351: The Floor Is High
07 Nov 2019The Apple TV+ launch, more MacBook Pro sleuthing, and a week with AirPods Pro.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: 🐛💇🏻♂️
- ATP HOLIDAY SHIRTS available until Sunday, November 17
- Marco's AirPods Pro Review
- Follow-up:
- FDA clears way for over-the-counter hearing aids
- TI-84
- Hearing aids are actually pretty fancy
- 16" MacBook Pro speculation:
- Is there more space between 16" MacBook Pro keys?
- More inverted-T fire?
- An aside about MacBook Pro wishes and dreams
- An aside about migrating Mac Pros and televisions
- Return to Follow-up:
- APFS for Time Machine theories
- Letterboxd Pro and import/export
- AppleTV+ initial reviews
#askatp
- Is Geekbench a good metric when comparing across architectures? (via Josh Hattersley)
- What's the state of podcast marketshare? (via glinn07)
- Should one get a Mac Mini now or wait? (via Paul Dunahoo)
- Post-show Neutral: Marco's Wheel of Shame
Sponsored by:
Chapters
- Winter is coming
- ATP Holiday Store 🖼️
- AirPods Pro, 1 week in
- FDA clears OTC hearing aids
- Sponsor: Hover
- 16” speculation
- Sponsor: Away (code atp20)
- APFS Time Machine
- Letterboxd Pro
- Apple TV+
- Sponsor: Eero (code ATP)
- #askatp: ARM/x86 benchmarks
- #askatp: Podcast marketshare
- #askatp: Mac Mini
- Ending theme
- Neutral: The Wheel of Shame 🖼️
Winter is coming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my voice is giving out. It’s like the beginning of winter sickness season. And so, I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had a slight cold for about a week and a half. And I’ve been managing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so far, but I’m worried. I’m starting to sound worse, slowly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think it was because I was singing Bowling for Soup in the car today. I think it’s actually the cold catching up with me, but we’ll see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what happens. Sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like you are constantly lightly sick. Paul Matzko,
⏹️ ▶️ John Ph.D.: Well, he’s got a kid, a young kid, and so do you. So, So you should also be constantly lightly sick.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I’m healthy as a mule or something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not sick all summer. All summer, I’m great. It’s one of the reasons why I love summer and why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t like the rest of the year. It’s one of the big ones because the rest of the year, I’m pretty much always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco either getting sick, sick, or was just sick.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’ll see once Adam gets old enough not to be entirely covered with the boogers of the other people in school, if this
⏹️ ▶️ John stops. Then we’ll know whether it’s you or the kid. I remember getting sick way more when my kids were younger too, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I do less now. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it matters a lot. Like, you know, like right now, like he’s not only is he just only in second grade,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but even if like his age group starts developing basic hygiene
⏹️ ▶️ Marco skills, they still all still have like a lot of like younger siblings who are still in preschool or kindergarten.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So like they’re all in the same house together. So like I feel like you until probably middle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco school, this is going to keep
⏹️ ▶️ John Have you had a lice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco outbreak yet? Surprisingly not. We’ve dodged that one so far. And like they do get lice here and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there like in this area. It just hasn’t hit us yet.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it amazes me. Like we used to do lice checks at school all the time in elementary school and I
⏹️ ▶️ John never got it, right? And I figured like, well, lice is a thing they check for and they have to check for it. And when
⏹️ ▶️ John anybody gets into school, they got to check the whole school and you all go down to the nurse and you wait in a big line and you go through it. But
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it’s not that I like I’d never seen it. I’d never knew anybody who It was just like a thing that we did and I
⏹️ ▶️ John got kids and I got lice everywhere It’s just delightful. Constantly.
ATP Holiday Store
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, we should start with some follow-up and we should remind you that the ATP Holiday
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Store is open for business ladies and gentlemen. ATP.FM.STORE.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You can get your six-color shirts in light or dark modes. You can get your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey old-school ATP logo shirt, your hoodie, your hat, your pins. It’s all there for the taking.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So please don’t be that person that listens to me and says, oh yeah, I’ll remember, I’ll do it later,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ll do it later. be that person every single time. At least
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one, usually a handful of people says, Oh, I forgot. Oh no. Can you bring it back? Can you bring it back? I forgot.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, we can’t bring it back. I’m sorry. We can’t go now. ATP dot FM slash store. You’ll be,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’ll be glad you did. The sale is available or this, the stuff is available until Sunday, November 17,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ATP time, please go ATP dot FM slash store and get yourself some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sweet, sweet, sweet ATP merch.
AirPods Pro, 1 week in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving on, Marco, you have had AirPod Pros for what, like a week now, week and a half? It’s AirPods
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro, Casey. Oh God, I’m so sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I know we talked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about it last week, but now that you’re a week and change on, are you still enjoying them? Is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this kind of like the Apple Watch where you flirt with it and then put it away for a year? What’s going on?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As of last episode, I think I had spent only a couple of hours with them so far, just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John walking around my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco house, basically. Since then, I’ve done a number of dog walks with them. I have not taken
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a plane, but I have taken two ferry rides with them. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the dog walks also have tested the noise cancellation because it is leaf blowing and lawn
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mowing season. It is, as we record this, early November, and this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is one of the few times of year where people in my town are allowed to use leaf blowers, and boy, do they,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco constantly. And so normally, it’s the kind of situation, normally I’m walking my dog,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have some kind of small portable headphones on, and they never isolate that well, and many times I actually don’t want them to. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I often wear aftershocks for that purpose. And so normally if I’m walking by something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very loud, like a lawnmower or a leaf blower, I just have to pause the podcast as I walk by, because I’m just not going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hear what’s being said. With the AirPods Pro, I use the long hold gesture
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the stick to enable noise cancellation as I walk by something loud like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it works and I’m allowed, and I’m able to keep the podcast playing. Now I don’t even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need to turn it up. I can leave it exactly at the regular normal volume I had it, add the noise cancellation,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it works very, very well. Like you still hear the leaf blower, but it takes it down
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a significant volume. The noise cancellation, I think I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco underrated last episode, because I hadn’t brought it into a super loud environment. I was only playing with like around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the house. So I would say last episode, I overstated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how good the sound quality was. They still do sound good, but I am missing a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that treble detail. And so I still stand by my statement that they sound better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than anything Bose has ever made, better than any earbuds I’ve ever tried, and better than many regular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco headphones I’ve tried. They are still, they are great for earbuds. They are good for headphones,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but they are not great for headphones. But still, you know, considering their size and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their portability and their features, and frankly their price, you know, like good in-ear monitors,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which these, you know, these aren’t even in your monitors physically, but a good in-ear monitors that can sound better than this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tend to cost more than $250. I mean, that’s even for like the basic wired kind. And this has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like all the wireless stuff and everything, and it’s Apple and it has all the features. So for what these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are, for the value they provide, for the quality they provide, the balance they provide, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sound quality really is remarkable. I would like a basic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco EQ, even if it’s as simple as like a base and treble slider, even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, a two slider screen would be great. And all their competitors do this now. Sony
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has it, Bose has it, like all the other headphone makers have added EQs in their apps in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recent years. I just hope Apple gets around to that. I know it’s against their style to offer control
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over things, but you know, maybe this would be something that would be worth it, I think. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want the same thing for the HomePod, right? home pod I now have I don’t know 15 of them and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever whatever I have in my house I have a lot of home pods there and there are lots of rooms now and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would like to have like a treble and bass slider on those most mostly the bass slider actually I turned
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it down in the bathroom but like you know just a small amount of control would go a long way here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but otherwise though the again the sound is very good for what they are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s great for what they are it’s very good in absolute terms. And yeah, so I would say the noise cancellation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is significantly better than I thought it was. I haven’t had a chance to take them on a plane yet,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I’ve already decided that the next time I fly anywhere, I’m going to take only the AirPods
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro and see how it is and actually try it and not take my big Sony’s or my Bose’s.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey How do you do with comfort? Because if I recall correctly, and feel free to correct me, you can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wear the traditional non-Pro AirPods for, I don’t know, like half an hour, an hour, think you said before they get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey deeply uncomfortable? And now with the AirPods Pro, have you done any extended listening with them?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is that better, worse, different, the same, etc.? Matthew
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Fossum Long as I can go without discomfort on regular AirPods is about 20 minutes. With the Pros,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have gone an hour straight so far and there’s no discomfort at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steven Connelly Oh, wow. Okay. So that’s a pretty big improvement. And what size tips are you wearing, just out of curiosity? Not that it really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Fossum The default ones, the mediums that come on on them. And I haven’t even tried the other ones because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the mediums, they pass the ear fit test. They feel good to me, they sound good to me, so I’m like, all right, I’m not gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mess with it. You know, so far I have not worn them for long enough to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reach a point of discomfort and I’ve worn them for about an hour numerous times,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I know it isn’t just like a little fluke thing. I’ve also worn them in numerous different temperatures. Like, I’ve worn them when I was hot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and when I was cold and they fit differently in in each condition. Like when I’m cold, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fit a little bit looser. They feel like they might slide out, although they haven’t yet. They haven’t budged,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I don’t know. But anyway, yeah, so far so good. I continue to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco extremely pleased with them. The controls are fine. I still do miss
⏹️ ▶️ Marco having a volume control. Any other headphone I’ve ever tried, there’s a volume control on the headphone. I know this is not new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to AirPods people, but not having volume on there is really annoying. I understand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why it’s not there. I think it would be difficult to wedge it in there somewhere, but regardless, it is not there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they did make the sticks smaller compared to the original AirPods to the point where like, I can put on or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco take off a sweatshirt and not knock them out of my ears. So like, I do appreciate how small they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so like, I recognize that part of why I don’t have volume controls, that they’re so small and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is nice being so small. I will say I don’t give a crap what they look like and to a large
⏹️ ▶️ Marco degree, I don’t know what they look like because I never see them. If I’m using them,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t see them. If I’m not using them, they’re in the case and they’re in my fingers for such a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco brief time on the transition either way. If you ask me to draw them, I wouldn’t be able to. I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what they look like. Steve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey McLaughlin Well, it is WeDrawWednesday. Tim Cynova
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know. Steve McLaughlin So, speaking of Tiff, did she get a pair? And I don’t recall what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey her perspective on regular AirPods were. So, did she get a pair of the Pros?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not yet, only merely because we’ve been busy and she has no problems with the regular ones,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that is on the list of things to consider.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey JSL And John, none of these have entered your house yet, is that correct?
⏹️ ▶️ John JG Oh, there’s been some interest perhaps for the holidays, but you know, I’m still just taking a wait
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, they’re really good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey JSL Everyone I’ve spoken to says they’re the AirPods but better, and I friggin love my AirPods.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So this sounds like it has Casey written all over it, but I just bought AirPods when the the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Qi ones came out and I just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guilty because Aaron doesn’t really have any interest in taking mine and I mean obviously as we discussed yesterday,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not yesterday, I’m sorry, last week, like reselling them seems a little weird so.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just, I don’t know, like it just seems so wasteful to get rid of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or stop using my perfectly good non-pro AirPods, my amateur AirPods, just to get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey these pros or the pro, whatever, I don’t care.
⏹️ ▶️ John nieces or nephews i forget
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh actually uh as of today i have a brand new one but
⏹️ ▶️ John go i’m so infants love airpods
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why not your kids want some of uncle casey’s earwax
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah exactly that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gross can you like repurpose them to maybe be used at a dedicated location in your house
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so for instance like to have one next to your bed for bedtime listening or to leave a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pair always next to the next to the tv station like next to the couch for like tv
⏹️ ▶️ John watching day airpods and in that
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey AirPods. God
⏹️ ▶️ Casey damn it, John, you beat me to it. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s because I’m always on offense,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, that is well done. I have to bow to that one. That was well done.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t know. This is like the first worldiest first world problem, right? Oh, I really want the new AirPods
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and my current ones don’t suck. What am I going to do? It’s a terrible
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing to even talk about, so I should just move on. But I do want them. Maybe they’ll end up on on a Christmas or Hanukkah
⏹️ ▶️ Casey list, just in case someone’s feeling particularly generous, but we’ll see what happens.
⏹️ ▶️ John I still feel like they’re not regular AirPods, but better, because they’re fundamentally different. These go
⏹️ ▶️ John into your ears and the other ones don’t. They don’t go super into your ears, they’re not in the ear, but that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a pretty big difference. So if that difference, if the expectation was, these are just like my
⏹️ ▶️ John old AirPods, but just they sound better and have no noise canceling. Not true at all. Like they
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey in your ear differently, right? And so
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s my main interpretation. Now, if you used AirPods like that before, earbuds or whatever the hell the generic
⏹️ ▶️ John term is like that before and they’re fine well then you’re fine but if not like
⏹️ ▶️ John again it gets into my whole thing of like trying them on and trying somebody else’s and wiping them off like you do have to figure
⏹️ ▶️ John out whether you’re okay with anything going in your ear canal and then you have to find out are you okay with this specific
⏹️ ▶️ John thing going in your ear canal.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No that’s totally fair when I said they’re like AirPods but better what all I meant was if you take all of the things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I like about AirPods from everything I’ve understood The AirPods Pro, you know, fitment
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and whatnot aside, everything seems to be better. You know, it has noise canceling. The
⏹️ ▶️ Casey battery life is roughly the same, even with the noise canceling. They’re smaller.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All of the features seem to be the same, if not better.
⏹️ ▶️ John Except for the tapping is another one. I saw a couple of people who said they prefer the tapping to the squeezing. Obviously, I’ve heard
⏹️ ▶️ John lots of people on the opposite as well. It could just be what you’re used to, but that is another difference. Like, at a Sparkle
⏹️ ▶️ John Point out last week, you don’t have the option to do the tapping anymore, so you’re gonna be squeezing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. All right, speaking of the AirPods Pro, there’s some interesting news with regard to the battery, thanks to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iFixit. Apparently, they’re using a particularly large, to my eye, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey otherwise basically standard button cell battery, like you would see in a watch. I guess not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the kind of watch that Marco uses, because you’re too cool for those, but the kind of watch that I would use before the Apple Watch.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s just kind of like a watch battery, which is fairly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco surprising,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco isn’t it? It’s watch battery shaped, but it is still a lithium battery and a different voltage and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco watch battery. Also, you can’t really get to it. But-
⏹️ ▶️ John cylindrical though, but like in a flat pizza shape, like a watch battery is. And more importantly,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not in the stick. So one of the reasons the stick is so small is because there’s no battery in
⏹️ ▶️ John there. So they put it elsewhere. They put it in the chunky body part.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, like what’s interesting to me about this is that the interior layout of the AirPods
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro is completely different than the regular AirPods. Like it isn’t just like a simple evolution of the same design,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it’s a total internal rearrangement.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, moving right along. Tell me about the charging light. This is something I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey noticed with my Qi-enabled AirPods, I guess they’re kind of AirPods too, whatever you want to call them,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that when you sit on the mat, on the Qi charging mat, it’ll light up on the exterior, as opposed to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my original AirPods, which had the light on the interior. It’ll light up on the exterior and show you kind of what the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey situation is, and then after a few seconds it goes out and the only way to get it back is to take it off the charger and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey put It back on and see if it turn turns from say amber to green or what have you But apparently that’s not the same
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the air pods Pro. What’s going on here, John?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this is partially spawned from the I fix it Teardown when they found this
⏹️ ▶️ John thing inside the case and they weren’t sure what it was and it was like a microphone or something But whatever it is, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John probably the hardware mechanism that allows the case to know when you tap it.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s probably either some kind of mic or vibration sensor or basically boils down to the same thing when it’s embedded inside the case. So
⏹️ ▶️ John if you wanna see the charge state of your AirPods Pro case, just tap it and the light will
⏹️ ▶️ John go on again and you can see what color it is. Maybe that will work on the upcoming 16 inch MacBook Pros
⏹️ ▶️ John as well. If you’re wondering
⏹️ ▶️ John much charge is left in it
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey and it’s sitting
⏹️ ▶️ John can tap it and then I guess, I don’t know, lights will shine through laser etched
⏹️ ▶️ John holes in the aluminum that are invisible otherwise. I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One thing that’s disappointing though is that this doesn’t work when you’re charging it through a cable. Yeah, it’s only on the mat. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When you’re charging through a cable, you have to open the lid slightly and then close it to get it to show whether
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the light’s green or
⏹️ ▶️ John orange. Yeah, which is weird because the tapping, like the sensor for sensing tapping, that doesn’t care whether
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s on a mat or not. I don’t quite know why that feature isn’t always available. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then John’s favorite subject, the case jiggle click. Does it exist in the AirPods Pro, John?
⏹️ ▶️ John Let’s see. I meant to ask about that on the show when Marco first
⏹️ ▶️ John got his. I’ve heard lots of reports from people, and here’s the thing, with the revised
⏹️ ▶️ John AirPods, whatever we call them, AirPods Series 2, not the Pros, but the ones that
⏹️ ▶️ John I have and that Casey has, that’s the one where I first noticed the side-to-side thing, but some people
⏹️ ▶️ John got those AirPods and their case doesn’t do that. So it’s like, it’s a manufacturing
⏹️ ▶️ John variability thing. So they don’t all do it on the old one. So I have heard from at least
⏹️ ▶️ John one or two people who say their AirPods Pro case goes side to side and it sounds like Marco yours does as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John hear it a little bit. It’s very, very little.
⏹️ ▶️ John I still feel like it is much more prevalent on the second generation AirPods than it was in the
⏹️ ▶️ John first. I don’t know how prevalent it is in the Pros, but so far I haven’t heard from anybody with Pros whose case
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All righty, and then Kieran Senior says, Pro tips for the AirPods Pro, instead
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of long squeezing, then squeezing once to pause and enable transparency when someone talks to you, just create a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shortcut named be quiet. So then, quote, unquote, hey, dingus, be quiet, quote,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will allow you to hear. That is very clever, but I can’t imagine somebody walking up to me and saying,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hey, dingus, be quiet.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like what I was talking about the ear tapping when I, you know, tap the things on my ear and people think I was pointing to them going,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, I’m listening to music and you’re being so rude. Can you imagine trying to say an activation
⏹️ ▶️ John for it? Like they’re you’re never gonna hear the hey dingus. They’re gonna think they walked up to talk to you and you just turned to them immediately
⏹️ ▶️ John and said, be quiet. Yeah, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, who are these people who Siri works that quickly for?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I don’t know. They’re very patient people asking to talk to them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve tried using Siri for volume control and stuff like that. It’s just too slow. I’d rather just take my phone out because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’ll say, hey thing, volume up or whatever, and wait, wait, delay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then it goes up. and then your music might resume or might not. Like, it just bothers me.
⏹️ ▶️ John Same thing with the fast forward and rewinded stuff. It’s the same thing. It’s just so painful. You might as well just, for me, even
⏹️ ▶️ John just to walk over to the other room and do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Yeah, like there’s no, I just, I don’t like using Siri for anything that requires
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like quick interactiveness, like media control, frankly. Like if I want to ask it a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco question or have it send a message or something, fine. That’s, I’m glad it’s there, but I don’t see any use for it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for media controls.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and as we pointed out last time this came up, like the most expedient and safest way to deal with this is to reach up and
⏹️ ▶️ John pull the thing out of your ear, which will pause the music or the whatever you’re listening to and also
⏹️ ▶️ John is the least likely to be interpreted by the person trying to talk to you as something rude.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And as I noted on Twitter the other day, a neat little touch is that if you’re in noise canceling mode,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you pull one earbud out, it pauses the music and it turns the other earbud into transparency
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mode. So you can hear the people around you more easily when you pull it out and then you put it back in, it puts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco noise cancelling back on. Super nice. And actually, if you want to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have one ear noise cancelling, there’s an accessibility option to disable that behavior basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and allow it to have split noise cancelling in just one ear. but by default
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it transparency-izes the other ear, which is really nice.
FDA clears OTC hearing aids
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s very cool. Last week we talked on the show about hearing aids and things of that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nature and Apparently the FDA has cleared the way for over-the-counter hearing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey aids Which I think John is going to make you very excited not because you need them But because this is something you’ve been thinking about a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, this is just seems like some deregulation of the hearing aid market where
⏹️ ▶️ John Previously to get one you had to consult with a doctor and they were expensive and it’s you know It’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of like the thing that came to mind for whatever reason, probably because I have school age kids is like the TI-84 calculators
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. Do you
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey remember those when you were in school? Oh, yeah. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. They still sell those and they still cost like 100 and something dollars and they must cost like 50 cents
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey because the stuff that’s in them
⏹️ ▶️ John has not changed since we were kids and they’re still like 100 and something dollars. It’s a pretty big
⏹️ ▶️ John disconnection. The price is held aloft by schools asking the students to buy it
⏹️ ▶️ John and and you know, induce demand from saying you have to get this for your kid. Anyway, it’s slightly different in the hearing
⏹️ ▶️ John aid market, but this is a nice timing coincidence for Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John to potentially get into the market, because Apple would probably not want to deal with all
⏹️ ▶️ John the regulatory stuff, and they’re not going to sell a lot of anything that you have to go to talk to your doctor about first.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I think there have always been over the counter things that you get, but like real proper hearing aids
⏹️ ▶️ John that serious people buy when they actually need it, are
⏹️ ▶️ John going to get in the coming year in the US, much easier to buy without having to consult with medical
⏹️ ▶️ John professionals. This according to AARP magazine, and they should know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So just for anyone who’s not American, FDA Food and Drug Administration, which regulates this sort of thing, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey AARP, American Associated of Retired Persons. I think this is often called pensioners in the UK,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I’m not mistaken, basically someone who is done with work and usually like in the 60s to 70-year-old
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s what makes you start feeling really old when you start getting the solicitations by mail
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AARP and you’re like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Also, Ryan Budish wrote to us, or to you, John, the following, I wear
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hearing aids, and I think you gave them short shrift on ATP. High-end aids have multiple microphones, do lots of specialized processing,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have modes for all kinds of challenging situations, and can cost over 10 times more than the AirPods Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so that cost thing is kind of what we’re getting at with the calculator. like they are very expensive,
⏹️ ▶️ John both because they, the most advanced ones probably contain much more expensive technology
⏹️ ▶️ John than AirPods, but also because their price is artificially inflated by the weird supply demand, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John medical establishment stuff that goes into them. I did hear from a lot of other people who
⏹️ ▶️ John said that they use hearing aids and thought that Apple could definitely do some great things here, but from all the feedback
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve been getting, I feel like, and I kind of felt like this last week as well, like the place where
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple can innovate in this space is kind of where they usually do. We think of them as being like the high end brand or the fancy
⏹️ ▶️ John brand, but it’s, I don’t use a car analogy, like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s high end brands and then there’s, you know, Pagani, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, or like there’s a separate tier for like the real high end or probably in watches. Marco could give better
⏹️ ▶️ John examples, right? So BMW is a high end thing, but it’s not the same as Ferrari. It’s also not the same as
⏹️ ▶️ John like, uh, one of those boutique brands. What’s the Kona sag? The,
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway. Uh, so I feel like there’s that kind of that same hierarchy, um, here. And so where I would expect Apple to make
⏹️ ▶️ John an impact is by fielding a good hearing
⏹️ ▶️ John aid type device over the counter that sells into basically the low
⏹️ ▶️ John end of the market, because as high as it would be priced, it would still be priced way less than the TI 84
⏹️ ▶️ John of hearing aids, right? Because they would sell it at apple prices, which are still better than,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, you know, totally lopsided market caused by your need to see a doctor and a limited
⏹️ ▶️ John number of devices that are, uh, approved, yada, yada, right? So I think that even
⏹️ ▶️ John though they’d be selling things for more than the air pods, I don’t think apple would ever come out with a $5,000 hearing
⏹️ ▶️ John aid. They would come out with a $500 one and that would still be disrupted to the market because that $500 one
⏹️ ▶️ John might have most or all of the features of the $5,000 ones that are there today. So still not sure
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple wants to get into this market, but I feel like they are right on the doorstep and it’s there and it
⏹️ ▶️ John has a good synergy with their, you know, watch and health strategy and with the over-the-counter
⏹️ ▶️ John FDA clearances and everything. It’s not, they don’t need to commit too much to it. They can basically say,
⏹️ ▶️ John look, here’s a device that we sell and it has a bunch of functions that everybody can use. And also it can function
⏹️ ▶️ John as a pretty decent hearing aid. And it’s the same hardware and it’s just a little bit of a change in software.
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, moving on from AirPods corner to MacBook Pro corner. Is there more space between
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the keys in the new MacBook Pro?
⏹️ ▶️ John I was trying to eyeball it last week and I was like, I can’t tell him these pictures and I’m like, look, I’m looking at
⏹️ ▶️ John my the actual, you know, 2017 MacBook Pro that’s sitting right at my desk and I’m looking at the picture, then I’m looking
⏹️ ▶️ John at my desk and I’m looking at the picture and it’s like, I can’t, that’s what I was doing last week. If you hear me on that thing, I’m like,
⏹️ ▶️ John they look about the same, but someone did what I should have done, which is take two images
⏹️ ▶️ John of the, the supposed image of the 16 inch and then the image of the 15 inch, put them on top of each other
⏹️ ▶️ John and then make an animated GIF that switches from 15 to 16 and 15 to 16. You can
⏹️ ▶️ John see that link in the show notes. It is from a Mac Rumors tweet. And I have to say,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the space between the keys is slightly bigger on the 16 inch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I agree. I didn’t think so when I saw the pictures individually, but once you see this, this like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this GIF looping them back and forth, I think it is slightly increased spacing, which again, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco welcome, because I think it needs that for accuracy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is like a millimeter though.
⏹️ ▶️ John It might be an optical illusion. Like once- That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the thing, yeah. It could be a difference of like shading.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Once Marco Bias says he needs to get some micrometers out and just, you know, find out. You know I will. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, like the same way we discovered the bottom row of keys shrunk when the butterfly keyboard came out. Exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ John Stay tuned for America’s favorite key measuring podcast.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then more suggestions for inverted T arrow keys on the new MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro. People are starting to wonder maybe we are getting the inverted T back. Why are we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thinking that today?
⏹️ ▶️ John This is the back to that sort of iconic image that we talked about where they have like a picture that shows
⏹️ ▶️ John you your model of computer that they use as sort of a big icon in various parts in the UI. And we talked about that
⏹️ ▶️ John a couple episodes ago. And now there’s like a zoomed in sort of Zapruder version of this thing saying, look,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you compare the left lower edge of the keyboard on this icon to the right lower edge, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John clear that they’re trying to indicate that that key that’s in the right lower corner
⏹️ ▶️ John is not as wide as the left lower corner, which implies an inverted T. So
⏹️ ▶️ John again, I invite you to look at the picture that we will put in the show notes. Utterly preposterous.
⏹️ ▶️ John I find it vaguely convincing. I mean, like, it doesn’t it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco make any sense. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco took me a while to even see it. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s it’s there. Like, we also saw the picture. I think Marco pooped this on Twitter. Someone actually posted like a top view picture
⏹️ ▶️ John showing the inverted T clearly, but wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco well, that was it. It didn’t seem like it was. Yeah, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John authentic. But this this I feel like I had said I didn’t actually confirm this, but it’s the type of thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, we have that image from Catalina that we could all go to our own Catalina machines and Extract
⏹️ ▶️ John ourselves to confirm that yeah, this really is an image from Catalina And I’m assuming if you zoom in on it, you’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John see exactly what they show in this picture There’s a pixel difference. There’s one pixel difference.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m willing to believe in the inverted T a little bit maybe I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hope so. I like I guess I this this image is not So convincing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I want to get my hopes up about it. Mm-hmm You know, I I really really want there to be inverted T
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again And between that and the key switch, going back to scissor,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the slightly smaller key widths, I think that would be amazing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I just don’t wanna get my hopes up. We’ve been burned so many times by hoping
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for these laptops to get better, and then every year they just don’t, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really am afraid. I’m kinda gun-shy to even get my hopes up about them getting better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually this is this is stupid. I had a dream last night about these laptops and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey know people’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dreams are stupid, but like where there more ports there were fewer ports.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh my God, this is a nightmare.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, there was one USB C port and one a and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one like Kensington lock hole
⏹️ ▶️ John and that was like your laptop, but it wasn’t your laptop.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would take one C and one a thank you very much. That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, this is how much I have tension about these laptops
⏹️ ▶️ Marco coming out and being even worse or disappointing in some way. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hope they come out soon. I still think they will. I mean, again, these resources are in this build of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the OS for a reason. They wouldn’t put these resources in Catalina.1
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if these machines weren’t coming out until next year. So I still think they are imminent. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just hope it’s—I just want it to come out so we can finally see it and finally like end this tension
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and get back to our usual expertise of complaining about whatever they didn’t do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, it’s funny to me. I think it was David Hennemeyer Hanson had something go around the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey internets over the last week or two where he had tried a Windows machine, like a Surface something or other,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for a week and decided he couldn’t do it. And on the one side, I I think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really kind of preposterous that people are that upset about the keyboards, that they’re turning
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to an entirely different platform because they think that’s better. But on the flip side of that, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the reason people are so upset is because they are having considerably worse experiences than I am, because I have definitely had to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey blow out the keyboard on my MacBook over the last two or three years, whatever it’s been, but I’ve never had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yet a catastrophic failure like I think so many other people have. In fact, John, I believe you have now gotten
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the point of catastrophic failure on yours. And, and it’s just weird to me because my gut reaction
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is, Oh my God, people relax. It’s not that, but Oh no, but it is that bad for them.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Like as soon as, as soon as it happens to you and you can’t type on your keyboard anymore, it changes your perspective
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Like, again, we
⏹️ ▶️ John talked to a million times, none of us know what the actual percentages are, but like the fact that there’s really nothing to do
⏹️ ▶️ John except for be without my laptop, that’s the whole reason I still have this on my laptop. Why don’t you just bring it to work? It’s not even yours. They’ll fix
⏹️ ▶️ John it for you. but I don’t want to be without my laptop. I don’t want to have a loaner. I got to have in the middle of a bunch of stuff. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John want to have to like backup and restore a bunch of my files. Like it’s a hassle. And so I’m just dealing
⏹️ ▶️ John with the hassle and it’s stupid. But like, I mean, DHH is doing it because
⏹️ ▶️ John like, well, whatever, what else does he have to do with his time? So he decided, and it’s a good experiment to do. You’ve got the disposable
⏹️ ▶️ John income and the time. Why not try Windows, you know, see what else is out there. And didn’t expect it to stick.
⏹️ ▶️ John And he didn’t, and he ended up returning the thing. But it wasn’t because of the keyboard that he returned it. So.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it’s funny, like in a way, like Casey, you started that by saying that he was so fed up that he switched platforms.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve kind of done that too. I hate using my laptop so much, and it’s almost entirely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because of that keyboard, that I do almost all of my portable work now on my iPad instead.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I save things that I need a Mac for, for when I’m home. And when I went on a trip, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco brought my iMac Pro instead of bringing a laptop. I don’t know. I really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t like using it. And again, it’s almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco entirely because I just hate the keyboard feel. And so in a way, I have kind of switched platforms
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for my portable needs just to avoid using that stupid laptop. And so that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a small thing. There’s a real collection of issues here that affect people in pretty substantial
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ways. So I just hope our long-lasting nightmare will be over soon. I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re so close. We’re so close. I hope so. I really do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So what’s going to happen when we have no more ports? Like even if the port situation stays the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey same, we have no more ports, but the keyboard got better. Is that enough for Marco? Are you going to finally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stop complaining and moaning? Or are you going to still whine about the ports?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The ports are inconvenient. The ports make me have to carry dongles. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I have to carry dongles and the rest of it’s fine, then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll be happy with that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Dongles weigh less than your iMac Pro. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Even the hundred that you need. Well, and like, you know, the ports, like that problem can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be solved with some dongles. The keyboard can’t, you can’t avoid the keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like that’s an unsolvable problem in that machine. So like, it’s a much worse problem. If you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can get away with having one or two dongles or buying a few new cables and that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, then yeah, that sucks and you’re out of money, but then the problem’s solved.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I’d rather have that problem than have a keyboard that I just hate no matter what.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What will happen if we get 16 inch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or whatever MacBook Pros? Let’s not go completely hog wild.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s not say they have any USB-A ports, they have at least as many if not more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey USB-C ports and they bring back your SD card reader.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d be on cloud nine. Like look, I’m not expecting USB-A. I know I would love it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because there are so many people in so many occasions where it’s like, hey, you don’t just give me one USB-A
⏹️ ▶️ Marco port. I need it right this second. I don’t have a dongle, right? Like that would be very helpful. I don’t see them doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it for lots of reasons, whether it’s, you know, physical, you know, thickness reasons or, you know, ideological reasons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of not going backwards or whatever. like that’s fine. I’m honestly I don’t have any hopes for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco USB. I don’t think it’s going to happen. Agreed. The need for SD cards has not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gone away and and like yeah like fewer people use standalone cameras
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but a lot of people who buy pros still do. A lot of the marketing images
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where Apple shows the ideal customer to buy these computers are people who use SD cards
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still. So so So I would say that like the need for that is still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very much there. Now if we’re carrying dongles anyway, most of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like multi-dongle things have SD card readers built into them. So it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco less of a need than it was because like we all have given up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and given into this dongle world anyway. So ultimately I would love an SD card slot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I would classify it the same way I classify USB-A as just being pretty unlikely. Now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco having more USB-C ports, that I think would be wonderful. Again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not, I honestly, I think the ports are gonna be exactly the same. I think we’re gonna have four USB-C ports on the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think we’re gonna have, and a headphone jack, God, I hope. But like, I don’t, I’m not expecting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any other changes to that because ultimately, I don’t see, I see the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like standing by that for lots of different, you know, technical and ideological reasons, which is unfortunate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because like, you know, we still, like, these computers can still connect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to fewer things than their predecessors could because we still end up wasting one port for power.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And because, you know, if you use your laptop the way that, again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that people in Apple’s marketing for these laptops use them, you can’t run on battery for very long. You can run
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on battery for maybe 90 minutes. If you’re doing what people are doing in the Apple commercials with these laptops. Like, you know, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you need power most of the time. So then you’re down to three ports,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? And like, it’s just like, these are basically three port laptops in practice, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you get the lower end models, one or zero port laptops. And so just, I just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want more, just give me more. And all the arguments for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, how great Thunderbolt 3 ports are, seem so wasted when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of them is being used just for power most of the time. Like all that PCI Express bandwidth, all that expansion
⏹️ ▶️ Marco capability. It’s like, yeah, that’s great, but I’m just plugging this in with this port. All it’s doing is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco taking power. I don’t need all that. So there’s a weird engineering trade-off,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mismatch going on here. And so the more ports there are, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco less bothersome that becomes. So just, even if they went to five,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which with odds, they might not, but six, great. Just the more, the better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the lower end models, the 13 inches, they should all have at least four.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because you know what, that old 11 inch Air, that had a lot of ports on it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t remember what the SD card slot was on the 2015, like what standard
⏹️ ▶️ John it supported or whatever, but there is actually an opportunity if Apple ever decided that they wanted to look back at
⏹️ ▶️ John SD cards to support whatever the giant alphabet soup standard is for the fastest
⏹️ ▶️ John of the fastest SD card standard. Do you happen to know what that is, Marco? Like UX,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco HD? I think we’re still on XC. Yeah, well, yeah, there’s the UHS series.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’re on SDXC for the capacity standards, I think. It’s like Super
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Bowls. I know. So there’s the faster
⏹️ ▶️ Marco generation of SD card slots that have the second row of pins on the back, but those are optional for readers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you, readers can read from both sets of pins at once and do a big parallel high bandwidth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco read, but they don’t have to. So it’s backwards compatible with everything. So like, I believe the only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computer that has that port so far in Apple’s lineup is the iMac Pro. I don’t, oh yeah, right, because the new 15 inches
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t have slots. Yeah, so the iMac Pro does have the super fast SD reader
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in it. And it’s wonderful, I use it all the time. Whenever I don’t miss and hit the vent instead.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, if you got those big, you know, 41 or 62 megapixel or whatever they are images
⏹️ ▶️ John in the big Sony cameras, and you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John up these giant SD cards, it takes forever. You’re not gonna do them over like Wi-Fi, and I guess, suppose
⏹️ ▶️ John they would work on USB-C, then you’re dealing with cables and that stupid flappy door that you open up to plug the cable into.
⏹️ ▶️ John SD card, take the card out, shove it in. It’s more convenient,
⏹️ ▶️ John and if it’s faster, all the better. Steve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey McLaughlin So what happens then if in the next couple of weeks, we slash
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco get the SD card equipped, cellular-enabled 16-inch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John laptop, and then right after that— Mark McClelland Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cellular. Steve McLaughlin —and then right after that, just shush.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John And then right after that—
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that we get the Mac Pro and suddenly Marco just wants
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to talk about the 16-inch laptop, doesn’t really care about the Mac Pro anymore, and John just wants to talk about his Mac Pro, and then what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do I get to decide what we talk about? Is that how this works?
⏹️ ▶️ John – Yeah, Marco mostly uses his iMac, so
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey even though he’ll be excited if he got
⏹️ ▶️ John his fantasy laptop, then he’ll just put it away, wait for his next trip and continue to sit in front of his iMac all day, so don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think this problem will solve itself, because if they come out anywhere near the same time, the answer is, I get to talk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the laptop first because John will waffle on… It’s taking me forever to buy one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will waffle on his purchase. He’ll be afraid to pull the trigger on a 15 grand purchase and will waffle over it for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least a couple of weeks.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 15, that’s adorable.
⏹️ ▶️ John And my computer will take forever to ship anyway because it’s not like they’re going to be, you know, raised and then
⏹️ ▶️ John it’ll take a while to sort of install because unlike a laptop where you just open it up and just plop it on a table, like I have
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of stuff to move and transfer data from, so don’t worry.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, John’s going to have to like rebuild his entire office from scratch to fit this computer into it somehow. So yeah, don’t worry.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’ll be a process.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, it’s the same size as my other one, but I do have to like, once you’re, you know, I thought about this when
⏹️ ▶️ John I was looking at, what was I looking at? Something on television or whatever that’s showing someone’s
⏹️ ▶️ John set up and looking at their cables. That’s the thing I always do, I think about. And I think about in my house where all my cables are.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you have a desktop computer that’s been there for a long time and has a lot of peripherals, you kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John forget how many cables there are, because I’m cleverly hidden them and routed them or whatever. Once
⏹️ ▶️ John you start pulling things out, then you just end up with this giant wad. You’re like, wow, I couldn’t believe how much of this stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John was back there, exactly how many wires have to connect for all this stuff to work together. When it comes time to move it,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially if you’re transferring data, I have to have them both connected for some period of time to transfer stuff or I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco have to yank out hard
⏹️ ▶️ John drives from it or whatever. Oh, forget it. Then I have to get everything out, then you got a vacuum behind there because of all the dust
⏹️ ▶️ John and the gross stuff, and I got to install a new UPS and maybe get some new networking cables. It’s like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John once the walls are open, you know. Right, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’re going to take a sabbatical just so you can do your new computer
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not as bad as my TV. My TV is worse. I should take some pictures from behind my TV. It is not
⏹️ ▶️ John a neatly arranged set of cables. The stuff you can see is neat, but if you look behind there,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I have like five game consoles connected to my television plus a receiver.
⏹️ ▶️ John And what else is there? The TiVo. And it’s just, yeah, there’s too
⏹️ ▶️ John much stuff. So there’s, and then all the wires going out to all the speakers. It’s terrifying back
⏹️ ▶️ John there. Plus all the power bricks. Oh my God, the power bricks. It’s bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, it’s not a Stephen Hackett’s way to be mean or nasty, but if he
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ever is mean or nasty, just send him that picture and he’ll have nightmares for weeks.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. I’ll send him the picture of the neat part where you can see where I have like the 17 HDMI cables snaking
⏹️ ▶️ John down from my plasma television that used to have all those ports.
⏹️ ▶️ John optical, all the optical cables, like everything that you can plug into my things. my television or plug in that
⏹️ ▶️ John Ethernet cables and everything and there’s like an eight port switch behind there as well with its own power brick and
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a lot going on behind my TV.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will I will admit something embarrassing I actually when I upgraded my my switch in my house
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I upgraded to a power Ethernet switch that can that can send power Ethernet over any of its ports
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I actually update I upgraded the sub switch that I keep in my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco TV Entertainment Center solely for the reason that I upgraded it to one that could be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco powered by a power over ethernet to save one power brick under my TV.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, because I have the big, you know, I don’t have UPS behind my TV. I probably should. But I have
⏹️ ▶️ John a couple of big power strips connected to different outlets from each other. And I buy the biggest
⏹️ ▶️ John ones, like the 12 outlet ones that are really far spread out because you need room for the stupid
⏹️ ▶️ John bricks to not butt up against each other. I’m basically at capacity. If and when, all this
⏹️ ▶️ John is to say is when I replace my television, it’s going to be worse. because that’s moving furniture and big heavy things and I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna have to pare down on the consoles. Like my television supports component
⏹️ ▶️ John input, which is what my sort of analog era consoles are connected to, because it’s the best connection. Like I
⏹️ ▶️ John think my GameCube is connected to component. And all those ports are gone from modern TVs. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I just won’t have those connected. I know I can buy adapters, but I’ll just probably get to retire them. And so I’ll pare things
⏹️ ▶️ John down substantially and hopefully get some space back.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So right now, you have a GameCube connected ready to go right now mm-hmm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh my god what other do what other analog consoles
⏹️ ▶️ John Wii is the Wii’s not HD yeah so that’s that my other one you oh my god what
⏹️ ▶️ John how often do you use the Wii well the Wii is actually my substitute GameCube right so because my I have a
⏹️ ▶️ John Wii with GameCube compatibility so if I want to play a GameCube game I’m probably going to play out on the Wii but occasionally
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll want to play it on the GameCube
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco or it’ll already be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco effectively I have two GameCubes connected to your TV right now yeah all the Wii is also in 2019. Yeah. I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, but also they’re just taking up space in my entertainment center at this point because I so rarely use them, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But they but they like here’s they take up they take up space that’s important for them to be there
⏹️ ▶️ John because they hide the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey wires that are behind them. You know what
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean? They look they look
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey nice or whatever. But if
⏹️ ▶️ John I were to if I were to remove them, you’d be able to see through because my entertainment center thing is just like this metal frame
⏹️ ▶️ John with glass shelves like it’s not enclosed, which is good for airflow and everything, but bad if you’re trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to hide a terrifying rat’s nest of cables.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Does your TV have a RF input? I can send it my Sega Genesis.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, it does have composite input, I think, though, which is crazy for an HDTV. It’s got component
⏹️ ▶️ John input for sure, but if I have things plugged into that, it might have composite. I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, my final question, John. I’m looking at automobiles.honda.com. A 2020 Accord LX CVT, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think is the cheapest Accord you can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey buy, the MSRP is $23,870.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What is the likelihood in your mind that your computer will be more or less expensive than,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey let’s say, what is the likelihood
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco it will be more expensive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this? Including the display. It will be less. You think you will be spending less than $24,000 with the display?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I think so too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco He can’t make himself spend more than that. I’m guessing the display, you’re going to spend the seven grand on the good one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’m guessing the Mac Pro itself is going to be between 7 and 10. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why I’m thinking like, you know, between 14 and $17,000. And
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t forget all my finagling for discounts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I know. But like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, no. Okay. Okay. But I’m talking about like, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John whatever you buy. Yeah, well, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John like cars, no one ever pays the full price. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John considering the most expensive car I’ve ever purchased has been less than $25,000. The odds of me getting
⏹️ ▶️ John a computer to cost more
⏹️ ▶️ John that is not that high.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Although you get more years out of your computers than you do out of your car.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I used both for around 10
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The 2020 Civic Sedan LX CVT, $20,550. I think that’s in the running. I really do. It’s close.
⏹️ ▶️ John never spend $20,000 for a car with a CVT. Come on. Yeah, but you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point. My point is simply that for the price of your Mac Pro, I think you will be able to get
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey that I wouldn’t like? A
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very bad car that you wouldn’t like. Yeah. More than one.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, I mean, you can always
⏹️ ▶️ John get like, you know, you can still find cars for 15 grand or whatever, just not
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Honda. No, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can find, no, no, no, no. My point is like, looking at Honda, which is your kind of your jam, what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Honda could you buy new for the amounts of money you’re going to spend on your Mac Pro? So as another example,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the 2019 Civic starts at just under $20,000. And I don’t think you’re going to get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to $20,000 on your Mac Pro, but I think you’re going to get uncomfortably close.
⏹️ ▶️ John But even if I did, that’s $2,000 a year. So that’s like Marco buying a new computer every year which he does it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John nothing he’s got it’s it’s a mortized over 10 years right so yeah I haven’t bought one this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you haven’t you haven’t bought any not you’ve bought zero
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computer my laptop is from last summer not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John this you’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy the 16-inch this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco definitely yeah so there you go the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John moment becomes available I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John it and it will not it will not That cost less than $2,000, so there we go. That’s also
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey James Stratford writes, this was with regard to somebody asking about why Time Machine does
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not use APFS. And James writes, another reason an APFS Time Machine rewrite may
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not be a priority is that APFS seems to be focused on SSDs. few people would use
⏹️ ▶️ Casey expensive SSD storage for backup at this point, which I think that point in and of itself makes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sense. But john, as our resident file system expert, what what says you?
⏹️ ▶️ John I included it because it does make sense. But on the other hand, SSD prices have been going down a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s not like it used to be a better surprising number of people are going to start using SSDs for
⏹️ ▶️ John backups when available. But yeah, ABMS performance on spinning this is crap.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was never I mean, it works, but it was never designed for that. And so,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I don’t think it’s the reason why they haven’t done it. Like I said in the last show, they’re they’re working towards it in slow, steady
⏹️ ▶️ John increments. They’re not sandbagging because they’re like, oh, we got to wait for everyone to not have spinning disks.
⏹️ ▶️ John People back up to SSDs like not everyone has terabytes and terabytes of data. And the great thing about SSDs is
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re all bus powered in a nice, handy little case. So, you know, again, power bricks, the enemy of all
⏹️ ▶️ John good people everywhere. And it’s great to back up to an SSD because it doesn’t take
⏹️ ▶️ John forever. So I highly endorse SSDs as backup drives. They’re small, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John silent, and they’re much less expensive than you might think, as long as you don’t have tons and tons to
Letterboxd Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Finally, we enter Letterboxd corner. Can you tell me about the benefits of Letterboxd Pro?
⏹️ ▶️ John Last week, I said that you can pay for Letterboxd. But yeah, I didn’t know if you got anything for paying for
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Well, apparently you do. I’ve always been paying for it. So I don’t really know what it’s like not to pay for it. But apparently, according
⏹️ ▶️ John to letterboxd.com slash pro, you get personalized annual and all time stats pages
⏹️ ▶️ John based on your diary entries. You can filter your favorite streaming services, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, basically tell which ones you actually subscribe to and you can filter activity by type pin reviews to your profile duplicate
⏹️ ▶️ John lists change your username and have cool background images on your profile pages and all sorts of other perk type things
⏹️ ▶️ John so yes you do get something for your money if that interests you and related to that I said in the last
⏹️ ▶️ John episode that I was using it kind of wrong because I just every time I watch a movie I would go in and I would give it a rating
⏹️ ▶️ John and that would also mark it as watch but what it wouldn’t do is add a diary entry to record that I watch
⏹️ ▶️ John it so at the end of the year when they say check out your year annual review of everything
⏹️ ▶️ John that you watched and we’ll show you these cool stats and graphs I’d go and say you watch zero films this year which is not true
⏹️ ▶️ John they want me every time I watch a movie to make a diary entry which is like a couple more clicks and I sent
⏹️ ▶️ John a feature request ages ago saying don’t make me do more clicks if I go and rate a movie that I have never
⏹️ ▶️ John rated before also add a diary entry that says hey you watch this
⏹️ ▶️ John and just know what they’re doing so they haven’t added that feature but one of the people from letterboxd site told me,
⏹️ ▶️ John because we preserve the date when you watched it, like the date when the little unwatched
⏹️ ▶️ John watched boolean bit flipped, you can export your data and then
⏹️ ▶️ John re-import it to make dire entries. And it pointed me to some export import
⏹️ ▶️ John page, which I went to, but I figured, oh, this will be a big pain in the butt. It’s going to drop out these giant JSON blobs, and
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll have to transform them and make new blobs and write to an API and, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, sign up for a dev account and get an access token and make a little program.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not gonna do that, but I just wanted to see what it looked like, whatever. And it turns out, as I wrote in the show notes, it’s CSVZ,
⏹️ ▶️ John which I think should be their slogan. Their export is a CSV file. You go and you export and it gives
⏹️ ▶️ John you a zip file with a bunch of CSV files, and the CSV files are dead simple. There’s one for each type of
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. It’s called like diary.csv, watchlist.csv, And it’s, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, CSV is the format that’s not a format as any programmer knows who’s ever tried to deal with CSV files. But
⏹️ ▶️ John in this case, it was very straightforward. There’s a little header to tell you what the fields are. I didn’t even have to read any documentation.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was totally clear. And then I saw my diary, which had zero entries, which was a little bit of
⏹️ ▶️ John a problem. All I needed to do, like to reassure myself, and so I was sure that I didn’t have to read documentation, is I
⏹️ ▶️ John added a diary entry and then re-exported my data so I’d have at least one line, so I knew what the lines look like,
⏹️ ▶️ John because there was a bunch of fields, Like, is that a boolean? Do they want a Y and N? Is it T or F? Is it one or zero?
⏹️ ▶️ John So I made a diary entry, downloaded the file, saw what a diary entry looked like, and then I just in
⏹️ ▶️ John BB edit, just did like select all one, you know, reg X copy and replace thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John and just uploaded the import step was I just uploaded the diary.csv
⏹️ ▶️ John file that I had now filled out with my hand selected set of all of the movies.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like the point of the person from the site telling me is like, just because you mark something
⏹️ ▶️ John as watch doesn’t mean you watch it that moment, which is true. When I first signed up for the service, I went through like this huge back catalog
⏹️ ▶️ John of movies saying, Okay, I watched that one. And I rated this like I rated like, like literally 1000
⏹️ ▶️ John movies just sitting there just in one day, you know, clicking, clicking, clicking, putting on ratings. It doesn’t mean I watched
⏹️ ▶️ John them all that day, right. So I wouldn’t want those to show up as dire entries, because then the first year I was on the service is
⏹️ ▶️ John like you watched 1000 movies this year, which is not true. So that, you know, they would want to
⏹️ ▶️ John do that automatically, which is why I suggested they have like a a feature that says, do you want this feature on or off when you rate a movie should
⏹️ ▶️ John mark as you’d anyway, since I had the CSV there, I could see, oh, look, 2013. When I signed up for
⏹️ ▶️ John the site, here’s like 500 entries, ignore all those that all happened on that one day. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John starting after like the first legit entry, that’s like five days later for me watching a movie, everything from that point
⏹️ ▶️ John on is a legit watch. So I use that as the contents of my diary dot CSV.
⏹️ ▶️ John So long story long. Now on my letterboxd page, every Every single movie I’ve watched has a diary
⏹️ ▶️ John entry. And I’m going to try to, from now on, actually add diary entries. Like, the
⏹️ ▶️ John main reason I didn’t do it before is because I didn’t realize until the first year I had used the service that I was using it wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ John At that point, I didn’t want to go back and do it. But let’s be honest, anyone who’s making a website or API,
⏹️ ▶️ John really dead simple import and export is great for people who, I’m not even gonna say for programmers.
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t have to do any programming. I literally did all this in BBEdit with search and replace. It was so easy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is very cool, actually. I saw the entry in the show notes, and I couldn’t tell if that was deep sarcasm or not.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m actually pleased to hear this. That’s very cool.
Apple TV+
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, we should talk about Apple TV+. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey want to immediately point you to upgrade number 270 from this week called the Toughest
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Compare, where Jason and Mike go through and talk about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some of the Apple TV Plus shows. I would actually like to discuss a little bit about them. If you don’t listen to Upgrade, they have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a really great segment called, what is it, downstream? Is that right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Of course. What would it be called downstream?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me, I really want that one back, but too late. Mark will fix it and edit, I swear. Luke Gromen Well, I…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jay Coole So anyway, they have a really great segment called Upstream, ladies and gentlemen,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where they talk about TV-related news and so on and so forth. The whole episode
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is very good. You should check it out. But I wanted to talk a little bit about my Apple TV Plus experience
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over the last 48 hours when I finally started watching a little of Apple TV Plus. I have seen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey episode one of Morning Show, and I’ve seen episode one of For All Mankind.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, have you had the time to watch anything so far? Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Timmins As usual, I haven’t seen it. Steven Connelly Okay. Marco Timmins Yeah. And to be fair, like, I,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, I will, I do plan to watch these shows, but I don’t watch a ton of TV shows.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like I watch entire series when possible, and that doesn’t leave a lot of time. Steven Connelly
⏹️ ▶️ John I was gonna say, you don’t watch a ton of TV shows, but you’re working your way through all of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cheers. Marco Timmins Yes. As I’ve mentioned before, The world of technology is very big.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And like one show can’t possibly cover all of technology. I like that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Upgrade covers the whole like streaming and TV side of all these businesses
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very well. Because it kind of means that we don’t have to. Like they have it covered. And that’s nice because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco honestly like as Apple gets into all these different businesses, like we don’t really cover the credit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco card business. Apple’s now in the credit card business. We talked about it here, like we talked about it briefly, but we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not gonna really make it a thing because that’s not really what our show’s about. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even though our show tries to encompass as much of Apple as we can, Apple’s really big now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they’re in all these different areas that we have neither the time nor the expertise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nor the will to cover in great detail most of the time. And so I think TV is gonna end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up being one of these areas. Like, we’re gonna cover it about the same way we cover credit cards, which is very briefly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like when it first comes out, and then we’re gonna forget about it because ultimately more stuff is gonna go on.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, you know, they’re gonna release these laptops, they’re gonna release the Mac Pro, they’re gonna have new AirPods, new other stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’re gonna talk about that stuff, we’re gonna measure the key caps with my calipers way more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than we’re going to end up talking about the details of like, oh, this series is pretty good, and you know, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got this director, and it’s like, because that’s not really us.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it’s definitely not Marco, but I’ve got a whole other podcast where apparently all we do is talk about Apple TV, so.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair. John, what have you seen so far?
⏹️ ▶️ John I have watched, I mean, so they did an interesting thing here with the episodes.
⏹️ ▶️ John They didn’t do the Netflix thing where they dropped whole seasons, but they also didn’t release a single episode. They released the first three episodes,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think, of all the shows, right? The first three for
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Morning Show. I think that’s true. For the big
⏹️ ▶️ John ones. Anyway, I watched the first three episodes of For All Mankind, and I watched the first three episodes of
⏹️ ▶️ John Sea, because that’s all there are released of those two shows. I’m going to check out Dickinson.
⏹️ ▶️ John I might check out the morning show. I’m not sure it’s up my alley, but that’s my plan.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I did want to talk about the, and not in the sort of, in the length that we go
⏹️ ▶️ John into on Rags to All Differences and on, you know, Upgrade and other shows, the actual
⏹️ ▶️ John application on various platforms through which we watch these shows. I had a
⏹️ ▶️ John tweet, I don’t know, well, I guess on November 1st when the thing came out,
⏹️ ▶️ John it was my only tweet about Apple TV Plus at that point, I think. And I basically said that I
⏹️ ▶️ John started watching a show and then put down my iPad and then later came back and picked up my iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John and wanted to resume watching the show. And the Apple TV app on the iPad was like, what show?
⏹️ ▶️ John show. I swear, I swear I was. You know, it didn’t, it didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John remember my play acquisition. And that’s not a great first experience for the application.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that, that was my whole tweet. It was, it fit in a single tweet with a new longer tweet length. It’s like, I started watching a show, put down the iPad,
⏹️ ▶️ John picked it up without doing anything else and it didn’t let me resume. Um, you got a lot of, uh, responses.
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, some people thinking I was implying that they don’t have this feature. They do like now that I’ve watched lots of shows in it,
⏹️ ▶️ John it does know how to resume where you left off sometimes. Um, but really
⏹️ ▶️ John like, I think it, there’s an important perspective. That’s like, so the application,
⏹️ ▶️ John it has problems. Sometimes it doesn’t keep track of where you kept left off. The UI is not great. The hierarchy
⏹️ ▶️ John of the UI is not great. they don’t they don’t. I kept alluding to the show where I talk about Apple TV,
⏹️ ▶️ John the upcoming episode of our installable differences. We talk about this even more, just sort of the standard set by the other streaming
⏹️ ▶️ John services of like when you launch them, the upper left corner is a giant square that shows you the show you were just watching
⏹️ ▶️ John with a little progress bar that shows you where you are. And if you want to pick up where you were, you know, and when the show ends,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a button to bring you to the next episode. And the next episode, they’ll often skip the opening credits or the very least,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’ll skip the recap because they know you just watched that episode. There’s no reason for to watch the recap right before the, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John basic sort of quality of life features of streaming apps that Apple is falling down on.
⏹️ ▶️ John And, you know, despite the giant barrage of crazy angry people
⏹️ ▶️ John yelling at me on Twitter because I dared say something bad about Apple’s service, it
⏹️ ▶️ John is right to expect Apple to do these things, right? Like, you know, but
⏹️ ▶️ John what I didn’t say, and I didn’t really engage with anything that’s on Twitter because I wasn’t interested in arguing with people about stuff. I was too busy
⏹️ ▶️ John watching TV shows, which brings me to my larger point, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty much no matter how bad the app is and how many bugs it has, as long
⏹️ ▶️ John as it can actually deliver the video to your eyeballs without like
⏹️ ▶️ John crashing or stopping or whatever, like as long as you can literally see the video, the thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John dominates all these other concerns about, oh, the app and the UI. And I don’t like how it didn’t do this. and it wasn’t easy for
⏹️ ▶️ John me to resume or whatever is the shows. If the shows are good, people will tolerate
⏹️ ▶️ John an app that’s buggy. I think it doesn’t pick up where it left off. Sometimes it doesn’t offer to show you the next episode. Sometimes you have to hunt
⏹️ ▶️ John through the app like it doesn’t matter. Like people dealt with terrible rabbit
⏹️ ▶️ John ear antennas and tinfoil and trying to get a good signal and terrible
⏹️ ▶️ John cable boxes with really bad remotes like it doesn’t people will tolerate almost any bad
⏹️ ▶️ John UI if what you give them is good content. So my context for our,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, whatever discussion we’re about to have about the actual content of the shows is that despite the fact that I’m disappointed
⏹️ ▶️ John in the quality and features available in Apple’s applications for watching the shows,
⏹️ ▶️ John it matters to me and it matters big picture wise to the world at large, so
⏹️ ▶️ John much less than the actual TV shows. That’s what matters in this context, like where I know we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John so used to talking to Apple talking about Apple in the in the context of like, what’s their hardware? What’s their UI? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John cause that was the whole product to pitch, but this is a fundamentally different business. This is the entertainment business.
⏹️ ▶️ John And while those things matter, the various, you know, quality of the UI and the hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John and software, blah, blah, the thing that dominates is how good are the TV shows? You
⏹️ ▶️ John know, no one talks about movies in terms of like, I love that movie, but like, you know, the seats in the theater
⏹️ ▶️ John that I saw it in were a little bit uncomfortable. It was a bad UI, right? But, but that’s, you don’t, the Oscars aren’t
⏹️ ▶️ John docked because the seats were bad. I know it’s a bad analogy, but anyway, that’s not what matters in this
⏹️ ▶️ John case, which is frustrating because we want the apps to be good and up to the standards that we expect
⏹️ ▶️ John from, you know, a company that’s supposedly good at this. And as I think they talked about an
⏹️ ▶️ John upgrade, it’s fairly surprising to see that the worst aspect of Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John TV’s launch is actually the stuff that Apple is supposed to be good at, like hardware and software applications.
⏹️ ▶️ John But really, all that matters is the shows. So I think that’s what we should talk about.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Agreed. I went into this having heard a little bit about Morning Show and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even less about For All Mankind. I’m going to do my darndest to try to do this spoiler free.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Additionally, on Upgrade, they were spoiler free. And I have not yet listened, but on Liftoff
⏹️ ▶️ Casey number 111, Jason and Steven talk about For All Mankind, Liftoff being their
⏹️ ▶️ Casey space podcast. That’s a pretty good place to talk about it. My understanding is that was also spoiler free. I’m going to do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my darndest not to do it have any spoilers. Um, I went to episode one of morning show, knowing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a bit about the premise and I didn’t think I would really like it. There was nothing about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the premise that really. Spoke to me, but given the cast and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey given, I thought, you know, Aaron might like that one. Um, we watched the first episode together.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, I think we both liked it a fair bit. She might’ve liked it a bit more than me, but I liked it a lot more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than I thought I would. I was very intrigued by it. But it was immediately apparent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that they were establishing ground rules for what an Apple TV show would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be and that there were swear words within the first like 30 seconds or something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that, which for me, and I tend to use the F word as a comma when left my own devices, I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have any particular problem with that. But if you recall, months ago, people were saying, oh, it’s going to be family friendly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it’s going to be almost Disney-like, and it is not almost Disney-like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not a bit. I’ve also heard that C is extremely graphic. I’ve not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seen it yet, but I’ve heard that that is very, very, very graphic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the point of making Mike a little bit uncomfortable, and Mike isn’t a clutch-the-pearls kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey person, generally speaking.
⏹️ ▶️ John He’s just uncomfortable with female sexuality, that’s all.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my God, I’m not touching that one. Moving on, Mike, you can send your angry emails to John.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving on, I thought the show was good. I thought the cast was great. It was a relatively interesting premise.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The most interesting thing to possibly the most interesting thing to me was when they went on a bit of a diatribe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about how broadcast TV is dying because of streaming services as they’re doing this television program on a streaming
⏹️ ▶️ Casey service, which I thought was quite funny. But all told, it was pretty obvious to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see where the plot was going. I thought in a way that I did not feel that that was the case
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with For All Mankind, but on Morning Show, I felt like it was pretty obvious to see where the plot was going through Episode One
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyway. But I really enjoyed it quite a bit, and I was very surprised by how much I enjoyed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. John, what were your kind of quick thoughts on it?
⏹️ ▶️ John John Greenewald So I watched For All Mankind first because it was the show that I had the most interest in,
⏹️ ▶️ John both based on the premise and also the people behind it. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John I talked more about all these shows on reconcilable differences in a spoiler free way. I’m going to talk in a spoiler free way here as
⏹️ ▶️ John well, maybe in a more abbreviated form. Uh, I thought it was fine. Uh, it’s, I,
⏹️ ▶️ John I still like the premise. I’m still watching the show. I’m still interested in it. It didn’t blow me away with its writing
⏹️ ▶️ John or acting. The special effects budget should have been bigger for a show about space. Uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, they, they should have, I know it’s not the same pool of money or maybe it is, But like the money they spent on C,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can you see it up there on the screen. The money they didn’t spend on the show about
⏹️ ▶️ John space stuff, you also see it up on the screen. We’re just kind of disappointing. But you know, it’s a TV show. I don’t mind too much. So
⏹️ ▶️ John like, yeah, it’s kind of like Marvel movies, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe to a lesser degree. Like the big thing about Marvel movies is it seemed to me that like, aside
⏹️ ▶️ John from a few outliers early on the Marvel
⏹️ ▶️ John machine that makes these movies has mostly found a way to make sure they don’t make
⏹️ ▶️ John a terrible movie again you know Thor to whatever say whatever you want right but but in general they made
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of movies and it’s amazing that they made that many movies that are for the most part
⏹️ ▶️ John okay to good like there’s no part of them that’s embarrassingly bad there’s no like boy I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John even believe they made this one or this scene is a real clunker or they should have got a better star
⏹️ ▶️ John for this movie. Like in general, there is like the floor is high. They won’t allow the machine
⏹️ ▶️ John will not allow them to put out just an actively bad movie anymore. Right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And so watching for all mankind, I’m like, this is not a bad show. Um, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not, you know, it’s not particularly innovative and daring.
⏹️ ▶️ John The writing isn’t super smart. The premise is interesting. The actors are good, but
⏹️ ▶️ John not too good. Like it’s it’s it’s fine. It’s OK. It’s good. Like I’m enjoying
⏹️ ▶️ John it, but it doesn’t it doesn’t have that extra special something
⏹️ ▶️ John which I read a big article by somebody I wish I could remember who but a seasoned TV critic was saying like,
⏹️ ▶️ John look, when somebody comes out who’s never made TV before ever, like Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John never made television shows before, aside from, you know, carpool karaoke and whatever, like like
⏹️ ▶️ John for their first thing you can expect. and they put out like maybe four or five big shows,
⏹️ ▶️ John zero of those are going to be Game of Thrones. Zero of those are going to be Breaking Bad. Zero of them
⏹️ ▶️ John are going to be The Sopranos. Like they’re not going to get half of them or two. They’re going to get zero. You don’t come
⏹️ ▶️ John out of the gate with Breaking Bad like, it’s our first try. And one out of our four shows is
⏹️ ▶️ John like one of the greatest shows ever. It’s just not going to happen. And I mean, it was a chance that could have they had the right pedigree,
⏹️ ▶️ John but expecting that is unrealistic, right? Instead, as far as I can tell, based
⏹️ ▶️ John on the two shows that I I watch, Apple has fielded shows that are not bad, which is important.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like a lot of the earlier is like, oh, these shows are awful. And I spent some time on rectus talking to Merlin about like the
⏹️ ▶️ John critics ratings or whatever, you know, on rotten tomatoes. And that was early on because I’m sure I’m sure
⏹️ ▶️ John the numbers have changed a little bit. But for all mankind is not a bad show. It is a good show. You should check it
⏹️ ▶️ John out. It’s got an interesting premise and I recommend it for most people to watch.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey agree. And I actually would I agree in general, but I actually enjoyed for all mankind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey quite a bit more than I expected. I went into for all mankind thinking I’m going to like this and I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really liked it. I was surprised how much I liked it. And even knowing the premise of it upfront,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I felt like it took some twists and turns that I didn’t expect and they weren’t dramatic twists
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and turns, but it, the ending of the first episode was not exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what I expected. And I, I can’t be any more specific than that because I don’t want to spoil it. But, um,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought it was really good. I thought the way they handled the line between the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey real past and their invented past, I thought they handled that well. I agree. The acting and the writing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were good, but not great, but all told it was, it was a premise that I already found interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just having heard about it and having watched only one episode so far, it was far more interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than I expected. And I really, really like it so far. And I like it so much. In fact, that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, Aaron and I were talking about it and she said, you know, in so many words, well, why didn’t you think I would like that? And then I thought about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. Why didn’t I think you would like that? Like we should watch this together, watch the first episode together
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for me a second time for her, the first, and then watch for all mankind together. So, so far of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two shows that I’ve tried, and admittedly, I’ve only tried one episode each. I think the two of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us are probably going to watch both of these shows. And I expect it to be like, eh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about both of them. So I was quite surprised. Now, with all that said, please feel free to comment
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on that or just tell me about C because I know almost nothing about it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think you’ll if you continue watching for all mankind, it’ll just if you like the first episode,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ll continue to like what they have on offer
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think part of what Apple has done that’s smart is with its with at least C
⏹️ ▶️ John and for all mankind is they’ve chosen shows with
⏹️ ▶️ John interesting premises like the pitch. If you see that someone was to give you the pitch, you’re like, Oh, that sounds like
⏹️ ▶️ John an interesting idea. You could make, you can make a good shot of that. Right. Whereas like they’re starting, they’re not starting from zero
⏹️ ▶️ John because like, it’s much harder to say, for example, Deadwood, if you give the pitch for Deadwood, it’s like, well, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the old West. Well, that pitch is not showing me anything.
⏹️ ▶️ John You could implement it in a okay way and have a boring show about the old West. If you
⏹️ ▶️ John are, you know, really good and you could get something like
⏹️ ▶️ John Deadwood, but just based on the picture like, well, you’re basically starting from the ground floor here. Everything you build, you’re gonna have to build yourself.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m sure it’s possible to make a deadwood quality show out of this old west premise, but it’s also possible to make a crap show
⏹️ ▶️ John out of this premise because the premise is not helping you at all. The premise on for all mankind
⏹️ ▶️ John and see already you’ve got a leg up. You’re like, you’ve already got the people’s attention.
⏹️ ▶️ John As long as you’re vaguely competent, you can build on that to go somewhere. And And I think that
⏹️ ▶️ John was smart because if they chose to just make a show about mobsters
⏹️ ▶️ John or a show in the old west, it’s very easy to be like, oh, I’ve seen a million mobster shows. Why would even watch this?
⏹️ ▶️ John You have to make the Sopranos to get people interested. Otherwise you might end up with like, say, Boardwalk Empire, which
⏹️ ▶️ John was a show that I enjoyed, but it was not the Sopranos. But both of those pictures are similar. It’s like, hey, organized crime
⏹️ ▶️ John in insert era here, right? Arguably, Boardwalk Empire was more interesting because it wasn’t set in modern day
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway. Um, so that was smart. And I think for all mankind is handily
⏹️ ▶️ John above the average for all Netflix original, uh, material. It’s not as good as the best
⏹️ ▶️ John Netflix has made, but it’s much better than the average. I feel like because I watch a lot of like questionable
⏹️ ▶️ John quality Netflix stuff that, you know, Netflix puts out a lot of things and they, they’re smart
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’re savvy and they try not to spend too much money and they, you know, I do searches for various
⏹️ ▶️ John keywords and find a bunch of shows and you’re I can’t even believe all this stuff exists and I try them out and some of them are stinkers
⏹️ ▶️ John and some of them aren’t. But for mankind is above average. And that’s why I feel like it deserves a higher
⏹️ ▶️ John visual effects budget. See, similarly, it’s got a premise where
⏹️ ▶️ John already it’s starting for you’ve got you got my interest before even the first frame areas because I’m like, Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John I want to see what they’re going to do with this premise. Like the
⏹️ ▶️ John the maturity thing of sort of people thinking, oh, they’re not going to curse, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going to Disney fire or whatever thing. Yeah, FC does have a couple of
⏹️ ▶️ John scenes of violence and some, you know, sexual content that clearly like
⏹️ ▶️ John it, it makes it very clear that that story about, oh, Tim Cook’s telling me I
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t have, uh, you know, adult things in my shows was, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John as, as suspected in various ways, probably partially motivated by someone who’s disgruntled about
⏹️ ▶️ John creative direction in a particular show or whatever. But that said,
⏹️ ▶️ John C does not even rise to the level of HBO
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of adult content in that the sexual content is
⏹️ ▶️ John really tame in the grand scheme of things. Like it’s nothing explicitly shown or anything like that. The violence
⏹️ ▶️ John is, you know, it’s personal violence, but it is not particularly gory or grim.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like to give just one example, the boys on Amazon, which I thought was an interesting show, uh, is so
⏹️ ▶️ John much more over the top with its gore. Like it’s totally in your face and trying to shock you with the course. He is not trying to shock you with the
⏹️ ▶️ John gore. It’s not trying to shock you with sex for the most part. Again, unless you’re very uncomfortable female sexuality,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, it’s, it’s fine. Like it is. I’m not going to say it’s Disney a fide, but it is all.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s not what C is about. C is not even to the degree of like breaking bad, bringing bad various had various moments where like they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going to sort of horrify you with this thing that happens and they’re really going to show you what it would really be like if that happens,
⏹️ ▶️ John not just like a sanitized TV version of it, right? C doesn’t do that either. So don’t watch it
⏹️ ▶️ John with your kids, obviously, but don’t expect to be shocked by anything. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John C, there’s a lot of money on the screen. It doesn’t really hold together.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, premise wise, if you think about it for too long, there’s lots of sort of hand wavy stuff. But the premise
⏹️ ▶️ John is interesting. I love end of the world stories. And so I’m totally willing to go along with it. I feel like the
⏹️ ▶️ John star Aquaman, what’s his name? Jason?
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. He may be a little bit overmatched by
⏹️ ▶️ John the acting required of him to carry this series. But mostly he just has to be
⏹️ ▶️ John a sort of brooding little kid. So it’s kind of in his wheelhouse.
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, again, I don’t want to say it’s bad, like the ratings that this got from critics, like I think it was like 38% on Rotten Tomatoes
⏹️ ▶️ John for the critics writing that is wrong. It is not that bad. It is absolutely not a 38% show by any
⏹️ ▶️ John stretch of the imagination. It’s not 90% show either. It’s fine. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I like for all mankind better, but I’m still very interested in C because it is I’m, you should see
⏹️ ▶️ John the garbage shows on Netflix that I’ve watched about the end of the world. This is so much better than them. Like, I have
⏹️ ▶️ John a high tolerance for garbage shows when it’s about the end of the world. That’s just me. But I would recommend
⏹️ ▶️ John C to people who find the premise interesting. Because if you if you hear about what the show is about, you’re like, Oh, it sounds kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of cool. You’ll probably like it. Okay, good. It’s not great. But it’s also not
⏹️ ▶️ John bad. So this is this sounds terrible, like these type of reviews. And again, I go back to that, the TV critics think you
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t expect when they feel like four or five shows for any of them to be on par
⏹️ ▶️ John with like the best shows on television in the past few years. And I think it’s good that none
⏹️ ▶️ John of them as far as I can tell, are awful. You saw the morning show and didn’t think it was awful and that
⏹️ ▶️ John got some okay good reviews and I saw a scene for all mankind and they like
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re not bad shows it sounds so terrible to not be able to say this is the best show or none of them are the best show ever
⏹️ ▶️ John but it is really important for Apple to come out of the gate especially that’s kind of in this free where it’s like free to everyone
⏹️ ▶️ John who bought an iPhone for a year or whatever to get people to watch it and not like turn
⏹️ ▶️ John it off and disgust or be like oh Apple can’t make TV shows or they really blew it I don’t think anyone’s watching is going to say
⏹️ ▶️ John that I I think what they’ll say is, well, I got it for free. Maybe I’ll watch it
⏹️ ▶️ John and they’ll get interested. And you know, it starts moving along and you watch it. Maybe by the end of the first
⏹️ ▶️ John season, people are like, you know what? I really enjoyed that. I’ll pay for it for the next year or whatever. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I think content wise, this is about as good as anyone could have expected. You could
⏹️ ▶️ John still be out there saying, oh, if only they had that one great show, but I just think that was an unrealistic hope.
⏹️ ▶️ John And either one, any of these shows could turn into a great show. It sometimes takes shows a little while get their feet
⏹️ ▶️ John under them. So I’m mostly impressed for a first time TV maker to come out
⏹️ ▶️ John with a bunch of shows that are okay, good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I agree with you. I’ve been granted I’ve watched a sum total of like two
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hours and 15 minutes of Apple TV plus, but I have been very, very surprised
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and very pleased with it so far. Can you tell me about the streaming quality? I watched for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all mankind on my phone in a fit of insomnia this morning, please don’t yell at me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then I had watched the morning show on my very old 1080 TV.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I would assume for those of us like you guys that have fancier TVs and fancier Apple TVs, and so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on and so forth, that it probably looks pretty good.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this is a flat panels HD, which is a website. And this is the editor
⏹️ ▶️ John in chief writing in their forums. He says, our TV plus has the highest streaming quality
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve seen for 4k. So far, It’s higher than most iTunes movies. Wow. Apple TV Plus
⏹️ ▶️ John uses variable bit rate with quite a wide span. The highest bit rate they’ve seen so far is 29 megabit
⏹️ ▶️ John per second average with a 41 megabit per second peak. I’ve also seen reports
⏹️ ▶️ John saying, oh, I watched a bunch of Apple TV content in HDR on my TV and there was terrible compression and banding.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it seems like the answer to the streaming quality is that
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple has the capacity to and will send you many more bits
⏹️ ▶️ John than other services will, but if your connection is slow or
⏹️ ▶️ John inconsistent or has any problems, they will of course throttle down and you will see compression artifacts. So the
⏹️ ▶️ John advantage of getting something from iTunes or watching it on a Blu-ray disc is you’ve got all the bits there
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re going to see all the bits. Doing anything over streaming, if there’s any hiccup in your connection or you actually have
⏹️ ▶️ John a bad connection or you have flaky Wi-Fi in the room you’re in or whatever, it’s just going to throttle down and the quality is going to go down.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s good to know that Apple is leaning on this one, you know, potential technical advantage they have is they’re willing
⏹️ ▶️ John to send you more bits because they have fewer subscribers and,
⏹️ ▶️ John know, in general, they’ve always cared about video quality, but you’re not gonna see
⏹️ ▶️ John nice, pristine video if you can’t sustain 29 megabit per second average
⏹️ ▶️ John to your television. It doesn’t mean like, well, my internet connection is 150 megabits or 300 megabits, I should get that. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John is your connection to your TV able to handle 29 megabits per second sustained? And
⏹️ ▶️ John then of course there’s server issues and CDN issues and all sorts of other technical things that are outside your control. But
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, I, I watched most of these shows on my iPad. I watch a surprising amount of TV on my iPad. It’s making
⏹️ ▶️ John me more and more wish for an old iPad actually. Um, just because like I end up
⏹️ ▶️ John watching like a show before I go to bed, uh, and you know, the lights are all out and I’ve got my air pods in like this
⏹️ ▶️ John my right before bed TV watching experience. Um, and I like it. I like watching TV like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John I haven’t noticed any I guess I haven’t noticed any terrible compression artifacts, so I guess that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John thumbs up again. Kind of like the shows. I didn’t see anything bad, right? I also haven’t noticed them. Their quality
⏹️ ▶️ John being particularly great either. But then again, all my internet connections and all my Wi Fi is very
⏹️ ▶️ John high bandwidth and a lot of the shows I watch are actually streaming from my Tivo in the other
⏹️ ▶️ John and so there’s no streaming issues there and or I’m watching stuff off my plex where I know I’m getting all the bits because I I do it
⏹️ ▶️ John in original quality because I have good network in my house. So I think the
⏹️ ▶️ John audio video is fine, but of course for any streaming service, you never know what you’re gonna get.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anything else on Apple TV Plus?
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, I mean, I know I said I didn’t wanna harp on the application issues and the quality of the shows is
⏹️ ▶️ John the dominant factor. That’s true, but I really do hope they get this stuff sorted out. Like for all the world, it felt like they
⏹️ ▶️ John were having weird server issues. A couple of people thought that maybe it was also the
⏹️ ▶️ John background process termination stuff. Like maybe their app was getting killed before it could send an
⏹️ ▶️ John API request to mark my position in the show. But honestly, I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t want to repeat the rant that I went into on Rectus. This is table stakes for the app.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can either innovate and say we have a great idea of how to present an interface to television, but if you don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John any great ideas, just do what Netflix does. Like when I launched the app, you absolutely have to show me in a gigantic
⏹️ ▶️ John box that I can just paw at with my monkey paws and just say, look, just continue showing me the
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that I was watching. If I was watching a show and I finished episode, show me the next episode. If I’m in the middle of an episode, pick
⏹️ ▶️ John up where I left off. I should never have to search for that. They also could
⏹️ ▶️ John do with a concept like Netflix’s My List or some other way to say,
⏹️ ▶️ John these are the shows that I intend to be watching right now. Every streaming app has some
⏹️ ▶️ John way for you to do that. They’re all different, which kind of sucks. But like, you know, obviously once you start watching a
⏹️ ▶️ John show you expect the app to understand you’re watching it, but also you could say, Oh, and like I could have, I would have liked to have gone and
⏹️ ▶️ John say, okay, I plan to watch for all mankind, uh, C and Dickinson.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. And I’ll think about the morning show. And then I should have had some page somewhere that shows all three of those shows and I should be able to go into them and see
⏹️ ▶️ John all the episodes and see how far along I am in them. And then when I get to the end of the episode, I should, it should go to the next one or prompt me
⏹️ ▶️ John to go to the next one. Like it should just do all the things. And it’s kind of boggles my mind that
⏹️ ▶️ John they dropped the ball on that. Some of it are bugs and some of it is just, that’s not how they organize They don’t have these features.
⏹️ ▶️ John They don’t they don’t conceptualize it the same way as Netflix. And I’m not saying they have to do what Netflix and Hulu and everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John else does. But if they don’t, they got to do something better. So right now they’re doing neither. They’re doing something worse or they’re trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to do the same thing, but doing it with bugs. So I mean, I it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John that big a deal because I can I eventually figure out how to get the show to play. But it just seems like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not it’s not high bar. We’re not asking them for amazing features that
⏹️ ▶️ John think about what I’m going to do. It just if I was if I was just watching a show Like I’m probably gonna want to continue
⏹️ ▶️ John watching it So that should be like the biggest perhaps the only thing on the screen when I launch the app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I also wanted to comment and I think they talked about this on upgrade as well It was surprising to me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that there was no obvious. Here’s the Apple TV plus stuff Or at least not on the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple TV app. Anyway in There’s so many the same name. So on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the device called Apple TV I was in the TV app and there was no
⏹️ ▶️ Casey obvious place for Apple TV plus content and I was able to find it pretty quickly like it wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a egregious amount of effort to go find it but you know that was the one time when it would have been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nice for them to kind of highlight this is the Apple TV plus stuff right here look here over
⏹️ ▶️ John here hey over here. It’s on launch day you would think it would be so in your face that you wouldn’t be able to avoid
⏹️ ▶️ John it like in your you end up looking for like how am I hunting for this how is this not like a giant banner in my face that I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I do, on the flip side of the coin, though, I do respect that they’re trying to, or it appears
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyway, that they’re trying to make a level playing field for all of the content
⏹️ ▶️ John that app. Which is a charitable interpretation,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey yes. Well, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John Of their bad information architecture. They’re just trying to be fair to the other services that didn’t launch today.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, you never know. I’m trying to get the benefit of the doubt. But, but no, all in all,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey again, I’m quite pleased.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. One more aesthetic thing. So Netflix, if you watch Netflix, you know, they have kind of a splash
⏹️ ▶️ John screen. They recently changed it to this terrible thing with a bunch of colored lines. But like the thing that says like Netflix or the HBO
⏹️ ▶️ John like bong and and hilariously compression defeating static, right? You know, it’s sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of the thing that shows you what service you’re watching. And so I was actually curious of what
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple was going to do here if they’re going to do anything like that. They do. They do a twofer, right? So they’ve got a
⏹️ ▶️ John Netflix style splash screen that says Apple TV plus.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then they also have before the shows it says like I think maybe Netflix does this too, but it says an Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John original or Apple original film or something like that. And both of those things
⏹️ ▶️ John also surprising for Apple like the first one, the sort of Apple TV plus
⏹️ ▶️ John splash thing is very what I would expect the company that’s not Apple to do. It looks like every
⏹️ ▶️ John other sort of production logo thing where it’s like shiny and back lid and the plus
⏹️ ▶️ John is glowy and there’s a little THX type chord, like it’s a little bit like the startup chime
⏹️ ▶️ John for a Mac, you know, but it’s a little bit different. It’s like it’s all the things that you would expect that
⏹️ ▶️ John to be. And that I feel like is a missed opportunity to do what only Apple could do, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John have no writing on the screen, just have an Apple logo. If Steve Jobs were still alive, you know, we love
⏹️ ▶️ John doing those things. That would have been just an Apple logo, like probably not even any sound or maybe some sound, but like
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re the only company, one of the few companies in the world that can literally put no text on the screen, but a one simple
⏹️ ▶️ John outline logo in a single color and everybody knows what they’re in for but they didn’t. They went with the whole Apple TV plus
⏹️ ▶️ John glowy plus blah blah. And then the an Apple original thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John text and the font they used like it makes it looks like it would fit in
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple marketing material. It does not look like it fits in in the front of a television program. So I feel like both of those
⏹️ ▶️ John things. I was surprised by the aesthetic choices. They the aesthetic
⏹️ ▶️ John choices in the case of the logo seem very conventional. In the case of the and Apple original seem kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of meh. So they have time to change it. Netflix, like I said, just changed their logo. I think it
⏹️ ▶️ John used to be like just their regular logo. Now it’s this weird animation with a bunch of colored lines and stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John that I think is worse. HBO is stubbornly sticking to their static despite how horrific it looks on the
⏹️ ▶️ John streaming services. So maybe in year three,
⏹️ ▶️ John someone will have an epiphany and say, you know what, we should just show the Apple logo. Stick with the startup bong, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John fine. It’s kind of cute and everything, but just show the Apple logo. You don’t need to say Apple TV+. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not a great name. It’s It’s not a great logo. does need to glow.
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s move on to Ask ATP. And we begin with Josh Hattersley, who writes, you often mentioned that Apple’s mobile system
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on chip are faster than Mac components using Geekbit. I just totally butchered
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that. How can I rephrase this?
⏹️ ▶️ John You tried to substitute words
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey and you overflowed your own buffer. I did.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is 1000% an accurate description of what just happened. Now you’re going to leave
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it in the show though, because that was funny. I’ll just read this verbatim and we can blame other people.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You often mention Apple’s mobile SoCs being faster than Mac parts and Geekbench, but is there much
⏹️ ▶️ Casey evidence that it’s a good metric when comparing across architectures, for example, ARM versus x86?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s difficult to find concrete info here, but in theory, it isn’t apples to apples, is it?
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m kind of sad that like that today’s today’s geek children
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t get to experience what was a staple of my sort of early adult
⏹️ ▶️ John geek life, which was arguing other geeks arguing with each other over benchmarks
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey back in the times when
⏹️ ▶️ John it was, you know, 68K versus Power PC, x86 versus
⏹️ ▶️ John 68K versus Power PC, RISC versus CISC, Altevec versus MMX.
⏹️ ▶️ John this is a whole subculture of comparing platforms and arguing about which CPUs
⏹️ ▶️ John are better than what. And of course, when it came time to argue about that, it was like everyone would pull out the benchmarks. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John it just became a meta argument about, well, that benchmark is not realistic, it’s not representative, that benchmark unfairly
⏹️ ▶️ John favors this particular architecture and no real application does that. And it’s just,
⏹️ ▶️ John it went on forever. Like just arguing about the quality of benchmarks and how representative
⏹️ ▶️ John they were. And if it’s artificial and trying real world applications and just trying, you know, it’s it
⏹️ ▶️ John never ended, right? But but it meant that everyone was well versed in the pluses and minuses
⏹️ ▶️ John of benchmarks. And in this more modern sort of post iPhone era, people threw out geekbench
⏹️ ▶️ John numbers and no one ever argues about how applicable geekbench or spec or any of these other things are. No one ever says,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, that doesn’t count because that whole benchmark fits in the cache. Like no one ever talks about this stuff anymore. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just not an issue. Uh, so I’m going to say this is why I give all I
⏹️ ▶️ John give all the sort of reflexive hemming and hawing every time we mentioned geek bunch and no one seems to care about my hamming and hawing and they
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I never get any
⏹️ ▶️ John comments about it. I’m having an honking because all benchmarks inherently are synthetic
⏹️ ▶️ John and non representative in one way or another. But all that said, from all the years you’re arguing about
⏹️ ▶️ John how fair unfair particular benchmark is to particular power BC or particular pendium or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John The upshot is that in general, benchmarks, benchmarks that are not made by someone
⏹️ ▶️ John who makes a CPU chip, like, you know, Intel didn’t make the benchmark AMD didn’t make the benchmark, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. These benchmarks are trying to be fair, and chips come and go
⏹️ ▶️ John and the benchmarks more or less stay the same. So it’s not like the benchmark even can be
⏹️ ▶️ John or is tweaked to be particularly favorable to one CPU or another. It doesn’t mean they’re not vulnerable to
⏹️ ▶️ John edge cases where Oh, we’ve been running this benchmark for years and CPU cache sizes kept getting bigger.
⏹️ ▶️ John And all we cross some threshold and now the entire, uh, you know, this particular entire benchmark fits in the cash
⏹️ ▶️ John and it goes like 10 times faster and that’s not representative of real world stuff. Like, so it’s up to the geek bench people to keep track of that.
⏹️ ▶️ John But in general, all those caveats aside, I’m going to say the geek bench, though it is not representative
⏹️ ▶️ John of any particular real world application or your particular application. I’m not aware
⏹️ ▶️ John of any arm versus X 86 biases that would explain the massive performance differences
⏹️ ▶️ John we see between like, let’s say Apple’s phone and all of the Macs that they have ever sold
⏹️ ▶️ John in their entire lives. So yeah, you can quibble over the details,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I think there I don’t think that the the benchmark
⏹️ ▶️ John is so unfairly biased that you should discounted in general. You should give yourself some, you know, 5%
⏹️ ▶️ John margin one way or the other. So if they look at their close to each other, it’s probably about a wash. But I for the most part
⏹️ ▶️ John trust that they’re they’re an okay way to look at things.
#askatp: Podcast marketshare
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving on, Glynn07 writes, Can Marco give an update on the state of podcast market
⏹️ ▶️ Casey share? Is the equilibrium holding or is Spotify taking over the world?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s hard to have an idea of like how do you measure podcast market share?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whose data do you use? Whose data is valid? The best data that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know of that is publicly shared is Libsyn’s numbers. I’ve mentioned this before. They do a show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco called The Feed that’s kind of about podcasting and like helping people podcast and question everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And every couple episodes of the feed, they will do a stats breakdown of Libsyn’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco global stats for all shows hosted by Libsyn for a certain month. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, they’ll do geography breakdowns, like which countries had the most downloads. They’ll also do like type
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of device breakdowns and app breakdowns. It isn’t like the most perfect measure in the world
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because there’s a whole lot of like really big shows that aren’t hosted on Libsyn.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s not like a perfectly representative sample, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s such a huge podcast host in general that I think it’s the best data we have that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco publicly shared. So anyway, based on what they have reported, things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were kind of in equilibrium for the most part. Spotify is taking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco significant market share. I think they’re up to something like 13% in the latest numbers, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s mostly additive. it has been mostly people who were not taken away
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from other apps. Like people aren’t leaving Apple Podcasts and Overcast, et
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cetera, and Droves to go to Spotify to listen to their podcasts. Instead, Spotify’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco existing audience is starting to listen to podcasts for the first time, adding to the market rather than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco taking away from other apps. They are big,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but they’re also, because they’re not really taking away from the rest of us, it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as much of an issue. And also, from what I understand, their market share is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not like an average slice. It is not like an even slice out of the rest of the market
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or an additional rest of the market. It’s like certain demographics are very strong there and certain ones are totally missing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In the worlds that I tend to play in, in like nerds and tech podcasts, Spotify
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is basically nothing. Like almost no one listens to shows like ours on Spotify.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and almost none of the users of my app would be at risk of turning into Spotify
⏹️ ▶️ Marco users instead. So it doesn’t really affect our corner of the internet here,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it still is a good deal of market share.
⏹️ ▶️ John What about things like Luminary or whatever, those various pay services for podcasts? Those wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John show up on Libsyn Stats or whatever, but.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, they do. Luminary shows up as Libsyn Stats of having something along the lines of 0.2% market share.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I’m not so worried about it. To me, as a point of comparison, Overcast hovers
⏹️ ▶️ John was that? Wasn’t there some other pay service?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s Stitcher Premium and a couple others. Audible has some originals. But I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t know how they do. Stitcher does okay in general. I don’t know how Stitcher Premium specifically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does. But Stitcher is somewhere in the 2% range most of the time, I think.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, that’s mostly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good news, I’d say. Yeah, I mean, it seems like things are pretty stable. You know, Spotify
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is growing. That is significant, but we’re fine. Like, we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not really being touched by that in our kind of corner of the internet over here. And so I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think, I think things are mostly holding pretty well.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the premium services sounds like they haven’t no, no premium services even gotten the traction that Spotify has gotten.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not even close. No. I mean, you could argue maybe Spotify is a premium service in some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ways, but like, you know, they own Gimlet now. They do have a paid tier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they do have exclusive content. So like in some ways they are a premium service, but but not in the way that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most people would would discuss premium podcasting
⏹️ ▶️ John services. And that wouldn’t show up and you can’t pull that out of the 13% because you have no idea what percentage of that
⏹️ ▶️ John is their premium stuff versus which is just people listening to regular podcasts than Spotify.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But all we know from this 13% is like, that is like among Libsyn hosted podcasts,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which which are public podcasts. Among Libsyn hosted podcasts,
#askatp: Mac Mini
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Finally, Paul Dunahoo writes, I do some very basic database and Excel work for a living, but I’ve been thinking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about learning how to develop apps on side for supplemental income. Since I want to force myself to be at my desk, I’ve been thinking about getting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a Mac mini, but it hasn’t been updated since last year. Do you think I should wait until it gets refreshed or would I be fine purchasing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it now? You know, this is so such a difficult question because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up until there’s a lot of smoke about something like, oh, I don’t know, a 16-inch MacBook Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it seems like just about any time is a perfectly fine time to upgrade. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when you wait as long as the Mac mini has been, because it’s been about a year, right? Since it’s been upgraded,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco like Paul said.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Paul Matzko, MPH. It has been almost exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a year, a little bit more. Jeremy Laurenson, MPH. Yeah. So then I get to get a little, I get to be a little nervous about recommending an upgrade.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would say, especially if you don’t have a Mac already, just pull the trigger. It’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be fine. Maybe get it refurbished so feel less bad if a new one comes out tomorrow. But I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would personally say pull the trigger. Marco, what’s your two cents on this?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco Ferrari Normally, I would say an Apple product that is a year old, you should probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wait. It’s going to be updated soon. Not with the Mac Mini.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it would be a miracle if the Mac Mini were updated after
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only one year. It has never, even if it could ever be said to have had a prime, which I don’t think it ever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did, but even in its prime, if it ever existed, it was never updated that frequently.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So for the Mac Mini, only being a year old is actually kind of,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, young still. It’s still a, what is the expression, like a spring chicken or something? I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very new still for the Mac Mini. So I would say, if you’re going to get a Mac Mini,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go ahead and get it now. You have a very low risk of it being updated anytime That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being said, there is the question of whether a Mac Mini is really the best
⏹️ ▶️ Marco point. And that’s a more complicated question about what Paul’s needs are, what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any potential other priorities might be, things like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco price or having certain equipment around. Paul says, I want to force myself to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at my desk. but I would say like a decently specced Mac Mini
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not that differently priced than an iMac. And an iMac is kind of a better computer in a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I would certainly have, I would urge Paul to consider an iMac. Otherwise, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac Mini is fine and it’s not at risk of being updated.
⏹️ ▶️ John I agree with Marco. Don’t wait around for a Mac Mini. Just buy it if you want one, buy it, but consider an iMac.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks to our sponsors this week, Hover, Eero, and Away. and we will talk to you next.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even mean to begin, cause it was accidental, oh it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental. John didn’t do any research, Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John and Casey wouldn’t let him, cause it was accidental, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was accidental. It was accidental And you can find the
⏹️ ▶️ John show 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 Auntie Marco Armin,
⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse, it’s accidental, they didn’t mean to, accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ John tech podcasts so long.
Neutral: The Wheel of Shame
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I tell you guys I blew my first tire.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we saw the pictures. Yeah, we saw that we saw the tire of shame. Tell the tire of shame story. That’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco pretty good. Yeah, I love shame.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sorry. Yeah, so so I was I was taking a left turn
⏹️ ▶️ Marco onto a road with a media and I took it slightly too tight and hit my rear left tire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the median on the inside and instantly heard a big too loud
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then and I was like oh and I was like I was wait for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it wait for it and then I seen the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John dashboard chime
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and low pressure warning zero PSI like oh no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and yes, I pulled into a parking lot and yeah sure enough completely flat tire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and huge gash in the sidewalls. My yeah this this is not going to be easily fixed,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I didn’t really know what to do. I’ve never had a flat tire before in my,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco geez, almost 20 years of driving. Actually, no, 21 years of driving, I’ve never had a flat tire. I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco driven hundreds of thousands of miles, never had to replace a tire. So I was like, all right, now what do I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do? So Tesla’s, like many new cars, don’t come with spare tires.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s nowhere to put it in the car, it just isn’t there. So I don’t know what the regulations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are. Like if you have to have some kind of way to fix this, but.
⏹️ ▶️ John Clearly you don’t, because you don’t. What most cars do is when they don’t come with a spare, they come with run
⏹️ ▶️ John flats, but I guess you get neither. You get no
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and no run flats. That’s not always true. My Golf R has neither a spare
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nor run flats. It has a fix-a-flat kit that it came with that sits
⏹️ ▶️ John in the back. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the little can. Yeah, that’s the hierarchy. But like in general, unless there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a particular reason, I assume the reason your car is supposed to save weight because and to save space that it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John come with like run flats tend to have worse performance and ride characteristics. So if it’s like a
⏹️ ▶️ John performance car, they don’t want to run flats on it. Corvette being accepted because America. But
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, I would like it’s obviously not a law because you can do that. But I actually surprised
⏹️ ▶️ John that the well, I don’t know, it’s kind of surprised that the Tesla’s don’t have run flats. I guess I never thought
⏹️ ▶️ John about before. I know that a lot of the Tesla’s have harder tires for better mileage, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But the performance models maybe less so, but you don’t even have fix a flat anywhere that you’re aware of. Casey,
⏹️ ▶️ John check his manual for him.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I don’t. Unless it was in the front, which was stuck shut, which is a different story. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, God. Oh, now, now, now we’re gonna have to tell that story either now or later, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on. We’ll get there. So, so yeah, but what they do come with is roadside assistance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that apparently is free. It was kind of cool, actually. So I, I opened up the app on my phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you tap tap rotan assistance and you answer like a couple of questions like what is it tires something else and you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hit tires like how many tires one okay and then like and like it it’s like you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you submit the request and it’s like I will get back to you in a couple of minutes and sure enough like a couple minutes after I submitted the request.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got this giant long text message series of like all right vehicles being dispatched from this company. It’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be there within sixty minutes and it’ll have a loaner tire and wheel. They will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco swap it on, they will bring your broken tire and wheel to the so and so service
⏹️ ▶️ Marco center, the nearest Tesla service center. It was great. And so sure enough, they said within 60 minutes,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 20 minutes later, a guy shows up in a van with a wheel and a tire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and he attaches it to my car. 25 minutes after I requested it, he’s gone, he’s done, I’m on the road again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was kind of amazing. And the deal was the loaner that he gave me,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s the same, it’s It’s a Tesla wheel, had a regular Tesla tire on it, not a snow tire, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you know, a regular Tesla tire on it, and it was, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rim of it was spray painted. It’s like graffitied, I’ll put the picture
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as the chapter right here. It was like graffitied with like red Tesla logos, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco smeary Tesla drippy spray paint logos. It said Tesla Mount Kisco on the side, like that’s the dealership.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the guys was saying that they actually just started doing this because people would just never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco return the loaner wheels. Because the deal is, they give you the loaner wheel, and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re supposed to schedule a service appointment at whatever dealership they brought your rim to,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and go buy a new tire. Well, there’s nothing really forcing you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do that, I guess, like you sign a thing on the roadside assistance thing, but like, it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seem that they enforce it. So like, he said people just never return them. Because like, why would you? It’s gonna cost you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a couple hundred dollars to buy a new tire. So like, he would just keep the loner forever. So they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spray painted it now to show, like to kind of remind you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it’s the loner wheel of shame, like it looks horrendous. Like some guy on Twitter said, it looks like I ran over a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trick or treater, which
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh. Yeah, like again, go look at your podcast player, which hopefully
⏹️ ▶️ John supports chapter art. If you’re envisioning a tire that’s like spray painted red and it looks like a regular wheel,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s a red wheel, it’s not a red wheel. It is literally a Tesla silver wheel that someone
⏹️ ▶️ John has haphazardly taken like a can of Krylon and just randomly put crap all over it.
⏹️ ▶️ John It looks so bad. Like it is not, they didn’t try to make anything. Like it just,
⏹️ ▶️ John the point of it is to look bad, I suppose. I just, it kind of amazes me that this is like
⏹️ ▶️ John an actual real large company’s solution to this problem, which is,
⏹️ ▶️ John can we just make them ugly? Yeah, sure, I can go down to the store and get a can, I’ll be in there one Tuesday. Like, are they different
⏹️ ▶️ John colors? Is it color matched to his car? Because it is red, and he’s got a red car. Like, it’s just fascinating. And
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, and like, I can’t, why wouldn’t people, you know, who’s going to want to go and pay all that money?
⏹️ ▶️ John They just gave you a free tire and a wheel. Right. And people aren’t thinking like, oh, well, the tread wear is different. And you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John in your case, it’s not even a snow tire. They’ll just keep driving it. That said, I’m not sure the incredible
⏹️ ▶️ John spray paint will deter people, because those same people who don’t care that they have a mismatched tire with different tread wear
⏹️ ▶️ John might not also care that it’s all spray painted red. And they’re meaning to go to it, but they never get around
⏹️ ▶️ John to it. Especially if, say, they have wheel damage. Say you had damaged your wheel on that median. The wheel
⏹️ ▶️ John is like $600 probably, and then the tire is like $300 on top of that. Or you
⏹️ ▶️ John could drive around with an ugly wheel.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it totally makes sense why people don’t frequently return these other ones.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. When you have a spare tire, it’s not the same wheel. It’s a smaller
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, and it looks ridiculous. Still, I see people driving around on their donuts. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John especially hilarious in this day and age when cars, every car, like the economy car
⏹️ ▶️ John for like $13,000 comes with 20-inch wheels or something ridiculous. Wheels have gotten so huge,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the spares haven’t kept up. So if
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you have one of these little tiny
⏹️ ▶️ John things, it’s like a roller skate wheel in this giant wheel well that fits 20-inch wheels.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, yeah, don’t replace single tires if you can help it. and don’t keep the wheel of shame.