377: $10 Worth of Headaches
07 May 2020The butterfly keyboard is dead! Rst in ppeace.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Getting financial information from Apple
- AppFigures
- Changing App Store company names
- Follow-up:
- Casey's Garage Project
- Debugging memory problems in Xcode
- ARM Predictions (via Colin McKellar)
- Installing an OS on a computer without a monitor
- WWDC date announced
- Hats
- New 13" MacBook Pro!
🎉 GOODBYE BUTTERFLY KEYBOARD! 🎉 - TGPro fan control app
#askatp- After the obvious, what should one do to alleviate RSI? (via Thom Anthony)
- How do I make my videoconferences sound better? (via Jack Johnson)
- Post-show:
Sponsored by:
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Chapters
- The fullness of John Siracusa
- Casey’s new toys
- ARM predictions
- Casey’s Tale of Woe
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- More WWDC info released 🖼️
- New 13” MacBook Pro(s)
- Mac Pro fan control
- Sponsor: Linode (code atp2020)
- #askatp: RSI, input devices
- #askatp: Mics for video chats
- Ending theme
- Neutral: CarPlay for old Porsches 🖼️
The fullness of John Siracusa
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Have some bad news. I’ve just been notified with an email from Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco subject aligned your Apple News Channel
⏹️ ▶️ John No, yeah, it hasn’t been updated This is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco org We noticed that you have not published to your markers or channel in three months or more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Your channel will be removed in one week period. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco regards the Apple News team Well, it doesn’t say that if I publish now It’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get me out of this like it just says your channel is gonna be removed in a week period like there’s no if you don’t publish.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, didn’t we have a friend who got the same notice, but their notice said if you publish something it’ll reactivate
⏹️ ▶️ John it? Maybe I’m misreading
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. I think that was Daniel Jalkut, but I don’t know. Anyway, yeah, it’s the Market.org channel. I don’t care. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know how many, first of all, I publish my channel just as an RSS feed that I submitted to them,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my regular RSS feed. I don’t have any special Apple News tags. So I think they were deprecating RSS-based
⏹️ ▶️ Marco channels anyway. Right? Aren’t they deprecating them or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John something? Anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I haven’t kept up with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I tried to do the same thing and something must be wrong about my RSS feed because they always refused it for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reasons I never quite understood and I didn’t care enough to fix it and nobody has ever, ever,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ever asked me about it. Now, to be fair, I probably have one-tenth of your readership, but nevertheless,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can’t remember a time that anyone was like, hey man, can you put that in Apple News?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I honestly would be surprised if my readership could be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco divided evenly into tenths. Like I might have eight people reading it in Apple News.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s going to be a very small number.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I never liked that Apple News app. I never tried to get my annually updated blog
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco for multiple reasons.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, darn. I guess I’m going to lose all those eight page views. I don’t even measure pages anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, how do they even show up? Like, how would you tell if someone’s coming from Apple News? What, do they have their own user agent?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I assume there’s probably at least a crawler user agent. And I would assume that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every time they view the page, maybe they’re probably going to report I have to sign up for, because I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s actually making a web request to you each time, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, you have to go to the special Apple web page with no API, and you have to look at a graph where they round things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right, I have to go to Apple Web Connect or something and look at only opt-in stats for people who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco viewed my content. I don’t have server logs enabled. I don’t even have Google Analytics enabled anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I haven’t for years. When I publish something on my site, I have absolutely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no idea how many pages it gets, and it’s incredibly liberating. Like, I highly recommend anybody out there who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has stuff online, remove the counters. You will be shocked how great
⏹️ ▶️ John feels. Or just have nobody visit your site like me, because then you don’t have to worry about it either way.
⏹️ ▶️ John Speaking of Apple’s websites where you supposedly can go to see some kind of number,
⏹️ ▶️ John you would think that the one web system they would have that would be,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, accurate, thorough, fairly well-vetted, would be stuff related to the App Store, because that’s real money
⏹️ ▶️ John if you don’t have a free app. It’s real money traveling back and forth. And real money, usually people are accounting for the real money,
⏹️ ▶️ John but boy, they do not make it easy to figure out
⏹️ ▶️ John what’s going on. I mean, maybe this is just me not understanding money. Granted, I’m not an accountant.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t understand the world of finance. It’s very confusing. But I have two apps.
⏹️ ▶️ John The second most simple thing I can imagine doing is wondering in a given pay period, I’m not gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John say month because I know that finance is too complicated for pedestrian concepts like months. In a given
⏹️ ▶️ John pay period, how much money did I make off of one of my
⏹️ ▶️ John two apps? But there’s no way to tell
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, they have a report that supposedly gives you an answer, but the answer is wrong. And I know
⏹️ ▶️ John that because for one pay period, I only had one month, one app. And so I could say,
⏹️ ▶️ John now run the report and tell me how much did that one app make during that pay period. And it’s different than the amount they paid me.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is their system. I’m like, well, I’m never gonna know how this works. It’s close, it’s like within 2%.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like maybe refunds or something, you’re accounting for that? I don’t, so.
⏹️ ▶️ John I run the reports and I download them and I keep them, but it’s just like, I don’t understand why these numbers don’t match
⏹️ ▶️ John up. In the end, the money they give me is the money they give me, and I trust that that’s the money they’re supposed to be giving me,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you know, try running those reports, it doesn’t make any sense.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s, so two things. Number one, I recommend using app figures.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is a paid service, this is not an ad, but yeah, app figures, I have found, is the best way to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of make sense of Apple’s weirder reporting, and it provides useful graphs and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve been using them for a long
⏹️ ▶️ John time. But the app figures also does not match the amount I actually receive from Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Again, it’s very close. Well, they have sales, they also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have the payments area. The payments usually are able to derive what it actually means.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, but I get one, I don’t do what you do, which I should have, which is like one Apple ID
⏹️ ▶️ John per app. So I have my two apps under one Apple ID. So they pay me some amount, and some of that is attributable
⏹️ ▶️ John to Switch Class, and some of it’s attributable to Front and Center. How much for each app?
⏹️ ▶️ John again, you can run the report, like filter by parent apps, that it’s in their
⏹️ ▶️ John software, and then they give you a graph that’s rounded, and then you can download an Excel thing that has exact numbers to 500 decimal
⏹️ ▶️ John places, but it’s off. It’s so hard to just try
⏹️ ▶️ John to back solve and figure it out. I mean, sometimes it’s off by a few cents or whatever. It just annoys me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s why like back forever ago, when I had that stupid idea to have some kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, pay Overcast $10 a month and then I’ll split it up between the podcasts you listen to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and distribute it to them, like I was thinking about doing that in that kind of scheme before podcasters told me they don’t want that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Surprise, nobody wants people getting in the way of them and their money. I should have known that before, because I’m the same way,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but for some reason I didn’t think about that. Anyway, so one of the problems with that plan is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco assuming I’d have to take in-app purchase, because otherwise Apple would never allow it, not only would I then lose 30%,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but also I would have no good way to account for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how much money did I actually receive from user ID 1234 this month? Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you just get that lump sum payment and you can’t actually know, Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can’t, there’s no way to correlate a user ID to an amount
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of money you definitely received. Because there’s so many different exceptions and there’s things like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco refunds, cancellations, there’s foreign currency exchange, which messes everything up.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the exchange stuff is like, all the things that are off, it could entirely be attributable to foreign exchange rates
⏹️ ▶️ John because the reporting, what you got paid is what the exchange rate was at the moment of the blah, blah, blah, if you read the big finance
⏹️ ▶️ John agreement, but then the reporting could be different. It’s very confusing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and the whole reason why, or the whole basis of a system like that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be, I need to know for your $7, how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to split it up between the podcasts you listen to. And the whole, this actually plays into, the whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco world of big services like YouTube Premium, or Red, or whatever it’s called this month,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or Spotify, or Apple Music, anything where the customers pay a flat
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rate, and that gets distributed based on whatever they listen to, to artists or whatever, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way those work is incredibly scam prone because they can’t do it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco either. They also don’t track, your $5 does not get split
⏹️ ▶️ Marco between the five artists you listen to this month. Everyone’s $5
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a month goes into a giant pool and they just track number of listens. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it doesn’t matter if you listen to five artists this month and a bot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somewhere in Russia listen to 100,000 artists this month, your money’s all pooled together first,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then it’s divided up by views. So you might think that you are helping the three bands
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you listen to a lot because you only listen to three bands on Spotify this month or whatever, but no, you’re not helping them at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’d be helping them a lot more if you left everything streaming all day 24-7. And there’s this whole ecosystem of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco scams and click farms and all this other crap to increase view counts and time spent listening
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and stuff like that to skim off more of the pool than what they actually have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco earned. It’s a whole thing. And so of course I didn’t want to deal with any of that, and my stupid plan
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wouldn’t have really worked that way anyway, but the reason why no one does that is because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s too hard to track how much money you actually got from each individual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco person each month.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and in the end you’re trusting the same company to do accounting on
⏹️ ▶️ John itself, right? It’s all sort of like an honor system, right? So I mean, and they have no particular
⏹️ ▶️ John reason until they start getting payola from the record companies to use some lingo from
⏹️ ▶️ John the 70s or whatever. But Apple doesn’t have any particular reason to lie to you about how much
⏹️ ▶️ John money your app is making, but it’s like anything else. You just, well, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John like that’s my instinctual first feeling when the App Store was announced
⏹️ ▶️ John is that people are going to stop receiving checks from customers and start receiving checks that are signed
⏹️ ▶️ John by Apple. It seems like it’s the same thing, but it’s not.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s way better than it used to be, though. It used to be, for the first, I think, two or three years of the App Store,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you would get paid in wire transfers from I think seven or so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco different places around the world, from various Apple subsidiaries for different regions. And so every month,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you would get seven wire transfers, six of which were foreign wire transfers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So depending on your bank account, you might be paying like hundreds of dollars a month and wire fees, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then you have to resolve, like, all right, you have like seven different deposits, and it was a crazy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco setup, and then fortunately, a couple years in, they fixed it to just have one direct deposit, and that’s, you know, so. I got
⏹️ ▶️ John two, I got two this last pay period. I got two Apple deposits. Oh, really?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t understand why.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them a different, the other app? Actually, yeah, it’s one per Apple ID. Oh, no, because you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John don’t have, you don’t have, right. No, that’s right, I
⏹️ ▶️ John just have the one, I’m just selling both through a single app, Because I have received payments
⏹️ ▶️ John for months when both were for sale and I got one payment. All right, this time I got two payments, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John fine. Like, if they want to send me three payments, four payments, just keep sending me money. It’s just mysterious. I just
⏹️ ▶️ John noticed them as separate line items in my bank account. I’m like, huh, that’s funny. Why would they send me, it’s the right amount. Like, if you
⏹️ ▶️ John add them together, you know, it’s like, yep, there it is. That’s all, this is weird. I’m still angry
⏹️ ▶️ John about the fact that I couldn’t change my company name. Did I complain about that on the show at some point?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No. Like, I was
⏹️ ▶️ John so angry about it when it happened, By the time we recorded, I had chilled out and realized it doesn’t actually matter. But boy, in the moment,
⏹️ ▶️ John I was angry. I actually sent the closest I’ve ever gotten to sending an angry email was
⏹️ ▶️ John a reply to some poor, helpful person who was trying to tell me that what I wanted to do was not possible. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I was like, this is dumb. That’s how angry I get in emails. I literally wrote, this is dumb.
⏹️ ▶️ John Wow. You’re spitting
⏹️ ▶️ John there, John. Thumbs down. I just like, I was angry, but I didn’t want to say something that was
⏹️ ▶️ John angry. But I’m like, what can I say that’s not based on emotion but is true? I’m like, you know what, this is actually dumb.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is a truthful statement. What I’m talking about is, since I had just freshly
⏹️ ▶️ John signed up for my developer account and all that stuff, I remember, I remembered at
⏹️ ▶️ John some point during the process, there was something, you guys might not remember this because it was so long ago that you signed
⏹️ ▶️ John up, maybe when Marco did it, this didn’t even exist. It was like, oh, and by the way, as you’re clicking through these things
⏹️ ▶️ John and typing stuff in boxes, if you’d like your product to show up on the store with a different
⏹️ ▶️ John name that’s visible to customers, type that name here. And at the time I signed up, I was doing it as just me,
⏹️ ▶️ John like my name, right? And so
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want that, right? Just John Syracuse is fine. That’ll show up as the developer on the store. And I did
⏹️ ▶️ John that for a while. And eventually I made myself a company and switched it over to that. And that took like
⏹️ ▶️ John a month and a half to get through all that red tape. And I’m like, and then I went to the app store and I realized that my
⏹️ ▶️ John name was no longer visible. And if you had to search for my name, you didn’t find me anymore. I’m like, oh, that’s bad. someone searches for a name, I want
⏹️ ▶️ John them to find my apps. And of course you can’t add it to keywords without releasing a new version, but that’s a separate
⏹️ ▶️ John issue. So like, oh, I’ll just change the company name back and I’ll just have it say my name again. Cause there’s that field where you
⏹️ ▶️ John can change what it says underneath your app to be something different than your actual like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John legal entity thing. And I searched and searched and couldn’t find it and asked a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ John of people in developer slacks that I’m in and went through all the help and someone’s like, oh, I did that, my
⏹️ ▶️ John company changed their name to this and that and the other thing. And it just, you know, eventually it was,
⏹️ ▶️ John I kept running into dead ends and, you know, I went through their official help system and got people and I called
⏹️ ▶️ John them on the phone, all right. And
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I had people telling me-
⏹️ ▶️ John like an animal. Yeah, people were telling me, we’ve done this twice. In fact, we’ve changed our name twice, right. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s complicated by all the people who did it, actually did something slightly different. I like, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John both of you have like, you know, a single person LLC that’s a disregarded entity for
⏹️ ▶️ John tax purposes. It’s really just me. It’s like legally and in all other ways, it’s exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John me. So changing my company name to my name on the app store is not like misleading or anything like
⏹️ ▶️ John that. And I forget the exact details, but basically, I said, I remember seeing that field or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the person was like, when you’re doing the initial setup, you can enter a registered trade name. I don’t know what that
⏹️ ▶️ John is, but whatever. It sounds like a legal thing, a DBA, which is I’m pretty sure doing business as or a fictitious business name.
⏹️ ▶️ John This cannot be edited or updated later. So during the process, you can enter,
⏹️ ▶️ John it sounds like anything, fictitious business name. You can just make it up. Like whoopity-doo,
⏹️ ▶️ John like this is gonna, on the app store, it’s gonna say whoopity-doo apps, which is not even a thing. It’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John not a legal entity in any way. But once you’ve done that during setup,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can never change it again. And it will always be, what it will be is it will always be the legal entity that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John considers, you know, like, so when I changed from me to an individual to my company, it became my company. Can I change it back to
⏹️ ▶️ John my name? No, this cannot be edited or updated later.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s what I said was dumb, I said, this is dumb. And unless I don’t understand, because for all I know, fictitious business
⏹️ ▶️ John name is a legal term that I don’t understand because I’m not a smart business person. But anyway, I was
⏹️ ▶️ John so angry that I couldn’t just change it back to my name. But by the time we recorded, I had calmed down. But now all of a sudden, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John about it again for some reason.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I mean, ever since the beginning of the App Store, the process
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of changing your company name or changing the name on your developer account has always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been, effectively, you can’t do that no matter what. Now in reality, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, okay, if you know someone or you email somebody in Apple and you can get the right person, they can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually do it, but the process apparently is very difficult. I have never succeeded in doing it, but I know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people who have. If you can call and get the right person on the phone somehow, or if you just get lucky with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who you talk to, that kind of thing, which is annoying. And it’s the kind of thing that you would think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this would be easier. I know, so initially you couldn’t do it at all, no matter what, period. Down
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the road, they added a special case where if your company was sold
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to somebody else, then you could change the account to be the new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco owner, like a one-time change, and you had to send in all this paperwork to prove that it was bought by someone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else. So that might be an avenue for you. Maybe you could say that John Syracuse has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bought Mac Pro LLC or whatever and try to get changed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that way, but I don’t think that would work.
⏹️ ▶️ John According to entrepreneur.com, fictitious business name is a similar thing to doing business
⏹️ ▶️ John as, and as with all these things in these lovely United States that we live in. Anytime you read anything
⏹️ ▶️ John having to do with business stuff, they always have to hedge, because it’s always like, in some states, X,
⏹️ ▶️ John Y, and Z is true. So that’s exactly what this thing says. In some states, you have to register your fictitious business
⏹️ ▶️ John name with the state. Some states you have to pay a fee, but that also implies in other states
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t have to. So basically, if I really, really, really wanted to make this happen, in theory,
⏹️ ▶️ John I could, I know I didn’t know I could get a doing business as, but I could probably also get a fictitious business name if
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s a thing that my state supports, and like get a legal filing to say, yeah, my company
⏹️ ▶️ John name, the fictitious business name is my name. But again, I will cite, and this is not the stupidity of Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s probably just the stupidity of law, That’s dumb because my LLC is a sole provider, not a sole
⏹️ ▶️ John proprietorship, my LLC is a single member LLC. It’s just me. We are the same legal entity.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I shouldn’t have to get a DBA or a fictitious business to say I can use my own name.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Objection, your honor. There’s a problem with that logic. The whole point of an LLC
⏹️ ▶️ John I know it’s not the same legal entity. I’m considered the same for tax purposes. The tax is passed through. Yes, you’re right. It’s a different, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a different legal entity.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco However, and I think this is why like LLCs in most states, at least if not all of them,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are required to have LLC at the end of their name. Corporations have, you know, Inc. or Corp. or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the reason why, I think, if I remember correctly from how this was explained to me like 15 years ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is so that like people know, like if you, if you say, you know, I’m doing business
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with John Syracuse, period. Right. Then, then your customers might think that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the fullness of John Syracuse is there to back it up liability-wise. If they come to sue you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you say, well, actually, you’re not really suing me, you’re suing this LLC that you didn’t even know was there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that LLC has $1 to its name and so sorry, that’s all you can get. So then how can you have a doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco business as at all though? That probably varies per state with the requirements of that, but I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can say doing business as your own personal name with no suffix or anything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the whole point- I can only pick another name
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or a name that is clearly not like, you know, yours probably. Like again, I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why these rules are there. So you probably can’t just say, okay, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco operating an LLC, but I’m gonna not say that anywhere. I’m just gonna say I’m John Syracuse, because that would probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expose you personally to liability. Like anybody could then probably see you and say, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you kind of broke the LLC seal there. And so you’re not really protected by it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, there’s a whole bunch of legal stuff about, I forget what it’s called as a term for it. If you do stuff with your
⏹️ ▶️ John company that mixes your personal stuff with it too much.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They can basically say, like, you know, you’re not really operating this correctly and so therefore you don’t get the protection. That’s why I always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recommend, like, if you’re gonna have an app, make money, have an LLC, do everything under that LLC,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a separate bank account that the only transactions are for the business. It has no other transactions.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, it just keeps everything so much cleaner and it protects you a lot better than any kind of weird, like, jumbled arrangement.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and that’s why I think all the people who say they did this probably just changed from one legal name
⏹️ ▶️ John to another, like from one corporation name to another corporation name, like or something like, because that’s hard enough. Like just
⏹️ ▶️ John changing it from my name to LLC was a pain and took a long time, right? And I suppose you could do doing business
⏹️ ▶️ John as like, I’m just looking at Microsoft’s, Microsoft says Microsoft Corporation on it. So maybe that’s, maybe they’re all like that. So
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, uh, it, it still strikes me as dumb. Uh, but I feel like the person
⏹️ ▶️ John who was helping me, had they just explained what Marco just explained, I would have been less angry because
⏹️ ▶️ John I would like, okay, you know, cause I cited fictitious business name and be like, look, you don’t understand. Fictitious business name is not what you think
⏹️ ▶️ John it is. And, uh, the whole thing about the LLC suffix or whatever, like I could
⏹️ ▶️ John have been walked off this ledge, but I wasn’t. So I got mad and said it was dumb, but then I gave up
⏹️ ▶️ John on it. So, you know, that’s, I did the right thing in the end, which is don’t worry
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco about it. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John I just waited and waited for me to do my next app update so I could put my name in the keywords.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I should do that too. I never thought about that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Let me see if it works. I didn’t even test it. No one’s buying my app anymore. Hey, everyone in the chatroom, go buy another copy
⏹️ ▶️ John of my app, it’s great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hey, me too, me too, me too.
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey’s, his has some sort of memory problem. You don’t want that. Aw.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Hey, I got, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John wow, someone put my name in the keywords of their app. Hmm. I don’t know how I feel about
⏹️ ▶️ John that. Oh, it’s a cool app. I like this app, so I guess it’s good. I don’t know. You’re not supposed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to like the spammers app.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, it’s not like a, it’s another app that someone was talking to me the beta test and
⏹️ ▶️ John beta testing it it’s an app that they thought I would like and they’re right it is an app that I would like.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know where my name appears it could be in the
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway downloading their app now. Yeah one of my I have to wait for I have an updated
⏹️ ▶️ John front and and center in a while, but the next time I do, I will add my name to the keywords.
Casey’s new toys
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Alright, so let’s start the show with some follow-up.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I presume that neither John nor Marco have looked at Instagram
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the last 45 minutes to an hour? Incorrect. I saw
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thingy. If you look at my Insta stories, you will see that I got some treats today and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have been messing about with all the raspberry pies. So in my Insta story,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you’re not on Instagram or don’t care to look. Oh my God. What you’ll see is me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey taking a Reed switch, which is a little magnetic switch, and moving it close to the other half
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of it and out and close and then away and close and away and a little LED in the background, lighting and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going off and lighting and then going off. And that is my physical proof of concept
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that everything, including my hilariously bad soldering, has worked.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I now have two Raspberry Pi Zero Ws.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So those are not at all the same as what I had. What I had is like the big boy Raspberry Pi, the Raspberry Pi 4.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now I have two Raspberry Pi Zero Ws, which are literally $10
⏹️ ▶️ Casey computers that have wireless and Bluetooth on them. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what I have is, as described last time in my ridiculously overcomplicated Rube Goldberg
⏹️ ▶️ Casey setup, what I have is a setup wherein one of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Raspberry Pis is just detecting this magnetic read switch, and then sending
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a multicast message to the other one, which is saying, it’s open, it’s closed, it’s open, it’s closed, and then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that other one will light or extinguish an LED. Now, since
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we last spoke, a lot of people have written in to share all sorts of completely legitimate and considerably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey easier, and in many arguments, better approaches to fix this problem, but I don’t care
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I’ve wanted to fix it this way because it’s fun, and I I wanted to get some of this kind of weird nervous
⏹️ ▶️ Casey energy out of my system, which we talk about in the forthcoming analog, which won’t be out until a few days after this episode.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But anyway, uh, the other thing I’ve learned in the last week is that there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are four connectors on the back of my garage door opener.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Two of them seem to be just like a, a constant power.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey One of them is connected to the sensors at the bottom of the garage door. so they know if one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the kids runs through as the garage door is closing, then it would stop the garage door from closing. And the other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one is connected to the switch on the wall. And it appears that all you need to do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to tell the garage door to open or close is just connect the common line,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or the always powered line, to the line coming from the switch on the wall.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So to test this theory, I did what I shouldn’t have done, but it worked, is I took a pair
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of pliers and just connected it, physically touched it to the two screws, one of which is the common line
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and one of which is the line from the garage from the wall unit. And sure enough, the garage door started closing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then I did it again then started opening. What this means is with a relay, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey should be able to open and close garage door from the Raspberry Pi. And so I have a relay which I have not even opened
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yet. But my next mission is to hack together my own completely bespoke HomeKit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enabled garage door setup. Why? because I can and because it’s fun
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’m having a lot of fun and It’s it’s stunning to me that I actually made
⏹️ ▶️ John I have some design notes for your based on your Instagram thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, it looks like utter garbage and it’s it’s terrible
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John and you should not see it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not that it’s something bigger. So I I I’m I may be wrong
⏹️ ▶️ John But my guess is that you are overestimating the precision of your
⏹️ ▶️ John garage door with those sensors Like, when you’re holding the sensors up to each other and saying, look, open, closed,
⏹️ ▶️ John open, closed, you’re assuming that the door will come to a closed position
⏹️ ▶️ John with such precision that those two things will be anywhere close enough to each other and align with
⏹️ ▶️ John each other to actually activate. When you’re doing it with your hand, it works great. When you’re doing it with a garage door,
⏹️ ▶️ John I can imagine there being up to a centimeter gap in any direction.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Aaron Powell Yeah, that’s theoretically true, but let me me remind you that as we discussed last week,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I was at WW a year or two ago, the garage door completely buckled and we got a whole new garage door and a whole new garage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey door opener. So this is not one of the like 20 year old God awful, extremely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey loud, extremely rickety garage door
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or at least not yet. But I do take your point you very well may be right. I haven’t even attempted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to mount these little sensors, so to speak, on the garage door or anywhere near
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. But my hope is that it’ll at least be able to get close enough.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe. I mean, like, what kind of tolerances do we have? Do you have like Apple style iPhone tolerances
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco on your garage door where
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s sub millimeter precision where this door comes to rest in exactly the same spot every time? I guess we’ll find out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, we will find out that that’s part of tomorrow’s mission as well. If I if I’m procrastinating on doing vignette
⏹️ ▶️ Casey image related work and memory related work then I’ll be trying to mount all this and see if I can get that going.
ARM predictions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We have some other follow-up from Colin McKellar who wrote in with regard to arm predictions.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we had said last episode that we couldn’t remember when each of us had wagered the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey arm transition, if it happens, would happen. And Colin wrote that in episode 285,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey starting at about 3 minutes and 48 seconds into the episode, and this was from the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 30th of July 2018, we had made predictions. And according
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to Colin, and I didn’t verify if this was exactly right, but I take them at their word.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had said sometime in five to 10 years from 2018, which puts that at 2023 through 2028 with the first Mac definitely by 2023.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think the context was when would the transition start and when would it be done?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John said you had said it would be done in 10 years, which is 2028, with a fast transition once it starts.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey However, in episode 306, at about an hour and 36 minutes, apparently you had said you would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be surprised if there were no ARM Macs by 2021. Marco was the most aggressive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and bold. You had said the first one within two years, which would put that at about mid-2020, mid this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey year, and the last Intel Mac sold within five years, which would be about 2023. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey finally, Colin also noted that on the talk show, Gruber, specifically episode Gruber
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had noted that he think it’ll be announced last year with a transition this year. So we’ll see what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel pretty good about that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, I think this summer is probably too soon as I, as I, you know, set the beginning of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my range at, uh, but I bet it’s not by that much. I’m guessing it’s probably going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be at the earliest, possibly this fall at the latest, probably next fall.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. The problem with all these predictions is they were like in 2018 ish and that’s a little bit too close because by then we had like rumors
⏹️ ▶️ John and we could all we were all informed by the same stories coming out of it. You know, leak type
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff coming out. Apple, that’s it’s it’s that’s the difficulty of predictions that are close to the event.
⏹️ ▶️ John We start getting some real information and it’s not just hunches. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s why we’re all clustered around this kind of thing. It’s just a question of how long do we expand out? And I I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John remember this conversation, but I imagine my tenure thing was like, well, like one Mac could hold on for a long
⏹️ ▶️ John time, presumably the Mac Pro, but who knows? Like so it could, But I’m saying like by 10 years, this has got to be done.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I was basically probably rallying against there was the idea that they’re going to permanently keep like
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac Pro x86 or something. And I just don’t see that happening.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So the other thing we had talked about at some point in the past, and we didn’t talk about this last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey week, did we? What is going to be the first Mac to go ARM? We’ve talked about it before. No, we’ve absolutely talked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about it before. I’m saying, what do you think now?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. I mean, and before I think we said the 12-inch which no longer exists
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey technically. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John mean, it could come back. It could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exist again. Like, I could come back as that. I think, if I had to guess, I’m gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco guess the MacBook Air. Yeah, I don’t know if it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna be a single, like you’re saying, like is it gonna be one Mac? I mean, I suppose it could, there’s no
⏹️ ▶️ John reason, but like, obviously we’re thinking laptop, because that makes the most sense,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then it’s just a question of which laptop, could it be all the laptops? Like, I’m still kind of rooting for that thing. Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John hasn’t done it in a while. They’ve been much more sort of conservative, where you pick a guinea pig machine, you do it, it eventually rolls out
⏹️ ▶️ John to the other products, right? But I kind of miss the days when they would just say, Guess what, here’s our new line of ARM-powered
⏹️ ▶️ John laptops, and it’s all of them. It’s the Air, the 13-inch MacBook Pro that we’ll talk about later, and the 16-inch. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just three computers, Apple could do it. So that’s not my prediction, but that’s what I’m rooting for. My prediction,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, I’m gonna go with the Air in the current lineup, that’s what I’m gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say. You know, I would say the same, but Marco’s really messed with my mind by saying it’s something new.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wonder if it would be something new. It could be the-
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the Air. The 12-inch. He
⏹️ ▶️ John said the Air. like the 12-inch could come back in the form of a new fanless.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right, that’s what I’m talking about. I don’t know if it would necessarily be the 12-inch, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some sort of new thing, a la the Air when it was brand new, or perhaps the Adorable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when it was brand new. You know, something-
⏹️ ▶️ John Like an iOS laptop, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like an iOS laptop, you never know. Things could get crazy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, you could also argue, though, that the 11-inch iPad with various keyboard options that are now available
⏹️ ▶️ Marco satisfies a lot of that need for a super tiny laptop. that was previously solved by the 12-inch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But ultimately, the reason I guess the MacBook Air is that it’s just such a massive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hit. It hits such a sweet spot of needs for most people being pretty well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco satisfied. Really, the one area that the MacBook Air really is not so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great at is CPU performance. And so that’s the area where ARM could really help there. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not so great in CPU performance because they need a super low wattage part from Intel to fit that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chassis and thermal design. and this is the best Intel can do with that wattage, I
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple could do better. And no one’s gonna argue against getting more battery life as well, right? So
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a crowd pleaser, that computer. Put an arm in that thing and no one’s gonna question why this computer
⏹️ ▶️ John exists and what the benefits might be.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I would buy one immediately. Like day one, an arm MacBook Air, I would buy it immediately
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because the current MacBook Air, again, it’s wonderful in many ways.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It really is an amazing size. Even the previous one with the butterfly keyboard,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I never bought one, but I handled one a few times, like in a store, and if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people would have one, I’d pick it up and play with it, and it felt great. Like, it’s a great feeling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco form factor, that just the size and the wedge shape really feels good. And they’ve done a good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco job with the other physical stuff, like the hinge and everything too, but like, I love my 16-inch, and I’m glad I have it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of the time I’m using it, but I can’t deny there is a very strong appeal of a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco super small laptop that can still somehow make a good balance of screen size and power and everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else. And the current Air is just a little bit too slow. We’ll get to this later when we talk about the 13-inch. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco current Air is a little bit too slow for me. I would feel that pretty frequently. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an ARM version could plausibly be faster enough to really close that gap between it and the current
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pros, or even surpass them.
⏹️ ▶️ John The other angle on this is the second most likely, or maybe it’s tied.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you think about it, we keep thinking, which computer would benefit most from ARM? Where does it make sense to have ARM? Yada,
⏹️ ▶️ John yada, yada. All those are factors, but the other factor is, okay, but this will be the first one. So it’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John have the most growing pains, and do you really wanna put those growing pains and those compromises and have to explain it to buyers
⏹️ ▶️ John in our most popular product? Or, and I think this is what they did with Intel, or do you want to instead put it in
⏹️ ▶️ John the 16-inch? Just because so few people buy that, and the people who buy it know what they’re getting into in terms of whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John emulation there might be or compatibility concerns, you know what I mean? To let the more expensive lower
⏹️ ▶️ John volume computer be the first one just to shake out all the kinks and get it settled because
⏹️ ▶️ John by putting it in the MacBook Air, there’s probably best selling Mac, then now you have
⏹️ ▶️ John this thing that you have to explain to people, especially if you don’t sell the x86 one anymore. It’s like, oh, I was gonna get a Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I hear they don’t run their software right anymore or something or other, right? That’s the risk with doing it on your most popular computer
⏹️ ▶️ John to begin with. Doesn’t mean they’re not gonna do it, that’s just the opposite argument and the way that you could end up
⏹️ ▶️ John having it in the top-end laptop first, right? Or put it in the Mac Pro first
⏹️ ▶️ John if the first one they make is 64 cores, but I’m not holding my breath for that.
Casey’s Tale of Woe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, if you’ll permit me to go back a step, I forgot to mention a small tale of woe I had with my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new treats that I got today. So I had ordered the Pi Zero W
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as I had mentioned, and again, this is a single board $10 computer. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I didn’t get one of the like overpriced starter packs that has like a case and a power
⏹️ ▶️ Casey supply and all this other junk because I didn’t need that. I knew what I was doing, or so I thought.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey One of the things that I needed, or basically in order to get these things started,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what happens is you can choose to buy, and I did, a SD card that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has something called Noobs pre-installed on it, N-O-O-B-S. What that basically does
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is it lets you decide what OS you want to put on that card, and it’ll do an internet restore
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in order to install that OS. So generally speaking, you would just install the Raspberry Pi, a Raspbian
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Linux distribution and that’ll be that. So I had ordered a couple of 16 gig
⏹️ ▶️ Casey SD cards for these little computers and that had noobs on it. So the first order of business in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey order to get everything working is to go ahead and plug in a keyboard to the Raspberry
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pi 0W and plug in my TV that’s operating as an HDMI monitor.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I didn’t order any dongles or anything with this because I did get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with my Pi 4 dongles for HDMI and it has USB
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ports and so on and so forth. I go to set the first one of my two Pi
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Zeros up and gentlemen, if you will look at the link in the chat slash in the show notes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you can see all the different connectors on the Pi Zero W and the connectors are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mini HDMI and USB on the go ports and then micro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey USB for power. So USB on the go is apparently also micro USB. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all I have keyboard wise is an Apple, like not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wireless, an Apple wired extended keyboard, you know, one of the ones that has a USB port, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey works great on the Raspberry Pi four that has a full size USB port. But on this, I,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh, I can’t connect a keyboard. Well, that’s a problem. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I went digging through my my drawers full of adapters. And finally, I got a series of adapters that would let
⏹️ ▶️ Casey let me plug in a keyboard so I can actually do something with this computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You actually have, because like, so what USB on the go is basically is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a micro USB port that’s acting as a USB host port instead of USB device
⏹️ ▶️ Marco side port. So it’s like a micro USB port on a device, but on the computer side instead.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Normally the cables are not made to do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. So I was able to get a series of cables connected to plug a full size USB
⏹️ ▶️ Casey keyboard into this thing. And then I went to connect my display. Now, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t know how close you’re paying attention earlier, but I said that the Raspberry Pi zero W and let me just get make sure I get this right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It has a mini HDMI port on it. However, my Raspberry Pi four has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a micro well to micro HDMI ports. So I have micro HDMI cables.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do not have many HDMI cables. And what really chaps my hindquarters
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is I went through all of my cables like six months ago. And I remember seeing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of these cables and thinking, Oh, that’s for a camcorder that we had 10 years ago. I will never need this cable again.
⏹️ ▶️ John Let this be a lesson to you kids. Never throw out anything.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Never throw out anything.
⏹️ ▶️ John I might need that cable someday. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco totally the wrong lesson. No, let’s be a lesson to you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When you buy your first Raspberry Pi of a certain size, get the adapter kit with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John it. Like everyone sells
⏹️ ▶️ John extra 15 bucks. That’s another lesson you could take from this. Or you could just hoard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all your cables forever. Yeah, like I know you’re gonna pay more for the cables and adapters than you did for the Pi Zero W which is $10
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but still like just there’s a reason why those kits exist because like yeah the the the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first one of these you buy you’re not gonna have all the weird crazy little tiny cables it needs so just get the kit the first time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s like $25 and then you know you can go from there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly now I assumed unfortunately that they were the same connector
⏹️ ▶️ Casey why wouldn’t they be but they are not and so now I have a very unique scenario where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do have a keyboard connected, hypothetically, as it turns out I never tested it. I do have a keyboard connected,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I can’t see anything. And that’s going to make things challenging. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what does one do? Now, Marco, you might know the answer to this, but I’m curious, John, and this is an unfair
⏹️ ▶️ Casey question. I’ll be the first to tell you it’s an unfair question, but what would you try, John, in order to fix this problem?
⏹️ ▶️ John Can you SSH into it and use a big, expensive $1,000 computer as a dumb terminal?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Certainly, except that there is no OS on it as yet. Remember that noobs, the first thing you do is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you choose what OS to put on it using a keyboard and a display. And then at that point, you could probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey SSH into it. But what do you do?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. Can you just do it by feel?
⏹️ ▶️ John could use the force. You can tell when you have to hit F2 during the BIOS process
⏹️ ▶️ John to get something going.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess in theory I could have booted one of the, because I got two cards, you know, one for each pie. I guess
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I could have put the other card in the Raspberry Pi 4 and kind of like followed along, you know what I mean? And just
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey just watch a YouTube video.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Or watch, yeah, that’s true. I didn’t think about that. That’s actually a pretty good answer. I’m annoyed because that’s a pretty good answer. Marco, do you know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what the, what I feel like is the correct answer? Like, how would you have handled this? Because I think you might know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think there’s probably some like config file you can edit or some like file
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you create. if you like touch a file at a certain path on the card, you can tell it like just automatically configure with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this or enable SSH or something like that. That’s what that’s the solution I would look for is like, is there something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can modify on this SD card to make it automatically configure enough to the point where I can get an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will award you full credit, even if you’re missing a step, but I still award you full credit. Hold down a
⏹️ ▶️ John key on the keyboard that you just connected.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, no, no, no. So what I ended up doing was I used an app called
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Etcher on my Mac to basically basically reset and reformat the SD
⏹️ ▶️ Casey card to actually have the OS already on it. So not have noobs on it, but instead
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have the full OS installation on it. At that point, this is where, Marco, you’re exactly right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You can put a file or touch a file called SSH into the root of that file
⏹️ ▶️ Casey system, and it will automatically enable SSH when it boots. However,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this thing does not have an Ethernet port on it. How do I connect to my Wi-Fi, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is not exactly open. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. You can open it up for two seconds. No one’s going to hack you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could. Is there some, like, again, config files. Is there some config file you can put on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there that says, like, connect to this SSID with this password?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey As it turns out, wpa underscore supplicant dot config, you set your country.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey set a couple other parameters, and then you set a network. You know, and you say it’s such and such SSID with such
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and such pre-shared key. And sure enough, when I plugged this thing in, suddenly my Eero
⏹️ ▶️ Casey app said, hi, there’s a new Raspberry Pi connected to your network. So I was able to at that point
⏹️ ▶️ Casey SSH, or if I really wanted to, I guess I could have VNC if I’d started X Windows, but I was able to SSH in and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do everything I needed to do. But imagine my utter misery when I finally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey got my treats, that I’ve been waiting less than a week ultimately, but it felt like forever for, I finally got all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the stuff I need. There was an Amazon order and a Pyshop.us
⏹️ ▶️ Casey order. So two different orders that happened to come at at the exact same time, and I’m all excited with myself,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not gonna have to wait for anything, ooh, and I’ll be able to talk about it on the show, this is like a double bonus,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and ah, crap, I don’t have any way to plug it into a monitor.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, this is perfect. The entire reason you got this is because you wanted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an incredibly complicated, convoluted,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco solution to a very simple problem. It’s so true. You’re getting your money’s worth. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m getting my money’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What you got was that problem being even more convoluted pain in the ass than you thought it would
⏹️ ▶️ John Mehran has $10 bought so much hardware and software headaches.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s how to really stretch your dollar. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You are keeping busy. I tell you what, you are finding ways to keep yourself busy during this difficult time.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco credit. Just wait
⏹️ ▶️ John until he starts trying to line up those sensors on the garage door. Open, close. Open, close.
⏹️ ▶️ John Let me just bend a little bit more. Open, close.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s going to be a three weekend ever, I’m telling you right now. Uh, but no, it was, it was such
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a, like, again, like this is so stupid. Like I recognize it’s stupid, but in the heat of the moment, it was such like a roller
⏹️ ▶️ Casey coaster because I’ve got my treats. I go and open it up. I go to set it all up and, oh wait, I can’t connect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my keyboard. Oh, oh, oh, I finally put together all the adapters necessary for the keyboard. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, I can’t get on the wifi. Oh wait. Oh no. You know what I can do? I can use the same connectors. I actually have USB
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to ethernet. I can put it on ethernet just long enough to set up Wi-Fi, and, oh crap,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can’t connect a display. So it was like issue after issue. I am definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey getting my $10 worth out of computer headaches, as you said. But even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey though this is so frustrating and silly, I think because it’s silly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I enjoy it so much because it’s so, like the stakes are so low. Like what’s the worst that happened?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think all in on this garage project, I’m at like a hundred bucks, which is not a little amount of money. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey money, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not insurmountable money.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Even though it has been stressful, I have gotten incredible amounts of joy from being able to do all this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and tinker. I briefly FaceTimed with my dad to show him my achievement
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tonight. Something that occurred to me as I was talking with him was, even though I’ve been writing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey software professionally for almost 20 years, and in an amateur sense
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for probably 30 at this point. Only
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in a couple of occasions have I really seen my software come to life in the sense that it is interfacing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the physical world. My first job out of college was actually, and I’ve mentioned this several
⏹️ ▶️ Casey times in the past, was writing C++ for DOS to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey power slot machines that, well, they weren’t actually slot machines. They were bingo machines that looked like slot machines
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because of weird laws. And so I got to see like the real spin and the display
⏹️ ▶️ Casey work when my code worked and so on and so forth. And so that was really exciting. And then I vividly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey remember the first time I ran FastText on my iPhone and saw my software like on this device.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it was just mind blowing. I don’t know, Marco, if you remember the first time you had, you know, Instapaper on your device.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But for me, it was it was incredible. And so this now Now I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey interfacing with real world things like sensors and lights. Yeah, it’s dumb, but it’s so cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s so cool being able to see this actually happening in the real world.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s so much fun and such a silly waste of time that I have enjoyed every
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More WWDC info released
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t need to spend money on WWDC. So I actually have like three
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or four thousand dollars to spend, right? That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how it works. So which of the new laptops are you going to buy or have you already bought?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I’m not buying anything right now. Not because I don’t want to, but because I shouldn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Because you’re not going anywhere? Yeah, because I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going anywhere. I actually said to Erin earlier, today or yesterday, I said to her, you know, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really want to buy like a two thousand $3000 laptop to go to the grocery store, so I’m not going to and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do work that I’m not doing there. Right. But before we talk about that, let’s talk about WWDC.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There has been a date announced. It is selfishly inconvenient because I’m supposed to hypothetically be on vacation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that week. As it turns out, I’m sure I won’t be on vacation that week because of coronavirus. But nevertheless,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple is hosting their Worldwide Developer Conference beginning June 22nd. So it stands to reason
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that on the 22nd will be the keynote. then the rest of it will be all virtual,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey including apparently labs, which I’m really, really curious how that’s gonna work. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we have a date and it’s June 22nd.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, most of the information in the announcement is not especially new,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the exception of there’s a whole bunch of stuff about how the student things will work. There’s a whole bunch of like new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco student things they’re doing. And apparently the only way you can get a WBC 2020 jacket is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by winning one of the student things that you could do. But for non-students, for kind of the rest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of us, the only real news here that we didn’t already
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know is the dates. And they did mention labs existing, and they said that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was free. We still don’t know. I think the big question is, how are the labs going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work exactly? That’s a pretty big question. But ultimately, this is good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m glad to see them laying out a little bit more, trickling out information as they are ready
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to, you know, this is good. And for now, this is kind of all we need to know anyway. I mean, no one needs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make travel plans. All we know now is like, all right, you know, set aside some time during the week of June
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 22nd because you’re going to probably want to, you know, do some of the sessions or if however the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco labs work, it’s probably going to be time-based. So like somehow get to some of those labs, who knows.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Um, but you know, again, glad to see we’re making progress. We’re getting towards this thing and uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, seemed like their heads on right. I think it would have been weird if they were like, all right, online WBC, $500. That would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have been strange. So the pricing seems right of being free. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco focus on a lot of student stuff is fairly typical. They seem to be amping it up a little bit every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco year, and that’s very good. And yeah, otherwise, it all looks good. We’ll see how it
⏹️ ▶️ John Is it just me, or did they not give an end date? We’re all just assuming it’s a week as normal, but
⏹️ ▶️ John they didn’t say that anywhere, did they?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think so. And that’s, I mean, keep in mind, this is so new. There are so many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco assumptions that we have, and that they might have, based on how it’s always been done that we can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco break. And one of those assumptions is, why does it have to be a week? It can be three
⏹️ ▶️ Marco days, or it can be all summer. Who cares? It doesn’t really need to have a certain ending
⏹️ ▶️ Marco date. The only thing that really needs to end is, at some point, the people doing it at Apple have to get back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John rest of their jobs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But that doesn’t mean it can’t be nine days, or four days, it could be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything within a certain reasonable range and it would be fine. And of course, the sessions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco air at certain times or are on at certain times or get released at certain times, but the sessions are then available
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forever. You can go online now and look back up to probably at least three
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or four years ago and they started putting all of them online. You can go back and get previous year session videos,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can search the transcript, you can look at sample code from previous years. So these things have long lifetimes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the only question is like, when are these sessions released? And because they no longer have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this like, travel-oriented in-person event, if they can’t release
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything they wanna release in five days, they don’t have to. They can take a little bit longer. They can release
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it over a few weeks if they want to. If some API is not ready yet, they can wait till it is ready.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, they’ve been doing that lately anyway, where they just, they would make these little mini presentations and they’d have technology announcements that
⏹️ ▶️ John were like miniature WWDC sessions, right? for the past several years. I mean, those tend
⏹️ ▶️ John to be shorter, but still, that’s a format they seem to like. The marketing for this one is
⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of Memojis behind
⏹️ ▶️ John laptops, I guess, inside of a dark background with being lit by the screen, I suppose.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s interesting because it lets them advertise their Memoji thing, but I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John where they have the people peeking out from behind their screen and you can only see their eyes,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s something strange about that. It’s like, it’s not menacing exactly, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of, I mean, maybe it’s a coronavirus thing where you can, you know, the mask is covering their nose and mouth and you can just see the eyes
⏹️ ▶️ John peeking out. I like it much better when you can see their whole face, like their smiling person or whatever, the guy with
⏹️ ▶️ John the gap in his tooth, or
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the missing tooth or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John That looks fun and happy, but I’m not quite sure why they’re in the dark. I mean, I guess it’s saying like, developers
⏹️ ▶️ John toil away in the dark. Do you remember a couple of years ago that Apple had that video that was kind of like playing
⏹️ ▶️ John at all the stereotypes that all developers are terrible antisocial troglodytes.
⏹️ ▶️ John That was not a good one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is an unfortunate stereotype to be emphasizing even further here. On the other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hand, it is largely true.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I don’t think they’re emphasizing. That just reminded me of it. But I do think that someone made a choice to
⏹️ ▶️ John not show the whole faces of a bunch of people and have them peeking out from behind the monitor, which is kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John cool. But also, I don’t know, a little bit, seems a little bit strange to
⏹️ ▶️ John me. I do like the fact that a lot of the media they have randomizes the Memoji
⏹️ ▶️ John you get. You know, Apple’s been a fan of doing that. It’s like three people, and which three people do you get? Like they have a set
⏹️ ▶️ John of, I don’t know, 20 or something, and they’re all different, and they’re all really cool. Like whoever did the character design on them, they
⏹️ ▶️ John have a variety of hair colors and glasses and skin colors and
⏹️ ▶️ John hats and hairstyles and all sorts of cool stuff. So it’s fun in that way.
⏹️ ▶️ John And people have stickers on the back of their laptops, but then some people don’t have stickers on the back of their laptops. So you can choose
⏹️ ▶️ John who you would, you know, the kind of person you’ll get along with. Should I become a hat person?
⏹️ ▶️ John You think I can pull that off? You were a hat person, and then, you know, they got ruined for you. And
⏹️ ▶️ John did you get a blue one or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something? I forget, I think I lost it. I gotta make a new one for the
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re a hat person by default to keep from getting sunburn on your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? No, but I don’t mean like a baseball hat. I mean like a fashion hat. Like it seems like- One of the options
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now for personal fashion is you could just be like a hat person. You could be like a cool hat person and wear a
⏹️ ▶️ John A lot of danger in that because a lot of the hats have pre-existing associations.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like for example, you probably wouldn’t want to get a fedora.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Just trust me. See, I don’t know anything about hat fashion, so I don’t even know like why is that bad.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, same. You could tip your hat and say m’lady. I wouldn’t do that. Oh God,
⏹️ ▶️ John just be glad you don’t know. Just trust me when I tell you that certain hats have pre-existing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco associations. You mean the cowboy hat? Can I pull off a cowboy hat? No. You absolutely could pull off
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a cowboy hat. Especially in the suburbs of New York.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John No, you absolutely
⏹️ ▶️ John can. You would, a cowboy hat would fit you perfectly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could totally see that. You seem to know a lot about hat fashion. What kind of hat do you think you could pull off?
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I could do like that, like the big straw, the big droopy straw hat
⏹️ ▶️ John that like, I don’t know what.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I would kill to see
⏹️ ▶️ John that. Huckleberry Finn or like, I don’t know what character I’m thinking of, but just kind of like a big stalk of wheat coming out
⏹️ ▶️ John of my mouth and the big floppy straw hat. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I could pull that off. And then what would Casey be wearing? Not what he would choose, what would look good on him?
⏹️ ▶️ John I think, I don’t know, I just keep saying Casey in a dorky baseball hat, I don’t know. Sorry, Casey.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That actually is like the perfect answer. It is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco saying. What’s the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese of hats?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like… Oh, come on. First of all, it’s Velveeta, you jerk. Secondly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, I am not kidding. I long to get to the point
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I can pull off a flat cap. You know what that is? Where it’s like, I think that’s what it’s called, right? Like Todd Vizzeri can pull this off so well
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it makes me so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco angry. I’m doing an image search. Yeah, so… Oh, this? I think you’re too tall for these.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Maybe, I don’t know. But it’s like, it comes up just a little bit in the back and then kind of like falls down like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco wedge in the front.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s like a MacBook Air shaped hat. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, yeah. I want to be able to do this so badly and I know I can’t right now, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I’m hopeful.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hopeful when I get old, I’ll be able to pull it off. No, no,
⏹️ ▶️ John please don’t. You have to get like a foot shorter and way fatter to pull this off. Casey.
⏹️ ▶️ John have to be short? I’m saying one doesn’t have to be short, but you to pull this hat off
⏹️ ▶️ John would have to be way shorter and fatter.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just want to be able to wear it. Come on.
⏹️ ▶️ John Sorry. I didn’t make your head shape this what it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco makes me so alright now if I were to get a fedora as John suggests no I did not suggest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh I was going to say do I got a red one for the Linux reference or is that to like Michael Jackson oh
⏹️ ▶️ John no I was telling you to get a cowboy hat
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh that’s right okay cowboy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hat we please discuss why fedoras bad I’m really curious
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now looking up image searches for all these things now do I curl up the edges on the cowboy hat like some people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do it I or leave it flat?
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s so much variety in cowboy hats. I don’t know all the different variety, but I do know that some of them have one curl, some of them have two curls,
⏹️ ▶️ John some of them have no curls of different degrees. And I think you would just pick whichever one works for you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it does seem like the world of cowboy hats is quite vast.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I still think when I’m like 60 or 70, I can do a flat cap. I’m telling you, I’m holding out hope.
⏹️ ▶️ John hope. Start gaining that weight. And shrinking. And shrinking. That’ll happen naturally,
⏹️ ▶️ John though. That much, though? No osteoporosis. I believe in him. He’s pretty tall.
⏹️ ▶️ John He’s got all sorts of genetic ailments though.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wait, what are my genetic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Okay. It doesn’t make you shorter. Yeah, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it doesn’t make me shorter.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m just saying like, you know, there could be other ones. We don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Let’s talk about something happier, except not.
New 13” MacBook Pro(s)
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not. There’s a new 13-inch MacBook Pro, which is happy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is amazing! The Butterfly keyboard is dead! We won!
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s it! Well, it’s as dead as you want it to be.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, yeah, I mean, obviously there’s still a whole bunch of them still on the channel and still in people’s homes and still owned by people that’ll be in use for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the iPad keyboard you like. That’s true, yeah, and still on the one keyboard cover that I like. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exactly as dead as you wanted it to be. Exactly, the butterfly keyboard is gone from the entire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac lineup. I am so, so happy. Finally, one of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco our long national nightmares is over. We will probably never know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why it took so long for them to fix this problem, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now fixed. And I could not be happier. The new keyboards that we have,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the magic keyboards in the laptops, they are totally fine. They’re not amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just fine the way laptop keyboards should be. They are unmemorable, you will start typing on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it and you will forget about your keyboard. You won’t have to think about it. You won’t have to baby it. You won’t have to be afraid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of getting a tiny speck of dust in it once. Your keys will work reliably all the time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s amazing. It’s the way it used to be. It’s like when you, it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if your house caught fire once a week, that would become pretty annoying and you would think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t think about anything else because it keeps catching fire and I have to deal with that, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is like your house was catching fire once a week for the last four years if you had an Apple laptop and now finally you can buy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one that doesn’t. It doesn’t need to be an amazing house. When you’re used to one that catches on fire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once a week, if you have one that doesn’t, that’s great! It’s a huge upgrade in quality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of life. And that’s what these keyboards are. They’re not amazing, ridiculous, awesome
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keyboards. They’re totally fine keyboards. And we’re coming from a place that was so far from totally fine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for so many people that that’s a massive improvement. So I’m happy that now the laptops
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are finally with, you know, a couple of minor nitpicks here and there as I will always have.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco For the most part, laptops are in a very good spot and I would say the entire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac lineup for the first time in a long time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco possibly 2012, I’d say the the entire Mac lineup
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is in a pretty good spot right now. The best spot it’s been in a long time.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s true, especially since those models that like never get updates have been updated recently-ish
⏹️ ▶️ John within the last year or two. And that’s pretty much the best you can hope for. The ones that are frequently
⏹️ ▶️ John updated were just updated and the ones that haven’t been updated in ages were kind of updated
⏹️ ▶️ John semi-recently. I mean, maybe the iMac Pro is the one spot that you could quibble about, but otherwise
⏹️ ▶️ John there are really no more Macs that if someone wanted to buy them, you would have to swoop in
⏹️ ▶️ John and explain some sort of caveats that they may not be aware of. All of them are, you know, it’s a balance of price
⏹️ ▶️ John and performance, and it depends on what you want, and yada yada, but they’re all basically good computers, even the really old
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Even the iMac Pro, it’s a Xeon. It’s a Xeon workstation lineup product, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those always have 18 to 24 month update cycles. So we’re near the end of that, but we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not, it’s not egregious. It’s not like super outdated to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco point where it’s embarrassing. If you had to go out and buy an iMac Pro today, it’s fine. Like, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not gonna feel like a total idiot doing that, and you’re not getting a terrible deal doing that necessarily. Even the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac mini, you know, the Mac mini is usually neglected horribly, and has been for much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of its life, or its entire life. But even the Mac mini is only a couple years old. I just bought one. I feel fine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with that. I don’t feel like I got ripped off like I needed one. I
⏹️ ▶️ John one. And I feel like you got ripped off more than usual with the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mini. Right, yes, more, yes. I don’t feel like I got ripped off because of the product’s age.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Obviously, it’s always ripped off in other ways. But even the value argument,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’ve had some pretty bad times for value in the Tim Cook era. It has seemed like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re just paying more and getting less in so many ways so much of the time. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’ve made a couple of corrections in the past year or so. Even though the high end is still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very expensive, John, there’s now significantly improved value at the low
⏹️ ▶️ Marco end for most product lines. And that’s true of the Macs too. The MacBook Air got significantly better value with its
⏹️ ▶️ Marco revision. You know, the Mac mini obviously not incredibly good. You do get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more storage now for your money, which the storage prices are still nowhere near like what you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can go on Amazon and buy an SSD for. But you know, it’s better than it was.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A lot of the complaints about the new 13 inch update that came out this week, focused
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the formerly Escape models of it, which are still around and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kinda didn’t get updated. Like they only got the new keyboard and I don’t think much else. They have, it’s the two port
⏹️ ▶️ Marco versions of the 13 inch MacBook Pro. And a lot of people are like, well, you know, to get one that’s good, you have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get this four port expensive one. And that’s true. That’s always been true for the 13 inch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like to get a good 13 inch, you’re always paying around $2,000 for like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a decent 13 inch configuration. Like I specced up, I went on earlier to see like how good of a value these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things are. If I was buying a MacBook Air, I would get the fastest processor, because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a pretty slow computer, so I’d get the fastest processor, 16 gigs of RAM, one terabyte storage. That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is $1850. The 13-inch MacBook Pro, i5 2.0 CPU,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 16 gig, one terabyte, four-port model, 2000 bucks, $150 more. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco significantly faster, it has twice the ports, it has the much brighter Pro screen,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Air screen is kind of dim. That’s a significantly better computer for 150 bucks with otherwise pretty comparable specs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we’re not talking about super cheap computers in any case, but they haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been. That is not new here. So the value argument, if you’re looking at a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 13-inch MacBook Pro, it’s probably not gonna be a good value no matter what you do. If you want a good value in the Mac lineup,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s the Air or the base model 16-inch. Otherwise, I think they’ve done a really good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco job here. You could argue whether the two-port 13-inch models should even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still exist, and I think they only pretty much are just to hit price points. Otherwise,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go for the four-port one if you can.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, as you know, the reason people are complaining about the lower-end 13-inch, which by the way, Jason Snell
⏹️ ▶️ John pointed out in Slack while we were recording, he was musing about the continued absurdity that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John sells two computers, both called the 13-inch MacBook Pro, that aren’t
⏹️ ▶️ John really the same computer other than more or less being in the same case, right? They’ve always used like different chips
⏹️ ▶️ John and had different performance trade-offs and different prices, and one of them used to not have a touch bar, and it’s always been kind of weird.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so here we are again in the same spot where we’ve got this bifurcation in the 13-inch line
⏹️ ▶️ John that is definitely not obvious from a consumer perspective unless you actually like look at the specs and understand
⏹️ ▶️ John more about it. And in this particular case, they upgraded the high-end one to be what everybody wanted,
⏹️ ▶️ John and they upgraded the low-end one, yes, they fixed the keyboard, but they didn’t really change much else about that. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John weird that they didn’t upgrade the CPU, the internals essentially,
⏹️ ▶️ John of the lower end 13 inch, and that’s making people scratch their
⏹️ ▶️ John head a little bit about it. You don’t wanna feel like you’re getting, Apple always does it with Intel’s terminology of eighth gen,
⏹️ ▶️ John 10th gen processor, right? It’s not a 10 nanometer processor, but the 10th gen one is,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s the same one that it had before, and yes, you get double the storage, and yes, you get the good keyboard, and so on and so forth,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s the one you look at kind of as an ugly duckling. And arguably, the escape was also always kind of an ugly duckling,
⏹️ ▶️ John unless you really love
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that escape key. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John always. In which case, right? And so the comparison that I’ve been thinking
⏹️ ▶️ John about, and a lot of people think about, is like, and you just did it yourself, comparing, all right,
⏹️ ▶️ John so how do I choose between an air and the low-end 13? Because they’re sort of in each other’s
⏹️ ▶️ John space, right? You know, there’s the obvious physical differences. You can look at them and see what the physical differences are.
⏹️ ▶️ John Rene Ritchie in his new YouTube channel which you should check out enumerated I think basically
⏹️ ▶️ John all the changes, the significant differences between the MacBook Air and the low-end 13. The
⏹️ ▶️ John low-end 13 is 0.3 pounds heavier, display is 20% brighter and it’s P3.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s got a better speaker and microphone setup than the Air. The MacBook Air
⏹️ ▶️ John has the 10th gen processor, but the 13-inch does not, it has 8th gen.
⏹️ ▶️ John The 13-inch has a worse GPU, and it can’t drive the Pro Display XDR, but the MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ John Air can, which is, again, something you wouldn’t expect. Wait a second, the cheaper non-Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John model can drive the Pro Display XDR, but the supposed 13-inch MacBook Pro can’t? It’s because it’s the older
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco and older chipset and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything. Is anybody driving a Pro Display XDR with a MacBook Air?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I’m just saying like, this is a spec difference. If it’s a spec difference, the worst GPU people do care about, because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not like worse by a little bit. Like if you do anything involving the GPU, which maybe you do, you’re doing, you know, but then
⏹️ ▶️ John the XDR is just a side effect of having an older GPU that doesn’t have display stream compression.
⏹️ ▶️ John One hour less battery life on the 13 inch, and of course, 13 inch has a touch bar, which again, like the Escape key is like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John is that a plus or a minus, right? So there are differences, but the differences, like
⏹️ ▶️ John aside from the display stuff and the speaker and mic, everything really is in favor of the Air
⏹️ ▶️ John because the Air is newer. Like the Air has got the new stuff. The Air has got the new GPU and CPU. The Air, you know, uses
⏹️ ▶️ John less power presumably with the new GPU and CPU. The Air has display stream compression, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John All those things makes that low-end 13-inch look like kind of ugly ducking. But that said,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, you can look at these differences and make the decision that you want about it. The point is,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you look at these trade-offs and say, actually, I do want the Pro because it has these advantages,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, has better cooling or the eighth gen processor runs the app that I want better
⏹️ ▶️ John than the 10th gen one because of thermal throttling, whatever. You decide you want it. It’s a perfectly
⏹️ ▶️ John good computer because now the keyboard is fine again, right? And it’s just, you can actually pick products based on
⏹️ ▶️ John the specs and not have to have any of these weird conversations about with the exception of maybe having a conversation about the touch
⏹️ ▶️ John bar. There’s no more sort of like caveats that you’re just desperate for everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John to know. But I think the fact that this one hasn’t been updated still makes that 13
⏹️ ▶️ John inch product the sort of most treacherous for the casual consumer because
⏹️ ▶️ John there are differences legitimate differences like you know sensible differences but that are not
⏹️ ▶️ John obvious by looking at them in the store because they all just look the same right so hopefully this
⏹️ ▶️ John weird low-end 13-inch either goes away entirely which I would love because I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John want there to be a two-port computer called Pro that’s just me or eventually gets the
⏹️ ▶️ John internals updated when you know New chips are available that are not the exact same chips that are in the high-end one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So if I were to buy something tomorrow, which I’m not what would I buy?
⏹️ ▶️ John You’d get the high-end one with all the goodies and you’d be happy, right? Because that’s what you always wanted You
⏹️ ▶️ John wanted a 13 inch size computer that has all the things and has all the ports and is fast and has a good keyboard And this is it 10
⏹️ ▶️ John nanometer Intel processor like good GPU Double the storage that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John another thing that it crosses whole line is the whole you get twice the storage for the same price which against their storage places are so
⏹️ ▶️ John stupid, but hey, it’s good, right? It improves the value. It’s everything you
⏹️ ▶️ John said you wanted for the past many years when you were, you know, waffling over what to buy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey COREY PONDERING, PRODUCER & SERVICE ADVISOR, VIVINT AGE COMPANY Me waffling? No, surely not. Yeah, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really want one really badly. I don’t want to spend the money on one at this particular moment, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I want one. My adorable is just, it’s old. I love it. I still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey love it, but it’s old and it’s slow and I want something faster and newer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I still love it, except that I’ve hated it every moment of using it. But I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey love it. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well. I love it. It has all these problems. It’s slow. The keyboard breaks all the time. It’s horrible. And the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one port is a huge pain in the butt. But I love it. I absolutely love it. Have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I told you how
⏹️ ▶️ John much I love it? When he’s sitting on the couch reading Slack with it, I’m sure it’s great. Same element. Reading, not
⏹️ ▶️ John writing. I could type on it. Typing I’m sure works fine, too. Maybe he’s not so great for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, typing is also difficult, because I’m getting double
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John vowels all over the
⏹️ ▶️ John place. I was thinking when Marco was celebrating the banishment of the Butterfly
⏹️ ▶️ John keyboard from Apple’s laptop line, I was looking at my laptop off to the side and I was thinking, you know what? I think
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m in the Butterfly second honeymoon period or the second wind of the Butterfly. Because remember, this is my work
⏹️ ▶️ John laptop and it was 2017 and I had the Butterfly keyboard and eventually my space bar stopped working,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And then I got it replaced on the repair extension program. Of course,
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s only a small percentage of people, though. Yeah, exactly. I’m one of the small percentage. And
⏹️ ▶️ John when they replaced it, of course, because this laptop is designed in a dumb way, they also gave me a brand new
⏹️ ▶️ John battery. And so after using this laptop for two years at work and really hurting
⏹️ ▶️ John the battery doing WebEx meetings with video and having the fans spin up and just like, I got a brand new
⏹️ ▶️ John battery two years into the life of this laptop for free. And I only had to be without it for like a week.
⏹️ ▶️ John So, and my keyboard works again. So I have a working keyboard and the battery, like new because it
⏹️ ▶️ John is new. It had like three cycles on it when I got it. So I’m actually not that I’m glad that I have
⏹️ ▶️ John a butterfly keyboard but if the butterfly keyboard didn’t break my battery would be terrible by now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So if I were to buy one which one would I get? I would think either the 2 gigahertz 512
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or the 2 gigahertz terabyte because I have 512 in my doorbell and I don’t need it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I would want I don’t want to be in a position where I’m like uh-oh.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I I made the decision a couple years back to just get one terabyte for my laptops because I have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a similar situation as you it’s not my primary computer so I don’t need like the biggest storage in the world
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I’m not keeping everything on it but it is nice to have a bunch of storage for you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not only development stuff because Xcode stuff is massive you always need tons of space for like the Xcode itself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the betas and the SDKs and everything else and then also you know when you’re going on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a trip or something when we can and eventually do that again. I know I like to bring a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of downloaded video files. Casey, I can only imagine what you bring with you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I like having a terabyte, and at most times, I have approximately 300 gigs free.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So like less than 500, so I know that was generally the right move to go to the terabyte.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and I think 32 gigs RAM, so that’s 400 bucks. Is it worth the $200 for the 300 megahertz
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the additional turbo boost? No, but I always pay it.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s really not most of the time, but because when the increment is that small, even though I know
⏹️ ▶️ John it will probably hurt my battery life, I just pay it. Because what
⏹️ ▶️ John always look for in laptops is to get a little bit more longevity because they’re the kind of computer that it feels slow before everybody else, so I would.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would do it. There’s not probably a good reason you probably shouldn’t, but that’s just me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I usually don’t get the high RAM option on laptops. Like, 16 is my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco RAM number for laptops. even though I get high RAM on desktops, because on the desktop I leave
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this thing, you know, the uptime is very, very long, and I’m leaving all sorts of huge things open all the time. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right now I have like numbers, pages, in addition to,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, I have Slack, you know, Dash, the documentation viewer. I sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco podcast with Xcode and a simulator running in open, which I probably shouldn’t, but that happens sometimes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Forecast, iTunes, like I have so many things open right now because it’s my desktop and I do everything here. On a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptop that I’m using as a secondary slash travel workstation, I’m usually more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco focused on what I’m doing. I’m not usually running everything all at once. Instead, I’m just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco running Xcode, Xcode and Mail and Safari or whatever, as opposed to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all sorts of different logic and Photoshop all being open at the same time like I often do here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So on laptops, I’ve been going 16 gig for years and it’s been totally fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So $400 for 32 gigs to me is not worth it at all. Now, for those of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you out there who are getting this as your primary computer and you’re like, oh, I gotta run VMs or whatever, okay, that’s a different story.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But as a secondary slash travel computer, 32 gigs might not be necessary for most people.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think there’s like two modes that you can use this computer in. Like if one mode
⏹️ ▶️ John is going for maximum battery life, which I suppose would be the travel case, I would get the slower processor
⏹️ ▶️ John and 16 gigs. but for all other cases, I would get the faster N32.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And for the processor, there’s also the, I know this is super nerdy, but my whole turbo boost religion,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like for me, because I usually run my laptop with turbo boost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco disabled, that changes the calculus of like, well, do you want a high
⏹️ ▶️ Marco base clock? Or do you want high turbo boost? It kind of changes that. So usually I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go for actually a lower base clock because then I save even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more battery power when I’m not on turbo. But that of course comes with a significant performance hit as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So like on this, between the 2.0 and 2.3 high-end CPUs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d probably go 2.0, just because it would run very cool,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d maximize battery life, and if I really needed to step it up for performance, I would just turn turbo boost on,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the difference between 3.8 and 4.1 is not very big. We gotta get you a hardware turbo
⏹️ ▶️ John button. Maybe in case you can make- I’m just thinking
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the same thing! He can make something with a
⏹️ ▶️ John Raspberry Pi that you can tape to
⏹️ ▶️ John I would love that. Use an authentic turbo button from PCAT. Talk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about, like, you know, the touch bar is so fricking useless. That should be on the touch bar, like that, like, or replace
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the touch bar with, you know, keys that make sense for volume and brightness, and then a turbo button.
⏹️ ▶️ John That would be amazing. Why don’t you just get the model that has four high-speed cores and eight power-efficient
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, man, see, this is why, like, when we go ARM, there’s gonna be a lot of problems that I think will just kind of
Mac Pro fan control
⏹️ ▶️ John Speaking of turbos and other That maybe this should have been in fall But I got some more suggestions
⏹️ ▶️ John for a fan control apps and I got one of them lets you manually control the fan speed
⏹️ ▶️ John I even on my Mac Pro and I’m not sure if this is a limitation of the software
⏹️ ▶️ John or if it’s a limitation of the computer but I was the reason I was all excited to get the manual control one is because I was like
⏹️ ▶️ John Now I can just I can manually turn the fans way way way down and just like look at temperatures and see if
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m about to Fry my computer or whatever, right? But this software did not let me turn any of the big
⏹️ ▶️ John three fans below 500 rpm like but that’s what they ran out all The time and it’s like yeah, they’re running at the slowest
⏹️ ▶️ John speed Someone from Apple should tell me can these fans have been in anything less
⏹️ ▶️ John than 500. It seems like they can’t So we’re just kind of disappointing because I
⏹️ ▶️ John was I was hoping they could spin it like 100 rpm And it would be like almost silent, but anyway this software couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John I forgot the name of it. It’s There’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like SMC fan control and stuff like that. TG Pro. I don’t know the physics
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it, but like motors have a certain minimum speed they can spin at. I’ve never seen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computer fans that, like from Apple at least, that idled below about 900
⏹️ ▶️ Marco RPM. So the fact that yours idle already at 500, I don’t think you’re getting a lot better than that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, they’re huge fans. Like they’re the size of a cantaloupe. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco understandable
⏹️ ▶️ John that they would be going slow. I just, you know, I couldn’t make them go any slower. Anyway, I did pin them all to the slow
⏹️ ▶️ John speed and just watched my temperatures. They don’t really go up. Maybe that’ll change in the summer with my
⏹️ ▶️ John lack of air conditioning in my house.
⏹️ ▶️ John that was a fun experiment to play with that manual fan control. I don’t recommend it. This software
⏹️ ▶️ John lets you like put in your own fan curves, essentially, and say, when it’s this temperature, go to this RPM, and I’m not gonna play that game. I’m just,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I’ll let the system handle it. But it was worth it just to be able to play
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around with it. Are you actually setting, like are you forcing it to stay too slow? Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually those programs are used to force the fans to spin faster than they otherwise would have to keep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the laptop running cooler. You
⏹️ ▶️ John can do that too, it has sliders. You just slide them and you can listen to the fans. You can just slide, you turn on manual control
⏹️ ▶️ John and you basically have a slider that lets you individually control the fans with one slider for each
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fan. Yeah, but will it actually, like I bet it probably wouldn’t let the CPU get above
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about like 90 Celsius, I bet.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was never close to that. Like, if I’m not doing anything, my computer it’s like it hovers and I changed
⏹️ ▶️ John everything to Fahrenheit because I can’t handle doing even for CPU stuff I know people get used to it for CPUs but anyway um
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah I don’t I didn’t try to stress it like I’m sure if I played a game or something it would get hot and maybe something would happen
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean eventually like the you know the thing will just turn itself off for for safety but
⏹️ ▶️ John it since they like I was saying since the slowest you can make them go with the software is 500 they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John really go much above that in normal use anyway the only time I hear hear the fans is when I’m playing Destiny in Windows,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And then it’s only like, this is the thing about games that I wish, I’ve heard people
⏹️ ▶️ John refer to many times, but I’ve never heard someone explain it to me, but I’m sure we’ve all experienced it in games, that
⏹️ ▶️ John the fans spin up the loudest when there’s stuff on screen that looks the least impressive, basically. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John menu, or like you’re at a vendor, which is like basically a static screen with just a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ John of choices, and you’re like, and all of a sudden, all your fans crank up, and you’re like, why are the fans spinning up? And I’ve heard
⏹️ ▶️ John game developers say offhandedly that this is the case, that like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, drawing things that are not impressive on the screen for some reason make the fans spin up. Maybe it’s because you can get amazing
⏹️ ▶️ John frame rates and things. I don’t know the explanation, but practically speaking, it’s what happens. Like so in Destiny,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m playing and everything’s fine, and then I go to some screen that is totally not impressive, like a menu screen or something, and the fans go crazy.
⏹️ ▶️ John Occasionally I can see where it makes sense where there’s lots of lighting effects where, you know, big explosions are going off and I hear the fans
⏹️ ▶️ John spin up. But yeah, you can definitely hear them when you’re playing Destiny at
⏹️ ▶️ John 4K and HDR. The struggle is real. And as for the theory that the frame rate goes
⏹️ ▶️ John wild, I have in software, in Destiny, I have the frame rate capped at 60 because I have a 60Hz monitor.
⏹️ ▶️ John So there’s no point in the frame rate being much above that. So I don’t know. It’s confusing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, when these sounds get going you can definitely hear them.
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#askatp: RSI, input devices
⏹️ ▶️ Casey SQTP? Let’s do it. So, let’s start tonight with a question from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tom Anthony. Tom writes, I’m a full-time video producer slash editor for three years, starting to develop some signs of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey RSI. I’ve adjusted my desk so that the keyboard, mouse, monitor are all at the recommended height and angle. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey take breaks, but it’s still getting worse. Are there any suggestions for the next thing to try? I’m considering switching to a trackpad or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a different mouse, but I have no idea where to start. I’ve been using a magic mouse forever. I don’t seem to have problems
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with my iPad, but I can’t edit video on that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. So I think the reading, reading this message and other
⏹️ ▶️ John things like this, I was just thinking, this is probably not medically accurate analogy, but you think about like,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, if you are like a metal wire and you bend it back and forth, you ever like bend metal wire back and forth
⏹️ ▶️ John to, until it gets like hot and breaks, right. As a, as a way to, you know, break a metal thing. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ John And this thing is kind of like, I’ve been bending the metal wire back and forth and it feels like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s getting weaker. And I’ve been bending it less and taking breaks between bending,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I’m afraid it’s gonna break. What can I do? And
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, stop bending the metal back and forth in that spot. Like that’s basically
⏹️ ▶️ John what it got. Like there’s no magic bullet. Like, you know, your insides aren’t made of metal.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if you’re doing the same thing with some mechanical part
⏹️ ▶️ John of your body, a joint or whatever, and you’re just repeatedly doing this, that’s why it’s called repetitive strain
⏹️ ▶️ John injury. You’re repeatedly straining something. Yes, taking breaks is good, and having good ergonomics is
⏹️ ▶️ John good, all those things, but what it all boils down to is not bending that thing back and forth. So
⏹️ ▶️ John for example, to use the wire analogy, you could bend a different spot. Like, oh, it looks like it was almost gonna break
⏹️ ▶️ John at this spot. Let me go to another spot on the wire and bend it back and forth. and it gives that other spot a break, right? And if it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a very long wire, you can bend it all to sorts of different spots and spread it around. That’s why lots of people, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John like say, which should I use? What’s the good pointing device? Should I use an ergonomic mouse? Should I use a track pad? Should I use a track ball? What’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the good one for ergonomics? There is no good one, right? There are ones that are worse than others depending on how your positioning
⏹️ ▶️ John is and whatever, but it depends on how and where are you injured. If you’ve always
⏹️ ▶️ John been using a mouse in the same way, using literally anything else will probably help
⏹️ ▶️ John alleviate some of the things that were bothering you about the mouse. It doesn’t mean that other one is better, it just means you’re bending a different
⏹️ ▶️ John part of the wire back and forth, right? Who do we know? Like Mike Hurley
⏹️ ▶️ John is on a, and CGP Grey does this too, on an input device rotation regime to enforce
⏹️ ▶️ John this. Like an actual, like, I do this with this device, I use the pen with this, I use the trackball with this, I use the
⏹️ ▶️ John mouse with this, just like, not just like on a month by month basis, but like on a task by task basis,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? You’re spreading the strain around. Now, it really depends on how injured
⏹️ ▶️ John you are And you have to take breaks and do all this stuff. And some people could get to the point where they’re so injured
⏹️ ▶️ John that any activity exacerbates it. And if you have any kind of nerve injury that doesn’t heal as
⏹️ ▶️ John well or at all, they’re all, you know, anyway, see a doctor, deal with all that. It’s such a
⏹️ ▶️ John pain. I know you can’t really see a doctor now. It’s such a pain in the butt. But bottom line is, there’s no way
⏹️ ▶️ John to avoid the wire breaking if you keep bending it into the same spot no matter how many breaks you take, right? It’s just, you
⏹️ ▶️ John really have to stop hurting yourself, right? hurt yourself differently
⏹️ ▶️ John in different places, spread it around and make yourself stronger and read books about it. And like, there’s no
⏹️ ▶️ John easy answer. So I guess in my depressing non-answer to this,
⏹️ ▶️ John things to take away are, there’s like the idea that
⏹️ ▶️ John a track pad is better or worse than a mouse or better or worse than a vertical mouse
⏹️ ▶️ John or better or worse than a pen or better or worse than a split keyboard or better or worse than a regular keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ John stopping doing what you’re doing that’s hurting you is what you’re looking for. And if what’s hurting
⏹️ ▶️ John you is using a super duper ergonomic keyboard and you switch to a different
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of keyboard, it might make you feel better. It doesn’t mean that different kind of keyboard is better than your neuroergonomic
⏹️ ▶️ John ones, it just means you’re injuring a different part of your body. So don’t look for the magic bullet.
⏹️ ▶️ John Get in touch with your body, read some good books on this and hope that someday you can see a doctor again and that doctor will have any kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they can help you. And I’m gonna say the exact same thing I said last time we had an RSI question,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is, first of all, I have found this is not an area
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where doctors are typically extremely helpful. For the most part, while there are exceptions, there are some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doctors who are very good and are empowered to do good work and recommend good things, and with patients who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are willing to take the right advice and everything. But largely, most modern doctors and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most American systems at least, and similar systems are largely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like medication vendors and people who will refer you to more specialized doctors
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who will generally recommend surgery. The way that doctors usually will address this kind of stuff is like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, you can put on these wrist braces from the drugstore for a while, which don’t really do anything,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you should take this ibuprofen or something, which also, I mean, it helps a little bit, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not really a great solution and neither a complete nor a totally safe solution. At the most extreme
⏹️ ▶️ Marco case, they’ll tend to refer you to surgery. And surgery of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any kind of surgery that involves RSI causes or see also back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pain, which has a lot of the same issues, efficacy rates of such surgery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are shockingly poor. While some people have good results, it’s far from a guarantee that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it actually will help you. So the solutions provided by the,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, doctor industrial complex for things like RSI or back pain, not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great for most people. Like your outcomes are not incredibly promising that they’ll actually be able to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco locate and fix the actual root problem for you. So, you know, what John said
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is largely true. Like, you know, the thing that is hurting you, you need to be doing less of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now, things are better and worse. I have a little bit more faith in input devices than John does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as like a potential for making things better or at least varying things, as you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco said. I’m a huge fan of split keyboards. Like for me, like the natural ergonomic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco split keyboard type has done wonders for me in this area.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I always find that when I go long periods using like non-split keyboards,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like on laptops frequently, I get a little more sore and I start having like potential
⏹️ ▶️ Marco issues. But it’s been, ultimately, it’s been years since I’ve had anything besides
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like mild soreness because I’ve spent those years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really like regularly exercising, like doing like core strength exercises,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lots, you know, just kind of whole body exercises with a trainer and everything. It’s been wonderful. I’m not like a bodybuilder
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or anything and you don’t need to be. And if you get your body in better shape, especially in like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco core and you know, you know, lower arm areas for this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you will generally have a better time around stuff like this. I know this is not a very useful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco answer when you want something like, I want to like buy a new mouse to fix this problem. Or I need this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem to be fixed yesterday, right? This is not a great solution for that. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is one that works and it works really well and not much else does. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco definitely consider a significant change to your fitness regime that can strengthen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco core and whole body stuff and you will probably see good results from that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as well. but certainly on the computer side, I strongly suggest a natural split ergonomic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keyboard. I have found, and I think many other people have found, that changing the keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the split type can have a surprisingly large impact. Certainly on the pointing device side,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I like having a trackpad on the left and a mouse on the right. It seems weird for about a day,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then your left hand gets used to it, and over time you will develop precision pointing device
⏹️ ▶️ Marco abilities with your left hand, as well as your right. So now I can do precise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco movement with either one. So you can kind of share the load between your hands, you can kind of alternate. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re having like worst problems in your right hand than your left, chances are that is mouse related.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And while you can switch up, you know, the kind of device your right hand is using, you can also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco share the load with your left hand and that will also help. Again, none of these things are silver bullets, but it will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco help. And if you can get enough solutions that kind of help and pile them all together,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have a pretty big overall improvement.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m just gonna defend medical science for a moment here and say that although it is totally true that
⏹️ ▶️ John in the US especially, doctors have no idea what to do with RSI and it’s very difficult to find a doctor that does,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s still important to see one because they can suggest whatever they want, but ultimately you decide what treatment you want to
⏹️ ▶️ John pursue as long as you understand that yes, they’re probably going to suggest dumb things like take ibuprofen or put on a brace
⏹️ ▶️ John or see a hand surgeon or whatever. Doesn’t mean you have to do them, But they
⏹️ ▶️ John do have ways to test for things that you would like to rule out. They could do nerve conduction studies, for example,
⏹️ ▶️ John which are not fun. But nerve damage is one you really want to know about because it’s the kind of thing
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t get yourself back to health with exercise. If you
⏹️ ▶️ John damage your nerves, it’s very difficult to come back from that. And it’s a serious issue. And they can test.
⏹️ ▶️ John Are you in the process of damaging your nerves? Have you lost nerve connectivity? We can test for that. Do you
⏹️ ▶️ John have one of the incredibly rare things that everyone knows the name of that everyone thinks they have, like
⏹️ ▶️ John Carpal Tunnel, which everyone thinks they have, and almost nobody who has RSI does have that, you know, the Carpal Tunnel is a real
⏹️ ▶️ John good PR agency, I guess. They can test to see if you have that one specific ailment,
⏹️ ▶️ John and they can rule it out if you don’t, right? They can tell you what part of yourself are you injuring and how.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now, when it comes to them trying to suggest ways for you to not do that, they’ll just say, oh, just stop typing, and that’ll solve it. And they’re right,
⏹️ ▶️ John but that’s not great advice. And then you get into the whole, like, who can actually help me with this? I mean, I think we talked about
⏹️ ▶️ John this in past shows, occupational therapy and trying to find a good doctor and so on and so forth. But science
⏹️ ▶️ John does have ways to test for things and it is good to know. And you know, for things like the, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John the split keyboard or whatever, if the thing you are injuring is alleviated
⏹️ ▶️ John by using a split keyboard, you will see relief from it. If instead the thing you were injuring
⏹️ ▶️ John is like somewhere else in your body, like in your lower back or your shoulders or your neck,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s, it’s possible that a split keyboard won’t provide any help beyond just a slight
⏹️ ▶️ John change of pace. Then you’ll be back in the same position as you continue to tense up in your neck muscles or whatever the hell you’re doing to yourself. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that could be, you know, of course strengthening or something else you need to do. Right. So you don’t, it’s good to actually know to
⏹️ ▶️ John the best of your ability, where are the actual problems and what are they? And also to
⏹️ ▶️ John get them sort of classified as like, is this the type of problem that I can solve with exercise?
⏹️ ▶️ John Or is it a, you know, like how am I injuring myself? And even on the rotating
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, like the do different things, rotate, so on and so forth, you’re always starting about some people have a bad
⏹️ ▶️ John knee, and then they get a brace in that knee, or they start favoring their other leg, and then they get a second
⏹️ ▶️ John bad knee, because now you’re putting all your weight on your supposedly good knee, and now you’ve injured that one. You can chase these
⏹️ ▶️ John things around all you want, but in the end, there’s only a certain amount of bends that wire can take,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you really just have to learn to manage that. And we’re not all given the same wire. This is a wire analogy. I’m really just riding
⏹️ ▶️ John this thing all the way home. We’re not all given the same gauge of wire and the same length
⏹️ ▶️ John and the same strength. One person can bend that wire back and forth 24 hours a day,
⏹️ ▶️ John seven days a week for their whole life and be fine. You might not be able to do that. It’s a genetic lottery
⏹️ ▶️ John and who knows? Like you can’t, one size does not fit all. So like so many
⏹️ ▶️ John things having to do with health, especially sort of like minor non-fatal
⏹️ ▶️ John chronic conditions, it’s very difficult to like to to
⏹️ ▶️ John find a way to deal with that without essentially taking on a lot of the burden yourself to like
⏹️ ▶️ John read books, do research, audition lots of other lots of professionals in the field. Don’t accept
⏹️ ▶️ John the advice of the first person you talk to. Be cautious of medical advice that you know is sort of interventionary
⏹️ ▶️ John of like, well, surgery, surgeons want to do surgery and doctors want to prescribe drugs and people don’t understand RSI.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like all that is the case, but God, I hate talking about this topic because you really I really just want to tell people
⏹️ ▶️ John how to deal with it, and the answer is, it’s hard. Good luck.
#askatp: Mics for video chats
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep. All right. Jack Johnson writes, what are the tips for improving audio quality on video conferencing for people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey working from home? Is there an external mic you recommend for this purpose that would be better than say AirPods?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is there a way to separate audio input and output on iOS? Uh, I gosh, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t know what to do about iOS unless you want to do one of those completely convoluted setups that like Federico
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would do. Um, for the Mac, I mean, you could get a decent mic or just talk
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really close to the one that you have. Marco, this is probably best asked to you. What’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the right answer here?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I’ll start with the tricky stuff. iOS, basically iOS does not expose
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the user a concept of like choose your input and output device.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apps can do it. Apps have access, like audio apps in the APIs, you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enumerate and list the devices available and give people a choice of where the audio is sent. Most apps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t do that though. By default, the audio APIs basically just go to whatever the most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recently plugged in, or there’s a certain priority order of what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco device should take control, basically, based on what’s available. But most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS audio devices, or audio apps, rather, will just use whatever the system default
⏹️ ▶️ Marco currently is for input and output, so they don’t usually offer that kind of control. that being said,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco generally when it comes to improving audio quality and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco intelligibility of how you sound, people being able to understand what you’re saying,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how professional, how clean your audio is as you’re talking, most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of us don’t have a ton of control over the room we are in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and most of us are not in a recording studio. I’m not even in a recording studio right now and you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I try to make it sound like I’m kind of close to one, but I’m not, I’m in an office that’s a shared
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use room that’s full of all sorts of other stuff that has some sound treatment on the wall, but more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than most people would have, but not nearly as much as a studio. There’s a whole bunch of other crap in the room. It’s way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too big to be a studio. So even I’m now in a room that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ideal for it. So what we need to do is figure out what are ways that you can make decent sounding audio
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or make noticeable improvements when you can’t control the factors, and usually you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can’t control the room. And the critical thing that, Casey, you were right what you said a minute ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what most people don’t realize is that you can buy the best microphone in the world,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but if it’s like three feet away from you in an echoey room,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s gonna sound like crap, no matter what mic it is. It can be a shotgun mic, it can be a hypercardioid mic,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever it is, it’s gonna sound like crap if you’re in an untreated room and you’re too far away
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from it. And so the best thing you can do generally, obviously there’s exceptions, but generally speaking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what you want to do is have a microphone that is as close to your mouth as possible given
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the conditions. And you also ideally want to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco able to send the audio that you are listening to, like the other people talking back to you,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ideally send that to headphones, not out to speakers. And the reason why is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have, you know, Zoom and Skype and all these different things, FaceTime, they are smart enough that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they will try to not record what they’re outputting. So you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t get echo back into it. The other person talking that’s coming out of your computer, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will be picked up by your mic, the software tries to correct for that and cancel it back out again so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it doesn’t get into an echo loop. By doing that though, the software has to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more work to filter your incoming audio. It introduces artifacts if you happen to talk over each other,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which happens all the time on video calls because of latency, and it just generally can sound
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worse. So ideally, you want to give the software the best fighting chance of sounding decent. So, number one, if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can, send the audio to your headphones that you’re hearing, so that way the software doesn’t have to work
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as hard to cancel it out. You will still get some headphone bleed, but that’s another story. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, in the context of video calls, it deals with that. Okay, so if you want to be wearing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco headphones, and the best thing for a microphone is to get it close to your mouth,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then ideally, use a headset. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of us have headsets, generally speaking, because Airpods
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and earbuds, the Apple cells that have microphone blobs in the cords, those are headsets.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They aren’t necessarily the best headsets for this purpose, but you probably already have one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So already, you can generally get a significant improvement by just using earbuds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or AirPods. Now, if you wanna go beyond that, again, look at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything that can get the sound to go into your headphones and the microphone to be close to your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mouth. So that could be like a gaming headset. There’s like USB headsets for gamers that integrate the microphone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s also like analog ones that have the two plugs on the outside, like the one headphone and one mic. And there are ways to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco adapt that to a phone with the three conductor phone cables that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have the microphone built in. So there are various ways to do that. I haven’t looked into the cabled ones in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a long time, so I can’t tell you what’s available. There are probably many that just go directly without any adapters into a headphone jack.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But there’s probably also Bluetooth ones. There’s some latency issues there, but for video conferencing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would be fine. So generally speaking, get the microphone close
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to your mouth. Now, what you do after that, that’s up to you, whether you wanna get super
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fancy you can get like a podcasting microphone, but in the context of video chats, it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really that important because, first of all, if you get a microphone close to your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mouth, no matter what it is, you’re gonna be the best sounding person on the entire call every single time, I guarantee it. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t have to be a great microphone to beat everyone else. It can be, and it can be as simple as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, there’s this wonderful Audio Technica mic series, the ATR2100 series. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most recently the ATR2100X. I added it to my giant microphone mega review on my site, which I guess we can link
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to. So you can kind of see how it sounds compared to everything else. And if you talk up close to it, it sounds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty good. And it’s, I think it’s like a hundred bucks and it’s a USB-C XLR
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or USB-C mic. So you can like add it later to a bigger setup if you really wanted to, or you can just use it over USB
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you know, stuff like that. But ultimately all that stuff is kind of overkill.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What you really just need is a decent headset.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I had actually forgotten and would like to reiterate what you were just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey saying about using headphones at all. When I was still working at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a traditional jobby job, we did a lot of Google Hangouts or whatever it was called for that minute.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And one of the things that annoyed me the most, because the mobile team tended to kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go in and out of the office, you know, sometimes some of us were always working from home, even though we were strictly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey speaking all, you know, based in Richmond. So anyway, I noticed that anytime we did like a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey standup or any, any sort of meeting, anyone who didn’t use headphones,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was very difficult to hear because there was so much like feedback and trying and cancellation of the feedback
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and so on and so forth, just like you were describing Marco, that it infuriated me that these people wouldn’t just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey put headphones on, even if you’re alone, just put headphones on, it makes a world of difference. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that’s probably step number one is to put headphones on and politely and gingerly and gently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey encourage those who you’re meeting with to also put headphones on if possible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Because there’s no chance of that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I know, I know. But if any one of you is doing this open air, it’s probably going to ruin it for everyone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, look, I have, there’s a lot of upsides to everybody working at home
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these days, being forced to. There are a lot of upsides to it. However, one of the major downsides
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is video conferences are just fancy conference calls, and conference
⏹️ ▶️ Marco calls are one of the worst forms of communication that humans have ever devised.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because it’s just, there’s so much latency and delay and cross-talk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and confusion and false starts, and it’s just a miserable experience for everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco involved, even if everyone’s really good at it. it tries to mimic and with video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it comes even closer. It tries to mimic being in person and hanging out, but in practice it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nothing like that at all. And people, the closer people try to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make it act like that, the more it falls down that, Oh no, wait, you, you go ahead. No, you go ahead.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh wait, I was going to say, Oh no, wait, you go, who’s, who’s breathing? It’s ah, just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s, it’s a bad scene. So make the most of it. Get a headset. You know what? The way, the way to beat this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get a headset to improve your quality and your listening and everything else, and then get a beer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And your hands are now free because you have a headset, so you can use your newly freed hands to have a beer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That makes it a little bit more bearable.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steve McLaughlin John, any other thoughts?
⏹️ ▶️ John John Green I can’t believe you, at least Marco, so worked up about a conference call considering he, I can’t even
⏹️ ▶️ John remember the last time he would have had to do one for quote unquote work. I have multiple ones per day,
⏹️ ▶️ John so I’m in the thick of it right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now? No, it’s that what it is, is that now the only way I can hang out with my friends is via conference calls.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I went from not having to ever do them to the only way I can socialize.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sucks. It’s way worse than in-person
⏹️ ▶️ John socialization. You can just tell your friends to put on headphones though. It’s harder to tell your coworkers
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, my advice would be much more pragmatic and lower level. I know the question
⏹️ ▶️ John was how do I improve the audio quality, but practically speaking, in all of my various video conferences
⏹️ ▶️ John every single day of the week. I’m just begging for people to like not
⏹️ ▶️ John be in the middle of a tunnel tunnel filled with diesel trucks when they’re like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John like mute yourself when you’re not talking. Everybody knows that. But apparently not everybody knows that. And like, all
⏹️ ▶️ John like, I don’t care about the audio quality. I don’t care how far away you sound. I just want to understand your
⏹️ ▶️ John words. And sometimes there’s just so much noise, like a constant static, like there’s a giant like,
⏹️ ▶️ John fan blowing on the microphone. I’m like, what is that? Where are you? What is that noise?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Like, it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John make any sense. And it’s not like it annoys you because you’re bothered by noise. It annoys you because they speak
⏹️ ▶️ John and you can’t understand their words because there’s too much noise. I just want to be able to understand you.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t care how good you sound. I don’t care how distant you sound. I don’t care if you sound like you’re in the far corner of a giant
⏹️ ▶️ John public restroom. I just need to understand your words, which means everyone else mute and you
⏹️ ▶️ John somehow have enough signal to noise ratio for me to hear the words coming out of your mouth. That’s all I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, because keep in mind, there’s going to be, I alluded to this earlier, there’s going to be so much processing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco done by the software to your voice that the difference between higher end mics are mostly going to be crushed.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Most people are not going to really be able to hear those through the terrible protocol that the programs are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using. So as long as signal to noise ratio is what’s important here, as long as people can understand you and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re speaking clearly and it’s not too echoey in the room. And you’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John riding a motorcycle at the time you’re on the conference call, stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You also want to avoid the problem of like, like I get this because whenever I do a video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chat, which again is not frequent, you know, normally, but it has occasionally happened for various, you know, somebody wants to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talk and let’s talk about podcast standards or whatever. It happens. Whenever I do a call, I always just use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my podcasting microphone. Cause it’s configured as like the input to my computer. It’s right here. Why wouldn’t I use it? I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have headphones. It’s always ready to go. So I swing it over. It’s on this big boom arm. I put on my big headphones. It has a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pop filter in front of the microphone. And every single time everyone’s like, whoa, look at you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all fancy. And it becomes like a thing. Like it’s like a thing that everyone has to mention. Like the other night I did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a hangout with my friends and same thing. It’s like, oh, whoa, look at that. Yeah, and you sound better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than all of us. And it’s like, that’s a kind of attention that you might not want,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or it might not be appropriate in certain contexts for you to like be like the fancy person with the big fancy setup.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So like- Maybe you don’t want the cowboy hat. So like, you know, that’s another
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reason why I suggest like a headset is a really good balance because a headset gives you like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the purposes of a video chat program, 90% of the quality or more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as the best podcast setup you could possibly have. But with a smaller low profile
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing that no one’s going to notice and call out and draw attention to yourself with. So stick with the headset
⏹️ ▶️ Marco range of things if you don’t want people to be commenting on it constantly. And then finally, I will also say that this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, you know, typically these days, we’re not just doing audio calls, we’re doing video calls. And the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco best thing you can possibly do for video calls is get some light on your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco face, for the love of God, get some light on your face. Most people doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco video calls do it, like, you know, in an unmodified office, unmodified
⏹️ ▶️ Marco room, that usually has a big light above and or behind them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they get backlit and you can see their face very, you know, darkly shadowed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and this bright light shining behind them. That’s never good. Do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever you can to get light hitting your face. So get light, you know, behind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your computer, above your computer, whatever it is, get light on your face. It doesn’t have to be fancy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, right now, if you go out right now and try to buy like studio lights, they’re all sold out everywhere, of course, cause everyone’s doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this. Like you don’t need that. It can just be a lamp. Just move it to,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, next to or behind your computer. Like somehow get more light on your face
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and get more light in front of your face than there is behind your face. So whether that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, turning on a light behind the computer and then turning off the light behind you, you know, whatever you can do,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do that. Because that will also like in addition to sounding reasonable on these video calls,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you will look better than everyone else in the video. You will, you will be clearer to see and clearer to understand.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You will look more professional if you have just some kind of light on your face during these video calls.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right. Thanks to our sponsors this week, Squarespace and Linode and we will talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John If you’re into Twitter, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco N-T Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse It’s accidental, they
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t mean to Accidental, check podcast so long
Neutral: CarPlay for old Porsches
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Did you see Porsche has come up, Porsche, excuse
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me, has come up with a new radios for old Porsches.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So the idea here is let’s say you have, and I don’t know squat about Porsches, so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey forgive me, but if you have like a 60s era Porsche, I keep trying to say Porsche because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m American. American. If you have a 60s era P car, you might want to have a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey modern stereo, maybe, I don’t know, with CarPlay. You know, Marco, the thing that your Tesla can’t do,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing? Anyway, you might want to have CarPlay in your 1960s era Porsche, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they have created head units that are specifically designed for that purpose. So they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey single and doubled in, and they’re styled in such a way that they would sort of fit in in in these
⏹️ ▶️ Casey old, old, old Porsches. And I think this is the coolest, most amazing idea
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the world. Paul Matz I’m sure they’re very affordable too, right? Jim Collins I’m sure they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are. Paul Matz Like everything else about having a Porsche, right? Jim Collins
⏹️ ▶️ John also true. Paul Matz This is the world’s most expensive 60s size head
⏹️ ▶️ John unit for your car. It’s this tiny thing with this tiny screen. Does it have the pricing anywhere? I
⏹️ ▶️ John really want to know how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much this is. Jim Collins I thought it was like a thousand bucks, but I may have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco made that up. Yeah, I’m sure like owning and maintaining an antique Porsche
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has got to be a really, you know value conscious hobby
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, it’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ John less expensive than owning maintaining a modern one. Just as the old ones were just so much simpler Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they’re very cooled for goodness sakes. I just think I just wanted to call out how cool I think this is because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I were to I mean, I’m not looking to replace my car But let’s suppose I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wanted to replace my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco car Casey. You’re always looking to replace your car
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Not right now. I’m really not. And that’s not even a financial thing. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just really am not. Plus, I haven’t driven it in like two weeks. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey let’s suppose I wanted to go back to my roots and get a 300ZX. And we can argue about how crappy a car that is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s irrelevant. But if I wanted to get a 300ZX, I would have to give up a lot of modern affordances.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And if I could do something like this in the 300ZX, have this Bluetooth CarPlay
⏹️ ▶️ Casey equipped head unit, really the only modern affordance that I can think of that I would really, really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey miss in this hypothetical 300ZX with this CarPlay head unit is a keyless entry
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and a keyless ignition. But other than that, I would have Bluetooth. I would have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey CarPlay. And yeah, I know there are other third-party head units that you can do this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with, but they wouldn’t fit in. Everyone I’ve seen always looks gross. I know, Marco, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had or have one and it always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me. I’m looking at one right now. It’s an inch away from my hand.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you go. And I just think this is the coolest, most awesome idea for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey keeping older cars relevant in a small way. And I just really commend
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Porsche for doing this. And it really makes, honestly, I would never in a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey million years buy a Porsche because I’m too cheap. But it makes the idea of owning a Porsche, particularly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a used one because that’s all I could afford, so much more appealing. because for somewhere between
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one and $35,000 or whatever it costs for these head units, you could retrofit them and you would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have all these modern conveniences in a Porsche from long ago.
⏹️ ▶️ John See, if I ran a luxury car brand, I would be doing stuff like this all the time
⏹️ ▶️ John whole point of a luxury car brand is your margins are bigger than everybody else. Your cars, they’re super
⏹️ ▶️ John expensive and the people who buy them, you want to cultivate
⏹️ ▶️ John fans, right? And so doing stuff like this, it doesn’t really make any financial sense and it’s not gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John really make you a lot of money and you may actually end up losing money on. You just have to look at it in the grand scheme of things that the goodwill this generates.
⏹️ ▶️ John It makes people proud to own your kind of car, it makes people happy with the car they have. And if someone owns
⏹️ ▶️ John and maintains a Porsche from the 60s, chances are good that they are a potential future customer.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because maybe if that’s your only car, it’s the only thing you could afford or not, but if you have a 60s or a 70s Porsche,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re probably the kind of person who might buy future Porsches because people don’t have old cars like that hell
⏹️ ▶️ John of it because they are weird and finicky and expensive to deal with. So that probably means they
⏹️ ▶️ John have a lot of money and it seems like they like Porsches. So like this is exactly and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John why I always encourage Apple to do frivolous things with its mountain of cash to cultivate
⏹️ ▶️ John a happy and loyal customer base. That’s what you’re going for, right? You’re not, you know, so
⏹️ ▶️ John even though this particular project doesn’t excite me that much and like I would much prefer like the authentic experience of having
⏹️ ▶️ John the crappy push button radio because that’s the the whole deal if you’re going to be in this noisy death trap of a car from the
⏹️ ▶️ John 60s. Why don’t you get some leaded gasoline while you’re at
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m glad they’re doing it and I’m sure they’re charging ridiculous prices. Can you put an airbag in it?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, no. You can listen to tunes, but your life is forfeit.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re not going to retrofit it with crumple zones and roll cages and airbags.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If only. It’s 1,300 euros on this random site I found on the internet. So that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey roughly $1,500. Do they charge a yearly fee to use CarPlay? No, they’re not BMW.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, a good aftermarket doubled-in CarPlay unit is $600, $500, kind of in that ballpark.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So when you add the Porsche multiplier, that’s not that bad of a price. No, it really isn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s another thing we should bring up that I forgot to mention. I’ve heard news via
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Twitter today that Marco, you and I are not going back to buy your next BMW,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because European delivery has apparently ceased, which really, really bums me out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I thought it was interesting. Yeah, so BMW’s ending the European delivery program for North American customers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think it was interesting, basically one of the reasons that the forum people dug up was basically that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most BMWs sold to North American customers are SUVs now. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost all BMW SUVs are made not in Europe. At least the ones
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sold in North America are made in North America. I think they’re in various factories somewhere in the US and Canada,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think. So it doesn’t really make sense. Those were never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting European delivery because they couldn’t, because they weren’t made in Europe. And so the percentage of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sales that BMW has for North American customers keeps going more and more towards models that weren’t made in Europe anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they’re basically saying they had very few people still doing European delivery.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so they’re ending it, which is unfortunate.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey America has historically represented an average of 2,000 European deliveries
⏹️ ▶️ Casey annually. Such deliveries have declined in recent years to under 500. Based on these trends and long-term evaluation,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey BMW Group will end the European delivery program in 2020 and cease accepting reservations as of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this week. Or maybe next week, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco soon. It’s a shame. It’s one of those things that it was so, I’m so glad we did it. It was so fun.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is, you know, if you want to hear us, we, when back when we recorded neutral, we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of ended with us having gone to European delivery for my M5 and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco us and the List family. It was great and it was a fantastic trip. And it was so cool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the fact that you could, you know, order a car from BMW in America
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then go to Europe. They would give you this like whole like factory tour walkthrough thing. They would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco give you your car. You could drive it around Europe for like a week and then just drop it off
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at any of these like five or six places in Europe and then they would ship it to America and you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a couple months later you could pick up your dealer. That was incredible and because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of some weird like tariff loophole it was cheaper. Like you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would save like a few thousand dollars on the cost of the car so you would kind of pay for the trip
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so it kind of worked out that the trip was like low to no cost in the grand scheme of things because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you were saving all this money on the car. It was this kind of amazing thing, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it always kind of seemed like, this shouldn’t be possible. How is this legal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and profitable for anybody? How do they work out with the tariffs that you’re picking up a new car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco meant for a different country in this country that it’s not certified to run in, and you’re allowed to drive it around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a little while and put on a boat somehow? This should never have worked, but it did,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it was amazing, and I’m so glad we got to do it. It is a shame that it’s ending, but it is kind of amazing that it ever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it was an incredibly, incredibly fun time. And I’m so glad that Aaron and I were able to do it with you guys.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was really preposterous and kind of stupid in a lot of ways. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey let’s fly across the planet to pick up a car and use it for a week. And in our particular
⏹️ ▶️ Casey case, we like drove arguably more than we actually stayed still.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But oh Oh my gosh, it was such a fun trip. And yet the, the next last episode of neutral, kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the, the end of the regular season of neutral, if you will, which is episode 12, uh, we dragged
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John through all of it and, and it was such an incredibly great experience. And it made,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it made me feel like a million bucks being part of this experience and, and really I was just a. Hang her
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on. Like I had no reason to be there, but the BMW people were still super nice. And it was such an, it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so, so cool and so fun. And it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sure, even before they shut down. And now with it being shut down, it’s even more so. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just wanted to call attention to it. It just kind of bums me out because it was so cool. But you can still do it with Porsche. I think you can still do it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with Volvo. Saab, I don’t even think exists anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, everyone loves getting in their fun new Volvo and driving it around the Nürburgring. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John fun. Well, you don’t have to worry because Tesla will let you do a California pickup where you can pick up
⏹️ ▶️ John your Tesla in the tent where it was painted.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco By the way, before we leave the Porsche CarPlay topic, can we just laugh at how amazing this single
⏹️ ▶️ Marco DIN unit looks? This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John is so like, you know, car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stereos have like the two different heights they can be, and the double DIN is the regular looking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one that has like a reasonable size screen. Then they also offer a single DIN one, which is like back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when cars were only radios or maybe a radio and cassette could fit in that size, and that’s it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That they have a CarPlay screen, and it looks like the tiniest,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it looks almost like… It’s smaller
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco iPhone. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it looks like two Apple Watches next to each other. And that’s your CarPlay screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey three and a half inches,
⏹️ ▶️ John apparently. It’s like you got to be squinting at the navigation screen. You see anything on it? It’s too small.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, because the CarPlay UI is not particularly scalable. Like, it’s fairly fixed.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s not like they’re just rendering like, you know, one icon on screen. I think they have to render,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, the same number of icons, just really tiny. It’s like 600 DPI screen. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s probably a really nice screen. You need a magnifying glass to read the street names.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Can we just pause and look at the link that N put in the chat?
⏹️ ▶️ John Someone gave me a, that’s a lady’s sun hat. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I was talking about for me. And
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Marco’s cowboy
⏹️ ▶️ John hat is not really a cowboy hat either. It’s on crooked. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey come on, it’s so good. It’s so
⏹️ ▶️ John good. Casey’s the only one who’s got the hat he asked for. And now we can see why he shouldn’t wear
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. Actually, I was just thinking to myself, that doesn’t look bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John No, see, this is why you need
⏹️ ▶️ John to be kept away from this hat. because you’re not thinking straight on this topic.