209: Making Sausage-Making Glamorous
16 Feb 2017Planet of the Apps, Chromebooks, and the endurance race between a car and a Mac Pro.
Episode Description:
- AirPods, a couple of months in
- Follow up:
- Chromebooks vs. ARM Macs
- Case sensitive HFS+
- Twitterrific for the Mac
- Planet of the Apps
- Caavo
- Ending theme by Jonathan Mann
- Post-show:
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Chapters
- Still enjoying AirPods?
- Follow-up: Phone contracts!
- Follow-up: Finger photos
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- Chromebooks vs. ARM Macs
- Case-sensitive filesystems
- Sponsor: Eero (code ATP)
- Twitterrific for Mac
- Planet of the Apps
- Sponsor: Pingdom (code ATP)
- Caavo
- Ending theme
- Post-show: John’s horse
- Post-show: Neutral
Still enjoying AirPods?
⏹️ ▶️ John I was just feeling out to see whether you’re making a legit mistake or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trolling and you strolling
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am a trolling Are you guys using your air pods anymore?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I still am I am not Tiff uses them more than I do now because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one pair or two pair
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I? Got one pair, which is two air pods But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey got three air pods. Yeah, how many
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how many ear holes? can you fill with the AirPods that are in the house? Two.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, that’s what I thought. Okay, so you have a single pair like you said. Yes. And Tiff is using them more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, she uses them actually often with the Apple TV. Like when I’m podcasting, she can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it isn’t as nice as using it with other stuff, but it does work. And there’s a couple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of niceties. Like when you use the volume up and down on the Apple TV remote with AirPods connected,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it does the volume to them instead of like your speakers. So it doesn’t do like the auto pairing thing the way it does on iOS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco devices, but once you have it paired, it works nicely.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So how does that, I’m not trying to be funny, how does that work then? Do you have to like go into settings in the Apple TV
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and say connect to the AirPods every single time?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I forget if we do it every single time. I think it was just the first time. I don’t know, usually she just does it. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once they’re paired. As long as you don’t pair them with something else though, right? That’s the issue. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve actually seen this a number of times. Like I was doing, I was trying to do testing between the phone, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco TV, iPad, watch, a Mac, testing all these different things. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I found that AirPods are a little bit frustrating in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trying to share between different devices and having it not quite always do what you want.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like even though the old way of doing Bluetooth where you just have to unpair from one device and pair to something else,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s also terrible. But the way AirPods do it is not quite flawless.
⏹️ ▶️ John But how do they do it? That’s my question, because I have used my AirPods with my phone and my iPad,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Those are two to two devices. Yeah. Uh, is something supposed to happen other
⏹️ ▶️ John than me going to settings and tapping Bluetooth and tapping AirPods? Cause that’s what I’ve been doing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey My favorite thing is occasionally I’ll put in a single AirPod and I’ll be in like the bedroom
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’m listening to a podcast or something like that. And then I’ll put in, it’s like five or 10 minutes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey later, I’ll put in another, the other AirPod, and it will go to connect.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And for whatever reason, it will semi-consistently connect to the iMac, which is in the next room over
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the office. And so I have one AirPod connected to my phone and one connected to my iMac.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I’ll double tap like the one connected to the iMac, which I still haven’t changed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do play pause. So I’ll hear Siri out of one ear and then like whatever podcast I’m listening to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out of the other ear. It’s actually quite funny. And I could see how that would be really frustrating
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to someone who isn’t like a developer perhaps or who doesn’t think about how difficult it is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to implement all this. But to me, I just find it to be hysterical.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I still get some weird audio sync problems sometimes. But overall, they’re still winning just because I guess my
⏹️ ▶️ John hatred of cords and snags has…
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Amen, brother.
⏹️ ▶️ John very frustrating that I can’t change volume and I have all these crazy schemes on how to adjust the volume
⏹️ ▶️ John by like reaching into my pocket and feeling for which side of the phone is face up so I know whether I have to reach
⏹️ ▶️ John for the side with the power button or the volume thing like,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey especially with gloves on and stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Slow down. Slow down. Are you talking pant pocket or jacket pocket?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, okay. Then I’ve seen myself.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I have it. You know, I might wear
⏹️ ▶️ John a winter jacket and, you know, reach around there to change the thing. Or like when I do it in the kitchen, like I said,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t even put the phone in the kitchen. The phone is in the dining room. So if I want to change the volume, I have to like take
⏹️ ▶️ John a few steps into the other room and on the little sideboard thing hit the volume up or down but
⏹️ ▶️ John i’m living with it and apparently you know proof’s in the pudding i’m people hate it when i say that because that’s not correct but
⏹️ ▶️ John deal with it you know what i mean um that i
⏹️ ▶️ John i’m i’m now using them despite the fact that uh double tapping my ear is uncomfortable and despite
⏹️ ▶️ John the fact that double tapping works weirdly inconsistently some people have suggested the triple tap
⏹️ ▶️ John to try to you know have a mulligan in there if one of them doesn’t register Sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John I blame overcast and or slash iOS first taking overcast out of memory
⏹️ ▶️ John so that it has to launch again Before I can start playing and then I question whether it
⏹️ ▶️ John It registered my taps and it doesn’t have just hasn’t started playing yet Sometimes it’s so far out of memory that it
⏹️ ▶️ John starts playing music Despite the last thing the fact that the last thing I was listening to was a podcast
⏹️ ▶️ John Very confusing. But anyway, all that said I’m still using them instead of my wired ones The only
⏹️ ▶️ John place I’ve used my wired ones recently was watching my iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John in a case where my AirPods were downstairs. And it’s like, well, I’ve got the wired headphones here and I’m not going anywhere
⏹️ ▶️ John when I’m just watching something on my iPad on my bed or something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, like the wireless I’m totally sold on. And as I mentioned earlier, like I love the idea of the AirPods
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is just how incredibly small and pocketable they are. They don’t fit me comfortably and they don’t really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work for my life as a result. And so that’s why I’m not really using them and why I typically use them more than I am. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that being said, all those limitations about what you can and can’t easily control from them like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco volume and play pause being finicky and stuff like that. When I switch back to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my beloved old Sennheiser PX210BT, when it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has its giant, you know, this little like, you know, on-ear Bluetooth set that I’ve had for a couple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years now that I walk my dog every day with and it just has these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big plastic buttons on the right ear cup and I can play, pause, volume up and down, seek back,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seek forward, next track, previous track all with these five buttons on the right ear cup and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is just so convenient. And every time I try other headphones for a little while to review
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them or to talk about them on the show or whatever else, whenever I go back to my crappy little Sennheiser
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Bluetooth headphones I am so happy with the amount of control and convenience that I have from them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Even though they sound like crap and they’re pretty ugly and they are, you know, still like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over the head headphones even though they’re compact ones so they don’t fit in any pocket really.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’ll fit in jacket pockets but not in like a pants pocket and it is just so nice to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those and I’ve tried now, I still haven’t done a review, I keep meaning to maybe do video reviews
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I keep putting that off because it turns out video is a lot of work but I’ve tried
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now many high end Bluetooth headphones including the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AirPods but also including like all like the $400 crazy ones from like B&O and B&W
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Bose and all these other headphone companies. And the convenience
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of my relatively cheap Bluetooth headphones that just have big plastic buttons on the side cannot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be beat. Like it is, they are so convenient for everyday use. That’s why I use them for podcasts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I would never recommend them for music because they sound like trash. They just have the worst
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sound for music ever. But for podcasts, it’s totally fine. And oh man, it’s just so nice having
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those physical controls right on the ear cup. I can operate it with gloves on. I don’t have to use any voice assistance. They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work every single time. Like, it’s just reliable physical controls. And they’re not sexy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they’re not cool, but they work. And it’s really hard to beat that for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steven Lee Yeah, if only there was a device you could like, I don’t know, strap to your body somehow
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that would give you all of those physical controls and also let you like get a text
⏹️ ▶️ Casey message and also let you reply to a text message and also let you get other notifications. Wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Anyway, let’s do some follow-up.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, actually, remember I said that it works every time. The ear cup
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work every time, not 80% of the time. And I can use them with gloves on, and yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Speaking of that, I keep forgetting to try that. That was suggested so long ago, and it still hasn’t occurred to me to try that. I should give that
⏹️ ▶️ John a try, although I really
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey don’t get to wear watches. Try a watch. Using the watch?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, as an example of having a physical volume control is easier than reaching into my pocket and
⏹️ ▶️ John finding my phone’s volume button and stuff like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that. Truth be told, finding the volume button is probably easier, but this is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a solvable problem. It’s just that you don’t want it to be solved the way it has been solved.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sounds like me and cars. Let’s do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey some follow-up. No, no.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s actually a solution. I already have it. It was really cheap a few years ago, and it works perfectly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every time. And the newfangled solution is both
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something like four times the price and worse. So no, this actually is a case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where the old solution was totally fine. And the good thing is, this is one of those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco areas where, as you Casey have been an advocate of for so long, cheap Bluetooth headphones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are plentiful these days. Tons of people make cheap Bluetooth headphones. And they’re largely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty decent. They’re not good, but they’re decent. And for their price, they’re usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fairly reasonable. And these headphones were, at the time I bought them,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of expensive at something like like $100 or $110. They’re not worth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more than that if you see them for sale. Don’t pay more than that. But they’re not even worth that really these days.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco However, this is like a five year old pair of headphones. This is one of the areas where the higher end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco headphones, the higher end wireless headphones are nicer in certain ways. They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are possibly more portable like AirPods. They are better sounding like some of the high end ones from like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco B&O and stuff. They are better noise cancellation and maybe more comfortable their larger
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on-ear things. However, for practicality of just like wireless wearing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them while walking or running or around the house doing stuff like John cooking, the cheap
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ones with plastic buttons on them are actually better for almost all purposes for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that kind of use than the high-end expensive ones.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mostly agree with you. If you ever need to flip between devices,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then the AirPods or anything really with a W1 chip start to make a lot more sense. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you are consistent with one machine, for example, my $25 Bluetooth headphones
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I bought literally five years ago, I believe, that are still kicking. I just don’t use them because my AirPods.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, I only ever use those with my work, my work computer. And it was great. It was, the sound
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was acceptable. And they had buttons on the side if I really needed them. Although I have the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey keyboard right in front of me, but anyway, uh, yeah, they, they worked just fine. And I do agree with you,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, I freaking love my AirPods, but nonetheless, if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you don’t feel like spending $160 on a set of little earbuds, you can easily spend between 20
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and 100 and get something that’s nearly as good as long as you’re not switching between
⏹️ ▶️ Casey devices frequently.
⏹️ ▶️ John As long as you don’t mind a giant thing, like I would never trade my AirPods. I would go back to wired earbuds before I would
⏹️ ▶️ John go to a big thing that goes over my head with a big band and puts two big squishy circles on my ears. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I want the buds. That’s what I want. And so, wired or wireless, those are my choices. And then a distant
⏹️ ▶️ John third would be, OK, if I can’t have any kind of ear bud, then I guess I’ll go an over-ear thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. All right, let’s start the show and do some follow up.
Follow-up: Phone contracts!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John why don’t you tell me about a phone contracts and other ways that you can make people
⏹️ ▶️ John This is much more interesting. Thanks
⏹️ ▶️ John last week talking about the different tractors that make people feel like they need
⏹️ ▶️ John to get a new device on a on a faster schedule than people apparently and
⏹️ ▶️ John or supposedly get new iPads and I was bringing up the idea that phones get dropped and break
⏹️ ▶️ John more often than iPads just by their nature So that could be one thing that will make people
⏹️ ▶️ John turn them over. A couple of people wrote in to bring up the idea of contracts,
⏹️ ▶️ John which are less prevalent now than they used to be in the US. It used to be that the phone was like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, it’s, you know, $200 for this phone on a two-year contract for blah, blah, blah. And they would just
⏹️ ▶️ John typical money hiding schemes where, you know, human nature makes you not see the upfront cost and you
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t do the multiplication in your head. So it seems like a cheaper deal. These days, it seems to me,
⏹️ ▶️ John as someone who does not buy a new phone that often, that the shift is more towards…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You bought a new phone exactly once!
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well, no. I’ve… I suppose. I bought my track phones, too.
⏹️ ▶️ John The move is away from contracts and more towards buying them up front, unlocked. I don’t know if
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s just an iPhone thing or just a my personal experience thing, but either way,
⏹️ ▶️ John historically that has been a big motivator to get people to buy a new phone every few years because it seems like a good deal
⏹️ ▶️ John because they hide all the costs from you in a way that makes your your silly fallible
⏹️ ▶️ John brain feel like you’re not spending the money that you are spending.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Can we pause
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here for a moment? Am I supposed to be paying less on my cell phone bill now that I buy my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phones outright because I’m not?
⏹️ ▶️ John No you shouldn’t be but
⏹️ ▶️ John Well it depends on how bad of a deal you got but the strange thing about the deals now is
⏹️ ▶️ John is that they psychologically seem more expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, like mine just is more expensive. So I have AT&T, and I started buying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my phones outright and not taking their subsidies anymore, and the plans are all still the same prices. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m just spending more money now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey on the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, you should be spending a little bit less. I’m logging into AT&T right now, but what happens is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the plans cost the same, However, they give you a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very peculiarly peculiar named discount once you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no longer subsidizing a phone and it’s going to take me like three hours to figure out where in my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bill this is listed.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, they did. I remember hearing the same thing from my wife who wrangles the phone contracts
⏹️ ▶️ John that sometimes you have to call them to remind them to give you the better deal once you’re off contract
⏹️ ▶️ John and then that deal gets
⏹️ ▶️ Casey discount for access, which is on the main line $25 off your total cost.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because discount for access, actually it’s on both lines, it’s $25 off. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I think discount for access, I think this is offsetting the subsidy cost, don’t you?
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s fantastic. Yeah, but it is an interesting change that they’re getting brave enough to reveal
⏹️ ▶️ John the price in a way that will register with consumers’ brains in the way that, you know, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John much scarier than the old way of like oh every new iPhone is $200 now every new iPhone is $800 and you’re like whoa $800
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s it’s like you just didn’t do the math before.
⏹️ ▶️ John So the other factor that people wouldn’t talk about for getting new phones that’s gonna make you get a new phone before
⏹️ ▶️ John you would get a new iPad or even a new you know laptop is battery life which you think
⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t make a difference because iPads and laptops have batteries too but phones batteries are really really small
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re much closer to the ragged edge of acceptable in terms of battery life so when the tiny little
⏹️ ▶️ John battery that probably is subjected to much harsher environmental conditions than your iPad or your laptop
⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of putting it in pockets or maybe leaving it in cars and stuff like that like I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John in the same way of dropping the phone goes everywhere with you so there’s more variability even just being
⏹️ ▶️ John in your outside jacket pocket during the winter which I’m guilty of I mean when I’m shoveling snow I have my phone in my jacket pocket
⏹️ ▶️ John that can’t be good for the battery to deal with those temperatures anyway when the phone battery starts to go south,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, it’s a bad scene. You can deal with a many years old
⏹️ ▶️ John iPad battery because then it drops from 10 hours to five. But because of the way
⏹️ ▶️ John we use iPads, that’s okay. But if your phone drops from making it until 6
⏹️ ▶️ John PM and to making it to only 4 PM, that’s a no go. And you’re going to be like, oh, I need a new phone. Cause
⏹️ ▶️ John my battery sucks. So more hardware based reasons that people want new phones sooner than they want new iPads.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Also, there’s the Apple whatever upgrade program. I forget what it’s called now, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like several normal people that I know have started doing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that. What is that called? Is it just upgrade? iPhone upgrade program? But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like that’s, yes, iPhone upgrade program and there are equivalents with each carrier
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that are roughly the same money. So I feel like that’s what’s going on is it’s your sort of kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of leasing your phone now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, honestly, this is really a better system. Most of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the rest of the world outside of the US were doing systems that were more like this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco long before we were, or you literally just bought the phone outright and then paid like cheaper
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plans. It does make more sense this way. Things are a little bit more honest,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even though, as usual, America has taken a straight normal on a system and has twisted it in such
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a way that it’s really confusing and complicated and tries to hide all the actual costs still. It’s called
⏹️ ▶️ Marco capitalism. It’s called something. But yeah, I mean, I think this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is still — this is long-term a better system, even if it is somewhat confusing in the short term,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as we have made this transition over the last few years.
Follow-up: Finger photos
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, tell me, if I take a photograph of you flashing me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the peace sign, is that a problem?
⏹️ ▶️ John This is related to the idea of biometrics and how accessible
⏹️ ▶️ John the features of your body may be to other people, because once they have them, and if
⏹️ ▶️ John you use them as a means of security on your devices, then you’ve got a problem, because as we
⏹️ ▶️ John established at SHOW, your face is indeed your face and your fingers are your fingers. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I was talking about how it is easier to get pictures of someone’s face that is the pictures of
⏹️ ▶️ John their fingerprints to articles related to this one from Japan
⏹️ ▶️ John where Cultural custom is to flash the peace sign two fingers up in the air in photos
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you do that, obviously you’re facing two of your fingerprints right at the camera Get good enough lighting
⏹️ ▶️ John get enough megapixels. You can lift your prints off of that. So there’s an article about about
⏹️ ▶️ John that happening and being careful about it because you are literally showing them your fingerprints. Here they are,
⏹️ ▶️ John and technology’s amazing. We can lift fingerprints from that. And then the second article was
⏹️ ▶️ John in a more challenging scenario, can we pull fingerprints from a photo where someone’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John flashing a peace sign, but we just happen to catch their finger at the right angle at the right time, whether it be video
⏹️ ▶️ John or still photos? And the answer is yes, you can do that as well if you get the right shot.
⏹️ ▶️ John All of which is scary and all of which leads to the idea that especially for public figures
⏹️ ▶️ John or people who expect to be photographed or people who have access to things that are highly desirable
⏹️ ▶️ John as opposed to just like your personal email account, but if you are someone who’s a head of state or something
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re using your fingerprints for something important, then people are highly motivated to get them.
⏹️ ▶️ John So yeah, be careful out there. Don’t show people your fingers or your face, I suppose.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, just never be photographed in any capacity ever. Yep.
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Chromebooks vs. ARM Macs
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey Continuing, John, can you tell me about Chromebooks and Chrome OS and how that relates to ARM Macs?
⏹️ ▶️ John We talked about the ARM Mac rumor idea from Slashdot
⏹️ ▶️ John as a more lockdown Mac type system and a lot of people brought up Chromebooks, which we have talked about in the past
⏹️ ▶️ John as an example of a very similar type of thing that has existed for a while. It’s taking it more
⏹️ ▶️ John to the extreme and not only is the Chromebook obviously locked down in the way
⏹️ ▶️ John that this fantasized slash rumor on Mac was, but also it
⏹️ ▶️ John shifts everything to network, which this rumor did not mention anything about the Mac being. But
⏹️ ▶️ John it all boils down to the piece of hardware being more robust
⏹️ ▶️ John in the face of user indifference. I don’t know how to phrase it. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t have to know how to, you can know less about using
⏹️ ▶️ John a personal computer and be successful with it in the same way that you don’t need to know as much about personal computing to be successful with
⏹️ ▶️ John an iPad or an iPhone as opposed to a MacBook. So Chromebooks, there are far fewer places
⏹️ ▶️ John where you can get into trouble. Software, installing software is more straightforward. The number of things
⏹️ ▶️ John you can do to it to mess it up is much lower. The overall system is simpler. Obviously, Chromebook and Chrome OS
⏹️ ▶️ John our far cry from the Mac operating system with a heavy focus on doing
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff with web technologies through a browser, with many things being put into the cloud.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think that simplification in fact is a big advantage Chromebooks have over any of Apple’s devices.
⏹️ ▶️ John The aggressively cloud-centric focus that this thing you’re holding in your hand
⏹️ ▶️ John is nothing. Everything you do if you have access to the network is saved
⏹️ ▶️ John to the network aggressively so that pretty much at any point, when you’re working on a Chromebook, you can do
⏹️ ▶️ John a five count and then throw the thing out the window into a lake and then
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco go get another Chromebook from the back
⏹️ ▶️ John room and sign in and resume where you left off. You cannot do that with any Apple device, right? That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the dream of the Chromebook. I’ve always thought it was a brilliant idea, perhaps not very well executed, but every time we talk
⏹️ ▶️ John about iPads or Macs, especially as they relate to education,
⏹️ ▶️ John people come out of the woodwork to tell us how Chromebooks are kicking Apple’s butt in education because
⏹️ ▶️ John what a dream machine. educational institutions do not want to deal with wrangling computers
⏹️ ▶️ John or software anything like that you have a bunch of computers that you’re gonna put a bunch of students in front of
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s just you know they’re gonna do everything they can to mess those things up and even if they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John the computers like eventually will mess themselves up especially if they’re you know if it’s Windows and we’re in
⏹️ ▶️ John a decade ago I assume it’s better now Chromebooks are very resilient sorry iPads for that matter but Chromebooks even
⏹️ ▶️ John more so in in that they are resistant to slowly
⏹️ ▶️ John degrading and or being compromised by devious students. And there’s lots
⏹️ ▶️ John of good tools for managing fleets of these things and for having multiple students sign into them.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Apple’s made some strides here with their weird multi-user sign in and out sync everything from iCloud
⏹️ ▶️ John things they’ve been doing with the iPad lately. But Chromebooks almost always went
⏹️ ▶️ John on price because you can get cheap crappy ones and, you know, cash strap schools love that. And they’re doing
⏹️ ▶️ John very well in management. And I always wonder if Apple cares that much about that
⏹️ ▶️ John market, or do they just like the rest of the many markets, they just want the high end of that market, they just want to sell iPads to the
⏹️ ▶️ John rich schools and let everyone else have Chromebooks or something. But I worry that
⏹️ ▶️ John the value proposition represented by Chromebooks in the ideal if not in actuality,
⏹️ ▶️ John is not falling on deaf ears at Apple, but is not Valued by
⏹️ ▶️ John the people inside Apple as much as it should be because talk about future of computing many of the
⏹️ ▶️ John aspects promised by Chromebooks and many of them delivered by Chromebooks Definitely
⏹️ ▶️ John feel more like the future of computing in terms of having to worry less about
⏹️ ▶️ John Managing the machine and having to worry less about the machine itself because in a network connected
⏹️ ▶️ John world Yes, you can work offline, but it would be great if the source of truth was someplace fast
⏹️ ▶️ John and reliable That is not sitting in front of you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, this is part of what last week when we were talking about that rumored slash-dot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco comment, Lockdown, Next Generation ARM Mac. Even though, again, disclaimer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco already, that was very unlikely to be true. However, one thing I forgot to mention during my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rant about how good that might be is that that might address the Chromebook market pretty well, too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, that wouldn’t have to be a high-end hardware device. could have run on iPad-class
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardware and be passable. And so they could, if Apple wanted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to address this market, which, as you pointed out, they might not want to. Although, I’m with you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think they should address it if they reasonably can,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is not to say definitely yes or no, but I think if they reasonably can address it, I think they should.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because having mass numbers of students growing up using all Google services
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on all Google computers is probably not good for Apple long term. But that being said,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if Apple could take that kind of next-gen Mac-on-arm concept and make a very low-end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardware device that was basically like, you know, mid-generation iPad-level hardware,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, suppose that iOS is two years away, they could take today’s, like, iPad Air 2 hardware,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sell it in two years in this little, like, you know, MacBook One-sized case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for 400 bucks, maybe? I mean, that could actually get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them a lot of the way there. And that OS’s additional lockdown-ness
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and easy management and easy security and everything would all help in that regard too. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think one of the things that made me consider that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco comment as possibly interesting and possibly plausible is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple has to be feeling their, they have to be feeling like the hurt a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bit from the massive success of Chromebooks in schools. They have to be feeling that on some level. Whether
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they choose to address it yet is another question, but I think if they’re going to address it, that hypothetical
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lockdown on our Mac would be a really nice way to address it because obviously they can try pushing iPads,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have as much as they want, and they have gotten decent numbers of iPads sold into schools,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but there’s a reason why those Chromebooks keep selling so well, and a big reason is price, no question, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, it’s a question of whether Apple is willing to or should compete on price to that level.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But also a big reason for that is that a lot of schools
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and students do prefer working on some kind of laptop-shaped device with a laptop keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, you can put keyboards on iPads, but we all know from trying that, that’s not really what they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great at, that’s not really what they’re designed for, and if you’re trying to manage a fleet of student devices,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the last thing you want is detachable, expensive accessories. You know, you want it to be one integrated unit that you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can manage as one integrated unit. So that actually might be part of their strategy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to combat Chromebooks long-term. And if it isn’t, I think it might be worth considering whether it should.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this is yet another time we have to bring up that one of the big advantages Google has in terms of management is the fact
⏹️ ▶️ John they do do everything server-side, and that is Google’s strength, and historically has not been Apple’s strength,
⏹️ ▶️ John to have very robust cloud services where the source of truth
⏹️ ▶️ John is in the cloud, not on the device in the same way you know it doesn’t necessarily have to be web-based
⏹️ ▶️ John tools like Google Docs and stuff which by the way is in extensive use in schools
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m using it at work now too and we mentioned this before we use it for our show notes
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s it’s the point where like I’m waiting for it to unseat
⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft Word in the entire corporate world I know that’s gonna take so freaking long but among
⏹️ ▶️ John certain wings of large corporations it is possible to to displace word and everybody is happier and seeing
⏹️ ▶️ John my kids do everything in Google Docs is like Marco brought up if you’re if you grow up doing that you just think oh word processing equals Google
⏹️ ▶️ John Docs and how does Google Docs work you need servers the servers need to be reliable they
⏹️ ▶️ John need to be fast they need to be always up they need to not lose data Google is really
⏹️ ▶️ John good at that Apple is not as good at it so that’s one weakness
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple has in doing that and the other reason I think Apple should be thinking about this market where Chromebooks are giving
⏹️ ▶️ John them a run for their money with iPads and everything is like it is a demanding
⏹️ ▶️ John environment. Public schools with a bunch of kids messing
⏹️ ▶️ John with your stuff is demanding. Physically speaking, it’s demanding from a management perspective
⏹️ ▶️ John because you have a lot of devices. You have people managing them who perhaps are not the most technically savvy
⏹️ ▶️ John because that’s not their job. Like teachers have to deal with them and they don’t. They want to be teachers. They don’t want to be like I.T. managers,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? So the easier it is to manage the better.
⏹️ ▶️ John But like making a device that is successful in that environment, like that is very hostile, much more
⏹️ ▶️ John hostile than corporate it much more hostile than an individual user’s house, who buys the thing and post
⏹️ ▶️ John an unboxing video and treats it like a little perfect baby, right? Schools are brutal. But in the same way
⏹️ ▶️ John that, you know, oxo good grips company that I believe, I don’t know if it
⏹️ ▶️ John was founded on this or was aimed at this originally, but the story I’ve always heard, and I like it, so I’ll keep repeating it as if it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John true, was that they were making tools for people with arthritis
⏹️ ▶️ John and other sort of motor difficulties with their hands. If you have trouble operating a regular can opener, try
⏹️ ▶️ John the OXO can opener because I know I know you can’t, like it hurts to turn a regular
⏹️ ▶️ John can opener. But here we have one that has very grippy material and a big, rounded,
⏹️ ▶️ John turny thing with lots of leverage. And so you know, and it turns out, good old turns
⏹️ ▶️ John out everyone loves it
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco if you make tools that are
⏹️ ▶️ John easy that are easy for people to use who have hand mobility or strength problems
⏹️ ▶️ John people who do not have hand or mobility or strength problems also love them because they’re just
⏹️ ▶️ John better tools they give you better mechanical advantage they work more smoothly so
⏹️ ▶️ John if you make something for an environment that is demanding in some way oh our customers
⏹️ ▶️ John only have this amount of hand strength and the average adult has five times that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Can you make a can opener that works for them? If you successfully do that, you haven’t made, oh, this is only
⏹️ ▶️ John a niche device for people who have mobility problems with their hands. No, what you’ve made is an amazing
⏹️ ▶️ John can opener. So if you make a laptop that can survive and continue functioning
⏹️ ▶️ John and be manageable by teachers and students in a public school environment, you just happen to have also made an
⏹️ ▶️ John awesome laptop that you can put into the guy’s house who’s going to, you know, treat it like a perfect little baby and always
⏹️ ▶️ John like do everything nice with it and read articles about and do all that stuff. They’ll love it too. Because guess what,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just easier to manage. It works more often, there are fewer problems. That is just a better product
⏹️ ▶️ John all around. So I would never want to see Apple surrender this market
⏹️ ▶️ John if only because it acts as a crucible for testing the
⏹️ ▶️ John the durability of every part of your product from the hardware to the software to the management to the whole nine yards.
Case-sensitive filesystems
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s talk about N.O. Relling, who writes, I bought my first MacBook Pro for work
⏹️ ▶️ Casey last year. Since my job is web development, and thus the target is obviously Linux,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I chose to go case sensitive to avoid trouble as much as possible. I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been burned by Windows case-ignorant file system in the past. Given how long OS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey X and HFS plus have been around, I expected that most modern software would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey run on either setup. But now I’ve learned that both Both Steam and Adobe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Creative Suite will not run on my machine unless I reformat it. Oops. I would love to hear your opinion on the state of this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and who you think is to blame for this mess. John, as our file system expert.
⏹️ ▶️ John Humans are to blame, as always. So yeah, the case-sensitive versus insensitive thing. HFS
⏹️ ▶️ John Plus and HFS before it, and MFS, I believe,
⏹️ ▶️ John were all case-insensitive in that you could not have two files whose
⏹️ ▶️ John file names differed only in capitalization. And there’s a whole bunch of Unicode normalization rules
⏹️ ▶️ John revolving around that. But let’s just talk about ASCII capital lowercase letters. If you had a file
⏹️ ▶️ John named my file all caps, you could not have a file right next to it in the same directory called my file all lowercase
⏹️ ▶️ John because guess what? HMS plus does not distinguish between those, which is mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John a human factors choice on the original Mac because regular people
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t consider those different things like find me the file name Jerry. No, not the one with the lowercase
⏹️ ▶️ John J, the one with the capital J. Being able to not having
⏹️ ▶️ John files that differ only in case because people will type the wrong file names in and think they didn’t save and stuff like it. So it is an important user
⏹️ ▶️ John interface thing, but they implemented down at the file system level, which means not only does the interface present
⏹️ ▶️ John in that way, but you physically can’t save files that differ only in case now, why would
⏹️ ▶️ John anybody want files different case sometimes case it contains information if you have acronyms
⏹️ ▶️ John or abbreviations or other type of things in your file names and they happen to spell out
⏹️ ▶️ John words like and or something and you happen to have another file name that has the lowercase because they wanted the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John and you know case does have meaning in some cases but the most important reason that
⏹️ ▶️ John case insensitivity the historic multi-decade case insensitivity on the mac
⏹️ ▶️ John is potentially a problem is if you ever change your mind. If you ever say actually,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve decided for the future is this people don’t really deal with the file system that much anyway, say on your phones or on your iOS devices, where people
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t see the file system. We don’t need that extra complexity, because it
⏹️ ▶️ John is an extra complexity. Every time you look up a file, you have to see if there’s any variation on that on that files case. And
⏹️ ▶️ John the same thing for writing a file, you have to make sure no files exist with any variation of that file names case.
⏹️ ▶️ John And practically speaking, lots of software made for other platforms, like say, Unix software, open source
⏹️ ▶️ John software, has files that are part of either the source code or the actual operation of the of the
⏹️ ▶️ John binaries in practice, that differ only in case. And if you can’t store
⏹️ ▶️ John them on the file system, you can’t even like untar, you know, the source of an
⏹️ ▶️ John open source tool and build it because it’s got dot lowercase c files and dot capital C files because someone thought that capital
⏹️ ▶️ John C was great for c++, you
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco know, many decades
⏹️ ▶️ John ago, and it will either puke or just randomly overwrite files and you will
⏹️ ▶️ John have things that don’t build. There’s plenty of open source software that has plain old source files
⏹️ ▶️ John foo.c and capital F O O dot C in the same directory that this happens
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a thing and if you can’t deal with it at all you have to make like disk images or virtual machines
⏹️ ▶️ John or all sorts of stuff like that but the real whammy is for
⏹️ ▶️ John decades and decades the Mac has been like this and human beings have been writing software
⏹️ ▶️ John for the Mac and those human beings have put
⏹️ ▶️ John file paths in their software. They’ve written code that reads things from the file system based on their
⏹️ ▶️ John path and a surprising amount of time those file paths
⏹️ ▶️ John that the software is trying to read from the file system do not match the case of the files on disk
⏹️ ▶️ John and nobody notices when you run it on a case-and- sense data file system because if you were looking for you know
⏹️ ▶️ John you know file where the F is capital, but on
⏹️ ▶️ John the file system it’s actually lowercase, your program works fine because it says open me file.conf with a capital
⏹️ ▶️ John F and it says, I hear, I found it and it opens lowercase file.conf and you’re good to go because that’s how all the APIs work.
⏹️ ▶️ John You try to run that in a case sensitive file system and the wheels fall off the wagon. All of a sudden the thing doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John work, can’t even start up, you know, you’re using it, it does weird stuff and it doesn’t function correctly.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Steam, which isn’t even that long on the Mac platform, guess it’s been a few years now but Adobe Creative Suite
⏹️ ▶️ John has deep roots lots of complicated software inevitably has some part
⏹️ ▶️ John that either assumes case insensitivity as like a foundational assumption of some section of the code
⏹️ ▶️ John or accidentally assumes case insensitivity by looking up files based on paths that
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t match the actual case of the files on disk or you know very more complicated variations
⏹️ ▶️ John of that where one part of the thing will write a file and the other thing will read it but they’ll won’t agree on the case and It’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John there are so many places where things can go wrong. And this is where the conventional wisdom goes, that if you format your Mac as
⏹️ ▶️ John case sensitive, be prepared for a whole bunch of your software not to work. And for your only alternative
⏹️ ▶️ John to be to reformat as case insensitive, get stuff working, you might say, well, why doesn’t everybody just fix their software?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it’s a chicken egg thing. They don’t need to fix their software because nobody runs case sensitive HFS plus on their Macs. And no
⏹️ ▶️ John one runs HFS case sensitive HFS plus in their Macs because none of their software works. And so they’re in an impasse
⏹️ ▶️ John there. IOS devices have been case sensitive from day one, which is a wise choice. So there’s there are
⏹️ ▶️ John not a bunch of IOS developers out there writing applications that expect to read files with paths that don’t match the
⏹️ ▶️ John case. Guess what? They wouldn’t work. So that’s great. But with APFS,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not even sure what they’re going to end up doing on the Mac, because the APFS is not officially released on the Mac. It’s only on IOS.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s one way to solve the chicken egg thing and say, hey, guess what? APFS is case sensitive only. I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John imagine them doing that because as we can see, Adobe, Chris and steam wouldn’t work and those are not obscure applications.
⏹️ ▶️ John So yeah, so sorry, bad news. You probably have to reformat
⏹️ ▶️ John your desk as case insensitive to get your software to work again and scrutable humans got you again.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you know, by the way, I guess Marco, I’ll say, does Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John have any Mac apps? It’s like it’s a good thing if you write an application or any kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of software for the Mac to find out do you have these kind of problems in your software because you’ll never know it if you just run a regular Mac all the
⏹️ ▶️ John time but you’ll be surprised they’re lurking I probably have them in my stupid blog system that I used to publish my
⏹️ ▶️ John blog once a year because I only ever run it from a case insensitive file system there’s probably in that tiny
⏹️ ▶️ John little piece of code someplace where I do something stupid about case with file paths
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Eroge.
Sponsor: Eero (code ATP)
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go to eero.com and use promo code ATP at checkout to get free extra added shipping.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wi-Fi in our houses just isn’t good enough. When you only have one router, which is the model we’ve been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sold on forever, no matter how many antennas you put on it, no matter how high powered it is, there’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be dead spots and weak spots in most houses or apartments. We’ve all been there, we all have like the one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco room where the Wi-Fi only gets like one little arc and it doesn’t really work unless you hold the iPad upside down. I’ve actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco done that. And this just is not a very good system for today when we have so many Wi-Fi devices
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that depend on a solid connection in our homes. You know, what year is this? We should have reliable Wi-Fi
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in our entire houses. And Eero lets us do that by having multiple access points work together
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from different points in the house to just blanket your entire place in solid, strong,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fast Wi-Fi coverage. The way they do this, so they sell the little Eero units. They’re kind of like the size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of an Apple TV, these little nicely designed little things. And you plug one of them in the same way you’d plug in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any other Wi-Fi router. plug it into your internet connection, so you know, wherever that is. And then you can plug the other ones in anywhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else in your house, and they talk to each other over a separate mesh network that they make. And then they blanket
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your home in pure high-speed Wi-Fi from each one, and they all work together to form
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one giant network. And it’s way faster than traditional repeaters or anything like that, because of the separate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mesh network thing. Check out the reviews. You will see for yourself. And they sent us
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some too, and We’ve tried them out and we’ve had similarly great experiences. Eros are fast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they are so easy to set up with their app and they have tons of great features. They have things like parental
⏹️ ▶️ Marco controls and all sorts of new features being added and they’re a very easy to use app all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’ve added so many features already. It’s only been out for like a year or something and they’ve added so many features already. It is very highly rated.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s rated currently 4.4 stars on Amazon with over 750 reviews. There’s a one year warranty.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s a return period if you don’t like it. it out. We highly recommend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Eero. It is so much better than just using one router. Go to Eero.com, that’s E E
⏹️ ▶️ Marco R O dot com and use code ATP at checkout to get free F-shadowed shipping.
Twitterrific for Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you very much to Eero for sponsoring our show once again.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, John, happy birthday to you. Your birthday was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually, what, a month and a half ago, but the gods
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have delivered you the ultimate birthday present, sort of.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What’s, uh, what’s going on on Kickstarter these days, John?
⏹️ ▶️ John my favorite Twitter client has been from the moment I started
⏹️ ▶️ John using Twitter Twitter if ik which I think was the very first Twitter client certainly
⏹️ ▶️ John it was the first thing I ever used Twitter with I did not sign up for Twitter based on their terrible website
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco signed up for it
⏹️ ▶️ John once Twitter if it was out and like all right oh this this is a good thing to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do if it wasn’t like truly the first app that uses Twitter API it was at least the first app that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyone ever used that used Twitter API, and it was by far the first app that mattered.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and so it was an iOS app, and there was, but before that there was a Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John app. I think the Mac app came first
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, yeah, so Twitter clients have had a bumpy road a couple years back. Twitter
⏹️ ▶️ John decided that it didn’t really want third parties to make apps, and it started this whole thing where you can only make apps if you have these special
⏹️ ▶️ John tokens, and there’s limited number of those, and some apps were grandfathered in. Oh, and by the way, a bunch of new features were rolling out
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t be used by third party clients because we really don’t like you third party clients and it’s made the
⏹️ ▶️ John market for Twitter apps very difficult for third party Twitter apps very difficult. Twitter or
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS has continued to be updated. Nevertheless, it’s gone through many major revisions and if you were to go buy it
⏹️ ▶️ John on the App Store today, which I recommend it is a great Twitter app. I’ve never I’ve never wavered
⏹️ ▶️ John despite also buying many other Twitter apps and having them installed. I love Twitter because of its unified
⏹️ ▶️ John timeline where it makes everything that has happened on Twitter related to the people you follow,
⏹️ ▶️ John a single list sorted by time. Mentions, tweets, direct messages, your own
⏹️ ▶️ John tweets that go out, just all ordered by time. That’s it. You know, you can view them separately if you want,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I like it to just be one big list that’s the unified timeline. Anyway, the Mac client on the other hand has not been
⏹️ ▶️ John updated in many many years because it just hasn’t been economically feasible to update it because the
⏹️ ▶️ John market for third party Mac Twitter clients is just not sustainable
⏹️ ▶️ John anymore. The market for third party iOS Twitter clients is basically barely sustainable
⏹️ ▶️ John because so many people use the official app and there are still features that you could only do in the official app.
⏹️ ▶️ John I hate the official app even though I have it installed.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t understand how anyone uses
⏹️ ▶️ John it. It’s confusing to me. People use their Twitter in all sorts of different ways.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I happen to know some of the people who work at Icon Factory who
⏹️ ▶️ John make Twitterific and for many years I have been begging them, half-jokingly, to fix
⏹️ ▶️ John Twitterific for the Mac. Which, by the way, I continue to use despite the fact that it is slowly crumbling.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, you know when they added the thing where the tweets can be longer than you would have expected
⏹️ ▶️ John and it doesn’t count like the mentions or everything towards the, or the
⏹️ ▶️ John URLs or mentions towards the the character count some some change related to the length of of tweets
⏹️ ▶️ John and if you don’t support like the new longer tweet thing
⏹️ ▶️ John what you get from the old version of the api is a tweet that is truncated
⏹️ ▶️ John and it goes like like towards the end of the tweet it just goes dot dot dot and then has a url that you can click on to read the
⏹️ ▶️ John whole tweet on twitter’s website that’s what long tweets look like in twitter for the mac
⏹️ ▶️ John and yet i still continue to use it i can’t I can’t do so many things from the Mac version of the client that
⏹️ ▶️ John I can do from the iOS one, but I still continue to use it because I like it and every other Mac client that I’ve tried
⏹️ ▶️ John I dislike strongly in some way. So I really wished for Twitter
⏹️ ▶️ John if it’s coming back to the Mac, but I understood like look you can’t, you know, if it’s not a viable market it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John a viable market even though I offered to pay obscene amounts of money
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco for Twitter for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac. In fact, I believe it was only last week or the week before that you said I would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pay $100 for an updated version of Twitterific for the Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve said that many times and I may or may not have been saying that because I may or may not have known about this project ahead of time. But
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, now there is a Kickstarter. Like everything, the thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve joked about for so many years, like how much money would it take to fund the number of developers who need to make this application?
⏹️ ▶️ John Let’s just do a Kickstarter. And if enough people want Twitterific for the Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ John they will fund this thing and they will make this application like it’s it’s an easy way to know that yes
⏹️ ▶️ John you will have the money to pay for the development of this project because you get the money upfront ish
⏹️ ▶️ John in exchange for the application. So I’m not I have backed this Kickstarter.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not going to tell you how much money I pledged, but it was a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ John It they the goal is 75,000. But I want you all to ignore that because
⏹️ ▶️ John the real goal is 100,000 to stretch the so called stretch goal because the stretch goal includes all
⏹️ ▶️ John the features that I want including fairly essential things like direct messaging. So I really want this Kickstarter
⏹️ ▶️ John to get to 100,000. And if it doesn’t, it will just be proving what I can factor has been saying all along is there’s just not enough
⏹️ ▶️ John people who want this who are going to pay for it, even though some of us are paying very
⏹️ ▶️ John much more than $5 for the privilege of having this application. So you may or may
⏹️ ▶️ John not like using Twitter on the Mac period because many people just don’t use it on the Mac at all. Maybe use the website or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. But if you are using an existing Mac Twitter client and
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t like it or it seems like it hasn’t been updated in a while, like Twitter for the
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac, or it doesn’t work the way you want it to, this is an opportunity to get
⏹️ ▶️ John a shiny new Twitter client from a company that really knows how to make Twitter clients
⏹️ ▶️ John for only as much money as you could possibly afford. So please,
⏹️ ▶️ John please back this it’s up to $35,000 now and it has been open. It’s got 28 days to go and
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s $35,000 out of a goal of not 75 ignore that goal 100k please
⏹️ ▶️ John everybody make this happen because I want this Twitter client.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But if we don’t make it happen, does that mean we will finally break you of your ridiculous insistence
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the unified timeline?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I will never I’m going to use Twitter for the Mac until it doesn’t launch anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m going to I’m going to beg my my friends at Icon Factory to give me a special build that does blunch.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m just giving you a hard time. I know some of the folks from the Icon Factory, we all do actually, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they’re great people. So definitely check out this Kickstarter and throw them a few dollars if you can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because it would make John happy and it would make the folks at Icon Factory happy and they’re good people.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you have good swag. They have t-shirts, they have little vinyl Ollie dolls. Ollie
⏹️ ▶️ John is their little, the blue Twitter bird. You should read some of the history, I think, on the Icon Factory website. I don’t think I linked to
⏹️ ▶️ John it. The history between Icon Factory and Twitter. Many of the things that you associate with Twitter
⏹️ ▶️ John were, in fact, invented by Icon Factory. Terminology, iconography, so much.
⏹️ ▶️ John Icon Factory is practically part of Twitter, only not in the financial sense, because
⏹️ ▶️ John they do not have thousands of employees and bazillions of dollars of investment.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Didn’t Hockenberry come up with Tweet? Was that him? No, it was his co-worker.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey something like that. I forget the details. I mean a lot like a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you know the I believe they were the first ones to actually use a bird as part of the logo that yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tweet they might even have invented at replies I don’t know it’s they did a lot like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of Twitter like standard things and practices and mechanisms and everything were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco invented by icon factory or by their by like their developers for their apps.
⏹️ ▶️ John Ollie the blue Twitter terrific bird is along with the with panics transmit truck,
⏹️ ▶️ John one of the most ripped off icons in the entire Internet. You see it everywhere is like that’s just a generic representation
⏹️ ▶️ John of Twitter. That’s Twitter’s logo. Nope, nope, not not Twitter’s logo at all. In fact, Twitter’s logo is
⏹️ ▶️ John worse than Icon Factory’s logo. They should have just paid them to make their logos for them, but they didn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cool. Well, good luck. I don’t know if I’m if I should wish you good luck, John, if I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey should wish the Icon Factory good luck, I guess a little of You should
⏹️ ▶️ John neither. You should pledge money. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what you should do. Here’s why you should all pledge money. So A, this is great software supported
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by great people doing great things. Agreed. B, Twitter needs more diversity
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in software and Twitterific is one of the very few clients that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got grandfathered in with a very large amount of user tokens. And so they actually can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make, they’re like one of the only companies that can make a widespread Twitter client.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see if this Kickstarter doesn’t fund John gets to keep all of his money
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so we want John we want John to have spent a ridiculous amount of money on his Twitter client
⏹️ ▶️ John say it’s like the second most expensive application of my computer after Photoshop
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco exactly exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we want John’s copy of Twitter if it to be the this ridiculous investment he has made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so please everyone go fund this so that his pledge will go through
⏹️ ▶️ John it really is just all the money that I would have spent on a new Mac Pro. It’s just being funneled into
⏹️ ▶️ John software, Kickstarter.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my goodness. All right.
Planet of the Apps
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving on let’s see what we have here planet of the apps. Oh god
⏹️ ▶️ John Can we start with before we start talking about this show can we start with the someone maybe we have a lawyer
⏹️ ▶️ John in the room How can they get away with calling it planet of the apps when it sounds like planet of the apes? Is there any
⏹️ ▶️ John is it does it fall into the like parody where like it’s referencing thing a thing But
⏹️ ▶️ John in a joking way, so it it’s almost like trade dress like I don’t know I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John the the legal things about this. It just seems too weird to me that they can get away with planet of the apps without paying somebody
⏹️ ▶️ John who has the right to planet of the apes. So fall for next week. Someone tell me what the deal is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean three things like a we aren’t trademark lawyers be they might have paid someone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to license it and see they might just not care and just accept if sent if anybody threatens
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them then they will just settle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John it because I’m a tree of being Apple and exactly on the
⏹️ ▶️ John top of a mountain to cash so high you can’t even hear the people yelling at you. Exactly. Like it’s probably…
⏹️ ▶️ John We will buy the Planet of the Apes franchise from Universal or whoever the hell owns it, you know, when we
⏹️ ▶️ John sneeze and the money falls out of our pockets.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. Like, and it’s probably, I mean, you know, as, as amateurs here, it does kind of seem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it might be considered like generic enough or clearly clear
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough parody or satire that it might not be a clear cut case of actual infringement.
⏹️ ▶️ John The humor angle is the strongest one, but
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I’m like, it’s not that funny. No, it’s not.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s not good at being funny.
⏹️ ▶️ John was like, how bad does your pun have to be before it stops being humor?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think one thing that, you know, I don’t wanna bash Apple too much about this, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do think that one very clear difference between Apple now versus Apple under
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Steve is that Steve was a cool person. Like, and not in all ways,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he knew the ways in which he wasn’t cool, and he kind of played off of them. But he was fundamentally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a pretty cool person to the people who follow Apple and to Apple customers. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t think anybody at Apple now is cool, at least in the senior leadership.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I’m not sure they know that. It actually kind of seems like they don’t know that and are actually under the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco opposite impression. Seafed is cool,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco What is not cool about Seafed?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, no, no, Seafed is, he is like the dad joke, but he knows that and he plays that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So he actually does a pretty good job of managing that, but he’s not much in the public eye.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tim, I think, is profoundly, deeply uncool, but is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco under the opposite impression.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, I agree.
⏹️ ▶️ John He’s just, he’s comfortable in his own skin. You’re thinking of Eddie Cue, who
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco thinks he’s cool. Well, no, Eddie’s a whole different level.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. But yeah, I mean, I wish…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Basically, Apple today is run by a bunch of middle-aged white
⏹️ ▶️ Marco men, and it seems like that is showing a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot recently. And it’s unfortunate. And that isn’t to say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they can’t still make good stuff, but I think some of their decisions are a little odd in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco context. But anyway… uh… well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John i’ve been really good off the name of the
⏹️ ▶️ John justices defend uh… or the opposite to condemn steve jobs coolness remember
⏹️ ▶️ John that you want to call the i’m act mac man we all have bad days remember that
⏹️ ▶️ John it talked out of it but advertising executives mac man i believe them memories correct and that
⏹️ ▶️ John someone who will correct me if i’m screening up but thank goodness for i’m back yet to be fair
⏹️ ▶️ John that was a long time ago i know but it’s just like to know name and taste like… And Steve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wasn’t as cool back then. In the mid 90s, Steve wasn’t as cool.
⏹️ ▶️ John 1998. iMac. Anyway. All
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right. So there was a trailer for Apple, well really I guess Apple Music’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey TV show. So the Apple Music TV show. I don’t know. It’s a little weird. It’s like music television. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I see what you did there. So it’s called Planet of the Apps. I only saw the the trailer once,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s like two and a half minutes. So at this point, if you’re listening to the show, feel free to pause and watch it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, it, so I have mixed feelings about this. It is clearly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unequivocally not a show meant for the three of us. And that’s okay. Like in and of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey itself, that’s not a bad thing. Um, the idea is I, if I understand this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, a bunch of, uh, app developers or potential app developers, uh, come in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and do an escalator pitch. So they are on an escalator and as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the escalator is moving down, uh, they have like 60 seconds to make a pitch to will. I am Gwyneth Paltrow,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jessica Alba and Gary Vannerchuck. Um, who I guess at that point
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get to choose if they want to tutor any of these, uh, teams, and then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess there’s a competition at the end. And if you win among other things, you get a special placement
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the app store, which most people would probably give an appendage to get.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wait, can I first start out with the escalator pitch thing? As a brief diversion here? Okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I have a question. Now obviously, I have never pitched to a VC. I’ve been around VCs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve been in board meetings with VCs, I’ve interacted with a lot of VCs, but I’ve never actually pitched to one. That was always done
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by David and other people who were around me. That being said, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco familiar with the concept of the elevator pitch, where the idea is you’re You’re in an elevator with the VC and you only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have like until the you only have the elevator ride to pitch them on your idea and then you got to convince them in this short amount of time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s supposed to be like a minute or something like that. However, how did this come about? Because Silicon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Valley has very few tall buildings. That’s an interesting point. There aren’t that many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco elevators there to begin with and the ones that are there are probably going over like three floors. So
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco elevator ride…
⏹️ ▶️ John They are lazy people and they have elevators in two-story buildings.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But still that’s not like a one-minute pitch. It’s like an eight-second pitch. Like where did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this idea come about? Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John in New York, taller buildings.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But Silicon Valley money has always been West Coast VCs. There are very, very few New York VCs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that actually fund Silicon Valley or tech projects.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think elevator pitch predates Silicon Valley, but going back to Steve Jobs again, remember the story about being trapped in an
⏹️ ▶️ John elevator with Steve Jobs and he has enough time to fire you in there, so for you to say the wrong thing and for him to decide
⏹️ ▶️ Marco He was remarkably efficient. Wow.
⏹️ ▶️ John elevator pitch predates Silicon Valley, but if not, like it’s metaphorical more than it is actual, but
⏹️ ▶️ John you got to the heart of it. The idea is that if you have to sum up your idea in a short amount of time, you should be able to say something
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s compelling instead of like just rambling on for 20 minutes and people not knowing what you’re selling. You need to have
⏹️ ▶️ John an elevator pitch and people in the chat room are like, don’t you mean when we said escalator
⏹️ ▶️ John pitch? Did you misspeak? Did you mean elevator pitch? No. of the
⏹️ ▶️ John get it apps instead of apes
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you think it’s gonna be an elevator
⏹️ ▶️ John pitch but you see what we did there as someone who we all know would say they took it and they turned it it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not an elevator pitch it’s an escalator pitch which makes even less sense because were you to a cost
⏹️ ▶️ John somebody on an escalator that would be super weird because you wouldn’t even be facing them you’d be there above them or below
⏹️ ▶️ John them and second thing is
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco an escalator ride it’s even less
⏹️ ▶️ John time than an elevator ride so it is it is ill-conceived in every possible
⏹️ ▶️ John way except for one and that one way is is that an idea that fits him in the reality show answer yes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well and it’s easier to film an escalator moving towards the hosts then it or the the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey vcs whatever then it is an elevator moving up from the basement and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey i guess the the the four like uh sponsors hosts whatever are are looking at a video
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feed until they arrive until the the participants arrive like it’s just weird anyway uh the name elevator
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pitch reflects the idea that that it should be possible to deliver the summary in the time span of an elevator ride or approximately 30
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seconds to two minutes and is widely credited to Eileen Rosenzweig and Michael
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Caruso while he was an editor for Vanity Fair for its origin. So presumably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this well predates Silicon Valley. So believe it or not Silicon Valley, the world did not always
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco revolve around
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you, truth be told. So yeah, so this show, so I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t intrinsically have anything against reality shows. In fact, I watched some truly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and utterly atrociously terrible reality shows. Not often competitions, but be that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as it may, I have watched seasons of American Idol in the past. So I have seen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my fair share of reality shows. I’ve seen The Voice many times.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reality show friend.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, right. Exactly. Um, this, this show does not speak to me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at all and I find it to be fairly preposterous, but I don’t necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think that’s a bad thing, because I don’t think this show is really for me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because it’s too much. I know too much about how the sausage is made. And this is not a show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about how the sausage is made, despite how they’re pitching it. It’s a show about making sausage making glamorous
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco have I killed this analogy, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be that as it may.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t like sausage anymore. Thanks a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah, right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I mean, I can’t watch it, I presume, because I do not pay for Apple Music.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I never have. I used it for the free trial and then never paid for it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would probably watch it if I could for an episode or two just to see what I thought.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t expect I would like it, and I don’t think that’s a problem. Marco, what do you think?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean obviously I’ve had similar reactions to most programmers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looking at this of just like wow this this kind of looks awful from the trailer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is very clear that it’s really meant as a ripoff of Shark Tank and whatever the original version of Shark Tank
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was called somewhere else
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in Europe because we steal all their TV and rename it and everyone thinks we invented it but it might be entertaining
⏹️ ▶️ Marco show in the same like like what was that not not Freaks and Geeks,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Beauty and the Geek. Like, it was like this horrible dating reality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey show. Oh, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I saw that, and it was delightful. It was terrible, but it was delightful.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and like, as a geek watching that, you could, you saw all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the ridiculous holes in the show, but it was still fun to watch as like a fun garbage TV
⏹️ ▶️ Marco show. And this could probably be that too for anybody who is remotely familiar with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco software development and building apps and building businesses. This might be that kind of thing too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It might be a fun garbage watch. It’s fine. I think a lot of people are reading a lot into this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wouldn’t read much into this. There’s a lot of arguments against it that Apple maybe shouldn’t be doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this, or that it’s going to cast app development in a bad light, or it’s going to distort
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people’s view on apps. And I think most of those things are both true
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on some level, but not a big deal in reality and on likelihood. They’re not going to be enough
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of an effect on anything to really matter, because chances are, this is going to go not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very far. It’s going to be watched by not that many people, and it’s going to make not that big of a cultural impact of any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sort. So it’s probably just going to be fun garbage TV for some people to watch. I think it’s weird that it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the music app everywhere, and it’s only on Apple Music. A lot of people are going to have trouble ever even knowing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it exists as a result. Those people who do know it exists are going to have trouble finding it. So that’s all going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to hurt viewership, probably. But anyway, the actual show itself,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a garbage reality TV show. The hosts of it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have, I think, limited knowledge about the reality of app building.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Gary Vaynerchuk I like a lot. I think he is the person on the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco show that I’m most interested to see. I followed his work back in the day. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco met him a couple times. He’s super nice. He is the real deal. He knows what he’s talking about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not necessarily in app development as far as I know, but he’s more of a business consultant.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What I wanted to get to, though, is that that’s kind of more what the show is about.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s called Planet of the Apps, and it’s focused on apps because Apple’s funding it and making it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and promoting it. Apple wants it to be all about them and the world they think they created.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Of course, they’re focusing the marketing and the naming and everything else on apps, And all the app developers are saying,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is crazy because this isn’t how apps are made, but the show really isn’t about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps. It’s like if the show was called Planet of the Websites. And you know, it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the website is like an interface to the business. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you don’t go around saying, hey, I’m making a new website. Like, no,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John you may… You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did in 1993, let me tell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, but the point is like for the for the types of things that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most people long say that would be entertaining to watch at all, no one is going to watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a show about you making a bespoke notes taking app or something like that. Like they’re going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to watch a show that’s kind of like Shark Tank or America’s Got Talent or stuff like that. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what people actually want to watch these garbage reality shows for and so they want to hear like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big business idea because this is a show I made a tweet about this is kind of like a show for like idea people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those people who always a cost app developers and at gatherings and stuff like I have this great idea
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for an app will you not tell anybody you can’t steal it you gotta go 5050 with me I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be the idea guy you you make the app okay here’s my idea and they tell you some ridiculous
⏹️ ▶️ Marco idea that is usually impossible and or terrible this show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is for those people to watch kind of like aspirationally because they think that can be them someday.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s who this is actually for. Or people like us who just want garbage TV to watch sometimes. But the point is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is not going to reflect what it’s like to be an indie app developer because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not only do people not really want to watch that, but most app development isn’t indie app developers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Most app development is in-house employees or contractors for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bigger businesses. Where the app is not… Exactly. The app itself is not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the business. The app is just an interface to the business, in the same way that 10 years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ago, the website was the interface to most businesses that were made in our industry.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we want this to be some other thing. People like us who are complaining, we want it to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be this beautiful story about app developers. It’s just not going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be that. It’s going to be the exact same thing that would have been 10-12
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years ago. pitching VCs about ideas that were based on web apps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and web services and social networks. It’s going to just be that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but where the interface to it happens to be an app in the app store. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not going to be great academically. It’s not going to be a high-quality TV,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I don’t think it’s going to meaningfully impact the app business or people’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco perception of it for lots of reasons, not least of which I don’t think many people watch it. But also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just as I said, just I don’t think it really has much bearing on what most of us actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do. But I also think it doesn’t really purport to because that does because what most of us really do or what we think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we want to do with indie app development is such a very, very tiny sliver of the world
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of app development as a whole.
⏹️ ▶️ John Thinking back to when we first talked about this, and we had this, you know, there was so little information like Apple’s making
⏹️ ▶️ John a show about app development, something, something, and a few like celebrity names attached to it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And we had that brief moment where we could talk about the possibility of this
⏹️ ▶️ John being a show that is actually about app development. And I think at the time we said, well, how can they can’t make that interesting? Because no one wants
⏹️ ▶️ John to see someone sitting there and coding like that’s not going to be on the show. Right. But still, we were we were entertaining
⏹️ ▶️ John the idea of a show about app development. But of course, like when the show comes out, it’s not about
⏹️ ▶️ John app development. As Marco pointed out, it is it is basically like a subset of Shark Tank. Like imagine
⏹️ ▶️ John Shark Tank, except the only thing you can pitch our businesses are
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco represented by an
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco You’re making your own
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bad pitch. Right. Well, that’s what it is. Okay. I have this great idea for a show. Are you ready?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll be the idea guy. You make the entire show. Okay. It’s like Shark Tank, but for apps.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but only but only apps like if you saw if your business can’t isn’t like rep like
⏹️ ▶️ John Instagram would be a business represented by an app. But all sorts of things would be like is the app the sort of standard
⏹️ ▶️ John bearer for your business. Is that how people deal with your business? Is it through an app? Then
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re fine. But if you have any other business idea, no, sorry, you got to go in shark tank, right? So it’s a narrow
⏹️ ▶️ John slice thing. And presumably, Apple does this because hey, they’re the app company. And so there’s some kind of synergy
⏹️ ▶️ John there. But this brings up a tweet that our friend cable sasser from panic
⏹️ ▶️ John posted today or yesterday, I forget. He was arguing with Gruber about something and he and his
⏹️ ▶️ John reply was, you can’t just say well that’s reality tv
⏹️ ▶️ John um he’s he’s using well that’s reality tv as a verb so i’m going to try to
⏹️ ▶️ John read this in the way that it says you can’t quote well that’s reality tv a thing from apple
⏹️ ▶️ John does that sentence make sense to people that’s what he wrote i’m trying real hard here not an actor um it’s from apple
⏹️ ▶️ John the experts of good taste now get a free pass for junk like the idea is you can’t just say oh well it’s reality or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever because it’s from Apple, we have some expectations of taste, which we, you know, get
⏹️ ▶️ John planted of the apps, perhaps not getting off on the right foot right from the title. Um, when I saw
⏹️ ▶️ John this tweet, I was thinking like we’ve talked in past shows about Apple getting into the content market and
⏹️ ▶️ John I still think that makes sense because if they are going to try to compete with the Netflix
⏹️ ▶️ John and Amazon and stuff and Netflix and Amazon are doing original content, should be doing original
⏹️ ▶️ John content too. But the thing about content is if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John doing original content well, not saying you can’t, but probably
⏹️ ▶️ John you shouldn’t imbue that content with any of the sensibilities from your
⏹️ ▶️ John company. Which sounds like, well isn’t that an Apple’s whole thing? Isn’t everything they do imbued with the sensibility of Apple? But
⏹️ ▶️ John content is different. There is nothing particularly about Stranger Things or
⏹️ ▶️ John Man in a High Castle that makes me think Netflix or Amazon like there’s no none of their corporate DNA in
⏹️ ▶️ John those shows. Creative content, especially entertainment, has to be true to its genre.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if it’s a sci-fi show, make a good sci-fi show. If it is a family drama, make a good
⏹️ ▶️ John family drama. If it’s a wacky comedy, make a good wacky comedy. It doesn’t matter how well wacky comedy,
⏹️ ▶️ John family drama, or sci-fi fit with your corporate branding. And it’s weird because Amazon and Netflix
⏹️ ▶️ John and Apple are are these tech-based companies that do fairly different things with some overlap,
⏹️ ▶️ John but none of them have anything to do with creativity. But I think Netflix and Amazon have shown, if you get the
⏹️ ▶️ John right people involved, basically like, what is being supplied by Netflix and Amazon? Obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a venue for viewing, but the most important thing is money. Here you go, people
⏹️ ▶️ John who know how to get creative things created by creative people. Here’s a bucket of money. Can
⏹️ ▶️ John you make a good show? And out pops half of the cards. Answer yes if you throw enough money at it and you hire the right
⏹️ ▶️ John people Netflix a company that delivers plastic discs and streaming
⏹️ ▶️ John video to people’s houses You know used to play and use the plastic discs Can make good
⏹️ ▶️ John content and same thing with Amazon the place that you buy stuff from they deliver for you in boxes
⏹️ ▶️ John can make original content so If Apple has decided and you can debate the merits
⏹️ ▶️ John of this, but they’re going to make a reality show. I I think we’re getting a little
⏹️ ▶️ John bit confused by the fact that it involves apps. The bottom line is, all right, if you’re going to make a reality show,
⏹️ ▶️ John what are reality shows like and can you make a good one? And I’m going to defend reality shows as a
⏹️ ▶️ John long time viewer of reality shows from from the very beginning. I still watch and enjoy many of them.
⏹️ ▶️ John That there is such a thing as a good reality show and a bad reality show. Oh yeah. But but
⏹️ ▶️ John within the genre, like there is a genre and if you look at this trailer, you go, that’s a reality
⏹️ ▶️ John show. it is clearly recognizable as a reality show. And I think it could
⏹️ ▶️ John be a good reality show, if done well, because it involves
⏹️ ▶️ John people with a skill and an ambition and a dream or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they are going to, you know, in all these scenarios where you have the panel of experts has to pick among
⏹️ ▶️ John them that can be very bad, or it can be good where they’re trying to encourage people after
⏹️ ▶️ John the initial like, let’s make fun of the other people who are really bad, you know, sort of American Idol type thing like that, I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a bad aspect of it. But either way, once you get into the human story of like, I want I want to do this
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, you don’t need to know what the details of the struggle are. This won’t be about application development,
⏹️ ▶️ John probably it’ll mostly be about starting a new business and business ideas. And in the end, unlike
⏹️ ▶️ John for example, American Idol, in the end, there is much less ability to make these people into
⏹️ ▶️ John superstars. I mean, even American Idol had trouble eventually, but like Kerry, Kelly Clarkson, had
⏹️ ▶️ John a reasonable expectation that if she won this reality show, she would have a
⏹️ ▶️ John viable recording career, a because the people picking her are going to pick people based on
⏹️ ▶️ John talent and be because you get an in with the recording industry, which is way more monolithic
⏹️ ▶️ John and actually back then had even more power than it does today to make you a star
⏹️ ▶️ John because they control distribution and so on and so forth, much less so than they used to in the old days, But still, it was
⏹️ ▶️ John a thing. But for this for the app show, I don’t particularly trust
⏹️ ▶️ John that the four people on the expert panel have any idea what is going to be a successful app beyond
⏹️ ▶️ John like any four random people that you picked in the tech industry. And furthermore, I don’t particularly think
⏹️ ▶️ John that even Apple itself by featuring you in the App Store and heavily pushing you is going to turn
⏹️ ▶️ John your idea into a viable business for the long term. But I think
⏹️ ▶️ John none of that matters for reality shows because at this point we are perfectly willing to accept that winning
⏹️ ▶️ John a reality show is its own reward. And whatever they promise you, we go, yeah, yeah, yeah, you’ll be rich
⏹️ ▶️ John and famous forever, or I’ll forget you by next season. Because that’s not what it’s about. It’s an entertainment program.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you want and like I said, it can be done badly and exploitively or it can be done in a way that people enjoy where you
⏹️ ▶️ John get to see plain old human drama and people with skills trying to apply those skills in a challenging situation.
⏹️ ▶️ John Hopefully the judges and the sponsors are supportive and encouraging and it is a positive type
⏹️ ▶️ John of program with good production values that treats its contestants well, that has smart,
⏹️ ▶️ John funny, and interesting and charming judges. I believe a good reality show is possible. I don’t know whether this
⏹️ ▶️ John will be one, but I think the fact that this reality show involves apps is a distraction
⏹️ ▶️ John and a thing that skews people’s thinking about it. I guess the only thing you really debate is
⏹️ ▶️ John should the first major piece of original content that Apple made not counting carpool karaoke was resisting franchise.
⏹️ ▶️ John Should it be a reality show? Maybe maybe not. But again, I don’t think it by
⏹️ ▶️ John judging it based on that you could say you shouldn’t be trying to figure out how well does reality show fit with
⏹️ ▶️ John apples ethos that’s not the question at all. The question is, are reality shows popular? Yes, they are popular.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if if you were picking a genre, and it’s also different than what other people. They’re not doing
⏹️ ▶️ John a sci-fi, a retro sci-fi show or a show based
⏹️ ▶️ John on, you know, sci-fi books from a well-known author, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John That has been well-trod territory. They’re doing a reality show as their first thing, which is a little bit different. They’re not doing a superhero thing or anything
⏹️ ▶️ John like that. So I think that’s a reasonable choice. And at some point, someone convinced them if we are doing a reality
⏹️ ▶️ John show, there’s a little bit of synergy if we do it on apps. But I’m willing to give this show
⏹️ ▶️ John all the benefit of the doubt even though I certainly won’t watch it and I’m not interested in it I don’t watch Shark Tank either
⏹️ ▶️ John all the benefit of the doubt but what I would say is if Apple is serious about content
⏹️ ▶️ John I hope it doesn’t only do reality shows because there’s no reason Apple can’t do original content
⏹️ ▶️ John in any genre that it wants because it has that same thing that Amazon Netflix have mountains of money
⏹️ ▶️ John and if they are wise and hire the right people’s and you throw mountains of money at them they can make a good
⏹️ ▶️ John video content in any any genre that you can imagine. And I love that that’s happening with Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ John and Netflix, and I would like that for that to happen to Apple, because what the hell else are they gonna do with their money if they’re not making a car or whatever?
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m all for it, even if it is weirdly connected with Apple Music, and even if I will never ever watch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I mean, I understand why everyone was perturbed about it, and I understand that it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like, oh, this is a distraction, and maybe for some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Apple, of Apple, but I mean for the developers that are doing the sorts
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of things that the three of us really care about, I don’t think it’s much of a distraction at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and it’s not like, the people who are making this show were not taking off
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new Mac Pro hardware to make this show.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the Mac Pro hardware team is just busily assembling the escalator. Right, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t even think it’s a distraction because Apple is in the TV connected box business, and they’re in the
⏹️ ▶️ John streaming video business. they have been, you know, from like, this is not a new venture where
⏹️ ▶️ John they will sell you a rent you movies and video like, and everybody else who’s in that business is doing original content.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think it’s that’s been shown to be a model that works. So they’re latecomers to this. All they’re doing is continuing
⏹️ ▶️ John to compete in a market they were already in. It’s not like, why are you making TV shows? You’re distracted. No, they were already
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re already in that market. They’ve been selling Apple TVs of various kinds for a long time. They’ve been selling video of the iTunes Store for a
⏹️ ▶️ John long time. That’s a market they’re in. They’re just competing in it. People should be encouraging them like we’re encourage them to compete in
⏹️ ▶️ John the personal computer market. Yes, by all means, look at what your competitor is doing and try to
⏹️ ▶️ John make your product more valuable and desirable. Good job. Not a distraction at all.
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Caavo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you to Pingdom for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t even know how to pronounce this. Kavo? Kavo? Ka-vo. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey exactly how you have to say it. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all right, good. I’m glad I got it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John in the last try. It’s Skrtechery.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Nicely done. Nicely done.
⏹️ ▶️ John I always feel bad about that and primer. You guys, I don’t know, you don’t listen to Being Harmful enough, but you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t know the movie either, do you? do you got I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey aware of it existing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I’m gonna take that as a wait. Is that the one with? No, hold on. Is that the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time traveling one with the box? Yes. The refrigerator size box? Yes. Yeah, I have seen that
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey know. That’s it. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John the title of that movie is PR I am er. And the person who
⏹️ ▶️ John made that movie initially expected people and preferred people to pronounce it
⏹️ ▶️ John primer. No, but eventually gave up because everybody, everybody who saw that
⏹️ ▶️ John word pronounced it primer, which is an alternate pronunciation of that word with a different meaning.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so the creator of the movie had to go and so techery same situation. I believe the
⏹️ ▶️ John original logo had a bar over the E to try to tell you what to long E say strategic.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. That’s correct. But that didn’t work. And the public has spoken. And now the creator
⏹️ ▶️ John of that site says strategy truth. Sorry, Ben Thompson.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John no idea what this is is about. So tell me
⏹️ ▶️ John lot of people were tweeting this with the idea that this is the omnivorous box that I
⏹️ ▶️ John talked about on hypercritical and earlier on earlier episodes of ATP.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s such an old idea from like 2011 or whatever the hell hypercritical was. That was back
⏹️ ▶️ John when I was complaining a lot about Tivo. And what I wanted was someone to make a box. It would be nice
⏹️ ▶️ John if it was Apple that sat on my TV and had a whole bunch of inputs. It
⏹️ ▶️ John took video from all the places that I pay for stuff back in 2001 was like, Hey, I pay for cable. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John also pay for Netflix. And I also have a, you know, a Blu Ray player or a PlayStation, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John all these different places that I can get video into my TV. I would like all those inputs
⏹️ ▶️ John to go into this thing that I called an omnivorous box because it would consume anything. And
⏹️ ▶️ John then I wanted one cable coming out of omnivorous box into my television and one
⏹️ ▶️ John remote that controlled the omnivorous box. And I would be able to through a single interface
⏹️ ▶️ John have access to all the video that I pay for. I pay for a cable subscription, cable has TV shows, they come
⏹️ ▶️ John on, my Tivo records them. I want access to all those shows both live and recorded.
⏹️ ▶️ John I pay for Netflix. And you know, if there’s a Netflix client, either on my television or on the omnibus
⏹️ ▶️ John box yourself or on an Apple TV or something, I want to be able to see that stuff. I have a Plex server running and
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s you know, or a ps3 media server back then. And that has can play
⏹️ ▶️ John files from a hard drive somewhere in my basement. I want to be able to watch that kind as well. And I want it to be one big unified
⏹️ ▶️ John interface. So when I look through the shows available for me to watch, it does not express to me in any
⏹️ ▶️ John way where this stuff comes from. It is just like, yes, this video comes from many different sources, but I give you a unified
⏹️ ▶️ John interface to it. It’s just a series of things that you can watch things that might come on in the future, things
⏹️ ▶️ John that have come on come on in the past things that you can stream right now, just one big contiguous clean
⏹️ ▶️ John interface. And that is a super hard problem to solve because all of those people who distribute that content,
⏹️ ▶️ John cable companies, Netflix, even like the PS3 media server people do not want you to make that box.
⏹️ ▶️ John They want you to use their box and their remote and all that other stuff, especially cable companies.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, that making that box is would be famously difficult. Many companies tried Google gave it
⏹️ ▶️ John probably the best run with its absurd Google TV thing with that crazy remote. Remember
⏹️ ▶️ John that? Um, yeah, that was like two Google TVs ago. I forget which
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco thing called was remember that that was one that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Eric Schmidt said was gonna be in every TV right
⏹️ ▶️ John no that was the second one this was the one before that yeah anyway it’s a really hard
⏹️ ▶️ John problem both technically because how would you even solve that technical problem and business-wise because
⏹️ ▶️ John everybody who’s injured whose input is going into your nervous box does not want people to get their content
⏹️ ▶️ John through your nervous box and they will fight you on it like they will make it so your box stops working on purpose
⏹️ ▶️ John because they They don’t want you to be the middleman. It’s like, no, they don’t want that at all. And so no one
⏹️ ▶️ John ever did make that box. Tivo came the closest because Tivo takes the cable input
⏹️ ▶️ John because of cable card, which is the thing that happened when there was a brief moment of semi sanity in
⏹️ ▶️ John our lawmaking institutions in this country that allowed third party products to accept cable
⏹️ ▶️ John signals with some caveats. So that’s why I can even use a Tivo and why I don’t have to have a cable box.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it could get cable television and record that. eventually Tivo added some fairly
⏹️ ▶️ John grim streaming video clients to their platform so you can watch Netflix through your Tivo and Amazon through your Tivo
⏹️ ▶️ John and all and because a Plex client I forget anyway not quite omnivorous because you
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t watch iTunes content through there and you can’t watch my blu-ray player through there and you know all sorts
⏹️ ▶️ John of other stuff like that so omnivorous box never came to be. Enter Cabo with two A’s and no bar
⏹️ ▶️ John over any of them. This is a set-top box that takes a whole bunch of HDMI inputs
⏹️ ▶️ John and has one output and it tries to do something like
⏹️ ▶️ John what I described. You have one Kavo remote, you use that remote,
⏹️ ▶️ John and with it you can see all the video that is available on all the different devices that are plugged into it,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you can watch video from any of them. It is not, I think,
⏹️ ▶️ John really an omnivorous box because one of my requirements for omnivorous box is it provides one interface
⏹️ ▶️ John that doesn’t make you have to be aware of where stuff comes from and one of
⏹️ ▶️ John Cabo’s primary interfaces is a series of boxes that say Roku, PS4,
⏹️ ▶️ John Amazon, Apple TV, DirecTV. Like when I
⏹️ ▶️ John first saw it I thought this is a glorified HDMI switcher. It’s like great all your
⏹️ ▶️ John HDMI things go into one box and out of that box it connects to your television and then when you turn it on with
⏹️ ▶️ John the one remote you can pick which thing you want to do and then you just get the interface to that thing. But that’s not quite how it works. We’ll link in the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes to this video from The Verge, which is very long and kind of boring, but just scrub through it until you see them start actually
⏹️ ▶️ John using the device. The creators of this thing talking to… who are they talking to? Walt Mossberg,
⏹️ ▶️ John I recognize because of his silly beard, and someone else.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they give demos of the product, and it tries to do more than that. It tries to give you an interface to all of the things
⏹️ ▶️ John that are available on all of the devices. not particularly pretty to look at, but it will try to say, Hey, here’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the shows available for you to watch without expressing to you where they are from.
⏹️ ▶️ John It has Amazon echo integration. So they keep doing this demo of like, you know, watch stranger
⏹️ ▶️ John things. And you have like a preference list of like, when I say watch stranger things, and you determine
⏹️ ▶️ John that stranger things to show it’s on Netflix, and I have three boxes connected, they can all do Netflix, I
⏹️ ▶️ John want you to prefer to use the Apple TV for Netflix for whatever reason. So it will start playing Stranger Things
⏹️ ▶️ John from Netflix through the Apple TV. If you say Watchmen on the High Castle, it will determine
⏹️ ▶️ John that that is only on Amazon and you have an Amazon streaming thing connected somewhere, and so it will start
⏹️ ▶️ John playing it from that for you. So the voice control interface is like, you know, one level up from what each of these
⏹️ ▶️ John devices do individually. Same thing with the remote. The remote, you’re controlling the Cabo box, the Cabo box is controlling
⏹️ ▶️ John the inputs. I wonder how they’re doing
⏹️ ▶️ John the unified interface. doesn’t look that great. It’s mostly just text. It’s not a particularly rich interface.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you were to go to the interface to any of these boxes or services, it would look better and have nice pictures and more
⏹️ ▶️ John metadata and stuff. But at least at least they’re trying. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John this box faces the same challenges as a real omnivorous box would, and that the companies that they
⏹️ ▶️ John are sort of trying to insert themselves between the customer and
⏹️ ▶️ John these other boxes, those boxes aren’t going to like that. And if they don’t intentionally break them, they will accidentally break them,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially if their means of control involves I mean, like, are they doing screen scraping? Are
⏹️ ▶️ John they trying to use API is documented or otherwise? How are they even doing this? Do they
⏹️ ▶️ John have separate metadata somewhere? That’s like in the cloud. So it’s not actually
⏹️ ▶️ John looking at the content over the HDMI thing. So I don’t know, I don’t know how they’re doing it. It doesn’t look that impressive. But
⏹️ ▶️ John at least they’re giving it it, you know, giving it the the old college try.
⏹️ ▶️ John The most interesting thing about this demo are the things that are probably
⏹️ ▶️ John the least technically cool in that, you know, calling it a glorified HDMI
⏹️ ▶️ John switch is kind of mean, but calling it a glorified
⏹️ ▶️ John less, less mean. But if you, if you have a receiver or any other box, it takes a whole bunch of
⏹️ ▶️ John HDMI inputs and sends one output to your television. You know that, uh, strangely,
⏹️ ▶️ John one of the challenges is aside from having a million different remotes and having to switch inputs. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s, that’s cumbersome. So one of the demos they give is what if someone comes over your house and they
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know how to use the 17 remotes that are on your end table, right? Or even the one Logitech harmony
⏹️ ▶️ John remote that you have, because that is generally complicated. And the example they gave in the demo is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John what if someone comes over your house and they see you have a PlayStation four, but they see the controller sitting on the end
⏹️ ▶️ John table and they just pick up the PlayStation controller off the end table. is you know they just
⏹️ ▶️ John come into the room nothing is turned on they just pick up the PlayStation controller and turn it on. Any reasonably good
⏹️ ▶️ John receiver should be able to notice that hey I was sitting here and everything
⏹️ ▶️ John was off but I noticed that the PlayStation came on and started sending me video output
⏹️ ▶️ John so I am going to through CEC or some other thing that’s supposed to work but doesn’t turn on your television
⏹️ ▶️ John switch the input to the you know switch my input as the receiver or whatever I am to the PS4
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. And so now merely by pressing the PlayStation on button on the PlayStation
⏹️ ▶️ John controller, there it is on your screen. You don’t have to know, oh, if you want to play PlayStation,
⏹️ ▶️ John pick up the receiver mode, switch to input number two, then turn on the Tivo or then then turn on the PlayStation.
⏹️ ▶️ John Make sure you do it in that order. If you want to hear it through the receiver speakers, also turn the receiver on. But if you don’t, it’ll go through the television
⏹️ ▶️ John and blah, blah, blah. You know, you don’t have to know how to do that. And then if someone comes along and they turn the Roku
⏹️ ▶️ John on, it’ll notice, even though the PlayStation 4 is already on, because you just activated the Roku
⏹️ ▶️ John using the Roku remote, because maybe all you know is the Roku remote. You don’t know what the hell this Cabo thing is, you don’t know the PlayStation thing, you see, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John Roku remote, I know what a Roku is, and you just turn the Roku on, the Cabo box will see it. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John even though PlayStation is on, someone just turned the Roku on, so I’m going to switch to the Roku input and
⏹️ ▶️ John let you control it with the Roku remote. That type of functionality should be in every decent receiver,
⏹️ ▶️ John and probably is in a lot of decent receivers. But to me, that was the most impressive because it’s like, yes,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s how all receivers should work and I’m glad that someone has realized
⏹️ ▶️ John this and tried to build it into a box. So I started off thinking this is a glorified HDMI switcher receiver
⏹️ ▶️ John and I ended up thinking this is a really good HDMI switcher slash receiver. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John now, now for the bad news, the bad news is it’s $400. All right. And
⏹️ ▶️ John this $400 does not include any of the boxes that you connect to it, which doesn’t a problem because I
⏹️ ▶️ John already have a million TV boxes but like the idea is you buy this box and you and it’s like you get nothing it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like it’s like buying a Synology with no discs in it’s like yeah it’s there it’s ready for you to plug things into but it’s no
⏹️ ▶️ John good to you until you plug inputs into it so $400 and then $100
⏹️ ▶️ John for every box depending on what you know I guess the Apple ones are expensive you know $60 for a Chromecast $60 for a cheap Roku
⏹️ ▶️ John $100 for a good one whatever but if you already have all those boxes
⏹️ ▶️ John and maybe if you don’t have a receiver. Oh, and also it’s pretty big and it’s weird and it’s wood, and
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s probably not going to be available to consumers until 2018. So all those caveats. Besides all that, it’s great. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John going to sell 5,000 of them sometime this year. You can pick three
⏹️ ▶️ John different kinds of wood, three different kinds of ugly wood to be on top of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, now that you tell me that, I’m in.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’re really not doing a great job of selling this, Joe.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco don’t, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think this product is really going anywhere, but I was excited by the idea that someone has tackled
⏹️ ▶️ John some of the very basic problems of this terrible terrible television age we live in where we all have
⏹️ ▶️ John way too many pucks or other kinds of boxes connected to our televisions
⏹️ ▶️ John and very frequently watching any video content involves switching
⏹️ ▶️ John inputs and possibly also switching remotes and all the solutions that try to make that easier are bad
⏹️ ▶️ John in some way including this one but in the absence of a true omnivorous box which can probably
⏹️ ▶️ John never exist for the same reason open doc can probably never exist business reasons on top of technical
⏹️ ▶️ John reasons equals death
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I like the fact
⏹️ ▶️ John that someone is trying to push the envelope forward and I hope somebody buys this company and incorporates
⏹️ ▶️ John their good ideas into their own products
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like Tevo I assume
⏹️ ▶️ John now they’re come on come on I just want to be able to stay
⏹️ ▶️ John in business they’re not buying anybody please Tivo don’t waste your money buying these people. Wow.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple could buy them, make their Apple TV better.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Apple could have made
⏹️ ▶️ John a box like this. Of course, they never would. But like the type of the type of functionality of just like, can we stop people
⏹️ ▶️ John from having to do switch inputs? That would be good. Like, can it just do
⏹️ ▶️ John what I mean? Can it just notice because I turn the PlayStation on, I probably want to play with the PlayStation, just switch to that input automatically.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to our three sponsors this week, Eero, Squarespace and Kingdom and we will see you next
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him, Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you can find the show notes at
⏹️ ▶️ John ATP.FM And if you’re into Twitter,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and T. Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental, they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John mean to Accidental, accidental, tech broadcasts
Post-show: John’s horse
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We have an odd note in the show notes. It says, John’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mac throws some more RAM.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco With more in parentheses, too.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey throws as in there’s a failure, throws as in it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ejected it, it spit it like a loogie across the room. Some kind of exception
⏹️ ▶️ John handling? We’ve talked about this before. This is this is a second the second time
⏹️ ▶️ John this has happened I think on the run of ATP and I think I used the same language last time the
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to make here and failing obviously is when a horse throws a shoe. Do you know that expression?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mm-hmm? Yeah, you know I was raised in Ohio where we had lots of horses. No, I what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no I don’t know what that
⏹️ ▶️ John means a horse throws a shoe my understanding. I was not raised with horses either either disclaimer disclaimer
⏹️ ▶️ John disclaimer disclaimer, you know, horseshoes, you know, the little metal bendy U shaped things you put on the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco bottom of the horses. I know that part at least. Yeah. And they’re attached
⏹️ ▶️ John somehow with like these weird looking spikes or nails or something. Uh, it’s scary and I don’t understand it. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John the horse is galloping along. Those little metal U shaped things are supposed to say on the bottom of the little feets.
⏹️ ▶️ John But sometimes when they’re galloping along, one of them goes flying off the foot and that’s bad because
⏹️ ▶️ John now your horse has lost its shoe and it needs it to walk comfortably or whatever the hell
⏹️ ▶️ John horses are for and it’s throwing as in like it could go flying because as the horse is galloping the shoe goes flying.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically while like doing something strenuous like encoding a video your Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forcefully ejected
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John one of its RAM sticks
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what I’m hearing.
⏹️ ▶️ John strenuous as the case may be. So my Mac Pro is very old. The RAM is also very old.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s 2008 Mac Pro now it is good solid eight years old pushing up on nine. I forget
⏹️ ▶️ John when I bought the thing Throwing some RAM means I have eight sticks of RAM
⏹️ ▶️ John in there and every once in a while One or two of them stop working
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s like my horse through a shoe my Mac Pro through some RAM so I came in the other day and tried to wake
⏹️ ▶️ John my Mac Pro from sleep and The fan spun up but the screen did not turn on and the power
⏹️ ▶️ John light on the front of my Mac Pro was blinking in a very concerning way and
⏹️ ▶️ John unlike later Mac Pros including even the 2009 but I don’t know how far forward they went my Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John does not have a little set of red LEDs on the banks of dims to tell you which ones
⏹️ ▶️ John are bad all I knew is that I had a computer with eight dims of
⏹️ ▶️ John RAM on two daughter cards four on each that would not boot it
⏹️ ▶️ John just wouldn’t post wouldn’t do the chime wouldn’t do anything because you know there’s some bad ram there
⏹️ ▶️ John and this has happened before multiple times I think I brought up when Casey had bad ram that I had a
⏹️ ▶️ John OWC ram in my thing and that despite the fact that my computer is so many years old
⏹️ ▶️ John every time it throws a dim if it’s an OWC one that is the problem I just call
⏹️ ▶️ John them up and they send me a new one and it would be better if they didn’t break but after eight years
⏹️ ▶️ John if it throws a dim and I get a new one for free, I still consider that pretty amazing
⏹️ ▶️ John in the age of like, you know, two year warranties and hard drives or whatever. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I had a fun afternoon of unseating daughter cards,
⏹️ ▶️ John removing dims, putting them back in in every valid configuration to by process of elimination
⏹️ ▶️ John find the pair of dims, because they have to be in pairs, find the match pair of dims that
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t work. And even with the pairs, all I can tell you is that one of the two doesn’t work out or they might both be bad. So eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John after many, many boots, and I’m good at this now, many, many exercises
⏹️ ▶️ John of seating and unseating, which is actually kind of satisfying with the little clips they have on them and everything and how you shove them in.
⏹️ ▶️ John I eventually did find the pair of dims that was bad. They were OWC dims
⏹️ ▶️ John and I am, they are sending me new ones for free. Nice.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m down I’m down Either two gigs or four gigs of RAM right
⏹️ ▶️ John now still doing okay. Let’s see what I got here 14 gigs of RAM so I should have 18 so
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I’m down for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, dear Apple if you are still listening to this somehow for some reason
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Please put this computer out of its misery Give John a new Mac Pro to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy so he can finally stop using this ancient one Please
⏹️ ▶️ John the terror that fills my heart when I think is this the time that it’s just like that It’s just dead like that. The motherboard is dead.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know that it’s just not gonna boot right Because then I think about like I would have
⏹️ ▶️ John I would have to buy an iMac or should I just like buy the cheapest laptop I can do what would I do with all my data? I
⏹️ ▶️ John just it’s terrifying so What you know I was afraid I got down to this point where I was like
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe it’s just not gonna boot because I got it down to like just just two dims You know that the two dim
⏹️ ▶️ John configuration of the two that I thought were like the newest and most reliable RAM And it still wouldn’t boot
⏹️ ▶️ John and the trick I learned this time is occasionally also need to do an SMC reset to make it happy
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey not all the time
⏹️ ▶️ John But occasionally because I was in one RAM configuration and it would not boot and then I did an SMC reset and it
⏹️ ▶️ John did boot With the same RAM configuration. And so once I learned that trick then that was the easy way to make sure I was
⏹️ ▶️ John You know actually testing the dims and I eventually did narrow it down and found the two that were bad
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’ve gotten my in my thing in one bank I’ve got two gig two gig four gig four gig and the other bank.
⏹️ ▶️ John I have one gig one gig empty empty It’s such a motley collection of RAM some of it Apple some
⏹️ ▶️ John of it purchased from OWC and like three different shipments
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yet some of it replaced over time
⏹️ ▶️ John kill this machine though takes a lickin and keeps on ticking Oh, God, please apple. Please
⏹️ ▶️ Marco let John replace this
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean well, it’s like is it gonna be short slower than the apple watch, but how am I yeah?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by the time the new by the time a new Mac pro comes out if it ever does Your Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pro is probably going to be slower than every Mac for sale at that time.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, IOS devices I think the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone is already faster than it isn’t it I believe at least a single threaded it passed it I think two generations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ago multi-threaded.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I think it still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hasn’t But it’s close. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s what I’m saying. I gotta watch for the for the watch to start lapping me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean at least if you limit it just a single threaded performance it would you’re really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looking bad compared to all the iOS device
⏹️ ▶️ John more RAM the iOS devices and I have one terabyte of flash storage so take that iOS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but their RAM works all the time. Ooh
⏹️ ▶️ John know that until you’ve used it for eight years years. How’s the ram doing on that iPhone after eight years?
⏹️ ▶️ John After eight years, the thing won’t even turn on and it’s not plugged in.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, well, I’m sorry to hear that as someone who’s lived through ram problems recently,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is no fun. And I feel
⏹️ ▶️ John how much quicker I diagnosed it and dealt with it rather than rather than like pretending it doesn’t exist. I guess you
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t pretend it doesn’t when your machine doesn’t boot, but addressed immediately. Problem solved.
⏹️ ▶️ John And also that like, oh, do you see wasn’t open? Like their phone line wasn’t open. I don’t even just call them and deal with the nice
⏹️ ▶️ John people there and just read them my serial numbers and they’re like okay we’ll send you new ram i did it through chat which
⏹️ ▶️ John it worked fine like because their phone lines weren’t open but the chat was but chat i find infuriating like customer
⏹️ ▶️ John support chat because i don’t know why it takes so long for there to
⏹️ ▶️ John be a response because you’re like hello my name is blah blah how can i help you and then i paste in my
⏹️ ▶️ John prepared sentence of what my problem is that is formatted in
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco a way from of course formatted in a way that I know there will
⏹️ ▶️ John be no follow up questions. It contains all the information. Here’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John the problem. Here’s why I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is a problem. How long does it take you to compose that sentence? Three days,
⏹️ ▶️ John I can do it on the fly. It’s very easy, very concise, right? But it contains all the information, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Here’s, here’s my problem. Here’s why I know it’s my problem, putting enough information to let them know they don’t need to take me through trouble
⏹️ ▶️ John shooting steps and crap, right? And here’s what I want to happen. I want you to send me new RAM, right? Like in a nice
⏹️ ▶️ John way, but like, all the information is there. And then you wait literally 10 minutes for
⏹️ ▶️ John the reply. And the reply is, can you give me the order number serial number blah
⏹️ ▶️ John blah, which of course I have ready for them, but I didn’t want to confuse them with the original message. And I paste that in 10
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey more minutes, 10
⏹️ ▶️ John more minutes of that chat window just off the side to the credit of the chat thing and OTC it has like a chime that lets you
⏹️ ▶️ John know when they reply because you can’t just be sitting there wait like there’s not even a typing indicator like just just 10
⏹️ ▶️ John minutes like are they just chatting with their friends? Did they go for a coffee break? They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John surely not spending this time typing, especially for the first message. There was no thing for them to be looking up in the system. Oh, the system is
⏹️ ▶️ John slow. We’re looking up your order. They didn’t even have my order number at that point. I just told them what the situation is. Bad
⏹️ ▶️ John RAM, want new RAM. Here’s how I know it’s bad. Don’t ask me to blow the dust out of my
⏹️ ▶️ John socket, basically. Like, you know, 10 minute reply on that. And then so it just
⏹️ ▶️ John it took an incredible amount of time. But during that time, I was like browsing the web and reading Twitter while
⏹️ ▶️ John for them to reply. I forgot that I was still in the middle of the chat. You know it’s long when you’ve forgotten. A little boop goes
⏹️ ▶️ John off. I’m like, oh, that’s right. I’m on a customer support chat to get new RAM. So hopefully that
⏹️ ▶️ John will be on the way soon.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m surprised at this point you don’t just call them up on the phone and just be like, hey, it’s me again. They’re like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all right, how big? 2 gig? 4 gig? 2? All right. Just send it out.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. I mean, if they feel they have this lifetime, or maybe people don’t know, don’t realize, you buy RAM from ODBC.
⏹️ ▶️ John If it goes bad, they’ll just keep replacing it forever. I think that’s That’s how it works. Like, you do
⏹️ ▶️ John have to pay to ship your old RAM back to them, but that’s cheap. It’s very lightweight, right? So it’s a couple bucks to ship
⏹️ ▶️ John old RAM back. It’s why, by the way, I save the boxes. I never throw out the boxes the new RAM comes in. I
⏹️ ▶️ John just, you know, I’ll just keep getting new RAM forever for this machine. And it’s fine with me, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think it’s like every two or three years it throws a dim. And you know, I’m okay
⏹️ ▶️ John with that. It’s like Casey’s BMW. Every once in a while, you know, 60,000 miles, the water pump’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John be like after
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two years you just lost two CPUs.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, the CPUs, yeah, that’s what I’m always afraid of. I mean, RAM, I could just say, I’m always afraid that the slots
⏹️ ▶️ John are gonna go bad. But even if that did, I can get by with 14 gigs of RAM instead of 18, I’m okay. I’ve had
⏹️ ▶️ John such a motley collection of RAM in this machine, like weird amounts and weird combinations,
⏹️ ▶️ John but as long as I’m in the teens, I’m okay for what I do with this snack.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m just trying to predict, During which year will you stop using
⏹️ ▶️ John When it dies, that will stop me, right? So if it actually dies, what am I gonna do? But if it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John die, my current plan is, look, this is the year, wait to WWDC, if there’s still no Mac Pro, if
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s an iMac Pro, either way, like, if there’s a Mac Pro, maybe, maybe not. But if there
⏹️ ▶️ John is no Mac Pro, then I’m getting an iMac. And if there’s an iMac Pro, I’m getting an iMac Pro. So
⏹️ ▶️ John my wife says, why don’t you just get an iMac now? It’s like, I’m resigned to the fact that I’m going to buy something that looks for all the world like
⏹️ ▶️ John a 5K iMac and I’m pretty much okay with that having used hers a lot. It’s like, whatever, if they’re not gonna make a Mac Pro anymore, what
⏹️ ▶️ John the hell can I do? The next best thing is the 5K, I’ll be okay with it, but I’m not gonna buy it now.
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to wait to see at WWDC what the thing is. Is there gonna be another Mac Pro?
⏹️ ▶️ John Is there gonna be a special iMac for pros, either called iMac Pro or not? That’s when I
⏹️ ▶️ John make my buying decision.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But the thing of it is, is you had a new Mac Pro, what was it, 15 years ago now? when the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey trash can came out, you had a new Mac Pro and you didn’t want that one. So what makes you think you’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Casey suddenly decide that this one’s okay?
⏹️ ▶️ John If I had to reconsider, well, the problem with knowing what I know now is I also know about the reliability
⏹️ ▶️ John issues of that one. Like when it came out, the reason I didn’t buy it was like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John this doesn’t quite suit my needs. Like I don’t need that much GPU and the GPUs aren’t that great and it’s super expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John and so on and so forth. But all our conversations about that were with the expectation that
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll wait for the next Mac Pro, like when they revise it, right? Like, and it wasn’t such a crazy assumption.
⏹️ ▶️ John I thought that that would happen. I mean, they even did that for the cheese graters, even like the, you know, the fake new
⏹️ ▶️ John one for the show was founded on, like it was still a revision. It was still like they they changed some stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John I none of us, I think, could have predicted that, like they would literally not release another version
⏹️ ▶️ John of the machine like ever. Like just no, no, not one year, two year, three. Like they just won’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do it. And that was not in my head. So it’s like me passing on that Mac Pro. I feel like you know It’s the first
⏹️ ▶️ John one like wait for the second revision like kind of like I did with the 5k Mac I didn’t buy the first one like Marco did even though it was a good
⏹️ ▶️ John machine It was like and the second one came out. Okay. This is the one to get seems like it’s you know Everything’s settled down. There’s no big problems. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John got the p3 screen That’s totally what I was expecting to do with the trash can they just never made another
⏹️ ▶️ John one and so you know What can you do?
Post-show: Neutral
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You make any progress on your car decision? We
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John had a lot of feedback on that. I love the feedback. Oh, did we have
⏹️ ▶️ John feedback? Can I just do this for you, Casey? Please. Casey wants a stick shift.
⏹️ ▶️ John That was apparently not emphasized enough in the past show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In the past 18 shows and the entire run of Neutral.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, he hasn’t been keeping it a secret, but people keep forgetting. People keep forgetting, or people say,
⏹️ ▶️ John I know you said you wanted the stick shift, but have you considered not a stick shift?
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey have you considered not a stick shift because I know you said you wanted one but think about this not
⏹️ ▶️ John you put it that way I see so not a stick shift that’s that what you’re saying not the thing I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right also a pretty close number two on that list was not front-wheel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot of people are saying oh you see you don’t worry about that don’t worry about a stick shift don’t worry about front-wheel drive you know I got a perfect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John automatic that I’d love to sell you. A paddle
⏹️ ▶️ John shifted car for you. That’s what you were looking for, right? It seems like that’s exactly your criteria.
⏹️ ▶️ John they were arguing, you know, they were saying most of the people were like, you know, some people just plain forgot because I would like,
⏹️ ▶️ John they were doing a whole email about the car that you should get, but other people were pitching you. They’re saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s why you should consider front wheel drive. It’s not your father’s front wheel drive, blah, blah, blah. And I mostly respect those pitches,
⏹️ ▶️ John but maybe they just don’t know your stubbornness.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now would you call that an elevator pitch or an escalator pitch?
⏹️ ▶️ John I call it an email pitch. And I think people have made some, I have to say, though, I have to think a lot of people made good arguments.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like if you were going to try to talk you out of
⏹️ ▶️ John stick shift or a rear wheel drive, people have some good arguments based on their actual experiences driving these cars.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I think there was good quality feedback in there, but I’m not sure how much it helped you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey My other favorite was everyone in the entire world, I counted, it’s true, telling
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me you should buy a WRX. In fact, in the chat room as we speak, two different individuals
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are telling me to buy a Subaru or a WRX. No, I won’t allow it. No, well, so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here’s the thing. I tweeted within a day of the show coming out because I was already getting inundated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by it, two things. I said, number one, I think the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey WRX isn’t cushy enough. I want something that’s a little bit less boy racer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Secondly, this is my past Subaru, and it’s a picture of my legacy GT.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, this was after I sold it, and I think we might have discussed this on the show, but it was after I sold it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it was—it literally died in a fire. You know that phrase that I love so very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much? It died in a friggin’
⏹️ ▶️ John Are you attributing that to the car, or is that the owner? Like I see that picture too, but because
⏹️ ▶️ John you didn’t own the car, you don’t know how that happened.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s true. Let me remind you that that car smelled of gasoline slash petrol
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For most of the time that
⏹️ ▶️ John wheels all stayed on it though unlike
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it This is true,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which was an improvement to low bar
⏹️ ▶️ John We have Casey gets a car a wheel falls off next car dies in a fire BMW is doing pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John well Just consuming its engine parts in a hail of metal
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, no big deal right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco What’s the common
⏹️ ▶️ Marco factor here, Casey? Maybe you drive really weirdly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess. I don’t know. But I had a few people reach out with interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ideas. I had a handful of people reach out and say the Golf R is just as good as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you think it is. I had a handful of people with various degrees of aggression
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say, stop fighting with this, just lease your damn car. Which I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I understand that and there’s probably some truth to it. In fact, Marco, you made a pretty good pitch for it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t remember if that was on Slack or on Twitter, but regardless. Leasing would surely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fix many, if not all of these problems, but it creates other problems, which is,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, I’m just throwing money into a pit. I’m borrowing a car.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Which I don’t really care for. But you’re doing that now. Fair,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fair. Any ownership of a car is throwing money into a pit and only borrowing it. No matter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how you do it, that is the result. It’s only a difference of mechanics of how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that actually happens, on what time scale, and in what pattern.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What I like about leasing, which I’ve said before, I’ll just go to the very quick summary, it is not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the absolute least money to spend on a car. The least money to spend on a car is to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy a lightly used Honda or Toyota and drive it until it doesn’t drive anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is by far the cheapest way to own a car. But if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re going to go the route of nice cars, and in particular if you’re going to go the route of buying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new, usually a lease is really nice for that because it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco predictable and fixed, and you put the risk of market fluctuations,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the value of your car, whether it ever gets in an accident or anything like that, you put the risk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of all that and the the eventual resale value back on the manufacturer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so you have a very predictable, guaranteed, fixed three years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of, here’s what this is going to cost me every year, or every month, or whatever, and then at the end,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is done, it is over. You don’t have to worry about, am I gonna lose a lot of resale
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for this little scratch I have over here, or whatever else, and all the maintenance is included.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s a way to just take this weird, severe up and down
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spiky expense pattern of owning a car and just make it flat. Make it flat but expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But financing new versus leasing new,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s kind of a toss up mostly. It depends on the incentives and the interest rates of the current month
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that brand and the configuration you’re looking at. Sometimes leasing’s actually cheaper because what a lot of the brands will do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is they will use lease incentives and lease specials to help them reach
⏹️ ▶️ Marco earnings for this quarter at their own expense, basically, like they’re kind of borrowing against their own future.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you can actually, the best deals in the car industry usually are, for new cars at least,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually are lease specials for that reason, that you’re kind of taking advantage of the manufacturer’s need to boost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their numbers in a certain time span or whatever, but that’s gonna be less applicable to the kinds of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cars you’re looking at, honestly. But anyway, that’s why leases are good. They’re fixed, they’re predictable,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they’re kind of like, if your usage pattern, like if your mileage driven
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fits within what a lease can do, which yours does, then it really makes a lot of sense, especially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the kind of cars you are looking at, which are fast cars, sports cars.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you know, it’s one thing to lease something more conventional and more like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco low key with a lower key, not as tweaked up engine and not high performance brakes, not high performance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco parts, you know, that’s one thing. but the kind of cars you’re looking at, as you know too
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well now, are very expensive to maintain. You’re gonna have that problem with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any way you look at this that still involves you having a soul. So because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of that, that’s why I think you should just go to leasing because, again, you’re losing a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bunch of money no matter how you do this. With leasing at least, it’s more compatible with the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of high-powered, sporty cars that you’re looking at, and it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco allows it to be predictable. There’s no more surprises. And I tell you what, that is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a freeing decision. Because I’ve done now every method of owning a car. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have bought used, I have bought new via financing, and I have leased. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco leasing is the only one of those I did more than once. And there’s a reason for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because my experience doing the other two were both very poor. When I bought used, I had a maintenance nightmare.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When I financed new, I lost a killing on resale value
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because at one time I had to get a door panel replaced, not my fault, the car was parked, and somebody backed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into my door, and I had to get a door panel replaced, and they saw that when I went to resell it, and they could tell that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it had been repainted from, they could look at the edge on the inside and kind of see, oh yeah, this is a repainted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco panel, even it looked perfect from the outside, but anyway, yeah, I lost like $5,000
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off the resale price on that car. Like it was horrible and it just sunk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all like it was it was that was my accord and like all the all the calculations I did just like is this the best value car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that best value was destroyed because of that resale loss. So like everything that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I thought I was doing right was out the window because I had bad luck similar to what you’re seeing now with your BMW like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything you thought of your calculation of what you were gonna spend on this car is being thrown
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out the window because weird stuff is going wrong and you just happen to have bad luck with the maintenance on this one. That can happen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with any car you get, no matter how reliable it is. That’s, this is all to say, this is why I like leasing so much. You just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go to leasing, you get the new car, and yes, you’re paying a cost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a new car, right? That’s never gonna be cheap, no matter how you do it. But if you’re gonna get a new or newish
⏹️ ▶️ Marco car, with a lease, you pay every month, you get the car, brand new,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exactly the spec you want, you custom order it exactly what you want, you get every option, every color, whatever you want, your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stick shift, you don’t have to wait and find one, you can get exactly what you want. Three years later,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you turn it into the dealer and you get something else. And you don’t have to worry during that time. If you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get a scratch in month six of a lease, you don’t have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look at that and say, A, am I going to have to look at the scratch for the next 10 years?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And B, is this going to kill my resale value or do I have to go get this fixed somewhere really expensive?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because you know what? Leases have scratch allotments built in. You don’t have to pay anything unless it’s a really huge dent or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something. Like, and it’s just fine. You just turn it back in and they, you have a certain allowance and it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine. Like it’s, it’s just so much easier. There’s, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much less also like if you’re kind of unsure about whether you want, like one of the reasons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got a red car this time, I’m not sure, like having never owned a car that was a bold color
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before, I wasn’t sure I would like it. But you know, I’m not buying this car for 10 years. I’m leasing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this car for three years. So I can take a bit of a risk. Same thing with the M5. I wasn’t sure if I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could deal with a rear-wheel drive car in a place that has winters. And if I was buying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a car for 10 years, I’m not sure I would take that risk. But because it was only a lease, I knew
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it was a much shorter commitment. And so I did it, and it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worked out great. Now I have my red car. That’s working out great. So you’re able to take more risks with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the choices you make, because it isn’t a long-term commitment. psychology is so much more relaxed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because you know it’s just a lease and The time that you’re giving it up is fixed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The value that you’re gonna get out of it is fixed what you’re paying every month is fixed and at the end you just repeat
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You just order something else and the process repeats and you can you know Every three years you have a chance to stop doing that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you want to but you know Honestly, once you start it’s hard to stop because it’s really
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey doesn’t want a three-year stand with a car. He’s looking for a long-term relationship.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I mean, to be fair, you can also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get four and five-year leases. I don’t know if anybody really does, but you can. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every choice that you have presented in front of you, you’re going to have to make some kind of major
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compromise on what you would ideally want, right? No matter what choice you have in front of you, you have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compromise on something. You have to make one big compromise to avoid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco making a whole bunch of other smaller ones. If you choose leasing as that compromise to make, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know you object to leasing from what seems like a moral standpoint, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco less about whether you can afford it or not and more that you just don’t like the idea of it. If you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compromise on that, everything else you can get exactly what you want.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, sort of. I mean, I guess that’s true, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the only things that that would give me access to really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is BMWs, and I could just buy a used one, or a Cadillac, and I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t think I want a Cadillac.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So— I won’t let you get the Cadillac.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I mean, I guess what I’m saying is I don’t know what— leasing doesn’t really open any doors, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t think, that aren’t already in front of me. just solves the maintenance problem because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everything will be on I will forever be under warranty
⏹️ ▶️ John what’s next marker you’re gonna recommend a three year marriage yeah that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco what you that’s what
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that’s right three
⏹️ ▶️ John years marriages and five-year marriage is this great try it it’s like no that’s not you don’t understand
⏹️ ▶️ John the relationship between a man in his car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no you and John you are doing one of my other recommended plans? Not quite. I would recommend,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re going to do the maximized value plan, I would recommend buying a just-off-lease
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Toyota or Honda and then owning that into the ground. You’re doing almost that, which is buy a new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honda and own it into the ground. That is also a totally valid way to do
⏹️ ▶️ John it. You know why I can’t do the leases? For two reasons. One, try finding a
⏹️ ▶️ John stick shift Honda car to lease. It’s hard enough to find someone who will sell you one from the factory,
⏹️ ▶️ John they do not exist. And two, I like having a new car. I like having
⏹️ ▶️ John a brand new car. Brand new cars are awesome. And you get that with the lease too, right? Brand spanking new.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s one of the great things in life is getting a new car. I would never forgo that for like a one year old. I will
⏹️ ▶️ John eat the 5k that I in depreciation. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very surprising to me.
⏹️ ▶️ John Who doesn’t like a new car? Come
⏹️ ▶️ Casey love a new car. But so my perfect scenario, Like if I could just invent the perfect scenario,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would get like a one or two year old car that was exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the build I wanted. That was used
⏹️ ▶️ John by Tiff Arment, driven 500 miles.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, it’s true. And that’s, and truth be told, that was my BMW. Now it had been driven many, many miles,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but the only way those miles could have been accrued in the time in which the first owner had it was on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the highway. And so on paper, my car was perfect. It was a relatively
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John deal. It turns out he was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Well, I think my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John he was actually an insurance agent. Stop and go, stop and go. That’s when the banner system
⏹️ ▶️ Casey could be. But no, my understanding was he was an insurance agent or something like that. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco will probably and justifiably cut this from the show. But as you guys were talking, I went to AutoTrader
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and quickly amassed the list of makes that are reasonably easily available
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me in the United States. And I will run through them alphabetically. So everyone will know the options
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in front of me, and the answer is that there are almost none. Acura. Acura does not believe in a stick
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shift anymore. Alpha. Volvo. No
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sticks. Done. Any other questions? A couple other quick notes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey First of all, Porsche is theoretically an option, which I had forgotten, but A, it’s way too expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey B, have you seen the Panamera? It’s frickin’ hideous.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s no four-door sticks. The Panamera doesn’t come with stick, does it?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But Panamera doesn’t come to stick, does it? You know, now that you say that, you’re probably right. Secondly, Inket, and this individual is not the only person
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who has said this, but, oh, you’re too picky. Well, f*** you. This is what I want.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I mean, I don’t care.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is what I want. I am allowed to be picky if I’m spending between $20,000 and $80,000. I am allowed to be picky.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So sorry, tough noogies. I would probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get a used Golf R. And then as I thought more about it, I thought, you know what?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know if it’s really even worth just trading this in because why would I spend 30 to 40 to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if Marco has his way $80,000 on a new car when I can just continue
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to feed my car from time to time and just call it a day. And so what I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m going to do is just suck it up and deal with the fact that my car is always going to be in this job.
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey’s BMW is my Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, actually, you’re right. And that makes me absolutely sick.
⏹️ ▶️ John should just go to OWC, see if they can send you a new water pump. There you go. Because every
⏹️ ▶️ John time it dies, they’ll just send you another one. You just have to pay to ship the old one back. It’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No big deal. I was morally offended last week, but as I got thinking about it, and as I actually got a couple of offers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of one person I know and one like friend of a listener that had said,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh, I’m getting an M2 soon and I have a Gulf R that I’m looking to unload. And we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey started lightly negotiating on it. And then I thought to myself,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know about this. I haven’t told this individual one way or the other, but my current thinking sitting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here now is, why would I throw $30,000 to $40,000 at a problem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s happening every few months for $1,000? That doesn’t really fix my problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For the privilege of driving around
⏹️ ▶️ John in a Volkswagen Rabbit.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. All I’m doing is being a petulant child at that point.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you didn’t already have a really nice 335, if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John were starting from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nothing, that’d be another story. But because you already have something that is good,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yes it is a maintenance headache. But if you’re looking at pure value for the money,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maintaining a BMW is going to hurt your soul, but it will actually be cheaper.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. And that’s the thing, is that my soul is damaged, but I know my wallet is thanking me. The problem with the Golf
⏹️ ▶️ Casey R, aside from the whole rabbit thing, there are two critical problems with the Golf R. Number one, the trunk
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really isn’t that big with the seats up. It’s not tiny, but it’s not that big.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Secondly, and this is going to sound silly, and this is just getting even deeper
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into the oh, you’re so freaking picky, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Our conversation sounds silly. Don’t worry about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. There’s no sunroof. And I frickin love sunroofs. I love them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I use mine constantly, even at temperatures where I probably shouldn’t. And the golf are unavailable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that that honestly, changes a car dramatically. Like If you’re a sunroof person, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco am too, so I understand. If you’re a sunroof person and you don’t have one, it matters a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so in summary, so what I’m backing myself into is, even the Golf R,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is very close on paper, has the small issue of trunk
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the medium-sized issue of sunroof. The ATS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or ATS-V is probably what I’d want, it’s too damn expensive. The Focus, like I said,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s either front-wheel drive or all wheel drive and I look like I am 18, the Chevy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey SS is really the right-est answer except the infotainment would murder me and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now they’re not making them anymore. And so really the problem I have is that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey either I need to drive an A4 and realize it’s not that bad or I just suck it up because BMW
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the only manufacturer. Like I’ve backed myself back into BMW and all this whole endeavor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was to get myself away from BMW And now I’ve just backed myself
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into the only option I really got is BMW. Look,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you get it right the first time. Yeah. Thank God I did with Aaron. Everything else, I’m not so sure.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Except except for on the car front, maybe not the color.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What do you think lasts longer, your car or John’s Mac Pro?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey My car, but not by a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ John You got a long way to go to catch up to my you only have the thing for a couple of years.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, you’re saying I think Marco’s saying what’s getting replaced first. Yeah. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Mac Pro. because this summer I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John getting something new, whether this thing breaks or not. You say that now, I don’t believe that. I’m just gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John get an iMac. Like worst case scenario, if they introduce no new Macs at the end of this
⏹️ ▶️ John year, I will just get an iMac because if they introduce zero new Macs, that means like, well, forget about the Mac Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ John forget about iMac Pro, whatever, just get a 5K iMac. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can take a hint. There’s probably gonna be a new 5K iMac in a few weeks. I’m not getting that one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, exactly. And so this summer, there’s gonna be like a four month old iMac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the lineup. You’re not gonna buy a four month old iMac.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, they’re gonna do something at WWDC, even if the something is not introducing a Mac Pro. That
⏹️ ▶️ John will be a signal to be like, guess what, it’s not gonna happen, so just give it up. I’ll be like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, you know, based on like rumors and crap, I think it’s very unlikely that we’re gonna see like a new Mac Pro or an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iMac Pro this summer. I think it’s too soon. So, assuming that the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco summer comes and passes, and it’s July and there’s still no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new iMac Pro or Mac Pro, are you gonna buy the then four month old
⏹️ ▶️ John say four month old like it’s so old that I wouldn’t buy it, but four month old, that’s in the babyhood
⏹️ ▶️ John of that iMac’s life cycle because it won’t be modified again for 18 months. No,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I’m saying you’re gonna wait till the next one. I bet you don’t even buy the iMac that hasn’t even come out
⏹️ ▶️ John conceivable, but I still think unlikely. I’m not gonna rule it out, because that
⏹️ ▶️ John is something I would do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will bet that you don’t replace your Mac Pro this year.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m ever so slightly leaning on John’s side, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey man is it close. Man is it close.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, because you gotta, the other thing you have to take into account, this thing could break. Like every time something goes wrong, it
⏹️ ▶️ John could be a thing that is like not as easy to replace as RAM. even if the video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco card went bad. I’m pretty sure it keeps showing that it won’t break. I think that’s very clear.
⏹️ ▶️ John How are the fans not seized by now? I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s a good question. Do you like blow it out every
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John few weeks? When I open it up,
⏹️ ▶️ John man, it’s filled with like, not just dust, but dust that is like, like plated on there. Like it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey blow or wipe off.
⏹️ ▶️ John The dust has become part of the machine. Oh my God. Like I have an air sprayer and I
⏹️ ▶️ John blow it and it does nothing. I’m like, why am I, why do I even bother? This is now part of the machine.