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

455: Your Yanking Force

Thunderbolt docks, a smart-home system that actually works, even more on the MacBook Pro, and selling our (not-so-)old computers.

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

Chapters

  1. How many computers?
  2. Computer setup
  3. ATP Store 🖼️
  4. Thunderbolt docks
  5. Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
  6. More on AirPods 3
  7. Monterey upgrades
  8. Sponsor: Stripe
  9. More on the MacBook Pro
  10. Marco’s Mystery Terabyte update
  11. Sponsor: Linode
  12. Caséta vs. Wi-Fi stuff
  13. Even more MacBook Pro 🖼️
  14. Ending theme
  15. Selling Macs

How many computers?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey What when did we start this we started this in like March of?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey 2013 is that right? So it’s been like eight years that we’ve been doing this. We’re still doing all this bullshit

⏹️ ▶️ Casey trying to get it to work

⏹️ ▶️ John Usually it’s only one of you that radically changes your setup and has things but now Marco wanted to get

⏹️ ▶️ John in on the action today, too. You

⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, it’s not always me I rarely mess with my setup Marco’s one that changes computers like underwear.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yep. That’s me

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, how many computers have you bought in the last three weeks? weeks. Kept?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Bought. I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco say kept,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I said bought.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, for my household or for me personally? For your household. He

⏹️ ▶️ John fosters computers a lot. And then

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco basically

⏹️ ▶️ John like when he has a foster fail, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco how he gets

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey his computers.

⏹️ ▶️ John Marco is about 15

⏹️ ▶️ Casey dogs and 35 computers,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Foster. Oh

⏹️ ▶️ Marco golly. All right. My office is a mess.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey The 32 minutes and seven seconds we’ve been recording. How do you think we have six minutes of content?

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s all for the bootleg. They need to get their money’s worth.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my god. Holy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco smokes

Computer setup

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve been doing computer setup stuff for the better part of the last

⏹️ ▶️ Marco week. For the most part I am still in like happy mode. You know for the most part

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m still loving computers and you know computer new computer setup.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll get to this in a little bit of like why this has taken me an entire week. Short version is I did two clean

⏹️ ▶️ Marco installs instead of doing any migration so that it just takes so much time for me to set things

⏹️ ▶️ Marco up. But I was happy until today because like I had I had this list of things I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco had to do, you know, for, you know, set up, you know, my, you know, Backblaze and Dropbox

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Time Machine and, you know, all just this list of stuff I wanted to set up on the new computers. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had saved until today the two things I really didn’t want to do. That would

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be Adobe setup and transferring the cellular

⏹️ ▶️ Marco plan from my old Apple Watch to my new Apple Watch.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, that usually isn’t bad in my experience. I have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco never had that succeed without having

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco invoke AT&T’s chat people.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like I’ve done it once or twice.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s supposed to be able to do it, but it never does. So all this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco time, I’ve been thinking, oh god, I’ve got to do this. And I had forgotten about the Adobe thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because my computer felt great. I had it all set up the way I liked. I’m really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very happy. Everything’s lightweight. I’m using Maestro instead of Dropbox. I don’t have that crap all over the place.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and keeping everything nice and tight and clean and using new modern things. And then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I went to record the ads for this podcast, which I do right before we record the podcast, and uh-oh, I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have Adobe Audition installed because of what I recorded. And I know there are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco other programs that are what we used to call a wave editor, like back in the very, very old days.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whatever now we call Adobe Audition, it’s a wave editor, but with a bunch more features.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it’s the best damn wave editor I’ve ever seen. And it’s like, you know, the modern version of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what used to be called CoolEdit Pro, which I think they actually bought and turned into Audition long, long, long

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ago. I could be wrong about that, but I just love a good wave editor and I’ve never found a better one than Audition.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I tolerate Adobe’s massive amount of crap

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for only for two apps, only for Photoshop and Audition. I don’t use any of their other apps anymore, really. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco my God, I must really love Audition to put up with this crap, Because Photoshop seems to have a lot

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of really good alternatives. You know, there’s Acorn, there’s Pixelmator, there’s the Affinity suite of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff. Like, there’s all sorts of nice alternatives to Photoshop. I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know of any great alternatives to Adobe Audition. And for what I do with like tons

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of various, you know, it’s basically like, it’s my sound utility knife. Like, I can do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tons of different things with sound with Audition. And it’s not my only one, I have many sound tools,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but you know, this sound is much of my business and pleasure, and so I kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco need it. But, oh man, installing Adobe, that is a fast way to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bring my computer high down crashing back to earth.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh my God. First you gotta install Creative Cloud, and there should be no way

⏹️ ▶️ Marco around installing Creative Cloud. Like, if anybody knows of an option for that for Audition, please let me know, but I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t think there is one. Anyway, I did briefly consider pirating my copy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of Audition. That I pay for anyway, just so I wouldn’t have to have Creative Cloud installed on my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco computer. But I don’t even know what that world is like anymore, so it’s been a while since

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve been in it. But anyway, other than Adobe’s crap being spewed all over my computer in the worst possible

⏹️ ▶️ Marco way, other than that, I’ve had a wonderful week setting up my computers.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I haven’t gotten any work done because I’ve been setting up my computers. but I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so happy to be at the stage I’m at now, which is everything is mostly done and working.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, it’s been a road getting here.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, to that end, I’ve decided to completely change up my audio setup for today.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m doing that because I wanted to trial using my fancy new MacBook Pro, which has finally arrived.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I am very excited about it. We will be talking about it quite a bit later, but I am now recording on the MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro, my poor iMac screen. It’s actually a truly stupid procedure that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m doing right now because I have this beautiful 27-inch screen right behind the 14-inch screen that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m actively using. And I’m just, that 27-inch screen with all that beautiful real estate is just sitting

⏹️ ▶️ Casey there dark. But nevertheless, I am recording on the MacBook Pro. So if anything sounds funky,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t blame Marco, blame me. But in the process of getting all this squared away,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of course, I had to do all my installs. And I’d like to get a reminder out in front of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of the people, including you, Marco, although it’s too late, Homebrew Bundle. If you believe in Homebrew,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I do, then Bundle is sort of kind of like a gem file, I guess,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for Homebrew packages. And so I’ve written about it. We’ve talked about this on the show before. I’ve written about

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, and I’ll put a link in the show notes to my blog post. But you can put in a list of all the packages you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey want. Like, I don’t know, if you’re Casey, then it may be FFmpeg would be high on the list. And you could put that in your Bundle

⏹️ ▶️ Casey file, and then you say to Homebrew Bundle, once Homebrew is installed, go install

⏹️ ▶️ Casey all the things. And there was a couple of minor issues with it this time,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey specifically the mechanism by which you can install stuff from the App Store is kind of broken at the moment,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey although I think they just merged the fix for it. But nevertheless, I was able to get it squared away and it is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey really nice. The one thing I will say though is, I was sold a bill

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of goods with this MacBook Pro, I’m kind of spoiling a little bit later, just a smidge. I was sold a bill of goods with this MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro that everything happens instantly. And a lot of stuff does,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot of stuff really, really does. But you know what doesn’t? Xcode install. And I did

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it from the Mac App Store, which maybe that was a poor

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco choice.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, well, there’s your problem. Never do that. One way or the other. The install took for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey freaking ever. And of course, like a noob, I had, the way I did my

⏹️ ▶️ Casey bundle file, which you can find off the link on my blog, is I did all of the Mac App Store stuff

⏹️ ▶️ Casey first, and then all the straight up brew stuff later. I did

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it alphabetically because I’m type A. One of the last things in the Mac App Store section was Xcode,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but then that caused everything to effectively come to a screeching halt because I couldn’t install

⏹️ ▶️ Casey anything else. Well, I mean, I could, but if I’m running through this file, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey held up on Xcode before it gets to any of the other stuff I wanted to install.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey One of the things I’ve learned from this process is put Xcode at the bottom. So it’s the very last thing you install,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not one of the first. But Homebrew Bundle, I know, Marco, it’s too late for you, and I know this isn’t really

⏹️ ▶️ Casey your style, because I know you don’t like automating anything with these sorts of things, but it’s a very

⏹️ ▶️ Casey neat tool, and we will put links in the show notes.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It isn’t that I’m against automating this kind of stuff, it’s just that the setup that I have,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or the technical needs of whatever I’m installing, or the packages themselves, tend

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to change more often than I set up new machines. And so the result is when

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am ready to use it again, either the script has broken, or the packages it refers

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have changed or broken, and or the things I want to install are different.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, I mean, if I was setting up, like, you know, if I, I mean, suppose I was ridiculous enough

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to buy a new Mac every year.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Suppose.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And suppose that I was setting them up as clean installs every time. then I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be way more likely to do this kind of setup. But what I do now, like, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I set up a clean install maybe every three to five years.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey So- Yeah, see,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s where you and I differ. So it makes even more sense that you would not be keen on this idea. But for me, I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey find that, for my preferences, I just like doing it fresh every time. I just, I like cleaning

⏹️ ▶️ Casey out all the cruft. And I know that’s more of like a holdover from Windows time, but I just prefer to clean everything

⏹️ ▶️ Casey out and just do it fresh. John, when you did your Mac Pro, did you migrate? You did,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t you? Yep,

⏹️ ▶️ John I always use Migration Assistant. I was just watching one of our Slack’s people were just talking about brew and all that

⏹️ ▶️ John other stuff. Oh boy, how you people live with these package managers. Like Margot was saying,

⏹️ ▶️ John I update so infrequently that when I update, it’s basically an opportunity for me to

⏹️ ▶️ John either update or change which things I have, right? So that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John the time for me to upgrade my installation of Postgres and upgrade my installation of MySQL, if

⏹️ ▶️ John it even still exists, or if it’s MariaDB now or whatever. Like, that’s the time for me to do all that. New version

⏹️ ▶️ John of Perl now, and all my CPAN modules. Let’s get those, and I don’t mess with those for years, but

⏹️ ▶️ John when a new computer comes, that’s the time for me to revisit all of it. So I don’t want an automated process that just gives me what I had before.

⏹️ ▶️ John I want every X number of years to reconsider everything that I have.

⏹️ ▶️ John And Migration Assistant brings a lot of it over, and because of the wonders of binary compatibility and R Rosetta, my

⏹️ ▶️ John existing installs tend to just work, but it’s just those are just copied as files because everything is in user local and

⏹️ ▶️ John migration system tends to copy over user local or if it doesn’t I can manually do it because it’s just one directory tree

⏹️ ▶️ John and that’s all my stuff but that I do take that opportunity to say okay well my stuff came over

⏹️ ▶️ John and it seems like it works but do I want to start upgrading or uninstalling or putting something different

⏹️ ▶️ John in or whatever so that’s what I do when I get a new machine.

ATP Store

Chapter ATP Store image.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s talk about the most important thing in the world. It is not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey new MacBook Pros, as exciting as they are. It is instead the ATP Store, which is back,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey baby, just like we said last time. The store is back. This is the middle of three

⏹️ ▶️ Casey episodes where we plan to talk about this. So you are running out of time. You are running out of time.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So the ATP Store is back in case you missed last week. We’ve got all new stuff. We’ve got

⏹️ ▶️ Casey ATP, the flamethrower. No, not really. We’ve got ATP M1 Pro shirts and Max

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⏹️ ▶️ Casey with a rainbow front and printed on the back. Then we also have the monochrome version

⏹️ ▶️ Casey where the colors of the shirt are various different colors, but the ink is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey always white. And again, there is something on the back there. And then we also have the ATP

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Winter hat. Note, this is not a chicken hat. Perhaps we should call it a turkey hat. I don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the chicken hat but just really big and less flavorful.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah, exactly right. And then we have the…

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Turkey

⏹️ ▶️ John is not less flavorful than chicken. What? That’s madness. Actually,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is probably true. You’re probably

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John right. Sorry, dryer.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, that depends on who’s cooking at us.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey No,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey there it is. We’ve got the ATP hoodie and then we’ve got the classic ATP logo shirt. All of these things are available

⏹️ ▶️ Casey at atp.fm.store. If you are listening to this right now,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey If you’re driving, maybe signal and then pull over. If you’re walking,

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⏹️ ▶️ Casey Don’t let John down. Don’t let us down. Buy a shirt, buy a shirt for you, buy a shirt for your friend.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Everyone will be happy. one will be happy. ATP.fm slash store. Also, don’t forget,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you are an ATP member, you get 15% off on time sales like this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one. So if you want, you could become a member at ATP.fm slash join,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you could buy your merchandise, you could cancel right after but instead you could hold on and listen

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the amazing bootleg that we put out every week, including this one, which I can assure you was a disaster.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco This is a good one. If you’re going to listen

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to a bootleg, this week is a good time to start.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is a good time to start. So, atp.fm slash join to become a member and

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⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right.

Thunderbolt docks

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s do some follow-up. We have a Ask ATP that I think I might have from somebody promoted

⏹️ ▶️ Casey an Ask ATP from Cesar Cavazos. I’m gonna go with that. And Cesar

⏹️ ▶️ Casey asks, can you do a follow-up on Marco’s dock setup? Which one will you be using with the 2021 MacBook Pro?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey If I recall correctly, both CalDigit and OWC were the culprits of network issue, or excuse me, weren’t the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey culprits of network issues. But I’m also wondering if the charging power, 87 Watts and 90 Watts will be an issue.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would also like to know this because I really think this MacBook Pro that I’m talking to you on right now is going to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey be my only, well, real computer soon. So I would like a dock and a frigging

⏹️ ▶️ Casey monitor, Apple, but we’ll leave that for another time. I would like a dock. So Marco, what’s your dock situation?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So interestingly, so I still do own both docks. I keep

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the OWC Thunderbolt dock back

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in Westchester. So whenever I go back there, I plug into that. that’s connected to my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco LG fine display and I have a fine setup there whenever I need

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to record there. But my primary setup with the XDR here at the beach

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is using actually none of those hubs. Oh.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have the CalDigit here, but I use it more for like, you know, if I had to like set up for a project

⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing something like, I’m currently playing with, you know, some gaming hardware

⏹️ ▶️ Marco type stuff that I might do like capture of all three of us in the family playing a game.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And to do that, I would actually use CalDigit Dock and capture onto my laptop, which is actually one

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the reasons why I upgraded laptop, even though I didn’t necessarily need to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for other reasons. Anyway, so the CalDigit’s kind of floating around my house as like a utility as needed thing right now.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco What I am using though, is still just two cables put into my MacBook Pro. the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thunderbolt to Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter that is currently the chain. Thunderbolt

⏹️ ▶️ Marco three to Thunderbolt two to Thunderbolt two to Ethernet, which is how we are talking to each other right now.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Listen to the bootleg if you want to hear the story of how that happened. And the other cable

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is going to my Pro Display XDR. And the XDR has on its butt three or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco four extra USB-C ports. And they’re not Thunderbolt, they’re USB because there isn’t enough bandwidth

⏹️ ▶️ Marco left over after the display signal to also offer Thunderbolt ports in the back, but it turns out that the only

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really high bandwidth thing I have is the Pro Display XDR, and everything else I plug into USB ports

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is mostly low bandwidth stuff. It’s mostly keyboard receiver, sound devices,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco input and output, a couple of external hard drives or external SSDs,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco USB devices, charging cables for a watch and my iPhone developer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tether cable. So there’s mostly not a lot of high-end needs I have here. I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really just need a bunch of USB ports. Also under my desk, I have a USB-A

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hub. So that provides a lot of the less modern connections to a lot of that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff too. In the back of the Pro Display XDR, I connect my audio interface, that USB

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hub, something else, I think one of the charging cables. And that covers my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco needs just fine. It really is, that’s really all I need. So for now,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not using any of these hubs and I don’t think I will need to add one to my desk in the near future.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m blown away that you’re using your USB audio interface via the XDR.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like there’s no reason why that should be a problem, but I don’t know, superstition just tells me that that seems

⏹️ ▶️ Casey like a terrible decision.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and I’ve been using it that way since I got the Mac mini, so about a year. The thing is like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I used to have that same superstition because it wasn’t a superstition. Like when the USB-C generation of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptops first came out in 2015 and 2016, the USB hubs and dongles and stuff

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the marketplace were very unreliable, including the ones that were on the back of the LG

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Fine. Those ports are notoriously unreliable. Hubs and dongles were unreliable.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so for the early generation of USB-C stuff, it wasn’t wise to plug

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in something like an audio recording device into anything besides a port that was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the computer. And that’s one of the reasons why I always wanted more ports on the computer, because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the things I needed to be 100% reliable had to go into those ports. They couldn’t go into a hub and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for me to actually depend on them. Well, the XDR’s ports have been 100% reliable for me. I haven’t had

⏹️ ▶️ Marco any problems with them at all. So it’s great in the sense that, I guess after spending $15

⏹️ ▶️ Marco million on this display and another $5 million on its stand, that I get four extra USB-C

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ports.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay. Do you remember the actual names of the two, the OWC and the CalDigit

⏹️ ▶️ Casey hub? Is the CalDigit the TS3 Plus? Yes.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Does that sound right? Yeah, they’ve been making that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a while. It’s great. It’s like this solid block of aluminum. Anecdotally, or I mean, just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco opinion-wise, between the CalDigit and the OWC Thunderbolt 3 dock, I think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s called, I prefer the CalDigit. They have similar capabilities. The CalDigit

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a little bit like smaller and stockier in its shape.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And even though they both seem to be built with high quality, the CalDigit is basically

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a giant block of metal. Like the outside has fins so it cools off without needing like a big

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fan anywhere. Like it’s a really nicely built thing. I’m a big fan of CalDigit

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from this purchase alone. Like I’ve never had any of the previous stuff. But this device has made me a fan.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s so, it just feels so damn solid. They actually, they have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco something called the Element Hub that I desperately want, but it’s out of stock everywhere right now.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because what’s interesting is that now that the MacBook Pros are providing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco HDMI and SD, I no longer really want those things in a hub.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Every little feature that a hub provides, every little hardware thing that it has built in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is kind of a liability if I don’t need or want it. Because for instance, all these hubs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have their own audio devices built in, they have a headphone jack, maybe a microphone, like a headset kind

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of microphone jack input. But you know, so it has all these additional things. And to me, all of those

⏹️ ▶️ Marco things are liabilities for some kind of peripheral that will be permanently

⏹️ ▶️ Marco connected to my computer that I can’t separate from the rest of the hub that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco might at some point get flaky or have some kind of weird driver issue with the OS or something

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that. I want my hubs to be mostly dumb. I want the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco variety of ports and stuff to be in the computer. The computer should have things like the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco SD slot and the HDMI port and hardware ethernet if it’s a desktop and stuff like that. That should

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all be in the computer and the hub should only be necessary ideally to provide just more ports,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco more USB ports ideally and Thunderbolt ports. So what I’m looking forward to is I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hoping to get the CalDigit element hub at some point soon once it comes back in stock because all it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is is Thunderbolt in and then some I think it’s three Thunderbolt out

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a whole bunch of USB-A out and so it’s and that’s it like there’s no

⏹️ ▶️ Marco networking there’s no sound there’s no HDMI it’s just a USB and Thunderbolt port

⏹️ ▶️ Marco multiplier and that’s awesome that’s exactly what I want so hopefully I can get one of those sometime

⏹️ ▶️ Marco soon but and And I hope that now as these

⏹️ ▶️ Marco new, a little bit more generous port-filled laptops start going into the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco market and over time start taking over the market as they filter in and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco people start replacing the old USB-C only ones after a few years from now,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m hoping that the world of these big multi-port hubs kind

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of gets reduced and we are just seeing much more just like, you know, multiple USB

⏹️ ▶️ Marco port multipliers or multiple Thunderbolt port multipliers. Hopefully we’ll get there.

⏹️ ▶️ John I wish the element hub worked without a power supply though, because it is so slim and small and just has those ports on it, but it

⏹️ ▶️ John does require DC power. So you’ve got a power brick and you’ve got a cord and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, I know that is unfortunate. But as far as I know, and the other side part too,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that on the market, I think how did you makes one? I think OWC and maybe a couple other,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe Belkin. There are other ones on the market that are bus-powered Thunderbolt

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hubs, but they only tend to have two USB ports and then like two

⏹️ ▶️ Marco HDMI or two DisplayPort ports. And a couple of different brands make this, so I’m guessing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s some kind of like just standard Intel chip they have in there to do this. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that to me, like, that’s fine, but I don’t really need two additional HDMI ports.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really just need more USB ports. But I also recognize the power demands

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of modern USB devices. They expect a certain amount of power from the bus, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco while Thunderbolt can deliver a lot of power over that port, I’m sure there’s, I don’t know what the limit is off the top of my head

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for Thunderbolt devices. Maybe it’s like 30 watts or something like that, but I bet they would hit that limit pretty fast

⏹️ ▶️ Marco once they’re adding ports.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s from their FAQ. They say Thunderbolt ports each require 15 watts of power and USB ports each

⏹️ ▶️ John provide up to 7.5 watts of power, so if you add it all up, you need a power supply. You can’t get that from the

⏹️ ▶️ John bus. It makes sense, but you know. Yeah.

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More on AirPods 3

⏹️ ▶️ Marco All

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, John, tell me about your AirPods 3. A

⏹️ ▶️ John quick update on my AirPods 3 I talked about last week. Now I’ve had a week to spend with them. I’ve used them

⏹️ ▶️ John as my main and only AirPods, which means I use them a lot. Use them while listening to podcasts,

⏹️ ▶️ John watching TV shows and movies on my iPad, did all the things. So, update on the comfort.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think they’re fine. My ears don’t hurt. They’re not fatigued. Like, I was worried about that.

⏹️ ▶️ John They do still feel different. They feel larger in the ear. they press up against parts that they didn’t, but it’s, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John after a week, I feel confident in saying that if these were gonna bother my ears in some way, they would have already, and they don’t, so.

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, that’s just me, you have to try them yourself to see how it works for you, but I’m personally glad that

⏹️ ▶️ John they don’t bother me. The case size, I did say that they come in a charging case that’s bigger,

⏹️ ▶️ John which kind of annoys me. It’s worth noting that it is smaller than the AirPods Pro case,

⏹️ ▶️ John so if you think you’re getting, it looks just like the AirPods Pro case, like it opens on the long side and everything like that, but it is smaller

⏹️ ▶️ John than that. It is slightly larger than the regular AirPods case, but still significantly smaller than the big AirPods

⏹️ ▶️ John Pro case. So don’t be too afraid of the case. It’s kind of like going from the iPhone 7 to the iPhone 10.

⏹️ ▶️ John Is that the time when we get one bigger? Like seven to, yeah, seven to 10, right? It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit bigger, but you get used to it. And then finally, spatial audio. These are my first headphones, besides

⏹️ ▶️ John messing with my wife’s AirPods Pro, that I’ve used that support spatial audio.

⏹️ ▶️ John And I don’t like it. Every time I try to do stuff on my iPad, I’m like, why the hell is the audio

⏹️ ▶️ John all messed up? Oh, okay, spatial audio. And then, do you want head track spatial audio? Do you want non-head track?

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, no, I don’t want any spatial audio. I mean, I’m mostly watching TV shows and movies, but

⏹️ ▶️ John whatever they’re doing, some of them says like, don’t be at most available. I’m like, no, I mean, it’s just, it

⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t, it sounds worse to me. Or maybe with music, I tried it with music a little bit too,

⏹️ ▶️ John and even including downloading ones that are, you know, whatever the keyword is for the music

⏹️ ▶️ John that says redownload to get the fancy spatial multi-track thing. For

⏹️ ▶️ John whatever reason, it’s not what I want. Definitely don’t want it on a TV show. It just makes it sound like,

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want the thing where, hey, the sound sounds like it’s coming from the iPad. I don’t want that. I

⏹️ ▶️ John want the opposite of that. That’s the point of wearing headphones is that the sound doesn’t sound like it’s coming from the iPad. It sounds

⏹️ ▶️ John like it’s right in my ears, and that’s much better. But then also,

⏹️ ▶️ John the music, the multi-track music, I just want it to be, I just want it to be mixed for headphones,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? I don’t want it to be, I don’t want it to sound like everything I’m listening to isn’t like, it’s like a stereo equipment

⏹️ ▶️ John from my youth when they first started having like concert hall mode where everything sounds like it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey in a cathedral.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey that bad.

⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, it’s not to my personal taste, but it just, for people who don’t know, if they just buy these and start using their iPad and everything sounds weird,

⏹️ ▶️ John remember that you can, what is it, upper right corner, swipe down to get the control center and then hold down on the

⏹️ ▶️ John volume bar. This is not particularly discoverable. I don’t even know like what the quote-unquote real way to do it

⏹️ ▶️ John is but anyway Upper right corner swipe down on iOS or iPad OS Hold your finger

⏹️ ▶️ John down on the volume slider and it will pop up a full screen thing That will have a giant volume slider and then at

⏹️ ▶️ John the bottom of the giant volume slider you’ll see probably three buttons for like spatial audio off and spatial audio

⏹️ ▶️ John head tracked and spatial audio fixed and then you can switch among them and it does seem to Remember

⏹️ ▶️ John your settings per app, which means that every time I use a different app up now, I’m using Netflix now I’m using Hulu now Now I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John using the Apple TV+, in every app, I have to convince it knows spatial audio. It does seem

⏹️ ▶️ John to remember so far, which is good, but yeah, not a fan. Oh yeah, and I guess speaking of not a fan,

⏹️ ▶️ John the tapping versus squeezing, I’m getting a lot better at doing the little pinch. Still miss tapping.

⏹️ ▶️ John I really wish they would bring that back in a future version of these, but I’m really not holding my breath. But yeah, the squeezing

⏹️ ▶️ John is just, it’s worse for my use cases. It recurred to me when I was,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, thinking about the squeezing and all this stuff during the week. I used to frequently

⏹️ ▶️ John knock on the AirPods with my knuckles or the back of my hand when my fingers were all gross from like

⏹️ ▶️ John cooking or washing something or whatever. Forget about that. Try pinching, if you have like, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John gross fingers that have like cooking stuff on them, you can’t pinch with your knuckles. At least I can’t anyway. I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John not that like, I really, I mean, I guess I could also go with the, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John hey dingus stop and hey dingus play type of thing. but anyway, still the

⏹️ ▶️ John audio quality is better enough that I’m definitely gonna stick with it, but I will miss tapping.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Understandable. I still haven’t tried spatial audio, nor the pinching versus tapping

⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing. I only have non-spatial audio tappable AirPods, and I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not sure how I’m gonna feel that either of those things, one eventually I upgrade.

Monterey upgrades

⏹️ ▶️ Casey One of you wanted to know what our Monterey situation is, who’s updated, who hasn’t, et cetera. Marco

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I just got new computers, so I think it’s safe to say that we’ve upgraded. You have no choice.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yep. Yeah, you didn’t upgrade. What’s your situation, John? Oh, well, I mean, just before we get to me, like

⏹️ ▶️ John obviously your new computers all came with Monterey and you can’t use anything else, but what about your

⏹️ ▶️ John older slash existing computers? Did you bother upgrading those? Marco’s got so many computers, I can’t keep track. So he’s gotta have some there. Neither can he.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, did you upgrade everyone else’s computer in the house to Monterey? Is your old Mac mini upgraded

⏹️ ▶️ John to Monterey? What’s the upgrade story?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The Mac mini is not, just because I had no reason to upgrade it to Monterey. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s funny, you know, when the M1 Macs first launched

⏹️ ▶️ Marco last fall and developers had the opportunity to either leave our

⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps as is and let them be available, like, I’m sorry, iOS developers, had the ability to let our apps

⏹️ ▶️ Marco become available in the Mac App Store for M1 Macs, or you could opt out. And I said at the time,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco why would anybody opt out? This is like free additional users for your app.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I figured what could possibly go wrong? Of course, I’m going to leave overcast in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as you know, for able to run on, on, on max. Well, it worked okay

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the most part for, for most of the last year until I was 15

⏹️ ▶️ Marco beta started coming out and Mac OS monitor beta started coming out and they, they’re starting to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco become bugs in the like now shipping versions of Xcode that build

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for iOS 15 and Mac OS Monterey. Now I have to actually test

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Overcast on Big Sur when building with Monterey’s version of Xcode.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Is this actually working now or is it gonna crash in weird ways? It’s no longer like a like a you get this for free kind

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of thing. So I actually I’m not saying I’m gonna remove it from this I’m not but when

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it does crash on Big Sur I hear from every single person who uses it and they start leaving

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one star reviews and bringing my average down. Even though they are not that numerous, there are enough of them

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that if the app crashes, I will hear from them. And I won’t hear from them in my support email, I’ll hear from them

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in one star reviews. So I do have a need now to become

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Mac app tester. Like I need to be able to test my app on old versions of Mac OS. I do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco intend at some point soon to look into like, how do I virtualize old versions of Mac

⏹️ ▶️ Marco OS so I can do it that way. But until I figure that out, I’m just going to leave this Mac Mini

⏹️ ▶️ Marco running with screen share enabled, which I maybe I’ll get to that story. But I’ll leave it running with screen

⏹️ ▶️ Marco share enabled in my closet for a while so I can just log into that and test it whenever I need to.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I don’t believe I upgraded my Mac Mini that’s basically a Plex server, a little

⏹️ ▶️ Casey else. But I have upgraded it basically everything else that I touch. I don’t even

⏹️ ▶️ Casey know what version of Mac OS Aaron’s adorable is on, but it’s probably like two versions old now.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I upgraded everything, it’s been fine. I like having focus modes echoed across

⏹️ ▶️ Casey all my devices. I know that’s very divisive and not everyone will agree with me and that’s fine. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I like it. I don’t use it super aggressively, but as an example, I have a podcasting focus mode that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey comes on at eight o’clock on Wednesdays and stops at like midnight on Wednesdays. And so

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is an example of something that’s echoed across all my devices, which I like. And I feel like there’s some

⏹️ ▶️ Casey other stuff, although off the top of my head, I can’t remember what, but I feel like there’s some other stuff that I’ve liked about

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Monterey, but buy-in. Oh, AirPlay receiving is pretty cool. So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can use my iMac Pro or perhaps MacBook Pro as one

⏹️ ▶️ Casey component of a multi-room audio setup, which I like. The only thing I didn’t like though was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey apparently it listens on port 5000, which I typically use locally when I write blog

⏹️ ▶️ Casey posts for my blog. And I use Port 5000 for the web server when I test locally.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I was starting it on the MacBook Pro in order to test or look

⏹️ ▶️ Casey at a blog post. And it kept saying, well, the port is in use. And I was like, what are you talking about?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do I have something running somewhere that I don’t even realize? And it did, it took me a little bit of doctor going before I realized, oh, apparently

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it listens on Port 5000 and one other one. I don’t remember which one I don’t, and I don’t know why, but that’s, that’s the way it works.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think we both end up with using port 5000 as our local web server thing,

⏹️ ▶️ John because I use the same one.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have no idea. It’s because we’re so damn smart, John. That’s why.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s weird. It’s not a convention that I know of, and it just, I don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, is it a node thing? It might be a node thing, because this is a node-based. I’m not using node. Well, you do sometimes.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Last I heard you were doing a bunch of node for work.

⏹️ ▶️ John No, I’m talking about my hypercritical.co.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, oh.

⏹️ ▶️ John My ridiculous stack of Perl garbage. There’s no node in there.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Fair enough. That’s port 5000.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, funny how that works. Well, anyways, but no, all in all, it’s been going well. How

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is it on your completely slow and boring Mac Pro?

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I mean, the reason I put this topic in here is a lot of people ask, like, how’s Monterey going here? We kind of said the same thing

⏹️ ▶️ John quickly with iOS, what the hell number are we on now?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey 15? 15.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey and

⏹️ ▶️ John we all just upgraded to iOS 15 and it was fine. I’d have to say the same thing in Monterey. In fact, the most difficult thing about Monterey

⏹️ ▶️ John was me making sure all my backups were up to date because they just take so long, right? Especially the

⏹️ ▶️ John ones to the Synology, because just, I guess, I don’t know. It’s like backing up over the network

⏹️ ▶️ John is always just so much slower than backing up to a local disk and when you’re in a hurry. So anyway, I updated all the backups.

⏹️ ▶️ John The new version of SuperDuper is out that supports, you know, bootable backups from Big Sur and Monterey.

⏹️ ▶️ John And so I, you know, I made it fresh. Make sure everything was like up-to-date, up-to-date. What I like to do is all the, the

⏹️ ▶️ John only thing I do before the upgrade is I do all the backups and nothing else. Don’t do any work because then you have to

⏹️ ▶️ John re-backup, right? So I do all the backups, I got all my backups all squared away, back to the Backblaze,

⏹️ ▶️ John SuperDuper clone, local time machine, remote time machine, then you can upgrade. And I upgraded,

⏹️ ▶️ John it went fine, uneventful. Just did the upgrade, it did its thing, and

⏹️ ▶️ John nothing broke and everything’s good. So, and I was using myself as the guinea pig, and I did, my traditional upgrade

⏹️ ▶️ John time is right after we record ATP, so that gives me the maximum amount of time

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey to screw up my setup before the

⏹️ ▶️ John next recording. So basically, the last week, you know, Thursday morning or whatever, I just started

⏹️ ▶️ John this process because I had already done all the backups. And based on that experience, that it was fine on my computer, upgraded my

⏹️ ▶️ John wife’s computer too. So if people are wondering, hey, how’s Monterey going? Now, with the caveat that there

⏹️ ▶️ John is some reports that updating Bridge OS is kind of hosing people’s older Macs so if you have an older Mac,

⏹️ ▶️ John maybe look up that problem. I couldn’t find a good link for it in show notes. All the ones that I saw were just like, hey, some older

⏹️ ▶️ John Macs are getting bricked because Bridge OS gets updated or whatever. And I’ve had that happen to my Mac Pro in the past

⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s no fun. You do not want to get into the situation. So it might be worth waiting if you have an older Mac.

⏹️ ▶️ John I wish I could tell you the list of Macs. I looked at like four different articles and they all just said older Macs. I’m like, you need to tell me what that means.

⏹️ ▶️ John Which specific Mac should not upgrade? Anyway, but if you have a modern Mac, a very up-to-date one,

⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re wondering, is Monterey okay? Monterey 12.0.1 or whatever, whatever

⏹️ ▶️ John the version is that like doesn’t ship on hardware, but like that you get when you upgrade, it’s been fine

⏹️ ▶️ John for me. I think it’s safe for you to upgrade if you have a modern-ish Mac.

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More on the MacBook Pro

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, The Verge released their MacBook Pro reviews, I don’t know, a few

⏹️ ▶️ Casey days ago now, and there was some very interesting kind

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of banter in that review, but most especially around battery life. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey they wrote, and I watched the video review and I believe I read the post as well, and the video review was very good too, but they wrote,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro ran for 16 hours on its battery during continuous use, making it the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey longest lasting laptop we’ve ever tested. Period. Ever, ever.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Which is pretty cool.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, the Verge stuff is not particularly scientific in terms of battery testing, but they basically just use

⏹️ ▶️ John the computers to do what they normally do. So this is, I would imagine this is light use, right? But in any

⏹️ ▶️ John scenario, getting 16 hours of battery, as they said in the review, they felt like they wanted to like stop working and go

⏹️ ▶️ John to sleep, but the computer still had battery. Like they ran out of battery

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco before the

⏹️ ▶️ John computer did. So yeah, that 100 kilowatt, you know, the biggest battery

⏹️ ▶️ John you can put in a laptop and still have it be allowed on a plane, apparently you put that in combined with an

⏹️ ▶️ John M1 Pro, not the Max, but the plain old M1 Pro can result in very, very long battery life, which

⏹️ ▶️ John is great.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now tell me about charging a MacBook Pro via USB-C. I, for one, am extremely happy

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that that’s still a thing. And it sounds like it had to be a thing. Am I right?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, Ethan C. wrote in to say that his theory is backed up by some links we’ll put in the show notes. Apple is required

⏹️ ▶️ John to allow charging through at least one USB-C port in order to certify the laptop as Thunderbolt 4 compatible.

⏹️ ▶️ John Here’s some text from this Thunderbolt PDF that says, required PC charging on at least one computer port

⏹️ ▶️ John for thin and light notebook that requires less than 100 watts to charge. And a similar

⏹️ ▶️ John citation from PC Magazine. So It seems like to be properly certified as Thunderbolt 4,

⏹️ ▶️ John you have to do this. Now that said, Apple has had no problem in the past just doing whatever the

⏹️ ▶️ John hell it wants with supposedly standard interfaces. An example would be, well, I don’t actually, I can’t say

⏹️ ▶️ John this is non-standard, but it’s definitely weird. Someone will write it and tell me whether it’s non-standard Apple thing or just like weird.

⏹️ ▶️ John The USB connector that connected to USB keyboards for Macs

⏹️ ▶️ John back when the power button was still on the keyboard. Do you guys remember that? Oh yeah. So

⏹️ ▶️ John they had the USB, it was a USB-A connector, but it had like a notch in it. Like it was weird. Like it wouldn’t, you

⏹️ ▶️ John couldn’t plug in a regular USB-A. They’ve always loved notches. Yeah, well, it was like a little, I think it was

⏹️ ▶️ John like a triangular notch or whatever. Because, you know, otherwise, you know, plain old USB,

⏹️ ▶️ John you couldn’t put a power button on that keyboard. It just wouldn’t work. So Apple sort of made its own thing. And

⏹️ ▶️ John I think that’s a totally Apple proprietary thing or it’s some weird variant of USB. But anyway, either

⏹️ ▶️ John way, Apple has no problem doing whatever the hell it feels like with any kind of buses and just saying, hey, this is

⏹️ ▶️ John the way it is in Apple computers. Or just look at Apple Display Connector, ADC, which was totally made

⏹️ ▶️ John up port with a ton of a bunch of other protocols over it or whatever. So it’s not like Apple was forced to do this, but it just seems

⏹️ ▶️ John like this was the path of least resistance for Apple, and we’re all glad they did it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed. Tell me about MacBook Pro compatibility mode and its resolution.

⏹️ ▶️ John This is a question for both of you to answer, because I can’t test these things. And I see these things on the internet,

⏹️ ▶️ John and I can’t figure out whether they’re true or not. So this is in reference to the sort

⏹️ ▶️ John of the checkbox that’s in the get info window that we referred to on the show, like right after

⏹️ ▶️ John the MacBook Pros were announced, we talked about this and now more and more people are discovering it.

⏹️ ▶️ John It is in Monterey. If you go in the finder, select an application, go to get info or hit command

⏹️ ▶️ John I, there’s a checkbox. What does it say? It’s not listed as compatibility

⏹️ ▶️ John mode. It is called…

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Scale to fit below built-in camera.

⏹️ ▶️ John There you go. Well, basically what it says is, hey, this application might not know how to deal with a notch.

⏹️ ▶️ John So just make this application think it is in a 16 by 10 screen and that the notch doesn’t exist.

⏹️ ▶️ John And the way I thought it did that was it would just tell the application, hey, the screen

⏹️ ▶️ John bounds end at essentially where the bottom of the menu bar would normally be. So hey, you’re on a 16 by 10 screen.

⏹️ ▶️ John And just everything above that would just be black because the application would just ignore that part.

⏹️ ▶️ John But if you look at this video that’s attached here in this tweet that shows it’s that

⏹️ ▶️ John purports to show this feature in action what it looks like it does instead

⏹️ ▶️ John is that it scales down the entire interface right that it like

⏹️ ▶️ John instead of chopping off the top it takes the picture that would be displayed on the screen and

⏹️ ▶️ John scales it including on the sides like that it basically goes to a non-native resolution by slightly scaling

⏹️ ▶️ John down the whole image so that it gets below the notch so it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco not just shorter,

⏹️ ▶️ John but is also narrower. And that seems bad. That’s not what I thought this feature did. And I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John want it to do this. I would much rather have chop off the top pixel so it stays at native res. So can you guys

⏹️ ▶️ John try this and tell me if this is true? Not it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Fine. My fingers on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey nose.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John We

⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t want you touching anything.

⏹️ ▶️ John No, you don’t need to run full screen. Just look at the terrible video with background music that probably just bled through my headphones

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey into the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey background. I’m not listening to the background music. So, but they’re running this full screen.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, screw it. I’ll just try it. All right. is an example of something that I know supports full screen mode. And I’ve

⏹️ ▶️ Casey ticked scale to fit below built-in camera. I’m now closing the info window. I’m starting day one.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it’s just in a window exactly as you would expect. However, when I go full screen, yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, yeah, yeah. It comes in a little bit for sure. It comes in laterally and vertically.

⏹️ ▶️ John Is it displaying non-native reds? It seems like it would have to be, huh? I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey know. I took a screenshot. Let’s see how big the screenshot is.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, anyway, it wouldn’t surprise me if this mode is not something that got a lot of time put into it by Apple’s engineers

⏹️ ▶️ Marco before the release of these things, because, you know, I mean, first of all, a lot of this stuff kind of seems like it was a little bit,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, last minute, but also, as soon as an app is built with the modern tools, like with the current version

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of Xcode, that option disappears for it. So this is not something that Apple intends to have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as like a long-term thing that people are gonna do for certain apps all the time. This is literally just like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco let’s get us through this transition period as smoothly and possibly hackily as

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we can, but this is a temporary thing. This is not gonna be a thing that you use more

⏹️ ▶️ Marco than a few months.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if this is, there’s a info plist key that’s NS something or other, whatever, and

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if that is the exact same thing. Is this like, I don’t think it’s just building on the new tools. The new tools may give you that key

⏹️ ▶️ John in your info plist by default, but you could in theory just delete it off of there and still build with the newest SDK. So I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John know if this checkbox is the same as that info plist key. But anyway, this

⏹️ ▶️ John is disappointing, because what it means is that you get this, we get all these advantages that we were talking about, having more

⏹️ ▶️ John screen space and having native resolution, and always having the ability to ignore

⏹️ ▶️ John the notch if you want to on a per app basis. But now it seems like if you do that on a per app

⏹️ ▶️ John basis with your older apps, you’re giving up the native resolution.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John I think

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you might

⏹️ ▶️ John be right. Which people maybe don’t notice, because again, there’s a lot of pixels there and it’s like 254 DPI or whatever, but yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ John And it does make sense for Marcos, like saying like maybe they didn’t want

⏹️ ▶️ John to put too much time to the scaling is less work because then you’re like look I don’t change anything it as far as the app is concerned

⏹️ ▶️ John it is displaying exactly as it would like if it was not savvy it’s just that we literally

⏹️ ▶️ John shrink the on output we shrink the image so that it avoids the notch but everything else about it is exactly

⏹️ ▶️ John identical

⏹️ ▶️ Marco right because that way they wouldn’t have to like build on a whole thing where like if the app asks the hardware how big

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is your screen in pixels you know they can just give the same answer no matter what and and you know just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco scale it down

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John it

⏹️ ▶️ John It doesn’t change, it doesn’t, you know, instead of this, it doesn’t think it’s on a 16 by 10 screen where

⏹️ ▶️ John the other apps think they’re on a, what is it, 16 by 10 point something screen, right? Right. Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ John If we figure out more about that, we’ll update, but otherwise it’s a one minor disappointment. Everyone should update their apps

⏹️ ▶️ John to be notch savvy.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And speaking of the notch, apparently its code name was Daisy as per Philippe Esposito.

⏹️ ▶️ John I just thought that was cute because that’s my dog’s name. that have some symbols pulled out of the, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John I guess the class number or something, get daisy bounds, get display daisy

⏹️ ▶️ John bounds, get daisy width. That’s cute.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a notch shaped notch.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mm-hmm. Ha ha ha. Reference acknowledged. All right, 120 hertz scrolling in macOS on

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the new MacBook Pros. I can tell you from experience, very hit or miss.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s what a 9to5Mac article says. Apparently, Catalyst apps run at 120 hertz

⏹️ ▶️ John as you would expect, on iOS, there’s still some things you might have to do to make your animations run at 120 hertz,

⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. But we were talking about, oh, Marco didn’t even notice the 120 hertz when he had his new

⏹️ ▶️ John computer last week. And we said, oh, it must be in Safari, right? Well, apparently Safari is one of the apps that doesn’t support,

⏹️ ▶️ John or at least as of the time of this article, doesn’t support 120 hertz because Apple has to do some update or something to it.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Whoops. Which is weird and kind of

⏹️ ▶️ John disappointing. The funny thing is that apparently someone on Twitter said that you can get 120 Hertz if

⏹️ ▶️ John you run Chrome in a Windows VM. Oh my gosh. Right? So

⏹️ ▶️ John you’re virtualizing Windows and then you’re running Windows Chrome and scroll that and you get 120 Hertz

⏹️ ▶️ John but not in native Mac Safari. So Apple needs to get on this.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m sure they will, but that is quite funny.

Marco’s Mystery Terabyte update

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Marco, tell me about your mystery terabyte. Did you find it?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not really, but I can tell that it’s my photos. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco many people wrote in to say, OK, you got to give this thing full disk access, or run this thing as root, or both, or disable

⏹️ ▶️ Marco SIP, or whatever. No matter what I did, I could not find

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what that terabyte was. It always showed up as miscellaneous, or system files, or inaccessible, or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Every single tool people recommended. I did learn when I got my new desktop laptop,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I decided to sync my entire photo library to it because I now had the space to do that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it all downloaded and sure enough, it was about 900 gigs. When I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco looking at the like mystery space on my Mac mini, it is pretty much

⏹️ ▶️ Marco exactly that size. Like it varies a little bit gig to gig here and there, but it’s about 900 gigs.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, it’s very clear to me that when I told the Mac Mini,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco store my photo library on this external USB hard drive, or USB SSD,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it only stored 70 gigs there, it’s very clear to me that that function

⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t work. Like, the function of, I’m telling you to store this photo library

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on this other volume, can’t be trusted. Because what it clearly did

⏹️ ▶️ Marco instead, will store all those photos on my actual main volume.

⏹️ ▶️ John That is weird though, because like I said, my photo library is on an external disk on my wife’s computer, and it will not

⏹️ ▶️ John fit on the main drive. The library itself is like, you know, seven or 800 gigs,

⏹️ ▶️ John and this thing has a one terabyte drive that is filled with other stuff that takes up that space.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, it can’t possibly be putting the photos on the main drive. So somehow there is, like, and I didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John tell it to do it. I just put the photo library over there, and then I, you know, started up Photos, holding down the option key

⏹️ ▶️ John and pick that external one. Do you have it marked as the system library, right?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and it still is. Like the one on the external drive is still marked as the current system library

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it seems to get new photos, but there seems to be some kind of mechanism that is probably in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco some kind of bug state. Like I don’t think it started out this way. It’s probably in some kind of bug state, but now it’s just writing everything

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to mystery locked storage somewhere on the main drive.

⏹️ ▶️ John I wonder if you’d like deleted your photo library, right? would that purge the space and then

⏹️ ▶️ John re-initialize it essentially on the external drive only? Would it download all the photos to the external one? Because that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John definitely weird.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I mean, this is one of the reasons why I decided to do a clean install on the desktop laptop instead of migrating

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that install over. Because that install, that’s also the same one that every time I reboot, it has

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the recovered items or whatever on the desktop and then I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John can’t delete it. Every time? Yeah, or every time I get a system update. That’s not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco healthy. No, it isn’t every boot, it’s every time I get an OS update. So it adds those relocated items or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever it’s called. And then I still, I haven’t been able to empty my trash for a year.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because every time I empty it, it says, oh, sorry, X11 can’t be deleted. So I skip, skip, skip, and then I have it empty everything

⏹️ ▶️ Marco else.

⏹️ ▶️ John I told you to go into your.trash folder and use RM. Remember, we talked about that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and I just, so the solution to that, many people wrote in and was like, you know, okay, first disable

⏹️ ▶️ Marco system integrity protection and recovery, and then remove it with a special way, and then go back. And I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just never felt like doing that. So I just have been hitting skip every time I, I like the three files

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that won’t get deleted. Anyway, so there were multiple reasons why I decided to leave that installation behind.

⏹️ ▶️ John I have to say, by the way, I have some experience slinging photo libraries around having the same photo library in multiple computers

⏹️ ▶️ John and having to move it from an internal and external drive. Photo library, especially, you know, only if you use

⏹️ ▶️ John iCloud Photos, it’s pretty easy to just like either move it from one place

⏹️ ▶️ John to another as is, you know, copy it. I’ve copied my photo library from one disk to another.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve done like super duper backups of my photo library disk onto another thing

⏹️ ▶️ John or just to delete it and just to say, hey iCloud, give me back all my photos. Like that’s the, it is,

⏹️ ▶️ John with Marco’s weird bug case aside, it is supposed to be just a self-contained dot photo

⏹️ ▶️ John library directory that contains all your stuff and it’s just one huge directory tree. And

⏹️ ▶️ John you can move it around just like, it looks like a single file, but you can move it around like a giant directory tree and you can delete

⏹️ ▶️ John it and reconstitute it, which I think is the right thing to do. I mean, I’m not sure you need to do a clean OS install,

⏹️ ▶️ John but if it’s in this weird state, I would just delete that. Make sure you have good backups, delete

⏹️ ▶️ John that

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey library

⏹️ ▶️ John entirely, and then just get all your disk stuff sorted out. Before, you know, don’t even launch photos

⏹️ ▶️ John anymore. Just get your disk stuff sorted out so your disk looks normal, and then you could then launch photos, and it’d be like, hey,

⏹️ ▶️ John where’s my photo library? And you would say, oh, make a new one here, and it’s your system library, and turn on iCloud

⏹️ ▶️ John Photos, and then just wait five hours for it to download.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and that’s what I ended up doing with the new computer, but my concern there was that this is the very first

⏹️ ▶️ Marco time, like this, that break, as I’m abandoning that installation and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco having it redownload everything, this is the first time that I am losing control

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the files. Like until this point, that has been my photo library

⏹️ ▶️ Marco since I started using Apple Photos, and I’ve just migrated the actual files by copying them to the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco next computer every time that computer has changed. This is the first time I’m taking Apple’s version of the files

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as the canonical ones. And so while I have no reason not to trust Photo Library, it’s been

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very reliable for me over time, that still is a bit of a leap of faith that like, okay, I am no longer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco copying from computer to computer the ones I know are correct. I’m now hoping

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Apple’s versions are correct and complete and all there.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think you already crossed that bridge in a recent update, maybe one or two OS’s ago, where

⏹️ ▶️ John they basically changed the path of every single file inside your library, although you didn’t know it. Lots of people complained

⏹️ ▶️ John about it because they had been relying on the paths inside the library, but they basically changed them all to UUIDs,

⏹️ ▶️ John and I don’t think, like when it was like an incredibly long updated library process, I don’t think it just renamed

⏹️ ▶️ John them. I think what it actually did is pull new ones from iCloud, put them in the UUID

⏹️ ▶️ John location and delete your local ones. I’m not entirely sure what that process was like. So you may have already crossed that bridge without even knowing

⏹️ ▶️ John it. You just didn’t know that it was essentially abandoning years and years worth of files

⏹️ ▶️ John downloaded from cameras and replacing them with an entirely new directory structure where every

⏹️ ▶️ John one of your photos is named with a UUID. But that already happened, you did that like a year ago and didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know it. Yeah, because I especially, like I’m very careful never to do that with music,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because iTunes Match is not that reliable. And for this music

⏹️ ▶️ Marco move, I actually, I’m very glad that I have the Mac Mini still, that was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco being my source. I still have it, I didn’t blow it away or sell it yet because I thought I moved

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all my music over just by copying the music directory and then opening up new music on a new computer.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco One song in each of my Phish concerts in a recent week or two,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one song in each concert was grayed out. It would say location iCloud,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I couldn’t download it And when I double click it to play, nothing would happen. Uh,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay. Something didn’t work. So I like recopied like with R sync. Like I just quit music, R synced

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the old to the new. Just copy the whole directory over again, start over. Okay.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And eventually I did get that to work. I don’t know what the heck happened the first time. But yeah, there’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco been some weirdness with music over the years. So I never want to have to do that with music. I never want to have to rely on that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it does seem like photos is much more reliable in that way.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and I don’t know what happened with that. I mean, maybe that’s a feature that we just don’t know about. If someone on the photos team knows a

⏹️ ▶️ John legit scenario in which Marco could get into the situation where Austin still be the photo libraries on an external

⏹️ ▶️ John disc, but it’s taking hundreds of gigs on the internal one, please let us know.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, you know, I’m just glad that that is not my system of record. That’s all I’m saying.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Uh-huh.

⏹️ ▶️ John You should, this is all a success story for photo libraries. The fact that he could just delete it and then pull it back down.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the magic.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, that’s the great thing. It is very,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I guess, it’s a good peace of mind to know that Photo Library is a pretty good

⏹️ ▶️ Marco backup. Like, it did fully sync over. As far as I could tell, it looks like everything’s there. Like, I don’t think it’s missing anything.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I couldn’t find anything that would be missing. But it is still a little unnerving.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Related to this, although it has nothing to do with macOS, Kevin Chen wrote in to say that iOS isn’t always

⏹️ ▶️ Casey good about deleting purgeable files when the phone is low in free space. But when ProRes is enabled,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the camera app gains a, quote, free resources, quote, button to trigger this deletion manually. Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Casey says, freeing resources will clear temporary system or app data that might be stored in your phone. It doesn’t permanently delete

⏹️ ▶️ Casey unrecoverable data, but might require some apps to refresh data when they’re used again. It continues

⏹️ ▶️ Casey later on. The camera app will also free resources automatically when ProRes is enabled and less than five minutes of recording

⏹️ ▶️ Casey time is available. and apparently it’ll free up about 15 minutes worth at a time,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey which in ProRes is 90 gigs, which is bananas

⏹️ ▶️ Casey when you’re in 4K60. So that’s just something useful to know.

⏹️ ▶️ John I wonder if there’s like this sort of skunk works team at Apple behind both the sync

⏹️ ▶️ John messages button and messages and the free resources button in camera. Like imagine

⏹️ ▶️ John a button to make the computer do a thing instead of just like sort of crossing your finger and saying, boy, I

⏹️ ▶️ John hope this phone notices that it’s almost out of space and free some space for me soon. No, just free resources.

⏹️ ▶️ John And the fact that it does it in chunks is terrible, but like sync messages, free resources, don’t be afraid to put

⏹️ ▶️ John those buttons in, but apparently only two teams in all of Apple have been somehow

⏹️ ▶️ John able to sneak through a useful button in their UI that lets people do a thing that a lot of people

⏹️ ▶️ John wanna do, which is do the thing now, free the space now, purge the purgeable space

⏹️ ▶️ John now, because I need the space now and you’re not getting the hint. It’s my space and I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey want it

⏹️ ▶️ John now. Yeah. You skipped over one item and Ezekiel Allen said in

⏹️ ▶️ John MacOS Monterey, I think we might have mentioned this before but it’s worth bringing up again. There is now a UI

⏹️ ▶️ John and disk utility for Time Machine snapshots. In fact, I’m pretty sure we talked about this in the past. But just to remind people,

⏹️ ▶️ John if you don’t want to use TMUtil and you don’t understand where your space is going or whatever and you want to see how many Time Machine

⏹️ ▶️ John snapshots do I have and how much space are they taking, a reminder that disk utility, the GUI app that comes

⏹️ ▶️ John with your Mac has a way to do that. You can see all your snapshots and you can delete them. You just have

⏹️ ▶️ John to go to the View menu and select Show APFS Snapshots.

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Caséta vs. Wi-Fi stuff

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, you have some experience with Lutron Caseta. You know, I think we might have mentioned this offhandedly last

⏹️ ▶️ Casey week, but you and I were jockeying over who was going to talk about Caseta, who did not sponsor this week, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wanted to talk and do the sponsor read because I freaking love it. And as far as I knew, you love it. So tell me

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what’s going on with Lutron Caseta.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, the reason so we decided to talk about this week as an actual topic because they are sponsoring our show. They sponsored last week and they’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sponsoring next week. And so I thought it would be weird to talk about it as a topic on an episode they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are sponsoring, because we try to be independent with that kind of stuff. So we decided this week

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the time we’re gonna talk about it. And obviously with a giant disclaimer, they are a sponsor, but I’ve been

⏹️ ▶️ Marco using them now for a little over a year in various roles in my house. And so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you recall, last time we mentioned this kind of stuff, so Lutron Considered, just for the record,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a smart home system of switches and outlets by Lutron. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s various, and I think they have like blinds and stuff, there’s a couple other things, but it’s mostly like light switches

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and a couple of switched outlet things.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and it’s worth noting that they work on some sort of proprietary like radio frequency or something like that. It is not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey thread, and I have no idea if it is or ever will be thread compatible, but it’s spiritually

⏹️ ▶️ Casey similar in that it’s got its own hub box that will spew RF

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for whatever it needs to do in order to talk to the switches. And then, you know, the hub is hooked up to ethernet

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so you can talk to HomeKit and whatever else you might have in your house. But the reason this is important is because you’re not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey relying on every one of these switches to get on your Wi-Fi. And in my experience, and I think I can speak for Marco

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in saying this, in Marco’s experience, this is way more reliable. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in almost all of these cases, there are physical switches that you can use if you want to completely ignore HomeKit

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in its entirety, which is really, really nice too.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and this is exactly why I wanted to talk about it, because the last time we talked about this kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing, we had talked a few months back about, like I was frustrated with just the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco general unreliability of Wi-Fi smart outlets and Wi-Fi smart light bulbs,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it just seemed like Wi-Fi stuff works like 90% of the time and then just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t, and it’s very hard to find good, reliable stuff. And I had mentioned

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in particular, there was a roll I had in my house that we have an ice

⏹️ ▶️ Marco maker that is loud enough that we don’t want it running during quiet evening TV or movie

⏹️ ▶️ Marco watching time. But in the middle of the day, it’s fine. And so I wanted to put it on some kind of timer outlet

⏹️ ▶️ Marco where I could adjust when it runs and still be able to run it manually if we’ve ran

⏹️ ▶️ Marco out of ice or something, but that doesn’t really happen. But anyway, I decided that the regular 70s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco rotating knob timer switch, I wanted something a little bit smarter than that that I could control. Also,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the ice maker is like built into the cabinet, or built into the counter, and the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco outlet is like behind it, and so to access the outlet, you have to pull the whole thing out, and it’s a big deal.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I wanted something that I wouldn’t have to ever pull the ice maker out to access physically. So,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco something that had to be able to be put back there, and A, still work, and B,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco never need to be touched. For a while, I had a couple, I tried a couple of different

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wi-Fi smart outlets back there and they were unreliable. They would work for a few weeks and then stop

⏹️ ▶️ Marco working and then, oh, I gotta pull the whole thing out, that sucks. And so I eventually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco switched. There is a hole in the Lutron Caseta lineup. They don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco make a plain smart outlet the way you think of smart outlets. They make

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one that is like a lamp box that has a built-in dimmer and a two-prong outlet

⏹️ ▶️ Marco only Because you don’t really want to be running a dimmer circuit on anything

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but an old lamp because that could mess up other electronics I think. So the idea is you’re not supposed

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to plug in an appliance into this thing. So they have that. They also make an outdoor

⏹️ ▶️ Marco switched outlet that is huge because it has a whole outdoor housing,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this big thick heavy cable. Well I put one of those behind my ice maker.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s the only like switched outlet they make that is part of their system that is not like that lamp dimmer thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I installed that whenever we talked about that topic, which was probably three, four months ago now, something

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that, right? Something like that. It has been rock solid reliable since then,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco 100% of the time. And that’s something, I don’t think I can say 100% reliable

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about any other smart home thing I have ever used. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco never, that literally has never happened. the Caseta stuff is 100% reliable. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it isn’t just that. So I also have, I remember back then we mentioned too, when we did

⏹️ ▶️ Marco our renovations here, that they had installed for code compliance for the outdoor staircase lighting,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they installed some staircase lights and a Caseta system to make them run on timers to only run

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when it’s dark outside. And so I had actually been running Caseta stuff for like a year,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I hadn’t even really thought about it ever, because it just works. Like it just, it worked

⏹️ ▶️ Marco every single day. It just quietly works and you never have to think about it. You set it up

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then it just works. The strategy they use, I think what Casey mentioned earlier is very important.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They don’t make smart light bulbs. They make switches and a couple of outlets

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so you can use whatever bulbs you want. And this is great because I actually, I, I am a huge light

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bulb nerd. Like I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey love getting

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like new, cool, nice lights, like getting more light for the same wattage and getting higher color

⏹️ ▶️ Marco rendering index. I’m actually, I wanted to mention also, I’m extremely happy with these lights.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have from a company called waveform lighting. I don’t know how good or well known this is, but somebody tipped me

⏹️ ▶️ Marco off to this a few months back and I finally got them. They are the nicest led bulbs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have ever used. Like the light they produce, it’s like super high CRI and super low flicker.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco My God, are they nice? Like they’re so good. The only, the only thing is they’re on dimmable, but otherwise they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are super nice. Anyway, waveform lighting, Also, strong recommendation. And yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have the 4000K ones in my office there. Oh God, I love them so much. Anyway, what’s great about the Caseta stuff

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that it works at the switch level, so you can have a wall switch

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is smart controlled. And that is by far the nicest way to do it, because then you can

⏹️ ▶️ Marco control it from the app, you can control it from a home kit, you can get their little wireless switches, the little

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pico switches, and you can put those wherever you want. So I also have a pair of those

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on my desk for the two lights that I have in my office. I have like a ceiling

⏹️ ▶️ Marco light and like a kind of, on one wall I have these other lights. And those are all Caseta. The

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wall lights are actually, they plug into an outlet. And so I have another one of those outdoor outlet switches

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from Caseta to control that. And then I could put over on my wall

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a switch that looks and works like any other light switch for that outlet plug.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I also have on the wall in the regular light switch box, a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco smart caseta light switch that controls the ceiling lights. And so what this means is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco nobody else who ever enters this room or lives in my house has to know that these are smart lights.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Bingo. Because there’s a button on the wall. You turn it on and they turn on. You turn it off and they turn

⏹️ ▶️ Marco off. And it’s the only way, like you can’t like trip over the cord for the lamp or accidentally switch

⏹️ ▶️ Marco off the lamp and your smart bulb doesn’t work anymore. Like that doesn’t happen. Like it’s just a switch on the wall

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that controls the lights on the ceiling and it happens to also be smart. And that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the best of all worlds. When you combine that with the reliability they have,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the only limitation I have for Caseta is that if you’re using the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco outdoor plug as your switched outlet, it’s kind of big and kind of expensive. I think it’s like $70,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it’s not made for that obviously, but I’m using it that way anyway. I’m looking forward to actually, when I have my Christmas lights

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this year outside. I bought a couple more of those to use for that because a couple of reasons.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Number one, again, these things are rock solid reliable. Number two, I’m just getting a little more

⏹️ ▶️ Marco conscious over time of what kind of hardware manufacturer

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m letting into my house and onto my network. You know, I don’t really want

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a bunch of like no-name cheap stuff from Amazon, from God knows what company

⏹️ ▶️ Marco running God knows what insecure software on my network. And I know I can do tricks like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, isolating it on its own private network and stuff like that, but that’s a lot of, you know, administration and work and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff, and most people don’t even do that. And so I don’t wanna have to deal with that. Like, I wanna get my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff in my house that is on my network from a smaller number of companies

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with a higher level of trust. So I don’t wanna get like the $10 smart outlet on Amazon that’s made by God

⏹️ ▶️ Marco knows what. You know, that’s, not only do those not work very well, But I just, I feel better not having

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of that stuff in my network. But anyway, so I had, I mentioned back then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco also, this past summer, we were talking about security cameras and I was putting up a couple of cameras

⏹️ ▶️ Marco under my house because of some problems we were having. In the area where we park our bikes, it’s kind of under the house

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in an area that has some physical light fixtures, like on the wall to light up that area.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco There was a switch on the wall to turn those lights on. And I thought, wouldn’t it be nice

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a motion sensor that every time we rode up with our bikes if it was dark out

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would turn those lights on automatically and light up the area for us. Seems reasonable people have been using motion

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sensors for that kind of stuff for decades. I thought I’ll do it the smart way. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco number one I thought I will convert the switch in the wall here to a caseta switch.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Great! So then I can run HomeKit automations to detect motion in this area

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and trigger that switch to turn on. And the Logitech Circle View Camera that I have there has

⏹️ ▶️ Marco motion control built in. So I thought this would be great. The camera will detect the motion.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m already running the camera. So here’s what happens when you do that. Walking, you know, riding your bike

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in, the camera detects motion and turns the light on. Now, if I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco honest, the speed at which it turns the light on after detecting motion is kind of variable.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Just Like again, think of any home stuff you’ve ever used. It’s always like this, right?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Any like smart home stuff, it’s like, it works in two seconds most of the time, but sometimes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco five seconds, and sometimes infinite seconds, it never works, right? So like you never know, it’s always very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco variable, and it’s a little bit slow sometimes. So that was problem number one with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Logitech motion sensor setup. Problem number two is that, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’d say, all right, when you detect motion, turn the light on for whatever minutes, x minutes, and then turn the light off if there’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco no more motion. Well, guess what would happen? The light would get turned off and the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco camera would say, something has changed, there’s motion. Because the difference

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in picture between the light being on and off was considered by the Logitech Circle View Camera

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be motion. So it would get into an infinite loop or it would just keep turning itself on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco forever. So that was not going to work. So I thought, okay, I have to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco separate the roles of motion detection and this camera,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because obviously that’s not going to work. So most motion detectors I don’t think work in the visible spectrum. I think they’re infrared based.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I figure, all right, maybe that’s the problem. You know, the camera’s doing it optically in the visible spectrum of light.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s considering this change in illumination to be a big motion event. If I can get any other motion

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sensor, that probably won’t happen. There are HomeKit motion sensors, not many of them.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The best reviewed one is by the company Eve. I got the Eve motion sensor, and I’ve heard

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Merlin talk about how good their stuff can be and I even got the Eve Extend, because it’s in an area, it’s like below

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the house, it’s kind of in a poor Wi-Fi area, and I have since put

⏹️ ▶️ Marco an access point down there to fix the Wi-Fi, but it’s still very far from any kind of Bluetooth reception for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco any HomeKit hub that might be at my house.

⏹️ ▶️ John Is this an outdoor motion detector? Of

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco course it is.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, it’s not, it wasn’t. But this is an area where it’s very covered,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it’s pretty far from the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John elements.

⏹️ ▶️ John Have we not been through this before?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey No, no, no,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John and Marco, as much as I want to make fun of Marco about this one, apparently it is IPX3 water resistance.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now I have no idea offhand if that’s like a droplet or-

⏹️ ▶️ John All right, well then, so that must be, I mean, unless they think your house is gonna have water in it, there’s gotta be some kind of outdoor

⏹️ ▶️ John thing,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? No, I mean, like in this particular location, I can use pretty much anything as long

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I can tolerate temperature extremes, because, you know, it does get pretty cold in the winter, but otherwise, like this,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco no rain gets to where this is,

⏹️ ▶️ John ever. Condensation, we talked about this before. Condensation is a thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yes,

⏹️ ▶️ John but anyway, so. That’s what distinguishes an indoor from an outdoor thing. All right, so go on.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, so I tried the Eve motion sensor and it worked

⏹️ ▶️ Marco occasionally. Just like every other HomeKit thing, I’m like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it works sometimes and it was kind of slow to respond, just like the Logitech thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Eventually I decided this is not for me. So I took that back in and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got the Caseta motion sensor. The Caseta motion sensor, it’s a little bit limited because it’s not a HomeKit

⏹️ ▶️ Marco device, but you can set up automation in the Caseta app that when that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sensor detects motion, it will turn on the lights that are in whatever room you say it’s in.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Night and day difference. So first of all, 100% reliable.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It works every single time, and it detects zero false things. It doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco care at all when the light turns off. It doesn’t treat that as motion. And best of all, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so fricking fast. Like you can ride a bike up into this area

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as you’re still riding the bike and it turns on in time. Like it’s so much faster

⏹️ ▶️ Marco than everything else because it’s kind of like when like your hand touches a hot stove and like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your brain doesn’t have to process that to say, oh, pull away the hand. Like it just does it. That’s kind of how, it’s like that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of difference where like the HomeKit stuff always felt like, hey, I detected motion,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco send somebody a memo about it. And then somebody, oh, oh, hey, oh, oh, is that, is that Bob? Is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco he saying there’s motion? Oh, hey, hey, uh, hey, Joe, turn those lights on, you know? And then like, you know, it’s like this, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco whereas this is just like, boom, motion. Like it’s, it’s as if the motion sensor is built into the lights.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like that’s how fast this is. And when you compare it to the HomeKit stuff, oh my God. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway, I am just so incredibly happy with Lutron Caseta. And I wanted

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to tell all of you this. In an episode they were not sponsoring because I want it to really,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want you to really know it’s authentic, that it’s just so good, it’s so reliable. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, the smart outlet situation, it’s a little bit limited and pricey, but otherwise I don’t see any

⏹️ ▶️ Marco major downsides, except for the fact that they only make a certain set of types of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco things. Like they don’t make thermostats and stuff like that. You know, obviously you gotta go to other things for that. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, for the things they do make, man, they’re good. And they are literally

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the only smart home system that I have found that is reliable

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that I don’t wanna throw out the window after like a month.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I don’t wanna belabor the points, I’ll just very briefly say that in my experience, I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey completely agree with you. I think we talked about several times months ago, we put

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a screened-in porch in the back of the house earlier this year, and we use Caseta

⏹️ ▶️ Casey switches for the fans there, and then I got a burr, or a bee in my bonnet, to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey change all of the switches in the house From the like gr

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the, the little like levers that stick out, I believe they’re called a toggle switch to a decorator

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or rocker switch, which I think looks far more modern and, and, and sleeker,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, and, and so I switched all of the switches in the house. And only maybe five of them

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I replaced with Caseta switches, not because I didn’t want to replace all of them with Caseta stuff,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but because it is, it is relatively expensive. Like you can get really crummy

⏹️ ▶️ Casey versions of a lot of their stuff for considerably less money, but they don’t work.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, in this case, you very much get what you pay for.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Could not agree more. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a dimmer switch from them is what, like 80 bucks, something like that? No, I think

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s like 60, which is still a lot of money, don’t get me wrong, but it works every

⏹️ ▶️ Casey time.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and that might be two times as much as some other weird wifi thing from Amazon, but I’m telling

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you, the difference is, it matters. The difference matters a lot.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and I was able to wire these myself, and I am a very

⏹️ ▶️ Casey poor homeowner in that I am very bad at all home maintenance things of any sort,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I was able to do it. Some of their smart switches don’t require a neutral line. Some of them

⏹️ ▶️ Casey do, but some of them also do not. I want to say the fan switches required a neutral line,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I don’t think regular, like on-off, or maybe it was the dimmer didn’t, check my work

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on this, but it is an option for those of you who don’t have neutral lines in your boxes,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but this stuff is extremely reliable. It works every time. And I think I’m cribbing from Quinn

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in saying this, but it is incredibly important to have non-smart options. I don’t mean a physical

⏹️ ▶️ Casey switch that then talks to HomeKit to do things. I mean a physical switch that physically switches

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco things. You know what I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey mean? And that’s what the Caseta stuff does. And it’s excellent.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would look at Quinn’s review, which we’ll put a link in the show notes to it. his video review is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey very good. And he was talking about his smart home in general, so it’s not strictly limited to Caseta, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey he talks a lot about Caseta and has a lot of the same things to say. So I don’t wanna belabor it any further, but hard degree,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was overjoyed when we were able to get them to sponsor the show because it’s one of those sponsors. I mean, we love

⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of our sponsors, but there’s some that we really, really love, and this is one of them. So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, Lutron Caseta stuff, you get what you pay for. They can run with that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s just, it’s so nice to have stuff be 100% reliable. Oftentimes when we replace

⏹️ ▶️ Marco some kind of old technology with something that we think is new and better,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco oftentimes we add coolness and capabilities and convenience

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the cost of reliability. You know, a lot of old tech works basically 100% of the time.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it has worked that way for decades. And then we computer guys come in and we’re like, hey, we can do this better.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s like, yeah, but then it doesn’t work. Like, yeah, so smart home stuff is definitely one of those things.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so to have something that literally does work 100% of the time is like game changing.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep.

Even more MacBook Pro

Chapter Even more MacBook Pro image.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Speaking of game changing, let’s talk about MacBook Pros.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey mine arrived on this past Monday, I believe it was.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey The MacBook Pro seemed to get stuck in, I think it was Shanghai, I might’ve

⏹️ ▶️ Casey said Shenzhen last time. It was somewhere in China for a while. Eventually got moving, it went via,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I believe, Korea, and then Alaska, and then Louisville, as UPS shipments

⏹️ ▶️ Casey are wont to do, and then eventually arrived to me, actually a shade earlier than UPS had estimated.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it was a day earlier than UPS had estimated when it finally got moving again. And it came about midday.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And a lot of this, I think Marco covered last week. So I’m gonna try to be brief, but if we end up getting

⏹️ ▶️ Casey going off on a tangent, so be it. I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco want to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey talk about, yeah, I know, right? I want to talk about several things. And let me set, this is probably

⏹️ ▶️ Casey gonna be relevant in a few minutes, but let me set a little bit of expectations. I have, you know, this iMac

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro, I have a 2020 MacBook Pro, and I really, really love

⏹️ ▶️ Casey both machines. They’re really great machines. But the bill of goods that I allowed myself to get sold, which

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not saying is fact or fiction, I’m just saying this is what I was kind of setting myself up to believe, was that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on M1 machines, particularly these new ones, basically everything is instant and you never have to wait for anything ever

⏹️ ▶️ Casey again. And that is kind of what I expected. I expected this monitor, screen

⏹️ ▶️ Casey display, whatever, to be brilliant. And I expected this thing to be a little bit on the chunky side,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but overall, not too different than what I’ve got. So with that in mind, physical design,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think the weight, not having measured it and not having looked it up, I think Martin John had looked it up last week, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the weight as compared to my 2020 Intel MacBook Pro seems to be approximately equivalent.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m sure that it’s not actually equivalent, but it seems to be about the same. The physical design, I think it’s good.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think later on actually, excuse me, John had asked in the show notes about

⏹️ ▶️ Casey how slidey it is. And I hadn’t thought about it until I read that in the show notes, but it is a lot more slidey

⏹️ ▶️ Casey than it was before. I think the material on the feet might be slightly different. So it does shimmy across my glass

⏹️ ▶️ Casey desk a little easier than the last one did, but I mean, it’s not ridiculous. It’s just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey noticeably less tacky, I guess you could say.

⏹️ ▶️ John I wonder if that was in it. The reason I put this in is because I wonder if that was, so I wondered if it was true, so thanks for confirming, but I also wonder if that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John an intentional feature because there’s a trade-off with feet on a laptop. You do want them to be grippy,

⏹️ ▶️ John but I have definitely seen people expect to be able to shove their laptop

⏹️ ▶️ John over or even just like rotate it so someone else can see it and the feet are so tacky that it just doesn’t wanna do

⏹️ ▶️ John that. So I think there is probably like a balance between making it easy to move your thing around on the surface versus

⏹️ ▶️ John making it secure. Where do you think this falls? Does it, it obviously feels less tacky, but does it feel insecure?

⏹️ ▶️ John Like you’re gonna accidentally gonna knock it off like it’s on wheels or is it just less tacky

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey in

⏹️ ▶️ John comparison?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would say it’s less tacky. Also, again, it’s not fair because I use a glass top desk which is probably

⏹️ ▶️ Casey more slippy slidey than say like wood or something like that would

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John be? That would be my assumption.

⏹️ ▶️ John It might be less slippy slightly depending on if the glass is wet. Oh, okay. I mean, if the glass is wet, it’s definitely

⏹️ ▶️ John more slippy. And you know, you have a lot of water around your computers a lot.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s true. I do have a water bottle, but it is capped about three inches from the computer as we speak.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Nevertheless, I would say I would prefer it to be slightly more tacky, but it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so slippy that I find it to be bothersome. It’s not like the computer’s moving when I’m just using it. but if

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I put really any amount of pressure on it in order to slide it, it will slide. So I’m not saying

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s bad. I would, I actually don’t have my old laptop near me, it’s downstairs, but I would say

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would probably prefer it a little bit tackier, but not necessarily as tacky as the old one was, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey again, by no means is it bad. Other than that, the shell of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, as we’ve talked about some areas are curvier or when maybe they weren’t before, or certainly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey less curvy than they were before. None of this is bad, it’s just different.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey The screen is very, very, very nice. It is very nice and it is super

⏹️ ▶️ Casey trippy for me to see the HDR stuff happening because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m used to seeing that on like a phone when suddenly the rest of the screen seems to get dim

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and just the video you’re looking at gets super bright. I don’t have a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey problem with it, especially since I’m used to it on the phone, but it is very trippy to see on my Mac.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey 120 Hertz, I wouldn’t say I notice it that often, but one place I notice

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it every time, and it makes me smile every time, and this is the, I think the equivalent of me saying that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the animations like, you know, zoom, maybe not zooming, but you know, zooming in and out of an app on

⏹️ ▶️ Casey my phone, the equivalent to that on this computer is spaces, going between spaces. So I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a, as we’ve talked many times, a devout spaces user, this is like virtual desktops, And as I slide laterally

⏹️ ▶️ Casey back and forth between spaces, it is buttery smooth and it makes me very happy. Other than that, I can’t say

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve really noticed a lot where 120 Hertz seems obvious. And honestly,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey my eye is not stupendous for this, but there are definitely times where I’m like, oh, that is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey very smooth and it makes me very happy. I have much more to say, but Marco, do you want to jump in on this

⏹️ ▶️ Casey particular point or are you good

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco for- On the 120 Hertz? Yes.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s interesting. I mean, so just to set the stage here, I’ve been looking at these screens

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot over the last week because what happened, I know I breezed over this a little bit earlier,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but what happened is I decided to go ahead with the plan to replace my desktop with a high powered laptop

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it became a 16 inch, but we’ll get to that later.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey But-

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey oh, hey now.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I spent most of the last week setting up two of these right next to each other on my desk.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I still had the Mac mini as my main computer, like connected to the big XDR. And then I had

⏹️ ▶️ Marco off to my right, the MacBook Air that I was transferring some data from. Migration assistant

⏹️ ▶️ Marco failed, which has happened to a lot of people with the MacBook Airs and there’s occasionally some way to like, dive into something

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or other and try to fix it with system integrity protection and all this other stuff. But I decided not to do that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I said I’m setting up both as new. And because I have operated

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for so long as a right mouse, left trackpad user,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco my left hand can use a trackpad just fine. And so I spent most of the last week with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one laptop on the left hand, one laptop on the right hand, trying to do stuff in parallel as much as possible,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like install this, install that, click here, click there, like doing it on both laptops, so I could stand

⏹️ ▶️ Marco them up together, which was kind of fun. My desk looked ridiculous, like just covered

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in computers, it was glorious. But all this, back to the point you actually asked.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I’ve looked at these screens a lot in the last week. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I go back to my poor, poor 60 hertz XDR,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I literally don’t notice. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s that I’m just not seeing a lot of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps that use it, because now that you say Safari doesn’t use 120 hertz yet, that’s a pretty big thing. Like, I’ve been looking at a lot

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of Safari recently, like, you know, going to websites of apps that I have to download and trying to find the download link that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’ve buried, God knows where. You know, it’s a lot of scrolling and hitting Command F, download, and stuff like that. So anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I honestly am not noticing 120 Hertz as much as I thought I would, which

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, in my opinion, a blessing because I still have my giant monitor that I have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco no intention of replacing anytime soon, nor is there anything to replace it with that would support 120 Hertz at anywhere

⏹️ ▶️ Marco near this size and resolution. So this is gonna be one of those things where I’m just gonna be blissfully happy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I don’t seem to notice it much on the Mac and that I can be happy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco using it without that on my desktop.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I mean, I think so far I mostly agree with you that it’s not terribly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey noticeable, but I wonder once like Safari starts supporting it, if maybe my perspective will change.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving right along, MagSafe. Wait, actually, hold on a second. You were setting up both

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the computers. So you’re gonna use the 16 as a desktop replacement and the 14 as a runaround computer?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, I’m on the 16 right now, talking to you as my desktop laptop.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Oh my God.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the 14 is my around the house computer. So what 16 build did you get?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the one that was in stock.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Which was what, a max max with two terabytes and 64 gigs? No,

⏹️ ▶️ John the 16 came with four, so it’s max everything, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s four terabyte, 64 gigs, and the max CPU.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, you could get eight terabytes for like $11 billion, I thought.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not in store, you can’t.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, fair enough. Yeah. That’s a lot of machine, don’t get me wrong. That is a lot of machine. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so you went and picked it up, you reserved it, right, and picked it up in store?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, yeah, I did, because like, it was, like, I was going to the mainland for some grocery shopping and stuff last

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thursday. And so literally, I edited the show that morning, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco while Logic was bouncing, I went and reserved one at the nearby Apple store, and then I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bounced it, got in the shower, got in a boat, got in a car. You know, did the whole

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cars, trucks, boats, trains, whatever it was, to get there. And yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and got my laptops. It feels really extravagant to have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bought two at the same time, but I am very happy I did, because,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so as I mentioned earlier, I really did consider only having

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the desktop laptop as a new one, and keeping my M1 Air as my around the house

⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. And truthfully, that would be fine for almost all conditions, except I do intend to do some

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty heavy video capture stuff on it, where there’s gonna be like three different cameras, three different

⏹️ ▶️ Marco computers being captured, like many streams coming in, a lot of throughput. And so I figured like having

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a beefier system that has more GPU power and more IO, like Thunderbolt throughput,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I thought would be beneficial to that. Plus, not to mention, more disk space and more RAM, which

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would also be a very big deal at some point. So I decided, let

⏹️ ▶️ Marco me actually upgrade all of them. But honestly, the desktop laptop, I’m 100% confident

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was the right move because 64 gigs of RAM is awesome.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s so good to be back to this. I think that’s what my iMac Pro had for the years I used that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So to go from 64 for a few years to 16, and now back to 64, I feel

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. I feel that difference a lot. You know, bouncing between apps. I know there was a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco YouTube video that says they couldn’t tell. I can tell. And with my workload, I have a lot of very RAM-hungry

⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps. Sometimes I’m running more than one at a time. Or switching between very RAM-hungry apps. Like now

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I switch between Xcode and Logic, Like it doesn’t bring everything to a crawl for a few seconds. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s really nice. It might even be able to run Swift UI.

⏹️ ▶️ John I wanna talk about that YouTube video by the way, because a lot of people have asked about that. Like it just did a

⏹️ ▶️ John bad job testing something that uses a lot of memory. It’s like, there’s no magic in these machines. We talked about this before.

⏹️ ▶️ John There is nothing particularly magical about the ARM-based Macs that makes them magically

⏹️ ▶️ John not need more RAM. Like I mentioned when we first talked about this, you know, months ago, if anything,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s potentially possible for the code size of Intel binaries to be smaller because, uh, in

⏹️ ▶️ John Intel CPUs have variable size instructions, whereas a arm being risks to be used have

⏹️ ▶️ John instructions that are all the same size. So in theory the code portion of your application and some memory could take up more

⏹️ ▶️ John room on arm. Now granted you don’t have to deal with 32 and 64, but that’s also not true in Intel anymore. Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John um, the whole point is with the Ram thing, if you test an application that doesn’t particularly stress

⏹️ ▶️ John the memory system, Like, oh, maybe it uses more than 16, but not much more. Yeah, you probably won’t notice that

⏹️ ▶️ John much of a difference. But if you use an application that really requires

⏹️ ▶️ John like 128 gigs of RAM, and you start swapping, which means not just pushing

⏹️ ▶️ John things into virtual memory or how much swap is used, but swapping means the program is constantly

⏹️ ▶️ John putting things into the swap file on quote unquote disk and taking them out and putting them in and taking them out. That’s swapping,

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s an activity, it’s a verb. It is not a measurement of how much swap space is used. That’s not relevant.

⏹️ ▶️ John So if you see some YouTube video that says, oh, we tried a 16 gig machine and a 32 one, and it

⏹️ ▶️ John was like two second difference between them. They’re just doing a bad test. It’s not stressing the memory. Now, if that’s the thing you

⏹️ ▶️ John wanna do, then yeah, you don’t need more memory because the thing you wanna do doesn’t require more memory, but some people do things

⏹️ ▶️ John that really does require more memory. One of the ones from the Apple keynote that they mentioned, I think it was brought up on the upgrade interview

⏹️ ▶️ John with the guys from Apple, that one of the files they opened in like the intro video

⏹️ ▶️ John for this, you can’t even open that file on a machine without like 64 gigs of RAM or whatever,

⏹️ ▶️ John because, and this was a VRAM thing, because basically it’s unified memory, and you can’t buy a video card with 64 gigs of VRAM

⏹️ ▶️ John on a laptop, therefore the only way to ever open this file on a laptop is to have a laptop

⏹️ ▶️ John with quote unquote 64 gigs of VRAM, because it’s unified RAM and it gets it’s accessible by the GPU. But

⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, sometimes people really, really do need more RAM and then you will notice the difference.

⏹️ ▶️ John Not just, oh, I couldn’t open the file, but you will actively be swapping and you can see that activity if you look at the

⏹️ ▶️ John VM stat or whatever the Equiv tools are on Mac OS. So

⏹️ ▶️ John be aware of what your use case is. Do you need more RAM? And that memory pressure thing of being like, oh, it’s yellow, red, or

⏹️ ▶️ John whatever, that’s, maybe that’s not the best thing. What you wanna tell is like, hey, if I do this,

⏹️ ▶️ John if I do the activity that I wanna do on a machine with more RAM, how much faster

⏹️ ▶️ John is it? And that’s what they measured, but the things they measured, those tasks obviously didn’t need more RAM, and apparently Marco does.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s great. The only thing is, there’s actually a few people in my family and friends who need

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a computer, so I actually might give away the Air to one of them, but I really love

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that MacBook Air. The M1 MacBook Air, I absolutely love that computer,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I’m kind of sad to have replaced it, like in the sense that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this new 14-inch MacBook Pro is really nice, but it doesn’t give me that love feeling

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the M1 MacBook Air does, And maybe that’s because the M1 MacBook Air is that fun, weird,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco orangey, pinkish color, and the MacBook Pro only comes in boring gray. By the way,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so Tiff got her 16-inch in as well, the stake through Casey’s heart

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the delivery timing. And so we set that up as well. And she has Space Gray, and I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have Silver. They did not make a Space Gray MagSafe

⏹️ ▶️ Marco plug, or MagSafe Cord, and it looks weird.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, come on,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco it’s not that bad. We talked about this last week. We did talk about this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco last week. I know, but- Unless you’re on that show, but. But like now I’ve actually seen them in person.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Like MagSafe looks perfect

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the silver metal,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the MagSafe does not look right. It looks like it’s the wrong cable. It looks

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you borrowed someone else’s cable when you see it against the space gray. It looks wrong. Both

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the color of the metal and the color of the cord are both noticeably too

⏹️ ▶️ Marco light for the spray-scray laptop. And I would also go as far as to say, having seen both

⏹️ ▶️ Marco now in my house, I think silver looks better. Because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not only does MagSafe look better, far and away better, I think, with silver, but now that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’ve moved to a higher contrast design, now that the keyboard tray kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco area is black, is all black, you have the nice black rectangle of that, plus the black

⏹️ ▶️ Marco rectangle of the screen against like the metal backdrop of the surrounding material,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the higher contrast of the silver model looks nicer overall

⏹️ ▶️ Marco compared to the Space Gray, which I think looks a little bit old, a little bit dated,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and is lower contrast with the hardware and the MagSafe looks wrong.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, I’m obviously biased because I did order a Space Gray. I don’t think anything

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’ve said is necessarily wrong. I just don’t find it nearly as bothersome as you seem to. And yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess the MagSafe cable does look a little bit off, but it’s not something that I notice on a day-to-day

⏹️ ▶️ Casey basis. Now, maybe you do or others would, but to me, it’s not that noticeable. But that is a perfect segue

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to talk about MagSafe, which I wanted to talk about next. Something I noticed about it is that when you,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know how to describe this, but like when you peel it in order to remove it, so you’re like putting your

⏹️ ▶️ Casey finger under it and peeling it upwards. You’re talking about

⏹️ ▶️ John the sandwich closing force again, aren’t you? Yeah, I guess so.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is more sandwich opening force, really.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I guess one way or another when you’re when you’re doing the sandwich opening or closing force,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it doesn’t take that much to get it to pop.

⏹️ ▶️ John However, no, no, you have the opposite. You’re the sandwich closing forces, the one where it’s hard where you’re pulling straight

⏹️ ▶️ John in the line of the cord,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right? Okay, well, that’s yeah, well, that’s what I was gonna say. I don’t care what you guys want to call them. Peeling is easy.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pulling is hard.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John That’s what

⏹️ ▶️ John the same as

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s always been on magazine forever. It’s much stronger now, though.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Yeah, yeah, I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey see. That’s what I was gonna say. I think it’s very strong, like to pull straight out from the cable, which I know I’m not supposed

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do, I’m just saying it to illustrate a point, to pull directly out by the cable is very, very

⏹️ ▶️ Casey difficult. In fact, the computer wants to move much before the cable wants to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John go. I

⏹️ ▶️ John think there’s a good reason for that too. Like, so the big change with this MagSafe is it’s just much

⏹️ ▶️ John narrower. Like it’s like the size of a USB-C port, right? Whereas before I was tall.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wouldn’t say that, it’s like one and a half to two times the size of a USB-C port.

⏹️ ▶️ John Go get MagSafe 1. I don’t know if you remember how tall MagSafe 1 was. I think MagSafe 1 was taller than USB-A,

⏹️ ▶️ John wasn’t it? Oh, you’re talking about tall, I’m sorry. Right, so with the force

⏹️ ▶️ John that you’re talking about, the easy one where you like yank upwards or downwards, or, you know, well, I guess, just upwards and downwards I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John talking about, right? You have to make that like sturdy enough that it doesn’t come

⏹️ ▶️ John off all the time. This is the complaint people have with all the MagSafe, that like if you have it on your bed and like your covers

⏹️ ▶️ John hit the thing upwards and it comes off, right? So you have to make that sturdy. But the problem is the magnets

⏹️ ▶️ John have this little skinny area to oppose that force, right? If you imagine MagSafe

⏹️ ▶️ John was six inches tall, that’s a pretty big lever. If you put a pretty weak magnet on top and pretty weak

⏹️ ▶️ John magnet on bottom, and then try to tilt that, the lever made by those distant points

⏹️ ▶️ John and the sort of the pivot point represented by the cord, is this making

⏹️ ▶️ John sense to you? There’s like a physics reason that the skinnier you make the plug, the more powerful you

⏹️ ▶️ John have to make the magnets to maintain a minimum amount of up-down sturdiness, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John So I feel like to make that up-down yanking sturdiness the amount

⏹️ ▶️ John that you want it to be, you have to use such strong magnets that when you try to directly oppose them by

⏹️ ▶️ John pulling directly out of the laptop, it’s way harder than it used to be because the thing got skinnier. That’s my

⏹️ ▶️ John theory.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That

⏹️ ▶️ Marco makes sense. I would even say, I think MagSafe is now a misnomer.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think it was also a misnomer when they brought it to the phone. I think they used the name because it was an old name that people liked, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the phone charging puck, nothing about that is necessarily safe. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the use of the word safe doesn’t really make a lot of sense there. Like I don’t think MagSafe

⏹️ ▶️ Marco charging on the phone is safer than cable charging.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s kind of the same of like if you walk by your phone and you trip across the cord, you won’t yank your phone

⏹️ ▶️ John off the counter anymore. It’s that type of thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But you probably will. But anyway, so with this, I think the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco original safety benefit of MagSafe, of tripping over the cord, not pulling your laptop off, back then

⏹️ ▶️ Marco MagSafe was easier to pull off and laptops were heavier. And now,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, I could easily, yeah, I could easily pull this across the desk by the MagSafe cable.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I

⏹️ ▶️ John think you could always drag a laptop by MagSafe, but the whole point is when someone trips over it, they

⏹️ ▶️ John never, or almost never, pull it exactly the right angle. If you’re off-axis

⏹️ ▶️ John by even a little bit, it disconnects with any

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco of them. I’m gonna test it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m gonna grab my finger here. All right, yeah, so if you kick it, it does pop off, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s less safe than ever. Like, if that makes sense. I

⏹️ ▶️ John think it might be more safe than ever because the thing is so skinny and because your yanking

⏹️ ▶️ John force is always going to be a little bit down, unless the cord, because who plugs in their laptop where the cord

⏹️ ▶️ John goes straight from the laptop at the same level to the keyboard? It’s probably always gonna go down, and because

⏹️ ▶️ John the thing is so skinny, Yeah, I don’t know, I’m sure Apple has done these tests, but the bottom line is they

⏹️ ▶️ John were constrained by both the width of the laptop and the width of their future laptop plans, like the M2 MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ John Air, that’s gonna be super skinny and will probably have this port on it. They had to make it super thin, and that means

⏹️ ▶️ John that it’s always gonna be really easy to yank even slightly upward or slightly downwards. You know, there’s only, so,

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, unless they use an electromagnet. Like, just using, you know, permanent rare

⏹️ ▶️ John earth magnets in that small a space, they’re probably near the limit of how Mag, well maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John not near the limit because they have pretty powerful magnets, but they’re probably near the practical limit for how powerful they can make

⏹️ ▶️ John those magnets. And still, I think any kind of slightly upward or downward motion’s gotta get that thing disconnected.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, maybe, I don’t know. I think it is, when they introduced MagSafe for the phone,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think they should have given it a new name and then used that same name for this. Anyway.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey In any case, I do like having MagSafe back quite a lot. Although it is a bit

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of a double-edged sword in that I’ve now sprinkled like USB-C power connectors around

⏹️ ▶️ Casey my house and not that I can’t use them, but now I kind of want to have MagSafe everywhere,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey except that my iPad doesn’t take

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John MagSafe.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So it’s like, I don’t know what I’m going to do about this. And one example of this is I have one of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey them kind of like barfing out of my couch, if you will. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey generally speaking, I would want to be able to have the flexibility of USB-C so

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I could plug in either my iPad or my computer. However, that is like prime candidate

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for MagSafe because if there’s ever a time that someone’s gonna get yanked, it’s in the living room, especially with the kids running around. So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know what I’m gonna do, but if this is the problem I have, I will take this over not even having the option of MagSafe. So I’m still

⏹️ ▶️ Casey happy. The braided cable or whatever this is, I’ve only had it for a couple of days,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but so far I love it. It is the right amount of flexible and the right amount

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of sturdy or stiff. I’m really, really digging this. And now I kind of want to have

⏹️ ▶️ Casey all my lightning cables made out of this, which I think there is a braided lightning cable or something like that. But

⏹️ ▶️ Casey nevertheless, I’m really digging that.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what I talked about when I got my Mac Pro. Remember I wanted all my cables to be black and braided. Yeah, they’re much nicer.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep. And I will probably, I suspect, pick up one or two more of these USB-C to MagSafe ends,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey even at $50, which is I think what they cost. But I kind of want to have one

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or two stationary in the house, and then probably one in my laptop bag for when I travel. So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I suspect I’ll be buying at least one more of them. Battery life, similar to my expectation setting from

⏹️ ▶️ Casey earlier, my expectations were that the battery lasts forever and you can never even get

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it below 100%. That is not true. You can get it below 100%. I haven’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey done extensive testing with this, but it definitely seems like this is a multi-hour

⏹️ ▶️ Casey battery, which I know sounds preposterous, but as much as I do love my Intel MacBook Pro,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can only realistically get two to three hours when I’m doing like reasonably heavy development

⏹️ ▶️ Casey work. And I’ve only done a little of that development work on this computer, and we’ll talk about that in a second, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it definitely seems like I’m gonna get considerably more battery life than my Intel MacBook Pro, which is very

⏹️ ▶️ Casey welcome, and I’m very excited about it. And even if this was heavier than my Intel MacBook Pro,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would absolutely make that trade-off. Give me a heavier computer and give me more battery life, absolutely.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey The keyboard does feel different. I don’t know if it’s just because it’s a fresher keyboard. I don’t know what

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is about it. And I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out a way to, to describe this. And I just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t have the words for it, but it feels, I think, almost ever

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so slightly mushier, which is a negative thing, but it, but in a good way, which I understand

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the words that are coming out of my mouth make no sense. And I’m sorry, but something about it is it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey feels a little bit nicer. And I don’t, I’m gonna have to see if

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can, you know, follow up in a week or two and put words to it. But it’s not night and day different

⏹️ ▶️ Casey by any means, but I definitely like it and it definitely feels really good.

⏹️ ▶️ John Some people were saying that it might’ve had more travel. That seems like something you can measure, especially if Marco’s still got his old, crappy 16-inch

⏹️ ▶️ John around.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I do. I’m actually keeping, so the 16-inch was Tiff’s computer until this new 16 came in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for her. And I’m actually gonna, I’m planning on keeping the 16 Intel for a while

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as my like my last Intel test machine. Because it’s a laptop, so it’s self-contained, has its own screen

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and everything, so that’s nice for you know, test machine purposes. And I feel like you know, again like as a,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know now I’m a Mac developer for multiple products now. I you know, I have, I have Forecast and you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, Quitter I guess, but mainly for Forecast for Intel. So you know, I do have occasional

⏹️ ▶️ Marco needs for Mac test machines. And so I figure I’ll keep this Intel one around for a while.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Did you have any thoughts about the keyboard marker before I move on?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think so. Except the, just like the, the change to black for the, for like the background tray of the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco keyboard, it does make the keys harder to spot. Um, like functionally,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it does not work as well as like a keyboard visual thing. However, I find it to be a very minor

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. And so I, I don’t care really about that. I do love the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco new full height touch ID key and the new full height function They’re really nice. Touch ID

⏹️ ▶️ Marco also just seems faster. I don’t know why, but it seems way faster on this than the Intel’s. And finally,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the different look of the keyboard, mostly in regards to the black background thing, are one difference

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that instantly makes the previous outgoing 16-inch model look old by comparison.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, as I’ve been using the 16-inch like to transfer TIFF stuff over in the last couple days

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to her new computer, The keyboard background being silver and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the touch bar both make it look like a dinosaur by comparison.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like that like you wouldn’t think it would be it would be such a big difference because like the new machines don’t look that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco different from the old machines but in those ways they do and that I noticed instantly.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also good riddance to the touch bar my god does that thing suck.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know I do miss it I do miss it for tap backs and messages but that is literally the only time.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I want to go back to the Touch ID briefly. I couldn’t tell you if it’s faster or not, but I will say, and this sounds

⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of bananas, but it really has made a huge difference to me having a little bit

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of ridge in it, or maybe it’s actually like a, not a depression. Is that what, is that the word I’m looking

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for? A little cavey area. It’s inset slightly.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco On the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Touch ID button specifically, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey mean? Yes, exactly.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really like having that so that I can place my finger appropriately on the button because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Intel one, it’s just like a completely blank key cap. And so it feels

⏹️ ▶️ Casey different than the other key caps, but it’s still just one big flat area. And having the circle

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in there helps me center my finger appropriately. And I think it makes it more accurate.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, the Intel one, it looks like they forgot to design it. Like, CS has failed

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to load

⏹️ ▶️ John something. like it’s part of the part of the touch bar. That’s why it’s featureless, because the touch bar is featureless

⏹️ ▶️ John when it’s not turned on. And so to make the same reason the stupid escape key doesn’t exist in the first ones,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? It was just part of screen, but the touch ID is supposed to just look like more touch bar. So no features. Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. The speakers on this are really good for a laptop, like really, really good,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey surprisingly good. And I never thought the Intel ones were particularly bad, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey these are really, really good and you get way more bass out of these than you would expect. Now, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not going to replace a regular sound system by any stretch, but in a pinch, I think

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s definitely sufficient, if not more than sufficient, for any reasonable use and I was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey very impressed by them. The SD card reader, I think you ran into something similar

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to this, Marco. So, I was using the SD card reader on the device to go through my photos the way

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I like to do it, which I know you guys hate and you know, look at each file on, on this SD card

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and, and decide what I want to keep and what I want to delete before I import them into photos. Yes, I understand that it’s bananas,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it’s the way I like to do it. Leave me alone. And so I was trying to do all this in Finder and I was getting constant

⏹️ ▶️ Casey beach balls. Like all the time I was rebooting, I was quitting Finder constantly. I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey know if it was a fluke. I only tried it the one time. So I don’t know if it was, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey bad internet weather, except not the internet, you know, bad computing weather. I don’t know what was going on, but Marco, you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey said you had something with like external drives or something like that, so maybe this is related?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, but it was very weird and very frustrating.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I’ve had, I’m currently tracking some issues and I even ended up filing a bug report

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with Apple with cyst diagnosis and everything. The generic like $20 USB enclosure for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco SSDs that I use, like regular 2.5 inch SATA enclosure, that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco seems to have problems with these new Macs. Now, I was trying to isolate, it might not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be a problem with the new Macs, specifically, it might be a problem with Monterey.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Once I upgraded my MacBook Air to Monterey, it has the same problem, or a similar one.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whereas, the Mac Mini that has not been upgraded, that’s still running Big Sur, but is also

⏹️ ▶️ Marco M1, does not have this problem. So, it seems to be maybe a problem with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco M1 series chips and Big Sur combined, or maybe it’s a problem with all of Big

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sur, I don’t know. You mean Monterey? Yeah, sorry, Monterey, God. California’s too many

⏹️ ▶️ Marco places. Anyway, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey a big state. It’s a big

⏹️ ▶️ Marco state. Yeah, so anyway, there’s something going on with these machines

⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash Monterey and USB3 storage

⏹️ ▶️ Marco devices. If you use a cable that is USB-C but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco does not transmit USB 3 speeds, like conveniently, Apple’s charging cable from all of their

⏹️ ▶️ Marco most recent laptops except these. If you have an Apple USB-C to C 2 meter charging cable

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that comes with pretty much every Apple laptop made between 2016 and right before these

⏹️ ▶️ Marco came out, that cable is USB 2.0 data speeds, but has USB-C connectors

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on both ends. If I connect the drive enclosure with that, it does work without

⏹️ ▶️ Marco any problems. It’s slow as crap, and you realize quite how good USB 3 is compared to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco USB 2, but it does work. So there’s something up with that. I assume,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I hope, because this seems to have come on with Monterey, and also seems to apply to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the old M1s, but they didn’t have this problem before this, I would assume this is a software problem,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not a hardware problem. And so hopefully we’ll see a Monterey update sometime very soon

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that fixes, you know, USB device connectivity or whatever. It seems to not apply to USB 2.0

⏹️ ▶️ Marco devices or to anything that is like Thunderbolt or otherwise not USB.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it was very, very wonky and I did not enjoy it by any means, but I agree that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it seems to me like it would be a software thing, but who really knows. Speed. So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey again, I was sold by me to me a bill of goods that this thing would load

⏹️ ▶️ Casey everything instantly always. And I think that’s true with asterisks. Certain things,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it definitely feels like it’s churning on something or trying to do something.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mentioned, I think briefly earlier, that when I installed Xcode via the App Store, which maybe that

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was my first problem, but one way or another, it took literally like an hour or something like that. I didn’t measure it, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it felt like a long, long time. However,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in starting Xcode once it’s been installed, it does take a few seconds. Like you see the Xcode

⏹️ ▶️ Casey icon bounce a couple of times. But one thing that blew my freaking mind

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was every time I opened the simulator, like from a cold start, the simulator has been

⏹️ ▶️ Casey fully quit. There are no simulator windows open. It is not actively running. Going

⏹️ ▶️ Casey from that to the simulator displaying my app is preposterously

⏹️ ▶️ Casey fast, hilariously, preposterously, ridiculously fast. And it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is so cool and it makes me so happy. Now, granted, I don’t cold start simulator

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that often, but even just getting the simulator to come up with the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey latest version of my app, that is also preposterously fast and makes me extremely happy.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve rebooted a bunch of times, including about 15 times when I installed Audio Hijack. That

⏹️ ▶️ Casey also happens very quickly, which I like. And something that everyone else has talked about for six months or a year now,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I am just now experiencing for the first time, when you go ahead and switch displays,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is instant. And after 30 years of waiting for flash, flash, flash, black,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not black, black again, not black, black again, oh, there it is, it is amazing.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is so cool that this happens so quickly and it makes me extremely happy.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I know that somebody must have put a ton of work into the display

⏹️ ▶️ Marco driving whatever whatever does that. It’s so awesome. And this applies to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the M1s as well, as you said. Plugging in and disconnecting monitors or opening and closing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the screen lid to have things just instantly pop into the new

⏹️ ▶️ Marco place and the new configuration is so cool. And again, it’s one of those things like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ve been trained for decades into thinking, I guess that can’t happen. I guess it’s too complicated to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have that. Like, we never even thought to expect better things in this area. And when you’re given

⏹️ ▶️ Marco better things, all of a sudden in an area you didn’t even think you could get them, it’s really delightful. And that’s one

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the great things about the M1 series of computers.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, completely agree. A couple of funny things that I think were more to do with having a brand

⏹️ ▶️ Casey new computer than anything else. I lost all of my group chat images in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey messages. So if you recall, for group iMessages, you can set a name

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s shared across all the participants and a icon that’s shared across all the participants. And the names

⏹️ ▶️ Casey seem to have persisted with the icons, because in a few cases, I set custom icons, and they’ve disappeared, which is kind of annoying.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Also, I’m constantly getting barraged with, oh, Casey List has a new photo for you. Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco Arment has a new photo for you, like incessantly. And I don’t really know what that’s about.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I’ve been getting barraged with that since they introduced that feature. just yesterday, it’s like a

⏹️ ▶️ John routine matter of course, I just look at the messages window and it says, do you wanna update the photo for this contact? I’m like, for the 8,000th time,

⏹️ ▶️ John no. I think it’s because you can set a preference

⏹️ ▶️ John that says, do you want to offer your photo to other people that you message with so that they can use it?

⏹️ ▶️ John If you set that, I think you’re kind of at the mercy, like on the receiving end, you’re at the mercy of other people who

⏹️ ▶️ John may be setting up a new account on a computer or something, or whatever makes the

⏹️ ▶️ John offer come to you. you have no control over whether you receive the offer or not. And it doesn’t apparently

⏹️ ▶️ John remember that you had rejected the offer from this person. It’s just that, oh, this person came online and their

⏹️ ▶️ John computer wants to offer it. So you get the pleasure of hitting that little x and rejecting it again.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep. Another thing that I thought was quite funny was that I think I was talking with Mike

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hurley. And he replied to an image that he had sent a few days ago before this computer

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was in my hands. And the way messages rendered that was just a little teeny black box. Because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, legitimately, I don’t have messages in the cloud turned on. And so it legitimately had no way of knowing

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what that image was he was replying to, because it happened long before my user had ever signed into this computer.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I felt like it was a failure mode that was a little ridiculous. It reminded me of the old Netscape

⏹️ ▶️ Casey image broken icon. But it was just a black box. And I was supposed to just divine what was being replied to.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Why didn’t you have messages in the cloud

⏹️ ▶️ John turned on?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because early on, it was terrible.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John It’s still terrible. Or so I remember.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And we actually, it was some slack that I think we’re all in was just talking about this and somebody else said it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey terrible anymore. So I probably should turn it

⏹️ ▶️ John off. I mean, it’s less bad than it was, but it’s still pretty terrible. But a slightly inconsistent,

⏹️ ▶️ John terrible, laggy, slow syncing mechanism that constantly re-scrolls you to a new position in the scroll back is

⏹️ ▶️ John better than nothing at all. Because with nothing at all, it’s like, well, some messages are on some device and some messages are on other

⏹️ ▶️ John devices. Well,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey see, that’s the thing. It’s been pretty rock solid for me without messages in the cloud. Oh yeah, and doesn’t messages

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the cloud give Apple your encryption key or something like that? That was the other thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s totally less secure, but I was like, that’s a valid answer. It’s like, I didn’t want to turn up messages in the cloud because I don’t want Apple seeing my messages,

⏹️ ▶️ John but you know, that’s not what you said. So I don’t know if you have secret messages.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, but that is a small part of it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John It was mostly because I

⏹️ ▶️ Casey heard it was garbage and then also because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey marginally less secure.

⏹️ ▶️ John It is better than it was, but like, boy, I mean, maybe it’s just on Mac messages. Like, you do

⏹️ ▶️ John have the button that you can do sync now, which is great, but if you don’t do that and you’re like scrolling through a scroll back

⏹️ ▶️ John to look at something, expect that at any point the program will decide, I’ve done

⏹️ ▶️ John something related to sync and now I’ve decided your scroll back position is gonna be offset by a few thousand pixels. Enjoy.

⏹️ ▶️ John And then you’ll scroll back and find where you are and start reading again and then it will just move back again. It’s bad. That’s true.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So for drinks and giggles, I decided to think about what would I do

⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I wanted to keep this as my primary machine, which is I think what I wanna do.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I wanna have a monitor for it, which I don’t have. So I tried using my

⏹️ ▶️ Casey OG, like literally from the Kickstarter Luna display, which thankfully I had gotten

⏹️ ▶️ Casey when my adorable was my, was my runaround computer. So it was USB-C.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey The Luna display is very good. I think they may have sponsored once or twice in the past. I don’t remember. It is very, very

⏹️ ▶️ Casey good. However, even over ethernet, powering the 5k over the Luna

⏹️ ▶️ Casey display is not exactly delightful because there’s so many compression artifacts and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey especially I tried using Xcode and every time I scroll the Xcode window, all the text gets garbly and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey gross looking and then you wait a beat and then it all comes back in nice and crisp because it stopped

⏹️ ▶️ Casey moving. It’s not great. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco you’re asking

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of that.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely, without a shadow of doubt. I mean, Luna Display, I think, was mostly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey meant for running on an iPad, right? So what sidecar is now? And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it wasn’t, I don’t think, really designed to handle this. and it wouldn’t surprise me if my hardware is old and there’s probably

⏹️ ▶️ Casey new hardware now. But one way or another, it did work. Don’t get me wrong, it absolutely worked, but it was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not super delightful. So I wish target display mode was a thing, but it is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not. So I don’t think we’re gonna have time today, but I would like very much to whine about the piss-poor state

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Apple monitors because I have ordered an LG

⏹️ ▶️ Casey 5K from Apple that might deliver this year because I don’t know what else to do. Oh no.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know what else to do.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Here’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what you do. You swallow your pride, you order the XDR and you never tell anybody.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh my God, I don’t think I can handle it. I don’t think I can.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not a good time to buy an XDR. I endorse the 5K plan assuming you can resell it at some

⏹️ ▶️ John point in the future because honestly we don’t know what the schedule is for Apple ever releasing anything better but I wouldn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John buy an XDR now.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey See, thank you John, I agree. I mean, if I was spending your money, I would have had an XDR yesterday, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m spending my money, which is why I don’t have an XDR. By the way, have I mentioned atp.fm. Thank you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey very much. And then finally, the only Mac

⏹️ ▶️ Casey OS or I guess iOS on Mac OS Catalyst app that I’ve installed is indeed Overcast because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was doing my normal thing where I put my iPhone in like a 12 South dock or whatever it is I have on my desk,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I was starting to play, I think was Upgrade, actually, the aforementioned episode of Upgrade. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I started playing. And I was, wait, wait a second. I don’t have to do this.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can just run it on my Mac. It’s a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mediocre experience. I can have a mediocre experience scrolling the iPad app on my Mac.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s exactly right.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually, well, that’s not even fair. It was a very nice experience, and it all worked really well until I tried

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to hit a media key on the keyboard. And it was like, what? Nope, that doesn’t work. Play, pause? I don’t know what that is.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that was a bit of of a bummer. So I got to talk to the developer and see if I can convince him or her to add

⏹️ ▶️ Casey media key support because that would be super awesome.

⏹️ ▶️ John You mean convince them to do literally anything to the app to make it aware that it’s running on a Mac? That’s exactly

⏹️ ▶️ John right.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think I have access to those keys in that environment. Like maybe because it isn’t a Catalyst

⏹️ ▶️ Marco app. It’s like a, you know, iOS Mac app and Catalyst might have hooks

⏹️ ▶️ Marco into that kind of stuff. But and one of the reasons I haven’t made a Catalyst app is that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Once you do that, then you have to have a whole separate entry in the Mac App Store

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for your app and maintain that and submit it separately, have all these separate builds

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s a lot of overhead for what has proven to be not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco no users, but not a lot of users. Not a lot of people

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are using Overcast on their Macs. And of course that will grow as

⏹️ ▶️ Marco more people use them, obviously that will, as more people have these machines that can run

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, then more people will run it. But it’s not a huge number. That being

⏹️ ▶️ Marco said, according to my analytics that I run, it is climbing quickly over the last couple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of weeks, or over the last week, rather. Who

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey would

⏹️ ▶️ Casey have thunk

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco it?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyway, so far so good. I’m really looking forward to, well, I might have mentioned this last week, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was going to say I’m really looking forward to taking this somewhere, like a patio somewhere, or somewhere

⏹️ ▶️ Casey where I can work outside and not have to worry about my battery all the time, but it’s freaking freezing here

⏹️ ▶️ Casey now.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco So now

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I have my wonderful new laptop, my portable desktop that I can take places, I can’t really take

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it anywhere because everywhere’s freezing and I’m still allergic to the indoors. Although, random follow-up,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Declan has his first shot appointment in a little over a week and I’m super excited about that. So at

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco that point- Yeah, Adam does too.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, at that point it’ll be three down, one to go. And for you guys, you’ll be all in, which will be great. So

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in any case, this is an incredibly nice machine. I spent a preposterous amount of money

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on it, and I probably over-ordered on it. Like, I probably didn’t need 64 gigs of RAM.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I stand by my four terabytes, but I probably didn’t need the max.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I probably could have been just fine with the Pro and 32 gigs of RAM, but so far, so freaking good.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And outside of my big monitor problems, I really, really, really

⏹️ ▶️ Casey love this computer, I’m so happy it’s here.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks to our sponsors this week, Squarespace, Linode, and Stripe. And thanks to our members

⏹️ ▶️ Marco who support us directly. You can join at atp.fm slash join. We will talk to you next

⏹️ ▶️ Marco week.

Ending theme

⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause

⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental, oh it was accidental

⏹️ ▶️ John John didn’t do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause

⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental, oh it was accidental

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you can

⏹️ ▶️ John find the show notes at atp.fm And if you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John into 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, Auntie Marco Armin,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A

⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse, it’s accidental, they

⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t mean to Accidental, check

⏹️ ▶️ John podcast so

⏹️ ▶️ Casey long

Selling Macs

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So related to this computer, uh, and, and potentially being my one and only computer,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey accepting my Mac mini server, which we’re not talking about. Uh, I have now a, well, not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right now, but soon I will have an iMac pro that I should probably get rid of and an Intel MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ Casey pro that I should probably get rid of, I think I am going to unload both of them. There’s a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey slim chance I might hand the MacBook pro to Aaron. Cause she’s still on the adorable, but she uses it so infrequently

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I I really don’t think she’d need the MacBook Pro. Like I think if anything,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it being bigger and heavier would probably not even make her happy. So I’m gonna talk to her about it and see what she

⏹️ ▶️ Casey thinks, but she’ll probably just stick with the adorable. So I’ll have this Intel MacBook Pro

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get rid of and probably the iMac Pro to get rid of. I’ve not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey really done this, but a couple of times, Marco. So I had some questions for you. Let me just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey rattle off the questions because they’re all pretty quick and then you can kind of answer them whatever order you see

⏹️ ▶️ Casey fit. First of all, do you, and again, save your answers for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a second here, do you typically include accessories? So for the MacBook Pro, all

⏹️ ▶️ Casey things being equal, I’d probably just hoard the power supply and USB-C cable, but on the flip side of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, if I was buying a new MacBook Pro, I’d probably want those things. So like, what do you do with that?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Does the fact that both of these have active AppleCare Plus things, does that matter? Do I take

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that into account in the pricing or do I just say that that’s an advantage to make the products

⏹️ ▶️ Casey seem more lucrative? And then more than anything else, how do you price

⏹️ ▶️ Casey these? Because I did a little bit of spelunking on eBay, and I came up with some numbers that I’m not sure if they’re

⏹️ ▶️ Casey realistic or not. And my recollection is that what you would do, and I’m going to shut up in a second

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and let you actually answer it, what you would do is you would look at eBay and basically discount a few hundred bucks or something like that. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so I’ve had a couple of people reach out and kick the tires on each of these machines.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I don’t think I necessarily need to go to eBay. I don’t, I certainly don’t want to go to Apple because those trade-in

⏹️ ▶️ Casey values are not great, but you know, if, if these couple of interested parties end up falling

⏹️ ▶️ Casey through, like my plan was to just post to Twitter and be like, Hey, you know, first, first one to pee on it, so

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to speak is the winner. Um, so it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco was, uh, but,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, but what is your, what is your advice in your approach to unloading

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not very old and still very nice computers?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, you know, depending, it depends on a lot of factors, you know, and it’s very much like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco trading in old cars, you know, like if, if you do the trade in route, like to,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the dealer, you know, to, if you do the Apple trade in, you will get the worst price, but the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco let the least hassle and the least risk, you know, so That is a really good

⏹️ ▶️ Marco option if there’s something kind of flaky or wrong with it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco In the sense that you don’t necessarily want to sell it to somebody who you know and who knows you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in some way.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Whether

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s somebody on Twitter or an eBay person or whatever, you don’t want to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be personally responsible for it if it’s a little bit flaky or broken. So if there’s anything

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of wrong with it, trade it in and take the hit. Also, if you just want

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be quickly done with it, or if it’s going to be a big pain. And this might be something like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if shipping it’s gonna be really problematic. Like, if it’s something that’s big and heavy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and hard to ship well slash affordably, like a Mac Pro Tower,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for instance. Like those are-

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Or an

⏹️ ▶️ Casey iMac Pro.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh yeah, or an iMac. Those are like larger, more expensive to ship. I remember, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, the last time, when I sold a Mac Pro Tower years ago, I remember it cost like $150 to ship it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was a big chunk out of its value just for shipping. And that was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because, and I had saved the original box. Like if you don’t have the shipping box for some of these things, it’s even more, because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco then you have to buy shipping boxes and padding and stuff like that. So anyway, so trading

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in is good in the sense that you don’t have to worry about any of that stuff. Like if you do a trade in to Apple, they will send you packaging material.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like they mail you an empty box with padding, you stick the computer in it, and you send it back.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, quick aside about that. A listener, and I don’t have their name handy, but a listener wrote in to say they

⏹️ ▶️ Casey were looking to trade in their John style, what is it, 2019, whatever. That’s right. Mac

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Pro. Yeah, the current giant Mac Pro.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And apparently Apple was not at all prepared for this because they sent them a box that was clearly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey meant for the trashcan Mac Pro, which I just thought was hilarious.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John You can’t even fit

⏹️ ▶️ John the monitor stand in that box. No. The monitor, remember how big the monitor stand box is, Mark? I

⏹️ ▶️ John mean, I talked about it when I got mine. you notice when you’re at yours, the monitor stand box is huge.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, actually I just moved it yesterday, so I was rearranging the basement a little bit, and there it is, it’s massive and heavy,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even without the stand in it. So for selling on eBay and stuff, eBay

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a great chance to be pretty much guaranteed a buyer.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It might not be the best buyer, it might not be the most profitable buyer, it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco might, you’re gonna have people saying, hey, can you maybe ship it to this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco remote island I live on that’s gonna be a pain in the butt for you and you gotta fill out a million customs forms because it’s like four

⏹️ ▶️ Marco countries away. Like no, you don’t want to do any of that. You want, like if you go on eBay, keep it simple,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco say continental US only, and you know, do shipping at cost because they’ll calculate it all for you.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The good thing about eBay is that you will get a buyer, like pretty much anything, unless you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like grossly overpriced the starting bid, but for the most part you will get a buyer. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the eBay app is surprisingly good. What I would suggest, like back, you know, not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco too long ago, if you were to sell something on eBay, you’d probably do it similar to the way I used to do it, which

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is like, all right, take out the good camera, get out like, you know, the light box to like get really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco good photos of the object and dust it off. Get all perfect. Like get no speck of dust on it anywhere.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Take the pictures important to light room, boost them up, you know, get the contrast nice. Oh, there’s a speck of dust clone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stamp that out. So you don’t see the dust in the picture is like really a lot of effort going to it and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco then you go on, you make a really nice description and everything. I would suggest throw

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of that expectation away and just use the app on your iPad

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and maybe even on your phone if you want to, but iPad is fine too. You get a little more space with like look at things like pictures and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco texts and stuff on the iPad. So it’s nicer, but just use the built in camera and don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco use any fancy lighting or fancy photo setup or anything. Set the item on a table,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco dust it off, you know, in a quick way, and use the eBay app and the built-in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco camera in the eBay app to take like, you know, five or six photos all around it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then you can look up and you can say, all right, it’s this model computer, here’s a description, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco type in, you know, approximate description, plain text, put in no effort

⏹️ ▶️ Marco into your listing except a handful of iPhone slash iPad photos and a quick text description.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s all you need. And what this does is it makes it really easy for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you, the seller, which means you’re more likely to do it and it’s less hassle and time

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for you. Then, when the thing actually gets sold,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like now that people can buy it directly on eBay and check out on eBay,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you don’t have to deal with like PayPal or anything like that anymore. eBay just pays you. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s really nice, because it’s really easy. Now, they will charge you for this.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you always pay fees on eBay. You pay both the listing fee and then the final value fee, just like it always was.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The payment fee is probably that on top of it now too. You end up losing something like 20% to fees. 15 to 20% I think is kind of the all in for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco eBay. So that’s significant.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so this is why it’s not a place to get the most money,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it is a place where you can be pretty much guaranteed a buyer, and you will generally

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have few to no problems with them. The

⏹️ ▶️ Marco previous problems in the past of like very fraudulent buyers a lot of times for laptops and stuff

⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t seem to be as common, especially if you’re restricted to US only and like only accept their built-in payment system and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff like that. So they make it very easy. And then like, if you tell them like the dimensions

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and weight of your package before you even list the item, they will give you a shipping

⏹️ ▶️ Marco label. Like you can say- Oh, interesting. Because they’re fully integrated now with the post office and everything. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you don’t even have to do that. All you have to do is print it out and tape it on the box and mail it and you’re done.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they’ve really reduced a lot of the old friction and a lot of the old steps you used to have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to take to sell on eBay. It’s now really quite easy to sell stuff there. The other option

⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be, as you mentioned, Twitter or if people email in saying, hey, can I buy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your laptop, that kind of thing. The downside of that kind of sale is that you’re limited

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in buyers. So if you’re selling something that your audience might not want, or at a price

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they might not wanna pay, it might not go anywhere. Whereas if you put it on eBay, it will sell.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, no question, you put it on eBay, make a seven-day auction, a week later, it will be out

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of your house. Like, no question, it will definitely sell. So I’ve been leaning more

⏹️ ▶️ Marco towards eBay for a lot of that kind of stuff recently. Anything I’m not trading in, I’ll usually go to eBay,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just because they had just made it so much easier. That being said, an even easier option,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you don’t necessarily need the money from it, is to give it to a family member or friend

⏹️ ▶️ Marco who needs a new computer. Like that’s also a really good option. And so whenever I have someone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in my life that could really benefit from it, I try to take that option. That’s not the common case, unfortunately,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because most people in my life don’t care about computers as much as I do. So,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually I end up selling. Or, you know, like, in the case of like selling a desktop, like most

⏹️ ▶️ Marco people in my life who need a computer don’t want a desktop, they want a laptop. And so like when we sold

⏹️ ▶️ Marco our iMacs a couple years back, that, you know, one of them went to a family member, the other one went on eBay

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it was fine.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So how do you price either for eBay or for like a Twitter sale, if you will?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So for eBay, it’s super easy. You can go search for completed items and then filter that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco by sold items, and it will show you what this exact item has actually

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sold for in the last whatever days. eBay sold items is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably the best way to figure out what is this exact thing with this exact configuration

⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually worth. See what it sells for on eBay. It’s like, well, they found buyers, so obviously

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s about what it’s worth. So pick whatever range you see there and make the starting

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bid something way low, so that way, and then set the buy it now price like maybe

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little bit below that range. Because if yours is going for 100 bucks

⏹️ ▶️ Marco less, 200 bucks less, whatever, 10%, 15% less than the value that people see

⏹️ ▶️ Marco by doing these kind of searches, it’ll sell fast. And you will have less trouble

⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting it sold. People will be more likely to hit the buy it now button and then it’s out of your house even sooner

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and with even less hassle. Again, this is one of those things, if you’re willing to give up a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco few percent off the price and get a little bit lower price, you can have a faster, easier,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco more guaranteed sale. So that’s, again, usually what I do is I will, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hope people pick the buy it now. Most of my stuff that I sold recently never even went to auction. People just picked

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the buy it now thing because I priced it five or 10% below what it seemed like it was worth.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it went, and that was it. If you’re on Twitter doing that kind of sale, you basically

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do the same thing, that you can kind of go lower because you can account for the eBay fees

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not being charged to you in that medium. So, what I usually do, if I’m selling on Twitter, I’ll

⏹️ ▶️ Marco look at the eBay sold item price and I’ll go maybe 20% lower than that because I know I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not gonna pay the 15% eBay fees. That works out pretty well if you can find a buyer there. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, for more specialized stuff or for computers that you have literally spent the last few months

⏹️ ▶️ Marco telling all of your audience that you shouldn’t buy, maybe eBay’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the better choice.

⏹️ ▶️ John How do you deal with payment from stuff that you sell on Twitter? Is that annoying to deal with?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Usually you can take advantage of the fact that people trust you. I know this sounds

⏹️ ▶️ Marco terrible, but you can use one of the options where it kind of works like cash to you.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the buyer kind of has no recourse after they send it to you. That only works if people trust you, obviously,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because that’s a good amount of trust to put in somebody to.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not that they trust you. The main thing, and I know this is not actionable advice for most people who aren’t us, but

⏹️ ▶️ John the main feature that we all have is not like, oh, we’re so trustworthy. It’s that

⏹️ ▶️ John we have a public presence that people know about so that if Marco screws someone out

⏹️ ▶️ John of a computer, it’s a story. And so the person, I mean, you might seem like, oh, but doesn’t Marco

⏹️ ▶️ John have all the power? He’s got the audience. This poor unknown person who is buying his computer

⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t have any power, but that’s not true. They have the power of now I have a story. Now, Marco, this person you know from podcasts

⏹️ ▶️ John and developers, screwed me out of a computer. That’s a story. Sites will pick that up. That will gain traction.

⏹️ ▶️ John And so the reason we have the ability to say, oh, just, you know, you can trust

⏹️ ▶️ John me. I think the mutual understanding is, you can trust me because I know that I have

⏹️ ▶️ John a lot to lose by screwing you out of this thing. And so therefore, I won’t. And so that’s the basis

⏹️ ▶️ John of our trust. Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That makes sense. All right. I appreciate it. So I gotta look at some Ebay completed

⏹️ ▶️ Casey sales and see what these things should be

⏹️ ▶️ John priced. Although I do have to say, I have some experience trying to exchange money with people, maybe not for selling computers and stuff, but

⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re not limited to US only, it can be surprisingly difficult to just like, let’s find a way

⏹️ ▶️ John that we can both agree on and use to transfer money between someone in the UK and someone in the US. Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John just use Apple Pay. Oh, apparently we don’t have Apple Pay Cash in the UK. I’m like, why not? I don’t know, because Apple.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, what about PayPal? Well, I don’t use PayPal. Use Venmo? I had a thing there and it was just, you go, there’s a million

⏹️ ▶️ John services, but it’s, if you have two sort of parties on equal footing

⏹️ ▶️ John and no one is particularly motivated, people don’t wanna sign up for a new payment thing. Like, well, I only

⏹️ ▶️ John use, you know, Apple Pay Cash and Venmo. And the other person says, well, I only use PayPal

⏹️ ▶️ John and some other thing you’ve never heard of. And so now it’s like a, you know, a staring contest of like, well,

⏹️ ▶️ John so are you gonna sign up for PayPal or am I gonna sign up for Venmo? It’s just, it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John super easy. And if anyone says cryptocurrency, I swear, just don’t even. That’s a hard no.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, and this is, this is again, not only for payment reasons, but for shipping

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and customs slash duty reasons, you don’t want to ship outside the US. It’s not worth the hassle.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m sorry, people outside the US, you can buy from people in your countries to make things easier for you.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco As an individual seller, occasionally of my computer equipment, it is such

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a pain to ship to other countries. because then you have to deal with customs. And that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a massive wild card, both for time to receive the item and for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco unexpected charges, either to you or to the buyer. And it’s a complexity level that’s not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco worth it when you are not a professional seller of goods.

⏹️ ▶️ John Plus, they don’t have the wrong keyboard, right? Don’t they have those terrible keyboards in the UK? Yeah.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey They sure do. Like where the

⏹️ ▶️ John enter key is giant and all the punctuation’s in the wrong place. And they can’t program because

⏹️ ▶️ John their curly braces are all screwed up.