477: In the Metal
06 Apr 2022iPhone 14 rumors, Studio Display impressions and predictions, acoustic perception, and Casey’s unique theory about California.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Marco played himself
- Would there be a “Studio Display Max” within two years?
- Marco’s Studio Display impressions
- New Peripherals
- Follow-up:
- Marc Edwards from Bjango has a follow-up on Retina displays
- Some thoughts on acoustics from Sam Kusnetz
- Chris Gonyea points out errors with some USB-C ↔ Ethernet adapters with the Studio Display
- Issues with iCloud and custom domains
- Expectations for WWDC, the event
- iPhone 14 Rumors
#askatp- If going from Canon dSLR → mirrorless, is it worth jumping to Sony? (via Elijah)
- Are fusion drives even worth it in 2022?
- Is there any sort of KVM-like thing for Thunderbolt? (via Matt Chinander)
- Given The Cook Doctrine, why is Apple bothering making their own cellular modems? (via Daniel Bergqvist)
- Post-show:
- Marco files a complaint about RecDiffs
- Marco forgets an anniversary
- John’s sitrep
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Chapters
- Challenging conditions
- Studio Display “Pro”?
- Studio tour
- Sponsor: Linode
- Input
- Sponsor: Trade Coffee
- Retina pollen
- dB vs. dBFS vs. SPL
- USB-C to Ethernet holes
- iCloud custom email domains
- Casey loves California
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- #askatp: Canon vs. Sony
- #askatp: External Fusion Drive
- #askatp: Thunderbolt switch
- #askatp: Apple cell modems
- Ending theme
- After-show
Challenging conditions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m going to try to get through this recording. I’m sitting here in my old office
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it is very echoey because I made a mistake when we were here
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cleaning out the house and filling the dumpster. I took too many objects out of my office
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and now the acoustics in here are terrible. It sounds like a bathroom
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because there’s too much missing from the room.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Did I tell the story on the show? I don’t recall if I brought this up on the show, but I’ve a month or two,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe two or three months ago, I was doing some sort of video conference, which is very rare for me and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is soon to be rare for John or is rare for John now. But I was doing some sort of video conference where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I needed to close the closet door. Now, the way I’m facing, I’m facing an exterior
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wall of the house and behind me is a closet, a very small closet that has, you know, some of those like accordion
⏹️ ▶️ Casey style doors on it. And I closed the doors early in the day for that video conference. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that evening, I recorded ATP. And the next day, Marco says to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me, what did you do? I said, what? What did you do? What are you talking about? Everything’s the same. No, you changed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something. No, I didn’t. What did you take out of your room? Marco, I don’t know. What do you have a camera? No, I don’t. I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do anything. And we have-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn’t say like you took out something softer from your room and you need to put it back.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. Yeah. That’s basically what you said. And eventually we concluded, oh, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had closed the closet door. And so all the soft material that’s in the closet, like, you know, coats
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and things like that. Instead of it being soft material, it was very echoey hard material. And I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey another human on the planet, except perhaps the people, one of the people we’re going to talk about in followup, other than Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in this person from followup, I don’t know if any other human on the planet would have noticed, but I tell you what, Marco noticed. So apparently you’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey done it to yourself. Congratulations. You played yourself.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The thing is like, you know, I’ve recorded shows in here for years and I didn’t, I mean, it was, it’s never been as good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as, as the beach office because the beach office is a a much smaller room and I’ve treated it pretty well. This room
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is sized to be like a bedroom and so it’s significantly larger. I might be moving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to a small bedroom upstairs instead soon. So reason number one, I’m trying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get through this, the reverb that I’m going to have to try to filter out with iZotope after the recording.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Reason number two, one of the benefits of living at the beach is that I live on a very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco skinny island. It’s very windy. And so in the springtime,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever pollen might be created by the island is instantly blown right off of it. And so there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually isn’t that much pollen in the air that actually like sticks around and builds up and, you know, gets into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my eyes and makes me miserable. Well, so that also means that my tolerance for pollen has gone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco down over the last two years. And so I’ve come back to Westchester for just like, you know, a day
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to run some errands. And now I am filled with allergies. Additionally,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the change in routine made me forget to take my allergy pill this morning. And so I had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the double whammy and I got away with it all day until about 15 minutes ago
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and now my eyes are just itching like crazy. Oh God, I spent a lot of time outside
⏹️ ▶️ Marco today too. It’s like a lot of, you know, I had a lot of like wind blowing around and blowing everything into my face. So that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fun. And then reason number three is that despite my best efforts,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which included stopping at an Apple Store earlier today, I am still looking at the goddamn
⏹️ ▶️ Marco LG UltraFine 5K, which is slightly crooked, which I think I can’t even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tell. I think it’s slightly crooked.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it’s moving a lot, so it’s hard to tell.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s wiggling constantly whenever I like touch the desk. And now that I’m used to 6K, it looks like I’m using my computer like through a porthole.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey it’s- Oh, get off of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You can come right off of it. Good
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John grief. I can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey allow the wiggly. I can allow you going to get a studio display. Honestly, I’m still surprise you haven’t gotten
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But frankly, I thought about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You can come off of it on the postage stamp.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honestly, maybe like if they ever update the XDR, maybe I would get the second one then and like move like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the older one to whichever place I was using the least. But that’s I mean, they’re so expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we actually drop a topic right here, which is going to fly completely in the face of everything John stands for.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hey, buddy, you know, you could save this for seven minutes. No, no, no, we might as will drop it now because it’s
Studio Display “Pro”?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve been thinking a lot about my forthcoming studio display, which should
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be here in the next couple of weeks, which means since we’re recording early, it might be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here by the time we have our next recording. No promises, we’ll see. But I’ve been thinking a lot about the studio display
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and how there’s so many things that we were talking about before it existed that we wanted,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like high refresh, the what is it mini LED? I always get the terminology wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because micro doesn’t really exist yet. It exists. Well, but no one’s using it really. Not on computer displays.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, the point is, there’s a lot of stuff that it seems like low-hanging
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fruit, even though I don’t think it actually is. But there’s a lot of stuff that we wanted that we didn’t get in the studio display. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not complaining, mind you. I am overjoyed to be getting this display, even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the current camera problems. Like, I am sure they will get fixed. I’m overjoyed to be getting this display. Certainly, Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was about to Insta-buy one earlier today, if at all possible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What I wonder from you guys is, Do you see an in-between display
⏹️ ▶️ Casey happening in let’s say the next two years? Do you think that there will be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a display that is beefier, more powerful, nicer, you know, take your adjective,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is better than the studio display, but still not quite the bananas
⏹️ ▶️ Casey XDR? Do you think that there’s space for that in Apple’s lineup for, I don’t know, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like three or $4,000 or something like that?
⏹️ ▶️ John I think, I mean, yes, there is space, but your first question was, will Apple actually do that? But
⏹️ ▶️ John the Apple approach I don’t necessarily think is to make sure that there’s space for it. They would just replace this one with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. And, you know, your question of, you said within two years, I’m gonna say definitely not within two years.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, historically speaking, Apple has been terrible about updating its monitors, but, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John things change. So, you know, again, it’s a question of will Apple do this or should they? They absolutely should, of course they should,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they just, I mean, just look at the history of their monitors. Has there ever been an Apple monitor that
⏹️ ▶️ John later was replaced with one that was better? The closest I think you can come to that is maybe the 22 inch Apple Cinema
⏹️ ▶️ John display was replaced by the 23 inch Apple Cinema display, which was a lot better in what seemed to me a
⏹️ ▶️ John fairly short amount of time, but everything else. I mean, even just the XDR. Where is the new XDR? It
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t come out the year after the XDR was released. That’s for sure.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think what we’re likely to see here is exactly what John said. Like when they are ready
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to offer those features, you know, at somewhere near this price point, they’ll just replace this monitor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with a new model that has them. It will probably be a little bit more expensive, but not $3,000. Yeah, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know how much of a market there would be for a 27-inch 5K Apple monitor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with those features for $3,000 or $4,000. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a market for it, because it would be for people who would buy the XDR, but it’s too much money, but they
⏹️ ▶️ John need the features of the XDR.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But once you’re at $3,000 or $4,000, why wouldn’t you go $5,000 or $6,000 for the XDR and get a much bigger monitor? Because it’s twice as much. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you get two of them. I mean, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John depends a lot on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the, does the X, you know, whenever the XDR is updated next,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is it still $5,000 without a stand? Yeah, or does it get even more expensive? Or look, maybe they can bring it down to 4,000.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, who knows? Or maybe it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John 8K and it gets more expensive. We’ll see. But like, the thing is, like the features that we’re talking about, this is another one of those reaching
⏹️ ▶️ John limits of human perception. The features that we’re talking about eventually will be economical, whether it’s with eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John with OLED or with micro LED, eventually those features will just be par for the course. And once you have them, It’s not as
⏹️ ▶️ John if you have to wait for 500 hertz, right? Like, it’s, you know, there is,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the point of diminishing returns. And same thing with the HDR thing. Will there someday be a 5,000-nit monitor?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, I really doubt that is something that any human would even really want, right? So I think
⏹️ ▶️ John you’ll be able to fit all the features that we want into something like the Apple Cinema,
⏹️ ▶️ John the Apple Studio Display within a handful of years. And at that point, for a reasonable
⏹️ ▶️ John economic, you know, amount of money. at that point, this will just be the new Apple Studio display. But
⏹️ ▶️ John look at the cadence of Apple releasing better versions of its monitors. Their history is really bad here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So you had said, and this was off the cuff, off the top of your head. I dropped this on you spontaneously,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so no shame. You had said that you thought the 22-inch cinema display to 23-inch cinema display
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was a year or two. I
⏹️ ▶️ John said it was a, it reminded me it was a very short amount of time, relatively speaking. So how long was it? So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey August 31st, which actually is Aaron’s birthday of 1999, was the 22-inch cinema display,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which has like a tripod-style stand, or just making sure we’re talking about the same thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John AARON It’s flat, but it’s got two stubby little feet on the right and left sides, then it’s got a kickstand on the back.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey STEVE Correct. Okay, we’re talking about the same thing. That was August 31, 1999,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the 23-inch cinema display, which is visually very different, almost iMac-ish.
⏹️ ▶️ John AARON No, visually very different? You must be thinking, Maybe I’m thinking of a different one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, this is aluminum. 23 inch. No,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John no, that’s not what I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about. Okay, this is okay. Then I take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You remember the one with the big plastic clear feet?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, they made two of those. One at 22 and one at 23.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That was March 21, 2002. That makes much more sense. Okay, I feel better.
⏹️ ▶️ John See, that’s a pretty small gap in Apple monitor years, which… That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey basically instant. That’s basically the next day.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that was three years, right? Is it within three years?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it was two and a half years-ish, give
⏹️ ▶️ John So that is the smallest gap I can remember, but pretty much everything else, like look at the Thunderbolt display. That just
⏹️ ▶️ John never got changed and then eventually went away.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, no, it didn’t. I mean, you’re thinking there was an LED SIM display that was not Thunderbolt.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It used, I believe, mini DisplayPort. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John there was a 24-inch Apple LED display that I had at work. No, but there was also a 27. 27-inch LED display. But it
⏹️ ▶️ John was right before Thunderbolt. Yeah, and then replaced with the Thunderbolt. But honestly, the replacement with the Thunderbolt display, It was
⏹️ ▶️ John like the thing that changed about it was the stupid rat tail thing and the Thunderbolt interface. I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ John sure the panel changed at all. I think you might be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right. And that thing was buggy as hell. Tiff had one for a while. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we heard from a lot of people too. Ours was buggy. We heard from a lot of people theirs were buggy.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I have one. It was always weird. It’s because it didn’t run iOS. That was the problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, but seriously. So anyway, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was in the Apple store today. I did finally see the studio display and the Mac studio in person.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I tried to listen to the fan
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John noise. but you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, in an Apple store, you can’t hear anything. And we’ll have feedback on that in a second. But I could have bought a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco studio display today if I didn’t want the good stand. If I wanted just the regular like fixed angle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or fixed height stand, that one they actually had in stock in my store here. And I could have bought that today, but I’m like, no,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I’m gonna get this thing, I wanna get it with the good stand because I never run
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my Apple monitors at stock height. So I could have gotten it, but yeah, I just had to wait. But as soon as I can get one of those,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think I’m going to get one to replace this stupid LG and I’m just gonna mail it to you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What, mail me the LG? That’s like an $80 postage sort of event, but hey, I’ll take it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s worth it for the joke alone. I think everybody should mail you their LG 5Ks. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco USB ports still work, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know what, they were always so unreliable, I don’t use them. Like right now, they’re just empty there.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, the one that connects to the computer still works.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right, remember it was the only one that actually frigging mattered that failed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John online. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John does your monitor occasionally go black like Merlin’s does?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And mine, I’m convinced Merlin has the exact same problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, he totally does. He has the exact same problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Everyone has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that problem. But yeah, it’s, oh god, this monitor. I’m so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over this monitor. I just want this out of my house. I’m literally willing to spend $2,080 to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get this monitor out of my house. That’s how much I hate
⏹️ ▶️ John it. You just put it on the floor and throw a blanket over it, and it could absorb sound.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So getting back to it, I don’t know how far off we are from economically having
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mini LED, you know, local dimming and everything here. Because if you look at the MacBook Pro, the 16 inch MacBook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro, that display is, what do you think, about half? It’s like, if you’d have like two of them,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a left half and a right half, that would about be the 5K area, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Mm, someone should do the math. That seems-
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Maybe three. Yeah, I think you need three.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s like between two and three of those would cover the 5K area. Now I know things are harder to make when you increase
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the area, for things like yields and everything like that. But I think we’re mostly not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talking about yields of the panel, we’re mostly talking about the backlight technology. That would enable the local dimming.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know Siri, I’m not sure I understand either. Your house
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you. No, that was my watch that just did that. Your watch? Oh, that’s the worst.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, how far are we from being able to economically offer that? I bet it’s not, we’re not talking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like six years from now. If we can do it in the 16 inch MacBook Pro for not that much money
⏹️ ▶️ Marco relative to the rest of the cost of the computer and everything. We can probably do it in 5K without
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too extreme of an expense, probably within maybe three years, two years, something like that. I think that’s the time frame we’re talking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about. But again, because of Apple’s aforementioned slowness to update the monitors, that’s why I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s going to be more like three to five years probably before we see it. With that being said…
Studio tour
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I did see these things in, I guess, in the metal. Is that what we call it? That’s what people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco call it, like, for watches. You were in the flesh. Yeah, I was gonna say, I was in the flesh. When you see a watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in person, you call it seeing it in the metal. So do we see the same thing about computers? You do not.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’re making that up. Is that a thing that happens? That’s actually the term that watch people use.
⏹️ ▶️ John When you see it, like, in person, they say, I saw the watch in the metal. That’s exactly what they say, yes. What if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a ceramic watch? They usually contain some metal somewhere. Oh my God. That’s a good question,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco though. There are very few watches that are all ceramic casing usually like at least the button pushers will be metal
⏹️ ▶️ John The fisher price watch it’s all plastic, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but even then you got some metal somewhere. There’s a battery at least You know, it’s wind up Plastic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco springs then. Yeah, right. You guys can see yeah, you you have metal somewhere
⏹️ ▶️ John in there It’s the watch that magneto wears in his prison.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, so I I saw I saw these things and I gotta say so number one the studio
⏹️ ▶️ Marco display looks fantastic I was very impressed by it. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco raising and lowering stand version, they had one on display. It’s very nice. Oh, it’s so nice. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I totally want to get that one when I get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So how does that compare to the XDR? Because I don’t recall having heard anyone who has spent significant
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time with the XDR and has also seen the studio display. And it seemed to me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey having never spent, you know, meaningful time with the XDR, that the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mount, the stand was very similar in quality.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s how it felt to me. I mean, the XDR stand is, you know, it’s a little bit thicker, like the metal is just a little bit thicker on the base and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything, and the little, I guess, neck. And it rotates. Right, yes, well.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, I would say overall, it’s very similar quality to an XDR stand at like, you know, two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thirds scale or something like that. It’s, you know, or thickness or bulk or whatever. Very, very similar. However,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the up and down motion of like how easy to just move up and down, I would say it felt the same. Now I’m not moving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my XDR up and down all the time. You know, I set it where I want it and then I set it and forget it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But you know, you do have to set it. And so I adjusted the one in the store, moved up and down a little bit and it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco felt great. It felt exactly as high quality as the XDR stand. And actually the fact that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it can’t rotate, I consider that a feature, not a bug, because again, I want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my monitors to be level and you know what monitor can never be unlevel? One that can’t rotate.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I would actually prefer it to not have that ability.
⏹️ ▶️ John This gets back to two things that I said when I originally got my XDR. First, that I was surprised at how
⏹️ ▶️ John the up and down motion wasn’t as smooth as I thought it would be. Not that it was janky or loose,
⏹️ ▶️ John it was very tight, but it felt kind of like, I don’t know, it didn’t feel like a well-oiled machine
⏹️ ▶️ John that felt a little bit gritty to me, right? And the second thing is that, but you’re talking about the, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can rotate it, right? But it doesn’t have like a click into place for exactly, you know, horizontal and exactly vertical.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is a disadvantage if you’re like, oh, well, how will I know if I really level? But it is also an advantage
⏹️ ▶️ John if you are not sure that your desk or room are level because then you can make sure the monitor is level
⏹️ ▶️ John even if the stand isn’t. Maybe that’s not a problem for people who live in new construction, but if you live in an old house in New England,
⏹️ ▶️ John the ability to actually level your monitor, even if your desk isn’t level, is actually a feature. Of course, my desk is level,
⏹️ ▶️ John so I don’t have to worry about it. or rather I do have to worry about it, but I can level my desk
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco and I also leveled
⏹️ ▶️ John And like Marco, I got it set where I wanted, I generally don’t mess with it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and also regarding seeing the Mac Studio in the middle, I was very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco surprised how bulky and blocky it looks in person. It was like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I knew academically how big it’s supposed to be. It looked in person bigger
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than I expected it to look. And still, no, I’m still not attractive. But not that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m, you know, it’s fine. It’s serving its purpose. So, you know, I’m very glad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this product exists. It definitely looks utilitarian.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was surprised there’s a large white power LED on the front. It’s not super
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bright, but it has a larger diameter than like a typical little point white LED. It’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more of like a, almost like a pencil eraser sized. So that was kind of interesting and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little surprising to see. So if you’re sensitive to that, you might want to get one of those little like stick on light cover tape things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for it, but otherwise, no, it looks pretty cool. Just, it looked big. It’s a chunk.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah. It’s not something that I would want, like, you know, they have it, in all their pictures, they have it kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sticking out from under the monitor a little bit, so you’re, it’s like, it’s like a few inches in front of the monitor a little bit. Yeah, because they wanted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it to be in the product
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Here I am. In practice, you’re never gonna wanna have that be sticking out past the monitor on your desk.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’re gonna like tuck it behind it somewhere, or like off to the side.
⏹️ ▶️ John Although it is nice that it fits underneath. I think that’s kind of like a space-saving thing, Like if the space is
⏹️ ▶️ John tight, you don’t actually need a separate space on the desk for it. You can just let it be sort of be in the shadow of the monitor. But I was
⏹️ ▶️ John at Jason Snell was just pointing out a like a plexiglass thing that mounts under your desk. It’s really
⏹️ ▶️ John what it actually is is a dual Mac mini under desk mount, right? But because this is about the
⏹️ ▶️ John same size as two Mac minis, you can just buy it, put it under your desk, put the studio in it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then, you know, you wouldn’t have to see it at all. It would just be stuck under your desk and maybe you wouldn’t hear it as much either.
Sponsor: Linode
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Input
⏹️ ▶️ Casey On a completely random note, you know what’s paining me a little bit? Knowing that there is a black version
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the keyboard and trackpad that I’m using right now and I don’t have it. Because I don’t have anything against the white version,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but after having spent years with the iMac Pros, black keys, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dark gray or whatever it was, and black trackpad, now as of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey event, you can get, and they’re obscenely expensive, but you can get a black keyboard and a black trackpad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I gotta say, I saw the black peripherals in person today as well. I wasn’t that impressed by them, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe it’s just not my style. I will say, the reason I was in the Apple Store-
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Other than the studio display.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I was shopping at Whole Foods, like almost next door to it, and so I walked over there. But the reason I was there is that for tonight’s recording, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wanted to get myself a Thunderbolt 2 to 3 adapter so I could use my other Thunderbolt ethernet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco adapter. It’s for, you know, remember when I have recorded here in the past, we had some issues using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the stupid, you know, Belkin made USB-C ethernet adapter is not very good or fast or reliable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But, and I had, I had two of the Apple Thunderbolt ethernet adapters. One of them’s at the beach and I had one here. I just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco didn’t have the converter to use it on Thunderbolt 3. Secondly, I wanted to get the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new little Touch ID keyboard. Because I don’t, I wanted to try it out, you know, try using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it as a keyboard. Maybe I could switch to it. I’ve already decided that’s probably not going to happen, but it is kind of nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I wanted to have like, you know, the thing where you like Velcro it under the desk or something so that you can touch ID
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with it while still using a good keyboard on top of your desk. And I did try using it for like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this afternoon for while setting up my computer and responding to some emails and stuff. And it’s almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a good keyboard. I could almost see myself using it, but the damn
⏹️ ▶️ Marco arrow keys. I remember we talked about how they like, they apparently like rounded the corners of this keyboard so much.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because you got the one without the numeric keypad. Yes, I did.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because the- Bingo, mistake.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The numeric keypad one’s too wide. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I might try that at some point.
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, aren’t you like ambidextrous now? You use like lefty trackpad and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do use lefty trackpad and righty mouse. But I just don’t like having the mouse like all the way off in New Jersey
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I’m trying to, but man, this keyboard is almost really good,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco except for those damn full height left and right arrow keys. That was messing me up constantly. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, I’m used to the Microsoft Sculpt that I use all the time. I’ve even, by the way, quick little thing. Lenovo released
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a new ergonomic keyboard recently. I bought one, I tried it, it was so bad and I couldn’t return
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, I actually threw it away. That’s how bad that was. So if anybody’s wondering if I’ve found anything better than the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Microsoft Sculpt for a split ergonomic keyboard, no. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so going back to the Apple thing, it’s almost really good. I just, if they made the small
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keyboard without the numeric keypad going off all the way into New Jersey, but with regular half
⏹️ ▶️ Marco height left and right arrow keys, that would be an amazing product. I’d be so happy with that. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might even stop using my ergonomic keyboard entirely for that product. But as it stands, unfortunately, we haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gotten there. But having Touch ID is really cool. And I was also interested to see that by setting up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this Touch ID keyboard with my 16-inch MacBook Pro, which of course has its own Touch ID sensor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the MacBook Pro, I didn’t have to re-register my fingerprint for the keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it must have either transferred my fingerprint data over somehow, which I’m not sure how that’s possible,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco while also having the whole security thing that they do where it’s all locked in, or there is some kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco common hash that it stores and it’s able to read the same fingerprint data from two different sensors
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and match one common hash. But I thought that was kind of an interesting little side effect that I expected I’d
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to train my own fingerprint again on this new sensor, but I didn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think the secure enclave is on the M1, right? It’s not in the keyboard, but I might
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s probably it. So it’s transmitting my fingerprint image somehow from this keyboard.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, not the image, but some amount of data, but who knows?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco By the way, just some real-time follow-up here. R. Moring in the chat has linked, there’s actually a whole Apple support
⏹️ ▶️ Marco document on how the Magic Keyboard with Touch ID does the fingerprint security and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how it securely transmits stuff between it and the computer. So we’ll link that in the show notes as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, hearing you, to go back a step, talk about the officially called Magic Keyboard with Touch ID for Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey models with Apple Silicon, hyphen US English, that’s a very non-Apple name.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s almost one of those like Amazon keyboard spam titles.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my goodness. Anyways, when I was buying my new setup, when I got my new computer, I got
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the keyboard that has numeric keypad on it. And I do like numeric keypad, but I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t use it that terribly often. And I understand what you’re saying, and I know you’re being hyperbolic, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even though my trackpad is east of where I would potentially want it to be, I wouldn’t go so far as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to say it’s in New Jersey or anything like that, or for us it would be the Eastern shore. but nevertheless,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is further away than I would prefer in a perfect world,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but- You’re sure as you gaze west of me, I just, I face south.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fair, okay, well, that’s true, actually, that’s a good point, but anyways, the point is that the reason I didn’t get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the keyboard that you ended up with was expressly because I knew those arrow keys were going to drive me friggin’
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nuts. And so I thought, you know what? I’m just gonna bite the bullet and I’m just gonna go ahead
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’m gonna get the one with the keypad because I would prefer to have the arrow keys that are not, the consistent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey arrow keys where everything is a full key size.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just a quick update on Apple peripherals with black key caps and so on. Stephen
⏹️ ▶️ John Hack had a good post to remind us. It was a discussion about the black MacBook and how that will cost more, but it came with
⏹️ ▶️ John a bigger hard drive. But even if you accounted for the bigger hard drive, it still costs a little bit more. So it’s a thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple still does. Reading from his webpage, we’ll put a link in the show notes. The current Magic Mouse, or I guess I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John if this is current, but anyway, the Magic Mouse, white was 79, black 99. The Magic Trackpad, white 129, black 149.
⏹️ ▶️ John Magic keyboard with touch ID, numeric keypad, white 179, black 199.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wanted the black MacBook until I saw someone else’s in person, and it was just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco covered in fingerprints.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Oh my, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey smudged up. Oh, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco it was the white ones,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I had a white polybook, and it was covered in finger grease. I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John easier to keep the white things clean than it is to keep the black one’s finger ungreased, because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s harder to clean off fingers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who are you to be throwing stones about black keyboards, Mr. I always bought black cars for
⏹️ ▶️ John I still have a black keyboard right here. I just don’t happen to have very greasy fingers or I wash my hands or touch my computer. I have a black
⏹️ ▶️ John mouse. I have a black keycap. I was lucky enough for my extremely inexpensive Mac Pro came with a keyboard
⏹️ ▶️ John with black keycaps and a black mouse that I’ve never unwrapped.
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Retina pollen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, we should, I guess, maybe do follow up, or aren’t we supposed to start the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John show at this point?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, someone derailed us. I can’t remember.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, well, geez, it must have been Marco. It couldn’t have been me. All right, so we should do some actual follow
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up. So a friend of the show, Mark Edwards over at Django, who makes John’s favorite app in the entire world,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iStatMenus, he put together a follow up to his post from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey several years ago that started me down this whole journey of looking into monitors
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and high DPI monitors and so on and so forth. Well, Mark has put together a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey revisit in much the same way I had on my post in December, and he walks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey through kind of, you know, let’s talk again about what it is we want, why we want it, et cetera. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey did you know, fellas, it turns out that when you have a visual medium and you’re trying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to discuss visual things, it’s very easy to display examples
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of exactly what we’re talking about. So if you’re a curious listener as to why we keep banging
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this drum and barking up this tree, then I encourage you to check out this post because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is abundantly obvious very, very quickly exactly what we’re talking about. Also, actually,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that reminds me, last week I meant to say out loud, and I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t, but I did put in the show notes, I went back and watch the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPhone 4 Retina Display announcement with Steve Jobs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I put in the show notes, but I completely forgot to say anything about it. And in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very Steve fashion, he does a phenomenal job in just a couple of minutes of explaining exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey why retina is a big deal in a much better way than any one of us can just using our voices. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s in the last episode show notes, but I remember I’ll try to copy it to this episode show notes as well. But it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is absolutely worth the, I don’t know, five or ten minutes of your time if you’re still confused why we want retina
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so bad. So go check that out too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you mentioned how it’s really nice to have a blog post for this visual medium, for this visual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco explanation. Well I happened to read this blog post earlier today while sitting outside at a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco playground with, you know, Adam was playing and I was like sitting there, you know, as I was sitting at the playground
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bench with no parents I knew around me to talk to, I was reading my phone of course, and the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wind just kept blowing in my eyes, and my eyes were just watering the entire time. In retrospect,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was most likely because of the pollen and the missed allergy pill, but at the time I thought, man, it’s just really windy today,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and my eyes were just constantly watering. And I’m trying to read this article, and I kept wanting to wipe my eyes, and they’re getting all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco itchy and red from all the wiping then.
⏹️ ▶️ John I thought you were having an emotional experience.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it looked like that. And I actually thought, people might think I’m crying here. It’s actually like there’s a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of water coming out of my eyes
⏹️ ▶️ John right now. One native scaling makes you sad.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Well, yeah. I mean, anyway, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that was a very good article that I read through tears of pollen. And joy. Yes. Also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pollen. Mostly pollen.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can tell you that this, like the mid-Atlantic is real bad. It may not be the worst, but it is real bad
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for pollen. And it is very frustrating. And what’s worse is, because I’m getting ever older,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it affects me more and more every year. And I assure you, when you have rigid gas permeable or otherwise known as hard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey contact is if even a microscopic speck of pollen ends up between your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eyeball and your contact, it’s like getting stabbed to death in the eye. It is delightful,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I assure you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can tell you, I know that my most popular subject matter that I can cover is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco medical advice. Everyone loves- And it never goes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everybody loves whenever I discuss medical advice. However, I can tell you, I have had good experiences
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with adult allergy shots. I got them when I was a kid also, like more regularly.
⏹️ ▶️ John you mean? Adult allergy? All
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco right, go on. I like what you said.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, allergy shots as an adult, you know, not like explicit allergy shots.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I can actually recommend. It actually helped a lot and takes way less time than you think to like build up immunity because
⏹️ ▶️ John But you just said how you’re dying from your eyes. If it helps so much, why are you still bothered so badly?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because I haven’t gotten them in like three years because they don’t have them at the beach. shot train. Yeah, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What are we doing right now? Is this the show? Is this what people tune in for?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I believe we’re still in the pre-show. We’re trying to do a follow-up.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not working. It’s not working. Keep trying. He will soldier on.
dB vs. dBFS vs. SPL
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so we’ve been dropping hints about this. We had some really genuinely great feedback
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from a couple of different audio people, and I know that’s not the right term, and I’m sorry, but one of them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that wrote in was Sam Kusnets, and Sam writes, I’m a theatrical sound designer, and a very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey big part of my job is ensuring that audience members sitting in different places in the theater have more or less the same
⏹️ ▶️ Casey acoustic experience as each other. This involves a lot of measuring of sound in a whole bunch of different ways, so it’s become a topic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s very near and dear to me. Something that we came close to touching on several times in episode 476, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey never exactly addressed, is the relationship between loudness and distance. We can say things like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey quote, a car passing by 65 decibels, quote, or a jet engine is 140 decibels, but those numbers don’t mean anything
⏹️ ▶️ Casey without knowing the distance between the source of the sound and the measurement device. Regarding the three decibel MacBook, Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey operator position measurements are almost certainly taken within
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an anechoic chamber, completely isolated from outside sources of noise. In this environment, the three decibels
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that they pick up from the MacBook Air is certainly thermally induced, but it’s hard to say what exactly it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey My guess is vibration of any parts that have flexed, like keyboard keys or the hinge of the lid. This is very close
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the edge of what is physically possible to measure, so it’s shrug-worthy territory. Apple’s probably obligated to report whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they measure, even if it’s hard to explain, since it’s part of the official technical specifications of the device. Finally,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there was the question of noticing a three decibel difference or not, with the acoustician stating that a three decibel difference was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey close to unnoticeable, and Marco observing that when he makes a three decibel change while editing podcasts, he very clearly notices
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. This is one of those great examples of, you’re both right! And the reason is that you’re likely not talking about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the same scale, because a decibel isn’t a fixed quantity, it’s a ratio, and without a reference point, a decibel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey means nothing. Measurements of the loudness of things in the real world use the decibel SPL
⏹️ ▶️ Casey scale, the SPL means sound pressure level, and is calibrated against a specific amount
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of air pressure. The reference point for one decibel SPL is 20 micropascals, which is the smallest quantity
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of air pressure that a human ear is able to perceive. Anything less than that doesn’t have enough energy to motivate the mechanism
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the ear. When Marco makes a three-decibel adjustment while editing, he’s working in the DBFS domain or decibel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey file system domain, just kidding, the decibel full scale, which uses as its reference
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point the loudest possible sound that can be encoded on disk at the given sample rate and bit depth.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This next part actually blew my mind. I had no idea this was the case. So back to Sam here. This is why
⏹️ ▶️ Casey almost all level measurement in audio software uses negative numbers. They are all saying, quote,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how much quieter is this level than the absolute loudest possible level that I can reproduce, quote. I had no idea, that’s why
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I always saw negative stuff in Final Cut Pro, that’s so cool. So I’ve learned something.
⏹️ ▶️ John You also see it if you have an AV receiver and you adjust the volume on it.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s very good that it shows you a negative number.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s true, I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey think about that. Yeah, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right. If you think about it, like, you know, if like zero, it’s kind of hard to say, well, what is the quietest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sound? Well, that depends a lot on the sensitivity of what you are recording or measuring it with. As you increase
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the signal-to-noise ratio, or you decrease the noise floor, or like in digital terms, if you increase the bit depth,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like from 16-bit to 24-bit or 32-bit, the smallest or tiniest little measurable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sound gets quieter the more sensitive you’re representing it. Whereas you can always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco easily represent what is the loudest. Like the loudest is like your digital circuit is at one, like 1.0
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever. Like it’s the maximum capacity of that circuit before it clips. It’s the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco highest value it can represent, whatever it is. So it makes sense to set that as your starting point and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco represent everything as well. How far below that are we? Because the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco depth of that can change over time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right, and then Sam finishes up, a three decibel adjustment within your editor may not equate to three decibel SPL difference
⏹️ ▶️ Casey once that signal makes its way through the rest of the signal path. And even if it does, it isn’t equating
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to an actual level of three decibel SPL. It’s equal to maybe 63 or 73 decibel SPL.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey human hearing perception is not linear, and the decibel scale is neither. The difference between 70 decibels SPL and 73
⏹️ ▶️ Casey decibels SPL is more perceptible than the difference between zero decibels SPL and three
⏹️ ▶️ Casey decibels SPL. This is all fascinating, and I know that was a little bit long, but I was riveted by all of it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think this is another time to say that all of which is interesting and important background knowledge, but it
⏹️ ▶️ John does not solve the very, I mean, it’s not a mystery, but the very puzzling
⏹️ ▶️ John reality of the wildly varying reports we continue to get from people who
⏹️ ▶️ John have own or are near Mac Studios, right? It’s just, I’ve been tweeting about
⏹️ ▶️ John it all week long. And I’m not saying any of these people are wrong, but this is really, the variability is
⏹️ ▶️ John just off the charts. It’s even made some people guess that maybe there’s like a manufacturing problem and some are loud
⏹️ ▶️ John or some are quiet, because people are saying, like you get the, from all the way from the people saying, I have one,
⏹️ ▶️ John I live in a tomb where there is no noise or wind and I can’t hear it at
⏹️ ▶️ John all. And my ears are the best ears. I won the hearing contest in my town. I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John hear a thing. And other people are like, I’m returning my $8,000 computer because I can’t stand the noise. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John so loud, you have no idea, right? Some people even said they could hear the display. I’m like, come
⏹️ ▶️ John on, you can hear the display. No one had said they could hear the display. I’m like, at least the whole world agrees you can’t hear the fans
⏹️ ▶️ John in the Apple Studio display. And
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey then people- Until you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get yours, and then you’re gonna say, I absolutely can hear
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t hear the fans in my XDR. I said that before, my XDR has fans, I do not hear them, right? But
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac Studio is all over the map, right? We even had somebody who said, I bought two Mac Studios,
⏹️ ▶️ John one was the Ultra and one was the Macs, and I can hear the Macs, but I can’t hear the Ultra.
⏹️ ▶️ John same person, literally the same person. And one of them
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s like, well, the Ultra has the copper heatsink and blah, blah, blah, but like, but every other person who tested them said that fans stay
⏹️ ▶️ John at the same RPM. Apple has said it’s the same cooling assembly in both of them, the heatsink is different.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s baffling, right? So all this academic stuff of explaining the decibel differences in SBL or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s good to understand the measurements we were getting. It’s like, oh, well, we don’t have to rely on
⏹️ ▶️ John people’s reported annoyance level. We can just take measurements with science. And this explains how the
⏹️ ▶️ John science would work. But almost everyone who’s told us about science has also thrown it a little aside
⏹️ ▶️ John as if it’s unimportant to say, of course, the quality of the sound matters because if it is
⏹️ ▶️ John broad spectrum, high pitch, low pitch, Loudness is just
⏹️ ▶️ John one factor that goes into, is this sound annoying or even can I hear it?
⏹️ ▶️ John And so the subjective support reports in many ways are all that does matter, right? Because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not like we’re measuring a single frequency tone at different sound levels. It’s we’re measuring a
⏹️ ▶️ John very complicated sound in very complicated environments and then subjecting it to individual
⏹️ ▶️ John people. And right now the individual people do not agree. Are these computers dead silent or are they the noisiest
⏹️ ▶️ John things Apple has ever made need to be returned. And in the end, all that matters is what you, listener
⏹️ ▶️ John or me or Marco or whatever, what you think about it when you buy yours. Because who cares if other people can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John stand the noise? If you buy one and you can’t hear it, success. Or if everyone else thinks it’s quiet and you buy one and can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John stand the noise, that’s bad. So I’m still hoping that by the time my Mac Studio actually
⏹️ ▶️ John ships sometime this summer, whatever issues they might have will be sorted out. And I’m just hoping I’m old enough that the sound
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But if it was a taste-related thing, you are a super taster and you would know.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I think your taste buds get crappier as you get older. Everything gets crappier as you get older for the most part.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey So I was gonna say, what doesn’t?
⏹️ ▶️ John Even that’s probably fading with age, but you know, if it tastes good, being a super taster is great. Tastes like a thousand peaches.
⏹️ ▶️ John Thousand pears? Come on, chat room, help me out. These two aren’t gonna.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Millions of peaches. Peaches for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Nice. along.
USB-C to Ethernet holes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Chris Gagne writes, it appears that some common USB-C ethernet adapters, like the Belkin
⏹️ ▶️ Casey One Apple cells, have issues reaching full gigabit speeds plugged into the studio display. I could only hit about 400
⏹️ ▶️ Casey megabits per second via speed test when plugged into the studio display, and about 920 megabits per second, close to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the limit of gigabit, plugged directly into my MacBook Pro 14-inch. However, an Anker 2.5 gigabit ethernet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey adapter, an Anker 2.5G model, was able to reach at least gigabit speeds, and I was consistently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey getting download speeds of about 930 gigabits per second when I plugged it into the studio display.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t have a 2.5 gigabit ethernet network to test its full capabilities, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this solves my issue. I didn’t put this in here. I’m not sure why we, why do we care?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, it’s just an interesting thing to consider for, you know, getting the full capabilities of your monitor
⏹️ ▶️ John and the mysteries of things that fit into USB-C shaped holes, but may not. You know what I mean?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like it’s just, it never ends. It’s not even just cables.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I mean, I get that. I don’t know. I would really love for someone to put
⏹️ ▶️ Casey together like an online calculator for all the stuff flying through
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a Thunderbolt connection. Because I feel like, and this is very unscientific of me, but I feel like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, the 5K displays, Karen, that 5K has a lot of data to pass and it has to pass
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, you know, very frequently. So if the network connection is a little slower, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I get that. And again, that’s not scientific at all. But I wish someone would put together some sort of like online calculator
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where you could say something like, oh, I’ve got a 5K display, and I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey got a this or that and the other thing. When do I get into the danger zone of throughput or something like that?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So somebody make that for me, please and thank you.
⏹️ ▶️ John Real-time update. I got the fruit right eventually, but blew the number. 100 pairs or a million pairs, not 1,000 pairs.
⏹️ ▶️ John Link in the show notes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have no idea what
⏹️ ▶️ John talking about. Put it in the chat room. I put it at the top
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the document. Just link it. Oh, they might be giants? Oh, fair enough. OK.
iCloud custom email domains
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s talk about from about 15 years ago iCloud and custom domains. Dominic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Lautner wrote a blog post or post about a lot of the problems with iCloud
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and custom email domains and to quickly go through some of them. There’s no catch-all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey address support. So this is, my email address is at kclist.com.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, if you were to email like foobar at kclist.com, which isn’t a valid address,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can set it up such that that will go to a particular email address of mine that I do check.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And iCloud doesn’t allow that. There’s also, according to Dominic, aggressive DNS record validation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s no inbound email relay support. And the error messages are, guess
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what, super duper opaque and useless because, hey, Apple, this is what you love to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Dominic, when he looked into this, got a crappy error message. And being an industrious,
⏹️ ▶️ John probably developer or whatever said, like, I need more. And then just, you know, because it’s like a web type thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can just look at the, you know, Ajax requests going back and forth and look at the
⏹️ ▶️ John actual JSON. And so the UI error was, there was a problem adding this
⏹️ ▶️ John email address. Please try again later, which is like the worst copy because try again later, it’s like, is it going to be different
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Or is it, are you just
⏹️ ▶️ John like, is this just a form of torture? Like, because later it makes it seem like there’s a temporary
⏹️ ▶️ John condition that you think will resolve, right? But if you look at the JSON, the JSON has an error
⏹️ ▶️ John code, whatever, some number, and then it has an error message key in the JSON. The error message is
⏹️ ▶️ John MX record not pointing to iCloud. Boy, that would be useful to know because now you know how
⏹️ ▶️ John to fix it. If you know what an MX, at least you have a hint if you know what an MX record is. And I understand this is technical and most people don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John understand that, but that is not the equivalent of there was a problem ending with email, please try again later, because later it will not
⏹️ ▶️ John work unless someone changes the MX record between now and later. And it reminded
⏹️ ▶️ John me of experience I’m having with my iPhoto library or
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple Photos library, where it will get into a state where it’ll say, restoring from iCloud dot,
⏹️ ▶️ John dot, dot, and it will just stay that way forever. And I look at it and I wonder,
⏹️ ▶️ John what’s really going on? Please tell me, are you ever going to complete? Are you
⏹️ ▶️ John stuck on something? Is there an image you can’t get to? And I just, I resort to such ridiculous
⏹️ ▶️ John things. Obviously I’m looking in console for anything and there’s nothing helpful there. And then I’m using FS usage and SC
⏹️ ▶️ John usage, running them in every process I can think of. You know, the iCloud, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, the photo library D, the photos application itself, the cloud sync D,
⏹️ ▶️ John like just, I just want, I’m, you know, because you look at it and like, nothing’s happening on the computer. The CPU is not being
⏹️ ▶️ John stressed. It’s not a lot of disk IO, but there’s a little bit, and you’re like, is the, our photos,
⏹️ ▶️ John is something happening related to photos? because I left it on this thing for like days a couple of times
⏹️ ▶️ John and so before I gave up and just rebuilt the whole library with that, you hold that launch photos and hold down command option. I’ll rebuild the whole
⏹️ ▶️ John library, which also takes forever, by the way, which is why I didn’t want to do it. But eventually, after several days of it, just
⏹️ ▶️ John having an opaque message like this, I just gave up. So I really wish Apple would.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like it’s a difficult problem because you don’t want to throw weird error messages in people’s faces. They’re confusing. Nobody knows what an MX
⏹️ ▶️ John record is for the most part. So I get why they’re trying to hide it. But there should be some way for people who
⏹️ ▶️ John want to know or want some kind of hint to figure out, is this irretrievably
⏹️ ▶️ John wedged? Is it doing something? Or should I give up and rebuild the thing? And
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple continues to be terrible about this. I thought this was interesting that this sub-subject came up
⏹️ ▶️ John in an otherwise unrelated topic of iCloud custom domains.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed. And then Dominic also talks about some notes about coupling with Apple IDs, email
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sent from addresses without an account get dropped, which is super delightful.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And according to Dominic, third-party clients may leak your Apple ID, which is also super delightful.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So there’s problems. And you might want to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tread carefully if that’s what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John you want to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John These problems may or may not apply to you. Like follow the link to the article to see them in much more detail. This is just a quick bulleted list,
⏹️ ▶️ John but there are sort of edge cases that may concern you that you should look into.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And finally, with regard to iCloud photos, or iCloud email stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Eli Lindsay writes that despite including instructions to configure DNS entries for domain keys, identified
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mail or DKIM, DKIM signatures are not generated when sending mail from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iOS or macOS mail app. DKIM is generated when sending from the iCloud webmail client,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but who actually uses that? This means outgoing mail takes a deliverability hit, though it’s still generally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey okay since sender policy framework or SPF is properly configured. Cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anything else we’d like to add about that?
⏹️ ▶️ John Use fast mail, I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, oh, and speaking of, I’ve had a few questions about what I’ve done with regard to my Gmail and Google
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apps Share domain. What I’ve done is I’ve continued to kick that can down the road and not think about it. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my current plan is the same as it was before, which is even though there apparently are some ways that you can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ask Google, please, please, sir, please can I have some more? And you might be able
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get access in certain circumstances forever. I just plan to divorce myself
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from Google at this point. And so I do plan to get a FastMail account. I need to do that soon because I would love to pull a Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and get all of the referral credit, but I haven’t done so yet. So please, if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re thinking about sending any referral credit my way, please just hold on a little bit longer. I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get to it at some point.
Casey loves California
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All righty, let’s talk about iPhone 14 rumors.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And there’ve been a bunch lately because we’re coming up to that time, which actually speaking of, I’m a little surprised
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that we haven’t heard about WWDC yet. It’s April,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what the heck? Yeah, it’s one of those like, you know, any day now situations. But I mean, frankly, I would be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very surprised if it would be any different than the last couple of years. I think it’s very little chance that it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco person. So it’s probably gonna be another remote conference. And frankly, I mean, we talk about this every year,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but frankly, I think remote is better. And it isn’t better in all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ways, but it’s better in many ways. And I think if they went back to having it in person
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, certain parts of it would feel like a step backwards. Can you imagine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to what used to be called the Fairmont and what is now, Hilton bought it and renamed it, but it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey back to one of these.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but I checked the other day for fun, like what does it cost for that first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco full week of June where it would most likely be if it was in person? And it’s like $475 a night. It’s like, and of course,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and San Francisco hotel is in that ballpark if it’s anywhere near decent.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not even, we’re not even talking like really fancy hotels. We’re talking just like, what would anywhere, in any other city in America,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what would be like $100 a night? There it’s almost 500.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But anyway, can you imagine going back there in person and spending a million
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dollars on a hotel and flying out there from wherever you have to come from, which is a big expense and a big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time commitment and everything, and sitting through the terribly slow coffee
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shops that you find out there between sessions and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco having to go into the conference center and having to wait in line to get into the room
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to then watch people present on a stage when, frankly, if you look at the videos they’ve made over the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco last couple years, the videos are better. it would seem in many ways like a step backwards.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And yeah, I miss the socialization, I miss the labs, like kind of BSing with some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco engineers here and there. That was fun, but I think what we have now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overall is better and you cannot ignore that it’s better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in many ways, even for those of us who were lucky enough to be able to go in person, but there’s so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many more people who could never go in person or who maybe only go once at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco best, because it’s a big ordeal, it’s a big expense, and it’s hard to get tickets, you know? So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco imagine how much better the current system is now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for how many more total people. I really do think if we ever go back in person, it will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feel like a step backwards. And we only will have known that by now, having it be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better. And then right now we think, oh, we can’t wait to go back, but if you do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go back, I think you will miss the parts about this that make this so good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I don’t know. I want to go back just because I need an excuse to see all my friends again.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I hear you, and I think you’re probably right. If I were to wager a guess, I don’t think it’ll be this year, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think in maybe next year, it wouldn’t surprise me if the keynote
⏹️ ▶️ Casey becomes a media event where the John Grubers of the world and so on. And I would love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco And us, maybe. Hey, invite us. You
⏹️ ▶️ Casey never know. But the Grubers and the Snells of the world would get invited and would go out and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go for one day for the big keynote. If there is hardware, which is not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey usually their style these days, then maybe they would get some hands-on time with the hardware, and then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that would be that, and the rest of the conference would be online, just as it has been. To go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey back a quick step, hearing you talk about $450 hotels in San Jose,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is California like the crypto
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of states where everyone is just agreeing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it’s more expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I believe they’re called fiat hotels. They’re just declared to be that expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But like, the Fairmont, while a perfectly reasonable and maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even fine hotel, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco ultra fine. That’s a step
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John too far. But it’s a perfectly fine hotel.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Was it a $450 a night hotel? No, no, it was not. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when we were in San Francisco, Was the Park 55 a $350 hotel? Absolutely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey not. It’s all about location though.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John the one in San
⏹️ ▶️ John Francisco is in downtown San Francisco. The one in San Jose is in downtown San Jose
⏹️ ▶️ John where there is, as far as I’m able to determine, nothing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know. I do miss the beer and sausage place.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey That was a very-
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh no, what was it?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Original Gravity? No, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wasn’t. Original Gravity Public House. That, yeah, that and the vegan Indian place across from it are both very good and I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco miss those places. I do not miss anything else about going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to prison. Right, but here’s the thing. I feel like crypto, not to really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tick off all the crypto people again, but I feel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everyone’s agreeing to, we’re all deciding as a collective that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we’re going to believe that this currency is worth a lot of money, right? And I feel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like, well, but I feel like that’s California at this point. We are just all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as a society agreeing that California is expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ John Things are worth what people are willing to pay for them is the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey phenomenon you’re describing.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s true of the hotels in San Jose as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well. I mean, I guess, but I don’t know, man. It just seems like we’re all agreeing that we’re just going to get fleeced anytime we step
⏹️ ▶️ Casey within the state border of California. Like, it doesn’t matter where you’re going.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I mean, if they held a
⏹️ ▶️ John conference, California is a big place. If I knew more about it, I could name some city in California that no one ever goes to
⏹️ ▶️ John where everything is super cheap. Yeah. I think we should do that. I don’t think they have a lot of big conference centers there. They’re probably
⏹️ ▶️ John not close to the airport.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Real-time follow-up. It looks like Original Gravity Public House is still open, from what I can tell, which is great news.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MARK Oh, thank God.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey COREY Yeah, that’s what we should do. We should do. Oh, and it looks like the gentleman who is pouring a beer on their website
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has what I think is a Triforce tattoo. That’s from a game called The Legend of Zelda, John.
⏹️ ▶️ John at this photograph to see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John if it’s actually a Triforce? COREY It probably isn’t actually. I’m pretty confident.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s in the chat room. But, you know, I feel like, Marco, maybe, you know, once it’s safe,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what you and I should do is we should go on a dining tour
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of WWDCs of years past, and we’ll get lunch at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Original Gravity, we’ll get dinner at House of Prime Rib, and then we can come home. We might not even need
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to stay the night. We could just come right then and save 500 bucks. Oh, golly.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I miss that place. Original Gravity was great. Their sausages were delightful. Of course, all the Germans
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are listening to this and like, oh, really? Let me tell you about it. Let me tell you about good sausage. Well, okay, this is going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nowhere good. Let’s talk about iPhone 14. John Willis
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Everything’s relative. Tim Cynova Although, we took that entire detour just to avoid talking about the iPhone 14 rumors. Janna Marley
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, frankly, like, is this very interesting? I don’t know. John
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco think it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tim Cynova Okay. Janna Marley Let’s hear why. Tim Cynova John,
⏹️ ▶️ John tell us what’s interesting. John Willis I mean, it’s interesting for the drama. It’s like the last time we talked about iPhone 14 rumors, I don’t know, it was ages ago.
⏹️ ▶️ John the prevailing rumor at that time, which I think we described as very early, so take with a grain of salt. I was excited about
⏹️ ▶️ John because iPhone 14 is my iPhone year. I buy a new iPhone every two years instead of every one.
⏹️ ▶️ John And recently I’ve been in the cadence where it’s like, when Apple comes out with a new form factor, that’s my
⏹️ ▶️ John year. So I get the first of whatever the new thing is. Like I got the first flat sided
⏹️ ▶️ John one, I got the 12 here, right? And then 13 was also flat sided. So it was the 14, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John time for a new form factor, or whatever. the rumors they had a while ago were getting me excited
⏹️ ▶️ John because the main thing I didn’t like about the 13 Pro, my wife has a 13 Pro, was the gargantuan
⏹️ ▶️ John camera bump. Like, I think we talked about this when we were reviewing our various iPhone 13s and I was saying when I use
⏹️ ▶️ John my wife’s phone very often, the camera bump’s so big for us all that it doesn’t lay flat even with the case on it. And second,
⏹️ ▶️ John when I’m holding it, I would bump into the little wall that’s around the giant camera bump. I would,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it was like, it just didn’t, I preferred, I was glad that I had a 12 because the 12’s
⏹️ ▶️ John camera bump, while big, is nothing compared to the 13 one. It is smaller in width and height, and it sticks out less
⏹️ ▶️ John far from the phone. And I’m like, well, maybe that will be solved by the 14. So the early rumors on
⏹️ ▶️ John the 14 was that it was gonna have a periscope camera and like no more camera
⏹️ ▶️ John bump, essentially. Like the cameras would be flush, because, you know, we’ve described this
⏹️ ▶️ John before, but the periscope camera is basically like the sensor is inside the phone, and it is sideways, and then there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like a little prism, or mirror or whatever, where the light goes into the phone, and then goes down the
⏹️ ▶️ John phone and all the lens elements are, there’ll be a link in the show notes which shows an image of what it looks like, but all the lens elements
⏹️ ▶️ John are stacked sort of sideways inside the phone, and that would let you have a very long lens, possibly
⏹️ ▶️ John also with an optical zoom on it as well, without sticking out a lot from the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then the next set of rumors that started coming were, hey, no more notch. It’s gonna have a hole, what they call a hole
⏹️ ▶️ John punch camera, only instead of just a hole punch for the camera, it would be like a circular hole punch for the camera,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then a lozenge-shaped hole punch for the remaining face ID sensor stuff, but the two of them
⏹️ ▶️ John together would be much smaller than a notch. Right, I’m like, wow, this iPhone 14 sounds like it’s gonna be awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ John And now as we get closer to actual iPhone 14 time, all my hopes have
⏹️ ▶️ John been dashed. Because now we get the real leaks, people are leaking the schematics that the case makers
⏹️ ▶️ John get, and the CAD drawings, and parts leaks of the actual screen. So the hole punch stuff seems
⏹️ ▶️ John to be true. Everyone’s leaking all these little different parts that show a little circle and a lozenge cut out instead of a notch. But
⏹️ ▶️ John honestly, that was the part that I was least excited about because the notch doesn’t bother me. And
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re gonna have something screwing up the top of your screen, whether it’s a smaller notch or a hole punch
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, there’s not like you can put content there. Like it’s still gonna, you can’t put text there. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John in the middle of the line. It’s gonna break. It’s good, you know, they’re working on it. They had the notch, they made the notch
⏹️ ▶️ John smaller. Then you get the hole punch and then, you know, iPhone 16 comes around and you’ve got the underscreen face
⏹️ ▶️ John ID sensors or something, which is another rumor, right? But anyway, there’s that. But the real thing that’s disappointing
⏹️ ▶️ John me is all these rumors say, yeah, the periscope camera thing, not this year. And not only
⏹️ ▶️ John not this year, but the little drawings of what the iPhone 14 is gonna look like, they’re saying, oh, you remember the
⏹️ ▶️ John camera on the 13? 14 is gonna be even bigger. I’m like, what? How could it possibly
⏹️ ▶️ John be bigger? Even bigger? It’s just gonna like rock on the table no matter what you do to it. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m really sad about that. And I’m trying to make myself feel better by
⏹️ ▶️ John thinking about what it means to have an even bigger camera pump than the 13.
⏹️ ▶️ John And apparently, according to the rumors, what it means is the iPhone would be going from a 12 megapixel
⏹️ ▶️ John camera, 1X camera, to a 48 megapixel 1X camera, which is a
⏹️ ▶️ John big step up. And the stats on that for the rumors are we would have the 57% bigger sensor than the 13 Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ John going from 44 millimeters square to 69 millimeters square, and a 28% pixel size increase going from 1.9 micrometers,
⏹️ ▶️ John But there’s a caveat there. So like 48 megapixels, like how can, you’re saying it’s gonna go to 48 megapixels, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna be a 57% bigger sensor, and it’s gonna have bigger pixels? How can it have bigger pixels when it’s got four
⏹️ ▶️ John times as many of them? Through the magic of what they confusingly call pixel binning, which is not
⏹️ ▶️ John sorting your pixels by which ones work and which ones don’t and selling the ones where everything works is more expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey That’s not what they mean.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s a different kind of binning. Yeah, different kind of binning. The binning is, what they will do, oh, this is so confusing with the retina stuff, I’m sorry. But what
⏹️ ▶️ John they will do is they will take a 48 megapixel camera sensor, and in conditions
⏹️ ▶️ John where there’s not enough light to be gathered by those tiny, tiny little pixels,
⏹️ ▶️ John they will group together two by two squares of pixels. And those
⏹️ ▶️ John two by two squares of pixels, those bins of four pixels, will act
⏹️ ▶️ John as a single pixel for light gathering purposes. So suddenly your 48 megapixel sensor
⏹️ ▶️ John will act just like a 12 megapixel sensor, which is exactly, you know, half as much like a 12 megapixel sensor
⏹️ ▶️ John with much bigger pixels. If there is adequate light, like on a bright sunny day, they will use
⏹️ ▶️ John all 48 individual megapixels. But as the light level goes down, they will bin them together
⏹️ ▶️ John and do that. So this does sound like a very impressive camera and a big upgrade, because if you think about how
⏹️ ▶️ John many megapixels have been in the iPhone camera, someone had a timeline somewhere, but it was like, it had only gone up a few
⏹️ ▶️ John times. And the current 12 megapixel camera has been the same for a few generations now. Going
⏹️ ▶️ John from 12 to 48 is a big jump. And you don’t have to, if they do the pixel bending as described, you don’t have to worry about,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, but now all the pixels are so much smaller, it will suck. They’ll just bend them together and it will become like
⏹️ ▶️ John a 12 megapixel camera with even bigger, quote unquote, pixels, because each of those pixels is four
⏹️ ▶️ John of the tinier ones, which turn out to be 28% bigger than the one single one of the other ones. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I am excited about having a bigger camera because I was originally thinking, well, if the
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone 14 is gonna have a bigger camera bump, I’m just not gonna buy it. I’m just gonna skip it and I’ll do a three year
⏹️ ▶️ John gap instead of a four year one because the periscope camera, that rumor’s still out there. They’re just like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, it’s not gonna be in the iPhone 14. Maybe it’ll be in the iPhone 15 or 16. I would like a periscope camera.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would like an optical zoom, but more importantly, I would like a flat back to my phone. So
⏹️ ▶️ John the rumors are exciting, but also mildly disappointing because I said
⏹️ ▶️ John last year that the 13 Pro has crossed some kind of a line in terms of the size
⏹️ ▶️ John of the camera, at least some kind of a line for me. Like it’s aesthetically, if you look at the back of the camera,
⏹️ ▶️ John or the phone, same difference, it doesn’t look like a rectangle
⏹️ ▶️ John with a thing in the corner anymore. It’s not in the corner anymore. Once you pass the midway point, Once you’re taking
⏹️ ▶️ John up more than half the width of the phone, you’re not tucked into a corner. It’s just, and it just is not,
⏹️ ▶️ John like they might as well have just made it full width like so many Android phones have done, or just chosen a different
⏹️ ▶️ John shape or arrangement because it’s like they’re trying to stick to the idea that there’s a phone in the corner, there’s a camera
⏹️ ▶️ John in the corner of the phone, but there’s not. There’s just a giant camera slowly eating the back of all of their phones. And
⏹️ ▶️ John so I wish they’d either embrace that or figure out how to get back to, you know, smooth with a periscope camera. But
⏹️ ▶️ John those are the rumors. And I’m like, right now it’s a battle between being excited by having a 48
⏹️ ▶️ John megapixel camera and being depressed about having a giant wart on the bottom of my phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you had put the Max Tech video on this in the show notes. And sometimes I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey their explainers are a little bit rough and kind of cut a bunch of corners, but this one was really, really good. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really enjoyed it. It’s worth your time. I think it was like 10 minutes or something like that. And they explain exactly why,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, 48 megapixels is potentially nothing but better. well with the exception of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bigger bump. Other than that, everything else about it is potentially better. And you know, one of those things is like you were saying earlier,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like low light performance can actually go up because the net pixel size, once you do this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey binning, is bigger, just like you were saying. And so what that means is you could have a far
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more crisp picture in good light and a more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey understandable, discernible picture in low light.
⏹️ ▶️ John noisy picture in low light, because you won’t have to crank up the ISO as much.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, that’s a better way of putting it, thank you. So this sounds to me, if you can get over the bump, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t agree that we’ve crossed the Rubicon or anything, but I do agree that it’s getting kind of ridiculous.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If you can put up with the bump, this sounds like it’s going to be a dramatic improvement to the camera on the iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if everything comes to fruition.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Frankly, I mean, the bump, now that I’ve had the 13 Pro for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco half a year or whatever it’s been, the camera bump does not bother me at all. That is never something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I notice, that it’s never something that bothers me. What bothers me about this phone is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it is pretty big in the pocket and pretty heavy. And my whole pants journey that I went through last fall,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know what, I’m like halfway through that by having bought my fancy Spoke
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pants, but also it still is noticeable. I do wish
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I had a smaller and lighter weight phone, but the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco camera is really, really good. And so I am glad I didn’t go mini this time just for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the camera alone. And actually, if these rumors hold, it seems like they’re gonna be an even bigger difference in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco specs, because the rumors are that possibly that the iPhone 14
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to retain the A15 processor, and that the iPhone 14
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro only will go to the A, pretty much it’s called A16, whatever the next processor is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it looks like they’re, if this is true, and iPhone rumors tend to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty accurate because it’s just so hard to keep that kind of scale of an operation quiet. But if this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is true, then this year there’s going to be more differentiation than ever, assuming this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big 48 megapixel camera is probably also pro only, between the pro models and the non-pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco models. And so that’ll be interesting to watch, but I have a feeling this is going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very, very quickly make people who are really serious about this kind of stuff jump for the pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco instead of whatever other physical advantages might be present on the lower end models.
⏹️ ▶️ John Speaking of differentiation, even within the pro phones, if the 1X camera is 48
⏹️ ▶️ John megapixels, but they don’t really substantially also upgrade the other two cameras, boy, it’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John be a big fall off from switching from the 1X. Like already the 2X you can tell is not quite as good as the 1X, but
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe they’ll, you know, they do the thing where the camera, or the Apple’s camera app sort of decides when it’s appropriate
⏹️ ▶️ John to use which lens. And it seems like in a lot of scenarios, it would be better to continue to use the 1X and like crop
⏹️ ▶️ John it maybe, then falling off the 2. I don’t know what the rumors are for the other two lenses.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe they’ll be mildly improved as well. Yeah, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the 3X camera is not very good.
⏹️ ▶️ John isn’t. It may, it seemed, with just this rumor, it suddenly seems like you have an unbalanced camera system where one
⏹️ ▶️ John of your cameras suddenly got way, way, way better and bigger and the other two, the other two are there too, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And as for the product line, I think we talked about this on a past show, like
⏹️ ▶️ John the non-Pro phones having A15 instead. And there’s no getting around it. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a downgrade as far as customers are concerned, right? Because it was really great when a customer could get a plain old iPhone 13
⏹️ ▶️ John and had the exact same system on a chip as the Pro one, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s not even like you can say, oh, well, when they have the 15, I bet their battery life will be better. It’s not like they’re fabbing the 15
⏹️ ▶️ John on a different, it’s just, it’s gonna be the A15 as the A15 ever was, fabbed the same way it always was. so it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John suddenly get lower power either. And so that’s just, that’s not as
⏹️ ▶️ John good as having the 16 in everything. And that’s disappointing and there’s no way around it.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not like Apple’s gonna pass the savings on to you. The system on a chip is not the most expensive part of those phones. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John on the bright side, the other part of the rumor is that the pro and non-pro lines will all
⏹️ ▶️ John have a full range of sizes. Like there’ll be a non-pro big phone, non-pro max, essentially.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s, oh, these names are so confusing. I listen back to episodes of the show I screwed up so many times. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John there will be like a iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Max, and there’ll be iPhone 14
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max. And the chips in the Max
⏹️ ▶️ John will be Pro and Max, but there will be no chip in a Mac called Pro Max.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Anyway, it’s their own
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco stupid fault for doing
⏹️ ▶️ John this. But having a big phone that is not a Pro is such a, I don’t know why they
⏹️ ▶️ John waited so long to do it. Sometimes people want a really big phone. They shouldn’t be forced to pay for the most expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John phone that Apple makes just because they want a bigger screen, right? So that’s the good part of the
⏹️ ▶️ John new rumored arrangement, but I just, you know, I understand why like, hey, if you’re gonna have
⏹️ ▶️ John a pro line, it should have, maybe it should have a bigger advantage over the non-pro line, as opposed to the
⏹️ ▶️ John 13s, where they were, you know, almost identical, except for the camera, but it’s just not as good as a consumer
⏹️ ▶️ John to get the A15 in the non-pro phone, right? just not so that’s kind of a bummer.
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#askatp: Canon vs. Sony
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, you want to do some Ask ATP? Let’s do it. Let’s start tonight with Elijah who writes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have been a long time Canon user, but I’ve seen the writing on the wall for a while that DSLRs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are being replaced by mirrorless cameras. Since I have to buy lenses again anyway to follow this trend, should I stick with Canons
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or why should I jump to Sony? John, I think you’re the most enthusiastic about Sony, although
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco, you’re not far behind. So John, do you want to start and then Marco take it away after?
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t even know that you need to buy new lenses or that you can’t use them. It makes sense, obviously, the distance of the sensor from the front of the lens or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John but anyway. I think Canon and Sony are very different in terms
⏹️ ▶️ John of like, it’s like the differences in car manufacturers. If you just like, if you, you get used
⏹️ ▶️ John to the way certain car manufacturers do things, whether it’s stupid Porsche with their ignition key in the wrong spot
⏹️ ▶️ John or bottom hinged, you know, pedals or, you know, whatever. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John even if it’s just how the stocks work or how the cars are priced, Like there are things that are just sort of arbitrary
⏹️ ▶️ John decisions that you just get used to. And if you try a different brand,
⏹️ ▶️ John those arbitrary decisions, even when they’re not actually worse or better, seem foreign
⏹️ ▶️ John to you. And that is very true of cameras. And then it goes from there up to all, you know, even more important things
⏹️ ▶️ John like value judgments, what’s important to spend money on, what’s not, how big, you know, what’s more important,
⏹️ ▶️ John small size or battery life or portability or grippiness in the hand, or,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, how many buttons are there versus knobs versus joysticks and how do they feel? There
⏹️ ▶️ John is such a huge difference between Canon and Sony. I like Sony better, but
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re used to Canon, almost certainly you’re gonna like Canon better. Like it’s almost
⏹️ ▶️ John impossible to imagine someone who used Canon for years, tries a Sony and goes, wow, this is much better. That is not gonna happen.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because it is so different. The companies make such different decisions. They couldn’t be any more different. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John Sony is so about making the camera body small as possible. For years, Sony
⏹️ ▶️ John was, first Sony started, they wouldn’t even make like a grip for your hand and then they put the grip on and it was just this tiny little
⏹️ ▶️ John grip and it’s like, what are you, what are you saving the grip size for? We want a bigger grip so we can
⏹️ ▶️ John grip it better and Sony was like, okay, how about we make it two millimeters bigger? It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco like, what are you doing? It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like the Johnny Ivey, just put a grip that fits in a human hand. We have hands, we have fingers, we need them.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you know, Sony eventually got the clue on that, but it took so many years for Sony to even deign to make the grip
⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit bigger. That is not a problem on on Canon cameras, especially the big ones. They put giant
⏹️ ▶️ John grips on them, they put giant battery cases on the things. The buttons feel different, the UI feels different.
⏹️ ▶️ John Everything about it is different. So I don’t think there’s anything anyone could say to convince you to use
⏹️ ▶️ John a Sony if you like Canons. If you’ve been using Canons for years and you think they’re too big and
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t like how the buttons work and you hate the UI, then maybe you like the Sony better. But they
⏹️ ▶️ John really are. And Canon and Nikon, I think, are so much closer than Canon and Sony
⏹️ ▶️ John are. Sony is really sort of… Don’t their zooms go the opposite direction? It depends.
⏹️ ▶️ John There are lenses for all the different camera systems that go in different directions. I think even Sony made one with a reverse
⏹️ ▶️ John zoom lens on it. Or maybe I’m thinking of a third party one, but no one can agree on which direction the zooms could go. Or
⏹️ ▶️ John which direction the rings are. Is the zoom ring or the manual focus ring closer to you
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco or farther away?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John a… Yeah, it’s always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco varied per lens. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John but anyway, Canon and Nikon are much closer together than either Canon and Nikon are from Sony. So
⏹️ ▶️ John try one out in the store, hold it, see what you think of it. If it appeals to you, I endorse it. I really like Sony,
⏹️ ▶️ John it matches my tastes, and I do enjoy the small sizes for portability, even if the grips are too small.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if you really love Canon, Canon makes mirrorless cameras too, just buy one of those.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mostly agree. At first, when I first heard this question, I thought I probably shouldn’t answer this because I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco haven’t been paying attention to the recent models of any of these things, because I really haven’t been in the camera game.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I think when you’re, you know, so Elijah’s saying already, you know, they have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to buy new lenses no matter what because of the shift from DSLR
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to mirrorless. So it’s just a question of whether to invest in Canon’s mirrorless system or Sony’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mirrorless system. Also not mentioned, Nikon’s mirrorless system is another option, although I know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even less about that. But I think when you’re talking about like which system to invest in long-term,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have to look past whatever the current models of each camera are, and look at in general over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time, what are each of these brands really best at? You know, what areas do they tend to specialize
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in or prioritize or pay attention to or excel in? So in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my experience over, you know, geez, 15 years, whatever it’s been,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I’ve been really into these things, my impression, having tried a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of Canon stuff, a lot of Sony stuff, and almost nothing by anybody else, So I’m sorry, I really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t know anything about Nikon. I’ve used them a handful of times, very small handful of times.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But my impression of Nikon seems like it’s very similar to Canon, but less popular among pro users.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But, you know, because again, just different decisions, as John was saying. Certain buttons are in different locations, certain things work
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slightly differently, but you know, generally pretty good. But in general, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Canon is better than Sony better than Sony in what I would call
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pro workflow and pro ergonomics. So if, as John was saying,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things like the battery grip situations, if you want, if you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some kind of pro setup, if you’re gonna have like some coordinated flashes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or some of the big L lenses with the big telephoto zooms and the sticks on the side of sports
⏹️ ▶️ Marco games, or if you’re in the market more for something like what used to be like the 1D or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 1DS series, where you have much more pro abilities, pro sports shooting, stuff like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think Canon has always had an edge in that area over Sony and they probably always will.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Canon is more likely, even though they had a later start to mirrorless, I think over time, Canon is more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco likely to have more pro lens options and more specialty lens options. Whereas Sony
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tends to have things that more kind of hit like the more commonly used lens roles.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Again, I think right now Sony probably has an advantage because they’ve been here a little bit longer, but I think over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time that edge will go back to Canon, because Canon is generally used by more pros for lots of other reasons.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And again, things like battery grips and flash accessories and timer accessories and all sorts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of stuff, Canon tends to really nail that stuff. They have a great first-party set of things,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and third-party tends to support them very, very well. Where Sony tends to have the advantage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is video features and sensor technology, and things that are related
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to those. If what you’re looking for is like, I want the camera that is going to be the best
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in low light that it can possibly be, most of the time that’s probably gonna be a Sony.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now Nikon is interesting because a lot of times Nikon uses Sony sensors. I don’t know what the current status quo is. Sometimes you can get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a pretty awesome hybrid approach where you have like Nikon with their like a little bit nicer pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco controls with a Sony sensor. That can be very good. There’s also other features
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that go along with this. Things like autofocus technology, even something more fundamental like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how do they render the colors? Do they render colors in a way that you like in their JPEG render and then you can save a bunch of time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and not do RAW? Or even if you’re using RAW, how are they creating the colors in the RAW to start
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with? There’s certain things where the different manufacturers will have their own algorithms for how they make the pictures and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that can work with you or against you depending on your style and your conditions. But generally,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Canon is much better usually for things like pro ergonomics and pro workflows, and Sony
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is better for usually the more techie angles of good, high quality sensors
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and video features. I don’t know anything about video features on these cameras and so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything I said applies only to photos. And so if you’re a video shooter or a heavy video user,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco frankly, I think you’ve ruined the camera industry, thanks a lot, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I don’t know anything about that. Wow.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the speed, two things to add. One is the speed thing, that applies to photos as well in general,
⏹️ ▶️ John Sony is sort of on the forefront of dumping things off the sensor as fast as possible. So you can hold down
⏹️ ▶️ John the shutter for a really long time and take 30 frames per second, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John That kind of goes hand in hand with the sensor tech, but in general, the Sony sort of electronics,
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of CPU, GPU, whatever, image processing engine,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re pretty good at that. And the second thing is on ergonomics, only if what you mean by pro ergonomics
⏹️ ▶️ John is excluding the idea that you’re going to be carrying this thing around a lot. Because if portability
⏹️ ▶️ John is anywhere on your list, if you’re a nature photographer, you’re lugging through the woods, obviously the giant lenses
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re gonna lug are the big factor too, but pretty much, Sony’s ethos is make
⏹️ ▶️ John smaller camera bodies. Which is why if you get a battery grip, it’s a thing that you can add on to it, unlike the,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can get Canon and Nikons that are just built in with the giant battery grip and are the size of your head, right? Every
⏹️ ▶️ John Sony camera is way smaller than you would think it would be for the size of things. And so depending
⏹️ ▶️ John on what you do with your photography, maybe it doesn’t matter because you’re in a studio and who cares how big it is, or you’re on
⏹️ ▶️ John the sidelines at an NFL game and you’ve got tons of gear anyway. But if you’re doing travel photography
⏹️ ▶️ John or you’re traipsing through the wilderness or the jungles or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Well, get an
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone at that point. You may value the fact that Sony does
⏹️ ▶️ John make things, tends to make things smaller and lighter, including their mount is smaller. That’s why they have the same mount
⏹️ ▶️ John on their APS-C cameras and their full frame. was done intentionally to sort of be able to support smaller
⏹️ ▶️ John camera lenses. And if you compare, even we were just talking about like the Sony 50 millimeter 1.2,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you see a picture of that next to the Canon and Nikon 50 millimeter full frame 1.2s, Sony
⏹️ ▶️ John lenses tend to be smaller. They also tend to be lighter. So if that is a factor in your
⏹️ ▶️ John selection and you can tolerate or grow to like the Sony UI
⏹️ ▶️ John and the Sony sort of the rest of the Sony feature set, that may appeal to you. but
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re so different that I can’t imagine somebody who likes it as a custom who can’t in an Icons
⏹️ ▶️ John seeing a Sony and finding it appealing unless they’ve been secretly gritting their teeth just how big their camera
#askatp: External Fusion Drive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ryan Mori writes, I have a M1 Mac Mini, a 2TB Thunderbolt 3 SSD,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and an 8TB USB hard drive. I think I’d like to use the SSD as a cache for the hard drive.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey While Fusion drives have gone out of fashion, I’ve never used one, and Apple doesn’t ship them anymore, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It appears possible to set one up manually via some arcane diskutil invocations.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is this a good idea? Am I about to shoot myself in the foot? Is there any better way to do this? Should I not want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do this? What even is a Fusion drive? Please advise and or expound.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If I understand this right, so Ryan said, I have a M1 Mac mini, a two terabyte Thunderbolt 3 SSD,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which implies to me that it’s external, and a eight terabyte USB hard drive, which obviously would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be external. I personally don’t think you want to do a Fusion Drive anyway, and John, I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey let you take it away here in a second, but the idea of doing a Fusion Drive with two external drives, that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seems, really even one external drive, that seems like a recipe for disaster to me. But John, what is a Fusion
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Drive, And why should Ryan definitely not do this?
⏹️ ▶️ John Fusion Drive was a really cool idea. In fact, I even kind of fantasized about
⏹️ ▶️ John this exact idea years before it became a reality. Because it was back when
⏹️ ▶️ John Mark was getting his first 160 gigabyte Intel SSD
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John The SSDs were so expensive, but they were so awesome. But it’s like, but how can I have the
⏹️ ▶️ John benefits of an SSD but fit all my stuff? Because in the beginning, they didn’t even make SSDs. They were big
⏹️ ▶️ John enough to fit a reasonable amount of stuff that people had. They’re all so tiny.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so the idea behind a Fusion drive and the fantasy I was describing is, well, what if you just sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of combined a big, cheap spinning disk with an SSD and the operating system handled,
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to keep the files that you access frequently on the SSD? You didn’t have to do anything. It looks like one volume
⏹️ ▶️ John to you, and through the magic of the file system and the operating system, everything gets shuffled around. You’re already done. You can’t do it a second
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, the first one, it was a half-hearted one. Yeah, the first one, you said FS something. FS
⏹️ ▶️ John That stands for file system usage. You got it. I was proud of you for-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wasn’t sure if it counts, but I did a quiet ding.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I’m with Marco. That was a ding, and what you just heard moments ago was a dong, and I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that we need a
⏹️ ▶️ John both. No, no, there’s no half dings. You can’t land on a fraction. All right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Integral dings only. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, the Fusion Drive was a way to do that. It was a, you know, use core storage, was a technology Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John introduced to sort of abstract away all these details, and lo and behold, Apple would sell you a computer with a small SSD and a
⏹️ ▶️ John big spinning hard drive, but from your perspective, it would look like one drive that is not as fast as an SSD, but
⏹️ ▶️ John not as slow as a spinning disk either. Cool idea, but the time of
⏹️ ▶️ John the Fusion Drive has more or less come and gone, because today you can find
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty economical SSDs that are big enough to hold all your stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now, maybe you’re not gonna find a 10 terabyte SSD, because you’ve got an eight terabyte
⏹️ ▶️ John spinning disk and a two terabyte SSD, and you want to have a 10 terabyte total, it’s faster than that, I
⏹️ ▶️ John understand where you’re coming from. But Fusion Drive, as you’ve noted, you can probably
⏹️ ▶️ John pull this off with DiskUtil, but it’s not really an area of active interest, let’s say,
⏹️ ▶️ John not a good idea to base something as important as your file system, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John if this is your boot disk or something, on a technology that Apple does not seem interested in anymore. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I think you could probably pull it off. I think it would work, but I personally wouldn’t do it. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John these are two big drives you’re talking about. Anyway, you’ve got two terabyte SSD and eight terabyte hard drive. You probably
⏹️ ▶️ John know which things need to be in the SSD and which don’t. Boot from the SSD, use most things from the SSD, and then put
⏹️ ▶️ John the big files with the large files where you can do large sequential reads, put them on the eight terabyte spinning disk.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you can’t figure out how to divide your stuff up and you’d rather just the drive do it for you,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, I mean, you can try it. It would be a cool conversation piece for nerds if
⏹️ ▶️ John they ever visit your house, But boy, if something goes wrong with that driver, one of them becomes unmounted while the other one is still
⏹️ ▶️ John mounted, I’m not sure that this utility in its current state would be able to figure out how to help you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s why I think doing it with externals seems brave to say the least.
#askatp: Thunderbolt switch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, and then final, oh no, actually I think we’re gonna go for a bonus. So nearly finally, Matt Chinander writes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey despite my better judgment, I’m exploring the purchase of a Pro Display XDR for my desk at home, which now houses
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a Mac Studio. I work from home full-time and have an employer supplied 14-inch MacBook Pro that I also need to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey connect to the monitor on my desk. The Dell monitor I have currently works great for this because it supports multiple inputs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I can easily switch between. This convenience would of course be lost with the XDR’s single input.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is there any device out there that would allow me to not have to plug or unplug from the back of the XDR
⏹️ ▶️ Casey every time I need to switch between machines. The first thing that comes to mind is something like an HDMI switcher or a KVM
⏹️ ▶️ Casey switch, but instead for Thunderbolt 3 or 4. From the research I’ve done, I don’t think these exist, but I would be happy to be wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I don’t understand, I don’t think, why we’re unplugging from the back of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey XDR. Why wouldn’t you just unplug the other end of that same cable? So there’s a cable coming from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the XDR to one computer. You unplug it from, let’s say it’s going into the studio. You unplug it from the studio
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and plug it into the MacBook and then reverse that later. I think I’m kind of missing the problem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John here. Maybe we’re not-
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t wanna do any unplugging.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, you’re gonna have to do some sort of unplugging.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, a KVM would do it for you, a switch.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, sure, but does that exist? Cause I don’t think it does. That’s the question.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think it exists for Thunderbolt 3 slash 4 speeds. Certainly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you could get various switches for simpler protocols, things like USB.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m sure you can get a switch for USB, maybe up to like USB 3.something speeds, but I don’t think anything like that exists for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thunderbolt and this requires Thunderbolt. Unplugging the cable from the computer end and plugging it into the different computer,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s gonna be, I think, not only your only option, but I think it’s not that bad of an option.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Obviously, it would be better if it could be automated in some way and wouldn’t involve physically wearing out the connector on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a very expensive cable. But the other thing is to know that, in case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this helps you decide, the XDR appears to work totally fine with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost every modern Thunderbolt hub that’s out there, like almost every modern Thunderbolt 3 slash 4
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hub from OWC or from CalDigit or any of the other companies that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are making the modern ones with these modern chipsets, the XDR works totally fine through those. And so if that helps you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make your decision a little bit more easily, that you can unplug and plug everything all at once
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through one cable, like that might make this a little bit easier to swallow.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was faced with a similar situation when I had my work laptop here and I wanted to hook that up to the XDR.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I also had that same feeling that Mark was just saying, like, I know how much the cable that’s connected to
⏹️ ▶️ John XDR costs. And I was like, am I gonna really, because I’m gonna do this every day, possibly multiple times a day. Am
⏹️ ▶️ John I really gonna plug and unplug this thing? Because-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way, you don’t even have to use that cable. You can use any Thunderbolt 4 cable and it’s fine. Like I- I know, but you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to plug it into the same spot in the XDR, right? Yes, the XDR has one input port, but you can use anyone, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can use any cable. Right,
⏹️ ▶️ John so you’d have to get the expensive cable out of there. expensive cable is the one that reaches my Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John because it’s over there, it’s a tower computer, it’s a little bit farther away. But anyway, I didn’t want to plug and unplug. The good thing about
⏹️ ▶️ John the USB-C type connector, which is the same as the Thunderbolt type connector, is that the
⏹️ ▶️ John springy bits are inside the cable. So the springy bits inside your expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John monitor and your expensive Mac Pro don’t wear out, the ones in the cable wear out, but in this case the cable is also expensive, so it’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of crappy. So I was faced with this decision. I did unplug and unplug a few times, but sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John also what I would consider doing, which was difficult because I couldn’t be on the VPN when I did this, but you can use like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, screen sharing
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey essentially. I was gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. To, and it sounds like, well, these two things are right next to each other. You’re telling me I’m gonna do it, like isn’t it gonna be laggy
⏹️ ▶️ John over the network or are there gonna be compression artifacts? If you have both computers like on your desk,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can connect them to ethernet. You can connect them to the same ethernet switch.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you use an efficient sort of VPN, not a VPN, a VNC
⏹️ ▶️ John or Apple Remote Desktop, There’s lots of different choices that you can use here.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s surprisingly tolerable if what you’re doing is like typing source code, right? It’s not,
⏹️ ▶️ John there is lag, it doesn’t seem exactly the same, but it does give you that sort of software
⏹️ ▶️ John switch KVM type feeling. You know, universal control is another option, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, have, I don’t know how you’d pull this off. Universal control and sidecar may give you some other way to get at the
⏹️ ▶️ John same thing, to sort of a software only solution. it seems like it will all be too laggy. I can’t possibly do that,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it still beats plugging and unplugging. And I agree there, it would be great if there was some kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John Thunderbolt, you know, KVM type solution, but that is, I don’t know if that’s technically possible
⏹️ ▶️ John And I’ve never heard of such a thing existing.
#askatp: Apple cell modems
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Daniel Bergfuss writes, the Cook Doctrine says that Apple needs to control crucial technology.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey How do you think that making your own cellular modem fits into this? How will Apple be able to differentiate using a modem?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sure, maybe they can make it a bit more stable, more integrated, cheaper, faster, and smaller, but do you see any obvious way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that making your own modem would truly help to differentiate the Apple products for the end user? And one of you has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been kind enough to put the Cook Doctrine into the show notes, which I will now read. We believe that we need to own and control the primary
⏹️ ▶️ Casey technologies behind the products we make and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was important to put the quote in there, right? And you’ll link there’s links to the ASIMCO page that
⏹️ ▶️ John lists the larger context of the statement. But this bit of the Cook Doctrine, it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John single sentence here. The first part of the sentence potentially contradicts the
⏹️ ▶️ John second part if you read it, right? So, own and control the primary technologies behind the products you make. That’s the sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of thing that we cite all the time. Like that, you know, why would Apple do this? Well, is it a super important part of the product?
⏹️ ▶️ John They want to own and control it, right? And so that’s why, you know, why should Apple make its own
⏹️ ▶️ John system on a chip? Why should they make, you know, their own processor for their Macs? It’s a primary technology
⏹️ ▶️ John behind the products they make. They want to own and control it. Now they do, right? But then the second part is participate only in markets
⏹️ ▶️ John where you can make significant contribution, right? It may be that you
⏹️ ▶️ John need to own and control a primary technology, even though, even if you you can’t make
⏹️ ▶️ John a significant contribution. And I think cellular modems are one of those cases. Where I don’t really think Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John is looking to make a significant contribution, but that technology is so important to
⏹️ ▶️ John their most important product, the phone, and they’ve already been like screwed over in various
⏹️ ▶️ John ways, fighting with Qualcomm about it, that it’s so obvious that they need to own and
⏹️ ▶️ John control this primary technology, even though probably they can’t make a
⏹️ ▶️ John significant contribution. Because all they’re hoping to do is, can we get a cell modem that works as well as the Qualcomm
⏹️ ▶️ John ones have in the past? Like, I don’t think this is an area of active innovation. It’s not like they’re fabbing them. TSMC
⏹️ ▶️ John is going to be fabbing them anyway, right? You know, maybe they make it smaller power. Maybe they can integrate it into the
⏹️ ▶️ John SoC. There are possibilities there, but even if there weren’t, even if it’s just like, just so we don’t have to deal with Qualcomm
⏹️ ▶️ John anymore, because we hate them and they’re always trying to screw us. And they have us over a barrel because without
⏹️ ▶️ John those Qualcomm chips, there’s not a lot of other manufacturers to go. They’d use Intel modems in one of their phones and
⏹️ ▶️ John the Intel ones maybe weren’t as good. They bought the company. They bought Intel’s cell modem division, so now they’re handling that, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think the reason people cite the first part is the first part trumps the second part. When there’s a conflict,
⏹️ ▶️ John the first part wins. And so, yeah, that’s the answer. That’s why they have
⏹️ ▶️ John to make their own modems because it is an application of the first part of the sentence, which is own and control primary
⏹️ ▶️ John technologies, even if the second part isn’t true.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I would say too, like I think the possible improvements they could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make to a cell modem might be significant. You know, you look at something like a CPU,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe five or 10 years ago, it seemed like CPUs were kind of a solved problem, right? I mean, you know, just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a matter of iterating on, you know, just process technology and, you know, the more physical side of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things. But when Apple jumped into the CPU game, they really showed like by applying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco both, you know, good talent and also just specialization, you know, specially designing the CPUs for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco exactly what their platforms and their products needed and nothing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more. Really optimizing for their stuff and their needs and then optimizing the software stack for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their processor and this wonderful cycle we have now. They actually did make pretty significant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco contributions to that field. And a cell modem, I don’t know much about cell modems, but I know that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s non-trivial. I know that it is not just like a sound chip. Like it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a pretty significantly complex chip, and it uses an untrivial
⏹️ ▶️ Marco amount of power, takes an untrivial amount of space. And so if they enter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that market, and if they, as Johnson mentioned, they could possibly integrate it into the SOC, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco frankly seems logical to me. I don’t know, again, know nothing about this. Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it makes no sense from a physical point of view.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’ve got some radio stuff that make that tricky. But I just mentioned that as like, there are integration opportunities to
⏹️ ▶️ John do things that Qualcomm would never do because now Apple has the, they did it with the M,
⏹️ ▶️ John what was it, the M7, remember the Motion?
⏹️ ▶️ John be a separate chip. That got sucked into the SoC real quick and I wouldn’t even talk about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but anyway, so cell modems are very complicated. They’re very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco processor intensive. They’re physically very complicated, all the radio stuff and everything. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a big deal and they’re such a big part of the phone in terms of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like its total technical complexity, its total power budget, possibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even its total heat consumption. Like there’s so much, they’re a big deal. And so I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple could make a good contribution to that area in the same way they contributed to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco processors. And I think in something like a phone, that actually matters quite a bit. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they not only do I think they are doing this, but I think it’s a good idea for them to do this. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think once they do it, we’re gonna look back a few years later and think like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why didn’t they do it sooner? Or it’s gonna be so obvious, we’re just gonna forget. Like, they’re gonna announce one year, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now we have the built-in, they probably won’t even announce it. But at some point, we’ll have the built-in submodem, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco literally like the next year, no one will even talk about it anymore. Like, it’ll just be, of course it’s Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco submodem built into the A24 or whatever. Like, it’s just gonna be a thing that’s there.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the other context, the sort of invisible context here, is these two clauses of the sentence are not
⏹️ ▶️ John talking about the same thing. The first part is about technologies, and the second part is when, and
⏹️ ▶️ John Cook says participate only in markets, he’s talking about like, what products do you make? Do you make a printer? Do you
⏹️ ▶️ John make a car? Do you make a laptop? Do you make a phone, right? That’s what participate only in
⏹️ ▶️ John markets. Apple doesn’t participate in the market for making CPUs, because they just make their own CPUs.
⏹️ ▶️ John They don’t give them to anybody else, right? And it still applies, Like everything we still said still applies, but I think the context
⏹️ ▶️ John is mostly talking about like, you know, why do you decide to make a cell phone? Why did you decide
⏹️ ▶️ John to make a TV puck or whatever? Like in all those cases, in theory, Apple can explain
⏹️ ▶️ John like what we thought we can make a significant contribution to the market for, you know, selling
⏹️ ▶️ John songs over the internet or the market for cell phones or whatever. And sometimes Apple is obviously right. I think they have made
⏹️ ▶️ John a significant contribution to the cell phone market. I think that’s inarguable. Have they made a significant contribution
⏹️ ▶️ John to the TV connected puck market? Meh. So again,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is a larger context. This was kind of a manifesto. I think it was in an earnings call or something similar to that. So
⏹️ ▶️ John context definitely matters here. But for the technology thing, what was their first chip?
⏹️ ▶️ John The A4? They basically worked on it for a decade before they blew away the entire industry.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The A4 was the first chip they branded. But they weren’t really designing the guts of it, I think, until
⏹️ ▶️ John I think they had a significant, maybe the A7
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco was the one. Day six, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, the point is like, when Apple starts down this road, they’re not saying, you know, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re gonna dominate, but they’re like, it’s so important as a primary technology that we have to do this. And
⏹️ ▶️ John then once they have to do it, of course they’re going to be able to do it like in a way that is less annoying
⏹️ ▶️ John to them. Because every third party thing they have to integrate into an iPhone is surely a headache. Because they don’t get to
⏹️ ▶️ John say what Qualcomm makes. Qualcomm makes what they make, and it’s probably some significant portion of their phone
⏹️ ▶️ John manufacturing is like, designing around the third party pieces that they have no control over. They can ask
⏹️ ▶️ John for what they want. They can suggest changes or whatever, but in the end, if Qualcomm makes a 5G chip that uses more
⏹️ ▶️ John power than Apple would like, what are you gonna do, not have 5G? Apple didn’t have 5G for a long
⏹️ ▶️ John time when they eventually bit the bullet. 5G hurt their battery life on the first generation of that phone. And how much of
⏹️ ▶️ John their headache for building that phone, whichever one it was, was building the guts around the Qualcomm
⏹️ ▶️ John chip that they can’t change, right? And so, you know, even if it is just simply
⏹️ ▶️ John a drop-in replacement, even if they never do integrate it into the SoC, at the very least Apple can make exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John the 5G or whatever chip that it wants according to its specification on its timeline
⏹️ ▶️ John with its sweetheart deals with TSMC for their best, you know, manufacturing process and all that other stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so that’s why I think in the end we will all be very glad, assuming Apple pulls it off, when they do this because
⏹️ ▶️ John it will have the same benefit as whenever Apple takes over any sort of technology component that goes into their things.
⏹️ ▶️ John shown that it is a huge advantage to be able to do only what Apple needs. And
⏹️ ▶️ John because they do not participate in the wider market, they don’t need to sell their cell phone chips to anyone. They’re not going to sell them
⏹️ ▶️ John to anyone, I imagine. They don’t sell their Apple Silicon things to anybody else. They just have
⏹️ ▶️ John to make it good enough for Apple and they just have to sell enough of the things to make up for it. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ John cell modems are already in enough Apple products that is, you know, even if it was just in the iPhone, it would be enough.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I think it’s going to happen and assuming they don’t blow it, It’s going to be good for everybody except maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Real-time follow-up. The Apple A6 is said to have a 1.3 GHz custom Apple-designed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ARM7A architecture-based dual-core CPU called Swift rather than a licensed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey CPU from ARM like in the previous designs.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep, got to reuse those names. A6. Okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway. All right, thanks to our sponsors this week,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Squarespace, Trade Coffee, and Linode. And thanks to our members who support us directly. you can join
⏹️ ▶️ Marco atv.fm slash join. We’ll talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause
⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause
⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental And you can find the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes at atp.fm And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ John Twitter, you can follow them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, and T. Marco Armin,
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, they didn’t mean to Accidental, check
After-show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, the grand tradition of broadcasting during large sporting events,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am sad to report that North Carolina is losing to Duke by two points and it’s almost halftime.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love that I don’t even know what sport you’re talking about right now. Like, I’m pretty sure it’s not football season. Nope. Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey basketball? It
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is. It’s March Madness, baby. Well, now we’re in April,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco but it’s March Madness. March
⏹️ ▶️ Casey basketball? Yes. Oh my god, Marco. Anyway, as one is required to do, you know, I would very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey much like to see Duke Luce and so far it’s not sounding like it’s happening.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I have a bone to pick with Mr. Syracusa. Last episode when he did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco his amazing reveal of his new job status of not having one,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he made us try to guess what he was gonna say and we guessed freezer and TV
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and he and Merlin guessed in the first try and rectus. Well it was not a fair
⏹️ ▶️ Marco comparison because on that rectifs episode earlier in the episode
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you had already discussed the freezer and the TV
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s true let me eliminate the two most common choice yes those topics
⏹️ ▶️ John were ruled out I don’t know what he could have guessed oh I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you also know that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was also ruled out it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also ruled out earlier so like the big like things like whoa what what might John want to talk about they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were all ruled out
⏹️ ▶️ John those aren’t mystery topics those would those Those all would have been written into the document. Like I don’t think he would ever guess something
⏹️ ▶️ John that would have been written into the document.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t know that. And Marco’s right. It didn’t cross my mind until Marco said something, but you’re exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John No big excuses. He was just in the right mindset and you two weren’t. It’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John a level playing field. I mean, if you want to be fair, we had recently had questions very
⏹️ ▶️ John close to this topic on recent ATP episodes that you had heard me answer, which is how Alex Cox said
⏹️ ▶️ John that they figured out that something was up. So I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco saying. I mean, look,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in your defense, I would probably still not have guessed correctly. However,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was on a level playing field because you had already ruled out all of the big hit possible topics, including the two we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco guessed earlier in the episode.
⏹️ ▶️ John They hadn’t been ruled out and there were so many other things that couldn’t be guessed. Those wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have been in the running correctives because those are always written into the notes. Those are never mysterious. So
⏹️ ▶️ John it would be so stupid to make that, oh, I’m gonna have a mysterious thing I’m not gonna tell you about, you know, toe freezer,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, TV show, whatever. It’s just, just
⏹️ ▶️ John take the loss. And the best thing is I, making him guess was a totally a spur of the moment thing. Cause I
⏹️ ▶️ John just, I had that feeling. It’s like, they’ll like get that vibe of like, I feel like we’re on the right wavelength
⏹️ ▶️ John here. That if I just ask this question, it’ll pop out. It’s like that game where you try and make people guess a vegetable
⏹️ ▶️ John and you show them a little card about what they’re going to guess. You two guess a vegetable. Asparagus.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Gotta get some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John vegetable, Casey.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco He doesn’t know of any. Macaroni and cheese? Oh, stop. Is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cheese a vegetable? French fries? Or French fries? Velveeta, velveeta. Get
⏹️ ▶️ John some vegetable, Casey. Carrot. Thank
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you, that’s what everyone
⏹️ ▶️ John says, and I would hold up the piece of paper that says carrot, and you’d be like, and Marco just said asparagus to be Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because he likes smelly pee. I don’t even like asparagus that much. John,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do you have that gene? Do you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John have smelly pee? I do, and
⏹️ ▶️ John I do not like it. I like the taste of asparagus. I do not like the pee smell, also avoided just for the P situation.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s not worth it. I agree. I like it’s it’s taste fine like I don’t love it, but yeah it’s not worth the side effects.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco Happy anniversary
⏹️ ▶️ John have to renew as a self certificate. What does this mean? Yeah?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What what did I fail to do?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Happy ninth anniversary, Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the show? No, no I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m really blanking here. How old is my child? Quick,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John no, he’s 10. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John almost. Not quite. That’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco an anniversary.
⏹️ ▶️ John Been married for more than nine years.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You really don’t know. This makes me a little bit sad that you realize. Not in like a you’re in trouble way, just it makes me a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way. I’m totally in trouble. Is this neutral?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, no, no, no. Well, you’re getting warmer, but no, not neutral.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, is this our Munich trip?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Specifically, this is the day you bought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your M5 or really received your M5. Nine years ago today.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh man, that was… So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John yeah, neutral was pretty close. Do
⏹️ ▶️ John you still have that picture on the wall? You’re in the room with it, would have it. Is it still on the wall?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, it’s in the closet with some other, like, you know, friction.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey That is sad. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because the area that it was hanging, I covered up with acoustic foam on the wall.
⏹️ ▶️ John I thought it would have graduated to the beach house.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What does the beach house have anything to do with cars? It’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John car-free island. It’s just a fond memory. You have pictures of fond memories.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco memories. Yeah, no, but I mean I have, you know, I have other ones. I have, like, I have a picture on the wall of Trey Anastasio,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, playing a guitar with, like, rainbow lines coming out of it. Like, that’s, that’s my beach wall art.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco You remember
⏹️ ▶️ John when the sound hit this acoustic foam and didn’t bounce back as much? Those were good times.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For the record, on my wall, it has been for years, is a picture of Marco and Underscore
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and me in front of the BMW Performance Driving School sign from South Carolina, which was also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey almost nine years ago. That was the same year. And that’s been on my wall in the office for years now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Just letting you know where you stand in my book, even though I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John apparently stand in the same book. But more importantly, the poor M5. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, right? That was a good car. Sad times. It was a great car.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like we should do a quick thank you to the members, and this is non-sarcastic, genuinely.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There have been a bunch of new members that have signed up over the last, actually I was going to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say week, but it’s only been a couple of days since we recorded last. And that is extremely kind of all of you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve been mostly amused when people have written in and said, yeah, this had nothing to do with John, or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had nothing to do with Marco and Casey. This is all for John. So, hey, you’re welcome, John. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thanks, but thanks. But no, all kidding aside, it’s been wonderful
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to see the messages of support just that I’ve seen, and I can only imagine how John feels.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But it’s been wonderful to see the message of support. It’s been wonderful to see some of you actually financially
⏹️ ▶️ Casey support, which is going above and beyond. And on behalf of all three of us,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thank you for that. We really do appreciate it. And I will say that we are working on merchandise. We are actively
⏹️ ▶️ Casey working on merchandise. You’ll hear more about that sooner than you think. John, how is this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fall week number one? Is that right? This is the conclusion of week number one of no work?
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe, yeah, sounds about right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey My timeline is already all out of whack.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I do have one specific question. So you mentioned at the end of your blog post that you’re not looking forward to having to tell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people, having to explain at your job that you’re now a full-time podcaster, basically.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Has that come up yet? Have you actually had to tell anybody that, and how did it go? Because I can tell you one thing. From my experience,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is always kind of awkward.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is super awkward. I don’t interact with people, although I am interacting with people
⏹️ ▶️ John for like business purposes, like talking to my accountant, who’s also Casey’s
⏹️ ▶️ John accountant for tax stuff, right. And had to, you know, just preemptively
⏹️ ▶️ John fill in for next year’s taxes and like, you know, just estimated taxes are a pain in the butt. So I’ve communicated
⏹️ ▶️ John that, but that’s mostly communicated as a negative. Like, oh, you remember that job I have? Well, I don’t anymore. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so that may be important for next year’s taxes or whatever. But yeah, it hasn’t come up for any person.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. I’ll probably be okay. You know what I used to say before? Like it wasn’t much better before really,
⏹️ ▶️ John cause, and I realized this recently because it was like what a month ago or something. I was out for like, I don’t remember. I
⏹️ ▶️ John had occasion to see a person who asked me a question about my life. And I was like, oh, what do you do for a living?
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, I know, I think it was when I was renewing my life insurance. I don’t remember. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I, for years now, I haven’t known what to say about what do you do? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I just slipped into this thing where I feel bad because I want to give people a direct answer,
⏹️ ▶️ John but eventually I just started saying kind of like Marco’s old hat that he can’t wear anymore. I would just say, computers.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey that usually
⏹️ ▶️ John made people not want to ask a follow-up question, partly because of how I would say it or whatever, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I would just say
⏹️ ▶️ John computers, or sometimes the longer version would be, I do stuff with computers. That’s all they need to know. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not actually interested. They’re like, oh, I guess, fine. Like, there aren’t any follow-up questions.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like unless they are, if they are actually a computer nerd, they’ll be able to tell that by their follow-up question then
⏹️ ▶️ John I can tell them more, but people aren’t that interested. So they’re just, I just have a computer. I used to say I’m a programmer, but nowadays
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m like, they’d be like, do you program things, like you know, things on the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John or something? Oh, nobody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thinks that. No, you can say programmer, everyone knows computers. Like that’s.
⏹️ ▶️ John But that’s what I would say. Like I would put it, like occupation, programmer, right? Because all those stupid fill in
⏹️ ▶️ John things, I don’t care what they think. If they think programmer means like something else, then that’s fine. But I would just say computers. And
⏹️ ▶️ John now I can’t really say computers or programmer anymore. I mean, I can if people don’t care
⏹️ ▶️ John because podcasting is done through computers as well and it kind of fits, but I guess I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John let you know the first time I have to say podcaster, but it has not come up yet and I don’t expect it to come up for a while because
⏹️ ▶️ John in general, people don’t ask, like, I don’t talk to strangers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, they spot you from across the room and they’re like, that man looks like he wants to talk to strangers about his job.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they say that man looks like he does computers. And as soon as you ask the question, Marco, a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey certain somebody that John lives with says, and I quote, he doesn’t leave the house. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that might’ve answered the question. I haven’t gotten COVID yet, woo!
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That you know of. That’s the same that I know of.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s the same in our house. And as a matter of fact, there’s a cough going through most of the house. And on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a precaution, Aaron took a test earlier today, an at-home test. And it was big fat negatory, but you never
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know these days. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unfortunately, the home rapid test negative
⏹️ ▶️ Marco simply mean you might not have it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I know, I know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, how was your first week, though? What did you do? I guess, really, since I spoke to you two days ago, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have you had any good relaxation time? Are you already doing either self-assigned or Tina-assigned honey-do’s?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What have we been up to?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I mean, I did spend a lot of time, you know, reading and trying to
⏹️ ▶️ John acknowledge slash reply to all the nice congratulations. Lots of people have been tweeting at me.
⏹️ ▶️ John Some people sent me some nice emails. You know, I appreciate every kind word that everyone has sent.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve tried to reply when I could. I’ve also tried, like, on Twitter, it’s hard to know what to do because honestly, tons
⏹️ ▶️ John of people have been tweeting at me, and I want to, my practice has been for years, for
⏹️ ▶️ John years and years and years, which probably means in the internet it’s out of date, and I agree that it probably is. My
⏹️ ▶️ John way of acknowledging that I have seen your thing and appreciate it, but do not have the ability
⏹️ ▶️ John to send you an individualized reply is to like it.
⏹️ ▶️ John fave it, to heart it, whatever the hell it’s called. But a couple years ago, Twitter changed its official client
⏹️ ▶️ John to do this weird thing where if you follow somebody, somehow you get injected into your timeline
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff that they fave, which doesn’t make any sense
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve apologized for it on the show before, I’ve like, because I sometimes fave like whatever things as a form of bookmarking,
⏹️ ▶️ John because third party clients can’t do bookmarking, because Twitter is crappy with their API and I still use third party client.
⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, I will fave things just to remind myself of them later. So it’s not, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, RTs and retweets are not an endorsement, faves are not an endorsement, but that is a dated notion because
⏹️ ▶️ John if I fave it and it shows up in someone else’s timeline, they’re like, oh, this is this thing was, you know, faved by John, he
⏹️ ▶️ John must really agree with it. Anyway, pretty much every single person who sent me a nice tweet to say,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, congratulations or whatever, I fave them. I fave them all. So I, God knows what this is doing to anybody
⏹️ ▶️ John who follows me. I apologize for people who follow me and aren’t involved in this whole thing. If you’re seeing this huge
⏹️ ▶️ John flood of things that I’m faving, but I fave pretty much every single one of them. And that’s my way of trying to tell
⏹️ ▶️ John the people, I saw your thing and I appreciate it, thank you, right? And
⏹️ ▶️ John I try to reserve my like longer replies for either if I have time to do it, because honestly it was, it
⏹️ ▶️ John just, you know, overwhelming support. I thank everyone who’s sent even a little note or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John You just don’t realize how many people are like aware of your existence until they all
⏹️ ▶️ John get something in them to, you know, to pop up and say hello or say something nice. So that’s been
⏹️ ▶️ John very gratifying. And same thing, lots of people actually send me emails and stuff too. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve been spending a lot of time faving and replying to emails and tweets, believe it or not.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you know, fixing typos in my blog posts and all that stuff. And then yeah, and then just dealing with
⏹️ ▶️ John the, I made the, speaking of the store, I made this the store page for
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the upcoming ADP thing today. What else did I do?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I prepared the show notes for the thing that we just recorded. like just doing my normal podcast stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John and doing a few things around the house. I am, one of the projects I’m working on is, maybe we’ll talk about it in future episodes,
⏹️ ▶️ John when I get past the point of research and Amazon ordering and get to the installation part, but I’m finally going to
⏹️ ▶️ John try to upgrade my thermostat, potentially with a smart one, which will involve major house surgery
⏹️ ▶️ John because my thermostat is, you know, older than I am, or the wires from it are older than
⏹️ ▶️ John I am anyway, so it’s a little bit terrifying. And I’ve been playing this for a while, And believe me, the best
⏹️ ▶️ John time to do a thermostat is when the weather is getting warm enough that you don’t need heat anymore. So you do not want to mess with this
⏹️ ▶️ John in the middle of winter and freeze to death in your pipes burst or whatever. So it’s kind of getting to that season, springtime is coming,
⏹️ ▶️ John where if I really screw it up and our heat doesn’t work, pretty soon that will not be a fatal error. So I’m giving myself
⏹️ ▶️ John leeway to do that. So that is one of the projects that I’m currently tackling.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you even have a common line or whatever it’s called? I do not. Oh, so it’s gonna, so can you even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use a smart thermostat? Or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John are you gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wiring. You’re gonna do it? Yeah. I mean, it’s low voltage. It’s not that dangerous if he messes
⏹️ ▶️ John 24 volts. Yeah. Alternating current. Yeah, it is AC. The real problem is
⏹️ ▶️ John not the electrical part of it. It is the physical part of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh. Just like routing the wires there.
⏹️ ▶️ John the guts of my ancient terrifying house. Yes. Which does not have drywall.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. I think I spoke about this a while ago, but I got to burrow up my butt a few months back as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a pandemic project to, I’m going to get the terms wrong, to go from the switches
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that you can like grab onto, you know, the stereotypical like older switches that are like a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey little thing sticking out of the wall that you flip up and down. I forget what those are called. But I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wanted to go from that to like the paddle style switches, you know, where it’s just like a paddle.
⏹️ ▶️ John – Because you wanted to look at your houses from the 80s?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey – No, I think it was.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco – No, the paddles are now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco paddles are in stock, or in style again. It’s the, what is it, Decor,
⏹️ ▶️ John forget. – I guess the flat paddles are more in style, but I still look at them and they look like the 80s to me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, what’s good about the flat paddles too is that if you wanted to upgrade them to possibly Lutron Caseta switches,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they all have that same shape for like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey the cover plates and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I think we got in the same argument when I was talking about this a few months back. But anyways, I’ve been putting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey paddles everywhere, which is relatively cheap to do all told. And it’s actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something that I can handle, which is when it comes to things around the house, there’s very little that falls in that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey category. And so I was able to handle like all of the,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of the switching over from the toggle or whatever they’re called to the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey paddle decor style. And I was even able to tap existing common
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lines to put in a couple of prior sponsor Luchon Caseta things. But I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey imagine actually like going through the wall back to the furnace or what have you in order to wire
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a new common line or just no, no thank you. I would definitely call
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I’m just gonna end up running a whole new wire because honestly the wire is
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey there currently. And you’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do this yourself? Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. I think that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John You should call somebody. No, I can handle it. It’ll be okay. And I’ll talk about it on the show, how it turns
⏹️ ▶️ John out. But again, if I really screw it up, it’s not like we’re going to freeze to death in the house because pretty soon it’s going to be hot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t tell you guys. I tried to fish a wire for the first time a few months back. Oh, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was hilarious. I did it totally wrong. Do you have the right tool? Do you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco little, what do you call it? The little metal thingy? The cable fish thing where it’s like the big, it’s like basically like a long
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tape of metal that you reel up.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I got one, you know, just some Amazon thing. I was trying to run a network cable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco across a portion of my basement that I can’t really reach. It’s like between two posts. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you can’t really get in there as a person or with your arm. And I had to run like 15
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feet to a space that I could reach. And I got it jammed between like two floorboards and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was just stuck. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like take off a siding board on the other side of the house to access where I’d gotten
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it stuck and it was a whole thing. So I learned for and like I just I had like hooked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on backwards so it was like hooky instead of flat.
⏹️ ▶️ John You didn’t tape up the end?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No I did but like it was still it still was able to like wedge itself somewhere.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah you really gotta really gotta smooth that out. Yeah no I did if you recall when I when I first got FiOS
⏹️ ▶️ John I ran like a hundred feet of cat6 through my basement because the fiber
⏹️ ▶️ John comes in the far corner of the house of where from where I actually need it and so I did all that fishing myself
⏹️ ▶️ John through you know the finished room in the basement through the non-finished room up through the floor to the television area
⏹️ ▶️ John up and up through the wall and floor into the room that I’m in. I’m very familiar with trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to fish ethernet cables through things and the techniques I came up with are unorthodox and probably stupid
⏹️ ▶️ John but they did eventually work. So I’m going to do leverage I’m going to leverage those skills my thermostat wire
⏹️ ▶️ John will be easy in comparison because my thermostat is actually not that far from the furnace in the
⏹️ ▶️ John basement. And I did all the Googling and looked up the part number and figure out all the parts that I have, because my furnace is not
⏹️ ▶️ John super ancient, but the wire, the two wires, and there are only two, the two
⏹️ ▶️ John wires that go to my current thermostat absolutely are older than me. Like they don’t even use rubber
⏹️ ▶️ John insulation. They use like braided cloth insulation that’s so old that if you look at it, it crumbles.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco None of the insulators,
⏹️ ▶️ John none of the insulation on the wires are anywhere in my house have any colors. Everything
⏹️ ▶️ John was like, oh, you’re gonna find like the common wire and it’ll be, you know, black and the neutral wire will be white and whatever the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey hot wire was. It’s like, are you kidding?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, whatever. Like none of the wires in my house have any color. They’re all colored, the color I would describe
⏹️ ▶️ John as soot. Every single one of them is soot
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey colored. And they’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John wrapped in rubber. They’re wrapped in like this ancient hard stuff and there’s like canvas things around it. And so like that just,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s amazing. My house doesn’t burn down anytime I do anything. So that is going to be removed and replaced with actual 18
⏹️ ▶️ John five thermostat wire if I am successful. And if I’m not, I will call someone and pay them lots of money and they’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John fix my mistakes. But I think I can pull it off for the news on future episodes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh man. There’s only a couple of spots in the house that I really wish I had an ethernet drop. And what I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey done because I’m lazy is I’ve put Mocha Bridges in those spots. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I was braver, and I know it’s not like, I helped my dad when I was in high school wire our then house
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for Cat5 or whatever it was at the time. And I presumably could do it, but I’m so scared
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m gonna like put a hole somewhere somehow, which you shouldn’t be able to do using, you know, just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey trying to wire with ethernet. But I feel like I would somehow like put my foot through the ceiling of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the second floor, you know, or something like that. I’m just, I’m scared. I’m a big baby.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s one of those things with truly, you know, eventually you realize like, you know what, if I accidentally poke a hole in a wall, I don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be there. Like it’s not that hard to patch a wall.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of those things that you learn as an adult, like, okay, well, I can patch it and it might look a little bit uneven, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who cares? You know, it’s just living in a house.
⏹️ ▶️ John Did I tell you that story when we were getting the new siding on our house? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco the big project
⏹️ ▶️ John a few years back? Yeah, yeah. And they were out, people who were doing the project were outside
⏹️ ▶️ John using pneumatic nail guns to do whatever they were doing or whatever. And
⏹️ ▶️ John they had a misfire and one of the nails from the nail gun went through the outside of the house and
⏹️ ▶️ John came into the room that I’m sitting in. So I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco came home one day. Oh my gosh.
⏹️ ▶️ John I came home one day and looked above the wall, above like the upper right corner of the wall where my wife’s computer
⏹️ ▶️ John is, and there was like four inches of nail sticking out of the wall, like sort
⏹️ ▶️ John of hanging there, just sort of dangling because it had come almost all the way through, but it had not come all the way through to fall out
⏹️ ▶️ John into the room. So it was just being held in by the little part of the nail. And I was like, what?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. So, you know, it’s like, well, how do you patch it up? we just kind of patched it up and
⏹️ ▶️ John put a little bit of spackle over it and don’t talk about it. Yeah. It’s not the same color
⏹️ ▶️ John as the wall, but it’s close enough that no one notices. And there’s so much else wrong with the house that really it’s hard to pick out any one thing.