315: 1.0 Was Just Speed
28 Feb 2019Giant laptops, foldable phones, USB speeds, and rumors of an upcoming Apple event.
Episode Description:
- Follow-up:
- USB 3.2 standard names
- Foldable phones from Samsung and Huawei
- A giant battery with a phone in it
- Apple's Rumored March Event and gaming subscription service
#askatp:- How do you purge many old apps at once? (via Mark Heeler)
- Does John still want a spatial finder? (via Platy Hsu)
- Why bother with a Synology when you can roll your own NAS? (via Dan Zaccaro)
- This post-show was evaluated as
Meets expectations.
Sponsored by:
Chapters
- ATP At The Movies
- Follow-up: 16” MBP
- Bus-powered TB3 hubs 🖼️
- USB 3.2 branding
- Sponsor: Backblaze
- Apple ID woes
- Foldable phones
- Sponsor: Discourse (code atp2019)
- Energizer Power Max P18K Pop
- March Apple event?
- Sponsor: Fracture
- #askatp: Purging old apps
- #askatp: Spatial Finder
- #askatp: BYO NAS
- Ending theme
- Post-show: School grades
ATP At The Movies
⏹️ ▶️ John I heard interview with Jon Hamm Marco. Do you know who that is? Yeah, madman.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, Don Draper. Yeah. Yay And that’s how I learned that he was gonna be in the sequel to Top
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey With their making it like gun.
⏹️ ▶️ John Did you ever see Top Gun?
⏹️ ▶️ John hate that I’m saying it like Top Gear because of Casey.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I’ve seen like bits and pieces I don’t I don’t know if I’ve actually sat through the whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. All right, that’s a no. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John fine Sorry, I thought there was a chance
⏹️ ▶️ John you knew who John Hamm was I was like this is it this is gonna be a markers Day, he’s gonna He’s
⏹️ ▶️ John seen like an incredibly popular Influential movie that everyone has seen but no.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, I had a movie related accomplishment last night Well, I don’t maybe accomplishment is too strong
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a word. Did you watch the Godfather? father? No, I saw that a long time ago. I never saw two or three.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know don’t see three, but see two. Anyway, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco last night for the first time ever a movie that I searched for via Siri
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the Apple TV was available to watch for free on Amazon Prime Video.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s the first time that’s ever happened. Unfortunately, it It was a terrible movie.
Follow-up: 16” MBP
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ryan Jones wrote in to point out that this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the existing 15-inch laptop, right, is actually 15.4 inches,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which means that the mythical 16-inch laptop that we had talked about last week would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be between six-tenths of an inch and 1.1 inches bigger than what we have today,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is really not that much. And I think Ryan was making this point in the context of, would that be a completely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey different thing this mythical 16-inch laptop or would that be just slotted in as a replacement
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep, this was an important point. I’m sorry if we missed it in the chat room. I assume someone in the chat room made this point, but I didn’t see
⏹️ ▶️ John it and we didn’t bring it up and that’s a big difference. That half inch is a big difference or that almost half inch is a big difference. Someone
⏹️ ▶️ John else did a calculation of saying basically if the bezels were the same size as the iPad Pro, like if you assume
⏹️ ▶️ John like you have to have some bezel otherwise like the screen’s gonna shatter if you tap it on the, you know, you put those size bezels on it,
⏹️ ▶️ John you could fit a 16.21 inch screen into the existing quote unquote 15 inch
⏹️ ▶️ John case. So, now I’m back to Marco’s side of believing if it’s like a 16 inch
⏹️ ▶️ John screen, they can fit it in, they don’t need to make the laptop bigger. If it’s 16.5, it won’t fit, they’ll have to make it bigger
⏹️ ▶️ John and then I start to wonder if you’re pressing up against a different size class. But it’s way closer than
⏹️ ▶️ John I thought it was, so maybe that’s what they’re doing. Especially since the rumor wasn’t like, we know exactly the
⏹️ ▶️ John screen size. they waffled it was like,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey well, 16 to 16.5 inch,
⏹️ ▶️ John which I don’t know what that means, but if it’s 16 inch, it’ll definitely fit.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would also say like, if they do end up making it a little bit bigger,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s the 15 inch. No one is buying the 15 inch because it’s small.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco People are buying the 15 inch because they want the biggest screen possible and the most power possible. So like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, I understand like, I wouldn’t recommend that they make a change that would increase the size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of say the 12 inch because the whole point of that is to be as small as possible. But if the largest laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the lineup gets a half inch larger, like case-wise, I don’t think anyone’s really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to care. Because people who care that much about minor size differences are not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buying that model to begin with.
⏹️ ▶️ John Of course, if they make it any bigger, and I would argue at its current size, it just makes the keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John more ridiculous looking.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey It just makes this tiny
⏹️ ▶️ John keyboard floating in the middle of this expanse of metal look ridiculous. There’s so much more room
⏹️ ▶️ John for keys, but baby steps, let’s get keys that work reliably first and then maybe we can talk to them.
⏹️ ▶️ John we can do both at once. You know what, I don’t think it’s too, they can do both at once. There’s room for more keys. You can put a real inverted T.
⏹️ ▶️ John You could put function keys in home and end in there. You could do all sorts of things. But no, uniformity
⏹️ ▶️ John wins out of a ball. So we’ll see, you know, maybe we’ll be shocked. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine that they made new laptops with a new
⏹️ ▶️ John reliable keyboard with native resolution with more ports in them and the big one had a bigger keyboard? We would
⏹️ ▶️ John just, we’d all die from shock. Inverted T, please? Yeah, we would all die, that’s never gonna happen, but we would
⏹️ ▶️ John just die from shock if they basically did what every other large
⏹️ ▶️ John PC style app shop does. So we have to pick from that menu, and I guess what we’re all picking
⏹️ ▶️ John is reliable keyboard, bigger screen, maybe with better res.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not even asking for what the PC makers do with their keyboards. A lot of them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will have numpads on the side, because there’ll be really huge aircraft carrier size laptops.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not even asking for that. Like, all I want is what they used to do, which is like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keyboards that worked. A forward delete button. Yeah, like a little home and end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shoved in the corner. So you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have to hit like a FN, right and left arrow, and FN delete for forward delete.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not even asking for that. No one’s asking for that except you. All we want is just reliable keyboards
⏹️ ▶️ John make. If they actually made it a half an inch bigger, Like it just looks so ridiculous to have the same
⏹️ ▶️ John keyboard that’s in the 12-inch be floating there in the middle of the 15-inch. But I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think it would mostly be, it would basically be the size of the old one. Like the footprint
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the old one, just thinner. Like that’s roughly what it would be at these sizes. So I don’t, like, again, like I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re asking for a lot here. And again, if that model gets bigger and the other ones mostly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t, that’s fine. Like no one is, no one with the 15-inch is saying, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know what, my biggest problem with this laptop it’s a quarter inch too wide or too narrow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That doesn’t matter at all for that model. Chris Reiflein
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I don’t know. I have conflicting opinions about this. I rocked 15-inch machines
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the last, I don’t know, six years of my old professional career.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I liked that size a lot until I didn’t like it anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is big. I don’t know how those people did 17s. I know they loved them, but I don’t know I don’t know how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they did it. So, I don’t know. We’ll see what happens. I suspect that this is a real thing though, and we’ll see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more about this at some point or another.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco God, I can’t wait. I can’t wait. I’m just like, this is, even though I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use a laptop full time, I just, I’m so excited and nervous about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever the next laptop is because the stakes are so high to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because for three years now, we’ve had really compromised,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco controversial, unreliable laptops. And so we know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that like, you know, A, the status quo is bad. B, we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hear rumblings now that something new is gonna come out soon. C, we know that if Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco takes a direction that we don’t like, it takes like three to five years for them to change that direction.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So like, the stakes are pretty high on these. And it does seem like they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting a lot better at designing new Macs in the last couple of years. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see the iMac Pro and the Mac Mini. So it seems like they’re lined
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up to do something really great here. But I also don’t wanna get my hopes up because it’s still Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they still only ever give me about two thirds of what I actually want at best. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, I’m nervous, but I’m fundamentally like excited excited and a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bit optimistic that I think this time they’re going to get it a lot more right than they did last time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We’ll see what happens.
Bus-powered TB3 hubs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We have talked on and off in the past about how there’s a real lack of like USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hubs and things of that nature. But one of you has discovered there is not one, but two
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bus-powered Thunderbolt 3 hubs. I know that is not exactly the same as USB-C, but…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So this is the last episode. I’ve won this rant about, you know, how very little,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very few hubs, USB-C hubs are actually Thunderbolt certified and are Thunderbolt hubs. They’re almost all USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things that are like, you know, $40 to $100 and, you know, they have like the USB and USB-A
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and card readers and network and HDMI ports on them. And almost everyone I know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who has a USB-C MacBook of some kind has at least one of these like multi-port dongle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things. And they’re all unreliable pieces of garbage. And what I’ve been told is that Thunderbolt certified things are way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more reliable. So last episode I said as far as I could tell, there weren’t any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thunderbolt 3 hubs that that were like portable and powered by the port itself, like all these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco little USB-C things that we all use. Almost every other one I could find that was actually Thunderbolt certified
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was like a desktop hub that required external power, was much bigger, usually in like the $300 range. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was saying, does anybody make anything that is small, that is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bus powered, but is Thunderbolt instead of USB-C? And it turns out, I was able to find at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco least three different companies selling what appears to be the same thing, just with very minor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco branding and port configuration differences. So Elgato sells it, so does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco CalDigit, and there was one other one I forget that I was able to find. They’re all about $100, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the weird thing, and the reason you can tell that I think it’s the same thing being sold by three or four different brands,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is they all have the exact same port configuration, and it’s slightly odd. It is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two either DisplayPort or HDMI ports, one USB-A port
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Ethernet. So it’s like, it’s kind of a weird combination that I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of people need. And so like some of them have, both of them as display port,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of them have both of them as HDMI, and some of them have one display port, one HDMI on those two,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then it’s always one USB port and one Ethernet port. So I’m glad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this exists. This is the kind of thing I’m looking for. Not a very mainstream port
⏹️ ▶️ Marco configuration, and not one that I would really use, but there should be more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of these. There should be more things like this. And I don’t know if this is actually reliable or not. I mean, I don’t have one, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get Thunderbolt certification requires quite a large degree of testing from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco either Intel or Apple. It bodes well for the quality of the product if it actually has that certification
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compared to the USB hubs, which I think, you know, anybody can just tape some metal together and call it USB
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s it. So please don’t email us about that. I know there’s probably some kind of certification, I don’t care, the results speak
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for themselves. Anyway, so I’m glad these exist. I hope there are more of them soon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because this appears to be the only one and it’s not very useful. Paul
⏹️ ▶️ Casey W.: So, Marco, did you order any of these or are you not really interested?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco R.: Well, because I would only use probably the USB port. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even stopped bringing any kind of wired ethernet adapters with me on trips and stuff with my laptop because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I haven’t actually for three or four years at least.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What I really need out of my USB-C dongles is USB-A ports
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and card readers. And that’s why almost every one of the USB-C dongles out there has those things in it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we’ll see. I, again, I hope more Thunderbolt certified docks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and hubs come out soon, because they are supposed to be way more reliable and way higher quality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than the USB-C ones. And we desperately need that in this ecosystem.
USB 3.2 branding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So speaking of the confusion between USB-C and Thunderbolt 3, there are a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of very perturbed nerds about what’s been going on with USB 3.2.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I have tried very hard, gentlemen, to summon up a little bit of interest
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in this, and I just really don’t care. So, John, tell me about this.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is just based on the last episode. I forget how it came up. We were talking about the
⏹️ ▶️ John USB standard and how they had all sorts of wacky names. What was the context of this? I don’t remember.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t. I think it was something else that had weird names. And I think I said it’s kind of like USB when
⏹️ ▶️ John they had those very confusing names when they made the bus faster. And what I was referring to was the, I don’t know how
⏹️ ▶️ John many years ago now, USB standards starting from like 1.0 and up from there. So
⏹️ ▶️ John they were, oh, I know what it was. It was HDMI cables we were talking about. HDMI has like, they have these marketing
⏹️ ▶️ John names, but they also have spec version numbers. But you can’t buy a cable based on a spec version number because
⏹️ ▶️ John the spec version number contains a bunch of different parts. then you don’t have to have went to all of. So, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, it was very confusing. And the names that I was thinking of are when they, when USB
⏹️ ▶️ John went above 1.0 and eventually had version 1.1 and two and three, they had marketing names
⏹️ ▶️ John for the different speeds and they were called, and I’m not gonna put them in any particular order so you can just try to figure out which
⏹️ ▶️ John one was, you know, fast, medium, slow. They were called high speed,
⏹️ ▶️ John super speed and full speed. And if you’re keeping track, If you’re keeping track, super
⏹️ ▶️ John speed is one word, and both high speed and full speed are two words. So which one of those is the fastest?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hmm, all right, so I already know what 3.0 is. Is one of those 1.1? Because 1.1 was,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, 1.0 was almost nowhere. Like, almost nothing ever used USB 1.0. 1.0 was just speed.
⏹️ ▶️ John Okay, so did 1.1, because 1.1 was the one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that actually was in most computers in the early days of USB. And then, so I’m gonna guess 2.0 is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wait, what was the first one, fast? Full
⏹️ ▶️ John speed, high speed, and super speed. All right, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m gonna say 2.0 was high speed. And
⏹️ ▶️ John what about the other two?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know 3.0 is super speed.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that makes it so. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I guess 1.0 is full speed,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco 1.1, yeah. And
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco dumb names because
⏹️ ▶️ John like, I think they would be fine if it was just high and super, because you could reasonably
⏹️ ▶️ John expect to understand that super is better than high, but full makes it sound like all the other
⏹️ ▶️ John ones are partial. And so if you want full speed,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you should obviously get, but
⏹️ ▶️ John this full speed is the slowest one. Anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like 1.0 is like beta speed. The break-in period speed. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what I was referring to with the confusing HDMI, HDMI naming, because they have like ultra mega high
⏹️ ▶️ John bandwidth, whatever the hell they’re called. But since last episode, There’s been people passing around
⏹️ ▶️ John the new USB standards where the same brilliant people who came up with super speed, high speed, and full speed
⏹️ ▶️ John have renamed and remapped a bunch of stuff to be even more confusing.
⏹️ ▶️ John They have made one improvement. They basically renamed everything to be super speed followed by a stat
⏹️ ▶️ John like super speed 10 gigabits per second, super speed 20, super speed 50, which like, okay, well, there’s numbers
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re all called super speed. So we can forget about high and full and just relegate them to the dustbin of history.
⏹️ ▶️ John Then they renumbered a bunch of stuff. So like everything is within 3.2 spec. And then there’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, it’s very confusing. I don’t want to go into all the details, but the key points of this is
⏹️ ▶️ John that the USB, whatever they are, that consortium that sets those standards, it’s the USB-IF,
⏹️ ▶️ John I forget what IF stands for, continues to be very bad at branding
⏹️ ▶️ John their standards. There are reasons for it. It’s not like, oh, they’re just super bad at their jobs. Kind of like the connector, where
⏹️ ▶️ John I argued they actually just were. It’s as simple as that. They’re just bad at their jobs. Back in hypercurrent when I talked about
⏹️ ▶️ John that. But there are reasons to rebrand and renumber things. They
⏹️ ▶️ John are trying to make it a bit more sensible, but it is helpful for
⏹️ ▶️ John vendors to be able to say, all our new PCs have USB 3.2 ports, some of which support
⏹️ ▶️ John a USB 3.2, super speed 2X to 10 gigabits, blah, blah, blah. And you can go into more
⏹️ ▶️ John esoteric detail, but you get to rebrand all your ports. And they get to update the standard to say,
⏹️ ▶️ John All your things have to be USB 3.2. They can operate at a slower speed, but they have to comply
⏹️ ▶️ John with all the other criteria that we standardized for 3.2, so they’re better behaved
⏹️ ▶️ John citizens of the ecosystem. Just before our showtime, we got a 1,000 word email
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to explain to us how these standards aren’t actually as confusing as
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco saying they are. And I think that speaks
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Apple ID woes
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steve McLaughlin Arash writes in, this is slightly long, but I think it’s worth
⏹️ ▶️ Casey getting the whole thing because it’s just preposterous. This is with the context of your Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ID woes, John, and how ridiculous Apple ID is. it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would, I would change my Apple ID region. I went in settings and tried to change it, but it told
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me that I have to cancel my Apple music subscription before I can do it. I canceled it, but it kept saying the same thing. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I called Apple and after staying on the line for a bit, someone answered and he, he or she explained everything. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then the Apple person said, there’s nothing that they can do. So the Apple person checked with the next level support
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and apparently they can cancel Apple music early. However, the Apple person told Arash that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that they have to cancel another subscription as well. So Arash looked and it turns out that they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had one subscription for an app, which was 99 cents a year. Well, they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey canceled that, but apparently that subscription was valid for another six months. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so according to the Apple person, there’s nothing they can do about it. And that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Arash has to wait six months until the subscription runs out
⏹️ ▶️ Casey before he or she can change their region for their Apple ID.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so Arash continues to write, I confirmed with disbelief that it’s in fact correct, and she, the Apple person,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey confirmed and suggested that I create a new Apple ID until that expires. So to recap, says Arash,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have to wait six months for a 99 cent a year subscription to end before I can change my Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ID region. Just well done, guys. Well done, Apple. This is clearly without
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, because like with Apple subscriptions, when you cancel them, they don’t end immediately.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They end at the end of whatever you paid until, because you prepay for all subscriptions. So if it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a dollar a year, when you say subscribe, you pay that dollar right then,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then one year later, it auto-renews, unless in the meantime you have quote canceled it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but what canceling means is just telling it not to renew at the end of its period.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you can cancel it a day later, but you will have that subscription
⏹️ ▶️ Marco active for 364 more days, at which point it will just not renew,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and at that point it will stop. So I didn’t realize quite how deep this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco went, but yeah, apparently this goes into like their billing systems such that you can’t move an Apple ID
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with any active subscriptions. And God, I hope they fix that, because now that they’re pushing so hard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into subscriptions as a more mainstream monetization method for apps, and they’re really promoting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it hard in many different ways, stuff like that has to catch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up. Like that, I hope this is a problem that gets solved in their back end. Because stuff like that makes me feel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like their back end is like running DOS. Like, what year is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John this? No, their back end is running
⏹️ ▶️ John a music store. That’s why it’s running. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco why their entire
⏹️ ▶️ John back end is so screwed up by, you know, because at the time the iTunes music store was created,
⏹️ ▶️ John and still to this day for lots of media, there is region locking and region
⏹️ ▶️ John specificity and different rights of intellectual property in different regions. And so just
⏹️ ▶️ John being able to take your Apple ID and change regions is somewhat fraught. But then they just added to
⏹️ ▶️ John it an actual app store on top of the music store back end. And so, and
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s all the things that related to that. And then they added subscriptions on top of that. And it’s just a giant house of cards with
⏹️ ▶️ John extremely surprising interactions between the components. I have follow up on my Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John ID woes, but I don’t think it’s particularly interesting. I’d also talked about it on other podcasts for a while,
⏹️ ▶️ John but suffice it to say that I’m still learning new and interesting things about the limitations of
⏹️ ▶️ John the Apple ID system. what exactly is preventing me from doing what I want. The
⏹️ ▶️ John one the one I think what I expected to happen happened at least once, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s something messed up with one of my Apple IDs and someone behind the scenes does a thing and then says, Okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John I did a thing. Try it now. That actually happened and worked for one small aspect of the problem
⏹️ ▶️ John that I’m working on. So I was excited by that because that’s all I want to happen. I call it when I you know, I get on a support phone call.
⏹️ ▶️ John I want to want to be like, Look, here’s the situation, do whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to do on the back end to make it work. I don’t know, you know, there’s you have
⏹️ ▶️ John access to things that I don’t have access to. I almost never want them to say, let me take you through a series of steps that you could have done
⏹️ ▶️ John before you called, because I feel like I’ve exhausted most of the reasonable sometimes those will work because they have, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John you wouldn’t think this would work, but try this weird combination. Hey, it worked great. And it’s successful call. But really what I want them to do is
⏹️ ▶️ John find out what’s broken in your system and fix it. Is there something corrupt or or unexpected in my data,
⏹️ ▶️ John fix that about it. That I can’t fix from my end, just fix it. Is there a bug in your code, fix that. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John they did that once, and then I got to proceed to continue to do a series of steps, all of
⏹️ ▶️ John which were very surprising to me from the outside. So I think I am mostly unblocked and on my way.
⏹️ ▶️ John I haven’t completed all the things that I wanted to get done but I don’t think I’m currently blocked in anything other than
⏹️ ▶️ John like the seven day waiting period or something for Apple IDs to get deleted before I can move on to the next step. So that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John where I am with that.
Foldable phones
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Speaking of things that I’m not, I don’t think I have too much of a strong opinion about this, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we’ll see what happens in a few minutes. Mobile World Congress is,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was going on over the last few days. And the star of the show seems to be phones
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with bendable screens. And there was a great discussion about this. Was it Upgrade this week, I believe,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where Mike and Jason talked about, there are two different kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of approaches to this. One is where you’re kind of folding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a… the big version of display is like the inside of a book and so when you fold it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of the manufacturers has a second display on the outside.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s the Samsung versus the Huawei approach right now. So the Samsung approach is the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen folds in on itself so that when it’s closed the screen is in and the Huawei one, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen folds out. So it’s It’s kind of like the Samsung one is like the inside of the book is the screen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the Huawei one like the cover of the book is the screen. Basically, I personally think the Huawei one with the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen on the outside looks way better from the little bits of these things that we’ve seen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You do have the issue of like the screen is on the outside. So like if you set it down on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a surface and there’s a little bit of sand on that surface, like there’s no way to set it down to avoid grit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco possibly scratching your screen with The second problem that these screens are not glass, they are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plastic, which in some ways should be better for durability, but also probably means they will scratch more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco easily. So there’s a whole bunch of weirdness with foldable phones,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but honestly, I am very interested to follow this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not interested enough to actually buy one of these things because these are two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very first generation attempts, and there’s a whole lot of unknowns, Not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to mention the fact that I don’t care about Android phones at all, and I probably shouldn’t even be talking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about this because I’m so out of that world. But the idea
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a foldable phone is so, if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you would have asked me six months ago if that was coming out in 2019,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would have said you’re crazy. Yeah, no way. We’ve seen at various CESs and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things in the last few years, even more than that, we’ve seen like rollable screens,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco folding screens, and it’s always that kind of thing where it gets shown off at a trade show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with like one concept product that like one manufacturer was able to make one of these things, and then it never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco comes into reality. It’s never a real product. So to have foldable screens
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually come into the world in what appears to be usable products, even if they’re weird
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and even if they have weird downsides, like the fact that these are released, or going to be released, I guess, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco aren’t out yet, but they’re gonna be out in the next few months. That is really cool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to me, just from a technical level. Again, I don’t actually want these things, but just from a cool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gadget, I can’t believe what technology can do kind of perspective, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really cool, and it’s very new. That’s something that we have not had. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just another evolution of something else. This is a totally new thing that technology
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can now do, And there’s gonna be lots of applications for flexible,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bendable, foldable, rollable, you know, tuckable, whatever, you know, screens you can fold into a paper airplane,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever it is, like, there’s gonna be fun stuff with that that we can do. So the main
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing I like about this is, for as long as I can remember,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the main problem with phones is, we want, in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many times in which we are using them, we want the screen to be as big as possible. but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we also want a small body to be hand-holdable in one hand a lot of times,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we want it to be able to fit in a pocket. And on the other end, kind of nearby
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to this whole struggle and compromise and debate, we have phones versus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tablets also. I really enjoy using my iPad quite a lot at home, you know, around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the house and sometimes while traveling, but I also would love it if I didn’t need to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have an iPad. wouldn’t it be great if a phone could just get a bit bigger?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because ultimately, that’s all my iPad is, it’s just a bigger phone. You know, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has like the same processor as the phones, and it has like the same software stack. So ultimately,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if a phone could just unfold and get bigger, yeah, it’s not gonna be as big as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my 11-inch iPad Pro, but it could be the same size as an iPad Mini, and for a lot of people,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would negate the need for a tablet at all. I mean, obviously, many people are not having a tablet to begin with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because they’ve made the calculus that a five-inch phone is better than having two different devices. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you could have a five-inch phone that unfolds into an eight-inch tablet, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is awesome to have in one device. Then you don’t need a tablet separately. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco huge, that’s a huge deal. And for a lot of people, that makes it even easier for their phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be their only or their primary computer, which is a trend that we’ve all been moving towards
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slowly. And so even if these two products that are out today are weird and have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things about them that totally suck, it’s still super exciting to be moving towards a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco point and to have taken this very large step towards this direction where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can resolve these two conflicts of having to own
⏹️ ▶️ Marco both a phone and a tablet or wanting both but not being able to have both or not having one with you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the time or whatever. You have that possibly being resolved with this as well as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone sizing being helped out a lot by like you want something pocketable and one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco handable, but also that can occasionally be as big as possible so that you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco browse larger content with it and do more things with it and everything. If these can do that, even if they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have large downsides down the road, like even, you know, suppose, you know, these are weird, okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Suppose in two to five years we have like good foldable phones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s actually like a more mainstream choice, I don’t think they’re ever gonna be compromise-free.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like there’s always gonna be compromises with this, and maybe the compromise is the screen covers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to be plastic again forever. Maybe the compromise is, yeah, you know what, your screen just gets scratched a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more, and that’s just a thing that happens. Cases are a huge unknown. How the heck do you put a case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on one of these things? And that’s a big question mark. But whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the downsides are, you have these two massive upsides of, you have a phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that can be two different sizes whenever you want it to be, and you might not need a tablet anymore. And those are so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big, those are such massive advantages that I’m willing to overlook a whole lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the weirdness and the downsides and the clumsiness in order to get those.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I agree with you. It’s so clear, as you said, that this is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the kind of us, We’re dipping our toe into the water of foldable phones, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it’s clear that these are going to be just compromised machines, but that’s okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I think this is the time at which everyone starts getting grumpy that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple doesn’t seem to be doing anything related to foldable phones, which is almost certainly untrue,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but that’s what we see, is that they’re not doing anything. And this is when Apple is at their best
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the past, is when they kind of sit back and wait and see, all right, how’s this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all going to shake out? You know, maybe we don’t want to be trailblazing on this one. Maybe we want to see how this goes. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then fast forward a couple of years and suddenly the, you know, it just, well, not a lot of Apple just works
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anymore. See Apple ID, but you know, the, the, it just works version of Apple’s feel foldable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phone comes out. But this seems, this seems
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like it’s an extremely cool idea and it seems like this has legs. And I’m curious
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to see where the industry runs with it. I don’t know, John, are you excited about it?
⏹️ ▶️ John This is why I should have more segments on the show where we talk about television screens and television screen tech, because,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the whole exciting thing with OLED, the fact that you don’t need to have a backlight behind it, it can be very thin. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ve seen all those old televisions that have a very, very thin portion and then maybe like a thicker portion down below where like the power
⏹️ ▶️ John supply and stuff is. It’s because all of their bendable. And if you’re wondering, will I see
⏹️ ▶️ John but when will I see bendable phones? If you’d watch in CES, yeah, they have all sorts of weird demos and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John But this year, we, you know, what happens is you get a bunch of tech demos, then eventually you get a products. This year, we
⏹️ ▶️ John have actual products. They’re selling a roll up television that they still it looks like a soundbar
⏹️ ▶️ John and has a slit in the top and the television rises up out of the slit. That’s not a tech demo. That’s an actual product
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re going to sell to people. It’s because OLED screens have reached a level of maturity where we can
⏹️ ▶️ John do stuff like that with it. So that’s where you get these bendable phones as well. The main reason people haven’t done metal
⏹️ ▶️ John phones before, this is not because they couldn’t make a bendable OLED screen, it’s all the other ancillary concerns.
⏹️ ▶️ John How do you power it? How do you deal with the hinge part? How do you deal with the compromises of product
⏹️ ▶️ John design? How do you do it in a reasonably affordable price? And
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re still not there with a reasonable solution, but people are trying stuff out. That’s why Android stuff is interesting,
⏹️ ▶️ John because someone will try every idea. Like, maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t. Like, they have ones, you’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John seen a bunch of stuff or they have like a phone that goes around your wrist. It’s not bendable, but it’s curved, you know, because you can wrap an OLED screen
⏹️ ▶️ John around your wrist and that’s probably not gonna catch on either, but try everything and see what sticks.
⏹️ ▶️ John The main thing that I’m interested about these bendable, I’ve noticed that bendable screens, not bendable phones,
⏹️ ▶️ John because is it, I mean, obviously if it makes phone calls, I suppose you can call it a phone, but
⏹️ ▶️ John most of these things are bendable tablets because a bendable phone would start the size of
⏹️ ▶️ John a phone and then bend into something half the size of a phone. These things all start the size of
⏹️ ▶️ John a smallish tablet and bend into the size of a phone. But bendable screens
⏹️ ▶️ John in general, what I’m thinking is like, what benefit are we trying to
⏹️ ▶️ John get out of it here? I can envision some scenarios where the folding and bending they have
⏹️ ▶️ John now might be beneficial, but kind of like the Naked Robotic Core thing where
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a certain amount of stuff on the outside. like basically
⏹️ ▶️ John the argument like taking a case and putting it on an acre robotic core ends up with a thicker phone than if you had built that
⏹️ ▶️ John case into the phone and the exchanges you get more flexibility that if you don’t want a case you don’t have to have it
⏹️ ▶️ John and you can pick your own case but because there’s like the innards of the phone the outside of the phone and then the case
⏹️ ▶️ John you sort of double stack everything so with these current phones as they exist or these bendable tablet
⏹️ ▶️ John things it’s basically like a regular device more or less at regular device thicknesses
⏹️ ▶️ John that has parts inside it and circuit boards and batteries and radios and all that other
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff throughout the entire thing and then somewhere in the middle there’s a hinge
⏹️ ▶️ John so when you fold it over it is necessarily thicker than you would expect a phone or tablet
⏹️ ▶️ John to be and I think for the current for a current
⏹️ ▶️ John level of technology I’m not sure there is a situation
⏹️ ▶️ John where you would want to trade width and height for a doubled thickness if
⏹️ ▶️ John the single thickness is roughly the same thickness as current tablets and phones. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John doubling that makes it pretty big. Like you could take an iPhone 10 and fold it in half and
⏹️ ▶️ John what you would get is my wallet that YouTube makes fun of all the time. Like yeah, it’s smaller in width
⏹️ ▶️ John and height, but it’s kind of thick. And like what’s easier to put in in your pocket, something that
⏹️ ▶️ John is an iPhone 10 folded in half so that it is like pretty chunky thick,
⏹️ ▶️ John but smaller in width and height, or something that’s like this. I don’t know if that is a big trade off. And then to Marco’s point, like if you want
⏹️ ▶️ John to go the other direction, say, no, no, I don’t want it to get smaller than a phone. What I want is a phone that
⏹️ ▶️ John folds out to be tablet size. Well, you can’t make it that big of a tablet,
⏹️ ▶️ John as Marco pointed out, maybe an iPad mini. And while it’s in phone, it’s a mighty thick phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John And of course they’re very expensive. the Samsung one, so I described in a video as basically it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John basically two phones. If you take two iPhone 10s and connect them with a hinge and make it one continuous screen,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s basically what it is. So you have twice the battery, but it’s also twice the weight and twice the thickness. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the Samsung one also has screens on the outside too. So there’s the big screen on the inside of them and you close it, you can’t see
⏹️ ▶️ John the inside screen anymore because it’s inside the book essentially. But the outsides also have screen on them, so there’s no place
⏹️ ▶️ John to escape the screens that are on these things. And then you of extra screen and extra power and had easier with the software.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s very confusing. So and apple apple has patents on all sorts of bendable screen stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’ve been doing bendable screen stuff forever. But apple is not a product with yet because they’re not ready. I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ John sure if apple will ever jump into this at least for a couple of years. But really I feel
⏹️ ▶️ John like we’re what we’re working towards is not so much a bendable screen as a situation where
⏹️ ▶️ John the screen part is separated from the guts part. The
⏹️ ▶️ John guts is the battery, the circuit boards, the radios, all that other part. Because the screen part can
⏹️ ▶️ John be incredibly thin and flexible. And because it’s OLED
⏹️ ▶️ John or similar technologies that don’t require like a light behind a bunch of things, like it’s a very, it’s its own,
⏹️ ▶️ John it emits its own light. And it can be very thin and very flexible, which is why we can have these things exist anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you can separate that part from the guts part, then you can get situations
⏹️ ▶️ John where, look at the giant rollable television and imagine a shrunken version where
⏹️ ▶️ John there is the computing part and what comes out from it is a
⏹️ ▶️ John screen that could roll out and extend like a scroll of paper or that type of thing, you
⏹️ ▶️ John could like suck that thing back in and now you have something the size and thickness of a pen with a screen that pulls
⏹️ ▶️ John out of it as far out as you want to pull the thing. we don’t have the tech for that yet, but
⏹️ ▶️ John that would be a situation where you’re not just taking a phone
⏹️ ▶️ John and trading width and height for thickness, you are
⏹️ ▶️ John taking something that works as a phone and getting rid of like
⏹️ ▶️ John all of the width and most of the, you know, like it becomes like a pen. It’s a different form factor entirely.
⏹️ ▶️ John You could put it in your, you know, your front pocket of your shirt, right? That’s not the case with like fold your iPhone 10 and a half
⏹️ ▶️ John and shove it in the front pocket of your shirt. It’s just not gonna work out that way. So that’s what I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John looking forward to. But in the meantime, I’m happy to see people experimenting with bendable. I still think
⏹️ ▶️ John the person who can get the most stuff out from behind the screen is gonna win in the bendable thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John I am concerned about the plastic screen just because anything that you’re gonna bend back and forth a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John is going to crease and kink. And if it’s made of plastic, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna have the ugly crease part in the plastic. like setting aside how it feels when it’s brand new,
⏹️ ▶️ John eventually open, close, open, close. Imagine if every time you took out your phone, you unbent it or maybe some percentage
⏹️ ▶️ John of the time, if you can use it when it’s in bent mode. That’s not a great experience. The ones that have the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John on the inside, the radius and that bend is really rough. Like it’s a tighter
⏹️ ▶️ John turn for even the OLED screen to make if your screen is on the inside, which is why screen on the outside is much
⏹️ ▶️ John friendlier to both creasing and the underlying screen. But, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, people will sort that out. I don’t see Apple entering this
⏹️ ▶️ John market unless they can either make a significant leap or unless it be
⏹️ ▶️ John a particular arrangement of screen and hinge
⏹️ ▶️ John and device and you know, like if something becomes popular, then yes, Apple, I feel like will enter the market
⏹️ ▶️ John will say, well, we didn’t think the market would want something like this, but all the Android phones now look like
⏹️ ▶️ John this. So we’ll try it. Honestly, I’m not actually predicting that for a little while. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not going to say it’s like curved televisions because that was stupid, but it’s I think we’re going to have some
⏹️ ▶️ John experimentation and then another regrouping and then another run at this because I really think the big win
⏹️ ▶️ John is get the get the guts out from behind the screen because then many more exciting things
⏹️ ▶️ John become possible. All that said, it’s definitely cool and futuristic and this is going to make movie props
⏹️ ▶️ John probably a lot easier to make because
⏹️ ▶️ John rather than I’m just doing it entirely in CG. It’s great when you can buy a real thing and glue a bunch of futuristic looking crap to it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I bet these phones will be used for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, probably not. I think the screens on devices are usually composited afterwards for movies. So they’re better off just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco carrying a piece of cardboard that’s folded in half.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, maybe. Like you ever see the, in the Westworld, they have foldable
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey tablets. But the
⏹️ ▶️ John interesting thing they did in Westworld is they didn’t make the screen continuous. They made it like, the
⏹️ ▶️ John two halves are separated so that when you unfold it, two halves just a butt up against each other.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the you know, the joint is so precise that you don’t really see the crease. Right? I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John actually, I think that is potentially an option if you wanted to have glass screens, but folding,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’d have to have like the sharp glass edges or something that like a butt at each other. And you know, on a television show,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can actually make them sharp because it’s not a real device. But in real life, if you actually made them sharp enough, so there wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John be a seam, they would like cut you if you’re writing your finger on the edge of them. So there are challenges there. But it’s interesting that
⏹️ ▶️ John even in the visions of the future on television, they don’t always pick the thing that actually seems more futuristic.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, oh, the screen is continuous and it wraps around the corner, probably because it’s just easier to make a prop that
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t work like that. But let’s say now that we have real devices that work like that, they can use that as the prop. Yeah. And also still
⏹️ ▶️ John composite the screen afterwards. But the actual, you know, the screen would be continuous all the way around the corner.
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, they could use that prop and people would buy it because eventually people are going to be seeing these things.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is what we should put in our calendar. sighting in the wild of somebody
⏹️ ▶️ John with a bendable screen device of any kind. I haven’t seen one yet in the wild. So far, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, we’ve only seen them at trade shows, but If you go over to some fancy rich person’s house
⏹️ ▶️ John and they have that roll-up television, that’ll count too. out for that.
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco Discourse move the discussion forward. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s one other phone that we should at least briefly discuss from Mobile World Congress and that is the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Energizer phone. That is not a joke. Energizer, the people who make batteries
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have made a phone that is basically a like Mophie battery pack with
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s more than just a Mophie battery pack. It’s like four
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Mophie battery packs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This thing, we’ll put a link in the show notes to a picture of it next to what appears to be an iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or maybe not an iPhone but something similar. This thing is preposterous. And yes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everyone’s saying, oh, ha ha ha, all you idiots who want more battery life and a thicker phone, well, here you go.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Put your money where your mouth is. But of course, nobody wants this. I don’t know why this was even made,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be honest. But what we do want is maybe a teeny, teeny
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bit thicker phone for a little bit more battery, just to get us right over the edge from, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ending the day a little uncomfortable to ending the day very comfortable. This is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cranking that all the way from past 11 to like 45. So it is preposterous,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey although that color, that shade of blue is nice, but it is otherwise preposterous and I don’t know why anyone would want this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just, I mean, first of all, it was probably designed for more of like a publicity stunt. I can’t imagine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re serious about this Because it’s Energizer making a phone, right? Like that’s, you know, Energizer is
⏹️ ▶️ John phone. Did Energizer make it, or are they just applying the branding to it after the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fact? Well, right, probably that, right? They probably like paid some contract manufacturer to make this, you know, make 10
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of these things for them. It’s just to have it a trade show. Because like, I think the Verge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco headline is perfect. This 18,000 milliamp hour battery has a phone in it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like it’s not, it isn’t a phone with an 18,000 milliamp hour battery. It’s a battery with a phone glued
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inside of it, basically. And yeah, this has gotta be some kind of gag
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or publicity thing. So it is kind of funny, though, to consider,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe there might be some people who might actually want this. Not us,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not almost anybody, but there’s a lot of people out there and everyone wants a phone, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s probably at least five or 10 people who would buy this thing. But yeah, it is kind of comical.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like 18,000 milliamp hour, that’s like the size of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the large battery packs. Like the ones that weigh like a pound by themselves.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s like, it’s the kind of battery pack that if you were going on a trip and you wanted to charge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like three or four phones, or you wanted to charge your iPad, or a Switch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a flight to New Zealand, or something, this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco isn’t the little tiny ones you put in your pocket. This is like the big brick ones that like, you know, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hope you don’t carry, but you hope like maybe you’re, maybe you can convince your partner to carry it for you. Like that’s, that’s what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these batteries are. And so to have, to have this be a, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an ostensibly pocketable device is just hilarious.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, it’s, it’s fun for, for the publicity stunt, but no one’s going to buy this because anybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who needs that much battery life, you can just buy any phone and get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a giant battery to use with it. Like you don’t need it to be always with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you, always built in. Like I thought about like, like when I wear dress
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clothes, I will take my phone out of its case so that it’s thinner in my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pocket because you don’t want a big thick phone when you’re wearing like dress pants.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was thinking like I have the luxury of doing that because I have, you know, because my phone is the Naked Robotic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Core style, where it comes with an okay battery in it. And if I really need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more battery, I can get a battery case, but most of the time I don’t. So I never even bother. This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone always has that giant battery brick on it. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even if you’re the kind of person who sometimes or even routinely needs that much battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco life, I can’t imagine that you would want it to just always be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there and not be easily be easily removed from it on the few cases where you didn’t need that much battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco life. So yeah, it’s a fun thing to consider the existence of, but it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a real viable product.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think this phone is great.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I think it highlights the
⏹️ ▶️ John advantages of the Android ecosystem, where if someone has some idea for
⏹️ ▶️ John a phone, go ahead and make it. Like, here’s the thing, like Apple’s never gonna make a phone like this, and really
⏹️ ▶️ John no one should probably make a phone like this, but in the Android world, somebody can make a phone like this. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t doubt that there are people who want this phone. Like, they want a big, giant
⏹️ ▶️ John phone. They don’t want to have a separate battery thing because they’d constantly be charging it. Or they don’t want to have a slot
⏹️ ▶️ John battery case on. They want it all in one unit. The only place I think this falls down is those people probably also want this thing
⏹️ ▶️ John to be totally encased in rubber so they can drop it from 50 feet and it’ll survive. Like, these are people who are like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I don’t know, like going out into the woods to do like logging or something for weeks at a time.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they, you know, they don’t have time to recharge and they’re using the phone constantly, and they don’t wanna have a separate
⏹️ ▶️ John battery pack, and they don’t wanna have cables, they just wanna have one big, thick, rugged thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John lasts a week, right? And here you go, almost, this one is not rugged. Something like the old
⏹️ ▶️ John Toughbook laptops or whatever. And that’s the advantage of an open ecosystem. Apple’s never gonna make
⏹️ ▶️ John products like this. Apple’s gonna make products for the mainstream that they can sell a lot of that most people want.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you have exotic needs, your best bet is to
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, hope that Apple sticks to the naked robotic course strategy and see if you can slap a bunch of stuff on to
⏹️ ▶️ John an Apple phone, which for the most part you can, but there is something to be said to integration. So I
⏹️ ▶️ John like the idea that things like this exist, even if this one just happens to be a marketing gimmick.
⏹️ ▶️ John weird, though. They advertise like a week like a week. It’s not just like, oh, I can charge my phone every two days to advertise a
⏹️ ▶️ John week of use of like normal uses, which I almost believe but maybe not quite because it
⏹️ ▶️ John looks more like maybe three days to me but what do I know.
March Apple event?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So there is rumor of a March Apple event,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I haven’t read too much about this yet. It seems to be that there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was a little flash in the pan, then it kind of just disappeared, but people seem to think that this, that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this will be the unveiling of this Apple video, as I keep petitioning for it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be called, uh, this, this Apple media thing offering, and supposedly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot of like movie stars have been invited and and stuff. So what do we make of this, fellas?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What’s going on here?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the rumors did sort of come and go, but this is supposed to be the subscription something something event. Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John has a bunch of subscription stuff in the works that we
⏹️ ▶️ John more or less know about. There’s the video service you just mentioned. They bought Texture,
⏹️ ▶️ John that sort of news subscription service. There’s rumors about the, you know, apparently
⏹️ ▶️ John ongoing contract negotiation with news vendors where Apple wants to take 50% of their money for
⏹️ ▶️ John going through the service. There is Apple’s gaming subscription service that we have a separate item about
⏹️ ▶️ John below. Basically subscribe to all the things and another area where Microsoft was ahead business
⏹️ ▶️ John model wise because they were forced to because their old business models fell apart sooner than Apple’s did. But Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John stuck stubbornly to selling music for way longer than most people thought they should until they eventually got a subscription service
⏹️ ▶️ John and basically all the other things that you can buy from applications to video to news to I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know you name it. Apple would probably love to sell you a subscription at a certain
⏹️ ▶️ John point. All the things that I just listed that are rumors. You have to start actually announcing some.
⏹️ ▶️ John It took them a long time to have to come out with Apple Music.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that was like just one. It’s like it’s Apple just going to keep selling music forever. Surely they have a subscription service. All these other
⏹️ ▶️ John people are going to launch and And finally, Apple Music. And then we’ve been waiting since then for the other seven shoes
⏹️ ▶️ John to drop. So this March event seems to be the time when Apple really needs
⏹️ ▶️ John to announce one or more of its new subscription services. The difficulty
⏹️ ▶️ John is that all the stories about all the subscription services,
⏹️ ▶️ John none of them seem like they are slam dunks. Like this sounds
⏹️ ▶️ John awesome. have special advantages that it’s going to make it attractive to people.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everyone is excited about signing up for it. And, you know, it’s going to be smooth sailing.
⏹️ ▶️ John All of them are fraught in some way. We already talked about their video business and their original content
⏹️ ▶️ John and what the landscape looks like there. The news thing is all tied up in how much money Apple seems
⏹️ ▶️ John to want out of this and whether that’s viable for the the content creators in that case and
⏹️ ▶️ John whether people want to subscribe to news in that way through Apple. The gaming services, I think, is the most
⏹️ ▶️ John unproven, even though everyone else is trying to come up with a gaming service. I pulled this quote
⏹️ ▶️ John from Satya Nadella talking in January, like some Microsoft earnings thing, about their gaming
⏹️ ▶️ John service, and he’s like, we are well poised to do a Netflix for games, and
⏹️ ▶️ John we won’t be the only ones doing it, but we’ve got a gaming console, and we’ve got PC games, and it’ll be great,
⏹️ ▶️ John and we already know about subscriptions. And that’s probably not on a lot of people’s radar, because
⏹️ ▶️ John who cares enough about games to subscribe to games in that way? And that’s not really a proven business model for
⏹️ ▶️ John games. To be clear, we’re not talking about paying every month to play World of Warcraft. We’re talking
⏹️ ▶️ John about paying every month to get a selection of games, just like you pay every month to Netflix and
⏹️ ▶️ John you get a selection of video that you can watch. I haven’t been keeping
⏹️ ▶️ John up with the March event rumors, but I assume the one and only thing they’re going to announce is either
⏹️ ▶️ John their texture thing or Apple video thing. If they announce both of them, I’ll be shocked.
⏹️ ▶️ John If they announce only Apple video, I won’t be surprised. I don’t expect gaming subscription to come out. And honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ John given Apple’s track record with games, I feel like that one, we should just like call that one ping 3.0 preemptively
⏹️ ▶️ John and just assume it’s going to be a miserable failure because Apple doesn’t understand games. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John if and when they announce a March event, we’re almost at March right now, it’s time for them to announce
⏹️ ▶️ John a subscription thing and hopefully it will be good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, the subhead on the original article from John Pazowski
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at BuzzFeed is the company is expected to show off a long rumored news subscription
⏹️ ▶️ Casey service. So there seems to be conflicting theories as to whether or not the video stuff would be there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey after all, but I don’t know, I don’t see, would they really do a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whole event just for this news thing? I guess if they thought it was a big deal, but
⏹️ ▶️ John they did events for like the iBook store, they do all sorts of weird things. Like here’s the thing that they bought texture
⏹️ ▶️ John a while ago. And they have Apple News, and it’s surprisingly popular. And like, so it’s, you know, that would
⏹️ ▶️ John make sense. But the video subscription service has more concrete
⏹️ ▶️ John evidence behind it, like they could buy texture and try to come up with, you know, a periodical
⏹️ ▶️ John news subscription service, and then just in the end, decide that, like, it didn’t work out. Oh, well, we lesson learned,
⏹️ ▶️ John we paid some money for another company, we tried to do something and it didn’t work out that happens, I’m sure happens all the time,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? But They can’t really do that with video anymore. They have to launch a video subscription service. Like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John really hard to write off the $1 billion, even if you’re Apple, like it’s a lot of money that we know that
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re spending. Like they’ve actually paid for stuff. Things already been produced, contracts have been signed. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s a lot of public egg on your face if they decide actually nevermind that video streaming
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. So I’m not quite sure what they’re waiting for for the new streaming. Maybe they want to wait for more original content
⏹️ ▶️ John to be in the can. So they have a strong launch lineup or something, but I feel like the clock is ticking their video
⏹️ ▶️ John service way more than it’s ticking on a subscription news service. If the news service is all that’s ready,
⏹️ ▶️ John then they can announce that. But if they announce that, all the stories are gonna be, hey, Apple’s news service, let’s talk about the economics.
⏹️ ▶️ John And by the way, where is that video service? When is that coming? Is that a 2020 product? I don’t, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I still am skeptical that all these different things that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we keep hearing that are rumored from Apple are separate subscriptions. Yeah, these are now three separate services.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, exactly. Like I really like it would be so much more compelling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it was a bundle and and I think it would serve Apple’s business interests better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it was a bundle
⏹️ ▶️ John because can Apple can Apple produce things all at the same time anymore is that because I Can’t even ship air pods and their
⏹️ ▶️ John wireless charging mat at the same time or in the planned year so forgive me if I’m pessimistic
⏹️ ▶️ John about their ability to ship a news thing and and a new storage plan and
⏹️ ▶️ John a video service and combine it with Apple Music all at once and call it Apple Prime or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s honestly, that’s a valid concern. Like, you know, one thing Apple is really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not very good at is multitasking. And so, you know, that’s why they tend to focus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on one area, get something out the door, and then not touch it for years as they move their focus to other things. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the idea of having to coordinate multiple different things all together to have one big, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco combined launch is admittedly a high risk for them. But these are three
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different things or whatever, however many things that are theoretically all under the same organization.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s all like the services and content sales kind of organization, like QLand. All backed by a music
⏹️ ▶️ Marco store, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I think in this case, it’s at least possible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have all those things be launched together. I don’t see any of these things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being incredibly strong on their own, but they could be incredibly strong
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when bundled with Apple’s other services. So if you consider, you know, Apple Music is very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco strong. It took a while to get there because it wasn’t bundled with anything else, so it took a while to get there,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it is now pretty strong.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, Apple Music, I’m gonna stop you there. Apple Music was bundled with something else. The only reason Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John Music is as big as it is and the only reason Apple News is as big as it is is because it’s bundled with the iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, I know we don’t think that counts, but like, that’s why, because they are first party things that come on your phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the reason the podcast app is the biggest app, right? So when we talk about being bundled, we’re talking about
⏹️ ▶️ John bundled with another subscription, but the only reason Apple’s successful at all in this realm was because they have
⏹️ ▶️ John this incredibly popular product and whatever they put on the home screen of that product, when you take out of the box and
⏹️ ▶️ John prompt you to potentially sign up for, that is their power move. So I
⏹️ ▶️ John think they actually can launch all these services piecemeal individually and eventually get traction because
⏹️ ▶️ John they come on the iPhone, and they’ll be on your home screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s fair. Yeah, but anyway, so I’m hoping that there is a strong
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bundle here. Because so many people would enjoy,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say, the magazine service or whatever it is, like the news service. They would enjoy that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but they’re probably not gonna pay for that separately. But if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can say, look, you can now, instead of just buying Apple Music for whatever it is, 10 bucks a month,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can now spend 15 or 20 bucks a month and get music, video, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco news. And then, you know, they’ll throw games in later, maybe. They’ll throw games, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I mean, we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see how that plays out and whether that’s actually gonna be strongly compelling for a lot of people, I don’t know. It might be.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But if you can, you know, again, if you can have that bundle where you can have multiple things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where at least one of them is a strong draw and the value proposition isn’t too bad,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, heck, I would love if they threw in iCloud backup space. I don’t know that that’s realistic, but I would love that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so to combine all these things into one bundle, that gives them incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco strong leverage to get these services off the ground from nothing. That’s why Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was able to do Amazon Video, because they bundled it with Prime, and they shoved a bunch of people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into that service because you couldn’t not get it. If you had Prime, you had Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Video, and therefore Amazon Video became big. Bundling is incredibly powerful,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I really hope Apple takes advantage of that because I think it would be better for them and their services as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a whole to be that strong right from the start. Because otherwise, if they just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco launch a paid new service that’s just another separate thing billing you every month on iTunes,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’ll get people to subscribe to it but I think the numbers are gonna be way lower. And I think they’re gonna lose a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of more casual people like us, who might not be super into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco magazines to pay for it separately, but if it’s part of a larger thing that we’re already paying for, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it’s a very small upgrade fee from what we’re already paying, then we might be into it.
⏹️ ▶️ John With the video service though, I think like despite the fact that that is how Amazon Video came to be what it is,
⏹️ ▶️ John the current thinking on video, which Amazon eventually adopted, albeit
⏹️ ▶️ John after the fact, and Amazon was the pioneer in is original content. And Apple seems to subscribe strongly to that
⏹️ ▶️ John aspect of how do you be successful as a video, that you have to have original
⏹️ ▶️ John content that people want. So they’re doing that. mean they’re not also doing the oh and by the way also hit your
⏹️ ▶️ John thing to a star and you know do the Amazon video thing but I think if Amazon video was launched today
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean it took a long time for Amazon video to get on the original content bandwagon like there was some original content
⏹️ ▶️ John and they had like they were slow moving like Netflix was the first mover and the strongest mover there and
⏹️ ▶️ John and you know Netflix just really doubled and tripled down on it in years and so that’s like that’s the defining
⏹️ ▶️ John way of like you can’t be forget about being a video service if if you don’t have original content. And that’s why all the other players
⏹️ ▶️ John are entering the market, Disney’s streaming service and CBS or whatever. Like those things don’t launch streaming services
⏹️ ▶️ John until and unless they have original content that nobody else has, because that’s how you succeed.
⏹️ ▶️ John So all we see from Apple is that aspect of it, that they’re putting money into original
⏹️ ▶️ John content. So I still think it’s plausible that they launch without tying it to anything else, video
⏹️ ▶️ John specifically, without tying it to anything else as a standalone thing on the strength of their original content.
⏹️ ▶️ John Given Apple’s video content so far, it’s reasonably pessimistic about how successful there be, but
⏹️ ▶️ John We’ll see if they did both. I think that would be a very powerful solution awesome original content
⏹️ ▶️ John and also by the way It’s tied to something else in part of a larger bill and so on and so forth for the other things like
⏹️ ▶️ John the far less Proven things like gaming subscription and new subscription. I don’t think there is a
⏹️ ▶️ John strategy other than tying it that has been that is a a reasonable
⏹️ ▶️ John way to get traction in that market. You’re not gonna get exclusive games on your gaming
⏹️ ▶️ John subscription thing. It’s just not, no one’s gonna take this economics. It doesn’t make any sense. And the news
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff, again, you’re not gonna get exclusivity. Washington Post and New York Times aren’t gonna shut down their website and say you can only get our
⏹️ ▶️ John content through Apple News, like especially if they’re giving Apple 50% of the money. So all you can do with
⏹️ ▶️ John those services is either make them extremely cheap or bundle them with something else at a nominal
⏹️ ▶️ John fee to try to get traction. The reason Apple News is so incredibly popular is A, it comes on your iPhone,
⏹️ ▶️ John and B, it’s free. It comes on your iPhone. You don’t have to sign up for it. You don’t have to do it. It’s just there on your home screen, and you can read
⏹️ ▶️ John news, and it gets crazy numbers and huge traffic, which Apple is now using as a hammer to bash
⏹️ ▶️ John publishers over the head and say, we have all the billions of users, and these users have money in their
⏹️ ▶️ John wallets, and they just bought a really expensive phone, and boy, you want these users, so we’re going to make you pay
⏹️ ▶️ John through the nose for them, but we’re never going to give you their names. And so that’s going on over
⏹️ ▶️ John there. The game thing is like we have tons of people who play games, granted mostly free games and you can
⏹️ ▶️ John fleece them, you know, with your free to play mechanics. But maybe,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, if we could collect some money on a subscription basis, we could distribute that to you in tiny little
⏹️ ▶️ John pennies, most of which would go to the games that were making all the money anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Like I don’t even understand the gaming argument of how
⏹️ ▶️ John you get people on this service. But it’s, you know, it’s something they can try.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if it doesn’t work out and no one signs up for it, it’s no skin off Apple’s back and I just feel bad for the people who
⏹️ ▶️ John went all in on the gaming subscription service. I don’t know. You know, if
⏹️ ▶️ John the March event is really just about one of those services, I am probably the least interested in the news one. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John think I’m most interested in the video one. But yeah, I’m my my faith in Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John ability to do the grand gesture to do the big giant unification to do the, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John see change large unified product making sense out of a what was
⏹️ ▶️ John once a complicated mess of different services. I just I just don’t see that happening
⏹️ ▶️ John anymore. Uh, and it’s a tall order. Like I’m not saying, oh, they should be able to do this. I’m Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John is one of the few companies that has ever done anything like this successfully. So doing a piecemeal is probably
⏹️ ▶️ John the smarter move. And then you can discard the ones that don’t work out and then, you know, unify it later and everyone will still
⏹️ ▶️ John be happy. But God, if they do a March event and it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John a new subscription service, the most interesting story is probably about the thing they’re not going to tell you, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is what the split in revenue is between Apple and the publishers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And honestly, a lot of people are getting their hopes up for hardware in this event. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would not do that. I mean, I haven’t heard anything, but it just seems unlikely.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, Apple, when they have a strong content story to sell or some strong
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other narrative to sell, they tend not to blend hardware with that in the same event. And so in this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if the rumors really are strong, which they are, that this is going to be focused on some kind of new subscription service
⏹️ ▶️ Marco launching, I really don’t think there’s gonna be like, AirPods thrown in for some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reason, or the AirPower, Matt, I think those things, if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AirPower and AirPods are gonna be released in the first half of 2019 before June,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s gonna be either a separate event or just briefings and press releases.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think that’s gonna be combined with the news service
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and possible video service and possible game service launching a new subscription. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too different, it’s two different things.
⏹️ ▶️ John They can just release AirPower in the dead of the night and hope no one notices.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It’ll just appear on their webpage with no press release.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’ll just start being in the stores. Like, just, what do you mean? You always wanna buy AirPower.
⏹️ ▶️ John But they announced that so long ago. You know, the AirPods, in the case that you can charge wirelessly,
⏹️ ▶️ John they announced that like a year ago. Like, that’s already out, yeah, right? Of course that’s already out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I need new AirPods, guys, because I’ve got the same sickness that everyone else has, that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John mine are not quite- Low battery life. Yep, yep, yep.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I don’t want to buy a new set. Like, not now, I mean. I want to wait. I want to get whatever’s the new hotness.
⏹️ ▶️ John ah, man. Become very familiar with that awesome sound. This is a great sound design. I’m reminded
⏹️ ▶️ John of the WWDC session where Apple talks about like how they design sounds for their things. That’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco great session.
⏹️ ▶️ John But very much like game sound design, like good sounding games is much harder
⏹️ ▶️ John than you think it is. When you do a good job, you don’t notice it. And so the sound when your AirPods are low on battery, it goes,
⏹️ ▶️ John do do do do. You know that little noise? It’s a sad noise, it’s like, no, no AirPods.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you start doing the thing where you put one in the case and just go with one ear and swap it back and forth to try to extend,
⏹️ ▶️ John I do that sometimes. Yep, I need new AirPods too, but I’m not buying them if I can
⏹️ ▶️ John possibly help it until the new ones come out. I hope this is not gonna be another Mac Pro situation going to be 10 years from now
⏹️ ▶️ John with airpods with like wires glued to the ends of them or something those are little batteries in
⏹️ ▶️ John there i feel for the little airpods i they’ve i’m very satisfied with the airpods despite the fact
⏹️ ▶️ John that and this is a fundamental problem with our current you know lithium-ion battery world
⏹️ ▶️ John all these devices i i don’t want removable batteries for my airpods i don’t want to be bigger or heavier
⏹️ ▶️ John i understand this is as good as they can be given the current technology. Uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John it is a bummer to have to buy a new pair every two to three years or whatever. It’s like, oh, they
⏹️ ▶️ John make disposable technology, but I don’t want the, you know, the thing is, if Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t make everything all sealed up, you could just buy new batteries for your AirPods. I don’t want the AirPods that have removable batteries
⏹️ ▶️ John because they would be bigger and heavier and more awkward. The beauty of AirPods is that they are these beautiful things. It’s a shame that
⏹️ ▶️ John the batteries don’t last longer, but I feel like the answer to that is better battery technology not like allow
⏹️ ▶️ John me to plug a triple A into my ear.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, I love my AirPods. I even, what are they like 150, 160 bucks, something like that. Even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey knowing that, which is a fair bit of money, particularly for headphones, especially if you’re not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey snooty about the headphones that you wear, because 98% of the time I’m listening to either a podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or music, I don’t really care what I’m listening to them on. Like the AirPods sound perfectly okay
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me. But $160 or whatever is a lot of money for these things, especially if they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dead after a couple of years. But I tell you, I use my AirPods literally every
⏹️ ▶️ Casey day for at least like 10, 20, 30 minutes a day. So given
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that the batteries in there are, as you said, John, freaking microscopic,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I still feel satisfied with my expenditure on these things. And I’m ready and waiting to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey throw more money at Apple to get a new set.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, new battery technologies will help. We’re still waiting for the next leap in battery technologies. There’s tons of ones
⏹️ ▶️ John that are in labs and in universities that have great promise of not dying
⏹️ ▶️ John after 1,000 cycles and retaining energy longer and charging faster and
⏹️ ▶️ John being more stable. None of them are commercially viable, especially in applications like this. But I
⏹️ ▶️ John have faith that in my lifetime we’ll have the next leap in battery tech and that will really help. Because think about it. Imagine if the only
⏹️ ▶️ John thing you changed about AirPods was that it was using a different battery technology that, let’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John say it doesn’t charge any faster, doesn’t have any larger capacity, but it lasts for 100,000 cycles instead of 1,000. That changes the product.
⏹️ ▶️ John Basically, if you didn’t lose your AirPods, you would use them for your whole
⏹️ ▶️ John life, which is probably bad for Apple. I know
⏹️ ▶️ John really talk about this, but a couple of events ago, the environmental person
⏹️ ▶️ John whose name escapes me was like, Apple’s working
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco on making products that
⏹️ ▶️ John last longer. Yeah, there you go, Lisa Jackson. Products that last longer. and everyone was kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ John tittering about that. It’s like, well, you say that, but then look at all these products that you have
⏹️ ▶️ John that are practically disposable, that, you know, go bad after a certain period of time or whatever. But then if
⏹️ ▶️ John you look at what Apple actually has been doing, you know, up to and including the $30
⏹️ ▶️ John battery replacement, they have been tending to try to make products that last longer. It’s just that inherently
⏹️ ▶️ John sealed lithium ion batteries, they’re, you know, they last for a certain number of cycles. And if
⏹️ ▶️ John you use the thing regularly, there’s your product lifetime. And I think it’s harder to swallow for a thousand dollar phone for,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, a fourteen hundred dollar phone. At least you can get the battery replaced there.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s not. I think people don’t consider that as an option for the most part, even after
⏹️ ▶️ John two years, just because it costs like one hundred dollars and you’re not getting the cool thirty dollar deal. And people like, well, I just buy a new phone at that
⏹️ ▶️ John point. But just a simple change of a 10 X or 100 X
⏹️ ▶️ John cycle life totally changes the face of these products. and every other aspect of them is
⏹️ ▶️ John all ready to go. It’s not like, oh, they have to redesign a new AirPod so that it will be a longer lasting product.
⏹️ ▶️ John The only thing that’s weak about them is that everything, like my AirPods look brand new. They’re not scratched,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re not scuffed, they’re not bent. There’s nothing about the case or the operation. Like they
⏹️ ▶️ John have no moving parts, right? It is, you know, the case has one moving part that hasn’t broken
⏹️ ▶️ John yet. Like it is, that’s why everyone loves their AirPods. It’s like it’s the it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the culmination of the platonic ideal solid of the Johnny
⏹️ ▶️ John Ive school design where everything is featureless and no moving parts in all one color or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John that matches up in this case with the best design from a user perspective
⏹️ ▶️ John of that type of thing. That’s why everyone loves the AirPods. It’s like, it’s a miracle. Everything finally came together.
⏹️ ▶️ John The way Apple wants to make things turns out to be the best way to make this thing. And the only problem
⏹️ ▶️ John is current battery technology means they’re going to go bad. And if you use, if you use them every day and the reason you use them every day is because you
⏹️ ▶️ John love them. So I forget when we did like, what’s your favorite product? But I think a couple of us either
⏹️ ▶️ John picked AirPods or talked about it. And I still, to this day, I use my AirPods every day too. And
⏹️ ▶️ John God, it’s so nice not to have cords. I was reminded of cords the other day when I got to see
⏹️ ▶️ John my daughter in her room, like I’m walking by and I hear or get angry and start yelling about something,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s because, God, let’s talk about first world problems. When she puts her hand-me-down Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John Watch on the charger on her nightstand, it’s just getting, you know, she gets hand-me-downs
⏹️ ▶️ John from my wife. Every time she goes to do that and then goes back to her bed,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is a separate issue from a separate podcast, both of my children cannot live anywhere
⏹️ ▶️ John in the house without holding an iPad in their hand that has a headphone cord snaking from it to their ears.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, so when she puts her hand-me-down Apple Watch on her nightstand charger and goes back to what
⏹️ ▶️ John she was doing, the cord that is snaking from her ears to her iPad,
⏹️ ▶️ John which of course she is holding because there is no time when she’s not holding it, gets caught on the little knob on
⏹️ ▶️ John the drawer on her nightstand. And when she goes back to her bed, it yanks the earbuds out of her ear. And we’ve all had that feeling.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it is, as I said on Twitter once, instantly infuriating for, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John way out of proportion to what happened, right? So she’s like, ah, I’m so tired of these cords
⏹️ ▶️ John getting caught every time I do
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think we’ve all been in that situation where, whether it’s your door handle or a car door or some other
⏹️ ▶️ John thing back when we were all using cords, we all left that behind when AirPods came out. I don’t get my cord caught
⏹️ ▶️ John in anything because I don’t have cords. And it was just such a huge upgrade in those sort of like
⏹️ ▶️ John minor annoyances of life that I, like so many other AirPod owners,
⏹️ ▶️ John are so ready that if I lost my AirPods or if they finally died or they fell into the ocean,
⏹️ ▶️ John the next 10 minutes I would have ordered new AirPods. Because I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John go back, I can’t live without them. And so far my kids haven’t discovered this and they’re probably not gonna hand
⏹️ ▶️ John me down AirPods because by the time I hand them down they probably will be well and truly dead.
⏹️ ▶️ John But in the meantime, they’re slogging around with their
⏹️ ▶️ John headphone cords getting snagged and everything and I’m just gliding through life with my AirPods
⏹️ ▶️ John shoved underneath my winter hat and you can’t even see them.
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, let’s do some Ask ATP. And we start with Mark Heeler who writes, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have I had an iPad since the original one and have kept bringing the apps over ever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey since then. Some for pacifying children on long flights and so on. And in the past, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, I’ve had a heap of games and junk that I’ve accumulated that I don’t need anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey How do you guys easily purge all of these old apps? And the apps in a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey screenshot that he provided no longer work in iOS 11 and so on, but how do you delete
⏹️ ▶️ Casey those easily? Are they, you know, in his case, they’re scattered all over the place in folders. What do you do?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have no idea. How do you delete a whole bunch of stuff very quickly and easily?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, the best way to delete a bunch of apps that don’t work anymore is to do an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iCloud restore. Like, back up to iCloud, restore from iCloud, and they just won’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be there. So it’s not an amazing technique, but it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does work that if you have a bunch of apps that didn’t make the 64-bit transition or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then yeah, just do a backup to iCloud, upgrade to iOS 12 if you haven’t yet,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then do a restore. and those apps just won’t be there.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s clever. Yeah, the main thing this question made me think about is my continued frustration,
⏹️ ▶️ John and probably actually getting worse these days, about how
⏹️ ▶️ John meager the tools are for managing applications on the iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ John My main concern is usually how incredibly, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know how you describe it. It’s frustrating. It is, I’m not gonna say
⏹️ ▶️ John dangerous, it is fraught, it is anxiety-inducing,
⏹️ ▶️ John it is to rearrange icons on an iOS device. It’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John a terribly designed game of Hot Potato, right? The first
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco thing I have to do is I have to pre-flight.
⏹️ ▶️ John My pre-flight is, okay, let me find the icon I’m gonna move, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna move this icon, and let me find where I’m going to move it. And let me memorize the destination. So I
⏹️ ▶️ John have to go, okay, the destination is three screens to the left and
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s to the right of the notes icon, right? Pre-flight,
⏹️ ▶️ John go begin the flight, begin the drag. You can go into wiggle mode, or you can not go into wiggle mode in this modern era,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you got to begin the drag. Then you have to hit the edge of the screen to go.
⏹️ ▶️ John One screen, two screen, the animations go fast. So pay attention, you know, don’t, don’t, and right,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, stop. We’ve got two screens go back to the middle, you know All right Get off the edge because you don’t want it to go three screens
⏹️ ▶️ John By the way when you were going through screens Just because you are holding it against the edge Doesn’t mean
⏹️ ▶️ John that the icons on the screens that you are merely passing through aren’t themselves Squirming out of the way and and ejecting
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey of their access
⏹️ ▶️ John icons over to the next screen. Don’t think that they’re not Yeah, you were just passing through those screens. You may have perturbed
⏹️ ▶️ John those screens on your way through you’ll find that out later But for now just keep going right then when you
⏹️ ▶️ John get to the screen and you pull the icon off the edge to stop the scrolling God forbid
⏹️ ▶️ John you pulled it off of the edge and now you’re over a folder because now that folder is gonna open up But I don’t want that folder up or maybe you
⏹️ ▶️ John hovered over another icon too long And now it thinks you want to make a folder out of those two things now you have to forget how to back out of That action
⏹️ ▶️ John do you still remember where you were supposed to put that icon try to find the place where you want to put it? Oh, it’s squirming. Oh, it’s making a folder. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John squirming squirm Oh, no, you were trying to put it next near the edge now. You’ve gone back to the previous screen
⏹️ ▶️ John How many screens away are you from where you were before? Go back. Wait, no, you’ve gone too far again. Oh, just like I won’t cancel the
⏹️ ▶️ John operation. No, because if you let go, it’ll drop the icon someplace. It is way harder than it’s supposed
⏹️ ▶️ John to be. I don’t know how normal people successfully arrange their icons. It must be an incredible
⏹️ ▶️ John trial and error process. I find it so annoying that I very rarely rearrange
⏹️ ▶️ John anything just because I know the chances that I screw something up are very
⏹️ ▶️ John high. there is no undo and there is no aborting the operation. That’s why I take screenshots
⏹️ ▶️ John on my home screen, not because I’m like, Oh, look at my home screen. I remember this point in time is because when I screw it up,
⏹️ ▶️ John the only way I have to get back to the way things were is to refer to a screenshot and try to reproduce it
⏹️ ▶️ John find all the icons that have gone everywhere. iTunes lets you I think still
⏹️ ▶️ John arrange your icons in a different interface with a mouse and keyboard, but it is still a crap interface like
⏹️ ▶️ John the main problem with the iTunes interface and with the regular one for that matter, aside from the lack of undo and the crazy
⏹️ ▶️ John hover readings and all the other crap is they they want you to do direct manipulation, pick
⏹️ ▶️ John up, move to new location, drop and things will squirm out of the way. What they need to do is have a
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of current state speculative future state commit type of thing with a buffer area
⏹️ ▶️ John like they need a shelf where you can chuck icons the side and then be like I am about to arrange my new thing. I
⏹️ ▶️ John haven’t done anything yet. I’m just saying here’s my speculative way things are going to be with a
⏹️ ▶️ John shelf off to side where you can chuck things for holding and then just arrange arrange arrange. If at any point you’re like, you know
⏹️ ▶️ John what, I’ve screwed this up or whatever. You haven’t committed any changes yet you just work and I know this is a way more complicated
⏹️ ▶️ John mental model. But honestly, it is a more forgiving user model to let people rearrange it either
⏹️ ▶️ John on device or off in a non committal way in a better interface with
⏹️ ▶️ John a shelf or buffer area that’s off to the side. Alright, that’s just me ranting about rearranging
⏹️ ▶️ John springboard icons. This thing is like, okay, Okay, if you’re going to do better management for springboard stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John how about a way to sort icons sort of the equivalent of list view to filter by supported
⏹️ ▶️ John OS level to filter by date last used like there’s all sorts of features like that are kind of an iOS where you
⏹️ ▶️ John can have like offload apps that you haven’t used in a while and they get a weird icon and I’ll download on demand, right? But
⏹️ ▶️ John very meager tools for doing this. You’re doing an iCloud backup to do it is clever, but is kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of dangerous. And that I really hope I have black up doesn’t have any weird. You don’t lose any state in
⏹️ ▶️ John that transition or the backup and restore work the way you think they’re going to. I
⏹️ ▶️ John like I would I would worry about missing something. I know it’s gotten way better and maybe that’s the only way to do it. But
⏹️ ▶️ John honestly, you know, if you’re just worried about the clutter, if you can’t find the icons to delete them with
⏹️ ▶️ John their little, you know, badge that shows that they can’t be launched, then why are you worried about them? And if you can’t find them, then just delete
⏹️ ▶️ John them. Right. Anyway, I think there is a lot of room for improvement in springboard, But
⏹️ ▶️ John both in terms of letting people do basic operations, like arrange their home screen in a much less fraught
⏹️ ▶️ John manner, and then also, you know, to Mark’s question here, to just manage your applications and have
⏹️ ▶️ John different views on them and to be able to perform operations. Basically the stuff that we took for granted that we could do in the Finder
⏹️ ▶️ John in the 80s, still can’t do on our modern $1,300 super megaphones.
#askatp: Spatial Finder
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, apologies for this pronunciation, but Platy Shue writes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that they have been binge reading Syracuse’s OSX reviews for a while, and it’s interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to find the discussion on the spatial finder is a recurring topic through the years. John, are you still a proponent of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey spatial finder? Have recent improvements in the finder satisfied you? And for me, for Casey, would you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mind restating or reminding all of us, what is a spatial finder anyway?
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll take the easy question first. Have recent improvements to the Finder satisfied me? No. No.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Definitely not.
⏹️ ▶️ John surprised. Yeah, the Spatial Finder is the Finder that existed on the Mac from the beginning of the Mac up until the
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac OS X error. So it’s the original Finder from the original
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac. And it was the only Finder until Mac OS X, and things started to get weird or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John So the Spatial Finder was just go find a classic Mac running classical Mac OS and use the Finder. That’s the Spatial
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Finder. Oh yeah, I’ll just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pull one right out of the closet,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John and yeah, it’s right there. Easy to find.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can run it on an emulator, you can run it on a web browser. Anyway, the key part of it was that the
⏹️ ▶️ John entire interface was modeled with sort of a
⏹️ ▶️ John consistent model of state. So every folder that you saw, when you double-clicked
⏹️ ▶️ John it, it opened a window. That folder was that window. Like there was no way to open
⏹️ ▶️ John two windows that view the same folder, because it didn’t make sense. And the mental model was, you open the folder, the folder icon
⏹️ ▶️ John would change to show that it is opened. And if it is open, that means there was a window on the screen that is that folder
⏹️ ▶️ John that you know, that that was the model. Same thing with the icons inside there and everything like that, that there was no
⏹️ ▶️ John no way to look at the contents of the same folder in two different windows. Uh, if you change the view of
⏹️ ▶️ John that folder of that window, it changed the view of the folder. So if you change the list view and then close the folder and then open
⏹️ ▶️ John the folder, it’s in list view. How could it not be in list view? It’s the one and only thing. Same thing with the icons. If you moved an icon,
⏹️ ▶️ John It was moved if you moved a window or resize the window it was moved or resized every
⏹️ ▶️ John Manipulation you did to the spatial state of anything in the finder
⏹️ ▶️ John Was retained because the model was completely one-to-one. There was no Browser there was
⏹️ ▶️ John no way you could model a window as a portal through which you have different views of different aspects of your
⏹️ ▶️ John file system That just wasn’t the model So I wrote a big article about this and
⏹️ ▶️ John you talk about it like Like the main argument of the spatial finder and you can read the whole article about how great
⏹️ ▶️ John it was is because people are great at dealing with objects in space because
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s what we’re doing our entire lives. We’ve evolved to do. We have amazing skills related to that, both in
⏹️ ▶️ John terms of, you know, retention and remembering where things are and arranging our
⏹️ ▶️ John life and workspace to suit whatever it is we’re doing. And uh, the low mental load of understanding,
⏹️ ▶️ John like if I move that thing and it’s over there, it’ll still be over there and like the one to one relationship between folders and windows.
⏹️ ▶️ John The argument against this is like, well, we have so many files now and it’s not tenable and yada, yada, yada. Uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John my argument has always been that, uh, that doesn’t mean you discard this. That just means
⏹️ ▶️ John you add tools on top of it. So you add like a quick launcher, like quick silver, you add a file browser, right? But you,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you don’t destroy the spatial interface. Um, these days
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s much less relevant cause you know, who uses max anymore and who uses the finder and yada yada all that stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I feel like the iPhone is the ultimate vindication of spatial interfaces. As much as I just
⏹️ ▶️ John complained about the particulars of how you arrange icons on it, springboard
⏹️ ▶️ John and the user interface of smartphones as defined by the original iPhone are relentlessly
⏹️ ▶️ John spatial. If your icons on your home screen randomly rearrange themselves or
⏹️ ▶️ John you looked at it and a different day and things were in a different place, people would flip out. People
⏹️ ▶️ John arrange their home screens the way they like them and they expect them to stay that way. And how
⏹️ ▶️ John do they find things? Do they consciously say row three, column
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey four? No, they just reach
⏹️ ▶️ John for it because they know where it is because they’re used to knowing where things are in space. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m glad Apple sort of came back to spatial interfaces as as not just an
⏹️ ▶️ John aspect of the interface, but the only the only way to get your applications. I think they could extend
⏹️ ▶️ John out from there and now perhaps have different views of things and as we just discussed.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I’m still a proponent of spatial interfaces. I’m a proponent of the spatial finder as far as that goes,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I’m a proponent of spatial interfaces. Same thing with Windows and applications and state preservation that you all talked
⏹️ ▶️ John about. Those abilities of human users
⏹️ ▶️ John are under leveraged. They could be leveraged more because there are things that everybody is good at doing
⏹️ ▶️ John that has very low cognitive load that reaps benefits and makes things feel
⏹️ ▶️ John more effortless, fun, and natural to use. And it’s powerful. It’s powerful to always know that your
⏹️ ▶️ John camera icon is right where your thumb is going to to find it.
#askatp: BYO NAS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Dan Zuccaro writes, hey, you guys talk about Synology a lot, or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey network-attached storage devices a lot, and that made me look into it, and yes, a NAS,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey network-attached storage, looks essential. Those specs, though, oof, they’re super low for the price. Why didn’t you build your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey own server for much cheaper? Seems like the best route for tech people, and you guys qualify.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey My parts are ordered, so wish me luck. Well, good luck, Dan. line
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of thinking, I am not a fan of. I’m trying to be kind because Dan is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well-meaning. I don’t, I don’t think he meant to say anything that would make me upset, but it kind of makes me upset because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is like, oh, why don’t you spend 35 hours researching
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all the things you need and then another 40 hours putting them all together and then 15 hours, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, installing and configuring everything, obviously I’m exaggerating, but you get the idea. Why don’t you do all this stuff?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s a small matter of effort. You know, it’s like, oh, it’s, this rings the same as when I was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey consulting and, and someone who had never written a line of code in their lives would say, oh, I’m sure that’s just a small matter of programming,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, just, I’m sure it’ll be simple. Like, yes, the Synology is probably overpriced for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what you get if you look at it on a spec sheet. But what I want from my Synology is to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey buy one, to be honest, ours were all comped, but in principle to buy one and then turn
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it on and then have it just work. just work. I mean, to this end, Dan,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do you drive a car? Did you build the car from scratch? You could have. You could have. Why didn’t you?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For something as complex as network-attached storage, I don’t get this line of thinking. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey understand the point that Dan is coming from, but maybe it’s just because I don’t have enough time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m sure 20-year-old me would have had a very different opinion about this, but very nearly 37-year-old
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me, no, I don’t have time. I just want something that I can turn on and just works. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will trade money for that if need be. But Marco, you seem to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like occasionally spending a lot of time on things. I’m thinking specifically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about your Wi-Fi setup. Why didn’t you just build one of these Synology clones
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on your own, Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, first of all, setting up Ubiquiti gear for a computer nerd is not nearly as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time-consuming as doing like building your own Synology level
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I would say that I kind of fall on the other side of this now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When we all got our Synology units, I mean this was a good two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or three years ago now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was like 2013, I think, 2014 maybe. Yeah, so it was a number of years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ago now. And things were different for my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needs back then. If I were doing it today, I would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not have a Synology or any other kind of like dedicated NAS. I would just plug some kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of external drive thing into a Mac Mini. Back then, that was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a harder sell because not only did I not own a Mac Mini and had no other use for one at the time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I also, back then, like hard drive sizes were such that to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco achieve the level of storage that I wanted, which was between 10 and 20 terabytes of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco total space, required like eight disks back then to do that with any kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of redundancy and reliability. And so you need like a big box to have that many disks in it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if you start looking at like eight bay drive enclosures, the cost between that and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco between like, you know, a USB eight bay drive enclosure and, or you know, a Thunderbolt
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one and a NAS, you know, the NAS is actually pretty similarly cost, you know, at that point.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you might as well. And then also back then I wasn’t, you know, I wasn’t so clear on like how I was gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco end up backing these things up and everything. I thought I would use more of the applications on the NAS, but the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way that I actually use it now is I basically use the NAS as a dumb drive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco box like I use most I access it mostly via iSCSI Mounted on a Mac mini
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it behaves like an external disk connected to the Mac mini And this is not a setup I recommend by the way It’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s too complicated and weird, but if any part of it broke significantly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wouldn’t replace it I would instead change to a setup where I’m just plugging in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a smaller number of very large disks like you know 10 terabyte disks like just a small number of those plugged
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into a dumb enclosure connected to my Mac Mini. Because all the things that Casey does with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco his Synology with like the fancier you know actually running the apps on it and doing you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know truck downloading to it and everything I don’t do any of that stuff. I don’t I don’t run Plex on it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I do none of that stuff all my all my home server roles are served either
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by buy nothing or buy the Mac Mini that I have now. And so just plugging in hard drives
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to a Mac Mini would be a lot easier and simpler for me. So that’s the direction I will take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the future. And if your needs can be solved by just connecting a few very large
⏹️ ▶️ Marco drives to a computer, especially a computer you already own, then I would say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a NAS is not worth it anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you don’t already own it, buying a Mac Mini plus hard drives is probably more expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John Probably, yeah. In current Mac mini prices, it is not a cheap computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John Kind of like my AirPods, if my Synology died, I would immediately buy another one
⏹️ ▶️ John I do use a bunch of features of my NAS. But in terms of like, the question really is like
⏹️ ▶️ John buying, you know, making your own NAS versus buying one. If you think it’s a fun project, do it. It’s a fun project. But like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I wasn’t interested in having a fun project, you know, and honestly, I didn’t know if the
⏹️ ▶️ John applications on Synology would be useful for me, but it turns out they are. and I don’t wanna have to maintain
⏹️ ▶️ John that software. I don’t wanna have to worry about weird open source incompatibilities. I don’t wanna have to
⏹️ ▶️ John do any of that stuff. Like, as nice as they make that, like, oh, it auto-updates and blah, blah, blah. Like, I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John used Linux enough to know that there is still a substantial difference between a commercial integrated supported
⏹️ ▶️ John product, like the Synology, and a do-it-yourself one. Even if the do-it-yourself one uses
⏹️ ▶️ John a well-supported open source thing, and, you know, like, it’s fairly straightforward commodity
⏹️ ▶️ John hardware, like, you can be successful with it, and you can definitely get it for cheaper. But when I look
⏹️ ▶️ John at the price of the Synology, I’m not saying, look at this crappy atom processor and then a metal
⏹️ ▶️ John box and a power supply.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I’m thinking
⏹️ ▶️ John of the whole package, like the fact that it comes with software, it’ll work out of the
⏹️ ▶️ John box, and during the time I’ve owned the Synology, which yeah, I think it’s been 2013, so like six years,
⏹️ ▶️ John the software has been auto-updated over the network and has added features that I have found
⏹️ ▶️ John useful over time, And I haven’t had to do a thing to it. Like, in the very beginning,
⏹️ ▶️ John I dabbled with like, SSH-ing into it, messing with it, or whatever. But eventually, I was like, you know what? Just
⏹️ ▶️ John let it be. And like, most of the features that I wanted eventually became officially supported. And every time I want
⏹️ ▶️ John to do something with it, I find it in some menu somewhere and it does it. And to me, who’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not really interested in a build-your-own-NAS project, that’s what I want out of it. But if you want to build your
⏹️ ▶️ John own NAS, you know, go for it. You definitely will save money. As the saying goes, Linux is free
⏹️ ▶️ John as long as your time has no, what is it? The next phrase, as long as your time has no value? I forget what
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the saying is. There’s some snarky saying about
⏹️ ▶️ John that. But anyway, if that time is fun time for you, then double
⏹️ ▶️ John win. You save money and you get a cool hobby.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks to our sponsors this week, Fracture, Discourse, and Backblades. And we’ll talk to you next
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they didn’t even mean
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to begin, Cause it was accidental, oh it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental. John didn’t do any research, Marco and
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey wouldn’t let him, Cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. And you can find the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes at atp.fm And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter, you can follow them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and T. Marco Armin,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John to. Accidental, tech podcast so long.
Post-show: School grades
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We can get an ear update. Not much to say. They’re not fixed, but they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco less bad. My left ear is mostly normal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and my right ear is making progress. It’s like, have you ever, have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you seen like, like, I don’t know, John, like what are your, what does your school do for grades for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the report cards? Like are they letter grades or are they these newfangled things that are ever, everything means something good.
⏹️ ▶️ John Newfangled things. Tell me about this newfangled thing. We have letter grades. alternative to letter grades, an emoji?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So our school, they do something, and I get the feeling this is like a more widespread
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing now, where we don’t have the traditional letter grades like A through F. We
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have on our elementary school report cards, they basically, they change the letter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco grades so that everything is a euphemism for good, but really it’s like, so it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like developing or something, or like developing towards standard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is like the bad thing. That’s like the D or whatever. And then like, you know, exceeds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expectations is the good thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, you’re talking, you’re talking, I know what you’re talking about now. Yeah. Elementary school preschool. Yeah. They have like a on
⏹️ ▶️ John level or meets and exceeds and it’s kind of they do the same thing in a yearly
⏹️ ▶️ John reviews and big person jobs as
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Casey well knows.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, the problem is that none of them mean is getting worse. Like, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco negative thing, like the failure mode of it, the wording of it is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re getting better.
⏹️ ▶️ John Paul Matzko, Ph.D.: Approaching, approaching level. I forget what the phrasings are, but yeah, approaching level and stuff like that. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco really, they’re supposed to be— Aaron Powell, Ph.D.:
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, but what if you’re not? Like, what if you’re below the level and not making any progress towards success? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what if you’re actually like having a downturn? There’s no way to represent that in this system.
⏹️ ▶️ John Paul Matzko, Ph.D.: But they’re not vectors. That’s the thing. They’re not like magnitude and direction. They’re just
⏹️ ▶️ John magnitude. They’re phrased as vectors, as in approaching mastery
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s because the schools are judged on how many kids do you have on level, below level, above level, or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John But all the points and times don’t have any direction. So you’re right. They don’t express whether your kid is actually
⏹️ ▶️ John getting better or getting worse. They just express where they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are. But the phrasing of it suggests a
⏹️ ▶️ John vector, though. Yeah. The only weird thing I’ve had in grading thing, I think it was my
⏹️ ▶️ John daughter in one of her middle school classes, it was like a, I’m not gonna say not a real class, but it was one of the less
⏹️ ▶️ John academic classes. I said it was like health class or wellness or whatever the hell they call it now. And she got into
⏹️ ▶️ John this thing where she turned in an assignment, but the teacher said she didn’t have it. And it’s like, well, I did
⏹️ ▶️ John it well, but I don’t have it. Did you turn it on time? Yes, I did. Well, you know, so it’s like, either she lost the assignment
⏹️ ▶️ John or the teacher lost the assignment, but we were like at an impasse where it’s like, well, you know, can she make it
⏹️ ▶️ John up? And the teacher’s like, no, if she did the work, she shouldn’t redo it. I’m like, OK, well, what are you going to do about the grade situation? Because
⏹️ ▶️ John right now in the computer, it was like a really bad grade because homework counts for x amount or whatever. And I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John sure my daughter did it. She’s very conscientious. She does all of her work. I’m not sure she successfully handed it in because she
⏹️ ▶️ John does tend to be a little bit disorganized in that way. But either way, that was the situation. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John the teacher’s solution was, OK, well, I just won’t give her a letter grade for this. I’ll just give her
⏹️ ▶️ John a P, like for passed. I’m like, but you can do that? You can just take a class and say,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re not gonna get a letter grade for this. You’re just gonna get a, you passed. I mean, it kind of makes sense since
⏹️ ▶️ John again, it’s like an elective and not like quote unquote real class and it’s middle school and not high school. So it’s not like an effect or GPA
⏹️ ▶️ John because no one cares what grades you got in middle school. But it was weird that that was even an option because in my
⏹️ ▶️ John day, not only did we get straight up grades, like they weren’t letter grades, they were number grades
⏹️ ▶️ John from zero to 100 with decimal points, with a single decimal point after the number.
⏹️ ▶️ John And there was no change in that to a P. It’s like, you’re gonna get a number. It’s like, what’s my number? Even in middle school,
⏹️ ▶️ John it was like that. So there is more flexibility. And in elementary school, I think elementary school had actual letter grades.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it was just like A’s and B’s. I don’t think I had like pluses or minuses, or maybe there were minuses, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know. But yeah, the advent of often state-mandated,
⏹️ ▶️ John standardized testing and measurement of school performance through these standardized tests, like in Massachusetts,
⏹️ ▶️ John we have MCAS, in New York in high school. Obviously, they have the regions, but it’s a separate thing. I don’t know what they have
⏹️ ▶️ John for elementary school. Has made all these schools, especially elementary, rephrase everything
⏹️ ▶️ John as, are you successfully educating the students to the level that we
⏹️ ▶️ John are targeting as determined by this set of criteria that’s set down by the state? And that all you care
⏹️ ▶️ John about is children’s orbit around that standard, because it affects your funding and all sorts of other stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it doesn’t surprise me that every school the elementary level has shifted to
⏹️ ▶️ John that. And honestly, you don’t need to be giving kids letter grades in elementary school. It’s kind of ridiculous. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John I have plenty of time to be anxious about their grades later in life. I’m happy to let
⏹️ ▶️ John the entirety of elementary school go by with, without kids having to worry about anything about their education. Cause Lord
⏹️ ▶️ John knows that the helicopter parents are worrying about enough for everybody involved.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. I don’t, I don’t think so. Adam’s only in first grade, but I don’t think he knows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that he gets grades yet. Like, well, I mean, if these could be called grades even. Like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he knows that we looked at a report card every, you know, every few months or something,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I don’t think he knows, like, cause he doesn’t even get it. Like, when I was a kid, they would like hand you the report card
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you’d bring it home. Now it’s all online or given to you like in parent teacher conferences. So like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think Adam has even seen his report card. I don’t think he even knows he gets one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco let alone worrying about what grades are on it. But yeah, there will be time for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That basically ruined my childhood, so I’m trying to have it not ruin his, but we’ll see about
⏹️ ▶️ John that. The thing that’s worse for kids now is like, yeah, we knew we were getting report cards and we had to bring them home
⏹️ ▶️ John and show them to our parents and often get them signed and go through all of that crap. But now, since there’s so
⏹️ ▶️ John much more, like in my education, standardized testing didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John really become a thing that approached our radar until like high school. Like we were tested, put
⏹️ ▶️ John standardized tests in elementary school, but it was like, you know, once in your entire elementary
⏹️ ▶️ John school career or maybe twice, like at two key points, the whole school would be tested. And it was like
⏹️ ▶️ John a curiosity, like, oh, look, the scientists are coming in to see how the school is doing. But you
⏹️ ▶️ John never thought it reflected on you in any way because you’re like, whatever, it was so infrequent. But now, every single year
⏹️ ▶️ John of education in Massachusetts, there’s some kind of requirement to make sure the children have achieved
⏹️ ▶️ John mastery according to some rubric, blah, blah, blah. And the kids are essentially tested.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it doesn’t take them long to figure out when we go to the separate room and the teacher asked me a bunch of questions
⏹️ ▶️ John or when we all take this certain test, like because the teacher is not that they have to teach the test, but they do have to prepare the kids for it.
⏹️ ▶️ John They realize that the children themselves realize we are being evaluated because it happens every single year,
⏹️ ▶️ John like clockwork, sometimes two times a year. So I think Adam will pick up on it
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty quickly. But in general, good schools make it less stressful
⏹️ ▶️ John and it doesn’t really matter. It only it’s only going to stress your child out to the extent that you
⏹️ ▶️ John stress your child out about it. Like it like I don’t think kids on their own for the most part are going to be worried about the grades unless
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s unless their parents are worried about the grades and then they you know pass that anxiety onto them. If everyone’s
⏹️ ▶️ John all chill about it, it can still be stressful to be put on the spot and ask questions. But if you come home and your
⏹️ ▶️ John parents don’t seem to care about that stuff. Like, obviously parents do care, but I feel like the parents
⏹️ ▶️ John these days fret privately between the parents and teachers about how they’re gonna get the kid to perform better
⏹️ ▶️ John if the kid is having problems, and less like, I’m gonna yell at my children until they get smarter, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John not a particularly good technique, but sadly one that many of our childhoods involved.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wonder, what’s the current, so I know you mentioned earlier, like health class is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like wellness now or something. Wellness or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know what the words are. I mean, it might as well be called like genitals and drugs. Like that’s really all it is. But like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what do they call like what used to be called home ec, which could be summarized as like sewing and cooking. Like what do they call
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that now? Because I’ve heard like 10 different names for that. Oh God, I
⏹️ ▶️ John it now. They call that not in the school curriculum anymore because school funding is ridiculously lower than it should be.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like nobody has home ec and shop. Are you kidding? Like if you want those classes in your school, you’d have to pay super
⏹️ ▶️ John duper extra money. Like, there are exceptions, but like, the total destruction
⏹️ ▶️ John of every class except for reading, writing, and arithmetic, the three R’s, right, that
⏹️ ▶️ John is definitely a thing. Even in all of my, like, I’m in a rich person town with a rich person school with high
⏹️ ▶️ John property taxes and all the kids are rich and everyone’s got tons of money, and even here, I feel like there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John less richness in classes taken in high school than there was in my high school, which is sad because,
⏹️ ▶️ John god, how much money does it take to get, like, so, to that end, I’m pretty sure There is no
⏹️ ▶️ John home ec course offered in my kids entire high school, but there is like a 3D
⏹️ ▶️ John modeling class and the equivalent of a shop class. And there is music and there is theater and there’s other things, but
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of that cost extra. So I wouldn’t just assume that every school that children
⏹️ ▶️ John are going through school now go to is going to have home ec on the menu at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wow. Real time follow up. It is apparently called family and consumer sciences. For me, it was called
⏹️ ▶️ Casey food, I believe, or foods. Literally, that was the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of It was like a cooking course. That was all it was. It was like, how to scramble an egg and things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco like that. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it worked so well for you. It exposed you to so many world foods
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John and different cooking methods. Yeah. Exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s more to home economics than just food. I think the most valuable thing that I learned that I wouldn’t have otherwise
⏹️ ▶️ John was sewing. How to use a sewing machine, how to sew by hand. That was all part of my home ec class.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mine was called human ecology because it almost abbreviates to home ec. It’s like they didn’t want to change
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the abbreviation. It’s like like, humic,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s close enough. Human ecology is like your zoo animals. None of us ever knew what that meant.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s a shame, because I feel like, you know, those classes, I’m glad to see, like, wellness
⏹️ ▶️ John still hanging on, but again, you do have to tell the people about the STDs and the drugs and everything. And vaping. Don’t forget
⏹️ ▶️ Marco vaping. Oh yeah, I guess that’s new now. We didn’t have that when we were
⏹️ ▶️ John kids. Yeah, so many vaping newsletters come in by
⏹️ ▶️ John Really? Vaping forums, come learn about vaping. Yeah. Oh God. It is a, it’s a big
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. I mean, I like to think, like, I used to think this about my friends, because, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John I was kind of at the tail end of smoking in high school. So like,
⏹️ ▶️ John what was it called? We had a designated smoking area in our high school. Let’s put it that way. For kids
⏹️ ▶️ John these days listening, just to think about it. It was like officially done so? Yes.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, officially by the school, an area designated by the school where students should go to smoke. There were only, it was called
⏹️ ▶️ John the smoking area, the smoking lobby. It was outdoors, right? Lounge, that’s incredible.
⏹️ ▶️ John It wasn’t a lounge, right? The teacher’s lounge was filled with smoke because the teachers all smoke there. The teachers didn’t smoke
⏹️ ▶️ John in the classroom, so they all smoked in the teacher’s lounge. And the students had an area where they could smoke.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I was coming up at kind of the tail end of that, where basically me and all my other nerd friends, nobody
⏹️ ▶️ John smoked because we’re the smart kids. And smart kids don’t do stupid things, and smoking is really stupid,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And I was so confident that that was going to be the case, right up until
⏹️ ▶️ John all my friends graduated and then half of them started smoking. I’m like, come on people, come on, you’re the
⏹️ ▶️ John smart people. But it’s like, nope, college and freedom and just
⏹️ ▶️ John that was enough to make half of them succumb. So it was sad, but anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John these days vaping, I feel like it’s similar. Like you would think, oh, all the smart students aren’t gonna be doing that because the smart
⏹️ ▶️ John students know, you know, and maybe that’s true, but at a certain point, peer pressure
⏹️ ▶️ John and other things can overcome any amount of supposed smarts to make. Children
⏹️ ▶️ John do foolish things because their brains don’t finish forming until they’re 25, people, 25. Not 18, not 17, 25.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I got married when I was 25. Erin was 23, I believe.
⏹️ ▶️ John She wanted to wait for your brain to finish cooking. And you wanted hers not to.