336: Your Face Is Not Your Face
24 Jul 2019Why wait for Apple’s not-canceled project when you can get your own AR glasses today?
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Nutrition is hard when you're in high school.
- Follow-up:
- iOS 13 optimized-battery-charging specifics
- Apple TV remote's influence on product box size
- Time Machine reliability when hosted on a NAS
- "Dropbox" on the Synology?
- Big WWDC
- Marco's AR glasses
- Overcast State of the Union
- AR glasses cancelled?
- FaceTime Attention Correction
#askatp:- What is our one true iMessage address? (via Matthew Loewen)
- Does Siracusa use LFG sites? (via Hassan Al Amiri)
- Most bang-for-your-buck $1000 Mac (via BJ Nemeth, among others)
- Post-show Neutral: The C8 Corvette
Sponsored by:
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Chapters
- High-school “nutrition”
- Breakfast cereal 🖼️
- Follow-up: iOS 13 charging 🖼️
- AppleTV remote & box size
- NAS Time Machine reliability
- Please email only Casey
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- Audio sunglasses 🖼️
- Big WWDC
- Sponsor: ExpressVPN
- Overcast 2019.6 update
- AR glasses not canceled
- FaceTime eye correction
- Sponsor: Linode (code atp2019)
- #askatp: iMessage phone/email
- #askatp: LFG sites for raiding
- #askatp: <$1000 Mac
- Ending theme
- Neutral: C8 Corvette
High-school “nutrition”
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m trying to stall for time because I need to finish my homework teacher. So we pull
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the fire fire alarm quick.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is why you’re in the back of the class, because when they’re handing the papers in you, the hand yours last.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, exactly. Is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that why people sat in the back?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, there’s a lot of reasons, but that’s one of them depending on the paper collection technique. That is one potential advantage
⏹️ ▶️ John of being in the back of the class. If the paper collection technique was passed the paper to the person in front of
⏹️ ▶️ John you, then you wanted to be in the front because you get the maximum time to scribble. But if they did, the teacher comes up the aisle and grabs
⏹️ ▶️ John the papers, then you you want to be in the back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think past to the front was the more common arrangement depends
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but yeah I was always in the front for either because I was you know just being a nerd or because I had a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco last name beginning with a so if the teacher would alphabetize the seating chart I was always like the front corner I was always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the back yeah you and your s all the way you’re near the
⏹️ ▶️ John just alphabetically I just wanted to be back there I know you gotta get a good
⏹️ ▶️ John view of the room you can always have your back to the wall so no one can come up behind you all
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey right Jason born
⏹️ ▶️ John know where all the exits are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how how would you actually misbehave in school
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t misbehave as well I mean I suppose like not paying attention that’s the kind of misbehaving though you’re not bothering anybody
⏹️ ▶️ John when on you doodling
⏹️ ▶️ John your notebook and I mean I suppose talking with my neighbors could be disruptive
⏹️ ▶️ John depending on who I was sitting next to that’s about it mmm falling asleep if it was high school and it was the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as you do I think I slept through literally about a quarter of high school
⏹️ ▶️ John it started at 7 a.m. what do they expect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and not only did it start 7 a.m. but like now like for much of high school I would make myself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for lunch every day a bagel sandwich and so I would have like a bagel with like turkey and cheese
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on it bagel I’m doing the air quotes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John no it was like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was from brewers it wasn’t that bad and so I bring my brewers bagel sandwich to school I eat that for lunch I would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy a 20 ounce bottle of sprite from the vending machine to drink with it so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look at you mr. sprite oh yeah I forgot that’s your drink like Like think about like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the amount of like sugar and carbs that I would fill myself up with every day at lunch No wonder I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slept every day at like during the 130 class like whatever class after lunch. I was out cold
⏹️ ▶️ John never made the connection my uh, my extremely unhealthy the peak of my unhealthy high school
⏹️ ▶️ John eating Uh, it was this I would wake up in the morning I would have a bowl of cereal
⏹️ ▶️ John then I would get on the bus at some godforsaken hour Go to school with no lunch
⏹️ ▶️ John spend the entire day, do not eat lunch, you know, didn’t buy lunch, didn’t have lunch with me, no snack,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey no nothing. You are a monster.
⏹️ ▶️ John No vending machine. I would drink from water fountains during the day. Then after school, I would go to
⏹️ ▶️ John an away tennis meet and I would bring a water bottle with me and get on a bus
⏹️ ▶️ John and go to another school and play a tennis match in 98 degrees, 80% humidity, and then I
⏹️ ▶️ John would come back to the high school and then I would go to the vending machine before the late bus left
⏹️ ▶️ John and I would buy a Welch’s grape soda. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey would drink the
⏹️ ▶️ John Welch’s grape soda, and then I would get on the bus, and then I would go home, and then I would have dinner. Oh
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you were basically powered by cereal and grape soda for most of high
⏹️ ▶️ John school. But that’s the thing, the grape soda came after everything was over. I had the only food I
⏹️ ▶️ John had the entire day was cereal in the morning, and then it’s just water, you know, an hour
⏹️ ▶️ John long tennis match in the blazing heat, back to the school, then the Welch’s grape soda. And
⏹️ ▶️ John let me tell you that Welch’s grape soda is like one of the best tasting things I had in my entire life because after not eating for an entire
⏹️ ▶️ John day and having a full day of high school and playing tennis and sweating your body weight out in water,
⏹️ ▶️ John that was just grape soda. I still think about that. That is horrendous. And that was my
⏹️ ▶️ John pattern for basically for tennis season anyway. I kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had the opposite problem. Like I would during high school for breakfast, I mentioned my bagel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sandwich on Sprite lunch. For breakfast, I would usually have either cereal or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like pop tarts, like some kind of like sugar bomb for breakfast, and then, or maybe another bagel.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Go to school, have my bagel and, you know, have my carbs and sugar for lunch, and then I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would, after school, have usually one or two Hot Pockets,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco possibly an ice cream, a bowl of ice cream after that, and then later in the evening have dinner.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And somehow I stayed very thin. I guess it’s just, you know, the metabolism of youth. I certainly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stopped having that metabolism like three years later. Like in college I got a lot thicker, and especially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco after college I got even significantly more thick after that. But man, high school
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could eat anything. I don’t know how I wasn’t unhealthy in various ways.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I guess when you’re a teenager, I think you can get away with a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like not eating for the entire day and playing a sport. Like I don’t understand how I didn’t collapse. Like where
⏹️ ▶️ John were the calories coming from? From the one bowl of Cheerios in the morning? That was it?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would like to comment that Eggos are the best and that’s what I had for breakfast for pretty much most of my high school career
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I had, I believe, a peanut butter or if I was really living it up, peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I’m that guy. And then fast forward 15, 20 years and at my jobby job, I was having
⏹️ ▶️ Casey PB&Js again for lunch more days than not. And then for a while, I started having grilled cheeses for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lunch most days and then I had a cholesterol problem. So, who knows?
Breakfast cereal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco By the way, I learned this past week that there was slash
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a Pop-Tarts cereal. Oh, of course. I’m sure. Can somebody tell me the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco point of that? Oh, I would try it.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s all the same. All sugar cereals are the same cereal, you realize. They just extrude stuff in different
⏹️ ▶️ John shapes and put sugar in different amounts on them. Like, it’s all the same cereal.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because it seems like like Pop-Tarts, just Pop-Tarts, are superior to cereal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in every possible way. Like, if you’re gonna have a sugar bomb regardless, the Pop-Tart is not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only better tasting, but it’s more portable, it’s more interesting, it’s smaller, it doesn’t require
⏹️ ▶️ Marco milk or a bowl or a spoon and no cleanup. Paul Matz
⏹️ ▶️ John People like cereal though. People like having things in milk.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Steven Connelly Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I like my cereal crispy, right? And I used to love, I still do love frosted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey flakes. I just don’t eat them anymore, speaking sugar bomb, and there was a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey precise, not even science, but it was like a juggling act, having the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey correct ratio of new to old frosted flakes. When I say old, I mean like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey poured 10 minutes prior as opposed to poured 10 seconds prior. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would eat like two-thirds of the bowl, and then I would notice that, okay, it’s getting a little too soggy. You add a little bit more frosted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey flakes. Now, okay, you’ve got a little bit of soggy, but you’ve got all that fresh new crunch. And you would do that dance, but you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t want to go too far, so you have like half a box of Frosted Flakes in one sitting,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unless you’re John apparently. And so it was a very tough balancing act. That was my game of golf
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I was growing up, was balancing the soggy to unsoggy Frosted Flakes.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was definitely not having any Frosted Flakes. This is one of the things I thank my parents for, in addition to not having soda in the house,
⏹️ ▶️ John thus making me have no desire to have soda for the most part. No sugar cereals ever
⏹️ ▶️ John in our house of any kind. So not not even honey nut Cheerios. Regular
⏹️ ▶️ John Cheerios are OK, not honey nut Cheerios, because that’s a sugar cereal. So you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco realize there’s there’s a good deal of sugar in even regular cheer like all breakfast cereals have
⏹️ ▶️ John sugar. Oh yeah, no, I’m sure. But like but you know what I mean when I say sugar cereals, the ones that actually taste cloyingly
⏹️ ▶️ John sweet, at least to me, like any sugar cereal tastes so sweet. I can’t believe anybody that’s thinking of
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey eating his Frosted Flakes. I’m just kind of getting because I have them, I’d, you know, sleep over friends house and they’d have sugar cereals and I’d be excited
⏹️ ▶️ John to try the, or you know, my grandparents had the little boxes of stuff for me. And I would try it. I’m like, Oh my God, this is like
⏹️ ▶️ John cornflakes totally covered in sugar. And it’s just, it’s like cornflakes ruined.
⏹️ ▶️ John So not, not a big thing for me. The only, the only one I could kind of tolerate was I have good memories of
⏹️ ▶️ John having Captain Crunch.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, that was my other week. When I, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John when I, uh, hung out with my friend and his trailer in upstate New York, but that had the, uh, the cutting
⏹️ ▶️ John into the roof of your mouth problem, as we all know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is true. Mm. But Captain Crunch, oof, I haven’t had a bowl that in years, I would destroy one if it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey put in front of me right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John now. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not, I mean, it’s sweet, obviously, again, they all have tons of sugar, but it’s not the thing where there’s like sugar
⏹️ ▶️ John coating the outside. The difference between Frosted Flakes and Captain Crunch I feel like is pretty significant. And the Captain Crunch is
⏹️ ▶️ John more vaguely recognizable as what it is, you know, aerated corn.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this is a good opportunity to plug the top four cereals from a van episode that my wife and I did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with some friends back at XOXO in Portland a few years back, where we, there of a cereal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from a van, like food van that sells cereal, like a food truck, but in a van by people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wearing pajamas, and you can get whatever cereal you want. And it’s really fun. And we did a live podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recording there, and we taste tested a whole bunch of different cereals with some friends. And it turns out like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like old favorites really hold up still. Like they still, whatever cereal you liked as a child, they probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still make it. And it probably hasn’t changed much, if at all. And it still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tastes exactly as garbagey sugary as you remember.
⏹️ ▶️ John I still have cereal, by the way, as my normal breakfast, and it’s still not a sugar cereal.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Is it still Cheerios or you have some kind of weird
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John granola thing? My
⏹️ ▶️ John son has Cheerios. I rotate Cheerios, Corn Flakes, Special K, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is basically Frosted Flakes but not covered with sugar.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s so much sugar in all of those. Grape Nuts, I like. I like Grape Nuts. I knew
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the only person I’d ever meet who would have a chance of liking them is you, but I actually like them.
⏹️ ▶️ John Grape nuts is the sort of the black swan of cereal, or at least the way I have it. I don’t know if everybody has it the same
⏹️ ▶️ John way. All the other cereals, there’s a ratio of cereal to
⏹️ ▶️ John milk, and you got to deal with it like Casey was talking about it. You can do the incremental approach like he was doing. You could do the one shot where you make sure you have
⏹️ ▶️ John the right amount of cereal and the right amount of milk and blah, blah, blah. But grape nuts is
⏹️ ▶️ John an outlier. The way I eat grape nuts, and I feel like the only way you can eat them, is you put a very small
⏹️ ▶️ John mound of grape nuts in there because they are very densely packing compared to other cereals like they go
⏹️ ▶️ John close to each other right that’s why the box is so small it weighs like as much or even more than other boxes but
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s so small because they’re densely packed so you put a little mound that seems like it’s way too small but you don’t realize
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s that’s actually a lot and then you completely cover it with milk so the
⏹️ ▶️ John top surface of the bowl is just white milk from edge to edge where you see no cereal because they don’t float
⏹️ ▶️ John right that’s how you eat grape nuts because first of all the grape nuts slowly expand to absorb that
⏹️ ▶️ John milk as you eat it. Second, you will end up when you’re done with no milk left, like literally
⏹️ ▶️ John no milk. You may have to add additional milk because grape nuts just soak up all the stuff. Of course, raisins. You got to add the raisins.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We will add to the chat room a great article about grape nuts from 2009 in the Wall Street Journal, No Grapes, No Nuts,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No Market Share. It’s actually a really great profile about grape nuts that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I remember reading in 2009. It’s quite good. I actually really enjoy grape
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If I’m going to eat cereal, which is very rare, but if I’m going to eat cereal, that is high on my list of consideration.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I always feel good buying it and having it in, you know, in the house and taking it out because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone around me during any of those times is always shocked. You eat that? You like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that? What are those? What do those taste like? Because, like, everyone’s either never had them before or has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had them, like, when they were a kid and didn’t let them because they don’t have nearly as much sweetness as most cereal. They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are sweetened, I believe, by barley malt. are definitely sweetened, but it’s not nearly as much as most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cereal. So it’s more like bread gravel. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John Do you do my technique, though? Do you cover it completely with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco milk, like I know? I use a lot less milk than that. I don’t like a lot of milk in my cereal.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So what I normally do, if I have a more puffed style of cereal, I’ll put the cereal in the bowl and I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pour the milk only until I can start seeing the level of milk rising.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Once it reaches the point where the level is visible, I will stop. So usually maybe halfway up the bowl at most.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So with grape nuts I use even less because they don’t… Wow,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s pretty dry I feel like, because they soak up the water. They just… by the end you’re just eating grape
⏹️ ▶️ John nuts that have absorbed some milk and there’s no more actual milk in the bowl.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well then it becomes an exercise for your jaw so it serves double
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John duty. Alright,
⏹️ ▶️ John alright. Yeah, I like the very milk version. And I like I said I still end up with
⏹️ ▶️ John zero milk left, which doesn’t happen with almost any of that. Most other cereals will have a little bit of milk so you can add a little bit more cereal with the KC
⏹️ ▶️ John technique, milk cereal, but you know anyway, but with grape nuts I end with nothing and sometimes for the one pour that
⏹️ ▶️ John I put in, I actually have to add additional milk.
Follow-up: iOS 13 charging
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s start with some follow-up. We have some follow-up about optimized battery charging
⏹️ ▶️ Casey strategy. This is already getting us some follow-up So what’s going on here?
⏹️ ▶️ John People were asking like I think we did a bad job of explaining exactly what it does And honestly, it’s because
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t know the particular details, but sure enough lower in the show notes We had a link that explained it
⏹️ ▶️ John So again, this is the strategy that’s trying to what it’s trying to prevent It’s a situation where you plug
⏹️ ▶️ John in your phone before you go to bed. It charges up to 100% in the first you know, 20 minutes, hour,
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever that you’re sleeping, and then it just spends the whole rest of the night sitting there at 100%. And having
⏹️ ▶️ John your battery sit at 100% is bad for the battery, right? So the optimized charging is trying to avoid
⏹️ ▶️ John that. It doesn’t refuse to charge your your battery, your phone at all.
⏹️ ▶️ John Until like an hour before you wake up, it refuses to charge it all the way. So it will charge
⏹️ ▶️ John it apparently according to the screenshot from whatever iOS 13 beta this was. We’ll charge it to 80% and
⏹️ ▶️ John then it will leave it at 80% all night long, which is better than leaving it at 100%.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then 20-30 minutes before it thinks you’re going to wake up, it will top it off.
⏹️ ▶️ John So worst case scenario, you wake up in the middle of the night and it’s an emergency, you have an 80% charge phone. But the idea is that
⏹️ ▶️ John it will learn your routine and make sure that by the time you wake up, it’s 100%.
⏹️ ▶️ John Some people mentioned, I think this is a good idea. If it integrated with the alarm, like if it saw you had an alarm for
⏹️ ▶️ John 5am it would notice that. Obviously you can do that with the built-in alarm app. I’m not sure it can do it with third-party
⏹️ ▶️ John ones but there may be some framework that they all use that it could detect that but that’d be something clever. I have no idea if it
⏹️ ▶️ John it does that it just seems like a good idea.
AppleTV remote & box size
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, tell me about the Apple TV remotes influence on product box size
⏹️ ▶️ John Getting still getting feedback about the Apple TV remote and one thing a lot of people bring up is
⏹️ ▶️ John about the Apple TV remote is If they made a better one or a more ergonomic one or
⏹️ ▶️ John one that’s less likely to get lost in your sofa or whatever basically a bigger remote some people
⏹️ ▶️ John say Apple will never do that because it would make the box bigger and they want all their boxes to be
⏹️ ▶️ John small because it’s inexpensive or whatever. Other people say if they made their remote bigger,
⏹️ ▶️ John would they make the box bigger? Would they sell it separately? You know, there’s a little bit of fatalism. It’s like they would
⏹️ ▶️ John never do that because the box is the size it is and that’s the size that Apple wants it. And Apple does talk about how they make the boxes
⏹️ ▶️ John as small as they possibly can because they, you know, it’s environmentally conscious and it costs less to ship
⏹️ ▶️ John and all these other reasons. That’s all true, but in the case of this
⏹️ ▶️ John and any other product they make, Apple makes the box big enough to fit the product you make. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I know that sounds dumb, but like, I don’t think they’re not making their remote bigger because they don’t want to make the
⏹️ ▶️ John box bigger. They control the box and the product. Whatever product they make, like the Mac Pro, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna make a box that fits the Mac Pro. At no point during the development of the Mac Pro or any laptop
⏹️ ▶️ John or anything else, they’re saying, sorry, you can’t make the computer that size or shape because the box has to be smaller.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, they build the product and then they put the box around it. So, if Apple makes a
⏹️ ▶️ John new remote and that new remote is a different size and shape than the current one, they will make a box
⏹️ ▶️ John that fits the new remote plus the Apple TV. I swear to you, it will all work out.
⏹️ ▶️ John So yes, it wouldn’t be a slightly bigger box, but it wouldn’t be tremendously bigger. And I think that
⏹️ ▶️ John is not a barrier to them improving the remote and will not stop Apple in any way. Other things might
⏹️ ▶️ John stop them, but not the box size.
NAS Time Machine reliability
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Tom English wrote us, on episode 334, Casey mentions in passing that his Time Machine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey backup failed over Wi-Fi from the adorable to the Synology. My personal experience with NAS boxes and Time Machine over several
⏹️ ▶️ Casey years has been consistently awful, leading me to assume that Time Machine back and forth to a NAS is just not tested
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or maybe only works with Synology boxes and time capsules. I get the dreaded, to improve reliability, Time Machine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey must create a new backup for you box, followed by hours of wasted traffic and the complete loss of backup history, rendering
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Time Machine unusable and pointless. So Tom had three questions. Number
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one, and I’ll ask each of you. Number one, have you guys found Time Machine reliable with your Synology boxes? So let
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me start. On my iMac, yes. I don’t recall having ever had a problem with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my iMac, which is hardwired to the same switch that the Synology is sitting on. The Adorable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey usually goes somewhere between six to 12 months before I get the exact same to improve reliability,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Time Machine must create a new backup for you dialogue, and then I have to start all over. Let’s start with Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What are you using for Time Machine, actually, these days? Are you using something physical?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, as opposed to what? Something mental?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, no, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Physically connected to the computer, as opposed to some sort of NAS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, it’s all physical somewhere.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Oh, god. OK,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John you get my point. Good grief.
⏹️ ▶️ John Do you use a mechanical keyboard? Yeah. I use an analog
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John hate everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it’s not the opposite
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of mechanical, but yes. Yes. Yeah, so I use Time Machine backed up to my Synology.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Their built-in Time Machine server, which is, I think, based on some kind of open source thing to do it, both my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computer and Tiff’s computer back up to it, using disk quotas to split those two up between
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one volume. And it has been the most reliable time machine setup
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve ever had. I mean, ever since we got our Synology, is what, like four years ago or something?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey More than that, it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost six, I think. Every other system I’ve had before that, from internal disks in a Mac Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to externals, to network-based things, nothing has ever worked reliably for very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco long until this. This has been 100% reliable. The dialogue
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you and Tom cite, to improve reliability, you must create a new backup. I’ve never even seen that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The issues I’ve had before with previous systems would be that eventually the Time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Machine disk would fill up in such a way that it couldn’t make enough
⏹️ ▶️ Marco space even to make a smaller backup that wouldn’t fill it up. However
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Time Machine fails in that way, that would happen to me eventually with almost every system I ever used. For whatever reason, this doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happen and maybe it’s because I’m lucky now, maybe it’s because I have the time machine volume
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty over provisioned. Like the time machine volume I think is about twice as big as my internal disk that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m backing up to it. So it has a lot of headroom for history and stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, every other time machine I’ve ever done, like with disks or anything else, you know, local, remote,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything else, I would have to basically blow it away and recreate it maybe every six months to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a year. But with the built-in one in the Synology, I never have.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, do you backup your laptops to the Synology? I assume not because you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t have them long enough for them to complete the initial backup.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, laptops are considered basically like disposable data. Like they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey have like, you know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s the most Marco answer I’ve ever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco heard. No, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, they’re not considered like primary data stores of anything. I do run the Arc
⏹️ ▶️ Marco backup client on my laptop just for like a few select folders, like, you know, working folders, basically.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair enough. And John, just question number one, have you guys found Time Machine reliable with your Synology boxes?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes, very. I have seen that dial I’ve been talking about, but I’ve seen it rarely, first of all.
⏹️ ▶️ John And second of all, I’ve seen it in equal amounts with my Synology and with internal drives.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I feel like it’s not related to the, you know, what the backup volume is.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just related to Time Machine. I haven’t seen it in years, obviously. And I was thinking about this question of like, you know, Time Machine reliability
⏹️ ▶️ John with your Synology. I can’t even remember how I set up Time Machine. Like what is involved? Is there
⏹️ ▶️ John some special thing? When during setup, I did a thing, and now I have this massive Time Machine volume, and I back up,
⏹️ ▶️ John what, three Macs to that thing. I mean, there’s been more at various times. All to
⏹️ ▶️ John one giant shared Time Machine volume on my Synology, and I can’t remember the last time
⏹️ ▶️ John I saw this dialogue, but I have seen it in the past on both the Synology and on internal
⏹️ ▶️ John disks, and external disks for that matter. But I could count the number of times seen that dialogue in my
⏹️ ▶️ John life on one hand, like maybe three or four times in the history of Time Machine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you back up to sparse images? And you kind of took the wind out of my sails, John, because I was going to say the same thing here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hand to God, I have no idea how I’m backing up to the Synology in the sense of like on the Synology side,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know what I did to set this up. I set it up six years ago, haven’t looked back. And so I’m trying, I was trying to dig
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a moment to go to figure out where or how or what I did in order to make this work.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m sure you can Google and I’m sure there’s a bazillion things that say, here’s how you do time machine on the Synologies.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I don’t remember how I did it, but I don’t think I’m using sparse images. I basically have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a two physical drive RAID zero array. Yes, do not email me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I understand RAID zero is dumb. I did it knowingly. It is okay
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if all of this data goes up in smoke. The only thing on there is duplicates. I don’t need
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you to email me. It’s okay. I got it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My time machine volume is also RAID 0 for the record.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In fact, I think you recommended it to me and I was like, yeah, you know what, Marco’s right. I think I did one of the Nathan Fillion
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gif where he’s like, okay, yeah, that was me when I was about to argue with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you about that. But anyways, yeah, so it’s RAID 0, it’s two physical drives, three terabytes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey each, and that is the only stuff on that volume.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I don’t think I’m using sparse images, but honestly, I don’t have the I don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the faintest idea. I’m pretty sure mine does use sparse images, because I use encrypted backups.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’m pretty sure that is always using sparse images.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, then maybe I am too, and I just didn’t even know it. All right, John, tell us the real deal.
⏹️ ▶️ John You won’t be surprised, then, that I’m not using RAID 0 for my time machine. No. I have at
⏹️ ▶️ John various times used RAID 1, RAID 5, and now I’m using the Synology
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco basically just like
⏹️ ▶️ John RAID 5, but you can use different sized disks to get more space sooner. You don’t have to have every disc exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John the same size. It’s not the same as Drobo, but it’s not as bad as real RAID 5. Because Drobo
⏹️ ▶️ John lets you see the space immediately. This is like if you replace enough discs, suddenly you see the thing, you don’t have to replace them
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, one of the great things about Synology is this is more or less the same volume that I’ve changed
⏹️ ▶️ John my mind about how it’s gonna be rated. And I’ve had enough spare space to shuffle things around. And that’s why I know, and
⏹️ ▶️ John because I’ve seen the volume a few times, that it is in fact using, I think like that’s sparse bundle files or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t make that choice. Like I don’t remember how I set it up. the Mac started backing up the time machine and
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re making these image files and so that’s how it works and
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess it’s fine but yeah.
Please email only Casey
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. I have a related question. I, and this is not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something I expect you guys to answer. This is something I would like email about, please. Oh no.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was thinking, yeah, here we go. Feedback something, something, something at ATP.fm. I forget what the actual
⏹️ ▶️ Casey email address is. But anyways, last week when we were talking about how Dropbox is a complete
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dumpster fire these days, it occurred to me, I’m pretty sure there’s something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that the Synology can host that effectively can operate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in, you know, cooperation with a client app, operate as like my own private Dropbox. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very briefly dug into this, very, very briefly, I’m talking like five to 10 minutes. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I quickly got confused, because there’s Cloud Station Server, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like something that effectively looks like Google Apps, I don’t even remember what it’s called
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John anymore. more
⏹️ ▶️ John totally out of good names and
⏹️ ▶️ John or anything having to do with cloud.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. So is there and maybe you guys if you do know the answer, I’m happy to hear it. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought I thought that there was a thing that I could use that would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey let me basically host my own private dropbox. Now I am running cloud sync, but that’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. That’s like a Synology native dropbox client. So that’s to get another redundant copy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of my drop box on the Synology. Or at least I think I mean, that’s what I’m using it for today. Maybe it does other things too. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you, the two of you guys, or if you, the listener, happen to know of a relatively straightforward
⏹️ ▶️ Casey way of doing, you know, basically making my own private Dropbox, I would love to hear it. Because I started down the road of looking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the Google, it’s not literally called Google Apps, of course, but they, whatever they call their, their equivalent of Google
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apps, and it looked like they wanted to do like a SharePointy, here’s where reports go, here’s where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey documents go, here’s where this goes, here’s where that, and I don’t want any of that business. I just want to have a space
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s tied to me that I can put files and even better if I could share them with other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey users, even if it’s only other users on this Synology, I’m actually kind of okay with that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I got very lost and Synology’s website is so enterprisey that I can’t get the wheat
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from the chaff or whatever the turn of phrase is. So I am completely clueless as to what to do here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If you guys, you too, or if you guys, you folks, listeners, happen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to know a solution, I would love to hear it.
⏹️ ▶️ John You haven’t been paying attention to this week’s, this past two days of feedback. Everyone is telling us about
⏹️ ▶️ John all their Dropbox alternatives
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco and there apparently are a lot of them.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yes, but none of them. I can’t even keep
⏹️ ▶️ John track of all. I know they’re not on Synology,
⏹️ ▶️ John all you’re going to hear about is more of those. And I’m sure there’s like 10 solutions you can do on the Synology.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I hope you find something you’re looking for. Honestly, I would rather not trust
⏹️ ▶️ John myself to host my cloud drive. I’d rather, I’d rather outsource that to somebody else.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t disagree, but I’m at the point that I’m running out of companies
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I trust with this. Now, to be fair, I haven’t heard of a lot of the companies that people have referred us to.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That doesn’t mean that they’re not great, but because I haven’t heard of them, I’m a little bit reluctant to throw
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all my data at them. Well, not all, but you know what I mean. So my thought was, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the exception of podcast-related stuff with you guys and with Mike, there’s very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey little that I share on my Dropbox. much everything else is stuff that I’m sharing between my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey own computers, including iPads and iPhones. So my thought was, if I could just offload all of that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey onto the Synology, maybe I’d be all right. So again, if you have something that you know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is native to the Synology, I’m not interested in like allowing myself to,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I almost said Telnet, to SSH into my Synology and do a bunch of command line stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am capable of that. I’m just not interested in that. So if there is some Synology-friendly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey package that I can install, I would love to hear it. Or I would even consider a Docker container
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s pretty much plug and play, like Homebridge is on Docker. So I would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey love to hear it. You can either at me on Twitter, or if you wanted to reply to the feedback, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey email address you can find on our website. I’m happy either way. Thank you.
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco way better. It jumped like 25 years forward in web design and it worked better on mobile
⏹️ ▶️ Marco devices. It had dynamic features like search and galleries. It was so easy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to use and I showed it to the people who were responsible for the old site and they were just so pleased with
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whether you’re making a site for yourself or you’re making it for somebody else has a favor or something,
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, tell me about your headphones. Apparently you are not done updating us on headphone stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, when I started talking about trying to get my new headphones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the summer a few weeks back, a few people recommended an option that I didn’t even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know existed that I got in today and I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only one day of use with it, but I think it’s worth pointing out what they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are. This is the category that I didn’t know existed called
⏹️ ▶️ Marco audio sunglasses. Ah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So Bose may, and I think other companies do too, but the ones that everyone talks about are the Bose ones. Bose makes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two fairly identical models of sunglasses that have headphones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in them. And so, they’re marketed as part of the new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Bose AR line of products. I think that’s a bit of a reach.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s AR in the sense that there are glasses that can communicate information
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from a computer for you. But in that sense, every pair of headphones is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an AR device because they’re literally just regular sunglasses glasses that have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco headphones in the, I don’t know, the sticks? What are those called, John? You
⏹️ ▶️ John can just keep calling them sticks. That’s what you called them last time. I was calling them stems. I have no idea what they’re really called.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, well, so there’s speakers in the sticks and the sticks are a little bit thick and bulbous because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they originally also have batteries somewhere in there and everything. So I think I kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like it, but it’s very weird and limited in a certain way. So first of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all they’re $200 and that’s not very cheap but in the realm of like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco small portable nice headphones that actually isn’t too
⏹️ ▶️ Marco crazy the sunglasses themselves are the biggest downside of them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re just really mediocre sunglasses. They’re fine but they’re they’re not great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They come with a regular like shaded pair of lenses that isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even polarized. You can also get polarized lenses separately for 30 bucks more that you can pop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out the other ones and pop these in which I did. But they’re just they’re not very good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and not very attractive sunglasses. They’re very kind of like big plasticky
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like any you could get this you can get sunglasses that were just like these for like seven dollars at any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco drugstore. Can we see a photo of me
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco sunglasses on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t have them up here, but I will try to send you one tomorrow. Sorry,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but yeah, maybe I’ll make up the show art for this chapter. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I like about them though, so there’s a couple of interesting things and there’s a couple of annoyances too. So I’ll get the annoyances out of the way first.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they’re not very nice sunglasses like they’re even the polarized ones are not very good. They the front
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of them like the shape of the Like the lenses and the frame that the main part of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the front is basically flat Not like the way some types of sunglasses will curve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around your face slightly And I generally like those better because it prevents a lot of the Sun from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting around the lenses like around the periphery of the Lens like from that getting into your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco eye And there’s also a good deal of the outer perimeter of the lens Reflection
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like like the way you might see the reflection of what’s behind you or like your hair through the very corner
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the lenses when the sun is behind you. You know how certain lenses do that?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can’t say I do, but I bet you the next time I have sunglasses on, I’m gonna notice it and then hate you for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Yeah, it’s worse on mirrored front lenses, which the polarized lenses are and the stock lenses
⏹️ ▶️ Marco aren’t. Anyway, as sunglasses, they’re pretty mediocre, but they’re fine, they work.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I took a walk with them, the sun was in my face and it wasn’t as bad with the sunglasses on, so it was fine. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wish they were better sunglasses. Like I wish, I have a nice pair of Maui Gyms that I bought when I learned that real sunglasses
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are really nice, and it’s nothing like those. Like, those are way nicer than these as sunglasses.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Their control scheme is hilarious. There is one button on them. You push that button to turn them on,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they connect, they announce to you, like, connected to Marco’s iPhone, battery 60%,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then that one button behaves like the remote clicker button. So one click is play pause,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two clicks is seek forward, three clicks is seek back. back. Notice there is no gesture to turn them off.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The way you turn them off is you lay them. You like hold them face up like as if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were setting them down on a table where like they’re upside down on top of it on top of a table. If they’re upside
⏹️ ▶️ Marco down flat for two seconds, they turn off what so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s this it’s like a gesture. You have to like set them down on something or like hold them flat really still for two seconds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then like the light blinks and they turn off So it’s kind of clumsy. And because, you’ll notice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t mention any kind of volume control, that’s because there isn’t any. So about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as convenient control-wise as AirPods, maybe a little more convenient actually, but not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nearly as good as something that actually has a full suite of buttons on it, or a full suite of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gesture controls, like my big Sonys or my AfterShokz, like those actually have buttons or controls.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But this is a very minimal control scheme. But, what’s really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nice about it, if you’re gonna be wearing sunglasses anyway, you can kind of have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco headphones for free, like in the sense that you’re not carrying something else to have headphones. You don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have like all the busyness around your ears if you’re trying to wear sunglasses with headphones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it would also be nice in situations where I don’t necessarily want everyone to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see that I’m wearing headphones. Like I wear headphones as I’m walking around like Beakstown
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here, that allow outside sound in. That’s why I like the Aftershocks so much.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And these do the same thing, because the speaker is kind of like, it’s in the stick of the glasses,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it just kind of like fires sound into like the top of your earlobe that kind of curves down
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and somehow reaches your ear properly. I don’t know how it works. It doesn’t actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco leak that much sound out to the outside world. Like you can hear it in a quiet room, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re like walking around outside, Like people around you aren’t hearing your music, but you can hear it and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty clear. And I don’t know how that works. That is a marvel of some kind of engineering. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sound quality is actually not bad. It’s great for podcasts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And as long as you don’t care too much about bass, it’s not that bad for music either.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like I listened to like an acoustic guitar singer songwriter type thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it sounded great on these. I was shocked. Way better than any other headphones I’ve tried that are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco light and portable. So, the base is nowhere to be found, but that’s kinda to be expected for this kinda
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. But, and for speech, for podcast speech, it was very clear, it was fantastic.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Charging is a little bit awkward because they have a proprietary MagSafe-like thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that just ends in USB-A on the other end, so you have to have their proprietary charging cable,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which comes with it, but if you lose it, you’re kind of out of luck, I think. So that’s less
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good. I would prefer just like a regular micro USB port or USB-C port on it, but I don’t know if that would fit.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I really, it was kind of nice. Like I was wearing them on my walk and I ran into a neighbor. And so I just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reached up to the, you know, a sunglass stick and just tapped the button, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco subtly to the point where then I don’t think she ever knew I was wearing headphones. Like I reached
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up and I paused it so I could talk to her. I don’t think she ever knew that they were headphones. And then I just kept going. She was thinking,
⏹️ ▶️ John guy. He’s really proud of his glasses, pointing them out to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, because it’s the same move, like if you reach up with your hand to adjust your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco glasses at all, it’s the exact same move, because the button’s on the underside of the right stick. So I gotta say,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, they’re really cool. There are so many major downsides that like, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost wanting to return them, but I think I’ll keep them because for situations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where they fit, they’re, I think it’s pretty cool. Now the other major downside, of course,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that these can’t be your only headphones, unless you only listen to music during the day.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because when you combine your headphones with your sunglasses, it makes it awkward
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to listen to your headphones in situations where you don’t want to be wearing sunglasses. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s like, it’s a bit of an odd thing in a number of ways, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s kinda cool. If you want to set $200 on fire, there are a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worse ways to do it than these Bose frames. Instead, them being sold as an AR
⏹️ ▶️ Marco device is hilarious. They’re kind of like the iPod Shuffle of AR.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But set that aside. Set aside the weird control scheme and the no off button
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and all that. It’s actually kind of cool technology. I look forward
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to a future where actual sunglass companies maybe help them out and make the sunglasses better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on them. But yeah, it’s surprisingly cool. It’s totally ridiculous,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco totally unnecessary, but kind of fun.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I don’t know about you, Marco, but I wear my sunglasses at night.
⏹️ ▶️ John there you go. I was waiting for it.
⏹️ ▶️ John A couple of things. Does long press on the power button turn it off?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, that invokes Siri.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, that’s a bummer. And just so we don’t have to deal with a million people wanting to send us a sensor, the
⏹️ ▶️ John sticks, the stems on glasses are called temples.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s stupid. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John part of your head is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco called the temple. Oh, just put the
⏹️ ▶️ John temple next to the temple. the whole thing is called a temple not just the part that’s near
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no that’s I reject that name and I think sticks is less
⏹️ ▶️ John what glasses that’s what it’s called on glass I knew it was something like this you hear about it if you go shopping for glasses that people
⏹️ ▶️ John at the store will occasionally let the jargon leak
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out no I’m invoking the George Lucas and gift clause the creator is wrong I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John think this is like the
⏹️ ▶️ John creator of glasses I think this is just what what that part of the glass anyway remember it for a jeopardy question
⏹️ ▶️ John because if there is ever a Jeopardy category called glasses, Temple will be like the the second
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now, whenever for the rest of my life and I’m not on Jeopardy, I’m going to keep on them sticks because that is a less bad
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, but sticks, though. I mean, I find the follow the link to your ugly Bose glasses things.
⏹️ ▶️ John Those are not sticks. Those are more like chicken wings. That’s pretty big. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I also put in a link to some suggested sunglasses that you might want because they’ll really help with the light leakage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for non-audio, for non-AR sunglasses, I’m set. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have my Maui gems, I’m very happy with them.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I have another dress for you. Follow the link, I just put it in the chat. All
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. There you go, no leakage there, and you’re apparently fine with gigantic temples. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could put these in front of the Bose AR experience.
⏹️ ▶️ John You certainly could, yeah.
Big WWDC
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right. And then our final item of follow up. And, you know, usually listeners, when I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see something in the show notes, even if it’s really vague, I have at least a vague notion of what we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about to talk about. But the following is in follow up big WWDC.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What is this about?
⏹️ ▶️ John So my usual struggle would put it like, I’ll think of something I want to talk about on the show, right? But
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t have a separate document, which is like notes for me. This this shared note documents
⏹️ ▶️ John is the only document. So I wanna put a note for myself to remember there’s a thing I wanna talk about,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I also don’t wanna give away what it is just so you two are surprised. So I
⏹️ ▶️ John have to, but of course I think whatever I write, it’s like, if I write it two ups here, I won’t remember what the heck I was
⏹️ ▶️ John talking about. And so I assumed you would know what this is about. It’s just a small item.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this is, here we are doing our, pre-beach vacation episode
⏹️ ▶️ John with weird scheduling. So this is really next week’s episode. And like the week I come back with the we’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ John record a day after we normally do so on and so forth. And usually during the summer is a time when we have
⏹️ ▶️ John difficulty coming up with topics and everything. And it occurred to me when preparing for the show
⏹️ ▶️ John that we’re still going through topics that were added to this document at WWDC. And it’s not because
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve been slacking off and not talking about things on the show, right? Like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco there was so much of
⏹️ ▶️ John this WWDC that we are here well and truly into the summer towards the tail end of it, even
⏹️ ▶️ John approaching August. And still, you know, it feels like we’re not even halfway through the things
⏹️ ▶️ John that happen in W.W.C. And of course, Marco is even farther behind and actually implementing all the things that he
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco in W.W.C. We’ll get to
⏹️ ▶️ John Big W.W.C. That’s it. Okay. Is there a question
⏹️ ▶️ John there? No, I just it’s something that just occurred to me. It was normally this part of the summer, like this show that recording now, like I
⏹️ ▶️ John suggested last week, we’ll make it like a Q&A episode because we’re like, well, nothing’s happening during the summer and we’ve already talked
⏹️ ▶️ John about everything and there’s no news so let’s just have a Q&A episode. That’s not happening this year. Maybe later in the
⏹️ ▶️ John summer, we’ll have a Q and a episode. We’ll see. We’ll
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sometime between when we’re recording and when this is released, I think there will be a new version
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mark. Okay, so Marco, tell us about what has already, wink,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco come out. I hope it does. Yeah, the problem is like, you know, I’m just waiting for app review since Tuesday. So I don’t,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know, maybe, or since Wednesday, I don’t know, whenever it was. But anyway, it brings a couple of new things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am officially announcing though with this, my updates for iOS 13,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco watchOS, macOS, Catalina, you know, Catalyst build, it’s halfway
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through the summer and I have just not made enough progress. It’s not going to make it. I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to make it on day one. I’ve had a number of setbacks, a number of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slowdowns, various like technical debt issues of my own. I have some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco design issues I have to work out that are going to be a lot of work. I have a lot more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco updates for iOS 13 that are required than what I had initially expected when I was making,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, when I was thinking up my fall schedule. Catalina has proven, or Catalyst has proven to be,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think more work than I expected to make something good. You know, I can make something crappy sooner,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I don’t want to do that. I want to make something good, at least passable, and that’s going to take more time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want to make a standalone watch app and that’s going to take more time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And on my iOS 13 update I want that to be good as well and that’s going to take first priority.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the iOS 13 update is probably going to come out sometime within maybe a week or two of iOS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 13 if that goes well, which is a big if. The standalone watch app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the Mac app that I want to do are not going to come yet. They’re going to come probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over the next year. So I’m sorry, I’m trying my best, but this has been a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very rough beta season for lots of reasons, some of which are Apple’s fault, many of which are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my fault. But it’s been a very, very rough beta season, and I’m simply not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting done what I want to get done. It’s not, I’m not getting enough things done to be able to hit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these deadlines that are granted self-imposed. So I am prioritizing iOS 13
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first, and then Watch and Mac are kind of being deferred until later.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that makes sense.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did have time, you know, to work on the iOS 12 app. I think I mentioned here a couple of weeks ago, like I was kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of, I was doing an iOS 12 update to basically maintain my own sanity. And you know, some of this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is to pave the way for what I’m going to need in some of the, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of the app protocol to the server, some of the app protocol to iCloud. I’m paving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way for what my fall updates need with an iOS 12 update now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it took the opportunity to also add a couple of features. So number one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is a really boring thing, but you would be amazed how many people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco requested this for such a long time. You can now set
⏹️ ▶️ Marco download versus stream and auto delete behavior per podcast.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Super boring, I know. To do this required a bunch of really boring server
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work that has just taken It required me to upgrade my version of MySQL so that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could alter the tables in a way without causing a bunch of downtime and get certain good behavior and good performance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco characteristics to add a lot of columns to the feed subscriptions table.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was a whole thing. And to do that, I wanted to upgrade from my ancient version of Linux I was using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the servers to a more modern version, which brought in this crazy systemd thing everybody hates.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I had to rewrite all my scripts, and it was a big, huge operation to do something very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco boring, which was like add a bunch of database columns to a very big table in a way that was performant and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was scalable and wouldn’t require a lot of downtime. So, now it’s there, and so you can now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco set download versus stream and auto-delete behavior per podcast. I know. Hooray!
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s very, very boring. Also, I’ve raised the limit on clip sharing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from 60 to 90 seconds. This wasn’t like a huge scientific thing. Basically,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have found that 60 seconds felt a little bit too tight a little bit too often.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There were some times where I just needed like three or four more seconds and I saw other people complaining about the same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. In the style of podcasts that many Overcast listeners, including me, listen to like this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that are conversational, that are not scripted, it can often take like a minute five,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a minute ten to get like a complete thought out. I raised the limit to 90 seconds. I I don’t think anyone’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have any problem with that. It does make it so that that won’t fit in Instagram stories unedited,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I have also found that a lot fewer people are sharing to Instagram stories
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than I expected. By far, the number one share destination is messages
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the camera roll, after which they do God knows what. But yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it’s actually mostly being used, as all sharing is, turns out,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s mostly being used for private sharing and for like personal stuff. So.
⏹️ ▶️ John Did you consider something that people have talked about a lot half jokingly, half serious, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John allowing people to make clips with all of their smart speed, voice boost, blah, blah, blah
⏹️ ▶️ John settings enabled. So you could cram a one minute, five second thing into a minute or whatever, or people would
⏹️ ▶️ John talk fast the way they’re supposed to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s weird to present a clip to the world as though this is what the show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sounds like when it’s been altered in a significant way. Like, what if you do it on a show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the effects make it sound worse? Like if you’re, like SmartSpeed would fail on a show that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has music in it. And so, you know, if you’re sharing like a brief clip that has some music and SmartSpeed makes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it sound weird, I feel like that would be misrepresenting the show and possibly making the show look bad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to other people. So that feels like it’s, it’s like maybe overstepping a line that I don’t want to overstep.
⏹️ ▶️ John Of course, the reason it comes up is people say, again, half jokingly, but also half serious, But it sounds weird to them
⏹️ ▶️ John when they get a shared a clip of a show that they’re familiar with because they’re used to listening at 1.5 X or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, again, getting back to everyone sounding drunk or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. And the reality is like, I don’t think there’s a good solution to this. One X is the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most popular speed. And then among the other speeds, there isn’t like one agreed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco upon ideal popular speed. Like it’s a range, as you can guess, basically it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco scales from one X and then the next popular is the first step above that, and the next popularity is the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco next step above that, and popularity basically goes down until you reach the fastest speeds,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with a couple of minor like fluctuations towards the end, but it doesn’t really matter. So the fact is, nobody can agree
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on what speed is the ideal speed for sharing in a situation where you can’t then control
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it during playback, so 1x is the only safe thing to do there that won’t sound weird
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to even more people. Anyway, and then the final feature that I change
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this update that I’m going to talk about today, although I did a crazy cloud kit thing, but that’s for later.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The final update that I’m going to talk about today is I have removed all of the Twitter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recommendations engine. There are still stars. Stars are still recommendations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and recommendations still decide what shows up in the directory in the categories and the most recommended section.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the Twitter recommendation function is gone. If you want to share to Twitter,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can still do that. You can share a clip, you can share a link through the regular share sheet, but all Twitter integration
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is gone. Overcast has had Twitter integration literally since version 1.0. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco five years ago. At the time, everyone has always been complaining about podcast discovery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being a big problem. At the time, I thought this would be a good idea. This is like, I’ll let people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco connect their Twitter accounts, and they can have a feed of Twitter recommendations. They can recommend stuff to their friends.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what their friends are recommending and bam, podcast discovery solved.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it also made sense at the time for me to tie a lot of like the the suggestion functionality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to that. So like you know most apps of this type will have some kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recommended podcasts for you, suggestions for you, and I didn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any data to generate those suggestions with. So I used Twitter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to try to basically replace the need for that. And I figured it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be great, people will share with their friends and they can see what their friends recommend and everything else. But it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco turns out that after five years of this feature being there and being very prominent in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco interface, like it was the top block in the ad podcast screen, it was this giant promo for connect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to Twitter account. And in most cases, every time you would hit the recommend star,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would prompt you to connect to Twitter account first. So like I very heavily promoted this feature
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and only 10% of people have ever actually connected an account to it. And 10% is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not nothing, but it’s not great because one thing that means is that 90%
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of my users weren’t getting recommendations, right? Which is not good. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the other problem that I’ve been keeping records for a while now of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how many How many subscriptions were the result of the search screen, or the result
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of an ad being tapped, or the result of browsing the categories in the directory? The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rate of subscriptions that were the result of Twitter recommendations was about 0.2%. Goodness.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not only was this feature not really being used by that many people, relatively speaking, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even the people who were using it weren’t really using it much, Because they weren’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really getting new podcast recommendations that were that were turning into subscriptions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at a meaningful rate Also, this was all you know, I wrote this all five years ago Well in five
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years I’ve built up pretty good data more than enough data to build the engine that says
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people who subscribe to this also subscribe to that So I just built that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as the entire engine and I I decided let you know Let me see what I can build here and over the last few weeks I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been tweaking it a little bit and it turns out it’s really good. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basic data, like we had a question the other day about machine learning stuff for this and I’m not using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any machine learning, I’m just using data. It’s a pretty simple algorithm and it’s fine. It actually works great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s way better than the Twitter-based recommendations that I was using before. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it works for everyone. 100% of users. Like, as long as you subscribe to at least one podcast, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you don’t, my app isn’t very useful to you, then as long as you subscribe to any podcasts,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you will get recommendations that are pretty good. And so I’ve replaced, I pulled out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the Twitter stuff. And there’s also, you know, there’s other issues with Twitter too. Like it’s kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco five years ago, being integrated with Twitter in some way was still kind of cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Today, being integrated with Twitter is kind of like being integrated with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a toxic waste plant run by Nazis. Like, it’s not a great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco association. It’s not a positive association for a lot of people anymore. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I admit that part of my desire to do this was to disassociate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco myself from Twitter in the app because I don’t, it’s not a good look, it’s not a positive association,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and social networks are becoming increasingly toxic and problematic.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I wanted to see if I could do something without it, and yeah, it turns out I could.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not only could I, but it was way better. So I think this is actually a pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big upgrade. And so I’ve given it the new top spot in the directory. It’s called Suggestions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for You. It’ll show up for everybody. And I think it’s pretty cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That sounds awesome. I don’t look at recommendations particularly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey often because I feel like I’m always catching up to my list of podcasts. I’m always
⏹️ ▶️ Casey several days, if not a week, behind. And so I don’t look at recommendations often, but I think ditching Twitter is definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the right call. And it sounds like it’s going to be better for everyone the way you’ve done it. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I was just looking at my phone to see this isn’t the latest beta, right? This suggestions for you. Yeah, this is the,
⏹️ ▶️ John one. Yeah. I mean, I, I got, I have so many podcasts. I’m not often looking to
⏹️ ▶️ John find things that are recommended to me, but I did check it out and there it is. And
⏹️ ▶️ John the recommendations make sense to me.
AR glasses not canceled
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But moving on, there’s a rumor that happened, I don’t know, a week or two ago
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that Apple’s AR glasses, that we don’t even know if they’re real or not, that that program
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has been terminated. And there’s been some thoughts from a friend of the show, Steve Trout and Smith,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that says, eh, I’m not so sure that’s true. I haven’t really kept up with this because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sitting here now, I’m not really that interested in AR glasses. It’ll remind me of this in two to ten years. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can one of you explain to me what’s going on here?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it fits into this show because we’re talking about AR glasses, like Marco’s fake AR glasses.
⏹️ ▶️ John It augments reality by playing sound.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I already have AR
⏹️ ▶️ John glasses. Yeah, I just thought this was interesting. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not exactly like the car, but like the car was heavily rumored and then we had the rumors about it being,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, pivoting, not canceled, but like now we’re not, we were going to make a car, but now we’re not, now we’re just making driving
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff and it’s all just stuff that hasn’t been released at all, right? So same deal with the glasses.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you know, I don’t I didn’t dig too far into this rumor, but I’m mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John agree with Steve John Smith, but just like, if Apple’s not making
⏹️ ▶️ John any glasses, why keep doing this AR stuff? Like, I feel like we’ve all been humoring
⏹️ ▶️ John all the AR stuff, because like, oh, it’s super cool. And you can do lots of fun stuff with it. And you can place
⏹️ ▶️ John furniture with Ikea. But it’s all it’s all just been like, all right, you know, it’s good, you really should
⏹️ ▶️ John work on on this technology so that when you come out with the glasses, this will be all ready to go.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if if we were to take the glasses off the table and say, actually, Apple is never going to make glasses, then
⏹️ ▶️ John I’d be like rewinding in my head and looking back at all those they are demos. And it’s like, so
⏹️ ▶️ John what are what are you going to use all this for? Because I think by now we more or less know that other than
⏹️ ▶️ John placing furniture in your house and doing stuff like that. As a non
⏹️ ▶️ John novelty interface, AR by holding an iPad in front of you or a phone in front of you is not
⏹️ ▶️ John great. It’s always just been waiting for something that just changes
⏹️ ▶️ John the way that we see, presumably glasses. Right. So not only do I think that
⏹️ ▶️ John this rumor is not true, like that, or, you know, not true in the sense that Apple is not
⏹️ ▶️ John going to make glasses, like maybe a particular glasses project was canned and they’re rebooting it and making a new glasses
⏹️ ▶️ John project because they all wasn’t working or whatever. But I feel like Apple must inevitably
⏹️ ▶️ John come up with something that you can put on your face that they can project all that AR stuff on, because that
⏹️ ▶️ John seems to me the only way all this great AR tech is going to be given a chance to be
⏹️ ▶️ John anything more than like a novelty or marketing gimmick or, you know, thing that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John fun for a few seconds in a couple of games. But like, just just think back to the past several years of
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple keynotes. How many have had an AR table? How many have had an AR demo? Like
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve seen it so many times now, it’s not really that impressive anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if this if we knew that this all this is all there was going to be is just holding up panes of glass in front of
⏹️ ▶️ John you and doing a like that, I think we’d be getting angry about it. And like, I feel like we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John all watching it and saying and just thinking about what is it going to be like when we have those amazing glasses?
⏹️ ▶️ John But if I if I say you can’t have the glasses, it’s like, stop showing me people holding iPads in front of them like it’s not.
⏹️ ▶️ John Stop trying to make Minecraft on an iPad and AR happen. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco not gonna happen.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like I know it’s happening, but you know It’s not it’s not a thing It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean VR and actual video game consoles is barely a thing VR and PC is barely is a thing
⏹️ ▶️ John And I know VR and AR are different, but I’m saying like things that you strap to your face. It can display
⏹️ ▶️ John Computer stuff on them is still in its infancy So I’m not surprised that Apple doesn’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John it yet But I think basically Apple has to do this They either have to do this or they have to stop doing ARKit.
⏹️ ▶️ John Those are their two choices. And I really don’t think the third choice is like, oh, Apple will do the software, but then someone else
⏹️ ▶️ John will make the hardware. Nope, that’s not the Apple way.
⏹️ ▶️ John now, Apple, you better still be making glasses eventually.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe, maybe on something better than a Mac Pro timeline.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sick burn. I mean, I think it’s inevitable. Like I think they are going to do glasses. Just looking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at everything else, like I’m not that excited about AR to be honest. I’m a huge AR skeptic, however,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I also recognize like the rest of the world is not, and I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not seeing a lot of the benefit because we don’t have it yet, and once I had it, I might really like it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, and also, you look at what Apple’s putting into it. Apple’s putting clearly a lot of investment
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into AR, like via ARCAD, as you said. There is no way they would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be putting in so much effort if it was just for placing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco furniture in a room on the phone. Like that’s not enough. Like that wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco justify the amount of effort they’re putting into ARKit. If what we know today as AR was all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was really ever gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John be. And to be clear, placing furniture is also better with glasses. True. Everything is better with glasses.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just that we’re willing to accept the clumsiness of using a device just because it’s a cool application that there
⏹️ ▶️ John is no real equivalent for. But even that has massively improved.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And honestly, like I’ve heard from a couple of people also that like this report is BS.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like basically, I don’t think anybody besides this DigiTimes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco report has heard that they actually disbanded this team or anything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It certainly sounds like this article is total BS, that the AR
⏹️ ▶️ John like a game of telephone where during the course of the project, they change technology
⏹️ ▶️ John partners, change manufacturers, change approaches, reboot seven times over. if
⏹️ ▶️ John one of those stories leaks out, it’s like, oh, the project is canceled. And it really happened is they decided to get apart from a different
⏹️ ▶️ John manufacturer. And as far as that manufacturer is concerned, Apple no longer talks to them about AR, so they think the project is canceled.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Like there’s all sorts of
⏹️ ▶️ John ways that this could be plausible. And and I’m I’m also willing to believe
⏹️ ▶️ John that the reason we don’t have them is still because the technology is not ready. Like there’s I don’t expect Apple to work magic.
⏹️ ▶️ John I expect that by the time Apple is actually ready to introduce a product that is AR
⏹️ ▶️ John glasses, we will know that it is possible based on the, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John seven other competing companies that have already introduced some crappier product, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That’s usually the way
⏹️ ▶️ John things go these days, right? So it’s still going to be a little while and I really don’t expect
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple to ship anything quite as awkward as those Bose glasses that don’t even display anything in front of your
⏹️ ▶️ John face. But as for your AR skepticism, I mean, I’m not sure
⏹️ ▶️ John how big it’ll it’ll possibly be, but I like I am very convinced of a few particular
⏹️ ▶️ John applications to give one example that I think you can relate to. And I think that everybody can relate to
⏹️ ▶️ John is navigation while in cars. Like you love your heads up display.
⏹️ ▶️ John imagine if car play with AR glasses, it would let you drive,
⏹️ ▶️ John continue to look at the road, and it would overlay the directions on the actual road. It is the best version
⏹️ ▶️ John of, if done well, the best version of navigation without taking your eyes off the road. Literally, they can
⏹️ ▶️ John put like transparent overlays on the actual road telling you exactly where the right turn is. That is
⏹️ ▶️ John unbelievable and it is using technology that we’re very close to having today in terms of
⏹️ ▶️ John can you do this. Setting aside the glasses, we already have navigation, we already have
⏹️ ▶️ John ARKit, and if we can get some glasses to combine those, you don’t need to do much, you don’t really
⏹️ ▶️ John care if you’re exactly on the road and it’s just a very thin, very transparent amount of overlayed information.
⏹️ ▶️ John That type of stuff where you’re just literally augmenting just a little bit of extra stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John in your field of view. It doesn’t mean you’re using your computer by seeing a bunch of windows floating around or some stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just like… And the other one that always comes up, which people may think is silly, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I think is useful, especially if you go to a jobby job. Can I have people’s names floating over their head? God.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know it’s in every sci-fi movie. I’m so bad with names. I am the worst with names.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, that’s not true. That’s me.
⏹️ ▶️ John I just, I would love that. You know, and then obviously in
⏹️ ▶️ John the movies, it’s always like, it’s not just their name. It’s like their blood type and whether they’re divorced
⏹️ ▶️ John and how many kids they have and what their kids names are. And the last time you spoke to them and it all gets, it gets
⏹️ ▶️ John all, you know, black mirror, you know, what if they are, but too much, it gets, it goes there really quickly.
⏹️ ▶️ John I understand that, but like, I, but I’m, I’m not an AR booster,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I’m also not a skeptic because I see so many actual, real practical applications in addition
⏹️ ▶️ John to the ridiculous ones that we will inevitably get. It’s just a question of can you make glasses that do that? And we apparently
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t even get reasonable size and shape glasses that play sound alone, so I think I might be waiting
⏹️ ▶️ John a while for our magic apple glasses.
FaceTime eye correction
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, so over, I don’t know, it was like a week or two ago as we record
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this, there was a bit of a brouhaha, I don’t want to say kerfuffle because that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sounds negative, so I’ll go with brouhaha, about how in the iOS betas, they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have this new feature that I think was pretty quietly just slipped in. And it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey toggle somewhere in settings called FaceTime Attention Correction.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that doesn’t mean a lot to me, but the footer underneath that row says,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your eye contact with the camera will be more accurate during FaceTime video calls.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Huh? So I saw some stuff fly around Twitter about this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It turns out, if you think about you being on a FaceTime call, what you’re going to be looking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at is the screen and the person you’re talking to. But from the perspective of the person you’re talking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to, not looking at the camera, you’re looking down. And that isn’t necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bad. I think we’re all pretty much used to this, but it would be kind of neat if you could talk eye to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eye, so to speak. So that it, so, you know, I actually try occasionally to look at the camera to kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of show the person I’m talking with that I’m paying attention to them, but then I can’t see what they’re doing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so then there’s no point in being on FaceTime at all. So apparently what this does is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it uses AR or some sort of other magic to make It looked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like you’re looking at the camera, even though you’re looking at the screen and this crap
⏹️ ▶️ Casey blows my mind. I, I, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey such a cool thing. Well, I think it’s cool. Maybe one of you is about to convince me I’m wrong. It’s such a cool thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but how, how, how is this magic happening? Because I’ve seen videos of it, you know, float by on Twitter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it looks perfect to me. How is this possible? So John, what,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what’s going on here?
⏹️ ▶️ John So I had two thoughts about this and it’s got this has been in the notes for a while and it’s kind of fortuitous that it came up today
⏹️ ▶️ John because just in a tangent about the Overcast clip sharing with
⏹️ ▶️ John the speed thing Marco was talking about how it’s not really an accurate representation of the show
⏹️ ▶️ John to be to be sharing that and I kind of my first instinctual reaction to this attention
⏹️ ▶️ John correction thing was exactly that not to be wowed by the technology but to think The whole point of FaceTime
⏹️ ▶️ John is so someone can see me if the and if the phone computer
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever is literally altering the structure of my face by taking my eyeballs
⏹️ ▶️ John and Remapping them so that they like it’s synthesizing Geometry
⏹️ ▶️ John for my face essentially it’s not just like changing the lighting doing a better job of picking up my face in a dark
⏹️ ▶️ John room It is literally altering the geometry and look of my face Then at
⏹️ ▶️ John that point, are they looking at my face or is it like I have, you know, those bunny ears on my head the entire
⏹️ ▶️ John time, which is another feature of many of these, you know, sort of real time conferencing things, which is fun and all. But imagine if
⏹️ ▶️ John like it’s clear to someone that you’re putting the bunny ears on or the unicorn horn or whatever, right? Whereas
⏹️ ▶️ John with the eye correction, I just feel like everyone can start looking like, you know, the weird
⏹️ ▶️ John orangutan eyes from the emperor in Empire Strikes Back.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Is that a ringing
⏹️ ▶️ John thing? Chat room? Chat room’s not gonna know
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, that is an actual Star Wars reference that Star Wars nerds will get. But I’ve seen the videos too, and honestly
⏹️ ▶️ John I find it a little bit creepy, and I don’t want that. Now, that said, I understand why
⏹️ ▶️ John the feature exists. It’s even worse on the iPad, because I often FaceTime with the
⏹️ ▶️ John iPad with it held sideways. So then you’re not looking down, you’re looking like to the left. It’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re not making eye contact with them, like you’re looking past them, right? And sometimes I try to look into the
⏹️ ▶️ John camera too, you know, whatever that hypercritical episode was, look right into the eyes of your sweetie. Like it’s hard to look right into the
⏹️ ▶️ John eyes of your sweetie with the camera so far off axis from where you are. The phone is
⏹️ ▶️ John smaller and usually if you’re holding it vertically, it’s just like you’re looking down a little bit. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I understand the motivation, but the mind-blowing technical
⏹️ ▶️ John solution that I would like to see is put the damn camera under the screen in the center, right? Obviously that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John easier said than done, but there are cameras that are sort of behind the screen to varying degrees.
⏹️ ▶️ John Obviously, there’s probably many compromises that go with that. But if I could just snap my fingers and have sci-fi
⏹️ ▶️ John technology, that’s the solution to eye contact. I really do not want something. I mean, I know it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a feature and it’s an option. I hope it’s off by default, but I really do not want something remapping either my eyes or anyone
⏹️ ▶️ John else’s eyes because I want to know that I’m looking at a person, not a, you know, CG augmented
⏹️ ▶️ John reconfigured, you know, suggestion of a person. It’s like it’s like a deep fakes.
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re all just gonna be deep fakes. It’ll just, you know, it’s the equivalent of holding up a puppet to your
⏹️ ▶️ John teleconferencing camera.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Currently, the way it currently is in the beta is it is off by default, and you have to enable it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for yourself, for your own eyes to be corrected to others. So if you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somebody who you FaceTime a lot with and they’re never looking at the camera, you can’t enable it for them. So I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s implemented in a responsible way. That being said, this is exactly the kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feature that if anyone else besides Apple did this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we would make fun of them relentlessly for how creepy and weird robots they are for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thinking of this feature. Like we as Apple people would make fun of them for this being over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the line. They’re too nerdy, they’re not thinking of humans.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the fact that Apple did it and we’re not making fun of them, I think exposes a real double standard that we have.
⏹️ ▶️ John Who’s we? I just made fun of them.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, I know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John We as a community… Or
⏹️ ▶️ John complained about them is worse. I’m not joking. I think this is seriously a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and I think also humans are really, really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good at detecting minor fluctuations,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco minor communication from eyes. We’re really good at it. Our brains are really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tuned to notice imperfections or differences or very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco subtle things about eyes. So to have our eyes be algorithmically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco altered in a video, it isn’t even just like a photo feature, like, I can almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see this making sense for selfies. It makes a lot more sense there, like when you have to like, oh, look at the lens, don’t look at the picture,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, that actually makes more sense to have that there, I think that’s a more common need. need, but for it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be altering how your eyes look in a live video stream
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is very much running risks of it getting things very slightly wrong
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you looking really disturbing and weird to the other end for it. Maybe even it may be just a frame
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or two, maybe it’s a split second that you look weird, but that’s gonna be really disruptive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if that happens. Like it’s going to be very unsettling to see as you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco having a video call with somebody, their eyes, you know, bug out or get weird. Like that’s…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they’re gonna do this at all, which I think is worth questioning, if they’re gonna do it at all,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has to work perfectly. And I think that’s just very unlikely. It’s not gonna work
⏹️ ▶️ Marco perfectly every time, and so that seems like a huge risk of like the downside
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when it fails is gonna be way worse. Even if it’s just for a split second, it’s to be way worse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the quality of that call than if it wasn’t there at all.
⏹️ ▶️ John Even if it worked perfectly though, like I think it doesn’t change the fundamental issue which is that you
⏹️ ▶️ John are presenting something that the other person thinks is your face but that you know is not. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John again unlike putting rabbit ears on or something where the other person is clear that you’re augmenting your face or doing something
⏹️ ▶️ John silly. This is going to look exactly like you just looking
⏹️ ▶️ John in a different direction and I feel like that’s not, you know, like, how does it affect your
⏹️ ▶️ John expression? Like the whole point of FaceTime is so you can see the other person’s face and see their expressions and emote
⏹️ ▶️ John in a higher bandwidth way than just audio. And I just don’t think we need anything messing that up. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John what, you know, what’s next a very subtle feature that also gets rid of my acne or something like,
⏹️ ▶️ John again, those things, those features are fun when it’s clear to both parties what’s going on. But these very
⏹️ ▶️ John subtle things that are like correcting for essentially a hardware flaw, the fact that the camera is off axis fix it in hardware.
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t try to fix my face in software.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, yeah, it’s just it’s it feels like it’s overstepping a line of like just creepiness
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and messing with like very intimate things that I don’t know. I don’t I don’t like this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think that I am nearly as bothered by this as you guys are, because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, maybe I just haven’t experienced it. And that’s why I’m not bothered by it. But I mean, 90%
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the time I’m on a face call, a FaceTime call, maybe even more than that, I’m looking at the screen and I’m emoting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with eyebrows or something like that. But in a perfect world,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what I’m doing really is looking at the other person. And if this thing can just shimmy my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eyes up so that it represents what I’m actually doing, I don’t think I’m bothered by that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey However, I do agree with what you guys were saying, that if Google did this, I would probably, knowing me, be making extreme
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fun of them. So I definitely have a double standard and I’ll be the first to admit it. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. It’s I don’t feel as bothered by this as you guys seem to do
⏹️ ▶️ John I was gonna throw another landmine here, which hasn’t come up yet, but could eye shape
⏹️ ▶️ John is a thing that people have strong feelings about and if in the course of trying to do its best effort to do With
⏹️ ▶️ John it to implement this feature They end up changing people’s eye shape that has all sorts of political and racial implications
⏹️ ▶️ John that are surely are unintentional But it’s like when you start altering people’s faces this stuff comes up
⏹️ ▶️ John or if it works better on white people’s faces than black people’s faces. This is, yeah, it’s just,
⏹️ ▶️ John is this where we want to go? Like move the camera or put two cameras, like here’s another
⏹️ ▶️ John one, put two cameras in and like synthesize the image out of the two cameras. Like, and I know you said, isn’t that the same thing? They’re altering
⏹️ ▶️ John your face or whatever. Like it’s, I feel like it can be done optically rather than
⏹️ ▶️ John take the picture and a depth map and then apply CG 3D magic.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like it’s great if you’re making a movie, right? With a bunch of actors, but not so great in my
⏹️ ▶️ John actual FaceTime call.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I wonder if they could do like a kind of slight tilt shift optic thing to make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the perspective change. But yeah, it seems like the risks of this going wrong
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are so great, like it’s so bad if it goes wrong, that it’s not worth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the benefit that it has if it goes
⏹️ ▶️ John right. Compare, by the way, compare to a similar feature that we’ve talked about a lot on the show, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is the fake depth of field, which some of us like and some of us don’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it has so many fewer downsides because A, it’s clear when it erases somebody’s
⏹️ ▶️ John ear that their ear is not actually gone. B, they can’t fix it optically because physics,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And C, it’s like it’s your own pictures. You’re not presenting
⏹️ ▶️ John anything to the world. If you wanna put a picture on Instagram with your ear blurred off, go ahead.
⏹️ ▶️ John No one is thinking that you actually have a transparent ear.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. I’m really looking forward to trying this. And like I said, I think I’m a lot less grumpy about it than
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you two, but who knows? Maybe I’ll try it and say, Oh, that is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good. So we’ll see what happens.
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#askatp: iMessage phone/email
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco you so much to Linode for hosting all of Overcast and for sponsoring our show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s do some Ask ATP.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And let’s start with Matthew Lohan. Do you guys start iMessage conversations
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from a phone number or email address and why? I think I start them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from an email address and the theory being that if I ever go overseas, which I totally do all the time,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I ever go overseas, then my iMessages are uninterrupted if I were to switch SIMs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So the idea being my phone number would then go away in theory unless I’m living the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fancy pants to SIM life, which I am not today. And so my phone number goes away
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then as of the time I made this decision years ago, Apple’s server-side
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stuff wasn’t smart enough to realize, oh, these are all part of the same account. Just shove them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to this other phone number. That may or may not be true today. I honestly don’t have a clue. But I am
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pretty darn sure that I do it from my email
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John address. Oh, no, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wrong. Look at that. I lied. Start new conversations from my phone number, which I almost read help. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidently did. But no, I guess I’m wrong. So either I’m doing this wrong, which is likely, or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am doing this right and don’t realize it. So I apparently don’t follow my own advice. Marco, what do you do?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Phone number all the way. Many issues that people have with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iMessage thread splits or multiple threads where there shouldn’t be multiple threads, many of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those issues stem from a discrepancy between whether people are communicating with your phone number or your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco email address. I was so tired of those issues cropping up whenever I would do this that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just disabled the email all together and just, all right, no, you can’t message me that way anymore. Now, you have to message me on my phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco number and that’s it. And that has solved most split thread issues on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iMessage for me. So that’s it. And I don’t worry about the international travel thing anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did screw that up in the past and that was not fun. But I don’t worry about it anymore because now when I travel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco internationally, I just do that whole day pass thing with AT&T where I just use my number over there and it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I think your split thread problem is not solved by what you think solved it. I think it was just solved
⏹️ ▶️ John by Apple doing a slightly better job, and this is why. I have the exact opposite stance. I am
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple ID all the way rather than phone number for a couple of reasons. First,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple IDs, they say email addresses, but it’s basically Apple ID when we’re talking about iMessage, are friendlier. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know what people’s friggin’ phone numbers are, and in theory they should all be in my address book and contacts, but sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John they aren’t. I might be messaged from somebody who I didn’t realize had never added in my contacts, and I have no idea who they are when I see their phone
⏹️ ▶️ John number. know, Apple IDs, email addresses are just a
⏹️ ▶️ John friendlier way to address someone in a series of numbers. Second, I would like to think
⏹️ ▶️ John that I am, and my message is not on the same page with me quite yet, but I would like to address the person, not the device,
⏹️ ▶️ John and certainly not the phone. And yes, I know you can get the phone on your Mac, you know, you can tell messages
⏹️ ▶️ John on the Mac to answer on your phone and all these other things like that, but the one thing that spans everything is your Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John ID, which any Apple device, your future glasses or anything like that or your iPad or your
⏹️ ▶️ John phone or your Mac or whatever else they come out with the Apple ID as far as I’m concerned represents
⏹️ ▶️ John the person. So when I want to I message the person I want to be from me a person
⏹️ ▶️ John with an Apple ID to them a person with an Apple ID and I don’t care what the heck their phone number is or whether they even own
⏹️ ▶️ John a phone. So you get a world where I’m doing this and Marco is only using his phone number. And how does that
⏹️ ▶️ John work? This is the problem, right? Some people want to always do it from their phone number. Some people always want to do it from their Apple ID.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s where you initiated as you, but sometimes when I when I message somebody, because I have everybody’s
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple ID isn’t no Marcos Apple ID and you know, his phone number in my thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John I get a choice of where I want to start messaging. Again, I don’t want that choice. I just want to message the person but it makes me choose.
⏹️ ▶️ John And when I choose I will never choose the phone because I’m like, well, some people have notifications on their phone and
⏹️ ▶️ John if they get a text on their phone, then it will, they think it’s important. So I want to use a less important one because it’s not super
⏹️ ▶️ John important. So I’ll just send it to their Apple ID and they can choose to receive that on their phone or not, and honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ John I have no idea how they’ve, you know, because in all the messages applications, you can choose receive messages in any
⏹️ ▶️ John of these seven email addresses or this phone number, and hopefully people set that up. But I’m not even sure. So anyway, I
⏹️ ▶️ John always pick start conversation from my Apple ID. And when I send text
⏹️ ▶️ John message, I message messages to Marco, I pick his Apple ID and not his phone number. So that must still
⏹️ ▶️ John be working because you get them and you respond, even despite the fact that you have your things set to initiate your conversations
⏹️ ▶️ John from phone number. Is that why we get thread splits? Maybe, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t like this. It’s a bad system because everyone can’t like just all agree to like pick
⏹️ ▶️ John one or the other. And I almost kind of wish that phone numbers didn’t exist anymore. It was just all computers
⏹️ ▶️ John and internet and we can get this all sorted out. but I don’t think I’m gonna live to see that.
#askatp: LFG sites for raiding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, next up on our list, Hassan Al-Amiri writes, has Syracuse
⏹️ ▶️ Casey used LFG sites for rating? Well, that sounds like it’s about destiny, so we can just skip it. Marco had a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey great idea for a thing that we can talk, no, I’m just kidding, John, you can have your moment. The clock
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think about this question? Well, yes, Marco, let’s start with you. Yes, sir,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the front of the room. I’m going
⏹️ ▶️ John yes. I’m going to guess no. Do you understand the question without having to Google anything?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Has Syracuse used LFG sites for raiding?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m assuming it’s some sort of like assistance site. I would guess it’s either having it like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey orchestrating meeting up with a raid party, or more likely it’s just like a description
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the raid and tips about how to complete
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. I’m going to guess it’s a new kind. LFG sites must be a new kind of configuration
⏹️ ▶️ Marco method for raid arrays. And so maybe it’s like, like you used to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like jumpers, like those little pin jumpers or dip switches on controllers and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco LFG sites are maybe it’s like a dot that you put a pencil in, and that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how you configure your rating. **Matt
⏹️ ▶️ John Stauffer** If it was that kind of rate, REID would be in all caps, right? Just like LFG? **Jason
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Flick** I mean, if it’s correct, but people often miscapitalize things. Like, your Mac! **Matt
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey was closest. Casey’s first guess was the
⏹️ ▶️ John closest to being correct. LFG stands for looking for group, although I often read it in my head as looking for a game.
⏹️ ▶️ John So when you have a multiplayer game like Destiny where you have to get together
⏹️ ▶️ John large-ish groups of people, not just one or two, to do an activity, like you can’t even, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t even start, you can’t even complete a raid without a full group of
⏹️ ▶️ John people unless you’re very good and experienced or overleveled for it or whatever. So it’s hard to get a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ John of people together. Try getting a group of six people together on the computer at the same
⏹️ ▶️ John time to play a game. And Marco’s talked many times about LAN parties, of trying to just get everyone in the same room to get all the map downloaded
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It literally takes like two thirds of any LAN party I ever had in high school.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and it’s easier now because
⏹️ ▶️ John in our own homes, but it’s harder because we’re all adults or whatever. So LFG sites are like a way for
⏹️ ▶️ John you to say, maybe me and one or two friends want,
⏹️ ▶️ John need a bunch of other people to make a full six. So it’s just, you know, it’s like, not like
⏹️ ▶️ John a dating website, but like similar to that, where you say what activity you want to do,
⏹️ ▶️ John how many people you have, depending on the site you can list all sorts of other criteria. Like a dating site where you can say
⏹️ ▶️ John we have microphones or we don’t have microphones, we accept cursing or we don’t accept cursing, this is our
⏹️ ▶️ John level in the game, these are the items we have. I remember LFG sites where people were listing things like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John Gjallarhorn only, which will make sense
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco people who are Destiny 1. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John ridiculous. Can you believe it? Gjallarhorn only? Yeah, a very level of details
⏹️ ▶️ John to try to say who you’re willing to group with. And all this gets back to the basic idea, which is playing,
⏹️ ▶️ John doing a raid or playing something like this with a group of people. It requires
⏹️ ▶️ John a certain amount of trust and communication in the group to be successful, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John why you want to do it with friends. And these sites exist because they want
⏹️ ▶️ John you to be able to put enough criteria, enough data into the thing so that you actually get matched with people
⏹️ ▶️ John who you will not immediately hate and who will be able to successfully communicate with you and
⏹️ ▶️ John who are on the same wavelength of what your expectations are. Like you don’t want to get matched with a bunch of people
⏹️ ▶️ John like say you’ve never done the raid. You don’t want to get a match with a super experienced group who is full of angry teenagers
⏹️ ▶️ John who are a not going to be patient with your lack of knowledge or
⏹️ ▶️ John skill about a thing and be are going to be like cursing at you and being jerks right. Or you don’t want to
⏹️ ▶️ John again it gets worse from there for all the various toxic behavior that we see in gaming, right? So it’s a difficult problem
⏹️ ▶️ John to solve. And these LFG sites, these exist mostly as
⏹️ ▶️ John third party things because for a first party to set up essentially matchmaking for raiding
⏹️ ▶️ John with people on microphones by default is as you would imagine a formula for, you know, just the outlet
⏹️ ▶️ John of all the worst toxic things in gaming culture. So Destiny for its history by default
⏹️ ▶️ John has basically not let you hear anyone’s voice unless you opt into it on both sides, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is the right choice. Right. There is a little bit of matchmaking and LFG style stuff in
⏹️ ▶️ John Destiny 2 with their iOS app and with their website. But that’s for
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I suppose you could use it for rating too. And they have the guided games beta that they’ve been doing. But bottom line is, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John extremely difficult problem to solve. Now, getting back to what I do,
⏹️ ▶️ John I have not used an LFG for rating because raids are very complicated, very difficult,
⏹️ ▶️ John very time consuming and there’s no way in hell I’m going to like to be able to carve out that amount of time
⏹️ ▶️ John in my life is difficult to begin with. I’m never going to carve that amount of time out and roll the dice and some random
⏹️ ▶️ John people I’m going to group with. So I’m always doing with friends or people I’ve played with before who I actually know are
⏹️ ▶️ John like reasonable human beings and who are on a similar level to me or willing to be
⏹️ ▶️ John patient with my lack of experience or whatever because I want to actually have fun. I’m not to the point of doing it. I’m not actually accomplishing
⏹️ ▶️ John it. I’m not actually saving the universe, I’d hope one is to hang out with people you enjoy hanging out with and are gonna have a good time,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? So I don’t use LG sites that I have used it for like Some activity that I can do with somebody
⏹️ ▶️ John off mic where I just need a couple of people to help me out I’ve used LFG sites and they built in
⏹️ ▶️ John Bungie one for destiny just to get random even that’s difficult because Then
⏹️ ▶️ John some people will join and they’ll just be idle and then you’ll have to kick them out But you feel bad for kicking them out and yeah
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, it’s much better when you play with either people you know or people that you know you can tolerate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel better for having known that. How about you, Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, yeah. I’ve raided all over my lifts and I feel great.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s only a matter of time before we get both of you playing Destiny. It’s going to be the special, special, special
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco scale. Yeah, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’ll be streaming it. Well, we’ve got we got me and you
⏹️ ▶️ John me you too Mike Tiff like we almost have a full six for a raid right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Can you play it on a late 2015 iMac on Mac OS? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John eventually because of the the stadia the stadia thing. Remember?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and can you play it on the switch?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, so then I am incapable of
⏹️ ▶️ John playing although no who knows with stadia If you can write a Stadia for the Switch, that’d be a hell of a thing. You’d have to jailbreak
⏹️ ▶️ John it and put Linux on it and then run Stadia on your Switch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There is a gaming PC in my house, but I refuse to touch it.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I’m mostly joking, because there’s quite a learning curve, but it would be fun
⏹️ ▶️ John to do a stream of watch someone who has no
⏹️ ▶️ John idea how to play Destiny try playing Destiny guided by me.
#askatp: <$1000 Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, our final Ask ATP of the day is going to be probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the biggest and gosh only knows how long this is going to take, so this could be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a while. But we had several people apparently write in. I had seen this personally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from BJ Nemeth who had written in so many words, can we do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a like cheap iPhone watch thing like Best Bang for the Buck for new or used Macs?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We got different suggestions, I guess, about what price point, but I think where we landed was, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what is the best bang for the buck for something from Apple that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is $1,000 or less? I will start the bidding, if you will.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think the—I’m going to break the rules two different ways. I have two answers because this is not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey top one. This is apparently top two. And my first answer is I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably the best bang for the buck is a refurbished 9.7 inch iPad Pro, Wi-Fi
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and cellular 256 gig, unfortunately in gold, for $700. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is the best bang for the buck. It is probably the most computer that you can get for under $1,000. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you could even add the keyboard thinger, if I’m not mistaken, and still keep it under $1,000. But if you force
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me to stick with a Mac, I’m going to somehow find $19 before tax
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in my couch and get a refurbished 13.3-inch MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro, the Escape version with 2.3 gigahertz processor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and unknown amounts of RAM. It just occurred to me. But hey, you know what? We’re sticking to close to a thousand bucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is eight gigs of RAM, which is fricking terrible, but it’s a thousand dollars, so that’s what you get.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, what do you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got? So I immediately reject your iPad suggestion, because if you want an iPad, get an iPad. But the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco question was about Macs. And if you’re looking for a Mac, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably are not gonna be satisfied by an iPad. So let’s set those right aside.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do agree, if an iPad satisfies your needs, they are better values than Macs in most configurations.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But anyway, what I found is, if you’re looking at new,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or quote new, nothing really seems to beat Apple’s refurbished deals.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The only downside with refurbished deals is that there are very few that are under $1,000. The closest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I found is actually $19 over. It’s $1,019. That’s what I was just looking at, yep. Yeah, the refurb 13.3
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Air. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Air, I was looking at a Pro, but it was also $1,019.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Basically, it’s the refurb version of anything that Apple charges $1,200 for, which is a pretty common price point.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would go with the MacBook Air, new generation, for $1,019, they have one that has 256 gigs of SSD
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at that price. One of the main issues I found trying to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco find things under $1,000 was storage size. Almost everything you find under
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that price is 128 gigs, and I cannot abide that. That is not enough. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would not recommend anybody ever buy anything that small. even 256 is smaller
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than I would buy. I would go 512 minimum if I could. But I recognize in this price category,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of times it’s less about what you want and more about what’s available. So, but yeah, I would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say 256 should be your minimum. And so what you tend to see in this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco price category is the MacBook Air. You see a lot of MacBook Airs. The downside is that most MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Airs that are in this price category were configured to be cheap. They were configured for like fleet sales
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or selling a big bunch of them to schools and everything. And those are all, almost always, 128 gig models.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s pretty hard to find good configurations that are this cheap, that are anywhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco near new. Now if you’re willing to go a little bit older, you can get the old model
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook Air, which I wouldn’t recommend because it’s non-retina, and again, just like we said last week, non-retina
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is non-starter for me. But you can still also get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco refurbs and Amazon’s quote renewed, which is not refurbished, but whatever, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can get that version of older models. I would not recommend any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the USB-C series laptops before the 2018 models, because only the 2018s and the 2019s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are capable of being fitted with the newest butterfly keyboard that has the improved materials.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And while we don’t know whether that’s gonna fix a lot of the problems, the combination of the membrane in the 2018s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and new materials in the 2019s, I think is more likely to have longevity
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than and to survive being refurbished and without any keys being flaky or failing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco soon. I think your chances are best of long-term reliability with 2018 or 2019 models.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there just simply aren’t that many of those in refurbished lots yet, because they’re just too new and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too expensive. So I would, if I was really sticking to this price cap firmly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would go back to the 2015 generation. The last one before the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey generation.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yep, the best laptop ever made. Now, the 13-inch version of that generation,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 13-inch 2015 MacBook Pro, is available, refurbished pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, in many places, or renewed, whatever they call it, many people sell those for around $700
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to $900 with reasonable configurations. Unfortunately,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of them are 8 gigs of RAM, but you can get some 256, some 512, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco occasionally you might see a terabyte, but that’s probably going to be over $1000. But you can get reasonable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco configuration to the 2015 13-inch for under $1000, often by a couple hundred dollars.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you’re willing to go a little bit over $1000, you can get my quote,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco best laptop ever, the 15-inch 2015 laptop. thing with 15-inch,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those are all 16 gigs of RAM, which helps a lot, and you can find more of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those that have been configured up to like 512 for storage. And I found, like there’s a list on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Amazon I found that is $1,188. So it’s, you know, $1,200 bucks instead of $1,000, but that gets you a 15-inch, 16 gigs of RAM, 512 gig disk. That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be really hard to beat for bang for the buck.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Of course you would go back to the 2015. Of course. John, save us.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What’s the right answer?
⏹️ ▶️ John I saw this question like 10 minutes before we started recording, so I didn’t have time to do anything,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I think laptops are bad.
⏹️ ▶️ John I waffled about suggesting this, but I think I’m going to do it. You can buy old cheese graters
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I’m going to suggest that, you’re like, old cheese
⏹️ ▶️ John graters can’t even run Catalina anymore. Why would you even buy that? The question is bang for the buck, and you get a
⏹️ ▶️ John hell of a lot of bang at these things. Let me, you know, so you mentioned like storage, you buy one of these things for a small price,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can put tons of storage in them. You can put a fairly powerful video card in it. Still today,
⏹️ ▶️ John there is the sub-genre of YouTube videos where someone takes a cheese grater and they fill it full of like high-end
⏹️ ▶️ John PC gaming parts and manage to get the drivers to work and it becomes this amazing machine that rivals any Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple ever makes. You know, it’s like a hot rod basically, right? So bang for the buck
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t mean necessarily like the computer that is the most sort of like middle of the road
⏹️ ▶️ John exactly what you would get to just do normal computer stuff. Bang could be like, what can you do? Can you hot rod it? Can you get
⏹️ ▶️ John lots of enjoyment out of it? Can you make it do amazing things that no Mac for any amount of money can do? And the
⏹️ ▶️ John answer to all that for a cheese grater is yes. And you have lots of cheese graters to choose from depending on your budget.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the good thing is, as someone tweeted at me earlier this week, if eventually you get
⏹️ ▶️ John bored of hot rodding and then sell all the parts or make a gaming PC out of them or something. You can haul this thing out and jam
⏹️ ▶️ John a new Mac mini inside there and make a Mac mini Frankenstein
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. I think I likened it to like if raccoons could come and made a home and like your grill in the backyard,
⏹️ ▶️ John you just open up the family raccoons in there. Someone shoved a Mac mini, a
⏹️ ▶️ John bunch of external hard drives, and I remember what else inside a cheese grater case. So cheese grater
⏹️ ▶️ John is obviously any cheese grater 2008. the 2012 models, any generation of any cheese grater,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can do amazing things with, so that’s my answer. And I didn’t even look up prices, but I’m pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John sure you can get them for less than $1,000 now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is not a good answer.
⏹️ ▶️ John Bang for the buck is a phrase that is very open to interpretation, is all I’m saying.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if you’re willing to skirt the monitor question and have it not be portable,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a refurb Mac Mini or maybe a used iMac would probably give you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more bang for the buck. That’d be my second choice, yeah, Mac Mini. Yeah, like, the problem, Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Minis don’t actually get that cheap, because a lot of people want cheap Mac Minis,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so the market for used ones, it’s propped up by so much demand, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco prices don’t actually go down very far.
⏹️ ▶️ John But for $1,000, you can get an okay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used one. Yeah, for $1,000, yeah, but then, but you still don’t have a monitor or anything. I
⏹️ ▶️ John feel like. Right, you have to get your monitor and keyboard, but this is just talking about the Mac. And like, all I’m saying is don’t get, I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, I guess we’re not talking about iMacs because it’s really gonna, really hard to find a decent one of those for under a thousand probably,
⏹️ ▶️ John laptops, like you all just recommended laptops and Casey tried to recommend an iPad. No one wants those laptops, they all have bad
⏹️ ▶️ John keyboards. Have you not been listening to the show? Get a desktop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac. The ones I recommended don’t have bad keyboards. You recommended 2018 or later USB-C. Or 2015 MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The 2018 keyboards are still not good. I agree, but if you’re looking for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something that is like at all recent, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John your option. I would take a Mac mini or that every day because I don’t like laptops. And the Mac mini,
⏹️ ▶️ John the modern Mac, if you can find one of the modern Mac minis for less than $1,000, it’s a fast computer. Just hook it up to whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John keyboard and mouse you got lying around.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple does actually sell refurbs of the modern Mac mini for under a thousand, but not much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco under a thousand. And the configurations are pretty bare bones at that level. The best you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get is a 256 SSD and eight gigs of RAM, which is fine
⏹️ ▶️ John unlike a laptop that’s not limiting to you because you can just connect an external drive and it’s not a burden because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John on your desktop and you’re not carrying it around yeah fair enough
⏹️ ▶️ John desktops they’re great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know you don’t have to convince me that but until you have to move them I actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey some wheels don’t even start yeah tell Marco about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that yeah just just get a wheeled cart and you’re all set to go Thank you to our sponsors this week, Squarespace,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ExpressVPN, and Linode. and we will see you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, Cause
⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ John John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him, Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you can find the show notes at atp.fm
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re into Twitter, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and T. Marco Armin,
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, they didn’t mean to
⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental, check the broadcast so
Neutral: C8 Corvette
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tell me, gentlemen, what you think about the Corvette C8.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s the new one, right? The mid-engine thing with the weird buttons? Mm-hmm. I’m not qualified
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to give any kind of intelligent commentary, so I’ll go first and let John clean it up afterwards. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have never driven a mid-engine car. I want to. I’m very curious what it feels like, how it handles. it handles.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve heard they’re amazing but I’ve never driven one so I’m by all accounts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that sounds like a good idea. I’ve never been tempted by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Corvette ever because it’s actually kind of not my style car in a number of ways. You know I don’t I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tend to like the kind of like you know old American brands the way they do things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t love the way they look they’re a little bit like loud and low and wide
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for me and the low part really kills it like Like I’ve said before, I really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco prefer sitting at like regular sedan height, not like down on the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ground like you do with a lot of like low sports cars. So it’s not really for me. I also would question
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the weird row of buttons on the inside from the pictures
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that floated around today. It looks like many of the controls of the car are on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a long strip of buttons that run basically where the passenger’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco arm would be in the middle of the car. If the driver had to operate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those, I feel like you have this long row of very similar looking buttons,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you would probably have to look at them a little bit to operate them. And they are so far, you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to turn your head so far out of the field of view of where you’re supposed to be looking to look at these buttons.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel like there’s no way to operate those buttons without crashing the car. So So there’s a number of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco issues with this that I have that make it probably not for me. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I also recognize if you’re looking for a fast, fun car for under 60
⏹️ ▶️ Marco grand, that’s actually probably going to be a pretty good value.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I don’t know. John, fix this.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was saying in the chat before that this car is like the Mac Pro of the
⏹️ ▶️ John automotive the world, but like times 1,000. Because literally for my entire life that I’ve been able
⏹️ ▶️ John to read and have read about cars, I’ve been reading about mid-engine Corvette. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s been rumored, it’s been prototyped, there’s been concept cars, it’s been shown in car shows or whatever. And the
⏹️ ▶️ John reason they talk about it is because Corvette is sort of America’s supercar.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a flagship sports car of our country, right? And for a very long
⏹️ ▶️ John time now, the flagship sports cars than supercars of other countries and the world have leaned
⏹️ ▶️ John heavily on the mid-engine design because it has many advantages in terms of weight distribution and acceleration. And you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John you got Porsche with the engine out the back or whatever. But anyway, it was an obvious thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John was always there on the table. It’s like, if Corvette, you want to be taken seriously as
⏹️ ▶️ John actual competition with these other cars, what you need to do is have a mid-engine model,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Which in some respects is a little bit, not silly, but
⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit overblown. Because the role, especially in recent years and most of my adult
⏹️ ▶️ John life for the Corvette, has been an extremely inexpensive car compared
⏹️ ▶️ John to other cars that get the same performance. So you would look at exotic cars,
⏹️ ▶️ John Porsches, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and they would cost
⏹️ ▶️ John huge amounts of money. And for 1 1⁄2, 1⁄4, 1⁄5, 1⁄8 the price, you
⏹️ ▶️ John could get a Corvette that matched the performance numbers. Granted, that Corvette would not be as nice, as they
⏹️ ▶️ John say, and the interior would probably be terrible. But you can’t argue with, like, again, bang for
⏹️ ▶️ John the buck. If you try to translate dollars into performance numbers,
⏹️ ▶️ John the Corvette has always been an amazing deal. So to say that, well, if you really want to compete, you have to be mid-engine,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like I’m already matching or beating their performance numbers for an eighth of the price and you’re telling me there’s something structural
⏹️ ▶️ John I need to do in my car to compete? And yes, it’s not as nice. usually it’s uglier and the interior is gross, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like that’s the role that Corvette has been playing. All that said, the reason it’s been rumored for my entire
⏹️ ▶️ John life and there’s been all these different concepts and various prototypes made is because it actually is
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of a good idea. You know, mid-engine has all sorts of packaging compromises that make it awkward
⏹️ ▶️ John for regular cars, but for your top end car, for your supercar, for your sports
⏹️ ▶️ John car that represents the whole US or whatever, yeah, it makes sense to make a mid-engine model. So I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John excited that they actually finally have made one again. This is not a surprise. We’ve all known the mid and
⏹️ ▶️ John Corvette. The C. H has been in the works for years and years, but now it is actually like out publicly out
⏹️ ▶️ John of disguise, blah, blah, blah, right? So it’s not. It’s not a surprise revelation. It’s just the culmination, like like the Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John at WWDC. Not really a surprise, although you know, this is less of a surprise because you know, we
⏹️ ▶️ John knew it was coming and we had pictures of beforehand anyway. Um, but this is a culmination of years
⏹️ ▶️ John and years, decades and decades of rumors, finally there is a mid-engine Corvette. Will this car be
⏹️ ▶️ John any good? I can tell you looks-wise, it’s not the most elegant thing, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it- Oh, stop. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not bad. I also have to say it does look like a Corvette, so success there. Because that’s difficult. You’re going to go from front engine
⏹️ ▶️ John to mid-engine. Is it still going to look like a Corvette? I think it still looks like a Corvette, down to the same features
⏹️ ▶️ John that I find ugly in existing Corvettes. It’s awkward in the ways the Corvettes usually are. In particular,
⏹️ ▶️ John I noticed that When you open the door, part of the scoop comes with the door in a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey particularly
⏹️ ▶️ John awkward way because it’s a different color. And I can just imagine that jamming into the car next to you and making weird little dents.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I give them kudos for finally making a mid-engine. I give them kudos for the amount of storage space they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John managed to add. You can tell it’s a US sports car, because they brag about being able to fit two golf
⏹️ ▶️ John bags in the trunk, which is a very important thing for dentists in Florida, that they need to
⏹️ ▶️ John fit two golf bags. which is who’s going to buy this car, right? The performance numbers will
⏹️ ▶️ John surely be great. The price is low. I think it is more attractive than the
⏹️ ▶️ John C7. In general, even though I don’t particularly like
⏹️ ▶️ John the styling of the C7 or the C8, I respect it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I understand what they’re going for. It’s just not to my taste. The interiors of Corvettes have always been awful.
⏹️ ▶️ John Despite Marco’s complaints about this interior, this is a much better interior than the ones we replaced. Doesn’t mean it’s still not bad.
⏹️ ▶️ John It still is. And you highlighted the worst aspect of it. It’s not just that those buttons are there, but that the whole
⏹️ ▶️ John structure is there. Forget about, yes, that’s a terrible place to put buttons, but take the buttons off
⏹️ ▶️ John of there. I still don’t want a wall between me and my passenger. I know they’re trying to make it seem like the cockpit is wrapping around
⏹️ ▶️ John you, but they’re just, yeah. But that said, there’s lots of good things about this car. They’ve taken advantage
⏹️ ▶️ John of the mid-engine structure. The nose is lower, the view out the front is better. Just
⏹️ ▶️ John the view out the rear is terrible because only Acura, or sorry, Honda, only Honda apparently understands
⏹️ ▶️ John that the ultimate luxury is being able to actually see out of your damn supercar. But maybe someday
⏹️ ▶️ John everyone else will figure that out. But overall, I give it a thumbs up. I think Corvette buyers
⏹️ ▶️ John waited long enough for it. I think Corvette buyers will like it. And I think it is better than the C7 it replaces.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s still no Ferrari, but come on.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So my dad has a C7, and I’ve driven it a couple times, very briefly. I love that car,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it is very much a product of where it comes from. Like the interior
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a very nice Chevy interior. And I don’t mean to be that snooty guy, but I’m gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be that snooty guy. Like my Volkswagen, which was like a third the price
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of his car or something ridiculous like that, has in my opinion, much nicer materials
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and generally speaking, a better interior than his.
⏹️ ▶️ John And not just nicer, but better ergonomically. Like better in all ways than interior can be better. Your little
⏹️ ▶️ John hatchback thing destroys your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey interior. He says with such distaste.
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like your Volkswagen rabbit has a better interior in all aspects than your dad’s supercar.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But yeah, you know, it is it is very it is very American in all the best and all the worst ways.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s very shouty. It’s very loud. It’s reasonably big, given it’s only a two passenger car.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it is extremely fast, just stunningly fast.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, his car is 650 horsepower, which is quite a bit more than
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the initial run of C8s is going to have at 495. Paul
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, what’s the base engine? There’s never been a Corvette with a base engine at 490 horsepower. Just
⏹️ ▶️ John wait for the actual good versions of this car to come out, but they’ll have plenty of horsepower.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, but dad’s car is also a seven-speed manual. Yes, seven with three pedals
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I’ve read a very fascinating article about this and I’m gonna have to dig up the link and put it in the show notes But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there was an interview I think on road and track with a couple of the engineers who worked on the project and they were saying that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Making a car mid-engine is actually considerably harder than you would initially think which once you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stop and think about it actually does make sense but one of the things that they were saying was because of the way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the driver, where the driver sits, their feet are way up next to the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tire, the front tire. And that means that in order to offer a manual
⏹️ ▶️ Casey transmission and thus have a third pedal, that legitimately might bump into the space
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they need for the car to be able to turn. And that was just fascinating
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me. And so if you ask me, the likelihood of this being offered with a traditional manual is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey effectively zero. I mean, I’ll never say never on an infinite timescale gentlemen You never know what’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey happen, but it sounds like it’s not gonna happen, which is really too
⏹️ ▶️ John bad And surprise you find that excuse compelling given the long history of mid-engine
⏹️ ▶️ John cars with three pedals that have managed to deal with this packaging Issue like maybe the design
⏹️ ▶️ John in the design they ended up with fine But honestly like you know The manual wasn’t a high priority
⏹️ ▶️ John as it shouldn’t be because you can’t even get manuals and supercars anymore So I feel like they just needed some kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of excuse to throw to the people who are, you know, the Corvette owners have to get over their
⏹️ ▶️ John anger about this, just like the Ferrari owners did, just like Lamborghini owners did, just like the BMW owners are currently in the process
⏹️ ▶️ John of, right? The manuals are slowly disappearing. And this excuse about the pedal placement is one of the weakest I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John ever heard. Just admit that you’re not doing a manual for the same reason Ferrari doesn’t, because the other
⏹️ ▶️ John transmission is faster and better and just, you know, manuals are the best.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m going to cry now, but you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John right. This is going to throw off my car sense even more like my my car sense when like out
⏹️ ▶️ John of the corner of my eye and distance I see a car and I think it might be a good car and it’s always like oh it’s just a Corvette like because
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re low and they’re wide and and often they’re red right and so they they do like from
⏹️ ▶️ John very far distance like often the heat haze you catch a glimpse of it coming in the opposite direction on the highway
⏹️ ▶️ John and for a second you think it might be like some kind of exotic car but it’s just a Corvette right this is going to destroy that like
⏹️ ▶️ John they even have like Ferrari look like wheels on it because that’s a front engine car. Again, you can’t tell from
⏹️ ▶️ John like this mid-engine red C8 is going to look so much like a Ferrari
⏹️ ▶️ John from a distance. It’s going to have to be 200 yards closer to me before I figure out that it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Corvette. But why is that a problem? I mean, if it looks the
⏹️ ▶️ John part. Because Corvettes are a dime a dozen. They’re everywhere. I see so many of them and
⏹️ ▶️ John I see far fewer Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Aston Martins or whatever. It’s more exciting to see the more rare
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cars. I mean, I guess, but I don’t know. The more I think about it, the more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I could, and this is, I should just stop talking, but here we go. The more I think about it, the more I think that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in many ways, this is the better car than a Ferrari or an Aston or what have you, and hear me out before you jump all over me. For
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a golf club carrying. Yeah, for sure. Would you stop? So the reason being, I still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have after effects. I don’t want to say PTSD, cause that’s really insensitive, but I still have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like the scars from, from having a car that was unaffordable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to maintain. Now, to be fair, you’ve got to pay to play, et cetera, et cetera. Yes, if you’re going to buy a BMW, if you’re going to buy an Aston,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you’re going to buy a Ferrari, you have to sign up for the fact that it is going to be unaffordable to maintain that car
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because in the case of some BMWs and every Aston and every Ferrari, they are unaffordable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get in the door. But I just find it so compelling and so interesting and so cool
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you can spend roundabouts of $60,000, which to be fair, is a pile
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of money. But as compared to its competitors in that interview that I’ll dig up for the show notes, They were saying that compared
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the 911 Turbo, which is like $200,000 these days, they compared to the Ferrari 488, which is what, like a quarter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey million, half a million, something like that? These are the cars that they were using as a benchmark for the C8. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this thing comes in at $60,000. And the best part is, the parts have got to be effectively
⏹️ ▶️ John cars. Yeah. I think you’re going to be disappointed in exactly how much those tires and wheels cost,
⏹️ ▶️ John for example, and how much those brake
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco pads cost. Yes, obviously.
⏹️ ▶️ John Comparatively? those other years, but it’s more expensive than it’s more.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think they’re going to be more expensive than that parts would be on a $60,000 BMW. Let’s put it that way. Although you do point out,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, one important factor with this, which I think is the most important part of this car
⏹️ ▶️ John you have, as far as I’m aware, never been able to buy a big
⏹️ ▶️ John boy real mid engine sports car for this little money relative to inflation. Yeah, there’s the MR2
⏹️ ▶️ John and the Fiero and stuff like that, but no one looked at those and like they were not the big boy cars. Like it was a fun
⏹️ ▶️ John little thing. Look, it’s a little mid-engine thing. It might catch on fire. This is a full-fledged, full-sized,
⏹️ ▶️ John normal, mid-engine car for $60,000. That has never existed as
⏹️ ▶️ John far as I’m aware in this country. And it is like bang for the buck. Corvette has always been an
⏹️ ▶️ John amazing deal, bang for the buck. And this is just like a new category of bang for the buck. Because there was
⏹️ ▶️ John no car in the market like this before. It’s completely unprecedented. So if
⏹️ ▶️ John you are shopping for a mid-engine sports car, This undercuts the competition by
⏹️ ▶️ John multipliers of 2x, 3x, 4x. And yeah, you’re going to see where that price is missing. And you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going to feel it because it’s 3,300 pounds or whatever. But who cares? It is really in a class
⏹️ ▶️ John of its own in terms of value for money. That doesn’t make it a better car than a Ferrari for
⏹️ ▶️ John sure. But it makes it a better deal than pretty much all of its competition.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and I do think you could get a Cayman, especially lightly used for $60,000-ish. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John saying yeah, until you add a radio and then it’s 80 grand
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey like you before you know, I’m saying lightly
⏹️ ▶️ John lightly used Yeah I mean that was the thing is this will crush a Cayman like this Even the base
⏹️ ▶️ John model is going to destroy a Cayman in all performance metrics and it looks you know cooler
⏹️ ▶️ John Like I think I think the Cayman is a better car, but like in any Actual
⏹️ ▶️ John way that you can measure other than you know, well other than ergonomics, I suppose
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, this is going to destroy it because they, this, like the Corvette is not playing in the little leagues. It is not
⏹️ ▶️ John the little brother to the nine 11, right? It is the top tier thing. So it is top tier and all the ways
⏹️ ▶️ John they can make it top tier except for price. And I don’t, I mean they’re saying sub three seconds
⏹️ ▶️ John for zero to 60 for the base model engine when they come out with the inevitable 750 horsepower
⏹️ ▶️ John version of this car, it’s going to be nuts.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I agree. I don’t know. I just think this is super cool. Um, I’m really excited about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think I would ever buy one, in no small part because I don’t have $60,000 laying around, but this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is not a car meant for me, or at least certainly not me at 37 years old and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey without a mustache, because I think that’s required. But it’s something that I think is super cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t agree with your turning up of your lip, John, when you see that it’s just a Corvette.
⏹️ ▶️ John cool. John Greenewald Because they’re everywhere. They’re common. If there was a million Ferraris around, I wouldn’t be as excited about seeing
⏹️ ▶️ John them either. It’s the rarity.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, I take your point, but I don’t know. I don’t think I live in as, is it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey affluent? Did I get that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John right? Oh, God. God, every time I try so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hard. I don’t live in as rich an area as you, John. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John have dentists too, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I mean. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey yeah. In case he has affluenza.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I have affluenza. Oh, God. Every time I overthink
⏹️ ▶️ John problem. They’re probably rare around Marco because no one would slum it in Viacor, better. I mean, it’s just the three dentists
⏹️ ▶️ John that have them, but around me, just they’re everywhere.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think honestly, I think it’s kind of more like a red stater kind of thing. Like I hardly ever
⏹️ ▶️ John see them. I saw it. I mean, to give you an example, Long Island. Corvettes are everywhere. Really?
⏹️ ▶️ John Every generation, tons and tons. Because there’s people who would come into money,
⏹️ ▶️ John like the suburbs, right? But they’re not ridiculously wealthy. So what’s the best all-American
⏹️ ▶️ John car you can get? Or you want performance for the money? There are a lot of Mustangs, a lot of Camaros. And yes, all the dentists
⏹️ ▶️ John and old, bald white men are driving Corvettes of all generations.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Excuse me. It’s bald and mustachioed white men. Thank you very
⏹️ ▶️ John much. The mustache has faded with the 70s. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kidding. I’m kidding. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kidding. I’m just people who once did have a mustache in the 70s. I
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a game you can play. If you were on the East Coast and you see a Corvette, make a bet with the person
⏹️ ▶️ John with you that the person driving will be a white man with white hair. You will be right a lot