260: The Todoyist Problem
09 Feb 2018App rejections for emoji, choosing a to-do app, and boosting spirits with an occasional spirit.
Episode Description:
- Follow-up:
- Is throttling old phones really better?
- Does anyone other than tech bloggers give a 💩 about smart speakers?
- Raspberri Pi music player update
- Apple's emoji is theirs and you can't have it.
- Marco's to-do app spirit walk
#askatp- Does Casey miss C#/.NET?
- Single vs. multithreading
- Meditation
- Post-show:
- Baby update
- Casey's Car Corner
Sponsored by:
- Betterment: Rethink what your money can do.
- Casper: Take advantage of the limited-time President's Day offer for the first time ever!
- Hello Fresh: A meal-kit delivery service that shops, plans, and delivers your favorite step-by-step recipes and pre-measured ingredients. Get $30 off your first week with code ATP30.
Chapters
- Follow-up: Battery throttling
- Who cares about smart speakers?
- Follow-up: Marco’s music player
- Sponsor: Hello Fresh (code ATP30)
- App rejections for emoji
- Sponsor: Casper
- To-do apps
- Sponsor: Betterment
- #askatp: Does Casey miss .NET?
- #askatp: Single- vs. multi-threaded
- #askatp: Meditation?
- Ending theme
- Post-show: Baby update
- Post-show: Casey’s Car Shopping
Follow-up: Battery throttling
⏹️ ▶️ John But eventually, the test writing becomes exactly as much coding as the coding does.
⏹️ ▶️ John That doesn’t sound right. I know it sounds weird. I’m not trying to convert you. I’m just saying like this is the… It sounds
⏹️ ▶️ John like it’s not math. Anyway, this is not the show where we convince you. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the show where you convince Casey to drink coffee.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey It’s not the show where you convince you to start testing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey When Marco starts writing tests, I’ll start drinking coffee. Let’s make that agreement.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, there you go. Now you’re going to make him do it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We should start with some follow-up and Ravi Saur writes in in ATP 258 Casey said he’d rather have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple throttle the iPhone by slowing it down Then have it shut down due to poor battery performance However,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I assume that’s being said by someone owning a relatively new iPhone. That’s true You should use an older model to really understand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the issue I have an iPhone 6 and believe me the slowdown is unbearable One should not be waiting 10 seconds to see an app come
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up or imagine when you see something you want to capture in photo Or film but it takes ages for the camera to launch and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’ve missed your shot. The list goes on and on This is a serious usability issue for people with older iPhones
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and and they suffer from it daily during the whole day now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is a completely fair point and Ravi is right that I haven’t really experienced this because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in well lately because I’ve always been on the latest and greatest phone That being said
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I believe was either my six or my success and we did talk about this on the show at some point or Another I want to say it was my success
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would occasionally just shut itself down. And whether or not it was the same
⏹️ ▶️ Casey problem, because it was a relatively new phone at the time. And I think it was during a generation of phones where they did
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have battery problems, if I’m not mistaken. And you know what? The specifics of why it happened don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really matter. But the fact of the matter is, I had a phone where this sort of shutdown was happening.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I remember vividly that there were at least two or three times
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I was trying to capture something that Declan was doing with the phone’s camera,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it decided to shut itself down. What Ravi seems to forget
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that booting a phone, even a brand new iPhone 10, is like 15, 20, 30
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seconds or something like that. That is way worse than waiting five to 10
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seconds for the camera to come up, which is also terrible. Don’t get me wrong. I am not arguing that that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is garbage. And I can’t imagine how tough it would be to have every app open after 10
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seconds. Unequivocally, that is trash, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would still take that trash over having the phone completely shut down
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I’m trying to capture a picture of Declan or now Michaela. Like, no question,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am still convinced that I would rather have throttling than not.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, the slow app launch could happen every single time, whereas the shutdown only happens once in a while. But the reason
⏹️ ▶️ John I put this thing in follow-up not to debate whether shutdowns are worse than slow performance. But to
⏹️ ▶️ John reiterate again, what I think I said on a past show, which is, if your phone is
⏹️ ▶️ John doing stuff like really, really slow, like this kind of slow, like I literally I mean, I don’t know, maybe he’s exaggerating.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it was literally like 10 seconds to launch an app. And you notice a routine regular app. Like if it’s doing
⏹️ ▶️ John things massively, so that’s not throttling. That is something else that is the mysterious ailment
⏹️ ▶️ John that no one has been able to identify. That is sometimes but not always cured by either
⏹️ ▶️ John wiping and restoring from backup backup or wiping and starting as a new phone. Why does that cure it?
⏹️ ▶️ John What does it do? I have no idea. But the throttling is not it’s going to make it
⏹️ ▶️ John feel slower. You know, for sure. But it’s not going to make it do this type
⏹️ ▶️ John like, even if you cut the clock speed in a quarter, it wouldn’t take 10 or 20
⏹️ ▶️ John seconds to launch an app. Right? It’s not you know, it’s it that’s too much, right? It would take
⏹️ ▶️ John a quarter of the time to launch the app or whatever. So phones that have these massive slowdowns or freezes and stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think those are explicable by the throttling. The throttling feels different. The throttling feels
⏹️ ▶️ John like your whole phone is kind of going through molasses, but not these huge things. So I’m going to say is that if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John encountering one of these problems, don’t merely assume that you’re being throttled. You may have something much, much
⏹️ ▶️ John worse than throttling. And what can you do about it? The only thing I’ve heard is some, you know, like I said, wipe, wipe and
⏹️ ▶️ John restore from backup or wipe and start as a new phone. And that may or may not fix it, which is terrible advice. I don’t have anything better.
⏹️ ▶️ John I just want people to be aware that every problem is not throttling.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco People, people often complain about how I bother Apple about their software quality. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, well, it doesn’t matter that they’re very successful. You know, they’re moving fast, they’re competitive, they don’t need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make everything perfect. But part of the reason why this battery thing became such a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big deal, and part of the reason why why so many people jumped on,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, sometimes even wrong information about it, but definitely sensationalized the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco motivations and what was actually happening, is because Apple’s had problems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for years where iOS has weird bugs, is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not tested well enough on old phones, weird cruft accumulates with older
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phones, older installations that get upgraded. Sometimes you have things like this where you just have to restore
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your phone and that might fix it. This is all just problems that arise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from having a massive amount of technical debt and bad software quality that never gets a chance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get fixed. If Apple had better software quality and better testing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and better support on these old devices, the battery gate thing would have been a way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco less severe problem. One of the biggest reasons why it blew up the way it did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is because there are so many quality problems with software on old phones. And people,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, Apple basically handed them on a platter a very good explanation for why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their phones are this slow. That isn’t their fault, that’s Apple being evil. It probably isn’t the right explanation,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as John said. Like, I think if most people’s phones are this slow, it’s probably not because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the CPU speed has been cut down by, you know, 50 or 60% or whatever it is. Like, this seems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a more severe software issue. But Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for years, they’ve been ignoring this kind of software quality, and it bit them really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hard. And there’s lots of areas, like things like security, where technical debt can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really come back and bite you hard. Maybe they need to really reconsider their priorities
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and how much they value and devote resources to quality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of their software, and running on old devices especially, as opposed to just plowing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ahead and giving engineers no time to fix bugs.
Who cares about smart speakers?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Andras Pouisse writes, does anyone other than tech bloggers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey give a darn about smart speakers? Isn’t there a gigantic market of dumb Bluetooth speakers? It seems
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that way all over Europe where electronics shops seem to be taken over by an unreasonably huge selection of these devices.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Blah, blah, blah, I’ll get a HomePod as soon as I can. I doubt I’ll ever say a single word to it.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can’t blah, blah, blah the middle part. You’re skipping over the important parts. I didn’t put the whole text there just for the hell
⏹️ ▶️ Casey love of all that’s good and holy. Okay.
⏹️ ▶️ John From the middle part. Don’t normal people just want a fantastic sounding speaker, even if it’s not the cutting
⏹️ ▶️ John edge of solving their lazy old white men problems of switching off the mood lights or turning on their smart kettles?
⏹️ ▶️ John I know I want a great speaker that connects seamlessly to my Apple devices, so I’ll get a HomePod as soon as I can, but I doubt I’ll ever say a single
⏹️ ▶️ John word to it. The reason I put this in here is like, so if I had to summarize this in a slightly less snarky way,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like Bluetooth speakers. We all, I have a Bluetooth speaker. I bet a lot of people do. They’re everywhere.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s kind of, it becomes sort of the baseline for, so you want a little speaker that’s better
⏹️ ▶️ John than your phone speakers that you can play stuff from your phone or whatever, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And he’s right. There’s lots of Bluetooth speakers around. So why do you even need all like what’s the deal with the
⏹️ ▶️ John home pot? If it was just a Bluetooth speaker, wouldn’t that be fine? Who cares about things you can talk to except for as he,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, puts it like turning on your mood lighting or your smart tea kettles or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And he even says I’ll get one because he wants something connected to his Apple devices, but I doubt I think this
⏹️ ▶️ John falls into the same category, albeit much more angry, as Casey, where,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I think we’ve talked about this before and I want to reiterate to it, if it seems silly that you’re talking to
⏹️ ▶️ John your speaker, you’re like, I don’t have a speaker, who cares about the talking? If that seems silly, people who say that probably
⏹️ ▶️ John have not tried one of these things. And I know if you haven’t done it, it sounds like a froofy thing, but
⏹️ ▶️ John as the technology required to make something that works like this goes down, and I argue it’s pretty low already considering you can get
⏹️ ▶️ John a little Amazon dot that does a pretty good job of understanding what you’re saying. The utility of it will be apparent. These
⏹️ ▶️ John things are not popular for no reason. So I would once again urge everybody, if
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ve never had a thing like this that you talk to, don’t immediately dismiss the idea of talking
⏹️ ▶️ John to it as something that like is a passing fad or a thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John only rich lazy people do or whatever. It is a technology that has utility.
⏹️ ▶️ John Talking to things is a useful interface in many situations.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s why I think as time marches on, Bluetooth speakers that you can’t talk to
⏹️ ▶️ John will become less popular in the same way that like smartphones that were not iPhones
⏹️ ▶️ John popular. Because you could do some of the same stuff, but once you’ve spoken to something to tell
⏹️ ▶️ John you to play music, having to go to your device and flick around in an interface and
⏹️ ▶️ John send the audio to the Bluetooth thing just seems it doesn’t just seem slower. It is slower. It is less convenient. It’s a different
⏹️ ▶️ John way of inter interacting with things. So I would once again say do not do not dismiss talking to cylinders. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re good to talk to.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I I understand why you brought me up earlier. I I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have mixed feelings about this, but I think even despite having never had an echo
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or any I stumbled because I couldn’t remember if that was going to trigger them or not. Despite having never had an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey echo in in my house, I think to some degree, I understand the draw.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s not something I feel like I need, but I do think I understand it. The reason I’m so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey grumpy about the HomePod is because I want to be able to shout at my HomePod, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cylinder, play such and such by such and such artist. And the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fact that I can’t do that unless I have either that in my library or an Apple Music
⏹️ ▶️ Casey subscription is what bums me out because as I talked about for a very long time previously, I would like to use Spotify
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do that. And yes, I am aware that you can do basic controls like, you know, hey, Cylinder,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey skip to the next track and it will work even if you’re air playing Spotify. Like I get that, but the whole point is I wanna
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be able to say, hey, Cylinder, play Placed on Hold by Mute Math. And I want it to just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey work without having to pay Apple for an Apple Music subscription. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that’s the thing that buys me. Yeah, I
⏹️ ▶️ John understand the limitations of the HomePod specifically, this was a more general, this person’s more general anger is like, Don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John normal people just want a speaker, even if it’s not on the cutting edge of solving your,
⏹️ ▶️ John like it’s not your lazy old men problems, right? And mood lighting and stuff like that. It’s not that you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John lazy. It’s like saying, don’t normal people just want a command line? So solving your lazy problems of,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh no, you can just point to the thing on the screen with a mouse and click on it. Like it’s just this sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John backwards macho thinking that you don’t need any fancy thing to do
⏹️ ▶️ John that. It should be fine to do it the way it currently works. We just want a Bluetooth speaker that sounds good. You don’t need
⏹️ ▶️ John to talk to things.” And it’s like, no, like people have tried it and it’s convenient to talk to things sometimes.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not all the time, it’s not the best thing in the world, but it is an interface that has proven its utility. And just because
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t find utility in it or you have never tried it, so you have no idea what it would be like, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have utility. It doesn’t mean
⏹️ ▶️ John everyone who’s talking to their cylinders or their phones or their watches, or talking to their cars to tell
⏹️ ▶️ John them to call so they don’t have to take their hands off the wheel to call home while they’re driving. Those
⏹️ ▶️ John are good user interfaces. They do not reflect badly on the people who use them, and people who think that way
Follow-up: Marco’s music player
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Some brief follow-up on my Raspberry Pi music player that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco discussed last week. Lots of people wrote in to suggest that I try something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that reads RFID or NFC tags. There’s been a number of projects
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that do this. One of the best ones I’ve seen is called Plastic Player. There’s a few other projects
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that were similar, where basically you have a Raspberry Pi with an NFC reading board board and you stick
⏹️ ▶️ Marco NFC stickers to the back of some kind of like card or something. There’s also a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really awesome original NES, like a kind of like an NES mini project that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somebody made that used RFID reading cartridges. Like he made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like little mini versions of old NES cartridges, inserted them into an old mini NES, had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the power and reset buttons all wired up to actually do correct things, and it was… but in reality it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wasn’t playing the games off of the cartridges it was playing them off of internal memory and the cartridge were simply
⏹️ ▶️ Marco telling it what to play and that’s how all these RFID based music players work too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Some of them play them off Spotify or something some of them play them off of internal storage. So I started playing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with this. I actually I got a NFC board. I was a little hesitant at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first because there don’t seem to be any kind of like quick little plug-and-play boards like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the sound cards you can get some that fit the Raspberry Pi hat specification which is like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s just like a board that like sticks on top of the Raspberry Pi it like with like a predefined
⏹️ ▶️ Marco connector on the on the main I o connector and you just kind of stick it on and it stacks on top nicely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s like plug-and-play and it just works pretty easily there’s none of those for art for NFC reading that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could find at least none that were maintained so I had to get like a different board
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that required me to actually wire it and then later on I soldered some stuff and it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was kind of fun but and I’m terrible at soldering this is the first time I’ve done in years and still terrible at it but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slowly getting less terrible anyway so now I have one that plays
⏹️ ▶️ Marco via NFC it just using internal storage and the NFC cards that I’m sticking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like on the reader just play the album and it’s really nice it’s still a little bit in progress but I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really enjoying it so far I’m kind of I’m really enjoying this crazy little world of making fun crap as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as you know procrastination when I’m waiting for overcast to get through test flight beta review or something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that. And so it’s nice and yeah, I’m really enjoying this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco world. That’s about all, I don’t have anything to show for it yet, but it’s coming along well and it’s getting pretty cool. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so once it’s done, I’ll take pictures and make a blog post maybe, I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John You should. You should get Tiff to help you design the case for it. She can do, you know, she can make a nice
⏹️ ▶️ John case or do something like painting on the outside. You gotta involve her in this project. She’ll allow you to put this thing in a prominent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I actually already have version one of it in a case, in a prominent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco place in the home that she has approved. I’m not going to spoil
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what the case is yet. I will tell you that it was manufactured by Apple. Oh
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my goodness. Anyway, once it’s done, I’ll take pictures. I’m gonna, I actually ordered
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Raspberry Pi Zero W, which is much smaller than the full-size Raspberry Pi
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to help it fit better into this case, but we will see how that goes when it arrives.
⏹️ ▶️ John You should have saved your trash can so you could chuck these little NFC cards into the trash can. Just chuck them in the
⏹️ ▶️ John hole and then they rattle down to the bottom and it plays the song. That’s awesome. And eventually you have to turn the thing upside
⏹️ ▶️ John down and empty them all out. Empty the trash. you
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App rejections for emoji
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apparently in the last week or so, there have been some rejections of iPhone apps
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or iOS apps, I guess I should say, that use emoji as part of the user
⏹️ ▶️ Casey interface. The rejections have said something along the lines of, listen, that’s Apple copyrighted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey material, which really is true. You can’t use that and it can’t be in screenshots. You really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey got to change your app. Let me start by saying that I am quite confident
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by the letter of the law. Apple is a hundred percent right. And they are, there’s nothing we can really do about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, but it seems short-sighted and stupid that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple provides all these beautiful emoji. And as most of you probably know, I do love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me some emoji that Apple provides all these beautiful emoji. And then if you use
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them as part of your user interface, they stomp on you and say, no, that’s not allowed. Now, shortly before
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we went to record tonight, I had seen some rumblings about this, maybe being walked back. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey instead of spending the entire rest of this episode on it, I guess we can just kind of talk about it and then move along
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and hope that it’s getting resolved. But man, that just seems dumb. Like I understand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that. Yes, it is their right to do this, but it’s just dumb.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t get it. And I like using emoji. Like I can’t say that I’ve done this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at work, but if I was writing my own iOS app, I would absolutely use emoji in my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey user interface from time to time, because I just think it’s cute and fun. But gosh, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dig it. And I haven’t had the chance to listen to the most recent Connected, which we’ll link in the show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey notes, where Jeremy Burge of Emojipedia is on. And I guess that interview is probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty good because Jeremy’s pretty damn awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is, you’re missing a lot. You really should have listened to it. It’s really your loss.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know, well I will listen to it, I just haven’t yet. I’m sorry you guys, I’m sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out like what, six hours ago?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Exactly. How could I have listened to it already? I’ve been a little busy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But no, the Connected guys of course are dear friends of ours. And Jeremy, even though we’ve never met,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he’s a dear friend of mine, he just doesn’t know it. And so. I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco been in a hot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey does that count? That is super hot, and yes that counts. In any case,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco the point of Javian is that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh wait, it was a giant hot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pool, it wasn’t a hot tub. Oh, well, in that case, not so hot. Anyway, you should listen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to that, and certainly one of you guys, I guess, Marco, if you’d like to jump in, kind of fill in the gaps here. But I just don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey care for it. I understand it’s within Apple’s right, but I don’t care for it, and I think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just a poor decision. So, Marco, since you seem to be more read up on this than I, anything you can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey add or fill in or kind of clarify for me?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Once again, the specific day that we are recording is kind of inconvenient for this story, because it does seem to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be like kind of in progress and still in motion. So this may be out of date by the time that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m able to, you know, release this tomorrow morning or whatever. But I think Apple clearly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needs to define a line of what is okay and what is not because certain things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with their emoji are obvious. You know, the emoji is Apple’s copyrighted work.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not that different from, you know, the San Francisco font is Apple’s font. They own it. they can dictate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the terms of use. One of the things that you can’t do with the San Francisco font is you can’t embed the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco San Francisco font in an Android app or on a website. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can call for it in your CSS, but you can’t actually embed the files that would then show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the San Francisco font to people on Windows or people on Android, because that’s ripping off their copyrighted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff and putting it on your server and redistributing it. That’s obviously over the line. So similar things with emoji. There
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are apps, sometimes really big apps. I’m not too familiar with the specifics of, but I think people are saying like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco WhatsApp just copied all of Apple’s emoji and was putting it on all their platforms, like on Android and stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Obviously, taking Apple’s emoji images and embedding them in your app on Android is obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over the line, and that should be enforced by Apple’s copyright department. That makes total sense.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So obviously there is a line of what is too far. The question is where is that line
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being drawn, and it seems like that might still be in flux, or maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there was some interpretation by AppReview that is still in flux, I don’t know. Obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think anything that involves you taking the images off the system
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and manipulating the images themselves is probably not right and not cool with Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I don’t think it’s right for Apple to say that a text label
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in your app can’t include characters in this range being rendered by the system fonts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That, I think, is too restrictive. And, you know, so from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a technical perspective, I think it’s easy to define that line. You’re allowed to use emoji
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in your app if it’s being rendered as text, like by the text system being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rendered as text. That makes total sense. That seems reasonable. Because then,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple can change the images whenever they want. It can only ever render that way on Apple’s platforms because you’re not embedding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the images. You’re just calling for the text characters. So if you do the same thing on Android or somewhere else, it’s gonna render
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Android emoji set, which is what you should be doing. That, I think, is a very good line to draw.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s unclear whether they are drawing that line or not. One of the, I think the big app that kinda kicked all this off
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is an app by Sam Eckert called BitTracker. So BitTracker has basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco emoji all over the UI. Like in text labels, there’s like little emoji at the end of the text label and everything. But that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looks okay to me. And so he, this is mostly coming out on his Twitter account over the last
⏹️ ▶️ Marco few days. And originally he got rejected, then he got a phone call from AppReview. And in the phone call,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AppReview apparently told him that you cannot use emoji anywhere in your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app UI except the user being able to enter text. So if there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a text field and the user can type emoji into that text field, that’s okay. And if you’re doing things with that text,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like displaying a message that someone else sent that person that happens to include emoji, that’s okay. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what he was told on the phone is apparently that you cannot use emoji in the UI in other ways.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But then AppReview decided to retroactively go back and approve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco his app after all and to let him use the emoji that way. But we haven’t yet received clarification
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the policy. So whether the policy is actually different, we have no idea.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this is a little bit, you know, I have a little bit of skin in this game because Overcast has a couple of small uses
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of emoji in the interface. If you star an episode, a little emoji star will show up.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you have not downloaded it, but it’s simply being streamed, a little cloud will show up. Both these things appear in the detail label, like where the date
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shows on the episode. And, oh, and I use the emoji heart,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also in tiny little form in the text label for becoming a premium subscriber. So obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have some skin in this game, because if this policy is super restrictive in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way that he was told on the phone, that you can’t use emoji at all unless the user is typing it in,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then everything I just said about Overcast would be prohibited, and that would be unfortunate.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the unfortunate reality is that we don’t know. This is one of those vague
⏹️ ▶️ Marco App Store times where either somebody made a big mistake by telling Sam Eckert this policy over the phone, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think is unlikely, or the policy is shifting, which is probably the more likely answer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they’re considering feedback and maybe considering they went too far. So again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some policing of their emoji is necessary. There’s a very clear line where, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re pulling the images out and putting them on other platforms or playing with them as images, that’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not cool. But if you are just calling for emoji as characters
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in text labels in your app being rendered by the text system in the system, I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that should be prohibited. In case, you know, what you said up front, like, they can legally, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco totally within their rights to prohibit that. I just, I don’t think they should. The language
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of emoji has become such a critical
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part of what’s currently in fashion in app design and how people are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco communicating and what people expect to see and what they expect to be able to use that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think restricting it from being used in the kind of innocent way I was saying earlier of being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used in text labels, restricting that I think would be a big mistake for just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of the design landscape of iOS apps. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t think Apple has to worry about dilution of their brand or losing control of their copyright with these images
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as long as it’s being rendered by the tech system on their device and not in other places. That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually, in my opinion, reinforces their brand because then all these apps that have these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unique looks that include Apple’s emoji in their text fields can’t look the same way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on other platforms. That actually, I think, reinforces the design walls around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple. It makes it that, look, if you want your app to look like this cool, to have this kind of cool mood, it has to be on iOS. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can’t be anywhere else. I think any effort to restrict apps from using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Emoji in the UI in this kind of relatively innocent way with the tech system,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think is not a good decision and is likely to do more harm than good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not to mention, It’s going to really annoy and anger a lot of developers.
⏹️ ▶️ John So that last point you brought up about emoji being a differentiating factor for Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John platform is I think starting to get at the angle that I’m taking on this.
⏹️ ▶️ John As Jeremy pointed out in an Emojipedia article, Google has an emoji font too, but theirs has
⏹️ ▶️ John different licensing terms. He describes it as an open source license that allows other projects
⏹️ ▶️ John to use it within the term set out, blah, blah, blah, but like, but it’s a different license, right? So it’s still Google still owns it,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s easier to use elsewhere. So Jason Snell had an article recently on six colors talking about
⏹️ ▶️ John Slack used to let you pick which emoji you want. Do you want to see Apple’s emoji? Do you want to see Google’s emoji? What are the other choices?
⏹️ ▶️ John It was a bunch of other Twitter style emoji emoji one style. Like it had a bunch of emojis clearly like embedded in
⏹️ ▶️ John the app somehow because I think it was like this on all platforms, right? Even if you were on Windows or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can get the Apple emoji and then obviously the app lets
⏹️ ▶️ John and because they were using, you know, using a different platform, so Apple must have gone to them because
⏹️ ▶️ John now you don’t have that option anymore. You can get the Apple Emoji on Apple platforms, but not on Windows or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if you’re on Windows, you can get the Google Emoji because Google’s license is more permissive. When it comes to
⏹️ ▶️ John what Apple should or shouldn’t do with its emoji rights, yes, there is the angle that’s saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John look, if you’re on Apple platforms, you get a nice emoji. We think our emoji are good. They make
⏹️ ▶️ John our platform nicer to use we think they’re better than other people’s emoji and people can use them in their interface
⏹️ ▶️ John like marker or whatever And that’s a differentiating factor. The other angle is if Apple decided
⏹️ ▶️ John to have a much more permissive license for its emoji What could happen
⏹️ ▶️ John and what I think is already kind of sort of happening without Apple’s permission is they could
⏹️ ▶️ John attain visual Dominance but like they could
⏹️ ▶️ John become the face of emoji to the world world, like the what they decide the representation of
⏹️ ▶️ John each one of these fairly vaguely specified emoji symbols is what they the artwork they
⏹️ ▶️ John choose and their art style and their all their artistic choices could come to define
⏹️ ▶️ John emoji across the entire industry, including when they decide to change an emoji or make a new emoji or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John like that they could become the de facto leaders of emoji merely by having the most
⏹️ ▶️ John widely used set. And you know, Google’s is very widely
⏹️ ▶️ John used as well. I don’t think Google is winning that battle judged based on like
⏹️ ▶️ John how often Apple’s emoji are a copy without permission rather than using Google’s with permission.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like given the choice between Google lets me use it in my app and it went over what platform it’s on, but Apple doesn’t. But I kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of like the Apple ones better, right? So that position being the sort of visual leader of
⏹️ ▶️ John emoji for the entire world also has value. And I’m not sure the value of saying
⏹️ ▶️ John if you want Apple’s nice emoji, come to the Apple platform is worth the sacrifice because this
⏹️ ▶️ John happens all the time for me. Like when you’re communicating with emoji, if you’re just communicating with
⏹️ ▶️ John all your Apple using friends, you’re all on the same page about what the emoji looks like. Right. But if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John communicating across platforms, it’s harder to know what they’re if they’re seeing the little
⏹️ ▶️ John face with the teary eyes or the whatever, like or the thing that looks like a grimace that’s supposed to be a grin.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like there can be miscommunication because of differences in art style. And
⏹️ ▶️ John people on Apple platforms experience that. Me as an Apple user, I wish
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple would widely license its emoji to whoever the heck wanted it so I could be sure that
⏹️ ▶️ John other people would see the same things I did because I have the expectation that if given the choice, they’ll choose
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s emoji over Google’s because Google’s is weird and ugly or whatever. Like I don’t know if that’s entirely true, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I would prefer that world. And I think being the de facto visual leader emoji has more value to
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple as a company than retaining its fancy stuff to only be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think there’s also the issue of like, app design quality, like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is not quite the same, but honestly, it’s not that different. Imagine if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we were not allowed to use the San Francisco font in our apps, that Apple had this wonderful system
⏹️ ▶️ Marco font that all their apps used, but the third party developers could not use the San Francisco font in their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps, period. What that would mean would be that every app would have to figure out some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco font that it could use, probably make its own or buy its own or license its own. So what that would do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not only would all apps look different, like way more than they do now, and sometimes in bad ways,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that also would draw some lines between apps that had money behind them and apps that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn’t so much. It would make that more apparent and you would have a bigger
⏹️ ▶️ Marco visual quality difference, making quality app design less accessible to people. And also,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there would be somebody out there, like, you know, we would all just go use the Google open source fonts or whatever. Like, there would be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some small collection of free or low cost fonts for developers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to just go get instead. And so, you would have iOS apps where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the design, as you were just saying, John, like the design would basically be dictated by third parties like Google, who were offering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some kind of permissive font that we could use instead. The emoji situation, if we can’t use them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in text labels and stuff, isn’t that different. Because the fact is, app design is including
⏹️ ▶️ Marco emoji now. That is happening. It’s been happening, it’s going to happen more. Emoji
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is becoming an increasing part of how people use computers,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how people expect to be able to use apps, how things should look, how people expect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things to look. So a lot of apps want or need to use emoji in their UI.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if we can’t use Apple’s emoji there, we’re gonna have to go get our own made, which almost no one can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco afford to do except the biggest companies, or go license some open source, or just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go use some open source one like Google’s. I don’t even know if we’re allowed to with their license, but I know it’s pretty permissive, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe. And in which case, what you said is right, John. In which case, then all third-party
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps on iOS look like these weird other emoji, and then Apple’s look weird by comparison.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s not a good situation to be in, which is why I think for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco same reason that we are allowed to use the San Francisco font in our apps on iOS,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as long as we don’t rip out that font and bring it to Android, for that same reason, we should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also be able to use the Apple emoji set in our UIs as long as that emoji set does not leave iOS.
⏹️ ▶️ John I want it to be used on Android too because I want the uniformity. But as for using it just in iOS, Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple does have a point which I can imagine being made in some future WWDC session if it hasn’t already in
⏹️ ▶️ John that they’re not going to say this, but it would almost be better if you,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you like ripped off the image as a ping and put it in your app than if you did
⏹️ ▶️ John it as a character. Because if you do it as a character, Apple changes its emoji font
⏹️ ▶️ John from time to time and your UI, like if they changed that star to be something totally different
⏹️ ▶️ John and it clashes with your UI all of a sudden because it’s not yellow anymore and you expected it to be yellow or the cloud that used to
⏹️ ▶️ John look a certain way looks a totally different way and you know or sometimes they change the emoji
⏹️ ▶️ John so much that semantically it doesn’t even you know convey the same message. It’s probably not a good
⏹️ ▶️ John idea to use a little graphic that you don’t control as part of your user interface unless
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re willing to chase that around. But of course once you start ripping off the image of it, that’s even worse in terms of
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple getting all uppity about its copyright and everything. So again, if
⏹️ ▶️ John they gave a permissive license and just considered these like, these are free glyphs that you can use in your thing. If you want to, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the case where I would say if you want to use it as your user interface, you can only do it on Apple platform, so not on any other ones.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then the license would say, if you want to use it as, you know, as text, like if someone types text
⏹️ ▶️ John and they want to sit like in the Slack application on Windows, that would be the case where you say, fine, you can use our emoji.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just don’t use them in your user interface on Windows, but you can use them for typing on this. I think there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a thing there’s definitely a way for Apple to Sort of have their cake
⏹️ ▶️ John and eat it too, and I don’t think the the way that is the most benefit to Apple Setting aside developers
⏹️ ▶️ John the most vendor to Apple is keeping it so tight that you know that people can’t use it
⏹️ ▶️ John Even on Apple’s platform, and I don’t even think it’s gonna either just a confined to Apple’s platform because I don’t think there’s any advantage
⏹️ ▶️ John Or I don’t think the advantage is worth being that restrictive and saying
⏹️ ▶️ John come to Apple for our cool emoji because people won’t and some other uglier form of emoji will spread everywhere and
⏹️ ▶️ John then Apple people will feel weird because they’ll send you the grimacing face and other people will see something different and not understand what you’re saying and
⏹️ ▶️ John that will make Apple people feel marginalized rather than the other way around
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just want us to be able to use emoji on Apple platforms just like Marco said is that so
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah I mean I don’t I haven’t been following the drama, but I’m sure I’m assuming that that there’ll be some nuances
⏹️ ▶️ John there because I think Apple’s goal is to make sure emoji and stuff looks nice on their own platform.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. I don’t think they’re going to be so restrictive as the you know, they did let the guys up through, but that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just, you know, that’s just me thinking that the app store has been more reasonable than usual in the past year or so.
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco I started using a to-do app this past winter. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey had always.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Which one? Well, I’ll get there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had always kind of used Reminders, the built-in Apple Reminders app, very lightly. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d have it remind me of maybe one thing a week. And you know, simple stuff like take out the garbage, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff like that. I very lightly used it, and it was never really a habit.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco For Overcast planning, I kept a task paper document since the beginning of Overcast,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and even before that, for a lot of Instapaper. And I still find the task paper format
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really nice for planning a software release for an indie developer like me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But this past holiday season, I was just super busy, and everything in my life was half-done
⏹️ ▶️ Marco projects and things I had to worry about and check in on, and try to complete all this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco crazy stuff. And I finally started using reminders very heavily.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And what really got me into it was Siri Capture.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Siri frustrates me a lot, but it’s pretty good at reminders. Like it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, it’s not perfect, but it’s close enough that it’s like, it’s useful. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I found that to be a very nice way to capture, like as I’m out, as I’m thinking about something, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco remind me to blah, blah, blah, you know, okay. The problem with Apple Reminders is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that while the Siri capture on Apple Reminders is great, pretty much everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else about it is terrible. The only reason why I ever used Reminders to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enter tasks is because I never had to actually use the Reminders app to enter a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco task. Creating a task on the Reminders app is awful. The UI is incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clunky. It’s ugly. It’s hideous. It still has a a lot of weird iOS,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pre-iOS 7 kind of behaviors and looks and everything. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially horrible on the Mac. It’s way worse on the Mac than it is on iOS. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple Reminders app on the Mac is honestly embarrassing. Maybe at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some point they’re going to do what they did with Notes, where they totally re-did the Notes app a few years back and made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it awesome. Maybe that’s coming to Reminders. I hope it’s coming to Reminders, but we don’t know whether that will happen yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I started seeking out third-party apps to help me finally. Do either of you use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reminders or to-do apps?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because of hearing a friend of the show, Mike Hurley, talk about it constantly. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think it was Mike. I’m pretty sure it was Mike. Now I’m having second thoughts. But anyway, somebody in my life had talked about the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey app D-U-E, DUE. And because I decided that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wanted to have occasional periodic reminders that were repeating, and all I wanted was reminders.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t want to go all the way into like OmniFocus or anything like that. I just wanted to have reminders that repeated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve started using D U E do. And if I’m honest, I kind of really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey love it because it does exactly what I want, which is reminders oftentimes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but not always periodic. And most importantly, that will nag you to death,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is exactly what I need because I’m the kind of person that’ll be like, Oh yeah, take out the trash. Yeah, sure. I’ll do that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in 10 minutes. You know, like clear, you know, clear the notification or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, no, you can’t clear the notification until you did it. There’s your mistake. You can never clear.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Never complete
⏹️ ▶️ John unless it’s complete.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John know. I’m not saying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s not a Casey problem, but I know myself. One has to know oneself, and I know myself,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and myself is the kind of person
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco that would say,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh, yeah, sure. I’ll get that in a minute. And so I have been using due for,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I want to say, three to six months, and I kind of love it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I just use the default reminders one, mostly because it was the one that had Siri support
⏹️ ▶️ John for so long when no other ones did, right? So remind me to whatever, like that’s one of the few times I use Siri
⏹️ ▶️ John to do that. Occasionally I will type them in and you can actually type, like remind me to, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John do whatever at 7pm tomorrow and that will save you from having to look at the UI that lets you pick dates and times,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is not fun to use. But that’s it. I’ve never used any third party
⏹️ ▶️ John apps. I use it very rarely. It’s usually like, like Mark said, usually for capture. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m in a situation where however I would normally make sure
⏹️ ▶️ John I remembered to do this is not available. I can’t put it on my calendar. That would be too cumbersome, but my phone is there. So
⏹️ ▶️ John you just pick it up, blah, blah, blah, remind me to do the blah, blah, blah, remind me to go pick up my daughter
⏹️ ▶️ John in 15 minutes, remind me to, I use it occasionally for, remind me to stir the sauce
⏹️ ▶️ John in 10 minutes or whatever. where I get annoyed that it won’t do a repeating reminder for 10 minutes because I don’t know why,
⏹️ ▶️ John because it won’t. Um, uh, but, but yeah, not very frequently, but when I do
⏹️ ▶️ John use it, it’s Siri and it’s on my phone and it’s plain old reminders.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Quick addendum. I should mention that for shopping lists and only shopping
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lists, I also use the app, any list, which I love. It’s really, really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey great at doing shared shopping lists before everyone writes me email.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, I am aware that reminders can do shared reminders lists. I am,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am aware that that’s a thing. I don’t care for it. I much prefer any list for reasons
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that are not interesting for right now. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey any list and I don’t remember if I stumbled upon that myself or if that’s because Jason Snell,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who is also an any list person, uh, had told me about it. It could have been either, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one way or another, if you’re the kind of person that wants to have a grocery list that’s shared between you and your partner, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is me. I wouldn’t. Sorry, your partner isn’t me. You know what I mean?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Point I’m driving at is that if you want to have a shared shopping list, I cannot recommend any
⏹️ ▶️ John That notes will do that now to the fancy version of notes
⏹️ ▶️ John true. You can you can make a shared note and you can put those little radio buttons on. It’s not as nice as any list. But
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, if you’re if you’re it’s a good way to try out like to see if this is a thing that you’ll want to use and you don’t want to bother
⏹️ ▶️ John downloading other app, just try it in Notes and if it seems nice, get a better app like Anylist.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, yeah. I keep meaning to try Anylist because of your recommendations, Casey, mostly. Like, it’s like I’ve heard you mention
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it a few times and yeah, because I would like to like right now I just have the shopping list and the way we share
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is Tiff tells me, hey, add this to your shopping list.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John That’s barbaric.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s a good system that I bet she likes. I have a worse problem. Like I’ve been trying to get my wife to use
⏹️ ▶️ John any kind of shared grocery list. I bought and subscribed to Anylist. I’ve tried using notes. I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John tried using other third party apps whose names I’ve forgotten. It’s just good on my purchases. And just the problem is she
⏹️ ▶️ John just wants to use paper. She just wants to use paper that’s like in her purse or in her wallet.
⏹️ ▶️ John And she wants to use the whiteboard that’s on the fridge and like three pieces of paper on the whiteboard. I’m like,
⏹️ ▶️ John but those aren’t electronically shared.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey And if I write it on the
⏹️ ▶️ John whiteboard, you’ll be like, oh, I didn’t see it on the whiteboard. I had a separate list I wrote down on this piece of paper. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, so I’m stuck outside the digital realm. There’s no real computer solution to
⏹️ ▶️ John that. Just like, I bet Tiff enjoys a system where she just yells things to you and you do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. It’s like paper doesn’t work for me because, so right now I use the app Clear, and I know, I’ve heard they have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a new beta going on that’s supposed to be a lot better, but I’m not on that beta, I’m just using the old one, which is like not even updated for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone 10 and everything. But what I like about Clear is that it’s very simple and it lets me manually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reorder things really easily. You just drag the row and it’s, because what I do with my shopping list, the reason I don’t use paper,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is I’ll enter things however they come to me, but then before I go shopping, I’m the shopper and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before I go shopping, I reorder them to be in the order that I know they’re in in the store.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because I know the stores really well, so I know where things are, and so I’ll arrange them, like okay, I’ll walk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into the produce first, put all the produce stuff on top. And so as I’m going through the store, I can very quickly check
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, why do you do this to yourself? Any list will do this for you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Does it know my stores?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well no, it doesn’t know your stores, but if you enter, I don’t know, like banana, it will be smart enough to put that in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey produce section. So a single list will be sectioned to,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it defaults to groceries, but you can set up other things. But if you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enter banana, it is smart enough to put that in the produce section. If you enter milk, it’s smart enough to put that in the dairy section.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You are begging for any list, you just don’t know it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, I will definitely give it a shot. All right, anyway, so going back to my to-do item,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which I’ve been trying to talk about for like two weeks. Sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna make this happen, damn it. All right, so what I really came to want, Like I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wanted basically something that was fairly simple, like reminders, that had great Siri
⏹️ ▶️ Marco integration. I basically wanted like Reminders Pro. Like what reminders would be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if Apple did it from scratch today and actually put resources on it instead of just whatever the heck is working on it now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is probably nobody. What I want is Reminders Pro, basically.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t want to practice getting things done or any kind of GTD-like system.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not that kind of person. I respect people who do that. That’s great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for you. That’s not for me at all. I want basically a flat, simple,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like single screen home view of what’s going on. When I complete
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an item, I want it to disappear. I don’t want to see future items at all until their date comes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up. You know, I have the concept of like separate projects or lists, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only need like one level of that. I don’t need things like contacts and tags to also be here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really just need a very simple hierarchy, very simple, flat structure.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I really dislike the concept that most of these other apps have where they have an inbox
⏹️ ▶️ Marco between capture and when it’s in its home. I don’t want that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco extra step. I don’t wanna have to review my inbox. I wanna just say in my Siri command
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I’m recording the item, I wanna just say where it goes right then and not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have anything in the inbox. If I don’t specify a project, I want a default list
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that just all the two items just arrive in that list. This is basically how Reminders works.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Just Reminders is terrible in all other ways. And I want something better. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Mac is my primary platform for viewing, editing, and completing tasks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it must have a good Mac app. My primary capture platform
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is Siri on the phone. So it must have an iOS app with Siri integration. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should be able to handle recurring tasks pretty well because I have a lot of those. And I want whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app I use to be an active development on all three major Apple platforms, Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone, and iPad. So some nice to haves, I would like maybe to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shared lists or shared projects. I think I might someday want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a web service for some kind of API integration, but I haven’t in practice actually needed that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for anything yet, so maybe I won’t actually need that after all, and just kind of nice to have, like, the apps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should be pretty, because I’m an Apple person, dammit, and I like things to be pretty. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, I want, like, an attractive app that is, you know, simple and has all this stuff. Okay, so,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple Reminders was not doing it for me. In many ways, I like it, you know, I like the integration. Apple Reminders
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the only one that works with Siri on the Mac, because there is no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Siri kit on the Mac. So, any of the third-party apps, no matter how good their Mac apps are,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they cannot take a to-do item from Siri on the Mac. That’s annoying,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that’s an Apple problem, really. That’s not the app’s fault. The Apple Reminders
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app will always get system integration abilities and stuff like that first, before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s a third-party way to do it if it doesn’t arrive at the same time. So there’s a big advantage to Apple Reminders there, just keeping it simple, keeping
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it in the system and everything. But again, it’s such a clunky app, I really didn’t like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it very much. I tried Todoist. Todoist has tons of features.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s very much web service oriented. So it has really good collaboration features, shared
⏹️ ▶️ Marco projects, shared lists, API integration, stuff like that. They have apps on every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco platform. But the Todoist Mac app is horrendous. It is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically a very poorly wrapped web app. Like Slack.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It makes Slack look native. Like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey really- Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I cannot believe that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, it’s bad. Every interaction with the Todoist Mac app feels just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wrong and limited and nothing works the way you think. Honestly, I think it’s kind of embarrassing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If iOS is your primary platform, like I understand why Federico likes Todoist because iOS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the primary platform and he needs collaboration features with some of his employees and stuff, so that makes total sense.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But for me as somebody who works alone on a Mac, I cannot recommend Todoist at all. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rough. I also, I couldn’t get over like, hearing the way that people like Federico and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mike talk about Todoist, one of the problems is that Siri doesn’t really recognize the pronunciation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Todoist. You have to pronounce it wrong like Todoist or other like way and like I couldn’t get over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. I know that’s that’s kind of a stupid reason to not pick an app but like even if everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else was great about it, the fact that every time I added a reminder I have to tell my phone to add something to Todoist,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t know if I couldn’t get past that. So I also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I tried OmniFocus. This OmniFocus seems to be kind of like the good default for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you want a powerful task management system, you should probably just use OmniFocus. The Omni group makes amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco software. Like they have an amazing long standing reputation for very high quality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac and iOS software. And OmniFocus has been around for a long time. It’s very mature.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s tons of guides on how to use it and everything. It has first class Siri integration. It’s frequently
⏹️ ▶️ Marco updated, very well supported, very powerful, very customizable,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s ultimately very complex. It’s far too complex
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for me. Maybe someday I will graduate to OmniFocus, but I’m not ready for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that right now, and I might never be. It has a lot of roots in getting things done, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the kind of people who practice that kind of more structured system than what I’m looking for, maybe it would be possible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to heavily customize it to be what I want, but I honestly don’t have the time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or will to do that. Maybe someday I will, but for now, OmniFocus is just way too
⏹️ ▶️ Marco complex for me. So then I tried Things. Things has,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco frankly, the best Mac app I’ve seen, like, not among all Mac apps, but among to-do apps.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a really good Mac app. I think the Mac app is actually better than their iOS apps. Again, first-class Siri
⏹️ ▶️ Marco integration. One thing I like about Things is that it’s one syllable,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s a regular word that you can always recognize properly. And it also doesn’t sound too nerdy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If I’m saying it when other people are around, like if I have to say to Doist to Siri,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s rough. Omni focus sounds okay, but a little nerdy things you breeze right,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right by you don’t even hear it. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, let me on this, on this topic of, of the names of the app, by the way, this is another place where I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve been waiting too long for what seems like a pretty obvious advancement. Uh, this, I
⏹️ ▶️ John understand why Siri works the way it does with the name of the app as part of the sentence that you say it, but that’s not how people want
⏹️ ▶️ John to talk to their phones. Even if it’s a nice one syllable, normal word, that’s not how people want to talk to things, right? If
⏹️ ▶️ John someone decides that they’re going to use things as their reminder app, there should be a way in iOS to tell it
⏹️ ▶️ John when I say remind me to blah, blah, blah. I mean to do it in things because I use things like it’s not, I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think it’s asking for the moon and it makes the experience so much better because your interface is talking.
⏹️ ▶️ John And once I feel like I have to talk in a particular syntax, I’m playing a text adventure game with my phone. I don’t want to do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John I want to speak in a natural way. That’s one of the beautiful things that I love about a lot of the cylinders
⏹️ ▶️ John and like my Google Home. I for my Google Home, I just say things however the hell it occurs to me to say
⏹️ ▶️ John it and it amazes me that it figures out what I meant in a very narrow problem domain
⏹️ ▶️ John like remind me to or like there’s already a million ways to say set a reminder blah blah. I shouldn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John to insert the name of the app I want to use, especially if it’s the same app every time that would avoid the stoust
⏹️ ▶️ John problem. And it would just make it better. gets back to the default apps things
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. Anyway, if Apple’s looking for something for iOS 13, not iOS 12,
⏹️ ▶️ John make that experience better because we do like talking to our
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco phones, we don’t like
⏹️ ▶️ John to say to douse or things or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and Federico brought this up on Connected this week, the episode that you all should have already been listening to for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Jeremy Burge emoji interview. But anyway, that was also in this episode. And Federico
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mentioned, people have for years wanted Apple to have default apps choice for things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the browser and the mail client. And I understand why they don’t do that. And that’s, you know, there,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s been argued to death, but this does seem like an area where that’s very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco easy to say yes to. Like Siri kit has a limited number of intents.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There doesn’t seem to be any downside to enabling like a default option for some, for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somebody to say like, okay, things is my reminders app. Like always put reminders and things, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, X or Y is my notes app. Like that should be supported. There should be a system-wide
⏹️ ▶️ Marco preference to just default that. And if Apple really wants to make Siri awesome, I hope they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco consider that. But anyway, so just finishing up with things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s no shared functionality, like no kind of like shared groups or lists or projects
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or anything like that. There is no API or public web service, but they did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recently add an email-in feature so you can kind of simulate parts of it. You can get the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco add this to things working by basically using email as a gateway. One of the annoying things about things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that I can’t figure out how to make a new task
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from Siri go directly to no project anytime. You can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say, like, you’re wanting me today to do this thing and things, and then it gets no project, but it gets today.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t figure out how to make it go no project. If you say anytime, it goes to the inbox. I don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything to ever go to the inbox, ever. On the Mac, you can configure it to basically skip that with quick entry,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you can’t do that with SiriKit on iOS yet, and it annoys me. But for the most part,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have found things pretty good. There’s a couple of other small weirdnesses. So for instance,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the repeating UI is really weird.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Once you get it set up, it’s fine, but creating recurring events is very unintuitive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mentioned earlier that I don’t want things that are in the future to show up until it’s their time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to show up. That is only done on the granularity of the day level.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you can’t say, don’t show up until Wednesday at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 9pm that I have to put out the cardboard recycling. All day today, I’ve had put out the cardboard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recycling on my to-do list, even though I really shouldn’t do it until 9pm. You can set a reminder to alert you of that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at 9pm, But it’s going to show up on your list all day. I don’t love that. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco finally, the whether it is an active development or not is kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a big question mark with things because the developer of it, culture code,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco went for a very long span between previous versions and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it seemed at many times as though the app was abandoned. And it turned out it wasn’t, but there were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco such long delays that it’s a little hard to shake the fear that it might get abandoned
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again or go for long spans without updates again. And so finally after trying all these apps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I finally understand why so many of our podcaster friends are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always talking about their frustrations with their to-do apps and why they’re always switching between them and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco saying oh now I’m switching to this because this thing annoyed me about this other app. I finally get it because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a hard problem like this is a very personal app, you’re trying to codify
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people’s internal mental systems in an app, and that’s really hard to do in a way that pleases many people.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco None of these apps are perfect for almost anybody. Everyone is kind of 70%
⏹️ ▶️ Marco satisfied with any given one at most. One thing I thought of, though,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that there’s really nothing saying that you have to only use one to-do app for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything. Like, Casey, you mentioned earlier that you use Anylist for groceries and you use Do for some other stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is totally a solution. If you don’t like the way Things does recurring reminders,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could just have some other app remind me to take out the trash. I don’t need Things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be the app that does all that stuff. There’s nothing saying that you only have to use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one app for everything. You can have different to-do apps for different needs depending on what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re good at. Your grocery store shopping list does not need to necessarily be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the same app as your next version of your iOS app and what you’re doing for it. It would be nice if one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app could do multiple things like that in a way that didn’t step on each other, but it doesn’t have to be. I’ve settled on things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the time being, and I think I’m gonna be here for a while because the Mac app is just so much nicer than the other Mac apps.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I like things a lot. It does fit what I want in some ways.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s some things about it that are just friction to me, but for the most part, it’s the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco closest I’ve found to good for me, but I’m also probably gonna check out any list for grocery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff, and I’m really curious to know whatever the heck Clear is working on for their next version for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other really casual stuff like groceries, but ultimately, I’m now using its Do app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and its things, and it’s pretty nice, not perfect, but definitely the nicest for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me. Once I kinda got a feel for it, it just felt really right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the way I like to use things and the way I like things to look and work and behave. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, there is some friction, but ultimately I like it. So thanks, things. What do you use for your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco calendar? Calendar.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so how do you decide whether something goes on your calendar or in one of those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, that’s easy. A to-do app is a list of things I need to get done. A calendar is a list of time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slots that are booked. So like, you know, and this is a great apologies
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to people like Merlin who have talked about this at great length forever. But like, you know, a calendar entry
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is like a thing that I have to do at that time. So like if I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have a meeting with somebody or recording a podcast like that has to happen at a certain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time, that is not a to do entry. A to-do entry is things like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco follow up about this thing I had this email about. Like, you know, stuff like that. Or like, you know, take out the trash,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, sometime today. Or stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John That’s a kind
⏹️ ▶️ John you said you wanted to be told to take out the trash precisely at 9.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, but I don’t have to do it at 9. I have to do it sometime between 9 and tomorrow morning. So
⏹️ ▶️ John where would you put the fact that a plumber is coming?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s a calendar entry. Because that is like a thing that is happening at a certain time. it’s not a to-do item.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s an event. That’s a very different semantic thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that the line is fuzzier than you’re making it sound because anything that I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John has a date and a time associated with it is a potential candidate for a calendar,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s also a potential candidate for a reminder, but it’s also a potential candidate for a to-do item
⏹️ ▶️ John because you want to do it at a particular time depending on how you view things. You just use one calendar. Casey, what do you use?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I use a shared Google calendar that is off of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my Gmail account that Aaron and I share, and that is the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey canonical family calendar. That being said, anything that happens during the workday
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or anything that for some reason I don’t want Aaron to see, like maybe I’ve booked a time to go buy her a gift
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or something like that. Like that’s the only thing I can think of that I wouldn’t want her to see, or maybe something that’s irrelevant
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to her. That goes on my work calendar just
⏹️ ▶️ John Going to the Tesla dealership.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey How did you know? But yeah, so basically the Google calendar that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey associated with my Gmail account, well strictly speaking my Google Apps for my domain account, that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a shared calendar that she has on her phone, that she has on her computer, that’s everywhere.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is the canonical List Family calendar. And then anything that is basically anything that happens
⏹️ ▶️ Casey during the workday or for some reason I don’t want her to be burdened with, that is on my work calendar.
⏹️ ▶️ John What is your work calendar?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s Google Apps for their domain.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s all Google.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it’s Google everywhere.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I also have a separate work calendar. It’s not Google because my work doesn’t use Google at work.
⏹️ ▶️ John Outlook or whatever, Exchange. And I think that’s split. I like that split. I like not having my
⏹️ ▶️ John work calendar mess with my family calendar. Most of the time my work calendar is totally bonkers. Like it is
⏹️ ▶️ John just massively booked and oversubscribed I would never want that noise in my life. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then the life calendar is less and this, the split the Marco, but it’s pretty much the same
⏹️ ▶️ John split that I use. Like, um, on the family calendar, it’s, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John podcast recording. Uh, I would put plumber on the calendar. It would be an all day
⏹️ ▶️ John item. Um, and then reminders are if I’m doing something
⏹️ ▶️ John off the normal schedule, um, I do put what I do put what time I have to leave
⏹️ ▶️ John work on my work calendar, I do put what time I have to leave home on my home calendar for days where
⏹️ ▶️ John that is different than normal. Right. So if I have to,
⏹️ ▶️ John I have a very early meeting and I want to remind myself, don’t forget today you have an early meeting. You actually have to be at work
⏹️ ▶️ John earlier than you normally are. I put that on my home calendar early in the morning. And if
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to leave work early to like a parent teacher conference, I put that in my work calendar, which is weird. Like I was thinking about that for the to
⏹️ ▶️ John do apps as well. And when I use reminders, I’m a lot of the time I’m choosing a system
⏹️ ▶️ John based on where I think I’ll be when I’ll need this information and what I think I’ll be doing. If I think my phone will be with me, reminders
⏹️ ▶️ John is a candidate because that’s where I’m going to see it. But if I think I won’t have my phone, if I put in a reminder, it’s not going to do me any good.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, if I’m if I’m someplace where I don’t have that. And that’s the homework calendar
⏹️ ▶️ John split is I don’t want to look at my work calendar at home. And I do look at my home calendar at work, which requires some
⏹️ ▶️ John combining of stuff. But for the to do stuff, like Marker said, with the multiple applications
⏹️ ▶️ John that are, you know, specific. I just got done asking for the ability
⏹️ ▶️ John to say like, Oh, remind me of whatever and have it use a single app. The next logical step in that is to have
⏹️ ▶️ John it understand you well enough to know when you ask to add something to your shopping list that it
⏹️ ▶️ John means this app. But when you when you say something about the trash, it means that app, right? These are all
⏹️ ▶️ John within the realm of reason, because these are fairly narrow problem demands and also within the realm of, you know, Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John favorite thing, machine learning, where if you keep talking about the trash, it should eventually like learn
⏹️ ▶️ John or ask you when you’re actual trash day is, and you should be able to say increasingly
⏹️ ▶️ John offhand and casual things which result in the correct, being reminded at the
⏹️ ▶️ John correct time because it has some context and history about what you’ve done in the past. We’re not asking for how 9000 here.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think all this is within the grasp, but it’s the stuff that probably Google probably already knows about
⏹️ ▶️ John us from like monitoring all our activities through its various applications and stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would love for those systems to get just a little tiny bit smarter.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So Marco, how long until you write your own is really what we all want to know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is not an unreasonable question. It would be totally my style to get upset
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with all the options and just write my own. But honestly, I don’t think that’s going to happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, first of all, there’s limited time in the day and it’s a little bit of a crowded market perhaps.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honestly, well, it isn’t because there’s only so many that are actually decent.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the problem is that for a… This is kind of a similar problem that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco John Gruber and Brent Simmons and Dave Viscous had with Vesper, is that to enter this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco market in a competitive way that’s useful to a lot of people, you really need to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on all of the Apple platforms at once at launch. That’s really hard for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any indie to do these days. I’m not going to use a to-do app that is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not on my Mac and my iPhone and my iPad. And a lot of people are also going to need a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco watch app. That’s getting really… The barrier is just so high that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is certainly possible for people to do it. And there’s going to be certainly some people who are totally fine to have it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say, only on their phone. That’s not me. And that’s not many people, unfortunately. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in order to make a good to-do app that’s actually competitive, you really need to launch on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all those platforms at once. And that’s just really a massive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco amount of work that I don’t think I’m ever gonna have not only the bandwidth to do, but also, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t have the passion for this market at all. I’m happy to use these apps and talk about them once on a podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for 30 minutes, but I really don’t think I’m going to fall in love with to-do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app systems and suddenly wanna make my own enough to actually be willing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to devote the massive amount of time it would take to make apps for all of these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco platforms to make it actually useful.
⏹️ ▶️ John So not that this actually reduces the amount of work, but it is a novel approach to reducing
⏹️ ▶️ John the apparent footprint on all the different platforms is the approach
⏹️ ▶️ John think Google’s taking this approach, I’m sure other apps have done it as well, where you decide that the problem you’re solving,
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever it is, to-do apps or whatever, you’re gonna implement that entirely
⏹️ ▶️ John server-side with some smarts somewhere, right? and that the interface to those smarts
⏹️ ▶️ John will be something that is not directly connected with a task. So in Google’s case,
⏹️ ▶️ John I forget, what was it? Was it Allo or something? They basically had a chat app. It’s bubbles of text, it’s you
⏹️ ▶️ John versus the thing you’re communicating with. And that chat app can be used to chat with any person
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s nothing in the chat app that is specific to the problem. So if you have the chat app on all the different platforms,
⏹️ ▶️ John the chat app is on your watch, it’s on your phone, it’s on your Mac or whatever, you just write that chat app once. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John what you’re conversing with is a series of intelligent agents that know how to do certain kinds of things.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so then you implement your to do app entirely server side. And then when you want to do your next
⏹️ ▶️ John app, which is like, uh, you know, a shopping list, it’s the same sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John interface with the chat type thing or speaking or whatever, like getting, getting closer to the idea of not looking
⏹️ ▶️ John at pictures and screens and poking at them, but they’re having sort of an assistant who helps you with things. Obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John writing the assistant is much harder, even harder than writing an application for all the different platforms. But that is,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s an interesting approach to these kinds of problems where
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re never going to make one user interface or one way of organizing that works best. But if you can make one kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John reasonably fake intelligent agent that learns based on your habits in
⏹️ ▶️ John some reasonable way, it could be, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John it could be a better, actually a better experience to be able to go back and forth
⏹️ ▶️ John with things over text and voice. And eventually, it’s sort of like having
⏹️ ▶️ John your own very primitive personal assistant who in the beginning doesn’t really
⏹️ ▶️ John know how you like things done, but eventually learns. And that could be better than any really nice interface
⏹️ ▶️ John that you make on all the different platforms and potentially easier to maintain because once you’ve mastered that interface, whether it’s faceless talking
⏹️ ▶️ John or just like a chat type interface, you don’t need to revisit that that much.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Another angle I considered when I was thinking, like, should I make my own one of these or not?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Is that the reminders, like, we’ve seen a lot of apps over the last couple years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that are basically, like, better interfaces to the built-in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple Calendar. Fantastical is number one, and I use Fantastical
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for all of my event entry on the Mac. But I still use Calendar for the browsing of it, but I use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Fantastical for entry, it’s wonderful. Cal or rather calendar does have a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somewhat fantastic Cal like natural language entry field in recent versions of OS 10.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sorry Mac OS but it’s not nearly as good so I don’t use it. But the same API
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exists for the reminders database so one way someone could tackle this market
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know if anybody has really in a serious way but you could just make a nicer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco interface to the built-in Reminders database. I don’t know what the limitations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of that would be. I’m sure it’s not gonna be nearly as full-featured as if you make your own database and run your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco own service, but that is one way you could do this where if you first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just tackle just the Mac first, or just iOS first, with a really nice interface to the Reminders database,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe that’s a way you could do it more incrementally. But again, this is not a market that I feel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco passionate enough about to spend my time on it, unfortunately.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you wanted to be differentiated in this market, which I still think is crowded, yes, there are the good ones, but there is such
⏹️ ▶️ John a long tail of mediocre to bad ones that someone somewhere loves, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m sure because the tail is so long that someone has already done this, but when you were talking about and when other people talk about
⏹️ ▶️ John these million to do apps and how they do one thing you like, but not some other thing or whatever, I’m always reminded of the calculator construction set.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like that old story about Steve
⏹️ ▶️ John the calculator app wasn’t quite to his liking and the developer was tired of hearing him
⏹️ ▶️ John say, no, this should be like that. And he just basically made a way, here, Steve, you can arrange the buttons and size them.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you build the calculator that you want. So instead of a to-do app maker saying, well, this person
⏹️ ▶️ John says they want this, but that person said they always want that. And they want, there’s too many demands. You make the to-do app you want. So if you can
⏹️ ▶️ John make a to-do app construction kit, where it was an app that gave you the tools to build the app that you
⏹️ ▶️ John wanted. I mean, maybe that’s what OmniFocus is, and that’s what Marco was recoiling from, because it was just
⏹️ ▶️ John too darn complicated. I think army focus does have at least some point of view about what you’re supposed to do. But if you really made
⏹️ ▶️ John a construction kit for to do apps where, and again, I start thinking of agents like I don’t want to
⏹️ ▶️ John get into a program really quick and that just narrows your market to nothing because no one wants to even do some kind of simple programming.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if I could converse with the application and negotiate how things are going
⏹️ ▶️ John to work, you know, do you want me to remind you once or do you always want me to keep reminding you like the
⏹️ ▶️ John nagging thing that Casey was talking about? You know, most of the time, what do you want? Okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John do you want to see all the things that are coming up in today or just the things that are due in the next time window
⏹️ ▶️ John or like just sort of go through the process of building the app that’s view again, that
⏹️ ▶️ John would be astronomically hard to make. But I think it would be I’m assuming it would be
⏹️ ▶️ John relatively novel in the market because having heard many, many dozens
⏹️ ▶️ John of hours of people talking about to do apps on podcasts, I have yet to hear someone say, I tried this construction kit and it was terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco if it does exist,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe it’s so far in the long tail that no one’s even seen it.
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#askatp: Does Casey miss .NET?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s betterment.com slash ATP. Thank you to Betterment for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Time for some Ask ATP. Let’s do it. All right. Roar Locker.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What a great name, Roar.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco That’s amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What parent decides to name their child Roar, and why didn’t I think of that? Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he or she writes, Casey, do you miss the C-sharp and.NET development stack? I’m taking my computer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey engineer bachelor degree, And I must say that I enjoy it very much. I also like C sharp much better than Swift.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Although I’ve spent more time coding in Swift, maybe I’m just feeling an Xcode versus Visual Studio effect. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I miss C sharp and that’s about it. .NET
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is fine, whatever. Like it’s good, I guess, but to me it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just a vehicle to give me C sharp. I do miss C sharp. I love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Swift. I really honestly do love Swift. I like Swift quite a lot, But C sharp
⏹️ ▶️ Casey does, and I’ve probably said this before on the show, C sharp does a stunningly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good job of being all things to all people. If you want to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey write sort of kind of functional programming and yes, I’m aware that there’s F sharp, but like, if you want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get halfway to functional programming, you can do that with C sharp. If you want to write kind of basic,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey boring procedural stuff, you can do that with C sharp. If you want to write super object oriented
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stuff, you can do that with C sharp. And I know that C sharp is not the only language that all this applies to. I’m waiting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for John to jump in and talk about Pearl. But C sharp does a really good job of being
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just about anything to anyone. And I do miss C sharp a lot. I, um,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t really mind X code, which means one of a couple of things. It means either
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m still a noob, which is possible. It means either I just haven’t been burned by it, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey semi-true, or it means I’m an idiot, which is possible as well, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the same way that everyone else seems to complain and moan about Xcode, like I don’t really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mind it. And maybe it’s because Visual Studio, while great in many
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ways, is aesthetically an assault on my eyes and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Xcode for all of its faults, Xcode does one thing very well, and that’s be very, very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty. Marco, you said something earlier about, you know, Hey, I’m a Mac user or I’m an Apple person, so I like things to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be pretty or well-designed. I forget how you phrased it earlier, but yeah, it’s, it’s that right. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Xcode is painful in some ways, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a, it is in forever will be better than Eclipse don’t email me and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey B it is. It is not that bad in my personal opinion.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, if you want to talk about Swift, like code completion, what is it? Source kit? Is that what I’m thinking of?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like SourceKit is an utter disaster, but Xcode itself, it’s not bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I like it. And do I miss Visual Studio? No, not really. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey holy hell, do I not miss anything related to Windows? Nothing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about Windows is something I miss or long for. I am so unbelievably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thankful to be off Windows. I cannot even verbalize it. I am so thankful
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be away from that. So I miss C-sharp.net, whatever it’s something that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gives me C-sharp. Visual Studio? Meh. Windows? Hell no, I don’t miss
#askatp: Single- vs. multi-threaded
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, David Steer asks, the next time you discuss single versus multi-thread processing, would it be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey possible to give a couple of real world examples of tasks or applications that perform better on each
⏹️ ▶️ Casey process? I love the show, but I’m not that technical and sometimes I struggled to give context to your discussions.
⏹️ ▶️ John to figure out exactly what is being asked here, because
⏹️ ▶️ John one way to read it is like what types of things benefit from multiple threads, and that’s getting into the Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John zone of like, look, if you’re doing this type of task and you got a 10 core Mac Pro, you’ll see a big benefit or iMac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if you’re doing this kind of task, you’re not going to see a benefit because it’s not, you know, it doesn’t use multiple cores
⏹️ ▶️ John and the and which tasks those are really depends on a lot of factors, including just like what the application
⏹️ ▶️ John is. Like, I think Final Cut Pro 10 wasn’t particularly strong at multithreading until recently. So
⏹️ ▶️ John but that doesn’t mean video processing does or doesn’t benefit from multithreading. The other way to think about this question
⏹️ ▶️ John is they’re asking, what makes something a problem
⏹️ ▶️ John to which you can apply parallelism
⏹️ ▶️ John beyond any kind of parallelism or degrees of parallelism? And
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that’s probably closer to the answer. So I’m going to try to give a non-technical
⏹️ ▶️ John explanation, as best I can to this. So doing stuff in parallel
⏹️ ▶️ John requires a problem where you can break it up into pieces
⏹️ ▶️ John and that the pieces don’t have dependencies between them or don’t have a lot of dependencies between them.
⏹️ ▶️ John The obvious example that comes up a lot is almost anything having to do with graphics
⏹️ ▶️ John processing, where you’ve got a lot of dots on your screen and for the most part, dots
⏹️ ▶️ John may depend on their neighboring dots, but they don’t depend on the dots way over at the other side. So if you’re taking an entire
⏹️ ▶️ John image and blurring it, you can break that image up into a bunch of smaller pieces, dole out those pieces
⏹️ ▶️ John to a bunch of things that are going to work on them all at the same time, and then put the pieces back together at the end.
⏹️ ▶️ John Lots of graphics cards do exactly that for, you know, tiling processing, but in general,
⏹️ ▶️ John just the giant array of pixels, they are worked on as much as possible in parallel
⏹️ ▶️ John by your graphics card. There’s probably a Wikipedia page on this expression, but there is a term of art in in the computer science
⏹️ ▶️ John world called embarrassingly parallel problems, where it is so easy to parallelize, because
⏹️ ▶️ John you can break it up into as many chunks as you want, and there are a lot of chunks. And so it’s like, look, if you gave
⏹️ ▶️ John me a million processors, this problem is embarrassingly parallel. I could break it up into a
⏹️ ▶️ John million pieces and do them all at once. And it would be a million times faster than doing them one at
⏹️ ▶️ John a time, assuming the thing is processed at the same time. So
⏹️ ▶️ John whether something performs in parallels is based on sort of the nature of the problem. There are
⏹️ ▶️ John problems that you can’t do in parallel because to do step
⏹️ ▶️ John one, to do step two, you need the answer from step one. To do step three, you need the answer from step two. So
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t do steps one, two, and three all at the same time. And so that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John high level computer science explanation. You can apply your basic reasoning about things to
⏹️ ▶️ John try to discover whether a particular problem you’re having
⏹️ ▶️ John is parallelizable in any way? Is it embarrassingly parallelizable?
⏹️ ▶️ John Or is it generally serial by nature? But that’s when we
⏹️ ▶️ John get into the complexity of like, well, this problem is parallelizable, say, mp3 encoding, but it turns out the mp3 encoder
⏹️ ▶️ John I have doesn’t do anything in parallel, it just does it from the beginning to the end. And that’s where
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco said, Well, I can, it’s not embarrassingly parallelizable, but I can break this
⏹️ ▶️ John audio track up into five pieces and encode all five at the same time and then put the five pieces back together
⏹️ ▶️ John and now I’ve done it five times faster, right? You can’t break it up into a billion pieces because
⏹️ ▶️ John at a certain point you’re doing, I don’t know what the size is, Marco would know, of like a single frame or whatever. It’s about 1,200 samples.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, like there is some unit size beyond which you don’t get any benefit,
⏹️ ▶️ John but that’s an example where the problem itself is parallelizable, but you could say,
⏹️ ▶️ John if I buy a faster computer, my MP3 encoding will be faster. Not if you’re using a non-parallelized MP3
⏹️ ▶️ John encoder, it won’t. So it gets a little bit complicated. Casey, you want to try a different angle?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so what I’ve been working on lately is this thing where I have a folder full
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of photographs, right, or maybe live photos. So it’s a photograph in a movie.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I want to file them away in a particular way. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what I’ve run into is some of this is parallelizable and some of it is not. So if you think about it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey any time that I have, any photo that doesn’t share
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a date, so if, for example, on today, which is the 7th of February, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey take only one photograph with my iPhone, I can,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey without worrying about a conflict, I can just copy that to where I want it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to go, right? Without worrying about a conflict with any other photos taken from my iPhone,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can copy it to where I want it to go. But if I took 15 photos
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yesterday, it’s possible that maybe some of those were taken at the same hour, minute, and second.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Maybe I did a burst or something like that. And so some of this is parallelizable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and some of it is not.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I meant to, when I was re-listening to last week’s episode, I meant to talk to you more about how you’re going to resolve your race
⏹️ ▶️ John condition and how you said, my thing is bug-free except for the massive race condition
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco didn’t consider. That’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bug-free. I mean, you could parallelize by day.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What I was trying to explain, and I think I’ve done a poor job of it, and that’s why I want it to be cut, is that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if in the batch of photos that I have, I have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no conflicts in terms of date, so the hour, minute, and second is unique,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of the photos or movies or what all the media that has a unique
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hour, minute, and second can be processed in parallel. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is to say it may have a conflict in the destination, but it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have a conflict amongst its peers that are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey being imported. Does that make any sense at all?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It does, yeah. But honestly, I’m kind of wondering, does this problem benefit from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco parallelization? It seems like it’s pretty fast to just dump the files
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So here’s the thing. The problem with the reason I think it may benefit from parallelization is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that there’s two different things at play. Number one, let’s say that I took a photo
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at exactly noon today, just for the sake of discussion. I took a photo at exactly noon today,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it turns out that the destination, so my photo repository that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has every photograph I’ve ever taken also already has by some mechanism,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t worry about why, but let’s just say it already has a photo that was taken at exactly noon
⏹️ ▶️ Casey today at 12 o’clock at zero minutes and zero seconds. One of the things that my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey app is going to do is it’s going to say, hey, let me take
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an MD5 of the source that I’m trying to import and of the thing that’s already at the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey target. And if if the MD5 is the same, then I need to take like evasive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey action, so to speak. So I need to increment the, the file, or I need to add a suffix to the imported
⏹️ ▶️ Casey file name. So instead of being 2018-02-07 12-00-00, the imported file will be all of that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with an A at the end, the letter A at the end, because they’re two different files.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, if you’re doing that across a whole bunch of files at once, which presumably I am, that may
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be well served to be parallelized because on an average modern processor,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you have at least two, if not four or six or eight or 10 or 12 or 18 cores,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which are all working simultaneously to solve problems. And so it makes sense
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to split this same kind of operation across all, or at least some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of these cores. Where it doesn’t make sense to split it is if I have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey multiple pictures that were taken at 12 o’clock and zero seconds, because then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can get into this race condition that I found earlier, which is to say,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the first photo that I’m processing looks at the target and says, oh, there’s nothing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there, and starts the copy. The second photo that I’m processing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey looks at the target and says, oh, there’s nothing there, and tries to start the copy, but then they collide with each other.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that’s the problem that I was running into before, and I’m solving it now by parallelizing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anything that doesn’t have an internal conflict. Because even if it has a conflict at the target, that’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It doesn’t matter. I can still parallelize it. But if it has an internal conflict,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then I have a problem. And so anything that doesn’t have an internal conflict
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can be parallelized. Anything that has an internal conflict will be serialized.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So what if you, in parallel, read the input files, get whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco date and timestamp buckets they belong to, and stuff all that into an array, then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco serially just have a thing run through that array, look for the conflicts, resolve them, and do all the renaming serially?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because that’s gonna be so fast anyway. You’re really just relying on the file system
⏹️ ▶️ Marco speed at that point?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, but no. But the thing that I haven’t mentioned, and I alluded to this earlier that never
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually put a period on the sentence. The thing that I haven’t mentioned is that my target
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for all of these image and also movie files, my target is actually my sonology.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So it’s not the local file system. I have to crawl across the network to do all of these
⏹️ ▶️ Casey checksums and to figure out if these files are identical or not. And some of these videos that I’m taking,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, like five or 10 minutes of 4k video off the iPhone is multiple gigabytes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but a rename should be quick, right? You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could import it somewhere first, then do a rename later really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fast. Yes, but again, my process is that I’m saying,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hey, I found a identically named file at the destination,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which in my case happens to be a Synology. So I need to MD5 both the local file that is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my local file system or at worst on an SD card attached to my physical computer, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also need to do an MD5 on the remote file that’s on the Synology, and that can take forever. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey why I want to parallelize it. So anything that has a conflict, I want to parallelize.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anything that doesn’t have a conflict internally, anything
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I know will not collide with any of the other files I’m importing,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that can be parallelized. What I worry about is if I have 15 files on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my SD card that were all taken at 12 o’clock and 0 seconds, that’s when I need to do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it serially because otherwise I run into a situation where I say, oh, does the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco target… That makes sense, but when something is slow in this case,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s probably being limited by the transfer bandwidth of the SD card or the network
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever. Does paralyzing those actually get you anything or is it just clog it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up and make everything run, you know, like, where you can run 10 things at 1 tenth the speed each. He’s already spent more
⏹️ ▶️ John time writing this program than he’s going to save by a pyrologist, but
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey that’s fine. I
⏹️ ▶️ John would just point out that your race condition is like the canonical race condition, which is check if something’s okay
⏹️ ▶️ John and then go do the thing and while you’re going to do the thing, something that you checked was okay is right. So my suggestion
⏹️ ▶️ John for a strategy for dealing with this that doesn’t involve serializing any portion of it is to
⏹️ ▶️ John use what other past technologies have used, including Unix and
⏹️ ▶️ John in this specific case, Ethernet, you want carrier sense multiple access collision detection.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s kind of getting what Marker was saying. Don’t do everything in parallel. You
⏹️ ▶️ John just need some kind of remotely atomic operation. And even with a NAS, if you can get the stuff onto
⏹️ ▶️ John the NAS and do a rename local to the NAS, hopefully you can get atomic renames.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then you just try to do your rename. And if your name fails, because the file exists, you
⏹️ ▶️ John increment it. And then you and you try to do the rename again, and you do binary exponential back off, and you just let all
⏹️ ▶️ John the parallel things fight it out, and because there is no inherent order to things that are literally, you don’t have any
⏹️ ▶️ John increased resolution. If you did, you’d put it in the file name, right? There’s no inherent order to the new and pictures,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? They’re all just new and pictures. So let them duke it out. There’s no locks,
⏹️ ▶️ John no shared state, no weighting, no serialization, and you’d be surprised at how
⏹️ ▶️ John nicely things terminate, because this is how Ethernet works. It tries, and if the line is busy, it waits a little
⏹️ ▶️ John bit and tries again. If it’s still busy, it waits a little bit longer and tries again and everything
⏹️ ▶️ Casey works. Yeah, but there is a bit of an inherent order, right? Because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the source file name is like img underscore 1111, img underscore 1112. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t tell me about that. So why aren’t you using that as your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tiebreaker? Yeah, wait, you have sequential names in the source? Yeah. Doesn’t that totally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco solve your problem?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, that’s why I’m running the collision, the potential collision stuff serially. that’s exactly why
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m running it serially. So I’m guaranteed
⏹️ ▶️ John will- You’ve already got a unique-ifier that you’ll never
⏹️ ▶️ John have a collision because you’ve got the date you’re doing the import and you’ve got a sequence number. Yeah, what’s the problem?
⏹️ ▶️ John He doesn’t want to put two dates in the file and
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that’s his problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s too much of an aesthetic is happening in these file names
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re right. Because I want it to be, you know, 2018-02-07. And
⏹️ ▶️ John people are using A and B. Do you go to AA and then AB and then AC? Do you then go A, A,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I’ve never run into a situation when that’s a problem, but I understand your point.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is another bug-free program that there’ll never be more than 26 conflicts.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey A through Z is fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey See, you, sir, you are why I will never open
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When the iPhone 15 shoots like, you know, 30 frame per second burst
⏹️ ▶️ Marco photos, you’re gonna have a problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the problem is that you’re not an old and crusty enough programmer. A
⏹️ ▶️ John Z is always fine, and I’m like, Do we need to use an unsigned 256-bit integer for this number? It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John what crashed me up, by the way. I was looking at something that briefly touched on source code to one of those Bitcoin or
⏹️ ▶️ John some other cryptocurrency, and they were literally using the—I’d never seen it in the U256
⏹️ ▶️ John type for one of their values, because they’re like, 64 bits is not enough.
⏹️ ▶️ John We need 256 bits of unsigned precision for this value. Like, yeah, you
⏹️ ▶️ John are really future-proofing this thing that will be gone in two years. Not Bitcoin, just some other random
⏹️ ▶️ Casey moving on. So where do we leave this? Because, John, you did exactly what you were supposed to do, which is give it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over to me, and then I completely ruined
⏹️ ▶️ John it. I tried, but I think that we have that question has been addressed to the best that we can do in
⏹️ ▶️ John an Ask ATP style segment. Really you should, you’ll be able to talk about it with Mike when you do like your computer
⏹️ ▶️ John science-y learning stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if that even keeps on. And wait a second, since when did you ever listen to analog? I know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you do from time to time, but.
⏹️ ▶️ John I am vaguely aware of many
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I feel like you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John This is the best way to characterize my current podcast listening, which is very spotty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s like, dad, how did you know I was doing that? I know,
#askatp: Meditation?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So Thomas Nosewitz or something like that writes, have any of you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ever tried meditation, please discuss. No, I have never tried meditation. John?
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty sure I’ve never tried meditation. Uh, I don’t know. I might have done
⏹️ ▶️ John something that qualifies at some point, but
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I’m going to say no. I’m going to say no. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John lots of things qualify as meditation and
⏹️ ▶️ John sure as a teenager, I probably did one of those things. That was called sleeping.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Maybe it was even a church
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. They’re always having you
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco do stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John That was called zoning out. No, no.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Like, anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m going to say no. The no is the quick answer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I too have not tried anything. I have a vague concept of the kinds of things you’re supposed to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do. I kind of want to try it someday, but it’s never been more than like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a passing notion like that for
⏹️ ▶️ John I was hoping one of us had done. That’s why I put this question in there. It’s like Like surely one of us has tried meditation, but nope, we’ve just heard podcasts
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know what I really wanna do? I really wanna get hypnotized sometime, because I think that’s bogus. I think it’s a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of malarkey, and I don’t think it’s real.
⏹️ ▶️ John try. Maybe you should start smoking, so then you can try to get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hypnotized to stop. Oh my God. Now we’re gonna hear from so many people about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John everything that just happened. All
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right, so thanks to our sponsors this week, Casper, Betterment, and HelloFresh, and we will see
⏹️ ▶️ John you next week. Oh, we’re gonna hear from listeners. We just haven’t tried meditation. We just tell the truth. I didn’t, we didn’t say anything bad about
⏹️ ▶️ John meditation. Casey said bad things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about hypnotism. Now we’re going to hear from the meditation people, the smoking people, the hypnotists,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the people who have been hypnotized, allegedly. We’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John going to hear from all of those people now. I think you’ll might hear from the hypnotized people, but you won’t hear from
⏹️ ▶️ John smokers. Who’s going to object to the joke about smoking and hypnotism? You’d be surprised. Hypnotists?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. It helps some people quit smoking. If that’s the goal, who cares? Does it work? Did
⏹️ ▶️ John it help you quit smoking? Sure.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I suppose it doesn’t really
⏹️ ▶️ John matter. it works and it actually helps you quit smoking great like
⏹️ ▶️ John stand on your head whatever works don’t smoke kids it’s time to go
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s terrible. Now the show is
⏹️ ▶️ John over. They didn’t even mean to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey begin. Because it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t do any research. Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
⏹️ ▶️ John And 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 and T. Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse. It’s accidental, they
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t mean to Accidental, check the broadcast so long
Post-show: Baby update
⏹️ ▶️ John Baby update. Ayyyy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, I love Michaela to death. She is adorable and she is my precious little angel, yet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if she doesn’t learn how to sleep, I’m going to go insane.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, she’s brand new. Like, this is like… this takes a while, usually.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am extremely lucky to have had one child, let alone two. I cannot believe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my good fortune that I have had two so far healthy children. Either one of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them could have been unhealthy or had some sort of physical ailment that would have been really unfortunate, like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in so many ways I am extremely lucky. But in the heat of the moment,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s funny how you kind of forget that. Oh my God. I’m so
⏹️ ▶️ John miserable. So how long are the usual sleep stretches?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey At night, between two and a half and three and a half
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John hours now, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not terrible, but is not great. And, to be fair, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey funniest part of this is that Aaron hasn’t really woken me up deliberately to help
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the nighttime stuff in like a week. So I am being this much of a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey baby, and all I’m doing is getting woken up when I hear the cry and then going right back to sleep.
⏹️ ▶️ John You just grumble and roll over.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, this is true. This is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco how ridiculous men
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are. You’re really not having a good showing right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now. Oh, no, I know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fully aware of this. 100% and maybe I should maybe I should not all men myself, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco like I mean, I mean
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I cannot feed I cannot feed Michaela I don’t have the equipment to feed Michaela
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right but the fact that I’m this much of a baby After being woken up like John said by a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ John got to wake up early to go to work in the morning, right? Oh, wait,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right Every part of this is me being but I’m the biggest baby in the house
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco honest with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, all right, here, look. I can help you with two liquids, vodka
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and coffee. I will let you decide when to apply each
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey one. Don’t give them to the baby. Yeah, these both go into you. Oh, not for the baby? Not for the baby? Okay. These both
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but at different times. Don’t do it at the same time. It’s a bad idea. Erin may
⏹️ ▶️ John not appreciate you doing things that she can’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, that’s also part
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it. That’s true. If you being a little bit happier and a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco little bit more functional turns into you being a little more helpful and less of a baby, she might appreciate that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So yeah, obviously, this is a hard time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey anybody. It
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is. It is. It could be so much worse. Like, I don’t think that Michaela is to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the point of being having colic. I don’t know what the right phrasing is. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she is very fussy for a lot of the day, but I would not go so far as to say that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she is like Alex was or anything like that. She is manageable,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but horrible. Alex, by comparison, John’s eldest, was,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from everything I’ve been told, indescribably bad
⏹️ ▶️ John that— You’ll know you’ve reached Alex level when you find yourself bringing your baby to a chiropractor.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, yeah. No, no, no. Not even in the
⏹️ ▶️ John ballpark. What’s wrong with my baby? Is it in constant pain? Is it filled with spikes?
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m willing to go to a quack non-doctor acupuncture Anything scan
⏹️ ▶️ John my baby. Is it filled with bees?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John We were at the desperation is like
⏹️ ▶️ John we will try anything that has is there a spell on my baby Do
⏹️ ▶️ John we get an exorcist in there? But yeah Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John Colic is one of those words that means nothing too. It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John does that mean? It means you’re basically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey crying all the time. Yeah. And that’s the thing. I recognize that I’m being the biggest
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco baby in the world. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fully understand that. You’re doing something hard, right? For anybody, even for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weak baby men, having a new infant in the house that you’re caring
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for is a lot of work. And it’s hard on everybody. So you don’t need to belittle yourself over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. hard for everybody it’s not constructive or useful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get into like trying to outdo each other of like oh well this is hard for me well it’s hard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for me to like don’t worry about that like that’s not constructive it’s hard for everybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s hard for you it’s hard for Aaron it’s hard for Michaela it’s probably hard for Declan to like it’s hard
⏹️ ▶️ John on sleeping like a baby so to speak
⏹️ ▶️ John has she woken Declan up because that’s the most fun
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey no thankfully chain of misery as it feels like unfair
⏹️ ▶️ John like oh come on you can’t wake the other one up we did all the work into the other one he
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco sleeps now I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it’s everyone it’s a hard time for everyone so the best thing you can do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is just try to be as functional and useful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as you can and try to add as little drama and problems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as possible to the situation that is already very hard on everybody. So whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you need to do to do that, do that. So if that’s coffee sometimes and vodka
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some other times, fine. Keep it under control, but if otherwise, fine. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s the most helpful thing you can do right now for everyone, including yourself,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is to try to make yourself useful and to try to not get bogged down by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the hardships and drama of this.
⏹️ ▶️ John Although, you were trying to remind yourself how lucky you are, which is a place that parents often go to try to
⏹️ ▶️ John train. But I found a perhaps more successful method is to remind yourself and
⏹️ ▶️ John you should have an easy time for this to remind yourself this this will pass like they don’t stay. They don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John stay babies forever like you. You can do it. You have done it and this will pass and I find
⏹️ ▶️ John I personally find it much more comforting than trying to remind myself how lucky I am because that’s like, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John another night off the chalkboard like the The kid is getting older. He or she is
⏹️ ▶️ John not going to be three months old forever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey literally earlier tonight as we were recording, I sent the following text to Erin.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But in the same way nobody goes to college in diapers, she will eventually learn to sleep.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John That’s literally what I said
⏹️ ▶️ John to her. That’s a big one. Potty training is the other time you remind yourself most kids are
⏹️ ▶️ John not 30 and still going in the diaper.
⏹️ ▶️ John going to happen. I remember reminding Marco of that when he
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco was going through it. And it seemed like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forever, but now it’s done. Like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco done. It’s kind of surprising. Like, you know, it seems like you’re doing it forever. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one day it just kind of just, you’re past it. It
⏹️ ▶️ John just happens. He’s probably not going to go off to college with
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco diapers. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exactly. And it seems like when you’re in it, it seems like it’s never going to end.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you’re like, oh my God, do I have a problem here? You take him to the chiropractor. Yeah, I know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the reality is, yeah, it’ll end. So just get through it, keep yourself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and your family healthy and as happy as possible given the challenge.
⏹️ ▶️ John And do, I’m not saying you have to go to the extreme of going to your
⏹️ ▶️ John local neighborhood like a psychic or exorcist, but
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey do bring up all the
⏹️ ▶️ John issues with the doctor because some babies have reflux and there’s all sorts of legitimate reasons
⏹️ ▶️ John treated that can help. so you should exhaust those,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Just maybe don’t go the step further and start being totally desperate.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know from having a kid before, you know that things are hard for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a while and then they end. And there’s new challenges that arise, but whatever challenge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re in, it eventually ends, and then, so you get to move on. And that’s just a thing that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco becomes automatic now, and it’s nice. So eventually, she will sleep, and it won’t be that big of a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem. And it might happen next week, or it might take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two years, or more likely somewhere in between. And you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know it’s coming, it’s gonna be hard until it gets here, but you did it once before,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can do it again, you are a human, you are an adult, you can do hard things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, you don’t have a choice, so you’re gonna do it anyway. But, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is, look, I am very happy, and I’m sure Underscore will be too, to teach you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how to use coffee.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John It’s wonderful. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so many, or at least it improves so much of this. Like, there’s a reason why coffee
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is so popular. This is a thing. I don’t know if you’ve heard about it in the world, but it really does
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t use drugs, kids. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco children. But it’s nice. It helps.
Post-show: Casey’s Car Shopping
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Syracuse let me down. If his beloved accord could be had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with a stick with anything other than cloth and basically no other options, I would
⏹️ ▶️ John have one. Cloth seats are great. What are you talking about? People love to get really fancy, expensive, luxury cars with cloth
⏹️ ▶️ John seats because they’re so much better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than leather. You know what’s awesome? Static in the winter when you rub against them and you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John get static from your
⏹️ ▶️ John car. There’s no static in my cloth seats. I don’t know how long ago you had cloth seats. No static in my… I live in the winter place. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have static in cloth seats. It’s fine. Anyway, no, but that is a thing of people wanting cloth seats
⏹️ ▶️ John in their luxury sporty cars because they grip you better, right? And also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey How can they grip you better? That makes no sense. Leather is not literally sticky, but kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of sticky. Well, you do kind of slide on leather when it’s cold, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John it grips you better in
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, come on. Yeah, the cloth seats are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey grippier. No, it’s funny because I’ve been talking to a couple other friends
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of mine. This is the one that had the R32 and previously before that, the M3, the 96 M3. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he’s the one that suggested both the Legacy and the 335. So I really should never trust him about any car ever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And he’s also suggested the Golf R, by the way. But anyway, I was talking to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey him and another friend of ours about how I really want a Golf R, but I really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey want a sunroof. Like, I really, really, really don’t like not having a sunroof.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And they’re, oh, you wouldn’t even miss it. You wouldn’t even know. And I feel like that’s sort of kind of the conversation we’re having now. You
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t even know. You haven’t had cloth seats in forever. Cloth seats are better, blah, blah, blah. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John out. You wouldn’t miss cloth seats. I’m just saying the stack is not as big a problem as he thinks it is, especially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now. I would take cloth seats before I’d lose my sunroof.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s an interesting question, actually. I think I agree.
⏹️ ▶️ John agree. Leather is just making you feel luxurious and having a nice smell, right? But leather,
⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of just what it feels like to sit in it, is not, like, the Holy Grail
⏹️ ▶️ John is cloth seats with seat heaters, which almost nobody makes, because
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco then you’d be like,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, if I want to get seat heaters, I have to get leather,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? I had them in my Accord.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John My own, but it’s like five or six. Nobody
⏹️ ▶️ John makes that these days, because basically, once you go to Seed Heaters, you also get the leather
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco package or whatever, because it seems luxurious. Or fake
⏹️ ▶️ John leather. Leather or fake leather.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really, honestly, I don’t draw a line between those two. I think fake leather is so good these days
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it doesn’t really matter which one I have. I don’t even notice, really.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All I know is, to go back a half step, my friends were saying, oh, you don’t even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know. You wouldn’t even miss the sunroof in the Golf R. You’d be fine. You’d be fine. Well, as it turns out,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my Legacy GT that I had before the 335, it was something to the order
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of $3,000 to get basically two options. And that was leather
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and a sunroof. And I bought the Legacy because my then car, a 300ZX,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wouldn’t stay on the road. Sound familiar at all? And it couldn’t stay on the road because it was always in the shop.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I bought the Legacy GT after having been employed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as a real adult for like literally a month or two months or something like that, which is to say I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey frigging broke and $3,000 would have destroyed me financially. Like truly, even like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over the course of the four or five or I might’ve even had a six year car loan, I was so broke at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the time. But whatever it was, like that $3,000, yes I understand it was only like 10 or 20 or $30 a month, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that would have ruined me, truly. It really would have ruined me. So I didn’t get it. And I had that car for like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eight years. I had it from 04 to 2012. Yeah, it was eight years. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey every single day in the spring, summer, and fall where it wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actively precipitating, I hated not having a sunroof. I hated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to Marco’s point, not having leather less, but I hated that too. And so I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can tell both of you, not that you’re really arguing with me, but I I can tell both of you and my two other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey friends with confidence that yes, I have lived the non-sunroof life,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I have lived the not-leather life, and it sucks. And I don’t want to go back.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John The question— JG
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What did you miss about leather? CW I just,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I don’t know, I don’t like cloth. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s like such a snooty thing to say. It just, it feels
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John so not nice.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, maybe I’m just— JG Because there’s a wide variability in cloth sheets. Cloth sheets just basically means not leather
⏹️ ▶️ John and not pertaining to be leather. There’s very wide variability in whether it’s fuzzy or like stitched or you know There’s all sorts of different textures
⏹️ ▶️ John and and patterns and all that other stuff I’m wondering what you missed other than the that it feels more luxurious because
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve been trained to think leather is Fancier,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it was just that I mean even the Saturn that I had the infamous Saturn where the wheel fell off
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even that Had leather
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I’m serious Leather in a sad
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m surprised you were like the only person who has like this This guy’s getting lit during a Saturday. Do you know what kind of car you’re getting?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, it’s Saturday. Why do you keep getting lit?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s fun. It’s fun. A lot of people have been saying, in fact,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even in the chat room just moments ago, Tim underscore underscore was saying the same thing. A lot of people have been saying,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey why are you even considering a Golf R? Why not get a GTI? You
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can get a GTI with sunroof. It is not that much slower. What
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is wrong with you? Why wouldn’t you do that? My answer has always been twofold. One,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would want the best of what I was getting if at all possible, because that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of who I’ve become. I’ll blame that on Marco, but it’s kind of always been a bit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco of me anyway. Yeah, come
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on. That’s like saying, oh, I drink and I become a jerk. Like, no, you’re just a jerk.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey It comes out more when you drink. Like, this has always been inside of you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s true, it’s true. But where was I going with this? I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would want the fastest one and I would want the quote unquote best one. And that’s why I think I would prefer the R. Plus,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in my experience, which admittedly, admittedly, I have not driven a front-wheel drive car in,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, 15 years or something like that. But I, in the past, have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey never particularly enjoyed driving front-wheel drive cars. Well, actually, that’s not true. Aaron’s Mazda was front-wheel drive. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey although I didn’t drive it regularly, I definitely did not like the feeling when I drove it. It
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just felt like the front wheels were doing too much. I didn’t care for it. And the GTI is front-wheel drive. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with that said, my understanding of the GTI is that it actually has like a limited-slip differential up front, which is weird
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and kind of like the Dodge SRT4 from back in the day. But anyway, all of this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is to ask the question, do you think you guys would, if I told
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you you had to buy a Golf R or a GTI, which I know, John, you’re going to blow this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey predicament out of the water some way, somehow, but if you had to choose between one of those two cars, Do you think you would entertain
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the front wheel drive GTI that has a sunroof? Or do you think you would have to go all in on the Golf
⏹️ ▶️ John R? I would get to GTI.
⏹️ ▶️ John you keep saying, like, oh, the R is the best, quote unquote, best. But it’s clear that you really want a sunroof. So it’s not the best for you.
⏹️ ▶️ John The amount of time I would imagine you would enjoy a sunroof is greater than the amount of time you would enjoy it being rear wheel drive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All wheel drive, but yes, I’m with you in principle. Why do you have to use your logic
⏹️ ▶️ John on me? Because you’re just cruising down the road at 15, 30 miles an hour. You’re enjoying the sunroof on a sunny day.
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re only enjoying the slightly different driving dynamics when you’re driving hard, which is way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey less of a thing. You haven’t been in the car with me in a long time, have you? But anyway, I understand your
⏹️ ▶️ John point. You should drive more safely.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Fair enough. I mean, look, you’re talking to people who have Volkswagen things, and they’re going to want to sell you Volkswagen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things because everybody always wants to convince other people to buy what they bought. So keep in mind,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco though, that that is their perspective. Like, you know, I’m telling you, first I told you, you should buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a BMW because I bought one. Now I’m telling you, you should buy a Tesla, because I bought one. John’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco telling you to buy an Accord, because he bought one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of this is to validate our own purchases. Part of it is because whatever thought process led us to make the choices for ourselves,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s natural to apply the same processes to you. The reality is, though, that when you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bending over backwards trying to get some GTI-like vehicle to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fit what you actually want, but it sounds like they just don’t make one that is what you actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s a totally fine answer. The answer, I think, just is they don’t make what you want. So therefore,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is not the right car family for you. And you should look at other things that might be. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in conclusion, I need to buy a Wrangler.
⏹️ ▶️ John That wasn’t one of the two choices. You were like, you’ve got to pick a GTI or R. I picked one. Mark was like, no, you
⏹️ ▶️ John should get something totally new. That wasn’t the question. The
⏹️ ▶️ John was GTI or R. The specific point of that question was seeing if you should value all-wheel drive over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m with John. I think you would probably enjoy the sunroof more. I think ultimately none of these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Volkswagen small hatchback things are actually what you want. So you shouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really like this kind of pointless exercise because you shouldn’t really be considering any of them unless what you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want completely doesn’t exist by anybody. But that’s not true. There’s lots of lots of cars that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well not lots, but there are some cars that you would enjoy more that are from other brands and that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe you’re not you know considering because you don’t think you should like in the case of your SUV envy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you know, we’re your friends, we’ll accept you for whoever you are. But like, you know, maybe it’s because you don’t want to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pay the price, or you’re mad at BMW, like with the M3, or Tesla with the price, but like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these cars, like the cars you’re looking at are not for you. Because every choice you have in that lineup
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has some kind of severe downside that you really don’t like. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, there’s Achilles,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s Achilles heels all the way down, it’s terrible. So therefore, none of them are the right car for you, and
⏹️ ▶️ John I know. driving these cars though. You always talk about them and hem and haw. Just go test drive them. It doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John cost you anything to test drive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them. And coincidentally, I might have a little bit of time outside the house just by myself tomorrow maybe.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I’ve been debating, I probably won’t because I’m going to want to come back and save Aaron, but I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been debating going to the Volkswagen dealer and, oh, that’s right. That’s why I wasn’t going to do it because I’ve looked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at their inventory and it’s garbage. But I was kicking around the idea of going to the Volkswagen dealer and driving a GTI
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just to try it and if there’s any part of this segment that Marco you leave in the show would you please
⏹️ ▶️ Casey leave the following I am aware of the key of stinger it looks very nice
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well not aesthetically aesthetically whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco but it looks like garbage go ahead yeah you’re winning over the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fans here exactly aesthetically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s I’m aware of this car you keep telling me about it’s ugly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco and it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey beautiful but I understand it ticks a lot of the checkboxes that I’m I’m interested in,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey except everyone seems to be forgetting that it’s two pedal only. And if I’m going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to go for a two pedal car, I’m going to go all in and do something like Tesla
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or really make my life miserable and get the Giulia Quadrifoglio or something along those
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lines. I’m not gonna get a Kia and get a two pedal Kia. It’s not happening.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’re giving up so much by dropping the clutch that you better be getting something amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly. I completely and utterly agree with you. I could not have said it better myself. And that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John And the latest car and driver, the Kia Stinger, tied with the BMW 430i xDrive
⏹️ ▶️ John Grand Coupe. It’s a giant long name. It was like Fastbacks.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey But it’s basically,
⏹️ ▶️ John it tied with the Kia Stinger for second place in a three-car race.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey So they were
⏹️ ▶️ John both massively behind the winner, which was the Audi A5.
⏹️ ▶️ John basically saying is, how far BMW has fallen, because we used to routinely win these matchups by a wide margin. Now
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s way behind by not just a couple of points, it’s not just a couple of
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. And it got tied with the Kia. So
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco saying is the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their way. Yeah. Like any any comparison to the the F30 and beyond
⏹️ ▶️ Marco generation of BMW three and four series has to have the disclaimer that like, yeah, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these are way worse than BMW used to be. So like, yeah, Kia has reached the level of BMW
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in BMW’s degraded state or as I forget. Oh man, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I started going to an exercise thing with Tip and the trainer used some amazing euphemism to describe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my physical state. Oh god. You’re like a Kia Stinger, Marco. I think it was,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh, it was my deconditioned state.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like a battery, you’ve been deconditioned?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, which is hilarious, because that implies that I was at one time conditioned, which was never
⏹️ ▶️ John Did you show them your mouse and trackpad hands? Look at these hands. I’m gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John have to track that all day with these.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worked hard for these hands. Look at how precisely I can double click. athlete!