355: The Way Corn Grows
05 Dec 2019Casey’s Computer Corner concludes, we celebrate the season of giving (to ourselves) with Black Friday shopping, John tries Stadia, and Marco tries to buy an appliance.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Marco's artificial ☀️
- Casey's Computer Corner Conclusion
- Casey's busted Mojave installer due to an expired certificate?
- Apple Trade-In Evaluator
- Marco travels with the 16" MBP
- Casey's other new toy
- John tries Google Stadia
- John doesn't need a Mac Pro
#askatp- Should developers be fun in release notes? (via Joell, probably)
- How should one set up iPads for out-of-state grandparents? (via Mike Bollich-Ziegler)
- Any chance of Alexa support for Overcast? (via Greg)
- Post-show: Marco goes appliance-shopping
Sponsored by:
- Handy: The easy and convenient way to book home cleanings on a schedule that works for you.
- Away: Because this season, everyone wants to get Away. Get $20 off a suitcase with code atp20.
- Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code ATP for 10% off your first order.
Chapters
- Flawliss content
- Marco’s Light Globe 🖼️
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- Casey’s Preparing the Way
- Traveling with the 16”
- Sponsor: Away (code atp20)
- Casey’s new TV
- John tried Stadia
- Sponsor: Handy (code ATP)
- #askatp: App Store update notes
- #askatp: Grandparent iPad setup
- #askatp: Overcast for Alexa
- Ending theme
- Appliance shopping 🖼️
Flawliss content
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So Casey, are you recording? CASEY
⏹️ ▶️ Casey METZLER Yes, I am recording. It’s sad. It is truly and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey utterly sad that you kind of genuinely need to ask that six years on. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey God, I’m such a disaster. I just need my computing life to be better. I feel like that’s all I need. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we had three and a half minutes of flawless content, absolutely perfect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey content that is lost forever because I forgot to start recording.
Marco’s Light Globe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My room is so bright right now. Oh God,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here we go. What have you done? Do you have like the studio, like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the LED packs where it’s like, you know, 10 LEDs wide and 10 LEDs tall and you’re just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey blinding yourself?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, not yet. So, actually one thing, you know, oh man, we’ve had so many recommendations. Thank you everybody for all the lighting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recommendations. So many recommendations. Many of which were actually very good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Many of which kind of like followed the same general themes of basically install
⏹️ ▶️ Marco LED panels on the ceiling and that would be a good idea if I was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in an office with a drop ceiling or you know like where like it’s made for that that’s what those are made for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I’m in a regular room in my house with like a regular solid white ceiling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so any kind of like you know thing made for offices where you just put a few big rectangles on the ceiling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not gonna fly I also didn’t mention last episode that my office is like a a prominent room
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in my house, like it’s visible from the front, like it’s one of the first rooms you see when you walk into the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco house. And so any solution for my lighting also has to look pretty good to satisfy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco our desire for our house to look nice. And we live here and we have people over and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we want things to be nice. So many of the options for insanely bright lighting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would not pass the aesthetic requirement that I forgot to mention last episode. So I respectfully
⏹️ ▶️ Marco decline many of the options. A number of people wrote in, there was a guy who wrote a blog post about his
⏹️ ▶️ Marco giant corn light that he put in his room and how bright it makes it, and that’s great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And for those that don’t know, the corn bulb is a style where it looks like corn on the cob made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of LEDs. I just bought one of those two days ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have one in my garage, it’s amazing. Yeah, they’re wonderful for garages, because in garages you don’t care how it looks. Like in a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco garage, you just want a ton of light, and usually you have one or two old light
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sockets stuck to the ceiling and you can just screw anything in there. And so you put these things in the garage and they are just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like cylinders covered with LEDs that you can get insane brightness
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out of, uh, as long as you don’t care how they look. And those are wonderful for garages.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Um, those that’s not going to fly in my office. So that, that option is out. One thing I am a little bit curious
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about though, does anybody make a fixture that encloses
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a corn style bulb in some kind of like fogged
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John dome. So some kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John Dyson sphere to capture all the energy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, no, like, like seriously, like just some kind of like, you know, translucent, like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fogged dome around one of those bulbs would be great. I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not been able to find such a fixture.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the fact that corn bulbs themselves usually aren’t even like the bulbs aren’t even covered like the little
⏹️ ▶️ John led thing that makes me think that the cooling requirements are such that use in an enclosed
⏹️ ▶️ John fixture is a no-go.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, leave the top open. Just have it be like the way corn grows.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, I suppose, maybe.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, just have like a cylinder and have the top be open and have it be a pole lamp.
⏹️ ▶️ John Speaking of your LED things, like not all LED panel things require a drop
⏹️ ▶️ John ceiling. They make a whole bunch of ones for residential use that just go right on top of your ceiling and just screw into it.
⏹️ ▶️ John They don’t help with your aesthetic requirements though, but just so you don’t get a million emails telling you that you can find
⏹️ ▶️ John LED panel lighting for your ceiling that doesn’t require a drop ceiling.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am actually very happy so far. So I have slightly brighter bulbs in my two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ikea knot lamps next to my desk now. I bought but have not yet installed. It’s funny, a lot of people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recommended, they’re like, just paint the room white. And I’m like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not gonna do that because I like my red office. But directly in front of me, behind my computer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the entire wall that’s the section of wall directly in front of me that these two lights are up against
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is covered in very dark gray acoustic foam. And so I have bought,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but not yet installed white acoustic foam because it doesn’t need to be gray and they make it because it’s foam and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty much every color. So I bought new acoustic foam to stick behind my desk. I was going to do it today, but it didn’t get, didn’t get to it in time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was, I wanted to like have an update for the show. So maybe for next week I’ll have that done. Uh, but yeah, it’s just like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco increasing the amount of light that can reflect off the wall behind my desk is probably also a very good option.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m wondering if that’s going to pass the historical commission.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hmm. Well, the idea of it has. We’ll see how it goes in practice.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, because like white, like, oh, white, fine. White goes with red. That’s no problem and it’s bright. But is it white or is it
⏹️ ▶️ John like whitish? And does it change color over time? We’ll see how this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco goes. Yeah, that’s always a risk with whites. So I guess we’ll find out. And then my final bit of light
⏹️ ▶️ Marco follow up for this week, at least, part of the problem was is that the two fixtures
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the ceiling in this room are enclosed and you put LED bulbs in there and they die. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it goes through bulbs like crazy and so even though each fixture on my ceiling can hold three bulbs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I can put super bright ones in there, realistically they only last a few months before I have to take them on again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I mean one option could be I might just replace six LED bulbs every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco three months and just deal with it. But a friend of the show Marina Eppelman I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tweeted the other day about a new kind of XLEDIA, X-Lydia, I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how that’s pronounced. It’s a new kind of LED bulb that is officially certified
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to work in enclosed fixtures. And it’s like the only one in the market that claims
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this. They’re really expensive, like 50 bucks each. I took the risk, I put six of them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in there, we’ll see if they die. The reviews on them on Amazon, many of them were great glowing reviews, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then some of them were like, yeah, they died anyway. So we’ll see what happens. but I do now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have six 100 watt equivalent 5000k bulbs. It was the closest it came to 4000 in my,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in my ceiling fixtures and that helps as well. So I’m sitting in right now, a very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bright office late at night, and I’m actually kind of happy with this light level. I don’t, I don’t think I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need much more than this. So, so far so good. We’ll see what happens when I put the white foam up and I will provide an update next week on this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exciting segment of Marco’s light globe.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I forgot last week, I should have written it down because I thought of it and then I forgot to bring it up. And a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John listeners wrote in with the same idea. Those seasonal affective disorder
⏹️ ▶️ John lights are just like this big, bright light that you’re supposed to shine at your own face to make you feel better
⏹️ ▶️ John about the fact that the sun isn’t there. And I forget if you had one of those or not. I don’t think, they’re not meant to light up the room,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so I actually made a chapter art last week, a shot of my desk with these two IKEA night lamps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco next to it and keen observers would have noticed that I actually had one of those on my desk pointed directly at my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco face, sitting on top of my left speaker. and I actually just took it down today as I was preparing to move
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my desk out of the way to put up the new foam. And I started using that last year
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the first time and it’s fine, but I don’t love having bright
⏹️ ▶️ Marco light shining in my face directly. Like it actually is fairly intense
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it was fine a little bit. I don’t think it made as much of a difference as just having a super bright office in the first place.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s why I’m trying the super bright office this time. And if I really wanna try the sad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco light as well, I guess I’ll turn that on as well. But for the most part,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t get as much out of it last year as I hoped I would. And meanwhile, I think solving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the better problem is just making the room insanely bright.
⏹️ ▶️ John Dunedin is like an Apple-style solution where your entire ceiling just looks like a normal ceiling, but there are actually
⏹️ ▶️ John tiny little pin-sized holes, millions of them, and behind them
⏹️ ▶️ John is a full field of RGB LEDs covering the entire ceiling,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then there’s software that controls it to the color temperature and the brightness, and it’s like the sun rises and the sun sets
⏹️ ▶️ John and the color changes, and when you turn it off, it just looks like a normal ceiling. That would actually be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And very affordable, I’m sure. Well, you wouldn’t need a stand for it, so maybe it would be affordable. Mm-hmm. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah. Well, I hope you get your light situation squared
⏹️ ▶️ Casey away as soon as possible, because nobody likes a sad Marco. You just got your keyboard, finally. We don’t want you to get sad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s funny, I’m adding up the wattage of brightness that is in this room right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got 600 on the ceiling plus 700 in the pole lamps. Yeah, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have 1,300 equivalent watts of light. I was gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s equivalent, right? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s gonna be more and more difficult to explain to younger and younger people why we keep talking about light in terms of wattage
⏹️ ▶️ John as if it’s a measure of light output. Well. Because I really hope you don’t have 1600
⏹️ ▶️ John watts of anything producing light. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, they’re 100% LEDs and they use like a 10 to that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s the great thing about LEDs. Like if I leave one on overnight, which I don’t do often, I come downstairs, I’m like, eh, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well. Whereas if I had, you know, the 300 watt equivalent light bulb in the garage,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I should say, you know, if I actually had a 300 watt light on in the garage all night, that would make a dent.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco See, and if you don’t, if you, like, garages, like, if you don’t care how, how bad something looks, garages have all sorts of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco options. Like, you know, so they have the corn lights, then they also, I discovered all these things when I was looking at, you know, various bulbs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could put in my not lamps. They also have these things that look almost like little fans. They have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco three or four or five, like little panels that like fan out from the center that are all just covered in LEDs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like there’s all sorts of crazy options out there. And as long as you, as long as they can look hideous
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and be very harsh to look directly at, then it’s totally fine for garages
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything. So yeah, now I’m thinking like, oh, I could put more fixtures in my garage and have an even brighter garage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For all the work you do on your electric car.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That sounds like me.
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Casey’s Preparing the Way
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey So gentlemen, I have to prepare the way.
⏹️ ▶️ John What are you preparing the way for?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, wait, we have to ask Casey, what computer are you using right now?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. So I am still on the broken iMac that I have been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey using for far too long now. And the funny thing is, after
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had done my desperation install of Catalina, which I have a little bit of follow up about that in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just a moment, but after I did my desperation install of Catalina, everything was actually working really, really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well for like a week and a half. And I did order a computer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on Black Friday, and we will talk about that in a moment. But when I ordered the computer, things were actually still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey working pretty well on this iMac and I couldn’t help but wonder, why did I just spend thousands of dollars?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But in an absolutely wonderful turn of events,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Sunday after I ordered the computer, so this past Sunday, I was using my iMac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and sure enough, all of a sudden the mouse just decided to not listen to me and the cursor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was delayed like it was walking through sludge and the clicks were ignored
⏹️ ▶️ Casey until suddenly I had the machine gun again. And in a way I was almost
⏹️ ▶️ Casey relieved because that meant, yes, this thing is still a piece of garbage that still needs to go away.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, my quick follow up with regard to, to the Mojave install. Uh, I, if you recall,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I intended to put Mojave on my computer because it seemed like everything’s still worked on Mojave. Uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then when I went to install it from my USB key that I’d made way back when I clicked the continue
⏹️ ▶️ Casey button on one of the very first prompts in the installation process and just hung. And there was no
⏹️ ▶️ Casey error messaging of any sort. We had discussed how I should have looked at the console and didn’t. And I had no idea what had happened. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey several people, many people in fact, wrote in to remind me, which I did know, but completely forgot, that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the installer of certificate, if I understand correctly, had been expired.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so the installer that I built on this USB key, you know, right when Mojave was new, knew,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey surely that was one of the installers that had the broken and expired certificate, and that’s probably why
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the install didn’t work. And so if I really cared, I could build a new USB key and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do the installation all over again, and it would probably work. But I appreciate people writing in. I had completely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and utterly forgotten about that. And while an unfortunate thing to happen, ultimately, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was good to hear that I am—well, I’m probably crazy, but at least not for that reason.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So on Friday, I decided it is time. I’m going to order myself a computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I am an easily influenced
⏹️ ▶️ Casey person. Sometimes I listen to friends or people on the internet a little too much.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I decided I’m going to do that again this time. I bought an iMac Pro. Hey!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Finally! So that is what I have done,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So through a series of events that I’m not going to share, I was able to get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a pretty solid discount on this iMac Pro from a friend of mine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’re friends with Tim Cook, aren’t you?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I spoke to Tim. I spoke to Tim Apple and said, hey Tim, can you hook me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on this? And he said, no problem. No, I got a pretty good discount on it, which meant
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I could afford to get a much nicer build than I would have otherwise been able to do. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up until knowing that I could get the discount, I probably would have gotten that refurb that you had pointed out, Marco, which is genuinely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an extremely good setup. I don’t know if it’s still available at this point.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco But, um… Yeah. There were also, there were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a couple of good Black Friday deals too from various people like giving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah. At least the base model was down, I think to like 3,400 on some sites. Like it was a, there were some good deals
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on that base model.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. Uh, but what I ended up doing because again, I got a very, very, very steep discount.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, I got, it is new. I got one with the 10 core processor.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I went very back and forth on this, but I figured at, you know, if I’m going to be spending $5,000 ish
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dollars on a computer. I might as well do it right. So I got the 10 core processor 64 gigs RAM and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in no small part because of Marco Arment as always convincing me to spend more money than I want to This is how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John works. This is how our
⏹️ ▶️ Casey friendship works, and I am usually thankful for it I ended up getting the 4 terabyte drive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as well. I almost said hard drive. I’m trying to break myself of that habit I got the 4 terabyte drive as well
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco disk, I believe, or I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I know you can say SSD, but like, I mean, because like drive is kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that’s hard drive. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey not soft. It’s not floppy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh man, that’s funny. But yeah, so that’s what I’ve done. And it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was a lot of money and I am not overjoyed at having spent that much money,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I am overjoyed to receive it. In fact, earlier today, I got the notification that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it went from processing to preparing for shipment. I forget how you phrased it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, but to butcher your line and to steal your line, one of life’s great
⏹️ ▶️ Casey joys is being able to tick the express shipping box on a custom
⏹️ ▶️ Casey built order computer. Because on this $5,000 plus computer, the express ship—and it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey heavy computer, by the way. I don’t know how much they weigh offhand, but it’s not light. I mean, ask Margo, he carries his, the beach
⏹️ ▶️ Casey every year. Uh, but anyway, on this express computer, or on this, uh, this large desktop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey computer express shipping was a totally unaffordable $8.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I absolutely tick that box. I think it saves you like two or three days or something like that on the delivery time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they’re always the express shipping from Apple is always like ridiculously cheap. Obviously they’re subsidizing most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the cost of it. Like, and I figure at that point, if it’s like eight or $9 on a $5,000 computer, why don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they just always include express shipping? Like, why is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey it even an option?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t even know. But anyway, so I have a new iMac Pro, a new two-year-old
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iMac Pro coming my way, and I am genuinely very excited. Now, the question,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey however, the question is two questions and one really. One, is it going to come with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mojave? I believe Mike’s did, and he bought his just like a month or so ago. And if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it does come with Mojave, am I going to be a moron and put Catalina on it, only to create more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the same problems for myself? So we’ll see how my willpower goes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I’m very excited. I appreciate you and the listeners for putting up with my waffling and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey indecision over all this. But hopefully this story is coming to an end sometime in the next seven to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and also, even if it comes with Catalina, that machine is compatible with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mojave because it came out before Catalina did, and it originally shipped with Mojave. So you can always download
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Mojave installer and wipe it and put that on there if you wanted to. Steve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey McLaughlin Yeah, that’s true. I don’t know. We’ll see what happens. I’ll probably just live with whatever. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey telling myself I’m going to live with whatever’s on it. It’s such a burden. You know what I mean, though. I’m just going to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stick with whatever’s on it. And we’ll see how well that works out. There’s outside of dark mode, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I actually have come to like. And that’s is that unique? No, that’s not unique to Catalina. It’s come to think of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. Okay, never mind. Because dark mode is the one thing that I’m really, really enjoying on this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iMac right now that I thought was Catalina only until two seconds ago. So I might not even bother for a while, we’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I am super excited. I appreciate all the help and tutelage from the two of you and the listeners
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in getting this squared away. A couple of quick things that a lot of people have said, you know, why not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a 16-inch MacBook Pro? Ultimately, it’s something that I think Marco said, which really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was probably John, because it’s always John. I don’t really want a 16-inch computer. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey want a 16-inch laptop, and I’m not discounting the fact that it’s amazing. Not at all. I’m just saying that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not a size that I really want. And so from the beginning, a 16 for me, for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me would have been a compromise, and it would have been a beautiful compromise, an incredibly easy and great, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m very lucky to have it compromised, but a compromise nonetheless. And so I decided not to do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A lot of people wrote in to ask about a Mac mini, and it’s a fair question,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But in a lot of ways, I felt like the Mac Mini like half solved all of my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey problems, but didn’t completely and utterly solve all of them. Like as silly as I would then need to get a monitor.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And yes, there are monitors on the market, but the one I would get would probably be the LG. And that’s another
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like $1,500 or something like that. So, or 1300, I think. And so, and this was another thing I ran into
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the 16 inch, I would wanna get a monitor, I would want the 5K LG, et cetera, et cetera. and the 16-inch MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro, when spec’d the way I wanted it and with the monitor I wanted, was effectively
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iMac Pro money anyway. Now, yes, to be fair,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can’t pick up the iMac Pro and take it to my local grocery store unless I have Marco’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fancy carrying case, but nevertheless, it just seemed like the 16
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was just a compromise, and a Mac Mini just half-solves
⏹️ ▶️ Casey many problems, a lot of problems, but only half-solves them. And the iMac Pro, it really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey effectively and efficiently, well, except financially anyway, efficiently solves every
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of my problems with the exception of portability. And hopefully
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sometime next year, I can scrounge up enough money to get myself like a base model 13-inch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey MacBook Pro or 14 with a refreshed keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, now you’ve got something to look forward to because now you, instead of being saddled with that 16-inch that you didn’t really want, and by
⏹️ ▶️ John the way, I think both Marco and I said that multiple times because
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it’s true. It’s true. See, there
⏹️ ▶️ John you go. You’ll be able to anticipate the small laptop that you actually wanted and be able to buy
⏹️ ▶️ John one that is not stuffed with all the most expensive stuff you can put in it because you don’t need it for
⏹️ ▶️ John that because you’ve got your desktop
⏹️ ▶️ John those things. One thing you didn’t mention is what GPU you got.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Whatever the stock standard one is. I don’t even remember off the top of my head. I did not tick any upgrades other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than processor RAM and disk space, however we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John phrasing it. So what
⏹️ ▶️ John input peripherals did you get?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I already had purchased underscores, black keyboard, and trackpad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and mouse off of him when he got his iMac Pro. So I just left the defaults because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John even though I am- You left
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the defaults? Yeah, well, it’s default, I guess,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John because the keyboard is the keyboard. Magic mouse keyboard? Yes,
⏹️ ▶️ John exactly. Aren’t they going to give you the tiny keyboard with the terrible half-size arrow keys?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, the one I have has faults. I don’t know. I understand your question.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, I’m nervous for you now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it doesn’t matter, I’m not gonna use it. I think they gave you the big one with the iMac Pro. I think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well. Yep, I can confirm, I just looked across the room at Tiff’s because she uses it. It’s the one with the full numpad.
⏹️ ▶️ John okay, then that’s the one I’m using. Dodge that bullet. I remember a couple of years ago, they changed the default to be the tiny half-size
⏹️ ▶️ John keyboard. It’s like, no, it’s not the right default.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, that was the default on the iMac since I can remember.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John No, it’s bad, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I actually, I really like that keyboard, if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John willing to. Not only do they have the same keyboard on their 12-inch and 15-inch and 16-inch laptops, but also on your expansive
⏹️ ▶️ John desk, same keyboard. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not a good plan. Well, in any case, I just left the defaults because I’m not gonna use them and the defaults being the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey big keyboard, like Marco said, and the Magic Mouse. And even though I’ve become more of a trackpad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guy over the last year, much to my own surprise, as we’ve talked about in the past, it didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seem worth the 50 or 70 bucks or whatever it was to upgrade to a second Magic Trackpad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey since we’ve already got one, and a black one no less, or a gray space gray or whatever. So yeah, so I’m excited.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I mean, if either of you have questions, I’m happy to talk about it, but otherwise we can just move right along.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John One more thing on the
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple keyboards. Now that we’re talking about the keyboards Apple offers for their desktop computers, which we don’t talk about
⏹️ ▶️ John too much, mostly because Marco doesn’t use one, so we don’t have to hear him complain about
⏹️ ▶️ John there have been issues with the current line of Apple’s desktop keyboards, which
⏹️ ▶️ John are very thin and very small. And the current, like
⏹️ ▶️ John very long extended one has bendy problems. So
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey supposedly by
⏹️ ▶️ John typing on it with your little fingers, tappity, tappity, tappity, you slowly bend it. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John very close to the ground anyway, but apparently originally only had like feet at the four corners.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so you’d bend it down just so it curved a little bit because it was so thin that your tapping would bend it. And then it would kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John like spin on the part where it hits in the middle. And that’s no good. So no one wants a bent keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if they’ve addressed that at all, but I’ve heard, I mean, obviously you can address it yourself by putting your own little feet in the middle.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe the new ones come with feet in the middle. I don’t know. I always liked it when the, I mentioned this before, when the
⏹️ ▶️ John function keys were a little bit farther away from the number keys. Again, there’s lots of room on my desk slash
⏹️ ▶️ John keyboard tray. I don’t need the function keys jammed right up against the number keys, even though
⏹️ ▶️ John it looks nicer. I don’t care. Move them a half a centimeter up, please. I can
⏹️ ▶️ John afford the desk space. And then as many people were pointing out in the chat, lots of people don’t like the numpad. Righties
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t like the numpad because it puts your mouse farther away from your keyboard, which is one of the many reasons that Marco doesn’t use a keyboard like this.
⏹️ ▶️ John It would be nice if Apple offered a, what they call 10 keyless or whatever, that has, it’s like the same as the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John Extended thing, but just cut the numpad right off. So you still get page up, page down, home, and your full size arrow
⏹️ ▶️ John keys in their own little area, but you don’t have the numpad. I don’t like the numpad either, but I do
⏹️ ▶️ John actually use it occasionally. Like I use it to enter numbers. I don’t know, maybe I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey from growing up with PCs
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, but it does push my mouse farther away and I don’t like that part of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, my preferred keyboard, the Microsoft Sculpt ergonomic comes with a separate wireless
⏹️ ▶️ Marco numpad that you can put anywhere. I mean, I think I’ve thrown away six of those things so far.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Nice. I forgot to mention earlier, by the way, Friday morning,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I forget when it was, I think I was not at the computer when it happened, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I came back to the computer sometime after I had ordered the iMac Pro, and I come back to my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iMac, and it had rebooted itself, And there was something, I forget the exact file name, but there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was like an EFI check dump file or something like that, which I had never
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seen before in my life and doing just a spot of Googling made me think that apparently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there is some periodic task that will check the EFI, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey BIOS, so to speak. I know it’s not actually BIOS, but for the sake of discussion, it’ll check the EFI
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and make sure it’s like valid and I don’t know, checksums are right and maybe certificates or what have you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I guess my iMac failed that check at some point, which is super concerning in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a billion different ways.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so here again, it is time for this thing to go away. I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with it. I haven’t figured that out. I feel like throwing it away is not the right answer, but at the same time, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feel like I necessarily want to give it to anyone or even sell it to anyone.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you’ve listened to Casey complain about this computer for a month and a half and you would like to buy it,
⏹️ ▶️ John please send us email.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, let me know if you want it, but I don’t think you do. So anyway, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t know what I’m gonna do with this. If somebody has smart ideas, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John in. I mean, Apple will recycle it for you. Yeah, but I want, I mean. You can harvest that awesome third-party
⏹️ ▶️ John RAM from it if you want.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Have you done the trade-in wizard to see what it’s worth?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I haven’t lately, but I thought, but I.
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t check the haunted checkbox when you see the numbers. By the way, is this Mac haunted?
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t check that one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But the thing is, I would need to buy a new Mac in order to get the trading money back.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Well, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna do that when the 13-inch comes. No,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no, no, they just give you a gift card. They literally just give you a gift card. You don’t need to be buying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the same time. Yeah, it’s go to the link in the chat. If you Google for Apple Trade Inner, go to that link. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they just want the serial number and then they look up the model number from that and that’s it, it’s super
⏹️ ▶️ John easy. Oh, I’m gonna do this right now and find out how much
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pro is worth. Let’s see, serial number. Bum-ba-dum, where,
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac. Do you think it’s gonna let me do it? I believe that’s gonna be a
⏹️ ▶️ John I get credit towards the, do I have to hit shop Mac or is that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Scroll down to get an Apple Store gift card, then hit computer. Oh, check that out, I didn’t know that. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it turns out webpages can scroll sometimes. Who knew? There’s more content than what’s just in the first window.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey right, I’m doing this now as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is excellent audio material right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco now. I just sent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them three old iPhones, one old iPad, and I almost, oh, and an Apple Watch that I bought this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco summer for my testing that I sent back to them for almost exactly what I paid for.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, wow. Nice. Oh, this is not great. I entered my serial number, and it says, which model do you have? I gave you
⏹️ ▶️ John the serial number. Surely from that, you can tell.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m going through the same thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m guessing Johnny’s Recycle and Casey’s, maybe $200.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m going down the Mac Pro alley, and it says, what year is it? Guess what the options are for the choices for year. Oh, no. 2013, and
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s it? 2013, and other.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right, and I’ve gotten to the end of the thing, and you want me to tell you what it says?
⏹️ ▶️ John Recycle. Based on what you’ve told us, your Mac is ready to recycle. Harsh. Harsh.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Based on what you’ve told us, your Mac is not even worth recycling. The aluminum has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey have no idea what to do with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this. We are happy to recycle it into one Coke can. I did get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a dollar amount. Would you like to guess gentlemen what that is. $200.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, wait, I’m gonna guess now. Let me see. What year is your iMac? It is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey late 2015. It is four gigahertz quad core i7 with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with 32 gigs of questionable and a one terabyte drive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is a like, you know, this is a a few year old iMac that at the time you bought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would have been something like $3,000. Right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Something like that. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m gonna say $800.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, if we’re playing prices, right rules, Marco Won, but you are closer, $580. Wow, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lower than I thought.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Take this deal.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I absolutely will take that deal, without question. I didn’t even know this was a thing. I thought you had to buy another computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they send you a box and everything. No, they send you a gift card in a couple of weeks, and then you can use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it whenever you buy anything next from Apple, and you can stack them up, you can use more than one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s excellent. I’m glad we had this conversation, so thank you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I get rid of a bunch of stuff this way because it’s not, you know, I know that when you sell things privately, you can get more money,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s also a pain in the butt.
⏹️ ▶️ John But then you’ll be inflicting this computer onto a private citizen, which no one wants that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I genuinely, I don’t want to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. Exactly. Like by doing this, like this is going to go into like, you know, refurbishment
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and parts and all sorts of crap. Like this is going to be like no longer your problem and also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not the problem of anybody, you know, or directly took money from.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. I am really, really genuinely happy about this option. I did not even know that was a thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s excellent. Thanks, man. So yeah, so Casey’s Computer Corner, I’m sure we’ll do a small update
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when this thing arrives, which might be by the next time we record, but probably not.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But otherwise, I’m super pumped and God willing, and hopefully it won’t be a problem. Actually, I expect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to have no problems with this computer because I did tick the 150 or whatever dollar AppleCare
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Plus box when I ordered it, thinking to myself, Well, given the great track record
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you have with your iMac, you might as well play it safe. But since I have gotten myself
⏹️ ▶️ Casey protection, that stands to reason that I will not need it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I was even gonna suggest that like, now that you’ve ordered the replacement computer, your current computer is gonna be perfect now. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never gonna have any problems again. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am happy to report that my computer is still a piece of garbage, don’t worry.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s just passive aggressively leaving like a little
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey note on his desktop telling you how broken it is. Yeah, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just so you know, while you were gone, I’m corrupt.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, exactly right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Yeah, a couple things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we mentioned this back when the iMac Pro first came out, but for whatever reason, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AppleCare on the iMac Pro is at the same price as the regular iMac, even though it’s a $5,000 and up computer. And so it’s like $160 or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something for AppleCare. No matter how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much, you can spec it up to like a $10,000 configuration, it’s still 160 or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dollars for the AppleCare.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it almost doesn’t make sense not to get it. Even I got it for my iMac Pro because it was so cheap relative
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the cost of any repair to this computer that might ever happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that was a good move. and then follow.
Traveling with the 16”
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And finally, I also wanted to mention that over this past week, being Thanksgiving and everything,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I traveled with the 16-inch for the first time. And actually,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey really, I got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of, I spent a lot of time on it, a lot of work on it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am just continuing to be so happy with this computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Aw, good, that makes me happy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s finally good. It’s so, this is how I used to feel about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all my previous laptops, 2015 and earlier. They were just good. I never had like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, I had like little tiny nitpicks here and there, mostly about like, oh, I wish the battery lasted longer. But there was never like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fundamental problems of things I really hated with these laptops before 2016. Like, it was just, and now it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back to the way it was before. This is just a nice Apple laptop. It’s fast, it’s capable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I loved having the giant screen. I never felt like it was too big. It was just a really nice,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got serious work done on it and a bunch of, you know, slacking off and shopping. Like, it was a combination of everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do on computers, like all done over a few days while traveling and it was just fantastic.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When Turbo Boost was off, which I’d left it that way most of the time, it had totally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco adequate performance for Xcode and everything because like, yeah, I’m slowing down the core speed, but there’s also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco eight of them. So it can make up the difference pretty well. And meanwhile, again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with Turbo Boost off, it had amazing battery life. It actually would last like six or seven
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hours of programming or like 10 hours of web crap. It was never hot, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never heard the fan, it never made my hands sweaty. It was just great. I just really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco am really enjoying this computer. I have no problems with it. Some people report there’s a problem with the speakers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco popping during certain transitions. I haven’t had that happen, but I watched some videos on it, it looks like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s probably a software bug. So I expect them to fix that with a firmware update probably pretty soon.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But otherwise, yeah, that hasn’t affected me and I just love this thing. It’s finally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a laptop that I really love again and I can get back to not thinking about laptops as much as I have for the last
⏹️ ▶️ Marco three years anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That genuinely makes me very happy. Now, hearing you say, oh, it was sufficient for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Xcode, I almost wonder if I should send you my adorable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whenever I’m done with it, so you can occasionally, just periodically, try to use that for Xcode
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and realize how good you have it because, oh man, I love this adorable,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really do, but doing any real work on it is so friggin’ painful. It’s so, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco frustrating. And I will again make the argument, I should blog about it again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will again make the argument for a true macOS low power mode. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using these amazing, fast, high core count laptops with Turbo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Boost disabled when you want it to be disabled is really nice because not only do you get really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nice battery life, but again, it’s also, it keeps the laptop cooler and quieter. Like I hate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I’m using my laptop and it’s getting so hot that it makes my hand sweaty. Like that’s a gross feeling, nobody wants
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. Right, like if you can avoid that, if you can keep it cool enough and that makes a difference between your hands being sweaty or not,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s a huge, like just kind of quality of life improvement, right? Not to mention the fact that like sometimes you do need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maximum battery life and sometimes you don’t care that much about performance. And so it really,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have a proper low power mode, I really, I’m gonna keep campaigning Apple until they do this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because there’s significant value to be had there, and it could be as simple as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco disabling turbo boost and disabling photos indexing. Like that could be it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That literally could be it. And that has a big impact right there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Would you choose, if you could only have one, would you choose low power or low data,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know like tethering mode for a MacBook?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would choose low power mode, no question. The reason why is because tethering mode, you can accomplish with third party
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps in ways that seem Catalina friendly. Like trip mode is I think the most popular one. It’s great for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Turbo Boost Switcher Pro has this kernel extension to make itself work.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And as far as I know, it’s signed in such a way that it’s one of those things that like it says, it works in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Catalina, but it probably won’t work in the next version of the OS, as they keep locking down kernel extensions further
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and further. So I’m guessing that is probably not long for this world. And so probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a year from now, whenever the next Mac OS comes out, I’m guessing there has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to either be an Apple provided solution or there won’t be a solution. And I will be sad when that happens because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that will mean that my laptop will get significantly worse to use when I’m in certain conditions that are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually pretty common for me.
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco wants to get away.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I also made an impulse purchase on Monday. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m just I’m just burning money up with call me Marco Arment.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wait, so you actually proved cyber Monday to be a thing?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Well, except
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I went to a retail store and walked out with a box, but yes. Paul
⏹️ ▶️ John Matzko, Jr. You’re doing it wrong. It’s also proving that people are spending their time buying themselves things
⏹️ ▶️ John instead of buying gifts for other people.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Aaron Powell, Jr. Oh, yes, yes. That’s also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco true. Paul Matzko, Jr. Actually, yeah. I bought a whole bunch of crap over the weekend, and I would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say only about a third of it was for other people. Aaron
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Powell, Jr. Well, how many thousands of dollars in lights did you spend over the last week?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s rhetorical. It’s rhetorical. I don’t even want to know. So on Monday… Paul
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Matzko, Jr. On
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Monday, it was $999, Bob. On Monday, $1, I went to the local Costco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I bought myself, and by that I mean the family, a brand new LG
⏹️ ▶️ Casey C9 55 inch TV. Which is their
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is the first 4K TV that has entered our house. It is actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the first TV that Aaron and I have purchased possibly ever. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we got a 720p TV, which at the time was pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nice. Like I think 1080 was just starting to be a thing when this thing was new. This was 07, because it was when we got married.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then a few years later, I think it was in like 2011 or thereabouts, we were gifted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a 1080 TV, a 40 inch 1080 TV. And that was our TV up until
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Monday. And now we have this 55 inch monstrosity that is up above
⏹️ ▶️ Casey our fireplace, which yes, I know is a terrible place for TV, but if you’ve seen the way our living room is set up, it’s really the only place
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for it, Marco can vouch. And so anyway, so we got this new 4K TV and it’s lovely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I really like it. The problem is I have no way to feed it 4K content at the moment
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I have a 1080 Apple TV. So it does have an internal YouTube app,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I’ve used briefly and was good. It has an internal Netflix app, which I haven’t tried yet. I wanna see if there’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a, internal isn’t the right word for it, but you know what I mean, if there’s a Plex app for it. So I wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey potentially, may not even need an Apple TV anymore at all, who knows? I don’t know that there is a Plex app for it, but I haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had a chance to look yet. But it seems really nice. It has HomeKit support, which really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey only means like power and inputs on this particular TV, but it’s still kind of neat.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, you were asking about that, speaking of HomeKit, you were asking about HomeKit support for your television.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the whole time I’m thinking, what do you do with a TV with HomeKit integration?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, can you explain like what you’re looking to automate or make work with HomeKit?
⏹️ ▶️ John Is it just saying words and trying to keep me on and off?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, so really what it came down to is I viewed it as a similar
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing as I did CarPlay. And just hear me out for a second. When we got our two most recent cars,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was insistent that we get CarPlay because I felt like, and I do still feel like, it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of future-proofing. Because at some point, I’m going to be disgusted by the onboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey navigation in either car, or I’m going to want functionality that either car didn’t come with that’s available via CarPlay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I wanted to make sure that both of these cars had CarPlay because to me, it helps them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Unlike Tesla’s, you don’t usually get updates to your car’s infotainment. And so I felt like it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would keep them more modern, even as the cars themselves get older. And with HomeKit on the TV,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was a similar thing in spirit in that I don’t know why I need it. And to be honest, it’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of whatever, but I just felt like, since I know it’s a thing, why wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I try to get a TV where it has HomeKit support? And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually went through really frustrating several hours. I know life is terrible for me around these days,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I couldn’t get HomeKit to work on my brand new TV. You guys, the struggle
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is real, I gotta tell you. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco what it turned out was… Let’s just disclaim
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that most of the things we talk about on this show are incredible first world problems and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey privileges, etc. Okay, let’s move on.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly. Exactly. So anyway, I couldn’t get it to work and I don’t have the gentleman’s name. There are actually two different
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people that wrote in, but the first person was a gentleman that had said to me, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you get the TV hooked up with your cable box, and remember I’m a Fios TV subscriber
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as well, if you have it hooked up to your cable box such that it can control the cable box, which I had done,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it won’t let you add the TV to HomeKit.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this was extremely frustrating to me because when I went to pair, not pair, but add this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accessory to HomeKit, it put up a QR code on the TV. I scanned the QR code with my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phone and my phone says, nope, didn’t work. And the TV was like, yes, we’re good to go.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay. So as far as I was concerned, the TV was happy and it was Apple that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was the problem. And Apple put up a tremendously useful error screen,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’ll put a link to my tweet about it in the show notes where I was whining about it. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey basically, the dialogue said something like, I think I could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go back, dismiss, or hit OK, or something like that. And it basically just said, couldn’t add
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accessory. Back, dismiss, or OK. Guys, can I have some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey amount of feedback here, please? Anything? Anything would be lovely. But it turns out it was not an Apple problem,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it was actually an LG problem. And there’s something about when the LG is hooked up to the cable box that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it will not allow or will not work with HomeKit. People theorize it’s something related to Bluetooth.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. But once I disconnected the cable box in a figurative sense, so it’s still connected via HDMI,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it’s not doing any of the fancy channel surfing and so on and so forth, then I was able to add it to HomeKit,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no problem. And in this particular setup, the only thing it lets me do is turn it on or off or set
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an input. And since I am an HDMI CEC unicorn,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t really need that that often. Cause like if I want to watch the Apple TV, I just turn on the Apple TV
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it turns on the TV and it makes it jump directly to the correct input. So that is many,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey many words to say, John, there is no damn point to me having HomeKit on this TV, but I knew
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was a thing and so I wanted to have it.
⏹️ ▶️ John A real time follow up, you can indeed get Plex for your television.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, excellent. Yeah, LG has like a whole app store basically.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a content store. The name of it is LG Content Store, which is not a good name. I
⏹️ ▶️ John suppose they can’t use App Store because it’s Apple and lawyers or whatever, but. Whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know if it has an Apple TV app. I need to look into that. Oh, and I will say that in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey theory, sometime in the next two or three weeks, I will get a voucher for a year of Disney+.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was dragging my feet on subscribing because there was nothing that I personally was dying to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey watch. Yes, I know the Mandalorian’s a thing. Yes, I should probably be excited about it, but whatever. The thing I was actually most
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and am most excited to watch is there’s apparently an Imagineering like documentary series or something like that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I’m super amped to see. Well, anyways, uh, apparently there’s a promotion where if you get an,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an LG OLED TV of which this is, then, um, you can,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can get a year of Disney plus. So you had to like upload a scan of your receipt and so on and so forth, which I’ve done, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess sometime in the next month, they’re going to email me a code so I can get a year of Disney plus. I’m pretty amped about that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know there is a Disney Plus app on their home screen app store, whatever you call it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t look for Plex, but the chat room is saying, yes, Plex is the thing that I can install. So I’ll be checking that out too. Maybe I won’t need
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an Apple TV 4K, who knows?
⏹️ ▶️ John The question you haven’t answered yet though is, did you calibrate your TV?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So by John’s definition, no. By my definition, yes. So when I got this TV, John
⏹️ ▶️ Casey immediately said, you must use the THX tune up or whatever it’s called app in order
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get it calibrated. I did not do that. I might. But what I did do was the other thing you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey suggested, which is use, what is it, RTINGS or something? Yep. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use their calibration guide to just get it close. And that is what I’ve done.
⏹️ ▶️ John Did you? So the thing about RTINGS settings, they have settings on their website, rtings.com.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you find your model on TV, and you can look at what their settings that they recommend are. But they are not
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of religiously anti-emotion smoothing. So very often they will tell you to turn down the motion smoothing
⏹️ ▶️ John or to pick a particular option in the motion smoothing. So I would say get your settings from artings.com
⏹️ ▶️ John and then disable all of the motion things. Anything that inserts frames of video that
⏹️ ▶️ John did not exist in the source, you
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco wanna turn that off. I know it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John hard to tell what those things are because they all have lots of weird names, but the artings site will usually explain to you, this
⏹️ ▶️ John is the thing that does motion interpolation, frame interpolation, whatever, turn them off. Not low,
⏹️ ▶️ John not medium, off, off, off. Mm-hmm. Yep. So I would suggest you do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I have, but knowing me, maybe I didn’t. So who knows? But anyway, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m really pleased with this. It’s really neat to have a very pretty and big TV. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it seems to have taken the place of my other TV really well. I have a very odd home theater setup, which the details
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are not particularly interesting, but this was basically able to slide into place in using
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of the connectors that were already there. I didn’t need to like get rid of component cables, for the sake of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey argument and put in HDMI or anything like that. Everything worked out just like I wanted, which is super great. And I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so far really, really pleased with it. And WebOS, this is the first time I’ve used WebOS. And I mean, it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Seems good for the most part. But I like it. It’s a nice TV. So that’s it. Do
⏹️ ▶️ John notice the picture quality difference?
⏹️ ▶️ John Really? Ask the person with terrible vision.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, not only do I have terrible vision, but remember, I’ve only watched one or two things in 4K. Like I quickly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey played a Casey on cars for like 30 seconds just to see it.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I mean, I think you
⏹️ ▶️ John would notice when you turn on the television, ignite at night. Uh, if I don’t know what the splash screen is for when you turn
⏹️ ▶️ John on the TV, but often the splash screen is black with like a logo or something in the middle.
⏹️ ▶️ John that screen alone should
⏹️ ▶️ Casey look very different. That’s true. That’s true. I don’t, I see the problem is I’m not as discerning as either of you. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so like, yes, I can recognize when I pay attention that the blacks are the blackest black, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in general, I don’t think about that that much. And I’m fairly easily impressed. So I do like it very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much. I’m not saying it’s not great, and it definitely does look beautiful, especially in the blacks, even when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m looking at 1080 content. But I really wanna just properly set it up with like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was gonna say Plex, but honestly, that’s all 1080 anyway. But get a Apple TV Plus app if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there is such a thing, or alternatively get a 4K Apple TV and hook it up. Actually, I meant to bring that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up. Something that does concern me, moments after I said, oh, all my old cables worked great, there were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no problems. Something that concerns me is I put HDMI or had HDMI put through the walls, or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey through the wall in order to go from where the receiver and cable box and whatnot are to behind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the TV, which is again mounted up on the wall. And I’m deeply concerned that whatever HDMI cable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I put in there literally 10-ish years ago isn’t going to have support for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all the new fancy stuff and I’m gonna have to get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John somebody. It absolutely doesn’t, it does not.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep. So then I’m gonna have to go through the walls myself or get somebody to go through the walls and replace
⏹️ ▶️ John all. Well, if you don’t use that fancy stuff, If you don’t use enhanced audio return channel
⏹️ ▶️ John and you don’t use the latest ethernet or power tunneling things, if you don’t use any of those features,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t, but what about HDR and all that other fancy stuff?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that might be okay. What you really have to worry about is HTCP,
⏹️ ▶️ John the copy protection crap, depending on what you connect to it. Try it. It will be clear
⏹️ ▶️ John when it doesn’t work. And HDR is a whole other realm of calibration
⏹️ ▶️ John settings and stuff that I haven’t actually dealt with, but it should also be obvious if you run any sort of test things,
⏹️ ▶️ John whether HDR is quote unquote working or not. Um, but I think like most cases,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, HDMI, you either get a picture or you don’t. And when you don’t, something is wrong. Uh, you won’t be able to do
⏹️ ▶️ John high frame rate. You won’t be able to do the wide color gamut stuff. Like lots of stuff you won’t be able to do over that 10 year old
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, and that’s the thing that I’m worried about is that it will show me a picture, but I, but it won’t be as fancy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and nice a picture as it could have been. Like it will be non HDR for the sake of discussion.
⏹️ ▶️ John You should bet there should be some I don’t know this particular TV It’s usually some way that you can put an overlay where it shows information.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like what is the frame rate? I’m currently getting what is the color space? What you know and then you can look at that information and figure
⏹️ ▶️ John out what’s broken about it. But yeah, that’s unfortunately HDMI
⏹️ ▶️ John Standards March along and this the TV you got is the one that has the I think the most
⏹️ ▶️ John support for the latest HDMI HMI 2.1 includes lots of features. This TV doesn’t support
⏹️ ▶️ John all of them, but it supports more of them than its other contemporary television. So, would behoove
⏹️ ▶️ John you to get a new cable that supports all the fancy stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, so that’s a thing, which I mean, it’s a self-created problem, but I’m gonna probably need to work that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out at some point. But sitting here now, it’s a very nice TV. Who’d have thunk it? So,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m really pleased
⏹️ ▶️ John about that. So you can have an empty tree this year. It’s just gonna be
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Christmas morning You get a lump
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, well, Casey, you already bought yourself every present you could possibly want. So, yeah, you don’t get anything.
John tried Stadia
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, you apparently had a new experience sometime recently. You want to tell us about that?
⏹️ ▶️ John Got to try out a new gaming system without buying anything, which is always the best way to do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John launched, Google Stadia. We talked about it many shows ago. I talked mostly about the
⏹️ ▶️ John idea of streaming gaming services, why people keep trying to do it, and why people will keep trying to do it. And we didn’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John if Stadia would finally succeed where all those other services have failed.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s from Google. They have a lot of money. they talk a lot about their cool technology, whatever, anyway, they launched their
⏹️ ▶️ John service. And because it’s basically a service and not a game console, they don’t technically
⏹️ ▶️ John need to launch any kind of hardware because you can play Stadia games on
⏹️ ▶️ John any device that’s supported as sort of a client, including your computer with a web browser.
⏹️ ▶️ John So on your Mac, launch Chrome and go to whatever it is. It’s like stadia.google.com
⏹️ ▶️ John or stadia.com. I don’t know, whatever it is, stadia.tv, I forget. There’s some sort of- Google.com. There you go. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John go to that in your web browser. Yes, your web browser on your Mac. And boom,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re playing a console game that’s running in Google’s data centers. You can play it on, I think, your iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John and iPhone, or maybe just Pixel phones. Eventually, it’ll be on your iPad and iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can play it on your television if you have a Chromecast on, but then you need a controller. And the one hardware thing they do sell you
⏹️ ▶️ John is there’s like a Google Stadia controller that is basically everything you
⏹️ ▶️ John need. Like it connects to Wi-Fi, it does all the stuff that your Mac would be doing in its web browser
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. It does all the connection stuff and then it sends to a Chromecast on your television.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if you wanted, you could buy that. And in fact, that’s the only way, or was the only way it launched where you could
⏹️ ▶️ John play Stadia is if you gave them like 130 bucks for the controller and I think maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John it came with a Chromecast, I forget. And you would get this little box and you would, you know, they had
⏹️ ▶️ John all the YouTube people opening up their box their Stadia controller and trying it out and so on and so forth. And Google sponsored a bunch of those
⏹️ ▶️ John videos, but I didn’t do that. I’m not going to pay $130 for a controller. I probably won’t like for a gaming
⏹️ ▶️ John thing and it probably won’t like. So I’m like, Oh, I have to wait until they eventually let you try Stadia for free just in your web
⏹️ ▶️ John browser. But it turns out that everyone who got one of those, uh, cool, I think they call them like the founders box.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like if you were, if you gave them money ahead of time or pre-ordered for it or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, you got that, but you also got invite codes. So somebody sent me an invite code and I was able
⏹️ ▶️ John to join Stadia and go through sort of the account creation process and all that other stuff. Uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John before I get to the gaming part of it, this is the part, this is the part that made me dislike Stadia
⏹️ ▶️ John the most. And it has nothing to do with playing games on it. Surprisingly, you go through
⏹️ ▶️ John the setup process like, Oh, welcome to Stadia, blah, blah, blah. Enter a bunch of information. Uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John inevitably, like, as you would imagine for any sort of network based service, it makes you pick
⏹️ ▶️ John a name, a quote unquote gamer tag, as the kids say.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because that’s how people relate to each other online. I have a gamer
⏹️ ▶️ John tag that I’ve been using since college and I have it on PSN
⏹️ ▶️ John and I have it on Xbox and I have a different one on Steam.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I type that in and it went to the next screen. I’m like, great, I must have gotten in early enough because none of the small
⏹️ ▶️ John group of founders my preferred gamer tag, which is a weird word and not, you know, any part of my name or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so I’m glad I got my name. And then the next screen said, Okay, here you go. And by the
⏹️ ▶️ John way, it showed at the bottom a, like a number sign and then four hyphens.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it said, and by the way, to distinguish your name, a number may appear
⏹️ ▶️ John after it to differentiate it from anyone else who may have the same name. I’m like, Oh, my,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, that’s weird. Well, I suppose if someone else picks the same name as me, I guess we’re both going to get numbers
⏹️ ▶️ John or maybe if we’re both in the same game, we’ll get numbers after things. And anyway, I just sailed through because,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, whatever. And then I started playing something and my name had
⏹️ ▶️ John a number after it had a hash mark in a number after a four digit number. Like, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John there are not, you know, 9999 other people who pick this name. There’s 500 people on the service total at this point.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like no one is using this. do I have a number after
⏹️ ▶️ John my name? With a little bit of research, I mostly figured
⏹️ ▶️ John out that the only way you’re ever going to see your name without a number at the launch
⏹️ ▶️ John of this service is if you are one of those founder people. Everybody else, no matter what name
⏹️ ▶️ John you pick, will get a number after your name. This is apparently a thing that lots of services are doing
⏹️ ▶️ John to try to avoid, I guess, namesplaced pollution and let people be happier to get their names but
⏹️ ▶️ John let me tell you this is the wrong choice from a human factors perspective right
⏹️ ▶️ John not being able to get your name is bad and makes people sad I understand that but saying
⏹️ ▶️ John that everybody is gonna have numbers after the name is worse and even worse than that is saying
⏹️ ▶️ John a tiny elite set of people won’t have numbers and everyone else will have numbers even
⏹️ ▶️ John if the name you pick nobody else picked that name this you think wouldn’t make a difference
⏹️ ▶️ John who cares what your name is
⏹️ ▶️ John who cares if you have numbers after that doesn’t but that’s a big issue for me. If I
⏹️ ▶️ John had known that I was going to have numbers after my motor picks a different name, it turns out it doesn’t matter what name I picked, it would always have numbers after it.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s bad. I don’t want to have numbers after my name. I try to teach my children that I think it’s a lesson for
⏹️ ▶️ John everybody. If the name if the name you want is not available in the service that you’re using,
⏹️ ▶️ John find a different name. Don’t put the year of your birth after anyway, that’s like personally identifiable
⏹️ ▶️ John information. Don’t put, don’t put, you know, a seven digit number. Don’t put 420. Don’t put 69. Don’t put 1138. Don’t put 42. Don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco put 360. Like do not put those numbers. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t add numbers. Don’t put two, don’t put three, but don’t put seven. Don’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the only thing I allow for young people only basically is ASCII art based on
⏹️ ▶️ John like little letters like lowercase X, capital X, underscore, underscore. If your name is underscore, feel to
⏹️ ▶️ John use as many underscores as you want, but no numbers. So I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John unreasonably upset about the fact that my gamer tag
⏹️ ▶️ John has a hash mark or whatever, and a four-digit number
⏹️ ▶️ John after it every time you see the name in a list
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey of names. Like an
⏹️ ▶️ John animal. And then it’s alongside, sometimes, people who don’t have numbers.
⏹️ ▶️ John The haves and have-nots in Stadia. Oh, John, I’m so sorry. Anyway, obviously I play
⏹️ ▶️ John Destiny. Destiny recently rolled out cross-save, which is these amazing
⏹️ ▶️ John terms in the industry for incomplete features. What
⏹️ ▶️ John you would expect is if Destiny is supported on multiple platforms and it’s an online game where you
⏹️ ▶️ John go and play online, everyone would be able to play with everyone. Because, hey, it’s the internet. That is not the case. If you’re on PlayStation,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can play with other people on PlayStation. If you are on Xbox, you can play with other people on Xbox. Back in Destiny 1,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you were on PlayStation 3, you can only play with PlayStation 3 players. If you’re on PlayStation 4, you can only play with PlayStation 4
⏹️ ▶️ John players, and on and on. If you’re on PC, you can only play with PC players. If you’re in Stadia, you can only play with Stadia
⏹️ ▶️ John players. Aha! Now they have cross-save, which means you can only play with
⏹️ ▶️ John people on the same platform as you, but anything you do on any platform shows up on all the other platforms.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if I play Destiny on my PlayStation, and then I quit my PlayStation, and turn it off,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then I go over and play in Stadia, I see that same player, all my same stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John everything is the same over there. So cross-save is better than nothing, but it’s not the same as cross-play,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I really hope cross-play is coming. Anyway, all that is to say I was able to play Destiny with my actual characters,
⏹️ ▶️ John with a mouse and a keyboard, on my Mac and Chrome, on a 5K
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac and Chrome, like zoomed to full screen. And I’d done this before with the GeForce Now service,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is a Nvidia streaming gaming thing. They also had PCs and you could play the PC version
⏹️ ▶️ John of Destiny over the internet. And Stadia,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s better than GeForce Now in particular. I think there were fewer huge hitches
⏹️ ▶️ John in frame rate and the image quality seemed a little bit better and the launch time and everything
⏹️ ▶️ John about it seemed a little bit faster. And it’s like a technical miracle that it works at all. But
⏹️ ▶️ John for games like Destiny, first-person shooters against other human beings.
⏹️ ▶️ John The technology is still not quite there. I have gigabit fiber to my house. I’m in an
⏹️ ▶️ John area that’s not too far away from major switches on the internet. Maybe all of the Stadia servers
⏹️ ▶️ John are on the west coast and that’s what’s killing me, but it was not good. So if you’re wondering has streaming gaming arrived
⏹️ ▶️ John for the hardest of hardcore games against other human beings, the answer is no.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if you’re looking for a way to play play games that don’t require twitch reflexes
⏹️ ▶️ John and you want the cheapest way to do it and you want to be able to play from any one of your devices including your phone,
⏹️ ▶️ John your iPad, your television, or just bring a controller with you to a hotel and be able to play there.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s technically impressive and is probably the best one of these services that I’ve ever tried
⏹️ ▶️ John and I think I’ve tried most of them. So yeah, we’re still waiting
⏹️ ▶️ John for that technical breakthrough or and I guess we’re still waiting for that marketing breakthrough where someone
⏹️ ▶️ John can convince people who are not hardcore gamers that don’t worry about it if you can’t play destiny.
⏹️ ▶️ John Destiny is a weird, complicated game anyway, and you weren’t gonna get into it, but this is the best, cheapest, most
⏹️ ▶️ John convenient way to play all those other games that don’t require, you know, millisecond
⏹️ ▶️ John precision. So I guess that’s sort of a thumb sideways on stadia
⏹️ ▶️ John and everyone complained about the launch because they had they had very few games available. Most of the games are already available on other
⏹️ ▶️ John platforms and there’s all sorts of complaining about the launch. It doesn’t seem like the service
⏹️ ▶️ John is off to a really great start and it doesn’t seem like any of the technical aspects have surprised anybody
⏹️ ▶️ John with how good they are. They’re not way worse than people thought, but they’re not way better either. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like Stadia is kind of landing with a thud at this point. Glowing review.
⏹️ ▶️ John But hey, for something that I didn’t have to, I paid zero for, you know, it’s like a free trial. I got to remember that way. Let me add a reminder.
⏹️ ▶️ John I did have to like sign myself up for a monthly thing, but I think you get like a one month free
⏹️ ▶️ John trial. I need to cancel this because I’m never going to use Stadia. Although speaking of
⏹️ ▶️ John destiny, which I just was, uh, someone’s asking me today, Hey, when you get your new Mac pro, are you going
⏹️ ▶️ John to play destiny on it? And you know, I hadn’t really thought about that, but I think I probably
⏹️ ▶️ John will try it. Like obviously destiny doesn’t run on the Mac, but uh, assuming bootcamp
⏹️ ▶️ John is still supported, which apple people continue to tell me that it is despite all evidence to the contrary. Sorry, I
⏹️ ▶️ John was like, no. That boot camp is still a thing. If I can run boot camp on my Mac Pro, I will
⏹️ ▶️ John indeed install some weird version of Windows and install Destiny for the PC and I suppose buy Destiny for the
⏹️ ▶️ John PC if I don’t already own it. I think I did buy Destiny for the PC once, but I don’t know if I need to buy it again. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John confusing. Anyway, I will do that so I can try Destiny
⏹️ ▶️ John on my Mac and see how it goes. The advantage, by the way, is like, why would you want to do that? For some people,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s mouse and keyboard to be able to use the mouse and keyboard. I can’t do that for RSI reasons, so I would probably still be using
⏹️ ▶️ John a controller when I played it on my Mac. But on the PlayStation 4, the frame rate
⏹️ ▶️ John is capped at 30 frames per second, and the frame rate is uncapped when you play on a PC
⏹️ ▶️ John or a Mac Pro. And of course, the resolution is better and all that other stuff. So I’d really love to see Destiny
⏹️ ▶️ John at higher resolution and much higher frame rates, just to see what that’s like.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But you don’t need to buy a Mac Pro, John. That’s what Jason told me.
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t. To run Destiny, again, As someone, a friend pointed out to me, if I put
⏹️ ▶️ John like a modern NVIDIA GPU in my 2008 Mac Pro, it would run Destiny at 60 frames
⏹️ ▶️ John per second. It doesn’t take much to be faster than PlayStation 4.
⏹️ ▶️ John Even my Mac Pro could do it if given a $600 GPU.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But you still are buying that Mac Pro, huh? Sure
⏹️ ▶️ John am. You don’t need it though. I don’t, absolutely do not. He has to
⏹️ ▶️ John buy it at this point. Oh, no argument, no argument at all. I want to buy it. That’s the word that keeps me laughing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You also have to buy it. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John be honest. I don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John to. My computer is the one that works, but
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I want to buy it. As
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve talked about before, I do occasionally dread that I’m gonna get this insanely expensive new computer
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s gonna be obsolete in two years when Apple switches to ARM, and it’s gonna be flaky, and I’m gonna have nothing but problems
⏹️ ▶️ John with it, and I’m not gonna be able to record podcasts. We’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see how it goes. Hey, I’ve been there, John. You can make it through, trust me on this.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll get the AppleCare, don’t worry.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I recommend it. And you’re still not getting one, Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I don’t have any plans to. I’m extremely happy with my iMac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’re so adorable. What if
⏹️ ▶️ John it comes with an LED light?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I mean, how bright is it? That’s right, it
⏹️ ▶️ John comes out of all the holes.
⏹️ ▶️ John thought those holes were there for airflow, but it’s also for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey light. It’s a billion nits, that’s the thing. You don’t even need that. Maybe, imagine how crazy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it would be if Marco buys the Pro Display XDR because of the bazillion nits,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bother connecting it to the Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John Can the iMac Pro drive the 6K? I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think it can, right? I think so. They have not said, I don’t think. All they have said
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that the 16-inch MacBook Pro can drive two of them. But I don’t think they’ve actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco documented or said anywhere what else can drive them and how many.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I’m guessing no based on the age of the computer, but who knows?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’re making me feel real great about my purchase, John.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you know, you’re not going to buy an XDR.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you going to put the 6K monitor next to your iMac Pro? Nobody wants to buy
⏹️ ▶️ John that except for a very small group of people. Even I don’t want to buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. But you will. You could almost buy two of your iMac Pros for the price of the XDR.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Instead of dual monitors, just do dual iMac Pros and
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey they’re two totally different
⏹️ ▶️ John computers and just use a KVM to kind of switch between them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, what was that software that let you do like a fake software KVM over the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John internet? Yeah, I forget the name.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey God, I can’t remember
⏹️ ▶️ John it either. Now it’s not hammer spoon. That’s the config one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s going to drive me nuts. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you spoonie, it’s pretty knifey
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey synergy. There we go. Yeah, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, that’s it. That’s it. That’s it. Oh man, I am so excited for Marco to cave on this and buy himself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Look, you’ll be the first ones to know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, the business rep at the Apple Store might be the first one to know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John and then Tiff
⏹️ ▶️ John and Yeah, I think that might know first. Yeah, we’ll see. I just agree. We need to get there and
⏹️ ▶️ John say if Marco just quietly leaves the house, ask him where he’s going. Are you going to buy a Mac?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I’m not buying. I’m going to the store and get milk. Not buying a Mac Pro at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The best the best will be if the way I find out that Marco has brought bought a Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is suddenly out of nowhere. Someone freezes his credit for the purchases too big that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no, I think even better would be out of nowhere. You know, I come home in the afternoon from wherever and I see there’s a big package
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my front porch and I think, oh, that’s weird. I wasn’t expecting anything and I bring it in and I see it’s from the town in which Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lives and I think, well, what would Marco have sent me? I wasn’t expecting that at all. And I open it up and I realize,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh, it’s an iMac carrying case. Oh my God, I know what he’s done.
⏹️ ▶️ John He would never give up the iMac Pro. That would
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey be that would be his
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stationary desktop and the portable desk. Yeah, my travel computer. Oh my gosh,
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s do some Ask ATP. And someone probably Joel wrote in, hey, what do you think of developers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey trying to be fun in Apple Store update notes? I generally speaking,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t like it. But there are exceptions where it’s really good. If you are lucky enough to be on the gift wrapped
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Beta on the test flight beta and I think jelly does this for the actual release notes, too But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the gift wrapped beta is worth the figurative price of admission For
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the release notes alone because I don’t even I don’t have any in front of me But jellies release
⏹️ ▶️ Casey notes for the gift wrap beta are phenomenal It’s like a story in and of themselves
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and they’re so good when like big companies try to be cutesy and funny I think it almost
⏹️ ▶️ Casey always fails and is garbage and I hate it it. But when smaller independent developers try it, usually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they are still connected enough with reality that it can work and work well. But that’s just my two cents.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let me ask the old and stodgy ones, starting with Marco, what do you think?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it used to matter what you put in those release
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco that’s true, too. That’s a very good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco point. But nowadays, like with auto update being on by default, and with the updates
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being buried further and further buried in the App Store app with every time they change anything about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. I don’t think it matters anymore, honestly. I think this fight is long lost and now it’s just irrelevant.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, you’re not wrong. John, what do you think?
⏹️ ▶️ John John Williams I think like any sort of content exercise, whether that’s the text in your dialog
⏹️ ▶️ John box or your menu item names or help text or anything where you have
⏹️ ▶️ John to write something or create graphics or whatever in your application, It is an
⏹️ ▶️ John opportunity to do a good job and make your product feel better. And that includes
⏹️ ▶️ John release notes. Very few people will ever look at them. Fewer now, like
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco pointed out, than ever before because of the changes Apple has made. But the people who do look at them
⏹️ ▶️ John are looking at them because they feel better about knowing what the changes are. Whether they need
⏹️ ▶️ John to know what the changes are or not, they want to know what the changes are. written release notes that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John you know content that is you know informative concise but also
⏹️ ▶️ John fun to read it makes the person reading them feel better about your application and those people tend to be
⏹️ ▶️ John the sort of most loyal hardcore customers depending on the type of application you make
⏹️ ▶️ John that customer group may actually be important to you they may be the people who are keeping you in business year after
⏹️ ▶️ John year because you have a niche application that caters to enthusiasts and they’re going to seek
⏹️ ▶️ John out those release notes. And so I think it is an opportunity for you to excel and for
⏹️ ▶️ John you to make your application, make your customers happier and make your application
⏹️ ▶️ John more valuable to them and increase their affection for it. You just have to know, am I making that type of application?
⏹️ ▶️ John Does literally anybody look at my release notes or am I making a mass market application that is not the type of thing where
⏹️ ▶️ John release notes matter at all? In which case I don’t have to care about that.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey But what do I
⏹️ ▶️ John think about trying to be fun? I think it’s it’s perfectly fine and could possibly be beneficial.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then the final thing is even if nobody reads them if it makes you happy to do it as like sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John celebrating like a cherry on top of you getting a release out and you just do it because it’s a fun thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John you enjoy because you like Writing and maybe like you and five-year friends ever look at them get amused by them.
⏹️ ▶️ John That can be a perfectly valid thing to do It’s not like we’re asking, you know, the act of writing release notes. It’s not writing
⏹️ ▶️ John a novel It’s like hopefully a very small amount of text And if it makes you feel good to do
⏹️ ▶️ John it, then do it. But as Casey pointed out, try to ask a trusted
⏹️ ▶️ John friend whether you are actually making amusing release notes or whether you are
⏹️ ▶️ John not doing a good job in that task, in which case it could actually be harmful.
#askatp: Grandparent iPad setup
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mike Bullock Ziegler writes, I am getting iPads for out-of-state grandparents to make it easy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to share photos of my son and FaceTime with us. Neither are tech savvy. Neither of them uses much tech
⏹️ ▶️ Casey outside of a TV remote. Any set-up tips or suggestions outside of accessibility settings for elder-proofing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it? You know, I don’t have any great answers for this, so I’m really curious if you guys have any really clever ideas.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually, I did this with both of my grandparents over the last decade or so.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s hard. Do what you can, get all the updates on, bury all the apps that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they won’t use, and we’ll just confuse them in a folder, like an Apple folder, literally. Bury as much as you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that they can just have one page of Springboard, they don’t have to swipe to different pages, have everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on one page. Show them, obviously the best thing you can do is be there with them when they first get it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco show them how to use it, show them the basics. And then one thing that, depending
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on what your budget will allow for this use, get them the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cellular ones and activate the plan with something that you pay for and you control.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because then they never have to worry about Wi-Fi or connectivity, they’re just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always online. You know, like I don’t know what this person’s grandparent’s situation is at home,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but like my grandparents, when I did this for them a few years back, they didn’t have an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco internet connection at their house yet because they didn’t have a computer. So I decided, let me just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco avoid this problem entirely. Because like, once you involve an internet connection, then they have to call the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cable company or whatever and have them bring out their stupid wifi router and deal with all that crap. And like, that’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whole other level of complexity and cost for them to deal with. And if you’re trying to minimize that impact
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on them, if you can spare the money, just set it up with cellular and on your own plan that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you pay for, that they don’t even need to think about it. To them, their iPad is just always online.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s a good idea. John, any thoughts?
⏹️ ▶️ John The only thing I’d add is, so Apple’s devices and their iOS devices have tons
⏹️ ▶️ John of accessibility settings, but the only way you’re going to know which
⏹️ ▶️ John one should be enabled and what they should be set to is to sit down with the person who’s going to be using it, the person or persons who
⏹️ ▶️ John are going to be using the device, and try each one. Do you like this better? Do you like that better? What do you think
⏹️ ▶️ John of this? What do you think of that? And then when you change the accessibility settings,
⏹️ ▶️ John in particular things having to do with font size and weight. Also, then try the applications that they think they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going to be using, because despite all of Apple’s WRC session is trying to tell you how to make your layout
⏹️ ▶️ John still work when the dynamic text changes and everything, even Apple’s own applications can have serious
⏹️ ▶️ John layout problems when you really crank up the text, especially on smaller devices.
⏹️ ▶️ John So like just run, you know, go through the whole accessibility screen, sit there and try
⏹️ ▶️ John to get something that, you know, is, It works well for the people who are going to use it
⏹️ ▶️ John and go through the applications, show them how to use them, send test emails so they know how
⏹️ ▶️ John to get it, send test FaceTime calls, show them how to call things, set up their contacts, put little images
⏹️ ▶️ John on all their contacts, get everything pruned down like Marco said, adjust the things that they care about.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can now, quote unquote, delete lots of built-in applications where it just hides them or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Do that and then just go through the entire settings screen instead of everything in a reasonable way.
⏹️ ▶️ John time but that’s the way to do it. The only part where I have some trepidation is
⏹️ ▶️ John I still find and maybe it’s because I’m just not in the loop on this maybe someone who’s more hardcore into iOS can tell me but
⏹️ ▶️ John I still find that the ultimate out that I talked about on the past episode
⏹️ ▶️ John of taking control of someone’s screen remotely I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ John you can do that in iOS do you know if that’s possible? I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so. I don’t think it is but man I have have wished for that. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have been times when one of my grandparents would call with a question and I’d have to talk to them through something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over the phone. And it’s hard because, I don’t know, depending on what your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco grandparents exposure to computers before this has been, my grandparents were starting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from zero. And so it’s hard to even try to get each other to explain with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clear terminology, like what’s going on, what to do, have them explain what’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happening on the screen and then you tell them what to do on screen. Like when they lack basic terminology, cause they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have any experience with computers before this, even that part becomes very difficult. Like, and so obviously if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can be in person, that’s great. In my case, at the time I was doing all this, I lived in New York and they lived in Phoenix.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that didn’t, you know, that wasn’t really easily possible most of the time. So I just had to do it, do text support
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over the phone. And it was really hard. And there were a couple of times where I had to say, I’m sorry, I don’t know what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do. Next time you’re in the mall, bring it to the Apple store and they’ll help you. because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we couldn’t figure out communication-wise how to work it out over the phone. It was really hard. And so I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would’ve loved some kind of remote screen control thing in that kind of situation. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as far as I know, it’s not possible.
⏹️ ▶️ John Chatroom says you can share the screen but not control it. But anyway, that’s my only trepidation.
⏹️ ▶️ John Macs by far are way harder for people who aren’t into computers to be able to deal with.
⏹️ ▶️ John But they do have that one advantage. The hack way that I’ve done in the past,
⏹️ ▶️ John even before the screen sharing days. I used to actually use VPN to do it, but it was so hard keeping third party VPN stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John going. And then iChat came and allowed screen. Anyway, the hack way is if they
⏹️ ▶️ John have a phone, they can do video chatting, or at least just have the camera and they know how to text you pictures.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can, you know, someone can hold the phone up to another computer screen and say, this is what I’m seeing, which
⏹️ ▶️ John helps a lot. Or they can take pictures of a screen and send them to you.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco But yeah, I kind of wish. Just do FaceTime. Problem solved.
⏹️ ▶️ John It depends on what their problem is. The worst case is that their internet’s not working,
⏹️ ▶️ John so they’re on the actual landline telephone with you. Yet another reason to go cellular.
⏹️ ▶️ John So that’s the only caveat I would say, that iPads are the best thing
⏹️ ▶️ John to give to non-techie grandparents to see pictures and stuff. They’re way better than
⏹️ ▶️ John a Mac. I just wish they had a way for you to take control of the screen. So then you wouldn’t have to do this
⏹️ ▶️ John back and forth, You wouldn’t have to look at the screen and direct them to do things You could just say just sit back and I’ll fix it
⏹️ ▶️ John and you can explain it to them Why you fix it if you want or not, and they don’t care about this stuff. They just they just make it work again
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the suggestion for Apple But yeah sitting down my suggestion is sitting down with them and going through all the settings
⏹️ ▶️ John is the best way to get it set up Right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Can the Apple classroom stuff allow for screen control if I recall correctly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the teacher could like like Snoop, for lack of a better word, on all of the students,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but could the teacher actually control any of the students’ iPads? Do you have any idea?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Don’t know. Never used it. No, obviously I haven’t either, but I only ask because maybe it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey somewhere in the system, just not exposed to us. to us at our website.
#askatp: Overcast for Alexa
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And finally, Greg would like to know, Marco, I’m sure you’ve been asked before, but is there any chance you would port Overcast to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Amazon talking tube ecosystem? Also, would be curious as to the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey challenges if you decided to or what the issues are that cause you not to pursue it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco For me, the biggest challenge, it’s not something that I have strong feelings on. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something that people have occasionally asked for, not as much as when the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Echo first came out. Very similar to, I think, an Apple TV app.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco People think they will use this, like when they first get these devices and so they request it, but then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco after a few months, like people mostly stop asking for it because they realize that they use these devices in different ways
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that maybe this wouldn’t actually be that useful for. So for the most part, demand has been fairly weak,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it seems. And so I largely haven’t looked into it much because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s always something else more pressing. You know, with podcast apps, and there’s at least
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of my competitors I know of that is on the Alexa family of devices, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t hear about it that often. I’m not seeing reports from people constantly saying, you know, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was gonna go with you, but I went with them because they have this, or I’m leaving you because they have this. Like, I hardly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever hear anybody even mention it. So I think it’s one of those things that’s just not super important.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The thing is, and I say this as somebody who spent quite a lot of time building this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco massive sync engine to sync between iPad and iPhone and web for Overcast,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most people only listen to podcasts from their phone. Almost none of my user base
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uses anything besides a phone. I use the iPad app every day myself, and that’s why I maintain it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But otherwise, like, the vast majority of Overcast users use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it on one device, their phone, and that’s it. Because most people listen to pod, first of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all, most people only have a phone. That’s problem number one. But even for the people who have multiple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gadgets, most people just listen to podcasts by themselves in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco situations where they are on the go. They’re going to work, they’re taking a walk, whatever it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, that is by far the majority of podcasts listening, commuting or exercising or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else. And so they’re not even at home necessarily. And if they are at home, many,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many people simply just play the podcast out of their phone’s speaker. Like the built-in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco speaker on the phone, they crank it up, they just play it on the countertop or whatever and it’s fine. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any feature that I have to invest a lot of time in that is about like multi-platform,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco multi-device support, not only is there low demand for it, but it’s also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually so complicated and so costly that it’s not even worth doing. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any time I would spend making the phone app better, addressing people’s wishes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for features in the phone app, that is almost always time better spent. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it isn’t that I am never gonna do this. It’s just a much lower priority than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most people would want it to be, of the few people who do want this feature. It’s a low priority
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it might never get done because there’s just always more important stuff that’s more pressing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Fair enough. Anyway, thanks to our sponsors this week, Alexa, no, just kidding,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Away, Squarespace, and Handy, and we will talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John didn’t do any research, Marco and
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey wouldn’t let him, Cause it was accidental, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was accidental. And you can find the show notes at atp.fm
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re into Twitter, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and T. Marco Armin,
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t mean to. Accidental, tech podcasts so long.
Appliance shopping
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh man, I had to go appliance shopping. Our washer died. We had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get a new clothes washer.
⏹️ ▶️ John Clothes washer? As distinguished, I guess, from a dishwasher?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know what people in other countries call their washing machines. I figured just in case, it’s the laundry machine that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco washes your clothes. If it doesn’t dry them, that’s a different machine in our country usually. Unless you have a combination.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, that’s very rare in America though to have the combo machines because usually we have these giant places that we can fit two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco huge machines. I think the combo machines are more common like in Japan and Europe where they actually have space
⏹️ ▶️ Marco issues. But anyway, so yeah, so how do we place our washing machine? And that was a whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. Because like, we had a front loader. Because when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we moved into our house, and we had to get a new washing machine, the one that came with the house was broken. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we had to get a new washing machine. We and everyone was getting front loaded. This was 10 years ago, nine years ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everybody was getting front loaders. So all right, fine, we got a front loader. And we heard, hey, they stink after a while, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco water basically sits in the bottom of them when they’re not in use. So you, you know, anytime you have standing water,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re going to have stink problems or mold problems or whatever. So we did all the precautions.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We always left the door a little bit open. We would always pull out the detergent drawer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing, uh, when it was not in use. So like everything could dry out, everything was open to the air and could dry
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out all the time when it, when it wasn’t in use, we would run the cleaning cycles. We tried the special
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off fresh things that the washer, I guess wanted us to use. We did all the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff reliably and we cared for this thing perfectly and it’s still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slowly starting to stink. Granted it’s it was nine years old, slowly starting to stink.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That still didn’t get us to replace it eventually because we we learned like oh just run the first wash
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like if we were gone for like if we were out of town for a week run the first wash empty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe and it’ll it’ll squirt out all the stinky water and then we can run and wash after that would be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco normal-ish. But finally, it died. Finally it started throwing error codes that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when looked up on Google, were things that were very expensive to fix. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it wouldn’t spin anymore. So we figured, alright, now finally we have a motivating reason. Let’s get a new washer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but let’s get a top loader. And it turns out, according to the appliance salesman and the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco installers who came to install of thing. It turns out lots of people have made this exact same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco move from the front loaders that seem really nice and are super efficient but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really have stink problems moving back to the old top loaders so we’ll see how that goes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The reason I wanted to mention all this is that we also really hate our fridge. This is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not for any, you know, incredibly major reason. It keeps our food cold,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, it works in most ways, but it has a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco water dispenser on the inside of the fridge. And so you have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco open the door and it’s not even on the opening side of the door.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s on the hinge side of the door. So you have to open the fridge all the way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and reach in and basically like hang out in the fridge, holding down the water button and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your cup under the water thing. This is mostly, most of the time, a two-hand operation to just get a cup of water.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we work at home and we drink a lot of water. So this happens
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the time. And we’re like, okay, this is stupid. We’re hanging out in the whole fridge.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Every time we need to get water, this has to be incredibly inefficient to be losing all this cold air
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as we’re sitting here with the door open filling up one or two glasses of water. We’ve hated the fridge forever.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s not the only reason that’s stupid. I think I talked about this on my big refrigerator episode, but I would suggest
⏹️ ▶️ John to people, and I know lots of people have some sort of conditioning against this,
⏹️ ▶️ John and sometimes there’s a reason for it, but I would suggest to you, because I know
⏹️ ▶️ John where you live, that during the winter half of the year at least,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can get cold water from your tap that tastes good to drink. You do not need to get water through some weird
⏹️ ▶️ John filter thing through a bunch of plastic tubes sitting stagnant in your refrigerator. plenty cold
⏹️ ▶️ John out of the tap in the winter and your water is not chlorinated and doesn’t taste weird.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, our water tastes delicious. That’s actually not a bad idea. Maybe I’ll start doing that.
⏹️ ▶️ John During the summer, you have to let it run for a while for it to get cold, which is wasteful, so maybe you shouldn’t do that. But people
⏹️ ▶️ John from, you know, because I’m old, from my childhood, nobody drank bottled water. Bottled water was not a big thing in my childhood,
⏹️ ▶️ John but then eventually as it became into adulthood, bottled water became a thing. And then eventually it became clear to me that whole
⏹️ ▶️ John swaths of the country would never even consider drinking water that came from the tap. Sometimes,
⏹️ ▶️ John again, it’s founded because your water is has chlorinated or has weird minerals in it and you know
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t want to drink it and it tastes bad or maybe it’s filled with lead or who knows what’s the problem with your tap water. Like it’s part
⏹️ ▶️ John of the reason we have these terrible bottles of water. But everybody loves those refrigerator
⏹️ ▶️ John things and as far as I’m concerned they taste like a filter. I can’t stand the Brita things. I can’t stand water on the
⏹️ ▶️ John door. I want water out of the faucet. That’s my preferred drink and I would suggest to everyone that if you
⏹️ ▶️ John are mindlessly getting water out of the little plastic tubes in your fridge, consider
⏹️ ▶️ John trying something different.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, you might have convinced me to try that because our tap water is fine. Maybe,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, because you know, because I’ll tell you what, so we ran into issues with the idea
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of trying to replace our fridge. Tell me about it. Yeah, so,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so again, anybody who has not listened, you have to go listen to John’s episode of of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Reconcilable Differences where he gets a new fridge from a few months back because it is amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a masterpiece. It is a Syracuse masterpiece. It is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re a fan of anything John, which if you’ve made it this far listening to our podcast, I assume you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are, you must listen. It’s a masterpiece, it really is. So we’ll link that in the show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like that is the naked robotic core of John Syracuse, that
⏹️ ▶️ John episode. It’s just an episode, but here’s my pitch. You’ll learn stuff about refrigerators and buying them. If you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John in the market for a refrigerator and you have similar tastes to mine and you were nodding
⏹️ ▶️ John your head when I was telling you not to drink out of the plastic straw filter water from your fridge, this
⏹️ ▶️ John will tell you what the landscape of refrigerators looks like in 2019-ish. So it will be informative.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, so our current fridge is a 36-inch wide,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 70-inch tall, counter-depth, She’s about 25
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inches deep. Oh, no
⏹️ ▶️ Casey counter depth ruins
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right it is built into a You know a cabinet style enclosure the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cabinet above it. There’s a wall on the left side But we want the hinge me on the left side
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so it has to the door when it swings open Can’t extend very far past
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the left edge of the fridge. We only have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inch You’re using single door right single door and we only have about an inch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the left of a gap before it hits the wall. So the door has to mostly swing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like with the hinge in place. It can’t swing very far to the left of the fridge’s bounds.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so we thought, let’s look at everything available. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if we can find a good fridge, we’re buying a washer too. We’ll get some kind of combo deal on it. We’ll discount both things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’re buying two at once. We’ll save on installation. So let’s just replace the fridge that we hate. And there’s other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco issues with it too. like all the drawers are all cracking and they don’t slide well anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s all sorts of other issues with it. So we figure like, while we’re getting one appliance, let’s see what they can do for two.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think there’s a single fridge on the market today that would fit in our
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fridge hole that we would actually like more than the one we have, let alone, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re trying to get something better than what we have. I don’t even think we can find one that’s as good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as what we have. Because this style of fridge that we have, which is a single
⏹️ ▶️ Marco door on top and a drawer freezer below, seems to not exist anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not in counter depth. Yes, so we have, counter depth is one problem, which I didn’t even realize.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like I just, I measured three dimensions of our fridge and I went to the store, I’m like, all right, what do you have? It’s this dimension, figuring this must be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a common dimension. Nope.
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t realize how big everyone else’s fridges are. Yours is so shallow, you can barely fit anything in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there. Yeah, so not only, So most of the fridges are like eight inches deeper than ours. So, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we have no extra space right there. So it would have to just then stick out from the front by a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John significant margin.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just got to renovate your kitchen. Yeah. Just, just throw money at this problem and solve it. Which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really don’t want to do for lots of reasons. But like, so I just like, this kitchen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was only built, this kitchen I think is about 12 years old. Like we didn’t do it. The previous owners did it, but they did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it pretty recently, you know, before we bought it. So like, It’s about a 12 year old design. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fridge is probably about that age as well. And I assume, as they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco boxed out the fridge hole when they first built it, this seemed like a common size. And if you look at any kitchen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco remodel that was done around like 2000, I don’t know, 2007, eight-ish,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything that was done around that time, they all had these same fridges. These like Whirlpool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash JennAir, it’s all the same company, like, you know, the stainless steel drawer fridge in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bottom, single door on top, water dispenser on the stupid hinge. Like it’s we we’ve seen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same fridge in many people’s houses that were done around the same time.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and countertop is still popular. Like people like it because it doesn’t stick out so far into your kitchen. And you like if you build
⏹️ ▶️ John the cabinets out to that depth, they become like oppressive and make your kitchen smaller. And it’s just nicer. It’s you
⏹️ ▶️ John get less storage. But, you know, countertop is that is still popular, but it’s popular. Kind of like my problem
⏹️ ▶️ John with trying to find one without a water feature on the quote unquote high end, like the cheap fridges,
⏹️ ▶️ John the ones that don’t follow the fads, the ones that have a single door on top, those are not counter depth. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re shopping in the cheap end, where you have no water feature and a single door and it’s not counter depth,
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t get any of the features. It’s only when you go up to the nicer ones that it’s counter depth. And the nicer ones
⏹️ ▶️ John always follow the fads. And as you know, the fad is not currently drawer on the bottom, big door on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco top. Yeah, the fad is, so as far as I can tell, and we talked to the appliance guy,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we looked at all the things that were in this store. I looked then later at Home Depot and Lowe’s. So we looked at everything,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco high end, low end. And it seems like, first of all, almost no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one makes drawer freezer and top single door fridge anymore at all at any size.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Most of them now are French doors, where you have two doors on top and a drawer freezer on the bottom.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s mine. I don’t like that arrangement very much. I don’t like French doors.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s really nice. It’s really nice. You get used to it very fast. and I understand it won’t
⏹️ ▶️ John work in your fridge hole, but it is, I am a total
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it won’t work in our fridge hole anyway because the left door can’t open, basically, because they slide
⏹️ ▶️ John So, but if it could work, it is actually really nice. Even if you, like the main reason
⏹️ ▶️ John that came out is if you have a small kitchen, it’s great to have a smaller door that opens into it, but once you get used to being able
⏹️ ▶️ John to open just the right or just the left, it’s really convenient. Kind of the same way the drawer fridge sort of took over. It took over for
⏹️ ▶️ John a reason, because the old fridge, whether it was, like when I was a kid, it was freezer on top
⏹️ ▶️ John instead of freezer on bottom. But when I was a kid, they also had some that were freezer on bottom. But the drawer
⏹️ ▶️ John is superior to both of those arrangements because you get to pull the thing out. Most of the fridge, I call them
⏹️ ▶️ John fads, but these are innovations in the fridge space. They catch on for a reason because
⏹️ ▶️ John they are more convenient, better use of space, fit into more people’s kitchens, so on and
⏹️ ▶️ John so forth. So I don’t, you know, even though the French doors seem weird.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think if you got them and they could fit you would get used to them very quickly and not be able to go back.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe. Unfortunately, they don’t fit because they the left door can’t swing open without hitting the wall with with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco itself like with the hinge part so that’s I don’t know why the hinges are designed that way and why the other ones aren’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but for whatever reason that’s how they’re designed so I can’t so we can’t do a Frank’s door fridge and at least any model I’ve seen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the only options we seem to have are to either get a fridge that is skinnier than our fridge hole that is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not 36 inches of why that’s more like 30, which is a pretty significant capacity reduction and leave
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a big gap that would just be weird. No, that’s not good. Or to remove the cabinet above our
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fridge and get one of these new like eight feet tall ones.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s the Marco, the Marco fridges. Yeah, I was waiting for you to get to the Marco fridges. I knew you would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. All the Marco fridges now, like all the fridges that are nice now cost $6,000.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh gosh. At least. and are…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re so tall that I can’t reach the top shelf inside of them. Like, we have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a little like step stool thing for our seven-year-old son to be able to get things in the fridge. I would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need to use that to get things in my own top shelf
⏹️ ▶️ John of my fridge. And they have the compressors on top of much of them. A lot of them have… because the fridges
⏹️ ▶️ John go all the way to the floor, but the compressors on the fancy $10,000 fridges are all on the top as well. So you need even more…
⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes you need very high ceilings and you certainly can’t have cabinets as big as cabinets on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco top of them. See, I wouldn’t even mind having the compressor on top, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the compressor takes up space in whatever is on the bottom of the fridge. So usually, in these days, it’s usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the freezer. Or like, so you get this super tiny freezer, or this weird trapezoidal cutout out of your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco freezer that you can’t use that space. So putting the compressor on top makes total sense if you’re going to make the fridge super tall,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because you don’t need to reach the compressor, but you do need more capacity in the bottom. So that, I’m actually fine with that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But like, how is a very common size of fridges 10
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years ago, now seemingly no longer made at all?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s the arrangement of the doors that’s not made. A counter depth, single door on top. I mean, maybe you could find one of
⏹️ ▶️ John them, but they’re all the French doors, because that’s better. Now, I would blame the people who remodeled your kitchen, not thinking that
⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh, this will never be a problem because we’ll just make the hinge open on the other side. That’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John good for a thought. You should always have a little bit of room, especially if it’s if it’s not just like
⏹️ ▶️ John if it’s a wall that’s there that can’t like are you in the middle of a long expansive wall are you
⏹️ ▶️ John right near a door opening like it could you widen a door opening by six inches and make it so your fridge hinge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t we would have to open up the wall it’s there to see like what’s behind it like are we dealing with like big supports
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we can’t easily move or like we don’t know it would take like it would take opening up a wall to answer this question
⏹️ ▶️ John but I can’t like make a door opening six inches bigger and make it it’s like how far is it from the nearest opening
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way the kitchen is arranged there is no other option of where to put this fridge or how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or how to widen its space without literally knocking down a wall that we’re not even sure we can
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m getting out of the wall that it’s up against yeah how far does that wall extend past
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the fridge oh I see what you mean probably good two or three feet at least yeah all
⏹️ ▶️ John right so you can’t you can’t I mean you can’t make that opening two or three feet wider and suddenly have it
⏹️ ▶️ John No, yeah, no, that’s that’s a shame. Uh, I, God, I don’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is, you just got to make sure that fridge doesn’t break. I mean, we have the same problem. Like I, in many ways, as you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco from the program,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, like we’ve, we’ve gone from like, we’ve gone from us hating this fridge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we’re like, we would joke because it’s the only appliance that came with the house that still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco works. All the other ones broke within the first year of us being here and we had to replace them all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco except the fridge that we hated and And that works forever. It’ll never die. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we kept joking, like, let me, someday we’ll sabotage the fridge so we can break it and finally get a new one. Now it’s the opposite.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now we’re like, oh crap, this fridge can never die because we can never replace it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, or you can replace it, but it’s much more complicated than the fridge part of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Yeah, we can replace it only after a cabinet remodel and buying one of these giant ones that I can’t reach
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or having something that’s way worse than what we have now. Great.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the other thing with the Margo fridges is the trend in that sort of price class is not just
⏹️ ▶️ John to buy one of those. They make those counter-depth so your kitchen can look nice and sleek and everything,
⏹️ ▶️ John but incredibly wide, like not as big as two fridges side by side, but close to it. And then they have
⏹️ ▶️ John two of them. One of them is 1.5 fridges side by side that’s really
⏹️ ▶️ John just one giant refrigerator. And then a second one that’s just freezer, and then a thing for wine.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And they’re all
⏹️ ▶️ John in the cabinet front. so much money can be spent on these sort of, quote unquote,
⏹️ ▶️ John commercial quality fridges, which by the way, kind of like Viking stoves, as you’ve experienced, is not any guarantee
⏹️ ▶️ John that they’ll be any higher quality. In theory, they keep the temperature more even inside there and they’re more
⏹️ ▶️ John powerful and they have multiple compressors which a lot of the consumer ones do and everything, but like, it’s one of those
⏹️ ▶️ John things where you don’t actually get what you pay for always. So I would be leery
⏹️ ▶️ John of the super expensive fridges, even if they did solve your problem. Which they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco won’t. Yeah. Also, there are surprisingly few fridges that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually have the ice and water dispensers on the outside. Why is that so rare?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When we were growing up, that was a common thing. I’ve never had one. My entire life, I’ve never had a fridge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that had a freaking water dispenser on the front. I’ve always wanted
⏹️ ▶️ John one. You don’t want that water. It’s bad tasting. And the ice cubes, you don’t want them
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s plenty of ones with this stuff on the outside. Did you see all the double door ones? Not double door. that I talked about
⏹️ ▶️ John on the Rectifs episode where they have a little glass door on the front so you can kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of… Yeah. Yeah, our friends have one. It’s weird. Whenever I go over there and take something out of their fridge, I always pull
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the wrong button and so only the front half opens. I don’t think that’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John thing that matters. That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not going to stick around, I think. It seems like a weird gimmick that just complicates
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the mechanism and takes up more space.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep. I mean, I see the advantages. I see the potential savings. I see the convenience angle, But
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just, it’s such a compromise in terms of storage space. And that’s the other thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you ever got a non-counter-depth one, you’d never be able to go back to counter-depth because you’d feel like you’re using half a fridge.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I see what looks to be a more modern version of our refrigerator that includes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco on it. Of course they do. Oh yeah, some of them have screens and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not really sure why. You can get apps for your fridge.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can get Plex for your fridge. Mike Lugino, the founder of Lugino, is a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey professional fridge maker. He’s also the founder of the Lugino fridge. You can get it from the content store. Nice. Oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my goodness. I put a link in the show notes in the chat room. So this is not our fridge. We bought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ours several years ago, but this is a rough equivalent visually to our fridge.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyway, it has the water feature on the front. Apparently it has Wi-Fi for reasons I still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t understand. But yeah, this is about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco what we have.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s an LG fridge and it looks roughly like that. blow out the counter, blow out the cabinet up top
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and get a crazy tall $6,000 fridge, or blow out the wall next to the fridge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and get a French door.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so the thing is, like, as I talked about on the Rectif’s episode, eventually, if you did
⏹️ ▶️ John find one that fit your dimensions and features, you’d open it up and look inside, you’d be like, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John like this fridge. These drawers are terrible. I don’t like these shelves. Like, you have no choices. Like, you narrow it down
⏹️ ▶️ John so much to find one that that actually can work at all, and then your choice is, well, it’s this one
⏹️ ▶️ John or nothing. And you look at this one, you’re like, but I don’t like this one. Yeah, too bad. Oh good, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Shopping for fridges and stuff. Yeah, and the thing is, I meant to talk about this when you were talking about your washing
⏹️ ▶️ John machine. There is a good subculture, if you want to check it out on YouTube,
⏹️ ▶️ John of people essentially complaining that they don’t make them like they used to, especially when it comes to washing
⏹️ ▶️ John machines and dryers. They absolutely do not make them the way they used to. In some ways, good, because the new ones
⏹️ ▶️ John use less energy and less water and do a better job and yada yada. But in many ways, very bad
⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of quality of materials and durability and expected lifetime, which is why you may have
⏹️ ▶️ John some relative or your parents or whatever that has like a 25 or 30 year old washing machine that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John still going strong. And if you buy a modern one at great expense, there’s no way in hell it’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John last 20 years. You’d have to replace like everything inside that thing three times over for it to last that long.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because they just don’t build them with materials that are even designed to last that long, from the
⏹️ ▶️ John outer case of the thing all the way down to every motor bearing, the whole nine yards.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if you do find a fridge that you actually like and fits in the space, don’t expect it
⏹️ ▶️ John to be there probably as long as this one was, because they’re all made of cheaper materials with lower reliability,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s just a sad state of affairs. Except for, I suppose, the Marco ones, which will be exactly as unreliable as
⏹️ ▶️ John the Marco fridge from the 70s, or
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco whatever the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was. Yeah, right. No, and I tell you, I actually did stumble into that area of YouTube briefly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when we were researching washers because I had the same thought. Hey, why don’t we try to find a really good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one? And if you look at the reviews for every single new washer, with one exception,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the reviews are all the same. They’re all like, well, it doesn’t use much water, cycles take a very long time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it doesn’t clean very well. Like, yeah, that’s, because that’s the, you know, the water
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and energy conservation standards basically require them to be this way. And there’s good reasons for that. You know, water’s in short
⏹️ ▶️ Marco supply in the world and everything, so it’s fine. But the result is that they don’t clean very well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they have other problems too. And there’s one type of machine that exists out there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that seems to still be the old kind. It’s the Speed Queen. And not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even every Speed Queen, the Speed Queen TC model, not the newer
⏹️ ▶️ John models. Have you looked at the controversy on YouTube of the new Speed Queens aren’t as good as the old ones? People are angry
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, I saw those videos. I saw a video of a guy who all he seems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do is take videos of laundry cycles start to finish and so you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see how it washes the clothes start to finish from a camera it’s and the commentary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is amazing I love these videos but yeah so speed cream up there was this big controversy that they changed everything to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco energy efficient for the 2018 models and then in 2019 they brought back one model
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is the old kind that’s the TC instead of the T whatever The other letter is C, I guess for classic.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so you can still buy that. And we almost did, we almost bought it. That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was my vote for which one we should buy. But ultimately, Tiff got final say because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco she does like 99.999% of the laundry in our household. So it’s her machine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this problem with the Speed Queen is that they only make them a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fairly small capacity. and we frequently want to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco put like a queen-size comforter in there and it that that’s not gonna fit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in that so we had to get a bigger one but it’s tricky because like all the reviews for all these machines are basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like yeah they’re terrible and they last you know three to five years maybe. It
⏹️ ▶️ John should last a little bit longer than three to five years but yeah you should just think of it as like a wear item like your brake pads you
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not going to last 35 years if you get 10 years out of it consider yourself lucky you replace it every 10
⏹️ ▶️ John years and in general I think we had the ones that were in our
⏹️ ▶️ John house before, maybe before we moved in, or maybe the ones we brought with us, they lasted a really long time.
⏹️ ▶️ John The new ones that we bought after that were more expensive, but I think they were also better. They were quieter.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think they washed the clothes better, certainly with less water, and
⏹️ ▶️ John in particular, the spin dry on them was way better than the old top loader that we had. So there was an improvement,
⏹️ ▶️ John but of course the reliability was worse. So within eight or nine years, they were
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of on their way out. And so now I’m just basically resigned that every decade or so we’re gonna have to get
⏹️ ▶️ John a new washer and dryer, which helps me to try to control the cost of like, look, don’t try to get a fancy high-end one
⏹️ ▶️ John because they’re just gonna last eight to 10 years anyway. So get one that you like, that has good ergonomics,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you can, we kind of failed on that the last time. We have, our dryer is actually up on blocks, so it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John for a variety of reasons to try to get it up higher. And you know, did you encounter this, by the way, when you were shopping, that they will
⏹️ ▶️ John sell you basically the equivalent of Apple’s monitor stand for your washer. The drawers?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, they’ll sell you a thing that basically, it is a stand, it is a thing that makes your washer or dryer
⏹️ ▶️ John be higher off the ground.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And they- Yeah, we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually, we had those for our outgoing one. Because it only works on a front loader,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because obviously if you do that on a top loader, you won’t be able to reach
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John in. Yeah, unless you’re very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tall. But yeah, which you know I’m not. But anyway, so yeah, we actually, we have the, we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spent the stupid money on the previous machines, because they were something like $200 each. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John stand that contains a drawer. Yeah, it’s a metal box with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a drawer. And I gotta say, it makes it a lot nicer. When you have a front loader, it’s much
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s also like $300 for a metal box, which is just galling compared, and since the washer itself
⏹️ ▶️ John costs so much money, it really bothers me. Anyway, ours is up on blocks of wood, which are much
⏹️ ▶️ John cheaper than that. And you have to be careful with that because obviously they shake around and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John So we just needed to get it a little bit higher so it would clear our laundry basket, because nothing worse than putting a laundry basket in front of your dryer,
⏹️ ▶️ John opening the door, and it hits the laundry basket, that’s no good. Oh yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t have that. So ours is just up a little bit, but yeah, no, I’m sure ours are gonna die
⏹️ ▶️ John in about three or four more years, and then we’ll get new ones and it’ll be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, the reality is, like, the one we got, like, so the one that we were replacing, that, I mean, we got it nine years ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it was, I forget exactly, but it was somewhere around like $1,100, 11, $1,200, something like that. and the new one we got is only 500 bucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so it’s almost like, well, you know, like if this only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John lasts five years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You got a cheap one. Yeah, because top loaders aren’t that fancy. Like if you get the front
⏹️ ▶️ Marco loaders, those are still a very, those are still like around $1,000 mostly. It was also Black Friday,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that helped a little bit. But like, our watcher did us one favor. It died right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before Black Friday. Man, that’s nice. But like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so you know, only 500 bucks for this thing. Like, yeah, you know what? If it sucks, I don’t feel so bad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about it. Because like, yeah, things these days are built like crap, and they don’t last as long. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they’re cheaper, well, you know, it’s not good from a waste perspective, but at least you don’t feel like you’re getting as ripped off.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, if you’re gonna pay a lot for something that’s terrible, that’s a difference. You know, like the microfridge. Like, that’s why I don’t wanna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do that. I don’t wanna spend $6,000 on a fridge, because I know it’s gonna be the same garbage as the $1,000 one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just with a fancier plate on the front of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, if a classic more aggressive wash action is your preferred way of washing, Speed Queens TC5 top load
⏹️ ▶️ Casey washers, the machine for you. Oh, and did we mention it doesn’t have a lid lock?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The marketing copy on this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can dive right in. Yeah, it’s amazing to see the reviews
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the Speed Queen after you’ve seen the reviews for all the other washers. It’s like a cult.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You look at the reviews, like Amazon’s full and everything. You look at the reviews and you’re like, these people are like, my entire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco house smells better as a result of this machine. they’re like Tesla
⏹️ ▶️ John customers. It’s all the positive reviews.
⏹️ ▶️ John people do have problems with the speed queens and they’re, in some respects, don’t do something as well as the modern ones,
⏹️ ▶️ John but those people aren’t gonna be in the reviews. It’s gonna be all the enthusiasts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, it’s the difference. You have to read these reviews. It’s amazing. It’s almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like those cultures of Reddit people who go and infect Amazon reviews with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco totally over the top humorous reviews. It’s almost like that, but they’re real.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s amazing. It’s like these people, it’s like this washing machine changed my life. Like it’s, it’s really