹️ ▶️ John to go until later. So five years from now, ten years from now, I think we’ll have much more clarity
⏹️ ▶️ John about whether we ended up being right or wrong. But
⏹️ ▶️ John either way, right now I think I think Apple is mishandling things in one direction or another.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, John, as somebody who was at one point a iPod
⏹️ ▶️ Casey touch devotee, um, when did you,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when did you know that that was not the right way forward? When did you know that the iPod touch was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not the right device for you anymore? I mean, I, I think it was more than just you not wanting to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pay for a more expensive cell phone, cell phone plan. Right. So at what point did you say, you know what, the iPod
⏹️ ▶️ Casey touch is not long for this world, or alternatively, it’s not satisfying my needs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it’s time to get an iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feel like that’s a similar situation, right? Like you seem to have been on the wrong side
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of that. And it seems like the right answer is to be an iPhone person rather
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than an iPod touch person.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, Apple was on the wrong side of that one. Here’s the, that situation.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not like Like I wasn’t changing from the Apple II to the Mac or
⏹️ ▶️ John from the Mac to an iOS device. iPod Touch is an iPhone minus the phone
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the same OS, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the same experience. It’s not a different platform, it’s not a different paradigm, it’s not even a different form factor.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s basically the same exact thing. Now Apple did stop updating it to keep pace with
⏹️ ▶️ John the phone stuff. But that was so easy to make that switch because like I’m not even changing anything. Like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John literally the same thing only now there’s a phone in it, right? and it’s just faster and it’s nicer. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John that was an easy thing to make. And the reason I think Apple was wrong is because that’s not a transition.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s no transition from iPod touch to iPhone that Apple needed to make. They didn’t need to get like the dinosaurs
⏹️ ▶️ John off of the old platform. It’s the same freaking thing. They just decided that it wasn’t as important.
⏹️ ▶️ John And well, I don’t know if I’m gonna say they’re wrong because they were probably right in terms of volumes because they probably sell way more phones than those things, so who
⏹️ ▶️ John cares, whatever. But what I’m gonna say about them being wrong is there was no, strictly speaking, There
⏹️ ▶️ John was no strategic reason to migrate people off the
⏹️ ▶️ John iPod Touch because it’s not like a legacy platform. It is the current platform. It runs the current version
⏹️ ▶️ John of the OS. It is. It is getting people into the iOS ecosystem. There’s nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John about it that is counter to their broad strategy. It just doesn’t sell as much and they can
⏹️ ▶️ John justify the investment of keeping updated or whatever. So in that respect, they’re probably right. But in terms of like,
⏹️ ▶️ John have they done the opposite, they would not have been making a strategic mistake. Update that and lockstep with
⏹️ ▶️ John the rest of the iPhones like they had done before Everything would be fine. They wouldn’t be selling any more iPod touches
⏹️ ▶️ John their iPod touch customers might be a little bit happier You know, but but
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re right that the one similarity that has is When they stopped
⏹️ ▶️ John updating it frequently enough and when I saw that if I really want the fastest iOS device available or anything
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s even in the ballpark. The only choice I have is an iPhone That’s when I had to switch.
⏹️ ▶️ John And like I said, it was easy because it’s the same thing. It’s the same platform. It’s the same software, everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. So, Marco, what do you think about all this? I mean, you’ve been stunningly quiet. I know you have some thoughts
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here, so lay it on me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I almost don’t know where to begin. It’s like, I honestly don’t care too crap
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the iPod Touch, but the whole story about what’s going on with the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac, I care very, very much about. It’s hard to know where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to start, so forgive me if this is disorganized, like most of what I say.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What bothers me about the discussion around this and about seemingly Apple’s position on this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by their mostly inaction around a lot of the Mac product line and the Mac OS, honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that to pull up the old Steve Jobs truck analogy, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not an amazingly fitting analogy because cars and trucks are not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computers and phones. It doesn’t fit incredibly well. But there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough parallels with what he was saying that I think it’s worth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco revisiting that for a second and kind of trying to explain how I feel. The way I feel,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not only as a Mac user, but as a Mac Pro user, really.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple is like the only manufacturer in the world of decent trucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they discovered a few years ago that cars are more profitable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so they’ve decided, you know what? We’re just hardly going to update trucks anymore. And we’re just going to not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make the biggest ones anymore. And you know, most people don’t need the biggest ones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But some people do. And what if it takes 20 years to develop a good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco truck making company? So I know this analogy is being stretched
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to hell. It’s long gone and I’m abusing the crap out of it. However,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple is abandoning parts of the market for which there is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no substitute for what Apple has been making. And if they’re not abandoning it, they’re neglecting it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they might be abandoning it soon. And everyone says, you know, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple excusers who hear discussion about this often respond with,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, they’re just not making computers for you, or this product just isn’t for you anymore,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or they don’t care to satisfy your needs anymore. But to some degree,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it isn’t that simple because these needs will continue to exist. People
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who need Macs, period, to do their work, and people who need high-end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Macs also, or certain high-end software and hardware needs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those needs continue. whether Apple feels like addressing them or not, but if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple has been addressing them all these years and then stops, that leaves those people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really screwed, like with nothing, because it isn’t usually as simple as jumping
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to Windows. Like unless what you do is, as I described, you know, about the Server Studio
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two episodes ago, you know, if what you do is primarily like in one Adobe Creative Suite
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app or something like that, where like it’s an app that’s available on both platforms, and that’s most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of what you do for your computer needs for that computer or whatever, like if it’s like a workstation or if it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a studio computer or whatever. That’s a different story. But for people who kind of like use the whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco OS in integrated ways, multiple software packages, maybe software that’s only available on that OS,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can’t just like, oh, just start using Windows. Like no, it isn’t that simple. And there’s a lot of like investment
⏹️ ▶️ Marco both in not only like software that you buy, but also like there might be custom software that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is developed for this OS that doesn’t exist on the other OS. Or if you’re a developer, like you’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco built your software library, your code base, your customer base,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all on this OS. So, just tellin’ people like, oh, just go use Windows, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s not a great answer. If Apple stops addressing a market,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in many cases, those people are just completely out of luck. And there seems to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be this like, it’s this like design virus. Like, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this kind of like cult of saying no as a feature. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost as though like when people back, you know, back when like Samsung first like started
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really ripping off Apple heavily, Steve was still alive for that part. The way people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would rip off Apple would basically be like to look at some kind of superficial quality that Apple products have,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, oh, everything is like rounded and has blue, you know, bulbous colors
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on it or whatever. and it has no, you know, it removes ports or whatever. Like, they would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco take some kind of superficial quality and just apply that as gospel without really understanding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why that was done that way. And without understanding that there were trade-offs involved and that sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you shouldn’t do things that way and like, you know, basically copying like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a superficial attribute and just replicating it without understanding why and without ever questioning it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I almost feel like that’s how Apple’s designing their own product line now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as like kind of repeating the, oh, just I guess we can make it thinner because what else
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are we gonna do? I guess we can remove some ports because that’s the future in quotes. But it’s almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like they’ve lost track of why it’s so, why it’s sometimes worth removing things,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why it sometimes isn’t. And it’s like they’re saying no or removing things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the sake of saying no or removing them. And this is kind of permeating now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Apple commentary culture right now of kind of assuming that everything that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco takes away or makes worse is for the future and inevitable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s it’s universally a good thing. Of course, this was progress.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they apply that same thinking to when Apple basically cuts off somebody’s needs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and say, well, well, that I guess they just don’t feel like serving you anymore or you’re not worth serving.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And by the way, For a company where you have quarterly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco results that keep going down and product lines that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seem like the growth is being problematic for you, I’m not sure it’s the wisest move
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the world to throw away market share that you’ve earned hard over the last decade or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two. To tell somebody your needs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are not worth serving is a big slap in the face to them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that doesn’t leave people happy with Apple or likely to buy a lot of other Apple stuff and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so they’re literally throwing away market share with everything they cut
⏹️ ▶️ Marco neglect or change for the worse or choose not to address you know they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco literally throwing away market share and in in a market like the PC market
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where market share is hard to come by and there’s not a ton of growth happening of the whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco market as a whole, that’s kind of the opposite of what you should be doing really. Like Apple should be trying to address more needs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the Mac not fewer. But anyway going back to more you know the more general stuff like I worry now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Apple does think Apple and also comment you know the the the Apple commenters
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all seem to support this notion unquestioningly. That removing things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and making things, quote, simpler, which often involves cutting off people’s needs and what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they were doing, that that’s universally a good thing. And I think that deserves more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco critical thinking at Apple. I think that deserves more pushback. And because sometimes that is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the right answer, but not every time. And it really does seem like Apple has lost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the ability to tell the difference.
⏹️ ▶️ John So what did you think about what I said before about how from the inside it’s difficult to distinguish between the
⏹️ ▶️ John situation that you described and the situation where Apple is actually right and they’re just not,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re being, they’re not being honest maybe with themselves even, but certainly not with us about the
⏹️ ▶️ John fact that we’re moving away from it. Like, you think you could tell the difference from our perspective,
⏹️ ▶️ John whether, whether we’re just being left behind and it’s painful or whether we’re actually right
⏹️ ▶️ John and Apple’s doing something stupid?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I honestly I don’t know. I don’t have any way to know that. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can look at the market. There is a clear trend that mobile is up and PC style OS’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco including Mac OS are down. And that things like like web browsing share,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can see that going going way towards mobile now. It’s obvious that’s where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usage percentages are going. I’m not yet convinced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it is inevitable that PC-style computing is going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to go away, or even be incredibly marginalized. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think those are necessarily givens. I would be very surprised if either of those happened,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually. And granted, I’m wrong all the time, so this could happen next year, I don’t know. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I see is a lot of common tasks moving to phones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and tablets. Sure, that’s fine. Phones and tablets are wonderful things. I think honestly I think the phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the way better thing but you know we we live in abundance in technology now we can have both cool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s fine but I think what we see is that even the most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dedicated people who love using iPads for all their work
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for instance still almost all of them have a Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because there’s like one or two or ten things that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you need the Mac to do that iOS not only can’t do but probably won’t ever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do. I don’t see any any change on the horizon that’s going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco change that like so I feel like it’s going to kind of like settle in where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know right now there’s like a line going in a certain direction where I think it’s going to kind of look more like an asymptotic curve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than like a straight line where it’s going to flatten and plateau and and and like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s going to be a certain baseline usage that people will just need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco PC style computers and and OS is to do this chunk of common
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tasks because the PC and again I use the word PC here I really do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean both Windows and Mac PCs and I refer to the PC
⏹️ ▶️ Marco style operating system you know as opposed to like iOS and Android and especially iOS which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is really more I mean the way iOS works is almost the way a game console works these days. Like it’s very much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like console computing, where you have like everything is very much locked down, much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more proprietary, you have much less control as the user, there’s much less potential for like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco messing around or customization or hacking things or using like little tools that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can like hook into the OS and provide cool functionality. There’s almost none of that, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very little of that. And then the PC style operating system allows you to basically install whatever you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want and the programs can do to a large degree whatever they want and of course that comes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with good and bad there’s a lot of security issues with that however ultimately what that allows is for the PC
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be a way way more customizable work environment it allows it to address
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needs that the platform vendor never imagined and it allows it to basically fill
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in all of the holes so like there’s all sorts of like you know what we call
⏹️ ▶️ Marco edge cases which has become a bad word for some reason you know, there’s all sorts of things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we have to do. And I’m not, and like, I also want to be really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clear here that like, thinking that these edge cases only apply to geeks and that geeks are a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco small market, both of those things are wrong. Geeks are a fricking huge market and everyone needs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do these things sometimes. So anyway, PC style operating systems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fill in these gaps. They are the most versatile software ecosystems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that can ever exist, like that have ever existed. you know, iOS and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the lockdown kind of console computing model that it provides is very nice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a number of ways, but one thing it really isn’t as versatile. It’s capable, you can do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of things, but it’s not versatile. And PC OS’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fill that in. So there are so many needs that really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can either only be done on PC OS’s or are just so ridiculous to do in iOS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you would rather, you only really will ever want to do them on PC OSes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that I don’t see changing. I don’t see some kind of massive shift on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the horizon where iOS is gonna suddenly allow you to like hook in and provide
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your own battery widget in the status bar and allow apps to talk to each other more directly and share
⏹️ ▶️ Marco files more directly. Like, I don’t see that. That would ruin iOS in a lot of ways.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So there’s always going to be massive types of things that are really only possible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on PC OS’s. And the percentage of time that you need to do one of those things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will probably continue to shrink over time the way it has. But I don’t think those needs are going away.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I don’t foresee a future in which a lot of people who have ever needed a PC
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will stop needing a PC completely. They might use it less. They might replace it less often. I mean we see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that now. now, but they’re still going to use them. So for Apple to completely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco neglect that, which they’re not doing yet, they’re not completely neglecting it, they’re partly neglecting it now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but for Apple to basically slowly let that die, I think is incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unwise. And I think that threatens their dominance in their more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco profitable markets. Because part of the reason that people love iPhones so much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that a lot of the people, all of them, but a lot of the people who both use and buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhones and also who influence other people to use and buy iPhones, a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of them are Mac users. So if the Mac starts to wither or dies, a lot of those people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are going to start looking around and consider different phone platforms as well because a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the advantage to using an iPhone is how it integrates well with the Mac environment. Not all of it. Again, this doesn’t represent everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who buys an iPhone. it’s a much bigger market, but like this is a non-trivial size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco group and it’s a very influential group. And so to completely throw away
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything they’ve built with Mac OS, which is amazing, to completely throw
⏹️ ▶️ Marco away all of the goodwill of all these millions of users that they’ve built up over decades,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think is an incredible strategic error. Not to mention the tragedy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is for those of us who use PCs, which is nearly everybody,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those of us who use PCs, if Apple leaves
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or effectively neglects this market, there’s nothing better left.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Windows is not good. We can probably get by on Windows, but it’s not good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Linux is really not made for this. I mean, you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of wedge it in there, but it doesn’t do a great job of being a desktop OS and it’s yeah it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco serves a lot of many fewer needs. Mac OS is the cream of the crop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and to make you know one’s gonna come along and just make another Mac OS like that takes 20 years and a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really good talent and really good direction and really good opportunities that are probably not gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happen ever again in personal computers or at least in our lifetimes. So Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to some degree like somebody on Twitter I’m sorry I forget who right now. Somebody on Twitter said earlier that they almost have like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco social responsibility to the world of computing to keep making Mac OS to keep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey satisfying these needs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, that’s going way too far. Honestly, is it? Yes. You know what? I bet Steve Jobs would have agreed with that statement.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Maybe. I mean, who knows? But Steve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Jobs loved computers. And even when new stuff came out, he loved computers. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he, I think, I mean, I don’t know him, but I think that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the kind of thing he would have agreed with. You know, his whole thing like the glass water and hell or the glass of ice water and hell, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really do think that he saw it as like his responsibility to bring good computing to the world.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And Apple still does that with iOS, certainly. And the Mac is still good for now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it is very very clear that the Mac is not being given the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco priority and resources that it needs to move forward. It’s very clear that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever it’s whatever level of resources and priority it’s getting now is enough to kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Steve Ballmer the Mac line. Like it’ll keep going, it’ll be it’ll make some money,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’ll be profitable, but the ship won’t be able to turn
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because that takes more than what they’re giving it. And so if and when the market turns
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into something new, whether that’s VR, AR type stuff, whether that is something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the Surface Studio or who knows what else will come along the way. Whatever is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to be the next big change in PC style hardware and software,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can almost guarantee that Apple will miss it. I can almost guarantee that Mac OS will fall behind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because they are simply not giving it enough thought and priority to to make it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stay on top of the game. They’re doing well now because they had such a big lead over Windows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in so many areas for so long, but eventually that lead’s gonna go away.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s going to take a while because Microsoft is not very good at things, but eventually something big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is going to come to the world of PCs that people want, that it will shift to, and Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will not be ready. They absolutely will not be ready, and they will totally miss it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s when they will lose the mat completely. Right now it seems like they’re okay with that outcome
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because of their actions, whatever they say, their actions say that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are okay with that outcome, and I think that’s That’s a huge mistake.
Sponsor: CocoaConf (code ATP)
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’re sponsored this week again by Coco Conf. Go to cococonf.com
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and use code ATP to save 50% on tickets for Yosemite and Chicago. Coco Conf is a technical
⏹️ ▶️ Marco conference for Apple developers and designers. It’s amazing. Next year on March
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 28th through 23rd, Coco Conf will be returning to Yosemite National Park for its third Yosemite
⏹️ ▶️ Marco event. This is again held at the Yosemite National in the US. Sorry. This is again held
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the Yosemite Lodge at the Falls right in the heart of Yosemite National Park. It is a beautiful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco picturesque venue. In fact, there’s even a guided photo walk led by TED photographer James Duncan
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Davidson who is both an awesome photographer and a super nice guy. And they have amazing speakers including Ashley
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Nelson Hornstein, Brent Simmons, Daniel Steinberg, David Smith, Georgia Dow, Jamie Newberry,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Matt Drance, and Sebastian DeWitt. Personally, I have seen almost all of these people speak.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They are great. They are top of their field. I highly recommend that you go to this and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can also get music from James Dempsey and the Breakpoints and by our theme song author Jonathan
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Songaday-Mann. I’ve also seen both of these acts and they’re also both amazing. So this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a fantastic event in an amazing location. Yosemite National Park, right? I mean
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s this beautiful, beautiful park. It’s… I can’t even describe it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all this is with these great speakers with this great event. You gotta see it. Go to cococonf.com,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use code ATP to see 15% on tickets for Yosemite. And also they have a Cocoa Conf Chicago event
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The Mac, cont’d.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Use code ATP to save 15% on tickets. Thank you very much to Kodakom for sponsoring once again.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I don’t know when it was, four, maybe five years ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there was this magazine that was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey called The Magazine. And I pitched a story
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to The Magazine about the importance of the manual
⏹️ ▶️ Casey transmission. And much to my dismay, it was refused because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey somebody else has already, had already basically claimed a story on the manual transmission.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey As it turns out, that story was by the terrible human being Dan Morin, who,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as it turns out, wrote a much better story than mine. And I will forget to link it in the show notes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but my version of the story is on my old Tumblr blog somewhere
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you can dig up if you’re interested. The manual transmission on a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey modern car means a tremendous amount to me. And I don’t say that to be funny. I don’t say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that in a hyperbolic way. I genuinely mean that. I will be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey devastated when there comes a time that the only car that I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can buy with a manual transmission is one that I don’t want. Say for example, a pickup truck.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not saying a pickup is wrong for other people, but it’s not the kind of car that I want.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco case, you can just ignore it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know you’re being snarky, but you’re kind of right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey It’s like the most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco popular selling vehicle in America.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I see your point. It’s actually an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco excellent analogy because pickup trucks are the kind of thing that most people never think about, but they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually everywhere and tons of people need them to do their jobs. And a lot of people just like them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, you’re right. And you’re right, that is a pretty good analogy. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it ruins my whole story, so I’m going to ignore it. Okay, feel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Jonathan Mann free, move on.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But the point I’m driving at is that, for me, I want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a four-door passenger car with three pedals in it. That’s what I want.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And to me, driving a car with only two pedals
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not enjoyable in In some ways, I think it’s a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unsafe and I know a lot of people are gonna disagree with that and with that that’s fine, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just don’t that’s not for me. I don’t care for it and Until
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I cannot anymore. I will always choose cars that have a that have a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey manually operated clutch That’s what I want. That’s what I’m interested
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in and And that’s what I will do until I have a compelling reason
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not to, as in my left leg is broken, or I’m down a limb
⏹️ ▶️ Casey somewhere, whatever. All of that said, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think there’s any question that I am one of few, and that the rest
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the world not only is moving on, but has moved on.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s a miracle. That’s a bit overblown, but I’ll stick with it. It’s a miracle that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can buy a 3-series BMW with a 6-speed. It’s a miracle that TINA
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was able to get a 6-speed Accord in 2016. And it’s clear
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you guys, John, had to go through some hoops to get it. It’s not like you pulled it off a lot. It’s not like they shipped
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it in from Connecticut or New York or something like that. It was built specifically for you because nobody else
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wanted that. It’s clear to me that driving a manual transmission
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is not long for this world. But why? I love it. In
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so many ways, I think it’s better. But the fact of the matter is, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of a very, very small breed, and I’m one of a group that is going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey away in ever-increasing numbers. Look at the take rate of the manual transmission on M3s and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey M4s. They’re plummeting. The only reason that the M5, the most
⏹️ ▶️ Casey recent M5, the F10, it’s F10, right? The only reason the F10 M5, god, that sounds like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a pickup. Anyway, the only reason the most modern M5 had a manual transmission
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was because of Americans, of all people, which is really weird. And it was only in America. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey believe that’s true. I might have my facts wrong,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco but it doesn’t matter. You get the point. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re right. At least North America. Right, right. So nobody else seems to want a manual transmission.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And to be honest, on paper and by most metrics, the transmission that Marcos M5 had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is better. It’s better in pretty much every measurable way.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But here it is. I’m going to be really freaking pissed that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whenever I buy my next car, it’s 50-50 shot, I won’t be able to get a six speed.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And when I looked for my car, which admittedly I’d got used, which to some degree makes things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Lot worse, but it took me something like six months to find this car because to find it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to find a 335 with the m-sport Package in white is hard That wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a criteria you big jerk to find a 335 just happened to be white It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I saw all of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your other cars now the other ones were deliberate this one was an accident,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Point is to find one with an m-sport package that was really difficult But to find
⏹️ ▶️ Casey any 3 series with a 6-speed get out of town because you’re gonna be waiting for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ever It’s impossible, but here it is. That’s what I want. And that’s what’s right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for me. I don’t care if it’s not right for you It’s what’s right for me. But the fact of the matter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is I’m a dying breed I’m one of few and I cannot expect BMW
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to forevermore Cater to Captain Casey. It’s just not gonna work. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not profitable It’s not manageable. It’s not understandable. It’s not reasonable.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s not gonna work All that being said I love the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hand on heart. I cannot begin to describe how much I love the Mac I feel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so much faster on the Mac than I do on iOS That doesn’t mean I can’t do equivalent things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on iOS in most cases, but I love the Mac. I feel hamstrung
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I’m on an iOS device. I feel crippled. I feel like I have handcuffs on. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not the case for everyone. Clearly, people like Federico and Mike
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hurley and so many other people have done amazing things on iOS. I’m not trying to say that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iOS isn’t right or good or great or amazing. For me, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is not the right answer. And I love the Mac. I feel at home
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the Mac. I feel free on the Mac and yes that sounds really ridiculous and lame and kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I know it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey free on the Mac I really do feel free on the Mac I agree with you Marco that I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will be devastated if the Mac goes away but the more I look around
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the more I see the people around me the more clear it is that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am NOT one of the many I’m one of the few and at some point at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some point, um, this group that loves the manual transmission, this group
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that loves Mac OS isn’t going to be big enough to really fricking matter anymore. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I, I will be devastated. I mean that word. I use that word deliberately. I will be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey frigging devastated when that time comes. Maybe not as much as you two,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but if not really damn close, because as much as I beat the two you up about, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey convention about the Mac and the state to the Mac and this and that. I agree with you. I want the back to live
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for ever. But to me, it’s becoming more and more clear that I’m not going to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have a manual transmission much longer. And I’m not convinced, but I’m not terribly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sure that I’m going to have a Mac much longer. And I think the reality of the situation is all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey three of us are just going to have to come to grips with that. And it doesn’t make me happy. It doesn’t make me smile. It
⏹️ ▶️ Casey makes me really damn sad. Not to the point that I’m losing sleep over it, John, but it makes me really damn sad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I hope that I’m wrong. God, I hope I’m wrong. But at some point,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all three of us need to look around and say, you know what? We aren’t the ones that matter anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I look at Aaron, who is by every measure a far more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey normal human than I am, in every measurable way. And I look at her and I think to myself,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she has this MacBook Air. And yes, it went underwater twice, but nevertheless, it’s working
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to clarify for any listeners who forgot, it was Casey’s fault. It went underwater, not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Absolutely. Absolutely my fault. But she very rarely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uses her BackBook Air. Why? Because her iPhone works for her. I gave
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the first retina iPad, was that the third generation iPad? Doesn’t matter. I gave her my old iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey She never touched it because her phone was enough for her. And I think that for most people,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s pretty much the truth. Maybe not at work, but in Erin’s case, she’s a stay-at-home mom,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so that is her work, actually, come to think of it. For a lot of people, they don’t need
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Macs. Now, take Tiff, for example. Tiff is also a stay-at-home mom, but she has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey other things that she does, and she absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, needs a Mac. So I’m not trying to say this This is universal,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I take Erin as an exemplar of somebody who is normal or a lot more normal than
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am, and she does have a Mac and she does use her Mac, but if I told her
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that her Mac was gone forever, say for example, if I dumped a bunch of water on it, I think she’d be okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And none of this makes me happy. I’m not pleased to say these things, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in summary, I think all three of us need to realize that we’re part of a we’re part of a group that’s getting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ever smaller and that’s ever less profitable and that probably doesn’t matter that much to Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and that sucks. It totally sucks. But
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s reality. You know, before I don’t know if we want to refute all the things you say, because I think Mark
⏹️ ▶️ John when I could rebut many of this,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey but I want to
⏹️ ▶️ John but I want to point out that both of you seem to be uninterested in my thought experiments. I’m assigning
⏹️ ▶️ John it to you as a homework assignment, because right now you’re still talking about like whether
⏹️ ▶️ John or not what we think might happen is happening. And I’m still more interested at this point in
⏹️ ▶️ John how you would tell the difference between the two scenarios between the Casey scenario where we’re stick shift drivers
⏹️ ▶️ John or Apple to users and it’s just happening to us and the scenario the more Marco scenario
⏹️ ▶️ John where Apple is doing something dumb and really they should be supporting
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac because if they don’t those needs aren’t going away. Again, not
⏹️ ▶️ John not the specific arguments either side of it But how if you are in the middle of it as a Mac user as an Apple to user
⏹️ ▶️ John as a stick shift driver What should you look for? To distinguish those two situations,
⏹️ ▶️ John right and I’m not sure I have great answers either but I think it’s something worth thinking about so we could table that is
⏹️ ▶️ John as a homework assignment I suppose And on the specific stick shift things
⏹️ ▶️ John and on the Mac I mean like I’ll just throw out a few of them like so the idea that we’re shrinking like
⏹️ ▶️ John percentage wise Mac market share, the line for Mac market
⏹️ ▶️ John share in the, you know, just in any kind of line you want to put overall PC
⏹️ ▶️ John market share, Mac sales years versus years, it looks way better than the stick shift
⏹️ ▶️ John line. Like way better. The stick shift line fell off a cliff years ago
⏹️ ▶️ John basement. And the Mac line, if you look at it on all the graphs, it’s boring, but it’s pretty steady.
⏹️ ▶️ John So regardless of, you know, just in terms of degree, I mean, you could still totally write
⏹️ ▶️ John about it, but in terms of degree, I’m going to say that the Mac is not in a stick shift situation. I mean, we would know it
⏹️ ▶️ John if it was if it was a six inch situation, I wouldn’t have to go to seven different stores and
⏹️ ▶️ John money. I want to give you will you give me? I swear, I talked to so many dealers.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Jonathan Mann They want everybody wanted to sell me a CBT accord.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Nobody wanted my
⏹️ ▶️ John money. I’m like waving dollar bills in their face. I have money, you know, I’ll do your finance thing, whatever incentives
⏹️ ▶️ John you have, I’ll do them like now. No, we don’t have any of those. Maybe try back later. Maybe. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John so we’re not in that situation yet. And the other thing on what Marco was talking about,
⏹️ ▶️ John one one aspect that would would show that Apple is screwing this up
⏹️ ▶️ John is that and this has happened in the past to Apple specifically, that if Apple doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John fill the needs of some market and that market is heavily invested in the Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, that can that can wreck companies that can really disrupt the industry, but more than any
⏹️ ▶️ John other type of business, people that need computers, PC style
⏹️ ▶️ John computers for professional needs are the most willing and able
⏹️ ▶️ John like as an industry, not as an individual company, perhaps, but the most willing and able to
⏹️ ▶️ John bail and go to something else. If they’re using Macs for video editing, and Apple seems not interested in video editing,
⏹️ ▶️ John the whole industry will shift to a different product on a different platform. Like, so they’ll stop Final
⏹️ ▶️ John Cut and they’ll go to Avid or, you know, same thing with like audio editing applications or 3D,
⏹️ ▶️ John 3D for a little while looked like the Mac might be a factor, but it’s like, nope, Windows NT or, you know, just have
⏹️ ▶️ John SGI. People switch from SGIs to Windows NT, which seemed unheard of, like, they’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John switch. They, if you don’t fill their needs and they still need to do this thing, and it seems like you’re not supporting them anymore,
⏹️ ▶️ John they will ditch you and retrain everybody and buy all new hardware and a whole bunch of companies will go out of
⏹️ ▶️ John business because they won’t make that transition and they’ll hate you forever and they will change. And one good
⏹️ ▶️ John way to tell if Apple is, you know, being smart about this or not, it’s like if they abandon these industries and people
⏹️ ▶️ John still need to professionally edit video on a PC style workstation and Apple isn’t interested in
⏹️ ▶️ John selling them hardware that works for their needs, they will switch to Windows. They absolutely will. They will hate it. They may be
⏹️ ▶️ John sad. The people who are dying, the Apple users will be sad. Some companies might go out of business because they can’t absorb
⏹️ ▶️ John the cost to turn over all the hardware and retrain everybody. But they absolutely will switch.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that you know, that’s a bad sign for Apple. And my final point, I know we need to get to the q&a part and we will.
⏹️ ▶️ John My my final point is that if there are any Apple people listening, hi, Craig,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey and if you’re sitting there as like an important,
⏹️ ▶️ John important person inside Apple, and you’re hearing all this moaning about, you know, these three diehard
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac users, who are talking as if the Mac is already dead or talking about that possibility.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you’re like, I, you’re like, how is this happening? Like, maybe they disagree with what we’re doing with the Mac. But,
⏹️ ▶️ John but like, we must be, you know, if you have this feeling, like we what are we doing to make these customers,
⏹️ ▶️ John our most loyal customers are customers that are love to give us money and want to buy Macs, and they think the platform
⏹️ ▶️ John is dead. Like if you have that feeling like that something has gone terribly wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ John It could be one of two things. One that you are one of those people inside Apple that I was just talking about who feels the same way about the Mac as we do.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s totally honest. And every time they get up on a stage and say we care about the Mac, it’s really important to us, blah, blah, blah.
⏹️ ▶️ John But maybe the rest of the company doesn’t agree with you. Or to the whole company
⏹️ ▶️ John is all on the same page that the Mac is really important. And you’re doing the world’s worst job of convincing your most
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco loyal customers of
⏹️ ▶️ John this fact. Like, but you know, we’ll pretend it’s the truth. If it is the truth, you’re doing
⏹️ ▶️ John of convincing Mac users of that fact. So no matter how you slice this, something
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple is doing is wrong. Strategically,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco PR wise, marketing timing. The
⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse. Yeah, well that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey true. Specifically on the
⏹️ ▶️ John issue of how Apple is handling the Mac. There is no way around the fact that something
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple is doing is wrong. It’s just a question of whether they’re wrong by not being honest with us, they’re wrong
⏹️ ▶️ John by not being able to convince us of a thing that really is true, they’re wrong that they shouldn’t they are
⏹️ ▶️ John de-emphasizing the Mac and they shouldn’t be and all is possible is they’re kind of up in the air I think we’ve talked about
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of them but like something is going wrong here as as is true with so many things 2016
⏹️ ▶️ John something has gone wrong
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’re sponsored this week by Audible.
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Q&A
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you very much to audible for sponsoring our show All
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, John, so you’ve come up with some ground rules about the Q&A section which I actually think we’re quite clever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love this? I love that you had to hook you had to have rules All right, we’re gonna do Q&A but they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna be rules those rules are mostly for YouTube But for the people
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey who are listening Us too I say, okay
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, I mean for us not for the audience, but as far as the audience concerned here, here’s the deal So we asked for questions just today.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you have one day to send in questions. We’re supposed to send it through the email form. If you sent it through Twitter, you didn’t follow directions.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe I didn’t specifically say don’t send it to Twitter, but I totally said send it here. That’s what the colon means. It means that in this
⏹️ ▶️ John URL, you go. Anyway, we got tons of questions. That’s great.
⏹️ ▶️ John A lot of people ask repeat questions. We, I picked and Casey picked, and I don’t know if Marco picked
⏹️ ▶️ John any, a subset of these questions. So if you send in your question, it’s probably not going to get answered because we had tons
⏹️ ▶️ John of questions, I just pick them out. Sometimes you ask 17 questions, I just took two. Sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John I rephrase your question. Sometimes 17 people ask the same question. And the person that I pick
⏹️ ▶️ John whose name is attached to it is basically random. So this is the system. It’s not a great system, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a system we have. This was done in a rush. And today, what we’re going to try to do with the questions,
⏹️ ▶️ John because if we didn’t do this, we would answer two questions total is to do them quickly.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey So rather than answer,
⏹️ ▶️ John answer your question thoroughly, Because a lot of these questions like, you know, what’s the best thing that Apple did last
⏹️ ▶️ John year? That’s a whole show. Like, that’s not a question, you know, so with those questions are still in there. And our
⏹️ ▶️ John challenge, as the people who are speaking on this podcast, our challenge is to go against everything that’s in our
⏹️ ▶️ John instincts, and to try to answer these questions with one or two sentences, and then
⏹️ ▶️ John move on, which means we’re not going to be able to have a big discussion about them. But hopefully, we will get to more of your questions.
⏹️ ▶️ John So that’s the strategy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So I guess I will start the MC process and then if somebody else takes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over, that’s fine. We begin with Brian Hamilton, who asks, how long does it take for Marco to edit an episode?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m going to put that aside for just a split second. Does Casey still do his listen through with the turnaround for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey episodes has been much faster lately. So quick recap, it used to be that I would listen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey through each episode and I would mark when somebody coughed or we cross talked or whatever. Then I would send that list
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of timestamps to Marco and he would do the actual edit. I would say it was between six months and a year
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ago that it became obvious to both Marco and I that my listen-through was getting kind of redundant, and so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I stopped doing that. I don’t know. Marco, do you remember when?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know. Maybe halfway
⏹️ ▶️ Casey through the show. Okay. So with that said, how long does it take you to edit an episode?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Total, with all the work involved in posting and everything, it helps a lot that you do the show notes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now, which I used to do the show notes, and it put too much time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on me, So like I was having to spend way longer and we were doing back and forth so that it took way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had to do my part and you had to do your part took forever. Now total editing time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is probably about three to four hours for a two hour show,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is a lot of time, but doesn’t seem terrible to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and a lot of a lot of that is also because I’m using logic and logic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not made for this and this is one of the reasons I want to make my own editor because I think if I made my own editor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was custom optimized for editing podcasts, I think that three to four
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hours could be one to two hours and with a lot less mousing and typing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, I want to elaborate, but I’m going to move on. Stephen Ham asks, have you read the Sweet Home Guide to Toaster Ovens?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think this is mostly meant for John. Have you tried their pick? Do you agree with their methodology?
⏹️ ▶️ John This is a super common question. I get it on Twitter all the time. I don’t always respond to it because it’s just so common at this point.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes, I have read the Sweet Home Guide to Toaster Ovens. Yes, I have tried their pick. Casey has a nice
⏹️ ▶️ John blog post that lists all my toaster reviews. And if you go to that page, which I’ve sent to many people, their pick
⏹️ ▶️ John is on it. So you can hear what I have to say about it. Do you agree with their methodology?
⏹️ ▶️ John I have different priorities. For example, their top pick, the reason I dinged it was it was smaller
⏹️ ▶️ John than I would like. Like it doesn’t fit as much stuff in it. And so that kind of disqualifies it for like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John being able to put, you know, four big slices of bread or whatever in there. and the UI was really weird. So they
⏹️ ▶️ John are they prioritize the UI less than I do. And the size is not I mean, how
⏹️ ▶️ John could they make size the fact that they don’t know what size toaster you need, they’re just trying to say this thing toast really quickly, which I said in my review,
⏹️ ▶️ John and really evenly. So. So yeah, that’s the thing with any reviews, including the sweet homes,
⏹️ ▶️ John you read them to find out information. But you also are trying to find out what they prioritize. And you have
⏹️ ▶️ John to compare that to how you prioritize. So it’s not as if I disagree with anything they did. It’s just that we have different priorities.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you can hear that in the reviews.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Mike Reinhardt asks, Marco, what apps on your phone do you have red badges?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And to give a little context here, Marco has made it very clear over the years,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I think you’re right, that having these red badges with counts and whatnot is kind of ridiculous
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and stress-inducing. So, Marco, what apps have red badges? It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually a pretty short list. The two that always have a red badge are phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and mail. And the reasons for that are basically, I suck at responding to email. I use Mark as Unread as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an organizational tool, which I know is wrong. And with phone, I never listen to my voicemail. So I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have voicemails here. Let me see. My earliest unplayed voicemail is from October
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 3rd. I currently have 10 of them.
⏹️ ▶️ John So that’s why you leave the badge on that, even though you like that would seem like the reason you turn it off because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John meaningless because it’s always going to be read, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, I’ve never even considered the possibility that I could turn it off. I guess I’ll look into that. I also have one on photos right now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just because there’s some shared album, probably from Casey, that has something in red. I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one on the Apple Podcast.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Backgroundless
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sunglasses. Spoiler alert. Cool. I have one on the Apple Podcast app because I have a folder of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a handful of other podcast apps. Basically, as I’m designing Overcast, I try to make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sure that I don’t rip off other apps too closely. So if I’m adding a new feature, for instance,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I to design the UI. I basically go and check, like, am I ripping off a competitor,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, really clearly here, or am I doing my own thing? I’d like to do my own thing whenever I can. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I always have podcast apps that are showing their own unread badges that I didn’t ask for. And then finally, I have a folder
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that shows an unread badge of 1500, because that is actually underscore David
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Smith pedometer plus plus app that is showing that as my step count for the day, which is actually horrible. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just opened up the It’s actually 5800, so that was just out of date. But anyway, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Everything else I have on my phone is either some app that I turned it off for or a game that doesn’t use it. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s it. Brian Moon asks, how did all of you meet initially? Online through Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slash software channels or perhaps at a car dealership? So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve told this story in bits and pieces, but I don’t know that I’ve ever told
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the complete version of the story. Part of that is because I thought it was kind of fun to have a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey little bit of ambiguity about how the three of us met. But 201 episodes in, perhaps
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s time to remove all doubt. So Marco and I met when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we were 10? Does that sound reasonable? Something like that? Something like that. My recollection, and I’ll give
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you a chance to interrupt in a second here, Marco. My recollection is that your mom was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a schoolteacher, and for the summers you would go to a lake in upstate New York. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my grandparents, my dad’s parents, had a house on the same lake. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was one of those situations where we were like the only kids that were anywhere nearby. It came
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to light to our mutual caregivers that, oh, we have, you know, boy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey children around the same age, they should hang out. And so we would hang out and basically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey write either choose your own adventure games in VB1 or play too much Transport Tycoon, just generally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be nerds and get yelled at to go outside. And then we kind of lost touch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for a long time. And around the time that Tumblr started, or right around the time that we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey graduated college, at least that’s my recollection, we got back in touch. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I visited, or well, Aaron and I at this point actually visited you at Tumblr and then ended up meeting up with Tiff.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I think this was… It was 09. Yeah. And so we got back in touch after that. And we got close
⏹️ ▶️ Casey again. You know, there was never like a screw you, man. I hate you. It was just that we fell out of touch.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so So we got close again, and then of course, because of that, I started listening to Bill D’Annalis, Hypercritical, and then when I started
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to WWDC in 2011, I ended up meeting John through Marco, and then John
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I kind of got to be friendly and then eventually got to be relatively close. And then, you know, the whole story
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of me needling Marco, hey, we should do a car show, we should do a car show. And Marco said, hey, you know, we should get John involved,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because, you know, John also just stopped a podcast and would probably like to talk cars. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we did neutral, and then here we are on ATP 201 episodes later. That was as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey brief as I think I can reasonably make it. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco pretty good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Any thoughts from either of you?
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s no thoughts. No time for thoughts.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cody Mims asks, question mostly for Marco, why do you give Stitcher slash Google Play Music
⏹️ ▶️ Casey flack for being a podcast walled garden but not iTunes? Not saying they’re not bad for other reasons,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but iTunes isn’t exactly the Wild
⏹️ ▶️ Marco West. This is a pretty easy one. question of degree. iTunes is a directory
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of public RSS feeds. Once you subscribe to a podcast in iTunes, the software then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco goes directly to the RSS feed every single time, downloads the episodes directly from your server, however you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco specify the feed to point to, and iTunes is basically out of the loop after that very first,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, browse and subscribe action. That’s it. So whereas Stitcher and Google Play
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Music are their own entirely proprietary crawling playback
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stats downloading platforms and they have you have to like you know do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all sorts of like you know giving up data to them and agreeing to their terms and everything where iTunes is iTunes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is really like you know about as much of a directory as Yahoo was for the web back in the day like it’s like iTunes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is happy to have you go there find what you want and then iTunes is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco removed from the loop they’re cut out of the loop and then you’re just dealing with the feed. So basically the way Apple does things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with podcasts is in support of an open ecosystem. Whereas
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way Stitcher and Google Play Music are doing podcasts, it is a completely closed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ecosystem that simply uses your RSS feed as input but then copies over your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco audio, re-hosts it, has everybody just participate within that system and it’s more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like leeching off of the open world rather than what Apple does which is really participating in it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then kind of handing you off to it.
⏹️ ▶️ John The other minor difference that I would add is that it’s too late for iTunes. iTunes, it is a problem that everything is
⏹️ ▶️ John so centralized in iTunes. I mean, it’s a benefit, obviously, that that’s a place where you go to find your podcast, but it’s also a problem, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John way too late. Like by the time we got into it, iTunes was already there. So it is more useful
⏹️ ▶️ John in general to complain about the up and comers to say, you knew thing that is coming that seems to be worse
⏹️ ▶️ John and all the ways the market just described. Stop doing that. Go away. time we came
⏹️ ▶️ John on the scenes iTunes was already the winner of where you find podcasts if you are a Mac user.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well also like the iTunes as a directory is that it’s actually really nice to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a human monitored directory in podcasting. Yeah now I said it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a benefit but it’s also you know not not great that one company controls that because again
⏹️ ▶️ John if Apple decides they don’t care then then we are left to the wolves. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John wolves being Google Play and Stitcher.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fortunately I built up this little thing on the side that has its own directory as an insurance policy against
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A friend of the show, Ryan Jones, who you heard us talk about earlier today.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Author of Weatherline, great weather app. My favorite weather app.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s been five years since Steve Jobs died. How is Apple doing relative to your expectations shortly after his death?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John This is a big challenge,
⏹️ ▶️ John guys. This is the big challenge.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So despite the fact that we’ve been complaining earlier this episode, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that all things being equal, this is at least meeting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my expectations, if not exceeding. I think Apple has its problems, but it’s doing well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’m okay with this. Good job, Casey. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up, Marco. All right. I think somewhere between healthy and Steve Ballmer.
⏹️ ▶️ John Wow, that’s a big range. Can you nail that where between?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe like a third of the way away from Steve Ballmer. So like closer to that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than healthy, but not right on top of that. And what I mean by that, Steve Ballmer was able to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco continue Microsoft into very profitable times. He was a very good businessman
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to keep things going, but he was clearly not able to identify
⏹️ ▶️ Marco future product direction that needed to happen and turn the company into that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think Tim Cook has much of the same issue. Not as badly. I think Tim Cook is a much better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uh… leader than steve ballmer especially you know in lots of ways but especially in product in product
⏹️ ▶️ Marco direction but i still think he has that problem and i still think that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when the next big things come apple will miss them and it’s just a matter of time before that’s a big problem for
⏹️ ▶️ John i think uh… there i’m gonna say uh… they are falling slightly short
⏹️ ▶️ John of my expectations they’re mostly meeting them like if you said what do you think i was gonna be like i would describe the scenario very similar to where
⏹️ ▶️ John we are now with the The exception that I would have said that at least one of the few things that Apple would try
⏹️ ▶️ John would hit stronger than it has, whether it’s the watch or car or whatever. So I think they’re slightly under, but not by
⏹️ ▶️ John much. In other words, I’m not shocked about where they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are. I think that’s a that’s a good way of looking at it. Ryan continues of the necessary apps,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey podcast player notes, Twitter, photos, mail, etc. which you least satisfied with. In other words, what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey app that you use every day because it’s the best available. Do you still not love all start in? I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know if he intended to limit this to iOS or not. I will give two answers very quickly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Number one, overcast for the Mac. Number two,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Slack is a dumpster fire on the Mac, and I hate it, but it’s the best option available.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I’m going to go Photos. Photos is an app that I use it constantly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is a big part of my life, both on iOS and the Mac. The iOS is mostly capture, the Mac is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mostly curation of the collection, editing, importing from cameras, and then picking through
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and doing minor edits. The iCloud Photo Library sync system is great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have never had problems with it. It is wonderfully convenient. It works quickly and reliably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the vast majority of the time for me. So the sync system is great. However, the Photos app, especially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the Mac, is very frustrating for me to use to do anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco beyond getting the photo. It’s nice that it syncs, that’s wonderful, but then once I want to do anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the pictures, whether it’s as simple as, when I took 50 photos
⏹️ ▶️ Marco during this event and I want to narrow it down to 10, photos on the Mac is just the worst in the world for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is so clunky, it is so unnecessarily clunky, even doing basic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco editing operations, you have to wait and sit through all these animations and mode switches and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It basically seems like it’s fighting me doing anything, even the most basic operations that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everybody would want to do with their photo app. But I do love the sinking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much that I tolerate that. But I do wish the Apple was better, especially on the Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ John John, I thought the last question was the challenge to try to try to simply say how you think Apple is doing five
⏹️ ▶️ John years after Steve Jobs is gone. But instead, Marco goes for 10 minutes on the photos that not 10 minutes.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I could basically agree with him. I mean, I don’t love photos.
⏹️ ▶️ John I love some parts of it, but everything I agree with everything Marco said about dealing with the app. It could be better. But the other
⏹️ ▶️ John contender that I mean, and I also kind of agree with Casey about slack, but I kind of do love slack
⏹️ ▶️ John despite all its grossness. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco eating a white castle.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. The other contender, though, is a another situation where I’m being left behind for explicable reasons.
⏹️ ▶️ John This this time, You know, I know I am is my favorite Twitter client on
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac hasn’t been updated in forever because It’s not worthwhile for the
⏹️ ▶️ John developer to update this but it is the only Mac Twitter app that I like and it’s frustrating to me That it doesn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John so many features and it’s such a big mess Because it just hasn’t been updated and I know why
⏹️ ▶️ John and I just sit here clinging to it and using it until it doesn’t launch Anymore, and then I’ll be sad and which app is that
⏹️ ▶️ John because somebody will ask Twitter effect for the Mac which I still I still really do like but it is so
⏹️ ▶️ John far behind the state of the Twitter art at this point that I can’t recommend other people use it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anonymous asks, Apple’s priorities are clearly iPhone then watch then Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then iPad. If you were Tim, how would you rank them? Well if I were Tim I would put Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey first but that’s not the way this works. I think the most reasonable approach is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPhone then iPad then watch then Mac and that doesn’t pleased me to say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I don’t want it to be that way but I think that’s the way that makes the most sense. Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would probably try to restructure the company and the management incentives such that it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not necessary to rank them like this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s such a non-answer.
⏹️ ▶️ John think that’s really possible unless you break it off into subsidiaries that are I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that’s dodging.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I think you should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still. Okay, if I have to rank them, I hate,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway, if I had to rank them, iPhone would still be first, I would put Mac second,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad third, and Watch fourth, because that’s basically the order in which, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think it’s the order of their importance, along with the order in which the amount of attention
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they need, basically. Like, the Watch is brand new and fairly young, but it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually do that much. It’s a fairly simple product. I don’t think it needs a ton
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of updating, especially with 3.0, it was pretty good. They’ve gotten to a good spot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now. It’s not really dying for tons of updates. The iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gets a lot of stuff for free, which just advances on the iPhone, so it doesn’t need a lot of its own attention. It doesn’t also justify a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of its own attention, because the sales aren’t that good. Whereas the Mac, the reason I put it second to the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not only obviously do I love but also I think the Mac needs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more attention and has more influence and has, you know, just it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more of a foundational important part of the whole market. John?
⏹️ ▶️ John Alright, I would go iPhone, iPad, Mac, watch. Although I
⏹️ ▶️ John think this list is not complete, and I’m not entirely sure that the order given is so clearly Apple’s priorities.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the reason I would, we all read an iPhone first, because I think that’s just a gimme. The reason I’m putting iPad second
⏹️ ▶️ John is because I think it has the potential is the only thing in Apple’s lineup that has the potential to eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John someday do all the things that a Mac does and the watch is so young and so new it should not have priority over the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John or the Mac or the iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right. Yeah. Also like you know like the Apple TV is missing from this list like there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are some things Apple does that aren’t here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John But it’s not complete.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. But I would also say like the Apple TV is similar to the watch in that I’m not sure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it justifies a lot of continuous investment. Because the reason why the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple TV and the watch and the iPad actually, what holds these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things back is not just like software features or hardware updates. It’s like ecosystem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco limitations around them that just make it very difficult for them to meaningfully progress.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Dan Caspi asks, do all of your wives listen to the episodes? Do they find them interesting?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Aaron does not. She does listen to analog. She does not listen to ATP. Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, Tiff listens to ATP. She does not listen to Under the Radar.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And she’s in top four. John.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes, my wife listens to ATP. I don’t think she finds it interesting in terms of the subject
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey matter. The only
⏹️ ▶️ John reason she finds it interesting is because her husband is on the show. And she wants to hear if we say anything about her.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hi, Tina. Have you ever rejected an ad? This is still from Dan Caspi. Yes, we have. I can’t think of any
⏹️ ▶️ Casey examples, and it’s probably not mature of us to cite them anyway, but yes, we have absolutely— Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can think of tons. I mean, yes, like we reject ads frequently, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not like every day, but like maybe every month or two we will turn down a sponsor or we will even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco decide to stop working with one that we have worked with before. There are lots of reasons for this. Obviously, there’s a lot of stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that just we don’t think would be nice to advertise here or would not fit the show well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sometimes we will drop a sponsor that we’ve had if we get reports from people that their product
⏹️ ▶️ Marco isn’t as good as we thought it was. We also like strategically we’ve tried to reduce
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the amount of clothing companies and stuff like that that advertise with us and increase more of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the tech relevant stuff. There’s tons of sponsors out there that want to sell you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a shirt subscription and that’s fine. I mean And look, last episode we had a socks return. It was pretty fun.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was a great spot. But I don’t want the advertisers to all be that kind of stuff because we’re still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a tech show. So I wanna have some kind of focus to make most of the ads tech-related.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s take a break. And speaking of sponsors, let’s talk about one of the ones that is awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s a shirt subscription.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann No, it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Casey mattress.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’d be great. That’d be so great though.
⏹️ ▶️ John Mattresses are totally tech-related. Everybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sponsor too. I mean that’s why it makes it a hard decision. A lot of these are great products.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We usually won’t drop them just for that. One thing that bugs me, just very quickly, one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing that really bugs me is things that are subscriptions that really don’t need to be, that you’re probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not going to benefit from them being subscriptions. I don’t mind a one pair of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco socks a month kind of thing, because you’re going to use socks, that’s cool. like are things that are like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bags of snacks for a you know you you pay 40 bucks a month and get some bags of snacks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco delivered it’s like that I don’t that just feels like it shouldn’t be a subscription you know or like there’s there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one that like you know you can like get dog toys delivered for 30 bucks a month it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I I buy toys for my dog every time I went to the dog store I would never reach 30 bucks a month worth of total
⏹️ ▶️ Marco investment in that like it’s crazy But yeah, so like certain things I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will outright reject just because it’s like, I think that’s BS to be a subscription.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, so anyway. We’re sponsored this week by Casper,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an obsessively engineered mattress at a shockingly fair price. price. Go to casper.com.atp.
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco also offers an adaptive pillow and soft, breathable sheets. The mattress industry, let’s face
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, I mean, if you go into a mattress store, or you gotta weirdly walk around while there’s some salesman hovering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over you. Try to lie down on a mattress for three seconds, and be like, okay, I guess I wanna spend a third of my life on this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s not a great way to buy a mattress, and the prices are really, really high, and it’s high-pressure sales because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re usually commission-driven. It’s not a great system for consumers. Casper has flipped all this on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco its head. The mattress industry, they don’t even know what to do about Casper. They’re freaking out, probably. They should be,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least. Casper is revolutionary in the industry. They cut the cost of dealing with these resellers showrooms and pass
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can regulate your temperature properly throughout the night. And all this is available for a shockingly fair price.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And normally a really nice mattress, you’re gonna pay about $2,000 for it really. Casper, $500 for a twin, 600 for twin XL,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 750 for a full, 850 for a queen, and just 950 for a king. This is really about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco half the price of what you’re gonna pay for most mattresses of this quality and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all these mattresses by Casper are made in America. They’ve also, you know, they’ve taken
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the problem of like, how do you know whether you’re gonna like it or not? You’re not going to just line it up in a store for three minutes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also buying it online obviously sounds crazy too. They’ve taken care of you with this. It is completely risk free. You can
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we’ve had people tell us they love it and they keep it and it’s awesome. I’ve also had a few people write in to say,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know what, it wasn’t for me, and the return process was amazing. So either way,
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Q&A, cont’d.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Go to casper.com slash ATP and use code ATP for $50 towards
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your mattress. Thank you very much to Casper for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Kyle Janow asks, I was wondering if there’s been any new tool, software, or hardware that you’ve started using
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in 2016 at work or at home that you think deserves a shout out or additional recognition.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is a fantastic question to which I can’t think of any good answer.
⏹️ ▶️ John unfortunate. system working as designed because if you can’t think of it in a couple seconds you have to pass.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yep, that’s a pass. I’m going to go with Git submodules and especially using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John them. Really?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. It’s crazy. This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John is not a holiday
⏹️ ▶️ Marco party talking. This is like real. And using them in particular with the Git Tower app for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac. I think it’s just called Tower now, the Tower app for the Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Oh, that is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fantastic. I love Tower.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so I use I mean I have I have tried many things over the years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to to basically try to solve like how do I import other libraries either written by myself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or like open source projects into you know how do I import shared code into my apps and manage that and there’s things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like cocoa pods and that kind of dependency manager and there’s also obviously methods like just copy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the directory over and stick it in your project and there’s there’s get sub trees and sub modules.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have no idea why there’s two different things. Please don’t write into emailing to explain it. I don’t care. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thank you anyway. But I have I recently settled on sub modules, especially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as managed by get tower, this wonderful Mac app that I love so much, because just called tower
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oops. And it is finally a system that I’m sticking with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that I’m very happy with. And I’ve stuck with it now for a while. I think it’s been at least six months, which is probably the longest I’ve used
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of these systems and not hated it. It’s great. I have lots of my own shared
⏹️ ▶️ Marco libraries in here. It’s wonderful and it’s overall while it is not perfect and while the raw
⏹️ ▶️ Marco git way to do submodules is comically obtuse just like most of git and when you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco manage it with a GUI tool it’s not too bad and and it is by far the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lowest hassle and least fragile of these systems that I’ve ever used.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That makes me think I have been fighting cocoa pods left and right at work
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah you don’t need to just stop. I’m telling you, it’s so much better this way.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not convinced submodules is the right answer. However, I’m really interested in Punic,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is a clean room re-implementation of Carthage done by Schwa on Twitter.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey God, I forgot his name off the top of my head. Holy crap. What a pleasant person. Well, there’s that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But anyway, I’ve understood that Punic is very good and I’d love to try it. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can’t say that that is definitely my answer. Jonathan White, that’s right. Thank you Sam the geek.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, I would love to give Punic a shot though. John.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mostly have to take a pass on this. But I when I read the question, I realized in the letter of the question,
⏹️ ▶️ John I do have a thing, you know, a new tool software hardware that you’ve started using 2016 that
⏹️ ▶️ John you think deserve a shout out, I think the much faster touch ID that the entire world has been using for a year
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey is awesome. And I love the fact that my iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John seven unlock so quickly it’s like magic is really it is the I think it’s the most significant
⏹️ ▶️ John change on the iPhone 7 that I’ve appreciated maybe second to the speed of
⏹️ ▶️ John like you know in general
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Chris Shamloo asks for Casey and John any desire to become independent desired yes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh strength of of soul strength of character
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably not I um I I recognize that that having
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a jobby job is not really any more stable than
⏹️ ▶️ Casey having a completely independent lifestyle, but it feels more stable and has health
⏹️ ▶️ Casey insurance. And so right now I really like my job. I’ve been there since February.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really, really like it and I don’t plan to leave, but we’ll see what happens.
⏹️ ▶️ John John? My answer is similar. Desire, yes, but a much larger helping of fear.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly. For Marco, still from Chris, any desire to start a company, something with more than three
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or four employees?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Nope, not even a little. I am terrible at managing people. I don’t enjoy managing people.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really don’t enjoy the idea of having to manage investors, which that would probably require.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, nope, I’m very happy limiting myself to just what I can do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough for all of us Who would win a 100 meter sprint?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Maybe me but quite possibly John and in a 5k race
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have no idea you guys
⏹️ ▶️ John the hundred meter. I’m I don’t I don’t know I’d like I’m not good at sprinting. So I would
⏹️ ▶️ John probably have to give that one to Casey 5k. I would win
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that’s probably fair. Why are 3d movies terrible because it’s just a gimmick
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco any thoughts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have never seen one so I can’t answer. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Are you surprised is this really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much of a surprise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John right? He’s terrible
⏹️ ▶️ John, Jonathan Mann Terrible so
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean I’m terrible whatever um the problem with 3d movies is
⏹️ ▶️ John When we see the world with our two eyeballs we can choose what to focus on 3d movies movies,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t do that 3d movies choose what to focus on for you. So they have the 3d effect where it seems like things are closer
⏹️ ▶️ John to you and farther away. But if you decide to look at the background, it doesn’t suddenly come into focus. And so it’s not like
⏹️ ▶️ John the real world we experienced, but it’s also not a flat picture, like a regular movie. And so it’s this uncomfortable
⏹️ ▶️ John middle ground that I personally find terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is an annoyingly good answer. Dream five car garage.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey God, I wish I had looked at this for the show. Parentheses $1
⏹️ ▶️ John million budget. I’m like, well, which is it? I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s let’s let’s say the best five cars you can buy for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a million or less.
⏹️ ▶️ John rattle them off. It’s lightning round. Come on.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So Aston Martin DBS. That’s what like a quarter million 200,000
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jeep Wrangler. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no, I’m serious. I’m really serious. They’re they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John I still have your turn.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So ask Martin DBS Jeep Wrangler, BMW M3,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Porsche Cayenne Turbo. That’s four cars.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I think you’re over. Now you’re over. Am I? Over budget, bro? No way. No way.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would say stay within budget and just stop short when you’re done with when you
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey use it. No, no way.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The DBS is like, let’s call it $200. The
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Cayenne Turbo is $100. No, $200?
⏹️ ▶️ John Are you kidding? I think you need to price that out. All right, fine. I’ll just
⏹️ ▶️ John The Porsche probably has like 90k in options alone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s true. All right, well, I’ll just stop it for then. All right, let’s go to John, since I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feel like I’ve been going to Marco first for a lot. So, John, let’s go to
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m going to say Ferrari 488, Ferrari 458. There’s a surprise.
⏹️ ▶️ John the E46 generation, the one that I like.
⏹️ ▶️ John Whoa, slow down. Why? Because that’s the M3 that I like. I
⏹️ ▶️ John like how it looks. I don’t like how the new ones look, but I want that type of car.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Mercedes S-Class.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Really? Okay. Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d go Tesla 100D, if that doesn’t exist yet. P100D. Number
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two would be Aston Martin, whatever Aston Martin is cool and sexy. I don’t keep track of which ones they are.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John EV10. That one’s the same anyway. Yeah, that’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The two-door one, though, not the crazy four-door abomination. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey yeah, one of those. Of course.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some kind of like small simple stick shift to door car, whether
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a cayenne. I mean sorry, whether that’s a came in sorry, oh my God, so whether
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that’s a came
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in or an M two it probably one of those you know and then the other two spots.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would just leave like I’d fill spots one three and five and just leave spots two and four empty just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have room because I love a garage with space
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John to around the cars because I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have that and I’ve never I’ve only ever had very crowded garages in my life so like to have space
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be an amazing luxury. You don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John know crowded garages.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey You do not know. Truth be told,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do not have a cavernous garage but both Marco and John have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John tiny garages.
⏹️ ▶️ John Mine is by far the smallest. Also, I want to change my answer. I forgot the Model S. I would throw one in there if I had budget left.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s a good call. That’s a good call. Prodance.ev says, what is the best TV show, movie, podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of 2016? I feel like I should have an answer for this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco It’s ours, come on.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Jonathan Mann Yeah, totally. Actually, you know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what? I think it was in 2016 that I discovered 99% Invisible, which I know everyone else
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the planet has been listening to for years. But I really love 99% Invisible, and I just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey discovered it this year, so that’ll be my answer. John.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m gonna go to Marco. Marco hasn’t seen any TV shows, movies, or podcasts in 2016.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the new, I saw Dory, the Finding Dory thing with my kid. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John wouldn’t put it as the best.
⏹️ ▶️ John to do best one of each because that will turn into an incredible episode. I’m just going to say best TV show. My memory
⏹️ ▶️ John is so short so I could be forgetting something important, but Westworld is the most recent in my mind. I think it’s my favorite
⏹️ ▶️ John TV show of this year and podcast, who knows, and movie, who knows.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think my favorite podcast of the year might
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be Upgrade. It’s the show with Jason Snell and Mike Hurley, and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically like a tech commentary show, not too different from this. They just do a really, really good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco job of it. So I’m a big fan of that overall. And I would say my favorite new podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recently, even though that wasn’t part of the question, is Due by Friday by Merlin Mann, Max
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Temkin, and Alex Cox. It is so incredibly funny. It’s pretty new still. They’re only four or five
⏹️ ▶️ Marco episodes in. But my god, is it funny. It’s just amazing. So that is a perfect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right still from protan how do you usually pick gifts for your loved ones? Are you good gift givers?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I I I feel like every third or fourth year. I do really well and the rest
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the time. I’m a friggin disaster Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not too much better About the same the main problem is that that Tiff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I like we will like buy each other like cool things throughout the whole Year, so when it comes time for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a holiday It’s often like, well, I was impatient two months ago and bought you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this thing for like happy Wednesday and now there’s nothing left. John.
⏹️ ▶️ John I am a terrible gift giver and how do I pick gifts? Badly,
⏹️ ▶️ John in desperation, hopefully with help. It’s a disaster, totally.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You are an impressively bad gift receiver as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yes, I would abolish all the whole gifting thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hope my gift, my wish for the world is that all of you get a chance to at some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco point witness John Syracuse opening presents. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John is… You’re the one who gave
⏹️ ▶️ John me a prank gift of a giant thing of Sprite. So prank gifts I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John I receive with ill manner appropriately. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even the real gift that you opened up before and after that, it was something to see. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey true. All right, moving on. Johnny Cirillo says, John Siracusa is a pioneer in podcasting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and podcast format. Among other touchstones, like each OSX review, CGP Grey has said that he is one of his
⏹️ ▶️ Casey podcasting heroes. Marco Arment has a reputation from co-founding Tumblr to being the independent app developer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and able to be independent because of the app store. Casey Lewis approaches the trio from the opposite
⏹️ ▶️ Casey end, I’m not sure if that’s good or bad,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Jonathan Mann where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey his friendship with Marco has exposed his talents on the show itself. Okay, good. How have each of you managed this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fame-like stature, reputation, and independence of a a show as great as ATP, well thank
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you, are their predecessors each of you have learned from? I will start. My predecessors
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are Marco Arment and John Syracusa, and I say that both to blow smoke up their butts and also because it’s actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was a jackal. I was a jackal in the 5x5 chat room. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey genuinely loved both of their shows. It was both of their shows that got me into podcasts,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I really, really mean that. I certainly admire many, many, many,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey many other podcasters like Mike Hurley and Jason Snell of Upgrade, like Stephen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hackett as some examples. But it was John and Marco that really got me into podcasts,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and so I really appreciate the two of them. Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. I basically have learned a lot from other podcasters, people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the You Look Nice Today people. That was a very, very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco strong influence on me and my style, my editing style also early on.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re way better than me at it, but that’s kind of who I’m imitating a lot of the time. I’ve also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco learned a lot from earlier podcast pioneers in this space, people like Dan Benjamin, John Gruber.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And as Relay and Mike and Steven and the crowd over there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have really developed way bigger and wider than a lot of us
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can do with just like one or two shows here and there, I’m I’m learning a lot from what they’re doing as well. And outside
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the immediate podcasting ecosystem, I also learn a lot from Howard Stern. I listen to a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I listen a lot to that as a young adult. I don’t listen much anymore because we basically can’t listen whenever our kid’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around, which is increasingly frequently. So I don’t listen a lot anymore, but I did learn
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot from Howard Stern’s style. Not like the sex stuff, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just his general speaking style, his impatience for boringness, although I didn’t learn enough of that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And a lot of it’s just some of the ways he does things and some of his principles.
⏹️ ▶️ John John? Yeah, I don’t know. I should have thought about this question more beforehand. There’s so many influences
⏹️ ▶️ John like this, but I always go back to the one like the my main, my singular main
⏹️ ▶️ John podcasting influence that made me understand what podcasts were as
⏹️ ▶️ John a medium, as a format or not, you know, that they are a thing. And also
⏹️ ▶️ John made me believe that it’s a thing that I can do, which are the two ingredients you need to become podcasting.
⏹️ ▶️ John One know that it exists and to somehow believe that you think you can make one. And that’s Mer Lafferty,
⏹️ ▶️ John who used to do a podcast. She does a whole bunch of podcasts for people who want to be fiction
⏹️ ▶️ John writers. And she eventually became a fiction writer and has written
⏹️ ▶️ John several novels now. And so she’s had this whole big arc through that whole series. And she does a whole bunch of other podcasts, people
⏹️ ▶️ John in the similar market. And, you know, I was a writer, mostly doing technical writing online.
⏹️ ▶️ John In those days, I wasn’t writing fiction, but I like hearing podcasts about writing and just hearing her do
⏹️ ▶️ John a podcast. It’s just her in front of a microphone. The podcast was I Should Be Writing. Sitting
⏹️ ▶️ John in front of a microphone in her house, talking. I don’t know how many hours that I listened to,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I thought that podcast was great, and I thought she was great, and I thought podcasts were great, and I thought, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John I have things to say. I could save them into a microphone in my house, too. So I’ll be eternally grateful
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Nice. Daniel Peters asks, I was wondering what each of you considered your favorite Apple product
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was that was released this year. I was thinking about this earlier, actually, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because it’s our show and in part my show, I’m going to cheat and use two Apple products.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I fricking love the AirPods and I fricking love my iPhone 7.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, there’s problems with both, but truth be told, I really, really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey love both of these I think the iPhone 7 is my favorite iPhone ever in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey part because I didn’t get plus and the AirPods are really phenomenal. So I really like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey both of those. John,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m gonna go iPhone 7 to like I already talked about the one feature, but yet that’s first of all, Apple didn’t release
⏹️ ▶️ John that much this year that I had contact with and I as much as like the AirPods. My new iPhone is definitely
⏹️ ▶️ John my favorite Apple thing that they released this year.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I’m gonna go iPhone 7 overall, especially in particular the jet black finish
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone 7 because the actual upgrade to the internals was a fairly minor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco upgrade from the 6s, but the exterior change with that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco jet black finish is substantial. It changes the way the phone feels and makes it able to be used without a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco case for a lot of people, including me. So that’s a pretty big change. I’m also going to give honorable mention to the 9.7
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inch iPad Pro, which I don’t use it to its full extent a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ton, but I do use it very often. It is my kitchen iPad and it is my main podcast player in the house
⏹️ ▶️ Marco while doing things. So I’m using it frequently and no matter how much or how little you use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your iPad, the 9.7 inch iPad pro is in my opinion unquestionably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the best iPad ever made. It is better than they usually are. Even like, you know, you can always say like, oh, this year
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this iPad was the best one ever made but I think the 9.7 pro is especially like especially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clear and unambiguously a a great update and just an awesome product all around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and there are basically no downsides to it that don’t apply to every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad and there’s tons of upsides to it so 9.7 inch iPad is a home run.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Omer Benami says I would really like to hear how you do backup or share your photos in your processing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Another challenge.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wrote a blog post about this, we’ll link it in the show notes. Boom!
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco? Backup is a super duper clone a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time machine share on my sonology and backblaze sharing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco photos and processing routines is a whole different question I oh wait this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sorry I misplaced the slash in the way I parsed the sentence
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Jonathan Mann I thought it was two different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco questions about how do you back up period
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey and then also have been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how do you share your photos
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s not how I I read it, I read it as how do you back up slash share your photos, but it could be either way. It could be either way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, that’s how I back up. My photos are included in the backups, so that covers that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And how do I… And my photo processing is still a mess and still in flux, but the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco system I’ve used for the last six months or so, or year, or whatever it’s been, everything on the phone stays
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in Photos app on all platforms. Everything shot on a camera goes to Lightroom first,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I pick and process and edit in Lightroom, and then I export finished JPEGs into Photos
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where they will live forever.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right, John. So let’s see. Backups,
⏹️ ▶️ John all my photos are in a photo library on the 5K iMac. That 5K iMac in its entirety
⏹️ ▶️ John is backed up to Time Machine, both locally and on my Synology, and also through Crash Plan.
⏹️ ▶️ John I also push the photos up to Google Photos as well. So my photos are in many places.
⏹️ ▶️ John For sharing, we use the iCloud, you know, library sharing, what
⏹️ ▶️ John the hell is it called? It used to be Photo Streams, what is it called now?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey iCloud Photo
⏹️ ▶️ John No, the sharing feature, like when you wanna share. Yeah, anyway, we use the iCloud sharing feature because all of our
⏹️ ▶️ John family have iOS devices and they get a little notification and they can go and look at it. So that’s how we do sharing
⏹️ ▶️ John and processing. Everything goes, you know, connect the camera to the 5k iMac.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s on my wife’s account. So her phone stuff automatically shows up there. For everything that’s on my phone,
⏹️ ▶️ John it goes to my Mac and photos. And periodically, in fact, I just did this recently periodically, I do a export
⏹️ ▶️ John on modified originals from my Mac to a folder and then import that folder into the big
⏹️ ▶️ John photos library to make the I the iCloud family photo library
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple refuses to make.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Nice. To be clear, my backup is crash plan. The only reason
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t use backblaze is because backblaze doesn’t easily support network drives.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If it wasn’t for that, I would absolutely be on backblaze tomorrow.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s, that’s the same reason I do it because we can we mount the Synology on my wife’s 5k iMac.
⏹️ ▶️ John And because it’s a network share crash plan will back it up. My personal back Mac is backed up with backblaze.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ryan Goodlett asks, what’s the most difficult challenge or transition that you’ve had in your professional life. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m going to go here again with a twofer. Um, I think number one, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my last job, I got a deserved reputation for being a complainer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I did too much complaining, not enough fixing, and it was challenging, but rewarding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to move away from that. And similarly, I was doing something that I was very comfortable in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doing my last job, and now I’m doing iOS development, which I am comfortable in, but I certainly wasn’t when I started.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so that was very challenging and very difficult, but I’m glad I’ve done it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is gonna be a ridiculous humble brag, and I apologize for that in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco advance. And that is the transition to having a large
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough audience and enough influence that when I write
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something it spreads often a lot more than I anticipated. And there are ramifications
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to that. And so I’ve basically had to learn how to responsibly have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this kind of audience and not get myself into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trouble or situations that I personally regret or that exploded my face unexpectedly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I have not completed this transition or process yet, but I am slowly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco learning basically like how how to responsibly have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the audience that that I that I now have. I think that was a really good answer
⏹️ ▶️ John actually. John. Uh I did read this before and I have been having trouble picking but I guess
⏹️ ▶️ John probably the best one is I was working in college I was working like tech and you know in
⏹️ ▶️ John the industry and doing you know because I was the advent of the web so I was getting into that but I also worked at like you know the IT
⏹️ ▶️ John help desk and stuff like that and anyway I transitioned right from you know I got the my first job out of college, I got it kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of when I was in college, and then just kept it afterwards. But then I moved away. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John I was telecommuting for that job, this job that I had already had, like, it’s not like I was talking the whole time I had been going
⏹️ ▶️ John into the office and then started telecommuting for two and a half years or so. And that transition
⏹️ ▶️ John from being a person who goes to a job as I had since I got my very first job as a teenager all the way up through college,
⏹️ ▶️ John and so on and so forth, where you go to a place and do a thing to being a telecommuter. I
⏹️ ▶️ John thought it was great. And I love telecommuting. But But in hindsight, that was a very difficult transition because I had to
⏹️ ▶️ John go all through all the things that I imagine anybody who works from home has to go through where
⏹️ ▶️ John you are responsible for your own time and you know, you need to, you know, anything that
⏹️ ▶️ John anyone is independent or works from home otherwise has to deal with. I dealt with that in my very first
⏹️ ▶️ John job. And like so many people on this very podcast, my problem
⏹️ ▶️ John was not motivating myself to work. my problem was having any kind of reasonable
⏹️ ▶️ John work life balance. Like I didn’t have kids then, but I was newly married, but I spent way,
⏹️ ▶️ John way too much time. Like it was like every waking second I was on the computer
⏹️ ▶️ John most of the time doing work related things. And that’s when I got in big trouble with
⏹️ ▶️ John RSI issues and it could have been career ending and it was very difficult and just learning how to
⏹️ ▶️ John be a human being with a balance between work and non-work. It was especially difficult after coming off of college
⏹️ ▶️ John where for the first time I had access to the internet on, you know, an
⏹️ ▶️ John ethernet connection, not a modem. Like I was on the actual internet and like I spent, you know, again, every
⏹️ ▶️ John second that I wasn’t in class, I was glued to some kind of X term or other terminal or whatever in the computer
⏹️ ▶️ John lab. That wasn’t a healthy balance either, but that was probably the most difficult. And after that, I think I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John more or less figured out that aspect of my professional life, balancing the
⏹️ ▶️ John life part with the work part.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Brent Ronsch asks, if you could force Apple to enter one product category they’re not currently in, which would it be?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The pro desktop business doesn’t count yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I might get dinged for this, but I’d like to see Apple do a standalone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey camera. And I know, yes, that the iPhone particularly has a really great camera, blah, blah, blah. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’d be really interested to see an Apple standalone camera. I know they did that years and years and years ago back when, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, John was a Mac user, but it would be interesting to see it today. Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is a hard one for me to pick because my answer mostly is like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff they already do but just do it better. But if I had to pick one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say I would like to see them address the Echo slash Google Home market.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the problem with that is that I don’t honestly think Siri is good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough for that yet and I also don’t think Apple would do any kind of integrations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with third-party APIs and stuff that would make it as useful as the Echo is. So basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want Apple to either make their current products better or if they’re going to enter a new market the only one I can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think of is one they’d be bad at which is probably not a good sign.
⏹️ ▶️ John John? I’m going to pick a gigantic desktop touchscreen
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that’s plugged into the wall basically a Microsoft Surface Studio. Oh interesting. Because they’re not in that market
⏹️ ▶️ John and and like Marco I have, you know, I can think of all sorts of things that I would like them to do but then
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like they wouldn’t do a good job at I think they could do a good job of this if they put their minds to it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Buckle omis asks does anyone in the ATP group use a stand-up desk? Not at home but at work
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I use a very desk which is the standard issue corporate sit-stand desk
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like add-on and I love it I can’t recommend it enough it’s very spendy Which is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey why work got it for me and I don’t have one at home But I really really really like it if you are to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get one though Absolutely get a mat and I have a recommendation for one So ask
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me on Twitter if you need one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco put in the show I want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Have a standing desk that I stole from tumblr when I left It is it is really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a very nice one It’s it was you know, it’s sold through like some kind of office furniture company the back, you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost ten years ago So I have no you know, I’m sure the market is totally different now But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one thing I don’t use it in standing mode a lot I I have gone through phases where I have like if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had you know certain back Inflammation like like disc inflammation in my back I would go through phases where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d use it in standing mode for like you know almost permanently for months And then go back to sitting so it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nice to have the option It’s also wonderful when routing cables and doing cable management cleanup in the back So you just lift it up a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and have that kind of headroom literally But one thing I’d recommend if you get a standing desk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my biggest recommendation is get one that has has memories for the different positions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it can like at least two memories. So you can have at least a stored seating height and a stored standing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco height because otherwise it’s it’s frustrating to like have to be fidgeting with it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get it just right every time you change it. So if you have memory presets, you can just set
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it where you like it and then just always repeat the same two levels. John
⏹️ ▶️ John never worked on a standing desk. I would try it. I’m interested in trying it, but I never have fair enough.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Also quick real-time follow-up. John Chigi, friend of the show, asks, how often do I use it in standing mode?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Usually every day, not always, but usually every day for probably a quarter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the day. Phil Chatham asks, although ATP is sponsored, supported, have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you ever considered member donations aside from merchandise? We’ve talked about this, but maybe not on a published
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show. We’ve considered it, but quite candidly, I don’t think it would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ever come close to earning as much money as a a sponsorship would.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Any thoughts from either of you guys?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Steve McLaughlin Nope, you got it. Tim Cynova I mean that’s, you know, our sponsorships make good money. One of the things I learned from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Howard Stern, which I mentioned before, so I’ll just go over it briefly, is that he said on a number of occasions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically that he likes to minimize the times and ways in which he asks the audience for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco money. Because that way when you do ask them for money, or you know, it basically makes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it count and you’re not like wasting that goodwill all the time unnecessarily. You’re not nickel diming your audience
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything. So basically, we try to make… We sell t-shirts like once a year for WBDC
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually or near it at least. And we have you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco listen to a show with sponsorships. And so far, those are the only ways we really ask you for money ever. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that works for us. We make good money from the sponsorships. Anything else, I think, would not only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bring in a lot less money than the sponsorships would, but would also kind of cloud the message and kind of make it feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we are like, I don’t know, double charging you or asking you too often.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey MARK Yeah, I completely agree. Charles Hart asks, which Apple exec is your favorite? Which one, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess this is multi-part, so let’s start there. Which Apple exec is your favorite? I do love me some Phil
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Schiller. He’s goofy in the best possible way.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Although, God, now I’m thinking about Craig. Yeah, I’m gonna have to change my I’m gonna have to go with Craig.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well if it’s if it’s about like public interaction, I think I have to go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with Phil because Phil is he has he is so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gloriously dry and Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it that that shows itself in weird ways sometimes because he’s he’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he seems like he’s a nice person person, but to get him to show genuine enthusiasm for anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is seemingly not very easy. He just has an impressive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco level of dryness about him that I really enjoy, even when you can just barely see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it through the marketing message. The Mario Run announcement email that I posted on Twitter,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was the most dry, unexcited email I’ve ever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seen from a promotional effort, and that just had Phil Schiller all over it. probably had something to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the authorship of that. But I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you look at activity of whose work I like the best, that’s got to be Craig.
⏹️ ▶️ John Fair enough. John? Leave it to Mark to pick two. I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey kind of did too.
⏹️ ▶️ John If someone… I feel the same way about Phil, but I got to go with CFed because he gave me my file
⏹️ ▶️ Casey done, both of you. All right, next from Charles Hart.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Which one leaving Apple would be the saddest? I’m going to absolutely go with Phil on this one. John?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Phil, definitely. I’d go Craig on that one. I think if Craig
⏹️ ▶️ Marco left, that would be, as much as I like Phil, I’d be upset if either of them leave.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d be a lot more upset, I think, if Craig left, because I feel like that would represent so much more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like what I care about being gone from the company.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyone who you’d think leaving would actually be a net win. I’m going to pass on that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco That’s mean.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s that’s mean. John.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Yeah, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John think like I don’t know enough about the inner workings of the company to say. Johnny, I’ve… Fair
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enough. Oh, that’s cold. Not a bad answer, though. Andrew Dirk says,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of you primarily use Apple devices or products. What two or three non-Apple products that each of you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what are two or three non-Apple products that each of you use on a regular basis? This is a great,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey great question. I don’t know if I can do two or three.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey list them. Don’t describe why they’re good. But one that I can think of, one that I can think of off
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the top of my head that I absolutely frickin love and have loved for years now is my Synology, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be fair, was sent to me for free, but I swear to God, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey love this thing. And if I knew then how much I would love it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would absolutely have paid my own money to buy it. Marco? Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mignone Almost all of my audio gear is non-Apple, and all of my cameras,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco except for my iPhone, which admittedly is a frequently used one. Devon Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey camera is a good one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco Mignone But those are all, yeah, those are all non-Apple as well. And, you know, audio in and out,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco microphone interface, headphone app, headphones, because the AirPods don’t fit me, so I just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keep that list going. I’m also a huge fan of my Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is incredibly boring, but incredibly satisfying, because it works so well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would also pile on on the camera one. That was a great answer. John.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m gonna go with my Panasonic Plasma Television, which I still love. My Sony
⏹️ ▶️ John PlayStation 4 Pro, which I love and play every day, including just before this show. Finally
⏹️ ▶️ John finished out the SRL record book from last year. I still kept it around because I knew I would finally complete
⏹️ ▶️ John it. What else? My sonology, just like Casey said, with all
⏹️ ▶️ John the exactly same caveats. If my sonology broke and I think about it breaking all the time, I would absolutely buy a new one in
⏹️ ▶️ John a second. In fact, I’ve been thinking about buying a new one just to get the new cool one. Like I’m looking at my sonology and saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re old and your discs are small. Let me buy a new one. But you know, it’s still working fine, So I’m not going
⏹️ ▶️ John to plunk down that money.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And I guess that’s- You
⏹️ ▶️ John know you can put different disks in, right? I know, but I don’t think mine supports BTRFS
⏹️ ▶️ John The new ones have faster chips for transcoding, for Plex stuff. And yes, I could replace the disks, but then I’m like, what am I going to
⏹️ ▶️ John do with all these gigantic disks? Lord knows I can’t put them inside a Mac anymore. Sick burn.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Charles Hunt asks, if the Mac, excuse me, if the iMac Pro became a reality,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what components and configurations would justify the Pro label to you? That’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey great question. I think just an absurd amount of RAM,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an absurd amount of hard drive space, which isn’t, I mean, I shouldn’t call them a hard drive anymore, an SSD space,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and a really, really beefy graphics card. I think the graphics card alone might be enough.
⏹️ ▶️ John John? I need, I think I would, justify to me, I think I need ECC RAM. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t need Xeons, but I need ECC RAM, tons of RAM,
⏹️ ▶️ John and a big honking graphics card. Like, so the CPU is, you would expect me to list that, but I’m not gonna. I would say like,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Jonathan Mann ECC RAM.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I don’t know, like, you know, Intel may not have those combination of parts available, but technically
⏹️ ▶️ John it is possible, ECC RAM and really fast graphics card.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you didn’t need to have CPUs because you knew I would cover them. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m gonna go with basically two things that are related. basically they require each
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other. I’m gonna go with both high core Xeon, so like basically more than four cores.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Give me at least double, at least eight cores because that matters and I will use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. And then also, which would be required to do that in the first place, give me a cooling enclosure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that can have the computer under very very high workloads and still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be silent in the room because Because the trashcan Mac Pro can do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The old Mac Pros almost did that. And the iMac and all the laptops and everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they make today except for the MacBook One cannot do that. Everything else, every other computer they make under load,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you hear fans. And I want a computer that is advanced and graceful enough to have 160 watt
⏹️ ▶️ Marco CPU in there and to have me never hear the fan in a regular room in regular conditions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when it’s under maximum load.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ted Pine asks, you’re forced to choose one line of Apple computers to kill, which one is it? Definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Mac Pro because I’m tired of hearing you two whine about it. I mean, no, all kidding aside, I would kill the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey MacBook Air. I think the MacBook is a great replacement. I don’t really understand why the MacBook Air is there. Okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do. It’s about price point, but really, kill the MacBook Air. Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Kill everything that is non-retina and has a spinning disk hard drive. And that would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the MacBook Air and the base models of the iMac. And the Mac Mini I think
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t you can’t just pick the base This is a line of computers you’ve got to say the whole iMac So the Mac the MacBook Air
⏹️ ▶️ John is the answer like that that is a line of computers And it shouldn’t exist and it should be
⏹️ ▶️ John removed and replaced by a better computer that hits the same price point
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tom Wilkinson asks this one is mostly aimed at John if you could design your perfect gaming console. What would
⏹️ ▶️ John It wouldn’t be that different than the existing PlayStation 4 I’m mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John happy with everything they did there. I would change the controller a little bit. I would ditch the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey opt-in. Really?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. All right, Marco, any thoughts on that by chance? Not at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, good talk. Friend of mine, Aaron Thacker asks, do you guys have any tech New Year’s resolutions?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Stop looking at my damn phone so often. That’s about it. Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t really do New Year’s resolutions for all the Merlin reasons of like, that’s kind of not, they’re not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually productive or effective. But one thing I’d like to do more of in the future as a general
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing is less time wasted checking social media and more time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco making things. Mm-hmm. Yep,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey completely agree. John?
⏹️ ▶️ John I have none. I don’t do New Year’s resolutions.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But if you did, what would you say? I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think in those terms that I don’t have anything. All right, fair enough.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey JW Paris asks, in the past, Apple has made cheap or cheaper
⏹️ ▶️ Casey polycarbonate laptops and iPods, both of which were bought by parents for kids and by college students. These
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were the sort of Apple’s version of, quote, my first Sony. Oh, I miss those. That
⏹️ ▶️ Casey started a lot of lifelong Apple users. Does it concern you guys that Apple’s evolution to exclusively high-end hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Casey won’t allow young users to buy into their ecosystem any longer? This is a great question. My first
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mac was a polycarbonate MacBook, a polybook
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as I love to call it, which drives Stephen Hackett bananas. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think it concerns me, no, but it’s a great point
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and an interesting question. Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think this is more about price than about materials, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so if they are satisfying lower price tiers, that’s great. I mean, when we were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco coming up in this area, the cheapest Macs you could buy were like $2,000. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was in like 1990s and 2000s of dollars. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco after inflation, we’re doing pretty well, even like the new MacBook Pros are pretty awesome
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compared to how when we were younger and getting into this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think as long as they serve lower price points somehow, I think we’re generally fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is a little bit unfortunate that the way they’ve chosen to serve lower price points is often things like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco non-retina screens and spinning hard drives, which make the product overall suck. That is unfortunate.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But as long as they hit those price points somehow, I think they’re okay on this particular
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mostly agree that the materials change is a red herring here. Like Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John is able to, has been able to, and currently is able to make good entry level computers
⏹️ ▶️ John that are higher quality, that feel better because they are made of aluminum. And you know, again, we
⏹️ ▶️ John have rose tinted glasses for the price points of the old things. Apple is totally capable of making
⏹️ ▶️ John entry level ones with the current aluminum glass thing, and they do. And some of them are actually pretty good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Grant Avery asks, I’m curious to know what is your daily carry? On my person,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in my left front pocket, I have keys, I have Listerine,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what is breath mint sort of things, I forget what they’re called.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Those little like strip things?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cool mint is my flavor of choice. What else do I have in here? Oh, I have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eye drops, Sustane Ultra eye drops because I wear hard contacts for reasons that are not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey terribly interesting. And so my eyes get dry on a not terribly irregular basis. In my right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey front pocket, iPhone 7 in matte black. In the little change pocket,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a Burt’s Bees lip balm. In the right back pocket, a very small wallet. I don’t recall what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the name is off the top of my head. In the left back pocket, a Field Notes. Oh, and also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in right front pocket, a blue Pilot Precise V5 pen.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And also in my left front pocket lately are my AirPods, which I freaking love. And that’s it for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my on-person everyday carry. Is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that all? John,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t carry anything in any of my pants pockets. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you carry like the whole world with you, Casey. Although to be fair, John puts all that in his wallet. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John When I go to work, I have my wallet with me, but during the day it is not in any of my
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And nothing is in any of my pockets.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because it doesn’t fit. No, it would fit fine in the front
⏹️ ▶️ John I do wear my badge at work, like the badge in and out of doors and stuff. And that’s like clipped to my belt on a
⏹️ ▶️ John little stretchy thingamabobber to reach the door things. But that’s the only thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s on, you know, even when I go to meetings and stuff, I don’t even take my phone with me. Wow,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s intense. I don’t know how many pockets I went through, but I’m pretty sure I went through only four. I just went
⏹️ ▶️ Casey back and forth on a few, but the chat room is indicating to me I have about 87 pockets. So if that’s the case, my bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Grant Avery also asked, and secondarily, your personal bag setups, as in what do each of you use
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to carry your things for day-to-day use as well as travel. I am in love with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tom Bihn bags and in the show notes I’ve already linked my review of the Tom Bihn Cadet, which is my laptop bag.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I also have a Co-Pilot, which is my kind of murse for when I’m traveling
⏹️ ▶️ Casey light. And in the review of the Tom Bihn Cadet, I talk about the things that I carry in that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bag. If you ever have a little bit of extra money to spend, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cannot recommend enough that Tom bin is phenomenal. Marco, your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey laptop bag if you are, say, traveling to dub dub or something along those lines.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco Mazzello, Jr.: I use a backpack from Waterfield Designs, whose name I completely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forget, but they only make two backpacks and it’s the smaller of the two. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, they’re fantastic. That’s sfbags.com, that’s it. And whenever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do anything that involved carrying a laptop or iPad or anything else
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anywhere, I use a backpack. And I use that backpack and it’s amazing. That’s it. It’s full of dongles
⏹️ ▶️ John Of course it is. John? I’m a backpack person. I always have been. My current one, I think, is an LL
⏹️ ▶️ John Bean thing. I basically use the backpacks until they wear out. And in my backpack is all
⏹️ ▶️ John phone, my wallet, iOS charging cables and crap, thumb drives,
⏹️ ▶️ John all sorts of – it’s not even that heavy because there’s mostly nothing in it. I’ll put hat and
⏹️ ▶️ John gloves in there in the colder weather and stuff like that. But yeah, basically that’s it. It’s a backpack.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you’ve seen me at WREC, you’ve probably seen me wearing a backpack, and that’s what I do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Martin Schleid asks, do you think pro hardware should be made to last, and does that include upgradability in your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey opinion? Yes, it should be made to last. No, it does not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by necessity mean upgradability. John? Same answer. Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, the same, really. is nice when you can offer it, but the market tends to vote against
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it in a lot of things like laptops. It’s more important in desktops where not only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will they likely have a longer life due to less physical stress and everything, but also there’s more room
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for it in desktops to have doors and ports and things with slots. Whereas
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in laptops, I think it’s understandable that they’re getting effectively un-upgradable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recently. It’s unfortunate for price perspective, But it’s understandable in laptops. Desktops, it’s less
⏹️ ▶️ Casey He also asks, do you upgrade your hardware or do you generally buy an entire new package? Similar to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what Marco was just saying, I do upgrade hardware when it’s a desktop. We have talked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the show in the past about my woes with OWC RAM, which are now fixed. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have 32 gigs of RAM in my iMac. But when it comes to laptops, I basically buy something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as is since basically that’s your only choice anyway. Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t upgrade much anymore because almost everything I buy from Apple now can’t be upgraded. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iMac, I maxed out the RAM when I got it to avoid Casey’s OWC issue.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s the only thing I think I really even can upgrade about this iMac. So there you
⏹️ ▶️ John I upgrade when possible. I mean, this Mac Pro has had like three graphics cards, tons of different RAMs, tons of different hard
⏹️ ▶️ John drives in it. So yeah, I think I am an upgrader. But you know, like Marco said, so few things can
⏹️ ▶️ John be upgraded anymore than I’m buying new stuff all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Brian Haugen asks, Are you still playing Desert Golfing or Altos of Denture? In what level on each? I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have never ever played Desert Golfing and I’ve played Altos of Denture like once. So I have no answer for this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t play much anymore with Desert Golfing. Altos of Denture I played the kind of playing once and that was it. Desert
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Golfing I got somewhere in the thousands, like 3000 or something and got frustrated and started
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back at the beginning for peace reasons. And I’m currently up at 1,500.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But again, I don’t play that much. So sorry, that was the stroke count. 648 is the whole number.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, I was gonna say you had lapped me. Desert Golfing, I’m in the mid-1000s. I haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ John played in ages, and I probably don’t think I’d go back to it. Alta’s Adventure, I played until I unlocked everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John This was back when the game was new, before they started adding all these other things. So basically I unlocked everything, and also
⏹️ ▶️ John after the point where we realized the amount of time that I would need to invest to catch my
⏹️ ▶️ John friends who have high scores is more than I’m willing to put in. So I did clear it out and I did get the good character.
⏹️ ▶️ John I did spend some time doing some high score runs with that, but then bailed. And that was a long time ago. I still play it every once in a while, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John the Zen mode with no scoring, where you just hang out and do it. I do that occasionally.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Tohaha Saeed said, what technologies outside of the Apple-centric ones excite you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey these days? This could be different server-side language, some camera sensor technology, or a concept like functional languages.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, I just did a five part series on RX Swift, which is a reactive programming
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my blog. Uh, it is really fricking cool and I really like it. And it’s a kind of,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, it’s sort of functional ish, but it’s, it’s both more in less than that. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that that’s my answer. Uh, John.
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, I think probably, um, I’m still looking at OLED TVs. I am,
⏹️ ▶️ John I am excited about them and I can’t wait for them to mature and settle down.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so that’s probably the tech that I’m mostly looking at these days outside of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco? Electric cars. They’re amazing and keep getting better. Fair
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enough. Let’s see. Pretty much the entire internet asks, what would it take for us
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to ditch the Mac for something else to be better? I don’t mean that to be flippant. I’m being serious. Nothing else
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is better. If something else gets better, then I’ll switch. Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, about the same. Mac, the Mac would have to get really unusable for the kinds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of things I do and something else would have to be good enough to get me to switch. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco honestly, even with Apple’s current rate of neglect, I don’t see that happening for a long time.
⏹️ ▶️ John It would take more than something being better because it would have to be better by a lot and I almost think for me,
⏹️ ▶️ John it would require Apple to stop making Macs. Like, I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco mean, they would have to like push us out.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, just having something better wouldn’t make me switch because my switching costs would be so huge, right? It would have to be
⏹️ ▶️ John phenomenally better that could make me switch or basically, Apple pushes us out and then
⏹️ ▶️ John like whether there’s something better or not tough luck.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, thanks for three sponsors this week, Coco Conf, Audible, and Casper, and we will see you
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann it was accidental, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental. John didn’t do any research, Margo
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Casey wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann let him, Cause it was accidental, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental. And you can find the show
⏹️ ▶️ John ATP.FM And if you’re into Twitter,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann T. Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann It’s accidental, they didn’t mean
⏹️ ▶️ John to. Accidental, tech podcasts so long.
Post-show: Neutral
⏹️ ▶️ John And we have the shortest after show ever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Yeah, we should make it quick laser sailor asks as a bonus Q&A question
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In so many words does Tina’s new accord support carplay? I did not even think to ask you this I am
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so jealous of people who have carplay does it support carplay? And if so, have you tried it?
⏹️ ▶️ John We talked about it in the after show of yesterday slash last week’s episode.
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t know yesterday and I still don’t know today day.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey You’re the worst.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s true. Like we were in the car today and I was telling I changed a bunch of settings and everything to like match my
⏹️ ▶️ John car because uh you know so so it’s a similar experience. By the way the the UI problem we
⏹️ ▶️ John currently have with the car is that we’re the same generation but like three two or three
⏹️ ▶️ John model years apart. The keys the key fob things look and feel exactly identical
⏹️ ▶️ John so I need to get some kind of like textured rubbery stickery thing on one of them so I
⏹️ ▶️ John can feel in my pocket and figure out which the hell key fob I need to press the button on. That is a big problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, as far as I can tell, her infotainment system actually is about the same as mine.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that makes me think it doesn’t support CarPlay. But honestly, I haven’t looked it up yet. So I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey How do you not know this? Oh, my Lord. That’s stunning.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey All right. So I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just got a new car delivered about a half hour before the show started tonight.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it does have, I think, I haven’t confirmed it yet, because I literally only had time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to like reprogram the homelink transmitter and bring it into the garage before the show.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But we ordered it with the new BMW implementation of wireless CarPlay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think they’re the first manufacturer to get this. Apple has been weirdly quiet about its existence,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it does have wireless CarPlay, and that’s probably going to be awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that is part of the reason why we got this car. It was a pretty big driver
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I need CarPlay testing hardware that’s a real car. So I get some kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feel for it sometimes. And I think it’s going to be a very long time before Tesla ever adds it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if ever, because their relationship with Apple is not great. And their level of care about their media
⏹️ ▶️ Marco system is also not great. So that’s probably… I don’t want to hold my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco breath on that one. But it’s nice to have a car that has it. Oh, Tiff just confirmed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco via message that it does indeed have CarPlay. She used it on the way home from the dealer from picking it up, so that’s cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John so that’s gonna be cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m looking forward to playing with that, and it’ll be nice as a developer of a CarPlay app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to finally not have to rely on everyone else to tell me all the bugs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What did she get? She got a 340 GT, is that right? That’s right. Awesome,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all right, any other thoughts? Her review of it so far is it is faster and it has nicer stitching.
⏹️ ▶️ John Both of which are true. Steering, steering any better? I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, good question.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hey, Tiff, is the steering any better? Are you listening? Yeah, that’s it, yeah, because she noticed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco immediately when she got the other one that the steering was kind of numb and not great. So I’m curious about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, well, we’ll give her a chance to answer. I will say that if anyone on this earth would notice whether
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or not the stitching was better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco She says it feels different. The steering feels different.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably good if anyone would know whether or not the stitching was better it would be Tiffany Armond and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so that is probably high praise if it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never mind she says the steering wheel feels different like just the wheel itself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the texture of the wheel not the actual steering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re just coming here she’s telling me all this by by I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey s she’s probably in bed God don’t make her come all the way downstairs. Here she is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hey lady. I have a question for for you and Tina by proxy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Can you please convince Aaron that it’s time for her to get a new car because she loves her car more than she loves me And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time to replace it
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann Aaron. It’s time to get a new car. You can love other cars.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Casey She
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doesn’t listen to show Are you kidding me? So just so what we see each other you need to work on her, please.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ll give you a whole American
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Jonathan Mann dollar Why
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann wouldn’t you want a new car?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Jonathan Mann Car
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so much. So no all kidding aside. How is your how is your new car? How is the steering?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey How’s the speed? How’s the car play? Tell me everything
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann it’s new and it’s faster and The steering wheel feels smoother
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann and thicker The lights are a little bit brighter,
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann so that’s good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The headlights or the interior lights? I’m not trying to be funny. I’m genuinely asking.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann All of the lights, but mostly the headlights because they’re LED
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Casey now
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann instead of the…
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, John Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah. That’s probably adjustable with some setting. They actually are brighter
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann and it has like a wider spread, I guess, of the
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann headlights.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, John And yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann other than that, it’s pretty much the same. I can change the color of my
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann interior mood lighting from
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Casey either amber or it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann white. It glows down from various areas of the
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann car like an airplane. And let’s see what else does it do?
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann Oh, when we did the car play thing when Jared was hooking it up, he’s our car guy. He
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A.K.A. a salesman at the car dealership that we dealt with a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Jonathan Mann You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann it has like the typical messages and mail and you know all that kind of stuff. And then you
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann swipe over and there’s Overcast. So that was pretty neat.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Aw, look at that. Hops is giving us the most et tu, Brute, look possible. He’s stuck outside
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the office. And now his whole family is in here except him. And he’s just staring, like, pathetically.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Jonathan Mann Aw,
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann he does look so sad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m going to go let him in.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann Hold on. Everyone’s coming in. Get him
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, John a little pair of
⏹️ ▶️ John headphones. Yeah, put Hops in the podcast. He’s got a lot to say. Sounds a lot like slurping, but
⏹️ ▶️ John, Jonathan Mann And you do what you got to
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann do. So my seats have like little white stitching on them. And from what I could tell, possibly
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann the console wood, whatever the heck it is, looks a little bit more
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann naughty than normal.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, John I don’t know,
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann everything’s in the dark. I picked up a car at night in the winter and I couldn’t see anything.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann I couldn’t even tell what color it was. Like, they’re like, oh, trust
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Casey me, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann blue. It looks black, but it’s blue. I’m like, okay, I guess I have to trust you because there’s no more light. There’s no lights.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had to go outside with a really bright LED flashlight and shine it on the paint to confirm that it was the right color.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann I don’t even know if the interior is the right color. I have no idea. It’s just been dark.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Marco That’s all I can tell you. Normally we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wouldn’t do this, but our hectic holiday scheduling has resulted in us having to pick up the car like today
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or tomorrow morning. And so we chose to do it tonight, but yeah, in retrospect, don’t pick up a car in the dark.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, are you traveling tomorrow? I don’t recall.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann Yeah, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Casey Are you taking the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tesla you taking the new car?
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann Oh, we’re not taking my car. The Tesla has more trunk space. It has double trunk.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ah, right. The frunk.
⏹️ ▶️ John The Tesla has more trunk space than your hunchback BMW.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Jonathan Mann Yes. Because there’s two trunks. Although, to be fair. It’s like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John why get the hunchback? Why are you doing this to her, Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann I want, I want the hunchback. I like it. It’s in case I need to. You like the hunchback? Yeah, I like it a lot. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann in case I need to buy a chair at HomeGoods. I can get it at HomeGoods. All right.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is an antiquing conveyance vehicle.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann I’ve never I in the last three years I haven’t bought a chair at home goods, but in when I do
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Marco for you’ll be ready. Well and also like you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like like I believe you also prefer a narrower car because like her like my car is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot wider. It’s it’s like the next size up. It’s like the seven series s-class equivalent size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rather than hers is more like an extended three series.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann Sure sounds good. No, I like I like the way way the back opens up I don’t like a typical trunk anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann I mean I just
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Marco don’t. Which my car doesn’t have.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann No and your car doesn’t have it, but it’s bigger.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Jonathan Mann Yeah, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah. The main reason why you chose this I believe as we figured
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it out over the last few months was.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann I decided not to make a choice, that’s why I chose
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Marco it. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was mostly inaction. Like the lease was ending, we had to get something and I’m like let’s just get the same thing. Because it’s nice to have both kinds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of cars sometimes.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann And you wanted CarPlay to test your app. That’s what you said, we’re like you need to get this car so I can test
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann my app. I said, okay. That’s basically it. Yeah. So yeah, I picked it up
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann tonight. It was good. Oh, and the sound system is much better. The
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Casey radio- Did you get the Harman
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Casey Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Casey I did.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann No, I don’t think-
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, John He was talking
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann about something.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, John I got something. Go
⏹️ ▶️ John outside with a flashlight and see what you got.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann I don’t know. He was saying that I got like the good sound system, whatever it is. Sounds really good.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Casey The
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Harman Kardon in my car anyway is phenomenal. So if you got the Harman Kardon, it would not surprise
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me if you were also impressed. Or I don’t even know if it’s Harman Kardon anymore, but that’s what it was when my car was new.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, well, all the options were different this time. So it was kind of hard. Like the reason why the interior trim
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is different is because the entire option set changed between the first one, the shorter one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and this one. So everything is like very slightly different.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann Yeah, as far as I can tell, it all feels pretty good because it was dark and I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann really see it yet. So I’ll see it in the morning.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You did not get an M Sport because you could not get the correct color. Is that correct?
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann I think so yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Jonathan Mann because you want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get the dark blue and the M Sport is only available in the Casey blue.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann It’s the same color that I always get my nails painted so you know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey At least you match.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Jonathan Mann You
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann gotta have your car matching your nails. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What was that in Gone in 60 Seconds? Isn’t that how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Jonathan Mann they discovered the Hemikuda?
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann Gone in 60 Seconds?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is that what I said? Anyway in Gone in 60 Seconds with Mario.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The Hemikuda, I believe, Angelina Jolie knew that it was a woman’s car
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because she had lipstick, maybe that’s what it was, that matched the color of the car
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that she found in the car. Good story. And then I found five dollars. It was amazing. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey congrats on your new car.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Jonathan Mann Thanks. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann Thank you very much. I’m very excited. It’s a Christmas
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Casey present. So what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are we going to see, that car or another car when we all meet up.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann You’ll probably see the Tesla. We
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, John take
⏹️ ▶️ John it. He has to come so his Tesla can dominate underscore Tesla. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the same Tesla.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The exact same model. Just mine’s red and his is blue. That’s it. Are you going to be able to plug in
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann over there?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Yeah. Just you know, not as quickly as my as here, but it’s close enough.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Jonathan Mann Yeah. Anyway, like their
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann superchargers and stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Well, and like, like on a long trip like that, like Like basically if I’m going to be driving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of the time or all of the time, I want it to be in my car.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco For trips where that doesn’t make sense, like the Long Island thing where we’re going to leave at parts and I was worried about discharging,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine, we’ll take Tess’ car. But for the most part, if I’m driving a long trip, I want to be driving it in my car.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey pretty nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann But then you’re not even driving. I think you guys would totally die if you knew how low my mileage
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann was when I dropped it off. Let me just say that the dealership is pretty excited.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann That I’m on your mind.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So how many miles did you have in your car after three years?
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann Under 10,000. Whoa. Are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you freaking kidding me? It
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann was just. It’s just under. Holy god.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann I drive upstate sometimes. But mostly it’s like around
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Casey here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Are you sure? Yeah. Are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Jonathan Mann you sure? We’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann done it once. But that’s only like 400 miles a pop. So, I mean, I don’t go that often,
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, John twice a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Jonathan Mann I have no words. Have
⏹️ ▶️ John you considered going out for chicken salad every day? I know,
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann yeah, I don’t even go out for chicken salad. Although now I’m driving to the driving range.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann So, there’s like two more miles
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Casey a week. Big spender, big spender. I walk,
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann I’m good for the environment, and I’m also good for the BMW
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Casey dealership. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good for the environment. I’m good for the environment, the owner of a brand new 340. That
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann came over on a ship from a
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Casey different country.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Jonathan Mann neutral. No, I’m kidding.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fun fact, I actually did work with a company based out of Helsinki that would take hyper-accurate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ocean current patterns and they would integrate that with navigation systems. So if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a cargo ship going from, say, I don’t know, Germany to the United States, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you would look at the ocean currents and you would say, oh, you know, this ocean current that’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 20, 30, 50, 100 miles north of where I really want to be, but it’s a current that’s running, you know, 10 knots east to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey west, which is the direction I’m traveling, I could send – or I could save 11 billion
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gallons of fuel if I ride this current. And so that’s what they would do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Jonathan Mann That’s awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. So it actually could be not terribly environmentally friendly, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not terribly environmentally hostile either going from Germany to here on a ship. You never know.
⏹️ ▶️ John The internet says my wife’s new car is CarPlay compatible and the internet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Everything on the internet is true, John.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann All right, now it is. It’s officially Aaron’s turn to get a new car.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Jonathan Mann God, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We actually saw an X5M when we were out doing our tacky light tour earlier, and I was kind of doing the,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eh, eh, and she gave me the most serious and angry side eye I’ve ever seen in my life.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, she wants a Mazda 6, like her current Mazda 6. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever Mazda’s line is right now, like, an X5M is not that. That is a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Jonathan Mann giant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Jonathan Mann also very expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t imagine Erin ever agreeing to replace her beloved Mazda 6
⏹️ ▶️ Marco full-size sedan with a giant expensive BMW SUV.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Jonathan Mann Why isn’t she asking for another
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I think that it left to her own devices. I think she would either get another six to your guys’
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point, or I think she would be okay with the Grand Cherokee. And I know that you guys are probably not fans of Grand Cherokees,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but she has always liked them. Of course, I want her to get an SRT8. She has no interest in that, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s what—if I were to wager a guess, I would say a new Grand Cherokee. That being said, she saw
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a Volvo—what is it? S90? Whatever? No, not the S. XC90, the SUV.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey She saw that outside of Costco and said that she thought that that was pretty good-looking. So there’s a prayer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Jonathan Mann But well, have you
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann taken her car shopping yet? Have you been like Aaron? We’re going car shopping and you are going to
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann go where you want to go. Not where I
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Marco want to go I begged I make it even better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Aaron. I will watch the kid while you go car shopping Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but she I understand what you’re driving out here, but she doesn’t have any interest in replacing her Mazda She’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey replace the Mazda when it falls apart.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann I know I think you know what you have to do
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Casey I have to sabotage your car.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey God, it’s like Star Trek 6. Am I right? Am I right, John? Am I right?
⏹️ ▶️ John I blocked that one out. Real time follow up from my wife.
⏹️ ▶️ John only the EX trim level has carplay, so now the car is back to not having carplay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Aww. See, the internet was wrong. This is the first
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a two day old car. We haven’t looked into it yet. We’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tiff, Tiff, did your car have a bow on it when you got delivery?
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann No, it should have, or maybe it did, and I just didn’t see it because it was dark. It’s too
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Casey dark. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann disappointing.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann know, it’s around Christmas and everything too. They should have at least had a
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Marco bow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In exchange for your trade-in that had no miles on it, they could have at least given us a giant bow. I know, for crying
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann They just extended my other lease because we were lazy. Forgot to re-up on our car.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey aye, aye. All right, I think we should all go to bed. Any other thoughts, Tiff, before you disappear?
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann Vroom. I don’t know. That’s all I
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Casey got.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann Oh, oh, my thought is when I started my car in the presence of Marco in the garage, because usually when I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann driving my car, when I was taking my old car out into the, you know, pasture where I was taking it,
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann um, I realized how loud it was. I was very surprised.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Marco Oh God. Cause he had the door,
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann he had the door open. And so normally I’m like just in the car starting it myself and backing out and like leaving and
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann yeah, it’s pretty loud.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I bet it sounds great though. Seriously.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann It does. That’s loud. I think definitely my next car is going to be an electric car.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann I feel like I feel like this will be this This will be my last gas car.
Post-show: AirPods
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Didn’t we have a question for Tiff about air pods maybe how they fit or something like that Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this was last episode, but I feel like we wanted to ask if something but Marco you had said that yeah Just gotten
⏹️ ▶️ Casey her hands on the air pods
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann I wore them last night while you guys are recording and They’re much
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann more comfortable I know I wanted to wear them mainly because I’ve been wearing my glasses for the last few days because
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann I’ve had these Eyedrops that I can’t wear my contacts. So wearing like over-the-ear headphones
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, John is pretty,
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann oh, it’s horrible. It just moves them, it gets, oh, it’s just so uncomfortable. So anyway, so I went to the AirPods
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann and they were pretty good. After a while, they did start to hurt a little bit, but
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann I think that that’s with any in-ear, earbud kind of thing does that. And it
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann was really nice that I could just walk away from, because I had it paired to the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann TV last night. So I was walking around the house, doing laundry and getting stuff out
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann of the car going upstairs and the range was really far. I mean like
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann you know our house and I made it pretty much to the other side of the house and it
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Casey only just started clipping. Well the
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann laundry room is a hike. Yeah, yeah. It only just started clipping like all the way over there or upstairs so
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann that was pretty impressive and it was kind of nice being able to listen to the movie I was watching anywhere
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann in the house and then come back and be like, oh yeah, because they were just in my ear. I wasn’t tethered to
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann anything and in but it was in my ear in a in a way that it was so discreet, kind of like a little Bluetooth
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann set, you know? So that was nice. That’s a very positive thing to say about them.
⏹️ ▶️ John Earbuds don’t have to hurt, by the way. They don’t hurt my ears, no matter how long I wear them. So it just depends on what shape your ear is,
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann Oh, well then, there you go. I have slightly hurty ears. They don’t fall out, but they do hurt
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann after a while. But I just feel like anything in my ear hurts after a while.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey How many times did you watch Claymation Christmas back to back, my goodness?
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann Ugh. I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann, Marco Tiff is
⏹️ ▶️ Jonathan Mann I mean, I have memories of it, but no, no.