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

378: Whale Quench

More Casey solutions to problems, voice-control superhumans, scams targeting app developers, and the etymology of “camcorder”.

Episode Description:

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MP3 Header

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

Chapters

  1. A band that jams
  2. Casey’s Garage Project
  3. Dropbox + Synology Drive
  4. Voice control for RSI
  5. Sponsor: Notion
  6. Federico + Federighi
  7. Scams developers get
  8. Importing miniDV tapes
  9. Early camcorders 🖼️
  10. TV carts, melted film 🖼️
  11. Sponsor: ExpressVPN
  12. #askatp: Buy first ARM Mac?
  13. #askatp: Big HDD filesystems
  14. #askatp: Multi-user iPadOS
  15. Ending theme
  16. Neutral 🖼️

A band that jams

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, I’m going to use my sweet Rube Goldberg Dropbox upload right now.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Get ready.

⏹️ ▶️ John All right. Don’t forget to check your little LED before you go to sleep.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will because it’s going to shine right in my face if I don’t.

⏹️ ▶️ John Your next innovation is going to be a black piece of tape to cover the LED that’s shining

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco in your face.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I’d like to file a complaint to the two of you, and you did not know this was coming. Right now,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey as we speak, there is something that Marco and I should be watching on YouTube

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right now. Right now, there’s a replay of a jam band’s concert from last

⏹️ ▶️ Casey year. Want to guess which one, Marco?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I don’t know. Fish did theirs last night and I recorded it. So I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know what you’re talking about, but I’m pretty sure it’s not Fish, so it must not be a jam band.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dave Matthews’ band had last week, this week,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I think for the next several Wednesdays are replaying concert videos on YouTube and they’re broadcasting

⏹️ ▶️ Casey them live. Last week I recorded it live using YouTube DL and then realized

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the next morning I didn’t have to bother with that. I could just download it after the fact, you know, because sometimes on

⏹️ ▶️ Casey YouTube I think you can make things live and then they don’t get saved, so to speak. I’m sure there’s better

⏹️ ▶️ Casey terminology for this. And in the case of the Dave Matthews one, it was perfectly up and available the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey next morning. But yeah, I think I might have to skip the show from now on because I’ve got more important

⏹️ ▶️ Casey things to do.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s a good thing that, you know, we would never possibly download an HLS stream

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and be able to preserve it forever in our Plex libraries. So we definitely have to watch these things live

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as your Jamband does, what my Jamband has been doing for quite some time.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, that’s just mean. You’re not wrong. You’re not wrong, but it’s just plain mean, man.

⏹️ ▶️ John Mark was going to add it to his definition of a Jamband. Does not allow downloading of high-quality

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey equipment equals not a Jamband. But really, I do think,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I probably shouldn’t say this out loud, but here we go. I do think not irregularly about the epiphany

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that either you or I, it might have been me, had several months ago when I realized that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey my definition of jam band and your definition of jam band are very, very different. And to recap, I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey think it’s fair to say, and correct me, but your definition of jam band is kind of the style of music

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and less about whether or not it’s improvised. And to me, I don’t really care what style of music

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is. It’s just whether or not it’s improvisation. And we can get into another argument for the 95th time over who is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right. It ultimately doesn’t matter. But it really made me feel better.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, mine, yours is more, yours is a more literal interpretation of like a jam band is like a band

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that jams.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John It’s almost like if

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your definition of country western music could not be made in New York City. Like if by

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John definition, if somebody,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if a country singer came to New York City and made music here, it would not be country western music. Like that’s kind of like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your definition of jam band is like a band that jams. Like it’s very literal. And I think many people

⏹️ ▶️ Marco share that definition, but from the point of view of like, if you are a like, say a Sirius

⏹️ ▶️ Marco XM jam band station that totally exists, that’s a genre of music that you play. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey not- Which

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Dave Matthews is on, if I’m not mistaken.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, I don’t know, I haven’t had Sirius in a long time, but they might be. The point is like a jam band is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not any band that jams. It is a musical genre that happens to include a lot of jamming,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that doesn’t necessarily mean that any band that jams has suddenly become a jam band.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and I mean, again, we’ve been around the block a few times on this issue, but it would genuinely

⏹️ ▶️ Casey annoy me to no end when you would just fluff off, oh, Dave Matthews isn’t a jam band, Dave Matthews isn’t a jam band, this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is not a jam band, and I feel like my world has been righted by realizing that we’re just having

⏹️ ▶️ Casey two different arguments at the same time.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like so many arguments in modern

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey culture. Indeed.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’re never going to come to a resolution because we’re totally arguing different things.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, at least we’re not moving the goalposts like John always does, am I right?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John So let’s start with follow-up.

⏹️ ▶️ John Ooh! What you were talking about was exactly that. You have two different sets of goalposts. That’s why you couldn’t figure out where the disagreement

⏹️ ▶️ John was. Here I am quietly not liking either band.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey So who’s doing it right here?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I guess you win again. All right, let’s start with some follow-up. Bye.

Casey’s Garage Project

⏹️ ▶️ Casey first and clearly most importantly to everyone involved with the show. My garage door project

⏹️ ▶️ Casey monitor my garage door monitor project is complete.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So Casey is your garage door open or closed right now?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I would have to look at the app right now. I’m in the office and not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the bedroom. But

⏹️ ▶️ John still your window have line of sight on your garage door. Could you could you peek?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, it does not. I don’t know if you set me up for that purpose or not.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Either way, it’s well done.

⏹️ ▶️ John Wait, wait, wait, I’ve got it. Can you have a camera that looks at the light? Yeah, that’s what I should

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey do. There we go. That’s the right answer. I can get

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the new Raspberry Pi camera that’s like 50 bucks

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John or something like that. There you go. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey super high res and it’s totally overkill for what I would need this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John for. And all it

⏹️ ▶️ John has is a view of this tiny LED on your nightstand.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Right. Oh, goodness, that’s hilarious. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyways, the project is complete. Don’t ask me to show you what most of the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey components look like because because there’s not any real good mounting set up for any of this stuff, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it does work. It is complete. There’s an LED that is in my bedroom that is illuminated when the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey garage door is open and it is extinguished when the garage door is closed. And I am very excited about this.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And for phase one, it is complete. Phase two,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I haven’t started yet is, and I think we discussed this last time, is to get a relay, well, I have

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a relay, but to get that relay working such that I can hypothetically raise and lower the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey door via the Raspberry Pi as well as just monitor whether or not it’s open or closed.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I think most important of all, we need to all celebrate the fact that I was right and John was wrong.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And my read switch, my window, it’s not necessarily specifically

⏹️ ▶️ Casey designed for a window, but my close proximity only read switch that John had thought

⏹️ ▶️ Casey would never possibly work did indeed work.

⏹️ ▶️ John Did you mention goalposts moving earlier?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Because it sounds

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco to me like

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey what

⏹️ ▶️ John you’re describing is not what happened. At this point, Marco can add the diddly-doo music and play back what I said,

⏹️ ▶️ John which I believe was something like, I think you might have too much confidence in your switch. Not that it would

⏹️ ▶️ John never work, which is

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco what you just said. So,

⏹️ ▶️ John so much for correctly identifying the goalpost movers.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m glad it worked out for you. I was pessimistic. I expressed doubt, but it looks like it

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey worked out well.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, yeah, so I’m excited about that. And you can see in my Insta stories, you can see that I was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey soldering today, which I’m still just hilariously bad at. But nevertheless, I am good enough

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to make a successful solder, even though it is hideous to look at. And yeah, so it’s all working. I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Casey really excited about that. And I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do any more work on this before next week’s show, but hopefully

⏹️ ▶️ Casey at some point I’ll be able to start toying with that relay and see if I can see if I get that working. So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will take my victory lap right now. Moving on…

Dropbox + Synology Drive

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was looking through the mentions for the ATP Twitter account, which I try

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to keep up with and I do a terrible job of. Somebody wrote something that at a glance, I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey almost skipped over it because I was like, I don’t care about this. Then I went back, I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So Derek

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Van Ittersom wrote, you can use Synology’s Cloud Sync to take a folder on the Synology

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and sync that with your Dropbox files. Yeah, I knew that. Okay, whatever. That folder can also be synced

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with Synology Drive. What? Thus, Dropbox synced files on

⏹️ ▶️ Casey all devices with no Dropbox app installed anywhere. Hold on a second, tell me more.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So it took me a minute to parse what Derek was saying, but then I realized he was basically

⏹️ ▶️ Casey solving my problem for me, and I feel so dumb for not having thought of this already. So there’s an app

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the Synology. So this is a Synology package that runs on the Synology called Cloud Sync, and I’d been running

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it for a long time to get a local backup of my Dropbox. it would just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey act as a Dropbox client, and it would sync all of my files from Dropbox down to the Synology. Again, I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey just used it as a one-way replicator. That’s not the only way you can use it, but that’s just how I was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey using it. Meanwhile, and off to the side, there’s also Synology Drive, which

⏹️ ▶️ Casey although it has the same problem as Apple TV, where there’s one phrase that means 95 different things,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of the things Synology Drive means is they’re like pseudo Dropbox-like thing, where the Synology

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the one source of truth for all of your data, and all of your other devices can

⏹️ ▶️ Casey hook up to that Synology. And it acts basically like Dropbox. You know, it has a client app, everything stays in sync, et cetera,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey et cetera. But it had never occurred to me to bring the two together. So what Derek is saying

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is, I could and have, I could take the Synology CloudSync

⏹️ ▶️ Casey server-side stuff and have it save and replicate my Dropbox into

⏹️ ▶️ Casey my Synology drive root folder. Am I making any sense, gentlemen? Are you with

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco me? Totally. Yeah. Okay.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It sounds like a very casey solution to a problem, because it’s overly complicated,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it solves a problem that doesn’t need to be solved that badly, and it involves Synology.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it adds potential additional problems. Remember we talked

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco about

⏹️ ▶️ John this way back when, in general, putting a synced folder inside a synced folder

⏹️ ▶️ John inside a synced folder, like Dropbox

⏹️ ▶️ John won’t let you put like Microsoft OneDrive inside it or vice versa. Like

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco they have

⏹️ ▶️ John they have things to try to stop you from doing it, but Synology is more laissez-faire and you can

⏹️ ▶️ John do it, but I would really, I mean, maybe two layers deep, maybe that’ll be mostly okay, but

⏹️ ▶️ John I wouldn’t go three or four layers deep. That’s a little bit sketchy. And of course, you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, I don’t, you do have to have something that syncs with Dropbox. So presumably, is that Dropbox software?

⏹️ ▶️ John Or is that something using some kind of public Dropbox API. Do you know the origin of the Synology Dropbox

⏹️ ▶️ John app? Steve

⏹️ ▶️ Casey McLaughlin You know, I don’t. I would assume they’re just using public Dropbox APIs,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I certainly do not know that for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John sure. Paul Well, they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John scraping HTML from the

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey web.

⏹️ ▶️ John Steve

⏹️ ▶️ Casey McLaughlin Yeah, right. Paul Laughs Steve McLaughlin It very well

⏹️ ▶️ John could be. Paul You don’t want to know how it works. It works. It’s fine. Just close your eyes. Steve

⏹️ ▶️ Casey McLaughlin Well, and to that end, I did do this earlier today when I saw this tweet and was like, wait, what?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, and so I tried it. And at a glance, in the last hour or

⏹️ ▶️ Casey two since I’ve tried it, it seems to be working just fine. You know, famous last words, knock on wood, et cetera.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so just for a test, and I don’t know if either of you guys happen to be sitting at your computers when I did this, I put

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a different audio file into our shared Dropbox folder,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey where we share our recordings from these episodes. And I did that using the Dropbox web

⏹️ ▶️ Casey app. And sure enough, you know, maybe 15, 30 seconds after it had uploaded using the web

⏹️ ▶️ Casey app. It ended back up on the same computer from where it started, but inside my Synology

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Drive Dropbox folder. And then I deleted it locally using Finder, and almost instantaneously,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was removed from the Dropbox web app. So, at a glance, this is working. And as someone

⏹️ ▶️ Casey who doesn’t really use Dropbox anymore, except to share files with you guys and with Mike and a couple

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of other random scenarios here and there, I’m actually really, really excited and pleased with this, because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think I’m going to be stressing it very much. And it seems to basically offload all

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the ickiness of Dropbox onto the Synology, which for me, for now,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey seems good. So if you’re in this weird scenario where you have cloud, you have a Synology, you’re

⏹️ ▶️ Casey using Synology Drive, you too, all 12 of us, dozens of us maybe, we can benefit

⏹️ ▶️ Casey from this weird, but awesome setup.

⏹️ ▶️ John The one thing I would watch for is for like, when you’re nesting multiple servers like this, is

⏹️ ▶️ John situations with very large files that actually take an appreciable amount of time transfer, that may not be much of

⏹️ ▶️ John an issue because you have such a fast internet connection and so on and so forth. But like when it’s just one service

⏹️ ▶️ John it can sort of say I’m not going to make the file look like it’s done until I know that it’s done. But

⏹️ ▶️ John when you’ve got two services the outermost service may think oh a new file has appeared

⏹️ ▶️ John and as far as it can tell it’s all set to go so let me make it appear on Casey’s Mac but really

⏹️ ▶️ John Dropbox is still syncing it in and I you know anyway that’s potential dangers

⏹️ ▶️ John of nesting services inside each other. But if you’re just very careful and do things very slowly and are very kind

⏹️ ▶️ John to the software and you’re just copying one file and you wait a long time and don’t yank it out from under it, it’ll probably be fine.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey We’ll see. I mean, when Marco starts sending me angry text messages wondering where my file

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John is.

⏹️ ▶️ John Truncated audio files. And I would say, don’t put your Git repo in there or anything.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No, no, no. Certainly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not. I mean, really, how is this incredibly convoluted pile of hacks better than just using iCloud

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Drive?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I am all in on iCloud Drive. I’m ready.

⏹️ ▶️ John Because we’re hoping that the files won’t just disappear one day or just fail to sync for some inexplicable

⏹️ ▶️ John reason. That’s the… I think in this scenario, you’d get an error if something failed to sync, and

⏹️ ▶️ John the chances of files just disappearing are lower.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I don’t know. The more I’ve thought about this problem, the more I’ve thought, let’s just try Cloud Drive and just see

⏹️ ▶️ Marco how it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey goes. Yes!

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m ready! You know, I don’t like having to run these persistent daemon services on my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco computers all the time, unless really necessary and unless they’re really providing a strong benefit.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No matter what we do, iCloud is already running. iCloud Drive is already there, already

⏹️ ▶️ Marco syncing, it’s already on every device that we use. It’s already running anyway, no matter

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what we do. So it’s like we’re already paying the price for the usage of iCloud Drive here. We might

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as well use it, and then I can get rid of all this other crap software.

⏹️ ▶️ John But there’s more price. The price of, hey, it didn’t sync my file. When it’s just running and it’s not working correctly,

⏹️ ▶️ John but we’re not using it, we don’t pay that price. So yes, you’re right that we have the overhead of it doing something, But if we never

⏹️ ▶️ John actually use it to do anything, we don’t, you know, we’re not asking it to actually run. And also we don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John aren’t exposed to the bugs. I’m still in favor of SFTP. That is still my favorable solution.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Cause

⏹️ ▶️ John we all have SFTP clients and they don’t run all the time. And you know, if you really want something

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s mounted, it’s really easy to mount an SFTP driver, whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well for the record, Marco, I am all in on iCloud drive or at least giving it a shot if nothing else. So you tell me

⏹️ ▶️ Casey when you’re

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John ready. Why

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t you just use iCloud Drive and then have that sync to your Synology and then

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey have that sync to an SFTP server? Perfect!

⏹️ ▶️ Casey nothing could go wrong.

Voice control for RSI

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, John, tell me about RSI and voice control, if you please.

⏹️ ▶️ John We had further discussion on RSI on the last episode of Ask ATP. We’ve talked about

⏹️ ▶️ John it in many episodes in the past. And we got a couple of interesting examples of

⏹️ ▶️ John solutionist RSI. One is from, oh, I got to do these names. I got to practice,

⏹️ ▶️ John though. You’re going to read them. I know Miyagawa. I just am not

⏹️ ▶️ John used to pronouncing his first name. I think I got his last name right. Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John Tatsuhiko Miyagawa has an example of

⏹️ ▶️ John someone using voice control to program in Perl, which, ha ha, yes, we all know, it’s got all those funny

⏹️ ▶️ John punctuation symbols and everything like that. The programmer is Emily Shea, and there’s a video

⏹️ ▶️ John of her at a conference explaining here’s how I use voice control to

⏹️ ▶️ John be a programmer, which you would think, A, is gonna be hard no matter what, because programming in general is filled with all sorts

⏹️ ▶️ John of symbols things you have to do that aren’t natural and B Pearl oh my goodness and of course there’s a you know a couple

⏹️ ▶️ John of humorous videos out there on the web of showing how terribly

⏹️ ▶️ John unmodified voice control software deals with Pearl in particular I think she uses one of them in the

⏹️ ▶️ John presentation I don’t know if this is the original funny and you know haha trying to do voice control for Pearl but

⏹️ ▶️ John it is one of them so I recommend everybody check that out if you want to see what’s

⏹️ ▶️ John possible it sounds funny it sounds a little bit humorous when you watch it, but you can’t help but be

⏹️ ▶️ John impressed. It’s kind of like a Casey setup only with an actual purpose, right? So the purpose is,

⏹️ ▶️ John the purpose is, Hey, this is a health issue. I need to find a way to do my job without using my

⏹️ ▶️ John body the way I was using it. So let me, let me use my skill as a programmer to fashion

⏹️ ▶️ John something from bits and pieces, not a Raspberry Pi, but, but the software equivalent essentially to make a setup

⏹️ ▶️ John where I can effectively program and use my computer. And then the

⏹️ ▶️ John second one is Philip Brokom, who has a video showing

⏹️ ▶️ John his hands-free technique of using his computer. So not just like, hey, I’m not typing when I’m programming,

⏹️ ▶️ John but like entirely hands-free, as in I’m not using a mouse or a trackpad, I’m not touching the keyboard.

⏹️ ▶️ John You know, and you might think, how can you use a computer like that? Sure, you can use voice for the text input,

⏹️ ▶️ John but what about everything else? Well, the answer is in this video. He says he’s been a developer for 15 years,

⏹️ ▶️ John 10 of which have been hands-free. You should definitely check it out. And he sent this

⏹️ ▶️ John because he just wanted people to know that the idea of don’t use your hands, like the humorous advice that I said

⏹️ ▶️ John that the doctor might offer you if you’re having some problem, is actually possible if you’re willing to put in the effort.

⏹️ ▶️ John One of the examples I was super impressed with is, like it shows the strengths of voice

⏹️ ▶️ John input we all kind of know. Most people can speak better

⏹️ ▶️ John than they can type. Doesn’t mean they can speak faster than they can type, but most people,

⏹️ ▶️ John if it’s just like an English sentence or prose sentence, they can rattle that off pretty well. And

⏹️ ▶️ John the voice input software, if it’s good, will make sure there’s a single space between every

⏹️ ▶️ John word, every word is spelled correctly, like all that stuff. And you won’t have typos. You might have speakos where,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, homonyms end up in a sentence or whatever, but you can,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, most people can rattle off a sentence faster than they can type. So add to that reasonably

⏹️ ▶️ John efficient use of the rest of the computer. And he does a little demo at one point in this where he’s like, I’m gonna take a picture of myself

⏹️ ▶️ John and then email it to myself, which is a silly exercise, but it does demonstrate all the things you would imagine would be such a pain

⏹️ ▶️ John to do with voice control. Take a picture of yourself with your computer and then mail it to yourself. Well, now you’ve got a

⏹️ ▶️ John file and you’re dragging things around and you got to open your mail app and you got to add the attachment. And then, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John he writes a line of text into the message. He does that task of take

⏹️ ▶️ John a picture of myself and email it to myself in an email with one sentence in it, I think just as fast as any person

⏹️ ▶️ John using both of their hands could do it. Maybe not faster, but I think just as fast. It’s a

⏹️ ▶️ John very impressive demo, so check both of these out. If you wanna see someone program Pearl by voice, check out the first one. And if

⏹️ ▶️ John you wanna see someone do, look, look ma, no hands, try the second one.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey What is this pedal that he’s using? Cause I’m only now watching this for the first time and I’m not listening to it. So what is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the pedal

⏹️ ▶️ John for? It’s a three button pedal, basically. It’s got a big fat metal part and then two parts on the side that you can kind of feel.

⏹️ ▶️ John And you know, he’s got the buttons program to do various things. He’s got the middle button, the middle part

⏹️ ▶️ John program to be mouse click, the right one program to be right click, and the left one program to be turn on and

⏹️ ▶️ John off the mouse tracking thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Huh, wow, and it’s tracking using his head, I guess, just from the looks

⏹️ ▶️ John of it? It’s tracking using the little reflective thing on the end of his headset mic. He’s gotta have the headset mic for,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, for good voice control, and all he does is stick a little reflective sticker to the end of the headset mic, et voila. Huh,

⏹️ ▶️ John that is wild. Look how well he uses the mouse. Like he’s targeting the mouse better than most like

⏹️ ▶️ John average people I see trying to use the mouse like they’re driving a tiny arrow-shaped car

⏹️ ▶️ John along the screen.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, this is really wild. I cannot believe how well and how efficient he is doing this stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ John And the reason you want to watch the Emily Shaye video is because one facet of it, to spoil it, is that

⏹️ ▶️ John there is a different set of words for letters. Do you know, what is the one called?

⏹️ ▶️ John Is it like NATO radio something or other one where it’s like X-ray, Foxtrot, all that business,

⏹️ ▶️ John right?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, the phonetic alphabet.

⏹️ ▶️ John As she points out in the video, a lot of those words are multisyllabic, and so it’s kind

⏹️ ▶️ John of a mouthful. They’re multisyllabic for a reason, but when you’re talking directly into a headset microphone of your computer,

⏹️ ▶️ John it can get a little bit cumbersome. So she’s got a second set of words for letters in the alphabet. For those who don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John know, this is like, if you had to say the letters of the alphabet over a slightly unreliable

⏹️ ▶️ John connection, Like if you’re trying to, for example, if you’re old and remember the telephone system before

⏹️ ▶️ John the age of digital phones and cell phones, they’re very bad at conveying speech. So if you’re trying to spell your

⏹️ ▶️ John name over the phone and you say B, and they’re like, did you say P or E or G?

⏹️ ▶️ John Like they all kind of sound the same over a 22 kilohertz connection with some noise. And so it’s like

⏹️ ▶️ John B as in boy, right? You do that thing. Well, there’s a canonical set of those that

⏹️ ▶️ John are developed for NATO or the military where X is X-ray and F is Foxtrot. Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s what we’re talking about. And so she has a different set of them that are shorter. She also

⏹️ ▶️ John uses VI. So to exit VI, well, you know, exit

⏹️ ▶️ John VI while saving, she has to say WQ, but instead of WQ,

⏹️ ▶️ John the word for W is whale and the word for Q is quench. So she says whale quench.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, if you just listen to it, if you just listen to a transcription of her using her

⏹️ ▶️ John computer, it sounds like ridiculous gibberish, but it’s amazing to watch, so recommend both videos.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So John, if you ever wondered what it sounds like to Marco and I when you talk about Destiny, from the way you described

⏹️ ▶️ Casey this video, it sounds exactly like that.

⏹️ ▶️ John Whale quench could totally be an exotic weapon in Destiny 3, Bungie call me.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I rest my case.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The area of RSI and accessibility and similar things where

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there are kind of unusual methods to interact with a computer is always fascinating because to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco people who are not accustomed to doing these things, it seems impossible, or it seems like magic, or it seems like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco superhuman when people can operate their computer or their devices with these

⏹️ ▶️ Marco input methods that we don’t use most of the time or that we don’t even know exist. But the reality is,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco every way that we interact with a computer was new to us at some point. The keyboard

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and mouse were new to all of us at one point. At first, when we were first learning

⏹️ ▶️ Marco how to use computers and use keyboards and mice, we were inefficient with them. and I’m sure seeing someone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco who was an expert typist, you know, blast away 100 words per minute on their typewriter or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on their keyboard, that seemed like magic to us if we didn’t know anything about it, if we hadn’t used it before.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But like that, and like everything else, it’s possible to learn these things, and it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco amazing, like, what, the difference between, like, when you are totally unfamiliar

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with a task, and someone who is a pro at it, and like, whose brains have wired

⏹️ ▶️ Marco those pathways to be really good at something, there’s a huge difference. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco our brains are capable of so many things that we don’t realize they’re capable of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with practice and with time investment. The reality is you can probably be super

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fast at lots of these different methods that we don’t think of. It just takes time. Just like on a smaller scale,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco my using a trackpad on the left and teaching my left hand as a right-handed person, teaching my left

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hand how to use a trackpad kind of in parallel with also using the mouse on my right hand, that felt

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really weird for the first, I said, week or so maybe, and now it doesn’t anymore. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco now it’s just something I do, and my left hand is totally fine. I occasionally mention this, and I hear people saying, how can

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you do that? I don’t know how it’s possible. And it’s like, yeah, well, try it. It feels weird at first,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you build it up, and you get faster, and you get better. And it doesn’t take, it isn’t that hard. And something like this,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco where to most of us, like typical computer users using keyboards,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and mice and trackpads, it seems magical that somebody can use voice control software

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or other input devices. Similar, like if you’ve ever seen a visually impaired person use VoiceOver, who’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really good at it, it’s a similar thing. It really does seem superhuman to us because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we can’t perceive using this tool that way, but that’s only because we are not accustomed to it. We are not familiar

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with it. We aren’t already experts with it. We’re not using it every day. But that isn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to say that we can’t learn.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the interesting thing about a lot of these input methods demonstrated in this video is some of them are not

⏹️ ▶️ John necessarily any less efficient than the sort of default ones that we use. Most

⏹️ ▶️ John of the time, the reason these input methods demonstrated here aren’t

⏹️ ▶️ John in widespread use is either because they have some attribute of them that’s annoying. So for example,

⏹️ ▶️ John controlling the cursor with a little reflective thing that means you have to have something strapped to your head.

⏹️ ▶️ John And that is way more of a burden, just like it’s annoying to have a thing strapped to to your head, just in terms

⏹️ ▶️ John of mass adoption, right? Convincing people to put on a headset to use a computer versus you sit down and put your hand on

⏹️ ▶️ John a thing, right? There’s a reason the mouse is the superior solution in that scenario,

⏹️ ▶️ John but practically speaking, if you can get over that very tiny hurdle of you put a thing on your head, I’m not entirely convinced that that system

⏹️ ▶️ John is less efficient than using a mouse with your hand or that people would be worse at it because

⏹️ ▶️ John we’re kind of used to pointing our heads at things that we’re interested in. And the second thing is, a lot of these input solutions

⏹️ ▶️ John require computing power that didn’t exist at the time where we were sort of laying the foundation for the current

⏹️ ▶️ John de facto set of input methods, right? And we’re kind of stuck with things that won’t. Like the reason we have the keyboard looking the way

⏹️ ▶️ John it does is because of typewriters, right? So a lot of these decisions take a long time to change.

⏹️ ▶️ John And so in the beginning of computing, the idea that you could put a tiny little piece of reflective tape to the end of a headset

⏹️ ▶️ John mic, or the idea of a headset mic at all, for home computer users, and that your computer

⏹️ ▶️ John could visually track it no matter where your head was, is science fiction. But today, no problem, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John And so it’s going to take a while for the realization that technology

⏹️ ▶️ John can do so much more than it used to to catch up with the evolution of our input methods. Arguably,

⏹️ ▶️ John the iPhone is an example of that. Touch input has been around, but it took a while for the technology to get to the point where touch input

⏹️ ▶️ John can finally be good. Same thing could be true of,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, looking at things or pointing your head at things. And the feet are obviously very often wasted because

⏹️ ▶️ John pedals are cool, but you know. That’s another situation where the hurdle is now I have to get a thing and sit it under my desk

⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s on the floor and it’s more expensive. There’s all sorts of hurdles besides efficiency, but I’m saying if you get over all of those,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like yeah, but of course using your head and a foot pedal is less efficient than a mouse. Is it? I’m not

⏹️ ▶️ John entirely sure. It’s weirder. People aren’t used to it. There are barriers to entry that don’t exist. It takes more

⏹️ ▶️ John sophisticated computing and software. It’s not built into the OS. It’s all sorts of things stacked against it. But once

⏹️ ▶️ John you get, once you sort of reach cruising speed, it might be just as good or even better in some

⏹️ ▶️ John scenarios. Same deal with voice recognition. Huge technical hurdle, but once you get over it, it’s,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it is better. It is better than typing for a lot of scenarios. And I say this as somebody, I didn’t mention this in the

⏹️ ▶️ John last time we talked about RSI, but the time before that, I think I did when I was writing, you know, 40,000 word

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac OS X reviews for Ars Technica for a large portion of them, I dictated them,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? I mean, granted it’s pros, it’s easier. I’m not programming, right? Um, but yeah, I dictated them. That saved from typing.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s weird to do and takes a while to get used to. Unfortunately the software used in at least one of these videos

⏹️ ▶️ John is Dragon Dictate for Mac. They don’t even make it for Mac anymore which is kind of crappy. But yeah, I

⏹️ ▶️ John bought a piece of software and I talked to my computer and it was weird at the beginning but eventually got used to it.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s kind of relaxing to be able to just sort of sit back in your chair and ruminate and fire off a sentence

⏹️ ▶️ John and then change your mind.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And

⏹️ ▶️ John all without touching anything. Your hands aren’t doing anything. So that was an answer to a question a

⏹️ ▶️ John lot of people ask, did you have used voice recognition software? Yes I have. I haven’t used it to program Perl, But I’ve definitely used it to write

⏹️ ▶️ John prose.

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Federico + Federighi

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Was it this week or last week? I want to say it was last week that we had an interesting

⏹️ ▶️ Casey podcast come out. Our friend Federico Vatici interviewed Craig Federighi

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Apple, mostly about iPad and the new cursor stuff in iPad.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the interview is, I don’t know, 20, 30 minutes, something like that. And I really enjoyed it. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey apparently, John, you need to do your victory lap now about destiny. So let’s just get it over with.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s not a victory lap. I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John just

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey pointing out something interesting from the

⏹️ ▶️ John interview. Yes, it’s a good interview. You should check it out. Like this is exactly who you’d want to hear talk about that, Vitechi, the hardcore

⏹️ ▶️ John iPad user and Craig Federighi, who’s basically in charge of software, or at least in

⏹️ ▶️ John charge of iPadOS at Apple, talking about the evolution of those two things. So definitely check it out. A

⏹️ ▶️ John couple of things jumped out at me in the interview I thought were cool. One, and we’ll put timestamped links

⏹️ ▶️ John in the show notes for these, was a bit where where Craig talks about the logic they

⏹️ ▶️ John added for the thing where when you move the cursor on iPadOS, it sort of like

⏹️ ▶️ John morphs into the button, right? Like it changes from the little circle to be just highlighting the button

⏹️ ▶️ John if you kind of get near the button. And he talks about how they did some sort of essentially

⏹️ ▶️ John client-side prediction to say if you flicked your finger, you know, across the trackpad

⏹️ ▶️ John on your iPad Pro, if you flicked your finger kind of in the direction where a button was

⏹️ ▶️ John and it looks to them like if allowed to continue at this trajectory,

⏹️ ▶️ John at this velocity, it would land more or less where the button is, they would do that for you and

⏹️ ▶️ John snap your cursor to the button that it looked like you were kind of flicking towards. So you’re basically making a gesture

⏹️ ▶️ John instead of them requiring you to steer, carefully steer the little cursor there, they would snap the cursor

⏹️ ▶️ John to the button if you have that little cursor changing shape mode on. And he

⏹️ ▶️ John describes it in a little bit more detail here, But basically what he’s describing is almost

⏹️ ▶️ John word for word, a match for portions of the implementation of

⏹️ ▶️ John aim assist in Destiny. So Destiny is a first person shooter. You may have heard of it on this program.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s available for personal computers and consoles. And on consoles, people use controllers, which just have little thumb

⏹️ ▶️ John sticks. And it’s actually pretty hard to precisely control where

⏹️ ▶️ John a little aiming point on the screen is with just your thumb on a thumb stick. there’s not much range of motion,

⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s not absolute, it’s relative, right? So it’s not like when you put the cursor to the far left,

⏹️ ▶️ John it hits the left edge of the screen, and the far right hits the right, you’re kind of like driving the cursor. So there’s all sorts of limitations that make

⏹️ ▶️ John controlling the cursor with a thumb stick worse for precision than say using a mouse or touching the screen directly,

⏹️ ▶️ John which is what the kids these days do or whatever. So to make a first-person shooter

⏹️ ▶️ John playable, games usually have to have some kind of aim assist that has to interpret what you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John doing with your thumb to control the cursor and what’s on the screen.

⏹️ ▶️ John And so if it looks like, for example, you’re flicking your finger up towards where somebody’s head is,

⏹️ ▶️ John and they calculated that trajectory that if it continued along that course, your cursor would come more or less

⏹️ ▶️ John near the head, they will snap your aiming cursor to the head so that you can pull

⏹️ ▶️ John the fire button and get a headshot. Whereas in reality, if they let the cursor go where it was going to go, maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John it wouldn’t have been anywhere near their head, maybe it would have just fired over their shoulder or something like that. And there’s all sorts of kinds

⏹️ ▶️ John of aim assist in Destiny, not just what I described. But all that stuff needs to be there

⏹️ ▶️ John to make the game playable and fun. And the interesting thing about it in terms

⏹️ ▶️ John of gaming, and I’m probably also true of, you know, hardcore iPad users like Petitie, is that if you

⏹️ ▶️ John play Destiny with a controller, you play the aim assist. Like once you get to sort of a medium level of

⏹️ ▶️ John experience with the game, you realize the aim assist is there, you understand it’s there, and you play it. You know

⏹️ ▶️ John that if I kind of just gesture as quick as I can in this general direction, there’s a certain

⏹️ ▶️ John amount of magnetism that player’s head has for my aiming cursor, and rather than taking the time

⏹️ ▶️ John to carefully get in that direction, at which point I’ll be shot myself, I quickly flick towards there

⏹️ ▶️ John and time it so that the aim assist, where my cursor slows down ever so slightly when it passes over their

⏹️ ▶️ John head, that I can pull the trigger at the same time. By the way, I’m terrible at this. I’m the world’s worst drag sniper but I still play

⏹️ ▶️ John the aim assist even just for primary weapons so this was this was exciting to me because

⏹️ ▶️ John it was hearing the application and not because it’s destiny but hearing the application of general gaming technology

⏹️ ▶️ John because every first-person shooter that has control of a sport does something like this the application of gaming technology

⏹️ ▶️ John to personal computers to non gaming applications and I think that’s a great idea

⏹️ ▶️ John I think we You should see more of that. All the same tech that make games

⏹️ ▶️ John fun to play and make them feel responsive and make it feel like the game is doing what you meant in

⏹️ ▶️ John your head and not what you did with your actual body. All that it just

⏹️ ▶️ John makes using your iPhone or your iPad or even your Mac also feel

⏹️ ▶️ John good. So more of that, please.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would just like you to know that because I feel so lost by the terminology in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Destiny, It was only halfway through your monologue when I realized you were saying aim

⏹️ ▶️ Casey assist.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John For some

⏹️ ▶️ Casey reason, I kept, no, no, no, no, no. You pronounced it correctly, but I kept hearing in my brain amethyst, which I assumed

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was some sort of weird destiny thing. This is on me. You were pronouncing it just fine. It’s just I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so used to not understanding.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Long Island accent.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah. Well,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m so used to not understanding anything destiny related that I just assumed this was another case. And then about

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a minute or two ago, oh, aim assist.

⏹️ ▶️ John The more derogatory term was called auto-aim. Back in the day, the PC users would say, oh, you have

⏹️ ▶️ John auto-aim. Automatically aims for you. By the way, PC users, sorry to disappoint you, but Destiny on

⏹️ ▶️ John PC also has a little bit of auto-aim. Don’t tell anybody. Yeah, I

⏹️ ▶️ John mean, if you want to see videos on this topic, just search for, like on YouTube, just search for like,

⏹️ ▶️ John how to make platforming feel good or all sorts of stuff. Like, every game does this to some degree.

⏹️ ▶️ John There’s lots of platforming videos is they there’s this well known things the platformers

⏹️ ▶️ John do like for example, coyote time, which is a coin a term that was coined. I don’t know, maybe a decade ago or so.

⏹️ ▶️ John And that everyone is video uses. That’s I have to give so much context. I feel like Merlin had to give so

⏹️ ▶️ John much context explain this coyote time refers to Wiley coyote. Who’s Wiley coyote? Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John God. Wiley coyote used to chase a roadrunner. He was a cartoon. And one of the things that

⏹️ ▶️ John would happen in the videos is he would chase the road. Did he die? Why Why is this past tense? Is he dead? I mean, I

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think they’re making any new Wile E. Coyote cartoons. Maybe I’m wrong, but they make new Mickey Mouse cartoons now. I haven’t checked on Disney Plus

⏹️ ▶️ John or I don’t think they own. That’s a Warner Brothers thing, isn’t it? Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John Wile E. Coyote would run and he was always running around where there are lots of big cliffs for comedic value

⏹️ ▶️ John and he would run and find himself find that he had run off the edge of a cliff, but he wouldn’t fall

⏹️ ▶️ John to his death until he realized that he’d fallen off the edge of the cliff. So at a certain point, he’s he’s in midair

⏹️ ▶️ John over the edge of the cliff so we can all appreciate his comedic situation, then he looks down and then he falls.

⏹️ ▶️ John Pretty much every platform game that feels good, a game where you’re like a side-scroller where you’re jumping around with a little character,

⏹️ ▶️ John allows you to essentially run off the edge of a cliff and still hit jump even though you’re no

⏹️ ▶️ John longer on the cliff. Because if they didn’t, you would feel cheated by the game. You’d be like, hey, I hit jump, I didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John fall, and the game knows, no, actually, your little character was off the edge of the cliff before you hit jump, so

⏹️ ▶️ John you should, by all rights, to your death, but instead we will build in some amount of coyote time which

⏹️ ▶️ John allows you to jump. In fact, speaking of modern game builds, there was a good video I think on the Celeste video

⏹️ ▶️ John game, a game that TIFF really enjoyed and talked about with Mike on their gaming podcast.

⏹️ ▶️ John Celeste does that and more. You can find that video. If I find it, I’ll put it in the show notes. If not, just search for

⏹️ ▶️ John Celeste game mechanics or something. All that stuff, like I said, all that stuff that makes games feel good and fun

⏹️ ▶️ John also makes computers feel good and fun. So I like seeing it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco here. And I always like seeing some of this talent applied to things that aren’t just shooting people in the head.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, although shooting people in the head is not good in real life, but virtually it’s basically just like

⏹️ ▶️ John playing a game of tag, especially since you respond instantly. So

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I endorse it

⏹️ ▶️ John when it is in the context of space magic and not reality.

⏹️ ▶️ John And the second thing that Craig talked about was one of our pet peeves, closing apps. So

⏹️ ▶️ John he was talking about how people who grew up with technology that was less advanced

⏹️ ▶️ John get used to the idea that they have to deal with memory. Like he didn’t bring this out specifically, but back on the classic

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac, you two probably don’t remember this, but back in classic Mac OS, you could get info on a file in the finder. One of

⏹️ ▶️ John the fields in the get info window was a place where you could type in how much RAM the application should have.

⏹️ ▶️ John Mm-hmm. Right, because classic Mac OS did not have dynamic memory allocation

⏹️ ▶️ John in the beginning at all, and then eventually it was still somewhat limited, right? It didn’t have virtual memory. Like it wasn’t, it didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John have a modern memory system. And so an application would come with a default allocation, but if you wanted to do something,

⏹️ ▶️ John if you want to open a really big document or you want to do something demanding or whatever, you could increase that amount of memory. And that

⏹️ ▶️ John type of manual management of like, oh, I have to keep track of how much memory the thing needs. And if it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John set, if it’s limited set too low, I have to like quit the app and make it bigger and launch it again. And all that sort

⏹️ ▶️ John of ridiculous stuff of managing memory. He brings it up in a more modern context of,

⏹️ ▶️ John on the Mac, I have to worry about whether an application is running or not. Do we need to launch the application first?

⏹️ ▶️ John So that was the whole push at various points in the history of Mac OS

⏹️ ▶️ John to make the distinction between running and non-running applications,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, less visible to the user, down to the point where they stuck, there’s still a preference where you can remove that little dot

⏹️ ▶️ John on the dock that’s supposed to be underneath running applications. You can just make it so there’s no dots. And what do you care if it’s running

⏹️ ▶️ John or not? If it’s not running and you launch it, it’ll just pick up right where you left because good Mac developers implement auto-save

⏹️ ▶️ John and resume and state restoration, just like iOS developers. iOS developers had to do it because their app could be killed

⏹️ ▶️ John at any time and was killed at any time when there was no multitasking and now it’s killed less frequently, but still

⏹️ ▶️ John killed. So every iOS app has had to do this from day one, but Mac apps haven’t,

⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s been difficult to bring up the speed of it. But all of this is about how that mindset

⏹️ ▶️ John of making the user worry about implementation details related to memory and running applications

⏹️ ▶️ John was something of the past. And Craig says, people

⏹️ ▶️ John who were brought up in that environment, to this day, we see them constantly force quitting

⏹️ ▶️ John applications on their iPhones, right? Which is true. He didn’t go so

⏹️ ▶️ John far as to tell those people they were bad or wrong, but they are, right? Because he’s very political, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John But he did say that people who are brought up in that older world bring those habits forward

⏹️ ▶️ John and think they need to manually replace, which I think is also true. But I would say that

⏹️ ▶️ John even kids who are brought up and have no idea what classic Mac OS is, they brought up on modern things, the

⏹️ ▶️ John first device they ever used was an iPhone or an iPad, they’re doing it too. And

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not because they’re used to the idea that they have to manually manage memory. So I really hope

⏹️ ▶️ John that, you know, this is just a throw offline in one podcast, but I really hope that Apple understands the root problem

⏹️ ▶️ John related to people obsessively forced quitting apps is not that everyone who’s doing it an old fuddy duddy who

⏹️ ▶️ John grew up using classic Mac OS. That’s not what’s causing this. There are people like that for sure, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John But that’s not the root cause. And so I hope they have a deeper understanding of exactly what’s going on and exactly why

⏹️ ▶️ John this phenomenon of reflexively force quitting every single application on your iOS device has swept

⏹️ ▶️ John the world like coronavirus. Anyway, bad comparison. I’m sorry.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I was if you if you didn’t bring up this part of this angle on that interview, I was going to bring it up

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I love I loved that interview. The Federico and Federighi interview

⏹️ ▶️ Marco over on App Stories was fantastic. I really enjoyed it. But that was the one thing that stood out, like when he kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco disregarded or excused this behavior of people force quitting apps as, oh well, you know, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just people who were used to the old way of doing things on PCs. Like, no, that’s not it. Like, people do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it for many more reasons than that, some of which are actually good reasons, much to my chagrin as a developer,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because people force quit my app all the time and then complain about it not, like, and stuff like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco which they basically caused by force quitting it. Regardless, like it’s a real thing that people

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do for very good reasons, some of which are you know urban legends,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of which are placebo, but some of which are actually real reasons and if Apple doesn’t understand them yet,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they really should.

⏹️ ▶️ John The reasons aren’t good, but the reasons exist and aren’t what Craig said, right? So they have their

⏹️ ▶️ John reasons for doing it. they’re just mistaken about the connection between thing

⏹️ ▶️ John that I want, therefore action will get what I want. And as you point out, Marco, a lot of times they may

⏹️ ▶️ John want something, but their action causes the other harm. Like, why doesn’t Overcast ever download my stuff

⏹️ ▶️ John in the back? Because you keep force quitting it, that’s why. Why are you force quitting it? Well, I just always force quit everything. This

⏹️ ▶️ John brings me back to that idea that I had many shows ago, that some new version of iOS

⏹️ ▶️ John should provide a single button to quote unquote force quit everything, just

⏹️ ▶️ John make all the little pictures disappear from the multitasking switcher, but not have it actually force quit everything. Cause

⏹️ ▶️ John those rules can change at any time. And they do. Like what does force quitting do? How many people who aren’t developers

⏹️ ▶️ John know all the consequences of swiping up that little thing? Like very few, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John And they wouldn’t be doing it reflexively anyway. But like, I don’t wanna get too deep into it again because we’ve talked about it many times

⏹️ ▶️ John in the past, but people wanna clean that thing up. And every once in a while, There’s a super duper

⏹️ ▶️ John legit reason to force quit a single misbehaving app or a few misbehaving apps But it’s just so

⏹️ ▶️ John much easier mentally just say you know what look I’m just gonna clean them all up It makes me feel good to clean them all up

⏹️ ▶️ John every once in a while. It fixes Facebook from killing my phone battery So it’s just

⏹️ ▶️ John a thing I’m gonna do from now on is I’m gonna force quit every app all the time and in the outside It’s my idle animation.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m online force quit force quit force quit I’m gonna put my phone in my pocket force quit force quit force quit force quit But

⏹️ ▶️ John please, everybody, don’t do this for a variety of reasons. Force quit apps when they need to, not reflexively all the time

⏹️ ▶️ John because it’s fun.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was a good interview, and it’s worth your time.

Scams developers get

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John and Marco, can you please ensure that you have given

⏹️ ▶️ Casey me lifetime free access to your applications? I want to make sure that I have all of your stuff for free.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I

⏹️ ▶️ John haven’t gotten that one. That’s an interesting one.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wasn’t sure which one of you this was that put this in the show notes. But show notes reads unsolicited emails that developers

⏹️ ▶️ Casey receive new line quote, give me your app for free quote.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so this is just I want to give a preface here. This is not like serious

⏹️ ▶️ John complaint, complaint, at least not for me, not, not a serious kind of complaint or anything like that. It’s not like saying, Oh, it was so

⏹️ ▶️ John hard to be developer. Cause people email us. Not that at all. It’s just that, you know, as someone who, as a newbie to

⏹️ ▶️ John the, the Apple app stores, I just recently put an app into two apps into the Mac

⏹️ ▶️ John app store. I noticed that I started to get a bunch of emails that I did not get

⏹️ ▶️ John in the past, right? Just because I have, you know, a couple of apps in the app store. One of

⏹️ ▶️ John those varieties of emails that I’ve been listing here is essentially an email that

⏹️ ▶️ John where someone asks for a free copy of your application. Now there are legit versions of that. Hey,

⏹️ ▶️ John I want, I want to review your application for my publication. Can you give me a free copy or whatever? You can argue about the ethics

⏹️ ▶️ John of them getting a free copy and reviewing it and stuff like that. But that’s what promo codes are for. You know, partially apple gives

⏹️ ▶️ John you a system where you can generate a coupon code that you can give to somebody and they get a free copy of your app. Great. Like there are

⏹️ ▶️ John legit reasons for that, you And hey, people can ask, it doesn’t hurt to ask,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? If you want a free copy of an app, maybe you just ask for it, maybe you’ll get one. Maybe you have a story, oh, I’m a student

⏹️ ▶️ John and I really wanna use your app to make this thing, but I can’t afford it because it’s expensive, you know, yada, yada, whatever. Everyone’s got a

⏹️ ▶️ John reason. The reason I bring this up though, is that just having two apps,

⏹️ ▶️ John I noticed a certain similarity, almost as if it’s like a form letter or an automation,

⏹️ ▶️ John to a particular form of asking for the free app, where there’s no real effort to give

⏹️ ▶️ John a reason, like I’m in financial straits or whatever, or I really need this app to

⏹️ ▶️ John do more, which makes sense for my apps, which are simple utility apps that don’t cost a lot of

⏹️ ▶️ John money and honestly don’t provide so much functionality. But like, I need this app for my work. No, you don’t. Like it’s an

⏹️ ▶️ John app switcher and a window layering, like behavior modification. There

⏹️ ▶️ John is no work that you do that requires those applications, right? But

⏹️ ▶️ John after the 50th or 60th one of these emails that all look the same and say,

⏹️ ▶️ John please may I have your application for free? I started to think, what is this? Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John what is the benefit of mechanically, through some automation,

⏹️ ▶️ John simply sending every single developer on the app store a free request for that application? I suppose, even with

⏹️ ▶️ John a very small hit rate, if you send out 300,000 emails and you get 0.01% back, you got some free apps, great.

⏹️ ▶️ John But then of what value are those free apps? Like did someone write a script and do this

⏹️ ▶️ John and then they get like three or four free apps each day and they’re excited by them but they never actually run them? Because they’re gonna be

⏹️ ▶️ John random apps. Someone replies, okay, here’s a free copy of my app and you’re like, oh, well, I don’t need this app.

⏹️ ▶️ John Is it just kind of like a collecting thing where you never actually use the apps? You just wanna have the free

⏹️ ▶️ John copies and you can compare like who has the most free apps? Like, you know, look how many free apps

⏹️ ▶️ John I have. You know, like you compete to see who has the most, if you can break the purchase page in the app store by

⏹️ ▶️ John having hundreds of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco apps. Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John I just thought this was interesting and it made me think about the kinds of emails that you

⏹️ ▶️ John expose yourself to by participating in an ecosystem. And in this case, it’s the app store or whatever. And

⏹️ ▶️ John I have my two little dinky apps and this is the one I could think of. But I just thought you two probably have similar stories, especially Marco,

⏹️ ▶️ John about the kinds of emails you start getting once you’re in the app store, especially if you have

⏹️ ▶️ John like a significant application with kind of a high profile. But I guess I’ll start by asking, do you two get

⏹️ ▶️ John the give me a free copy of your app email and does it look to you like some kind of automation?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I almost, I don’t, I can’t remember a single time I’ve gotten that. So maybe my apps aren’t as good or aren’t as popular

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or aren’t as visible, but not,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I’m not sure. Not

⏹️ ▶️ John as expensive as not, your apps are free though, right? That may, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey why.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, free to download and then they’re both

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John five bucks. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John maybe it’s a different form letter to say, can I please have your app purchased for free?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Again, it surely has happened at some point, but off the top of my head, I can’t remember it having happened.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so I used to get these all the time for Instapaper because when I ran it,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Instapaper had a paid upfront app. And I didn’t use an app purchase at the time,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or at least not, anyway, for a while. Anyway, so it was paid upfront, so I got these

⏹️ ▶️ Marco emails all the time. So one of the reasons people would get it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, hey, I wanna review it, or I’m just a poor college student, please give

⏹️ ▶️ Marco me, you know, people begging for it. And there’s not much value, honestly, in giving most of these people

⏹️ ▶️ Marco free copies of your app. It’s one thing, you know, if you are serving some kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco humanitarian or charitable purpose, but if you’re looking at it purely from a business point of view, like what’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the value to me of a few people having a free copy? Like, it’s usually not even worth your

⏹️ ▶️ Marco time to respond. What about exposure, Marco? Yeah, so that’s one of the most common variants

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I got was along the lines of, hi,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m so and so, I have a popular YouTube channel in country X

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is not your country. If you give me a promo code for your app plus like three other promo codes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to give away on my channel, I’ll talk about you and you can have exposure, that kind of thing. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s, you know, you were asking, John, why somebody, what people do with their free codes.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco If they get more than one, they usually will use one for themselves and they will give one away as some kind

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of contest on their YouTube channel or their blog or whatever. These days it’s usually YouTube channel.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the funny thing is, if you actually look at these people’s YouTube channels, they have, what, 30

⏹️ ▶️ Marco subscribers maybe? Like it’s not, you’re never gonna get any kind of meaningful value out of that. I would also

⏹️ ▶️ Marco say, just as anecdotal counter-argument to those kinds of things, I have gotten

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lots of press reviews of my apps so far throughout my career, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they never asked for a promo code. Like the ones that actually mattered, the ones that actually got

⏹️ ▶️ Marco significant attention that actually possibly might have moved the needle of sales of my apps at all,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco were never anything that requested a promo code from me. So for whatever it’s worth, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s, but I got those emails all the time for Instapaper. For Overcast, I haven’t.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think, you know, it’s because these are free apps up front. For a long time, you couldn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even have promo codes for in-app purchases. I’m not sure you can now, and if you can

⏹️ ▶️ Marco now, I’m not sure whether you can do it for subscription purchases or not. And since Overcast currently

⏹️ ▶️ Marco only has a subscription purchase, I don’t know if there’s any real way for me to do that. But either way, nobody ever asks.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, certainly the exposure on my YouTube channel, give me five codes to give away for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like 30 subscribers, that was a very common thing to get.

⏹️ ▶️ John This was an interesting, some amount of savvy that they must know that there’s no such thing that

⏹️ ▶️ John for as a promo code for a subscription based in app purchase or whatever. Otherwise they would just ask anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John and you know, whether or not you can actually give it to them so there is, it feels like there’s knowledge on the other end. Yeah, the

⏹️ ▶️ John exposure or whatever, like my apps, no one’s buying them anymore anyway, so it doesn’t matter. But like, I

⏹️ ▶️ John give away free apps all the time. Like I don’t care if I happen to have the App Store Connect window open

⏹️ ▶️ John and I wanna generate a promo, I can generate a promo, I’ll just give them, like I’m not begrudging these people these apps,

⏹️ ▶️ John I just, at a certain point I became amazed at the sameness. at the sameness and then like,

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m amazed, in the case of my weird little apps, I’m amazed that anyone would go through the effort to write an

⏹️ ▶️ John email for a free copy for this weird app. I feel like saying, do you know what this app does? You’re

⏹️ ▶️ John probably not gonna like it. Like, especially if you’re an automated form thing, like, it’s just gonna be,

⏹️ ▶️ John like, here you go, but like, of all the free things to ask for, like, you’re really, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John especially if they write more than one sentence and have some kind of explanation, it’s like, ask for a free copy of Photoshop or something. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John Switchglass is not gonna change your world

⏹️ ▶️ Marco too much. Well, and people did. I mean, and I think this kind of thing made more sense when software

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cost hundreds of dollars. But these days, when most of the things that are receiving

⏹️ ▶️ Marco these emails cost like one to five dollars, it’s a lot less of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco an amount.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m at the top of that range. Five dollars is the hundred dollars of today’s app

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco store.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it is. My app is incredibly expensive at $4.99. But you know, I understand. Some

⏹️ ▶️ John people can’t afford that exchange rates, that people wouldn’t have money, kids or whatever, fine, here’s a free copy,

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m glad you like it. Tell all your friends, right? But it’s just weird that

⏹️ ▶️ John that is a steady trickle of people just, people

⏹️ ▶️ John and or scripts asking for free copies. The other thing is that then I never hear from them again. No one

⏹️ ▶️ John ever replies and say, gee, thanks for the free app. Like you will never hear from them again. You send the promo code, they redeem it, and

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s it. The struggle is real. So what other things have you gotten? What other kinds,

⏹️ ▶️ John strains of emails that you get just by being on the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco App Store? Well, first of all, you will hear from Dun & Bradstreet.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh God, are they a scam?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like every three to six months, I send a DM to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco and Underscore in Slack saying, hey, I just got this thing from Dun & Bradstreet. This is total garbage,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right? And usually it’s like a race between the two of them to see which one of them will say, Yes,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey total garbage, throw it away.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so Dun & Bradstreet, they’re some kind of business directory

⏹️ ▶️ Marco company or something that’s been around forever. And Apple uses them during

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your account setup, when you set up a business app store account, Apple uses Dun &

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Bradstreet to verify your info. Basically as almost like a credit or verification agency, like they’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco using them in that role. And so you have to submit your info. And Apple makes it easy, it used to be way harder.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple now makes it pretty easy to go through this process, but basically you are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco submitting all of your business info, you know, your EIN, your name and address and everything, to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this private company, Dun & Bradstreet, for Apple to verify that, you know, through them, that you seem

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be a legit business. And then after that, Dun & Bradstreet will, for the rest of time,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco spam you with the most hilariously misleading, scammy,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, both phone calls and postal mail stuff, and I think maybe also email.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s typically, it will say something on the lines of, you need to complete your business credit

⏹️ ▶️ Marco report. And finish your business credit report today by filling out this form or paying us

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this money or whatever, and all it is is Dun & Bradstreet basically selling you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fake verification for fake spots and fake yellow pages, like that kind of crap. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco every business gets weird, scammy solicitation attempts from services, like usually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the mail, just by having registered a business somewhere and some database somewhere. But Dun & Bradstreet

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really takes it to another level by how scammy their stuff looks. And it makes it really just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco dirty feeling that Apple is so involved with them, or at least was. I don’t know if they still are. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple basically forces all developers with business accounts to subject themselves to this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco other company and give them all this information. But I wonder if they still do it.

⏹️ ▶️ John the beginning of this year, and I was just registering as an individual. I didn’t have an LLC at that point,

⏹️ ▶️ John and I still had to do

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it. And they did call

⏹️ ▶️ Marco me. Yeah. It’s like for a company that values privacy so much,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s kind of crappy that Apple forces everyone to submit themselves to this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really terrible company.

⏹️ ▶️ John Their checking wasn’t even that thorough. You know what you reminded me of when you mentioned snail mail? Do you guys still get the snail mail of,

⏹️ ▶️ John this isn’t being the app store, but if you have any domain names registered, there’s a reasonable chance that you’re going

⏹️ ▶️ John to get a actual piece of paper mail to your house that says, your domain is going

⏹️ ▶️ John to expire renew today. And it’s basically another registrar trying to essentially get you to transfer

⏹️ ▶️ John your domain name from your registrar to

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey them.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey What? No, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten one of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco these. Yeah, well, because like I do a pretty good job of not having my address on any of my who is every anywhere.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So most of the time I don’t get those for domains. I do get them occasionally for like business registration stuff. And I will

⏹️ ▶️ Marco frequently to get stuff that’s like New York tax scams of like, it’ll

⏹️ ▶️ Marco look like I owe money to the state, and it’s really, you have to look

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really carefully and find the one line of text on this piece of paper somewhere that says,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is a service by a third party, but it’s real scammy. But that’s just any business

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in New York state and probably any state. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John the domain name stuff, in the days before Hover, domain privacy was either

⏹️ ▶️ John not common or very expensive for both. And so I do have domains or did have domains where

⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t have domain privacy. And now I think that’s just, you know, they’re forever going to be sending

⏹️ ▶️ John me snail mail with some kind of domain name. Come on. I think I still think every year I go check this and I just say like, are

⏹️ ▶️ John there any domains that I still haven’t transferred to hover, which frequent sponsor of the show, you know, disclaimer, disclaimer, but

⏹️ ▶️ John like I legit put my own, I don’t, I don’t get any kind of, you know, free domains. I’m legit paying for my

⏹️ ▶️ John own domains to be on hover just because it’s convenient to have them all in one place and Hover is a nice service, yada yada, this is not an ad. Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John some domains, like I bought a long time ago, that on like five year, like

⏹️ ▶️ John long expiration dates or something, and every year I go and say, are all my domains on Hover? And it’s like, oh, there’s still

⏹️ ▶️ John that one over there. And it has like multiple years left on it, and I’m like, do I wanna go through the transfer

⏹️ ▶️ John thing? I’m like, eh, no, I’ll just wait a little longer. So I keep deferring it, so it could be some, or like,

⏹️ ▶️ John I think actually Hover doesn’t do some subdomains as well, some really super obscure ones that Hover either didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John do or doesn’t do. Anyway, all this is to say is that I’m hoping someday when all my domains are on hover, that has two ways privacy

⏹️ ▶️ John by default, I think, this will be solved. Not that I look at my snail mail anyway, but

⏹️ ▶️ John I do recall seeing one of those in the past several years and still continue to boggle my mind that this is a thing that people

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do. Another very significant scam that app

⏹️ ▶️ Marco developers get once you go to a certain size, there’s this company, oh god, I cannot think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of what it’s called. They email you, cold, and it sounds like what they want

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do is get your app featured on their TV show

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that airs on some cable channel.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, yes! Yes! Oh, man, I know what you’re thinking of. Oh, what is that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco called? I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco can’t find it in my email. I can’t remember even what cable channel. It was like Bravo or something. I can’t find it. Anyway.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, it wasn’t Bravo. I know what you’re thinking of,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco though.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, you got it. Probably every developer gets this. It’s like, we produce a video

⏹️ ▶️ Marco segment on technology on cable TV and it gets millions of people,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever, whatever, and we’d love to feature your app in a segment on our show.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s very salesy, it’s like, contact us if you wanna talk more and everything. So one time I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually did, I was curious, I’m like, well, that sounds like a lot of people, what do they want from me to get

⏹️ ▶️ Marco featured on their show? If they just wanna talk about my app, it’s no skin off my back. So I scheduled a phone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco call with them, And what you eventually learn on the phone call is that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are going to, you have to pay them thousands of dollars and they will produce

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a video segment. And it doesn’t actually really air to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco any number of people like, whatever cable channel it is might show it once at like two

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the morning or something. And they have this YouTube channel that they also will publish it to and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco many of their advertised numbers of like you’ll get this many subscribers, are actually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like YouTube views, and their YouTube channel looks horrendously sketchy, and it looks

⏹️ ▶️ Marco terrible, and it doesn’t seem like anybody watches it, or anybody real

⏹️ ▶️ Marco watches it, but it takes you quite a lot of engagement with them before you can even

⏹️ ▶️ Marco get to the point where you can realize this, where you can realize like, okay, A, they don’t seem to have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the audience they claim to have, and B, they want me to pay them a lot of money for this.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So really what they are is like a video production. You pay them to make kind of an infomercial

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about your app and nobody will ever see it. And I actually went and watched some of the things they make

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they’re hilariously low effort, formulaic, low value.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s just amazing. I forget what they said, but I think they wanted at least $5,000. It was a lot of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco money. Anybody on the app store for a non-trivial amount of time, you’re very likely to get that.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So this was addressed to Jelly, whose actual name is Daniel. Hi

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Daniel, I’m reaching out to you because one of our senior producers here at Newswatch. That’s it,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Newswatch.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Came across GIFRAFT and thought it would be great for a feature on our nationwide show. In case you haven’t had a chance to watch an episode,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Newswatch’s 30-minute morning, I can’t believe I’m reading this, but it’s so bad. 30-minute morning news show brings our

⏹️ ▶️ Casey audience up to date on the latest innovations for both consumers and businesses, from apps and tech products to B2B services.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m surprised you got through B2B and didn’t just immediately delete this, Marco. And even interviews with celebrities.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey The program is broadcast nationwide on the AMC network in over 200 markets and reaches over 95 million

⏹️ ▶️ Casey households across the US.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so that’s what I got. I scheduled a call to them. This is back in early 2019. Oh, here, their standard

⏹️ ▶️ Marco plan is $4,500. They go all the way up to the exposure package, $9,500.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco All the metrics are still the same. I wonder what’s different. It’s standard interview or exposure

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for $4,500, $7,000, and $9,500. but all the metrics say they’re the same. I wonder what does exposure get

⏹️ ▶️ Marco me for $9,500? Yeah, that’s, yeah, so there’s,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the thing is, the App Store is an active market where people are making lots of money

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and there’s lots of traffic and lots of everything. So there’s gonna be a million vultures out there. There’s gonna be scammers,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s gonna be just opportunistic vultures who aren’t quite running scams, but they’re at least doing things

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of not in a great way. There’s gonna be all sorts of stuff. Because it’s an active market, It is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco possible to make money here and through legit and non-legit ways. And so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco people will try and many of them will succeed. There are so many scams on the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco App Store and around the App Store. This is just scratching the surface.

⏹️ ▶️ John I would say the general advice for anyone listening to this is just apps in the App Store is like, if you have

⏹️ ▶️ John an app that you know is like, you know, it’s an app you made, it’s cool, you like it, but it’s not like super popular,

⏹️ ▶️ John like, you know, like my apps, they’re little toy apps that I like and think are cool, but they’re not super popular. If

⏹️ ▶️ John you get people approaching you with business deals, they’re probably scams. If you are a big

⏹️ ▶️ John app developer and you have a popular, sophisticated, well-regarded, well-reviewed

⏹️ ▶️ John app, you’re gonna get legit people talking to you of like, hey, let’s do this thing, right? But like, be suspicious

⏹️ ▶️ John if your app has like 10 downloads, ever, and you’re getting people who wanna do business deals with your great

⏹️ ▶️ John app. Like just, sometimes it feels good to think that, oh, hey, someone noticed my app, but chances

⏹️ ▶️ John are, like, you know, compare, Compare your sales numbers to the supposed attention

⏹️ ▶️ John you think you’re getting. Marco needs to be a little more careful because he does have an actual popular app that people know about, that people wanna do legit

⏹️ ▶️ John business deals with him all the time, which he also rejects, but whatever, there’s legitimate people who are doing that. But

⏹️ ▶️ John if you just put your first app in the App Store and next week someone wants to do a great important business deal with you, probably

⏹️ ▶️ John a scam.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Something’s up recently. I don’t know what the market force is that’s happening right now, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the last month I’ve heard from three different companies who express

⏹️ ▶️ Marco serious interest in buying my app, not because they wanted

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a podcast app necessarily, but because they wanted to just buy my app and just stick their

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ads in the bottom of it and they can make enough money through those ads to pay good prices for apps.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Is that market somehow hot right now, hotter than usual?

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, if they can buy your app for a little enough money and it’s an automated process, you make it up

⏹️ ▶️ John in volume, I guess. You buy a bunch of apps, you put your ads in the bottom, it takes

⏹️ ▶️ John about a week for people to notice, you get your impressions during that week and you’re done. And you just abandon the app or delete it from

⏹️ ▶️ John the store and just rinse and repeat, right?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But this was like actual humans reaching out specifically for actual, like this app with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco substantial offers.

⏹️ ▶️ John You gotta compare, like the more users an app has, the more it’s worth their time to actually engage humans

⏹️ ▶️ John and try to actually, you know what I mean? I don’t know how the math works out, but maybe they do. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll see if you keep getting offers like this five years from now, assuming we’re all still here,

⏹️ ▶️ John then it’s obviously a viable business for somebody. I advise you don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sell, by the way. Thank you. Yeah, I don’t really want to. Usually,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d like everyone has a price, right? Yeah, I would I would sell if somebody offered enough money.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But that number is very high. My number is lower. Call

⏹️ ▶️ John me. Actually, no, my number actually. Yeah, it is lower, but still not as low

⏹️ ▶️ John as you think. Because if If someone bought my little utility apps and ruined them, I would have to write them

⏹️ ▶️ John again, because I run them all day. So I do actually need them to continue working.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I just, at this, I learned my past

⏹️ ▶️ Marco story with having apps and then selling them, it was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fraught, there were problems. One of the reasons I have no interest in selling is because things are going well,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I don’t really have anything else I want to be working on. but also like I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco want my podcast app to suck. And if I sell my app to somebody who

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is gonna ruin it in some way, then I won’t have a good podcast app to use

⏹️ ▶️ Marco anymore because I don’t like anyone else’s. That’s the reason I made mine. So I would probably just make

⏹️ ▶️ Marco another one. Like I don’t know, I’m not sure how well that would go over

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the

⏹️ ▶️ John deal. The Brent Simmons approach. Yeah, right. I think you have to wait like 10 years in between those

⏹️ ▶️ John two events though. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I probably wouldn’t be able to do that.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, that’s how you’d know you’re a cool kid, is if Marco puts you on the test flight for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sunny, the replacement for Overcast. Ryan laughing

Importing miniDV tapes

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John John,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is this going to be a happy story about importing old footage or is this going

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be a sad story? Because I don’t know if I can handle a sad story right now.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s an in-betweeny one. Oh, goodness. Yeah, no, it’s not, you’ll see anyway.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Tell me about importing mini DV videos.

⏹️ ▶️ John So when I first had my kids, the state-of-the-art technology, or at least my first

⏹️ ▶️ John kid, the state-of-the-art technology for taking videos of your kids was still mini DV

⏹️ ▶️ John camcorders. This is a tiny little magnetic tape and this adorable little mini

⏹️ ▶️ John digital video cassette and you put into this device and it would turn and the tape would

⏹️ ▶️ John go past the recording heads and it had a lens and you know it’s an old style camera but it was digital video

⏹️ ▶️ John right so it was doing some kind of MPEG compression or something and recording onto

⏹️ ▶️ John this tape and you know it didn’t take long for iPhones

⏹️ ▶️ John and in my case iPod Touches and other things to come out and video to be taken in more convenient

⏹️ ▶️ John packages, right? But before that happened, I recorded many, many

⏹️ ▶️ John tapes of my kids, both my kids in fact, although the first more than the second, you know how that

⏹️ ▶️ John goes, parents. And but mini DV tapes, especially in

⏹️ ▶️ John the time I was making them, I had like my blue and white G3, I think, when I first started making these. That’s actually a lot of data.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like if you just pull the digital, the DV files off of the mini DV tapes, it was gigs

⏹️ ▶️ John and gigs, and that used to be a lot back in the days before, you know, multi-terabyte hard drives. So

⏹️ ▶️ John I’d have them on the tape, and the tapes are digital, right? But I can’t actually take them

⏹️ ▶️ John off the tape and put them on my computer. They wouldn’t fit. They were like a hundred times larger than the capacity

⏹️ ▶️ John of the hard drives

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco on my

⏹️ ▶️ John computer. So they’re never going to go on my computer. But I did, you know, I would take

⏹️ ▶️ John snippets of the footage and I would edit them in iMovie and I’d make a little movie and share it with the relatives. I’d

⏹️ ▶️ John do all that, but even just doing that one iMovie project for like a 60 second clip or something was a significant

⏹️ ▶️ John amount of data and then I would just throw away the files and just keep the finished video, right? So I had all those. I had all of my little

⏹️ ▶️ John projects and little things, but I had the raw material hours and hours, literally hours

⏹️ ▶️ John of mini-DVD footage and all of these tapes. And I wanted to have them available in some

⏹️ ▶️ John way on my computer. So way back in the day, it was in the Mac OS X era, I got an app called iDive

⏹️ ▶️ John that unfortunately no longer exists. And what iDive would do is you’d hook up your camcorder

⏹️ ▶️ John and it would essentially, two things. One, it could take like a tiny, blurry

⏹️ ▶️ John little thumbnail every N seconds, so you’d have like a scrub-able thumbnail, you know, highly

⏹️ ▶️ John compressed thumbnail timeline of your video. And two, you could also make massively compressed

⏹️ ▶️ John postage stamp size, you know, H.264 or whatever was the algorithm of the day. I think this

⏹️ ▶️ John might predate H.264. Tiny, heavily compressed, miniature versions of your stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ John And you could fit all that on my computer of the time. So what I did was I used iDive

⏹️ ▶️ John to transfer these thumbnail and heavily compressed tiny versions

⏹️ ▶️ John of the video to my computer. Just so if I ever said, oh, where’s that video of my daughter doing

⏹️ ▶️ John this cute thing? I didn’t have to remember which tape it was on. I could go and physically scrub through the video. Oh, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John that one. And then pull out the tape and get the quote unquote high quality footage off of the mini DV and

⏹️ ▶️ John do stuff with it in iMovie. And if anyone

⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t remember, never knew what importing DV footage was like, at least with my camcorder, the

⏹️ ▶️ John only option I had was essentially press play on the camcorder and allow

⏹️ ▶️ John the computer to record in real time. So if you have 90 minutes of mini DV, that’s gonna take 90

⏹️ ▶️ John minutes to import. Repeat for your shoebox full of tapes. Took a long time.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, because the mini DV format, I think, was very closely tied to Firewire. Like I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was basically sending a raw Firewire stream. It was like 400

⏹️ ▶️ Marco megabits per second, exactly like the, it was something like that. It was very closely related

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the Firewire spec, and Firewire was basically made for DV.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the standard, yeah, they were tied closely together. A lot of the selling points of Firewire was that it could handle

⏹️ ▶️ John the latency and the strict timing required to have that constant stream of

⏹️ ▶️ John video coming down so it didn’t have any hiccups or anything. You know anyway the firewire USB battles are long

⏹️ ▶️ John over but back in the day it was important and my camcorder did have a firewire Port on firewire 400 port

⏹️ ▶️ John because that was the only firewire at the time I got it So I did that I spent the hours importing everything

⏹️ ▶️ John into iDive and I brought that iDive library with me along from you know My power max into my

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pro and then eventually I brought it on to my current Mac Pro This is long after

⏹️ ▶️ John iDive Stopped being developed. This is long after iDive stopped working I

⏹️ ▶️ John think even I think it broke in one of the old versions of Mac OS But if it hadn’t broken then it certainly would have broken now because

⏹️ ▶️ John it was a 32-bit app and of course, you know Anyway, and the company that makes it like just has a sad little web page. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John like We don’t make I’d have anymore. Sorry So but I had all this

⏹️ ▶️ John footage and I dive and I was like, well Can I can I rescue that

⏹️ ▶️ John or do I want to rescue that? So, you know I did this is a kind of a Casey solution You

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco know

⏹️ ▶️ John fire up a VM

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco with an old version of Mac OS 10 on it

⏹️ ▶️ John You know, and yeah, that works. And you can run iDive. I don’t recommend it,

⏹️ ▶️ John but I got it working well enough to be able to sort of look at what’s in iDive

⏹️ ▶️ John and with modern eyes, it’s like, yeah, this isn’t really worth saving. The total size was like 50 gigs

⏹️ ▶️ John or something, but it’s 50 gigs of postage stamp-sized garbage things.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco So I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John like, okay, well, that was fun having iDive there. It was useful

⏹️ ▶️ John as a way to look things up quickly, but now it is of no value to me. but I do actually want the contents

⏹️ ▶️ John of those videos. So I had to eventually face the reality that I have to

⏹️ ▶️ John re-import everything. And that meant 90 minutes

⏹️ ▶️ John per tape. I did that over the course of many, many weeks.

⏹️ ▶️ John And I imported and I used modern compression, these H.265 and the full quality

⏹️ ▶️ John ones. They’re still big, by the way. If you’d import them, I don’t know if it’s uncompressed, but it seems minimally compressed or uncompressed.

⏹️ ▶️ John They’re big, but even by modern standards. But if you H.265 compress them, you can get really good quality

⏹️ ▶️ John and they end up being kind of small. So I re-imported every single one of these tapes and then I deleted my iDrive

⏹️ ▶️ John library. Notice, Casey, the order that I did that in, by the way? Yes,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey yes. Re-import

⏹️ ▶️ John the new ones first, then, anyway. Because for all I know, the tapes are all entirely bad. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ John the one wrinkle in this is that when I was re-importing them, a couple of them, especially at the beginning

⏹️ ▶️ John of the tapes, would have all sorts of digital noise and stuff all over them, like these giant blocks

⏹️ ▶️ John of white and blue and pink and stuff like that. I’m like, hmm, well,

⏹️ ▶️ John these tapes, they are very old. They may have deteriorated, stretched out, got demagnetized or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ John But very frequently, if I saw that, I would stop, rewind the tape,

⏹️ ▶️ John and everyone loves rewinding, and then start the import over again. And either

⏹️ ▶️ John the noise would go away or I’d get different noise. And so each tape that I had noise on, I took two

⏹️ ▶️ John or three attempts to see like, and I would only let it run if I got past the first minute or

⏹️ ▶️ John so with minimal noise. But it was interesting that this is my first actual experience with

⏹️ ▶️ John trying to rescue digitally stored media from my distant past

⏹️ ▶️ John and having some of it deteriorate. The good thing about whatever algorithm or whatever, whatever

⏹️ ▶️ John format they’re using is that just because there’s some noise and garbage and you know, it’s not, I guess

⏹️ ▶️ John I noise, I have this analog noise just because some of the bits are obviously flipped and screwed up on this

⏹️ ▶️ John thing. It didn’t stop it from importing. It didn’t stop it from mostly working.

⏹️ ▶️ John It was just some garbage on the screen and it eventually clears up. I’m glad the entire tapes weren’t like this.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like it was mostly just at the beginning, but a few of them, you know, I did have some data

⏹️ ▶️ John loss. Like there are sections of the picture of the first few minutes of a couple of these dozens of tapes that have a bunch of garbage

⏹️ ▶️ John in them and I’m never gonna get those back. So what can you do? But I’m mostly glad

⏹️ ▶️ John that it worked and that I now have a hopefully more robust digital copy of this.

⏹️ ▶️ John Fingers crossed for BitRot not to bite me. And then of course it has entered my patented backup Vortex and is now

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco copied in a thousand

⏹️ ▶️ John places. Including, by the way, putting them into my photo library. Because why the hell not? That puts

⏹️ ▶️ John it in five more places. So, that’s it. It was mostly a good story. I didn’t actually lose

⏹️ ▶️ John any. None of the tapes were unreadable. But, you know, maybe three or four minutes

⏹️ ▶️ John of video total are kind of scrambled a little bit out of the hundreds and hundreds of

⏹️ ▶️ John minutes that I recorded, God. Not just technology wise, but it became clear to me when watching it that

⏹️ ▶️ John I, at least personally, used to record video in a very different way back then. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John every shot was like, they were long, right? I mean, I would film 90 minute

⏹️ ▶️ John tapes. No one is taking 90 minute videos of their kids on their iPhone unless there’s some

⏹️ ▶️ John like very enthusiastic relative who wants to record little Timmy’s entire birthday

⏹️ ▶️ John party. People are taking clips, and honestly, if you tried to do 4K 60 on your

⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone of Timmy’s birthday party, you’re gonna fill it. Like, that stuff takes up a lot of room. People

⏹️ ▶️ John take much shorter movies, including me. I take much shorter movies. Oh, the dog is doing something cute. Fine, you take

⏹️ ▶️ John a 60 second movie, maybe at most. But looking at this footage, I’m like, wow, I just kept rolling.

⏹️ ▶️ John Just like, you know, minute after minute, hour after hour, just like, and it’s great because you get

⏹️ ▶️ John to see my kids doing, you know, things in an extended way and not just trying to catch the one cute thing, but like,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, here’s, here’s an entire feeding and the cleanup afterwards. Right. Um,

⏹️ ▶️ John so it was fun. Uh, I enjoyed, I enjoyed, uh, watching the videos out of the corner of my eyes as they,

⏹️ ▶️ John as they totally monopolized my computer for hours and hours on end. Oh, and, uh, the

⏹️ ▶️ John other fun part of this was of course, finding the series of dongles required to go from

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco firewire 400 into a 2019,

⏹️ ▶️ John uh, Mac pro. It wasn’t that bad. That’s the other reason I did this. I said, look,

⏹️ ▶️ John if I keep waiting, eventually no series of dongles will get me where I want to go and those tapes are not getting any younger, so I better

⏹️ ▶️ John just do it. So I did.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m glad it mostly worked out.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, my kids were cute. The mini DV video quality is terrible and the audio on the

⏹️ ▶️ John camcorder was not good. Yeah. But hey, my my childhood movies are on

⏹️ ▶️ John Super 8, which has its charms. Casey would love it for the ceremony, of course.

⏹️ ▶️ John But A, there’s no audio whatsoever. B the frame rate is what 12

⏹️ ▶️ John frames per second what a super 8

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John really low frame rate see it looks worse than MiniDV, even with the digital

⏹️ ▶️ John noise.

Early camcorders

Chapter Early camcorders image.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I remember, I might have told this story on the show, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey dad, it was maybe when I was like newborn

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or maybe it was my immediate younger brother, but this thing lingered for long enough for me to have a memory

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of it to this day. Dad had some sort of camcorder where

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the camera did not have any sort of apparatus with which to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey save the data it was capturing. So what he ended up having to do was carrying an entire

⏹️ ▶️ Casey VCR on a shoulder strap. So this is like, for those of you who are not old

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like us— That was very early in camcorder

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey days. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah. Yeah, so imagine like—I know some of the kids these days don’t even know what a Blu-ray player is, but just for the sake

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of discussion, imagine like a PlayStation that you put on

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a shoulder strap and wear it, and it’s hooked up via a cable to a camera

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the size of like a professional film camera that is taking video so just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey indescribably bad with burn in that lasts for like 20 minutes anytime you get anywhere near a light.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that was his setup. Surely, the batteries lasted all of like four and a half seconds, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s what he had to do was actually hit the record button on the VCR that was hooked

⏹️ ▶️ Casey up to the camcorder. And the VCR was like specifically designed to do this, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey nevertheless, it’s still like a household VCR that you’re carrying on your shoulder. that probably weighed like 10 or 15 pounds,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and God knows how much power it drank. It was preposterous. And that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was early videos of maybe not me, but certainly my younger brothers. It was just the worst.

⏹️ ▶️ John The Super 8s had such bad light sensitivity that this is probably also true of your

⏹️ ▶️ John VHS setup, that my parents had this incredibly blaring, presumably

⏹️ ▶️ John also super hot white light that would blind everybody. It was like a light on a movie set.

⏹️ ▶️ John You always hear people talk about being on movie sets and how there’s so many lights and it’s so hot and they’re so bright,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? That’s what you had to do to take any kind of video where you could see people. So even though it’s just indoors and normal indoor

⏹️ ▶️ John lighting, like during the day, everyone looks like you found them in a cave, right? Because it looks like it’s total blackness

⏹️ ▶️ John outside the radius of this white, hot, burning sun that you have to like have mounted on top of your camera.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, my first camcorder experience was only a small generation after Casey’s.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It wasn’t even ours. Like it’s like our family friend had one and we could borrow it whenever we had like a school play or something.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is interesting, so Ryber in the chat is saying that the term camcorder actually refers to a camera with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a built-in recorder. So that’s what the one that I first used was. They had

⏹️ ▶️ Marco figured out how to miniaturize VCRs enough that it was still a full-size VHS cassette,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you could put this full-size VHS tape into the camcorder, which was approximately

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the size of a VCR, you know, vertically.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it weighed a ton. It came in this giant black carrying case. Like, it was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the size of a desktop computer, like the case. And inside you’d

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pull out this heavy, giant camcorder with a battery that was probably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about the size of the sole of a shoe. Like this huge, long, rectangle,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco big, thick thing. And I remember having it on your shoulder. And I must have been maybe,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know, 11, 12 when we were using this thing. And so like having that on my shoulder, I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the scrawny kid, you could only hold it up for maybe 15 minutes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco before your shoulder would hurt like hell because it was just so heavy. But it was a full VCR. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you could actually, you could connect it to your TV and you could actually watch movies

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on it. Like you could put in any VHS tape and hit play and you could watch movies

⏹️ ▶️ Marco either on the little tiny black and white eyepiece screen, which was actually,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, a little CRT in there. Or you could connect to your TV

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and have that be your VCR if you really wanted to. But man, people don’t know how good they have it these

⏹️ ▶️ Marco days. Things

⏹️ ▶️ John are- Yeah, this is all analog, by the way. There’s no digital anywhere. This is all just analog, quote-unquote

⏹️ ▶️ John standard def, because there was nothing else, videos. Yeah, JVC had the first breakthrough product,

⏹️ ▶️ John the one that was red, red and black. That was the kind of one where it broke through to the point where people would look at it not

⏹️ ▶️ John be horrified that this is an actual product. The JVC one was like, ah, it kind of looks like a camera until you got it. The

⏹️ ▶️ John original JVC was also huge, but at least it wasn’t like a shoulder bag like Casey’s dad thing. That was the early adopter

⏹️ ▶️ John model.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Steve McLaughlin Yeah. So I put in the chat, there’s an RCA camcorder, and this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey matches my mental model of what these things used to look like. And if you’re used to holding

⏹️ ▶️ Casey up, like I joke about how we’re old and kids these days, but really and truly,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey people that are 10, 15 years younger than us have probably never seen this. And this is the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey highest possible tech option that you had. And really, the only option that you had in the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey prosumer or consumer category was something that was basically a VCR that was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey mounted, like Marco said, on your shoulder that had a lens in front of it.

⏹️ ▶️ John I found the JVC one. I think it’s the JVC GRC1, the old

⏹️ ▶️ John red and black

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey model. Yeah. Yep, yep,

⏹️ ▶️ John yep. It’s so small compared to that RCA one, isn’t it?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, right? Yeah, this is the one, didn’t MKBHD do one of his like discovering old tech videos on this camera? It was on either this or something

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very similar to this.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s a very famous thing. I think my aunt had this one too. I think this, there was also

⏹️ ▶️ John a similar looking VCR at the time and I remember it because it was the first remote

⏹️ ▶️ John control I can recall seeing and it had a wire. It had a long wire,

⏹️ ▶️ John but it had a wire. It’s remote though, you could be on the couch and you could hit play. Man, that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that is some

⏹️ ▶️ John stuff. Yeah in some in some respects It makes you think that like they’re like super 8 and 16 millimeter and like the

⏹️ ▶️ John film ones had a certain Classiness that maybe this RCA one did not

⏹️ ▶️ John like it looks impressive and everything But in the end like like the idea of film like actual

⏹️ ▶️ John photosensitive film flying past an aperture at you know 16 or 12 frames

⏹️ ▶️ John per second or whatever and that you would get that film developed and that you would that you would show it using a projector

⏹️ ▶️ John in your house that you had that you could project the film onto your screen that you also would have to have a

⏹️ ▶️ John big reflective movie screen in your house. My parents had all these things. The idea that

⏹️ ▶️ John you could do it all electronically with this the idea called a VCR on your TV like it was amazing but in some ways like

⏹️ ▶️ John huh but our TV is 21 inches the projector screen was huge

⏹️ ▶️ John and I don’t get to hear the chicka chicka chicka chicka chicka I don’t watch Kachikechike anymore.

TV carts, melted film

Chapter TV carts, melted film image.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I remember when I was in elementary school, you would know

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you were in for a good day because the reel-to-reel projector would come into your room and that’s how you would watch

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a movie. Do you remember this? Because there wasn’t any sort of portable TV

⏹️ ▶️ Casey situation. As I got older in elementary school or perhaps middle school, they would

⏹️ ▶️ Casey eventually stick these 50-pound CRT TVs

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John and VCRs onto a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey cart. heart,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? How do we not all die from those TV cards? It’s the most top heavy thing in the world. Like, take this huge

⏹️ ▶️ John CRT and put it as high up as possible on this stand that weighs nothing. This rickety

⏹️ ▶️ John metal stand with wheels on the bottom. And it’s amazing we’re not all crushed to death underneath those TVs right now.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And put it in a room full of, like, hyper kids, like, wiggling and running around. And then,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of course, you have to run a cord to it, too. So,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John yeah, the kids can trip over. I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ John to be fair, it was, you know, kind of a a trapezoid in profile. The base was

⏹️ ▶️ John slightly bigger than the top, but it was not well balanced. I never even heard any

⏹️ ▶️ John stories of those falling on people. I guess we just all thought they were stable. But yeah, the film projectors were certainly more fun because

⏹️ ▶️ John there was more of a possibility of fire and melting.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John great. Because of the, you know, I had to explain this to my kids, what were we watching? We were watching some movie.

⏹️ ▶️ John No, it wasn’t a movie. It was Little America, an Apple TV Plus show, which I can actually recommend that I hadn’t,

⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t look at until someone had tweeted at us and I checked it out and I actually, those, you know, them episodes are hit and miss, but the

⏹️ ▶️ John good thing is that they’re all standalone episodes, it’s not a series. So I would say just watch the first three episodes of Little

⏹️ ▶️ John America, you’ll know if you like it. It’s only like 10

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco total.

⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, at one point they’re showing a thing that’s supposed to have taken place in the 60s or something, and a bunch of people are outdoors watching

⏹️ ▶️ John a movie, like an American movie in a foreign country, and they get to some dramatic scene, and then the film gets

⏹️ ▶️ John stuck, and it melts, right? And it occurred to me that my kids probably

⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t know what they were seeing, like, I guess

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey people

⏹️ ▶️ John have seen this in movies, you know, they still do it as a kind of a trope, but like, instead of showing the picture,

⏹️ ▶️ John all of a sudden a white blob appears in the center of the picture, and it starts to expand, and there’s

⏹️ ▶️ John color fringing around it. And I explained to my kids, what’s happening there is that the

⏹️ ▶️ John film that you can shine light through to make the picture that’s flying past the light and the projector,

⏹️ ▶️ John the film got stuck. And the only way you could get light bright enough to project was to have a very big

⏹️ ▶️ John and very hot light. And if any piece of film stays in front of that bright hot light for more than a couple

⏹️ ▶️ John of seconds, it melts. And that’s what you’re seeing on the screen. What you’re seeing is the white hot light of the projector

⏹️ ▶️ John melting through the frame of film that got stuck in front of the light, and that’s why it looks like a big melty thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John I enjoy explaining stuff like that to my kids. Soon I’ll be explaining to people what the little icon

⏹️ ▶️ John of the phone handset means on their iPhones. Yeah, right. It’s true. What is that shape? Is that a C?

⏹️ ▶️ John What is that? What’s the bee?

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#askatp: Buy first ARM Mac?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco our show.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s do some Ask ATP. And let’s start with Jamie Bender

⏹️ ▶️ Casey who writes, if Apple does release an ARM-based Mac, would we be willing

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to buy the first-gen machines that run it, or would we wait until they sort out any major issues?

⏹️ ▶️ John We know Marco’s answer.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco’s answer is absolutely

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yes. Oh, yeah. I’d buy it on

⏹️ ▶️ Casey day one. For me, I don’t know. I honestly don’t. I mean, generally speaking, this is where I say, no,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s not for me. where I say, no, it’s not for me. I’d wait. And then I end up buying it on the first day. So probably

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s what I would do. But it’s, it’s, it’s a much more, uh,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey invasive, let’s say change than a lot of the things that I’ve lived through as an Apple user, maybe

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not John, but for me. And so I don’t know what I would do. I’m, I’m really not sure. I would like to think I would

⏹️ ▶️ Casey wait until at least the second model, if not the second generation, But I do

⏹️ ▶️ Casey like me a new shiny, so I don’t know what I would end up doing. John?

⏹️ ▶️ John An Apple user. Such a weirdo. Initially, I’m thinking, like, well, of course I’m not going to buy it on day

⏹️ ▶️ John one because I got this big honking, expensive computer that I’m going to be using for a long time, right? Even if they do come out with

⏹️ ▶️ John a new one, I can’t afford to get a new umpteen thousand dollars, you know. So of course

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco not.

⏹️ ▶️ John But what I think about is, especially in these days of remote learning and all sorts

⏹️ ▶️ John of other stuff, how my kids are fighting over the one laptop we have because none of them want to the desktop computer because desktops

⏹️ ▶️ John are for old people I guess. I could potentially be in the market for another laptop

⏹️ ▶️ John to deal with having two teens in school where they need the laptops so they could each

⏹️ ▶️ John have sort of one of their own. We’ve got the previous generation is the yeah I’m so I’m losing track

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey of

⏹️ ▶️ John that. Yeah the butterfly keyboard Retina MacBook Air is what we’ve got 2017 MacBook Air and it’s fine

⏹️ ▶️ John for their purposes and the keyboard hasn’t broken yet but if they came out with the very first arm computer

⏹️ ▶️ John and it happened to be a laptop in that sort of the MacBook Air class

⏹️ ▶️ John price range, I might get it just to give the kids another laptop and because of course

⏹️ ▶️ John I’d be curious about technically what it’s like or whatever. So it’s not out of the question. It really depends on what

⏹️ ▶️ John computer it’s first. If the first one is a 16 inch MacBook Pro, no I’m not getting it because I’m probably never gonna get

⏹️ ▶️ John that computer. But if it’s a kid appropriate laptop, I might get it on day one.

⏹️ ▶️ John This is part of this question about whether they’re, sorting out major issues, yeah. there’s going to be issues, right? But

⏹️ ▶️ John that hasn’t stopped me before. I got the very first Power Mac G5.

⏹️ ▶️ John There was a lot of inherent risk in that and mine did have a weird tripping power supply. But there is

⏹️ ▶️ John also the excitement of having the new thing, you know, ASAP. So if I

⏹️ ▶️ John bought it on day one, I wouldn’t be buying it expecting it to be perfect. I’d be buying it knowing there could be weird problems.

⏹️ ▶️ John But if you go into that with your eyes open and that’s part of the experience you expect, it can

⏹️ ▶️ John still be fun.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, I think the most likely source of weird problems is gonna be the OS and the application ecosystem.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, it’s gonna be the software side of things. The hardware is probably gonna be rock solid because it’s probably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not gonna be that different from iOS hardware, which their record on that is very strong.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, really, the bigger challenge is gonna be how ready will both

⏹️ ▶️ Marco macOS, presumably it is macOS, and the apps that will run on it, how

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ready are those? Like how mature is that gonna be on day one? And the answer is probably gonna be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, I’m sure most stuff will work most of the time, but there’s gonna be problems. And there’s gonna be certain apps that you just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco can’t run for a while, while they get updated. And some of them, it’s, you know, like any other transition, some of them will never get updated

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they won’t make the transition. And so there’s gonna be issues like that, but that’s probably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna be true for the first few years of them being in existence, probably through multiple revisions of the actual hardware.

#askatp: Big HDD filesystems

⏹️ ▶️ Casey there. Unai Haran writes, hey Casey, which file system did you use to format your

⏹️ ▶️ Casey big external drive? Maybe it’s a question for John, but in accumulated experience in the last months, I think you were the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one. So this is with reference to the Best Buy 12 terabyte drive that I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey got in desperation and made a duplicate of my Synology onto. I formatted it APFS

⏹️ ▶️ Casey because it seemed like the most appropriate thing to do and the path of least resistance when I’m hooking it up to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a Mac Mini. Now John can tell me what I should have done, but to quickly answer the question, it is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey APFS. John, what should I have done?

⏹️ ▶️ John A lot of people have asked about this. APFS does not perform

⏹️ ▶️ John well on spinning disks. It was not designed for spinning disks. You know,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just not, that’s not its strong suit. It is kind of an anti-pattern to put APFS on

⏹️ ▶️ John a spinning disk. But the reason a lot of people end up doing it, including me, my internal clone

⏹️ ▶️ John of my my boot drive is a spinning disk that is forming with APFS is the path of least resistance

⏹️ ▶️ John when cloning a drive with most cloning software is to just actually make a clone. So if the disk

⏹️ ▶️ John you’re cloning is APFS, so is the clone. It’s a very straight, I use SuperDuper to do that. I’m not even

⏹️ ▶️ John sure if SuperDuper can do an APFS clone to HFS+, but it’s just more straightforward

⏹️ ▶️ John to me to say, if you’re gonna make a clone of a disk, make it identical to that disk. I don’t run anything off

⏹️ ▶️ John that I mentioned, I think on a previous episode, that I accidentally booted into that and couldn’t understand why it was making so much noise,

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t recommend people use APFS on spinning disks unless they’re using

⏹️ ▶️ John it as a backup that’s just there just in case or a clone or something similar.

⏹️ ▶️ John HFS Plus and HFS before it were made in an era when the layout of the

⏹️ ▶️ John structures of the file system on the disk were tailored to the idea that you had a disk

⏹️ ▶️ John head zooming back and forth on a spinning platter and you had to wait for the platter to spin around to the part

⏹️ ▶️ John that you wanted and you had to move the diskette from one place to another and you had to wait for it to stop shaking so it stabilized in the little

⏹️ ▶️ John thing. And so HFS Plus does a lot of work to jam all of its important structures

⏹️ ▶️ John into continuous blocks in a single location so that that little diskette doesn’t need to fly all over

⏹️ ▶️ John the disk to do a simple operation. APFS does not do that because APFS was born in the world of SSDs

⏹️ ▶️ John where random access is a thing and there is no more diskette and there’s no more spinning

⏹️ ▶️ John platters. So I think Casey did basically the same thing I would do,

⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s, you know, if he was actually going to ever try to use that disc as opposed to just having it

⏹️ ▶️ John As a backup, it would be a bad

⏹️ ▶️ Casey scene.

#askatp: Multi-user iPadOS

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pascale Lindelof writes, what are the chances of Apple ever making iPadOS a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey multi-user OS? I have a new model iPad Air, which is used by the family around the house, but when it’s not in use by

⏹️ ▶️ Casey them, I like to use it as a second sidecar screen. However, that requires it to switch from the family iCloud account

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to my own iCloud account. This is a very tedious process. I want to have a separate iCloud account for the family on the iPad

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to prevent my photo library from getting swamped with pictures taken by the kids on the iPad or having my YouTube recommendations being

⏹️ ▶️ Casey overgrown by Shaun the Sheep. are multi-user

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the education environment, but that requires a whole bunch of specific scenarios and circumstances

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and software. What is it, Apple Classroom or something like that?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really don’t see it coming to the iPad, if at all, then I don’t see it anytime

⏹️ ▶️ Casey soon. I mean, you could say, John, on an infinite time scale, maybe it would happen, but personally, I just don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey see it in the next few years. But John, what do you think?

⏹️ ▶️ John I think this is actually, I was thinking about this and the reason I put this question in here, this is actually a miniature version of

⏹️ ▶️ John my old hobby horses, like back in the day, Apple’s

⏹️ ▶️ John big problem, technologically speaking, their biggest amount of tech debt, to use modern lingo that the

⏹️ ▶️ John office drones will understand, the biggest chunk of tech debt was they had an operating system that

⏹️ ▶️ John did not support preemptive multitasking or protected memory. And that

⏹️ ▶️ John became an increasingly big deal as its competitors got those features and as it continued

⏹️ ▶️ John to not get them because so much of its software stack was built on the idea of a single continuous

⏹️ ▶️ John memory space that every app could access at the same time and cooperative multitasking, right? And those

⏹️ ▶️ John were not the answers for the future. It made sense when they made those decisions, but eventually it became

⏹️ ▶️ John this huge tech debt burden. And the company basically almost went out of business while it tried to figure

⏹️ ▶️ John out how the hell are we going to get a modern version of the Mac operating system while not losing

⏹️ ▶️ John literally all of our customers. It came very, very close to going out of business. So they had like, what, 90 days

⏹️ ▶️ John worth of money before they bought, left when they bought Steve Jobs in and Nexon and everything.

⏹️ ▶️ John So close call. That’s obviously a much bigger boulder than this.

⏹️ ▶️ John And I used to complain about their file system and they addressed that. What were my other

⏹️ ▶️ John technological peeves? I’ve had a bunch of these of varying size. Swift. Oh yeah, new programming

⏹️ ▶️ John language. Yep, they more or less addressed that too, right? So good on Apple. I think the

⏹️ ▶️ John one time I actually met Craig Federighi at WWDC a couple years back, his opening line to me was like,

⏹️ ▶️ John well, you got everything you wanted. You have nothing left to complain about, right? You got your modern operating system, you got your new

⏹️ ▶️ John programming language, you got your new file system. And he was partly right, but there’s always something else,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? So this little thing here, hey, why isn’t iPadOS multi-user?

⏹️ ▶️ John iOS from day one, again, for explicable and good reasons, was not made

⏹️ ▶️ John like Mac OS, where you would log in as a user and all your files would be owned by you, the

⏹️ ▶️ John user, and like iOS on the original, it wasn’t iOS, iPhone OS, the firmware

⏹️ ▶️ John on the original iPhone, they called it firmware, it wasn’t even an OS. Yeah, it runs OS 10,

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s what Steve said, but they never used

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that name.

⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, if you know how that was working under the covers, it was not working like

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac OS 10. You did not log in as a user, you didn’t have your own user home directory. It was weird, lots of stuff ran

⏹️ ▶️ John as root, Lots of stuff was sort of, you know, it was like a, not that it was single user, because

⏹️ ▶️ John under the covers it’s still Unix and it’s still got the same Unix security model and there was the sandbox and everything and whatever, but it just,

⏹️ ▶️ John it was just weird and it wasn’t laid out or it didn’t run like logging into

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac OS X. And it still doesn’t, right? To this day, there’s a weirdness about it where

⏹️ ▶️ John it is not like, oh, well, we can add multi-user to iOS anytime, because it’s exactly like Mac OS X under the covers. It’s Darwin

⏹️ ▶️ John and you don’t know it, but you’re already running all your apps out of your own home directory. Not really that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John not quite how it works like the classroom stuff does this weird user space reboot and you know

⏹️ ▶️ John like Everything the solution they’ve had to that has been kind of a hack So this

⏹️ ▶️ John is a fairly big piece of tech debt assuming that Apple ever wants to have this feature Which I think

⏹️ ▶️ John they should want to have it eventually It’s not easy to add like adding, you know Pre-emptive multitasking

⏹️ ▶️ John memory protection like coming up with a whole new programming language language, like writing a new file system that will work

⏹️ ▶️ John across all their devices, is not the type of thing that you can bang out, you know, in a couple months. Ah, we’ll

⏹️ ▶️ John get that, you know, no problem, we’ll just make that when we need it. If there comes a point where

⏹️ ▶️ John they want that, and arguably they’ve already passed that point because if they could get it easily, they would have done it for classrooms,

⏹️ ▶️ John a place where it is actually necessary, they had to do it as a hack. Because doing it the quote unquote

⏹️ ▶️ John real way, where it’s an actual real multi-user system like the Mac is so different than

⏹️ ▶️ John the way iOS works now, that it would be really, really hard to do. Now, again,

⏹️ ▶️ John this is much smaller than even a new file system, and certainly much smaller than how we get a modern operating system. Those are

⏹️ ▶️ John much bigger tasks. And this probably won’t hurt them in the long run. But if I had to pick my next

⏹️ ▶️ John area to watch where Apple’s got some core technological problem that is

⏹️ ▶️ John thorny and annoying, and is never going to be easy to deal with on the

⏹️ ▶️ John iOS platform, this would be in my top five for sure. Cause it’s always

⏹️ ▶️ John struck me as a little bit of a shame that like the iPhone was so

⏹️ ▶️ John forward thinking, so ahead of its time, so barely possible. Like that’s part of the miracle. Like

⏹️ ▶️ John the original Mac, so barely possible that people thought it was fake and didn’t understand how it was done. You know,

⏹️ ▶️ John the original Mac, I would argue, was even more so if you consider what it did with 128 kilobytes of RAM and all those other

⏹️ ▶️ John things, right? That it had to be designed with all sorts of expedient hacks just

⏹️ ▶️ John to even make it possible. And thanks to its success, again the iPhone much more so than the Mac,

⏹️ ▶️ John many of those hacks became enshrined and Apple has slowly unwound them and slowly addressed

⏹️ ▶️ John its tech debt over the years such that iOS of today is way more sort of sturdy

⏹️ ▶️ John and reasonably constructed and built, but the legacy of the original iPhone is still in

⏹️ ▶️ John there right down to this, you know, inability to do multi-user in a straightforward way because

⏹️ ▶️ John you just couldn’t afford to do that from day one with the original iPhone.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, to add a little bit to that, I mean, so not only has iOS

⏹️ ▶️ Marco grown up not having multi-user support, but iOS has also grown up at a ridiculous

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pace in a kind of frantic software update

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ecosystem where iOS in general does not get a lot of opportunity

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to pay off its technical debt because it’s constantly moving and having stuff added and the market

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is changing, and the hardware is changing, and everything is changing so much, there’s probably not a lot of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco good times that the people who work on core iOS services and core UI have a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco chance to work on things that might make this possible or at least easier to do later.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That technical debt is so baked in and stretches across so much of the OS, I don’t think they’re ever

⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna be able to repay it because it’s never gonna be important enough. It’s never gonna be like a top priority

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing to add multi-user support to iOS for a number of reasons. You know, first of all,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I never really used Mac multi-user support until about the last year or so.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco As we’ve been various like, you know, beach travels and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco now, you know, with home school work and stuff like that, we’ve had more needs over the last

⏹️ ▶️ Marco year for a Mac to be used by two or three people in our household. And so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s become a very common thing for us. And even on the Mac, where multi-user

⏹️ ▶️ Marco support’s been there since the beginning and it’s, or at least Mac OS 10, you know, it’s been there since the beginning and it’s really,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, baked into the OS, it’s still kind of weird and still a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of stuff kind of breaks with it. And that’s a mature system that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco was designed that way, right? So even when it’s baked in, the OS

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is really most of the time, and the applications on the OS, most

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the time are assuming that it’s going to be used by one user on one device

⏹️ ▶️ John period. What kind of problems are you having, by the way? Because I use multi-user all the time and it works

⏹️ ▶️ John the way I expect it to. What kind of things are you running into?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Usually it’s like apps that don’t think that they have their registration information

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or Skype keeps trying to install helpers over and over again and it can’t. One of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the, oh, and how different Apple IDs work with different passwords and keychain

⏹️ ▶️ Marco storage. Somehow on one of the computers,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tiff set up Adam’s account using parental control, and it’s now entered

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this state—I haven’t done any research on how to fix this, so I’m sorry, everyone’s going to try to email and help me, and I appreciate

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, but I probably can fix it myself with 10 minutes of research, but I just haven’t done it yet—where it gets to the state where

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we can’t turn off the parental controls now on his account, and they’re super obnoxious.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Obviously, no one uses Mac protocols really, because trying

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do anything on an account that has protocols, and it’s quite a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John disaster.

⏹️ ▶️ John They’re both obnoxious and hard to circumvent, and easy to circumvent rather, so it’s a

⏹️ ▶️ John double whammy. The only one that you listed I’ve seen is the software

⏹️ ▶️ John non-Mac app store, like traditional Mac software, that wants you to register on each account. And I’m not entirely

⏹️ ▶️ John convinced those are bugs, because it just could be their licensing model. Maybe the licensing model is each easier and your computer needs to

⏹️ ▶️ John have a license to it. But other than that, I haven’t had any of those issues. Like the worst I could think is that

⏹️ ▶️ John maybe it’s not entirely clear to me when I’m on one user’s account how,

⏹️ ▶️ John what kind of priority tasks get on the other user’s account. Like if there are apps that think they’re not,

⏹️ ▶️ John think they’re not running in the foreground, therefore they’re never gonna do some check or whatever. But in general,

⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve been using it, you know, multi-user from day one. I think it works exactly the way you would expect

⏹️ ▶️ John it to with no problems, because it is actually baked into the OS. You do actually have your own home directory. You do

⏹️ ▶️ John actually have your own user. The operating system has no problem running multiple copies of the same application

⏹️ ▶️ John owned by different users. All works out fine.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I’m glad it works for you. It works OK for us, but yeah, we do run into weird little issues here and there.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But anyway, so I think the bigger challenge here is that most

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the market doesn’t really want this anymore. What it would take from a user perspective, first of all,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Say you wanted to share an iPad. The idea of how would that work with things like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps, with the home screen, with notifications, with a lot of the security stuff, with the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco store kit. There are so many things about how it would have to work that would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco greatly complexify things. It doesn’t seem like that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco necessarily worthwhile. And then finally, the bigger challenge with this is that market-wise,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think Apple just wants everyone who buy their own devices, and the market

⏹️ ▶️ Marco largely has accepted that. If you’re gonna have multiple people in a household who are going

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to want their own stuff on a device, you probably are gonna wind up

⏹️ ▶️ Marco having them each have their own device. And even though it costs more money, this also

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a world where people’s primary computing device could be a $400 phone or a $300 iPad.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And back when the mainstream computer platforms were

⏹️ ▶️ Marco designed back in the 80s and 90s, computers cost $2,000. So it was a much bigger deal that,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay, you’re gonna get a $2,000 computer for your household. You’re gonna have it in the computer room

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or in the den or whatever, and it’s gonna be in the computer cabinet, and your family will share this.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was like a major appliance. It was like a washing machine. It was like, your family’s gonna share this major appliance, it’s a major investment

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for them, at this one station in the household. It wasn’t like your computer, mom’s computer,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco dad’s computer. It’s like, here is the family computer. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so multiple user accounts were more important as things were bigger, more expensive, you know, younger.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now, technology is so ubiquitous and so much of it is so inexpensive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that everyone just gets their own devices. As, you know, if you can afford to do that, which is increasingly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco accessible as devices get cheaper, everyone gets their own devices and that’s fine. And so the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco usage demand for multi-user stuff on one device is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco greatly reduced and the need for it is greatly reduced at the same time that the OS is now like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the iOS you know side of things it would be harder than ever to add that to it so that’s why

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I suspect we’re not really gonna see that come to iOS more than it already has as this weird

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like educational hack thing that regular people don’t have access to

⏹️ ▶️ John at a certain point it like it will become a little bit easier not just because they’re paying down the other tech debt

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s lurking in the operating system just because the resources will expand, right? iPhone used to be so RAM starved and

⏹️ ▶️ John such slow CPUs, you know, fast forward 20 years, there’s a huge amount of RAM in everybody’s phones and iPads and you

⏹️ ▶️ John can afford to do multi-user switching in an efficient way and all that other stuff. Like, they do have

⏹️ ▶️ John a use case, it’s the education use case. Obviously it’s not very important in the grand scheme of things, but it’s important enough that

⏹️ ▶️ John they implemented that weird hack, right? And that weird hack is just more tech debt, right? So

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco even

⏹️ ▶️ John just to address that customer use case, eventually someone’s gonna say, hey, like, oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John all our iPads have 32 gigs of RAM in them now. And we’ve actually cleaned up a lot of the

⏹️ ▶️ John operating system in iPad OS. We’re pretty close to doing a one-year-long project to

⏹️ ▶️ John get real multi-user for iPad. And we could just have a better implementation of our classroom thing. Doesn’t mean they even need

⏹️ ▶️ John to use it for the other things, for regular consumers. But the second thing is that there are people

⏹️ ▶️ John with shared devices, especially iPads. iPads cost $1,000 now. Obviously, it’s $1,000 in 2020 money, not $2,000 in 1980

⏹️ ▶️ John money. but they’re not cheap. And because of the way, because

⏹️ ▶️ John of how regimented things are, because of how they are such

⏹️ ▶️ John single user focused devices, trying to have someone else use them

⏹️ ▶️ John is disruptive. Like not just because you, you know, get your kids’ YouTube recommendations, but you can’t even unlock

⏹️ ▶️ John the device if it doesn’t know who you are, if you’re not registered on the, you know, like it doesn’t have an awareness of multiple

⏹️ ▶️ John people. Like granted, I am an alternate appearance of my wife and vice versa, but that’s,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, stretching the limits so we can just get into our other devices. Right. So

⏹️ ▶️ John I, you know, it’s not an important use case. Like Apple is correctly prioritizing. There are much more important things they need

⏹️ ▶️ John to be doing, but it’s one of those type of things where eventually, unlike that tech that coming

⏹️ ▶️ John home to roost and being like a company killer, it’ll be more like eventually we’re

⏹️ ▶️ John close enough. We’re in shooting distance of that anyway. And we do actually want to do this thing for the classroom because that

⏹️ ▶️ John is, that’s always going to be a shared device situation if Apple keeps its prices the way

⏹️ ▶️ John they are, right? A one-to-one iPad thing is very expensive in the grand scheme of things, especially in this country

⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of how much money we spend on education, that having shared iPads will probably

⏹️ ▶️ John always make sense in an educational setting. And so, hey, wouldn’t it be nice to have a better version

⏹️ ▶️ John of that? It’s a low priority, but I don’t think it’s a zero priority. And like I said,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s kind of a shame Like that, you know, if the iPhone had come out five years later,

⏹️ ▶️ John maybe multi user would have been baked in from the start and we would have complained about how slow it was switching users. But I

⏹️ ▶️ John mean, the other way Apple can do it, this is, I don’t know, they shouldn’t do this, but

⏹️ ▶️ John every time I see one of these messages about why someone might want my

⏹️ ▶️ John multi-user or sharing an iOS device or even sharing, well, sharing a Mac, they have multi-user, right? But

⏹️ ▶️ John iCloud signing out of iCloud is another reason I want to use iCloud drive Signing out of iCloud is like the end of the

⏹️ ▶️ John world.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Like, you might as well just like, do you want me to

⏹️ ▶️ John delete every piece of information and so you have to painfully and hopefully restore

⏹️ ▶️ John it all the next time? Like, it is not, it’s a big deal, especially if you have a huge photo library. Like, I

⏹️ ▶️ John will never sign out of my iCloud account ever, anywhere, if I can possibly help it. So,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, if you just like, oh, we have an iOS device, but that is on little Timmy’s

⏹️ ▶️ John photo collection. I wanna pull that photo. and I don’t know about iCloud.com, the web interface,

⏹️ ▶️ John so how do we do that? Well, I guess I could just sign out of my iCloud account and sign into Timmy’s.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Like, no, turn back.

⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t do it. But if you could just switch to Timmy’s account for a second to grab that, that would be cool. I mean, again, storage

⏹️ ▶️ John space, RAM, like this, you know, I’m not saying this needs to be done today or tomorrow, but it’s out on the horizon

⏹️ ▶️ John as a piece of tech debt that Apple could address that would make its devices a little more convenient.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it would be nice for Uniforny. Max can do it. iOS devices should be able to do it too. It’d be neat. that

⏹️ ▶️ John way everyone can use their shared 27-inch iPad that’s in the computer room.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks to our sponsors this week, ExpressVPN and Notion, and we will talk to you next.

Ending theme

⏹️ ▶️ Marco next week.

⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, cause it was accidental,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. John didn’t do any

⏹️ ▶️ Casey research, Marco

⏹️ ▶️ John and Casey wouldn’t let him, cause it was accidental,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental. And

⏹️ ▶️ John you can find the show notes at atp.fm

⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re into Twitter,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can follow them At C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M Auntie

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco Armin S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A

⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse, ah, it’s accidental They

⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t mean to accidentally Accidentally Tech

⏹️ ▶️ John Podcasts So long

Neutral

Chapter Neutral image.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I Have excellent excellent news gentlemen The mark 8

⏹️ ▶️ Casey GTI. So this is the brand new not yet released GTI will

⏹️ ▶️ Casey offer a manual 6-speed transmission John when Honda

⏹️ ▶️ Casey inevitably abandons you you can come to the Volkswagen Auto Group side of

⏹️ ▶️ John the world Drive around in an ugly hatchback. I think your generation of of

⏹️ ▶️ John your generation of the Golf R looks way nicer than this new generation. I’m not a fan of the new

⏹️ ▶️ Casey look. It’s okay. The squinty eyes, I don’t really, I don’t love,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know. I don’t like those weird fog lights. What are they doing with like the five dice

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey dot fog

⏹️ ▶️ Casey lights? Apparently they’re fitting it in the, what is that, hexagonal grill,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I don’t know why there’s five of them. The whole

⏹️ ▶️ Marco grill looks

⏹️ ▶️ Casey stupid. I don’t mind the grill. I am a sucker for big front fascia, I’ve said many, many times about

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the M Sport package on BMWs, but, um, yeah, the fog lights are a little odd to me.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I also don’t like that black, like, sea just outside the grille

⏹️ ▶️ Casey area. Do you see what I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John talking

⏹️ ▶️ Casey about? Like, there’s… It’s too busy. Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It, it, it looks okay. I mean, I’ve seen rend… well, not renderings. I’ve seen some, like, camouflage

⏹️ ▶️ Casey pictures of Golf R, and it looks okay. Um, I don’t know if I’m falling into the same trap

⏹️ ▶️ Casey as BMW where the generation of car that I came to the brand, that is the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey last good one and everything that comes

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco after

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is garbage.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, every BMW owner.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, because I mean, I’ll tell you the last good 3 Series was easily the E90 and the F30 was trash

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and whatever the current one is, it’s got to be garbage too. So I am definitely

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that when it comes to BMW and perhaps I’m doing that again with Volkswagen. But I am overjoyed

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to know that if, you know, if I ever have a reason to drive anywhere ever again,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and if I need to get a new car for some reason, at least for now, Volkswagen

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the GTI trim has me

⏹️ ▶️ Marco covered. I don’t like either of these

⏹️ ▶️ John wheels. What kind of person is deciding to show a GTI in red? Why would you? The whole

⏹️ ▶️ John signature of the GTI is the red line across the grill. You can’t see that when

⏹️ ▶️ John the whole car is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey red. I don’t know. I mean, I like the GTI pretty good, the existing one.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Obviously, I prefer the R. But it’s still a very nice, very fun car. And I’m enthusiastic

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that this is getting a stick. Now, what will be terrible but hilarious is if this gets the stick, but the R is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a DCT only, which would be just my luck. And again, I’m not looking to replace my car anytime

⏹️ ▶️ Casey soon. I mean, to hell. At this point, I’m ensuring I’m driving my car every couple of weeks just so it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey still functional.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s all I’ve done with my car is go on, essentially, joy rides to give the car exercise. I

⏹️ ▶️ John would love to see your joy

⏹️ ▶️ Casey ride. The same here. It’s gotta be the slowest, most boring joy ride in the

⏹️ ▶️ John world. Oh, there’s not a lot of cars on the road. You can, you know, I let the engine warm up a little bit because

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m old and think that’s still a thing, and then I go for some high revs. Have lots of fun. No,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey think that is still a thing. I’m not joking. I really think that is still a thing, where you should have your oil a little bit warmed

⏹️ ▶️ Casey up before you act like a turd. I mean, look, Marcos M5, if I’m not mistaken,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wasn’t your M5 one of the ones where the red line would increase as the oil got

⏹️ ▶️ Marco warm? I don’t remember that at all. I mean, I never probably approached the red line, so I don’t know, but yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think what’s interesting to me is that you’re talking about this as if you’re,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as if, you know, this is very likely that by the time you need to buy your next car, because your current car is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what, a year, two years old, something

⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that? Year and a half-ish.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so by the time you need to buy your next car, which is probably not for at least

⏹️ ▶️ Marco three to five more years,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, I hope so, yeah. Yeah, right, I hope, right? Unless something goes really wrong with this one. So hopefully,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, you’re talking on like probably like, you know, a five-ish year time span at minimum. You honestly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think that you’re still going to have a gas car or that you’re still going to want to buy a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco gas car five years from now?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, it’s a very good question. And the stubborn child within me

⏹️ ▶️ Casey says, of course, because I mean, what monster would buy an electric car where you can’t shift for yourself

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and so on and so forth.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John But the reality

⏹️ ▶️ John is that one stick shift electric

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey car. Yeah, I know. Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That was that one off build. Um, but the reality of the situation is I’m already sort of giving what’s the,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what’s the happy equivalent of side-eye, you know, cause side-eye kind of implies anger, but happy side-eye

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to electric cars. Like my parents, uh, I think we’ve talked about this on the show. My parents got a Chevy Bolt and it’s not remarkable,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it’s surprisingly great given what it is. Now it’s also not as cheap as you would

⏹️ ▶️ Casey hope it would be. You know, it was expensive and it’s got problems,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but by and large, it’s much nicer than I expected. And, you know, if Tesla wasn’t completely

⏹️ ▶️ Casey canceled by now and more affordable, maybe I would consider Tesla, but God knows I’m not giving

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that man any of my money ever. And so, as I think I said to you privately, Marco, and now I’ll

⏹️ ▶️ Casey say publicly, I cannot wait for us to reboot neutral while you go on the journey

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of picking out what replaces is your Tesla because I don’t think you should be buying any more Teslas, or at least not the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey way things are right now.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Man, does that guy really make it hard to be a fan of this brand. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love the cars. The cars are so good. And look, they’re not perfect. No car

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is ever perfect. But I love this car so much that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I didn’t have anything else to consider, like this guy and his often offensive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco behavior, If my car was stolen tomorrow and I had to replace it,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would literally get the exact same thing. And I have said that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the last, what, five years that I’ve had Model S’s. Like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love this car so much. I actually don’t love the Model 3 that much. Other people like it,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that’s fine. It has enough fans. I love the Model S. I absolutely love the Model

⏹️ ▶️ Marco S. It is my car and it feels so much like my car and I love so much about it. and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the things I like about it, nothing else really offers yet. So maybe that giant Porsche

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing, but I honestly, it has some other compromises that I don’t love,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it costs more money, and so yeah, I’m not super into the Porsche thing. But there’s no other car

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want to drive than a Model S. I love it that much. And so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just, I wish that that guy would stop making an

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ass of himself so often, because I don’t want to have to make excuses for why I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco drive the car that I drive, because the car is great. And he just makes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco such an ass of himself so often, it’s really hard to deal with.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think this will solve itself. Assuming Tesla can A, survive and B, get its

⏹️ ▶️ John act together enough, they will ruin your car, because they will eventually make a new Model S or Model

⏹️ ▶️ John S replacement that is significantly different from your car and you won’t like it. And their problem solved.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Then you’re like, OK,

⏹️ ▶️ John well now suddenly options are open. They keep buying used Model S’s of my generation, you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, the good generation, back when I first started buying the Model S. Those are the good ones. Yeah, right. Because honestly, your

⏹️ ▶️ John first Model S, granted, there’s, you know, you can cosmetically tell them apart very easily. And they’ve changed a lot in the interior.

⏹️ ▶️ John But in general, the size, shape, features, layout, compromises of the car

⏹️ ▶️ John are the same. It’s got the same number of seats, the same dashboard, the vertical screen in the center, the shape of the car.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s essentially the quote unquote first generation Model S, even

⏹️ ▶️ John though it’s been heavily revised. I’m assuming eventually they will make a new Model S

⏹️ ▶️ John that, and if you look at Tesla’s recent cars, like the Cybertruck and the new Roadster

⏹️ ▶️ John and the Model 3, they have different sets of compromises which seem to appeal to you less. So

⏹️ ▶️ John this may solve your problem for you. Yeah. You won’t be so tempted. And

⏹️ ▶️ John then you’ll have to really gauge what is my desire to have a used my generation Model based on battery

⏹️ ▶️ John lifetime and all that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff. Oh yeah, no, literally earlier today, I was driving today, and I was literally thinking,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, maybe at the end of this lease, I might buy it out. Because I just like this car so much,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and nothing on the horizon has me particularly excited yet. And you know, maybe, I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have another roughly year and a half left on this lease, so maybe by

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the end of this, maybe we’ll have a lot more electric car models, and one will tempt me, but honestly, I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco see any on the horizon that are tempting yet, and I think…

⏹️ ▶️ John Okay, I’m gonna get you back to BMW, your old favorite.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I don’t know. There’s so much more, there’s so much about Tesla that I like better. I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like so much about the UI of the car, the app, the key, so much about it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco All this little stuff adds up. Yeah, the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey CarPlay integration is phenomenal. Yeah, CarPlay’s the one big

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing that I wish they had that they don’t.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I’d rather interact with my phone on the little mount, the ProClip USA mount

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sponsor. I’d rather interact with that and then have the giant screen for all the car stuff than

⏹️ ▶️ Marco interact with TIFF’s Cars CarPlay because CarPlay, like the way BMW integrates

⏹️ ▶️ Marco CarPlay is very clumsy. CarPlay is not a like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco built-in automatic thing that just works seamlessly. It’s like a mode that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iDrive’s system can show or not show and it’s very clunky to get in and out of it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, frankly, CarPlay needs a touch screen. So I drive, she’s like the knob in the center

⏹️ ▶️ Marco console, and you like wheel through everything with a knob and doesn’t have touch screens. CarPlay, while it works

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that way, you can navigate CarPlay with knobs. It sucks. It’s way better with a touch

⏹️ ▶️ Casey screen. Now I would agree with that, because my car has like, it has like a volume knob

⏹️ ▶️ Casey close to the driver, and on the passenger side, it has like another almost identical knob that’s just used for like

⏹️ ▶️ Casey scrolling manipulation and whatnot. And you can use that right side knob for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey using CarPlay, which I didn’t even realize for months. But you can do it. And I’ve done it from time to time just to try

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. And it sucks. It definitely sucks. You’re right. And even though I stand

⏹️ ▶️ Casey by sort of what I said in Neutral, that having a touchscreen in the car is not the greatest

⏹️ ▶️ Casey because you’re bouncing around the road and you have this, your fingers so far away from your shoulder

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so it boings even more and so on and so forth. But ultimately, I think I would rather

⏹️ ▶️ Casey have a touchscreen than not, even with all of its troubles and issues

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with it. So yeah, I can only imagine that if Tiff’s car is still just the knob,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it would not be terribly fun, even despite it being wireless CarPlay, which I’m very jealous of, because mine is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey wired only and I really wish it was wireless. But you win some, you lose some.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco touchscreen it sounds crazy but I’ve now that I’ve driven a car for five years that has a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco giant pretty good touchscreen I can tell you it’s fine it’s totally fine I don’t find

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it’s significantly worse or less safe or harder to operate

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or more error prone I find it’s totally fine and anything about it that is kind of iffy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is down to the design of like you know how they’ve laid out certain controls not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco necessarily like that it’s a touchscreen or that it isn’t a touch screen. And part of this is like, at least on the Model

⏹️ ▶️ Marco S, this is not, this is less true in the Model 3. On the Model S, you actually do have physical controls

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the steering wheel and the two stalks that cover so many common needs that you actually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t use the touch screen as much as you think you would. On the 3, it’s, the 3 has a lot more on the screen.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it has like a whole, I think it has one fewer stalk completely and some of the things you can set are a little bit different,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but yes. On the Model S, it’s a really good

⏹️ ▶️ John balance. You can see your speed right in front of you. Imagine

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, right. What a radical idea. Yeah, I don’t care for the three, but I’m glad they’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco selling a whole lot of them and it’s a pretty good car for a lot of people, but it’s not for me. But I just, I love

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Model S so much. And the reason I was thinking about buying it out is like, I just want

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this car. And even if Tesla explodes and flames out and goes under,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco which honestly, everyone always thinks they’re about to do that. And I don’t follow the finances enough to know, but they’ve

⏹️ ▶️ Marco been around long enough now that I would meet any of those speculations with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco quite a lot of skepticism at this point. But man, I just love this car. And I love it so much

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I’d rather have the Tesla I have now with no car play

⏹️ ▶️ Marco than the best possible car play thing that I can think of that exists in the market today. Now, in the future,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if that changes, who knows? Like, I love that little Honda e concept thing that is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco still not available in the US, unfortunately. I love the way that thing looks. That thing looks awesome.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I haven’t driven one and everyone says it’s not that exciting of a car to drive, but it looks so cool

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s so compact and it’s such a fun little design. The interior looks like it has a really good design too.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That I’m very interested in as just like a fun option, but you know, that’s probably not going

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to come to the U S anytime soon. And so I think like right now I can look at what’s on the horizon for the next year and a half

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I can pretty much know what are my options going to be when this lease is up. I don’t think there’s any

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like massive bombshells that are going to drop there. oh, all of a sudden this new car model comes out of nowhere

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and no one knew about it. Like, no, I think we pretty much know what’s gonna be there in a year and a half. And I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m gonna stick with this in some form, whether it’s buying this out or getting a new one that’s probably the same.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, you should get a fresh battery. You don’t wanna keep using the used battery. I know there’s a risk if you get a new one, it might be

⏹️ ▶️ John like, you know, might have some manufacturing problems. The steering wheel might come off in your hand or whatever, but

⏹️ ▶️ John a fresh battery. I feel like if you’re gonna like buy out the same model of car, you should really get one of the fresh batteries

⏹️ ▶️ John so it’ll last you the longest, right? So you can wait the longest for something that you like

⏹️ ▶️ John equally as much or better. And I think if and when you do get a more traditional car with a more

⏹️ ▶️ John traditional interior, one of the things that you will appreciate is, oh, this one physical button that

⏹️ ▶️ John was annoying to get to on the touchscreen, it’s so nice to have a physical button for this one task. Because

⏹️ ▶️ John it still is a thing. I think even your Model S goes a little bit overboard with the touchscreen

⏹️ ▶️ John just to sort of prove a point, and the Model 3 does it even in a more pig-headed fashion. Knobs and

⏹️ ▶️ John buttons, they’re awesome. I’m not even saying don’t have it on a touchscreen, by all means put it there, but certain things

⏹️ ▶️ John being able to have knobs and buttons where like striking that balance is the current exercise of interior car design. And

⏹️ ▶️ John if you look at all the cars that are out there, forget about electric, just your cars in general, you’ve got a touchscreen and you’ve got knobs and you’ve

⏹️ ▶️ John got buttons and you’ve got stalks. How do you balance your controls among them? I think putting everything on the screen

⏹️ ▶️ John is the incorrect balance, just like not having a screen at all is the incorrect balance. You just gotta find the right

⏹️ ▶️ John balance and get the, you know, use each thing, use each

⏹️ ▶️ John input area for its strengths and not have some kind of philosophy where like everything’s gotta

⏹️ ▶️ John be a knob or a button everything’s got to be on the touchscreen.