238: Begging for the Hub
07 Sep 2017Predictions for next week’s event… after nearly two hours of other stuff.
Episode Description:
- Follow-Up:
- Isn't iCloud close to full-machine backup?
- Do you really need to spend $1000 on a camera?
- Printing photos
- Photo resolution
#askatp- iPhone-buying strategies
- Is 4K worth it?
- Why & how we use Plex
- John's 2017 MacBook Pro impressions
- iPhone 7 exit interview
- iPhone 7S/8/Pro/Edition predictions
- Apple Watch predictions
- Wildcard predictions
- Ending theme by Jonathan Mann
- Post-show: Marco is still obsessed with bikes
Sponsored by:
- Betterment: Rethink what your money can do. Get up to 1 year managed free.
- Hover: Find a domain name for your passion. Get 10% off your first purchase.
- Away: Travel smarter with the suitcase that charges your phone. Get $20 off with code ATP.
Chapters
- Follow-up: Is iCloud a backup?
- Follow-up: Photography
- Sponsor: Away (code ATP)
- #askatp: iPhone lottery?
- #askatp: 4K vs. 1080p
- #askatp: How we use Plex
- Sponsor: Hover
- John’s new MacBook Pro
- Sponsor: Betterment
- iPhone 7 exit interview
- iPhone predictions
- Apple TV predictions
- Apple Watch predictions
- Event predictions
- Wildcards
- Ending theme
- Post-show 🖼️
Follow-up: Is iCloud a backup?
⏹️ ▶️ John We didn’t even address rose gold, that’s what we forgot. Rose gold or no?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Eh, what about it?
⏹️ ▶️ John Is there going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Why wouldn’t there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s allegedly now like that pink copper color. Is it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John going to be like space gray where
⏹️ ▶️ John they just keep calling 20 different colors rose
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco gold despite the fact
⏹️ ▶️ John look nothing like each other? It’s rose
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey gold, right? It’s like, just…
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t care, I don’t buy those phones.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We have a lot to talk about and we should start immediately as we always do with follow-up. Richard Anderson writes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in, if you use all the Apple things, isn’t iCloud pretty close to offering full Mac backup? Desktop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Docs in iCloud Drive, Photos in iCloud Photo Library, Music in iCloud Music Library, or whatever it’s called,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iTunes Match, I guess. One extra thing offered by Backblaze is backup of other folders in user
⏹️ ▶️ Casey home, and with storage sharing in the new OS’s, the two terabyte plan is a good option. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey assuming they mean two terabyte iCloud, but whatever, it doesn’t really matter. More for Apple to do, but that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot of Mac backup they’re offering. So why is that not sufficient? I will speak for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me first in saying, I do not use all the Apple things. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very much like iTunes match. I have never tried iCloud photo library. Don’t trust
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. Don’t plan to use it. I have used iCloud drive only for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things like solver, for example, where it’s just easier to save those documents to iCloud drive,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I don’t use it as like a Dropbox replacement where I’m just putting random crap in there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I think that was most of what they said. So for me, I don’t trust Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do those things as well as the longstanding people have done it. So I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use Apple for all the things. Although I understand Richard’s point and I do think he is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey onto something. So Marco, how do you treat all this stuff? Would this be sufficient for you?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, obviously not. I mean, we’re all nerds, so we’re all gonna have different types of data that’s gonna be different folders
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything else. So it’s probably not gonna really help nerds very much. But I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s basically Apple like hitting the big things first, picking the low-hanging fruit. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco photos are a big one. You gotta look at what people store on their computers,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where is most of the stuff they store, and what is the stuff that is basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardest to lose? Like stuff that if your computer was wiped out, what would most people freak out about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco losing the most? So photos are a huge one. That’s probably the number one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on that scale. So they have a service now to do that. And it’s built into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the phone, it’s built into the Mac, it’s built into, you know, it’s like, they cover photos really well. They added
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the documents folder and desktop folder in Sierra.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I still have not been brave enough to actually try to use that feature. However, that’s also,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, two big spots. Basically where most people store most stuff is either in the documents folder
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where every app in history has defaulted to saving because that’s what computer people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think that’s where they think you should put your documents or the desktop, which is where people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually put all their documents. So it’s a great thing. They hit those two big ones,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you know, and all this, you know, music, that’s another big one and a lot of moving to streaming anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, you know, they’re doing it piecemeal so far. That’s nice. That is better than not doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it at all. And that has probably saved literally millions of people’s data loss from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being worse than it could have been. So that’s a great thing to do, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s not full backup of a computer. That’s a separate type of product, separate type of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco design and decisions and implementation details that has to work out. So no,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is not enough to be a full backup. It is enough for many people, or it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco close to enough for many people, but many people not all people. And that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s not just that it’s not a full backup. The problem is that it’s not a backup. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the real problem. So if you
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re going through like, Oh, are they creeping up on a full backup solution by backing up bits and bits? Those aren’t
⏹️ ▶️ John backups. Those are just cloud storage of stuff. It’s like calling a Dropbox a backup. Dropbox is not a backup, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John A backup is first of all, completely service agnostic. Backblaze
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t care what I use to store my photos. Backblaze doesn’t care if I use Dropbox, Google Drive, anything
⏹️ ▶️ John like that, it’s not application connected. And back plays makes a separate copy
⏹️ ▶️ John of my stuff, right? And I know Dropbox, you’ve got your local files, and they’ve got your cloud versions, and you’ve got local files
⏹️ ▶️ John and all your other computers, you can kind of sort of view it as a backup. And the same thing with iCloud Drive,
⏹️ ▶️ John or iCloud photo library, but they’re just fundamentally not backups. So for example, if an iCloud photo
⏹️ ▶️ John library, you accidentally delete all your photos, and that syncs to all of your things, I know they go into recently deleted
⏹️ ▶️ John and yada, yada, but with me here. Like if you actually legitimately deleted them, you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John restore them from your backup is like, Oh, iCloud photo library is my backup for me. No, it’s not.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is a cloud synced representation of your current data. If you
⏹️ ▶️ John totally wipe out your photos, or delete everything from your Dropbox or do something else that actually deletes them, delete them
⏹️ ▶️ John for realsy realsies out of the recently deleted out of the trash or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you go to backblaze to restore from backup backblaze will still happen because backlight that doesn’t care what the hell you do with
⏹️ ▶️ John iCloud photo library, right? It’s going to still have those photos or whatever your
⏹️ ▶️ John actual backup solution is. So the key part of a backup solution is, it is a separate copy that is disconnected
⏹️ ▶️ John from the programs that created that stuff. Same thing with iCloud backup for your phone, right? If you delete
⏹️ ▶️ John everything off your phone, your previous iCloud backup of your phone still has that stuff on it.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if you’re like, oh, I’ve made a terrible mistake, reset my phone, restore from cloud backup, I think they still
⏹️ ▶️ John give you, I haven’t done this in a while, but don’t they give you like a date, a series of backup dates where you can restore from your
⏹️ ▶️ John most recent backup, second most recent, third most recent, right? I don’t know what the retention policy is. And that’s a, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s a point of contention of a lot of these backup services. But the nature of a backup is it is a separate
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. So CloudSync is great. And I use it in addition to my backups, but it should never be confused
⏹️ ▶️ John with an actual backup because it’s a separate job. And you want both. I want iCloud photo library.
⏹️ ▶️ John In fact, I have my photos in two cloud libraries, But I also have multiple actual backups
⏹️ ▶️ John of my photos. So backups are different than Cloud Sync.
Follow-up: Photography
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Marco, you have some quick follow-up on your requirement
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you spend $1,000 to take good pictures, which clearly—I mean, all snark
⏹️ ▶️ Casey aside, to me, I totally understood what you were driving at, and I don’t think that was intended to be a literal, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is impossible to take good pictures with less than $1,000 spent, but seemingly your sarcasm
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was not well-received or understood. So can you clarify for us, please?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sure, yeah. episode, we talked about, you know, one of the ask ATP questions was about, you know, beginner camera advice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and like some setup advice, and I had said something on the lines of you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably need to spend at least $1,000 in order to get in order to get pictures that are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco significantly better than your than like a recent iPhones camera, because you know the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cameras and smartphones are so good these days that it doesn’t just take like a mid-range point-and-shoot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be better than an iPhone in a lot of conditions. A lot of times you have to be better, you have to go even higher than that. A lot of times you have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go to like a mirrorless or a high-end compact to really be better. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had thrown out the number of roughly $1,000 as an approximate minimum. A number of people wrote in,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of the contention seemed to be that I was prioritizing the price
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the camera body over the price of the lenses. I don’t think I actually said that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it was, I left it ambiguous and that was my fault. What I really meant to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco convey with that estimate was the cost of the whole setup, body and lenses.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not even including in that an amazing high quality set of primes or a zoom.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m thinking like what most people do, which is you get the kit lens, or if it has a kit lens, you get the kit lens for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco general use and maybe you get a 50 millimeter equivalent prime because those are usually really inexpensive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and really high quality. Something like that, one good prime with whatever general purpose
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lens you’re going to use on it. that’s going to put you over $1,000 with almost any decent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco setup. So that’s kind of where I got that from. Again, this is a ballpark. This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is meant to be an estimate. These are all squishy, vague things,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s also all very subjective. The other thing I wanted to talk about with camera follow-up is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco John mentioned that I had told him at one point that the secret to… Or no, Casey, one of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you mentioned that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John told you at one point
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the secret to photography was don’t use the flash and take lots of pictures. I mean, I got a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco number of people who wrote in who took offense to this because they thought that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco either we should learn how to use the flash properly or that it is not necessary to take lots of pictures
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to take good pictures. That in fact, many people can take great pictures and as they get better, they take fewer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s true and that’s great advice if you have… If you’ve already developed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a good eye and a good proficiency with the technical side of things, that is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not true of most beginners. It’s not true of me when I was a beginner. It’s not true of me now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so if you can shoot fewer pictures and get the same number
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of hits, that’s great. That means you’re getting better at it. But for beginners, it helps to take a lot and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can kind of see where you go wrong on some of them and you have a better chance of having caught something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost accidentally instead of having to get it exactly right the very first time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steven Connelly Yeah, I thought your advice was good, which is why I brought it up. And I stand by your advice
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for, like you said, the general purpose person, which is exactly what I was. I was a complete novice.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was a noob. And I wanted some basic guidance on how to take a decent shot. And to me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I concur that avoiding the flash and just, you know, trying not to just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey drown it out with too much light is the right answer. Now, one of the things that somebody wrote in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to say was, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you need to think about where the light is. Well, okay, sure. But that to me is like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey step two or whatever. The first step is just trying to take a decent picture that isn’t just blown
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out to smithereens and any normal camera, particularly, when you told me this in like 2007 or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eight or something like that. So, you know, your average camera was a point and shoot,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which probably had a flash that was always ready to rock and on 90% of the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So it made perfect sense. and I stick with it and stand by it, and I think you were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right to say it. So don’t let the haters get you. But speaking of photos, we had a little bit of interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feedback about printing photos. John, do you want to tell us about this?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mentioned it last show, like as a diversity of backup, but also to like print your photos so you actually look at
⏹️ ▶️ John them every day and get to enjoy them. So the enjoyment thing, everyone’s all on board with that, but the
⏹️ ▶️ John diversity of backup, a lot of people wanted to point out that many modern processes for printing photos
⏹️ ▶️ John will not stand the test of time. They won’t even last as long as the photos printed from like your
⏹️ ▶️ John childhood in the 70s, right? Because of the, you know, the, the differences in, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John chemical composition of developed photos or God forbid, if you’re printing them on your inkjet printer,
⏹️ ▶️ John those are going to be in and putting them, uh, you know, somewhere in sunlight, those will be dead in like
⏹️ ▶️ John a week and a half. Right? Um, so if you are actually trying to
⏹️ ▶️ John make hard copies of your photos for the purposes of diversity of backup, you’ll have to go
⏹️ ▶️ John and find someone who’s going to print them on like acid free paper with a process that’s not gonna, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John fade or one of the colors isn’t going to go all wonky or whatever. I confess I have no idea what those processes
⏹️ ▶️ John might be. Digital is my backup for the most part. But
⏹️ ▶️ John even if you’re just even if you just have a bunch of prints that will last like even just a few years, you don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John to last 100 years. So the last a few years and if they’re spread around or if you have some sort of digital
⏹️ ▶️ John disaster and all you’ve got left are the prints, it is possible to recover you know you can scan those prints
⏹️ ▶️ John back in. Now it’s not going to be great but scanning prints back in is way better than losing
⏹️ ▶️ John your pictures entirely. Like we have our wedding photos for a while you know they were we got
⏹️ ▶️ John married before the digital camera age so they were taken on film and we had prints of them and I have
⏹️ ▶️ John no idea how high quality those prints are but anyway we scanned the prints and scanning the prints didn’t come out great,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it was reassuring to have the photos on our computer and
⏹️ ▶️ John backed up a bazillion times. Right. And eventually, many years later, we went
⏹️ ▶️ John through the process of scanning the negatives and that came up way better because we still have the negatives. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so now we have digital copies of our wedding photos in addition to, you know, ones that are in it. We have a wedding album,
⏹️ ▶️ John we have things in frames on the wall. So I feel like we have a pretty big diversity of
⏹️ ▶️ John wedding photo backups, you know, all all the digital versions, the negatives, pictures in frames,
⏹️ ▶️ John and pictures in albums. And so that’s what you’re going for. But like I said, if you’re interested
⏹️ ▶️ John in making prints for archival purposes or to pass on to your children or grandchildren,
⏹️ ▶️ John be sure that you just can’t go to Walgreens and get a print. You have no idea how long that’s gonna last. You have to do some research
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Alrighty, and do you want to talk to me about the plateau of photo resolution?
⏹️ ▶️ John A couple of people wanted to talk about this. I listened back to the show, I thought I had said more about
⏹️ ▶️ John it, but apparently I just thought some of it and said less. This is about the idea
⏹️ ▶️ John that photos get bigger every year. And I was saying that that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John that’ll level off because the minute you get diminishing returns at a certain point,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you can argue what that point may be. A lot of people said, well, you know, it may not be useful to have 1000
⏹️ ▶️ John megapixel image because like you know you don’t need that many pixels for
⏹️ ▶️ John normal sizes that you’re gonna print it but now all of a sudden you have the ability to crop subsections of the image and stuff like that
⏹️ ▶️ John but even even in terms of cropping and everything they will reach a point of diminishing returns
⏹️ ▶️ John is it 100 megapixels is it a thousand is it 10 000 you’re not going to have a 10 billion megapixel
⏹️ ▶️ John image like it’s just not going to happen it’s not a not a useful thing unless you’re nasa like taking pictures
⏹️ ▶️ John of the surface of a planet and even those are a series of other pictures stuck together right but
⏹️ ▶️ John this is all talking about plain old 2d pictures nothing else in
⏹️ ▶️ John them just you know colors and pixels in a big matrix right
⏹️ ▶️ John as soon as you start considering other things like photos with depth or light-field
⏹️ ▶️ John photos or things that are not simply 2d images or photos with like live picture photos or
⏹️ ▶️ John photos where you can 360 degree photos where you can move around or change the focal depth and
⏹️ ▶️ John all these other technologies that are different than plain old 2d photos those can potentially be very
⏹️ ▶️ John large it remains to be seen if those will take the place of plain 2d photos I
⏹️ ▶️ John have to think that plain 2d photos will still have a place in the world and
⏹️ ▶️ John that those will be capped in the same way that audio is essentially capped we have we have two
⏹️ ▶️ John ears and yes you can have multi-channel audio and yes you could go up and higher bit depths and resolutions but for
⏹️ ▶️ John you know at a certain point and we may already be at that point, digital audio files are not going
⏹️ ▶️ John to get any bigger than today’s biggest highest resolution totally uncompressed
⏹️ ▶️ John audio. Because there’s no point, there’s no point in taking a hundred thousand times more space than FLAC. You know, 75
⏹️ ▶️ John channel FLAC and you know, 196 kilohertz or whatever, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, the max values that we’re able to do, there’s no point in going much bigger than that because,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the limits of human hearing, right? Same thing with vision. Once you go
⏹️ ▶️ John out of the realm of 2D photography into the realm of like VR or like a scene you could
⏹️ ▶️ John travel around in or depth maps or other things like that, then you
⏹️ ▶️ John start to go up on the curve again. I have to think that that will eventually level off too, because again, our eyeballs can only
⏹️ ▶️ John see so much and there’s eventually a limit to, you know, just even in a 3D
⏹️ ▶️ John world, how much you want to move around, but that’s a different graph. but I, but photo resolution, like
⏹️ ▶️ John I think in our lifetime, photo resolution or plain 2D photos will level off. And if
⏹️ ▶️ John I had to guess what the number is, I would guess that it is going to be under a thousand megapixels.
⏹️ ▶️ John So probably some number of hundreds of megapixels, maybe as low as one or 200.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that will be like the point at which people, in the same way, MB3 is like, it seems almost like 256
⏹️ ▶️ John kilobit lossy compressed files files are like, yeah, we
⏹️ ▶️ John can do better than that, but at this point, consumers are fine with it. So we’ll just stick with that.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I think that will happen. So don’t worry about storing, you know, if storage sizes keep going
⏹️ ▶️ John up, you know, with the current trends, because we always have more stuff to store like video and
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, all the other things we have, hell, pretty soon each game is going to be 100 times the
⏹️ ▶️ John size of like the biggest hard drive I could have imagined like 10 years ago. have plenty
⏹️ ▶️ John of room for generation upon generation of photos in our storage.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Speaking of the size of games, I was looking through some old files that I have,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I noticed that Super Nintendo games
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are like under a meg.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John They’re smaller than a Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah, they’re like under a meg or something.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s insane. I understand it. It conceptually makes sense, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s hard for me to reason through it or, you know, when you, when you think about it without really reasoning through it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as I guess what I’m trying to say, it’s just like, wait, what, how can that possibly be so small? There was so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey many hours of gameplay I got from that. How can that be so small? But I mean, again,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey once you start thinking about it, it does make sense. But wow, did that really kind of freak me out when I saw
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#askatp: iPhone lottery?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you very much to Away for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, let’s do some Ask ATP. Thomas Holliday writes in to say, Apple distributes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not a lot of WWDC tickets with a lottery. If Apple reused its WWDC ticket system
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to allocate first day iPhone whatever shipments, would that be better or worse than what they do now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is a screen refresh click fest? After the iPhones
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are up for sale, presumably next week sometime,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will tell you our secret to how to avoid the screen refresh click-fest, which really means
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco or John is about to tell you the secret to avoid the screen refresh click-fest. Force quitting the app and using
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the app? Yeah, basically. Just use
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco the app on your phone. That’s the way to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Well, but the reality is, no matter what method you pick, whether it is refreshing the store page
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a web browser or whether it is using the Apple Store app, which is definitely the method I recommend. And even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you take all the shortcuts, like if you first set it up as a favorite after it’s been announced before it ships,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then you can go in and just go right to your favorites in order from there in the app. Like there are ways to make this faster. However,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way the store has worked in the last few years, different areas, I don’t know whether it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because of CDN caching or different region caching, or it seems like there’s something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about caching or going live. Not every region goes live at the same time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so So no matter what, if you are not one of the lucky few whose region goes up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the very first, whatever you’re loading from might go up five minutes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco later than some other people’s. And so you’re already gonna be backordered. Or you’re gonna only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be able to get the least desirable color in the largest size for T-Mobile, or something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that. It’s gonna be backordered like crazy. And if the various
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rumors of low volumes low volumes and low availability
⏹️ ▶️ Marco due to low yields or low production numbers. If that’s all true, or if it’s even half
⏹️ ▶️ Marco true, it’s gonna be a crazy mess of like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco scalpers buying them, having to get them off of eBay or Craigslist or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone trying to sneak in through the business reps. It’s gonna be a huge mess of trying to get these phones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say probably until January, maybe even longer than that. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just expect going into it that almost no one’s going to have these on day one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unless you are willing to pay a large premium or you get very, very lucky.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and I actually wrote up a blog post on all this last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey year, and we’ll put a link in the show notes. It’s called iPhone Pre-Order Lessons Learned, and basically it’s exactly what you described, Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Set up your favorite in the Apple Store app. Get your Apple Pay settings squared away in advance.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sure your shipping stuff is squared away, etc. It ended up that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey according to this post, that my preorder went through at 3.11 in the morning. If
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you recall, the preorders in years past have always started at midnight Pacific because apparently the world revolves
⏹️ ▶️ Casey around California. Anyway, so they went up at 3 or so our time, and then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s never actually on time because besides caching, California is not exactly a punctual area
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the world. Don’t at me. You can email Marco about that. Hey,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t hate me. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco true. But anyways. They’re even on vacation at midnight.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. Even on vacation at midnight, they’re still not punctual. It drives me bananas.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the point is that 3.11 was when I finally got it through. And what I ended up doing was just what Marco said, you know, force
⏹️ ▶️ Casey quitting the Apple Store app, trying again, force quitting the app, trying again, et cetera, et cetera. And that is, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve tried just about every mechanism for buying iPhones over the last few years. And that is the one I do recommend.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It may not work this year. It may not work for you, but that is what I recommend. John, what are your
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, to actually answer this question,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey would it be better if they used the lottery? No, it would not be better if
⏹️ ▶️ John they used the lottery. It would be worse if they used the lottery. And the difference between WWDC tickets and iPhones
⏹️ ▶️ John is that iPhones, they make more of them, right? So you may not get
⏹️ ▶️ John it as soon as other people, but you’re going to get an iPhone if you want one eventually. WWDC
⏹️ ▶️ John tickets, if you don’t get one of them, that’s it until next year, right? So
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of it would be worse because that’s just more bookkeeping and the added bit of randomness.
⏹️ ▶️ John And like, like I said, with WC tickets, when we talk about WWC lottery, I kind of liked the idea that people
⏹️ ▶️ John who are willing to stay up at three in the morning and have these elaborate systems put more effort into it, showing they care more about
⏹️ ▶️ John getting in on day one. And they’re rewarded for that. Whereas a lottery is like, Oh, well, everybody’s
⏹️ ▶️ John equal in the eyes of the lottery and it’s just totally random and so I like the idea that there’s something people can
⏹️ ▶️ John do to try to get an iPhone sooner but like I said unlike WWDC tickets if you don’t get one that doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John mean you can never have one of these iPhones you just have to wait a little bit longer. Rest assured Apple will sell you
⏹️ ▶️ John one unless it’s like the white iPhone 4 and then in which case you might have to wait a really really long time but you’ll get one eventually.
⏹️ ▶️ John So lottery would be worse.
#askatp: 4K vs. 1080p
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Monty Thomas writes in is there a perceptible difference under normal viewing conditions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey between 4k UHD and 1080p HD if so Is that difference
⏹️ ▶️ Casey substantial enough to justify TV and blu-ray upgrades recently been reading some articles that Steve Yedlin
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Director of photography of the Last Jedi is written on the topic of 4k He argues that 4k is used by TV manufacturers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and others as a marketing gimmick and is not a valuable feature in itself This seems to be a compelling
⏹️ ▶️ Casey position that I’ve seen little meaningful counter-arguments against. I don’t really know anything about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this, so I’m gonna throw in my two cents so I can feel smart and then give it to John. But, um, my understanding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that it’s HDR that’s the real good stuff, and that 4K, in most cases, until you get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just a comically large TV, really isn’t that great. So, John, what’s the reality?
⏹️ ▶️ John So there are plenty of meaningful counter-arguments, because as you know, first of all, 4k when
⏹️ ▶️ John you see like that on a television it represents a set of industry standards that people have all
⏹️ ▶️ John agreed on only one aspect of which is the increased resolution
⏹️ ▶️ John there are other aspects to it setting aside HDR which you’re right is probably a much bigger deal than 4k
⏹️ ▶️ John the plain old 4k standards have different bit depths different
⏹️ ▶️ John frame rates and all sorts of other things different color profiles right
⏹️ ▶️ John also other things that make the picture better now as for the resolution itself there are
⏹️ ▶️ John you know I tried to find a good one for the show that’s what I found is reasonable there are calculators you can
⏹️ ▶️ John put in to say how big is my TV how far away do I sit from it and at what
⏹️ ▶️ John point does the increased resolution become meaningless now the question of become meaningless
⏹️ ▶️ John is tricky because a lot of these things use like oh the eye is no longer able to resolve anything
⏹️ ▶️ John you know smaller than this particular size or whatever, that’s not necessarily the point at which
⏹️ ▶️ John the picture is indistinguishable. Because you’re not trying to resolve
⏹️ ▶️ John individual pixels or lines distinct from each other. I can still perceive increased
⏹️ ▶️ John detail, even if it can’t perceive the boundaries between the pixels, right. But nevertheless, there
⏹️ ▶️ John is a point at which your distance from the television combined with the size of the television means that 4k is completely indistinguishable
⏹️ ▶️ John from 1080, 1080 is indistinguishable from 720, so on and so forth. So a lot of these charts have thing that shows your
⏹️ ▶️ John screen size and your distance and a bunch of lines and you can you know plot the things and find out where you
⏹️ ▶️ John lie and they show a region of the graph where it’s like if you are in this region of the graph the graph it doesn’t matter
⏹️ ▶️ John if you have 1080 or 4k or 720 because they all look the same to you so use
⏹️ ▶️ John one of these viewing distance calculators one of which we will put in the show notes to see if it makes a difference in your setup but
⏹️ ▶️ John like I said keep in mind that 4k resolution is just one aspect of 4k and
⏹️ ▶️ John not even the most important aspect for most people most setups HDR is
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if it’s part of the 4k standards but anyway HDR comes to modern TVs and that is more important than
⏹️ ▶️ John 4k resolution and the color profiles and bit depth are also probably more important
⏹️ ▶️ John than the resolution so yes 4k TVs are probably worth it and bottom
⏹️ ▶️ John line is like like so many things before you don’t have a choice like eventually you won’t even be able
⏹️ ▶️ John to buy a non 4k So don’t sweat it too much and rest assured that is not just a marketing gimmick.
⏹️ ▶️ John It does, you know, modern TVs, 4K, UHD, HDR, capable TVs
⏹️ ▶️ John have better picture than 1080 TVs, even if you can’t see the resolution difference.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So let me ask a dumb question. Now, my understanding of HDR comes from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when it was added to the iPhone. And my understanding is it’s a way of saying, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re taking a portrait of somebody like at the edge of a mountain, for example. And you want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the people to be exposed properly, but you also want the perhaps
⏹️ ▶️ Casey comparatively much brighter landscape in the background to also be exposed properly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so my understanding of how the iPhone works is that it’ll like take two or three shots at different
⏹️ ▶️ Casey exposure levels or what have you and kind of stitch them together to make one shot that’s exposed properly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at a wide range of distances. is assuming
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s the case, why is this on the presentation side? Like what makes that to me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a capture time issue. What makes it a display time issue?
⏹️ ▶️ John So yeah, you’re looking at it at the opposite end. You’re looking at it at capture. What you’re trying to do is,
⏹️ ▶️ John like your sensor has a certain dynamic range. You know what this is like if you’re taking a picture with a film
⏹️ ▶️ John camera or any kind of camera, depending on how you have your camera set up in terms of
⏹️ ▶️ John what’s the aperture, shutter speed, The speed of the film in the old days your sensor blah blah blah blah
⏹️ ▶️ John the bottom line is Certain areas below a certain darkness are 100% black and areas above a certain
⏹️ ▶️ John Brightness are 100% white that represents a dynamic range of your current setup of taking
⏹️ ▶️ John a picture, right? and if you have an image that you see with your eyeballs or you know
⏹️ ▶️ John out in the world where the brightest part is really really bright and the darkest part is really really dark
⏹️ ▶️ John and That that range is way bigger than the dynamic range of your capturing equipment And the way they cheat this
⏹️ ▶️ John with HDR photos and the iPhone is they will take multiple pictures at different exposures. So they will say,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m going to take that out of range of the camera and shift it way over to the left and take one picture over there and then
⏹️ ▶️ John put it in the middle, take one picture there and put it at the other end, take one picture there. And then I combine them all. So I can’t. So
⏹️ ▶️ John instead of the shadowy part of the picture being 100% black and the bright part being 100% white,
⏹️ ▶️ John I will take those three different pictures with three different exposure settings essentially and combine them all into a single
⏹️ ▶️ John picture. really hope nothing in between because it’ll be all blurry and gross right that is making that trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to fake the dynamic range of your sensor to make it wider now on the display side assuming
⏹️ ▶️ John your content was either captured with the higher dynamic range by like a much fancier camera than the ones in our phones
⏹️ ▶️ John or manipulated in some way in a computer to add more dynamicism back in it to say that the bright
⏹️ ▶️ John parts are really bright in the dark parts are really dark now the display has the capability to show
⏹️ ▶️ John that range usually is manifest in the bright parts being much brighter than you thought.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s the same thing. Like if you if you take your television, like crank down the brightness or whatever, all of a
⏹️ ▶️ John sudden the shadow areas just become 100% black and you can’t see anything. And the same thing, if you crank up the brightness, you lose
⏹️ ▶️ John all detail in the light areas, right? A screen with a higher dynamic range can show details in those
⏹️ ▶️ John shadows while also not washing out everything at the bright end. And like I said, this usually
⏹️ ▶️ John TVs are good, but pretty good at showing shadow detail. But if you want
⏹️ ▶️ John the brights to be really really bright You will destroy all the shadow detail on a tv with
⏹️ ▶️ John a solar deck range So high dynamic range tvs when you watch them, it feels doesn’t feel like looking out a
⏹️ ▶️ John window obviously because it’s not like the sun burning your eyeballs out from your
⏹️ ▶️ John but They go much brighter than regular televisions. And when they go brighter like that, it doesn’t wash
⏹️ ▶️ John out the bright the blacks. So that’s high dynamic range in the display
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So when I watch an HDR TV, do I have to put like a little pinhole in a box and look in the box
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John like that works?
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I haven’t been keeping up with this recently. But I’m pretty sure no television you
⏹️ ▶️ John can buy maxes out the range of like the highest dynamic range standard like
⏹️ ▶️ John to be compliant, you just have to I fit to some fudge factor of like, you just have to be like, within this range,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the HDR standards go like to super, super bright. And I don’t think any television
⏹️ ▶️ John for sale today can hit the max limit of the HDR standard with the highest range maybe it’s still
⏹️ ▶️ John be vision I forget because if you were to crank any current panel so that level it would wash
⏹️ ▶️ John out the dark so they have a much higher dynamic range then I don’t know what you call the regular televisions
⏹️ ▶️ John that TVs without HDR right much much higher than that but there’s still even headroom and current standards but
⏹️ ▶️ John no you won’t need to burn your eyes out although I imagine if you’re watching it in a really dark room and a movie
⏹️ ▶️ John a a poorly mastered movie switches from a really dark scene
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco to a really bright scene,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re gonna squint. I’ve had that happen with my non-HDR TV. Ever watch like a movie in the dark and it switches from a dark, they’ve been
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco in a dark scene for a long
⏹️ ▶️ John time, then it switches to bright sunlight and you squint? I’ve had that happen with my extremely dim,
⏹️ ▶️ John by standards of HDR or even terrible LED backlit LCDs,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve had that happen with my plasma. So I imagine that’ll happen even more so with HDR.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Finally for Ask ATP, you know, these previous two were really long, Are you accepting ask ATP
⏹️ ▶️ Casey via email because that was not part of the agreement.
⏹️ ▶️ John storms people do instead of blogging I was gonna blog this but how about I write it a sentence at a time
⏹️ ▶️ John With numbers at the end of it every time I read that just think what what happened to blogging? All you got to do is do
⏹️ ▶️ John one tweet with a link to a blog. That’s it But people don’t want to click through the link So they’d much rather read
⏹️ ▶️ John what you write one tiny paragraph at a time It’s always let’s mix people condense their thoughts and say,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know So they don’t just ramble on and on and on. But the other way, it’s like, just
⏹️ ▶️ John too many damn tweets. Anyway, this was like three tweets. I accept that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it’s better than tweet shots, at least.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, amen, brother. I hated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Twitter. Twitter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tweet shots. When you would you would take a picture of it or take a screenshot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the thing you’re trying to talk
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco about, like writing a note,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey highlight. Yeah. And like highlight the section. Oh, God.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, no, that’s like a that’s like a feature of the medium side, isn’t it? they like manufacture those pings programmatically
⏹️ ▶️ John for you or whatever and
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey upload them? Yeah, what was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey OneShot or something was an app that used to do it and was really popular for like two months or something.
⏹️ ▶️ John You say it’s better, but I honestly, I would rather click on one of those stupid images and read it than have
⏹️ ▶️ John to scroll through 75 tweets.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In any case, just let the record show that if you’re writing a tweetstorm, your question is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably too long.
#askatp: How we use Plex
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Matt Sullivan writes in one tweet in an obscenely short amount of characters, and I commend
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you for it. What would you, or let me try that again. Would you discuss why and how y’all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use Plex Media Server? I would love to, because I love talking about Plex.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So this, you know, we might not have time for the iPhone announcement predictions, because this is going to take a while.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what I use Plex for is a front end to any sort of video media that I have.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So that’s TV shows, it’s movies. It’s a collection of music videos that I tend to like to watch from time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to time. It’s concerts that I’ve, that I have. It is to some degree home movies,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey although I don’t have a lot of those split out right now. But Plex is an unbelievable front end
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to basically any kind of media. It does do music, although I don’t think it’s particularly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fantastic. It does do photos, which is okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But to me, video is where it’s really at. And what’s great about Plex is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you can suffer through their very opinionated naming structure and their
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very opinion way of how they want you to name
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things, then it will find all the metadata for your stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Casey automatically. So if you name, you know, the file for the movie that you’re trying to put into Plex,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, the rundown space, peren, 2000 peren, or whatever the year it came out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It will go to not IMDB, but an equivalent thereof, and it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will grab the poster, it’ll grab the cast, it’ll grab all sorts
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of stuff. And so the Apple TV app, as an example, is a really phenomenal
⏹️ ▶️ Casey front end. You know, the Plex Apple TV app is a really phenomenal front end to all your media. What’s also great about Plex
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is if it’s being run on a machine that is even reasonably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey powerful, it will transcode that media on the fly. So say something fell off the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey back of a truck and let’s say, for example, it’s an MKV, it’s a Matryoshka file.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That isn’t something the Apple TV can natively pick up or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey read. I’m sure someone will, well, actually me on this one, but let’s just go with it for now. So it can’t read
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an MKV natively. Plex is smart enough to see, oh, the client that’s trying to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey play this is the Apple TV or an iPhone or an iPad. It really needs to be H.264, et
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cetera, et cetera. So I will either repackage it so that it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey being presented in an MP4 container, or I will actually transcode the darn thing so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is H.264. It does it all on the fly, all transparently. You don’t have to think about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. The other phenomenal thing about Plex is if you expose a couple of ports in your router,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can access all of your data, all of your media remotely. So as an example,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when we were at the beach a few weeks ago, we wanted to listen to music or put on a movie
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or what have you. And what we would do is we would hook up my Fire
⏹️ ▶️ Casey TV stick. It has a Plex client, and we would connect to my Plex server at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my house. We were in North Carolina, obviously the house is still in Richmond, and we would connect to Plex and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we would play our movies remotely from North Carolina, which is really awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then what’s even greater, which people don’t talk about that often, is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you have really close friends that you’re willing to share your media with, you can become Plex
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pals, that’s my word. I just came up with that. I really like it. Plex pals. A bulk bag. Anyway, so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can become friends on Plex. And that means that you can stream from each other’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey libraries. So as an example, all three of us are friends on Plex. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I ever wanted to watch something that I don’t have, but Marco has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or that John has, I can just go to their Plex servers from my house and stream
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right off their servers. And similarly, if Marco ever wants to watch, you know, Top Gear or The Grand Tour
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or what have you, I mean, if I hypothetically had those on my Plex server, that is, then he
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can just stream direct from me. And in fact, if you’re a Plex Pass member, and this is where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you would start having to pay for it, actually I think the iOS app might be paid, but there’s no recurring
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fees. Plex Pass does have a recurring fee. And if you are a Plex Pass member, you can actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey download this media onto your devices. So I can download stuff from my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey server onto my device, if say I’m going on a plane or something like that. And then furthermore,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I want to, I could give Marco or John the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ability to download from my server. So by default, you can only stream, but I can go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and say, no, Marco and John can download for me. And I think I have actually, but anyway, Marco and John can download for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so they can download my source files onto their devices. So it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a really good kind of omnivorous. It will consume anything. It will spit it out
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in any way you need it. It’s on darn near every platform and it’s really,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really great if you can suffer through naming your files in a particular
⏹️ ▶️ Casey way that makes Plex happy. I don’t find that way terribly egregious. I know a lot of people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that think it’s absurd and completely unintelligible. I have a couple of blog posts I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey written about this in the past. I’ll put links in the show notes, but it really isn’t that bad. For TV shows,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you make a folder with the name of the TV show, The Grand Tour. In there, you make a folder per season. you know, season 01.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In there, it’s the grand tour space hyphen space, s 01, e 01 dot whatever, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. That’s the whole thing. So it’s really not that bad. I’ve talked a lot. Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have none, john.
⏹️ ▶️ John You kind of got it. Why use plex? And how I mean, how do we use it to watch video,
⏹️ ▶️ John sure yeah, I mean, I guess the only thing I had to add is like I have
⏹️ ▶️ John Video and from all sorts of places like as we’ve established on past shows. I can’t remember all the subscription
⏹️ ▶️ John services I I subscribe to I think it’s probably all of them at this point
⏹️ ▶️ John And I have a tivo And the clients for all the streaming services are some of them are on my television
⏹️ ▶️ John Some of them are on my tivo some of them are on apple tv like they’re all over the place like And and the playstations everything
⏹️ ▶️ John else is hooked up to it it. So I don’t have all my video in one place. A
⏹️ ▶️ John lot of people use Plexad as their clearing house but I don’t. I have plastic
⏹️ ▶️ John discs with video on it of various kinds, blu-rays and DVDs. I have movies saved on my TiVo
⏹️ ▶️ John that are marked not to delete that are just convenient to watch them in that way. And it really depends
⏹️ ▶️ John on, I mean it’s kind of annoying, like how do you know where your thing is? I just know because I put them all there.
⏹️ ▶️ John But like the The big fancy movies that I care about, like I just watched Blade Runner for when we did
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mike of the Movies Revisit thing, I watched that off my Blu-ray, the actual plastic disc,
⏹️ ▶️ John because that is the highest quality version of that movie that I have and I wanted to see it in really nice quality.
⏹️ ▶️ John Other movies that we play for the kids a lot, we have the plastic discs
⏹️ ▶️ John for them but I don’t want to take out the disc and I don’t want them touching the discs and it’s just a mess and it takes a long time or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John So we have a lot of those ripped and they’re sitting on my Plex server. Why? I didn’t buy them on
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple TV. I bought like the Pixar, you know, Blu-ray, whatever, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t care about the Blu-ray quality for when the kids are showing it. So if, sometimes Blu-rays come with a digital copy, but
⏹️ ▶️ John if they don’t, I will rip the Blu-ray and re-encode it as smaller H.264 and put it on my Plex server.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so now they have a way to watch a movie immediately. I don’t know how
⏹️ ▶️ John they keep track of where everything is, but eventually they just learn like, hey, Moana’s on the Plex, you don’t have to get the disc, right? Just
⏹️ ▶️ John play it from there. And we do buy things on iTunes, and they just keep track of, oh, the Hunger Games movies, we bought those
⏹️ ▶️ John on iTunes. So if you wanna watch those, they’re there. And kids are adaptable and they learn. So iUse is just
⏹️ ▶️ John another place to hold video that’s convenient to play from, because Plex is very
⏹️ ▶️ John convenient, it looks nice. Like Casey said, it will get the cover images. You can change them if you don’t like them, which I appreciate, because I always
⏹️ ▶️ John pick alternate covers.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey You would. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s pretty good
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey about matching up
⏹️ ▶️ John the metadata. And it presents a nice interface, and I have clients on lots of different
⏹️ ▶️ John places, on iOS devices and on my television. So that’s why I use it.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s why, despite all the things that I already have in my life that I just listed, I
⏹️ ▶️ John found room for one more thing, which is a convenient place to play video
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not on a plastic disc or purchased in DRM and covered from some other service, or streaming,
⏹️ ▶️ John obviously, or recorded from TV. I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey got a lot of video in my house.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and I mean, to be fair, I do have a bunch of plastic discs, but generally speaking,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will rip them, and in a lossy way, which I know offends John, but to me, it’s fine. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will go and buy the plastic disc and rip it so I don’t have to worry about being DRM encumbered.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I almost never buy anything video on iTunes because I want it to end
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up in Plex, and I don’t want it to be DRM’d. But I did kind of skip over the how, and we’ve talked about this, I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey semi-recently on the show, but very, very briefly, all of my media is on the Synology,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but the Plex server software is on the iMac, The iMac and the Synology are both on always. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so the iMac looks at the Synology via a network share and crunches
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all the media off of that. Synologies do run Plex natively. There’s been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey conflicting experiences even within the three of us, whether or not our Synologies
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are fast enough, good enough, strong enough, quick enough, et cetera, to transcode things on the fly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In my experience, it very much was not, but I think the media that I was asking it to transcode was not already
⏹️ ▶️ Casey H.264. Now that I’ve been doing a very, very good job of curating what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enters my Plex server and making sure it is always transcoded to H.264 before
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Plex gets to it, now I wonder if it wouldn’t be so bad, but I haven’t done any further tests
⏹️ ▶️ John You gotta change the quality to original. Like don’t, like the remote quality or whatever, change it
⏹️ ▶️ John to, well, there’s two qualities, local and remote. Change, at the very least, change the local quality to original. Even on your
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS devices, that will tell it, if it already is in the right codec, do not attempt to
⏹️ ▶️ John downsample it to a lower resolution. And that will go a long way towards making your streaming
⏹️ ▶️ John from your plain old Synology work fine. I do the same thing as Casey, but I also have Flex running
⏹️ ▶️ John on my actual Synology, pointing to the exact same media. They have separate libraries, which is a little bit annoying to keep in sync,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I mostly go from the Synology because my iMac isn’t always awake. It’s my wife’s computer. Sometimes it’s asleep.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the Synology is, you know, far away. and I don’t have to know what I’m doing to it by
⏹️ ▶️ John streaming movies, I don’t hear it, it’s in the basement, that’s my ideal. If it doesn’t work on this analogy
⏹️ ▶️ John in the rare case, then I try it from the iMac.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, the only problem with doing it original is if you have something that is truly big, then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your downstream connection may not be able to handle it. So as an example,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey normally at the beach, we have truly terrible internet connections via Wi-Fi and streaming video
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is not the sort of thing would want to do over tethering. So a lot of times, including this past
⏹️ ▶️ Casey beach vacation where we had better Wi-Fi than we’ve ever had, it was still too slow to get a lot of like 1080
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stuff without any sort of downsampling or anything like that. So I agree with what you said in principle
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, you know, doing it where it’s just blindly dumping stuff across the internet will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey make it a lot easier on the synology, but that may be overloading your internet connection if you’re outside
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the house. Within the house, oh, absolutely. You should be fine. Also, the chat room is asking,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do I have my Plex library backed up to CrashPlan? Yes, I do. Yes, I understand, given last week’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey discussion, that some of that is redundant, especially since I just said a lot of this I have on Blu-ray.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I prefer it that way because to separate out what is redundant and what isn’t would be a nightmare.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And also being asked in the chat room, what do I I used to transcode every incoming file. Either
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Don Melton’s video transcoding script is what I typically use, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if not, I’m using FFmpeg, and I’ll put links to both of those in the chat, or in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show notes, excuse me.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just to be clear, Plex has separate preferences for when you’re on a LAN versus
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re on the internet. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John you know, that’s true.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’d forgotten about that, you’re right. So, like I said, set your local connection to original, because I have gigabit ethernet between all these devices,
⏹️ ▶️ John like wired. None of this is on Wi-Fi. Everything
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey is connected to wire,
⏹️ ▶️ John so it’s like no problem whatsoever. And remote is where you have to pick what kind of quality downgrade
⏹️ ▶️ John you want. But you can change that setting from the clients, you can say, let me try original Nope, not gonna happen. Yeah, try transcoding.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey that’s exactly what I
⏹️ ▶️ John did until you get it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s exactly what happened at the beach was I was like, Oh, yeah, we’ll just use original. Oh, that didn’t work for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey beans. All right. Well, let’s try it slightly down. I think, you know, let’s let’s crank it back, but still keep it 1080. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that didn’t work. All right, let’s crank it back to 720. Oh, I think we’re almost there. Let’s Let’s crank
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it back to crappier 720. Ah, okay, there it is, finally, we’ve got it.
⏹️ ▶️ John way, within the house, like I said, I don’t have any devices that will play these things back at correct 24 frames per second cadence.
⏹️ ▶️ John You may have a different box that is able to do that, but you can do multi-channel audio. Like so if you
⏹️ ▶️ John have, if you rip something, rip it with 5.1, like, or I always make sure I rip it with 5.1, because it will
⏹️ ▶️ John stream the, you know, original quality, which obviously is a downgrade from what was on the Blu-ray,
⏹️ ▶️ John because I’m not doing 50 gig rips, if I can help it. And it will also
⏹️ ▶️ John stream the multi-channel audio as well. And that will be the same as it was on the disc. So it makes for some
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty big files, but within the house, it is a perfectly acceptable way for the kids to watch movies,
⏹️ ▶️ John So I don’t have to get a discount.
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John’s new MacBook Pro
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, tell me about your work computing situation because I hear it’s just recently changed.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so my 2009 Mac Pro that I’ve been using since 2009 at work, it was the first Mac our
⏹️ ▶️ John company ever bought. And I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John be sad to see it go. It’s been a trooper. It still works fine. but I do now have a 2017 Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Space Gray, I think they got Space Gray for everybody.
⏹️ ▶️ John A MacBook Pro, you mean? Yeah, MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Pro, sorry. Wishful thinking.
⏹️ ▶️ John Small difference. Yes, yes. So now I have that, and I know Marcos had 17 of them, and Casey
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you’ve all already given your- Still
⏹️ ▶️ John hate it, by the way. Given your impressions about all these things, but now I have one, so I have some actual
⏹️ ▶️ John hands-on impressions with it, aside from My sadness of trying to retire
⏹️ ▶️ John my other computer. So first the computer itself like no surprises I’ve seen them
⏹️ ▶️ John in person or whatever, but Actually using one for real at work
⏹️ ▶️ John very quickly Let me know in practical terms
⏹️ ▶️ John which things Bother me in which don’t first the keyboard You know, I’ve typed on
⏹️ ▶️ John a million times in the store I’ve even typed on 2017 ones with the different damping and stuff right like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not a surprise But again you do a day of work in it, and it is different than when you’re in the store. Just playing
⏹️ ▶️ John I Think I mostly like the keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John right I I’m not sure if I would choose a desktop keyboard with this, but as far as
⏹️ ▶️ John laptop keyboards go It mostly agrees with me. I
⏹️ ▶️ John like the fact that it is quieter I feel like I can type fairly efficiently
⏹️ ▶️ John on it. If I have one complaint about the keyboard, it’s that I think I may be
⏹️ ▶️ John pressing harder than I need to, which is weird because the travel is so low, you’d think I’d be pressing
⏹️ ▶️ John less hard, but I don’t know if I’m, I don’t know, I feel like I’m more gentle on the Apple Aluminum
⏹️ ▶️ John Extended. And I use the keyboard for only a couple of days,
⏹️ ▶️ John for reasons I’ll get into later, before I switch back to my Apple Extended Aluminum. So obviously I don’t want to use like that
⏹️ ▶️ John tiny cramped up keyboard without home and end and full size arrow keys and all the other things that I hate about laptop keyboards,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? I am using it in clamshell mode, by the way. I really like
⏹️ ▶️ John Touch ID because my work computer, I have to enter my password every single time I come back to the desk, every, every
⏹️ ▶️ John single time. And my password is long and complicated for stupid security reasons.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was like, Touch ID, this will finally save me from it. But because I’m in clamshell mode, and I’m so good at typing my password,
⏹️ ▶️ John that it’s faster for me to type my password than it is for me to open the case, put my finger on Touch ID
⏹️ ▶️ John and close it. Touch ID is not as fast as it is on the phone, right? The thing about the laptop
⏹️ ▶️ John as a laptop, setting it aside, you know, connecting it as my sort of clamshell desktop machine,
⏹️ ▶️ John that I was very surprised at how I cannot handle
⏹️ ▶️ John is the escape key and the touch bar. I cannot handle it in real life when I have to press
⏹️ ▶️ John that key. I just can’t do it. Like, I don’t even like VI to begin with,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the added insecurity of knowing, did I actually get into command mode? Did
⏹️ ▶️ John I actually hit the escape key? Because I have no way of knowing if I hit the escape. I almost wish the computer beeped when I successfully hit the
⏹️ ▶️ John escape key, because I just don’t know. I reach my finger up there to hit escape instinctively, and I land on an unmoving
⏹️ ▶️ John slab of whatever that stuff is, like plastic or glass or whatever. No, my whole body revolts.
⏹️ ▶️ John I cannot handle it. Just that one key. And who hits escape? Apparently I hit escape
⏹️ ▶️ John all day long. Like whether it’s, you know, Escape X and Emacs, or I’m stuck on a machine that has
⏹️ ▶️ John VI and I’m hitting escape. No,
⏹️ ▶️ John no. And like, I’m just totally surprised to me because I went in the store, it’s like, oh yeah, I can hit it now, it activates fine. Like, but when you’re doing
⏹️ ▶️ John it for real, like doing real work, and you just expect to be able to hit the escape key with your pinky or whatever, and that
⏹️ ▶️ John thing is there, I don’t like it. I do
⏹️ ▶️ John like it at all. As much as I love Touch ID, I would be with Marco in the,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the MacBook escape camp, which I need an escape key right now. all the other keys in the touch bar,
⏹️ ▶️ John I could take or leave. Like it bothers me a little bit that there’s a thing with flashing lights under there, like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John another screen kind of flashing in my face, but some of the more annoying things you could turn off, like this auto suggestions as you’re typing
⏹️ ▶️ John and crap like that, I could mostly take or leave it. I think if I had the
⏹️ ▶️ John choice and they gave me one with regular keys, I would leave it, even setting aside the escape thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John So not a touch bar fan, but the escape key is my big evil thing. Haven’t had a lot of accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John input. I don’t mind the trackpad any more than I mind other trackpads. I still I think I’m getting
⏹️ ▶️ John worse at trackpads in my old age. I’ve never been good with trackpads. I’ve always hated them. And now I think I’m getting worse,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially with force touch, because when I’m getting worse with the trackpad, and I’m just like in the middle of a drag operation
⏹️ ▶️ John or some crap, and I got to move my fingers around, I end up pushing too hard in it and going through to force touch. And then I just like,
⏹️ ▶️ John disable it or in that application. So force touch doesn’t mean anything anymore. I don’t like trackpads. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John I got this thing’s closed. I’m not using it as a laptop if I can at all help it because I don’t like laptops.
⏹️ ▶️ John So then I’m faced with a challenge of how I connect my 2009 peripherals, right? These are
⏹️ ▶️ John all you know, well, they’re not all 2009. But the screen is from 2009 came
⏹️ ▶️ John with the computer. It’s a 24 inch LED Apple Cinema display. I think it was
⏹️ ▶️ John their first LED backlit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco monitor. Yeah, it was one that looks just like the Thunderbolt display and It has a mini DisplayPort connector,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but is not actually a Thunderbolt. It came out right before Thunderbolt came out.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep, and it was the first of that style. What I’m staring at right now is a 23 inch
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple Cinema Display, which has a matte screen, had white on the side, it was aluminum with curved things on it,
⏹️ ▶️ John and was not LED backlit, right? So this was the one after that 24 inch LED backlit,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s mini DisplayPort. This display,
⏹️ ▶️ John I got it with my Mac, I don’t remember when I got it, I think it was my only real choice, because the Apple is weird with its monitors.
⏹️ ▶️ John It comes with a very, very short cord that goes
⏹️ ▶️ John out into like a three-prong rat tail thing. So like this little cord, like the size of a power cord,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then it splits into three separate things. One is MagSafe. I think it’s MagSafe 1.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is. Which I’ve never used and still can’t use. It just sits there
⏹️ ▶️ John being annoying and magnetic. Two is the mini DisplayPort connector, which as Marko said
⏹️ ▶️ John is actual mini DisplayPort, not Thunderbolt of any stripe whatsoever. And the third cable
⏹️ ▶️ John coming out of there is USB. And the USB connects the monitor’s speakers,
⏹️ ▶️ John microphone, and camera that are all built into the monitor. So that’s my monitor,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I wanna keep using that monitor. The reason I wanna keep using that monitor is 24 inches. It’s small, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s 1920 by 1200. The reason I wanna keep using it, this was part of my plan, is because I hate laptops
⏹️ ▶️ John and because I hate anyone to move my windows, I was going to take this 15 inch MacBook Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ John put it into scaled resolution at 1920 by 1200 and put it into mirroring mode. So
⏹️ ▶️ John when I open and close my laptop and disconnect it from the screen, nothing moves because the resolution of my big screen is exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John the same as far as the computer is concerned as the resolution of my small screen. Plus or minus
⏹️ ▶️ John the retina, right? But it handles that. Like it, you know, it figures it out, right? And
⏹️ ▶️ John that part works. But for that to work, I was faced with the problem of How do I connect
⏹️ ▶️ John this thing I just described to my computer? And I also have an Apple aluminum extended keyboard,
⏹️ ▶️ John which, you know, post-dates 2009. Like whenever that came out, I got that. And I have an ancient
⏹️ ▶️ John USB mouse that I use at work, right? My challenge was how do you get all these things
⏹️ ▶️ John connected to your laptop? And I had, I thought, every adapter that you could possibly need,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I was wrong. And also work gave me like this little docking station thing. The docking station, I don’t know what brand it is, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s the thing that plugs into the two Thunderbolt ports on the side. it takes both of them up. It’s sturdy,
⏹️ ▶️ John like it goes in both ports so it doesn’t like twist or anything like that, but then it hogs both ports. And what it has
⏹️ ▶️ John on it is two USB-C, I think they’re both maybe power pass-through
⏹️ ▶️ John or maybe just one of them is, two USB-A, an SD card,
⏹️ ▶️ John and HDMI. None of those are helping me with my monitor and it would be hogging two ports, so that’s out the window. I can’t use that
⏹️ ▶️ John at all. I didn’t think I was gonna be able to use that. So I have a bunch of adapters. First thing
⏹️ ▶️ John I did was like, right, I do have USB to plug in I have USB from my keyboard and my mouse is plugged into my keyboard because my
⏹️ ▶️ John keyboard Serves as like a hub and the mouse is attached there, right? So why don’t I connect
⏹️ ▶️ John the keyboard? I try this stupid docking station thing plug it in Use one of its two USB 8
⏹️ ▶️ John ports for my mouse and keyboard use the second USB 8 port for my monitor but that doesn’t work because the
⏹️ ▶️ John monitor rat tail can’t reach the USB on that side because the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Mini-display port right to the other
⏹️ ▶️ John side so it doesn’t physically reach then I plug my keyboard into the USB thing Let me just use the mouse and keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John nothing keyboard does not work mouse does not move nothing right try it in the other port Took it in took it
⏹️ ▶️ John out. I was like is this does this keyboard not work with a 2017
⏹️ ▶️ John MacPro I could not for the life of me figure it out look I Googled
⏹️ ▶️ John for it some people think it’s a bug some people said oh you have to use an extension cable Which I have which was
⏹️ ▶️ John frustrating to find the answer is just use the extension cable that came with the thing I’m using the extension cable, so I tried not using
⏹️ ▶️ John the extension cable didn’t make any difference, but that didn’t work Monitor wise I had to buy an adapter that
⏹️ ▶️ John is mini display port to Thunderbolt whatever that has
⏹️ ▶️ John a power pass through so I don’t have to you know hog the power port for that. Then I have
⏹️ ▶️ John C to A connector for on one side for the monitors,
⏹️ ▶️ John camera, speakers, and microphone. And then on the other side I had a C to A connector
⏹️ ▶️ John for my keyboard. And the plain old straight through Apple C to A connector does work with my keyboard and mouse 50%
⏹️ ▶️ John of the time sometimes you plug it in the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco keyboard doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John you just unplug it and plug it back in and that does work very disconcerting the docking station is completely dead
⏹️ ▶️ John to me and then I had a USB C to Ethernet adapter which I need
⏹️ ▶️ John for a variety of gross reasons to get files from my 2009 Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John onto this laptop they’re on separate networks they can’t see each other’s IP addresses
⏹️ ▶️ John at work at all so I had to disconnect them both from network and then do an Ethernet cable
⏹️ ▶️ John like a patch cable directly from the laptop to the computer and just communicate over self-assigned IP addresses
⏹️ ▶️ John to transfer the files which is fun.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my god. What is this 2003? Different
⏹️ ▶️ John networks. It’s a security thing like and the thing is I the networks as far as I’m aware the work like the networks
⏹️ ▶️ John are based on my MAC address all caps MAC you know the medium access control address not
⏹️ ▶️ John the capital M lowercase ac address not the Mac store
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco yes that’s how it
⏹️ ▶️ John must be I assume this is the case because how does it know to give my Mac Pro this IP it’s got to be you
⏹️ ▶️ John know you come in the network you recognize your Mac address I’m gonna put you on this network right
⏹️ ▶️ John so I said okay well my Mac Pro has two Ethernet ports surely they only entered the Mac address
⏹️ ▶️ John of one of them I guess two separate interfaces but apparently they entered them both so that didn’t help me so yeah my only
⏹️ ▶️ John way that these things can you they communicate with each other in two ways. One, I could put things in Dropbox but we can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do that for security reasons because we’re not supposed to have any of our work files like outside of our network so I can’t do that and I wouldn’t be able to do that
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway because I just have too many damn files and they’re too big and it would blow my Dropbox space. I could have
⏹️ ▶️ John tried to use Google Drive for the work thing but I thought it would have taken forever to upload and download. So
⏹️ ▶️ John the picture I sent to Slack the other day was my laptop in clamshell mode with
⏹️ ▶️ John all these adapters sticking out of it and I think it was basically every all four
⏹️ ▶️ John ports filled up just to be in be in the same state I was with essentially
⏹️ ▶️ John no you know with certainly with none of the front ports filled on my Mac Pro because
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m just I just have a keyboard and a mouse and a monitor and I’m using my computer and
⏹️ ▶️ John almost every port was filled depending on whether or not I had the ethernet patch cable and to pull things from the other thing in there
⏹️ ▶️ John which means every time I want to leave the desk got to yank out all these cables carefully and you know if I want my laptop with me which
⏹️ ▶️ John I tend not to want to and then and then I did the thing where I wanted to play some
⏹️ ▶️ John music or something and I picked up my headphones and put them on and I’m cranking the volume like why is this not working and then I heard sound coming
⏹️ ▶️ John out of some other place like why isn’t it’s not coming out of my headphones were still plugged into my Mac Pro and then I realized oh
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to plug my headphones into the stupid laptop now too and so I had to snake the cable around and shove it into the little
⏹️ ▶️ John headphone port which is totally in the wrong place for my desk and I started thinking about casing his bluetooth headphones and how I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t want to You have yet another cable that I need to plug and unplug anybody from my stupid laptop, but
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway That’s that’s my not too brief impressions of my 2017 MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro don’t have much to add other than I can’t handle the escape key and
⏹️ ▶️ John let Laptop plus dongles does not make a desktop computer user happy
⏹️ ▶️ John especially one with eight euro peripherals Which is mostly my fault, but I didn’t have an option to get a laptop
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s kind of works well to our option to get a desktop So there you have it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey before you get a billion emails You are you looking to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey upgrade your peripherals or try newer peripherals? I can can you try Bluetooth
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for keyboard and mouse for example I know you have like a 30 year old mouse But are there no other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey keyboards and or mice that you’re willing to entertain that or perhaps Bluetooth?
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve thought about getting the new wireless one with the key switches you like, you know, the Apple extended
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey wireless Yep, I thought
⏹️ ▶️ John about that, but then I said well, then where am I gonna connect my mouse right and then basically I have to Get usba into this
⏹️ ▶️ John computer somehow and I guess I could get a bluetooth mouse to eventually but it’s like how much money
⏹️ ▶️ John am I? Spending here on or you know how much of my like desk budget do I have left to buy peripherals
⏹️ ▶️ John that replacing perfectly good working peripherals? And I like my mouse and I like my keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John And I’m pretty sure I would like the one that with the key switches you like to I’m pretty sure I would like that It’s got full-size
⏹️ ▶️ John function keys on it instead of the half-size things I think I would like that keyboard, but it’s serving as the
⏹️ ▶️ John USB connection point for a mouse which means I don’t have a mouse cord That’s like dangling all over the place and I know corded
⏹️ ▶️ John mice are so you know weird feel but remember I’m the person who searched eBay to buy
⏹️ ▶️ John this exact like 1990s model It’s like the Logitech USB wheel mouse is the name of
⏹️ ▶️ John it before they started letting letters and numbers It’s not like the MX anything or the G anything. It is just
⏹️ ▶️ John Logitech USB wheel mouse It is really really old and when my work one died I went on eBay and found
⏹️ ▶️ John another one So I really like my mouse. I don’t want to change it. My mouse needs to connect to my keyboard Bluetooth
⏹️ ▶️ John keyboards don’t have a place to connect USB So it’s all one big chain that leads back to me having crap plugged
⏹️ ▶️ John into the thing as for monitors I have a 27 inch Thunderbolt display at home That and I do have a Thunderbolt 3
⏹️ ▶️ John to 2 adapter that would let me use it with my laptop But I can’t match a screen res and I can’t handle my windows moving.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I don’t think I’m gonna do that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John much of this you’re doing. Can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we just put it on record? Okay, yes. Being in Dongletown totally sucks. I totally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get that. It totally sucks. But so much of this you’re doing to yourself. By insisting on using an ancient mouse,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re kind of doing this to yourself. By being unwilling to have your windows ever move on you, you’re doing it to yourself. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not saying that’s unreasonable.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, who wants their windows to move? Who wants that? Nobody likes that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stuff full screen. If you didn’t have 85 tiles on your one desktop, one desktop. This is why you need to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey embrace spaces. Full screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John Come on. Come on. I can have one window at a time. That’s great. No,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey can have two.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know about my windows. I need to have them. They need to be arranged. I don’t want them to move. Now, the
⏹️ ▶️ John possible possible solution is never let my laptop leaves my desk. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I may come to that because the 27 inch screen is bigger and nicer than what I have. And it would mean fewer
⏹️ ▶️ John and less crazy dongles. Right. Because I can go from two dongles to one because right now I have two dongles just for the
⏹️ ▶️ John monitor and one of the dongles is the crazy thing with the power pastor right so I could switch to one very
⏹️ ▶️ John simple dongle because the Thunderbolt display does the camera and the microphone
⏹️ ▶️ John and the speakers all through the one adapter so I’m tempted to
⏹️ ▶️ John do that just to have a bigger screen at work and also to have fewer dongles and I may bite that bullet but if
⏹️ ▶️ John I do that I’m just never going to open the lid of that laptop which means I’ll never get to use touch ID
⏹️ ▶️ John which is sad Or I won’t use it in mirror mode. I’ll just use it in dual screen mode and just find something to do with that other screen
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, but I don’t know. I’m still mulling it over. This is just week one with the new computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John I thought it would feel like super duper faster than my old one, and I guess it does.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey That’s fantastic.
⏹️ ▶️ John 2009 Mac Pro is still a champ. Obviously I upgraded with an SSD long ago, right? And that
⏹️ ▶️ John made it tolerable and not, you know, disgusting, right? But it’s still a champ.
⏹️ ▶️ John I switched back to it today earlier, and I was like, because I have essentially perfectly cloned
⏹️ ▶️ John the setup down to the position of all the windows, the desktop background, the order of the items in the dock, all the software that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John running on it, in my way that I do, unplugging many display port from
⏹️ ▶️ John one and plug it into another, it was like manual KVM. And I was like, if someone
⏹️ ▶️ John switched this on me and didn’t tell me, would I notice that I’m using the 2009 Mac Pro instead of the MacBook Pro?
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe, but it’s still pretty good. It’s still such a good computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So why move on then, if you don’t absolutely have to move on from the
⏹️ ▶️ John First of all, I fear this thing dying. And second of all, I do want to have
⏹️ ▶️ John a faster computer and nicer things, and I thought I wanted to have Retina until I realized I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna be looking at the screen, so it doesn’t matter. And it’s just been eight years. I think every eight years, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John okay to get a new computer at work. Can I get a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco widespread agreement on that? I feel
⏹️ ▶️ John like it’s the right time to do. Our I think our replacement interval is 18 months or some, some
⏹️ ▶️ John absurdly short thing that I remember hearing a couple of years ago. It’s like, if your computer is older than how many months
⏹️ ▶️ John you can get a new one. So anyway, I made it eight years. It’s still on my desk. Officially it doesn’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not going to stop the clock until it leaves my desk. And that will be a sad day when I have to call the IT people
⏹️ ▶️ John and say, please come take away, take away the computer that is listed in your inventory system as a Mac mini, because
⏹️ ▶️ John you have no idea what Macs are. I kid
⏹️ ▶️ John not, it is listed as someone came to my desk at some point in the inventory system and said,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is a Mac mini. And that’s what they wrote. Like they had to see it in person to write that down. Because if they were taking the information
⏹️ ▶️ John programmatically, they would have got the correct model on it. So I will enjoy seeing them come to retrieve my Mac mini
⏹️ ▶️ John and then learn how painful it is to carry a 50 pound block of metal with sharp edged handles,
⏹️ ▶️ John quote unquote handles on the top of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hi, so for the record listeners if you have not heard ATP number 96,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is entitled the windows of Syracuse County Marco and I think John begrudgingly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and myself Allowed for that episode to be tied to use the of Syracuse
⏹️ ▶️ Casey County title Which is something that we swore we would never allow and we allowed it in this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey episode Because I will only speak for myself and saying I am pretty sure that is my favorite episode that we have ever recorded
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of ATP And the discussion about John’s window management, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was literally in tears laughing so hard at how absurd John’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey window management quote unquote setup is.
⏹️ ▶️ John And by absurd you mean the one true way of
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco course. Yeah, and management I think is a loose term. Yes. Oh, it’s management.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m managing the hell out of those windows. But
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco seriously, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t do everything full screen, right Casey? Like do you have?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey No, I don’t, no, I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t. So do you get annoyed by the screen flippy switchy
⏹️ ▶️ John together crap when you unplug?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey As both friends and co-hosts, it is my obligation to make merciless fun of you for this. However,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I take off that hat and just be honest with you, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it does bother me, but it doesn’t drive me nuts. And to be honest
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with you, when I’m going to a meeting and bringing the laptop, it’s typical that I’m doing something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in one of the apps that’s either half screen. So, you know, and the, I don’t remember when this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey started, but in macOS, you can either do one window full screen, or you can do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two tiles side by side. So they’re not full screen, but they’re in that full screen mode, if that makes any
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sense. So in any case, um, typically if I’m in a meeting, I’m going to be looking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at Slack, which I happen to have sharing a full is sharing full screen mode with messages,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or I’m using Google Chrome because that’s my work email. We’re all in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on Google Apps at work. So I use Chrome as like my work, you know, quarantine where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Gmail and Google Calendar and all that jazz is. And so if I’m in a meeting, I’m typically working with one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of those windows, which is in that full screen mode. If I’m at my desk, I’m usually writing code. And that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a combination of Xcode with taking up most of the screen, a terminal window in the upper right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and managed in just so that it’s just so just like John. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the iOS simulator in the bottom right, again, managed that it’s just so. And that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey screen, that virtual desktop, absolutely gets rejiggered every time I unplug and reopen the computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But it takes me all of three seconds to get it back to where it is. So it annoys me, but it doesn’t bother
⏹️ ▶️ John me. It’s easy. You only got three windows to
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey arrange. It’s annoying to rearrange three windows.
⏹️ ▶️ John True. Now imagine if you had 30. It gets way more annoying. And at a certain point, you’re not going to put 30 windows back.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey And you’re just going to surrender to the—
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The problem, John, definitely isn’t the 30 windows. Definitely
⏹️ ▶️ John the problem. No, I got 30 things to do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You can use more than one desktop, John, and I’m pretty sure you’re not doing 30
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John things at once. No, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John use multiple desktops.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey That’s where I partner with you.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the problem. No, it’s not the problem, that’s the solution. I hate multiple desktops. I hate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I hate spaces. I love that we’re talking about this an hour into the show, the week before the
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone. As foretold by the tweet
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco of somebody earlier
⏹️ ▶️ John in the day. Well, I think they used two hours, allow for exaggeration.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, and I just, I will say one quick
⏹️ ▶️ John thought. I bet you will.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I’m sure this will be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John quick. Hey, really quickly though, Marco. I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even get through this sentence. Really quickly, do you believe in multiple spaces, or are you a one-space-only kind of guy?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I don’t. I tried spaces briefly, and I even, for a long time, I did multiple monitors.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Instead of doing spaces, I figured, like, now here’s just two physical spaces. I have come
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to know that I am a one large monitor and one space kind of person.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey you monsters. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the way to go. You monsters.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Just wait until he gets one 8K
⏹️ ▶️ John display, then he’ll be living large.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I know. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, I have predictions about that, probably for the Mac Pro next year. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey but I will say… So, go ahead with your quick
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thought. My very quick thought about the tockle town…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tock. the 2017 MacBook Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So my summer of using the MacBook Pro as my primary computer has concluded
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and using it in clamshell mode with the LG 5K, doing all my regular work.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you can get over the keyboard, which I can’t, but if you can get over the keyboard and you can get over the touch bars,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just kind of floppiness in the way that it is a flop, not that it is flexible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you can get over all that, the ports still really irritate me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and not just in the way that, oh no, I have to buy dongles. That’s kind of a secondary concern.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The biggest problem for me in using this computer is that the USB-C ecosystem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still can’t produce reliable hardware. Like there isn’t a lot of it. The hardware that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out there is weird and limited and it’s just not reliable. So thank God I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had four ports on this because one of them is going to the monitor, one of them had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be my Ethernet adapter which is the Apple Ethernet adapter which is actually made by Belkin but it’s the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one Apple officially sells as the only one they sell. It would drop packets if it was plugged
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into the Thunderbolt display or any hub of any kind. So you have to plug that into one of the four
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ports that you have if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky you might only have two of them or one of them. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have to plug the ethernet cable or the ethernet adapter into one of the four on the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computer. I also had problems with my keyboard. I don’t know, John, John had the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco same problem. I don’t know if this is a keyboard thing, but my keyboard USB adapter, the little wireless receiver
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the Microsoft Sculpt, it would only work reliably when plugged into one of the ports
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the computer through Apple’s USB A to C adapter. It would not work reliably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in any other place in this setup, either in another USB, A-to-C kind of hub
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or splitter thing, or directly into the LG 5K’s ports on the back of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s now two things that require to be plugged in to the ports on the computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Plus, the 5K monitor itself, that’s number three, which left me only one port on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the computer that could be used for high reliability needs devices.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now in my case, I considered my audio interface one of those when podcasting, because the last thing I want is to have weird
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff happen to a USB device while I’m using it to record a show. So that goes into the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fourth one. I’m full. That’s it. And it’s just the USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ecosystem is so crappy, and Apple is so insistent on relying on it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco heavily that what we have here is that even on the highest end computers, you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now a port situation that is way less flexible and way less reliable than what we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had before. You know, the USB-C way, the USB-C promise, is that you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have these ports that are versatile that can do anything. And that’s a great idea! I hope
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we get there someday, but we’re so far from it now. And USB-C is not that new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anymore, and I’m starting to wonder, you know, will we ever get there? And in the meantime,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what are we supposed to do with these pro computers that are just increasingly difficult to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use in pro contexts. You know what pros need? They need reliable hardware,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they need reliable ports and as many of them as you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s what pros actually need. We have unreliable keyboards, we have unreliable ports,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we have unreliable peripherals, unreliable dongles. Good luck. If you ever want to have an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco HDMI output, read the reviews of every HDMI adapter out there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for USB-C. It’s a disaster zone. And you know, video out is not an uncommon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. This entire ecosystem is really crappy. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is totally not sufficient enough, not reliable enough, and unbefitting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the Pro name to rely solely on this ecosystem of crap hardware plugged into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this way fewer ports than we had before on these laptops. And the only ways I can see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple really meaningfully helping the situation are either give us our ports back, which will never happen,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or actually make high quality USB-C dongles and hubs and adapters
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and docking stations and everything else because no one else obviously is or can.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So Apple shipped that weird hub that we tipster rumored for
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey forever. Here we go.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m saying that the found the foundational a TV tipster rumor we made fun of it but now we’re begging for the
⏹️ ▶️ John hub aren’t we? We’re begging
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for it! Yes, because look you can’t rely on the rest of the… it’s just like the monitors.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know Apple tried to rely on third parties to make good monitors. LG tried.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It sucks. So Apple’s getting back into the game because they realized or they saw that you know the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco third party world just didn’t and seemingly couldn’t deliver. Deliver on USB-C hubs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because Because that’s what all of your pro users buying these pro laptops actually need. We
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need reliable, useful, many-ported USB hubs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we don’t have those don’t exist right now in USB-C. So please, for the love of God, Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fix this problem because it makes it very, very hard to use your laptops
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way you market them to be used if things aren’t reliable.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey My Adorable works great instead of my Bluetooth accessories. I just wanted to let you know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but you also had, like your iMac was turning itself off, like intermittently for like three months before you told
⏹️ ▶️ Marco us about it. And you’re like, it’s not a big deal.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, actually to that end, to that end, I meant to mention that the infinitesimally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey small or infinitely small piece of dust that has been migrating around my Adorable keyboard definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey made its way under the space bar briefly until I blew it out with some compressed air.
⏹️ ▶️ John bar? I think you blew it out. You gotta stop saying that you blew it out. You’re just moving it around in there, it seems
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like. Yeah, exactly. Well, that’s true. That’s true.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You love this keyboard, though. It’s great, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know you’re being silly, but also serious. I do love the keyboard, but I will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey absolutely concede after a few months’ use that it is not tolerant enough to having any sort
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of dust getting under—I’m assuming that’s what the problem was—but any sort of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey debris getting under the keys. I do love it in every other way. I still prefer the Magic Keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ever so slightly, but that’s the current gen external keyboards. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do love this keyboard, but it is not tolerant enough of the real world. And as much as I’m poking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fun at you guys for not liking your MacBook Pros, I think part of the reason I love my Adorable so much and can suffer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey through it having only one port is because it’s an accessory computer, which is a totally ridiculous thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to say, but it’s the truth. If I really want to get something done, I either have my work pre-USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ Casey MacBook Pro or I have my iMac and I don’t have port issues
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on either of those computers. And although the USB-C peripherals that I’ve bought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have been perfectly fine, I’m not in a position where I’m relying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them for my livelihood like you guys are. So as much as I’m joking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and poking fun, it’s really not an apples to apples comparison. not fair of me.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think Marco and I have the same problem in that to varying degrees we are attempting to connect
⏹️ ▶️ John quote unquote legacy peripherals to a modern computer like Marco has his weird Microsoft keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John which doesn’t is not Bluetooth and doesn’t know anything about USB C and I have my weird
⏹️ ▶️ John ancient discontinued mere months ago Apple extended aluminum keyboard which used
⏹️ ▶️ John to be the most modern extended keyboard they sold until they changed to the Bluetooth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one and I have my totally ancient USB-C Belkin Ethernet adapter sold in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple stores as of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John last year. Yeah, yeah. That’s a separate
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. Yeah, well, Ethernet is legacy. Everything is everything is wireless now. But yeah, the keyboard thing just really blew me away because you
⏹️ ▶️ John just assume like keyboard and mice, they’re the most boring peripherals. How could they
⏹️ ▶️ John not work? If anything is going to work connected to any kind of adapter that makes a USB, surely
⏹️ ▶️ John like the keyboard will. That’s not a demanding application. And you said you had reliability
⏹️ ▶️ John problems with it. As far as I’m able to tell, it never works with that adapter. So
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s there’s this, you know, the dock thing that had the plugs into both the ports that has two USB ports
⏹️ ▶️ John on it and the keyboard plugged in with or without an extension cable on both sides of the thing, plug it unplug 50
⏹️ ▶️ John times, just nothing just like there was nothing there. And even the mini display port adapter,
⏹️ ▶️ John if I unplug it and plug it back in, very often It won’t work and I will have to unplug the main
⏹️ ▶️ John display port from the adapter Unplug the power from the adapter plug them both back in and then plug the thing back in to get
⏹️ ▶️ John it to just I don’t I mean, that’s some weird off-brand thing, but I agree the ecosystem is bad
⏹️ ▶️ John If we use Bluetooth everything and had modern peripherals things would be better But that doesn’t help with like the Ethernet
⏹️ ▶️ John situation and the lack of hubs, so Not looking great, but I’m sure my new Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro will solve all these problems.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mm-hmm. You know to be fair I would argue argue just to play devil’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey advocate that I would argue that Ethernet is also legacy. Like just Ethernet as a thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hold on, hold on. I absolutely love Ethernet. I have pretty much all of my devices on Ethernet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not, I’m playing devil’s advocate here, but the future hypothetically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is wireless. And just a few weeks ago I was transferring something mammoth between computers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I forget exactly what it was, but I was reminded how much faster
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ethernet is than any wireless I’ve ever used. And I completely agree with you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guys that given the choice Ethernet all day every day, but you could argue you could make the argument
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that just the fact that you want to plug in Ethernet is just as legacy as using a USB a keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, reliability is legacy.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, the USB, I’ll give you this, the Ethernet connector is ridiculous, right? RJ 45, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John the hell that thing is, that is ridiculous. And that is totally like a connector, which is why it’s not on computers anymore, unless
⏹️ ▶️ John their giant desktops, in which case it would still be there. And also, modern wireless standards are faster than gigabit
⏹️ ▶️ John ethernet. They have faster than gigabit wireless things. They don’t have faster than 10 gigabit, because you have 10 gig
⏹️ ▶️ John ethernet on super fancy enterprise hardware. And of course, the new Mac Pro will
⏹️ ▶️ John have 10 gig ethernet, because why wouldn’t it? With the 8K display, it’ll have five 10K ethernet ports. The
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco iMac Pro has
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Seven USB 3.1 ports with A connectors. Boy, this fantasy Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro is looking better all the time. Wow,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that mock-up that guy made, remember, like six months ago? With like, it just had like 15,000 ports on the back
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco got an ADB port. EGA. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John got an ADB port in case, so Gruber can hook up his Apple Extended too, without an adapter. Scuzzy.
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iPhone 7 exit interview
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Betterment, rethink what your money can do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s an event next week, but before we talk about what we hope
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and want to see an hour and a half in the show for the event, let’s talk
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about Marco’s self-described crazy topic idea. And if I’m reading this right,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I actually think this is a really good idea. So tell me, Marco, what’s going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on? So I kind of felt like this would be a good time. It’s always hard to know, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco after the event, to objectively look back on the phones we’ve had for the last year
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and to really judge them or to or to know, like, to look back and say, you know, what did we really need versus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what was what was delivered by the new phone? And so I kind of wanted to have what I’m calling here the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seven exit interview. And I know you think I’ve never had a job before, but I actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have done a couple of exit interviews because I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey one thing I’m good at is leaving jobs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of myself, does he really know what this is? I’ll just let it go. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco sure enough, I’ve run out. I haven’t done many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of them. So basically, I wanted to kind of like, you know, looking back now at the iPhone 7,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it is a year old, how has it been for us? What are things that we were concerned about that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ended up not being a problem? And what do we really want from the next phone to solve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shortcomings or things that we would like to be improved in the iPhone 7?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wish I had prepared more for this because I saw you adding this like 20
⏹️ ▶️ Casey minutes ago into the show notes. But I really like this topic. I think this is a really great idea.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And off the top of my head, just some immediate ideas. I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, let me remind everyone I have an iPhone 7. I do not have the Plus because I am not a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey giant. I do not have the jet black model. And because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of that, I feel like I don’t care for the fact that this thing is still one of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey most slippery devices I’ve ever held in my entire life. However,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is visually, aesthetically, one of my favorite-looking devices.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have the matte black, and I think this color is just beautiful.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I love the way it looks. I wish it was tackier,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stickier is maybe not the right word for it, but I wish it had that feel and that grip of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jet Black, but I love the way this thing looks with the exception of the camera bump.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I like the fact that they embraced the camera bump this time rather than in the 6S and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe the 6 as well, where it was kind of like a piece of metal that was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not part of the case. This feels to be a part of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey aluminum was kind of blown out to make the camera bump. I don’t care for the camera bump.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really wish that would go away. I think the battery life on the seven has gotten to the point
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it is no longer frustrating on a regular basis. If I go to WWDC or something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that, where I’m on my phone constantly, I’m fighting thousands of other people for cell
⏹️ ▶️ Casey coverage, um, then I will need, you know, a battery pack or something like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that. But for my use anyway, day to day, I think this battery is fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am sure there is a listener and it might be you listening to this right now saying, oh my gosh, Casey’s crazy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This battery is nowhere near fine. And for you, that very well may be true. But for me, this is the first
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phone that it’s very rare that I end the day concerned with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how low my battery is. So I do very much approve of the battery life.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I still want for more. I wish I had an additional 20 to 50%
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more than I do at the end of the day, but because thin trumps everything with Apple, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t expect to have that. And for all I know, it might even get worse with this new phone, with its even bigger display.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The lack of headphone jack doesn’t bother me because I am freaking in love with my AirPods.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s been like twice that I’ve really needed to plug something into this. And I think both times I had the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey little adapter thing with me, unlike John on his flight to London. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey overall, I think this is a damn good phone. It doesn’t mean it can’t be improved, But I do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think this is a really, really, really good phone. And I’m really, really happy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with it. And that said, it’s about to be ruined when Apple tells me about the new phone and this is going to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be an utter piece of garbage, which is exactly why we’re doing this today, like Marco said, instead of in a week from now.
⏹️ ▶️ John John. I think when we were listing, maybe the end of last year, like our favorite Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John products, I think I listed my iPhone 7. I’ve got the Jet Black iPhone 7 in the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John leather case. And I said I liked it then and I really like it now. This is by far my favorite iPhone I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John ever phone, which is not saying much because I’ve owned two iPhones. I had a six and now I have a seven. So I
⏹️ ▶️ John do not have a long history of phones, but I like this better than any of my touches,
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like, because like- I also- Even just in the moment,
⏹️ ▶️ John like I’m, you know, adjusting for, you know, obviously it’s better than now, but even like back when I got them, because
⏹️ ▶️ John I think, as I think I said on a past show, the non-moving home button, I have become a super fan of, now just
⏹️ ▶️ John as they’re going to ditch it, of course, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I love it. I agree. The leather
⏹️ ▶️ John case, which I lasted like, you know, 24 hours with it and not in a case and I couldn’t handle it, so I bought the leather case.
⏹️ ▶️ John The leather case is so much better than my iPhone 6 leather case. It’s just the Apple leather case, black Apple leather case.
⏹️ ▶️ John I love the volume controls on it. I’m good enough now that I can hit the volume controls when my phone isn’t in
⏹️ ▶️ John my front or in my back pocket. Why do I have to do that? Because the damn AirPods don’t have volume control on it. So I’ve learned
⏹️ ▶️ John this skill, but they’re very reliable. They feel good. I can find them.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, it is not steered me wrong. Battery life is sufficient for
⏹️ ▶️ John my needs, uh, more than sufficient for my needs. Even to the WWDC, I feel like it’s okay.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would probably go with the silly hump battery pack if I had, uh, you know, if I did a WWDC like thing
⏹️ ▶️ John more often, but I don’t, so it’s fine the way it is. I like the fact that it’s grippy. It’s been very reliable.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s felt fast the whole time. The lack of the headphone port burned me twice, maybe,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, once in a big way on, on a six hour flight to the UK.
⏹️ ▶️ John And once in a small way where I just, you know, I couldn’t listen to something when I wanted to.
⏹️ ▶️ John But in the end, it was not a big deal in my life. I like it doesn’t day to day it doesn’t bother
⏹️ ▶️ John me. I have not encountered situations where I wanted to use headphones and also charge because I’m in the post AirPod
⏹️ ▶️ John age now and I super duper love my AirPods. Maybe the AirPods help cover for the lack of headphone jack.
⏹️ ▶️ John But in the end, even when I was using the wired ones, I thought it was mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John fine. I think I would be more cranky about it if AirPods didn’t exist. Let’s put it that way. But
⏹️ ▶️ John but it involved me. But yeah, I think it’s been great. I really like the product. I like the camera. I like
⏹️ ▶️ John the case. I like how it fits into my life. It is better than the six.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Marco, take us home.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Overall, I am way happier with the seven than I expected to be at its launch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, you know, things that I thought would be a problem, the home button being all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weird, like John, I thought it was weird for like the first couple days, and now I actually like it. Like I actually have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco converted to it, and now other home buttons feel inferior. I don’t know why, it doesn’t make sense,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that’s how it is. The jet black finish that we were all concerned about all the scratches,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it turns out I never look at the back of my phone. So while it is indeed all scratched
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up at the bottom, you really only see it at like a certain angle where the light reflects on the scratches
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway and it just is not a problem in real world use for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just don’t ever look at that. And the jet black finish because it is a little bit tacky like you were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mentioning earlier Casey, it allows me to use this phone with no case, with no grippy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stickers or decals or vinyl wraps for the first time in the entire, in this whole design
⏹️ ▶️ Marco era from the 6 forward with the shape of phone. It allows me to use it caseless and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has always been very secure in my hand. I’ve never even come close to dropping it. So I’m incredibly happy with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the physical parts of it. The size is great. I would like the larger
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen and better cameras of the plus size, but ultimately the size of this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just works very, very well for me of just the regular size 7. So I’m very, very happy with that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The camera is amazing. Having the optical image stabilization has made a huge difference, especially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in video. Oh, good point, good point. I mean, and this is one of the things that I really want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the next iPhone. Hopefully we’re gonna get that next week. I saw a brief rumor about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, so we’ll see. But one thing I really want is for the video camera to not make me choose between
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 4K and 60 frames per second. I want to be able to shoot in 4K at 60 frames per second. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s a big ask. If you look around the rest of the video camera
⏹️ ▶️ Marco world, very few things shoot at 4K 60. that is incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uncommon. Even among very high-end video cameras, that’s still pretty uncommon.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the iPhone, especially with the 7 adding the stabilization and everything,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has made it very clear to me in practical usage that the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone is the best video camera in the world for almost anything. Obviously not if you’re shooting professionally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for movies or TV or things like that, but if you are just a regular person shooting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco video for your family, yourself, you know, even lower end creative
⏹️ ▶️ Marco projects, I would say the iPhone camera as a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco video camera is world class in practice. It is incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco easy to use. You don’t have to really worry too much about focus or audio,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco both of which are massive pains in the butt on a regular video camera, even good ones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s just really, really good as being a video camera. And a built-in stabilization, that helps too,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything else. So, overall, I am very, very happy with camera,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the physical form factor. The battery has been pretty good for me, better than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I thought, and by far, probably the best iPhone battery I’ve ever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had. Still not enough for me most of the time, but I would say, actually, before the iOS 11
⏹️ ▶️ Marco beta, in June, it was enough for me most days. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever since the beta, that has not been true anymore, unfortunately, and that could just be weird beta weirdness, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even now that we’re at the very, very late beta stages and the build we have now is probably the GM, the battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still is not good enough, but it’s at least not that far off. Like Casey, an extra 20
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to 50% would probably do it for me. Headphone jack, it was a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco real pain in the butt when I was on an airplane. Like John, airplanes are when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of people hit that problem. Or if there’s a situation in which you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco listened a lot while charging at work or in cars, if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you use the little plug adapters for it instead of a Bluetooth adapter, things like that. The only thing out of those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that really applied to me in my life was airplane usage. So on flights, I hated it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I eventually have figured out Bluetooth headphones that aren’t so bad for planes, so I switched to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those begrudgingly, giving up my awesome wired pair. For portable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco walking use around town, I was already on Bluetooth, so it didn’t matter. AirPods don’t fit my ears, unfortunately,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that solved the problem for a lot of other people, although also not on planes, because they just leave too much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sound in and you can’t hear anything. Anyway, so overall, pretty good. One thing also that doesn’t get a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco attention with the iPhone 7 that we might have already forgotten about, the speakers got a lot better. And it used the earpiece
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John as a second speaker.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That helps a lot. It helps especially when you’re watching video on the phone. You don’t have to cup your hand around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the bottom to try to reflect the sound into your face. It’s just coming out the front now from the ear speaker.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that helps a lot and it also just got louder when using it on a table or a windowsill
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a podcast speaker. It gets louder for that. So speaker improvement was a pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco major upgrade. The one thing I’m hoping that we get with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the new phones, you know, we already are pretty sure that we’re gonna get big screen in a small body.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s awesome and huge. And I’m willing to tolerate a lot to get that, as I said last episode.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The camera is where I have a lot of these wishlist items still. I mentioned earlier 4K at 60
⏹️ ▶️ Marco frames a second would be great. I know artistically a lot of people don’t like 60 frames per second, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want that when capturing family videos. and to have more resolution would be nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So anyway, that’s great. I would also like to see on the camera front,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make it so that live photos, so that more of the frames in a live photo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are full quality than just the middle frame. This is a similar problem to 4K60
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in that it requires dumping a lot of data off the camera sensor very quickly. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually hardware limited by whatever the sensor can push out or retain or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s not an easy problem but I bet Apple could do it. Also, I would love, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the two camera system that the 7S, or sorry, that the 7 Plus got,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 2X zoomed in camera is significantly worse optically than the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wide angle camera. And that kind of harmed a lot of its usefulness or it reduced,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, the coolness of that feature for me. The zoomed in camera lets in less light
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s more noisy and it is not optically stabilized. I would love for those problems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be improved upon or eliminated in the next one. So it looks like we’re going to get two camera
⏹️ ▶️ Marco systems again. Anything they can do to reduce the quality difference between the two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cameras would be very very welcome. Stabilization would be the most helpful and if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they can’t do that let more light in. Other than that though you know I don’t really know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my wish list is is fairly common with everyone else’s. Sure, yeah, make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it faster, make the camera better, and you know.
⏹️ ▶️ John And more battery life, because the room is gonna be thicker.
iPhone predictions
⏹️ ▶️ John Alright, so we can transition to predictions now. Some of them you’ve already given.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So what are we… So on the iPhone front, they have really kept a remarkable lid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on secrecy of the physical devices and of the software. Software
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is usually kept secret pretty well, so that’s nice. But how this phone will use the screen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the weird notch on top is still so unknown. That’s very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco interesting to me. And in fact, I have done very little work on overcast UI
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for iOS 11 so far. I’ve been mostly doing under the hood things and fixing table view stuff and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff like that, because I don’t want to do any UI design until I use this phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because for me, this could be a dramatic change in how apps are laid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out, what kind of gestures they should respond to, what kind of gestures they shouldn’t respond to, or that don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work very well. I’m very concerned about this swipe up home button thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that that’s going to basically make my now playing card far less useful. So I might have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco relay that out or reconsider how that’s done. I think it’s wise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for developers to wait a little bit before you make any major UI decisions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for iOS 11, because, again, we have no idea how this phone’s going to use that screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s very interesting to me. And we’re going to learn part of that at the event. But we’re not going to really learn a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of it until we get our hands on these phones, as our primary phones, and just figure them out, and you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feel them and use them every day. So that’ll be interesting. But otherwise, I do think, again, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wonderful that we really don’t know a lot of the major details
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here. You know, as much as we learn from rumors and leaks and everything else, the major details…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s still a lot of holes in that picture. So that’s pretty cool, I think. Especially so close to the event that we haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seen, like, credible parts leaks or fully assembled phones or anything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Compared to previous years, we know not that much.
⏹️ ▶️ John Major details like Jumbo Shrimp. We know it’s gonna be an edge-to-edge screen with
⏹️ ▶️ John a notch on top of an OLED screen with stainless steel. We know so much about it. We know the dimensions. We know the
⏹️ ▶️ John guesses at the screen res. We just don’t know how the software’s gonna work, as you noted. But I feel like we know the same amount as normal.
⏹️ ▶️ John All these mock-ups that you see, the reason they’re able to make these mock-ups even if they’re all
⏹️ ▶️ John just fake, like we built something. They have the specs down to the millimeter for
⏹️ ▶️ John this thing and they just might not have the surface details right. So I feel like we know the same amount as we normally do. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it is more exciting stuff this year because it’s like, oh, it’s actually a different phone and you know, with
⏹️ ▶️ John the notch and the size and stuff like that. But I think for the one bit that I haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ John been keeping up with the rumors. So maybe we’re just gonna sound dumb or I’m gonna sound dumb by saying if you’ve just been keeping up with rumors, you’d
⏹️ ▶️ John know the answer to this. but do you all want to make a prediction about whether this thing will
⏹️ ▶️ John have Touch ID on the back or not? Again, I don’t know what the current rumor is. Is everyone just saying
⏹️ ▶️ John that it’s not a thing anymore or it is definitely a thing, but what do you think? Regardless of whether, oh, I don’t think it’ll have Touch
⏹️ ▶️ John ID on it, just this one question, will it have Touch ID on the back of this phone
⏹️ ▶️ John Is that because the rumors all say no? Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Okay. I was going to guess no just based on the possibilities
⏹️ ▶️ John of the rumors about the software swipe up and stuff because if they’re going to do stuff like that and they have face
⏹️ ▶️ John recognition, like it’s so clear that they’re all in on the front of the phone. And honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ John I really don’t want there to be touching in the back because I’m a case user and as we discussed before, I don’t want to have a lint filled belly button to
⏹️ ▶️ John poke my finger into in the back. So I’m going to say no both because I hope it and because
⏹️ ▶️ John most of the markets I’ve seen haven’t had either. So that makes me kind of sad because I really like Touch ID
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff is still a big question mark, but it seems like we’re all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thinking the same thing. Well, so slow down. So slow down. Let’s talk about that. So in my opinion,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the only way that the face ID or whatever it’s called, I think Pearl is like the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey internal code name, we’ll call it face ID for now. The only way that face ID
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is going to be okay in my book is if it’s at least as reliable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and fast as Touch ID. So similar to John’s question a minute ago, yes or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no, do you think starting with Marco, do you think that this Face ID thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will be as good and as fast and as reliable as Touch ID to the point
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you will not end up missing Touch ID? Yes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or no? I think it will be at least close enough that we won’t care.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s a cop out, but I’ll allow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. It might not be at least as good or better in all those metrics, but anything that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it it is worse at, I bet it’ll still be close enough that we won’t care.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this question is supposing that they haven’t done Touch ID under the screen, right? Like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey phone not only won’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John it on the back, but now we’re saying it won’t have it at all and the only thing it will have is face.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is how I meant it,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. All right. So I don’t think that any face
⏹️ ▶️ John thing they have will be… I can’t imagine a situation where it’ll be as fast and as
⏹️ ▶️ John convenient as current Touch ID. Because current Touch ID is really, really fast. I can have my thumb on
⏹️ ▶️ John it before I get it out of my pocket. At what point the cameras are useless, right? So no matter how fast it
⏹️ ▶️ John is, it’s already unlocked by the time the camera sees my face in right now. Right? So nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John can beat that in terms of actual efficiency. As Marco said, though, all right, fine. But
⏹️ ▶️ John is it less efficient? Do you care? Do you care that is that it is a little bit slower because
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a trade off there. Like, okay, well it’s a little bit slower, but you don’t have to fish around for the button in your pocket. And there
⏹️ ▶️ John is some utility to that as well. So I 100% believe that Apple can make
⏹️ ▶️ John face ID so that I don’t care about the lack of touch ID. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I but I don’t think it’s possible to be as efficient as touch ID. And I have my doubts
⏹️ ▶️ John that their first crack at face ID will be
⏹️ ▶️ John good enough that I don’t miss touch ID because like this is going against the second generation or is it third I forget
⏹️ ▶️ John but second generation of touch ID that is that is phenomenally good. that’s one of
⏹️ ▶️ John the reasons I love I think I mentioned when I went on that show where I said the iPhone 7 was my favorite Apple device of the
⏹️ ▶️ John year. I love the fast touch ID. I love it to pieces right. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John I it makes me and that’s one of the reasons I don’t like the touch ID on my on my 2017 MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro. It’s not as fast as it is on my phone, right? So I think it is possible that in their
⏹️ ▶️ John first crack at face ID, it will I will feel the loss
⏹️ ▶️ John of touch ID if touch ID isn’t there. Hope it’s not true. But anyway, I totally believe by their second crack at face ID,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll be in the Marcos zone where it’s like, yeah, it’s a wash.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, we’ll see. I think I think Marco nailed it that it will be sufficient
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it won’t drive us bananas, but will we may still miss it. Miss touch ID that is and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey face ID will be sufficient. But I’m very curious and slightly nervous. Like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I hadn’t learned from my past and Apple’s past, I would absolutely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be going on a tirade right now about how, oh, there’s no way that Face ID could be even near as good as Touch ID.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But if there’s anything I’ve learned over the years is that just because I don’t understand how something could possibly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be as good as what it replaces doesn’t mean that Apple also doesn’t understand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. Typically Apple does something to amaze me and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stupefy me with these sorts of moments. So I have faith, but I am
⏹️ ▶️ John So before we get off of this whole topic, prediction on will every touch ID be anywhere on
⏹️ ▶️ John this phone just to nail down a prediction?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would say no, but I think the rumors are going to are saying yes right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I personally say no. And somebody mentioned that ATP tipster in the chat had mentioned that it is still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there. I didn’t personally see that. I don’t think it’ll be there, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am not terribly confident about that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, Tipster in the chat I think is the only person I’m seeing who is still saying that it’s there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Everyone else I think has assumed or has actually said, no, it’s gone. I hope
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s still there, but I bet it isn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I’m with Marco. I really, really hope it’s still. I really hope they figured out a way to get it to work on the screen,
⏹️ ▶️ John something like that. But if I had to put money, I would say, I lean slightly towards it’s not gonna be on the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do hope they do a promotion or whatever they’re gonna call if they do 120 hertz refresh rate. Oh yeah, I would be 100, I
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s gotta have that. It’s gotta have promotion. Is OLED good enough to do that? I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually know. Like, can you get an OLED screen of that size to do 120 hertz? I don’t know if that’s, if that’s a not,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if that’s a limiting factor. If that’s a limiting factor, then, you know, then oh well. But
⏹️ ▶️ John like, I really hope it has it because the phones still don’t have True Tone, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That’s true, probably not.
⏹️ ▶️ John They don’t have room for the sensor. I hope this isn’t one of those situations, because I feel like they don’t need to find
⏹️ ▶️ John room for another sensor, they just need to crank it. And if it’s the one thing this phone is gonna have, it’s plenty of grunt, CPU
⏹️ ▶️ John and GPU. So I feel like there’s no reason they can’t do ProMotion. So I’m 100% predicting ProMotion.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’d be really upset if it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have it. Yeah, I really hope they do, because on the new iPads, it’s so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pleasant to use that. It looks so good. I described it before as it’s like Retina
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for motion. And in practice, now that it’s been kind of like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s been a few months since getting the new iPads, it isn’t as big as Retina was,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even for motion. Like it isn’t quite that big. But it’s really nice, and I would really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like to have it if I can.
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to say that I set up my dad’s new 10.5 inch iPad with
⏹️ ▶️ John ProMotion on vacation for him. And not that I wasn’t impressed by it, like I could see
⏹️ ▶️ John it, but it was way more subtle than I thought it would be. And so I’m totally all for this feature. I want it to be everywhere
⏹️ ▶️ John so and so forth, but it was less noticeable to me than I thought it would be.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I was looking for it. My dad, of course, has no idea what I didn’t even bother trying to tell him because he can’t even
⏹️ ▶️ John tell retina from not retina.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So slightly pivoting on this new phone topic.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What is the feature or features that Apple will be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey marketing in order to make the non-pro or non-edition or whatever the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thousand-plus dollar phone is, what are the regular iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 8 and 8 Plus or 7S and 7S Plus, whatever the hell they’re called, what are they going to get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s going to be enough to convince people to upgrade? I mean, the obvious answer is, oh, it’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be a better camera. Oh, it’ll be faster. Oh, it’ll potentially maybe have more RAM
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and or potentially maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I’m just spitballing. I know, I know, I know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m spitballing. But you see what I’m driving at though. Like, is it just gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be basically a spec upgrade on some or all the things? I’m specifically looking at CPU and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey camera hardware. Or do you think there’s going to be some other nifty trick? Like maybe as an example,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I don’t think this would be the case, but as a silly example, will Face ID be across the entire
⏹️ ▶️ Casey line? and there will be no Touch ID or only Touch ID under the screen everywhere. Or maybe,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as a different approach, maybe Touch ID is under the screen in the iPhone 8 and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey either is also under the screen in the 8 edition or 8 Pro, or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it isn’t on the 8 edition or the 8 Pro because Face ID is only on
⏹️ ▶️ John that. You’re confusing me with your names.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I know, well, there’s- You should call them 7S and
⏹️ ▶️ John 7S Plus and 8S. Okay. Or is it
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey one- That’s fine,
⏹️ ▶️ John that. Not that we’re predicting those are the names, but just for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco discussion. Well, but even on the names though, like I would say, there was a great discussion on Upgrade about this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco during their draft episode today. It makes, the more I think about it, the more sense it makes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it is not 7S and 8.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh yeah, I’m just saying like that’s a way we can refer to them so we all know what we’re talking about. The names are a
⏹️ ▶️ John separate discussion of what they’ll actually be called. And that’s always the trickiest to predict because Apple is
⏹️ ▶️ John historically very weird about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco names. Well, but I think it does lead to the question of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what is in the smaller or lesser 8s, or whatever they are. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John so you’re confusing me again in the 7s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this. All right, so I think it makes the most sense to have these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be marketed together because they don’t want everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to regret not getting the big one if they have to get the boring
⏹️ ▶️ John know, yeah, that’s the best-case scenario is this is a family of phones that all have the same external
⏹️ ▶️ John appearance That all have OLED screens, which is I’m saying this is best-case scenario all have OLED all have
⏹️ ▶️ John the same like external cases appearance Whatever it is stainless steel glass back whatever the hell it’s gonna be
⏹️ ▶️ John and then you have no problem Then you just pick some naming scheme that whatever you come up with for the naming of them
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s fine. You start to run into problems though So like Casey was saying, if the only thing
⏹️ ▶️ John you can unify them with is external case design, and two of them essentially are 7S’s, and one of them is clearly
⏹️ ▶️ John an 8, and then whatever you name them, it’s really kind of hard to convince people that those aren’t the lesser
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phones. Right, and so that’s why I think, naming wise, I think this ties
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in, I would go with iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and either Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or 8 Pro. And the reason, so pro is a very,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a pretty well understood word in Apple marketing. What pro means is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the biggest and the best. That’s what it like across the whole rest of the lineup, that’s what that means.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they use it not to suggest that you have to be professional to buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this product, whatever that means, right? So, it kind of self-segments people,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it gives people who aren’t buying the Pro permission not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to buy it. It lets them be happier with a lower-end purchase
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because they don’t think they need the Pro stuff. And it lets people who think they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need the best, or who want to do video editing and have been convinced through years of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computer marketing that you need something named Pro to do video editing, it convinces
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them that people will self-select and say, well, I’m a professional. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need the best. I will get the pro, the expensive, bigger, better one. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it gives everyone else permission to buy the regular, lower ones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco without feeling like they’re buying something low-end or cheap
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or bad. And that’s what Apple needs to happen here, because they aren’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to be able to produce the the pro one in volume. They’re not you know it’s gonna be more expensive. It’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like they need the regular iPhones to also seem really great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so that’s why I think the naming is gonna be across the way eight across all of them and just the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco high-end one is pro and iPhone 8 will mean a certain amount of core features.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think CPU, GPU, maybe even most of the camera
⏹️ ▶️ Marco functionality will be the same across all of them. The other ones might even get wireless charging, because we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco haven’t talked about that yet really either, but it’s been heavily rumored that there’s gonna be some kind of wireless charging thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco add-on purchase after the fact. Apple’s really good at coming up with ways recently to make you spend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an extra one to $200 on accessories to your devices.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s not an accident. But anyway, every iPhone update
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to date has been pretty substantial from the one before it. Even the ones at the time, people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of poo-pooed because they weren’t enough. If you look back and you look at all the components
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that were upgraded and everything else, it ends up they were all pretty good updates. And I don’t think this is gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be any different. They’re not gonna crap out an update to the two consumer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco grade, or whatever we’re gonna call them, iPhones. I think the components across all of them are going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be very, very similar, with a few exceptions for the big one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The big one’s gonna obviously have the very different screen. The other two I don’t think are gonna be OLED, and they’re gonna be LCD,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco regular IPS LCDs that we’ve had forever. They’re gonna be the same old form factors, maybe updated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco case design with the new stainless steel band with glass in front and back. Maybe that, I don’t know, doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco honestly matter that much in that regard. Most of the camera upgrades I think are gonna happen across the line,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the exception that I don’t think the 4.7 inch smaller
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone is going to get dual cameras. I think they’re still gonna have problems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with fitting that in there while also fitting in like the forehead and chin components and
⏹️ ▶️ John The Pro will also have a better front facing camera, I bet, for face
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ID. Yeah, I would guess you’re right. Because it looks like, you know, based on APIs and stuff, it looks like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the front might be getting dual cameras or at least a camera with a depth sensor.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that we’re gonna have better portrait mode. That whole thing about adding better portrait mode, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might be pro only. I don’t know if the lower end ones are gonna get the IR
⏹️ ▶️ Marco depth sensors or not. And if they don’t, they wouldn’t get face ID. So I’m guessing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the exclusive features to the pro are probably depth camera things,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dual front camera, dual back camera in the small size,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco face ID, obviously the big screen with the notch, And that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might be all. Like I wouldn’t expect major difference. I think wireless
⏹️ ▶️ Marco charging goes across all of them. I think any CPU and GPU update goes across all of them. RAM
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably goes the same across all of them. Like I bet it’s the same system on a chip in all of them. Or maybe the Pro might be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slightly overclocked, but probably not. I’m guessing even that’s the same. Because they really have to make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sure that most of the people who are gonna wanna go buy iPhones buy the regular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ones and not the Pro. And therefore, they have to make sure that the marketing does not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco denigrate it or make it seem like it’s an inferior product.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So hold on, though. So if I don’t think I’m interested in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Pro or perhaps Edition, and my money is on Edition the more I think about it, but be that as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco No, Edition is a failed name.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Edition died with the Gold Edition, even though I know they still sell the White one, which is way better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, there’s a reason why even Apple can barely bring themselves to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talk about the addition of watches anymore, even though they still sell one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, I think in a lot of ways it makes sense, but that’s irrelevant. So the question I’m still not hearing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a clear answer to is, if I don’t think I want the Pro, what am I getting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from the non-Pro iPhone? So you’re saying, obviously better camera hardware, possibly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new case and possibly inductive charging and
⏹️ ▶️ John it? You’re getting the same thing you got from six to seven right so it’s the same size the same
⏹️ ▶️ John screen resolution Essentially the same screen But you get a better camera faster CPU faster GPU better battery life
⏹️ ▶️ John and in this case you actually also get a different case Too slightly different aesthetic case so
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a pretty big upgrade and by the way if I had to nail down like the Like I gave the best case before
⏹️ ▶️ John there a family and they all have a lid and blah blah blah the more realistic case Is as Marco said LCD only
⏹️ ▶️ John on the non? fancy one I’m also gonna say no wireless charging on the non fancy ones too
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like that’s gonna be a pro only feature if it exists at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all well but they really want to sell you that hundred and fifty dollar wireless charging thing
⏹️ ▶️ John I think just because it is it’s a good differentiator and honestly I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John think out of the gate it’ll be all that popular people love plugging their phones and they have things to plug them in I think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John it should get its test run on the on the low volume Pro to see what kind of appetite
⏹️ ▶️ John there is for it. And because I agree with you that there’s there, there’s not going to be that much
⏹️ ▶️ John differentiation when it comes down to it beyond the physical form factor. This is an
⏹️ ▶️ John additional differentiator that everybody understands. Like you want the pro and only the pro ones got wireless charging, but no one’s going to
⏹️ ▶️ John say, Oh, I’m not going to buy the non pro ones because they have no expectation of wireless charging. Like it doesn’t feel crappier.
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, they’re like, Oh, I just plugged my phone and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John Like I don’t, I don’t want to buy a hundred dollar wireless charging thing anyway. Right? only people with money to burn. So that’s my prediction
⏹️ ▶️ John that if it exists, it’s pro only.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So what else are we predicting?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do expect the iPhone SE to get an update, but not this fall.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s going to be updated the special event with the Mac mini,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco right? Yeah, right. No,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no. I’m guessing, you know, because the first iPhone SE came out in springtime. I’m guessing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s going to be similar here because the SE is a product that has sold way better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than they thought it would. It is a product that to keep pushing into more markets that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re not very dominant in, I think they should keep selling it, and I think they know that too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it doesn’t seem to cannibalize sales of the bigger phones to a meaningful degree.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s great, but they probably shouldn’t update it at the same time as the bigger phones because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it might cannibalize slightly more if they
⏹️ ▶️ John did. won’t match them too. It’s not going to be right. It’s not going to look it’s not going to be of a piece with
⏹️ ▶️ John the other ones with the you know new external design. So there are a family.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. And and it might not be even after it’s updated, you know, so anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do think they were they’re going to update the se or at least the role the the SE plays in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lineup, but probably not until next spring or summer.
Apple TV predictions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So anyway, moving on to other products. So 4K Apple TV?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I sure hope so. I think that’s, based on the rumors, that sounds likely. I sure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hope so because the Apple TV needs help. We’re going into a holiday season
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it is probably the least desirable of all the TV set-top boxes for most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people. It’s already the most expensive. It’s already has the worst remote
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in history, in the history of TV remote devices. Like, it needs a lot of help.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So if this is a great time, I really, really hope they add, you know, 4K,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco redesign the remote, and have some kind of story for 4K content.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A basic story could just be as simple as, look, we have Amazon and Netflix having 4K in their apps.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s good, I would say that’s a minimum that what you need. I really hope they also have a story
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for buying 4K movies and 4K TV shows from iTunes. that would be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great. I really hope they
⏹️ ▶️ John do that. Even if they don’t though, they should just ship the hardware. Like, I hate waiting
⏹️ ▶️ John for hardware for content deals. Just ship it. Like you said, Netflix will be useful.
⏹️ ▶️ John We can look at the menus and just ship, and you know the hardware’s done, just ship it. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco whatever, you
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t get your stupid deals worked out, you can’t agree on how much they’re gonna cost, work that out later. We’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John get it in a software update, just ship the hardware.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Especially because like, hmm, the deal making department at Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It seems like it has been underperforming in recent years. The last thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want is for the hardware and the ability of other apps that could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do 4K just fine to be held back because the deal-making department can’t make content
⏹️ ▶️ John Now I can imagine they’ll ship the hardware and it will come. I don’t even know. What are they up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it just matches iTunes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I can’t keep
⏹️ ▶️ John track. There’s obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John that they need that’s part of that, so it could be
⏹️ ▶️ John that the 4K Apple TV doesn’t ship until the tvOS equivalent of iOS 11 is ready for
⏹️ ▶️ John it, so there could be a couple week delay in that or whatever. tvOS 11, is that what it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t even know. Yes, I mean, they don’t really talk about the OS on the TV, it doesn’t really matter, honestly. Right,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s totally the iOS 11 based tvOS that has the HEVC stuff that they need for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. I’m also, one of the wild cards for me for Apple TV prediction is I wonder,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, assuming they have redesigned their remote, which we’ve heard from a few different places and I hope it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John true. I’m so dreading that.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Like now I know I want the remote
⏹️ ▶️ John to be changed, but it’s like, oh God, what are they? Because they had two remotes so far and both of them, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get worse than this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John one. There are more than two, they have three remotes. It can’t possibly get worse. Yeah, they have the white plastic one. Remember the white
⏹️ ▶️ John one, right? A series of remotes that it makes me feel like they’re just, they’re not getting it. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re trying, I guess, every five years they make a new remote.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I just hope someone says, look, look how big my hands are. Look how small
⏹️ ▶️ John the couch cushion cracks are. Just give me a TiVo peanut and or I’ll just
⏹️ ▶️ John use my spare TiVo remote. I left the TiVo remote at the vacation house, by the way. So I’m down one TiVo
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco remote. I can buy an aftermarket one.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, why are you buying a $70 Bluetooth TiVo remote to use with my Apple TV?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so anyway, I hope that in the process of them hopefully redesigning
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this remote, I would like to see a little bit more of a nod towards gaming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uses. The Apple TV,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say the… In the remote? Yes. So the App Store situation I don’t think has panned out the way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple expected it to and the way most of us hoped it would. There really have not been, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco must-have apps on Apple TV that were anything beyond video apps for content services.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s fine. That’s what most of us want most of the time, it turns out, to nobody’s surprise. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the gaming situation, like, first of all, like other types of apps, like, you know, people were,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, when they demoed it, they had, like, a real estate browsing app and catalogs that you were supposed to, like, browse catalogs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on your TV. Nobody does that. But the two big ones that are obvious
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that most people want to do on their TV is watch video and play games. And the video thing, I think they have pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well down. There are some rough edges here and there, but it serves that purpose
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty well. The gaming thing, I think there’s a number of issues that have prevented that from really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco taking off. There are a few good games on the Apple TV, but not many. As
⏹️ ▶️ Marco far as I understand, the financial upside of those for their makers has been pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco low and that’s one of the reasons we haven’t really seen a lot of them. One of the things that could fix
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, I mean obviously there’s lots of App Store improvements that could fix that or could help that, but one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the things that could really help that also is no one is buying a $50 controller for their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple TV. I have, I’ve bought two of them, but I’m weird and they aren’t very good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I kind of regret having bought them. Like no one’s buying them. Apple needs to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is to have every Apple TV that is sold be able to play a reasonable number of games
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the remote that it comes with. That doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be a giant gamepad, but it has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be a little more game accessible than the Sierra remote that we’ve had so far,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which basically has one button the games can use. It needs more than that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I hope we see something like that. I’m not confident that we will necessarily.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think they’re just going to give us another redesigned version of the Sier remote with no additional functionality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really. And you know, if that’s what we get, fine. I would still be happy with that. That’s still better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than the remote we have now. But I think it would be a missed opportunity if they didn’t take this chance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to improve the prospects of gaming on the Apple TV. I reject this
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco reasons. Okay.
⏹️ ▶️ John I want the redesigned remote to be a good remote for the common case and I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John want any gaming functionality compromising it in any way. And two,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you don’t want to make it a full-fledged controller, there’s gonna be no analog sticks.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s gonna basically be, oh it’s great for playing NES and SNES games, and I feel like that is not sufficient
⏹️ ▶️ John to fill the role that you’re trying to say, which is like, look there’s some, you can play reasonable games on it. Because in
⏹️ ▶️ John my world, reasonable games are not only things that are controlled with a D-pad. You have to have
⏹️ ▶️ John at least one analog stick, preferably two, and you just can’t put that on a remote that is good
⏹️ ▶️ John for the common case for TV. I’m all for Apple shipping an actual real gaming remote with the
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple TV by default as part of their astronomically high price, but we know that’s never going to happen. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m saying Apple continue to be really bad games and game hardware, and just
⏹️ ▶️ John ship it with a decent remote for the TV. I understand where you’re coming from, where you want to you want a gaming ecosystem to flourish
⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit there by having something but I feel like the gaming control that you can fit
⏹️ ▶️ John into a remote that is still essentially a TV remote is not good enough to fill that role. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John plus plus there’s a switch. Have you played Sonic Mania? You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really like it? I’ve started to I haven’t gotten through a lot of it yet because I keep saving it to play with Adam
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I have started to play it and I am so incredibly happy with it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It just it makes me so happy. It is so good. And anybody who’s a fan of the old 16 bit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sonic games for the Sega Genesis, MUST play Sonic Mania. It is so, so good.
Apple Watch predictions
⏹️ ▶️ John All right, Apple Watch, yes or no?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think yes. I am slightly in favor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of it being with LTE. I think it’s going to happen, not terribly confident.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What I’m unsure of though is will you be able to place a phone call
⏹️ ▶️ Casey via LTE or will it be data only like an iPad? And I want the answer to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be that you can place a phone call only because I want it in like Oh crap scenarios like oh crap.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just broke my leg as I’m off for a run But I suspect that if it gets
⏹️ ▶️ Casey LTE at all, it will not Be supportive of a phone call much
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like the iPad. I think If it gets LTE it will keep the same form
⏹️ ▶️ Casey factor because it’ll need more battery I think they’ll be intelligent I’m not the first person to come up with this But I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think there’ll be intelligent switching as to whether or not LTE is on so it will be off until it can’t find a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can internet connection any other way.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think if it doesn’t have LTE, then the form factor might get thinner, but I think they are going to stick
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the same, not lugs, I don’t think that’s the word I’m looking for, but the same design
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the connector for the watch bands. So that even if it gets a little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bit thinner, your existing watch bands will still work. That’s my two cents. Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I have a love-hate relationship with the Apple Watch. There’s a love part?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, it’s useful sometimes. I want it to be a better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco watch than it is. But it seems like Apple thinks it’s good enough as a watch,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that the market is very clearly telling them this is a fitness tracker, primarily, for most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people. It is a fitness tracker and maybe a notifications display. And so it’s hard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for me to argue against the entire rest of the market. I would love for it to move in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco direction of telling time more reliably, and maybe looking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better while doing it. That would be nice, but the market is telling it differently.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It seems, by all accounts, to be selling pretty well as mostly a fitness
⏹️ ▶️ Marco device. I think what they will do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is to keep pushing it in that direction, and that means probably a cellular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco option so that you can take it without having your phone with you and have it behave as a stand-in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone. Things like that because a lot of joggers and things really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need it to… They really want to be able to run without their phone. And right now they run with big phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco armbands or belt clips and they’re clunky and nobody really likes them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple will do with the watch what it takes to sell to more fitness
⏹️ ▶️ Marco type roles because that is where it succeeds. So that’s why they added GPS in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Series 2 and full waterproofing and full swimming capability and stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s why they keep working on things like new workout functionality and why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the smart watch faces haven’t gotten very smart. There seems to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be very little effort for them to move in the direction of having an always on or at or at least ambient mode type screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, things that would make it a better watch or a better wrist computer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have not really invested heavily in those areas, where they are investing heavily is fitness areas, because that’s where it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco selling. So again, what I would like is very different than what they will do, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s fine, because I like regular watches so much, I just don’t wear the Apple watch most of the time, and I would rather have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a regular watch that has its screen always on, and always tells the time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with that, and doesn’t require me to bring a charger on trips. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would be, I am curious to see what they do with it, but I’m not hopeful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it’s going to change my outlook on the watch for myself. I do think whatever they do will probably be successful.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One of the reservations I have though, is that if they do what people expect them to do and make it cellular,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the entire watch OS, like as an OS, as a platform,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really is designed to be a satellite device of a phone. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco granted, the phone was first devised to be a satellite device of your Mac, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not to say that they can’t ever break it away from that, but watchOS needs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of work to make it meaningfully good to use,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, as a standalone cellular-connected device. And I don’t think they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing that yet, or I think it would be unrealistic expect them to do that this quickly based on what we’ve seen so far.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I don’t know how a cellular watch would work in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco practice. And so that remains to be seen. I’m a little skeptical
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on that front, but I do expect that’s probably what they’re going to do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If they do a cellular watch, will there be any sort of negotiation,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at least with American carriers about how that is handled from a pricing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey standpoint. So do you think they’ll say, oh, okay, here’s your cellular watch,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and by the way, we’ve talked to the major U.S. carriers and it’s not going to cost you any extra money on any of your plans?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Or do you think they’ll just leave that entirely to the carriers to utterly fleece us as they are off to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do? Oh, it is definitely going to cost extra money. The only question is maybe they got a good deal. Maybe it’ll only cost 10 bucks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a month, you know, as opposed to more, you know, like that’s That’s the more likely situation there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s no way it’s free. I think there were already
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the beginnings of various moves by the carriers to enable technologies for things like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco having multiple devices share the same phone number. If your watch was away from your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone and they both have cell connections, they could both ring and you could pick up on your watch. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s something about that I read recently that that’s in progress or that’s being deployed slowly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So like, you know, there is carrier involvement probably here to make this stuff happen,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but there’s no way that’s coming without an additional monthly fees.
⏹️ ▶️ John Thinking about the watch, and now I’m starting to think like how much stuff is going to be in this event. Obviously, they got to have time for the phones.
⏹️ ▶️ John You would think maybe that they would do the phones as here are two new phones and then there’s one
⏹️ ▶️ John more thing, whether they say that or not. And then there’s the fancy one. I guess that depends on how they end up naming the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John It would work better if we didn’t all know the notch phone was coming. But anyway, who knows what they’ll decide there. Then you got
⏹️ ▶️ John the Apple TV which is a good warm up thing of like yeah yeah they could be the first thing they announce it’s short no one really
⏹️ ▶️ John cares that much we all look at the remote fine. The middle thing could be a watch
⏹️ ▶️ John but I don’t know is that is that too much will they have
⏹️ ▶️ John to spend not as much time on the watch and I think it works out if the watch is not externally changed too much you mentioned
⏹️ ▶️ John the strap lugs being the same which seems like a gimme but that the external design is also pretty much not changed
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like the what are we on the third iteration of the Airstream trailer now,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey right? You get zero one, two,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? That’s fine, I guess. With the cell connection in the phone,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that’s a reason they would have to keep the Airstream look because they just need all that battery,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? It’s going to, you know, it’s got to be tough on the battery. So presumably all the internals are get
⏹️ ▶️ John more efficient, right? And what do you do with that extra battery now we can have LTE.
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess maybe that you would consider that not a very exciting watch update but to
⏹️ ▶️ John show anything about it at all you’ve got to show the hardware and then also the software and do some silly
⏹️ ▶️ John demos of how or a video or something of how LTE works. I mean we haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ John gone on to other things but I guess like is this it for the event? Because I could I think the watch does, to be clear, I think the watch does
⏹️ ▶️ John need to be updated and it would totally fit in this event and you You know, now would be the time to do it, so they should.
Event predictions
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, but is that it now? Now we have a full event, Apple TV, new Apple Watch, new phones. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, that’s three new phones, one of which is especially groundbreaking.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Uh, the Apple TV, you know, and you know, Apple TV going four K
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and, and, you know, having a little new remote and everything and, and getting four K content being sold through iTunes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s not that much time on stage really like that’s even if they pad it with a demo, which doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make a lot of sense, but even if they depadded it with a demo, that’s probably under five minutes, definitely under 10.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I think stage time-wise, we’re mostly being, mostly spending time on the iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And even if they add cellular for the watch, that also is not a huge time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco taker in the event. They can probably get through the whole watch segment in 20 minutes at
⏹️ ▶️ John most. Yeah, the phone is going to be so long though, because it’s three phones and
⏹️ ▶️ John they have to really talk up the first two to make you think like if this is all there was it would be a great
⏹️ ▶️ John update year but wait there’s there’s even more and they’re just gonna spend so much time with that because it’s like this is like
⏹️ ▶️ John the most important marketing presentation they give all year every year.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this time it’s like did you get it? It’s actually three separate devices.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Three separate devices.
⏹️ ▶️ John That showmanship, even just the showmanship to do the first two and to say aren’t these phones great but there’s one more thing
⏹️ ▶️ John like Jobs would love that if everything hadn’t leaked but I don’t think whoever they have presenting these phones will even
⏹️ ▶️ John make a feint in that direction because we all know they know that we know that they know that we know that
⏹️ ▶️ John you know they’re not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just coming I’m mad that I flubbed it it’s are you getting it yeah yeah damn it yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right well and also you know speaking of Steve like this is their this is their first event in the Steve Jobs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco theater of their new campus so they’re probably gonna spend a couple minutes on that all right so it’s probably gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be the opening I’m guessing that gets
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John two to three
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One picture and two sentences. Yeah, well, only if they don’t mention their campus. If they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually mention their campus, then we’re spending two or three minutes on this probably. But that’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m curious to see it, honestly. Whatever they say about it, I want to
⏹️ ▶️ John The theater, it’s just going to be a big screen and a stage. Like, is the inside of that theater anything special?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, it’s nice that it’s there. I’m sure it’s a really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco theater. Oh, no, no. I’m saying like the whole, you know, I want to like, anything they’re going to say about the whole campus, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re probably going to give like a very brief introduction to the campus. Thanks for having us, etc. Okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then they’re gonna go over probably the most boring stuff first. So probably like the Apple Watch update first,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then TV, actually maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John TV first. TV’s before watch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, TV first, then watch, and then they’re gonna get into the phones. I don’t expect,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe they could do like a HomePod update, but I don’t think the HomePod is ready to ship yet,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I also don’t think there’s that much more to say unless it’s ready to ship. What about the
⏹️ ▶️ John giant Mac Pro teaser video? How about that, huh? Yeah, right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hope they had like a bit. They were trying to bet like whether they would even mention the Mac at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I honestly think they’re like it is it is a valid question like whether the Mac will be mentioned
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all in the entire
⏹️ ▶️ John presentation. No. Why would it be is the Mac is the Mac ever mentioned at the phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco event. Well here’s a question. Do you think high Sierra is ready because some of the beta people are saying it’s really
⏹️ ▶️ John not. if it is, they’re not gonna know. I don’t I haven’t been
⏹️ ▶️ John using the betas, but my impression is that October I mean, I think it announced it like, you know, it’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John be ready by the end of October the latest. But why would they say anything about it? We all know about high Sierra, they’ve talked about
⏹️ ▶️ John it plenty, it’ll come when it comes. There’s no reason to mention it. Maybe like, here’s one final thing for this.
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS 11 date, do we get that at the event?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco definitely announced. Yeah. I mean, because it’s probably gonna be like, within a week or something. I was 11 is going to be
⏹️ ▶️ John after that. Yeah, I agree. I’m just wondering like, you know, something they might just be like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the new iPhone ship on such and such a date and we all know they’re coming with 11 but they never actually say I was 11 for everybody else
⏹️ ▶️ John is coming in whatever day because that is an announcement that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does fit in now. They always tell us it’ll they’re probably going to give a GM that day and then you know, and then the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the full iOS 11 ships to customers, you know, a week later or or five days later something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John It’s not going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be a big a big gap
⏹️ ▶️ John Steve Trout and Smith has been doing the diffs on the builds and now they’re like really tweaking small things in each of these builds. So it seems
⏹️ ▶️ John like it’s pretty much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ready. The only thing is that, you know, whatever, whatever API changes are going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be required or enabled to take advantage of the new phone screen shape and size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and any possible like, you know, IR depth stuff, those are probably all going to be enabled at the very last
⏹️ ▶️ Marco minute in the SDK. Like, you know, the day of the event, like that’s going to be brand new in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco GM and none of the developers will have ever seen that stuff before or at least
⏹️ ▶️ John of them. I’m sure you know all those if-deaths coming to life won’t affect their code. Yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well this is again this is one of the reasons why like why I said I really am I’m not doing any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco UI work on Overcast yet because I want to see how things change because I know they will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s I think it’s like that I’m really delaying my iOS 11 UI refresh
⏹️ ▶️ Marco until probably the wintertime because I really want to do it right for these new phones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco To do that right requires me to use it.
Wildcards
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, we’re running long, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco of no great surprise. We’re running long.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Us? Yeah, I know, right? So let’s maybe round
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this out with a wildcard prediction, something that, and you can specify one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey way or the other, either the one thing that you don’t expect that you really want or what I’d prefer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you answer, but go whichever way you’d like, the one thing that we haven’t really talked about but you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey expect to be there. And so I will start to get into kind of get you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thinking about it. I think that if we’re doing this at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple Park or Apple Campus 2 or whatever it’s called, Apple Park, and this theater
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was presumably built in large part for this very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey moment, I think there’s going to be some sort of showy, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can’t think of how to verbalize this, but like something will come up from the floor in a way that we’ve never
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seen before. Like there’ll be some like whiz-bang showmanship things that are enabled by this new space
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that they had complete control
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over. The whole building just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey takes off. Oh yeah, exactly. It spins so fast
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it eventually takes off and or travels back in time. That’s a reference that neither of you will get. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that there’ll be some sort of like interesting thing that that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is never been done before. Yes, okay, so like Sam the geek in the chat is saying, we’ve seen things emerge from the floor. I’m just using
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that as like an illustrative example, but I think there’ll be something about it that makes it more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fancy and whiz bang than anything we’ve seen from an Apple product demo before, certainly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey recently. That’s my wild card prediction. So John, what do you think? Either something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that we haven’t really talked about that you really expect to happen, or if you wanna cop out something that you just really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wish would happen that hopefully isn’t the Mac Pro that may or may not actually
⏹️ ▶️ John happen. First of all, I just want to say I hope that the thing you predicted doesn’t happen. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s like, I don’t think that not that it’s in poor taste, but that’s not the modern Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John sensibilities for that type of thing. I hope that the inside of the theater is just a really nice theater with a really
⏹️ ▶️ John awesome projection and comfy seats for a thousand of your closest friends. And
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s it. It could have stage lifts, but I feel like that’s kind of gimmicky. And I hope they
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t do that. So for I think my my wild
⏹️ ▶️ John card, I think this is a third category of a thing that. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t actually predict, but I really wish what happened is I really wish all the phones would be all that I know that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John almost certainly not going to be the case, but I think that would be that would really unify the line,
⏹️ ▶️ John the external appearance, the old, the internals, the different form factors like just.
⏹️ ▶️ John It would be nice if this was the year for all that for all the phones. based on the
⏹️ ▶️ John various articles floating around how Samsung’s supplying all the OLEDs. Maybe they just mean for Apple’s new
⏹️ ▶️ John phone, but I think they just mean in general, and they just can’t do that with their high volume phones. So
⏹️ ▶️ John aside from Mac Pro stuff, obviously that I’m not gonna mention, I think it would be really cool if they were all OLED.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco. I mean, the thing I would want the most that is still plausible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I haven’t already predicted, I would say early
⏹️ ▶️ Marco release of the iMac Pro or the HomePod. I don’t think either of those are very likely.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because they both were saying December, I think, at WBDC, right? So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those are fairly unlikely. And if they’re being released in December, this would even be awfully early
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to open up pre-orders. So they probably aren’t going to do that either. But if the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iMac Pro is ready early, that would be cool. And the HomePod,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, probably has the least chance of being really strong, because it seemed like it was still way behind in software, and that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the hardest thing to get done early. I also, more realistically,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the front of the iPad—or, sorry, on the iMac Pro front,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would be really cool if that had Face ID. It isn’t out yet. We
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will or not. could they could put the same sensors presumably into the display
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of an iMac so I would love if an iMac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if the iMac Pro started out having Face ID. We already know it has secure enclave so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has some of the things that would be required to do that already so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any sign that Face ID could be making it into Max would be really cool and the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most opportune time to start that would be with the iMac Pro. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s a big wildcard I think, but that’s fairly unlikely to happen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all, let alone in this event. So if I had to look at this particular event,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I guess my wildcard or the thing I kind of hope blows me away, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I already hope the phone is great in all these different ways, but I’m pretty sure it will be. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the phone being Apple is such a good track record with phones that the phone being great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not even a risk to take to predict that it’s not even a thing that would surprise me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because the phones are always great and that’s you know it’s kind of horrible in some way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to think that way to say that but that like their track record is so good that you know I expect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the phone to be amazing one thing that would dramatically surprise me that is not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco easily predicted is I want the watch to really surprise me and delight me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, if they’re doing a new watch now, the only watch update they’ve done so far,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which was when they launched the Series 1 and 2, was a pretty minor overall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco update. It really, as I said earlier, it really didn’t change that much. I would love
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the Apple Watch to really surprise me in a positive way, and to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do something that makes me say, wow, I really want that, or that would be really great, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wonder what I could do with that. And it hasn’t done that yet. And so I really
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, there’s no way that’ll happen. So Marco listed three things in the interest of time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Have you ever heard top
⏹️ ▶️ Casey four? Yeah, well, in top four, you can only come up with one or two things. In this show, I ask for one, you get three.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I see how it works. Of course.
⏹️ ▶️ John For his next selection, Marco picks every prediction except for the Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We know that’s not gonna happen. I would not even bet on them mentioning
⏹️ ▶️ Marco honestly, I honestly think it’s very unlikely that we’re gonna have anything about the Mac mentioned at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That would be extremely unlikely. I don’t think High Sierra is ready, and therefore they’re not gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco launch the Mac Pro without High Sierra, and I don’t think they’re gonna mention
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Mac Pro at all, because they have nothing new to say about it yet, because it’s too early. So yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wouldn’t expect really anything about the Mac to be mentioned at this event. A few people have predicted or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have wished for an update to AirPods, either a new version
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or a price drop or both. Or shipping them? Yeah. I think a new version and a price drop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are both incredibly unlikely to happen. I think the AirPods go unchanged
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in all ways through this holiday season and they’re going to sell a ton of them and you’re going to love them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, they’re not going to sell a ton of them. They can’t make them.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Still… for the 4K Apple TV HDR, which should
⏹️ ▶️ John go without saying, but it’s worth saying. Oh yeah. And the other thing is, uh, uh, increased
⏹️ ▶️ John frame rate output. So you have something that’s a multiple
⏹️ ▶️ John done. I think we’re done with this event. We don’t even need to watch it now.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Yeah. Thanks to our sponsors this week, betterment hover and away.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we will see you next week after the iPhone.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him,
⏹️ ▶️ John cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental. And you can find the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes at atp.fm And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter, you can follow them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco At C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss
⏹️ ▶️ Marco M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M A-N-T-Marco-Armen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s accidental They didn’t mean to
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental Accidental Tech Podcasts So
Post-show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m going through serious bike withdrawal.
⏹️ ▶️ John my god. Don’t you have like seven bikes at your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco house now? No, they’re at the Beach House.
⏹️ ▶️ John What about the one you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got for your house? I didn’t get one for my house
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yet. Oh good, now you can get another six of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them. Well, the problem is that the, uh, there’s really nowhere here to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco put bikes at all. Like, it’s going to be fairly hard to put even one bike in my
⏹️ ▶️ John garage. Don’t you have a two-car garage?
⏹️ ▶️ John has two cars in it. no room for bikes my garage barely fits my Honda Accord
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re like I was no room for bikes in my two-car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco garage well I mean I I still actually like you know we use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco our cars in and out of the garage all the time and we have other things in the garage also like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know snowblower and tools and stuff like that so it’s like it’s hard there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s not a lot of room in there oh that sounds hard if it was at all reasonable to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have multiple bikes in my garage I I would have already ordered one to tide me over until I get the one I really want,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is probably like a couple months out, so. Oh well. At least this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco money draining hobby of mine is making me marginally healthier.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it was also gonna get you hit by a car.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Because it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you know, biking on this level ground with no
⏹️ ▶️ John cars trying to kill you. Now you’re in a combat zone now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I actually have incredibly little interest in riding on the roads.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’re gonna go on the bike the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trails Yeah Like we have we have a trail very close to our house like so that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I plan to do a lot of riding on that there’s also a Much larger trail
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like on the border of our town so I have to figure out how do I either get there on a bike without
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dying on the roads or Somehow transport a bike using my car and that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John bike rack I’m sure they have bike racks for the back of your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing They do, but you have to get a tow hook installed first and getting a tow hook installed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on Model S is something that is possible to do, but is not officially supported and is kind of hard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do and you have to have like a specialty place install it and the dealers won’t do it anymore and so I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know. I started looking into it and I’m like, oh god, this sounds awful, so I stopped looking into it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the more likely approach is I’ll just throw it in the back and go alone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sometimes when I don’t have a car seat
⏹️ ▶️ John back there. Yeah, it could fit. don’t have the seats back there so you fold the seats down you should have a room back
⏹️ ▶️ John there I was gonna say a roof rack but then you need someone’s help to get it off the top of the
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m serious I think I would need someone’s help to get off the top of the car it’s not easy to like the bikes you know standing it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John skis on a ski rack where you just have to be able to reach on to the thing to get it off you be getting a big tippy bicycle up there is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tricky oh yeah cuz they stand them up they don’t lie them down right yeah oh geez yeah how do you like not hit overpasses
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and stuff I guess not that
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re not that high. Yeah, now it’ll probably fit in the back of your sort of hatchback, but not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco car. If I take out the car seat, I bet it’ll fit with the car seat in it might not because I could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then I can’t I can only do the two thirds fold down with the car seat in inside of that probably is not going to
⏹️ ▶️ John happen. But stick to your local bike trail. That’s easier way to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do it. Yeah, but but like the one that’s on the edge of town is way longer. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. Also, you the real problem is if you ever want to go on the big long one, like as a family now you got to fit three
⏹️ ▶️ John bikes and three people And now you’re into you got to call Casey with the giant truck to help you. Exactly. You
⏹️ ▶️ John couldn’t fit that. You couldn’t put that in his truck anyway, because you couldn’t get it on a roof rack and there’s no room in the tiny little trunk because it’s a stupid SUV.