428: A Series of Rectangles
29 Apr 2021A lot of follow-up in a race against an antihistamine.
Episode Description:
THE ATP STORE IS BACK!! Make your purchases until Friday, May 14.
- Pre-show: ⅔ of ATP has completed their journey on the vaccination train! Toot toot! 🚂💉
- “Fully vaccinated”
- Joanna Stern’s C-Fed Interview
- Spring 2021 Apple Event
- Apple TV
- Calibration
- Remote Design & Pricing
- No Acceleromter nor Gyroscope
- Apple TV pricing
- High-frame-rate HDR compatibility?
- AppleCare+ for Apple TV
- Extended AppleCare+ for Macs
- iMac
- Power brick/cable
- Upgrade #350: The Time for Color is Now
- 143 watts
- VESA mount
- Why not put Ethernet on all Mac adapters?
- Why have high-efficiency cores in a batteryLiss system?
- Power brick/cable
- iPad
- 12MP front-facing wide camera with Center Stage
- iPad RAM amount is listed 😱
- 12.9” iPad Pro and older Magic Keyboards
- AirTags: for tracking your luggage
- Apple Premium Podcasts
- John’s Eero & Smart Outlet update
- EV charging from Sam Abuelsamid of Wheel Bearings and Dave Nanian
- Apple TV
#askatp- What would it take to get you into this [phantom] Mac Pro, today, John? (via Brian Ashe)
- Do we use FileVault on our personal Macs? How come? (via Lingxiu Zhang)
System Preferences→Security & Privacy→FileVault- Mat Honan’s tale of woe
- What’s the longevity of the M1 look like? (via Johann Neubert)
- Post-show: Marco’s arms are on fire
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Become a member for ad-free episodes and our early-release, unedited “bootleg” feed!
Chapters
- ATP Store 🖼️
- Vaccination update
- What “fully vaccinated” means
- J-Stern interviewed C-Fed
- Apple TV follow-up
- iMac follow-up
- iPad Pro follow-up
- AirTags follow-up
- Apple Podcast Subscriptions follow-up
- Smart-outlet follow-up
- Casey’s fans
- EV fast-charging follow-up
- Sponsor: Backblaze
- #askatp: Replacing John’s Mac Pro
- #askatp: FileVault performance cost
- #askatp: M1 longevity
- Ending theme
- Post-show
ATP Store
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not feeling great
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco now. Save it for the show. Okay. Save it for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the show. Save it for the show. Yeah. So we have a lot of things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to… This is not really the show, but I’m trying to ease into it since I’ve cut Marco off. We have a lot of stuff to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cover. It’s going to be John Syracuse’s favorite kind of episode, an episode where it’s probably nothing but follow
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up. So brace yourselves, everybody. It is everyone’s favorite
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time of year. It is approaching WWDC time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So what does that mean? It means the ATP store is back
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and no snark. I really mean this. I’ve been really excited for this one. I feel like we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have a really good lineup this year. Not that they’ve been bad in other years, but I feel like this year, really good
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lineup. And so here’s what we’ve got. If you are listening to this now, recorded or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey live, you can go to ATP.fm slash store. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we have several different offerings. Let me briefly try to go through
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them all without John or Marco probably, John interrupting me, and then we will spend a little more time on each of them. We’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey got… Hey, I’m good at interrupting you too. Well, yes, but I thought John would have more thoughts on this one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyway, so we’ve got… Actually, you succeeded in making the point. Well done. All
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, so we’ve got several different shirts. We’ve got the M1 shirt. The
⏹️ ▶️ Casey front is our favorite six colors, you know, slash, slash, slash, with M1 on the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey front. The back, a certain John Siracusa spent an inordinate amount of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time recreating the chip diagram of the M1. It looks excellent. We have that in color on the front,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then it’s monochrome on the back. We also have that in monochrome on the front. So it’s just white
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ink on the front, but several different colors of shirts. We’ve got an ATP Performance shirt. So this is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of in the spirit of Under Armour, although it is not exactly Under Armour. So if you were wearing this while you are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sweating, it doesn’t stick to you and you don’t have to like scissor it off, it actually slides
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right off. Then we also have the classic logo shirt, the one that we’ve known and loved for several years
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now. We’ve got the pins that have been around forever and we’ll eventually run out of them, but that day is not today.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then my personal favorite, because this was my contribution, we have an ATP
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pint glass, an etched ATP pint glass, which I’m very excited about. So that’s the quick overview.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This will all be available. The sale will end Friday, May 14. This is where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do the same thing I do every year. For those of you who are good about this, I’m sorry for wasting a moment of your time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m sorry, but I got to do it every year, every time without fail.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey At within hours of the, of the sale ending, I get tweets. Is it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over? Oh, I forgot. Is it over? It’s over. Oh no, I forgot. Is it over? Yes, it’s over.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So please, if you’re listening to this and you are at all interested in any of these fantastic shirts
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or glasses or pins, now’s the time. Pull your car over if you’re in the car, pull over
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the side of the walkway that you’re on if you’re walking, or in all likelihood, you’re at home, which is where you probably should
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be. So stop what you’re doing at home, atp.fm.com slash store, now’s the time. All right, let’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go through this with a little more detail. John, the M1 shirt was, I think, 100% your work.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So would you like to dive in a little more and tell us a little more about it? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John for the people who don’t listen to the car segments or don’t care about them, or don’t understand what it is with our logo, Like
⏹️ ▶️ John the joke of our ATP logo is that since this, you know, since Accidental Tech Podcast came
⏹️ ▶️ John out of us doing a car podcast, it looks a lot like the M logo, the BMW
⏹️ ▶️ John M logo, which has some colored stripes leaning to the right and then an M. And so our show was a
⏹️ ▶️ John bunch of, you know, colored stripes, but it was the Apple colors and then a leaning A for ATP,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? This year, of course, we know the M1 is in all the Macs and the M1 is awesome. So it gave
⏹️ ▶️ John us a chance to make a shirt that actually has a bunch of colored stripes and a slanty M
⏹️ ▶️ John looks just like the BMW M logo. Please BMW don’t sue us, it’s parody.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so now finally we have an actual M shirt. Now BMW, the M1
⏹️ ▶️ John was a supercar and it was not, it didn’t have a logo or anything like this. Actually BMW makes their ones
⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit different but we took some artistic license. So that’s the idea behind the M1 shirt.
⏹️ ▶️ John So we’ve got the colored one, which I think is the most expensive to manufacture a shirt
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve ever made because every single one of those colors on the front, I think is a separate printing pass.
⏹️ ▶️ John Plus we print it on the back. So I think for the first time we had to do calculations to make sure we literally
⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t lose money in each shirt that we sold. So we apologize
⏹️ ▶️ John for the price. And speaking of the price of these shirts, and forget about shipping and VAT, I know they’re insanely expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just want to remind everybody, if you don’t care about shirts, you don’t care about pint glasses, you don’t want any of this junk in your life,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you just want to give us money, we have a way for you to do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey You can become an ATP
⏹️ ▶️ John member at ATP.FM slash join. And believe me, like if you want a shirt,
⏹️ ▶️ John get a shirt. But if you just want to give us money, we get way, way, way more money if you join
⏹️ ▶️ John as a member than if you buy a shirt. I know it seems ridiculous. Like how can you not be making a ton of money off these shirts?
⏹️ ▶️ John The shirts are here for people who want shirts. I want shirts. My kids want shirts. People want shirts.
⏹️ ▶️ John People want pint glasses. Get them if you want them. They’re awesome. They’re really cool. But if you don’t care about any of this
⏹️ ▶️ John merch and you just wanna give us money, atp.fm.com. And the synergy here is, if you do want a shirt,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you don’t wanna pay full price
⏹️ ▶️ John that shirt, if you’re an ATP member, you get 15% off every single thing in the store.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you can become a member today, become a member, get, you know, pay for one month of membership, get the 15% discount,
⏹️ ▶️ John save more money than you spent on the membership, buy a bunch of stuff, cancel next month. It’s really easy to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep. Oh, and I guess the colored M1 shirt. So the monochrome one is our attempt to let people
⏹️ ▶️ John have this shirt for less money, because the monochrome is just one color of ink so you don’t have to do umpteen printing passes on it.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the cool thing about the M1 monochrome shirt is it comes in a ton of colors. Let me look at how many different colors
⏹️ ▶️ John we have of this thing. We have like blue, red, purple, teal, green, pink,
⏹️ ▶️ John like a lighter purple, like tri-blend versions of all those. So just because
⏹️ ▶️ John we show a blue shirt and you’re like, I don’t want a blue shirt, look at all the colors. A lot of them are really cool looking.
⏹️ ▶️ John Lots of different styles, different materials. when possible, we give every color and every possible material.
⏹️ ▶️ John not always possible. Some colors are only available in cotton, some only available in dry blend, but just check out all
⏹️ ▶️ John the colors. Same thing with the performance chart. It comes in a bunch of different colors and styles, so check it out.
⏹️ ▶️ John And as for the pint glass, it is not printed, it is etched. We already had someone ask whether that’s dishwasher safe.
⏹️ ▶️ John I assume so. We will have follow up next week to confirm one or the other, but that’s part of the reason we didn’t choose
⏹️ ▶️ John printing. Etching is actually scratching of the glass, so I think that’ll hold up well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, yep, I’m super excited about this. All of this, and I can’t stress enough, John,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can you tell the story of recreating the M1 for the back of the M1 shirt? Because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you went through and just a preposterous amount of work to get this to look right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John It’s not that much work.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, like, so it looks, if you look at it, you’ll say, hey, I recognize that kind of from like Apple’s presentations where
⏹️ ▶️ John they show this stylized, not really realistic version of the M1 that shows the four high-performance
⏹️ ▶️ John cores and the four efficiency cores and the GPU cores. It’s not a reflection of the physical chip, but it
⏹️ ▶️ John is kind of an abstract diagram that Apple uses But of course we can’t use Apple’s graphics because they belong
⏹️ ▶️ John to Apple’s but I can in fact sit there for hours and hours in a vector design
⏹️ ▶️ John program and Make a series of rectangles that more or less approximates exactly what
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple had. So Thank you Apple for the inspiration for this chip design,
⏹️ ▶️ John even though it doesn’t reflect reality And yes, I did drive a single line of that chip myself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I think a series of rectangles might be be underestimating how many lines
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John there are in this drawing.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, they really are all rectangles. Like, it’s just a lot of rectangles. And the other thing that I discovered
⏹️ ▶️ John when drawing it is that Apple’s drawings are not symmetrical. Like, when you see a bunch of lines
⏹️ ▶️ John that you think are evenly spaced, they’re not actually evenly spaced. Because I was trying to do it on a grid with, like, GridSnap,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I realized when I did the same number of lines as Apple, it would be like, they wouldn’t line up correctly. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s artisanally hand-created. It’s very interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I’m really, really excited for this. Way back when, it was one of our earlier shirt sales when we had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey done the, how would you describe this? I think this was Marco’s idea, but it was a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey rounded, rect outline that was approximately the proportions of the then new Apple Watch. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it said Accidental Tech Podcast on it. And we did this years and years and years ago. And I think this was the same
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shirt that we did the edition, the very first edition, if I’m not mistaken.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And if you weren’t around for that, we basically printed one or had one printed in with like gold foil or something like that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I don’t think it was actual literal gold, but nevertheless.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, we actually tried to make it literal gold, but they, and there are people who print in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gold leaf, but like it wasn’t going to work out. Like there was some practical reason why, like you, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of can’t really do it. It’s technically possible, but it’s a bad idea.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. So we attempted to do that and it didn’t work out. But one of the shirts we did was a, was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the sport shirt. And we did that in this, again, it’s not literally Under Armour, but you know, armor style, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, I don’t know how to describe it. That doesn’t that in a flattering way, cause I would say like almost like a plasticky, but that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sounds terrible. It’s not plasticky, but nevertheless, we did that. And that is like my designated workout shirt. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I only bought one of them. So I, I use it a lot and it’s, I need, it needs,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it needs brothers and sisters. So hence the ATP performance shirt, which I’m really excited about. And again, that comes like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John said, in several different colors. Uh, and I cannot tell you enough how excited I am for the ATP. Pine Glass. Years
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ago, Plex sent me a bunch of swag just to be nice because Plex is awesome. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of them was a pine glass with a printed Plex logo on it. And it is my favorite pine glass. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even though I’m not a beer drinker, it’s, you know, a pint is a perfect size for all sorts of beverages, for water, for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey soda, for any number of things, for mixed drinks if you’re aggressive. So, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey am really excited to get this pine glass in the house and have some friends for my Plex pine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey glass as well. I am super stoked. This is all again until Friday, May 14th. I won’t belabor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the point, but please, if you’re even thinking about it, now’s the time. Pull over, stop what you’re doing. atp.fm slash
⏹️ ▶️ Casey store, atp.fm slash join. And again, please go to your membership page or your member page
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and see what your discount code is and find your discount code and use that when you check out. Save yourself 15%.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So thank you for entertaining us. I appreciate it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we’ll move right along and continue
⏹️ ▶️ John before we continue. I wanted to thank Casey and reiterate that because I totally forgot if you’re an ATP
⏹️ ▶️ John member you get 15% off if you go to your member page and get your discount code. You actually have
⏹️ ▶️ John have a link to the member page on it. Fm slash store. So you log in as your member. You go to your member page there. You see like your
⏹️ ▶️ John private feeds and all the other stuff and you will also see your discount code copy and paste that discount code into the promo
⏹️ ▶️ John code field when you check out from the cotton Bureau page and that’s how That’s how you get your
Vaccination update
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving right along, we have other things that we need to celebrate. Two-thirds of ATP
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have completed asterisk, asterisk, their journey on the vaccination train, which we’ll talk about that in a second. But Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how are you feeling, buddy?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What is that from? I know the line, but what is that from?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So you got yours, your second shot yesterday?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Yeah. I’ve had friends who have had worse days after,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I’m not having the nothing reaction that I think many people have,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey for sure. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had a mostly nothing reaction. Erin also got her second yesterday, and she, I think, is on the same,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, path that you are. She’s not bad, but she’s not feeling good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco On my desk in front of me are two Benadryl pills that I will be taking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco near the end of the show, which will start a timeline after this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, I look, let me start by saying I might have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco committed a crime.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I gave false statements. They asked if I had had any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the symptoms recently and I said no, but that wasn’t entirely true.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You see, my kid had a cold about a week ago. It basically it was going around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the whole school, the whole town, everybody has this cold and it’s not COVID. If people have been tested, it’s fine. We know it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not that. So this cold has hit me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One of the weird symptoms of this cold is that every night for, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most nights for the last three or four nights, I’ve gotten like hives on my arms and legs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Just itch for a while. I’ve never gotten hives in my life. I have mild allergies here and there. Never had hives
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for anything. So that’s interesting. And it seems to completely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unrelated. I’ve done the debugging of like, all right, what are the factors that have changed?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What could this possibly be? Could it be food? Could it be laundry detergent? Like all that everything? It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s none of those things like nothing correlates in in a direct way to this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco except I did some research and apparently Hives are often
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apparently the result of like certain viruses like sometimes you just get a cold and one of the things it does to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You is give you hives for the duration of the cold I had never heard of this, but when you research hives,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s what turns up from like the more reputable sources, which by the way are hard to find.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But anyway, so I decided, you know, we had this appointment
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was set from when we got the first shot. They automatically set you the second appointment three weeks later. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I thought, you know, I can, I can not get my second shot, but there’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco risk in that, that like all the testing that’s been done on the vaccines
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the massive amount of data that we have at this thing is ridiculously, overwhelmingly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco safe. Like I’m pretty sure you’re more likely to die on the way to the vaccine site in a car accident
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than you are to die from the vaccine. I know that we’ve tested this very widely, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ve tested it with people getting a shot, you know, once and then getting a second one three weeks later.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If I get my second one six weeks later, then that’s going to be a lot less
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tested of a situation.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’d be fine. Like the three weeks is the soonest you can possibly give it because they’re rushing to get
⏹️ ▶️ John the vaccine. Most vaccines, they wait six months to a year. So just FYI, I know it’s too late now, but you could, you could have waited
⏹️ ▶️ John a year and it would be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and I, I know logically, I know like, and I mean, again, like the way mRNA
⏹️ ▶️ Marco vaccines work is so remarkably amazing and remarkably safe compared to, you know, most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the things. Like I’m not, I wasn’t, I wasn’t too concerned. I’m like, okay, that would be like an unknown
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or I could just go get it now, even though I kind of have a weird cold and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco roll the dice on that risk. And I decided to do, do that instead
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I wanted to get this done.
⏹️ ▶️ John Your reasoning about health decisions is suspect on many levels. I mean, you’re talking about the thing that’s tested.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re asking those questions for a reason, presumably because they don’t want you to take it when you have a cold, but you’re okay
⏹️ ▶️ John doing that. Anyway, I’m sure everything is fine. I’m sure it’s fine. I’m just saying I feel
⏹️ ▶️ John like your reasoning is not sound for any of this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, regardless, maybe people don’t always make the right decisions, but regardless, that’s what I did.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I still have the weird nighttime hives on my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco arms and legs, but otherwise, like from the vaccine, I seem to only have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have worsened my cold by making myself extremely tired all day today.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Just like really just like knocked out tired, but I don’t have like the fever that everyone says
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they get and everything. So I think I’m doing okay. And ultimately, I mean, geez, I did two episodes of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the show with Covid.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco was going to say like you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John really on that. You’re really on the Covid tour this year. You get
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Covid, you get the vaccine.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now you’re getting the second shot while you have some other cold like you just you’re rounding all the basis here. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I think you’re, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ll get a fourth
⏹️ ▶️ John a third COVID shot in six months. Who knows? Thanks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Maybe I see this. I got the Pfizer. Maybe I get the maternal one also just just for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah, why not? All right.
What “fully vaccinated” means
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so we should start with some follow-up, and this relates actually to what we were just talking about. So this is one of those
⏹️ ▶️ Casey moments where I swear at some point I said something, but either it got cut or-
⏹️ ▶️ John said it, it got cut in the edit.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, so I was gonna say either it got cut in the edit or there was enough distance between
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the thing that I said wrong in my in-show correction, which does happen sometimes. You know, I’ll say something five minutes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into the show and then I’ll correct it 10 minutes into the show, and we’ve already gotten inundated with emails after the five-minute
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mark about how wrong I am, which, you know, at that moment I was wrong, That’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s why it got edited out, because your correction was distant from it, and Marco was trimming the fat. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. So last week, I was making reference to being, quote unquote,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fully vaccinated, which I don’t know if that necessarily is the wrong nomenclature,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it certainly presented the wrong implication. And I would just like to state clearly that, yes, even last week,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I knew that it’s not until two weeks after your second shot, if you’re on the two-shot system
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you are considered completely and utterly vaccinated. All I was trying to say at the time, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey again, I probably should have chosen better words is, I have received the mandatory two shots that I need.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And this was at some point or another, this related to the Gruber term, maxinated, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think is quite funny and I have embraced. And Gruber defined maxinated as two weeks after your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey final shot. And so I am not yet maxinated. I am halfway to vaccinated in the sense that I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey got my first, or excuse me, I got my second shot about a week ago. So yes, you are not fully vaccinated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey until two weeks after your second shot. I am well aware of that. I am sorry that that got cut in the last episode.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As am I, because it was probably my fault.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, you know, like I said, I think I clarified. We went off on like a tangent, if I recall correctly. And then by the time I got the
⏹️ ▶️ John Us? Yeah, if you listen to the tangent, you see why it was cut, but that’s where you put your correction. Yeah, exactly. Got
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, Austin, a tangent,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right. That never happens.
J-Stern interviewed C-Fed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving right along, some time, what was it, just a day or two ago, who is this? Joanna Stern
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had an interview with Hair Force One, otherwise known as Craig Federighi. And it was a pretty good
⏹️ ▶️ Casey interview. It was only eight minutes long. You can find it on YouTube. And interestingly, at seven and a quarter minutes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Joanna asks him, hey, you know, Tim has said that he’s going to be out in 10 years.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Are you going to be the next CEO? And John, what did he say? Also,
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s the thing. Yeah. I would encourage everyone to watch his interview because it’s really short. and also because his hair seems to be at half
⏹️ ▶️ John mast. I don’t know if you had a, if you had a, this is like the first bad CFED hair day I’ve ever seen. Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John it was like really humid there. Yeah, it looked kind of like that. Or maybe he just got out of bed, I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John But that was the question, it’s like, oh, your name has been floated as the next CEO, which is a topic that we discussed in the show a couple episodes
⏹️ ▶️ John ago, who are the possible people who could be in line for next CEO. And when we discussed
⏹️ ▶️ John it, my attitude towards Federighi being the next CEO was like, ah, it doesn’t seem like something he’s interested
⏹️ ▶️ John in, you know, because he just seems like he’s more interested in tech stuff. And I’m sure he knows how hard Tim’s
⏹️ ▶️ John job is. I’m not sure he has any, you know, it was all about like whoever was going to be CEO was going to really have to
⏹️ ▶️ John want that job. And it’s a difficult job. And it’s in many ways not as much fun as being more technical
⏹️ ▶️ John level. So he got asked the question and his answer was, get out of here. No, I
⏹️ ▶️ John think he said irresponsible. Yeah, that would be irresponsible. That’s insanity. Forget it. Right. But
⏹️ ▶️ John watch the video. That’s why we have a timestamp link in the show notes. It brings you directly to that question.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can see his answer. What he says, the words, the transcript is, oh, that’s silly,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, whatever. But the way he says it, so, CFED wants to be CEO.
⏹️ ▶️ John That was my read on it anyway. My read on it was, yes, it was a silly, oh, forget it, that’s so ridiculous,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? But the way he said it makes me think he’s open to the idea. So I’m starting
⏹️ ▶️ John to come around on that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I still don’t think that A, he would want it, or B, he should be the CEO because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we know him to some degree. The three of us have all met him at some point, right? Like I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had a couple of conversations with him like WBCs and stuff. You can tell through and through,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he’s a nerd like us. And a nerd like us should not be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the CEO of Apple in 2021 position. Because like as I was saying, at this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco point, it’s more of like a, it’s almost like a political and diplomatic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of job on a lot of levels. And that’s not a job for a nerd. That’s a job for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically a tech-savvy politician.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I was saying that because he’s a nerd, he wouldn’t want it because that’s not what he’s into. But in terms of
⏹️ ▶️ John could a nerd do that job, well, here’s the thing. Yes, he’s the nerd, but he’s so high up on the
⏹️ ▶️ John org chart that surely his last two or three jobs have been like 98% political managerial BS.
⏹️ ▶️ John It just so happens that he’s also still super technical and super into that. But I think as
⏹️ ▶️ John Steve Jobs at least has shown, whatever it is that you’re super into, you can still dig down
⏹️ ▶️ John on even when you’re CEO. Like you can just kind of choose which things you delegate, you know what I mean? So that,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I’m basing it off like the way he said, like a three word answer. So this is obviously silly,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? But I no longer think it’s ridiculous that he might be interested
⏹️ ▶️ John in it. And I don’t think it’s ridiculous that he might do an okay job at it. Just because his strengths are
⏹️ ▶️ John completely different than Tim Cook’s, and Tim Cook’s were completely different than Steve’s, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re all inhabiting such a high level in the org chart that they
⏹️ ▶️ John all could do a reasonable job as CEO. They would just be very different kinds of CEOs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that’s true. And the rumblings I’ve heard from friends at Apple is that, you know, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some of them like CFED and some of them don’t, but I’ve never heard anyone even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think about breathing that he’s not an incredibly smart man.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Everyone universally, the friends of mine who like him, the friends of mine that don’t, all say that he’s extremely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bright. And if you look at this interview, now granted, I’m sure it was heavily edited, but it seems like not only is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he smart, but he’s a very cool customer in a very Tim Cook sort of way. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know that he would get the nod, and I’m not 100% convinced he would want it, but I do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think if I were a betting man, I’d say he would definitely take a stab at it. And the other interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing is, he is extremely technical. I think it was Marco a second ago that said he’s a nerds nerd. He really, really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is. Right. He’s still at least looking at code from time to time. I think there have been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey times that rank and file engineers have had to be like, Craig, stop,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey please don’t make commits. No, no, no, no,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no, please stop. You have much more important things. That may be BS, I might be making that up, but I’m pretty sure that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have heard stories about that years, not too many years ago, that this is still a thing that happens from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time to time. And he seems to really get it. So I only met him
⏹️ ▶️ Casey once. It was when Marco, if I recall correctly, you had spotted him across the field at the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bash when it was still in San Francisco. And all of a sudden you basically grabbed my arm and said, follow me, let’s go.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What is going on? And next thing I know, I’m posing with Federighi and shaking his hand. And he was an extremely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind fellow. And so anyways, yeah, I would be surprised if he was the one to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get the nod, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was interested in it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did pick up there was a little bit of oddity to his tone of reaction, but I attributed that to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco discomfort with the question as opposed to actually wanting the job. Again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve heard similar things, Casey, of how he really is very involved with the tech.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can’t imagine that he has any interest in doing all the other crap that the CEO
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has to do. He’s really into the software and the tech. He doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even seem to be that into a lot of the product design and product decisions stuff, let alone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the massive amount of operational and political stuff that CEOs have to deal with,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco financial stuff. There’s so much stuff that CEOs have to do these days, especially the CEO of Apple in 2021 or 2031 or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever it is. It’s not a job
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that somebody who is very, very technical would probably really want to do. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco honestly, he’s probably really happy where he is, because where he is, is about as high up as you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go without having a lot more of that other stuff come into your job description that he
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably doesn’t want.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I think, you know, people always have aspirations. People are always enthusiastic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and trying to get to the next, you know, next big thing. But I totally hear what you’re saying. I could go on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with this conversation for another hour. We got a lot to go through. So let’s just move right along.
Apple TV follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple TV. So calibration. I thought we had said this or implied this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey last episode, but I guess not. The whole thing where you calibrate the TV, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is I guess how we phrased it, you’re not actually calibrating the TV itself. You’re calibrating the Apple TV’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey output for your specific TV. The idea being that when your TV
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is tuned to the Apple TV, when you’re using the Apple TV as your input, then it will look incredible because you’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey used your iPhone and the Apple TV in concert in order to tune the output for your specific TV.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is that a better way of describing it?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, we did say that it adjusts the TV’s outputs, but I didn’t delve into what the implications
⏹️ ▶️ John of that are. I mean, the obvious first implication is that means that if you calibrate the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John TV’s output to look better on your TV, that only affects the Apple TV, because when you’re not looking
⏹️ ▶️ John at the Apple TV, that was the only thing whose output you calibrated. Like you’re not calibrating the
⏹️ ▶️ John display device, you’re calibrating the signal that comes over the HDMI cable into your display device
⏹️ ▶️ John and adjusting that signal to account for whatever weirdness there is in your display device. But when you use another display
⏹️ ▶️ John device like your game console or your cable box or whatever it is that you have, anything you did with the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John TV is totally irrelevant because you were only basically telling the Apple TV to output different
⏹️ ▶️ John signals. Second thing is, perhaps less obvious, television sets, especially modern ones, have tons
⏹️ ▶️ John of of adjustments that the Apple TV has no access to.
⏹️ ▶️ John There are tons of image processing things that happen on the TV itself, and there’s nothing you can do to
⏹️ ▶️ John the output from the Apple TV to enable, disable, or adjust those features at all. And if
⏹️ ▶️ John your TV is super duper off, there’s nothing the output of your HDMI signal can do to account for that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or if it could account for it, it could just make it much worse, because if you’re red and you’re green, you’re super low, the only way it can
⏹️ ▶️ John get it in balance is bringing your blue super low, and now your whole image level is down. This it’s very very complicated all
⏹️ ▶️ John this is to say that you should actually calibrate your television and Not
⏹️ ▶️ John calibrate the output of one of your HDMI devices to account for the idiosyncrasies of
⏹️ ▶️ John your television set So please calibrate your TV if you want to do this now all that said
⏹️ ▶️ John This Apple thing is probably better than nothing and if you watch most of your TV through the Apple TV It
⏹️ ▶️ John might help some but yeah you know
⏹️ ▶️ John Quinn Nelson snazzy labs snazzy YouTube channel has an upcoming
⏹️ ▶️ John video about the Apple calibration versus a real calibration. I’m really curious to see what he finds but
⏹️ ▶️ John my My assessment of this Apple calibration thing right now is pretty low. So unless it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John this is some very surprising results I would say please calibrate your television and not just your Apple TV
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sounds good. All right, the remote has a slightly rounded back, which I think I had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seen before we recorded but I don’t believe we brought up last time. So that should be nice to at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey least be able to pick up the correct side facing upwards, which is definitely an improvement.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey How do you feel about that, John?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and even last time he said it had no acknowledgement of human hands, here’s a minor acknowledgement. Now, the Siri
⏹️ ▶️ John remote also had slightly curved sides, so you could pick it up with your fingernails off the table. This
⏹️ ▶️ John one is a more of a uniform sort of U shape along the entire bottom.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not sloped enough, and it’s not like it’s still not gonna be You’re gonna pick it up or you’re gonna feel like you’re a giant and this is something
⏹️ ▶️ John for a toddler Because that’s how small the remote is but credit where credit is due. They slightly curve the bottom
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed and then eric weber writes that the original siri remote was 80 But it was dropped
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to 60 with the refreshed white ring when the original apple tv 4k was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey introduced in 2017 So
⏹️ ▶️ John this remote is not cheaper than the siri remote. It’s only cheaper than the original siri remote. So that’s a shame
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There was a big brouhaha over the last several days that the new Siri remote does not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have an accelerometer or gyroscope for gaming on the Apple TV, which is a bummer.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, especially since it costs the same amount and it doesn’t have a U1 in it as we discussed last week. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not sure where the extra money went. It’s got a smaller touch pad, a
⏹️ ▶️ John similar number of buttons. It’s made of aluminum instead of being aluminum, glass
⏹️ ▶️ John and metal or whatever the other one was. I don’t know. Anyway, I don’t quite understand why
⏹️ ▶️ John this lacks those features, other than like the touch pad’s not big enough to play games with anyway, so why should they bother?
⏹️ ▶️ John But really, if you’re gonna play games on the Apple TV, you should buy a controller. You shouldn’t use the Siri remote. And
⏹️ ▶️ John apparently you can’t use this remote if the games require an accelerometer or gyroscope.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Is anybody playing games on Apple TV?
⏹️ ▶️ John I hope they’re not playing them with their remote, if they are. I mean, I guess you can play Crossy Road with their remote. Any game that has one button.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We did. Like when it first came out, We played a lot of Crusher, we played Badland, but ultimately
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we just kind of fell out of favor with the Apple TV as a gaming platform because we tried a bunch of games. I even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bought two of the controllers, like from two different branded Apple TV
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MFI controllers. And the gaming scene is just so, it feels like back in the 90s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you bought the wrong system. Like it feels like you have like the 3DO and you’re waiting for good games to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco come out and you’re like, well, there’s not a lot here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’re used to that being a Genesis person.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, no way. Come on. Ha ha ha ha.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too easy. I couldn’t resist. No, it’s more like a 32X. It’s like you bought a 32X thinking, oh, there’s going to be a lot of games for this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then just nothing happens.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, if you subscribe to Apple One, you should at least check out Apple Arcade because they just added a whole infusion of games,
⏹️ ▶️ John including a bunch of known good games from the pre-Apple Arcade days, only without
⏹️ ▶️ John ads and an app purchase. So if you’re getting it for free anyway, you might as well check it out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so anyway, to come back to this lack of gyroscope and accelerometer, apparently if you try to play a game that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey requires it and you don’t have a, a like proper game controller hooked up, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple say, to play this game on your Apple TV, you need to connect the Apple TV remote, parenthesis, first generation,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey parenthesis, or a compatible PlayStation, Xbox, or MFI controller. If I were to read that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as a regular person, I wouldn’t have a clue what MFI meant.
⏹️ ▶️ John I wouldn’t have a clue what Apple TV remote, parenthesis,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey first generation means. That’s true
⏹️ ▶️ John too. Yeah, absolutely. And there’s a note about this that Apple TV remote is what it’s called in countries where Siri is not
⏹️ ▶️ John available on the Apple TV, but otherwise it’s called the Siri remote. But no one knows
⏹️ ▶️ John what Siri remote first generation is and no one knows what Apple remote first generation is, but people do know what PlayStation, Xbox controllers
⏹️ ▶️ John are, so at least they have a fighting chance.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Somebody, Odin wrote in with an interesting point about Apple TV pricing. So as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everyone else has been, we’ve been lamenting the fact that it is a very expensive box to do the sorts of things that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it does. And Odin writes, with regard to the pricing, neither comes, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple TV doesn’t come with an HDMI cable so you can’t even connect it to your TV right out of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the box. Meanwhile, Google and Amazon’s $30 streaming devices plug directly into an HDMI port.
⏹️ ▶️ John Neither meaning like the 4K or the HD. Like it makes sense if you think about it for a second and you know how big the box
⏹️ ▶️ John is. Of course, there’s not an HDMI cable in there. It’s this tiny little box. It just got enough room for the little puck and the remote.
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s another, you’ll get it, you’ll say like, yay, here’s this new Apple TV, let me hook it up, and you realize, unless you
⏹️ ▶️ John already have a spare HDMI cable, unless you disconnect another input and put this one in its place, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John something else you have to buy. Because, you know, it’s just not expensive enough to
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey support the price
⏹️ ▶️ John of that cable. It’s pretty crummy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Did the Apple TV ever come with an HDMI cable? I don’t remember.
⏹️ ▶️ John No. I don’t think so. I think it’s always, maybe the one that was basically a Mac mini, do you remember that one?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think that had HDMI output. I think that was component. Maybe. I never had one, I don’t remember. But no, they never came with HDMI.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had one of those. They never came with HDMI cables.
⏹️ ▶️ John And yes, the chatroom asked if the PS5 does come with an HDMI cable. And it’s good that it does, because PS5
⏹️ ▶️ John supports HDMI 2.1, and most people don’t have an HDMI 2.1 compatible cable just laying around
⏹️ ▶️ John if they haven’t bought AV equipment in a while.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Correction, it did have HDMI out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also had component, in my defense.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was the one that ran Mac OS 10.4 or something. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was basically, it was like a little Celeron in there, it was a whole little low-powered, like 400
⏹️ ▶️ Marco megahertz Celeron computer, or something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John And a hard drive, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I believe so.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was a little Mac, it ran Mac OS.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do not remember this at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all. It was the one that, it basically acted like an iPod, you had to sync things to it from your Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it was a whole thing. I think it was introduced
⏹️ ▶️ John at the iPhone event in 2007, was it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, originally it was, well, I think it was announced as ITV earlier that year, but I think they introduced it then as Apple TV.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was introduced at one event, or it was previewed at one event, and then I think it was shown off at the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John As bad as the current crop of Apple TVs are, this one was worse, so just be glad things have improved.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco For the time, it was really interesting. For the
⏹️ ▶️ John time, TiVo embarrassed it, so I’m not sure.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, here we go. We need a different sound effect other than a ding for the TiVo.
⏹️ ▶️ John know about TiVo much, I’m just saying. Back when the first Apple TV came out, Tivo is just
⏹️ ▶️ John a thousand times better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving right along. John, tell me what is the deal with high frame rate, high frame rate HDR
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyway? Like what is the story there?
⏹️ ▶️ John We talked about that as a possible reason that Marco should get the fancy new Apple TV. Oh, don’t you want to see a high frame rate HDR
⏹️ ▶️ John video, meaning higher than like, you know, 30 frames per second or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Chris Jennings tells us that apparently, according to his conversations
⏹️ ▶️ John with Apple support, which isn’t always exactly correct, But according to these conversations from a theoretically
⏹️ ▶️ John knowledgeable Apple source in Apple support, you can get
⏹️ ▶️ John the high frame rate HDR features on the older Apple TV 4K too, that it’s basically
⏹️ ▶️ John a software feature, not a hardware feature. Now, initially I thought, well, that can’t be the case because only the new Apple TV
⏹️ ▶️ John 4K supports HDMI 2.1. And I know you need HDMI 2.1 to support 120 frames per second and stuff like that. But
⏹️ ▶️ John it turns out that even though the new Apple TV has HDMI 2.1, it only supports
⏹️ ▶️ John up to 4K at 60 frames per second. Even though HDMI 2.1, the standard,
⏹️ ▶️ John can do 4K at 120 frames per second, the fancy new Apple TV doesn’t go higher than 60.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the old Apple TV 4K supported HDMI 2.0a, which stops at
⏹️ ▶️ John 4K 60, but I don’t know if the old Apple TV 4K before the software update can do 4K 60.
⏹️ ▶️ John So anyway, it’s still Still an open question, but it seems clear that if you’re looking for 4K at 120 frames per
⏹️ ▶️ John second from your new Apple TV, it can’t currently do that, even though technically the wire coming out of it can
⏹️ ▶️ John support that. I guess we’ll just wait to have to get these things in our houses and see if
⏹️ ▶️ John we can play back 4K 60 frames per second HDR video on an old Apple TV
⏹️ ▶️ John 4K with the new tvOS update. But according to Apple support, that is a thing that can happen.
⏹️ ▶️ John The other theory I have is that maybe high frame rate HDR via AirPlay requires the new on Apple TV and it only
⏹️ ▶️ John works wired or downloaded to the thing with the old
⏹️ ▶️ John one. I don’t know, it’s very confusing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Better get that 64 gig model in case it’s only downloaded. Yeah, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, yeah, yeah. All right, and AppleCare Plus is available for the first time for Apple TV, providing three years
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of technical support and additional hardware coverage, including up to two incidents of accidental damage protection
⏹️ ▶️ Casey every 12 months. It’s $30 for all of that. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey first thought, why would one want this? But then it occurred to me when I was still with a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey true jobby job, there were Apple TVs in like every conference room. And I would assume that this is a corporate thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, no, you forget, or maybe you’ve been lucky enough not to know this. It’s a stupid remote. The Siri
⏹️ ▶️ John remote was covered in glass. People were shattering them all the time. It’s not like your Apple TV, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not like your Apple TV puck is gonna get damaged, I hope, like it’s usually just sitting with the TV or whatever, it’s this stupid
⏹️ ▶️ John remote. Now, I think the new remote looks much, much sturdier because it’s just aluminum and plastic buttons and there’s no big
⏹️ ▶️ John glass thing. But I’ve seen so many pictures of completely shattered, like the glass diving
⏹️ ▶️ John board on the Siri remotes. So I just wanted to bring those up just because if you’re afraid of
⏹️ ▶️ John that happening or if for some reason you’re buying the one that still has the glass remote, you can
⏹️ ▶️ John actually get AppleCare for it. And I think the only reason this exists is because of all of the people breaking their Siri
⏹️ ▶️ John remote and then being super angry that it cost 60 bucks or in the past 80 bucks to replace the stupid remote that they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s a good point, I hadn’t considered that.
⏹️ ▶️ John The chat room says that the Apple TV remote is not covered by AppleCare or was not covered by AppleCare. I’m assuming this
⏹️ ▶️ John new AppleCare for the Apple TV covers everything. And when they say accidental damage, I’m assuming
⏹️ ▶️ John they include accidental damage to the remote. But if you have any questions, ask Apple to make sure before you buy it, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it is only 30 bucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Is it very likely that you would accidentally damage the box?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I guess if it’s in a conference room or being wheeled around on a cart and you drop it and it cracks,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. maybe yank out the cable and it breaks the connector.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, man. But all I know is it’s this coming Friday, which as we record is like a day
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and a half away that I can finally order a new one. And I am super excited.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is pretty funny though. Like there was, I think somebody wrote in to point this out, but like the new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one isn’t that much better than the outgoing one. Like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually, most of the newness of it is the new remote, which you can now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get for all of them, or you will be able to get for all of them, you know, once orders go up. And it’s an A12 versus an A10X,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but like the A10X and A12 are actually not as far apart as you would think. And-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did read that the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John A10X has a better CPU
⏹️ ▶️ John than the A12, which I’m not sure that I buy, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, the A12 certainly will be lower power and for doing the same amount of work, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco suppose. Yeah, it seems like this was an update mostly to the remote and Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically, you know, speed bumped barely the box. And I’m okay with that, because the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco remote was the biggest problem. I still, I’m still amused at how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bad the pricing is, and that they still offer two capacities.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But, you know, I’m hoping that the remote will be good, and we will find out. Honestly, though, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t think I’m even gonna buy the new box. I think I’m only gonna buy the remotes, because I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look at the box, and I’m like, well, what am I spending the extra $120 for the box for? I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really getting a lot for that, I don’t think.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can understand that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Real-time follow-up, they were looking at the apple.com slash support slash product slash Apple TV,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it says the AppleCare Plus does cover your Apple TV, included Siri Remote and PowerCord.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not called Siri Remote anymore, Apple, update your page. And up to two incidents of accidental damage. It looks
⏹️ ▶️ John like the remote is covered under the new AppleCare. And one more AppleCare thing here that I snuck in.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is not Apple TV related, but apparently now AppleCare Plus coverage for the Mac can be extended
⏹️ ▶️ John beyond three years. You just keep paying for it. So they always have the thing where you can pay like per month,
⏹️ ▶️ John but then you could also pay one lump sum and get the three years. Now at the end of the three years, you can just keep paying, I
⏹️ ▶️ John presume, on a yearly or monthly or whatever plan. We’ll put a link in the show notes for more details on this. So if you
⏹️ ▶️ John have a Mac and you’re always annoyed that even with the fancy AppleCare plus, you know, three year
⏹️ ▶️ John bulk purchase thing, it just ends after three years, now you can keep paying and keep getting that AppleCare if you want to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s actually really nice. You know, like I would have definitely used that on my iMac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, you know, people who buy like, you know, really expensive Macs and use them for more than three years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s a really nice feature. I wonder like how long will it go though? Like there has to be some limit, right? Because they,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco otherwise they would be, like Apple would therefore be on the hook to replace your like seven year old Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or something. Like there’s probably some limit.
⏹️ ▶️ John They have a time horizon where like the products become like obsolete or something in Apple parlance. And
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re like, I’m sure there is a limit on it, but just going past three years is useful. And
⏹️ ▶️ John the longer you go, the more likely it is you’re gonna need that coverage. So if, and if the price doesn’t increase, which I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John think it does, I don’t think increases with time, other than just like the normal sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John inflationary increases of AppleCare and all their products. Yeah, it might be a good deal for people if they keep you the max for a long
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hey, going back to the Apple TV for a second, I am going to be placing an order Friday morning. Do I,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey why would I spend the extra $20 for the 64 gig one? I’m never gonna play games on it. I almost never, I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey remember a time I’ve ever downloaded anything to
⏹️ ▶️ John You got a whole dollar screensaver video.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, you joke, but that actually is a reasonable answer because those screensavers are so good. But like, I don’t think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey worth 20 bucks to do that. Is it? Like, why would I get the big one?
⏹️ ▶️ John I think $20 is so little for doubling the storage. I’m just might get it anyway, just for the hell
⏹️ ▶️ John I have the Arial screensaver on my Mac and I looked at how big the folder of downloads is and it’s 54 gigs. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s big. It is not small, especially for a computer with the monitor you have.
⏹️ ▶️ John So, you know, if you get the 32 gig Apple TV, you certainly won’t have all of the screensaver video cached
⏹️ ▶️ John locally, and I know that’s gonna really pain you.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That’s interesting
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey actually. With your gigabit internet connection. Exactly, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’ve never noticed this. Yep, all right, well we’ll see how I feel. But sitting here now, I think I’m just going to get the 32.
iMac follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, moving on to the iMac. The power brick slash cable,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this was brought up, I think I first saw this with Jason Snell. He apparently cut a, I think it was a two meter
⏹️ ▶️ Casey string and hung it off the back of a standing desk while it was in standing mode. And he said that the power brick
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would probably be dangling in the air because the two meters isn’t quite enough for his particular standing desk, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John What is this meters business? Analog is affecting you. We’re talking about feet here, okay? Sorry, John.
⏹️ ▶️ John meters is not the same thing as six feet. Yeah, so Jason did bring this up when he
⏹️ ▶️ John was trying to see, you know, in my standing desk, if I had a six foot cord coming out of the back of my iMac,
⏹️ ▶️ John would the brick reach the ground? Or would the brick be dangling in midair? And his measurements indicated
⏹️ ▶️ John that the power brick would kind of be dangling in midair, which is not ideal. He did an interview
⏹️ ▶️ John on upgrade with the Apple folks and brought this exact issue up and said, hey, it’s a six foot cord. I just measured
⏹️ ▶️ John that won’t be quite long enough for my setup. How did you come up with six feet? And the Apple people said, ah, well, we looked at all
⏹️ ▶️ John different setups and we came up with, we thought this was the blah, blah, blah. But like Jason had just got done telling them.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, well, this may fit like the AirPods fit the average year, but not fitting Marco’s ear.
⏹️ ▶️ John This may be sort of the sweet spot for satisfying the most people, but it doesn’t work in Jason’s
⏹️ ▶️ John setup. And I don’t think Jason’s, you know, because Apple acknowledged standing desks. It’s not like they didn’t think about standing
⏹️ ▶️ John desks. They did, but Jason’s not that tall and his desk is not that high. So I feel like they may,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, put an extra six inches to a foot on this cord would probably be beneficial
⏹️ ▶️ John for people who use standing desks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, it would be a lot more beneficial for people who use standing desks. Why are you running
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more than one cable off the desk?
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, you love to Velcro things at the bottom of your desk. Here we go.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes. Somehow zip tie or otherwise attach a surge strip under
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your desk to the underside of your desk. Plug everything on your desk into that. Tie up all the loose
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cable access so it’s nice and tidy somewhere. And then run one cable, or maybe two if you include
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ethernet, from that area of your desk down one of the lifting legs or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever you can have it run down cleanly to the outlet. And then you can have a huge amount
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of slack in that second cable grouping of just the ethernet and power coming out of the desk, and all the stupid little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco short cables you can plug into the underside of your desk and have everything nice and tidy.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this is a setup for people who have more than just the iMac on their desk, but part of the beauty of having the single cable
⏹️ ▶️ John coming out of your iMac, like you don’t even need ethernet back there and everything, like that’s, I think if you
⏹️ ▶️ John just have an iMac in a lone scenario like that, you don’t need the whole power strip underneath
⏹️ ▶️ John the desk, maybe you just have the one cord. And maybe those people don’t use standing desks, I don’t know, I’m just saying like it’s, the fact that
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s so close to working with a standing desk but just needs a few more inches seems like they could fix that in a subsequent
⏹️ ▶️ John revision. The second thing to know about the PowerBrick is we were speculating about, hey, they could have used USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ John because USB-C can USB-C power delivery can do 100 watts Apparently the
⏹️ ▶️ John power brick is rated for 143 watts now. That doesn’t mean the iMac or any of the iMacs they
⏹️ ▶️ John introduced You know in the Apple that will actually ever consume 143 watts,
⏹️ ▶️ John but that’s what the brick is rated for So maybe Apple knows something we don’t maybe they’re just trying to have one brick
⏹️ ▶️ John and reuse it You know, maybe they’re thinking ahead is the next version might use more power
⏹️ ▶️ John than this one did I don’t know but either way The bricks makes me think that Apple thinks
⏹️ ▶️ John that 100 watts is not sufficient for the system either in the present or the future
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s interesting Tell me about visa bounce because apparently you can flip-flop sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah We didn’t know if we mentioned visa mounts at all But just FYI like the like the old style iMacs
⏹️ ▶️ John these new colored ones You can also get them with a visa mount if you don’t like the non adjustable
⏹️ ▶️ John little foot You can get a visa mount on the back and then put it on whatever arm or stand or anything else you have that supports to Visa.
⏹️ ▶️ John And apparently, according to Jason Snell, you can call AppleCare, and if you buy a Visa
⏹️ ▶️ John mount iMac, and say, I don’t want the Visa mount anymore, can you swap it for the foot
⏹️ ▶️ John version? Now, no idea how much that would cost. Obviously, it would cost you some money. I assume they just replace
⏹️ ▶️ John the entire back of the computer. But the good thing is the computer is basically a giant iPad anyway, and
⏹️ ▶️ John so the back is just like the entire big back shell, and maybe it’s an easy repair, I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s nice to know that you’re not stuck with the VESA mount permanently if you buy one
⏹️ ▶️ John and then change your mind later.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed. And then someone wrote in to ask, hey, does anyone else wish that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they would add the ethernet port to all Mac power adapters? For example, the notebooks would be nicer than
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a dongle. Don’t we all want that? Or is it just me? I guess not literally just me, but.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, it depends on your setup. I can see the appeal because we don’t like dongles, right? And you have to have the power brick with you
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway. And there’s plenty of room on the power brick for the ethernet connector. But on the other hand, people tend
⏹️ ▶️ John not to like to crawl around under their desk and plug things in. And with an iMac, it’s not a big deal. You do it once, it’s a desktop, you
⏹️ ▶️ John set it up and you’re done. But with a notebook, you’re bringing it from place to place. Maybe if you had multiple power adapters
⏹️ ▶️ John in the house and you could set up the ethernet at once and just have the power cord kind of stick it up on your desk, it would be cool. I can
⏹️ ▶️ John see the appeal and maybe that is Apple’s plan. Again, they made 143 watt adapter. Maybe this adapter
⏹️ ▶️ John will also come with some other future computer. But the tricky bit is you need
⏹️ ▶️ John to route ethernet to the power brick and all of Apple’s current power bricks
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t do that in terms, I don’t think they even have the right number of conductors. I think they’re just power from the power
⏹️ ▶️ John brick. I’m not entirely sure, but my impression is that from the power
⏹️ ▶️ Marco brick. That’s not entirely true. They support only USB 2 transfer speeds though. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like whatever Apple labels as a charge cable for USB-C, it can be used as data,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but not for USB 3 speeds.
⏹️ ▶️ John and of course, you know, they could put out an adapter that would support this. The other wrinkle in this, and we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not gonna talk about this week, but there’s a bunch of leaks from some ransomware attack on a manufacturer
⏹️ ▶️ John that supposedly show the rumored MacBook Pros with all the things that we talked about
⏹️ ▶️ John in past shows, SD card slot and MagSafe. And HDMI. Yeah, and HDMI,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? If those things end up having MagSafe, of course Apple can do whatever it wants
⏹️ ▶️ John with whatever this new MagSafe is, but that would mean that they would need to route ethernet through the
⏹️ ▶️ John MagSafe adapter along with power down the power cable to the power brick where the supposed
⏹️ ▶️ John ethernet port is. So I think there’s some merit to this idea, but it seems complicated
⏹️ ▶️ John enough that unless Apple is really married to it, that they’re, you know, especially if they’re going to MagSafe,
⏹️ ▶️ John it just seems simpler for them to just bring back MagSafe as just a power thing, and then continue
⏹️ ▶️ John to rely on dongles for everything else.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and if you actually want a single cable solution, I would assume and hope that if this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new, you know, MagSafe-based MacBook Pro thing is real, or even if it isn’t, you know, assuming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco future MacBook Pros might have MagSafe, I would hope that they would also still be able to charge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco via USB-C PD. And if that’s the case, then people who want a single cable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco solution, but some kind of port expansion, can continue to use like Thunderbolt docks and stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and still have just one cable running to the computer that also charges it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I will be, even though I think MagSafe would be great to bring back for notebooks,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it will bum me out ever so slightly if USB-C power delivery goes away. You know, if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s, if it’s one or the other, not both. And, and especially since we’re all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey approaching this like USB-C lifestyle where everything is USB-C. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mean, there’s so much of my life other than my iPhone that is USB-C and just having
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a USB-C dongle sitting around can power, you know, my iPad, my computer,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my drone, et cetera, my, my switch. and man, it would really stink
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if MagSafe got reintroduced, which would be excellent, and then they said, well, that’s the only way you can charge
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now. Tough noogies. That would really bum me out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, agreed. And I hope and I bet they would probably keep both.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one would think. All right, and then finally, Eric Berlin writes, what’s the benefit of having four high efficiency cores in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a system without a battery like the iMac or Mac mini? Aside from economies of scale, do you expect there to be a split
⏹️ ▶️ Casey between desktop and laptop versions of future Apple M-series systems on a chip? I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one silly answer is it’s just more efficient. Like as silly as that sounds, but why run
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a higher wattage core and why expend all that energy if you don’t have to? I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mean, I know that’s kind of silly, but it does add up over time, doesn’t it?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, it makes sense from more than just an electric bill perspective. It’s, you know me, it’s all about
⏹️ ▶️ John fan noise, right? If you can use, most of the time your Mac is not doing much if
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re not running some big, you know, hard task in the background that’s using lots of cores. So
⏹️ ▶️ John from moment to moment, those efficiency cores are getting a ton of use because especially when you’re just sitting there reading text on a web
⏹️ ▶️ John page, there’s probably, hopefully, unless you’re running Chrome with a bunch of terrible tabs in the background, no need
⏹️ ▶️ John for the high efficiency cores to be enabled at all. And if you can just use the efficiency cores or one or two of
⏹️ ▶️ John the efficiency cores, it uses less power, yes, and that means less heat and that means less fan noise.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now, Eric is right that like the reason they’re using this because this is the architecture they have and they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not gonna, apparently, we now know the answer. Is it worth it for them to make
⏹️ ▶️ John for the low-end iMac an entirely different chip even though the current M1 fits fine?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, not worth it to them. They could have made a chip without efficiency cores and with six
⏹️ ▶️ John high-performance cores or something, right? And that would be extra expense and maybe they’d get a little bit of benefit, but for the low-end
⏹️ ▶️ John iMac, it was not worth it. So yes, economies of scale, there are many different computers you can wrap around the M1
⏹️ ▶️ John and the iMac is one of them and it’s perfectly fine for that. And as a bonus, less fan noise, less heat,
⏹️ ▶️ John less electricity. Probably less electricity is non-measurable, but I imagine the less heat and less fan
⏹️ ▶️ John noise is something that they could actually measure. So I’m glad that efficiency cores exist. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I think there’s a place for efficiency cores on every single one of their desktop computers, even the big giant Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro that they eventually make with umpteen cores or whatever. It’s okay to have some efficiency cores in there because sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac Pro is not doing anything that big either.
iPad Pro follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that brings us to another computer that has an M1
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as its core, and that is the iPad. And so there’s some follow-up we need to talk about with regards to the iPad,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey starting with the front-facing camera. Tell me about that.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think we missed this entirely in the event show. There was so much stuff. But Apple talked about center
⏹️ ▶️ John stage, which is their way to use the new 12-megapixel front-facing wide camera
⏹️ ▶️ John on the new iPads to take a very wide view
⏹️ ▶️ John of what’s in front of them, but then crop it to show the area of interest when doing like video
⏹️ ▶️ John conference type things. And they showed it with like, with one person in the picture, it will center on them. And then when
⏹️ ▶️ John more people come, it will expand the image. Now the camera doesn’t move. It’s not like it’s actually zooming
⏹️ ▶️ John optically. It’s not pivoting from side to side. It is merely taking different crops and doing image processing, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, using the, using the software to do some smarts. and obviously the crops are gonna be lower resolution than the full 12 megapixels,
⏹️ ▶️ John but apparently there’s enough pixels to go around to make this work, especially for like a FaceTime thing. So it looks like a very
⏹️ ▶️ John cool feature. And the other thing to know about it is that this feature is actually available
⏹️ ▶️ John to other people through an API. So if you have any kind of third-party app and you want to start taking
⏹️ ▶️ John video from the front-facing camera, apparently there’s an API that you can just tell it, please do that center stage thing
⏹️ ▶️ John where you look for people’s faces and try to include them, which is very nice of them to include. Although honestly, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John not sure what other apps people use for doing video conferencing on the iPad. Besides FaceTime
⏹️ ▶️ John and I guess Zoom maybe? But do people use Zoom on the iPad? I guess so. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, Declan spends several hours a day in Teams on the iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ John In Teams, seriously? Oh my God, I didn’t even think about that. Children shouldn’t be subjected to Teams.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, it is bad. It is real bad on
⏹️ ▶️ John hope those apps do use those features though, because that is a problem, especially with an iPad where you’re trying to like prop
⏹️ ▶️ John it up at the right angle and make sure you get everyone in the picture like doing, you know, well, mostly for me is doing family FaceTime
⏹️ ▶️ John calls, but I suppose for, you know, other things that are not family and maybe you’re using Teams
⏹️ ▶️ John or what do you call it, WebEx or, you know, Zoom or whatever. So that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John cool and worth mentioning.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed. Hey, John, how much RAM do you have in your iPad?
⏹️ ▶️ John We noted this on the event show, but we didn’t really emphasize, right? So yes, the iPad comes
⏹️ ▶️ John with two different amounts of RAM, but the most important thing is, Apple lists those two different
⏹️ ▶️ John amounts of RAM on their web pages and in their promotional material. For the first time, the amount of RAM
⏹️ ▶️ John in an iPad is not a secret that Apple won’t tell you, even though everybody knows what it is. They
⏹️ ▶️ John actually use it in their advertising material. It’s on their slides. Up to 16 gigabytes of
⏹️ ▶️ John memory. We should all, if we were there live, we all should have gasped and said, the iPad has memory?
⏹️ ▶️ John I thought it just had storage. All these years, we’ve just been buying iPads based on storage. Now you’re gonna tell me there’s memory?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like when they change from iOS firmware, from iPhone firmware to iOS. It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone has an operating system? I thought it just had a
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like a secret. So I like this. Obviously this is just in the pro models that I think they still don’t talk
⏹️ ▶️ John about RAM on the lesser iPad models. But see Apple, nothing bad happens if you talk about RAM. We
⏹️ ▶️ John all know it’s in there and we have to figure out what it is anyway. Eventually, it’s just annoying that it’s not on your product
⏹️ ▶️ John pages. And now it finally is, at least for the pros.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So speaking of iPad Pros, apparently the new 12.9 inch iPad Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey specifically the 12.9, won’t work with the original $350 Magic Keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So it’s just a bit thicker than the last one was. And because of that, officially speaking,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is not compatible with the Magic Keyboard that came out before this new one existed.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey However, if you were to buy a Magic Keyboard today, it is compatible with every iPad that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has ever been compatible with the Magic Keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s a shame, but I still think they made the right move. Some people were saying, oh, but didn’t you know how
⏹️ ▶️ John thick the new 12.9 inch iPad would be when you made the original Magic Keyboard? I
⏹️ ▶️ John think it’s conceivable that no, they didn’t. Maybe they were shooting for, oh, it’ll be the same width, but you know, we talked about the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John tech in this new 12.9 inch iPad with the, you know, 2,500 different zones and 10,000 LEDs.
⏹️ ▶️ John That screen is amazing, and it’s worth putting on the highest of the high-end iPad, And if they had to make it 0.5 millimeter sticker
⏹️ ▶️ John to pull that off at the cost of breaking compatibility with their very expensive Magic Keyboard, I
⏹️ ▶️ John still think that’s the right move because this is the most expensive iPad with the highest
⏹️ ▶️ John end, you know, you can get it 16 gigs of RAM and two terabytes of storage and all that stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John Obviously not ideal. I don’t think Apple planned this. I think they probably tried to make it exactly the same size
⏹️ ▶️ John and they just couldn’t quite get it. And if the choice was between this screen and being compatible with the
⏹️ ▶️ John Magic Keyboard, they take the screen any day. So it’s a bummer, but I think the right move.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, honestly, I’m surprised and happy that they haven’t changed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the keyboard size for the 11-inch. I mean, this is like, this is the longest they’ve ever gone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you’re an 11-inch customer, this is the longest you’ve ever been able to carry any peripherals forward. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco normally, if you were buying a new iPad Pro, or you would have to buy a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new keyboard, possibly even a new pencil, depending on when you bought it, if you use the pencil or not.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, and those things are so expensive. They, you know, they add up pretty quickly. So this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually a nice, you know, constant period here where you, like, if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bought a new iPad, which honestly I’m not going to, but if I bought a new iPad, I would still be able to use my same keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from two years ago.
⏹️ ▶️ John And people who are second guessing this, like it was helpful to think about the other scenarios that could have happened, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is, let’s say they’re targeting to make it exactly the same width. and they build one and they say, here it is with the new screen
⏹️ ▶️ John and the new guts and it’s exactly the same dimensions as the old one. And they have some kind of problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, it’s like overheating in this area or this thing is very close to shorting out or there’s some other problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they say, well, the only way we can solve this is to make the thing half a millimeter thicker
⏹️ ▶️ John to give a little bit more breathing room. And everyone’s
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s gonna break compatibility with the thing. You would much rather have them make the thing thicker
⏹️ ▶️ John than to say, well, let’s just shove it in there and just hope for the best because whatever the problem may be with overheating
⏹️ ▶️ John or shorting or compressing or bulging or causing discoloration on the screen because of stress,
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t want any of those problems. And if that was the reality and they said, well, they did that because if they didn’t do that, the keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t work, you’d be saying, what a ridiculous notion. Who cares if the keyboard works? I just want my iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John to work. I don’t even have that keyboard. This is absolutely the right move. It’s a bummer, but sometimes that happens when you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John pushing the envelope, which I feel like Apple is with this, with this, don’t call it a tablet,
⏹️ ▶️ John iPad, that is just tremendously fast and has an amazing screen on it.
AirTags follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Last week, we were talking about potential uses for air tags, which actually, speaking of, before
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we get to this follow-up, Marco, did you order any air tags?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can order them? Yeah. Oh, yes, that’s right. I did. Wow. Sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Are you feeling well, bud? Fever’s setting in. A little warm. No, it’s just,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I forgot. Yes, I did order a four-pack. It’s coming on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever day one is, which I think is, is it this Friday?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s either this or next, I think. I don’t recall, to be honest with you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the reason I don’t recall is because I ordered a one pack, which at the time was delivering in like mid May.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I thought about getting a four pack, but I don’t even know what I’m using one for. So it seems silly to buy four
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just on a lark. But I did order one and it’ll be here several weeks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey after your four pack is. John, what about you? What did you order? If any?
⏹️ ▶️ John Didn’t order any because I still can’t think of what I’m going to use it for. You know, so
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll listen to your reports and what it’s like to have a little plastic puck.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is kind of, you know, I would have been very surprised if you would have told me before the Apple event
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the only things I would buy as a result of this Apple event were AirTags and a new Apple TV remote.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But that’s honestly, like, that’s what I mean. I’m in this for those things.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah, that’s a fair point. So anyway, so we were asking, you know, what would we use these for? And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something that I had thought of, but I didn’t say on the show, This was not Marco’s fault this time. I definitely did
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not say it out loud. And this was also provided to us by Jamison on Twitter.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A use case for air tags, watching your luggage work its way back to you at the carousel at the airport. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I vaguely remember where airports are and I vaguely remember what luggage is, but nevertheless, that is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a very good use case for it. Another thing that a few people have suggested, including just now in the chat, is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey placing it in or around a favorite stuffed animal from a child, because if you’re a parent,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, especially when they’re young, they have that special stuffed animal that if they lose
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that stuffed animal, Oh, your next week, two month is going to be terrible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So a lot of people are saying they’re thinking about sewing one in the animal or putting it, you know, around
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the animal or whatever the case may be. And again, I’m talking about a stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John put it, if you put it inside the animal, though, your kids will just tear it open and pull out the stuffing and get that thing out and then just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably. But nevertheless, that’s another, if your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I would say also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like on on the following your luggage through the airport thing. We don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know yet how frequently the location is updated and what kind of range they have in practice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yet. I would wait, if that’s the kind of use case you have in mind, I would maybe wait
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and see how these things actually perform in reality.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I’m assuming people are expecting that to be in U1 range by that point. Like you’re not looking to
⏹️ ▶️ John say which baggage carousel is in it, you just wanted to know like, is it coming off the
⏹️ ▶️ John thing now or whatever. Again, yeah, you’re right. Someone would have to test it, but I’m guessing that this
⏹️ ▶️ John use case is only useful when you’re within U1 range. And I don’t know what U1 range is, but certainly it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John less than the passerby had Bluetooth on range.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I would expect it to be something like 30 feet, you know, because it’s Bluetooth based. And yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so I’m guessing it’s something like that, but I wouldn’t expect it to be like.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you don’t need this for Boston’s Logan Airport. You don’t need this air tech thing at all, because I
⏹️ ▶️ John can just tell you, just get a chair. your luggage is not coming out for an hour.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, that’s what you get for living in Boston.
Apple Podcast Subscriptions follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, moving right along. Something that I think all of us knew, but again, did not say actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the show, is one of the problems with Apple’s premium podcast offering is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what if you don’t have an iPhone? Tough nogies?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we were talking about who are you excluding by using this Apple premium podcast. And we talked mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John about, hey, if any of your listeners don’t use the Apple podcast app, they have to start using it because that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the only way to listen to your show if it’s an Apple premium podcast. But many people
⏹️ ▶️ John are going to say, And yeah, what about all the people who don’t even have iPhones? Of course, they can’t use
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple Podcasts and they can’t listen to your show at all and there’s tons of those people. One of the reasons I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John mention this was something that I should have mentioned when we talked about the premium podcasts is I’m basing this on nothing,
⏹️ ▶️ John but my impression and hunch is that Apple is
⏹️ ▶️ John at least considering the notion of making Apple Premium Podcasts available on Android.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know this seems weird to you, but I mean, I just assumed that they would eventually make it available
⏹️ ▶️ John on Android. And then I saw everyone else thinking that they never would. It just seems like Apple Music, like
⏹️ ▶️ John an audio service type thing. I know Apple doesn’t do
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of things on other platforms. They made Safari for Windows and then gave up on it or whatever, but like Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John Premium Podcast for Android does not seem like a ridiculous thing to me. Now, obviously they don’t have that now.
⏹️ ▶️ John So don’t assume it is going to exist, but I don’t know if you two feel the same way. it just seems to
⏹️ ▶️ John me that it’s not such a ridiculous notion.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I don’t think it’s a ridiculous notion. It would take a lot of motivation though. You know, the reason
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why Apple brought Apple Music to Android, they did, right? That’s the thing they actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did? Yep, at least. We’ve never talked about it like after they did it, so I’ve kind of forgot.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, it’s like Safari on Windows. When it went away, it probably took a while for me to realize it went away because we use Safari
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, so I don’t know how well Apple Music on Android would be doing, But the reason
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they did that is because Apple Music is a massive service that brings in significant revenue
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like into their services division and everything. Premium Podcasts, I don’t think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean I could be wrong, but the way they’ve launched it at least, their version of Premium Podcasts, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t see that becoming anywhere near the size of Apple Music as a business. And therefore,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think there would be a lot less financial motivation for them to invest into the engineering of that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, the Apple music or the Apple podcasts app is not just a big web view.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a whole bunch of native code in there. And so it would be substantial work for them to bring
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over that app as its own thing. So I just, I don’t see it happening,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, it really, it kind of depends a little bit on the competitive landscape. Not that we’re probably not gonna have time to talk about it
⏹️ ▶️ John this episode, but Spotify’s new premium podcast move is an interesting counter to what
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple has done and is different in all sorts of ways. And you’re right, it’s mostly small potatoes and the safe bet is that
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re not gonna do it, but they might eventually see it as a strategic thing that they have to do just to
⏹️ ▶️ John keep Spotify at bay. It also depends on how all of the antitrust stuff related to Spotify and other stuff turns
⏹️ ▶️ John out. So all I’m saying is that, you know, this is right that you are excluding people who
⏹️ ▶️ John have Android but that, you know, I don’t think it’s completely ridiculous that
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple might someday put their premium podcast on Android.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, I think it depends a lot on like, how well is Apple Music doing on Android? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve never heard of anybody using it. I’m sure there are some people who do, but I would bet it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a substantial market for them.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, and I think one of the big reasons that Apple Music exists on Android is, interestingly, as a counter to Spotify,
⏹️ ▶️ John not in the podcast space, obviously, just in the plain old music space. And I think you’re probably right that it’s maybe not doing
⏹️ ▶️ John that well on Android. But like, why does it exist at all? You said it’s because Apple Music is a big business.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think a big part of it is also because Spotify is there and if we’re gonna compete with Spotify, kind of like the
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple TV thing, if we’re gonna compete at all, we can’t be stingy and say, oh, it’s only
⏹️ ▶️ John on Apple platforms. It’s like if you’re gonna be some kind of service type thing, you’ve gotta be everywhere.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, maybe. And part of it also, it might just be as simple as, like Apple Music was born out of Beats Music
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Beats Music was available on Android. So maybe they had an easier path to get there. Maybe they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to build as much as we think they had to build from scratch for that. They should give
⏹️ ▶️ John Android the old podcast app with the real drill tape.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, that’d be great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey man, that would be funny. All right.
Smart-outlet follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, do you want to tell me about your Eero and smart outlet situation, please?
⏹️ ▶️ John This is so long ago, I don’t know if people still remember. I did a whole big rec diffs episode about it. So I’m not going to go into
⏹️ ▶️ John too much detail. But to catch everyone up, I had filled around with my network and made my
⏹️ ▶️ John Eero my router and got rid of an airport extreme. And everything worked except for my smart outlet, which
⏹️ ▶️ John was completely invisible. And I was trying to debug it and configure what the deal was. Here’s what eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John worked. Why did it work? unknown, but here’s what eventually worked. It was a
⏹️ ▶️ John suggestion I got from two different places. Merlin suggested that I do this and I didn’t follow his suggestion.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then I got the same suggestion from a person at the smart outlet company. And the
⏹️ ▶️ John reason I did it when the person in the smart outlet company said it was not because like, oh, I trust that person more than Merlin, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it was simply because I needed to respond to their email. And when I respond to any kind of email where people give debugging
⏹️ ▶️ John suggestions, I have to tell them, I tried your suggestions and here were the results, like truthfully.
⏹️ ▶️ John And one of their suggestions was hardware reset the outlet, which I had done many, many times before,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I had not, you know, this is two different ways to reset. It’s like a soft reset and a factory reset, depending
⏹️ ▶️ John on how long you hold down the little buttons or whatever. I had not factory reset the
⏹️ ▶️ John new outlet, the new one that I bought that just came out of the box. Now you may be thinking, why
⏹️ ▶️ John would you need to factory reset an outlet that you just brand new took out of a box that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John never been on your network, like it’s never even been seen by anything on your network that is invisible. Like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John I haven’t even been able to attempt to connect it because every time I do, it says looking for devices, can’t find anything, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But that’s what I did. I factory reset the new outlet and it just joined right
⏹️ ▶️ John up and worked perfectly. Oh my goodness. Now, here are the theories we’ve got
⏹️ ▶️ John behind this. One theory is that there is, for apparently for this brand of smart outlet,
⏹️ ▶️ John there is a server side component associated with your account, because I think
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to sign into your account to use their iOS app, and the person at the smart outlet company says, we deleted
⏹️ ▶️ John all your data on our server side.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco So, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve all, maybe that was a factor, right? The second thing is, and this is something I didn’t know, and I just don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know the details of it, that apparently HomeKit devices can only be in provisioning
⏹️ ▶️ John mode, like where they’re ready to be added to your network or whatever, for a limited amount
⏹️ ▶️ John of time. I think it’s like a security thing. Like you don’t want to allow them to be in provisioning mode indefinitely because
⏹️ ▶️ John you could like put some, put some thing in provisioning mode and like your neighbors accidentally pick it up a week after you tried
⏹️ ▶️ John to connect it and they connect it to their thing, right? So there’s some kind of time limit as part of the HomeKit spec. If you want to be
⏹️ ▶️ John a HomeKit compliant device, you can only be in provisioning mode for a limited amount of time,
⏹️ ▶️ John after which you need to do some kind of reset to get them out of that. And maybe this particular smart outlet needs a factory reset
⏹️ ▶️ John after it has reached its provisioning mode time limit. And I can tell you that if there is a time limit, I’m surely past it because I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John been trying to add these things to my network for days and days, just constantly having them
⏹️ ▶️ John ready to be added to your network, make sure this light is blinking, right? So those are the theories. Server side, or
⏹️ ▶️ John it was stuck in provisioning mode too long and timed out, but whatever it is, a factory reset of the brand new thing
⏹️ ▶️ John made it work. And now I have the old one, which I have no use for, it’s just sitting here, I’m not sure what I’m gonna do
⏹️ ▶️ John with it, I haven’t even tried to connect it, but now I’m just not touching anything because my network, everything’s on my network,
⏹️ ▶️ John just like I want it to be. I still haven’t had any of that Teams problem in all my Teams meeting at work. I have yet to
⏹️ ▶️ John have the problem recur, although it hasn’t been a month yet, but so far so good. My networking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s good. I’m very glad for you. Don’t touch it. Don’t definitely don’t touch it.
Casey’s fans
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’d actually like to make a brief request for help. I, in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the process of doing this screened-in porch, selected, I don’t remember talking about this on the show, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey selected two not-cheap ceiling fans in order to put in the screened-in porch.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And there was a little bit of a disagreement as to whether or not these not-cheap ceiling fans were worth the money that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we spent. And one of the things I wanted to do with these ceiling fans was use them with Lutron Caseta
⏹️ ▶️ Casey switches. And I thought I was buying the appropriate kind of fan in order to use them with Lutron Caseta switches,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it turns out I did not. And many, many hours of investigation and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fiddling about later, what I’ve realized is these particular fans use some sort of proprietary radio
⏹️ ▶️ Casey frequency controller. So there is something in the wall, um, and it is connected to the fan,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but the actual commands to go on or off for different speeds or whatever are radio frequency. And what I’d like to do is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey figure out a way to get that on HomeKit. These fans are Kichler fans, K-I-C-H-L-E-R.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Kichler doesn’t seem to believe that HomeKit exists, or even Alexa or anything like it. So, if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you have a way that you are aware of that you can make a RF device
⏹️ ▶️ Casey talk HomeKit, please let me know, kcliss on Twitter, or you can find my contact information on my website.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’d love to know, because I’ve been looking at this broad link, RM4 IR
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and RF universal remote, which I guess is basically, it’s supposed to just, you know, emit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey IR or RF in order to control things that really you’re not supposed to be able to control.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I’m looking at this, but I don’t know if it’s going to work with the appropriate frequencies, blah, blah, blah. So I will stop here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But just if you’ve experienced anything like this, please let me know. I would love to know about it.
EV fast-charging follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Our, I think, final bit of follow-up? No, yeah, our final section of follow-up is with regard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to Marko’s refusal to believe that there’s anything other than Tesla superchargers in the world. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey friend of the show, Sam Well-Sumid of the Wheelbearing’s podcast wrote in to say that Tesla accounted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for about 2 3rds of EV sales in the US in the last year. But according to Sam, whose
⏹️ ▶️ Casey job is to know these sorts of things, that share is likely to shrink significantly in 2021 and beyond. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lots of new competitors arriving this year and next all the legacy brands. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey moving on, Sam writes, for distribution, there are currently 3,440 CCS, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I believe is the connector type, DC fast charger locations with 6,534 actual outlets. So it’s about 3,500 locations
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with about 6,500 outlets across the United
⏹️ ▶️ Casey States. There are 1,000 supercharger locations. So about a third
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as many locations. However, they have about 10,000 outlets, so about twice as many outlets.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So Tesla has fewer locations, but more chargers per station. Something I don’t think we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mentioned on the show is that Electrify America was done in part because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Volkswagen was compelled to fund it as a result of Dieselgate. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Electrify America was the first network to implement the plug-and-charge standard, which allows drivers to set up one account for their
⏹️ ▶️ Casey compatible vehicles. So Ford, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Lease, and Rivian have all announced support and more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey coming, and then they let you just plug it in, and then it authenticates and starts charging just like a supercharger. And we’ll put a link
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the show notes to a list of all the chargers and networks and whatnot at the Department
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Energy website for the United States. Do you wanna jump in here, Marco? Because I know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you have some feedback, or do you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco wanna plow forward?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay. Yeah, just a quick little thing on this point. So my car is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still in the body shop, still, and they haven’t even been able to start to work on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it because insurance companies are apparently terrible. But,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so it’s been almost a month and they haven’t actually started working on it yet because of my insurance company. So that’s okay. I mean, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco guess it was my fault for going with the totally flat by night insurance company Allstate.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ah, I also use Allstate and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John they are- You
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t get to be a big insurance company by just giving out money for free. Insurance company does not
⏹️ ▶️ John wanna pay a lot for the smuffler. Yeah. Nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, so we were still driving around the I-3, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we had an opportunity to stop and supercharge, and I specifically sought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out an Electrify America location, because there was one kind of near where we were going. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we were down to about 30-something percent on the I-3. We stopped
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off. It looked almost like a supercharger. They had these big, glowing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco white bays across the back of this mall parking lot. There were eight plugs in this location.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it looked pretty nice. And it was a pretty good experience. It was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco significantly nicer than the ChargePoint, one that I’d used before. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was super easy. I walked up to the thing, I plugged it into the car,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they had a little credit card contactless slash chip reader on the front. So I just did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple Pay on the front of it. I didn’t have to make an account. I didn’t have to do anything. All I had to do was Apple Pay with my credit card,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, Apple Pay with my phone rather, wave it in front of their little reader, beep, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco started up, and then I was able to watch both in my car and also on their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen, they had a giant glowing screen to show my car’s charge level. I guess the car communicates
⏹️ ▶️ Marco its charge level back through the CCS connector to the charger. So it was able to give me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a time estimate, it was able to give me a percentage readout and everything. It’ll allow you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to type in a phone number and it would text you updates. That way, like in case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey you wanted to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco leave and go inside the mall or whatever, you know, you could do that and see when it’s done. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overall, it cost me about 10 bucks to charge from something like 30% to about 90%.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, this is not a large range car. That’s something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like 100 miles of range. But it was about a half hour. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really not bad at all. It was a surprisingly nice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco supercharger competitive experience. And if every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco DC fast charger was as nice as the Electrify America ones, then I think that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be a really nice world to get to. I don’t think we’re there yet, and I think it’s going to be a while before we get there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But when and if that kind of world arrives for the non-Tesla
⏹️ ▶️ Marco charging needs, that will be very nice and very compelling. So I really enjoyed it. It was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very nice to use and I would gladly use it again. However, again, when I look for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things like this in the areas I travel, the Tesla Superchargers are still, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re still better coverage of the areas I go and they’re in more convenient locations.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, many, kind of an underappreciated part of charger location
⏹️ ▶️ Marco selection is, well, what can you do during the half hour that you’re waiting there? If it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in like a travel plaza or something, off the highway, that’s great because then you can park your car and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the thing is like you’re only going to be charging there for maybe a half hour to 40 minutes. You can’t do something that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to take you two hours. You can’t like watch a movie or anything like in a movie theater, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you also don’t want it to just be like in the back of an empty parking lot where there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nowhere to even within walking distance that you could really meaningfully go. So you want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something to do and I like the travel plaza kind of situation because then like you can go in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use the bathroom order food, you know, maybe have some have a quick snack, you know, get get a crappy coffee at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Starbucks, go out to your car, and it’s pretty much time. Tesla seems to be significantly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better, at least with the more recent round of superchargers, significantly better at choosing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good locations that actually give you some reasonable way to use your 40 minutes that you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to have while sitting there. So that’s one thing that so far, the the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco non Tesla fast chargers around here are not super great at but I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, that could just be a regional difference. But anyway, it’s something to look at, like when you’re looking when you’re comparing if you’re if you’re looking at electric
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cars, if you’re comparing the charging networks, you definitely have to, I think, look at like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which ones you’re likely to use, like where they actually are, what kind of environment they’re actually in.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because that that matters a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like Sam said, though, this is changing rapidly because all the EVs from all the car companies are coming out pretty fast
⏹️ ▶️ John and furious now And most of them granted are not actual cars. They’re stupid SUV things, but there’s a ton
⏹️ ▶️ John of them and Electrify America and all the other sort of car brand charging
⏹️ ▶️ John networks are just going to be expanding Extremely rapidly and it’s not just one company doing it’s multiple
⏹️ ▶️ John companies doing it So I expect this to be a very dynamic situation. In fact, I was surprised to see there was three times as
⏹️ ▶️ John many CCS DC fast chargers because this is trying to compare like to like and not just say like any
⏹️ ▶️ John old thing but the DC fast chargers. And I’m also surprised to see that a bunch of car brands,
⏹️ ▶️ John like we talked about this one, let me get the pronunciation right, cause I saw a video,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Taycan. They have
⏹️ ▶️ John two syllables in their word and neither one of them is pronounced the way that an English speaker would expect them to say, but Porsche has a YouTube
⏹️ ▶️ John video that says, tie like a necktie and then con like the opposite of pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John Taycan, which has this 800 volt system that allows it to charge faster and stuff. I recently saw
⏹️ ▶️ John a review of the new Hyundai Ioniq 5, which
⏹️ ▶️ John is another SUV type thing or whatever. I
⏹️ ▶️ John has an 800 volt system too, and it’s not a fancy car. Like it’s competing
⏹️ ▶️ John with mainstream SUVs, right? It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John more expensive than a gas SUV, but still it’s not a $100,000 car. And those 800 volt systems
⏹️ ▶️ John can charge a lot faster. So the amount of time that you spend at the chargers may actually be decreasing,
⏹️ ▶️ John assuming we can get these 800 volt, like whatever it is, 250 kilowatt or whatever. I
⏹️ ▶️ John get confused with battery specs for laptops. If those start to proliferate.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the other thing I’ll say about your charging experience is your car doesn’t even have the plug and charge thing that we were talking about here, which is just
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you don’t have to do any of that stuff. You just plug the thing in. I mean, that’s what this feedback says, is that you just plug it in and
⏹️ ▶️ John somehow it knows who you are based on the fact that you plug the car into it, because you had set up an account with Electrify America
⏹️ ▶️ John beforehand. And that’s the best experience because when you fill up your car with gas, I mean, I guess you have
⏹️ ▶️ John to pay with your phone or whatever, but like just being able to pull up to one of those things, take the plug out, shove it into your
⏹️ ▶️ John car and walk away and get all those features that you described without even having to activate Apple Pay or tap it.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s pretty cool. Although I do wonder, like I’ve been watching a lot of videos about electric cars because there’s so many
⏹️ ▶️ John of them coming out. Most of them don’t appeal to me at all, but a lot of them have, I mean, I guess we’ll get to this in the next
⏹️ ▶️ John feedback. Interesting integrations with their various power supply
⏹️ ▶️ John things like You know, they’re they’re sort of charging network integrations in the car integrations
⏹️ ▶️ John outside the car Like you said the thing where it texts you to see how how filled up your thing is or whatever so
⏹️ ▶️ John I wonder if those features will end up being differentiators or if we will kind of Settle on
⏹️ ▶️ John one feature set kind of like gas pumps. There’s a million gas companies around here But the feature set of gas pumps in the US
⏹️ ▶️ John has always kind of like coalesced around a standard feature set If there was any moment
⏹️ ▶️ John where like, you know, mobile speed pass came out and for a little while They don’t want to add it eventually that stuff like
⏹️ ▶️ John that spreads everywhere So it’ll be interesting to see that play out with electric charging stations as well
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In speaking of very expensive cars front of the show Dave Davinian writes with regard to charging station integrations
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know each each car vendor either owns a charging network or partners with one and At least with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Volkswagen Audi and Porsche the charger location routing availability, etc is fully integrated into the nav system,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m assuming much like Tesla. And the, hold on, let me see if I can do this. In the Ticon,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’m sure this is true of others, writes Dave Naney, and if I plan a trip, it automatically routes me through chargers,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not just in network ones, and it tells me how long to charge for and adjust during the trip if conditions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey change. It’s just like the Tesla, basically, except the DC fast chargers, while fewer in number, can go up to 350 kilowatts,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I can charge from five to 80% in 22 minutes. Dave admits that that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sometimes in a Walmart parking lot, which is kind of crummy, but nevertheless, it’s fast, which is great.
⏹️ ▶️ John Another cool thing about the 800 watt system and the new Hyundai, one of the features they’re advertising is you can use it
⏹️ ▶️ John to charge another electric car. So you can drive over to them and just plug
⏹️ ▶️ John your thing. Like if they run out of charge somewhere, you can go there and charge them up on it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s interesting. That would actually be really nice for like a towing company to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have some of those in their fleet. So if you have an EV that gets totally dead and stranded on the side of the road, you could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco drive this to them. Because you
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t bring a gas can.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Right, yeah, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That actually is a really good feature.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. And what you can do then is if you take a cord back from that car and put it into your car, you can drive forever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, exactly. Yeah, that’s how it works.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You just have a loop. Aye.
Sponsor: Backblaze
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Backblaze, unlimited computer backup
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have, you know, Time Machine or clones or whatever backup solutions that you have on your desk, those are great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you should have those too. But Backblaze is a cloud backup service so that they can protect
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco my favorite one, because quite frankly, it’s the best one. All these other points, they can tell me what to say,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but they can’t pay me to say that I actually use this one, and I do, and it really is the best one.
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco too. You know, you can of course restore right from their website, you can download right from their website, or if you
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#askatp: Replacing John’s Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, let’s do some Ask ATP. Brian Ash writes, this one is for John. If Apple were to announce a new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mini Mac Pro in April or May, can you imagine a configuration that would make you switch away from your Intel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mac Pro this soon? How much performance would you need and at what price would that need to be
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve actually talked about this before, but it’s worth revisiting now that we know more about the ARM Macs.
⏹️ ▶️ John I am totally open to a smaller version of the Mac Pro. Like all I want is some internal storage
⏹️ ▶️ John and a big GPU. And that’s what I’ve got in my current Macro, but if you open it up, there’s a lot of empty space
⏹️ ▶️ John in there, right? So if they make a miniature version, they can fit the stuff that I want and doesn’t have room
⏹️ ▶️ John for all the stuff that I don’t use, that’s fine. Like this thing has so many slots in it. Like I have a second GPU
⏹️ ▶️ John in there that I’m not even using just because there are so many open slots. That’s the best place in the house to store it, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John So I, and I, and I think maybe something we’ll use it for compute someday, but like
⏹️ ▶️ John I do not need the massive amount of space that’s in this thing. But I do actually enjoy the fact that I have,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, a bunch of internal storage in there and my big double height video card and all that stuff. So we’ll see, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John totally open to a miniature one. And as for when I would upgrade, you know, I’m still
⏹️ ▶️ John assuming that the Mac Pro will be like, if not the very last, then at least one of the last
⏹️ ▶️ John machines to port over to ARM. So I’ve got a while yet to see what they’re gonna come out with.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if the new ARM-based Mac Pro equivalent comes out by
⏹️ ▶️ John the end of this year, I don’t think I’m gonna upgrade that soon. It’s mostly a monetary issue because I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ John going to sell this one. Like, you know, I don’t sell my Macs, I keep them. I keep the Macs that are meaningful to me. This
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac is always going to be meaningful to me. But I don’t need to use this thing for 10 years. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, we always knew the ARM transition was coming and I said when I bought this, if it turns out that the ARM Macs come out right after I
⏹️ ▶️ John buy this, oh well, I’ve gotta be okay with that. And look what happened. it is and I’m more or less okay with it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll use this Mac until I’ve saved up enough discretionary income to replace it
⏹️ ▶️ John or until it becomes so obsolete that I have to replace it. So maybe not the end of this year but you know
⏹️ ▶️ John in two three years yeah I’ll be ready to replace it.
#askatp: FileVault performance cost
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Lingxu Zhang writes, do you use FileVault on your personal Macs, and if so, why? I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just got a new M1 MacBook Air and came across the setting during setup, which was on by default. I’m hesitant
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to turn it on because of the possible computational overload, but is that even still relevant? You know, I honestly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t even know if I’m using FileVault. I think I am on my laptop. Where is that? Is that in security and privacy?
⏹️ ▶️ John think you’ve hit on the main thing that I was gonna say, which is most people don’t even know
⏹️ ▶️ John whether they’re using FileVault, which really speaks to how transparent it is, both from a user’s perspective
⏹️ ▶️ John and I think also from a computational perspective. There is computational overhead to it, and I think it can
⏹️ ▶️ John still actually be measured, although that might be harder with the ARM Max because all the decompression
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff probably has some dedicated hardware unit somewhere inside there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, the T2 did accelerate that. Right. In the last generation of Intel Max, they used the T2. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the T2 did that, which made the computational overhead part basically free.
⏹️ ▶️ John free, like at the cost of some additional power that your battery, you know, whatever. But like, but yeah, like it’s, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the type of thing where like, don’t worry about the performance is what we’re saying.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so it turns out I was looking, so in system preferences, security and privacy, and then there’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tab for FileVault. Both of my computers are using it. And I would have expected that my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey MacBook Pro definitely was, and I wasn’t sure about my iMac Pro, but yes, both of them are.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And yeah, I don’t think even having, I’ve used FileVault, especially on laptops for years. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey remember ever having noticed a computational difference. You know, I don’t remember ever having
⏹️ ▶️ Casey noticed a slowdown. Even there have been once or twice I’ve either turned it on after I’ve, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had the operating system, you know, installed and so on, or perhaps even turned it off. But,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, I don’t see any reason not to at this point, to be completely honest with you.
⏹️ ▶️ John Margot, do you have it enabled on your Macs? Do you even know?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t know. I thought I had it enabled. I just checked on my Mac Mini that I’m using now, and it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on on the Mac Mini. I figured I probably shouldn’t turn it on during the recording.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would recommend not, Casey.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I, yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s on my laptop, but yeah, I recommend leaving it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on because at this point, this day and age, the computational overhead of that I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think is relevant.
⏹️ ▶️ John So my policy is I tend to put it on for laptops just because they might be lost somewhere
⏹️ ▶️ John and whatever modicum of security it is to have this stuff encrypted at rest, I will take
⏹️ ▶️ John that, right? On my desktops, I personally choose not to enable
⏹️ ▶️ John it, but it has nothing to do with performance and everything to do with me being afraid of hosing myself somehow, by either forgetting
⏹️ ▶️ John the encryption password or it’s somehow getting corrupted in some way. I’m just paranoid in that
⏹️ ▶️ John way that I have enough problems. I’m always doing weird stuff with my computer, like trying to somehow get Boot Camp installed
⏹️ ▶️ John and bootable on an external disk, which was a saga that I’ve just reflected I was telling us the other day that I’ve long
⏹️ ▶️ John since forgotten what I did to make that happen. So if I ever had to do it again, I’d be starting from zero.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it was really hard, and it was scary, and it involved a lot of my machine being in a almost
⏹️ ▶️ John unbootable state. And that’s before we even get to the ARM Macs, which are way harder to deal with booting and external booting,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? So the reason I don’t enable it in my desktops is, like, well, they’re in my house. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John much less likely to be stolen or lost. And I’m kind of afraid
⏹️ ▶️ John that I’ll accidentally lock myself out. Those are probably not good reasons. You should probably just enable
⏹️ ▶️ John encryption everywhere, but it seems like based on Marco’s experience that Apple still doesn’t default it to on for its desktop Macs.
⏹️ ▶️ John Otherwise, if Marco doesn’t remember explicitly choosing not to do it, it was probably just the default. I’m assuming it
⏹️ ▶️ John defaults to on on all their laptops, but maybe not on their desktop.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, this is also an installation that I brought forward from old desktops. I just checked, my laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does indeed have it on. And I’m kind of with you, like I tend to make my laptops more secure.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like for instance, I always leave Find My Mac on on my laptops,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I don’t leave it on on my desktops because remember back when Matt Honan was hacked and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they used Find My Mac to remote wipe all of his Macs? That scared me enough that like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I like the ability to remote wipe my laptop if it ever gets stolen, but I don’t want anybody to have the ability
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to remote wipe my desktop. So that’s just one of those things, like I always turn that off on the desktop.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, FileVault is on on the laptop and I leave all the high security stuff there. And I think I’ll turn it on on my desktop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too, because why not?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Paul Shuffman Yeah, I mean, like I said, from Johann Neubert.
#askatp: M1 longevity
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What do you think about the longevity of the M1? How long do you think they’ll last? Usually buying a quote unquote first generation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mac computer can be bad in the long run. Do you think that they’ll last as long as iPhones or even as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey long as John’s old Mac Pro? I mean, I don’t know. Look at, I guess, look
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at iPhones, right? Because this is, or iPads perhaps, especially early
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on, like in the iPhone 4 era, you were seeing dramatic speed increases with each new year’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phone. But I feel like the last couple of phones I’ve gotten, I think they’re snappier, sure, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wouldn’t say it’s a dramatic increase like it was in years past. So I would expect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s probably a three to four to five year chip without feeling too terrible about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, and also look at the iMac Pro, or excuse me, my iPad Pro from 2018. I don’t feel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like I’m CPU bound or CPU limited very often on that thing. And that’s three
⏹️ ▶️ Casey years old now. So I think you’ll get some time out of it. What do you think, Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I don’t, I think if anything, you might get more time than you expect because it’s the first of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the new architecture. So far, like in, you know, the reason why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re not really supposed to buy the first version of things if you can help it is that usually the first version has problems, just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weird bugs or shortcomings or weird things that they fix in later versions. We’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had the M1 stuff now since November, so, or October whenever it was, well, it was delivered in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco November. So, you know, we’ve had them now for, you know, good half a year and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there don’t seem to be many issues. Like, and possibly even any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco major ones. There’s some
⏹️ ▶️ John software issues. Like I’ve, I’ve- Agreed. Pulled my kids about the reliability of Mac OS on
⏹️ ▶️ John the M1s, but those aren’t, they don’t have anything to do with the hardware. It’s just like, okay, well, Mac OS has some shortcomings
⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of drivers or whatever, or, you know, like, yeah. There’s more weird pink
⏹️ ▶️ John screens are not unlocking or stuff like that. that software, the software will continue to get updated and the software
⏹️ ▶️ John will eventually come to accommodate these. But there’s nothing weird about this hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John from a hardware perspective, simply because it is so much like, and now is identical to, the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John hardware from which it’s derived, right? So it’s not like this is the very first system on a chip that Apple has made,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? So I think the hardware is very solid. And Casey was talking about like
⏹️ ▶️ John projecting forward, like how much faster a chip’s going to be like, well, is the next year’s chip gonna be so fast that you’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John feel bad about having this one. The more important direction is to look is backwards because backwards behind
⏹️ ▶️ John this thing are the Intel chips and they’re way down there in the mud in terms of performance, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John So as these machines get older, the Intel machines will rapidly become, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John so slow I can’t even imagine using those. But these things will hang on, but this is the big leap. This is the big discontinuity.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was like slow and steady, one or 2% or 5% increase in Intel chips. And then this
⏹️ ▶️ John huge leap to the M1 And it’s gonna take a long time before the performance that’s available
⏹️ ▶️ John in the M1 becomes so slow that you can’t even imagine using it, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John So I think these M1s, assuming there’s no catastrophic hardware problem, are going to be usable,
⏹️ ▶️ John useful computers for a really long time. Like think about that fanless $999 MacBook Air.
⏹️ ▶️ John What an amazing performance bargain. I think that computer will last longer than any
⏹️ ▶️ John thousand dollar Apple computer has perhaps ever. So I am very optimistic about
⏹️ ▶️ John how long these will be usable, especially since that M1 MacBook Air doesn’t have any moving parts even. Like it’s so
⏹️ ▶️ John much, it’s like an electric car. So much simpler, so much fewer parts inside it, fewer
⏹️ ▶️ John things to go wrong, and the performance is great. So thumbs up on the M1. I made a shirt
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The only thing I will note about the performance characteristics of the M1, now having used them full-time for however
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many months, the reason it feels so ridiculously fast And the reason why certain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tasks are so incredibly much faster than they were on Intel or smoother or better responding.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The ceiling of performance when you have very efficient, parallelized,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco vectorized code is not that much higher than what we had before. In some cases it isn’t higher at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What they did was they raised the floor a lot. So a lot of common
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things on the M1, common CPU tasks and everything, those are faster.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sometimes by a lot. And so it seems like performance all across the board, everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is just snappier, more responsive, but where the M1 is limited is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you wanna push it really hard, when you’re maxing out all the cores and doing something really CPU intensive,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not slow, but it’s not as much faster than the Intel stuff as you would expect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco based on how much faster it is with kind of more pedestrian tasks.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it depends on what you’re comparing it to. If you compare it to the Intel $999 MacBook Air, it crushes
⏹️ ▶️ John it, and even in the parallel stuff, but as you get to the higher end, yeah, because they’re using this chip everywhere. Again, we’ve just seen the
⏹️ ▶️ John low-end computers here. But let’s say the MacBook Pro, 13-inch MacBook Pro, that’s an area where
⏹️ ▶️ John I can imagine the previous best 13-inch MacBook Pro Intel model would
⏹️ ▶️ John match it in multi-core maybe. But as you get to the lower-end machines,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re thinking of multi-core as compared to like, what about my 10-core iMac Pro? but that’s not what these machines are competing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, exactly. And so, if you are someone who tends to buy the high core
⏹️ ▶️ Marco machines, the 15 or 16 inch MacBook Pro, the iMac Pro, the Mac Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you’re buying the highest core counts and you’re maxing those things out, first of all, you’re gonna want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably more GPU power than this can offer if you’re using that for video stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I can see a good case for waiting until
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever it’s called, the M1X or maybe the M2, whatever the beefier version of this for the bigger computers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ends up being called, waiting for that. But otherwise, and that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by the way, that’s why my computer never feels slow to me anymore
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unless I am doing something like an Xcode archive build.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or a lot of Xcode builds, honestly, where my project is big enough now that when I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do a lot of builds in Xcode, and I’m using enough Swift now, thanks a lot Swift, I’m doing, whenever I do a build
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on Xcode, it maxes out all of the cores for maybe 10 to 60 seconds,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco depending on what exactly it’s doing. And you definitely feel that. And there are areas where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would love to have more high-performance cores, just so I can shorten those builds. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when that, whatever the next little Mac Pro ends up being, whenever that comes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out, I will probably buy it for that reason. because I don’t need any GPU
⏹️ ▶️ Marco power more than I already have, but I really would love way more high performance cores. As many as they will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco give me, I’ll take them. And you know, because right now I have four, that’s great. Give me 12, give me 16, great,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would be even better. And so I don’t know what they’re gonna do, but if you have that kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco performance need where you’re doing a lot of high-end parallel stuff, you may wanna wait and see what else
⏹️ ▶️ Marco comes out after this if you’re looking to use it for a very long time. That being said, right now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am incredibly satisfied with this. It just, the only time I notice it being a little bit slow is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, but I also look and say like, well this is a MacBook Air or a Mac Mini,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco depending on which computer you’re using. And like, these are, for what they are and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for what I paid for them, it’s fantastic. All right, thank you to our sponsor this week, Backblaze,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and thank you to our members who support us directly. You can become a member and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get a discount on our new merch by going to adp.fm slash join. If you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just wanna buy a shirt not become a member, no problem, that’s cool, go to atp.fm.com. Thank you everybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we will talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental. John didn’t do any
⏹️ ▶️ John research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him, Cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental. And you can find the
⏹️ ▶️ John show notes at atp.fm And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter, you can follow them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, N-T Marco Armin,
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, they didn’t mean to
⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental, check podcast so
Post-show
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh my god, my arms are on fire.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Your arms? Oh, because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco the hives. I’ve never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had hives before this week. It’s terrible. It does not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sound particularly fun.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, and these aren’t even like severe hives. Like, I don’t have to be scratching them all the time. I’m trying not to scratch them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all. And they go away like sometime in the middle of the night. And like, so I go to bed. They start
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around like 7 or 8 p.m. I go to bed and then I wake up in the morning and they’re gone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I don’t know what’s
⏹️ ▶️ John going on. People give me stick Talking about my toes and rectus? I think this is worse. I want to hear about hives.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t want to have them, believe me. This is not a fun thing, but…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, how do you think all that 5G is getting out of you, man?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m just, I’m glad that they started before the shot. So, I know that that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey it. That’s true, actually.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s a good point.
⏹️ ▶️ John Your body is a Petri dish. Some people’s body are a wonderland. Marco’s body is a Petri dish.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I always get the weird medical issues in the family. Like, I don’t have anything anything normal that’s wrong with me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I only have occasional really weird stuff like this happen and then it goes away. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well. So anyway, hopefully by next week I won’t be having hives every night
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for unknown reasons.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, by next, actually, uh, next week’s show I will be vaccinated.
⏹️ ▶️ John And next week’s show I will be where Marco is because that’s my, that’s the day my second shot was scheduled for.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t recall. Are you Pfizer or Moderna?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay. So I’m the lone Moderna man.
⏹️ ▶️ John her second shot today too. She went to bed early complaining of a headache. So.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Lots of hydration is what I’ve heard.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I’m not sure. I think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco placebo, but I mean it’s always a good idea anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is probably a placebo, but I was drinking water, Powerade, Pedialyte,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey literally Pedialyte, like whatever, nonstop the day before and the day of. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really did not have a bad go of it at all. Like I said, I think earlier in the show, there was a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey couple hours where I was like really chilly during the day and felt a little run down. I had a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of like, I don’t know if you guys get this, but when I take NyQuil, which I don’t do often, the following
⏹️ ▶️ Casey day I’ll wake up and I’ll feel like my head is like two or three floors above my body. Uh, that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey only way I can describe it. Like it’s the most odd, like very light, not, well, not lightheaded, but like, like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fuzzy feeling. And I had, and I would like, would waffle between, oh, my head is not several
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stories above my body. Like it is after NyQuil, but it’s like the next story above my body.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then it would go into like a light headache and then back to this like floating head like brain fog as Rollcall
⏹️ ▶️ Casey says in the chat. That’s a good way of looking at it And I kept going back and forth with that and I was freezing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at night for two nights but that was it like I Tweeted about all this and some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people were like wow, that sounds really bad. No, actually it really was nothing Like it really wasn’t bad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at all So yeah, it seems to be just a luck of the draw. I don’t know what to make of it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can tell you from experience though, this is all better than actual COVID.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I was going to say, like, from my experience not having had it, it’s like, certainly even what Aaron’s going through,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, super, super tired and feeling not the greatest, like, I’ll take that over COVID any day of the week.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you actually are in the, you’re uniquely positioned to say with authority
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it is indeed better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Imagine having that brain fog for a month.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah, no. In
⏹️ ▶️ Marco addition to like the horrible fever and aches and everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey that you had for two weeks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s just, it’s no contest. This is better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, no, thank you. Indeed. And I’ve probably said this live, and the thing of it is, is that, like, if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I knew that COVID was just a bad flu, like, hear me out, hear me out. If I knew it was, like, just a bad flu
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where you feel like crap for a week, like, fine, whatever. I probably would have just gone on living my life. But because there’s such a variance
⏹️ ▶️ Casey between, like, oh, you get it and nothing really happens, and oh, you get it and literally die.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like, that’s why I’ve been locked in my house for a year, because you don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what’s going to happen. And, and yeah, like Erin and I both were, not that we were dreading
⏹️ ▶️ Casey getting our second shot, but we’re both like, oh God, what’s going to come of this? Are we going to feel like death for a day? But you know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what? I’ll take it. That is, that is absolutely worth it. I will absolutely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do it. And I wasn’t planning on getting preachy in the after show, but here we are. If you have the opportunity
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get a vaccination, please, please do so. Please do so.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is really like this is this is all of our duty to society. If you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you can get vaccinated, get vaccinated.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep. Couldn’t agree more. I think that’s fine for an after show, to be honest with you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know how long I have in this Benadryl, so we’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey keep it moving. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey got it. I got to get you on the phone in like an hour and start asking for something that you really don’t want to give me like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hey, man, you want to buy me a tycon?
⏹️ ▶️ John down, Marco. You got to fix it. What?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You won’t be able to. I’ll be in dnd mode. Auto dnd 10 PM is when it starts.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hey, man, I can call you twice in a row. That’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Will it? I think it’s only if I tell you to, right? Don’t I have to whitelist you for that, or is it everybody?
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it might be people in your address book can double call through. I don’t remember.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, crap. You’re in my address book.
⏹️ ▶️ John He’s going to actually do it. Don’t worry.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John not going to.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to be asleep by then. Oh, yeah. I’m absolutely going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey got his sleepy shirt. I am in my sleepy shirt. You are correct. That is a fact.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m in my sleepy hives, so I’m ready to go.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, no. Yeah, you’re in your own sleepy shirt,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco manner of speaking. Yes. Red and blotchy on my arms. Gross. Oh, God. Kind of itchy, kind of hot.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay. I did think the toe thing was much worse, but we’re starting to even out the longer
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, the toe wasn’t like infectious or, you know what I mean? It’s not spreading across my body,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco going to be one.
⏹️ ▶️ John Hives aren’t infectious. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just going to be one big hive soon. Yeah, but it’s not infectious. It doesn’t spread to other people. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to yourself. Now granted, I only learned this like 48 hours ago when I looked it all up.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh god, this is terrible. I don’t know how people do this. Like a lot of allergy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people have hives on a more regular basis. God, I hope this is not my new life. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hope this better not be my new normal. Time for some more allergy shots. Oh yeah, I haven’t actually gotten
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them in a few months because it’s difficult where I live to get that done. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, well, before you die, let’s say goodbye to the live listeners. Thank you if you’re listening
⏹️ ▶️ Casey live, if you’ve joined, because at least a couple of you did, if you’ve bought merch, which I haven’t looked, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m assuming at least a couple of you did. Thank you. Thank you for just listening to us. Chill for all these things. That’s very kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of you, and thank you for being live listeners. Hopefully not covered in hives. Live listeners, not hive listeners.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you all can rest assured, when Casey said a few of you joined, Casey watches
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the membership number.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, like a hawk. Like a hawk. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t even know. There was one time when there was a wave of payment failures,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just because it was the interval that they renew on. And Casey posted in our chat, we’ve had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what was disastrous, what was the word you used?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know what you’re thinking of, but I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco remember how to phrase it. A disastrous drop in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco members, and it was like.01% or something. Whatever. It was some number of people, like five people or something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was more than five, you big jerk.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco number of people and you were like, it’s a disaster.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Excuse me. It was like 20 or 30 people, sir. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will concede that I was definitely having a chicken little moment. It was more than you were making it out to be, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was still not as much as my reaction justified.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And regardless, so if you’re out there thinking, should I become a member?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Would they even notice? Rest assured, Casey will notice.
⏹️ ▶️ John I will notice. I look at the numbers too and I actually keep track of them. I mean, I don’t keep track of them over time, but I
⏹️ ▶️ John do have a little like solver sheet that I updated in. Like, let’s put it this way,
⏹️ ▶️ John perspective members, we do not have enough members that you are one of an anonymous few.
⏹️ ▶️ John You are a precious gem, a unique ingot of whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s not so many members, so come and join, so there’ll be more.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And rest assured, at least Casey and probably John will notice. I won’t notice, but I will appreciate it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco doesn’t give a shit. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John about like, you know, like… I’m kidding, I’m kidding, I’m kidding. He cares in the aggregate, but… Yeah, that’s it, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. I care like what’s the ballpark of how we’re doing and is the average either going up or staying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same. That’s what I care about. If it starts, like, if the average starts going down, then I’ll start
⏹️ ▶️ Marco caring in a bad way, you know, but like as long as things are flat or going up, like trend-wise,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m fine with that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I would agree with that. I pay closer attention than I know I should should and is probably healthy, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s important to me. So, well, that implies it’s not important to you too. You know what I mean? It’s just, it’s, it’s, it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there, there are things that I choose to worry about.
⏹️ ▶️ John Paul Matzko, Jr. Casey also needs his garage door status in his status menu bar on his Mac. So Jay
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Haynes Hey, both of these things, they’re literally next to each other.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Matzko, Jr. Oh, yeah. Did you see this was I think this was the best email of the week from Russ
⏹️ ▶️ Marco newcomer. Subject line, Casey air tags use. I am surely not the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first person to to suggest that you put one on the top half of your garage door to determine if it’s open or not.
⏹️ ▶️ John See, I read that. I’m like, how is that supposed to work? The U1 can point an arrow to say if it’s open or closed?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t feel like the resolution would be enough to make that useful.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it depends on how close the bedroom is to the garage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey It’s pretty close, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco true. Isn’t it right on top of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it? Literally, that’s right. Our master bedroom is directly above
⏹️ ▶️ John garage. Then we had to launch the Find My app, which always takes a long time, and wait for it to find and register and show the letter
⏹️ ▶️ John arrow and then show the number of feet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was slightly miffed by it, but also it was a very, very good email.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I did laugh.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That was my favorite email of the week. Russ gets an award, a gold star for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco best email of the week.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve put in our super secret text. This is my menu bar as it stands right this very moment. So you’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see that there’s a padlock that is locked. So the garage is indeed closed. And then there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a one to seven digit number that indicates subscriber count.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You have that in your menu bar?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’re damn right I do. You’re damn
⏹️ ▶️ John right I do. He’s got too much stuff in that menu bar. Like do you need backblaze there? Like the whole point
⏹️ ▶️ John of backblaze is it just runs without you worrying about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. No, I don’t want backblaze there. Can I remove it?
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh really? Go to the preframe and uncheck the checkbox, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Where? I don’t see
⏹️ ▶️ John any such checkbox. I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I don’t even know what half
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the stuff in my menu bar is. Backblaze.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey god, there it is. Settings. Oh John, I love you.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not new. It’s always been there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve just never noticed. I love you, John. That’s true.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John All right, so I saved
⏹️ ▶️ John you some space. What else can we get rid of? You can’t get rid of Skype because it puts that up there whenever it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John That’ll go away. Do is there. Bluetooth, do you actually use that menu more?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I used to more often than I do now, so I could probably remove
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, Control Center now makes that a lot less necessary for a lot of people.
⏹️ ▶️ John Do you ever disable Wi-Fi or pick a different network? No.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, it’s like, can I move the Wi-Fi? Oh, yeah, good
⏹️ ▶️ John idea. We’re really cleaning house here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, okay, I’m liking this. All right, can I get rid of the Wi-Fi? This is, this is, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John yeah, I can’t. You were performing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Command drag, command drag, and it’s still available under Control Center if you ever actually want to do it, so it’s technically still in your menu bar. Yeah, oh, you were performing
⏹️ ▶️ John a wonderful service, John. Yeah, and then get rid of fuzzy clock, because it’s dumb.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John like fuzzy clocking, you know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For those who don’t know, fuzzy clock is, right now it’s literally the words five space
⏹️ ▶️ John F-I-V-E space T-O space T-E-N, because it’s five to 10.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I like fuzzy clock.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s like, how can we make time really hard to read quickly? Like I know time is easy to tell at a glance
⏹️ ▶️ John because people are used to looking at both analog clocks and digital clocks, but can we make it, can we slow them down? Can we add cognitive
⏹️ ▶️ John load? And someone said, yes, we can.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, I’m also taking away day one. I used to be religious about taking a note as to what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I work on each day. That’s the little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bookmark-shaped thing. Yep, that’s the bookmark. And I don’t do that anymore, so I’m just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey taking that away. Dropler, I use enough that I want it in the menu bar even though I probably
⏹️ ▶️ John should just remove it. What’s the lock icon on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the far left? That’s my
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s closed. It’s locked. Oh, that’s fine. OK. But you need a custom icon for the garage door. Now that we’ve made all the
⏹️ ▶️ John space for the glory item, which is the garage
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey door, you need a custom template image
⏹️ ▶️ John for garage door open and garage door closed. Yeah, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Everything else, I have iStep menus, which I know is your favorite app of all time. Let’s see.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If I could get rid of it, can I get rid of Time Machine up there?
⏹️ ▶️ John You can get rid of Siri. I would recommend it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Can I? Yeah. God bless. How do I not know all these things? God, I’m an amateur. you don’t use a Mac, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good grief. Oh, this is looking so much better, John. I would get rid of the clock, but now that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fricking notification center, so I can’t get rid of that. Can
⏹️ ▶️ John I, I can’t get rid of spotlight either. You’ve got fuzzy clock and you’ve got the analog clock.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know, I know, I know. Then Synology Drive. Yeah, see,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John this is looking much better. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John basically making your screen bigger. Pretty soon it’ll feel like you have an XDR. Beep, beep, beep.