230: Auto, Dynamic, Fresh, Dank
14 Jul 2017Marco bought something again.
Episode Description:
- Follow-up:
- Marco's latest impulse buy
- Ending theme by Jonathan Mann (a brief return of the Summer 2014 remix)
- Post-show:
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- Betterment: Investing made better.
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Chapters
- Follow-up: Face ID
- Follow-up: mDNSResponder
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- Follow-up: dyld 3
- Follow-up: Mac IIfx
- Marco bought something
- Sponsor: Betterment
- John has some advice
- Sponsor: Audible
- One other brief run
- Ending theme (summer special)
- Post-show: Net neutrality
Follow-up: Face ID
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Last little bit there is worth adding. No. Well, it wasn’t bolded. I got scolded
⏹️ ▶️ Casey earlier that I should
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Sorry. All right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We’ll just we’ll just have to edit all this out. Let me take a note John gets angry at Casey
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You gotta be you gotta be serious with these bolds John
⏹️ ▶️ John I already did turn this down you realize this is not like I just Copied and pasted the thing here. This is the trim version the bowls
⏹️ ▶️ John just to let you know, which parts are important All
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, so let’s get started, as we have to with follow-up.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We have another instance of a fairly long email that I’d like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to read most—actually, a couple instances of this—that I’d like to read pretty much in their entirety because I think they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really, really fascinating. I would never generally do this, but now I’m making the exception the rule
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because these are really good emails.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You do it like every two weeks, and I have to edit it in some way because it’s like nothing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is more boring and harder to follow than listening to somebody read like a six-paragraph
⏹️ ▶️ Marco email in a podcast. Steve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey McLaughlin All right, all right. I’ll try to make this as quick as I can since
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John has done us the service of bolding certain sections in the show notes. So we got some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feedback from an anonymous Microsoft employee on the facial recognition in Windows. And they said, all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Surface devices since the Surface Pro 4, which is the last two generations apparently, have supported Windows.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is different than Hi Sierra, this is Windows Hello, which uses an infrared LED, infrared
⏹️ ▶️ Casey depth camera, and RGB webcam to authenticate via your face. This technology is derived from the Kinect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and has in general been super well received. It’s fast, very reliable, and works in the dark. And this includes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a link to a video which we will put in the show notes. It is also tricky to fool, arguably more secure than a fingerprint, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it can even tell twins apart. And we’ll put a different link in the show notes for that. When Microsoft tried to scale this down to mobile
⏹️ ▶️ Casey devices in the Lumia 650 and 650XL, the same technology didn’t work for a number of reasons, including
⏹️ ▶️ Casey power, cost, and constraints. The Lumia device shipped
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in 2015, and while the Surface solution didn’t scale down effectively then, I have no difficulty believing Apple could scale down to a full-face
⏹️ ▶️ Casey solution like Windows Hello in 2017. That said, most good solutions I’ve seen require
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at least two cameras, IR and RGB, to get depth, verify it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fleshy 3D object, and capture enough identifiers as well
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as an IR LED to function in mixed lighting conditions. Heavy backlighting and bright sunlight are especially challenging.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s hard to see how these would fit into the quote-unquote forehead of a bezel-free iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey without significant cutouts in addition to what’s already required for the front-facing camera and proximity sensor.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Blah blah blah. All that to say, it is fast, dependable, delightful
⏹️ ▶️ Casey face recognition that is absolutely possible and is in fact par for the course on some high-end Windows devices like the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Surface. Yes, it does introduce some UI requirements for for explicit confirmation of intent, for example, with purchases.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s just a matter of time before someone makes it work on a phone. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if to hear Apple had done
⏹️ ▶️ John This isn’t a thread of feedback with all the people all the Windows users telling us about Windows Hello, which we discussed
⏹️ ▶️ John in the show many, many, many months ago. And as this person point, the reason I picked this email out is,
⏹️ ▶️ John it is a Microsoft employee. And they talk specifically about the challenges of getting it down into a phone because
⏹️ ▶️ John obviously, you have luxuries on even just a laptop form factor that you don’t have on phones. You got a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of space to put sensors in there. You got a lot more power, you got a lot bigger battery. Usually you have more computing
⏹️ ▶️ John power. A little these days, the phone is probably faster than half of the things they listed. Um, so,
⏹️ ▶️ John so we’ll see. So yes, the face recognition and windows hello is there. We’ve got varying reports. Some people say it’s amazing. It
⏹️ ▶️ John already exists and it’s wonderful. Other people said, I can’t get it directed out as my face. It takes like three to five seconds. Then it doesn’t work
⏹️ ▶️ John half the time and I hate it. So mixed results, but in general, I think mostly people like
⏹️ ▶️ John Windows Hello and think that it works well. It’s just a question of can you get this in a phone?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love that like the new like Windows did it is a lot like the old Opera did it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that Windows is now so marginalized that like the cutting edge features of like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco surface hardware and like the stuff that’s like the whole pure Microsoft stack hardware to software like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so few people, relatively speaking, are using that and enjoying that to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the point, especially like around these parts, around like, you know, Apple-y tech podcast circles,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we have no idea what they’re doing. And they’re so, like, and they’re doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco important stuff and innovative stuff, and they just want everyone to know that so much, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco meanwhile, we’re all like, hmm, no one’s ever done this before. Like, it’s exactly what, exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why the opera people have were always so mad because opera was doing all these great features
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that other browsers would add five years later and act like no one had ever done that before and
⏹️ ▶️ John everyone else believed it. But the reason people didn’t know about it because in the case of opera is that opera was
⏹️ ▶️ John would fall down on like the basics like that. People didn’t use it not just because it was obscure and weird, but
⏹️ ▶️ John because it just wasn’t as good a web browser in most cases as other ones for like boring practical reasons.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, Windows is not as good of an operating system. That’s why we don’t use these things.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, so Mordo certainly doesn’t have the mindshare, but like Windows Hello, like I said, we talked about it on this very podcast. It
⏹️ ▶️ John was not like we didn’t know that it existed. And a lot of these features, I think we talked about the Samsung face recognition.
⏹️ ▶️ John A lot of these features we do know have even been tried in phone form factors before.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the reason we don’t have them in front of mind is because,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mentioned the Amazon Fire phone last time, but like the five cameras and all the sensors everything is like if they don’t work really
⏹️ ▶️ John well it’s like oh well yeah they tried to do a thing but they essentially failed and so
⏹️ ▶️ John it will rise to the level of public consciousness if it becomes popular
⏹️ ▶️ John and everyone agrees that it works really well and because if it worked really well it would be everywhere and every phone would be using it and
⏹️ ▶️ John so like no one has really cracked it kind of like fingerprint sensors that essentially work really well everywhere now and so
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re very very common and so that’s why everybody knows unlocking the phone with your finger is a thing
⏹️ ▶️ John whoever was first with that and getting it to work work. Obviously, we know about it from the Apple world. But for all we know, Android was
⏹️ ▶️ John doing it, you know, years before. But anyway, that technology is kind of settled and it works just fine. Face
⏹️ ▶️ John recognition is still in the realm of maybe on some desktop computers and some operating systems. Some people think it works
⏹️ ▶️ John great, but no one has really nailed it on the phone to the point where it’s better than fingerprint unlock
⏹️ ▶️ John or you know, typing in a code or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I also still do think that there are significant challenges with face recognition as an unlock method
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around the issues of how do you confirm the authentication and what do you do if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t want to authenticate something? One person, I think it was on Twitter, pointed out the example
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of what if someone takes your phone out of your hand and holds it up to your face?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If the only confirmation thing is recognize your face and then tap a thing on screen to say okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then somebody can take your phone and just authorize it right there in front of you and then walk away.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s going to make another Indiana Jones reference, but a Red is the Lost Star reference. So I know you don’t know that one, like, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of like the, the, the watch authentication where once you unlock your watch, as long as it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John on your wrist, it’s, it’s, you know, it stays unlocked. But if someone wants to steal your watch, it automatically locks
⏹️ ▶️ John when it leaves your wrist. So I can imagine a similar feature where the gesture
⏹️ ▶️ John of picking it up and putting your finger on part of the screen, your finger has to be there. Then the,
⏹️ ▶️ John then the camera recognizes you, then you press the screen or slide in a direction or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. And if any point in that chain, like that your finger leaves the phone surface
⏹️ ▶️ John or wherever you’re supposed to be holding down, then it’s all over. So someone pulls the thing out of your hand,
⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t work either, does it? I don’t know. It’s a difficult problem. You’d have to
⏹️ ▶️ John incorporate the fingerprint sensor, I guess. But
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the whole point of this is that… In which case, you have a fingerprint sensor. Yeah, we’re trying to avoid that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the thing is, the more complex that the gesture is, or the more requirements it has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to succeed and to unlock the phone and to keep the phone unlocked, the more often that it won’t work in legitimate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use. You know, the more legitimate use cases you have where like, okay, well, what if I want to authenticate my phone while it’s sitting on a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco table and I just put my thumb on it now, but you know, if you have to have your hand on a certain part like touch ID is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so good and I feel like it solves some, it solves or avoids
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so many of these other weird little problems that it would, it would really take a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make it worth not using Touch ID anymore?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. I’m glad this is still a rumored feature so we don’t even know if shipping at all. We won’t have to consider this
⏹️ ▶️ John but well, I guess we’ll all find out. I still think it would be neat to like just
⏹️ ▶️ John have it sort of work by magic and just pick up your phone and use it and it’s just automatically unlocked because you’re you. I would
⏹️ ▶️ John probably sacrifice that for the security of like, oh, what if someone rips the phone
⏹️ ▶️ John out of your hand? you know, that’s not that common of occurrence in my,
⏹️ ▶️ John in the circles that I travel in. But for other people, I mean, obviously, if you have an option to turn this
⏹️ ▶️ John on or off, that would really help. A lot of people decide what their security profile is. And we said in the last
⏹️ ▶️ John show, if you’re in a situation like in an airport or going through immigration in some country, you want to avoid
⏹️ ▶️ John both Touch ID and face recognition because you can be, you know, compelled to unlock your phone in that way.
⏹️ ▶️ John There are other ways where you can lock down your phone so that you have to enter a big a long password, which they would have to,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, use. What was it? Rubber hose cryptography, pipe wrench cryptography. This
⏹️ ▶️ John depending on what version, whether it’s an XKCD comic or from the idea that the XKCD comic is derived from,
⏹️ ▶️ John they just beat you with a pipe wrench till you tell them the password.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This reminds me also of the the watch unlock on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the desktop. So if you have an Apple watch that is actively unlocked, you’re I forget
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the exact requirements. I think you’re all on the same like iCloud account or something like that, and you’ve enabled everything on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey every device. Then what you can do is if your watch is physically close to, say, your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iMac or something like that, and you tap a keyboard button or a mouse button to wake
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it up, then it will see if your watch is nearby, and if it’s nearby and it’s authenticated,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey et cetera, then it will go ahead and unlock the Mac for you. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that seems perfectly reasonable until you think about, say, an office where, you know, most of us
⏹️ ▶️ Casey work in cubicles. And so what if I’m a couple cubes down or maybe the next cube
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over and somebody goes up to my work machine and,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, smacks the keyboard and it feels like my watch is close enough, then guess what? That thing’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey getting unlocked. And on the surface, that’s terrible. But in reality,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you should, in theory, be close enough that you can hopefully see what is going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on with your device. And if you’re not close enough to see what’s going on, it hopefully wouldn’t allow itself to be unlocked.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But it’s a similar kind of problem, right? Where there’s a pretty reasonable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey expectation that you are close and that is the intended result
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is for your device to unlock. But you don’t know for sure. Now the difference is, which I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t get a chance to talk to you before the chat room started yelling at me that you get a notification on your watch, hey, such and such has been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unlocked. But it to me rings a similar set of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey potential problems. And for me, it’s been working out really well. And it’s super convenient. So I kind of agree with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you, john, that in the circles I travel in, I’m not too worried about it.
⏹️ ▶️ John By the way, Casey, as the person who knows that they’ve seen Raiders, can you do you know what reference
⏹️ ▶️ John I was going to make before I bail?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I definitely I’ve seen Raiders many times, but I do not know
⏹️ ▶️ John beginning bit with the Idle. You gotta take the idle off, but put a sandbag, you can wait, like someone
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey takes something out of your hand while maintaining contact with the part that you’re…
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey like stealing
⏹️ ▶️ John your watch while keeping something touching the sensor on the bottom so it stays unlocked. I
⏹️ ▶️ John bet Apollo Robins could do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was just about to ask, who’s that guy that can do that unbelievable, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stealing stuff while you’re talking
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s his next level. He gets an Apple sponsorship. He can remove people’s watches without them knowing, but can you do
⏹️ ▶️ John it while at the same time like keeping something touching the proximity sensors underneath the watch so it remains
⏹️ ▶️ John unlocked that’s the trick. All
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right moving on before I get stuck in some Apollo Robins videos because they are mesmerizing.
Follow-up: mDNSResponder
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, an anonymous Apple source familiar with MDNS Responder has also written in. They
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said, now I’m quoting, you said, MDNS Responder was a mess and had tons of bugs. John said
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that. We didn’t say that. Fair enough. I couldn’t let that pass without a response. The reasons for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Bonjour rewrite were entirely political, nothing to do with MDNS Responder.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If you’re a manager looking for something for your team to do, rewriting some extra software seems much safer, much, existing software,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey excuse me, seems much safer and much more predictable than thinking of something new for yourself. Rewriting something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from scratch, as we all know, is a terrible idea. And there’s a link to the Seminole
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Joel and Software blog post about this very thing. Coming back to the email, if you measure it in admittedly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey crude, simple numerical terms of number of devices deployed, MD&S Responder is arguably the most successful
⏹️ ▶️ Casey piece of software ever to come out of Apple. As well as being on almost every Apple product, it’s also many other devices,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey almost all network printers, TiVo, network cameras, et cetera. in every Android device, which is not just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Android phones and tablets, but also Android-based accessories. If you consider
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the quality and robustness of the MDNS Responder code, it’s illustrated by the fact that even after being
⏹️ ▶️ Casey neglected for five years, finding an old copy of MDNS Responder from a previous OS version and installing it on Yosemite
⏹️ ▶️ Casey still worked better than Discovery D software Apple briefly shipped before reverting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey back to MDNS Responder. I’m amused that you heard that the return to MDNS Responder was instigated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by a celebrity emailing Tim Cook. You’re right about that part, except it wasn’t Bono. It wasn’t Bono.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was Vince Cerf. Fair enough. And who is Vince Cerf? Can you explain to the audience?
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s why we have a link to the Wikipedia page. One of the fathers of the internet. An old guy who did lots of important work on
⏹️ ▶️ John the early internet. Is that you? No, I’m not that old.
⏹️ ▶️ John So, well, first, getting back to the part of this of MDS Responder being a buggy,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a basis for that. Like, first of all, being neglected for five years is never good good for any piece of software.
⏹️ ▶️ John Second, as a regular user, it was not uncommon to have weird
⏹️ ▶️ John problems with your Mac and to have the solution be killing MDNS responder. Right? I think I don’t know if you
⏹️ ▶️ John guys remember that, but I certainly do. Right? So whether you want to consider it a buggy mess
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, it is something that would be a candidate for, hey, this
⏹️ ▶️ John this essential piece of the system seems like it might be getting a little creaky. And if someone has a good idea
⏹️ ▶️ John about how to vastly improve it, by all means do The Joel and software thing about you should things
⏹️ ▶️ John you should never do you should never write software of law That’s been hashed out to death I mean, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a good presentation of a particular of one side of a particular issue But of course sometimes you do have to rewrite
⏹️ ▶️ John things So many good things that we love came from the decision to rewrite things You just have to know when to do it and when not to do
⏹️ ▶️ John it It was basically Joel’s point, but it was expressed in a very hyperbolic way of like Oh, you should just totally never do this let me tell
⏹️ ▶️ John you all the great things that are about like software that already has all the corner cases and
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, all the education, all the things that you’ve learned over the years, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John baked into it. But on the Mac, we have examples of rewrites that are great.
⏹️ ▶️ John And a lot of the you know, important things that we have on the Mac today are because someone decided to abandon some old code and rewrite
⏹️ ▶️ John it and we have some cautionary tales. So I think there’s a reasonable mix. And I think it’s not, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John out of bounds to say that MD and s responder is it was a candidate because it did cause real world problems for regular
⏹️ ▶️ John people to the it wasn’t zapping the PRAM point but it was the point at a certain point in the history of
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac that killing mdns responder to fix a whole host of problems it became like one of those things you might
⏹️ ▶️ John just want to try because it could be what’s going now politically speaking who knows maybe that’s because
⏹️ ▶️ John they said oh just don’t ever fix mdns responder for five years whoever this person was wrote and seemed to think the
⏹️ ▶️ John project was neglected um but obviously discovery d was not a successful rewrite
⏹️ ▶️ John and whatever reason uh that the rewrite was undertaken and the people who did it and whether they had the expertise
⏹️ ▶️ John or really understood what mdns responder was doing and how it did it and all the decisions that led to
⏹️ ▶️ John its design and all the things they learned it just seems like it was not it was not a
⏹️ ▶️ John project undertaken with the right attitude and by the right people but anyway this uh
⏹️ ▶️ John as to the the idea of mdns responder being on lots of different systems this is news to me as well
⏹️ ▶️ John um i suppose it’s got to be an open source component or maybe it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John part of some wider, like I don’t know whether it’s part of Darwin or some even bigger open source
⏹️ ▶️ John component. I don’t know. I mean, I only know it because it’s that process that I had to kill my Mac sometimes it was super important. And
⏹️ ▶️ John then most people know it because it’s the thing that came back to replace discovery need to make your Macs work again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I did some very, very quick research. Sorry for everyone who knows a lot more about it than this. But so Bonjour
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the is the zero conf networking protocol that Apple popularized under that name
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and basically if you wanted to you know use like a network printer or use network shares that were just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco listed by their names that automatically find each other there’s a very good chance it’s using this Bonjour protocol.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Part of the Bonjour software is MDNS Responder which is like the demon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the systems that manages that. That apparently MDNS Responder itself is open source
⏹️ ▶️ Marco under the Apache license and and so it apparently went into all sorts of things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that had to support zero conf networking and or bond the Bonjour protocol.
⏹️ ▶️ John a better name rendezvous was like so zero conf is the techie nerd name for the technology and
⏹️ ▶️ John then rendezvous was how Apple branded it but then in one of the rare cases where Apple lost or
⏹️ ▶️ John decided not to fight someone challenging their I forget what the situation was whether they just said oh never mind we’ll pick a new name or
⏹️ ▶️ John they actually lost the court case they have to change it and so they change it to Bonjour, which is not bad, but boy, Rendezvous
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. So anyway, so it appears that like lots of different operating systems and devices
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like printers and stuff all embedded MDNs Responder because it was open source.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So apparently that’s why it kind of went in all these different things and went everywhere and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is apparently in Android as well, which is pretty, pretty impressive. That’s, you know, that is, I got to give this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco guy credit for putting out the stuff like that is really quite widespread.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I always just assumed it was just an Apple thing, but nope.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, I would add to the idea of it being successful and it being deployed everywhere are two very different things. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John lots of software that’s deployed everywhere. The success, if your success is just
⏹️ ▶️ John measured by how far and wide you spread, all sorts of terrible things can be considered quote unquote successful.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not even, even if you just take some terrible code in the core of Unix
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s just been passed around because it’s sort of unimportant but it’s just that’s where a lot of bugs and buffer overflows
⏹️ ▶️ John come from some really old library and some bsd uh
⏹️ ▶️ John unix variant that just gets passed around and no one ever looks at it and it’s just this gross crusty little corner
⏹️ ▶️ John and yeah um anyway um i don’t know uh
⏹️ ▶️ John exactly why mdns responder was uh chosen as a as a victim for a rewrite
⏹️ ▶️ John but i I think it was a reasonable decision. But it was followed up by
⏹️ ▶️ John terrible execution. So you got to you got to have both parts of it. If you if you identify the parts of your system that could benefit from rewrites,
⏹️ ▶️ John then you do a bad job. You have not succeeded.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What it’s worth open source.apple.com slash source slash MDNS responder.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, and by the way, now that we know more about the open source nature of this, maybe it wasn’t such a good candidate. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John when there is a project like an open source project that lots of other people use that is sort of being
⏹️ ▶️ John worked on. Like other people have a stake in this, like if mdns responder really is broken, or whatever, presumably, there’s lots of people from lots
⏹️ ▶️ John of different companies that are motivated to make it not suck, right? And you say, you know what, we’re gonna write
⏹️ ▶️ John our own thing. It’s like saying we’ve been using WebKit, which everybody helps update, but we would like our own
⏹️ ▶️ John engine. So we’re just gonna start our own from scratch. Again, it’s probably not a great idea. Now I’m doing this response, not the same thing as WebKit, obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of complexity and importance. But if everyone else in the industry is using mds responder, and presumably updating
⏹️ ▶️ John it fixing it and you decide to go down your own boy you better have the best team available
⏹️ ▶️ John with lots of people on it to equal the effort and smarts and experience of everyone else
⏹️ ▶️ John who’s maintaining MDS responder so perhaps it I wasn’t actually such a great candidate.
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Follow-up: dyld 3
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Make your next move with a beautiful website from Squarespace.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Sid Polk writes, I was at Apple when DYLD 2 was developed and released.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There was a guy who worked on linkers. He was bothered one day by how slow DYLD was, so he spent the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey weekend writing a new one from scratch, because why not? It was eventually released in a software update
⏹️ ▶️ Casey during the 10.3 cycle, but the release notes for it were included in the 10.4 release. The engineer who wrote
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do I LD two also wrote do I LD three. I trust him specifically.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Also this is what public betas are for. We did not have those in 2003, which is kind of funny. Yeah, I
⏹️ ▶️ John think people are surprised at exactly how few people are responsible for such important
⏹️ ▶️ John parts of this isn’t like they always film is like hundreds of engineers when you learn is like I forget what Twitter’s employee count
⏹️ ▶️ John was some there’s something obscene like 3000 employees or something like what are all those people
⏹️ ▶️ John doing and then you learn like how many people work on, you know, the dynamic linker for
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac operating system and iOS and tvos and watch os and you’re like boy that’s probably like
⏹️ ▶️ John a team of a couple hundred people and it’s like five people it’s like five you know and really like like two or three
⏹️ ▶️ John of them are doing the bulk of the work and the guy who did the dwd you know is largely responsible for the dwd3 also
⏹️ ▶️ John was responsible dwd2 and he did it on a weekend and an earlier more innocent time push it out
⏹️ ▶️ John in a a software update in the middle of the 10.3 point X cycle. You know, this is
⏹️ ▶️ John a different time. But but even today, like the teams are teams at Apple are smaller than you think. And that gets
⏹️ ▶️ John back to the whole like how money can’t solve your your talent and retention problems. Like if you
⏹️ ▶️ John could mold money into the shape of people, Gollum style or Gollum style, I don’t know how to pronounce it in this context.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple would do it, but they can’t. They actually have to hire people and keep them happy and give them interesting things to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you need the right people. And very often some of the best software is written by very small teams of people who really know
⏹️ ▶️ John what they’re doing and are very enthusiastic rather than hundreds and hundreds of people being directed by 17
⏹️ ▶️ John levels of management
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. Also, it’s gangnam style Actually, I probably even pronounce that wrong. There you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go All right, anyway, please cut that from the show so I don’t get a million pieces of feedback.
Follow-up: Mac IIfx
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyhow, Aaron Kirkland writes in, on my Mac 2FX,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had, that is not a very good name if I’m honest, but anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John on my Mac 2FX, I had a-
⏹️ ▶️ John whoa, whoa. What’s not good about 2FX? That’s one of the best Mac names ever. One of the best Macs
⏹️ ▶️ John ever, FX, who doesn’t like FX?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s pronounced if-ex.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s got an X in it, so it’s cool. It’s a pun for effects. It was the name of a movie
⏹️ ▶️ John in the 80s about special effects. They don’t make those anymore. Now you get Now You See Him, which is about magic
⏹️ ▶️ John or something terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You remember movie magic? That was a great TV show.
⏹️ ▶️ John FX is the whole, neither one of you has probably seen FX and it’s probably a terrible 80s movie, but
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey might like it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Why do you say that? Because I have terrible taste?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John You’ve like,
⏹️ ▶️ John Hunt for Red October.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Don’t you make fun of Hunt for Red October, man.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I know, I’m just saying like, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not gonna turn up your nose at a movie with like slightly dated sort of tropes or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, FX was a great movie to catch. This movie’s terrible, Casey would like it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I’m glad somebody else heard that. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a great movie to catch on a Saturday when you’re 12 years old.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, God. I don’t know if I love you, John, or if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I hate you. Probably a little of both.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey On my Mac 2FX, horrible name or not, writes Aaron Kirkland, I had a floppy disk autoloader. Wow, why
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are we still talking about this? I had a floppy disk autoloader that would hold 25 disks for unattended
⏹️ ▶️ Casey retrospect backup, and it relied on auto-inject.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is the discussion I was actually having with Merlin at some point, although I think it was off the air. I had
⏹️ ▶️ John this recollection that there were devices that would do the floppy swapping for you,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I’m like, that’s probably just something I was thinking of when I was a kid. I don’t think those things ever existed because
⏹️ ▶️ John when you’re swapping floppies manually, you’re like, surely I can make a machine to, you know, some sort of Rube Goldberg
⏹️ ▶️ John machine to do this for me. Right. But this person says
⏹️ ▶️ John that apparently such a thing actually existed. So my, I had convinced myself that it was just like a false memory.
⏹️ ▶️ John But then I asked, do you remember the Macon model? And he didn’t. I would love to if anyone
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, if anybody has knows more about these can provide like a picture or a name or something to Google
⏹️ ▶️ John so we can find one of these things and see what it looked like. I would love to see such a thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can always rely on the world of large scale backup hardware, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tape drives and everything else for the weirdest stuff out there.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can do large scale backups onto 3.5 inch floppy disks. That sounds great. Right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, you know, And because like there was a need for that, like not everybody needed that at that time, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco someone needed it and someone was willing to pay thousands of dollars for that probably.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, retrospect whether it was a Mac backup program, which someone in the chat room saying was terrible, but I think had some
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of neat features. I used it for many years.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Any other follow up kids are still in follow up. I know this was a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey long one. Those emails were good though. So that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They were pretty good. I’ll give I’ll give john a buy on this one. As we all know, good follow-up is our fault,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but bad follow-up is John’s fault. That sounds right. Works
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We have a consensus. All right.
Marco bought something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, Chief Waffler in Chief, what’d you buy these days?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This was not a waffle. This was just straight-up upgrades.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s fair. You can help me narrow it down, that question, Casey, if you want an answer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What did you buy in the last 48 hours?
⏹️ ▶️ John biggest thing, physically speaking, that you purchased recently?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What impulse buy, what multi-thousand-dollar impulse buy did you just do?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we’ve had our our wonderful plasma 42 inch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Panasonic 85 you TV for about 10 years and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s fine. It’s great, but you know in in the room that we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have it in like we have a pretty large like first floor great room in our house.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When I first got this TV, I was still in apartments and it was great for apart for apartments
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the room. We had it in it was a little small for like the setup we had in that room. But it was still fine,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I was just waiting for it to die before I replaced it. And I didn’t want it to die for a long time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because a nice 1080p plasma was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still kind of the best thing you could get for a while. And I also didn’t want it to die for a while because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over time, like when I bought it, you could get a 42 inch screen that was like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco highest quality type of screen. Today, if you want a great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco image quality TV, the smallest you can get them in is usually 55 inches.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And for a long time, I was kind of hoping that my TV would hold out longer and longer and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco longer because A, 55 inch plasmas were huge, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plasmas still retained quite a bit of thickness and bezel width,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even until the end of plasmas, compared to the other technologies. And so a 55 inch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plasma is a pretty big thing, and I thought that would be too big for the room, and for the TV stand and everything else. So I really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn’t want to upgrade to that. I also, like, 1080p was great, and like, I already had 1080p
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with great color, great black levels, like, great, you know, great brightness, everything else, because plasmas are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco awesome. So I was basically, I didn’t want to have to replace my TV
⏹️ ▶️ Marco until I could get a really great 4K HDR OLED TV,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I hate LCD. Like, LCD is a terrible TV technology. The only thing good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about it is that it costs almost nothing. That’s it. Everything else about LCD TVs is terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, I wanted to just go from plasma to OLED. And don’t even give me anything about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco LED TVs, because we all know that’s fake. That’s a wonderful marketing slide of hand. I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco believe they pulled it off, but they did. Anyway, when we were at the beach last week, the house
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had a really big, cheap LCD TV that was about 50
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inches. And Tiff messaged me one night saying, OK, we can get a bigger
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nothing. And within 45 seconds, it was already ordered and on
⏹️ ▶️ John Why was she saying that? Because she was watching the cruddy, the LCD TV in there? It was
⏹️ ▶️ John like, why does that mean we can get a big? Was the one in the house too small for her?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think she was. I think seeing the cruddy one finally convinced her that a bigger TV can
⏹️ ▶️ John it was this one bigger. Oh, it’s 50. You said 50
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco is 50. And I was 50 compared
⏹️ ▶️ John to a 42. And so she was like, wow, this 50 inch feels so much bigger. She’s
⏹️ ▶️ John sitting closer to it then.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, she also was sitting closer to it. Yes. But anyway, I’ve been dying to get a 4k
⏹️ ▶️ Marco OLED TV ever since I saw one in Best Buy like last year. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I already had all the research done that like, you know that if I had the reason to get a 4k
⏹️ ▶️ Marco TV this year that I would get an LG you know whatever the LG 4k
⏹️ ▶️ Marco OLED series of the year was because all the reviews seem to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be in pretty wide agreement that that’s basically the best one out there. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco finally Tiff said okay we can get a bigger TV and I said
⏹️ ▶️ Marco absolutely nothing about it until it arrived.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because I did not want to bring the conversation back up to have it maybe be backed down
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or have her mind changed. This,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not sure if this is indicative of you having mastered marriage or you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey having a real and true problem with buying s***. Or maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey both, to be honest with you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tiff did not appreciate this strategy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, man. Where are you sleeping tonight? Are you sleeping on the couch?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This resulted in a… To get me back for it, she periscoped me, undoing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the wires and stuff with the old one, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John basically just a periscope of my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco butt leaning over the TV stand for like an hour. And now we are even.
⏹️ ▶️ John By the way, the small TV problem remains. We have a small TV in our bedroom and it was so hard to find
⏹️ ▶️ John a small television. Forget about like the best picture quality, just like not the
⏹️ ▶️ John worst picture quality because small televisions are like, oh, someone’s going to use in their kitchen.
⏹️ ▶️ John So put the crappiest thing you can and it hasn’t gotten better over time as everything’s crept up.
⏹️ ▶️ John It used to be that the good TVs were 42, then the good TVs were 50. This is the minimum size. Now, like you said,
⏹️ ▶️ John the good TVs are 55 minimum size. Everything’s creeping up. So to try to
⏹️ ▶️ John find like now it’s a choice is kitchen TV or 55 inch
⏹️ ▶️ John no man’s land of crap. Yeah, basically.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I’m sorry, what model did you order Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I did exactly what I what I had been researching to do. I did a quick double check before just to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make sure nothing had changed. But everyone seems to agree. So I got the LG 2017 4k OLED series
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It has sevens in the names and they have they put a number in front of a letter in front of them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to indicate as far as I can tell nothing except like the sound bar that’s included.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you can pay like a small or you will know none of these are small amounts. You can pay a smaller amount
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get one with just like regular TV speakers and like on the back and then you can pay like a thousand dollars more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get a little sound bar on the bottom and I hate sound bars anyway so that that was not going to be a thing and then you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pay a thousand dollars more than that to get like even better of a sound bar on the bottom or something. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so the one I got is the base model of the 2017 one, which is the LG C7
⏹️ ▶️ Marco TV. So it’s amazing. Steve Grove That 55 inches? Jared Polin 55, yeah. Steve Grove
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John why didn’t you go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, first, I knew I had to sell this when it arrived.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And now that we see it in the room, I think I actually probably could have pulled off 65.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the reason why I’m glad, I’m pretty sure I’m happy enough with the 55 now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that first of all it is a substantial upgrade from 42. But the good thing is the TV itself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does not look that much bigger on the shelf because there’s such a difference in bezel width.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like the the new one has almost no bezel at all and the old one the bezels were like you know three
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inches on all sides or something. It’s a huge difference in bezel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco width and and thickness, like the new one looks really sleek and has a screen that is more than 10
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inches bigger, but it doesn’t look like that much bigger of a TV. Which is nice because we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t want the TV to like dominate the look of the room. Like when you get a TV that’s too
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big for the room, or that’s even just like kind of big for the room, that is like, your eye is drawn
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to that. Even when it’s off, like you just have like this big, black wall in your room. Like it’s something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is very dominant and because our TV is not in some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back room of the house, it’s like the main room, like you walk into our house and you’re in this main room
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that has the TV and the living room and the dining room all in one big room. To make the TV
⏹️ ▶️ Marco substantially bigger, I think would look too big for the room. But now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we have the actual screen size of the bigger TV without it looking that much bigger. So it’s almost like we got the extra
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen size for free visually.
⏹️ ▶️ John I thought they had to put the Touch ID in the back though, right? And it’s got a brow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The only thing is, TVs have gotten a lot more full of crappy software since I last bought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a TV 10 years ago. Worst products through software. Yeah, exactly. Evergreen. Like, this TV
⏹️ ▶️ Marco takes a good 20 seconds to boot. I don’t know why a TV has to boot, but fortunately
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you just put it in like standby mode instead of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John turning it off. Because it’s got a webOS.
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to say, like, yeah, all software on TVs is terrible, but everyone agrees this is the best
⏹️ ▶️ John software on TVs or close to the best. I mean, there’s some disagreement, but if you want any kind of quote unquote smart
⏹️ ▶️ John TV features, the webOS things that LG uses are
⏹️ ▶️ John the least disgusting, let’s say that. Because nobody does what Panasonic used to, which is completely
⏹️ ▶️ John utilitarian, minimal. I remember my first Panasonic Plasma had
⏹️ ▶️ John the volume, the little volume bar that appears on the screen when you change the volume, was really small
⏹️ ▶️ John and was jammed against the bottom edge of the screen so it obscured as little of it. Nobody does that now. Now
⏹️ ▶️ John you change the volume and it’s like a giant fairy comes out and waves a magic
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco sparkles fly
⏹️ ▶️ John from it and this bar full of bubbling liquid moves forward and this pulsing pattern’s like, oh my God,
⏹️ ▶️ John just change the volume.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The good thing is it’s actually, even though that the software is really kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of overbearing, it doesn’t seem like it’s horrible software. It’s just,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s software where I don’t really need there to be software. But the good thing is it also has built-in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps for Netflix and Amazon Video. So. Every TV has that now. Exactly, I know, I know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is again like the opera people. It’s like, yes, we know, we invented this years ago. Like, yeah, I know. But, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s new to me. And it’s actually kind of nice. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John got the little accelerometer remote with a little mouse cursor thing, which I thought
⏹️ ▶️ John would be terrible, but having used it, it’s actually pretty good. We have different opinions about that.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, you don’t like it? I mean, the alternative is using like a five-way pad to move a little thingy around.
⏹️ ▶️ John I like the little accelerometer cursor thingy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have not found it to be, to have the precision I want. Maybe that’s just me. Maybe I don’t have the precision I want,
⏹️ ▶️ John would you prefer to go tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap? Because I find it, I find it, put it this way. I find it more
⏹️ ▶️ John precise than the other main thing I use to navigate stuff on the TV, which is a stupid Apple TV remote where I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John forever trying to swipe vertically horizontally and
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that’s true it’s misinterpreting me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah yeah cuz yeah so for the listeners who might have missed what we were talking about here the remote to this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco behaves a lot like a Wiimote where the TV somehow senses I don’t know if it’s only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco accelerometer or if it’s also like the vision based thing like the Wiimote have a little IR bar but somehow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the remote you just wave it around and it moves a little mouse pointer thing on screen and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it doesn’t I don’t I’d say it does not work as well as a Wiimote does in that way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it isn’t as precise or stable. So, it’s fine. Ultimately,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m assuming that there’s gonna be a 4K Apple TV update this fall. Once
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we have that 4K Apple TV, I don’t expect to ever use the built-in software on this TV again. It’s the kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing I’m just like setting it up once, going through all the picture settings, trying to find out how to make it look normal, and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you just leave it after that. So, I don’t expect the software of this TV to matter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all to me after
⏹️ ▶️ John Except for potentially the boot time and whatever the volume control looks like when you move it up and down.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s, well, I don’t use the volume control on the TV. Who uses TV speakers? Animals, that’s who.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s it. We are.
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John has some advice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Betterment, investing made better.
⏹️ ▶️ John you were doing is exactly what people shouldn’t do when they adjust their TV, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John play with the settings and try to see, try to think, does this look right? Turn this on, turn this off. What does this
⏹️ ▶️ John mode mean? Blah, blah, blah, blah.
⏹️ ▶️ John so you’re never gonna, you’re never gonna arrive at anything that way. So to, first of all, the thing that Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John knows and that everyone else should know is when you buy a TV, no matter where you get it from almost all the time,
⏹️ ▶️ John it is configured badly. Um, it, it might still be in showroom
⏹️ ▶️ John demo mode where everything is like super saturated and super bright with all the effects on, but even if it’s not,
⏹️ ▶️ John the sort of standard default modes on most TVs is not quote-unquote accurate. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not what the people who created the content were expecting you to see, because they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of creating it and mastering it in a particular color space with the expectation that things
⏹️ ▶️ John look a certain way. The only way to get a television configured correctly is to use some
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of calibration thing whether it’s an app or a blu-ray or whatever and the tricky part is the
⏹️ ▶️ John the place where your configuration thing comes from like the source
⏹️ ▶️ John affects how you’re configuring it like if you can get a configuration thing to
⏹️ ▶️ John run on your Apple TV that will and your and your adjustments are per input that will correctly
⏹️ ▶️ John adjust the Apple TV input but then how do you correctly adjust the input that is you know if
⏹️ ▶️ John you use that same setting and apply it to your other inputs or some TVs don’t even let you do like how do
⏹️ ▶️ John you apply that to the one the blu-rays in how do you apply it to one of the cables in or whatever that’s something you have to sort it out in every TV but either
⏹️ ▶️ John way you have to get a calibration thing and there’s tons of calibration things that are out there they give you grayscale things
⏹️ ▶️ John they tell you what it should look like and all sorts of color patterns and then you have to basically
⏹️ ▶️ John mess with the menus of your television to get the test patterns to look correct
⏹️ ▶️ John to do that to figure out I don’t know what all these words mean I don’t understand but what these you know
⏹️ ▶️ John the settings are like auto, you know, dynamic, fresh,
⏹️ ▶️ John dank, like, you know, what the hell?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Like, what do these words mean? Right?
⏹️ ▶️ John goodness. Sometimes if you look in the manual, they’ll translate them to like
⏹️ ▶️ John the actual meaning. But most of the time, what you want to do is seek out on the internet, one of those forums where people
⏹️ ▶️ John spend a million years adjusting their TVs, and people have, like, basically settings
⏹️ ▶️ John lists for the television. So in order to get this particular exact make a model of television
⏹️ ▶️ John to pass a reasonable calibration test, here’s all the things I had to change it to.
⏹️ ▶️ John And sometimes they’ll helpfully say, here’s what these settings actually mean. And this sounds like a long way to go. Like I got to go to
⏹️ ▶️ John internet forums and scroll through like web bulletin boards like it’s like 2003 and just
⏹️ ▶️ John find setting packs for people and and download them sometimes. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, here’s the thing, you only have to do this essentially once and then just to, you know, adjust over every
⏹️ ▶️ John few years, right? Once you get it set up and calibrated according to the calibration app
⏹️ ▶️ John and you kind of know what the settings do and you know how to turn everything off and what the different things mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly all you need to do is adjust contrast, brightness, and a few other things as the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John ages and it drifts a little bit. That’s really the only way to do it. You can’t do it
⏹️ ▶️ John by looking at people’s faces and saying, does that skin look right to you? You will never do it that way. You can’t do it by looking at video and saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John does that motion look right to you? You need to use a calibration app. tons of them out there
⏹️ ▶️ John or you know calibration DVD or calibration blu-ray or whatever the hardest thing to do is cadence
⏹️ ▶️ John which you probably don’t care about to see if you’re you don’t even have a blu-ray player do you like to see
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco if you can have the ps4
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah well do you ever watch it do you ever watch anything that you care is showing 24 frames per second cadence if you don’t care about
⏹️ ▶️ John that you don’t need to do it but that’s the hardest one to do the only way i’ve found to do that one is to use a camera and configure it to
⏹️ ▶️ John use a shutter that’s open for a second and run a pattern that you know does something over over
⏹️ ▶️ John the course of a second and you can see if you see even lighting in the one second exposure if you don’t see even
⏹️ ▶️ John lighting then you’re seeing three to pull my pull down because one frame was shown three times the other frame was shown
⏹️ ▶️ John two times and the three times one is brighter than two times one so you get this sort of checkerboard bright dim bright dim
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that’s how you know you’re getting the wrong cadence true 24 frames per second cadence everything will be exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John equal brightness because it was 24 frames and each one of them was shown you know for the same amount of time that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John hardest to calibrate I don’t know how to do that with an app. I just know how to do it with a camera and an app. But the other ones
⏹️ ▶️ John just, you know, get an app and easiest for you. You have an Apple TV. There
⏹️ ▶️ John are apps on the App Store like THX apps or whatever, like go find one download doesn’t really matter
⏹️ ▶️ John which one it is. They all kind of have a similar test pattern. Some of them might be better than others and just spend
⏹️ ▶️ John a day with it. And it’s important to calibrate it both during the daytime and nighttime and figure out the
⏹️ ▶️ John balance of brightness, especially for televisions. I don’t know if all that oh, it’s not as bright as a LED
⏹️ ▶️ John backlit LCDs, but I think it’s brighter than most plasmas. But sometimes you have to make a trade
⏹️ ▶️ John off between doesn’t look right at nighttime versus doesn’t look right in day and your television. And I believe most televisions have an ambient
⏹️ ▶️ John light sensor that can be like, Don’t worry about it. You just calibrate it and I’ll use the ambient light sensor to
⏹️ ▶️ John adjust the brightness for you. Sometimes you want that because it’s helpful, but other times it’ll just screw with your settings. So you
⏹️ ▶️ John calibrate it. And then night comes and the ambient light sensor screws with all your settings and you can’t see anything in the dark scene
⏹️ ▶️ John so if it’s up to me I would pick a good medium setting
⏹️ ▶️ John and turn off all the dynamic stuff and say this TV is gonna look like exactly like this all the time please do not dynamically adjust
⏹️ ▶️ John anything but anyway it’s it’s a lot harder than just let me go through the menus and try
⏹️ ▶️ John a few things and I think it’s worthwhile I think it’s worth adjusting because if you do if you spend
⏹️ ▶️ John the day adjusting it and you know maybe like three months later or six months
⏹️ ▶️ John later run through the adjustments again just to make sure the thing hasn’t drifted and then like save the original setting
⏹️ ▶️ John and like in the middle of the movie switch back to the other setting and be like oh god it’s just it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco terrible it’s like it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John suddenly everything was you know you know that uh it’s like a festival in india or something we use colored powders
⏹️ ▶️ John to throw over everything suddenly everything is like super
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco oversaturated it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like it doesn’t it doesn’t look right it doesn’t look natural um it looks like someone has thrown
⏹️ ▶️ John uh festive colored powders over everything on your television you don’t want that just ask merlin you don’t want the powders
⏹️ ▶️ John So did you did you just fiddle with controls and you’re like good enough and now you’re never gonna revisit it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I at least did just finish fiddle with controls and say good enough. I don’t know if I will ever revisit it or not.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I probably will because we only been we only had like one night with it so far to really play with it so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we will probably still be messing with some stuff. I will say though that this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is probably going to be an area of my life that I choose the Casey path.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The path of not being very picky.
⏹️ ▶️ John just one day, in your case, one day over the next ten years that you’re going to own this television. Just spend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, you said it would also be one day doing boot camp on Windows to set up the gaming for TIFF.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I had done it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So come over, take a day off of work.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John That’s the other option. You can
⏹️ ▶️ John pay someone to calibrate it for you, but I think it’s a rip off. if you just do it yourself with an app. If the
⏹️ ▶️ John next time I’m at your house, if you give me some time, I will do this to your television because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a service I provide. How busy could you be? Just come tomorrow. Oh, at the very least, make sure you have the size
⏹️ ▶️ John set correctly. Can I at least convince you to do that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You mean like instead of like fake over scanning and then a re-do?
⏹️ ▶️ John exactly. Like make sure that it’s actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John showing. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have it correct. I haven’t like tested anything like that can verify on the edges, but.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know how you can tell whether you have it correct? Calibration app. It’s like the first thing they’re gonna do is like, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John can you see all the pixels of a 1080 in a 4K picture? Or is it cutting off
⏹️ ▶️ John the stuff around the border because you have fake overscan on?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, send me the name or a link to an Apple TV app that you think I should try.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I will give it a shot. Yep. But I really can’t, I don’t think I’m gonna spend a day
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on it. That seems like a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ John I say a day, because you know, whatever. But it could turn into a day, depending on how obsessed you get about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let me guess, not terribly obsessed. Also, Marco, there’s an easy way to fix this problem. Stop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, that’s the most easy way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco to fix it. The second
⏹️ ▶️ Casey most easy way, and by the way, I highly recommend that. It’s wonderful. Ignorance is bliss.
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey, where you can’t tell what’s going on anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s also an easier fix, but it also affects other parts of your
⏹️ ▶️ John your glasses off. Everything looks great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But no, the second easiest way to fix this is to tell John that you have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey three dozen bagels of various varieties that are all on the approved bagel list, and all he
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has to do is come pick them up from your house. Oh, and by the way, fix the TV. John has free time. He can do it. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that seems reasonable. I would do it for three dozen bagels. Problem solved.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So you happy with it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Again, I’ve only had like one night to watch it so far. But so far, yes. It is not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as dramatic of a change as I would have guessed. Maybe if we went all the way to 65 it
⏹️ ▶️ John If you went from a crappy LCD to this it would be. You’re just used to black levels that are reasonable
⏹️ ▶️ John But I mean, I feel, although, obviously I’m way more sensitive to this than most people, but when I went
⏹️ ▶️ John from my previous Panasonic Plasma to my current Panasonic Plasma, I was startled by how much
⏹️ ▶️ John better the black levels improved. Just from like when you turn it on, it’s got like a logo, like whatever, on a black background.
⏹️ ▶️ John I could tell, wow, this is, you know, in my opinion, quote unquote, dramatically better than my previous plasma.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if you had gone from LCD to OLED and you turn on the LCD and it’s just, you know, like whatever Samsung
⏹️ ▶️ John and then a black background and this thing it turns on and it says LG and a black background, you would be startled by exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John how black it is. But going from plasma, maybe not as startling to you. Maybe you don’t notice as much, although I have to say your
⏹️ ▶️ John plasma is old enough that it is, you know, still several generations behind the best
⏹️ ▶️ John plasmas got before like plasmas went away. So right,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because because they got so big I couldn’t upgrade.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but like, yeah, and also like, I’ve seen very little 4K content on it so far because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there just isn’t that like, right now the only way I have to get 4K in there is the built-in Netflix and Amazon apps.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Amazon app, I had a very hard time getting it to show me anything in 4K. The Grand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tour. No, it showed me Grand Tour in HDR, but 1080p for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some reason. Like I couldn’t get it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me up to 4K. I don’t know why, maybe it’s the settings. I couldn’t I looked in the settings couldn’t find anywhere.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did I was able to see real 4k with Netflix and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco watched a little bit of House of Cards and so that was nice, but House of Cards is a pretty dreary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gray show. So like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey like there’s so many ways. Yes,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exactly. So I wasn’t able to really see like you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what is like a beautiful nature scene like I want like the stuff they show on the demo reels in Best Buy and like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all like the the beautiful nature
⏹️ ▶️ John in planet Earth just go get well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have planet Earth but I don’t know how to get in 4k
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah the other thing is you should look go to one of those viewing distance calculators it
⏹️ ▶️ John could be that your viewing distance and your television size is such that you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna have difficulty discerning 4k versus 1080 at that combination
⏹️ ▶️ John so you’re saying I should have gotten the 75 yeah well you have to you have to use one of those calculators to see. But I was
⏹️ ▶️ John surprised when I did the tape measure thing to see like, here’s where I sit on my couch and here’s how far away my television is. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John I would have to step up to bigger than 55 to to really get the benefit of four k.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, not that it matters, like you don’t have a choice anymore. Essentially, you’re getting at a 40 4k TV whether you want or not, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is fine. But I’m saying is that don’t don’t get hung up on the four k too much. Until you’ve done that measurement
⏹️ ▶️ John to see can my I even resolve the difference in dot pitch essentially between 1080
⏹️ ▶️ John and 4k at this size television at this distance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well and it isn’t it isn’t just about like being able to resolve individual pixels you know like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can you can look at the screen of an iPhone 7 and then next to it on iPhone 7 plus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 7 plus screen has a much higher DPI and the 7 plus screen looks better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you might not be able to identify like oh oh, I can see pixels on this one and this one I can’t. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can’t really see them on either of them.
⏹️ ▶️ John Seven plus is non-native res though. Maybe you’re just responding to the blurring. And the aliasing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, maybe, who knows, probably not. But anyway, and there’s also HDR, the different contrast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ratios. So there’s a huge amount of improvement to picture quality here that was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not just the resolution.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the frame rate and color range, potential frame rate and color range differences are what you want. A lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of 4K content, especially like on Netflix, is also very heavily compressed, so, you know, not that
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re gonna run out and buy a Blu-ray player, but if you really wanted to see what this television can do, Blu-ray is your highest
⏹️ ▶️ John quality, the highest quality video that you can bring to your home still comes on a plastic disc, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is there 4K Blu-ray, is that a thing?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Really? I didn’t know that. Can the PS4 non-pro do that?
⏹️ ▶️ John I have no idea. Ah.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John a 4K TV, and I have no idea. That’s one of the things keeping me away from 4K is I realize I have to just rip out my
⏹️ ▶️ John old setup because I’m pretty sure my receiver, maybe it has 4K pass-through on one of its inputs
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, but I just have to start over.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like 40 people in the chat just said, no, no, no, no, none of the PS4s do this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco please don’t, oh my god, no, no, no. So apparently I have to get an Xbox One SX1X,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I don’t know what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that is. No, don’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John or you could just get a Blu-ray player, they’re pretty cheap and you can get a good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Blu-ray players are pieces of crap, I hate them so much. I hate like, just the Blu-ray spec
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the worst thing that has ever happened to movies.
⏹️ ▶️ John everyone hates it, but still, if you want to get like 100 and something gigabytes of the
⏹️ ▶️ John highest quality video of your favorite movie, I mean, at the very least, you gotta get the Blu-ray and then rip it on
⏹️ ▶️ John your Mac, and then find a way to play it losslessly off of whatever device you put it on, which I also still
⏹️ ▶️ John haven’t mastered because of the 24 frames per second cadence problem as previously discussed. Although, someone did
⏹️ ▶️ John mention this Plex valve for the PS3, when I revisited it and I saw Plex was already installed on my PS3, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John I already tried it. But Plex changes fast, so maybe it got fixed, I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, the other thing is, again, this fall, when the Apple TV 4K presumably exists, I have a feeling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s gonna be my answer to this. I think I’m just gonna buy 4K stuff on iTunes and call it a day.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, you hope they have it for sale. I know, I really hope they have it. I also, I kinda hope that I can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe upgrade some things I’ve already bought. I bought Planet Earth 2 on iTunes, and I know that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is available on 4K somewhere, and I would hate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have to re-buy the whole thing at an undiscounted new price to just get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, but I probably would anyway, because it’s so good. That’s something, if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really want to show off 4K, you need bright nature scenes. Or even just,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want to see the Apple TV screensavers in 4K. They’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey look amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think the source video is 4K though. I’ve watched it
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco iPad and it looks so great. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just 1080. when you run Arial, the Arial screen saver on your Mac, I’m always struck by how, on the
⏹️ ▶️ John 5K iMac anyway, I’m like, ooh, that’s blurry, this looks much better on my TV. My TV is 1080 and my 5K iMac
⏹️ ▶️ John is, you know, whatever giant resolution it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, that doesn’t mean that the source is not 4K, that just means that Apple is not publishing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more than 1080 worth of streams. Yeah, I’m just
⏹️ ▶️ John they gonna, are they gonna remaster it? Is they gonna go back to the red 8K footage or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John this stuff was taken from and remake all those videos?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Also, if you happen to see the back of a truck roll by Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from what I can tell, Grand Tour’s between 20 and 30 gigs for 4K, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there are trucks that have it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But how do I get that onto my TV in a way that actually can play 4K?
⏹️ ▶️ John If you’re gonna see 4K content, please don’t make it the Grand Tour.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco well. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ John see 4K old man wrinkles.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Like, that’s not. No, no, no,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I agree. I agree, I’m just trying to think of something that you would potentially at least
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slightly enjoy, and typically is well shot and pretty. Yes, I understand your point about the old man
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wrinkles and you’re right, but I mean, generally speaking, it’s visually a nice looking show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, anyways, to get it on your TV, well, why not do, can you do,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can do 4K over HDMI, although usually it’s 30 frames per second, except in this case, that’d be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I mean, I’m pretty sure that there is a new HDMI spec that this TV supports that does 4K 60, I think.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Oh, there you go. So do it with your,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John play with your computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John you have a what version of HDMI that I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey assuming as well
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco but I would look it up
⏹️ ▶️ John before I spent the money on it instead of after I got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco believed I had a narrow window of
⏹️ ▶️ John well here’s the thing but what Marco did is like look if any TV is gonna support
⏹️ ▶️ John all the things make it the most expensive one and it’s essentially what you did you didn’t get the most most expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John ones you avoided that weird sound bar crap and everything which I agree is not a good idea. But that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s really all you can do. The problem is, though, like sometimes you look at the most expensive one and still
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t have support for the latest whatever that’s just about to come out. And so you’re like, OK, I can’t I can’t buy a TV this year. I got
⏹️ ▶️ John to wait till next year. But I think you’re probably safe.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, because it seems like that the four K world has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has pretty much reached like the point that it’s safe to buy it like with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John you. Well, I mean, it’s not.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco means the same reason
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of people give bad reviews of this TV. It’s like, well, it’s the best picture quality we’ve ever seen, but it costs a whole jillion dollars.
⏹️ ▶️ John And obviously that’s not a barrier for you, but for other people, it’s like maybe,
⏹️ ▶️ John like maybe wait one more year, two more years for the same quality television
⏹️ ▶️ John to come down from the middle of the, of the pack or whatever. Right. And the other thing with the smart TV stuff is over
⏹️ ▶️ John the, over the years, a lot of that LG smart TV stuff, like I don’t know if they weren’t using enough Ram or slower processors
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, but that has gotten faster too. And it’s like, when it first came out, it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it kind of works. But in two years, presumably they’ll put better chips in their TVs and it will get faster. And it has.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I think you bought the earliest you could possibly buy
⏹️ ▶️ John and still get all the things. And all you had to sacrifice for it was a little bit of money and some yelling from your spouse.
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One other brief run
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks to audible for sponsoring our show
⏹️ ▶️ John Before we leave the TV topic one. I’ll take one other brief
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Brief run to try
⏹️ ▶️ John and convince you slash you slash the audience To invest
⏹️ ▶️ John in a multi-channel audio solution.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No you think stereo is just
⏹️ ▶️ John fine I know you think you don’t need a subwoofer and left and right channel is fine
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean The way I was going to try to convince you was like to think about how how
⏹️ ▶️ John concerning it is when viewing an LCD screen and non-native res. But that is now an outdated
⏹️ ▶️ John analogy, because as you were just saying, with the seven plus, if you make the pixel small, it doesn’t matter. But there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John no equivalent to making the pixel small enough in and the world of audio. So
⏹️ ▶️ John lots of these shows that you like, including probably House of Cards, have
⏹️ ▶️ John five point one mix like they have. They have six channels of audio. Maybe they have seven. I don’t know. but they have their
⏹️ ▶️ John multi-channel audio. That’s what they’re putting out. And some of them don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John a stereo mix. So you have to take that 5.1 and down mix it through some voodoo into, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, Dolby ProLogic or something into a stereo mix. And that adds stuff. It adds
⏹️ ▶️ John artifacts and weirdnesses that are not there. Like you’re taking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did- What doesn’t have a stereo mix? Like whenever I’ve like ripped DVDs and stuff, there’s always
⏹️ ▶️ John The things that fall off the back of trucks sometimes don’t have stereo mixes to give just one example.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like most of the stuff I watch is legal. Like almost everything I watch is on the Apple TV.
⏹️ ▶️ John I, when I rip my own Blu-rays, I don’t put a stereo mix on them. Sometimes they don’t, anime things sometimes don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John stereo. Sometimes they’ll be like stereo Japanese and 5.1 English, but no stereo English.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know about iTunes, but all I’m saying is like the 5.1 mix is available, right? And
⏹️ ▶️ John a reasonable 5.1 setup with a 5.1 mix going straight to it
⏹️ ▶️ John sounds better than stereo. And if you don’t have places for speakers, I can kind of understand
⏹️ ▶️ John that. We don’t. But I think you do. You’ve got a big room. It’s great, that room.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you about your house, Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think you can find, I mean, I found places in my totally awful, should never
⏹️ ▶️ John have any kind of television in it, carriage house weird thing. I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John think it would be a big deal either. Held off doing it forever. I have some fairly cheap,
⏹️ ▶️ John cruddy 5.1 speakers. It sounds so much better to have dedicated
⏹️ ▶️ John left, right, back, you know, center channel. It’s a big difference.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would encourage you to, if you, I mean, I know you don’t care that much about movies and, but
⏹️ ▶️ John these days TV shows have 5.1 mixes. It makes a difference. 5.1, I mean, it’s like games of thrones
⏹️ ▶️ John or something. A 5.1 mix with a subwoofer of a good TV show is just plain better than stereo,
⏹️ ▶️ John consider it. It’s not like you’ve done nothing to preclude it. You didn’t buy a TV with a weird soundbar, which is like the worst
⏹️ ▶️ John of like, let’s just forget about multi-channel and just do some weird stuff up front and try to fake it out. I think you
⏹️ ▶️ John have the room, especially with these very tiny speakers. Like mine are very small. Like, I don’t know how big
⏹️ ▶️ John they are. They’re like the size of a big iPhone kind of speakers. You’re like, oh, those can’t possibly sound good.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re wired, they’re passive wired. You know, they don’t need to be plugged in anymore. They’re not Bluetooth
⏹️ ▶️ John or any sort of other weird thing. You can get those speakers for a reasonable price and
⏹️ ▶️ John hide the software for somewhere in the corner and it sounds awesome. Consider it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I don’t think that either Marco or I is denying that it’s better. It’s not that we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey saying it’s not better. It’s just, and I’ll now speak for myself. I, I,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would love to have that set up, but it’s not worth the energy to me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to make it happen because to do it right, I would have to put like wires under the floor and,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John and it would- You
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t always have to. You just have to be a little bit creative. I don’t have wires under my floor or through my ceiling,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? But you can find ways to make, like the wires are smaller than you think they are
⏹️ ▶️ John and you can be creative with where you route them. And I don’t think Marco would even have to be that creative. And
⏹️ ▶️ John worst case, Marco can throw money at this problem and actually get wireless ones because then you don’t have to worry about it.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you want to spend more money than I was willing to spend on it, because I was like, I’m not going to spend a lot of money on a 5-by-1 system. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John even know if I like this, but since we’re getting all this stuff, I might as well try it. And I bought like the cheapest one I possibly could. It was well
⏹️ ▶️ John rated, you know, but I said, if you don’t want it, if you’d want to spend a couple hundred bucks and get six speakers
⏹️ ▶️ John and a subwoofer, do this. And I did that. And I was amazed. And they’re very
⏹️ ▶️ John small. And so I’m not planning on replacing them with fancier, more expensive ones. But Margo’s excuse was he was
⏹️ ▶️ John tired of hooking up all that stuff, moving from apartment to apartment. But he’s been in this house for a long time now. So that excuse doesn’t work. The other excuse
⏹️ ▶️ John is it doesn’t work in his doesn’t work in his room. But you know again this would take more
⏹️ ▶️ John than a day. I feel like I could map
⏹️ ▶️ John where to put them in places where you wouldn’t notice them and hops wouldn’t eat them and it would be just fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John Hops doesn’t eat speakers. I don’t know. My dog eats everything so now I’m mapping my dog
⏹️ ▶️ John onto all dogs. You can’t put wires in a house. The dog will eat them. Hops
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Hops will look at them and back away slowly because he’s scared of them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So yeah I mean, and Casey’s right. I never said that surround is not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good or better. Like surround, I had surround for a long time. Granted, this was a long time ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, I stopped hooking up the surround speakers at least 10 years ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the speaker set that they were part of, I don’t even own anymore. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it died long ago. So, I know it’s good. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, I’m gonna have to pull a Casey here and say, I just don’t care. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of the benefit is for movies.
⏹️ ▶️ John But TV shows are in 5.1 now, is that what I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know, I know. But what I care about is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the sound should sound good and clear and it should be usable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to fill the room with music when I want music in the room. And a standard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stereo set works great for that. I should also point out, I don’t have a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco receiver. I drive the speakers currently with a little tiny stereo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco speaker amp that is about the size of like four decks of cards stacked. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a really small speaker amp. One of these little like class D things. And it’s great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it has a remote support, so the Apple TV controls the volume on it, like through its remote, because it’ll learn
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the IR thing. It’s a great, simple setup. The TV stand that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we have is a non-negotiable piece of furniture with the historical
⏹️ ▶️ John know. Discussions are ongoing with the historical commission
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco regarding the receiver. Yes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There is no receiver that exists that I have been able to find that will fit in this stand.
⏹️ ▶️ John What if I make a receiver the same size and shape as, say, an old bell telephone? They don’t make
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco them that small. How would that work for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you? Even the low-end receivers have these giant cases now because they use the same case design
⏹️ ▶️ Marco design, whether you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two or seven channels, they just put like different numbers of cards in them.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I think the solution here that we’ve learned is I just need to install a surround system and a
⏹️ ▶️ John receiver in the beach house and then have Tiff watch a movie on it late at night and then she’ll send you a text that says, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John we can get a receiver.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John we’ll have to play with that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, so I am totally fine with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco our basic stereo setup. It’s a really good stereo setup because the speakers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are my favorites, the Paradigm Atoms. I love the Paradigm Atoms speakers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because they’re like 200 bucks each, so it’s like about 400 bucks a pair, and they are the best
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bookshelf speakers I’ve ever heard. And I’ve heard many that it costs way more than that, and they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sound better. Like the Atoms embarrass everything else I’ve ever tried. Like they are just so
⏹️ ▶️ John You can use them as your left and right channel, and then only buy the backs and the center, and the subwoofer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Here’s the problem now. the new TV is just bigger enough that the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco atoms no longer fit on the stand next to it. Oh no. So I have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco either get those, you know, little pole speaker stands for them, which I don’t love that, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco option because that seemed like it would be, you know, to make, to get something top heavy in a house
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that often has children running around and it does not seem like a good idea. Um, so I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco love that option. Also those stands are really expensive. Um, like, and you can get, I can get new speakers for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not that much more money than those stands. So I’m looking into floor standing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco options now, but it’s very early in the search.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just screw some tiny little wings onto the edges of the TV stand. Now they’ll fit.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, but. I love that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, right. Well, if I can somehow like drag them behind a truck for a while first and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like spray paint them in weird
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John ways, it might be mad. It might be distressed,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah. Yeah, distress it in like the most hipster way possible and then it’ll look right. about that on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the upcoming rec diffs just for you. Awesome! But yeah, so now I’m looking into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like floor speakers but I’m probably just going to get more Paradigm. Paradigm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco makes floor speakers too and they’re similarly from what other reviews say they are amazing values
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and amazing sound quality for what you’re paying. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it you didn’t like measure the top surface of your table and the width of the television. You didn’t do this math
⏹️ ▶️ John beforehand. So you just you got it, you took it out of the box, you put it on there, okay let me put the speakers back on, you’re like like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty much. I did the math a year ago, like with the TVs that were out of your when I first started doing all this research,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did it then and I knew then that I could get a 55 inch TV
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that it would intrude roughly halfway into my speakers on either side. So I knew this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John was already going to you had a
⏹️ ▶️ John you ever see I’ve seen this in a lot of people’s houses. Two possible solutions I’ve seen in real
⏹️ ▶️ John life. One, put the speaker slightly behind the television to put the speakers in front of the television. I’ve seen
⏹️ ▶️ John both those solutions. Both of them boggle my mind.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Those are both terrible solutions.
⏹️ ▶️ John They think like this is fine. Like and I can’t decide which is worse, blocking the television or
⏹️ ▶️ John having the speakers firing directly into the back of your television set.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s I would have a hard time figuring that out too. I think I mean either way you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco making something suck terribly. So yeah, I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John Are these are these bookshelf speakers that you love? Are they super expensive? Let me look at them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, they’re 200 bucks each. So a pair
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John is 400 bucks.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think we have different definitions.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco For bookshelf speakers made by a company that is respected in the world of speakers, 400
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bucks for a pair is not incredibly expensive. My whole set of
⏹️ ▶️ John speakers was like $400. Six speakers for that price.
⏹️ ▶️ John Speakers are kind of like watches, unfortunately, where you think if you’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John a watch person, you don’t really know how expensive watches are. And speakers are like, oh, I’m going to buy some speakers. much could they cost?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, what? Is this filled with diamonds? I don’t know. And those, you’re right, those are cheap in the grand scheme
⏹️ ▶️ John of things, but I was thinking, oh, bookshelf speakers and Marco likes them. Maybe they’re, you know, 50 bucks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Nope. Sorry. But come on. For good speakers, that is not
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not. You’re right. It’s not like they’re $900 each, but like when I hear bookshelf speakers I start thinking like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, this is for people who don’t want to spend big money on fancy speakers. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no, because I have, I’ve gotten, I’ve had two pairs over the years. The second pair of them is on my desk. These are like my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computer speakers because computer speakers are the biggest ripoff in the world. They are the worst. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my entire time using a computer ever since I have had a sound card, I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used regular speakers instead of computer speakers. Every time I’ve tried computer speakers, I have been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dramatically disappointed by how crappy they sound compared to how much they cost. Regular, even cheap
⏹️ ▶️ Marco regular speakers. Like, when I first started doing this, I just had like, it was like a little Pioneer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco integrated stereo thing that I just had like in my room like, you know, with like the two speakers and the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big unit in the middle that has like the cassette deck and the CD player all in one and the whole thing was probably like 200 bucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just used those speakers as my computer speakers and that sounded a million times better than anything else I’d
⏹️ ▶️ John ever heard. How are you amplifying them? You’re going through the big receivery thing yeah it’s a big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah and the ones on my desk now I have a second one of those tiny little like class D desktop amplifiers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that amplifies them just fine like there are better ways to amplify speakers but they’re all much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco larger and so you know you can you can do it I’ve tried powered monitors
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and powered monitors sound okay but these paradigm Adams again they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just kick their butts like it’s not even close they just had a million times better and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a pair of powered desktop speakers is not that much cheaper than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than these paradigms like you’re getting into the $400 territory pretty fast with those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they really don’t sound good I have never I even good ones like like from brands like like Klipsch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and KEF and and Bose and B&O like you know brands that that like have a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of fans and I know I know I shouldn’t put Bose in that list I’m sorry but it has a lot of fans
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I’ve I’ve tried a lot of these. In some cases, I’ve bought and returned them because they were so bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco For whatever reason, there seems to be very little correlation between
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how much you pay for a set of speakers and how good they sound. Everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has their one thing that, oh, I bought this one pair of these 60 years ago and they sound great. Once you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco find that, it’s really hard to try anything else because you try
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something else and you you get it and it’s on the worse end of the spectrum. I get the feeling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anybody can slap together some drivers into a box of particle board and say they’re a speaker manufacturer
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve been surprised by the speaker system. I got some Logitech speaker, typical desktop speaker,
⏹️ ▶️ John computer speakers for my PlayStation 4. And I’ve gone through a series of quote unquote computer
⏹️ ▶️ John speakers on my Mac and they all sound terrible including the ones that I’m currently using. But I don’t use them for anything, they’re fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know they were cheap, and they’re okay But for the ps4
⏹️ ▶️ John again. I’m playing games there, which is mostly like gunfire and explosions I was surprised
⏹️ ▶️ John at how good the 2.1. Set up late you know to stereo speakers and
⏹️ ▶️ John a Comically large subwoofer to get that all those explosions to sound good
⏹️ ▶️ John Makes a big difference when you know for a ps4 that you’re not playing on a TV that you have a gaming monitor You know 4k
⏹️ ▶️ John gaming monitor 2.1. Logitech speaker system and a ps4
⏹️ ▶️ John so much more impressive than just a ps4 hooked up to someone’s cruddy LCD TV
⏹️ ▶️ John playing through the TV speakers I don’t know if I can wholeheartedly recommend the product because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s kind of expensive and the power button flakes out but I did buy a second one when I got
⏹️ ▶️ John my ps4 pro and I shifted my old ps4 up to my son’s room I got
⏹️ ▶️ John a second one of the exact same speaker set even knowing that the power button is going to eventually flake out
⏹️ ▶️ John you just have to wavelength the right way and then it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is saying something though. If you’re willing to like re-buy the same thing a second time, that does say
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and again, this is after years and years of terrible computer speakers, often by Logitech, often
⏹️ ▶️ John by the same exact company. And I realized how much I like them when I went to get speakers and I’m like, oh no,
⏹️ ▶️ John what if they don’t make these anymore? Because that’s always the problem with computer speakers. If you find a set that you like and they break, they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John make them anymore. But they do still make them and I bought a second one and so and
⏹️ ▶️ John when mine eventually break, I will scavenge the new ones from my son’s room and use them. You know what’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco awesome about buying regular speakers? First of all, they’re for sale for more than like a year, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco second of all, they last forever. They really, you can get speakers that last 50
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years. Like, eventually the cones often dry out and have problems, but like, they last a long
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time because they’re just passive devices that they don’t, at least if they’re,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually if they’re really good, there’s no electronics in them. You know, there are circuits inside of them,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s like the crossovers and stuff, but there’s not much there,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they just last. And it’s like the Mac Pro thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like my iMac is having all these weird problems now, and I’m gonna have to like upgrade the entire computer if I want an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco upgrade, but like you get a decent pair of speakers, and if the amp flakes out,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can just replace the amp. If you want like bigger speakers, but you already have an awesome amp, you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco replace the speakers. like having components is turns out really nice, which like all of our
⏹️ ▶️ Marco parents discovered 40 years
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ago. Yeah, speaking of my dad, who is a huge stereophile and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know this because he believes in vinyl. Anyway, he has a set of Dalkwa speakers that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he tells me were in his dorm room when obviously he was effectively a kid.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, I’m sure the cones have been replaced on these, you know, and presumably whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey minimal electronics in there have been replaced from time to time. But to your point, Marco, I mean, these
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are 40-ish year old speakers that he is still using to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this day, not as his primary speakers on his nice stereo, but as the surround sound
⏹️ ▶️ Casey system in his accessory setup, if you will, his second setup.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So yeah, this stuff lasts forever.
⏹️ ▶️ John The other thing I find about speakers, though, is they’re very often ugly, that I
⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t want them sitting next to my computer. For TV, usually you can hide them, but some of them, especially the
⏹️ ▶️ John fancier they get, like even the boring ones, they’re just plain ugly. I don’t know why
⏹️ ▶️ John speakers need to look like anything except for like the world’s most understated rectangular solid.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like why do they need to be weird shaped or have things poking out of them or be shiny or
⏹️ ▶️ John draw any attention to themselves at all? So, and even the ones that are supposed
⏹️ ▶️ John to look like boring little cubes always have some little flourish or chamfer
⏹️ ▶️ John or other thing to make the boxes look weird and I wish they didn’t do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well there’s another reason why I love my Paradigm Adams because they come with you know the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the black cloth grills that you can just stick on there and then it just looks like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a boring speaker like it’s a black cloth rectangle sticking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the front of a wooden rectangular solid like That’s it. It’s very simple. It comes in like four different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco colors. Like it is again. It’s possible to do great speakers
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s got the wood grain if I’m looking at the right one here I can’t like because I wouldn’t I would not put that next to my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have it next my computer It looks great. And you can also get it without you can get it in different colors different finishes
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, they look nice with them without the speaker covers in the front very simple, but that would be fine But
⏹️ ▶️ John and they are just normal rectangular solids, but the wood grain I don’t like that’s part of the reason
⏹️ ▶️ John my current one of these I don’t even know what the hell they are They’re probably like creative. Yeah, they are created. This is
⏹️ ▶️ John terrible creative speakers. I have hooked up to my computer They look nice. No
⏹️ ▶️ John sound great, but they look okay. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Will say one of the most attractive speaker things I’ve ever seen was computer speakers It was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what was John you would know like those clear plastic carbon card and sticks with the big like lamp thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as the subwoofer Some sound sticks with a big
⏹️ ▶️ John jellyfish subwoofer.
⏹️ ▶️ John I like the subwoofer. That looked cool. Like the subwoofer did look like a jellyfish and
⏹️ ▶️ John it was really neat and clear or whatever. But the sound sticks, I didn’t like.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I still, I honestly, I’m not even sure I’ve ever even heard those. I have no idea how they sound. But I honestly think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that should go down in history of computer industrial design. Like that was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco such a great design.
⏹️ ▶️ John I like the cube speakers better in terms of visuals. Like, you remember the G4 Cube came with, like, these
⏹️ ▶️ John two little round balls that were just a single, single little cone
⏹️ ▶️ John of visual language of clear, but, you know, you could see the electronics. I thought
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco they were- Oh, I think I know what
⏹️ ▶️ John you mean, yeah. They nicely match the thing. The sound sticks always just seem, they just look like giant octopus
⏹️ ▶️ John tentacles. I know people, I think, is Dan Morin? I think some people we both
⏹️ ▶️ John know got those back in the day and still use them and still have them. To your point about component stuff, it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, what other stuff do you have from the era of the G4 Cube that you’re still using? But if they’re just plain old
⏹️ ▶️ John speakers, you can just keep using them, because they’re speakers and they work with every Mac that you buy and
⏹️ ▶️ John everything works out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s the thing, so many of, and even getting back to receivers and stuff, so many of the receivers these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco days, the receiver is integrating certain HDMI standards
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that go out of date quickly, certain, maybe it has network streaming standards, maybe it has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Bluetooth or AirPlay or integrates with like Pandora. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even my new TV now has dedicated hardware buttons on the remote for Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Video and Netflix and that’s probably not gonna age that well in the grand scheme of things if TVs still last 10 years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s nice to keep things, you give up on some of the cool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco integration of like having things all in one, that this one box does all these different things and has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco integrated Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, all this stuff, you give up on some of that if you go the separate component route.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s usually still a way to achieve it. You just might need multiple parts. But I feel like long-term,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re setting yourself up for a better outcome. And this is, again, why I really want to wait
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the Mac Pro Tower rather than buying the iMac Pro this winter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because I like having separate components because most of the time in my life I have done things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that way. and the few times I haven’t, I’ve usually come to regret it.
⏹️ ▶️ John But you won’t, you’ll buy the iMac Pro. So the SoundSticks
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco are still available, by the way.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re still for sale. The SoundSticks are only up to three. SoundSticks 3 by Harman Kardon. Wait, really?
⏹️ ▶️ John 170 bucks, you can order them right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s actually not that expensive for what that is.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, I think they look cool. I’ve never heard them, so I can’t vouch for how good they sound compared to anything. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can look at it, I mean, you can see the components, like, well, there’s that size driver for the subwoofer, and there’s these little
⏹️ ▶️ John tiny drivers for the left and right speakers and it is what it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The other thing is I have a feeling this is probably a design that looks better in pictures than it does like in real life
⏹️ ▶️ Marco covered in dust and with the plastic faded and cracked and scratched.
⏹️ ▶️ John I bet the plastic holds up pretty well, but I just don’t like how it even looks in pictures. Like I like the subwoofer, I think that’s a cute design,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the sound sticks, they look like octopus tentacles and I don’t like the little Cheerio life
⏹️ ▶️ John preserver bass thingies, don’t like them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I guess those little basses aren’t that great either. Damn, you know you’re ruining this for me. is why do I do a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John podcast just get the subwoofer and keep it on your desk
⏹️ ▶️ John as a curiosity but filled with M&Ms pour it down the little you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that’s the other funny
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part too is like you put subwoofers usually out of sight but the like on the floor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John you’re not supposed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have this anywhere where it’s visible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that is about
⏹️ ▶️ John subversive you can put them anywhere who’s to say you know you put them out of sight because usually there’s big black you know
⏹️ ▶️ John cubes that you just want to get rid of but this one is so nice put it on your desk and you know because humans
⏹️ ▶️ John cannot localize low frequency sound as as well as high frequency sound. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t matter where you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco put it. I will say on that though, I greatly prefer just big speakers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that have their own woofers that can produce the low frequencies well enough to the sound
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of little satellites and then one subwoofer somewhere in the room.
⏹️ ▶️ John have heard this from you before and I think your opinion of this is based on some very terrible 5.1
⏹️ ▶️ John setups early on. No,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no, my opinion of this is based on liking music. That’s what it is really. I totally agree with you that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if what you’re optimizing for is movies and TV sound, then having a subwoofer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is cooler. Like it sounds cooler that way. You get more of like the big booms from explosions and stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I don’t like the way music sounds through that kind of setup. I think it sounds weird
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and unnatural and not how that was intended. I would rather have speakers that are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty good at TV and movies and also really great at music
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than the opposite.
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Well you gotta get your, I mean you can choose your left and rights to be stand alone left and right channels that
⏹️ ▶️ John can reproduce all the frequencies. I mean your receiver usually controls like, you can control like the crossover of like what you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, you can shift the cutoff of which frequencies go to the subwoofer for mixes that don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John separately address it. But if you’ve got left and right channel speakers that can handle all the frequencies you don’t have to send anything
⏹️ ▶️ John to subwoofer in the case where you’re just playing music. Although multi-channel music is a thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Jason Snell’s house I heard was a crowded house 5.1 mix. It’s not everybody’s
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, but it is a thing. Thanks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for three sponsors this week, Betterment, Audible and Squarespace. we will see you next week.
Ending theme (summer special)
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And now the show is over, they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John to begin, Cause it was accidental, accidental, accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wouldn’t let him, Cause it was accidental, accidental, and it was
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental You can find the show notes at ATP.FM And
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re into Twitter, you can
⏹️ ▶️ John follow them At C-A-S-Y-M-I-S-S-K-C-S-M-A-R-C-O-E-R-M
⏹️ ▶️ Casey N-T-M-O-R-K-O-R-M-I-N-T-S-I-R-A-C
Post-show: Net neutrality
⏹️ ▶️ John we have a multi-channel vinyl 5.1 vinyl they
⏹️ ▶️ John even have stereo you just get you just buy
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco five records and you play them
⏹️ ▶️ John all at the same time like it was that the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco flame how is there stereo
⏹️ ▶️ John the flame lips did a thing where you buy it wasn’t it you buy two vinyl albums and you play them both at the same time
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey maybe the CDs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah let me like what I like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey let people enjoy things John
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m letting you enjoy thing I’m telling you you might enjoy a a thing where you get to play two records at the same time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Double the fun, right? It’s like double mint gum.
⏹️ ▶️ John And yeah, as the part of the challenge is, you know, you like the ceremony. Now you have a physical challenge
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco drop the needle.
⏹️ ▶️ John You have to drop the needle on the beginning track in exactly the same spot at exactly the right time because you don’t want the music to be out of sync.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Flaming Lips
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Was it Double Dare that had physical challenges? They actually phrased it as physical challenge.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes, that was Double Dare. I was going to make that reference, but I didn’t bother, but there you go. You got it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You proud of me, john?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All I want is for you to be proud of me, daddy.
⏹️ ▶️ John Did you read that story? By the way,
⏹️ ▶️ John there and there was the big like, you know, inside story of double dare. I think there was
⏹️ ▶️ John a separate story about like the video phone that you get as a prize and double dare.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know exactly the video phone you’re thinking of. I don’t recall having seen the story
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about that. But I did read and freaking loved
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the oral history of of Double
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which was actually written, which is a little weird. I mean, I guess it was— It sounds
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John written history.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly. But nevertheless, it was—I think there might have been an associated brief podcast,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I never bothered listening to. Maybe that’s what it was. It doesn’t matter. If you are a child or if you were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a child of the 80s and watched Double Dare on Nickelodeon, this is absolutely worth
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your time. It was a fantastic read.
⏹️ ▶️ John And now you have to find that link for the show notes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey already have it. This is my other job other than being chief summarizer and chief.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love Double Dare.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Double Dare was the best. And that’s the thing, like I’ve actually said to people, I don’t think I’ve ever said it on the show, but I’ve said to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people in real life, because apparently this isn’t real. But anyway, do you remember
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that when you were a kid, the grand prize from Double Dare
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was, as already mentioned, a video telephone where you would get two of them, I believe, and you could put one in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one person’s house and one in the other person’s house and you would get like a postage stamp and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s not much of an exaggeration, a postage stamp sized image that had a frame rate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of like one new image every five to 10 seconds. And that blew
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my mind when I was 10 or whatever. And now in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my pocket, I can have an HD call with anyone on the planet, anywhere I am.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, the future is amazing. You know, what else is amazing about the future? speaking of net neutrality.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Net neutrality is pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco amazing. Is it so amazing? You should play
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for it. I think it would be amazing if we maintain it. I think I’m not sure the future is going to be so amazing in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So true. So what’s going on with this? Why do we care about that today as we record on Wednesday
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t want to go through net neutrality all over again. I think people who don’t know what
⏹️ ▶️ John it is or what we’re talking about, there is a video. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a video from Vi Hart explaining net neutrality in her unique way.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s actually an updated version of an older video, which gets us more
⏹️ ▶️ John towards why we’re talking about this again, where she just took her old video and then bookended it by a
⏹️ ▶️ John preface and then the things that have changed. This is a battle that we thought we had, if not
⏹️ ▶️ John won, at least sort of got things moving in the right direction, but for a variety of depressing
⏹️ ▶️ John reasons, things are moving back in the wrong direction in these parts on seemingly all fronts
⏹️ ▶️ John and net neutrality is no exception so you get someone who used to be a
⏹️ ▶️ John lawyer for Verizon or whatever you get some industry person in to come in and do something that
⏹️ ▶️ John most people in the United States don’t want which is roll back net neutrality to make it so that big
⏹️ ▶️ John corporations can charge different amounts of money for different customers of the internet
⏹️ ▶️ John instead of just being a common carrier blah blah blah watch the video to have explained. The
⏹️ ▶️ John annoying thing about this is like you get fatigued. Like how much do
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to hear about and care about net neutrality? Like didn’t we go through this all where we all got all up in a tizzy
⏹️ ▶️ John and everyone write your congressperson and it seems like we’re doing that all the time and how many things can I possibly care about?
⏹️ ▶️ John And I don’t, you know, I’ve heard about net neutrality too much. I don’t even care anymore. Just don’t bother
⏹️ ▶️ John me. Or if you do want to do something about it, you’re like, well, what do I do? did a bunch of stuff last time to
⏹️ ▶️ John do the same stuff again architect has a good article here uh… entitled how to write
⏹️ ▶️ John a meaningful fcc comments supporting that neutrality now the depressed person in me who sees
⏹️ ▶️ John everything falling apart in this country these days uh… thanks it doesn’t matter
⏹️ ▶️ John how meaningful your comment the fcc is because the stupid horizon lawyers running things going to ignore and do whatever the
⏹️ ▶️ John help the corporations want because he doesn’t care what people want he doesn’t care what’s good for a long-term anything
⏹️ ▶️ John all he cares about is screwing everything up and that’s exactly why he was appointed to his position. Anyway, but
⏹️ ▶️ John if you are not in that type of dark mood for the moment that you read this article, this will help you do
⏹️ ▶️ John the best that you can possibly do. Instead of just clicking a bunch of buttons and filling out this thing, how can you write a meaningful
⏹️ ▶️ John comment that has a chance of influencing things? And who knows, it kinda sorta worked last time
⏹️ ▶️ John before everything started moving backwards again and it might work this time. So two links in the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes. One, watch Vi Hart’s video for, it’s not the best explanation of net neutrality because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John many faceted and a lot of times they pick an analogy like it’s kind of like if this happened and you know
⏹️ ▶️ John in some ways it’s better to just straight up explain it without analogy but the analogy she uses is reasonably
⏹️ ▶️ John representative even if it does gloss over a lot of things and there are other aspects to it but anyway watch that to have it explained
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s fun and interesting and if you already know what it is but you feel fatigued by the idea
⏹️ ▶️ John of trying to battle against this again give the how to write a meaningful
⏹️ ▶️ John comment thing I read to see if you can do more than just check a box or put your name on a list or Whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John but actually pour out a little bit of your heart and your angst and even your anger in
⏹️ ▶️ John the most constructive way possible And you know do what you can do
⏹️ ▶️ John To fight the same fight that we continue to be fighting over and over
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and over and over and over again There’s also a great video. It’s only about three and a half minutes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from CGP gray that was from the last time we were all at this exact same
⏹️ ▶️ Casey rodeo. This one’s from 2014, so maybe it wasn’t the last time, but you get my point.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is also very good. I’ve seen this ViHard video, or at least the original iteration thereof, probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also from 2014, which it is excellent as well. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s important. I think—well, I was going to say I think that anyone who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really has any inkling as as to what’s going on that isn’t paid by one of these big corporations will say net
⏹️ ▶️ Casey neutrality is the only way to go. But, you know, then we elected who we elected. So obviously people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think differently. So anyway, if you care about things like this podcast and you want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get it reasonably quickly and not have people get in the way of it, maybe talk to your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey representatives about net neutrality.
⏹️ ▶️ John And on that, by the way, a lot of the examples they give you of like, here’s what could happen if we didn’t have net neutrality,
⏹️ ▶️ John the difficulty is if you wanted to be like if you wanted to actually
⏹️ ▶️ John extrapolate like if you had to put money on it like what would actually happen if we’re back to neutrality it’s such a sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of systemic boil the frog kind of thing that we’re already halfway through
⏹️ ▶️ John to that is difficult to convince people exactly how bad it would be like like the things
⏹️ ▶️ John that we describe are like oh your podcast will download slowly right yeah that could happen but in general
⏹️ ▶️ John the powers that be the powers that are lobbying behind this that want this, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John they want to, you know, they want the net not to be neutral. Um, they’re not that dumb.
⏹️ ▶️ John They would do it in the same way they’ve done everything else. Like how do we all of a sudden wake up and find ourselves with only one ISP choice
⏹️ ▶️ John in like half the country, right? They did that slowly and insidiously by merging and lobbying to
⏹️ ▶️ John allow larger and larger companies to merge together. And it’s kind of like a thing like, what do I care if time
⏹️ ▶️ John Warner is purchased by whatever, or this cable company buys that I don’t care, whatever. I just want my TV. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John people don’t care at that level and slowly these giant giant companies are doing things behind the
⏹️ ▶️ John scenes that is making people’s lives like that is closing the door and things that can make people’s lives materially
⏹️ ▶️ John better you could have faster internet access for less money they’re like they’re essentially
⏹️ ▶️ John taking away something that you never had the back progress essentially like and you don’t know how
⏹️ ▶️ John cheap broadband is in the rest of the world and how other people have choices and how if you have a common carrier that people can actually compete
⏹️ ▶️ John based on price and features like if you’ve never experienced that it’s It’s a lack of something. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve never known it could be this way, therefore the lack of it doesn’t make me feel like I’m losing anything, but you are,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? That’s how they do it. And so if they made the net non-neutral and cut all these deals
⏹️ ▶️ John and extorted money from as they’ve already done from Netflix to get their bits to carry over the wires
⏹️ ▶️ John and startups that you’ve never heard of and never will hear of or are not allowed to enter against the big, like you will not notice,
⏹️ ▶️ John most people will not notice the lack of things that you could have had. But that is really the worst effect of
⏹️ ▶️ John this stuff. stuff that that people that you will never get because
⏹️ ▶️ John competition has been eliminated and you know people in the middle are extracting value
⏹️ ▶️ John from everybody else and it’s like you may have like a mid-level malaise like Oh Comcast
⏹️ ▶️ John is all I can get and I hate Comcast but it’s like oh you know I airlines you know airlines have a similar problem of
⏹️ ▶️ John monopoly and consolidation but anyway it’s it’s usually not as comically evil
⏹️ ▶️ John as like I I was watching my show and they turned it off and they’re not going to do that, right? They’re going to do
⏹️ ▶️ John it in a much more insidious way. And they’re going to end up, you know, finding a way to continue
⏹️ ▶️ John to charge you more for worse service and make you feel powerless against it. And you were like, how did how did we even get
⏹️ ▶️ John here? And like net neutrality is like the last batch and literally the last one because they’ve already got everything else that I just described.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is like, and if we could just get that one last little bit, and be able to be the gatekeeper for all internet
⏹️ ▶️ John content for the last mile for everybody, and we’ve already chased out all competition
⏹️ ▶️ John and consolidated our power structure we just need this last little bit that’s why everyone is fighting for this tooth and nail because it’s not as
⏹️ ▶️ John like we’re fighting for some sort of utopia we’re just trying to hold on to the last shred of what we have
⏹️ ▶️ John in this country and I’m sure people listening in other countries it’s better where you are but as with many
⏹️ ▶️ John things in the US for historical reasons and stupid governmental reasons
⏹️ ▶️ John many things are terrible and internet access is one of them and so send help.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s… I can’t say… I can’t add anything to that. That wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be just dark and depressing.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, if you want to be optimistic, as people pointed out, like the previous head of the FCC was also
⏹️ ▶️ John an industry person. And I mean, you know, we did all the public comment and we
⏹️ ▶️ John do all this rallying or whatever. Eventually we did, you know, we did get the result we wanted.
⏹️ ▶️ John Of course, that was a very different administration. And that’s where Marco gets depressed again and we all get depressed like that was a different
⏹️ ▶️ John administration but anyway the fact that we have made progress on this in the past
⏹️ ▶️ John means it is not 100% impossible that we can’t make progress on in the future and as we’ve learned
⏹️ ▶️ John administrations change right every 48 years so
⏹️ ▶️ John even if we lose this one we can still win the war unlike things like supreme i can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John even talk about supreme court justice is like this these are things that can change with the administration.
⏹️ ▶️ John So anyway, this is a great, we’ll be great
⏹️ ▶️ John at rallying people to political action by telling them exactly how useless everything they can possibly do
⏹️ ▶️ John we have to do it. It’s like, it’s like all we can do. We can vote. We can register
⏹️ ▶️ John to vote. We can vote. We can be active politically and we can do when they call for public
⏹️ ▶️ John comment on things and the FCC does publicly comment. You’re part of the public comment. That’s what it’s for.
⏹️ ▶️ John you think you’re gonna be ignored
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you think the FCC gives a crap about public comments like do you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John think like the kind of like like who in what part of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco population is asking for any of these laws that they’re trying to shove through like no one’s
⏹️ ▶️ John big companies big companies with a lot of money that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco right there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like four companies asking for it zero part of the population asking for it you know just like so much else that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going on There’s like no one is asking for this except the people passing the laws
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, there you have it. Another rousing episode of ATP. Enjoy.