466: There's Probably a Wizard for It
20 Jan 2022Microsoft and Activision Blizzard, iMessage vs. green-bubble people, and a gaming PC finally doing what PCs do best.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Windows woes and the challenges of loading modern trucks
- Follow-up:
- Printer Murder Rooms
- LG UltraFine 5K Repair Video (via Brian Almeida)
- Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion
- Wall Street Journal
- Activision Blizzard’s abhorrent culture
- Prior acquisitions (via Jon Erlichman)
- Activision Blizzard: $68.7b
- LinkedIn: $26.2b
- Nuance: $19.7b
- Skype: $8.5b
- ZeniMax: $7.5b
- GitHub: $7.5b
- Nokia (phone unit): $7.2b
- aQuantive: $6.3b
- Mojang (Minecraft): $2.5b
- Perfect Dark
- Green bubbles ruin everything 🙄
#askatp:- Will macOS last another 20 years? (via Daniel Begqvist)
- What game system for a casual gamer who hasn’t had a console in ten years?
- Do programming languages cause problems for people with hyphenated last names?
- Post-show: Marco’s Jerk-Store Moment
Sponsored by:
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Become a member for ad-free episodes and our early-release, unedited “bootleg” feed!
Chapters
- BSOD, TPM, FML
- How are trucks loaded?
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- Printer bloodbaths
- LG 5K service video
- Microsoft + Activision Blizzard
- Sponsor: Mack Weldon (code ATP)
- iMessage vs. green bubbles
- Sponsor: Linode
- #askatp: Next-gen OS foundation?
- #askatp: Which game console?
- #askatp: Bugs from hyphenated name?
- Ending theme
- Coconut jerk store
BSOD, TPM, FML
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Adam’s gaming PC has started to regularly blue screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, you don’t say. So it’s been the Windows installation has been there for six months or more.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have absolutely no idea what to do about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Blow out the dust. Oh, yeah. All kidding aside, when I last regularly used Windows and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we were talking before even the bootleg started, Marco and I were that I haven’t regularly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey used Windows in like a a VM anyway since like 2018. I don’t think I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had a Windows installation since like the early
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 2010s. Like I think I went maybe even earlier than that, like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey late aughts, early 10s. So it’s been a long time since I’ve used Windows for more than literally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey five minutes. But when I was a devout or maybe avid, I guess I should say Windows
⏹️ ▶️ Casey user, it used to be the rule of thumb was every six months, You destroy everything and put it back where it was.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you know, start anew, so you would clean out all the cruft and get all the junk out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, it would not surprise me if that is not at all the case today, but how long has Adam’s computer been operational?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco — That was TIFF’s first gaming PC from like two and a half or three years ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something like that. And so there’s a number of factors here. So, number one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was very well-specced at the time. It has the mobile NVIDIA 2080.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s actually a pretty well-specced computer for,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, whatever, two years ago, whenever we bought it. The downside of the 2080 in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a laptop and whatever that giant version of it was to begin with is that it’s a very large,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very hot running GPU. And so already I’m thinking, oh no, this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptop that worked totally solidly for, you know, years and then all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a sudden has started like blue screening regularly while playing games like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t feel great about that from a hardware perspective. But then I’m thinking like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it is something stupid and software related, I’ll feel really dumb if we ended up like, you know, replacing it or somehow getting it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco service. I don’t even know how it would do that. And like, I’m so far from the PC
⏹️ ▶️ Marco world at this point. I have no idea. Like, can I sell this? Can I trade
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it into somebody? the most
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco answer is, ah screw it, sell it and get a new one.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can sell anything that someone’s willing to buy. I don’t think you need permission from or knowledge
⏹️ ▶️ John of the PC market to do that. You can just put things for sale. I mean, you just explained how to sell things on eBay. This
⏹️ ▶️ John is a thing, you can sell it on eBay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but like if the GPU might be flaking out, like I can’t really in good conscience sell that to a person.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like if there was some kind of like trade-in thing, I could do that, but- But you don’t know that the GPU
⏹️ ▶️ John is flaking out, you’re just speculating. It occasionally blue screens, but that could be anything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It regularly blue screens. And like, it’s so funny, like, because I’m so far from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using Windows regularly, I mean, the last time I used Windows regularly, the version I used was XP. I never used Vista
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or anything after it until getting these gaming PCs. And we literally use them only for gaming.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they’re basically consoles to us. We open them up and, you know, launch Steam or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Minecraft launcher and go from there. And that’s about all we do on them. And so it’s funny, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, all these years, I hear, as nerds, you always hear stories of people in your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco life, and you’re like, oh, I don’t wanna upgrade to the latest software, it’s gonna break everything. And meanwhile, these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco PCs, they have Windows 10, I think, on them, and they started asking very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco aggressively for us to upgrade to Windows 11. And I’m thinking of this, like, from my point of view, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why? Why would I want to touch anything? It works, mostly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, yeah, okay, fair enough. But the other two, they work totally fine. So it’s like, why would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want to do a software update if everything works? Whatever it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco adding, I couldn’t possibly care less about. Like any features it’s adding to Windows, I don’t even know, I don’t care.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco These things are only gaming consoles to us. And so like, the last thing I want is to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco upgrade my version of Windows, which like, you know, best case scenario, nothing about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my life changes. That’s the best case scenario. And there’s lots of worst case scenarios where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something that worked before doesn’t now. And I’m realizing this is how regular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people have thought about computers forever. It’s so kind of funny and sad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco First of all, how many people never update their software for this very good reason of, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know what, I did it once, it broke stuff, I was burned and I don’t wanna do it again. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco asking analytically, what’s this thing gonna do for me? And then also like how much hardware,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially in the PC world, let’s be honest, how much hardware that’s been perfectly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine has been replaced due to software bugs and the person would just like, look, I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco afford to or don’t have the skills to figure this out, I’m just going to buy a new one.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like I can’t tell you how many, like when I was in the PC world, I’m sure you both have seen this, I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tell you how many PCs I’ve saw people replace that were just like, oh, it’s old and slow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it was full of spyware. And like, you could have just reformatted and reinstalled Windows on it, and it would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have been fine. Like, the hardware was fine, but people, like, so much PC
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hardware has been discarded and replaced over time. That was totally 100% fine,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because people were misdiagnosing software problems for hardware problems, or that was the easiest way out of the problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for them, or the fastest, or the only thing they knew they could do, you know, whatever it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And here I am, like, waffling over that same dilemma, What do I do about this damn computer? Like, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not, now it’s unreliable. Do we replace it? It seems kind of wasteful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to replace it at this point. But
⏹️ ▶️ John why aren’t you using the old ways? Wipe it and reinstall. I mean, that’s a reasonable first step,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially if the only thing you ever do with it is game. Everything is on Steam or whatever. It’s not like you need to preserve anything.
⏹️ ▶️ John Wipe and reinstall, and if that cures it, then yay, it was some weird software thing that you didn’t have to figure out. But at the very least, do that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, so, I’m thinking of that, and that might be what I do next. But like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know how to do that anymore. Like I have no idea how to do that. I don’t know where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco games are storing their files. I have no idea how to preserve like all the, you know, the progress Adam’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco made in his games.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s why Steam is good. I mean, we talked about Steam before. What does that bring to you? For Steam at least, you don’t have to worry about that
⏹️ ▶️ John because Steam will take care of it all. Pretty much everything has cloud sync saves and all the games obviously themselves
⏹️ ▶️ John are on Steam. Minecraft, I don’t know the answer to that, but I assume Microsoft does a reasonable job. But
⏹️ ▶️ John individually installed a bunch of games, yes, that’s where you’d be. But still, as I’m sure you know, you can reinstall
⏹️ ▶️ John Windows without erasing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the hard drive. Honestly, I don’t even know how to do that. Like, I don’t even, like, I know there’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John some kind of like- There’s probably a wizard for it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I’d probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, hold some key command at boot and it probably has its own like system recovery
⏹️ ▶️ John And then you’ll see a big DOS screen with white text on a black background. It’ll tell you to hit F2 if you want to do this and F3 if
⏹️ ▶️ John you want to do that. And you’ll feel like you’re using
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco modern technology as you look at your drive letters.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Let me jump into my BIOS that’s where I see my RAM count
⏹️ ▶️ John And by the way, if you had said okay to that Windows 11 thing, you just would have found out that you don’t have TPM 2.0 and you can’t upgrade to Windows 11
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I don’t even know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Is that a trusted platform module? Is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, we actually did that?
⏹️ ▶️ John Windows 11 requires TPM 2.0. You probably have it. I’m just making a joke and I’m kind of bitter because I couldn’t update
⏹️ ▶️ John it. I was willing to update my Windows gaming PC installation, which is an
⏹️ ▶️ John external SSD that I plug into my Mac Pro. It has like, I think I have Windows 8 on it. No,
⏹️ ▶️ John it must have Windows 10. Yeah, I have Windows 10 on it. And I was like, I’ll upgrade to Windows 11, what the hell?
⏹️ ▶️ John And it said, no, sorry, you don’t have TPM 2.0. And then I did all this Googling to see, does the Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John have something that can fool the Windows into thinking it’s TPM 2.0 Xeon?
⏹️ ▶️ John know. And I just, I gave up. So I’m stuck on Windows 10 as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I remember when the TPM stuff was first floated, and this was back when I was using PCs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and let’s say the PC enthusiast community was not very thrilled with the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco idea of basically like DRM support in hardware in our in our computers. And it’s funny to think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back like now in today’s world we carry around these phones and we have tablets we have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computers all of them have hardware DRM support deeply like there’s so much hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Marco DRM support everything with an HDMI port has hardware DRM support it’s just so much hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Marco DRM everywhere and all the devices and we just like not only did we lose that fight.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We were annihilated in that fight and no one cared.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not really because part of it, the reason, the main benefit we get from TPM stuff and all
⏹️ ▶️ John the secure stuff that we have on even Macs today and iPhones and everything is not the one
⏹️ ▶️ John that the TPM, the anti-TPM people complain about. They’re like, oh, this is going to put DRM
⏹️ ▶️ John in everything and we’re not going to be able to share all our songs through Napster and something. They would spin out all
⏹️ ▶️ John these things about how it’s going to make it more difficult to pirate stuff and make our software not ours or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the actual main important function of all these things is to provide a
⏹️ ▶️ John chain of trust for booting, so that the machine knows that it’s booting something that is trusted. And that chain
⏹️ ▶️ John of trust has to go all the way down to the hardware to try to make it.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s much, much harder. Not impossible, because there are bugs in these things. But much, much harder to get a root kit
⏹️ ▶️ John in there that even if you wipe the OS, you’re still infected. and that whole secure
⏹️ ▶️ John boot thing that’s on the modern Macs, it’s on all our iOS devices and iPads and everything like that. That is a thing about
⏹️ ▶️ John being confident that you’re running the OS you’re thinking you’re running. Which no one has a complaint about. Everybody wants that. No one wants to be rootkitted
⏹️ ▶️ John or exploited in a way that’s deep in your hardware.
⏹️ ▶️ John But in theory, that same hardware could be made to like, oh, this program won’t run unless it checks for a secret
⏹️ ▶️ John key that we embed in the secure enclave equivalent in the TPM blah, blah, blah. And that just didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John really happen. plain old normal software based DRM like Fairplay or whatever the hell
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple calls their modern one is we had that back then and we have it now and that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly all Apple uses for this type of thing like all the exploits on the iPhone and everything
⏹️ ▶️ John aren’t about like oh I can’t side load because Apple has encryption it’s like no if you jailbreak the OS you
⏹️ ▶️ John can side load whatever the hell you want like and the jailbreak doesn’t involve well sometimes it involves breaking the
⏹️ ▶️ John hardware level or whatever. But the slippery slope fantasies of TPM and
⏹️ ▶️ John having this security hardware and all our devices, the dystopia was going to bring, it didn’t bring
⏹️ ▶️ John it. All it brought us was secure boot, which is the thing we all like. The dystopia of DRM
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything doesn’t require the hardware. It just requires people being annoying and stupid with their, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John with how they sell things. And people still do that all the time. Copy protection, you know, DRM on what
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, so music is DRM free but Apple’s iTunes movies are still not DRM free for some
⏹️ ▶️ John stupid reason because it prevents piracy because everyone knows you can’t find movies on the internet. Thanks, Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ John That DRM made sure that no one will ever pirate a movie again. Success! No, what it did was it made
⏹️ ▶️ John it so I can’t take screenshots of movies to make jokes on Twitter. That’s what the DRM did. That’s what we should have been fighting about,
⏹️ ▶️ John but that didn’t require TPM. That just requires stupid software. anyway rant over.
How are trucks loaded?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I have a tangentially related question, which I’m now totally derailing the conversation,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This conversation was never railed, Casey.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey When there’s something, like, let’s say something that’s exclusive to Disney Plus, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t know, like Hamilton a year ago, and there exists on the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey back of, you’re falling off the back of trucks, there exists a copy of Hamilton. How are those
⏹️ ▶️ Casey captured? Like, are people playing this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on some sort of like TV and then using like some illicit HD capture card that doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey respect DRM or something? Like, how does that work?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, no, that’s, that is very weak sauce piracy. You don’t want to
⏹️ ▶️ John take an encoded file of some kind, decompress it and play
⏹️ ▶️ John then send it over a wire and then try to capture it.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Agreed, but like how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do you do it though?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use like HLS hacks or doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John So there’s a million ways to pirate things, obviously. I think one
⏹️ ▶️ John of the most common used to be back in the day when we had physical media was they would send screener DVDs
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey to everybody, right? Yeah, yeah, totally,
⏹️ ▶️ John totally. And they would just get the actual digital files off of there and then they started watermarking them and stuff like that. Most streaming
⏹️ ▶️ John services either used to or still have a way to send the actual
⏹️ ▶️ John encoded file in pieces that you, you know, and you can just sort of intercept those pieces and stick them
⏹️ ▶️ John all together probably with a pen peg. Kind of like what you do for the keynote streams, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John If you can get the data as it would come into the decoder to go onto your screen,
⏹️ ▶️ John capture it that way, you don’t have to play it and then recapture it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, I think this is how, so I’m actually talking a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey outside my comfort zone, believe it or not, but if I were to download something from like NBC.com,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, for, I don’t know, for example, like This Is Us or something like that, like I could use hypothetically,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, YouTube DL or what is it, YTDLP is the blessed version now. And I can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey log into my Verizon Fios to show that I have access to this thing. And it does
⏹️ ▶️ Casey magic. And I know that HLS is involved, although now you know everything I know about HLS. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one way or another, it does magic to do, I think, exactly what you’re describing, John. But I had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey assumed in PreZoom that it is not quite so simple for a Disney Plus, or Netflix is another great
⏹️ ▶️ Casey example. I just, I wonder how those are captured.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If something with, if a mature, reasonably mature tool chain like YouTube DL can’t do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, which I don’t think it can.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I mean, the final way is just break the encryption. I mean, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco easier said than done,
⏹️ ▶️ John obviously, but like it only takes one person to do it and you know, obviously DCSS broke the DVD encryption ages ago,
⏹️ ▶️ John but every one of these things that has some kind of DRM thing is crackable. Um, and getting back
⏹️ ▶️ John to the TPM thing, maybe if, if there was a mandatory your hardware component, it would be slightly harder
⏹️ ▶️ John to crack these things. And I say only slightly, because there’s a lot of security related hardware that is just so thoroughly broken. Like I think Intel
⏹️ ▶️ John stops shipping, they announced they’re gonna stop shipping or stop supporting SGX, which is one of their secure
⏹️ ▶️ John enclave things, just because it was so thoroughly and massively broken. And when it’s in silicon and a bunch of chips, you
⏹️ ▶️ John just have to basically say, yeah, that’s over now. We’re not doing that anymore because it’s so thoroughly
⏹️ ▶️ John broken and you can’t change it because it’s in millions of chips. And so it’s like, that’s not a thing anymore, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John I wish DVDs had done that, that industry moves slower. But yeah, you can crack the encryption, like they say in the movies.
⏹️ ▶️ John Once someone gets through, it’s open season and everything. And I think Fairplay
⏹️ ▶️ John was cracked pretty early on, too. I don’t know if the current version of Fairplay is, but that’s the final way to do it. It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ve got the file somewhere. If I can download it in Disney+, it’s like, oh, but it’s encrypted on your iPad. How are you going to play it? Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve broken that encryption already. So there you go.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so where were we? So how are you fixing your
⏹️ ▶️ John We were pirating movies, which is not possible because Apple puts DRM in everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, and because of TPM, I can’t reinstall Windows possibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John on my- Exactly. I have no idea.
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, people complain about that, but I think pretty much every modern PC supports TPM 2.0. It was just people with some
⏹️ ▶️ John older PCs or like enthusiast setups that didn’t have TPM that are suddenly locked out of Windows 11. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, why do you even care? Like, I don’t know. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John a controversial move. Anytime anything obsoletes hardware in the PC space, someone complains.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I would imagine that’s not gonna be my limiting factor here. My limiting factor is going to be, A, am I ever really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to figure out how to reinstall Windows on this laptop? And then B,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco am I going to actually want to spend probably a day? It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gonna be a small operation for me, because I haven’t done this in how many years?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, 20 years maybe? It’s been a long time. And I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sure everything is like, I’m sure all the crappy stuff is the same as it was 20 years ago, but I’m sure a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the other stuff is totally different, so I’m gonna have to like relearn the entire process and Just like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is why people buy new computers when they don’t have to because that’s honestly an idea
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that if this computer was a little bit older I Would probably strongly consider this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco site and if there was an easy way to like trade it in somewhere I would probably strongly consider that idea, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not and it’s not and so after that after that I’ll figure out like oh How the heck do I do
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s probably easier than it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then how do I put on like all the drivers and everything? I don’t want it. Who wants to deal with that? Who has time for
⏹️ ▶️ John that? But I say if you, if you just reinstall windows, you won’t have to reinstall the drivers. Then they’ll still be there.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, I doubt that very much, but I don’t know. I mean, I’m probably going to have to like find some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like me of today, like, like teenage me who like people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I used to guess what? That’s Adam. I know. No, like people used to pay me like a hundred bucks to reinstall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco windows on their PCs. Like, you know, adults would like when I was in high school, because like and now I understand why Adam will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably give you the family right yeah right now but now I totally understand why like if if I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could hire some kid to come here and just do this for me and it would work for a hundred bucks I would totally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do that because I do it that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John would save me a whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco day all right come on
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean travel expenses or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll pay the ferry that’s that’s it You’re on your own for gas.
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Printer bloodbaths
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, we should probably start the show. And let’s do that with some follow-up as we are contractually obligated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do. John Sambacos has a picture for us with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey regard to their printer. And oh my gosh, this is
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes, this is his HP PhotoSmart 3100 Dexter
⏹️ ▶️ John Murder Room version. This is an inkjet printer. Uh, we will put a link to the tweet and maybe Marco can make this chapter
⏹️ ▶️ John art or maybe not. You never know until you look,
⏹️ ▶️ John go look at the chapter art. Um, if your podcast player doesn’t support chapter art, uh, try using overcast because
⏹️ ▶️ John it does. Um, yeah, uh, inkjet printers are a mess inside, but turns out
⏹️ ▶️ John Richard Smith has a picture of the inside of his printer and it happens to be the printer that Marco loves so much is HBM 553,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, inkjet color, inkjet, whatever. And it’s a disaster inside there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too. It’s a laser. It’s a color laser. It’s massive. Amazing how can you think that’s an inkjet?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I’m saying look at the picture.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I saw I saw It’s a mess. There’s a little bit of magenta in the area
⏹️ ▶️ John look inside a printer and it looks like you know an ink murder room How does a paper
⏹️ ▶️ John pass through this and not come out streaked with every color under the rainbow? But apparently it does probably the paper path
⏹️ ▶️ John is clean, but everything else is just just destroyed.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh yeah, those were slightly traumatizing.
LG 5K service video
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And speaking of traumatizing, let’s see who this was. This is Brian Almeida tweeted at me earlier
⏹️ ▶️ Casey today. And apparently there’s a YouTube channel, what is this called? Northridge
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fix. And I believe this is a repair shop in Northridge, California. And the proprietor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will repair things and do videos showing him repairing it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And today, or actually, yes, I think it was literally today, the proprietor repaired,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guess what? a broken USB-C connection on an LG UltraFine 5K monitor.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mine works fine. What are you talking about? You must be wrong. These always work.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyway, so the monitor does not make an appearance, but the motherboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey does. And in the span of about 15 video minutes, this gentleman, and I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey found this fascinating because my electronics experience was a little bit in college
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then screwing around with Raspberry Pi, what was it, two years ago now? And so I understand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the general principles behind what’s going on, but if you had asked me to do any of these things, it would have been a disaster.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyways, he like, you know, repairs this connection, including like, you know, removing some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey solder, applying new solder, fixing some lines on the PCB. Like it’s very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey intricate and very interesting. And in the span of 15 minutes, this guy gets this motherboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good as new. Meanwhile, my LG 5K arrived at LG’s repair center in city of industry,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey California, on the 22nd of December, and I have heard precisely d*** about it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey since then. And I am getting more and more perturbed by it. So there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that. So that’s my LG update for the day.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco LG always has the best service, Casey. This is totally an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, definitely an anomaly, for sure.
⏹️ ▶️ John This video shows the kind of repair that Apple does not allow or like to do, which means changing
⏹️ ▶️ John components on the circuit board by re-soldering them or doing whatever. Apple’s solution is always
⏹️ ▶️ John new circuit board, fresh new circuit board, everything new. Because this type of repair, inevitably things will corrode
⏹️ ▶️ John later and blah, blah, blah. If you’ve ever, I’m looking at this video, if you’ve ever seen,
⏹️ ▶️ John what’s his name? Lewis Rossman, the guy who was talking about in that right to repair thing. He
⏹️ ▶️ John has a similar channel where he shows similar repairs. Only he’s got like, the
⏹️ ▶️ John amount that this is zoomed in, I think his is zoomed in maybe two to three times as much for even tinier
⏹️ ▶️ John And he’s got these little tiny, tiny soldering iron needle-y
⏹️ ▶️ John things that look huge in the video, but in reality are these tiny. Because the smaller the components, the harder
⏹️ ▶️ John this becomes. So this looks like within the realm that a human might be able to accomplish it. But sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John when Rossman does things, I’m like, how far are you zoomed in? It’s like doing microsurgery, where
⏹️ ▶️ John the tiny tip of the hypodermic needle fills the entire screen as if it’s just like a tree trunk.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So yeah, so it was interesting and also depressing to see this. So thank you to Brian.
Microsoft + Activision Blizzard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, uh, breaking yesterday, I believe it was, uh, Microsoft has decided
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to acquire Activision Blizzard for almost $70 billion.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So you might know, you might’ve heard of Activision for a variety of reasons, mostly their games, but,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey um, lately you might’ve heard about them because of the apparent frat house that is their corporate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey culture. And so they, Microsoft got them at a steal. They were worth like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over a hundred billion, I think, like a year ago. And now they have acquired Activision Blizzard,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or are about to acquire Activision Blizzard. And it seems like they’re saying without saying they’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clean house of, at the very least, the CEO. I think it’s Bobby Kotick or something like that. And potentially
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more of senior management at Activision, which seems like a reasonable course of action.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so the numbers here are really big. Someone, John Ehrlichman, tweeted a list of
⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft’s biggest acquisitions. Number one is this one, the Activision Blizzard, for $70-ish
⏹️ ▶️ John billion. Some places, LinkedIn, I mean, this is like a list of companies you forgot Microsoft bought.
⏹️ ▶️ John Second is LinkedIn. They bought them. That was 26 billion. So like less than half the size.
⏹️ ▶️ John Nuance, the speech recognition company, they used to do like Dragon Dictate, I think, but
⏹️ ▶️ John they licensed their speech engine to tons of people. That was 20 billion. Skype was 8 billion. Zenimax, which no one
⏹️ ▶️ John has ever heard of, but I think we talked about on the show, was 7 billion. That Zenimax owned, bought id Software,
⏹️ ▶️ John Doomquake, all that things, and they own a bunch of other stuff as well. Microsoft bought GitHub. I’m not sure if people
⏹️ ▶️ John remember that, but they did. That was also seven and a half billion. Nokia, I remember that.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, too much. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. Yeah, 7.2 billion. AQuantive, I don’t even know what the hell that is. 6.3 billion.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then Minecraft for 2.5 billion. So Microsoft has purchased a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John things, but this Activision Blizzard thing is big. If
⏹️ ▶️ John you think about what they’re buying, like I liked reading the articles about it because they would have to, they’re writing
⏹️ ▶️ John an article for a general audience that doesn’t know who Activision Blizzard is. So they have to say, you don’t know the name
⏹️ ▶️ John of this company, kind of like me with a quantitative, but here are the things they own that you might have heard of. So, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the Wall Street Journal listed in their article had said that they’re getting
⏹️ ▶️ John a stable of popular game franchises, including Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Candy Crush. So there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John three choices from the very large catalog they’re getting. People have probably heard of Call of Duty, maybe World of Warcraft,
⏹️ ▶️ John probably Candy Crush. If you haven’t heard of the other two, you probably heard of Candy Crush. but Activision
⏹️ ▶️ John Blizzard, as the weird name implies, is a huge conglomeration of things. Blizzard used to be its own company,
⏹️ ▶️ John Activision used to be a game company, then a game publisher, and Activision bought tons of things, and eventually they bought
⏹️ ▶️ John Blizzard, and they just got bigger and bigger, and they had more and more IP, and then Microsoft gobbled them all up.
⏹️ ▶️ John And a lot of people were comparing this to like, when Disney went and bought all the things,
⏹️ ▶️ John Disney bought Star Wars, then they bought Marvel, and of course they have all the Disney stuff. And it’s like, wow, Disney
⏹️ ▶️ John owns everything. That’s why Disney Plus can be a streaming service that has all the things. Like, these are not small franchises.
⏹️ ▶️ John Disney bought Star Wars for, what was it, four billion? I don’t remember. I think they bought Marvel for also
⏹️ ▶️ John four billion. I may be getting the specific numbers wrong, but those are mid-single-digit
⏹️ ▶️ John billions for Star Wars and all of Marvel.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they bought this game company for 70 billion. I mean, you always hear, like, games are bigger than movies,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is true, But that should give you some idea of what, how,
⏹️ ▶️ John how much, what they bought was worth. They didn’t just buy Star Wars. They didn’t just buy Marvel. They bought tons of extremely lucrative
⏹️ ▶️ John franchises and customers they bought because people have been playing World of Warcraft for what, is it multiple
⏹️ ▶️ John decades now? At least one and a half decades or something. Those are subscribers who pay every month to play
⏹️ ▶️ John a game. There’s a bunch of other games that are like that. And then all these other important franchises that make tons and tons of money.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not to mention, you know, future games that could be made by the various game
⏹️ ▶️ John development studios that are within Activision Blizzard. So it is a huge purchase.
⏹️ ▶️ John The Wall Street Journal article said that this makes, this would make Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ John the world’s third largest gaming company. Don’t look at the notes. Try to guess what the
⏹️ ▶️ John number one and two are without looking if you didn’t already read it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh gosh, I did not read it and I don’t have the faintest idea.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m gonna say number two is probably Nintendo.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is Electronic Arts still a thing?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Believe so. Number one, probably EA, and then number two, Nintendo?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you gotta think like, Strategory, come on.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I mean, you’d probably know the name of the company.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, number two, Tencent.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh, of course.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco China’s Tencent. That makes sense, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John thing you have to remember is that mobile gaming is the biggest part of gaming.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Right, right. Which we don’t think about
⏹️ ▶️ John when we think of gaming. And number one, and this is kind of bogus, Number one, Sony. Really?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but here’s, yeah, there was the trick question, right? Would make it the third largest
⏹️ ▶️ John gaming company by revenue. Yeah, Sony has a lot of revenue, but not all of that’s from video
⏹️ ▶️ John games. I mean, Sony makes other things besides video games. So I think that’s a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ John bogus. But that’s why everyone is sort of like feeling the ground shake, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John the sort of hardcore gamers who don’t maybe care that much about mobile, is because now Microsoft,
⏹️ ▶️ John who, as you might know, has multiple gaming platforms, PC gaming, which basically means
⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft PC gaming and not so much Linux gaming, and of course, Xbox.
⏹️ ▶️ John And their competitors are on the console side are Sony and Nintendo. Nintendo is the tiniest drop in the bucket
⏹️ ▶️ John you could possibly imagine that are not on this list. But now,
⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft owns tons and tons of IP, as they say, tons and tons of franchises,
⏹️ ▶️ John many of which, I would say most of which, used to be available on platforms other than
⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft’s, right? So you could buy many of the games made by Activision Blizzard,
⏹️ ▶️ John you could buy them for PlayStation. And occasionally, you could buy them for Nintendo consoles when they felt like throwing some shovelware of last
⏹️ ▶️ John platform, or they just want to cash in on the Switch craze or whatever. So if you’re a gamer
⏹️ ▶️ John and you look at this, you’re like, oh, no, I don’t currently have an Xbox. I have a PlayStation
⏹️ ▶️ John or a Switch or whatever. Will I be able to play the next version of insert my favorite game
⏹️ ▶️ John here now that Microsoft owns it. Because historically, one thing that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Especially console makers have done is when they buy a franchise or a developer or a publisher
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, the next version of that game will only be for their platform will be exclusive to their platform. That’s the point
⏹️ ▶️ John of buying them. You know, I will buy rare and the next version of Perfect Dark will not be on Nintendo platforms.
⏹️ ▶️ John It will only be on consoles and it will stink and everyone will be sad.
⏹️ ▶️ John like Microsoft does own rare, by the way. That, you know, it was
⏹️ ▶️ John the old move. It’s like I bought the franchise and now it’s only going to be in our platforms. That’s another reason for you to buy our thing. So if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John a gamer and you don’t have an Xbox platform, it’d be kind of sad. But even if you’re not a hardcore gamer,
⏹️ ▶️ John you look at these numbers, you’re like, is it really healthy for a company that itself has
⏹️ ▶️ John gaming platforms, you know, PC gaming and the Xbox gaming platform to also
⏹️ ▶️ John own the so many of the most popular game franchises.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, in the entertainment world, like Disney owns everything and that’s terrible and makes us sad and really controls
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of what gets made. But Disney doesn’t own, you know, 40% of the
⏹️ ▶️ John movie theaters. Not that this is particularly a great analogy here, but I’m trying. They don’t they don’t own the means to
⏹️ ▶️ John watch those things, right? They they own the IP to make the movies, but you
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have to buy a special Disney console to watch the movies. If they owned both, all the TVs and DVD
⏹️ ▶️ John players, or half the TVs and DVD players in movie theaters, and also all of the
⏹️ ▶️ John franchises that constitute the movies, that would be kind of upsetting. So I look at this,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I know there’s not anything, well, I don’t think there’s anything particularly to stop it from antitrust or whatever, because
⏹️ ▶️ John in the grand scheme of things, mobile is still bigger, and you can’t really slice and dice the market and say, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not a big deal because the gaming market’s so big, and we You can’t say it’s just, I only care about the console gaming market.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’d have to really get narrow. It’s kind of like as I say all the time, Oh, you know, Honda has a monopoly
⏹️ ▶️ John on Honda cars. Well, they do, but like that’s too, you’re slicing the market too narrowly
⏹️ ▶️ John or Apple has a monopoly on Apple computers. Yeah, but that’s stupid. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John so if you look at the entire world of gaming, Microsoft is still small, but if
⏹️ ▶️ John you look at the world of console gaming, they look a little bit bigger. And what I mean, look at mainly look
⏹️ ▶️ John at is of Microsoft’s competitors, particularly on the console platform. How
⏹️ ▶️ John do their competitors look compared to them in terms of stable of IP that they own? And nobody comes close.
⏹️ ▶️ John Nintendo arguably comes the closest just because they’re all they made all their own IP, like the
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff that makes Nintendo Nintendo Nintendo made. But it’s not a lot of it. Like there’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John as many franchises as Microsoft owns. Sony has also bought tons of studios and built
⏹️ ▶️ John up its IP catalog through acquisitions, but it has fallen way behind Microsoft in terms of
⏹️ ▶️ John gobbling up other things in the industry. So I look at this and I get a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ John frightened, but the thing that makes me feel a little bit better is the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s usually safe to bet on is when a big company buys a smaller company they screw it up.
⏹️ ▶️ John When a company buys some IP they mess it up in some way. Right? basically the
⏹️ ▶️ John shelf life of IP, especially for video games, is not guaranteed. So you
⏹️ ▶️ John buy Call of Duty. You’re like, great, we’ll be minting money from Call of Duty for the next 20
⏹️ ▶️ John years. You won’t if you make bad games. To give an example, I don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ John to crap on this, but like, Bungie made Halo and then split from Microsoft. But Microsoft kept
⏹️ ▶️ John Halo. It’s like, great, well, we have the IP. We don’t need those stinky Bungie people. We’ve got the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Halo IP. We can continue
⏹️ ▶️ John to make Halo games without them. And they did continue to make Halo games without them. And not that they were bad,
⏹️ ▶️ John and in particular Halo Infinite is much better than the recent ones, but they never recaptured
⏹️ ▶️ John the magic of the original Bungie-made series of three or four Halo games, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John IP is like that. You can’t just say, well, because we own it, we’re going to do a great job of it. It’s kind of the
⏹️ ▶️ John inverse of the Marvel effect, right? Marvel IP was owned and optioned by various
⏹️ ▶️ John people at various times for years and years, is nobody can make anything out of it. And they sold it for a song
⏹️ ▶️ John to, you know, a company that said, well, actually we are going to make good movies with Marvel material, and we’re going to start
⏹️ ▶️ John with Iron Man. And they’d be like, who? It’s like, just trust me, it’ll be good. They took IP that
⏹️ ▶️ John no one could do anything with and made something good out of it. It’s equally likely, probably more likely,
⏹️ ▶️ John to take IP that people have made amazing things with and make some duds. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s hard to, like just owning the IP doesn’t mean you can actually do the thing. And particularly in creative fields, can you make a good game?
⏹️ ▶️ John Can you make a good movie? You know, if you own the characters, fine, that’s a start and you get
⏹️ ▶️ John people in seats. But over the course of many, many years, if you don’t make good games
⏹️ ▶️ John based on these franchises, people will leave you behind. So, you know, that’s why it’s important they didn’t just buy the IP,
⏹️ ▶️ John they also bought the studios that made them and the people that made them and so on and so forth. But even within that, I feel like in the
⏹️ ▶️ John games world, there are very few, with the exception again, possibly of Nintendo stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ John very few sort of franchises that have stood the test of
⏹️ ▶️ John time and not sort of withered and been replaced by other franchises. And Nintendo
⏹️ ▶️ John has done it by basically, yeah, it’s Mario and all the games, but like what
⏹️ ▶️ John does, you know, Mario Galaxy have in common with the original Super Mario Brothers in terms of game design and gameplay?
⏹️ ▶️ John very, very little. You think, oh, he’s a guy, he’s a plumber, he jumps around. But it’s, Nintendo has
⏹️ ▶️ John had to reinvent its franchises over and over and over again to remain relevant and that is extremely
⏹️ ▶️ John difficult to do. So, you know, can Call of Duty make the leap to VR in 2075? I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know. I mean, I think, I feel like it’ll just be defunct and be replaced by other franchises. So I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of rooting for this ploy not to work as well as it has for
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe arguably Disney and for Microsoft to not become the
⏹️ ▶️ John overwhelmingly dominant force in console gaming because I’m a console gamer and I don’t want Microsoft to have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know this is interesting. I’m, I don’t know, I’m actually, because I’m not much of a gamer,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey almost most interested to see if the cultural changes that Microsoft is hinting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are coming will actually do arrive and if they actually do make a difference. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also interesting for me because my little brother actually used to work there until this past summer, I believe. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so it’s kind of fascinating watching from the outside. And I spoke with him very briefly earlier today.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I don’t think he had really had time to talk to his former coworkers at that point. But it’s interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to watch, to say the least.
⏹️ ▶️ John Some people look at the story and think this shows the consequences for screwing up your company by having a terrible culture that is
⏹️ ▶️ John abusive and disrespectful to your employees and sexist and filled with harassment and all that
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff. Like, ah, see, it tanked the value of the company. And then someone swooped in and bought them out. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ John And everyone seems pretty sure that despite like the announcements today or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John that once the acquisition goes through, I mean, this would be true even if there wasn’t a terrible culture at
⏹️ ▶️ John Activision. In general, when a company buys you because you, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John your stock price was slammed and you’re doing really poorly and someone swoops in and buys you, they’re not going to keep the people
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco who are running
⏹️ ▶️ John their company around. They’re going to replace them all with their people because you suck. That’s why we bought you.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, so that was going to happen no matter what. But then on top of that, it’s like, also, these are all terrible people.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the reason their stock price tank was because these are all terrible people. We found out about it. I’m pretty sure
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re going to clean house for multiple reasons here and hopefully get rid of most of the bad people.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s difficult to do that, though. But everything I’ve heard, Microsoft’s culture is way, way better
⏹️ ▶️ John than Activision. I mean, it’s low bar, right? Yeah, I think it’s terrible. Microsoft culture is better. So I have some
⏹️ ▶️ John faith that they’re going to, like I said, they’re going to clean house for reasons nothing to do with culture just because that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John what that’s what you do when you when you gobble someone up and you put your own people in charge, but hopefully they will find
⏹️ ▶️ John and root out all of the very worst people in addition to putting
⏹️ ▶️ John all of their good people in charge of things. And that should hopefully help because I
⏹️ ▶️ John feel like if they can make great games under these terrible conditions they can make even better games under conditions that are
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iMessage vs. green bubbles
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, so moving right along. Hey, what’s up with those green bubbles?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. Do any of your conversations with the green bubbles work anymore? I mean, that was one of your longstanding complaints.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ah, you know, it’s funny you say that because it just kind of got fixed magically months and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey months and months ago. And then just like in the last month, either Aaron or I, I forget
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which one, lost just a message or two. And I almost was in such a big rage that I flipped
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my entire home upside down. And the only reason I didn’t was because I was saving that moment for the LG 5K,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is still broken. But nevertheless, now, if you recall, basically all of Aaron’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey family, some of whom are still speaking to us at this point, are on Android
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phones. And it’s been frustrating, to say the least.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I have been petitioning very strongly for them to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to buy iPhones in part because I am so annoyed by MMS group
⏹️ ▶️ Casey chats, but also because they’re constantly complaining. It’s the standard thing, right? Where the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people with the PCs and the Android phones need all the tech support. And I have told
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of them in no uncertain terms, if you want to get help on that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s not me because I don’t run PCs. I don’t have Android phones. You’re going to have to ask somebody else.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that’s mostly worked okay. But anyway, I digress. So yeah, so if you live in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the blessed life where you don’t have to interact with Android people,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this isn’t really a thing. But for those of us who lived the cursed life of a mixed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey OS world, it is annoying, the green bubbles. But apparently, if you believe the Wall
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Street Journal, the green bubbles are an evil lock-in that Apple is sitting there, Mr. Burns style,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, tenting their fingers and cackling all the way to the bank.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I mean, there’s the cultural aspect of like, oh, green bubble means you have a less expensive phone,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re poor, like whatever. Like the whole sort of class system of fancy iPhones versus
⏹️ ▶️ John non-fancy green bubbles things, which you can imagine teens certainly going in for because that’s what being a teenager
⏹️ ▶️ John is all about, whether it’s your Reebok shoes or your T-shirt with the
⏹️ ▶️ John alligator on it. I’m using bad references from the 80s, but anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We sound like Mr. Burns trying to describe what the young people are doing these days.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John This is the thing that I did as a kid. We’re so far
⏹️ ▶️ John from this. I’m describing it as we would have described it in the 80s, making fun of older
⏹️ ▶️ John people who didn’t know what an IZOD shirt was.
⏹️ ▶️ John that is definitely a thing, but that, and that does affect the numbers you see of like how many teenagers
⏹️ ▶️ John have an iPhone and how many teachers want an iPhone. But it’s like, well, how many teenagers want the expensive fancy thing? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s good that Apple has that image because you want to be cool with the teens because they eventually become
⏹️ ▶️ John adults and spend money on things. But that’s not really the issue. The issue here is what Casey was talking about, even
⏹️ ▶️ John though he was kind of jokingly talking about the class stuff as well, is that if you’re trying to have
⏹️ ▶️ John a conversation, like a group conversation using your phone, bugs make
⏹️ ▶️ John that difficult, where someone will reply and you won’t see their reply, or half the people will see their reply, or you’ll say
⏹️ ▶️ John something and they won’t see what you said. Like the basic function of having a group conversation is impaired
⏹️ ▶️ John by poor interoperability between iMessage, which is Apple’s service for messaging,
⏹️ ▶️ John And SMS, which is the old cell phone messaging service back from before smartphones
⏹️ ▶️ John even, right? And that bad interoperability
⏹️ ▶️ John is what makes the experience bad. And that leads people to do things like, oh, everything would work better if everyone
⏹️ ▶️ John used the same messaging service. And if it’s a majority of people have iPhones and there’s one or two people
⏹️ ▶️ John who don’t have iPhones, the solution is to badger those people and say, just get an iPhone so we can have a productive conversation
⏹️ ▶️ John where everybody sees everybody’s other messages and we don’t miss things, things don’t get screwed up.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that is a real phenomenon. And this is, started a broader conversation about RCS,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is like, put a link to it in here somewhere. What is it, Rich Communication Service? It’s like the successor to SMS,
⏹️ ▶️ John as in a cell phone messaging service that has more feature rich than SMS,
⏹️ ▶️ John that is more modern, that is not sort of, doesn’t have its origins in like sideband,
⏹️ ▶️ John analog cell radio stuff that SMS came from. But importantly,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s still like a cell phone type thing where your phone number is your identity and all that other stuff. And lots of other
⏹️ ▶️ John companies have been getting on Apple saying, hey, Apple, you should support RCS because if you don’t, you’re showing that you’re using
⏹️ ▶️ John iMessage for lock-in for your messaging service or whatever. And
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s some truth to that, that like, it would be good, well, start with Casey’s
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. It would be good if SMS and iMessage worked
⏹️ ▶️ John better together, together as in you could have productive conversations and not miss your messages like I don’t see who would disagree
⏹️ ▶️ John with that I don’t think Apple is intentionally sabotaging I think it’s probably a hard problem but
⏹️ ▶️ John if you pretend to support it like Casey can in theory have a group conversation
⏹️ ▶️ John with Android phones and iPhones it should work right like it just should otherwise why have
⏹️ ▶️ John the feature you know is it supposed to work or is it just not supposed to work and it’s like a decoy or something right
⏹️ ▶️ John and then RCS is similar. If RCS ever becomes a thing and it
⏹️ ▶️ John becomes a feature that carriers and again I’m mostly just talking about the US here we’ll get to all your other messaging things in a second
⏹️ ▶️ John and most carriers support RCS Apple should probably support it so that you can
⏹️ ▶️ John have a conversation maybe even a group conversation with multiple people some of whom are using RCS and some of whom are
⏹️ ▶️ John using iMessage just like you can have one today with people who are using iMessage and people using SMS. Seems like
⏹️ ▶️ John a reasonable thing to do and by the way it should work all the time, and people should get all the messages.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think that’s particularly controversial, but I think what most people are mad about is the idea of
⏹️ ▶️ John message platform lock-in, which is funny to me because iMessage has one
⏹️ ▶️ John of the weakest message platform lock-ins. Who is it?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Mario, Marco, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John you heard this on, what? Instratechery, or was it Dithering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Production Hickory,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. Yeah, talking about this, I think a lot of people have, in talking about larger conversation,
⏹️ ▶️ John have hit on the real issue here, which is what messaging service is
⏹️ ▶️ John popular where you live and why? In the US, iMessage is very popular.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you see someone on a cell phone sending tech messages, the chances that it’s, especially if they’re using an
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone, the chance that it’s iMessage is a pretty darn high. Elsewhere in the world, different services have won. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John remember the exact affiliations, but I’ll try. I think Japan is Line is the most popular service.
⏹️ ▶️ John WeChat is China, right? A lot of Europe is WhatsApp. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John sure there are different ones in other countries. And it’s like, how did that come to be?
⏹️ ▶️ John What is it about these services that make them so dominant in these different places?
⏹️ ▶️ John And why is it different? Why isn’t iChat popular across the whole world? Why isn’t WhatsApp popular across the whole world?
⏹️ ▶️ John Why are these regionalities, right? And I think what it highlights is
⏹️ ▶️ John how little the messaging service itself has to do with
⏹️ ▶️ John what everybody uses. It’s just basically like who got critical mass first.
⏹️ ▶️ John And a lot of things in the computing world are like that. Like why is Facebook popular? Why was MySpace
⏹️ ▶️ John popular? Why was AOL popular? There’s lots of legit reasons like, hey, well, send out free CDs and here’s this business study showing
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s great. But the whole point is, if you’re in the right place in the right time and make reasonable enough
⏹️ ▶️ John moves, you can get critical mass for things like this that have network effects. Where,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, Facebook is only useful if your friends are also on Facebook. A messaging app like AIM is only useful
⏹️ ▶️ John if your friends are also on AIM. And if you can get that critical mass of everyone
⏹️ ▶️ John I know is on this thing, it snowballs and it becomes very difficult to go someplace else because you
⏹️ ▶️ John need a huge meteor or boulder or explosion or something to kick people off of one and put them
⏹️ ▶️ John onto another. It’s very hard to dislodge people if everybody is there. So
⏹️ ▶️ John why is Line in Japan? Because they got critical mass first. Why is WhatsApp in these European countries?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because they got critical mass first. And there are things like SMS used to cost money there and less money here and so on and so forth. The whole
⏹️ ▶️ John point is whatever got critical mass, that inertia is very difficult to overcome. And
⏹️ ▶️ John you need something big to knock it out. But what it also means is there’s nothing specifically
⏹️ ▶️ John about Line versus WhatsApp that makes one better than
⏹️ ▶️ John the other in terms of a messaging service. Maybe there’s better cultural fits in terms of how they marketed themselves. And of course there are economic
⏹️ ▶️ John ones of what was free versus what charged money and how much did carriers charge for things and so on and so forth, but not the specific
⏹️ ▶️ John service. And related to that, just before we came on the air, I read a
⏹️ ▶️ John Jason Snell article on Macworld that talks about one point that I was gonna make on the show was that iMessage is crappy.
⏹️ ▶️ John We all know this, right? It’s not a good messaging service. We already pointed out how it doesn’t interoperate
⏹️ ▶️ John with SMS. It has very few features compared to other services. Even just within iMessage,
⏹️ ▶️ John there can be weird bugs and stuff, And it doesn’t change much. Every year iMessage doesn’t get that much better.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, they tried to do the iMessage app store and that didn’t really go anywhere. But lots of things that are in iMessage
⏹️ ▶️ John have been the same as they have been for ages. The search is still bad. The way they do replies is still weird.
⏹️ ▶️ John Jason pointed out like the tap back feature where you can put different reactions. It’s been the same like five or six
⏹️ ▶️ John reactions for the entire life of that feature. It’s not a product that they’re iterating on and making better and
⏹️ ▶️ John better all the time. So if you could say, okay, everybody’s kicked off all their messaging services.
⏹️ ▶️ John None of your friends are any messaging service. Let’s start from a level playing field and let’s all
⏹️ ▶️ John decide what messaging service we should get on. And by the way, we erased your memory so you don’t remember iMessage, so you can’t do that at Abbott. And
⏹️ ▶️ John you look at the messaging services based on who has the nicest app, who has the most features, like all that other stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John And price is most taken advantage because these are all these days internet powered things. I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ John iMessage would do as well as it does. It was a default messaging app on iPhones and iPhone became popular and that’s why iMessage is popular
⏹️ ▶️ John but not because it’s a good message service. It’s terrible, right? And so
⏹️ ▶️ John this whole conversation about like, oh, iMessage is giving you lock in, everything with network effects
⏹️ ▶️ John gives you lock in. And it always feels terrible. It’s like, why is everybody doing X when Y is better than
⏹️ ▶️ John X? It’s like, well, it’s too late. Everybody’s doing X and it’s a social thing. And so unless you have some way to get everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John off of X and onto Y, like say X goes out of business or
⏹️ ▶️ John X is overwhelmed with spam, or it’s very difficult. I’m trying to think of like, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like conversation I have with Merlin, what would get people off Facebook? What would get people off of their messages
⏹️ ▶️ John and servers of choice? If everyone you know is on WhatsApp, what gets you off of WhatsApp? What gets you and everyone you know off
⏹️ ▶️ John of WhatsApp? And it’s very difficult. You know, we haven’t been able to get everybody off of Facebook,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I don’t think you’re gonna get everybody who’s on iMessage off of iMessage. That’s why I feel it’s imperative that if you’re going to do
⏹️ ▶️ John cross-protocol support, that you make it actually work. And if you’re not gonna do cross-protocol support, then just
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t do it at all, and let your message, you know, make your own little bubbles in the world.
⏹️ ▶️ John So all this is to say is that I guess Apple should probably implement RCS, but it’s not going to really
⏹️ ▶️ John help anything. Oh, and by the way, RCS is, you know, cause it’s a carrier thing, it’s kind of swimming against the tide where
⏹️ ▶️ John modern messaging servers say, we’ll use the internet communicate, which is a great idea because the internet is cool.
⏹️ ▶️ John But having your identity be your phone number, that’s really crappy. I mean, Apple, speaking
⏹️ ▶️ John of half-hearted things Apple did, can I send SMSs from my Mac?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, kind of, through your phone because you need a phone number. Well, can I
⏹️ ▶️ John a conversation with blue and green bubbles on my Mac? Sort of, with a little help from your
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco phone or a relay that
⏹️ ▶️ John converts the, it’s like, like if you use the internet, anything connected to the internet can do it. If
⏹️ ▶️ John you use your phone number, there has to be a cell phone or a phone number somewhere involved. And in that respect,
⏹️ ▶️ John RCS is sort of a retrograde type of service where it’s not forward looking. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John forward looking services are all internet based. And so although we’ll probably have to support RCS because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s better than SMS and it’s not as technically backwards, if you’re looking for a new service for the entire world
⏹️ ▶️ John to communicate with each other on, RCS is not it. It’s got to be something on the internet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. I don’t see Apple being willing to implement RCS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unless they can explain or explain away the lack of end-to-end encryption because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my limited understanding of RCS, I might have this wrong, is I think Google layered on like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a superset or something of RCS or their own like custom, like Apple does with Bluetooth
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and has their own custom stuff writing on top of like traditional Bluetooth. Well, I guess Google, I think, had put their
⏹️ ▶️ Casey own custom stuff on top of RCS so they could get end-to-end encrypted messages. And I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see Apple being able to, or perhaps willing to, implement RCS unless
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they have a good privacy story. Because otherwise it’s like, well, why are you banging
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this privacy drum over there, but then you totally throw it out the window over here? And with SMS
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and MMS, I mean, it’s like table stakes, at least here in America, that you have to support those
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things. Otherwise, you basically don’t have a functioning cellular phone. But I know it’s different the rest of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the world. But for here, you have to have it. But to add something that is,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was going to say inherently dangerous, but that’s a bit overblown, that is certainly less secure than
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple would like. It seems like it would be disingenuous for them to do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, SMS already doesn’t have any security, so this would be just a replacement for SMS. Like, I don’t think Apple is raring to go
⏹️ ▶️ John on this. I think if other people implement RCS and it becomes an issue where it’s like, hey, everyone else is doing it to Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John then Apple should do it too. But I don’t think Apple has to lead here or anything. Like, you mentioned SMS, like the reason you have to have
⏹️ ▶️ John it to have a functioning cell phone And just to give one example, the current use of SMS for two-factor, which
⏹️ ▶️ John itself has its own problems, but it is still a common practice. And the whole point of that being a second factor is
⏹️ ▶️ John that it’s a phone number, right? And it was sent through SMS because that is sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of the base level, lowest common denominator thing that cell phones can understand.
⏹️ ▶️ John Could people send two-factor through using RCS? They could, but you have to get
⏹️ ▶️ John to a point where there is a reasonable chance that that’s going to work.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think there are probably any cell phones that people are still using that can’t do SMS,
⏹️ ▶️ John but RCS is nowhere, right? So-
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think that’s true. I think it’s implemented in lots of places, isn’t it? Maybe I have this all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wrong, but I could swear that it’s been implemented certainly on a lot of carriers. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thought like Android has had it for many more years than I had thought. I thought it was just coming out now. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it’s been there for like four or five years.
⏹️ ▶️ John The standard is certainly very old, but I think everybody still sends two-factor stuff using plain old SMS
⏹️ ▶️ John and not RCS just because it’s guaranteed to be there. At the minimum, the billions of iPhones in the world
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t get it. And so if you send it via RCS and someone has an iPhone, they can’t log into your
⏹️ ▶️ John two-factor thing. That seems like a big deal. Like that’s why they’re going to, you know. So anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John if RCS replaced it just because SMS is an ancient old standard and eventually SMS is gonna go away and RCS is gonna replace it, then
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, Apple has to do it because it’s the lowest common denominator. Same reason Apple, well, not the same reason I’ll do
⏹️ ▶️ John SMS because I messages know it exists. But like the same reason Apple continues to port support SMS, not because Apple loves
⏹️ ▶️ John SMS, it’s because if they took it away, their phone becomes significantly less functional for the users. If RCS ever
⏹️ ▶️ John gets to that point, then Apple will have to do it. And that’s I feel like that’s what I’m saying. Apple should do it
⏹️ ▶️ John probably before it becomes a problem, but only just before it becomes a problem for them. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John not sure it’s a problem right now. I don’t I’ve certainly never encountered some something in my
⏹️ ▶️ John life where my phone’s lack of RCS support has been a problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John But they should eventually implement it if like, don’t wait for it to be a problem and band dated,
⏹️ ▶️ John anticipated by a little bit and then implement it. And who knows, I hold out hope that RCS being
⏹️ ▶️ John a more modern protocol, Apple and implementing it in a more modern time, maybe with a more
⏹️ ▶️ John modern language, even there is a higher chance that it will the interoperability between iMessage and RCS
⏹️ ▶️ John will work better than the interoperability between SMS and iMessage. And hey, that’s great for Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ John They just never have to fix those bugs. They can just let it sail off into the sunset and replace it with the
⏹️ ▶️ John new, better, actually functional RCS and iMessage interoperability.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If I may again take us on a small tangent, something that really drives me nuts about my group
⏹️ ▶️ Casey chats with, you know, one or more Android people is, and I’m sure many Americans
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have experienced this. If I’m in a group chat, like for example, Aaron and me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and my brother-in-law who’s an Android user and my sister-in-law who also has an iPhone, because of my brother-in-law whom
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I love dearly, the entire damn chat is all green bubbles because of that one Android phone. It makes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sense. And if I were to slip up, or let’s say if Aaron
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were to slip up and do a tap back on one of these messages, which I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would argue maybe shouldn’t even be allowed in the first place, but let’s leave that aside for a second. What
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will receive is Aaron Liss liked, and then like a quotation of the message that she
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco gave a thumbs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up to, which, okay, fine. I understand that, you know, when, when Aaron’s phone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is trying to verbalize for lack of a better word, or transmit her action
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to an Android phone, the best it can do is say Aaron Liss liked, and then repeat the message. Sure. Totally makes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sense. But on my phone, I have an iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Why is Apple not parsing Aaron Liss liked and then the exact message that she
⏹️ ▶️ Casey liked? Why is it not, why is messages not parsing this and throwing a thumbs up on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the message that she liked? Does, do you understand what I’m saying? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, well, I mean, you don’t want it to be parsing. What you want, the, the, what you want is sort of a dual rights thing where
⏹️ ▶️ John the, your phone sends the iMessage to the iMessage people and the SMS to the SMS SMS people, so you’re doing everything
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of like the native way. You
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey wouldn’t want it to be- Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m sure there would be no problems there, John, with no one source of truth.
⏹️ ▶️ John But what I’m saying is like the other way you’re describing is if an SMS comes in and the string
⏹️ ▶️ John is exactly one of these five strings interpreted as a tap back on the previous thing, and that
⏹️ ▶️ John is not a great way to go about things.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Because especially
⏹️ ▶️ John with localization and other stuff, like it’s weird. You don’t want to sort of like
⏹️ ▶️ John send text, interpret text that goes through SMS, certain text
⏹️ ▶️ John being special triggering commands to run. Probably not how you want to go. Even if it’s as simple
⏹️ ▶️ John as like, well, when I see that, I’ll interpret it as a thumb and display it that way. Not that SMS and iMessage aren’t cracked
⏹️ ▶️ John 10 different ways all the time anyway, but I probably wouldn’t choose to do that. But the way they do it, you can see it making
⏹️ ▶️ John sense. It’s like, and look, how will we interoperate? Oh, it’s easy, we’ll just convert everything into text. And they just
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t go the extra mile to say, but, you know, can we make it better for the iMessage users?
⏹️ ▶️ John And I guess the conspiracy theory is like, see, they made it look annoying. So the green bubble people would be shunned into getting an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so that’s, that’s the thing, right? Is that I totally understand that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Aaron’s phone, when she likes the message, you know, sounds good. I totally understand that her phone emits
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Aaron Liss liked sounds good. But where I start to be the conspiracy, conspiracy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey theorists with like the red yarn all over the Bolton board is when my phone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doesn’t take that and turn it into a thumbs up. And I understand what you guys are saying, but I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s got to be a way to make this somewhat reliable. Or you know what? Even if somebody literally typed the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey message, you know, Casey List likes such and such. And like if there was an errant
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thumb, like is that really the end of the earth?
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, if there was an errant thumb attributed to you because the client would then interpret it as
⏹️ ▶️ John you liking the thing, you’d need a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sure, but perhaps it would only do that if I’m the, like if I typed out KCList liked,
⏹️ ▶️ John I know, I mean, anyway. I mean, so there’s two angles. The product design one is
⏹️ ▶️ John doing it as text for everybody as a uniform experience, sort of adhering to a principle that you
⏹️ ▶️ John may have for the UI that everyone involved in group conversations sees the same thing, right? And so you may not like that,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s like, well, why do we have to get dumbed down and it gets back to that whole argument, but at least it’s a consistent experience. In theory,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, minus the bugs that we’re talking about, The whole point is we don’t get a consistent experience. But you can see the
⏹️ ▶️ John argument for the sort of simplicity of just saying, look, everybody in the group chat sees the same thing. We’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John giving special treatment to the Apple ones where they know how to do the tap backs and the other ones don’t, just so we’re all looking
⏹️ ▶️ John at the same stuff. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I could swear that I read recently, and I’m not gonna be able to dig up an article to justify or verify this, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I swear that Google is doing what I described. Oh yeah, no, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John saying like, I’m saying from a product design perspective, you could make the decision that everyone should see the same thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John even if only just so you know what they’re seeing, right? So because otherwise,
⏹️ ▶️ John how do you know what other people are seeing on their screen? If it looks good to you, maybe you don’t realize that it looks
⏹️ ▶️ John weird to them, whereas just doing this text everywhere shows it looks good to everybody. So there is an argument to be made for this sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John consistency, even though it’s lesser quality. But the other thing is, and it’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s just like, if
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s gonna prioritize features, they’re not gonna prioritize making really, really good
⏹️ ▶️ John integration with SMS just because they would prefer everyone just use iMessage. So why are we, you know, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not, it’s not like, you know, their mustache twisting, ha, it’s part of our dastardly
⏹️ ▶️ John plan, it’s just plain old prioritization. It’s like, what do we care more about? Like new feature
⏹️ ▶️ John X or making SMS and iMessage work together better. And clearly, they don’t care
⏹️ ▶️ John that much about making SMS, iMessage work together, even just basic functionality
⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of the messages go through and people see them. Like that has been a struggle. This is way down
⏹️ ▶️ John on the list. Like it’s just prioritization, sort of banality of it. It’s not even banality of evil. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John actually evil. It’s just like, look, we have to have priorities. And this is a pretty low one because
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple solution would be just use iMessage. It comes with your phone. Oh, but my friends don’t have iMessage. Oh, they should buy iPhones.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if they don’t, we try to interoperate too. And we do the best we can, but like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not gonna be a high priority. Like Apple is not going to, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John win people over by making that integration better. And that sounds evil to people. It’s like, see, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John intentionally making it bad. But I feel like there is a nuanced distinction between choosing your priorities
⏹️ ▶️ John based on what’s important to the company versus an evil plan to punish bad people
⏹️ ▶️ John with green bubbles. And even though they seem like they’re the same thing, I feel like it’s important
⏹️ ▶️ John to understand the distinction there, right? Even if there are like two or three people who are
⏹️ ▶️ John twisting their mustaches or rubbing their hands together saying, ha ha, this will really teach those Android users.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think it’s like corporate policy to do that. If you look at the leaked emails and everything,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it was a Eddy Q was pushing for iMessage to be on all platforms and other people said, why would we do that? It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John great platform lock-in. People use iPhones because they all have iMessage. And if we let them, if we let iMessage
⏹️ ▶️ John be everywhere, that removes the differentiator. And people think that’s evil. That’s what everybody does in business.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, why would we put Halo on the PlayStation? People buy an Xbox because it has Halo. Why would we put it
⏹️ ▶️ John everywhere? It’s like, see, you’re trying to lock people into the Xbox. Yeah, yeah, we’re trying to make
⏹️ ▶️ John the Xbox be the best selling cup. That’s business and it’s not a life or death thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s not like, I don’t think that’s particularly evil. And even then the argument was had with some
⏹️ ▶️ John high, big executives like Eddie Q arguing, it’s like, that’s all well and good, but we should make iMessage
⏹️ ▶️ John be everywhere, right? Because it would make us more successful, like bringing the iPod to Windows, right? That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John always the push and pull, especially in computer markets or whatever. Whereas like, should we try to be
⏹️ ▶️ John the standard for everything? Or should we try to be a really cool feature that makes you buy our product instead of
⏹️ ▶️ John theirs? And it’s not always easy to know when you should cross over that bridge. Like in hindsight, it’s easy. Like, so
⏹️ ▶️ John can you believe they didn’t want to put the iPod on windows? How dumb would have that been? Yeah, it’s easy in hindsight. But
⏹️ ▶️ John other decisions have gone the other way, and have also worked out. So you know, I’m not sure
⏹️ ▶️ John where I message is at this point. As I think they were saying on dithering, it may be too late
⏹️ ▶️ John to put I message everywhere. Speaking of that, it’s like, Oh, Apple can solve this problem by just putting iMessage on every single platform.
⏹️ ▶️ John Who the hell would want iMessage if you’re using something that has better features, which is basically anything that’s not iMessage
⏹️ ▶️ John like line, WhatsApp, probably WeChat, all those things are better chat clients than iMessage.
⏹️ ▶️ John They have more features, they’re more useful. They’re you know, maybe some of them are also crappy in ways
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple wouldn’t like in terms of being festoon with ads or spam or whatever. But in terms of feature set, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not even close. What I think about That is Slack. Slack is so much better at sending textual
⏹️ ▶️ John messages back and forth to people and having conversations and threads and reactions and inline previews
⏹️ ▶️ John and all the things you do. And that’s a fricking web view. And it’s so much better than iMessage. It’s not even
⏹️ ▶️ John funny. I would use Slack as my instant messaging app if that was an option. But of course,
⏹️ ▶️ John to do that, I would have to, you know, send the giant asteroid that would knock everybody I know
⏹️ ▶️ John off of iMessage and onto some hypothetical iMessage replacement that has the same features as Slack. right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, oh, and I guess the other factor that we need to throw in here is who owns the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, a private company owning something like Facebook, owning WhatsApp, uh, may
⏹️ ▶️ John be a factor in some people’s decisions and it certainly is in mine. Not enough to change who goes
⏹️ ▶️ John where, cause network effects, you know, don’t care about that. But I would prefer
⏹️ ▶️ John not to switch from iMessage to a system owned by a company that I trust less than Apple. That
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t mean that’s what’s keeping people on iMessage at all, But me personally, I don’t like the idea of switching
⏹️ ▶️ John to a better, more full featured chat client that happens to be owned by Facebook. So I really hope that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I almost wonder like how much any of this like, you know, giving people new options at this point, I wonder
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how much that even matters because it seems like most people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t have value. Like you were just you were saying, John, like how it would be pretty much impossible to try to move everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off of what they’re using now. And I think the reason why is that most people, I think, have worked out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their messaging platform around the time that they got their first smartphone. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all their friends got smartphones and they all message each other on something. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think most of the world that can have a phone at all now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has a smartphone and has a messaging platform. And I think it’s one of the things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, as you were saying, you know, three hours ago, it’s not that these platforms
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are competing on features or anything. They’re mostly just like, why do people use the ones they use? Well, because their friends
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used it and that’s how they talk to their friends. And then it’s just kind of, you know, certain groups fall
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into place with certain platforms and I don’t think we’re ever going to change that. Like, I don’t think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first of all, I’m surprised RCS is even still being talked about, um, because it was, it had so many shortcomings when it was first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco floated however many years ago that was. But no one’s looking for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco text messaging to get better without it being a totally different thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No one’s looking for RCS. That solves no problems people actually have. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iMessage is great for the people who use it. The people who currently don’t use iMessage will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably never use iMessage. And I think you could say that about almost all these platforms. Whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you use, your messaging needs, if you have a smartphone, your messaging needs are probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty well settled and you’re probably not looking to change. And so I almost wonder how much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any of this discussion, even like if Apple launched iMessage on Android
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tomorrow, like would it, would people actually even install it? Would people use it? Probably not.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco People probably keep doing what they’re doing already.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it has a chance in the US just because so many people in the US still use SMS, right? And SMS
⏹️ ▶️ John is so dire and so terrible and so old that I think you could get
⏹️ ▶️ John some people, if they put out iMessage for Android, I think you could get a lot of Android people off of SMS
⏹️ ▶️ John and onto iMessage. Because in this country, we don’t have, you know, a huge majority of people on WhatsApp
⏹️ ▶️ John or WeChat or Line or anything like that. The other thing, I mean, there’s two other things that can
⏹️ ▶️ John move people. Like obviously the big asteroid coming, you know, one version of the big asteroid is,
⏹️ ▶️ John hey, the company that runs Line, yeah, they went out of business. I guess what? That’ll get everybody offline.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the problem with these, like, oh, I’m on a messaging platform, I’m never gonna move. You’ll move if the company goes out of business and doesn’t get
⏹️ ▶️ John bought, right? Or you’ll move if that company turns into like a, you know, a blockchain thing and
⏹️ ▶️ John like starts spamming you with NFT crap and just becomes a giant scam thing, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Or it becomes festooned with ads or someone buys it and drives it into the ground. That’s the difficulty of having
⏹️ ▶️ John network effect based platforms owned by individual companies because individual companies can screw up and they
⏹️ ▶️ John can go out of business or be bought by somebody worse and do terrible things and just mess up. Arguably that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of what happened to MySpace versus Facebook, right? We keep hoping that Facebook’s gonna screw up and
⏹️ ▶️ John wither away and die, but they keep staying alive and getting more money, so it’s difficult to kill them. But
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s one way you can get rid of things. And the second way is people, like I said, they’re just never gonna change
⏹️ ▶️ John their platforms. Yeah, but they die. And if young people are using a different platform. Wow. Right?
⏹️ ▶️ John If young people are using a different platform, like, oh, young people all message each other on Snapchat. And Snapchat
⏹️ ▶️ John becomes the dominant platform over the next 50 years, because those young people started using Snapchat when they were nine
⏹️ ▶️ John and just never stopped, right? Cause that’s what them and all their friends were on. That type of, that’s not an
⏹️ ▶️ John asteroid. That’s more of a slow rollover. That can also happen. We’re just a generational thing. One thing
⏹️ ▶️ John is seen as cooler than something else. Old people use X, young people use Y and the old people never change and the young people
⏹️ ▶️ John never change. And you wake up 50 years later and all the old people are dead and everybody’s using Snapchat for messaging. Oh my gosh.
⏹️ ▶️ John But that presupposes that Snapchat’s gonna stay in business and not screw up their application
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything, right? This is the danger of having something as important as ubiquitous,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, instant message type text messaging being owned by individual private companies.
⏹️ ▶️ John If there was an individual private company that owned email, we would be on email seven by now, like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco whatever the seventh iteration of email is.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not that email is great, you know, no encryption spam is a problem, blah, blah, blah, because it wasn’t owned by any single
⏹️ ▶️ John company, it’s very difficult to kill. Companies come and
⏹️ ▶️ John go, companies screw up, They fill their products with ads and
⏹️ ▶️ John spam and malware and do all sorts of terrible things. But email survives because no matter what
⏹️ ▶️ John any individual company does, email as a standard has network effect, is one of the original network effects
⏹️ ▶️ John of the internet. Everybody’s got it. It’s difficult for any single
⏹️ ▶️ John company to replace it. Lots of people tried really, really hard and they didn’t pull it off. And no matter
⏹️ ▶️ John how many companies go out of business, email stays. That’s not true of instant messaging. So we’re kind of in
⏹️ ▶️ John the early stages of that. In 50 years of all the companies I described,
⏹️ ▶️ John how many will still be in business? How many would have been bought by other companies? It’s like WhatsApp, Facebook buys Line
⏹️ ▶️ John and says Line is eventually gone and now it’s folded into WhatsApp. And by the way, WhatsApp has gone and it’s folded into Facebook
⏹️ ▶️ John Messenger. Like, those are things that can happen. It’s the danger of
⏹️ ▶️ John having private companies that may not live that long and may not do what you want controlling
⏹️ ▶️ John such an important thing. So that’s the one thing that RCS has going for it is that at least it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John a cross-company standard. I mean, granted, they’re cell phone carriers, so not the best companies, and granted, it’s a terrible
⏹️ ▶️ John standard, and it’s crappy and old, and doesn’t have the features you want, and so on and so forth, but that’s one of the advantages
⏹️ ▶️ John that SMS has is there’s no company that can go out of business that makes SMS
⏹️ ▶️ John not work, right? It’s kind of baked in. It’s old, it’s ancient, it’s crappy, but it’s not owned by any one
⏹️ ▶️ John single company, and RCS has that advantage. And again, the advantage for me personally, not for
⏹️ ▶️ John regular people because they don’t care. But for me personally, I like the fact that Apple runs iMessage because I trust Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John more than say, Facebook or whoever owns WeChat. Any company based in China, I
⏹️ ▶️ John probably don’t want them to run the messaging service that the whole world uses. So I think this is still
⏹️ ▶️ John a problem area. And it is difficult to move people en masse from one thing to
⏹️ ▶️ John the other. But change can happen through people dying. And change can happen through companies dying. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess that’s what we have to root for. Not people dying. That’s going to happen whether we root for it or not, I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re really old, long, natural
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey death, as we call it. Not an
⏹️ ▶️ John unnatural death, but a natural one. Oh, dear God. When you’re old and no one cares about you anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Usually I’m the one who puts not only my foot, but my ankle and my thigh in my mouth. But today, that role is being played
⏹️ ▶️ John you ever thought about the phrase the diet of natural causes?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey natural childbirth. It’s the same thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John No, it’s not the same thing at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all. I mean, it’s kind of the same thing. I mean, whatever. I don’t feel like arguing about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that either. See, this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John It’s happening
⏹️ ▶️ Casey again. Anyway, I don’t know. And the other thing, just to get ahead of the feedback emails that have already
⏹️ ▶️ Casey come in, I’m quite sure, every time we talk about messaging platforms, particularly Americans, all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the like smug Europeans and people from, you know, like the Asian countries are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey always like, well, just tell everyone to change. Yes, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sure. I’m going to tell the 700 contacts in my phone book, you know what, the king
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has decided that I am going to use WeChat now. So if you would like to talk to me, come talk
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me on WeChat. Yeah, that’s totally gonna work. Related, when’s the last time you loaded the Glass app on your iPhone?
⏹️ ▶️ John Does anyone actually say that, just tell everyone to change? I haven’t seen that.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yes, it happened in the chat earlier today. Earlier today. You would have been able to
⏹️ ▶️ John get it, but yeah. It’s kind of like people saying we can solve traffic jams for everyone just to go at once,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right? Right, seriously. It’s so preposterous. Like, yes, maybe like my core 20
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or 30 people, Maybe I could get half of them to change to my preferred messaging
⏹️ ▶️ Casey service, but the likelihood of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that is almost zero.
⏹️ ▶️ John Even if you bought them all brand new iPhones, you probably still couldn’t get 100% conversion. Right, exactly. If
⏹️ ▶️ John them and paid for their cell phone plan for their life, you probably still couldn’t get 100% conversion. Yep. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John people just like what they’re used to, right? And they don’t, why would, they don’t want change. Like, why am I changing? Why don’t you change free?
⏹️ ▶️ John Why don’t you get an Android phone? How about that?
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#askatp: Next-gen OS foundation?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, let’s do some Ask ATP. And I have been excited
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to hear John talk about this. And that’s no sarcasm. I really mean it. Daniel Bergfuss writes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mac OS is over two decades old now, but its foundation is still roughly the same, and also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the foundation of Apple’s entire OS suite. Would you say that this will continue to be true for the next two decades?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Or should we assume that a team within Apple is cranking away on exploring a completely new OS approach,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey designed from the ground up, to even better suit Apple’s multifaceted future? Should we expect another large
⏹️ ▶️ Casey transition within the next 20 years because of this, maybe impacting Apple’s full range of products? And if so,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what is your advice for Apple as well as your hopes and dreams for this new approach? And to get ahead
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of you, John, the very first thing I thought of when I read this Ask ATP, which was very good, was avoiding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Copeland 2010, which I will put in the show notes. You
⏹️ ▶️ John should probably put the revisited article because it explains it and has all the links back because otherwise you have to link
⏹️ ▶️ John to all three of them and it’s confusing. So maybe just do the revisited article is the main thing. Sorry,
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we’ve done these links for it. So for making a completely new OS,
⏹️ ▶️ John the rumors are that’s one of the things that Apple was doing for the car project. Because as you can imagine, an operating system suitable
⏹️ ▶️ John for helping a car to drive has different requirements than
⏹️ ▶️ John one that runs your cell phone or whatever. And it’s a clean sheet type thing. Apple doesn’t have an existing
⏹️ ▶️ John car. They don’t have an existing car software base. so they could start from scratch and use more modern technology
⏹️ ▶️ John better suited to being a car OS. But who knows where any of that is going.
⏹️ ▶️ John That aside, the good thing about what Apple did with Mac OS X
⏹️ ▶️ John is they sort of built their operating system, the core OS thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John with a POSIX Unix style layer to it. And
⏹️ ▶️ John that really helps for the future. If there’s some deficit of the microkernel,
⏹️ ▶️ John the mock microkernel and the BSD system that’s fused to it and all the sort of low-level parts of Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John operating system, if it turns out that there’s some limiting factor for some future application,
⏹️ ▶️ John whether it be VR or self-driving cars, something like that, Apple can really replumb
⏹️ ▶️ John the guts in very interesting ways while still maintaining that sort of POSIX-compliant
⏹️ ▶️ John layer on top of it, because that’s something that the software industry has done many times over, putting POSIX layers
⏹️ ▶️ John on operating systems that are not themselves like natively Unix POSIX systems. Windows NT did it back
⏹️ ▶️ John in the day. Microsoft does it with Windows. Like it is a common thing. Arguably Apple’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of doing it with with the BSD kernel fused to mock and everything. And yes, there
⏹️ ▶️ John are all sorts of stuff in Mac OS X that use the mock ports and all sorts of mock IPC features that are specific to mock. But
⏹️ ▶️ John you can also I’m saying MACH. You can also mock those, M-O-C-K.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can mock versions of mock. What I’m saying is that it’s a layer cake. And so, you
⏹️ ▶️ John have the, because Apple got rid of the main deficits, which was, hey, no memory
⏹️ ▶️ John protection, no preemptive multitasking, all the Copeland 2010 stuff, right, because they addressed
⏹️ ▶️ John those and have a solid foundation, they can rip out the guts
⏹️ ▶️ John and put better, more interesting guts in there while still maintaining lots of compatibility with
⏹️ ▶️ John the higher layer is because that layer, that sort of POSIX Unix layer, is very common
⏹️ ▶️ John across the entire world of operating system that has proved very durable and useful.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s no underlying design that really negates that interface. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not to say that could be the only thing, you could have some sort of real-time operating system that you use in the car and it has advanced features, but you
⏹️ ▶️ John can implement the sort of old flutty-dutty POSIX APIs on top of that and give them a road
⏹️ ▶️ John going forward. That said, so far, everything that Apple has made has shown
⏹️ ▶️ John that the guts of Next Step slash Mac OS X is surprisingly flexible. They put
⏹️ ▶️ John it on a watch, right? They didn’t just put it in a phone or an iPad, they put it in a wristwatch.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m not sure what flexibility or new features you need from the Core OS that you’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John getting. They put it on the giant Mac Pro all the way down to a wristwatch. And it’s done really
⏹️ ▶️ John well in all of those different applications. It just goes to show that the Core OS It’s not the limiting factor in those
⏹️ ▶️ John things. So I don’t think there’s any specific thing that Apple needs for any of the
⏹️ ▶️ John platforms that are currently planned to setting aside the car. So AR, VR,
⏹️ ▶️ John future gaming console, any kind of computing device from a wristwatch all the way
⏹️ ▶️ John up to a big personal computer. I think their Core OS is in a reasonable good place. And it’s not like it
⏹️ ▶️ John hasn’t changed. It is improved and everything, but I think that’s doing mostly okay. They can
⏹️ ▶️ John redo, replumb the kernel to try to fix some longstanding architectural problems. And they can do it in a way that we probably
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t notice. The car is the one where they might need a new approach. And rumor is that’s what they were doing for the car,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is, let’s not build this on top of the Mac OS X foundation because it’s kind of old and
⏹️ ▶️ John creaky in terms of the way we need a car OS to handle. Like, the reliability concerns
⏹️ ▶️ John of a multi-thousand pound piece of metal are different than the reliability concerns of your cell phone. They just are.
⏹️ ▶️ John So let’s get something that’s more reliable. And we’re not going to get to that reliability by starting with this giant code base and trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to make it more reliable. And plus we need real-time features because you kind of need to decide now, now, now, whether you should turn.
⏹️ ▶️ John And there are operating systems designed for that. There are real-time operating systems using spacecraft
⏹️ ▶️ John and airplanes and all sorts of other stuff. And Apple being Apple, of course, they would try to make their own, right? Because
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re a lot of smart people, which fine. But that project hasn’t come out yet. So that is the only place where
⏹️ ▶️ John I think a new OS approach is, if not necessary, then
⏹️ ▶️ John reasonably appropriate. Every other application Apple has applied, the Darwin core of
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac OS X, Mac OS whatever, to it has succeeded and
⏹️ ▶️ John gone great. Again, I will cite the wristwatch. If you can get a drone wristwatch
⏹️ ▶️ John and a giant Mac Pro, it’s probably doing okay. So I wouldn’t worry about it too much.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m surprised by this. I was expecting a lot more angst from you. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not saying this is bad, I’m just, I’m surprised.
⏹️ ▶️ John There were rumors in that same blog where the Copland 2010 thing was like, that the L4
⏹️ ▶️ John microkernel was being investigated, like the really, really core of the OS. Like there’s lots of interesting projects
⏹️ ▶️ John of how you could make something more reliable or faster or better in situations of high
⏹️ ▶️ John contention. But you can do that without disturbing the higher layers. And it turns out they
⏹️ ▶️ John haven’t needed to do that yet. So it makes me think that there’s not a particular crisis looming here. Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John I need the younger version of me to write like avoiding Copland 2057, But
⏹️ ▶️ John right now, I think, with the exception of the car project, in a reasonably good position.
#askatp: Which game console?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Patrick writes, I haven’t owned or played a gaming system in over 10 years. Recently I played some Halo with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a friend. It was a lot of fun and I’m thinking about getting a modern system. The problem, however, is that I don’t know which one to get.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t want to buy multiple platforms since I’m not a hardcore gamer. The Switch, PS5, and Xbox all have a game or two that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey look really appealing. Do you have any advice on helping me choose a platform?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Without knowing exactly which games look appealing to Patrick on each platform,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would just say, go with the one that’s going to give you the most fun. If you’re not a hardcore
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gamer, that means that getting the latest and greatest graphics on the PS5 and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Xbox, whatever it is, is a lower priority. What you’re optimizing for is fun.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I think for most people, the odds are you’d have the most fun with the Switch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out of those. It’s also, right now, much easier to get. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s that helps and it benefits from a Pretty large software
⏹️ ▶️ Marco library since it’s you know been out a few years now compared to the ps5 and xbox whatever which are both
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much newer and so I Would say unless there is a unless like there’s like a really must-have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco game or games calling you over to the ps5 or xbox Go with the switch because you’re more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco likely to find a lot of fun there and it’s just easier to approach being less expensive,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco easier to get, larger game library already in place, and it has the benefit of being portable if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever actually need that, which you might not think you would use, but you might end up using it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think there’s a larger game library because you forget the PlayStation plays PlayStation 4 games and the Xbox plays
⏹️ ▶️ John the older Xbox games as well, so there’s a big catalog of those. But the not a hardcore
⏹️ ▶️ John gamer is the big twist here because it makes people think like what you just said, Okay, well then you don’t care
⏹️ ▶️ John about all these, you know, why get a super expensive, super powerful console? You don’t care, you’re not a hardcore gamer. But
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re not a hardcore gamer, that also means, the people who say that
⏹️ ▶️ John probably don’t have a lot of experience, especially with modern video games. So you don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John if that person is the type of person who is going to love World of Warcraft and should
⏹️ ▶️ John therefore get a gaming PC, right? Because they’ve never had contact with it. They don’t have any immunities built
⏹️ ▶️ John up. They don’t have the antibodies. Like you don’t know what thing is gonna be their thing. It could be that it turns
⏹️ ▶️ John out that they’re super into real-time strategy games, or they get obsessed with puzzle games, or they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John really, really into Final Fantasy. Like you just don’t know because they haven’t been exposed to them. So they
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t give you an opinion. I like this type of game or that type of game. And so guessing like, oh, you should like Nintendo because
⏹️ ▶️ John most people like Nintendo and it’s fun. It’s hard to make that assumption. If I met this person in real life,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’d talk to them and try to figure out, if you’ve played any games in the past, which
⏹️ ▶️ John one appealed to you? And you’re like, well, I used to play SimCity a lot and I would lose hours and hours in SimCity and
⏹️ ▶️ John Civilization, right? That tells me a lot about what type of game they’re going
⏹️ ▶️ John to be interested in. But by the same token, if they’ve never played an open world game, for example,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe that’s the thing that is going to make them obsessed. And it’s so difficult to choose a platform without really interrogating
⏹️ ▶️ John somebody about that because most people who play video games don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John play like any large percentage of the games available for a platform. Not everybody’s like me
⏹️ ▶️ John where you essentially play one game all the time, but some people don’t. But one game, some people, all they play is World of Warcraft, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John For a first approximation, all I play is Destiny, right? That’s one type of gamer.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the other type is not someone who plays 75 games a year. Most people play a small
⏹️ ▶️ John number of games per year of the type that they like. And if you are really,
⏹️ ▶️ John really into, you know, Zelda, you have to get Nintendo, it’s the only place
⏹️ ▶️ John it is. There’s not even any kind of Zelda equivalents on other platforms for the most part. Sorry, Oceanhorn.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you just play like the one or two Zelda games that are released and then a couple other things, you have
⏹️ ▶️ John to get a Nintendo platform. So that’s the danger of picking a platform you’re like, I’m really excited about.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m really excited about Call of Duty and that’s available everywhere, right? Well, fast forward and maybe it’s only available on Xbox
⏹️ ▶️ John and PC and they get a PlayStation and they’re like, oh, but I want to play Call of Duty. In fact, that’s the only thing I want to do with
⏹️ ▶️ John my game system is play Call of Duty. Now I can’t play Call of Duty, this thing is useless to me. But when someone’s not a hardcore
⏹️ ▶️ John gamer, you don’t know, like, are they going to be a single franchise player for a decade
⏹️ ▶️ John or are they going to get heavily into one or two types of games that are better on one platform or the other? So it’s really a shot in the dark.
⏹️ ▶️ John So my suggestion for anyone like this is like, find a game,
⏹️ ▶️ John find a game that you think you really want to play and maybe test that theory by trying it over a
⏹️ ▶️ John friend’s house or whatever. And then buy whatever platform that game is on, right? If
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s on multiple platforms, then it’s an easier conversation. You can talk about price and features and availability of all that, but
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re not. I know it’s difficult because you’re like, I don’t want to buy the wrong platform, but really what you want to do is find the game
⏹️ ▶️ John or games that appeal to you and then buy whatever platform lets you play that game or games.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I would say like the odds of the switch having stuff that you find really fun
⏹️ ▶️ John But it depends. Maybe they’re the type of person who’s going to get obsessively into civilization. The switch
⏹️ ▶️ John is not going to help them there. Right. All right. I don’t know. Civilization. So I’m trying to think of a game like, well, then you’re a PC,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think at that point. Right. But you don’t know. Like maybe like someone who’s just like, all I do is play
⏹️ ▶️ John the Sims. Right. There’s all I do all day long is play the Sims. That’s the type of game I get into or like, you know, or
⏹️ ▶️ John World of Warcraft or, you know, an open world thing. You have to you have to know. You never know if they haven’t had
⏹️ ▶️ John contact with that, what is going to suck them into the rabbit hole? Maybe they get sucked into no rabbit holes and they just want to casually play stuff and
⏹️ ▶️ John they should just be fine with their phone, right? So that’s why it’s so difficult for people who haven’t been exposed because
⏹️ ▶️ John if you haven’t been exposed, you don’t know what, if anything, will grab you. And you can’t predict
⏹️ ▶️ John based on your past behavior because if you’ve never been exposed to World War Warcraft,
⏹️ ▶️ John you have no idea whether it will consume your life or whether you will not care about it at all.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, this is the one moment where I kind of am sad that Blockbuster Video
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doesn’t exist anymore, right? Because didn’t, weren’t you talking about this, Marco, just a couple of months back, like renting video game systems
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and video games and whatnot, and so you could like rent a Switch and give it a try for a week or whatever, a few
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nights just to see how it goes, and then rent an Xbox after that, you know, and so on.
⏹️ ▶️ John It amazes me that they did that. I mean, I did that. I rented the systems. I was like, how did those systems survive for more than three days?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, seriously. It was a gentler time, I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I think I was the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only person renting the Sega Saturn, so it was getting pretty gently used.
⏹️ ▶️ John You again. Okay, you want the Saturn?
#askatp: Bugs from hyphenated name?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, and then Peter Wagoner writes, my wife and I recently combined our last names into a single hyphenated last name. However,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know many people confuse hyphens, M dashes and N dashes. Is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that right? Is it EM or am I pronouncing that correctly?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco It’s M, you got it right. It’s M and N,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yep. All right, I didn’t know if I was supposed to be like spelling those out or anything. Anyways, do most programming languages
⏹️ ▶️ Casey distinguish between these three? I worry someone will use the wrong one and we’ll wind up with multiple entries in an important database somewhere,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or worse, they won’t be able to find our entry at all.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is where not being a computer programmer is a blessing for
⏹️ ▶️ John people. But also it makes you have sometimes the wrong mental model about what part
⏹️ ▶️ John of what is responsible for what. So this is not, for the most part, a programming
⏹️ ▶️ John language problem, but it is a problem. But it’s a problem for complicated,
⏹️ ▶️ John stupid reasons that you probably don’t care about involving the entire stack between you
⏹️ ▶️ John and where the data is stored and back. And I’m sure all of us could describe all the different places where this can get screwed up, including
⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes the programming language, but very rarely. But the wire protocol,
⏹️ ▶️ John the database format, the web form, like there are so many places
⏹️ ▶️ John where non-ASCII characters can get mangled due to sort of, you know, US dominance and invention
⏹️ ▶️ John of the internet and international standards and crap like that. But yes, you probably
⏹️ ▶️ John should be concerned that anything fancier than ASCII is going to get mangled by some, especially if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John in the US, is going to get mangled by some system somewhere, but it is not mostly the fault of the programming language.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s the fault of one of the other 17 layers between you and success.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Any time that you are relying on other people to enter your information into a computer system,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have a pretty high risk of errors there, no matter whether you have a hyphen or not.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I think that John is right, first of all, that this is not a language problem, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is a technology problem in the sense that you’re relying on things like Unicode normalization
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to match, and anybody who has a name that has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a letter that is not common in English. So for instance, if you have a vowel that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has an accent over it of various forms as part of your name or something like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, there’s gonna be a lot of cases where not necessarily programming languages, but just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the frameworks, the databases, as John was saying, different parts of the stack might either not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco consider an A with an accent over it to be an A, or they might consider
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that to be a different character than an A, or it might not match in the right way or something.
⏹️ ▶️ John it gets double encoded because someone screwed up the web form, and so now the UTF-8 itself becomes UTF-8
⏹️ ▶️ John encoded, and you get the big capital A with a tilde over it.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco There’s just so many
⏹️ ▶️ John ways that this can go wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, but the good thing is most things that are related to Unicode
⏹️ ▶️ Marco encoding, UTF-8 encoding, and stuff like that, most of those things are probably being worked out in most computer systems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over the last few decades because of the prevalence of having to make software
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that works all over the world for every different language and all the different character sets and everything. So that problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is less of an issue, I think, in most cases you’re gonna run into today. The bigger problem, I think, is normalization.
⏹️ ▶️ John Except for the parts where you care about it the most, like banks and healthcare,
⏹️ ▶️ John which are the most backwards and the most terrible systems, and unfortunately, money and health are probably the areas
⏹️ ▶️ John where this is going to annoy you the most. Starbucks is gonna probably have your name in beautiful
⏹️ ▶️ John UTF-encoded characters preserved everywhere across the whole entire thing. But your hospital
⏹️ ▶️ John might not even be able to fit your name because their field for last name only has like eight characters max.
⏹️ ▶️ John And none of the, and they’re all ASCII, right? So things are
⏹️ ▶️ John slowly getting better. Unicode does make things better, but the older the system, your DMV, whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John the worst things tend to be.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. The other thing that might help you out a little bit is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most people, especially people who would be entering your name into a database somewhere,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t know how to type m dashes or n dashes, and don’t even know what they are. We’re lucky
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people can deal with things like periods in anything, like relying on the general
⏹️ ▶️ Marco public to type punctuation correctly. Again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is going to be very error-prone, no matter how you do it, but most people don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that there are these different dashes, nor do they know how to type them. And usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you see somebody sending you a different dash it is not usually because they hit option
⏹️ ▶️ Marco minus or whatever or that they held down the hyphen key on their iOS keyboard and waited
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a second and got the other two dashes there. It’s usually because they typed in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two dashes in a row and whatever they’re typing in corrected it to an em dash for them. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is like, no one’s choosing to type these except nerds like me.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and very often you will not know how to enter them, even if you’re entering it yourself, because say you’re not on a Mac. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John I came across this recently, someone was asking me, how do I type this stuff in Windows? And I was like, I don’t know. Do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they still have those like, Alt O One
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Five whatever codes? Yeah, type on the number pad. Oh my God,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that still like the only way to do it? They have to fix that by
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s Windows that has to still work,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know the numerical. I don’t know the numerical code for an
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco M-Dash, do you
⏹️ ▶️ John off the top of your head? No. And if you’re not a Mac user, You have no idea about all the options, semi-colon for an ellipsis
⏹️ ▶️ John and crap like that, right? So even if you are allowed to type it yourself, the keyboard doesn’t have those keys on
⏹️ ▶️ John it. So you have to know how to enter them and it’s weird.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you to our sponsors this week, Squarespace, Linode and Mack Weldon. And thank
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you to our members who support us directly. You can join, please do, atv.fm slash join. and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ll talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was accidental, oh it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was accidental John didn’t do any
⏹️ ▶️ John research, Margo and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental And you can find the
⏹️ ▶️ John show notes at atp.fm And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ 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
⏹️ ▶️ John Syracuse, it’s accidental, they
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t mean to Accidental, tech podcast so long.
Coconut jerk store
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had such a jerk store moment two weeks ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tell me more. You were buying some dried meats?
⏹️ ▶️ John No. What is it? The Spirit of the Stairs? Someone tell me the French for that in the chat room,
⏹️ ▶️ John please. What is that?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have no idea what you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John talking about. Esprit
⏹️ ▶️ John de Scalier, maybe? Did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I beat the chat room to it? I don’t even… I think you beat the world to
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Yeah, seriously. A jerk store moment. That’s from a Seinfeld episode where George remembers
⏹️ ▶️ John a great comeback line, but he remembers it like a day later, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John So the spirit of the stairs is, I think, a French saying of like, you remember the witty comeback as you’re going down the stairs
⏹️ ▶️ John on your way out of the place where you were insulted.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So two weeks ago, when I did my first thing about like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, eating more vegetables and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were berating me because you don’t believe I like coconut because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t like dried toasted coconut flakes. And I’m sitting there in the edit the next morning.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m like, how did I not fight back on this in the most obvious
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way? And then I thought to myself, how am I going to tell them this? I better save it for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco next week. Well then, next week comes around, that’s last week’s show, and we talk about the same topic again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I totally forget to give this follow-up, and then the next morning, editing that, I’m like, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my God, I can’t believe, how did I not? Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so hold on, I don’t remember exactly what you said, but my recollection of the conversation was, You see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guys, I don’t like coconut. I like this, this, this, this, and this, which all include coconut,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I really don’t like coconut.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, it’s even worse than that. No, you’re misremembering
⏹️ ▶️ John it, but before we get to that though, Marco, I would like to remind you of
⏹️ ▶️ John what happened in that Seinfeld episode. Do you remember how it ends?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I believe George eventually does get himself back into that group and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gives his stupid jerk store thing and it falls on its face miserably, which is how this is
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe a cautionary tale.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco So with that in mind, proceed and explain to
⏹️ ▶️ John how we should not have said that you really don’t like coconut.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, okay, so my position on coconut is that I like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I eat tons of coconut. I eat the coconut meat that you get pre-sliced at the grocery store, like those little wedges
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of coconut. I drink a lot of coconut milk, and I have coconut-based
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cream and milk and stuff in lots of other things. Oh, and I like coconut water as well. Okay, so.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you like coconut. You two said that the only way you like coconut
⏹️ ▶️ John toasted, dried. The only way. I just said that that is a very common way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, and then you told me that because I don’t like the shredded,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco toasted, dried version, that it sounds like I don’t like coconut. So okay, if you look at the,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what is in a coconut? What’s in it? Untouched, like you just take the hair off.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What’s in the coconut, naturally, in the most basic state, is all the stuff I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like. And you guys are saying you only like this one like really processed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco version of it, and that like somehow I’m the one who doesn’t like it. You don’t like coconut.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you don’t like coconut meat and coconut water and coconut milk, you don’t like coconut.
⏹️ ▶️ John We just like the other ones better.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco It’s like saying, I
⏹️ ▶️ John like steak tartare, but I don’t like hamburger steak or any cooked form of meat. And you’re like, oh, you
⏹️ ▶️ John only like this processed form of beef. I’m going to say if you don’t like hamburgers or steaks, you don’t like beef.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I’m like, you know, I like steak tartare, the raw version. In fact, that’s the best version. I just go right up to the cow and I bite
⏹️ ▶️ John it. You like the uncooked coconut meat, but the most the most common form
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco in this country
⏹️ ▶️ John is shredded and very often toasted. So mounds and almond joy are shredded
⏹️ ▶️ Marco coconut. The most common form of cheese in this country is American cheese. Are you saying that if somebody doesn’t like American
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cheese, that they don’t like cheese?
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what I’m saying. Cheese has more variety than coconut. Does it? I think the coconuts that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m eating, the form of the coconut I’m eating is pretty different from the form that you’re eating. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the most common form, you said
⏹️ ▶️ John you also didn’t like German chocolate cake. We’re not just saying dried, toasted coconut. All that is very common. But you also
⏹️ ▶️ John excluded tons of other forms of coconut that are way more common than just having the raw coconut. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I think if you’re saying, I don’t like any of those, but I only like it raw, it’s like only liking steak tartare but insisting
⏹️ ▶️ John that you love beef. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think I love coconut and I think you guys don’t. I think you guys love coconut candy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would say that I don’t generally care for coconut. I think there are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey occasions where I like it. Typically, the number one thing I can think of is coconut shrimp, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is deep fried to smithereens. It’s very American. There’s a lot of coconut. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will be the first to tell you that is not really coconut at that point. It is some other thing entirely.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Is it even shrimp at that point? I mean, that’s… Yeah, who knows? It’s mostly batter, like all fried
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things. Yeah, right. Right. But I think the analogy I use, because I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think I particularly care for coconut with a couple of exceptions, but the example I used is that I keep
⏹️ ▶️ Casey telling Aaron that I don’t like caramel, however you pronounce it, but then I’ll keep saying,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh, this is really good. And what is this? And I can’t think of a specific example, but oh, that’s like chocolate covered
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in caramel. And then I’ll say something, oh, wow, that was really good. What was that? Oh, it’s it’s such and such with caramel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all over it. But I don’t like caramel.” And Aaron will just give me that look like, you think you don’t, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you do. And so I would say that I don’t particularly care for coconut, with an exception or two.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I think my coconut moment is that I tell you, I would tell you I don’t like caramel, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I actually do. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think, Marco, the thing you’re missing, you’re saying the essential raw form of it is the primal form.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I’m saying that the primal form is the form that is most commonly found it just like the cooked beef thing. Yes, beef
⏹️ ▶️ John is meat eaten raw, but generally it’s cooked. And if you only like the raw form, you can make the argument that this is the most
⏹️ ▶️ John primal form. I like beef the most because I don’t even need it to be cooked. But in this country, that’s weird. And I feel like coconut
⏹️ ▶️ John is in the same category. Most people have it shredded, sometimes dried, sometimes toasted,
⏹️ ▶️ John but certainly not just raw from the thing. And because you like it that way, you think that means you really like coconut.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I think it’s because it’s so uncommon that you like it in a weird way and you don’t like all of the
⏹️ ▶️ John much more common ways, it makes me think you’re not as big a fan of coconut. If you really love coconut, you say, I like it in all
⏹️ ▶️ John forms. Like, if you really love beef, I love all forms of beef, from steak tartare to a great steak to
⏹️ ▶️ John a burger to everything you could possibly imagine. Steak smoothies, I love it. I
⏹️ ▶️ John think you’d have a stronger argument. I think you’d have a stronger argument there, but because you like a weird form of coconut the best and
⏹️ ▶️ John actively dislike the other ones, it makes you less of a coconut fan in my eyes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, first of all, I would say my weird form of coconut is only weird in the US.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And even then, it’s getting less weird over time as all these dairy alternatives
⏹️ ▶️ Marco start involving coconut.
⏹️ ▶️ John The coconut milk is probably getting less weird. The raw, uncooked coconut, staying weird.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people do with them?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if most people could even, if we said you have one hour to buy raw, uncooked coconut,
⏹️ ▶️ John go do it, most people couldn’t accomplish that task. Because they wouldn’t even know where to look for it.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s so uncommon. Next time you’re in Kroger, Casey, see if they even have that in the store.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You assume I’m going into grocery stores these days. It’s all click list, baby.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Someone’s got to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, even Aaron does. We all, we do the deliver to your Trump
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. Well, that’s even better test. Have some Instacart person try to find this for you. Like what?
⏹️ ▶️ John You want a what? Coconut. And they’ll bring you a bag of shredded coconut because that’s the much more common
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All kidding aside, can you not find like coconut in the produce section? I’m genuinely asking. I have no idea. You
⏹️ ▶️ John can find whole coconuts sometimes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Usually they have those, they usually have those like peeled ones that they they like they have somehow removed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the dark brown hair on the outside and it’s what’s left is like this like tan like like a like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cone it’s like a weird shape like they’ve like shaved off part of it. I haven’t been brave enough to open
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of those up yet but I almost did last time but they felt kind of soft.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah but Whole Foods is the only place that has for a thousand dollars a piece the pre-cut up pieces of
⏹️ ▶️ John coconut. And they’re delicious. Because Whole Foods will pre-cut up any fruit for you and charge you a thousand dollars for it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is there anything that isn’t a thousand dollars at Whole Foods?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey like… Pineapples?
⏹️ ▶️ John Milk is a loss leader at Whole Foods. Our Whole Foods is the place where we can get the cheapest milk. Is that
⏹️ ▶️ John right? They want to get you in the door, but do not buy any cut-up fruit because it costs more than a car.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think we might have told this story on ATP like literally five years ago, but one day when I was at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my jobby job, I decided to go out to eat or like to grab some food from out which is very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey unusual for me. I brought like a sandwich or something. And I decided to go out and I worked very close
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to a Whole Foods. And so I went to Whole Foods and I went to the little hot bar and I was treating myself.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Mad Fientist Well, there’s your mistake on so many levels. Jim Collins
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, so hold on. A million levels, but I’m all excited. I got a little of this, a little of that. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I’m American, I grabbed like a ladle full of mac and cheese, which of course
⏹️ ▶️ Casey weighs 85 tons. Mad Fientist
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John That’s a hard-boiled eggs. Jim Collins And it’s a cloric bomb.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mad Fientist The weight will kill you. Jim Collins Exactly. Exactly, and so I grabbed some mac and cheese and I went through the line, and of course
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this was 10 years ago, my memory’s shot, and so I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey probably making
⏹️ ▶️ John this up, but I genuinely think- You’re forgetting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you told the story on the show before, but go on. I said that I told the story on the show before! At least give me credit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for that! So anyway, so I go to check out, and it was like $18 at the hot bar for just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John me. And that’s a bargain!
⏹️ ▶️ John You can’t get one thing of cut up pineapple for that price. Ah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s how they get to it. Like, that isn’t a whole food problem. That’s every hot bar. Like, when I used to work in Manhattan,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like we’d go out to lunch a lot of days, and I would occasionally go to a place that had one of those big hot bars.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And like, it’s, you know, you put anything in there, $13, anything. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it makes economic sense, like both the hot bars and the pre-cut fruit, like it’s not like they’re gouging
⏹️ ▶️ John you for the hell of it. It’s because you have someone, you have to pay someone to cut up all that fruit and then they end up throwing
⏹️ ▶️ John out tons of it because it doesn’t keep, right? And so someone prepares all that food, cooks it, puts it in these dishes,
⏹️ ▶️ John sits it out there, and then half of it gets thrown away because nobody bought it. And so the one person who buys a salad
⏹️ ▶️ John a huge amount of food. And when you buy that thing of cut up fruit, yes, it’s the cost of the fruit,
⏹️ ▶️ John but then it’s the time of the person cutting it up. And then there’s the fact that the seven other bins of pineapple
⏹️ ▶️ John are gonna get thrown away in two days and no one’s gonna buy them. So you’re buying all those too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think I’m also just upset because I had a pineapple today and it was really disappointing. My
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John latest pineapple.
⏹️ ▶️ John We discussed the difficulty of trying to get one that is the correct ripeness. I did actually Google up on that to try it
⏹️ ▶️ John out, but it was very difficult advice to follow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I even, and I knew when I was buying it, because I was wearing a big mask, and I was trying to dip the mask down
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to smell the bottom of the pineapple, and I couldn’t smell much, and I’m like, well, can I not smell much because I just had a mask on my face for an hour?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I not smell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much? Yeah, well. Right. And yeah, no, thank God that wasn’t it. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, so I knew going into it, I’m like, this is gonna be a pretty bland pineapple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But they were on sale for like two bucks, and I’m like, I gotta try it, just in case.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Isn’t that your hint right there?
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll take a $2. $2 pineapple in January, Marco thinks I’m gonna go for it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know anything about pineapple, and even I know that’s a poor choice.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, for $2, you can’t go, I mean, it’s probably worth the gamble.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Because who knows, you could’ve gotten
⏹️ ▶️ John lucky, but you didn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, it’s not inedible, it’s just not a good pineapple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When you get a good one, it’s so good. Because I like pineapples, John. I don’t know if,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I find the natural form of it, and I cut it up and I eat it, and I like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John now I would say that if you like fresh pineapples, but didn’t like canned pineapples, I’d be like, hmm,
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t really like pineapple.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now I don’t like pineapple flavored seltzer. Does that mean I don’t like pineapple, John?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t flavor seltzer, it’s just a carbonated water that they wave a pineapple over for two seconds.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s like my martinis with vermouth. You know, it’s funny to me how genuinely upset you are about
⏹️ ▶️ John market. I love coconut, don’t tell me I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco don’t love coconut.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John annoying me for two weeks.
⏹️ ▶️ John I have the purest coconut love. Your coconut love is processed, but I love
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pure coconut. But it was the gall of you telling me I don’t like coconut because I eat it like the most direct way.
⏹️ ▶️ John think I explained my reasoning. I mean, you may disagree with it, but I had, that was my thinking on that. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John think it is not an unreasonable way to think about who loves something more than someone else.