246: I Just Want My Stories
02 Nov 2017iPhone X preorders and reviews, rumor mill report card, repair costs, and Casey’s ascent into video.
Episode Description:
- Follow up: F1 flappy paddles
- iPhone X preorder results
- Recent performance of the rumor mill
- Marco's iMac returns
- MacBook Pro keyboard repair cost
- Apple TV output formats
#askatp- Mac antivirus software?
- Would we use Apple OSes on any other hardware if they were theoretically compatible?
- Apple fires engineer involved in iPhone X leak (via Tim Walker)
- iPhone X reviews, and the PR strategy
- Post-show: Casey the video editor
Sponsored by:
- Casper: You can be sure of your purchase with Casper’s 100-night risk-free, sleep-on-it trial.
- Betterment: Rethink what your money can do.
- Jamf Now: Set up and protect your Apple devices at work, from anywhere. First 3 devices are free.
Chapters
- Follow-up: Neutral
- iPhone X orders
- Rumor report card
- iPhone X orders (reprise)
- Sponsor: Jamf Now
- iMac returns home
- Repair costs
- Sponsor: Casper (code ATP)
- Apple TV dynamic video
- #askatp: Mac antivirus
- #askatp: Non-Apple hardware
- #askatp: Fired Apple engineer 🖼️
- Sponsor: Betterment
- iPhone X PR strategy
- iPhone X first looks
- Ending theme
- Post-show: Casey’s video 🖼️
Follow-up: Neutral
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh god, I can’t imagine having to put a key in a steering column. Oh gross.
⏹️ ▶️ John an animal. It’s fun. Twisting the key is fun. Yeah. Oh, John, how do you live, man?
⏹️ ▶️ John Get in, foot down on the clutch, foot on the brake, twist the key. That motion is still, you know, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a thing. You know what’s even better than that? Get in, push the gas. Yeah, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John sure Tiff loves it when you just get out of her car and leave it rolling down the driveway.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco With the engine running.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Running and unlocked. Unlocked.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah. Running
⏹️ ▶️ John unlocked. All the windows open, air conditioning on, radio blaring.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The sick thing is you’re probably serious. I bet this has happened at least once.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have not left it in gear rolling, but I have left his car running and unlocked.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh man, you’re so spoiled. All right, so let’s start the show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and we’ll start with some neutral follow-up. up. Apparently, people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pay attention to racing cars and people pay attention to Formula One. I’m not really clear why.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apparently, please, please write Marco. Apparently, pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much every racing car has its paddles on the wheel. I was lamenting last week that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Alfa Romeo had its paddles on the column, which I’ve heard other like car reviewers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and people like that say, oh, it always has to be on the column. But I don’t really understand why? Because I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t like it that way. And I, and I had at the same time, a BMW loaner and F30
⏹️ ▶️ Casey loaner, and that had the paddles on the, on the wheel. And I much preferred that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyway, so a lot of people wrote in to say pretty much every racing car has the paddles on the wheel.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You are right. That’s where it should be. And somebody, and I don’t, I don’t remember who this was. I apologize,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but somebody said to me, and this is just a theory, but I mean, it makes sense to me. Maybe it’s less of a big deal
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for race car drivers because their wheels don’t typically do like an entire revolution. If you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think about it, they’re typically, you know, doing maybe a 30 or 60 or maybe a 90 degree turn. But, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would assume not often not much more than that. If I’m wrong, I don’t really care. I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just just a thought exercise. So no big deal. But I just thought I’d cover that really quickly.
⏹️ ▶️ John the responses related to this were due to me musing about what F1 cars might be and knowing nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John about F1. And I had a brain fart there. That was my bad. I was like, oh, F1 cars, they don’t even use paddles
⏹️ ▶️ John because they got all those buttons on the steering wheel. And while there is very often a button to shift into neutral,
⏹️ ▶️ John they still use paddles for everything. So never mind on that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I did have to give the Alfa Romeo back. I was very, very sad. It pulled away and I wept.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Not really, but I was sad. And now I’m back to my BMW, life is rough I tell
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you, God I sound like such an intolerable piece of crap.
iPhone X orders
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, let’s don’t actually it’s getting no better as it turns out. Let’s talk about our iPhone orders and our thousand dollar
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phones. I quit. This is just going nowhere. Good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think one of the biggest things that we have learned in this entire iPhone 10
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cycle is that the rumor mill is completely full of shit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now. Like it’s complete bullshit. All of it. It turned out so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much of it was complete bullshit.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when we were and we were complicit or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco at least I’ll speak
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was complicit in it because I was I was probably the most worried of the three of us about not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey getting a phone until 2020 and I was freaking out about it for no reason. Well, as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well as it turns out spoiler alert
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco no reason but But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, I was just as deep in this as anyone else if not more so and I don’t know I was trying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to like Do a retrospective which is a word that you don’t really understand Marco, but John will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was trying to have my own little one-man retro meeting.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco believe it’s called a post-mortem in the parking lot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, exactly, right. Yeah, so you do know So anyway, so I was I was tossing things into the parking lot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as I was as I was having my one-person retro And I don’t really know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Specifically where this notion came from. I mean I was one of the ones parroting it. So I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guilty I am a hundred and fifty percent guilty, but where did we all get it in our brains?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is not just the three of us. This is the royal us. Where did all the talking heads get it in their brains
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that It was going to be this bad. Like where did this come
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John from? I mean
⏹️ ▶️ John the phone the phone is supply constrained and people had guesses about how many they were going to make and there were lots of
⏹️ ▶️ John Stories about part shortages. So that’s that’s what it was It was basically like oh They can’t make enough of those 3d dot thingies
⏹️ ▶️ John and supposedly they lowered their standards for the dot thing used to make more of them But then Apple said no we didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do that. That’s BS. I mean at this point point, the past few cycles, you have to imagine that a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of those stories about Apple’s manufacturing problems and blah, blah, blah are
⏹️ ▶️ John things motivated or not planted by competitors, but
⏹️ ▶️ John like that they’re they’re motivated stories that somebody wants to put that information out there
⏹️ ▶️ John to sow doubt into Apple situation. Now, they you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John they don’t have enough iPhone tends to go around just like they don’t have enough of any, they don’t have enough iPhone,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, sevens to go around, certainly another jet black, there’s always shortages, right? It’s very difficult
⏹️ ▶️ John to tell until Apple starts reporting numbers, exactly how big the shortage was. But last show,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, you know, we were talking about was, will we be able to get our phones forget about how many Apple sells
⏹️ ▶️ John and so on and so forth. Oh, we did touch on that briefly. And but everything was just estimates like that one
⏹️ ▶️ John newspaper, whatever said, they it looks like they’re gonna have four times fewer phones
⏹️ ▶️ John as in previous years. we’ll find out when Apple reports how many iPhones did they sell between launch
⏹️ ▶️ John and the end of the year. Although they have a fiscal year, I don’t know how this all works. But anyway, we’ll find out.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it could be that the numbers are dead on really, they sold one fourth as many as they did last
⏹️ ▶️ John year. But that’s not what we’re talking about. What we’re talking about here is we were all staying up to 3am
⏹️ ▶️ John to order phones. And some of us were very, very pessimistic about getting a phone anytime soon.
⏹️ ▶️ John So how did it go for everybody, assuming we all stayed up.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it’s pretty safe to say that Marco and I did. And since I’ve got the mic, I will say that I stayed up.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey My experience was slightly worse than the watch than the LTE watch. My experience
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the LTE watch was stunningly good. It was the Apple Store app was live at 301 or something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that I was in and out in no time. In this in this instance, it was typical
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple, which is to say five to 10 minutes late. Now in the defense of Apple, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s a aggregation issue or something to do with CDNs. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now outside of my comfort zone, but one way or another, it was like 3.05-ish that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everything woke up. I did use the Apple Store app, and surprisingly, I heard a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fair bit of reports from Twitter and whatnot that the Apple Store app was not the pretty much flawless
⏹️ ▶️ Casey experience for everyone that it had been for the last few years. I had a few people say that they actually had better
⏹️ ▶️ Casey luck on the website, which is stunning because anytime I’ve tried that, it’s been a disaster. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about 3.05, I ordered my phone, and then I rolled over and ordered
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Aaron’s phone and got both of them, and they should be here Friday. So it worked out
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really, really well for me to a degree that I did not expect. I did choose to ship
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to home. I was thinking about doing a store pickup, which I’ve never done before,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I know would get me my phone earlier in the day because typically, UPS doesn’t get to us until like five or six at night on iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey day, but I was scared that just going through that whole process, especially when I’m unfamiliar with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, would slow me down too much and I would lose my chance. So, both of them will be delivered to the house
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sometime Friday. So, I’m working from home Friday, if you happen to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco be listening to this from my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey job. I will be here at the house making sure that I know. I’m sick.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I mean, everyone knows exactly what’s happening. Marco, how did it fare for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you? Pretty similar. I used the app. As usual, the app didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco come up for me until like 3.05 or 3.06. I was in some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slacks where some people were already completing their entire orders and reporting back what their dates were when they completed their order before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my store was even up. But that happens all the time. The Apple ordering process
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the iPhones has gotten really, really good with just that one exception.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The only part about it that really feels unfair is that there’s a huge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco variance in when people’s stores come up, and it could be like 15 minutes apart.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a big variance. And so some people said they saw the store at 2.58,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and some people didn’t see the store until 3.10. It’s a huge range. Usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I fall on the worst side of this range. Usually for me, it’s somewhere around five
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or six minutes after the hour. And you can try alternating between cellular and Wi-Fi
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be on different networks. Some people suggested even trying a VPN. I didn’t get that far into it. I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think about it at three in the morning, surprisingly. But it just seems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it’s a total crapshoot when your store will come up. And that makes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a pretty big difference in whether you get one on day one or not, usually. If yours comes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up at 307, you’re probably not getting day one delivery on most high
⏹️ ▶️ Marco profile projects and products. The same thing happened with the watch. Any kind of high profile
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 3AM Apple launch, usually this is a problem. Jet Black phones, same problem. The whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rest of the system feels very good and very fair, and it has dramatically improved over the last few years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s just that one piece that feels, if you’re on the bad end of that, it feels like you’re getting screwed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for no reason. I hope Apple can figure out a way to improve that. I’ve never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco done anything on their scale before, but I have done high-scale things. It is possible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make everything go up at almost exactly the same time. That is a thing that can happen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the Internet. It’s not easy, but it’s possible. If they prioritize that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe they don’t realize how annoying this is, but I hope someone I hope whoever at Apple cares a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot about these things, about getting these right, about building into systems like the thing where if it can’t contact
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the carrier it like reserves it for you and emails you again like tomorrow like a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thought has gone into that system and for the most part it’s great and there’s just this one big glaring problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with it that I hope they can figure out a way to fix or at least at least reduce that variance in CDN availability
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that like maybe everyone’s store comes up in the same one minute instead of the same 15 minutes that’s the only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing about the system that feels unfair a lot of it’s competitive, a lot of it’s cutthroat, but all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it feels fair, except that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I would agree with that. I can’t think of any particular way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that they could do better with it. I mean, I guess maybe a lottery,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I think just like we lamented when WWDC went to a lottery,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think there’s something to be said for having the dedication to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wake up at 3 in the morning if you’re on the East Coast to actually ensure that you get one, you know, initially.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In the same way, WWDC rewarded the people who had like seven different notification
⏹️ ▶️ Casey strategies in order to know when tickets went on sale. And maybe a more fair
⏹️ ▶️ Casey answer would be a lottery, but if not that, I think you’re right, that this is as fair as it can get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the CDN propagation issues notwithstanding.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the thing is, like a lottery, like a few people have suggested that. I think it’s such a more complicated thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than WBDC tickets. First of all, you’re talking about allocating 5,000 conference
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tickets versus 10 million phones. There’s a pretty big difference
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And of course, the phones are tied to carrier things and have to be checked out with carriers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The phones are way more complicated than WBDC and there’s way more of them. So the same system doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco necessarily apply. Again, I think the system they have, I agree with you. I think it’s fine. They just need to fix that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one thing. Anyway, so all that being said, I did wake up at three in the morning, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did place an order successfully for my iPhone X on day one delivery. I didn’t do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco store pickup, just a delivery. Store pickup is fine, but you still have to wait in such a long
⏹️ ▶️ Marco line for pickup on day one. Like if you’re not day one, and you do pick up at the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco store, it’s much faster. You know, there’s basically no line or a very short one. But on day one, you’re waiting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on line just like everyone else. You’re just waiting on like a different roped off section of the line. if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have reservation, but you’re still gonna be there for like two hours, you know, so.
Rumor report card
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m looking forward to it. Anyway, just to conclude the rumor mill thing before we leave this topic, in general, the rumor mill
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has gotten so much wrong since about a year ago or so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when there was a rumor going around that one of Mark Gurman’s big sources was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like escorted out of campus very publicly. I don’t know if that was true or not,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it certainly does seem like there’s not a lot of leaks out of Apple anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And by far, the most credible information we got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the iPhone 10 leaked out of Apple itself, you know, in their two software leaks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It didn’t leak out of anywhere else. Like, the rumor mill was basically,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, empty. All they were doing for the most part was reporting on what Apple accidentally leaked.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Almost everything else they reported ended up being BS. Like, now, you know, as we’re getting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more information about the phone, people are using the phone, we’re hearing more from Apple executives, like, on-the-record stories and stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it certainly seems like the entire like Touch ID under the glass thing was completely false. There are now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco multiple Apple executives directly stating that in interviews and I’m inclined to believe them. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think they would lie about that kind of thing. I think it wouldn’t serve them at all to lie about that. We’re now hearing things like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Face ID having issues and everything. Those are probably BS too. The component thing and having adjustments,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple directly called that out and denied it which they never do for things like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s unprecedented for the most part. So that also I’m inclined to believe because they so rarely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever comment on things like that publicly. So that was probably BS. It seems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like anything that was about supply being super short was probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco BS too. Because here’s the thing, right now, everyone, us,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other podcasters, tech podcasters, the rumor sites, we were all expecting this to be a massive backorder
⏹️ ▶️ Marco situation. We were saying on the show, 2018 isn’t that far away. We
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were all saying we would be lucky to get it, waking up at 3 a.m.,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’d be lucky to get it by December. And then it won’t be too long before it’s 2018. Well, guess
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what? Right now, today, as we record almost a week later, the latest estimates
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say five to six weeks. That’s mid-December. A week later, you can still order it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and have it come this year, because then this year’s almost over. So that’s pretty good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So one of two things is true. Either there is way less demand for this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone than anybody thought, which I think is pretty unlikely. Or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of those reports about there being incredibly short supplies and everything are wrong. So that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just adds even more to the pile of rumors that were wrong about the iPhone X.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like we heard so many. Everything about the software we heard was wrong. Like everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the home indicator situation, the home gesture, that was all wrong. Like, we heard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much wrong stuff about the iPhone X that really this is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this has been a bad year for the Apple Rumor Game and in some ways it’s kind of like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Good Riddance, it was getting a little bit too good. It was getting, it was starting to get like a little too spoilery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a lot of the new products. You know, I’m saying this here not only to call
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them out, but also to kind of help the world help me remind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco myself when I get caught up in talking about these rumors? Because I too, like you said Casey, I too have been totally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco complicit in discussing these rumors as if they were almost a sure thing or if they were a sure thing because for so long
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the rumors were that good. Like for so long in like the heyday of Mark Gurman like two years ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they actually like they were getting every detail of every product. Like they were nailing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much before the release. It was actually really unfun.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was like It was kind of fun to be a commentator, but it was unfun to watch the events and just see them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unveil the things that you already knew about two months ago in great detail, no less. But we all,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of us commentators and Apple fans and readers of these sites and followers of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Apple News, we all have to now readjust from that time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That now we have to probably assume that most of the rumors that we’re hearing are wrong,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rather than assuming that they’re right and then figuring out later that some of them are wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ John Let me do the opposite of helping you, Marco, and
⏹️ ▶️ John once again that I generally disagree with your assessment that the room rail was off. Before
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s leaks, we knew all screen OLED phone
⏹️ ▶️ John with Face ID. Face ID leaked so early before any software
⏹️ ▶️ John leaks. And yes, there were tons of reports about details that were wrong. And yes, Apple’s exec
⏹️ ▶️ John said, you know, we committed to Face ID and we never really spent any time trying to do under the screen or
⏹️ ▶️ John side things and stuff like that. You know, that’s all well and good, right? But there’s always a certain amount of noise. So even
⏹️ ▶️ John before Apple software leaks, which were massive and gave us huge amounts of totally verified
⏹️ ▶️ John realsy real information, even before that, we knew almost everything about this phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John What it looked like, the shape, the size down to the millimeter, the orientation of the cameras, how many cameras there would be,
⏹️ ▶️ John the fact that it would be all screen, the fact that the screen was OLED, the fact that it would detect your face and that’s how you would unlock it. Everything
⏹️ ▶️ John else is details. I think that still for these phone products, it is impossible so
⏹️ ▶️ John far for Apple to actually keep anything like this secret. There was a lot of BS and misinformation,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially the stories. And we said this at the time we were discussing them, where they’re like Apple’s considering
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you know, using whether it’s going to have face ID under the it was like a month before or it was
⏹️ ▶️ John a touch ID on the screen. It was like a month before the intro announcement. It’s like they’re like displaced in
⏹️ ▶️ John time where maybe this was true a year and a half ago, and we’re just hearing about it now. but always the
⏹️ ▶️ John rumors, especially on a lot of the rumor sites are phrases if it’s happening now
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s nonsensical. Like, I mean, who is it? Dan is his name? Dan Riccio? What? I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know how to pronounce his name. Something like that. I’m pretty sure you’re right on the Dan part. It’s Riccio, I think. Yeah. Some,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. One of Apple’s people was in a press thing and they said, he said that they had locked the design
⏹️ ▶️ John for the iPhone 10 in November. That’s November of last year, right? Not, not,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco not now. November 1st. Not today.
⏹️ ▶️ John locked it a year ago, right? And yet there were rumor stories like two months ago that Apple’s debating what
⏹️ ▶️ John it should do with face ID versus touch ID under the screen. And like, No, what do you know? They’re not like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, that was that we knew those were bs at the time. But I still think that the combination of
⏹️ ▶️ John the rumor mill knowing so much about this phone before any leaks, and then the leaks, basically
⏹️ ▶️ John putting highlighter over the details that are right, and sort of xing out the ones that are wrong,
⏹️ ▶️ John means that we still more or less knew what was getting introduced. And I don’t you know, one way I kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ John being surprised, but also kind of like hearing details so I can go either way. But just because the
⏹️ ▶️ John rumors, especially motivated rumors like Oh, Apple’s having manufacturing problems, oh, fear, uncertainty and doubt,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially since things like that. There’s reasons for them to exist. And they’re gonna be wrong awareness. Oh, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think that’s that big of a deal. I don’t know, I’m, I’m not adjusting
⏹️ ▶️ John my attitude towards rumors, because I don’t mind that a bunch of BS noise mixed in with the real information.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I still think there’s a ton more real information than we used to have about things because there’s Apple makes
⏹️ ▶️ John too many of these phones. The supply chain is too leaky. And we’re just going to have to accept that
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re more or less going to know what the next phone is going to be like. And that all we have to worry about are the
⏹️ ▶️ John details. And then it’s sometimes like a few weeks before intro Apple tells us all the details accidentally by releasing
⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of software.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, you know, we did hear a lot of rumors that ended up being true, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the rumor mill, the challenge is always knowing what parts of this are actually likely to be real or not.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And usually, during the really good days of the rumor mills, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two years ago, you could be sure almost everything they said was actually true. But until
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s software leaks, we didn’t know whether the products
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be possibility ABC or D or many of the details but we knew exactly what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would look like we well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John not really I mean I
⏹️ ▶️ John go I save some of the images of like like down to the millimeter you
⏹️ ▶️ John know when people were selling cases for it we knew what this thing would look like there was still questions like I can’t tell this touch
⏹️ ▶️ John ID to that screen can you right and same with the face ID like that rumor was really long it took
⏹️ ▶️ John a really long time of coming but didn’t really get confirmed until much later.
⏹️ ▶️ John But what I’m saying is like, you know, is this the next iPhone and they’d show you some 3d render?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that was that was the next iPhone. And we knew it a long, long time ago, will it recognize your face? That was the
⏹️ ▶️ John only credible rumor we had other than various other places to put touch ID. And so that was the only debate. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, Oh, surely it’ll do the face thing. But is it gonna have touch ID at all anymore under the screen on the back?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like that was a question. But we knew like, the face ID would be there. So I feel like we
⏹️ ▶️ John had a really good picture of this phone. And it all turned out to be correct. And the details that
⏹️ ▶️ John turned out to be wrong, were interesting, especially when we were discussing, you know, touch ID in the back. And
⏹️ ▶️ John the best one was the, the game of telephone rumor about touch ID being on the home button. Do you remember that rumor? Mm hmm.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. And that that’s explicable. Now you see how it works, like because you have to double tap the the power button
⏹️ ▶️ John to make Apple Pay work. And it puts a little highlight anything over it. Right. So somebody
⏹️ ▶️ John like in this game of telephone knew about that and you know, through seven different people,
⏹️ ▶️ John it becomes something touch ID in the power button, which never really made any sense because it’s not big enough. But anyway, even
⏹️ ▶️ John things like that I love seeing after the fact. Oh, that’s that’s what they were confused about. There was never
⏹️ ▶️ John a touch ID in the power button, but somebody knew that piece of information. And it got like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John lost in translation. And then all of a sudden, this rumor came out of it. So I think that’s just par for the course of rumors.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. I feel like the rumor mill was so sketchy. And then around the time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the lost iPhone four, I think sources got really good. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the last year or so, like I think Marco had said, uh, sources have been.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Not as good because I feel like we knew before, even without software,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey software releases, we knew exactly what the stuff would look like, like to the pixel, so to speak. I understand that’s a terrible analogy,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but, uh, now if it wasn’t for software releases. We know we know the broad strokes. You’re right, John.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I don’t think without the HomePod debacle, we would have known
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as specifically as we have in prior years. But I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know. I don’t think it’s broad strokes. Like we didn’t have if it wasn’t for that phone left in a bar, we wouldn’t have known
⏹️ ▶️ John exactly what the iPhone four looked like until somebody found one. But we knew exactly what the iPhone 10 would look
⏹️ ▶️ John like maybe some service details we didn’t know. I feel like the iPhone eight, we didn’t have any really good
⏹️ ▶️ John grasp on service details maybe but when you have millimeter perfect
⏹️ ▶️ John you know measured drawings of the phone months ahead of time that turn out to be 100% accurate
⏹️ ▶️ John so I hear that people could build cases based on them that is unprecedented we didn’t have that for the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John 3gs for the iPhone 4 like back then you know being left in a bar was the only way we were gonna get that kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but like that but there are so many there’s so much noise you said John like I feel like part of the Apple rumor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco game is always trying to figure out like you know what what if this will actually because like everybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who you know floats their head near Apple or is a is a you know friend of a nephew
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a supplier or something like everybody who was anywhere near Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can leak something about what they think they might be working on because they had one part made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or they heard from a friend of a friend of a friend who works at a factory or you know something like that there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always something about like or even you know people on campus who leak you know people inside inside the company, they can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco leak about things that they’ve seen or heard about around campus. But none of that has a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco strong correlation to what actually gets released and how things actually ship and what the final version of things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually look like or do or work. So the challenge of the rumor mill has always been,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay, you have all this information, ten percent of it is true, but you don’t know what ten percent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco until the event, right? And that part has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reverted back to as bad as it used to be. That part was better two years ago and that part
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is now back to where it was ten years ago and which is basically all over the place and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not that useful. So that’s what I’m saying. It’s not that we won’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seen many of the details ahead of time, but we won’t know which of the details we’ve seen are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco true and which will ship. That’s the kind of thing that used to leak a lot better than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it does now and that’s what I’m very happy about now. But again, that’s also what I need to now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I need to now adjust myself to by default disbelieve rumor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sites rather than by default believing them the way I’ve been doing the last two years.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if you want to change your defaults, but maybe just make it a setting.
⏹️ ▶️ John And on this front, I think the iPhone 10 was actually a tricky case too, because
⏹️ ▶️ John so much was changing. We knew so much was changing with the iPhone 10. So with so much up for grabs, there’s less sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John bedrock that you can, you know, say, Well, it’s an iPhone and these two minor things change.
⏹️ ▶️ John Once you get rid of all the stuff on the front and make it all screen. There are many possibilities with how that
⏹️ ▶️ John can go, especially before the software leaks. It was that’s why it was I did like, well, what happened to touch ID? Where does it go? It’s on your
⏹️ ▶️ John screen? Is it on the back? Is it on the power button? Like, you know, because more things were up
⏹️ ▶️ John for grabs. If this pretend that 10 doesn’t exist, and this is just the eight, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John there wouldn’t have been a weird rumor about touch ID being in the power button on the eight because they’d like we’ll touch it
⏹️ ▶️ John is where it always is like look there’s the phone like there you know only a few things are changing so
⏹️ ▶️ John the bigger the break from the past the more possibility is for random
⏹️ ▶️ John guesses and rumors and misheard things because just so much more seems possible right so you’ve entertained it
⏹️ ▶️ John as as a possibility because you know who knows what they’ll do and then of course the software leaks sort of you know refine
⏹️ ▶️ John that all that well we’ll say next it was presumably next phone they will not have a catastrophic
⏹️ ▶️ John software leak like this and we’ll we’ll get to play the game all the way up to the end where we’ll have, you know, it will be
⏹️ ▶️ John more constrained. I bet there won’t be such, you know, the one after the 10 is not going to be as a radical departure
⏹️ ▶️ John as the 10 is from the seven, right? And we’ll have a bunch of different competing theories and
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll see how we do on them. But it still seems like, you know, a couple of months before
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone time next year, we will have measured drawings of exactly what the phone will look like. Maybe we won’t know the exact colors
⏹️ ▶️ John and names, though. So get that going for us.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All we know is that it’ll be a new shade of space gray.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, will they ever run out? They should just line them up and see, you know, when do they have to go from
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you know, 8-bit color to 16-bit color to contain all contain all the space grays.
iPhone X orders (reprise)
⏹️ ▶️ John All this is to say let me tell you about my iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was just about to
⏹️ ▶️ John ask So I The first time I ever did this Getting a phone for my wife We both
⏹️ ▶️ John ended up waking up because really when one person wakes up like look everyone’s gonna be up. I
⏹️ ▶️ John Was very unlucky in the CDN lottery. The store did not come up for with me for me
⏹️ ▶️ John For like 10 or 12 minutes What I eventually got through on first
⏹️ ▶️ John was actually the website So I’m about the category of one of the people where I’m furiously forced quitting and
⏹️ ▶️ John relaunching the app on You know on Wi-Fi and LTE did not let me get to
⏹️ ▶️ John it I got it first in the website, but because my wife was also doing this on multiple devices
⏹️ ▶️ John She was doing it on her Mac and her phone Before I went through the auto process right up to the end because I knew
⏹️ ▶️ John what she wanted But before I hit the button about that point I had walked downstairs and wanted to check Are you
⏹️ ▶️ John are you in the same process turns out she was she was right at the buy step as well So I didn’t actually pull the trigger on my by
⏹️ ▶️ John she pulled the trigger on hers two to three weeks That’s when my ship date is so I did not
⏹️ ▶️ John get day one. I was unlucky in the unintentional CDN lottery
⏹️ ▶️ John But two or three weeks is not that bad You know She was she was happy with it because she was also worried that it would be a really long time and she didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John want to Wait a really long time because he’s kind of getting sick of her phone. So two or three weeks is acceptable to her.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh Yeah, I forgot. Yeah, she got the big one and we did a Verizon and they did the thing where it’s like like, we’re having trouble
⏹️ ▶️ John contacting your carrier, which is a vast improvement. I tweeted, you know, I tweeted
⏹️ ▶️ John that might have seemed like snark, but wasn’t. And I called it progress. This is progress. This is better than it was before. It’s still sad that
⏹️ ▶️ John they, you know, the carrier suck and they can’t make this work, but at least it doesn’t stop the process. But there
⏹️ ▶️ John was, you know, a good 24 hours of fretting because you go through the process and
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, ah, well I could contact the carrier, but don’t worry, your phone is reserved and you go to bed at 3.30
⏹️ ▶️ John thinking everything’s fine, right? But then the next day you start to worry as everyone else says, look at
⏹️ ▶️ John my order, look at my ship date, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you have nothing. You just have a screen that you saw
⏹️ ▶️ John last night at 3.30 in the morning that said you had a phone but there’s no proof that even happened, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And you have an email that says, oh, we’ll contact you when it’s time for you to complete your order,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? But then you’re just waiting for an email. It’s like, so when are you going to email me and tell me I can complete my order? you start worrying,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re going to email me and tell me I can complete my order. And that’s going to count as my order time like that I didn’t reserve a spot in line at 3am.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s really just going to be when I get the email, especially since they say you’ll have 24 hours to complete your order. So there’s a little bit of time pressure.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it was a really long time like everybody else had gotten their orders and they got their dates and everything. We
⏹️ ▶️ John still hadn’t received the email. But finally, towards the end of the day, the next day, got an email completed the
⏹️ ▶️ John order. And that’s when we saw the two to three week thing. So that’s not the best system.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a little bit nerve wracking, I would like it if I could actually go through the process and give them their money
⏹️ ▶️ John and complete the order and just say, just settle up, figure it out with Verizon later. Because obviously already reserving me a spot,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t see why I have to be involved with the time delayed retry, right? Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John can do that on their end. So that was a little bit nerve wracking, but it all came out well in the end.
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iMac returns home
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey So tell me about your iMac. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back. So here’s what happened. So you know the Genius Bar or Grove
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or Forest or whatever had it for a little less than a week.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In a little less than a week, they replaced the panel. it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, and then the very last day, somebody called me to ask if they could format my hard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco drive. Even though I told them when I dropped it off, yes, I have everything backed up, you can you can replace it or format it if you need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to. They said they needed to format my hard drive because there were some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bad data on the platters. By the way, this is an SSD only iMac.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There were some bad data on my platters and that was causing my GPU overheating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco issue and that they had to reformat the hard drive to get rid of the bad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco blocks on my platters. And so I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was just like, really? Like you explain that a little bit more? And every explanation I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got was worse than the last one. And I didn’t pull like the I’m a nerd card.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t tell them how wrong they were.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why did you bother pressing them on that? Did you think there was a real explanation hiding
⏹️ ▶️ John under there? and you just want to hear them squirm as
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco way. Well and I was trying to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I was like I was like how can that affect the GPU and and there and okay I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco said GPU every single time I talked about this fan every time like look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the GPU runs too hot I monitor I can’t tell you the temperature like it runs too hot then the fan
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spins up well it’s doing almost nothing okay the GPU and I kept I said it when I dropped
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it off I said it when they were doing testing, I said it everywhere. Every single time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they said it back to me, they said, oh, this is why your fan’s running hot. I’m like, no, no, no,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s more detailed than that. Trust me, I’m trying to help you figure this out. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nope, they didn’t hear it. So, you know, look, I had a mediocre experience, right? The people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were very nice. They didn’t fix any of my problems except for the screen. Oh, and now I have a hot green pixel in the middle of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the screen. So, you know, I’m not gonna have them touch it again. This is why I don’t,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whenever people, whenever I complain about a problem with hardware I have, and people are like, why don’t you just bring it in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for repair? This is why, because it doesn’t usually get the problems fixed. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sometimes if it’s easy, like when I had a bad lightning port on my phone, that was easy. They swapped it out,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco done, great experience. But when it’s like a nuanced issue with a desktop computer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had to haul it there, go without a desktop for a week, get it back, put all my data
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back on, they formatted the drive for no reason. Fan still runs too fast when the GPU runs hot for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no apparent reason. It wasn’t bad data on my platters in my SSD. Surprise,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco surprise. And so you know, I appreciate that they tried. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is why I don’t do this. Usually,
⏹️ ▶️ John I usually take the opposite approach where I feel like once the seal is broken, once I’ve gone to and from the store once,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m going to continue to go back until as John Roddick would say, I get satisfaction. That’s why I
⏹️ ▶️ John my Thunderbolt display back three times so if I if I they replaced the screen and it came back with a hot green sub pixel
⏹️ ▶️ John that would go back immediately just for the screen because like look I’ve gone through this hassle to get the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m gonna keep going through it until I get a perfect screen back unless there’s some policy about them not doing it but I don’t know I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know the deals but I would try right and my attempt to explain the erasing of
⏹️ ▶️ John the disc like maybe like the the the cutting the ends off the roast
⏹️ ▶️ John reason behind this poor person trying to explain to you why they want to erase your hard drive. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John I have had many times in the past problems that make the computer do weird stuff that have to do
⏹️ ▶️ John with like corrupted libraries somewhere. Right. So like some, some sort of file on disc does not
⏹️ ▶️ John check some correctly. It has the wrong data in it. It is who knows why like HFS plus errors, uh, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John could actually be a hardware related failure. Who knows? Um, and you say like, well, how, why would
⏹️ ▶️ John that manifest, uh, in the GPU getting hot? There’s enough tiny little things all over
⏹️ ▶️ John the place loadable pieces of code and various library files and stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John that it’s possible that one of them could be loaded and
⏹️ ▶️ John Only a certain code path hits the corrupted part and that causes it to crash and then it immediately Relaunches and that happens
⏹️ ▶️ John over and over and over again and that causes some subsystem to work harder than it should because it’s basically
⏹️ ▶️ John you know probabilistically constantly crashing depending on when the code path that hits the corrupted part
⏹️ ▶️ John of the library is hit and you don’t see that and except maybe in a console line somewhere if you’re lucky
⏹️ ▶️ John and that would cause temperature go up so that’s my most charitable interpretation of why there might be a legit reason for them to erase
⏹️ ▶️ John your disk although that’s why a lot of people say I did a combo updater and it fixed everything like just reinstalling
⏹️ ▶️ John the OS often fixes it too because it’ll replace that library with the correct version of it again stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John like that has happened it probably doesn’t explain a temperature specific thing I would expect to see more
⏹️ ▶️ John crashes or whatever but I’ll bet that that issues like that are one of the reasons why they routinely want to
⏹️ ▶️ John erase your drive just to reduce the number of variables essentially like they should have just said we don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John but we’re out of ideas and this is always the last thing to try and sometimes it fixes it so it’s worthwhile.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so they did it.
Repair costs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, so we had somebody write in who is an anonymous AppleCare advisor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and they said that they were servicing a 2017 MacBook Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 13-inch for a space bar that stopped functioning. AppleCare had determined the issue was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey related to accidental damage and therefore was not covered under warranty. They held their MacBook Pro for a re-quote price
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of $475. Holy smokes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Although the customer disputes prying the key off in an effort to fix the issue herself, I don’t doubt that she probably did. The
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point is, our customers would have no reason to try and perform surgery on their brand new laptops with their car keys
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if the keyboards worked reliably in the first place. $500 to fix this keyboard? That is bananas.
⏹️ ▶️ John thought this was a good story because it shows just how things can go wrong. Thus far, we’ve been talking about it like, oh, we don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John really know what the reliability issue is, but these things are all still under warranty and eventually they won’t be and it will be worse. this
⏹️ ▶️ John is, you know, this is example of good Apple customer service in the end, but
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of a trap for customers. Like, if this happens to you, you get a new laptop and
⏹️ ▶️ John the spacebar stops working, and you decide to try to pry the key cap off. Now, maybe you’re just frustrated, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re impatient, maybe you don’t want to while it bother taking the store, maybe you’ve pried the key caps off past Apple laptops and
⏹️ ▶️ John have fixed it yourself by blowing stuff out or whatever. But either way, if you do this,
⏹️ ▶️ John and like and you know, and when you do with these new keyboards, there’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John no way to get it back on successfully. Like you’re doomed. Prying off the keycaps is not a thing you should do. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John even a thing that Apple repair centers do. That’s why they have to replace the whole top of your computer, right? If you
⏹️ ▶️ John do that and then bring it into the Apple store, they’re going to say, well, I
⏹️ ▶️ John see your problem. You pried off your space bar and that’s not covered under warranty because
⏹️ ▶️ John you essentially damaged your own computer. And if you said, no, no, no, I’ve only pried it off because before
⏹️ ▶️ John the spacebar wasn’t working, you know, by the letter of the of the Apple Apple care laws
⏹️ ▶️ John like no, if you pry the key, if you try to repair your own computer and mess it up,
⏹️ ▶️ John we don’t pay for that. Now, you know, the reason this is good Apple customer services that
⏹️ ▶️ John the person involved was, you know, able to make an exception and override the repair center or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John like the genius understands like the only reason you probably is off because it was broken. I don’t think you’re sitting around deciding to pry off your key caps
⏹️ ▶️ John for the hell of it, right? And so they did the right thing and are letting this get repaired under warranty. But
⏹️ ▶️ John when the warranty runs out, like, we just wait for the first person to have a stuck key, and
⏹️ ▶️ John exactly the time of the warranty runs out and realize stuck key equals $475. And
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s going to be a very, very sad person who is a person who will probably start considering how convenient
⏹️ ▶️ John it might be to use their laptop without ever touching the keyboard. Maybe they are in the market for a new Mac Mini.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t remember which show it was I heard this on, but did you hear that repairing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the back glass on an iPhone X is something like $500? Yeah, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it’s like a full replacement cost basically. So yeah, it’s like over $500. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco notice AppleCare costs $200 now on the iPhone X. I forgot
⏹️ ▶️ John ask, did you guys all get AppleCare?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did not. Oh, living dangerously. I buy it for Tiff’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because she wants the peace of mind of knowing that, and she does drop her phone occasionally. We do have cases, we have yet to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco break one, but still for hers we wanted to buy it because that makes her feel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better. For mine, I never have. And my policy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has been, you know, because now AppleCare is like, I think it’s like 130 or 140-ish for the regular iPhone 8s,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then for the iPhone X it’s 200. My thinking here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, the first time I have to have a very expensive repair, I will reconsider
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my policy of having not spent $200 every year up until that point. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco until that happens, and unless that happens, I’m going to keep not spending $200 to protect the phone that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t necessarily need to be protected. And we’ll, you know, we’ll let it ride from there. I’m the kind of person who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t really drop my stuff. Like all I’ve never dropped gadgets before. Like, I think I’ve dropped
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a phone in the total of time that I’ve had iPhones the entire last 10
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years. I think I’ve dropped it maybe twice. And neither time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was significantly damaged. So I hope I don’t need it. And if I start needing it, then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll eat that first repair as a life lesson and I’ll start getting it then. Until that happens, I’m saving 200 bucks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I did get AppleCare Plus on my iPhone 7. And if you recall,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I dropped it when I was running with it because I’m an idiot and that was my first iPhone casualty.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have also developed a deep scratch in the screen. Since that happened, I have no earthly idea how. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the good news is if I get this repaired a second time, the AppleCare will have paid for itself. But this is the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey first phone I’ve run in a long time without a case, and $200 on top of $1,200 or whatever I paid is a lot of money.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I have a leather case that will be a few days late behind my phone because I just ordered
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it today. And I think I’m going to go back to having a leather case and hopefully not destroying my phone.
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, it is all coming up Milhouse with regard to the Apple TV. Tell us about this.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so a bunch of announce essentially announcements from Apple because they have videos,
⏹️ ▶️ John these strange sort of out of time, not a WWDC, but very much like WWDC videos
⏹️ ▶️ John explaining some of the new API’s in tvos 11.2, which is not yet released,
⏹️ ▶️ John but presumably will be in beta soon. So the very first thing I did was went out to my Apple TV
⏹️ ▶️ John and turned on beta software updates, which is a thing that you can do if you sign up for the beta program, you get a menu
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that says in the software update thing, do you want to also consider beta updates? I said yes. And I said, please
⏹️ ▶️ John update me. And it did an update. But then when I rebooted, I was still on 11.1.
⏹️ ▶️ John And now every time I check for an update, it says I have the latest version. So I do not have 11.2. I don’t know if anybody has
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Maybe that beta is not out yet. But anyway, what why do I want 11.2? Well, a couple of reasons.
⏹️ ▶️ John First, there is a new API called AV display manager. Actually,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t even know if it’s a new API. Unfortunately, I have not had time to watch this video. But this, there’s new
⏹️ ▶️ John API’s that allow you as an app developer to switch video display modes.
⏹️ ▶️ John Confusingly, there’s a second set of screenshots showing you know what the tv
⏹️ ▶️ John us thing will look like where there are options now to say automatically match
⏹️ ▶️ John the frame rate of the source video and automatically match the hdrness of the source video
⏹️ ▶️ John and you can turn them both on and for a little while i was confused that well which is it
⏹️ ▶️ John is it that application developers have to update their apps to switch modes or is it that apple tv will simply
⏹️ ▶️ John detect the frame rate and quality of the of the video that’s displaying in apple tv
⏹️ ▶️ John you will switch modes. As far as I can tell, it is you need both for this to happen. Developers
⏹️ ▶️ John need to update their apps to use the new API. And the new API won’t actually switch your mode unless the
⏹️ ▶️ John preference is set in your Apple TV to say, hey, if an application says that it wants to
⏹️ ▶️ John change the mode to 24 frames per second, or whatever, or some multiple that allow it to do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Again, I haven’t actually installed this beta because they won’t send it to me. So I’m not entirely sure. So I’m just going off
⏹️ ▶️ John several articles on this topic. We’ll put a link in the shown us the arts technical one, which I think just summarizes the information that’s provided.
⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, this is all good news. The good news is, you will not have to go to that menu
⏹️ ▶️ John and pick from umpteen different formats every every time you’re going to play a video, which of course, you know the exact
⏹️ ▶️ John frame rate for. And it’s also good news with people with HDR TVs, because previously, apparently it was if you turned HDR
⏹️ ▶️ John on and played some non HDR video, it would try to display it in HDR and make it look all gross, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John just terrible. I didn’t know that because I because I don’t have an HDR TV. My only fear now is that
⏹️ ▶️ John these features will come and they will be 4K only. Not Apple TV 4K only, but
⏹️ ▶️ John will only be available if you have a 4K television. Because right now, I can’t tell the Apple TV to output
⏹️ ▶️ John at some multiple 24 hertz to my television because I have a standard,
⏹️ ▶️ John not a standard definition, a non-4K television and I don’t have a 24 hertz option
⏹️ ▶️ John or any multiple thereof, which is a shame. If you have a 4K TV, you do. I’m hoping all this mode switching and
⏹️ ▶️ John everything is not confined to 4K like these other settings are. So
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll see, but I’m excited by it. things are going in the right direction.
#askatp: Mac antivirus
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s ask ATP. Drew wants to know, what do you recommend for antivirus on High Sierra?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Don’t run it. Don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, someone asked me this at work, too. And the reason I put this question in there is that this is a surprisingly common question,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially for new Mac users. What should I get for antivirus? My answer to all these people is
⏹️ ▶️ John do not install antivirus software on your Mac. Maybe that sounds terrible. And maybe people think I’m an old fogey. And
⏹️ ▶️ John really, in this modern day and age, you need antivirus software and blah, blah, blah. But from my experience
⏹️ ▶️ John over many, many years being forced to run many different kinds of antivirus software at work,
⏹️ ▶️ John I hate all of them and all of them made my Mac worse. And at home, I have never, ever, ever, ever
⏹️ ▶️ John run antivirus software on my Macs. And as far as I’m aware,
⏹️ ▶️ John I have never had any problems with viruses. So my recommendation is do not run
⏹️ ▶️ John antivirus software on your Mac. It’s all bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, any other thoughts?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think exactly what John says, minus the work experience part. But yeah, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at this point I would say that antivirus software on your Mac, I think, probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a bigger threat of itself being malware
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John than any malware that you would find.
⏹️ ▶️ John And even when it’s working correctly, not that it’s malware, but it messes with your computer. It makes it slow,
⏹️ ▶️ John it makes it annoying, it makes things not work that were supposed to work. get from the
⏹️ ▶️ John antivirus software itself far outweigh the supposed protection that it and honestly it’s not going to protect
⏹️ ▶️ John you anyway like I mean the real question is like just find a longtime Mac user maybe not me like you know 1984 Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you know humble
⏹️ ▶️ John breath right well I’m just saying like find someone who’s been using a Mac for years and ask them what do
⏹️ ▶️ John you run for antivirus like can you find a Mac user who has not run
⏹️ ▶️ John antivirus and has been you know overrun by viruses like Marco Casey have you ever run antivirus
⏹️ ▶️ John software on your Mac?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey My work computer, but that’s because it’s compulsory, not because I choose
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Yeah, but I mean your home one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Nope. Even when I had a work computer, I didn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John Have you ever had any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem with viruses? I’ve never not only have I never had a problem with a Mac virus, I’ve never even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco heard of anybody else having a problem with one ever. Same.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, more likely it’s going to be, you know, social engineering and getting you to click on some button you’re not supposed to.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not to say there aren’t vulnerabilities. are totally vulnerable to malware and viruses 100% and
⏹️ ▶️ John humans are completely vulnerable to social engineering and things that trick you into clicking something you’re not supposed to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. But the question wasn’t like our max vulnerable to virus they are. The question was, should I
⏹️ ▶️ John install antivirus software? And the answer that is no, because that software is bad and makes your Mac worse.
⏹️ ▶️ John And remember that Apple does have a very rudimentary anti malware stuff that you’re getting whether you
⏹️ ▶️ John know it or not, they do push updates to it when they identify new malwares. And again, it’s not going to save you from everything, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not as if you’re completely unprotected.
#askatp: Non-Apple hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So this next one was an email submission and I thought it was really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey interesting. Charlie Ellman writes, if iOS and Mac OS were available to install and integrate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with any hardware, would you still use an iPhone and a Mac? And he continues, for this thought experiment,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey assume that it works well on all devices, none of the Windows driver crap.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Software updates would happen just as regularly, none of the Android fragmentation crap. You could use
⏹️ ▶️ Casey any of the new hardware on other devices without issue, NFC, Microsoft pen and dial, Google pixel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey squeeze, et cetera. And the prices don’t change, meaning the Galaxy S8 wouldn’t cost
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as much as an iPhone, the Surface Book wouldn’t cost as much as a touch bar Mac, a MacBook, et cetera.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have thought about this for several days now, because I was the one who added this to the, to the show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey notes. And I don’t think I have any really strong answers because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really really do think for me that the best hardware out there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is Apple hardware I would probably at least flirt with a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ThinkPad especially that retro one that just came out Mm-hmm. I know John is getting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really sick to his stomach hearing me to talk about this, but man I think that looks good. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyway, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a phone that I’ve that I’ve longed for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I don’t really ever see computers that I’m Terribly enthusiastic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about outside of what comes from Apple and I don’t know if I’m just if it’s Stockholm syndrome at this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point or what but other than maybe a ThinkPad, I don’t think there’s anything but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what about you John?
⏹️ ▶️ John I would definitely Use non Apple hardware because I would get basically the modern
⏹️ ▶️ John equivalent of my 2008 Mac Pro I’d get a big computer with room for lots of stuff inside including a really big big
⏹️ ▶️ John gaming video card and Apple doesn’t sell anything like that. So I would have gotten that long ago. Like that’s what I’m waiting around
⏹️ ▶️ John for is that, you know, a Mac pro that I want to buy. If I could get third party hardware and run
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac OS and not have to deal with any of the, you know, Hackintosh stuff or whatever. Yes, I definitely would.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, for phones, I also have never seen a phone
⏹️ ▶️ John that has made me think I would rather have that hardware than my iPhone hardware. Even if it was down to something like
⏹️ ▶️ John a mini USB versus lightning. That was no contest. And USB C versus lightning. I think I still
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of prefer lightning. So I don’t think there’s any hard phone hardware that would tempt me,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially now that we have like the sevens, the six and seven size phone. And we’ll see what I think of the 10
⏹️ ▶️ John when it gets here. Um, but for my desktop Mac computer
⏹️ ▶️ John in the absence of a Mac pro that suits my needs, I would definitely be running third party hardware.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Longo Marko? Mark Ruffalo I’ve never seen another phone that I actually thought like, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would like to stop using my iPhone and go use that please. It has never come close. I was very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco impressed when I saw the Samsung S8, not the Note, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the one that came out like six months ago that was edge-to-edge-ish,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that one. I was very impressed when I saw that, but it wasn’t so compelling that I want to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lose everything I know about the hardware. Now this is a great question in the sense that it assumes that we can still use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the software that we like, all the Apple software. Because that really is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s what matters more. Ultimately, I would take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple hardware that makes me miserable before I would leave Mac OS and iOS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the alternatives. So it’s a good question. For the phones, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no way. For tablets, no. laptops
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe I think I might consider using PC laptops especially oh you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey absolutely would after all this convention about the keyboard you absolutely would go to a
⏹️ ▶️ John well PC laptops are kind of ugly though
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well I don’t care about the look so much as as the functionality for me because like so anyway so I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very happy right now with just having an older Apple laptop you know in the future when that plan
⏹️ ▶️ Marco becomes untenable I hope their modern ones at that point again are better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for me then I’ll just switch to the modern ones or even if they’re not better maybe I’ll just want to suck
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it up and deal with it so I don’t so I don’t have to like mess with hackintosh is or old laptops or anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else but if I could like run Mac OS perfectly well on something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better from the PC world or you know at least better for my preferences
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sure I would consider that there isn’t a lot out there that’s It’s honestly that much better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s very similar to when I mentioned a couple episodes ago how reviewers always positively
⏹️ ▶️ Marco review whenever there’s a new Surface book or whenever there’s a new Google
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone, a new Nexus or Pixel phone. The reviews are always really positive and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then the reviewers don’t end up using them. They’re like, oh, this is a great phone for somebody else. And then they switch back to their iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and their MacBook the next day. With a lot of this alternative
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff, it’s hard to get good quality long-term reviews, and oftentimes the long-term reviews
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are a lot less positive than the initial ones were. So it’s hard to really know as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somebody who admittedly does not try non-Apple hardware almost ever,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s hard for me to really know how good the stuff is. But certainly I would have an open mind to it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And on the desktop, similar to John, right now Apple doesn’t make what I need.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They said they’re going to, so I hope they do. Unlike John, I don’t need my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac Pro or my Mac desktop, I don’t need it to be a standard tower
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with a whole bunch of card slots for gaming cards or drive bays or anything else. I don’t actually need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. The Trashcan Mac Pro would’ve been great for me if they just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco updated it. That would’ve been great. They didn’t, which is unfortunate.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If they could just deliver me that with, you know, not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the overheating GPUs issue maybe, deliver me that with modern internals that can drive a 5K display,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that would be great. I would love that. Not a lot of other people would, but I would. So I’d be totally fine with that. But in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco meantime, they don’t have that, and I don’t know when their new Mac Pro is coming. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco assume that it’s hopefully next year, hopefully in the earlier part of the year, but I really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have no idea. So, desktops, I would use non-Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardware because I feel like that’s where it would matter the least that I would use non-Apple hardware. Like, you’re not touching it really.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can use someone else’s screen and it’s not that bad. You know, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to use someone else’s desktop, you know, especially if you build a tower, it’s under your desk, you barely even see it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But, yeah, it’s a cool question. I like having, I like thinking about this. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of prompts you to look around the PC at Android worlds to see what the alternatives
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even are, but ultimately I don’t find a lot of them very compelling.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It would be kind of interesting to build my own computer again. I used to do that. You know, I used to build my own PC, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really enjoyed that hobby. That was a really fun hobby.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah, yeah, I agree.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It would be kind of interesting to see like what that’s like now, you know, from the little glances I’ve seen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here and there from people posting about it and stuff, it doesn’t seem like it’s that different. It seems like most of it is actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the same, just like, you know, now there’s like, There’s been like five new versions of ATX since then,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s still like fairly similar.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, now I think everybody water cools now. Before, you know, back then it was much more of a specialized
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing that most people didn’t do. Now water cooling is much more common and there’s a lot more blue LEDs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which I would not consider a feature. So it would be kind of fun
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to build computers again, but ultimately, you know, If Apple gives
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me a really nice Mac Pro, I’ll be pretty happy with that.
⏹️ ▶️ John I forgot to address laptops because I don’t like laptops, but if forced to pick a laptop, would you stick with the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John one? I’m in a bind because I think all the laptops, except for the Microsoft ones,
⏹️ ▶️ John I find them less pleasing looking than the Apple ones. And that makes
⏹️ ▶️ John a difference to me. And it’s not like you can build your own laptop like you can with desktop, right? So
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t have as many options there. But all I’ve heard about the Microsoft laptops there,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, transformable tablets and stuff like that is that they have all sorts of weird reliability problems and durability problems with
⏹️ ▶️ John the fabric and everything like that line of computers is the most appealing to me, but I would
⏹️ ▶️ John be wary of actually buying one for myself because of all the reliability problems I’ve heard for the service
⏹️ ▶️ John book. So you know, I’m like Casey, I don’t have a thing for the ThinkPad. So I just don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a lot of laptop hardware out there. Although if pressed, if I was forced, I would probably
⏹️ ▶️ John still just grin and bear it and get an ugly PC thing just so I could have ports and battery
⏹️ ▶️ John life and all the things that we’ve complained about a million times.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will say there was a really nice segment on back to work about I think it was last week’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco episode. Microsoft reps offered to send Dan Benjamin a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco surface book. Honestly, I don’t know. I can’t tell you which model some kind of surface book
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to just try out something that could be a tablet and a a laptop. I think, can they all do that? I don’t know. Whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, they sent him one to try out and he talked about it on the show and the discussion was very, very good. You know, Dan is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somebody who is mostly an Apple person, but he has recent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco PC experience also. And so to hear his impressions of the service book were very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good. And overall, to spoil it, overall his impressions of it were pretty positive. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s worth hearing that to know, like, to have kind of a glimpse into the other side of like what it’s like when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a mostly Apple person talks a lot about a modern,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nice Windows laptop. And especially hearing about what it’s like to have crossovers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco between tablet mode and being able to have a pen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or touch input in a desktop OS. Dan came out of that basically saying,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple should have something like this for Mac OS. And if you’re a really big fan of the iPad, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably shouldn’t listen to this episode. But I think there’s a lot to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco consider there that they bring up. So that’s worth a listen if you’re interested in this kind of stuff.
#askatp: Fired Apple engineer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey McLaughlin Finally, Tim Walker wants to know, any thoughts about Apple firing an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey engineer after his daughter posted a hands-on video of the iPhone X on YouTube? So the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey chief summarizer and chief hat is on. Basically what happened was, and I think it was a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey little while ago, but certainly after the announcement, an Apple employee
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who we have later found out worked somewhere in the RF team, I guess, the radio frequency team,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had his daughter into Cafe Max and she was was filming a vlog and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she also was handed his phone. Like he handed her his phone, which was an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPhone 10 again, post announcement, but pre, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, before everyone had them and she was flipping through the home screen and I haven’t done the Kremlin
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ology on this, but apparently, well, that’s kind of a loaded term now, isn’t it? I haven’t done the Zapruder
⏹️ ▶️ Casey film or however you pronounce it on this. But, um, anyways, I guess there were some apps that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you wouldn’t expect to see. Somebody said something about a QR code that you wouldn’t expect to see. So there was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some unreleased stuff on this phone for sure.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, this video somehow or another got popular. And I say that only because the, the,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the young woman who had, who had filmed it and put it on YouTube had said, you know, I have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in so many words, I have no followers, I don’t know how this became popular, et cetera, et cetera, but somehow or another it did,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and they have since fired her dad, they fired this engineer and you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, Tim Walker wants to know, well, how do we feel about that? And my initial reaction was, man, that’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s kind of crappy because the thing was already announced. Everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey knew what it was like. What’s the big deal. But then I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey found out, well, there was some unreleased software on there and, you know, maybe this QR code thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And some, I guess there may have been a code name or two shown on the screen at one point or another.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that made me less confident that Apple was being a bunch of jerks. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was reminded of when Marco, you and I went to Apple last year
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in 2016. And we went to aisle one or one aisle. I always get it backwards.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, we went to the main building and then we went to the theater, the, that they would occasionally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do product announcements in and there’s a Steve Jobs quote outside the theater. And, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think both of us, or certainly I, you know, took a picture of it put it on like Instagram or something like that. And one of our
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mutual friends who works at Apple actually privately wrote me and was like, who was letting you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey take a picture on campus? That’s BS. And the picture was of a Steve Jobs quote. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and he, he was genuinely like perturbed that this picture was taken, much less posted anywhere.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey He was perturbed that, that my escort had allowed me to do that, which I think is kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey freaking ridiculous, but that’s, I tell the story to tell, to just emphasize
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how deep this lies within Apple employees. And so in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the end of the day, I think, you know what, the dude knew the rules. Like she shouldn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been filming in the first place and definitely should not have seen pre-release software.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If it was just that he handed her the phone and it was off, meh, I don’t see that as that big
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a deal, but since apparently there was some unreleased stuff on that device,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that changes my tune quite heavily. Marco, how do you feel?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I come down a little harder than you, but nearby, basically.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco None of us have ever worked at Apple. And this is internal hiring
⏹️ ▶️ Marco policy stuff. And it’s hard to say what should or shouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happen based on what we know from the outside of the situation, because we obviously don’t know everything. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we don’t work there, we don’t know this person, we don’t know everything that was inadvertently revealed in that video or could have been revealed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or what the policies exactly are written. Apple’s not that keen on sharing things like that with the public.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But we, you know, I can say that when we were there, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the last thing I would have ever thought to do was shoot a vlog.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t even imagine, you know, to me that just shows a severe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lapse in judgment. And not of the woman who was vlogging. I mean, she wasn’t the employee.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Her father, who was permitting her to do this and bringing her into campus knowing she was doing this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he’s the one who has the poor judgment here. Whether it’s against the rules
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as they’re written or not, I don’t know. I don’t know what the rules are. I would never assume
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would be okay. And I don’t think anybody should be surprised
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that he lost his job as a result. To let somebody in, and you said that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe it wouldn’t matter if the phone was off. No, I’ll go even further. The phone was not out yet,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the press embargo wasn’t even lifted. Like, reviews hadn’t even been permitted yet. To
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bring someone into campus as an employee and to permit them to shoot video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of your running phone, of this non-publicly available phone, I think that’s common
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sense that that would be a problem. Yeah, yeah. And that’s not even considering that it was allegedly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco running internal software, which is another problem. But even if it wasn’t running
⏹️ ▶️ Marco internal software, I think allowing someone to shoot a video, first of all, to shoot a video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inside campus at all and publish it, like, you know, I had lunch at Cafe Max, it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco amazing. The last thing I would have thought to do was shoot a video and post it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, even though we weren’t, as far as I know, we weren’t seeing anything secret, you know, but like, still, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, this is like the interior of the campus. Like it felt incredibly privileged
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be there at all. And I didn’t want to get myself or our hosts in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trouble. So the last thing I would have thought to do would be to shoot any kind of video or like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco take pictures of people in the cafe or anything like that. You know, I too took a picture of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quote on the wall in that one room. And because it was a press area, I decided
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is probably safe to post to Instagram. And I did. But that was the only thing that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I took a picture of. Like, that’s the only memory that I have a record of, of that trip, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was too afraid to take my phone out for any other reason. And I didn’t want, again, I didn’t want to get anybody in trouble. And I assumed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it would get people in trouble if any of us took photos and posted them online.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So yeah, so this should have been common sense. And I think to most Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco employees, it is common sense. And so if somebody didn’t see that as common sense
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or had a bad lapse in judgment and lost their job as a result, I honestly don’t think that’s that much of
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I don’t think these people need to use common sense because every employee gets training with regard to
⏹️ ▶️ John secrets and stuff, right? It’s not like Apple just allows this to happen through osmosis and culture. You
⏹️ ▶️ John get told when you’re hired by Apple, here’s what you can and can’t do and
⏹️ ▶️ John all sorts of guidelines and how to be safe and blah, blah, blah. And this is clearly a thing that you’re not supposed
⏹️ ▶️ John to do. And this person did it. And not only and sometimes like, well, is it is it a zero tolerance
⏹️ ▶️ John policy, one strike and you’re out like, isn’t there, you know, okay, you made a mistake, but you
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe you’re a new employee and don’t know, I’m not sure what their policy with that is. But
⏹️ ▶️ John in this particular situation, whether it was the first time or not, it was
⏹️ ▶️ John not the type of thing where it’s like, Alright, well, you took someone on a tour, and you let them take a picture. But then you,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, have them deleted off their phone or you let them take a picture, but that it never left their phone again. Like there was a violation
⏹️ ▶️ John of the rules. And technically, we could fire you according to you know, whatever thing you signed in your employment agreement
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. But we won’t because the consequences weren’t that bad. But in this case, the consequences were about as bad as they could possibly
⏹️ ▶️ John be in that the entire world saw this video before they were supposed to see it,
⏹️ ▶️ John revealing essentially that, yes, you broke the rules. And now everybody knows you broke the rules. And if Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John was to allow this to happen, they’re basically saying, our PR doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John need to actually control the message for a new product introductions. Actually, random employees in
⏹️ ▶️ John our cafeteria can also decide when the public gets to see the phone and in what context,
⏹️ ▶️ John because that doesn’t undermine our corporate goals at all. This gigantic corporate like it
⏹️ ▶️ John was a mistake and it was a fireable offense and it
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t go well. Like it went pretty poorly when it’s on YouTube and spread all over
⏹️ ▶️ John the internet. So it’s a sad story. I feel bad for everybody involved,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? But it’s not a surprising story. And I don’t think Apple was
⏹️ ▶️ John being excessively mean here, because like I said, I think the consequences were actually pretty bad. It may not seem
⏹️ ▶️ John that bad, but you’re like, well, everyone knew about the phone, whatever. But as we’ll discuss in a moment,
⏹️ ▶️ John for probably the one and only topic of the show. Apple has a PR department whose job it is to control
⏹️ ▶️ John how the world, uh, it comes to know their products when they’re introduced
⏹️ ▶️ John and no part of the PR plan involves random employees in the cafeteria posting vlogs
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iPhone X PR strategy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Day. Betterment, rethink what your money can do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This has been an interesting week in Apple PR. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of the talking heads like us, I think, have been in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey various degrees confused, happy, upset, and enthusiastic, and bitter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at some point or another. So help me get the timeline right. So was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it Monday that—was that Stephen Levy’s review came out, is that right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay. Yeah, I might have the details slightly wrong on this, but I think that’s right. So Stephen Levy was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of the very small handful of people that reviewed the original iPhone way back
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when, and he was apparently given some sort of blessing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be the first person to get a review posted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the iPhone X. And I believe Tuesday,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or maybe it was late Monday, sometime shortly thereafter, it ended up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that we saw that a bunch of YouTubers had,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I understand things right, been offered to come, it seemed in New York,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey offered to come in to like an Apple kind of press event where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they could film and use the iPhone X, and they could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey film the iPhone X and do, you know, a couple of minutes with it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And they could post their reviews to YouTube late Monday or early
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tuesday. And my reaction to that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was kind of like, what the hell? Because in and of itself, YouTubers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey getting access wasn’t remarkable. Like, okay, fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Of course MKBHD had access, but it wasn’t MKBHD. It was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people that I’d never heard of, which to be honest is actually probably a good sign because I don’t know who any of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the popular YouTubers are, but it was surprising to me because I’m at least
⏹️ ▶️ Casey casually aware of most to the popular tech-related or tech-adjacent YouTubers, like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey MKBHD, like Casey Neistat, and people like that. And these people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that had access seemed to have a far, numerically anyway, a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey far smaller following than the heavy hitters like the Neistats and the MKBHDs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that was kind of weird. And naturally I was a little,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe offended, that’s probably too strong word, but I was a little like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t I get a chance at this? Like, is podcasting not a thing? Does that not count? I gave up on that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Oh, I know, I know. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s a selfish reaction, full-on, but it’s, you know, it was my honest reaction.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I was kind of, I wasn’t upset about it, but I was kind of like, what the hell? And then I talked with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Joseph Plinsky and Matt Alexander, and Matt Alexander put
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up a really, really great post about kind of what do you think about when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re a product company and releasing a new product, and how do you control the PR?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I am unfairly summarizing it by saying the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey takeaway I had from it was that these YouTubers that I kind of fluffed off as,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh, who are they? They’re not important. They’re actually quite important just to circles
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I don’t pay attention to. And I’m embarrassed to say that didn’t occur to me until I really talked to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Joe and Matt about it, but it seems obvious in retrospect. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s probably really smart on Apple’s part, because the reality of the situation is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m unlikely to wait very long to buy an iPhone X. And most of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey listeners of this show, given infinite money, would probably buy an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPhone X tomorrow if they haven’t already. So does Apple really need to convince
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us to buy an iPhone X?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really. But what about the people that care about fashion or care
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about things that are not just technology? And so the reactions to this were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey varied, some very angry, some confused, some a combination of both.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then shortly thereafter, I think it was Tuesday morning, that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot of the traditional reviewers like the Groobers of the world, the Jason Snells, etc.,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when their embargo was lifted. And then we got some of the stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that we expect as Apple nerds. But it’s been an interesting few days
⏹️ ▶️ Casey watching Apple try to pull the strings on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this puppet and figure out the best way to get this PR
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wave orchestrated. I don’t know. I’ve been talking for a while.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t have a lot of thoughts on this. It just seemed weird. It seemed like a weird approach.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s really hard to talk about this without somebody saying, oh, well, we’re just old and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out of touch because everyone gets everything from YouTube now. And I’m not even arguing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that people on YouTube shouldn’t get pre-release review unit access.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I think they actually should. I think Apple should go to where the people are. That makes total sense. And YouTube
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is where many of the people are now, so that makes total sense. The thing about it that seemed weird to me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that compared to all past launches like this, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wasn’t weird that they added these YouTube channels that honestly many of them were not very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco popular, as you said. Like, it wasn’t like MKBHD was there at that event, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco earlier than everyone else. Like, I don’t know. But what seemed weird about it was not the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco addition of the people who got it, but the subtraction of the people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who didn’t. It’s again. It’s not weird that youtubers got access.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s weird that none of the press did basically like that and and the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco press that usually does as somebody who follows this stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Like I always want to read those first reviews. Maybe that makes me a dinosaur
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but for the most part Almost none of the press that usually gets
⏹️ ▶️ Marco review units got one at all or with more than like 12
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hours before before the publishing deadline. So it’s just it was weird as a fan.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Most of what we have to go on is very surface level and that to me is deeply
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unsatisfying. Like I want I wanted like the in-depth reviews from Gruber
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and from like the other like the other tech publications that usually get them and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to not have that felt weird and I I don’t think it’s a good,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think it projects confidence from Apple. Like, to give so many of these reviewers less
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than a day to review their phones suggests that Apple doesn’t want them to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spend that much time before they publish their thoughts. And I don’t think that’s a, even if the iPhone X is great,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and by the early reports it seems like it probably is, that doesn’t look good. Like, that doesn’t exude confidence
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in their product to say, like, we’re not even gonna give you enough time to judge things like battery life or Face ID reliability.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, that doesn’t look good for the product, so it’s just weird. So in an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ideal world, and I’ve seen people suggest too, like, well, they didn’t have enough to go around. That’s completely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wrong. Like, they have plenty. If you can still log on right now and order one that comes in December,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have plenty. Apple could have given phones to more reviewers with more time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they wanted to. This was clearly a choice not to do that. And I just think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that part is what feels off about this, that we don’t have those in-depth reviews
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from tech writers, big publications, really,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardly any of them. We have basically like three. And it’s weird
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have so few for such an important product coming out of Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I think it’s easy, especially if you’ve been
⏹️ ▶️ John following Apple for a long time, to start getting into a tail wagging
⏹️ ▶️ John the dog situation where you really start to believe that
⏹️ ▶️ John the publications and people who get early access to Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff and write the reviews that we like to read are getting it
⏹️ ▶️ John because of some kind of merit that they have. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John for the original iPhone is a good example. Like the original iPhone went to Pogue,
⏹️ ▶️ John Mossberg, Ed Baig, and Levy, I think. Yep. Like get them all there. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ John But that’s all right. So that’s this who went to. But the reason we are all comfortable
⏹️ ▶️ John with that worldview is because it went to Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today.
⏹️ ▶️ John And what was Stephen Levy working for that? I forget. Maybe Time. famous
⏹️ ▶️ John old people who have been doing this for a long time, working for famous, powerful,
⏹️ ▶️ John influential old institutions. And so it fit with the mental
⏹️ ▶️ John model of, if you’re the New York Times, you get the iPhone early. If you’re the Wall Street
⏹️ ▶️ John Journal, you get the iPhone only. And even if you’re USA Today, which may be McPaper, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s extremely popular, right? Of course, USA Today gets one, even though we say,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, USA Today, what is that? you’re going to be like, haha, USA Today, right? But they’re really big.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so that all fits with our model of the tail being the publications wagging the dog
⏹️ ▶️ John that is Apple. It’s like, Apple has no choice. They have to give it to the Wall Street Journal. Apple has
⏹️ ▶️ John no choice. They have to give it to the New York Times. The New York Times is just too important, right? But that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John never been the situation. The tail is not wagging the dog. Apple has a PR
⏹️ ▶️ John department whose job it is to choose how best to promote their products to the public.
⏹️ ▶️ John It just so happens that the strategy chosen by that PR department
⏹️ ▶️ John has fit with the narrative that people who get early access get it based on prestige,
⏹️ ▶️ John longtime relationships with Steve Jobs, long time in the industry, like whatever criteria
⏹️ ▶️ John that we had come to accept as like that’s the reason they’re getting it. when
⏹️ ▶️ John that should never have been the reason they were getting it. Strictly speaking, it
⏹️ ▶️ John should have been that like it’s a second degree thing where Apple’s like, the best way to
⏹️ ▶️ John promote our product is to have the most prestigious newspapers promoted. Let’s go find the most prestigious
⏹️ ▶️ John newspapers. So it’s a second degree. It’s not as if like, well, we have no choice but to give it to the most
⏹️ ▶️ John prestigious newspapers. If we don’t do that, we’ll be hurt. It’s a selection of a strategy
⏹️ ▶️ John and an execution of that strategy. In recent years, Apple has been changing its strategy
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot more from year to year in terms of how it does everything, like the Mac roundtable
⏹️ ▶️ John showing like Yosemite early in private press briefings distributed around the country,
⏹️ ▶️ John the incorporation of YouTubers starting several years ago, like from year to year,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s clear that Apple PR is trying different strategies.
⏹️ ▶️ John And depending on what strategy they’re executing, from that follows, who
⏹️ ▶️ John who gets this and there is no like, well, of course, they have to go to the New York Times. No, they don’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John They didn’t. They didn’t do it this time. They don’t have to get the Wall Street Journal. Like, you know, there’s, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John no reason that the Wall Street Journal has to have the best and most and earliest access as compared
⏹️ ▶️ John to a YouTuber with not a very big follow it like there’s that’s not a rule
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just what apple chooses to do now i’m not in pr i don’t know what the best strategy for
⏹️ ▶️ John apple is um but this strategy this time around was different
⏹️ ▶️ John in a way that seemed to break people’s mental model of how pr works and they were forced to realize that
⏹️ ▶️ John who gets what when is entirely the choice of apple on how that you know how they think
⏹️ ▶️ John they can best promote their product now you may say that they’re wrong maybe you’re suddenly a PR expert, you’re like Apple, you made a mistake,
⏹️ ▶️ John you should have given this to these people and that people in these times or whatever. But most people on the outside aren’t
⏹️ ▶️ John thinking of it that way. They’re not thinking how, how does this does this put the Apple’s best foot forward,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? We’re thinking of it as consumers. And I you know, I am as well like you just want to read
⏹️ ▶️ John your you just want your stories. I want my stories. I want to read the reviews from the people that I know. And if suddenly you can’t read those reviews,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re like, Oh, that’s sad for me. Right? But it’s not about whether you get to read the reviews from the people you
⏹️ ▶️ John want. Apple doesn’t care whether you get to reuse and the people you want, unless that influences the success of their product
⏹️ ▶️ John and how it’s received by the public, which maybe it is. And maybe that’s the argument like, oh, because you didn’t give it to Walt
⏹️ ▶️ John Mossboro, he’s retired now, but because you didn’t give it to the New York Times as early as possible. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, that’s going to influence me to not buy the phone or whatever. Like that’s, you know, that’s, that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John an argument. So mostly I think it’s people had the wrong
⏹️ ▶️ John model of how PR works. And that wrong model was brought into stark relief. And then a little
⏹️ ▶️ John tiny bit is you move my cheese. I’m used to always reading these reviews and these people and expecting
⏹️ ▶️ John them to have a week with the phone beforehand because it’s always been the case. Right. And then finally, the
⏹️ ▶️ John ugliest part of it is, you know, just general, uh, bitterness that
⏹️ ▶️ John somebody got the phone and somebody didn’t. Right. Now it’s easy for us to say here on podcast where we never get anything.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. So we didn’t lose anything. We’re always at the bottom of the barrel. Right. Although I still, there’s still room for us
⏹️ ▶️ John to be bitter too, because of course, selfishly, as Casey pointed out from my perspective.
⏹️ ▶️ John I love that more different people get the iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m a more different person too. Like we have a dinky podcast anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John so from an outsider’s perspective, not thinking of it as PR, I wish everybody got all the
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhones they wanted. If you’re doing any kind of stuff on YouTube, on podcasts,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re writing a blog, if you’re doing anything and you’re doing it day after day, year after year, week after
⏹️ ▶️ John week, and you’re doing a good job, and you have any kind of audience, I think it should be possible
⏹️ ▶️ John to get review hardware for a phone after it’s announced, but before the public can get it. But
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s just like, Oh, what do you want? What the word of the tail here? We’re not the dog.
⏹️ ▶️ John A question Apple has to ask is not does this person deserve it? Or do we feel like we have
⏹️ ▶️ John to give it because they have a big audience? The question is, what is the best strategy for selling a lot of phones
⏹️ ▶️ John and making people happy for them. And this year, they tried this strategy, which was this weird mix
⏹️ ▶️ John of low volume YouTubers plus traditional media with with lead time plus
⏹️ ▶️ John some traditional media with less lead time and they’ll see what the result is. And I bet
⏹️ ▶️ John they’ll change it next year. But people getting angry
⏹️ ▶️ John about it like it’s a human reaction to you know, you know, they move my cheese
⏹️ ▶️ John like I want I want to read the the Walt Mossberg review, but he retired and now I’m angry. Well that’s life,
⏹️ ▶️ John like whatever, you know? I wish Gruber had had
⏹️ ▶️ John the phone for two weeks and he didn’t. Well that’s life, right? But
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think the whole class struggle thing of like old world tech old white dudes who always get the reviews
⏹️ ▶️ John versus new people, I don’t think that’s actually the story other than like chiding people
⏹️ ▶️ John for being too sort of up their own butts about it. Like, once you start really
⏹️ ▶️ John believing that like, my favorite person deserves to get the phone you have totally lost the plot about
⏹️ ▶️ John what what is going on here. We’re, you know, some of us are just
⏹️ ▶️ John disappointed that we don’t get to read the reviews from the people that we wanted to read it from it at the you know, the scale
⏹️ ▶️ John we want to read it, but but that’s just us. Perhaps this is the most brilliant PR strategy
⏹️ ▶️ John ever for a phone with Apple choosing to do what it you know what it did. We won’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John until maybe we’ll never know because we won’t know like what the results are of this as compared to press past
⏹️ ▶️ John strategies, but at the very least as a less interested outside observer, because honestly, um,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I do want to read the reviews from basically from people I know personally, like Jason’s nails review, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But that’s, that’s a position that most people do not find themselves in. Um, but none of them are going to influence my,
⏹️ ▶️ John my buying decision. Like what’s going to be influenced by buying decision is when you two get them and when I get them and we try
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco to each other like, like
⏹️ ▶️ John anyone else. But beyond that, like
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m excited by new people getting the phones and I’m trying to think with PR mindset,
⏹️ ▶️ John why would it be a good idea to give low volume YouTube channels early access to the phone? And I
⏹️ ▶️ John can think of a ton of reasons not again, not being anyone who knows anything about PR, but just like
⏹️ ▶️ John thinking about it for a few seconds. First of all, those people are going to be so grateful, like, like, just like we would
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco So these people are going to be so grateful to get early
⏹️ ▶️ John access to the iPhone X, like, because they know they’re not, you know, some big channel
⏹️ ▶️ John that has millions and millions of subscribers. They know how big they are compared to the YouTube world. They are going to be so grateful
⏹️ ▶️ John to get that. They’re all enthusiastic. These people love the iPhone. They love
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple. Like, it is, you can’t, you know, you can’t buy that enthusiasm. These people are not jaded,
⏹️ ▶️ John cynical, I’ve reviewed every single thing and, you know, I just expect to get it and I’m angry if I don’t. they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John excited to be there. And they’re going to do things and review things in a way
⏹️ ▶️ John that is different than people who reviewed 100 different things. Like, I see lots of
⏹️ ▶️ John potential interesting upsides to doing what they did. We already talked about the downsides.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe it makes you look like you’re scared that you don’t want to give like the jaded reviewer access to your phone because they’re just going to tear it apart
⏹️ ▶️ John because they’re going to find all the problems that the person who gets to play with it for 10 minutes in an
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple thing before release isn’t going to find right that all factors into the decisions,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I’m definitely not angry that more people got access to it. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John not even really angry that my favorites didn’t get access to it earlier. It seems like a lot of them are angry, which
⏹️ ▶️ John know, whatever. If it’s your livelihood, I kind of don’t blame them, but that’s always the way it’s been with Apple, like
⏹️ ▶️ John for to give an example from my past for years and years and years, ours technically didn’t get
⏹️ ▶️ John crap from Apple. The other technical could not get like they would not that they wouldn’t return our calls, but basically
⏹️ ▶️ John like they would be nice and polite, but we could not get anything from Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ John And eventually that changed. And it changed because Apple’s PR strategy
⏹️ ▶️ John changed. It’s not like we weren’t worthy before and were worthy after. And it didn’t feel good when we
⏹️ ▶️ John couldn’t get anything. Right. And it felt good when we could get something. But
⏹️ ▶️ John the connection between the quality of Ars Technica and whether or or not Apple gave us review hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John was not the connection people want to think it is. It is Apple decides what to do. And you honestly
⏹️ ▶️ John really have noticed is important life lesson. You can’t control what other people do or think about
⏹️ ▶️ John you. The best you can do is just decide how you’re going to act and do your best work and hope
⏹️ ▶️ John for the best. So that’s why we continue to do this podcast patiently waiting Apple for Apple to send us preview Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Please call us. How funny would it be if I was the one that got the Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not that funny. Not as funny as you think it is.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I would find it very funny. But seriously,
⏹️ ▶️ John who else are they going to send? I guess they could send preview Mac Pro hardware to like, like actual professionals who are like doing video
⏹️ ▶️ John and stuff. But that’s boring. What other what other cultural institution
⏹️ ▶️ John cares more about the Mac Pro than this podcast?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Two thirds of this podcast. Two out of three hosts in this podcast recommend
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac Pro that is not yet released.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my word. You know, I should also note that his name Juan Bagnell,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t get a chance to look it up and I think one of you added it to the show notes, but he had a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey relatively long kind of rant, although it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was very level-headed to be called a rant, but a discussion, I guess, about how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of the advantages of giving some of these YouTubers access is that that they’re not all old white guys
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like we are. And there’s a lot to be said for that. And I think, John, you touched on this a minute
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ago, but that’s an improvement. No matter how you slice it, that’s an improvement to the PR
⏹️ ▶️ Casey strategy. Now, does it have to be at the cost of old white dudes? Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey certainly reaching more diverse voices is a good thing for Apple. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you should check that out if you have about, I think it was a little less than 10 minutes to
⏹️ ▶️ John spare. And like so many things in this world, the older, like the farther you go back
⏹️ ▶️ John in time, the more likely it is that all the people in positions of power are old white dudes, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And so any PR strategy that focuses
⏹️ ▶️ John on old white dudes is necessarily back in time. Like we hope that we’re making progress
⏹️ ▶️ John on all fronts and that there is a more diverse set of voices out there, especially with the dawn of the internet and the bit lowering
⏹️ ▶️ John the barriers to entry. And if if you if they were if Apple was still pursuing the same strategy they did in 2007
⏹️ ▶️ John with the iPhone and only giving it to old white dudes who work for newspapers, like we would all agree
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s that’s an outdated strategy, right? If they simply shift and say we
⏹️ ▶️ John should give it to new media as they did as they started giving it to websites like ours, technical stuff like that. New media
⏹️ ▶️ John you would hope has better ratios of, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John men and women and different races. hope that purely by moving to
⏹️ ▶️ John new media you get more diversity and that’s before you even consider should
⏹️ ▶️ John we actually target diverse reviewers because we’re leaving money on the table if we
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t do that right and so it’s not even
⏹️ ▶️ John clear to me that there was a specific effort to target more diverse reviewers in this point
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s a natural consequence of targeting modern media.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, you know, and again, it’s not the first time they’ve done anything with YouTube. We were commenting about the fact that they’re not giving you
⏹️ ▶️ John the most popular YouTube channels or whatever, but that is the promise and the beauty of the internet
⏹️ ▶️ John and YouTube and blogs and every other sort of form
⏹️ ▶️ John of media without as many people preventing you from doing it. Anyone can put
⏹️ ▶️ John up a blog, anyone can put up something on YouTube, And that is allowing
⏹️ ▶️ John us to hear from people we previously didn’t hear where they were there. We just didn’t hear from them because they weren’t hired by the
⏹️ ▶️ John New York Times. Right. So that is all positive and a conscious shift
⏹️ ▶️ John towards modern media, you know, like podcasts, which are super modern, but also still dominated
⏹️ ▶️ John by white dudes. Sorry. Yeah, like, I think that
⏹️ ▶️ John that is all positive. And if anything, Apple should lean even more heavily in that direction, because all those voices
⏹️ ▶️ John are still underrepresented in modern media as well. It’s just that, like I said, the older the
⏹️ ▶️ John people get and the farther you go back in time, the worse it gets in terms of diversity, even if you’re not doing anything
⏹️ ▶️ John differently. Even if you’re not like consciously trying to just give it to white dudes, if you want to give it to old people who work
⏹️ ▶️ John in newspapers, That’s what you’re gonna end up with much more so than if you want to give it to popular youtubers
iPhone X first looks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, now that we’ve discussed the completely insular
⏹️ ▶️ Casey brouhaha, what do we think of these reviews? It sounds like this is a pretty solid phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have time to review so many of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them. Yeah. No, I mean, like, again, my one hesitation basically is, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost nobody has had a chance to really live with it for more than, like, a couple days. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the initial impressions are great. So I think I’m confident enough with all these reviews that my first day
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the phone is is probably gonna be awesome. I just don’t know what’s gonna happen after that. But it does seem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty positive. If nothing else, it was frustrating to see all that PR
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff because almost every one of the YouTube quick takes and even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many of the press quick takes were just kind of restating Apple’s own PR points
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about like, look, Animoji exists and it’s new and shiny. It’s coming out soon.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there wasn’t much that we didn’t already know. whenever we learn details of new things about it that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn’t already know, like, and that’s one of the reasons why I like Jason Snell’s review so much and why I like the Upgraded podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this week so much, because it’s packed full of like, actually new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco information that we didn’t already know as enthusiasts who follow this stuff and who already saw the keynote.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, like, so many of the articles and reviews and YouTube things are just like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rehashes of the keynote event, basically. And so to hear anything new is great. And as we’ve heard new things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the very few sources that have new things to report so far, it just sounds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really great. It sounds awesome. And I am very much looking forward to it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t wait until Friday at 9 p.m. when the overworked UPS driver
⏹️ ▶️ Marco finally gets here. I cannot wait for that because I’m really looking forward to it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It sounds like what I have wanted ever since the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Plus came out three years ago. When was that? Three years ago? Ever since then, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I’ve wanted, which is I would like the benefits of that in a smaller body that I can actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hold more easily than the big one. And so this seems to offer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically that. There’s a few things that are different. The screen is taller and skinnier.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It isn’t the same aspect ratio and width as the Plus phone, but it seems like we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have the best of everything this phone finally and that’s that’s gonna be really great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am a little concerned about reachability of the vertical reachability but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m kind of looking forward to it as an app developer you know I finally I shipped overcast 4
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it should be out by the time this show is edited if everything goes well now I have a giant canvas
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to play with and now I have a whole UI to rethink I haven’t really done much of that yet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I basically just expanded the existing UI to fill the screen properly because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t want to do any redesign work without actually having it in my hand physically to test with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and to see like how does this actually feel what can I actually reach you know things like that but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m looking forward to this new era of kind of having to rethink everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s it’s a ton of work for developers as I mentioned last week but I think it’s going to be really nice when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we when we get there and I’m really looking forward to having all this real estate on the screen to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco play with. My now playing screen can have so many more features now that I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a tall, skinny aspect ratio. I’m looking forward to it both as a developer and as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a user and as a fan of this stuff. I’m happy to see so far that the reviews,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shallow as many of them are, are seemingly universally positive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It seems like everyone loves Face ID. It seems like it’s really fast. It seems like it’s not perfect, but it’s close
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough and people don’t seem notice it much anymore, which is awesome. Overall, I’m very excited.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m very happy and thankful I got a day one order in and I just can’t wait to get it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I’m mostly relieved that FaceTime works as
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco we always hope
⏹️ ▶️ John it would like it from sorry. Yes, face ID because that was that was my big fear
⏹️ ▶️ John that that face ID would be good but
⏹️ ▶️ John just barely under the threshold of of annoyance and every review I’ve read so so far
⏹️ ▶️ John has said it’s fine. Like it does. It works like Apple says it’s supposed to
⏹️ ▶️ John within the parameters that they set out. There are no surprises and it feels good to use. It’s different
⏹️ ▶️ John but as someone who spent a long time with touch ID phones, you know, we all
⏹️ ▶️ John know and have internalized the vagaries of touch ID. No wet fingers. Sometime doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John get it on the first try and you got to pick up your finger and put it down again. Every once in a while you get the code thrown in your face.
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, and we just accept that as the price of living with with touch ID face
⏹️ ▶️ John ID has all the equivalents of that. It’s too far away from me. There’s bright sun. Uh, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John my identical twin can unlock my phone all sorts of things like yes, every one of these things has inherent problems, but
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, the videos I’ve seen about how long it takes to unlock, like people going
⏹️ ▶️ John down and doing a timing and a stopwatch and everything that shows me so far not having used one of
⏹️ ▶️ John myself, that it seems like it’s with it’s under the threshold like that it’s acceptable,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And like touch ID was in the first iteration, touch ID in
⏹️ ▶️ John the first iteration was also like, you know, there’s obviously a vast improvement over typing in code, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it got better in the second. So I’m already looking forward to the second one. But the first one, like there’s no catastrophic problem, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, my goodness, this phone hinges on face ID. And face ID is just
⏹️ ▶️ John too annoying to use that does not appear to be the case. So I’m relieved in that case.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you know, there are a few reviews I’ve read in full like Jason’s and I’ve read
⏹️ ▶️ John some of Pansorino’s like their take on the phone obviously speaks to me the most because
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re, you know, they come from the same experiences that I do. But getting back to the PR thing briefly, all those reviews,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re like, oh, this is a shallow review and it doesn’t tell me anything that I didn’t already know. The people who watch
⏹️ ▶️ John that video don’t know all the things that we already know because they didn’t pour over the keynote and do a three hour podcast about it.
⏹️ ▶️ John all new information to the people who watch that channel. People who watch that channel have seen like an advertisement
⏹️ ▶️ John and some images on articles they didn’t read and everything they’re being told they’re learning it for the first time from a trusted
⏹️ ▶️ John face that they know right? That’s so again if I had to put myself my PR hat on and think
⏹️ ▶️ John like if you you know how do you imagine PR might work? Reaching people
⏹️ ▶️ John who aren’t you know pouring over everything that comes from Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John those reviews aren’t shallow to them that is a giant info dump as far as they’re concerned. Yeah, we’re hearing things
⏹️ ▶️ John that were like, yeah, yeah, I knew that I knew that I knew that I knew that but the people who are watching those videos on those channels that are not
⏹️ ▶️ John tech related, didn’t know any of that stuff. And they’re seeing the new iPhone for the very first time,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe they don’t even understand what a big deal it is like whatever the new iPhone is it out yet? Can you buy it? Do all my friends
⏹️ ▶️ John already have it? They don’t know. Those are channels that were probably being underserved
⏹️ ▶️ John by just giving it to the tech columnists and the Wall Street Journal and a bunch of Apple blogger
⏹️ ▶️ John nerds. So Again, I can imagine all sorts of potential upsides to the strategy
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple took. Even someone like MKBHD has a nerd audience. Like, that’s a nerdy channel,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? It’s not the same as giving it to someone who works for a fashion magazine. It’s a different audience and Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John reaching different people with this strategy. Now, who was that? I think it was, was it Marco or Casey?
⏹️ ▶️ John Which one of you brought up the subtracting people? Me. That’s the, that part of the strategy
⏹️ ▶️ John of not giving it to the other institutions? I have more trouble thinking up a
⏹️ ▶️ John reason for that other than they were afraid that the
⏹️ ▶️ John cranky sort of, you know, the old guard would be
⏹️ ▶️ John more likely to spend time focusing on the flaws and less time being excited about the cool stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John But that’s just that’s just a theory. Like and again, I think Apple PR tries things and looks at the
⏹️ ▶️ John results and adjust their strategy and they’ve done it so many times that I give them leeway to try this strategy
⏹️ ▶️ John and we’ll see what they do with the next one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, thanks to our sponsors this week, Casper, Betterment, and Jamf Now, and we’ll see
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mean to begin, cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research,
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him, cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental. And you can find
⏹️ ▶️ John the show notes at atp.fm And if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John into Twitter, you can follow them At
⏹️ ▶️ Marco C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
⏹️ ▶️ Marco N-T Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse, it’s accidental
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Accidental, they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John mean to. Accidental, check podcast so long
Post-show: Casey’s video
⏹️ ▶️ John I have some after show things to ask Casey about so I am super behind
⏹️ ▶️ John on Twitter Casey Have you already posted your video review of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No good god No, yeah we mark when I spoke about this a little bit in the pre-show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and and I have Purchased Final Cut Pro Final Cut
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Pro X Whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John this free car is already costing you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey money. Oh, is it ever? I did post a like literally eight second teaser
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to Twitter earlier today I Stopped that teaser deliberately
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right before I got to quadrifoglio Because I didn’t want to have the entire internet make fun of me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for pronouncing that incorrectly. So I Am pleased with the progress
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on making on the video But I have made very little progress and it is slow going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but that progress that has been made I’m pleased
⏹️ ▶️ John with so I am I am actually I did actually see that clip. So that’s how far behind I am Twitter.
⏹️ ▶️ John think I just read that before we sat down podcasting
⏹️ ▶️ John have one piece of advice. I watched it with mute on so I didn’t hear any of the
⏹️ ▶️ John what I did see is one of the default fonts for every
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey titles. Everyone got so
⏹️ ▶️ John that. Do not use that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John font. Everyone got so cranky about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that. I don’t I don’t think it was the default.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now I’m not arguing it was one of a short list of options. It’s completely correct,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it was not the default, I don’t believe. And I have since changed it to Futura because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I haven’t come up with a better plan
⏹️ ▶️ John yet. Well, I was gonna if you hadn’t changed, I would have said, let me put it this way. That’s the font
⏹️ ▶️ John I use on my destiny videos. You should be aiming higher than that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Fair enough. Okay, so you know, if you have a bunch of people complaining that your font isn’t good enough, you only have two options,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Comic Sans and Papyrus.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, no, Avatar already used Papyrus. You don’t want to be confused with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Avatar. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, so far, so good. I can certainly send the two of you guys a draft if you
⏹️ ▶️ John So for the first two seconds, I saw that also again with Mewdon or whatever, seven seconds or whatever it was.
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s hard for me to tell whether you are doing an homage
⏹️ ▶️ John to the the car review channels that you watch and love or a parody of them.
⏹️ ▶️ John feel like you should feel constrained by the formats that have come before. Yes we’ve all
⏹️ ▶️ John seen these other car channels but I don’t think you need to
⏹️ ▶️ John do a car review the way you do them. You can do them the Casey way. Now maybe it starts by saying I’m gonna imitate
⏹️ ▶️ John the channels that I know and love or like maybe you are sending them up or maybe half of it is the joke
⏹️ ▶️ John that you are exactly following the format of the channels that you like, but it’s funny because it’s you doing it, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. I have began. Sound was off, but I would encourage you to spread your wings and fly
⏹️ ▶️ John and do whatever the hell kind of car view you want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do. Your assessment is semi correct. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I need to pull from somewhere, right? Like I’m not a creative enough person that I can just fart
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out like this brand new
⏹️ ▶️ John So you are You’re an excellent farter, Casey.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am a very good farter.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re full of gas. Everybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco loves it. Wait, is that a marketable skill? We wish. Because if so…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, the three of us, we’ve got that on lock. I need somewhere to start from.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And my starting point, and certainly the first seven seconds completely bears this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out, and you are right, but my starting point is kind of mostly Doug
⏹️ ▶️ Casey DeMuro-style review, but the formula is not identical. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a bunch of quirks, then in-car video,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then Doug score. It’s not going to be quite that formulaic, but I do start with some of me talking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey around the outside of the car, then me talking—well, that’s about all I’ve got so far—that the intention is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of me talking about the inside of the car, but very little in the realm of quirks and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more about just what does it feel like to drive a Giulia. And then a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of ride-along footage, which I actually think will probably be pretty brief because all it’s going to be is me giggling
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about how fast it is and how good it sounds. And then a little bit at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the end, which is again me standing in front of the car outside. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I have a couple of I feel like this is if it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey goes the way I intend, it’s going to be part Doug
⏹️ ▶️ Casey DeMuro, part CGP Grey, and that I have some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John figures at some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, no, no, no, no. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John not really. That would be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey awesome. So, that, I don’t know if you saw it, John. This might have been before you,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey before you jumped on the call, but I’d put in the chat a link to a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey still picture that I had taken, which is of the three key fobs. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so, yeah, this is when you were here, because you were talking about the accord key fob. Yep, I saw it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the shtick with that is that is like the final frame in me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey building up to what you see. So the, you know, as, as the voiceover is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going, I have just a white sheet of paper and then I, then you see the BMW E90 key appear.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then, you know, the next quote unquote frame, which is probably, you know, 30 literal frames later,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you see the E90 having been written and then you see the F30 key appear 30
⏹️ ▶️ Casey frames later, the F30 key that’s, that’s been written. You see what I’m saying? And so there’s like a, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some gags, not Not gags, that’s too strong a word, but like some cutesy timing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I’m trying to do for a couple of these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things. Is that on top of a toilet tank?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No. Also, screw you, that’s my trunk, you bastard.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s a white car, it’s hard to tell. Oh!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, God. You two are the worst. That’s funny,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John are the worst. It looks like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John toilet tank. God bless America.
⏹️ ▶️ John That just shows how clean he keeps his car. It’s so polished. That’s true.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, but the reason I say it’s vaguely CGP grayish is that I think one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the ten Tenet is the word I’m looking for one of the like Sticks with the CGP gray
⏹️ ▶️ Casey video is is being cutesy with the timing and I mean that in a complimentary way, you know like things are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey happening visually on beats verbal beats and and so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s like a little bit of that going on and there’s a I plan to do a little bit of that with regard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the interior as well. Um, I hope I can trim it down. Like it’s a couple of minutes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey long. How long is this? It’s three minutes right now. And it has probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a third of the footage I want, maybe even a little less than that, and I’m aiming for between five and 10 minutes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, I think the 20 minute Demuro Doug Demuro reviews, that’s way too much for me today. If I get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the habit of doing this, maybe I’ll get in the habit of doing, you know, 20 minute reviews one day eventually,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but for my first crack at this. I really hope to stay under 10 and would prefer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be closer to 5, but I think it’ll be 10 or maybe even more than that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just don’t spend a lot of time on the owner’s manual on the spare tire and you’ll be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sorry Doug. Okay, noted. I deeply regret not having bought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or rented or done something to get a lav mic. I think the audio quality is, I’m going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get dinged for pretty bad to the point that I am debating actually trying to dub.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I feel like bad audio on your first YouTube video
⏹️ ▶️ John featuring yourself as a rite of passage for everybody who’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Yeah, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably true actually even I only had mediocre audio
⏹️ ▶️ John But you were way above the normal bar Which is like you sounds like you’re talking to a laptop microphone from across
⏹️ ▶️ John the room Everybody’s first YouTube video has to be like I think it’s the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rule Yeah, I mean I was wearing a lot of Mike just a crappy one So I had
⏹️ ▶️ John audio you still sounded way way better than what people’s first YouTube video supposed to sound like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah I mean, I would say Casey like it’s better to like and and I’m saying this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to myself as much as you because when I tried To do a like nice-looking YouTube video with my MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro review like I looked back on it Recently and it’s like I can’t I can’t even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco watch it. It’s so bad like at the time I didn’t think it was that bad now and looking back on it now I think it’s really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bad, and I it’s painful for me to even see it Someone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the lessons I learned from that that I wish I would have learned before I made it is is it’s better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do a better job at a format you can do better than to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then to aim too high with with the format or style that you want to create
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and do a bad job of it and that’s what I did I am too high and I tried to create a much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco higher production value video than what my skill and experience
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and to some degree equipment was actually capable of, this is mostly not an equipment
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem. This is mostly a skill and experience problem. And the fact is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ve made so few videos, I don’t know if you have a better knack at it than I do. It’s hard to have a worse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco knack at it than I do. If I make any more videos, I’m going to try to make them in a more casual way,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with lower production value, intentionally, to prevent me from getting too much in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weeds here. Because you might be thinking about fixing your audio, that’s cool, you should have good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco audio if you can, But that’s probably not going to be your biggest challenge. Your biggest challenge is going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be like things that people who make video more and who are experienced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and or trained with it are better. So things like composition, timing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cutting motion, color, corrections, like stuff, stuff that like that casual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco beginners just don’t get or need experience to develop to get.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And because we’ve made so few videos, We don’t have that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yet. So it’s better, I think, to aim for something more casual,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco less produced, less fancy, and just put that out there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than to try to make something super professional when you don’t have the tool set
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or the skill set or the experience to be able to achieve the look you’re going for yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I think that makes sense. And I think I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my aspiration is to have something that feels like, or even feels
⏹️ ▶️ Casey vaguely like a cross of DeMiro and gray, not to say that that’s my marching orders, but, but does
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that somebody could watch this film or whatever you want to call it, this, this video and say,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, I see what he was going for there. And I can see a little sprinkle of DeMiro and a little sprinkle of gray there. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you, okay, he, he didn’t get there, but I see where, where this line is heading, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can’t really have a line if it’s only one data point, but you know what I’m saying? Like, I understand where he’s going with this and yeah, that was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a bit hamfisted here. The audio is crappy there, but there’s promise
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here. Does that make sense? Like I want to, I feel like it is within my skillset
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to, to get in the vicinity. Of this perfect video
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I have in my brain. And I don’t think I’m going to deliver the perfect video that’s in my brain, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do feel like the things I’m asking of myself, I’m reaching to get to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them, but I think they’re by and large attainable,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is the best place to be, right? Where you’re uncomfortable but not—and so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s where I think I am. Remind me of this when the video is released and it’s utter garbage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and the thing is to like, you know, you’re comparing yourself to people who are such pros.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah Well, Doug DeMiro, come on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good I’ll give you a quick story here is it like in this? So gray is gonna be so embarrassed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I’m that I’m saying this but oh well Sorry, great. I don’t want to give any details
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really in case it embarrasses anybody but at some point I witnessed somebody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco asking gray for a critique on a video he like kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of you know went on his phone for a few minutes and the conversation went elsewhere and about 15 minutes later
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he showed on his phone he had re just on his phone he had recut
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the entire video and was showing frame by and I saw before and after
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and his was way better just by recutting the footage that he was given in this video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and he was able to explain why he rearranged things, he trimmed things differently,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why he like certain scenes flowed into the other ones better than the other ones, and how this reordering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and recutting of this completely changed the feel and pace and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overall quality of this video. And to see him do that, it’s like it’s I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco imagine like when when non tech people see tech people like whiz through a problem on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the computer super fast and it blows their mind, that’s how I felt watching this like I’m like oh my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco god like that’s this is a skill set that people like gray have because they’re very experienced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with this and and they’re very good at it yeah yeah when I compare how the way I approach
⏹️ ▶️ Marco making a video to the way that I saw a pro do it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my god it’s worlds apart it like so like I don’t even have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the vocabulary to describe you know what it is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he was doing and why it was better, but it was way better. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way he was explaining it, it made total sense, but I could never come up with that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, you’re getting started in this. You don’t have a lot of video experience, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You don’t have a secret YouTube career that we didn’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about? No. And for those who listen to this, if this makes the released version of the show, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have never, ever edited a podcast. Truly, I never have, not once, because it’s always been either you or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mike or, you know, one of your minions that has done it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Mike Lugino Oh
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, we got an organization full of minions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here. Jared Ranere Yeah, exactly. The two of you, just minions all the way down. But, but you know what I mean? Like, I’ve never even edited
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a podcast. So I’ve dabbled in iMovie a couple times, and I think I’ve dabbled in GarageBand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe once. But these are, these are tools that I’m not familiar with.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I’m just kind of hacking at it. You know, I feel like I’m going through the jungle, not with a machete, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with like a pocketknife. And I do feel like I’m making forward progress,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but unequivocally what I release is going to look ham-fisted. What I hope
⏹️ ▶️ Casey though is that once you get past the crap audio, and once you get past the fact that the timing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is wrong, once you get past the fact that inevitably this video will run longer than it should, and I’m going to try my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey damnedest to cut it down, but I know it’ll end up running too long. I hope that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you, the collective you can see this and say, I see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the start of something here, it’s probably not the end, hopefully
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not the end, and this, I can see how this is going to get better with time. And,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and part of the way I’ve tried to do that is I do feel like my review, my video review is going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to have a bit of a narrative. I feel like I can, I have created an arc and I even took some engineering
⏹️ ▶️ Casey paper from college and like drew out like really crudely drawn storyboards, which I think I put on like my
⏹️ ▶️ John stories. I saw those. I thought that I thought that was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey adorable. Well, but it’s I mean, that’s how I’m trying to like frame it in
⏹️ ▶️ John head. Because you were doing it on real pencil and paper like you’re Mike Hurley or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something. Yeah, which is which is barbaric, but it’s the best way I could come up with to try to like reason
⏹️ ▶️ Casey through what the story I want to tell. And I think if I didn’t at least have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the beginnings in that regard, I would be totally lost and this video would never
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John since I have—
⏹️ ▶️ John You could have done an Xcode storyboard. Finally find a use for it. That’s true.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I guess what I’m saying in a roundabout way is this is going to be embarrassing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I release it, if I do at all. It may be so embarrassing that I don’t release it or I only send it to my
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. You should. After you release this video, you should by all rights have the most popular
⏹️ ▶️ John YouTube channel on this podcast. I mean, I think Marco had does
⏹️ ▶️ John have you have a lot of views on your on your your MacBook thing. But in theory,
⏹️ ▶️ John a review of an $80,000 sports sedan has more like general interest than
⏹️ ▶️ John a yet another review of like a laptop. So I feel like you should come out as the undisputed
⏹️ ▶️ John views champion of ATP.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I hope I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I hope so. And I think my plan is to release it, I really do feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I I can get it to a point that I’m only lightly embarrassed by it rather than deeply embarrassed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by it. But we’ll see what happens. And part of the reason I really want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to release it is because I feel like I have a story here. And that story may not be interesting to anyone else.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s like, you know, when you when you have like a really good slideshow of your vacation, right? To some degree, what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we made you sit through, John, when when Marco and I went to Germany and then again, when we went to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey driving school, like to us, we had this like story arc and and it was fascinating and exciting, but to you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it might have been a total fricking snooze. It may be the same thing here, but I feel like I have a story arc, I feel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like I have something to say, and maybe it’s completely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey selfish, but I have already filmed my conclusion, and I knew what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wanted to say, but I ad-libbed it, and I’m really, really happy with how it came out. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like I’ve got a decent start, and I’ve got a pretty good end that I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty happy with. So if I can just get the middle, okay, then it’ll be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey okay. And we’ll see what happens, but I am having fun and that’s the other thing. If nothing else,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m having fun and I’m adding a tool to my tool belt.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Will that be interesting or useful in the future? Maybe not. Who knows? But, uh, alpha
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Romeo has told me that they’re going to give me another car next year, not a Julia, something else. Uh, we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see if it comes to fruition in part because baby. But, in theory,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ll have access to an Alfa Romeo. My dad actually just bought an interesting car, which I can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tell you two about privately later. So, if he really and truly loves me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then maybe he’ll let me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John review that. It might
⏹️ ▶️ John be easier to get your car from a manufacturer
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey than from your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dad. I think you might be right. And you haven’t even met my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dad. You know I only have one question.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s silver. Didn’t we see a picture of it last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time? Yeah, it’s silver. It’s just shiny white. white. Yeah, it’s just, oh God, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the worst. But you see what I’m saying? There is a way in which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can probably eke out a couple more videos. And if I have a handful of videos under my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey belt, maybe it’s possible to get access to cars I wouldn’t already have access
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to. And I’ve actually had a couple of people reach out via Twitter, which is extremely kind and nice of them, and say, hey, if you want to review
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my genuinely interesting car, I’m happy to do it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That works for regular car reviews. I don’t know if I’m comfortable with that because God forbid I broke something like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey within what, you know, or if I ran into somebody, then what, you know, so I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey entirely comfortable with that or at least not now, but it’s been extremely flattering that somebody would be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey willing to even entertain the idea. So who knows, maybe this will be a one and done thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’ll be embarrassed about it in a month or maybe even an hour after it’s posted, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so far I’m learning and having fun and I know it’s very like kumbaya and touchy-feely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but that’s really the most I can ask for at the moment you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know. All right let me let me you know pose an alternative path here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you know A, you you waffled a minute ago about whether you’d even release this video. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco definitely should release this video because the way you get better at making
⏹️ ▶️ Marco videos is by making videos.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Like that’s you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know just like everything else like you’re not gonna to get good at something if you do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it twice a year when you get a press car. Like that’s not going to be enough.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You should actually consider doing reviews of other cars, boring cars,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other things, like that aren’t cars, you know, review helicopters, I don’t care, like just review…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if this is a thing you want to get good at doing, you have to construct ways to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it more often Because otherwise you’re never going to be able to create
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the kind of thing you want to create. If you’re not getting more experience like you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco per unit of time like doing one of these a year is not going to be enough. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you actually want this to be a thing that you get good at and that you do on a regular basis,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do more of it. Find ways to do more of it and maybe that’s just reviewing boring cars sometimes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know like just like if you make yourself a deal. Review one car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a month and then try to figure out how do you even do that? How do you get set up for that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco How much effort do you have to make this fit within in order to be able to afford,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time-wise, to do it once per month? Set that system in motion.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You could have something like, what if you get friendly with a local used car dealer and whenever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have a cool used car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you give them some small amount of money and they let you borrow it for a few days.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then it’s no sweat off their back, it’s used anyway. Borrow it for a few days, maybe you promote their dealership
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the end of it or something. There are ways to solve this problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you want to only review cars and you don’t want to borrow a friend’s cars, there are ways around that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There are things that you can do here. If that’s not enough for you, first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of all, review your car, hello. Like you have…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, but my car is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco old. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know what? There’s a lot of people who are wanting to buy used BMWs and want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to know which ones are good. None. And which ones have a lot of expensive work that needs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be done. But like people want it. You’re not going to compete with like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, the pros for like getting all the high profile views for every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco brand new car. People are going to go to the bigger viewers for that. Where you can compete
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is on things that the big reviewers aren’t spending time on. So you can compete with all the crazy cars you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have access to in your everyday life and there’s going to be someone looking for that. And you can use those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lower profile, lower traffic, lower pressure videos to build
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your skills with. So that on the off chance that you do get some kind of awesome new press
⏹️ ▶️ Marco car that is higher profile and expensive and fancy, you will already have built the skills.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you won’t have to be learning on that one. Build the skills up in a more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco training wheels kind of environment where the stakes are lower and you can do it more often.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then you can be ready for when something big happens.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I completely agree with you. And I think just looking at my network, for lack of a better term,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that sounds so LinkedIn, but maybe I could get some seat time in either your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey car or Underscore’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco car. Yes. You know how many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco car people you know? Exactly. I have with you, you’re telling me about one of your friends who has a cool car.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, you know so many car people. Like, this is not a hard thing for you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do. Like, if you wanted to set this up, you could very easily set this up. Also,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey here’s how you…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That and Aaron’s car. Yeah, Aaron’s car, your car, your, you know, your parents’ cars, all your friends’ cars,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can happily drive mine if you can get yourself here somehow. Like, this is totally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a thing that you can do. It is not that hard. If you want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get yourself set up with this, you already have a pretty good network in place to do it. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a big time commitment, but developing any new skill like this is going to be. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you want to do it, figure out a way to do it. Set it up. Make it a habit.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s how you will get good at it. I’m not saying that you’re going to make bad stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Matthew Foss Gottlieb No, no, no. I’m totally with you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Steven Penn What I’m saying is, I know what you’re going for, and you’re not going to be able to achieve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the level you want to achieve unless you do it regularly, unless you make a habit of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Then you’re going to develop the skills to do it over time. But you have to start doing that and you’re not going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do that if you only get one car a year.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah, I completely agree with everything you said. And, you know, Aaron and I have talked about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it a bit and, you know, we’ve talked about, you know, is this worth spending money on, you know, outside of Final Cut
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro, obviously. Like is it worth me getting, you know, a hundred dollar lav mic and, you know, maybe a multi hundred
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dollar like XLR portable recorder and the answer is we don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but— Okay, stop right there. This stuff is really cheap. You don’t need to spend that much money. What you need is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an iPhone, maybe a gimbal for it, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some kind of small mic that you can clip to your shirt and record. But those are—if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you don’t want something fancy and wireless that hooks up to SLRs, you can go really cheap
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey and it works.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So there you go. But my point is to say, like, you know, what what both time and financial
⏹️ ▶️ Casey commitment is worth, is this worth? And on the surface, the conservative
⏹️ ▶️ Casey answer is not a single cent and not a single minute, but it’s not quite that simple, right? Because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what if like, and I was talking to Aaron about this, and this is probably going to be embarrassing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to say at some point in my life, but I’m gonna say it anyway, suddenly this became analog.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What if this becomes another livelihood for me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and my family? And what if doing the podcast and doing these videos
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is enough to fund our existence? And what if then I didn’t have to go to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a jobby job every day? And what if I could then spend more time with my family?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s a moonshot. I don’t think that’ll ever, ever, ever, ever happen. But why wouldn’t I just give
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it a whirl and see what happens? And I’m basically repeating,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m parroting what you said, Marco, back to you. But that’s kind of the way I’m looking at it right now is, who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey knows? What if I have a bit of a knack for this? I feel like there’s something here,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it’s not going to be mature, and it’s going to have problems. But why not to use
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an underscoreism, why not unpack this a little bit and see what I come up with?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Maybe I’ve got this. If you really want to go for the moonshot of the moonshot,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what if I end up on Top Gear America in ten years? Again, I understand how preposterous
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and comical that is, but who knows? Why should I say I can’t do that? You never know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Weirder things have happened.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. I mean, look, worst case scenario, you have a really cool,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fulfilling hobby that you really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey enjoy. Yeah, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s the worst case scenario. You get to film cars and talk about them. do that anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey can’t think of a better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hobby for you to have. If you happen to be able to turn this hobby into a business, cool, that’s bonus.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But either way, it’s good. Either way, it’s going to make you happy to do it. Everybody has hobbies.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco John plays Destiny. You can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t know, John. Take me back to Earth. Am I crazy?
⏹️ ▶️ John I was just going to say, it’s making me feel old to hear people whose spirits haven’t been crushed by
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey life yet. That’s the most Jon answer ever.
⏹️ ▶️ John With optimism. Yeah, I do play Destiny and I make videos of me playing Destiny. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a fulfilling hobby. Wait, do you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a channel where you put those?
⏹️ ▶️ John On the internet? I’ll have you know, I have dozens of views on my videos.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Dozens of us. Do you really like put these online somewhere?
⏹️ ▶️ John I have a YouTube channel. It’s been mentioned on this show before. You
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey were here. Yes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yes, even I knew that and I have no memory.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There it is, use a Syracusa, there you go. Yeah, that’s you or somebody who’s posing as you and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also plays Destiny.
⏹️ ▶️ John Whoa. And plays Destiny just the way I play it. Let me tell you, the videos are action
⏹️ ▶️ Marco packed. 113 views. Yeah, that’s right. Wow.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, you have a lot here. I’ve been doing it for a while, since Destiny 1.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, you’re gonna have to edit out all the times I mentioned Gray because I think there are times that he actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey does listen to this show I don’t know what I said about him.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John It was all intended to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Complimentary,
⏹️ ▶️ John but if he’s if he’s smart He’ll pounce on me for using the phrase lose the plot and
⏹️ ▶️ John say haha now you’re using British
⏹️ ▶️ Marco isms. Actually, that’s true He’ll jump on it straight away
⏹️ ▶️ John His first videos were crap too. He just he just didn’t publish them or maybe he did I think he was mentioned
⏹️ ▶️ John on an old hi episode like that You have to keep your first really crappy video in your
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco channel. You can’t delete
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s the thing, like, you know, like you’re comparing yourself to somebody who’s been doing this for years,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, like, everyone starts out crappy. And if you only make one video a year, you’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be crappy for a long time. If you do it, if you make this a new thing that you do on a regular basis,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have a much better chance of getting better over time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah, yeah. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say, and again, like, this is me telling myself, this is much anything else. Don’t focus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the gear. The gear is not your problem. You can do everything you need with an iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it that’s all you need you everything else is bonus like it’d be nice to have a little bit better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know audio input it’s a little closer to your mouth if you’re gonna be on camera otherwise like that’s you don’t really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need that much you don’t think about the hundreds of dollars audio interface and stuff you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need it also you already own one but you don’t need it like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you only the The content of the video, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco video footage itself, the writing of the video, the timing and the editing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the cutting and what you’re saying is way more important than the equipment you have.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the fact is, the iPhone that you already will have anyway
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the best video camera in the world for this type of thing most of the time. Like, not all the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time. You can have specialized things and pros and everything, but like, if you wanna just make a video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a newcomer to the field, just use your iPhone. It has everything you need built in. You already own it. Spend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco zero dollars, just use the iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and so the stuff I did, I did with a GoPro, an old GoPro that I borrowed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from work, and my iPhone. And there are a couple of things, like I’ll do voiceovers with the good mic, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is going to be jarring because it’s gonna be so much better than the stuff I filmed live, but whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But, and I recorded the exhaust note a couple of times with my good mic just to get a really good,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, like the beginning of this preview is actually the exhaust as recorded with the mic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m speaking to you with now, which I’m sure is wrong in some way or another because it’s probably not the right mic for it, but whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco yeah, this was… No, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not wrong, just your mic is not filled with exhaust.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I mean, whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good, right? But you see, it was like a GoPro and an iPhone and my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey podcasting mic. To your point, I am 98% of the way there. The only problem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of them I haven’t really solved for is when the iPhone is several feet away
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from my body and I’m doing a live discussion. And by that I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, I’m recording both video and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’m going to keep both the video and the audio. That’s the thing I haven’t solved for. And that’s what’s going to sound like garbage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in this video unless I like overdub or whatever the term is that actors do. If I dub over myself
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco and try to record—
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, ADR. Yeah, whatever it is. Yeah. So I try to like match my exact—
⏹️ ▶️ Casey delivery that I did at the time but I do it with my podcast Mike and I don’t think I’m capable of it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ll probably give it a shot just to see if it gets even close but I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco don’t think I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that’s incredibly hard and I think like you have to be a very experienced actor probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be able to have any chance of doing that well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I’m sure you’re right yeah but
⏹️ ▶️ John you should get Declan to dub over you because that would make a good video yeah I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John assuming I’m assuming you’re you’re over dubbing quadrifoglio with a Vatici
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I haven’t done it yet, but I plan to do it at least
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco the first time. It’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slow down the video slightly like match it up so you look all weird.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John No, I mean it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the secret to good audio for this purpose like you can get into any degree in any degree details but basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco none of them matter as much as getting a mic close to your mouth and it matters
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way less what that mic is how good it is like just get something that can be close to your mouth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because even a really good mic even if you get like a really nice fancy shotgun mic that’s made for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this purpose, it does not sound nearly as good as a cheap lavalier next to your face.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steve McLaughlin Well, and the stopgap that I used, which you’re going to yell at me for and you’re right,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is I used actually one of my AirPods. So I have one AirPod in my ear and that was what the audio was for. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it sounds like a telephone call, which is okay, but it’s a lot better
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than me because the phone was probably 10 feet away for a lot of the stuff that I filmed. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey left with just the phone mic, it would have been nothing but wind and a dim, faint version
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of me. And so it was the best I could do without spending any money. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can tell you right now that if this gets posted, which I intend to post it, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guarantee that I’m going to get a bunch of complaints about the audio. And they’re going to be fair because the audio is going to sound like garbage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the stuff that I filmed, quote unquote, in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco person. But it doesn’t matter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I know, and that’s why I’m just rolling with it. Just focus on it for next time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One thing you can do that’s probably your cheapest option, really, without having to buy much of anything, you’re gonna have to buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably a wired lavalier mic. That’s fine, they’re really cheap. They’re like under 50
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bucks for even halfway decent wired lavalier. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I suggest you do is plug it into something that can record the audio separately from the video, that way you don’t have to worry about that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then you can sync it up in Final Cut. You can sync up the audio, I think automatically, with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the video, somehow it syncs up. There’s a way to do that. And the good thing, and you’re doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco short clips that drift is not gonna be a noticeable problem in the time duration that you’re doing. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other thing I would say is one thing to consider for what is recording that thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it can be an old iPhone, a second one. If you don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enough. Oh, interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco point, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, yeah. If you don’t have a long enough eight inch cable to a lightning adapter to a dongle to fit into the new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey iPhone, just use an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone 5 and run voice memos as you plug in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a wired lavalier to its headphone jack that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Like, that’s a thing you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do too, because all iPhones can be audio recorders. So like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s gonna be better than what you have now. Like, it’s gonna be easier. The other thing, or you can get something like a Zoom H1,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is like this little tiny thing you could like, I mean, it’s not invisible,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you could like put it in a shirt pocket at least, or somewhere near your mouth that is nearer than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an iPhone, It’s like it’s you know kind of like a standalone recorder. You can also run a wired lavalier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into an H1 line in jack. That’s the thing a lot of people do. So like there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lots of options here that range from free because you already have the stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to like under a hundred bucks. And you can go crazy, you can go way higher than that, but you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t need to. Like don’t even, I would even say just don’t. Like don’t mess with that because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s so much more important now to get the other basics right. This is where I went totally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wrong with mine. Like, I got the fancy camera and the fancy tripod, and I even bought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like an iPad teleprompting mount.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought about doing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco that, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah. So I could use Joe Chplinski’s Teleprompt Plus in there. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got all this crazy stuff, so I could like have teleprompter, so I could be looking at the camera while I’m reading my text instead of looking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off screen at my laptop with the notes on it and everything. I got this crazy setup, and I ended up using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of it zero times, or one time, to make a mediocre video, and I didn’t make a video after that. It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I make videos again, I’m going to instead just use my iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the gimbal that I also bought for some reason. Like, I’m just gonna use it in that and shoot myself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and maybe I’ll have a lavalier mic to give myself better audio, but that’s as far
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I would go, probably in that department. Just because like, if I’m going to make videos again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I need is to make the process lower friction so I do it more.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the only way I’m gonna do that is by making it basically all iPhone and making it informal. You know, basically like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco making it like Periscope, you know, or Instagram
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s, cause I had no problem doing those cause they were informal and all iPhone based. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just need to do that, right? And so like you need to find out what that is for you. Like find out how to make yourself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do more videos so that you can get better at making videos so that when you get an opportunity like this, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can do the kind that you actually wanna do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, the only equipment I’m currently planning to buy, if any, is a lavalier
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mic of some sort and maybe a gimbal. And that’s it. That’s all I feel like I really need at this point because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can borrow a GoPro from work or there’s a possibility that a listener might have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually a similar generation one that they’re not using anymore. So he had offered to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey send it to me. So I have a GoPro, I’ll have my phone,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe some sort of mount that I can mount between the headrests. Like if I get really serious,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey um, something that I can mount the GoPro to between the headrest, because basically the only mount I have right now is the suction cup
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mount, which is great for taking video of me, but less great for taking video of what’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going out the front of the car. Um, but anyway, the point is, I, I agree
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with you that I, there’s very little I intend to spend money on. Unless
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have a compelling reason to, which is to say things are going well. And if things are going well, then great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Why not throw money at that? Throw money at it. But if things aren’t, if things are as I expect, which is to say,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was a fun blip on the radar for me and the people that care about me, then whatever.