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

339: Ketchup Momentum

Cheese graters, condiment battles, competitive electric cars, then maybe some tech stuff if we have time.

Episode Description:

Sponsored by:

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

Chapters

  1. Cheese and ketchup
  2. Sponsor: Mack Weldon (code ATP)
  3. More on Apple Card
  4. Follow-up: Streaming JSON
  5. Sponsor: Casper (code atp2019)
  6. Upgrade took bets on us
  7. Apple at Black Hat
  8. Press any key to turn on
  9. “New” LG 5K
  10. Sponsor: Linode (code atp2019)
  11. #askatp: Non-Apple tech
  12. Neutral: Tesla competition
  13. #askatp: Non-Apple tech
  14. #askatp: Portrait lock
  15. #askatp: Zelda order
  16. Ending theme
  17. Automattic buys Tumblr

Cheese and ketchup

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But rest assured, Casey, we will get paid back because we will hear from every Hunts fan.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All six of them.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. I’m now in fear that, like, it’s another one of those

⏹️ ▶️ John mustard things. We’ll see. I would be stupefied, but you never know.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Even you would be stupefied if other people shared your bad taste.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey seriously. That’s basically what it boils down to at this point. John, tell

⏹️ ▶️ Casey me about your cheese grater. I’m hoping that this is your computer that has finally died. I mean, I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean that it’s still going strong, but I’m assuming this is about your literal cheese grater.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s about one of my literal cheese graters, the one I talked about last week, the electric one.

⏹️ ▶️ John Good news, bad news. Good news, I know what the problem was. Bad news, the

⏹️ ▶️ John problem was all my fault. This shows the danger of having the wrong mental

⏹️ ▶️ John model. I don’t, I don’t know why I had this in my head, but I had

⏹️ ▶️ John this idea in my head that this grater, that you’d get it and like, I guess, like all the other kitchen

⏹️ ▶️ John appliances that I have that use electricity, you plug it into the wall with

⏹️ ▶️ John a cord and you use it, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Because it’s- That’s exactly what I thought. It’s a plug-in

⏹️ ▶️ John appliance, like my blender and like the toaster, the immersion

⏹️ ▶️ John mixer. Like I have plenty of like the, just, but anyway, that was the wrong mental

⏹️ ▶️ John model. And that led me down a terrible path. So,

⏹️ ▶️ John the, you know, this is a German product, but the manual did have

⏹️ ▶️ John English in it, because manuals have multiple languages. And I did look at the manual, but like ad banner blindness,

⏹️ ▶️ John my eyes just slid right over the relevant sections. And I was just looking for, what is the voltage? What

⏹️ ▶️ John is the output of the AC-DC converter? Like I just kept reading that and just was ignoring

⏹️ ▶️ John the fact that this device is supposed to be used handheld, yes, but not plugged

⏹️ ▶️ John in. it has a rechargeable battery inside it. Now I saw the thing about rechargeable batteries in the manual and

⏹️ ▶️ John I kept dismissing it because, well, for really weird reasons. One, obviously, was the mental model

⏹️ ▶️ John thing. It’s like, yeah, yeah, I don’t care about battery. I’m not using a battery power, I’m using it plugged in. I don’t need a battery for it. I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John need it to be usable on the go. I just, you know, plugged in is fine. And the second thing is the battery was nickel metal

⏹️ ▶️ John hydride or whatever it is, NIMH, right? And I associate that chemistry

⏹️ ▶️ John with those little rechargeable like AA or AAA cells that you can get, Right?

⏹️ ▶️ John Because back when I was, I said it was NICADs before that, which were terrible, NICADs were gross.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey And

⏹️ ▶️ John then the nickel, am I getting it right? Nickel metal hydride something?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco NICAD was the one where, if any of our listeners were children of the 90s and you had any kind of remote control

⏹️ ▶️ Marco vehicle and it had the big yellow rectangle that was like six double A sized cells glued together with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like yellow wrap, that’s NICAD. Pretty much everything we had that was rechargeable as

⏹️ ▶️ Marco children in our age group was probably NICAD. They had terrible problems. They had memory

⏹️ ▶️ Marco effect, they didn’t hold that much power. It was, they were a big pain in the butt. They were

⏹️ ▶️ John very fanky. And so when I saw all these references in the manual to

⏹️ ▶️ John nickel metal hydride batteries, I’m like, well, maybe there’s a place where you can put in a rechargeable battery, or maybe it’s telling you

⏹️ ▶️ John this would be the equivalent, but I don’t wanna put in a bunch of little double A looking cells in there. I’m just gonna use it plugged

⏹️ ▶️ John in. And I just was completely ignoring the fact that it’s telling me this

⏹️ ▶️ John is not, it’s a rechargeable device. So the sole purpose of the thing

⏹️ ▶️ John that you plug into it is to charge the battery, which explains all the behavior

⏹️ ▶️ John I was seeing. I got out of the box and I plugged it in and I tried running it and it just ran for like,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it just turned a little bit and then died because it was dead, the batteries were dead in the box, even though it says, oh, it comes out of the

⏹️ ▶️ John box with a charge after I went back to the menu. But obviously that’s not true. It comes out of the box with no charge. And

⏹️ ▶️ John plugging it in, it doesn’t immediately charge it. And it doesn’t, it’s not like a pass-through effect

⏹️ ▶️ John where like on a laptop where even if the battery is dead, once you get past a certain point, you can just use it powered. That’s not how this device

⏹️ ▶️ John works at all. In fact, the manual tells you that you shouldn’t use it plugged in, although it’s not clear whether they’re just telling you

⏹️ ▶️ John that just because it helps them avoid liability to say, look, we told you not to use it plugged in because that’s dangerous,

⏹️ ▶️ John who knows? But anyway, they tell you not to use it plugged in and you do have to charge it. Unfortunately, by the time I had figured

⏹️ ▶️ John this out, I had already gone through the procedure I described last show where I, you know, tried different adapters

⏹️ ▶️ John and they didn’t do anything and it would only move like a little bit, which in retrospect is like the longer I would pause

⏹️ ▶️ John scratching my head between trying it, the more charge would fill the battery, right? And then it would move like a little bit

⏹️ ▶️ John more. But remember I got the third party adapter

⏹️ ▶️ John and I cranked up the voltage and eventually fried, I’m assuming fried the batteries inside there.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey So I did actually let it charge

⏹️ ▶️ John overnight to see how much charge I can get into the batteries. And the answer is about 10 to 15 seconds.

⏹️ ▶️ John So after an entire night charging, it, I, you know, unplugged it from the charger,

⏹️ ▶️ John picked it up, pulled a little trigger and went, were were were for like. 15, 20 seconds, then petered out. So I

⏹️ ▶️ John killed the batteries. I as a this is a rechargeable battery device and the batteries are

⏹️ ▶️ John dead because I killed them. The

⏹️ ▶️ John so and the other bit of good news, the goodness is I figured out what the problem is. The other bit of good news is that reading

⏹️ ▶️ John more of the reviews of these type of devices, everybody hates them. Like it’s for for for the purpose

⏹️ ▶️ John that I want it. They’re like, this is great. if you just want to like grate some cheese onto your dish that you’re eating right now, but

⏹️ ▶️ John if you want to grate a whole bunch of cheese, which is exactly what I want to do, I want to like do it batch mode, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John Just let me do a whole bunch up front. It’s terrible for that because you have to, you know, it’s the mechanical

⏹️ ▶️ John disadvantage design where the lever is working against you and you have to sort of hold pressure on this thing for a really long

⏹️ ▶️ John time as that thing slowly wears and your hand gets tired from pressing because it’s, you know, it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John inefficient. So anyway, I’ve kind of given up on all these electric models now now that I’ve

⏹️ ▶️ John learned my lesson for frying this one and learned that in general, people don’t like these for the purpose that I want them.

⏹️ ▶️ John And so I started looking again at the industrial ones. I found an industrial one for the low, low price

⏹️ ▶️ John of $300 and I started thinking about it.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh my God.

⏹️ ▶️ John But it makes the, it looks really cool, but it’s a Whole Foods problem. It grates the stuff to look exactly

⏹️ ▶️ John like it comes from Whole Foods and I don’t want it grated the way it comes from Whole Foods. That’s too fine for me. So I’m just back

⏹️ ▶️ John to my mechanical ones and I’m back to babying them. And when all my mechanical ones die, I

⏹️ ▶️ John suppose I’ll try to build some kind of Frankenstein monster out of the parts of them. I don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, you know. That’s amazing. On the one side, and I feel like I’ve made this speech 100 times,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I do understand and admire how particular you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey are about the things and the tools in which you use. But most of me is so thankful

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I just don’t care that much. And I’m so glad that I don’t have to stress about these sorts

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John of things. But

⏹️ ▶️ John you do. It’s just that the things that you have things that you’re used to in your life, whatever they may be, a brand of ketchup, say someone

⏹️ ▶️ John replaced your ketchup. I’m assuming it’s Heinz because it’s always Heinz in this country. But say someone said, no, you’re not going to have Heinz anymore. You’re

⏹️ ▶️ John going to have a different kind of ketchup. And you’d be like, but I like Heinz. Like, well, this is ketchup. It’s the same thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John And you’d be like, what if Heinz like went out of business and all you get was Hunt’s? And it’s it’s close,

⏹️ ▶️ John but you’d be like, but I just want Heinz. I’d be like, oh, Casey, you’re so particular about your ketchup. It’s not, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John just, you just want it the way you want it. And just because you can get it easily and it is always available doesn’t mean

⏹️ ▶️ John you have any less of a preference for it. You don’t notice until, if we told you, you could never have Heinz ketchup again.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just Hunt’s forever. You’d be like, oh, I suppose I could get used to it. But boy, it’d be great to have some Heinz. And some Heinz would be

⏹️ ▶️ John available, you know, at an Etsy store for $75. You’d be like, wow, Heinz ketchup, I’m going to get that. And then we’d be having the same discussion

⏹️ ▶️ John about you.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cody Reifer For the record, I prefer Hunt’s 100% natural ketchup. Thank you very much. Paul Matz What? What? You’re a monster.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey monster. Oh my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco God,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey how it’s the it’s the natural

⏹️ ▶️ John stuff. This is the this is the most startling of revelation. The show is ever real. Oh my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco God,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John no,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what is wrong with you? Oh my God, I thought we’ve we found at the bottom of your bad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco taste every like every few weeks. We discover some new way

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in which John is like incredibly particular and picky

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John and then that’s what my whole point of this thing is.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not incredibly particular. It’s just that I’ve I’ve been using this one type of way to great cheese for a long time

⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s way I like it. And if you told me I can’t ever grade it like that again, I get sad. And so

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m looking for alternatives.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Paul Matz Right. But then every few weeks, we also learn about some new way in which Casey has just terrible

⏹️ ▶️ Marco taste. Jared Polin His favorite

⏹️ ▶️ John soda? RC Cola.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Paul Matz I honestly don’t understand why this is so terrible.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Why is this so terrible?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Just because it doesn’t say Heinz on it? It’s the natural ketchup, man. It’s better for me,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey isn’t it? No preservatives.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Jared

⏹️ ▶️ John Polin What’s natural about it exactly? Paul Matz

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know. Jared Polin The natural ketchup is tomato paste. Like there’s no… Paul Matz Well, fair. Which, by the way, honestly,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I gotta say, like as I’ve been cutting out a lot of sugar for my life, tomato paste just by itself, which if you can find one without

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of sugar in it, which is very difficult, but although, and I have found the kind that comes in like toothpaste

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tubes that’s like the super concentrated kind, that seems to be the only kind you can buy that doesn’t seem

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have added sugar. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John not any more concentrated than the stuff in the can, but yeah, the tube is more convenient because you can reseal it, and because you never use it all, you

⏹️ ▶️ John know?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like anywhere that you would use ketchup, listeners out there, try just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco using that toothpaste tube tomato paste. It’s way less sugar. It tastes better to me because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s more of the savory tomato flavor. Tomato paste by itself is delicious and that’s most of what

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ketchup

⏹️ ▶️ John is basically is that plus sugar. It’s a lot of sugar though it makes it and vinegar. There’s two big things you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John missing from tomato paste that make ketchup

⏹️ ▶️ Marco different. Tomato paste is a delicious condiment and I suggest you try it. Sure

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m yes it is but it’s not a substitute for ketchup because the main flavors in ketchup are vinegar and sugar and neither

⏹️ ▶️ John of which is president. So anyway, Casey loves RC. We’re gonna

⏹️ ▶️ John think all the things he loves RC Cola.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, no, don’t you? Actually, that is that is the way you got me. I was gonna make

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a Velveeta joke here in a minute. But the real way you’ll get a burr up my hindquarters is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey by taking away my diet coke.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John That was

⏹️ ▶️ John that was the generic version of Velveeta. Is there a generic like cheese food version of Velveeta?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think Velveeta is the cheap cheese.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Anyway, if

⏹️ ▶️ John you’re interested in quote unquote less artificial, Heinz does make, is what we get. We get Heinz without corn

⏹️ ▶️ John syrup. I mean, it’s plain old sugar instead of corn syrup, so not much better, but if you’re worried

⏹️ ▶️ John about corn syrup, you can get Heinz without it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and I’ve tried a lot of fancy ketchups. I’ve tried the various organic ones you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco get at Whole Foods. I’ve tried the Sir Kensington ones. Sir Kensington makes really good mayonnaise and mayonnaise-based

⏹️ ▶️ Marco products. all the other ketchups I’ve tried, none of them have been as good as Heinz

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at just beating ketchup. Like if you’re going to have ketchup, have ketchup. Have like the right ketchup. And that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Heinz, simple as that.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, so the thing with Heinz, and it’s probably also true of Coke and Pepsi and RC or whatever, it’s not that there is a quality

⏹️ ▶️ John difference, really. It’s just that there is a default that everyone gets used to. And when they think of ketchup, they think of Heinz.

⏹️ ▶️ John And anything that doesn’t taste like Heinz is non-default, and it’s therefore wrong in some

⏹️ ▶️ John way. Right? It’s just it’s just what you get used to. I feel like ketchups are probably more or less all the same, but because

⏹️ ▶️ John their formulation differs in in any discernible way and Heinz is the default, Heinz is the

⏹️ ▶️ John massive default. It’s like, oh, well, hunts is bad because it doesn’t taste like ketchup because ketchup is Heinz and Heinz is ketchup.

⏹️ ▶️ John But maybe there’s some sort of hunts line, like the Mason Dixon line somewhere where we switch

⏹️ ▶️ John over. I don’t, you know, it’s where you switch to Velveeta and hunts.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t even want to think about where that line is.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apparently it’s encircling my house is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John where it is.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yes. Nowhere else has this preference. Well, now you’re raising your children to be hunts children because

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re going to be like ketchup equals hunts. What did no…

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but if you ever

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey eat

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fast food anywhere, that’s all hot.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s fine as well. It’s just when we’re in the house, we want something that is marginally more

⏹️ ▶️ Casey natural and marginally…

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John But

⏹️ ▶️ John what’s more natural about it? I don’t understand the more natural part.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Here’s the ingredients to 100% natural tomato ketchup. tomato concentrate, less than 2%

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of onion powder, garlic powder, and natural flavors. Tomato concentrate made from vine-ripened tomatoes, sugar,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey distilled vinegar, salt, less than 2% of onion powder, garlic powder, and natural flavors.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ John all you need. But what is it that’s in Heinz that’s…

⏹️ ▶️ Casey High fructose corn syrup, my friend.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but you can get Simply Heinz that’s just the sugar.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know what? I bet if you put both of them in front of me, I wouldn’t know the difference. I’m sure I would like that just as much.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco watch. My favorite thing is if you go if you look look up Heinz ingredients you get to this page on the Heinz

⏹️ ▶️ Marco website that has sections of all the different types of ketchup and you can jump to the top section is classic.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The middle section is labeled health and wellness and there are 11 varieties of Heinz

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ketchup under health and wellness, including no salt added, no sugar added.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco How do they do that? They put some crazy crap like sucralose in there. Oh Oh God, it’s sucralose. Oh no!

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh my God, they have sucralose ketchup. Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John why? So the Heinz I get is tomato concentrate, vinegar, sugar,

⏹️ ▶️ John salt, onion powder, spice, natural flavoring. It’s the same ingredient list.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it is. I’m not saying I have a specific allegiance to Heinz. It’s just that that’s what I know

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that we have gotten and have felt was fine. So we just get it again out of momentum more than anything else. I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not saying it’s better than Heinz. I’m not saying it’s- You

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have ketchup momentum?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yes,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John it’s so hard to buy Heinz.

⏹️ ▶️ John Speaking of top four, it’s a great band name. Yeah. Oh, God, I…

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Can we please get off of the subject before I… I just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco can’t believe… I’m already dreading the feedback.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t think anybody bought Huntz or any… Casey’s the one.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey There are dozens of us, John. Dozens. I am just not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to look at Twitter for like a month after this because I just I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I don’t know. I for

⏹️ ▶️ John all I know it’s like mustard on on on fast food burgers. For all I know it’s like the whole rest of the country does

⏹️ ▶️ John it and just where I grew up doesn’t and I’m the weird one.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No I don’t think that’s I don’t think that’s true. I think I’m probably the weird one but I think we’re I myself included I think we’re

⏹️ ▶️ Casey all over blowing my loyalty to Heinz or excuse me to hunts over anything

⏹️ ▶️ Casey else. It’s just the thing that we got the most recently that we

⏹️ ▶️ Casey knew the entire family liked and was marginally more healthy than the other alternatives. I am confident

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that if I tried the Heinz whatever simply whatever it is you called out a minute ago, I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey bet you, like I said, I would not be able to tell the difference or perhaps would even prefer it. So again, I think we are

⏹️ ▶️ Casey overblowing my enthusiasm for hunts. It’s just,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John it just happened to me. It just happened. Well, now that we thoroughly

⏹️ ▶️ John buried my point, which was pushing back Casey’s idea that I’m super duper particular about everything. Everybody has the stuff

⏹️ ▶️ John that they’re used to, and everyone doesn’t think about it as long as it continues to exist. And I mentioned name

⏹️ ▶️ John brands because that’s the thing we just assume. Well, you know, Coca Cola will always continue to exist. People who don’t remember

⏹️ ▶️ John new Coke anyway, there are, but but even then, like it didn’t, you know, there

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s some sort of continuity where you get used to stuff. And if suddenly that continuity after decades, someone

⏹️ ▶️ John says that thing that you’re used to in your life, you’re not going to be able to have that anymore.

⏹️ ▶️ John You would seek alternatives, not because you’re super picky about it, but just because it seems like, well, I found a thing

⏹️ ▶️ John that I like and there is not a real… I’m not choosing to get rid of it

⏹️ ▶️ John for health reasons or some other reason. It’s being taken from me.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah, but that’s not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey your problem though.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John It is. No, no, no. The

⏹️ ▶️ John way my cheese is graded is being taken from me. It’s like, well, how about we grade it slightly differently? It’s like, well, that

⏹️ ▶️ John way has always been available to me. Example, I could buy it from Whole Foods and I don’t like that way as much as my way, which is why I continue

⏹️ ▶️ John to do it my way.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but but that’s the thing is is for me for let’s take the ketchup example

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you subbed another approximately equivalent ketchup to this one I wouldn’t care

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John notice. Well then pick Velveeta. We

⏹️ ▶️ John sub we sub another fake cheese that doesn’t taste quite like Velveeta. You’d be like but I want the real thing. I want the Velveeta.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I would I wouldn’t I wouldn’t go out of my way bending over backwards

⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to a German uh

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Amazon. You would totally buy

⏹️ ▶️ John German Velveeta.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey No I would not. But

⏹️ ▶️ John anyways… And it keeps really well, so it’ll be no

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey problem. That is true.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey There is the advantage there. But no, I think the thing that’s the delineation

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for me is that you are so hyper-particular about the kind

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of cheese that is emitted from this device and the mechanism by which the device emits

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the cheese that it’s not just being able to switch from one to the other. Like a normal amount of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey fussiness is, you You know, oh, I would like to grate my own cheese, but the eventual end product,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey eh, doesn’t really matter. I just want it to be grated right then and there. That to me is like an acceptable level of fussiness.

⏹️ ▶️ John But I don’t even have that pickiness. If you notice, a lot of people will say that, you know, you don’t want to pre-grate it because then it loses something.

⏹️ ▶️ John I pre-grate it. So I don’t have that pickiness at all. I

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey pre-grate. Can you just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey take the spirit of my point, please, for the love of God, is that you are so fussy

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about the exact specific size and spiral pattern, and everything else, it has

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be exactly 4.6 millimeters wide and exactly 7.9

⏹️ ▶️ Casey millimeters tall,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John and if it’s anything else it’s bull. I

⏹️ ▶️ John only care about the finished product. If something can get close, I would be fine. The problem is the finished products that I’ve been able to get from

⏹️ ▶️ John any other mechanisms aren’t even close. So that’s the problem. If I could find my hunts to

⏹️ ▶️ John my hinds, I would probably just accept it, but I can’t get anything even close.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey my eyes. It’s very good.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Mack Weldon. Now, allow me to get a little bit personal. It

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⏹️ ▶️ Marco certainly a good degree of sweating during the day for sure. Given these conditions, now, like at 8 or 9pm,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would be totally reasonable if I smelled a bit bad. Now, to exacerbate the things,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the air conditioning has been off all day, I’ve used no fan, I’ve fans and I haven’t been in the water.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco In fact, I haven’t even showered yet today. So this should be pretty bad. To top

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it off, I’m wearing only a light application of unscented natural deodorant from 14

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hours ago. So by all accounts, I should stink right now. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t stink at all. In fact, there I just checked. Still, no, I don’t smell like nothing. Because

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⏹️ ▶️ Casey We had asked last episode about Apple Card and somebody had pointed out, I forget who it was, that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you should opt out of arbitration and… It was me. No, I thought you were

⏹️ ▶️ Casey parroting somebody else that told you, but it doesn’t matter. Anyway, the point is, John had recommended that you opt out of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey arbitration, which was which was very smart. And John had looked through the kind of terms and conditions and whatnot and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was not entirely clear the mechanism by which you do that. And as it turns out, we

⏹️ ▶️ Casey got several people who wrote us that said, if you, and I have not done this so I don’t know exactly how it works, but basically within

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the wallet app, you can go slightly deep into the bowels of the wallet app.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then there’s a mechanism by which you can use business chat, not with Evernote, but with Apple.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you can, I guess, very, very quickly and very easily chat in an iMessage style

⏹️ ▶️ Casey way and just say, Hey, I would like to opt out, please. And I guess they’re basically like, Okay, cool.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that was the the question from the contract wording last time was like, if you contact us via messages,

⏹️ ▶️ John email, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the question was messages. Where do you message to? Well, that’s that’s what the button in the

⏹️ ▶️ John thing solves. I don’t know what it messages to. But the bottom line is you hit that button and now you’re chatting. Now tons of people sent

⏹️ ▶️ John us their actual chat conversations. I’ll put a link to one tweet in the show. It’s very

⏹️ ▶️ John concise. It’s like arbitration. I don’t want it. Okay, done. Like that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John the ideal scenario. Lots of people had longer versions where they’re like, because the wording of the

⏹️ ▶️ John contract says you have to provide your email address and your mailing address and your first name and your last name. And like,

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s what it says in the contract. So some people also did that. Uh, you don’t have to do all that based on these

⏹️ ▶️ John things, but then based on these chats that I’ve seen, some people just say, I don’t want arbitration. They’re like done because they already know

⏹️ ▶️ John everything about you because of the business chat connection and all that other stuff. So that’s an advantage to using it that way.

⏹️ ▶️ John But still other people send conversations where they’d say, I don’t want that arbitration thing and they’d be like,

⏹️ ▶️ John uh, let me connect you to whatever I need to say. No, I don’t want arbitration.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like I don’t know. You’ll have to call like they were unsuccessful. Like the people didn’t know what they were talking

⏹️ ▶️ John about. So your mileage may vary, but I would hope that the longer this

⏹️ ▶️ John goes on, the more every single person at the other end of that business chat, we’ll have at least one instance of this arbitration

⏹️ ▶️ John thing and they’ll just be, you know, wrote for them as we all tell each other to opt out of arbitration.

⏹️ ▶️ John But if you’re not successful, there are other avenues. And I would say if you’re not successful, just try again a different day. Maybe you get

⏹️ ▶️ John a different agent, but it seems like most people are successful.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then the Apple card, unsurprisingly, lacks any sort of web interface.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And generally speaking, I guess, push notifications in the wallet kind of takes that place.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You want to tell me more about this. That seems kind of backwards that there’s no web interface, but it’s Apple.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, that’s the Apple way.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Is anybody surprised by this?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Oh, not really.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, the reason it’s weird is because when Apple does things, they seem to not care

⏹️ ▶️ John about the status quo, which is good in many ways. They’re like, just because it’s been done this way before by everybody else doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John mean that that’s the best way to do things. But in this case, the status quo is if you

⏹️ ▶️ John have a credit card, chances are very, very, very very good. There’s some website you can go to,

⏹️ ▶️ John they will show you your transaction history and you can pay your bill there and you can like just a web interface to

⏹️ ▶️ John looking at the stuff you’re doing with your card. It seems like table stakes for a credit

⏹️ ▶️ John card. That does not exist as far as anyone is aware for the Apple Card. Everything you do with it is

⏹️ ▶️ John through your iOS device which seems fine until and unless you

⏹️ ▶️ John lose your iOS device and you only had one of them and then you have no way to like pay your bill unless it’s been set to

⏹️ ▶️ John pay automatically. So there’s some gnashing of teeth about this. And in general, a web

⏹️ ▶️ John interface to your credit card seems like it’s not just the status quo. It

⏹️ ▶️ John seems like a good thing because the web is more accessible than iOS.

⏹️ ▶️ John So if you say you’re on vacation and you just have your phone and you drop it in the ocean and you don’t have any access to it, you wouldn’t get to go to a cyber

⏹️ ▶️ John cafe. Like what century is this? Do they still exist? Oh yeah. Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m assuming they would. I mean, you’d have to get to some web interface anyway, but the The whole point is you wouldn’t have one of your iOS

⏹️ ▶️ John devices with you to do this stuff. So it would be nice if Apple had a website. And the push

⏹️ ▶️ John notification thing is something subtly different. Yes, of course, it sends you push notifications. But in the contract, this is all people

⏹️ ▶️ John are doing. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the

⏹️ ▶️ John only time anyone ever reads a contract is when Apple does something. You have to now read the contract to find out how evil Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John is, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Never

⏹️ ▶️ John mind if you read the contract for any other credit card. It’s equally terrifying. But Apple is supposed to be

⏹️ ▶️ John good about this privacy stuff. So the story here is that in the contract wording, in very plain

⏹️ ▶️ John language, which is nice. Apple says that based on what you purchase

⏹️ ▶️ John with your Apple card, you may receive push notifications advertising services related

⏹️ ▶️ John to what you’ve purchased, which is not great.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s bad. I really hope that this is some kind of boilerplate that somebody had the guts

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to put in there, but that they just never use. They’re gonna use it. That’s the thing, like Apple has shown

⏹️ ▶️ Marco over the last few years that they have very little regard

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for badgering the user with promotional messages. Like, they just don’t care. The

⏹️ ▶️ Marco App Store does it, Apple Music is relentless about it. Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has shown that they will badger people with annoying spam push notifications

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to sign up for more Apple services and make Apple more money. So I kinda

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think they’re gonna do this and I really hope they don’t. And when they do, it’s gonna be a really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bad look. And even if they don’t do that, I’m sure I’m gonna

⏹️ ▶️ Marco start getting the notifications myself to sign up for the Apple card. So it’s like, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think this is just modern Apple. Modern Apple has lost a lot of respect for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco certain user boundaries, one of which is spamming us for promotional stuff for their own gain.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I fully expect this to be used.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, no, the reason I totally think it’s going to be used is because there’s a difference

⏹️ ▶️ John between what you’re describing, which is like respect for the user’s attention and time or whatever,

⏹️ ▶️ John and privacy. And Apple touts how they address privacy in this

⏹️ ▶️ John feature. And they do in a

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco good way, which is like, well,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They spam everyone equally. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John exactly. So the

⏹️ ▶️ John idea is like, well, I don’t want them tracking my purchases and sending me the example they give is like if you

⏹️ ▶️ John buy a ticket somewhere on an airline, they’ll send you travel related spam push notifications, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John But they don’t, like, because they want to de-identify and make sure everything is all private,

⏹️ ▶️ John that information about what your purchases were doesn’t leave your device. So it’s like, well, how do they know who to

⏹️ ▶️ John send what messages to? Well, they send push notifications for everything to everyone, and

⏹️ ▶️ John then on your device, once it arrives on your device, the device looks up in

⏹️ ▶️ John your transaction history that is only on your device, hey, has this person made any travel purchases?

⏹️ ▶️ John If so, show them this promotional message, spam, whatever. But if it’s like something

⏹️ ▶️ John for promoting dog food and you haven’t purchased any dog food, it won’t show you. But that decision is made on your device.

⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s wasteful of bandwidth, but it preserves your anonymity. But the bottom line is, that’s not what we all have

⏹️ ▶️ John a problem with. It’s not like, oh, I’m worried about you know what my purchases are, because Goldman Sachs does know what your purchases are, because

⏹️ ▶️ John they have your transaction history, right? So somebody knows. What we’re annoyed about is getting push notifications. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ John the top level concern. The bottom level concern is if you are going to spam people, do it in a way that

⏹️ ▶️ John preserves privacy. So Apple is doing that. And the fact that Apple went through that effort and is promoting

⏹️ ▶️ John how they preserve privacy, that’s all good. But we would prefer it if you would just not do this at all, not do it in a way

⏹️ ▶️ John that preserves our privacy to the maximum extent possible. I’m just not doing it like

⏹️ ▶️ John and the respect to blah, blah, blah, like everything that Marco was saying.

⏹️ ▶️ John Another way of phrasing that is sort of what part of the reason

⏹️ ▶️ John we buy Apple stuff and pay lots of money for it is we hope to get a better experience out of it. So the Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John card, I think lots of people would be willing to like it for

⏹️ ▶️ John it to be a premium experience. You should get less of this. Like we would

⏹️ ▶️ John expect this from a regular credit card, but this is going to be a premium Appley credit card.

⏹️ ▶️ John In general, When you spend more money, you expect to be respected more. There are

⏹️ ▶️ John counter examples, obviously. As you spend more money donating to political campaigns,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you get way more spam.

⏹️ ▶️ John So there are counter examples. But with a credit card, you would think the fancier

⏹️ ▶️ John the credit card, the less junky spam you get. And so Apple Card is

⏹️ ▶️ John still, if you’re trying to rank it where it is on the snooty rich people cards versus their regular peon

⏹️ ▶️ John person cards. Apple card seems much more like a regular peon person card because they are doing all the regular

⏹️ ▶️ John peon card

⏹️ ▶️ Casey stuff. Steven Odruff Yeah. And you guys, neither of you have signed up for one yet. Is that correct? Paul Sherman

⏹️ ▶️ John I still want to. I would like to be invited now that I’ve complained about it. Apple, where’s my invitation?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Steven Odruff I did some math the other day of like, you know, if I get my 2% back on ApplePay

⏹️ ▶️ Marco transactions and if I get my 3% back on Mac purchases and stuff from Apple, like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco how much money I’m actually going to be saving every year compared to the credit cards I already have now that give me like, you know, one and a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco half or two percent back on everything. The difference this would actually make in my life

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be something like $100 a year. And I don’t know that it’s worth having an entire separate credit

⏹️ ▶️ Marco account for that little of gain. Mhmm.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I think if I were to be, I don’t know, like just graduating college or just entering

⏹️ ▶️ Casey college whenever kids these days get credit cards, God, I’m so old. If I was just now getting

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a credit card, I would very strongly consider getting this as my first and only card. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I first heard about it, I was like, yeah, that sounds good, saving money on Apple stuff. All right, sounds great.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the more I think about it, the more I think, especially what with credit monitoring, at least in the US, being so

⏹️ ▶️ Casey wonky and opening a new line of credit being terrible, except when it isn’t. I don’t know. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a whole level of alchemy and math that I just can’t wrap my head around. But the more I think about it, the more I think

⏹️ ▶️ Casey just leaving well enough alone is probably probably the right answer for me as well. So I agree with you there,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco. Also, there have been many times, like you know, I’ve had credit cards

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for, let’s say, about 13-14 years now, and I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have had to log into their websites fairly regularly, like maybe three or four times

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a year at least, to look up an old transaction or download a history of something

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or administer or check something on the website or something like that. it is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco frequently useful to do that. And so to not have any way to do that for the Apple card.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I know you can look at the phone. I know you can look up stuff there, but it’s always going to be more limited as

⏹️ ▶️ Marco john mentioned, like accessibility and you know, not only that, but just like being able to like export everything as like a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco CSV or something like these are common

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John functions

⏹️ ▶️ John or copy and paste the text. How

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco about Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco right. Like these are very cool or hit Command F on the page and jump down really fast. Like there’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco these These are very common things that people with credit cards do on the credit card websites. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to not be able to do that for the Apple card at all, that’s a pretty glaring

⏹️ ▶️ Marco shortcoming. And so I’m sure over time, they will probably, God I hope, they will probably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco add something like this. But I think the lack of this is, it’s just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a bigger annoyance than I think many people might assume if they haven’t had it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey yet. That’s Apple for you. They’re great, except that they’re not.

Follow-up: Streaming JSON

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You had talked last episode, Marco, about how you had created your own kind of like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey streaming API to handle overcast requests. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey several people wrote in with a bunch of different options. I think it was you that called out one in particular. Do you want to tell us about this?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so I didn’t actually. John probably did. Fair enough. It’s always me.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, it’s always John.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so my problem was trying to stream in JSON

⏹️ ▶️ Marco object by object at the top level. That way I wouldn’t have to, on the client side, load the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco entire JSON object and decode it before I processed the sub-objects one by one

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from large sync operations. And so my solution was to send out

⏹️ ▶️ Marco little blobs that were a binary 32-bit 32-bit integer that specified

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the size of the blob to follow, and then the blob to follow would just be a JSON string, so it would say, like, you know, basically,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, read 100 bytes, and then I’d read the 100 bytes, and after that was another 32-bit

⏹️ ▶️ Marco binary integer telling me the size of the next blob until we ran out. Many people wrote in to tell us

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about newline-separated JSON, which is apparently a thing, I think it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco called NDJSON. There’s some issues with that. It basically, it’s more complex to read that, because when you have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco newline-separated JSON, you have to ensure that the JSON you’re generating will never contain

⏹️ ▶️ Marco new lines. And if you have any kind of pretty printing turned on for debugging or anything, that might happen.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or if you’re—you have to basically verify all the libraries that you’re using and all the settings that you’re always going to use will never

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a new line. And it’s kind of annoying. And you also have to read ahead until you—so you have to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco scan the whole string until you see the new line, and then parse that. So it’s a little

⏹️ ▶️ Marco more complicated. So that’s where I like my solution better. And so John apparently wrote

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in to say that there’s also something on the Wikipedia page for JSON streaming

⏹️ ▶️ Marco called length-prefixed JSON, which is almost what I’m doing. The

⏹️ ▶️ Marco difference with length-prefixed JSON is that they are using the character

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ASCII representation of the number to describe the size. So it actually has the number in ASCII, 18

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the example, and then 18 characters of and then the number 55, and then 55 characters of JSON.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the reason I still like mine, while this is more human readable,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the fact is, you know, this is a binary format for me, I don’t really care, and mine is, you don’t have to do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco any reading of numbers in ASCII and then converting, and you also

⏹️ ▶️ Marco always know how many bytes to read. So the code to decode on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the decoding side, like in Objective-C or Swift or whatever, the code to read that is super simple.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s like, read 32-bit Big Endian integer. That’s it. It’s binary, it’s right there,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you always know it’s those 32 bits. Whereas this, you have to basically read

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the string until you see a non-number character, and then decode the number that you got so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco far, which could be one digit, it could be five digits. And so my way is just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco simpler in the code on the client side. So I still prefer my way, but it’s good to see that lots of people

⏹️ ▶️ John You make it sound like you chose the byte

⏹️ ▶️ John order, but obviously you’re just using the native byte order of the platform on which you wrote this.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, no, no, I specified Bigendian on both sides.

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, is that, but that’s the default on the Mac side, or the iOS side, right?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco On iOS is, I believe, Bigendian natively, but certainly not on my Intel servers it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco isn’t.

⏹️ ▶️ John You shouldn’t really be using network byte order, but I don’t forget if that’s already Bigendian. I think

⏹️ ▶️ John it is Bigendian, yeah. Yeah, but anyway, it’s network byte order. You’re not supposed to know which one it is. It’s just network.

⏹️ ▶️ John I remember the protocol to a Mac chat client from way back in the day

⏹️ ▶️ John was obviously written by someone who was just taking their C structs and then just jamming them across the wire.

⏹️ ▶️ John They were all just like binary representations of C native types in the byte order

⏹️ ▶️ John on this person’s computer. And that was the protocol, terrible to parse. There’s

⏹️ ▶️ John the advantage of knowing that you have to read 32 bits and then what order the bytes are in and decoding it, but

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a reason almost every protocol involving the internet basically uses textual representation

⏹️ ▶️ John for everything, including numbers. Right,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because text never has weird encoding problems. Well, so

⏹️ ▶️ John does

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco transfer encoding

⏹️ ▶️ John chunk, by the way. It also uses just the actual numbers written in text. And it’s not the number of characters,

⏹️ ▶️ John because that would be difficult. It’s always the number of bytes.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco UTF-8

⏹️ ▶️ John saves most of this. Almost every protocol has come around to the idea of we don’t support any other encodings.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s UTF-8 or it’s nothing. It’s like JSON. JSON is a young enough standard. they said it’s just UTF-8.

⏹️ ▶️ John Stop doing anything else.

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⏹️ ▶️ Casey Upgrade had a very interesting conversation this week about what Marco and John would

⏹️ ▶️ Casey be doing with regard to the Mac Pro. And I will put an overcast timestamp link into the show notes.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love that they’re placing bets on our purchase intentions here. They’re placing bets on whether John

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I would buy the Mac Pro and or the Pro Display.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right, and so if I understood and summarized their positions properly,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey then Mike had said that Marco will get both the Mac Pro and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Pro Display by the time that pre-orders end. So in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John other words, you will

⏹️ ▶️ Casey put your name in the hat before pre-orders end. Mike is right.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And Mike also said, interestingly, that you’re more likely to get the display.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jason said that Marco would not bother if it wasn’t for the fact that you’re a pundit,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is not correct. I understand the logic there, but no, that’s not true. Marco will always get the best Mac

⏹️ ▶️ Casey possible no matter what. Marco will do it in the first two weeks. Yep, I agree with that. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John will buy one in the first three months. And you might even just get the LG display

⏹️ ▶️ Casey instead of the Pro Display HDR. So I would like to go on record in saying there is zero

⏹️ ▶️ Casey chance that both of you will not be buying one of these. I’d say there is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey almost an equivalent amount of certainty that both of you will get the Pro Display XDR, HDR, whatever it’s called.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I think Marco absolutely will have his pre-order in before the end of the pre-order window

⏹️ ▶️ Casey without question. John, I think Jason has you pegged. It will be in the first three-ish

⏹️ ▶️ Casey months, but I don’t think it will be immediate. So gentlemen, with that said,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey let’s start with with Marco, what are your purchase intentions right now?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco First of all, I want to bet on John’s purchase intention. Okay,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey fair enough, fair

⏹️ ▶️ Marco enough.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I will

⏹️ ▶️ Marco allow it. I think Jason had a lot of good points about John being practical

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and caring about the cost of the pro display and everything. However, I think if you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco look at what kind of outcome can John stomach, the LG display

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or spending too much for the Apple display, I think it’s no contest. I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco he’s gonna grumble and grumble, but he’s gonna get the Pro Display. I think there’s no way John gets

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the LG. If John gets a Mac Pro at all, he gets the Apple Pro Display,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco unless there’s another option that becomes available from Apple. But otherwise, I don’t think there will be anytime soon.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I think John gets the Pro Display XDR. And if he gets the Mac Pro at

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all, he gets that display. And I think he will get the Mac Pro, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably not for a few months after it’s released, he’s going to be afraid of lemon things. As for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco me, I think Jason had a very good point that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I probably wouldn’t bother if not for my reputation and position

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the show. Jared

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Polin – It just happened to you,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco, didn’t it?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, right.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It happened to you. You have

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco to admit

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s it for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco his work, but but I don’t like you know, you say I’m always gonna

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean your work of being on the

⏹️ ▶️ John podcast, not your work work

⏹️ ▶️ Marco right. Yeah. Like like you said, Casey, I always get the best Mac, but I don’t necessarily like I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sitting in front of the iMac Pro, which currently is the best Mac. But I didn’t get the top configuration.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got like a middle configuration of it. Because I didn’t really need the top stuff. It

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John was it wasn’t really good benefit.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like his point his point stands. You did briefly own the the trash can Mac Pro

⏹️ ▶️ John and you brought this so it is it’s not the best Mac with everything set to max it’s the best with most things

⏹️ ▶️ John set

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to max something set to max or medium but but I think you know the Mac Pro

⏹️ ▶️ Marco again I it solves problems I mostly don’t have and it introduces

⏹️ ▶️ Marco problems that I currently don’t have like it introduces limitations and and bulk and size

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and especially cost that and and I really am incredibly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco reluctant to buy that Pro Display XDR or to use the LG

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when right now my iMac Pro really serves my needs incredibly well and I already own it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it’s really it’s very very hard for me to justify the Mac Pro

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when the iMac Pro is very very good for my needs in ways is the Mac Pro

⏹️ ▶️ Marco isn’t. So I don’t think I’m gonna buy one, honestly.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, play this back for me in a month when I’ve ordered one. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think they’re both wrong. I think I’m not gonna get it, and John is. But I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think he’s gonna get it immediately. I think he’s gonna wait like three months.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, John, what’s your current theory?

⏹️ ▶️ John My plan is that I’m gonna get a Mac. I still haven’t decided on the monitor. I’m probably not gonna buy it on day one. That’s my current,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey that’s my current. You’ve decided.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, Marco could not be more correct about this. You have absolutely decided, and it will

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John absolutely be. I

⏹️ ▶️ John mean, I take your point. I totally do want an Apple monitor. I just need to, there are unknowns yet,

⏹️ ▶️ John which is I need to go to the configurator and see what it’s gonna take to configure my Mac the way I want, and if the Mac is

⏹️ ▶️ John ridiculous, then I really have to reconsider.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey You’ve

⏹️ ▶️ Casey waited 10 years

⏹️ ▶️ John to. Yeah, I’m getting the Mac. I’m getting the Mac, it’s just a question of, because if I got. Then you’re getting the display.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yep.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John It’s easy as that. There are other

⏹️ ▶️ Marco options. There is no way you get the LG.

⏹️ ▶️ John There are options other than the LG or the Apple one. Non-retina?

⏹️ ▶️ John There are options, I’m just,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I own a bunch of monitors.

⏹️ ▶️ John I can use my existing monitor.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, please.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I

⏹️ ▶️ John can use the 27-inch Thunderbolt display that’s upstairs.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco So you’re gonna get a $6,000 at least Mac Pro

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and use a non-retina monitor with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John it? Yeah, come on.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m looking at a non-retina monitor right now. This would be a stopgap.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Get

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco out of my

⏹️ ▶️ John hand. A stopgap

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for another 10 years?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Until when? What are you waiting for?

⏹️ ▶️ John I really hope that it wouldn’t be another 10 year wait. Anyway, no decision has been

⏹️ ▶️ John made about the monitor. Still we’re waiting. We’re waiting to price out the Mac and then we’ll see what we

⏹️ ▶️ John see.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let me rephrase what John just said. No decision that he’s willing to acknowledge has been made about the monitor, but Marco

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is 1000% correct that you will be getting the monitor.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, as sure as everyone else in the world is that I’m gonna get the Mac Pro, I’m not sure you’re getting the monitor. Well put.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh man, all right. Let’s get through a couple of topics We have to go to ask

⏹️ ▶️ Casey ATP

Apple at Black Hat

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple was at Black Hat recently. Black Hat is, I guess, like a hacker convention

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of some sort and a security convention. Maybe that’s a better way of describing it. And apparently,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple has decided to make a massive jump in their bug bounties. So this is if

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you find a bug in Apple software that can be exploited and you report it to Apple in the right way and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the right examples and so on and so forth, you can get pretty big payouts,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey up to $1 million for a zero-click

⏹️ ▶️ Casey full-chain kernel code execution exploit. And additionally, what is perhaps even

⏹️ ▶️ Casey more interesting and exciting about this is that Apple has announced that they will be giving

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what appears to be a slightly sanitized version of their dev devices that they

⏹️ ▶️ Casey use internally to certain security researchers. So you have to like apply for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. You have to have a clear history of doing security research that is useful to Apple,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but you will be able to do some things that you could never do on an iPhone before unless

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you worked for the fruit company. So like SSH into it and stuff like that. This is exciting

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and surprising and I applaud it. So somebody ran on my parade before I get too happy.

⏹️ ▶️ John No, I think this is good. And it’s an example like we talked about bug boundaries before and how Apple has

⏹️ ▶️ John been late to the game of bug bounties. People used to complain that they didn’t give them or that they were stingy with them or they weren’t available

⏹️ ▶️ John on all platforms. And there, you know, we’ve talked in the past a lot about

⏹️ ▶️ John problems that money can’t solve, but this is a problem that money can help with a lot. And

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple has a lot of money. So why not throw money at it? Like security vulnerabilities are a serious issue.

⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, Apple is bidding against the value of those vulnerabilities

⏹️ ▶️ John on the black market. You know, how much is this vulnerability worth? If you can sell it to people or use it for

⏹️ ▶️ John state sponsored terrorism and all sorts of of things like Apple has to outbid

⏹️ ▶️ John the bad people. And I feel like that’s that’s a position that Apple should feel comfortable because

⏹️ ▶️ John they do have a lot of money. So you can just make those numbers bigger until you get the results you

⏹️ ▶️ John want. The result you want is that if anybody finds any kind of bug, it is in their best interest to give it

⏹️ ▶️ John to Apple and make all that sweet, sweet money. So I think this is a good idea. And the research things where you have like root

⏹️ ▶️ John access and you know, like basically pre jailbroken research devices is great because

⏹️ ▶️ John that accelerates the process again. It’s another thing that Apple is empowered to do. It’s not a big deal.

⏹️ ▶️ John It doesn’t change the face of anything. It doesn’t mean that we’re all gonna be able to

⏹️ ▶️ John sideload on our phones because these are special research kits given to specially vetted people, but it helps them

⏹️ ▶️ John find vulnerabilities better. So this may not be the most cost-effective, economic

⏹️ ▶️ John way to find vulnerabilities, but it may be the best way. And like I said, Apple’s

⏹️ ▶️ John got a lot of money they’re always trying to, you know, make their cash hoard shrink because it’s bad to have

⏹️ ▶️ John tons and tons of cash on the books because the shareholders get mad or whatever. So I give

⏹️ ▶️ John this program a thumbs up and I hope they find lots of new bugs.

Press any key to turn on

⏹️ ▶️ Casey We got a word from Andy Beyer Bowden that Apple laptops

⏹️ ▶️ Casey are turning on in new ways now. And apparently in the 2018 era

⏹️ ▶️ Casey MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, they will turn on when you press any key on the keyboard

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or press the trackpad, which is new. I mean, I haven’t had a touch bar laptop

⏹️ ▶️ Casey ever. But I can tell you on my adorable, there is a power button that you have to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey hit. that you have to hit. And the only time this is important to me is when I, like once every month or so, will turn the computer

⏹️ ▶️ Casey full off and take a Mr. Clean magic eraser to it to get off all my finger grease from the keyboard and the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey wrist rest and so on and so forth. And if I were to do that with the computer where it will turn

⏹️ ▶️ Casey itself on as soon as you hit a key, that is going to be deeply inconvenient. So not a big deal, but a little bit of a bummer

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and something I had no idea was the case.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, they’ve been actually slowly ramping up the number of ways that the computer will turn on in the last

⏹️ ▶️ Marco few years. I believe, starting with the USB-C generation, so the original MacBook in 2015,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and all the Pros in 2016, I believe that’s when they started that if you just opened the lid,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they would turn themselves on. And there is, I think there’s some kind of like, you know, NVRAM

⏹️ ▶️ Marco argument to disable that, but by default that is what it is. And then, and now, yeah, now

⏹️ ▶️ Marco apparently the 2019 models are such that just brushing against a key turns it on. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think I can figure out why, because in both cases, if you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco look at the modern laptops, there’s no visible power button on most of them. Anything with a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco touch bar or touch ID, you can’t see a power button. The power

⏹️ ▶️ Marco button is the touch ID sensor, but it’s a blank black square with no markings on it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you kind of have to know that’s the power button. And I think most people just don’t know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, And Apple probably got tired of support calls and everything from people saying, my computer won’t turn on or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco where’s the power button, because they couldn’t find it. So my guess is this is directly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in response to them having a totally undiscoverable power button,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is its own problem. But just being able to hit any key to wake it up from

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a power off state, which is the same way you’d wake it up from a sleep state, is a fairly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco elegant solution to their design flaw.

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, arguably what they’re shooting for, and they’ve done this in the past,

⏹️ ▶️ John uh, to much lesser degrees of success is like on the Mac where they would like you to not

⏹️ ▶️ John be so worried about the distinction between running and non running applications and iOS.

⏹️ ▶️ John They’re much better about that. The distinction is so incredibly blurred that most people

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t even know and they just swipe upwards on all these little pictures of applications that are not running, but that’s a separate conversation.

⏹️ ▶️ John But on the Mac, in somewhere like Doc Preferences or whatever, you can decide not to show the little indicator

⏹️ ▶️ John dots below running applications because in Apple’s idealized world

⏹️ ▶️ John as of several years ago, applications should resume exactly where they left off

⏹️ ▶️ John and it shouldn’t matter to you whether they’re running or not. You should just click on them when you want to use them and then ignore them

⏹️ ▶️ John when you don’t want to use them anymore and then automatic termination should handle them. They want to make it more like iOS, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John So the hardware equivalent of this is, I would like to

⏹️ ▶️ John not have a distinction between a computer that is turned off-off and a computer that is just asleep,

⏹️ ▶️ John because it should boot right back to where it left off if all the defaults are set.

⏹️ ▶️ John Things might take longer, but basically the computer should always be in the middle

⏹️ ▶️ John of doing whatever it’s doing. And whether it’s asleep or off, or whether the app is launched or not launched, it should

⏹️ ▶️ John all be the same. In practice, it’s not all the same. In practice, the gaps are

⏹️ ▶️ John actually longer than you would imagine. You can always tell when it’s actually booting. There’s actually different things that appear on the screen. So

⏹️ ▶️ John it is not as transparent, but I feel like these changes are

⏹️ ▶️ John moving more towards that goal. And I think the disappearance of the dedicated power button

⏹️ ▶️ John is part of trying to get to that goal, not a mistake they made that they’re now trying to remedy, but they

⏹️ ▶️ John just, they rolled out pieces of the solution, rolled out pieces of this vision

⏹️ ▶️ John out of step with each other. So they got rid of the visible power button before they added the ability

⏹️ ▶️ John to turn it on by doing anything. Because that’s what you do when a computer is like not awake or whatever. You just hit the space

⏹️ ▶️ John bar, hit the track pad. That’s what people are going to do. That’s how you wake an already open laptop from

⏹️ ▶️ John sleep if you’re just a regular person. All that said though, like Casey was saying,

⏹️ ▶️ John there is utility in being able to turn your computer off

⏹️ ▶️ John and then clean the key caps or clean the track pad or do whatever with it actually off.

⏹️ ▶️ John And now, these MacBook Pro 2018 and MacBook Air 2018, the

⏹️ ▶️ John Retina one, they become like the Apple remote where you can’t even touch them without them doing

⏹️ ▶️ John something. You’re like, I’m afraid to pick it up. It’s off, but I have to pick it up very carefully because if I accidentally hit a key, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John gonna boot. And the boot process takes some time. You’re like, I didn’t want you to boot. I was just trying to pick it up and I

⏹️ ▶️ John accidentally hit a key. So I think this is, it’s fine. I think the vision is reasonable

⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s fine to have this feature, but this is the type of feature that should have

⏹️ ▶️ John an actual GUI preference somewhere where if you don’t like it, you can turn it off in the same

⏹️ ▶️ John way that you can, the doc preference to change the indicator dots on the doc. Uh, it shouldn’t be like

⏹️ ▶️ John a hidden P list key. It shouldn’t be an NVRM. Are you have to go to terminal for it should be an actual GUI.

⏹️ ▶️ John First of all, the existence of that GUI thing and system preferences may clue people into the fact that this actually happens because if you see

⏹️ ▶️ John a preference says would you like me to wake up would you like me to boot when someone hits any key

⏹️ ▶️ John then that could clue people in

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey oh I

⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t know this thing booted if you hit any key right and second it makes it feel like an officially supported feature

⏹️ ▶️ John so that if you do need to clean the keyboard you just change that preference shut down clean your keys reboot with the actual

⏹️ ▶️ John power key right they could even do a thing like when you unset that preference it throws up a little thing it says just

⏹️ ▶️ John so you know your power button is here and shows you a little picture of the you know that’s the thing that

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple can do because they know what your hardware looks like that’s how they have like little graphics of your actual laptop or your actual monitor

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever so I I think this is an

⏹️ ▶️ John okay reasonable feature but I really want there to be GUI support for toggling

⏹️ ▶️ John the behavior.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, agreed.

“New” LG 5K

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, and then I think finally for topics this week before we go to ask ATP We should

⏹️ ▶️ Casey talk about a couple of weeks ago. Maybe even actually it’s like a month ago almost There was a new

⏹️ ▶️ Casey LG 5k display perfect for you John and it’s beautiful

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Can you just imagine that sitting on your desk next year five to ten thousand dollar Mac Pro? Wouldn’t it be perfect

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John?

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean it does have advantages over the Apple display and that it has a microphone and camera in it and the Apple display does not

⏹️ ▶️ John Yep But other than that, I think it has a well

⏹️ ▶️ John It comes with a stand my god The

⏹️ ▶️ John price is right 1300 bucks for essentially the same panel. It’s in the iMac right

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey as far as we

⏹️ ▶️ John know. It’s a bargain, but it’s ugly It’s got a big forehead on it

⏹️ ▶️ John the stand is the stand is not hideously ugly, but it’s not attractive either

⏹️ ▶️ John and And, but Marco, did you have the 5K one or only the 4K one? 5K. And you were

⏹️ ▶️ John not impressed with the monitor in many ways? The

⏹️ ▶️ Marco image quality is great, but obviously the plastic surround is hideous.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the biggest problem I had with it was that it was just a little bit flaky. Sometimes it wouldn’t wake from sleep, sometimes the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco USB ports on it would flake out, like the downstream USB ports on it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sometimes things that were plugged into its USB ports wouldn’t work well, but if you plugged them into

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the computer directly, they would work perfectly. It just like, it was just stuff like that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like the accessories about it were kind of crappy. The panel itself was fine.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, it just had like, it seemed to just have like flaky electronics in other ways.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, wasn’t there a thing, recall being in an Apple store maybe and experimenting with this, wasn’t there a thing where like,

⏹️ ▶️ John was it Wi-Fi would drop if you got too close to the

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco thing?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco As far as I know, that was fixed before I bought mine. There was an issue with the first generation of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the LG 4K and 5K displays, where they were improperly shielded

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they could cause WiFi dropouts, and then Apple kind of suspended sale for a little while quietly,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco got LG to revise the design, and then they put them back in storage

⏹️ ▶️ Marco revised. So I’m pretty sure mine was the revised one.

⏹️ ▶️ John So stuff like that is not reassuring.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No. That’s not like an

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey obscure

⏹️ ▶️ John feature that you would be surprised by. if your business is making computer peripherals,

⏹️ ▶️ John first of all, you’d think that FCC rules would require

⏹️ ▶️ John that you don’t interfere destructively that way, but it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey like a fundamental thing that

⏹️ ▶️ John you’re gonna make a monitor, it’s gonna be near computer stuff, computers use wifi, maybe test this?

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, it’s not reassuring. I mean, it’s a very cheap monitor. And there are other, people are sending

⏹️ ▶️ John other alternatives, like other places where this panel might appear, but this is the one that

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple is selling on their website. This is the one that Apple is promoting. This is the one that

⏹️ ▶️ John may or may not mean that we’re never going to get a reasonably priced Apple display,

⏹️ ▶️ John which we’ve talked about in the

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey past. Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John this is out there. It’s an option. It is what normal

⏹️ ▶️ John people should buy if you want a 5K display for your new Mac Pro and you don’t care

⏹️ ▶️ John about all the features of the XDR, but I really wish there were other alternatives. I mean, yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John this is old news by now, but it’s worth noting. We had lots

⏹️ ▶️ John of debates and I had many crises of faith when this

⏹️ ▶️ John came out to say, Apple sells all sorts of third-party

⏹️ ▶️ John stuff on their website. Doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re not going to make something equivalent,

⏹️ ▶️ John but it kind of does. Or maybe not now.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just, it’s a very fraught situation.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of them announcing a pro display, not XDR,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s basically what we’re asking for, a 27 inch iMac panel external. I wouldn’t rule that out, but it just seems

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very unlikely for that to be announced this fall. I bet

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they will eventually do that, because there is clearly a lot of demand for that. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just don’t think it’s gonna happen soon.

⏹️ ▶️ John How many of these can I buy for the price of that other one?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Like five? Yeah, seriously.

⏹️ ▶️ John Can I make a wall of them? Yeah. The Mac Pro can drive them all, right? There’s plenty of video

⏹️ ▶️ John cards

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you can show in

⏹️ ▶️ John there. Like just a giant wall of monitors.

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⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s do some Ask ATP starting with Colin D’Evreux, who writes, what tech outside of Apple are you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey most happy with currently or bonus excited about in the near future? I don’t have any

⏹️ ▶️ Casey stellar answers for this, I don’t think, but some things that I thought of, smart home stuff I think

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is definitely getting better. I lived in a house that was deep into, what was it, X10,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think, was the technology, way, way, way back in like the mid-90s. My dad

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco had wired for that. If you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever saw a pop-under ad for anything ever, it was probably X10. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey indeed. Dad had the entire house wired for that, and it actually did work pretty darn well,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey given what year we’re talking about here. And I do think smart home stuff

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is getting a lot better. It’s starting to converge a lot more in the good way. You know, I’m seeing HomeKit

⏹️ ▶️ Casey support for a lot more stuff and I’m finding less and less need for HomeBridge, which I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Casey happy about. Driving aids, I think are getting a lot better. I am not interested

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in having a conversation about what is or is not self-driving right now. But I think in general, driving aids are getting

⏹️ ▶️ Casey better. Things like lane keep assist, things like automatic braking, automatic

⏹️ ▶️ Casey parking, which we tried in Aaron’s Volvo about a month or two ago, which was extremely scary, but extremely

⏹️ ▶️ Casey cool. I do think those are getting a lot better. I would absolutely use the summon feature

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on a Tesla if I had one. I would probably put a hole in my garage doing so, but hey, you know, you win some, you lose some.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then speaking of Teslas, I do think electric car.

Neutral: Tesla competition

⏹️ ▶️ Casey cars in general are getting better and better. I made the mistake

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of tweeting something negative about Tesla earlier today and my mentions have not let me live that down quite

⏹️ ▶️ Casey yet.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marc Thiessen, MPH, Chief

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Investment Officer, FOX News Tesla fans are the worst. Trevor Burrus, MPH, Chief Investment Officer, CNN Absolutely. I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple fans are not great, but Tesla fans are the worst. Anyway, I do think electric cars are getting a lot

⏹️ ▶️ Casey better. Something I’d said to Marco via the tweet in question was that I really think that now that Audi and Porsche,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey among others, are really starting to take electric cars seriously. I am

⏹️ ▶️ Casey very interested in seeing what a quote-unquote real car

⏹️ ▶️ Casey manufacturer who actually understands reliability and build quality and things of that nature, user interfaces.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Service.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Service, yeah, exactly. I’m really interested to see what a traditional

⏹️ ▶️ Casey car company can do with an electric powertrain. And I suspect what will happen is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the electric powertrain will not be as fancy and as advanced and the autopilot sort of stuff

⏹️ ▶️ Casey will probably not be as fancy and as advanced as a Tesla. But everything

⏹️ ▶️ Casey else about the experience will probably be way, way, way better. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so we’ll see what happens. I mean, I could be eaten crow in a little while, but that’s my expectation. So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey those are three things that I’m really pleased with and really, really hyped about. Marco,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what are you most happy about currently or excited about in the future?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Just to rebut very slightly on the Tesla thing, because we Tesla people are the worst,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really most of the experience of owning and using a Tesla is great and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in many ways better than what a lot of other car makers or any other car makers are doing. They have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few significant drawbacks, most notably that the company is just seemingly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco always in manic mode and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey they’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really bad at paperwork and service and the supply chain required to supply their

⏹️ ▶️ Marco service centers with parts and things like that. They’re terrible at that. But when you actually have the car and it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco working properly, which is most of the time, it’s fantastic. And you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mentioned things like user interface. I like the Tesla UI better than other cars. There’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a couple of minor nitpicks I have with it, but way fewer than most other cars. So really, I’d say

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in many ways, they are way ahead. And I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco other car makers think they can compete well with Tesla by just turning some

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of their existing models electric or making something that’s vaguely similar

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s new. But I think it’s going to take more than that. I think they, similar

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the way a lot of tech companies try to do what Apple does,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to kind of misunderstand all the things that make it good and only do like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a feature checklist competition. I think that’s what the car makers are doing to compete

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with Tesla. And I think it’s going to have similar results where like, yeah, we’re gonna have more

⏹️ ▶️ Marco electric car options to choose from, which is great, we need that. But I don’t think they’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna like come and kill Tesla just because they take like, you know, a five series and make it electric

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or something like that. Like, I think it’s gonna take more than that. And I don’t think they realize that or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would even appreciate the differences if they did.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I mostly agree with you, and that’s why I was saying earlier that I don’t think that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a electric 5 Series, to pick on that example, will be as good as a Tesla, as a Model

⏹️ ▶️ Casey S. And I think the biggest issue that the other manufacturers

⏹️ ▶️ Casey are gonna run into is that for all the things I love to make fun of Tesla for,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And for all of their build quality problems and service problems and paperwork problems,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one thing that Tesla seems to have done extremely well and extremely right is the supercharger network.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t see, I don’t see anyone else getting anywhere near that robust

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a network anytime soon. And yes, I’m aware that there are like third parties and like independent, like, I don’t know,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey people, companies that will provide electric charging, but I don’t think it will be near as

⏹️ ▶️ Casey easy or as seamless as it is with a Tesla supercharger. I’ve seen superchargers in action several times,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it is extremely cool and extremely convenient and extremely easy. I think that’s probably going

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be the biggest hurdle. The point I was making to you in a very snarky way on Twitter, but I really

⏹️ ▶️ Casey genuinely mean, is that we have friends that had cracks in their windshields and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey waited literally six months or something like that to get a new windshield from Tesla because Tesla’s the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey only people that will provide the windshield for a Model 3. That’s just utterly preposterous. I’ve heard other

⏹️ ▶️ Casey similar stories of not being able to get in for service for months and months and months because parts weren’t available or

⏹️ ▶️ Casey technicians weren’t available or so on and so forth. And certainly the ridiculous problems you’ve had for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey four years with your Bluetooth being barely usable, that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey shouldn’t be the case. And I don’t see a BMW or a Volkswagen or any other quote unquote real manufacturer

⏹️ ▶️ Casey making those kinds of rookie mistakes. And yeah, I think to some degree it’s potato versus

⏹️ ▶️ Casey potahto, right? the infotainment’s great in this mythical 5 series, but it only

⏹️ ▶️ Casey runs 100 miles at a time and there’s nowhere to charge it. So I’m not saying they’re just going to swoop

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in and save the day, but I do think that an older,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey more traditional car company in some ways does have a lot of advantages in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey bringing something to market that is way more reliable and way more usable. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. This is my two cents. John, where do you come down on the Tesla stuff? and then we’ll circle back

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the actual question at hand.

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I feel like Tesla’s still kind of a mess. And I think

⏹️ ▶️ John no matter how badly the competitors do, there’s just going to be so many of them.

⏹️ ▶️ John And their approach is going to be so much less company destroying,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I feel like, than

⏹️ ▶️ John Tesla’s, because they have existing businesses that they’re easing their way into that it’s going to be difficult

⏹️ ▶️ John for Tesla to remain independent and thriving in this environment because

⏹️ ▶️ John like the I mean, who knows how long it’s actually take, but there’s lots of miles coming out now and like

⏹️ ▶️ John the car companies like the Volkswagen was saying no more internal combustion

⏹️ ▶️ John engine cars after 2025. And that date keeps moving around a little bit. But in general, I think it’s moving closer

⏹️ ▶️ John to the present rather than farther away. Like it’s not like they’re thinking of making a couple of electric models.

⏹️ ▶️ John These companies are slowly but surely going all in to basically be electric

⏹️ ▶️ John car companies. So there’s just going to be so many cars. Some of them, like internal combustion

⏹️ ▶️ John cars, some of them will be good, some of them will be bad. It’s going to be so that like that will

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not like they’re all going to be better than Tesla, but there’ll be enough of them

⏹️ ▶️ John that Tesla will just be another electric car maker that has its advantages and its disadvantages.

⏹️ ▶️ John And you have to weigh them the same way you weigh. Do you like BMW? Do you like Mercedes? like Honda, they all make internal combustion

⏹️ ▶️ John cars and it really depends on what you value. And that’s the world that Tesla is going to be living in

⏹️ ▶️ John as opposed to the world now, or you know, the world they came from, which is they’re so differentiated.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just like they’re in another league entirely. Their differentiation is going to be shrinking and shrinking. Now they may still

⏹️ ▶️ John be the best at many things and make people, they prefer them. If assuming they’re still in business by then, this is a separate issue,

⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s the foot of put it this way, the competitive landscape is getting harder for them,

⏹️ ▶️ John not easier. Um, and I think that if they liked it to Marco’s

⏹️ ▶️ John point, the part that is most undervalued about what Tesla does is their

⏹️ ▶️ John lack of respect for orthodoxy because all the other car makers, like

⏹️ ▶️ John the thing there, their respect for orthodoxy is their strength because they’re going to make cars

⏹️ ▶️ John that work and can be repaired and are reliable and work in cold weather and and can be used repeatedly without overheating and

⏹️ ▶️ John like all the stuff that just car makers make. But that same orthodoxy is what’s

⏹️ ▶️ John going to prevent them from making a UI like Tesla’s that Marco really likes, right? Because like, well, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John just not the way we make cars. Like we outsource most of that and it’s mostly gonna be a conventional car with a

⏹️ ▶️ John bunch of touchscreens and that’s not the whole deal here. It’s the powertrain or whatever. You’re not going to end

⏹️ ▶️ John up with a user interface like Tesla has coming from an established

⏹️ ▶️ John car company. Even if they think they’re being super duper radical, All that means is their screen will be a little bit bigger. Now,

⏹️ ▶️ John me personally, I probably prefer the car interfaces that

⏹️ ▶️ John take a more orthodox approach with more buttons and knobs and smaller touchscreens or whatever. But

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re never going to give people who really like Tesla’s what they want.

⏹️ ▶️ John Because what people really like about Tesla, yeah, it’s that it’s electric car and everything. But if you really like the car, you like

⏹️ ▶️ John Tesla’s approach to making cars in terms of how they look, how they

⏹️ ▶️ John work, how you interact with them on a daily basis. And no one seems to be copying

⏹️ ▶️ John that. I think that’s good, because I don’t really like that approach that much. But if you’re a Tesla fan, I

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think there’s anybody out there trying to be just like Tesla, but better. What they’re trying to be

⏹️ ▶️ John is just like the car company they already are, but electric. Which

⏹️ ▶️ John is very appealing to somebody, I mean, you made fun of like an electric 5 Series. If you really like the 5 Series, and someone said, what

⏹️ ▶️ John if we gave you this car, but with better performance than its silent that has no exhaust. You’re like, sold, great, because

⏹️ ▶️ John I love that car, right? But Marco fell in love with Tesla, not because it was like his old five,

⏹️ ▶️ John but electric, but because it was a very different experience, not just because it was electric, but every other

⏹️ ▶️ John part of the experience was different as well, so.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s it. Like that, I think, is what people underestimate about Tesla and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco why people choose Tesla. It’s more than just the drivetrain. The drivetrain is really significant,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but don’t get me wrong. The drive train is awesome, and that’s a huge reason why people

⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy Teslas. But also, one of the reasons why people like Teslas,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially after owning them, is all the other details, all the other niceties, all the other

⏹️ ▶️ Marco practicalities. Like, I haven’t had a Model 3, so I can’t speak to it, but the Model S is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a fantastic car. I don’t see a lot of people coming

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in and competing well with the Model S on anything except price. on price there’s huge

⏹️ ▶️ Marco room to compete and that’s going to be a huge market but for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s honestly going to be challenging for the car maker for the other car makers because batteries are very expensive and they’re going

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be expensive for them too uh they’re expensive for tesla and they’re going to be expensive for them so uh possibly more expensive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for them um so you know that’s it’s going to be hard to compete on price maybe but that is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco where a lot of the competition is going to happen that will actually succeed what most car

⏹️ ▶️ Marco makers i think don’t realize and and what even a lot of drivers and the press don’t realize if they haven’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco owned a Tesla is that just turning other cars into electric vehicles,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco while that is nice and while that needs to happen for lots of reasons, that’s not gonna be that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco much of a competitor to Tesla necessarily because Tesla’s really nice in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of other ways. And like, if you are not willing to be as forward-thinking and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco aggressive as Tesla in certain ways, like with the controls or the, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the shapes of the cars or the styles or the way your cargo goes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in, what it holds, how it can be configured, all the stuff that makes Tesla’s nice,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the remote control stuff from the app, the giant touch screen, all that stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the problems I have with it, like Casey, you mentioned my Bluetooth stack was barely usable. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not true. My Bluetooth stack works fine, it just lacks key features,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it doesn’t have CarPlay. And those are, you know, not insignificant. Ultimately,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the lack of CarPlay or Android Auto, you know, they support neither of them, I think that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco will hurt them more than almost anything else any car company could do to them. Because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco once people get accustomed to having CarPlay, they really don’t want to go back to not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco having it. And there’s no way with the Tesla to add it later. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, I think, like, their incredible stubbornness to not adopt CarPlay. And at this point,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s clearly a choice. It’s not like, oh, we haven’t gotten to it. Like, it’s definitely, obviously, a choice now.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That, I think, will cost them more customers than an electric 5 Series would or anything

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that. Because the fact is, like, that’s the kind of stuff that will start mattering. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco once everyone has electric drivetrains, it’s gonna come down to, you know, how nice is the rest of the car then? How nice

⏹️ ▶️ Marco does it drive? How well does it fit your needs with things like size and space and price and everything else?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, all that stuff’s gonna matter, with the exception of not having CarPlay, Tesla

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really is, they compete very well on all of those fronts, way better

⏹️ ▶️ Marco than I think most people give them credit for who haven’t owned one, because they don’t realize that it’s about way more than the drivetrain.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So when people start competing now on basically just the drivetrain, I think they’re going to have a harder time

⏹️ ▶️ Marco than they think.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, that’s not the only thing that people compete on, though, like to be fair to BMW, like the

⏹️ ▶️ John set of decisions that Tesla has made appeals to a certain set of people who, you know, like Teslas and maybe own them.

⏹️ ▶️ John Other car companies, particularly BMW, have at various times made equally unorthodox

⏹️ ▶️ John but different decisions about how to make an electric car. Take the stupid i3, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John Very different decisions than Tesla, and it sure isn’t a BMW 3 Series made electric.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just that those decisions apparently were not as appealing as the decisions that Tesla made.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not a worse car. Some people love the i3, right? But it’s a different set of decisions about

⏹️ ▶️ John it. Because when you make an electric car, you have so many more options. Because you don’t have the internal combustion engine and all those parts. You can configure

⏹️ ▶️ John it in all sorts of different ways. The decisions that Tesla made fit exactly what Barco was looking for. Huge car,

⏹️ ▶️ John tons of capacity, good for a big family, not an SUV. The i3

⏹️ ▶️ John is a very different set of decisions. You can make it way smaller because you don’t have to have all that stuff in it. You

⏹️ ▶️ John can have lots of cargo capacity without a lot of overhangs. It’s not really car-shaped anymore, but it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John a van. Or let’s take the i8. That’s the other one? Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the supercar.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s a hybrid. Right. Another set of decisions, right? And BMW’s

⏹️ ▶️ John attempts at making electric cars were not take its existing line of cars to do the drivetrain. It’s just they

⏹️ ▶️ John made two totally different cars, neither one of which found the audience

⏹️ ▶️ John that Tesla’s set of decisions made. So Tesla’s cars are unorthodox, but being unorthodox

⏹️ ▶️ John alone is not enough. But other car makers are willing to make unorthodox electric cars. Nissan Leaf

⏹️ ▶️ John as an example. Some people love their Nissan Leafs because the set of decisions it makes appeal to them. They don’t want a

⏹️ ▶️ John gigantic Model S with all those things. They want a tiny little car that they use to commute and they would

⏹️ ▶️ John rather have a Nissan Leaf than the Model S. So there is room for car companies to make different sets of decisions.

⏹️ ▶️ John All the other cars are basically changing out the drive trains, not changing

⏹️ ▶️ John out, but like making new cars from scratch that have nothing to share with the other ones, but that are basically like

⏹️ ▶️ John if you squinted them, oh, that looks like the midsize SUV it’s replacing. It’s like, well, actually it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John all new and it shares zero parts with the previous one. It’s like, but yeah, but you made similar decisions in terms of how big should it be,

⏹️ ▶️ John how many doors should it have, how should it be a package, what is the user interface. And those are good decisions because

⏹️ ▶️ John those car companies already have customers who like all those decisions. They like

⏹️ ▶️ John this size SUV with these features. If you could give them that same thing that has

⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit more cargo room and is a little bit nicer and is totally silent than as electric, that’s great for them

⏹️ ▶️ John to make. But car companies are also making different unorthodox bets. It’s just that Tesla

⏹️ ▶️ John is pot committed. They don’t have any quote unquote normal cars. They only have ones that are made

⏹️ ▶️ John like Tesla’s. And that set of decisions thus far has been the most popular

⏹️ ▶️ John and unconventional approach to making cars. It could be

⏹️ ▶️ John that some other company comes up with another unorthodox approach to making electric cars that is equally appealing.

⏹️ ▶️ John But in the meantime, merely sort of replacing all the internal combustion engine cars with electric

⏹️ ▶️ John cars that are packaged in similar ways is a smart decision for the rest

⏹️ ▶️ John of the industry. Because there are lots of people who like those packaging decisions. As much as we complain

⏹️ ▶️ John about how every single car is some kind of SUV thing, that’s what everybody loves. That’s what

⏹️ ▶️ John everybody buys. So it’s almost like Tesla’s kind of, other than the Model X, Tesla is a sideshow until they come

⏹️ ▶️ John up with their, what is it, Model Y, the small SUV? I believe so, yeah. Right. But that’s the whole industry

⏹️ ▶️ John now is those SUVs. So while we sit over here saying how much we love the fact that Tesla makes a car and it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John a great car, everyone else is like, car schmar. All they care about are these stupid SUVs, and that’s what

⏹️ ▶️ John everybody is making. So I feel like the real war is

⏹️ ▶️ John playing out elsewhere, and it could be that most people’s taste is kind of conventional.

⏹️ ▶️ John And maybe Tesla fans will remain Tesla fans, but the whole rest of the world, just Just like with

⏹️ ▶️ John the internal combustion, the whole rest of the world would just be buying cars that we all find unappealing.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey The other thing that occurs to me, and I’m a little bit ignorant because I’ve driven Teslas more than most

⏹️ ▶️ Casey non-owners, but I’ve not spent an overabundance of time with any Tesla. But the things

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I remember thinking were incredibly novel back when the Model S was brand new, things like the big

⏹️ ▶️ Casey touchscreen, things like autopilot to some degree,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and being able to control it with an app, you know, to unlock and unlock the car and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey start the AC and stuff like that. To some degree, I am not trying to say it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey apples to apples, but to some degree, I can do all that same stuff with Aaron’s car. Aaron’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey car has some amount of autopilot. I am not saying it’s as good. I’m just saying it’s similar.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can start it from my phone. I can turn the AC on from my phone.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It has a big touchscreen in the center of it that a lot of the controls are on, which is in some ways bad and some ways great.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I think a lot of the novelty behind the Model S and then the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Model 3 just crank that novelty up even higher because there’s nothing but a touchscreen.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But a lot of that novelty is not as novel anymore because every

⏹️ ▶️ Casey other car manufacturer is catching up to those sorts of things. And I think there will, to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey both of your points, I think there will always be people who just prefer Tesla in the way in which they do things and that’s fine.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I think the novelty of a Tesla, both in terms of being electric in the first place and in terms of having

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a big touchscreen with which you interact with this stuff, that I think is becoming

⏹️ ▶️ Casey ever more normal with each passing day. And I think that that’s going

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be hard for Tesla to compete with when you can do so many of these novel things, maybe not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey exactly the same, maybe not quite as well, but close enough. You can do all these novel things in quote unquote regular

⏹️ ▶️ Casey cars.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want to make a Windows Mac analogy, but there is a little bit of that in here. And Windows is like, see, we

⏹️ ▶️ John have all the same stuff as Macs have, but they didn’t really, there’s

⏹️ ▶️ John more to it than the checklist. There’s a commitment, there’s a design ethos, there’s a sort of

⏹️ ▶️ John cleanliness and simplicity. Again, to be clear, I don’t particularly like, but people who like Teslas

⏹️ ▶️ John like it. And so even though you will go down the list of things, your Tesla can do that, my car can do that, your Tesla can do that, my car can do

⏹️ ▶️ John that, the experience of being and living with a Tesla is still materially different. And

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like trying to explain the difference between a Mac and Windows 95 back in 1995. They’d be like, it’s the same thing, right? It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John like, no, it’s not the same thing. The differences are subtle and nuanced

⏹️ ▶️ John enough that it’s difficult to explain it, but people who like Macs know that Windows 95 is no substitute,

⏹️ ▶️ John and people that don’t care one way or the other are like, I don’t understand what you’re on about. It’s all the same thing, and everyone runs Windows, therefore

⏹️ ▶️ John you suck. So I don’t think it’s exactly the same thing, but it’s close enough.

⏹️ ▶️ John And honestly, I feel like I could explain, like, you know, think about all the things that

⏹️ ▶️ John you and I, Casey, are not a fan of in the Model 3. The extreme, even Marco would not do, the extreme

⏹️ ▶️ John simplicity, the concentrating everything onto a screen. People like that. It’s refreshing. In the same way that people

⏹️ ▶️ John like their, you know, junky little GM EV, or their Prius, or their Nissan Leaf. The things

⏹️ ▶️ John about those cars that are different, so different from other cars, is what eventually,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, what appeals to and eventually hooks the people who fall in love with them. So Tesla has

⏹️ ▶️ John a, it’s not an advantage, but it is a loyalty and a willingness. That’s what I was saying about their willingness

⏹️ ▶️ John to go against orthodoxy. They are defining their own orthodoxy, but it is so different than everybody

⏹️ ▶️ John else. And everyone else’s attempt to defy orthodoxy has been less successful. Equally daring,

⏹️ ▶️ John I would argue that the i3 is an even more unconventional car than the Tesla. It’s just not quite

⏹️ ▶️ John as beloved. So, like, maybe try again, BMW.

#askatp: Non-Apple tech

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And we should probably get back to Colin’s actual question. So Marco, what tech, what’s 20 minutes

⏹️ ▶️ Casey later, what tech outside of Apple are you most happy with currently or perhaps excited about in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the near future?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m going to go, I mean, there’s honestly quite a lot of it. I too thought about electric cars, which we’ve

⏹️ ▶️ Marco now talked about a lot. But the area that I immediately jumped to is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco audio gear and to some extent video gear too. The

⏹️ ▶️ Marco boom in podcasting and especially the boom in YouTube

⏹️ ▶️ Marco being like a huge industry has created enough demand

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for manufacturers to make really, really good and fairly affordable

⏹️ ▶️ Marco audio and video gear that is just incredibly capable.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the world of audio in general, both production and consumption, Audio gear

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is really good now, because to some degree, like all that stuff has to compete with phones, and so it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has to be really good to even compete at all. And of course, there’s more competition for all these new markets

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything, podcasters, YouTubers. So like, to give some examples, like the world

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of audio interfaces, like the thing that you plug in microphones to, and then you can plug it into a computer.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The audio interfaces are amazing now. You can get really, really great ones at all

⏹️ ▶️ Marco different prices, with all different capabilities, you know, pro level gear for decent amounts

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of money. You can get fantastic microphones. Microphones don’t change that often, but you can still get fantastic

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ones for not that much money. You can get, you know, amazing headphones

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for both, you know, both for like, you know, enjoyment listening and for professional monitoring.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You have Bluetooth now in all the, in a lot of the consumer headphones, you know, that you have tons of choices

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there. Like basically areas that you used to have either no choice or very little choice, you now have a lot of choice.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The choices you have now are usually very good and you’re just deciding between

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fairly personal factors that just matter to you. Any

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of production gear is just really, really good these days and there’s lots of great options out there. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s some crap still to be sure, but you can get good stuff now

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at way more accessible prices than you used to be able to. And it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just getting really good. One of the things that in particular I’m looking forward to that isn’t out yet is the Zoom

⏹️ ▶️ Marco F6 recorder, which is very, very promising looking as like a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco six-input audio recorder that has this amazing property where you don’t have to set gain because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it records it all as float, and so it can’t clip. There’s all sorts of amazing stuff like that coming

⏹️ ▶️ Marco out. You know, Sound Devices has made amazing stuff with the MixPre series at the kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco higher end of the consumer and prosumer line. There’s all sorts of just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco great stuff in AV stuff. In the drone area too, like the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco drone area is a whole other thing. The stuff DJI’s putting out there is amazing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco What drones can do now for like 500 to $1,000 is incredible. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff like that, just like anything that appeals to like podcasters and YouTubers, that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco whole, the industry of that gear now is really, really good.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’d like to jump in there and I’m glad you brought up DJI because just yesterday, I think it was,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey they announced the Osmo Mobile 3. So this is the gimbal that you would put your smartphone

⏹️ ▶️ Casey inside of. And it’s $120 and I have the Osmo Mobile 1 and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I bought it like a few weeks before the Osmo Mobile 2 came out. This one is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey foldable in a way that the other ones were not. So it’s much much more compact, it has many

⏹️ ▶️ Casey more features. And in a lot of ways, spending $120 on a gimbal for your

⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPhone is really, really stupid, but holy cow, the stuff, the video you can get

⏹️ ▶️ Casey out of that when it’s stabilized is amazing. See also GoPros. Like in so many ways, GoPros

⏹️ ▶️ Casey are such a waste of money because you can do 80% of the same stuff with your smartphone. But having

⏹️ ▶️ Casey something that you can put in water or throw or on the outside of a car

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and be okay with it because it’s probably gonna survive if it falls off. That stuff is just incredible.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And to your point, the drones as well. So much of this is so, so cool and I’m glad

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you brought it up because I did not even think about it. It is incredibly impressive stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And even on the listening side too, or like the consumption side, you know, like I don’t care about TVs like John does, but like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the audio side, headphones are amazing these days. Headphone amps and other gear

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that, music players, They’re all super cheap and amazing these days. Like, we

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just live in a time with just an embarrassment of riches of how good AV gear

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is right now, both consuming and producing, and how accessible

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has become to make really high quality stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ John All right, John. Oh, not to touch on cars again, but

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I

⏹️ ▶️ John reflect on this when I’m driving around. I’m really happy with my car. I reflect on it more because I think about

⏹️ ▶️ John whether there will be another car that has the same set of attributes. Again,

⏹️ ▶️ John very inexpensive stick shift car. It’s the favorite, my favorite car I’ve ever owned,

⏹️ ▶️ John despite having the brake caliper thing that does not put it in top of class in terms

⏹️ ▶️ John of reliability. It’s still in the grand scheme of things, very reliable car, but it’s great. It performs

⏹️ ▶️ John well, it handles well, it’s incredibly roomy. It has more creature comforts

⏹️ ▶️ John than my past cars. I like it better than my wife’s more or less equivalent car just

⏹️ ▶️ John because of the minor details like I like my cloth seats better than her leather seats. I have a little bit more headroom because I think her power

⏹️ ▶️ John secret mechanism is a little bit bigger or whatever. I like my shifter better than her shifter.

⏹️ ▶️ John These are basically identical cars. I like my trim better than hers. You know, that’s it just lets me know that how much do

⏹️ ▶️ John I like this car. I like it better than basically the same car two years later with different trim

⏹️ ▶️ John options and I certainly like it better than any other option that’s out there that I can buy with

⏹️ ▶️ John possible exception of the upcoming new Mazda6 because the new Mazda3 looks really good. But anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m happy with my car and I really I’m planning on probably just plowing lots of money into it and keeping it runny

⏹️ ▶️ John for probably longer than I should because once it goes what are my options going to be?

⏹️ ▶️ John Hopefully Honda will still be making stick-shift Accords, hopefully they’ll be in a generation that I like because I skipped

⏹️ ▶️ John a generation of Accord that I I didn’t like so you never know so I’m very happy with my car right now

⏹️ ▶️ John Cameras that we’ve talked about in the past several shows. I feel like in Sony. I found a camera brand that

⏹️ ▶️ John is more closely aligned with my values

⏹️ ▶️ John than the other camera makers like it’s not like Apple if Apple made a camera because Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John cameras would be very different but what Sony is doing is sort of treating cameras more like an electronics

⏹️ ▶️ John company where they are really pushing the boundaries as far as they can go. Kind

⏹️ ▶️ John of like it’s the early days of the PCR. It’s like how fast can we make the CPU? You know, how much can we crank this?

⏹️ ▶️ John How much storage? How much memory? Just try to do better. Why? What’s the point? It’s like, just do it. Just that’s what

⏹️ ▶️ John we’re doing because we’re computer makers and every year we try to make it faster, bigger and better. And sometimes they screw up

⏹️ ▶️ John and make cameras that overheat or whatever, but what it means is that they keep iterating. Like rather

⏹️ ▶️ John than taking many, many years and come up with the single next generation product it is a conservative

⏹️ ▶️ John evolution of the previous one. They just keep trying stuff. Models, they’re coming out much faster than

⏹️ ▶️ John other camera companies. And they’ll upgrade the electronics, they’ll upgrade their software, they’ll

⏹️ ▶️ John improve. They’re doing computational photography, not to the degree that Apple would, certainly, but

⏹️ ▶️ John to a higher degree than their competitors. Their motion tracking, their eye autofocus,

⏹️ ▶️ John they are flexing in the areas that the other camera companies are not. So I’m happy to have found

⏹️ ▶️ John a fancy camera company whose values more closely

⏹️ ▶️ John align to my own than the other more traditional camera companies.

⏹️ ▶️ John And this is just, you know, I’ve just got the one camera, but I’m thinking of upgrading or whatever. But it does, when

⏹️ ▶️ John I look at the action in the camera industry, like all I’m interested in is what Sony is doing. I look at what everyone

⏹️ ▶️ John else is doing, I look at the Fuji cameras, I look at the Nikon, I look at the new Nikon mirrorless, I look at Canon, I look at all this stuff,

⏹️ ▶️ John but Sony is kind of my Tesla in terms of matching with my

⏹️ ▶️ John values. Let’s see, what else? Future stuff. I’m not gonna list

⏹️ ▶️ John TV, because I still feel like, I mean, I don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ John We’re very far away from mini LED. OLED still has a bunch of compromises.

⏹️ ▶️ John I saw a review recently, someone reviewing one of those reference monitors that Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John was talking about in its thing, right? you know, $30,000, but it’s LCD based.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not OLED. And the pitch of the review was, if you spend 30

⏹️ ▶️ John grand, you can get a tiny LCD that actually outperforms OLED.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey And it uses very

⏹️ ▶️ John similar technology to the XDR display with the multiple layers and like, basically dynamic

⏹️ ▶️ John backlight gated by another, essentially another sort of monochrome LCD that controls the

⏹️ ▶️ John show through of the backlight. It’s pretty amazing. Granted, it’s not TV sized. It’s a tiny reference monitor.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not a 65 inch thing. I think it was like You know 20 something or 32 inches or something. It’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John for watching tv But it looks pretty amazing and it just goes to show it’s got tons of fans in the

⏹️ ▶️ John back of it Just like apple’s display and everything, but it just goes to show that There is like oled

⏹️ ▶️ John is not the be-all end-all

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco you can already

⏹️ ▶️ John see existing technologies that if you spend horrendous amounts of money can beat oled and

⏹️ ▶️ John Out in the future mini LED that could potentially be that so that’s I’m actually going to

⏹️ ▶️ John not list TV There’s a negative answer and then Also, am I happy with

⏹️ ▶️ John in the near future? No, I had something else I think

⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve forgotten that’s why I should write these things down Anyway, we’ve gone on long enough, but those are my two answers. current car,

⏹️ ▶️ John thumbs up, and my current and future potential cameras.

#askatp: Portrait lock

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tom Tubbs writes, do you use portrait orientation lock on your iPads and iPhones

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and how do you deal with watching video? I almost never use it on my iPad.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I almost never turn it off on my iPhone. So my iPhone is almost always locked

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in portrait. Good apps will let you, and I think Plex recently

⏹️ ▶️ Casey added this as well, will let you optionally force to landscape for video playback.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But in the case that an app doesn’t support that, I will turn off the rotation lock

⏹️ ▶️ Casey long enough to watch a video and then usually turn it right back on when I’m done. My iPhone is pretty much always

⏹️ ▶️ Casey locked to portrait and iPad is almost never. Marco, how do you handle this?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I tried for a while to portrait lock my phone and it never on an iPad.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That seems less common of a need. But on the phone, I tried it for a while

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I just, it drove me nuts because the fact is like the reason

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want portrait lock is because almost all apps almost all the time

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want to be locked to portrait but on the phone not on the iPad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but there’s also a very common set of things that I do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on my phone that I want to be able to go to landscape and those are consuming video

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and and pictures and taking video and pictures

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in landscape which is a pretty common thing I think and so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco whenever I am portrait locked those things just get in the way too much

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I end up not being portrait locked. Now the history of iOS

⏹️ ▶️ Marco rotation on the API side has been very turbulent.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They change the rotation APIs like every two or three years with iOS. And there’s always

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lots of bugs related to it. And it’s really hard to make an app that like rotates most of the time, but not all the time.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I think what I ultimately want is I want iOS to have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco API’s where you can have rotation lock on, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps can specify certain views or certain modes that they will rotate

⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway, even defeating rotation lock and that would be for things like camera

⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps or video playback apps. Because I think a lot of people want

⏹️ ▶️ Marco rotation lock on their phone much of the time but still want to be able to take and watch

⏹️ ▶️ Marco landscape videos and photos. So that’s my wish but until

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that wish is granted and unless that wish is ever granted, I turn rotation lock off because it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just too annoying to have it on.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John?

⏹️ ▶️ John I turn rotation lock on and off at least once a day. And it’s because I

⏹️ ▶️ John use my iPhone in a reclined position, laying down on my side,

⏹️ ▶️ John whether it’s on my couch or on my bed, at least once a day. And everything flips sideways if you don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John lock it. And so that’s just like sort of mandatory time. And then there’s the optional

⏹️ ▶️ John times, like Margo’s thing, where you do want to actually rotate the thing. During the day, rotation

⏹️ ▶️ John lock is off, but I always end up turning it on if I’m laying on the couch or laying on the bed

⏹️ ▶️ John or waking up in the morning. One of those times I’ll end up turning it on. And that is

⏹️ ▶️ John enough. That sort of once or 1.5 times a day is enough to make me wish for the return of

⏹️ ▶️ John hardware rotation lock. I don’t think it was ever on the phone, but it was on the iPad. I

⏹️ ▶️ John use it frequently enough that I really wish there was a hardware solution to it. Or like Marcus said, a software solution where

⏹️ ▶️ John apps can decide on a per whatever basis. but boy, like hardware buttons,

⏹️ ▶️ John as easy it is to get to control center and hit that little icon, it’s faster to

⏹️ ▶️ John not have to swipe on the screen and to just flip a little button. So I don’t expect

⏹️ ▶️ John that button to come back. I understand when they get rid of it, like there’s so many good reasons for them to get rid of it, but I do it enough that it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John annoying to me. I wish there was an easier way to toggle it. iPad,

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t really lock at all on my iPad for the most part. iPad annoys me

⏹️ ▶️ John is when I’m using it, like just in normal ways, but it’s, it’s like

⏹️ ▶️ John close, it’s in between being laying flat on the table and being vertical, like it ends up tilting

⏹️ ▶️ John and the accelerometer is triggered and you’re like, there’s no way that you should be triggering you don’t notice that like you’re tilting it a little bit, you know what I mean?

⏹️ ▶️ John Like iPads, I feel like rotate more freely because they’re larger. And I hate

⏹️ ▶️ John it when that happens and it makes me consider locking it, but I go back and forth from portrait to landscape on my iPad in

⏹️ ▶️ John one session a lot.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Like, you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, because what do I do on my iPad? I’m watching, if I’m watching Netflix or YouTube on landscape, if I’m reading Twitter,

⏹️ ▶️ John I am portrait. But sometimes I’ll read Twitter and landscape too and then have a second app with,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the split screen thing. And it’s just, I’m always going back and forth. Like that’s the beauty of the iPad for me. So I

⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t lock the rotation there. But

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey my

⏹️ ▶️ John phone laying on my side, I really wish I could lock and unlock easier.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I agree. I really missed when the iPad lost that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey hardware button because I did used to use it. I had the hardware button set to rotation lock rather than mute, and I did

⏹️ ▶️ Casey use it fairly often at the time. But yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s been a long time since that’s been.

#askatp: Zelda order

⏹️ ▶️ Casey been a thing. All right. Finally, David Sparks, I believe the other David Sparks writes,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I’ve never played any of them in which order should I play the Zelda games release order in word

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in world chronological order, order of descending quality. Should any be omitted? Is there some core set

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of must plays and some set of stay aways? Does your answer change if the gamer is a young child as opposed to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey an adult and bonus question. And I actually have a couple of thoughts about this. I’ve been thinking about exposing my son

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to video games chronologically. so that he tries, for example, NES games first, then SNES, N64, GameCube, etc.,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey before jumping to the Switch. My idea is that he might enjoy the older games more if he hasn’t been exposed to the shinier graphics of newer games,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and he might better see how gameplay mechanics have evolved. What do you think about the merits of this idea?” So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a couple of quick points about this. First of all, it would be wrong of us not to point

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the wonderful post by Andy Baio about doing exactly that with his son

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and walking his son through, I think they started with the Atari or something like that, something that predated even

⏹️ ▶️ Casey my video gaming and went all the way through modern games. It’s a really good post. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey despite the fact that it’s on Medium, it’s worth reading. And also, just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey last week, in the last week, I decided I wanted to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey try to see what the world of emulation was like again on the Mac. And so I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey cracked open the app OpenEMU and fed it some

⏹️ ▶️ Casey backups that I had taken myself off of cartridges I had in the past. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was able to play some old video games. And Declan has been really into Mario Kart on the Switch these

⏹️ ▶️ Casey days. And so I thought, well, you know, it would be really cool to show him like the original

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mario Kart on the, what was it, Super Nintendo and then Mario Kart

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on Nintendo 64. And we did that. And we also played a handful of other games that I remembered

⏹️ ▶️ Casey fondly from my childhood. And interestingly, he hated

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and did not do well with anything that predated the Nintendo 64.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the reason was he could just not get his little mind in the span of, you know, half an hour or an

⏹️ ▶️ Casey hour, he couldn’t get his little mind around the D-pad. He was so used to using an analog stick.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That was the only thing he knew. And he just could not get his mind around how to use the D-pad, which I thought

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was really, really interesting and kind of And again, I’m sure if I had compelled him to keep trying

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and stick with it, I’m sure he would have picked it up. But it was so weird to me as a kid who grew up on the D-pad

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then had to adjust to a joystick or an analog stick, it was so weird to me to see him

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so flummoxed by the D-pad, which I thought was really wild. Obviously there’s a lot of questions

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about Zelda here, which I think we should leave to John, but since you will probably also be fairly quick about this, Marco, what are

⏹️ ▶️ Casey your thoughts about doing this chronologically, or do you have thoughts about Zelda?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t have that many thoughts about Zelda because I personally don’t play Zelda games because it’s just not my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of game, but I recognize they are obviously very popular and very good, so I think this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco question should be answered. I know that my son has greatly enjoyed

⏹️ ▶️ Marco watching his mother play Zelda games a lot,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and she went through and played with him a couple years ago now all of the old Zelda

⏹️ ▶️ Marco games. NES first, then Super Nintendo, then N64. I don’t think we got to the GameCube. I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we had to just watch that one on YouTube because we couldn’t find a good way to emulate it. But otherwise, like the other ones we could do.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And he enjoyed watching all of them. However, he has only

⏹️ ▶️ Marco played the most recent one, the Switch one, you know, the whatever, Breath of the Wild.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco He’s played that and really enjoyed playing that. But he hasn’t played the old ones, so I can’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really say for sure. But he did really enjoy watching them.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, John, drop some knowledge on us.

⏹️ ▶️ John So for the Zelda thing, for the presumably adult asker of this question,

⏹️ ▶️ John which order should you play them in? Release order is the answer. That’s generally the answer for any kind of media. I

⏹️ ▶️ John guess if you’re going back to read a book series or watch a bunch of movies, any order that is not release order

⏹️ ▶️ John is worse because the later games were made with

⏹️ ▶️ John the knowledge of the previous games. So in a later game, there could be a reference

⏹️ ▶️ John to a previous game or a joke based on something that happened in a previous game.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s that’s the way they’re meant to be viewed. Like it’s the same thing with you know, that Star Wars

⏹️ ▶️ John movies are like, Oh, we’ll reorder them. I’ll watch the prequels for setting aside that you should never watch prequels period.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s not the way they’re meant to be consumed. And it’s interesting to do that. Like it’s a fun experiment.

⏹️ ▶️ John You can, you know, read a book series chronologically once they’re are all out, even though they were written in a different

⏹️ ▶️ John order, that can be a fun exercise. But for a first, if you’ve never played them for a first run through, you have to do them in release

⏹️ ▶️ John order. Like they’re, they’re purposely built that way. They’re meant to be consumed that way. You will

⏹️ ▶️ John enjoy them more that way because they’ll make sense to you that way. Cause that’s the

⏹️ ▶️ John way we all experienced them now. And so that’s, you know, so release

⏹️ ▶️ John order is the question is the answer to that question. Doesn’t mean you have to start all the way at the beginning, it doesn’t mean you have

⏹️ ▶️ John to play them all. So for, I would say, go on a release order and

⏹️ ▶️ John skip the games that everyone agrees are bad because they’re just gonna take a lot of time to play them. Or maybe just play the very

⏹️ ▶️ John best ones. Like it really doesn’t matter with the Zelda series how many of them you play. You could

⏹️ ▶️ John just sort them by order of quality and then go through them in

⏹️ ▶️ John release order and pick a threshold of quality that you’re going to skip over, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John So I think that’s probably the best strategy for just an adult playing the games. My personal recommendation

⏹️ ▶️ John is to start with the 3D Zeldas because I like 3D Zeldas better than the 2D Zeldas because what Zelda

⏹️ ▶️ John is all about is exploration and discovery and blah, blah, blah. And I feel like that experience is enhanced by being in a 3D

⏹️ ▶️ John world, even a primitive 3D world, versus a 2D one. But the 2D games are great and some people like 2D better

⏹️ ▶️ John than 3D. And there are things to recommend the 2D games that 3D games don’t have.

⏹️ ▶️ John So it depends on what your taste is. But there’s a lot of Zelda games, so pace yourself.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Um,

⏹️ ▶️ John and then for the child question, I have gone through this. Now, the first thing I would

⏹️ ▶️ John say is be prepared for the possibility that your child will not be into

⏹️ ▶️ John video games, which may be heartbreaking for you because you want your child to like all the things that you do, but that’s just

⏹️ ▶️ John a parent cliche. Like your kids are their own independent people. Sometimes they don’t like the same things as you, so you can’t force

⏹️ ▶️ John it. You shouldn’t force it. Support your kid, whatever they want to do. If they don’t like video games, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John fine. I have two kids. like video games way more than the other. That’s just the way it is.

⏹️ ▶️ John For exposing kids to games, there’s…

⏹️ ▶️ John I understand, I read the Andy Baio article and I took a similar approach with my kids, but here’s

⏹️ ▶️ John the problem. You have a small window of time. It’s the window of time between when your child

⏹️ ▶️ John becomes interested in video games and is able to play them in any way.

⏹️ ▶️ John And the ending time is when they’ve been too exposed to the rest of

⏹️ ▶️ John the world to deal with your manipulations basically.

⏹️ ▶️ John So the idea is you do want to get them to play

⏹️ ▶️ John the games that they would not otherwise play. Like eventually they get

⏹️ ▶️ John older and more jaded and there’s no way they’re going to be interested in your stupid old game. Right? going to

⏹️ ▶️ John happen eventually. So you want to get them before that. But the other danger is that

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not a danger, but like they may imprint on like the

⏹️ ▶️ John game that means the most of them may end up not being the best one. So let’s say not the Zelda series

⏹️ ▶️ John in particular. Let’s say you throw them with like the Atari 2600 game because you’re trying to do them in chronological

⏹️ ▶️ John order and that’s the game they imprint on and it’s a garbage game. So I know you’ve made their like favorite, sentimental

⏹️ ▶️ John favorite game a bad game. And I think it’s better to make their sentimental favorite

⏹️ ▶️ John game also happen to be a great game. So it’s a good idea to just expose them to great games. It is a good idea to

⏹️ ▶️ John show them the more primitive ones first because eventually they will be jaded and will turn up their nose at

⏹️ ▶️ John Atari 2600 graphics or whatever, because how could they not? They’re so incredibly primitive. But what I

⏹️ ▶️ John was always going for was, get, you know, A, get them to play it before they’re disgusted by

⏹️ ▶️ John it. But B, get them to experience a tiny, massively condensed version of the thing

⏹️ ▶️ John that I got to experience and lots of people of my generation and the generation near there was like, in

⏹️ ▶️ John our collective childhoods, there was this incredible accelerated

⏹️ ▶️ John advance of technology. We went from when I was born, personal computers not being a thing, period,

⏹️ ▶️ John to where we are today. There was this run up, whether it’s game consoles

⏹️ ▶️ John or the PC space, where things just got so much better from year to year. By the way, I finally remember the

⏹️ ▶️ John second technology I was excited about. I’ll get to it in a second. The third one. So much

⏹️ ▶️ John better. Like, it was just, and part of the experience from year to year was being dazzled

⏹️ ▶️ John by the amazing thing that we can do next year that we couldn’t do the previous year. And that doesn’t happen as much anymore

⏹️ ▶️ John because pace of change has slowed massively. We went from nothing to

⏹️ ▶️ John colored blobs on the screen to barely legible 2D graphics

⏹️ ▶️ John to nicer 2D graphics to barely legible 3D graphics, to nicer 3D graphics,

⏹️ ▶️ John to amazing 3D graphics, that you can bring your kid through that and give

⏹️ ▶️ John them a tiny, tiny compressed version of the sense of wonder of like, I can’t even believe

⏹️ ▶️ John that games can do this thing. And they’re never gonna think that about like, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John Star Fox on the SNES, right? They’re never gonna think that if they’ve seen a modern game,

⏹️ ▶️ John because they’d be like, what is this junk? But if all they’ve ever seen is, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John 2D side-scrolling Mario and they see Star Fox on the SNES, they will be amazed

⏹️ ▶️ John by it, as long as they’ve been sheltered enough not to understand what’s out there. That gets harder and harder over time, obviously,

⏹️ ▶️ John and you can’t really do maybe that same ramp, but for the Zelda games in particular, if you

⏹️ ▶️ John just do the 3Ds, if you let them play like Ocarina, and they’ve

⏹️ ▶️ John never seen a 3D game before, it’s perfectly enjoyable and they’ll love it and it’s a great, fun game, and you’ll have to help them with

⏹️ ▶️ John it because it’s kind of difficult, you know, if you get them really young. And then when they see Wind Waker, they’ll be

⏹️ ▶️ John surprised and charmed by it, right? And then when they see Twilight Princess, they’ll be like, it’s like Ocarina, but 10 times nicer. And then,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, you save Breath of the Wild to the last, this is the key thing, because it’s such a

⏹️ ▶️ John change in strategy to going to open world, that if you let them play Breath of the Wild first, they’ll never

⏹️ ▶️ John want to play a more constrained game, probably, right? So my answer to this is basically,

⏹️ ▶️ John release order, skip a bunch of games, get in as early as you can, compress the timeline as much

⏹️ ▶️ John as you can, Be aware that eventually once they see the outside world, like if you let them play iOS games with

⏹️ ▶️ John amazing graphics, they’re not gonna choke down Mario 64. Or maybe they

⏹️ ▶️ John will to like, to humor you, but it’s, I don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s kind of cruel to shelter them in that way, but I feel like you do give them that, you

⏹️ ▶️ John can give them that experience of unfolding sense of wonder

⏹️ ▶️ John in a six month to a year and a half period, if you strike at the right time if

⏹️ ▶️ John you constrain their media consumption sufficiently,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey they don’t such that they don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John know what’s out there in the world. Oh, and yeah, my other my other technology thing that

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m excited about, uh, game consoles, but I’m not going to say more about it today. I think I still have the PS

⏹️ ▶️ John five somewhere down the top because I do actually want to talk about that in a future show, but we were going a little bit long, so I’ll save it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks to our sponsors this week, Linode, Casper, and Mack Weldon, and we will talk to you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco next week.

Ending theme

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, cause

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Marco

⏹️ ▶️ John and Casey wouldn’t let him, cause it was accidental,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. And you can find the show

⏹️ ▶️ John notes at atp.fm And if you’re into

⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter, you can follow them

⏹️ ▶️ Marco At C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M A-N-T Marco Armin,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A

⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse, it’s accidental They didn’t mean to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidentally

⏹️ ▶️ John Check my cast so long

Automattic buys Tumblr

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, Marco, there’s been some news from your past this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey week that just came out. So Tumblr is not worth as much as

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it used to be.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so this… It’s really hard for me to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco talk about whatever is going on with Tumblr these days. Because of my history with it,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco people assume that I know a lot more about it than I really do. And I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco want, you know how occasionally Waz will give some asinine quote to the press

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about Apple and he just kind of embarrasses himself and it’s kind of painful to see? I don’t want to do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that for Tumblr. And so the news came out over the last couple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco days that Tumblr, first Yahoo bought it five years ago

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or so. Yahoo kind of collapsed and was kind of pieced out and sold off to various people.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And Tumblr was basically sold through to a bunch of different weird corporate entities.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It ended up in Verizon’s hands as part of Verizon buying a bunch of scraps from Yahoo

⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically. And I think whatever Verizon had in mind for what they were gonna do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with this new initiative of buying all these web properties, I think they might’ve changed direction or something. I don’t know, whatever happened.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They decided they didn’t want it anymore. And so they, it was just announced that they are selling Tumblr

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the company behind WordPress, which is Automatic. And I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco want to be precise, and it’s the company behind WordPress.com, not the WordPress Open Source Project, because that has apparently a different

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ownership structure, and they care very much about getting that right. Anyway, so Automatic,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the company behind WordPress.com, among other things, including Case’s favorite Gravatar,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have bought Tumblr for, they didn’t confirm the price yet, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the reports are suggesting that it was less than $3 million, which is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco nothing for a company like that. And so there’s been all sorts of news articles

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about it and reporting about it saying like, oh, I can’t believe how much value they lost and now it’s worth nothing. Now look at this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco house in Silicon Valley that’s worth more than it or this special fish that’s sold at a Japanese auction

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever. And I recognize that coming

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from somebody who has a podcast every week where I discuss my thoughts

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on other happenings in the industry, It’s kind of rich for me to say this,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but as I have seen the kind of reporting coming out about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this, it has really illustrated quite how little people understand about how stuff like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this works when they comment about it. And let me preface this by saying,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, my knowledge of Tumblr is completely useless now.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know nothing more about Tumblr than anybody listening does, because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I left Tumblr in 2010. Most people who use Tumblr today probably weren’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even using it when I left. So my knowledge of this is not insider

⏹️ ▶️ Marco knowledge. It is not anything about my past. It is simply

⏹️ ▶️ Marco being around the web a lot and seeing these kind of companies come and go. The fact is,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s really hard to judge what a company is worth over such

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a long time span when things change. It’s complicated. I bet the purchase price was artificially

⏹️ ▶️ Marco low in part because they have a bunch of employees and costs. And so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Automatic is going to take on a lot of these costs. I don’t think you can read too much into

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. People are trying really hard. I don’t think there’s much there to be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco read into. Everybody has their own pet

⏹️ ▶️ Marco complaint about Tumblr. Everyone thinks that the part of a social network

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this that they see is the whole thing, or is most of it. That was true when I worked

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there, it’s true now. And we say the same thing about Twitter. People say the same thing about places.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco People will say New York is all about finance culture, and it’s not. New York

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a massive state, first of all, and if you’re talking about the city, it’s a massive city, and there’s tons

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of industries and communities and types of people in this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco large place full of tons of people that you can’t say, like, oh, New Yorkers are all mad today, or,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wow, New York’s all about industry X, because it’s just not, it’s too big for that. If

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you focus on just that thing, it seems like, maybe to you, it might seem like it’s all about that thing, but it’s not. And everyone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has this about social networks, too, and Tumblr was no exception to that. Everyone thinks that whatever part of Tumblr

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they follow and they focus on is all of Tumblr. And it’s a really big

⏹️ ▶️ Marco site. It really isn’t. There’s always been a lot more

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to any given social network than one community. It’s way bigger than that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so people have speculated all sorts of bad takes about like, this was about the porn ban,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or this was about drama, or whatever. People have all sorts of guesses. all of those things,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco while they might be big to a community, they might be very important issues to a community,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco no service like Tumblr is just one community. It’s way bigger than that. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say, as you’re formulating your thoughts about this, if listeners, if you have,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco keep in mind, these things are really big and really complicated, and the story is not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably anything simple. Also, I did want to take this opportunity to say in public, something

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think I’ve said anywhere before, I think Marissa Meyers did a pretty good job.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I recognize I profited handsomely from Marissa Meyers’ job that she did,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I’m biased here to some degree. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco she was brought on, like she was, I forget what she was, but she was some kind of high-ranking executive at Google.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And she was hired away by Yahoo to be their CEO. And she was brought in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to a company that was struggling. Yahoo was struggling to find relevance and growth.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They brought her on to basically an impossible job. Yahoo

⏹️ ▶️ Marco had, if you look at the parade of leadership they had before her, clearly this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was a tough position. To be put in charge of this company, it was a very tough position to be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco put in. It was a huge challenge. That’s probably why she took it, because she wanted a big challenge.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And yeah, she paid a lot for Tumblr because at the time, Tumblr was both very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco valuable, and also, Yahoo really needed things like Tumblr.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They really needed more growth, more relevance to more younger people

⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially. They needed that. And she took a big risk in an impossible job.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it worked for a while. And eventually, it wasn’t enough to save the company. The company

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ended up falling apart anyway. But I don’t blame that on her. I don’t think this was like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, her big flop or anything. Like, I’ve seen a bunch of weird, bad takes about it. I think she took on a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really hard challenge and it didn’t quite work out, but I don’t think she did a bad job. Given

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the conditions that she was in and what her options were,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think she did a pretty good job, honestly. But again, I’m saying all this really from

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the position of an observer, mostly because that entire sale and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the entire time that Yahoo owned it was all years after I left.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Again, I left in 2010. So, this is, I don’t know how the company was to work

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for or anything like that, but I think in retrospect, she’s getting a bad rap for this, especially this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco week, with the loss of value between the two prices. But I think, honestly,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think she did a pretty good job in the situation that, in the situation she was in and in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the challenge that she took on. I sure wouldn’t have done any better. Like if I was running Yahoo at the time, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wouldn’t have done anything better. Like I had no better ideas, you know? And I don’t think most people who criticize

⏹️ ▶️ Marco her right now would have any better ideas either. I think given the same situation, I think people would have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe done a lot of the same things. So anyway, I am really curious to see

⏹️ ▶️ Marco now what Automatic does with Tumblr. Because Automatic is a pretty good

⏹️ ▶️ Marco company. They’re pretty well run. The people behind it, like Matt Mullenweg, and by the way,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco he did a great interview on the Verge cast, I think today or yesterday, this week, we’ll put a link to it in the show notes,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was very good. I’m really curious to see what they do to it because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the things that makes Automatic unique as an owner is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re super into the open web, you know, the whole thing with WordPress, obviously that’s a huge

⏹️ ▶️ Marco role in the open web, and they are not an advertising-based

⏹️ ▶️ Marco company. And Matt said this, said this much in the interview, and he said he’s made a few remarks here and there in various interviews,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it seems like one of the main areas that they’re going to seek to monetize Tumblr, or to fund

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tumblr even, is gonna be via just payment from people, like upgrades

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to certain premium plans or facilitating commerce on the platform,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like kinda like what Patreon does or other types of, like shopping commerce and like taking a cut of it, you know, stuff like that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s really interesting to me because one of the things that if you look at the history

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of how all this stuff played out, Tumblr was one of the companies, kind of like Facebook, that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really got caught off guard by the rise of mobile and apps. Tumblr

⏹️ ▶️ Marco had a very similar problem to Facebook at a very similar time, which is like, apps were

⏹️ ▶️ Marco becoming a really big thing as they had this massive computer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco desktop web-based service. service and the entire interface for the service was like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was a web app that didn’t translate well to mobile initially and everything

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the whole service all about that web app and and eventually tumblr you know through various

⏹️ ▶️ Marco trials and and and you know revisions they did become a kind of mobile first company

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it took a while because they had that legacy and Facebook had the exact same problem and had similar challenges

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I think I think if Tumblr didn’t have that baggage

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at that time, Tumblr I think could have been what Instagram is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco now. And I mean that in a good way. There’s some parts of Instagram that are bad,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I think ultimately Tumblr could have been Instagram

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if things had played out differently and if timing was different and if certain different things happened, but obviously

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in hindsight it’s hard to really say. What if Tumblr becomes kind of like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Instagram now, but without the ads?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Bear with me here. So like, I had this thought earlier when I was walking around, I was walking my dog and listening to the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Matt Molenbeck interview on the Verge cast, but like, Tumblr

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of reimagined for today, I think would look and work a lot like Instagram.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But with WordPress, I mean, sorry, with automatic funding it and running

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it and figuring out ways to make it profitable. Ads aren’t their forte,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and ads on Tumblr were never really that great. I don’t know any Tumblr users who

⏹️ ▶️ Marco love the ads. And so what if they just fund it in other

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ways, whether it’s by direct payment or facilitating commerce or whatever,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and what if Tumblr could become Instagram without the ads, basically,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you know, and with some other stuff too, with the short text types and the quotes and links and everything

⏹️ ▶️ Marco else. Because I love Instagram. I use Instagram probably more than other social

⏹️ ▶️ Marco networks now. And I really love a lot about it. But man, is the advertising

⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting really heavy handed. And it’s like, it’s really starting to, I mean, it’s always been annoying.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like as soon as they turn on ads for my account, it’s been annoying, but like, it’s getting more and more shameless and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco more and more of the people on Instagram are becoming ads themselves. More and more of the people

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I follow are becoming influencers.

⏹️ ▶️ John You mean the dogs you follow.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco More and more of the dogs I follow are becoming pro-influencers. And it’s like, every third post

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is like, we like this dog food. Dogs sit next to this big bag of dog food.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They don’t even say it’s an ad, but you know it’s an ad. It’s turning into that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I feel like that’s, I’m seeing a whole lot more of that on Instagram than

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was two years ago. And they seem to have turned up the ad load

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to maximum to the point where I’m seeing an ad about every three posts now, and stories

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are about the same too. And so maybe a role

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Tumblr could take, again, I’m saying this with no information, and no experience

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all, really, that would be relevant to this, but maybe a role they could take now would be an

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ad-free Instagram. Wouldn’t that be kind

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of cool? It would be way more than kind of cool, Marco. It would be amazing.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, that would be so cool.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, that’s all I got. I hope I don’t get in trouble for any of this. Anyway, that’s all I got. I hope I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t get in trouble for any of this. And what are they going to do, fire you?