320: Here Comes the Big But
04 Apr 2019Accidental AirPods ASMR, the fate of AirPower, Google Stadia, and time-budgeting for Casey’s app.
Episode Description:
- Follow-up:
- AirPods 2 hinge is different
- People use GSuite! Dozens of us!
- Workaround that uses Charles Proxy
- Probably a Google issue?
- AirPower cancelled
- Google Stadia
#askatp:- Have any tips on booking a Disney World vacation? (via Stephen Kim)
- What do we use to post/share photos? (via Andrew Wade)
- Do we still check drive health? (via Jack Mordoj)
- Post-show:
- 100% plant-based follow-up
- Casey's app's business model
Sponsored by:
Chapters
- Liability exclusions
- John ruins your AirPods
- No iPad Maxi Non-Pro
- Follow-up: G-Suite
- Sponsor: Molekule (code ATP)
- AirPower cancellation
- Sponsor: Fracture
- Google Stadia
- Sponsor: Away (code ATP)
- #askatp: Disneyworld tips
- #askatp: Photo sharing
- #askatp: Defragging
- Ending theme
- 100% plant-based follow-up
- Casey’s app
Liability exclusions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, I got the insurance. It’s all set. I got the certificate of insurance today. I sent it to the venue.
⏹️ ▶️ John What are we insuring ourselves against? Like if our audience bursts into flames? Like I don’t even
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco understand. That’s basically it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Like any kind of, like every event requires this kind of thing. Like the venue requires you to have a certain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco degree of liability insurance
⏹️ ▶️ John understand. I’m just wondering like mechanically, is it like something that you bring? Like we put our laptop on the table and it sets the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco theater on fire. The exclusions are actually kind of entertaining. Here, let me see if I can take one up here. probably
⏹️ ▶️ John like injury from spacecraft is excluded.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well no, there’s like things we aren’t allowed to do. So here I’ll let you know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Nuclear energy liability exclusion.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll leave my reactor at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco home. We can’t have athletic or sports activities as part of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They do not cover problems arising from fungi or bacteria?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like no guarantees there. Who knows what diseases Marco’s gonna bring from
⏹️ ▶️ John his and Casey both from your germy children.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are not allowed to have pyrotechnics or fireworks. It’s gonna rule out my Mac Pro celebration
⏹️ ▶️ Marco display. We are not allowed to do inverted aerial maneuvers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If we’re upright it’s fine. This includes things such as has ski jumps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no matter who builds the ski jumping ramp and whether it happens with or without our permission or knowledge.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco jump ramp without our knowledge. Exactly. We can’t use amusement devices. This includes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mechanical or non-mechanical rides, slides, water slides, moonwalk or moon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bounce things, so no bouncy houses on our stage, no bungee equipment or any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco vertical device or equipment used for climbing, so no climbing walls.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No trampolines. We cannot have a trampoline on the stage. We also cannot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use propelled objects into a crowd or by the direction of participants. So I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco guess no t-shirt cannons?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, no t-shirt cannons. That’s a bummer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And my favorite one, grass skiing. What? I don’t even know what
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s where you do a big ski jump and it has like astroturf on it. Really? Well we can’t do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s one that you ever see like where they, you know the big ski jump at the Olympics, uh, where they practice for
⏹️ ▶️ John that in the summer, there’s no snow. So they have these big long skied ramps that basically have artificial
⏹️ ▶️ John grass on them and it’s kind of wet and you go down it with your skis. Oh, so if you were thinking of practicing
⏹️ ▶️ John your ski jumping on AstroTurf inside a theater, don’t. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh wait, there’s one more. There was a second page. Uh, rodeos. We cannot have any rodeo activity,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco including but not limited to bronco or bull riding, steer roping, team roping, barrel racing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or horseback riding. What? They actually mean like real animals here. So we can’t hook any bulls.
⏹️ ▶️ John All things considered, our show where we sit at a table behind microphones and don’t do anything for the entire show is
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty good from an insurance perspective. Yeah. Describe your show. Mostly about sitting.
⏹️ ▶️ John Sitting fairly motionless. Talking a little. Talking to each other in a conversational tone. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John it. That’s the whole thing.
John ruins your AirPods
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So a lot of people have been talking about the new AirPod case
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hinge and how it’s obviously different. And I have an old set of AirPods,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have a new set of AirPods. I can’t tell the difference, but someone of the three of us
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has put in the show notes, new AirPod case hinge is italicized different. So which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of you is that?
⏹️ ▶️ John That was me. Last week you had an excuse because you said, well I don’t have the old case with me, I just have the new one and I can’t tell
⏹️ ▶️ John it looks the same. Fine. But now you’ve seen both of them, how can you not tell the difference?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t I well now I have neither of them with me right this very second but I don’t I can’t tell the difference
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I really can’t. Well
⏹️ ▶️ John I can tell the difference I have I have mine now the difference is that well first
⏹️ ▶️ John of all just looking at it the new one is more of a matte finish
⏹️ ▶️ John now there are some people saying that’s because the new one is like a matte finish aluminum the old one was shiny stainless steel
⏹️ ▶️ John I have no idea if the material is different in the same but one is less shiny than the other whatever fine second
⏹️ ▶️ John I fix it tore the thing down and said it looks like it’s actually a different part internally. It actually looks beefier on the
⏹️ ▶️ John new ones. Um, I don’t know. They didn’t say anything about the material, but third and most importantly, and this is one
⏹️ ▶️ John of those times where we should have some kind of like chapter skip or warning. If you don’t want to hear something potentially
⏹️ ▶️ John upsetting about your air pod case, skip to the timestamp that someone will put in the chapter marker
⏹️ ▶️ John and you will be able to avoid this. Marco and Casey unfortunately will have to get this marker. Doesn’t care cause he doesn’t have air pods.
⏹️ ▶️ John This was pointed out by someone in the chat, I think, or no, maybe someone on Twitter who asked about it, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I’ve confirmed it on mine. So there’s at least two air pods that I like, cause I’m pretty sure all of them are. If you look at your, and in case you can do
⏹️ ▶️ John this now, look at your air pod hinge from the back and see how there is like the little rounded corner things on either
⏹️ ▶️ John side. And then there’s a rectangle in the middle.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, I don’t have mine nearby, but I am envisioning that in my, in my mind. Yes, I do. All
⏹️ ▶️ John right. You see the rectangle in the middle there.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right. There is like two vertical lines. There’s the left edge of the rectangle, the right edge of the
⏹️ ▶️ John rectangle. One of those lines is probably thicker or darker than the other. Do you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see that? I see what you’re talking about, but I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John see a difference.
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s the thing. The reason one line is probably darker than the other is because
⏹️ ▶️ John the new hinge has slightly more play in that little rectangle. And you can see that
⏹️ ▶️ John by pressing the hinge sideways until it clicks back and
⏹️ ▶️ John forth. Hear that? Oh yeah!
⏹️ ▶️ John They all do that. It moves a tiny tiny bit and it makes a clicking noise and when you push
⏹️ ▶️ John it from side to side you can see the gap get really skinny on one side and big on the other and push it back the other way. Now
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s skinny on that side and big on the other. The old top did move a tiny
⏹️ ▶️ John bit but it didn’t make this satisfying and or annoying clicking sound.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wait I have the old one it’s right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John It’s a small sound.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would not suggest that you do this to your air pods because it’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ John for the hinge. Some people may be annoyed knowing that this like that this
⏹️ ▶️ John little bit of play exists. Some people may be exhilarated by the idea of having little fidget buddy.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m kind of sad that I know it exists because now I find myself clicking it sometimes. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John just so you know, the new AirPods have more play in the hinge, and it’s a little bit weird and clicky.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, hold on. I am I have dispatched a assistant to bring me AirPods. Thank you,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Aaron. I love you. All right, so I’m looking at the but I got to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco turn lights on. This is very important
⏹️ ▶️ Casey work. This is good podcast material right here. Okay, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do see that one is darker than one of the, oh, yep, okay.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now press it, now press it sideways, and now watch the other one got darker.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, I see what you’re talking about. Now let me look at the old ones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can tell it’s like, like we’re not actually talking about like, you know, air power or anything, like all the news that actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happened that people want us to talk about, like we got to do it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I would say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, I would say that the twisting motion is equivalent between the two, but yes, there’s more lateral
⏹️ ▶️ John this is just purely side to side. There’s no
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s no pressing down. It is pressing totally to the left and totally to the right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now let me see, do I feel different clickiness though when I flip them closed? Hmm,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John really. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know anything about the opening and closing. That felt the same to me. It’s just merely in the closed state there is slightly more play.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I guess that’s fair. I can’t say I would have noticed that previously. And yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do see what you’re saying about the mat on the hinge, it is more matte. Yep,
⏹️ ▶️ John be aluminum instead of stainless steel, I can’t tell.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, because the old ones, they look like a very shiny material.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m terrible with materials, but this new one looks like the outside of a MacBook.
⏹️ ▶️ John assume the iFixit thinks that the new one is machined, whereas presumably the old one is
⏹️ ▶️ John forged. So the new one is like a block of aluminum or whatever, machined into these little pieces that are fitted. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know if that’s true either, this is just speculation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Although now that I’m looking at the back of my AirPods, I think I like having the indicator
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the outside because Qi charging naturally. Although I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from an aesthetic point of view, it looked better on the inside. Ooh, my word, the inside of my old ones
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The oh my God button that’s on the back, I much prefer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that being lower because I have definitely caught myself mashing down on it on the new ones when I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John just like holding them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’m afraid that I’m gonna like reset them and then I’ll have to like sign out of iCloud. Wait,
⏹️ ▶️ John what? Yeah, this should have been one of those Kickstarter fidget things, just filled with,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a busy box for grownups. Ha ha ha ha. And anyway, this reminds me of a
⏹️ ▶️ John thing you can, a fun thing you can do with crowds that I learned from Penny Arcade Expo, which anyone who’s
⏹️ ▶️ John been probably knows this. If you have a gigantic room full of people, like, auditorium-size,
⏹️ ▶️ John like thousands of people, and especially if they’re nerds, and especially if much of them are guy
⏹️ ▶️ John nerds. I know this doesn’t seem like it should be gender, but I feel like it is.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you ask them all to crack their knuckles at the same time,
⏹️ ▶️ John which, cracking your knuckles is, I don’t think it’s a good thing to do, and I don’t recommend it, and I don’t and can’t do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John But lots of people can, and they’re proud of it. If you ask them to all do that at the same time, it makes a sound
⏹️ ▶️ John that I guarantee you’ve never heard before in your life.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It is a very,
⏹️ ▶️ John very upsetting sound.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’re really not selling this experience.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s very upsetting. Anyway, what I was thinking is if you had a WMDC sized crowd of people,
⏹️ ▶️ John all of them have the new AirPod case and you ask them to all do…
⏹️ ▶️ John Ask them to do that at the same time, it might make probably not as upsetting a sound, but it could be surprisingly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Gentlemen, I have to say that there are times when I sit down to record this show that I have a pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey solid feeling for where this show is going to go and what we’re going to talk about. And then there’s days when I have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no idea how we ended up where we ended up. This is one of those days.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep. Oh my goodness, alright.
No iPad Maxi Non-Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, I assume this is you as well. I will read to you and the listeners what it says
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the show notes. No iPad Maxi non-pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s it. That’s all followed by it. We can move on. Everyone knows what that means, right? Didn’t we cover that last week?
⏹️ ▶️ John No. What we covered last week is that there is no Pro Mini, but the reverse
⏹️ ▶️ John is also true, which my wife pointed out to me. There is no non-pro Maxi. So it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John the final non-uniformity in the line. Okay.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Now I get it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Any no non-pro maxi. Done. Moving on. Okay.
Follow-up: G-Suite
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steve McLaughlin Finally, in follow-up, some thoughts about G Suite. So if you recall, last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey week I was really grumpy because I couldn’t use Mail App or Calendar App
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or anything really on my Macs that interfaced with my email account, which was what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I called Google Apps for Your Domain, which is now called G Suite. John had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been of the opinion that I am the only human on the planet that has this particular setup, so that’s why nobody caught
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. I appreciate every one of the listeners who wrote in to defend my honor.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is rare that anyone will disagree with John for any reason whatsoever, and I am deeply appreciative.
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty sure I didn’t say you’re the only human. I said it is most people don’t do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that’s true. I think you’re in the vast, vast minority, a tiny number of people do this compared
⏹️ ▶️ John to the people who use Gmail. So that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey what I said.
⏹️ ▶️ John it. But yes, other people do do it. Of course, they’re going to write in and say, hey, I use G Suite too. And all universities
⏹️ ▶️ John use it and all businesses use it. Fine. Add them up. Do you know how many users Gmail has? Yes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A lot. I’m sure. But I take your point. Is it more
⏹️ ▶️ John Is it more than a million?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey many people use G Suite? How many students are there in the United States? How many business people
⏹️ ▶️ John there? That’s a good that’s a good interview question at Google. How many students are there in the United States? Assume every university in the United States uses
⏹️ ▶️ John G Suite. How many students are there?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t have the faintest idea.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s over a billion Gmail users. Most people do not use G Suite or Google for their domains, my point
⏹️ ▶️ Casey McLaughlin Mm-hmm. Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ve ever wondered how you could be so lucky as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be on a podcast with John Syracuse, ask yourself, is that being lucky? Is it really?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Anyway— John Syracuse
⏹️ ▶️ John I was saying, like, yes, lots of other people do
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it, but my point
⏹️ ▶️ John was not that nobody did or that you were the only one. It’s just that it’s rare, and that’s how it could have got through QA, because
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m sure they tested with Gmail, but they probably didn’t test with G Suite because it’s so
⏹️ ▶️ John So relatively rare, not that there’s only 10 people, but that percentage wise, it’s like 1% or 5%. So
⏹️ ▶️ John they test the 95% case because that’s how testing works.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, and even though I was expecting, well, I shouldn’t say I was expecting, I was hoping for a for a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mea culpa from John. I’m not surprised I didn’t get one. But I owe Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a an apology because somebody wrote in to say that, oh, maybe it’s actually a Google
⏹️ ▶️ Casey problem. And there’s a link from Mac Observer, where they kind of go through this and say, ah, Google’s Google’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been twiddling with things behind the scenes. It was probably Google’s fault after all. It just turns
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out that it was really poor timing. I’d also like to call out Martin Steiger, who pointed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out to me, or yeah, it was he that pointed out to me that you could actually use Charles, which if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re an iOS developer that does anything with the internet, which pretty much every iOS developer does,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Charles is a proxy that lets you deliberately do, among other things, man-in-the-middle attacks. And there was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a workaround that I successfully used by deliberately man-in-the-middle-ing the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey request to Google for like auth and stuff. And it turns out Google just wasn’t giving Apple the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stuff that Apple expected back. So that could have been Google’s fault. It sounds like it was. It could have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been Apple’s fault, which is what I assumed. Sounds like it wasn’t. But anyway, you could man-in-the-middle this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing and kind of rewrite the response and convince Apple to do what you want to do, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what I did. And that was great. But it turns out Google also fixed it as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m picturing a man in the middle as like the guy who enters your Twitter conversation. Like when you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talking to your friend on Twitter and some guy comes in and starts like complaining about something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you said that like they were just butting in. That to me is a man in the middle attack.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Every time you say I’m just picturing like some guy being like, Oh, you know, actually that’s wrong. You gotta, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re misspelled this and this is insensitive and it’s like, Oh my God, just go away.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Today I posted a really stupid joke that was regarding white
⏹️ ▶️ Casey space and Swift. And the two, or to the best of my recollection, the two
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tweet replies I got to that were two people either critiquing the code or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey telling me how wrong that was. And I’m like, guys, guys, of course it was dudes. Guys,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s a joke. We don’t need to critique this. It’s a joke.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, do you honestly think Swift programmers would have a sense of humor?
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s unfair. Unfair to Swift programmers at this point.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t think the language imparts on them any kind of particular attitudes?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, it’s the reverse. You’re reversing cause and effect. People with that attitude tend to like Swift. It doesn’t turn them that way.
⏹️ ▶️ John Speaking of third-party services that are having trouble integrating with Apple, but then they end up fixing something on their
⏹️ ▶️ John end and Apple stuff starts working again, this week, briefly, dashboard weather widget stopped
⏹️ ▶️ John working because the Yahoo weather thing that it uses behind the scenes moved or something.
⏹️ ▶️ John But Yahoo fixed it, and so now it’s back. So I had a brief moment where I had to download an alternate
⏹️ ▶️ John widget into dashboard, which, yes, still exists. But that time is over, and so we’re back. JSON
⏹️ ▶️ Casey DAY-RICHTER I’m happy that your long national nightmare is
⏹️ ▶️ John over. GABLER It’s just like the G Suite stuff. Your email wasn’t working for a little while, and then Google fixed it, and now it’s back, and everyone’s happy. JSON
⏹️ ▶️ Casey DAY-RICHTER But the difference is, we all agree that there are two humans that use dashboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John and there are more than two humans. I
⏹️ ▶️ John may in my tweet, because I knew I’d get the reply guys saying, you know, you’re still using dashboard. That thing is this.
⏹️ ▶️ John I did. I did the self joke in the same tweet in line, not in a second tweet to saying, yes, I’m the
⏹️ ▶️ John one who. Yes, I still use dashboarding. Yes, I’m the one. Right. And still
⏹️ ▶️ John I couldn’t stop. Still, people. I got the reverse. I got the double turns out. I got the actually
⏹️ ▶️ John I use dashboard and I know a lot of people who use it. It’s just like, Oh my god, and I still got the people
⏹️ ▶️ John saying, wait, dashboard still exists. So there’s no avoiding it. It’s fine. It’s all in good fun. I’m just happy to have my
⏹️ ▶️ John Weather Rigid back.
Sponsor: Molekule (code ATP)
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Molecule, a complete reinvention of the air purifier.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So Molecule, unlike HEPA filters, it can actually destroy indoor air pollutants
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at a molecular level, completely removing them from the air you breathe. This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is all made possible using PECO nanotechnology. This can eliminate allergens,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mold, bacteria, even viruses and airborne chemicals. This can allow PECO
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to destroy pollutants a thousand times smaller than what HEPA filters can capture.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this can make a meaningful impact for asthma and allergy sufferers. So they did a study of 49 allergy sufferers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco presented at the American College of Asthma, Allergy and Immunology, and Molecules Technology provided dramatic,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco statistically significant, sustained symptom reduction within only a week of use. These have transformed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lifelong allergy and asthma sufferers’ lives. And they have a clean, awesome design with this product
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too. It looks almost as though Apple made an air purifier. It’s like this wonderful, it’s like the tall,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sleek metal cylinder, the top of it’s nice, like a clean, white design, a little control panel on top,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they have an app to control it and everything. It’s really, really nice. It’s a nice object to have around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in your home. It doesn’t look like a piece of medical equipment. And this can be super important. Right now, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco springtime as we record this, I just move mine from the living room to the bedroom to really amp up the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco effectiveness of it because I know it’s going to be nice to have that in the springtime to reduce some of the allergens blowing around. And this
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey So speaking of air power and speaking of my sweet new chi air pods, I would love to put
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them on my air power map, but I’ll never be able to because it’s canceled.
⏹️ ▶️ John That makes me kind of excited. You know why, Casey? And I guess this is for Marco too. three
⏹️ ▶️ John of us have what is a potentially a collector’s item and an official Apple piece of hardware that
⏹️ ▶️ John on the outside of the box references the canceled product. I don’t have one. Oh, I already threw that away. You threw
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco monster. I thought you said you
⏹️ ▶️ John old air pods. I thought you had the new one. Why don’t I get the new ones? Oh, anyway, Casey, Casey and
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I have it. I’m just hitting. I’m kidding. I’m kidding.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. I mean, it’s not that rare because they sold like a five hundred thousand of these things in the first twenty four hours or whatever. most
⏹️ ▶️ John people are going to throw out that box, but not me. That’s why I’ve still got my Apology Mouse box. It says, McRoyal,
⏹️ ▶️ John New York, 2001 on the side. It contains a basically mint condition
⏹️ ▶️ John Apology Mouse. Corey Ponder
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we did get some interesting feedback with regard to air power. Now, the person who sent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this in conceded that this was like, my friend’s uncle, cousin’s brother, sister’s uncle’s aunt’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey former roommate said, but it was interesting Nevertheless, and of course I’m also exaggerating
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a bit, but this anonymous person wrote that Apple acquired Power by Proxy, which was a New Zealand-based
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wireless charging company that designed wireless chargers for industrial applications. Note that the deal was finalized in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey October of 2017, about a month after the AirPower announcement. Power by Proxy, or PPP,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had been approached by Apple to create a prototype wireless charger in a bid for a buyout. They delivered an impressive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey product that Apple was happy with and triggered the announcement of AirPower in the acquisition. Can we pause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John second? Yes, absolutely.
⏹️ ▶️ John just take this in, company wanted to be bought out by Apple, said we have this cool thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John you should acquire us or whatever. So they showed them a cool product, and then
⏹️ ▶️ John based on that, and based on Apple’s intent to purchase, Apple announced AirPower,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? So they hadn’t even acquired the company that they thought was basically going to give them AirPower,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they announced, they hadn’t finalized the acquisition, but they announced the product based on a demo
⏹️ ▶️ John that a product who wanted to be bought by Apple showed them. So if you’re thinking, well, they announced AirPower, but maybe it wasn’t quite done
⏹️ ▶️ John yet, they announced it before they’d even bought the company that was supposedly bringing in AirPower, if this is
⏹️ ▶️ John to be believed, based on a demo of a thing that they showed them, which is kind of mind-boggling, because we were just assuming
⏹️ ▶️ John like, well, AirPower, like they thought it was almost ready, and it would be ready in time or whatever, and the team wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John working. Team? Those weren’t even Apple employees at the time of the announcement. It was a whole other company. It boggles my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mind if this is true. Yeah, and we don’t know if this is true. We don’t know, but I agree with you. That is something else.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So this anonymous person continues, what Apple either failed to realize or it ignored was that the prototype
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was not anywhere near production ready. You don’t say. It was big, expensive, and somewhat unreliable.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey PVP was not really a consumer product company and hadn’t designed something ready to be rushed into production. Complicating this, PVP
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was also responsible for designing the wireless charging hardware of the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil 2. AirPower
⏹️ ▶️ Casey got sent back to the drawing board and the iPad got assigned a higher priority. This small company was now split between two very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey complex engineering challenges and guess what, AirPower suffered. So, in summary, says the anonymous
⏹️ ▶️ Casey person, the reason AirPower has taken so long to come out is because it was announced before Apple even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey owned the company behind it or verified that the product met Apple product standards. In the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time since the announcement, the product was effectively restarted from scratch, and that’s why it’s taken so long to come out and Apple’s been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so quiet about it.
⏹️ ▶️ John This email was before they canceled it at BuyAway. It was just saying, like, what’s the deal? Why did it take so long? What about the
⏹️ ▶️ John restarts or whatever? And I feel like the essential additional piece of information, which you probably could have found just by looking at
⏹️ ▶️ John Wikipedia or news stories because everyone knew power by proxy and acquisition. But I just had never seen the timelines laid out like
⏹️ ▶️ John this, that like if you’ve ever been in a company that’s trying to be acquired by another company, you know
⏹️ ▶️ John what that company will do to make itself seem attractive. So I bet power by proxy was putting its
⏹️ ▶️ John best foot forward when it came to this awesome new charging mat where you could put your device anywhere and it would charge
⏹️ ▶️ John it and like it’s gonna make itself seem awesome. And to be fair to Power
⏹️ ▶️ John by Proxy, the fact that Apple acquired them and gave them the Pencil 2 and the iPad Pro charging,
⏹️ ▶️ John both of which seem to be great, it’s not like they didn’t know what they were doing. It seems like a good acquisition if they were assigned those
⏹️ ▶️ John two things. Those should have been higher priority than AirPower, and it seems like they did a good job with it. It just
⏹️ ▶️ John turns out that the AirPower thing was not, you know, I’m not going to say it was smoke and mirrors, like
⏹️ ▶️ John it was an idea that seemed like it could be feasible, but it turned out not to be feasible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and this, I mean, again, we have no idea if this is true or not, but it’s certainly, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very plausible given what we do know is true, given the things that happen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco publicly and looking at this company and stuff like that. So I’m inclined to believe that this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably either true or close. Maybe it’s the gist of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if so, I think it confirms what we all kind of already suspected, which is Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really, The really crazy thing about this is that Apple pre-announced it when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they did. Like, you know, with apparently no need to do so. Because, you know, in reality,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we are all talking about this product way more over the past year, and especially over the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco past week, than we would have if they would have just released it. Like, if this was a real shipping, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shipped product, we would have probably talked about it for maybe 15 minutes on one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco episode of a show and been done with it. And that would be it. It would just, you know, because like, Apple sells all sorts of like boring
⏹️ ▶️ Marco accessories we don’t talk about like there’s all these like you know like the various like watch charging UFOs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and stuff like that we just wouldn’t even mention it or we’d mention it very quickly but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is so interesting not because it’s a charging mat and not because charging mats are that exciting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but because it was such a weird like misstep in their PR
⏹️ ▶️ Marco strategy and and like it’s so unlike them to announce things that are nowhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco near shipping and and that they haven’t even proven will ship. I mean, and you know, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we can make jokes about how they just announced like five services and none of which are really out yet, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually when it comes to hardware, they almost never announce things that far ahead.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think this is the first time hardware has ever been announced in the modern Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco era that ended up not happening, with the exception of maybe that three gigahertz G5.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But you know, like other, so like it’s, I just I it’s interesting to see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like modern Apple made this massive misstep why what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco led to this and I think another interesting angle to consider is it appears
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as though the cancellation was possibly very last-minute
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I don’t think they planned like I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think they decided to cancel airpower two months ago. Like I think it might have been more like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two or three weeks ago that they actually made this decision because that’s why you have things like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the AirPods packaging referencing AirPower. That’s why you have you know various instruction
⏹️ ▶️ Marco manuals here and there referencing it. You have they apparently secured the trademark to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it like last week or something like very recently. So there’s all sorts of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco signs that they didn’t cancel this a while back and just take a while to admit it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think they really cancelled it very recently, and possibly right before they expected to release
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. And if so, that’s also interesting. There’s a lot of wonderful ways we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can speculate on what could have happened there. Why was this cancelled? Did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they think they nailed it, and they finally got it right, and they were about to ship it, and then one of them caught fire or something? Who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco knows? But I find it just fascinating that this happened at all,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s way more fascinating. The speculating on the story and seeing what actually happened, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think is way more fascinating than a chi-charging Matt would otherwise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco deserve. But it’s only interesting because of all the drama around it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, speaking of the services stuff, I’m assuming this is true, but who knows? Like, historically,
⏹️ ▶️ John when stuff is late from Apple, it’s almost always the software. I mean, that’s just true in general, because hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John people are working in a more constrained, defined domain constrained
⏹️ ▶️ John by the laws of physics. And now that I’m saying hardware is easier,
⏹️ ▶️ John but especially when it comes to the Silicon process, shrinks just as Intel about that.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it is more of a constrained domain than software. Software, you can do anything, and it can lead you down weird
⏹️ ▶️ John paths. So usually when there’s some hardware plus software product combined, the hardware is ready because
⏹️ ▶️ John the hardware people are better able to have predictable schedules, and the software is late. But in the case of Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John services, of the all their television services they announced on the 25th. I’m going to assume that
⏹️ ▶️ John all the software related to that will be ready before possibly
⏹️ ▶️ John long before they decide to launch because what they’re waiting for is I mean, it’s kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John the television equivalent of software. It’s all TV shows. You don’t have to wait for them all to be done, but
⏹️ ▶️ John you want to have a good launch lineup and they take a long time and their their sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John production is staggered and you know all that stuff. So the apps might be all ready
⏹️ ▶️ John to go and the services and the service side might be as far as Apple’s concerned, all ready to go. But they said,
⏹️ ▶️ John actually, we’re going to wait until these three shows have at least this many episodes out or whatever their rollout strategies
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. And so I’m hoping that unlike air power, all of the
⏹️ ▶️ John parts of this that Apple makes themselves with, you know, software and traditional
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple technology will be could actually have been done on the 25th and sitting there just waiting in the hopper,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, going, body, we’re just waiting for the, you know, the television shows to be done. And then when
⏹️ ▶️ John all the shows are ready, uh, they’re all amount, which is another thing we don’t know about their TV services, by the way, are
⏹️ ▶️ John they going to be like Netflix where they drop a whole season at once, in which case they have to wait for every episode of each show to be done.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or are they going to roll them out one at a time over a week? Or are they going to do some weird hybrid thing? They didn’t really talk much about
⏹️ ▶️ John that, but my guess is they’re going to do the Netflix route and dump the whole season at lunch, which means they need every episode
⏹️ ▶️ John of the shows they want to launch with.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it’s interesting, like Marco said, because it’s a public flop and a misstep,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I don’t know. I saw a lot of grumbling about how this wasn’t announced prior
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the AirPods with Qi charging going on sale. And I guess if I bought the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Qi case specifically because I knew I was going to buy a previously
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unannounced pricing AirPower mat, I guess I would be grumpy about it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I don’t know man. I Didn’t really have any intention of buying an airpower mat
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I have a couple of I think they’re Mophie Qi chargers around the house
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I Have been overjoyed by just dropping the little case on there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when my phone isn’t already there to just you know Top them up from now and again and not have to worry about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey messing with the cable, which yeah, okay This is the first of the first world problems. I’ll be the first to tell you that but But nevertheless,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is very convenient. And I don’t think that this was a bait and switch, but oh man, was Twitter upset
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when this all happened, that oh, what a bait and switch, that they should have told us in advance. And yeah, I mean, I guess they should have told us
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah. That was a non-event. That was like three people being mad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I don’t know. I saw some very grumbly people about it. There were some people that were very, very, very grumbly about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. And I agree that that’s kind of a non-thing, but there was enough
⏹️ ▶️ Casey smoke there that I thought I should say that I don’t really get it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Paul Krugman Was that within the 14 day return window?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Timing wasn’t ideal in that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco announced there would be no AirPower mat after some people had made the decision of whether to get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the cheap charging case for the new AirPods or not. But like, you know what, honestly, you’re talking about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people who are buying a $200 product on day one and they’re mad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they can’t buy another $100 charging mat, a specific
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one that they can just buy a different charging mat instead now. Because it’s not like this is the only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Qi charging mat that has ever been promised to exist. Turns out there’s a bunch of them, and it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s why this is such a funny thing, is this product category
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is already established and quite boring. It’s because AirPower was announced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so long ago, and it was announced with the first Qi charging iPhones, and iPhones weren’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even the first Qi charging phones, And so like, even when the iPhones came out, what was it, almost two years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ago now? Even when the first Qi iPhones came out, there were already a bunch of Qi products
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the market that were pretty decent. And since then, there are even more of them that are even cooler
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and even better. And like, now almost all of us have tried Qi charging at some point,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we’ve decided whether it’s right for us or not. And it’s fine. It’s boring,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s inefficient. We know how it fails and how it doesn’t. And it’s totally fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, I don’t think the cancellation of AirPower
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should really change anybody’s plans, because like, if you don’t have Qi
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yet, you probably don’t need it. And if you really wanted it, there’s a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of other good options out there. Like, it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John One thing before we leave the topic of AirPower, the promise of the AirPower, while not groundbreaking or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John it does highlight, I feel like, next reasonable step in the
⏹️ ▶️ John wireless charging mat thing, which is it would be nice if you could have a
⏹️ ▶️ John Mat where you could put the thing anywhere because that opens the door to sort of larger mats Without predefined
⏹️ ▶️ John spots for things that you can really can just a family can just chuck all their devices on to right
⏹️ ▶️ John if that worked That would be an improvement to the ecosystem of wireless charging mats
⏹️ ▶️ John Couldn’t get it to work with this particular approach of overlapping rings and yada yada see Apple’s patent That’s a shame,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I think that is a design goal worth pursuing
⏹️ ▶️ John for whatever the next standard is for wireless charging. So I hope Apple doesn’t give up on this entirely
⏹️ ▶️ John and I think also the market is open for Apple to release boring
⏹️ ▶️ John Qi chargers because why shouldn’t Apple make some more money with nice accessories
⏹️ ▶️ John that match their devices and all that other stuff. So I’m not entirely down on the idea
⏹️ ▶️ John of Apple building a wireless charging mat and I kind of like the idea of air power.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, if I didn’t really like the shape and I felt like it wasn’t, I probably wouldn’t have bought one no matter what. But I hope
⏹️ ▶️ John somebody somewhere continues to pursue this because it seems, it seems like a good idea.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, and if anyone wants an alternative, this is an unrequested
⏹️ ▶️ Casey spot for our friends at Studio Neat and they are our friends, but I have the non-QI
⏹️ ▶️ Casey version of their material dock and it is lovely and wonderful. And at some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point I will upgrade to the Qi version of their material dock. And so you can get just the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Qi charger, you can get a Qi charger in a slot for your Apple Watch and you can have a Qi charger
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slot for your Apple Watch and a slot for your AirPods. They’re very, very nice. And the two guys that run Studio
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Need are friends of ours. They’re good guys. So I definitely recommend the material dock if you’re looking for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something equivalent.
⏹️ ▶️ John And finally, if you bought AirPods with a wireless charging case and you regret it because now there’s no
⏹️ ▶️ John air power, I bet you probably have pretty good resale value on those AirPods right now.
⏹️ ▶️ John It seems to be a pretty popular product. People kind of like them. I bet you could sell it at cost even if you’re outside the 14-day
⏹️ ▶️ John window because you spent you burned the 14-day window complaining about it on Twitter and forgot to actually return them.
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, John, tell me what Google Stadia is all about.
⏹️ ▶️ John This was a couple of weeks ago. This has been in the notes for a while. I really did want to talk about it, but it’s now practically
⏹️ ▶️ John old news. Like so many Google announcements, they have a big presentation and they tell the world
⏹️ ▶️ John about a thing and people talk about it for a lit and then talk about it for a bit. And then I guess we all
⏹️ ▶️ John just forget it exists because it didn’t actually launch. And then and then like I guess six months, eight months
⏹️ ▶️ John to 18 months later it launches and no one care. I know I’m not going to predict the success of this, but I do want to
⏹️ ▶️ John talk about the, uh, the concept Google stadia, which is a terrible name, um, is
⏹️ ▶️ John Google’s attempt at a streaming video game service. I don’t know what the hell the,
⏹️ ▶️ John we want to call these things now, but there’s been lots of things like this in the past. I think in fact we’ve we’ve talked about on this very show. Did we talk
⏹️ ▶️ John about OnLive a couple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ago? Yeah, I think so.
⏹️ ▶️ John That was one of them. Sony bought a company that does this, and they use it to
⏹️ ▶️ John stream PlayStation 3 games. Microsoft has one that they’re in the process of working
⏹️ ▶️ John on and launching. There’s been many attempts at this. Google is not the first one. What it is is a way
⏹️ ▶️ John for people to play games without running that game on the hardware that’s sitting in front of them. So you do need some hardware in front
⏹️ ▶️ John of you. You need a screen. You need a controller. The screen could be a TV, it could be a computer,
⏹️ ▶️ John and a controller, just a regular game controller, or it could be a mouse or keyboard, whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the point is that the actual game runs on a computer in a data center
⏹️ ▶️ John somewhere else. That computer in the data center has a video card, has a CPU,
⏹️ ▶️ John the game is installed there. That’s where the game runs. And your inputs
⏹️ ▶️ John to your controller, your keyboard, your mouse get sent to that computer in the data center and then
⏹️ ▶️ John the image that is projected by the video card inside that computer gets sent over the network
⏹️ ▶️ John to you onto your television or your whatever. That’s the dream of streaming
⏹️ ▶️ John gaming or whatever you want to call it remote gaming and like I said all those
⏹️ ▶️ John services either have done this or do it right now like I believe if you buy a PlayStation 3 game on your PlayStation 4
⏹️ ▶️ John PlayStation 4 can’t play PlayStation 3 games the architectures are wildly different from each other
⏹️ ▶️ John and it doesn’t try to emulate it I believe it runs that game on PlayStation 3 hardware in a data
⏹️ ▶️ John center somewhere and projects the image to you. OnLive did the same thing I forgot the Nvidia
⏹️ ▶️ John what the hell is it called Nvidia games now Nvidia has a service that does this too I used it
⏹️ ▶️ John to play Destiny the PC version of Destiny on my iMac quote-unquote on my iMac
⏹️ ▶️ John my iMac can’t play Destiny Destiny only runs in Windows on Windows PCs, but I ran it onto Windows PC
⏹️ ▶️ John in some data center somewhere and Nvidia’s service projected it onto my iMac screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why are there so many of these services? Why do they exist? Why is this a thing that anybody wants to
⏹️ ▶️ John do? Because this approach looks amazing
⏹️ ▶️ John on paper for tons of reasons. The first one that most people like is
⏹️ ▶️ John the computer in the data center that runs your game can be really awesome. It can
⏹️ ▶️ John be have the biggest, fastest, hottest video card. It can have a great CPU.
⏹️ ▶️ John It can just be amazing and you don’t have to buy it. Somebody else buys it and all
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to buy is something that has a screen and then whatever controller hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John keyboard or mouse or whatever you want and then a network connection and a tiny little bit of software
⏹️ ▶️ John to make it all happen. So that is cheap. You can build that into a television really easy, you can build it into a controller.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think Stadia does that. I think you could like the controller itself has all the smarts it needs and it just needs like a screen
⏹️ ▶️ John to to control and project on like a television or the chromecast or whatever. The hardware you need at home is
⏹️ ▶️ John like nothing by modern standards. You just need a good internet connection and all that stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then the hardware that runs the game can be shared kind of like you know ride sharing
⏹️ ▶️ John versus you with a car in your driveway. Your car is useless to everybody when it’s just sitting in in your driveway doing nothing,
⏹️ ▶️ John but in the Stadia model, someone else could be driving your car when you’re not using it. So if you’re not using your gaming PC, it just
⏹️ ▶️ John sits under your desk. But in the Stadia model or any of those other things, if you’re not using that PC in the data
⏹️ ▶️ John center, somebody else can be using that to play the game that they’re playing. So there’s an economy of scale there. So it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not like they have to buy one PC for every user in Stadia. Like they only need one PC for every simultaneous
⏹️ ▶️ John user, not every total user because half of them are sleeping or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John advantages that are more esoteric but are important to people who are into games. If you have the game running
⏹️ ▶️ John on a bunch of things in a data center, it’s kind of like a LAN party.
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco remembers these of lugging CRTs over to friends’ houses. Oh yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Hey, me too.
⏹️ ▶️ John towers. Like all your computers are within feet of each other. Ben never had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the map installed.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’ll all have the map installed and they’ll all like… They’re all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco running the same version of of the game. Yeah. They all have all the
⏹️ ▶️ John patches. The latency between the different players in a massively multiplayer game
⏹️ ▶️ John would be phenomenally low because they’re literally feet from each other inside a data center. And they’re all up to
⏹️ ▶️ John date, and they all have the same version, they all have the same patch. Additionally, all of the cheating things that
⏹️ ▶️ John are an epidemic on PC gaming become much harder. Not impossible, because nothing makes cheating impossible,
⏹️ ▶️ John but much harder to do when you don’t get to, like when the game doesn’t run on the hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John that you have access to. the game runs on hardware in a data center and they can make sure that
⏹️ ▶️ John you aren’t able to inject malware into there, whatever. You could still, again, software being
⏹️ ▶️ John software, you could probably send some malicious thing that overflows some buffer that gets the code to execute
⏹️ ▶️ John into your game thing and yada, yada, yada, but it definitely makes cheating much, much harder. So
⏹️ ▶️ John this seems like an amazing solution for tons of reasons. It’s cheaper for the players,
⏹️ ▶️ John there are economies of scales for the game makers, the gaming experience can be better. Certain things are just not even
⏹️ ▶️ John possible. Like you can have such massively multiplayer things because the latency is like in
⏹️ ▶️ John single milliseconds or nanoseconds, because you’re all in the same data center. You’d never get that with people spread all over the world.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then here comes the big but. But the computer’s
⏹️ ▶️ John running in the data center far away from your house, which means that every time you press a button on your controller,
⏹️ ▶️ John that button press has to leave your house over your internet connection, travel over whatever it’s traveling
⏹️ ▶️ John over to get to that data center before it lands at the computer and says, oh, they pressed the fire button. I guess I should
⏹️ ▶️ John fire. And then when you do fire and the little blast comes out of your gun and that image gets
⏹️ ▶️ John rendered, that image has to go back over that long wire, find its way back to your house and onto your screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that can increase, introduce tremendous lag and to combat lag, you can reduce
⏹️ ▶️ John quality. Now things don’t look as good. And that’s why historically all these services that I’ve described have
⏹️ ▶️ John not been particularly successful. The ones that play older games, it’s like, well, I wouldn’t be able to play that game
⏹️ ▶️ John at all, and it’s an older game and it always looked bad, and people are willing to accept compromises, and you know, whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the benefits are so big. Like the monetary
⏹️ ▶️ John benefits, the potential for market share
⏹️ ▶️ John are so big because if you told people, hey, you can play PS4 games and just buy this $10
⏹️ ▶️ John piece of hardware, everyone would have, quote unquote, have a PS four if it costs 10 bucks or way more people
⏹️ ▶️ John would have a PS four if it costs 10 bucks instead of 400. Right. Big benefits. But
⏹️ ▶️ John if you can’t overcome those limitations of lag and everything, it doesn’t, you know, so
⏹️ ▶️ John far it hasn’t passed that critical mass. So there’s a reason game consoles still sell in the millions and game PPCs
⏹️ ▶️ John still sell because they provide the best experience and thus far no streaming game service
⏹️ ▶️ John has gotten over that critical mass to say it’s not as good as local, but it’s good enough
⏹️ ▶️ John that most people say it’s fine and want to do it. Now, I’m kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of fascinated by Stadia because Google, not that they are uniquely
⏹️ ▶️ John positioned to do this well, but they are well-positioned to do this well.
⏹️ ▶️ John Google is really good at server-side services. So I have no doubt that the stuff where they run all your games in their
⏹️ ▶️ John data centers will be good. Google also is pretty good at getting
⏹️ ▶️ John network stuff closer to its users. like they do that with their distributed DNS with the 888 and 8844 business or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John like they have the ability to put hardware closer
⏹️ ▶️ John to more people than a lot of other companies do because they are invested in having multiple data centers
⏹️ ▶️ John and partnering with people who have edge proxies and having their own sort of data networks
⏹️ ▶️ John and dark fiber and Amazon similarly is in a similar camp here, but there’s very
⏹️ ▶️ John few companies in the world that actually own and control enough data center hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John and networking infrastructure to have a fighting chance to be better than just the average ISP thing, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because a company like OnLive, there’s only so much they could do. For the most part, they’re at the mercy
⏹️ ▶️ John of people’s ISPs, which, as we all know in the US anyway, suck terribly. And if your
⏹️ ▶️ John entire service relies on that latency being good or that bandwidth being consistent or not having hiccups or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you don’t really control that, you’re just crossing your fingers that things are going to be good enough. found out that no,
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever year they went out of business, it’s not good enough yet. Are we
⏹️ ▶️ John there yet? Does Google have the fiber optic
⏹️ ▶️ John connections between its data centers and edge proxies that are close to your house to
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of get from your house onto the really fast Google network and then stay there and bounce
⏹️ ▶️ John the things back around to make the latency acceptable? Maybe, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John not. But I think if Stadia doesn’t do it, and is another one of those Google flops that we don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John end up hearing about, people are going to keep trying this. They’re gonna keep trying this, and it will eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John probably work. Because there’s no reason it can’t work acceptably
⏹️ ▶️ John for geographically local areas. Like if you do the speed of light calculations, or whatever, speed of photons
⏹️ ▶️ John and fiber optic cable calculations, you can make it work acceptably
⏹️ ▶️ John for most kind of games in reasonably geographic areas. if you if you had an idealized
⏹️ ▶️ John network set up and reasonable software trickery. I think we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John getting close. I played Destiny over NVIDIA service. It was not acceptable,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it was way closer than I thought it would be. I thought it would just be like horrendous. But it was to the point where
⏹️ ▶️ John I could play the game and get through levels and do stuff. It was just
⏹️ ▶️ John ugly and a little bit laggy, but it wasn’t impossible to play. Wasn’t like, well, there’s no point in
⏹️ ▶️ John even playing this. I can’t, it’s not even playable at all. I can’t make any progress. It’s like trying to play by mail
⏹️ ▶️ John or something. It wasn’t like that, but it still wasn’t good enough to be acceptable to any reasonable amount of people.
⏹️ ▶️ John But for other kinds of games, for maybe like a more relaxed game that doesn’t require
⏹️ ▶️ John twitch reflexes and minimal lag between input and appearing on the screen,
⏹️ ▶️ John Stadia could work. I just don’t think you can build a service on those type of games quite yet. I think you have to get over the threshold to be
⏹️ ▶️ John able to play like the most popular genres of gamers on these platforms in an acceptable way.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m not here to tell you that Stadia is going to be amazing or to
⏹️ ▶️ John sign its death warrant or whatever, but I am here to say that we all collectively, if
⏹️ ▶️ John we live long enough, we’re going to see company after company after company try this. And I think eventually you’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ John succeed because I think it’s actually a good idea that just might not quite work yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have no thoughts on this whatsoever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am so glad that John knows a lot about this and can talk about it because I’m glad we covered it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the show and I’m glad that I didn’t have to say anything useful.
⏹️ ▶️ John Would you guys sign up for a service like this if it worked? Like to an acceptable
⏹️ ▶️ John level? Like does it appeal to you not having to buy a console or whatever thingy
⏹️ ▶️ John to attach to your TV?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, but I don’t find myself longing to play console games
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really ever. And if I do, I’m going to play them on my Switch, which I have in my house.
⏹️ ▶️ John your Switch costs 20 bucks? I mean, maybe you don’t care. And it could
⏹️ ▶️ John be way smaller, way lighter, because all it would be was like a screen
⏹️ ▶️ John a controller, right? It wouldn’t need to have any hot little CPU in there. It wouldn’t need to have any cartridge
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I see your point. And actually, one of the things I did think was very fascinating about the Stadia thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that the controller, if I understand what little I know of it appropriately,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that the controller, as you were saying earlier, actually connects to your home or apartment or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wi-Fi, and you may not need anything but the controller itself
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I would presume a Chromecast hooked up to a TV, which you were kind of dancing around earlier.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But it is bananas to me that you wouldn’t need the controller connected via Bluetooth to something that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something connected to the internet. You know what I mean? The internet is connected directly to the controller,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is just bananas. I mean, if you had told, I was at late middle school, early high school, me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey using Kali to find other people to play Quake with online or whatever it was, or Descent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey online, and you told me, oh, you’re not going to even need a computer for this, your controller will hook up to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the internet and then you’ll have just a magical puck on the back of your TV that does the rest. Like it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is unbelievable technology. And the fact that it even kind of works is mind blowing,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I just I don’t care enough about console kind of games to really think that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is for me. Marco, do you find this appealing?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Only in the sense that we do find ourselves in this household, usually for TIFF,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco occasionally buying a game console to play only a small number of games on for a podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or something. And so if this could help us not buy as many game consoles,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then great. Ultimately, that’s the only real use I can see for it. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think people who really love console games want this trade-off.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, people who really love console games don’t seem to have a problem buying consoles.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I don’t really think that all the, you know, latency
⏹️ ▶️ Marco potential, and more importantly, the potential for inconsistent levels of play,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think that’s gonna fly with those people. And everyone else who’s not super into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco console games, I don’t think care is enough to even get this service. You know, like, so I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know. I don’t think it’s gonna do anything for me ultimately, but maybe someone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else will like it.
⏹️ ▶️ John A good analogy for the trade-off, speaking of like people who like consoles, I think is the move from
⏹️ ▶️ John plastic discs to downloadable. That came with trade-offs too, because plastic discs you can resell,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can lend it to a friend, all sorts of things that if you’d been having the same discussion, you’d be like, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John downloadable games are probably fine, But given all the compromises that we know they’re going to do,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think people would just prefer to get the plastic discs. In the end though, I think the
⏹️ ▶️ John latest generation of console has shown that people basically just want to download them. And despite complaining all
⏹️ ▶️ John the way about all those things, oh I can’t resell my games, I can’t lend them out to a friend, I have to worry about
⏹️ ▶️ John my disk space filling up, the convenience for it outweighs the benefits.
⏹️ ▶️ John So all the people who buy console games do it because it’s the only way to have that kind of experience. And
⏹️ ▶️ John if you got a Magic Stadia that gave you exactly the same experience, they would all use it, despite any
⏹️ ▶️ John other drawbacks, just to not have to pay the money and not to have the thing hooked up to their TV. Like it would be better.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Casey, if you could tell your childhood self that it’s all done from the controller, he’d be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like, wow, that’s amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then you told them that a really good wireless controller can cost $150, they’d be like, oh, no, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sad. Wow. 150 space
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s an eerily accurate impersonation. I’m very impressed.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. No, I think it’s that’s that’s what everyone’s looking for. Like I handicapping
⏹️ ▶️ John it. The safe money is that it’s still not time yet. But I I like
⏹️ ▶️ John Google’s chances better than any other company that has tried to do this. If they fail,
⏹️ ▶️ John it should tell everybody, wait five years before they thought
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey we tried this
⏹️ ▶️ John again. Like, I mean, you if you get there first, I think the benefits are big because
⏹️ ▶️ John I think there is a pretty big market of people like Margo. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John people who don’t buy consoles, they’re like, maybe there’s one game I might be interested in, but do I really want to spend $400 on a
⏹️ ▶️ John console? No, I probably don’t. But if it really was $50 for a controller plus $10 for a Chromecast,
⏹️ ▶️ John or even no Chromecast, like if you just buy a modern television that has that built in, it’s really just $50 for the controller.
⏹️ ▶️ John It starts to become like an impulse purchase, and maybe you’ll just try it and play game and
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe that’ll be a gateway to getting into gaming and then maybe you’ll buy the five hundred dollar
⏹️ ▶️ John console the next year. I don’t know. I, I, I see the, I see a lot of potential benefits as do all these companies
⏹️ ▶️ John who keep trying this. And the other one that I think most people aren’t thinking of is because it’s speculative,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I believe in the speculation when you have all the gaming stuff in the data center and they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John all like a nanoseconds away from each other. There are types of games that were previously impossible
⏹️ ▶️ John to do that become possible. Like I mentioned the, you know, massively multiplayer that’s way more massive.
⏹️ ▶️ John Most of the problem with doing multiplayer games is keeping all the people in sync. So they all agree about the state
⏹️ ▶️ John of the world and who actually shot who and so on and so forth. That’s why and they have client side prediction.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, I haven’t heard from the server in a while, but here on the client, I’m going to continue running the simulation as if
⏹️ ▶️ John what I think was happening on the server was happening. And if the server tells me I’m wrong later, I will back
⏹️ ▶️ John that out. client side prediction started in the quake days and like it’s a staple of modern, uh, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John multiplayer computer. If it didn’t exist, everybody’s experience would be horrendous, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But that means there’s a limitation of like, you can’t have 10,000 users all in the same instance running around because there’s no
⏹️ ▶️ John way that they would be able to keep up with what’s going on with all the other players at the same time with a reasonable
⏹️ ▶️ John frame rate. Put that all in the data center. New kinds of games become possible games that no
⏹️ ▶️ John one has ever played before. Because back when we were having land parties, multiplayer at all
⏹️ ▶️ John was an amazing thing. And there were no 10,000 players in the same instance type of game because you couldn’t fit 10,000 PCs into your friends
⏹️ ▶️ John den, right? Or you were setting stuff up. So there is a potential combination
⏹️ ▶️ John of someone gets a service right enough. And also they have a killer app that includes
⏹️ ▶️ John a genre, a game that had that has never been possible before. And that
⏹️ ▶️ John would be, you know, the sort of the perfect storm that that would make a lot of money for whoever
⏹️ ▶️ John gets there first. It could be an established player like Sony or Microsoft, it could be a new player like Google, probably won’t be
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, because come on. But I’m actually looking forward to that sometime
⏹️ ▶️ John in my life, because I see the benefits and I believe in it and I understand how all these companies can get invested. And
⏹️ ▶️ John hey, that company that did it and got bought by Sony, they basically had a successful business on it. They
⏹️ ▶️ John built this product and got bought out by a big company and probably made lots of money, and Sony has a value
⏹️ ▶️ John add to their platform. They didn’t have a backward compatibility strategy for PS4, but they wanted to be able to
⏹️ ▶️ John continue to sell people PS3 games because there’s some good ones. And they bought that company and found a way to do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And people mostly just, I’m assuming I’m right here because I’ve never actually done this myself because I have an actual
⏹️ ▶️ John PS3, so I’ve never played the mini-emulation. But assuming I’m right, there is a success story
⏹️ ▶️ John of moderate proportions for a company that did this. So good luck to Google.
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#askatp: Disneyworld tips
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steven Kim writes, Hey, do you have any tips on booking a Disney World vacation? So this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is one of those things that everyone has their own secret sauce in order to plan the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey perfect Disney World vacation. I too have my own secret sauce, which I will share with you, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is just the way I like to do it. This will not work for everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and probably won’t work for the rough draft of Disney World that some people on the West Coast called Disneyland.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So if you’re going to the one true Disney experience, which is Disney World, then you probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey want to consider a couple of things. First of all, you almost certainly want to stay somewhere on site,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is almost certainly going to be a whole pile more money, but if you stay on site, then you have the advantage of going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to what Disney calls extra magic hours, which means if you stay on site, they let you go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into certain parks early and certain, you, they let you stay in certain parks late, which is very cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, something I’ve tried out this trip, because we are going to be going to Disney,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey um, later this year. Something I’ve tried out for the very first time, and I cannot stress enough.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know how this is going to go for us, but we have booked using this service.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Disney seems to have acknowledged that we have a trip planned, but there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this thing called David’s Vacation Club Rentals, and there are other equivalents to it as well. This particular
⏹️ ▶️ Casey company happens to be Canadian, so that makes them more trustworthy in my book. The
⏹️ ▶️ Casey idea is that Disney has its own timeshare thing, which is the Disney Vacation Club. If you pay
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Disney a whole pile of money upfront and then a whole pile of money every year, then you can stay at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Disney, I guess for free or for cheap or something like that. And I don’t really understand how or why, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guess maybe it’s use it or lose it or something like that. But occasionally you’ll be a Disney Vacation Club quote unquote
⏹️ ▶️ Casey owner, and you’ll want to not use your points or what have you, your reservation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for one year. And in order to kind of get your money back, you can go to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a third party service, kind of almost like an escrow or a matchmaker that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will say, hey, you have points and you don’t want them. Casey
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wants to stay somewhere, but he doesn’t belong and doesn’t have any points. Let’s meet in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey middle and I’ll take a little cut from each of you. And that’s what we’ve done. So we booked something using David’s Vacation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Club rentals. We have paid about half of what it would cost to go directly to Disney
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to book the room that we’ve booked. So in that sense, we’re doing great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If we get to Disney World and they say, oh, we have no idea who you are why you’re here, then that’s going to change real quick. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hopefully it works out. Think happy thoughts. The other thing I would say is that if you stay on site, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can use Disney’s Magical Express, which is their fancy term for you put a special
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tag on your luggage when you leave your home airport. And the next time you see that luggage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is when Disney brings it into your hotel room. You do not pick it up at the airport. You just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey trust that Disney will get it and put it in your room, which is amazing. I definitely recommend that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I also do recommend been the Disney dining plan. It is not the most cost-effective thing in the world.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey When Aaron and I went last, we computed the equivalency and it’s the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dining plan that we got, which is the middle of the road standard dining plan. We would have paid maybe a hint
⏹️ ▶️ Casey less if we just a la carte-ed everything. But for us, I like the idea of not having
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to nickel and dime ourselves. Oh, do I really, really, really want that appetizer or is it not worth the five bucks?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so the idea of the dining plan is you just pay for everything up front and not have to worry about it. That is kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of, oh, and the other thing I would say, sorry, this is the final thought. The way I like to plan each and every day
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that I will decide where I want to have dinner
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in what restaurant, in what Disney park that will be, and I will work backwards from there. So as an example, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really love the fifties prime time cafe, which is in what I call MGM. I think it’s actually called Hollywood studios.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Maybe on Tuesday, I’m going to Hollywood studios and, or I should say on Tuesday, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to eat at the 50s Primetime Cafe, that means I’m going to end my day at Hollywood
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Studios, so I will plan that afternoon being at Hollywood Studios. And typically, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would do somewhere else in the morning, a different park in the morning, go back, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do a little siesta in the middle of the day for me and the kids, and then go over to Hollywood Studios
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the evening. So that’s many words to say. I like to start from dinner and work my way back,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and that kind of works out well for me and then obviously use FastPass and FastPass Plus wherever possible to pre-book
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things. It’s a lot and I haven’t been in a few years, but we’re going this year and I’m really excited because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m of the opinion that Disney World is kind of like the geographic equivalent of Christmas where it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is possible to be in a bad mood at Christmas, but you got to try real hard. For me, and I’m expecting that John
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and or Marco will argue with me momentarily, for me, it is hard for me to be in a bad mood at Disney.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If I try hard enough, I can do it, but it’s hard. So that’s kind of my quick and dirty.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steven, if you want more tips, then hopefully the listeners will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey send tweets to you and not me. But that’s my two cents. John, you are the only one that’s been to Disney anytime recently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey other than me. Any thoughts on that? Or was that all Tina that did all the work there?
⏹️ ▶️ John She did most of it, but we also actually did engage with one of those Disney
⏹️ ▶️ John planner people. their whole job is to help people plan Disney vacations, which helped
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot. Um, my, my only tip, I mean, I’ve only, only been there three times in my
⏹️ ▶️ John life and only once as an adult. And my only tip is the tip I gave when I came back from the trip that I think worked
⏹️ ▶️ John out well for me, which is, you know, Disney vacations are ridiculously expensive. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John and, uh, like there’s all, everything costs way more than you think it’s going to, especially if you’re there
⏹️ ▶️ John with kids cause kids see things and they want a thing at like the gift shop or they want to do an
⏹️ ▶️ John activity or like just you know like this. There’s all sorts of ways that you can imagine going to Disney and finding
⏹️ ▶️ John ways to save money by you know not doing the meal plan not staying on site you
⏹️ ▶️ John know not letting your kids have a thousand souvenirs so on and so forth. My plan going in which I think
⏹️ ▶️ John worked out well was to accept that this was
⏹️ ▶️ John going to be a very expensive vacation to save money for 10 years before we went
⏹️ ▶️ John and and to say say when I’m there when I’m on the vacation, don’t worry about it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t look at the prices on things. Don’t bargain with the kids about you can have one toy
⏹️ ▶️ John here or two toys there. Not to say that it’s a free for all making of everything in the world, but essentially the default
⏹️ ▶️ John answer to everything was yes.
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not like you go there all the time and I didn’t want the vacation to be a series of fights between parents and kids
⏹️ ▶️ John about what we should or shouldn’t do. And I didn’t want the parents to be fretting about Who do you want to go to this restaurant? Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is expensive. You know, even just we went to we did a bunch of stuff We did a Kennedy Space
⏹️ ▶️ John Center. We were in there. We did What is the thing that has Harry Potter land universal whatever? That’s right
⏹️ ▶️ John and we did Disney like we did we did all the things like and I remember the first time this came to a test was when
⏹️ ▶️ John the kids wanted to have butterbeer at Harry Potter land and People who haven’t been to what I don’t know what the
⏹️ ▶️ John hell is called But people who haven’t been to the Harry Potter thing Like, if you went there without
⏹️ ▶️ John doing this mental prep that I said, and the kid’s like, oh, I want to have a butter beer. You’re like, okay, fine, or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you find out each one is $12. Oh, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the point where you’re really testing, like, I’m just going to say yes to everything. I’m not going to care that it’s $12.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m just going to say yes. And that, I feel like, was the right move. This was the most expensive vacation
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve ever been on, by far. But again, we did actually save money for a long time.
⏹️ ▶️ John We had a vacation fund and we were just filling it up and filling it up and filling it up. And we did it at the
⏹️ ▶️ John one time when the kids were the right age to still appreciate Disneyland and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it was, you know, I feel like it was a successful vacation. So try that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I couldn’t agree with that more that it is unreasonably, just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ridiculously expensive, just heinously expensive. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can totally understand if, you know, whoever you are, if you decide, no,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s no way it’s worth that kind of money. To me, I think it is. I mean, we honeymooned in Disney.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I took Erin to Disney for her 30th birthday. I love Disney. It
⏹️ ▶️ Casey makes me genuinely very, very happy. If your math is different on that, that’s fine. That’s totally fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But what John said, could not agree more. It is going to be twice as expensive as you think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it could ever possibly be. Just save and embrace it, which is exactly what we’ve done.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, because that can, I mean, it might not be worth it to people and they might have better ways to spend the money, find, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John spend the money in a different way. But if you’re going to do it, like it can, you know, you said it’s hard to be in a bad mood,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you see families that are all in fights about stuff or like kids are cranky about things and you see adults who fret
⏹️ ▶️ John about that. You’re the type of adult who’s always like trying to find like, oh, if we go at this hour we can
⏹️ ▶️ John get it cheaper or I don’t want to pay for parking so I don’t go here. Like, you know, if it’s the type of person who’s always trying to find a
⏹️ ▶️ John way to save money which is fine like it’s a good way to live that’s how you you know save money especially because like i just said if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John the type person who saves money for literally 10 years for a disney vacation you’re probably the type person who doesn’t want to pay 12 for
⏹️ ▶️ John that butterbeer like i understand where it’s coming from but like it i feel like it will make your vacation
⏹️ ▶️ John less enjoyable if you’re constantly thinking about that so you just have to you just have to somehow let go
⏹️ ▶️ John of it for like for for a couple of days or however long your vacation is for that period of time just let
⏹️ ▶️ John it go it’s like a true vacation sense Let it go, let
#askatp: Photo sharing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Andrew Wade writes, hey, what do you use for posting or sharing photos these days? I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feel like we get asked this question weekly because the answer changes weekly. Uh, for me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I, when I’m sharing things privately to a group, it’s iCloud, um,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shared iCloud photo libraries. I might have that terminology wrong, but the thing where you can share an album
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with other people, and that’s what we’ve done. We have an album for the kids that we’ve shared with family and friends.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that’s where we do kind of private sharing for public sharing. And even though Facebook is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just a total cesspool of a company, I still do love Instagram and use Instagram. And yes, I understand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that that’s hypocritical, but whatever. Marco, I’m sorry we ignored you on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that last question, but what do you use for posting and sharing photos these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco days? I’m the same. I use Instagram for public sharing and iCloud
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Photo Library for private sharing.
⏹️ ▶️ John John? Maybe we haven’t changed that much. I saw this question and I thought it was a good idea to check in because it is like the
⏹️ ▶️ John eternal problem. I take pictures, I have people who want to see pictures, whether they be family or friends, how do
⏹️ ▶️ John I let them see them? Thus far, my technique
⏹️ ▶️ John has been successful in that I’ve been able to get an iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John device or a macOS device into the hands of all the relatives who want to see the photos.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m able to use Apple’s iCloud shared photo stream things
⏹️ ▶️ John which are mostly terrible. I don’t like how they work. I don’t like the interface to them. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John like setting them up. I don’t like using the Photos app to deal with them. But it has the advantage that when I post pictures to it,
⏹️ ▶️ John I know all my relatives will get a notification on their Mac or iOS device that says, hey, new pictures, and they’ll just
⏹️ ▶️ John poke at it with their finger or their mouse cursor, and they will be able to see pictures. The reason
⏹️ ▶️ John I keep using it is because it is successful at getting photos in front of the eyeballs of the people I want to
⏹️ ▶️ John see it. And that’s all just private. The only real downside is my brother uses the same
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, And he takes away, well, not that he takes more pictures of his kids, but he publishes more pictures of his kids.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I’m not sure if you’ve encountered this, but the iCloud shared photo album things have a limit
⏹️ ▶️ John in the number of pictures you can have in them. And once you hit that limit, all you can do is delete older photos from
⏹️ ▶️ John it. So he starts a new one of those shared photo things every year. So every year, it’s like the 2019
⏹️ ▶️ John one, the 2018, like it’s kind of silly. I wish it was just like a never ending
⏹️ ▶️ John stream, but it’s not. So be aware of that. And for everything else, like I don’t really
⏹️ ▶️ John share photos in any other capacity. I do have an Instagram and I post like two pictures to
⏹️ ▶️ John it a year, three pictures to it a year, but that’s not really, that’s not really sharing. That’s more like
⏹️ ▶️ John a hobby of like, if I find a picture that I feel like is Instagrammable, which is a very difficult to define
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that is totally personal to me, I will do it. But otherwise I don’t really do any
⏹️ ▶️ John public sharing of photos.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would like to add as well that with the iCloud photo libraries, so Aaron’s entire family
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is on Android. And what we’ve done is we have enabled the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing where you can have a web presence, if you will, for your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey photo library. So there is a very, very hard to guess web URL that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a version of our photo library. And so what we’ve done is for like Aaron’s parents, we’ve put
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bookmarks on their computers And every day or two, they’ll wake up and go to their computers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and check the photo library link and see if there’s any new pictures. It’s not as nice as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the iOS users where it’s actually beamed and like there’s a notification, you know, it’s beamed directly to your phone, there’s a notification, etc.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But at least it still gives them the option. So you don’t have to be all in on iOS, but what John described
#askatp: Defragging
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Jack Mordaj writes, Hey, when was the last time any of you launched disk utility
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and checked your boot drive health? And also does John miss the feeling of a recently defragmented disk? I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think that defragging happened on Mac OS ever. Is that
⏹️ ▶️ John It certainly did. Oh. It was happening on your, it was happening before APFS. It was happening on your Mac all
⏹️ ▶️ John the time, whether you liked it or not.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, HFS Plus did it? HFS
⏹️ ▶️ John Plus eventually added auto defragging, but there were actual utilities like
⏹️ ▶️ John Norton Utilities they would do non-auto defragging, and it was very satisfying to watch.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I, maybe it was the placebo, but I remember not infrequently defragging
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my drive. This was early Windows, is that right? Or was this DOS? I don’t know, it was DOS. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t remember, whatever it was. It was a long time ago, and I remember defragmenting my drive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it genuinely feeling snappier after the fact. So if you’re not familiar with what this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is, when files are written to disk, or at least this is the way it was 15, 20 years ago, Uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when files, more than that, even yikes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John uh, when files were written to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey disk, they tended to have little portions strewn all throughout the physical
⏹️ ▶️ Casey platter. Like, so literally, you know, if you, if you were to map where these files physically sit on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the drive, they are, they are, they were often at the time strewn all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over the place. And so if you were trying to read those files, you had to physically move objects
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the real world. Now, granted you had to move them very, very, very small amounts of space, but you still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had to move things in order to get all the pieces of this file off the disk. And what defragmenting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey did was, guess what? It moved all these files so that all the contiguous pieces were right next to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey each other. And again, maybe it was a placebo, but I remember thinking, holy smokes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this computer feels genuinely faster after having done this. I don’t know if that was the same way on the Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t remember if this was DOS. I think it was DOS, maybe it was Windows, but whatever it was, it made a big difference to me. Did you have that experience,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, that it made a big difference? You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, I thought it did, but I think it was probably mostly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco placebo. I mean, the reality is computers were so damn slow with everything back then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that like you had enough time to think about whether it was making a difference or not. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was, I don’t know. I would do it because I thought it was cool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you’d watch a little animation of all the blocks moving around and everything. But really,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think it was making a noticeable difference. I’m sure if you benchmarked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things, maybe you’d see a difference then, but I don’t think it was actually really noticeable in real world
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it was noticeable up until the point, and maybe this was before your time even,
⏹️ ▶️ John when the connection between addressable location on disk
⏹️ ▶️ John and the physical location on disk got broken. And
⏹️ ▶️ John way back in the early days, there was like whatever, cylinder and sector and all these things that actually mapped
⏹️ ▶️ John directly to the physical reality on a spinning platter and a little disk head. And as
⏹️ ▶️ John drive mechanisms evolved, that connection got severed. And so there were sort of logical
⏹️ ▶️ John addresses that the drive decided how they physically mapped to the disk. And
⏹️ ▶️ John the OS and everything else involved couldn’t really know the intimate details of the disk because the hard disk was like,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re speaking to me in the disk protocol, but I’ll handle where the data goes. Like, I’ve got
⏹️ ▶️ John buffers here, I’ve got a little CPU, I’ve got these platters and I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John handling the storage. Kind of in the same way that SSD is only less extreme, where things
⏹️ ▶️ John were abstracted. So that really was the death knell for defraggers because they would mostly defrag
⏹️ ▶️ John at the logical level and you really had no idea whether they were contiguous at the physical level. Probably they
⏹️ ▶️ John were, like it was probably mostly straightforward, but once you broke the connection, it became tenuous.
⏹️ ▶️ John I felt like I, anyway, back when the connection was very direct, I felt like I felt the difference
⏹️ ▶️ John when the disc was really shredded and didn’t have a lot of free space. Mostly just because for writing new data, it
⏹️ ▶️ John would have this big continuous free space where it could write it and it wouldn’t have to write it in a million places. Like you could literally hear the hard
⏹️ ▶️ John drive head. This is something most people, very young people listening to this program won’t know. How
⏹️ ▶️ John much of dealing with computers in the old days was an audio experience? You could hear how they were
⏹️ ▶️ John performing. Like you hear an internal combustion, and I bet you also wouldn’t know here, how you can hear if an internal combustion engine is healthy,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? You can hear if it’s misfiring if like a, you know, a belt drive is squeaky
⏹️ ▶️ John or like all sorts of things you could hear and you would know the health. So you’d hear the floppy drive
⏹️ ▶️ John grinding, you’d hear the hard disk heads moving, you’d know if your machine was swapping like before you even noticed it on
⏹️ ▶️ John the screen. And you’d know if you launched a program and you heard that tickety tickety tickety and you’re like, wow,
⏹️ ▶️ John that is ticking way more frequently than I think it should launching this program and you defrag your disk and you launch
⏹️ ▶️ John the same application, it would be fewer ticks and it would seem faster and probably was measurably
⏹️ ▶️ John faster. So in the extreme cases, I think it definitely did help, but there was definitely the placebo effect.
⏹️ ▶️ John And honestly, I was mostly doing it to see the Norton defrag animation. Um, and when they, and, and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John still a thing that you need to do, like why they added auto defragment HFS plus, which is like, nobody runs those utilities except for computer
⏹️ ▶️ John nerds. But if you allow your disc to get massively fragmented, it does eventually impact performance at the extremes
⏹️ ▶️ John where everything is just Swiss cheese. And the largest continuous block is like tiny little slivers. So if you
⏹️ ▶️ John write anything anywhere, it’s spread all over the disk. Luckily with SSDs, the connection
⏹️ ▶️ John between logical and physical storage is entirely broken, and there is no head seeking around.
⏹️ ▶️ John Even though there are still actual performance differences in reading from one place to another, because SSDs
⏹️ ▶️ John are broken up into banks that have different characteristics, yada, yada, yada, it’s not the type of thing that you can control
⏹️ ▶️ John from software with a defragging thing. Anyway, the other part of this question was, when was the last
⏹️ ▶️ John time any of you launched disk utility? You two want to answer that?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think I have in at least a year or two for anything other than like formatting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco key. Yeah, certainly within the time I’ve owned this iMac Pro, I have not done it once.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Unsurprisingly, I have done it fairly recently. Remember that I’m sitting in front of a Mac now that
⏹️ ▶️ John runs HFS plus and not APFS because it’s running El Capitan because that’s the newest OS it can run officially.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco How amazing is it that we finally got your new file system and you haven’t been able to run it yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And all of us now, everyone else in the world is running APFS
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve got it on the other computer, it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know what I’m waiting for.
⏹️ ▶️ John surprisingly, I do run it on my boot disk, but surprisingly, the main thing I run it on and the most recent disk that I ran
⏹️ ▶️ John it on, I think last week, I run it on my local time machine backup
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey because it’s really
⏹️ ▶️ John important to me that that not have HFS plus corruption for obvious reasons. And yes,
⏹️ ▶️ John I have more than one time machine backup, but oh, yada, yada. Like, but, uh, boot drive,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I ran it on this maybe last month. Uh, time machine drive. I think I ran it last week.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think I’ve run disk utility in recent memory on the APFS max.
⏹️ ▶️ John Mostly because I assume it’s not so necessary, but maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I need to develop new habits there, but
⏹️ ▶️ John any computer that runs the AHS plus I have, you know, my habit is to run it on a fairly regular basis
⏹️ ▶️ John And it does find problems and it does fix them and I feel better about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, thanks to our sponsors this week, Away Molecule and Fracture.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we will see you next time.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John If you’re into Twitter, you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anti-Marco Armen, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse It’s accidental, they
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t mean to Accidental, check podcast so long
100% plant-based follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Marco, you probably got a little bit of feedback about your diet because I’ve seen
⏹️ ▶️ John God. Marco, I just want to preface this by saying that I’m not a diet expert, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me tell you exactly what you need to do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, we heard from a lot of people. I want to thank people. Most people were well-intentioned and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did get a lot of good advice. Last week, I had mentioned that I had this high cholesterol
⏹️ ▶️ Marco result and I had been doing basically almost a keto diet, and so I was cutting back on and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the doctor recommended a quote 100% plant-based diet, which the vegans immediately
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wrote in to tell me why that’s not vegan. So thank you for the vegans for clarifying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why they don’t call it that. Sorry, vegans. We had a lot of things written to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco us, much of which conflicted, but everybody in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the world wrote in to tell me that the link between cholesterol,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco diet, and health is way more complicated than we used to think, and so therefore I should not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco draw major conclusions from one simple cholesterol test. So I’ve done a lot of research
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and reading since then. I even got my Kindle out and I’ve been reading books.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s crazy right? And I think the best of what we know about food
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and health today has a few consistent themes that are pretty well supported
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by medical and scientific evidence. So So number one, eating a lot of carbohydrates is bad for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco us, especially in the forms of sugars or refined flours, which are basically sugars.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s what I was doing before the low-carb diet. Like a year ago, I was eating lots of pizza and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff like that, and so lots of carbs. I made a dramatic change there, and it worked very well for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco both me and my wife. But we also know from modern science, and this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is where I’m gonna lose the keto people, that eating a ton of meat and dairy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is also bad for us, just bad in different ways. And so setting aside
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the massive ethical and environmental costs of meat, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we really shouldn’t be setting aside because they are truly massive, but setting aside those for now, there is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very strong evidence for many studies performed over decades that meat and dairy-heavy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco diets have their own significant risks and problems. and that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is what I’ve been doing recently. I’ve been doing way too much meat and cheese. So the only kind of food that science and everybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can agree on that is good to eat a lot of is plants and especially greens
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and vegetables and especially in their whole and unprocessed state. Now we knew this already
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we’ve been eating tons of greens and vegetables even when we were doing the keto diet, which is why I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually didn’t say we were doing keto per se because true keto dieters will even count
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the carbs in vegetables and they will like limit their intake of spinach and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kale, and that’s just stupid. We decided that was stupid. We’re not gonna do that, because that’s stupid.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So anyway, sorry keto people. Now I’m gonna anger everybody with this. So the right approach
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for me, and I’m gonna pull Casey here and say, this might be different for you. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just saying what’s working for me. Everyone can do their own thing, because I’m not gonna commit to this. Anyway, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the right approach for me doesn’t need to be never eating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco meat or cheese or eggs again, but we need to eat a lot less of them than we did before. For
⏹️ ▶️ Marco instance, to give you some idea, instead of going to the barbecue restaurant twice a week and loading
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up on leftovers each time to eat over the following few days, maybe I only go to the barbecue restaurant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once a week or every two weeks, and maybe I only eat what I can eat there and not bring home leftovers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe instead of eating three scrambled eggs with meat and cheese every morning,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I should only have two eggs without meat and cheese. You know, like there’s lots of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco room for reduction
⏹️ ▶️ John here. On the barbecue place, you probably also don’t want to do some reading on the carcinogenic effects
⏹️ ▶️ John of sort of carbonized, blackened, you know, meat, smoked meats. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I know. All right, and you know, I’ve also, and you know, we were having large
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quantities of meat and cheese in almost every meal. and also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco snacking on meat and cheese between almost every meal. So it turns out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is too much. So goal number one here is a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco significant reduction in meat, cheese, and eggs, but that isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really very hard because we were really being excessive with those things before.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now, I also feel horrible whenever I eat a carb-heavy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco meal these days. So I don’t think reintroducing grains, even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whole grains, as the main source of the bulk that fills us up in our diet is a very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good idea. I think it is not wise to ignore the very strong signals that my body is sending
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on that. So I think the best science and knowledge we have today shows that too much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco carb intake is generally worse for our health than meat and dairy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco intake. Now we were definitely going overboard with the meat and cheese before. So, for the last week,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we spent the first five days as 100% plant-based,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we felt terrible, and there were lots of bad side effects to that that I don’t wanna get into on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the show, because that’s what mute buttons are for. And the last two days, we decided
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was not working for us, and so we introduced small amounts of eggs and dairy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We haven’t introduced meat yet, but small amounts of eggs and dairy. Simple things like we had two eggs for breakfast,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco instead of having a pile of garbage for oatmeal or whatever. Two eggs for breakfast, nice and easy,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a little sprinkle of cheddar cheese in my salad in the afternoon. That level of introduction
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of these things. And we switched back to half and half for Tiff’s coffee instead of fake milk. Even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just having those changes, we feel way better than we did being full plant-based.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I think we can find a really nice balance here. We are going to be relying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much more heavily on greens and vegetables to be the bulk of what we’re eating most of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time, to be the things that mostly fill us up. And, because that’s what we’ve been doing the last couple of days, it’s been great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we feel great without reintroducing a bunch of carbs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and also while having a big reduction in meat and cheese. Now, so I do think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, while we’re not gonna go 100% vegan or vegetarian or plant-based or whatever else,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do think that most of the science does say The more plants you can eat and the less of everything else, the better. It’s well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco supported by decades of science and medicine and research and everything. And I think that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t need to be mutually exclusive with low carb principles, which I think now we know are generally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a good idea. And so that’s what we’re trying now. Basically a hybrid of still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being low carb, not going too crazy overboard on meat and cheese
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and using plants for most of the food we eat. And so that’s what we’re doing now, and I’ll let you know how it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Somebody pointed us to this article, and I don’t remember who it was. I think it was somebody talking to you, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they pointed us to an article from January of 2007, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s in the New York Times. It’s called Unhappy Meals.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, the Michael Pollan article. Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, basically what we’re switching to is the Michael Pollan
⏹️ ▶️ Marco diet, which is the one where he summarizes his advice basically as, eat food, not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too much, mostly plants.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s literally word for word the very first paragraph of this article. And I’ve only read the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey first like four or five paragraphs, but it literally, just like Marco says, begins eat food, not too much, mostly plants.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it continues a little later. I’ll try to resist, but we’ll go ahead and add a couple more details to flesh out the advice. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a little meat won’t kill you, though it’s better approached as a side dish than as a main, and you’re much better off eating whole fresh foods
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than processed food products. That’s what I mean by the recommendation of eat food. And I don’t know what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was about this. I don’t recall having read this in the past. And even just the first couple of paragraphs of this, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was like, huh, how did I not look at it this way in the past?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Because it’s—
⏹️ ▶️ John How did you avoid this article for so many years
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey is the bigger question. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey knowing my awful memory, I probably have read it 15 times and just don’t recall it. But I do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey plan to read the whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. Well, you should. Anybody who hasn’t read it, you should read it. It’s very long, but it’s very good. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worth reading. And I think, you know, this article is now 12 years old,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I think everything we’ve learned since then has mostly supported it, or entirely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco supported it. Like it has aged very well. I think the areas
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of research around low-carb diets, high-fat diets, have been more advanced since then,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but for the most part, like, it holds up pretty well, and there’s a lot of good stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John Paul Bateman Problem with a lot of this food science stuff as it does come and go in phases where one thing is bad
⏹️ ▶️ John and one thing is good. I think the thing over my lifetime that has had the most consistent scientific
⏹️ ▶️ John evidence is the thing that nobody wants to talk about because it is just depressing, which is basically
⏹️ ▶️ John setting aside diseases and things that will kill you like heart attacks or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. If you’re just concerned with what will make me live the longest,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s unfortunately calorie restriction,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey like massive
⏹️ ▶️ John calorie restriction. If you want to make like people or lab mice live for
⏹️ ▶️ John a longer than their peers again, setting aside the normal disease that takes them all
⏹️ ▶️ John out in equal measure, calorie restriction, calorie restriction is not fun. I’m not talking
⏹️ ▶️ John about like, oh, I’ll eat a little bit less. I’m talking about like calorie restriction where not that you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John starving to death, but maybe close. Uh, and they always do those studies and it’s like that
⏹️ ▶️ John we you know we did this and look these mice live like 25% longer and everyone’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John okay well that’s not actionable because no one wants to be hungry but it’s like but but you’ll live longer
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like yeah well hunger no no take a pass on the hunger so everyone’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John should i eat oat bran tell me about that i’m not into the whole being hungry all the time and honestly it’s not good you shouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do this i’m just saying from a scientific perspective that has been very consistent the carbs
⏹️ ▶️ John versus plants versus all the other stuff. It’s mostly been consistent. Vegetarian, Marco’s right,
⏹️ ▶️ John the plant-based things are mostly been good, but it depends on what you’re looking at. You’re like, yeah, but if you’re not growing
⏹️ ▶️ John your plants yourselves, they’re filled with pesticides and they’re all going to kill you from cancer, so it doesn’t matter how healthy you are.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s very difficult with the food stuff to get an idea of. There’s so many different factors, but the calorie restriction
⏹️ ▶️ John I always love because it’s a trade-off that most humans
⏹️ ▶️ John aren’t willing to make and honestly probably shouldn’t be willing to make because being hungry all the time has such detrimental effects on your
⏹️ ▶️ John mental life that doesn’t really matter if you actually live longer. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, I will say so on that topic. I mean, so one of the books I’ve been reading is how not to die
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by Michael Gregor and that’s actually quite good. It almost every chapter. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it basically goes like, you know, number one, like how not to die from heart disease chapter two, how not to die from cancer and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like every chapter is like, you know how to greatly reduce your risk as much as possible. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s almost entirely about diet. And it’s almost entirely basically saying 100% plant-based
⏹️ ▶️ Marco diet is the way to go for everything. And there’s parts of it that I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have been, not disproven, but could use a bit more commentary.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I don’t agree with all of it, but it’s a good read to at least know what your risks are with certain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things. And I’ve also really enjoyed, in this week of research on this topic,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on YouTube, this guy named Ivor Cummins, who does, who,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not entirely sure what his medical credentials are. I think he’s just like a nerd.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But he does a lot of stuff about like, looking at studies scientifically and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what the actual risks are for heart disease and how pretty much it all comes down to insulin resistance and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problems that arise from that and everything. And so it’s actually, it’s very good. And he does a number of things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I don’t, you know, I don’t think it’s wise to follow any one person 100%
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the letter in this area, because as John said, everyone has different things and these things change over time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s worth looking at like people who are looking at data and larger trends and looking at science
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and things behind it and, you know, really why things work the way they do in our bodies and our best knowledge at the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s why I’m looking more like at like consistent themes that all the best science
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seems to agree on. And that’s what it’s basically like. Eating a lot of carbs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is really bad for us. And also is a lot of risk involved in eating a lot of meat and cheese.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the carb one is going to turn around in like five to ten years. Like that one feels like a cycle to me. The problem
⏹️ ▶️ John with this whole domain is success in this domain. We just mentioned it like success in this domain has a lot to do with
⏹️ ▶️ John like what we would now consider me. I mean, it’s like the Michael Pollan thing. Like he’s not super qualified to tell the world what to eat, but he
⏹️ ▶️ John had a snappy, you know, a memorable slogan that has some reasonable foundation and has a kernel
⏹️ ▶️ John of truth behind it. And that’s the one we all remember. Like it’s marketing and sales and like and with a good
⏹️ ▶️ John intent, like Michael Pollan probably has a good intent. Right. But that’s why we had all the we have all these
⏹️ ▶️ John other fads of like, oh, you can’t eat eggs or you should eat all eggs. Like, I mean, if you had told if you had told people about
⏹️ ▶️ John like keto, like 15, 20 years ago, they’d be like, what a diet where you just eat all
⏹️ ▶️ John that. Like it’s the exact opposite of what they’re telling you before. It was like, don’t even eat egg whites. Forget about
⏹️ ▶️ John the yolks. The yolks will kill you. Don’t even have egg whites. And then Keto’s like, no, own the eggs. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like a total reversal. And then carbs and gluten come. I feel like that’s going to go around in a cycle, too.
⏹️ ▶️ John But yeah, there is a consistent theme under it all. But through that whole thing, the people who are successful in
⏹️ ▶️ John the market of telling people what to eat are very often successful. Even people like Michael Pollan are
⏹️ ▶️ John very often successful for reasons that have nothing to do with science. So you really have to try to take the broad view
⏹️ ▶️ John and try to feel like, well, all these people are trying to make money telling me how to live. But I
⏹️ ▶️ John feel like the accumulation of evidence is probably leaning in the direction of Marco’s
⏹️ ▶️ John assessment of probably plants are good. And I mean, the moccopolum thing caught
⏹️ ▶️ John on because it’s meany and because it agrees with a lot of the science. But
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t really get hung up on the details. So you have to just be resigned to the fact that eventually there’ll be some study that says
⏹️ ▶️ John if you eat an all-plant diet in the current agricultural system, your chances of cancer grow up to a degree that
⏹️ ▶️ John negates the longevity effects of the plant-based diet. You never know when that’s lurking out there.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I feel like don’t, shouldn’t ever feel like you have it figured out and shouldn’t trace trends too much,
⏹️ ▶️ John but just like, that’s why the wussy moderation and
⏹️ ▶️ John all things diet, it’s like index funds, right? Like don’t pick individual stocks
⏹️ ▶️ John because you’re gonna mess it up. It’s too, you don’t have enough information and it’s too hard
⏹️ ▶️ John to know, but in general an index fund across all of them is probably gonna be mostly okay.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s why I tend not to like diets that 100% eliminate a certain kind of food because it’s the equivalent of faking
⏹️ ▶️ John individual stocks. This may be a horrible analogy,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but. Well, I mean, it is. I mean, there’s certain things like moderation in all things, but really? How about heroin?
⏹️ ▶️ John some heroin? In foods, moderation in all kinds of foods. Like not eliminating like, oh, I don’t eat any
⏹️ ▶️ John fish, I don’t eat any meat, I don’t eat any plants, I don’t eat any vegetables. Like it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re really putting your chips down on a particular number on the, whatever, roulette wheel instead
⏹️ ▶️ John of I don’t know my analogies are falling
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco what I’m saying? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, no and you know the reality is like there there there are these few things that everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seems to agree on like that you know like yeah you know what eating as many plants as you possibly can especially when those plants
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are not grains and corn you know that’s a really good idea most of the time and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I don’t think any diet has really ever legitimately found that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh you know what it turns out we should eat less kale like that has never happened. That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John will never happen.
⏹️ ▶️ John The pesticide of the agricultural practice is part of the wild card in that, right? Like I don’t think anyone’s gonna say that the
⏹️ ▶️ John vegetables are particularly bad, although there are some that have weird chemicals that have different reactions with different people’s
⏹️ ▶️ John tolerances for them. They can really mess you up, but we don’t grow our own vegetables.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everything we grow is covered with pesticides, and those pesticides are quote-unquote safe to
⏹️ ▶️ John use according to, you know, politicians that are massively
⏹️ ▶️ John lobbied by the companies that put the,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey so there’s always
⏹️ ▶️ John something lurking, right? It’s like, yes, but, so that’s why you feel like you really have to spread
⏹️ ▶️ John it around. And same thing with the meat filled with antibiotics and all, like
⏹️ ▶️ John is safe, right? So you just try to spread the risk.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s actually pretty good advice. And ultimately, you know, humans are omnivores.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like we were made to do a lot of this stuff, but I think what we found over and over again is that we were not made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the American diet. You don’t need to eliminate any of these things completely, but the typical
⏹️ ▶️ Marco balance of the American diet is way out of whack for what our bodies really need. Shouldn’t be 90% corn syrup.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, right. Like the balance of what we eat is way,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way off, even though the individual components can be part of a regular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco diet. Part of a nutritious breakfast. Exactly.
Casey’s app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, so I do want to move on because I wanted to cover this last week and forgot. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want to talk about Casey’s app. I want to talk about the business side of your app a little bit.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, let me set the stage a little bit. So this app is in progress
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and if it all goes according to plan, what it lets you do is crawl your contact list that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on your device. And it will look at different data sources such as Gravatar or maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Twitter or something try to say, Hey, for the contact that I’m looking at, do they have an image
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on Gravatar or Twitter or what have you that, that I can use to update
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that contact. So, you know, as an example, Marco somehow, some way I don’t think has an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey image in my, in my contact list, but Marco has an image on Instagram, on Gravatar and Facebook,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on Twitter. It’s that one, maybe not Facebook, but you get the point. And so this app will look at one or more or all of those,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it will. try to grab a new image from Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and if I so choose, save it into my contacts list. I have several different
⏹️ ▶️ Casey options that I’ve thought of as to how to monetize this. There’s four that I’m thinking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about that I can go through very, very quickly, and then Marco and John, if you would like to choose your favorites, I’m all ears.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The one I think I’m most into is just paying once to unlock rights only.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You can use the app to crawl your contact list and see the edits that would be made,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but no edits will be saved unless you give me your money. The second option I thought was,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you could pay to unlock an individual data source. So if I get to the point that I have Instagram, Gravatar,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Facebook, Twitter, maybe something else entirely, each one of those will be like, I don’t know, a dollar
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or two or something like that. So I’ll only look at Instagram if you give me money, I’ll only look at Gravatar if you give me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more money, etc. Another option I came up with was you can have X
⏹️ ▶️ Casey updates for Y money. So maybe you get a 100 updates for a dollar, or 200 updates for $2, or something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that. Then the final most obvious answer because this is what everyone is doing these days, is a full-on subscription.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That I think has some merit because this is the app where as you accrue
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more contacts, and or as your contacts choose to change their images, then new data
⏹️ ▶️ Casey could arrive. But I’m not in love with the idea of doing a subscription
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I think that comes with it. Marco made some references to this either in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show or perhaps just privately to me. Going to subscription, I guess, has a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gotchas and other hoops you have to jump through in order to make that possible from Apple’s perspective.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I’m not totally in love with that idea, but I don’t know a lot about it and I don’t really know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what I don’t know. So those are the four options. pay once, pay to unlock a source, a consumable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where it’s, you know, so, so many updates for so much money or a subscription. So that’s where I’m, that’s where I’m thinking right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now. Marco, what should I do?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s only one answer. It’s pay for rights, then that’s it. It’s a one time payment,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you get as many rights from as many sources as you want for the rest of time. No matter how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much time it takes you, I’m going to get to that next, no matter how much time it takes you to do this app, no matter how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much effort you that you put into this. People are going to view this and perceive this as a pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco simple app. Any kind of complex thing that is going to appear nickel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and dimey, they’re going to reject. And you’re not going to make anything from it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Subscription, I think, as you mentioned, subscriptions have certain requirements. If you do them, you have things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you have to do certain types of different validations and you have to check for renewals and cancellations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different kind of privacy policy, you have to have terms of use, you have to have, you know, server side stuff. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just like it’s subscriptions are kind of a mess. And like, it’s there, there are a lot of work to implement.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so for something that is relatively simple like this, I don’t think it makes any sense at all, not to mention
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the value side to the user that like, they’re not going to see a lot of ongoing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco value, they’re going to see like, one time they do one big bulk import. And for the most part, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most people aren’t adding a whole a whole ton of new contacts all the time. Like, I bet this is the kind of app where like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people install it, they go through once, they do all the import, they import all the photos,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they say, that looks good, they hit buy to unlock the one time write permission thing, and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they probably never launch it again, or they launch it maybe like once a year or something, you know, it’s not gonna be like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco regular thing, I think, for most people. So, you know, simple in-app purchase, the app is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco free to download, and there’s one purchase that unlocks anything, unlocks everything, basically. and it’s a one-time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing, and you don’t worry about ongoing revenue because most people aren’t gonna be ongoing users. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s the business model side of things. Now, I wanna mention,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I heard you say on Analog, something like you expect this to take like six months
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I think I did say that, and there’s a story behind that. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have something that’s functionally Most of the way there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I haven’t dealt with the IAP stuff yet. I’ve started to, but I haven’t done a lot of it. But in terms of crawling
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the sources that I plan to crawl on version 1, in terms of actually doing the updates,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in terms of allowing the user to choose which updates to commit and which not, and in the case of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey multiple options, to choose which of the options they like the most, all of that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is done. So at a glance, the overwhelming majority of the work is done.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I haven’t done the IP stuff yet and it does scare me quite a bit. I’ve again, I’ve done
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some, but not a lot and it’s visually. Okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wouldn’t say it’s actively gross, but I wouldn’t say it looks great either. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s the thing that scares the poop out of me is what to do to make it look better because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am not a designer. I have plenty of critiques within me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but for me to generate something is very very difficult. This, I have no idea if this will make any money.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I don’t, I’m not in love with the idea of paying a designer just because I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if, if I’ll ever make that money back. So I’m not really sure where to go from there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And, and, and that’s what scares me about it is if I even imply
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on a podcast, Oh, it’ll be, it’ll be ready by this, this time I’m going to end up blowing through
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it and past it. And so that’s what scares me. But I mean, if I didn’t care about the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey look, all I really need to do is fix up a few bugs and get IAP working
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then I could ship, which in a perfect world is a couple of weeks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Good, so here’s why you need to do that. Okay. Because yeah, when you said six
⏹️ ▶️ Marco months, I laughed out loud and I thought, oh no, Casey, you are so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John misguided, but I’m glad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to hear. So I don’t think you need to be worried about the IAP stuff. if you do the one-time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco non-consumable in-app purchase of the unlocked the rights, that’s the simplest way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do it. You don’t even need to do server-side validation because you don’t care if people pirate the in-app purchase.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Who cares? You can do just local validation, do it as simple as possible, and be done with it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Here’s why you need to do this. You need to get this app out there as quickly as possible because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would estimate the total lifetime earnings lifetime earnings that you will make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from this app is likely to be probably $10,000 or less, and possibly as low as $2,000.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, because of that, you can’t be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spending six months on this. Yeah, yeah, that’s fair. Like, if you want to get to the kind of place like where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Underscore is, Underscore has multiple apps. He launched way more apps in the early days
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to find what worked, and now has, you know, pared down to like the one, like basically the hits, and the ones that really work for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco him. If you want to have this indie iOS income and indie iOS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco career, this one app by itself is not gonna do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What you need to do is place a bunch of bets and see what pays, see what works, and see what you like doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and see what you can do on an ongoing basis. This is a good bet. This is one bet though.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so because you’re probably gonna make a few thousand dollars from it, total,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever, don’t spend six months on it. Don’t even think you’re gonna spend six months on it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And budget the time you’re spending on it now with that expectation that, you know what, this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not gonna make your life. This app is gonna be a really nice project
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that should take you, as somebody who is experienced with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS, although you’re less experienced like launching complete products from scratch, but you are very experienced with iOS,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this should take you a month, maybe at most. And you’ll make some money from it and then move
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on. And so every decision you make about it, about what kind of purchase you want,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what the business model is, how much time to invest on it, what features to do at all,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that should all be informed by the lens of like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re only ever gonna make like five grand from this. Budget accordingly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I think that’s fair. So if I’m really, really honest in channeling analog here,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the thing that scares me is People don’t know if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m a good or bad developer right now. They may have opinions, but nobody really knows. I mean, FastText
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was effectively a career ago and it was not great, but it was functional
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the icon was not great, but it was there, but that was a long time ago. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t want to release something that all of a sudden
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everyone looks at and goes, Whoa, this dude is a quack. He has no idea what he’s doing. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s what scares me, particularly when it comes to user interface, because I feel like I can make something that functions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mostly all right. And I think I have, but I guess maybe I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey too prideful, but I, I don’t want to release something that people are, are,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are looking at and saying, wow, that looks like crap
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and, and I don’t want to be, and I’m not embarrassed by it, but I don’t want to be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey embarrassed by it. You know, does that make any sense
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco at all? Like I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want to Completely I totally understand, but keep in mind also that like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That kind of thinking if left unchecked will lead to you never shipping anything It’s very true.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco By the way. I feel these actually made a video just saying that for myself, but but be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of the people who are going to Eventually, you know find and buy and use this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app Aren’t gonna know or care who you are are. If you do your job
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right and you put this app on the App Store and you know yes some people from our show and from your audience and stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are gonna are gonna find him by this app but I you know if you do your job right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it gets out there on the store I bet most of the people who buy it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco won’t really care who you are as a developer or how good you are as a developer or anything like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I think while that is a legitimate concern I don’t think you should let it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco paralyze you into raising the bar so high that you only release a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new video every two years. Oh, wait, now I’m talking to myself. Steve McLaughlin
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I totally hear you. And actually, as it turns out, breaking news, remember I told you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I wasn’t going to do very many more Casey on Cars? Well, I’m getting another car next week.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, oops. So that also is factoring slightly into the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe not six months, but maybe six months estimate from before. Now, I totally hear you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think the other thing I’ve learned as I’ve gotten to be an old and curmudgeonly developer is that if I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m almost done, that means I’m a long, long, long way from done. In fact, if I think I’m almost done, that means I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey further away from done than I’ve ever been before. So I’m just scared
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I’m going to uncover something that is going to make me go, holy crap. And I mean, earlier today, I thought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that this thing was already multi-threaded and ready to rock. And then John and Mike convinced me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’m glad that they did, that I’m full of garbage and that it wasn’t multithreaded, although it is now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But earlier today, I thought that was already a done deal and turns out it wasn’t. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think when I said six months, a lot of that is hedging because I’m a podcaster and I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a, to some degree, a public personality. And there’s some amount of brand,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey self-brand on the line. I think a lot of it was me just being an old man developer that knows that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey any estimate you have double it and then add some. And some of it is me just probably trying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to work too much at this being utterly perfect when it really doesn’t need to be, which is I think what you’re saying in a roundabout
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way. Right, because keep in mind, even in the most successful use case, if somebody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buying this app, getting it, using it, paying for it, the total amount of time that the average
⏹️ ▶️ Marco user is going to spend in this app is what, like five minutes? Yeah, hopefully. It doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need to be so insanely polished and everything because the reality is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is a pretty simple utility that most people are gonna use once
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then never launch again. And that once is like five minutes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at most. So again, just budget accordingly, set your expectations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco accordingly. This is a really good idea, but this should be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like idea one of like four or five that you try over
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I hear you. And I think you’re right. And I, it’s just, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wrestling with, you know, if it was, it’s hard not to sound self-involved when I say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey these things, but if it was all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco three of us were self-involved, we’re all okay with this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Good. John Giesinke, MPH, JRTL, JRTL News, Journal of Public Information and Public Relations Presenter If it was the me circa FastTax time when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nobody had a friggin clue who I was, I might have already shipped a version by now. And John and Mike
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would be finding that it’s not multi-threaded in the store version rather than the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey test flight version. And I’m not saying that’s a good thing necessarily. I’m just saying that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m opinionated enough and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m hypercritical enough, sorry John, that I can see the flaws in my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey own work product, and I want to polish as many of them as I can, as well as I can, before it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey released to the broader audience. And I think that it would be very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey easy for me to do what you’re saying, Marco, and just work on this literally for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey six months and never look back, and then finally come up for air on the other end
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of it. And if I’m honest, it’s probably going to end up being, that looks nice
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it works fine. Okay. What’s next? Which is again, exactly what you’re saying, Marco. I don’t know, John,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’ve been quiet. What do you think?
⏹️ ▶️ John John Willis I agree. Pay once is the right way to go. And I agree with Marco, you should just ship. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I, given the potential, you know, small income
⏹️ ▶️ John from this thing, I don’t think like, it depends on what your strategy, if your strategy is to go the underscore route, then yeah, ship
⏹️ ▶️ John soon and then to come for the next day, so on and so forth. But if your intent is for this to be kind of a background
⏹️ ▶️ John hobbyist thing to keep your skills sharp and maybe hone them. I don’t think if you want this thing to take six months
⏹️ ▶️ John because you sporadically work on it and polish it to a degree that is out of proportion to
⏹️ ▶️ John the amount of money you spend, go for it and just consider it a sunk cost and a learning opportunity and make your next one the one that
⏹️ ▶️ John you ship in, you know, three weeks or whatever. Like I don’t I don’t know what your your goal is with the effort, right? Like it
⏹️ ▶️ John really depends on what you want to get out of it. If you’re trying, excuse me, if you’re trying to get income
⏹️ ▶️ John out of it, yeah, for sure. Then don’t spend six months on it. But if you’re viewing it as something
⏹️ ▶️ John else, you know, a learning opportunity, trying to see if you like making iOS apps, just trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to keep your skills sharp to return to the marketplace. There’s so many different things that you could use this for,
⏹️ ▶️ John some of which actually do fit into a six month schedule.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. And I think half of me wants it to be the like underscore approach of throw it against the wall, see if it sticks.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And half of me wants it to be, well, you know, I can see that this is version one, but version two could do this thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and version three could do that thing. I mean, you were telling me earlier, John, that duplicate detection would be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something interesting I could add in. And I mean, I’ve thought of the same thing, but I don’t view that as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey V1 by any stretch of the imagination. And so, I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess I don’t really know what to make of it. And I think my hope is if I put it out there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and if it gets some amount of traction, then I have no problem with dedicating
⏹️ ▶️ Casey myself to a degree to this. I’m not hell bent on the underscore approach, not to say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that there’s a problem with the underscore approach. It’s just, I don’t have any other particularly great ideas in my back pocket
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at this time. But yeah, I just kind of want to ride this wave and see where it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey goes. And my hope is, I’ve hoped that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would get it done in a lot less than six months. In fact, in like one or two months,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I don’t trust myself to actually execute on that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not from lack of trying, but just because the last 10% is 90% of the work. You know what I mean?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, but what is your goal, though?
⏹️ ▶️ John Is your goal, like, I want to eventually be making a substantial portion of income from
⏹️ ▶️ John the app store, or is your goal, I want to keep my skills sharp if I have to reenter the marketplace? What
⏹️ ▶️ John are your goals, plural, possibly, and what is the balance of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them? I think my goal is that I would like to diversify my income and have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a noticeable income stream from the app store. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey noticeable doesn’t necessarily mean something as big as Overcast. It can be something considerably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey smaller than that, but something where it’s more than just pocket change. And secondarily, yes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey absolutely. I didn’t really touch Xcode for the first two to three months, maybe even more of me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey being independent. And I think I kind of needed that break to just kind of chill out for a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and catch my breath after, what, 15 years of working, which I know to you,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, sounds absurd, but here we are. But I do want to make sure that my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey skills are sharp. So if you guys decide you can’t talk to me anymore tomorrow
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or God forbid one of us gets hurt or something, that there’s other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey income streams and other opportunities for income because I could just go back to getting a regular job. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not like, oh yeah, like five years ago, I used to know how to do that stuff. But now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, I know where Xcode can be found. That’s enough to get me hired, right? Like, I don’t want to put myself
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in that position either. I don’t know if that really answers your question, but that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John kind of- It does, it does, it answers it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty well. And I mean, I think more than anything, it’s keeping my skills sharp. You had asked, you know, what’s the weight of this?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think more than anything, it’s keeping my skills sharp, but it’s not just me goofing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey off and writing a tool for myself, like my podcast editing tool is, like my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey photo management tool is, that was stuff that I never really intended to release to anyone. This,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from the get-go, once I proved the concept to myself, has been intended
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for release. So I think it’s useful to have something that I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey want to release to the broader world to keep my skills sharp enough that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I were to interview tomorrow, I can point to some, well, not tomorrow, but hopefully in less than six months, I can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point to an app in the App Store and say, I did that, Start to finish, top to bottom.