235: Notch-Savvy
18 Aug 2017A a a a a Very Good Episode.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Always on vacation in... New York?
- Follow-Up:
- Mighty, the Spotify "iPod Shuffle"
- Audio bit depth
- "iPhone Pro" notch
- What happens in landscape?
- Why bother with a notch?
- 1Password backpedals a bit
- A a a a a Very Good Song
#askatp- Google's diversity "memo"
- Apple sets $1B budget for original TV/movies
- No more send-to-watch in Overcast
- Ending theme by Jonathan Mann
- Post-show: Marco's continued bike escapades
Sponsored by:
- Fracture: Photos printed in vivid color directly on glass. Get 10% off your first order.
- AfterShokz: Headphones powered by bone-conduction technology.
- Eero: Finally, Wi-Fi that works.
Chapters
- Intro
- Follow-up: Spotify Shuffle
- Follow-up: Audio bit depth
- More on the iPhone notch
- Sponsor: Eero (code ATP)
- Follow-up: Subscription pricing
- Follow-up: Apple TV calibration
- A a a a a Very Good Song
- Sponsor: Aftershokz
- #askatp
- James Damore manifesto
- Sponsor: Fracture
- Apple’s $1B for original video
- Overcast’s Send to Watch
- Ending theme
- After-show: Bike follow-up
Intro
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t see you out there, uh, swimming in the waves. In fact, I’ve never seen you swimming
⏹️ ▶️ John in them. You gotta… There’s a reason for that. That’s the next level of your beach education, learning how to swim in the ocean.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s unlikely. Because the ocean is full of things that eat you and stuff. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not going to eat you, it’s fine. Don’t you see all the people playing? They live, they go back to their homes, it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, every day,
⏹️ ▶️ John every day, the jellyfish are just taking people.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we haven’t spoken to each other in like a week and a half, two weeks, something like that. But we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are back together again, back on the normal schedule. We’ll be back on the normal schedule, as far as we know, for at least a little while,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably until the holidays start picking up. And you know, if things are going to go back to normal, we have to do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what we always do, and that is your favorite segment and mine, and especially John’s.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ask ATP? Yeah, that’s it. No, it’s follow-up. So, yeah.
Follow-up: Spotify Shuffle
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we are starting with the streaming music iPod shuffle like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing, which is apparently something that Spotify, I don’t know if it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for, is it first party? I don’t know. Anyway, it’s a thing that’s for Spotify that’s called
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mighty, which is a peculiar name that is basically an iPod shuffle, but for Spotify
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from what I’ve gathered. So John, can you tell me a little more about this?
⏹️ ▶️ John Everybody sent us links to this thing and then eventually the Verge picked it up too. That’s what
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll link in the show notes because we’re talking about the place in
⏹️ ▶️ John the market for something like an iPod shuffle. But this doesn’t really qualify because first
⏹️ ▶️ John of all it’s not 50 bucks it’s 85. Second it does not have cell data access, it only
⏹️ ▶️ John has wi-fi and bluetooth. So you know we’re saying last show was the last show maybe a show
⏹️ ▶️ John before that you know eventually you’ll be able to make one of these for 50 bucks that can just stream music.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’re not there yet but this one definitely looks like it doesn’t look like an iPod Shuffle. It
⏹️ ▶️ John looks like a Fisher Price versus an iPod Shuffle. In fact, it’s probably better. This
⏹️ ▶️ John is the thing I was annoying about the Shuffles that it’s so minimal and you needed to like feel
⏹️ ▶️ John your hand on it to do like a volume up or down or next previous track right you could find the middle button pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John well but because it was a circle trying to make sure that you’re hitting up
⏹️ ▶️ John on the circle instead of right or left which can be very bad if you’re in the middle of a podcast especially
⏹️ ▶️ John before they got the software updated or if your track got rid wasn’t marked as a podcast in iTunes and
⏹️ ▶️ John it was just a song and you hit the button and just lose your place entirely uh you couldn’t feel with your finger
⏹️ ▶️ John what is up and what is down this one’s a little bit better because the center thing is a square so you could feel the flat
⏹️ ▶️ John edge anyway um it’s just another uh coincidence of
⏹️ ▶️ John a product that is kind of like what we’re talking about but not really like it So we’ll come back in 10 years.
Follow-up: Audio bit depth
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Marco, tell me about audio bit depth, because apparently we got that ever so slightly wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I wouldn’t say that. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey here we go.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So last year, we had some discussion about whether Apple should or ever will sell higher resolution
⏹️ ▶️ Marco music, you know, so like, because like the audiophile world loves high bit rate, high sample rate music, like 24, 192,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and stuff like that. So Amaya Matra writes in to say, well, I understand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco higher resolution audio isn’t for everybody. I was disappointed that you guys get the basic terminology wrong. Given the technical bias of your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco show and audience, a followup item addressing the difference between bit depth and bit rate would be appreciated.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Um, so basically, so bit rate is how many bits a,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a, an, a an encoding scheme is using, you know, usually per second to encode the total music.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So in a lossy scheme, this basically like MP3, there would be like 128 kilobits per second. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is just like the quality level of the music that you’re getting. It’s how many bits it will allocate to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco representing it. And usually the more bits you allocate to it, the higher quality you can achieve and the less you have to throw
⏹️ ▶️ Marco away. Bit depth is basically talking about how precise the samples
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are. You know, everybody can kind of picture what a wave looks like. And that’s how sound waves come in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and are represented in the uncompressed form. This actually doesn’t apply to things like MP3
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quite the same way because the way the sound is represented is different. But basically,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you’re looking at just a pure waveform and the way that’s represented in like a lossless file
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or a wave or AIFF, every sample of audio, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have like the sample rate of like, you know, 44,100 samples per second or whatever else represented as hertz, every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of those samples, it’s representing the amplitude of that wave as a number.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the bit depth is the precision of those numbers. So if it’s 16-bit like CDs, then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is represented by a 16-bit signed integer. If it’s 24-bit, you have more bits. If it’s usually,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think a 24, or I think beyond 24, I think it’s always float, and you have floating-point
⏹️ ▶️ Marco representations. And the reason these matter is that as you’re encoding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the music to these samples, you have to fit a number, the value
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you’re getting from the analog or whatever, you have to fit the value of that into this many bits
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a number per sample. And so there’s a certain degree of rounding that happens and a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco certain degree of error that’s introduced as part of that rounding. If you only have 16 bits, then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that kind of limits your resolution of how precise of a number
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can represent there. And so there’s all sorts of complicated things that go on in DAX and ADCs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about basically how you round the numbers in such a way to minimize the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco error or to hide the error in different noise patterns and everything else.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As you increase the error rate, you increase the noise floor. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you reduce the signal to noise ratio. That’s the difference between the loudest sound you can hear and the quietest sound that can be represented
⏹️ ▶️ Marco below the noise floor. So you basically increase the hiss level at the very bottom of the track.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The reason why audiophiles freak out about this is because when you go from 16-bit to 24-bit,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is where they usually go, the noise floor does drop considerably. There’s a great Wikipedia article titled
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Audio Bit Depth, you should check it out. Basically the noise floor at 24 bits for bit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco depth is 144 decibels, and at 16 bits, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco regular CD standard, it’s only 96. So that’s a pretty big difference. However,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the reason this doesn’t really matter for the most part is that 96 decibels of signal-to-noise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ratio covers the human audible hearing range pretty well. The actual human audible hearing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco range is something like 120 decibels. It varies per person a little bit, but it’s around 120 decibels. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it actually isn’t representing the entire human audible hearing range, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you don’t want to turn your speakers up so loud that you’re actually damaging your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco eardrums. Like the human hearing range can go much higher in volume
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than what you actually should ever be listening to on a sustained basis. Like that’s like, you know, a rock concert
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or a jet airplane flying overhead or things like that. If you listen at any reasonable length
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to something that loud, you’re gonna damage your hearing pretty quickly, permanently. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 90s Accessibles of signal-to-noise ratio, which is what you get from CD quality 16-bit audio,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is good enough upon listening. Where it matters is if you are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco editing. If you’re recording, like I record, my end of the show is 24-bit. I record
⏹️ ▶️ Marco audio 24 bit whenever I can, or as float even, whenever I can, which is 32 bit usually, because when you’re editing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re changing the numbers, you’re processing the audio. And so if you have rounding error, over time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that could add up after you apply a certain number of filters or adjustments or anything like that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then that 96 decibels of noise floor that was in the original signal, once you process it a few times and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re rounding off the numbers a few more times, you might actually have more error in the signal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than that, and the noise floor might start to become audible. So where higher bitrate audio
⏹️ ▶️ Marco makes sense is in mastering and editing and recording. But the final shipped version
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you release to the public or the version that you, the listener, are listening to doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need to be more than 16-bit for almost any reason whatsoever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Sorry. Well, that solves that. No. It’s as though,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, that you really care about audio. I don’t understand where this comes from.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you want, also, there’s a wonderful video that explains a lot of this. There’s a guy, Monti,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think his full name is Chris Montgomery, he is either the guy or one of the people who invented
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the AugVorbis audio codec. And he has a lot of great explainers out there about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically like why you don’t need higher than CD quality audio as a listener. And explains
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of that stuff. I learned a lot from that and some other research, but we’ll put both these links in the show notes, both that video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the Wikipedia article on audio bit depth.
More on the iPhone notch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we had a couple of thoughts or listeners had a couple of thoughts about the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro notch And I’m embarrassed to admit that there’s one thought that I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey consider So I’m in the camp that I think not having seen anything Of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey course that it makes the most sense to to kind of hide the notch So hypothetically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the area adjacent to the notch would be all black So it would all kind of blend together and it would just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey look like empty screen in the center and it would look not too dissimilar from the way a phone looks today.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But somebody, maybe it was one of you guys, thought, well, okay, smart guy, what happens when you go landscape?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I don’t have a good answer for that. So I’m really ashamed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of myself that I didn’t even think about this until I saw this in the show notes. So, Marco, what do you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think about what happens when you put this supposed phone in landscape?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So obviously it depends on like how they handle the notch in the UI. If the notch is basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hidden and you just have like status bar black on left and right and then you have like a square window
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Below it that takes up the rest of the screen Which as I mentioned previously, that’s what I kind of hope they do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If that’s what they do, then I think it’s pretty easy in landscape You just leave
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those little strips black and you don’t use them at all That’s probably not what they will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do. I have a feeling what they actually will do is, you know shove translucent UI under
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those and have ways to actually use it in a way that might be kind of awkward.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now in landscape, the only reason I think anybody uses their phones in landscape, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think probably the big ones are watching video, although even that a lot of people watch it in portrait anyway
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just because that’s how they are used to holding their phones. Also certain games play in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco landscape, although again I think the most successful ones play in portrait on the phone. And then the other thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is I guess when you’re taking video or shooting with the camera, you might rotate it. So all those things could,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they could make ways to use the notch in a few clever ways
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like maybe a game could shove some controls in there, maybe the camera can shove some controls in there. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have a feeling most of what we’re going to see is basically going to be in landscape, the notch just becomes black
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you don’t see it at all.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think you can’t Can’t do anything with the notch in landscape because
⏹️ ▶️ John Anything that you would think of doing would represent data loss to the content and in portrait
⏹️ ▶️ John the status bar is not your content It’s part of the UI so you can do whatever dance you want to do with the status bar whether
⏹️ ▶️ John you know hides in there Or the status bar is the blow or whatever, but If you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John in landscape and you’re doing video or something Even if the OS lets you go edge to edge and use
⏹️ ▶️ John the notches, what if you want to see what’s under the camera things? It’s like, oh, something’s in my way.
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t I can’t see what the camera is shooting there. I know maybe that’s not important What was there was something
⏹️ ▶️ John that I was angry about? Oh, I think it was like QuickTime player Many years
⏹️ ▶️ John ago, maybe still now. I don’t know. I still use QuickTime player 7, but at one point Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John I believe Apple released a video player, I think it was the QuickTime player, that would
⏹️ ▶️ John show video in a window with rounded corners. And it was like,
⏹️ ▶️ John what’s, like, don’t chop off the corners. Like, there’s video in those corners. Why, not that there’s a lot of video,
⏹️ ▶️ John but there is video there. And he’s like, no, you don’t need to see that. Because it’s more important for this window to have rounded corners than
⏹️ ▶️ John for you to see the video that’s in that corner. And I know it’s just a small thing, but just
⏹️ ▶️ John on the principle, it’s like, If you do that, I don’t even have the option
⏹️ ▶️ John to see what’s under
⏹️ ▶️ John notch, right? So I think you have to just when you go into landscape.
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like the OS should just enforce entirely. Maybe games can come up with something clever to do like little men climb on the notch,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Or the notch is like a little gun turd or something. But
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey beyond that, that’d
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco be awesome. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, because you can incorporate it and be fun, but it would only work in this one model of phone. It’s just so much safer
⏹️ ▶️ John to say when it goes in landscape, forget about the notch. don’t light up the pixels on either side of it the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John is just you know it’s just a straight line down the edge I also saw by the way
⏹️ ▶️ John another mock-up image for a while ago showing screen real estate
⏹️ ▶️ John wise what do you get with the edge to edge phone and I know this can’t be true because this one’s got to be wider than the iPhone 7
⏹️ ▶️ John too but it was like basically trying to say you don’t really get any new space
⏹️ ▶️ John because all the new pixels on the bottom are taken up ostensibly with the home button area and whatever they’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John do there and this thing was assuming that like the UI nav bar wasn’t gonna throw stuff there
⏹️ ▶️ John and in the top you’ve got the notch and Then you got a little sliver of space
⏹️ ▶️ John and then you’ve got the normal iPhone size screen in between those two things and a little sliver of space was like
⏹️ ▶️ John look like a little status bar so the idea was that I guess if you had a non-optimized
⏹️ ▶️ John for iPhone Pro application It would show its status bar below
⏹️ ▶️ John the notch in the traditional way because between the bottom of the notch and the top of the software home
⏹️ ▶️ John button area Would would be a screen that is the same resolution as some existing iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway That’s that’s the impression I got from this image but the more I think about it the more I think I can’t possibly be the case because at
⏹️ ▶️ John the very least it should be wider with any other stuff, but It would be weird if there
⏹️ ▶️ John was like a backward compatibility mode for unmodified apps that were not like
⏹️ ▶️ John like, notch savvy, you know what I mean? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, and he was like, Apple wouldn’t do that, it’s inelegant. They, you know, phone apps run at 2X on your iPad to this day,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it looks terrible. And they Zoom things that have not been updated for the iPhone 5,
⏹️ ▶️ John for like, in the past they’ve done that, and it’s been a good choice, because like, like if people don’t update
⏹️ ▶️ John their apps, we’ll make them run as close as possible to the way they used to run. So the app has no idea that it’s running
⏹️ ▶️ John on a totally new, weird phone, it just looks a little bit strange, but it’s completely compatible
⏹️ ▶️ John because we don’t do anything weird. And I can imagine that happening with this new phone,
⏹️ ▶️ John which will be bad, but I guess it’ll motivate people to incorporate the notch into their applications.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. Now, why bother having the notch in the first place?
⏹️ ▶️ John Again, this is one of my thoughts. Why are we doing this?
⏹️ ▶️ John Why do we have a notch? Like the edge-to-edge screen, all right, yeah, we want to have an edge-to-edge screen,
⏹️ ▶️ John Why do we have to have a notch on that? You can go all the way to the left edge, all the way to the right edge, and all the way to the bottom
⏹️ ▶️ John edge. All you had to do is not go all the way to the top edge. Instead of having a notch, you have
⏹️ ▶️ John a presumably very thin little forehead. It would still be
⏹️ ▶️ John a quote unquote edge to edge screen as compared to all iPhones previously which had very large
⏹️ ▶️ John chins and foreheads, right? The notch is asymmetrical and so would
⏹️ ▶️ John the skinny little forehead version.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey But it would last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey asymmetrical john.
⏹️ ▶️ John well, but you know, the whole point is, there’s something on top is not on the bottom, whether it’s a skinny thing that’s on the top of the
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway. And it would just it would just eliminate an entire class of weird software problems.
⏹️ ▶️ John So presumably, Apple has done a lot of work in the OS and in the frameworks, figuring out the answer
⏹️ ▶️ John to all these questions that we’re just guessing at now, right? They’ve done, they’ve figured out answers to all of these, they’ve decided what they’re to do
⏹️ ▶️ John in all these different cases, tested applications, test the new API, so you can be not savvy and do all
⏹️ ▶️ John this stuff, right? All that work would go away if they just made that notch go from edge to
⏹️ ▶️ John edge. But I guess the phone wouldn’t look as cool. And then, you know, I don’t know, like, does
⏹️ ▶️ John anyone else have a notch? Is Apple going to be the first notch? I know there are phones out there that already look like edge to edge screen,
⏹️ ▶️ John but with a little skinny forehead. So maybe Apple just didn’t want to look like that. Can’t innovate anymore my ass.
⏹️ ▶️ John This would be one of those things where if Apple was like other companies
⏹️ ▶️ John and like you could, they have like interviews with the designers like you get the whole team that designed
⏹️ ▶️ John the new iPhone and they’d have to do a big article like Wired or something and be like tell me about your motivation for designing
⏹️ ▶️ John that and they would like explain why they went with the notch, right? But we never get those reasons. It’s like this is
⏹️ ▶️ John the phone, here it is. Maybe there’s a sentence in a keynote about it which Apple will never
⏹️ ▶️ John ever elaborate on. And like, so we just, you know, we just have to wait 20 years
⏹️ ▶️ John for the tell all books, but it’s a bit of a head scratcher for me because I think it looks
⏹️ ▶️ John cool at the notch. I think there’s going to be some interesting possibilities there, but it is a heck of a lot of work.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it seems like a stop gap, like are we going to have notches forever? Presumably
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever tech issues necessitate the notch will diminish over time.
⏹️ ▶️ John either you’re able to embed those sensors someplace else, or you’d be able to make such a skinny forehead that it won’t even be a forehead, and it’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John just be like, thing goes to edge to edge, or I don’t know, this is not the permanent state of, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John will all future iPhones have notches for the next seven years? There’s just gonna be notches from here to there, but
⏹️ ▶️ John again, doing all this work with the OS and everything, it would seem like a waste if it’s just like,
⏹️ ▶️ John remember that time we rejiggered all the frameworks on the OS for this one phone, and it was the only one that
⏹️ ▶️ John ended up having a notch? I don’t know. We’ll find out in the fall, I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, this is why what I want to happen, although I don’t think this is what will happen again, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I want to happen here is I want the notch to basically be invisible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the software. Like, I want it to just have a status bar on left and right. Then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you get the extra 20 point height that the status bar would have taken up in the main screen. You can shove that up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into this little side area where there is no center, but you can rearrange the status bar, and then the application
⏹️ ▶️ Marco frame is just everything below that. I would love that that was a solution. I don’t want,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a user and as a programmer of apps for this thing, and as a designer of the app, I do not want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have to deal with the notch. I think it will be clunky and weird, and I think it will look weird as a user.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not looking forward to that at all, and I do think it looks like an inelegant hack,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and if Samsung would have released that notch and Apple didn’t, we’d make fun of them for it. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exactly the kind of thing we’d be like, oh, you guys are bad at design, at this stupid notch, just like the flat tire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Moto 360 watch. We made fun of that relentlessly. Everyone in Apple world did,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because that was a bad design hack to get around a physical shortcoming.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t see how the notch is any different. That looks like a bad design hack to get around a physical shortcoming to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Again, we’ll see what happens when we see the final software, but I really do not want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the UI in any way to wrap around that except the status bar in a way that you barely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even notice. But because of that leaked image from the HomePod firmware showing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that notch as like the recognizable iconic shape of this phone, that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reason I’m concerned that they’re not doing it that way.
⏹️ ▶️ John That must be the lock screen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you said. Yeah, maybe just the lock screen. That wouldn’t be too bad. But if it’s any other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco parts of the UI, like if they scroll translucent bars under there or anything like that, I really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think I’m going to like that. Again, that seems like that seems like a bad design hack not
⏹️ ▶️ John So people in the chat room are posting pictures of of course Android phones that have their own little notches. The
⏹️ ▶️ John one they’re showing here is a very tiny notch it just wraps around one little front facing camera because obviously the
⏹️ ▶️ John you know why does the new phone supposedly have a notch instead of just this little tiny button
⏹️ ▶️ John like cutout because it’s got to have more than just a camera there maybe it’ll have two front facing cameras certainly it’s got the IR
⏹️ ▶️ John sensor for depth of the face stuff like who knows what’s in that notch but it can’t be as small as this but anyway
⏹️ ▶️ John as in all things android phones have done it first.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I think actually Simpsons did it first John. Then Opera. Then Opera.
⏹️ ▶️ John did it is the line. Opera did it first is that joke so I think Opera wins
⏹️ ▶️ John this one. Thank you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Did you really just well actually me? You sure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey sad part is he’s
Sponsor: Eero (code ATP)
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Eero. Go to Eero.com and use code ATP for free
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overnight shipping. Wi-Fi, when you only have one router, just doesn’t cover houses
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very well. Because Wi-Fi waves don’t go through walls as well as they go through open spaces, and you get these dead zones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything else. Eero is designed to solve that problem. Because businesses and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco schools and campuses have done this for a long time, they use multiple access points. And if you did this for your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco home, it was very, very complicated before Eero. Eero makes it incredibly easy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have a distributed Wi-Fi system, enterprise-grade Wi-Fi, in your home
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the easiest setup of any system I’ve ever seen. All you do, you plug it in, you use their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app on your iPhone or your Android phone, and it sets it up and you have to do literally almost nothing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you get the one main unit, and they’ve actually just updated their hardware. The old ones are great too,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but they just did the Generation 2 system. So this has the main unit, which is now tri-band
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and twice as fast as the first one. Has a whole other radio. You have these now, these secondary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco units. They used to be the same as the main unit. Now they have these little ones called beacons.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they are even smaller, even simpler. They look like, kind of just slightly larger than a nightlight. And you just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plug it in and it sits flush in your outlet. It looks amazing. It’s tiny. It’s unobtrusive. They even actually have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nightlights in the bottom of the beacons, which is pretty cool. So if you put it like in a hallway or anything. And it makes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it so easy to place anywhere. And that covers the whole house. And they don’t have to be wired to each other.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Only the first one has to be wired to your home’s internet connection. And the other ones, they distribute
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the wifi with a mesh network between themselves. So you don’t have to worry about running ethernet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wires to your access points or anything else. It’s super, super easy. With the new second
⏹️ ▶️ Marco generation and the era beacon, performance is even better and the looks are even nicer and it’s even smaller.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What you need is this kind of system. routers are not good enough anymore. They don’t cover houses. We
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all know that. We’ve all done that for years. No matter how many antennas you put on one, it doesn’t cover everything. And Eero
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is by far the easiest way to do this I’ve ever seen. So check it They have great support if you need it. They have great
Follow-up: Subscription pricing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go to Eero.com and use promo code ATP to get free overnight
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shipping. Thanks to Eero for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, Rustam Karamov of 1Password, I believe a co-founder if I’m not mistaken,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has written a blog post to say, among other things, 1Password 7 for Windows will be getting support for standalone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey vaults, which is the thing that started the big kerfuffle a few weeks ago. Also,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey WLAN sync and different license related information. John, any other thoughts
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you want to add on this?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, just that this is another in the pattern we’ve seen for a couple of years
⏹️ ▶️ John now. A company will change some part of its product, either the features or the
⏹️ ▶️ John business model or both, and then a bunch of people get angry about it. And then there’s always
⏹️ ▶️ John the follow-up where they’ve incorporated the feedback from their customers. they were
⏹️ ▶️ John taken by surprise by how, you know, angry people are about a particular thing. And they are, right, well, we
⏹️ ▶️ John can change that. And you want to reassure people that like, we’re not going to, you know, the subscription thing is not going to take away your
⏹️ ▶️ John ability to have all your stuff locally, you don’t have to use the cloud, so on and so forth. So looks like they are
⏹️ ▶️ John doing the right things.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I saw a lot of feedback about this. A lot of people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey talked about well, Well, if everything goes subscription, then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not going to have any money for anything anymore. And I don’t know, I feel like we should address
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that perhaps again. I don’t know. Did we talk about this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John before? I think Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John covered it the last time we talked about it. I agree. It’s fresh in my mind.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s fresh in my mind because I listened to those shows just recently to catch up on them. But yeah, like, I mean, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of a slippery slope argument, but so far it hasn’t happened. And there’s a natural
⏹️ ▶️ John counterbalance, which is, well, if people don’t like it, they won’t buy it. And if they don’t buy it, people won’t do it. So there
⏹️ ▶️ John aren’t many forces in the mix here that are going to cause
⏹️ ▶️ John this dystopia to happen, despite the fact that users don’t want it. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John possible for there to be countervailing forces, for example, if Apple said, hey, guess what? The only way you could sell applications in
⏹️ ▶️ John the App Core is through subscription. But that’s not the way things are. So it’s not time
⏹️ ▶️ John to be worried about it now. Don’t like it, don’t buy it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly, exactly what I was gonna say. If something that you like but don’t love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey suddenly becomes subscription, then guess what? You have an option, which is not to get a subscription.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s okay. The one thing I will say though is that if an app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey goes from not subscription to subscription, like there’s no way around that, that’s going to happen from time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to time. And that is tough, right? Because here it is, you thought you paid for something in some cases that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you would have for a while, though you should not have expected that you have it forever. And then the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cost changes, and that’s a bummer. I don’t mean to be sarcastical at all about that. That really
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s different trade-offs too. Like that one person who said, like, what if I lose my job, I don’t want to also lose all
⏹️ ▶️ John my programs because I can’t afford to pay their monthly bills anymore. Well, you know, that’s the model. Like, what if I lose my
⏹️ ▶️ John job, I don’t want to lose cable TV because I can’t afford the bill anymore. Well, you know, it’s like, well, I need the software to do my job.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, presumably every single application in an entire category won’t be subscription,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Or even if it is, maybe they’ll have varying subscriptions. And right now, the subscriptions are like $3
⏹️ ▶️ John a month, so I feel like if you can’t script together $3 a month, you have much bigger problems than not being able to use your
⏹️ ▶️ John graphics program to produce spec work, which you shouldn’t be doing anyway to get your next job.
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, in times of hardship, many things are difficult.
⏹️ ▶️ John From paying your rent to your food to your health insurance, your software licenses are just another
⏹️ ▶️ John one of those potential things that could be a problem. But if there’s a need for this,
⏹️ ▶️ John and if this is a real problem, someone will fill it by selling a program for a fixed price
⏹️ ▶️ John and selling upgrades in the traditional way or going out of business because they
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t sustain their one application. But hey, you’ve got it until it stops working.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, there’s always options too. at what like high school kids and college kids and people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in developing countries like there’s a lot of markets of people who can’t afford a bunch of software
⏹️ ▶️ Marco licenses or subscriptions and they find other options. Piracy maybe is not the best option
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s certainly a widespread one. A much better option is free software alternatives.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Almost every kind of task you can do in a computer today has some kind of free software alternative
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the big name one. Photoshop, Illustrator, you know, audio processing stuff like all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All these big creative apps or productivity apps, they almost all have freeware alternatives,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco free open source, if not just free alternatives. Not to mention
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the stuff built into the OS’s these days, or doing things on iOS and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Android where the apps cost very, very little money usually, and usually you buy it once
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if anything and it’s free and you can do a lot of free stuff there, or do a lot of inexpensive stuff there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with tools that are really good these days. There’s lots of options now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the I can’t afford all my software subscriptions thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is mostly a complaint from people who very much can afford them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and are just looking for a reason to be upset about a pricing change because when you change the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco business model, that’s when people get upset. It matters a lot less what you change it to than the fact
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you changed it and people feel maybe surprised or caught off guard by that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or feel like they’re being taken advantage of like after the fact, you’re changing the deal, you know, after the fact, you know, I know, pray
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you don’t alter it further, etc. I don’t, again, I don’t think this is a real issue. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think this is something that anybody is actually facing hardship over in any real numbers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is people complaining who very much can’t afford it and are just mad. And for the people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who truly can’t afford it, there’s lots of great options out there that are either inexpensive or free.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And many of them are built into the OS you already have, and whatever isn’t, you can get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in your app store of choice or your online repository of software of choice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for very little money or nothing usually. Because this is not like, people have used computers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco without paying for things on them for a very long time. This is a solved problem in
Follow-up: Apple TV calibration
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Jaro wants to know is there any reason not to use the built-in calibration tools on the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey TV? You can get to that from the Apple TV settings audio and video calibrate
⏹️ ▶️ John you can use them, but they’re terrible. I mean like they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Of course, they’re not terrible. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John limited like I think it all it does is like screen bounds
⏹️ ▶️ John and maybe like one other thing like it doesn’t do all the color,
⏹️ ▶️ John white balance, gray scale, brightness, contrast, you know, it doesn’t do all that stuff. If they want
⏹️ ▶️ John to improve that in the future versions of the video also it would be great, but the current one and I believe the one
⏹️ ▶️ John in the betas is still just very limited. It’s better than nothing, so by all means
⏹️ ▶️ John do it and so you can see if you’re in a Casey like situation where you’re missing half the pixels on your screen, because, not half, but some
⏹️ ▶️ John portion of the pixels on your screen because you have your thing in overscan mode, And that may make you
⏹️ ▶️ John sad to know that, but beyond that, you still need a calibration
A a a a a Very Good Song
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fine, fine. All right. Apparently, Samir Mizrahi
⏹️ ▶️ Casey listens to our show, or at least that’s what I’m going to claim, because mere weeks,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe even a few days after we had discussed how frustrating it is to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hear the first song in your library every time you reconnect via Bluetooth, this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey individual has released a single on iTunes called, A-A-A-A-A,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Very Good Song. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John it is- I love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this so much. a little less than 10 minutes of silence because apparently any more than 10 minutes and iTunes charges you for a whole
⏹️ ▶️ Casey album. And the idea is because it’s a space, a space, a space, a space, a space,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very good song. It is very likely to be the very first song in your library.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So every time you plug in your phone or start Bluetooth or what have you,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you don’t hear the same in my case, track by Aaliyah every single time. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is an absolutely brilliant solution a problem that none of us should really have.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My favorite thing about this is how far up the charts it was climbing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We saw some articles about it here and there. I don’t have anything handy, unfortunately, because I’m a slacker on vacation.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it was noticeably ranking on the iTunes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco top singles chart somewhere.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why are you not allowed to start with a space or a punctuation character
⏹️ ▶️ John or a number or all the other things that would have sorted before the A’s because I feel like now now this is now you’ve started
⏹️ ▶️ John a war now for who can be the earliest right no don’t get that a track you need my
⏹️ ▶️ John track which is one one one I don’t get my it’s it’s space space space exclamation point
⏹️ ▶️ Marco um I feel like that’s kind of like a like a million dollar homepage problem like it anybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else who tries the same thing is it’s not gonna get anywhere
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah I’m just saying for sorting purposes not for like actually selling the thing um
⏹️ ▶️ John but But you know, everyone sent us this obviously, but it doesn’t solve the problem at all. In fact, I think it makes it
⏹️ ▶️ John worse. The fact that it’s silent makes it worse because I if I had this track, I would be like,
⏹️ ▶️ John waiting and thinking, am I hearing the silent track? Or is it just taking a long time to start playing?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like is it launching overcast in the background? And like, you know, the problem is not,
⏹️ ▶️ John I keep hearing the first, you know, few notes of a song, because alphabet the alphabetically first
⏹️ ▶️ John song in my playlist, I like it’s a good song and I’m not sick of it because I never listened to the whole thing I
⏹️ ▶️ John frustrated by the fact that it has picked the wrong source and by the way after I said like oh most of the time
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the right thing maybe 15% of the time I get the wrong thing this thing is taking revenge on me
⏹️ ▶️ John and in my last like 50 trips in the car
⏹️ ▶️ John percent of the time it has started playing music even if I was just playing I don’t know if it’s the overcast beta is crashing
⏹️ ▶️ John or I don’t know what the hell’s going on but anyway it’s really bad for me but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wait there is no current beta you should be using the app store version
⏹️ ▶️ John oh that’s the problem do I have a little dot next to overcast on my phone? I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco see. That’s a bug dot right now.
⏹️ ▶️ John I do have a dot next to overcast.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Ah, get rid of that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Alright, anyway maybe that’s my problem but either way this track would not solve my problem and I mean what it should really
⏹️ ▶️ John be is a voice that says it happened again. You thought
⏹️ ▶️ John different audio would be playing but instead it’s playing this song from your playlist. Pull over safely
⏹️ ▶️ John and then fiddle with your phone. Don’t try to do it while you’re driving because you’ll run somebody over or you’ll die.
⏹️ ▶️ John But you’d then you’d be sick of hearing that. Bottom line is there is no safe track to put there and I don’t think the silent one solves the problem. I think it
⏹️ ▶️ John makes it worse, but more power to this person for selling people the sounds of silence.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, a I don’t know how to sell music on iTunes, but can we cut that out and actually try this and then be the way to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco solve this. I know we have some listeners inside of Apple. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know how high up they go. But the way to solve this is to somehow get a hold of Johnny
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ives or Tim Cook’s iPhone and sync a single track to it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is a renamed version of some very annoying song that is renamed to be like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ay ay ay ay ay. I don’t know, the possibilities are endless of what song
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this could be. ♪ My, ay ay, my, ay ay ooh, my,
⏹️ ▶️ John ay, my, ay ay, uh, uh. ♪ You know, something that would really drive them nuts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This problem will get solved in the next version of iOS.
⏹️ ▶️ John Phil’s car will just be, can’t innovate more my ass on a loop. Oh my word.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we actually did get some feedback about this and this individual wrote to say,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Bluetooth has two major ways to start playback in a car. The good old simple play command and a newer set of advanced
⏹️ ▶️ Casey browsing commands that allows the car to control the apps and navigate the media library on the phone. With a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey play command, the active media player is chosen by the phone, and that from time to time gets a little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey buggy. According to this person, it is quite likely that this whole little subsystem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was written by one person who may have then been moved somewhere else within Apple, and who even knows.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But with the new browsing stuff, then the car can decide how it wants to select, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like the active media player and a playlist and an album and blah, blah, blah. And so now you’re letting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the car make choices that it probably shouldn’t be making. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so that makes everything a little bit dodgy. So this is surely in part
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple’s fault, but it is not by necessity entirely Apple’s fault, on the car,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey depending on how it’s connecting, etc., etc., etc.
Sponsor: Aftershokz
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’re sponsored this week by Aftershox bone conduction headphones. Go to ATP.Aftershox.com
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to learn more. Aftershox headphones work by bone conduction. So these small
⏹️ ▶️ Marco transducers rest in front of your ears, not inside or around them like most headphones, and they send
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many vibrations through your cheekbones directly to your inner ear. It totally bypasses
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your ears and your eardrums. So unlike every other kind of headphone, bone conduction leaves your ears
⏹️ ▶️ Marco completely open with nothing in them. So for a lot of people like me, we can’t wear
⏹️ ▶️ Marco earbuds or in-ear monitors because they get physically uncomfortable in our ear canals. Aftershocks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t have this problem because nothing is sitting in your ear. And because they don’t cover your ear,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I find them far less sweaty than regular headphones in the summertime. And they’re even IP55
⏹️ ▶️ Marco certified for water resistance, so you can run with them in the rain or you can just sweat all over them all gross and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco totally fine. I have found that I use these more than any other headphones in the summer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time. In fact, I’m on vacation right now for a few weeks and I brought only these headphones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for walking. All other portable headphones I’ve left at home because I only want to use these here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I’m walking a lot. I’m using these multiple hours a day. I’m sweating a lot. I’m sometimes using them in the rain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s totally fine. And the great thing about it is that because nothing blocks your ears at all, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hear the whole world around you. You can be walking or maybe cycling or running where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you really want to hear the world around you for safety reasons or just to enjoy it and you need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something that doesn’t block your ear and that’s what bone conduction is great at. It’s also great if you want to listen around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the house. If you want to take a phone call, because these are obviously Bluetooth, they can do phone calls. If you want to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco take a phone call with them and maybe you want to hear if anything happens in your house in the process, you can do that too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If I’m honest, the downsides here are they’re not the best for sound quality and they don’t get very loud. you’re in a very loud
⏹️ ▶️ Marco environment, because they’re so open to the world, if you’re in like a subway station, these wouldn’t be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the pick for you. But they’re amazing for walking around outside, for any kind of exercise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use, for around the house, and anything you wanna hear the world around you, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where the Aftershocks are great. And again, they’re so awesome for minimizing sweatiness too. So the Aftershocks Trex Titanium
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I use here retails for 130 bucks. Listeners can get a pair for yourself for just $100, $99.95 by visiting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ATP.AfterShocks.com.
#askatp
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is ATP.Aftershox.com. Thanks to Aftershox for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, apparently Ask ATP is really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a thing. John, I think you had said you wanted it to be a thing and Marco, you might have said the same.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right. And apparently it’s a thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, the question is, where does it go? Does it go after followup or does it go after topics? Or does it go in the after show, where does it go?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I think it goes after followup.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Yeah, that sounds good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that was right.
⏹️ ▶️ John feel like it’s gonna, you know, You always don’t want to keep us away from our topics. If we have a long ask ATP, we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey even less likely to get topics.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know what we could do, John? Stick with me here. I know this is wild. But we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey could have a little bit less follow up.
⏹️ ▶️ John We just did. We just did do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Are you sure? We’ve been recording 45 minutes. I
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t add an item about talking about bit depth for 20 minutes. That was Margo. That wasn’t 20 minutes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, Kane asks, how do you guys sync your home directories between your Macs? And I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will go first. I don’t. I use Dropbox for a handful of things, but generally speaking,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s all in the cloud, man. So who cares? Same.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I don’t think my home directories. That’s not a that’s not a thing. I mean, I doubt many people do that. I think there used to be a way
⏹️ ▶️ John to know that I’m thinking of the server thing. Nevermind. Anyway, what people do is they just
⏹️ ▶️ John use cloud stuff, whether it’s iCloud Drive or Dropbox, and that’s the stuff that sinks, but they don’t stick their entire
⏹️ ▶️ John home directories and probably wouldn’t be a good idea to sink your entire home directories Because probably in the library directory, in your
⏹️ ▶️ John home directory, there’s crap that is machine specific somewhere lurking in there. So you probably don’t want to do a naive
⏹️ ▶️ John full sync of your entire home directory. And in general, sync is really hard to get right. And don’t try to set up something
⏹️ ▶️ John yourself to do it, because you’ll just end up hosing yourself and you’ll be sad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. This is a truly great question, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey outside of the obvious, I don’t have a really good answer to. So the question is from, let me get a full name
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I can. Peter Cam asks, what’s one piece of old
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tech that is still in use, not hidden in an attic, and I think he’s really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey talking to you, John, due to superior qualities or retro joy? So for example,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey CRT TV, old video game consoles, iPods, et cetera. I will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey start again. The obvious answer to this is that I have a turntable that I still use almost daily.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey However, I just received that turntable as a Christmas present, and it was brand new at the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So it is old technology, however it is a new device.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In terms of old technology that’s still in use, I can’t think of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anything offhand. I’m sure there’s something. I’m not debating that I have something barbaric and old that I still use,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but darned if I can think of what it would be. So Marco went first last time. John, anything old
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s outside of your attic?
⏹️ ▶️ John I was going to say my Plasma TV, but it’s not superior quality anymore. It’s not retro joy.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I guess that’s probably just the example of something old my consoles are probably it. I have a bunch of old consoles hooked
⏹️ ▶️ John up Journey on ps4 helps me not have to use my ps3 for that But I want to play
⏹️ ▶️ John ego or shadow of the colossus. I still have to use the ps3 so it is still connected to my TV
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s gonna be a ps4 port of shadow of the colossus leaving only ego like my
⏹️ ▶️ John ps3 is hanging on Same thing with my Wii which is basically used to play GameCube
⏹️ ▶️ John games most of the time Almost all my old consoles are still hooked up. It’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John be a shame when I eventually get a 4K TV because I doubt the 4K TV will have component
⏹️ ▶️ John video input to which I can connect my GameCube so I’d have to buy some kind of adapter and then I’d probably go,
⏹️ ▶️ John eh, doesn’t even bother, right? Same thing with the Wii. Wii’s got component video going into my TV.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would have to buy an adapter for that as well. But for now, yeah, I got a lot of old consoles hooked up.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I should point out that Marco is probably going to say the same thing I forgot about, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is I do have a mechanical watch that is also not terribly old, but I do like using it when I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dressing up for something special. So now that I’ve stolen your thunder, Marco, what about you?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honestly, that was what I was thinking of as the best thing I could say here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Most of the things that I use are, you know, like the things that I use that are actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, quote, old in tech terms are not old enough to be interesting. So like I’ll have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like an old speaker ramp for my desk or something, but that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like an old desktop computer speaker ramp being like six years old.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or like for a while I was using my first Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which I got about nine years ago, but I actually replaced that about last year because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was tired of replacing the rollers and the new ones were super fast, so I just got a new one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco For me, I think the best answer here is mechanical watches. It’s not a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very interesting answer, and it’s not a new answer for people who have heard me talk ever. So, that’s why I kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of wanted to go with something better, but I was not able to. I do have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mechanical watches that are somewhat old. My oldest one is from 1968, so that’s fairly old. So I guess that counts.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that’s the end of Ask ATP for this week.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco So let’s move on to some topics.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Johnny really gonna let me get away with this? So fast. It’s a really
⏹️ ▶️ John quick one. It’s a really quick one. That’s another question. How many questions do we do? I just did three because
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s how many I could put before I ran out of time before the show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So Chris Johnson, thank you, Chris writes in blah, blah, destiny
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to blah, blah, blah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Which destiny to class and subclass will you start with?
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco, you wanna take that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hmm, how about NSObject? And let’s see, subclass
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how about NSMutableSet? I like that one a lot. Aw, you need to get it
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the Swift Foundation
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey classes here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, they dropped the NS prefix a while ago, man. Come
⏹️ ▶️ John on. So I’m going to do, I was a Warlock main in Destiny 1. I
⏹️ ▶️ John barely, I had a Titan that my son played and a Hunter that I barely played. level the
⏹️ ▶️ John Titan and Hunter up so they will be ported over to Destiny 2 along with my Warlock but I’m going to be Warlock main in Destiny 2
⏹️ ▶️ John and I’m probably going to start with Dawnblade because it’s the new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one. Was any of that English? Because it didn’t sound like it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco First episode of AskATP a rousing success.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John No one else remembered about the Tata
⏹️ ▶️ John thing and I had to rush to get the things in there in between trying to get my kids and my dog settled down before the
⏹️ ▶️ John show. free to, I’m pulling from that same sheet, feel free to pull your own questions in there
⏹️ ▶️ John and throw them in the little section.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, the right answer, which will never work, but the rightest answer is for each of us to pull our favorite
⏹️ ▶️ Casey question each week. But I guarantee Marco will forget and or not care. And I give
⏹️ ▶️ Casey myself one chance in three
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John of actually remembering.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, in the absence of anybody else, I will pull questions and throw them in there. But you know, we wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have the section at all if I hadn’t remembered it. So it’s true.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Where would we be without you, John?
James Damore manifesto
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And speaking of, John, tell us about this kerfuffle with Google and this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey diversity memo, which I’m not sure is even the right way to describe it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this is old, kind of old news by now, but we haven’t recorded in a long time. And there,
⏹️ ▶️ John in the world of politics and discrimination, there is newer news, but it
⏹️ ▶️ John is not really tech related. But this certainly is tech related. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a story that everybody probably knows by now. The Google employee wrote, I don’t know why
⏹️ ▶️ John they call it a memo, I guess it’s the old parlance, wrote a big thing sort of talking
⏹️ ▶️ John to Google internally saying, we’re all Googlers here, here’s what I think about what
⏹️ ▶️ John the company’s doing, and here’s my opinion on it, so on and so forth, and it caused a big stink.
⏹️ ▶️ John We will put a link to the document in the show notes. On the off chance that you haven’t already read it, it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John that long. People are like, oh, it’s 10 pages. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not that long, because we don’t have pages on
⏹️ ▶️ John the web, just scroll. And also what we’ll have
⏹️ ▶️ John in the show notes are what I think are some of the best responses to
⏹️ ▶️ John the Google thing. So anyway, getting back to the story here, being Chief
⏹️ ▶️ John Summers, I was the interim chief in lieu of Casey doing this.
⏹️ ▶️ John The upshot is that the person who wrote this was fired because it contained,
⏹️ ▶️ John I forget what the phrasing was, but it contains a bunch of ideas
⏹️ ▶️ John and opinions that are counter to the way Google operates, and then people are angry that the person got fired,
⏹️ ▶️ John and people argued on the internet about it, and so on and so forth. Again, this is a well-covered story,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I feel like if you don’t know what we’re talking about or don’t, or have only read one or two things about it, just read,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the five links that we put in there. I feel like you will have covered the range of what people, how people are reacting
⏹️ ▶️ John to it. What I wanted to talk about, you guys can feel free to take whatever angle you
⏹️ ▶️ John want on this thing, um, is the idea
⏹️ ▶️ John that people dismissed the memo. That people,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, read it and were just, didn’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t address it at all, didn’t take it seriously. They just dismissed it out of hand and
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of people were angry about that. it like why won’t you engage with this? Why won’t
⏹️ ▶️ John you talk about the ideas? Lots of yelling about like someone said something bad about it, but
⏹️ ▶️ John you didn’t even talk about any of the points that are in the memo, like why, why are you being so dismissive
⏹️ ▶️ John and I understand where people are coming from with that. But I think there is an explanation and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a frustrating explanation, but it’s something, you know, you encounter again and again, um,
⏹️ ▶️ John nothing. But when I read that memo, nothing in it was new because I’d seen every idea
⏹️ ▶️ John put forward in the memo many, many times before. Because there weren’t a lot of new ideas, there
⏹️ ▶️ John weren’t any new ideas in there. Everything in there is something that someone else has said in a very similar
⏹️ ▶️ John form many, many, many, many, many times in the past. And if
⏹️ ▶️ John you enter any field, whatever it is, whether it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John woodworking, programming, diversity, whatever it is, and you
⏹️ ▶️ John lay out all your opinions, but you are not an expert in the field,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially if you say something controversial or you’re addressing some point that is a point of contention, chances are very good that
⏹️ ▶️ John the people who have been arguing about this same topic and who have studied this topic and
⏹️ ▶️ John are well-versed in this topic, chances are very good that they’ve heard everything you’re going to say
⏹️ ▶️ John before, and they’ve argued about it amongst themselves for years and years and years. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John when you come out with this thing and they roll their eyes and dismiss you,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s because to them, it’s like the 900 times someone is saying the exact same things
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’ve already been discussed. But from the outside, it’s like, well, how, why are you not addressing my
⏹️ ▶️ John points? I feel like I have important things to say here. And how can, like, it’s, how can you
⏹️ ▶️ John just dismiss me? It’s not a valid argument. obviously, you know, maybe I’m writing, you’re just afraid to address
⏹️ ▶️ John my blah, blah, blah, this is going to happen, no matter what the topic is.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I mean, in some ways, you have to recognize, like where you are
⏹️ ▶️ John on the in the range of knowledge about this topic, am I do I have a PhD in this topic? Have I
⏹️ ▶️ John studied this topic for 50 years and a well versed in all literature and like, or am I just somebody who thought about this
⏹️ ▶️ John for the past year or two and has some ideas like you’re never you know and
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe you say they shouldn’t dismiss me and what they should do is if someone is a novice and says something that’s been said before
⏹️ ▶️ John then please tell me point by laborious point bring me up to speed
⏹️ ▶️ John on the state of the art in this area of study that’s not a reasonable
⏹️ ▶️ John request because then it’s like everybody who stumbles into a math forum and says I just think I’ve you know what
⏹️ ▶️ John about this and have you guys ever thought of that but they got to teach you all the math you need to know to get to the point you
⏹️ ▶️ John realize the thing that you’re saying has been discussed many times before and like either proven or disproven or here the different
⏹️ ▶️ John you know like it’s that’s not a valid position I know a little bit about something
⏹️ ▶️ John and I have an opinion and here’s this thing and they’re like oh well we’ve seen people say that thing
⏹️ ▶️ John a million times we’ve already discussed it amongst ourselves and we already know what everyone else in the field thinks about this we don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John time to bring you up to speed on this entire field of study and that feels like you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John being dismissed and so I understand why people are angry the guy who wrote it’s angry about being dismissed. People who
⏹️ ▶️ John sympathize with what is in the thing are angry that this thing is dismissed. They feel like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, whatever. It’s being silenced. No one’s taking him seriously, whatever. Now, first of all,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s an initial reaction. But second, all these links in the show notes show that that’s not true, that some
⏹️ ▶️ John poor people went there and just went point by laborious point
⏹️ ▶️ John and tried mightily to explain. And these aren’t even experts in the field for the most These are just people
⏹️ ▶️ John who happen to know a little bit more or have a little bit clearer, you know, train
⏹️ ▶️ John of thinking about this or really just even if they have no expertise in the field, but have been around
⏹️ ▶️ John the block a few times and have argued on the internet a few times, they can say, listen, I don’t even know anything about this subject, but I can
⏹️ ▶️ John tell you memo writer that you have no idea what you’re doing. You know
⏹️ ▶️ John that even without knowing anything about this topic, I can see that your points don’t connect and
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re doing a bad job arguing this. And again, if you argued on Usenet in the 90s, if you
⏹️ ▶️ John argued in person in college campuses in the 80s and 70s and 60s,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know the person who wrote this memo. You know their thinking, you know what they’re saying, you recognize
⏹️ ▶️ John their enthusiasm and fervor. And this is
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing about getting old. Everything slows down and your hearing goes bad and your eyes get worse
⏹️ ▶️ John and just all sorts of bad things happen. But there’s something to that wisdom thing. I mean, not wisdom, maybe it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John experience. Like that’s why in all sorts of sci-fi things when there’s some really old creature, like they’re always just like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ve seen it all, right? And I know that’s like the worst thing. It’s like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John that that itself is a logical fallacy, like, you know, appeal to authority. You should trust me because I know a
⏹️ ▶️ John lot about this topic, but that’s not what it is. It’s more like just exhaustion. Like if pressed,
⏹️ ▶️ John if the fate of the universe depended on it, experts in the field could take this person into a room and over
⏹️ ▶️ John the course of the next 20 years educate them to the point where they understand what is wrong with this
⏹️ ▶️ John memo, right? And I feel like that should be the goal of a lot of, you know, if you trust that this is the case,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I’m not just like blowing smoke for your butt, that the goal should be like,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you read this memo and you think that there are some good solid points in there,
⏹️ ▶️ John your goal should be to learn more about it until
⏹️ ▶️ John you get on the same page with everyone else who sees this for what it is
⏹️ ▶️ John or learn so much about it that you actually reveal the real truth of it that nobody knows, right? But
⏹️ ▶️ John I can tell you this memo is not the real truth of it that nobody knows because this memo are the same tired ideas
⏹️ ▶️ John that have been discussed again and again and again by people in every single field related to this, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And that like, again, this this is the meta point and people like
⏹️ ▶️ John they don’t want to hear it and there’s no way to convince them of it. And I’m not I’m not really here to convince people that this is the case, but like,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s why people get angry about that’s why it feels frustrating. And I want I’m trying to stay away
⏹️ ▶️ John from the topic itself, because I want people to understand this is going to be true when you come in and tell people about
⏹️ ▶️ John a particular kind of glue putting together remote control boats. And the remote control boat builders
⏹️ ▶️ John had discussions about this kind of glue 50 years ago. And they just roll their eyes and be like, Look,
⏹️ ▶️ John I know it seems like that kind of glue is the kind of glue you want to use. I know you have a lot of information that you think supports your
⏹️ ▶️ John idea that that kind of glue is the… trust me, we’ve been debating this glue for 50 years and 25 years
⏹️ ▶️ John ago we all came to this conclusion and we revisited this topic from time to time to see if things have changed but they
⏹️ ▶️ John haven’t and you’re wrong and we don’t have time to explain to you laboriously and again glue for
⏹️ ▶️ John model boats is much simpler than this topic right so that’s that’s my reaction as
⏹️ ▶️ John a tired old person who is beaten down by even worse things happening in the world right
⏹️ ▶️ John that I see this, I see the young person who is writing it, I know where that person
⏹️ ▶️ John is coming from, I know that person and I’ve seen these exact
⏹️ ▶️ John arguments on these exact specific topics and it is depressing to have to have this
⏹️ ▶️ John argument again, it’s depressing that these tired ideas get any kind of traction and yet
⏹️ ▶️ John people go out of their way to do the hard work to explain to this
⏹️ ▶️ John person and to anybody who reads this, to explain to the world like you know isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John that your job to educate me about blah blah not really but we’re going to do it anyway because we know it’s you
⏹️ ▶️ John know it’s it’s we have to do something we can’t just let it stand as it is so many many people did
⏹️ ▶️ John you know tried to explain what’s wrong with this and i’m not going to try to explain it here because i feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John the problem with this topic a lot of times on the show is and any kind of podcast like this is i think what i described in the hypercritical
⏹️ ▶️ John days as having a slow motion argument with the internet a one-sided slow motion
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco argument with the
⏹️ ▶️ John where you’ll say a bunch of stuff, but there’s no one on the show who actually is there to disagree with you. So you can’t actually have a debate.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you have to debate the hypothetical person who’s out there and then you put the podcast out into
⏹️ ▶️ John the world and then you wait a week and a bunch of people reply and say, that’s not what I think at all. Actually, I think X, Y, Z and
⏹️ ▶️ John then you debate those people’s feedback. But then you but then what about people who don’t care about the topic
⏹️ ▶️ John anymore? It’s just, it’s impossible to have a slow motion debate with with a hypothetical person. So that’s why I’m trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to take this meta. And also, because Like I said, I think there’s some really good articles about this and to be clear
⏹️ ▶️ John this this manifesto is totally bogus The the ideas embodied in
⏹️ ▶️ John it are are not the right ideas. They are just you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s explicable by all of the the the
⏹️ ▶️ John the sort of Explicable by the experiences and the biases that the person who wrote it
⏹️ ▶️ John is bound to have had and so I think this is a learning opportunity for everybody involved. Why did he get fired? Do you
⏹️ ▶️ John think you should have been fired? That’s the I guess the controversy thing. Yeah, I don’t see how you can’t fire
⏹️ ▶️ John him. Because how can you have an employee in your company who thinks women on average are genetically less capable
⏹️ ▶️ John than men to do the job? Like, how can you have that person doing performance reviews or leading a team of people? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John how can you have that? Like, if that’s in people’s secret hearts, you don’t know about it, fine. But if someone comes out and says,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is what I believe, you can’t have that person doing performance reviews for women, you can just have a segregated company and then segregate by
⏹️ ▶️ John everybody’s biases right and never mind that you know these are all at will employees they can be fired for pretty much every
⏹️ ▶️ John reason any reason and uh you know misogyny is not a protected class like it’s an idea
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco like he’s being fired because he’s a pregnant woman right like
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah like this is guess what if you if you uh call your boss a jerk every
⏹️ ▶️ John day and give him the finger you’re also going to get fired because people who call their boss a jerk and give him the finger
⏹️ ▶️ John are not a protected class like there are so many things you can get fired do to get fired this of all the things
⏹️ ▶️ John at least is like pretty high-minded in terms of things you’re getting fired for believe me you can get fired
⏹️ ▶️ John for way stupider stuff because that’s the way employment works uh and so but yeah like this
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah you have to fire and in fact it’s they probably should have been fired faster but i’m sure you got to go through all the
⏹️ ▶️ John legal things or whatever um so anyway i i think i’m um
⏹️ ▶️ John i’m starting to get into the realm of where i’m going to start having a slow motion argument with the internet i don’t want to do that
⏹️ ▶️ John uh what do What do you two have to say about this?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have very little to add because you just did a really good job of covering it, and I also don’t want to get into the slow motion
⏹️ ▶️ Marco argument with the internet. The common people’s grasp on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what free speech protects them from is about as good as their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco grasp on fair use and copyright,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John which is not that good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No copy intended. No copyright intended, Marco. So yeah, I would,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before making an argument about free speech, I would investigate with some basic research
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what free speech actually gets you and what is actually an assurance of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what it actually means and what it doesn’t mean. And yeah, John, I think you’ve got it very well. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to admit, I did not fully read James’s memo or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was, manifesto, whatever it was. life is short and I could tell pretty soon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into it that this was not going to be worth the time I was going to spend reading it. So I didn’t. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do anything else with my time besides read this honestly rear-end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco openings memo on what he thinks about people. So I decided not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to. Yeah, same here.
⏹️ ▶️ John He provided a summary at the top, although he called it a TLDR because he’s a millennial. But yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John the summary at the top, like you don’t have to read the 10 pages, read the five, six point summary or whatever. It’s a, it
⏹️ ▶️ John is a fit, I mean, he wrote the summary himself. It is a fair encapsulation of the points made in the thing. You
⏹️ ▶️ John can look at only the summary and see, yep, no, I’ve seen this idiot before. Yep. I understand where he’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, no, I, I, I got about that far and then I was like, yeah, this is, and then once I thought that was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the memo and then once I saw that was simply the summary, I was like, oh my God, close tab. That’s it, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco done. And I would also say that I think it’s worth,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s worth Google doing some introspection here about their own culture and about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what is it about Google’s culture that would hire somebody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who holds these ideas, that would foster someone’s intellectual development who would hold these ideas,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that would make somebody think that it would be a good idea and would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not get them fired to actually write this and circulate this within the company. reveals
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think cultural problems in that company. Which should be a surprise to nobody. But
⏹️ ▶️ John it should reveal some good aspects of culture too because the fact that he felt like he could say this
⏹️ ▶️ John shows that they have a culture where people feel like they can express themselves. Now again
⏹️ ▶️ John like a culture where you can express yourself doesn’t mean you could say you know what
⏹️ ▶️ John I think we should eat babies and be surprised about people like gasp right
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey and give them back
⏹️ ▶️ John to the baby eating right. It’s good to have an open culture but you also
⏹️ ▶️ John have to be aware of, you know, what people might think of what you say, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And a lot of companies, people would be afraid to say
⏹️ ▶️ John remotely about controversial about like any HR policy, like, you know, the HR policy is like, for example, imagine
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple getting the Apple Park thing, like, oh, people aren’t gonna have as many offices, right? If Apple had a culture where
⏹️ ▶️ John everybody was terrified to make any kind of complaint about I kind of wish we still had offices,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want to be an open office space, right? That would be a bad company culture. You want to have a company culture where people
⏹️ ▶️ John are super pissed about not having an office, they feel like they can say, Hey, I don’t want to lose my
⏹️ ▶️ John office Apple, I don’t like the new Apple Park and complain, right? Because that and
⏹️ ▶️ John just being a general adult in the world, you could understand. If you do it in a constructive way, this is
⏹️ ▶️ John a reasonable avenue of feedback within the company. And a good company culture encourages people
⏹️ ▶️ John to do that because you don’t want them to be secretly hating you and then quitting like you want you want to hear What the employees have to say
⏹️ ▶️ John but if their complaint is I don’t want to work next to a woman You should at least be aware enough
⏹️ ▶️ John to know if you say that They’re gonna get rid of you because you can’t have an employee like
⏹️ ▶️ John that It’s like how is it any different from from offices if you can’t see the difference like start there
⏹️ ▶️ John What’s different about saying I prefer offices to cubicles versus I can’t be next to a woman when I work
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, figure it out. Like, work on it. Like, I feel, you know, that was one of my first and only comments about
⏹️ ▶️ John this, which is snarky granted, but, you know, I’m allowed some snark on Twitter, was like,
⏹️ ▶️ John the irony of someone at Google writing this memo who so clearly has
⏹️ ▶️ John not even done the most cursory Google search on the topic. It’s like, no, he’s done Google searches, look at all these things he’s citing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, no, I mean actually, you know, actually learning about the topic. Like, his Google’s right there.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can Google yourself every one of these points and find, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, everything about them and why they’re BS like everywhere. Instead the only thing he Googled for was,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, cherry picked things that he thinks supports his ideas and that he can string together into this
⏹️ ▶️ John completely broken chain of logic and the other one. Anyway, I don’t want to go to you can read the links to the one or other stuff, but like, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John right there. Like no time it has been easier for you to educate yourself about this topic without having to be led by
⏹️ ▶️ John the nose by people more versed in the field. Like everything’s right there. The person works
⏹️ ▶️ John for Google. Uh, and it just, you know, that, that just blew my mind that, you know, sort of. The,
⏹️ ▶️ John the incuriosity and the being content to, and, you know, as, as the economist response
⏹️ ▶️ John that one of the links we’ll put in there, the, the motivated reasoning, like that, no amount of access to the world’s information can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. The thing that struck me about this was the little bit of feedback we got about it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which was a couple of people saying, please don’t talk about this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But here’s some anonymous feedback about why I think this guy was on the money.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This was amazing to me. This was like we actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey got multiple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pieces of feedback about from people who were basically yelling at us in support
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of this James Hole before we ever talked about
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Right, right. It just happened and they knew in the future there would be an episode of ATP recorded and people said, I know
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re going to want to talk about this, but don’t. Well, we did. Sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Here’s the, you don’t talk about this, but here’s what I think. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and you know, if anyone thinks otherwise, that’s just that that’s them silencing us, yada, yada, yada, blah, blah, blah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was it was more than what the thing was, if it was just one individual,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey OK, fine. But this happened two or three times and it was the same
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing both times. Please guys, don’t talk about this. What if you do,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you should consider the following.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey And by the way, to be
⏹️ ▶️ John clear, my example of like a difference between I like offices instead of cubes versus I can’t work
⏹️ ▶️ John next to a woman. Neither one of those things in the memo. I’m giving hypothetical examples to understand different classes
⏹️ ▶️ John of things that you might want feedback. Yeah, but I actually getting back to Marco’s point, like I think I think
⏹️ ▶️ John the fact that this person felt free to say this is a good reflection on Google’s culture of letting
⏹️ ▶️ John people feel like they are free to give feedback. The fact that this particular, you know, that are
⏹️ ▶️ John the have open discussions. The content of this shows that doesn’t reflect poorly
⏹️ ▶️ John on Google other than their hiring practices or not being aware that this is this is happening. And you know, like
⏹️ ▶️ John this is on the person who wrote the thing, not so much on Google. If you want to place blame on it, it’s not the culture that
⏹️ ▶️ John let him post the memo, because that is more of just sort of like lack of self awareness, you know, not
⏹️ ▶️ John understanding of that other people exist in the world and how they might react to what you have to say,
⏹️ ▶️ John But this is true of a lot of tech companies. If the interview is all coding on a whiteboard
⏹️ ▶️ John and solving brain teasers and making sure you have a good education
⏹️ ▶️ John and making sure you are reasonably personable and polite and then most critically, making sure
⏹️ ▶️ John that the people who you interview with say, oh yeah, I could work with this person. Yeah, this seems like a person. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John people will say, oh, I could work with this person. He’s just like me.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m a dude who is a CS major who likes video games and blah blah blah yeah, no like if that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John all there is in your interview is technical stuff and and Brain teasers and education
⏹️ ▶️ John and work history and do you feel like you could work with this person? It’s very easy to get into you know speaking of
⏹️ ▶️ John echo chamber Which is one of the complaints this thing is very easy to get into a situation where people hire other people that they’re comfortable
⏹️ ▶️ John with And so you may never dig deeper to say oh and by the way again Again, this is not in
⏹️ ▶️ John the memo, this is my silly example that’s supposed to make you realize. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John would you have any problem working on a team with a woman? Maybe you can’t ask that legally, I don’t even know.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s all sorts of weird things about hiring where you can and can’t ask. But figuring that
⏹️ ▶️ John out, if the person says, oh, I would never work on a team with a woman, don’t hire that
⏹️ ▶️ John person. Don’t hire that person. And if you never figure out that
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s, again, that’s not what this person said. I’m trying to give an extreme example. I know people get confused by that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, this is a hypothetical extreme example, right? If you’re not sort of figuring that out, if you don’t have an
⏹️ ▶️ John interview process that weeds that out, you’ll never have a chance of weeding out the much more subtle things, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is like, maybe this person has some slightly less well-examined
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco about gender and
⏹️ ▶️ John diversity. And again, like, I don’t think this person is super terrible. I heard they were vaguely involved
⏹️ ▶️ John in gamergate, but who knows, I haven’t been following this. But anyway, I think the ideas in this memo
⏹️ ▶️ John are ideas that a lot of smart
⏹️ ▶️ John white dudes basically who have never faced any sort of oppression based on
⏹️ ▶️ John their gender or race end up having. Not because they’re bad
⏹️ ▶️ John people or they’re evil or whatever, but it’s like, again, there’s a reason all these ideas have come up before.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is kind of, it’s not a logical conclusion, but it’s like you find yourself going down these allies. You find yourself
⏹️ ▶️ John having these thoughts. You find yourself coming to these conclusions and especially if you have a slightly
⏹️ ▶️ John rebellious bent, there is something for you to rebel against, which is all these diversity
⏹️ ▶️ John ideas. And like, it just, there’s a reason it’s common. I don’t think these people,
⏹️ ▶️ John this person is, you know, an aberration or a terrible person. It’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re, they have some things to learn. They have some living to do they have some experience to gain and
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re able to get that experience and live that life and learn and change because most people who
⏹️ ▶️ John are on the other side of this started out somewhere more like this memo
⏹️ ▶️ John writer and changed and learned things like that. They’re not born like, oh, I’m a perfect angel from the beginning
⏹️ ▶️ John and I know everything and I don’t have any prejudices and biases. No, especially if they’re they are similar have similar backgrounds to this
⏹️ ▶️ John person. They had to walk that same road and figure things out and stick their
⏹️ ▶️ John foot in the mouth and do stupid stuff and learn things the hard way, right? We’re not super
⏹️ ▶️ John enlightened, wonderful, we know everything from the beginning. Like my hope for this person is that he
⏹️ ▶️ John grows and evolves and comes,
⏹️ ▶️ John people, it’s mean to say that he grows up, but like that’s part, he’s already an adult, but just, you don’t stop
⏹️ ▶️ John growing up when you become quote unquote an adult. You keep growing up throughout your whole life, hopefully. And
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s my hope for this person.
Sponsor: Fracture
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Fracture, who prints your photos in vivid color
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on great little minimal sheets of glass. Visit fractureme.com slash podcast.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mentioned ATP so they know that you came from here. Fracture is a photo decor company. They want to rescue
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your favorite images from the digital ether of these Facebook and Instagram and other social feeds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where you put your pictures up there and then they’re just gone after like a day and you never see them again. Get those photos
⏹️ ▶️ Marco printed and hang them in your house or put them in your office or give them as gifts. They make amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gifts. They have these awesome glass prints. They print directly onto the glass and they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a laser cut rigid backing so they’re ready to display right out of the box. They even include the wall anchor.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All you have to do is upload your photo and pick your size. It is that simple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The fracture printing process really makes the color and contrast pop and the sleek frameless design
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really lets your photo stand out. There’s no frame needed. You don’t have to get them frame and they are their own stand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco alone thing and they really fit in very nicely with any decorating style. So bring special memories
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to life, give them as unique gifts for friends or family, or just decorate your home with the moments that tell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your story. Fractures come with a 60 day happiness guarantee so you’re sure to love your order
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and each fracture print is handmade in Gainesville, Florida from US source materials in a carbon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco neutral factory so you can feel good about it. And we have fractures all over our house, in fact right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now we’re on vacation and I I kind of miss the Fractures. I think we should order a few more for here. This place could really use it. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think that’s what I’m gonna do after this week podcast. I’m gonna go order some Fractures because we need some stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the walls here. That’s more us. So really make your moments visible in your home. It’s really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wonderful. And again, they make wonderful gifts. For more information and 10% off your first order, visit fractureme.com
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash podcast. That lists podcasts there and you will tell them which one you heard from. Tell them ATP
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because we’re the best. Let’s be honest here. It helps support the show and it tells them that you came from here. So fracture me.com
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash podcast. Don’t forget to pick ATP in the survey there.
Apple’s $1B for original video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Once again, thank you very much to Fracture for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple apparently has said they’re budgeting a billion dollars, that’s B, one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey billion for original TV shows and movies because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apparently that’s a thing we need. So I’m not sure what to make of this. Like in and of itself,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have no issues with Apple trying to get into the content business. excuse me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but so far they have not shown us that they’re terribly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good at doing this sort of thing. So I don’t know. Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what do you think about this?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So with the actual budget and like how it compares to other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco services and everything, people have commentary on whether this is enough money, whether it’s a lot, whether it’s a little.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know. I don’t know enough about the business of TV and movie production to even know what this buys you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All I do know is that so far Apple’s original content for video, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for some reason appears on Apple Music, is bizarre at best and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mostly pretty bad. Whatever has caused them to produce what they’ve produced so far,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think is the same thing that caused them to do the whole like, you know, U2 finger touch thing and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then shoving Songs of Innocence into everyone’s libraries and, you know, it’s like, they seem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have this like most of what they make is pretty cool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and is pretty well considered and then there’s like a certain like blind spot that they get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around certain types of content or celebrity things which which everything they make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seems to be profoundly uncool and just fall on its face. A lot of the various like you know celebrity
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tie-ins they’ve done, much of the efforts they’ve tried to do around Apple Music,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sometimes like the weird intro videos to the conferences, stuff like that. A lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of this stuff just seems profoundly uncool and just flops. Certainly I think Planet of the Apps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco qualifies big time for that list and I suspect the Carpool Karaoke version
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re doing, while I haven’t seen it, the early impressions of it are similarly not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very positive. So whatever is causing these things to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be greenlit and to then be terrible, I hope they figure this out and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fix that. For Apple to become a company that represents bad content,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that hurts the whole brand. So it’s a big risk they’re taking here, and so far it seems like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not paying off at all. So far it seems like it’s actually harming them. If they do it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right, it could be great. They could be, you know, they could produce things as good as what Netflix and Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and HBO were making. Like they could make great original content, but they’ve made such bad original
⏹️ ▶️ Marco content so far that it’s just kind of hard to see how they get from here to there.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the last time we talked about this, I made the same point because I found it occurring to me again. I’m like, Oh, I think I talked
⏹️ ▶️ John about that already. But like if you if you fund content, you
⏹️ ▶️ John shouldn’t like other than some vague sort of overarching
⏹️ ▶️ John theme like Disney in general makes kind of family friendly stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John You shouldn’t be influencing the things that you make. So everything that Apple makes doesn’t have to be an athlete thing. Obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ John Planet of the Apps is super aptly. Carpool Karaoke, not really aptly. So that’s an
⏹️ ▶️ John okay one. But HBO makes all sorts of shows. They make Western, sci-fi, fantasy,
⏹️ ▶️ John drama, just comedies, stand-up comedy specials, documentaries.
⏹️ ▶️ John In so far as there is an HBO brand, the brand is good television for adults.
⏹️ ▶️ John Disney is family-friendly stuff. Marvel is, you know, superhero movies
⏹️ ▶️ John like Star, the Star Wars, like just like there are overarching brands for things. But in general, you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John want Apple to make like Apple stuff. And that that is
⏹️ ▶️ John something they have to get out from under because almost everything Apple does is an Apple thing. And if you’re making content, you have
⏹️ ▶️ John to basically just be the money people. Here’s
⏹️ ▶️ John bucket of money, then get a bunch of people who know how to find
⏹️ ▶️ John talent and, you know, develop the shows. And that’s what they’re doing, they hired a bunch of people who had previously
⏹️ ▶️ John done this same job for other people. Like they hired the guy from Sony Television or something
⏹️ ▶️ John that has had a bunch of things under his belt and they hired somebody else. It’s a different
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of business and it’s not an easy business because it’s like, how do I know
⏹️ ▶️ John what’s the next Breaking Bad and what’s the next Planet of the Apps? Can I tell the difference between
⏹️ ▶️ John those two when they’re being pitched to me? If I get a pitch for the next Breaking Bad, can I
⏹️ ▶️ John actually develop it, give them the right amount of money and get the right talent involved. Like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John this was said about the phone business. Apple’s not just going to walk in the entertainment business is a similarly difficult problem,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s much farther from Apple’s wheelhouse and Apple can’t use all its
⏹️ ▶️ John old tricks of we’re going to build every show like we do an Apple product. Nope, nope. The shows can’t be
⏹️ ▶️ John an Apple product. Some shows have to be the opposite of an Apple product. They have to be, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, you know, intense and involved sex and violence or they They have to be
⏹️ ▶️ John goofy comedies, or things that just don’t fit in the
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple way. And again, you can have a brand, you can be
⏹️ ▶️ John like Disney or like Pixar and have a brand and put everything under that umbrella,
⏹️ ▶️ John but its competitors’ brands are in general content that wouldn’t air
⏹️ ▶️ John on network television, expensive television made for adults. So that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of what Amazon and Netflix and HBO have been doing. They’re all
⏹️ ▶️ John spending more money on it than Apple still, which is fine. Apple’s just getting started. You know, Netflix’s budget is $7 billion
⏹️ ▶️ John compared to Apple’s budget of $1 billion. I think that’s fine. Apple should not be putting $7 billion towards something it
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t know how to do yet. So you’ve got to figure out how to do it. Amazon’s $4.5 billion.
⏹️ ▶️ John These are mostly their estimates from this article we’ll link in the show notes. And HBO is $2 billion. HBO’s
⏹️ ▶️ John getting a lot of bang for its buck because they apparently really know how to develop shows. They don’t make a lot of shows,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the ones they make, they have a pretty good hit ratio and their hits are really big hits. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John they’ve been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing it for quite some time. Like they developed the skill over a very long time.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. And, and, you know, it’s, it’s a set, it’s, you know, it’s people, it’s, it’s sets different people who know
⏹️ ▶️ John different people who know how to get things developed, know what to buy, what not to buy, know how to make sure that
⏹️ ▶️ John the things produced in the same way that Apple knows how to like, Oh, I have an idea for a product, but how do I that
⏹️ ▶️ John product? What people do I need to make that product a reality so that it actually works and what partners do I have
⏹️ ▶️ John to do it like it’s a difficult business. I’m getting back to the
⏹️ ▶️ John broader issue of this thing. Like the reason Apple is doing this as we’ve discussed in the past is if Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John wants to be in this business of selling you video over the Internet, everybody else is doing it.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is an important differentiator. Like eventually if everybody else has original content like
⏹️ ▶️ John this is why I get Hulu. This is why I get Netflix. Like because of these specific shows and Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t have any of those, it has no more differentiator.
⏹️ ▶️ John Other than, oh, I bought a bunch of movies on iTunes and unless I go and remove the DRM on them,
⏹️ ▶️ John I need an Apple TV to view them. Very quickly,
⏹️ ▶️ John these streaming services have stopped being differentiated by the fact that, wow, I can watch a video
⏹️ ▶️ John over the internet. They can all do that. They all have clients. This is another thing. They all have clients everywhere. had
⏹️ ▶️ John on Twitter, I think maybe directed us or maybe someone else is like, Am I going to need an Apple TV
⏹️ ▶️ John to watch this original TV content? Or will I be able to watch it? Not on an Apple TV? Could I watch
⏹️ ▶️ John it in a web browser? Could I you know, could I watch it? Is it built into my television?
⏹️ ▶️ John And the answer so far is Apple’s been like, well, no, you can watch on your iPad, your iPhone and your Apple TV.
⏹️ ▶️ John No place else can you watch it’s not built into your TV. You can’t watch from a web browser. You can’t watch it in Windows and it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John what nobody else is doing that. If you want to watch Netflix, you can watch it everywhere you can watch Netflix on your on your
⏹️ ▶️ John wristwatch on you know it’s it’s everywhere nothing doesn’t have Netflix on it that’s the strategy
⏹️ ▶️ John you do if you want to compete so that’s the other thing I’m looking for is will Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John go iPod on this and say yes we’re gonna make the iPod for Windows yes we’re gonna let you watch whatever they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna and I have to divorce it from Apple music obviously too because it’s silly to continue with that charade right
⏹️ ▶️ John if they really want to play with their big competitors Netflix Amazon HBO
⏹️ ▶️ John Hulu everybody else has got some kind of is funding some kind of original content table stakes is
⏹️ ▶️ John I can view it anywhere I want and the original content is actually worth getting the service for
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’ve got a long way to go to get there I’ve someone pointed out that maybe you can watch it on iTunes and Windows
⏹️ ▶️ John probably true but if I turns the windows probably not the ideal viewing experience and we’re all
⏹️ ▶️ John rooting for iTunes to die anyway right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel like this is one of those things too like for For this to succeed,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have to really go all in on it. You have to really, like you were saying, right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now it seems like these original content efforts are just these kind of like side projects
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that are a little bit promoted, a little bit funded, a little bit prioritized,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they’re kind of these things that are made to try to boost Apple Music, Buzz, and subscriptions,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is totally wrong. Like, that’s not how you compete in the music space. You don’t compete there with video services
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with two or three original content lines. Like that’s not at all how that works. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel like if Apple really wants to do this, really do it. Like really go all in, make it a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big thing, maybe buy somebody like Netflix or HBO or something. Like really go all out and really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do it. I just, I don’t see the value in kinda half-butting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it like they’ve been doing seemingly so far. Like why do a little bit of this kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buried in this product that no one’s looking for video in? don’t do it or do it right.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s maybe like a slow start like I don’t know what the budget was before but again 1 billion is a smaller budget like they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re obviously getting serious about it and trying to hire more of the right people but it’s a slow start like they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not they’re not coming in on day one and said we got we’re gonna put 10 billion dollars because they just blow it they’d blow that 10
⏹️ ▶️ John billion they have no idea what to do with that money like it’s not so I mean the slow start would be better if the few
⏹️ ▶️ John little things they made were actually good even if they’re weird appendages to Apple Music But, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John the Apple Music thing, I think, is a learning experience. And who knows, maybe the Carpool Karaoke is going to be insanely popular, just because
⏹️ ▶️ John we don’t watch it. Like, I know what Carpool Karaoke is. People seem to like it. It’s, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John even if it’s not my particular thing, sometimes they’re amusing, right? And the reality show was a flop,
⏹️ ▶️ John but like, you know, reality, some reality shows are hits, some aren’t. It wasn’t a, it wasn’t a crazy
⏹️ ▶️ John idea. They just, they just blew it. They didn’t do it. They didn’t make something that people really want to watch. Probably again,
⏹️ ▶️ John because I feel like they, they want to have some kind of Apple. For Apple, what kind of synergy do we have with, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you don’t need any synergy.
⏹️ ▶️ John Breaking Bad has no synergy with the people who fund it. It’s just a good show. You just need
⏹️ ▶️ John to make stuff that people want to watch. And it’s really, really hard, and I can’t help you with it. I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John how to do it either. But hiring people who have done it in the past is a good start. That’s the difficulty
⏹️ ▶️ John about a lot of these things. Like, again, with Apple, it’s very small teams, small numbers of people.
⏹️ ▶️ John If one or two or three people you have in charge of this with the most power are going to have a big influence
⏹️ ▶️ John and if you end up hiring the wrong people, you know, then
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s bad. Like you get a paper master situation or even if you just get like a
⏹️ ▶️ John four-star can’t get along with Ive and you have to can one of them. It’s you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John these are big companies with a lot of money at stake, but in the end it comes down to just a small number of people.
Overcast’s Send to Watch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So Marco you blogged for the first time in forever recently. I’m very proud of you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco exciting Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it counts it turns out that Marco org is still a thing it hadn’t been a thing for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Almost three months, but it is still a thing However, Marco giveth and Marco taketh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey away What happened to send to watch an overcast?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Basically, I had to pull it I’ve already covered this pretty well both in the blog post and in under
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the radar about two weeks ago So I don’t want to cover it too much here, but basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I Was using a crazy hack that would allow me to use good audio
⏹️ ▶️ Marco api’s on the Apple watch and watch it was for that doesn’t Work anymore So now the only way to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco write this feature is to stop using the good audio api’s that allow my process to keep running and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco monitoring with AV audio player and the only way to make this happen now is to use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the old WK Audio File Player watch playback API
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which basically is used in practice by I think almost nothing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple doesn’t seem to use it for anything which is probably why it’s so incomplete and buggy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s a much larger more complex pile of hacks because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it involves transferring control of the playback to the system and then your app stops running in the background.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then this system will wake you up occasionally, maybe if you are lucky,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when things happen like the queue runs out or the track is over or something else, but that’s about it. It forces
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a certain type of interaction with the now playing glance that does not work at all for podcasts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It makes a very bad experience for podcasts. So things like if you hit the seek forward button,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it immediately stops playing the current podcast and either moves to the next one if there is one just stops.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s instead of like skipping forward 15 seconds or whatever like you actually want. Things like that. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all sorts of little shortcomings like that. This API was designed for music.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was it was clearly designed so that somebody you know somebody like a Spotify or something could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make a sync to Apple Watch feature and have the Apple Watch play a playlist of music. When you apply
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same API to podcasts, there are so many shortcomings and bugs and weird behaviors of the system that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are just not at all what podcast listeners want or need, that it makes for a very bad experience. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco early on when I was developing the Send to Watch feature, I was basing it on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this API because this seemed to be the only way to do it. And I actually decided to not ship
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Like I spent months on it. And after fighting with this API over and over again, I decided
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was so bad I can’t ship this feature. So I didn’t. I filed a bunch of bugs. know, talk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to people in Apple to make sure they knew about them and everything. And you know, how many apps are using this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of all the, of all the needs that watchOS has, like this might satisfy like 10
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps, maybe like almost nobody needs this feature. So I can understand why this doesn’t seem to be a priority for them to,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to really improve audio playback APIs in the watch. Especially because this one probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco works okay enough for music syncing. So it’s really only podcast and audio
⏹️ ▶️ Marco book and other long form audio syncing that actually need this. My hack
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that allowed me to use AV audio player allowed me to ship a version of this feature that was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco minimally acceptable. It still wasn’t good. There’s still lots of other problems with the feature
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like how long it takes to transfer data, how I as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the programmer and therefore you as the user don’t have any indication of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether a transfer is in progress or how long it’s going to take. Like the reason that’s not exposed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the UI is that I don’t have that information. The API doesn’t provide that information. So like there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all sorts of shortcomings in the APIs and the technical limitations of these platforms.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Most of which are very understandable because most of which are like, yeah, you know what, the watch is a low power device. You know, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needs to squeeze every bit of power it can out of the, you know, tiny little parts and batteries
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it has. Most of these are very understandable things. But the reality is, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was barely possible to make a barely acceptable version of this feature. And now that the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco audio API has changed and has forced me to go back to the old one that I deemed unshippable,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, probably nine months ago, when I first tried to do this, that is now that has now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco made this feature unshippable again. Unfortunately, I’ve already shipped it. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I had to remove this feature. And that’s never easy. That’s never an easy decision to make.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not a very popular thing to do. I’m getting a good number of one-star
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reviews from it, which I expected. That was part of the calculus to do it. I had to weigh that. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I removed the feature now, and if I can bring it back in the future
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as the APIs and the hardware mature, I would love to do that, because I already wrote most of the hard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff to do this. But there is simply no good way to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco play podcasts in the background on the Apple Watch in watchOS and hopefully that’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John Do you have any hopes of them changing it? Like maybe if Apple adds offline
⏹️ ▶️ John watch playback of podcasts to their podcast app? Like do you know, do you have any info like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, you know, not this release, this release you’re stuck, but next year they’ll be updating
⏹️ ▶️ John all these APIs to be podcast savvy. Because podcasts are not, you know, not obscure. Like it seems,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re obviously not as important as music, right? But in this release they did the thing that lets you mess with the music
⏹️ ▶️ John during your workout in an easier way so they understand that people are controlling audio playback
⏹️ ▶️ John on their watches. So do you think next year, you know, do you have expectations of WNBC
⏹️ ▶️ John of like, oh, new APIs that make it possible to do this again, or are you just like, have
⏹️ ▶️ John no real hope of them addressing this because it doesn’t seem like a thing they care about?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, there’s still a lot of technical limitations. So with the new like music syncing, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been, in WatchOS 4, they demoed during the keynote that there’s this kind of like new automatic music syncing kind of thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where it just kind of automatically can like sync a playlist for you based
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on what you like or based on what you’ve selected or whatever else. And so I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way this seems to work is overnight while it’s charging on the charger, it’s doing these data
⏹️ ▶️ Marco transfers that could be large and time consuming. So that way it doesn’t have to worry about speed being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco low or about using too much power. For a podcast-like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feature to work, that’s probably how it really has to be. Because problem number one, which I never solved,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was it’s too slow to transfer data to the watch. And I did all sorts of crazy hacks, like I wrote a whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco transcoding engine that would transcode to a lower bitrate and then send it, because that was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually faster than just sending it to begin with at its original size. So solving that speed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem, that’s a huge problem. And it’s going to take, I think, multiple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco generations probably of the hardware being improved before that’s no longer a big problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So as long as data transfer to the watch is still slow, syncing podcasts to it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is always going to be awkward or clunky because podcasts don’t work the same way as music. With music,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can sync a playlist overnight and that’s it, you’re done. You’re probably not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to want to change that in the middle of the day by sending all of a sudden 60
⏹️ ▶️ Marco megs of new information to it that you really want to be available right the second right now. Whereas
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with podcasts, that happens. An episode comes out like, you know, it has worked the same way that it worked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the iPod days back when podcasts first came out a decade ago. The idea of an episode coming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out and then you having to wait till you got home to sync it to your iPod and listen to it maybe the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco next day, that was how we did things back then. But now things are better. Now we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t live in the Stone Age anymore. Now, when a new episode comes out, you expect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be able to hit play immediately and start playing it. And so to have that kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of experience with the watch with podcasts, the whole, you can’t wait
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for it to sync overnight. You can’t wait for like, oh, next time I plug in the watch, I have some kind of system to automatically sync stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over while it’s charging overnight. Like that’s not a good enough experience. What you need is something that you can say, I want to listen to this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right now, go. And have it be not a significant amount of time before you can do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think long term, the way this is solved is the watch becomes a full-blown client
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the app with its own downloads and its own sync to the servers and is no longer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tethered to the phone app as much as it is now. Long-term, that is probably the right solution,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that requires large advances in the hardware and software before that’s possible. You know, that would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco require, first of all, the rumored cellular watch, or at least more frequent WiFi
⏹️ ▶️ Marco connectivity, or whatever, you know, that would require things that we don’t have today, really, to do that very well. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other thing is, on the software side, I don’t know the fine detail of this. In fact, I bet Steve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Trout and Smith probably knows a lot more about this than I do. When you write apps for the iPhone,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of the APIs you’re using are the exact same APIs that Apple uses. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco incentive is pretty strong for Apple to keep those things up to date because they use them too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So if there’s like a bug in UIKit, it’s probably gonna affect Apple also in their own
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps and their own development. So they have a pretty strong incentive to fix that. Whereas on the watch,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco developers have only had access to WatchKit, we don’t have straight
⏹️ ▶️ Marco UIKit. It seems, I think, I’m not positive on this, but I think Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is using lower level APIs. Apple seems to be using something like UIKit to make their apps on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the watch. But we, developers, are using this kind of subset that we’re kind of being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forced to use, and we can’t use the real APIs on the watch. And so what we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are using, Apple doesn’t seem to have a very strong incentive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to fix what we use, because I don’t think they’re using it. And especially like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the audio playback APIs, what I have seen so far
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the limitations and bugs that they have, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think Apple uses any of them on the watch that we use. I honestly don’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple is probably using AV Foundation directly on the watch, but we don’t have access
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to that in any kind of way that we can actually background on the watch. We only have foreground access
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to some of those things and background access to this awful WK Audio File Player thing that has all the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bugs. So until that changes, like until Apple’s using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same things we are using on the watch, I don’t think it’s ever gonna be an amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco development platform to make advanced type of apps like a podcast player. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hope that changes, I really do. But so far, it seems like we are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using these kind of baby APIs, these training wheel APIs in the watch that existed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at first because it was just so limited and so low powered and the first watch kit was this huge hack
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where the thing ran on the phone and it was kind of beamed over. It made sense then a little bit,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but now I want real API access in the watch. I want low-level
⏹️ ▶️ Marco UI frameworks and full-blown audio frameworks and exactly what we have on the phone in regards
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to what I mentioned earlier about how when the watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Crazy API, if a user hits next track or forward, it just stops a podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it’s playing in the background. And the podcast player on the watch can’t do what we’ve done
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on iOS for ages, which is interpret the remote control event manually. interpret the event
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is sent from a headphone clicker or the lock screen or your car Bluetooth or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that says next track. And instead of doing next track, on iOS we can say, oh, we’ll just move it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forward 15 seconds. Or we can respond however we want to that. On the watch, none of those APIs are there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We have no way to interact with the remote controls. We have no way to set what appears
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the now playing screen besides a very, very limited thing with this crazy audio player API.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can kind of set it, but then it’s kind of unreliable. Even basic stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I found, like if you hit pause, it doesn’t pause, like it’s half the time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it just, two seconds after you hit play or pause, the button flips over back the other way. It’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco crazy stuff, it just doesn’t work. Every time I’ve worked against those APIs, I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco felt like I’m the first person to ever have used them. So to answer the actual question
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you asked me 25 minutes ago, I think it will eventually, hopefully become possible to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco write a good standalone podcast player on the watch, but I don’t think that’s coming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco soon, because too much has to mature. We need hardware advancements for battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and power and data transfer speeds. We need all those things to improve. We need the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ability for apps to actually stay running in the background as they’re playing audio,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not just do what watchOS tries to do now and kill us in the backgrounds and leave this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weird standalone file player that’s run by the system. No, we need what we have on the phone, basically. The phone had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this a very long time ago, so maybe we aren’t that far off, who knows. But whatever it is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we need API parity in a lot of these areas between the watch and the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And not only do we not have that, but it almost feels like Apple doesn’t want to do that on the watch. It seems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like they think that this is all the audio exposure we need right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I don’t know if that’s an ideological thing or if that’s reacting to limitations of the current hardware. Either way,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that has to change. And that’s a big change, so I don’t expect for it to be soon.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if you got, I’m trying to think of
⏹️ ▶️ John minimal stuff that you would need for this, because it’s going to be a while before you get full access to the APIs that
⏹️ ▶️ John Ava has, if ever. If you just got cell
⏹️ ▶️ John data and the ability to run in the background, at the very least, make
⏹️ ▶️ John a very simple streaming only
⏹️ ▶️ John player that communicates with, uh, that, that pulls the data from wherever the podcast is
⏹️ ▶️ John and that communicates with your server in a lightweight way to keep sort of the timestamp updated. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ John Cause if you, that’s not, that’s not heavy background work. You’re like, um, you know, pull it, pull in data
⏹️ ▶️ John for this podcast. You know, you have plenty of time to slurp it up when your connection is good and then just sleep for a while, you know, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John it is. So the input of the audio data is fine. And you’ve got to communicate with your server a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ John every, you know, you can do it every minute, who knows, like just say, Oh, update the play position, update the play position or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then I guess minimal, uh, interface to the controls to understand what you, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John have to have control over when you hit the next and previous to do something different than, than doing something ridiculous.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that I think, you know, I know, I know this is this entire section is about offline watch playback,
⏹️ ▶️ John but this, I think would fulfill all the needs. like I don’t need to bring my phone with me, I can just wear my watch
⏹️ ▶️ John and I can listen to my podcast. And but I was mostly getting at with that with the question about do you have any
⏹️ ▶️ John expectations? A if you had any inside information about it, but I don’t. Presumably Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John will eventually on its list of things that we want to add to the watch get to the point where people like yeah, people do like to listen to music on their watch.
⏹️ ▶️ John They also would like to probably listen to podcasts on their watch. They know how many people listen to podcasts. They have
⏹️ ▶️ John their stats for the podcast app that comes bundled with your phone. Podcasts are a thing. Again, not
⏹️ ▶️ John as big as music. Eventually, I think Apple will get around to the idea of like, oh, it’s silly that you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John listen to podcasts on your watch without your phone with you, especially now that we have the second generation of this watch
⏹️ ▶️ John with cell data access, right? So they will get to it eventually. So I feel like there’s hope for you. You’re not just like swinging in
⏹️ ▶️ John the wind where like they’re just never going to get to me. But I don’t know what the timeline looks like on that. It’s very difficult to
⏹️ ▶️ John tell how much Apple cares about podcasts sometimes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it’s also this is the kind of feature that I believe I’ve run into lots of these. If
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you ask people if they want this feature, a certain number of them will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say, yes, of course I want that feature or a certain number of them will email you without you even asking saying please I want this feature.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But then if you actually give it to them, the number of people who actually use it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually or not usually often for some of these features way, way lower than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what they thought before they had it.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s also the usability. Like I remember when I tried to send it to the watch, it’s not easy to just figure out even
⏹️ ▶️ John how to do it. And then when you do figure out how to do it, the fact that it doesn’t work that well will discourage people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Sure, and I think a lot of people had that same experience with playing music on the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco watch through Apple’s apps. Like the reason they had to do this kind of overnight automatic syncing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing with watchOS 4 is because before that, when you had to kind of manually pick stuff to sync over and then wait
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forever for it to transfer, that was terrible. It was so bad, most people didn’t do it. Even now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the watch, I find the playback experience, even if you can get the data there,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the playback and control experience on the watch is really rough compared to what you have on the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Again, this goes back to my thing of never bet against the smartphone. The smartphone is really good at this stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is very rare that I do something on my watch to interact with a podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is at all non-trivial, that I don’t regret not just taking out my phone doing it there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like if you’re doing something like, you know, skip to the next chapter, fine. Take out the watch app, do it there,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s fast. If you’re walking, that’s fine. But like for anything non-trivial,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I find it very hard to do anything on the watch. Not even just with audio in general.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, and there have been lots of other overcast features where like people have asked for it or wanted it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of the things I haven’t even released because like, for example, the Sonos integration.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I, right now there’s, as I mentioned, I think somewhere on Twitter or something, there’s an API limitation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that basically makes it, in my opinion, not good enough to ship. Sound familiar? So I’m not shipping it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I found in my testing of the Sonos integration, it was not a very good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco experience. And I mostly just preferred to have podcasts playing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through my phone speaker sitting on the counter, or eventually upgraded to an iPad Pro with big speakers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in it. So that’s the way like and so like an iPad Pro on the counter is by far the best way to play
⏹️ ▶️ Marco podcasts out in the open at home by a long shot. It’s way better than Sonos, way better than Echo.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s just a way better experience because you don’t like you don’t listen to podcasts the same way listen to music.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s a lot more interaction involved and you have different like you want to look at if somebody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mentions a link you want to look at the show notes. If you know you might want to seek around a little bit or look at a chapter list or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco skip ahead or skip commercials or whatever else. there’s much more interaction with podcasts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than when you have with music. So like, these systems that are designed for music playback, when you try to play podcasts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with them, it sounds like a good idea, and it sounds like it’d be awesome, but trust me, when you actually get it, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not nearly as good as just using your phone, or using an iPad that’s, you know, sitting up on a counter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, there’s a lot of these features, and I think watch playback is just one of these things,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the nature of interacting with the watch, it’s so limited, the software is so limited, the hardware,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the ergonomics, they’re so limited because it’s such a tiny little device. I don’t think it’s ever gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be a great experience to play and manage podcasts on the watch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s gonna be something that people will ask for forever and some people will use it, no question.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not saying nobody will use it, but I’m saying very few people will, even if it’s done well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like even if I do everything right and even if the hardware gets a little bit better and things get a little bit faster,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I still don’t think it’s going to be a very good experience compared to just taking out your phone and doing it there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, you said something earlier, Marco, about the potential for an LTE-equipped
⏹️ ▶️ Casey watch. And I was on Clockwise earlier today, and that was actually the question I brought up is,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hey, would you be interested in an LTE-equipped watch? And, you know, why or why not?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And not to rehash that too much, but what I was saying was, you know, I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been running a few times a week lately, and we’ll see how long that sticks, but it’s been sticking for a while now. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been a couple of months. And it occurred to me recently that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey part of the reason I bring my phone when I run is because if I were to somehow really injure
⏹️ ▶️ Casey myself, I’d really want to be able to call like Erin or an ambulance
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if it really was that bad. And if I had a watch that had the mechanism by which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I could do that, presumably with LTE, although I saw some rumblings earlier
⏹️ ▶️ Casey today saying that maybe it would be data only and not permit phone calls, but either way.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If I had a watch that could call for help some way, somehow, then maybe I wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey need to bring my phone with me, which would be nice, that I wouldn’t have to, you know, because currently I carry it. I don’t have one of those peculiar
⏹️ ▶️ Casey armbands or anything. And it occurred to me, wow, you know, it would be really great to be able to listen to my podcasts
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my – oh, crap. So I definitely am
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not one that had used the send to watch feature in Overcast while it was there, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey am on a Series Zero watch, and I think I’ll probably upgrade this year. And yeah, it would be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty cool if that came back. So count me in as one of those people that’s looking forward to somehow figuring
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out a way to make this work again, presumably with API changes.
⏹️ ▶️ John By the way, Steve Trout and Smith actually gave us the name of the thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s apps use on the watch in the tradition of weird internal Apple name
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean springboards kind of weird too and the weird code names like what is the watch like the code name gizmo or
⏹️ ▶️ John something anyway watch kit runs on top of pepper UI core like
⏹️ ▶️ John the you know black pepper and pepper UI core runs on top of UI kit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how do you know it isn’t about bell peppers
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know what it’s about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe Chris Pepper.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah could be. It corrects your typos for you. Mm-hmm. Joke with
⏹️ ▶️ John an audience of seven people. Yay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks for our sponsors this week. fracture, ero, and aftershocks. and we will see you next
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental. John
⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him, Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you can find the show notes at atp.fm
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re into Twitter, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and T. Marco Armin,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental They didn’t mean to, accidental, accidental
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tech Podcasts So long
After-show: Bike follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have some bike follow-up.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Let’s talk about bikes.
⏹️ ▶️ John I saw your bike, or Tiff’s bike, and I couldn’t figure out if that was your, I’m going to buy
⏹️ ▶️ John the bike and if I don’t like it, I’m going to give it to Tiff, or if it was an entirely separate, dedicated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it was the bike that I was buying for probably Tiff, but I was going to see if I liked it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so that’s kind of why I bought it first. I was going to use my opinion of that to inform what I was going to get for myself.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that bike was the Priority Coast. Priority is a… They seem to be a pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good bike company. They’re a New York-based company. They started on Kickstarter. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have… They do all belt drive bikes. I mentioned last year that I like the belt drive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the lack of maintenance and better, you know, everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I like the belt drive, and that’s what I wanted. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Priority Coast is their Beach Cruiser model. I got it kind of thinking,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think I want a Beach Cruiser. I wanted a little bit more of a forward position. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always enjoyed mountain bikes more than most other bike shapes, I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that kind of forward position with the straight bars and the hand brakes and everything. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just like that better, I think. But this is a beach town and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco literally every other bike in town, except for the Cop bikes, beach cruisers. Even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the cops has a beach cruiser. The rest have mountain bikes. But anyway, so I thought that I should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably try that. So we did and it is a little bit big for me, which I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of expected going into it. So it’s a little bit big and I really don’t like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the coaster brake. This seems like a beach cruiser thing that all beach cruisers have that you know where you pedal backwards
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to brake the coaster brakes. I just I was not I’ve taken that bike
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out a few times and I just could not get into the coaster break it also it has the the coaster brake
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seemingly as like the main brake and then it also has a front only handbrake
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that to me was very confusing I think if this was gonna be my bike I would actually remove the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco front handbrake because to have like half of one method of braking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the main method of braking be the other thing like it was it was just very confusing like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I won’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John that on there because coaster brakes suck and if you need to stop in an emergency they don’t want you to die because the coaster
⏹️ ▶️ John brakes can’t stop you you know so
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean really it’s just friction point even if the coaster brakes could lock up the back wheel you will stop faster if you could also
⏹️ ▶️ John do something to stop the front wheel so that would be a bad idea to get a bike with coaster brakes and remove
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve actually seen bikes with hand brakes that only have the back hand brake like you need you want something pinching both
⏹️ ▶️ John the front and the back wheels because you need both contact patches to stop you an emergency. So don’t don’t do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and you know, my needs here are lower because again, like because they’re all like sidewalks full of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people that you’re riding on, like there’s no roads, there’s like these broad sidewalks and they’re all full of people and wagons and stuff. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you actually can’t go that fast most of the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John You’re gonna hit a deer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That yeah, that actually is a concern or a fox
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John or deer is good. Deer is gonna hit you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s more like more like it anyway. So so that was fine. I then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco after lots of research correction waffling as you know I’m I’m prone to do. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John decided to final.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, right. So I am now driving a CVT just for John. Oh my God.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John So what brand what brand is this? It is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco another. It’s also priority. It’s their their continuum onyx model. It’s basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their like high-end road bike. I have some issues with it. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a road bike like a road bike. It’s like a it’s like it’s a commuter bike. So it’s like it’s not like a racing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like like the handlebars don’t have like like dip down U shapes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Road bike is a term of
⏹️ ▶️ John art. Sorry. It’s like a 10 speed type thing but not the ones with the really skinny tires.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s a commuter bike. I have some issues with it. Their fenders are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty low quality on both of the bikes and they rattle a little bit even when they’re tightened and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The fenders are also slightly asymmetrical which is I can’t tell if it’s intentional or not. Like they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look just kind of crooked. So I’m probably actually going to remove the fenders because they just kind of are annoying me and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think in retrospect this was a bad choice for a beach town because it has these really skinny
⏹️ ▶️ Marco high pressure tires and while that might be great on a well paved road
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you’re commuting to work, I guess there’s a reason why every other bike that I pass
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the beach town has these like two inch wide cruiser tires. Like there’s a reason for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that and so when you’re riding along these walks that are all like the old concrete.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, it’s like it’s like running on an old sidewalk. So, you know, you’re going bump bump bump bump bump like as you go like you just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hit your feeling every bump and and on these tires you feel it a lot. So I’m actually I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I might go to the bike guy in town and see if he can like see if he has any larger tires that would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still fit these rims to not make it too big of a project. But and the seat
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is like sitting on a rock like they call it the priority comfort
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seat or saddle. I think they call them, bike people call them saddles for some reason. I don’t know what part of this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is comfortable exactly, but it’s certainly not the part that my butt is sitting on. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have to fix that as well. Fortunately that’s an easy fix. There’s lots of… Make sure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco friendly one. I was not aware there was a difference.
⏹️ ▶️ John The one you have is that like you’re distinguishing it by like there being a big split in the middle. You’re like why
⏹️ ▶️ John why is this seat split in half?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, yeah, it has like a
⏹️ ▶️ John little hole in the middle. Right. So sometimes they just give a suggestion of a crease
⏹️ ▶️ John there, which I feel like doesn’t help and sometimes there’s actually an air gap there. But anyway, you want something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, good. Noted. So, so I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John have that. You
⏹️ ▶️ John probably, you probably want for your sensitive tushy, like a gel seat or some other thing that’s squishy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Like, like the, the, the old rusted out mountain bike I, I, that I was riding here beforehand that only technically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has like three gears left of it’s 21. Um, that one has like an aftermarket gel seat on it and that, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was always fine for me. So I ordered some on Amazon that was well reviewed. We’ll see how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it goes when it gets here in three years. Because getting things here from Amazon is tricky.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, so replacing the seat, otherwise it’s very nice. I really love disc
⏹️ ▶️ Marco brakes. This is my first time ever riding a bike that has disc brakes. It’s such a massive difference over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the regular like V-style calipers that go on the rim. It stops like on a dime.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s amazing. So big fan of that. Big fan of generally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the handling of the shape of the bike. Although again, the tires are way too skinny. So I’m going to work on that too. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the CVT is amazing. Like it shouldn’t be as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good as it is, but it’s, it’s just really, really nice. Um, you know, one of the advances
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and, and there are, there are gear hubs that do this too. You can shift at, you know, even, even when you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at a stop, you can still shift. So if you, if you like are going on a high gear, have to stop really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fast and don’t time to like, you know, shift all the way back down. Doesn’t matter. Just twist the handle here in the low gear. You just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go because it’s a CVT and because you can just kind of twist as often as you like on that gear
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in any interval you like. I find myself shifting way more than I would on a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco derailleur style bike. I wouldn’t say it’s necessary. Like I’d be fine with a geared setup or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even with a fixed gear for most of the time I ride here. But it’s really nice to have this. That way you can like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, if I’m slowing down for a turn or something, I just kind of you know kind of I’ve automatically kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco started you know going into the lower gears and then moving back out as I go like as I pedals
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going back up it’s really cool make sure
⏹️ ▶️ John you do rev matching
⏹️ ▶️ John shifting for the corner flip the pedal literally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah so anyway it was probably not the best bike to get for the beach because of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco its incredibly hard ride that’s obviously designed for smooth roads and not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John sidewalks on this one Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no shot. It seems like shocks are passe and fancy bikes. It seems like nobody wants to build shocks anymore
⏹️ ▶️ John Well for mountain bikes you need them or anything that’s on uneven terrain you need it For not for not just for comfort,
⏹️ ▶️ John but also for control.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I Also, it’s been so since we recorded I also got curious about Sandbikes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or fat bikes as bike people seem to call them the ones that have like five inch wide giant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sand tires You occasionally see those around here. And I thought,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that could be interesting. Then I could ride past the crazy point of woods fence and I could expand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my horizons in the direction so I could get more distance if I can ride on the sand.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So since we last recorded about two weeks ago, I spent this time researching
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fat bikes and looking around for places that I could maybe rent one or try
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. And it wasn’t until about two days ago that I learned that my neighbor has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one and he let me borrow it and showed me how to use it on the sand. Have you ever ridden
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve run on sand, you ever run on sand?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it’s not fun either.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I knew it would be challenging. I did not realize to what degree it would be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco challenging. So I get out there and this is like, it’s a perfect setup. Like, it’s pretty low tide. He’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco showing me exactly where on the sand to ride, so it’s like optimally packed down,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slightly damp but not like super wet sand. And the bike has like these large,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco five inch low pressure tires. So it’s the ideal setup really. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would be hard to find a better setup than the setup I had. And so I first started
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going and for about the first 30 feet or so, I’m like, this is easy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What was I so concerned about? This is nothing. And then,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as you keep going, you’re like, wait a minute, I have to maintain this level of resistance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like indefinitely. It’s not like a quick hill where you go up the hill and then you’re flat for a while and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then you can coast for a while and you have low resistance. No, it’s like to keep moving, it’s like you’re going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up a pretty sizable hill all the time. Like.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I lasted something like two or 300 feet before. I was like, all right, I’m done. Like, I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do any more. Turn around, went back to him and I’m like, all right, thanks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m like, this, this ride is either going to save me a $50 rental fee
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the place in town or it’s going to cost me $1000 to buy one of these bikes. For the first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time ever, I didn’t buy the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re, now you’re researching East Sand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bikes though. Of course I researched East Sand bikes, but because those are only about 1500, but, but I uh.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only. Honestly, that’s not compared to the price of e-bikes and the price of sand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bikes. That actually is a really good price. But anyway, my issue with those is like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s the point then? Like the whole reason I’m riding is for exercise and getting myself,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, like, and like the challenge of it. And, you know, the e-bike thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think makes more sense if you’re doing like commuting or like if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s like, there’s some other reasons why you’re doing this besides just like the exercise value. Like if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you were a delivery person using using a bike or if you’re if you had to ride between these towns
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you had to go on the beaks to ride between certain ones like for your job or something,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’d be a different story. Then that would make more sense. But for my purposes, as like this is mainly for exercise,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any bike is it kind of misses the point, I think.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, what about exploring? Is at this point that you want to explore beyond a certain point that you hadn’t gone beyond
⏹️ ▶️ John before? You want to find new places to get Lyme disease. You should use the e-bike for that
⏹️ ▶️ John to let you go exploring in areas where previously you would have been too tired to get to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think a more responsible thing to do is to just keep biking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco until I’m strong enough to do the sand bike thing. That is what I should do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It probably isn’t what I will do, but that is what I should do.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco You just walk.
⏹️ ▶️ John You just walk on the beach. You can walk on the sand. Feet work really well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what are you crazy
⏹️ ▶️ John no so somehow we go up and down beaches on Long Island and we have
⏹️ ▶️ John no bikes just just our feet make sure you bring shoes sand is hot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John pretty frustrating though like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when like you will occasionally see somebody with an e-sand bike drive by as you’re on the beach you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like yeah so anyway what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I ideally still want is basically what I mentioned last time is my high-end option, the Budnitz
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bicycle, the model three or number three. I keep getting their names confused
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with Tesla’s names because they have some that begin with model and some that begin with number. Anyway, I want the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Budnitz number three and I will probably end up ordering one of those for home
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then maybe next summer I’ll get one for the beach, but we’ll see because this summer’s almost over and you can’t get them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re made to order so it takes a few weeks to get them so it’s too late for the summer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway. But I think That’s what I want here is basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a high specced bike that also has wide tires, but not quite
⏹️ ▶️ John Where are you going to ride it at home? On streets or are there like paths you can go on?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mostly streets, but there also is, I live near the old Croton Aqueduct
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Trail. I would probably ride on that. Lots of people do. There’s also nearby bike trails. Then I have to become
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the person who like puts their bike on their car and brings at places and that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I might get there sometime. I don’t know, but I don’t know anything about that world yet. And so I’m a little resistant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to that. Um, but you know, one thing I think I might get into this is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is actually, I’ve only told you about two of the three bikes that I’ve bought since we last talked.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Uh, the third one word was the tiny version, which I bought for my son cause they also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sell priority also sells the priority start, which is a tiny
⏹️ ▶️ Marco belt drive fancy bike made by hipsters in New York.
⏹️ ▶️ John he appreciates all the nuances of this very expensive fancy bike.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco First of all, compared to other well-rated kids’ bikes, it was surprisingly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inexpensive. Like, the bike that everyone else told us to get, which was the Isla,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or Isla bike, or Isla bike, whatever, however you pronounce that, that’s like 400 bucks. This was 250. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compared to those, that’s actually not that bad. I could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John also get this quickly.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s pretty cheap for a kid bike. Although this is real, I mean, the problem with these kids bikes is a throwaway bike. He’s gonna grow
⏹️ ▶️ John three inches in the next two weeks and it’s like, oh, now he’s too big for that bike because it’s like kids clothes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, well fortunately, we got the 16 inch size and he’s barely tall enough to make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it now, so that way he has the most time to actually use it before he gets too tall for it. And it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty well-specced bike. Like it has dual hand brakes, like real
⏹️ ▶️ Marco V-brakes on both wheels, not a coaster brake. And it has the carbon belt instead of the chain because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once he saw Tiff’s and then mine, and he asked about why those were there, and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco explained why it’s superior. And so of course he wanted one. So now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we have three people riding priority bikes. He hasn’t quite gotten it yet, but I bet within the next few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco days he’ll be pretty good on it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Do you have the training wheels on or off?
⏹️ ▶️ John All right, yeah, he’ll be doing it in two minutes. That’s another thing you can periscope. I don’t learn
⏹️ ▶️ John to ride. Just run behind him and hold the seat, and then you let go.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s how you do it. Yeah, so me and Tiff were doing that today earlier. This was the very first time we tried it, so we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got slightly far, but we didn’t quite get far enough today to fully let go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for more than a second or two. So I think we’ll practice over the next few days, and probably by next
⏹️ ▶️ Marco week, he should be riding a bike.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was mostly joking that’s not how you should have your head do that’s the way my father did it to me But that’s like the worst way to do the
⏹️ ▶️ John way you the way it should be done is the way you’re already doing it You give him the scoot bike so he learns how to balance and he’ll do it on his own
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so he’s I think he’s basically all set if he just uses this like a scoot bike But then picks both his feet up
⏹️ ▶️ John and puts them on the pedals instead of just holding them up in the air Then starts pedaling he’s off to the races.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we’re getting there This button it’s bike is weird Which
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah the frame is weird
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well they’re actually known for their like cool artistic frame
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah I don’t need my friend to be artistic and it’s not no CVT you’re gonna be spoiled by
⏹️ ▶️ John the CVT and then you’re gonna come to this and it’s like 11 gears that’s not enough
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually I already asked them and they they actually would do a CVT if I wanted it but yeah no I mean it’s because it seems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it what I actually want is a road
⏹️ ▶️ Marco version of a mountain bike
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah that’s what this looks like except for the fruity frame. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so what this gives me, you know, high end parts, like it has like good brakes,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good gearing options, the carbon belt, you know, like nice stuff and a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slightly mountain bikey, slightly roadie kind of hybrid riding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco position and wide tire support. And it looks cool. And oh, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it also has the other things I like, like minimal branding. Like so many of these bikes have just a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco giant names all over the place and it’s just ugly as sand. So you know stuff like that like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they do some pretty good work.
⏹️ ▶️ John So the way you feel about sand bike tires is the way I feel about tires that are the width of this thing. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like it’s just huge amounts of unnecessary friction as soon as I stop pedaling it’s like all these tires
⏹️ ▶️ John slowing me down like regenerative braking.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They actually had the Model E actually is one of the more interesting e-bikes I’ve ever seen too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s all in the rear hub. Like there’s no battery on the frame or anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it’s just all it’s just a rear hub that happens to include like a radial battery around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John the center. There
⏹️ ▶️ John are things you see the thing you can add to just any bike and just slap it on the wheel is lots of clever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Helvetica one was I called the I
⏹️ ▶️ John think it’s a bunch of them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see something wheel anyway. I honestly I thought that was hideous. The thing you could just add to any of them. Yeah, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but no, but again, like if I get an e bike, It would definitely be for home, not for here,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because that’s the place where like there are giant hills in my neighborhood. And one of the reasons I have not gotten
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a bike yet at home is that I assumed there’s no there’s no way to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reasonably ride a bike in my neighborhood because there’s so many hills.
⏹️ ▶️ John There is. Come on. I should show you. I don’t think any hill in your neighborhood is as big as the
⏹️ ▶️ John hills near where I was growing up. And I went up them in a bike with no gears. Couldn’t change gears down to first gear to get up the hill.
⏹️ ▶️ John You had one gear in the Mongoose and that was it. I powered my way up those hills all the time because that’s how you got to your friend’s
⏹️ ▶️ John house one gear both ways
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, that’s how you got to your friend’s house.
⏹️ ▶️ John The worst part. There’s more dangerous going down the hills I Wish I have topology and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sometimes it’s weird
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing is like like as as my kid gets into biking I suspect that a good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing to do will be for me to go with him biking even at home year-round So, like, to have something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at home that could do that pretty well is probably a good idea.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, no, no topology. I can go 3D. 3D.
⏹️ ▶️ John not very 3D. What the hell? It’s making it look like this road is flat. This road is not flat.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Every time I see a Mongoose around town, I think of you, John. No, it’s a different company now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they actually have what seems like a fairly popular fat tire bike, too. I’m not talking about,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, the Budness size tire. I’m talking about, you know, like the sand bike size tires. I see there’s a lot like a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the sand bikes around town or the ones that are kind of there seems to be a class of bike around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here that it’s they’re not quite wide enough or not knobby enough to be sand tires,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but they’re just ridiculous. They’re like three and a half inch wide, but just like flat rubber tires
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on bikes that look like they might have cost two dollars out of the Walmart discount bin. It’s very, very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco strange, but I kind of want to ride one because it looks like it’s probably a lot of fun.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m looking at these roads on Google Maps and I see what these terrible people did to my childhood home.
⏹️ ▶️ John I can see it from the air. They cut down all the trees, they put
⏹️ ▶️ John this hideous swimming pool, like taking up the entire backyard. Just this giant hideous swimming pool. Like literally
⏹️ ▶️ John the whole backyard is paved over with this terrible swimming pool in it. I hate these people.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know what, that should be your retirement plan. Buy back your old house and fix it.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not that great of a house. I can’t replace all the trees. They cut down so many
⏹️ ▶️ John trees, so many big full-grown trees. At least they still have them in the back, but just they cut down so many trees.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, you can. I mean, if you save enough money, you totally can buy full-grown trees.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know because there’s the guy Shaw, there’s some guy named Shaw who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco invented the hedge fund or something, and he’s building a large house down
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically at the edge of my neighborhood. actually trucked in full-size trees.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Have you ever seen a tree on a flatbed truck?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s what Apple did for the Apple Park thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah. I would love to know how much it costs to get a full-size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tree shipped to your house and planted. I’m guessing it has to be like a hundred grand or something. Like there’s… Nah,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe five thousand dollars a pop. Well, alright, maybe 10k a pop. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not on one like regular flatbed, it’s on like the oversized load trucks they bring houses
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah they got the big spade they got the big spade thing that’s containing the root ball and all the dirt yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah there’s it’s a giant root ball like I can’t like I can’t even imagine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John like yeah I’m gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John take it out like it’s like it’s like a thing from like a portal in a portal Half-Life 2
⏹️ ▶️ John with like City 17 these giant metal things go in ching ching ching and they all go underneath the thing and they all
⏹️ ▶️ John go down and meet in the middle and it tears up the tree it’s cool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah I didn’t see that far but even just seeing the truck go down
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the main thoroughfare in our town and park next to this giant construction project with this giant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tree lying down on the back of it like that’s Wow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so anyway you totally can replace the streets but maybe plan for like a hundred grand each as the
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just such a shame I mean I like I don’t understand why people like you don’t want to have a backyard you want
⏹️ ▶️ John your entire backyard to be brick in a swimming pool. It’s just. And it’s awkwardly
⏹️ ▶️ John shaped, it’s not the right place, like it’s a house on the corner and their swimming pool is like
⏹️ ▶️ John instead of being tucked away from where people are, it’s like right up against the driveway and the road.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like you want some privacy in your swimming pool. It’s just. I don’t know what they’re thinking.
⏹️ ▶️ John Telling you, this is what you got to do. Who knows what the inside of the house looks like now? I mean, maybe they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco change that much.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. But they sell it and they have an open house. I should go down there and look at what the heck they’re doing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, totally. No. God, it will drive you insane knowing the things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that they’ve done. The only way that ends well for you is if you don’t have any idea.
⏹️ ▶️ John They haven’t changed the outside of the house. They’ve kept all the gross 80s deck and like the little abbreviated
⏹️ ▶️ John deck that my dad, but maybe they fixed the walk when they did the driveway.