274: Not the Teddy Bear's Fault
17 May 2018Misheard names, big tables, Twitter’s antics, class-actions, and more from Google I/O.
Episode Description:
- Yanny vs. Laurel
- Follow-up:
- Raise to listen in 🇨🇳
- Google Duplex
- Amazon and executive diversity
- 🤬 Twitter.
- Google I/O
- Apple Keyboard class action lawsuit
- Microsoft Surface Hub 2
#askatp- What's Apple's focus? (via Ish Shabazz)
- Will the new Mac Pro have only USB-C? (via Owl City)
- What the future for manuals? (via Adam Roark)
- Post-show: Casey's Car Corner
Sponsored by:
- Betterment: Rethink what your money can do.
- Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code ATP for 10% off your first order.
- AfterShokz: Use code atp30 for $30 off the weightless, wireless Trekz Air.
Chapters
- Laurel or Yanny? 🖼️
- Sponsor: Aftershokz (code atp30)
- Follow-up, mostly Google
- Diversity via shareholder vote
- Twitter API changes
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- The rest of Google I/O
- Keyboard lawsuit
- Sponsor: Betterment
- Surface Hub 2 🖼️
- #askatp: Apple’s focus
- #askatp: Mac Pro USB-C-only
- #askatp: Manual transmissions
- Ending theme
- Post-show: Neutral
Laurel or Yanny?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, we should start the show while I’m not coughing, which is a very brief window of time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. Mark Miller Too late. Matthew Feeney There it is. Comedy, ladies
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco it’s all about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey timing. All about timing. Oh, man.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So while Marco is dying, let’s cover the most important piece of follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right up top. Is it Yanny or Laurel? Go ahead, John.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t like that one as much as the dress, because although I had a thought about both the dress and and that
⏹️ ▶️ John Yanny Laurel thing, they both kind of the sound one much more than the
⏹️ ▶️ John the visual one, but they both highlight the fact that even though we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John all reading the same internet, the output devices we’re all using
⏹️ ▶️ John vary so incredibly widely. Visual ones less than the auditory ones
⏹️ ▶️ John but both vary a lot. Like we all think like you know I looked at this picture and I think X and I looked at the picture and I think Y
⏹️ ▶️ John like with the dress thing right? But we’re not all looking at the same picture. This is setting aside for a moment
⏹️ ▶️ John the input device like ourselves like the people vary from person to person which is also more true of the auditory
⏹️ ▶️ John one than the visual one I think just due to people getting old and their hearing going bad
⏹️ ▶️ John versus color, you know, sensing colors, which probably changes age, but maybe not as much. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John setting aside the person, the device that we’re looking at, monitors have different gamma, you’re looking at
⏹️ ▶️ John a different, different lighting conditions, so on and so forth. But speakers, especially in the smartphone age,
⏹️ ▶️ John vary incredibly widely. So for something like the Annie Laurel thing, where it changes
⏹️ ▶️ John based on how much where the frequency cut off is, right, get rid of all the bass, it sounds like one thing, get
⏹️ ▶️ John rid of all the high frequencies sounds like the other. I think that makes that one more boring to me, but it shows like the
⏹️ ▶️ John reason people are so convinced is because they think we’re all listening to the same sound and we’re not. The sound you get out of your tinny crappy
⏹️ ▶️ John phone speakers is very different than the sound you get out of your, you know, desktop speakers or your laptop speakers or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then of course the input device if you have cold or you have trouble hearing a certain frequencies or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John So anyway I think it’s I think it’s dumb. I think the dress one was also dumb but slightly less dumb
⏹️ ▶️ John because you could look at the same picture and convince yourself one way or the other, but the
⏹️ ▶️ John audio one, if the frequencies are not getting through your ear, there’s not much you can do to convince yourself
⏹️ ▶️ John it sounds like the other one.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Completely. Whereas the same
⏹️ ▶️ John picture you could go back and forth on. If you change the frequency cutoff so it’s kind of in the middle, you can hear both of them, but that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like altering the sound.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have heard all of the different variations of hearing both of them, or well, I’ve heard many of the variations,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I can only hear one. But John,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John you haven’t answered the question.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, it’s called the New York Times one. Like they do, if you do a hard frequency cutoff of all the low or all the high, it’s impossible to hear the
⏹️ ▶️ John other one at the extremes. So that’s why it’s kind of crazy. What did you hear? So anyway, it also shows how crappy
⏹️ ▶️ John people’s speakers are because I have no speakers that I own that can make me hear
⏹️ ▶️ John the one with all the low frequencies cut off. I guess all of my speakers, including my crappy ear pods
⏹️ ▶️ John and all of my iOS devices have enough bass in them that I can’t get it to sound like
⏹️ ▶️ John the one with just high frequencies.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, part of that’s also that all your speakers are ancient. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey so, so basically, like your ears.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, like like new new speakers from a lot of different people, especially speakers and smartphones. As
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you mentioned, they do a lot of processing to try to make up for the inherent crappiness
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a speaker that’s that small and or cheap. Like if you actually profile if you like, you know, play
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a test sound out of the iPhone speaker and profile it with some kind of measurement thing like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shocking, like how flat of a response curve it doesn’t have. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they do a heck of a lot of processing with almost all modern phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco speakers and anything with anything like the home voice assistant cylinders and everything. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much processing to try to make up for physics and economics that you want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a very small device but you want it to sound great. Whereas older speakers, they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have the electronic resources to do that kind of processing. So they just rely on like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco physics and quality and size. So you know, old speakers like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you will never have like the kind of processing, unless something is really going wrong, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the crossover. I mean, you would never have the kind of the kind of processing that would heavily alter that sound to sound
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that different to people. That being said, people’s hearing is also very different, as you mentioned, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it changes as it changes throughout your life as well. We all know that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco young people can hear higher frequencies than older people, but also your hearing does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not have a flat frequency response curve either. You have peaks and valleys in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco certain frequencies you hear more strongly than others or have more distortion than others, and that’s just the realities
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of us being these big bags of analog meat.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wait, but John, you never actually answered the question, did you?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s pronounced Syracusa. In it,
⏹️ ▶️ John said, in its normal form, being played, being like unmodified, like, you know, not
⏹️ ▶️ John using one of those tools that actually cuts off frequencies in the source sound, but just playing it through all my speakers, playing it through
⏹️ ▶️ John my AirPods, playing it through my phone speaker, my iPad speakers, my laptop speakers. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John Laurel for me all the time, all the time. And I have to really cut off a lot of the low frequencies before it switches to Yanni,
⏹️ ▶️ John like at the source, not in, you know, so I don’t, I don’t have any speakers that have so little bass or to
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco’s point. I don’t have any speakers that do not massively process the sound to make sure that there is some
⏹️ ▶️ John base to ever hear the audio. And I am old, so obviously the high frequencies
⏹️ ▶️ John are probably much less audible to me than they are to younger people. So maybe my speakers are playing them, I just can’t hear
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco? I know what you’re talking about, but only just barely, and I didn’t listen.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, well, at this very moment, you can drop in a clip for the listeners to hear exactly what I’m talking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But basically it’s like the blue, what was it, blue and gold dress where you can either hear one thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or hear another although obviously the dress was seeing one thing or seeing another.
⏹️ ▶️ John But like it would be like the dress one but they’d say oh but if you can’t see the other color apply this filter that turns
⏹️ ▶️ John everything blue. Don’t you see it blue now? It’s like yeah of course I see it blue now because you changed the source right so the
⏹️ ▶️ John ones like if you can’t hear it the other way cut off all the low frequencies. Oh great well you’re right now it sounds different.
⏹️ ▶️ John Good job you changed the source.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right hold on let me listen to it.
⏹️ ▶️ John The New York Times one is the best because it has a slider for frequency cut off. So if you leave it in the middle, I was like, I’ll listen to it, but I won’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be able to hear you. One sec.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay. It’s clearly Laurel. It’s not even close,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? But that’s just the speaker. So go to the ones that have the cut off. And the worst part
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John So I’m Laurel, Laurel, Laurel, Laurel,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yanny. Yanny. Yanny.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I can kind of, sort of hear Yanny, kind of, when I crank
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it all the way over.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so listening in my regular headphones through my decent setup, not even my good headphones, just my regular headphones,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can only hear Yanny on the New York Times one in the rightmost two notches
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the far right and the one right before it and and the one right before it is really kind of crossover point anyway
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so you really got to go pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John far right yeah and I think the middle is the like unmodified I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco forget what the unmodified is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah the middle is like not frequency modified.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hold on let’s bring it back to the show so we left the show on you going to listen to it as far as I’m concerned.
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t know when we left the show Marco decides when we leave the show. Oh my god just work with
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco me here. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So there’s no question it’s Laurel. If you’re not hearing Laurel you have seriously messed up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco speakers or ears and that’s fine I’m not going to judge your speakers or ears but just so you know they’re not normal.
⏹️ ▶️ John Although I have something to add to what you hear. The thing that really makes this sound
⏹️ ▶️ John also not great is when you hear Laurel it sounds like someone saying someone’s
⏹️ ▶️ John name or you know because that’s what it sounds like. When you hear Yanny it does not really sound
⏹️ ▶️ John like a human anymore. It sounds like an audio artifact or a heavily processed person’s voice, it’s been pitch shifted
⏹️ ▶️ John does not sound like a person saying that because no one who is saying that word would say it in such a weird
⏹️ ▶️ John way. So I feel like at its at its root, this recording is someone
⏹️ ▶️ John saying Laurel with lots of high frequency noise that happens to sound like a word in the same way that when you play stuff backwards,
⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes it sounds like other words.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I, I had only ever heard Laurel until you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pointed out this New York Times thing. And And when I crank it all the way to the right hand side, which is Yanni or Yanni or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s how we pronounce it, I can sort of kind of hear it, but it’s still difficult
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for me to get it. To me, it is so unequivocally, the raw version is so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unequivocally Laurel that it stupefies me that anyone can hear anything different.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s got to be either we’re all old enough that our high frequency hearing is shot. And I think I forget when your high frequency hearing
⏹️ ▶️ John really falls off a cliff, but we might all be past that age. not or people are using speakers that really
⏹️ ▶️ John have just no base whatsoever. They
⏹️ ▶️ John processing and so all they get is the high frequencies and then it sounds like some mutant alien saying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean basically where you might where you probably hear it. I’m not gonna test it now, but where you’d probably hear it is using the built-in speaker
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a phone because that’s that’s an area where like you have a tiny little speaker that is it’s pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much impossible to get base out of out of like the built-in speaker on the you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know seven millimeters thick side of a phone. You’re never going to get bass out of that. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it makes total sense that maybe out of phone speakers, especially crappier ones, then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you might hear that. But any kind of headphone or regular size speaker,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t see how you
⏹️ ▶️ John could. Yeah, not on my phone. So on my phone, it’s 100% laurel to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, Apple speakers have been really good recently. In the last few years, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco physical speakers and Apple products have gotten significantly better than not only than where they were before,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but where the competition is. So anybody on an iPhone, you’re probably not hearing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what other people are hearing here if they’re listening on their phones.
⏹️ ▶️ John So the next time one of these things comes up, depending on what it is, is remember the like the key
⏹️ ▶️ John fat the thing that kills the source of fascination is the idea that we’re all experiencing the
⏹️ ▶️ John same thing and coming away with different impressions. And that’s not true. We’re all experiencing different things
⏹️ ▶️ John and then on top of that even if we were experiencing the same thing we would have different impressions of it
⏹️ ▶️ John but the key the part that really kills all these is we’re not looking at the same picture and we’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John hearing the same you know sound waves going through the air and
⏹️ ▶️ John after that there’s even more crap but even before that like the whole premise of the fascination is
⏹️ ▶️ John is killed maybe if we have you know if Apple rule the world and everything was carefully color
⏹️ ▶️ John corrected at the factory for all of us maybe it would be closer but you know you know it’s like when you go see someone else’s television
⏹️ ▶️ John set just you know output devices vary widely and input devices also.
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Aftersox bone conduction headphones. Visit ATP.Aftersox.com
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve been telling you for a while about bone conduction headphones. They are great because they don’t put anything on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or in your ears. They instead send little vibrations through little transducers that sit next to your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ears into your inner ear canal through your cheekbones and that produces sound that you can hear but no one else
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can. And you still hear the world around you because your ears aren’t blocked. So it’s great when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re outside, you can hear things like cars go by or someone tries to talk to you, you can hear it. It’s also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great if you’re doing stuff around the house and you just want to know like, you know, if something in the house makes a noise or if someone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco knocks on the door, it’s very practical. So you can like be listening to a podcast or taking a phone call with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their wonderful built in microphones and you can actually participate in the world around you still and be aware of what’s going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on around you. There’s lots of ways this is very helpful. It’s also just really great in the summertime.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me like any kind of like pad sitting on my ear or thing that goes into my ear just makes me hot and sweaty in the summertime
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s very uncomfortable. The Aftershocks bone connection headphones don’t have this problem because there’s nothing in my ear
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s a little tiny contact patch next to my ear you don’t even notice it and so it’s wonderful in hot weather.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I highly recommend for workouts or for just being outside in the summertime check out the Aftershocks headphones.
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco highly recommend checking out the Aftershocks headphones. are so practical and so useful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the summertime, especially if you spend time outside.
Follow-up, mostly Google
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you so much to AfterShokz for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We have plenty of Google follow-up to do, but before we get there, we have a little bit of a Raise
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to Listen follow-up. Ricky Bright writes in to say, Raise to Listen is a big capital
⏹️ ▶️ Casey B-I-G, according to Ricky, deal for China as it’s a pain to type. The default behavior makes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sense there. Maybe change the default based on the region. Cool. All right. Bob Burrow, who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess was an ex-Apple employee or something like that, writes in or wrote on Twitter, I shouldn’t say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey writes in, wrote on Twitter that instead of just crawling websites, Google was going to start crawling
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people. That is deeply disturbing and also accurate.
⏹️ ▶️ John That was in reference to Google having automated calls to businesses to find
⏹️ ▶️ John out what their hours are on holidays or whatever. And it really is, you know, the web crawler visits
⏹️ ▶️ John websites periodically and updates their Google search index and stuff like that. And I guess
⏹️ ▶️ John their web crawler would be crawling websites and trying to pull, you know, holiday hours and hours from
⏹️ ▶️ John the website so that so Google can surface that to people who are doing searches. But in cases where they can’t get that information
⏹️ ▶️ John they will stop crawling the web and I like this you know this of crawling people saying we are Google
⏹️ ▶️ John and our computers may contact you to extract information from you for the purpose of serving that information to
⏹️ ▶️ John millions of people who search for things and it sounds creepy oh it
⏹️ ▶️ John is creepy well you know like I said about the creepiness things that that initially sound creepy eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John just come to get used to as a user of the service I can see the value
⏹️ ▶️ John in having accurate information that would otherwise be impossible to get without
⏹️ ▶️ John doing it by a human. I guess the Amazon way to do it would be to hire a bunch of low-wage people who are
⏹️ ▶️ John up whose life is partially funded by government subsidies so you can pay them less than a living wage
⏹️ ▶️ John and have them call all the businesses and find out the answers and the Google way is to
⏹️ ▶️ John pay a smaller number of people to write a program to do that same job.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s a pretty accurate summary. Michael Love writes, another Google Assistant voice call issue,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey isn’t it recording the call? And so wouldn’t it be running afoul of the law in two-party consent states?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What that means, and I am not a lawyer, what that means is you can only record a conversation if both parties have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey agreed to the fact that it’s going to be recorded. If it’s not recording a call, the call continues, Michael.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey How can I check its work and make sure the appointment was actually made as I requested?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Although I will say that if you’re wanting to listen to the recordings of the call that placed on your behalf,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then maybe you shouldn’t be placing these calls through a robot. Like that kind of seems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the point of the convenience of this.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, that’s the accessibility angle, like I was saying before, that I imagine in cases where you need the computer to help you
⏹️ ▶️ John make a call just as an assistive device,
⏹️ ▶️ John would want to participate, not just listen to it afterwards, but be there
⏹️ ▶️ John when it’s happening again, so you can nudge the conversation in a particular direction because you are trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to use it as an assistive device. were not delegating responsibility to do this, right? So,
⏹️ ▶️ John but anyway, as for the recording thing, I assume it’s not recording for the reasons they said, like, it just doesn’t seem like
⏹️ ▶️ John a thing you can do because it’s using regular phone lines and the laws having to do with regular phone lines or
⏹️ ▶️ John from a bygone era when we made laws that tried to protect people’s privacy. And they’re much stricter for what you
⏹️ ▶️ John can do over telephones than they are what you can do over the internet, the internet, you can do whatever the hell you want to get, you can get away with, but
⏹️ ▶️ John the laws for phones are very clear. So I imagine they’re not recording it, which I think as
⏹️ ▶️ John I said last week, if you’re trusting this thing to be successful, like if I,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I’ve talked about how I travel, I travel with phone trees when they first came out. But I think for something like this,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially in the beginning, since it’s going to fail so much of the time, say I use this thing
⏹️ ▶️ John and said, you know, Hey dingus, make me an appointment, make me a reservation at restaurant, blah, blah, blah.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would spend the rest of the day wondering whether the, the confirmation that it has made
⏹️ ▶️ John that reservation for me is true. I’d be like, but did you? Like, and
⏹️ ▶️ John you’d wonder and you get to the restaurant, you’d be like, God, my phone told me it made a reservation, but the thing breaks
⏹️ ▶️ John all the time. Did it actually make a reservation? And you would get there and be like, we had no, have no idea who you are. And we have no
⏹️ ▶️ John idea what reservation you’re talking to. And what are you going to say? I think I told my phone to call you.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah. What evidence do you have of that? Look, look at this message.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s just says, that’s just a text text message that didn’t call us at all. It’s like, no, but I told it this and then it called
⏹️ ▶️ John you behind the scenes. And then it told me I had a reservation. And I’m like, well, your phone lied to you.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. I wouldn’t. I just wouldn’t trust it. And to trust something like that, kind of like, you know, the difference between Siri
⏹️ ▶️ John in the early days and maybe still today and, and the Amazon Echo is you learn to trust it after
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s successful a lot of times, right? Like you just, you realize, oh, the, the, the, the Echo can hear
⏹️ ▶️ John me and it does do what I asked. Uh, so the first couple of times you’re a little bit shaky. eventually come to trust it. But
⏹️ ▶️ John like I said, I don’t think people are going to come to trust this because I think its reliability
⏹️ ▶️ John will be very, very low.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So to go back a half step with regard to recording, we don’t know if they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are being recorded as far as I’m aware anyway. But a friend of the show, Matt Drance, wrote a couple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of tweets about this. And so Matt writes, So I have some questions about this section of the duplex blog post.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And he posts a screenshot and a link. And the summary of the screenshot is that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Google is saying that Duplex is capable of carrying out sophisticated conversations and it completes the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey majority of its tasks fully autonomously without human involvement. The system has a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey self-monitoring capability which allows it to recognize the tasks it cannot complete autonomously. And in this case, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey signals to a human operator who can complete the task. To train the system in a new domain,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we used real-time supervised training. This is comparable to the training practices of many disciplines, blah, blah, blah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But what Matt points out is, and now I’m quoting from him, so you throw a request
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over the fence to assistant, which may or may not bring a total stranger into the call with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my doctor, my therapist, my lawyer, please tell me I’m missing something.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that was a use case, or not really a use case, but that was just a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wrinkle that I had never even considered, which I thought was really fascinating. is you know we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey potentially exposing really really private information or data
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess about ourselves to potentially humans at Google that we may not particularly want to have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that information about.
⏹️ ▶️ John But you don’t have to worry about that because the user agreement they make you blindly click through to get to it
⏹️ ▶️ John signs over all your rights to every piece of privacy in your entire life to Google and says that you agree that it’s okay
⏹️ ▶️ John that Google knows everything about you. So don’t worry Google won’t get in trouble.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I don’t know, it just seemed really, really weird to me. And it’s tough
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I do appreciate, as we mentioned
⏹️ ▶️ Casey last episode, as you mentioned, John, a minute ago, I do appreciate that there are people for whom this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey could be a just world-changing product in that you either
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are incapable of using the phone or perhaps using the phone is very,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very difficult or something like that. And so for an accessibility purpose,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is really, really brilliant technology. But I think the thing that we all keep coming back to, and I don’t remember if it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco or maybe Jason or Mike on Upgrade, somebody said recently, you know, the thing that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think we all find most creepy is that it’s not identifying itself as a computer,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which brings us to our next bit of follow-up. Google says its human-sounding robot will identify itself on the phone calls.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So apparently, Google noticed that the Internet was not happy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And they’re saying that, you know, that in the future, they will identify themselves
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as non-human at some point during the call.
⏹️ ▶️ John That really takes the wind out of their sails, though, because most of the wow factor of that demo was was
⏹️ ▶️ John the fact that the computer sounded a lot like a person down to the pauses in the arms and the whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John you take out the arms and, you know, just leave the time gap pauses. It really
⏹️ ▶️ John highlights the parts where you notice this this thing on the other end of the line says the same word
⏹️ ▶️ John exactly the same way every time like it doesn’t have much variety right you can tell it’s artificial and the ums really
⏹️ ▶️ John sell it but if you’re if it identifies itself as an automation but then it does
⏹️ ▶️ John um and stuff it’s like come on come on computer like i don’t have time for you to you know play human just
⏹️ ▶️ John i you identified yourself as not human don’t keep trying to do things the human do you know be
⏹️ ▶️ John efficient be a machine and get to get the job done make the the sale, make the reservation, whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Also, Hey, you DVD just posted a link to Reddit in the chat. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m going to read this whole thing. It’s not very long, but it’s it’s fascinating. It’s titled Today I realized I live in the future.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it reads, I got a call at work today, a woman called me claiming to be Google Maps, and she wanted to know our opening
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hours. We went through what hours we were open for weekdays, clarified the weekends and said goodbye. She never told me your name and her
⏹️ ▶️ Casey responses were a bit odd. But I put it down to a language or cultural barrier, though she spoke very, very cleanly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in English as her accent was Southeast Asian, I live in Australia. It was otherwise unremarkable. I told the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey store manager, I’m an assistant manager, and their first response was, was it a person? I said, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of course. He said, are you sure? Then it dawned on me, I checked Google and our hours
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were already updated, but one day was slightly wrong. It’s logistically impossible to have the manpower to call every establishment
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and confirm their opening hours. I wasn’t talking to someone from Google Maps, I was talking to Google Maps.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was talking to a computer and I had absolutely no idea. Wow.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the main thing these, uh, these things have going for them in terms of making people think they’re humans
⏹️ ▶️ John is that humans have widely varying behavior on the
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Especially with the fidelity of phone lines. You can’t hear the sort of audio artifacting
⏹️ ▶️ John and like computeriness of the, of the, the actual speech synthesis.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was, it all just becomes mush over, over, you know, a pot system. And then you’re just left with, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John this person just sounded weird. And like, maybe they weren’t a native speaker, but they didn’t have an accent. But anyway, people are weird, whatever.
Diversity via shareholder vote
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A couple of quick topics to start us off. First, I wanted to recognize
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that on Recode, actually a couple of weeks ago almost,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there was a post which is entitled, Amazon employees are outraged by their company’s opposition to a plan
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to add more diversity to its board. And my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey understanding of this entire story is that Amazon did the same thing Apple did, which is they said, no, no, no, we’re not going to go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out of our way to add diversity to our board, our board is our board and basically go screw yourselves. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey apparently a whole bunch of Amazon employees have been getting really angry about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this and seemingly Amazon has said, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no, actually we’ll, we’ll take this seriously and we’ll try to make our board a little more diverse and I just wanted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to call attention to this because Apple has gone through this exact same thing. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they basically told us to pound sand and well, not us specifically, But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they’ve told the people who have brought this complaint to pound sand and I just find that kind of gross and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just wanted To say that hey, this is kind of cool that Amazon is doing something that Apple refuses to
⏹️ ▶️ John I Still think it’s like I said when we last discussed this as little actually to do with
⏹️ ▶️ John the nature of the shareholder proposal All right like it doesn’t matter what it
⏹️ ▶️ John but it could be like we should all wear blue hats on Wednesday and a lot to do with the fact
⏹️ ▶️ John that Companies like Amazon and Apple and any big company did not want to be told what to do
⏹️ ▶️ John by a section of shareholders, right? They don’t be told what to do by majority shareholders
⏹️ ▶️ John or a very large percentage shareholders but small activist group of shareholders trying to tell the company what
⏹️ ▶️ John to do not just like Broadly speaking, but specifically you must agree
⏹️ ▶️ John to this plan and it becomes a thing that you have to do as a public company They don’t want to be boss around say you’re not the boss of me,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? and so it looks bad when the thing they’re telling you to do is probably a thing that you want to do like Apple has tons of diversity
⏹️ ▶️ John initiatives and so on and so forth. But these things usually come down to you must do exactly X, Y
⏹️ ▶️ John and Z. And Apple says, all right, we want to, if we want to improve diversity on our board, we want to do it
⏹️ ▶️ John our way. We don’t want the terms to be dictated to. We don’t want you small group of shareholders
⏹️ ▶️ John to convince a larger group to vote for this thing. And now we’re beholden to your exact plan of an exact,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, you know, milestones and everything. Um, and so it’s not a good look for any of the companies and they should,
⏹️ ▶️ John Amazon seems like they’re handling it much better, but I bet the outcome is Amazon says, we now have a new program to improve
⏹️ ▶️ John the diversity of our board, but it won’t be, they won’t be bound by it in the same way they would have been if all the shareholders
⏹️ ▶️ John voted for this thing. You know what I mean? Um, so that’s why these companies just reflexively recommend against
⏹️ ▶️ John any shareholder recommendation to do anything ever because shareholders are not the boss of them
Twitter API changes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so rounding out the Casey complains about every public company episode,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Twitter is a bunch of jerks. And as much as I love Twitter, basically they can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go f*** themselves. Because they have announced today,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as we record, that they are replacing the API they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey provide that basically is behind any of the third-party Twitter clients that any of us may
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use. and they’re replacing it with their Twitter’s account activity API, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is not nearly as full-featured as what it replaces, and is hilariously
⏹️ ▶️ Casey expensive. Sean Heber of the Twitterific
⏹️ ▶️ Casey folks at IconFactory, he wrote, the public pricing that I’m seeing shows Twitter’s account
⏹️ ▶️ Casey activity API pricing is $2,899 a month to get activity updates for 250 users. Needless
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to say, we have more than 250 users. It’s possible
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an enterprise deal could be made, but it seems likely to be affordable. And so you can assume that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Twitterific, that Tweetbot has many, many thousands
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of users, if not tens of thousands of users, and you can see how this quickly becomes unsustainable. And in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fact, friend of the show, Craig Hockenberry, wrote, the math works out to about $10 per user per
⏹️ ▶️ Casey month to get push notifications. And that means that they would have to, in order to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stay afloat, they would have to push that cost down to all of their users. So Craig continues, on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a platform where people balk at spending 99 cents.
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t forget about Apple’s 30% cut. Yeah, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So it’s really like, what is it, $15, $16 or something like that per user per month? It’s just not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tenable. And so Gruber wrote earlier tonight, and I don’t have the quote
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in front of me at the moment, but he had a really good analogy. And he said in so many words, it’s like breaking up with somebody by just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey being a really, really big jerk until they go away. That’s kind of what Twitter is doing with third party,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, with third party clients right now. And it just, it not only, it not only makes me sad, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it makes me frigging angry. I don’t know. Maybe I’m going through the five stages, right. But it just makes me angry because it’s, it seems
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unnecessary. Like they already have something that is working and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it doesn’t seem like they’re doing a lot to update it. I can’t imagine that just keeping it working as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is, is that terribly expensive or difficult. But they really want to tell
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of the third party developers to, as I said earlier, pound sand and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s just frustrating.
⏹️ ▶️ John They have, I saw the thread that Craig linked to, like there was some part of you from Twitter saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, well, we want, we will have a new set of microservices that are implemented in a more robust way and we’re transitioning
⏹️ ▶️ John to them. Like that could be a reason, but the most frustrating thing to
⏹️ ▶️ John me from the outside of looking at this eternal struggle between third party developers and Twitter is
⏹️ ▶️ John that Twitter does things that affect third party clients and explains them in a way that never mentions third party clients.
⏹️ ▶️ John They always explain, like, are we doing this for this reason and for that or whatever? It’s like, yeah, but
⏹️ ▶️ John you see how it’s doing this bad thing. Hey, Twitter, how you feel about this bad thing? Is it a side effect? You know,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t say you’re not aware of it. You know it’s happening. last time i remember they were going to do this is that we have to think about it for a while
⏹️ ▶️ John i could delay it and i was like how does that help you all you’re doing is trying to wait
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better for like three weeks
⏹️ ▶️ John yet would you bring for the bad p r two died down and just do the same thing again it’s like address it had on i think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a missile directives episode uh… where uh… merlin and i were yelling about to our clients like
⏹️ ▶️ John decide what you want do you want their party plans to do not we don’t want to get rid of the if you do want them support
⏹️ ▶️ John them but like uh… you know address the issue head-on instead of just constantly saying
⏹️ ▶️ John other things other than, you know, people out there saying you’re killing us and they’re like, we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John really improving our API and blah, blah, blah. But just you have to talk to those
⏹️ ▶️ John people. You have to say, you have to say, we’re sorry, but that’s just the way it is. You should stop making third party clients. So you have to say,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re sorry, and we won’t do this. But instead of saying, well, actually, we’re doing it for this reason. I don’t care what reason you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John doing it for. These are the effects that it’s having. And you should address them head on and they don’t seem capable of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I have a slightly different take on this. First of all, there was a great alternative take on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Connected this week, led, I think, mostly by Mike, where basically he’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco saying, like, this kind of doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Even if you use these apps,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco none of these things should be deal killers for you as a user. Now, whether they are for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the apps is a different story, but as the user, this is not the end of the world, probably.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, the DM one is kind of the end of the world. Now you got to use a different app for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco DMS. Yeah, that’s kind of that’s a bigger problem, but we it’s easy for us
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as fans and users well as users of Twitter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s easy for us who will be using third party Twitter apps forever to look at this and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to look at the continued slow jerkiness of Twitter towards third party apps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco since like 2012 and to ascribe all of their actions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to this motive of like Gruber’s excellent analogy of like, you know, like somebody who is just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trying to break up with their significant other and just being a jerk about instead of just telling them. And that could be possible that that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could be what’s happening here. That’s what
⏹️ ▶️ John he’s like. That’s what it’s like. Not that that’s their motivation, because again, if their motivation was to get rid of third party clients, they
⏹️ ▶️ John would just do it. It’s it’s like that there this is from the outside. It seems like that’s what’s happening,
⏹️ ▶️ John But like neglect or like just not caring or apathy or you know just
⏹️ ▶️ John equally you know reasonable explanations but from the outside it just seems to us that
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re just being a jerk and we’re trying to figure out why you’re trying to be a jerk either break
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up with us or don’t right but but I think ultimately though I think it is you know a combination
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of ignorance and apathy and just like because look at the way Twitter runs the rest of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Twitter you think they can have a coherent vision and solid plan that ran from 2012
⏹️ ▶️ Marco until now about anything. Twitter doesn’t even understand Twitter themselves. They don’t even understand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the basics of their own service. They don’t like they can be they’re barely keeping that company running.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re barely keeping the product usable. They’re actively fighting against the product and its users all the time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with tons of crazy mismanagement, horrible directions they go in and then abandon.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Twitter sucks at running Twitter. So I think it’s very, very likely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the actual, you know causes of their behavior here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are not some gradual plan to kill third party apps. I think they just are doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things that they see as reactionary to other forces other you know API desires
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or other you know platform initiatives or God knows what else they call it that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happened to hit third party apps on the way but I don’t think anybody influential
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inside Twitter gives two seconds of thought to any third party apps.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I think all of this is just like it’s just collateral damage from things inside that have nothing to do
⏹️ ▶️ John But last time they did delay the thing though. They were like, oh, people are angry, we’ll, they immediately had a reply
⏹️ ▶️ John and said, I see lots of people are angry, we’ll, you know, we’ll sure that we’ll give you 90 days notice and that
⏹️ ▶️ John was an immediate reaction. So I think they are hearing it, but they’re like kind of, you know, Spindler style, you guys don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John get that reference. They’re hiding under their desk when the people get angry. And they’re like, we realized something we’re doing is making some
⏹️ ▶️ John people angry. And we don’t really, I don’t care about those people, but I don’t like being yelled at. So if I just hide under
⏹️ ▶️ John my desk for a while and then like, wait, are they calm down now? OK, let’s go back to what we were doing because they
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t care. And you’re right. There’s no there’s no six year sustained plan to do anything at Twitter. But the frustrating thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John corporate communication wise, is you should at least address the issue people are mad at you about. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John every answer that I’ve seen from Twitter about the specific issue never says head
⏹️ ▶️ John on anything about how about like the third party clients or whatever. And so yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just it’s continued indecision and indecision eventually becomes the decision and it becomes like, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John in effect, you’re being a jerk to us for six years and eventually will go away. But if
⏹️ ▶️ John if that is a goal of yours to get rid of third party clients, you would have done it already because you are entirely
⏹️ ▶️ John empowered to do it. So it’s like it’s not a goal and we don’t like being yelled
⏹️ ▶️ John at. But if we do it eventually as a side effect of a bunch of other flailings
⏹️ ▶️ John that we’re doing, we’re mostly OK with that. but we’ll never tell you any of this. And every time you ask
⏹️ ▶️ John about it, we’ll just say something else about why we’re making these changes. And I bet the
⏹️ ▶️ John reasons they’re making the changes are true. I bet they are changing to new API endpoints that are better and have better performance.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I bet they are phasing out the old API endpoints because they were badly implemented and inefficient. All that is probably 100%
⏹️ ▶️ John true. But that’s not what people want to hear. They want to people want to hear Yeah, but by doing this, you’re having
⏹️ ▶️ John this effect. How do you feel about that? We don’t like it. We’re being hurt by it. Can can you help us out?
⏹️ ▶️ John And last time they said, Whoa, don’t yell at us. We’ll take the time to think about this. Now they’re just like, Okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John how about now? Can we just do the same thing now? It’s just, it’s incredibly frustrating,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially since as many people pointed out, like oh, they want they don’t want people to use third party clients that
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, or at least they don’t care about third party clients. First of all, most people don’t use third party clients.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s not like this is a big problem. Oh, half our user base using third party clients, we can’t control their user experience. No,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not true. It’s eventually a small percentage. And second of all, we want them to use our first party clients.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re canned their first party clients for the Mac. So they just want people to use their website I guess, which is their
⏹️ ▶️ John first party client iOS, you know, they still have the client anyway, they’re, they’re, they’re just making a mess.
⏹️ ▶️ John And, you know, it, it’s disappointing. And I’m glad
⏹️ ▶️ John that a lot of the features that they’re canning or destroying don’t affect me that much, because I don’t care about notifications, I don’t have any
⏹️ ▶️ John push stuff enabled. But but DMs would affect me and if I lose the ability to use Twitter DMs
⏹️ ▶️ John I will just stop using Twitter DMs and I’ll just use something else for that use you know I message or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John because I’m not gonna use a DM API that has like a three to six minute lag every time I send a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just makes me sad I mean to be honest it’s probably for the best that I slowly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey weaned myself off Twitter because I spend too much damn time on it but it just makes me sad and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and again It’s I guess in a way the same problem. I have with the Google duplex
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing like just call spade-of-spade You know, hi, this is a computer calling you on behalf of Casey list. I’d like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to schedule an appointment, please Hi, I’m Twitter and I want third-party clients to go away. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John we’re gonna know
⏹️ ▶️ John if they want to go away They could make them go away. They’re just sort of it’s benign. It’s benign neglect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I think the thing is they want them to go away But they don’t want to be the one with the smoking gun
⏹️ ▶️ John If they want to not make people mad at them, the six-year strategy of making people constantly mad at them is not like
⏹️ ▶️ John those same people. Like those people aren’t like, you know, if it were,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you had to say this was a strategy, it would be a strategy of like barely appeasing them. But, but as Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John pointed out, the idea that that, that Twitter had any six-year strategy that was consistent is
⏹️ ▶️ John ridiculous anyway. So it’s not like they’re consciously barely appeasing them, but in effect, because they’re so
⏹️ ▶️ John reactive when people yell at them, they are always walking that line between just making people incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ John angry at them all the time and then slightly appease the, and then angry and then appease them a little bit and then angry
⏹️ ▶️ John and then it’s just, and meanwhile the state of third party Twitter clients just gets
⏹️ ▶️ John worse and worse over time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know what we should do? We should just have all the white Nazis use third party apps and then they will get priority support
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Twitter will do everything they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey want. Oh, good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then all this stuff will get
⏹️ ▶️ John fixed. Brilliant idea. reminds me of the the hell banning feature that I just added you know about that
⏹️ ▶️ John a Twitter ad is hell banning
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah where it’s like where you post and you don’t realize no one’s seeing your stuff but no one’s seeing your stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John so it’s not actually quite that bad as the no one sees it but like basically they
⏹️ ▶️ John certain people’s tweets do not appear in a thread like so if you’re looking
⏹️ ▶️ John at a thread if anybody’s looking at a thread and they participated in the thread certain people’s tweets
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t appear you know the bad people, bot accounts, Nazis, all that sort of stuff like that, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Which sounds like a good idea because it’s like, it’s well, it’s, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s been tried many times in forums and everything. And it’s kind of good if you don’t like getting yelled at, because what you’re just hoping is that the people
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t realize that they’re hell man, that’s the whole idea. Eventually in forums, you people could realize but in Twitter,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe they just think people are ignoring them. And most of the time, these are just like, create a new account, spew a bunch of
⏹️ ▶️ John invective, get your account suspended, repeat, you know, loop. So no, they’ll never care right they’re hell-banned
⏹️ ▶️ John but the key with all these things is okay how does twitter decide who gets hell-banned and the first
⏹️ ▶️ John place i saw anything having to do with hell-banning on twitter was because some person’s account
⏹️ ▶️ John was hell-banned because they like told the nazi to go screw themselves right that was the
⏹️ ▶️ John person who was hell-banned the person who told the nazi to go screw themselves because they used like screw or something or said like an insulting word
⏹️ ▶️ John um Um, to be to the, the whole point of, of online trolls is they
⏹️ ▶️ John figure out how your system works and then they make 500 sock puppet accounts to report your account
⏹️ ▶️ John and get it hell band and you don’t notice. And so like the concept of hell banning,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not entirely against, but the idea that Twitter would correctly identify the accounts to
⏹️ ▶️ John actually ban versus having the system entirely gamed by the bad people to essentially hell ban,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, you know, everyone else who’s, who’s against them. Like, it’s just,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s so little that Twitter could do these days where I think the result of it will be an improvement to the service. Even when
⏹️ ▶️ John they ostensibly are doing more or less the right thing. So anyway, I’m assuming I’m hellbent
⏹️ ▶️ John right now. Sorry if you can’t see my tweets.
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey What else happened at Google I O we talked a whole lot about the Google duplex thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Was there anything else interesting that happened? What else went on?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Do it? Well, first of all, let’s preface that by saying, do any of our any of us qualified to even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know what’s relevant, let alone to have seen enough of it to talk about it, let alone to talk about it. know
⏹️ ▶️ John well I watched it I did my homework I assume you two didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco know of course now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why would I already gave 14 minutes of my life for that and that was too many
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah it was pretty long yeah there’s some there’s some downtime sections there but it’s good to see the whole thing to you know
⏹️ ▶️ John see how Google is presenting its face to the world that middle section duplex really was the important part
⏹️ ▶️ John though yeah yeah there’s a few odds and end here one of them is about that Google is now on the bandwagon
⏹️ ▶️ John with their assistant where they have a like what do they call it continued conversation where you don’t have to
⏹️ ▶️ John say, Hey, dingus in front of every single command, you say, Hey, dingus and then a command and then it’s still listening to you for a little period
⏹️ ▶️ John of time. So I think you know, I think we talked about that when Amazon a couple months ago on
⏹️ ▶️ John then now Google has got it. I’m sure Apple will have it in like 68 years, so it’ll be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, compound commands was something that they demoed. Um, and we talked about that as
⏹️ ▶️ John well of being able to, you know, say, play the song and turn the volume up, which is something that
⏹️ ▶️ John HomePod can already do, at least in the domain of music. Google was showing off particular
⏹️ ▶️ John how they handle interesting compounds. This was a good demo of
⏹️ ▶️ John where it seems like an easy problem because you just look for like an and or something and then you know where
⏹️ ▶️ John to split the thing up. But they showed two commands that if you just blindly split an and it would get the wrong answer. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it has to understand the sentences and understand this is part one of the command and this is the second command
⏹️ ▶️ John as opposed to a compound command that is applying to two things that are anded in it. So I thought that was
⏹️ ▶️ John neat. And like I said, that’s an area where I think a HomePod actually can do that in
⏹️ ▶️ John the limited domain of music, although probably not as sophisticated as Google
⏹️ ▶️ John Assistant can do. There was Pretty Please mode, which this
⏹️ ▶️ John is starting to get into Google’s sort of lifestyle part, where they’re trying to, this is interesting,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple does this a little bit, but Nintendo does it a little bit too. This is the first time I’d really seen Google leaning
⏹️ ▶️ John on this The idea that we make electronics and software
⏹️ ▶️ John and servers, and we recognize that
⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes people use our products more than they want to. I don’t know how else
⏹️ ▶️ John to phrase that. Like we make things and we give them to you and you can use them, but sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John you feel bad like you’re using them too much. I’m on my phone too much. I spend too long browsing the web, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, whatever it may be. So I would imagine that like for the audio things, no one is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is a great stereo system, but we also have a feature just in case you feel guilty for listening to too
⏹️ ▶️ John much music. Every once in a while, our stereo will come on and say, you’ve been listening to music for about an
⏹️ ▶️ John hour. Are you sure you don’t want to stop and go outside? That doesn’t happen with stereo systems for the most part,
⏹️ ▶️ John but for products like a lot of the products that Google and Apple and lots of other tech
⏹️ ▶️ John companies make, that is a common feature. Windows consoles for a little while now have said you’ve been playing
⏹️ ▶️ John games for two hours maybe you should get up and stretch or go outside because the perception is that if you play games
⏹️ ▶️ John for two hours maybe you should take a break but no one wants a stereo that says you’ve been listening to music for two
⏹️ ▶️ John hours maybe you should take a break. Anyway Google has a whole wing of their products now that’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John you seem like you’ve been using your phone a lot maybe you should do something
⏹️ ▶️ John else for a little while and they call this digital well-being and there’s another feature about that
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll get to in a second but the pretty please mode is similar to that. And that say you
⏹️ ▶️ John are someone who has a bunch of cylinders in your house, like all of us do, and you have kids, like all of us do,
⏹️ ▶️ John and the kids talk to the cylinders, there is this, I’m not gonna say alarmist
⏹️ ▶️ John parenting, parents are alarmed about many things.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh my goodness, what’s happening to our children?
⏹️ ▶️ John Something is different in my children’s life than was in my life. Are we accidentally teaching our children
⏹️ ▶️ John something bad? Are we losing our children? So this one is, are we teaching our children to be
⏹️ ▶️ John rude by having them order around our cylinders? Like my child is mean when it talks to my cylinder
⏹️ ▶️ John and demands that the cylinder do things, right? I think that’s a little silly because if your child is a
⏹️ ▶️ John jerk, it’s not the fault of the cylinder probably. But you know, parents have
⏹️ ▶️ John concerns and want to deal with it. And so pretty please mode is a mode in which your cylinder, I don’t know if
⏹️ ▶️ John it requires, but it really wants you to ask it to do something in a nice way.
⏹️ ▶️ John And when you do ask it in a nice way by saying please or whatever, uh, the cylinder
⏹️ ▶️ John acknowledges that you’ve done that and say, and thank you for asking so nicely. Right? I don’t know if it’s a jerk about
⏹️ ▶️ John it and says, ah, you didn’t say Simon says, but the idea is that
⏹️ ▶️ John our products are too efficient and little kids can use them and maybe little kids are being bossy. So
⏹️ ▶️ John let’s change our product to make it worse, but make it so the kids learn politeness,
⏹️ ▶️ John which as a parent I’m going to say if your cylinder could help my kid learn to be more polite I’m not going
⏹️ ▶️ John to argue with that but I think adults would not particularly like that I wonder if it only works for kids because
⏹️ ▶️ John the Google cylinders can’t identify different voices and the other digital well-being
⏹️ ▶️ John thing was like say it’s nighttime and it seems like you’re on your phone a lot digital well-being has a
⏹️ ▶️ John wind down feature that you can you can tell it to say if it’s like 11 p.m. and
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m still on my phone phone please try to encourage me to go to bed. So the new version
⏹️ ▶️ John of Android will transition the entire UI to black and white to try to make
⏹️ ▶️ John the phone less engaging to you and it will remind you to go to bed. And I love the idea of taking all the color out of your
⏹️ ▶️ John phone, like transitioning your phone to black. I’d be like, ha ha, you fool. I used a monochrome Mac for many
⏹️ ▶️ John years. This is not less appealing to me. You
⏹️ ▶️ John many hours I spent staring at a monochrome screen? Not even grayscale. It’s just black pixels and white pixels.
⏹️ ▶️ John It wasn’t less engaging. couldn’t get me off that thing but yeah Google’s
⏹️ ▶️ John literally it has a feature to make its products worse to encourage you to stop using them
⏹️ ▶️ John and it sounds absurd but this is a thing I think people want because I think
⏹️ ▶️ John well I talked about this on directives like self hacks sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John the way you can accomplish a goal like I wish I used my phone less it’s not by remembering to use
⏹️ ▶️ John your phone less but by in your moments of in your moments of clarity and rationality where
⏹️ ▶️ John you realize you want to use your phone list, sabotage your own life in a way that will either remind
⏹️ ▶️ John you to use your phone less or force you to lose your phone, use your phone less like self hacks. I need to make this change in my life.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because if I don’t willpower alone won’t cause me to do this like it like I said on the show, like not having ice cream in the
⏹️ ▶️ John house. If you’re trying not to eat ice cream, you could just not eat ice cream. But it’s much easier to not eat ice cream when it’s not in
⏹️ ▶️ John the house. So when you’re when you’re in the mindset, I really want to do this when you’re at the store. Don’t buy the ice cream
⏹️ ▶️ John because you know future you will thank you for that because you’re like you know what if there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John ice cream in the house I would eat it now but thankfully before I had the presence of mind to hack myself so I suppose what
⏹️ ▶️ John the wind down feature comes on you’d be like oh but I still want to use my phone and but now it’ll be like
⏹️ ▶️ John oh but my phone is getting annoying and I should really go to bed anyway just giving you that little extra nudge so
⏹️ ▶️ John I wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple introducing features like this because as
⏹️ ▶️ John absurd as they sound I think they’re features that people might actually like and use. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know. Would either of you ever configure one of your electronics to tell you
⏹️ ▶️ John to stop using it? No.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I would. I don’t do the best
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with putting my phone down or away in times when it shouldn’t be in my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hand. And so I’ve done a lot of these self hacks with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey varying degrees of success. Lately, I’ve been leaving my phone on a different floor of the house. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I think, oh, I wonder, you know, if so and so was in such and such TV
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show, like it doesn’t matter. I don’t need to look
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that up. You should ask your son.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, and actually, yeah, now I can ask the cylinder, but I’m just trying to think of a stupid example. And so I’ve been leaving
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the phone on the wrong floor, if you will. Additionally, I’ve had Do Not Disturb come on by
⏹️ ▶️ Casey five in the evening. I used to have it come on at 10, which is about when I go to bed, except on Wednesdays. Hi, fellas.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I’ve moved it up to five in the evening, uh, such that basically once
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m home from work, I really won’t be bothered unless somebody really wants to get ahold of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me. Um, and so I’ve been doing little things like that. So I think I would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably turn on these sorts of, of, of warnings or reminders or what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have you. You know, I wouldn’t, and like, uh, do not disturb while driving. I think that’s another good
⏹️ ▶️ Casey example. I have that on. And sometimes when I’m at a stoplight, I tell it shut up and go away. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sometimes I see it and I’m like, you know what? I really should not do the thing I’m trying to do right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I would do it. But that’s just me.
⏹️ ▶️ John What do you think about the pretty please cylinder thing? If you could put your cylinder into a mode that requires you to be nice
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So given that we have a three and a half year old in the house and he I like to think of him as pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey polite, you know, he’s my perfect little precious angel. He does no wrong. No, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think anything we could do to encourage consistency on please and thank you would be helpful. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t really actually care if he says please or thank you to Alexa,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I do care that he says please and thank you to people. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think it’s useful to try to explain to him, no, no, no, that’s not really a person, so you don’t have to worry
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about them. But when you’re talking to mommy or daddy or other people, you do need to say please and thank you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have been meaning to turn this on, but I haven’t gotten around to doing it yet. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m on board with it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco, you’re gonna say please and thank you to your cylinders?
⏹️ ▶️ John If I think of it from the kid angle, parents will take anything they
⏹️ ▶️ John can get to help along with parenting. And like you said, it was gonna make my kid more polite, great. But there is
⏹️ ▶️ John another aspect of parenting a child in a house full of cylinders,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, as preparing them for their future life, and essentially making the distinction between something
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s a person and something that’s not a person. And I get that like the habits that you build
⏹️ ▶️ John on the non-person can transfer to the person, but on the other hand, efficiently navigating a world
⏹️ ▶️ John of computer agents and stuff is a skill, and
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not particularly efficient to pretend the computer is a person,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? especially for very young kids, like I guess it’s a fun thing to do. And, you know, kids believe lots of magical things.
⏹️ ▶️ John But at a certain point, the skill that you want your kid to have transitions from learn to be nice to inanimate
⏹️ ▶️ John objects, to learn to efficiently use, you know, computers to accomplish
⏹️ ▶️ John tasks, because that will be part of your life. And even perhaps to the fact of learn to identify
⏹️ ▶️ John when it’s not a computer, when it’s not a person on the other end of the phone line or whatever, so that you can
⏹️ ▶️ John switch modes essentially and switch into, you know, you know, last week’s show was it playing the video
⏹️ ▶️ John game, playing them like a video game. Yeah, playing it like a video game, because that’s, that’s a skill you should
⏹️ ▶️ John have, like, you should understand how these systems work, you should know that they exist, and you should treat them.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not about being nice or not nice. But it’s about, you know, doing the having the appropriate
⏹️ ▶️ John interactions with them, because the appropriate interactions, like, like, what’s next, like, going to put please in your Google queries,
⏹️ ▶️ John of course, you’re not because it’s not efficient. And you know, Google is not a person. It’s just that if you start making it
⏹️ ▶️ John sound a little bit bit like a person, you know, I’m not saying be abusive. I think that was when the hell did that come up? I think that was
⏹️ ▶️ John a IRL talk if you should be mean to your robot butler.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh yeah, yeah, yep, yep, yep.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right? Like so there there is a crossover point where you actually are training people to be terrible to humans. But I think
⏹️ ▶️ John the voice is not quite at that crossover point. I don’t know. I have to think about it some more. I would like to try it just to see what like
⏹️ ▶️ John what the failure modes are. And if it is really mean to you, it won’t do what you said because you didn’t say please, because people do like positive
⏹️ ▶️ John reinforcement. And if you say please and it’s nice to you back, that actually
⏹️ ▶️ John could make the product feel better to people because they’re like, Oh, my cylinder was nice to me. Right? It’s still, it’s already
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of nice. It’s, you know, it sets my timers and tells me about stuff that I
⏹️ ▶️ John ask and it’s generally pleasant when it does it. But if it, if it congratulated me on being polite, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John I would say, Oh, I feel better about that even though I know you’re just a computer program. So that that could actually be a user benefit,
⏹️ ▶️ John not so much changing my behavior as making me feel better each time I use it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I totally hear you about the teaching the kids the difference between computers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and not computers, but at three and a half, I don’t think that that’s the battle I want to fight.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The battle I want to fight at three and a half is say please and thank you at I don’t know, five or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seven. I don’t know what the appropriate age is. I will absolutely fight the battle or not fight the the paddle, but you know, explain,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you don’t really need to say please to a thing that doesn’t exist, or that’s not, you know, a human, but you should say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey please to other people. I do need to to navigate that. I agree with you. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just don’t think that for my particular family at our particular this particular stage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in our lives, I don’t think Declan needs to be worrying about the distinction between the two.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know. But that’s the way I look at
⏹️ ▶️ John it. And also, like I said, if you know, if it really depends on your kids, like we just had a sleepover
⏹️ ▶️ John party here with a bunch of 10 and 11 year old girls in the house and they loved talking to cylinders
⏹️ ▶️ John and asking them to play music and they’re all talking at once and they’re all yelling over each other and all excited about
⏹️ ▶️ John and I you know I can say I heard everything they said you couldn’t help but hear them they’re very loud it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a small house and they were never mean to the cylinders they were excited about the cylinders
⏹️ ▶️ John they laugh when the cylinder would make a mistake I did eventually convinced them I had to force them I went to
⏹️ ▶️ John their men nudge them because they were they were playing music on the Google home mini and the home pod is like five feet away
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m like come on people come
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco cranking the volume on the Google
⏹️ ▶️ John the Google mini is the size of like a softball right and the home pod sitting there going like I have 20
⏹️ ▶️ John speakers that fire in a million directions that can adjust to the room shape they’re like oh we’ll play so I got them to change and
⏹️ ▶️ John talk to the home pod and they get confused about the trigger words a lot which is you know they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John care about these distinctions they just want the stuff to happen. Sometimes they’d both be playing at the same time or slightly offset,
⏹️ ▶️ John which was, you know, it was a little bit of a mess. Anyway, they were never mean. They were never mean to the cylinders. They never got mad
⏹️ ▶️ John at them. They never, you know, were bossy or whatever. And so I feel like if
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s kind of like if your kid was being bossy to their teddy bear, it’s not the teddy bears fault. There’s no alteration in the teddy bears
⏹️ ▶️ John demeanor or appearance that will change your child from yelling at it. The kids being bossy to the teddy bear is
⏹️ ▶️ John a sign that something else is wrong. Why Why is your kid angry? Whatever the problem is, it’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ John not the teddy bear. If your kid is yelling at their cylinder, changing the cylinder to ask them to be
⏹️ ▶️ John polite is not is addressing the symptom and not the root problem I would say.
Keyboard lawsuit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, we have probably half an hour to an hour left of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show, so I think we can—we still have time, possibly, to bring up the next topic.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s talk about keyboards, Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco There’s a class action lawsuit,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and apparently one of you wants to talk about it, and that is not me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t put it in here, so it must be John. I was just hoping to say that, you know, Apple gets
⏹️ ▶️ Marco class action lawsuits filed against it all the time. They usually are BS.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They go nowhere. Class action lawsuits are generally scams
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because the only people who tend to make any real money out of them are the lawyers. Usually they’re not news.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m still not sure this one is news, but it happens to be on a topic that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I talk about a lot, so I suppose that’s why it’s in here. But yeah, there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has been a class action lawsuit filed in California that alleges that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it’s regarding the keyboards in the 12-inch MacBook and 2016 forward MacBook Pros
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I love to bag on so much because they are highly controversial in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feel and attributes and I fall on the they suck side of that controversy but of course they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also fairly unreliable compared to the previous one so anyway this lawsuit alleges
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not only that they are unreliable and that Apple is refusing to fix them under warranty the way they should, but also that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Apple knowingly put them in the MacBook Pros after
⏹️ ▶️ Marco knowing after the 2015 12-inch MacBook that basically it’s legend they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco knew they were defective and put them in the other laptops and have been continuing to sell them anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even knowing that they would fail at a high rate and be defective. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s honestly plausible. You know if you look at the sequence of events,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve been saying this for a long time now, you know, Apple released a 12-inch MacBook, it had the butterfly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keyboard for the first time, and those failed at a very high rate, seemingly, you know, anecdotally.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And, you know, you can say this is all anecdotes and everything, but that’s all we have.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple doesn’t reveal these numbers, so it’s all we have, is you can, you know, ask around, you can hear on Twitter or stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it did seem like right from the start, there was a seemingly unusually high
⏹️ ▶️ Marco failure rate on those keyboards even the 12-inch and this was a year and a half before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the the MacBook Pros shipped with them. So anyway this lawsuit is alleging that Apple knew they were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know higher than usual failing rates and ship them in all their computers anyway and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that does seem plausible. Apple might have known. We’re probably never gonna know. This is probably never gonna reach a court
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Apple’s probably never gonna have any kind of like testimony put on the record. Chances are it’s either gonna fizzle out or it’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco settle for some, you know, thing that makes the lawyers a lot of money and makes nothing for any people who have these laptops.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So chances are this will go nowhere, but I think it is noteworthy that it has reached
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this point. This is not the first time this has happened. Apple has had class actions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the past for various product flaws, some of them valid, most of them not. So again, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hard to know how newsworthy this is or how valid this is or if this will actually change
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything at all. But it is at least noteworthy that it does seem to be an actual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem. What they’re alleging is both pretty horrible on Apple’s part and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also kind of plausible. So, you know, it’s worth, you know, looking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back on in a year and seeing where it ended up. But it’s probably not. It’s probably not going to have like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, breaking news all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ John So the reason I put it in here and I should have actually put that the petition, I think there was a petition, online petition,
⏹️ ▶️ John change.org online petition to, I forgot what they were asking, probably something similar like,
⏹️ ▶️ John extend warranty repairs and fix your keyboards or whatever. And class action lawsuit, because lots of people send me
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff. Hey, did you hear about this class action lawsuit? You signed this petition, can you amplify
⏹️ ▶️ John this? Can you retweet it? Can you send it to all your people? So they will sign the petition, and so they will join
⏹️ ▶️ John the, learn about the class action lawsuit. And I wanted to put them in here to explain basically why
⏹️ ▶️ John I tend not to do that. And I think Margaret explained it well. Um, class action lawsuits
⏹️ ▶️ John are not, you know, just because there’s a class action lawsuit doesn’t mean anything. You can sue anyone for anything,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? It doesn’t mean you’re going to succeed or doesn’t mean that even if they, if you get a big settlement, doesn’t mean that you were right.
⏹️ ▶️ John It just means that lawyers smell money. So yes, the problem, this particular problem, like so many problems before it
⏹️ ▶️ John has raised to the level where lawyers know that they can extract lawyers think and are probably
⏹️ ▶️ John right, that they can extract money from Apple over it, which says nothing about the validity of the issue. You
⏹️ ▶️ John know, we’ve discussed the validity of the issue at length and none of it, you know, my opinion of the validity of the issue is not
⏹️ ▶️ John changed by the filing of the lawsuit. Similarly, online petitions are an interesting signal
⏹️ ▶️ John to say, you know, is there enough, are people worked up enough about this to click a couple buttons
⏹️ ▶️ John on a web page? And that’s a pretty low bar. Like I’ve seen online petitions with five to ten to a hundred times as many
⏹️ ▶️ John signatures for a minor change in a video game. So you know, like
⏹️ ▶️ John just because people are willing to click on a web page and sign up at the quote unquote signed a petition
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t really mean anything about the importance, severity or correctness of an issue. But it’s another signal.
⏹️ ▶️ John It shows that the bad publicity about this particular issue has reached a stage where
⏹️ ▶️ John someone decided to make a petition and a lot of people signed it. And again,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it’s it doesn’t mean that the issue is valid because lots of people have signed lots of positions about lots of
⏹️ ▶️ John things that related to Apple over the years. But it does mean that this particular issue,
⏹️ ▶️ John which we all think has some validity, is getting traction among
⏹️ ▶️ John among more people than just a slightly bigger circle than just Apple podcasters, I suppose.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, and you know, all this signal like it’s a signal to us and to
⏹️ ▶️ John know how things are progressing. But it’s also a signal to Apple. I think Apple also has a similar
⏹️ ▶️ John opinion class action lawsuits. We get sued all the time. Yeah, some apple lawyer should come on and
⏹️ ▶️ John say, how many times a year does apple get sued? It’s probably like seven times a second or something. It’s like how fast they sell iPhones. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John people love to sue companies with a lot of money as the those the best people to sue because that’s where the
⏹️ ▶️ John money is right. Uh, it’s just a small input into their system. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John the class action lawsuit is a slightly bigger signal to apple than the online petition, which apple
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m sure is used to entirely ignoring, but they’re both signals. Uh, and so if Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John wants to know how annoyed people are about the keyboard, valid or invalid, they can look at those signals and
⏹️ ▶️ John find out. But yeah, it’s not a class action lawsuits.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, it’s, it’s hard for me to get worked up about any of these things, but class action lawsuits in particular bother
⏹️ ▶️ John me by their nature for the reasons that Marco said that like it promises like justice,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, But it feels bad to a lot of people that the justice accrues
⏹️ ▶️ John in a very small measure to everyone in the class. So great, great, you get a $12 check, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But the three lawyers involved become multimillionaires. And like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it just it seems unfair. It’s like one of those things that people like you did so little work and made so much money. You shot
⏹️ ▶️ John on the movie for three days and you made $20 million. That seems so unfair. But at least movie stars you understand
⏹️ ▶️ John like, well, people really want to see this person. But no one knows or cares who the lawyers are in a class action lawsuit. And the fact
⏹️ ▶️ John that they get so much money out of it disproportionately to the people who are part of the class, it
⏹️ ▶️ John just doesn’t leave a good taste in a lot of people’s mouths. But anyway, people just want to see Apple lose
⏹️ ▶️ John a lawsuit or they want to get their $12 check and feel there’s just and finally on this topic,
⏹️ ▶️ John as I think Marco pointed out in a tweet and many people have pointed out, like, we all kind of know how this is going to go down.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, unless something dramatic happens, unless like some Apple employee comes out and it’s like a
⏹️ ▶️ John whistleblower and says, yes, Apple knew they were defect. You know, unless something very dramatic happens, it’s going
⏹️ ▶️ John to happen the way we always knew it was going to happen. And that Apple will probably do something in their future laptops
⏹️ ▶️ John to have a different keyboard. Hopefully it’ll be better, but you know, they’ll do something different, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Just like they did something different with the antennas on their phones eventually. Uh, and like many other hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John issues they’ve had, they’ll probably do a repair extension program, uh, for these things. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it may or may not be a good repair extension that may or may not leave a big like gap in the poor suckers who bought them
⏹️ ▶️ John at the wrong time and will never be covered. And they’ll move on with,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, they’ll live and learn, right? So I don’t, you know, I don’t think even this class action lawsuit
⏹️ ▶️ John was wildly successful. They’re not going to say refunds for everybody who got who bought a MacBook Pro this keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John or you get a you can trade it in for a new computer or whatever. Like, we, we know how this is going
⏹️ ▶️ John to turn out with or without the class action lawsuit. So we’re all just kind of like,
⏹️ ▶️ John waiting out this the reliability of issues of this keyboard and
⏹️ ▶️ John hoping that the next one is better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the sad thing is, like I’ve wanted for a while now, I’ve wanted to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco start a campaign like to announce to people on a regular basis, here on Twitter, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all Apple knows about officially, all it’s hitting them like where it counts, which is their data and their wallet,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is when they’re brought in for warranty repair, when Apple has to foot the bill for replacing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an entire top case for one dead key. So I’ve been wanting for a while to encourage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people. If you have one that that has like a bad key, bring it in and make them replace
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, you know, and so that way like you are counted because there’s a whole lot of people out there who have brought them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in who have a good beginning replaced. There’s also a lot of people out there who have flaky keys
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and just don’t bring them in because it’s a huge pain and the reason I haven’t encouraged
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people to do that and the reason I keep like convincing myself to not announce
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this everywhere is because I know in reality I wouldn’t bring it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in if that was my only laptop or my main laptop because it is a pain. It’s so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco disruptive to bring in your computer to Apple, give them a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stupid account with a stupid password, so they can log in and do whatever they need, and look at all your data. You should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never ever ever have to give your password to anybody in this day and age. I don’t know why they still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco insist on that, but okay, you know it’s a pain to be without
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your computer. The reason like if you’re buying a you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know $1,500 plus laptop, chances are you need it for something in your life
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and chances are you need it regularly and especially if it’s your only computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s quite an intrusion to go without it. I mean look at how long I tolerated my terrible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco image retention on my last iMac because I didn’t want to go without my main computer for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a week, which is almost what it took when I finally did do it. I’m like in like the last week of the warranty.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is another reason why like when people say like when there is a flaw with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with an Apple product and and a lot of times the defenders of this product will say well just bring it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in get it serviced you know just bring it in just bring it in and it’s like that’s not that’s not actually a good answer That’s actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like because most Apple products that I have bought, I have never needed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to bring in for service. Most products of any type that I have bought, I have never needed to bring in for service.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Bringing things in for service is hugely invasive and costly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to a lot of people in various ways. The fact that it can be fixed in service is not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a great excuse. So anyway, I totally I get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why people would be hesitant to bring in their computers for service, especially if the first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time they bring them in, they get the run around from from the genius on the other side after the pain in the ass of making the appointment and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then somebody eventually tells them well. This is user damage because you cause the dusting or that key cap like what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happened to Stephen Hackett. I get so much why nobody wants
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to bring in their laptops, but honestly, if you can bring it in, if it’s not a big pain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for you, bring in any broken fly keyboard laptop that you have and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make them service under warranty because if you want this problem to actually be fixed,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we need to hit them where it counts. They don’t give two craps about sixteen thousand signatures on a petition.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They don’t give two craps about people like me complaining on Twitter. They do give a number of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco craps about their spreadsheet and so you know if you have one of these keyboards
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again if this is affecting you if you can bring it in for service wallet under warranty and make them replace it, please
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do. However, if that’s a huge imposition on you, I totally understand.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’d not like so I’m not I’m not like saying you have to do it, but if you can do it,
⏹️ ▶️ John You can do the old people thing, I’m thinking of the people who, and this will start happening
⏹️ ▶️ John more and more, I assume, who go in with a broken key, and
⏹️ ▶️ John their thing is out of warranty, and they find out to fix their broken key, it’s $400. Now they have to
⏹️ ▶️ John pay out of pocket. You may or may not be able to yell and scream and make
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, you know, give you a better deal or do it under warranty. This is assuming there’s no warranty extension program
⏹️ ▶️ John by now. Uh, but one thing you can do, regardless of whether you choose to have the repair.
⏹️ ▶️ John Is go back home and write a long, sad letter to Apple to say,
⏹️ ▶️ John dear Tim, dear Apple, I’ve used your products for years and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I went in and one key broke
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s disappointing enough that the key broke with them and I learned to fix the keyboard they have to replace the whole top of the computer it’s gonna cost
⏹️ ▶️ John you $400 this computer is only a year old or whatever you know like like one of those letters
⏹️ ▶️ John and I mean like an actual physical letter but even could be an email taking the time and this is a good outlet for your
⏹️ ▶️ John anger to it like the company regardless of whether you actually paid it say you can say you didn’t pay it or you can say you
⏹️ ▶️ John did pay it and it was a big hardship and you’re disappointed and you’re never gonna buy our products again or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John but kind of like you know say with a you know political campaigns that
⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of automated signatures is weighed less than a real signature is weighed less than a real
⏹️ ▶️ John handwritten letter you know like that sort of hierarchy of how much time did the person who sent this to me
⏹️ ▶️ John spend on it and how does that represent how passionately they feel about it how
⏹️ ▶️ John many more people do I multiply this by to know that for every one handwritten letter we get there’s ten
⏹️ ▶️ John people behind the scenes who couldn’t be bothered to write a letter I remember my mother doing the same thing when
⏹️ ▶️ John I got my Mac SE30 and speaking of young hearing I think I’ve told the story before the power supply
⏹️ ▶️ John made a high-pitched whine that only I could hear because I was like you know 12 and had really
⏹️ ▶️ John good hearing and the adults at the repair center this is before Apple source the adults at the repair center
⏹️ ▶️ John said this thing isn’t making any noise and I felt like I was being gaslighted and I was like it but this is making this
⏹️ ▶️ John terrible high-pitched screaming noise how can you not hear it and we went back and forth and
⏹️ ▶️ John the the repair center said they did something and gave it back and it was just as bad
⏹️ ▶️ John or worse and you know and so it was like it was all under warranty so we weren’t paying any money for it
⏹️ ▶️ John but it went back and forth to the the authorized Apple reseller as they were known in those days and still
⏹️ ▶️ John are I assume back and forth lots of times and eventually my mother wrote a handwritten letter to
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple saying we’ve used your computers for years my son is really into your computers we’ve been trying to
⏹️ ▶️ John get this repaired and we haven’t had any success and they’re kind of giving us the runaround and blah blah blah eventually we
⏹️ ▶️ John ended up finding a different repair center that did replace the power supply with a new one that didn’t make the
⏹️ ▶️ John noise. But that type of letter, I imagine, goes
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot farther than a signature or participation in a class action lawsuit or anything like
⏹️ ▶️ John that. Obviously, Marco’s right. The thing that goes the farthest is making Apple pay their own money out of pocket
⏹️ ▶️ John for the repair, because that really hits them where it hurts. But if you can’t do that, like for instance, you’re out of warranty and Apple’s not going to pay
⏹️ ▶️ John for it, and neither are you, because is honestly, I would have serious doubts about paying $500 to repair a key on
⏹️ ▶️ John an out of warranty laptop that’s probably gonna have that same key go bad on the new keyboard because the new keyboard is the same as the
⏹️ ▶️ John old keyboard. I would really think twice about that. Write an angry long letter, you know, you
⏹️ ▶️ John can be polite. You know, you could say, I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed. However you wanna do it, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John they will wait, I think they will wait that a lot more than you clicking on that online petition.
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Surface Hub 2
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s Betterment.com slash ATP. Betterment, rethink what your money can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know anything about the Surface Hub 2 other than that the brief thing I read made it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seem like a smart board to me. So what’s this about and can somebody fill in as chief summarizer
⏹️ ▶️ John Did you even look at this, Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I tweeted about it. Everyone got mad at me. All
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey right. Anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What was your tweet? Why did everyone get mad?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I basically said like I was kind of you know snarkily saying that like you know Apple and Apple’s defenders
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have basically been advancing the argument seemingly you know either by words in the case of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco outsiders or by inaction in the case of Apple that the Mac is kind of done and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco complete and there’s nowhere else for the Mac to go might as well just it’s kind of a maintenance mode and we can occasionally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make good new hardware to make to make more money but you know we don’t really need to advance the OS meaningfully
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in any significant direction. And then Microsoft comes into crazy stuff like this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like Microsoft has like the entire surface line has been you know very ambitious
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardware and software directions, ambitious new takes on on what a computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can and should be, what it can do, blurring the lines between computers and tablets
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and things like that. You know Microsoft is doing tons of crazy experimentation and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah most of it is weird and most of it doesn’t go anywhere and and and people also try to argue like, well, look at their sales
⏹️ ▶️ Marco numbers. They don’t sell very many. Look, I don’t give two craps about anyone’s sales numbers that when I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco discussing what’s a good product and what isn’t. So there’s lots of like resistance to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me saying stuff like this, but basically like, you know, I think I applaud Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for trying things like this because there’s this perception in in our community
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that like the PC and by that I also include the Mac in the category
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of things that are PC and PC like, there’s a perception that the PC is just dead
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or it’s the past or it’s done, it’s complete. And that’s just so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco short-sighted and ignorant. We in technology always want things that come along that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are new to quote kill the old things and the old things are dead and in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reality that hardly ever happens. In reality most technology that comes out is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco additive to what came before it. Like when, you know, phones came out, we didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all just move everything we did to phones. We use phones a lot, but we also still use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computers and, you know, when tablets came out, tablets didn’t kill phones. We just used tablets
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and phones and computers and now we have smart watches and smart cylinders.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When the smart watch was first like kind of in its early rumblings, everyone’s like oh this is gonna kill the phone! Everything’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco move to your wrist! Guess what? It hasn’t and there’s no sign of that happening anytime soon.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so guess what we still use we use smart watches and phones and tablets
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and computers and cylinders. Now we’re talking about a are a are going to replace
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything with all this magic hardware that doesn’t exist yet, but it’s going to it’s going to replace everything with all these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco killer apps. We can’t think of it’s going to replace your phone and it’s going to replace your computer. You’re going to be just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco staring there sitting in front of a blank wall in your cubicle and moving things through the air
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that might happen, but what’s more likely to happen is that it’s going to come out and we’re going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to buy our glasses and watches and cylinders and tablets and phones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and PCs. So anyway, all of this is a long way of saying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I think that the the the world of PCs and Macs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has gone through a period over the last, you know, five to ten years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of creative rethinking by Microsoft and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco negligent under-investment by Apple. And that makes me sad because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t want to use Windows, I don’t want to use PCs, I still want to keep using Macs and MacOS.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It does seem like maybe this is turning around on the hardware side recently.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not Not so much on the software side, unfortunately, but maybe on the hardware side, we’re getting some movement here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The iMac Pro is excellent, the Mac Pro is coming, but the laptops are kind of a mess. The Touch Bar
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seemed like their one experiment in this area and it wasn’t very good, and it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hasn’t gone anywhere since the launch two years ago. So basically my position on the Surface,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever this is called, the Surface Smartboard, is this is a thing I’m never going to see in real life. It’s a thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m never going to use. It’s a thing that very few people will ever see use in real life. However,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gotta give Microsoft credit. They are trying to advance the PC in a way that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seemingly no one else is. So even though it’s crazy and even though
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s probably not going to go anywhere and even though their sales numbers are nothing to pay attention to,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still they are trying to move the PC forward. And the reality is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of us still use PCs to do most of of our work most of the time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it benefits all of society that someone is trying to move these things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forward and it should unfortunately apples not really there or they’re not doing enough
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they are if they whatever they are trying it isn’t enough, so I’m glad someone is I wish everyone was,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but ultimately the PC and PC like things are a part of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco our life. They are still a part of our life. They will be a part of our life for the foreseeable future
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Good job, Microsoft, for trying to advance them.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, when I look at this, I knew what your take would be. And we’ve all talked about this before, about how
⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft’s trying all sorts of interesting things. I think we talked about the, God damn, Surface Book Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ John Surface Studio. I cannot remember their damn
⏹️ ▶️ Marco names. The Studio is the iMac thing with the knob. The Book Pro is the detachable laptop tablet thing, I think.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Which one’s the MacBook Air with the carpet keyboard?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I see it in the picture here. I just don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what it’s called. That’s just a Surface, isn’t it? I have no idea.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t I don’t know. Is it the surface air? Maybe I don’t know. Is that a thing?
⏹️ ▶️ John like with all these things like if to varying degrees sometimes like the one that looks like a big iMac it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the thing that Apple I would have liked to have seen from Apple. But for this particular one and for people to know we’re talking
⏹️ ▶️ John about it’s called the we’ll put the link it’s called the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Surface Hub Surface
⏹️ ▶️ John Hub 2 which means there was a Surface Hub 1 that I’ve probably already forgotten about if I knew about it at all. Well do you remember
⏹️ ▶️ John what the original surface was yeah the big table thing
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah so these things are very big like the size of a television set
⏹️ ▶️ John oriented vertically and most of the things I see although they do rotate like like a big TV like
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know 40-something inch TV I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco don’t know how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big it looks like a 42 inch TV rotated into portrait orientation
⏹️ ▶️ John right and on it is running some variant of Windows like everything else that Microsoft does and it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John touchscreen and it has a camera on and I assume that’s what that thing is it looks like the old Apple eyesight it’s like a cylinder
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like you couldn’t build that into the display anyway and use it as a touchscreen
⏹️ ▶️ John you can gang together multiple ones they have only you can connect all four of them and show an image across all four and they always showed all
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of in the wall of an office where you can project from your little laptop II thing onto the big screen and people
⏹️ ▶️ John can walk up to the screen and scroll and point to things and manipulate it on the screen with your two hands and it’s really big
⏹️ ▶️ John like it’s not the resolution is it’s only like a 4k TV so it’s not if you get close to it I’m sure you can see big chunky
⏹️ ▶️ John pixels and stuff but it’s more of like a large display type device and And unlike the
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that looks like an iMac, when I see something like this, I think it’s not so much
⏹️ ▶️ John showing that they’re trying new things in the PC space. It’s more like they’re trying new things in the tablet space.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if Apple was going to do something like this, not just Apple, I think the appropriate
⏹️ ▶️ John software for this kind of hardware is more like iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John in that you want something like this to behave like an appliance. and you want it to have the
⏹️ ▶️ John less complicated, more reliable, more sort of, you know, less flexible,
⏹️ ▶️ John but more appliance-like operating system in an Apple’s ecosystem, that’s iOS.
⏹️ ▶️ John No one wants to see a big set of these displays with some weird Windows update message popped up in the corner, which I see
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco or worse, you had a blue screen,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you know, just sort of the sort of Windows desktop PC nags
⏹️ ▶️ John about things that you have to do, right? And I suppose that dialogue can come up on iOS as well, But like
⏹️ ▶️ John this should be a really big iPad. I mean, we saw that with
⏹️ ▶️ John Panic Software, their great status board application that they eventually gave up
⏹️ ▶️ John on after some struggles with Apple. They had a big television set
⏹️ ▶️ John showing the output of an iOS device showing status board. And this just wasn’t even a touch screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John It wasn’t for input. It was purely an output device, just to have a big screen in their office showing them cool graphs
⏹️ ▶️ John of information that’s relevant to the company that they updated from an iOS app that they wrote using a clever API,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? That’s looks like a lot what this is without the touching. This is adding the input
⏹️ ▶️ John aspect. If I wanted to have a gigantic iPad that I could swipe around on to show people thing you could gang
⏹️ ▶️ John together multiple ones of them. That’s this. I don’t know if it’s a great idea. Maybe it’s a terrible idea. Maybe no one will
⏹️ ▶️ John buy them or whatever. But this is a case where Apple is actually better positioned than Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ John to feel the product like this if it turns out that people want a product like this. Now, in this particular case, I’m going to guess
⏹️ ▶️ John that there’s not a lot of market for this, even if it is
⏹️ ▶️ John great at fulfilling its need in every company in the United States has this. There are far fewer companies and there are people
⏹️ ▶️ John and so this would be, you know, sort of an enterprise type sale, which, you know, it’s Microsoft bread and butter these days. So maybe it
⏹️ ▶️ John is a product that will work for them. But you know, it’s not just about Oh, Apple’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John being daring enough by trying things with the Mac. Apple’s not being daring enough by trying things with the iPad either.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think they’re probably being appropriately daring with the iPhone, but for both the iPad and the Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac seems not to be advancing just because they’re like, you know, it’s less prioritized and they’re too cautious.
⏹️ ▶️ John But then the iPad, as many, many people have pointed out over many, many years, that’s not advancing either.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s supposed to be the platform Apple cares about, like the OS platform that Apple cares about. Obviously, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not the hardware form factor that Apple cares about as much, but It’s the same OS as the phone, and so it
⏹️ ▶️ John feels like a shame that Apple isn’t making. It took them so long to make a bigger iPad, and I still think they should
⏹️ ▶️ John make an even bigger one. Here’s a huge iPad, and no, you don’t carry a 40-inch iPad around. It’s ridiculous, but it’s mounted
⏹️ ▶️ John on the wall, and it can run iOS, and you can do lots of cool things with it, and then Panic can bring back status board, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be good. I don’t know, man. I simultaneously can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get too excited about this, because as one of you just said, I don’t think I’ll ever see it in my entire life, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I also respect, like Marco was saying, At least Microsoft’s throwing something at the wall and seeing if it sticks,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is weird because I think the, the, the line that, that an Apple fan should
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tow is, Oh, they should just have an opinion and figure it out once and for all and go with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it and not throw a bunch of stuff against the wall. But I think we’re, we’re, we’re so thirsty for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple to do anything. And I mean, the touch bar wasn’t that long
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ago, but it, it was not that exciting to most of us. And I mean, sir, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t even have one yet. I’ve never owned a computer with a touch bar, even what, two years on or whatever it is. You’re not missing much.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I know. And, and so I think we’re all just thirsty for something interesting. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, you were right in saying that, that they are doing interesting things on the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess maybe they’re doing interesting things on the iPad, but again, that doesn’t personal personally affect
⏹️ ▶️ John But they’re not like on the iPad. They’ve been so cautious. There’ve been so few features that are even iSpat specific.
⏹️ ▶️ John Forget about what the features do. just how many features are unique to the iPad. There are not that many of them
⏹️ ▶️ John as compared to the phone. So it just gets like phone leftovers plus a little bit of iPad stuff. And what you
⏹️ ▶️ John could do, I mean, what you can do with a much bigger, more complicated iPad, what you could do
⏹️ ▶️ John with multitasking that was more capable and flexible and configurable than the current
⏹️ ▶️ John split screen stuff, which itself is a huge leap over, like not having anything before or like having very primitive
⏹️ ▶️ John multitasking to make these devices more capable. And we used to talk about them
⏹️ ▶️ John becoming capable enough to replace your Mac. But at this point, I’m saying just forget about that as a goal for now and just say,
⏹️ ▶️ John let’s you know, there’s so powerful hardware wise. It’s like that that power is being squandered
⏹️ ▶️ John to make a truly pro iPad and yeah, maybe make something that you can stick on a wall. Who knows? But
⏹️ ▶️ John like they’re not they’re not really change in the iPad world is slow. How
⏹️ ▶️ John many years did it exist before we got the the bigger ones and the bigger ones weren’t that much bigger?
⏹️ ▶️ John How many years did it it exists before we got an Apple-supported stylus, and even then it hasn’t changed much since then.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I think there’s plenty of room for hardware and
⏹️ ▶️ John software innovation in the iPad realm. It’s just happening very slowly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So that actually kind of segues relatively nicely to Ask
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ATP for this week.
#askatp: Apple’s focus
⏹️ ▶️ Casey week. So ish a boss writes, uh, what would you say Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey focus is at the moment? And naturally Apple’s a big company and it focuses on many, many, many different
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things. And so, uh, I will even extend this to say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what is their focus and or what should their focus
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be? And I will start us off by saying, I think their focus is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty heavily on iOS and specifically the I don’t think that’s a particularly revolutionary point
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of view to have and similarly unrevolutionary their focus really I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey want their focus to be actually possibly more than anything else on Siri
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because now that I have a Competing cylinder in the house and a competing, you know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey person in a tube in the house It’s becoming ever more obvious to me how much
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really dislike Siri and don’t trust it for anything and I kind of hope they’re focusing on that and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and we’ll see if they really are. Marco, what’s your thoughts?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco First of all, credit to Asker Ish Shabazz. He’s a really cool indie iOS developer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you should look at his stuff. Anyway. Also true. In broad strokes, I basically have two interests to this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Number one, I think you should listen to last week’s episode of the talk show with John Gruber. He and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ben Thompson got into a very interesting discussion about basically where Apple’s growth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in their revenue is, is really in services. And if you look at how that services thing breaks down,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco number one is the app store revenue, like they’re 30% cut. And then number two is iCloud storage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so you look at things like, are they likely to lower
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the cut to app developers? Nope. Are they likely to make better deals on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iCloud storage or increase the free tier? Nope. And there was an interesting discussion about how,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple in the past was all about like selling you new hardware, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the the interest of like what’s best for Apple aligned well with what’s best for the customers,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but as they get into more services revenue, those interests start to diverge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s it’s a very interesting problem to have it probably not a good problem to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where in order to make more from services you have to start doing a little more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco user hostile stuff or like taxing your users in more and more ways. And I think that’s going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco conflict with what’s best for the user more often than not. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think I can summarize this in part, you know, what their priority
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is versus what their priority should be. I think Apple used to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a software company that was funded by the sales of their hardware.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think today’s Apple is a hardware company that just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uses software to provide basic support for their hardware. And I don’t think Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco leadership sees the difference between those two things. But there’s a pretty big difference. There’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco huge difference between those two things. To sell good products, good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computing products, the software is really what sells them. You know, for most, for almost all these things, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the software is what matters here. You know, the hardware is nice and that’s it’s great to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nice hardware and it good for Apple for, you know, continuing to make nice hardware most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the time. But it seems like the software is really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stretched thin. Ultimately, it seems like Tim Cook’s solution to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of problems is just make a new hardware platform and then just throw
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some software on there that you might maintain. Maybe throw another App Store
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on there to get more App store revenue. But like how’s Apple TV doing? How’s the HomePod
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing? How’s the iPad software doing? Like you just mentioned like they can’t they kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of can’t keep up with it very well. How’s the watch doing? How’s the watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco OS doing? How’s the iMessage store doing? Like there’s there’s lots of app stores
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that keep being launched. Lots of new software platforms that have launched over the last like five years or so and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it just seems like Apple has neither the the resources nor seemingly the interest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to maintain them and to bring them forward and to maintain quality levels on the software
⏹️ ▶️ Marco side. All they want to do is sell us more and more hardware. Here have a dongle factory laptop. This laptop exists
⏹️ ▶️ Marco purely to sell dongles. Like it you know your solution here have a have a home pod.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Here’s an expensive home speaker that we’re going to put minimal effort in the software
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into and make it barely function with the assistant. Like I think that’s a huge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco divide between philosophies. And ultimately, I don’t think Tim Cook understands software
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all. And I question how much Johnny does. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the company’s going to keep being run this way for a while. Ultimately Steve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was a software person who used hardware to make that happen.
⏹️ ▶️ John I hate any analysis of Apple that includes it being described as either a software company or hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John company. So I will set aside that. But setting aside that whole part and where Marco went into his usual downward
⏹️ ▶️ John spiral into being sad about Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John I agree with the short version of the answer, which is where is Apple’s focus at this moment? iPhone and
⏹️ ▶️ John services. That’s where it is. Where should Apple’s focus be? Probably
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone and services, and in particular, the services that have to do with voice assistants,
⏹️ ▶️ John case he pointed out. So I think I think Apple’s focus is more or less in the appropriate place. And there are some
⏹️ ▶️ John tweaks here and there. Uh, but that clearly that’s where it is. Um, and all that stuff that
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, the Marco listed that as you know, is Apple’s version of, let’s say it was stick.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe people want to buy iMessage apps. Let’s try that or whatever. It’s like, you know, uh, that’s not where their focus
⏹️ ▶️ John is though. They do that. That is a pattern that they’ve done and it’s disappointing to us who, who
⏹️ ▶️ John want things to be there well supported or not to exist. But that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John where their focus is. Like, that’s clearly that’s clearly not where the focus is. If they were focusing there, they’d
⏹️ ▶️ John be constantly improving it or ditching it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, you know, I could just answer it with one word. What’s their focus? Margins.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey That’s their entire focus.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Margins. Talk about what is Tim Cook care about? Margins.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think that actually is there. I don’t think the focus is margins. And to do that, the nicer explanation
⏹️ ▶️ John of like, you know, Apple being a software company, hardware company. Like I think if you asked Apple like an apples best
⏹️ ▶️ John version of itself speaking as an institution or any individual person who’s supposed to be
⏹️ ▶️ John an avatar for the institution, they would say that they’re trying to sell you products like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s the whole package. The whole point of apples is the whole package like they make the whole thing and it’s supposed to solve a problem
⏹️ ▶️ John for you. It’s supposed to provide an experience and they lots of their products have been like that. The iPod is a great example
⏹️ ▶️ John of portable music playing like is it a hardware product? Is it a software product like at various
⏹️ ▶️ John times you could say, Oh, the software no one cares about. It was all about the hardware. Oh, maybe the Harvard doesn’t matter. It’s all about the software
⏹️ ▶️ John once you get to the iPhone or whatever. But like they’re selling you products or solutions
⏹️ ▶️ John or, you know, there is a benefit that comes as a unit and then we break it down into pieces
⏹️ ▶️ John and see how each part is being maintained and what they’re emphasizing and where they’re able to innovate and how software
⏹️ ▶️ John affects the quality of the product. And you know, with the
⏹️ ▶️ John how hardware affects your experience of the product and and all that other stuff, but I’m not particularly cynical or pessimistic
⏹️ ▶️ John about where Apple’s heart is. I think it comes down to
⏹️ ▶️ John implementation. Are they achieving their stated, and I believe real goal, to provide
⏹️ ▶️ John good products that people like? Where can they improve that? But focus
⏹️ ▶️ John is slightly different. I think what this question is getting at, and what a lot of people are talking about, is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John we often complain about areas where Apple’s focus doesn’t exist, we very frequently acknowledge
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple shouldn’t be focused on the Mac more than the iPhone. That would be the wrong thing to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, you know, every, every aspect, not just how much money it makes, but in the end, how
⏹️ ▶️ John important the product is. The iPhone is a more important product, not just a more important product to Apple, but a more important
⏹️ ▶️ John product period than the Mac. It just is right. And so if that’s where the company’s focus
⏹️ ▶️ John is, it’s in the right place. And as we always say, they’re doing pretty good with the phones for the
⏹️ ▶️ John most part, right? So I think this question leads me to say that despite all
⏹️ ▶️ John of our complaining, Apple is focused in the right place, more or less.
#askatp: Mac Pro USB-C-only
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Owl City writes, yes, seriously. Do you think the new Mac Pro will have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey only USB-C ports? I’m not so sure. I do think any new MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro absolutely will have only USB-C ports, no matter how much any of us, ha-ha Marco, wish it didn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But the new Mac Pro, given that the iMac Pro came with some old USB ports, I think there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a pretty solid chance there’ll be at least one or two, what is it, USB-A or B? I always
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get it wrong, A? A. A. It doesn’t, yeah, it doesn’t really matter anyway. but USB-A ports, I think there’ll be a couple on there,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I think it’ll be very heavy on USB-C, unless obviously they go ARM, in which all bets
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are off, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen. John, what do you think?
⏹️ ▶️ John Can you clarify, did you ever get a clarification of what this question actually means? Because I think there’ll be a power plug on it.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I mean, like, what does this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean? Come on, man, come on. Well, we don’t have them on the MacBook, you’ll just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John have power over USB PD.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m saying the Mac Pro will have a power plug, it won’t be powered by USB-C. I’m gonna come out on a limb and say that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, they just mean, like, will it have any USB port that is not a C? Is that your interpretation of his
⏹️ ▶️ Marco question? Yes, correct. You can plug in any of the six USB-C ports into the power adapter.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think there is a reasonable chance that it will have USB-A, and
⏹️ ▶️ John the iMac Pro is the, like, that was my question. I forget if I actually suggested it
⏹️ ▶️ John to somebody, maybe to Gruber before he did his interview or whatever, but the question
⏹️ ▶️ John would have been, Why does the iMac Pro have USB-A ports? Like if you’re gonna get Phil Schiller, Craig
⏹️ ▶️ John Federighi or whatever, or Johnny Ive, or anybody involved with the creation of this product,
⏹️ ▶️ John since you have to be so careful about how you’re asking Apple to get any reasonable answer, the simple question would be why
⏹️ ▶️ John does the iMac Pro have USB-A ports? And it’s a trap, the question is a trap, because the idea is they’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John give you some explanation, and the follow-up is how does that explanation not apply to insert product that you’re angry
⏹️ ▶️ John about not having USB-A ports on, right? Like that’s how that goes. But the answer, I think, is
⏹️ ▶️ John why it has USB-A ports is because there’s room for them and some of our customers want them. And so I’d
⏹️ ▶️ John say, okay, so is there not room for them on your laptops or do people not want them on your laptops? Right,
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, that’s how that goes. But I think that is the answer. The answer is that there’s room on the iMac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John and some people want them. And they’re cheap, that’s another thing. And so they put them there. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John really hope on the iMac Pro there will be room for them, because the iMac Pro should not be the size of a softball. On the Mac Pro, you
⏹️ ▶️ John mean? Yeah, the Mac Pro. be room for them because it’ll be big. I think people do
⏹️ ▶️ John want them. This is convenient. Like we got all the space in the back of this damn computer. You can’t throw some a ports. It’s just it’s just easier
⏹️ ▶️ John not to have to have an adapter and and they’re cheap. So that’s I would give
⏹️ ▶️ John it a 50 50 odds that the Mac Pro has USB a ports.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I would give it almost 100% odds. I mean because the iMac Pro has them by the way and I agree
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with you Casey. I think you know likelihood of MacBook Pros being released that ever have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco USB a ports are pretty much zero. I think best we can hope for on new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook Pros is maybe the return of the SD slot. That’s about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s the best we can hope for for like the return or addition of old ports. So I would not be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know I wouldn’t be hoping for any more than that. You know on the laptops you can you can make a reasonable argument that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you really can’t fit most of the legacy ports including USB-A with the current thickness
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of those cases like it just doesn’t fit. The whole reason that we can have it on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the desktop so easily is because you know Apple has made this very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expensive decision to tie Thunderbolt 3 into USB-C and to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have all of their USB-C ports except the one on the 12-inch MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be Thunderbolt 3 ports. So therefore the number of USB-C ports on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any of their computers is limited by the amount of Thunderbolt ports that the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chipset can support bandwidth wise and controller wise. So So that’s why you know you have four
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on most of the you know high-end products. You have two on on the lower end ones and you have zero on the 12 inch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook, because that chipset doesn’t actually support Thunderbolt. So on the iMac Pro they have these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two wonderful Thunderbolt 3 controllers and supply tons of damage to those USB C ports, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s kind of a waste if you if you were using your USB ports mostly to plug in like keyboards and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mice and charging cables and stuff like that. totally makes sense if you have the physical
⏹️ ▶️ Marco space to include regular old USB-A ports that are not Thunderbolt 3
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ports. Now they could make USB-C ports that aren’t Thunderbolt 3 ports.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They do in the MacBook, but they could decide like, alright, the rightmost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco four of them have Thunderbolt and the leftmost four of them are just USB over USB-C.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I think they probably don’t want that kind of port confusion. So that’s why they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco restricted Thunderbolt three to or they’re for USB-C to only be Thunderbolt three on most of their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco products. But again, I think that was a bad choice, especially since like you know most of the time on the laptops
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of those being used for power at least when the other ones is probably being used for some kind of low speed USB device
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know if or charging a phone or something like that. But anyway on the desktops they have the space
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they already have USB built into the chip set that Intel supplies them. So like all they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to do is put the ports on the outside and run a cable to the chip set and they have ports.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s kind of You basically get them for free, so you might as well.
#askatp: Manual transmissions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Adam Rourke writes, with manual transmissions on the decline
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and fewer people eager to own them, could you see the option flipping from its place in history as the starting point
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the cheap car to becoming a premium one for the upper-end niche market? How much would you pay?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So to build on this a little bit, when we were growing up, even the youngins,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco and myself of the show, it used to be that if you didn’t want to pay a whole pile of money
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for a car, you would get a manual transmission because it was between $500 and like $3,000 cheaper
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in order to do so. But now
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it seems like nobody wants a stick and it’s becoming
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of passé or just like just antiquated to have one. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would you pay additional money for a three-pedal car? I would. I absolutely would.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think it is very quickly becoming either extinct or as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Adam said, a niche thing. I would absolutely pay one to two to three to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey four to maybe even more thousands of dollars for a car that I wanted to have a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey three pedal option. But the more I think about it, the more I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my very next car, especially if I don’t buy it soon, which I do not intend to buy a car soon, although we might
⏹️ ▶️ Casey talk about that the after show. My next car may not be a six speed.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It very well be it may be my next
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that’s in part because I’ve had terrible thoughts about Alfa Romeos. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but that’s a different issue. So yeah, I don’t know. I would pay many,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey many, many dollars in order for this to be a possibility. But unfortunately, it’s not quite so simple. Marco, you I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey presume don’t give a crap anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s true. I don’t give a crap anymore. But I do think it’s an interesting different question and I am you know standard disclaimer applies here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is for the US. Things are very different elsewhere where manual transmission cars elsewhere have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had a much longer and more widespread lifespan than they have in the US,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but yeah, basically in the US right now, the only way you can get a manual is on a few very low
⏹️ ▶️ Marco end cars and sports cars and even the sports cars is getting increasingly rare.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The question is interesting because it’s kind of happening already like right now. If you want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a manual transmission, except for the very few cases where you can get them in lower end cars, you kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of do have to pay extra in the sense that you have to get it like a high end sports car to even have it as an option.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have paid extra to get a higher end model to get a transmission. I like in the car. I wanted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now. I don’t have one anymore, but I’ll tell you one thing’s for sure. I’m not going to go back to automatic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no matter what like that. That is an option. I won’t take John
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re so cheap. You wouldn’t pay any extra would
⏹️ ▶️ John you know the problem with this the scenario is like Could you see them
⏹️ ▶️ John flipping? And stopping being as part of a cheap car and becoming a premium
⏹️ ▶️ John the problem is that there is a very narrow window between the time
⏹️ ▶️ John when When it’s not a cheap car thing anymore and the time when it disappears
⏹️ ▶️ John completely right there’s the tiny sliver where like oh we don’t put this on the cheap cars they all get
⏹️ ▶️ John automatics and most people don’t want it even on the high-end cars but there is
⏹️ ▶️ John some small subset of people that are willing to pay a premium to get the stick and that
⏹️ ▶️ John window we’re currently in that window right now and I don’t even know if it’s a premium maybe it’s just like a same price
⏹️ ▶️ John or a no-cost option
⏹️ ▶️ John I was at the m5 it was a no-cost option last
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey time yeah I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John most BMWs yeah this is it it, and it’s going to
⏹️ ▶️ John disappear. It’s never going to be the case where it’s available as a $5,000
⏹️ ▶️ John option to $10,000 option on a narrow range of high end cars. That will never be the case. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John it can. All of the high end cars now are giving up their manuals as even options
⏹️ ▶️ John like that’s what’s happening. First, they it became a no cost option. And then they’re just like, how many cars can we remove
⏹️ ▶️ John the stick from? There are very few holdouts and it’s leaving more and more cars the new M five no stick
⏹️ ▶️ John option, right? We we all knew that was going to happen, right? A lot of Porsches are getting rid of the sticks, even
⏹️ ▶️ John though they’re they’re able to sell more than probably than any other car maker just because of their place in the market.
⏹️ ▶️ John So no, it’s not going to be like, you know, there are many things that will end up being a
⏹️ ▶️ John premiums on high end cars for for a small number of people, but the stick will have a very brief moment in that
⏹️ ▶️ John slot and then it will just disappear entirely. That’s my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey prediction. Yep, I agree. And it makes
⏹️ ▶️ John me sad. The only place that will live on is in and it’s not like a premium, it will live on like
⏹️ ▶️ John like kit cars, people who have kit cars and you know, sort of outside the mainstream of regular cars
⏹️ ▶️ John where you’re like, I’m, I don’t buy, you know, cars from dealers. I build them myself or do
⏹️ ▶️ John aftermarket modifications and stuff like that. That’s where the sticks will live on because forever people will want
⏹️ ▶️ John to like the same reason people like build and drive replica model tees like stick shift
⏹️ ▶️ John will never die in that realm. It will always be a historical thing that people are interested in. Even people who
⏹️ ▶️ John are alive today, like They never drove a real Model T, but they’re interested in it because they’re interested in history. And then the whole
⏹️ ▶️ John class of people who are interested in cars because they were the cool cars when they were kids, that will never die. And Stix will
⏹️ ▶️ John always live there. And that entire realm is premium in that everything there costs a bazillion
⏹️ ▶️ John dollars, and it really has no reflection on cars that regular people buy. But setting that aside, just
⏹️ ▶️ John for, you know, when you go to your BMW dealer for a brief time, you can get Stix as a no-cost option.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe there’ll be a tiny window where you can pay extra for them, and then you just won’t be able to get a Stix on a BMW. That’s what’ll happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know you’re right, but sigh. Thanks to our sponsors this week, Betterment, Squarespace, and Aftershocks,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we will talk to you next time!
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over, they didn’t even mean to begin, cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. John didn’t do any research, Margo
⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t let him, cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. It’s accidental. And you can find
⏹️ ▶️ John the show notes at atp.fm. And if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Auntie Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s accidental, they didn’t mean to.
⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental, check the podcast so long
Post-show: Neutral
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh wait, John, you never answered how much would you pay?
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh I would probably pay like, you know, a thousand or two. I mean the proportion
⏹️ ▶️ John wise, if I’m buying a $25,000 car, obviously the absolute amounts are not that much, but I would pay a premium
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for it. Well it’s just, I mean this will get into what we’re talking about in a second, but like it just so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco totally changes the experience of driving a car.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s worse on low-end cars because the automatics and the, God forbid, CVT’s are so much
⏹️ ▶️ John worse than the fancy car. Transmissions of the same kind? So much more hunting for gears,
⏹️ ▶️ John so much more weird droning and just like laggy reactions
⏹️ ▶️ John to everything you do. I’m reminded of every time I have to drive around in a rental Accord,
⏹️ ▶️ John even if it’s the same model as mine, I’m like, oh God, this car, suddenly I hate this car. This car that I like and use,
⏹️ ▶️ John you change the transmission and it becomes something that I don’t want to be in.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. It’s a very, very big difference in having the exact
⏹️ ▶️ Marco same car otherwise, whether it’s manual or automatic. It’s a totally different driving experience.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So Casey, what’s going on with your car stuff?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so let’s start with Casey’s car corner. I got in my car,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what was this, Monday, I think it was, maybe it was Monday, after work,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it was something like 90 or 95 degrees out, and I very much wanted to turn the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey air conditioning on. So I did, and nothing happened. The screen, the little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey HVAC controls or whatever you call them, the air conditioning screen, showed that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the air conditioning was on maximum. It showed the fans were blowing as hard as they could possibly blow.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And no air was moving, the fans were not on. And I drove home like that. Luckily,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had functioning windows. Luckily, I don’t live that far from the office, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was a bit toasty.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, you could almost take a running leap out of your office door and land in your house.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is true, but nevertheless it was a warm five-minute drive and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey When I got home, I parked the car in the garage turned it off waited about 15 seconds turned it back on everything worked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey great And so far it has continued to work great Since that fateful Monday or whatever day
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was But yeah, just a new little thing for me to stress out about on my car. Wonderful
⏹️ ▶️ John I remember my air conditioning compressor went bad on my Civic and we weren’t ready to buy a new car yet
⏹️ ▶️ John So I just drove it for like a year and a half with no AC see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no absolutely not it was rough no and now granted you live in you know an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey arctic hellscape so you could probably get away with it there but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John down here we
⏹️ ▶️ John summer summer is very hot and humid up here
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as well no no no no you don’t get to friggin tell me that I don’t have winter and then say oh but
⏹️ ▶️ John summer it is it’s not here’s the thing it’s not like you live in Arizona where it’s 125
⏹️ ▶️ John your hot weather is just like our hot weather there’s just slightly more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of it it’s exactly the same with winter
⏹️ ▶️ John you get slightly more No, most of your year is tepid. Most of your year is tepid and crappy. For
⏹️ ▶️ John the super hot part, go look at the weather charts. Your average temperature may be a little bit higher, but
⏹️ ▶️ John humidity, which you have too, that’s what does it. When it’s 93 and humid and you have
⏹️ ▶️ John a 95 and humid, that’s the same weather. It’s not like you’re 125.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m so angry at you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John right now. Also, my
⏹️ ▶️ John drives back to and from work are much
⏹️ ▶️ Casey longer than yours. Anyway, I just wanted to share that there are still continuing issues with my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey BMW and somebody needs to donate me a Giulia Quadrifoglio.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Please and thank you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Here’s the thing. Somebody could donate you exactly the price of it and you wouldn’t buy it. You still wouldn’t buy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I don’t know. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t know. And the AC might break on that after a year or two. That’s also true. I did see one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in town and it was a blue one, which is what I keep telling myself. My next car will be blue. In this particular
⏹️ ▶️ Casey blue, I did not care for. I think if I were to get a quadrifolia would have to be the red of the one that I tested
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but that being said How’s it looking white? Mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John good. We have some white ones tooling around here and I think it looks gross in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey any color It’s not gross in any color Your eyes are as broken as your ears.
⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse. Oh, it’s someone around here has an i8 by the way I see it all the time now someone must have just
⏹️ ▶️ John gotten it and I don’t think it could they still selling i8s new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think so. I think so.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, anyway, they got that’s an awful car, but it looks really cool
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, um, I’ve seen this Quadrifoglio around town and I, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I kind of wants it,
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, speaking of cars you’ve seen around town today, I saw my first Maserati SUV. They make
⏹️ ▶️ John an SUV. Of course they do. Everyone has to. Is it as boring and expensive as their cars? I’m sure it’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John be their best selling model if it isn’t already. Yeah, probably.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So Casey, so so you want, you want to buy the Quadrifoglio
⏹️ ▶️ Casey after all? Well done. I do and I don’t like Like the problem is it’s an $80,000 car and I absolutely,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey without a shadow of a doubt, do not want to spend $80,000.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So Casey, you want to lease the Quadrifoglio
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all? Well, but that’s, I mean, that’s equivalent money just spread out. No, that’s not how leases work.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, whatever. You know, it’s, you know what I mean.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I’m not sure I do. But,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey okay, so let me finish my thought. What I’m driving at though is I’ve been thinking a lot about getting,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what would the price of a Quadrifoglio be after a lease? You know, so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is a two or three year old car. From my understanding, they’re having a hard time moving
⏹️ ▶️ Casey any of them. But I would assume the Quadrifoglio would be even worse since it’s an $80,000
⏹️ ▶️ Casey car. And since it doesn’t have a good transmission, I don’t have a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clutch to worry about, and tires are replaceable, and nobody
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wants to buy it off Romeo because they presumably can’t run for more than 10 minutes at a time. So could I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey steal one for like 20 or 30 or 40 grand, you know, after it comes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off lease? First of all, no. So, okay, so what do they run new? Like 70, 80? Yeah. All right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Even a terrible car, you know, it’s going to have a lease residual of something like, you know, 50% or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something like that. So assume, assume that the post lease buyout price,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco best case might be 40%. And that’s best case. It’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more than that. So what’s 40% of it? That’s you know forty grand or something like that. Thirty, thirty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s again percent of eighty is thirty two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco grand and then that’s really best case. That’s unlikely. It’s more it’s going to be more like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fifty to sixty percent and so you’re looking at like you know in the in like the forty to fifty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco range. Secondly for God’s sake after buying a BMW and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey having problems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John serving it do not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy an Alpha and like a three year old Alpha that someone else leased and drove
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really hard probably because why else would you buy one? Yeah, first of all, that’s a terrible idea. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco finally, if they’re having trouble moving them, you might be able to take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco advantage of the best deal in buying cars, which is lease specials. Lease
⏹️ ▶️ Marco specials are how auto manufacturers dump inventory of models that they want to move
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or to temporarily boost sales for a certain quarterly margin or something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So if this is actually if they’re actually not moving, which I wouldn’t assume
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the high-end sporty model is not moving just because the rest of the line isn’t. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if that is indeed the case, the deal to be had is going to be on a lease special,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not on some kind of weird off-lease thing. And that also totally avoids the issue of your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maintenance problem with buying unreliable high-performance brand cars.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah. I don’t know. I shouldn’t do it. I won’t do it. But it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tempting. Unassure my name is T in the chat says, at least wait until it gets to beta Romeo.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is a truly terrible joke that I approve of. The other thing I wanted to share in Casey’s Car Corner
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is I went on a test drive as a passenger in a brand new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jeep Wrangler JL, which is like the equivalent of saying, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an F30, if you will. And, uh, it was nice for a Jeep. I mean, it has all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the problems that Jeeps have. It’s tall, it’s slow, it’s bumpy. It’s not extraordinarily
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cushy inside. This one actually had, uh, manual windows. It was a brand new car.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So in 2018, manual windows. And, and the reason being, it actually makes sense. The reason being
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is because if you are the kind of person that would take the doors off, which I would be,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then it makes sense, you would want as little weight in the doors as possible, so taking them off would be easier. And having all the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey weight of, you know, a power window, actuator, what have you, and motor and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all that, that is not insignificant. And additionally, it didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have power door locks for the exact same reason. And I laughed about that. I think if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I were to buy one, I would get power, power door locks. I would get power windows, et cetera. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I respect those who don’t get them, especially if it’s because they want to take the doors off.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This particular one had the most, it wasn’t a beater, and it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wasn’t stripped, but it was certainly not a high-end model. It didn’t have the very nice infotainment,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so the infotainment was kind of garbage. And the interior bits were fine. They were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not great. They were certainly not of European quality, but they were fine. This particular
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one had the six-cylinder, and it was decent from the passenger seat. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know what? It was not bad. The one thing that I noticed that really bothered me, though,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that when Aaron’s car comes to a stop, her XC90, when it comes to a stop and turns itself off, do either
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of your cars do this, John? I forget.
⏹️ ▶️ John Stop-start? No, thank God I have avoided that so far.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, it’s actually, you get used to it. It’s not terrible. But when Aaron’s car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a stop… No, no, it is terrible. You
⏹️ ▶️ John can get used to it, but it is terrible. I would disable it. I would consider not buying a car
⏹️ ▶️ John if I couldn’t disable
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Fair. It’s that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bad. So here’s the thing. In the Volvo,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the warm weather, because we actually have summer here, unlike in Boston, what happens is the car
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will turn off and the air conditioning will still run for a solid couple of minutes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then eventually when the car realizes, oh, the air conditioning seems to be fading, it’ll actually start itself
⏹️ ▶️ Casey back up or perhaps not even turn itself off in the first place in order to get the cabin to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stay cool. Meanwhile, the Jeep, and this is one of those small touches that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is just indicative of the difference between American and European cars. The Jeep,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two seconds after starting it, after it had been sitting out in the hot sun all day, we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey came to the first stoplight, it turned itself off, and the air conditioning conked out within like 10 seconds.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now granted, there was a button right on the dash, a physical button, which was a nice touch, right on the dash in order to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey turn it off, but it was annoying to say the least that we got all of five seconds
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of air conditioning before it just gave up the ghost. And that was too bad. Additionally, when we took
⏹️ ▶️ Casey off, the soft top was actually not latched properly, which was kind of funny because we were driving
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on a surface street, so we’re doing like 20, 30 miles an hour. I’m like, man, this thing is loud. And remember, my dad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has a JK Wrangler. He has had older Wranglers on and off my entire life. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so I know what a Wrangler is supposed to sound like, even with the soft top. And I was like, damn, this is loud. And then I look up and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey realize, oh, there’s a little bit of sun coming through right above the windshield. That might be why. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so we had to pull over and latch it, and then it was much, much, much better. But it wasn’t bad inside. It really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a lot nicer than they have ever been before, which I know is a low bar. But they’re pretty nice inside.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would definitely like to drive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. You’re really not selling it very well. Yeah, I took a ride in this Jeep the other day, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the interior sucked. The controls sucked. The air conditioning sucked. The auto start-stop sucked. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wasn’t very comfortable. It was slow. It was boxy. It was bumpy. It was loud. The roof fell off. The doors were going to fall off.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No power locks. No power windows.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey interpretation of the story I just told. That is not the way I intended it, but that is is one valid interpretation