237: You Are Not a Datacenter
01 Sep 2017More on backups, camera advice, and whatever “sit bones” are.
Episode Description:
- Follow-Up:
- Marco's tukhus, sit bones, and cushioned saddles
- Backing up
/Applications - CrashPlan native client may not be for small business
- CrashPlan migrations over 5 TB
- Arq and macOS metadata
- Backblaze's 30 day retention
- Peer-to-peer NAS backups
- Synology C2 backup
- Dan Moren: iCloud Backup for Mac?
- Casey's MacBook keyboard woes
#askatp- Photo storage between generations
- Camera advice for beginners
- Playing the notoriety card
- APFS in High Sierra
- No home button on "iPhone 8"?
- Ending theme by Jonathan Mann
- Post-show: Caseys deep thought about batteries
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Chapters
- Pre-show: Neutral
- Follow-up: Bikists’ sit-bones
- Backblaze exclusions
- Follow-up: CrashPlan
- Backing up Mac metadata
- Sponsor: Casper (code ATP)
- Backblaze’s 30-day retention
- Peer-to-peer backup
- Synology C2 backup
- iCloud Backup for Mac?
- Sponsor: Audible
- Casey’s adorable keyboard
- #askatp: Passing down photos
- #askatp: Cameras
- #askatp: The notoriety card
- Sponsor: Fracture
- APFS conversion in High Sierra
- iPhone “8” home-button rumor
- Ending theme
- Post-show: Battery question
Pre-show: Neutral
⏹️ ▶️ John Someone trying to spell took us and they’re spelling it t you you Q you a s it is not derived
⏹️ ▶️ John from Spanish to quads
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, that is not the way to spell You
⏹️ ▶️ John are the wrong region of the world for the origin of that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s magnificent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love Sean P. Walsh in the chat earlier people who truck equals truckists
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Somehow I missed that joke That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco people who are
⏹️ ▶️ John prejudiced against trucks who already established that yes
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Like me with
⏹️ ▶️ John the stupid jeep Cherokee with a… Would you stop with that? …lowered and big. It’s so ridiculous.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s the worst thing ever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Didn’t I tell this story on Neutral? It’s December in Connecticut. And for those
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who are not aware, Connecticut doesn’t believe in salting the roads. They believe in sanding the roads. So the entire state is just one big
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sandbox. It’s December. It’s Connecticut. And there’s sand everywhere. And we’re at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a T. You know, so we have to make either a left or a right. It’s my friend’s SRT-8 Grand Cherokee.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And similarly to the Eclipse turbo that we were talking about earlier, he looks over and says, you holding on? I’m like, what the fuck are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you talking about? We’re about to do a 90 degree turn. Why would I need to hold on? I was like, yeah, okay, sure.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Next thing I know, he stands on the gas and we make this 90 degree turn like we were getting shot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out of a cannon. It was the most amazing thing in the world.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, no, fast car. Fine. But like, it’s like, let’s make something that is not designed to go fast,
⏹️ ▶️ John but let’s make it go fast.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And there’s no, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John of the perverse thing in that. But in the end, it’s an abomination. It’s just like, let’s take a Chihuahua,
⏹️ ▶️ John but make it a pack animal. Like we’ll have it carry all our suitcases down to the Grand Canyon.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you could do that, it’s like, wow, that’s the world’s strongest Chihuahua. But like, that is the wrong tool for the job.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is a terrible analogy. I am disappointed. You are usually so good
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at coming up with decent analogies in a way that I am terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was reversed because I’m taking the small thing and making it big. But it’s like making a hippo dance. Like that’s what you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey trying to do. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just like, why would you do that? perfectly good cars that are not big, tall, tippy,
⏹️ ▶️ John gross things made to go off-road that are… they want to go fast. The cheap charkey doesn’t want to go
⏹️ ▶️ John fast. What are you doing? You’re… I love it when they lower it. They take a car with good ground clearance and then you lower
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Like, what are you even doing? Like, why? You’re just… you’re just ruining a car.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, it’s por que no los tos. Why can’t you have both? Why can’t you have this convenient car
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that’s… Because
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t, because the thing is like 17 feet high and rolls over. You can’t. No, it doesn’t. I just explained
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to you. We did a 90 degree turn at like 30.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can lower it as much as you want. The center of gravity of that car is not the same as the center of gravity of
⏹️ ▶️ John a sports car. It’s down low.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So if somebody offered you a Porsche, what’s the, it’s not the Cayman, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Cayenne, the Cayenne Turbo. And the
⏹️ ▶️ John McCann is the even bigger one. I would sell it and use that money to probably not buy a better car. But if I was forced
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey forced, I said, you have
⏹️ ▶️ John to get a car, I would immediately sell it. And I would use that money to buy a million other cars that I’d
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Why do you hate fun, John? Why do you hate fun?
⏹️ ▶️ John What’s your next suggestion? A monster truck Ferrari? Why can’t I have both? Look, it’s like a Ferrari, but also you can crush cars
⏹️ ▶️ John What have you done? And a monster truck Ferrari would still look cooler than that Jeep. It would still look cooler.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I hate you so much, and yet I don’t. Oh, God.
Follow-up: Bikists’ sit-bones
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we should get this show started and as per usual we have to start with some follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and you know here’s the thing you guys we’ve been doing the show for what almost three
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and a half years now is that right because it was 2013 if I’m not mistaken and and you know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I knew both of you guys pretty well when we started I knew Marco a little bit better but I knew both you guys pretty well but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had you told me in 2013 yeah you know you’re still gonna be doing this in 2017 I’d
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’d probably been like, eh, that’s surprising, but okay, I’ll believe it. If you had told me in 2013, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you will have multiple episodes of follow-up about Marcos hindquarters. I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John sure I would have believed that one. He’s got a
⏹️ ▶️ John horse. I don’t know if he has hindquarters. Exactly. Marcos
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I was going to go with Tukus. I was going to go with Tukus. We
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey all the different,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco his derriere,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey his fanny, but
⏹️ ▶️ John fanny means something different in the UK. So.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey did grow up in a mixed environment if you know took us I’m very proud of you John
⏹️ ▶️ John touches derived from that I think it’s all just you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, well anyway, so let’s talk about Marcos took us. Why don’t you tell me about?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Whether cushion saddles are good or bad and I don’t know if I’m talking to Marco or John
⏹️ ▶️ John Hashimi who says cushion saddles are bad. You can tell it’s a bike
⏹️ ▶️ John person when they say saddles because
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco yes regular people who call
⏹️ ▶️ John them seats but but bikers does mark say
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey marko whatever that guy’s name
⏹️ ▶️ John is they’re good dogs mark um they’re saddles anyway
⏹️ ▶️ John uh he says when you sit on a large cushion seat the cushioning material ensures pressure is placed over the entire region
⏹️ ▶️ John it goes into the nooks and crannies between your thighs and finds all the sensitive areas to ensure maximum
⏹️ ▶️ John pressure yeah what you want instead and this was repeated this
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco was repeated by many many yeah
⏹️ ▶️ John this was repeated by many people who sent in feedback i just fix on his representative. What you want instead is contact
⏹️ ▶️ John at your sit bones and nothing else. Did you know you have sit bones? If you read the dozens of emails that
⏹️ ▶️ John talk about sit bones that were sent to our show you would know.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah I thought this was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a term that the first person was making up but then we got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John multiple people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey telling us about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sit bones apparently I mean I haven’t done any more medical research on this topic but multiple people seem to think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these are real things.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah and so he says with some honesty soreness at the contact areas ideally the sit bones is to be expected
⏹️ ▶️ John for the new cyclist by the way many people wrote in to tell Marco that it’s not bikist as if he didn’t know that.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Sometimes it’s hard to tell if Marco is joking. I myself have done it
⏹️ ▶️ John rest assured he knows bikist is a bad joke.
⏹️ ▶️ John He likens it to the soreness in your feet when you first start using a standing desk. Numbness is a much more ominous
⏹️ ▶️ John sign. It means pressure is being placed on the wrong spots, cutting off blood supply, or pressing on nerves. So The consensus seems
⏹️ ▶️ John to be, padding aside, what you want is most of your weight to be
⏹️ ▶️ John on the sit bones and not sort of distributed across all the different parts
⏹️ ▶️ John because then no matter how you sit, it’s like squishing all your soft tissues together and cutting off blood flow.
⏹️ ▶️ John Whereas apparently I’m guessing there’s a path from the sit bones to, you know, it’s kind of like jacking a car,
⏹️ ▶️ John put it that way. When you jack up a car, you put it on the jack points, you don’t just take the jack and put it on any squishy part underneath your car
⏹️ ▶️ John and start Cranking it because bad things will happen. So anyway, I debated even putting
⏹️ ▶️ John this in here but I feel like this is good information for other people who are Getting into
⏹️ ▶️ John bikes or not into bikes and are wandering around bike seat stuff The there was very loud consensus
⏹️ ▶️ John that it’s all about you and your sit bones and then making good contact and that not having pressure on other places
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you for all the bikers for your feedback about my James Damore
⏹️ ▶️ John It sounds like they’re like, Yeah, it sounds like they’re, uh, they’re prejudiced against bikes. They’re bikers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Nice. Speaking of jacking up cars, it always drove me nuts because anytime
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wanted to jack up, I think it was the Subaru. I don’t think it was the BMW. The official jack point for the rear of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the car was to jack up by the rear differential, which just seems like a terrible
⏹️ ▶️ Casey idea to me. They were like, Yeah, just put it onto the rear pumpkin and go to town. You’ll be fine. It just seems
⏹️ ▶️ John Probably a pretty strong part of the car. I mean, I presumably they know what they’re talking about. They made the car. They’re not gonna,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know. I know, one would think, but it just struck me as wrong.
Backblaze exclusions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, Mo Rubensoh wants to talk about Backblaze backup limits and also wants
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to know, how do folks back up their applications folder because Backblaze exempts
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it and restructuring it would be hell. I don’t, or at least I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think I would want to because if I wanted to back everything up in my applications
⏹️ ▶️ Casey folder, I would rather just recreate it by hand because I don’t think I want any of this stuff in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there. In fact, one of my favorite blog posts that I wrote, which is mostly for myself as kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of a long-term memory, but it’s talking about here’s all the things I would install when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reinstalling a new Mac or starting a new Mac. So I used that for the MacBook Adorable. I used it for the 5K iMac.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t use Migration Assistant, generally speaking, because even though
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s unlike the Windows when I was using Windows, and this is probably Marco’s era as well, that You had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to re-install everything, you had to just destroy everything and start anew every six months
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to clear out all the cruft that just magically appears. Mac OS is not like that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but when I get a new machine, it’s time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I also don’t ever back up my applications folder unless it’s like from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco automatically doing it from things like Time Machine or a disk clone. I think the main advantage to backing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up your applications folder is if you’re literally just cloning your entire disk and if you want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fast recovery after a disaster. And there is definitely a role for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. You should have some, like one of your backup methods should be like a straight up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco copy of your entire disk because then if you do have a disk failure you can restore that onto
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a new disk or a new computer very quickly compared to downloading things off of an internet backup.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco An internet backup is like a last resort because it is slower, it goes over the internet, you You might
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have limited upstream, so you might not want to upload every single thing you have on your disk if you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco easily get it through other means. So there is definitely a role for including
⏹️ ▶️ Marco applications folders in backups, but I totally see why it’s not included in Backblaze
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as cloud backup by default. Again, we should disclose that Backblaze is a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco frequent sponsor of our show. But I’m saying this partly to defend them, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also not because they are paying us sometimes. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco simply because I think that it makes sense to exclude that for a cloud backup, because the purpose of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cloud backup is like last resort, where an application folders are really easy to reconstruct
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with just time. You’re not permanently losing data there, you’re just losing some time to redownload
⏹️ ▶️ Marco applications, reinstall applications and everything. But yeah, for a full disk copy method,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like time machine or super duper carbon copy clone or things like that, any kind of disk cloning method,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it makes sense to include that just for speed of recovery.
⏹️ ▶️ John So we talked about this a long time ago, one of our earlier shows about backups. I think it was when we were all just started
⏹️ ▶️ John using Backblaze, actually even before maybe they sponsored the show. It was. This is, I was discussing like
⏹️ ▶️ John the fact that Backblaze excludes a lot of stuff. And they had like a hard coded, they have a thing where you can say what
⏹️ ▶️ John you want to exclude, but they have a hard coded exclude list. And it excluded stuff that I wanted backed up.
⏹️ ▶️ John So that time I hacked up whatever XML file they had buried somewhere in the slash library folder,
⏹️ ▶️ John not the home directory one, but the one at the top level of the disk. There was some XML file somewhere that you could mess with
⏹️ ▶️ John to make it back up things that are in the quote unquote hard quote, quote, exclude this.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think that technique still works and it’s just as unsupported
⏹️ ▶️ John and dangerous and do it your own risk, but it is a thing that I do. Frequently that file moves around
⏹️ ▶️ John and changes or whatever, but I’m pretty sure it’s still working for me. So basically
⏹️ ▶️ John you can make back plays back up stuff that it says it doesn’t want to back up if you’re willing
⏹️ ▶️ John to live a little dangerously. But like Mark said, you
⏹️ ▶️ John should just be losing time because applications, it’s annoying, but none of your data is there. You
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t write those applications, right? And these days, the chances are
⏹️ ▶️ John very good that you have some reasonably convenient way to get those applications back. The company you bought
⏹️ ▶️ John it from has some record that you bought it that can let you redownload it. Even if it came on plastic disks, I’m hoping you’re saving
⏹️ ▶️ John those plastic disks somewhere. And if you’re not saving them, I’m hoping you can contact the vendor that you bought it from and say, Hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John my house burned down, I lost my plastic discs, I get the software back. But realistically speaking, most applications you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going to want to launch these days, you have to be able to download them some way. And if you can download them, there’s probably some record
⏹️ ▶️ John on their servers about the fact that you own it. So it may be annoying. But like Margo said, like if
⏹️ ▶️ John you find yourself restoring from an internet backup, many, many things have gone wrong. And you’re probably just so happy that you have
⏹️ ▶️ John your precious data preserved in any form that you’re not, you know, you’re going to be spending like days and days, possibly weeks restoring
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway so don’t worry about it but yeah but I but I because it’s unlimited backups I’m like you know what go ahead
⏹️ ▶️ John back up my applications folder Why not?
Follow-up: CrashPlan
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So CrashPlan does have a native client for Macs, maybe.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we’ve gotten a lot of feedback saying that the Enterprise CrashPlan
⏹️ ▶️ Casey client is actually native. And if you recall, one of the things that really drives me freaking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bananas about CrashPlan as a consumer is that it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Java-based cross-platform utter garbage app. I guess saying Java-based and utter garbage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is redundant, but here we are. That joke will never stop being funny, I’m sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco So anyway. And we got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco zero negative feedback on it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco surprised. So anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so there’s been a lot of people coming to us saying,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hey, the Enterprise client is actually native, so it may not be so bad once you do the migration. Except
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe not. So Phil Stollery wrote in to say to us that he just upgraded to CrashPlan for small
⏹️ ▶️ Casey business, which to be fair is not necessarily the same as Enterprise. And he said it’s the same
⏹️ ▶️ Casey crappy Java app. And he said that he was only allowed to use version 4.9, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess is still Java, not the enterprise version, which is 6.x. So tread
⏹️ ▶️ Casey carefully. I still haven’t taken any action on my backup strategy yet because I’m procrastinating
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and sticking my head in the sand like an ostrich trying to pretend that it’s not an issue. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be wary that things may not be all roses and daffodils in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the crash plan for small business category.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m wondering how you can get if it’s possible to get that native version even if
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re a small business customer but I’ve been running the Java version for everything said it’s not like it doesn’t bother me I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John see the application I just see the icon in the menu bar it’s probably using a lot more memory and CPU than I want but it has pretty good controls
⏹️ ▶️ John about you can tell it don’t even start doing a backup unless the machine has been idle for a certain period time you can
⏹️ ▶️ John always stop it if it’s in the middle of doing something and honestly with a with a big
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac with lots of RAM and an SSD you just don’t notice it running, even though it’s a bloated Java application
⏹️ ▶️ John and, you know, it’s probably doing ridiculous things. And if you bring up activity monitor, you may get sad about it, but, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, you can always pause it and tell it not to run now and then just do your stuff and then let it run when you’re away where you don’t have to see what it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John doing to your computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. Uh, speaking of crash plan, the year is a five terabyte migration
⏹️ ▶️ Casey limit, which I was not aware of. So this is a crash plan support article entitled migrate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your crash plan for home account to crash mine for small business. stated a little over a week
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ago. And it says that, hey, your backup, do my backups continue
⏹️ ▶️ Casey automatically and the backup type cloud backups to crash plan central crash plan central being their cloud offering?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Does it continue? Yes, except very large backups over five terabytes. And just seconds
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ago, I took a look to see how big my latest backup was to crash plan central. Would anyone like to guess how big it was? 5.15
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point three terabytes. Woo.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m just under five. I’m like 4.8 or something. So I’m happy. I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John already I’ve already done this conversion It already updated my client it
⏹️ ▶️ John my client to the it’s still the Java client, but the color scheme is different I’m pretty sure
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey that’s interesting. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John running 4.9. But whatever but yeah, just it just continued my backups.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, man, that’s it. That’s I’m jealous because apparently I’m good. So it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I can’t use this new home and business or small business thing But apparently I’m gonna have to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reupload everything everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John you contact them and say, love very large backups over five terabytes. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m a little bit old. Can’t you just, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John grandfather me and I’m close like I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, something like that. I don’t know. I’m sad. I need to take action on this. I just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really don’t want to I just want it to go away. And ignoring it does not make it go away, but I wish it did.
Backing up Mac metadata
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so ARQ versus Backblaze versus CrashPlan
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on saving Mac metadata. So this is something I’ve never paid attention to because I don’t really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey care enough, even though I probably should. So as the person who is most likely to care about this,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, why don’t you tell me about what’s going on here?
⏹️ ▶️ John This was a larger story, like maybe two years ago. I think back when Backblaze was starting to come to prominence
⏹️ ▶️ John and ARQ was a lot newer than it is now. And one of arcs big selling points was,
⏹️ ▶️ John Hey, we back up all your Mac metadata, like every little bit of it, all the labels and the dates and the comment
⏹️ ▶️ John field. And like every little weird bit, the Flander flags and all the stuff, we back it
⏹️ ▶️ John all up. And there’s another program. I’m not sure if it’s associated with arc, if it’s written by the same guy, or if it’s totally independent,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it called backup bouncer that was trying to say, um, if you make
⏹️ ▶️ John a backup and restore the backup, is it exactly like it was before down to the bit down to every single
⏹️ ▶️ John piece piece of metadata, right? And you could care more or less about different things at various times,
⏹️ ▶️ John people who use like labels, like Mac, Mac OS is labels where you can label
⏹️ ▶️ John your items in the finder with different colors and give the colors names and stuff like that. If you use that extensively,
⏹️ ▶️ John or tags, you know, that which is the expansion of labels, like if you use that stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John extensively, and you do a backup, but like, that’s how you organize your files, right? And you do a backup, and you restore and all
⏹️ ▶️ John that stuff is gone. That is essentially data loss for you. So you care a lot about that, that metadata
⏹️ ▶️ John backup bouncer is, you know, down to the bit thing. I remember like super duper would fail on backup bouncer because
⏹️ ▶️ John it didn’t restore permissions on things that didn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John the rights to restore. Like it changed the ownership or change some, you know, like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s very picky about exactly what you want to have. But, uh, the general line from these companies about
⏹️ ▶️ John why their products don’t do well on backup bouncer is like, well, we
⏹️ ▶️ John are not a bit for bit imaging system. We are a data backup solution.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you’re not going to get your disk back bit for bit exactly how it was. You’re just going to get your data back.
⏹️ ▶️ John Crash plan reportedly backs up metadata better than back plays back plays drops almost all
⏹️ ▶️ John of it on the floor and just backs up your data crash plan does better arc is apparently 100%
⏹️ ▶️ John like it’ll get every single little bit because that’s you know, that’s it’s the bespoke artisanal handcrafted
⏹️ ▶️ John backup program just for Mac users. And a lot of people ask me how I feel about that, since I love all my metadata and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, one of the reason is I don’t use labels and tags is because I know how they’re implemented and it’s gross.
⏹️ ▶️ John But B, I fear how the how that stuff will if that stuff will survive,
⏹️ ▶️ John so I wouldn’t want to rely on it and then have a get lost in some kind of backup thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And like we said before, online backup is absolutely the last resort. So it being the lowest fidelity
⏹️ ▶️ John backup I have superduper being the highest fidelity where it’s pretty much exactly the bit for bit
⏹️ ▶️ John the disk that I had time machine kind of being in the middle and then backblaze
⏹️ ▶️ John being the lowest fidelity. I’m okay with that, right? There’s there’s trade offs, you’re paying $5
⏹️ ▶️ John a month to store some obscene amount of memory and someone else’s server. You know, I’m, I
⏹️ ▶️ John understand again, if that if I find myself restoring from that so many things have gone wrong, that
⏹️ ▶️ John I just accept that, you know, every little bit of metadata won’t be there. But because of that, I also don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John use the metadata for any, it’s not an essential part of my workflow for organizing my files, just because so many things not just backup
⏹️ ▶️ John software, but so many things are not won’t won’t honor and copy that metadata,
⏹️ ▶️ John like the Apple’s own CP commands and MV commands and stuff will for the most part honor it. But
⏹️ ▶️ John lots of other tools like even if you install the third party build of our sink and haven’t compiled it with the right options that might
⏹️ ▶️ John and that bring your extended attributes over. And if you don’t pass the right flags and stuff, like I just can’t rely
⏹️ ▶️ John on myself to be careful to preserve that stuff. So I never put anything I really care about in metadata like that, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is sad because I wish it was pervasive and supported everywhere. But the lowest common
⏹️ ▶️ John denominator, which is a mathematically incorrect expression, but you all know what I mean, is
⏹️ ▶️ John so much lower than what it is on the Mac. So the common set of metadata that you can
⏹️ ▶️ John be confident is going to survive everywhere is higher than it has ever been, but still way lower
⏹️ ▶️ John than what Mac OS supports. So backup programs being on that
⏹️ ▶️ John lower end, I just accept as another sad reality, just like file name extensions.
⏹️ ▶️ John Sorry, John. Someday we’ll get there. Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection.
⏹️ ▶️ John That went right over my head.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I know I’ve heard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it before. I think it’s a Beatles
⏹️ ▶️ John lyric. Have you, yeah, close, close, Margot. Have you shown Adam the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, there we go. No,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, it’s a little bit slow pace for kids because it’s like a 70s movie and movies were slower back
⏹️ ▶️ John then But still got some good songs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know what? I loved Charles Bronson was in like the Great Muppet Caper or something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was another Muppets movie I forget where what what the official title was But I remember
⏹️ ▶️ Casey loving that as a kid and like many years ago I watched it with Aaron and you know as an adult and I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like, oh this movie is not
⏹️ ▶️ John that The original Mamma movie though is very sweet and has good songs and is good production values
⏹️ ▶️ John and Kermit rides a bicycle So Marco can watch it and feel some kinship. What kind of saddle does he use?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s hard to tell Is he is he properly fit on his sit bones? I don’t know frogs have sit bones
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m still not sure if people have sit bones. He’s got someone’s hand up his butt, but oh my god Through
⏹️ ▶️ John the magic of special effects, he’s riding a bike. It’s pretty cool
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Backblaze’s 30-day retention
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you so much to Casper for sponsoring this show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so let’s talk about a lot of people have written in with a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lot of anger about Backblaze’s 30-day retention policy. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is something that I could not possibly care less about, but there’s a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very grumpy people about it. So if I understand things right, Backblaze
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has said, if you have a, say, external hard drive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is physically connected to your computer and thus qualifies for Backblaze backups,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you don’t plug it in every 30 days, then they will delete those backups.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So let’s say, you know, I have an external hard drive that has a bunch of pictures on it. If
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t plug it in at least once a month, at the end of a month, if I haven’t plugged it in, backblaze
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will delete all those files. And there’s a lot of people that are really, really grumpy about this that have written us
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and are like, why aren’t you talking about this? How can you let this stand? I just don’t care. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey why? I don’t understand why people think it’s acceptable for backblaze to hold on to this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey data in perpetuity, just because they’re paying them $5 a month or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John is. Crash plan does it for $10 a month. I mean, it all comes down to the business model.
⏹️ ▶️ John the corporate, you know, for $10 is the new plan that they are doing. Right? So backblaze has been
⏹️ ▶️ John on Twitter talking to people and they say like, oh, we consider reusing this policy, blah, blah, blah. But yeah, it just comes down to economics.
⏹️ ▶️ John If this is a way for backblaze to make it so they don’t lose money and cancel this
⏹️ ▶️ John plan, because you can imagine just hooking up every hard drive you have and pushing it up and then just
⏹️ ▶️ John never reconnecting it. I do it because I keep most of my hard drives unmounted. And occasionally backblaze
⏹️ ▶️ John yells at me and tells me I haven’t mounted one in a while and I just mounted it and it’s fine. Like it sends you a reminder, you’re not gonna not
⏹️ ▶️ John know that it’s happening. But if backblaze wanted to like revisit this, what they would have to do is say,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can store as much as you want. But now we’re gonna have to charge you on some sort of usage basis, maybe there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a flat fee up to a certain size. But once you get beyond that, you have to pay an additional x number of dollars for different
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, you know, I mean, like, it doesn’t have to be exactly a la carte, you pay for every bite like s3, it can still be the insurance
⏹️ ▶️ John model where everybody pays the same amount. And most people do very little, but a few people do a lot and it all
⏹️ ▶️ John evens out like that’s their business model to support your ability to just hook up a hard drive,
⏹️ ▶️ John two terabyte hard drive once, let it back up over the course of the week and then file it away in a shelf confident that those
⏹️ ▶️ John two terabytes will be there forever. Backblaze will store those two terabytes for you. No problem. You just got to give them enough money to
⏹️ ▶️ John make it worth their while. And how much more do you have to give it than $5 a month? I don’t know. They can figure out how the math
⏹️ ▶️ John works. But for all the people asking for that feature, it’s going to cost you more money. And I think those people will be willing to
⏹️ ▶️ John cost more money. So I think Backblaze should come up with a plan that has slightly different policies,
⏹️ ▶️ John that is priced slightly differently, and for its extreme users, they would use that. They would get more
⏹️ ▶️ John money out of the extreme users, and I think they would just have happier customers overall, because most people don’t care about this,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the people who do, as we noted, are very worked up about it. So Backblaze,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re leaving money on the table. Go take some money from the people who want their stuff to be stored forever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think one of the main roots of that anger is like, you know, when, you know, Backblaze advertises
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unlimited, and unlimited in computers is never really unlimited. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s always exceptions to that, because it’s impossible to build a business on being truly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unlimited. And, you know, usually, like, it’s easy to understand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco business models that don’t claim to be unlimited and just show you their pricing and their limits right up front.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I think the people who are angry about that probably angry because they expect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco truly unlimited because that’s how it’s advertised and this is an exception
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to that but you know that’s again like that’s you know I think you put it well like that’s why they’re able to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stay in business is because of limitations like that that are I think pretty reasonable limitations
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah like that’s not a secret they’re gonna pop dialogue in your faces I think they pop the first dialogue box in like 10 days or 14 days
⏹️ ▶️ John like hey I haven’t seen this books in this disc in 10 days perhaps you want to plug it back in. Like they’re not secretly
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to delete all your data, but this is where the economics work for $5. You can really start as much
⏹️ ▶️ John as you want for $5, but you can’t like briefly connect a hard drive to your computer. Like have
⏹️ ▶️ John your friends come and bring their hard drives, hook them up to your computer, let them back up and then take their hard drive back to their house and never visit it again. Now you
⏹️ ▶️ John have a permanent backup of their stuff just in case they lose it. Like that’s the model they’re trying to avoid.
⏹️ ▶️ John People just, you know, using it as a way station to drop off a couple of terabytes, That’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John sustainable for $5 a month flat fee. Yep.
Peer-to-peer backup
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So a lot of other people have written in and said, Hey, you know, I don’t know if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you guys were aware, but you all have Synology’s and, and Synology does have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a peer to peer backup system, strategy, et cetera. Why don’t you do that? And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will be the bad guy and say, I don’t want to share my space with you two jerks. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s mine and I don’t want to share. And I, I would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably, if either of you asked me, be willing to offer up what I could.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But last I heard, John, you said last episode or the one before,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that you’re bursting… There’s no
⏹️ ▶️ John room in the inn. I don’t have a square to spare. Insert
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey your own reference here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, exactly. So John doesn’t have any excess space
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to offer. And thus, if you don’t have any excess space, I won’t have enough to offer you a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey backup. up. Marco and I maybe could set this up, but I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like this is the sort of thing where I should be paying a company to handle
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this for me, which is what I will probably end up doing. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feel comfortable asking even you guys, who I think would probably say, all things being equal,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would probably say, yeah, sure, you can back up to my sonology. I don’t feel comfortable talking to you guys about it, let
⏹️ ▶️ Casey alone, you know, anyone else I might know. So I don’t really view this as a reasonable option
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for me, but maybe I’m just being a big baby.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I don’t. It’s not a reasonable option for most people. And I wouldn’t say yes, because I don’t want the responsibility of
⏹️ ▶️ John holding your data. Like the whole point of cloud backup is I want it to be far away from my house. So
⏹️ ▶️ John if the house burned down, it’s okay. And I want it to be someplace where it’s somebody’s
⏹️ ▶️ John job to make sure my data is actually there. A lot of people do this where they do a hard drive
⏹️ ▶️ John and back it up and put it in a relative’s house that is better than nothing. I’m not going to discourage you from doing that. But
⏹️ ▶️ John in that situation, and I’ve been in many times, what always happens is you forget to keep bringing
⏹️ ▶️ John the hard drive back and forth because it’s a pain. And if it’s network based, like, Oh, you know how to do that. It’s all magic over the network
⏹️ ▶️ John is the person at the other end, invested in making sure that your backup continues to be successful
⏹️ ▶️ John and that you know, the the hard drive that’s doing it isn’t filling up or doesn’t have some bad sectors
⏹️ ▶️ John and stuff like that. not their job. And they don’t want to be responsible for that. And if something goes wrong, now you’re mad at like
⏹️ ▶️ John a friend or a relative. And there have been like products on Kickstart and stuff to try to do with strangers like we’ll all
⏹️ ▶️ John share our data and it’ll be a big distributed p2p cloud like so far that hasn’t worked out. It’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John good it’s a good idea. If I think of space was cheaper and bandwidth is more it would work out. But
⏹️ ▶️ John right now I hardly recommend sending your data to some company whose job it is to make sure your data
⏹️ ▶️ John is safe doesn’t mean the company is going to be perfect either. But a if the company screws things up, you can
⏹️ ▶️ John feel fine about being mad at the company B, you can sue the company maybe probably not because of their user agreement. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John like you can get as mad as you want about them. They have deep pockets. So if you want some sort of recourse, you can get it you would
⏹️ ▶️ John never want to be in this relationship with a relative or a friend where through some faults that you will argue about
⏹️ ▶️ John your your backup, your offsite backup is corrupt or unreason or not
⏹️ ▶️ John there or something goes wrong or whatever. And then people being bitter about the hard drive space you’re using that they want to reclaim
⏹️ ▶️ John that to put like more of their bits blu rays on it’s just it is not a relationship you
⏹️ ▶️ John want to be in. I do not recommend this even though there’s lots of good software for it that makes
⏹️ ▶️ John it easy. But like I said, all that said, if that’s your only option, like if that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John only thing you can do, whether it’s carrying hard drives back and forth in a car or having your two sonologies talk to each other,
⏹️ ▶️ John it is better than nothing but I really recommend making a company do it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I think I would almost feel I’m not even almost I I think I would probably feel more comfortable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey saying to one of you guys, I am shipping a Synology to your house. A second
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey your Synology.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want to run your hardware in my house. It’s hard enough for me to run my own stuff. My kid’s going to spill peanut
⏹️ ▶️ John butter on it. My basement’s going to flood. The mice are going to poop in it. It’s just no.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I totally understand that. Yeah. Yeah. I also, I don’t want the responsibility.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s much less about the physical, having the hardware, or having
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the space, or the money required to run and power it. It’s more about, I don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you to depend on this box in my house, in my garage, that’s probably overheating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco itself slowly. I don’t need the stress of that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would hate to be in a position where your stuff went bad and you were depending
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on me and this thing being perfectly operating in my house to fix that. And talk about like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, that’s fine for the three of us. Like, most people don’t have friends with giant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco NAS boxes in their garages
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John or basements. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is not a generalizable solution. It barely would even work for us. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we have giant NAS boxes with giant hard drives and fast internet connections, and we’re all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco friends. Like, most people don’t have that kind of setup. And even the ones like us who do probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shouldn’t do that if we have other options.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s safer to lend people money than to store their
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey backups. Because if
⏹️ ▶️ John you give people money, you can just say, this is just a gift. You never have to pay me back. Here it is, we’re friends. Whereas the data, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you’re keeping this safe for me, right? Like, it’s easier to keep people’s children safe
⏹️ ▶️ John than their data, because you forget the stupid,
⏹️ ▶️ John forget the stupid hard drive is there. You forget if it’s still running. You forget if things are going bad.
⏹️ ▶️ John The person on the other end doesn’t know that their thing is failing, because you have some, It’s just, it’s not you
⏹️ ▶️ John are not a data center. You don’t have a climate control thing with aisles and aisles of racked computers.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, like you just, you don’t have that. You don’t have redundant power backups. You don’t just, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not in the business of being a backup thing. So it’s just, it’s just gonna be sad all around because if something goes wrong,
⏹️ ▶️ John then, you know, what do you do? You just sit there and try not to blame each other, but then you do feel bad about it. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like it’s a much better feeling for you to backup stuff to Backblaze and then all your data goes corrupt on Backblaze
⏹️ ▶️ John the last moment, like then you just be righteously mad at backblaze being mad at corporations what Americans are best at. We don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey to ruin your relationships. Just,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I’m never flying Delta again, like you can do that all you want and be fine. You don’t want to sacrifice your personal
⏹️ ▶️ John relationships, but you’ll keep you vibrant and extend your life according to all the studies.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it’s funny you bring that up because the unfortunately named pahish food in the chat
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said backing up each other’s storage is like lending money. Don’t do it with your friends do it with a business and I agree with
⏹️ ▶️ John Like I said, I think lending money is better because
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you can at least
⏹️ ▶️ John say it’s better than backing up because lending money, you can lend it and say, oh, well, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John pretending this is a loan, but in my heart of hearts, I’m realizing this is a gift and just say, I never expect to see this money back
⏹️ ▶️ John and I’ll be fine with it because it’s a nice thing to do. There’s no ongoing relationship where you’re like maintaining that money for the person
⏹️ ▶️ John or anything. It’d be more like if they gave you, instead of putting their money into savings, they gave it to money for you
⏹️ ▶️ John to invest, then that would be the kind of responsibility you’re getting for data. And then they come back and say,
⏹️ ▶️ John how’s all that money I gave you? How’s that investment going? You’re like, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s going. It’s going. Okay. And then they get mad at you. Why did you do a better job of investing my money? It’s like, just why didn’t you
⏹️ ▶️ John not make me do this? No.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. And I mean, to be clear, I agree with you that lending money to a friend is maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not the best thing in the world, but it is way better than being a backup strategy. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to hopefully come to the end of this, there’s only a couple more things about backups.
Synology C2 backup
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, tell me about Synology C2 backups.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is still in beta, and it is apparently a thing, a Synology thing. I think it’s only in Germany, too, so it’s not really relevant
⏹️ ▶️ John to us, but Synology has their own, everyone wants to riff on S3, you got B2 and now you got C2. We’re running out
⏹️ ▶️ John of letters and number combos here. Your Synology will do a backup
⏹️ ▶️ John of itself to Synology’s own cloud storage. Are they just reselling S3? I have no idea, but anyway, if everyone wanted
⏹️ ▶️ John to know, that’s a thing. We’ll put the link in the show notes if you have a Synology and you’re interested in looking at the C2 beta, especially if you live
⏹️ ▶️ John near Frankfurt, Germany, or wherever the hell this is, check it out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it’s expensive though.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Maybe they are reselling S3.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s 70 euros per terabyte per year. So that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey $83-ish, according to DuckDuckGo, per terabyte. And if I have five,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s $415 a year for me. That is not inexpensive. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think Backblaze B2 is still probably the cheapest option I know of for like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like actual pay per gig, but otherwise, you know, unlimited in usage as long as you pay for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it kind of thing. Like, I don’t know of anything cheaper than B2 yet, but I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happy to hear suggestions.
iCloud Backup for Mac?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Additionally, friend of the show, Dan Morin, has written a post for Macworld,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is apparently still a thing, saying, why the Mac needs iCloud backup. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey why not, I guess, right? I mean, iCloud is foolproof and definitely is a justifiable use,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is backing up all of your data that you cannot possibly lose. Why wouldn’t that work?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s backing up a lot of data. A lot of iOS devices are backed up. I got only Apple knows for sure how many
⏹️ ▶️ John of them. I mean, you get some amount of iCloud backup stuff. I forget it’s some it’s some obscenely small amount that you get
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey five gigs. I think it’s five gigs. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John right But anyway, and you could pay for more But the Mac just doesn’t have that and this is just another those
⏹️ ▶️ John cases where the Mac doesn’t have a feature that iOS has had for years and years And a lot of people asked about
⏹️ ▶️ John like when is when is Apple gonna do I cloud back over the Mac? It seems inevitable if they eventually get around to it because they
⏹️ ▶️ John already do I cloud backups. It’s not a new business They would do the same model of giving you a useless
⏹️ ▶️ John amount of storage for free and then you pay for more and I bet people would use it
⏹️ ▶️ John because why shouldn’t Apple be in the cloud backup business for all of its devices basically in
⏹️ ▶️ John the cloud backup business for all of its devices minus a rounding error which we call the Mac these days so I hope
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple does do that because I mean first of all what choice do we have for cloud backups on the phone it’s not like we can use backblazer
⏹️ ▶️ John crash plan on our phone we all do iCloud backups even if we also do iTunes backups and
⏹️ ▶️ John for the most part it seems to sort of work and But it’s certainly better than nothing, so Apple should do that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And also, you can make jokes about how bad Apple’s services have been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so far in the past and everything like that, but I think iCloud backup is pretty solid. And most of their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recent services are pretty solid. Some of their intelligence-based things,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like Siri and things like that, could use some work. But the stuff that’s about storing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your data responsibly and syncing it and everything, that stuff has been pretty solid for a while
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now. So I am totally fine with the idea of Apple offering this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s one of those things, it’s similar to, like when they launched Time Machine,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there was a lot of criticism about various limitations or requirements Time Machine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had, but like the one thing you can always say in defense of moves like this is, well, it’s better than people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who use nothing at all. Like it’s better than nothing, right? And so with iOS devices
⏹️ ▶️ Marco backing up to iCloud, like, you know, that’s another situation where like, it’s better than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not having, even the five gigs they give you is better than nothing. It’d be nice to have more by default
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it would be nice to have a reasonable amount for all iPhones sold that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just came with the price of the iPhone. I think that would be a wonderful thing for Apple to do. I’m not holding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my breath on that, but I wish they would do things like that. But, because you know, having any backup
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is better than having no backup. And this would be the kind of thing where like, yeah, not every Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco owner would or should use an iCloud backup service if it were offered on the Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it would be a really easy, fast way to get lots of Mac users to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a backup who otherwise would have had nothing at all. And that’s good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you want that.
Sponsor: Audible
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Casey’s adorable keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks to Audible for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for almost everybody?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, no, no, that’s fake news.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, okay. Just wanted to make sure.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so my beloved MacBook Adorable apparently got an infinitesimally small piece of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dust under the numeral four key. And because of that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was mushy for days until I finally had the time to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go to Target and buy myself compressed air, which is something I haven’t bought in probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey five, maybe 10 years, and then take the compressed air to my MacBook and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey blow out the infinitesimally small piece of dust. And then subsequent to that, it took
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me a few hours to realize I had not really removed the dust, but simply relocated it to under
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the caps lock key, which I don’t generally use, but I happened
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to use a few hours later and was like, oh, well, that’s mushy and gross. I guess I know where that dust went.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then I had to take the compressed air again to the caps lock key in order to blow it out
⏹️ ▶️ Casey again. And now I think my keyboard is fully functioning once more. But yeah, very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey frustrating because the difference between the regularly functioning keys and a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey key that has just an iota of dust under it is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey night and day. It is disgusting to use a key that has dust under it because it feels mushy and gross and terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I still love my MacBook Adorable. I still do recommend it, especially as like an accessory
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mac, but the tolerance for dust and debris
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on this thing is approaching zero, which is really unfortunate.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like the opposite of that Panasonic Toughbook. Remember that?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh yeah, I do. Oh yeah, I do. The yellow thing. The
⏹️ ▶️ John laptop, yeah, the laptop meant to work in all sorts of environments. Maybe you should get one of those like glass boxes
⏹️ ▶️ John with the little holes with the gloves in them that the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey scientists use when they’re working with hazardous materials. Just put the MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John Adorable inside the box, and when you wanna use it, just put your hands into those gloves.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I hear you. So yeah, so that was sad times.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m about to get one of these at work, by the way. I’m about to get a 2017 MacBook Pro at work. I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John let you know if and when my key, I think my keyboard will be fine because I plan to never touch it. I plan to keep the thing closed
⏹️ ▶️ John and use it hooked up to a monitor and just use it as like a three times more powerful version of my Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John that I have at work now, hooked up to the very same monitor, mouse, and keyboard. But we’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You say that, but as Marco and I were just recounting an episode or two ago, clamshell mode is
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll leave it cracks, but the point is I’m going to not use that keyboard if I can help it.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, I mean, the thing is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, and I, I’m obviously always tempted to launch another rant about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how this keyboard is awful to be on all the computers, but it makes some sense
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for this awful keyboard to be on that computer, the one you have, Casey, not the one John’s getting and the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one that I have but it makes sense the MacBook adorable 1 12 inch whatever we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco calling it is super super small and thin at all other costs that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is what that computer is for so I honestly can’t complain that much that they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco put this incredibly controversial unreliable keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John you can complain about the reliability like it’s fine to make it super slim and compromise and everything but reliability
⏹️ ▶️ John no matter what you do that That should be the one thing, the job of the keyboard is when you press the key it makes a letter on your screen, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John So it can’t, we shouldn’t be accepting this big of a downgrade
⏹️ ▶️ John in expected reliability because every keyboard goes bad eventually. I’ve broken a bunch of the flat aluminum
⏹️ ▶️ John ones but they last for years before something goes wrong and I mean it could be whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing is, not confirmation bias but you know where you’re hyper aware of people telling you tales of woe
⏹️ ▶️ John about their keyboards but boy we’ve heard a lot of them from people who have this keyboard and it just seems like
⏹️ ▶️ John a big change in reliability and keyboard reliability. I’m you know
⏹️ ▶️ John all laptop keyboards are gonna you know go crappy eventually probably but within the first
⏹️ ▶️ John several months to have a key stop working to the point where it affects it’s not like oh it feels weird when I type
⏹️ ▶️ John like to the point where it doesn’t make the letter on the screen that’s just not acceptable even for the slim one.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That’s true yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it’s like again it’s like it’s this is a problem that we didn’t used to have. And,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or, like, you know, if you had a laptop that had a key break or die on it, it was maybe after
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like five years, or after you had abused it, or dropped a whole bunch of crap in it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so, that’s one thing, that’s probably unavoidable. But to have laptops where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now this keyboard is on the entire line of laptops, and that entire line of laptops has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco significant reliability problems with the primary interface method, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a big problem. That is a massive design flaw that shouldn’t have shipped the first time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco let alone the second and in the case of the 12-inch, third times. So I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really, you know, there was, remember that Reddit thread that was a couple months ago that was allegedly from some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco manufacturing insider that was spilling details about who knows what about Apple? One of the things that said in there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was that there’s gonna be a new key switch mechanism for the 2018 MacBook Pro revision that allegedly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s going to be similar in thickness and travel, but it’s going to be like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco magnetic or something. There’s going to be some kind of significant key switch change. I hope that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, you know, I hope something like that is going to happen. I hope Apple sees the way we do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, you know, we can’t convince them to make this keyboard thicker to make it feel better. That’s never going to happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I’ll take what we can get. Let’s just make this, if we’re going to have this super thin keyboard that sacrifices
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the key travel for Johnny Ives’ Thin World, at least make it work reliably.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There is no way in 2017 and 2018 we should not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have unreliable laptop keyboards on brand new $2,000 and up laptops. That is completely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unacceptable and ridiculous in this day and age.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey How to clean the keyboard of your MacBook or MacBook Pro If your MacBook 2015 and later or MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro 2016 and later has an unresponsive key or a key that feels different than the other keys when you press it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Follow these steps to clean the keyboard with compressed air. 1. Hold your Mac notebook
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at a 75 degree angle so it’s not quite vertical. That’s 75, kids, not 80. We covered
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John this exact article on this show. You were there. It’s so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey preposterous. I cannot believe that this is a thing. 2. Use compressed air to spray the keyboard or just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the affected keys in a left-to-right motion. Number three, rotate your Mac notebook
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so it’s right side. And so it’s right side. That’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even a full sentence. Rotate your Mac keyboard so it’s, oh, to its right side. I can’t read, my apologies.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco To its right side and spray the keyboard again. And spray the keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey again from left to right. Number four, repeat the action this time with your Mac notebook rotated to its left side. This is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey asinine that this is a thing. Now, to be fair, my keyboard still worked. It just felt like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey garbage, but, or one key felt like garbage. And by and large, I actually do still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very much like this keyboard. I know, Marco, you don’t, and that’s fine, but in general, when it’s working,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really like this keyboard. Similarly, when my car’s valve train hasn’t exploded, it’s a very nice car.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But yeah, it’s just frustrating. It’s very frustrating that I have had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this computer for two and change months, and I’m already having to take
⏹️ ▶️ Casey restorative action to get the keyboard to work again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, it’s like, and again, I’ve resigned myself to this new thin key
⏹️ ▶️ Marco switch thing that feels, to me, crappy, but I’ve resigned myself to that. I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been constantly reducing my expectations. Fine, I’ll carry a dongle bag.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Fine, I’ll pay a little bit more. Fine, I’ll have this touch bar on the big ones that I really don’t like.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco At least make it reliable, just make it work reliably. If you’re gonna make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me swallow all of these other jagged bitter pills at least make the thing reliable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s all. Like, I’m not asking for much here. I’ve reduced my expectations and given up on every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other battle on these laptops. Just give me that.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah, jagged little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pill though. Thank you very much.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know. I’m just saying, like, that’s Marco’s brain farting out some
⏹️ ▶️ John references without his knowledge. I know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I honestly, not only is that a great album, but I was arguing with Tiff about this a few days ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say that is possibly one of the most influential albums of the 90s.
⏹️ ▶️ John You 90s kids, who cares?
⏹️ ▶️ John You’ve got to wait 20 years before you can be nostalgic like we are about the 80s. You
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey know, there are times, John. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John right, not 10 more years, but actually 20. It’s not a linear scale.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So you are, what are you, like six or seven years older than we are? And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey usually that that feels like six or seven minutes, but then there are times that it feels like six
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John And this is one of those times.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s when you listen to Margot and Tiff talk about and you for that matter, talk, talk with nostalgia about 90s music
⏹️ ▶️ John and just it’s just like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was more than 20 years ago for most of it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know. I know. It just it just seems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco coming out in like 95 96 something like that. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe I’m assuming people from the 70s feel the same way with people in this nostalgic about 80s music because you know it’s all the 70s
⏹️ ▶️ John was good music and 80 was all this crap but you know whatever it’s what age you are I understand how it works
⏹️ ▶️ John just Alanis Morissette influential album
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that should be a top four top four albums in the 90s
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t you I knew her when she was on you can’t do that on television you didn’t know her then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I sure did I loved that show that was a great
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh you are such a turd
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Let’s just move on. All right, ask
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ATP. Can we slime John somehow? Oh, I would love to. Oh my God, we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey should kickstart sliming John and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco give the money to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Houston or something like that. that. My word, somebody get on that. Anyway.
#askatp: Passing down photos
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Joe Lyon writes in to Ask ATP. This is a little bit long, so I don’t, I remember seeing this, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it must have been an email or something. What is the long game in photo storage? Not just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which cloud service do I use for the next five years, but how will photos be managed, stored, and handed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey down between generations? We take more pictures than ever, but then we lock them all into personal devices and accounts that imprint
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very few of them. I think our family histories are actually at more danger than previously, ironically.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hundreds of thousands of pictures from a family can be lost when someone dies and doesn’t leave behind a password, or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a cloud service goes belly up and local backups weren’t made, or photos or hard disks crash, or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey data isn’t carried to new devices. Coincidentally, I was thinking about this recently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I have really been wondering,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I were to suddenly pass away, what would happen to the things that I care about, like our pictures?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And because of that, that’s yet another reason why I recommend the One Password Family
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Plan, because Erin has my password via 1Password.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey She has my password for Google Photos, for example. But Joe Lyon’s point
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is exactly right. It used to be that you would print all these pictures and create albums. And granted, there would be far
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fewer pictures than you would have in this digital age, but at least there was something you can physically give to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey somebody else. What does the future bring? And I’ll start with the semi-pro photographer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, what do you think about this?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m barely even that anymore but it’s it’s a bigger question
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of you know lots of things regarding your you know your data integrity and everything else you know it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s it goes way beyond just photos but like lots of your other data as well but I mean largely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know once once I’m gone I won’t care I won’t be able to care
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not my problem with that with my particular But look, I think it relies… The nihilist guide to photo backup
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. But like, you know, I think it relies on your family
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and people who come after you. It relies on them caring, just like preservation of anything from previous
⏹️ ▶️ Marco generations. Like, if they care, you know, it basically, you know, we as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the people who have this data now, I think we do have some responsibility to have some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of recovery, you know, you know, that our heirs will have access to after we’re gone. So, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things like making sure like that, that our family has access to passwords and data and stuff like that. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco beyond that, like it’s up to the next generations to care. And it always has been like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every family, you know, like we you know, you only know what your relatives have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been able to pass on to you. You only have what they have carried with them and what they still have in their possessions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from previous generations. And the same thing is going to apply
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to this. Like, in some ways it is easier than ever to keep this stuff. And especially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as time goes on, like my entire photo collection from the first year
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was taking photos with the digital camera, which was like 2004, I think, or no, 2000 really.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But my entire photo collection from that year is like a few hundred megs, like it’s at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most. Like it’s nothing compared to it. And as time goes on, every year that goes by,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hard drives get bigger, and cameras get better, and photos get bigger, and so it seems like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything’s always really big, but what was taken in the past, with lower resolution cameras, lower resolution
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sensors, less data being captured, less video, more stills, I don’t know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel like it’s not that hard if you care, and if your heirs and relatives care.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It isn’t that hard to keep stuff and to pass it down. It’s just an issue of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will the people who inherit your things actually care to keep them? And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s always been a problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John And photos don’t get bigger all the time. Like you said, photos get bigger every year and cameras get better, but
⏹️ ▶️ John we are probably already very close to limits of human visual acuity on
⏹️ ▶️ John the highest end cameras, and we’re just waiting for that to trickle down. Once your phone is taking 42 megapixel images,
⏹️ ▶️ John do you think in 10 years they’re gonna be taking 84 megapixel images? They will not. there, what are we
⏹️ ▶️ John going to do blow it up to a poster the size of a football stadium like there, we are close to the limits.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if storage continues to increase at any rate, while the size of
⏹️ ▶️ John photos stays more or less the same, maybe even get smaller, if we have better compression tech, this is the
⏹️ ▶️ John storage of photos is a problem that will solve itself essentially,
⏹️ ▶️ John as storage size increases. So just in the same way, it’s easy for Marco to take 100 megs of photos from 2000
⏹️ ▶️ John in 50 years it will be much easier to take our quote-unquote massive photo libraries
⏹️ ▶️ John and put them in in the storage of the day and 50 years they
⏹️ ▶️ John will not be taking 10,000 megapixel photos there probably be like 50 to 100 megapixel
⏹️ ▶️ John photos if even that probably not even that it’s not it’s gonna stop because you can’t there’s no point in
⏹️ ▶️ John more pixels like again you’re not blowing it up to a poster that covers your entire house so
⏹️ ▶️ John that that little that part of the problem will take care of itself I have some faith in that kind of like music did like
⏹️ ▶️ John the music files like you know even if they go to flack that’s it like limits
⏹️ ▶️ John of human acuity bit depth bit rate all things we talked about take the biggest audio file you could have
⏹️ ▶️ John is there a benefit to making something a hundred times bigger no there isn’t because we can’t hear
⏹️ ▶️ John anything better than that that’s it the audio will never get bigger than than that you know and multi-channel
⏹️ ▶️ John and so on and so forth so I’m optimistic about about that. And it’s the thing to remember about trends like
⏹️ ▶️ John this, where it’s like, oh, we’re just, it’s never, you know, it’s just going to continue on and on some of the lines and the graph
⏹️ ▶️ John level off. And that is a saving grace. Yeah. Um, the thing I would add though, this, this is just a
⏹️ ▶️ John backup problem. Like anything outside from the social things of like, Oh, passing it on and having, you know, sharing your
⏹️ ▶️ John passwords that you should definitely do that. But like any other backup problem, it’s all about diversity, right? So
⏹️ ▶️ John print some pictures, first of all, because that is a diversified backup strategy, physical things
⏹️ ▶️ John versus digital things. The physical things are worse, they deteriorate, that you can lose them that you know, they take up space,
⏹️ ▶️ John so on and so forth. But it’s a it’s an important diversification. You print some books from from Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John photos app, go to Shutterfly or whatever, print some pictures from one of our sponsors of
⏹️ ▶️ John this episode, right? That is a diversification. That’s also as Marco will surely say in the ad read,
⏹️ ▶️ John not just diversification of backup, but it lets you look at your pictures like,
⏹️ ▶️ John know, all have so many pictures but if they’re in a digital thing like how often do you even look at them I think I spent more time
⏹️ ▶️ John looking at the pictures on my phone in the new Uncharted game than I do looking at the pictures on my actual phone
⏹️ ▶️ John so printing them and hanging them on your wall lets you enjoy them for the time you’re alive before you don’t care like Margo when he’s dead
⏹️ ▶️ John diversification of backup means also perhaps winnowing your collection down to some really
⏹️ ▶️ John good pictures and sharing them with a relative this is the case where you’re not doing it for a backup but you just want to give other people your photos.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think we’re in a much better situation than we were in the past because it’s harder, I think, for the
⏹️ ▶️ John shoebox full of photos or photo albums to transfer from the elderly relative who’s died to the rest of the family
⏹️ ▶️ John because people don’t want, here’s like 50 pounds of photo albums or even just a shoebox. Like people don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John want that junk, like especially when you’re trying to clear out all the belongings and everything like that, and you’re trying to save the few
⏹️ ▶️ John precious things like one or two wedding photos. Them being digital and us having a fighting chance
⏹️ ▶️ John at least of losslessly carrying them across generations is merely a matter of making
⏹️ ▶️ John that process easy enough to do. And I think as we all die and the people
⏹️ ▶️ John who grew up in the sort of the cusp of the digital age die off, the process of figuring out how
⏹️ ▶️ John to get our crap to continue on will be worked out in a generation or two. And so I have a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of confidence that a sort of permanent growing archive of things associated with the family
⏹️ ▶️ John will be passed on from generation to generation again, because storage sizes will keep going up, not forever, but they’ll keep going
⏹️ ▶️ John up long after the size of the things we’re doing go up. And I, by the way, I also think there’s a limit
⏹️ ▶️ John on number of photos we’ll take too, because I mean, I guess you just switch to, to constantly recorded video, but there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John some social parts of that that I think might, won’t make it happen. But we take so many more pictures now than we used to, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John that we have kids. But in 300 years, we’re not going to be taking a thousand times more photos.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like you just can’t do that. We’ll be taking a photo every half a second for our entire lives, 24 hours a day. That’s just video. And I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ John we were we’re on record every second of our life. So I am much more optimistic than Joe Lyon about this. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I would recommend people think about the password sharing thing like Casey said, diversify your photo
⏹️ ▶️ John backups, and maybe get a couple of them and print them and hang them on your wall so you can look at them while you’re still alive.
#askatp: Cameras
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Brad Ringel asks, it’s been discussed a bit, but can you give a brief rundown
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of how you decided on a camera to buy and suggestions for a beginner? I will start
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and say that what I had done was look around at my friends and try
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to figure out what was something that felt kind of entry level and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey approachable and also was reasonably easy to carry physically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because it wasn’t the size of a DSLR. So I have an Olympus OM-D E-M10.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ll put a link in the show notes to a couple of, actually a two or three year old review now of that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey camera. It’s the one I still use. This is a Micro Four Thirds camera
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it has interchangeable lenses. And so I spent a fair bit of money on, well, what I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thought was a fair bit of money on both the body and one really nice prime lens. That prime lens lasted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me for the first couple of years I had the camera. And then about a year ago, I added a zoom lens.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I chose this because Sean Blanc had recommended it very, very strongly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I love this camera. By no means is it the best camera in the entire
⏹️ ▶️ Casey world, but I love it. And it is done right by me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and helped me get better as a photographer. Because it allows, and not to say that it’s unique
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to this camera by any stretch, but This one is very good because it allows interchangeable lenses, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it allows me to do things like shoot an aperture priority, which is to say, I can concentrate on getting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one thing right, and the rest of it will just automatically happen. Again, I’m not saying that’s unique to this camera, but that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of how I got started. And that’s generally speaking how I still shoot today. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey suggestions for a beginner. You know, everyone says this, and I remember, Marco, you and me and Aaron and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tiff were sitting in some restaurant in New York forever ago, and we were talking about cameras.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I remember you and Tiff saying to me, there are two rules to being a good photographer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Number one, never use the flash. And number two, take a bazillion pictures. Because if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you take a bazillion pictures, at least one of them will be okay. And I really think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as as cliche and as silly and as frustrating as that may sound to a beginner, that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really, really is the case. Like I would recommend getting enough of a camera that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you feel like you’ve got something interesting and special. And that doesn’t have to be very expensive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by any means, but enough that maybe you can get a little bokeh, however you pronounce it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But other than that, just try to avoid the flash. It takes a lot of pictures, and I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think that’s sufficient. So, John, let’s go to you next. What do you recommend?
⏹️ ▶️ John I basically bought the camera Marco told me to.
⏹️ ▶️ John strategy for many things in life. But the caveat, though, I did, he also told me about
⏹️ ▶️ John lens rentals. And so before I bought it I’m pretty sure you guys may remember that I do didn’t I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John I rent the that camera first before I decided To plunk down the money for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I believe you did It was either that one or its predecessor and I did the same by the way
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, no, it was a 63 and I remember when Marco recommended it I wasn’t I wasn’t that keen on it
⏹️ ▶️ John because I wanted like I basically wanted a fancier camera, but then I used Marco’s A7 r2
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever used to have and it just seemed too big and so then I’m like, ah, maybe he was right The small one so I rented it and
⏹️ ▶️ John liked it and bought it and I didn’t honestly I didn’t shop around that too much because that’s that’s a service both wire cutter and Marco provide
⏹️ ▶️ John if you don’t want to spend a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey year researching stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John I did actually spend a very long time researching super zooms because I had experience with a couple of them. And I’m like, let me just
⏹️ ▶️ John find the successor to my family camera and I get my super zoom and I could never find one that seemed like it was
⏹️ ▶️ John a win over what I was doing. So yeah, so ask friends who know stuff about cameras.
⏹️ ▶️ John And before you plunk down a large amount of money, it seems large
⏹️ ▶️ John to someone who doesn’t by fancy cameras, consider something like lens rentals, where it seems like, Oh my God, how
⏹️ ▶️ John much am I paying to rent this? But it’s cheaper than buying the camera and realizing you don’t want it and having to, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John find a way to sell it at a loss and everything. So um, that, that, that I
⏹️ ▶️ John think that works for me. And honestly, in the age of the internet, you know, if you don’t know Marco personally, there is
⏹️ ▶️ John the wire cutter, there is DP review, you can find the information out there and then just come up with
⏹️ ▶️ John a couple of candidates, or rent them to see which one you like and
⏹️ ▶️ John then go for it. I agree with Casey. Go like kind of like a Mac storage. Go a
⏹️ ▶️ John little bit more than you think. Like save money for an extra six months if you have to, because
⏹️ ▶️ John you will never regret getting a slightly nicer camera. You may regret getting a slightly bigger camera. So that’s why I say use it
⏹️ ▶️ John and see if you feel like does this camera fit into my life, but make
⏹️ ▶️ John it make it something special, especially in the age of our phone. Cameras are also good. If you’re going to buy a camera camera
⏹️ ▶️ John that all it does is camera stuff make it better enough than your phone camera that it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not close and that will make you excited to use your quote-unquote good camera like I do
⏹️ ▶️ John take a lot of pictures with my phone I take video with my phone but I really like my fancy
⏹️ ▶️ John and not that fancy but my my my quote-unquote real camera I really like that I use it a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John you know not all the time not every day but I like knowing that’s there and when I do use it you know like I
⏹️ ▶️ John said 2,000 pictures coming home from the ocean from one day
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey That’s a good time for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and I would just like to quickly double down on what you said about lens rentals. I’ve used lensrentals.com.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They’ve never sponsored. I rented the camera that I now have before we bought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one and got a chance to play with it for a few days. And in fact, I rented it to take,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, I had my dad do it, but to take maternity shots for Aaron before Declan
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was born. And I got to spend some time with it. took these really beautiful pictures with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it and he’s not a photographer. He just was able to take really good shots with a combination of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this body and this lens. And so I completely agree with John and I think Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was the one who originally recommended it to me as well. Take a spin with whatever camera you’re looking at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it cost me like 150 bucks or something like that to get the camera for a few days and the lens I wanted for a few days.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But it was worth its price in gold because it made me know that this like 1500 or $2,000 I ended up spending was worth it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, Marco, what would you say about this? You know, what’s a good set
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of tips for a beginner?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You guys have actually covered it really well. I don’t have that much more to add. The Q and me talking for 20 minutes now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I know myself pretty well. So, yeah, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco definitely renting before you buy is very valuable, because you spent the 150 bucks, and you know, go to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco LendFriends.com. I think there are other sites, but I’ve always used Lens Rentals and I’ve had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco excellent experiences with them over the years, over a pretty long time, over lots of different rentals of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lots of different things. A few times I needed their customer service. It was excellent every time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they’re a pretty big operation and pretty reputable. So I highly recommend Lens Rentals. You’re right, they have never sponsored us. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t think they ever would sponsor us, but now they don’t need to because we’re giving this one for free.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So not only did you learn,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you basically got confirmation that what you wanted to buy was probably a good idea, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in some cases it can teach you that you don’t want to buy something. Like if you rent it and you learn, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually this is too big or the handling doesn’t work out for me or whatever. It’s useful for that. It’s also useful for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if there’s some really expensive piece of gear, whether it’s a camera or a lens usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more often, hence the name, something that you don’t need very often. Like there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was, like I was shooting the talk show live at WBDC two years ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I shot it with a rented lens because I knew I would need a certain type of zoom
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lens to do a really good job with it. But it’s a lens that I hardly ever need in my daily life,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it was very expensive to buy. So I just rented it for the week, and it was way less money, and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco learned as I was renting it like wow, I’m so glad I don’t own this lens because it’s giant and heavy, and I really don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have this most of the time. I only very rarely need it. So it’s nice to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually consider the possibility of renting things just as part of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way you operate in the camera world, because there is so much incredibly specialized
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gear that you might need twice or once, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s probably not worth buying it for that. But for those one or two times, it’s really, really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and that actually is a really great point as well because after I had had my camera for a couple of years,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had my eye on a zoom lens and I forget the specifics, but I want to say it was like a 100 to 300
⏹️ ▶️ Casey millimeter zoom, which is something like double that in a DSLR, maybe half that. I forget how it all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey works out, but it was a, it ended up that it was like a really, really, really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey strong zoom. And so you had to be like, you know, 20, 30, 40
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feet away from your subject before it was even useful. And then that’s when it started to be useful.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And again, I’m making up the details here, but it was something along those lines. And so I rented it for a week. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually, strictly speaking, Erin rented it for me for like a birthday present or something because she knew I was looking at it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it turns out it was a terrible lens. And I was so thankful that Erin had spent the money to rent it for me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I then knew that it wasn’t worth the like $800 or whatever it costs to get that lens.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the zoom lens I ended up with was quite a bit different. And I knew that because I then rented
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that lens and spent some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it and knew that it was worth the money. So yeah, I completely, completely doubled down, tripled down
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even on the lens rentals idea. I couldn’t recommend it enough.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and to expand a little bit on what John said about like, you know, renting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it and or, you know, getting a handle on like how it feels and, you know, possibly regretting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things like size and weight laid down the road. Or battery life.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, or battery life. I would say one of the best things you can do if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re in the market for a camera is to go to a store that has them in person and to actually be able to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look at them in person, next to each other, and do some basic research before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you get to the store just so you know roughly what models offer the kinds of things that you’re looking for, but actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pick them up and see them in person, see them next to each other, try to handle them, See, like certain ones, like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cameras these days have so many capabilities, but they’re also oftentimes very small. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so ergonomics become a pretty big challenge in a lot of them. Usability of the various
⏹️ ▶️ Marco menus and controls and dials and everything. These are all pretty major factors that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco differ significantly between different models. And so anything you can do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get your hands on, you know, like it’s the precursor to renting, basically. Anything you can do to get your hands
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on them and see them in person before you decide. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can read a review, or you can hear me say something about a certain model, or you can go to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wirecutter, and you can go to DP Review, and you can spend hours and hours and hours, I have, on these sites,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like when you’re trying to make a decision on what camera to buy for you, or what’s right for you. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s good, you should do some of that, but the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco model of trying to figure out what is the one camera you should buy in this price range?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That really is not a great model for this because different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cameras will work for different people and there really isn’t one great model that everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should buy in each price range or in each size category. I was able to give John a decent recommendation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for him because I had more information about what he wanted and he had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used my medium-sized one and so there was more to go on. But if you just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go to some site that tries to pick like, here’s the one camera you should get in this category, that might
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not be right for you. So anything you can do to see them in person, to use them, whether it’s going to a store
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or renting one that you think you might wanna buy or both, you know, ideally, like you kinda narrow down as you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go, it’s invaluable. Because really, the cameras that are out there, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are so different in how they handle. And a lot of times, a camera that might not have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the best sensor or like the best technical specs in certain areas, a lot of times,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like if it just handles better, you will end up using it more or you will enjoy using it more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because of just the physical differences or the other differences that aren’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just like the sensor quality. And this is a lesson I’ve often not learned fully when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve made certain decisions, but like, you know, I try to recover from that. I try to get better over time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it just, It matters so, so much. Like just how it handles,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how it behaves, how it performs in your hand, in like the mechanics of using it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like one of the ones that I have heard great things about, and I have very little experience with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them, is the Fuji X line. People love these things. Like there is the X-T1,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the X-T2, the X100. I haven’t followed them too closely,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but these are cameras that like, they often don’t perform top-notch in certain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spec comparisons, but people just love them because of their ergonomics and their mechanics
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and things like that. That’s the kind of thing you want to look for. Similarly, it’s hard to understand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the appeal of Leica cameras, because Leicas are very, very expensive. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco eye-wateringly expensive. And you think, why would anybody buy that when the sensor doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco perform any better than a Sony sensor or something like that? And a couple of times I’ve had a chance to actually handle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Leica camera, and there is a certain degree of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, wow, this is just really nicely handling. It’s nice, it’s responsive, it feels good,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel good using it. There is some degree of that. There are these other factors
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you’re looking at the… and by the way, this does not apply just to cameras. There are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these other factors when you look at a buying decision like this, where you can do as many spec comparisons as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you want on paper and on websites and everything, but it’s really hard to do a really,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s really hard to know how much you’re going to actually love using it until you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually get a chance to try it. And that’s, that’s, again, that’s why we say go see these things in the store.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you can rent one, like those are great options. And for something like this, that’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s so personal and, and where not everyone has the same requirements. That’s pretty good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then finally, to definitely, definitely echo what John said, you want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a camera that is going to be a lot better than your phone. If it isn’t a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better than your phone, you should not buy it. There is no reason for you to buy a camera that’s only a little better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than your phone. And phone cameras are really good and they keep getting better at an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco alarming pace. They keep getting remarkably better. And so I would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say, generally speaking, I mean there are exceptions. It’s hard to give a firm a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco price floor here that’s meaningful. But I would say if you’re spending less than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably $1,000, you’re probably not getting a quality jump that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco makes sense in the world of today’s smartphones. Especially if you’re listening to this show, you’re probably an iPhone user.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’re probably a user of a fairly recent iPhone. And that’s going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be hard to beat with anything below $1,000 in a lot of situations.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Most of the recommendations that I give are in the $1,000 to $3,000 range. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s a lot of money. And you have to ask yourself, is that really worth it? For a lot of people, it isn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or you might go through all this and realize, actually, I still take most of my pictures on my phone,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because my phone’s always with me, and the cameras keep getting better, and they offer more interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco features in a lot of cases, like live photos, and automatic HDR and stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that like other cameras can do sometimes or can do some of these things but they’re clunky or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t work as well or harder to use or you know so it’s like a camera a standalone camera
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these days has to be way better than your phone to make it worth buying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and to make sure you’ll actually use it on a regular basis so if you’re not willing or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco able to spend over a thousand dollars I would say easily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a camera and a couple of lenses for it. I would say it’s probably not worth it. You should probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just get the best phone you can and use its camera.
#askatp: The notoriety card
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oplez writes, have any of you used or played the notoriety card
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in your day-to-day life to get something you wanted? And I will start with John.
⏹️ ▶️ John I put this question in here because I want to reemphasize
⏹️ ▶️ John to people exactly how little notoriety we have. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe it seems like there is no card to play. Even at WWDC, where we are,
⏹️ ▶️ John that is the maximum of our fame and notoriety. It’s like we’re there with
⏹️ ▶️ John the highest percentage chance that people know who we are is like at WWDC. Even there,
⏹️ ▶️ John I have never had a way to parlay my notoriety
⏹️ ▶️ John into pretty much anything except for perhaps giving me the
⏹️ ▶️ John confidence to go up and talk to somebody who I might not otherwise, though I don’t have any expectation,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re gonna know who I am. I guess that’s I guess that’s my answer is like, I have never played
⏹️ ▶️ John the notoriety card because there’s no card to be played. But my impression of my own notoriety
⏹️ ▶️ John in very specific circumstances where a specific kind of nerd gathers for a week,
⏹️ ▶️ John it has given me the confidence to overcome what would normally be my inclination to never talk to another human being
⏹️ ▶️ John to go talk to somebody and introduce myself. Most people you know, if you don’t have my personality,
⏹️ ▶️ John you You don’t need that extra boost of confidence. But I really want to emphasize to listeners, we have no notoriety. No one
⏹️ ▶️ John knows who we are. No one knows what a podcast is. Well, maybe now with Serial they do. Podcast, what’s that? You know Serial?
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, I think I heard of that. Anyway, that’s my answer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think I have used it in a useful way because of what John said.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you actually would take that risk and say, do you know who I am? Chances
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are the answer you’re going to get back is nope. That’s not a good risk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to take, even if you can get over the fact that, best case scenario, they do know who you are,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you’ve just been a huge jerk. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not my style. That’s not how I interact with the world. Even if I knew I could get away
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with it, I would still not try to do it, because I don’t want to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. But John is correct. In reality, there is almost nowhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where we could be where we could pull a card like that and have it actually work. Like maybe,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe at our own live show, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like in the room seconds after we’ve walked off stage, maybe,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but anywhere else that would not work at all. And yeah, that’s not…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we don’t have any degree of actual fame in any context where this would even be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a possibility, let alone the fact that I think none of the three of us have the personality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco type to actually try to pull a card like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John ______ Well, there was that one time where I wished that it worked, where I forgot my wallet and I couldn’t pick up my hardware and I had to drive
⏹️ ▶️ John all the way back home. And
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it’s not because I wanted any special
⏹️ ▶️ John treatments, because I didn’t want to drive all the way back home, because A, I felt dumb for leaving my wallet at home, and I couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John pick up my thing at the Apple store. I didn’t actually do it. I did jokingly offer,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, just Google my name and my picture will come up. And I was half joking, but I was kind of,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey half serious.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like you need to know who I am, who I am, type my name into a Google search box, but just I had to drive
⏹️ ▶️ John all the way back home. And that’s, again, not that’s just me trying to save myself commuting time. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t feel quite as dumb for leaving home without my wallet. But that is that is the one time and and note that it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, it wasn’t I didn’t say why they should Google my name and why I might come up. Of course, I would never do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they didn’t know I am and didn’t care and I had to get my freaking wallet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it is really, really gross to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey try to be like, Oh, don’t you know who I am? So let me tell you about the three times that I did
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. The first time was, the first time was,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I forget what I guess was, I don’t remember what year was, but maybe it was 2016, I guess, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tried emailing a few people at Apple and being like, Hey, I don’t have a WWDC ticket.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Maybe I could do something about that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Didn’t work.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The second time was when I was trying to get my current job and I don’t know if it’s really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey being like, do you know who I am? But I definitely mentioned that I had a popular Apple podcast on my resume. And the reason I did
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that was because I was trying to switch careers from being a Microsoft developer to being an Apple developer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I was trying to figure out any justifiable reason to hire
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me at that point and to take a risk on me. The final time is one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you two did not know about, and I wasn’t planning on telling you about, and I’m only going to talk
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about it very lightly because I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey trying to think of how to describe this without giving it away. It was offered to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me because of this show. So it was not really a do you know who I am, but it was offered
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me because of the show and because of a friend
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that listens to the show. Would you like to get access
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to a car from the press fleet from a manufacturer that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey none of us would normally have access to? To which I said, yes, absolutely. That car
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was supposed to arrive the week after WWDC, and by happenstance,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something happened and it didn’t work out. Then that car was supposed to arrive a few weeks later,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and when it was traveling from the press pool in DC down to me, it caught
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a chip in the windshield and they had to turn around. I haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey heard much since then, and it’s been a month or two, so I’m guessing that this didn’t work out. In a few
⏹️ ▶️ Casey months, like by the end of the year, If I haven’t had access to this press car, I will concede
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe privately, maybe publicly what it was. But on the slim chance that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I actually do get a week with this particular car, which is a car that I would never generally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have access to, I don’t want to spoil the surprise. But that is somewhat sort
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of kind of me leveraging my do you know who I am. Even though it was offered to me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I did not request it. And that is all I’m going to say.
⏹️ ▶️ John garbage car that we’re gonna laugh at, like the stupid Jeep Cherokee with a big engine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey First of all, the Cherokee SRT8 is not stupid, you big jerk. It is stupid and gross. Ha ha ha
⏹️ ▶️ John ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey ha ha ha ha. Anyway, is
⏹️ ▶️ John it the type of car, and we know you’re excited about it, is it the type of car that we’re gonna be excited about it, or is it just the type of car where it’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John be like a Casey car, like a Camaro ZL1? I guess I would kind of be excited
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey about it. I would not be excited
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about it. Why are you so mean
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John to me, John? Why are you so
⏹️ ▶️ John mean to me? I would not be excited about a Veyron, I just wanna put that out there, because I think the Veyron is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also stupid and gross. So I only have one question about the car and you know what it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is not a Tesla. That
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco wasn’t the question. Oh, okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, but I would guess, I would guess that it is red and that is
⏹️ ▶️ John Interesting. Well, I’m interested in a Ferraris.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey It is not a Ferrari.
⏹️ ▶️ John But unless it’s the California, I don’t like that one.
⏹️ ▶️ John the replacement for the California, the replacement for the California is also gross. What the hell is the California replacement,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love that you’d even be picky about which Ferrari you got to borrow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John It’s totally
⏹️ ▶️ John But wouldn’t you care? Wouldn’t you be excited about it? I’d be like, no, not that one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, Sean, you are the worst.
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t like that one.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey And the replacement is
⏹️ ▶️ John similarly… Come on, chat room. What’s the replacement for the California? Portofino.
⏹️ ▶️ John There we go. Thank you.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey are the worst, Sean. Portofino
⏹️ ▶️ John always has a better name, and it does look nicer than the California, but it’s still the Ferrari that I don’t want.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’d rather have the weird four-wheel drive FF thing, and well, the replacement. You just said it, the
⏹️ ▶️ John GT4 or Lusso in the pre-pre-show that won’t be there. I’d rather have that than the Port of Vienna
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APFS conversion in High Sierra
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you very much to Fracture for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so 90 minutes in, you want to start the show? Because I think it’s time.
⏹️ ▶️ John All of our topics are short today, so it’s…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, really? Okay, listeners, buckle up. Let’s talk about APFS.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco We are really good at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco short topics here on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey ATV. Seriously.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey talk about this short topic, John. The clock is ticking. Tell me about APFS conversion in High
⏹️ ▶️ John This is a bit of news that was officially published by Apple this week or very recently anyway between
⏹️ ▶️ John the show and last show. They have an article we’ll link in the show. It’s official Apple documentation, not about like betas
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, but like, hey, when you upgrade to Mac OS High Sierra systems with all flash
⏹️ ▶️ John storage will be converted automatically to APFS. So if you have a Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John and it has flash storage and you upgrade to the Mac OS High Sierra, you
⏹️ ▶️ John are getting converted to APFS. You cannot opt out of the transition to APFS. This is right from
⏹️ ▶️ John their documentation. So it’s not like as in the beta is like, oh, you can convert or not convert and decide
⏹️ ▶️ John later or whatever. If you upgrade to High Sierra and you got flash, you’re gonna get it. Even if you have a third party flash drive, we have one
⏹️ ▶️ John listener right in to say, I have a Mac that shipped with a spinning disc, but I replaced it with SSD, upgrade
⏹️ ▶️ John to High Sierra, automatic upgrade to APFS. A lot of people installed one of the later High Sierra
⏹️ ▶️ John betas and didn’t even realize they had been converted to APFS because like, how would you even tell? Because it doesn’t ask you anything about
⏹️ ▶️ John it. It just does it, right? If you have a hard disk or a fusion drive
⏹️ ▶️ John you won’t be converted I don’t know if that means you can’t be I think you still go to disk utility and decide to convert your thing
⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, that’s what they’re doing. It’s a very simple straightforward policy
⏹️ ▶️ John And there’s no choice in the matter and we’re all just gonna deal with it a couple people have reported their Macs being unbootable
⏹️ ▶️ John But there it’s still in beta and who knows but I suspect the Mac transition will be rockier than the iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John one and then the only other minor item on this page that will link is a Bootcamp doesn’t read
⏹️ ▶️ John or write APFS, in case you were wondering. I really hope Bootcamp continues to be supported.
⏹️ ▶️ John I hope they write a read-only driver for APFS so you can at least read your stuff, but right now you won’t
⏹️ ▶️ John be able to, so. Did Bootcamp read HFS? I think there was a read-only driver for
⏹️ ▶️ John HFS. Maybe I’m thinking of it the other way, where they had a read-only driver for NTFS, but either way, there is some
⏹️ ▶️ John way I think you can get HFS volumes, you can at least read from them on Windows, even if it’s not through Apple stuff. But APFS
⏹️ ▶️ John is just too new, and if anyone was gonna do it, it was gonna be Apple, and they didn’t yet anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, this is totally a fine change to me. Like, you know, they have this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco APFS was automatically converted to and deployed very widely on iOS devices.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And as far as we know, nothing bad happened. And yes, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem set is much smaller on iOS devices. The number of possible configurations is much smaller. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, so like the edge case count is way smaller on iOS. But also the install
⏹️ ▶️ Marco base is way bigger. The usage is way bigger. So it seems like APFS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is pretty solid. And I’m sure there are areas, like I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco believe they still haven’t done automatic integrity checking, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco level? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s not there, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John The checksums on metadata only, not on data.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, so there are areas of the file system that still could be improved, ideally.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But what is there seems to be pretty solid. You know, the fact that they deployed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it to every iOS device, and that’s been running now for months,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s been totally fine, that’s pretty great. So, you know, we know they’re doing this carefully.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We know, like Craig Federighi mentioned in the talk show live that everybody’s seen this year, how like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they, a couple of versions before that, when they deployed to iOS, they would do like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco test migrations and roll them back, just add just and then like report back if anything failed to Apple. So they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco knew what was happening there. There have been some reports, somebody pointed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out that the latest Mac OS 10 update seemed to take a very long time to apply. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there was a theory that, you know, maybe it was doing the same thing, maybe it was doing those test, those test migrations that would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then get rolled back before it completed. You know, like, it seems like Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco knows how to do this. There, it’s already been done on a very, very large scale. And this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will be, relatively speaking, a drop in the bucket. Again, there are more edge cases on the Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more different configurations that can be used, more ways people use the file system, more dependent things working a certain way. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think they’re doing a pretty good job of it, and I trust them to do this correctly and carefully.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I don’t think this is bad at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, that was pretty quick. I have to concede. I am stunned.
iPhone “8” home-button rumor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so Marco, tell me about the lack of home button on the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro slash 8 slash whatever it’s called, because there seems to have been some news from Bloomberg that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there will be no physical home button on the new iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, we already knew there would be no physical home button, but this was more about like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is today’s rumor that came out that basically is claiming a certain way that the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco software-based home button will work, that is different from what we’ve heard or assumed in the past. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what we’ve assumed up till now, or heard up till now as rumors, is basically that there would be an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco area, basically where the home button is now, but there would be like an area
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the phone that you would like push firmly there, and it would go home.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And how that would be represented on the screen was up for debate. There was some speculation from like the HomePod
⏹️ ▶️ Marco firmware that maybe there’s some kind of like home indicator that could show or hide at different times,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whether it’s like a little circle down there or a dot or who knows. This whole area,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we know a lot from the HomePod leak and from all the rumor sites. We know some things pretty firmly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the physical design of the next iPhone. But the whole area
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I think is most interesting to me is how the software will actually deal with this physical
⏹️ ▶️ Marco design. And that is still mostly unknown to us.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the leaks including the HomePod firmware, not to mention all the rumors,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s not, you would think at first like there’s not much surprise left for the event, but actually to me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s tons of surprise left because we still don’t have concrete solid information
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we still haven’t seen how the software will actually deal with this bizarre all-screen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone with this notch on the top. That to me is the most interesting part and I think most of that’s going to remain a surprise.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, Bloomberg’s trying to ruin that a little bit by claiming that the home button is going to work a totally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different way. That basically instead of having like an area that you push at the bottom that you’re gonna have like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a swipe up kind of gesture not that different from what the iPad does and iOS 11 with the dock
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a big swipe up gesture to go home instead of pushing that area at the bottom
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that therefore the entire screen basically will be usable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as regular application area not just having that like hole in the bottom for a home button and maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco help maybe like a like a toolbar area to the left and right of it and if this is true
⏹️ ▶️ Marco obviously this has a lot this raises a lot a lot of questions about implementation details if this is the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco direction they go I am certainly that’s going to be a major change so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m certainly a little wary of it but it would it would avoid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of issues because if you think about if they do the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco method that we assumed before this, which is they have like a home area that if you push there it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco works like a home button. Which I think is roughly what Samsung does with their edge to edge thing, right? Like I use one in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco store and I just kinda push down there and it seemed to work. So I think that’s basically what Samsung does and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that worked fine as far as I could tell when I used it for two seconds in a Best Buy. But if they do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, it does raise a lot of questions about things like what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happens to app UI that’s down there? there? You know, do you, do you have tab bars
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still? If so, like does the tab bar just go completely on top of that so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that that whole bottom half of the screen is just a home button and maybe something on the left and right of it that maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can’t control or you don’t have full control or you can only put like maybe a navigation item down there or something like that. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is it like that? Because if that’s the case, then that whole bottom area is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fairly significantly wasted. Like it’s not totally wasted, but it raises the question of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why even make it a screen if you’re not going to have much use for that area. If they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco let applications put content down there, but also have like a big home button hole in the middle of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that bottom row, then you have to think, what happens with things like tab bars?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Where you typically have like this row of four or five buttons across
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the bottom of the screen. Do you go with like a two on the left, two on the right, nothing in the middle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of arrangement or something like that? And just have a big hole in the middle of any tab bar that goes on there? You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can! That’s one option. It’s not a great option, but you know, you can do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The claimed method by this Bloomberg article is that it’s going to be swipe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco based and that basically the entire screen will be usable for apps, or the vast majority of the screen will be usable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by apps most of the time, and there won’t be this hole in the middle of bottom that is reserved
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the home button that some kind of swipe up from the bottom will be used instead to go home
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if so I’m interested to see that that that sounds like it would solve some of these problems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it might introduce new problems but I don’t think we know enough as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like actual fact not just speculation to say for sure like obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is what they’re doing and we don’t know that yet but we also don’t like we don’t have enough information here to really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know for sure like what they’re going to do. I would also say that Bloomberg
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and German’s record on things like this in recent times has been pretty spotty.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I would not take this as fact and would definitely not take this as a given.
⏹️ ▶️ John The thing he does lately, which I don’t understand because it doesn’t seem like he needs to do this is
⏹️ ▶️ John writes about things in the present tense like Apple is experimenting with different ways that the home
⏹️ ▶️ John button can work. It’s like Apple perhaps did experiment with different ways that the home button would work. But
⏹️ ▶️ John at this point, with the event like a week or two away, Apple’s not experimenting with different ways of the
⏹️ ▶️ John home button, different fundamental ways to use that bottom half of the screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, I’m pretty sure
⏹️ ▶️ John they know. Yeah, like they’ve picked one by now. Or even like worst case, they have two
⏹️ ▶️ John complete implementations that they’re going to pick between, but they’re not in the experimental stage anymore. Like that ship is sailed
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway on this particular thing about the home button this gives a little bit more
⏹️ ▶️ John of the answer of what the heck do we get with that shit screen because if they don’t have to dedicate any of the bottom of the screen to essentially
⏹️ ▶️ John to UI but the app can use it all hey I got and now I could see more tweets right whatever like it’s it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a benefit you can see it being a benefit it makes that part of the screen like you’re actually using it’s not just like
⏹️ ▶️ John a virtual representation of the the chin on our our phones today. But
⏹️ ▶️ John all that said, if it is swipe based, swiping
⏹️ ▶️ John on phones, for me, and I think for Edward just like in general,
⏹️ ▶️ John to do a successful swipe, case or no case, anything like that, is
⏹️ ▶️ John a, you have to, it’s like, you have to find the right balance between how
⏹️ ▶️ John hard you press your finger on the screen and how hard you swipe and how you
⏹️ ▶️ John hold the phone. because obviously if you press too hard, you get too much friction, it’s hard to like slide
⏹️ ▶️ John your finger and do the gesture. If you press too lightly and just graze it, maybe you won’t activate, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John if like your fingers are cold or whatever, right? So there is a balance, like you have to, it
⏹️ ▶️ John requires more finesse to do any kind of swipe gesture than it does to
⏹️ ▶️ John do a button press, virtual or otherwise, because with a button press, you find the place where you
⏹️ ▶️ John need to apply the pressure and you just bear down. And for the most part,
⏹️ ▶️ John unless you go all the way through and activate force touch, but even so maybe that’s not that bad. It is easier to sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of fumble in your pocket and like, obviously the physical buttons, just jam the sleep wake button
⏹️ ▶️ John or jam your finger on the home button, moving or otherwise.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or if it was the bottom of the screen with the virtual thing jam your finger somewhere on the bottom of the screen even if you can’t feel it because now it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just a screen image. But a swipe requires more finesse and for a move that you do so frequently, pick up my
⏹️ ▶️ John phone, put my finger on touch ID, unlock it, open it up, pick it up, activate it or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or just hit the home button to switch between apps or double tap to do the switcher. I’m a little bit wary
⏹️ ▶️ John of my ability, my dexterity to for that maneuver,
⏹️ ▶️ John that common maneuver to feel as comfortable as it does to me to just blindly hamfistedly
⏹️ ▶️ John press somewhere on the phone wherever that might be. But I think my wariness
⏹️ ▶️ John will probably even if it is slightly worse, I think it will be made up for by the additional screen
⏹️ ▶️ John real estate. Because the screen real estate you enjoy all the time. And the additional dexterity
⏹️ ▶️ John required to pull up the swipe things, A, is probably only a problem for old people. Like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John for younger people who are more plastic and just get used to it, they’ll just get used to
⏹️ ▶️ John But B, as often as you may do that, as often as you may activate the Home button, you spend way
⏹️ ▶️ John more time staring at your phone screen and scrolling through lists of stuff. So I think in the end it’s going to be a trade-off, but I
⏹️ ▶️ John am a little bit wary of more swipe gestures. I just think of all the swipe gestures I do on my phone
⏹️ ▶️ John now and how occasionally I’m not successful at them. And that’s not a pleasant experience. Whereas I’m pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John much always successful at pressing the home button.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s there. There’s a lot of potential for conflicts with that gesture,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like any gesture that involves a big swipe from any of the sides of the phone,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or in any large direction on the phone, you’re going to have substantial conflict
⏹️ ▶️ Marco risk with that with other things within apps, or even other system gestures. Obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the big questions is, what do you do with Control Center? Is it the kind of thing where you pull up a little bit and you get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Control Center and you pull up a lot and you go home or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John vice versa? Who knows? Have
⏹️ ▶️ John you used iOS 11? Was that weird? The same thing they have on iOS 11 with the multi? You pull up a little bit and
⏹️ ▶️ John it brings it back, but if you keep pulling, it’s the other thing. Even just on iOS 10, I found myself, I’m really good
⏹️ ▶️ John at this gesture, but I found myself looking at it consciously today and realizing how good
⏹️ ▶️ John I am at making this fine distinction after lots of practice. If you pull down from the top of your phone, like I think
⏹️ ▶️ John if I think notifications, my thumb pulls down from the top of my phone, I see notifications. If I think
⏹️ ▶️ John launch an application that I just launched, my thumb pulls down from the top of the phone and it shows recent applications because I’m on springboard.
⏹️ ▶️ John There are two different gestures, you have to start above the edge of the screen for the for the notifications and below the edge of the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John and be on springboard for the apps, but I just do them without thinking. So I guess
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the best case scenario that this is a bottom of the phone gesture, but it’s pretty picky. Like try to explain to somebody
⏹️ ▶️ John the nuances of swiping from off the edge of the screen versus just swiping sideways.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve seen many people do the wrong version of that to bad effect and not understand why they didn’t pull
⏹️ ▶️ John it off. It’s learnable, but again, it’s subtle and it requires much more finesse
⏹️ ▶️ John than press this big circular button to bring back the place where you see all your apps.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. I’m curious to see where this goes. And a lot of people have been making comparisons to webOS,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is presumably completely reasonable, but I never used a webOS device, so I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey squat about it. But I don’t know, I’m curious to see where this goes and see how it feels in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey execution, because I can tell you that my initial—I only have iOS 11 on my iPad,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and my initial impression of putting it there was, where did Control Center go? And eventually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was able to deduce, oh, you just need to swipe further. But golly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s tough for a normal user that isn’t really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thinking about these sorts of things. And I didn’t care for it at all at first. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over time, I’ve gotten used to it. The deep swipe, or maybe deep isn’t the best word, but the long
⏹️ ▶️ Casey swipe in order to get control center. But we’ll see how it works on the phone. I am really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey excited about the prospect of having a phone that’s sized for humans but has the screen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from the Plus. So I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very anxious about the thought of being able to buy one of those, despite the fact that it’s apparently going to be over $1,000,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I’m not too thrilled about. But it is what it is. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco honestly, whatever acrobatics are required to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have this phone work the way we want with things like Touch ID, Face ID, screen sizes,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco edge swiping, all this stuff, I think it’s probably going to be worth it. is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s been this tension in the iPhone line ever since the introduction of the plus size phones, which is like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many of us, myself included, want the screen of the plus, like we want the biggest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen we can get, but those phones are just too big for us to comfortably carry
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and use and hold and everything else. So the idea of having a much bigger screen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the phone size that we’re able to carry now, like the middle size or something very close to it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s exactly what everybody wants. Like that is so desirable that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think we’re gonna be willing to tolerate quite a lot of weirdness and transitions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and even possibly downsides to get that because that is not a small thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am. Anyway, thanks to our three sponsors this week, Casper, Audible, and Fracture.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we’ll see you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research,
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him, Cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental. And you can
⏹️ ▶️ John find the show notes at ATP.FM And if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John into Twitter, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S That’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse, it’s accidental They didn’t mean to
⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental Tech Podcasts Casting
Post-show: Battery question
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So Casey, what is your deep thought about batteries, as indicated in the show notes?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s actually a question and it’s probably silly, but I was thinking about this the other day
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I was wondering if I could choose, and thus I will be asking the two of you as well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I could choose one corporation that exists today
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to make a just night and day battery breakthrough. But let’s assume for the sake
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of this hypothetical that it takes, you know, one hundredth of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time to charge whatever battery we’re talking about. So if it’s an iPhone, it takes like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a few seconds or something like that. And if it’s a Tesla, it takes maybe 10 minutes or something to go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from empty to full or maybe less than that, given that the superchargers are pretty darn quick. So if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you could pick one and only one company to make just an utterly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey amazing battery breakthrough, Who would it be? And the obvious
⏹️ ▶️ Casey answer for the three of us is Apple, because we want our iPhones to last forever. But I think it’s bigger than that,
⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t pick Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. So I never really reached a great conclusion, which is funny for me to be bringing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it up. I feel like some auto manufacturer may be the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey best answer, so that we could get into real honest-to-goodness electric
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cars that aren’t compromise mobiles. To be fair, the Tesla is amazing. It is amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the compromises are made in the best possible way, but in a lot of ways, I still feel like it’s a series of compromises.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I feel like some auto manufacturer, maybe Tesla, would be a really great answer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here, but I have a feeling after listening to you two, I’ll be convinced that maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s a better choice. So John, you seem pretty enthusiastic about this. What would you say? If you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey could pick one company to make just a tremendous battery breakthrough, who would it be?
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s not a tremendous battery breakthrough unless, because there are battery technologies that do exactly what you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John saying, but unless it also works out with a cost and manufacturability
⏹️ ▶️ John resources it uses. So that’s what you’re talking about when
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you say a breakthrough, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And in the end, batteries are a commodity. So ideally, this breakthrough
⏹️ ▶️ John would come from academia or something not associated with the company. That would probably be the easiest and
⏹️ ▶️ John gives you your best chance not to be encumbered by stupid patents or whatever. But
⏹️ ▶️ John in the end, what I want it to be is something that is
⏹️ ▶️ John that is able to be produced on a large scale by some boring company that just
⏹️ ▶️ John produces things on a large scale. So maybe an existing battery manufacturer or like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John General Motors or Siemens
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco or like any,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, or like any, you know, whatever, whatever giant corporation that makes commodities
⏹️ ▶️ John out of natural resources is the least evil, right? But either way, like, I don’t want it to be owned and controlled by
⏹️ ▶️ John a single company, right? And I want it to be the type of thing that everybody has access to because in
⏹️ ▶️ John the same way that everyone, you know, they’re, they’re building up all this battery capacity for all the electric vehicles.
⏹️ ▶️ John The car industry is actually not a bad place because in general, there is no, there is very
⏹️ ▶️ John little technological secret sauce in terms of the commodities like Toyota will sell
⏹️ ▶️ John its hybrid powertrains to other people if they’re going to pay for them. Some of if someone has excess capacity to manufacture some commodity
⏹️ ▶️ John type thing, they will sell to other people, right? So I want it to be a very large company that’s good at
⏹️ ▶️ John building things. You know, for everybody else, and that it’s all just like, I will
⏹️ ▶️ John sell this to everybody who wants to sell it and just becomes a commodity that everybody is able to manufacture it because the breakthrough
⏹️ ▶️ John happened in academia and all the all the patents are freely available. I wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John want Apple to do it or Tesla or any other thing because I’m afraid they tried to turn it into a competitive advantage. That’s the last thing we
⏹️ ▶️ John want. We want the technology to spread everywhere far and wide. We don’t want it to be,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, this lets Apple and or Tesla extract an extra six months or a year
⏹️ ▶️ John of larger profits because it takes longer for everyone else to catch up. So it’s not a very satisfying answer.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s just you know, but it’s not it’s not the the old world where like
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a there’s a breakthrough and it belongs to a company things like this, like battery capacity your
⏹️ ▶️ John CPUs or like, you know, whatever material science in general should be
⏹️ ▶️ John and generally are industry wide.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think John covered it pretty well. I, you know, if obviously like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the the right answer is basically what John said, a more interesting specific answer is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like if you think about what types of products or uses
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are really held back by battery technology today and you can look at things like you computers and phones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the tech gadgets that we all use. And in many ways, we’re doing just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine. We would all love more battery life.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We would all love to not have to plug in ever or to actually be able to use the amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computing resources that are in these mobile devices frequently and all day without having
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to massively throttle all the applications and very tightly control power.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And obviously it would make a big difference in things like the Apple Watch, where the application
⏹️ ▶️ Marco paradigms and the display uses could be so much better if we didn’t have to worry so much about power constantly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s kind of the boring answer, is like, yeah, make all of our tech gadgets have way better batteries. That would be nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But we still have a great tech industry, and these gadgets are still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco awesome and amazingly capable, even with what we already have. So I think it might be more interesting to look at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where are areas in which batteries and better technology just is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not good enough to even make big shifts possible yet or ever. So obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing you can look at transportation in other ways and you can say like obviously like airplanes currently can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be electrically powered because like the power and weight ratio is just way off like they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t say that there are plenty of electric powered airplanes you mean airliners right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah big airplanes yeah you know know, like, like, there’s large parts of transportation that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that like battery technology, like batteries are just too heavy, or too big or don’t have the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t have the capacity or charge too slowly. One area that’s recently getting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little bit of traction in the electric vehicle news is trucks,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco long haul trucks, like, you know, big semis and stuff. Lots of energy is spent on trucking. And if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can electrify trucks the way that cars are being electrified, could have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty substantial savings to both people who truck and also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the environment around all these things. That could be a pretty significant fuel reduction.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Trucks have an issue where you need a lot of power to move a big semi truck with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a big trailer and everything. It’s just a big load and they’re not particularly aerodynamic.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you need a lot of power and also truckers can’t afford to sit around for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two hours while things recharge every hundred miles. That’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feasible for that business. So for trucks to be electrified, you need significant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco improvements for that to really be a thing that could take off. So I would lean more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco towards areas like that, where things that you basically just can’t do efficiently with batteries
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as we know them today, just because the ratios and and the economics
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and whatever else are just completely infeasible as we know them today. That would be my answer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is like, find things that we just can’t really do electrically today
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a reasonable way. Make those more practical or more feasible. So obviously, things like trucks,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say probably like container ships, like big ships in the ocean, a similar problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Airliners, like other parts of transportation that it would be nice to eliminate their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco emissions and or reduce their emissions at least and we just can’t do that yet.
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t forget clothing, going the other direction. Your battery breakthrough could be, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John amazing fast charging, tiny, lightweight, inexpensive waterproof batteries that you can weave into clothing
⏹️ ▶️ John so that you can stream Spotify from your shorts because your shorts know how to stream Spotify.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like that’s the other that’s the other direction of like, oh, there’s so many places where you can’t use electric
⏹️ ▶️ John power at all because batteries are too big and bulky and it would so much of a hassle but if batteries were the size of
⏹️ ▶️ John grains of sand and had enough energy to stream Spotify all day it would be in every piece of clothing you own if they were also cheap
⏹️ ▶️ John to manufacture right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Would I want my shorts to be playing music? I’m not entirely sure
⏹️ ▶️ John It plays it into your ears but it’s the thing that receives the radio signals and sends it through Bluetooth version 8
⏹️ ▶️ John bazillion up into your magic airpods that whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They could use bone conduction technology and send it through my sit bones.
⏹️ ▶️ John You get your head up your ass you Haley music just the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Feel like there’s some humanitarian angle here that we’re not considering You know like providing power to to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey communities that simply don’t have any like it’s not even an option or it’s unaffordable Or whatever the
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s like storage of solar energy That’s a you know a battery that just battery breakthrough But just like the energy
⏹️ ▶️ John problem like if you want world peace if you could solve the energy problem And there was like free energy for everybody. That would
⏹️ ▶️ John solve a lot of problems really quickly. Because energy is convertible, as you may know, into many
⏹️ ▶️ John other goods and services. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, if you can solve that problem, it doesn’t take like
⏹️ ▶️ John the old sort of sci-fi utopia. It’s like, if you had unlimited free energy for everybody,
⏹️ ▶️ John no one needs to work anymore. You just need to have the sort of base level technology to convert that energy into food
⏹️ ▶️ John and shelter and other types of things. Like it’s, you know, but we’re, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s thermodynamics has something to say about the whole free energy thing, but we could, you know, deplete
⏹️ ▶️ John the, the earth, uh, firefly style, uh, and
⏹️ ▶️ John live high on the hog for a while until the machines take over and enslave us all.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wow. That’s a positive
⏹️ ▶️ John outlook, John. But Marco will be dead so he doesn’t care.