426: Loaded Baked Potato
15 Apr 2021Home electrical work, dumb Wi-Fi networks for allegedly smart devices, and predictions for next week’s Apple event.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show:
- [Hopefully not] Burning Down the House
- All of ATP is on the vaccination train! Toot toot! 🚂💉
- Follow-up:
- Smart outlet update
- Reconcilable Differences
- For eero:
Settings→Troubleshooting→My device won't connect→My device won't connect to my network→Temporarily pause 5 GHz
- Electrical resistive heating
- Casey has a CarPlay apostrophe epiphany
- Charging the i3
- Smart outlet update
- Follow-out: Upgrade’s Discussion of TouchBar and HomePod
- Apple event on 20 April
#askatp- Post-show Neutral
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- Alex Weinstein: Want to tell a better story? Start with better music.
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Chapters
- Always get a second opinion
- Home improvements
- Get vaccinated!
- Sponsor: Alex Weinstein Music
- Wi-Fi vs. “smart” outlets
- Electric-heating follow-up
- CarPlay, car-charging follow-up
- Follow-out: Upgrade
- Sponsor: Mack Weldon (code atppodcast)
- Spring Loaded 🖼️
- Sponsor: Linode
- #askatp: HomePod pair vs. big
- #askatp: Email BCC
- #askatp: Apple adopting ARMv9?
- Ending theme
- Neutral: We’re sorry, Casey
Always get a second opinion
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Whoa. Oh, that’s delightful.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Oh, your house is on fire also.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s not good at all. All right. Hold on. Let me deal with that. Hold on. I’ll be back.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s we can’t just let that one go. We have to actually go deal with it. You
⏹️ ▶️ John can just take that out and post. That’s so loud. It is. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John piercing. It’s doing its job. I can’t wait to hear what this was, assuming it’s not an actual smoke.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I always I’ve and I’m like, I’ve been to Casey’s house. I know it’s not like this, but I always picture like there’s always some calamity. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I always picture like you live in like a cartoon.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, that was super
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco fun. So what was it?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The fire alarms just randomly decided that something was wrong and then quieted themselves,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey means it’s probably going to happen again at some point, which is super fun. Do you have carbon monoxide detectors? Yes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we do have a carbon monoxide detector, but it is not what went off. We have a whole home set up. I know this is probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey common, but when one goes off, all of them goes off.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John But I didn’t touch any of them. No one is
⏹️ ▶️ John cooking anything or showering in your one?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no. Do you have any dusty spiders walking through them? MMM.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, all kidding aside, I think that’s probably what happened. I’m not even trying to be funny because this has happened in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey past, typically in the middle of the night. But yeah, as far as I know, everything’s okay.
⏹️ ▶️ John good. Does Erin agree? Does she agree that there’s nothing on fire in your house? Do you have a second opinion?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s worth getting a second opinion. Yeah, right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If this happens again, I guess what I’ll do is you’ll hear it for a split a second and I’ll unplug
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco No, no, no, leave it in.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Leave it in. Well, no, because what if it goes on for like 15 seconds? That’s gonna be annoying for everyone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Take it out in the edit. In the edit, the edit fixes it. Please don’t unplug your mic in the middle of recording. It’ll do weird things when you plug it back in.
⏹️ ▶️ John Did he just mute himself or did he just unplug it again? Just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t unplug your mic during recording, please. Don’t change your level either, please. Whatever you’re doing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just don’t mess with it. When we’re recording, just don’t touch it. Just leave it. Leave it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Leave it. Don’t touch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. Sorry, I wasn’t listening to anything you said. Good
Home improvements
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Perhaps this is the appropriate time to mention that we did have electricians at the house working
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the screened-in porch today. Hypothetically, one should not relate to the other.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I believe you’re referring to the secret expansion project of the house that you have not disclosed on the show.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Oh, well, hey, guess what?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We’re putting a screened-in porch on the house. By the way, if you’re interested, atp.fm slash join
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would be extremely helpful right now. And also, merchandise is coming. Merchandise is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey coming. But anyways, yeah. So the secret project that definitely is not a screened-in porch.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I gotta say, I love
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a screened-in porch. They’re so nice. It’s the best.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So yeah, we had the electricians, they already did the rough-in, which is like getting the wires approximately
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to where they’re supposed to be. And then today they were doing some,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but not all of the final stuff. Additionally, the structure itself got its final county approval,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is good from the building people. So that means they think it won’t fall down, which
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That’s a start.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s a start. Yeah, so we’ve been, well, we were living in it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in a figurative sense for the last several days, but about a week ago we entered pollen season here in Virginia
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and hoo boy, oh, it’s, either I’m getting more sensitive,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is certainly possible, and or it’s getting worse and worse with each passing day.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think there actually might be some signs that it actually is getting worse most years.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s so bad. So Declan today, I haven’t driven my car in a couple of days, and we had the garage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey door open. And the garage door is typically open most of the day for various uninteresting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reasons. And Declan walked up to the hood of my car, and I see him going,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m like, what are you, what are you? Oh, and I’m watching the pollen just like, just float
⏹️ ▶️ Casey off of the hood of the car because it’s just, it’s so thick that it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey billowing off the hood. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco God. It’s so, it’s so bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All that to say, you know, we really love the screened-in porch that now at least has lights
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in it, so we could go out there in the evening time, but we can’t really enjoy it because we’re covered,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s covered in yellow all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ John You have those HEPA filter screens on your screened-in porch. Yeah, that’s what I need
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do. For us, Aaron pretty much dictated, and I mean
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that in a happy way, not in an angry way, dictated what the design of the screened-in porch would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be in terms of size and what’s what and so on and so forth. But I basically told her, hey, I’ll take
⏹️ ▶️ Casey care of the electrical.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And- And wait, by that you mean you’re gonna decide what it is, not you’re gonna actually run the wires.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco no, absolutely not. Don’t, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey goodness, no. To put things in perspective, I wanted to change out a light switch from a traditional light
⏹️ ▶️ Casey switch to a Lutron Caseta light switch because I forgot to give it to the electricians today. And Aaron was like, no,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, just let them do that when they come back. It’ll be fine. Okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey honey. And she’s right to tell me no, because I probably would screw it up somehow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I mean, I put in a lot of my own light switches, like swapping them over time in the old house.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you could do it, but you shouldn’t do it. And if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had to do it, it would probably be fine. I’ve done it, and the ones I’ve done have been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine for many, many years. But I know an electrician would do a better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco job than I did. You know, like just things like, you know, like having to like, you know, making
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the perfect loop shape with the solid core wire, you know, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, making sure, giving it like exactly the right amount of slack of the wire in the box so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that when you have to push it in, it doesn’t like squish in a weird way. You know, just stuff like, there’s little details like that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, because I have also had electricians do stuff like that here and there. And when they do it, it is so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much nicer than when I do it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, anyway, I was, what I was striving at, and the question I have for you guys is, when you have done any sort of renovation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or improvement or refactor, for lack of a better word, to your home, has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there been a pretty clear division of labor? Because Aaron said, I said to Aaron, and Aaron said
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me, I’ll take care of the kind of physical setup of the place. And I said, I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey take care of what electrical needs to go where. And so as an example, we had a bit of a,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not a marital issue, but there was a conversation about whether or not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we should have infrared heaters on the Screenden porch because I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wanted to be able to use the Screenden porch—well, I should say we wanted to be able to use the Screenden porch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into the parts of the year when maybe it wouldn’t be terribly convenient, you know, when it’s like 50
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or 60 degrees outside rather than 70 or 80 degrees outside. And I eventually won
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that discussion, and we do have infrared heaters that I turned on for the first time today, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very exciting. But I was curious, you know, did you guys, when you’ve gone through
⏹️ ▶️ Casey renovations, and you don’t have to be specific about the renovations, but did you have, like, clear divisions of labor or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was it just one person doing all the work?
⏹️ ▶️ John Neither one. It was a collaboration. Everything was a collaboration.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Fair enough, fair enough.
⏹️ ▶️ John You had to work in teams. Everyone, you know, all got opinions on everything, and usually one person feels more strongly
⏹️ ▶️ John than the other about any specific thing, and you work it out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I mean, that’s more or less what happened with us, but if you look at it, you know, a macro level.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey She had much stronger opinions about the physical design of the porch, and I had much stronger opinions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about the electrical, and so it kind of worked out. But, Marco, you’ve done things on and off over the years.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What did it end up for you guys? Marc
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thiessen Pretty collaborative. As time has gone on,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the first time we did anything, we were super heavily involved. Part of that was because we had a really terrible,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very cheap contractor, and we kind of had to micromanage things because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the contractor wouldn’t or couldn’t. And like for a later
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing that we did, we hired a better contractor. And we had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do and say almost nothing for that because it was somebody good who kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ran his own ship correctly. And so we didn’t need to be doing much.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the first one we had an architect, the second one we didn’t. It was like, the first one was like gutting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a bunch of rooms. The second one was like one room. So it wasn’t that big of a thing. But architects
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are supposed to be the ones, when you’re doing bigger jobs, they’re the ones that specify where the outlets go and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff like that. But you can also tell them, like, I want one here, or I can move this over here or whatever. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have to follow certain codes, of like, they have to be within a certain number of feet of various things, and a certain frequency,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a certain type, and a certain height, and all this other stuff. But to the degree that decisions were ours to make,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, we would do a lot of them ourself, in areas that we cared about.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But we wouldn’t specify like, oh, I want the beams to run this direction because we don’t know or care
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how that should or needs to be done. But certainly as projects go on,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you get decision fatigue. And so like the first parts of the project, we super care.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then as the project goes on, you’re like, just do whatever, just do whatever’s right, just you pick, we don’t care,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just get it done, please, for the love of God, get out of our house. Like that kind of thing. So that will happen here,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t worry. Right now, it sounds like it’s roughly the middle of your project, so.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s actually pretty close to the end at this point. The physical construction is already done. I think we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one to two working days away from the electrical being done, and when that’s done, it’s done. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know when the electricians are gonna be able to come back out, because they’re pretty busy, but it seems like as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey early as the end of the week, it’ll be, in fact, potentially even tomorrow, but I doubt it, but I think by the end of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey week, It’s possible that it’ll be done-done, and that would be really exciting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I don’t know. This is the first time we’ve done a really,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really big renovation. Like, we redid the kitchen, I don’t know, right around the time that Declan was born, and we redid
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the HVAC about the same time. Actually, I think it was happening at the same time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is it coincident or coincident when it’s happening at the same time? What’s the right pronunciation there? A-fluent. A-fluent,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s what it is, thank you. Those were more like, take the things that we have now and make them not suck,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as opposed to like, let’s construct something new and new and exciting. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s what this is. So, and I shouldn’t say happier news. I was going to say happier new.
Get vaccinated!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but in extraordinarily happy news, all three of ATP
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is now on the vaccination train. Am I right? You are right.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right. Got lucky. A friend of the show, Paul Kifasas,
⏹️ ▶️ John maker of what? Many audio apps, including the one we’re all using right now to record this, Audio Hijack.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep. Gave me a late breaking tip in the middle of the night saying, hey, this
⏹️ ▶️ John place near us, because he lives in this area as well, has vaccines available. And apparently
⏹️ ▶️ John they have have too many of them and not enough people to give them to. So on the little sign up website, they basically
⏹️ ▶️ John said, look, when you go through this thing, enter this thing here, you know, it says like, have you been contacted by a community
⏹️ ▶️ John outreach person for a vaccine? And just say yes to that. That’s what their website said. So I went through it, answered all the
⏹️ ▶️ John questions completely. Honestly said yes to the community outreach thing. And it said, congratulations, you can get a
⏹️ ▶️ John vaccine. So I went today with my son. We both got ours. They were even taking walk-ins.
⏹️ ▶️ John People would just show up like no, no appointment, no nothing. They would just show up and they would say, here, fill out this
⏹️ ▶️ John paperwork and then get in line. Because they got vaccines to give and they’re only there, I think they’re only there today.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then they’re only going to be there, you know, three weeks from now to do all the second rounds because it was Pfizer.
⏹️ ▶️ John So that was good. I mean, you know, I’m glad, I’m glad I could finally close
⏹️ ▶️ John all those windows and tabs of all this obsessive searching for vaccine appointments. And it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John even, you know, normally I would have to wait five more days to be eligible for this place, have them and needed to get rid of them. And I was
⏹️ ▶️ John more than happy to take some.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let me ask you something, were the staff there like kind of whatever or were they super
⏹️ ▶️ Casey excited? Because in my vaccination story, which I described in detail in the most recent analog, when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I went, they were like overjoyed to be giving vaccinations to whoever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey showed up. They were so excited to be doing this for people. And it was really, really lovely. And I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if that is a Southern thing or if that was a we’re saving lives thing, but how were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they where you were?
⏹️ ▶️ John It might be a southern thing or a collegiate thing or something, but I mean, everyone
⏹️ ▶️ John was fine. They all look like they were 12 years old, but that’s just because I’m an old person.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the person who was giving me the shot asked me if I was excited. I was like, just do it. Just like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t have time for small talk.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John want to keep
⏹️ ▶️ John the line moving, you know, we got to go through
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey this. There was actually- That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a New Yorker talking right there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John That’s great
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey was actually a line. Like it wasn’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John though they were taking walk-ins, the walk-ins would fill out a thing and then they would have to get in line. But the line was moving, right? So
⏹️ ▶️ John I was there for less than an hour to get through the whole thing.
Sponsor: Alex Weinstein Music
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Wi-Fi vs. “smart” outlets
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s start with some follow up. John, I am extremely excited to know I’ve been waiting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with bated breath. What is going on with your smart outlet?
⏹️ ▶️ John I talked about my redoing my home network and then my smart outlet was the one thing that I didn’t get to
⏹️ ▶️ John work. And this is a weird having multiple podcasts. I know I talked about it extensively on rec tips,
⏹️ ▶️ John but on this podcast, I just sort of mentioned it and then, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John talked about some other stuff and went our way. I should have at least probably given a little bit more detail
⏹️ ▶️ John because many, many people have suggestions of things that I could do to perhaps get my smart outlet to work. I thank
⏹️ ▶️ John everyone for their suggestions. There’s no explanation that they could have heard an as yet unreleased episode of Rektives
⏹️ ▶️ John and know all the things I tried, but I did try many, many things all prior to
⏹️ ▶️ John recording the podcast. I haven’t had time to mess with it anymore, but anyway, just to list some of the things I tried because these
⏹️ ▶️ John may help you with your smart outlet or smart thing that’s having problems.
⏹️ ▶️ John One of them is some smart devices only support 2.4 GHz if they’re WiFi
⏹️ ▶️ John things, and if you have a 2.5 and 5 GHz WiFi network, sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s some miscommunication where the device will try to join the 2.4 GHz
⏹️ ▶️ John but your phone will be on the 5 and won’t be able to talk or all sorts of stuff like that. So the Eero has a nice option.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is a common enough issue that the Eero app actually has an option, just a separate dedicated thing that says,
⏹️ ▶️ John disable 5 GHz for a little while. It’s like the bit more button on those toasters. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ John you just press it once and it’s like self timing, it will reset itself because you don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ John to turn off five gigahertz everywhere, right? So you just, you press it and it turns off five gigahertz for like 10 minutes to give you
⏹️ ▶️ John a chance to set up stuff. So that’s something you can try. Didn’t work in my case. WPA3
⏹️ ▶️ John is out now as kind of an experimental feature on the Eero thing. I had that enabled.
⏹️ ▶️ John One of the support people at Eero said, why don’t you try disabling that? I did, no difference. IPv6 on and off.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s another thing you can try, no difference on my end. Eero has this extra security thing for HomeKit
⏹️ ▶️ John where you can turn this feature on and it will first of all add all the Eero’s as HomeKit devices so you can see all
⏹️ ▶️ John your various Wi-Fi hubs but also it has this thing that’ll like limit what
⏹️ ▶️ John other devices that your sort of HomeKit stuff can communicate with to prevent like
⏹️ ▶️ John a light switch from communicating with your computer to somehow tunnel information out of your home or something. I don’t know, it’s just basically
⏹️ ▶️ John just confining them in their network. And so maybe that’s the problem, tried that on and off.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m probably missing other things that I’ve tried, but I tried many, many different things. I’m in communication with both
⏹️ ▶️ John Eero and the Smart Outlet Maker going through various support things. I think I’m at the point with
⏹️ ▶️ John both of them where they want to essentially get me on the phone in real time and try a bunch of stuff. I did find a reproducible crasher
⏹️ ▶️ John in the app that belongs to the outlet, not the home app, but the specific app for the
⏹️ ▶️ John outlet. And so they have a fix for that crasher and I’m getting on a test flight to try that. But I don’t think that was
⏹️ ▶️ John the problem because you should be able to add this with HomeKit anyway. So the short answer is
⏹️ ▶️ John still no smart outlets. And we’re noticing in the house how many people are used to speaking to the air now that we’ve had this thing for
⏹️ ▶️ John like, I don’t know, multiple years now. And now you have to turn the lights on and off with your fingers.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s terrible. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of hardship.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve seen people speak into the air and then just sit there for a second and realize, oh, nothing’s happening. Which isn’t that
⏹️ ▶️ John strange because half the time we speak into the air and then the HomePod says, haven’t heard back from your devices and then we have
⏹️ ▶️ John to speak into the air again and ask somebody else to do it. But now you’re speaking to the air and nothing happens
⏹️ ▶️ John ever because they’re just plugged into the wall.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh, it’s a hard life.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so we’re working on it. It’s not that I back-burnered it. I feel bad
⏹️ ▶️ John that I have to email something. There’s only so much time I can dedicate to fighting with smart outlets.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, it’s funny. I really want to make fun of you for this, but one of the discussions and conversations
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Aaron and I had about the porch was whether or not Lutron casetas were necessary for like fans
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that are out there, because my perspective was, I might wanna tweak the speed of the fan and I don’t wanna have to get up to do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, that’s barbaric. And her point was, this porch isn’t that big, you can get off your butt. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it ends up that I won that fight because she basically just didn’t want to continue to hear me complain and moan.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But nevertheless, I totally hear what you’re saying. John, I have a question for you. Where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the Eero app, just for pure curiosity’s sake, is the 5G switch? Maybe it’s because you’re on newer hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than me, but I just don’t see that anywhere. No,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not easy to find. So I use the Switch multiple times. Like I used it myself and then I was in support
⏹️ ▶️ John email and they asked me to do it. I’m like, oh, I found that feature on my own and I already tried it, but I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John try it again, right? And then like the third time it happened, like someone mentioned on
⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter and they were like, oh, you should try turning a five gigahertz. I’m like, you know, and they said, oh, you have to call
⏹️ ▶️ John Eero to do that. And I replied and I was gonna say, no, it’s in the app now. And I was gonna send them a screenshot of it
⏹️ ▶️ John in the app. and I couldn’t find it. I was like, I’ve used this feature twice. How can I not find
⏹️ ▶️ John it? Anyway, it’s under troubleshooting. It’s hard to find. You go to troubleshooting, you go under like my device can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John connect. Eventually you dig down the troubleshooting menu tree. You get to a leaf node that
⏹️ ▶️ John says like disable five gigahertz for 10 minutes or something. So it is
⏹️ ▶️ John hidden, but if you’re desperate and trying everything, you probably will end up in the troubleshooting section of the Aero app, and then you will find
⏹️ ▶️ Marco For whatever it’s worth, I have actually for a few months at least now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve faced similar issues with 5GHz networks, having problems with certain devices connecting to them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or getting confused by like their SSID being the same as the 2.4 SSID.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I actually have like one of the random nerdy things you can do with Ubiquiti stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is you can create as many networks as you want, like as many network name broadcasts as you want. You can specify all sorts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of different things about them. And one of the things I do is I broadcast a version
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of my SSID that has no spaces
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and only like basic ASCII characters, like only the basic letters in the name.
⏹️ ▶️ John That was one of the troubleshooting options, troubleshooting suggestions, I think from both ends.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I tried it, I did what you’re just describing, just FYI, I didn’t do anything, but go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on. Anyway, but yeah, so it’s, because I found like certain devices, like my SSID
⏹️ ▶️ Marco contains a smart quote. And you can’t even type that on a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco devices that have like, like on a Nest thermostat, there’s like no way to type that in. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it doesn’t show up in like a list of browse things, you basically can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use it. Like I had some kind of like crazy Epson printer I had to set up wirelessly that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, it just couldn’t join the network at all, no matter what, because it had an apostrophe in it, like a smart quote.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I have this whole separate SSID again, 2.4 only, only the letters in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco name, and it’s not broadcast. Like it’s not advertised as, it doesn’t advertise its name
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for people’s lists. So that way it doesn’t clutter up my wifi menu when I look at it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And like, you know, when we have guests over, they don’t actually accidentally try to join it or something, but I can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco easily type it in to any device. And because it’s 2.4 only and has a different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco name, technically than my main one that has 5.8 and 2.4 on it. There’s no conflict. There’s no potential
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for conflict. So I’ve actually had a few devices that only worked when they were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco connected to that network and not my main one.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and the other thing to want to remind people is that this smart outlet was connected to this very
⏹️ ▶️ John set of Euro hardware for Wi-Fi and always has been. It’s the only thing it’s ever been connected to.
⏹️ ▶️ John The only difference is now all of a sudden the Euro is doing routing. That’s why I think it has probably something to do with my router setup, but I don’t know what
⏹️ ▶️ John to change on it other than the stuff I’ve already tried. But yeah, it’s super weird because it’s not like this isn’t new
⏹️ ▶️ John hardware. It’s not like it’s new wifi. Like if there was any incompatibility between this smart outlet and my era wifi,
⏹️ ▶️ John how did it work for the past two years or whatever? Right. So it’s probably just like I’m distributing
⏹️ ▶️ John IP addresses wrong or some other weird bug and you know, anyway, I’m, it’s a background,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a background task. working on it but it’s not the most important thing.
Electric-heating follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, tell me about electrical resistive heating, please.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I don’t think it was clear enough in this when we were talking about things you can do with electricity that are constructive is like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m using electricity anyway to and it’s producing heat. Why don’t I do something useful for that
⏹️ ▶️ John electricity like mine for Bitcoin or something? Anyway, and we got into a discussion of heat pumps versus
⏹️ ▶️ John electrical heating, which is confusing because many or most heat pumps use electricity
⏹️ ▶️ John to do their job. And what we didn’t distinguish between is
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of electrical resistive heating, where electricity comes into your home from the outside,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you basically run that electricity through something that has resistance and turn that electricity into heat. And
⏹️ ▶️ John you can turn pretty much 100% It’s really easy to turn stuff into heat in general. You can turn pretty much 100% of that electricity
⏹️ ▶️ John into waste heat, and you can use that to heat your home. And that’s what I was talking about as the
⏹️ ▶️ John fairly inefficient and kind of electrical heating. And I just got done saying, well, if I can turn all
⏹️ ▶️ John the electricity into heat, how is that inefficient? Isn’t that like 100% efficient? That’s again,
⏹️ ▶️ John where you should watch the videos that we linked last week to learn that it is much more efficient to simply
⏹️ ▶️ John use that electricity to transfer preexisting heat that you didn’t have to pay to generate
⏹️ ▶️ John from a place where it isn’t, or from a place where it is to a place where it isn’t. So heat pumps take heat
⏹️ ▶️ John from outside your home and put it into your home. And you may be thinking, well, there’s no heat outside my home when it’s cold out. Again,
⏹️ ▶️ John you need to watch the video. So heat pumps, they’re cool. They use electricity. They’re not the same
⏹️ ▶️ John as electrical resistive heating. And yes, it is very possible to get a better efficiency
⏹️ ▶️ John than you get for electrical resistive heating, even though all the electricity in electrical resistive heating essentially
⏹️ ▶️ John turns into heat. You can do even better you don’t have to make the heat in the first place.
CarPlay, car-charging follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. A lot of people wrote in with regard to, uh, with, with corrections and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also supplementary information for Marco with regard to CarPlay and with charging, which we’ll get to in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a second, but something that I didn’t know, and I’m kind of embarrassed that I didn’t know this, but I’ll bring it up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the show in case other people didn’t know this. Lots of people said that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you have like a dictation button on your steering wheel, if you long press
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, it’s like a press and hold, it will activate Siri when CarPlay plays connected. And my mind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey exploded because I had no idea that was the case. My Volkswagen has a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dictation button on the steering wheel. I honestly don’t remember if Aaron’s car does. I don’t think it does. But nevertheless, my Volkswagen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey definitely does. And when I tap that button, or you know, just just momentarily press that button, it always does
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Volkswagen’s dictation system setup or whatever. And it’s always garbage,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as every car dictation I’ve ever tried is always garbage. All of them always. Yeah, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But turns out when you mash down on it for like a second or two, it’ll activate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Siri if CarPlay is enabled and connected. And I, honest to goodness, I had no idea that was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the case and this is going to change my life. So thank you to all of you who wrote in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and told us that. That was extremely interesting news to me that I did not know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, we’ve, we heard from a bunch of people who were all correcting me on how wrong I I was about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how bad CarPlay in BMWs was, apparently not only that, but also,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had forgotten, and I think we even talked about this in neutral at some point, but I had forgotten that with the old BMW
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iDrive systems, where you’d still have those one through nine memory buttons, like radio
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buttons, across the front of the dash, I had forgotten that you can actually hold those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco down and program in a shortcut to any screen in iDrive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t have to just program number one to a radio station, you can program it to the CarPlay screen,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or any other screen in iDrive. And so some people suggested if I want like a hardware button to jump right to CarPlay all the time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just program in like button number one to that. So we’ll try that next time I’m in that car. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, you’re right, the press and hold for the button apparently will also do Siri, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s also very good. And I was told by many people also that apparently Apparently the non-touch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen and ancient iDrive system in the i3 is apparently way behind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the systems that are in literally every other BMW. Even though this is a model year 2019 car, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not that old, but the i3 hasn’t really been very well updated over time. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it apparently is still running an old generation of stuff. Apparently the new car plays in BMWs, apparently
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they all have touch screens and they are like way better. So apparently this problem has been solved in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the other models except for the i3.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can twirl your finger in front of the new ones to turn the volume up and down. Oh, great. Yeah. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. That’s true, by the way. That’s not sarcasm. You really could do that in some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And we also heard from people who drove lots of other kinds of cars who basically said that the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dream setup I had talked about of having it just be in CarPlay and have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quick buttons to jump around between the map and the music app, Apparently, like every other car maker
⏹️ ▶️ Marco offers that. That’s what we were, we had so many people write it and just say like, oh, I drive a, you know, whatever. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, that’s apparently very common. So pretty much, it sounds like pretty much everybody except Tesla
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has very good car play options for their vehicles.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that brings us to some feedback from friend of the show, Dave Nanean, who is the primary author of SuperDuper, which is some really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey great backup software, which we’ll put a link in the show notes. Dave writes, there are only three charge plugs used in the United
⏹️ ▶️ Casey States, the Tesla one, the Leaf one, and CSS, or excuse me, CCS, which everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey else uses. And there’s a link to evgo.com, which details all the different
⏹️ ▶️ Casey electric vehicles and what plugs they use and approximately what their range are and so on and so forth. Dave continues,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so the BMW plug is the one used by nearly everything, including his Taycan, what is it, John? Taycan? I
⏹️ ▶️ John think it’s Taycan, like the tie you wear around your neck and like a can of soup. That’s my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Don’t worry, like everything else about Porsche, every way we possibly could say it is wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I believe it’s Porsche, Marco. It’s Porsche. So it’s Porsche, in his Porsche
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tea kettle. That’s it. So anyway, Dave continues, I’ve had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very little problem finding fast chargers, but I’m not driving where Marco is. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also, boy are John and Casey right. You knew I had to include this feedback when that phrase was part of it. Marco needs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to actually look at non-Teslas. I’m really much happier with my Taycan than I am with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my admittedly early Model S. It’s a far better car, and I’m sure that the Audi e-tron GT is similarly great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought this was good feedback because I honestly had no clue what the charging situation was across all these different brands
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and all these different vehicles. But I also like someone who has lived
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your life, Marco, saying, please, please leave the Tesla
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bubble, just at least to look. It doesn’t hurt to look. You can look, just look. There’s other things out there and they’re good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I will counter this argument with… Oh no. With, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so the very first line of Dave Nadean’s email here about the charge plugs. Yeah, so I had said
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the last show that the i3 had some weird plug that nothing else had and that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had a very hard time finding fast chargers for it on the public networks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to look at chargers. You know, Dave says, there’s only three charge plugs used in the US. Test the one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Leaf one, which is the Chatomo, and CCS, which is used everywhere else And apparently that’s like the standard in Europe.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So much so that even Tesla uses CCS in Europe, I believe they were forced to. Anyway, the Tesla
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one, comma, the Leaf one, comma, and this thing everyone else uses, Tesla and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Leaf are super popular. It’s like the number one available
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. And then this other one that’s on this very popular other car. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not like CCS is like the majority of everything by like total unit sales.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so that’s like two very big ifs. That’s like saying, you can use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this website that works on everything except Chrome. It’s like, okay, well, that’s kind of a problem. I’m gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John guess that CCS, that more cars with CCS are sold in the US than any other EV, but that’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John a guess. I’m sure we’ll find out by next week.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I honestly, I’d be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco surprised. I would assume that Tesla has everyone beat on total unit sales for
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the Model 3 really is the big factor there, because I feel like tons of models, at least in the US, tons of Model
⏹️ ▶️ John 3s are sold. But I’d see tons of other, I mean, maybe if you don’t count plug-in hybrids,
⏹️ ▶️ John it changes, you know what I mean? Because I think a lot of cars- No, I wouldn’t count plug-in hybrids.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they have the CCS connector, though. Do they? Do they get fast charge? Because you only need the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bottom extra pins if you’re doing DC fast charging. So anyway, going back to this. So we got an email from Devin,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who makes a really good point. As someone who owns both a Nissan Leaf and a Tesla,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once you want to drive more than 100 to 200 miles away from the home point, you can’t really find charging
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reliably. Tesla is so far ahead of the charging game and supercharging spots are so rock solid.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve come up on many quick charger stations in my Leaf that I absolutely needed to continue my trip, and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the station is broken and there’s only one unit. Unless you’ve driven on both charging networks, you really don’t appreciate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how important the Tesla network is. I’ll take that over CarPlay any day. So that’s from
⏹️ ▶️ John Devon. I mean, the Leaf has terrible range though. I mean, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be fair. Agreed, but I think this is a major factor that when I was looking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for chargers, one of the reasons I didn’t find that many, first of all, is that there are way more slow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chargers than fast chargers. If you actually want DC fast charging, there are way fewer of those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than there are like hotels that happen to have a 220 charger in their parking lot. So, and if you’re going on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a long trip, you want DC fast charging. You don’t want to be sitting there for seven hours for while your car charges. You know, so, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, you want actual fast charging, like that’s what, and that’s what superchargers are direct DC directly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the batteries. So anyway, there simply aren’t very many of those in the US in many places.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think Tesla has way better coverage. And then I totally see that this is the reality here. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you do find one of those DC fast chargers that has a CCS plug, it’s usually really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just like one unit. Or it’s like in some parking lot of some, you know, some place
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you don’t wanna be. It’s like tucked away in some terrible parking lot behind a warehouse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and there’s like one CCS charger and like, okay, well, if you’re gonna drive to that and there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no more in a very close range, you’re gonna have to be darn sure that’s gonna be there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and work and be available to you and not be already taken. Whereas the Supercharger
⏹️ ▶️ Marco network is just so nice and so consistent and the car knows where it is. So like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, in order for me to find a fast charge place for the i3, I have to like pull over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somewhere, take out my phone, open up various apps to figure out like where these things are, and then like manually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get myself there. In every Tesla, they have a map on the screen that’s updated constantly with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco supercharger statuses and locations, and they’re marked clearly, and you can just tap them. If you’re using the car’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco navigation, it will automatically route you to them as needed along long journeys. And you can see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the screen how many like charging parking spots, charging bays, or whatever they’re called, are in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco each charger. It tells you whether each one is taken, so you can see if you’re in a super busy area, like maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the LA to San Francisco corridor, you can see, okay, well this one is full right now, but the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one a few miles up is not, so I’ll wait for that one. I’ve never actually seen one full, not even close. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so this is like, it’s really nice to have Tesla supercharge your network with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the integration with the car and everything else, because it’s a very easy, it’s almost like Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco versus other crap that you couple. It’s like running a Mac versus running desktop Linux.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can do it, you can run desktop Linux, but you’re signing yourself up for more work and at least
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things being a lot less nice than they are when you have like a total, you know, integrated experience. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco value of a supercharger network to people who don’t drive Teslas, I think is underrated. I really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think that’s a significant nice factor and significant lock-in.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I half agree with you. I think I agree that as much as I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do like to snark about Tesla, which it’s become, you know, kind of a pastime of mine at this point,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really do think that there are a lot of great things about Tesla, and one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the best is unquestionably the supercharger network. And it is certainly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much better done than any of the alternatives. That being said, my limited understanding,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’ll be the first to tell you, I don’t have an electric car, so I don’t really have to live this life. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my limited understanding is that the non-Tesla, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey charging network that isn’t superchargers has gotten considerably better in just the last
⏹️ ▶️ Casey year or two. And I suspect that, Marco, if you were to give it a really and truly honest shake,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it’s probably better than you think, and perhaps not as good as I think. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think you’re pooping on it a little more aggressively than necessary. But I don’t think that you’re overblowing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the supercharger network. It really is phenomenal. And I wonder if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it would have been better or nicer or more in the spirit of togetherness and let’s save the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey planet together, if Tesla would make that available to other electric cars as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco well. Wait, oh God,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco please stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. They’re gonna yell at you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John They’re gonna yell at
⏹️ ▶️ John you. Tesla people are gonna come. They do, they do make it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, stop. Okay, if you say so. Yeah, apparently Tesla did like offer that. I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what the reality of that offer was, but yeah, apparently Elon said that he would open
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it with anybody, but I don’t think anybody took him up on it, but who knows what that was actually. You know, like it could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have been real and everyone else is saying, oh, we’ll do our own thing, or it could have been like a, you know, Steve Jobs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will open up FaceTime, open standard kind of thing, where it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John like, okay, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that never, that couldn’t and wouldn’t actually ever happen. Who knows, but it doesn’t matter. Everyone went a different way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’m sure eventually the US will standardize on this. I think we will probably eventually have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco CCS being the standard required, but it would take government intervention
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do that at this point because Tesla has no reason, strategically or practically,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have no reason to change their connector right now. And no one else has any reason to adopt Tesla’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco connector. So I think we’re going to be a two-system country for a while until
⏹️ ▶️ Marco regulation steps in and forces Tesla to change over.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’re probably right.
Follow-out: Upgrade
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I also want to do a very brief and quick bit of follow out. I thought that there was a really great conversation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on Upgrade this week about both the Touch Bar and the HomePod. And it got me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thinking about both of them. Kind of the crux of the argument made in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a roundabout way, I think from both hosts, was that the Touch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Bar in particular was severely limited. They were talking about it in the context of a stream box, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not even entirely clear what that is, but I guess it’s like a little mini keyboard that has programmable buttons that you can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tell via software what you want them to do. But people were saying to them,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, why don’t you use the touch bar for that? And they started talking about things like Better Touch Tool and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey other hacks in which that would let you use the touch bar to be more customizable.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But it’s really a hack. I’ve dabbled with Better Touch Tool for this. I think I’d mentioned on the show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey months and months ago that I had had my garage door status on the touch bar just because I could.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But it was always so… Of course I did. But it was always so finicky and it never
⏹️ ▶️ Casey worked quite right and I just didn’t care for it. Plus the better touch tool, while extremely powerful,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey its interface is super janky. And I just, I don’t know, I didn’t really care for it. But it got me thinking, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what if there was a first-party way to completely customize the touch bar? I would be all over that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because my experience with the touch bar is like, well, it’s a thing. It’s fine. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t hate it like I think Marco does, but I don’t particularly love it either. It’s there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s a thing. But if I could customize it, I think I would love it. I would absolutely love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. And it’s a bummer that it’s Apple’s way or nothing. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s all you get.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, that’s welcome to Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, exactly. Exactly right. And this also got me thinking about the HomePod, and this was discussed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the same episode. I don’t think they brought this up, or I’m going to claim it was an original idea
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that was spawned from that conversation. But I got to thinking, everyone has said
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for years, well, it’s too bad the HomePod doesn’t have an aux in. And it got me thinking,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if there was a way to treat the HomePod as just a speaker,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I probably would have got, I almost certainly would have gotten one as they’re clearing out inventory
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or when Best Buy used to run those incredible sales. And I might have even gotten one before then when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they were full price. Like I probably wouldn’t have because I’m cheap, but I would have thought about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it a lot more. And it’s really too bad that it’s Apple’s way or nothing and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all software. And if you don’t like that, tough noogies. And it’s just both of these products
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think would be so much better if we were allowed to get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in there and use them in a way that isn’t officially blessed by Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I can, and I understand a lot of the of the reasons why that’s not possible, especially for the touch bar, but it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just bums me out. And I thought it was a really good conversation between Mike and Jason, that if you have the time, I suggest
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you checking it out.
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Spring Loaded
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hey, guess what? We’re going, we’re going to get spring loaded next week.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Does that mean we’re going to like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bounce? I don’t know. But the little logo is pretty cool, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is pretty cool. I mean, it’s, you know, it’s one of the many like modern Apple graphic design marketing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco logos. It doesn’t really mean anything. It’s people are trying to read into it. They’re trying real hard, but there’s nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John it to. I mean, it’s a spring and the season is spring.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, that’s it. That’s it. As I said last show, there
⏹️ ▶️ John always is an interpretation and it’s the obvious one. That’s the one. It’s spring, it’s loaded
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So as we all woke up on the East Coast on, what was it, Tuesday, I believe?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apparently it was discovered that Siri was telling people that there was an Apple event on the 20th, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John was pretty funny. If you asked,
⏹️ ▶️ John when is the upcoming Apple event? Siri would sometimes answer that it was coming
⏹️ ▶️ John on April 20th and sometimes would not. this was another great thing about Siri and I guess rollouts
⏹️ ▶️ John to CDNs or who knows how Siri works behind the scenes. But depending on what you asked
⏹️ ▶️ John and where you are maybe in the information propagation across Apple’s Edge network through
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever third party they’re using, you might get a different answer. But yeah, once Siri started saying
⏹️ ▶️ John that, I mean, my first thought was, did they do an event on April 20th in some year past and Siri is just regurgitating
⏹️ ▶️ John information from years ago? But no, it turned out that Siri was just a little bit ahead of the game.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed. So yeah, so Spring Loaded is the name of the event. It will be on 420, snicker,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it’ll be at one in the afternoon ATP time, which is 10 in the morning Pacific and gosh knows
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whenever it is in your local time zone. What do we think is coming?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A lot of people have said kind of, you know, the obvious things that are rumored, you know, things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like new iPad Pro maybe, AirTags seem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like an obvious thing. It seems like they’re always like, they should have been out by now, and I think they should have been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out by now for like the last year. It seems like they’re perpetually delayed by something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Who knows? But before we get to the actual hardware, do you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think there’s gonna be some kind of announcement made at this about either
⏹️ ▶️ Marco App Store policy stuff or attempt to defend app tracking transparency?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because one thing that seems most likely is that iOS 14.5 will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most likely launch shortly after or shortly before this event. This is gonna be the event that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco debuts iOS 14.5, whether directly or indirectly. And 14.5 includes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the AppTrack and transparency prompt that everyone’s all up in arms about, like all the ad people are all up in arms
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about it. There’s possibly some inquiries from Congress in this direction.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s certainly a lot of pressure from people like Facebook. And Apple’s under increasing regulatory
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pressure from Congress and other governments, possible issues with the App Store,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Epic lawsuit, there’s all sorts of stuff, all this pressure that we’ve talked about, right? One thing that kind of caught my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco eye is Senators Amy Klobuchar and Mike Lee, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sent this letter to Apple to appear at some hearing, sorry, I haven’t been following for the details, but initially it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was reported that Apple declined to send someone. And then Apple gave this statement the other day that Bloomberg
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got a copy of that said, we are willing to participate in a hearing, we simply
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sought alternative dates in light of upcoming matters that have been scheduled for some time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that touch on similar issues.” Huh. Now the way I read that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco upcoming matters that have been scheduled for some time is either gonna be this or WWDC, but WWDC is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way far out. The subcommittee was not trying to meet anytime then. So it must be this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco event. And so the part that gets me then is that touch on similar issues. And this subcommittee
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seems to be about the App Store and App Store policies and App Store monopoly issues,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and whatever else is there. So do you think there’s going to be something at this event that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to be in that category of either AppTrack and transparency
⏹️ ▶️ Marco requirement defenses in some way, which is probably a given, or do you think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they would actually involve some kind of App Store policy change in this event?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t see them doing an app store policy thing. I would, unless it’s something that you could spin
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for a more traditional audience. Like I could see that being a WWDC
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing, but I don’t see them going into that at what is a marketing event
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for regular people. It’s possible, but I doubt it. Now, app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tracking transparency, I think that they will absolutely be touting that as look at what we are doing to protect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you and protect your data. You are welcome. Totally that that is absolutely going to happen is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I doubt they’ll do much more than that. I doubt they’ll do more than like an offhanded comment about why
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everyone is grumpy about app tracking transparency. I don’t, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see it getting aggressive, but I absolutely think they’re going to go on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a probably medium length, a song and dance slash dog and pony show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about why ATT is good for you and me.
⏹️ ▶️ John As the chat room is reminding us, uh, there’s also the epic, court case that apparently is happening in
⏹️ ▶️ John early May. So that could be another thing that touches on similar issues. But like what Casey just said,
⏹️ ▶️ John like in the language of the touches on similar issues, yeah, rolling out public rolling out of 14.5 where you talk
⏹️ ▶️ John about it on stage at a spring Apple event that totally counts as touching on issues. So I mean, I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John everyone involved in the app tracking thing has already sort of had their say. All the involved parties have
⏹️ ▶️ John all complained both publicly and to Congress in various cases and in their court documents
⏹️ ▶️ John and Apple has had its say and had its press releases and done interviews. I feel like there’s, you know, it’s all
⏹️ ▶️ John over but the court cases and the regulation right now. So I don’t think Apple is going to do anything more than what they
⏹️ ▶️ John would normally do, which is, hey, here’s a new product that’s part of a new OS and here’s why we think it’s cool.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then all those things that are going on in the background, all the court cases, all the congressional testimony, all of
⏹️ ▶️ John the public posturing that will just continue apace. But I don’t see Apple like dedicating much of of this
⏹️ ▶️ John event to it beyond just the 14.5 features. And I feel like from the,
⏹️ ▶️ John like having an event at all, there’s products to announce.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s gotta take the majority of the time. Normally the 14.5 stuff is just, it’s gonna be thrown in there because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s shipping or whatever, but it’s gotta all be about the products. That’s my take on it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would agree with that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think you’re probably right, but that just, that kind of threw me off, you know, that if this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is what they were talking about, which maybe it isn’t, I think maybe the Epic lawsuit, I think might be,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s probably a better bet. But still, like, it just kind of threw me off. Like, this is probably just about products.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t imagine why they would announce any kind of app store policy change or anything like that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at an event like this. That makes no sense to me. But yeah, anyway, you’re probably right, hopefully. All right, so let’s move on to products.
⏹️ ▶️ John like this is kind of weird because all of our notions about product stuff, other than like, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, every year they release new ones of whatever products, unless you’re the Mac Mini or the Apple TV.
⏹️ ▶️ John So yeah, products are due, but this year is all messed up because of all the part shortages and everything, which are, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John coming home to roost about now. Everyone is having trouble getting all the parts they need to build all their stuff, whether you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John a car manufacturer or you’re making consumer electronics or TVs, or yes, even Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ John So, and this event already seems like it’s been kind of delayed from when we normally would have expected it
⏹️ ▶️ John to come. And of course, Apple can announce products that aren’t ready to ship, because it does that all the time. But
⏹️ ▶️ John it really throws a monkey wrench into predictions. If we didn’t have these part shortages,
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like new iPads would be a shoo-in. And I still feel like they are the most likely
⏹️ ▶️ John product that is being announced, especially since this event is later than we would have expected it to be.
⏹️ ▶️ John But kind of all bets are off. If there’s one annoying part of the iPads that they can’t get,
⏹️ ▶️ John and they, you know, in a reasonable amount of time, then maybe they can’t announce new iPads, right? And it’s just gonna be all
⏹️ ▶️ John be about other stuff. But I feel like this is a hard to predict event because sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John for the first time, the determining factor is not solely Apple and how far along
⏹️ ▶️ John it is in developing a product because it’s now like, okay, well, regardless of what Apple wants, if you can’t get the parts, you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I would be very surprised if iPads don’t show up at this event
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because it has certainly been long enough and I think everyone’s been waiting long enough.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that true? No, there was a 2020 iPad. It
⏹️ ▶️ John the A12Z though. The iPad Pro desperately needs to be bumped and it would have
⏹️ ▶️ John been already, I feel like if we didn’t have, if supplies weren’t constrained.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I mean like the iPad Pro quote fourth generation with the A12Z, it’s kind of,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s about as new as the 2012 Mac Pro was new, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco our very first logo was based on. Like, it really was not very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new. But, and you know, to clarify when we say iPads, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re most likely only talking about the iPad Pro because the no-name iPad and the iPad Air
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were both updated last fall. The iPad Mini needs an update.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That could be interesting. The last iPad Mini update was two years ago, roughly. It could be Minis
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Pros, which would be kind of an odd combination, but those are both the ones that are overdue for updates.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there have been loose rumors about minis here and there, but nothing super firm, but there have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been lots of rumors about iPad Pros. So it really does seem very likely that it’s iPad Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I mean, I have a 2018 iPad Pro when it first went to Touch ID, excuse me, it first went to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Face ID, and I can use the fancy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Magic Keyboard with it, and I do. And the 2021, last year’s, it added the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new processor, And it added LiDAR, didn’t it? If I’m not mistaken, so there’s that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, but who cares? Agreed, agreed. Well, you know, Tim Cook could use it to show a chart.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s true. We know he loves his charts. So I didn’t feel compelled to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey upgrade at the time. And I don’t really even feel, sitting here today
⏹️ ▶️ Casey before I see the new hotness, I don’t even really feel that compelled to upgrade now. Like, I can’t say that my 2018
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPad Pro feels sluggish or slow. still a really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nice device. So I’m sure if I see the new iPads, I’m going to immediately buy one because I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey weak. But nevertheless, there’s nothing that I feel like I’m desperately seeking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in terms of improvements. That being said, what everyone seems to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey expect sometime soon, be that with hardware, software, or both, is improved external display
⏹️ ▶️ Casey support. And though that’s not something that I personally see myself doing very often, if at all,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with an an iPad, I am extremely interested and my eyebrow
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is very raised with regard to what that would look like and how it would work. And here again, we were talking,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they were talking about that on Upgrade Today, well I listened today, it was I think a day or two ago that it came out. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it got me thinking when we look back on bigger phones, when it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey went from whatever three and a half inches or whatever it was to four inches if I remember right, around the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPhone 4 era, that was somewhat four
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, no, no, it wasn’t then. It wasn’t then. It was, it was after that. And whatever it was, it doesn’t matter. It was foretold
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by auto layout. So auto layout is an API
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iPhone five introduced the foreign screen from 3.5, which is the one before that. And then the iPhone six
⏹️ ▶️ Marco introduced the 4.7 and screen that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re right, you’re right. Thank you. That is exactly what it was. So so when they went to the 4.7 and screen, you know, they needed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey support more than one size, you couldn’t just call it slightly bigger and kind of just scratch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everything. And there needed to be an API for that. And the summer before that happened,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, we got introduced to auto layout and it was pitched, if I recall correctly, at the time is like, oh, you can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey make things work much nicer in both landscape and portrait. It’s great. That’s the only thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’ll need this for. Okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They like beat us over the head with it. Like I remember like all the hints at that WWDC.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was hilarious. They were like, read what we’re saying.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Read between the lines. You can make things flexible sizes. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey was so obvious.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, anyway, I haven’t really seen any even hints of an API
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that for more robust external display support.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. And, in fact, I don’t remember there being probably strong hints about cursor support,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or certainly not in the API sense of the word, before that dropped. But there’s nothing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I see that indicates that it’s imminent other than Apple Silicon using Thunderbolt
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the new Macs. So do you guys reckon that external display support is one of the things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that we’re gonna get this year, even if not this particular event?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In addition to what it already has? Because it already has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey external display support. Right, I’m sorry, yes. Are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey external touch screen support? No, not necessarily. Just something better than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there external touch screens?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I don’t even think so. I don’t even know if people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sell those. Yeah, I mean, there were at one point. I don’t know if they still are, but-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I’m sure someone does, but I don’t know if anybody sells a good one that you actually wanna use for this purpose.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly, but I should still be more specific, I’m sorry. Yes, there is external display support, as is today.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But what I mean is something more robust than typically it’s just screen mirroring. Like if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey look at Apple Fitness Plus, for goodness sakes, all it is is screen mirroring. It doesn’t even do the thing like Plex does, where it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey takes up the entire screen for video, all it is is mirroring the iPad screen. Is it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pillar box where you have the bars on the left and the right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pillar, okay, so it’s that. And it looks like garbage. And that’s Apple Fitness Plus for goodness
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sakes. So I’m curious if there’s better app support. So maybe, maybe,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe even some sort of quote unquote windowing, although I think that’s probably a bit aggressive.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just, I wonder if there’s more robust external display support perhaps
⏹️ ▶️ Casey coming. Like the way I see this playing out, if it were to happen at all, is we get the hardware with Thunderbolt
⏹️ ▶️ Casey display support next week, but no new software changes, and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all still the same jankiness it is today. And then at WWDC, suddenly the software lands where we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey start getting much better APIs with much better external display support.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that the real question has to be like, what are people actually using external displays for? Where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the demand there? And I think obviously, you know, we’ve heard from people like Federico has tried to, Like we’ve heard from people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who have tried it and some of them still do it, but it’s not a common case. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, you could argue, is this a chicken and egg problem? Like would more people do it if you could do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m sure that is part of the issue. But I think unless there is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco external touch screen support and people start making external touch screens, and you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re waiting for Apple to make one, I got news for you, like they won’t even make very many regular screens.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I think if you had input solved on the iPad, that would make more sense. You know, it makes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tons of sense to have lots of big screens, external support for Macs, because you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not directly touching the screen to interact with everything. So maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the iPad, since they have added keyboard and trackpad support and made it better over time, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they only recently had trackpad support, like maybe on the iPad, trackpad support
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is what will make that more useful people because now you don’t have to be touching everything to do everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on an iPad, but I still don’t think it is a very big market enough
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for Apple to really cater that much to it. So I’m honestly not predicting anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that changing at this time. Whatever the new iPads can do, if they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have new hardware abilities, if there was a major software break, if there was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some big new thing that the OS was going to allow them to do, I think we would have seen leaks of that with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS 14.5 betas because the version of iOS they’re going to be running is iOS 14.5.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it seems very unlikely to me that there’s going to be something like that. It seems like 14.5 has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been like done and ready for a while. We’ve had, I think, eight betas of it so far. So I don’t think we’re seeing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that kind of change. So I’m guessing the, assuming that we’re getting new iPad pros, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco guessing the nature of they are better is much more like hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Marco side than software side. And the hardware side, I don’t necessarily think it needs to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be that much. There have been the rumors of the mini LED screen and for that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco possibly only being on the larger model, which I think that’s probably fine. If all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they do is basically a speed bump update, you know, they skip the A13. if they just go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from A12X slash Z to something it’s A14 like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A14X most likely is what it would be called, which would be a overall somewhat
⏹️ ▶️ Marco similar chip to the M1. I think that could be a perfectly fine update and that’s all it necessarily would need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be because as you opened up with Casey, the iPad Pro, like if you have one of the 2018
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash 2020-ish models of the iPad Pro, it’s still really good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I use mine, like it’s still really good. And even though it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at this point pretty old hardware, it turns out it was really great then and it held
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up and it’s still really great today. And I know a lot of people who use iPads
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to a lot of different degrees of power level usage, but I know almost nobody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who uses an iPad for anything for which the difference between the A12X
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a presumed A14X would make a huge difference to their life. Because most people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing most workflows on the iPad aren’t being limited by processor speed or GPU speed. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not a common case as far as I can tell. At least among anybody I know who is like an iPad power user. So I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s much, much more likely that this is gonna be a fairly boring spec bump
⏹️ ▶️ Marco update and that’ll be fine, that’s all it really needs. And I honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know I say this every single time, I can’t imagine that I would even upgrade to it because my current iPad is totally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine. I have the same with it. I have the 11 inch iPad Pro from 2018. I have no issues
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with it. I actually don’t even use it that heavily anymore ever since the M1 MacBook Air.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve been using the iPad a lot less since then. And so I think for iPad Power users, it’s nice to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just kind of get it updated so it’s no longer so old and stale, but I don’t think it’s gonna set the world
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on fire any more than the old one did because the old one was really good and is still really good.
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like the hardware is probably going to be out ahead of the software in the usual way like I’ve got a case.
⏹️ ▶️ John You just said it before. I think like, you know, so you release the bumped hardware, but then the big software support
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re planning on it is announced at WWC with the big new OS. In general, that’s been Apple’s move.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s Apple could be changing the way it releases features. I know 14.5 has been invaded a long time,
⏹️ ▶️ John but Apple has had some success occasionally hiding features from us in a beta,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially if we’re not looking for it. if they actually don’t leak out symbols they didn’t mean to leak, especially if it’s like a minor
⏹️ ▶️ John feature. So there’s a possibility that 14.5 could just have slightly better external display support
⏹️ ▶️ John in a basic way. But I haven’t been keeping up with the iPad rumors, so forgive me if this is not even in the offing, but I remember
⏹️ ▶️ John reading something about this a while back, and it was already mentioned here, about the iPad’s going to Thunderbolt instead of just plain
⏹️ ▶️ John USB-C. So if you’ve got the inside of this iPad, and it’s got an A14X, which looks a lot like an M1, and
⏹️ ▶️ John M1 Macs have Thunderbolt, right? And it’s not so far of a leap to say there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John some sharing of componentry there where you can imagine an iPad with Thunderbolt coming out,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And I believe that has been rumored, right? Assuming that is, you know, rumored for this particular
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. Like Margaret was saying, it’s a little bit tricky. How do you roll out your
⏹️ ▶️ John new iPad Pro with faster processor, great, everyone loves that, and a nicer screen, it’s easy to pitch that.
⏹️ ▶️ John And now the USB-C port isn’t just USB-C, it’s Thunderbolt. And then what do you say about that?
⏹️ ▶️ John And you can use it to, well, you can’t do all the cool external display stuff because that’s gonna require iOS 15, and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not out yet, and we’re not ready to announce that. You can use external storage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco faster. Maybe you can use the Pro Display XDR that way, because I don’t think the current one can do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, maybe, but that’s where you get into, you have to have some kind of better external
⏹️ ▶️ John display support, right? To tout, to say, okay, now with Thunderbolt, what could you do with Thunderbolt that you couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do before? I suppose faster transfer speeds to storage, but is that a really important
⏹️ ▶️ John use case for iPad users? I don’t know. And then you can drive different
⏹️ ▶️ John or better monitors, but then that requires, you know, I assume it requires some kind of reasonable bumps
⏹️ ▶️ John in software support. So if these things come out and have Thunderbolt ports in them, Apple’s gonna have to have something to say about
⏹️ ▶️ John it. And because this is the iPad Pro, it’s not ridiculous for them
⏹️ ▶️ John to tout features that basically nobody needs, right? Cause it’s the pro product. It’s their top of the line iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you get the mini LED screen, which most people don’t care about, right? And you know, we get better black levels, who cares, whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John You get the faster processor, which as you both said, most people who are casual iPad users aren’t feeling like their
⏹️ ▶️ John current one is slow. And you get a Thunderbolt port instead of USB, and most iPad users probably never connect anything
⏹️ ▶️ John there besides the charger, right? But this is the pro product. So if there’s anybody who’s using an iPad who wants
⏹️ ▶️ John more of these things, that’s what Apple delivers. So I can
⏹️ ▶️ John see them doing a picture of this product of saying, screen’s better, processor’s faster,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe it’s got more RAM, but we’ll never mention that, and now it’s got a Thunderbolt port, and here’s two things you can do with it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And maybe some minor additional support in 14.5 in those. And then a bigger
⏹️ ▶️ John coming out, in the iPad user’s dreams, a bigger coming out where you can have more than just mirroring
⏹️ ▶️ John and not necessarily Windows, but like our external touchscreen support or whatever fantasy you have
⏹️ ▶️ John about a real pro level support for external monitors, waiting until 15, but having the groundwork
⏹️ ▶️ John laid by the hardware that we see on the 20th.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that makes sense. So sitting here today, assuming a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey relatively straightforward bump and no curveballs or anything, Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do you think you would buy a new iPad next week?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think so, honestly. Because I barely even use the one I have anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t see what a new one would change that would make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me say, I have to have that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s fair. John?
⏹️ ▶️ John market for one because I’ve still got the I don’t even have one with face ID right so I’m I don’t have any of this generation
⏹️ ▶️ John still on the iPad 3 no iPad Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John think first iPad Pro with touch ID oh the 9.7 yeah but anyway I spend a lot of time watching TV shows
⏹️ ▶️ John on my iPad believe it or not and so a better screen does appeal to me but not enough that I’m gonna buy the 12.9 to
⏹️ ▶️ John get it so remains to be seen if you know I don’t need most of the features I just listed,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I would like a newer iPad and I would like a better screen. And
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, um, if this has both of them, I’m probably in the market for it, but there’s also the potential that I would just wait
⏹️ ▶️ John until Christmas and get it as a Christmas present for myself. Like I’m not desperate for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. Yeah. I think if there’s something really interesting and really exciting,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would think about it, but none of the things that I’ve heard rumored are my definition of interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or exciting. And so I don’t plan to get one, but remind me of this in a week and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a day when I already have one on order. All right, other things that may be coming out, AirTags. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been motion over the last couple of weeks with regard to Find My and the Find My network. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do think this is super cool. The idea that you can make a tag or a thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a dongle, a widget that emits Bluetooth low energy, pulses,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey beacons, if you will, and literally every iPhone in the world will be listening, or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that has the appropriate hardware, will be listening for those pings and will take
⏹️ ▶️ Casey note of where that iPhone is geographically when it heard the ping and what time it was and so on and so forth,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and will, in a privacy-conscious way, send that data to Apple such that if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you lose something, you can say, oh, I’ve lost my keys or what have you,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Apple can look at where was an iPhone iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that has seen that unique Bluetooth low-energy ping, oh, it was in the neighbor’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yard, 300 yards away, that’s where you need to look. You can do all this without
⏹️ ▶️ Casey having an Internet connection on the device that’s doing all the pinging away. It’s just pinging away and the iPhones will hear
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, and then they will tell Apple about it using their Internet connections. This is very similar in spirit to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how the COVID tracking API works. I love this. I think this is super cool. I am surprised
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but glad that Apple has allowed third parties to get in on this. With regard to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey air tags, I mean, I feel like everyone has been saying for three years, yep,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is the one we’re going to get it this time. And I have no reason to say differently this time. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, we’ll see what happens. John, are they going to have air tags next week?
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t like the third party Apple did a press release of like, look at all these third party products they use to find my network,
⏹️ ▶️ John which by the way, opening up the find my network to third parties was I think announced last year’s WWDC,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right? Oh, was it? I didn’t remember
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that. It wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John super recent. Yeah. It’s been a long time coming, but Apple did a press release recently listing actual
⏹️ ▶️ John products. Here are some products that are either shipping now or shipping soon in a week or a month or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John that take advantage of this. And so what does that mean for AirTags?
⏹️ ▶️ John Does it mean that Apple was kind of like coming out ahead of time and saying, well, let’s talk about some third-party products
⏹️ ▶️ John because on the 20th, we’re just going to talk about AirTags. And so we want to give our partners a boost to say,
⏹️ ▶️ John just so you don’t feel bad before we steal all your limelight. Let’s we Apple will promote your product because you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of premier partners. The first people out of the door with these products. Right. And that would mean air tags are coming. The
⏹️ ▶️ John flip side of that is air tags are still not ready. And Apple just wants to say, look, this is,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, that find my thing that we announced last year, WWDC. It’s not you know, we’re not doing nothing with
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Things have been happening. No, we haven’t released anything, but third parties have integrated like they want
⏹️ ▶️ John a success story. We announced this find my network at WWDC, and then it’s almost a year later. we want to be able to say,
⏹️ ▶️ John hey, something has come of that announcement. Look at these third party products you can buy. And that would
⏹️ ▶️ John be cover for them, not releasing air tags of this event, because they I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know. I don’t understand why air tags are not like we don’t have rumors of them catching fire
⏹️ ▶️ John like the air power matter or anything. Right. They don’t seem like they would use any kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John component or technology that is unavailable to Apple. Maybe I’m wrong about that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe they’re, you know, they’re five nanometer tiny chips in there to save energy or something, but it’s mysterious
⏹️ ▶️ John why they haven’t been released. We found so many hints of them on all sorts of software that Apple has released. So it seems like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, there’s traces of them in many, many versions ago. So it seems like they were planned for much earlier than they have been released.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I think it’s a mystery. It’s also kind of a mystery of like, who will care that
⏹️ ▶️ John about our tags? I mean, it’s cool. Like, I mean, there’s been existing products in this space before, and Apple, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey pointed out the COVID tracking thing, like the the basically underlying technology and the security and privacy stuff are things that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John has talked about before. So it’s like, if they announce them,
⏹️ ▶️ John I know there’s nobody in the room because it’s all virtual now, right? But who’s super excited about
⏹️ ▶️ John AirTags at this point? You know, they don’t have to be super excited about every product, but it seems like
⏹️ ▶️ John we might all be burned out on AirTags and they haven’t even been released yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That to me is the funniest thing. It’s like, we are so excited about this product. It’s very similar to AirPower,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what happened with that, which is like, AirPower was a charging mat. That’s not super exciting,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really. If in the grand scheme of things, like Apple releases all sorts of little accessories that aren’t super exciting, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t get much attention from the press. But like when there seems like there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some weird story, like what happened? Why isn’t this being released? Then it becomes interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So yeah, AirTags, I mean, I’m sure some people will find them incredibly useful.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not usually in the market. I have never, there’s all these things like tile trackers in the space that have already existed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for years. And I’ve never used any of those things because I don’t really, I’m not really in the market. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if Apple made them, yeah, I’d probably buy a few. I’d probably put them on our bikes, maybe in my backpack,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d put one there, and maybe that’s about it. I don’t know, I don’t lose stuff that often.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know, but it’s a cool idea for a product. Like you, I think the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tech involved to make it happen with the huge network of phones that I think was very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clearly related to the exposure tracking stuff. I think that’s just a cool, it’s a cool technical
⏹️ ▶️ Marco idea, but this is a product that they’re gonna release and maybe we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy a few of them and then we’ll probably never talk about them again.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, but Find My exists on a max forever. Like it’s not like the COVID tracking is the first time they did Find My, right? It’s all,
⏹️ ▶️ John isn’t this all the same tech and the same, you know, system, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think this, using Bluetooth LE to do like a giant worldwide mesh network of finding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things, I think that’s new. So the
⏹️ ▶️ John Macs do use wifi for it? I just assumed the Macs were using Bluetooth as well, but maybe not. I don’t think so, no.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought that they were using, you know, an internet connection like wifi or, you know, ethernet if they happen to be plugged in. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not confident I’m right about that, but yes, I thought up until the COVID
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tracking and now Find My, I didn’t think that there was anything that was run via Bluetooth Low Energy. I thought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everything required an internet connection and required, you know, an onboard GPS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even. And I very well could be wrong about that, That was my understanding.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh yeah, it might be some hybrid type system. But here’s the thing about all of these features, right? The use case is I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John find my thing, right? And that use case,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a real use case, but it’s not a use case that people get excited about. Because if you’ve lost
⏹️ ▶️ John something, you’re already kind of in a distressing situation. You want to avoid losing things. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you know, it’s, I was gonna make another destiny analogy, but I make too many of those and
⏹️ ▶️ John no one will get it. but it’s not fun to think about
⏹️ ▶️ John something that helps you out when you are in a situation you’re already unhappy about. It’s much more fun to think
⏹️ ▶️ John about a thing that can help you do something you’re excited to do. So like say you’re an artist and the Apple Pencil
⏹️ ▶️ John comes out and you’re excited about that because you already like drawing and this can help you do a thing you already like to do more
⏹️ ▶️ John or better. Nobody likes to lose things. And even though you’ll be thankful that this is around
⏹️ ▶️ John when you have to find something, you have to get into a distressed state before you get to
⏹️ ▶️ John use this product at all. So it’s kind of like buying insurance. A certain personality
⏹️ ▶️ John type may be super excited to buy AirTags and put it on all their items so they can be excited when they lose something to
⏹️ ▶️ John find it again, but I think for a lot of people, this is not a
⏹️ ▶️ John product with a lot of sizzle. Unless there’s more to it than we know, but we’ll see. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, it’s almost like being a prepper. Like you want things to go wrong so you can use it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and again, some people like to be well prepared and have things organized and they get excited the
⏹️ ▶️ John first time they get to use it, but I’m not sure that’s the common case. And what this has me thinking of, like in
⏹️ ▶️ John our document here, the next thing we have as potential announcements are AR, VR, you know, goggle
⏹️ ▶️ John things and new Macs, right? And it starts to tail off in the things that we have sort of solid rumors
⏹️ ▶️ John of as far as I know. Again, I haven’t been keeping up with this, but is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John are iPads and AirTags, even assuming AirTags are real, is that enough for an entire event? What if there is no AirTags
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s just iPads? Is that enough for an event? plus 14.5 I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John really hard-pressed to think of what the other thing would be in this
⏹️ ▶️ John obviously if it’s AR VR goggles then there needs to be nothing else that would be just a gigantic deal and they would make such a huge
⏹️ ▶️ John deal about it you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think we’re getting anything AR VR related
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah and then of course there’s you know new Macs which at any time you can roll out new
⏹️ ▶️ John Macs with the ARM processors because we really have no idea what that pipeline looks like and we know
⏹️ ▶️ John there are still Macs out there that they could release with not much of a radical change
⏹️ ▶️ John from the current Macs that they release. You could release a low-end iMac as your first ARM-based iMac that has
⏹️ ▶️ John a processor that is M1-ish and it would be fine. But again, I haven’t heard any
⏹️ ▶️ John rumors about that. I don’t want to read anything in the title, but it says it’s supposed to be loaded. Now I asked for a loaded
⏹️ ▶️ John baked potato and it just comes with iPads on it. I feel like I’ve been disappointed.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. I hear what you’re saying. I think it is certainly possible that we’ll get some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mac of some flavor at this event. I certainly do not think we’re going to get anything goggles at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All that being said, though, the last couple of events, they haven’t been the two hour jam packed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey extravaganzas that they were when people were there. Now that Apple has embraced
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a more quick and concise event, I think airpads and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or excuse me, iPads and air tags might be enough like that and maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John some for you. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, I was going to say that and something about iOS 14.5. And that’s an hour, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. You’ve been right that they like they don’t feel the need to make it worth your while to at least fill 90 minutes. It’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John if they only have if they only have 57 minutes worth of content, you get 57 minutes worth of content. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Even though they could theoretically have an event that’s 10 minutes long and because it’s all digital
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything, I don’t think they would. I think they like saving it up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for when you can make a bigger splash. That’s always been their style. I think it always will be their style. So I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s going to be… And I agree, so far, unless there’s some massive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing about the iPads that has not been rumored and that there’s been no software leaks for,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think the iPads are that interesting, honestly. I think the same thing about AirTags. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco interesting products on a very shallow level, but you know not super exciting for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an event So I do agree with your inclinations that it is probably more than just that being announced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 14.5. I think we’ll have some time obviously I do think they’re gonna push hard on the value
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of The App Store if not directly maybe indirectly because I they’re in a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty significant PR battle with the world about that right now now. So I do think they’re going to use this event to push on that a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bit to say how great their system is and how how much they protect privacy. And here’s the new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app tracking transparency feature. And here’s how much is going to protect everyone’s privacy. Here’s why it’s so important. We really believe in this blah blah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that I think is a shoe in. There are a couple features. There’s there’s the mask unlock, which I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they might even they might mention that in the event because that’s new to 14.5. And that’s pretty useful to a lot of people right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that I can see them, you know, doing mask watch watch unlock thing. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, we’re not reaching loaded level here. So.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve got an idea that, remember, that fits with the iPad things. I mean, it’s a long shot, but the
⏹️ ▶️ John external non 6K display that you could use with your new Thunderbolt iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That’s interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. It’s not a $6,000 display. It fits with the event. Cause like now Apple finally find it because it’s like, you got
⏹️ ▶️ John this iPad. What display are you supposed to use it with? Before Apple didn’t sell one except for the XDR, which is too
⏹️ ▶️ John big and expensive. So now there is this, if they’re ever gonna do a display like that,
⏹️ ▶️ John this would be a reasonable event for them to announce that. Because what are they gonna do? Announce it at the Mac mini event, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like it’s, what do you?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, but they already did it. There is no Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John mini event. They could do it with a released laptops, but they already released laptops or at least
⏹️ ▶️ John one round of laptops and they didn’t, it’s a long shot, but at least it would fit with the event. And I also think we might
⏹️ ▶️ John be underestimating, I mean, this ties into your sort of app store, rah, rah stuff, underestimating
⏹️ ▶️ John how much time Apple may be willing to burn demonstrating applications for the
⏹️ ▶️ John iPad Pro that they think reflect well on it as a platform.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, they love that stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. And so in-person ones, they would burn more time than we would want it. They’d go to the AR table.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’d have five game demos that we’d all just like, ah. Right? And they don’t need to do that in the virtual
⏹️ ▶️ John ones. But they do want to say, to answer the question, what can I do with these new iPad Pros?
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s the perfect time to tout out a bunch of, you know, big third-party companies that have amazing new products that
⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t be possible without the power of the A14X, and that burns up a lot of time. And so there you
⏹️ ▶️ John do your iPads, and you’re 14.5, and you’re already at like 36 minutes. Right, and then you just need one
⏹️ ▶️ John other thing to fill it out to have a reasonable size of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think waiting for the external smaller display, I think we have a longer wait for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because the latest rumor on that was from a few months back, and it basically said like they were starting to work on
⏹️ ▶️ John But the thing is like, I mean, depending on what they do, the whole point of this one is,
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t have to try that hard on this one, Apple. You don’t need to make a miniature XDR. You just need to make,
⏹️ ▶️ John buy a LCD from somebody, but you know, and put
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it in case. Oh yeah, but that’s not how they do things. I mean, look, when they made the new Mac Pro, we know when they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco started working on that. I
⏹️ ▶️ John know, but it’s so much harder to do the XDR. Like I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John the only reason Apple couldn’t have a, you know, essentially an external 5K display ready right now
⏹️ ▶️ John is because it’s not as a high priority. Honestly, I don’t think it is a high priority. If they’re ever
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna do it at all, they might as well just wait until like the pro laptops come out or whatever, but it would
⏹️ ▶️ John tie in with the iPad announcement. So if it happens that, you know, oh, it turns out this product came together faster than we thought,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is a reasonable time to announce it, especially if there’s any kind of better external display support.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So here’s the question, Max, then at this event, Now, WWDC
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is in a couple of months. Now, it’s my opinion that Apple does not actually like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco announcing hardware at WWDC, because they have so many software platforms these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco days that they wanna cram as much in about how great their software is as possible during that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time. Because WWDC is really the celebration of, here’s what the next year of software is going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be like. Look at this cool software. It’s usually not a hardware-focused event.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My theory is maybe what we expected to come at WBC,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think namely the 15-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 or M1X, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would be, maybe that’s gonna come here. Because if you’re gonna really jam pack
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an event, I think you’re gonna need some Macs in this event. And the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iMac with Apple Silicon, I think that’s a shoe in. I think we’re almost certain to get that at this event.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And once you have, assuming that the higher end iMacs with M1s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would have some kind of M1X variant, because it’s a higher end computer, you’d probably want more cores and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, that’s probably gonna be the exact same chip that they put in the 15 inch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or 16 inch MacBook Pro. So they would presumably, maybe, be able
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to announce those two products at the same time. And so maybe this is the event that we get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iMac with Apple Silicon and the 16-inch MacBook Pro. Once you add all that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco together, that would be… That would be loaded. Yeah, especially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because the rumor is that the new laptops are gonna have a case redesign, I believe, with this generation.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Isn’t that the current rumor?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was months ago. I haven’t seen that recently, but yes, it certainly was being said
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that the next 15-inch is gonna get the new design.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, so if there’s a 16, if there’s even a 14, who knows, but if there’s a new 16 and a new high-end 13 slash 14 Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and iMacs and iPad Pros and AirTags and 14.5, that’s a loaded
⏹️ ▶️ John I just got to cut off the AirTags.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the problem. The one is
⏹️ ▶️ John I want Macs. Those are the products I care about the most here. So it’s hard for me to believe in them. The second is
⏹️ ▶️ John our entire sort of like past, oh, I don’t know, like several decades
⏹️ ▶️ John of sort of sensing when new Macs are coming, we’ve always had external
⏹️ ▶️ John cues, right? And so like what Intel chips are available? How old
⏹️ ▶️ John is the hardware in the stuff that we’re using now? What is possible out there in the competitive landscape?
⏹️ ▶️ John And ARM-based Macs have screwed all that up. Because first of all, our Macs are already far ahead of everybody else in performance.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s not like we’re still like, oh, they got to release new Macs because the Macs are so slow. It’s like, well, yeah, the
⏹️ ▶️ John Intel ones. But like, that’s not a problem. Second thing is we have no idea what Apple’s roadmaps are for
⏹️ ▶️ John its own chips that literally no one else in the entire world is allowed to use. So they’re really good at keeping those things
⏹️ ▶️ John secret. So it’s like, how do you judge when, like when are the next round of
⏹️ ▶️ John Macs available? Why weren’t they available when the original ones come out? When are they planned? It’s entirely up to Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s so little to grab onto in the external world to say, well, based on sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of the landscape of the parts that go into Intel-based laptops, we think now
⏹️ ▶️ John combined with Apple’s normal sort of cadence is a time to expect laptops. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John the only thing that we can say, I think, the only thing we have to hang onto here, and even this is tenuous, is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John okay, well, they’re not releasing their own Mac Pro at this event, right? Because that is, we think they have
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot, the biggest challenge they have is how do you do that? We talked about many, many times, right? But
⏹️ ▶️ John almost all their other computers, we know exactly how they would do it. We kind of know what it would look like and
⏹️ ▶️ John why don’t we have them now? because Apple decided this is the order they’re doing things for whatever reason, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s so hard to predict when, you know, what the cadence of Mac stuff’s
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna be. I hope that it is as you predicted, but I was looking
⏹️ ▶️ John at this lineup and saying, I put new Macs below AR VR goggles, just because I felt like, well, at least AR VR
⏹️ ▶️ John goggles is one thing and it’s, you know, important to, those are probably WC, but anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John like who knows? Who knows, they could just decide not to release those because the stupid VR rumors like, yeah, this is the 15th headset that
⏹️ ▶️ John they’ve had floating around Apple, but are they gonna release it as a product? Eh, I don’t know. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I am having so much trouble sort of pinning down what the cadence of
⏹️ ▶️ John Macs are. It will get easier as the two year time limit comes up on us, because then it’s gonna be like, well, Apple said two years
⏹️ ▶️ John and they usually try to hit their dates. And again, it doesn’t seem like there’s any reason they would miss it for anything except for the Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John But right now we’re kind of in the middle. So it would be a good time for another round of Macs to come out, but so would
⏹️ ▶️ John WWDC. And I agree with Marco that in general, they don’t want to sort of overwhelm WWDC
⏹️ ▶️ John with Macs, but they’ve done it before. I mean, the original Retina 15 inch was WWDC, wasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John it? So, you know. As was the 10.5 inch iPad Pro. Right, and they made a big stink about
⏹️ ▶️ John it. And it was like, sometimes that’s just how the timing works out. So, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m rooting for Macs, but I can’t bring myself to believe it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, I still think this is going to be a shorter event and I think it’s going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be more focused than that. But I would be very pleased to be wrong
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I would be very pleased to see new Mac show up among many other things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, it’s probably also going to be, you know, stupid stuff like new watch band colors.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s true. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe. I don’t, I don’t know. I haven’t been keeping up with the rumors, but like, yeah, there’s room
⏹️ ▶️ John for little things like that. But I think Apple does want to have some kind of coherence to the event.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Apple is not above releasing things that minor without an event. So
⏹️ ▶️ John new watch band colors are out. They’ll just have a press release and everyone will see the new watch band colors. They do it every season, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, maybe it’s kind of a wild card. Maybe we get a retail update
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from Deidre O’Brien to slowly over time increase her
⏹️ ▶️ Marco public presence so that people get used to her as a possible future CEO.
⏹️ ▶️ John But people do people care about retail Apple stores in these COVID times? Like that seems like a time filler for an
⏹️ ▶️ John in-person event more than something they would put in the virtual one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe she could say how well they’ve handled this and how they’ve enabled people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all around the world to get their stuff done and everything. Because honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the more research I do, the more I think Deidre O’Brien is very high on the list of future CEOs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think they’re going to want to, in the same way that they’ve increased Jeff Williams’ public presence over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time, I think we’re going to see more of O’Brien as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey possible. I don’t see that happening myself, but it’s within the realm of possibility for sure.
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#askatp: HomePod pair vs. big
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, let’s do some Ask ATP and Josh Erickson has two questions. Josh writes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey should one buy a single HomePod or a dual HomePod mini? And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, I’ll ask you guys to answer that in a moment. Josh also writes, given that they already have a single
⏹️ ▶️ Casey HomePod, should they get a second HomePod or a dual HomePod mini?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For reference, Josh writes, they’re not an audiophile. They just like listening to music in their kitchen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at low to moderate volumes. So coming back to the two questions, Marco, single HomePod
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or dual HomePod mini?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No question, I would take a dual setup anytime, even if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco each one individually doesn’t sound as good as the big HomePod. I would greatly prefer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a dual HomePod mini if my only other option was a single HomePod. Now, the second part of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the question complicates matters. Josh already has a single big HomePod.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the question is really a second big one for $300 or replacing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it with two little ones for $200. The
⏹️ ▶️ John good news is there’s plenty of big HomePods in stock still. Only in white. They were potentially
⏹️ ▶️ John manufactured in 2017, but Apple cannot get rid of them.
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe you can get a deal.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, so I would say under the condition, if your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first HomePod is white and therefore you get it matching. Cause I couldn’t bear a mismatch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say get a second big HomePod because what you’re basically getting is for an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco extra hundred bucks over the other options as you already own one, it’s just a hundred dollars more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would get you a way better sounding stereo pair than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the like replacing it with two HomePod mini. That being said, obviously there’s other factors like if you have a use for the first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one somewhere else in the house and then maybe you use a dual HomePod minis in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the current place where the first one is then you can get it in another room with the quote old first one, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine too. But two big HomePods sound way better than two HomePod
⏹️ ▶️ Marco minis. And two of either one is better than one of the other one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, John, single HomePod or dual HomePod mini? And if you already had one big HomePod, would you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get a second big one or two new little ones?
⏹️ ▶️ John I just assume this was a question for Marco. I have no opinion on any of this because I’ve never heard any kind of dual
⏹️ ▶️ John HomePod setup mini or otherwise. So I really have no idea, but honestly, I would
⏹️ ▶️ John have to just give a suggestion. I would say find a cheap big HomePod mini, or big HomePod
⏹️ ▶️ John rather, and add it to your existing one. Because you’ve already got the one, you already bit the bullet, you already did the hard thing, which is paid probably
⏹️ ▶️ John full price for the big one. Find another big one. That’s my suggestion. Have you ever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco watched TV with a full-blown home theater system? I sure have.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Have you ever watched TV on your phone? Sure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, do you realize that there’s a difference in the audio quality?
⏹️ ▶️ John But none of these HomePods have surround speakers, so it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s. No, but when you compare one point to multiple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco points, heck, even, you know what, compare it to a soundbar. Everyone’s favorite thing, the soundbar.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, compare the way TV sounds with just a soundbar
⏹️ ▶️ Marco versus how it sounds with left and right dedicated speakers. I don’t even care about the rears,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just left and right dedicated speakers versus a soundbar in the middle, left and right speakers sound way better,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way better. The reality is like when you, we’ve covered this before, so I won’t go into it in too much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco detail, but just like so many products now try to boast the ability
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to fill a space or fill a room with sound from a single broadcast point, from like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one speaker in the middle and to fill an area with sound. And it just the physics
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are so against you for that. There are small tricks you can pull that make it sound a little bit better,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but not very good and nowhere near as good as it sounds from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two regular speakers spaced apart so that they form an actual like stereo separation.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The physics are just totally against you for any any kind of like simulated thing from one point and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I would in general like two mediocre speakers that are actually put
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in proper locations are way better than one of the best speakers in the world
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuck in the middle.
#askatp: Email BCC
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Kumanaji writes, is the blank carbon copy feature in email actually useful? The only time I see it being
⏹️ ▶️ Casey used, it’s because I’m trying to figure out how some random discussion in a work distribution list broke through all my filters into my inbox.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you use this feature? If so, how? I do use this from time to time. I used to use it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more often, I feel, in a professional setting because a lot of times I would send
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an email to myself that I wanted copied to a bunch of people, but I didn’t want the whole chain,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey email chain going on forever. I’ll use this if I want Aaron to be aware
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of something like often like child or house-related, but they don’t, but Aaron doesn’t necessarily need to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be officially CC’d on the email. It’s more of like a, hey, FYI, this is something that happened.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I definitely use it from time to time. I wouldn’t say I use it terribly often though. John, what’s your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey status on BCCing people?
⏹️ ▶️ John John Greenewald I mean, I’m surprised that people don’t use it more because it is exactly the right tool for
⏹️ ▶️ John one specific job, which is you want to email a bunch of people and you don’t want to to be
⏹️ ▶️ John vulnerable to the dreaded reply all right so anytime this happens more at work i suppose but
⏹️ ▶️ John even if you’re just like planning a family outing and you know pre-covid times whatever you know or
⏹️ ▶️ John in the future when you’re all vaccinated who knows um if you have to mail email a bunch of people it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s always gonna once the group gets big enough there’s always gonna be one person that does reply all and then we’re off to the races right
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey and now a bunch of people got emails they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not interested in and it’s just like depending on Depending on how it goes down, whether it’s family or friends or coworkers,
⏹️ ▶️ John it can resolve itself in all the different ways, but it’s always annoying, right? So BCC is the solution to that. It’s basically
⏹️ ▶️ John telling your email client, here’s a list of people, send each one of these people their own separate email.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then in that email, don’t list any of the other people that I sent it to because they don’t need to know that. So if they reply, it
⏹️ ▶️ John will just come back to you, the sender, and won’t annoy any of the other people. And that’s what BCC, I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John if that’s what it’s for, but that’s what it should be used for in all cases. I know it’s weird,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially with how email clients handle this, and especially if people who put themselves in the to
⏹️ ▶️ John line and everyone else in the BCC line, you can end up with getting emails that you don’t quite understand how
⏹️ ▶️ John or why you got it. But if you look at the headers, you can usually figure it out. But it’s not for you. It’s for the sender
⏹️ ▶️ John to be spared the dreaded reply all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but it could be for you in the sense that if you’re in a situation where it’s kind of an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco informal mailing list, where you’re not being mailed by an actual big mailer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with some big mailing list service, but maybe the teacher of your kid’s school
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has a mailing list of the 20 parents in the room or whatever. It’s useful when,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in that context, when somebody wants to send out a semi-formal mailing list to a bunch of people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco without revealing to them everyone else’s email address. And so it’s very useful for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that in these kind of informal mailing list notifications. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, that’s exactly what I said. It’s not just the reply all, but it looks like it was just an email sent to you.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you don’t even know who else they sent it to. Right, yeah, that’s the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you are protecting the email addresses and identities of everyone else who got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the email. There’s also a couple other things people do, like the whole introducing people to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things and then moving them to the BCC on the reply. There’s little conventions people have come up with. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s used. There are totally very useful and very common uses for it. But I think the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco informal mailing list, or kind of like the ad hoc mailing list is the best use
⏹️ ▶️ John Although your example is unfortunately the exact opposite of what actually happens. Anytime the school mails things, they will never
⏹️ ▶️ John always use to the two line or the CC line, and both of which will reveal everyone’s email address to everyone else. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s just a thing we have to live with because that’s sometimes how things goes down at schools.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One of the many dysfunctions of email.
#askatp: Apple adopting ARMv9?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Abel Demos writes, with the recent announcement of the ARM v9 architecture, how long will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it be before we see Apple use this architecture in chips?
⏹️ ▶️ John So I bet most people don’t know or care what version of the ARM instruction set Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John has used in its various processors, but there are different versions and Apple has used a bunch of different ones.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you’ve been a developer for iOS devices for a long time, you’re probably familiar with the architecture choices that you’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John had in various pop-up menus in Xcode or whatever. I think the 64-bit transition was essentially ARM v8.
⏹️ ▶️ John To this day, Apple uses a variant of ARM version 8, which they call
⏹️ ▶️ John ARM 64 in most of their command line tools and everything. ARM v9 is a newer version of one
⏹️ ▶️ John of those. And the reason I think this is interesting is there is still
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of an open question about where Apple is going to go with its instruction
⏹️ ▶️ John sets. Like, who bought ARM? Did Nvidia buy ARM? I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. Apple’s got an architecture license. They can continue to make ARM chips or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John but give an Apple certainly has influence in the ARM instruction sets and has had influence
⏹️ ▶️ John in the ARM instruction sets, but Apple’s it is potentially true that Apple’s influence
⏹️ ▶️ John on the ARM instruction set has now diminished. Now that their good friend Nvidia owns them,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Apple doesn’t call its Macs ARM Macs. I keep calling them that, right? But it
⏹️ ▶️ John calls them Apple Silicon Macs. That opens the door for Apple at any time to say, hey, the next round of
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple Silicon Macs, use the next round of Apple chips. And
⏹️ ▶️ John does anyone know or care whether they’re compatible with ARMv10, ARMv11, ARMv12? It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John relevant to a Mac user because the entire ecosystem is a compiler tool chain
⏹️ ▶️ John development platform that targets Apple Silicon, right? And it’s not like Apple would make a
⏹️ ▶️ John new set of Apple Silicon Macs incompatible with the existing ones. They would be backer compatible the same way ARM v9
⏹️ ▶️ John is backward compatible and can run binaries in ARM v8 and ARM v7 or whatever, you know, like it’s not like
⏹️ ▶️ John they would have to break any kind of compatibility because they’re not ARM chips, they’re Apple silicon
⏹️ ▶️ John chips. Right. So I think Apple will use ARM v9 probably just because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s been in the type pipeline for a while and Apple had influence on it and it’s the next logical step for its next
⏹️ ▶️ John line of chips. But the real question is how long does this go on? Um, or does Apple start going its own
⏹️ ▶️ John way? Because from the outside, only tech nerds know that Apple already hasn’t gone its own
⏹️ ▶️ John way. Oh, don’t they make their own chips? What do you mean their ARM chips? No, they’re Apple Silicon, right? I think that door is open to
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple whenever it wants, and I think the only thing that would drive it to wanting to do that
⏹️ ▶️ John is if it desires control that it doesn’t currently have over the direction
⏹️ ▶️ John of the ARM architecture, right? So, I think Apple had plenty of influence
⏹️ ▶️ John on ARM v9, but stay tuned in the next… I don’t know what the cadence of these things is
⏹️ ▶️ John in the next year or two or three to see if Apple starts branching off and I feel
⏹️ ▶️ John like the only way we would know is reading between the lines of some Apple presentation about one
⏹️ ▶️ John of the new processors and then after everyone gets them and realizes hey, wait a second This is technically not exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John the same as arm v10 or 11. It’s some Apple thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Do you think that might hurt them in the future? Like if they diverge or if they if they just stop, you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco accepting updates from from the arm architecture stuff Do you think in the future
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that might hurt them in the sense that like, you know, software that’s made to build on Linux ARM
⏹️ ▶️ Marco servers would now need even more special handling for building in an Apple environment?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, that was another item that I was actually gonna put in a follow-up or whatever, but Parallels now runs Windows,
⏹️ ▶️ John the ARM version of Windows in virtualization on ARM Macs. Right?
⏹️ ▶️ John you can actually run, you know, cause there is an ARM version of Windows and apparently Parallels did whatever, combined with Microsoft did
⏹️ ▶️ John what it took to make that happen,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Do is there anyone who wants to run ARM
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s a separate question, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like is it like can you do anything useful? And does any software run on that that you’d actually want?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, that’s that’s the question that I feel like Apple would be grappling with in terms of breaking compatibility, because there’s no reason that
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple a new Apple Silicon chip that technically is an arm V10. It might run all ARM software
⏹️ ▶️ John perfectly. Right. Because, you know, it’s just that they added like one or two new instructions that only Apple stuff adds, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. Like there are many ways that Apple can diverge while still maintaining compatibility. Witness
⏹️ ▶️ John AMD versus Intel. At various times they’ve had, you know, what did, uh, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if they ever had different SIMD stuff, but like, there are lots of different things about Intel and AMD chips, but in general, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John both x86 or x86-64 compatible. Right? So there’s some, there’s some leeway
⏹️ ▶️ John there, but what really matters is what out, you know, what you just said, Margaret, what is it that’s out
⏹️ ▶️ John there that’s worth being compatible with in the ARM world, right? We still don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John if ARM will just sweep through the entire industry and like all PCs will be ARM and all server
⏹️ ▶️ John chips will be ARM. In that case, it’s really advantageous to sort of stay on the ARM train,
⏹️ ▶️ John even if you’re kind of off doing your own thing, just to say, oh, we are ARM compatible. Because you want to
⏹️ ▶️ John be in that ecosystem because it is an ecosystem. But as things stand now, Windows is x86,
⏹️ ▶️ John the server is still mostly x86 with ARM trying to make inroads there. Microsoft is trying to put
⏹️ ▶️ John Windows on ARM, but it’s not setting the world on fire. And so it’s an open question. Is there anything
⏹️ ▶️ John arm related that is worthwhile for Apple specifically to stay compatible with? So I think
⏹️ ▶️ John this is the Apple should wait and see, because it’s not clear which direction this is going in
⏹️ ▶️ John three to five years. It should be clear what arm has been able to
⏹️ ▶️ John carve out for itself versus what X86 has been able to defend.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks to our sponsors this week, Mack Weldon, Linode and Alex Weinstein music
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and thanks to our members who support us directly you You too can join them at atp.fm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco join and we will talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause it was
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John can find the show notes at atp.fm And if
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re into Twitter, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the anti-Marco Armin S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse It’s accidental, they
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t mean to Accidental, tech podcast so long.
Neutral: We’re sorry, Casey
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What did you end up doing about you decided you are or not going to repair
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your Tesla for hilarious amounts of money?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is currently being negotiated between the body shop and my insurance company. So I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They haven’t begun the work yet because they can’t agree on what the work should be and what it should cost. So we’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s I have nothing to report yet on that front.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right. Let’s get in those anticlimactic repair because it’s gonna you’re gonna get back a car that looks almost like the car that you
⏹️ ▶️ John got with some minor scratches gone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, the amount of effort and time and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somebody’s money, whether it’s mine or theirs, that’s going to go into repairing like three scratches.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it makes me crazy, but they’re really big scratches. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I turn the car in at the end of the lease, they’re going to charge me big money for those because it is significant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco damage, even though it looks very small. So I do have to get it fixed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I want to protect my future money. And right now insurance will possibly maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cover possibly some or all of it. So we’re getting there.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think it’ll probably work out. And I think it’s smart to make insurance pay for it because, you know, so it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John clear it’s a clear situation. Car hit one parked, right? Just
⏹️ ▶️ John done and let them argue amongst themselves that, you know, because here’s the thing, no matter how they do it, it will be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John Probably like it’s not it’s not an important mechanical part. There’s not any kind of safety concern. It’s purely cosmetic.
⏹️ ▶️ John the cosmetic issue in any kind of reasonable way, which is eminently possible. It’ll be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and I and like I’m not a big picky car person. Like if if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they like paint it in a certain way, that’s like subpar to car nerds. I wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even notice like whatever fix they do as it sits there in the parking lot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like as long as it’s enough to pass least turn in inspection, I don’t care how they do it. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I couldn’t care less. Like I I decided years ago, I decided that I’m no longer going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to even bother trying to treat my cars incredibly preciously. Like my cars are tools
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for me. And if it gets a little scuff here and there, I don’t really care as long as it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not gonna like cause problems for me in some way. I go through automatic car washes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you not remember the time that you came to visit me in the M5 and I had to somewhat teach you how to wash your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey own car? How quickly we forget.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, I didn’t forget. I just chose not to do it. It turns out watching your own car is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a very tedious and time consuming thing for which I don’t get the appropriate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco level of corresponding enjoyment or satisfaction to make it worth it.
⏹️ ▶️ John gosh. I’m just giving Casey nightmares about swirl marks.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, you know, actually you say that. I like having a clean
⏹️ ▶️ Casey car, but I actually am closer to Marco that I’m giving myself credit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for in that, you know, if there is, I don’t want to say damage, but like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things like a swirl mark, it happens like whatever it is, what it is. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the I’ve, as I get older, I in. It coincidentally, as I have more money with which to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey keep my cars perfect, I realize that cars will never be perfect and there’s nothing you can do. So for example, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey remember if I talked about it on the show, but early on in quarantine, uh, Declan dragged his car, his
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bike against the front of my car. And so there’s a gouge in the, well, not a gouge. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably dramatic, but there is a scratch, a scratch. You can feel like that. You can definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feel in my front bumper. And it’s been like that probably almost a year now. And I’d like to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get it fixed at some point, but you know what? It is what it is. It, it bothers me, but not so much that I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey running to a body shop to get it repaired. And I like, I very, very much like my cars
⏹️ ▶️ Casey being clean, which is yet another reason why the season of pollen, all the things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is, is just awful for me because not only does it make me have the sniffles,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not only does pollen jump under my hard contact lenses and feel like pins are stabbing me in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eye, but my cars are only ever clean for five minutes at a time and that drives me bananas.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But nevertheless, uh, I, I am very, I’m, I, I treat them preciously
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the sense sense that I like them to be clean. I like their tires to be shiny. I like their wheels to be as brake dust
⏹️ ▶️ Casey free as they can get. But if there are imperfections, there are imperfections and you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s the way it’s going to have to be.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I hate to tell you how long it’s been since I’ve washed my car, but we moved to the beach
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like last May. And since then,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, because I know that I’m always a short time away from from just driving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back to the beach and parking it in that parking lot for a month or whatever, I never think it’s worth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco washing it. Because I’m like, what am I gonna, I’m not gonna wash it and then go leave it in a parking lot to get rained on for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two weeks. That’s stupid. So I just haven’t gotten a car wash
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in well over a year. I mean, because before that was a few months of quarantine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not gonna go out and get a car wash during that time. And so I probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco haven’t gotten a car wash since at least like fall of 2019. Oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my God, oh my God.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I probably have you beat.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh God! How can you complain about your car getting nicked or your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey curb rash or anything like that when you never wash
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it? When you turn in a lease, they don’t charge you for never washing it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, no, no, I was more talking to John because I know that you’re a lost cause. I’m never turning
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in. No, I know you’re not turning your car in, but I thought you-
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I did get that body work done fix all of the bad scratches and everything and then
⏹️ ▶️ John put a bunch of new scratches back on it. But
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey yeah, I just,
⏹️ ▶️ John I should do it. I used to do it like once a year, but then
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it started to fall off. But anyway. Oh my god. Oh god,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John killing him, John. We’re killing him. I know, I know. Oh god.
⏹️ ▶️ John If I led a life of luxury, I’d probably clean my car more, but I have higher priorities.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, like Destiny? Oh, come on.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes, absolutely. That is a higher priority than car washing. Boo. things are
⏹️ ▶️ John high priority in car washing to me to each their own.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, to each their own, but boo this man.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, really, since my car is parked in a parking lot most of the time now, isn’t the rain just slowly washing it for me?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I don’t think that’s