334: Mechanical Disadvantage
11 Jul 2019John’s cheese grater broke.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Must vs. Shall
- Follow-up:
- John's cheese grater broke
- Deviation from the Ive design philosophy
- Marco's "new" iPhone and Apple Watch
- Apple's new (and "new") laptops
#askatp:- Naming computers (via Ron Olson)
- Catalina's move from
bashtozsh? (via Pedro Estarque) - Caring for our 📷 at the 🏖️ (via Tyler Menard)
Sponsored by:
- Fracture: Photos printed in vivid color directly on glass. Get a special discount on your first order.
- Boosted: Vehicle-grade electric skateboards and scooters to solve your transportation woes. Use code ATP at checkout for $75 off your vehicle.
- Linode: Instantly deploy and manage an SSD server in the Linode Cloud. Get a $20 credit with code atp2019.
Chapters
- “Shall” vs. “must”
- John’s cheese grater broke 🖼️
- Deviation from Ive
- Sponsor: Linode (code atp2019)
- Marco’s new iPhone, Watch
- Sponsor: Boosted (code ATP)
- MacBook updates
- Apple drops SSD prices
- Photo library on disk image
- Sponsor: Fracture
- #askatp: Naming computers
- #askatp: bash to zsh
- #askatp: Beach camera care
- Ending theme
- Delicious coasters
“Shall” vs. “must”
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Before we do anything else, the rules of Syracuse Involved Podcasting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dictate even that you shall start with follow. Did we talk about that on the show,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the shall versus will versus whatever? When I was doing government contracting, whenever we wrote
⏹️ ▶️ Casey requirements documents, you knew a requirement because it said the software
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shall do x, y, or z. If will was not enough, the software shall do x,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey y, and z. And that’s how you knew.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I guess that makes sense because will means like a prediction of what it will do, where a shall is like a dictation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of what it needs to do. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can you not just substitute the word must for the word shall? Like how, how do those
⏹️ ▶️ John You got to look at the, uh, the internet RFCs, you know, those things, those big
⏹️ ▶️ John right? I believe they have a formal definition of will shall and must and all that stuff. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if it’s the same as the ones that you had to deal with, Casey, but it’s definitely a thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I probably was this was when I was working at a big big big government contractor We were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doing stuff for the Navy. So it was it was all of that happy horse manure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I digress so I just searched for must versus shall the first result is a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco page on the FAA website weirdly, but it basically It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco says must and must not our words of obligation obligation. Must imposes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a legal obligation that something is mandatory. Must not is prohibited. But apparently shall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used to mean must, but these days shall shall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is kind of understood now to mean may.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they advise that you go through and replace shall with must and wherever you use shall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to mean that because must is unambiguous.
⏹️ ▶️ John I put a link in the show notes, the IETF one, the RFC one. It’s got must, must not, should,
⏹️ ▶️ John should not, may, required, recommended, optional. It makes more sense
⏹️ ▶️ John than the one you were just reading, but it is the place where programmers are most
⏹️ ▶️ John likely to come across these particularly important words because you’ll be looking up something
⏹️ ▶️ John in some spec like the HTTP spec or the TCP spec or something and you’ll run across one of these documents and it will have these
⏹️ ▶️ John words in all caps then this is what they mean.
John’s cheese grater broke
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I read the show notes several days ago as I was looking at something and the very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey first item of follow-up, our show notes read as follows, John’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cheese grater broke. And because I’m a turd, I saw this and just cackled
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in excitement because I was like, oh man, it finally, oh wait, this literally means a cheese grater, doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it? So John, tell us about your 10-year-old computer that’s still chugging along
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and your silly cheese grater that I have used once and got shamed for it, by the way. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey assuming this is the same one. Tell me about your cheese grater. Paul Matzko,
⏹️ ▶️ John J.D. That’s a little learning curve for the cheese grater. Yeah, my computer’s fine. We talked about kitchen stuff last
⏹️ ▶️ John show and I said, oh, it was like my cheese grater was on its last legs and I didn’t know how many I had in reserve.
⏹️ ▶️ John It really was on its last legs because between that show and now, it finally did. The last little bit of
⏹️ ▶️ John plastic that was holding the little flappy thing on broke and it just came off. It’s the same way they always fail. They
⏹️ ▶️ John fail, you know, like a crack starts forming. It just creeps its way up. I nursed this one for a really long
⏹️ ▶️ John time being very careful with the cracked plastic but eventually it was dead. So now I know how many I have left.
⏹️ ▶️ John I unboxed a new one and I’m using that one now and I have one in reserve. So I had two left
⏹️ ▶️ John before this one broke. Now I’m on my second to last one. Oh no. Yeah. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John think I’m gonna, I gotta put a thing on the calendar. Um, I guess recording this podcast is one way to do it because I
⏹️ ▶️ John want to know how long do they last? Like I don’t really pay attention, but now I have a recorded version. So when this next one breaks,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll be able to do the date math between now and then and know roughly how long these things last.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The real question that everyone wants to know is, did you purchase for $75 a replacement to your favorite spatula?
⏹️ ▶️ John It was black only. I couldn’t overcome that. And I don’t think I would have gotten it. Like I said, unlike the
⏹️ ▶️ John cheese grater, the spatulas continue to function seemingly perfectly. There is nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John wrong with them other than slight discoloration from food sticking to it. But other
⏹️ ▶️ John than that, I don’t foresee them breaking in any way, so I don’t need to have a giant supply.
⏹️ ▶️ John Unlike, for example, Apple Extended Keyboard 2s or whatever, if you’re using something that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John going to wear out, keyboards wear out, albeit slowly, these cheese graters wear out way too quickly.
⏹️ ▶️ John Spatulas, they just last forever, kind of like this Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They just slowly leach plastic into your food forever. It’s not leaching
⏹️ ▶️ John plastic, we established this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I found the post on Instagram that I put up 289 weeks ago on December 21st of 2013, where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I attempted to shred some mozzarella, which I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sure I butchered that pronunciation. I tried to be Italian. But anyway, I shredded some mozzarella and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John absolutely mercilessly shamed me for it. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I was- No, this is a
⏹️ ▶️ John different cheese grater. This is the box grater. This was like pizza cheese. Geez, Casey, what are you doing?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco is a totally different thing. My mistake. Totally
⏹️ ▶️ John different. thing. But that one we still have. And again, unlike the
⏹️ ▶️ John cheese grater I’m talking about, I don’t foresee it breaking. It’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wait, what cheese grater did I use for this then, if not a box grater?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey metal box grater. Oh, so what are
⏹️ ▶️ John you talking about then? I’m talking about the thing I use to grate Parmesan cheese, which I do frequently because it’s a staple in the household.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey OXO… Is that like a
⏹️ ▶️ John sword? No, it’s an OXO model they don’t make anymore, probably because it has a fatal flaw in
⏹️ ▶️ John it. breaks that for a couple of years. But it’s so much better than the model they ship now. The model they ship now is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, just Google for like Oxo rotary cheese grater, you’ll see the current model and the current
⏹️ ▶️ John model is terrible. This old model was genius other than the fact that it breaks eventually.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, is this, oh, this is the thing that they bring around at like Olive Garden, isn’t it?
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, no, not quite. I mean, are you looking at the current one? I mean, put a link in the chat.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is one of the options and this looks to me like what I would find at an Olive Garden.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so that is the current model and it is no good. Because if you grate a lot of cheese and you try
⏹️ ▶️ John using that, your hands will hurt. It is not good. You don’t have good mechanical advantage. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John as you squeeze that handle, the pressure on the part that is
⏹️ ▶️ John pressing down on the cheese is less than your hand. Like you’re using a lever, but in reverse,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? It’s like squeezing way down at the end. The force at the tip of that lever is
⏹️ ▶️ John less than you’re squeezing down there. So it is mechanical disadvantage. No good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, and what is yours? Can you link to yours?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just put something in the chat. Is that the correct thing?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep. So that’s mine. So that one, you can’t really see in the picture, but
⏹️ ▶️ John that cylinder, it opens up along that hinge. Do you see the hinge thing there? Yeah. It opens along the hinge,
⏹️ ▶️ John and the thing that is, it’s got a very, very thin curve piece of plastic that sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John keeps the cheese in. So you open it up, and then you can slide the cheese down. The metal cylinder is going up
⏹️ ▶️ John and down. You slide the cheese down next to the metal cylinder, and you squeeze the cheese
⏹️ ▶️ John against the cylinder with your entire hand. Like you are directly pressing it against the cylinder, and then you
⏹️ ▶️ John rotate the thing. So basically you put one hand around the cylinder, and then the crank on top, you turn.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s still kind of difficult to do, but it is pretty much as good as you can get
⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of, I mean, there’s no mechanical advantage to squeezing, but there’s no mechanical disadvantage, and
⏹️ ▶️ John the turning thing is good. Inside it is a cylinder with very, very small, widely
⏹️ ▶️ John spaced holes to get a good, you know, permanent energy use grade going there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So why couldn’t you find like a reasonable facsimile of this? So for example, I put a $13 item in the chat room,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which seems to me like it is roughly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John the same thing you’re describing.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s totally different, what are you talking about? Why is it totally different? It’s a piece of cardboard. Look at this little knob, look at
⏹️ ▶️ John this little plastic, uncomfortable knob. It has to be big, round, grippy, oxo, rubberized.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, that’s the whole point of the thing. And I don’t even know where the cheese goes in this thing or how the gripping
⏹️ ▶️ John would be. And like that big protrusion coming out of it, you can’t grip it from multiple angles. Look at the second picture. It shows exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John what happens. Yeah, no, that’s no good. Like, I don’t understand what that big orange thing is sticking out there.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now you can’t grip it. Like, you can’t grip it from any angle because it’s not a cylinder. It’s a big
⏹️ ▶️ John protrusion thing. And also the holes. That’s not the right, the metal cylinder, that’s not the right
⏹️ ▶️ John shape for the grating. The holes in this thing are very small. I just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy pre-grated Parmesan cheese and it’s awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is the most Marco answer I’ve ever
⏹️ ▶️ John heard. Well, so here’s the thing, pre-grated costs even more money, first of all. But second of all,
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever machine they have, like in Whole Foods that grates it for you, grates it too fine for my taste. Like it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John tiny pieces of hair. It’s too wispy. I want one step up from that. I like
⏹️ ▶️ John the texture the Oxo makes. So I don’t know what I’m going to do. I mean, technically, when I’m saving
⏹️ ▶️ John the bodies of these things. So when they all die, in theory,
⏹️ ▶️ John I will have the raw materials to make some kind of Frankenstein cordless
⏹️ ▶️ John drill powered. This is what I want, an electric one. I don’t know how to do this by hand at all. I’d like just
⏹️ ▶️ John an electric one. All I need is something that can turn with lots of torque, but not too quickly. And then I can just shove the
⏹️ ▶️ John cheese down into. So I might go all steampunk
⏹️ ▶️ John on this eventually.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What is it, we have the technology, we can build it, something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John like that? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John for the next, let’s say, three and a half to six years, I think I’m good on my,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m assuming these last maybe three years. Maybe I’m really wrong about that. Anyway, we’ll find
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out. Can you commission somebody to custom mold you a replacement?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, like 3D print it. You can do anything with a 3D printer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, can you hire a maker? I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, I should show you this. I look at it, it’s amazing how unreparable it is, because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a tiny, flat piece of plastic connected, it’s like glued in, and
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t fasten it any other way because for the cheese grater to work, it has to close
⏹️ ▶️ John completely, like you have to be able to close that thing down completely for like the last little bit of cheese, you have to basically
⏹️ ▶️ John get that cylinder so that it is, basically the plastic is basically touching the metal thing, otherwise you end up
⏹️ ▶️ John with that part of cheese that you can never press against the grater, right? So it has to close completely, completely, which
⏹️ ▶️ John means that it has to be like a perfect, you know, it has to be just the little C-shape thing
⏹️ ▶️ John with a flat plastic flap coming directly out of it. If you tried to attach it with any kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of glue or fastener or anything to strengthen it, it wouldn’t close all the way. And now you’ve got
⏹️ ▶️ John basically a non-functional grater where you can never grate that last little bit of cheese. So it’s not a good
⏹️ ▶️ John design. Like they kind of messed up in what they, but what they replaced it with is worse. So I
⏹️ ▶️ John might just have to go and look on eBay see if I can find some more of these.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just did and I didn’t come up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John with anything in the first research.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I bought like five or six back when I bought them and maybe that wasn’t enough. You
⏹️ ▶️ John cornered the market? Yeah. And none of them were $75. Let me tell you, they were all like, you know, $12 each.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just can’t wait for some listener of this show, either now or in like four years, goes digging
⏹️ ▶️ Casey through their junk pile and realizing they too have a cache of vertically oriented
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John grills. a cast, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going to have one and it’ll be broken because they break.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, man. I am very happy that I am not this particular about my tools.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Remember this when we have a two-hour conversation about my computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I’m sure I wouldn’t be as particular, A, if it didn’t have RSI, and B, if it didn’t eat quite so much Parmesan
⏹️ ▶️ John cheese. But unfortunately, that’s not both of those things I’m afflicted with.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Can you get a mechanical grater or an electric grater of some kind? Do those exist? Like
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what I’m saying. I would like to get something that is not powered by something
⏹️ ▶️ John other than my hands, but I haven’t found one that does the job. Lots of people recommend food processors. I have
⏹️ ▶️ John many food processors. I have big ones and small ones. The problem with most electric things is they go too fast
⏹️ ▶️ John and or the holes are the wrong size. Going too fast is bad because then you get heat and friction. You can’t have any heat. You have to basically turn it
⏹️ ▶️ John at hand speed. You don’t want to produce any heat. You just want to grate the cheese slowly.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then the hole size. The holes on this thing are very, very small. Smaller
⏹️ ▶️ John than the smallest side of a box grater, but the same shape as the big side of a box grater, like the
⏹️ ▶️ John little, I don’t know, crater, inverted crater.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What do places like Whole Foods, what do they use? Just
⏹️ ▶️ John they must have a machine. Obviously, it’s probably not someone back there doing it by hand. Or if they do have a machine, it’s probably with
⏹️ ▶️ John a really big crank, like a meat grinder-sized machine. I don’t know what they use, but it’s way too fine for me. They might
⏹️ ▶️ John use like, you know the puckered side of a box grater, where it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John a cross is cut in the middle and then the four triangles are pushed out a little bit? I think so,
⏹️ ▶️ John where it’s like a slicing edge? No, it’s like, like I said, picture a piece
⏹️ ▶️ John of metal and now cut a plus sign in it, right? And now press on
⏹️ ▶️ John the plus sign from the inside so that the four little triangles formed by like the
⏹️ ▶️ John plus sign bend outward into like a little pyramid. I’ve never seen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, oh, are you talking about like the handheld like swordy looking thing? Oh my
⏹️ ▶️ John god. I have chat room. Tell me I did not describe this exactly correctly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Are there just one of those on the side or are there like a whole bunch? A whole bunch. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think I know what you mean, but I’ve never used that before.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, I think they might be using something like that, but whatever they use, it makes it incredibly fine. I mean, you know, it’s like, it’s just,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s very wispy. It’s not bad, it’s just not particularly to my taste, so I prefer it a little bit bigger than that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just use more. It’s not, that’s not, it’s a texture thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A microplane, that’s what I’m thinking of. I’m thinking of a microplane.
⏹️ ▶️ John Microplanes are awesome. No, it’s not a microplane. The cost of pre-grated Parmesan cheese is so
⏹️ ▶️ John expensive. Like pre-cut anything at Whole Foods.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, yeah. So, since everyone will tell us, is there a reason you don’t use a microplane style
⏹️ ▶️ John It doesn’t make the right shavings. I have a microplane grater. doesn’t make it the right, that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I’ll say I’ve got a couple years on the clock yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We hope. Yeah. Oh man, you know, just earlier today, I think it was,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I listened to 99PI and they were talking about how we’re going to eventually run out of sand.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I don’t think that I personally have to worry about that, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey am very worried, John, about when you run out of cheese graters.
⏹️ ▶️ John Speaking of the ambiguity, this cheese grater computer has outlived
⏹️ ▶️ John many of those plastic actual cheese graters. So it is clearly the king
⏹️ ▶️ John of all cheese graters.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Something like that.
Deviation from Ive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Also in the show notes for follow up, deviation from the Ive design philosophy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This sounds like a John thing to me. Tell me what’s going on here.
⏹️ ▶️ John JB I was thinking more about our discussion of Johnny Ive from last week. And
⏹️ ▶️ John with his sort of philosophy potentially exiting the company with him,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll see. We’ll see what changes in the in the design of stuff that comes out. But one
⏹️ ▶️ John way his design has made
⏹️ ▶️ John itself known is like it extends everywhere. So I was thinking of the Apple mouse
⏹️ ▶️ John that I think Marco is using right now, or maybe you too Casey.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, like the mouse that
⏹️ ▶️ John should, and I was thinking about it because
⏹️ ▶️ John magic mouse. Yep. I was thinking about it because I was having dark thoughts about like, who is
⏹️ ▶️ John that? It was because someone, Marco, someone sent both of us that like that third party monitor,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco right? Yeah, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John we’ve seen it before.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think Macs can easily drive it. I don’t know, it has those giant bezels and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John Who cares? Yeah, someone was saying it’s basically like a 5K display right from an iMac, complete
⏹️ ▶️ John with the little hole for the camera, but there’s no actual camera there in the glass bonnet surface. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John I was having dark thoughts about it. I can’t believe Apple’s gonna sell you a computer and then
⏹️ ▶️ John the only option is a $7,000 monitor or whatever and they don’t sell monitors. It would be like if they didn’t sell a mouse
⏹️ ▶️ John and a keyboard, but they do sell Myosin keyboards. And you can buy them at your computer, you can even pick which one you want.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they continue to make them despite the fact that it’s much easier to find a reasonable replacement mouse
⏹️ ▶️ John or keyboard than it is to find a reasonable replacement monitor. And so I was thinking about their peripherals,
⏹️ ▶️ John like obviously the keyboard at this point, like all of the margins
⏹️ ▶️ John are tucked in on the thing, like it’s basically just a bunch of keys floating in space.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Like how are those
⏹️ ▶️ John keys even there? Is there any space around them and between them? it’s just keys, right? It’s really
⏹️ ▶️ John boiled down to its essence again, the Johnny Ive philosophy. But the mouse I was thinking about, like
⏹️ ▶️ John it is a very, you know, it fits with the Johnny Ive
⏹️ ▶️ John era design aesthetic because there are different ways a mouse could be designed. I
⏹️ ▶️ John think we had a show in the past where we had that diagram of all different ways people can hold a mouse. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not like the Apple mouse is, you know, designed badly, but it is designed for a particular
⏹️ ▶️ John way of using it. Like it’s a very low mouse, right? And some people like a sort of low profile mouse
⏹️ ▶️ John and some people like a bigger thing that sort of fills your palm, right? Microsoft has always
⏹️ ▶️ John made very large mice and logic for that matter, like they’re sort of made for you to
⏹️ ▶️ John grip under your entire hand and it’s gonna be pressing up against the back of your palm, you know, gripping.
⏹️ ▶️ John Whereas the Apple one is very slim and very low and very minimalist. And it fits with, if you put it next to Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John computer, it looks like it fits. It’s next to that keyboard, it makes sense. Obviously there’s no cord on it.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s almost featureless, looks like a flattened piece of sushi, right? You look at it
⏹️ ▶️ John and it looks like a little piece of art. And I was thinking with I’ve gone,
⏹️ ▶️ John if Apple’s design philosophy changes a little bit, how far would be too
⏹️ ▶️ John far? And I was thinking even in terms of the mouse, because if Apple came
⏹️ ▶️ John out with a new mouse, which they do once every, what are they, on a decade plan? know,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco once every decade and a half, they come up with
⏹️ ▶️ John a new mouse, which is not unheard of. Apple does come out with new mice. Imagine
⏹️ ▶️ John if it was more of the shape of
⏹️ ▶️ John like a Microsoft mouse or a logic
⏹️ ▶️ John not in terms of the details, but in terms of like, it’s no longer a super low profile mouse. Like I would
⏹️ ▶️ John say, you know, for my style of mousing, it would be more ergonomic for me. I don’t like them to be that low. Cause that’s not how I hold the
⏹️ ▶️ John mouse. Right. And you know, if you make a low one, the people who want a high mouse, aren’t going to like it and vice versa. So it’s not like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a or incorrect or correct choice. But say Apple did make one that was still beautiful and Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John detailed and like it still looked like an elegant piece of art, but it was basically fatter.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like it was the fat mouse to go with like the fat man. It was bigger and fatter and it filled your hand.
⏹️ ▶️ John It would be less elegant and less minimalist and less simple because like, if you can make
⏹️ ▶️ John a mouse slim and low, why would you make it big and fat? And kind of the same way with the remote.
⏹️ ▶️ John If I can make a remote the size of a piece of chewing gum, why would I make it bigger? And the answer is obviously because
⏹️ ▶️ John people, human hands are big and chewing gum is small and anyway, setting aside the remote
⏹️ ▶️ John for now. There’s an argument to be made in the mouse that if you made it bigger, it might be easier for
⏹️ ▶️ John people to grip and find and use and manipulate, blah, blah, blah. But if Apple did that,
⏹️ ▶️ John people would look at that fat mouse, kind of like the fat nano and go, boy, Apple really needed Johnny Ive
⏹️ ▶️ John because he left and they made this disgusting mouse that looks like a Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ John mouse. Looks like a Logitech. like an Apple mouse at all. And what I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John what I’m driving at is like the design philosophy evidenced
⏹️ ▶️ John by Apple’s product during the Johnny Ive era has become so synonymous with Apple because he’s been here so long
⏹️ ▶️ John and is such an important influence on so many important products that that’s what people think
⏹️ ▶️ John of as Apple like. So even if Apple the company makes a Microsoft style
⏹️ ▶️ John mouse and even if it’s a great mouse and people love it they’re going to look at it and and say, ugh,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not like, it was better when Johnny Ive was here because look how inelegant this looks.
⏹️ ▶️ John Look how bloated it looks. Look how silly and comically large it looks.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, you know, the Ive mouse was elegant and this is not.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think that would be a shame because although the design philosophy embodied
⏹️ ▶️ John by Apple’s current products and its past products for many years is a great one, it is not the only one,
⏹️ ▶️ John the only reasonable design philosophy, especially when it comes to peripherals. So I feel like our hope
⏹️ ▶️ John for the remote and maybe external keyboards and possibly
⏹️ ▶️ John mice, depending on how you feel about the current one, hinges on the public’s willingness
⏹️ ▶️ John to accept anything that is not in line with the Johnny Ive minimalist essentialism
⏹️ ▶️ John design aesthetic. And I’m afraid that even if Apple makes a great product, but it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John a, you know, sort of a zen garden sculpture,
⏹️ ▶️ John beautiful Ives style thing, that they’re gonna get backlash for it, and I think that would be a shame.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, we do see bits and pieces of pragmatism over appearance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco peeking through here and there. One of the great examples in recent years are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iPhone smart battery cases, which by all objective accounts are kind of ugly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, they have that weird hump on the back. The first generation had the weird centered mid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hump, and the current generation has the weird like bottom hump, which I think is even uglier,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but they do that for a few highly functional reasons. And we all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did make fun of it when it came out, but it’s actually a pretty reasonably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco successful product as far as I can tell. We’ve owned a couple in our household and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re good products. And Apple, it seems, was willing to make that trade-off. Like, look, we can’t make this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco beautiful and have it still function the way it needs to function. So they just didn’t make it beautiful.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They just did, you know, they kind of did the best they could with what they had to work with and it came out and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a very useful utilitarian product. I think looking at the new Mac Pro case,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is not attractive. You know, it’s worse in pictures, but it’s also not attractive in person. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s very much a utilitarian design. Like this is a big tower with a bunch of weird holes in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco front. It’s giant, it’s heavy, it’s bulky, it’s weird looking, but it’s all those things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for utilitarian reasons and for the customers who need that and who buy that, the utility
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it is more important than the aesthetics. And so, clearly, like Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even before I’ve officially left, Apple is able to occasionally let
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that peek through and it seems like maybe in recent years, they’re regaining their,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I would describe as confidence to ship something that doesn’t look incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty but is that way for functional reasons? It takes a certain degree of confidence to do that. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have to be able to ship something like with a straight face that they know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many of us are gonna say, ooh, that’s ugly, because they have to be competent enough in their design to be like, no, look,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we know it’s ugly, but it is this way for reasons. It was a trade-off and this is what came out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I don’t think it’s that unreasonable to predict
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that maybe they’ll be doing more of that. you know, maybe they have kind of seen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the light and have gotten enough customer feedback and enough sales data and everything over the last few years to be able
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to revert certain decisions. You know, it’s clear the Mac Pro is one of the biggest examples
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of that. We’ll see and we’ll talk about later what might be happening with the laptops, you know, in that department.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I think Apple had a really rough period
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where a whole lot of decisions were being made for aesthetics over utility. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we told them about it over and over and over again. And their customers told them about it over and over and over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again. In some of these cases, their repair data told them about it. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there was a bad period that we are clearly on our way out of, that we’re already partially out of it, and there seems like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s more to come. So I don’t think it’s that unreasonable to expect that we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually would have a chance of something like a more ergonomic mouse. Although honestly, I like the mouse just fine, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I recognize a lot of people don’t. So I think we do have a chance to stuff like that. I think we do have a chance that the next
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple TV remote might be more ergonomic, for instance. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we were in a dark period, but Apple has clearly shown recently that they are willing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to put utility first with some of their new designs sometimes.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s why I was entertaining the possibility, because it seems like it is a possibility, but I think they’ll get backlash. And I guess
⏹️ ▶️ John now that I think about it, it actually is mostly focused on, on, you know, if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John thinking of cheese graters and Oxo and all this stuff, on things that you grab with your hand,
⏹️ ▶️ John which there aren’t many of them. Obviously, the phone itself is a thing that you grab, but there are limitations there where you
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t really make it strange and knobbly because it does have to fit in pockets and there are other concerns about it, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But for peripherals, like for remote controls, for keyboards and for mice, for things that,
⏹️ ▶️ John like it’s your interface to the computer, you know, indirect controls that you grab, kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ John controls in cars, the steering wheel, the shift lever, the turn stocks, all that other stuff, like anything that you
⏹️ ▶️ John manipulate with your hands to make the stuff work. It’s it’s the the
⏹️ ▶️ John place of highest tension between making something look beautiful. So it looks nice
⏹️ ▶️ John in your product shots. And so when it’s in a museum 50 years from now, everyone who’s in Oz and making something
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s good to use with your hands. And there’s not much of an intersection there. Like it’s why
⏹️ ▶️ John OXO products tend to look so ugly, right? because, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the things that are easy and good to grip and manipulate tend not to be beautiful
⏹️ ▶️ John minimalist sculptures. Like those are slippery or slim or pointy or
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t, you know, don’t match the negative space created by a gripping hand because the negative space created
⏹️ ▶️ John by a gripping hand is ugly. As you know, if you grab a lump of clay and squeeze it real hard and then open your hand and look
⏹️ ▶️ John what’s left. It’s not a beautiful sculpture, but that’s the inside
⏹️ ▶️ John of your hand. So I’m not saying a mouse has to look like a giant snail turd, like many of them do,
⏹️ ▶️ John but there are multiple styles of mice. You could make a fairly elegant mouse in a different style
⏹️ ▶️ John that is more of the hand-filling kind, but I feel like if Apple did that, there would be a surprising
⏹️ ▶️ John amount of backlash, especially given that people would get used to it and everyone uses mice like that and it would be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John be better for the half of the population that likes it one way and worse for the people that like it the other way. But
⏹️ ▶️ John all you would hear about is how Apple made an ugly mouse.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do think it’s worth noting though that, and I think I speak for both of you, that we’re not going to see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a pendulum swing dramatically the other direction. I mean, this design department
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has certainly been under Ives’ leadership for, what, 20 years or something like that? A long time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I would certainly not expect, and I don’t think you guys are trying to imply that you do expect. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t think any of us expect that there’s going to be some dramatic turn where you’re going to see like the back of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a snail for a mouse and things like that. But I do concur that it is certainly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to be interesting watching how often we see function
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over form going forward. Because one of the things that I think the three of us agree on is, especially
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when it comes to things like the thickness of devices, it seemed that it was form
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over function. And so I’m curious to see how that changes
Sponsor: Linode (code atp2019)
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Linode, by far my favorite web host. I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been with them now for over eight years, way before they were a sponsor of our show. All of my servers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are hosted at Linode for a reason. They have amazing hardware, amazing backing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco network behind it all, amazing support when you need it, and most of all, for me, it’s an amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco value. For the entire eight years I’ve been with Linode, there has never been a time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when any other host has really competed with them on value for more than like a month.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like it’s, it’s been amazing. Linode is constantly the best value I’ve seen in the business for the entire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco eight years I’ve been with them. It’s not like it’s a one-time sale and that’s it after that. Literally the entire eight years I’ve been with them, they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been an amazing value. So they have all sorts of great things. Native enterprise grade SSDs, 40
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gigabit network behind it all. Xeon processors, amazing support, amazing control
⏹️ ▶️ Marco panel. This is why I’ve been with them for so long because it’s just a really good I’ve been with a lot of web hosts in my career
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Linode is by far my favorite one I’ve used. That’s why I’ve been with them for the longest and I’m the happiest with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them that I’ve ever been. Check it out today at linode.com slash ATP and if you use promo code
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ATP2019, they can give you a $20 credit. Now at Linode, that can actually go really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco far because their cheapest plan starts at just $5 a month. That gets you a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco server with one gig of RAM in the Linode cloud in any of 10 data centers worldwide
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you want. It’s really an amazing service, an amazing value. I love Linode.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You should too. If you need a server, you can do things like host Git repositories
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or entire web applications or CI, CD environments. Anything you need a server to do,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco check out Linode to do it. Once again, thanks for watching.
Marco’s new iPhone, Watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again at linode.com slash ATP. Promo code ATP 2019 for a $20 credit. That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could be four months free on that one gig plan. And they have a seven day
⏹️ ▶️ Marco money back guarantee, so you have nothing to lose. Thank you so much to Linode for hosting all my stuff and for sponsoring
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You have somehow fallen upon, it just happened to you, Marco, you have fallen upon
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a new iPhone and a new watch? Question mark? What’s going on here?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As you know, I’m running the betas on my main devices. I’m also working
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a good like, you know, mid cycle update for overcast for iOS 12 and watchOS 5, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the existing non-beta versions. And there’s been a bug that I’ve been trying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to replicate that people keep reporting where when you’re doing watch local playback,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sometimes the seek back or seek forward buttons will skip instead
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the next episode and will lose your position in the one you were in. Which is a pretty serious
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bug and I was trying to replicate it on my beta devices and I just couldn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now it is impossible to downgrade an Apple Watch from the beta.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And theoretically maybe I could bring it to an Apple Store and have them send it out and have them do it but I’m nowhere near
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an Apple Store that would be a big pain etc. So that wasn’t really an option for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I also didn’t want to go that long without it for various testing reasons. I also have this other problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I only have my one iPhone here with me at the beach, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m doing a lot of development, and I don’t have an iOS 12 test device.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I briefly decided to borrow Tiff’s phone and Tiff’s Apple Watch to try to run a test.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco She did not appreciate this at all. So I really needed something,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I needed test devices that I could test the regular GM version and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the beta. So I have my regular ones that I could test the betas on, but I really needed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco another test device. I needed another Apple Watch running watchOS 5 that I wouldn’t put on the beta
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I needed a phone running iOS 12 to pair it to. What would you do in this situation?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well what I would do because I’m cheap is that I would go back to my house and go get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ones that I already had, but I’m cheap. If I’m Marco, I would next day air
⏹️ ▶️ Casey myself some new devices.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that’s what most developers do is they keep their old phones to use as test devices instead of immediately selling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do keep a lot of my old phones, not all of them, but a lot of them. I, however, didn’t keep any old
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple watches. Like I have my, my series zero for just like nostalgia sake in a drawer that I haven’t powered
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on and the battery is probably deeply discharged and totally unusable now. Uh, it probably won’t I don’t even want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to boot anymore. But, because that happens with Apple watches, if you leave them in a drawer for a few years and don’t charge them, you will never be able to charge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them again, they’ll never power on again, in all likelihood. The battery totally dies. I also have this other problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I never got an iPhone SE. For the last few years, my 4-inch test device was my old iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 5S. And that worked fine, except that now the 5S no longer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco works on the new version of the OS. So, my 4-inch test device, which I left at home,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t bring it to the beach, my 4-inch test device is no longer going to be a useful test device
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once iOS 13 ships and I have to run that on it. So I actually kind of wanted an iPhone SE.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I know it’s discontinued but I went on Amazon. I’m like, you know what, what do they actually cost?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it turns out you can get an iPhone SE not refurbished because that means more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but renewed which means very little. It’s basically very used.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You you can get a renewed iPhone SE unlocked on Amazon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for about $120. And that’s really pretty good, I thought.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I put one of those in my cart, and I thought, okay, now I gotta have an Apple Watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to pair to it. What do used Apple Watches cost? And I didn’t wanna go super low
⏹️ ▶️ Marco end for the Apple Watch, because the build and run cycle on Apple Watches improves drastically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as you go more and more recent. But I thought, you know, I’m probably gonna have to, If I want something cheap,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m probably gonna have to go Series 2. But it turns out you can get Series 3
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple Watches, which is only last year’s model, basically. You can get a Series 3
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple Watch. I got Series 3 42mm cellular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in stainless steel for $240. Wow! That’s pretty cheap.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The only reason I got the stainless steel and the cellular was it was only $20 more to get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco steel and cellular. I’m like, all right, sure. And so I got both these in. They came
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in, you know the kind of packaging if you sell your phone or watch to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple or Gazelle or one of those companies, they send you basically a sheet of cardboard with shrink wrap
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over it and you can kind of shove your device into that. You know those things?
⏹️ ▶️ John Amazon ships a lot of stuff in
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like when you’re injured and they put you on one of those stiff backboard things and then just like wrap you with saran wrap
⏹️ ▶️ John so you’re stuck to it. That’s how your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco products come. Exactly. So both the watch and the phone, which came from different companies, they both
⏹️ ▶️ Marco came in those kind of just like, you know, plastic hold, like sticking it to a piece of cardboard.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s how Apple intended them to be presented to the customers. I believe they spent a lot of time working on that presentation. Yeah, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ John So piece of piece of brown corrugated cardboard and then saran wrap.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Yeah. When you when you have an entire iPhone for $120, you don’t get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco such luxuries as genuine Apple chargers. Like it was shipped with like a a generic, definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not MFI, lightning cable and little USB power brick.
⏹️ ▶️ John It comes with a wire code hanger that’s already been unwound for you so you can just shove one end to the lightning connector and
⏹️ ▶️ John shove the other end into an outlet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, exactly. And the Apple Watch has clearly been put on a generic knockoff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sport band. It looks very similar to the Apple white sport band. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I didn’t own many white Apple sport bands, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference maybe, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I own them and I have one right here, right next to it, I could tell this very much a difference.
⏹️ ▶️ John You would tell when it starts to melt on your wrist. Yeah. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But still, you know, it’s still an Apple Watch. And the Apple Watch did appear to come with a genuine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple charging cable, because I don’t think it’s as easy to come by generic Apple Watch charging cables as it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is for other things.
⏹️ ▶️ John Did you look on the back of the Apple Watch to make sure it didn’t say A-P-P-E-L or anything like that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, no, it’s real. And it’s stainless steel. Is it filled with sawdust? Does it turn on? I mean…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like the thing is, it works. Like, so both of these things, I plugged them in and they both
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work fine. Like there’s a few dings on the cases. Like there’s, you know, like the iPhone especially has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a corner dent on one corner. But like everything works, you know, there were no scratches
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the screens. Everything is fine. They charge up. The battery seemed to be totally fine. There were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a couple of interesting takeaways for me using this phone for the last couple of days. I haven’t been using it full time. I didn’t put my sim in it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I have been playing with it a lot, like in the house, leaving my big iPhone XS behind, like on a countertop,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and just taking the SE with me and playing with it for a while. And a couple of things jump out at me from this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. So number one, first of all, I think it’s hilarious that the Apple Watch costs a lot more than the phone,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I still think that $240 for last year’s model of stainless steel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cellular 42 millimeter Apple Watch is a really good deal. And it kind of struck me like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re willing to not have the latest and greatest, and if you’re willing to go used, you can get surprising
⏹️ ▶️ Marco discounts on Apple stuff. If you would’ve just asked me before I looked like how much I thought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these things would cost, I would’ve guessed substantially higher than what they actually do. So that’s number
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one, it’s kinda cool that this is available and for 120 bucks, this is a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of phone actually. It’s not a bad deal at all. I would imagine if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really wanted to get something a little more versatile, I would probably go for an old iPhone 7, which probably isn’t that much,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe those are maybe like 200 bucks or something, I don’t know, I haven’t looked that up, but I was surprised how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nice it was for that price. And the watch especially, $240 to get what was a year ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think a $700 configuration, is pretty awesome. So, a few other things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that came to mind just for fun discussion’s sake.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When you’ve had a Series 4 Apple Watch, and you’ve had the pulled in corners,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the more rounded corners, the shrunk bezels, and the Apple Watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco faces that go more edge to edge. The old Apple Watch looks incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco old when you see the screen turn on. Thanks, buddy. You’re welcome.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Still on the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Series 3. But see, you haven’t gotten used to it. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey when you go to the Series 4. I know, I know, and I would feel the same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way. It really is, like, especially like using my favorite face, the utility one, you know, like the basic round clock with all the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good stuff. That face looks comical on the old one when you’re used to the new one, because it just gets this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco massive black border around it. So, Series 4 was actually a surprising upgrade in a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of ways. But I will say otherwise, you know, it’s fine. It performs well and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just as buggy as the Apple Watch always is. The iPhone SE has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually been pleasantly nice. I haven’t used this size phone for more than, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, five minutes of testing since it was new, since I owned the iPhone 5S.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s actually a really good size in a lot of ways. I’m surprised
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how well certain things still work on it. Like I’m surprised certain things, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first of all, you pick it up, it looks awesome and it feels awesome. And I heard on one of our friends podcast,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I forget which one, I apologize, but I heard recently there was a discussion of like, what do you think is Johnny Ives,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like what do you think are Johnny Ives greatest designs? And I would put very high on the list, the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 5S. It is such, like I remember when John Gruber reviewed the iPhone 5,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he said in his review that it was such a nice object. It was like the nicest object he owned.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The iPhone 5S, I think, refined a lot of it. And the SE took away the polished chamfered edge,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which made it less nice. But, so that’s why I think from a design perspective, the iPhone 5S was kind of the peak
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it. And it is just such a great device. It is timeless looking. I still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think it looks good. Even holding this SE in my hand, it’s an old phone now, very old
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now, and it’s based on the even older 5S. but it is a this this wonderful like the space
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gray with the black with you know little cellular windows on top and bottom this is a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fantastic timeless really nice design and if you consider
⏹️ ▶️ Marco design to be the combination of how it looks and how it works I think the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone 5s really was the peak of all of that entire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco class of iPhone before they got big I really really enjoy this device has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a physical object. And secondly, the using it. Now, when I’m, you know, I’m accustomed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the bigger phones now, so certain things like typing are really hard once you’re accustomed to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big phone, it’s really hard to go down a size for typing. Like I made so many errors just like typing my passcode
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and stuff. But once you get past that, or once you get accustomed to that, the interface
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually scales down fairly well on most things. There were a few screens here and there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that like something would fall off the bottom because nobody tested it, but it actually scales really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well. And certain things like deleting a mail message by swiping,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know it’s a stupid thing, but it’s something I do all day long. It feels much smoother
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and better on the 5S than it does on my XS. Or I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sorry, on the SE, than it does on my XS. And I don’t know if it’s just because it has fewer pixels,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe it’s running things at a higher frame rate because it has so many fewer pixels to drive, or if it’s something about the digitizer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s different, or that it’s just my finger is moving less distance because it’s a smaller screen, who knows? But certain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things about this size just feel really good. And it’s like feelings that I’ve missed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco since I use this size on a regular basis. So I don’t really have any conclusion here. I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco suggesting anybody go back and use this because it is, you know, it’s an iPhone 6s internals,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it is kind of the bottom of what’s supported by iOS 13, and I would expect iOS 14 probably won’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco support it. But it was kind of nice going back to the size just to play around with and to see like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in certain ways it feels like the past, like when you view certain things and you see quite how narrow your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco text column is, or like Instagram looks hilarious by comparison. But like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is actually a really nice feeling phone. And for 120 bucks, surprisingly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usable. So that’s it, that’s all I had on this segment.
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like this, we’ve talked so much about phone sizes on this show, but it’s an issue that’s never
⏹️ ▶️ John going to go away if phones continue to be things with screens in them that you hold in your hands,
⏹️ ▶️ John because there’s always that tension between, there’s the size of your hand and the motions that are most comfortable
⏹️ ▶️ John for adult hands and fingers to make, and there’s a range there, obviously, because people have different size hands, but still,
⏹️ ▶️ John you could define that range. And then there’s the screen, where we want to see
⏹️ ▶️ John more stuff all the time. And you have to find the sweet spot between
⏹️ ▶️ John how much stuff do you want to see and how comfortable is it to hold in your hand, to manipulate, to stick in your pocket.
⏹️ ▶️ John And those two things will never meet. There is no perfect compromise. So it will always
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of be oscillating depending on your, so if at any point, if we’re in a big phone error or a small phone
⏹️ ▶️ John error or somewhere in between, you pick another extreme, you will find things about it that are better than
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever size phone you’re using because those two things are always in conflict with each other. There is no point
⏹️ ▶️ John where they’ll, you know, find each other exactly in the middle and we’ll be like, I will never
⏹️ ▶️ John notice any benefit by going smaller or larger. You will notice benefits going larger and you will notice benefits going smaller
⏹️ ▶️ John and disadvantages and you know, it’s a constant compromise until we get Apple Glasses or whatever, where we can
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of divorce the, go back to an indirect interface, divorce the, I wanna
⏹️ ▶️ John see as much information as possible, but I don’t wanna have something the size of a brick in my pocket and you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, I can’t put an iPad in my inside jacket pocket because I’m not David
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Smith. That’s another thing, this thing feels like nothing in my pocket, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now, because I’m used to the XS, and before that, the X, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco SE feels like nothing. It feels like, it’s smaller than my wallet. I mean, it’s really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very small, and it’s very lightweight compared, you know, the new phones are surprisingly heavy, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you feel the old ones, you realize quite how light the old ones were. And the five generation was an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially light generation of phone, because it didn’t have the glass back. And it’s just, it feels
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so good in so many ways. Like the sleep-wake button’s in a good spot, there’s a headphone jack on the bottom, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco volume up and down buttons feel great. I really like, there was that rumor that came
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out, I think last week, we didn’t have time to cover it in our show, but there was a rumor, I think from Minchu Kuo, that either this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco year’s or I think next year’s iPhones, the one that I use, the XS line, the screen was gonna get a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bit smaller, and then the Max line, the screen was gonna get a little bit bigger. And at first I thought,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who, that’s such a slap in the face for XS owners. Like here, you get to either have a smaller thing or pay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even more and get a much bigger thing. But actually, I think I might take that trade
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off because it turns out like, if you can take what you already have and get most of that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a little bit smaller, that’s kind of nice. I really like the way this tiny
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone feels. And you know what? The XS is a little bit big. So I think maybe I would enjoy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going a little bit smaller than that.
⏹️ ▶️ John that sort of bouncing around I was talking about, where you’re sort of, there are extremes and you’re trying to find the sweet
⏹️ ▶️ John spot, but you’re always oscillating back and forth. Those oscillations let you from generation to generation,
⏹️ ▶️ John or maybe two year or three year gap or whatever, let you get a phone, and no matter which direction you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going, you’ll be like, oh, there’s some aspect of this that I find agreeable. Whether it’s like the other screen felt too cramped
⏹️ ▶️ John or this feels better in my pocket, there’s always an advantage for you, but then also a disadvantage, so that when they oscillate
⏹️ ▶️ John slightly back, maybe the oscillations are getting smaller or narrowing down on a compromise
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s reasonable. But I think the oscillations are an important part of the product line. There should never come a time where
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple feels like they have exactly correctly struck the balance between
⏹️ ▶️ John size, weight, screen, real estate, all of those things. They should always oscillate because
⏹️ ▶️ John the oscillation will make any new phone, any oscillation,
⏹️ ▶️ John any direction, feel good and interesting and make people not regret their purchase. And then,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, eventually when the negative aspects get annoying, in two years they’ll buy another phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steve McLaughlin Declan, well, both the kids use some iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey app, I don’t even remember what it’s called, as like a little noise machine while they’re sleeping.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And Declan’s using a 5S, his noise machine has for like four years now or whatever it’s been.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I don’t often pick it up. Usually I just, you know, leave it on his bedside
⏹️ ▶️ Casey table and just interact with it on the table. But when I do pick it up, every
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time I do, I’m just gobsmacked by how perfectly it fits in my hand.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Maybe your hand is bigger than mine, maybe your hand is smaller than mine, but for me, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 5S just fits perfectly in my hand. For a fleeting moment, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to myself, why the hell am I carrying this tremendous phablet, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it really isn’t, but it feels like a phablet by comparison of an iPhone 10 in my pocket every day. But then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I ever open any app but the Sleep Machine app or the Noisemaker app, I can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see like six words of text on screen. Then suddenly I remember why I have this comparatively
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enormous phone in my pocket. And yeah, I think you’re right, John, that I don’t think we’ve struck the exact
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right balance. I do think the X is a little bit big for my taste, but at least I’m not one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of those plus or max monsters like Mike Hurley is. I don’t know how that guy survives.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s funny, when I first start using it, I think the same thing, like, wow, what a tiny little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco window that I’m seeing all this content in. But as I play with it, it’s so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco damn fast. For the phone that is the lowest-end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco supported phone for the new OS, it sure is fast on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS 12. It is surprising how fast it is. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not benchmarking, but just the way it feels to do things. I mentioned the mail thing earlier.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And again, I don’t know whether it’s just that my fingers need to travel less distance, so it’s just faster
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in wall clock time to do certain things or not, but it just feels, it’s almost like I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been driving an SUV for the last five years, and then I get into a Miata.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It just feels so nimble, because you can just fly around it so fast, because you’re not spending any time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco adjusting your grip at all, or reaching across long distances at all. It’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really, really nice, and surprisingly fast in basic operation for such an old
⏹️ ▶️ Marco device. So I actually like, I mean, you know, I don’t think I could ever switch to one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, that’s this small full time again, just because I do so often use things that really want a bigger screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but boy is it nice to play around with this sometime.
Sponsor: Boosted (code ATP)
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Boosted. Instead of sitting in traffic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and searching for parking or riding a bus, imagine riding the streets with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the wind in your hair on your own Boosted electric vehicle. It’s so much better than sitting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in traffic. You can be out in the world exploring, creating, and having fun. Use Boosted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get where you need to be faster using Boosted vehicle-grade electric skateboards and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco scooters. These are the modern solution to your transportation woes. With a 22 mile
⏹️ ▶️ Marco range and max speeds of 24 mph, Boosted is perfect for both running to the store
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and traveling across town. And these are high grade electric vehicles designed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to provide a luxurious experience. So it’s no wonder that Boosted was one of Time Magazine’s best inventions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of 2018. With 5 options to pick from, including their new scooter, the Boosted Rev,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there is a personal electric vehicle from Boosted that is tailor-made to you. And they start at just $61
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a month with financing, so there is no better time to change how you move than now. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right now, Boosted is offering $75 off the purchase of an electric vehicle when you use the code
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ATP at checkout. So go to BoostedBoards.com and it’s code ATP
MacBook updates
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So once again, BoostedBoards.com, promo code ATP at checkout for $75 off your vehicle.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you so much to Boosted for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So you have new toys. I want a new toy, guys.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Over the, what was it, yesterday that Apple announced that they have,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they’ve done me some good things and they have done me some bad things. So Apple has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey refreshed the MacBook Air and the 13-inch MacBook Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But they have killed my beloved adorable. The MacBook One, also known
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as the MacBook Adorable, also known as just plain MacBook. It’s dead, you guys. Mine is fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, it’s still slower than shit, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s dead. And so I don’t know what to do. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would like to talk about what I should do from here, but before we get to that, we should probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey run through the changes that have come from Apple over the last 24 hours. So the MacBook Air now
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has True Tone. It is now down $100. So instead of being $1,200, it is now $1,100,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and importantly, $999 for students. So that’s a big deal. The 13-inch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey MacBook Pro is now on eighth-generation quad-core
⏹️ ▶️ Casey CPUs. It is $1,299 to $1,300, which is the same price as the Escape once was.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And like I said, the MacBook Adorable is dead, the MacBook Escape also dead. Apparently,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple just really hates our nicknames, almost as much as Stephen Hackett does.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will say though, there is a significant reframing going on here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about what happened to the Escape. The Escape is not dead. There are still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two very different 13-inch MacBook Pro models, one of which uses 15 watt TDP
⏹️ ▶️ Marco CPUs, one of which uses 28 watt CPUs. The 15 watt one still has only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two ports. The 28 watt has four ports. What happened is not that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Escape went away. What happened is that the Escape got a touch bar.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it’s not the Escape anymore. I mean- Exactly, but like- You lost the Escape. The Escape is definitely
⏹️ ▶️ John dead. Because the MacBook Escape was, yes, the computer with all the slow stuff inside it, but it was the one with the Escape
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so that one’s dead. I know, so we, but well, the name is dead, but the computer lives
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on. They’re still selling two very different computers as kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the same thing. It’s just at two different price points. But it’s like, oh, this one has only two ports,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and this one has four ports. And the CPU clock speeds are very different. The internals are completely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco differently laid out. It’s a very different machine. So the Escape is not dead.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We just can’t call it that anymore because it got a touch bar. But it
⏹️ ▶️ John is still, what do we call it? the Touch Bar Escape.
⏹️ ▶️ John Our names are getting as unwieldy as Apple’s actual names. I know, right? Touch Bar Escape, late 2019.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like what Style Dash suggested in the chat, which is MacBook Unescaped.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Actually, I’ll get to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that later during Ask A2P. But anyway, so these are some really odd updates. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, so first of all, the MacBook Air got quote, updated,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the only changes are the display got true tone, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very minor, the price got lowered, and I’ve also heard that the SSD is slower,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which might accommodate for the price lowering.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, the MacBook Air is a pretty recent computer. Like, it’s not overdue
⏹️ ▶️ John for an update, so I’m surprised it got any updates at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, and what’s extra weird about this is that there is that the Ming-Chi Kuo thing last week,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he says that the MacBook Air with the new scissor keyboard is coming out this fall.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So this to me, I hesitate to call this an update.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think this is more like when last fall or last winter,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whenever it was, like December, whenever it was, when Apple slightly revised the 2018 15-inch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook Pro by simply adding a new Vega GPU
⏹️ ▶️ Marco option to it. So it wasn’t really a full-blown update, it was just like a new, a slight
⏹️ ▶️ Marco adjustment to what was available for it. I think this is kind of like that. I think they’ve taken the 2018 MacBook Air
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they’ve finally given it by default the new revised third-gen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco butterfly keyboard with the new materials, right? So that’s one change that has definitely happened here. We
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got that confirmed somewhere. It has True Tone, which is very, very minor, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has apparently, possibly a slower SSD, which probably allowed it to drop that price down a little bit.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It seems more like a slight revision that was timed specifically to capture the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back-to-school market, which for the MacBook Air is a pretty substantial buying period. I think they sell a whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of these for students in the summertime. I think this is being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco presented PR-wise as a refresh to the MacBook Air, but I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it really is one. I think it’s a very slight mid-cycle tweak that is mostly a price drop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a few very small modifications to achieve that. But I think that’s about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Escape change is more substantial because that one got completely new CPUs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that are now quad-core before it was dual-core at the 15-watt level. So the Escape now got the quad-core
⏹️ ▶️ Marco CPUs, a T2, and the Touch Bar. It didn’t have any of those things before. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it got the new keyboard, the new old keyboard. The Escape before this had the 2017 keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It didn’t even have the membrane from summer 2018. It didn’t,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it missed that cycle completely. So the Escape, or what is now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the artist formerly known as The Escape got an actual real genuine update. That it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is like a real, like nice 12 to 18 month style update.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the Air, I wouldn’t call what happened to the Air an update. And that’s why I think that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Ming-Chi Kuo rumor about a new Air coming out this fall with a new keyboard,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think this quote update invalidates that or makes that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much less likely. I think these can both be true, that the MacBook Air got this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco small revision this summer to make it a little bit cheaper, but that it might also be getting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco replaced this fall. Because Apple’s been updating things more frequently. You know, they went
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through the bad period of the 2016 era, you know, updating things on a very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slow cycle and making everything worse with every update that they did do. But now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the last couple years, they have shown a pattern of updating the laptops whenever,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or at least updating the laptops that matter to them. I should definitely have had that. Updating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the laptops that matter to them whenever they can. Basically, whenever there is something new to update to,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they do it. They did the mid-cycle GPU update. They did this 2018 revision this spring, and did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco brand new things as soon as they could. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m guessing that whatever rumor stuff is coming out with the new keyboard this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fall slash this winter slash next spring, whenever all that stuff happens, I think that’s still gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happen. I don’t think these updates necessarily preclude that simply because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would only be like six months from now.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know I’m not the biggest laptop fan, but I mean, I continue to look at these
⏹️ ▶️ John various revisions, new materials, reshuffling of the line, It’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John like, who cares until they get a new keyboard? Like my brain is just turned off to the notion of Apple laptops
⏹️ ▶️ John until they deal with the keyboard. It’s kind of like with the Mac Pro. It’s like, you know, are you gonna come out with
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac Pro until it comes out? Like I don’t care. Like don’t, you know, only, they keep shipping
⏹️ ▶️ John products. I’m like, I like the Mac Pro which was never actually updated. They keep shipping products, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, okay, fine. But, you know, I can’t recommend these to people without
⏹️ ▶️ John a big long explanation about the keyboards. like we’re still kind of in that halting pattern. So I think it’s great that they’re updating
⏹️ ▶️ John them and simplifying the line and all that other stuff, but it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t matter. Like it’s not deck chairs on the Titanic because it’s not going down. Like they are going to make computers with the
⏹️ ▶️ John new keyboard that presumably will be better. And honestly, we haven’t even heard, at least I haven’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John whether the new materials have solved the problem. Maybe they have. Maybe the new materials actually solved the reliability
⏹️ ▶️ John problem and we’re just left with the key layout and typing feel, which is a thing that some people
⏹️ ▶️ John may like some people may not like, but I’ve just given up on this whole line. It was
⏹️ ▶️ John like, revise them all you want. I’m just waiting for the new laptops, and it’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John be great if they come out with the Air and the other one, but then we’ll be like, okay, well, who’s left? Who’s left still with the old
⏹️ ▶️ John keyboard, right? Until we can wholeheartedly recommend it, because I would almost wholeheartedly recommend
⏹️ ▶️ John the new Air if it had a different keyboard. A couple minor tweaks here and there,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I can’t get excited about these revisions, and
⏹️ ▶️ John getting rid of the escape makes sense to me because that computer never really made much sense. And sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John folding it in to be a sheep in wolf’s clothing, so to speak, whether it’s got a touch bar and everything, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s half the ports and half the number of cores and everything. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John the only part of this that I’m interested in
⏹️ ▶️ John is the MacBook One getting canned because I kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John loved that machine, that it existed. I didn’t love that it was slow. I always hoped
⏹️ ▶️ John that it would travel the same path as the original Air, where it started off as an oddity,
⏹️ ▶️ John pushing the boundaries of technology, and then eventually got its feet under it, and it became a really great computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it seems like the MacBook One never really got that chance. Like it was an oddity, and it pushed the boundaries
⏹️ ▶️ John of technology, and it got like one foot under it, and then it just was thrown in the garbage can.
⏹️ ▶️ John So, I mean, obviously it is the most awesome and obvious candidate
⏹️ ▶️ John for a revision to have an ARM CPU to have even better battery life and even
⏹️ ▶️ John less power. I do wonder if there’s room in that form factor for
⏹️ ▶️ John the scissor switch keyboards with double travel. Maybe, again, maybe with an ARM CPU there’ll be more room inside
⏹️ ▶️ John there. Shove everything out of the way of the keyboard and there’ll still be enough room for the battery for that tiny little ARM CPU.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if when the ARM Macs come out, I’ll really be looking forward to the resurrection of,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re gonna have to call it the adorable. That was, CGP Grey came out with adorable? Yep, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think we’re gonna have to call it that because I really hope that if they do resurrect this computer as an ARM computer,
⏹️ ▶️ John it will have more than one port, but who knows, Apple is stubborn. They could stick to
⏹️ ▶️ John one port. But yeah, it just seems like the MacBook One was too thin to live,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? They’re like, I would imagine you can’t put in the current
⏹️ ▶️ John MacBook One, you can’t swap out that keyboard for one with more travel because of all the computers Apple sells, this
⏹️ ▶️ John is the one where you need a low travel keyboard because it is so thin. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John really think that what would have made that product great is to have a really,
⏹️ ▶️ John really good, powerful CPU in there. And there’s nothing from Intel apparently that fits the bill to be able to fit
⏹️ ▶️ John in a fanless enclosure that is way faster. but there are a bunch of CPUs in fanless
⏹️ ▶️ John enclosures and products made by Apple that are really fast, much faster than the MacBook One
⏹️ ▶️ John that would really make that machine kick butt. So I really hope it comes back to us later in
⏹️ ▶️ John the ARM era. But yeah, and until then, wake me up when there’s a new keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with that. I mean, I think that pretty much everybody in this racket
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would guess like, yeah, if anything’s gonna come out with an ARM version, the tiniest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco little 12-inch MacBook was one of the top candidates to have at first. But I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think in general, I was very surprised that it was canceled. I have since heard from a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco number of different people, apparently sales of it were very low, that it didn’t sell well. And I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say I’m surprised by that. Because I think what we’ve seen in the laptop line
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over the last while now, remember the MD whatever whatever 101,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was the 13-inch non-retina MacBook Pro with the DVD drive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was kept in the lineup forever. It was, I think it was a 2011 model, I think, or a 2012 model maybe, and it was kept in the lineup
⏹️ ▶️ Marco until like 2016 or something. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people just kept buying the thing. Like no matter what else Apple released, they sold a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ton of those MD101s. Because it was a roughly $1,100 computer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it was like an inexpensive, by Apple standards, an inexpensive laptop.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It would, you could replace the hard drive and the RAM easily down the road.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it was serviceable long-term. It was cheap to spec up. You could put a spinning disk in there back when everything else Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sold used SSDs only. So it was like, it was much cheaper to spec up. It had a DVD drive. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was like one less thing people had to worry about, like one less limitation that they had with the computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And yeah, it was non-retina, but everyone, you know, mostly didn’t care. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they sold a ton of those 101s because it was just like a very practical, cheap,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very versatile computer, as long as you were willing to take something that wasn’t particularly new.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And when they eventually discontinued that, what replaced it in that role was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 13-inch MacBook Air, the old one. Again, by that time, that was actually a pretty old
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computer as well. It was also non-redneck, also 13 inches,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also about $1,100. You can see a lot of parallels here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It didn’t have the replaceable RAM or hard drive, or it didn’t have the DVD drive, but it was a very similar thing of like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple had lots of other computers that were nicer and newer and above it in the line, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people kept buying that thing in droves because it was a great value
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it was highly versatile. It would satisfy almost anyone’s needs. So if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look at the 12-inch in this context, it never could reach that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco point. It was not anywhere near versatile enough,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they either couldn’t or wouldn’t make it cheap enough to ever take that role. And so if you were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a person going into an Apple store wanting to buy a laptop for yourself and you wanted something at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the lower end, why would you get the 12-inch when you could get,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, until recently, the crappy old 13-inch MacBook Air, which was actually a pretty great computer if you didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco care about retina, like, you could get that for the same or less money
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and have better specs as long as you didn’t care about retina. And it wasn’t, it was bigger and heavier, but,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, most people didn’t care that much compared to what they got for that money.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, So really, what Apple needs in that range
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the lineup is better value and more versatility.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s something that a 12-inch MacBook just couldn’t get. The 12-inch, it had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of fans. Well, it had no fan, but you know what I mean. It had a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of customers. Almost everyone I knew who had one, you included, Casey,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost everyone I knew who had one a bit of a love-hate relationship with it. I know very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco few people who bought only one. Usually, you’d buy one and it was slow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as hell and then they would revise it and it would be 5% faster and you’d be like, okay, take my money. I need every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco drop of performance I can get because it’s still so slow. I’ll take the 5% faster. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was just so slow and so limited. and using that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one port was so annoying because if you wanted to plug in power
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and anything else you would need a dongle so it was like it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like laughably annoying to own this computer but a lot of people did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enjoy it anyway because it was so damn small and so damn light and so I see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there is a role for that. But I don’t, I think what this probably confirms,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first the, you know, going almost two years without an update and then being, being quietly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco killed, I think what this kind of confirms is like just not enough people are willing to tolerate all those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trade-offs. Like the 12-inch, a lot of people try to compare it to the MacBook Air, but it really is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a very different computer because it takes way more trade-offs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get it to where it is than the MacBook Air did. Even the at 11 inch MacBook Air
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needed fewer trade-offs than what the 12 inch MacBook needed. The 12 inch MacBook was a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco massive pile of massive trade-offs to get, you know, a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco smaller, a little bit lighter. And most people just weren’t willing to make those trade-offs.
⏹️ ▶️ John And like the original Air, like I said, a huge amount of trade-offs to get a little bit thinner, you know, it can fit in an
⏹️ ▶️ John envelope, but honestly it was basically just like take an existing Apple laptop and make it have a taper.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if the Air had not, imagine if the original Air, the next one that came out was 5% better.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then it wouldn’t be, you needed that big jump with the 2011 model or whatever when they
⏹️ ▶️ John did the revised one, it’s like finally, this is a really good computer now. And so suddenly,
⏹️ ▶️ John all the attractive attributes are still attractive, and they got rid of all the downsides. And I just felt like they couldn’t do
⏹️ ▶️ John that with the One. If they could have made the MacBook One, they could have taken it in two directions. One is it could have become
⏹️ ▶️ John like the Air, where it’s the computer that’s good enough for everybody and it’s inexpensive and super light. And the
⏹️ ▶️ John other direction they could have taken it if they couldn’t do that is make it the luxury model. If they could
⏹️ ▶️ John have made the MacBook One three times faster and add hundreds of dollars to the price, it would have been like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, if you have tons of money, you can get this amazing computer. It’s super fast and it’s incredibly small, but there was no
⏹️ ▶️ John option to do that. Like there is no CPU they could put in there that could do that, right? So with ARM,
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like they have both options on the table. They can make this a good enough for everybody computer
⏹️ ▶️ John that also happens to be ridiculously thin, basically a resurrection of the 2011 MacBook Air, the one we say,
⏹️ ▶️ John why would you not get this one? If you need, unless you need more than three ports,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m getting greedy,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco right? More than two ports, maybe,
⏹️ ▶️ John get this model because it’s fast enough for you and it’s so thin and it’s got a new keyboard and you’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John love it and it’s great, right? Or they could put the fastest of the fast
⏹️ ▶️ John iPad CPU in there and say like, this is expensive, but boy is it thin and it’s super fast
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s got four ports on it or something. So I think we’ll be seeing a computer
⏹️ ▶️ John like this again in our future, but it could never get
⏹️ ▶️ John out of its own way. It spent its entire time with the, what the hell was that? The spinning disk
⏹️ ▶️ John in the original MacBook Air? Like 120 gig or 80 gig. It was like the iPod hard drive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? Yeah, it was literally an iPod hard drive. It’s no good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So as someone who has lived with one and only one MacBook Adorable slash MacBook One,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I did only purchase one. I think that’s because I got the most recent one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then they killed it. And so I agree with what you had said earlier, Marco. I would have taken the underscore
⏹️ ▶️ Casey approach where if they had revved this today, I probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would have already placed an order. Not definitely, but probably. And having lived with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this computer for two years, especially when I was in my anti-iPad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey days, which was basically up until the new iPad pros last fall. It was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey amazing. Yeah, it was a little bit slow, but it was rare. Usually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up until vignette, it was rare that I was doing anything that really required a whole lot of oomph on it. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was this, it was basically an iPad that was an actual computer. Ha ha. Yes, I know. I don’t,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not trying to start that fight. I’m just saying like, it was an iPad that ran. Oh, S 10 or Mac iOS.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that was amazing. That was so amazing. And, and I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey loved that so much and I still do love this computer,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but as I’m doing ever more development on it, I am finding that I am ever more annoyed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with how slow it really is. And so. As you know, a couple of people lit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me up on Twitter saying, how, how could you need to replace a two-year-old computer? I haven’t needed to replace
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a two-year-old computer in a decade or something like that. And yeah, that’s true.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They weren’t buying the 12-inch.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But yeah, buy the 12-inch MacBook, which was underpowered the moment I bought it. And I knew that. I knew it and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I did it anyway. And the reason I did it anyway was because I wanted something ultra hyper-portable. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that was the number one priority to me. And in that, this thing has succeeded
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tremendously because it is unbelievably portable.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey However, it is dog slow. And the other problem I have with it is that it only
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has one port. And it is not often that I want to plug in two things, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is also not rare. And so just earlier tonight,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it has decided that the time machine backup on my Synology is somehow corrupt and it would like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to start over and make a new one. And so I’ve thought, okay, I’m probably gonna have to plug in ethernet. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you remember the days when ethernet was just in the computer, but anyway, I’m going to have to plug in an ethernet adapter. Oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wait, that means I need to go get my dongle. Oh, and the ethernet adapter and the dongle are across the room and I’m recording right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now, so I guess I’m not doing that, am I? And that just gets frustrating. Or, hey, I would really like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to plug in my phone to debug and also be plugged into power. Yes, it’s dongle
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time. It’s just stuff like that is very frustrating. And so I really wonder, and I’m based on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey zero empirical evidence other than my own experience, but I can’t help but wonder if this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing had two ports, would it have sold twice as well or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey considerably better? And there’s no way for us to know. But the one port thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was very, very frustrating, particularly once I started developing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with it, when I really would want to plug in a phone and not have to do it via a dongle. So, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have a USB-C to lightning cable, which works great, but then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can’t power the thing. And so then, especially now, now I’m asking this dog slow CPU
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do something that requires a lot of CPU power. So now I’m murdering my battery
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’m charging my phone off of the laptop battery. So I’m murdering it twice over. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey getting hot because it’s fanless. Exactly. So it’s like the perfect storm of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey awful for this computer. And I still love this computer and I will always
⏹️ ▶️ Casey love this computer because it is such an unbelievably cool piece of technology. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think it’s the right one for me anymore. And so that’s why I said I would have probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bought a revved version earlier today if such a thing existed. But I’ve gotten
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the point that I really think that I need more power.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And we are skipping a little bit ahead, but this is a perfect segue to the field trip I took today
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the Apple Store. And I went to the Apple Store today because I thought to myself, we’re going to talk about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this tonight. And I want to handle a 13-inch Air and a 13-inch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey MacBook Pro because the last 13-inch Air I’ve handled is Aaron’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which not only has it been underwater several times, but—
⏹️ ▶️ Casey still allowed to handle it? Yeah, that’s true. But I don’t even remember how old that thing is, but it’s easily
⏹️ ▶️ Casey four or five years old. It is not young at this point. It might even be older than that. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t recall. I don’t even know what version of macOS is on it. It might even be a version of OS X. That’s how old
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is. But anyway, you get my point. And that thing is big and it’s heavy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey compared to my adorable. It is enormous compared to my adorable. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t really have experiences with 13-inch Pros or 13-inch Airs other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than that one. So I went to the Apple store today and I went looking at the Escape because it was still an Escape
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in my store at this point. And I went looking at the Pro and then I went looking at the Air as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And as it turns out, these things have gotten crazy light over the last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey few years. Who knew? So I was looking at them. You’ve been working out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I’m looking at these things and I actually brought my computer, you know, I brought my computer bag with me with my laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in it. And of course, I feel like I’m looking as though I’m preparing to steal these things. But be that as it may, I’m trying to look confident.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And if you look confident, that’s halfway to getting away with anything. So I, you know, pull my adorable out of my laptop bag and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have that in my right hand and I’m closing and picking up these display units in my left hand.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I went and did a little bit of research because my name is not John Syracuse and I’m allowed to. In 2017, I paid $1,744.82 for my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey loaded MacBook Adorables, as loaded as I could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get it, which by the way, I thought I paid like over $2,000 for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So it was cheaper than I remember it being. But anyway, it is listed as 2.03 pounds.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So for all intents and purposes, two pounds. The 13-inch Air, as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I looked at Apple’s website earlier tonight, is 2.75 pounds. So that’s effectively three
⏹️ ▶️ Casey quarters of a pound heavier. It is also, the way I would configure it, it is $1,900.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is not the base config, as we’ve said before. This is the way I would configure it, which is the 1.6 gigahertz
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Core i5, the 16 gigs of memory, one terabyte SSD,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and that, of course, has two Thunderbolt 3 ports. How amazing would that be, ladies and gentlemen? It has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two ports, imagine that. And so I’m handling this MacBook Air, and I’m handling my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey MacBook Adorable, and I realize there’s really not a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lot of difference here. There is certainly a difference in surface area, there’s certainly a difference in weight, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s really not that much difference here. I could do the Air. So then I go over to the 13-inch MacBook Pro, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I start looking at the Escape, and then I’m boinging back and forth between the Escape
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the real, quote unquote, real MacBook Pro, come to find out that’s three pounds, 3.02 pounds.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So it is almost exactly one pound heavier than my adorable. I gotta
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tell you, I understand that that’s, you know, what, another 150% heavier than my adorable,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it doesn’t feel like it, man. It really doesn’t feel like it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’re saving three quarters of a pound of dongles. Yeah, right, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I couldn’t believe how small and light that felt in my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hand. And maybe I’m just trying to convince myself. Maybe I’m just trying to justify a purchase Marco style,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it really felt unbelievably small and light. And the way I think I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would configure it is a $2,400. So it is nearly a thousand dollars more than I spent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my MacBook Adorable, which again, 1,700 versus 2,400. But I think the way I would configure
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is a 2.4 gigahertz core i5, a 16 gigs of RAM, a terabyte hard drive. And then I would think about going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up to the next CPU, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is $300 more. And I would think about, and I think that’s an i7, if I’m not mistaken. And I would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think about going to an additional terabyte, so a total of two terabytes, for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an additional $400 more. So if I did both of those things, it would be just over $3,000, which is more than
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’d like to spend. But I’d at least consider it. But if I were to buy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a new computer today, I really think I would get the 13-inch MacBook Pro because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it really isn’t that much heavier. And I don’t think I need the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ultimate in portability anymore because if I do, that’s why I have my iPad Pro, which I also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really, really love.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it’s too bad you’re forbidden from buying a new computer until they have new keyboards, so we don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey have to worry
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about this. Well, that’s the thing. That’s the thing, hearing you talk earlier, I was like, oh, John’s right. I really do have to wait
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a little bit longer.
⏹️ ▶️ John is the wrong time to be buying a new laptop.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Just wait, just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’m gonna say the exact same thing. If your MacBook 12
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inch was totally dead and you really needed a laptop very badly, then I would say, all right,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do what you gotta do. If you need one that badly.
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco would tell you you could get a stainless steel MacBook one with cellular
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey for like $300 on Amazon. It’s been refreshed.
⏹️ ▶️ John It comes wrapped in styrofoam peanuts, but it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so if you really were in a bind you had to get something today, I agree with you,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 13-inch MacBook Pro, and I would say get the one with four ports, it’s nicer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just get, you’ve served your time in one port purgatory, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just get, get the one with all the ports next. You’ve earned it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s the right move if you had to buy today. But because you don’t have to buy today,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you are looking at, right now, the ones that were updated now and the ones that are updated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in May, you are looking at what are likely to be the very last butterfly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keyboard laptops. Chances are, the butterfly keyboard era
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will come to an end within the next year, possibly even faster
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than that. But I bet one year from now, in July 2020,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make a calendar, mark my words, I bet that in July 2020, there will either
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be zero butterfly keyboards for sale from Apple, or it’ll only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be like old models they’re still selling, but like all the new ones will have scissor keyboards.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s my guess. And I think that’s one of the reasons why they killed the 12-inch, because they can’t do it for that one. It won’t fit.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I think there’s enough room in the other ones, especially if they’re willing to revise them slightly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or make them slightly thicker or slightly change the tape or whatever else. Like, I think there’s enough room in the other ones where they probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could do it in all the other ones, including the 13-inch Air. But I bet a year from now, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will be able to get a range of multiple Apple laptops with scissor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cues. And if you get the very last butterfly laptop,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just out of impatience, or out of, you know, fancy, this is new. As soon as the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new ones come out, you know, six months later, you’re going to regret that decision.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I’m sorry, so state your bet one more time. So you’re saying that there will be no
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new models with butterfly switches?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My bet is in one year, the vast majority of laptops Apple sells,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like model-wise, not like volume-wise, like the vast majority of models they sell, possibly all of them,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I’m not that confident in that, I think within a year, most of the models for sale
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will have scissor keys.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Got it. It is N-D-U-E.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not willing to bet any money on that, and I’m not that confident in this, but it’s just a feeling I have. I just think I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think this is the end of the butterfly
⏹️ ▶️ John Such a weak bet you’re not even willing to say they’ll all have it. You’re just the vast majority
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Are you willing are you willing to bet that Apple doesn’t sell an old model out for a long time these days?
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re sounding you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John so confident then you’re like, I think there’ll be some models with new keyboards Of course, there will be models with new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keyboards But not like not just the 16-inch like I think it’s gonna be all of them or most of them at
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you said the vast majority. So yeah, there’s only like four models so that means you’d
⏹️ ▶️ John have to have like three of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, because like what they might do is like, you know, make the new MacBook Air that Ming-Chi Kuo predicted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and have that be $200 more and keep this old one around at $999 for a while. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it could be something like that, right? So that’s why I don’t want to say all of them. But I think most of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them a year from now will have scissor keys.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think maybe you could have, would you agree that they’re not going to make
⏹️ ▶️ John any new computers with butterfly keyboards, as in it’s a new case design,
⏹️ ▶️ John a new form factor. Like that’s the easier bet to say.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh, 100%! These
⏹️ ▶️ John are the last ones that they’re going to make with butterfly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keyboards. I would even go as far as to say that the computers that they revised yesterday
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are the last revisions even that I think will have butterfly keyboards.
⏹️ ▶️ John You just think they might keep selling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them? Yes. Tim Cook. Like, yeah, I think like the Air that they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slightly touched, They’re probably going to keep selling that as their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cheapest computer for a while because that’s just how they do things. But I bet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all revisions that will occur after yesterday will be scissor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pauls I don’t think you’re wrong, but I am interested to see how this turns out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Michael Morgan And you’re going to be so regret it if you bought the last, but not even I bought the last butterfly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keyboard. I haven’t bought one since last year.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But, but, but remember that I actually do like the butterfly keyboard and truth be told,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have not yet had a bigger issue than something that I needed compressed air for with my adorable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in two years. Hold
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on. Didn’t, didn’t you have to bring your computer to your dad’s like automotive power
⏹️ ▶️ Casey compressor? No, no, no, no. I didn’t have to. It just so happened. I know what you’re thinking of. It just so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey happened that I was at it. It happened to me, Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just so happened that I was at his house when I had an issue and I was like, Hey, do any compressed air?” and he just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like looked at me. It was about the same look I got when I once asked a friend of mine from college
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if his twin sister was identical or not. But anyway, my dad just kind of looked at me and said,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yes, yes, I have compressed air. And so we went out to the garage just because it was easy. Aaron
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Powell I don’t have compressed air. I do have this jet engine. Just put your laptop behind this. Steven Penn
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’ve met my dad, that would be his style.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve never had to have the thing serviced more seriously than me or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dad taking compressed air to it. But yet, I fear the thought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that if I were to get another one, that I would not be so lucky. And so,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like I said, when John was talking earlier saying, how could you possibly buy a laptop right now if you don’t need to?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah, you’re right. Why would I be buying a laptop right now?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just, I feel like we’re so close. You know, it’s like there have been, there are multiple rumors
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from multiple directions that the scissor keyboards are coming this fall or this winter. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John that far away. And imagine if the new Air is made with the
⏹️ ▶️ John design philosophy embodied by the iMac Pro, the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro, and it comes
⏹️ ▶️ John out and it’s got four ports on the side of it and a better CPU and a new keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John and an SD card slot. You buy that instantly. You’d be like, thank God I didn’t buy another laptop. This is finally
⏹️ ▶️ John a good MacBook Air again. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that’s not going to have an SD card slot. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John like just imagine that it has more ports. Imagine that I don’t even think it’ll have four ports. Honestly, there is
⏹️ ▶️ John some embodiment of more boards. I probably won’t have more ports to them. This is what I’m thinking. Like, again, with the design
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they just took the existing MacBook Air and just put a frickin scissor keyboard in it, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would be a great computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s better. But like, honestly, I’m I’m done with the bargaining. It’s like, OK, why don’t you just make your laptops good again?
⏹️ ▶️ John All right. So they’re all going to have this USB-C. Can you put more of those on? The answer is yes, you could. Don’t stubbornly
⏹️ ▶️ John refuse to like. Don’t go for that minimalism. Make a MacBook Air with more
⏹️ ▶️ John than two ports. You can do it. It will work. People will like it. They’ll buy it. They’ll like
⏹️ ▶️ John it better than if it just had two.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Or put an SD card
⏹️ ▶️ John slot. Two ports and SD card slot are more than two ports. This is the line I’m drawing for the
⏹️ ▶️ John MacBook Air that was finished being designed a year and a half ago, which is the other problem with expecting something new
⏹️ ▶️ John to come out of Apple. We have to wait, you know. Anyway, yeah, don’t buy these. than
Apple drops SSD prices
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So one other thing we do have to cover quickly is that Apple has fairly dramatically lowered their SSD
⏹️ ▶️ Casey prices. And so from 9 to 5 Mac, the 4 terabyte SSD
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the 512 gig 15-inch MacBook Pro used to cost $2,800. $2,800. Now it costs half
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that at $1,400. And
⏹️ ▶️ John that is the price, the amount that you add to the price of your computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Right, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not the price of the computer with that. It’s like take the price of your computer that comes with an SSD of some size
⏹️ ▶️ John that is less than four terabytes Throw out that SSD and then add
⏹️ ▶️ John 2,800 more dollars and now it’s half price at merely 1,400. Yep,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I think that’s actually really great and I Haven’t been quite as bitter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at Apple RAM and SSD pricing as I was probably five to ten years
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ago Maybe less than ten but a while ago It used to be that they would absolutely gouge you on, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at that time, it was spinning disks and also RAM. But I feel like this is, to me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey within the realm of, okay, yeah, you know, it’s good. You have to make your money and it’s convenient,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey blah, blah, blah. And okay, that makes sense. You know, $2,800, that does not make sense. $1,400 does make sense to me, but I feel like it’s at least
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The reality is, this isn’t just Apple. If you spec up a machine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from anyone else who sells you complete computers, from Dell, from HP,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from Alienware, like whatever it is, whoever you’re buying from, any kind of RAM or hard drive upgrade
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the time of purchase from the OEM is always more expensive than what you can go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to Amazon or Newegg or whatever and buy your own for. It’s always done that way. It’s a profit center for them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s just the business. That’s the reality. So I know that SSD storage can be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had way more cheaply outside of Apple than it can from Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco SSD storage has gone through a massive price collapse over the last few months. It’s awesome. You can get cheap,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very, very cheap third-party SSDs now from other companies that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are very big and very inexpensive compared to where they were even one year ago, let alone before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. So it’s great to be in the market for storage. And you know what? Apple did lower these by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a large amount. And yeah, they are still way more expensive than what you can buy a for on Amazon or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the fact is, in this business, you’re never gonna get that price from the OEMs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from Apple, from Dell, from HP. So the fact that they lowered the prices is great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco news, even though they are not the bargain basement that we always want
⏹️ ▶️ John It just shows how out of whack they were. It’s not like they reduced them by 10% or something. Cutting the price in half and still
⏹️ ▶️ John having it be ridiculous? Like Ben Holmes tweeted, the prices have gone from absurd to ridiculous.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Although I guess
⏹️ ▶️ John this thing absurd is worse than ridiculous. Not sure I agree with it. Anyway, so another example
⏹️ ▶️ John is on the MacBook Air with a one terabyte SSD at $400. And
⏹️ ▶️ John this is the thing people notice. Another one of the, that’s why I highlighted when
⏹️ ▶️ John I described the other thing, another one of the effects of a configurator is you’re like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, if you want the terabyte one, it’s $400. Like, no, what you’re doing is you’re removing 512
⏹️ ▶️ John gigabyte SSD. And then you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John replacing it with a 1 terabyte and you’re paying $400 for that additional 512. Like, it’s not like a $400 1 terabyte, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, SSD costs $400. Like, oh, well, I can buy a 1 terabyte. You’re not buying a 1 terabyte.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re buying half of a 1 terabyte because you threw away a 512, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John So their prices are still completely out of whack. Like Ben Holmes cites a price of $100 for
⏹️ ▶️ John a one terabyte NVMe SSD stick. I’m not sure where he’s getting that price from. But
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, like it’s because you are removing an existing part or replacing it with a
⏹️ ▶️ John better part and then looking at the price as if you were just buying the better part, not accounting for the price
⏹️ ▶️ John that you should be gaining by removing the other one. Yeah, they’re like Porsche car options.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re just ridiculous and it makes sense. That’s where they make their money. but if
⏹️ ▶️ John you price them too high, like no one will ever pick that option. So honestly, Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John probably not making as much profit as it could be to, you know, just be reasonable. And
⏹️ ▶️ John the storage, it used to be like this with memory. Now Apple is reasonable with memory. And
⏹️ ▶️ John in some respects, like maybe that’s the better thing to do, but in other respects, if Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t eventually get its iCloud act together, either in terms of pricing or transparency or both,
⏹️ ▶️ John Running out of storage on your Mac is one of the things that hurts
⏹️ ▶️ John the user experience and the satisfaction with the computer the most, because it’s the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that users are least able to deal with, and rather than motivating them to buy a new computer,
⏹️ ▶️ John it will just make them angry. Just be like, I just bought this computer three and a half years ago,
⏹️ ▶️ John and now it’s out of room, and I as a user have no idea what to do about that. My computer is full,
⏹️ ▶️ John they just get angry, right? And so if we could just get over, I think we’re close. We’re
⏹️ ▶️ John close to getting over the hump of having enough storage. I think we’re probably there on phones. Like I think most people’s phones
⏹️ ▶️ John have close to enough storage now, maybe one more doubling, and we’ll probably have enough local
⏹️ ▶️ John storage that even Apple’s cloud transparency stuff is enough to paper over the difference, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But Apple laptops specifically, especially lightweight ones, are not anywhere near
⏹️ ▶️ John getting over the hump of they have enough storage for most people, especially if you have a photo library and
⏹️ ▶️ John especially if you use iCloud photo library, even if you do the quote unquote optimized storage, which is terrible, you
⏹️ ▶️ John can fill a default configuration Apple Laptop SSD because the default
⏹️ ▶️ John configs are way too small and the step up configs are a lot of money and people see even
⏹️ ▶️ John a $400 upgrade to one terabyte and they think it’s not worth it and they need some nerdy computer friend like me to convince
⏹️ ▶️ John them, trust me, you will be so happy three years from now when
⏹️ ▶️ John for that $400 you spent because you’ll still be able to use your computer, as opposed to having to chuck it in the ocean
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco right? And there’s nothing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Yeah, I’ve been there. There’s a couple laptops
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve owned where I just was impulsive. I just wanted to go to the Apple Store and just buy one on day one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So there wasn’t time to do a config to order option and customize the storage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And in both of those cases, that laptop ended up being a 256 gig SSD. And in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco both cases, that limited the useful life the laptop severely because I just slammed into that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the time. So now these days, no matter how impatient I want to be, 512
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the minimum I will buy. And what I actually aim for for a laptop is one
⏹️ ▶️ John terabyte. Yeah, I feel like that’s the thing that makes me like a computer the most is having it not
⏹️ ▶️ John get full like the 5k iMac already. Like I filled the one terabyte SSD
⏹️ ▶️ John I bought a big SSD I thought I was buying a really big one back when they were really expensive. I filled it and I had to I had
⏹️ ▶️ John to move my entire photo library to an external SSD which isn’t the end of the world but it kind of annoys
⏹️ ▶️ John me and one of the things I’m looking forward to the most slash fearing the most is when I get my new
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pro I wanted to have a lot of storage I mean it’s less of an issue because as we discussed
⏹️ ▶️ John you can actually put quote-unquote external drives inside the thing through various
⏹️ ▶️ John mechanisms but I would prefer it if the super fast internal storage was big enough
⏹️ ▶️ John to you You know, hold all my stuff for five years without me
⏹️ ▶️ John hitting limits. So if I were to get four terabytes, I think that would be fine because it would be four times what I, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John just barely able to fit in these days. So yeah, it’s, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John still kind of a shame that that’s where Apple gets most of its money and especially on the laptops and most people buy
⏹️ ▶️ John laptops first of all. And second of all, like I don’t, laptops,
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t have all the options of external drive and stuff because you just want to carry the laptop. And,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, we ever talk about Catalina, we’ll get into this some more, but
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac operating systems handling of disk
⏹️ ▶️ John storage or whatever we want to call it these days, I mean, in some respects, it has new features, but
⏹️ ▶️ John in other respects, it’s actually getting worse in terms of how confusing it is, you know, related to the weirdness
⏹️ ▶️ John of APFS. How much space do I have? How do I free up new space? How do I deal with the disk
⏹️ ▶️ John full? How does the operating system deal with the disk full? of the applications that claim to deal with the full disk
⏹️ ▶️ John actually deal with it. It’s one of the biggest pain points I’ve seen with Macs. Less
⏹️ ▶️ John so with phones and iPads, although there was still that ad campaign from Samsung or whatever, or Google or
⏹️ ▶️ John whoever was making fun of Apple’s phones filling up with photos. But I feel like with the advent
⏹️ ▶️ John of, what is the default config on the good iPhone now? Is it 64 gigs? I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco believe so, yeah. That really fixed it. That made it so that we all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco completely stopped complaining about how the entry level storage was so bad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before. Like, you know, back when it was 16 gigs, that was terrible. And it stayed 16
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gigs for a very long time. And once they went up, they first went to 32, and I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some models might still be at 32, but for the most part, they begin at 64 now. Huge improvement. And it basically takes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco care of the problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, it’s not like they don’t get full. They still get full, but I feel like when you have 64, there’s enough time
⏹️ ▶️ John for even Apple’s sort of iCloud stuff to shift to your iCloud, shift some of the photos off and to just have like
⏹️ ▶️ John the low quality ones. Like Apple does need to keep up with this. It’s not like 64 is enough forever. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to keep, you know. Anyway, that’s all we’re talking about here is Apple keeping pace
⏹️ ▶️ John with the increasing size and decreasing cost of storage. And they fell way behind,
⏹️ ▶️ John embarrassingly behind even for Apple to the point where they’re cutting their prices in half. And now they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John slightly less embarrassingly. I don’t know. Like, it still annoys me,
⏹️ ▶️ John but like who is honestly, who besides businesses, what individual person was
⏹️ ▶️ John paying an additional $2,800 for the biggest SSD? It’s only businesses. Because no
⏹️ ▶️ John individual person could probably justify that. Even if they were like a freelance person or whatever and they thought they would
⏹️ ▶️ John use this, they were like, honestly, I’ll just buy an external drive. Because you really need to
⏹️ ▶️ John be disconnected from the budget by a lot to pay $2,800.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then if you bought one of those yesterday and saw the price cut, that’s not gonna feel good. I bet you could get half of
⏹️ ▶️ John that money back from Apple. I paid it.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Well, I mean, talk about
⏹️ ▶️ John being disconnected from the value of money.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, so it’s for the reasons you said when I bought the iMac Pro. I weighed that decision for a long time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I opted to do it because ultimately, like I was juggling a lot of weird externals
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with my previous iMac because when I ordered my previous iMac, the biggest it got was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one terabyte like that was the biggest option it had which and at the time I bought that and that was expensive not that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expensive but it was that was expensive at the time like in 2014 and whenever I bought that and so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I bought the Mi Pro I got the 4 terabyte because I’m it was a pain in the butt juggling all these externals
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I wanted to start I knew this was a computer I was gonna have for a while so I wanted to start at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the highest point I could start at knowing that over time I would be happy I did and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sure enough here I am about what a year and a half into this computer. And I 100%
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stand by that decision. And even though it just got half the price, I’ve still gotten a year and a half of use out of that four
⏹️ ▶️ Marco terabytes, and I’m still happy I did. Yeah, it was a ton of money, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so was the rest of the computer, and I decided that was worth
⏹️ ▶️ John it. This is the MacBook Pro we’re talking about, though. Like the iMac, was it exactly the same price?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco $2,800. That’s why when you were saying earlier, like no one knew what it was, I knew what
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t buy that iMac Pro yesterday. might feel different if you did. That’s
Photo library on disk image
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But anyway, and I will, before we leave this topic, which you really should do, but before I leave this topic, I will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reiterate a trick I learned that I’ve been extremely happy with. One of the biggest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problems when you have limited storage, like almost every laptop,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the way photos doesn’t really purge the purgeable space
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you have it in like, you know, only keep small things mode. Like if you have it, keep your whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco photo library, you’re on your own. But if you have, and that’s how I do my iMacs, I just have to keep everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I have the space for it. But if you’re on a computer that’s like a secondary one, like your laptop or something, where you only have Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Photos, keep like the small versions and offload things to the cloud, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco marks the space that it uses as purgeable, but as John said, the OS doesn’t deal with that the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way you think it will. It doesn’t provide the controls that you need. A lot of times you try to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use the space that is left and it doesn’t purge it, and so you can’t use the space or whatever. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a bit of a mess. So what I did when I set up my most recent laptop last summer was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I put the photos library, which you can move where that is, I put it on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a sparse disk image that has a size cap. I think I made it like 30 gigs, something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So a size cap of a sparse disk image, put it in login items, so the sparse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco disk image always mounts on login. That’s where my Apple photos library is. and it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco obeys the disk quota of the sparse image you put it on. So my photos library
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is capped on my laptop at 30 gigs. No matter what I do, it will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make space so it fits in that 30 gigs, and then I don’t have to deal with it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco intruding on the rest of my drive. So that is by far the biggest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quality of life improvement that I’ve discovered for having a modern Apple laptop with limited
⏹️ ▶️ Marco SSD space. I highly suggest everyone do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a little bit scary. I mean, I’m not even sure that’s even a supported configuration I know understand the application
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t tell the difference, but I’d be a little bit scared of it The other thing though is I don’t know if this is still true But I believe
⏹️ ▶️ John at one point and maybe this was just an iOS like the the optimized storage thing
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe I’m doubting whether this was actually true or not But my impression was that back in the
⏹️ ▶️ John day what optimized storage would do is it would? download
⏹️ ▶️ John lower quality, not thumbnails, but just lower quality versions of photos to save space.
⏹️ ▶️ John The problem that you could run into with that strategy is eventually, if your phone
⏹️ ▶️ John fills with the lower quality ones, there is no other strategy. Like it wasn’t as if
⏹️ ▶️ John it would purge the photos entirely and download them on demand. It always wanted to have a photo
⏹️ ▶️ John on disk, so to speak. It would just be a lower quality one. So if you have a very large library
⏹️ ▶️ John and you put it in a very small, sparse disk image, it is possible that by adding pictures and adding pictures,
⏹️ ▶️ John you may hit the limit of your disk image and then you’d have to make a second disk image or expand it or copy your stuff over or whatever, which is not the end
⏹️ ▶️ John of the world. But all this is to say I still don’t have much faith in
⏹️ ▶️ John the photo library’s ability to actually manage the space available
⏹️ ▶️ John to it. I feel like it’s using very naive strategies and never goes sort of full on demand where
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, I’ll pull in images as needed, and I will purge them as needed. It’s more like, I have strategy
⏹️ ▶️ John A, which is keep everything, and strategy B, which is keep everything, but if you run out of space, keep smaller versions of some things.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that strategy runs out of space eventually, unlike the other one, which is just, I have a buffer to work with, and I will pull
⏹️ ▶️ John in the most recently used images in that buffer and purge them as needed. And the second thing, of course, with the purgeable space,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think there’s actually a way to make it purge. But the other thing that always gets people is local time machine backups. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, this is a nerdy thing to do. but if you are a nerdy person listening to this and you frequently have space issues or
⏹️ ▶️ John you need to free up some space that you think should be free but some part of the operating system or application thinks it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re running a modern version of Mac OS, man TMUTIL, T-M-U-T-I-L,
⏹️ ▶️ John and look at the local snapshot stuff. You can list your local time machine snapshots and you can
⏹️ ▶️ John delete your local time machine snapshots and that will save a surprising amount of space depending on what
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ve updated recently on your rack.
Sponsor: Fracture
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Fracture, who prints your photos in vivid color directly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on glass. Almost all of us take and share photos, but very few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of those photos end up actually being printed and even fewer end up on display anywhere to enjoy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So most photos we take, they get on like a social feed or something and they’re gone after what, a day at most? You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never see them again. Let Fracture help you focus on the moments that mean the most in your life by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco turning your favorite memories into actual, physical photos. Fracture
⏹️ ▶️ Marco makes these amazing edge-to-edge glass prints. They print the photo directly on the surface
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the glass and it shines through, so you have this glass front printing on the back that shines through,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then this foam core behind that to hold up a screw or a wall anchor or anything else, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by the way they include in the box. So it is an amazing edge-to-edge piece of glass that is still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very lightweight. You don’t have to worry about it falling off the wall or anything. And it’s very, very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco beautiful looking in pretty much any decor. Because it’s just glass, edge to edge, no borders, no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco frames, no bezels. So it just fits in pretty much anywhere. And I gotta say, these make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco amazing prints and amazing gifts. We’ve given Fracture Prints as gifts to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco family and friends to show off pictures of our kid to our family or help enjoy a moment
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we share with friends, maybe like a photo from a vacation we went on together. That’s just a wonderful service to make amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco prints out of your photos. There are even a green company operating a carbon neutral factory
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right here in the US using US source materials and all being assembled in Gainesville, Florida.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So check it out today at fractureme.com slash ATP for a special discount
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on your first fracture order. where you came from, and just tell them you came from ATP.
#askatp: Naming computers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So once again fracture me calm slash ATP for a special discount in your first fracture
⏹️ ▶️ Marco order Don’t forget to tell him you came from ATP Thank you so much to fracture for making amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco photo prints on glass and for sponsoring our show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ron Olsen would like to know what are your opinions on naming computers back when I was in college and even through my first few
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tech jobs whimsical names for computers were ubiquitous in my university. They were named after 50s TV characters
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But of late, it seems standard for computers to have names as interesting as a barcode. I’m curious what everyone thinks of giving more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey memorable names to their machines. I used to do this. I don’t even remember the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey schemes that I used to use, but I cannot remember the last time I have changed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the name of a computer other than to maybe take my name out of it. So instead of like Casey’s MacBook,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it just says MacBook or something like that. And I’m not even sure I did that much. So I haven’t done this in forever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and a day, and I rarely pay attention to this sort of John, what do you think about this? John
⏹️ ▶️ John this was going to be quick. I could go for 20 minutes on just
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey on naming computers.
⏹️ ▶️ John I could just do one question. So, in
⏹️ ▶️ John thinking about this, I’m not going to say I’ve always named my computers because
⏹️ ▶️ John before the internet and before ubiquitous networking, there was
⏹️ ▶️ John not much reason to have a sort of computer world manifestation
⏹️ ▶️ John of what you call your computer, because it wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John addressable by its name to other computer things. And
⏹️ ▶️ John for me, at least, I never named my computer in the same way that you’d name your car.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s no reason for your car to have a name. Other people don’t have Apple’s glasses on, and they might
⏹️ ▶️ John look at your car, and they see your car’s name. There’s no sort of computerized reason for it to have a name. If you
⏹️ ▶️ John give your car a name, it’s just because you want to give it a name. So what I would do with all of my Macs, though, is
⏹️ ▶️ John I would name the hard drives. The hard drive singular or the hard drives plural.
⏹️ ▶️ John Always my hard drives have, you know, the Apple hard drives would come and it’s called Macintosh HD.
⏹️ ▶️ John Thinks still to this day, it’s just Macintosh, a whole spelled out space, a capital H, capital D.
⏹️ ▶️ John Even though they’re not really hard drives anymore. I’d rename the hard drive. And that was basically
⏹️ ▶️ John like the computer name, especially when you just had one hard drive It was your boot hard drive. It was inside the computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I wasn’t technically naming the computer. I was naming the hard drive. Because if I had a second hard drive, it would have a different name.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’ve always done that. Usually it’s like cartoon characters. And I would have a matching icon and all this other stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John I continue to do that to this day. But in the modern era,
⏹️ ▶️ John when your computers are networked, even if it was just Apple Talk and now a day is like the rendezvous
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever the hell it’s called, zero-conf networking and everything, there are reasons to give your computer a name that you can address
⏹️ ▶️ John it with. So all the computers in my house, both their boot hard drive and their name of the computer is
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever icon and name their boot hard drive gets. So again, it’s video game characters
⏹️ ▶️ John and all various other things. So yeah. The only thing I’ve done recently is as I’ve gotten
⏹️ ▶️ John lots of computers, I got tired of coming up with new names. So I basically give my computer the same name all the time. It just,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I don’t give it Roman numerals. It doesn’t become the second or third. It just takes on the mantle of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s like Air Force One. It’s like whatever is your current computer has that name.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, more or less. And I did the same thing with my work computer across many different work computers and many different jobs. I always give my work computer
⏹️ ▶️ John similar names so I don’t have to keep thinking of new names. And then the only other interesting
⏹️ ▶️ John story I have about this is the naming of the computer and not the hard drive or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John began far before I ever got into it in the world of servers that needed
⏹️ ▶️ John to have names, you know, the internet, DNS, all that other stuff, right? And at universities where you’d have labs full
⏹️ ▶️ John of computers that weren’t in the very old days. They weren’t PCs or Macs. They were
⏹️ ▶️ John Unix machines. They were on the internet via TCP IP and had host names.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so there was a challenge. How do you come up with host names for all these computers? And you could have
⏹️ ▶️ John boring host names, or you could just call them lab 1, lab 2, lab 3, or computer lab with all these things, lab3.myschool.edu or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s very boring. And I’m sure I’ve told this story on
⏹️ ▶️ John ATP before, but people don’t listen to the whole back catalog. So I will just reiterate my favorite naming scheme
⏹️ ▶️ John I ever saw was in the computer graphics lab at Boston University.
⏹️ ▶️ John Whoever came up with this one, I thought it was very clever and interesting. The names of the machines were
⏹️ ▶️ John like, scrutable, stinked, I’m giving it away by the way I
⏹️ ▶️ John pronounced them, like a pendant. Lots of things that you’d look at them and you think they were
⏹️ ▶️ John as like, pendant. Is that misspelled? Do they mean like a thing that dangles around your neck? scrutable? Do they mean inscrutable?
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, or no, scribable. They mean like able to be scribed or whatever. Anyway, there, it was like
⏹️ ▶️ John a lab full of machines like this. Uh, and they were all a Silicon graphics, indie
⏹️ ▶️ John machines. So it was all words that began with indie independent, indescribable.
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, yeah, I don’t remember all the names, but you would think you couldn’t come up with all the words that begin with the sound indie, but they
⏹️ ▶️ John came up with like 12 of them. And I thought it was very clever because if you look to the names, it made no sense until you saw the
⏹️ ▶️ John pattern. So kudos to the computer graphics lab at BU who came up with that naming
⏹️ ▶️ John scheme. And yes, Silicon Graphics, that was a modern thing when I was at school.
⏹️ ▶️ John When they did that Jurassic Park thing where like she says this is the unique system I know is to have that weird thing where you’re flying
⏹️ ▶️ John through all the buttons. That was a real thing on SGI machines. And when I saw the movie, I’m like, I
⏹️ ▶️ John do know that. That’s a real thing. That was real? That wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John BS? Yeah, it was like a demo thing. I don’t think they expected people to use it, but yeah, it came with SGIs.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was like a way to navigate the file system through a bunch of weird rotating sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John rectangular solid things. They didn’t write the code for that thing. You could buy an SGI for 20 grand in 1990, whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it would come with that. Marco, any thoughts?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have a similar Air Force One situation where I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco named my computer forever ago and just whenever I get a new one, just inherits the old name
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with one notable exception to our relevant to our conversation earlier when I got the MacBook Escape
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I named it Escape and then when I later got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 15-inch touch bar to replace it well I lost my escape
⏹️ ▶️ Marco key so I called it no escape which is kind of a play on you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not only losing my escape key but that now I have no escape from these horrible butterfly keyboards. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuck with them forever. So my laptop became known as Noescape, and my laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is still to this day, even though it’s now two laptops later, called no escape.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Only two? You sure you didn’t drop a zero there?
#askatp: bash to zsh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Pedro Estarque writes, Hi, I’d love to hear John’s take on the recent default
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shell change from Bash to ZSH and Catalina for new installs. Given license issues with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Bash, why not Phish since the guy works at Apple and GPL version 2 seems
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uncontroversial? So I’m not 100% sure that’s correct about the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey creator of Phish working at Apple, but I think that’s correct. But either way, John,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how do you feel about bash to ZSH? Because you usually use ZSH, don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you? Or did I make that up?
⏹️ ▶️ John You are misremembering. So we actually have a whole section about Catalina that if we ever get to,
⏹️ ▶️ John we probably will some point when we have to do like three episodes a week to deal with vacations in the summer. Anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this is one minor point in it that some of the Unix stuff in Catalina is changing. So we’ll talk about the
⏹️ ▶️ John rest of it later. But for now for the shell stuff What I heard is that it was a license
⏹️ ▶️ John issue. I don’t know if that’s actually true It’s hard to get this type of
⏹️ ▶️ John answer from Apple because you can if you’re lucky Apple tell you what they’re doing But
⏹️ ▶️ John they rarely tell you why especially for something like this. I
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t use bash or ZSH. So this doesn’t affect me. I use TCSH
⏹️ ▶️ John for legacy reasons, because it’s what the Unix system at my university used, and that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just what I got used to. I do not recommend it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Phish, I believe the person who writes Phish does, or did work at Apple, and he wrote Phish, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John not sure if he still does work at Apple. Apple should not change their default shell
⏹️ ▶️ John Phish is a weird shell. If like Apple is not in a position
⏹️ ▶️ John to make something the de facto shell for Unix computers, like
⏹️ ▶️ John by shipping it, it’s not like everyone will follow them. If the whole rest of like the Linux world essentially
⏹️ ▶️ John switch to Phish, then yes, by all means, Apple should start shipping Phish. But if Apple is the
⏹️ ▶️ John only one doing it, they shouldn’t, because then Apple’s Unix will get the reputation of like, oh, Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John got Unix, but it’s got this weird shell. It’s like only Unix nerds know. You can change your shell, right? But it won’t
⏹️ ▶️ John matter. just be like Apple, Macs have Unix, but the shell is weird.
⏹️ ▶️ John By going with Bash, because it’s what everybody else uses, Apple does not have a weird shell.
⏹️ ▶️ John ZSH is less weird than Phish. It is more
⏹️ ▶️ John closely aligned to Bash. It has been around for much longer. It is less weird.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if you have to change from Bash to something, ZSH is a reasonable alternative. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John care because I don’t use either one of the shells.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. Marco, do you have any thoughts on this?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do care quite a bit because I use Bash heavily in my Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usage. I have shell scripts that use it. I use it directly in terminal a lot. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do care, but I don’t yet know enough about ZSH to know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how much of my stuff is this going to break or require relearning.
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t have to use it. You can just use Bash. You can either build your own Bash and install it, and I think they’ll still ship Bash.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re just changing the default shell.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a pain in the butt, though.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well, I mean, hey, like I have used the non-default shell for basically the entire life
⏹️ ▶️ John of Mac OS X. It preserves it across installs. So it’s not like a thing you need to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just when you set up a brand new computer, if you don’t do a migration assistant or whatever install, type chsh
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’ll be off to the races. It’s just fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, all right. For what it’s worth, I’ve used Phish for years and I do not use
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very many shell scripts. I’ve not written very many shell scripts. So I’m just using it for just navigating around and doing basic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey operations. And I love it. I don’t argue that it is very weird though.
#askatp: Beach camera care
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Finally, Tyler Menard writes, how do you use and take care of your big camera at the beach? Carefully.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t really have any particularly good answers here. I try to put it in like whatever backpack
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or bag or what have you that I brought it to the beach in when I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actively using it. I also don’t go like deep into the surf like John does with his big camera.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But generally speaking, just being careful and trying to keep it away from anything that can hurt it, which yes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I recognize every grain of sand on that entire beach can hurt it, but just doing my best to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey put it inside a towel or put it in a backpack, like I said, and just keeping it as far away from sand as I possibly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can. Marco, you occasionally live outside of the beach, but generally live
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the beach. What do you do with this?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t. I don’t bring my big camera to the beach almost ever, and so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I kind of avoid the issue.
⏹️ ▶️ John Fair enough. John? So I’m on now a 15 year run of bringing quote-unquote big
⏹️ ▶️ John grandma’s cameras to the beach and haven’t lost one yet Which means that I’m well overdue to drop my camera
⏹️ ▶️ John in the ocean this summer I know it’s gonna happen eventually my my plan is basically
⏹️ ▶️ John I have a separate bag That’s just for the camera that I try to keep away from children
⏹️ ▶️ John because children kick sand everywhere Like you can’t yet just keep a perimeter right and the
⏹️ ▶️ John camera is either around my neck or it’s in that bag It
⏹️ ▶️ John gets, it’s a fact of life, it gets sand and salt spray on it. I clean it between
⏹️ ▶️ John trips, try to get the sand and salt spray off. The bottom line is some tiny,
⏹️ ▶️ John minuscule speck of salt water is going to get inside your camera and it’s going to slowly corrode some
⏹️ ▶️ John electrode and then, or some solder joint or something or the contacts on the SD
⏹️ ▶️ John card or like, there’s no stopping it. Like, and my cameras that I’ve had are not particularly weatherproof,
⏹️ ▶️ John but even if you get a quote unquote weatherproof one unless it’s one of those things that you use to take your camera you know deep sea
⏹️ ▶️ John diving in the beach versus camera beach wins so just be resigned to the fact
⏹️ ▶️ John that by taking your big fancy camera to the beach frequently you are killing your camera and
⏹️ ▶️ John eventually it will die and as long as you can be okay with that and get good pictures in the meantime
⏹️ ▶️ John fine but there is no real strategy other than be careful and take as much care that you and that
⏹️ ▶️ John will stop eventually the saltwater from The ocean always wins.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would even go as far as to say that applies to pretty much everything that you bring near the ocean. It’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco highly corrosive environment. It’s full of salty air
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and moisture and gritty sand. Everything about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going near the ocean is amazing for your mind and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco terrible for anything physical. So, just, you know, anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is going to be near or on a beach, you are limiting its lifespan and that’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part of the deal. Anyway, thanks to our sponsors this week, Linode, Fracture,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Boosted Boards. and we will see you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John If you’re into Twitter,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental, they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John mean to Accidental, tech podcast so long
Delicious coasters
⏹️ ▶️ John You know how many tabs I have open in Safari right now? I do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not. Three. What? Are you feeling
⏹️ ▶️ John okay? It’s Chrome, that’s the issue, isn’t it? I try to close them when I’m done, and I haven’t been doing any major web browsing. Here’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing, this computer is getting far less use as it gets old. I use it for podcasting now,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then during the day if I need to do something on the computer, I use the iMac. Oh, man. Everything here has been closed except for
⏹️ ▶️ John the tabs that I always leave open, like Gmail and stats pages.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I get to assume when you said three that it was like, it was like one of those charts that you see and at the bottom it says like millions.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just three. One window, three tabs. Chrome
⏹️ ▶️ John is one window, one, two, three, four tabs, five tabs.
⏹️ ▶️ John Times are changing. I know. No, it’s not. If you go, because if I go to the other computer, that is not true.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you go to my work computer, very not true. It’s just because I’m not using this one. I would use
⏹️ ▶️ John it and close out the tabs and I would never open new ones. Like the biggest source of new tabs is like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John shopping research. What am I trying to do? My dog’s even eating the coasters. So we’re trying to find new coasters.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s a lot of tabs. I need to find like a dog proof coaster. It has to be acceptable
⏹️ ▶️ John to me, but also not attracted for the dog.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve never had to solve that particular problem before. My dog is too low to reach
⏹️ ▶️ John coasters. I know it’s tricky like you know you just get ones like I was a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of ones that are not attractive for the dog or unacceptable like you get stone coasters but I don’t like that I like the feeling
⏹️ ▶️ John of putting a glass on stone the ones we have which we got again got when we were married we have a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of things that we got when we were married that had lasted until the kids and our pets destroyed them these
⏹️ ▶️ John have cork on them like you put the glass on cork and I love that feeling like the glass
⏹️ ▶️ John of glass of water on a little cork coaster. That is a nice feeling. But the dog
⏹️ ▶️ John likes wood so what I want is like something that’s like stone or metal with a cork
⏹️ ▶️ John insert for the glass but it like has a rim around it because you also need like the condensation not to leak out onto the thing so
⏹️ ▶️ John it has to be slightly cup you know there has to be an indentation and in the indentation I want cork but I want the
⏹️ ▶️ John material to be totally non dog attractive like a dog’s not gonna bite on a metal or stone thing
⏹️ ▶️ John so I’m still working on it. Anyway a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tabs. There are a lot of advantages to having a low dog.
⏹️ ▶️ John dog. Low dog that doesn’t want to chew. My dog wants to chew. She’s
⏹️ ▶️ John good. She doesn’t chew most things, but she’s got a lot of her own chew toys. Every once and while she’s like, mmm,