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

374: Screwdriver Testing Harness

16 Apr 2020

John pours even more money into his Mac Pro, Casey buys a $300 keyboard for his tertiary computer, and Marco realizes he may not be a programmer.

Episode Description:

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

Chapters

  1. Marco vs. \Modern\PHP
  2. Follow-up: Retro gaming
  3. Follow-up: 360° audio
  4. Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
  5. Mac Pro wheels, W5700X
  6. Sponsor: Fully
  7. Magic Keyboard for iPad
  8. New iPhone SE
  9. Sponsor: ExpressVPN
  10. #askatp: Podcast time
  11. #askatp: Automated windows/apps
  12. #askatp: Most-proud episode
  13. Ending theme
  14. A second order

Marco vs. \Modern\PHP

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Next thing you’re going to say, oh, I still use PHP, or oh, I still use Objective-C, huh?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, God, let me tell you about PHP. Oh, my God.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Actually, all kidding aside, I wasn’t planning on talking about that tonight, but since I slash you have brought it up,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m genuinely curious what the issue is. And the problem is, I don’t know enough PHP to really be able

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to contribute to the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John conversation. Save

⏹️ ▶️ John it for the show. This

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey is the show.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is not the show. Get on board. Buckle up, John. Oh, my goodness. Not following

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the format, John.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Buckle up. So, what is the issue with modern PHP? And somebody, I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey remember who it was, but somebody had conjectured, you know, maybe it’s for better testing or something, which

⏹️ ▶️ Casey could be, but again, I don’t really know enough about what you’re seeing nor what I’m talking

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about when it comes to PHP to be able to pass judgment. But what is good PHP to Marco

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and what makes modern PHP not good?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco When PHP first was a thing, I think it came out

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the late 90s, I remember first seeing it becoming a thing early 2000s was when

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it really got going. And it became very popular and it got an immediate

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very bad reputation. And part of that was well-deserved. There’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that wonderful website that somebody wrote that says, like, PHP is a fractal of bad design and it goes through a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco million different things about why. Yeah, PHP was like a kind of cobbled together mess

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of multiple different styles of things that from a very long time ago, by not the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco most language nerdy of people. And so it really has a lot of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco odd or bad design choices. But as we said with Chris Lattner, like if you don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know what those things are in your language of choice, you don’t know it well enough. Like every language

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has things like this. You know, some maybe a few more than others and PHP certainly doesn’t do great on the design front,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s not a bad language and there’s lots of wonderful, solid code you can write in it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’ve made half of my living writing PHP code. Everything I’ve done

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in my career has been, for the most part, has been backed by some kind of PHP web app

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or it was some kind of PHP web app. So this is an area that I’m very familiar with.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And over time, what has been considered good good

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or standard PHP code has changed. Back in those early days, before the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco language even had official object-oriented support, it was written

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very much kind of like similar to how probably Bad Pearl was written back then.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Everything was kind of like inline code mixed with markup that was being kind of templated out

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as it was being generated from the web server. And it was very much like a template language.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tangled up with a webpage. If you’ve ever dealt with an old WordPress template,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’ve seen the style that was of the time forever ago. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco over time, it has been, they added really good object-oriented

⏹️ ▶️ Marco support a long time ago, back in like PHP 4 and 5. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really by the time PHP 5 came around, they had ironed out almost all the major shortcomings of object-oriented support.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it was like first-class stuff. So you could write really well-structured, clean code

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very easily as a PHP 5. And that was, jeez, probably 14 years

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ago or something. It was a long time ago. And since then, the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco style of what was considered good PHP code, the style of code you would find if you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco searched for a pre-written library of some kind, became

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the worst stereotype of Java you could possibly think of. I don’t even know if

⏹️ ▶️ Marco actual Java programmers write code this bad, but if you can think of like, how would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mike Judge write a Java programmer code? Like, how would he satirize

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this for Silicon Valley? Like, how would… what’s the worst possible

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stereotype of Java programmers? It’s all these like, huge, deep,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco class hierarchies for no reason. It’s like the only programming book

⏹️ ▶️ Marco anybody’s ever read is that stupid Gang of Four book that has all these patterns in it that are wasteful of everyone’s time

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and code. And it’s just this huge, like, complex mess

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of just classes and getters and setters and subclasses and subclasses and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco subclasses and factories and all this—generators and all these things that just like, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this just needs to like hash a string. What are you doing? Why is all this necessary?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the reason I’m getting all mad about this now is because Apple changed the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the protocol for sending push notifications a while back and I’ve not adopted it yet.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they set a deadline that they’re gonna shut down the old one in I think this fall, November,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco something like that. Part of the work I’m that I’m doing during the quarantine where

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s it’s kind of I’m not getting a lot of like deep programming done and that’s that’s not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know my family’s fault It’s just like I’m not in the mood and so I’m not getting like a lot of iOS coding

⏹️ ▶️ Marco done But I’m taking this time to do like administrative stuff server stuff fixing server side bugs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco improving processes upgrading some of the things on my servers that I’ve been putting off upgrading that really need to be updated because they’re really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco old Stuff like that. One of the things I wanted to tackle was this push notification thing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the new system Apple uses It requires a certain kind of hash. It’s it’s one of those like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ECDSA Yeah, that with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco SHA-256 and this is something that is not easily generated with stock

⏹️ ▶️ Marco PHP And so there’s all these things with like this Java web token or JSON

⏹️ ▶️ Marco web token JWT With like it has to authenticate with this thing. I’m looking for like, all right, how do I generate

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this thing? Now the way most programmers solve a problem of how

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do I generate this this hash that this that this API needs is is they look for a library

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that already has it and they just blindly install it and it doesn’t really matter what

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is or how complicated it is or how big or slow it is. There could be any code in the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco world in there and they’re never gonna look at it. There could be malicious code, there could be creepy code, there could be bad code.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re never gonna look at it. So everyone just installs a package and adds it to their list of package manager scripts

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and their app gets a megabyte bigger with 40 new files

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they call it a day, right? That’s not how I like to do things. I just need to generate this hash.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s already a lot of OpenSSL and built-in hashing functions. Maybe

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s some way I can generate this hash with a lot less than 40 files. Maybe I can do this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a 15-line function somehow. If I could just figure out how exactly to get this,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what exactly to do here. This was tricky, because usually this involves, alright, I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know how to do this yet, and PHP has very documentation for most of its stuff, but even

⏹️ ▶️ Marco reading through a lot of documentation, you know, when you’re dealing with like edge case stuff like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cutting-edge OpenSSL calls, like this is not gonna be well documented and it wasn’t.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I had to resort to my last resort having to read

⏹️ ▶️ Marco other people’s library code to see how they do it. Normally

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I’m in my PHP world, I’m I’m writing my code

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with zero contributors. It is all my code.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The only thing in this that is not my code is like the Stripe library

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for processing payments from ad buyers, which that’s isolated and actually pretty old at this point

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I trust them to not mess around and I don’t wanna mess around with payment stuff. And the built-in PHP

⏹️ ▶️ Marco functions, that’s it. I don’t run anyone else’s libraries. I don’t run anyone else’s, I use S3

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for some things. I wrote my own S3 functions because I needed like two of them. It was super easy. I didn’t need some giant

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing, right? If I’m going to like have to make this certain kind of hash for this push notification authentication

⏹️ ▶️ Marco token, can I just make a function that does this myself? I don’t even use someone else’s framework. I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco use my framework that I wrote that I’ve been evolving for like 15 years. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s my framework. So I know everything it’s doing when something is not working the way

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want to. Not only do I know exactly where it is and how to get at it, But I can change

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it if I need to. Anything about my framework, I have full control over. So normally I’m in this happy little world

⏹️ ▶️ Marco where I don’t need to be exposed to the rest of the PHP universe. And every so often,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will have something like this where I need to go out there, venture out into

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the world with my cloth bag on a stick, walking down the highway.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Venture out there to see, what are other PHP programmers doing here? Every time I do this,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s like I’m looking at a different language. It’s so different from the way I write PHP code. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very simple object hierarchies, mostly C-style functions and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco general processing, not using a lot of the newest cutting edge features.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s especially not using namespaces. If you see modern PHP code, they use the backslash character as

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the namespace separator. So now you see backslashes everywhere. It’s very confusing for a programmer to look

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at that. Everyone’s using this composer package manager and all these frameworks that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t use. So it’s very much like, it’s like if there was a Ruby programmer who

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really didn’t like Rails and was just still writing Ruby without ever seeing Rails. And if you go

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and look for any kind of code out there, you’re like, well, why is it all Rails? Or in my case, like, I don’t like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco using jQuery for everything whenever after I write JavaScript stuff. Like, I don’t like to run jQuery.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t like to rely on this giant third-party library when

⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of what I write in JavaScript now is supported via very easy built-in browser functions. Like, JavaScript’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco built-in functions have gotten really good over the last few years. And you don’t need jQuery for a lot of stuff anymore.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so whenever I can write something that can use the built-in stuff, like the query selector all kind

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of stuff, I just use that directly. I don’t like to use frameworks if I don’t have to. Anyway, so man, when

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I venture out to the world of PHP, and I try to figure out, all right, this library

⏹️ ▶️ Marco can generate these hashes, allegedly. How does it do it? And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco first you go and you’re like, all right, well, this, first of all, is not just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a couple of files. It’s an entire GitHub repo with 40 files,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least 10 of which are meta files, things like package manager description files and manifests and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff like that. And then you see source and tests and all this stuff. And eventually you find the source files where

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re allegedly doing the code. And you go in and it’s like, all right, well, now there’s hashing and classes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and combining and all these subdirectories and each subdirectory has like four files

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in it at least and you’re diving and you’re driving and you’re driving and you’re like where the heck is the actual code

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to generate this hash? How hard can this be? And you find one file

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s just like, okay, this is actually just a subclass of a subclass of a subclass and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this entire file consists of four getters and setters that all they’re doing is returning instance variables.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, that’s nothing. That’s an entire file of like 30 or 40 lines of nothing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s just bloat. And then you go to another file and you’re like, okay, let’s see what the superclass of this is, how is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it calling this, and that one is full of 40 or 50 lines, and they don’t do anything either.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re just, it’s just passing data in and out. It’s like, you know, getter, setters, creators, factories,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco destroyers, whatever they are, it’s nothing code. It’s overhead. It’s templating. It’s BS.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you look at these files and this library that’s like, you know, 40 or 50 files

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in total and it’s hundreds of lines of code, actually contains very little like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco meaningful code. There’s almost nothing to it, but it has all this structure on top of structure

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on top of structure and overhead and this like formality that something like this does not justify.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, so after a day I had it down to 30 lines. Oh, in one function,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it’s one function. And it turns out that there’s almost nothing to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I wanted to do, and it’s documented nowhere. And the responses in Stack

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Overflow and everything are all just, oh, just install this library. It’s like, no, we have amazing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardware these days. We don’t need to use it all for everything. We don’t need to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco use all the memory and all the disk space GitHub repo space.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We don’t need to use it all. We can do things simply. I just,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m really happy I don’t work with other people.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think this is one of those opportunities we have to make Marco even more depressed as he dips his toe

⏹️ ▶️ John into slightly more modern practices. Two things to make you more sad. Well, one of them, I don’t know,

⏹️ ▶️ John you may be neutral about, but the idea that jQuery is what everybody’s using as the big library

⏹️ ▶️ John that blows their JavaScript is… Yeah, I know. be a little out of date. And the second

⏹️ ▶️ John thing is, would you like to know how modern people pronounce what you’re just discovering

⏹️ ▶️ John as JWT? Do I want to know? You do not. I actually

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know either, to be honest. Well, you don’t do modern server-side development. Not anymore. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John pronounced jot.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey What? As in J-O-T?

⏹️ ▶️ John Because people didn’t want to say JWT. I personally like saying JWT, and I’m perfectly fine with But other

⏹️ ▶️ John people did not like it. So the community decided, without consulting me obviously, that we’re

⏹️ ▶️ John all going to pronounce it as Jot. So enjoy that. I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t even know what to say about that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel like I’m not even a programmer. I feel like I’m just some guy who happens

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to write code for my job, but the way the rest of the world does this job is so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco radically different from the way I seem to do it. I feel like I don’t even fit in here. Not only do I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco feel I feel like I would be pretty unhappy working in most modern software development

⏹️ ▶️ Marco teams. But I think I’d be fired. Or I wouldn’t even get the job in the first place. Because I just,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t work this way. I don’t think this way. I don’t think it’s good. I would not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do it well if I was forced to. And I feel like there’s just so much

⏹️ ▶️ Marco unnecessary overhead. Like I always wonder, when I hear some stat, like we learn

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that some company like Twitter has like a thousand engineers for their iOS app. You hear something like that. And I always think,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what do they need all those people for? But then I see the way people write code these days, and I’m like, oh my god,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s so much overhead. They need all these people to maintain and create

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and process and deal with this huge amount of BS

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we’re all writing to justify ourselves existing in this profession and telling ourselves this is all

⏹️ ▶️ Marco worth it and necessary because one time there was a bug because somebody didn’t do this. And it’s like, is it really worth

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all this?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, so I think what we’re, potentially what we’re angling into is the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey philosophical discussion about unit testing again. And I can’t speak for the specifics of this code you looked at.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t see it. Even if I did, I probably wouldn’t be able to understand it because, again, I haven’t written PHP since 2006.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And when I did it, it was barely functional at best. So I am

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not the judge of these sorts of things. one of the reasons you could see that sort of bloat is to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey have a bunch of different places wherein you could plug in like fake versions

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of other code so you can unit test that code. So like, you know, for those who are not developers,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey think of it like you wanted to test out a car, right? Well, if you want to test the engine,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you don’t want to have to connect it to a transmission and all the other things that are

⏹️ ▶️ Casey downstream from the engine. You just kind of of want like a fake transmission or something that you can

⏹️ ▶️ Casey just plug in in its place. Or perhaps an even better example is the other side of the coin. Like if you’re testing the transmission, you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t want a full engine to test the transmission. You just want like a fake one, like an electric motor or something to test that.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’ll spin the transmission just enough so you can test it. And in my experience, a lot

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of times when you see this bloat of classes is because a developer, for better or worse,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’m not necessarily saying it’s better. But perhaps, you know, a developer decides,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, I would really like to be able to unplug and uncouple these two things. So I can substitute one

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in and test the other. And when that sort of thing happens, you have to have many different like levels

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or layers, if you will, such that each layer is testable. Now, if I’m Marco,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would say, well, why do you need to test all these layers? You know, I don’t have any of these layers, my code works, why bother?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you’re not really wrong.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t disagree about the value of modularized testing, like what

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re describing. Where I think people get it wrong is they make those modules too granular

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of the times.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, in this analogy, it’s like, all right, we need to build a transmission. First, we need a screwdriver.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey we need to have a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John screwdriver testing machine. First,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we need to have a machine that makes a screwdriver. Then we need to test it to make sure it always makes screwdrivers. Then, the screwdrivers

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that get produced need to be placed in a screwdriver testing harness first to make sure they work as screwdrivers before

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we can actually use them as screwdriver. It’s like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey okay,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco move up a couple orders of magnitude.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey That’s what we need

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do. It’s not that structure or testing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or this kind of stuff, it’s not that this stuff is bad. It’s that people apply their practices

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or their design patterns so blindly and they never question, do we need to do this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for this level at this time? There’s so much just unquestioning, blind following

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of rhetoric and of other people’s past wisdom in our industry, that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s not a lot of people who are saying like, you know what, let’s actually think about this, let’s actually evaluate this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco honestly, like, are we ever going to need this? Does this deserve this level of complexity?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, does this problem need this complexity? Does this function need to account for all

⏹️ ▶️ Marco these different possibilities that, like, if that happens, the computer’s on fire

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or something like that if that happens something something else is so seriously wrong or like do we need to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco accommodate for all 17 hashing functions if we’re only ever going to use one like it’s stuff like that that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco people are not asking these questions enough they’re not there’s such this like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know this like dogma driven approach like well we need to do this because it’s better we need to do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it this way because it will someday maybe be necessary we need to do this because yeah

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I said earlier like once there was a bug somewhere that we hit as a result of this not being done so now we have to do this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco every single time for the rest of time. Some of these things are good practices

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you need to… but they all have costs and it’s so common for programmers

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to totally ignore the the implementation and ongoing maintenance

⏹️ ▶️ Marco costs of some cool technical thing that they think they should do.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That stuff adds up so much over time that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we end up being crushed under the weight and complexity of things that should be simple.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I agree with you. I think it’s tough though, right? Because on the one side

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re completely and utterly correct. We shouldn’t just blindly take the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey teachings of those who are older than us, but at the same time, how often do the three of us

⏹️ ▶️ Casey snicker when, you know, some hotshot startup like, I I don’t know, Twitter when it was brand new,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey tries to do something with some new tech, because Ruby on Rails at the time was new, if I’m not mistaken, or new-ish.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it all falls on its face because they decided to use the new hotness and not the old and tried and true stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So it’s a give and take. And as I’m getting ever older, granted I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Casey working by myself now, but when I still actually worked with people, I would find

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it frustrating when the young whippersnappers would be like, well, why are we doing it this way? Well, because I’ve lived

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, that’s why. And so I don’t disagree with you, Marco. It’s just, it’s a tough thing, even internally to myself.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like, where do I say, no, this is, I’ve lived this, this is the way it needs to be.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And where do I say, no, actually you’re right. We should rethink this. I presume, John, actually you probably have some more eloquent

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or coherent thoughts about this.

⏹️ ▶️ John I

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey was just

⏹️ ▶️ John going to say that, you know, a factor in this discussion may be that PHP may

⏹️ ▶️ John not be the kind of language that attracts the wisest programmers. Steve

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco McLaughlin Mark, the present company accepted, I’m just saying.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mark Miller There is something to that. I mean, part of the reason why PHP has such a bad reputation is that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was such an easy beginner’s language to learn for so long that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of beginners would use it. And you’d see a lot of beginner code as a result. You

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, before PHP, that role was filled by Visual Basic. Like in the late 90s, Visual

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Basic was like the thing that programmers mocked as a terrible language, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that newbies used in great volume. And it was possible, granted not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco easy, it was possible to write decent visual basic code. The language really fought

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you in a number of ways, but it was possible. And people did. But a lot

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of people who were very new to programming and not very good at it yet wrote in that language. And so it got

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a reputation for being a bad language. PHP was the exact same way of like it’s really you know PHP

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was so many people’s first programming language just as a result of the job market and how easy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was to run and what was in what was in fashion in the boom of web development years

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the early 2000s that like a lot of people learn that first and so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’d search for tutorials you’d blindly you know plow through and copy and paste and you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know have really unstructured bad code in PHP and because language had such a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really a horrible rough start in the sense of language design and advancement there,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there was no central authority really that was showing any kind of leadership whatsoever about what is good PHP

⏹️ ▶️ Marco code, how do you structure this? And there was no dominant framework for most of PHP’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lifespan. It didn’t have something like Rails where like all right, pretty much you’re gonna be using this if you’re gonna be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco using a framework in this language. And the framework can enforce a certain project structure

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and code layout and stuff like that. PHP didn’t have that really. They had this weird Zend company and this Zend

⏹️ ▶️ Marco framework, but nobody ever used that. And that came along too late anyway. For the most part,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of PHP’s real structure and renaissance has happened much more recently,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like in the last five years. For a language that’s been popular for about 15 years,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s pretty much missing the boat. But anyway, PHP has a lot of problems,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you can write really good code on it. And I think my code is all right. I don’t think it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the best code in the world because it’s just for me, so it’s not well documented at all or anything

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that, but it runs really solidly and it is possible to write extremely good, extremely

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fast, low maintenance, high availability code in PHP. I just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wish anyone else’s PHP code has ever been usable to me.

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, part of it is cultural because if you look at the culture of the language, you see a little bit

⏹️ ▶️ John of that, I don’t know, like the charitable way to

⏹️ ▶️ John put it would be a flexibility about adopting features of other languages and less charitable

⏹️ ▶️ John way would be like a thirst to have what other languages have. So if you look at the,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the PHP language itself, it’s like, we don’t have this and not some other language does. We should add that. And they just add it

⏹️ ▶️ John with the first thing that jumps in their mind, whether it be

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey OO or

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco namespaces or whatever, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John And no one is like, all right, so we want to have namespaces. That seems like a thing we might want, but how can we best add

⏹️ ▶️ John them? It’s like, no, no, just add them. Same thing with all the object-oriented stuff or whatever. So you end up with a language that is, and a culture

⏹️ ▶️ John that is, the philosophy is, we can do that too.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s, in some respects, it’s kind of pragmatic of like, well, who cares? I don’t wanna debate the perfect way

⏹️ ▶️ John to do the thing, just add the feature. And so you end up with a language and a lot of features that don’t really work well with each other, and you end up with a culture

⏹️ ▶️ John that says, you know, we have all that stuff too. So if someone arrives and says,

⏹️ ▶️ John I wanna make a library and I wanna do it in what you consider to be a Java style or whatever, like they

⏹️ ▶️ John have an idea in their head of what quote unquote good code is, and maybe they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John not that experienced, but they just know about all these new cool features, they learned about object-oriented stuff, and everything’s gonna have 20

⏹️ ▶️ John class-deep class hierarchies using multiple inheritance or whatever, and they just bang it out, and it suddenly

⏹️ ▶️ John accidentally becomes popular, then now, when you go looking for a library

⏹️ ▶️ John that does a thing, it’s like, oh, this is the best known PHP library for doing

⏹️ ▶️ John cryptographic stuff, and you look at the source code, you’re like, this is the

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey popular library that

⏹️ ▶️ John everybody’s using? And it’s true in Perl too, like a lot of times there’ll be a library that becomes

⏹️ ▶️ John popular over time and you look at it and it was written in a different era of Perl. So if you look at the source code,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like no one would ever write this this way now. Why did it occur to someone to write it this way then?

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, well, it was just a moment, it was a fashion. And in PHP, it’s compounded by the fact that the language itself

⏹️ ▶️ John looks like that. Like why does PHP have this thing? Well, at the time it was considered important that it have that feature and it was important

⏹️ ▶️ John that it had it quickly. And so here’s what we’ve got. So, you know, like the bigger picture, as you noted, is

⏹️ ▶️ John like just, you know, how is other people’s code that whole thing and the fact that you’re used to working alone and not having to deal

⏹️ ▶️ John with that. But on the other hand, you’re very used to dealing with the annoyance of other people’s code when you work on Apple’s platforms,

⏹️ ▶️ John because most of the code in your apps is code that you did not write and you have to deal with it. And their APIs sometimes are

⏹️ ▶️ John broken and they’re weird. And there’s different errors of APIs, depending on when they were written. And, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John some are straight C and they’re weird. And there’s the core foundation stuff, which is its own weird thing. And then there’s the objective C. now that’s the

⏹️ ▶️ John new Swift stuff. And you survive that, like you complain about it, but you

⏹️ ▶️ John work in that world. So I think if you had to get a quote unquote real job, you would deal with it the same way you deal

⏹️ ▶️ John with working on Apple’s platforms. Like, well, this is a fact of life. The code can’t all be mine from top to bottom when

⏹️ ▶️ John I write my iOS app, because that’s just not how the world works. So I’ll just have to deal with what I have to deal

⏹️ ▶️ John with. In the PHP world, thus far, you’ve been able to say, I can just use PHP plus my own code, but

⏹️ ▶️ John depending on what you’re writing and what the environment is, that may not be feasible. If you were writing a much

⏹️ ▶️ John bigger, much more complicated application in PHP, you would be forced much sooner to look to third party code.

⏹️ ▶️ John Because either you wouldn’t want to or flat out couldn’t write all the code you needed. So for example, if you needed

⏹️ ▶️ John to do some complicated cryptographic stuff and you didn’t just need that one hash function, you’re not going to write your own cryptographic

⏹️ ▶️ John library. It’s just too much of a hassle. You would just find a reasonable library and use it and grit your teeth. And that’s what everyone

⏹️ ▶️ John else does.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d be fired immediately. Maybe for other reasons. I wouldn’t last

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a week in a regular job anymore.

⏹️ ▶️ John Too much fisherman’s friend in the office.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ John Creating a toxic work environment, literally.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t wish you to have to get a real job

⏹️ ▶️ Casey ever, really, but I can’t help but wonder if the thing

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that would be your downfall is your new boss saying, okay, I’d really like you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do this. And you look and you just blink. No.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I think I’m done here. That’s that. That’s it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco What if I don’t? The

⏹️ ▶️ John key to having a real job is that you usually can’t actually afford to do that unless you want

⏹️ ▶️ John to spend your entire time interviewing for jobs, which is its own special hell.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my goodness. All right, so half an hour in, you want to start the show? Tried

⏹️ ▶️ John to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey save it.

Follow-up: Retro gaming

⏹️ ▶️ Casey We should do some follow-up and that begins with some retro gaming follow-up. First of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey all, I wanted to say thanks to the people who wrote about Enjoying the last episode. I thought it was one

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of my favorites for for a recent memory And I think that you you two probably

⏹️ ▶️ Casey did as well I really enjoyed it and thanks for all the kind words a few bits of follow-up a whole bunch of people

⏹️ ▶️ Casey pointed us slash me to three different pieces of software slash hardware that I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Was most of which I was familiar with but I didn’t think to bring up at the time The first one is OpenEMU.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey OpenEMU is an emulator for the Mac,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for macOS. And I have used it in the past. I didn’t mention this on the show, but I’ve

⏹️ ▶️ Casey used it in the past and it’s very, very good. The problem I had with it at the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey time was that the only controller I had that could even vaguely work with it was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a Switch Pro controller. And for reasons that I never bothered to figure out, connecting the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Switch Pro controller via Bluetooth was like very finicky and didn’t work terribly well. It very

⏹️ ▶️ Casey well could have been user error. It doesn’t really matter. But I did try it a few times and it did work very well and I really liked it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I’ll put a link to that in the show notes. Additionally, there’s Providence, which is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a emulator for the Apple TV, which I’ve heard very, very good things about. The only catch here

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that you have to sideload it. You have to have a developer account with Apple, which I believe is free

⏹️ ▶️ Casey these days, but nonetheless, you have to sideload it and install it yourself onto your Apple TV. My understanding

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that’s fairly straightforward. I have never written anything for the Apple TV. I don’t know what any of that is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about, but they have pretty good instructions on the Providence GitHub site. And so I think it is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey definitely doable. I also, again, don’t have any controllers that I’m aware of that work with the Apple TV. So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for me, this wasn’t really anything terribly useful, but I did want it to call it to everyone’s attention.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I do definitely recommend OpenEMU. That’s very, very good. And then finally, James Thompson was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the first person, friend of the show, James, was the first person to write to us slash me about Mr.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Which, I’m a little out of my depth here, but if I understand it right, it’s an emulator that’s built on top of a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey readily available FPGA board. So I think we discussed last episode, I think it was mostly John bringing this up,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you have a field, what is a field programmable gate array, which basically means you can kind of reprogram

⏹️ ▶️ Casey chips as you wish. And what this allows you to do is if you trust

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the way they’ve set up their FPGA, you can effectively, asterisk,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey dagger, double dagger, have a perfect, asterisk, dagger, double dagger,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey perfect recreation and emulation of the original systems because they have the original

⏹️ ▶️ Casey system in this FPGA. It’s not quite that simple, of course, but James said very,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey very good things about Mr., that’s capital M, lower I, capital S-T, lower E-R, and again, we’ll put

⏹️ ▶️ Casey links to this in the show notes. But I just wanted to call all these to your attention because a lot of people recommended all three.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Any thoughts about that from you two fellas?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do want to add a couple of other tiny bits of follow-up. I don’t think I ever actually mentioned

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in last week’s show, but the way light guns work doesn’t work on most modern TVs.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Ah, yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you want to play light gun games, depending on the light gun, some of them do work, but I think many of them

⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t because of the way they work. So you might need a CRT to play light gun games.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I also looked into, John and Tiff both thought I should get a CRT instead of using my crazy upscaler.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I was into like, okay, well, what if I want a good condition PVM, which is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a professional video monitor, which is like the best kind of CRT you can get. What are those costs? How do you get them? How many are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco available? It turns out they’re like over $1,000 for a decent one that’s over like 20 inches.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I actually think my setup is not as ridiculous

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as John and Tiff both suggested.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, we suggested you get a CRT and you immediately said, what’s the most expensive, rarest, weirdest

⏹️ ▶️ John CRT I can find? Like, I’m pretty sure you can get a CRT for less than $1,000.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, yeah, but like a crappy one. Like, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John if you want to get- Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John but that was how these games were played.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I don’t think many people were

⏹️ ▶️ John playing on professional video reference monitors. They were playing on their TV in their house and that’s the way it

⏹️ ▶️ John looked and that’s how it acted and you can get one of those for less than $1,000, just saying. That’s fair.

Follow-up: 360° audio

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, and then we had some feedback about 360 degree audio to John I presume you put this in here

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you want to tell us about this?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, Ibrahim Ali writes in to tell us that Sony already has a way to

⏹️ ▶️ John take a photo of your ear to optimize audio Apparently they do it for their 360 reality

⏹️ ▶️ John audio product line thing. It’s kind of confusing like you can basically use

⏹️ ▶️ John Apparently any headphones with it. It’s not a headphone specific feature but it’s like

⏹️ ▶️ John software specific, so in their little how it works section, they’re like, you know, you need to

⏹️ ▶️ John use it with a premium music service, which seems weird, but I guess it’s some kind of tie in, and the choices

⏹️ ▶️ John are Deezer, Nugs.net, and Tidal. I’ve heard of Tidal at least.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can tell you what Nugs.net is. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I was about to say,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco’s gonna be all over Nugs.net, even I’m familiar with

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco it. What

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that, is that a Phish thing? I believe it started out as one, or at least, it certainly started out as like a live band community

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing of like, it’s a service that for a while they were the only place to get like, soundboard

⏹️ ▶️ Marco recordings and fan tape recordings and everything of like, jam bands and other live performing acts.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I believe they actually became official partners with Phish at some point, but anyway, it’s that kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, anyway, so they have, there’s the Sony headphone app that Marco probably has from his old Sony headphones on

⏹️ ▶️ John his iPhone now. You can take a picture of your ear and it will set up a profile that you can apparently

⏹️ ▶️ John use to listen to music. Now, given the constraints of this thing that you can use any headphones,

⏹️ ▶️ John but you have to use these premium services and you take a picture of your ear, it seems to me that what it must be doing is,

⏹️ ▶️ John and also it seems like you don’t need special audio tracks. I

⏹️ ▶️ John think it’s just creating like a profile, like a, I don’t know if it’s just an equalizer

⏹️ ▶️ John profile or a timing profile, some kind of profile based on your ear shape, but since it doesn’t control anything

⏹️ ▶️ John other than sort of like the audio processing side, it’s not quite the

⏹️ ▶️ John same thing as the PlayStation where the PlayStation is synthesizing thousands

⏹️ ▶️ John of audio sources in a 3D game world in real time and then playing that through this thing and then it goes through

⏹️ ▶️ John your head transfer function, yada, yada. But anyway, all this goes to show is that Sony’s

⏹️ ▶️ John thing on stage of saying you can take a picture of your ear and stuff is a thing they’re already doing. They also mentioned taking

⏹️ ▶️ John a video of your ear which would give you, in theory, a way to do a 3D map of your ear instead of just a

⏹️ ▶️ John 2D thing. So if you heard that about the PS5 and thought that’s ridiculous.

⏹️ ▶️ John Sony’s never gonna do that. Never underestimate the weird things that Sony’s willing to do because they’re already doing part of it. Hahaha

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⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, great news about the Dacia Sendera. Now, great news about your Mac Pro, you can put

⏹️ ▶️ Casey wheels on it and it is super affordable.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so this is almost the completion of the Mac Pro rollout, as

⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll see, there’s a bunch of announcements.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Rollout, I see what you did there. Hey.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m gonna say it’s the completion as far as I’m concerned because I think if there’s anything missing it’s stuff that I don’t care About which

⏹️ ▶️ John is why I don’t know the detail. So let’s start with feet and wheels You can

⏹️ ▶️ John buy them separately now We’ve known since the first Mac Pro shipped and people took them apart that they were removable and it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John a big deal But them being a rule doesn’t help unless you can get something to swap in so if you want to

⏹️ ▶️ John buy a Spare set of feet for your Mac Pro or you want to buy wheels for it you

⏹️ ▶️ John can do that. Now

⏹️ ▶️ Marco John, what would four wheels cost me for my Mac Pro?

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, if you remember when you ordered it online in the beginning, adding wheels was $400, but

⏹️ ▶️ John as people tend to not think about when they’re doing options, like, oh, the wheels

⏹️ ▶️ John are $400, like, no, no. Adding wheels and taking away feet equals

⏹️ ▶️ John a net increase of $400. The feet aren’t free, right? So you take away the feet

⏹️ ▶️ John and the feet must cost something. And then you add the wheels. Basically, the wheels are $400

⏹️ ▶️ John more expensive than the feet. So lo and behold, Apple, and it’s Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John math, continues to hold these constraints true. If you want to buy the wheels just by themselves

⏹️ ▶️ John and you do not have a pair of feet to trade in for them, a pair of like new feet to trade in for them,

⏹️ ▶️ John you will pay Apple $700. That is rock bottom.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey So let’s do the math now.

⏹️ ▶️ John If they cost $700 by themselves, but they cost $400

⏹️ ▶️ John when you take away the feet and add them, how much should the feet cost? You guessed

⏹️ ▶️ John it, $300. If you want to buy a set of feet, they are $300. The math,

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s insane math works out. Whether this makes any sense in any, you know, in any

⏹️ ▶️ John real world, that’s apparently how they’re doing all the stuff on the Mac Pro, which is nice

⏹️ ▶️ John in that it’s sensible and I guess it avoids like a condition where there

⏹️ ▶️ John could be this weird, you know, I don’t know what the word for it is, like people could be buying

⏹️ ▶️ John feet in bulk and then trading them in for wheels and like, there’s no way to make money off it. It’s like in an RPG

⏹️ ▶️ John where if you figure out that if you buy this item from this vendor and sell it over there and you just do it infinitely, you can

⏹️ ▶️ John like make money forever. That’s not possible with the Mac Pro. No matter how many Mac Pros you buy and

⏹️ ▶️ John strip the feet off of them and try to sell them separately and trade, like it’s always, the math’s always gonna work out.

⏹️ ▶️ John The numbers are huge and ridiculous, but that’s what they are. $700 for four wheels or $300 for four feet. Enjoy that.

⏹️ ▶️ John Now,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, what year is your Accord? Is it 2014? Yeah, I think so.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Oh, no.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey OK, and is it an LX by chance?

⏹️ ▶️ John No, it’s a Sport, remember?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I thought it was a Sport, and then I changed my mind. Well, for a 2014 Honda Accord sedan LX,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which we now know is not exactly John’s car, a set of four decent continental

⏹️ ▶️ Casey tires, $139 per tire, for a sum total of $557. First of all, those are garbage tires. And second

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John of

⏹️ ▶️ John all, having replaced a wheel on my car. A wheel

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a whole different story.

⏹️ ▶️ John At Honda OEM retail prices, the wheel for my car is $650. So

⏹️ ▶️ John if you do four of those wheels,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey plus four decent tires,

⏹️ ▶️ John it is still way more expensive than this. Now, obviously, who would ever pay OEM Honda

⏹️ ▶️ John prices for the wheels? because I dented my wheel like the first week I got the car and

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I couldn’t stand it. Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, those wheels cost a lot of money. So it is still more expensive than for a real car.

⏹️ ▶️ John And as many people point out, the Mac Pro wheels, they come with basically wheels and

⏹️ ▶️ John quote unquote tires. Like you get them both. What a bargain.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t, I just, $700, that’s so,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially like if you look at the rest of the Apple product line. You know, I think, first of all,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco two things about the wheels. Number one, I think the value is hilarious because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the rest of Apple’s product line, with the exception of the Mac Pro and the XDR,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’ve actually done pretty well in value recently. Like, there was a bad time for a while, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’ve come back in the last year or so with some pretty good value moves.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, you can get the Series 3 Apple Watch, like the low-end Apple Watch is available now, for 200 bucks, that’s pretty good.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can get that entry-level iPad, which is pretty good, for 330, 329, something like that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can get the new iPhone SE, which we’ll talk about, which is an incredible value, for 400 bucks.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The new MacBook Air, that base model, at 999 again, is a great value. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco then you go to the wheels for the Mac Pro. Like, which, by the way, you could get

⏹️ ▶️ Marco an iPhone SE and an Apple Watch for less.

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh my word. Yeah, but try putting your Mac on top of those. They’ll just crush

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. You could get most of a MacBook Air for this price. It’s comical when you consider

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it in comparison to other technology products. It’s just what you could get for $700.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then point number two on the wheels. Back when the wheels

⏹️ ▶️ Marco were discussed on this show before, we didn’t know at that time

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about this hilarious shortcoming that they don’t have wheel stops. And we didn’t, I mean, you can’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco see one in the picture. So, you know, I guess we should have figured out that they didn’t have, but like, he didn’t think about it. And then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you started hearing people who had this and you started like seeing these YouTube videos, like, oh yeah, they don’t have wheel stops and they’re really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco good, really free spinning wheels. So they roll really easily.

⏹️ ▶️ John I thought about it, if you remember, when we first discussed it, I said, I didn’t want wheels because what if I ever decided to have it on like

⏹️ ▶️ John my little table? I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey want it rolling off. That was

⏹️ ▶️ John exactly my thought of why I wasn’t gonna get the wheels.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I now that I know that they don’t have wheel stops like. Maybe in California,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything is so new that their floors are level.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, no, it’s not that they’re level is that because they’re in an earthquake zone, kind of like how a trebuchet has to have wheels on it.

⏹️ ▶️ John Obscure

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey medieval sea weapon reference. You

⏹️ ▶️ John know, the wheels are important because when the trebuchet launches, the wheels allow the base of it to like

⏹️ ▶️ John move on the

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey ground.

⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s important for getting maximum throw distance. So when you’re in an earthquake in California, If your

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pro has wheels, your house will shake, but the Mac Pro can stay still. It will stabilize.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, exactly. It can go back and forth on the table. The table will move underneath it, but it will stay still.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so I feel like any situation where you want to use these

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wheels that’s not on carpeting, you’d be running a pretty big risk. If you’re wheeling

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it to and from location and stuff, that’s kind of crappy. I feel like this was Johnny

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ives’ final middle finger. on his way out, he made these gloriously

⏹️ ▶️ Marco beautiful, useless, expensive wheels for this headlining product.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Here it is, here’s my last move to Apple. I’m gonna go out and I’m gonna ship these

⏹️ ▶️ Marco beautiful objects that are totally useless. Thanks, Johnny, thanks a lot.

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, they’re not useless. It’s good for if it’s on a floor, because if you want these things on wheels, it’s probably like you’re wheeling

⏹️ ▶️ John it around some space that’s frequently reconfigured, or you have it inside a movie studio You’re rolling from place to

⏹️ ▶️ John place and in that case the fact that there are no stops Isn’t that bad it may even be an advantage

⏹️ ▶️ John because if you are like reconfiguring it after a shot or after a series of shots You don’t want to be bending down

⏹️ ▶️ John and finding the little wheel locks even and which wheel that I locked that I lock all four Of them and it’s just too fiddly

⏹️ ▶️ John like I know it’s on the floor. I can’t roll off on anywhere It’s already on the floor It’s not like you’re taking this thing

⏹️ ▶️ John Outdoors and you need special off-road wheels and it’s gonna be on a big hill and the dirt or something, right? It’s just that wheels

⏹️ ▶️ John are a no-go if it is anywhere except on the ground which I think is reasonable. And the fact that they cost $700

⏹️ ▶️ John and the whole pricing thing, it’s just like cars. I mean, you just look at the price on options on luxury cars,

⏹️ ▶️ John they make no sense. Like, you can buy a paint color that costs more than my car. So it’s not, you

⏹️ ▶️ John know. And it’s only when you get into the ridiculous, you know, luxury or super exotic

⏹️ ▶️ John cars. The prices make no sense. That’s what the market will bear. And, you know, and it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John a similar sort of jump. Like you go from like, oh, regular people cars, and then they’re expensive

⏹️ ▶️ John cars, right? And then there are just like cars where money no longer makes sense.

⏹️ ▶️ John And Porsche, I think, is like the inflection point. Because it’s just right in the middle. It’s like, is that a regular car, regular fancy car

⏹️ ▶️ John like a BMW, or is that a ridiculous car like a Ferrari? It’s like, well, Porsche is where you start

⏹️ ▶️ John having discontinuity in the graph. How much is that option? Doesn’t really make any sense anymore.

⏹️ ▶️ John Whereas at least with BMWs, you can kind of see this is an expensive version of a regular car and even Mercedes,

⏹️ ▶️ John but then you get to Porsche and then after that it’s like, well, Ferrari, Maserati, McLaren, just

⏹️ ▶️ John money has no meaning. You want a different color piece of fabric on your glove box, that’s $8,000. Right, it doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John make any sense. So, I mean, Apple would probably argue

⏹️ ▶️ John this, you know, A, this is what the market will bear, and B, if we didn’t price stuff like this, there would

⏹️ ▶️ John be no Mac Pro. And I think most people in this market, and even people who are not technically in the market, like me, who is

⏹️ ▶️ John buying one anyway, but doesn’t need one, would say, I’d rather have the Mac Pro exist and have ridiculous prices,

⏹️ ▶️ John as long as, as Marco pointed out, the prices in the normal products are normal. Like this is a better situation

⏹️ ▶️ John for everybody. The fancy product exists at ridiculous prices that no one’s ever gonna buy, but it exists,

⏹️ ▶️ John and the regular products have reasonable prices. So I’m actually not particularly burned

⏹️ ▶️ John up about the price of the accessories. It could also be because I have no desire to have wheels, but there you go.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, everyone’s gonna be real perturbed when they sell the thousand dollar version that does have wheel locks.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’ll be next year’s model.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, they have opportunities for improvement and price increases. So

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. And so we’ll continue one more Mac Pro item. This completes the rollout. So our second concern,

⏹️ ▶️ John when the Mac Pro was launched, they they had a bunch of video card options in the configurator,

⏹️ ▶️ John some of which were grayed out, including the one that I wanted to get. And I couldn’t get it. So my only

⏹️ ▶️ John options were the stock card, which is garbage, but comes,

⏹️ ▶️ John quote unquote, for free with the computer or a horrendously expensive workstation

⏹️ ▶️ John card that was like add $2,300 or whatever. And this, by the way, when we were doing this on like launch

⏹️ ▶️ John day or when we were configuring it, this is when we first discovered the

⏹️ ▶️ John math that they work. So if you wanna get the, whatever was the Vega 2

⏹️ ▶️ John MPX module, it was add whatever amount of dollars. And so given that that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John what it costs to add it, and they also sold it separately, you could do the math and say that Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John is valuing the stock card at about $400. Because if you take

⏹️ ▶️ John the ad price for the fancy card and the $400 you’re saving by

⏹️ ▶️ John taking out the stock card, you get the total price of the standalone card. So sure enough, the card that

⏹️ ▶️ John I did want, which is their Radeon Pro W5700X, which is

⏹️ ▶️ John basically just a standard AMD gaming card card with more

⏹️ ▶️ John RAM added to it. They are selling it for $1,000. And

⏹️ ▶️ John if you want to add it to your Mac, it’s $600. Because if you take away the $400 stock

⏹️ ▶️ John card and add in the $1,000 one, your net increase in price is 600 ducks. So the math adds up.

⏹️ ▶️ John They’re now selling it separately. Actually during the day today, they launched it and it was available in the configurator,

⏹️ ▶️ John but it wasn’t available separately. And then it was available in the UK separately. And now it’s available in the US

⏹️ ▶️ John separately. So if they’re missing anything that they had announced on launch day, I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John know what it is. I know they’re missing the dual GPU 5700X, but I think that wasn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John on launch day. I think they added that as an option later. They had it as a grayed out option later. So I think

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s still not available, but anyway. Now all the things, as far as I know,

⏹️ ▶️ John that were put up on Apple’s website on launch day are available for

⏹️ ▶️ John purchase. So you’re gonna buy one of these? I did, I ordered it already. The reason I ordered

⏹️ ▶️ John it already is because I’ve already waited a long time for this. And I didn’t want to be in a big shipping

⏹️ ▶️ John queue because who knows how many of these things are. I don’t understand why it took them so long to launch it, but it’s because they were calling you

⏹️ ▶️ John get five of them. I want one of those five. And honestly, it’s because

⏹️ ▶️ John I have very little hope that a better card is going to come out anytime soon. There

⏹️ ▶️ John are better options for cards. There are better, you know, Nvidia options for cards, but Apple’s not going to

⏹️ ▶️ John go there. So if I wanted to say, well, I want to wait around, or I want to wait to see what the

⏹️ ▶️ John benchmarks are or whatever, I know what the 5700 XT can do on PC.

⏹️ ▶️ John But more importantly, I know how terrible the 580X is, and I know I don’t want the workstation

⏹️ ▶️ John card, so this is going to be my only option for a long time. So I ordered it. It’s on its way. It’s arriving

⏹️ ▶️ John sometime between the 30th and May 4th. So I will finally have

⏹️ ▶️ John a non-garbage GPU. And I will also have a $400 GPU that I, quote unquote, $400 GPU that I extract

⏹️ ▶️ John from my computer,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey actual retail value, what, $70?

⏹️ ▶️ John I have no idea what I’m going to do with it. I’ll probably just put it up in the attic somewhere.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Of course you will. Where else would it possibly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John go?

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I could leave it in the computer if I had more monitors to attach, but I don’t. The struggle is real.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You could get another XDR.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco right. I could.

⏹️ ▶️ John Actually, where would I even put that? I don’t think it will fit, literally,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey will not physically fit on my desk.

⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe would two of them side by side fit? Maybe if they went edge to edge, but then I’d really be turning my head.

⏹️ ▶️ John Goodness gracious. Or if you don’t want those people to have to bend, make like a V out of your dual monitors, you know? I mean, I guess most people

⏹️ ▶️ John do that with their dual monitor setups, but at a certain point it’s just like, looking straight ahead just shows you the crease between them,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not good. I’m not a multi-monitor person, as you know. My one monitor is just fine.

⏹️ ▶️ John Plus, like, my pocketbook can’t handle another one of these monitors. It’s bad

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey enough that I’m paying $1,000

⏹️ ▶️ John for a PC video card that actual retail price

⏹️ ▶️ John on the PC is like 300 and change. But I do like, here’s what I do. The reason I didn’t,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, why didn’t you just buy a PC video card already? You could have bought, there’s tons of PC video cards that work on these things. People have done all sorts of tests.

⏹️ ▶️ John Part of the reason I waited for this thing, even though I knew it would be expensive, is because as far as I’m aware, having already ordered

⏹️ ▶️ John it, but as far as I’m aware, it’s passively cooled like the other MPX modules. It’s just a big honking

⏹️ ▶️ John passive heat sink. There’s no additional fan, so the only extra noise my Mac is going to

⏹️ ▶️ John make is going to be determined by how much extra fan RPM is needed to cool this thing. And I’m hoping

⏹️ ▶️ John it won’t be a lot, because most of the time I’m not playing games, and when I am playing games, fine. So, I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John optimistic about this, and I’m glad that I’m getting an MPX module even though I’m paying through the nose for it, which

⏹️ ▶️ John is in keeping with my general attitude towards this computer.

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⏹️ ▶️ Casey We don’t have this in the show notes because apparently you guys don’t care, but I care. I ordered a new keyboard today.

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah, I know that we were missing something. I’m assuming Mark ordered it too.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep. Now John, remind me, what iPad are you rocking these days? You’ve told me 18 times.

⏹️ ▶️ John I have the original Pro. The 9.7? Yeah, none of us have, We don’t have any of the flat edge

⏹️ ▶️ John ones in the house just because my wife, she would have gotten it, but she didn’t like the keyboard accessory. So now that there’s a new keyboard,

⏹️ ▶️ John maybe she’ll like it, but I don’t think she’s going to entertain that until she can try one.

⏹️ ▶️ John And she’s not going to end up trying one until going to stores becomes a thing again. So I’m not holding my breath.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, early earlier today as we record, the magic keyboard for the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPad pro became orderable and I have ordered one. It should be here in a couple of weeks. I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Casey very, very excited. I probably should not spend the money on this because I already have a keyboard attached

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to my iPad Pro, but I’m so excited for this thing. I am so excited. Marco, did you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey order one or seven of them?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s funny, and now that I guess, you know, ragging the wheels for being so expensive, I did order a $300

⏹️ ▶️ Marco keyboard for my iPad Pro, which is almost the cost of the entry-level iPad. It does feel

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little excessive, but you know, it might be really great.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not yet convinced of that, and I really want to see it. And in part, I ordered it because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s such a thing in our community right now that I want to be able to try it and be able to talk about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it intelligently on the show. And I’m kind of irritated whenever tech podcasters

⏹️ ▶️ Marco say this. I’ve said it myself before, I’m guilty of this, of like, I need this for the show. I need to buy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this new gadget. I don’t really need, but I need to buy it for my work, for the show, so I know how to talk about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. I’ve said this before, too. It’s that we never need it that many

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of us get by without buying these things and we have careers in podcasting just fine Yeah, and there’s lots of stuff. I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t buy that I talk about anyway, so it’s it’s not we don’t need these things

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We buy them because it’s an excuse to buy them and we are fortunate enough that we can take advantage of that excuse

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and here We are so anyway. I bought it with no excuse just because I want I want you try it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not yet convinced that I will keep it Because I’m not yet convinced that it will be the right thing for me

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I really am very curious about it. I’m most curious about that hinge and how it, just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco how it feels, how heavy the whole thing is, and just how it works in practice.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I’m super excited. I’m looking forward to it. You know, I am not a devout

⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPad user, but I really do enjoy using my iPad, particularly, you know, when I’m goofing off on the couch

⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the end of the day. And I find that the smart keyboard,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what is it, smart keyboard folio, the existing one? I do like it quite a lot. In fact, I think I like it more than

⏹️ ▶️ Casey most people, to be honest with you, because I really, really like it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco However- As do

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I. The thing that drives me absolutely bananas about it is the fact that there are two viewing angles

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which both suck. And this is not, you know, an original thought. Almost everyone who has this has said the same thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, there are occasions when one of those two viewing angles is perfect, but that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey extremely rare for me. And I really want more mobility. This is such a first world

⏹️ ▶️ Casey problem. I’m listening to myself just getting disgusted, but here we are. So anyway, I just really want

⏹️ ▶️ Casey more mobility in my keyboard for my tablet computer that I don’t need. God, I gotta stop.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John But anyways,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really, really am excited for it. I really, really want it. And so I Insta-bought it just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I think it’ll, I’m hopeful and I think that it will really make using the iPad that much

⏹️ ▶️ Casey more enjoyable. Plus the very limited time I spent with a mouse and or trackpad

⏹️ ▶️ Casey connected to the iPad, it’s not something that I feel like is changing my world the way it might change like Mike’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or Federico’s. But it definitely was really cool and I can definitely see using it. I actually have been

⏹️ ▶️ Casey VNCing into my own computers, not irregularly for dumb reasons

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be honest, but it happens. So it would be nice to have an honest to goodness pointer

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the device that I could use instead of scrolling around. I mean, the Screens app

⏹️ ▶️ Casey by Adobe, is that right? Our friends Luke and I forget who else he’s working with now. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyways, it’s a very good app. And I really, really like it. And they do as well as they can without having a pointer.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But now that I’ll have a pointer, they already support having the pointer from what I understand. I’m so excited.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyway, I am really, really, really excited to get this at the end of the month or beginning

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of next month.

⏹️ ▶️ John I was looking on the website. It doesn’t appear that there’s any additional information about the weight of the thing or anything

⏹️ ▶️ John added to the website now that you can actually buy it. It’s the same pages as always. The buy page doesn’t seem to have any

⏹️ ▶️ John extra info. So I think we’re still all in the dark about how heavy this thing actually is.

⏹️ ▶️ John I know people were trying to do math based on the weight listing on Amazon or whatever,

⏹️ ▶️ John but then some people thought that included the packaging or it included the iPad or who knows.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, there was a good Dr. Drang post about that, but the thing is Amazon weights and dimensions

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are often off. Yes,

⏹️ ▶️ John yes, I’ve experienced that many times with non-tech products. Both

⏹️ ▶️ John of those things are very suspect. That’s why everyone asks in the Q&A section on Amazon, there is always a question

⏹️ ▶️ John that someone asks, can someone tell me how big this thing actually is? Yep.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, that’s so true.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and I always, whenever I need to know that information, I always look there because the quoted spec I know is gonna be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wrong a lot of the times.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so I’m excited for both of you to get this and tell me whether it’s garbage or not because I

⏹️ ▶️ John probably am going to get, no, I’m not gonna probably buy this new iPad, but whatever the next iPad is, I think it’ll

⏹️ ▶️ John be time for me to finally upgrade my 9.7 inch iPad Pro. and I might

⏹️ ▶️ John consider this keyboard thing. Like I don’t think I would use it all the time, but it would make this

⏹️ ▶️ John a much more viable laptop replacement for me. I don’t use my iPad like that at all now.

⏹️ ▶️ John I might even consider it, even if it just ends up being a better way to have

⏹️ ▶️ John my, to watch TV on my iPad, even if I never touch the keyboard, just like because of the flexible hinge and

⏹️ ▶️ John the different viewing angles, like Casey was saying, you know, if that’s, if you have more flexibility than two positions, Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John realize right now, when I watch TV on my iPad, I’m using the smart cover on the 9.7,

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s one viewing angle. It’s just, I make a little triangle behind my thing, and that’s the angle. And of course I can

⏹️ ▶️ John adjust that by like, putting it on top of a pillow and tilting it, and then it falls on my forehead. You know, everyone knows the

⏹️ ▶️ John deal with using an iPad in bed. So I might consider this case, if the hinge

⏹️ ▶️ John turns out to be super awesome, they’re like, look, even if you don’t even care about the keyboard or the trackpad, this is the greatest hinge ever,

⏹️ ▶️ John I might end up getting it. But for now I’m content to let you two try it and tell me if it makes the thing weigh seven

⏹️ ▶️ John times as much or if the hinge is garbage.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am nervous about that, but I mean, does it really matter for me anyway in the grand scheme of things?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like this thing almost never leaves the house to begin with. And that was before we weren’t allowed

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John to leave. I mean, you

⏹️ ▶️ John might be used to it, but it might like, cause my wife has the, uh, the old keyboard

⏹️ ▶️ John thing that when we’re talking about the, like it’s double layered in a spot, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, yeah. I know

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that

⏹️ ▶️ John one. Yeah. And every time I pick up her iPad, I just get angry at how heavy it is. Like

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s on the bed or I want to pick it up and put it on her nightstand or whatever. Like, why is this so heavy? It just, I

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know why it makes me angry, but it does, it just feels like a ton of bricks.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco This isn’t going to improve that. Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ John I

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco know, that’s what I’m saying. This

⏹️ ▶️ John is gonna make that even worse. So I’m like, even though they never leave the house, I’m not carrying it in a bag over my shoulder.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, it becomes a different thing. It becomes less of just like a,

⏹️ ▶️ John like a flingable light thing you can quickly pick up with two fingers, it becomes like, like if you had your laptop

⏹️ ▶️ John on your bed, you start feeling like you have to pick it up more carefully because it’s so heavy, you need more effort, you can’t just

⏹️ ▶️ John pick it up with two light fingers, like whereas my iPad is, you know, much less like that. So

⏹️ ▶️ John I think subjectively for me anyway, despite the fact that like Casey’s iPad it never goes

⏹️ ▶️ John anywhere, I don’t want this to be a device that I think about and lift in

⏹️ ▶️ John the same way that I do my MacBook Air or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, we all know how you mentally file laptops. And if this gets heavy enough that it ends

⏹️ ▶️ Casey up in the laptop bucket in your mind, then it’s all over.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the laptop bucket, though, because I’m not using laptops, I’m constantly picking them up because my kids leave them on the couch,

⏹️ ▶️ John leave them on the bed. And

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I’m picking it up and I’m bringing

⏹️ ▶️ John it downstairs and attaching it to the charger so it’ll be charged for the next day of school Zoom meetings.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. hehehe

New iPhone SE

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, yeah, yeah. All right. So other new hardware today, and I honestly didn’t spend

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the time to look into this too much because for me, I’m not that interested, but perhaps others are.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s a new iPhone SE and it got bigger.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the iPhone SE is dead. Long live the iPhone SE. You don’t sound too excited.

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, so here’s the thing. This has been discussed to death, you know, in our

⏹️ ▶️ John weird nerd community. The iPhone SE, why is it not updated? I like small phones,

⏹️ ▶️ John when are they gonna update it? Oh, when they update it, they’re gonna make it bigger. I only care about the SE because it’s small.

⏹️ ▶️ John There’s much philosophical debate about this, whether the iPhone SE was the small

⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone or the iPhone SE was the cheap iPhone. And there is a very loud contingent

⏹️ ▶️ John of mostly tech nerds, I would imagine, for whom the iPhone SE was

⏹️ ▶️ John the small phone. The whole point of it existing is that there can be a phone on Apple’s lineup that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John small like my beloved iPhone 5 or 5S or whatever it used to be.

⏹️ ▶️ John The new phones are too big, I want a small phone, I’m glad Apple still makes a small phone, and when they updated the internals of

⏹️ ▶️ John the SE, it’s like, wow, look, I can have a small phone and not have total garbage internals, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, to that section of the population, when you said iPhone SE,

⏹️ ▶️ John they thought, ah, the small phone that I like. Like, that defined the product as far as they were concerned.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think it ever defined the product as far as Apple was concerned. I also don’t think it defined

⏹️ ▶️ John the product as far as the public is concerned, but I could be wrong about the public part of it, just because

⏹️ ▶️ John there are lots of reasons why Apple may conceptualize the product differently, right? Because in the end, it was just like an older version

⏹️ ▶️ John of their phone that they were manufactured for longer. You know, there was like all sorts of reasons why it made sense that it looked

⏹️ ▶️ John the way it did from the perspective of Apple, like here’s how we manufacture phones

⏹️ ▶️ John and here’s how we can sell it cheaply because we already have the factories and the assembly lines

⏹️ ▶️ John and all that other stuff. But from a consumer’s perspective, knowing nothing about Apple or

⏹️ ▶️ John anything, if you go in the store and say, here’s all the iPhones, which one do you want? The distinguishing characteristic of the iPhone

⏹️ ▶️ John SE would be, oh, this is the smallest one. Whether Apple intended it or not, I

⏹️ ▶️ John can imagine them thinking that. All that said, I’m not entirely sure that the public, when they saw

⏹️ ▶️ John the line of the iPhones in front of them, when they saw that’s the small one, they would say, oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the small one. Actually, I love small phones because the public has shown that they do not love small

⏹️ ▶️ John phones. The public has shown ever since the iPhone six, even the iPhone buying public is they

⏹️ ▶️ John like larger phones than the iPhone five or iPhone five s

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s, you know, the public has spoken, right? So nevertheless, there was the se and it was small

⏹️ ▶️ John and it was also cheap, but most people were not buying the iPhone se they were buying the bigger

⏹️ ▶️ John phones and in the Android market, same deal, they’re buying the bigger phones. So now the new iPhone

⏹️ ▶️ John SE, which is called iPhone SE, exactly the same as the previous iPhone SE.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s like the Xbox One, which is not the same as the first Xbox, but now it’s the Xbox One and then we’re going to have the One S, One

⏹️ ▶️ Marco S, One

⏹️ ▶️ John S. Xboxes were distinguished. James Thompson, the developer of Pcalc, brought this up in a tweet today.

⏹️ ▶️ John He was in the Xcode simulator where you can pick which device you want to simulate. What are, in a pop-up

⏹️ ▶️ John menu, what’s going to be the items in the pop-up menu? and then next to it another item that’s also called iPhone

⏹️ ▶️ John SE? Are they gonna put a year in parentheses after it? You just have two items called

⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone SE?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway. I can tell you exactly what it’s gonna be. Because you see in the list right

⏹️ ▶️ Marco now, you see iPad Pro 11 inch in parentheses, and then in the second set of parentheses,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco first generation, and iPad Pro 11 inch, second generation. iPad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Air, parentheses, third generation. iPad, parentheses, seventh generation. So I bet what we’re gonna see

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is iPhone SE, parentheses, second generation.

⏹️ ▶️ John Is this the second, isn’t this the third generation?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not of the SE, I mean, there was the 5S, but that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John was its own

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. There was iPhone SE, which was the 5S case with the 6S internals, and now we

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have the iPhone SE, which is the 8 case with the 11 internals.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, anyway, so like I was saying, from Apple’s perspective, this is just,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, like they sell you a phone that they use to manufacture, you know, form factor wise, but with different

⏹️ ▶️ John internals. And so this is all shift, as time has marched on, they’ve done the shift and now they’re selling you,

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t remember the year gap is, but they’re X generations or X years old phone with

⏹️ ▶️ John modern internals. So this, as far as I’m aware, I didn’t look at the details, but this is the iPhone 7,

⏹️ ▶️ John basically case. iPhone 6, 6S, 7. It’s the

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco iPhone 8,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, 6, 7, 8.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yep, so that’s what it looks like. It’s obviously bigger than the SE

⏹️ ▶️ John because the SE was like the 5 and 5S, which, you know, so it’s just going back in time as far as manufacturing.

⏹️ ▶️ John But like the SE, even though it looks like Apple’s old and busted phone, ancient

⏹️ ▶️ John phone from a long time ago, inside it has, for this brief moment in time,

⏹️ ▶️ John the best internals that Apple makes. So it’s got the A13 chip inside it, and it’s not a crappy

⏹️ ▶️ John version of the A13, it’s not an underclocked version of the A13, it is the plain old A13. So

⏹️ ▶️ John kind of like the Mac mini and lots of other products that Apple makes that are updated incredibly infrequently,

⏹️ ▶️ John there is a moment when they are first introduced when they are competitive, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John The new iPhones with A14 will come out soon, and then this will be the previous gen thing. But

⏹️ ▶️ John for this brief moment in time, if you’re interested in a phone the size of the 6, 6S, 7, or 8,

⏹️ ▶️ John and you wanna get one, but not pay the price of having old internals, you can get this

⏹️ ▶️ John phone. And it’s an incredible bargain because you’re getting an A13 system on a chip

⏹️ ▶️ John and 64 gigs of storage for $399? And 64 gigs is, I think, a fair base model.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, that is a totally fair- It’s a good

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John phone. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so 64 gigs, it’s the same as the base storage for the iPhone 11. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iPhone 11 has the same processor. The

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cameras appear to be almost the same. There is some difference, like the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhone SE apparently might have different optics, maybe, and it apparently does not have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco night mode. But it does have almost everything else, including portrait mode, amazing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco processor, as you said, it’s the A13, so it’s the same. The iPhone SE did something very similar when it came

⏹️ ▶️ Marco out, as I said, the first one, it was iPhone 6S internals

⏹️ ▶️ Marco during the 6S’s reign as the flagship phone. So it was the same thing, where the 6S was released in the fall,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then in the spring, they released the SE with the same processor as the current flagship phone. So they used the exact same

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing again. flagship phone releases in the fall, in the spring we have the new

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tiny value phone for, tiny is relative, but you know, the new tiny-ish value phone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at this $400 price point, which is also what the SE launched at, and using the same internals. It’s fantastic,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a fantastic deal. And if you look at like, okay, well if you want something above that, above this $400

⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone, you have to go to $700 to get the iPhone 11, the non-pro one.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And what you get for almost twice the price is nowhere near almost twice the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone. And if you want to go for the iPhone 11 Pro,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you are then spending significantly, and then you’re spending almost three times as much

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for something that is definitely not three times the phone. And so this is an amazing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco value, $400 to get flagship class components with just no face

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ID, basically, and a smaller screen. That’s not a bad deal at all,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially right now as Face ID is not really what the world

⏹️ ▶️ Marco needs right now.

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, you give up other things as well. Like obviously you have the screen that doesn’t go edge to edge. It’s an LCD

⏹️ ▶️ John instead of an OLED. You only get a single camera. Like there’s all those sorts of things, but like you would expect,

⏹️ ▶️ John especially from Apple, but even from any other manufacturer, you expect they would compromise on everything.

⏹️ ▶️ John And I think that the internals, like the system on a chip is where it really counts. So

⏹️ ▶️ John you like, yeah, you’ve only got one camera and it’s not the fanciest camera and it doesn’t have night mode

⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s touch ID instead of face ID and the screen doesn’t go to edge and all these compromises, but like it costs

⏹️ ▶️ John so little money compared to the other phones. And you get one, the one component you get that is

⏹️ ▶️ John best in class is the most important component. Now, you might say, well, isn’t the camera the most important component for most people?

⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe, but this is not a bad camera and the lack of multiple cameras, I don’t think it’s gonna

⏹️ ▶️ John bother most people, especially since the software papers over a lot of this, like with portrait mode with a single camera. And the

⏹️ ▶️ John reason they can do all that stuff is because the system on a chip is so powerful that they can make up for the hardware deficiencies. So,

⏹️ ▶️ John also I wouldn’t read too much into the fact that this has touch ID and all that stuff. It’s like, oh, Apple’s found

⏹️ ▶️ John out that people don’t like Face ID. It’s just because this generation of phone had touch ID. That’s why it’s on this one. Eventually,

⏹️ ▶️ John as we move up, these phones will touch ID, will age out. And if Apple hasn’t come up

⏹️ ▶️ John with under the screen touch ID by then, this, the SE line of phones will stop having

⏹️ ▶️ John Touch ID. It’s not a philosophical difference, it is just the march of manufacturing

⏹️ ▶️ John of Apple, you know, makes a product and they have the product, the assembly line to do it, and

⏹️ ▶️ John they change the internals and they keep making the product and they don’t wanna change too much about it. So, because the 6, 6S, 7,

⏹️ ▶️ John and 8 all had Touch ID, so does the SE. Eventually,

⏹️ ▶️ John I guess, you know, when the XR or whatever ages down into this thing, they’ll have Face ID. Speaking of which,

⏹️ ▶️ John I think that, do they still sell the XR and XS and stuff? Like that may be a step

⏹️ ▶️ John up. If so, that may be a step up from this that isn’t a jump all the way to the 11.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The R is for sale, the S is not.

⏹️ ▶️ John And I also heard that this camera is more comparable to the camera on the XR

⏹️ ▶️ John than it is to like the 1X camera on the 11 Pro, but

⏹️ ▶️ John either way, like you’re not, when you’re buying a phone for this much less than the fanciest iPhone.

⏹️ ▶️ John Haggling over the specific spec details of the camera, I like, is a little bit ridiculous.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So. The XR, for reference, as a quick follow-up here, is $600. So it’s like 50% more money for a phone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is better in some ways, but worse than others. Like, it does have the A12s and the A13. The camera

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is worse in certain ways. Like, I don’t know. I think between these two, I’d rather

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have the new SE than the XR.

⏹️ ▶️ John No, you don’t have the Face ID, which is a big experience change, but some people do like the Touch ID better. Again,

⏹️ ▶️ John those people should be prepared that eventually it probably will go away, but for now, if you want

⏹️ ▶️ John a phone that has it, here’s your option. I really loved my iPhone 7. I

⏹️ ▶️ John think I said back when I finally retired it that I felt like the 7 was the pinnacle

⏹️ ▶️ John of that form factor because the 7 was the flagship phone at the time, right? The 8 was not the flagship phone

⏹️ ▶️ John ever, right? And this is not a flagship phone, So the 7 was a flagship phone and I

⏹️ ▶️ John felt like it all kind of came together. I like the home button that didn’t move. I like the

⏹️ ▶️ John color and finishes and even though I kept mine in a case, I like the size and dimensions

⏹️ ▶️ John and this was before Face ID appeared. So it was just like, this is the perfection of this design.

⏹️ ▶️ John Basically the iPhone 6 size phone with Touch ID, you know, before the

⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone 10 came and redefined everything. And so this SE is basically like, Imagine if they had just continued

⏹️ ▶️ John down that evolutionary path. This is this is an even better iPhone 7 So I looked at this and I was like

⏹️ ▶️ John for my next phone if I was getting my next phone today Would I get this one? I pretty quickly said no just because of the camera

⏹️ ▶️ John stuff Because you know, I’m not that price sensitive and I’d rather have the fancier camera but I really like

⏹️ ▶️ John this this size like I liked it better than the The 10 and 10s size 10 and 10s are

⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit bigger You know, I like the bigger screen on the 10 and 10s But

⏹️ ▶️ John I you know, I have I have some affection for this form So kind of like the MacBook Air if

⏹️ ▶️ John someone wanted to get an iPhone and they didn’t want to spend a lot of money I would have no hesitation

⏹️ ▶️ John to immediately point to the iPhone SE especially since if you want to go to 128 gig It’s only like 50 extra bucks

⏹️ ▶️ John This is a no-brainer recommendation for somebody who wants an iPhone and they what they would be getting is not

⏹️ ▶️ John a crappy iPhone or like A used iPhone 6s that barely works anymore anymore.

⏹️ ▶️ John This is a completely modern, good iPhone that if you don’t care about having the super

⏹️ ▶️ John awesome best specs, I think you will buy and love.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I fully agree. I mean, and even you know, you’re saying a minute ago about about like face ID, like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this past summer, if we recall, I did an experiment where for a little while I was carrying my iPhone,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I see a lot of the places instead of my my at the time 10s. I thought it would be harder

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to adjust to. But it really wasn’t. And it was glorious, how small and light

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was compared to the XS and 11. The new

⏹️ ▶️ Marco X, XS, 11 series phones are not only bigger, but significantly heavier

⏹️ ▶️ Marco than what came before them. And if you’re wearing a big complicated outfit, you might’ve noticed, in the summertime when you’re wearing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco shorts, it’s actually pretty obvious. It’s actually a substantial difference. And when you put that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco little tiny SE in your pocket, you’re like, wow, I feel like I’m walking on air. You’re bouncing down the sidewalk. It really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a noticeable difference. It is certainly very pleasant to hold that tiny

⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone in your hand. Now, actually using it was not quite as pleasant and the camera on it was garbage compared to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco modern standards. But this might be a happy medium for people who don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco want the increased size and heft of these larger 10 series phones.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is a pretty good option. I would also say going back to Touch ID,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from Face ID and switching back and forth during those couple of weeks in the summer was not actually difficult.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I thought it would be harder than it was. It really wasn’t. The only hard part for me was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco going back to the narrower keyboard width on the original ESE. That was tricky.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I made a lot of typos those first few days, but then I just got used to it and it was fine. You know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we typed on those for years and that was just the only size we knew and we all typed a lot of words on those

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just fine. Well, mostly fine, it would correct them. But, you know, and so I think,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, First of all, if anybody is thinking about maybe switching back to a smaller size,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s not a bad idea. Keep in mind that this fall, new

⏹️ ▶️ Marco phones will come out at the high end and you’ll be jealous of them and so you might not wanna do it for that reason.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But if you have been sitting around and maybe you skipped the 11 or the 10 series and you’ve been sitting

⏹️ ▶️ Marco around maybe waiting for Face ID to get better or maybe you really love Touch ID and you wanna hold onto

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it for as long as you possibly can, which is great, Touch ID is awesome. then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is a really good option. And I will also go back for, if we can step back even

⏹️ ▶️ Marco further, before we leave this topic, John mentioned at the beginning, there’s a lot

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of people who buy the small one because it’s small. There’s also a lot of people who buy the small one because it’s the cheapest one.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we see this across the whole product line. Typically, Apple prices the smallest option

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a line as the cheapest. And typically we hear from various rumblings

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or statements that those smaller options usually are the biggest sellers in any given line.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whenever the smallest is not the cheapest, it’s usually not the biggest seller. Like the iPad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mini, for instance, is a great example. The iPad mini is the smallest iPad. It got updated this past year,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco uh, you know, just like all the other ones. So it’s like, you know, it has current components and everything. It is the smallest iPad.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is not the cheapest iPad. As a result, almost no one buys it. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s clear in that case that what people want out of an iPad is not the smallest iPad, they want the cheapest

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad. When you look at the Mac lineup, they had the 12-inch for a while.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco When the 12-inch was discontinued, the reasoning we heard from rumblings, et cetera, was that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically, once the new Air became for sale, the sales

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the 12-inch fell off a cliff, that people just totally stopped buying the 12-inch because the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco new 13-inch Air was similarly priced, had similar compromises,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but was actually just a better overall computer at that price range, even though it was bigger. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there were configurations of it that were cheaper. Like they would under spec it, so it wasn’t quite an even fair

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fight, but there were configurations that were cheaper. So really,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what sells large volumes at these smaller products is usually just that they’re cheap,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cheaper, rather. They’re less expensive. Not that they are necessarily the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco smallest. And so while there are people out there who are upset by this, certainly, because they were hoping

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the small SE to remain a small phone and just be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco updated in that old, you know, tiny form factor. The reality is that’s not why most people who bought

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it were buying it. Most people who bought it were buying it because it was the cheapest one. Apple is doing the same

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing again. They’re using an old phone case, new phone internals, the same $400 starting

⏹️ ▶️ Marco price point, and they’re gonna sell a ton of these things because for what is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in there, that’s an awesome deal.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I do wonder about the justification of the

⏹️ ▶️ John size, like the justification that Apple gave, like for people asking the question, hey, the old SE was

⏹️ ▶️ John small, this one is bigger, what’s the deal, Apple? Apple’s line was typical,

⏹️ ▶️ John political, like they could have just given the answer that you gave, Marco, which I think is the right answer, which is basically, look, people

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t want a smaller phone, they want a cheaper phone, as evidenced by these other product lines. but doing that would be

⏹️ ▶️ John a revealing too much about their sales that you tend not to wanna reveal. Like they don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John even give those unit sales and earnings or anything anymore. But also

⏹️ ▶️ John B, like when they discussed this topic, they said

⏹️ ▶️ John what they actually said. They said, we’ve sold, what is it? 500 million of these phones.

⏹️ ▶️ John So people love this size, which is a PR-y thing

⏹️ ▶️ John for you to say and is true, but it’s also a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s like, well, you sold 500 million

⏹️ ▶️ John of them because it was like the only size during the 6, 6S, 7, and then later you continued

⏹️ ▶️ John to sell the 8. Of course you’ve sold a lot of these phones, right? Any

⏹️ ▶️ John form factor that you keep in your lineup for years and years is going to sell a lot. And then later when you say, here’s

⏹️ ▶️ John why we’re selling this thing, oh, it’s because we sold a lot of them in the past. When they only had one size

⏹️ ▶️ John of phone, all of the phones were that size. And they said, this is the size iPhone that people love.

⏹️ ▶️ John Why? Look how many millions we’ve sold. In fact, 100% of the iPhones we’ve sold have been this size.

⏹️ ▶️ John Clearly people love this size. And that was, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John true in one sense in that, yes, people bought them and they like them, but not true in the other sense in that when they

⏹️ ▶️ John put out the iPhone 6, their first quote unquote big phone, sales went crazy because there was pent up demand for the

⏹️ ▶️ John big phone. This is a too nuance of an explanation for

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple to try to actually give when someone asked that question. They’re not gonna go through all of that. They’re not gonna

⏹️ ▶️ John explain how their experimentation with the SE, you know, continuing to sell

⏹️ ▶️ John the SE, like that Apple didn’t conceptualize it as a small phone, it’s just because that’s how big the phone case was of their older

⏹️ ▶️ John phone and they kept selling it. And that their evidence shows that it’s the cheapness that sells it, not the size

⏹️ ▶️ John and yada, yada, yada. They could talk about the 5C, about that being a cheaper phone. And you know, like

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s all sorts of stuff that Apple could use to justify this, but they chose not to do any of it. They just said, this is a

⏹️ ▶️ John super popular phone and we sold a lot of them, which is a non-answer, but in many ways

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a more honest answer than trying to explain these nuances, right? Because the

⏹️ ▶️ John bottom line is, like, they don’t want to say, we’re selling this phone because

⏹️ ▶️ John we already have made this phone for multiple generations. And the next phone, if we continue to follow the same pattern,

⏹️ ▶️ John is going to be whatever phone we sold a bunch of, presumably the XR or XS form factor. They don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John want to give you those details. They just want to give you an explanation that says people like it. And honestly, in the end, I think they’re right.

⏹️ ▶️ John They sold a lot of these phones. And unlike the situation with the original one before the six, it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John like there’s pent up demand for a tiny phone that isn’t being served. If that was true, you know, the SE would

⏹️ ▶️ John have sold way better. Now, remember the stories back way back when they were saying that Apple was surprised at

⏹️ ▶️ John how well well the original SE sold, because at that point there was pent up demand

⏹️ ▶️ John for the smaller phone. but I think that’s more of a in comparison to expectations

⏹️ ▶️ John thing more than an absolute value thing. So Apple underestimated how much pent up demand there was for a small phone,

⏹️ ▶️ John but in absolute values it was nothing like the pent up demand for a large phone when the 6 came

⏹️ ▶️ John out, right? So they quickly caught up for demand for the SE and then there was a steady state

⏹️ ▶️ John in which the SE was not selling like hotcakes, you know, despite the fact

⏹️ ▶️ John that it was the cheapest phone just because the market has moved on and they don’t want phones that small, which is painful for

⏹️ ▶️ John people to hear. Like they were saying, can’t they just make one phone that’s small? And I would argue that that would be a good idea, but

⏹️ ▶️ John the problem is that Apple’s scale, even Apple’s scale of phones, making even just

⏹️ ▶️ John one very small phone, the only way they could pull that off and make it work economically, is if the small

⏹️ ▶️ John phone was like the Mac Pro of the iPhone line. That it would be by far the most

⏹️ ▶️ John expensive model with pricing that makes no sense because the R and D that goes into a phone that sells that few

⏹️ ▶️ John copies is just so astronomical. And then that would make the

⏹️ ▶️ John sales be even smaller. And unlike the Mac Pro, it doesn’t actually make sense for anyone to spend

⏹️ ▶️ John five times the price on a tiny phone. Really, it’s just a personal preference. And even the personal

⏹️ ▶️ John preference, people have to eventually admit that typing on a tiny keyboard is really hard. Oh, one more

⏹️ ▶️ John thing on Touch ID. This is always the front of my mind because I’m always

⏹️ ▶️ John recommending products to my older relatives,

⏹️ ▶️ John as has been expressed to me many times, and despite my disbelieving it, experimental

⏹️ ▶️ John evidence shows that Touch ID works less well for old people. I don’t know if you’ve experienced this,

⏹️ ▶️ John but apparently fingerprints on wrinkly old people fingers are less consistent. So

⏹️ ▶️ John no matter how many times I train Touch ID on various old people fingers and it works,

⏹️ ▶️ John the next day they’ll come and say, nope, I can’t unlock it anymore. And it’s frustrating for them, and guess what? They just stop

⏹️ ▶️ John using Touch ID. They type in their code every single time, because it doesn’t take much

⏹️ ▶️ John inconsistency to just give up on the feature, right? So although Touch ID is great for the days

⏹️ ▶️ John of us all wearing masks, and you can train Face ID with your mask on and stuff like that. Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John even though it seems like a thing of the moment to go back to Touch ID, for certain people, it appears

⏹️ ▶️ John in my experimental experience that Touch ID works less well

⏹️ ▶️ John for some people than others, Whereas Face ID, no matter how wrinkly your face is, Touch ID doesn’t care, it will still unlock

⏹️ ▶️ John the phone for you.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I am glad that Apple has come out with a new SE2. Like this is not something that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey myself or anyone that I can think of is really interested in, like in my real life, if you will.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I’m super glad that they’re updating it. You know, just like we were saying, I believe last episode with the Mac mini

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the new iPads from a couple of weeks ago, I’m happy to see even just,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, version bumps, if you will, you know, just put the new internals in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and just keep on chugging because I think that in this case, having more

⏹️ ▶️ Casey options is good and makes sense. And sometimes one of the things that frustrates me and certainly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey people who are considering the Apple ecosystem so much is when Apple basically says, well, these are your four choices

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and if you don’t like it, go pound dirt. know, there should be more options and I’m glad to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey see that there are more.

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⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, let’s do some Ask ATP. Addy Burr

⏹️ ▶️ Casey writes, I am finding myself wanting to listen to more podcasts than I have time for. This problem has been

⏹️ ▶️ Casey exacerbated by the recent changes to my routine due to the pandemic. How do you make time for listening to your favorite

⏹️ ▶️ Casey shows? What activities do you find yourself comfortable to do while simultaneously listening to a podcast episode?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey For me, I am also having the same problem. As soon as I stopped, even my 10-minute

⏹️ ▶️ Casey commute, that created problems for my podcast queue. Then I stopped

⏹️ ▶️ Casey working at a job where I can actually code and listen to podcasts, that’s not a problem for me. And so

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that hurt my podcast queue. Now it’s just terrible because my work-life

⏹️ ▶️ Casey balance is all out of whack, probably for the better in the great scheme of things, but all out of whack.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so for me, I am trying to listen to podcasts at times when perhaps I wouldn’t have before.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So when I exercise, typically I’ll listen to a show. If I’m doing something that’s a solo

⏹️ ▶️ Casey chore, like the dishes, for example, I typically do the dishes by myself.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I’ll listen to a podcast then. But yeah, I’m super far behind

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and have stopped listening to shows that I genuinely enjoy because I just don’t have time for all of them.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, what are you doing with this? Anything different?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m in kind of a similar boat except that my like commute life hasn’t been that differently

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know affected by this. And I should say too like people have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco these theories that podcast listening is dead or gone or totally down and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I released the other day in a tweet from the Overcast account the actual Overcast stats of like what is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco different in this globally among all Overcast users. And what’s interesting

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that for the, Overcast usage has always followed a very,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very clear pattern of weekends being down and weekdays being up.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Clearly, many people listen to podcasts on their, you know, as part of their workday

⏹️ ▶️ Marco routine, whatever that may be, whether it’s commuting, whether it’s at work, because there’s always this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like huge drop of like about, I believe it’s like 20 or 30% on Saturdays and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sundays. And there was always this shape to the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco usage graph, and you could see it very clearly, like these bumps. What has happened since the quarantine

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the weekends, like the Saturday and Sunday parts of that graph, are almost unchanged.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re down a little tiny bit, but it’s not a significant reduction. They’re almost the same.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The weekdays have simply come down to be closer to them than they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco were before. So it’s like whatever people are doing on Saturdays and Sundays, they’re still doing that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at about the same rate. But what people do on the weekdays is now closer to that than

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was before, which honestly makes sense. Many people who used to have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco commutes to work now temporarily don’t. Many people who

⏹️ ▶️ Marco listen to podcasts are in jobs where they still have to go to work right now during this quarantine, so they’re still listening.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Many people who eliminated their commute listening are adding listening time during

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the rest of their day now in their new home life because they want the company or they’re bored

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever the reason is. The reduction in listening has actually only been among

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Overcast users, something like 15% total. So many

⏹️ ▶️ Marco people, most people are still finding time to listen to podcasts. So my answer to this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is I listen, first of all, the obvious ones. If I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on like a dog walk, the rare occasions where I am driving somewhere, or any

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of errand running, or walking, or if I’m like, if I were the type

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of person to run outside, maybe I would do it then. I’m not a runner, most of my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco exercising is indoor stuff on mats or rowing machines or things, so it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not really like outdoor stuff, but exercising, if I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco by myself, if I’m like not working with a trainer, then I will either do YouTube videos or podcasts.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually YouTube videos, but sometimes podcasts. And then, as Casey said,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco throughout the rest of the day, you know, just errands. If I’m washing dishes, I’ll put a podcast on. If I’m cooking,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll put a podcast on. Anything where I have to be occupied with my hands,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I’m doing something where it’s not distracting to listen to people talk to me. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is not anything I ever do to a computer. This is one of the reasons why I don’t have a Mac app.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco There is nothing I do to a computer where I wanna listen to podcasts. Except maybe game

⏹️ ▶️ Marco time. And I actually have been listening occasionally while playing Minecraft. But that’s just like with my phone next to the computer.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So basically any time where like you’re occupied doing something else physically,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but your brain isn’t fully engaged, doing yard work, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cleaning, any of that stuff. It’s great for that. I also listen in the shower. I have a HomePod in my bathroom.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, I know, it’s ridiculous, but there it is. I listen to John Roderick in my bathroom. That’s,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco he’s my shower podcaster. And yeah, so it’s just, you find time.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re kind of, they’re always just on as I’m doing things around the house. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s how I’ve, and the dog walks for like 45 minutes a day, so that’s significant right there.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, you know, it adds up. Basically, make podcasts part of your routine if you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wanna keep listening. Keep in mind that you don’t have to necessarily listen

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in headphones. The most popular output device for overcast is the built in speaker

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the phone. Many, many people just listen with their phone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco playing through its speaker as they do stuff. And so you can just take your phone,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can set it on the counter as you’re washing the dishes, you can set it on the count, you know, next to the stove as you’re cooking.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You don’t have to make it a thing where like, alright, let me go get my headphones. Let me put them in. Let me sit down and and listen to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco only these highly produced shows that you gotta listen to really closely. Like no, you can just be more casual about it than that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, no one’s stopping you. So just put on a podcast on the phone speaker when you’re doing something boring next time

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and see how you like it.

⏹️ ▶️ John My venues are the same as they’ve always been. You listed all of them already, I think. You know, doing laundry,

⏹️ ▶️ John cooking dinner, cleaning up after dinner, cleaning the house, except for it’s kind of hard during vacuuming. You really shouldn’t turn the

⏹️ ▶️ John volume up that loud during

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. AirPods Pro, noise

⏹️ ▶️ John canceling. I have a pretty little Bluetooth speaker for the shower. Although the shower is an issue in

⏹️ ▶️ John my house because in order to hear it over the sound of the shower and the ceiling fan, you

⏹️ ▶️ John have to turn it up pretty loud and then you can hear it in other rooms and people don’t like me to listen to podcasts in the shower if they want

⏹️ ▶️ John the rest of the house quiet. That’s the only one that’s contentious. And yeah, going for dog walks and going for

⏹️ ▶️ John regular walks. The only thing I’ve added recently is I did start listening to podcasts

⏹️ ▶️ John during some Destiny stuff when I’m doing certain space chores that

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t have to engage my mind fully on, I can listen to podcasts, but for

⏹️ ▶️ John the real destiny stuff, I can’t. I need my full concentration. The way

⏹️ ▶️ John I have dealt with getting behind on shows, it’s not really related to the

⏹️ ▶️ John virus stuff. It’s mostly related to me continuing to subscribe to more and more shows, which

⏹️ ▶️ John is untenable. Like you can’t just keep subscribing to more shows. Like you will run out of time in the day.

⏹️ ▶️ John The way I deal with it is I try to increase the duration of things that I’m already doing. So

⏹️ ▶️ John longer dog walks, right? Or longer regular walks, which is easy because it’s spring and you want to be outside

⏹️ ▶️ John more. And it takes longer to maintain social distance and keeping, you know, 20 feet away from

⏹️ ▶️ John people or whatever. And then for all the things that you do, either

⏹️ ▶️ John do them more often or like, you know, instead of, you know, trading off with

⏹️ ▶️ John your partner, cleaning up, just clean up after dinner all the time. because that’s now twice as my podcasting

⏹️ ▶️ John time if you were alternating before, right? Cook dinner all the time. Fold laundry all the time.

⏹️ ▶️ John Clean the house twice as much as you were cleaning it before. It’s kind of like in dieting where people

⏹️ ▶️ John can change their mindset to the point where just looking at some kind of unhealthy

⏹️ ▶️ John food they used to love makes them disgusted, right? It no longer becomes a test

⏹️ ▶️ John of willpower not to eat that food. you get to the point where you don’t want that food anymore.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like it turns you off instead of turning you on, right? You can do that with chores.

⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, I hate doing dishes, right? If you’re reconceptualized doing dishes as this is the time

⏹️ ▶️ John when I finally get to listen to that podcast show I’ve been waiting to listen to all day, you look forward to doing dishes.

⏹️ ▶️ John You’ll fight over who gets to do dishes so you can listen to your podcast that you’ve wanted to listen to all day. Like

⏹️ ▶️ John reframe things in that way, you can find more time for podcasting. And you know, I

⏹️ ▶️ John think that’s the perfect, That’s why people love it during the commute. It’s the perfect way to add enrichment

⏹️ ▶️ John to an activity that otherwise would not engage your mind fully. Like the dishes need to get done

⏹️ ▶️ John and you probably need to do a good job with them, but they absolutely do not need to engage your entire mind once you have

⏹️ ▶️ John a couple of decades of dish washing experience. You can basically do that on autopilot and you can be engaging

⏹️ ▶️ John the rest of your mind with an enriching activity, like listening to people talk about how expensive wheels for

⏹️ ▶️ John their expensive computer are.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All the time.

#askatp: Automated windows/apps

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Hunter Holland writes, when it comes time to record, you all have spoken

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a bit about all of the apps you have open and how you have them arranged in a specific way on the screen. Do you automate this?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey How do you do it? I haven’t found any good answers elsewhere and I don’t know AppleScript yet. I don’t automate this.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I probably should because as we have discussed in the past, I like to tile things in a particular

⏹️ ▶️ Casey way when I’m recording. I don’t automate this in any way, shape or form.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not even sure. I know there exist apps to do it and perhaps you two can fill me in on some of them.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think BetterTouchTool might do that sort of thing. But either way, it’s something

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I should probably look into but don’t do.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco? Similar. I don’t do it. I don’t have any kind of automation. I just manually move

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the windows to where they’re supposed to be every time. And it’s fine. I mean, I only have a few apps I’m using. I have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, Skype, Audio Hijack, and the chat thing, and a browser,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a terminal window for the live server.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s it. John? My computing philosophy, as

⏹️ ▶️ John implied by the Windows Syracuse County episode and as evidence from my first ever blog

⏹️ ▶️ John post at Architectic, which I think was called The State of Web Browsing and it was a pun on state being about

⏹️ ▶️ John preserving state and not about the conditions of web browsing.

⏹️ ▶️ John My philosophy is that the computer should – things on the computer

⏹️ ▶️ John that need input to customize them should stay the way I customize them. So asking this

⏹️ ▶️ John question is like, you know, do you, how do you set things up and do you automate? It’s like asking, do you automate,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, getting your keyboard connected to your computer and having the mouse be next to it and having the mouse pad go underneath

⏹️ ▶️ John and having the monitor be in front of you and having your chair be in front of you. Do you automate that every time you grab your pocket? It’s like, no,

⏹️ ▶️ John the keyboard I connected once and it doesn’t move unless I move it. Like every time I come in, the keyboard is on the keyboard

⏹️ ▶️ John tray in the same spot. Where else would it be? I don’t have to replace the mouse pad under my mouse. I don’t have to

⏹️ ▶️ John reconnect the mouse and put it to the right of my mouse pad. It’s always just there. And why is it there? Because at

⏹️ ▶️ John one point in the past, I set up my keyboard and mouse where I wanted them to be on the keyboard tray,

⏹️ ▶️ John and they stayed there. Same thing with my monitor, same thing with my chair. I don’t come in and go, where the hell is my chair? Oh, my chair is on

⏹️ ▶️ John the ceiling? Come on, chair, off the ceiling, down in front of

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the computer.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s how I feel when I launch Skype and the stupid little floating recording window is some random ass place.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like my chair is on the ceiling. It’s like, why are you there, recording window? Every time I launch Skype, I

⏹️ ▶️ John have to take that little recording window and drag it back to the place where it has to be. Everything

⏹️ ▶️ John else, for the most part, on my computer, related to podcasting, doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John require any automation because I size of the windows and place them once. And every time

⏹️ ▶️ John I launch those apps, the windows appear in those same places. Now, arguably, you could automate the launching

⏹️ ▶️ John of the applications. Oh, I don’t have to remember to launch audio hijack and Skype and my IRC

⏹️ ▶️ John client and to you know Quit Dropbox or turn off time machine like that can

⏹️ ▶️ John all be automated and I know some people who do it Jason Snell I believe has a bunch of Apple scripts to set up all this stuff, but

⏹️ ▶️ John The amount of things that I need to do to get into podcasting mode basically boil

⏹️ ▶️ John down to clicking a bunch of icons in my doc and that is way below my threshold for automation like

⏹️ ▶️ John I I can just click the icons. It’s not, honestly, it’s not a big deal. I have to remember to turn

⏹️ ▶️ John off Dropbox? Yeah, I do, but I don’t forget, first of all. And second of all, it’s mostly just superstition

⏹️ ▶️ John at this point, given I have like 12 cores or whatever. I used to turn off Time Machine on my 10-year-old computer.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t do that anymore. It’s been on since I got this new Mac Pro. It hasn’t affected any of my recordings. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John it can have a CPU core to grind if it really, you know, starts going nuts, right? So

⏹️ ▶️ John my answer is no, I don’t automate it. People shouldn’t have to automate things like this. The

⏹️ ▶️ John state that you build up by arranging your work environment the way you want it should be preserved by a well-behaved

⏹️ ▶️ John computer. And if it’s not, I think that’s a problem, which is why I hit that stupid little tiny

⏹️ ▶️ John Skype floating window that is the one outlier this all set up.

#askatp: Most-proud episode

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Finally, Marut Chendegra writes, what podcast episode are you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey most proud of having recorded? What about that episode are you most

⏹️ ▶️ Casey proud of? I can’t choose one of my favorite children, but of all of my children,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the hundreds of them in terms of podcast episodes, I am definitely very proud

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the Latner episodes and the episode where Phil Schiller guested. I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey just I think it’s a really nice recognition of the work of the three of us. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that was a real honor to have both of them on the show. And then on analog, it was actually, I think,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey number five, I believe. I always get the number wrong. But it was one that I did

⏹️ ▶️ Casey very early on with Mike Hurley and Stephen Hackett about kind of some of the tougher things

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that our families have had to deal with in the past. And that one is probably

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of my favorite, if not the best, but also hardest podcast episode I’ve ever recorded.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But yeah, every ATP episode, every single one, that’s the answer. Final answer. Go

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco. Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, so I like the special, like, you know, like the high profile ones, like the Schiller ones and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Latin. I like those, but ultimately my favorite,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I enjoy the most are the episodes. like this where we’re just BSing with each other.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially when one of us does something that the other two can make fun of, or when we uncover something

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about someone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that we’re just like, what? You

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do what? Like that, I just like that. Like my style

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of enjoying this show and heck, enjoying a lot of parts of life

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is about finding everyday amusement and happiness in little crap

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with my friends. Like I love that. And that’s what this show is to me, is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like BSing with my friends and it’s fun and all of you out there actually listen to this for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco some reason and that’s wonderful for us at least. And so I appreciate

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. But I just like the like kinda everyday BS

⏹️ ▶️ Marco episodes that we have. Like this, I think this week is great, I like last week. Like these are just like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco regular episodes. This is what I enjoy. if I had to pick

⏹️ ▶️ Marco out something that I enjoy, like noteworthy levels, doing the live shows at WWDC,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I really enjoy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco those because those are, you know, not only noteworthy for like whatever news was announced,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but those usually involve a lot of us like, you know, ribbing each other and stuff. And so that’s always fun

⏹️ ▶️ Marco too. But ultimately I just, I just like the like regular chemistry

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and BS that this show is.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I couldn’t agree more. And I actually would say that to me, the canonical,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey like, best example of the three of us just being the three of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey us might be the recently mentioned Windows of Syracuse County episode, which is number 96.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey If you have come to ATP after episode 96, please go back to episode 96

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and just listen to it. I don’t want to ruin it and say any more than that. But episode 96 is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in that sense, like just in terms of pure joy is probably my favorite

⏹️ ▶️ Casey ATP episode we’ve ever recorded because it was so ridiculous and so much fun. John, what do you think?

⏹️ ▶️ John I just think Windows should stay where you put them. I mean, can I get some agreement on that? Like

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it seems like anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll try to answer this question better than you do because you Oh, there it is.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey There it

⏹️ ▶️ John is. is the actual question. What are you most proud of having recorded? It didn’t say what are your favorites. I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ John I guess it can be similar, but like, anyway. Well, it’s difficult because like, what are you most proud of having recorded?

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, it doesn’t mean the episode that most people liked. It doesn’t mean the episode that you got the most compliments about.

⏹️ ▶️ John It doesn’t mean the episode that you even enjoyed recording the most. What are you most proud of recording? So when I think about

⏹️ ▶️ John that, I’m like, is there something I think I did, like, or accomplished by

⏹️ ▶️ John recording something? The closest I could get is, I feel like there are a couple of episodes of podcasts

⏹️ ▶️ John where, you know, I was lucky enough to be recording a podcast at a moment in

⏹️ ▶️ John time when something important happened and I was able to catch my reaction to it in real time.

⏹️ ▶️ John Right. But just not really a thing that you can control. Cause if you’re not doing a podcast when some important thing happens,

⏹️ ▶️ John like, you know, well, Oh, well. Um, so I was thinking back to

⏹️ ▶️ John the episodes, uh, hypercritical episodes when like Steve jobs died, which was very important

⏹️ ▶️ John and emotional moment. And I just happened to be recording a podcast right when those

⏹️ ▶️ John feelings were the most raw. Right. And I feel like that is the type of thing that you can’t you can’t

⏹️ ▶️ John set out to do. Right. You can’t no matter how hard you try and how good at what you’re doing. It’s a

⏹️ ▶️ John confluence of events that you didn’t control. And like showing up was the this

⏹️ ▶️ John is the most important thing that you had a podcast and that you recorded that week and that it was an emotional issue for you and that you captured

⏹️ ▶️ John how you felt in that moment. even if those episodes aren’t as popular as, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John or as entertaining or whatever as other things. That’s the first thing that came to mind. The second thing that came to mind is,

⏹️ ▶️ John like I continue to get tweets about old episodes of ATP or old episodes of

⏹️ ▶️ John Hypercritical or whatever, where I’m talking about some BS, who knows, we’re doing pontificating

⏹️ ▶️ John about technology. And people tend to tweet like that they’re amazed

⏹️ ▶️ John that what they heard reflected so well into the future. And when I listen to

⏹️ ▶️ John it, I’m like, I got everything wrong. Like, what are you talking about? I didn’t, you know, this, if you listen to the text of what I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John saying, it’s clear that the details of what I said turned out not to be true. But I think what

⏹️ ▶️ John people are reacting to is like, okay, so you got the details wrong, but in general, like

⏹️ ▶️ John the spirit of what you were going for, like big picture wise, you had the right idea.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just that of course, cause if you’re projecting 10 years into the future, you’re going to get the details wrong, but in

⏹️ ▶️ John general, you got, you, you had some inkling of the general direction

⏹️ ▶️ John that things were going. And I’m proud of being able to, even, especially when I hear it, I’m like, that

⏹️ ▶️ John was like a throwaway thing that I didn’t even, I wasn’t even written down anywhere. It’s just like the first thing that popped into my head.

⏹️ ▶️ John But yes, I am proud of the fact that off the cuff, every once in a while,

⏹️ ▶️ John I would just instinctively say a thing, uh, you know, the projected real far forward in the

⏹️ ▶️ John future and get all the details wrong. but some people listening to it in the present say, wow, that reminds

⏹️ ▶️ John me a lot of what actually did happen. So those two things, showing up at a time when something

⏹️ ▶️ John really important happened and I guess being willing to just like spill your guts into a podcast,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? I’m proud of doing that. And I’m also proud of every once in a while having an off the cuff

⏹️ ▶️ John insight that turns out to resonate with people in the present day.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, I mean, the fridge episode of Rectifs has gotta be on your

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco list.

⏹️ ▶️ John Ah, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco true. I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John not sure. Which is that qualifier? I don’t think that it qualifies for saying anything about the future.

⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe it captures a moment in time. I don’t know. Maybe it’s more of Marco’s

⏹️ ▶️ John thing about just a bunch of BS.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco My favorite, I want to amend what I said also. Another type of episode I really, really enjoy doing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is when there has been some kind of major tech news in an area

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we ostensibly maybe should care about, but typically don’t,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like some big new Android flagship phone was released, right? And we don’t even mention

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Not even once. We pretend like whatever big news this is, that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco every, every, literally like every other podcast in our little group of community podcasts

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have similar things. Everyone else is talking about, you know, news item X, Y, or Z from this week.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we don’t, we blow right past, we don’t even mention it because we’re spending all of our time BSing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with each other over other stuff. stuff that doesn’t matter in the news

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey sense.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love those too. Whenever we just totally skip a really big story

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that everyone else is talking about because we’re too busy making fun of each other. Hey, you want to talk about contact tracing?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, thanks. We actually do have a lot to talk about that, but we’ll save that for next week. Next week.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’ll do it, really. Thanks to our sponsors this week, Squarespace, ExpressVPN, and Fully,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we will see you Now.

Ending theme

⏹️ ▶️ Marco next week.

⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, cause it was

⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, oh it was accidental. John

⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him, cause it was

⏹️ ▶️ John accidental,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. You can find

⏹️ ▶️ John the show notes at atp.fm And if you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John into Twitter,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can follow them at c-a-s-e-y-l-i-s-s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-a-r-c-o-a-r-m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Auntie Marco Armin, s-i-r-a-c-u-s-a

⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse, it’s accidental They

⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t mean to accidental, tech podcast so long.

A second order

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually placed a second order from apple.com today.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh no, what did you do Marco?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it isn’t that interesting. It’s a Mac Mini.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey A Mac Mini? Why? To replace

⏹️ ▶️ Marco his other

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mac Mini. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco seriously. Basically. Yeah. What? In our in our work at Hometude,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tiff and I both record a lot of podcasts. Adam is also being like homeschooled

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a way sort of like with the school’s online stuff and And so there’s lots of need

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for all of us to be using computers in the same two rooms

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the house that are adjacent to each other at the same time. And so we have a need for,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know what, maybe we can record podcasts upstairs during the day. So that way

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the people downstairs can keep doing the stuff they need to do on their computers or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the homeschool stuff, homework, activities. The fact that we have a kid at home

⏹️ ▶️ Marco who needs to do stuff and be a kid and make noise sometimes. So we

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wanted for a while to set up a alternate recording studio upstairs. And we had

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty much everything to do it. Like I had my stupid LG UltraFine monitor that was sitting in the basement wasting

⏹️ ▶️ Marco away. I have a third microphone because when we do our live shows,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bring three, for the three of us, I bring three microphones. And so normally we have the two, my desk,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tiff’s desk, but we had a third one of the exact same kind, just in the closet most of the year. And I had

⏹️ ▶️ Marco old boom arms and everything I wasn’t using anymore, so I had all the gear to do it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so we set up the UltraFine, plugged in a bunch of extra gear. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we ran it the last couple days. It’s been wonderful podcasting up there, with the one exception that what we’ve

⏹️ ▶️ Marco been doing is just taking our respective Apple laptops and plugging them in during our recordings.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The desk is really small for this, for like a laptop and the giant LG

⏹️ ▶️ Marco monitor. And there’s no keyboard and mouse yet, and there’s certainly no room to have keyboard and mouse and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco monitor and laptop, you know, somewhere. Unless we do clamshell mode and some kind of one of those like standup

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stands, but the main problem is that using a laptop in this way is annoying.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is disruptive to the state of things on the laptop. And also

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I learned today is that the fans on my laptop are a little bit too loud for this when plugged into

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a monitor. Whoops. Yeah, the 16 inch, even when I disabled turbo boost to try to save some heat,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 16 inch, when plugged into the LG monitor, keeps the fan around 2,800 to 3,000 RPM most of the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco time. And so it was audible on the recording.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’m like, you know, I just, I don’t like, this is not good. And plus,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, using a laptop as a desktop is clumsy in lots of other ways. and I don’t love that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had to use Wi-Fi for the recording because I’m not gonna use Ethernet

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on my laptop because it’s always unreliable. Using some kind of dongle for that, like I don’t,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just want something with Ethernet. So basically I was looking at, you know, Mac Mini versus low-end iMac and the Mac

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mini won. I considered using my existing Mac Mini for this purpose, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco using it for this purpose would require me to upgrade its OS from, you know, DOS,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever it’s running, some very old version of the OS. to something more recent to run on like all the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco podcasting capture software and everything and it’s also it’s it’s a this is a 2014 Mac

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mini so it’s very old and it was I didn’t even get the high-end configuration then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it was you know it’s an old low-end Mac Mini running a very old OS

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and if I upgrade the OS not only will it probably run even slower but I will lose

⏹️ ▶️ Marco my iSCSI setup for my Synology. Oh yikes. Because the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco initiator software is not compatible and blah blah blah. You know, I could buy a new version

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever, but I don’t want to put any more money into my Synology

⏹️ ▶️ Marco setup. That’s a legacy product for me.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It remains a product in your lineup? Yes.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, anyway, I don’t want to mess with that. Let me just get the new Mac Mini. I know it’s great. I had that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco review loaner. I know it’s a great system. And so I just bought like the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of low to mid range one. But yeah, I think, you know, I looked at all the options and I think it was the right move.

⏹️ ▶️ John Interestingly, in my house, we have a similar situation with people needing to be

⏹️ ▶️ John on computers simultaneously much more than they used to, because everybody’s home and everyone’s got to do these computer stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ John And like, not really surprisingly, but still frustratingly, the same

⏹️ ▶️ John reason that both my kids and I imagine most modern kids prefer to watch any kind

⏹️ ▶️ John of video, quote unquote, television or whatever on their iPads as opposed to on the gigantic

⏹️ ▶️ John fancy television, right? They want, why would they want to watch video on their phone or on their iPad

⏹️ ▶️ John instead of the big TV? Because they can do it on their phone or their iPod in the privacy of their own room,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? They don’t want the parents to know what they’re up to, what they’re watching. They just, they want privacy

⏹️ ▶️ John because they’re teens and tweens, right? So in our house, we have all this computer equipment

⏹️ ▶️ John around where you can do your Zoom meetings and do all your school stuff and so on and so forth. And we’ve got this

⏹️ ▶️ John nice big 5K iMac with a nice comfortable desk chair and you can just do there, sit there

⏹️ ▶️ John and do your work. And you have a desk in front of you to put your school books on and camera and microphone are built

⏹️ ▶️ John in and everything’s great and nobody wants to use it. Nobody wants to use the iMac. They’re all

⏹️ ▶️ John fighting over the stupid laptop. Why? Because you can take your laptop into your room

⏹️ ▶️ John and not have your parents see you on a video conference and be all embarrassed, right? So it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John such a battle of like them fighting with each other over the laptop, because they don’t want to be forced,

⏹️ ▶️ John punished by using the 5K iMac, which is a much better computer in all respects for all possible

⏹️ ▶️ John schoolwork. It has a better keyboard, it has a better screen, has a real mouse, nobody wants to use

⏹️ ▶️ John it. So this is, you know, ridiculous battles over this. To make them feel

⏹️ ▶️ John better, the solution I’ve gone with is because for my work, I have a laptop. So I take

⏹️ ▶️ John my work laptop up to my bedroom and do my meetings there. And then

⏹️ ▶️ John one kid is locked into the computer room that I’m in now with the door closed so they can

⏹️ ▶️ John have privacy and then they can go on the 5K iMac and do their Zoom meetings and somehow feel comfortable.

⏹️ ▶️ John So they are basically the inverse of me. I hate laptops and they will only tolerate laptops because

⏹️ ▶️ John they can’t stand the idea of being chained to a desk.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually, you know, kid computer needs did weigh into this decision because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Adam is, you know, he’s about to turn eight. He almost needs his own computer. They keep finding situations where

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re like, well, he can use ours for this, he can use ours for this, he can use ours for this, but like, at some point he’s gonna need

⏹️ ▶️ Marco his own computer, and this, I think, could become that. If we stop needing Studio B upstairs,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco then this computer can just become the computer that, this is the upstairs computer, and that can be his computer, because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it provides some of that privacy and everything. It would be upstairs. It doesn’t necessarily need to be in his room,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s also not a laptop, which I think is great for a kid’s first computer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you can swing it because not a laptop is much more durable.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco If there’s some sticky or buttery hands touching that keyboard, or if something gets

⏹️ ▶️ Marco spilled onto it or anything, a desktop keyboard is much easier and cheaper to replace

⏹️ ▶️ Marco than a laptop keyboard. And a desktop is much less likely to get fatally damaged

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in use than a laptop. You don’t have to worry about, oh, what if they accidentally leave it somewhere and somebody steps on it, or the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hinge breaks, Like, you know, you have none of those concerns with the desktop. So the likely

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lifetime of this computer, it’s gonna start out being a Studio B recording machine, but I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think it’s gonna end up probably as my kid’s first computer.

⏹️ ▶️ John Those eight year olds don’t need the privacy that tweens need, like they’re not in that phase of all that stuff. Although,

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, and you’re very right, like my, the 13 inch, the good 13 inch MacBook Air, like the good

⏹️ ▶️ John one before they went Retina, my daughter destroyed that. I mean, she just didn’t treat it well and eventually

⏹️ ▶️ John got to the point where she’d literally crack the screen on it. So yeah, laptops and young children

⏹️ ▶️ John do not mix, especially expensive laptops. So

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey if

⏹️ ▶️ John you can get him to use a desktop, and I think he’ll have no problem with it until he becomes a surly tween and doesn’t want you

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey seeing what he’s doing, I think that’ll work

⏹️ ▶️ John out

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey great.

⏹️ ▶️ John Although the only thing I’m worried about is maybe that he messes up your podcasting setup in some way, because kids can find

⏹️ ▶️ John a way to mess up your computer. You go in, you try to switch to your account, and you realize that Adam has somehow found

⏹️ ▶️ John a way to download a bunch of malware and install it in his screen with your computer.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, yeah, the reality is like, I think if we still use this as a podcasting machine, we probably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wouldn’t let him use it also. Like that would be like if we stop needing it as that machine, then we would repurpose

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it as is or, you know, something like that. Maybe he’ll use my iMac Pro when I get the Mac Pro someday.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh goodness. That’s what I thought you were going to say.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know. That’s why I teased you. Like, hey, you know, I bought another computer from Apple, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not what you think. Still not what you think. And the thought even occurred to me, maybe.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, trickle

⏹️ ▶️ Marco down. But yeah, my fan problem is back on my Mac Pro. Like, the fans still

⏹️ ▶️ Marco spin up like crazy while doing simple things that didn’t used to happen and I’m concerned,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but this is not a time to make changes to my production setup, Casey. This is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not a good time for that. So I’m like, all right. One thought I did have was,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what if I just buy myself the Mac Pro and then move this computer upstairs to be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Studio B computer? but that is substantially more expensive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I think that would be really a waste of this computer because the needs for that upstairs computer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are not high. They’re just specific. By the way, the chat room is going nuts saying like, and so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want to put this in the show so we don’t get a million emails, saying like, oh my God, don’t get your kid a Mac mini

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for his first computer, it’s terrible for PC games. That’s probably true. If he’s gonna be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco needing a computer for PC games, we’ll get him a gaming PC. That’s totally fine. During our Minecraft obsession

⏹️ ▶️ Marco during this quarantine, I’ve actually been using TIFF’s gaming PC, which

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a Razer, I don’t know, a 15-inch Razer laptop that whatever

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was their nice gaming laptop as of about a year ago. It’s been great, actually. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a gaming PC, it’s been wonderful. When I look at the numbers, like the performance numbers

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of what gaming PCs, like GPUs, desktop

⏹️ ▶️ Marco versus laptops, how they perform. So in this laptop is a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco NVIDIA, whatever, whatever, whatever, 80 Max-Q. It’s a RTX 2080 Max-Q, is that a thing, John?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know about the mobile version of it, but yeah, the 2080 is their current sort of high-end

⏹️ ▶️ John video card

⏹️ ▶️ Marco line. Right, so it’s the mobile version of that that’s in the Razer 15-inch whatever from last year.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I looked at, you know, I tried searching, I’m like, okay, well, how does this compare to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever you could get today in a desktop PC? And it’s not that far off. You know, what

⏹️ ▶️ Marco does that mean for me and my games? Like, you know, I can run them higher resolutions or with greater filtering settings, or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can get a few more frames per second. Like, it’s already incredibly fast for the few games that it plays.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, it’s great. And so I think actually, like, if Adam ever needed a gaming PC,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d probably go the laptop route for that. because laptops can clearly come pretty close to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. And for that kind of purpose, a laptop would be fine,

⏹️ ▶️ John but. If he wants a gaming PC, I’m assuming he’s gonna be playing something more demanding than Minecraft. So maybe don’t go with a mobile

⏹️ ▶️ John GPU.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’d be surprised what demanding Minecraft is, it’s so poorly written.

⏹️ ▶️ John You should get the, there are a bunch of variants of Minecraft that do real-time ray tracing.

⏹️ ▶️ John You should try one of those. Oh yeah. Yeah, cause as you can imagine, like it’s simple geometry

⏹️ ▶️ John wise, But, you know, the things that ray tracing is good at, like, you know, handling

⏹️ ▶️ John light sources in a more realistic way and having light sources sort of affect

⏹️ ▶️ John and color the world in interesting ways and light filtering through transparent stuff can actually make Minecraft look,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, look different, like, look even more moody than it already does. There’s a bunch of,

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if they’re official ports or just tech demos, but just do a YouTube search for Minecraft ray tracing and you can

⏹️ ▶️ John see what some look like. the RTX in those Nvidia

⏹️ ▶️ John lines is, you know, both Nvidia and AMD have this, have these extensions

⏹️ ▶️ John to their GPUs that are supposed to help ray tracing be faster in the ways

⏹️ ▶️ John that games use them, and those actually do make a difference if you try one of those game engine

⏹️ ▶️ John variants that takes advantage of the ray tracing things. It’s obviously not doing full ray tracing for the entire engine,

⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s like for the things that it’s using it for, this tiny little part of the GPU helps accelerate

⏹️ ▶️ John that function and make it either less expensive or basically free in addition to the normal

⏹️ ▶️ John stuff that it does.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean most of the things, most of the research I found basically made it look like it would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably, like it has almost all the same capabilities as the flagship PC GPUs now,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it just has like… Fewer cores

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John and lower

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cost. Yeah, it’s like you know a 30% lower performance ceiling basically. Like it’s not, it’s surprisingly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco close. Like I thought the difference would be a lot bigger than it is.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but uh, you know the gaming PC’s you get desktop like you can get

⏹️ ▶️ John an entire desktop That is like you said 50% faster for less money than the laptop The

⏹️ ▶️ John other tricky bit is that the laptop screen is small compared to the potential desktop screen

⏹️ ▶️ John So once you get a desk a desktop size screen now You need to beef your GPU if you want to run it at native res, which you

⏹️ ▶️ John probably do So yeah, that’s fair. Anyway, who knows what who knows? Well, Adam will want by the time he’s into

⏹️ ▶️ John that thing Who wouldn’t want to turn up his nose, like my kids, turn up his nose entirely at desktops and want to play everything on

⏹️ ▶️ John his hollow AR iPad, whatever the hell.

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple glasses.

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