257: Smell the Wind
18 Jan 2018Baby Liss II, photo management scripts, what ARM PCs and Windows Sets could mean for the evolution of the Mac, and a special gift for Casey.
Episode Description:
- Casey and Erin had a baby!
- Casey's photo management workflow
- Follow-up: Europe's black Mac
- PCalc About screen, revver of fans
- ARM Windows PCs
- Windows 10 Sets
#askatp- Non-Pro iMac upgrade cadence (via Erik Berlin)
- John's 🧀 grater (via Andy Hume)
- Messages in iCloud (via Kurt)
- Post-show: A gift for Casey
Sponsored by:
- Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code ATP for 10% off your first order.
- Hullo Pillow: Your favorite pillow, guaranteed.
- RXBAR: Whole-food protein bars. We tell you what’s on the inside on the outside. Use code ATP for 25% off your first order.
Chapters
- Baby Liss
- Casey announces Mac app
- Follow-up: Black desktop Macs
- Follow-up: PCalc revs iMac Pro
- Sponsor: Hullo Pillow
- ARM PCs and LTE MacBooks
- Sponsor: RXBAR (code ATP)
- Windows 10 Sets and macOS
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- #askatp: Hold back iMacs?
- #askatp: Cheese-grater plans? 🖼️
- #askatp: Messages in iCloud?
- Ending theme
- Post-show: A gift for Casey
Baby Liss
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we should probably catch everyone up in case they weren’t aware. Aaron did
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in fact have our baby early Thursday morning. So for those
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of you who may have heard the last episode, you may recall that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that was recorded Tuesday night. And I didn’t really want to get into it during the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show, but Aaron was actually starting to have contractions during the show. Like it was shortly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey before the show that we looked at each other and said, oh, yeah, this is probably it so we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we went into the OB the following morning Wednesday morning and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The OB had said oh she’ll definitely Aaron will definitely be done
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by evening time And as we got closer and closer to evening time, oh, it’ll be definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey done by midnight And as we got closer and closer to midnight Oh, it’ll be definitely done any second now and sure
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enough that a little after 3 in the morning Aaron blessed our family with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a little girl whose name is Michaela Charlotte and And we are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey overjoyed and very tired
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the normal response for having a newborn Oh and I started to say earlier and then I got myself sidetracked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we did what appears to be the inverse of the Syracuse of family approach because our first child was or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at least my hazy memory of Declan was Reasonably easy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the grand scheme of things like any child is a royal pain in the tuchus, but nonetheless
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Declan was reasonably easy whereas Michaela is Starting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out anyway Considerably more challenging and it may just be that my memory which is already
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bad in general has just blocked the new baby phase from My mind, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh boy, this is something else and and if I recall correctly John you said that that your son
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was what did you call him? I was asking Aaron this earlier, like a screamer pillar or something like that?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Yeah, from The Simpsons.
⏹️ ▶️ John One of his many delightful names. He basically screamed for the first several months of his life
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yet you somehow decided to have a second child, which
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, like the only thing that we kept this doubt was like what if the next one is worse? Like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey is that even
⏹️ ▶️ John possible? Like literal fire coming from
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the baby. I don’t know Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John it could be worse. Alex was inconsolable. Nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John consoled him in any way. You know, rocking, walking, burping, feeding.
⏹️ ▶️ John He refused to eat for a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey really long time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, even feeding? Oh, okay, so you’re worse off than we are. Because the one thing that we do have going for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us is that if Michaela’s attached to Aaron, everyone is happy. Well, except Aaron.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But everyone is happy. And I say except Aaron only because as it turns out, which I didn’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey until we had a kid, breastfeeding, not fun, not easy. Who knew? And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so Aaron is, you know, extremely happy to be able to do it. Don’t get me wrong, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is not an intensely pleasurable experience for Aaron to have this like leech latched
⏹️ ▶️ Casey onto her all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, it can be depending, but like, but yeah, there’s definitely a learning curve that most people don’t think about.
⏹️ ▶️ John And one of the extra difficulties with Alex was because it was our first, we didn’t have the experience
⏹️ ▶️ John to know that this is a thing we could successfully do. Like, you know, Erin had with
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Jack. She knows,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, I’m capable of this. Like, it’s a pain, and it’s annoying, and lots of things can go wrong and
⏹️ ▶️ John be a bother and be painful, and things got a little whichever. She can do it. But Alex was like, look,
⏹️ ▶️ John can we accomplish this? Why does our child refuse to feed? Why is he just
⏹️ ▶️ John screaming at me? Like, surely this child is hungry, but no, it’s only hungry for screaming. Oh, he’s
⏹️ ▶️ John hungry for more screaming. Oh, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So it wasn’t, yeah, Michaela isn’t as bad as Alex in that regard. This is a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lot of complaining, which is truly and utterly unfair. You just hit me at a tired moment. The reality of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey situation is, and I’m being serious, is that if I take a step back, we have been lucky
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enough through the miracle of science, and I say that with no hyperbole intended, we have been lucky enough through the miracle of science to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have two kids that nature by itself wouldn’t let us have. And that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is really tremendous. And we’re deeply, deeply, deeply lucky for it. Erin’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey labor was difficult. Every labor is difficult. I’m not saying hers is more or less
⏹️ ▶️ Casey difficult than any other.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, regardless, big congratulations, Casey. You guys went through a lot on both fronts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with both kids. And we’re really proud of you. And big
⏹️ ▶️ John congratulations. It’s all smooth sailing from here. Yeah, totally. That’s exactly how it works.
Casey announces Mac app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, you have a newborn, everything is in chaos, you haven’t slept at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You got a self-employment gig set up yet?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Lying right up. No, I do not. I have not even thought about it. Although,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because this is what I need to do with my time, I’m working on a Mac app.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What? Sort of, kind of. That was the correct
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Nursing Clock Pro. Yes, that’s it. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John exactly it. Overcast for Mac?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Overcast for Mac. Overcast for Mac. Yeah, and by the way, I’m billing you tomorrow. No, I, I,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey God, I’m trying to think of the short, short version of the story. So I have a very esoteric
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and a very weird photo management workflow that works
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for me. I understand that it’s complete garbage to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everyone else on the planet, but it works for me. And the problem with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that workflow is it’s based on a bunch of Python that I basically understand but can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really create anymore. I’m not very good at writing Python. I’ve done a smattering
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in my day, but very, very little. And these scripts came from Dr. Drang. I’ve tweaked them ever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so slightly in order to do what I need, but they’re almost entirely what Drang had written.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyway, so Apple in their infinite wisdom has decided to release new image
⏹️ ▶️ Casey codecs or formats, whatever you want to call it, with HEVC and HEIC,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey HEIF, whatever. I don’t even care. Whatever. I’m tired. Point is, there’s new things and those have ruined my workflow.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so rather than trying to hack apart Drang’s script, which is great, like I’m not trying to say his script
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is bad. It’s a casey problem. I don’t really understand Python very well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do approve of using white space as delimiters. Don’t at me. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the point is I’ve decided to write a Swift command line app in order to do basically the same thing, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is to say, look at a folder full of images and videos, figure out what the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey date was that those images or videos were taken, which could be as simple as the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey file creation date, but oftentimes is not, rename them to a given format.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So in my case, I prefer, and this is one of the few cases where I like 8601. So my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey preferred file format or my preferred file naming is 2017 or 2018-01-17 space hour
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hour hyphen minute minute hyphen second second.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s just the one I like. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. This one is mine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s a reference, John. Anyway, point is, the script that Drang wrote
⏹️ ▶️ Casey does all of this for me, but I decided I don’t, I don’t like the way I hacked it up to work
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with live photos and trying to figure out what’s the associated movie with a particular image, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so I’m just rewriting it as a Swift command line app that’ll do all this for me. And in the span of just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey today, I think I started it. I feel like I’m about a third of the way through, which means I’m actually about a 10th
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the way through, but that’s better than nothing. And that’s exciting. And I will probably either never release
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this or at most open source it. so other people can laugh at how hacky this is because I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey writing it for a job, I’m writing it for me and hashtag YOLO. But that’s what I’ve been doing on and off
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I’ve had a moment to breathe, when I’ve not been entertaining Declan or keeping the Screamer Pillar from screaming.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m trying to stay on my Screamer Pillar. You’ve got to come up with a new name. You had
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey your pre-birth
⏹️ ▶️ John name with Sprig and Sprout. You’ve got to have a post-birth name.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah. I thought Michaela was good enough. Seems not. Anyway, I’m going to go.
Follow-up: Black desktop Macs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, what else is in follow-up? What do we got here? So there’s another black desktop Mac, I hear.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this is one I did not know about. Why? Because it’s Europe only! So many things
⏹️ ▶️ John are Europe only. I like this model of Mac. This is like the, I don’t know what you would
⏹️ ▶️ John call this case. It’s the sort of iMac looking all-in-one, but the nice looking one. They
⏹️ ▶️ John made a lot of Macs in this particular form factor, but apparently one of them came in black in Europe. So
⏹️ ▶️ John more cool stuff to get. I was also trying to find, I looked for the link for the second thing. There was a
⏹️ ▶️ John story that went around a while ago about how Europe
⏹️ ▶️ John or some European countries or some sort of international standards body had some requirement about the specific
⏹️ ▶️ John color of computers. I think the story was like, here’s why all computers used to be beige.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s because of this like ISO
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey specification. Oh yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey yeah, yeah. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I couldn’t for the life of me find the link. So if anyone knows it, send it to us and we’ll put it in the show notes. But anyway, the
⏹️ ▶️ John important part of that story, other than the silly, you know, sensational headline, was that to
⏹️ ▶️ John comply with this, apparently Apple had to create a bunch of PowerBooks whose keyboards
⏹️ ▶️ John were grayish, and it looked just awful, because PowerBooks were all kind of like dark gray or black,
⏹️ ▶️ John and they had keyboards that either matched or complemented that, except for they would make them for, I think it
⏹️ ▶️ John was just Germany, but maybe it was other European countries, they’d make a nice sleek black PowerBook and put it like a light gray
⏹️ ▶️ John keyboard on it, and it was gross. So kudos for Europe for having this black Power
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac 5500 and whatever the opposite of kudos is for
⏹️ ▶️ John making Apple make their computers ugly for you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cheers and cheers, John.
⏹️ ▶️ John Cheers and cheers. Yeah, but what’s the opposite of kudos though? Cheers and cheers works, kudos and dookies. No.
⏹️ ▶️ John Dookies is kudos backrooms, right?
Follow-up: PCalc revs iMac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, moving on. So tell me about the Pcalc about screen and how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is as quoting and I’m now quoting from the show notes, the refer of fans.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. So Marco’s mighty iMac Pro was recently purchased by James Thompson,
⏹️ ▶️ John creator of Pcalc the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and iMac Pro configured like mine, not like my actual one. I didn’t sell mine
⏹️ ▶️ John And Pcalc has been around for many, many years. It’s a calculator application and it was able to run his fans
⏹️ ▶️ John at full blast. How can a calculator run a Mac Pro’s fans at full blast?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, if you haven’t been keeping up with pCalc, and you really shouldn’t be,
⏹️ ▶️ John there is an interesting feature hidden in the About screen that starts to
⏹️ ▶️ John make more sense when you understand that it’s revving the fans. So I don’t want to spoil it for but
⏹️ ▶️ John it does other things as they say on Seinfeld.
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ARM PCs and LTE MacBooks
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⏹️ ▶️ John So this is an older story about people announcing ARMs, Windows PCs. This is kind of Microsoft’s
⏹️ ▶️ John second run at selling you ARM hardware that runs Windows. Remember, what was
⏹️ ▶️ John it, Windows RT was the first one? They were gonna sell like x86 versions of, I think it was their Surface
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff or whatever, also arm versions with a special version of Windows that runs on it. They did, they actually did it. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John no one bought them, but they did it. And it was it just wasn’t that popular. A lot of people speculated because like,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, it’s all well and good. And it runs Windows and it has some advantages. But it was a while ago,
⏹️ ▶️ John arm PCs weren’t as powerful as they are now. And the main thing is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, I can’t run office or I you know, not an office, but I think they ported office, but like all the software that
⏹️ ▶️ John runs on Windows, unless the developers recompiled for arm I can’t run it so their
⏹️ ▶️ John second run at this is cleaner without a special you know without it being like
⏹️ ▶️ John Windows you know suffix type thing it’s just Windows 10 for arm they have
⏹️ ▶️ John an emulator that will run x86 software so everyone does have to port like they’re doing a better job of like
⏹️ ▶️ John you know supporting a second architecture still remains to be seen whether it will succeed
⏹️ ▶️ John for them because I really think or you know I don’t know The only examples I have that I’m knowledgeable about
⏹️ ▶️ John are the many transitions Apple has made to different CPU architectures and in all cases Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John has made a transition from One thing to another it is not tried to
⏹️ ▶️ John sustain on an ongoing basis two things at the same time So I’m not sure what when
⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft’s endgame here is anyway I’m not not really interested in Microsoft’s ongoing strategy to
⏹️ ▶️ John find ways to sell people more copies of Windows and making interesting hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John Mostly interested in this because of the consumer experience
⏹️ ▶️ John that is offered by these various arm PCs are all laptops obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John Or portable things and a lot of these products offer to the customer
⏹️ ▶️ John statistics like 20 hours of battery life And one one
⏹️ ▶️ John reviewer said that he has been using it for five days without charging the battery
⏹️ ▶️ John This was, you know, an arm based PC was testing. Um, and most of these things come with LTE.
⏹️ ▶️ John And now the modern, the slightly more modern than December twist on this is CES happened recently, which I’ve been
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly do my best to ignore plus or minus the new televisions. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John but apparently it’s CES people who were there were saying, you know, you can’t throw a rock without
⏹️ ▶️ John hitting a laptop that has LTE. So this combines two new ways for Marco to reiterate
⏹️ ▶️ John old complaints about Apple laptops. One,
⏹️ ▶️ John life doesn’t seem to be that great and two, they don’t have LTE. And I have to think this is kind of one of those
⏹️ ▶️ John if you know, again, if Microsoft is successful with these things, like maybe they find a way to sell them, the emulator
⏹️ ▶️ John works well enough to make people consider them. But like, it’s not like they get a little bit more
⏹️ ▶️ John battery life than like a MacBook durable, because 20 hours is a lot is
⏹️ ▶️ John enough more than five or six hours that is it’s in a different ballpark. It
⏹️ ▶️ John changes how you would use this thing. If you could buy an Apple laptop
⏹️ ▶️ John that was MacBook Adorably-ish, you know, form factor, with LTE,
⏹️ ▶️ John they got 20 hours of battery life, people would flip their lid, right? And so
⏹️ ▶️ John the question is, why can’t we buy that? The LTE question we’ve talked about many times in the past. Seems like that
⏹️ ▶️ John is within Apple’s grasp to do that, but so far they haven’t. And the ARM thing we’ve also talked about in the past, but
⏹️ ▶️ John this is another scenario, of like the Microsoft Surface Studio and various other things
⏹️ ▶️ John that Microsoft does where I look at it and I think Microsoft is has
⏹️ ▶️ John better hardware ideas than Apple and is merely thwarted by the fact that their platform is not as successful
⏹️ ▶️ John and they have lots of other problems that are, you know, so you can say, well, you know, you kept saying that Microsoft Service Studio is such a big deal,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s not really setting the world on fire. Yes, they have other problems like you don’t win just because you have interesting hardware, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it pains me to see Microsoft being more innovative and it’s hardware when I think if Apple just did those same
⏹️ ▶️ John things, plus also stayed good at all the things that it’s good at on. It’s much more, you know, sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John popular on the upswing platform. I think we would all all love products like
⏹️ ▶️ John that. And I’m not saying it’s time for Apple to go to arm or whatever. I’m just saying the longer Apple waits,
⏹️ ▶️ John the more its laptops seem like they are. I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not going to say like from another age, but going in a different direction than everybody else. If I
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t think of any person who, you know, who is a current MacBook adorable owner. This is the 12
⏹️ ▶️ John inch MacBook with one little board on the side of it also known as the MacBook one. And saying, great, you like that
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything. But what if I gave you the same thing, and it had to run some of your existing software
⏹️ ▶️ John and emulation, but you got 20 hours of battery life and it has LTE. I think a lot of people would be willing to give that a try.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, absolutely. I was just thinking earlier today that I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey love my my adorable. I freaking love this thing, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was also thinking I would kill everyone I knew for a second port, but that’s a different issue. Um, I do love the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey signal. I really, truly, and honestly do. It is not exceptionally fast.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is only one port, which is, which is very frustrating from time to time. Not always, but from time to time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I love this computer. And if you told me that I could get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two times the battery life, not to say that I have a problem with the battery life, but if you said, Hey, charging
⏹️ ▶️ Casey once a day isn’t even necessary. Charge once a weekend
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and or you said, oh, and by the way, you can have the internet anywhere.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my word. I would pay twice as much as I paid for this thing. And I think I paid like two or $3,000 for this thing, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was. It was not insignificant given that it’s the tiniest laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that Apple sells. And I would do anything just like John was saying, I would do anything
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to have that this phantom laptop with twice the battery life in LTE.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t care if it has ARM or not, that to me is mostly irrelevant. Obviously, it’s an interesting conversation for us three nerds,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but as a consumer, I don’t care if it has ARM or not. I just want it to last forever,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which it sort of does now, and have LTE would be tremendous. Yes, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey understand. You can tether. I get that. But to me, I’d prefer to have it on board if I
⏹️ ▶️ John So the arm factor is, uh, you know, it’s like if you put
⏹️ ▶️ John x86 in there, it wouldn’t get 20 hours of battery. Like that’s the, that’s the contention of arm. Right. Uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it starts to be ever more plausible when you think about how like the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John benchmarks against the adorable in single and multi-threaded like the modern iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then you compare the size of the battery in the iPhone 10 to the size of the battery in the adorable. Granted, the adorable
⏹️ ▶️ John has a massive screen on it. Like it’s not apples to apples. It’s not 100% clear to me that I would just
⏹️ ▶️ John magically replace the CPU with arm. You get 20 hours of battery life. But you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John like I said, from a consumer perspective, they don’t know or care what what hardware is inside these
⏹️ ▶️ John except as it might impact their software compatibility experience. And that’s where the emulator comes in. And
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe that hurts the battery life. But either way, if they treat this as a transition and go
⏹️ ▶️ John all the way. This is an experience that Apple currently can’t compete against is very far from
⏹️ ▶️ John competing against. And the other angle we didn’t even get to here is the sort of Vatici angle where if
⏹️ ▶️ John you were to go to the story that will link to the show notes from our technique and look at these products, you would say, but wait a second, that’s not a
⏹️ ▶️ John MacBook adorable. That’s an iPad with a keyboard. That’s like a Windows 10 convertible. And remember,
⏹️ ▶️ John Windows has the one OS strategy that handles touch and blah, blah, blah. And Apple doesn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that brings us into a second conversation that I think I had probably around December, whenever I was on upgrade with
⏹️ ▶️ John Jason snow talking about iOS laptops. And since then, uh, or maybe it
⏹️ ▶️ John was before that. I remember Jason’s written a couple of articles about it. Uh, the teachers talked about it forever and
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s come up again. And so, you know, maybe the answer isn’t an adorable 20 hours of battery life. Maybe the
⏹️ ▶️ John answer is an iOS laptop, which is another thing that people are climbing for. And as I said, an upgrade, Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John should totally make one because it is a known proven form factor. And some people really like iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John and I can see you getting 20 hours of battery life from an iOS laptop. So if you’re not going to do it with
⏹️ ▶️ John the actual adorable to make easy happen, do the iOS laptop thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the iOS laptop thing is is a thing that they should do. I don’t know how good it would end up being, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know a lot of people who would buy them, I would probably buy one I I’ve had ever since
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 9.7 Pro came out. I’ve used I have dramatically increased
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my iPad usage because I got it with the smart keyboard. And the smart keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cover, it transforms an iPad for a lot of people, and I’m one of them, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know I’m not the only one. And it’s pretty much always in it. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never take it out of that cover. I do occasionally, like if I’m gonna be sitting on the couch for a while, I will occasionally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fold the keyboard behind it, but I’m not even detaching it. I consider that keyboard part of my iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So if we had basically what tablet PCs offered like 15 years ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which was the convertible form factor, where it looked like a laptop, except the hinge,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you could rotate the screen all the way around and then flip it back to fold it back on itself.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco PC makers still make laptops like this. This is still a thing you can get. Some version
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of that as an iPad that had a permanently attached keyboard that was a really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good keyboard, and then the whole thing could be shaped and weighted the way a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptop is shaped and weighted and have a lot of benefits there, that would be an amazing device
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a lot of people. And this is not to say that all iPads should become laptops. Obviously, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not true. But what we’ve seen with the, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like stopping the fall of iPad sales and starting to have some growth again in the last
⏹️ ▶️ Marco few quarters, I think that’s directly attributable to two big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco changes in the iPad line. Number one, that awesome new, cheap 329 iPad. That’s a big thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then number two, the iPad Pro, finally giving a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco high-end and business users what they’ve been begging for for the iPad since
⏹️ ▶️ Marco day one. I made this tweet about it that was kind of quick on this point, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, the history of the iPad has been like, Apple tries
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something, they say, we don’t need legacy thing X, Y, or Z. And then customers are like, I don’t know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think we kind of do need that. And Apple’s like, nah, trust us, you don’t need it. And sometimes they’re right. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s why I think they make that bet so often and they’re so stubborn on it for so long most of the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because a lot of times they are right about that. But sometimes they’re not. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you have a pretty decent sized portion of your customer base hacking keyboards
⏹️ ▶️ Marco onto iPads in weird ways, in these crappy cases and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco brackets and things, and things eventually you’re like okay well let’s actually just make the iPad do this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well and we will we will make the iPad supported better the same way like the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one didn’t have any support in the hardware for a case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s where the iPad one case was that horrible like vinyl pocket thing that was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a disaster because the like there was no good way to a tattoo attach a case to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an iPad the iPad 2 they realize oh everyone is attaching cases to this so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ll build in the magnets to have this, you know, magnet connector on the side, and that can support the case. Over time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, these needs expand. Eventually, we get where we are with the iPad Pro now, where we have the smart connector. We have a nice,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco easy way to attach keyboards without dealing with Bluetooth or batteries or anything, and Apple makes this nice one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It really hasn’t panned out that much in the sense that nobody else really makes anything for the smart connector, but Apple does at least.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, I feel like going towards this, like, you know, clamshell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad option or this convertible iPad option as kind of a half laptop,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is a perfectly valid place for the iPad line to go. Not all of them, but for that to be an option. They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco already sell it in like four different sizes. People are always like, well, they only want to ever make one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They want to minimize SKUs. No, that’s not true anymore. That has not been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco true for a long time for most Apple product lines. They’re fine making additional models if it expands the market.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I think this would expand the market by enough to make it worth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the additional cost of having it. So that aside for a minute, let me just rant about LTE
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for one more time. This will be quick. We don’t have to think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about why Apple might or might not want to put LTE in Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptops. We don’t have to. This does not have to be theoretical. Because PC laptops
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have offered LTE built in as an option for over a decade. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not theoretical at all. We can see why people want it. We can see that people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy it. We can see the good and bad that comes from it. We can see how it can be managed and sold. All of this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has been shown by the PC world for over a decade. The only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good reason, they might have some bad reasons, but the only good reason why I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple has LTE in Macs is because Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardware has spent so much of the last few years, especially, but you know, honestly, a lot of the time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco since I was came out, Mac Harbor has spent so much of this time in neglect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and in seemingly the entire platform. I seem to be in maintenance mode in a lot of ways,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we see signs of this maybe not being true anymore with things like the I Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where this is like, you know, this awesome computer, lots of custom engineering and everything. So, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe we’re coming out of this time, but there is no question in my mind that there is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no good reason why we can’t have LTE as an option in MacBooks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There are only bad reasons. And if Apple wanted to make it happen, if they cared
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make that happen in the Mac line, if they thought that was a thing that was worth their time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they could do it. It would be totally fine. Mac OS has had support for distinguishing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cellular connections on network API requests. Since I think Mountain Lion or something,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s been there for a while now. So the software support is there. There are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps like TripMode if you really need to watch it more than that. But you know, these are all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco solved problems on the software side. The hardware side is, okay, is it a cost issue?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Charge more for it. It’s a cost issue on the iPads too. You can get a $1000
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad Pro and then you can add LTE to it for like $150. That’s okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whatever you need to charge, charge it. We will bear that as the market.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco People want this. Yes, you can tether, as you mentioned earlier, Casey, but tethering sucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not always on. Your phone isn’t always with you. You’re draining two batteries in instead of one. That sucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Nobody wants that. Yes, you have to have another plan for another device, but these days, we have plans
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for There are watches now, for God’s sake. Plans for additional devices have become easier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and easier over time, and cheaper and cheaper over time. There are so many people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who would buy a MacBook Pro or a MacBook, whatever, I don’t care, some Apple laptop running macOS,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t care what it’s called, who would buy that with an LTE option for an extra, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, $200, and would gladly pay an extra $20 to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco $40 a month to have that on a cellular plan. This is not theoretical. The entire PC
⏹️ ▶️ Marco world has done this for a decade. We know this. We see this. We know it can be done. Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for God’s sake, it’s way past time. Just do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John So in that category of things that Apple sees other people doing, says we don’t need to do that,
⏹️ ▶️ John one very minor one, well, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s that minor because I continue to be annoyed by it despite the
⏹️ ▶️ John fact that I’m not really in the market for this thing. Take a look at the picture at the top of that Ars
⏹️ ▶️ John Technica article about the Windows 10 And, you know, so this is a great
⏹️ ▶️ John example of a convertible iPad-ish type thing, and it’s got an OS on
⏹️ ▶️ John it that runs your desktop apps, but you can also touch it, and it’s got a keyboard, and it’s got a little kickstand. This is actually
⏹️ ▶️ John a less laptop-y, more smart keyboard. There’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco little loop where you can store your
⏹️ ▶️ John pen. Look at that. A, it’s got a pen, which is in the earlier category of things that Apple didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco like it needed until I realized it. Yeah, but
⏹️ ▶️ John B, guess what? It has a place for you to put the pen that you’re going to use with
⏹️ ▶️ John your tablet-y thing. There are a million third-party ways to do that, but I’m not entirely
⏹️ ▶️ John sure what Apple expects people to do. Like, do they expect people to put it behind their ear, like a
⏹️ ▶️ John carpenter or something? By
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way, the third-party ways all suck. I’ve tried many of them. They’re all terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. I just saw one today of another one of these things, like a case with a
⏹️ ▶️ John big long stick that magnetically attaches to the smart cover or whatever. It’s like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s almost like we had it better in the Palm Days where all those devices came with a little slot where you put that tiny little stinky
⏹️ ▶️ John plastic stylus. Hell, the Newton had slots for you to slide a stylus into. They had a collapsible one where it went in sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of horizontally and the message pad 110, it went in vertically. If
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re, you know, they sell a stylus now, a pretty good one, and people like it. And the people who like it want to
⏹️ ▶️ John use it with their iPad, because as far as I’m aware, you can’t use that stylus anywhere else, can you? Like it doesn’t work with anything
⏹️ ▶️ John except for an iPad. So the only reason you own it is to use it with your iPad. And I guess you just
⏹️ ▶️ John carry the pencil in one hand and the iPad in the other. It’s just, this just seems like
⏹️ ▶️ John a huge oversight. And so my tiny, tiny miniature wishlist thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple should do, obviously LTE is bigger and iOS laptops is bigger, but like, if we
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t get either one of those things, Apple, give us an officially supported place to put
⏹️ ▶️ John the Apple Pencil so that you can carry both it and the iPad that it goes with
⏹️ ▶️ John together in some way where there is a reasonable chance that they won’t immediately detach and you’ll lose it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, there’s also, I mean, I honestly, I think the pencil could use a lot more consideration than that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but maybe that’s for another show.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but anyway, Microsoft obviously has been on that page for a long time, but there’s sort of a kitchen sink thing. Oh, it’s a laptop,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a tablet, it’s, you can draw on it, you can touch the screen, it’s got a stylus, you know, it’s got a, hell,
⏹️ ▶️ John the Surface Book thing had that, whatever, that little cylinder thing that you stick on the screen and turn and do
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco all sorts of
⏹️ ▶️ John things. The knob! Yeah, they’re trying all sorts of stuff. I’m just saying like, we’ve crossed the stylus
⏹️ ▶️ John Rubicon here, like we’re all in stylus land. We just need some
⏹️ ▶️ John place to put it. And I say this, I own one of these, and you know where mine is? It is on my nightstand
⏹️ ▶️ John next to my iPad. And no, it doesn’t roll off because it’s vaguely weighted and I have it on the inside instead of the outside, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it just annoys me. Like one of the reasons I never have my stylus with my iPad is I don’t have a way to attach it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And all those third party ways always just seemed a little bit, I don’t know, inconvenient for
⏹️ ▶️ John me, especially since I’m not like a super heavy, uh, stylus user, but honestly there should be, there should be
⏹️ ▶️ John an Apple supported way to do it, please.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just want my, uh, Mac book adorable with LTE. Yes, I would pay the extra fees for it if I really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John it was useful. I can already hear. As much as a watch. You know why? No.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because the adorable is so much bigger than the watch and the watch is so small.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey You shouldn’t pay money for a small thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Why should I pay for that? It’s, it’s just, it’s sipping data.
⏹️ ▶️ John Who buys batteries? Yeah, that’s why Mac apps get more money because the screens are bigger.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, right. Well, I I feel like we kind of got sidetracked though on the idea of arm
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like us. Yeah, I know right Do we think that this is realistic?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like we went through this like six months ago or something like that and I Don’t remember what conclusion
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we came to it seems to me like If it wasn’t for the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fact that there’s so many third parties that would need to get on board this train this would have maybe already
⏹️ ▶️ Casey happened at this point. Like it seems like Apple would want to control the entire stack.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They’re clearly very good at making ARM CPUs. The ARM CPUs they make
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are clearly very power efficient. Like in so many ways, I’m slightly surprised they haven’t dipped
⏹️ ▶️ Casey their toes into this water. Although I agree with, I think it was John that said earlier that they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey typically, you know, straddle two platforms. They will just decide, okay, we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going from PowerPC to Intel or we’re going from Intel to ARM, et cetera. But I don’t know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like this is an inevitability, but remind me of this in like 15 years when we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey still on Intel processors.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, they’re playing chicken with that inevitability. Like, so we all see it as an inevitability, but it’s, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the game of chicken is that inevitability of like, look, they gotta do ARM. Like, they’re so good at doing ARM CPUs, their ARM
⏹️ ▶️ John CPUs are getting better and better. Like, isn’t it only a matter of time? the car racing
⏹️ ▶️ John in the other direction at that eventuality is, yeah, but if they keep holding
⏹️ ▶️ John on, eventually the Mac will just fade away on its own and we won’t have to deal with it because iOS has always been ARM,
⏹️ ▶️ John and so problem solved, right? It gets back to the Mac investment thing, and you know, in our past discussions, like look, if you really
⏹️ ▶️ John wanna go ARM on the Mac, it’s very difficult to
⏹️ ▶️ John support both for a long time, which means you’re kind of signing up to build like an 18-core ARM
⏹️ ▶️ John processor to compete with Xeons if you’re still going to be in that market, which as of last year, Apple has decisively
⏹️ ▶️ John said, yes, we want to be in the market. Marco’s sitting in front of one right now. So if you want to
⏹️ ▶️ John go ARM on the Mac, oh, now it’s not just, yes, great. So we can take the phone CPU and turn it into a laptop. And we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh, we’re good to go there. It’s a perfect fit. What do you put in the iMac Pro?
⏹️ ▶️ John And then you’ve got the Thunderbolt issue. And it’s like, yeah, we could solve all these problems. You could totally do it. If the Mac was a growing platform
⏹️ ▶️ John and it was the future of the company, they would do that. they would make ARM CPUs with 18 cores in them, they compete
⏹️ ▶️ John with Xeons, and they would figure out the Thunderbolt thing and they’d be fine. But that’s not where the Mac is right now. And so it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John do we really want to put that much money into a platform that we sell so little of? Maybe if we just hold on
⏹️ ▶️ John long enough, we won’t have to worry about this problem and it will solve itself. So that is the game of chicken I see on the ARM
⏹️ ▶️ John CPUs. Like in the fantasy engineer world, it seems like a no brainer that Apple would do it because
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re so good at it and surely they do a great job or they’d work out the tech issues. But in the reality
⏹️ ▶️ John where you have to look at sales numbers and consider how much you’re investing and yada, yada, yada,
⏹️ ▶️ John it does not look like a sure bet, you know, clearly
⏹️ ▶️ John the right thing for Apple to do. So, you know, every year, like
⏹️ ▶️ John you smell the wind and be like, is this the year for them? And I suppose that the
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that could make it happen sooner rather than later or not at all is Apple could actually decide we’re gonna do to
⏹️ ▶️ John a two cpu strategy. We’re not going to bother trying to compete with the zion, but
⏹️ ▶️ John all these, you know, next year’s set of arm system on a chips
⏹️ ▶️ John for iphones and ipads could cover such a vast portion of their laptop
⏹️ ▶️ John at this point, right? In terms of cpu power and gpu power for that matter,
⏹️ ▶️ John that they could sell more than half of their max with arm cpus without having to
⏹️ ▶️ John basically build new chips. Like I say, we have built these anyway for the iPads and the iPhones
⏹️ ▶️ John repurpose them, do all the work we have to do the OS, voila, arm on the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John and uh, you know, the Mac pro and the iMac pro and all that other stuff. You know, we’re, we’re not going to
⏹️ ▶️ John put that much money into arm to, to build chips for those. So those will just stay with x 86 and we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John just continue to ride this out with two cpu architectures for that. But so far Apple has never done
⏹️ ▶️ John that. And I don’t think that strategy is a good idea. I think the strategy is commit and convert,
⏹️ ▶️ John either go big or go home.
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’ll say something like, three egg whites, two dates, six almonds, and no BS.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s really, honestly, what it is. And it turns out these are great. I’ve been eating these things
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love them as my mid-afternoon snack when I’m hungry, but it’s not dinner time yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I also use them on long car rides. I brought them on my last plane ride. They’re great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you need to toss it in a backpack for like a bike ride or a hike,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or involving it before or after a workout. They’re wonderful, and it really is what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it says. Three egg whites, two dates, six almonds, no BS. Like there’s no crazy additives.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They have 11 delicious flavor varieties. All of them are gluten-free, soy-free, and dairy-free.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There is no added sugar. This is a big problem with so many of these protein bars. They’re just packed full of sugar.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The only sweetness in this comes from those two dates, and that’s not that much sugar, it’s hardly any. There’s no artificial
⏹️ ▶️ Marco colors, artificial flavors, preservatives, or fillers. They use egg whites for the protein, dates to bind it together,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nuts for texture. It’s wonderful. They come in 11 different flavors, as I said. I honestly can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pick a favorite. Whenever I’m buying them, I just buy one of everything. They have a variety pack, you can try that, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just like them all. They’re great. So check it out today at rxbar.com slash
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Windows 10 Sets and macOS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, tell me about Windows 10 sets.
⏹️ ▶️ John This was, I’ve been keeping up with Windows 10. I have not actually ever run Windows 10.
⏹️ ▶️ John My Windows stuff at work is Windows 8 or earlier. I still retreat to
⏹️ ▶️ John the comfort of Windows 7, the relative comfort of Windows 7 for someone who’s not a Windows user, obviously.
⏹️ ▶️ John Although I bet Windows users are comfortable in Windows 7 too. Like yeah, that was the last one that still seemed vaguely like Windows, but Windows 8
⏹️ ▶️ John screwed it all up. like
⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, Windows 10 sets, I’m assuming this is an official shipping
⏹️ ▶️ John feature but I can’t really tell because it’s just a YouTube video for all I know, it’s just a speculative thing. But you know
⏹️ ▶️ John my love of window arranging and so to see any OS
⏹️ ▶️ John coming up with new strategies for dealing with Windows is interesting to me. Now obviously the Windows
⏹️ ▶️ John windowing model is so different from the Mac and I like the Mac windowing model better. But given the
⏹️ ▶️ John Windows windowing model where everything is this is his own damn window, and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John its own little taskbar item, and its own independent entity, and potentially also
⏹️ ▶️ John its own duplicate running instance of an application. Everything flies in the face of the Mac model, but given that
⏹️ ▶️ John model on Windows, where you got a lot of windows floating around, many of which are actually independent instances of programs,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s difficult to figure out how to, to come up with a sort of a system, or
⏹️ ▶️ John to create any sort of hierarchy. Like on the Mac, because you basically can’t have,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, technically you can, but from a user’s perspective,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can only have one instance of an application running at once, right? So if you start Safari and it shows up in your dock,
⏹️ ▶️ John what if I want to run a second instance of Safari? Well, you can’t. Now, obviously, if you know what you’re doing, you can make that happen,
⏹️ ▶️ John but regular users, if they double click Safari again in the Finder, it doesn’t launch a second Safari
⏹️ ▶️ John on your dock. If you click it again on your dock, it doesn’t launch a second Safari. You’ve got Safari. And within Safari,
⏹️ ▶️ John you have multiple Safari windows. and then within Windows you have multiple tabs. That hierarchy on the Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ John application is one level, and then drill down one level, each application can have zero or more Windows.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s one fundamental aspect of the window. Windows is not like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if you don’t have that hierarchy, I mean, Windows kind of had that hierarchy back in the day, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John you two Windows victims can tell me about this.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Do you remember the windowing model? I think
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe Visual Studio did it at one point. There was a name for it that I used to know, you’d have a parent window and all… MDI?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and all child windows were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inside the parent window. Called MDI, Multiple Document Interface.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that was a terrible idea. But anyway, there is still that hierarchy because you can launch one instance
⏹️ ▶️ John of IE and have multiple tabs, and many applications you could launch one instance of the application and open multiple documents, even
⏹️ ▶️ John though depending on the taskbar model… Yeah, that’s what Photoshop has always done in various ways. Yeah, because that
⏹️ ▶️ John started as a Mac app, so this encouraged… So you have some flexibility to do but in general it’s much more flat in Windows.
⏹️ ▶️ John So Windows 10 sets, it’s kind of like when
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple added framework support for tabbed windows on the Mac, where it was easy for
⏹️ ▶️ John a Mac application to say we’re going to support tabs that look and behave vaguely like Safari tabs. So previously
⏹️ ▶️ John you’d have my document-based application, TextEdit. You launch TextEdit and you
⏹️ ▶️ John open a bunch of new documents and each document is in a new window. and with the framework support
⏹️ ▶️ John for tabbing, it’s like, oh, it’s pretty easy for text edit to say now I support tabs, and you can take your two text edit windows and merge them together,
⏹️ ▶️ John and now they’re in one tabbed window that kind of looks like a Safari window with little Safari tabs, right? They added that a couple
⏹️ ▶️ John years ago. Well, Windows 10 Sets adds tabbed windowing sort of to the
⏹️ ▶️ John window manager, so that in OS level, you can assemble windows from multiple
⏹️ ▶️ John different applications into one tabbed mega window to make a set
⏹️ ▶️ John of documents, So you’ve got a web browser window, a text editor window, your graphics application window,
⏹️ ▶️ John all are tabs within the same master window. So it’s not like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s seven PowerPoint documents. It’s a PowerPoint document, an IE document, like a Finder
⏹️ ▶️ John window, whatever that, like all the windows, a file system thing showing your disk.
⏹️ ▶️ John Explorer. Yeah, is it even called that anymore? Who knows? And that’s their
⏹️ ▶️ John way of organization. So instead of just being a flat stew of windows, which is one of the many
⏹️ ▶️ John reasons that Windows usually love to fullscreen, because look, there is no hierarchy, so just give each window the entire screen and I will just
⏹️ ▶️ John furiously alt-tab between them and I’ll feel efficient. Now that you have the ability to
⏹️ ▶️ John make sets of windows based on whatever task you’re doing, kind of like I’ve talked about making sets of tabs in
⏹️ ▶️ John my web browser, say this is my like I’m shopping for a new screwdriver window
⏹️ ▶️ John and I have like seven tabs of different sites looking at screwdrivers, right? This could be I’m working on a project.
⏹️ ▶️ John Here’s all the graphics from the project. Here’s my research window. Here’s a text editor window.
⏹️ ▶️ John Here’s a web preview of what I’m doing. Put them all together into one big set, and then the cloud
⏹️ ▶️ John twist is, oh, and also Microsoft will cloud sync those sets. So if you go over to another Windows 10
⏹️ ▶️ John computer and log in as you, you can recall that set and say, what was I working on? Bring up that Windows set
⏹️ ▶️ John from that thing I was working on. And all those windows appear on your new computer, all those tabs or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. So I think that’s very intriguing. I would love both
⏹️ ▶️ John that statefulness and the ability to sort of mix and match windows in a task-oriented way.
⏹️ ▶️ John It doesn’t work really with the Mac windowing model. So I don’t think Apple should look
⏹️ ▶️ John at this and adopt it wholesale, but I am kind of excited by Windows itself
⏹️ ▶️ John taking another look at something as basic as window document and application
⏹️ ▶️ John management and trying to come up with a, you know, I’m not gonna say it’s novel because
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m sure 57 X windows managers have done this exact same thing. But I found it interesting
⏹️ ▶️ John and there are parts of it I find attractive, especially the cloud syncing and statefulness. Of course,
⏹️ ▶️ John all the caveats apply. Does this require support from application vendors? Will the only person who supports to be
⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft? If you take a bunch of credit windows application and try to use it with this, will they not behave correctly?
⏹️ ▶️ John Historically, when Microsoft has had a harder time getting all its developers to adopt new technologies.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple has done better. They’re a little bit spotty in recent years, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John with things like autosave and state restoration and stuff like that, that kind of flew in the face of
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac orthodoxy and was sort of only half-heartedly implemented by some Mac applications. But in general,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think Apple has a better time at it. So once again, I am in the position where I
⏹️ ▶️ John am forced to praise Microsoft and be proud of what they’re doing and wish Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John not did the same things but uh innovated with a similar spirit
⏹️ ▶️ John like when’s the last time Apple looked at window management on the Mac and had some bold new ideas like they
⏹️ ▶️ John they added like some vague slightly annoying uh snapping thing in
⏹️ ▶️ John like Sierra uh and then like the the you know the tiling thing was that Sierra
⏹️ ▶️ John too they’ve added a couple of minor features in half-hearted ways in recent years, but nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John that tries to not fundamentally rethink, but add a dramatically
⏹️ ▶️ John new feature akin to like, you know, Mission Control or Expose or whatever. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John in the early days of Mac OS X, you know, that’s what they were doing. They were saying, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, we have a new idea of how you might want to manage Windows and we call it Expose and later we’ll rename it and make it even more
⏹️ ▶️ John confusing. And then spaces like this is not a new idea, but hey, we think it’s maybe worth bringing into the Mac and then we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John refine it and try to make a different model. I miss that. I miss those days of windowing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, this is just one more area where it feels like the Mac is in maintenance mode.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco At one of these times, one of these cool experiments by somebody else is going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco take off. Like, Microsoft is doing a lot of things. They’re trying a lot of things. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, they aren’t all working. But some of them are and some of them will. And it’s, you know, both
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in hardware and software with what they’re trying over there. And Apple is really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not trying that much on this level with the Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The touch bar is probably the only thing that was on anywhere near this level that they tried, and that was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more of a hardware, I know the implementation crosses everything, but that was more of a hardware feature than a software
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feature from the user point of view, and it wasn’t particularly well received. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think history will judge it as a flop, if the president hasn’t at least,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that doesn’t mean they should not try anything else. That just means the one thing they tried
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was anywhere near this type of thing didn’t work out. But they need to keep trying because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the PC industry is, and you know we forget sometimes like quite how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco small percentage-wise the Mac has compared to PCs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in market share. And you know the Mac is much more influential compared to its market share
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of size than you would expect, but if people are like on their work PCs and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re using all these things at work and they get used to something like this this sets feature,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then the Mac just looks bad by comparison for not having it you know and the more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the more as time goes on the more Microsoft tries things you know some percentage of them will stick
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some some of them already have like touchscreen laptops again we help made fun of that Apple makes fun of that, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the reality is people use them and like them and it’s fine and Apple doesn’t do that. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so when somebody who is used to being able to scroll the screen on the laptop occasionally with their finger or poke a link with their finger sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they go to a Mac and that doesn’t work and that doesn’t make Apple look like great product visionaries. It makes the Mac look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco broken or outdated and over time the number of things that cause
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that feeling in new buyers is going to increase. That’s my concern with the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stagnating is that Apple can keep the Mac kind of in maintenance mode for a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of its, you know, for a lot of the platform and you might think, oh well Apple’s fine, they’re selling, you know, iPhones and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPads, yeah it’s fine, but the rest of the industry that the Mac competes with is moving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forward. With or without Apple, they are moving and if Apple is not even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really putting in a strong effort to compete with them, the Mac isn’t going to remain constant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over time, it’s going to decline over time, it’s going to start falling behind in big ways.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I don’t want that to happen to my favorite computing platform of all time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m just tired of being sad, man. I’m tired of being sad. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happy with this. I’m a pro, I’ll tell you that. But it has nothing to do with the software.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I was going to say, like, the Touch Bar, as Margo said, is a reason to be happy because look, there was
⏹️ ▶️ John a pretty big investment in it and, you know, a pretty important, dramatic, clearly Mac-only feature. Doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John seem to have worked out, whatever, but that’s exactly we’re asking for, you know, you got it, you got to try things right.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I would say that the T2 in Marcos iMac Pro is another example of granted, mostly hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John based, but interesting innovation that, you know, it is. It’s borrowing technology
⏹️ ▶️ John from iOS like it’s building on other successes. That’s just smart business. But they didn’t have to do
⏹️ ▶️ John that. They could have made a more traditional Xeon based PC and slapped it inside an iMac
⏹️ ▶️ John case, but they didn’t. There they you know, there’s there’s extra cost and expense involved in adapting
⏹️ ▶️ John that iOS hardware and software to the Mac. And they did it. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s an exciting avenue for innovation, I think, to make Macs less
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you know, less like Apple branded Hackintoshes and more like you can’t you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John assemble this from parts. You know, this has advantages over a PC that you would build
⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of, you know, performance, power, draw, security, all the areas that we expect Apple to innovate
⏹️ ▶️ John in which for many years even in the Mac’s heyday, you know, in the jobs, you know, PowerPC,
⏹️ ▶️ John G3, G4 era when Macs were very exciting and were, you know, the bread and butter of the company,
⏹️ ▶️ John those Macs inside were more conventionally like PCs than Marco’s iMac Pro is. They
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t have some weird custom ARM chip implementing secure boot. They were more or less on the same,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, what is it, EFI and later the,
⏹️ ▶️ John all of Intel’s security features like that, but it wasn’t like Apple was building these giant custom chips to do all
⏹️ ▶️ John of its like image processing from the camera and to run the SSD and to do a secure boot and
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff like that. That I think is innovation. It’s not software innovation, but it is innovation and investment in
⏹️ ▶️ John in the Mac. So I’m heartened by the renewed interest. And yeah, we all would have liked the touch
⏹️ ▶️ John bar to maybe be more to our tastes. You know, maybe some people like it, but for the three of us, it hasn’t really
⏹️ ▶️ John set the world on fire. So I guess more of that,
⏹️ ▶️ John more of that please, and with a higher batting average.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and it seems like there’s obviously a lot of different areas in which Apple is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco innovating or not innovating or moving forward or just in maintenance mode. My main complaint
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about stagnation is in frequency of hardware updates, number one, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco number two, the much bigger problem, I think, is the software platform. You know, it’s very,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think there’s, John, I think there’s a lot of parallels to be made to your, you know, Copeland 2010? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to that article, like, you know, the arguments you made back forever ago, which is like, you know, at some point,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forgive me for trying to paraphrase your argument, but at some point, you know, they can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco continue doing this forever, like something has to change, there has to be a next generation version of this at some point. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know, we don’t know, we don’t have enough insight into Apple to know, like, is there a next generation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco version Mac OS that they’re working on because, you know, we don’t see any signs of that. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco obviously we probably wouldn’t until it was much further along and almost ready to ship. But like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if there isn’t, that’s a big problem. That’s a really big problem because what we, you know, the,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the OS we’re using right now on the Mac is, you know, it’s, it’s fine in a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ways. It’s world-class in a lot of ways, but it’s really ancient and creaky and has a lot of baggage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and does a lot of things in really outdated ways that is catching up to it. It has been catching
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up to it for quite some time. It’s going to keep catching up to it more and more. And for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple to move the Mac forward, they need to be investing heavily in it. They need to be giving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it its next generation operating system, a next generation platform. And so things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the Touch Bar and the T2 are awesome on the hardware side. The iMac Pro is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco amazing. I continue to be incredibly happy with it as a computer. But Mac OS is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco starving for attention. It is stagnating, it is falling apart, it is starving.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco High Sierra is in many ways pathetic and scary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in how sloppy things were done with it, how many bugs there still are in a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco areas. The security bugs are embarrassing. I mean, it’s getting worse. Every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco release seems like it’s getting worse. Sierra was a terrible release also. Very unreliable, lots of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bugs, lots of problems, lots of subsystems and things that were seemingly rewritten for vague
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reasons and then were worse and more buggy. Like, this is increasing over time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because they’re not putting the resources into the OS that it needs to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stable and secure and to be moved forward. That’s my concern area. It’s not about the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco T2 and the touch bar. It’s that Mac OS itself is not being properly maintained
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and invested in. And hopefully I’m wrong. Hopefully I’m totally wrong and they’re working
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on an awesome new next generation, OS 11 or whatever it would be called. Not that, but you know, hopefully
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m wrong about all this. But we have seen no signs in that direction. So we have no way
⏹️ ▶️ John If there’s a next gen operating system, I don’t think it would be a next gen macro operating system. It would be a next
⏹️ ▶️ John gen operating, Apple operating system that would span the range, right? Because like what you’re really talking about for
⏹️ ▶️ John next gen operating systems. And honestly, I don’t think Apple is at the Copeland 2010 point, just because
⏹️ ▶️ John like in the, If you look at the rate of important advancement
⏹️ ▶️ John in computing, lots of really important sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John industry changing, paradigm shifting stuff happened really early on in that beginning
⏹️ ▶️ John part, going from very simple computers to more complicated ones. And it just so happens
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple’s success with the Apple 2 and the Mac happened to hit right before
⏹️ ▶️ John all of the personal computers got on the memory protection and preemptive multitasking bandwagon. it
⏹️ ▶️ John was unfortunate timing that they were successful with a slightly older platform, but there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John nothing out there as clear cut as memory protection. You either have it or you don’t, and it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty big innovation. And if you are unfortunate enough to be massively successful with a platform that doesn’t have it,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s very hard to add it after the fact. Everyone else has it, and it’s not a minor thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John But that doesn’t mean there’s no room for an for an extra operating system, but I think Apple can get along with their,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, Mach BSD amalgam. As they’ve shown, they can bring that down
⏹️ ▶️ John to watches and all the way up to Macs. So it’s fairly flexible and it’s pretty neat and they can
⏹️ ▶️ John piecemeal replace parts of it and improve it. So it’s still got life left in it. But eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John you want a next generation operating system. That next generation operating system is not an next generation iOS and not an next
⏹️ ▶️ John generation Mac operating system. It’s a next generation Apple operating system that will probably have to run on their self-driving cars
⏹️ ▶️ John and your watch and your glasses and your whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s where they would go. And I don’t think it’s pressing for them to do that now, but all their
⏹️ ▶️ John car projects and any other weird things they’ve tried with glasses
⏹️ ▶️ John and rings and whatever, those are avenues to
⏹️ ▶️ John experiment with different kernels, real-time operating systems, things
⏹️ ▶️ John optimized for neural nets, which arguably they’re experimenting with on the phone with the whatever that,
⏹️ ▶️ John what’s the little thing? The name, the branding name they gave to the neural
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey processing. ChlorML? No, no, no. Bionic? No. Oh!
⏹️ ▶️ John Some part of the chip that
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco was dedicated. The new
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. Yeah. Anyway, I’ve heard lots of rumors of experimentation with
⏹️ ▶️ John different sort of kernels and, you know, sort of core OS designs.
⏹️ ▶️ John And also, anything they’re doing with the car, I’ve also heard rumors that that stack
⏹️ ▶️ John was potentially different from the bottom up than a lot of the existing ones. Whether those things go
⏹️ ▶️ John anywhere, I guess I don’t think it’s pressing, but if and when a next generation
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple operating platform comes along, I fully expect it to span the range of all their products and
⏹️ ▶️ John to finally and decisively the dichotomy between
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac and iOS, which is to say I don’t think it is imminent. we’re more much more likely to get something sooner
⏹️ ▶️ John as we talked about in a couple of shows ago with the unified UI framework, right? That is a
⏹️ ▶️ John much more reasonable incremental step towards that, that goal. And you know, right now, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it could be argued that Apple currently has a unified low level across all their products, because under the covers,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s all mock BSD, Darwin, however you want it, like that’s underneath all of them. It’s not like the watch,
⏹️ ▶️ John as far as I’m aware, is running a dramatically different operating system from the kernel
⏹️ ▶️ John all the way up than your Mac is. So there is a common foundational platform with various
⏹️ ▶️ John bits stripped down on it and obviously different architectures and different optimizations and stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just that as you get up to the higher layer this historical
⏹️ ▶️ John somewhat artificial distinction appears. Oh this is a Mac app and that’s an iPad app. No they’re totally different.
⏹️ ▶️ John They look kind of the same, yeah I know, but just they’re same core OS, same kernel, yeah I know but they’re not, it’s It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not the same thing. So I think Apple can address that top layer before they have to go all the way down to the bottom
⏹️ ▶️ John and start, you know, and what was that? Google has a project like that. What is it called?
⏹️ ▶️ John This is the show where I can’t remember the names of anything. Fuchsia. There
⏹️ ▶️ John we go. I pulled it out, pulled it out before the chat room. Ha, that their future operating system
⏹️ ▶️ John is sort of like an hour in the open. Let’s try this experiment with another potential platform,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is such an un Apple like thing to do. just like so is confusion is like, wait, so you still doing
⏹️ ▶️ John Chrome OS? And what about Android? And what the hell is fuchsia? And not an Apple move at
⏹️ ▶️ John all. But Apple should be doing things exactly like that internally.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Maybe they are. Who knows? I don’t know. It’s just weird, because in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the last 24 hours, as I mentioned previously, I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve been reminded how much I freaking love this MacBook adorable, even the keyboard,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which admittedly is not the most reliable thing in the world, but I do love the feel of it. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something tremendous. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco love the keyboard. It turns off by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco itself sometimes, but it’s fine. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey won’t mention it for six months. Yeah, exactly. It’s not a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey big deal. No, I love this little laptop. And I love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this little laptop’s hardware design, but I tell you,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple software is not doing it for me. fleeting moment earlier
⏹️ ▶️ Casey today, actually. Maybe it was yesterday. It’s all a blur, you guys. Anyway, for a fleeting moment, sometime in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey last 48 hours, I thought to myself, man, I wonder if I should just try Windows again. No. Because,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, and I know that that’s the answer, but I’m looking at, and I think I had tweeted about this, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was trying to pull pictures off my iPhone, and Image Capture,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is an app that comes with the operating system that is designed to do specifically this, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey almost nothing else. image capture says, oh, I can’t do that because of error, negative 9917.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I was like, well, crap, at this point, I’m basically using Windows already. That’s a useful
⏹️ ▶️ Casey error message, negative 9917. No, only the Mac operating system
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John has negative
⏹️ ▶️ John number error messages, right? It’s probably an OS status. That’s deep Mac flavor, negative number
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco in a dialogue,
⏹️ ▶️ John error dialogue. All
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m saying is, it was a completely non-actionable error
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I could not find anything useful on the internet about what to do about it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know if the issue was that something on my iPhone is corrupted, and the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey issue is iOS software is kind of broken, or at least for me anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know if it was something that was wrong with my Mac. I tried two different
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Macs, had different but similar problems across both. It’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco what drew me to the platform. I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tell you what the problem was. You were doing something that Apple does not give, they could not possibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco give less of a shit about. You were connecting an iPad, or you were connecting an iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to your Mac with a cable, and then you were launching an old program
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the Mac OS Utilities folder to try to take data off of your iPhone over a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wire. Apple could not give less of a shit about that, so it’s never tested.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think you’re probably right. And that’s just really too bad. Right. And maybe the problem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is me. Maybe the problem is Casey again, and that maybe I just need to, to accept iCloud
⏹️ ▶️ Casey photo library, but for reasons that are not interesting and that I don’t care to explain, I’m not all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in on iCloud photo library. And because in the past it was always fine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I would just, I would have to remember to pull things off my phone, but no big deal that it worked every time. time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A hundred percent of the time it worked every time. Now, 60 percent of the time it works every time. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also a reference, John. So anyway, it’s just, I found myself and I think I made
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the same speech again, like six months ago. I found myself just more and more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey annoyed that things that used to reliably work don’t work anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it was such a whiplash because in the same day or two window,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve just head over heels fallen in love with this MacBook Adorable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and thought to myself, you know what, even though I’m not the kind of person to buy computers hourly like Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will probably get a new Adorable whenever it’s refreshed because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I want more of this Adorable. I want more speed. I want more ports. And if they don’t give me more ports,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s fine. But if they give me more speed, that’s great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, the Adorable fans have to buy every one because each one is barely usable. So any improvements like, oh my God,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s not that bad, but I understand your point. I understand your point. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I go from just being overjoyed by this adorable, and generally speaking, I’m pretty overjoyed with my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPhone X. And then I just see these software issues that are just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey depressing and disheartening. Depressing may not be the right word, but just disheartening. And it makes me just feel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like, it’s like that throw your hands in the air, and don’t wave them like you don’t care, because you do care.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Just throw your hands in the air and then plop them down on the desk. You’re just like, well, now what? Now what do I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do? Because I’m just screwed. I mean, where am I going to go? And it’s a rhetorical question, and I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think we need to answer it, but it’s just frustrating because it used to be this was my happy place. And maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the problem is that I’m clinging to the Mac, and the Mac is dead. Again, we don’t need to go there. We spent so much time there,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s not even worth it. Plus, I don’t want to give Federico and Mike the pleasure. But one way or another,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know where the issue is. If it’s me, if it’s the Mac, if it’s Apple, if it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John software, if it’s hardware.
⏹️ ▶️ John where it is in this case, like you just said, your your photos work for us is a little bit old, right? And so
⏹️ ▶️ John and like Marco said, you are exercising code paths that are not
⏹️ ▶️ John popular anymore with most other people. So they’re going to be abandoned, not tested as much.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you’re keeping your habits. Hey, I use image capture. This is how I do my photos is just the way I like to do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And time marches on. And everyone else has different photo workflows that
⏹️ ▶️ John do not exercise this code path at all. It’s kind of like if you you know, I manually arrange my
⏹️ ▶️ John music, I don’t want to use iTunes, I manually arrange it and I play the stuff manually from the Finder
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like you can keep doing that for a long time. But once everyone starts using iTunes, it’s hard to swim against that tide. You’re like, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John now they sell music and I’m forced to use iTunes is the only way I can buy music because they can play the fair play DRM. But like,
⏹️ ▶️ John how long can you keep doing it? The one old way that you did it, you can keep doing it the one old way forever, if you
⏹️ ▶️ John never update anything else about your computing life, right. And but you know, it’s hard to hold on to that. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, you know, you’re using third party software that fewer
⏹️ ▶️ John and fewer people are using for the task you’re using it for. And you’re asking more and
⏹️ ▶️ John more of it because you’re taking more bigger, more complicated pictures in different formats, right? So it’s not,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I’m not saying you’re doing anything particularly wrong, but it’s, it’s explicable. Right. And I think there’s, it’s inevitable
⏹️ ▶️ John in situations where you’re like that. We all have computer habits that are like that, where like, I’m just going to keep doing it this way until I can’t do it anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think you may be approaching the until you can’t do it anymore thing, because unless you’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ John write the Mac app yourself to handle this, which you were just entertaining the idea of doing, probably
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s not a big market for other people to write Mac applications to support these kind of workflows.
⏹️ ▶️ John So as I think we have all done at various points, there comes a time where you say,
⏹️ ▶️ John I will give in and try whatever everyone else is doing. Try the, know, iCloud
⏹️ ▶️ John photo library, try Google photos, try get back on the code path that
⏹️ ▶️ John is being actively developed that has lots of people using and that if it breaks spectacularly, at least you’ll be suffering along with
⏹️ ▶️ John millions of other people who will cause the thing to be fixed. Whereas here you are just screaming into the void about
⏹️ ▶️ John a very high number negative error code from from image
⏹️ ▶️ John capture. And by the way, I put a link in in our notes for the good old days of negative
⏹️ ▶️ John numbers and error messages from the Mac, when most of them were single or double digits. Before we got into negative 9,478,
⏹️ ▶️ John we had good old negative 27, and it was like a good friend. And then you’d have
⏹️ ▶️ John to turn your computer off and back on again. No memory protection.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I agree with everything you said, but with one small correction. The pieces
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of this workflow that are falling down right now that I was complaining about a moment ago, that was all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey first party. You had said third party, maybe that was accidental. But this is image capture, which is first party
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John using. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John it was like Marco said, it’s something you’re digging something out of like, is that a new utilities folder? But anyway, yes, it is first party. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John lots of applications that come with the Mac that haven’t been touched in forever or and that if they stop working,
⏹️ ▶️ John who’s going to notice like when’s the last time you launched the chest application? Is that still work? Are there bugs in the chest application?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know. Well, so like the conditions that it’s like this is operating in are changing like now that iCloud photo library
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is on phones and that photo management is kind of automatic and managed, you know on the device
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the interface to interface capture, like exposing a D-sim folder and exposing photos
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through a virtual file system on the phone that the computer can just copy off of. I think that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all simulated at this point. It’s different, it’s all weird now because iCloud Photo Library messes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with what photos are actually on the phone and what control you have over that. And if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things try to access them, weird things might happen. So it’s probably running into something is different now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with that versus with maybe the HEIC and HEIF
⏹️ ▶️ Marco changeover, and not to mention that High Sierra appears that nothing has been tested at all in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the entire OS ever. So it’s a combination of all these things. Like yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of those things is going to make your incredibly low priority use case not work. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is not an excuse, this is probably just the reason. Ultimately, this is like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I totally share, I think your disappointment here, it’s like, clearly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, both the hardware and the software on the Mac were really being neglected for a few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bad years there. It seems like they have righted or are righting the ship
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the hardware side. But the software side, I don’t see any sign of that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s, so like, we’re just gonna keep having more and more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco embarrassing, disheartening OS releases where it seems like more gets broken
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than gets fixed. That’s my concern, and I hope that doesn’t come to pass, but so far that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is what’s happening.
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#askatp: Hold back iMacs?
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey is there something happy for us to talk about?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, hmm, there actually is. Let me, uh, I was, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but. Well, do you want to do ask ATP? That’s always pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, let’s do ASK ATP and then I have an after show gift for you Casey to celebrate your new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John baby Is it another baby?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, it’s it’s it’s literally it is a gift for Casey. You’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey All right Let’s do ask
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ATP if we’re talking about the Mac Pro. I’m hanging
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up. We’re not that’s first of all part One of the gift is we’re not talking about the Mac Pro. All right, fair enough
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right Starting with the ask ATP Eric Berlin writes Do you expect the release of the iMac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro will slow the update cadence of the non pro iMac? For example, would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple hold back a six-core Coffee Lake iMac configuration in 2018 because it would outperform the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eight-core Xeon W configuration in the current Mac Pro? It’s an interesting question.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would think that it would not slow things down
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because they’re serving different purposes and maybe single-core is way better
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the non-pro iMac, but presumably multi-core will always be way, way, way, way, way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey better on the iMac Pro. So I don’t think this would be the case, but I am not terribly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey confident in my guess here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Marco, what do you think? I am terribly confident.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco To me, it’s no question. The iMac Pro was like, they’re not going to hold back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new releases of the regular iMac that outpace or come close to the iMac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro’s performance in certain ways due to the progress of the consumer CPUs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco versus the progress of the Xeons.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I know this- They already have them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I know this because not only is the current iMac faster in single core
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than most of the iMac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John configurations- And it will always be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost. Yeah, but also, they already did it once. The 2013 Mac Pro cylinder that came out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was bested seven months later or eight months later when the iMac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 5K came out and those processors were faster than in single core. So, they’ve already done
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this in the past. it is currently the case, they don’t let that control them at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple is confident enough and neglectful enough of the Mac Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a combination of like, you know, they know that like iMac pro buyers are not going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not buy the iMac pro in meaningful numbers because the newest iMac is now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slightly faster in single threaded tasks. That’s that’s not a major factor for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most pro buyers. Also, I don’t think Apple would care. And also, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would never hold back the release plans
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of consumer lines in order to favor a Mac Pro line. They don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco care enough about the Mac Pro to do that most of
⏹️ ▶️ John time. Yeah, and if they had to wait on Xeon timelines, they would never update anything. It would be ridiculous. Like part of this is Intel,
⏹️ ▶️ John but like, but, but honestly it’s like the single core differences, like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John good for bragging rights and benchmarks. You’re a few percentage faster, but the multi-core
⏹️ ▶️ John difference when you have 18 cores for a good parallel thing is you’re, you know, you’re many times faster.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s the difference of like minor percentages and bragging rights, uh, versus
⏹️ ▶️ John a fundamental change in your workflow. Like If I can do this three times faster, that’s why
⏹️ ▶️ John you buy a Pro Mac. If you know, and if you want fastest single core performance, Apple sells you
⏹️ ▶️ John one of those, like if that’s what you want, like for, you know, you have some task that is you can’t make multi thread
⏹️ ▶️ John and you want the absolute fastest machine, you can do it. Apple will sell you one. But it’s going to make
⏹️ ▶️ John a change in your life that is in like single or double digit percentages. It’s not going to be like 500% faster.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like it might be if you go from a,
⏹️ ▶️ John know, a low core count on a low end iMac to 18 cores
⏹️ ▶️ John on the top end iMac Pro. So I honestly, I don’t think they really compete with each other. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ John it could be argued that, you know, for the people who just want everything all the time, which, you know, we’ve been so conditioned
⏹️ ▶️ John to expect so little, we’re not asking this, but yeah, you can take
⏹️ ▶️ John one of those Intel CPUs that has the fastest single core performance and wedge it into
⏹️ ▶️ John an iMac Pro if they make one of those that supports ECC RAM, like the i9 or whatever, or something like that. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John you could say, why, why won’t Apple sell me an iMac pro with a low core count that
⏹️ ▶️ John is just as fast as the iMac 5k? Yeah. You know, like I don’t think, again,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think there’s a demand for that. Like if you want that by 5k iMac, um, because
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it’s not, it’s not appreciably different, right? You’re not getting the big multi-core performance.
⏹️ ▶️ John The reason it’s so fast and single core is because, well, it’s, it’s not the Z online, so it’s revved
⏹️ ▶️ John more and because you can go faster when you don’t have so many damn cores shoved inside there. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a long way of answering Eric’s question to say, they won’t hold it back, don’t worry.
⏹️ ▶️ John They might not ship new iMacs for other reasons, but believe me, it’s not because they’re afraid of stomping on their
#askatp: Cheese-grater plans?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Andy Hume writes, what are John’s plans for his cheese grater after he replaces it?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sell it, donate it to the Hackett collection, and I’m going to add my guess, which is it’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go in your attic never to be seen again.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I had a collection before Hackett was in short pants.
⏹️ ▶️ John I have a giant collection of stuff in my attic. That’s probably where it’s going to go. But I have a half a mind to answer this literally
⏹️ ▶️ John because I actually do have plans for and
⏹️ ▶️ John a uh collections of actual cheese graters because oxo makes a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco used to make a cheese oxo used to make a
⏹️ ▶️ John cheese grater for that i used to to grate parmesan cheese it was the one
⏹️ ▶️ John hard cheese grater that i found like ergonomically satisfying oh my god and they
⏹️ ▶️ John stopped making it i love you so much they stopped making it because it had like a design flaw
⏹️ ▶️ John like it had it had this this flappy plastic part of it that would eventually crack so i
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of understand why they stopped making it because you know it would last like a couple years and then that thing would crack
⏹️ ▶️ John so it’s like oh you know we need to go back to the drawing board because yeah this thing is great but eventually it cracks
⏹️ ▶️ John and the one they replaced it with is terrible it is ergonomically bad you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John get as much mechanical advantage when you know compressing the cheese against the
⏹️ ▶️ John the grating part that turns or whatever I continue to wish and hope for and have many times
⏹️ ▶️ John thought about trying to tinker my way into a an electric powered one of these because it
⏹️ ▶️ John is difficult to do and tiring and kind of tedious if you use as much marmite cheese as I do To constantly
⏹️ ▶️ John have to be grating it by hand You can’t really use a food processor or any other things for a
⏹️ ▶️ John variety of other reasons You kind of need something that’s slow high torque. Anyway, I’ve thought about it a little bit, but in the meantime
⏹️ ▶️ John These oxo cheese graters they don’t make anymore. I think either I or my wife or some combination
⏹️ ▶️ John Like we waited too long We realized we went to like buy a new one after one of ours cracked like we can’t find it anymore
⏹️ ▶️ John What happened to it when you found it? It was discontinued and we tried a bunch of other ones and they all sucked and it was like we need to
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s no we need to just find every one of these things that still for sale So I have like a collection of three of them
⏹️ ▶️ John I think in the basement My current one is slowly cracking upstairs in my kitchen right now
⏹️ ▶️ John And when I go through those three, like I don’t know what I’m gonna do it Maybe at that point it’s time for me to build my
⏹️ ▶️ John Electric powered one. But anyway, my plans for my cheese graters are grim Like I don’t know what I’m going to do after I go
⏹️ ▶️ John through all three of them. But my friends on Mac Pro is it will go into my attic alongside its brethren.
⏹️ ▶️ John Surely it will because this is one of my champion Macs of all times. It will go it will have a place of honor next to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I never in a million years did I think that that was where this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was this question was going to end up. And this is one of the reasons I love the show so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey damn much is because that’s where we ended up.
#askatp: Messages in iCloud?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All righty and finally in our diversion in task ATP that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to make us happy again. Kurt asks, hey remember messages in iCloud?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Is this a question
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like what’s the question? Yeah, honestly I almost forgot about it but like yeah there’s no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look there’s no news here. They announced it, it isn’t here, you know it it probably got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it delayed until the next OS release. Oh well.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not, oh well, because that was one of the features I was most looking
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco forward to. Oh yeah, I want it. I had
⏹️ ▶️ John it actually as a topic in the list for a long time and it kept getting pushed down and I want to say to this
⏹️ ▶️ John question, yeah, I remember it.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I was looking forward
⏹️ ▶️ John to it. Every time I go to messages and I see a different collection of messages and a different conversation contents
⏹️ ▶️ John on my Mac and on my phone that are like sitting two feet from each other, I think, why does this have to be this way?
⏹️ ▶️ John So I really hope, fine, if it’s not done, by all means, wait until it’s done, right? But I
⏹️ ▶️ John really, really hope that this feature appears eventually.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, me too. I mean, there’s a reason why it got like a noticeable applause during the keynote
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where it was announced last summer. But you know, yeah, it’s the kind of thing like if look, if it’s not done, don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ship it. If it’s unreliable, or if it’s broken, like the system we have now is already unreliable and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco broken. We don’t need it to be broken in new ways. Like let’s wait until it works right and then ship it and then you know, I’d rather
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have it you know, late than wrong. Well thanks to our sponsors this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco week, Squarespace, Hullo, and RxBar, and we will see you next
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John If you’re 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 Auntie Marco Armin,
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-E-R It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, they didn’t mean to
⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental, accidental, tech podcasts so long
Post-show: A gift for Casey
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So Casey, I have a gift for you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was wondering whether to keep this secret, how long to keep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this secret, but at some point the secret is going to fall out, so I figured I might as well come clean
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with you now. Oh my God, I think he fired
⏹️ ▶️ John you. He somehow got you fired from your job. That’s his gift.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John yeah. I wrote a note
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as you to your boss, filled with profanity.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey profanity. Oh that would be for me so that does make sense. Yeah actually.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah so my gift to you is revealing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the secret. Tiff got me a vinyl player for Christmas.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A vinyl player? Is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John what you think they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey called? You might
⏹️ ▶️ John need to look at the box again. A
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John turntable. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John definitely not called vinyl players I can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that. This is the best moment of my life right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco now. Yeah I figured
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you use a gift after after you’re probably sleepless week
⏹️ ▶️ John all right so can you can you can you give me context for this like is she buying it for you
⏹️ ▶️ John as a joke is it something that you mentioned you want is it something that she wanted and is passing
⏹️ ▶️ John it off as a gift to you but really she wants
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so we’ve had the hello internet episode of vinyl sitting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John on the office
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like two years or however long it’s been since it came out
⏹️ ▶️ John does she know she can make a player out of a cone of paper and a needle?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did not know that, actually. I guess that makes sense. Yeah. Anyway, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco she got me a turntable so that we could play the Hello Internet vinyl.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have a turntable and I have that particular
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco record. No spoilers. I actually have not had the time. No, I haven’t either.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve had it for forever and I still haven’t had a chance to play it, so I’m right there with you. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s awesome. So I need to start sending you actual good music, and thus not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Phish, post-haste.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And she also got me a Phish album. She
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey got me a live one, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is great. Tiff giveth and Tiff taketh away.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I actually decided, you know, because also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over the holidays, we visited Mike and Adina they had a turntable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they were and we they were playing music on it during our entire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know you know meal there and it was really nice to just kind of be hanging out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and to have music playing now you can’t do that without vinyl that’s for sure right and so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was nice though and so I figure okay let’s I’ll try this on like you know it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it’s like trying on a new style of hat or something it’s like here’s something that like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hit people are doing I I don’t know if I don’t know if this is my thing, but I’ll try it on you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so I tried it on and So I have a couple of albums. You know I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also by the way Boy, do I suck at buying vinyl? There’s a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco albums that are available on vinyl like modern albums You know besides like the night You know the ones that were originally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco issued on vinyl like in like the 60s and stuff But there’s a lot of like modern modern
⏹️ ▶️ Marco albums and reissues from like the 90s and stuff that have been reissued now and vinyl now that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now that’s like a growth business that you can charge people $25 for the same album they bought 20 years ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Most of them that I have found like about half of the ones I have found I have accidentally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bought them where it’s like they split what was one CD
⏹️ ▶️ Marco onto two records and so each side if each record has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco three or two songs on it followed by this giant wide strip of black
⏹️ ▶️ Marco silence in the middle.
⏹️ ▶️ John you have a record player as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes so this is like I know how to use
⏹️ ▶️ John them. You don’t remember that like you don’t remember one of the things about CDs being its
⏹️ ▶️ John capacity for like how many minutes of audio you can have on it and with the compromises about the inner
⏹️ ▶️ John and outer tracks like that those things were gone like that was one of the innovations of CDs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh my got I just figured it out yeah cuz the the outer tracks will rotate more so they’ll have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey more fidelity oh
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s why they do it final is a show oh that’s those all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right did you just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John show it is I
⏹️ ▶️ John was trying to think of a way to say it without cursing but I just said it’s the after
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah so like here so let me tell you my annoyances first and I’ll get into some things I actually like about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it yeah like so many like I I bought albums thinking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, oh, I love this album. It’s good because my criteria is obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things that I want to play like out loud with other people around that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wouldn’t be embarrassed by. The whole album has to be good all the way through because skipping songs is not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing. Oh, it’s not bad. I understand your point, but it’s not bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So anyway, and I had to get a photo preamp. So I got, of course, the one from
⏹️ ▶️ John shit. I forget that. All right. this record player is just a way for Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John more amps and other German boxes with vulgar names. One
⏹️ ▶️ Marco box a phono preamp because the turntable did not have a built-in preamp. Okay so first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of all I’m like you know I connect everything up and there’s like just constant constant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco low-level noise coming out of the speaker and I’m like well something’s wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John It feels warm doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it? Yes so it’s like I get like I got a ground loop isolator I tried that I tried like a power isolating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco brick I tried like different different cables in case the cables were introducing interference, everything’s analog, so like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything can introduce interference in an all analog signal path. Tried lots of things, isolated lots of things,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it turns out, yeah, that’s just like the noise floor of this cartridge or whatever. It’s like there’s no, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it isn’t a ground loop, it isn’t electrical interference, like, it’s just like, yeah, just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the noise floor isn’t that low. I don’t know. And definitely,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my least favorite thing about playing them about playing them is how often you have to flip it over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because each side holds, I think, a maximum of something like 22 minutes or 20 minutes, something like that. Do you know the
⏹️ ▶️ John John? No, I don’t remember from my youth, but I surely do remember
⏹️ ▶️ Marco flipping. Yeah, exactly. So you have to flip them every four or five songs, basically.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Unless you have one of these stupid audiophile ones that I accidentally bought where it’s like, you take one album, split it into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco four, and then you gotta flip it every two songs. Thanks a lot. Anyway, I will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say in this endeavor, there are things that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unexpectedly like about it. The best metaphor I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco come up with for this is, it’s kind of like a Kindle is for reading.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, a Kindle does not look as good as an iPad or a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco printed page. Like, the resolution of the text is nowhere near it, even on the new Kindles with the higher
⏹️ ▶️ Marco resolution screens, It’s nowhere close to either print or even retina screens on an iPad Pro. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Kindle by all accounts looks worse. It also does less and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco functions worse in a number of ways than other ways to read books. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the appeal of Kindles is that they can do nothing else.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it kind of helps you appreciate the book more that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this, this that if you’re using this device to read books that’s all you’re doing like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s all you you kind of have to put some effort into it that’s all you’re doing it’s not going to ever do anything else it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very simple etc playing music on vinyl
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a pain in the ass but it’s a way to like deliberately
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sit down and choose to enjoy an album and this works
⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially for me because I’m I’ve I’ve always been an album listener, even when I listen to MP3s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything. I don’t listen on shuffle to my whole collection or anything. I don’t make playlists. I listen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to albums all the way through. That’s how I’ve always listened for like the last 20 years. Like that’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how I listen to music. And I’ve joked to Tiff like, Oh, we could have just gotten a CD player
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco there are other devices you can buy that only play
⏹️ ▶️ Marco music. I know, I know. But I’m saying like, you know, this is a pain in the ass
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s a novelty and it’s you know I don’t expect to be playing vinyl forever and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it doesn’t sound better it sounds worse no this will be worse you know I’m not I’m not my my my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco making fun of Casey in the past on vinyl is that you know I don’t mind if people say they enjoy it more I do mind when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people say it sounds better because it doesn’t and it can’t and it never will but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do appreciate the activity of playing music
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on vinyl now in a way I I didn’t appreciate before. So that is my gift to you,
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey. You need to get one of those, I don’t know if they make these, but like, I don’t know what the best
⏹️ ▶️ John analogy is, but like one of these things you use for like pets or animals where like, it looks like a record player
⏹️ ▶️ John and you put a record on it and you put the little needle in and you hear the little crackle,
⏹️ ▶️ John but then what actually happens is behind the scenes it plays just, you know, a digital audio file that is
⏹️ ▶️ John exactly equivalent to whatever record you put on there. So you can get the audio quality you
⏹️ ▶️ John want with all the other stuff that you want from it. Like, so you get all the ceremony of doing it. Hell,
⏹️ ▶️ John make the digital audio file stop and make you flip the disc before it plays the next two tracks, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve actually been scheming, like, I wonder if I could get a Raspberry Pi or something next to the record player
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey and just put an SD card
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and have cheap SD cards in the pocket of each vinyl cover and just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John like stick it. To have the
⏹️ ▶️ John music. So what you just wanna do is put a plastic disc on something and drop a needle on it. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John what you want to happen. and then you just want music to play, but the music doesn’t have to come from that thing. Yeah, it’s…
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway. Well, so you didn’t adequately explain to me, I guess, was it just
⏹️ ▶️ John the Hello Internet and that’s like literally it? Or was Tiff actually convinced by the
⏹️ ▶️ John moon hipsters from London that this is a thing you have to do to regain your youth and coolness?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think some of both, certainly. And, you know, it’s a cool thing. It’s a really nicely designed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco object, like it’s a nice hipster turntable. It’s like this, you know, minimal visual design
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing made of wood. It’s really nice looking. So I think it’s a combination of all those things.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I’m very disappointed in you, Marco. Oh, yeah, you should be. I’m very disappointed in Mike and Adina, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Next year, I’ll buy an SACD player maybe, and I’ll tell you how that goes.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, no, I would not be. I would say, there you go. Now you’re on the right track. You got to get a Nakamichi stereo
⏹️ ▶️ John and a Super Audio CD player. And what was the other one? audio dvd-a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco i think that’s dead i think ssd i mean in both
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John formats they still make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ssd i’m as well you can get like if you get a sony blu-ray player it will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s they’re almost all also ssd players so you so i could get like a sony 4k blue because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco i was thinking like maybe i should get a 4k blu-ray player
⏹️ ▶️ John also you think of the ceremony of the blu-ray as you wait for a job and to load the stupid menus
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that’s all part of the Ceremony
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m that’s listen. It’s very I’m very I want to be very clear here. I don’t give two craps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the ceremony I Appreciate the idea of sitting down to deliberately
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and only listen to music like to just enjoy the music that is playing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and not have it be part of a Whole separate like computing experience
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and multimedia device and everything like it’s it’s hard. You could just get a CD
⏹️ ▶️ John player I’m not convinced you don’t you don’t care about the ceremony.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t care about the ceremony I’m not convinced and and just just give me a few more days of flipping these discs
⏹️ ▶️ John You know what else you can do with records that you might remember from your youth They shatter real good when you have fights with them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, it’s also it’s kind of cool to like first of all like the the the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco services like like I’ve been buying most of them on Amazon the ones that are still in print at least and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s cool because like they include a digital copy. If you buy vinyl on Amazon,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it automatically adds that album to your music collection.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is the most millennial hipster thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Well, I’m so. You buy
⏹️ ▶️ John a record and it comes with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the vinyl. Yeah, some of the ones I’ve bought have the CD in a paper sleeve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Like it comes with a free CD. What? I’ve never seen that. Yeah, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think the Nickel Creek one I bought I think has that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John band. Great, great band. No,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, if you buy the one with the corn song, the elephant in the corn,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the album that has that on it, it comes with
⏹️ ▶️ John that. You know how they make USB thumb drives out of all sorts of things,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey come up with a
⏹️ ▶️ John vinyl album that is itself actually an SD card. Like it’s an SD card with a huge circular
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey That is awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That is a record,
⏹️ ▶️ John but really it’s just a giant SD
⏹️ ▶️ Marco card. Yeah, so anyway, yeah. And it’s, I, again, it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know it’s ridiculous and it does not sound better and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a bit of a pain in the ass, but it is kind of fun. I also, I kind of like having the giant album art.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, this is like the original
⏹️ ▶️ John album art. That’s what you should be buying. You should just be buying record sleeves and putting them on your wall as art.
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t listen to them. Look at them. That’s actually not a bad idea. We’ll get there. I used to have,
⏹️ ▶️ John I used to have long boxes on my wall when
⏹️ ▶️ John out as like a, as a replacement of like because I was kind of disappointed that album like the album art went
⏹️ ▶️ John away it’s like well they got these long boxes so I guess it’s all like and then those went away too.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well I for one am happy that that you’ve discovered that sometimes I say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things that are not completely insane turns out I know it’s weird but it’s it does happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Look it wasn’t saying when you said it sounded better that was definitely insane it does not sound
⏹️ ▶️ Casey better. Well, I’m excited. I applaud TIFF’s purchase for you. I applaud you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey realizing that’s something I’ve known for most of my life and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey older people, older than us have known for their entire lives basically that, hey, it’s not so bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you know what, in the grand scheme of things, as a man who likes wristwatches based out of 1812, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not entirely surprised that you like an audio playback system that is also based from out
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of 1812. So as time goes on and as you get older so does your technological preferences.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so this is just the next step in the way. You have a beard now? I mean you just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco need some flannel. That’s true.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do have the beard. I mean you’re really getting close. You need flannel and skinny jeans and you’ll be full hipster.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I’m not actually skinny though. That’s the problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John matter? I was saying you’re trying to recapture your youth. You’re not actually in your youth.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is a good gif though. It’s pronounced jift. God damn it, John.