462: Xcode X
22 Dec 2021The kids these days don’t understand our good-ol’ computin’ metaphors.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: “Web3”
- Follow-up:
- Thank you, ATP members
- Casey has changed up his setup yet again
- “☝️ Well, actually ☝️”s on Marco’s Synology
- Marco’s jugs
- Apple Silicon in forthcoming LG displays
- Clarifications on attention-aware features (via Gui Rambo)
- Marco’s New iPhone Case (via Oliver Ames)
- macOS 12.2 beta
- :::✊🏻::: Kids these days :::✊🏻:::
- Post-show
#askatp:- When did Corvettes start looking so different? (via Rob Knight)
- What vaporware would we love to see Apple work on? (via Juno Orion)
Sponsored by:
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Chapters
- Netcast3
- Thank you, members!
- Casey’s desk setup has “changed”
- New Thunderbolt hubs
- Ode to the ubiquitous C13 plug
- Sponsor: Green Chef (code atp10)
- Follow-up: Synology DS420j
- Follow-up: Water-jug flooding
- Apple monitor with A13 inside?
- Sponsor: RevenueCat
- Follow-up: Attention-aware features
- A new iPhone-case winner 🖼️
- Noticing 120 Hz on Macs
- Mac Music.app going more “native”
- Sponsor: Stream
- Kids don’t understand files
- Ending theme
- #askatp: Corvettes look like Lambos?
- #askatp: What should Apple (not) make?
Netcast3
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Do we have to learn what Web 3 is or can we just ignore this and let it pass?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I don’t think we can necessarily ignore it because it’s a threat.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John whoa, it’s like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John We should, I don’t think we need to do anything to stop it, but it’s stupid and
⏹️ ▶️ John people have money and interest behind it. So when stupid ideas have money and interest behind them, we should probably
⏹️ ▶️ John know enough about it to give it the finger.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is one of those times where, and I think I’ve talked about this perhaps here, certainly on Analog,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of the things I really respect about Jason Snell, and actually you as well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, is that you guys are, you have a little more experience
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in life than I do, I’m trying to put this gently, and yet you both are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very good about keeping your opinions fluid in in a way that I fear
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m getting worse at as I get older, and I’m trying really hard to be better at not dismissing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something out of hand simply because it seems kind of kooky and bananas. But this Web 3 stuff, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stupid, not only game.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I’m trying to figure out what exactly it has to do with the web. No, it’s fair.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It seems it… I kind of object… I know, like, trying to battle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the tide on what terminology people are using for something new is usually a losing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco battle and there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s like people trying to call these netcasts you know or like you know I think the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use of the term web three I don’t see how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what is going on in the world of like crypto crap has anything to do with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the rest of the internet like it seems like it’s not web three it’s you know gambling 25 like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Speculative volatile investments, you know, 17,000. Like how many of these have we
⏹️ ▶️ John But Web 3 is not the same thing as just blockchain and NFT. It’s blockchain stuff applied
⏹️ ▶️ John to a web-like environment. Like it makes sense they would try to call it Web 3. Like I think it’s stupid that they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John squatting on that term. And I think Web 2.0 is also a stupid term, but whatever. Like the whole idea is
⏹️ ▶️ John that, you know, the stuff that we do on the web, imagine if we could do similar
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff, but differently on top of blockchain, right? And that’s why they call it Web 3, because they want this
⏹️ ▶️ John particular application of blockchain to make people think it’s like the web, but you’ll have more ownership
⏹️ ▶️ John of stuff or whatever. But it’s different than, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John NFTs or cryptocurrency, which are also applications of
⏹️ ▶️ John blockchain. But the fact that you say, oh, it doesn’t have anything to do with the web, well, they all have something to do with the web, like
⏹️ ▶️ John all the things, like NFTs use URLs for things, URLs go through the web, and cryptocurrency,
⏹️ ▶️ John if anyone’s doing stuff with that, it’s probably HTTP based APIs. Like the web is fairly inescapable.
⏹️ ▶️ John So there’s not much that, you know, but you’re right that it isn’t the web. It’s not like, oh, it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, HTTP 2.0, like that protocol is an advancement in web
⏹️ ▶️ John technologies, but anything that doesn’t change HTTP, anything that doesn’t get, doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John become an essential part of a web browser probably isn’t part of the web proper. But if you’re doing
⏹️ ▶️ John web-like stuff, if you know, if you’re using blockchain to, in theory let people do web-like
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff in a different way. Makes some vague kind of sense that you would try to get the name Web3
⏹️ ▶️ John and get people to use it. But of course this, like all the other things, is aside from
⏹️ ▶️ John scamming people out of money and aside from figuring out how to make money off of suckers,
⏹️ ▶️ John no one needs to care about this until and unless it rises to the level of something
⏹️ ▶️ John useful, right? So think about, I don’t know, for a long time people didn’t have to care about
⏹️ ▶️ John by BitTorrent, and they’ll eventually, BitTorrent found a useful application, which is piracy. And also downloading Linux
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And downloading-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve done both of those things with BitTorrent, but a lot more of one than the other.
⏹️ ▶️ John really likes Linux. Steam uses a peer-to-peer protocol, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I think World of Warcraft was one of the first games to use the literal BitTorrent protocol to help downloads of the game
⏹️ ▶️ John go faster. But yeah, you need an application of
⏹️ ▶️ John this technology that regular people find useful. And so far, the only application of these blockchain technologies
⏹️ ▶️ John are things that people who want to make money fast find useful.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it seems like, I mean, we’ve talked about this before, how there’s this kind of psychological
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hack that when a certain type of person, let’s face it, usually dudes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get faced with the prospect of being able to make money from other money, as opposed to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing something and making something, it seems to hack their brain in a way. It’s like a drug.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the effects that, it just, it breaks people’s brain in such
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a weird drug-like or cult-like or religion-like way that they just get so obsessed and they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can’t, they see this is gonna do everything and save everybody and do everything for everyone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they can’t see that it’s like, oh, this is actually just a pump and dump Ponzi scheme
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or a speculative volatile investment kind of thing. or we just invented an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco interesting technology, but use it only for these horrible things. And there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this whole culture around obsessing over it and claiming this is gonna be the next big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing. But a lot of people claim a lot of things are gonna be the next big thing, and most of them don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually reach that point.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, but you just said it, the enthusiasm is part of this whole grift. You need to
⏹️ ▶️ John get more people to come in and be investors. You need the greater
⏹️ ▶️ John fool to come in later and put their money in, otherwise you don’t make any money. So the
⏹️ ▶️ John outsized enthusiasm for whatever it is that you’re doing is part of the system. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh, and they become obsessed with it. They don’t become obsessed with it. Being obsessed with it is what you have
⏹️ ▶️ John to do to make the thing a financial success for you. And each
⏹️ ▶️ John group of people that comes in, if they come in and go, oh yeah, we’re not enthusiastic about it, then they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John the last one holding the bag. So they also need to be super enthusiastic about it to get other people to come
⏹️ ▶️ John in. So yeah, some people really are obsessed with it and like, oh, this is gonna change everything and we’re all
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna own our information and we’ll get out from under the thumb of the big tech companies. And
⏹️ ▶️ John yes, there are definitely true believers, but it’s hard to distinguish the true believers from the people
⏹️ ▶️ John who just are turning their crank on the machine that they think will hopefully make them money.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. It seems very irrelevant to my life right now, but that doesn’t mean it will be forever.
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s what you should be watching for. It’s like, when does this become relevant? Oh, here’s something useful
⏹️ ▶️ John that can be done in a better way than it could be done before. And so far that has
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly not happened except for you can definitely do crime better
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco and you can do scams better. Right? So
⏹️ ▶️ John those are the two applications where people go, well, this is way better than it used to be. We used to ransomware people. It was
⏹️ ▶️ John so hard to get the money. Now it’s way easier.
Thank you, members!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s do some follow-up and I actually wanted to very quickly mention
⏹️ ▶️ Casey since it is the holidays, this is our Christmas Spectacular, in as much as we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have a Christmas Spectacular. Anyways, I thought, you know, since we missed talking about it at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Thanksgiving, it seemed like now is as good a time as any to just briefly thank all of our members who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have made it much, much less stressful to do this show insofar as worrying about sponsorships
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and things of that nature. I’m not going to belabor the point, but all of you that have become members
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over the last year and a half, it has really made a tangible and demonstrable difference, certainly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to my life, and I think it’s fair to say to all three of our lives. So I just wanted to very briefly and quickly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mention all of you. It is very kind of you to have even tried it once, much less
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the many of you that have stuck around. So thank you to all of you. And if this sounds interesting to you, atp.fm. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thank you very much. Casey’s glossed over it quickly, and I won’t spend too much time on it, but the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ad market has its ups and downs. We’ve talked about this before, and it used to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hurt a lot whenever we would have a spot that didn’t sell in an episode, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’d have to offer a discount to get something sold at the last minute or something. That would hurt a lot more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the past, but now that we have something to fall back on, we have diversified
⏹️ ▶️ Marco income, we have this chunk from members and this chunk from advertisers, it hurts a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco less when the ad market has its dips or its little flukes. And so it makes it easier to take.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it gives us pleasure to be able to also have this kind of like fun
⏹️ ▶️ Marco premium product that we give you, we give members the ad free feed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we have the bootleg bonus for the members and stuff like that. It’s like, it’s kind of fun to have these,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this like little club for people who want a little bit extra and also to just smooth out the market
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fluctuations of the advertising business. And so thank you very much. And anybody who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chooses not to be a member, that’s fine. We’re not gonna like make you feel bad about it. Anybody who does choose to be a member, thank you for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what you’re doing. And we’ll keep trying to make it awesome for you.
⏹️ ▶️ John Members hate it when we talk about membership on the members only feed. I thanked them. I know,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco but they don’t wanna be thanked. They don’t wanna
⏹️ ▶️ John hear anything about membership. The whole point of Pankvist, I don’t wanna hear you talk about membership. We’re sorry for talking about membership, but we thank
⏹️ ▶️ John you very much for your membership. I’m not sorry. Neither
⏹️ ▶️ Casey am I. All right, hey.
Casey’s desk setup has “changed”
⏹️ ▶️ Casey My desk setup has changed yet again. I feel like you every week. Otherwise, it just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wouldn’t be an episode of ATP at this point No, it’s nothing bad. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something else a diary
⏹️ ▶️ John get flooded the glass decks desk. No, I’m correct. Yeah
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the weight of all these monitors. I now have on it. It is possible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco How many monitors do you now have that are not the XDR?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey First of all that are not the XDR for but one of them just arrived in California today So hopefully
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it will be repaired before I turn 40. But anyways, as of a few days
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ago, thanks to my buddy Ian Fuchs at Cult of Mac, he had an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey extra Alogic Thunderbolt 4 Blaze Hub laying around. And it just occurred to me like an hour
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ago, this is in many ways the USB-C hub that Marco has always wanted. And it didn’t even occur to me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it landed on my desk with little to no fanfare. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually have three very similar ones.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, so there you go. So if you’re not familiar because I wasn’t familiar. It is a USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slash Thunderbolt 4 port that connects from the device to the computer, and that is on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey physically the front of the little box. And the box is very small. It’s surprisingly small. It’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey little bit bigger than a deck of cards, but not too much so. Anyway, so on the front, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a traditional USB-A and then the connector to connect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to your computer that is Thunderbolt 4. And it does provide 60 watts of power delivery, which is less than I would want for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my particular laptop, but for 99% of the time, it’s fine. I’m not doing anything to really need
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more power or at least not that I’m aware of. And then on the back, there’s three USB-C Thunderbolt
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 4 ports. So right now I have two of them used by a USB-C
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to display port connector for the two LG 4K temporary, but probably forever monitors
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I have. And then one of them for a USB-C to Ethernet adapter. However,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I have not yet recorded with this whole setup and I don’t trust anything anymore, for Marco’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey benefit, you’re welcome, darling. I have plugged the Ethernet directly into the computer. I have plugged
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the MixPri3 directly into the computer. I have also plugged in the MagSafe connection
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I usually just leave dangling because I have the power delivery via the device. So that is plugged in directly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the computer. So even if everything took a dump at the same time, it shouldn’t be a problem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and and shouldn’t interrupt the recording. But I just wanted to take note that I have switched up my setup yet again.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And we’re sitting here now, next week, it should be normal. Like, it should be the new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John normal. But remind me of
⏹️ ▶️ John this. You changed your desktop, but all you did was get basically a USB hub. That’s not changing your setup. You got
⏹️ ▶️ John one new peripheral.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hey, man, it’s a whole corner
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John now. Like, how
⏹️ ▶️ John did this change? You have the same number of monitors, you’re using the same computer, you’re using the same input devices. Like, how did
⏹️ ▶️ John this change anything about yourself?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Empirically,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey barely at all. they find that the difference would have been if i had left the ethernet plugged into the box,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I didn’t trust it quite yet.
New Thunderbolt hubs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So this new category of Thunderbolt hubs, these just came out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe six months ago at the most. And a bunch of different companies seem to be making the exact
⏹️ ▶️ Marco same product, presumably using the same Intel chipset or something. So yeah, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one Thunderbolt 4 in, three Thunderbolt 4s out, and also usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a USB-A port or four. So this, Alogic, this is the first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time I’ve heard of this brand, but this is one. OWC aka MaxSales also makes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. It’s basically the exact same product for basically the exact same price. And then CalDigit, this is their Element Hub
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we talked about a while back, except the CalDigit Element Hub has four USB-A ports, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is kind of convenient instead of just the one. But they’re all basically seemingly the same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco product with the same specs with that one exception of the number of USB-A ports. I have two of those CalDigit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Element Hubs in various testing and occasional roles right now. I haven’t made them permanent yet. and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have one of the CalDigit TS3 Plus that we talked about a long time ago. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right now, so we started doing YouTube Minecraft streams as a family and I’ll talk about it some other time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not really that interesting right now, but except that we started doing it and you should go watch it. We’re on Twitch, we’re called
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Team Armament and it’s fun. We’re also on YouTube if you wanna see them there. But the technical side of it, I’ll outline it some other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time. But the CalDigit TS3 Plus, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco am using in that setup and plugging in just a ton of USB devices to it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a ton of bandwidth, and it all comes through one Thunderbolt port, and it’s fantastic. I tried
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing the same thing on the Element Hub, which is their version of this, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is more USB-A ports, and I had problems with my Elgato
⏹️ ▶️ Marco video capture, HDMI capture thingies, whatever they’re called, the HD60S
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Plus, I think? Anyway, I had problems running those through
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Element Hub that I didn’t have running through the TS3 Plus. And so that makes me kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think, like I wonder if something’s up with these hubs. Maybe like the, maybe OSs need like a couple more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco updates before they’re very well supported in some edge cases, or maybe like the chipset has some limitation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m unaware of, because the TS3 Plus is a much older device using presumably a much older chipset.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But anyway, these are great. The only thing that I, my only big complaint about this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new class of Thunderbolt hubs, which finally has given me what I want in the sense of like, take one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thunderbolt port and make more Thunderbolt ports with it. That’s great. The only downside
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that their power adapters are like three times bigger than the hub. Yes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yes, that’s absolutely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco true. They’re delivering 60 watts of power, but that’s often 60 watts to the laptop.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You also have to provide, I think, at least 15 watts per port for Thunderbolt for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco devices that are plugged into it. So you have a combined a pretty large amount of power.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’re talking, you know, 90, 100 watts easily for that power brick to be delivering. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s one of those like big black rectangles that has the C13 plug on one end and the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco DC out on the other end. And so you have, you know, one of those like floating black blocks that is somewhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco between the outlet and this thing that you have to put somewhere or a buckler to the bottom of your desk or something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s just, I wish they would, like, can we, maybe we can get like a law passed that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco says that your product photography of your electronic device must include the power
⏹️ ▶️ Marco supply in the photo. Because this looks so small and elegant, like so many things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in our modern technology lives, but oh, it’s only small and elegant because they outsourced this giant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ugly part of it to this thing that’s gonna sit outside of it. And like, either build it in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or include that in the pictures.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, agreed. But I do like this device. I mean, granted, I like it in part because it was free, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do like it. And it is simplifying my connection situation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because before I had two physical connections, one per monitor, not to mention the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ethernet connector and power. Now all of that in general use, podcasting aside has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dropped down to just the one connection just from the computer to the hub. And then everything else is taken
⏹️ ▶️ Casey care of from there, which is really nice. This is part of the reason why, all snark aside, this is part of the reason why I liked the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey LG 5K in the four minutes that it stayed working was because it did similar things. And it handled,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it has three additional USB-C ports on the back, other than the one that’s used for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey transmitting data to the computer. So it worked out real well when it was working. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyway, I just wanted to give a quick update. I’m sure I will fabricate some sort of reason to bring this up again next week.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving right along.
Ode to the ubiquitous C13 plug
⏹️ ▶️ Marco By the way, user Tom Hartnett in the chat asked, what is a C13 plug? This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a good question, this is a nice little hack that I, or not a hack, but a nice little tip that I came upon recently.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So C13, it’s that three prong AC plug that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you plug one end of it into the wall and you put the other end into a desktop PC power supply or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lots of other electronics. It has the three big AC pins arranged in a little triangle.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Every desktop PC power supply forever has used one of these, that’s called a C13.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And like, well, I think the other end’s a C14, but like the wire end of it is the C13.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the good thing is, because this is a standard used in so many things, including
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the wall to big power block cable of almost everything that uses a big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco power block, therefore you can go on like Amazon or whatever and get standard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cables that have that same end. So you can do things like get a really short one or get a really long one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco depending on what your needs are help clean up your cables. Or you can get splitters. Or you can get a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cable that has one wall plug and comes out to three C13 plugs. So if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to power multiple devices in the same location, you can run it all through one plug. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of course, be careful, don’t overload your wiring or your circuits, be safe about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that stuff, but most of the things that use these plugs are not super high wattage devices. So for instance,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the things we use this for as part of my YouTube streaming setup for our games, we each have a gaming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco PC. And they’re these Razer Blade 15-inch gaming PCs that each have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of those tremendous black power supply things, and each of them takes a C13.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we all want to play in the same location, and there’s one outlet nearby. Well, a nice clean way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to clean up those cables is to have a regular AC, you know, NEMA 15,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever, regular US AC plug on one end, and it splits into three C13s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I plug it in boom boom boom to the three power supplies for the laptops and have them all running through one outlet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And because the combined wattage of those is only about 600 watts at peak, it’s still very much within all the limits
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of everything that it’s rated for and so it works out very well. So hot little tip if you want to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clean up some of your wiring, you probably have like 15 of those wall AC
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to C13 black cables in your cable drawer that are all the same length and you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t need them. throw them all away and buy some that are like exactly the lengths you need.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s so much nicer.
⏹️ ▶️ John Nobody has those cables anymore because nobody has desktop PCs anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, man, the power supply, like Mark was saying, the power supply for this breakout box uses it.
⏹️ ▶️ John surprised. I’m surprised they didn’t use the, I don’t know what the name of it is, but you know, the one that looks like a three leaf clover, you know, that one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, those are on like, um, I think PlayStation’s right. They use those.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Lots of things that are smaller. Like I imagined a power brick. Why would a power brick have this giant thing on it,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I guess so. It does.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s a pretty big one. And that little, the three-leaf clover one is, I forget, I don’t know the name of that one, but that’s also a standard.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey C5, it looks like.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yep. Yeah, and so you could do similar things if you happen to have multiple devices that use that, or you want to get different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cable lengths. All of those things are all standards.
⏹️ ▶️ John And there’s the two-leaf clover, the one that looks like the three-leaf clover, but it’s just the two side by side.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, the Apple TV plug.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, there you go, the Apple TV plug.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah, that’s C7.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you know what Apple TV does? They put the power supply in the computer, or in the box.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Just like Mac minis, same thing. It’s really nice.
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Follow-up: Synology DS420j
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We have some file system related news from Squosin. Tell us about this, John.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s a couple of people pointing out limitations in the weird synology that Marco bought that he
⏹️ ▶️ John talked about last episode. Apparently,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey according to Squosin,
⏹️ ▶️ John the J-series synologies cannot use BTRFS. They’re ext4
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Does that count? It was FS. That’s an abbreviation. Does that count? It’s a file system. Yeah. All
⏹️ ▶️ John right. So I don’t know if, I mean, I didn’t look this up, but I will trust Squosyn, but if
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s true, that means the answer to the question I asked last week, Marco, what file system did you use? He is not
⏹️ ▶️ John using BTRFS or ButterFS, if you would like to call it that. I don’t know why they would,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe there’s like a CPU limitation and BTRFS is more CPU intense, I don’t even know.
⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, I thought, huh, that’s kind of weird. But then Matt Sullivan had another limitation
⏹️ ▶️ John of this J-Series thing. Apparently, Marco’s Newsanology has a max storage capacity of 64 terabytes.
⏹️ ▶️ John So currently he’s using two 18 terabyte drives that sums up to 36 terabytes,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is more than half of the 64 terabyte max. So you can’t get two more 18 terabyte drives
⏹️ ▶️ John and put them in here apparently, or I guess you could, but maybe you can’t address all the space.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would be surprised if that’s really the limit. So what probably happened, what I’m guessing, is when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they were testing and qualifying this unit, the biggest hard disk you could get was 16 terabytes. It has four bays,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so they’re like, like, all right, we tested it with four 16 terabyte disks, that’s 64 terabytes, that seems to work, so we’ll say that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco limit. Since then, 18 terabyte disks came out, and they still work just fine. So probably,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bet, I could put in two more 18s, and it would address all whatever, you know, 72.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe, but you did say that the quota thing wouldn’t let you set quotas higher than four gigabytes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Four terabytes, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Four terabytes or whatever, sorry. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but again, that seemed like a software thing. And I would actually guess that the lack of ButterFS support might,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, This J-series of these 2020 model Synologies,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think they have a different processor architecture. Like I think the new ones are all these fancy ARM chips. I think this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uses some kind of low-end Intel thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s like real tech something. I looked that up last week and I was like, huh, it’s not even an Intel chip
⏹️ ▶️ John or anything. It was real tech something, something. But still, these are all like Linux.
⏹️ ▶️ John Linux is running on it, right? And VTRFS is part of Linux. And I can’t imagine the
⏹️ ▶️ John processor would stop using it. I have to think it has to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think it would be like the processor can’t do it. I think it’s that maybe Synology
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t have their, like maybe they forked their software stack and when they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco change architectures and they’re just not gonna update the software on this to that level, or they don’t wanna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco test that package on this old processor or on this low-end product or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John When BTRMS first came to Synology, it was a question of like, oh, will our old ones be able to do it? And for a
⏹️ ▶️ John while, I think they couldn’t, but then eventually they could, So maybe this will change in the future, but anyway, there you
Follow-up: Water-jug flooding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Continuing on, there’s a quote in the show notes that none of you can see, but the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey quote is as follows. The hatch just blew! And that’s about all I know.
⏹️ ▶️ John What is that from? Titanic? I don’t know. No, Marco’s not gonna know it. Casey, you’re only helping. Lost?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, you didn’t? I assume Marco put this in. Oh, this is a John reference? I put
⏹️ ▶️ John it… Marco gonna put in a movie reference? He’s seen like three movies. He doesn’t remember them. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thought it was like a quotation from you or Tiff or something like that. Or from Marco or Tiff or something
⏹️ ▶️ John that. It’s a line from a movie, I guess neither one of you have seen, that’s fine. Which one? Uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have seen it, but it’s been forever and a day.
⏹️ ▶️ John Wasn’t that a song? Anyway, this is about Marco’s jugs of water. Many people wrote
⏹️ ▶️ John in, surprisingly, in addition to all the sand driving and
⏹️ ▶️ John off-roading tips, lots of people wrote in to say, hey, I had water in one of those
⏹️ ▶️ John one-gallon US milk jug things in some location in my house,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it spontaneously started leaking. And lots of people said, and it wasn’t hot in there and it wasn’t cold
⏹️ ▶️ John and it wasn’t weird. It was just plain old room temperature place. Basically, the bottom line is that
⏹️ ▶️ John these water jugs that are, you know, gallon milk jugs or whatever, whatever they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John made from nowadays, they don’t stand up to long term storage.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you put liquid in them, even if it’s just plain water and you put it anywhere, eventually they will spring a leak.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m that makes much more sense to me than Marco’s theory that his SSDs were getting so hot
⏹️ ▶️ John in his little unventilated closet that somehow it was like melting the jug or whatever. Apparently, these
⏹️ ▶️ John things are just not not made to be permanent storage units for liquid. They’re made to
⏹️ ▶️ John last just long enough for the expiration date of the milk, and then they just go completely.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And I was curious. So like when you when you go to the store to buy distilled water, it has expiration
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dates on it. And I’ve always wondered why. And maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John this is the reason.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like maybe it’s because like they just know the container might leak a few months after this date And so you might as well just get rid of it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the stores and not cause problems
⏹️ ▶️ John One person also had a theory of why it was like indented The idea is that they get like a pinhole
⏹️ ▶️ John leak and water can seep out of the pinhole leak But air can’t get it back in so as water seeps out,
⏹️ ▶️ John but air doesn’t get back in it sort of implodes the the container
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That doesn’t seem right to me. I mean it could be but that doesn’t seem right
⏹️ ▶️ John It was just theory presented an email I pass no judgment on it other than to say at least it’s a theory that you can test
⏹️ ▶️ John about the explanation for the dented Part of the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s just like breathable fabrics. It’s like it where it kind of seems impossible Like wait, you’re gonna keep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my warmth in but you’re gonna somehow let sweat not happen Like how is this gonna work and you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the moral of the story is if you need to store water for any Period
⏹️ ▶️ John of time in your house more than you know more than just like a few days or a week or whatever do
⏹️ ▶️ John not use essentially disposable gallon milk or water jugs from
Apple monitor with A13 inside?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Look, very quick clarification with regard to the forthcoming LG or maybe Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey display featuring some sort of Apple Silicon. Back in July, 9to5Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had an article about this and a brief quotation from that article. However, 9to5Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has now learned from sources familiar with the matter that Apple is internally testing a new external display with a dedicated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A13 chip and also neural engine. So I bring this up to clarify what people are thinking, or at least what 9to5Mac is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is thinking is inside these displays.
⏹️ ▶️ John Again, I’ve never seen a real good theory offered for what the SOC inside
⏹️ ▶️ John here would be doing. I mean, A13 is like, well, it’s what we’ve got on hand. That’s a chip that we’ve made and it can do what we need it to
⏹️ ▶️ John do. But what do you need it to do exactly? Is it gonna run FaceTime face recognition? Is it going
⏹️ ▶️ John to be a helper GPU somehow? Is it just gonna run the display? Is it gonna run a fancy
⏹️ ▶️ John compression decompression algorithm for the signaling to use some weird custom thing? Like, it’s a general purpose,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, an A13 can do all sorts of things. It’s got video encoders and decoders. It’s got all sorts of stuff in there.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I don’t think any of the rumors have said, and here’s what they’re using it for and
⏹️ ▶️ John why they’re using an A13 and not some other chip. So still kind of mysterious to me. I’ll have
⏹️ ▶️ John to wait and see when they release these displays. If they have some kind of chip in them,
⏹️ ▶️ John they can explain what is it doing for us. And the thing with the A13 is, you get the A13
⏹️ ▶️ John and you get everything that’s in it. So whether or not you’re using that neural engine, it’s in there. Whether or not you’re using an H.264 or H.265
⏹️ ▶️ John encoder decoder, they’re in there, right? That’s the deal, right? And surely
⏹️ ▶️ John if they put a chip like that in there, they’re not going to use every single part of the chip because some parts of it just are
⏹️ ▶️ John not relevant. Like maybe the secure enclave isn’t relevant or maybe it is relevant if they’re doing face ID on
⏹️ ▶️ John it or maybe the SIMD engine is or isn’t relevant. I don’t know. We’ll wait and see. But
⏹️ ▶️ John honestly, I kind of hate these rumors that’s like Apple, you’re over-complicating
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco We just want a monitor. We don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John need an A13 in there. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, my guess, if this is real, and if these monitors do, A, come out ever,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and B, have something like an A13 chip in them, I’m guessing the role it plays is something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really boring that we might not even, like, it might not even be obvious in their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco announcement and release, and they might only find on teardown, like, wait, there’s an A13 in here doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something. So, you know, things like that, it could be, obviously it could be more public things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like Face ID, I think it’s more likely to be something like, you know, maybe they’re doing a custom
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compression algorithm to fit 120 Hertz over the cable, you know, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bandwidth wise and the A13 decodes it. You know, like I don’t think it would be something like an integrated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco GPU because the A13 is too old for that, for that kind of, you know, for a large new screen that might
⏹️ ▶️ Marco come out in a year or two, the A13 seems like it would be grossly underpowered to be the GPU for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that screen. So it probably is not that. So it’s probably some other like boring thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a timing controller to glue two panels together logically, you know, something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know enough about it to really speculate on anything more specific than that, but I’m guessing it’s gonna be something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco boring if it’s anything at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would agree with that. Tangential question, we haven’t had anyone write in with the mathematics behind 120
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hertz at 5K, but I think the three of us tentatively agree that it seems like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s too much for Thunderbolt 4 as it exists today. That’s not a fact. It’s just our theory.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So let’s assume, though, that it is fact. Let’s assume for the sake of conversation that 5K, 120 hertz is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey too much data. You can’t carry it over Thunderbolt. And I know both of you have mentioned, you know, display or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some sort of compression just moments ago.
⏹️ ▶️ John And chroma subsampling, which you need to point out, we went to the thing with chroma subsampling, which is essentially throwing information
⏹️ ▶️ John that you’re not going to get back because it’s perceptually not interesting. There’s, with chroma subsampling,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can definitely fit it, but you are starting to lose stuff that you will miss if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John looking at text on a computer screen that you wouldn’t miss if you were looking at a TV show.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right, so for the sake of discussion, let’s say that Apple is not satisfied with any mechanism
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that has it on a single cable. Do either of you envision a world where there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like some new XDR, maybe it’s 5K, maybe it’s 6K at 120 hertz, who knows? But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one way or another, it requires two physical cables to plug into a Mac. Do you see that as even a possibility
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that Apple would consider?
⏹️ ▶️ John On the Mac Pro, yeah. If it was 8K, if it was an 8K screen at 120 hertz on the Mac Pro and it took two cables,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the only machine that Apple would find two cables except the one, because the whole point is it’s a giant monster. Like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, everything about it is big, it’s got all sorts of ports and whatever, and if the only way you can get
⏹️ ▶️ John 8K, 120 hertz, HDR, blah, blah, blah, on the big giant Mac Pro thing
⏹️ ▶️ John is with two cables, then yeah, Apple would do two cables. Obviously they would want to avoid it, but I think that is a bridge they
⏹️ ▶️ John would definitely cross on the Mac Pro if indeed they’re trying to even make an 8K. still making 6k then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to worry about it. I’m gonna say no. I don’t think Apple would ever do 2k, well modern Apple at least as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we know them today. I think they would either wait years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco until the next standard came out and use that.
⏹️ ▶️ John The question is are they waiting or does it just take them that long? Well yeah right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco either they would just wait until the next highest bandwidth standard comes out and use that and leave this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco massive hole in the market until then, or they would develop their own custom
⏹️ ▶️ Marco connector and cable that, you know, maybe logically it would just be two Thunderbolt four,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, channels in the cable, but I think they, they would go their own way before they would do a two cable
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, if they did, when I say two cables, yes, if they, if they make it like a single thicker cable
⏹️ ▶️ John that inside it has two cables,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I’m going to
⏹️ ▶️ John still call that the two cable solution. Cause like, basically the idea is like, are you implementing something because a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of these things already support 2K. Like, I’ve only did the 5K iMac, I think internally, essentially, it had quote
⏹️ ▶️ John unquote two cables, like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey two data paths,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco right? That’s why I had a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco custom timing controller, RT-Con.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, yeah. So, like, if they do that, you know, the advantage of just taking two Thunderbolt
⏹️ ▶️ John tables and wrapping them in a bigger rubber thing is like, you don’t have to come up with new protocols. You don’t have to, like, you don’t have to invent anything.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is, you know, PCs do that today. Like, and Apple itself has done it internally, so it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John as big a lift, right? But honestly, I haven’t even seen any rumors of 8K. So I feel like,
⏹️ ▶️ John and also I think 120 Hertz is probably the least relevant to the Mac Pro, believe
⏹️ ▶️ John it or not, right? Like it’s more like a consumer facing thing where everything gets smooth, whereas there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not a lot of like video mastering done at frame rates higher than 60, right? Probably not even higher than 30
⏹️ ▶️ John most of the time. Again, unless you’re Peter Jackson, like high frame rate movies didn’t seem to catch on. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I think there’s actually less of a demand at the highest of the high end for Apple to field
⏹️ ▶️ John a 120 Hertz monitor. And if they just did 8K at 60, I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ John you need any new tech with that, except for maybe DisplayPort 2.0. Like new standards come
⏹️ ▶️ John out all the time. You know, in Thunderbolt 4, even though I saw some people fretting about Thunderbolt 3 versus 4, remember Thunderbolt 4
⏹️ ▶️ John is no faster than Thunderbolt 3. All it is is Thunderbolt 3 with more requirements to support like whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John the latest USB 4 stuff is. Like it’s not, it’s 40 gigabits per second on
⏹️ ▶️ John both, right? Thunderbolt 5, the rumors of that is that it is significantly faster. And that
⏹️ ▶️ John would take care of all of Apple’s needs as well. So it’s just a question of how long these things take. Like Intel was presenting
⏹️ ▶️ John some behind closed doors thing that had some slides about Thunderbolt 5, which means Thunderbolt 5
⏹️ ▶️ John could show up. I don’t know what the timeline is, but it could show up in a year or two years. And you know, someday,
⏹️ ▶️ John some Mac Pro will have Thunderbolt 5 and maybe that’s the time Apple chooses, like Margaret was saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John now’s the time to go 8K. And now’s the time to go high airframe rate because Thunderbolt 5 can handle it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If that’s anywhere near on the horizon, they’ll just wait for that before they do anything like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Agreed. Was there not a like cinema display? Wasn’t it the Thunderbolt? Oh no, the Thunderbolt display
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had like MagSafe and data. Is that what I’m thinking of? It was still
⏹️ ▶️ John quote unquote one cable, but inside that cable was like five other cables.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That was DVI back then.
⏹️ ▶️ John I have the monitor at work. It’s 24 inch Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John cinema display. It has a MagSafe connector, a USB-A plug,
⏹️ ▶️ John and the video connection, which I think is Thunderbolt 2, looks like mini
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first one was, yeah, the first one was just mini display port. And then they later made the Thunderbolt
⏹️ ▶️ Marco display. That’s what I’m thinking of. Which they upgraded the port to Thunderbolt and they might’ve had to,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that that left them drop the USB source
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the 27 inch was the Thunderbolt one. I have that upstairs. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, it’s just that that’s the only example I could think of where they had two connection points,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but one of them was power and one of them was data. So you could excuse that, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guess, although I still concur that I don’t see that happening in today’s Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I think that they- Well, that was like, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, so Apple DisplayPort was the Apple proprietary one, which still was kind of DVI with extra wires
⏹️ ▶️ John in it, but it wasn’t so clearly, we just took multiple cables and wrapped them in a round thing. And then for the Thunderbolt
⏹️ ▶️ John display and the LED cinema display, they didn’t want to make another ADC. They didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John want to make another new thing. So they said, well, you know, we need all these things. Let’s just wrap all the cables together
⏹️ ▶️ John with the existing standards. So that USB-A cable was a straight through USB-A thing that connected to USB
⏹️ ▶️ John interface on the display. And, you know, the display port or Thunderbolt 1 went straight through, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And so that, you know, that’s, I think that is a more of a modern Apple solution. ADC was the last
⏹️ ▶️ John gasp of Apple saying, we can make our own ports and our own protocols. Because ADC was great. ADC was
⏹️ ▶️ John one cable to your, you know, Apple Cinema display that gave everything. Power, data,
⏹️ ▶️ John and video. Sound familiar? But that didn’t exist. They had to create it themselves. And yes, granted, it was just
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of DVI with a bunch of other stuff mixed in, but they made their own connector and their own protocols to
⏹️ ▶️ John handle all of that. I don’t think Apple wants to do that anymore. And they don’t really need to. Thunderbolt basically
⏹️ ▶️ John handles all of that for them with the DisplayPort tunneling and all that other stuff. So they’ll just sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John keep up with the latest Thunderbolt standards and use them when they’re ready.
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Follow-up: Attention-aware features
⏹️ ▶️ Casey couple of quick clarifications with regard to attention aware features. I think Marco made a mostly offhanded remark
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about how I believe Marco, you had said you typically turn off the attention
⏹️ ▶️ Casey aware checkbox or whatever. And I forget exactly the justification you used, but a friend
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the show, Guy Rambeau, wrote to say that to Guy, and I agree with him, the most important
⏹️ ▶️ Casey aspect of the attention setting is that the iPhone will not dim the display while you’re actively looking at it. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for example, if you’re reading a long piece of text or watching something, it won’t dim the display because it’s looking at where your eyes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are looking and it sees that your eyes are looking at the screen. Additionally, the thing where it requires attention
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to expand notifications can be disabled on a per app basis in notification settings. That was news to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I did not know that was the case. So to recap, if your phone is sitting upright and using the default
⏹️ ▶️ Casey settings and you get a notification, it’ll show like messages and it might even show who it’s from, but it won’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show the text of the message until it you know, unlocks by you looking at the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So you might not have touched the phone, you’ve just looked at it, but it does the face ID dance and it unlocks and it shows you the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey preview. Well, apparently, on a per app basis, I didn’t verify this, but according to Guy, who knows his stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you can actually turn that on and off per app, which is pretty cool. I just had no idea.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the attention aware stuff, I actually turned off the attention setting for face ID unlock for
⏹️ ▶️ John my mother because she has vision problems. And apparently her vision problem make it hard,
⏹️ ▶️ John make it more difficult for the phone to tell that she’s looking at it, or maybe she’s looking like not
⏹️ ▶️ John directly at it. Cause the whole point of the attention thing is, you can, if you look like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, to the left of your phone, it won’t unlock, right? You have to be looking at your phone. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s trying to kind of tell where you’re looking, not just that your eyes are open and you exist and have a magic face.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think it was causing Face ID to fail for my mother a lot of the time. So I just turned off the attention thing. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John the success rate has gone up and, you know, She doesn’t need the additional security for a face-heading unlock, I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think. Yep, fair enough.
A new iPhone-case winner
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, you have a new iPhone case?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I sure do, and I think this is the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco winner. So, thank you to Oliver Ames, who wrote on Twitter the other day.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got this gummy clear case that has MagSafe. It is fantastic. And it is the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Spigen brand, which is a pretty common phone case brand as far as I know. Ultra-hybrid
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mag anti-yellowing technology compatible with MagSafe. And this case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, so far, fantastic. So it combines
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the kind of gummy clear case finish that I liked from the other case I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had before with the big white, obviously very visible because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s in a clear case, MagSafe magnet, very similar looking to Apple’s clear case,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but with the squishy finish instead of the hard.
⏹️ ▶️ John So Apple’s isn’t squishiest, because I was gonna say, if you
⏹️ ▶️ John this case, why don’t you just get the Apple one?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s clear case is like a very hard plastic. It’s not at all flexible or grippy.
⏹️ ▶️ John The Apple clear case does have the naked butt though. I know you like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So what’s great about this case, you know, it’s overall fairly similar to what I had before.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s a couple of minor regressions. One is that on the back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco corners of the case that are not the camera bump, they have these little raised like ridges
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the corners so that to try to make it sit more evenly on the desk. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco love those. I got used to them after like a day, but at first, like the feel of those kind of was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off-putting as I would feel the back of my phone and it’s not smooth on the corners. Like you feel those like scrapey
⏹️ ▶️ Marco corners. That’s not great. The other thing I don’t like about it is that on the top
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ridge of the case, like right around the top left corner of the phone, like on that part of it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it says it’s printed on the case, air cushion technology
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it has a little triangle that’s pointed towards the corner, showing I guess these little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bubble square things on the corners of the case. So I don’t usually see this because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s on the edge, like it’s on the vertical part of the case, not the big flat part. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know why they had to print that. That’s stupid.
⏹️ ▶️ John Same reason they had to cut a hole in the side of Nike Air Jordans so you could see the air thing. Because when the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey was in there when you couldn’t see it, it
⏹️ ▶️ John need to know the air cushion
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s a deep cut, but oh yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco definitely. But anyway, other than the air cushion technology printing on the corner,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and those weird little corner things on the back, this is great, and I am very happy with this case. I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kept it on now for about a week, maybe? And I’ve gone through a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The mag safe is great, it’s nice and strong. The finish of the case feels well, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has that same grip that I love from the other squishy clear case. So overall,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is great. And it was only 20 bucks. So the clear winner for my iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco case saga, the new clear winner rather. And yeah, I’m very happy with it. So thanks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to Oliver Ames and to Spigen.
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t believe you can handle those Ridge things in the corner. That would be a deal breaker for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It almost was like the very first day I’m like, oh no, I don’t know if I can live with this. But then, you know, after a day
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I ignored them. You can probably shave them off. I thought of it. I mean, hey, for 20 bucks, I might try it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, I mean, it’s just this
⏹️ ▶️ John rubbery plastic, you get a razor blade, be real careful and you can, you know.
Noticing 120 Hz on Macs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All righty, let’s move right along and macOS 12.2 beta is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out and there’s a couple of interesting things here. I’m going to start with the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing that I think will take less time. There is supposedly improved scrolling in Safari with ProMotion,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is exciting. So I guess, you know, 120 hertz scrolling in Safari. So that’s cool. I like
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I keep hearing stories about, you know, improvements to scrolling in Safari. And I was like,
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t they fix that in in 12.1, but in all these things, it’s like under certain circumstances, depending
⏹️ ▶️ John on what the application is doing, whether it asks to have a maximum frame rate of 120 or
⏹️ ▶️ John not, but it sounds like on 12.2, maybe it’s just like any web page, when you scroll it,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’ll do 120 hertz. We’ll find out when it gets released.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that’s not in Purple Safari yet, is that right?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. Okay. I don’t have a high refresh screen. I can’t test any of this stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Actually, I wanted to ask Marco, I guess you’re not often living on the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey onboard display of your new fancy MacBook Pro, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when I use my new fancy onboard display on my MacBook Pro, I feel like I don’t notice
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the 120 hertz that often, which we’ve talked about. I think the only place I regularly notice it is when I’m doing the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey three finger swipey left and right to go between spaces because I know a monster and I believe in spaces.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I was wondering, first of all, Marco, do you notice it at all today? And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the real question I wanted to ask both of you, actually, is what is, what do you think the real
⏹️ ▶️ Casey advantage of variable refresh rate is? Because the more I think about it, the more I think, for my use anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think the best thing that variable refresh rate gets me is potentially longer battery life. If they can crank the,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, which I believe they crank the refresh rate way down when possible. And that seems to me to be the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey real winner. You know, I can’t give numbers about this. I’ve never like tried to force it to stay at 120 Hertz or anything like that. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it seems like that’s what’s great about these displays. And even though I like the 120 Hertz,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t even care about that as much as I care about, you know, the potential for more battery life. But Marco, do you notice it?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What do you think is the real advantage here? Tell me your thoughts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really don’t notice it. I really don’t. Like I mentioned, I think last episode
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I noticed it like once while scrolling a column in Tweetbot, but otherwise like I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really don’t notice it much. And maybe part of that is that I’m not seeing it in Safari
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yet on that computer, because I do see that computer, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 14-inch is what I’m usually using as a laptop. And it’s upstairs, I mentioned
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has basically replaced my iPad that I was using as like an upstairs slash kitchen computer for most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the time. It’s also doing FaceTime calls for workouts and stuff like that, so that computer bounces
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around the house. It is wonderful for that purpose. It’s so wonderful in fact that I did end up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco selling my MacBook Air, my M1 MacBook Air, which I loved, but this is just better, you know, in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every possible way. So overall, it’s, the 120 hertz thing, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really don’t notice it, honestly. That’s why, like, if there was an XDR released
⏹️ ▶️ Marco next year that supports 120 hertz somehow over a cable, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t think I would be that tempted to upgrade to it unless there were other major gains to it. because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco frankly, it’s something that I notice a lot on touch devices,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I don’t notice it a lot on Macs. Because, you know, it makes sense. Touch devices, you’re doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of direct manipulation with your finger against that screen, pushing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around the content. Like, that’s something that I think you’re gonna notice a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As we mentioned when the new iPhones came out, like, it makes so much sense on a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco touch device, and you really do notice it a lot on iPhones and iPads, but on the Mac, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not usually doing that kind of direct manipulation. You’re not scrolling directly with your finger on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything, like even when you scroll with the mouse or a trackpad, you’re limited by the sample rates of those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco devices and whatever the pipeline is between that and the computer. So you’re not really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting that same kind of like direct feedback. So ultimately, I’m not finding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of like must have value in 120 hertz on the Mac yet. Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the future that’ll change, but for now, I’m glad I have it in case it becomes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco useful, but I wouldn’t make major decisions based solely on the availability
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a long time Mac user, you’re killing me with this whole like, oh, the Mac doesn’t have direct manipulation. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John like when the Mac was introduced, the whole point of the Mac was, hey, it has direct manipulation. You don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have to like issue a command to specify what thing you wanna act on and then issue a second command to
⏹️ ▶️ John specify the action. You just grab the damn file. It’s direct manipulation now in the modern smartphone
⏹️ ▶️ John era. And in particular on this program, we’ve had many past episodes where we say, well, the Mac doesn’t have direct manipulation like the
⏹️ ▶️ John phone does. I mean, you don’t touch the screen. I know what you mean, but you know, terminology
⏹️ ▶️ John marks on. I would still say that they both have direct manipulation, but one does not have a touchscreen. That is definitely true. Yeah, when
⏹️ ▶️ John we talked about promotion on the phones, on the iPhones originally, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John one of the points you brought up was like, you’re more likely to try to read something while it’s scrolling on
⏹️ ▶️ John a phone, because of that sort of, you know, whether it’s doom scrolling or not, the whole notion that you’re staring
⏹️ ▶️ John straight at it, it’s right in front of your face and your thumb is scrolling it. And while you’re doing that, you may
⏹️ ▶️ John also be trying to read it. And 120 Hertz makes it way more readable to while things scroll,
⏹️ ▶️ John instead of it just blurring and your eyes going, oh, I can’t read it anymore because I scrolled too fast, right? Whereas on the Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think we’re accustomed to, whether it’s hitting page down or, you know, there was a time, I don’t know if it’s still possible,
⏹️ ▶️ John but there was a time where I kept setting the hidden preference on the Mac to say,
⏹️ ▶️ John when I hit page down,
⏹️ ▶️ John animate from where you are to one page lower, just immediately go there. Cause that’s the way page down used to work
⏹️ ▶️ John and it is faster. And it’s like, I don’t need the animation. I don’t need to see the text flying by at the speed of light,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? I can’t read it when it goes by anyway. I’m not confused by the fact that the display
⏹️ ▶️ John just updated immediately. I know I hit page down. I understand that it is a page down,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? But that is not the default and it may be difficult to get that back, and it scrolls
⏹️ ▶️ John really, really fast. But anyway, all this to say is on the Mac, I think we’re not accustomed to
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to read while we scroll. I think it’s more like read, because you have so much more to read. You can, you know, on most Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John displays, you can get more or less a full page or almost a full page worth of text in the vertical space.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then when you want to go see more, maybe you hit page down or click in the scroll bar area,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you have your scroll bars visible, like an old person like me. And then you just let it go
⏹️ ▶️ John by, and then you read. So you’re less likely to try to read it in motion. So the 120 Hertz, I think the main
⏹️ ▶️ John advantage it has other than maybe looking nicer or something is that things are more legible while they’re in motion.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think there is less need for things to be legible while they’re in motion based on our, you know, habits
⏹️ ▶️ John of using the Mac. And then of course, Casey brought up battery life, which is probably the biggest saving for anything that
⏹️ ▶️ John is portable or battery powered. But I would also throw in a variable refresh rate lets you
⏹️ ▶️ John view video at, while refreshing the screen at the frame rate of the video.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right, so if the video is 24 or 30 frames per second, you can update the screen at exactly 24
⏹️ ▶️ John or 30 frames per second. If you’re watching content whose frame rate is not an even, does
⏹️ ▶️ John not, you know, divide nicely into 60 hertz, if you have
⏹️ ▶️ John a fixed refresh screen like most people do, it’s updating at 60 hertz all the time and
⏹️ ▶️ John it can be difficult to get the motion to look right if you’re looking at some content that’s an odd frame rate it
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t divide nicely into 60 or, you know, not divide nicely into 60, I’m not saying this right,
⏹️ ▶️ John but like, how long do you show frame one and how long do you show frame two and how long do you show frame three, right? And you
⏹️ ▶️ John have to, you know, if you’re doing it 30 frames per second, it’s easy. You show frame one for two screen refreshes, frame
⏹️ ▶️ John two for another two screen refreshes, right? That’s 30, right? It’s an even
⏹️ ▶️ John multiple of 60 or whatever, but 24 doesn’t work out that well. If you’re seeing 24
⏹️ ▶️ John frames per second, how long do you show frame number one? You have to do, there’s all sorts of things of like,
⏹️ ▶️ John how to decide, you know, how many refresh cycles to show each frame to try to make the motion smooth. The bottom line is
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t show it for half a frame. You have to show it for, you know, two frames or three frames or four frames,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you can’t show it for 2.1 frames, right? And that can screw up with the motion. But if you have a variable refresh
⏹️ ▶️ John screen, you can just refresh the screen 24 times a second, and that will make the motion look smooth. There
⏹️ ▶️ John are other problems with motion and LEDs and persistence and all sorts of other issues
⏹️ ▶️ John having to do with display but that is I think the the third main
⏹️ ▶️ John advantage of variable refresh setting aside battery which is important for anything that’s on a battery and setting
⏹️ ▶️ John aside high refresh which is important if you’re trying to make things legible while they’re in motion or you just want them to be
⏹️ ▶️ John smooth and cool looking.
Mac Music.app going more “native”
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The other big news that came out from the 12.2 beta is that according
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to 9to5Mac, Apple is rebuilding Apple Music as a full native
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Are they though? Asterisk, asterisk,
⏹️ ▶️ John So I did not install this beta, but I almost did because I was so frustrated by all these stories saying, oh, is there
⏹️ ▶️ John going to be a native app now? And finally someone put up of screenshots and I was like,
⏹️ ▶️ John they just took the existing app, which is music, which used to be iTunes with his guts ripped out.
⏹️ ▶️ John And some things that used to be web views now maybe aren’t web views, but it’s such a
⏹️ ▶️ John hodgepodge. Like if you remember the original iTunes, it was like, it would make requests to the server
⏹️ ▶️ John to get XML and then based on that XML, it would render a UI and then, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John it eventually changed to be like, to use, I think, WebKit to render web views and there were native views mixed
⏹️ ▶️ John in there. So this quote unquote new version of music looks an awful
⏹️ ▶️ John lot like the old one and maybe some things that used to be web views aren’t anymore, but it
⏹️ ▶️ John still doesn’t seem to me to be the thing that we all want, which is Imagine if music
⏹️ ▶️ John was a new app, I’m not gonna say written from scratch because that’s not necessarily what we want, we just want
⏹️ ▶️ John an app that we look at and say, this is a good app for listening to music. And
⏹️ ▶️ John iTunes eventually became not that, and music continues to be not that. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco so not that.
⏹️ ▶️ John To give an example of what we’re looking for, Notes, we talk about the Notes app. For a while, Notes was
⏹️ ▶️ John unspectacular, but not that great. And then they basically redid Notes. And the new Notes app is
⏹️ ▶️ John not, you know, the world’s most feature-rich application, but it got way better. And if you look at Notes, you say,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s a pretty good Notes application. It’s sad that, like, from our perspective, the way
⏹️ ▶️ John that we judge applications is like, if there was a really good single person
⏹️ ▶️ John development shop and they made an app, would it be like this? And Notes looks like that. Notes
⏹️ ▶️ John is like, one really good independent developer made a Notes app. And if they put out Notes,
⏹️ ▶️ John we were like, hey, that’s a pretty cool app, right? And now that’s the bar
⏹️ ▶️ John that we’re setting for Apple, this trillion dollar company to hit is like, can this big
⏹️ ▶️ John company make an app as good is a single really good independent Mac developer who cares about it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because that’s, you know, and that shouldn’t be the bar. The bar should be, well, of course, Apple can do things way
⏹️ ▶️ John better than any single developer or small development team or whatever. But at this point, we
⏹️ ▶️ John hope every sort of built-in native, Apple, not everyone, but like
⏹️ ▶️ John the built-in apps that Apple ships, a lot of them are not up to the level of
⏹️ ▶️ John small independent developer team that’s really good at the Mac. Some of them surpass it, obviously no small individual
⏹️ ▶️ John developer could make Safari. Like that’s too big. The web, being a web browser is an incredibly hard
⏹️ ▶️ John problem. Many people have tried, people continue to try. Safari is actually pretty darn good, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But things like notes or terminal, you know, or I would say even
⏹️ ▶️ John the music app because there are independent developers who make music player apps, most of which are better in fundamental
⏹️ ▶️ John ways than music, if only in fewer bugs, right? You know, and faster
⏹️ ▶️ John and less crutch and less ancient history. So I don’t know if this Mac OS 12.2 beta is going
⏹️ ▶️ John to bring us a music app that will be any more satisfactory than it is now,
⏹️ ▶️ John but maybe things are moving in the right direction. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. I still didn’t install the beta, so I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t have high hopes for this being a meaningful change, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you actually read the article and see what they’re actually changing, and it’s using this web backend
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still, and it’s It’s just like the rendering layer on top of the web backend in the app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is going from basically a giant web view to something more native. Well that’s fine,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but all Apple devices that are remotely modern are able to render the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco contents of a web view very quickly and responsively. And it’s possible to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make great UIs in a web view with care
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and with effort. The shortcoming we’ve had with the music
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app and similar apps from Apple recently is that the care and effort aren’t there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that the services backing them are spotty and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inconsistent and not very good. And I don’t see how this changes any of that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Except maybe they’re putting more effort into it. But all right, I mean, that’s good. It’s the effort
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’ve gotten so far in the last decade has been somewhat minimal and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very misguided. As a daily user of the app that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was previously known as iTunes and is now known as Music on the Mac, this app is only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco getting buggier and buggier and harder to use for its original purpose of,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have music in these MP3 files, please play them.
⏹️ ▶️ John And more confusing too. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John many places in the UI where, like there’s so many different ways to view
⏹️ ▶️ John music And what you can do from each of the views is just like, it’s historical, it’s an
⏹️ ▶️ John accident of history. What can I do from this view? It’s like, well, you have to understand when this view was created and what it
⏹️ ▶️ John used to look like and what view it replaced and why is this under the right click menu and this under the three dots menu
⏹️ ▶️ John and this not available at all in this view. And like, it’s, you know, when iTunes started,
⏹️ ▶️ John it had like a list view and that list view was used all over the app. Anytime you looked at a playlist,
⏹️ ▶️ John you looked in the browser, like it was the list view. And whatever you could do from the list view, you could do from the list view. Now
⏹️ ▶️ John music has like 17 different views, all of which are subtly different from each other. Very often I’m like, is this feature
⏹️ ▶️ John not in the music app anymore? But it’s like, no, you have to be in just this right view. And remember, it’s not under right
⏹️ ▶️ John click. You have to click over here, but then it’s under the three dots, but you have to click in this area. Lots of mystery meat navigation,
⏹️ ▶️ John lots of like, I wonder what will happen if I click here. Can I hit the delete key? Can I drag this? You know, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just, it’s incredibly confusing. It is like a house that’s been added onto. And you know, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like a house that was gutted because they took out, we were begging for them to take out all the baggage, you know, and like
⏹️ ▶️ John some of the baggage ended up in Finder for like the singing stuff, and obviously they took out podcasts
⏹️ ▶️ John and the TV stuff came out of it, and I think that was a move in the right direction, but still what you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John left with is a house that was recently gutted that has been added onto 17 different times, and every new view they
⏹️ ▶️ John added to music, isn’t this new modern view, doesn’t it look so much better than that old, crufty one?
⏹️ ▶️ John It just makes me wish we could go back to just having one list view that had all the features that work
⏹️ ▶️ John consistently and fast.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, because that’s, like, I often think, like, back in,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, the Stone Ages, when I used to use a PC and I used Winamp as my player,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would be able to hit the J key, which would open up the jump
⏹️ ▶️ Marco box, I guess, and I could just hit J and start typing, and it was like a quick search,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you could jump right to whatever you were looking for, And that navigation was so fast.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now granted, my collection was a lot smaller back then and had way less fish, but it was so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco incredibly fast and easy to navigate. Everything the app could do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was visible or findable. It was findable, at least very quickly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was fast as hell. And that was, what, 20 years ago?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I feel like this is one area where what we have now, if you look at the capabilities, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, it’s not even, you can’t even imagine back then. Like if you would have told me 20 years ago
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that in the year 2021, I could literally, I could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pay some small, very small, relatively speaking, some small monthly fee and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be able to legally and pretty much instantly listen to any music.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like anything that was available from any major label or many indie labels, like most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco available released music, I could just type in the name of, or even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just shout into the air and something would start playing. That would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be incredible. But everything should be better than it was 20 years ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like it shouldn’t be like, well, we’re better in certain areas, but in some like really core
⏹️ ▶️ Marco critical areas, things have gotten worse. Like, yeah, we have these amazing capabilities. We now have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco effectively infinite storage space, or we can stream things whenever we want and not even use any of our local storage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco space. So we have all this amazing technological capability, but a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot of these basics of, you know, can I just quickly get to the thing I’m looking for and play it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or can I star rate something in my list and not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have it three seconds later jump to the bottom of the list because something changed in the list and it’s at a table reload? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the basics are getting worse.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or like, show me where this file is in the Finder, right? It’s a file that I downloaded. let’s say it’s a podcast file
⏹️ ▶️ John in the podcast app and I’ve downloaded it. I just always feel so accustomed to be able to say, reveal and find it, because maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John you want to pull that MP3 file out and do something with it or whatever. And everything is in containers
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey And finding- This
⏹️ ▶️ Casey drives me nuts about photos all the time. I want to get to the, because I’ll use
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco photos. For the most part, I like-
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m using your photos. No, no, but a lot of times, I want to get to the original file. Now, truth be told, I really don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey need to. I can just copy in photos and it does the right thing. But muscle memory, and because I’m an old
⏹️ ▶️ Casey man, It makes me want to get to the original file. And every time I go looking and looking and looking, trying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to find the show in Finder option somewhere, and can never find it, only to remember, no,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is its own magical container. I just need to copy and paste.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can do export on modified original. And in Photos, you can always do export on modified original.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Photos is much
⏹️ ▶️ John to give an example of an app. Photos basically has one view with all the features on it, where you can show different size
⏹️ ▶️ John thumbnails. iTunes or Music does not. It has many different layers of views. some of them let
⏹️ ▶️ John you reveal and find or something done. And the podcast app, since it’s a quote unquote entirely new app,
⏹️ ▶️ John is really stingy about revealing and finder because it really just doesn’t want you to know where those files are at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, it’s funny, Marco, a minute ago, you said you can listen to almost any music you want instantly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That confirms for me that you must be a Spotify user because I can tell you that nothing in Apple music happens
⏹️ ▶️ Casey instantly. It is so dog slow and it still drives me nuts. For the most part,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m fine on Apple music. We’ve belabored this point in the past. I’m not going to build on it now, but it is so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dog slow by comparison to Spotify. It is infuriating. I, as much as I love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to poop on Apple services, which is one of my favorite pastimes these days,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is, it is, it is so bananas to me that iMessage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for me anyway, is extremely reliable in almost always instant.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And iCloud is for me anyways, extremely reliable and almost always instant.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But Holy cow, Muse, Apple music is so slow
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and so inconsistent and fails so frequently. I don’t understand. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey does Apple issue like a direct, like fiber optic line directly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from the spaceship to every employee’s house? Like, especially for the last year and a half when they’ve all been home, how How do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they not run into this and get infuriated by it? I don’t understand it. It’s so frustrating.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I’m with you. And I’m actually not usually using Spotify because their app is garbage and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t usually need to stream music. Like usually I’m listening to my own collection and that’s all in Apple Music
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because iTunes. But it is so frustrating to me whenever I have Apple Music
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do some kind of weird failure. And so, I mean, this integrates with so many other of Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weak points. Siri, web services, like this, it’s all interconnected with the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco experience of using Apple Music. And it’s frustrating because like there’s such, Apple makes such amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff in so many areas. And it’s not that they don’t have the talent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or the resources to do this well. They easily have the resources.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if they don’t already have the talent, which I think is unlikely, I think they probably do already have the talent, but you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they could get the talent. And chances are, they probably already have it. And it’s just not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being managed correctly to achieve greatness in these areas for some reason.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we don’t know enough about their structure to say why exactly, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bet a lot of it is historic, in the sense that there was a lot of weird cruft and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco baggage coming from the iTunes era, trying to modernize that over time and everything. But,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, geez, what year is it? Like, enough is enough. There’s no good excuse for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why Apple Music and Siri and the music apps, why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these things are still mediocre. Like there is no good excuse. I’m sure everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the company has their reasons. Either they are delusional and think they are extremely competitive,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which would be truly delusional, honestly. Or they think they have good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reasons for why they have to be the way they are. And I’m telling you there’s no good reason. I’m sure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have lots of bad ones, but there’s no good reason. It’s mismanagement, simple as that. and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is something they can fix.
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Kids don’t understand files
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So in the tradition of ATP, we’ve had something in the show notes for what feels like a year or two now. I think it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually been a few months. But it was something that I hadn’t noticed until I saw it in the show notes, and it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a very delightful article that was a pretty quick read. And it’s called File Not Found.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A Generation that Grew Up with Google is Forcing Professors to Rethink Their Lesson Plans. And this is by Monica Chin.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The short, short version of this article is college professors are realizing that kids
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in college today genuinely don’t really understand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what a file is or where one can find a file. This is not them trying to be too cool
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for school or anything. They really just don’t have any experience with this and don’t understand it. So here’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a few quotes that I think John has pulled. Katherine Garland, an astrophysicist, started seeing the problem in 2017.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey She was teaching an engineering course and her students were using simulation software to model turbines for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey jet engines. She had laid out the assignment clearly, but student after student was calling her over for help. They were all getting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the same error message. The program couldn’t find their files. Garland thought it would be an easy fix. She asked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey each student where they’d saved their project. Could they be on the desktop, perhaps on the shared drive? But over and over, she was met with confusion.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Quote, what are you talking about? Quote, multiple students inquired. Not only did they not know where their files were saved, they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t understand the question. Gradually, Garland came to the same realization that many of her fellow educators
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have reached in the past four years. The concept of file folders and directories essential to previous generations’ understanding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of computers is gibberish to many modern students.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re modeling turbines and not turbans, by the way, but that’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was wondering about that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John pronunciation.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Fine, whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whatever, whatever. Sorry I dropped the E, guys. Anyway, the point is,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m withering away to dust and dying as we speak because, oh my gosh, I’ve never felt more
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I don’t think you need to. And part of the reason I put this thing in this article in here is
⏹️ ▶️ John because I feel like this, the, like this is, it sounds like it’s a depressing article. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John all the kids these days, they grow up in the school system and they use Google Docs because Google really dominates
⏹️ ▶️ John the school system and everyone knows in Google Docs, you never need to save because it’s just always saving, right, and you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, you don’t really have to deal with the file system and you don’t even have to pick where you save things. And yes, you can make folders and organize
⏹️ ▶️ John things in Google Drive, but a lot of people don’t do that. And apparently for this lesson plan, they were having actual files with whatever this
⏹️ ▶️ John weird modeling software is and the kids couldn’t handle it, right? And so it seems like, oh, the kids these days, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John They don’t understand files and folders, and now we’re old. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the, I mean, and this is, it’s not exactly an exhaustively researched thing. It’s just a
⏹️ ▶️ John fun article with some anecdotes from people. So I’m going to counter it with my own fun anecdotes
⏹️ ▶️ John from me. The even sadder
⏹️ ▶️ John reality is there has never been a point in the history of personal computers where
⏹️ ▶️ John the average person has understand files and folders.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It is not worse now than it used to be.
⏹️ ▶️ John It has always been this bad. Yes, even college students. Yes, even smart people.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, because I’ve been helping people with computers my whole life, you know, starting from the
⏹️ ▶️ John very first computer that had icons, files, and folders that anyone was likely to see in the 80s, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Some people get it and some people don’t. And I don’t think those percentages
⏹️ ▶️ John have changed and maybe will ever change. And it’s not because it’s a complicated
⏹️ ▶️ John concept, it’s just you have always been able to get by
⏹️ ▶️ John without ever really grokking this at a fundamental level. You could
⏹️ ▶️ John use a Mac, a Windows 95 PC or whatever with just enough
⏹️ ▶️ John understanding to get the thing done that you wanted to get done. And you may think, well, isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John it even less necessary today? We use Google Docs, autosaves and all that other stuff. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John think so, at least not on personal computers. Maybe on phones, you could say, but even phones, then iPads, you’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John got the files thing or whatever. No matter what the computing device is, there is
⏹️ ▶️ John still a file system under there and there is sometimes you have to deal with it,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you can get by without really ever understanding or engaging
⏹️ ▶️ John with it at anything below a surface level.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that leads to situations, and it’s always led to situations where, where did you save your file? Oh, I don’t remember.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s not a thing that happened because of Google. People have always been saving their things and not knowing where
⏹️ ▶️ John they saved it. The only thing that has ever saved them is well-written applications that
⏹️ ▶️ John remember the last directory that the open save dialog box was on. And so when they hit
⏹️ ▶️ John open, It’s right, you know, they don’t know where it is, but wherever they hit save, when they hit open, it opens
⏹️ ▶️ John to the same place and they can find it again.
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that we talked about in this show a million times and everyone is familiar with, why does everyone save everything on the desktop?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s the one place, quote unquote, in the file system that people feel comfortable that they can find because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John literally on the screen in their face, right? And that’s why people have crap all over the desktops.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s one of the sort of coping mechanisms, let’s say, for people who don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John understand or want to engage with the file system is, I don’t know about all that mumbo jumbo, but I know what the desktop
⏹️ ▶️ John is. I can see it right here. And I put stuff on the desktop, it’s on the desktop. And I always know
⏹️ ▶️ John in an OpenSave dialog box, I figured out on whatever operating system I’m using how to get to the desktop, which is the
⏹️ ▶️ John one place that I know about, and that’s where I put my crap. And then I see it on the screen, right? And
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s enough for people to get by. That’s why people, things are all the top levels of everyone’s Google Drive. It’s whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John the default save location is, that’s where the stuff is. And when they go look for it, Some people also learn that you can sort by date and then
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ll find your thing. And honestly, I’m not saying this is bad and people are bad for doing this. It’s just that this
⏹️ ▶️ John is, like water has found its level. You
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t need to ever really, really understand the file system
⏹️ ▶️ John if you don’t ever need to engage with it at anything more than just this very surface
⏹️ ▶️ John level. And that will always lead to situations like this. Oh, it’s the first time you’re using this, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John the simulation software is, which is surely not a consumer application. It’s some weird academic thing or something
⏹️ ▶️ John from industry. And it expects you to understand the file system. And it’s maybe not going to be, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John have its preferences set up to spring you back to the last directory where you saved files. Or maybe it’s on a communal computer
⏹️ ▶️ John where someone saved in a different location or maybe, you know, all the students are saving into their shared drive and they don’t understand
⏹️ ▶️ John this and they just can’t find their file or, you know, and there were always people, kids
⏹️ ▶️ John who I used Google Docs my whole life, but I never had to deal with the file. It’s just, you know, it was always just there in my Google Docs. and I saw the
⏹️ ▶️ John icon because it always shows the most recent three things I worked on. And, you know, I don’t think,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I would never blame modern technology for making people more ignorant of this. And I think fundamentally,
⏹️ ▶️ John we have never lived in a world where it has been necessary for
⏹️ ▶️ John some percentage of people for, you know, for most people. I don’t know. I don’t know what the percentage is. I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John give you numbers here, but like whatever percentage has been able to get by without knowing this, I feel like that percentage
⏹️ ▶️ John has been more or less the same and continues to be the same. And it’s a pretty big percentage. And even though it’s unfathomable
⏹️ ▶️ John for us computer nerds who understand the file system and don’t think it’s that complicated
⏹️ ▶️ John and is a fundamental way that we organize things, that’s just us. There’s a whole other
⏹️ ▶️ John swath of the world that has never needed to know that and never will need to know it. And if they don’t need to know it, then they won’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John it because they’re not into it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I’ve told this story many times before, I think, including on this very program, But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was a very frustrating kid for at least,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably my whole upbringing, but at least a small portion of my life, because I really wanted to play
⏹️ ▶️ Casey games on the family computer and I just didn’t understand how to use DOS. And John, can you please
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hold your snark about how barbaric DOS is just for a few minutes here. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I always needed my dad’s help. And dad, for all of his great qualities, patience
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has never been one of them. And eventually he threw me the manual to DAS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and said, just read this and you’ll figure it out, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really not great parenting. But as it turns out, that set me on the course to talk to you two every
⏹️ ▶️ Casey week all these years later. And on a lark, I think because of a Cocoa
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Conf keynote I did several years back now, I found and purchased with real
⏹️ ▶️ Casey money a physical copy of the disk operating system version 3.30 User’s Guide.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And on page 6-3, I’ve been trying to find a PDF for this. And the only PDF I found is a different version
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of this guide that doesn’t have all these ridiculous things I’m about to describe. But on page 6-3,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s in the section Organizing Files. It says, the title is, Your Fixed Disk, an Electronic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Filing Cabinet. And there’s a little goofy diagram of a filing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cabinet with files pulled out. And then there’s a different diagram on the next page of your root directory, which is like a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hallway with doors off of it. and then you’re building rooms off of the room. And it’s just the most
⏹️ ▶️ Casey preposterous, like, chintzy and weird and cutesy diagrams to help you understand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how to use your file system. And it’s so ridiculous, especially looking at this, at my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey position that I’m in now, but it is also quite hilarious. And if I can find an electronic version, I will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey put it in the show notes, but I don’t think such a thing exists, unfortunately.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s part of the reason people have trouble with the file system, even though, again, you know, computer nerds don’t, It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, what’s, it’s really simple. What’s the problem? Like that book, you know, more so in the eighties,
⏹️ ▶️ John but a lot of the times things like that book are trying to give a metaphor by comparing
⏹️ ▶️ John it to something that people understand. Oh, it’s like a hallway with doors off of it. And you know, it’s like a filing
⏹️ ▶️ John cabinet and you know, all these types of things that they’re, they’re assuming the reader is familiar with this thing in the
⏹️ ▶️ John real world. And I said, well, this is like that, but in the computer. And you know, it’s the whole desktop metaphor
⏹️ ▶️ John and having folder icons and the trash can, and you know, but it breaks
⏹️ ▶️ John down surprisingly fast, right? In the real world, we do not literally put other folders
⏹️ ▶️ John inside folders that like, you can’t put a bigger folder inside a smaller folder. Like this folder has
⏹️ ▶️ John two items in it, but inside it is one folder that has 10,000 items. Nothing in the real world is like that. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe the TARDIS, right, from Doctor Who, right? It’s not, that’s not, you know, not how it works at
⏹️ ▶️ John all, but that’s how it works on the computer. And we have no problem with that because we’re not constantly, it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John learning a language fluently. You’re not constantly translating from the computer metaphor to the real world one
⏹️ ▶️ John to understand. When you understand the file system and quote unquote, files
⏹️ ▶️ John and folders on a computer, you understand it for what it is. You don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John understand it because it’s like a filing cabinet. It’s not like a filing cabinet. It’s not like
⏹️ ▶️ John a hallway with doors on it. It’s not a big truck, right? It’s a series of tubes.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s not very difficult to understand, but all of those attempts to explain it to people in terms of folders
⏹️ ▶️ John within folders or filing cabinets or houses with rooms all fall down really quickly, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John in the modern age where we have millions of files. And just, it’s like either it
⏹️ ▶️ John is worth your while to, I keep going back to the word grok. Either it is worth your while to grok
⏹️ ▶️ John this for what you do with computers, or it’s not worth your while because you never actually need to know it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or maybe, you know, when I took that one astrophysics class, I had to learn the file system because there was some annoying
⏹️ ▶️ John software they used and I learned it for that, but then after that, I forgot about it again. Like, not everyone is going
⏹️ ▶️ John to be as into your hobby as you are, right? In the same way that people who are into repairing their own cars can’t believe that people can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John identify the major parts of an internal combustion engine and don’t know how to change their oil, but it’s like, never
⏹️ ▶️ John need to know that. It doesn’t come up in my life and I’m not interested in it and I can get by without knowing it. And that
⏹️ ▶️ John is true of basic file system knowledge for computers. And it always
⏹️ ▶️ John has been true and I think it will continue to be true. I mean, maybe over time it’s becoming more
⏹️ ▶️ John true. Again, phone is really takes you farther away from that. But still, for my
⏹️ ▶️ John entire lifetime, there are major classes of people who absolutely do need to know about it. Programmers, for
⏹️ ▶️ John example, any kind of program, you cannot avoid dealing with the file system. You can argue whether
⏹️ ▶️ John this is right or wrong, but we still organize source code files into subdirectories.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the Web is very fundamentally based on, you know, if you’re running any kind of Web service or Web server, you’re probably
⏹️ ▶️ John going to have to know files in directory because they’re a very important part of how things are served and how code is organized,
⏹️ ▶️ John how classes are, like, it’s unavoidable if you are a programmer. And that hasn’t changed, right? So
⏹️ ▶️ John there will always be people who really do need to understand this as like a, just baseline,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, it’s like knowing how to read and also understanding the file system because you will not get far as a
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco programmer without
⏹️ ▶️ John understanding the file system. That’d be super confusing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I wonder if that’s always going to be true. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I don’t. I don’t think it’s always going to be true, but it still is. And what I’m is that has not made any progress. Like in
⏹️ ▶️ John my entire lifetime, you need to know about the file system just as much now as you did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, there’s so many angles on this. I mean, number one, like going back a second, like to use a like file
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cabinet metaphor, I am almost 40 and I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never used a file cabinet or file
⏹️ ▶️ John You haven’t had many like normal jobs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, fair enough, but there’s a lot of people younger than me now in the sense that like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco young people don’t understand like file folder metaphors. Well, of course not. If people who are 40
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have never used file folders, how, what do you think someone who’s 20 is going to have it? Like what context do they have?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right? So that’s, but it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John make any sense because there’s not another file cabinet inside any of the folders in my
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco filing cabinet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But, but still the point is like, I think in the, in the early days of computers, I think we,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because computers were so new to people and because older people in particular seem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be very intimidated by them because they had their way of working for their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whole career and all of a sudden you try to change it in pretty big ways, that’s hard for people to adopt.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we first, we made these file and folder metaphors so we weren’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dealing with just like sectors on disk. So that’s part one and then you start dealing with,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco okay, well now we have a GUI and we’re gonna visually arrange these things and have your spatial finder
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you love so much and have spatial, visual ways to navigate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and organize things, and that’ll help. And then as computer technology
⏹️ ▶️ Marco went on, the need for the file folder metaphor made less and less sense as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more and more people just natively understood computers and didn’t necessarily,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like me, didn’t necessarily understand files and folders, like file folders on paper as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the thing that they were trying to emulate. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we started making computers so easy that we started hiding the file system.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So rather than trying to assume people would know this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and this would be the main interface to computers as it was with,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say, the original Mac, obviously the file system was the main interface of the computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the sense that it was, here is Finder, here’s this visual thing, and here are your files, do stuff with them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And over time, we’ve shifted more and more away from that. More towards not only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the app-based metaphor, the app as the container, and where the app manages the storage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in some managed way. Things like Apple Notes or Apple Photos, stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, interestingly, the apps are all arranged in spatially and into folders.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco They even call them folders. I wonder
⏹️ ▶️ John if young people wonder, why the hell are they called folders? Like when you put icons on
⏹️ ▶️ John your phone and you lump them together, that’s called a folder. It looks nothing like a folder. It doesn’t even,
⏹️ ▶️ John they don’t even attempt to make it look like a folder. But we call it that because, and you’re right, it’s totally app driven. What do you see in
⏹️ ▶️ John that screen? You don’t see files, you see apps. But those apps, A, can be arranged spatially, and B, can
⏹️ ▶️ John be put into folders. Not multiple folders, just one level of them. But so
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, it’s like AdEase or Microsoft Bob. Like it’s the PlaySchool version
⏹️ ▶️ John of the file system for your apps, right? And it doesn’t have much of a connection at
⏹️ ▶️ John all with the actual file system. But still, whatever the fundamental thing that you’re dealing with,
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t have to know anything about how they’re organized. You don’t have to organize them at all, but you can organize
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And the thing you organize
⏹️ ▶️ John them into are called folders. Kind of like the same reason like in the Contacts app, they’re called contact cards.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why are they called cards? If you’ve never seen a real Rolodex, like they don’t look like cards anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco They’re called that.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re called contact cards because that’s what they used to be in a Rolodex. They were like literal paper cards.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that is so long gone that nobody, You know, it’s just one of those,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not a skeuomorph, that’s a physical thing, but it’s a terminology skeuomorph, like a
⏹️ ▶️ John leftover from a bygone era that no longer serves a purpose, that is only there for historical reasons. They’re called contact
⏹️ ▶️ John cards, and the things on springboard are called folders.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but I think, you know, so we went through this period where, you know, for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what was relatively speaking, you know, a brief period
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the computing revolution, files and folders mattered a lot because that was like the only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way that you could organize your data on a computer. You had to know how to find files where to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco put files, you know, back in the DOS and early Windows and Mac days, you had to interact with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. But over time, we removed the need in many ways,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the ability in many ways to interact with it. And net and then what developed later,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were web apps, where you you know, now now your data is somewhere else entirely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you and you can’t manage it with the file system on your computer because it’s all in a web app, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the rise of both web and local search as one of the main ways you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco find stuff. You know, keep in mind, you couldn’t just, Quicksilver and Spotlight
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and whatever the heck the Windows search thing is called where you start typing into the start bar now, those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things didn’t exist like 15 or 20 years ago. Like there was a very long period where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the idea of searching for files on your computer was nowhere near instant.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was something that you were expected not to have to do very often because it would take like seconds or minutes to actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco search for in some rudimentary way for like a file name portion rather than like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what you can do now if you just like hit command space and start typing something and you’re probably gonna find the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco file you’re looking for within a few seconds. Now search is so universal that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can save files pretty much anywhere on your computer if you are still doing that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and not using a web app or a managed like, you know, shoebox kind of app, you can save files pretty much anywhere and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re gonna find them really fast no matter where they are. So you don’t have to know.
⏹️ ▶️ John That search where you just mentioned, that was the first, like this article, this is one of, again, this is a silly article or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John but like the first wave of these articles, the same type of thing of kids these days don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John understand the file system and you wanna know why? Like the culprit, what wasn’t Google Docs back then
⏹️ ▶️ John and the fact that like it auto saves and you don’t have the concept of files, it was search. It was like, in this age
⏹️ ▶️ John of search, no one will need to organize things anymore because they’ll just search for it. And lots of people wrote that article,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I think this is just a modernized version of, in this age of Google Docs, who has any concept of saving
⏹️ ▶️ John a file on a location? You just open a window and start typing. I mean, like, without looking, either one of you,
⏹️ ▶️ John where is our ATP Topics Google Doc? It’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John In Google Drive. No, but like, where is it? Like, because you can organize things in Google Drive. You can make folders and sub,
⏹️ ▶️ John is it in, whose Google Drive is it in? Is it in a subfolder? What does that subfolder call? None of us know, no one in none
⏹️ ▶️ John of us need to know. Do I have a Google Drive? I don’t even know. That’s what I’m saying. Like, so there’s always something
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s going to be held up as like, this is the thing that makes people not understand the file system. But like I said, I’m here to tell you that
⏹️ ▶️ John even when there was nothing, you know, there was no Google search, there was no, people still didn’t understand the file system.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what made computers hard. And as you’re saying, like when we introduce things that let people
⏹️ ▶️ John be able to use computers in a more sophisticated way without understanding the file
⏹️ ▶️ John system. Still the same number of people didn’t understand the file system. It just let them accomplish more,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right? Yeah, so two other things I wanted to point out here. So number one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think when we say something like, you know, the kids these days don’t know this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s not that they are somehow, you know, they’ll never learn it or they’re unable to learn
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. They just haven’t had to learn it yet. And as soon as you give them a reason or need to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco learn it, they’ll learn it, it’s fine. So this is, I wouldn’t say this is anything that we necessarily have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to worry about. You know, if you replace the file system with something like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco assembly language, well, yeah, most people don’t need to know assembly language and when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we first came up with, you know, higher level languages, a lot of programmers were like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no one even knows assembly anymore, this is ridiculous, how is anybody ever gonna be a good programmer, because now they don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even know assembly and yeah, you know what, they didn’t need to. Or, you know, in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some ways, sometimes that happens, sometimes it goes the other way. Sometimes, you know, it’s, you hear stories like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the kids these days, they’re only learning how to use iPads. They’re not even gonna know how to use computers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I thought that’s, I thought, I was afraid that would happen, you know, to, you know, in our family, to our son. I was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thinking like, man, I should probably like, teach him how to use like a full-size computer or some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sort of PC or Mac, whatever, so that he can start coding and, you know, get into better games and stuff, because he’s doing everything on his
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad. Well, you know what? As soon as he wanted to play a computer game, he learned how to use a computer. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it took him like three seconds to pick it up, and he picked it up and he’s flying now. In no time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all. Same skill level, everything. He started coding recently, first on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco his iPad, and then I showed him some stuff to do on the computer. By the way, Pico 8, really cool. Showed him that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he did it in two seconds, figured it all out. Kids,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they don’t know what they haven’t needed to know yet, obviously, but as soon as they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need to know it for something, they’ll learn it, it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John And also on iPad, you’ve got things like Swift Playgrounds 4 or whatever, it’s not like the iPad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s what I want to talk about next, actually. So, Swift Playgrounds 4, we didn’t talk about this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco last week because we had too much other stuff as we tend to do, but Swift Playgrounds 4 came out and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s incredible, like it’s, the things you can do with Swift, so this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the update to Swift Playgrounds that they, I think originally talked about, was it WBDC? But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is the one that lets you actually build and submit apps to the App Store. So that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a pretty big deal. You literally can do it all on the iPad. And obviously there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a bunch of limitations, chief of which is that you can’t use any Objective-C code.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s limiting in certain ways. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not a bug or a feature.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but in practice, it’s gonna be a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey bit limiting.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m kidding, I’m kidding. But the point is, so here is this complete development environment that it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not as full featured as desktop Xcode or as other PC and Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco based environments, but it is like a full blown app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco development environment just with a lot of limitations. But you can make full apps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on an iPad. And that is programming that could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco become professional programming. I’m sure somebody, there probably already are,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but there will be people who are doing their full-time job that way. It’s not gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be the main way people do their full-time programming jobs for a while, if ever, but there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are gonna already, if not already, there’s gonna be people who are doing full-time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco programming work from an iPad, from that environment, and that environment has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no access to the file system. So I can’t say for sure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that programmers will always need file system access, because here’s a brand new environment that doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really expose that to you at all. It does though, because you can organize your source files. Sort
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re more groups. You could have all your source files at the top level. Some people do that. But
⏹️ ▶️ John eventually, if you want to organize your source files, you will take subdirectories. And if
⏹️ ▶️ John you want to understand version control, version control deals with files and directories. You’re going to have to
⏹️ ▶️ John know it eventually.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not supported. And actually, that’s one thing that I think-
⏹️ ▶️ John control’s not supported?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No. That’s terrible. Well, they need to fix that. I told them that.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, they will eventually. Like, it’s called Playgrounds. It’s not called Xcode for iPad, right? But it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and bounds. If you look at this, though, like you can take those project files and migrate them back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and forth to desktops, and you can open them up in Swift Playgrounds on a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac, and you can manipulate them on the Mac, and you can ship them back to the iPad back and forth. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would not surprise me if this is like, you know, Xcode
⏹️ ▶️ Marco X, like, for lack of a better name, like, you know, like the way they remade, you know, Final Cut Pro, it’s a Final
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cut Pro X or 10, or however that one was pronounced. They wouldn’t surprise me if this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco after a long time, I don’t think this is going to be a soon thing, but I think on a long-term
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basis, the next Xcode might be just this brought forward
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a lot of ways. Xcode project format is probably going to be this project format.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All the things that this can’t do today are probably things that future Xcode
⏹️ ▶️ Marco won’t do. Um, you know, with the exception of things that are more likely to be obvious
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John developer needs forever, like version control, right? Pretty sure it’s still going to be there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I’m guessing that like, this is the direction this is going. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wouldn’t assume that even programmers would necessarily need file need file system
⏹️ ▶️ Marco access. Like we’re moving towards worlds of many more packages
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and pre-made modules being used. Right now today, you and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I, us old programmers, we think of course you would always use a file system. In the same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way that people who were older than us doing programming a long time ago said, of course you would need assembly language
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for everything at some point. And here I am as a programmer in 2021,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have never used assembly language except for one class in college that taught me how to use assembly language. I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never used it in a real program like after that. And I’ve never had to and I never will, as far as I can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tell, like based on my career and what we actually do these days. I’ll probably never need that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Access to like, you know, file system stuff and dealing with and organizing files in,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, non-trivial hierarchies besides like, you know, a single level grouping like we have now, that might
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just be stuff that people in current and future generations just never need to deal with because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ve just moved in different directions.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, let’s say your example of assembly is a good one. And it’s why I emphasize the point that for my entire life and
⏹️ ▶️ John career, programmers had to deal with the file system. Whereas for my entire life and career, programmers have not
⏹️ ▶️ John always had to deal with assembly because they did way back when, and they do way less now. But the file system has
⏹️ ▶️ John been a constant. And as I said, I’m not saying again, infinite timescale eventually, yes, we will hopefully
⏹️ ▶️ John move farther away from it, even for programmers. but I think no time soon is that gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John happen, right? Because it just, everything you described, Swift Package Manager, packages
⏹️ ▶️ John are a structure of files and directories, right? Version control, frameworks, everything
⏹️ ▶️ John having to do with programming, and by the way, writing programs that manipulate files in the file
⏹️ ▶️ John system, because yes, the file system’s underneath it. The whole operating system is running off a file system. All those containers and all that other stuff are
⏹️ ▶️ John in a file system, right? Fundamentally understanding files and folders and how they nest, which is not
⏹️ ▶️ John a complicated concept. People think we’re talking about something complicated. It’s not. It’s the simple thing that you understand
⏹️ ▶️ John that maybe a little bit of nuances of like, if you’re in a CH root environment,
⏹️ ▶️ John where is the root of the file system? What do you have visibility into? What is the security model? It actually gets more complicated on the
⏹️ ▶️ John phone than on the Mac these days, because the Mac has just basic Unix permissions and all that other
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff, whereas everything on the phone is sandboxed. Everything on the phone has a constrained view
⏹️ ▶️ John of the world at a fundamental level, which is harder to understand than
⏹️ ▶️ John the relatively open file system on a PC. But just the basic idea of like,
⏹️ ▶️ John hey, when I’m, you know, I guess it’s not the same thing with, because we’re not talking about
⏹️ ▶️ John Objective-C, but like an import statement in Objective-C, where is the framework
⏹️ ▶️ John that I’m importing? I know there’s some magic there with search paths, but again, search paths and, you know, LD
⏹️ ▶️ John load path and the dynamic linker, and where does it find packages and whatever? It’s like, oh, well, it’ll just all take care of that for me.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, most of the time it will take care of that for you until it doesn’t, at which point you kind of have to know where things are and you have to understand file
⏹️ ▶️ John system at the very basic level to do that. And even if you’re just organizing your source files, you know, you might
⏹️ ▶️ John not even know that those things in the sidebar, you know, maybe they’ll use a folder icon, maybe they won’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe you’ll dimly understand that you’re organizing things into a hierarchy, maybe you won’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John And maybe that won’t be reflected on disk as actual files. Maybe it’ll all be in the database. It doesn’t really matter. Those are
⏹️ ▶️ John implementation details. The whole point is just understanding that what is a directory and what is a file
⏹️ ▶️ John and what is their relationship between them? How can I navigate amongst them? How can I reference them? How can I refer to
⏹️ ▶️ John them? And the web helps with that too. Like URLs have a bunch of slashes in them. Do those mean that those are files
⏹️ ▶️ John or directories on a file system somewhere? Maybe, maybe not. But
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco conceptually- These days,
⏹️ ▶️ John usually not. Right,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco but conceptually,
⏹️ ▶️ John they do work that way. And for, you know, for many years, I should try this in Safari. For many years, you could go to a website.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, it’s probably broken now. It’s gotta be broken, let’s see. Ah, yeah, it doesn’t work anymore. For many years
⏹️ ▶️ John in Safari, before they really went hog wild on that menu bar. You could do the same thing you
⏹️ ▶️ John do in the Finder. So if you go to Finder and you go to a list view window and you hold down the command key and you click on the title
⏹️ ▶️ John of the window, you will see the path to the root of your system, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Used to be able to do that in Safari. You could hold down the command key and click on what used to be, back when Safari
⏹️ ▶️ John had the title, like the title tag, the content of the title tag was the title bar in Safari. You could command
⏹️ ▶️ John click on that and you could go, it would show you the hierarchy of the
⏹️ ▶️ John website that you’re on, right? Like if I go to, let me see. You
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco gotta find a
⏹️ ▶️ John website that has any hierarchy. Probably our website doesn’t, let’s see.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It does, thank you very much.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, is anything more than two levels deep? No. No. No,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone does like controller action ID now. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more than two levels deep.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, if you were to go to atp.fm slash join
⏹️ ▶️ John is top level slash store is top level. Let me see, Apple will have something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Overcast has a few, overcast.fm slash account slash a bunch of stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John here you go. Apple.com slash shop slash Mac slash accessories, right? If I was to command click
⏹️ ▶️ John on an old version of Safari, it would give me a pop-up menu that this first item
⏹️ ▶️ John was Apple.com slash shop slash Mac, then it would be Apple.com slash shop, and then it would be Apple.com,
⏹️ ▶️ John as if those were directories, you know, because it’s laid out, like, it’s the concept we’re talking about. Those
⏹️ ▶️ John aren’t obviously probably real directories But conceptually, the idea that a
⏹️ ▶️ John string, what is a path? The path portion of URL is called the path portion.
⏹️ ▶️ John Even though we know it’s probably not a real set of files and directories, conceptually, that’s how
⏹️ ▶️ John we describe resources on the internet, including local resources, including things in a sidebar and
⏹️ ▶️ John Xcode, even though on an iPad, we have no idea, we can’t reach out and touch the file system. But the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John does have an app called Files that shows a bunch of folders. And yes, it’s complicated by sandboxing
⏹️ ▶️ John and containers and all sorts of other things, but conceptually it works that way. And even conceptually, springboard in the
⏹️ ▶️ John folders that are there. Like someone pointed out in the chat room, the original Mac file system called MFS
⏹️ ▶️ John did not allow multiple levels of nesting. It was very primitive. You know, this is on like a
⏹️ ▶️ John 400K floppy disk, so there wasn’t that much need for that. Eventually HFS came. That’s what, you know, if you’re wondering what HFS,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it’s a planted MFS. HFS, the H’s stands for hierarchical,
⏹️ ▶️ John if I’m putting extra syllables. Oh, wow. I’m sorry. Because you could have more than one level and it was, you know, a better
⏹️ ▶️ John file system. So MFS didn’t last very long. I don’t know what the timeline is on MFS, but yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think these concepts are still there. It’s kind of like, this is kind of reminds me of one of those things in terms of programming.
⏹️ ▶️ John We talk a lot about, maybe not so much these days, but you still hear it occasionally.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why do we use monospace fonts in our text editors in programming, right? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John why don’t we use styled text? like bold, italic, proportional fonts. And
⏹️ ▶️ John technically, there’s not really a reason for that, but culturally,
⏹️ ▶️ John we still are acting like, you have to use a monospace font, and of course
⏹️ ▶️ John it has to be plain text. Why does it have to be plain text? Well, plain text is simple, we don’t need anything more than plain text or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. It’s the same thing with the file system. Could programmers eventually not
⏹️ ▶️ John have to know about the file system? Maybe, but so far there hasn’t been enough
⏹️ ▶️ John of a reason for us to go there to do that, which is why, like I said, and in contrast to assembly,
⏹️ ▶️ John which we flee, we ran away from as fast as we could because it’s really hard to deal with. And now very,
⏹️ ▶️ John very few people need to deal with assembly. The same number of programmers need to deal with the file system in some fundamental
⏹️ ▶️ John level as they always have. And so it’s on a much longer timeline. Getting away from the file
⏹️ ▶️ John system, getting away from plain text for source files, that seems like it’s going
⏹️ ▶️ John to take probably longer than all of our lifetimes, which is fine with me. And you know, infinite time scale, eventually we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John get away from it, but it seems like both of those things have legs. Thanks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to our sponsors this week, Green Chef, Stream, and Revenue Cat. And thanks to our
⏹️ ▶️ Marco members who support us directly. Big thank you, once again, to our awesome members. You can join and become one of them,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco atp.fm slash join. We will talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental And you can
⏹️ ▶️ John find the show notes at atp.fm And if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco T. Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s accidental, they didn’t mean to
⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental, check podcast so
#askatp: Corvettes look like Lambos?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna do two ask ATP since we ran out of time But one of them is gonna be fast
⏹️ ▶️ Casey watch this Rob Knight asks I keep mistaking newer Corvettes for fancy European cars. When
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do Corvettes start looking like Lamborghinis? I’m not generally interested in fancy cars, but I live adjacent to Silicon Valley
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I’ve seen my fair share of expensive European cars lately I’ve been surprised by how often I think I’m approaching a fancy European
⏹️ ▶️ Casey car and it turns out to be a Corvette How do you all feel about Corvettes looking like fancy European cars? So what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re looking at is almost surely the C8 Corvette. That would be the eighth generation Corvette.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Which is the, which on an infinite timeline, the Corvette did go mid-engine, as has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been foretold for literally like 40 or 50 years. And so yeah, what’s different about this is that the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey engine is between the axles. It is sort of kind of in the back, but strictly speaking, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the middle of the car because it’s in front of the rear axle. And they look way different. They look
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much more like a Lamborghini or Ferrari or something like that. And from everything I have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey read and watched and heard, et cetera, given how expensive they are, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is I think they start at like $60,000 and can easily run up toward $100,000. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey given how expensive they are, the performance per dollar, if you will, is just off the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey charts. And they are phenomenally fast and phenomenally good, despite being for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the market reasonably cheap. Now this is where John, I’m sure, will complain and moan
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about the C8 Corvette, So please carry on.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you think that the Corvette looks like a Lamborghini, I really
⏹️ ▶️ John question how discerning you are about what cars look like. Ouch.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, it is, because, no, not that I’m, you know, if you’re not into
⏹️ ▶️ John cars, yeah, lots of cars look the same, and yes, of course they look the same, but if you are into cars and you think, that Corvette
⏹️ ▶️ John looks like a Lamborghini, now I’m thinking like, it just, it
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t. Like if you are into cars and you know what a lot of different cars look like,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you are very familiar with the different sizes and shapes of different makes and models of cars,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s no confusing, I understand what you’re saying, like mid-engine proportions from a distance, it can look like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I have this problem myself, when I’m looking at fancy cars in traffic, I always have like fancy car peripheral vision, right? In
⏹️ ▶️ John the distance on the highway, like, huh, is that a, and then as soon as I glance over it and you know, swivel my pupils
⏹️ ▶️ John over, it’s like, oh, it’s a Corvette, right? Because it does, because it’s a mid-engine car, you might think, is that a Ferrari?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, no, it’s Corvette. And this is to the credit of the Corvette designers. Through many years and many,
⏹️ ▶️ John many iterations, they’ve managed to keep Corvettes, they’ve managed to keep a family resemblance through the line of Corvettes.
⏹️ ▶️ John It has changed very much over the years. But when I look at it, I can say it’s clear
⏹️ ▶️ John that that’s a Corvette, that it still looks like a Corvette, which means it doesn’t look like a Lamborghini.
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t I don’t think you need to see them next to each other. But if you saw literally any Lamborghini, I mean, literally any Corvette next to each
⏹️ ▶️ John other, like modern ones, right? They don’t actually look the same. Yes, they’re mid-engine and they have mid-engine
⏹️ ▶️ John proportions. They don’t actually. I was trying to think of an analogy of like, just,
⏹️ ▶️ John I couldn’t think of a good one. They’re so, they’re so fundamental. It’s kind of like if you think, oh, the Mac and Windows 95
⏹️ ▶️ John look the same. Regardless of which one you thought was better or worse or ugly or not ugly, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John they will have windows and little window controls and a mouse pointer and folders and menus, and they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John the same. know, like a Mac user would say, if you can’t see the difference between Windows 95 and
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac OS, I’m saying just aesthetically and forget about user interface, ease of use, you know, but I was just aesthetically in a
⏹️ ▶️ John screenshot. There’s that’s how different I feel like the C8 Corvette is from any
⏹️ ▶️ John modern Lamborghini. It’s like Windows 95 and the Mac and I’ll let you decide which is which.
⏹️ ▶️ John Wow, hot dog stand. All right, that was Windows 3.1.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You realize that, Rob, in in the question, Rob said, and I quote, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not generally interested in fancy cars. So you shouldn’t beat up on poor.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, no, I mean, that’s what I’m saying. Like if you, you know, if for someone who doesn’t know about a topic, if I look
⏹️ ▶️ John at five different racehorses, I don’t know anything about racehorses. They all look just like horses. I mean, I can tell they’re different colors
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe, but that’s about it. Right. And I can tell a racehorse from like a horse that pulls
⏹️ ▶️ John the carriage around central park. I can tell the difference between those two. Right. But beyond that
⏹️ ▶️ John nuances of like, oh, you know, this is a horse from this line or or this is an
⏹️ ▶️ John Arabian horse versus a Russian horse. I can’t tell those, you know, it doesn’t make a difference to me.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if you were into horses, you could tell and it would be super obvious. And if you were into cars, Corvette does not
⏹️ ▶️ John look like a Lamborghini when vice versa.
#askatp: What should Apple (not) make?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you know, Orion asks, since we seem to agree that Apple should not make a car,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what’s the next product they should focus a lot of R&D on in order to not make?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I love the way that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John was phrased.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The options, there are three options for you, gentlemen. I
⏹️ ▶️ John want to emphasize, by the way, that we have a lot of these questions. I appreciate the fact that when they have these questions,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, like, oh, you know, Apple’s doing these things. They don’t just ask an open-ended question of
⏹️ ▶️ John like, what should Apple do next instead of the car? people have a limited list
⏹️ ▶️ John of options that you will not choose from these three options and that really does focus us
⏹️ ▶️ John And not just you know I have to be like oh you can make anything you want like the last one is like if they could buy a company they
⏹️ ▶️ John Buy like a camera company or I figure what the other one is like a game company or something else
⏹️ ▶️ John Really narrows the question down. So I appreciate that but that being said let us hear What
⏹️ ▶️ John Juno’s options are for the three things that Apple can make instead of a car
⏹️ ▶️ Casey spoiler alert? I don’t really love any of them, but here we go. A sophisticated, easy to fly camera drone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with 3D scanning capabilities. That’s option one. Option two, a user-friendly 3D
⏹️ ▶️ Casey printer with a built-in quote-unquote object store like the App Store, but for things you can print.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not an object store
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey like- That’s exactly what I thought. Like S3, Cloud Kit
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, or like a database, a non-SQL database, right? No SQL database.
⏹️ ▶️ John An object store as in a store, like a storefront where you buy things, where you could buy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed, and then finally in door number three, behind door number three, a smart TV with great audio capabilities
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that can be used as the main quote unquote dashboard for controlling your smart home.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I, you know, when I read this originally, I thought, ooh, definitely drone. I think that’d be super cool, but I can,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and maybe this is Apple at its best to be honest with you. I can’t think of what I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really wish my drone had that would require Apple special sauce.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like, I wish it had the collision detection that Marcos does, but it’s because I have the little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey baby one, and so that’s why it doesn’t. It’s reasonably easy to fly, though. Mine didn’t detect a roof.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, it did detect it. That’s why it played dead.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Exactly. It said,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh no, I’m going to crash. It’s like those bees that drop as soon as they see a
⏹️ ▶️ John video that’s going around recently of a bunch of bees flying around. And when you turn the lights off, they just stop, drop
⏹️ ▶️ John dead out of the air. They just immediately stop flying and fall to the ground in a straight line.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey No, I have not seen that. That’s what your
⏹️ ▶️ John drone did on the roof.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, pretty much. So yeah, so that was my gut reaction was yes, definitely the drone because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, that would be great. But again, I don’t know what special sauce Apple would really bring to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that. And I don’t personally see what 3D scanning really does for me, but maybe I’m just not creative enough. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey leaving the 3D printer in smart TV, I don’t know, maybe it’s just because I’ve got such
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a burr up my keister about monitor related things. But even though I don’t particularly want a dashboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey controlling my smart home, I think just having an Apple branded TV with like really solid audio
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would be really cool. We bought a new I think I can’t remember who brought this up in the show, but we brought it bought a new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bedroom TV recently. Actually, this is going to drive Syracuse awful up a wall.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We bought a new bedroom TV recently. And this TV’s purpose is to maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey once a week at most show video and play a little bit of audio. It is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very infrequently used. We have it for reasons that are uninteresting, but we need
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something to show video and play audio and it does not have to be fancy. So we bought a like $150
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or $200 4K Sceptre TV that immediately
⏹️ ▶️ Casey got mounted on the wall and it sounds like garbage. Sounds like a made up brand. No, it’s it’s this is our second
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Is it the James Bond villain company?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco No, it’s Spectre. I’m sorry. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right. You’re right. You’re right. I apologize. It is Spectre. You are right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it is the James Bond villain.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But anyways, it was a really good Black Friday deal and we bought it and it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sounds like utter trash. It looks fine. I’m sure it’s not filled with spyware. Yeah, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s not a smart TV. It doesn’t have any sort of smart features,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John which is good
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as far as I know. But I think having a legitimate like Apple, what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was the person that kept asking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco for Apple television? Yes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John me Gene Munster. Poor guy. It’s going to be remembered for.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, well, it’s so true. I think it could be interesting even leaving the dashboard stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and smart home stuff out of it. I just think it’d be cool to see Apple do a television set. I don’t see it happening,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I think it would be interesting. So I’m going to go with that as my answer. I feel like I’ve been picking on John
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot recently. Marco, what’s your pick of these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco First, I must relay this quote from who hoofed in the chat. No,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mr. Bond, I expect you to buy.
⏹️ ▶️ John That line delivery makes me think you’ve never seen that movie, Marco. That’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve seen all the bonds except for I think one or two. Anyway, in the context of which of these products
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would I want Apple to release, that’s a different question, right? And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it was products that I want them to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey release, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe I’d go for the TV. Although, the thing is, you know, a smart TV with great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco audio capabilities, well, I already have, you know, great audio capabilities
⏹️ ▶️ Marco covered from other people if Apple doesn’t make it. I don’t have covered by other people a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really great TV with software on it that I can trust. That’s something that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would like to have other people enter and Apple would be a good maker for that, I think.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Although, they’re never gonna do it and they shouldn’t do it for lots of other reasons. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 3D printer with built-in object store, like the App Store,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wonder how useful that would actually be for most people because,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, 3D printers can’t print anything. They can print
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lots of different types of shapes from a small variety of materials,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that’s very different from being able to print any random object. You know, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lots of sophistication and material needs and things like that that they just can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco achieve, just because, you know, just in practice the way they work. So they have great uses, but they’re great,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco narrow, and still fairly specialized uses. So I’m not necessarily sure that would be super necessary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or beneficial. A sophisticated, easy to fly camera drone with 3D scanning capabilities.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Casey, you’re right that, I mean, for the most part, you know, most drones are pretty good these days.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I’m not sure what Apple would really add to that. But the question here was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not, what should Apple make? It’s what should they focus a lot of R&D on in order to not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make like the car, right? So that’s a different question. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so the question in my mind is, well, which of these things, if they invested in heavily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then failed to produce a product, how would we benefit from the R&D
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in their other products? So a smart TV with great audio,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco controlling a smart home, well, we already pretty much have all those parts. Apple already makes really great displays,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really great speakers, and an okay home control
⏹️ ▶️ Marco system. So that I don’t think would be super necessary.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A 3D printer with an object store, I don’t see where else that would fit in their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lineup. Now, a drone with 3D scanning capabilities,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now we’re talking. Now that is something that actually has a role in the lineup. They already
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are doing things like AR with lidar and stuff and 3D scanning and integrate with cameras,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s just good for cameras, for things like autofocus and things like that. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ultimately, I would rather them dump a whole bunch of R&D into that option, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sophisticated drone with 3D scanning capabilities. And if they happen to actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get 3D scanning capabilities working in something, which honestly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should just be your iPhone, and I think we’re already part of the way there,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s something that I actually would find useful. In the sense, and we’ve talked about this before, like I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would love to be able to capture a 3D object and send
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it like in an iMessage, or post it on Slack, or put it up on a webpage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as like a weird image, like the USDZ format, something like that. Like I would love to be able to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, to be able to treat 3D scans the same way we treat images today, where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re just easily back and forth, support it everywhere, capture on one end, have some, send it to somebody, have them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be able to view it like in some kind of AR view, because that would allow you to see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco objects better, you know, the way they are in the real world, you know, remotely,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it would allow you to have a better sense of scale of objects. Because that’s one thing that’s really hard to tell with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco photos and videos, is it’s really hard to tell, like, how big is that in practice? And I would,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m just, I’m very much looking forward, you know, when we talk about all the research
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s dumping into AR and stuff. I am interested in almost none of it, and I’m excited
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by almost none of it, and I think almost none of it has a super great future, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something as simple as take a 3D scan of this thing and send it to my wife
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and say, hey, will this size table fit next to our couch? I’m out somewhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it looks interesting. That, I can see uses for that. Or you’re looking at a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco product page on an online store and you wanna see like, hey, how big is this thing? Let me visualize
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it being held in my hand. That kind of thing, I see great uses
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for. So all that to say, I would go for the camera drone,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco R&D, money fire option here, because I think the 3D scanning and everything, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would have the most usefulness in their other products that they would actually be shipping.
⏹️ ▶️ John Of all the AR things you pick like stuff that we can almost do now and don’t pick the
⏹️ ▶️ John killer apps, which is names over people’s heads and directions when you’re walking around.
⏹️ ▶️ John So, out of this very strange list of three things,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m gonna nix off the drone thing, just because I feel like the drone part of it, the flying thing part
⏹️ ▶️ John of it, doesn’t really have any place, and Apple’s already doing the 3D scanning stuff without the drone part, so I
⏹️ ▶️ John feel like that’s not gonna help much. The 3D printer, I mean, maybe Apple’s industrial design
⏹️ ▶️ John lab probably has lots of experience with 3D printing prototype objects or whatever, but I don’t, you know, like
⏹️ ▶️ John if they did that and didn’t release it, maybe it helps their industrial design group, but those, I think they’ve already, they’re already
⏹️ ▶️ John traveling that path again. They don’t need this project to help them go down that road. They’re already doing that with their rapid
⏹️ ▶️ John prototyping. I’m sure they keep up with the latest and greatest and all that other stuff. I think the smart
⏹️ ▶️ John TV is the one, because although Apple does have lots of home automation stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John one thing that Apple continues to lack is any home product with a screen,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? I’m not counting the Apple TV, right? Because it’s not actually the screen. Like, they don’t have like
⏹️ ▶️ John a HomePod with a screen on it. And I think a lot of the things that people would use a kind of Home
⏹️ ▶️ John Hub voice assistant thing for are augmented by having a screen. Even if it’s just as simple
⏹️ ▶️ John as glancing over and seeing a cute picture of your kids plus the time and the weather, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John easier to glance at that or a recipe in the kitchen or whatever than it is to ask your faceless
⏹️ ▶️ John cylinder for it, right? And if they made a smart TV, they would be forced to
⏹️ ▶️ John make, what does a UI look like that’s not an Apple TV UI? What is a home
⏹️ ▶️ John hub, controlling your smart home, but with a screen? We know what they think it looks like on the phone and the iPad
⏹️ ▶️ John and the Mac, and it’s stupid and bad, right? We don’t like the home app. But if they
⏹️ ▶️ John had to make something that was expected to be shown on a television
⏹️ ▶️ John set for controlling your smart home, they’d have to rethink that UI and that project gets scrapped, but then they sell us the shrunken
⏹️ ▶️ John version. Kind of like the original HomePod was supposedly, according to rumors, part of the
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s television set project that got scrapped. What we got out of it was the HomePod product, which wasn’t a television by
⏹️ ▶️ John any stretch, but some of the work they did transferred over. So I think if they made the smart TV and scrapped
⏹️ ▶️ John it, they could say, well, now we basically have all the pieces to make essentially a big HomePod with a screen, so let’s make
⏹️ ▶️ John that. And that I think is a product that Apple should have.