catatp.fm Unofficial Accidental Tech Podcast transcripts (generated by computer, so expect errors).

297: It Also Deserves to Die

iPhone XR reviews, why next week’s Apple event is so exciting, why retweets ruined Twitter, and which of us is the Wafflemaster.

Episode Description:

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MP3 Header

Transcribed using Whisper large_v2 (transcription) + WAV2VEC2_ASR_LARGE_LV60K_960H (alignment) + Pyannote (speaker diaritization).

Chapters

  1. Instagram
  2. Sponsor: AfterShokz (code atpbundle)
  3. Update: Marco’s limiter
  4. iOS and RAM swapping
  5. John’s last Apple photo book
  6. Sponsor: Linode (code atp2018)
  7. iPhone XR reviews
  8. Apple event next week
  9. Sponsor: Warby Parker
  10. #askatp: A-series for Macs?
  11. #askatp: No-regression updates
  12. #askatp: Shortcuts?
  13. Ending theme
  14. Casey the Wafflemaster 🖼️

Instagram

⏹️ ▶️ Casey As I have for the last two or three weeks, I think the first words out of my mouth were, uh, I’m busy right now.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I, for two or three weeks running, I’ve said that to Marco, even though every single time I’ve been doing nothing important.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, one could argue that most of what we do is not that important. That’s also

⏹️ ▶️ John true. Being busy doesn’t mean you’re doing important things. It just means you’re doing something.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s also fair.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, tired.

⏹️ ▶️ John You’re, you’re meeting from eight to five too. I was working. is a meeting of one.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Actually, it was two most of the time. I was teaching Tiff how to edit podcasts today.

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh yeah, I saw that. And I went to Instagram or, I don’t know, she posted

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco a

⏹️ ▶️ John picture of it.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, stories. I still don’t know what I should be posting on my Instagram stories.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really, I don’t think I’ve ever posted anything on there and I don’t really know why. I’ve never

⏹️ ▶️ John done anything. I don’t see why I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would. Right, that’s the thing. And like, I kind of, I want to be the kind of person who just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has always done that and does it routinely. but I’m not and to transition from

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not having ever done that to doing it, I don’t really know how to do that.

⏹️ ▶️ John Why do you wanna be the person who does that routinely? Why, like why do you aspire to that? What is it about that

⏹️ ▶️ John person that you would like to be?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hmm. That’s a good question.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, it seems like the way you’re supposed to use Instagram now.

⏹️ ▶️ John Hmm, maybe. I mean, like there’s stories up top, but there’s,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, square inch wise, there’s way more pictures as I scroll through the terrible application.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, slow down. What’s wrong with Instagram? Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John the application? It doesn’t give me a chronological timeline

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that keeps

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey track of where I was.

⏹️ ▶️ John It never has.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, that used to really grind my gears real bad until the genius,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so genius I should have thought of it myself, but didn’t, you’re all caught up. Which I agree with

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you, John. I would prefer the chronological timeline. I’m not trying to deny that in any way, shape

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or form. But I feel like, and what did I hear this on? Independence with Jelly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Alisao and Curtis Herbert. I think it was Curtis who was making this pitch

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that once we got the you’re all caught up, eh, that was sufficient.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I said, no, it’s still stupid. I mean, Instagram was never good for completionists. Like, because even

⏹️ ▶️ Marco back in the day, it would just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John lose your place. And it would just pull

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you to the top, like if you left the app for 10 seconds. So it was always hard for completionists.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now it’s actually easier because if you keep visiting the app, eventually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you will be all caught up, even though it won’t be in order. Because if you scroll through

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few things now, and then you quit the app and you go back a little bit later, you see different things on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco top. And they aren’t necessarily newer, they’re just different from what you saw before. And eventually you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are caught up. It’s just, it’s harder to see things in exactly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the right way you want it to, but it’s actually, I am now sold on the algorithmic

⏹️ ▶️ Marco timeline, even though I also hated it at first, because it just changed the way I had to browse.

⏹️ ▶️ John You’re sold on it? I feel like it’s like reading a book and going, I’m going to read from

⏹️ ▶️ John the back of chapter five to the middle of chapter five, and then I’m going to put the book down. Then I’m going to pick it up. I’m going to read from the back of chapter

⏹️ ▶️ John eight to the middle of chapter eight. Then I’m going to put it down. And then being excited by the fact that, oh, the book lets me know

⏹️ ▶️ John when I’ve actually read all the pages. Like, screw you. Not how I want to interface with it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco What’s nice is that if you don’t have time to fully catch

⏹️ ▶️ Marco up, you can at least be relatively sure that you’re gonna see your wife’s posts and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your best friend’s. You can be relatively sure it’s gonna show you the things that you wanna see, and you will be caught up on those.

⏹️ ▶️ John Briefly, I had that experience today. I saw some of my wife’s Instagram posts, and

⏹️ ▶️ John what I did was I went to go post a picture of it to one of our Slacks, because I wanted to talk to Stephen Hackett about it, because

⏹️ ▶️ John my wife and he were in the same location, it seemed, And I briefly left to go to Slack to post a picture. When

⏹️ ▶️ John I came back to Instagram,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey where the hell’s

⏹️ ▶️ John my wife’s picture? I hadn’t paged through all of them horizontally because it’s the multiple things. So I had to go find her

⏹️ ▶️ John picture by scrolling down the stupid algorithmic timeline, all the while convincing the application that I’m looking at these images, but I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John not because I just want to get back to the image that I was on before. So I just went through. I hate it

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco so much.

⏹️ ▶️ John And there’s no iPad app. I mentioned there’s no iPad app. I’m not sure if that whole iPad thing’s gonna catch on, but as far as

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Instagram’s concerned, it is not a going concern.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that to me is the more egregious thing. If I had to pick either give me an iPad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco app or give me back a straight timeline option, I would easily pick the iPad app because the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad is so good for browsing and content consumption. Yes, I know you can

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John work on it. Who

⏹️ ▶️ John wants to see pictures on a big color screen? That’s so stupid.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it’s so good for browsing through stuff like that. I don’t understand why they haven’t done

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that yet.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I derailed the conversation. Marco, you were starting to say that you want to be a cool kid

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if we’re taking the definition of cool kid, which is probably under debate, but if we’re taking the definition to be

⏹️ ▶️ Casey somebody posts to Instagram stories or Insta stories, you wanna be one of those people, but don’t feel like you have a way in. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey let me give you some really good advice. The way in is to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey just do it and not care. I guess that’s how

⏹️ ▶️ Marco people do this, huh?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, exactly. And I’ve been watching Mike be more prolific,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and we’ve talked about this on Analog. I’ve watched Mike be more prolific with his Insta stories

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and been jealous of it for reasons I can’t put my finger on. It just feels, and I think this is kind of true for you,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it just feels like something that I should be taking part in.

⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t believe you two have this feeling. I have the opposite feeling. Every time I see someone’s story, I’m like, and this is why I never

⏹️ ▶️ John do that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I just sent a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco horrible picture of my microphone right now to my Instagram story. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about that.

⏹️ ▶️ John I sent a live picture, put on some pants.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my gosh.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think if you’re going to really build a following on Instagram, you have to participate in stories. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s also, like, one thought I’ve had about Instagram recently is maybe I don’t need

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to care about building a following there. Like, I care on Twitter because it’s so tied in with,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, promoting my business stuff. But it’s kind of hard to promote audio on Instagram

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or to promote apps on Instagram. Like, you can do it, but it’s not very effective. Like, it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really made for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that. You

⏹️ ▶️ John should pay Casey to use your app on one of his stories.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I’ll be an influencer. Casually,

⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh yeah, I’m just listening to some, look, I have limiters here, it’s pretty

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey cool.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am happy to be an influencer, a hashtag influencer on Insta.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Influencer? Is that how you say that?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Influencer.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But like, so I wonder, like, there’s almost a level, I know this is like the biggest first world

⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem in the universe, but like there’s always a level of, like I don’t have a big following there, and so I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco feel like it’s actually a little more relaxing to be there, that I’m not a super Instagram pro.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I kind of want to keep it that way. Like it’s nice to have an outlet there

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is under a lot less scrutiny than whatever I would post on Twitter.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey How do you, isn’t there a way to like retweet or like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey re-blog, if you will, somebody’s story? I could swear there’s a way to do this.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, there is. You can add something to your story and then it puts it in that frame or like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey inset. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey How the hell do you do that?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know how to do anything with stories. I view stories. That’s Tiff. She’s good at stories.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, yeah. It’s funny, like, occasionally, like, I went to Tiff’s Building Adams Halloween costume over the last week or so.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Occasionally, she would ask me to, like, hold her phone and shoot a little video segment on her story

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of her doing something. And she would have to explain every little detail

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of how to do this, because it was just baffling to me, like, how, what? Like, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hold this down, and then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I push what?

⏹️ ▶️ John Adam to do it next time.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s it’s bizarre when you’re not a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John customer. She needs

⏹️ ▶️ John a helper who understands computers.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey This is how old I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey am. I am now looking at a wired post from March of this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John year. Actually, the day after my birthday. You googled

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it? No, no, no. Well, somebody in the chat room pasted it, but I’m old enough that I’m like, oh, this is wonderful. This is exactly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what I need. The rules of regramming, which presumably how to regram. There you go. Yada,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey yada, yada, yada. You copy a link to the Instagram photo you want to repost, but I don’t want to do I want to do with

⏹️ ▶️ Casey somebody’s story. Yeah, man. I’m so old.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll tell you what, though. Like, here’s something that I, it’s a thought I’ve had over the last few months

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I know no one else is going to agree with. I think reblogging ruined Twitter,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or sorry, retweeting ruined Twitter. I think the retweeting is the reason why it’s so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco easy for hate to spread. I mean, there are other things that they should

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be doing to cut down on that, like basic community management and basic rule enforcement that they seem to not be able to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do. But retweeting is what makes Twitter

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so horrible to be on when you express any kind of opinion because when people follow

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you and they see your posts, they get to know you, they get to see things in context, and they get to see you more as a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco person, so they’re less likely to just lash out and attack you. What gets the most

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hate is when something you post gets retweeted to someone else’s audience

⏹️ ▶️ Marco who doesn’t know you, who is less inclined to see the whole round person that you are, and is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco more inclined to see this one isolated thought as something they should lash out at, especially somebody who

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has their own angry army of people who go to battle for them. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco retweeting, seeing someone else’s post on timelines of people who don’t know them at all,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco while it might spread users more easily or might spread content more easily,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it also was responsible for those people who get retweeted getting all sorts of waves

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of trash responses and abuse responses. And back before Twitter had

⏹️ ▶️ Marco retweeting, you could do it but it was harder and it was like so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically fewer people did it and it and responses wouldn’t always go to the person depending

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on how you did it. And so there was a lot less you would see a lot less of that trash but now

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s so easy to see all these different thoughts totally out of context and and to not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even see them as people, or to not know the people, that you get waves

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of hate just being spread like wildfire all over the platform. And so Instagram does

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not have native reposting, retweeting, whatever it would be. Like, they don’t have that. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I kind of like that. I mean, I guess they kind of have it in stories maybe, but for the actual pictures, like, they don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have that. And so, something I post, not only is it easier to see me

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a human because it’s a picture and not like, you know, a thought, humans don’t deal well with other people’s thoughts.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But if you see a picture of something nice, you know, that’s harder to throw trash at.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it’s also because whatever I post is only really being seen by

⏹️ ▶️ Marco people who have chosen to follow me. And the vast majority of them have followed me for more than just this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one post. So they kind of have an idea of who I am, and they see me as a human, so they’re more likely to be decent

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to me. Whereas, on Twitter, you don’t have that. When you see something that’s retweeted or reposted,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you are seeing that totally out of context, and you don’t know the person, and you’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco less inclined to treat them like a person. So I really hope Instagram never

⏹️ ▶️ Marco adds native reposting.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I mostly agree with you, but sharding in the chat room,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey man, that’s really unfortunate. Anyway, has the following

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco to say. There’s a D in there.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it’s not sharting, it’s sharding. I generally agree with what Marco was saying,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But on the other hand, a lot of interesting people I follow, I have found because someone else I respect retweeted them. And I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey do think that that’s a good point. Maybe I almost wonder if like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey instead of a quote tweet, excuse me, instead of a retweet, a quote tweet would be the only

⏹️ ▶️ Casey like officially blessed thing in this phantom universe where Twitter isn’t evil. And I wonder if that would make it better.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So there’s at least a little more context, although I guess somebody could just be like LOL, which is super ambiguous. So I just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey argued my way out of that. Never mind. I got nothing.

⏹️ ▶️ John Didn’t we all use Twitter before retweets? Like, this is not just a theoretical thing. Like, we used it. And we saw the

⏹️ ▶️ John origin of retweets with people typing the capital letters RT and then pasting in the content of a tweet and everything. But it was

⏹️ ▶️ John harder. And it did require you to put in more effort. So it was less prevalent. But I felt like it was still possible

⏹️ ▶️ John to discover things, because people would do exactly that. They would copy and paste the person or

⏹️ ▶️ John a portion of their thing or whatever. I mean, in some respects, it would be hard to stop retweeting

⏹️ ▶️ John from existing because of that sort of, before there was retweeting, there that’s the thing that led to retweeting.

⏹️ ▶️ John And people would just continue to do that today. So I’m not sure it would help that much, because I feel like the problems are fundamental. But

⏹️ ▶️ John making native support for it certainly let it spread more quickly and makes it much more accessible.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel like if they removed native support and you just had to do it the old-fashioned way where you type in RT username and then you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco already have fewer characters, you gotta like maybe start editing the tweet to fit, like, people did a lot

⏹️ ▶️ Marco less of it, because it was harder. By making it so easy, by making it like one or two taps to do,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s something that that orders of magnitude more people do than if it was still the old

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardware where you had to basically copy and paste the tweet. That was harder. And so I really think it was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco multiple orders of magnitude, less of it happened then and would happen again if it went back to that.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But don’t you think that this is somewhat rooted in stuff that you did? I could make an argument that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey this came from reblogging.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean it might have. Tumblr had reblogging years before Twitter had retweeting.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I don’t know if Tumblr inspired, Tumblr also didn’t invent it, it was like a term on blogs, Tumblr

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just made it easy. And similar, it was a thing that bloggers would occasionally

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do before Tumblr, Tumblr made it really super easy to do, and so it exploded in usage.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that had problems too. It didn’t have quite the problems of Twitter, in part because,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco well at least when I was there, in part because it was just a smaller scale platform than Twitter, but also in part because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was much more about longer form thought, and much less focused on the social

⏹️ ▶️ Marco feed and constant social activity. And it did, like over time,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it did kind of go closer to that but it was never to the same level that Twitter was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a lot of these areas. And a lot of that was just due to the format. But certainly,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was in a similar vein but nowhere near the level

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of ease and kind of like the mania and the speed the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mass at which any thought would get huge amounts of trash thrown on it from

⏹️ ▶️ Marco other people.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, in summary, you should just continue doing Insta stories and not to put any peer pressure

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on you, John, but Marco has taken a photograph of his setup

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I have of mine. We could go for the trifecta and you could do that right now live on the air.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Seems

⏹️ ▶️ John unlikely. My main objection to all that stuff is I don’t want to

⏹️ ▶️ John share more aspects of my life with the public. Like I, the amount I share is the amount I want to share. So giving

⏹️ ▶️ John me an outlet to share more aspects of my life is not attractive to me. And I, you know, I look at

⏹️ ▶️ John Instagram stories. I’m fine that other people do it. I enjoy that, but it’s just not something that I want to do. It doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John matter how much other people do it. It doesn’t change my inclination to not do it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But John, everyone else just jumped off the bridge. Don’t you want it to? I don’t,

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t have that problem. Whatever the opposite of FOMO. What was, what’s that? Uh,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know FOMO. I don’t know what the opposite of

⏹️ ▶️ John it. No fear of not missing out of someone in the chat room get it someone it’s there is an actual reverse

⏹️ ▶️ John FOMO

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pomo proud of missing out

⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually is that that’s probably it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco is that it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just made that up I don’t know

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s probably it now I found that I’ve been I’ve been enjoying contributing insta stories for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey things that are not well so I was gonna say things that are not mundane but like me

⏹️ ▶️ Casey washing my car is mundane I do that freaking hourly it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John seems but

⏹️ ▶️ John if I can speaking of

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey of you washing your car

⏹️ ▶️ John and doing things. If I can give you one suggestion as someone who watches all of your Instagram stories,

⏹️ ▶️ John whatever the name of that effect is where it goes forward, reverse, forward, reverse, never do that again.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’re not a boomerang fan, huh?

⏹️ ▶️ John Nope. You are a boomerang fan, I am not. And by the way, it’s Jomo, the joy of missing out.

⏹️ ▶️ John I definitely am. I’m all in on Jomo and I am anti-boomerang. Real-time

⏹️ ▶️ John follow-up,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey very important. Oh man, I like the boomerang, But you know who else hates the boomerang?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Erin.

⏹️ ▶️ John Erin hates the boomerang. She knows what’s best.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The problem with all those built-in effects and the little sounds they play, like the little, like, hoo, hoo, kind of party

⏹️ ▶️ Marco music, like the, I’m one of them, like, whatever that is, they get so overused. Those have all been there for so long now that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re just old and so played out, and they don’t add new ones very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco frequently. And

⏹️ ▶️ John they never looked or sounded good. They were always hacky, and now they’re hacky and played out. But the boomerang,

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not my objection, the fact that it’s hacky or played out. I just don’t like it. I don’t enjoy that effect. I find that upsetting.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Fair enough. It’s on the list. The list of upsetting things.

⏹️ ▶️ John It is like something about it makes a clip that I might enjoy. Oh, look, there’s Casey doing his car and he’s going forward, back, forward,

⏹️ ▶️ John back, forward. No, stop it. Stop it. And you just want to close the window.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Wait,

⏹️ ▶️ John close the window? You know what I mean? It’s like when we tape things,

⏹️ ▶️ John we all still say tape things and eventually people will start rolling their eyes at that.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, but I I’ve enjoyed posting, to finish my thought earlier, posting things that are not mundane,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so like not the everyday consistent machinations of my life, but things that are slightly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey more interesting, I hope, he says with no commitment whatsoever, and I think it’s fun.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it’s interesting and neat and I enjoy watching other people’s Insta stories. And I like, I like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that Instagram is a two-headed monster. It is both the super curated, look at how perfect my life

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is, as well as, oh, look at this disaster. This is just kind of what’s happening to me today. Ha ha,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey who cares? And I like that you can get both of those in one spot. And I’ve heard

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot of conversation recently. I can’t remember where I heard this particular conversation that I’m thinking of, but about

⏹️ ▶️ Casey how Instagram is, maybe it was on Rectifs actually, I don’t remember now.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But anyway, but Instagram is like, oh, look at my perfect life and everything’s perfect. And you should be jealous of how perfect

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am and my perfect vacation with my perfect wife and my perfect children and all that. And there’s certainly an element of that.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I don’t know. I think most of the people I follow on Instagram, even if their timeline is that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey curated perfect life, which I think I’m fairly guilty of as well, their stories are a little more haphazard

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and human, which I really enjoy.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Aftersocks bone conduction headphones. Let me tell you, these

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have ruined me for all other headphone types when I’m out walking around listening to podcasts. Every

⏹️ ▶️ Marco other headphone now feels like it’s keeping my ears too hot and sweaty or pressing too much on them,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or I don’t like how they block the sound around me because then I can’t hear like if a car is coming. Aftersocks

⏹️ ▶️ Marco avoids all of these problems because they are bone conduction headphones. Here’s how this works.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of having some kind of like speaker driver that your ear has to hear through the regular ear canal

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so like it sticks something in your ear or it squishes against your ear or it goes around your ear, Aftershocks

⏹️ ▶️ Marco works differently. They have these little transducer pads that rest next to your

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ear and they send little vibrations that you can’t really feel that your eardrum picks up so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you hear it but there’s nothing on or in your ear and so not only does it keep

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your ear from getting sweaty which is great like for exercise use or for just walking around in the summertime, I love these in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the summertime. But also, because it isn’t blocking up your ear, you can still hear the world around you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in addition to the podcast you’re listening to in your AfterShokz. And this is great if you’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco walking or running or biking or doing anything else in the world where you need to for safety

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or practicality concerns, it’s really nice to hear the world around you. This is what this gives you. I really don’t like walking around with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco headphones that cover up my ears anymore because I miss hearing the ambient environment. I want

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. So Aftershocks are great for that. They’re also just really good Bluetooth headphones. They are,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of course, wireless, because they’re Bluetooth. They have great battery life, great reception. You can place calls on them and they sound

⏹️ ▶️ Marco great, too. They have a warranty if you need any help, although I don’t think you will, because they’re really nice. And they’re also just super

⏹️ ▶️ Marco small and they weigh nothing. I think they’re like less than one ounce. They weigh nothing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I highly suggest you check them out. Go to atp.aftershocks.com and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can get the Trex Air Bundle for $50 off. it’s a really good deal

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with Code ATP Bundle. So once again.

Update: Marco’s limiter

⏹️ ▶️ Marco atp.aftershocks.com and you can get $50 off the Trex Air

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bundle with code ATPBUNDLE. Thank you so much to Aftershocks for making really awesome headphones

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and for sponsoring our show.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tell me about your Lookahead limiter. I would give you a standing ovation because I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey hear good things have happened but the whole house is asleep so I’m just gonna very quietly say well done sir.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you. Yes. So on the last show I was talking about how I was trying and not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very well succeeding to implement a look ahead limiter for audio processing for part of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the upcoming voice boost to feature of overcast and other tools that I make. And so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was having lots of trouble last week getting getting the gain processing to work on my limiter.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I’m happy to say that a few hours after I posted the show I got it working and I’ve been

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tweaking it and improving it the whole rest of the week I have ported smart speed into the new this new architecture

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and who if you’re listening to this you are listening to voice boost to processed files

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I’m I’ve used it on the tracks for this podcast to normalize the volume and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco apply my EQs for each of us each our individual tracks so that’s one role to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco use it for is in podcast pre-production, or podcast production, I guess. Also,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a big part of designing a heavy audio processing pipeline intended to run on phones,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is you have to really think about performance and battery costs to doing this. You have to have something that’s really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco well below 10% CPU usage for people who really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not notice the battery cost of it. And on my iMac Pro, where I’ve been doing most

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the development, I was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco able to get this down to using 0.1% of the CPU

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with real-time playback. Wow! But the whole time I’m thinking like well this is my this is my iMac like when I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco run this on the phone you know I’m gonna have to you know lower the you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s gonna raise these numbers up and it’s gonna I’m gonna have to like you know really really pinch the pennies on that and then lower the budget maybe reduce

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the quality of some things. I ran it on my iPhone XS

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it ran at at exactly the same cost as on the iMac Pro. Wow, 0.1%

⏹️ ▶️ Marco CPU usage, or about 900 times real time.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m shocked that the iPhone XS runs this stuff, which includes a lot

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of bulk math operations, a lot of vector operations, as I mentioned

⏹️ ▶️ Marco last time, on large arrays of floats, like huge amounts of number

⏹️ ▶️ Marco processing here. and the iMac Pro and my iPhone XS run

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the same speed. And so I’m very, very happy about that. Not only does that bode well

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for me being able to ship this with the high quality modes enabled and with some pretty advanced processing, but also

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s just awesome. It’s an awesome statement about how fast the iPhone XS is. That’s pretty amazing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I also, for comparison, ran it on the iPhone 5S and that runs it at 0.5% CPU usage. So-

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about four times slower, roughly.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But still, you have so much headroom that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s fine. Exactly, like if it can run on a 5S, which is my slowest supported device, using

⏹️ ▶️ Marco only 0.5% of the CPU, then it’s totally fine to ship even the highest quality stuff

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the iPhone 5S. So, very, very pleased with this.

⏹️ ▶️ John So we had one listener write in to suggest, I think it was an audio person, I forget,

⏹️ ▶️ John about like using multiple limiters instead of just one, like a cascading series of them culminating in

⏹️ ▶️ John like the hard cutoff limiter just to get rid of, just to make sure everything’s within the envelope, but basically a series of

⏹️ ▶️ John limiters, you know, starting with a very gentle one and then whatever, there’s this whole theory behind it. Did you read

⏹️ ▶️ John that? Did you take any of that advice? Was it helpful?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did read that, actually, and that was one of a handful of really great emails that we got from really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco great people and I thank them all for that. I haven’t had time to respond to all of them yet, but I’m very, very thankful for those

⏹️ ▶️ Marco emails because they were really good. And that, so when you’re producing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a music album, you do much more sophisticated processing than what I’m doing here because you have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco different needs. Like what I’m doing here is trying to maximize the perceived volume

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of speech in talk podcasts. And that’s very, very different from trying to master

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a rock album or something. One of the things, so one of the reasons you’d use multiple limiters

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, I mentioned last time the whole deal with being a look-ahead limiter where as

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the volume of something is approaching the clipping point, you want to start reducing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the gain on it before it clips, so that way it doesn’t hit that clip and sound bad.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the look ahead part, it can make that perfect. It can make it such that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you look ahead of where you are by enough time that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the time that you’re applying the reduction is gonna be less than that. So you look ahead by like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco five milliseconds and you can apply the reduction over two milliseconds. So you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you can see five milliseconds ahead and you can see that you’re about to clip five milliseconds from now, you can

⏹️ ▶️ Marco over the next two milliseconds apply that reduction gracefully. And then by the time that peak signal

⏹️ ▶️ Marco comes in, you’re low enough that it doesn’t clip. The problem is that if you take that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco method for all of your volume reductions, you kind of cut

⏹️ ▶️ Marco off or tame or diffuse what are called transients. So like the hit of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a drum, you get this nice smack, this nice big hit. Whatever your average loudness

⏹️ ▶️ Marco level is, you want those quick little transients to actually be louder than that. You want those to be able

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to break through that wall. Not to clip, but if you’re having a lower limit of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your target loudness than the actual clipping threshold, you want those transients to be able to get through.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because otherwise it just sounds, everything just sounds kind of flat and muffled. So when you’re doing pro mastering, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do stuff like that, where you have some limiters that will let things through, that usually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t look ahead. So they will let through quick sounds and then reduce their volume

⏹️ ▶️ Marco over like a few milliseconds after that. This is what compressors do too, this is kind of the point.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so the idea there is, you can let those quick transients through, but still maintain

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the kind of average loudness within the desired range. So you need that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for like kind of loud music production. But then you still need another

⏹️ ▶️ Marco limiter at the very end of the chain to make sure, even despite that, that nothing is going to clip.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So usually you’ll have like one or two limiters or compressors earlier on in the process

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to help shape that volume, but still allow transient loudness things through. And then at the end of the chain,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’ll have a look ahead limiter that can do a perfect job of making sure nothing ever clips. But ideally,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very few things are even approaching where that limiter is set. And that’s the kind of thing that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of these audio engineers who were actually pros at this, unlike me, had been writing to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tell me. And that’s really nice to know. But in the case of a podcast app, I’m not going to use that kind of complex

⏹️ ▶️ Marco setup because I’m not trying to preserve those transients. Like when somebody

⏹️ ▶️ Marco smacks their lips together on a podcast, I don’t need to let that through louder than everything else.

⏹️ ▶️ John All

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, anything else on your look at

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a limiter? All snark aside, I’m very excited for you. That’s really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco awesome. Thank you. Yeah, I’m very, like, this is just one of those times where, like, I’m doing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hard stuff and it’s working and it’s like, that’s such a satisfying thing for a programmer, like, and you don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco get a lot of times like that. Like, so much of what I do is just, like, BS moving stuff around or laying out forms. And this is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much better and I’m so happy. So yeah, I’m just, I’m having a really good week.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Awesome.

iOS and RAM swapping

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, tell us about iOS and swapping.

⏹️ ▶️ John One thing we forgot to mention last week when we were talking about Photoshop on iOS and

⏹️ ▶️ John how to deal with the fact that iOS doesn’t support swap and

⏹️ ▶️ John files take up a lot of memory and all that other stuff is one aspect

⏹️ ▶️ John of using your disk for memory in a situation where you’re going to be

⏹️ ▶️ John using it a lot is that you may wear the SSD

⏹️ ▶️ John faster than you normally would. Now, this is true of the SSDs in our Macs because all our Macs have swap. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John true of our hard drives. If you ever ran Mac OS X in the early days, you saw

⏹️ ▶️ John how it massively abused your hard drive, especially if you didn’t have too much RAM, pulling things out of

⏹️ ▶️ John off the disk and into RAM and out of RAM and onto the disk. But

⏹️ ▶️ John given SSDs being what they are and they have a particular wear life, and you know, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John potentially putting more wear on a phone as a phone’s flash

⏹️ ▶️ John storage than would happen in normal usage. Because I would imagine that most iOS

⏹️ ▶️ John applications, A, do not deal in the huge amount of memories that potentially Photoshop could be subjected

⏹️ ▶️ John to, because B, they don’t have a built in swapping system to deal with it.

⏹️ ▶️ John So I don’t think this is a real concern because, you know, again, Mac apps do it all the time, but it is probably something that Adobe

⏹️ ▶️ John has to think about and that Apple has to think about and hopefully will not have any unpleasant

⏹️ ▶️ John surprises about. But I meant to mention last time we did. Oh, and this and

⏹️ ▶️ John the second item, this is that while this is being discussed on Twitter, a couple of people

⏹️ ▶️ John suggested, I think Steve Jordan Smith is one of them, that swap is surely coming to iOS devices

⏹️ ▶️ John eventually. I think they were basically making an infinite timeline argument to saying, well, like, look, You know, the reasons for not having

⏹️ ▶️ John it were because you could barely get, uh, you know, an OS 10 derivative to run on a phone

⏹️ ▶️ John at all. And any kind of lag or anything related to swapping would

⏹️ ▶️ John have killed the experience. And that’s all still mostly true. But today’s iPhones have way more

⏹️ ▶️ John memory, way faster flash, way faster CPUs, way faster GPUs. At a certain point,

⏹️ ▶️ John there is no reason not to have swap on an iOS device. other, you know, like you can add it

⏹️ ▶️ John without impacting user experience. We’re probably not exactly there at this point,

⏹️ ▶️ John but eventually, like whether whether it’s swapped traditionally or unified memory architecture

⏹️ ▶️ John where disk and RAM are the same thing or any sort of, you know, variant future world things like this is not

⏹️ ▶️ John the steady state forever where Max have it and iOS devices don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John eventually the, you know, like I said, whether whether it’s a unified memory architecture or

⏹️ ▶️ John some some swap like usage, it’s probably in the future. Not this year, not next year, within 10

⏹️ ▶️ John years conceivable.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco See, I disagree that it’s that it’s an improvement. Overall, like iOS

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has benefited greatly from the architecture of not having swap, because both

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the system and the apps are forced to manage their memory

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in some in some way like they’re like on on desktop OSes with Swamp, you can

⏹️ ▶️ Marco grab as much memory as you want, and the system will figure out a way to give it to you, and there’s all sorts of optimizations, but the reality is,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you write bad code on the desktop, you don’t get punished for it nearly as much. Whereas

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on iOS, if you write code that takes too much memory, your app gets killed.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you don’t do that, and you have to think about it, and you have to be conscious of it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco If iOS gained Swamp,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco If your app just slows down a little bit over time, you as a developer might not feel that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much or you might not care about that so much. It’s very different if your app just gets killed because you use too much memory. If it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just kind of slows down, it’s going to be hard for you or your company to prioritize fixing that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So what you’re going to get is a whole lot of much more bloated, much

⏹️ ▶️ Marco more sloppily coded apps. And I think iOS as a platform has benefited greatly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco had so far where that’s just not really possible.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it’s also been hurt by that restriction in that you’ll launch a game and it’ll kick everything

⏹️ ▶️ John else out of memory and those things have to relaunch from scratch, which takes battery life. And so there’s downsides to it as well. But the other thing

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s important to remember is you don’t have to have the same rules as on a desktop. You can still have rules about

⏹️ ▶️ John the maximum amount of memory an application can take. Having swap just gives you a little bit more flexibility.

⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe it’s just the OS that’s allowed to do your swap. You can just make the limits a little bit higher.

⏹️ ▶️ John Because if you had to think of like, I launched some big application, and I go back

⏹️ ▶️ John to my web browser, because I was doing some research in it, because I’m Vatici, I’m on an iPad, and

⏹️ ▶️ John I have 12 things open, right? And oh, the web browser got booted out of memory because the application used too much. And I

⏹️ ▶️ John have to wait for that application to relaunch and restore its state, right? That’s not a better experience than allowing

⏹️ ▶️ John that application to go to swap and swapping it back in, because presumably swapping it back in is faster than letting the application go through the

⏹️ ▶️ John entire launch procedure again, right? And it doesn’t mean

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that you just have to say-

⏹️ ▶️ John not be. I definitely will be because yeah, you’re just it’s you

⏹️ ▶️ John have to read you have to read less from desk and you get right back to the state you were you don’t have to restore that state by

⏹️ ▶️ John executing a bunch of code it’s just pulling stuff in from memory especially if you dedicate a special pool

⏹️ ▶️ John of slightly faster memory like a like your swap disk right you can there’s all sorts of things you can do when they control the entire widget inside

⏹️ ▶️ John there to make it you know to have a memory hierarchy that is not exactly the same as on

⏹️ ▶️ John a desktop it’s just just giving you a a little bit more flexibility. So maybe you just raise the RAM selling for applications by,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, some tiny percentage to give a little bit more headroom to make it seem like iOS devices have more

⏹️ ▶️ John RAM than they have. That’s the type of thing I think about not like it’s just a free for all and you just get to

⏹️ ▶️ John like allocate memory until everything slows to a crawl. And even the max not entirely like that. I mean, there are limits,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, you can you’ll find out if you ever try to install database software on your Mac, exactly what those limits are. The limits do exist. They’re just

⏹️ ▶️ John way higher than on the phone. So I think there’s a reasonable compromise to be had at

⏹️ ▶️ John some point and that it would be a benefit.

John’s last Apple photo book

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, John, tell me about and hopefully our editor

⏹️ ▶️ Casey can put in a little bit of taps or something in the background. Tell me, John, about your last Apple Photos book.

⏹️ ▶️ John This is only only memorable for one reason. So I knew to talk about the deadline

⏹️ ▶️ John when Apple is going to stop selling you photo books and you have to use one of those third party things. I said I want to get all

⏹️ ▶️ John my books out of the way so they have a nice match set of books like I know I wanted to, you know, go back all the years I wanted to

⏹️ ▶️ John go back to and print to all my books before the deadline. And I did, and they came,

⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re nice, and got it all done, right? But right around the time of the deadline, I realized, oh, there’s one more book

⏹️ ▶️ John I should make. We did one other

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey trip, and I

⏹️ ▶️ John think that’s worth making a book. So it was a San Francisco trip that we did, unrelated to WREC,

⏹️ ▶️ John we just went to California and did touristy things, right? I’m like, that was a significant enough trip, I bet I can make a book

⏹️ ▶️ John out of that. And sure enough, I could. I made a book out of it, and it was like, I thought maybe I didn’t have enough pictures, but I did, it was fine.

⏹️ ▶️ John And I ordered that book, And I ordered that book on the 30th, like literally the last day you could order the book. So just getting

⏹️ ▶️ John it under the wire. And that book eventually came. And like,

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know why, like I had this fear a little bit when I ordered the last batch of books. But I was like, I made it out.

⏹️ ▶️ John Everything’s great. I have this beautiful match set of books. I got this book, I looked at it. I’m like, great, this book looks great.

⏹️ ▶️ John I, you know, look through it with the family, check it out, it’s, you know, I did it. I got all the books. And then I went to put it on the shelf

⏹️ ▶️ John and I realized, wait a second. This book didn’t come with the big

⏹️ ▶️ John cardboard sleeve that all the other books come in.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It’s kind of like,

⏹️ ▶️ John what is that called on Blu-rays where like the Blu-ray slides into like a cardboard thing? Yeah, yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. Figure what that’s called. Like a slip cover. Right, I had the same thing with my Studio Ghibli

⏹️ ▶️ John Blu-rays. Like for the longest time, they would come with those cardboard things, but then they started not.

⏹️ ▶️ John And so now I have on the ones on my shelf, half of them have the cardboard things and half of them don’t. It’s very upsetting to me. Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John this book didn’t come with the cardboard thing. So I have an entire line of books that are all exactly the same size and shape inside the little cardboard

⏹️ ▶️ John sleeves and one book That’s not I’m so sorry. So my dream of having

⏹️ ▶️ John a completely consistent Apple photo book collection is dash and so I also loaded the third-party

⏹️ ▶️ John stuff to see what it’s like The Mimeo one looks okay I kind of like

⏹️ ▶️ John is it sad to say but like I mean I try out third-party ones before I knew they were going away and I didn’t like them

⏹️ ▶️ John They’re better now, but honestly the Apple one because I’m so familiar with it But it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John much faster for me to get the result I want. The new ones have more options, but they’re very buggy and weird

⏹️ ▶️ John and I’m worried about what the things will come out like. So I’m kind of dreading ordering next

⏹️ ▶️ John summer’s Long Island book. But I’m going to do it and hopefully it will be roughly

⏹️ ▶️ John the same size. There will be a discontinuity, but the discontinuity is kicked off by my last

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple Photos book which did not come with a cardboard sleeve. Of course, my wife’s like, oh, you should email them and call them

⏹️ ▶️ John and tell them to bring you a cardboard sleeve. They’re gonna be like, this crazy person wants the cardboard sleeve.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’ll never happen. So I’m resigned to having a one mismatched book,

⏹️ ▶️ John which is going to be the beginning of what will surely be a series of mismatched books as I move away from Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John vendor?

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⏹️ ▶️ Marco are really nice. They have, of course, things like backup services. They have built-in load balancers. They have great stats

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iPhone XR reviews

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⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you to Linode for sponsoring our show.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey We should talk about the Apple event, but before we do that, we should talk about the iPhone Xr,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which the reviews have been dropping over the last few days. I actually

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was a guest on my buddy, Tyler Stallman’s podcast, and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey we talked about his experience with the iPhone XR. He got a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey preview in New York for it because he works on YouTube and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple believes that YouTube exists, yet Apple does not believe podcasts exist. Not that I’m bitter. Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey we had a really good conversation about it, and I encourage you to check that out if you are at all interested in the iPhone

⏹️ ▶️ Casey XR. I said, Tyler had some time with it. He’s a phenomenal

⏹️ ▶️ Casey photographer, a professional photographer and had some really interesting thoughts about it. But plenty of other people have

⏹️ ▶️ Casey had them too. I haven’t heard any other talk about it as yet because I’m behind on

⏹️ ▶️ Casey podcasts but the rumblings I’ve heard via Tyler and via

⏹️ ▶️ Casey texts that I’ve read is that it’s really freaking good. Like really, really good

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and without too many compromises. And I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m stunned and really excited about this. I think as many have said, this is probably the most

⏹️ ▶️ Casey interesting phone, possibly even device, at least up until next week, that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple’s released this year.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, I don’t have a lot to say on it yet because I’ve never held one or used one

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or seen one in real life, but all the reviews seem really positive.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The summary, if I can editorialize a little bit, the summary basically seems to be,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I keep looking for ways that this phone is worse and I’m not finding them. Like that’s kind of like what everyone’s opinion

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has been. It’s like, it should be worse in more ways than it is. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in some ways it’s actually better. Ultimately, I think if I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wanted a phone that was a little bit bigger than the X and I didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mind losing the 2X camera, I would probably go for it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Unfortunately, neither of those are true. I really like the 2X camera and I use it sometimes.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not as much as I thought I would, admittedly, partly because it’s such a worst camera in any kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco low light, but I do use it sometimes. And the size

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is such that I like that you can get the plus screen

⏹️ ▶️ Marco resolution. I know it’s 2X instead of 3X, but you get the plus point size. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you get the pluses screen real estate in a phone that is not quite as big as the plus, or the max, excuse

⏹️ ▶️ Marco me. So that’s nice. Like I like the potential of having

⏹️ ▶️ Marco more screen real estate but without going quite so big on the phone. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ultimately losing that camera would hurt. I do think it’s really interesting how,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think one of the biggest features that’s lacking is 3D touch, but no one seems to care.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it turns out not a lot of people use 3D Touch that much. And even for the keyboard

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cursor movement, which a lot of people don’t know about, but that’s what I use it mostly for, I’ve been learning through all these reviews

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you can now do that by just holding down on the space bar for a second and then moving your thumb. So they even kind of fixed that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco part of 3D Touch not being there. So it kind of seems

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it’s a really good option if you don’t mind that camera. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the major difference is the screen being a different type that is not as good. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even though I love OLED, I love my OLED TV, I do love my OLED

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone 10 and 10S, I love the OLED watch, I’m a snob, I’m picky,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco despite all those things, I could switch back to an LCD phone tomorrow and not even notice.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, it just doesn’t matter that much on your phone. I thought it would matter more than it does. It just doesn’t matter that much.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And OLED, we also thought, would bring a big battery boost because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it should use so much less power. And it turns out it kind of hasn’t. Like the battery life is basically the same as it was.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco In part that’s because we look at so much bright content, but that isn’t changing anytime soon. So, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel like the XR has a better price, a better

⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen size to body size ratio. It has a screen that is supposed

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be a lot worse, but kind of isn’t. It’s like a better battery life. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a pretty awesome phone. As long as you don’t want that 2X camera, it’s a pretty awesome phone.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it comes in colors, the back doesn’t have the ridiculous, like, lozenge of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey camera array,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John you know? I

⏹️ ▶️ John like the

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey lozenge. I

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t. I don’t like that it’s vertical, but I kinda like the lozenge. Actually, I do like how it looks vertically, I just don’t like it underneath my finger. But

⏹️ ▶️ John I, yeah, the little circle. I don’t mind the lozenge. Yeah, I think it actually is a good look, it’s just

⏹️ ▶️ John underneath my finger too much. On the screen thing, with OLED versus LCD, Like

⏹️ ▶️ John bright content is one problem, but the real problem is that the XS and the XS Max have

⏹️ ▶️ John true 3X, right? So if you had a true 3X LCD and it had to crank the backlight to

⏹️ ▶️ John shine enough light through all those stupid transistors, it would not be as good battery life-wise. But

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s the right compromise for the screen. Like the best analogy, I mean, Gruber

⏹️ ▶️ John came close to it, but he’s not as much of a car person as we are. Like the XS and the XS Max

⏹️ ▶️ John are luxury cars. like the price premium of a luxury car over a less luxurious

⏹️ ▶️ John car, you never, it’s never worth how much additional you’re paying like how much more expensive

⏹️ ▶️ John is an Audi than a Volkswagen? You don’t get that much more value. It’s not linear. It’s like, if I pay

⏹️ ▶️ John twice as much, the car will be twice as good. No, it will not be twice as good. It’ll be better. It’ll be 1.25, 1.5, but at times

⏹️ ▶️ John is good, but it won’t be twice as good, right? So you pay a lot more

⏹️ ▶️ John for the 10S and 10S Max phones that are better, but not

⏹️ ▶️ John in proportion to the price. I think the 10 R is the type of

⏹️ ▶️ John phone kind of like I’ve been saying that they should do with laptops, but never do like the type

⏹️ ▶️ John of phone that will make people who buy it really, really love Apple and iPhones,

⏹️ ▶️ John because when they get that phone, it will it will have the things that

⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t have, they’re unlikely to care about or miss because they don’t have anything to compare it to, especially if they’re first time iPhone

⏹️ ▶️ John buyers. And the things that it does well and the things that it does better

⏹️ ▶️ John than anything else are really important. Like the one I keep coming back to is best battery life of any iPhone ever made,

⏹️ ▶️ John any size and anything. Like it’s the best battery life and it’s thicker to get the best battery life. Nobody cares.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like it’s lighter because of the aluminum. So the thickness doesn’t show up and it feel like a brick, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John Like it feels less dense than the other phones, which maybe makes it feel less luxurious and expensive, but

⏹️ ▶️ John who cares? It’s got a beautiful screen. It gets incredible battery life. It’s the size most people want.

⏹️ ▶️ John It comes in fun colors. It’s the kind of phone that if someone buys it as their first iPhone, they’re gonna be like, boy, iPhones are

⏹️ ▶️ John great. Like, this is the best phone I’ve ever had. Like, it does all the things that I want it to do and it looks nice and it’s pleasant to

⏹️ ▶️ John use and it feels good and the battery lasts all day. And you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John the price is the magic of anchoring. Of like, selling it for the same price that the most expensive iPhone has been for years

⏹️ ▶️ John and years is just, you know, last year we cranked that up, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco even higher. So now we have this

⏹️ ▶️ John new, again, like luxury car, this new ridiculous tier where you can pay us even more money

⏹️ ▶️ John and suddenly, like the regular BMW seems reasonably priced after you’ve looked at the M’s, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, wow, this is like their bargain BMW. No, the M’s are just really expensive. Like

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s the typical you know, so they’re, they’re clever with the money. Like, it would be great if this iPhone

⏹️ ▶️ John was more accessible to more people. It’s not it’s just it’s very expensive phone. But

⏹️ ▶️ John I think it is a wonderful balance for most people. And it’s like,

⏹️ ▶️ John well, Apple used to say this about the Macs when they were trying to cover their excuses for why their Macs

⏹️ ▶️ John were slower than PCs. They’d be like, it’s a well-balanced architecture. Like we didn’t want to have too much

⏹️ ▶️ John of this and too little of that. So everything is kind of evenly balanced. But it’s really true in the XR.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a nicely balanced phone in terms of, well, one of the balancing

⏹️ ▶️ John things, unfortunately, is making sure Apple continues to make its expected margins, right? So they take out

⏹️ ▶️ John a camera, they take out a gig of RAM because they don’t need it, because the

⏹️ ▶️ John graphic buffers are smaller because it’s 2X instead of 3X. Like, they didn’t have to do that, but

⏹️ ▶️ John they wanna maintain their margins, right? But everything they took out, they took it out of, it’s like,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, JPEG compression or MP3 compression. It took out in places where people won’t notice it and gave

⏹️ ▶️ John it things to recommend it, like the, you know, the real long battery life and sacrificing thickness

⏹️ ▶️ John that no one will notice. And yeah, in some ways it makes me wish like the tennis

⏹️ ▶️ John line came in more colors. Maybe it makes me wish that there was a thicker version of the

⏹️ ▶️ John luxury thing. What if I want battery life like that? Can I pay more to get

⏹️ ▶️ John that battery life? No, you can’t. You have to pay less to get that battery life. Like I’ll trade the thickness or whatever. So there’s still some

⏹️ ▶️ John balancing to be done in the line, but, um, and I’m, I’m not, I was going to say, I think this is

⏹️ ▶️ John a great product, very well balanced and will be very successful I was about to say. I honestly don’t know how it will sell

⏹️ ▶️ John because I can’t tell how skewed Apple’s audience or customers

⏹️ ▶️ John are in always being obsessed with buying the best and the most expensive. So

⏹️ ▶️ John maybe we’ll never know exactly how well it sells, but I can tell you if you are in the market for an iPhone

⏹️ ▶️ John at any point until before the next iPhones are released and you’re trying to decide

⏹️ ▶️ John which iPhone is the one you should get, consider the the 10 are don’t consider it a lesser phone. Consider

⏹️ ▶️ John it just a different set of trade-offs than the other phones. I don’t even consider it lesser. It just,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, especially because I feel like the battery life is the type of thing that most people would

⏹️ ▶️ John trade for the 2X camera. Why do I need two cameras? I’ll take the extra hour of battery life. I’ll take it all day long. Oh, and

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s the cheaper phone and it comes in colors. It’s great. I don’t know how many people make that call, but I support that call.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I completely agree. I am really interested to see one in person.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey As I’ve said many times, I feel like the iPhone 10 is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey bigger than I want it to be, but I can’t go back to like an SE sized phone. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey just not going to work. Um, so something even bigger still, I can’t imagine I would really care for it, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I want to try one out. I want to hold one. I want to play with one for a few minutes and see, see what I think. So that’ll be my homework

⏹️ ▶️ Casey between now and the next episode.

Apple event next week

⏹️ ▶️ Casey because we certainly won’t have anything to talk about next episode. Definitely not an entire event,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is happening, what is it? Tuesday the 30th at 10 in the morning in the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one true time zone, which

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I’m really

⏹️ ▶️ Casey excited about. It was funny hearing Jason Bimone having to travel

⏹️ ▶️ Casey across the country to do something Apple related. Yep. This is how the rest of the world lives. Wouldn’t we all go

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the Apple events? Well, no, I’m just saying like when we go to WWDC, Like we have to cross the country

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for WWDC every year. But at least it’s not in San Francisco anymore, am I right?

⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway. Lyle Troxell Well, so we’ll all be in the Brooklyn event, right? Because we got our invitations as press?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Jim Collison Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, totally. Lyle Troxell Well, the theater holds 2,000 people. Obviously we’d be among

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John those 2,000. Jim Collison

⏹️ ▶️ John There’s plenty of room for, I mean, Marco’s practically like right there. He could like walk there. Jim

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Collison If only. Yeah, if somebody wants to put in a good word, good word.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Lyle Troxell He’s a little

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John late for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that. Jim Collison A little late for that. No, I meant in general, you jerks. But anyway, that’s okay. So there’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey an event, it seems pretty clear that iPads are going to be the stars of the show.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey What do we think we’re going to see? And we can either start, I can either start throwing ideas at

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you guys and we can talk about it or if you just want to do like an overview individually of what you think you’re going to see.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey How would you like to handle it, gentlemen? Well,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do have an opening statement. Please. I’m really excited about this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco event because…

⏹️ ▶️ John Because there’s a possibility that the word Mac will be mentioned. A possibility, mind you,

⏹️ ▶️ John not a guarantee.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, yeah. But what we’ve heard, the rumblings we’ve heard about what is likely to be announced at this event

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are really exciting things, but we know pretty much nothing about them.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s actually a really great balance of what’s being spoiled versus what hasn’t been spoiled yet.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco What’s been spoiled? For me, there’s these three major themes to me. There is completely redesigned

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPads.

⏹️ ▶️ John And those have basically been spoiled. What do we not know about them?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, there’s a lot we don’t know about them. All we know about the iPads is that they’re most likely going to have Face

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ID. They’re most likely going to have a more edge-to-edge style design.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if you believe the case rumors, then they have a new connector

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the back for something. A lot of the other stuff that we’ve heard has been based

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on really loose speculation or based on software leaks or software

⏹️ ▶️ Marco spelunking. So that’s things like the Face ID came from that. Things like the USB-C support, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all just from software spelunking. That could be like, so there’s a rumor that it’s gonna have USB-C

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ports, and possibly only USB-C instead of having Lightning, which I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually I would support that decision. That’s based on software support for outputting

⏹️ ▶️ Marco video over USB-C that’s 4K.

⏹️ ▶️ John It could just be over a dongle.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that could literally just be a new Lightning to USB-C dongle that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco can output 4K video. So the fact that that support is there in the software, we don’t actually know that the iPad will

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have USB-C ports based on that. So that’s an unknown. Like, USB-C, huge question mark?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Who knows, right? And does it get USB-C instead of Lightning

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or in addition to Lightning? Does it get more than one USB-C port? Those dramatically change

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what this product is. And by the way, I think that’s a great idea because then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not only can you just have one set of dongles, is like, I mean, look, if we’re going to live in a dongle world,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least you can reuse them between devices.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John They should, they should

⏹️ ▶️ John add two USB-C ports so we can have more than Casey’s MacBook.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, that’s just

⏹️ ▶️ John brutal. Even with one, it can have more because you can charge it while you use the USB-C port.

⏹️ ▶️ John If it had still had lightning,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John mean.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. I’m, I’m guessing it goes to just one USB-C

⏹️ ▶️ Marco port and no lightning. That’s my best guess. My ideal case would be two USB-Cs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and one Lightning, which would really make it like a real power machine, but I don’t see that happening. That would be, yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would be a MacBook Pro at that point. But also, like, you know, like, so the, when this rumor first

⏹️ ▶️ Marco started, one thing I thought was, boy, there’s so many, like, you know, made for iPhone,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco made for iPad, the MFI program, there’s so many, like, peripherals that you can plug into the iPad through

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Lightning port, and there’s, like, you know, like, there’s a lot of audio stuff that you can, like, audio interface and everything, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they wouldn’t want to give that up, right? But then I thought about it some more. I’ve owned a lot of these Lightning

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Port peripherals. And first of all, there aren’t that many. Many of them never even made the jump from the dot connector.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the ones that exist are mostly garbage. Like they’re really not very good.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The most powerful thing you can do with that Lightning Port is use that USB adapter with the charging

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pass-through, keep it powered with the charging port, plug it into a powered USB hub,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then plug in real devices. That’s like the best thing you can do with that port. If you actually want like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardware devices plugged into your iPad. And so getting rid of the lightning devices,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, people would not be very happy if they owned them because there would be no way to adapt

⏹️ ▶️ Marco them, as far as I know. So you’d just lose those if you upgraded your iPad. You just have to throw

⏹️ ▶️ Marco those away and replace them. So that part kind of sucks. But that ecosystem is not very good. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just full of mostly crap and not that much of it. So, to move the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad to the USB-C ecosystem opens up such a world of possibility for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco external device support, even without having a lot of software support on the iPad. Like, just with the built-in, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, HID profile support that it has for standard things, like standard audio devices, standard input devices, like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the built-in support it already has is enough to have a lot of wonderful USB devices

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be natively supported on that device, if it just had the port, and then you wouldn’t need all these dongles. And that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think would be really, really nice for the platform.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I agree. I don’t see any chance of it having USB-C

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Lightning. I think that, I don’t remember which one of you just said it, but I think it would be one USB-C port

⏹️ ▶️ Casey only.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Yeah, that’s the most likely, I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey think. But it would be interesting to have Lightning for sure. But I would expect it’s gonna be,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, my same MacBook scenario all over again. And I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey necessarily think that’s a problem. I think that’s just fine.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it’s like we’re in that world anyway, right? So like we might as well at least be able to use these dongles on more than one device.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’d be great if it had one USB-C port, but no new place to charge the pencil.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey And the pencil

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco was unchanged.

⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s like you can get a pencil and you can plug it into your iPhone to charge it or use a dongle

⏹️ ▶️ John to charge it from your

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco iPad. Like just

⏹️ ▶️ John continuing the trend of the pencil being like the person who loses

⏹️ ▶️ John a musical chair and it’s no place to sit down. Yeah, that’s here. I’m on pencil. I say, oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John everything’s taken. I guess I’ll just I’ll just be here on the desk. Don’t worry. I’m slightly weighted.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like and that’s that that whole thing, like with having that having potentially this new connector

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the back. What is it for? Huge question mark, right? And then what does that mean for the smart keyboard

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the Apple pencil? It means Apple gets to sell you a new smart

⏹️ ▶️ John keyboard and Apple pencil. That’s what

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, of course. But look, they did it every time. She says, I mean, look, they went from nine 9.5 or 9.7 at 10.5 and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had to get a new smart keyboard. Like you know they’re happy to do that, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s you know that’s kind of cost of doing business with this kind of stuff is you know you as the buyer like when

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you buy a new iPad you’re going to buy new accessories for it. That’s just how it goes and that’s how your iPad ends up costing $1000 somehow.

⏹️ ▶️ John And this 9.7 size last well I mean them changing the bezels and everything has caused a little bit of

⏹️ ▶️ John a problem, but sizes last usually more than one year

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco right? Yeah, that’s true, yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s just the smart connector coming into the mix versus before the smart connector with the Bluetooth keyboards. This has been

⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit of a regular, but I don’t think it’s that bad. Honestly, I’d rather have a keyboard that exactly fits than

⏹️ ▶️ John them trying to maintain compatibility through things. And they should continue to

⏹️ ▶️ John rethink their connector strategies,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as we’ve discussed.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John And that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the thing, I really wanna see what this means. This is why this is exciting to me, because we’ve heard

⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough that it sounds like this is gonna be a really cool iPad update with a bunch of major changes.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I want it, but we don’t know what any of them are. Like, and the small rumblings we’ve heard of the directions

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they might be in, things like USB-C, things like a new connector and new pencil

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and probably new keyboard, those are all really exciting because these are all areas that the iPad’s been kind

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of lacking or kind of not great or not as good as it could be. And if Apple has rethought

⏹️ ▶️ Marco these things at some fundamental level, that’s promising. Like, they could just go off the deep end ship

⏹️ ▶️ Marco total crap and give us like, you know, a keyboard that dies with a speck of dust that falls into it. I mean, they would never do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, but you know, if

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey they, if they did, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, they, maybe they’d stick with it for three years and just pretend it’s fine. Uh, but so far the iPad hasn’t had those

⏹️ ▶️ Marco things. Like the iPad smart keyboard is fine. It is totally sealed in. So nothing ever gets in those

⏹️ ▶️ Marco keys. It works very reliably. It feels okay. Uh, and it’s totally fine. So like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you have like the a team and Apple keyboards, uh, working on a new iPad keyboard

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that possibly connects in a more convenient way, working on a new pencil that possibly connects or charges

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever in a more convenient way, and maybe working on designing the new

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad to better support the keyboard and pencil, that’s really exciting. I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco want to see what that means. And we have no clue yet, and that’s even more exciting.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m still fixated on the idea that I put into my own head a couple of shows ago, which I’m assuming there are still no rumors about, because

⏹️ ▶️ John I certainly haven’t seen them, but I, and maybe no one else in the world,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco really

⏹️ ▶️ John wants an OLED iPad, because I watch a lot of TV shows on my iPad and the blacks suck.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, I know it’s silly, like, it’s like, why are you watching? I have a big fancy TV, like, that’s where I watch most of my

⏹️ ▶️ John TV, but sometimes, like, as I’ve talked about on Rectives, there are iPad shows where it’s like, eh,

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not paying that much attention, and it’s before I go to bed and I’ll watch. I mean, I know people love this show, but

⏹️ ▶️ John the Good Place, it’s a short show, It’s like 20 minutes or, you know, it’s a 30 minute show without commercials or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ John I watch The Good Place on my iPad most frequently because it’s like, oh, before I go to bed, I’ll watch one episode. It’s short,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s, you know, like, I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. It’s not like Game of

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Thrones,

⏹️ ▶️ John like these epic imagery. It’s a bunch of people standing around talking. It’s a comedy, right? But I

⏹️ ▶️ John would like that to be better. I would love an OLED iPad. I just, I mean, I’m assuming because there are no rumors that it’s just

⏹️ ▶️ John not in the works and I kind of understand why, but it would be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco neat. I agree it would be really nice, but I don’t think it’s ready yet. I don’t think we’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there yet.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. Are we seeing Macs?

⏹️ ▶️ John I think we are. I think we have to, like, put it this way. If we don’t, it will be

⏹️ ▶️ John very disappointing in a way that I think Apple, if we weren’t going to see any

⏹️ ▶️ John Macs, that Apple would strategically indicate, strategically leak or otherwise

⏹️ ▶️ John prepare the ground for the idea that there would be no Macs whatsoever. It doesn’t mean that the Macs we see will be

⏹️ ▶️ John the Macs that we want, but I feel like if there wasn’t going to be any, if it was, if the only thing at the

⏹️ ▶️ John event was gonna be iPads, and by the way, I’m assuming we all agree, iPads are like a lock,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco right?

⏹️ ▶️ John And will probably be the focus of the event. And now we’re just talking about, in addition to the iPads, what

⏹️ ▶️ John else might there be?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and I think it’s gonna be limited to, you know, a small number of slides

⏹️ ▶️ Marco before the real meat of the event. It’s gonna be like, here’s an intro, look at how great the iPhone is selling, everyone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco loves it. Here’s some quick updates about the Mac, you know, and it’ll be, you know, we’ve updated the iMac with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the new processors that, you know, now it has more cores, et

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John cetera.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Do you think they’d say that on stage? It might get a quick mention, like, you know, iMacs are updated today with, you know, the latest

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Intel whatever generation processors, and then, and you know, maybe some other minor thing. And then-

⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t think they’re gonna put T2s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the 5K iMac? That’s a good question. I would be surprised

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if any new Mac was shipped that didn’t have the T architecture in it. Like, I think they’re all gonna

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have it now because it’s such a dramatic improvement for not only SSD performance and such a gain

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for like manufacturing integration to have that part be one of theirs, but it’s also just massive improvements in security

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the system. And I don’t, like the fact that they put it in even the 13-inch

⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook Pro this summer, and not just the 15, not just the iMac Pro, like there’s a reason they’re putting

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it in all their laptops now. I bet we’re gonna see all Macs shipping with the T-whatever chip

⏹️ ▶️ Marco by, you know, maybe a year from now when they’ve all been updated.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what we talked about when the iMac Pro came out, this isn’t just a thing that I probably this is the new way that Apple makes Macs

⏹️ ▶️ John like because we have the T1 before it, but like the T2 was such a dramatic statement of not just

⏹️ ▶️ John like a fancy thing we’re doing for our top end computer, but like this is the new architecture of Macs going forward,

⏹️ ▶️ John something like this until and unless we do the arm switch or whatever. But the reason I mentioned it for the five K

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac is like if it really is just a speed bump and they just swap the CPUs, it probably wouldn’t mention

⏹️ ▶️ John probably wouldn’t be mentioned on stage. And it would be a way to say, well, this isn’t the new five K Mac.

⏹️ ▶️ John This is just the old 5K iMac with a more traditional speed bump. So I don’t know what the timelines

⏹️ ▶️ John look like on getting the actual new 5K iMac, which will surely have a T something chip in it. I’m just wondering if

⏹️ ▶️ John this one is just going to be like a CPU swap or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever. I’m not expecting, as I think you just implied, I’m not expecting an iMac redesign at this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco event. Also, the iMac just isn’t in that much need of a redesign. Like the bezels

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are a little wide, but it’s fine. No,

⏹️ ▶️ John an internal redesign, like like like the next the next 5K iMac, meaning the next one that

⏹️ ▶️ John has all new internals. Like as you mentioned in a couple of past shows, ditch the spinning drive,

⏹️ ▶️ John use a more iMac Pro-like cooling system, but use all the desktop, all the non-Xeon

⏹️ ▶️ John components. And you know, like just basically a non-Pro version of the iMac Pro, which doesn’t exist. We have the

⏹️ ▶️ John previous generation 5K iMac, and we have the iMac Pro, which represents the next generation.

⏹️ ▶️ John We don’t have a non-Pro of that generation. I don’t know if that’s ready to come yet. So I’m wondering

⏹️ ▶️ John exactly what this 5K iMac will look like inside. Although, honestly,

⏹️ ▶️ John externally, the iMac is probably due for a redesign as well. But if the iMac Pro didn’t get it, I’m not holding my

⏹️ ▶️ John breath to see one anytime soon.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I actually don’t think that it is a lock that we would hear mention on stage,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey even if there was a slight visual refresh, even if they

⏹️ ▶️ Casey add the T2 chip. I think that they, they, I think Apple would be willing to do a lot

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with at most a little hand wavy. Oh, and we’ve got some new IMAX.

⏹️ ▶️ John I got to fill time. Like if it’s just the, if it’s just the iPads, there has to be something else. So what else do we think it’s going to be?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, Mac mini, that’s honestly, that’s the funny thing is that like what’s rumored for this event,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is backed up by a little bit more than just wishcasting. What’s rumored is like, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the magical unicorns, things we, things that we’ve been wanting forever and thought we’d never get a replacement

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the MacBook Air and a new Mac Mini and a new iPad Mini was recently like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey what?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Where did that come from? Like, so like, and I don’t, I don’t necessarily think we’re going to get all those things, but it sure does

⏹️ ▶️ Marco seem like we are probably going to get at least the MacBook Air replacement and maybe even

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Mac Mini. That is amazing to me. And, and even, I mean, look,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple over the last few years has shown two different paths they can take when they do massive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco new products like this. They can make it really suck. That’s what the 2014 Mac Mini did. That’s what the 2016 MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro did. And that was probably about it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the suck department. Or they can do something really frickin’ amazing that shows that they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco still care and are still capable of greatness, like the iMac Pro. The iMac Pro is awesome.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s so, so good. Still now, I don’t know how many months in, I love my iMac Pro

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much. I have zero complaints. It is perfect. So, we

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know Apple is capable of greatness still, but we also know that they don’t reliably deliver it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, the question is, if we do have a MacBook Air replacement,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and if we do have a new Mac mini, are they good, or do they make these products even more punitive than they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco already were, and then leave them that way for five years? So, I’m guessing, let’s start

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the Mac mini, because that’s, I think, the lesser known thing. I would be shocked.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think all of us would be shocked just to see a new Mac Mini. It’s such a long shot. It’s been such a long shot for so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco long. It’s been the butt of jokes, like whenever anybody’s doing event predictions and some listener

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is like, what about an iPad Mini? And we’re like, ha ha ha, that’ll never happen, right? The fact that it actually is rumored to happen,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco credibly, at this event is shocking and would be amazing if it happens.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But there’s so many questions. I mean, we covered this a few weeks back, so I’m not gonna go into too much, but like, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, what does it have in it? Does it have, you know, Like my theory was that it’ll

⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably be the guts of the new 13-inch MacBook Pro. So it’ll have the T2, because I think all new Macs will have the T2. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’ll have a T2, it’ll have like the, you know, that 28-watt processor class. You could have, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco four cores in it again, hopefully. I don’t expect them

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to increase the expendability or upgradability of it from the 2014 model, which

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is basically none. I, so I expect it to be totally locked down, everything soldered to the board, including the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco SSD. I don’t expect it to support hard drives at all. There was a rumor a while back that it would be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco quote pro-focused. I think what that means is SSD only, like the laptops, like the iMac Pro.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I’m guessing it is a very small box. Unfortunately, I think it’s also

⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna have way fewer ports, and I consider that a loss because part of what

⏹️ ▶️ Marco makes the Mac Mini so versatile for so many different things is that it has a bunch of ports in the back and of all different

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kinds. And so chances are, whatever you need to plug into it, you can probably plug in without a dongle. And I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think the new one would have that. I think the new one, they would go for making it super, super small,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco which they don’t need to because no one looks at their Mac mini and says, boy, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wish this was smaller.

⏹️ ▶️ John I do, I don’t even have a Mac mini.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco You don’t have one. No,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the people who have them or who want them are like, I just want this thing to be updated for God’s sakes.

⏹️ ▶️ John It could be a little smaller. We need to find the link to that video, because we did actually cover this really well. And so you should go back and

⏹️ ▶️ John listen to that episode if you haven’t, so we’ll sound really smart when the Mac mini comes out. Because

⏹️ ▶️ John I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we did cover it really well before. Yeah, so, but either way, I hope they put as many ports as they possibly can fit on the thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know they won’t, but that makes the current one useful and it will make the new one useful too.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But ultimately, anything about this is going to be a pleasant surprise, even

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they make it suck even more in some ways, which they probably will. That’s been their pattern with the Mac

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mini, is two steps forward, one step back. So we’ll see about that. But the fact

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that there’s going to be a Mac Mini at all, that is credibly rumored, is really, really promising

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on some levels.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think what they should do is come out and announce that they’re working on a new Mac Mini to thunderous applause

⏹️ ▶️ John and say, we’ve listened to Mac Mini owners and we think we know what we want and we’re gonna give them a new Mac Mini. And then sometime

⏹️ ▶️ John in the middle of next year say, Mac Mini’s not gonna be ready in 2019, the new Mac Mini’s a 2020 product. At

⏹️ ▶️ John least it would be something. Because the Mac Mini people think they’ve suffered, but there’s nothing

⏹️ ▶️ John like the interminable wait after they tell you that they’re working on a new Mac Pro to actually

⏹️ ▶️ John getting that Mac Pro. I have to wait until June to even see anything about it probably.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I was gonna ask, so are we gonna have even a tip of the hat in the direction of the Mac Pro during this event?

⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s a perfect time for a trailer.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John agree it’s a perfect

⏹️ ▶️ Marco time for a trailer, I don’t think we’re gonna see it.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I don’t think there’ll be a trailer either.

⏹️ ▶️ John It feels like June, but I’m not even, I’m not even, you know, go for it, I’ll be

⏹️ ▶️ John pleasantly surprised, but I’m mostly thinking about, so the Mini, I still have

⏹️ ▶️ John trouble believing it, but it’s conceivable. The laptop thing, you kept describing it

⏹️ ▶️ John as a MacBook Air replacement. I’m just conceptualizing it as

⏹️ ▶️ John a new laptop that is not one of their existing laptop lines. Yes. But I have

⏹️ ▶️ John no idea what the hell that will mean in terms of like, what does this product mean? And as we said before, I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John even think it means they’ll stop selling the frigging Air, right? but just a new laptop, a new laptop, and

⏹️ ▶️ John a new laptop is a potential vehicle for all our hopes and dreams, because maybe it has an actual different keyboard.

⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe it doesn’t, who knows, but like a new laptop gives you an opportunity to not just, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John beg for scraps of modifications to the existing laptops that we have frustrations with, but to say, if

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a new laptop, everything’s up for grabs. This could be the new and a whole new line of laptops, like, or

⏹️ ▶️ John it could just be more of the same.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, this could be the new direction that all their laptops

⏹️ ▶️ Marco will be migrated to over the next couple of years. Like, that’s what they do. Like, they start with one model. Like, the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco generation that we see today started in 2015 with the MacBook 12, actually the MacBook 1.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, it started with that. That showed, like, the new way forward, the new construction style, the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco new keyboard, all the, you know, some of the, you know, USB-C only, like, all that stuff. They started that in 2015 and then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco brought it to the rest of the line in 2016. If this is a new style and not just, like, a really cheap

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cut-down thing, it might be a preview of what we’re gonna see for the rest of the line. So it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is exciting from that point of view. It’s also just exciting that even if it is something totally different, which it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco seems like it probably would, I mean, to get out of the way, one possibility is it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just a really cut down MacBook Escape. It could be that their new low cost laptop is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just a really stripped out MacBook Escape. So maybe it has like. Same keyboard. Yeah, it would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have the same keyboard, it would have the same case, maybe it has a crappier screen, Maybe it goes down to one USB-C

⏹️ ▶️ Marco port, like Casey’s Unfortunate Beast of a machine. You know, maybe it goes to, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it wouldn’t have a P3 screen, maybe it wouldn’t have, you know, a good processor,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, who knows? Like, there are ways they could cut it down, you know, they could really cut back the stock

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hard drive size and RAM and everything else. So like, there are ways they could cut that machine down

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to give it a low entry price, to get it kind of near where the error has been.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really hope that’s not what they do. I think that’s what they were hoping to do when they launched

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this in 2016, but I think the market has spoken, and the market has said, that’s not what we want,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s why the market keeps buying MacBook Airs. Because if you remember, even in the 2016 introduction of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the new MacBook Pro line, when Phil Schiller introduced the Escape, he mentioned

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the MacBook Air, and basically said something on the lines of, he positioned the MacBook Escape

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as the new MacBook Air replacement. But the market just didn’t agree with that, and has not,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as far as I know, has not really bought them to fill that role. And for lots of good reasons,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, ports, price, keyboard. So anyway, whatever, so assuming that it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just a really cut down MacBook Escape, that it’s actually a different laptop, it’s so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco exciting because we don’t see brand new laptops from Apple very often that are totally different new styles,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or new bodies, or new generations. So even though it’s gonna be most likely a low-end product,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s still gonna be exciting. The 12-inch MacBook is a very low-end product, but people love them, and people

⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy them. Even people who could afford higher-end models, so many

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of those people buy the 12-inch one because of its other qualities. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco anytime Apple releases a new laptop, it’s exciting, even if you don’t think it’s gonna be the kind you want, because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it might be the kind that you end up wanting, or it might be really cool in other ways that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you find useful or nice or pleasant. So I personally am curious

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about this just to see, number one, what do they do with the port situation? And number

⏹️ ▶️ Marco two, this is really my number one, what do they do with the keyboard? That’s my huge question.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Are they gonna have the same keyboard or is it gonna be tweaked or different or what? Huge question mark for me.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But ultimately, I just hope that whatever they do does

⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually finally replace the MacBook Air. because the MacBook Air,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco while it is wonderful, has had the same design and general

⏹️ ▶️ Marco specs for eight years. And when it was launched, the 2010

⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook Air was one of Apple’s most successful products in their entire history.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco This generation of this laptop was flawless. It was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco perfect. It was improved over the previous generation in every way. There were

⏹️ ▶️ Marco zero downsides to it. It was affordable, it was fast, it was versatile, it was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco widely appealed. Like, it was such a good computer for so long. It

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really does deserve a place in history, in Apple’s history, for being so successful. It also deserves

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to die eight years later. Like, it’s really, it finally needs to die. It needs to be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco replaced. There is no reason they should still be selling that body style in 2018.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco There should be a replacement. Apple should do it justice by giving it a really good replacement.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think they might be about to do that, and that’s why I’m excited.

⏹️ ▶️ John Needs to die, but mine has been killed, which is why I’m actually in the market, potentially, for whatever new

⏹️ ▶️ John laptop, because I have

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey a 2011.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco What happened to you, did you lend

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it to

⏹️ ▶️ John Casey? Ooh. It’s a 2011 MacBook Air. Now, my children use it, my daughter dropped it, cracked the screen.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, it is, she beat that thing to hell. The only thing that finally killed it is cracking the screen, because then you

⏹️ ▶️ John get those lovely, like, green and colorful, like, lines of pixels going, you know, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John a mess, you can actually see physical cracks. And it still works, you can still use it as long as you don’t like, you can see what

⏹️ ▶️ John the heck you’re trying to do. But it’s dead, right? So it’s been a problem in our house since the school year

⏹️ ▶️ John started because they have to do homework on the computer and then I ended up using my wife’s computer and then they both need to do homework at the

⏹️ ▶️ John same time. So we basically need a minimum one homework laptop. And I keep rephrasing

⏹️ ▶️ John it as that because I’m gonna try to say that you can’t use it unless you’re doing homework because

⏹️ ▶️ John honestly, like they do everything else in their iPads and their phones anyway, right? It’s only when they need to use

⏹️ ▶️ John Google Docs with a keyboard or my son is taking a programming course in Swift. So

⏹️ ▶️ John he’s taking a programming course in Swift, but kids these days, right? What does he use to do his programming homework? And it’s because they make

⏹️ ▶️ John him do it in the course. He types his Swift code into a giant fancy text box in a web browser

⏹️ ▶️ John on some website that lets you type your Swift code in and run it for you.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh

⏹️ ▶️ John God. Everything is on the web, including programming Swift. Because that’s just, I showed him Playgrounds, but it’s like,

⏹️ ▶️ John oh, but I don’t know how to get it to print something. It just shows me the results on the right-hand side. like whatever, just go back to what your teacher wants you

⏹️ ▶️ John to do. It’s fine. Anyway, we need a homework

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco laptop to be fair.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I still stand by the fact that Swift is a terrible learning language and is not at all for beginners.

⏹️ ▶️ John It is a complicated language, but I think it’s a reasonable to learn in like because you don’t you’re not learning all the nuances of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Swift. You’re just like you need you need a language that’s like forgiving and and nice and friendly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Swift is just such a dick like you can’t it’s just no I don’t if you just

⏹️ ▶️ John do the simple things like they’re just doing like conditionals loops functions arrays

⏹️ ▶️ John strings. fine, right? Like, you know, not into the parts that are annoying and swift yet. And you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyway, Jared Ranere Swift is the swiftest is a friend that you kind of fall in in friendly love

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with real hard, right? Like, oh, there’s this person that that just really gets me and I love

⏹️ ▶️ Casey this person. And then after you really, really get to know them, you realize, ooh,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, they have some dark spots that I was not prepared for. Now I’m not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco sure how

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Jared Ranere Swift is the friend that insults you within and five minutes sitting down at the table for the first time to meet it, and you’re like, all right, I’ll see you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco later.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Ah, you’re such a baby.

⏹️ ▶️ John The only part of the ugliness that’s coming through a little bit is so much of the standard library deals with optionals, which is a concept that I think beginners

⏹️ ▶️ John shouldn’t have to

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey understand. That’s very true.

⏹️ ▶️ John He’s mostly taking it in stride. But anyway, the whole point is we need a homework laptop. So I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John watching this event. I’ve been holding off on it and dealing with contention for the computer and all sorts of whining

⏹️ ▶️ John and everything. This is like, just wait, there’s an Apple event coming up. And then no matter what happens, if they don’t do anything,

⏹️ ▶️ John then we’ll, I don’t know, we’ll buy something. But I really hope they offer a laptop that is cheaper

⏹️ ▶️ John than any of their existing ones that is fine for doing homework on. That’s what I want. And

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I don’t wanna

⏹️ ▶️ John buy another MacBook Air because 2011 MacBook Air, if I bought a new one, I’d feel like I was buying

⏹️ ▶️ John another 2011 MacBook Air. I understand I’m not, but the screen is still basically the same. The case

⏹️ ▶️ John is the same, the CPU is faster, the SSD is faster and bigger. But other than that, I don’t wanna buy another

⏹️ ▶️ John MacBook Air. I want a new laptop. So I am actually watching this event with the intent to spend

⏹️ ▶️ John money. Obviously, I’ll probably also want a new iPad and my wife definitely

⏹️ ▶️ John wants a new iPad, but neither one of us needs one, so I’m gonna try to hold the line on that. We’ll see how it goes.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So you are getting a computer, maybe one or two iPads. Marco, what’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey your intention sitting here now, not really knowing what’s gonna happen?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I use my iPad every day.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m using it more and more over time, not less. It’s a 10.5. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I might rationalize whatever new one comes out. Ultimately though, my 10.5

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is fine. With one exception, the screen coding on this model

⏹️ ▶️ Marco shows fingerprints like crazy. It always looks horrible. Like, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve even heard that like the more recently produced ones don’t have this problem, but mine was like one of the first earlier ones.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it like, no previous iPad and no iPhone I’ve ever owned

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has shown fingerprints the way my 10.5 inch iPad Pro does. It looks horrible all of the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco time. To the point where it actually like, it actually interferes with content displaying on screen

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when it’s on. Like you have to like constantly be like wiping stuff off the screen. It’s really gross.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I would love to replace it just for that. But ultimately that’s a really small reason

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to replace like a thousand dollar iPad. So we’ll

⏹️ ▶️ Casey see. I have seen you use much less to purchase much more.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I, if the new cheap laptop exists and has

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a non-Butterfly keyboard, I will buy it. I don’t care how low in the specs are,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will buy it. That’s how much I hate the Butterfly keyboard.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I keep hearing Butterfly keyboard and I keep thinking of the 701C and I know that’s not what you mean,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but our RIP little buddy. You know, Raffola reminded me of something that I meant to ask you, John. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey an excellent question. So they announce a brand new Mac mini

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and an Apple 4K display or even 5K display. It doesn’t really matter, but something

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is made by Apple. What are you doing, John?

⏹️ ▶️ John Nothing, I don’t want a Mac mini.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John had a feeling. What

⏹️ ▶️ John do you want

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do with a Mac mini? I

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know, mini things. No. I need to hold up some component of my Mac Pro. Yeah, you just… I

⏹️ ▶️ John want to raise… Can I put it underneath my monitor to raise it up a little bit because Apple doesn’t make adjustable stands?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe you can put it under a HomePod to keep it from making a ring on the desk.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I

⏹️ ▶️ John interfere with the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bass. No, and like I have a Mac Mini for home server

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff, but it’s totally fine. Like I don’t see any need to replace it until it dies. And it’s probably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to be a while.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, this is possibly the most ATP episode we’ve ever recorded. We started

⏹️ ▶️ Casey out talking about, well, briefly talking about WaffleMakers, which you may or may not hear in the beginning, but you’ll hear at

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the end, critiquing how all these social networks are from the perspective of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey old dudes. Then we talked about math and lookahead limiters. We briefly touched on a brand

⏹️ ▶️ Casey new iPhone that’s never existed before. And then for the iPad event, we decided to talk about Macs

⏹️ ▶️ Casey instead.

⏹️ ▶️ John I like to think of it as the Mac event, really. I know it’s the iPad event, but as far as I’m concerned, if any mention

⏹️ ▶️ John of Max is made, it suddenly becomes the Mac event.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and to be fair, like we did talk about the iPad a lot also. And yeah, and I think it’s it’s going to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be most like the iPads are going to be the focus of the event. I think I do think the Max are going to be relegated

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to a brief segment of slides at the beginning of the event, kind of like in like the low priority

⏹️ ▶️ Marco updates like, hey, we touched the Apple TV. Here’s an update like it’d be like in that section of the keynote. Right. So it’s not not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to be a major thing, but even, like, right now, we have these pretty significant

⏹️ ▶️ Marco rumored Mac updates. If any of them happen, that’s newsworthy. Like, if we get the low-end

⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptop or the Mac Mini, both of those are newsworthy and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco awesome and that we’ve been waiting for both for a long time. So, here we go. I really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hope we get them. I’m very excited to see what this event is. And I’m more excited about this event than

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve been in a while because of what is rumored, but yet how much we still

⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I agree. I, I get the feeling that this is going to be

⏹️ ▶️ Casey really, really interesting. And I don’t have a lot of specifics as we’ve already

⏹️ ▶️ Casey discussed, but it seems like it’s going to be interesting. And I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey haven’t felt that way in a while. I don’t think, you know, we, I, we all thought the iPhone 10

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was going to be interesting, but we also knew most of what was coming. And I don’t get the feeling like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know most of what was what is about to come. We’ll see what ends up actually happening. But it seems as you’ve

⏹️ ▶️ Casey been saying, Marco, over and over again, I think you’re right that this is this is kind of up in the air. And that’s really

⏹️ ▶️ Casey exciting.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Warby Parker, who believes your glasses should not cost

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⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they’re doing good for the world on your behalf. They also have sunglasses, even if you don’t wear glasses, I don’t

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⏹️ ▶️ Marco Here’s how this works. They send you, for free, five pairs of glasses of your choice.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whatever you wanna try, you know, you try them out, see how the frames look on you, see how they fit. They will send you up to five pairs.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You try them on for five days, and then you send them back with a prepaid return

⏹️ ▶️ Marco shipping label. None of that is, there’s no obligation, you don’t have to buy anything, they don’t bother you, they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t hassle you. There’s no like automatic buy if you don’t do something. They send you the try-on kit,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you send it back when you’re done, and then you can decide whether you want to buy any of them or not. They also

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have an app to help you out with looks and buying and everything. Their app is super easy to use. And if you have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco an iPhone X, you can use the brand new feature called Find Your Fit. This uses the iPhone X’s true

⏹️ ▶️ Marco depth camera to map and measure your facial features. It’s pretty amazing, really. And then it can use those measurements

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to recommend about 12 frames that are likely to be the best fit for your face, and it only takes a few

⏹️ ▶️ Marco seconds. So check all of this out today at warbyparker.com slash ATP.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you can see for yourself, you can get that home try-on kit, you can try on your glasses up to five frames,

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⏹️ ▶️ Marco days, check it out today. Once again, warbyparker.com slash ATP to get that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco home try on program. Thank you so much to Warby Parker for sponsoring our show.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey We got an interesting question from Cameron Deardorff. Cameron writes, Apple names their chip series

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with a letter. We have the A series on iOS and other devices, the S series for watches, security T-ships, and some

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Macs, W, etc. On an infinite timescale, writes Cameron, In which

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple puts ARM chips into Macs, what letters should the chip series get? So to recap, A is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey system on a chip, S is for the watch, I’m sorry, A is the iOS system on a chip, S is for the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey watch, W is the Bluetooth Wi-Fi system on a chip, T is the Mac security system on a chip,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and there’s also M, which is the motion coprocessor. So John Syracuse, so what

⏹️ ▶️ Casey would the Apple Mac, see Apple Design Mac CPU, what letter would that

⏹️ ▶️ John have? It’s easy, the answer is A. Really? Yep, it’ll be A and a bigger number. Boom,

⏹️ ▶️ John done. Guaranteed.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John did not see that coming.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Take it to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the bank. Really, that confident? I was gonna go with R or S, which is partially influenced by our

⏹️ ▶️ Casey chat over the last few

⏹️ ▶️ John days. Yeah, you’re in the car thing, yeah. The Mac Pro GT2 RS.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess it would be R then, because S is taken.

⏹️ ▶️ John GT2 RS, I was using Porsche, thank the Lord.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m with you, I’m with you, I’m with you. I’m just, I’m re-looking at my list I put in the show notes. Now I’m saying Porsche

⏹️ ▶️ John like Marco. what’s happening

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me. We’ve ruined you, John. Marco, what letter are they going to use?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I thought about this. At first I thought that X would be kind of cool. Not only because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John it would introduce… I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you mean 10. I was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey going to say like it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would introduce all sorts of horrible pronunciation jokes. Like imagine if it was like the X1X

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s like one of like you it’s pronounced X110. But like so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one thing to consider though with this lettering is that that Mac chip names need

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to represent a much wider range of capability at any given

⏹️ ▶️ Marco time than the iOS A series. iOS devices all have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically the same power budget. The phone gets the A12, right? And then the iPad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has the A12X, but the A12X is the same chip as the A12 for the most part.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sometimes it’s a little bit higher clocked. One year it had one more core, I had three instead of two, but for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the most part, the main difference is that the X versions

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have more GPU bandwidth, and because they’re driving way more pixels. But for the most part, those

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are basically the same chip. But in Macs, you have a huge variety

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of basically thermal classes. You have the little five watt chips that are in the 12 inch,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the way up to the 180 or 200 watt chip in the iMac Pro. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have all sorts of models in between. So you need, there’s gonna need to be more than just like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco every year, you can’t just have like the A12 and the A12X cover the entire range of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Macs. Like that’s not enough to denote the differences. Even if they are very different,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you would still want more letters to denote that. And so I didn’t wanna pick X as the first

⏹️ ▶️ Marco letter because I think we’re gonna need that as one of the suffixes for like the pro

⏹️ ▶️ Marco version of the chip. So you want like the something 10X to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be like maybe the pro version that’s in the iMac Pro and the Mac Pro.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple hasn’t used Z. You can put a Z at the end of the suffix for a speed suffix. And then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re also gonna probably need more letter suffixes for like some of the other ones. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I thought maybe like a C or an L for the super low power one. Because C is used in cheap

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cars and L is for low power. And then like.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like the Mac LC, Celeron, all sorts of great things

⏹️ ▶️ Marco going on with that. iPhone 5C, right, that does a thing. So, you know, C for like the cheap

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one, basically, or like the low power one, and then like no modifier for like the middle

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one, that’s like the one that’s in like the 13 inch laptops and the 4K iMac, like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the kind of like mid-range, like base model processor gets no suffix. And then maybe for the high

⏹️ ▶️ Marco end, you have X, and maybe if you need another one in the middle, you use S, because Apple uses

⏹️ ▶️ Marco S for like the faster one, you know, so I would have, My vote for the first

⏹️ ▶️ Marco letter is M, even though it’s already been used for the motion co-processor, because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco A, they don’t talk about the motion co-processor anymore. The last time we heard about the M1 chip, I think was when the iPhone 5

⏹️ ▶️ Marco came

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John out. M7,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? M7? Oh yeah, was that it? Yeah, you’re right. They started

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco at 7 there.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so I don’t, we haven’t heard about it since. We never heard

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about an M8. It isn’t a separate chip anymore. It’s built into the A-Series amount of chip now, so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as far as I know. So it’s not a thing anymore. So that’s available as far as I’m concerned.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It also avoids confusion with the iOS lineup. It

⏹️ ▶️ Marco avoids most trademarks that might be a problem. Like BMW has the M cars, but that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a totally different industry. It’s probably fine for Apple to use it for chips. What about all those roads in England?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Oh, yeah, maybe,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah. But yeah, because I mean, it’s like Audi has cars that begin with A and have a number after them, but that doesn’t mean a problem because it’s a totally

⏹️ ▶️ Marco different industry, right? So, you know, I’m guessing M would be available to use. It avoids,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as far as I know, it avoids all of Intel’s trademarks. Using X might be a problem with the Intel Xeon. They

⏹️ ▶️ Marco certainly can’t use I. Intel has trademarked on I out the I, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so they can’t go anywhere near that. M is available. It stands for Mac.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It also means fast to BMW people. It’s a cool letter. It’s right in the middle of the alphabet. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco my proposal here is you’d have, say, you have the M1, right? And this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is for the low-end laptops and the 4K.

⏹️ ▶️ John Has to be the 1M because of that really fast Mac that they introduced a while ago.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Nicely

⏹️ ▶️ Casey done,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey nicely

⏹️ ▶️ Marco done. And then you have like the M1C for the 12-inch, the M1S

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the high-end

⏹️ ▶️ John laptops. As you enumerate this, it’s making me think you are perfect for Apple’s naming because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco these are terrible. I know, yeah. And then the M1X would be in the highest-end

⏹️ ▶️ Marco 15-inch laptop, the iMac Pro and the Mac Pro.

⏹️ ▶️ John You talking about all these things is making me think that the, I know there’s questions about what letter would it be, but it’s making

⏹️ ▶️ John me think about something that allows me to bring destiny into the podcast for the second time in two

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco weeks. Oh no, nicely

⏹️ ▶️ John done. You guys are not familiar with a StatCrunch? You know what a StatCrunch is? Nope. Well,

⏹️ ▶️ John you

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco are familiar with it.

⏹️ ▶️ John Is that an exercise? You are familiar with it in a different form because you’re familiar with GPU names.

⏹️ ▶️ John So if you, like the first letter is the first letter, but the idea of having a letter followed by numbers,

⏹️ ▶️ John especially if year over year, like with the A series on the phones, you know, like last year was the A11, this year is the

⏹️ ▶️ John A12. At a certain point, you run into problems. And you’re on the A37 versus the 38, you’re like, eh,

⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like it’s a problem. Like the numbers start getting too big, they become unwieldy. And your note about the range

⏹️ ▶️ John in the Mac line, that you’re probably gonna need some more numbers there than you need in the iOS line, at the very least one or two

⏹️ ▶️ John more numbers than you have in the iOS line, just because of the range. And if every one of those numbers needs to go up every year,

⏹️ ▶️ John or change or whatever, eventually the numbers start to get big and they start to become meaningless people can’t remember the distinctions anymore,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? That happens in GPUs. Look at the you know, the ATI now AMD

⏹️ ▶️ John line where it was, you know, the Radeon and then some number it was like the 1000 series 2000 series 3000 8000 9001 to get around 9000 is like, are we going

⏹️ ▶️ John to go 10,000? No, you have a stat crunch that

⏹️ ▶️ John crunch in an MMO is when you’ve been given higher level items that have some stat about them.

⏹️ ▶️ John And like maybe when the game rolls out, like the highest level things are like 100 because it’s a cool number. It’s like, wow, you have a level 100

⏹️ ▶️ John whatever, right? But But then an expansion comes out and you need to raise the level cap or raise the highest

⏹️ ▶️ John level of your items and that’s like 110, 120, 130. Eventually you’re up to like 900. Do you want to go to 1000? It’s going to blow

⏹️ ▶️ John your UI, it’ll take four digits or whatever. So you have a stat crunch, which means that

⏹️ ▶️ John everybody’s numbers go down, but nothing gets less powerful. It’s just that you change like the scale ratio. So

⏹️ ▶️ John what was before 500 is now 350, but it’s exactly the same damage as it always was. We’ve just

⏹️ ▶️ John done a stat crunch and AMD did the same thing with its video cards. they restarted the numbering and went to

⏹️ ▶️ John like hundreds instead of thousands and with a different, you know, like, because they just get too big. So no matter what they

⏹️ ▶️ John pick on the Mac line, and probably eventually on the iOS line, too, they’re gonna have to have a stat crunch if they go with the same naming

⏹️ ▶️ John scheme. All that said, the my one meta comment about naming is we’ve learned anything from

⏹️ ▶️ John the last several years of Apple naming is any system that we think we come up with that sounds sensible

⏹️ ▶️ John is probably not what they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco gonna do, because they

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey always surprise

⏹️ ▶️ John us with something that is just a head scratcher. And it’s like, what,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey The only

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco last time they did something

⏹️ ▶️ John that made sense, I still didn’t like, which is the tvOS, iOS, macOS, like case, but at least that makes

⏹️ ▶️ John sense and it’s consistent, but it’s bad. But everything else they do is just like 10R, 10S max.

⏹️ ▶️ John So, you know, even though I was so confident in my A-series thing, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John probably more likely that they will be like, no, we’re naming them after like, you know, kinds

⏹️ ▶️ John of bread. I thought you’d do like A-naming or something, Like, why the

⏹️ ▶️ John hell are the Mac operating systems named after places in California? Because that’s what somebody felt like doing. So who knows? Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John Casey, what’s your guess? This is the M7 Rai. I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey mean, I stand by like R, because of the car connotation, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco’s convinced me pretty strongly that M has something to it. So I think

⏹️ ▶️ Casey M or R.

⏹️ ▶️ John M or R too.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Nice. But not in France.

#askatp: No-regression updates

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so let me tell you a short story. On Twitter, it is very popular to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey make some sort of really cheesy and silly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey pun out of your name around Halloween time. And that’s all well and good until

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco you use it. First of all, no, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco go

⏹️ ▶️ Casey ahead. Well, right.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco It’s never

⏹️ ▶️ Casey good. Well, here’s the thing. Then you write into a podcast with a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey question. And now I’m in the position that I have to read out the following from Michael

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Goulbriel. Are you rethinking that now, Michael?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, new tech or products often come with regressions, necessary, like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey LCD or plasma ads latency, or sometimes not necessary, such as the iPhones lose the headphone

⏹️ ▶️ Casey jacks. What was the last of each Apple product line without regressions you cared about,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey subjectively better in any way that matters to you? So I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey guess we can round robin this by platform. So let’s start with the iPhone.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have not bought a new phone in a year, but I don’t feel like I had

⏹️ ▶️ Casey any regressions in my iPhone X. Like Face ID has always worked pretty darn well for me. I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t feel like I miss Touch ID at all. I feel like my iPhone X is pretty much without compromise.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, how do you feel about the iPhone line specifically? When was the last time you didn’t have a compromise on something

⏹️ ▶️ Casey new?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think this entire question is not gonna go as Michael might’ve expected.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Because- It’s only gonna be the most recent product in every line.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Almost all of my answers are the most recent model. But yeah, the XS

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has no regressions compared to the X. Now, if you look at the X compared to the 7

⏹️ ▶️ Marco before it, maybe Face ID

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a regression sometimes in some ways, but overall, it’s fine. compared to Touch

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ID, it’s mostly fine. And so if I look at literally

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the last product compared to the one before it, like the XS compared to the X has

⏹️ ▶️ Marco zero regressions. But even the X compared to the 7 has, I think, nothing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really cared about. John?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, if I’m not talking about products that I own, yeah, the XS has no regressions over the X. But I would say that the

⏹️ ▶️ John X has regressions over the 7. But again, this is for me personally, because I prefer the phone to be a little

⏹️ ▶️ John bit smaller. And so I like the size of the 7 better and I’m still slightly struggling with,

⏹️ ▶️ John again, not Touch ID versus Face ID, but the Home button. So the 7 is the last one

⏹️ ▶️ John that I owned in this line that I felt like had no regressions. The 7 lost the

⏹️ ▶️ John headphone jack. I thought that might’ve bothered me, but it didn’t,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know. In the end, it didn’t. I forgot my dongle once. It only happened once and it’s fine.

⏹️ ▶️ John But yeah, I feel like it’s mostly the size. Like I like the 7 size slightly better than the 10

⏹️ ▶️ John size. And I would consider that a minor regression. But taking the face value,

⏹️ ▶️ John 10S versus 10, 10S has no regressions.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey For the watch, I still have not bought one. I’m probably going to try to buy one when I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey go look at the 10er next week. But I feel like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey as excited as I am to try the new one and from the position of not owning

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one yet, I think that my Series 3 that’s on my wrist as we speak is probably the most

⏹️ ▶️ Casey recent one without regression because it added cellular, didn’t really give up much on battery

⏹️ ▶️ Casey life, and is still working great a year on. Whereas I feel like from the moment I buy

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a Series 4, it’s either going to be a hair smaller than I want or a hair bigger than I want. Marco, you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t really believe in the Apple Watch, but nevertheless, what was the last one that did not have regressions?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I almost picked the Series 4. The only reason I didn’t is because of software.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that not only is the built-in software just a little bit buggy with the new curved screen just still,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they still need to work that out, but I think the curved complications on the old faces,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like my favorite utility face, really hurt. That, like, I still have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not found a face that I’m happy with on the Series 4 that has analog hands.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, most of the time I just end up using Solar, which has the digital time and the big sun thing through it. I love the way Solar

⏹️ ▶️ Marco looks. Even Solar is buggy as hell on this watch because a lot of times

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’ll, like, it seems like all the complications will just crash. So they all just disappear. And you can’t, and so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you just have no complications for a while until you like force push and go to customize and go back

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then they all appear again. So like, it’s buggy. Like the software is not ready for this watch yet.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But if the software was better, I would pick the Series 4 because it is wonderful in so many

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ways. Because I can’t do that yet though, my official answer right now is the Series 3. It did

⏹️ ▶️ Marco get thicker than the one before it, but it wasn’t by enough that I really cared that much. And it was so much faster

⏹️ ▶️ Marco than the Series 2 that I thought it was worth it. But yeah, Series 3 had no major downsides.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, wait, wait, no, the red dot, that’s a big one.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Oh, why

⏹️ ▶️ John did

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you

⏹️ ▶️ John ruin it? And

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it was thicker. And it was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thicker. Oh God, okay, Series 2, I guess, would be the, like, again, really, I should be picking the Series 4 because I am

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very happy with it, but I really wish the software was a little bit tweaked on it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s, it’s probably the series four in reality, but if I’m, if I’m being a real stickler,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’ll be then the series two.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. See, I think the dot is a bummer, but I don’t think it’s enough that it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey actively bothered me to consider it a regret, a regression in the spirit of the question.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco So I stick with real

⏹️ ▶️ Casey bad. I stick by series three for me, John, do you have any thoughts on this?

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m pick the series four cause the things that Marco mentioned, I don’t care about. Like I’m not so picky about watch faces. Not that I

⏹️ ▶️ John even have one, but I don’t, I don’t care about the curve complications. I’m sure I could find some watch face that’s fine. I would just use utility with

⏹️ ▶️ John some whatever. Like it doesn’t have any regressions for me. I definitely wouldn’t pick the three because of the thickness.

⏹️ ▶️ John And so I would have to go back to two before. But I think the four is it does not have any regressions that I care about.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I pad the last one that I bought and the last one without,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think, any compromises to me was my iPad mini that I feel like I got 13 years ago

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John because

⏹️ ▶️ John what regressions to the iPad Pro nine point seven

⏹️ ▶️ Casey have. I don’t want a 9.7 inch iPad. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ John not a regression, though.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey It’s for me. From a

⏹️ ▶️ John regression from the previous model of the iPad 9.7.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The regression is he doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John own it. No, that’s why it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John worse. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco like saying

⏹️ ▶️ John the 12.9 inch iPad is a regression from the mini because it’s too big.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yes,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s exactly what I’m saying. That’s exactly what I’m saying. It doesn’t make any sense. I for me, I want

⏹️ ▶️ Casey an iPad. And actually, I don’t really get to this earlier, but I think that even though I never touch my iPad mini

⏹️ ▶️ Casey anymore, in part because it’s so darn old. I am. I actually think

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that there’s a pretty good shot. I’m going to buy an iPad after this event, cause I’m really, I’m really interested in what’s being

⏹️ ▶️ Casey shown. But anyway, up until Tuesday, I don’t feel like I want a full size

⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPad anymore. I did that and I don’t want it anymore. I want a mini and the most recent mini was the best

⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPad for me. It’s just ancient now. And so any of the other ones, yeah, there are, they’re not a regression

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in terms of like, you know, year over year, the 9.7 from one year is better than 9.7

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the prior year and the 10 was better than the 9.7, etc. But for me, as the question says, subjectively better

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in every way that

⏹️ ▶️ John matters. But it says it says product line. It doesn’t say individual product is difficult when a product line has like the reason

⏹️ ▶️ John I could talk about the 10 versus the seven is they were essentially replacements for each other. There is no more seven size. The 10

⏹️ ▶️ John is the replacement for that. But the 9.7 is not the replacement for the mini any more than the 12.9 is

⏹️ ▶️ John a replacement for the 9.7. Like the iPad line has different sizes. And I feel like you have to pick within those

⏹️ ▶️ John size classes.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It also

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey happens

⏹️ ▶️ John that your size class dead-ended, I suppose, but I don’t think every new iPad that comes out,

⏹️ ▶️ John you should be saying it’s a regression over your mini because it’s too big.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Steve

⏹️ ▶️ Casey McLaughlin John, this is my answer. You can answer your own way. This is my

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John answer. John Svazic I’m answering the

⏹️ ▶️ John question. I’m answering my own question that I made up.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steve McLaughlin Yeah, you’ve never done that before and totally rejiggered the rules of a question to suit

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John you.

⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway- John Svazic I haven’t. I’ve addressed the question as written and then also said that the question is dumb, but you’re saying that

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you don’t want

⏹️ ▶️ John to address the question is. You should give your answer within the rules of this question as well.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t even know enough about modern iPads anymore. I would suppose that whatever the most recent

⏹️ ▶️ Casey 10-inch one is probably

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John my answer. Sounds like it’s got a fingerprint problem.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Oh yeah, other than the fingerprint

⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem. And that’s my answer. The 10.5 almost made it for me, but because of that fingerprint problem, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to say the 9.7 Pro, that came right before it, because that had no downsides. I mean, well, it was more expensive,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but otherwise it had no major downsides. And to gain the the support of the keyboard and the pencil

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was massive. Like it was a great all around iPad, great release. And the 10.5

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would have beaten it if not for the fingerprint screen.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t have enough experience with the 10.5 to know whether it’s a regression, so I’m gonna pick the 9.7 as well

⏹️ ▶️ John just because it was great. It was better in all ways than the ones that came before it. Still using it, still

⏹️ ▶️ John love it. I even love the accessories that go with it. Maybe the 10.5 is also, you know, just as

⏹️ ▶️ John good a leave over, but I don’t have one so I can’t say. So I don’t have a 9.7 inch iPad, John, or 10.5 inch

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or 12 inch. I could have given that answer, but you didn’t.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Moving on. You

⏹️ ▶️ John said it’s because it’s too

⏹️ ▶️ Casey big. Moving on for the Mac, I actually

⏹️ ▶️ Casey think, and this is either going to go over really well or really poorly, and I’m not sure which direction

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I actually think.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is it the Mac Mini?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John No.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that my most recent

⏹️ ▶️ Casey 15-inch MacBook Pro with anti-glare

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with an SSD in it, which I don’t remember if it came from the factory that way, so I’m kind of cheating a little bit and I admit it. It didn’t.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But okay, so the 10.5 high-res anti-glare, especially

⏹️ ▶️ Casey once an SSD went in it, was probably the least amount of compromise of any of the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Macs I’ve ever owned. And that even though I love, I love, love, love

⏹️ ▶️ Casey both my 5K and my adorable, I think there

⏹️ ▶️ Casey are some amount of compromise in both of those machines. And I think that the 15-inch high-res anti-glare

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was with the least amount of compromise. And that’s the one that I remember most fondly.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I have a split between desktop and laptop. Desktop, obviously the iMac Pro. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I said earlier, it’s fantastic. There’s nothing about it that’s worse than anything that came before it, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s better. It wins on every front, whether I’m comparing it to the 5K iMac or the trashcan

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac Pro, which I think you could argue it’s a successor to both of those at the moment.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And compared to either of those, on every front, it wins. It is a spectacular product that I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco immensely happy with. In the laptop line, it depends on whether you’re talking about years

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or generations. If you’re talking about years, technically,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 2018 MacBook Pro, all the horrible things about it, were already horrible in 2017. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re either the same now or better. So technically, the 2018 MacBook Pro

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be my laptop pick. If we’re talking generations though, which I think is more interesting, I would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco say the Retina MacBook Pro. That’s the generation that went from 2012 to 2015. That generation, I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was, That’s the one I wrote the best laptop ever article

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about. Like it’s such a awesome generation of laptop. As much as I love the 2010 MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Air, this is more recent. And so it did lose the optical drive and it did lose

⏹️ ▶️ Marco upgradable RAM and disks, but those didn’t really affect me. Even back

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in 2012 when I got the very first one, those didn’t really affect me. So the 2012 Retina

⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook Pro is my laptop answer.

⏹️ ▶️ John I will continue to follow the instructions of the question and say the product line being Mac and I pick the iMac Pro.

⏹️ ▶️ John because I’m taking them out. I hate all laptops anyway. iMac Pro, easy

⏹️ ▶️ Casey answer. All right, finally, the Apple TV. I don’t personally

⏹️ ▶️ Casey have any need for 4K because I don’t have a 4K TV. So my, what is it, the third generation where it got

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the whole new interface and all that, I don’t mind the remote. Everyone’s gonna yell at me. I don’t mind the remote. The remote

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is fine for me. I don’t feel like it’s a compromise. I like it, it’s fine. So for me, the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey third generation Apple TV is the one with the least amount of compromise. Marco.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I go with the Apple TV 4K. I think you should get the Apple TV 4K even though you don’t think you need it because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is significantly faster and more responsive and in my experience, more reliable.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I maintain at any given time between two and four

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple TVs depending on like Beak stuff or my in-laws or something like that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like we always buy Apple TVs for everybody for various Christmases and everything. and so I have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a small fleet of them, basically. And the first one with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Siri remote, which I believe was the fourth gen, maybe? Paul Krugman I thought it was third. Is it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fourth? Kevin Fallon I think it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey fourth.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, Paul Krugman Okay, my bad. Kevin Fallon Yeah, that one, the one that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco runs tvOS. The first generation of those not only gets really slow at really weird times and is unresponsive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for weird reasons more often, I mean, they are older, but I’ve had them flake out

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and die in weird ways and just be generally unreliable. Whereas the 4K

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ones, again, while they are younger, so far have been rock solid and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are way faster and way more responsive to input and touch and everything else. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 4K actually is really good. And I think the original fourth gen had

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a major regression in the design of the remote, but again, the 4K didn’t get worse.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It actually got slightly better with that stupid white circle they put around the menu button. So it is slightly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco less horrible. And everything else about it is better. So Apple TV 4K is my pick for this.

⏹️ ▶️ John Me too, Apple TV 4K, everything Marko.

#askatp: Shortcuts?

⏹️ ▶️ John All

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right. And then finally, Fabian Deem writes, are you using the Shortcuts app at all? And if so,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what are your favorite uses or shortcuts? I actually have kind of gotten back into

⏹️ ▶️ Casey workflow slash shortcuts since Shortcuts came out. My favorite

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one is a slightly revised version of what I call ETA to Aaron. So what I can do

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is I can say, hey, Dingus, I’m on my way home. And it will figure out where

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am, figure out how long it takes me to get home by car, and what’s great about shortcuts over workflow

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is it will actually, without my intervention, send a text to Aaron saying, I’m leaving now, I’ll be home

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in whatever minutes, and that’ll be at such and such time. That’s my favorite. A couple

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I’ve found are really nice are I have a good night

⏹️ ▶️ Casey shortcut, which among other things, sets my brightness to all the way down, so it’s the volume of my phone all the way down, turns

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on do not disturb, but also attempts to SSH into both my laptop

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and my desktop, and turn the volume of them all the way down, because sometimes I’ll leave the volume up,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then in the middle of the night, I’ll hear myself get a text message or something like that.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know why Do Not Disturb wouldn’t have caught that. I don’t know. Anyways, somehow or another, I sometimes hear audio coming

⏹️ ▶️ Casey from my computers. My shortcut actually will turn their volume down using

⏹️ ▶️ Casey AppleScript as called via SSH, which is really convenient. Then

⏹️ ▶️ Casey as an example of something interesting you can do, although this is something that’s really only useful for me, is that I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey use this app called MoneyWell to keep track of our finances. It doesn’t do terribly well

⏹️ ▶️ Casey when you run it in multiple places at once. It syncs over Dropbox, and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey as long as you’re only ever running it in one spot at a time, you’re good. But if you run it concurrently in two different computers,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey bad things happen. I have a script that will log into my desktop,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey figure out if MoneyWell is running, and then let me know either you’re good to go or stop everything. You

⏹️ ▶️ Casey need to, you know, a remote desktop, oh God, I’m a Windows user. You need to VNC

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco into,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you need to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John VNC into your- It’s called screen sharing, Casey.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey There you go. You need to screen share with your iMac, tough guy, and you need to close MoneyWell.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I use all those pretty frequently, and I’ve really enjoyed those. Since I was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey beating on Marco a lot first, last time, let’s start with John. This time, John, are you using shortcuts

⏹️ ▶️ John at all? I’m still laughing about MoneyWell colon, Throw your money down a well, TM.

⏹️ ▶️ John I understand the idea is the money is coming out of the well but I think of Money Well and it’s like, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John very close to Money Pit. Anyway, sorry Money Well, sure the app is great.

⏹️ ▶️ John I have a bunch of shortcuts that I’ve either tried to

⏹️ ▶️ John make myself or imported from other people. I have a whole topic on this that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John slowly getting buried in our very long topic list. I think I’ll talk about it more later but shortcuts

⏹️ ▶️ John just don’t mesh with the way I wanna do things. As a programmer, I find them frustrating.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m glad they exist and I’m glad to have shortcuts. Like for example, based on the last

⏹️ ▶️ John show where we talked about contacts and Apple’s rules, suggestions, guidelines

⏹️ ▶️ John about how big your contact photos should be, someone made a shortcut that will run on your phone and it will

⏹️ ▶️ John look at all your contact photos and tell you how many of them are over the limit. Right? Which is neat. And it’s like,

⏹️ ▶️ John hey, I’d love to have that shortcut. And he sent it to me and I ran it And it told me I had like 12 pictures

⏹️ ▶️ John that were too big, which is less than I thought I would have, but it’s still some. But

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not like I don’t, I’m a Mac person. I do anything remotely complicated I do on my Mac. I

⏹️ ▶️ John have some shortcuts that I think might be useful, but it tends not to occur to me to use them. And I just find

⏹️ ▶️ John being productive on iOS devices does not match the way I want to work. So I am not a

⏹️ ▶️ John heavy user of them. I don’t have any particular favorites, but I’m still very glad that the functionality is there.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, basically with John, I don’t use shortcuts at all. I never used

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Workflow before it either. I’ve never gotten into the iOS automation scene

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with drafts and Long Shutter Pro and stuff like that. I just never got into that scene.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whenever I want to do something that involves complex automation, I want a Mac.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s just, again, it’s what I’m used to, it’s what I’m good at, it’s where all my skills are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco things that that our friends who are who are more into like iOS power usage than than me the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kinds of things that they do with shortcuts they talk about like on podcasts and stuff I’ve never like all those

⏹️ ▶️ Marco things they do are never things that I really want to do it’s it’s it doesn’t really pique my interest I guess

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I’ve just don’t I don’t know do it all right thanks for our sponsors this week, Warby Parker, Linode

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and aftershocks, and we’ll see you next week.

Ending theme

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you.

⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to begin, cause it was accidental. Oh it was accidental.

⏹️ ▶️ John John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him, cause

⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh it was accidental.

⏹️ ▶️ John And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.

⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re into Twitter, you can follow them at

⏹️ ▶️ Marco C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and T. Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s accidental,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey they didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John mean to Accidental, check my cast so long

Casey the Wafflemaster

Chapter Casey the Wafflemaster image.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So Casey, I’ve heard you’ve had some drama with,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of all things, your waffle maker. What is going on

⏹️ ▶️ Casey there? Oh, this is the sad time. So I have to set the scene.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey A year or two ago, maybe even more than that, we dug our waffle maker out from

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the back of our like deepest kitchen cabinet and we had gotten this waffle maker for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey our wedding and we didn’t use it but a couple times for the longest time. And then we fell into the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey tradition where we would do Sunday morning waffles and bacon. And so Erin, the saint

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that she is, would prepare homemade waffles and bacon for the family.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And these waffles were delicious. There was nothing particularly special

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about the preparation. I think she uses a particular kind of Bisquick and mostly follows the direction

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the box. I don’t need to hear about alternative waffle recipes, that’s not the point.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But suffice to say, I loved these waffles. They may not have been the best waffles in the entire planet, but I loved

⏹️ ▶️ Casey them. And one morning, about a month ago, I want to say I bumped our waffle

⏹️ ▶️ Casey maker and I must’ve done so at either the exact right moment or the exact right way.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey In retrospect, I should have sent it to Dr. Drang to analyze, but somehow or another I bumped it. And basically

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the entire thing fell apart. The, the plates that were not removable fell away

⏹️ ▶️ Casey from like the iron part, if you will, or like the steel part behind the plates, the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey hinges all but basically exploded. It was as though the thing was a hair’s breadth

⏹️ ▶️ Casey away from falling apart and me bumping it just put it right over the edge. So I went on a search to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey find a replacement waffle maker. And the one we had was a Waring

⏹️ ▶️ Casey WMK 300. And I would like for you to not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey yet look that up. I want you to wait just a moment. too late.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Wait,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s the one you had. That’s the one that I recommended to you, I think. Oh, wait a minute. No, this is… Is it? This is $500.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, that’s the thing. The one that I had did not cost $539.95, which is what this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey costs on Amazon. This waffle maker

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was amazing until it exploded. It was amazing. The waffles were fluffy

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and light on the inside, but always crisp on the outside. It beeped when it was warm enough for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you to put in the batter, it beeped again when it was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey ready, and it cooked the waffles reasonably quickly. Everything about it was pretty

⏹️ ▶️ Casey much perfect.

⏹️ ▶️ John Except for the fact that it makes round waffles.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Don’t even start with your square waffle

⏹️ ▶️ Marco nonsense. My waffle maker is very similar to this. It’s also a Waring. It was only $100,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not $500. We’re going to come back to that. But like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey it’s very similar to this.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a two side, so it makes two at once, which I think is a critical feature.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s the kind of like what you see at hotel breakfast bars where like, you know, it’s round and you pour the batter in and you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco flip it over. And then you can pour batter into the other side and then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco flip it over again and you can make two at once. And just like Casey was saying, it beeps when it’s ready, it’s crisp, it’s like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a great waffle maker in most ways. There’s one major critique I have of it, which is that,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least on mine, the plates are not removable, So it’s really a pain in the butt to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey clean. Yep, yep, yep, yep. That’s absolutely accurate

⏹️ ▶️ John on this one too. I can’t believe everyone, I mean, I know everyone cites it because they want you to be familiar with it. It’s like, oh, it’s like at the

⏹️ ▶️ John hotel breakfast bar, or some people say, oh, it’s like in your dorms, you know, dining hall, both of which

⏹️ ▶️ John are true, but those are not two things I would ever cite when saying you’re interested in

⏹️ ▶️ John fine dining. You know, like a hotel breakfast bar? No, or dorm dining hall.

⏹️ ▶️ John Ugh, anyway, yeah, I don’t like round wobbles.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I feel like there might be an argument that you and I should have about that, but let’s leave that aside for now. We will.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Don’t worry. So when this was purchased for us, I can assure you it was not $539.95. And although this waffle

⏹️ ▶️ Casey maker was darn near perfect in my estimation, even still, even as much as I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey love my waffles, I don’t think I would spend $539.95 on this. And so I went

⏹️ ▶️ Casey digging before the show to find our wedding registry, which I had printed

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and made a PDF of years ago, you know, 11 years ago when we got married.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And sure enough, I found on our Bed Bath & Beyond wedding registry that, that we had listed

⏹️ ▶️ Casey this exact waffle maker, which at the time was 80 bucks, which is a way, which is still

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot of money for a waffle maker, but way more reasonable, of course, than $540. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so I ended up replacing this one with, I don’t actually

⏹️ ▶️ Casey have it handy, but some, um, some Hamilton beach model that makes square waffles.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John like an

⏹️ ▶️ Casey animal, it is not like an animal Marco. It’s so true. And so it makes two

⏹️ ▶️ Casey square waffles. I will put the link in the show notes. I just don’t want to look it up right. The second it makes two square waffles. The thing costs like 30

⏹️ ▶️ Casey bucks. Hamilton beach is actually a local firm. They’re based out of Richmond. And so I had some amount of affinity for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey them for that reason. I shouldn’t have, because it’s just not very good. The waffles are kind of not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey gummy. Isn’t the right word, but not the greatest on the inside and the outside is nowhere near as crispy. It doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey make any beeps. It takes forever to cook. I don’t like it. And so now

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know what to do because I am a man that likes myself, what Americans describe

⏹️ ▶️ Casey as a Belgian waffle. I’m not here to debate whether or not that that definition is accurate or not.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But what that means to an American is a waffle that is very thick. So typically around

⏹️ ▶️ Casey an inch thick with very deep pockets. That’s the way I like my waffles.

⏹️ ▶️ John There’s more to a Belgian waffle than just that.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, yes, but when you’re looking for a waffle maker that makes that style

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of waffle, you’re going to look for a Belgian waffle maker. And that’s exactly what this is called, a Waring WNK 300,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the old one, Belgian waffle maker. And that’s what I like. And so what I want, listeners,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is I want something that will cook a waffle reasonably quickly, that will give me that nice crisp

⏹️ ▶️ Casey outside, and then that not too gummy inside. And I’ll be the first to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey tell you, I spent $25 on the replacement. I should have known better, but I didn’t know what else to do.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I tried something, and I’m probably going to end up either donating it or throwing it away or

⏹️ ▶️ Casey doing something with it because it’s not up to snuff. So I got to figure out what the right answer is. Maybe I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey need to come and visit Marco and make you guys make me waffles.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I’ll say try this. You

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know why you are asking the listeners because I already gave you the answer to this question in Slack. And

⏹️ ▶️ John I just found out today that there actually is a round one if you prefer.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh. You know, the round versus square

⏹️ ▶️ John thing. But anyway, the waffle maker, I was faced in a similar situation. I had a waffle maker that I liked. I like a different

⏹️ ▶️ John style of waffle than Casey and I was disappointed that I couldn’t, because I like a thinner one. I was disappointed that I couldn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John find one that made the waffles the size and shape that I want. But despite that,

⏹️ ▶️ John despite the fact that this makes like one inch thick waffles, which are to Casey’s taste, but not to mine, I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John very impressed with my Breville waffle maker. It does what you expect

⏹️ ▶️ John it to do, but it also has like settings for what kind of waffles you want. You’d be

⏹️ ▶️ John like, isn’t there one kind of waffles? And as Casey was saying, no, there isn’t just one kind of waffle. Like the difference between a regular waffle and

⏹️ ▶️ John a Belgian waffle isn’t just the size and shape, but it’s also how crispy the outside is versus how

⏹️ ▶️ John fluffy the inside is. Like you can have a waffle that is kind of the same doneness all the way through

⏹️ ▶️ John or a thing that’s very well done on the outside, but not as well done on the inside. Like there’s lots of variations, plus there’s the overall

⏹️ ▶️ John darkness. And those settings on this waffle maker really actually work. Waffles,

⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t need to use any nonstick stuff with it. The waffles come right out. It has a special thing in it that makes it so that there’s any overflow,

⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t make a mess. You don’t like, you’re saying the plates don’t come off. Plates don’t come off, that’s either, you’ll never need it to, there’s nothing in

⏹️ ▶️ John this thing you can’t clean up by just like pulling it out with your finger. It is absolutely amazing, it makes

⏹️ ▶️ John the waffles fast, it has all the settings you want, it has all the lights and the beeps, and they make a round one, which seems like

⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t have the Belgian settings, so maybe you’ll wanna check it out. But anyway, it makes four waffles at once, not two.

⏹️ ▶️ John Each one is gigantic and thick, and so you’re a waffle maker that you should get,

⏹️ ▶️ John that you will be very happy with because it makes the kind of waffles that you like, is this Breville, what the hell

⏹️ ▶️ John is that number? Stupid Amazon with its mouse over things. It just says the Smart Four Slice Waffle

⏹️ ▶️ John Maker. I’m sure it

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey has something to do

⏹️ ▶️ John with that. But this one is square.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey You’re saying they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John even. So yeah, the round one, the round one I will put in. This is the round one.

⏹️ ▶️ John It doesn’t seem like it has, it doesn’t have the screen, and I’m not sure how many settings it has, but it’s the same design basically, with the gutter around

⏹️ ▶️ John it and all that other business. They are very big, they are very heavy, and they are ridiculously expensive for waffle makers,

⏹️ ▶️ John but I thought I might regret getting the one that I got. Despite the fact that it makes waffles the wrong

⏹️ ▶️ John shape for my personal preferences, it does a really good job of making the wrong shape waffles.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco A glowing review,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? I was impressed by it. I thought I might end up returning this because it was so expensive and

⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t like in the pictures, but like it just does a really good, and the settings really do things. Like that’s the thing

⏹️ ▶️ John that blew me away. I’m like, ah, it doesn’t matter what the settings are, right? And I changed the setting one day. I was like, what the hell? This is not how I want

⏹️ ▶️ John them. And I realized, oh, I didn’t have it set to the setting that I like. Like, you can actually dial in exactly

⏹️ ▶️ John the waffles you make, which most waffle makers don’t have. They just have like a light that says, put in a waffle now, and then a different light

⏹️ ▶️ John that says your waffles are done. This one has adjustments and yes, an LCD screen, all

⏹️ ▶️ John sorts of silly stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mine has a knob that works and you can adjust things. I don’t think,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve actually never seen one that didn’t have an adjustment knob.

⏹️ ▶️ John Right, but no, but the thing that this has with the settings is, it’s kind of like my toaster has too. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John what is the ratio? Like, do you want it to do, it doesn’t have to do the same temperature to the whole side. Like, one of the settings, I think the Belgian

⏹️ ▶️ John one, is basically like cook it normally until it’s cooked through, but then crank it at the end to make the outside extra

⏹️ ▶️ John dark and extra crisp without drying out the inside. Or the regular one, which is

⏹️ ▶️ John keep it kind of the same attempt, same slightly higher temperature for the whole time so it’s kind of evenly brown all the way through.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, those are the type of settings. It’s not just like, what temperature do you want me to be? It’s like a curve. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John at what time during the cooking process you want me to be at what temperature? Kind of like the bagel setting in toasters. If you put the

⏹️ ▶️ John cut side of the bagel face up, we’ll add for the last 45 seconds, crank the top element as high as it can go

⏹️ ▶️ John to crisp the top of the bagel without like over crisping, like the toppings on the bottom or whatever. Like

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a complicated science. It’s not just a dial that says hot or cold.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I don’t know what this wearing one that I had did, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it worked some sort of magic. Maybe it was temperature, maybe it was something else that got me that just delightful

⏹️ ▶️ Casey crisp exterior with the light fluffy interior and I miss it so

⏹️ ▶️ John dearly. I guarantee you’ll be able to dial that in on the big four or slice one on the round one I’m not

⏹️ ▶️ John sure but the round one is only 122 so I mean

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s worth pointing out here like there’s a wire cutter article on best waffle makers

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I looked at it while I have my occasional issues with their picks these do seem reasonable and actually is their

⏹️ ▶️ Marco budget pick at the bottom is that the one you got it looks it looks like it matches the description exactly but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even their top pick is for look if I If I made a lot of waffles, I would probably upgrade to their top pick here because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the one thing I love my waffle maker so much except washing it sucks so much

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I the one thing I would require of any new waffle maker purchase is dishwasher

⏹️ ▶️ Marco safe removable plates.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think I got that one and returned it the one that’s on there that it was like I don’t like you think removal plates

⏹️ ▶️ John everything again the plates are not removable on the purple I have never washed it like there is nothing to wash the bagels

⏹️ ▶️ John just count the bagels the waffles just

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco come out. You

⏹️ ▶️ John just pick the cooked waffles thing off of the thing and you wipe it like

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that. That’s it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s nothing to do. So I usually will do like cooking spray in there.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Are you not doing that? I am not doing that. So you’re just pouring the batter straight in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John and it falls

⏹️ ▶️ John out? Sometimes I put butter in it depending on my mood, but that gets absorbed by the waffles. It doesn’t remain behind. But

⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t have to put anything in it. Nothing. And I would encourage you not to.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, so you’re pouring the batter right onto the plate with no lubrication.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John And you’re relying on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the non-stick for it to just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John basically

⏹️ ▶️ John fall off. Yeah, and as part of the expenses, you’re hopefully getting a good non-stick. Recently, my

⏹️ ▶️ John non-stick pans always die, like a skillet or whatever, right? And we bought a cheap one to replace it,

⏹️ ▶️ John which is the quote-unquote ceramic coating, which works great until it doesn’t, and it lasts like less than

⏹️ ▶️ John a year. Whatever coating they have on this waffle maker, maybe it’s gonna go bad,

⏹️ ▶️ John and it will be terrible in a few years, but I’ve had it for at least a year now, maybe more, and it’s still going strong.

⏹️ ▶️ John Hmm, interesting. I feel like that’s what you get out of it. So the one they recommended, the Krups thing, it just felt

⏹️ ▶️ John like it was chintzy and it just didn’t, it

⏹️ ▶️ John just wasn’t a quality appliance. And yes, you could take the plates out, but then the heating elements were there and then gunk

⏹️ ▶️ John got under the heating elements and then it just was not satisfactory in any

⏹️ ▶️ John way. Whereas the Breville one, for all ridiculous costs and everything,

⏹️ ▶️ John it makes better waffles. It makes better waffles than the Krups one does, and it makes less of a mess.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just a better, obviously it better be better for like three times the price or whatever. But, and it’s sad because the Krups

⏹️ ▶️ John one, I think is closer to making the shape and size of waffles that I want. But I think I’ll just have to wait for that fad

⏹️ ▶️ John to come around. I wish I could have found, if I could have re-bought the one that I had, like mine just died, like died,

⏹️ ▶️ John died, like it doesn’t work anymore, but it was older than all my children. Like this was, It was either from my parents or my

⏹️ ▶️ John grandparents. It was an old waffle thing. It was a Waffle Master or some,

⏹️ ▶️ John some brand. It’s awesome. I don’t remember

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey what the hell. But I looked for

⏹️ ▶️ John it. I look, it wasn’t Waffle Master or something else, but I looked for it online and it didn’t exist. And I looked for it on eBay

⏹️ ▶️ John and I couldn’t find it. So I’m like, like I, I would have just rebought it because it

⏹️ ▶️ John gave me what I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey wanted. Well, and it’s funny you bring that up because I may have found one spot

⏹️ ▶️ Casey online that might have a few of these left. And when we’re both awake tomorrow, I pretty

⏹️ ▶️ Casey much plan to plead with Aaron, hey, can we spend $80 on a replacement for our old waffle maker? Because this thing,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey while it was working, was flawless. But yeah, I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey saw the Wirecutter post. I looked at it a lot. The thing that gave

⏹️ ▶️ Casey me pause was, it was hard to tell both from the Wirecutter and from the Amazon reviews,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which are always hit and miss to begin with, whether or not the waffles were thick as I wanted, plus

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t want a square waffle. I just, I wish I, we can have

⏹️ ▶️ Casey this fight, but I honestly don’t have a lot to back myself up. I just think that square waffles are not as good,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey like not in a taste perspective, just in an aesthetic.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, see, this is kind of like the Midwest pizza thing where they take a round pizza and they cut it into squares.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s disharmony, right? The square, the things in a waffle, the little holes, they’re square,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? And the second thing that really bothers me is If you’re gonna have a round waffle, the only way I will accept a round waffle

⏹️ ▶️ John is if it is one waffle. I don’t want a round waffle that is then cut into four things. So it looks like what I’m getting

⏹️ ▶️ John is, instead of getting four waffles, I’m getting four three-quarter waffles. Oh, no,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey John, no, no, no, no. Right, because

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re not complete waffles. It’s like, so I had a waffle here, right, and then someone ate around the

⏹️ ▶️ John edge, and I’m missing that part

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it. So I came into this conversation expecting to totally fight you on this, but I think you’re convincing me

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that that round actually is not what I wanted.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No,

⏹️ ▶️ John no,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco no. Here’s

⏹️ ▶️ John the thing we can agree on. The waffles, no matter size and shape, they all taste good. And like, you know, in general, like a round

⏹️ ▶️ John waffle, I’ll take a round waffle over a no

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco waffle. Like we can all agree

⏹️ ▶️ John on that. Waffles are universal good, and we should accept them into our hearts and just eat them.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco But if given a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco choice. Oh, and by the way, Casey, on the recipe side, mix some fast action yeast into some warmed,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but not too hot, like in the microwave milk. Like whatever milk you’re gonna use to make the batter. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco warm up the microwave for like, I don’t know, 30 seconds. Like make it just warm, like lukewarm to the touch. dump in a packet

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of fast action yeast, stir it up, dump it into the batter, make the batter, put plastic wrap over it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for 20 minutes. Come back, you have a very light, airy batter.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Man, you give me far too much credit with regard to my patience, but I appreciate

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco the tip.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John You can also

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco just make

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John them yourself. It’s 20 minutes, it’s not that big of

⏹️ ▶️ John a deal. You don’t need to use a mix, you can just make it yourself. Most waffle makers will come with a recipe. The

⏹️ ▶️ John recipe’s very wildly, I will warn you, like you might wanna just look one up or whatever. But if you are gonna use a mix, I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John going to put a shout out for Aunt Jemima over Bisquick.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Really? I don’t think I’ve tried

⏹️ ▶️ John that. Yeah. That’s what I grew up with. I’ve had Bisquick as well, because that was my wife’s brand, but I’ve

⏹️ ▶️ John converted her over to things. If you like Bisquick

⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s what you expect, you’re going to continue to like it. But Aunt Jemima is more to my taste, and the fact I was able to convert my wife’s

⏹️ ▶️ John show is something to recommend. Homemade tastes better unless you have a bad recipe. I

⏹️ ▶️ John used to make the homemade ones for my kids, and they eventually told me I would do the blind test, which one do you like better? They

⏹️ ▶️ John like the mix better because I’ve been giving it to them for too long. So the homemade ones that I painstakingly made for

⏹️ ▶️ John them, I think it’s probably a tie because

⏹️ ▶️ John I haven’t found a really good recipe, but the convenience of the mix just wins

⏹️ ▶️ Casey out. Steven Gunnell-Yeah. Well, to be more specific, we’re using the Bisquick HeartSmart mix, which is,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think, almost maybe a little bit better

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for you. But…

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But let’s be honest, your heart doesn’t like any part of eating waffles. Like, right. You’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco attacking the wrong problem. If you’re if you’re subbing out a different waffle mix

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey for, for heart health. Oh, agreed. Well,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and also, let me remind you that it’s not just waffles on Sunday mornings, kids. It’s waffles and bacon.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I’m, I’m, it doesn’t really

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John ultimately

⏹️ ▶️ John matter. My one tip for the mix thing, by the way, this will work with this quicker as well as anything else.

⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe you could say this is just for kids. The kids do love it. But I Grumps like it too. Put a tiny little bit of vanilla extract

⏹️ ▶️ John into your

⏹️ ▶️ Casey waffle mix. Uh, Aaron does that. I’m almost

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John sure.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the recipe, but I just want to make sure people do that. Yeah, I always use a little bit of vanilla. I use one more egg than they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ask me to. I wouldn’t go that far. And I do the yeast trick if I have time and a little bit of baking

⏹️ ▶️ Marco soda if I don’t. The

⏹️ ▶️ John yeast trick makes me think that’s the thing that a beer drinker would like. Like make everything yeasty.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No, it gives

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you more air bubbles, basically, which I

⏹️ ▶️ John like. Yeah, I know what you’re going for, but like, yeah, it’s also like the sort of the malt malted waffle

⏹️ ▶️ John type things again dorm dorm dining halls and stuff like that that I was never to my taste but some people really

⏹️ ▶️ John like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that all right so one way or another I need to find myself something

⏹️ ▶️ Casey better than this Hamilton Beach abomination

⏹️ ▶️ John and someone brings up in the chat room I I’m almost afraid to talk to you about this Casey but I really feel like we need

⏹️ ▶️ John to have this

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey intervention oh god oh no

⏹️ ▶️ John okay please use maple syrup on your waffles please please tell me

⏹️ ▶️ John that you do, please.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh God, what is it that we use? Hold on. Let me open any list. No,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that’s not.

⏹️ ▶️ John No, there’s not. It’s either maple syrup or it’s not.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey No, no,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey no, no, no, it’s not. It’s something. Oh

⏹️ ▶️ John God. Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey come on. Casey, what are you doing?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I actually,

⏹️ ▶️ John you make it in these waffles. You’re worried about how good they are and then you’re ruining them. You have to use maple. You have to corn

⏹️ ▶️ John syrup on them. You have to use

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey maple

⏹️ ▶️ Casey syrup. We use log cabin light

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John with no high fructose corn syrup. You’re pouring corn syrup on your waffles please. With no high fructose corn syrup. We know what to

⏹️ ▶️ John get Casey for Christmas, we’re getting you maple syrup. Oh

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey my god Casey. Stop feeding your children corn

⏹️ ▶️ Casey syrup. I’ve had it, I’ve had it numerous times. I actually prefer the taste of the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John package

⏹️ ▶️ John cream. Oh

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco no, no. Of course you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do, oh god. I would, I would rather you switch back to

⏹️ ▶️ John a white car. Velveeta, shells and cheese, and corn

⏹️ ▶️ Casey syrup. It says no high fructose corn syrup right on the box, or the jar, or

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s just sugar slime, please. Whatever. You need actual maple syrup, which is nature’s

⏹️ ▶️ John sugar slime.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I am in full agreement. That’s using. Oh God. I mean, look, it’s fine.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you can’t afford maple syrup, it is more expensive. A bottle of it’s like 12 bucks.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You

⏹️ ▶️ John can afford it. It’s like real Parmesan cheese. Like you could have less of it and have it less often,

⏹️ ▶️ John but have it be good.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, like if you’re drinking enough maple syrup, the price is a problem. You’re probably doing too much maple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco syrup. Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, exactly how much are

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you going through? Like, maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John you have a family of 17. I can

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco see

⏹️ ▶️ John the economic argument. And also, there’s such a thing as sales and coupons. Like, it doesn’t really go bad.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s pretty shelf stable. So if you are just a little bit smart about finding it, you can get yourself maple syrup for

⏹️ ▶️ John not that much money. And it’s so worth it. So worth

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey love that I’ve trained you two so well that you assume it’s a money issue. It’s not. I’ll spend the money if it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John worth it. No, I assume it’s a South issue. Because you’re so far from

⏹️ ▶️ John fall in New England that you

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco just

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know how to do waffles.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You realize like when Mike comes to visit the US, he goes back with maple syrup. He brings maple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco syrup to England because it’s hard to get there.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco No, no, I’m not arguing

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it is by almost any measure it is superior. It’s just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey my taste buds, as screwed up as they may be,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I like the package crap. It’s the same. It’s spelled with a shell

⏹️ ▶️ John cheese. It’s what you were raised on. I know, but I feel like maple syrup is the kind of thing that even if you’re raised on the other thing,

⏹️ ▶️ John you can be converted as an adult. It is possible. You’re not. You can get to the point where you are not craving

⏹️ ▶️ John the other thing. Shells and cheese, maybe not. Maybe you’ll never be converted off that. But I

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey feel like you can

⏹️ ▶️ John be converted on the maple syrup. You can come around. And certainly I’m saying for your for your children,

⏹️ ▶️ John for your children, Casey,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco don’t get them started. Create

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a better future for your

⏹️ ▶️ John children. Exactly.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Whenever Whenever we go to my parents’ stay overnight, which happens once every few months, typically

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Dad will make pancakes and he will warm up some honest-to-goodness maple syrup and he’ll warm up

⏹️ ▶️ Casey some sugary sludge. And every single time I reach for the sugary sludge. I am aware of what

⏹️ ▶️ Casey maple syrup tastes like. I’ve had it many times in my life. I don’t find it to be superior.

⏹️ ▶️ John You should try it cold.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey If you don’t like

⏹️ ▶️ John it warmed up. Cold? Yeah. Refrigerator cold.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like, literally, I thought you just meant like room

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John temperature. I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ John refrigerator cold. I mean, you know, warmed up is definitely a thing. Room temperature is a thing, but

⏹️ ▶️ John try it cold.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I actually prefer it cold. I like pouring cold maple syrup on a hot waffle.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, I know it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John doesn’t make sense.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey waffles only stay hot

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for like two seconds anyway. So, you know, it’s, I kind of like the the temperature contrast.

⏹️ ▶️ John There’s also the divide of pour over versus a puddle next to and dipping.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, you have to pour

⏹️ ▶️ Marco over. Well, I pour over, but I kind of overshoot the waffle a little bit so that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have edges that I can dip into. You’re doing a hybrid.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. A hybrid. Oh, and to go back to the circle conversation, part of the reason I like the circles

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is because it’s for…

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John You can maximize,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can fill the whole plate. Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco that too.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Part of the reason I like the circle waffles is because what ends up happening is the first waffle

⏹️ ▶️ Casey when we were using circles or when we had circles was I would give a quarter to Declan and I would have the remaining three

⏹️ ▶️ Casey quarters for myself. And then subsequent to that I could take half waffle or quarter waffle.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So typically I would do a three, two, one. I would do three quarters of a waffle, half a waffle, and then one quarter of a waffle.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And at that point, pretty much every single Sunday morning, I knew that I was full.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I liked having that time to space it out and eat slowly and enjoy my waffles. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can’t do that easily with a square waffle. You’re just going to be hacking

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John at

⏹️ ▶️ John that thing. See the thing is your kids are gonna grow up and you have a four-person family And if you make four

⏹️ ▶️ John waffles at a time, it’s it’s very convenient Yeah Four full

⏹️ ▶️ Casey waffles that that I that I that I totally understand and but that has

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John nothing

⏹️ ▶️ John to do ready for the next batch One for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey everybody, but that has nothing to do with shape. That’s just the particular

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John model

⏹️ ▶️ John Is not an efficient use of it. We’ve already gone through the shape

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I’m a little curious because I I struggle with this. What is your buttering strategy?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because the problems I have with with waffle buttering are a like you can make an argument

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you actually kind of don’t need the butter

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey but I like it better I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey well sometimes waffles are just a butter delivery device yeah I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think they’re way better with butter but absolutely but you I have two challenges when trying to butter

⏹️ ▶️ Marco my waffles number one is the aforementioned heat capacity of a waffle is very low or these the specific

⏹️ ▶️ Marco heat rather of a waffle is very low where it loses heat real fast like faster than eggs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like waffles stay hot for two seconds and they’re cold. So you have a very small

⏹️ ▶️ Marco window in which to butter it before it’s too cold to even melt the butter and then unpleasant

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to eat and then also the shape of a waffle is such that it’s hard to spread

⏹️ ▶️ Marco butter

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John through

⏹️ ▶️ John the gonna pull in one of the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco holes and you’re not going to get anybody right right. So how a case you’re hopeless john? How do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you butter a waffle

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey effectively?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Come on? I don’t even have a chance.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco So I have a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco secret case. He probably just sprays on margarine,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey but He

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John sprays on cams. There was a window of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey time in my life where I did use spray on butter, but this is not that window of time. Of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco course there was.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, the correct answer to this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John question, we don’t even need John.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey We don’t even need John to answer.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m already using Kerrygold, which is great. Kerrygold, because it’s softer, it’s grass-fed, it’s wonderful. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco great butter.

⏹️ ▶️ John Are you using the spreading tub kind? Sometimes. Not every time. that

⏹️ ▶️ John is softer than the sticks we also have carry old most

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the time. So the correct answer to this question, which is something that Americans find barbaric, is to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey leave butter out and do not refrigerate it so it is not rock hard. Rejected. And then

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is so much easier to spread.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John And that is what you

⏹️ ▶️ John do. Especially when it gets that hard crust on it and the mouse is nibbled on the corner.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh my God, stop it, you.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not, it’s not like I’m leaving it sitting like just out there on the counter. It’s covered. It’s just the point is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s room temperature.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Casey’s buying is not real butter. So no, no animal

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey wants it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, we are buying real butter. You big jerks. It just trust me on this. Try

⏹️ ▶️ Casey leaving a little a little bit of butter sitting

⏹️ ▶️ John out for one. That’s not that’s not I mean, you don’t have to do that to get that solution. There’s a market question. There’s two parts of it.

⏹️ ▶️ John One, you can do even with the nonstick things, like I said that you don’t need to do any lubrication, you can put a pad

⏹️ ▶️ John of butter down on each thing for flavor, not for non stickiness, and it will sort of butter infuse the waffles,

⏹️ ▶️ John depending on if you’re making homemade, depending on the recipe, lots of the recipes have melted butter in them, sometimes too much melted

⏹️ ▶️ John butter. So you can balance the butteriness before you even get it to your plate and start considering putting butter on top

⏹️ ▶️ John of it. Because if the waffle itself is more buttery, you’re less reliant on

⏹️ ▶️ John getting butter evenly smeared. And then for the spreading of the butter on, I have

⏹️ ▶️ John one technique that’s gross, that Casey might like. And then I

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco have like,

⏹️ ▶️ John the basic thing. The basic thing is, if you just leave the butter out while you’re cooking and preparing it, it will be soft enough.

⏹️ ▶️ John And the Kerrygold tub stuff is softer than the sticks. So you can basically do the thing

⏹️ ▶️ John that you should never do with the stick. If you do this with a stick, you should feel bad. Where you scrape, do not scrape

⏹️ ▶️ John the stick. Scraping the stick is bad and you should be punished for scraping

⏹️ ▶️ John someone’s butter stick. But if you get the tub, the tub is meant for scraping. So if you get Kerrygold

⏹️ ▶️ John in the tub, which is already softer, you can scrape and you end up with these big shaving

⏹️ ▶️ John things. And those can spread very easily because they’re already very thin. and

⏹️ ▶️ John you can get lots of coverage. But in the end, you’re right, it’s not gonna spread as easily as it does on a pancake.

⏹️ ▶️ John Whipped butter is a way that you can help with that. I’d rather not have whipped butter on my

⏹️ ▶️ John pancakes. Now, the gross thing that Casey would probably like, maybe, this is something I did as a kid.

⏹️ ▶️ John So I was a kid on Long Island, they had diners, which is another thing that we have on Long Island, or the New York metro area,

⏹️ ▶️ John that they don’t have much anywhere else. But we had diners, and we’d go there like every Sunday after church, and we’d eat diner

⏹️ ▶️ John food, which is ridiculously inexpensive, unlimited quantities of breakfast

⏹️ ▶️ John food. And what I would usually get, because I was a teenager and had unlimited capacity for calories, is

⏹️ ▶️ John I would get a waffle, two fried eggs, bacon, sausage, Canadian bacon, and sometimes

⏹️ ▶️ John one other kind of eggs or a pancake. And what I would do is make a slurry

⏹️ ▶️ John of maple syrup and butter

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco and dip the sausage into that slurry

⏹️ ▶️ John and also dip the pancakes into that slurry. then when you’re dipping, you don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John have to worry about, did I spread the butter onto all the thing, or did I cool it down too much? You take the waffle that is

⏹️ ▶️ John as warm as it’s going to be, because you haven’t put anything cold on it yet. You take a piece and you dip it into the maple syrup

⏹️ ▶️ John butter slurry, which I admit is gross. But if you haven’t had maple syrup butter slurry on breakfast sausage

⏹️ ▶️ John in a diner on Long Island, you are missing

⏹️ ▶️ Casey out. Oh, I’m sure everyone’s going to get right on that, John. No, I don’t find

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that to be gross. I find it to be weird, but not gross. But I think part of the fun of having a waffle is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the inexact nature of it, and the fact that there’s going to be some pockets in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the waffle that are just going to be pools of butter, and some that are going to be butter-free. And it’s that,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the fact that it varies between bites is something that appeals to me. So I understand what you’re saying, Marco,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that having uniform butter distribution is extremely difficult, but I say you just lean into the fact

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it is not uniform and will never be and just enjoy the randomness.