481: Accidentally Made It Too Good
06 May 2022John vs. technology, Marco vs. technology, and Casey vs. his walls.
Episode Description:
- Follow-up:
- Follow-out: Clockwise #449: It’s Still Working, I’m So Sad
- T-Shirt Results (THANK YOU!)
- Marco’s tech woes
- On Double-Clicking the lock button for Wallet
- Open the wallet app → double-click the side button (via Trevor Kay)
- Andrew notes this still works even if double-click is disabled globally
- Control Center
- Just hold the phone next to the terminal
- Open the wallet app → double-click the side button (via Trevor Kay)
- WWDC 2022 Apple Park Special Event
- Jason Snell on Apple Studio Display settings
- Mechanical Watch How-To
- On SEC violations and Elon Musk
- Apple TV+ Quickies
- iPhone 14 Pro Rumored Designs
#askatp:- Is Casey still using Combine? (via André Videla)
- What is Marco’s Overcast redesign process? (via Steven Garrity)
- Where is the Mac’s sound mixer? (via Carl Freyer)
- Post-show: Casey needs a project
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Chapters
- John vs. the world
- Self-employed life
- Sponsor: Linode
- Thanks for buying merch
- Marco vs. the world 🖼️
- Sponsor: Kolide
- Summoning Apple Pay
- WWDC, Developer Center?
- Studio Display update
- How mechanical watches work
- Musk stock lawsuits
- TV, sports, and garbage
- iPhone 14 front-glass leaks 🖼️
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- #askatp: Combine API
- #askatp: Design process
- #askatp: Sound Mixer on Mac
- Ending theme
- Casey needs a project
John vs. the world
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes, I was a few minutes late today because I was battling with broken
⏹️ ▶️ John computer stuff. And it’s, Oh, me too. No, not that kind of broken computer stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John The kind of broken I should, I didn’t know not to do this right before I was supposed to record a podcast, but whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John My son is setting up his account at his college. He’s selected a college
⏹️ ▶️ John he’s enrolled. Oh, congrats. You know, you get to get set up your computer account, right? And I wanted to go through it
⏹️ ▶️ John and make sure everything was all right or whatever until of stuff. And the account made him set up two
⏹️ ▶️ John factor, whatever, I don’t know what I asked him to set up two factor and he did. And he used the Google Authenticator
⏹️ ▶️ John app because it’s an app that he had used previously, I think for two factor stuff. But anyway, he had it on his phone and he did that.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I wanted to get it set up in the Apple two factor thing because it’s nice when you’re in Safari or when
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re on your Mac or whatever, like the Apple has people who don’t know that Apple has a thing in their sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John iCloud keychain thing where it can do two factor stuff for you. You don’t have to launch a separate app or whatever will
⏹️ ▶️ John autofill right in the thing out of your iCloud keychain. That’s what I wanted to set up for because
⏹️ ▶️ John yes you can have the Google Authenticator app but it would be nice for also it to be integrated with you know
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS and macOS and all that other stuff. Seems like a simple task.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is technically possible, technically 100% possible, but frustratingly
⏹️ ▶️ John annoying to do. So here are the two things. So first of
⏹️ ▶️ John all, I wouldn’t be angry and late if it wasn’t for the fact that the school’s thing is
⏹️ ▶️ John broken. So that’s the first problem. The first problem is that- Definitely not your fault,
⏹️ ▶️ John John, definitely not. I’ll tell you how the school thing is, because the school thing was broken in a pretty bad way. But how did I find out the
⏹️ ▶️ John school things were broken? Well, I was trying to accomplish that task. So he’d already set it up. It was set up and
⏹️ ▶️ John we logged in with it with Two Factor. He’s got a username, he’s got a password, he’s got Two Factor right out of the old Authenticator
⏹️ ▶️ John app, logs you in. Anyone who’s ever done this, Again, it is technically possible
⏹️ ▶️ John to take that information and shove it into the Apple thing, but it is not easy
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s definitely not easy to do when you’re trying to do it 10 minutes before you have to podcast, right? So here’s the problem. The Apple thing
⏹️ ▶️ John wants you to go on the happy path, which is I am using Safari to
⏹️ ▶️ John set up my account on this website. I’m going to enable two-factor. It has presented me with a QR code or some
⏹️ ▶️ John other thing. Oh, look, in Safari, I can just right-click on that and it says, do you want to set this up as the authentication thingamabobber?
⏹️ ▶️ John And I say, yes, and it magically goes in. That’s what they want you to do. But of course,
⏹️ ▶️ John that already happened a while ago, right? It’s already set up in two-factor and we didn’t do it the
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple way, right? So here we are now, I say, I wanna get this two-factor
⏹️ ▶️ John thing into the Apple system without invalidating
⏹️ ▶️ John Again, technically possible, right? Especially since Google Authenticator added an export function. You can export and it’ll show
⏹️ ▶️ John you a QR code that export information or whatever. And then you can, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John decode that QR code and then you can base 64 decode it and then you can run it through a proto buff
⏹️ ▶️ John thing and try to get out the data. And like, this is what I’m doing, 10 minutes
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey for things to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is seriously what you have to
⏹️ ▶️ John do? Oh my gosh. I mean, but the point is it’s not like the data is there. Like QR cards aren’t magic, it’s just data, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But you know, because you can export two factor stuff from the Google Authenticator app as a QR code. What you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do easily is get that QR code as far as I know, into
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s system, right? So you go to the Google Authenticator app, you get the QR code, you can
⏹️ ▶️ John take a screenshot of it, you can take a photo or whatever. I just wanna get that into the Apple system and they make it so
⏹️ ▶️ John hard. The way I used to do it is I would go to the two-factor setup page of the website and
⏹️ ▶️ John I would take the QR code from the Google Authenticator app, save it as an image,
⏹️ ▶️ John turn it into a data URL, use the DOM inspector to paste it in as the image source
⏹️ ▶️ John of the setup thing, and then Safari would be tricked into thinking, oh, do you want me to use that QR code as the setup
⏹️ ▶️ John thing? Because it’s on a setup page, like whatever heuristics it uses, I would bring to the real setup page,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I wouldn’t like click through it. I would just bring to the real setup page and I would replace the image with a data URL
⏹️ ▶️ John of the QR code from the Google Authenticator app. That used to work, but now
⏹️ ▶️ John when you right click in Safari, somehow it’s smart and it goes, I don’t see any QR code here. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know what you’re on. Like it doesn’t even show the line item for setup verification system. So please, please
⏹️ ▶️ John Ricky, if you’re listening, please, I just, if I’ve got a QR code,
⏹️ ▶️ John like if you go to the passwords thing in system preferences, it says, oh, do you want to enter a setup code here?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know what it wants from me from a setup code. Like I’ve got a QR code and I can decode it and I can pull out different pieces,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I don’t know what it wants from me from a setup code. Like, please, can I just give you an image of a QR code?
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve got a ping, I’ve got a JPEG. Can I just, can you let me scan it with my phone? That’s the one thing I didn’t try. Maybe there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a way if you do it on iOS, maybe you can just take a picture of it with the phone’s camera and it’ll let you edit. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I couldn’t figure it out. And that was making me very angry. And it’s like, I’m so close. Like why, why,
⏹️ ▶️ John why is Safari like, cause they want it to be magical. You just right click on the QR code and it says, set this up as authentication.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it somehow is angered by me editing the Dom, which maybe makes sense. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ John like if you were to look at the webpage, you say, there’s a QR code. When I right click it into Safari, why doesn’t it take it? It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, it’s not the real QR code. It’s the one I made into a data URL and paste it into the source thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know? I kind of get it, but it’s just so much harder than it needs to be because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, you guys, the data is right here. Like, it’s often on the same computer because I had like one window logged
⏹️ ▶️ John in and like Chrome and then the Safari window. It’s like, same team, people. We’re all here, let’s just make this
⏹️ ▶️ John happen. And I just could not do it. So anyway, that’s just angering
⏹️ ▶️ John me. And so I’m like, okay, well, why am I trying to do this? This is just a stupid thing to be doing.
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, you have the two-factor already are set up and you’re trying to transfer it to the Apple thing. Well, yes, again, it
⏹️ ▶️ John is technically possible. I know, I’ve done it. I’ve done it multiple times, but oh, you can’t figure out how to get it to work this time.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s obviously not a supported use case. Just forget it. And what’s the thing you should do then? How about just start over?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Use 1Password,
⏹️ ▶️ John no. I want it into the Apple thing. This is the most effort I’ve ever heard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to avoid using 1Password. Right? Thank you.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I don’t wanna
⏹️ ▶️ John The goal is I want it in the Apple operating system thing, in addition to
⏹️ ▶️ John other places that it might be. So yes, it could be in 1Password, but if it was a one password, I would also want it in
⏹️ ▶️ John the Apple thing. Like that’s the goal here, to get it in the iOS iCloud key chain, you know, that
⏹️ ▶️ John whole deal, right? Anyway, so I’m like, okay, well, you can just reset up Two-Factor.
⏹️ ▶️ John If anyone has Two-Factor knows you can do this. If you just say, okay, I wanna set up Two-Factor again. I got a new phone or
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m gonna get a new phone or whatever. You can just go in, you log in with your existing Two-Factor and you say,
⏹️ ▶️ John I want a new Two-Factor and it gives you a new QR code and you scan the new QR code or you’re right-clicking in Safari
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever and that’s your new two-factor, right? And since I’m doing that from the beginning, I can do that
⏹️ ▶️ John from the beginning from Safari, right? The happy path. Now I go in and do a Safari, a right-click,
⏹️ ▶️ John then it does give you the option set up as two-factor. And of course, like all good two-factor things, it says,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I’m not letting you off the screen until you type in the magic code from that you now get out of the
⏹️ ▶️ John Safari Apple thing, like to show that you successfully did it. So I do that, I set
⏹️ ▶️ John it up in Safari, it says, please enter the six-digit code here, and Safari auto-fills the six
⏹️ ▶️ John digit code, right? Cause that’s what the whole point of this feature and it works and it says, great, I believe that you successfully set
⏹️ ▶️ John up two factor, right? It even gives you backup codes, the whole nine yards. You’re like, this is awesome, everything’s
⏹️ ▶️ John great. But this is where the schools bugs come in. If then you try to log
⏹️ ▶️ John in in any other web browser, your codes won’t work. The six digit code will just will
⏹️ ▶️ John not work, right? And I tried it in different accounts and different devices or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John And even though it successfully worked when I configured it, it won’t work anywhere else.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s a scary situation to be in, where you think you’ve just successfully set up two-factor, you’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John verified to the system that you’ve set up two-factor by entering the six digits from the QR code that you just scanned,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it says, yes, great, that’s good, but you can’t log in anywhere else because every place else you
⏹️ ▶️ John go, you enter a username, password, it prompts you for the code, and whatever code you enter from your thing, it says, nope, not valid.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is not encouraging at all. That’s the school’s bug, okay? because that’s not the way the world’s supposed to
⏹️ ▶️ John work. That’s just broken, it’s a bug. But then what do you do? So luckily, the school had a big honking button on
⏹️ ▶️ John there on the setup screen, which I’m frantically making sure that I stay logged into, right? That says
⏹️ ▶️ John disable multi-factor authentication. Like, all right, well, let’s just, I got a podcast. Let me just disable
⏹️ ▶️ John multi-factor authentication entirely. Click disable multi-factor and it says, boop, it goes back and goes
⏹️ ▶️ John back to the screen and now the button is set up multi-factor authentication. Right, the disable button’s gone and now
⏹️ ▶️ John I have a button to set it up. But I don’t want to set it up. I don’t want to deal with this now, let me just disable multi-factor. But of course, me being me,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t trust the system anymore. I try logging in from literally anywhere else. And it
⏹️ ▶️ John prompts me for, please enter your verification code for your
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey multi-factor
⏹️ ▶️ John verification. Oh no. Like, I just disabled it. I’m logged in here. I’m staring at the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John where it is disabled. I’m so angry. I’m like, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just totally broken. And of course, none of the, you know, no codes from the existing
⏹️ ▶️ John ones that I had saved before worked, the original one or the new one. Doesn’t matter what you enter, nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John works. And I knew, I knew for a fact that if I logged out of that one window where I was logged in, I would never be able to log in again,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? I just know. Now I know the system is broken. I know how it’s broken. It thinks I’ve disabled two-factor,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s still proud to me for it. So the best I could do was it seemed there was an iOS app. So I downloaded
⏹️ ▶️ John the iOS app on two different phones. I logged into the iOS app using a special iOS app specific
⏹️ ▶️ John login QR code. So now I’m logged in on two iPhones. And then I logged out in the web browser and sure
⏹️ ▶️ John enough, no web browser can ever log in again because even though two-factor is supposedly disabled, it prompts you
⏹️ ▶️ John for the two-factor code. So then from one of the logged in iPhones, I contacted
⏹️ ▶️ John the online support chat and said, here I am and I’m locked out of my thing
⏹️ ▶️ John because I disabled two-factor but it thinks I still have it enabled. And they just directed me to talk to some other thing or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John and then I had to start podcasting. So school stuff is broken, whatever, that’s annoying.
⏹️ ▶️ John but I feel like the main, you know, I, that’s just, that’s just bugs, that’s just whatever. But I
⏹️ ▶️ John really wish, and again, if you can do this in iOS, I didn’t get a chance to look at that, but I really wish there was an
⏹️ ▶️ John easier way to say, I’ve already got two-factor set up somewhere, whether that’s in 1Password,
⏹️ ▶️ John in Google Authenticator, and one of the 50 other, in Authy, and one of the 50 other two-factor apps. Almost
⏹️ ▶️ John all of those systems have a way to use, sort of export that two-factor thing, either by showing a QR
⏹️ ▶️ John code or whatever. I want, what’s the point of exporting if I can’t import it. The only
⏹️ ▶️ John thing I can find to import an Apple thing is cleverly make a Safari web page
⏹️ ▶️ John on the actual website so you can trick it into showing that line item on the right-click menu, which apparently I’ve now lost the ability
⏹️ ▶️ John to do no matter how clever I get, or enter what it calls a setup key, and I have no freaking idea
⏹️ ▶️ John what it wants for me there. Is it the base 32 decoded section of the base 64
⏹️ ▶️ John encoded data section of the proto buffer from the Google? I don’t know, but anything I entered
⏹️ ▶️ John there, it would accept all sorts of garbage, but it wouldn’t be right. So I’m obviously entering the wrong thing there. So
⏹️ ▶️ John please make this easier. Like two factor information is our information. We should be
⏹️ ▶️ John allowed to have it in Authy, in one password, in Google Authenticator and in iCloud Keychain.
⏹️ ▶️ John There should be a way to go from one place to the other and it should be way easier than it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So Alex’s first real interaction with his forthcoming school is going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey his dad breaking his login.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I didn’t break his login.
⏹️ ▶️ John school broke the log.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey It’s not my fault, you guys. It’s not my fault.
⏹️ ▶️ John If I click Disable Multi-Factor Authentication, and then it proceeds to always prompt me for a multi-factor authentication,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not me. That’s not on me at all. That’s just a broken system in the school.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wasn’t hacking. I was just discovering vulnerabilities. Everything. Everything.
Self-employed life
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’d like to start with a little bit of follow out if I may clockwise
⏹️ ▶️ Casey episode 449 It featured one John Syracuse Ah, and this is remarkable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because of all the guest spots that you’ve done John on all the great podcasts and all the great shows
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was very unusual if it has ever happened I know there was a little bit of debate on the show But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if it has ever happened, it’s very unusual for you to be able to record clockwise at noon your time on a Wednesday
⏹️ ▶️ Casey day. But it’s a whole new world, baby! And here is John Siracusa appearing on Clockwise. Made me
⏹️ ▶️ John JSH Yeah, Dan tells me that I did it in the past, and I probably did back when Jason was hosting like years and years and
⏹️ ▶️ John years ago, but I had no recollection. I didn’t even remember how the show worked. I didn’t even know that there was a fixed order that people go
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco in the clock.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I was just total, you know, as Allison called me on the show, I was a total noob.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey JS Well, it was a good episode and well under 30 minutes. I was quite surprised. But I’m I’m using this as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a crummy excuse to ask you, how is your new world? I know a lot of this is covered on Rectifs, and I know I’m kind of in…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m inviting myself into Merlin’s world, and I apologize profusely. I’m stealing Merlin’s valor on this, but… He’s so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mad. How is your whole new world? Oh, he’s so mad. How is your whole new world? Is there anything you’d like to share with the group
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right here on ETP, on your big show?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think there
⏹️ ▶️ John new developments in that area. I did talk a lot about it on Rectifs and how weird it was and how strangely
⏹️ ▶️ John stressful, And that kind of continues because I’m still doing I’ve still working on those boulders that giant back
⏹️ ▶️ John life backlog of things that I have to get done and we were still Working through them every time I think we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John making progress. I did make progress on one I mean you’ve seen this in the neutral channel. We had a little problem
⏹️ ▶️ John with the car. We had a look kind of a fender-bender And getting that repaired was a surprise
⏹️ ▶️ John thing to be thrown in the pile and we actually finally got the car back and And despite
⏹️ ▶️ John the only bad thing that happened as a result of that, aside from us having to pay our deductible is they tried to
⏹️ ▶️ John clean the inside of the car and they use like armor all and you know how that is. I don’t like it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything’s all slippery and shiny.
⏹️ ▶️ John gross. And so I spent a lot of the spent a little while this afternoon trying to was like outgassing under the windshield
⏹️ ▶️ John and gross. I spent a little while trying to essentially wipe off the armor all from the inside.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, you got to get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in there like with a towel.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, spent some time doing that this afternoon. But anyway, that’s an example of like a surprise Like, surprise, you got
⏹️ ▶️ John to deal with cars and insurance and whatever. And I’m just glad I got that done. But there’s so many other big backlog items that
⏹️ ▶️ John I just trying to drag kicking and screaming across the finish line. And I look at them and like, I have a to-do list, you know, and
⏹️ ▶️ John a notes thing or whatever. And I don’t check them off until they’re done. So there was an item that said, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John fix car, right? I just check that off because like, car is back on the driveway, it
⏹️ ▶️ John is fixed. And I checked it off, but I can’t check off any of the other ones because they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John all like, Still one or two more things to be done. And that’s kind of still the phase I’m in, working on
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s everyone else charging for these kind of resources and Linode is always either matching or beating everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else that I could find and they just have incredible service with that. So I just love Linode.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They make cloud computing fast, simple and affordable so you can focus on your projects, not your infrastructure.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Go to linode.com slash ATP, create a free account and you get $100 in credit. You can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco give them either your Google account, your GitHub account or just your email address no matter what. $100
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in credit with any new account. Once again, linode.com slash ATP. Thank you so much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to Linode for being an awesome host and for sponsoring our show.
Thanks for buying merch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That brings us to my victory tour. There was a great showing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for t-shirts and membership recently, so genuinely thank you so much to anyone who even thought about buying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a t-shirt or a mug or a glass or has considered a membership or maybe bought a membership.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Maybe you canceled, but you certainly don’t have to. Maybe you didn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well and honestly we’re doing great and it’s very clear that there was a a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco John Syracuse is now self-employed bump in membership.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh yeah, that’s no joke, that’s for real.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, normally when we have merchandise sales, we get a small bump just because people actually listen to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco John and sign up for a little bit, get the code, and then maybe cancel later if they want to. But you know you don’t have to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But this is a substantially bigger bump than I think we usually get from membership sales, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I attribute that entirely to the John effect, because John is the public’s favorite member of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the show by a long shot, and so.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know about that. Oh, 1,000% true. I think the bump was the same size as it always is.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you want to make it a bump for me, what I would say is more people need to forget to cancel. So that’s what we’ll see. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco we see is we see
⏹️ ▶️ John the bump. I didn’t measure it last time, but my recollection is that it is a similar size bump. People
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco don’t know what we say.
⏹️ ▶️ John Sign up for the membership, get the discount, and then cancel if you want to. But it’s like, how many people don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John cancel? How many people stick around or will we just fall back to the levels we were before?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All of them. All of them should not cancel.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so the final results, this is where my victory lap begins. The Ultra shirt, 311
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sales as of when I looked right after the sale ended. The Interposer shirt, 1,676 baby!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s 5.3 times. So hashtag
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Casey was right. Well sort of, I’m kind of stealing your valor now because it was your idea in the first place
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but then you poo-pooed it. I don’t care. I’m taking it as mine. Hashtag Casey was right. 5.3 times. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey am so excited to get my Interposer shirt. Thank you genuinely to anyone who has signed up for a membership or even considered it, who’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bought a t-shirt or any of the other merchandise. Oh, and I should mention that if you did miss the sale, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do not have to tweet me either comically or otherwise. But we do have the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey old shirts, the pre-Ultra shirts are up, the print as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you want shirts are up. And remember that these do not have anything on the back and the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shirt themselves, or is it the shirt or the printing? I always get it wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ John printing and it’s not we have the whole range up. So the on man, your bonus, let me help you. The on demand products
⏹️ ▶️ John that we have available are all of our m one shirts, m one and one pro and
⏹️ ▶️ John one max and one ultra, not the joke shirt, nothing on the back of any of these. These
⏹️ ▶️ John are on demand printed. So the printing is not as nice as it is on the real shirts. These shirts are also
⏹️ ▶️ John cheaper. That’s why I tell all the people listening to the show by during the sale. Those are the good shirts. They cost
⏹️ ▶️ John more, but they’re better. But if you totally missed it, you want one. The on-demand printings is more like, I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know what the process is, but it is not like, it’s like they, they lay down kind of like a lighter
⏹️ ▶️ John color and then do, do printing on top of it as opposed to the, the real shirts where they do multiple
⏹️ ▶️ John printing passes I think, which with colored ink.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey So yeah, I think that’s right.
⏹️ ▶️ John I hope you got one during the sale. We just have those ones up there for the people who see the shirt on a YouTube video so we can have them,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, buy a real shirt instead of one of the million counterfeit ones that’s out there. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, enough, uh, navel gazing, let’s Let’s move right along. We
⏹️ ▶️ John some real-time follow up before you go into that. This is killing me, but I’m just looking at the screen right now. If
⏹️ ▶️ John I had just done it on the phone, the phone has a scan QR code option. Oh no!
⏹️ ▶️ John The Mac doesn’t have that. The Mac says, please enter a setup key, whatever the hell that is.
⏹️ ▶️ John I wish the Mac had or drag an image here. And I would have done that because I had an image of it and I should
⏹️ ▶️ John have just used the phone and done scan QR code. My bad. It doesn’t change the fact that the
⏹️ ▶️ John website of the school is totally hosed and hopefully I’ll get that resolved. But the next time I do this, after
⏹️ ▶️ John we get everything resolved, I’ll do the right thing.
Marco vs. the world
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ll tell you what, a quick derail here, because it’s always a quick derail with me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My tech to-do list is growing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I feel the same way, but what’s your, why don’t you lay down on the couch and tell us what’s bothering you?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh my God, all right, so, first of all, yes, I’m back with the UltraFine for this recording, because I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happen to be here this week, and I hate it, and everything’s diagonal, and I can’t get the monitor straight, and all this stuff. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s a separate thing. So recently when recording
⏹️ ▶️ Marco another show that isn’t out yet, so I won’t spoil what it is, but it’s on it, but I lost a portion of my audio.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This has not happened to me in years. I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco remember if I ever lost a recording or part of a recording before this. I might not have ever done
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. So this shook me to the bone and here’s what happened.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Listeners may recall a long time ago when I had to do MacBook Pros, the 14 and the 16, and the 14 was always doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time machine backups over Wi-Fi, because that’s how it was backed up. And I noticed that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a pretty regular basis, I would open it up from sleep, after not using it for maybe half a day
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or a day, things would be kind of unresponsive. I would right-click on something and nothing would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happen, or I’d try to open or close an app or navigate to a different page in Safari, and it would just hang
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weirdly or nothing would happen. Shortly after that, usually it would kernel panic. And the kernel panic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco indicated something deep in, like, you know, possible file handling code or something. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I eventually realized, let me try disabling network time machine and see if that fixes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. And it did. Like, that problem has never reoccurred since then.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But for some reason, that problem, even though I used time machine on my desktop laptop, that problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never occurred on it. Now, I speculated at the time, maybe it was because it was Wi-Fi. you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, because the desktop laptop is always Thunderbolt Ethernet connected, and the laptop laptop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is always just on Wi-Fi. And so I thought maybe it was that, and so I kind of left it alone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, as we’re recording this podcast, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people are talking, I’m occasionally talking, and I’m occasionally navigating through a page in Safari to look something up,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I noticed that pages in Safari kind of stopped loading completely.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And at some point I went to go, I was going to relaunch Safari. I was going to right click
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the dock icon, hit quit, relaunch Safari. I right click on the icon and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the dock beach balls, like the dock process beach balls. And I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh no, this is not good because this is how this problem began
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before on the other computer. I’m in the middle of a recording. I can’t launch any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new apps or close any apps I have running. And the recording is still going,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like in the recording app I’m using it’s still going. So I thought, okay, don’t touch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anything and just hope I can get through. It was, we were most of the way through the, through
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the show. So I thought, let me just hope I can get through the rest of the show. I won’t touch any apps. I’ll just let the recorder
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go with finder beach balling in the background. And I’m just going to let this go and hope, hope I can make it. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every so often the, uh, the other person on, on, um, it was, it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Skype. the person on Skype would just cut out for a few seconds, but then it come back.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I thought okay, that’s not good. That’s not good, but we’re still go the recording look. It’s still going. It’s still you know the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the recording app still says going okay. Okay, eventually Skype the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other party just drops out completely. I mean I’m hearing no nobody and I thought okay. Well this I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can’t recover from let me just reboot everything and so I type a quick message in the slack,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know BRB computer trouble, came back and I learned after after I came back,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did finish the show. I learned afterwards that I was missing something like ten minutes of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco audio in the middle. They’re like basically since the problem had begun, it stopped recording like I had. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had no data from that from that segment, and this shook me to the core again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve been podcasting professionally for a very long time. I have never lost recording as far as I can remember.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If I did, it’s been a long time ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, you get used to it. Don’t worry about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So to lose 10 minutes or so of audio, that killed me. It really, like, I can’t believe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I lost that audio. Like, it drives me crazy. I can’t believe that happened. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco instantly I thought, I have to make a change. This can never happen again. So my recording setup
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for, I don’t know, the last two or three years has just been the Sound Devices USB Pre-2,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is my favorite preamp I’ve ever used for a microphone USB kind of interface. I love it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And in part I love it because there is absolutely no software. It is just a simple,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, USB preamp that, you know, that is covered in knobs and buttons and LEDs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s no software, there’s no touch screen, there’s no, like, there’s nothing like that. It’s just covered in knobs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and buttons, and so everything is done on hardware. And, as far as I can tell,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the signal path that goes through between the microphone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the headphone monitoring output seems to be 100% analog, which means
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that when I’m speaking through the USB pre, there is zero latency
⏹️ ▶️ Marco between the voice that’s going into the microphone and the voice I’m hearing in the headphones. No
⏹️ ▶️ Marco latency whatsoever. And that is something that is only possible when the microphone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is connected via analog to the headphone output in some fashion. So- It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you mean. Yes, it’s not going through an analog to digital converter, being processed somehow, being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco routed anywhere, and then being spit back out. There’s nothing like that happening on that signal path.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this is the way almost every low-end to mid-range
⏹️ ▶️ Marco USB XLR interface works. They almost all work this way. Anything that has a headphone output or a monitoring output,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually they work this way, until you get into the more advanced ones that have, usually they have multiple,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more than two inputs. sometimes they have built in mixing capabilities, things like the Sound Devices Mix
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pre Series, the Zoom F6, things like this. These are mixers that usually have digital
⏹️ ▶️ Marco routing, so you can change what signals contribute to the headphone mix and stuff like that. And so all of that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is always, at least as far as I can tell, it seems to be always done now in the digital domain. So you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first convert the signal to digital, route it, process it, whatever you wanna do, then you output it to analog, and that introduces
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually on the order of a few milliseconds of latency. And the way this manifests itself to me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is I sound a little bit worse to myself in my headphones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s not a huge difference, but I notice it and I know it’s related to latency. Everyone on Twitter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is like, you must not be hearing something right. It may be it’s a face thing. This everyone’s of course telling me that the problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m having is not really the problem I’m having and I’m telling you it is. And the way I can tell is because when you change
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the sample rate of the interface, it decreases the latency and it makes the problem less bad. So normally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I run I record everything at 44.1 kilohertz But if you change the sample rate of the interface
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from 44.1 all the way up to like, you know 192 kilohertz then it’s almost real-time like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it that’s that becomes the point where I can’t really hear much of a difference But at 44.1, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very much can and so everyone keeps telling me I can’t hear it. I assure you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I Measured the mix pre line because about three point four I think three point something milliseconds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of latency and I absolutely hear the difference. It’s clear as day to me And I think I’m a professional podcaster
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I should sound in my ears as good as I possibly can to myself because this is this is what I do I deserve to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have you know myself be happy and sound good in my ears. Okay, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the problem is that almost anything that has built-in recording to like, you know Almost any interface
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that records to an SD card goes through that analog to digital cycle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before the output, because they almost all have some kind of mixing features or something like that. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think there are any that I can really replace this with that have that. And furthermore,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love the USB Pre-2 for lots of reasons, including the fact that it has analog limiters.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this is again, something that almost no modern interfaces offer, analog limiters.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that way I can’t clip, and it doesn’t sound bad like, you know, some other methods do, and there’s no latency like digital
⏹️ ▶️ Marco emitters introduced. So, all this is to say, I wanna keep my USB pre-2. So I have this huge,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ridiculous setup now. Part of it is still coming from Amazon, part of it is in process now, where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bought a little Zoom F3, which is this little tiny newly released
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Zoom recorder that right now I’m going through it at 182.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Once I get all my wires from Amazon, I’ll be able to actually not listen through it and just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have direct output from the USB pre-2. Anyway, so I had this whole process going.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What I should probably do is switch to the MixPre and just suck it up and maybe run it at 192, but that’s its own
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can of worms. So I don’t really wanna deal with that. And the great thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about this setup having it totally separate is that even if the computer reboots, even if the USB connection
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gets flaky, this has nothing to do with USB. Right now it’s running on batteries. Like it’s just, it’s totally separate. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway, happy with that. So moving on from that, that’s problem number one that I’m dealing with. So my computer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now did that. By the way, to try to figure out what the heck that was,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first, the next day, I’m using my computer and it just keeps happening. So, I’m using my computer regularly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not recording a podcast, not running Skype, doing other things on my computer, and the problem recurs where all of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a sudden I can’t click on apps, can’t close apps, then I eventually have to reboot. And I try, all right,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco let me switch over and stop using the Synology for Time Machine. Let me change over to, I have a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco little external SSD, a USB SSD, I’ll try that. That way it’s not network
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time machine at all. So I turn off the network time machine, I connect the USB thing, format it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, clear, start new, go. And within a half hour it happens again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even with that. So now I’m thinking, is it not time machine? Or is it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just any time machine? Turn off time machine, problem hasn’t happened since. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the problem happened I believe four times in eight hours. And then zero
⏹️ ▶️ Marco times after turning off time machine. So I think it was probably Time Machine, but what the heck is that? And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now I don’t have Time Machine. And like, that’s, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that’s problem number one.
⏹️ ▶️ John I see errors like the one you’re describing. Maybe it’s just me, but I always
⏹️ ▶️ John think my file system is host. Thank you. All right. Because like, and you was
⏹️ ▶️ John like, well, why would that manifest with Time Machine? Time Machine, especially doing a full backup, has to touch every part
⏹️ ▶️ John of your file system. And if there’s any part, it’s like bad disk IO, bad sectors, corrupt file system
⏹️ ▶️ John things. If it gets to some point where it’s like crawling over your file system and it’s trying to read a file and it monitors
⏹️ ▶️ John into like a blocking IO call, right? And that thing just hangs forever because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John local IO call and it’s blocking and there’s no timeout on it. That’s where you get like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, something gets hung up in a beach ball or whatever. So the first thing I do when I see something like that
⏹️ ▶️ John is, you know, disk first aid, FSDK, all that whole nine yards, boot into recovery mode,
⏹️ ▶️ John see if they have a corrupt snapshot in time machine, which happens in APFS a lot. to
⏹️ ▶️ John see if I have any errors. And like, I always suspect this guy because if disk I O goes
⏹️ ▶️ John bad, that manifests in hard hangs from whatever is trying to do that. And that eventually cascades
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, like it feels like the disk has just stalled or,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, we’re running out of file descriptors something like that, some kind of disk related. Yeah, that could also be one of them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But what leads me to believe it might be like a Mac OS bug is that this happened on the 14
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inch months ago. And that was a brand new computer. These are both brand new MacBook Pros from last fall. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think any kind of like hardware disk failure, like bad sectors, I think is unlikely to have happened both
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John like this. Not
⏹️ ▶️ John failure, but like, you know, disk, what do you call it? File system structure.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, right. But the other thing is like, they were both clean installs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they’re both used very differently. The small laptop has almost nothing on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it and is only used like, you know, once every day or two. And there’s like, there’s very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco few apps, very little new writes happening. Like that, and these have very, very different usage patterns
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and very different conditions. And that’s why I think like, I think it’s a bug. I think it’s a Mac OS bug or an M1
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Max bug or something. There’s something wrong here. So we’ll see. And maybe I’ll try your suggestions, see if they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco find anything, but probably not during the show. But.
⏹️ ▶️ John Wow. Yeah, and by the way, if you do find a corrupt snapshot, you can just delete that snapshot. That’s, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John not that you have, I don’t think you have any other choices. In fact, I don’t think you can repair a snapshot, but if you find a bad snapshot, you
⏹️ ▶️ John can use TMUtil to delete that snapshot and then do another run of, you know, disk utility
⏹️ ▶️ John from recovery mode and make sure it gives you a full clean bill of health. Because you’ll see it checking all the things,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, check the, you know, top level thing of the device and then check the individual
⏹️ ▶️ John volumes and it’ll check all the snapshots. And once you get a clean bill of health on all those things, then at least you know that’s not the problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, I’ll give that a shot. So anyway, the other area that has been failing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the HomePods. They’re on their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey last legs. So now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here’s the thing, though. I actually, I am slightly optimistic for a reason
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I probably shouldn’t be, but it makes very little sense. But here’s the thing. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my home pods are continually having ridiculous problems. Like they barely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work anymore. They, they work, you know, maybe two thirds of the time I asked them to work.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s not a good ratio. And there, and the number of bugs happening, especially with the stereo pair, The number of bugs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where the stereo pair breaks or one of them drops out or they just become two separate entities for some reason or like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s happening a lot now something is seriously wrong And it’s very clear that Apple has totally broken
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the software on them or the hardware or both and it’s not going to get fixed in a reasonable way anytime soon, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that being said When you write an audio app for iOS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you pay attention to what your users say or what you experience on the iOS point-release
⏹️ ▶️ Marco betas. You can usually predict when Apple’s about to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco either add a major audio feature or release new audio hardware which usually comes with a new major feature.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So every time Apple has released new AirPods say or something like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that or the HomePod they have usually somehow royally messed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up audio usually in an iOS point-release like you know 15.1, 15.2 like not like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 15.0, like a regular, you know, point, point X release audio gets messed up in the betas,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually shortly before they’re about to release a new audio hardware that uses something like that. And that just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happened for the first time in a while in the 15 point, what are we on four, whatever the recent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS 15 point, whatever beta is, they completely and in a major way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco broke AirPlay audio for I think two beta builds, and then they fixed it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like and they haven’t touched AirPlay audio in a little while. So I’m kind of thinking that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we might, this is again, this is the only thing I have to support this hypothesis, but we might
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be about to see new HomePod hardware. If that, like this is again, this is just a hunch. I have nothing to support
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this. There’s no room to this effect, so it’s probably wrong. But I think we’re about to maybe see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new HomePod hardware. And while that would be great, I don’t know if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m gonna make it. Like we use them every day and they’re breaking so badly. And so here’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s probably going to happen is I’m going to get fed up with these and replace them with something else.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then that will guarantee new home pod hardware will come out shortly after.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ultra fine says the system works right. I bought this ultra fine and then sure enough, we got the studio
⏹️ ▶️ Casey display just a few months later. So you’re welcome. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I, I, maybe I will, you know, conjure new home pods into existence
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by, by replacing mine, something else. But we’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re so, they’re like, they’re almost ridiculously broken now. Nothing is working reliably anymore
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about them. It’s quite sad. We’ll see.
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Summoning Apple Pay
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We had a lot of discussion last episode about double-clicking for wallets
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and how we could save the quickness or make the lock button quicker
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by disabling double-clicking, triple-clicking, things of that nature. And we were wondering, well, how do you get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey into Apple Pay if you can’t double-click the side button? And we didn’t have a really good answer for that at the time. Well, a few people have written
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in. Trevor Kay writes, for getting into Apple pay without the side button double click, first open
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the wallet app, then select a card, and then double click the side button. And then Andrew notes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that this method still works even when double clicking the side button feature is disabled globally. So again,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you’re deliberately going into the wallet app, selecting a card, if at that point you double
⏹️ ▶️ Casey click, it apparently will work. Additionally, some other people have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey written in that you can add a wallet button to control Center, which brings up the same double-click side button
⏹️ ▶️ Casey UI when you’re on the lock screen. And Michael Samuels writes, important that tapping the button
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in Control Center will open the payment sheet only if the phone is locked. If the phone is unlocked, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey button will jump to the Wallet app instead. So that’s worth noting. And then finally,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I tried this earlier today when I was in Publix, which is a grocery store in the Southeast.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If you just hold a completely sleeping locked phone up next to a payment terminal,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it will actually pop up as though you’ve double-clicked, which I had no idea. And a few people have written in about that. That was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey news to me. So that’s kind of cool. So you can do that as well, obviously. And a lot of people wrote in and said,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, don’t you wear an Apple Watch? Well, yes, but we weren’t talking about the Apple Watch at this point. I almost never Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pay with my phone anymore because anytime I have the occasion to, I have a mask on. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so I would just use the watch, which is much easier in my personal opinion. But yeah, those are three different methods to,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or a couple of different methods to do the double click dance without having it enabled all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So still keeping your very fast lock button.
⏹️ ▶️ John The mask unlocked is working pretty well for me speaking of doing face ID with mask and I think one of the
⏹️ ▶️ John this was working kind of before mask unlock, but often when I’m brushing my teeth, I will look at my phone
⏹️ ▶️ John and have to unlock it while I’m brushing my teeth, which I think is a challenging face ID scenario because at the very least is
⏹️ ▶️ John a toothbrush going in my mouth and also my hand is kind of in front of whatever. And I have pretty good success unlocking
⏹️ ▶️ John my phone while brushing my teeth. I think I had pretty good success doing that before mask unlock, but I wonder
⏹️ ▶️ John if it helped a little bit. But anyway, yeah, mask unlock has been working very well for me and I don’t wear an Apple Watch, so I
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t do Apple Pay with Apple Watch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What did people do while we brushed our teeth before smartphones?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey that’s what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do. Yeah, no, but then doesn’t toothpaste, doesn’t a little toothpaste flex have the risk of getting other places that you don’t want to?
⏹️ ▶️ John Not only if you’re really bad at brushing your teeth or you’re five.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The real question is, what did people do when they were pooping before Wi-Fi? That’s what I
⏹️ ▶️ John to know. I read entire books on the toilet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, that’s true. That’s a good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pilot. I played Mealborn a lot in Hearts. I read books
⏹️ ▶️ John on my Palm Pilot. 160 by 160 pixels. Perfect for reading a book.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wonder if the smartphone era has actually made people spend more time brushing their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco teeth. Like, it’s easy to get to the full two minutes on the electric toothbrush because you have something to do. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, you’re moving it around casually. but I feel like it was much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco easier in the pre-smartphone era to rush through it and accidentally not spend your full
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two minutes brushing your teeth that you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John supposed to. Yeah, that’s why walking around is the old standby, so it always works. Yep.
WWDC, Developer Center?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so we got some news about WWDC 2022 and specifically the event,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the in-person event that’s happening at Apple Park. And so there is a special
⏹️ ▶️ Casey page on the developer site with the URL slash WWDC22 slash
⏹️ ▶️ Casey special hyphen day. But anyways, on that page, it says we’re hosting a special all-day
⏹️ ▶️ Casey experience at Apple Park on June 6 to kick off WWDC 2022,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gather with others in the developer community to watch the keynote and State of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Union videos alongside Apple engineers and experts. Explore the all-new Developer Center and so much more.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We can’t wait to connect in person. I’m sorry, all-new Developer Center?
⏹️ ▶️ John What? Explore it. Let’s explore
⏹️ ▶️ Casey our desks. And then one of you, I presume, John, put this link in the show notes that I completely missed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when it flew by, which was apparently this time last year. And this is a link to Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Rumors, and it says, Apple’s building developer center at Apple Park Campus. And in this, it says
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that Apple’s working to build a dedicated developer center on its Apple Park Campus, Apple Fellow Phil Schiller said today
⏹️ ▶️ Casey during his testimony in the ongoing Epic versus Apple trial. Schiller did not provide additional detail on the developer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey center and has not been previously announced by Apple. So little information is available at this time. Again, that was a year ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I don’t know what this is about. We can come back to that in just a moment. But moving right along to the actual details
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about this event that’s happening in next month, Attending this event is free and open to members
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the Apple Developer Program and Apple Developer Enterprise Program. Invitations will be allocated through a random selection
⏹️ ▶️ Casey process and are non-transferable. This sounds exactly like WBTC actually. Submit your request
⏹️ ▶️ Casey between May 9th at 9 Pacific to May 11th at 9 Pacific. You’ll be notified of your status
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by May 12th at 6 PM Pacific. It requires a negative COVID-19 test
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no more than three days before the event. Masks are currently optional. provide details on the latest requirements
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to its attendees prior to the event. One thing I would love to know, and I think James Thompson pointed this out,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where is this happening? Like, is this an indoor thing? Because that would make the very… I’m not going to sign
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up regardless. But like, if this was an… if I was going, if this is an indoor thing, I don’t know about that. If it’s an outdoor thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hey, I think I can handle that. So what do we think of this event? What do we think of this developer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey center thing? What do we think?
⏹️ ▶️ John I wonder if the developer center is like a trap. I was like, so the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey reason I pulled out the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco story from May, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, oh, it’s like a developers check in, but they don’t check out. I don’t know. Like, yes,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s the developer re-education center. I know, I like this
⏹️ ▶️ John quote from the MacRumors thing of saying, you know, that Schiller talked about it in the trial. I mean, you know, I
⏹️ ▶️ John did bring it up in the trial. It’s like Apple would be like, what do you mean? We love developers. In fact, we’re building a developer center right now.
⏹️ ▶️ John And as the quote said, you know, has not been previously announced. So little information is available at
⏹️ ▶️ John this time. That was May, 2021. Well, I can tell you right now, on May 2022, little information is available at
⏹️ ▶️ John this time. What the heck is the developer center? Presumably it’s like a bunch of machines and like you can go, it’s like, imagine
⏹️ ▶️ John like WWDC labs, right, but on Apple’s campus, where a place where developers are allowed to go.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s no secret Apple stuff there. You go in there, you bring your laptop and your app, and there’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John bunch of, you know, Apple engineers there to help you with your app or whatever you need help with. You need help with UI design,
⏹️ ▶️ John you need help with a particular API, just like WWDC labs, except a dedicated little room for it
⏹️ ▶️ John in Apple Park, cordoned off from everything else. That’s my best guess at what the developer
⏹️ ▶️ John center would be. But, you know, they didn’t say, it’s like, you know, you’re gonna be here in person. We’re gonna watch
⏹️ ▶️ John videos. All right, sure, whatever. We’re going to explore the developer center. I don’t know what that
⏹️ ▶️ John means. And so much more. They can’t wait to connect in person, even if you’re not vaccinated and aren’t wearing
⏹️ ▶️ John a mask, which seems ill-advised to me, especially since this is a lottery. And like,
⏹️ ▶️ John honestly, how many people can they let that? It’s not like they’re gonna have 10,000 people on, you know, at Apple Park, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s going to be a small number of people. It seems, I don’t know, I still feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John this entire thing is kind of ill-advised, but that’s what they’re choosing to do. It’s a small
⏹️ ▶️ John in-person gathering of potentially maskless, potentially unvaccinated people who three days in
⏹️ ▶️ John the past did not test positive. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know. Well, we’ll see, but I find the developer center somewhat intriguing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, there’s so much that we don’t know here. And I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, we say that, oh, we got an update from Apple about this whole thing, but the update
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really only added new questions. It’s like an episode of Lost. It’s like, all right, well, now we know a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bit more about it, but now we have these new questions of what’s the developer center and why no masks? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I just, this whole thing is baffling to me. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do still wonder, you know, as you said, John, know, they’re, they’re, they’re certainly incurring
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some degree of COVID risk here by having this event. And while
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s probably going to be a low risk, generally speaking, you know, compared to, you know, worse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco scenarios that could exist in worse seasons and worse places, it still doesn’t really seem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it’s worth the risk to have an event at all right now, if it’s going to be so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco limited and, and still, you know, bear, bear some risk. It’s like, I feel like either
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have WWDC or don’t, you know? But I don’t know, I could be wrong. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, maybe this is just going to be the way forward indefinitely for WWDC.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’ve had this issue that we’ve talked about before, how they made it remote or online only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the last couple years, and they accidentally made it too good, and they spoiled us, and now we realize
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that actually this is better for most people most of the time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s better for all people certain ways. And so maybe this is the new kind of compromise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like, okay, well, we still are going to have some kind of in person component for those who want it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it’s not going to be the full conference in person the way it used to be. And so we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see what that means. Again, I still have so many questions about how this actually works in practice.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And what you know, what is the developer center even what are their plans for that? I mean, I’m sure that got derailed by COVID. But you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what, what do they plan for that to be? Who Who gets access? What does it take to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get access? What do you have access to once you get there? Is it going to be like labs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that are open year round? That’s kind of awesome if that’s what it is. And that’s kind of what it sounds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it might be. So we’ll see. There’s so much unknown and Apple keeps dropping
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like one sentence at a time of what this thing even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, what this event is. And it’s hilarious that when they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco drop these sentences here and there, they act as though we all already know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sure they know what they’re doing, but still, it’s just kind of funny. They’re like, oh yeah, they’ll preview the new developer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco center. And everyone’s like, wait, Wreck or Scratch, what? And
⏹️ ▶️ John you dig up the article from Mac Rumors from May of last year.
⏹️ ▶️ John Obviously doing the PR drip is a common strategy of releasing a little piece of information at a time and also
⏹️ ▶️ John like Apple probably doesn’t know the details of exactly what it’s doing at this point because they always plan stuff at the last minute. They
⏹️ ▶️ John probably know more than they’re saying but it’s the combination of those two things but you know yeah it gets us to talk about it again because they
⏹️ ▶️ John revealed a little bit more information but still my main overriding sense about
⏹️ ▶️ John this thing is it’s weird that they’re doing anything in person at this particular time. I don’t know I oppose
⏹️ ▶️ John the strategy of having a limited in-person thing combined with a mostly online thing I think it’s great and
⏹️ ▶️ John you know especially if they have a you know a developer center that’s always there or more accessible, that all makes sense too.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the details of this particular event at this particular time seems strange to me. And I continue
⏹️ ▶️ John to question who’s gonna be super enthusiastic about going to this and who’s gonna be super enthusiastic
⏹️ ▶️ John about being the Apple people at this. You know what I mean? Like, cause there have to be Apple, presumably
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s other Apple people at the developer center, unless it is just like one tour guide walking you through backwards, like Casey at Virginia
⏹️ ▶️ John Tech saying, and here’s a developer
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco center. Nice pull,
⏹️ ▶️ John Were you actually able to use a developer center? This is where you would sit and get help. But anyway, let’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So let me be serious and then let me be silly for a minute. I remember
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when the Apple Watch first came out that a lot of developers that were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey considering, potentially publicly considering writing Apple Watch apps, they quietly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey got whisked off to San Francisco or Cupertino or whatever, and were able
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to bring their code and run it against not yet released Apple Watches.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I only ever heard this through the grapevine, and I don’t know that this is true, but I’m pretty sure it’s true.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh no, it was a public program. Oh, was it? Okay, okay, I wasn’t sure if it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, well, there’s two stages to pre-release hardware stuff. There’s like, before it’s even announced,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple might approach certain developers to say, hey, can you make us a demo for our new hardware that we can show off during the keynote?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s a very, very small group that’s kept very under wraps with lots of limitations on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how they even see the hardware. It’s usually in big boxes, it’s guarded, it’s a whole thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whereas between when something’s been announced to the public and when it’s available to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco public, sometimes you get more access. And in the case of the Apple Watch, what happened was,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they announced it, I believe it was a few months before it was gonna be available, something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that, right? And so there was a big gap between announcement and availability.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco during that time, they actually launched a program for developers to apply to have this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pre-release access so that you could go. It was already announced and shown to the public, so you didn’t have to worry about breaking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the secret of this thing existing. And if you were accepted to this program, you would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go. And you say they whisked them there. No, the developers had to pay to whisk themselves there. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Fair, fair, fair. That’s a good point.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, so if you were accepted, you would have like one day, you’d be like, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, you could be here during this one day and you’ll have access to the hardware and be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco able to bring your app already mostly done from the simulator and you can run
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it on the actual hardware and make tweaks for one day and then see you later. So that’s what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was happening. And I don’t know if that has happened in any other way for anything else they’ve done in recent history.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I’m not sure either, but I’m thinking of that And I’m wondering if that’s one of the uses
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the developer center is to be able to have a specific place to, well, I was going to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say bring people, but to have people arrive at and let
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them play with something. And then it got me thinking, and this is where I’m getting a little bit silly, what if this is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all in preparation for the supposedly forthcoming AR glasses? Like, what if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is, I’m sure it’s going to be used for other things too, but what if this is in large part to prepare a space
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or prepare the way even you could say for for developers to come and use AR glasses
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and test their presumably simulator or whatever driven code on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actual hardware. Like I could see a world in which that’s what this is about.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just a room full of AR tables.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah. Just empty blank
⏹️ ▶️ John tables. Like big places for you to be able to walk around and not bump into things. Speaking of this, by the way, like the latest,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, rumors, whatever, the latest round of rumors I heard was that, oh, Apple was planning to do the AR
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff at this WWDC, but it got pushed. But we’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, that’s been the rumor for every WWDC for the last three years.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, so far it’s been true. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco remember like the last one they had in person. I remember like, I was in the room for that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one with you guys, I believe. And I remember like, before the keynote
⏹️ ▶️ Marco started, they have, you know, the screen showing little animations or whatever. and the animations they were showing looked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very much like they would be the style of something drawn for air glasses. It was almost like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those laser portraits in the 80s, but forming shapes, you know what I mean? Like everything was made out of lightsabers.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like it was that kind of style, and even I remember looking at that thinking, oh my God, are they about to do the AR
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing right now? Because that art style sure looks like it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it turns out it was just, no, that was just the art style for the year. It meant nothing, it was just what they thought looked cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was like a virtual boy. Yeah, yeah. Getting ready. Yeah, I don’t know. We’ll see what happens. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m enthusiastic about this for other people. You know, it’s one of those things like, would you hire this person for your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey team? No, but I’d hire them for that team over there. I think this is an interesting way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for Apple to dip their toe in the water. Personally for me, I am not in love with the idea of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey getting on an airplane yet, much less, you know, going to a place where a bunch of people are milling about potentially
⏹️ ▶️ Casey indoors, you know, potentially without masks. Like, that’s not my jam. But if it’s your jam, feel free.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I’m very, very excited to see pictures, what people will be allowed to share
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyway, pictures and information about how this goes down. but we’ll see.
Studio Display update
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, our friend Jason, friend of the show Jason, had something to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey talk about with regard to the Apple Studio Display and settings. And Jason
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lamented in Macworld, in his periodic column in Macworld, that it would be cool if we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had settings for the Studio Display webcam. Wouldn’t that be interesting? So Jason writes, we can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey debate the wisdom of putting center stage on a display, most likely designed for the desks of nerds, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey let’s leave that aside. Actually, I would like to talk about that briefly. I stand by. I love center stage and I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think this is a reasonable application of it. I think I’m the only one, or maybe Jason was saying the same thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John I agree with you. I think center stage is good here. It’s just, they need a camera that is capable of doing center stage and not also look
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Agreed. So anyway, so back to what Jason wrote.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco By the way, the, the update to the firmware still looks like crap, right? We all are in agreement
⏹️ ▶️ John on that. Yeah. Some people say it’s getting slightly better, but that’s, that’s why I put this article in there. I think Jason really nailed the,
⏹️ ▶️ John the heart of how Apple’s traditional ethos hurts. It makes it more
⏹️ ▶️ John difficult for Apple to get out from under this bad hardware that it has chosen to put in its display.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. So continuing with what Jason wrote, how about the audacity of Apple shipping it without any interface to speak of?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And how much better might the camera on the studio display have been received if it could be tweaked by its users to produce
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more pleasing images? The studio display users are reporting that occasionally the studio display’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey audio speakers or microphones or both get a little choppy. Again, this is me interjecting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is absolutely factual. Occasionally, the speakers will have, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t even know how to describe it, but they’ll have like just a few milliseconds where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s no audio. It’s enough that you notice, but not enough that it’s extremely jarring.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then occasionally, and this happened to me today, I was listening to a podcast using Overcast on the Mac, and I don’t think this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was Overcast, I think it was the display. I’ll be listening to something and I’ll go, and it’ll just freeze like that for a while.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And eventually, and what makes me think it was the display is eventually it stopped,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then when I adjusted the volume just to see if anything was working, because I turned back on the, you know, the pops
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when you adjust the volume, the boop boop boops. Anyways, when I heard, when I did that, I heard it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my clamshell Mac book Pro. So what, even though the sound
⏹️ ▶️ Casey settings, last I had touched it, were set to the studio display, Suddenly after the Googoo,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the MacBook Pro is what was actually emitting sound. And then I went back and system preferences moved it back to the studio
⏹️ ▶️ Casey display and everything’s fine. It’s very weird though. So yeah, a little bit of audio problems are definitely happening
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from time to time. Anyway, back to Jason. The studio displays, audio speakers, and microphones, or both, get a little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey choppy. That’s a common problem with audio hardware on the Mac. But it’s fixed by the classic tech problem solver. Turn it off and back
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on. Except the studio display does not have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a button. If the audio on the studio display gets weird, your only option is to crawl under your desk, pull the plug,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then plug it back in. All true, all very true.
⏹️ ▶️ John See, and that’s because, as we noted before, you can’t even pull the power cord out of the back of your monitor. You
⏹️ ▶️ John can if you really want to pull really hard, but that’s not supposed to be pulled out. It’s not a regular connector. It is really
⏹️ ▶️ John well wedged in there, and it’s not the type of connector that they want you connecting and disconnecting. So even though technically
⏹️ ▶️ John you can yank the cord out, you really shouldn’t. And so, because it doesn’t have a power button, because why
⏹️ ▶️ John would you ever need a power button, right Apple? You have to go and crawl into your desk and find where it’s plugged in and unplug it, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John So these two things, like the typical Apple ethos, you don’t need a power button because why would you ever need one? It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just smart enough to know when to turn on and smart enough to know when to turn off. You don’t need to worry about it. That fails you when
⏹️ ▶️ John it turns out, actually sometimes you do need to turn it off because there are bugs. And then the total lack of settings, right? A lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of webcams have, and you can read the article, see this, there have been third-party apps in the past that have let you tweak
⏹️ ▶️ John the image of your Apple built-in camera. And then of course, third-party cameras, you often come with their own app where you
⏹️ ▶️ John can tweak the brightness, the contrast, the exposure, the focal distance, you know, all sorts of those things that
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe you could fiddle with to make the image of yourself in center stage
⏹️ ▶️ John look more pleasing to you. Like I said in past shows, a lot of the complaints about the center stage camera, aside from the
⏹️ ▶️ John low resolution, is that there is like some over-processing that really smooths out, presumably the noise
⏹️ ▶️ John in your face, and it’s like low contrast and overexposed. And so the over-processing,
⏹️ ▶️ John If you could disable the processing or weaken it, that might help, but simple things like exposure,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And contrast, those are basic settings that a lot of webcams have. And it could just
⏹️ ▶️ John be that people would be happier if they could just have two sliders to mess with those
⏹️ ▶️ John things, to make it look more like it does on the iPad. Again, nothing’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John save the hardware. Like a lot of people who are frustrated by the studio display are getting third-party
⏹️ ▶️ John webcams or taking like a point and shoot digital camera or a mirrorless
⏹️ ▶️ John camera or whatever, and those just look fantastically better. So, you know, there’s no substitute for cubic inches, but
⏹️ ▶️ John with the existing hardware that’s there, some amount of settings might have actually
⏹️ ▶️ John saved Apple from this, because the only alternative people have now is there’s no, as far as I know, there’s no
⏹️ ▶️ John third-party apps that you can mess with this internal camera with. And people are just waiting around for new,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, beta versions of macOS that come with slightly tweaked firmware, which again, you can’t change. The only
⏹️ ▶️ John setting you have is basically, should I do center stage or not? Jason also mentioned if you could
⏹️ ▶️ John select how big of a crop it takes, another setting that Apple just doesn’t give you, although Apple changes it
⏹️ ▶️ John from beta to beta, that it’s not like they give you a setting of like, how big do you want the crop to be? And that could also help
⏹️ ▶️ John you be happier with your camera. So lack of settings, it’s a known thing with Apple. And
⏹️ ▶️ John when there is a problem, the lack of settings, as we’ve discussed in the past, when troubleshooting things really makes
⏹️ ▶️ John it so the user has no recourse except for just to wait around and hope Apple fixes their problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For what it’s worth, the LG UltraFine also has no buttons whatsoever, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is also kind of annoying.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Honestly, they would just screw them up. Probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s better for LG to attempt fewer things because they obviously can’t do even the basics correctly.
How mechanical watches work
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, as a quick aside, speaking of screwing up buttons, did you guys see, I’m not going to be able to find
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the website while we were talking, but I’ll put a link in the show notes. Did you see the new,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the thing about the mechanical watches? This was posted in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John a Slack raw.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I still have it open thing with
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey my windows. I haven’t finished going
⏹️ ▶️ John through it, so it’s still in a browser window. I will have it for you in a second. Here you
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey go. I got it. I got it. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not going to try to pronounce this name because I’m not going to do it any justice, But this is a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey website that this person does some phenomenal live
⏹️ ▶️ Casey animations of things and mechanical engineering and discusses how things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey work. If I recall correctly, the same person did an absolutely brilliant
⏹️ ▶️ Casey version on the internal combustion engine. This is so cool. And to see…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like, I knew a little teeny tiny bit about how a mechanical watch worked, but this is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is one of those things where you literally build a mechanical, well, not literally, I shouldn’t say, but you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey effectively build a mechanical watch from first principles and from nothing into a fully functioning
⏹️ ▶️ Casey watch with a complication, the whole rigmarole. Marco, if you haven’t read this already, this is straight up your alley.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is super cool. But yeah, with regard to the display, like for my personal
⏹️ ▶️ Casey needs, the camera doesn’t really bother me that much. Like of course I wish it was better, but I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not sitting on Zoom calls all day long. If I was sitting on Zoom calls all day long, this would really tick me off.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like Center Stage is awesome and it works. I tried it with, I think it was with Zoom
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it did work with Zoom. And again, I stand by Center Stage. I think it’s huge on me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I think Jason also did as well if memory serves. But we might be the only ones that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there are dozens of us, we might be the only ones that are enthusiastic about it. But nevertheless, I still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think Center Stage is a perfectly reasonable application or it’s perfectly reasonable on the studio display.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And for my uses, I’m not too bothered by all this, but golly, if I was sitting on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Zoom all day, every day, this would really, really, really frustrate me.
Musk stock lawsuits
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving on, we can’t go another episode without talking about Elon Musk apparently. So we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had some feedback. I don’t want to read this person’s name just in case
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that would get them in trouble, but we had some feedback and it is as follows. It’s a little bit long, but it’s fascinating.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m one of the attorneys suing Elon Musk for his delayed disclosure of his stake in Twitter. John suggested that it was good
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that some probably rich shareholder was taking this on. It’s not actually how our system works, generally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey speaking. Our firm does plaintiff-side securities litigation because the SEC,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Security and Exchange Commission, cannot or will not take on so much wrongdoing. The laws in the courts
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have left it to the private sector to enforce security laws through private civil lawsuits. The plaintiff in our case
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually sold very few Twitter shares, a lot of money for him, but not a lot of money in the scheme of things. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a system and the attorneys who will ultimately lead the case will be the ones who represent the investor who lost the most
⏹️ ▶️ Casey money and wants to serve as lead. That may or may not be us. We take all our cases for securities fraud and other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey security law violations on contingency and at risk and get paid a percentage of a recovery
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if we are successful. This model may not be ideal, but it’s the system we have. Contingency
⏹️ ▶️ Casey class action lawyers are often maligned, and I agree with much of the criticism, millions of dollars of fees for the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lawyers when the injured class members get a coupon in the mail for 10% off another product from the company that wronged them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Our cases don’t settle for coupons. The class usually gets around 75% of any recovery we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ultimately obtain. The security laws are written in such a way that there aren’t any punitive damages,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so recoveries are often not 100%. But I feel great about what I do, both
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because of the recoveries we are able to get for the classes we represent and for the hopefully deterrent effect we have on the markets.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Unfortunately in Elon’s case, I don’t think the system can provide much of a deterrent because there’s no amount of money that will cause him to lose sleep.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But that doesn’t mean he’s above the law, and hopefully we’ll get a chance to remedy that for those who sold their shares too cheaply when he was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hiding his stake. It’s fun to hear my case discussed, sorry Marco, even for just a few seconds.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In a prior life, I used to defend Apple and privacy-related class actions, so I guess it isn’t the first time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just thought that was all super interesting. So thank you to that anonymous person.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s interesting that the one he’s representing is not some super rich shareholder,
⏹️ ▶️ John but obviously they’re working, they say, we don’t make money unless we win. And they get,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not like class action, like you said, when you described it well, the handful of lawyer gets millions of dollars and the class gets
⏹️ ▶️ John some, you know, pittance. But it is actually similar because if they get a percentage,
⏹️ ▶️ John if they’re representing someone who had millions and millions of losses, they’re going to get back 75% of their million.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that means the lawyers get 25% of that million back. So anyway, I guess they don’t get anything
⏹️ ▶️ John if they lose. I mostly agree like that it is good that someone’s trying to,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, hold him account for doing a thing that he ostensibly wasn’t supposed to do. It’s kind of sad
⏹️ ▶️ John that this is supposed to be against the law and you’re not supposed to do it according to, or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John against the rules of the SEC that are supposed to govern business in the United States. But
⏹️ ▶️ John you can just flout those rules and just assume no one’s going to come after you. Because apparently the SEC can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John or won’t, kind of like how our IRS can’t go after rich people because they
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have enough money to audit them. Because it’s very expensive and time-consuming to audit rich people, because
⏹️ ▶️ John rich people have lots of lawyers and accountants and everything. So the IRS goes, ah, we can’t go after rich people. We’ll just go after
⏹️ ▶️ John slightly less rich people who we can afford to pursue, which is a totally broken
⏹️ ▶️ John system. And in this case, it seems like the SEC is not interested in going after clear violations of their rules.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so they leave it to the private sector, quote unquote, where lawyers will take it up because if they can recover some
⏹️ ▶️ John of the money that people say that they lost because, you know, again, he was hiding his stake
⏹️ ▶️ John in Twitter. And had people known that he was buying up all those shares, they would have acted differently. but they didn’t, so
⏹️ ▶️ John they ended up losing money on stock. It’s seems like it’s a difficult thing to prove, or at
⏹️ ▶️ John least, at the very least, a difficult thing to, obviously, you can’t even get all your money back. You can get some percentage of your money back,
⏹️ ▶️ John but some percentage is better than zero. So we can just, like, if this succeeds,
⏹️ ▶️ John it will be added to the list of sort of slap on the wrist things that Elon has run afoul of. So when someone
⏹️ ▶️ John says, Elon Musk has never done anything wrong, you can say, well, he has. He hasn’t done anything wrong that has caused him to, as
⏹️ ▶️ John in the words of this, you know, feedback, lose sleep. Like nothing has actually hurt him because he’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John when you’re very wealthy, it’s very difficult to have anything that hurts you, but has he ever done anything wrong? And, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John provably wrong, like where everyone agrees he did a wrong thing and then he got either convicted or sued and lost
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. Yeah, sure, it happens all the time. I mean, we’ll see what happens with, for example, all the discrimination lawsuits
⏹️ ▶️ John in the Tesla factories or whatever. And add that to the column of things that probably don’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, make a difference in the grand scheme of things to Elon Musk personally, but never let it be said that he
⏹️ ▶️ John has never done anything wrong is the blameless angel that some of our listeners may believe he
TV, sports, and garbage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, I wanted to channel upstream and do a couple of quick things, cover a couple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of quick things that I thought were super interesting. Over the last couple of weeks, there’s been rumors
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that Sunday Ticket might be coming to Apple TV+. Marco, could you describe to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me what Sunday Ticket is, please?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes. You are going for a drive on the weekend and you go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little bit too fast and an officer of law
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey prevents you from going further
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and gives you a piece of paper that makes you pay money.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m kind of annoyed at how good an answer that was. That is not at all close to what it actually means, but that was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an annoyingly good answer. Well done, sir. So Sunday Ticket is a thing for American
⏹️ ▶️ Casey football. It used to be for years, and as it stands still is, for years and years
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and years and years, the only way you could get access to, exceptions, any NFL
⏹️ ▶️ Casey football game was to pay an obscene amount of money to a particular cable provider. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s actually not cable, it’s satellite provider. So Dish Network, which has had other names
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the past, had a exclusive deal with the NFL such that in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey order to get Sunday ticket, and again this is the thing that lets you watch whatever games you want, with exceptions, any
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would no matter where they are, and it had some other features too, like a channel that showed only the super exciting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey plays in football, because as much as I do love I love football, let’s be honest, it’s kind of boring.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I’m sorry, it’s DirecTV, not Dish, thank you, CMF.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco But anyways.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’re gonna anger so many people, this is gonna be fantastic, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey can’t wait.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I love football, even though I shouldn’t, but nevertheless,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco let’s be honest.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Frankly, just a quick aside, because I don’t know what you’re talking about for the most part, but just a quick aside, you mentioned it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lets you watch some of the games, well, most of the games, well, you know. The feeling I get, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe I could be wrong, I don’t know anything about sports, I’m probably wrong. but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it seems like the leagues really hate the fans. Like, they hate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you. They absolutely hate you. All the crap they make you go through
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have subpar experiences and so many limits. And I know why.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know it’s because of basically large money deals between large companies.
⏹️ ▶️ John They don’t hate the fans, they just love money.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Right, and more. It seems like they hate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you so, so much. Like I’m just, again, maybe it’s just me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and my lack of like a traditional father growing up and that’s why I’m not into sports at all,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I don’t understand why people would care so much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get through all this crap. Meanwhile, I guess, I mean, I’m buying Apple products and putting up all their software bugs and everything,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that’s a bad example. Just think of
⏹️ ▶️ John how much you went through back in the day to watch the QuickTime 4 streaming video from
⏹️ ▶️ John WWDC. You would have gone through a lot to do that people are willing to do exactly that much. Think of think
⏹️ ▶️ John of our friend that we know who has a sling box in the Midwest to view something to view
⏹️ ▶️ John sporting events on the other side of the world. Like we would totally do that if that’s what we needed to do to be able to
⏹️ ▶️ John see WWDC keynote live. So I don’t think we have any sort of high ground to stand on here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey By the way, it’s not a sling box. It’s prior sponsor channels, which is excellent. But anyways, I take your point, Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it’s exactly what John said. It’s not necessarily that they hate the fans, although in some cases I think that’s kind of true.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But it’s more that they want money, money, money, money, money, money, more than anything else in the world. And they make these
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ridiculous deals with anyone who gets near them about, oh, well, we can show this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this game in these areas in these markets, but not that market. And not when it’s too close to home and so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on and so forth. It’s a mess.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, they want they want to sell exclusive rights, like because you make money by saying we will extend. We will sell you this. And it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John valuable because you will be the exclusive rights holder to air this type of game
⏹️ ▶️ John for this team in this area or whatever. And the exclusivity makes it valuable. And the exclusivity means now all there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John now all of a sudden there’s a bunch of rules about what you can’t can show on like the blanket streaming service
⏹️ ▶️ John or in their app or whatever. It’s like, well, we have this, you know, it’s it’s just, you know, it’s how they make money. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ John And sometimes it’s a huge amount of money. And sometimes these are weird legacy deals and they’ll slowly fade out. I’m sure,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, listen to someone talking to a sporting podcast about how the age of streaming is changing the landscape
⏹️ ▶️ John of local television contracts and blackouts and all of this stuff. But still, stuff like that changes slowly.
⏹️ ▶️ John and in the end, there is value inherent in the sporting events because people
⏹️ ▶️ John want to see them. It’s just a question of who is going to, how much money that
⏹️ ▶️ John value is going to make and for whom. And so I think the total amount of money it’s gonna make is probably gonna stay the same, but that
⏹️ ▶️ John money is gonna move around. I’m hoping, I bet sports fans are hoping that by the end, there is a simpler
⏹️ ▶️ John way as a fan to give the amount of money required for you to see the things you wanna see.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right now it seems anything but simple because we’re seeing like we’re in this in-between period of, you know, cable
⏹️ ▶️ John and streaming services and over the air live TV all in the mix. And I don’t know how people
⏹️ ▶️ John even keep it straight of, you know, how they have to watch the thing, but you know, then again, it’s like that for streaming TV.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s why things like JustWatch exists, the JustWatch app and whatever it is, just watch.com. It’s literally
⏹️ ▶️ John the second place I go. I first place is what am I going to watch? Second place is how do I watch that? And I just go
⏹️ ▶️ John to JustWatch and say, JustWatch, please tell me how I can watch this. And then it tells me of the umpteen services I have
⏹️ ▶️ John to subscribe to. here are the different ways you can watch it. That’s not an app I needed when I was a kid and
⏹️ ▶️ John I had 13 channels. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s so true. And this is all relevant because, you know, the NFL wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sell you – the NFL had a streaming product years and years and years ago. Before that was super duper popular.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The NFL had a streaming product, and I’m sure like the baseball people say, oh, baseball was for – it doesn’t matter. But the point is years ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it had a streaming product, but you could only subscribe to it if you were not American. And if you entered American
⏹️ ▶️ Casey contact information or came to the NFL website from America, they would say, kindly pound sand and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pay DirecTV. So a friend of the show, Lex Friedman, many moons ago, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this website is now gone from the internet, but many moons ago, he put up a post that said, hey, you can pay a company to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey give you a DNS server that’s way off in Europe and that was all you needed in order
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get the NFL to serve you the European page. And then you could pay the NFL like 150 bucks to get Sunday ticket
⏹️ ▶️ Casey via streaming, but you You had to masquerade as a European to do it, and it was a total mess. Well, anyways,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of this to say, yes, I totally understand, Marco, why this seems bananas to you, and you’re not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really wrong, but a Sunday ticket may be coming to Apple TV+, which would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be wild, and I think a huge deal, because a lot of Americans, myself included,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey although I mostly don’t pay attention to the NFL anymore, a lot of Americans really love American football and the NFL,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and for a Sunday ticket to be available via streaming would be a big deal.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And maybe it is already on DirecTV and I misunderstand it, but my understanding is, you cannot get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sunday Ticket without being a DirecTV member. And yes, I would presume that you wouldn’t be able to get Sunday Ticket
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in this potential new world unless you’re an Apple TV Plus member, but that is a much easier thing to do than
⏹️ ▶️ Casey putting a satellite dish on your friggin’ house. So I just think this is fascinating. Even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey though I don’t pay attention to the NFL, I still think it would be super cool if Sunday Ticket
⏹️ ▶️ Casey came to Apple TV Plus, and I know they’re doing the Friday Night Baseball games and they’re kind of dipping their toe in the water of sports
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stuff. So I really, really am keeping a keen eye on this to see where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it goes, and I think it’s a fascinating play. And then additionally, very quickly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there was a rumor or there’s been a statement actually, this is from the Register
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Citizen, which is a paper that I don’t remember ever hearing about before. But apparently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple TV Plus has commissioned a movie on the Danbury Trashers. And you might say, well, what in the hell are the Danbury
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Trashers? So the story of me driving a family friend’s Ferrari,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the family friend was the owner of the Danbury Trashers minor league hockey team.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And this you may have heard about many, many years ago in the early aughts, because he then made his then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 17-year-old son the general manager of the Danbury Trashers minor league hockey team.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so there was a documentary done about this. It is on Netflix. It is excellent. untold
⏹️ ▶️ Casey crime and penalties. And I will put that link in the show notes. I would watch it again, but I just cancelled
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my Netflix subscription, but that’s neither here
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But either way, yeah, so there’s a documentary about this. It’s like an hour, hour and a half, and it’s excellent.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then I talked about all this on analog, because, you know, this guy, Jimmy Galanti,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he was in the garbage business, hence Danbury Trashers. He was very Italian.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Had a lot of money from the garbage business and he was an Italian from New Jersey, okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh-huh, and he went to jail for tax evasion for a while. So you can put, I’ll let you put the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in-between together. But he was always super nice to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey always super nice to me and let me drive his Ferrari once and that was pretty cool. So anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so I just thought this was fascinating and this is a little bit selfish but I think it’s super interesting and neat and apparently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of the stars of, shoot what is this, Stranger Things. This gentleman’s name is David
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Harbour, he’s going to play the aforementioned Jimmy Galante. So it hits close to home. It was super
⏹️ ▶️ Casey weird watching this documentary and seeing their kitchen and being like, wow, I’ve stood in that kitchen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey many times before. Like, this is really weird and creepy. But anyways,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just thought that was fascinating.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will say too, while we’re on TV for a moment, in a failed effort to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco find anything else to watch for the moment, Tiff and I decided to just start watching Severance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again. Yeah, I was just talking to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Aaron about this. What
⏹️ ▶️ John do you mean again? I thought you already had started. Did you start over again?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so we finished the season. Right now, they’re between seasons. Oh, you’re watching it a second time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so we’re going back and re-watching season one. And there are only a couple of episodes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in it, but there is so much to pick up on a second watch-through. So if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enjoyed season one, and if you don’t, what’s wrong with you? But if you enjoyed season one, I strongly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco suggest go back and watch it again. while it’s still fresh in your mind, and there’s so much there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you will pick up the second time. So it’s pretty cool.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I would recommend that for you as well, John, but I hear that you didn’t like Severance at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I haven’t heard the episode yet. Save me for a long drive tomorrow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I am actually watching it a second time,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I’m watching it with a Wi-Fi. If you’re going through it, but
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. The frustrating thing that annoys everybody that I’ll say again, so all you and
⏹️ ▶️ John all the listeners can also be annoyed is, you know, a lot of the things that Mark was picking up on the second time were possible to
⏹️ ▶️ John also pick up the first time. if you were paying attention.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Not all of us are smart and observant as you, John. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s not about being smart and observant, actually. What it is, and this is why Marco is ill-equipped to deal with it, is experience
⏹️ ▶️ John watching similar programs. Basically, do you know the tropes? Do you know how things
⏹️ ▶️ John are normally telegraphed? When you see X, I don’t wanna spoil anything, but
⏹️ ▶️ John what they do in the previously on, when they do the previously on. Oh yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I never watch those because they spoil too much.
⏹️ ▶️ John so the reason they do the previously on, like I think on episode eight or nine, they do a previously on that reminds
⏹️ ▶️ John you of something that was in episode one or two, because they assume most people have forgotten by now
⏹️ ▶️ John about episode one or two, or the thing that they are showing you previously on wasn’t noteworthy to people because
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re not familiar with the tropes. But if you’ve seen lots of shows like this, when it happened in episode one or two,
⏹️ ▶️ John you go, oh, that probably means that X and Y are gonna happen. And then when X and Y do happen, and it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John about being observant or being smart, is just like, how many shows like this have you watched before? And for Marco,
⏹️ ▶️ John that number is usually zero, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Unless he’s watching a sitcom,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? So that’s why, you know, it’s not a character judgment and it’s not because Marco wasn’t paying
⏹️ ▶️ John attention and he was on his phone or whatever. It is just simply like, how many similar shows like this have you seen before?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. I was just talking to Aaron and my parents about this and my dad, or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my mom and dad had just finished Severance for the first time and dad was like, man, I gotta watch it again. And I was like, you know, I was thinking about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this too Aaron and me and dad were talking about this. I feel like I do need to rewatch because I really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enjoy it. We don’t need to go into this much more. I really enjoyed it. I don’t know if I enjoyed it quite as much as everyone around me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enjoyed it, but I definitely enjoyed it a lot. And, um, and I feel like I missed a lot and I, and I need to
⏹️ ▶️ John time. And the best kind of rewatch, my favorite kind of rewatch is the kind I’m doing where I get to introduce the show to someone who
⏹️ ▶️ John hasn’t seen it. I haven’t watched it and liked it and I can say to my wife, I like the show and I think you’ll like
⏹️ ▶️ John it too, which are not always the same thing, but in this case, I think you’ll like it too. And then to be to take her through with it and then refuse
⏹️ ▶️ John to answer her questions when you ask me, because I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey don’t want to spoil
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m pretty sure, John, that Merlin said that you didn’t like it.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s not what I heard. Uh-huh. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is his story.
iPhone 14 front-glass leaks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s talk iPhone 14 display panels. There’s been a picture leaked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that purports to have the iPhone 14, 14 Pro, 14 Max, and 14 Pro Max all arrayed.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it is, well, other than way too many words, way too many names, way too many numbers, it looks like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about what everyone’s been saying it’s gonna look like. So the iPhone, let me paint you a word picture, the iPhone 14
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro and 14 look to be approximately the same size. The 14, the non-pro, appears to have the traditional notch,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whereas the 14 pro has, what are we calling this? The pill and something? The pill and lozenge? Is that right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The sideways eye. A
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eye is actually a pretty good description. No, it’s not a pill, the hole in the- That’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John what people are gonna call it, but it looks like a little stylized letter I on its side.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and then the 14 max and 14 pro max, I think they’re the same size,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but again, the 14 max, the notch, the 14 pro max, the sideways
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eye. sideways lowercase i. And again, this is around the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time of year that we would see fairly accurate leaks. To my eye, this looks accurate, but I’m no expert on these sorts of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things. And this is about what we’d expect. I’m intrigued that the pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey models are the only ones that go notch and hole or whatever we’re calling it, the side eye.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But one way or another, this looks like it, it, it, it smells like it’s probably true to me.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. All the iPhones always leak. They leak, everything leaks. It’s impossible to keep that these are real parts, I’m sure.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’ve got everything about it, this is leaked. We’ve got the whole, we’ve got what the case looks like. We’ve got what the cameras look like. We’ve got
⏹️ ▶️ John some specs on them. Obviously we don’t have the colors, but we’ve got probably the names. We don’t have the prices, but anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John the reason I thought this particular leak was fun was because these phones, especially in a year
⏹️ ▶️ John when there’s not going to be a quote unquote redesign, which basically means they change the sides and the back.
⏹️ ▶️ John These phones are so sort of defined by looking at the face
⏹️ ▶️ John of them, It’s like that this part, this one part, which is just like the cover glass or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you see that, you’ve seen the whole phone basically. Right?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Cause you know, what is it going to be?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s going to be a rectangle. That’s going to be that big. And it’s going to have these features on the
⏹️ ▶️ John screen, which is kind of what we’re interested in terms of like, is it full screen? How big is the notch? What else is there? And then there’ll be
⏹️ ▶️ John a phone behind that. Right? And what will look like? Well, it’ll look like your current one. It’s got flat sides, got a flat back. It’ll come in a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ John of different colors or whatever. Right? And then obviously what’s inside it really counts. Like what processor is this? The specs on the camera.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, of course that also leaks in separate rumors, but this one little part is such a sort of, it’s like, yep, this is what
⏹️ ▶️ John the next set of phones are gonna look like. And the reason I thought this was interesting is because despite all the rumors of us talking about, we talked about
⏹️ ▶️ John this on past shows, like the little hole punched out for the camera and the slightly longer hole for the face ID sensors
⏹️ ▶️ John versus the notch or whatever, one thing that really stands out when you see, you know, the parts
⏹️ ▶️ John sitting in front of you, is the thing that a lot of the rumors had mentioned, but it’s like, it’s more visceral when you
⏹️ ▶️ John see it, is that the little, you know, we’ll put the link in the show notes so you can
⏹️ ▶️ John see the image, but if you don’t know, it’s like a circular cutout and then like a lozenge shape
⏹️ ▶️ John next to it, as opposed to the notch, right? Because the circular cutout and the lozenge are near the top of the display
⏹️ ▶️ John where the notch would be, but there’s screen between them and the top of the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John Unlike the notch, the notch, there’s no screen between the notch and the top of the phone. The notch is the top of the phone. The screen ends, the
⏹️ ▶️ John notch begins, and that’s it. And this thing, if you’re going up the middle of the phone, you hit the lozenge, and then
⏹️ ▶️ John you hit some more screen, and then you hit the top of the phone. So I’m not sure of the exact
⏹️ ▶️ John measurements, but it looks to me like it’s possible that the little lozenge thing
⏹️ ▶️ John is lower on the screen than the notch. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it does look like that from this picture. It could just be a weird perspective trick, but I think it does look like it’s a little
⏹️ ▶️ John And so you get more pixels of lit up screen, but some of those pixels are on the other
⏹️ ▶️ John side of the lozenge. And like if the lozenge is blocking part of your video if you turn landscape
⏹️ ▶️ John and you’re watching some video and the lozenge is blocking it. The notch blocks video sometimes too, right? But
⏹️ ▶️ John the lozenge would block the video and then you’d also be able to see a little bit of the video on the other
⏹️ ▶️ John side of the lozenge. And I do wonder, I know this is the pro models, only the pro models have this, only the more expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John ones will have the lozenge. And I’m wondering, yeah, you get more lit
⏹️ ▶️ John up pixels numerically on the pro ones, but would you prefer to have
⏹️ ▶️ John the smaller notch from the non-pro or the lozenge. And I’m looking at this and I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John wondering if I wouldn’t rather have the notch just because it would be,
⏹️ ▶️ John it might intrude less far into the content. You know what I mean?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, this does not immediately appeal to me very much because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what the notch effectively becomes is a status bar. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is just where we shove the status bar, which wasn’t exactly useful space before for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco full color, full width stuff, before it was a black bar, and you’d have stuff on the sides and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe a little thing in the middle, and that would be it. The clock would be in the middle or whatever. And they rearranged the status bar when they brought the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco notch into things, and they just shoved the stuff on the sides, and that was kind of it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so we didn’t really lose much. Similar, see also when they added the notch to the MacBook Pro last year, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where the notch covers in the MacBook Pro is just usually a blank part of the menu bar.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so we weren’t really losing any useful screen space but it doesn’t really matter, right? And so on the iPhone,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco same thing. It’s like they rearrange the status bar to work around it, it’s fine. To then try to, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, change from the notch of this weird hole punch thing, are we actually really gaining anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from that besides it looks cooler? Now, that being said, it looking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cooler is a major reason why they might want to do this because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the hole punch style is already occurring in the Android world that does, I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look slightly more modern. And so to have a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco visual differentiation, especially for their pro models, that does make sense.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I see why they’re doing it, but from a utility point of view, I don’t see how that helps us,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the exception that I will get to see a little bit more blue at the top of my screen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from my wallpaper on the lock screen. Like that’s like, I’ll see a little bit more sky.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it’s narrower than the notch too. It seems like, so you get a little bit, in terms of content,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a little, for the status bar, for example, up there in the ears of where the ears of the notch are, there’s a little
⏹️ ▶️ John bit more space. And then it also means when you’re, you know, I’m thinking of like losing landscape video. When you’re in landscape
⏹️ ▶️ John mode and the content is trying to go to the edge of the phone, but there’s either the notch or the lozenge there, the
⏹️ ▶️ John lozenge will cover less of it just because it’s not as wide. But my main thing is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John okay, So it’s not as wide, but if it is lower on the phone, that it is intruding farther into
⏹️ ▶️ John my content. Again, I’m sure this is mostly a non-issue because like the notch, we will eventually just get, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, notch blindness, ad banner blindness, whole bunch blindness. We will just, we will all just collectively, we learned
⏹️ ▶️ John this with the notch. We were worried about how it would be. We all got our phones with the notches. Now we just do not see it and think about it at all,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? I think that is universal. And I’m sure that will happen with this too. I’m just like, when you were getting at it,
⏹️ ▶️ John Margo, I’m like, but is it actually any sort of upgrade or is it just status
⏹️ ▶️ John quo? Like if you didn’t have this, right? I guess the only upgrade is that you can,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s easier to visually distinguish the more expensive phones or whatever thrill you get from having the more expensive model
⏹️ ▶️ John is a little bit keener or something. And I don’t even know if it looks cooler because like whole punch
⏹️ ▶️ John phones remind me of Android. They’ve had it for years and years and years. And so for me, it’s not a status
⏹️ ▶️ John symbol. It’s on the way towards, you know, let’s not have any, let’s have a full screen
⏹️ ▶️ John phone, right? We’re not there yet. presumably we’ll get there eventually, but not this year and probably
⏹️ ▶️ John not next year, but eventually iPhone 16, maybe or whenever they go full screen. We talked about this when the notch came
⏹️ ▶️ John out. It’s like Apple does not want the notch. It is a necessary evil. And the moment Apple can get rid of the
⏹️ ▶️ John notch, they will. Can’t get rid of a net. They’ve shrunk it and now, and then they’ve turned it into a lozenge
⏹️ ▶️ John and eventually it will be gone entirely and we’ll all be happy. But until they can get there, it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John keep pushing on the perimeter of that thing. And then we’ll just, you know, we’ll ignore it out of the corner
⏹️ ▶️ John of our eye and just gone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with it a lot. Yeah, I mean, I do think though, having it look different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and cooler and newer, even if the function is not that different, that is a major thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Apple is always seeking and needs to seek. They have challenges getting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people to upgrade their phones if their phones still work. And if Apple doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco change much year to year, they get criticized for it. Like, oh, why does this phone look the same as my old one?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they do actually need things like this to keep moving the design forward, to keep appealing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to people, and to look fresh and new. So even if all it is is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a reshuffling of the existing trade-offs with a new shape that doesn’t actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really give you that much extra, that is itself a valuable thing because people will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco say, oh look, they redesigned it. It looks fresh and new. So I see why they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing this if they can, but for actual utility, it won’t matter too much, I don’t think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it will look cooler temporarily.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that probably is for all the tech nerdery that we talk about. That probably is one of the most important factors
⏹️ ▶️ John making regular non-tech nerd enthusiast people get
⏹️ ▶️ John the Pro. We know that the Pro, according to the rumors,
⏹️ ▶️ John have a totally different system on a chip that’s gonna be way better than the 14, because the plain 14 is gonna have A15 and the 14
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro is gonna have the, you know, or A15 and the 14 Pro is gonna have the A16, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But nobody cares about that except for us. Like that is a way bigger differentiating factor
⏹️ ▶️ John if you wanted to say, what’s the difference between the Pro and the Max? Well, the cameras are gonna be different, but also an entirely different system
⏹️ ▶️ John on a chip, and the new one presumably is way better in a bunch of ways, right? But nobody cares about that, but everybody can see
⏹️ ▶️ John Notch versus Lozenge. And does it matter? Like we said, is there any practical benefit? No, but look, Lozenge,
⏹️ ▶️ John and they tell me Lozenge is better, so therefore, you know, it’s like, like that is so, that and colors
⏹️ ▶️ John are like so much more important to getting people up here to the Pro than trying to explain to them that the number after
⏹️ ▶️ John the A on the system on a chip that people don’t even have any concept of, It’s one bigger on this one. This is a 16, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a 15. What difference is it like with the sort of AB test, put the two phones in people’s hands
⏹️ ▶️ John and cover up the Vosage and let them swipe around. How long do you think it would take a regular human
⏹️ ▶️ John being or us for that matter, to be able to tell one is an A16 and one is an A15? Like you
⏹️ ▶️ John have, like you’re never gonna be able to tell looking at Safari, looking at, like you’d have
⏹️ ▶️ John to like run a benchmark or maybe play a game with an FPS counter because if you just play a game,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, It’s like, it’s so hard to tell, right? Or you’d have to use it all day. Like say the A16 has better battery
⏹️ ▶️ John life. It’s, even though that is the differentiating factor of these phones and
⏹️ ▶️ John the A15 is an existing chip that you can buy today, what people will probably care more about is loss and service
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and I think when you look at this lineup, the other big piece of news here is that this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty clearly is supporting the rumor for a while that there’s going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a quote, low-end Max. And I know this is all, it’s all relative, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco These are all expensive phones. Apple doesn’t make a low-end phone, but, you know, so they’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have not only the like, you know, regular 14, 14 Pro, and 14 Pro Max,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but now they’re also having a 14 Max that is not a Pro. So they’re gonna have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two sizes with two families, and you’ll have all four combinations of which pairing you wanna get.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And because they’re moving to that, and I think it’s fairly obvious to guess why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are doing that, because they will capture more of the market by having a large
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone that is not super expensive. It’s only regular expensive,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is as best as Apple can hope for. So there is market to capture there. And so I see why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are doing that. But this also being the year that they are more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco differentiating the pro family from the non-pro family, I think it’s not a coincidence that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re adding that big non-pro phone the same year the pros are gonna have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more differences between them and the non-pros. And that goes from both the system on a chip
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that allegedly is happening where they’re only gonna have the 16 and the 14s are gonna keep the 15, this is getting very confusing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or, and also, they’re gonna look visually different still. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think personally, Apple overvalues the difference in materials
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used on the phone. Because what they’ve done so far with the Pro phones, you know, in recent years,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is they have this stainless steel band, which makes it heavier, and they have the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco textured glass back, which makes it more slippery to hold. So like, the way they make the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro phones look different from the non-Pro phones to date, has made them physically worse phones,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by being both heavier and slipperier. And so maybe by taking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a different method of, you know, these screens are gonna actually look different from the front, it’s gonna look very different. Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they can stop using the fingerprint magnet heavy stainless steel on the case band and maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make it a little bit nicer of a phone to hold by maybe shedding some weight
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and making it a little more grippy.
⏹️ ▶️ John I hope they don’t get rid of the stainless steel. Yes, it is heavier, but it’s not that much heavier. And I really do think
⏹️ ▶️ John it feels more expensive. It’s like in luxury cars, you can do things to the control surfaces that don’t make them any better,
⏹️ ▶️ John and in fact are probably heavier than the previous ones, but they feel more expensive. I love the feel of the stainless,
⏹️ ▶️ John because I used my stainless steel ProPhone without a case for as long as I could tolerate it, which wasn’t that long, granted,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I think it feels great. It feels more expensive. Does it have any functional difference? No.
⏹️ ▶️ John Is it correct fingerprints? Yes, it does, but it feels so good. I love the stainless steel thing, and you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. Like, I don’t think they’re gonna give that up, because they do want to visually differentiate the surfaces,
⏹️ ▶️ John and they probably do wanna use a more expensive material. That’s the whole point. That’s like, you know, heavy AV equipment
⏹️ ▶️ John where they put lead weights in it. They just want it to feel more expensive. And in some ways being a couple ounces heavier
⏹️ ▶️ John and having that stainless steel feel is that luxury feel they’re going after. The slipperiness
⏹️ ▶️ John is harder to excuse though. It’s like, even if you really like a matte surface, how much are you gonna like it when your phone falls
⏹️ ▶️ John out of your hand and breaks in the ground? So.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And yeah, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone uses cases.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know, I know. Yeah, they need, but still, they should not make the Pro1 slipperier, But
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m okay with it being a little bit heavier in exchange for the really cool stainless steel I think it’s great.
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#askatp: Combine API
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, so let’s do some Ask ATP. Andre Videla writes, is KC still using Combine? If so, what is it like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey since it came out in 2019? How does it compare to RxSwift in practice and what’s the future of declarative or event-based
⏹️ ▶️ Casey frameworks in the platform? And have Marco and John tried them as well? So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do still use Combine, but relatively sparingly. So Combine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is, I would argue, functional reactive programming. it’s trying to embrace
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, hey, things are going to happen asynchronously over time. Let’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey make that a thing. Let’s deal with that in an intelligent way. What’s great about Combine and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey RxSwift is that you can say, you can take something, an event happening,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and you can say, all right, well, out of this class that represents this event, I only care about this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey object, and then I want to do something with it, and this, that, and the other thing, and you can transform these chains
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of events or you can make these chains of functions that transform an input into an output and do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something with it. And Combine lets you do this, ARC Swift lets you do this. A great example of this is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey using Notification Center if you’re an iOS developer. Notification Center is a way to pass messages around your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey app. You can go, it’s the kind of the global message bus that I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feel like, maybe it’s a me thing, but like all developers eventually want a global message bus,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and that’s what Notification Center is. And Combine has a really great, Notification Center is a really great
⏹️ ▶️ Casey combined API for it, where you can say, all right, when such and such notification happens, give it to me, and then I’ll do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things with it. That’s a great example where I still use combine. But I don’t really let
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it take over my apps in the same way that I did with RxSwift. And that’s largely because with RxSwift, it had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a subproject called RxCoco, which gave you observables. That’s kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey publishers and combined speak. But it gave you events when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things happen with Coco. So like when buttons were tapped, when things were scrolled, and so on and so forth.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And Combine doesn’t really touch Cocoa Touch. Like that’s its own thing. Like it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doesn’t really touch UIKit. And there’s good things about that, there’s bad things about that. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because it doesn’t really have an equivalent of RxCocoa, I don’t use it near as much as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I used RxSwift. And I think for the most part, that’s probably okay. But I definitely do use it sometimes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now with regard to what’s the future, I think it’s pretty clear that Async Await
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is where Apple thinks the future is going and where they’re putting their efforts.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And this has been made even more clear with the recent, just in the last month
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or two, release of Async Algorithms. And Async Algorithms is an open source package that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not part of the Swift runtime or package, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s stapled on the side of Swift, or optionally you can staple it on the side of Swift. And what it basically does is it fills in a lot of the gaps
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that Combine doesn’t have on its own. or excuse me, that async await doesn’t have on its own. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it has operators like combine latest, join, zip, merge, things of that nature, and different
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ways of creating asynchronous sequences and things like that. And so this fills
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in a lot of the gaps that combine was able to do that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey async await was not. And I haven’t really played much with async algorithms yet, but it seems
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clear to me that for most use cases, In my opinion, I would start with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey async await, maybe paired with async algorithms. And then I would use combine,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not when I’m forced to, because obviously I’m never forced to, but only when that is really, truly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clearly the best available option. With all that said, I’m happy to honor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey questions if either you two fellows have any. But I’d love to ask, John, I mean, you’re not really doing iOS development
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the moment, so I assume you’ve not really touched combine?
⏹️ ▶️ John I haven’t. And hearing you say all these things, and I also saw the async algorithms thing when it was announced.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m wondering, what do you think this means for Combine? Is Combine gonna go away
⏹️ ▶️ John and these are the replacements? It’s so weird because Apple releases these things to the public, so there has to be,
⏹️ ▶️ John Combine has to exist because people wrote apps against it. So it has to be there for some period of
⏹️ ▶️ John time. But do you think this is a sign that Combine is out of favor at Apple and they prefer
⏹️ ▶️ John to go with just SwiftUI async await and async algorithms instead?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, asterisk. So I think you’re absolutely right in your implication that that Combine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is kind of on life support, maybe going the way of the Dodo. I think that’s pretty clear because since Combine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey landed in 2019, it’s basically been crickets since then.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The only thing that gives me pause about Combine really and truly going away, other than, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, a lot of people like me have embraced it, is that a lot of SwiftUI is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey levered, well not a lot, but a not insignificant amount of SwiftUI is leveraging Combine under the hood, like observable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey objects, for example, published properties, for example, things of that nature. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they would need to revise their story and replace Combine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in order to really and truly deprecate it, or replace it in the context of SwiftUI to really and truly deprecate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. I think in the future, yeah, Apple’s star eye emoji
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is looking at async await and async algorithms. But yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the time being, I don’t think Combine is necessarily going away. And if they do replace things like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Published or even just re-implement the internals, and we somehow found out about it, of like Published
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Observable Object and things like that, I think that’s when I start to get really worried
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about the future of Combine. Although I think the official word is, no, it’s not going anywhere. But I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s pretty clear to me that that’s where the wind is blowing. Marco, you’ve used a little bit of Combine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here and there, haven’t you?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. So, you know, besides published observable object, which I’ve used, you know, as I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bridge my old code into the SwiftUI world. So I use that. And I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also, I make pretty good use recently in my recent code of the,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the publisher for KVO bridge thing that like there’s like a method that you can get a publisher for,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for like a key value thing on an object. So I use I use that a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lot. And otherwise, that’s about it. And so I’ve never written something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you would recognize as like functional reactive programming ever. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that being said, I do intend to lean more into the async stuff shortly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have recently crossed over the threshold that I think it’s safe for me to require iOS 15 for my app. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t require it yet, just because I don’t have any reason to yet. But next time I do a major thing, which is probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to be when I redo the now playing screen, I’m probably going to require 15 from that point forward,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because there’s a couple things I want to use from it. And so once I start requiring iOS 15,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which will then allow me to use the native Swift async stuff, then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will probably jump more heavily into it. But that being said, I still have a ton
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of legacy code in my app that works fine and doesn’t justify replacement, and that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t use this whole system. I mean, most of it isn’t even Swift, most of that kind of stuff. You know, I already
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have libraries for things like collating messages over time and stuff like that. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve already written a lot of those and they work and they’re already done. So a lot of that stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, just my legacy baggage is going to keep me from using a lot of the stuff just because I don’t need to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But, you know, over time I’ll start using more and more of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that makes sense.
#askatp: Design process
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Stephen Garrity writes, Marco has talked in the past about designing directly via code. I’d like to know what the design process
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the recent Overcast redesign was like. Did you redesign major screens with the actual code in-app,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or did you use any design tools and mockups? —Mockups, excuse me, mockups.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco —One of the reasons why it takes me a while to design things in the app is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I build everything. The way I design something is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I try it in the code. I just try doing it. And I see how it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looks, how it works, what challenges have arisen as a result of me doing that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I end up building a lot of things that I never ship design-wise. I try a lot of weird
⏹️ ▶️ Marco little tweaks here and there. And that’s just how I work. I’ve never gotten into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco design via design apps. I’ve never gotten into graphic Photoshop
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or the mock-up tools that exist now that aren’t exactly Photoshop but allow you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do mock-ups in a more specialized tool. I’ve never gotten into any of those things. And part of that simply because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not a designer, part of that simply because I can’t draw. But part of that is also just like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the language I use, like the creative tool I use to try to design is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just building it. That’s it’s as simple as that. And, and until I build it, I can’t really tell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether and how it’s going to work. I built it, and I put it on my phone on in hardware.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So off off of my Mac screen, like let me see it in hardware to see how this works and how it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feels and everything. And that’s how I design. So it takes a while, but that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just always been how I do it and yeah, that’s simple as that. And I think this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is also kind of the luxury of being a one person shop that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I am doing the design myself, like because I’m conceptualizing the design myself,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t have to worry about the intermediary representations or steps or processes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, if, if I’m working with a designer, obviously I wouldn’t expect the designer to be able to code everything up in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco UI kit or Swift UI. So that would be a different story. Uh, I would have to use one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of these tools, but because I’m the programmer and the designer and I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing, I’m coming up with these designs myself and trying them out. I have that feedback loop of like, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, I think this might look good if I do this. Let me, let me try this. And then I see, okay, well, here’s the challenge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of doing that. If I do that, it’s going to break here, here and here. Or I can do, you know, 80%
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of what I want visually for 10% of the effort in the codes. Let’s probably do that instead. Like I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have all the benefits of that kind of feedback loop. Um, and, and I can see instantly like what doesn’t work,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what works, what, you know, what’s made difficult by the frameworks, what’s made easy by the frameworks. And that allows me,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, to have a lot of advantages in the way I do that. But the, the disadvantage is that it does take a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco longer to iterate on, on a design because I’m actually building and like, I’m not even using like the live
⏹️ ▶️ Marco previewing stuff and Swift and Swift UI, because it always breaks for me, I can never get to work reliably. So I’m literally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just like trying something and hitting build and run every single time. Every time I change anything, tweak color,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tweak a spacing, change it in the code, hit build and run pops up. I’m doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of that every single time. And it works for me, you know, but obviously that that kind of thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does not work for everybody.
#askatp: Sound Mixer on Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so Carl Fryer writes, I’m new to the Mac, and I am missing a feature on Windows called Sound Mixer. It is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a function of the audio system that allows the user to control volumes of specific applications. Is there a good third-party
⏹️ ▶️ Casey program for this on the Mac? Is there
⏹️ ▶️ John I put in the screenshot here of the, he provided a screenshot of the Windows feature that shows a little application icons with
⏹️ ▶️ John volume sliders, and the matching screenshot from Rogamube’s Sound
⏹️ ▶️ John that shows little icons of applications with volume sliders. It was so perfect. It was just right on their marketing page. I didn’t even know
⏹️ ▶️ John if SoundSource did this, but if your question is, how can I do something with audio on the Mac, Rogue Amoeba is the place to
⏹️ ▶️ John check immediately. Someone said, Paul was on a talk show and he was saying they have Rogue Amoeba, but Rogue Amoeba is hard for people to spell because
⏹️ ▶️ John they write rouge and who knows how to spell amoeba. So I think they have MacAudio.com.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, learn how to spell the word rogue and the word amoeba. It’s a good exercise and go to RogueAmoeba.com and check
⏹️ ▶️ John out SoundSource, which looks like just a very fancy way for you to pick the source of your sound,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it has so many features and one of them is per application volume control.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks to our sponsors this week, Squarespace, Linode, and Collide. And thanks to our members who support
⏹️ ▶️ Marco us directly. You can join atv.fm slash join. and we will talk to you next
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause
⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John John didn’t do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause
⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental, oh it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental And you can find
⏹️ ▶️ John the show notes at atp.fm And if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John into Twitter, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 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
⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental, accidental, tech podcast so
Casey needs a project
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I’ve realized something about myself, and maybe everyone around me knew this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but me, but I feel like I am following in my dad’s footsteps as I get ever older,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I need a project. So if you remember early on in pandemic, my project was,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use 300 raspberry Pis to do something very, very simple, because I can. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then I didn’t have a project for a long time. Then I had the replace all the switches in the house with, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think they’re called decorator switches instead of toggle switches, which in my opinion look way better, maybe you disagree, it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really matter. Now that I’ve completed that project, I need a new project.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I have semi decided that my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new project is going to be put at least a couple of ethernet drops in the house, in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Which is not something I should be doing for about 300 reasons. But that is the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey project that I’m considering embarking on. And the issue that I have, well, I have many issues,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey trust me, but one of the primary issues that I have is that I would like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so my office, if you imagine my house as a, I was gonna say a big rectangle, but it’s not a very big house, but if you imagine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my house as a rectangle, and if you think about the northeast corner
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the rectangle, that is where the office is, I would like a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ethernet drop on the western side of the house, so clear across the house, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also upstairs like my office is. So presumably I can get into the attic and go across the attic and that wouldn’t be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey too terrible. But the other place I want an ethernet drop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is directly below my office and across the house the short way.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So my office and my bedroom are across the house the long way,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but on the same floor. The living room, which is the other place I want the ethernet drop, is across
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the house the short way, but down a floor. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know what to do about this. Because at first I thought, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey let’s just assume I can get into the walls, so to speak, and wire through the walls. Well, that shouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be too bad. But then I got wondering, well, if I’m doing that, is it really the right answer to put
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a panel of ethernet drops in the office, as that’s the place that terminates all these ethernet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey drops? Because what if the office, which bigger than Michaela’s bedroom that she’s using right now. What if she
⏹️ ▶️ Casey moves into the office at some point and I go back to her bedroom, which was my original office when Declan
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was first born, when we first moved in the house. So then I’ve got all these ethernet drops terminated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in her bedroom. And then that makes me wonder, well, okay, where would I terminate all these ethernet drops
⏹️ ▶️ Casey otherwise? I don’t particularly want it in my room. The garage. Well, and so that’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think, the most logical conclusion. And I guess my question, I’m mostly just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey talking just because I wanted to tell the story and see what you guys had to say about it. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of the things I was wondering is if I terminate in the garage, like that has some semi-wild
⏹️ ▶️ Casey temperature swings. Like I’m not saying it’s as much as you guys get. It’s different for sure. But for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of stuff, it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey matter. So that’s what I was gonna ask. Like does your average not crappy switch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and like Eero for example, could that handle the 20-ish
⏹️ ▶️ Casey degrees to, Well, and this is outdoors, but.
⏹️ ▶️ John Eero is maybe not as robust as like a business enterprise
⏹️ ▶️ John data center type thing. Because data center stuff are built to handle, you know, difficult temperature situations.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not sure if the Eero’s are. Did I miss the part where you eliminated the basement?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I only have a crawl space. And that is a possibility for sure. And the crawl space is not terribly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like it’s more of a crouch space than a crawl space. But
⏹️ ▶️ John How’s the environment control in there? Is it better than the garage in terms of temperature
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey fluctuations?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would be a little better but not tremendous, but the thing is I don’t want to terminate all the Ethernet down there Because what if I have to futz with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I don’t want to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have to crawl under the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You want the garage it’s like here. I you know I’ve had I’ve had switches in my garage here for 12 years The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first I had an HP big you know 18 port one, and then I moved over to the ubiquity stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know whatever that was four or five years ago. It’s been it’s been fine. It’s been rock-solid I’ve never had a problem. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the garage here is uninsulated It’s only touching the house on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two of the four walls. And so it has like one exterior wall plus the big front
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wooden door thing. So it’s been fine. It’s been totally fine. And so that’s your answer.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, you don’t have that many devices though. I mean, like I know Marco’s got the overkill thing with the rack and rack
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco things or whatever, but like honestly, how many things do you have in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your house? I mean, rack is generous. It’s a bent piece of metal that holds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco three or four you you just against the wall. Like it’s not,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John it’s no, but you could
⏹️ ▶️ John just Velcro Velcro and eight port switch to any wall and it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, and I think I would probably do something like that. The other thing that’s really appealing about using the garage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that when the house was built, it was a single zone air conditioner and the, and the furnace
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was in the garage. And so that means there, there at the time was a bunch of,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know the technical term for this, but a bunch of duct work running under the house to, to service the downstairs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then there is some ductwork that was running up to the attic to then split off to the upstairs. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey around the time Declan was born, we went to a two zone system. So now there’s a furnace in the attic, and there’s a furnace in the crawlspace.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that means, interestingly, that the area that is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the garage where the ductwork went to the attic is just empty now. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s, it’s capped off, but there’s basically ductwork that that is not being used and and nothing in it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s a obscenely large circle in which I can put ethernet cable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get from the downstairs to the upstairs. But then what I need to do though, is I would need to run
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one or more ethernet runs from the office, at least the way it is today, clear across
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the house to go down into the garage.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John And then I would need to- But you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John running across in the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey attic, right? That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ideal. Yes, yes, I am running across in the attic. But I’m talking about a considerably more distance
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than I would otherwise need to do if I was just going.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that’s fine. I think you have an ideal scenario. You have a way to easily get from your garage up to your attic, and
⏹️ ▶️ John from your attic, you can go across to any room and drop down into the walls.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, that’s pretty good. Hypothetically, yeah. That’s what to do. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think about, you can burn length like crazy here. Because the ethernet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is pretty good up to 100 meters without any really compromises. 100 meters can wrap around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your house a number of times. On the outside, you’d be fine. So, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would be, you can do things that are, that you wouldn’t necessarily think of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as solutions. Like what John said, like, just everything goes up to the attic and you go across, you move laterally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco across the attic as much as you need to, and then you drop down through the wall cavities as you go. Like, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I think you’re probably right. And the only thing that gives me a little bit of pause is, and I forget the numbers off the top
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of my head, but you know, I started asking these questions in some slacks that we’re in, and I think you had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pointed out, Marco, that Cat 6, and jump in when you’re ready.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is what you want. Well, so hold on. So Cat 6 can only do 10 gigabit, which I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do not have a single piece of 10 gigabit equipment in the house right now. But eventually I might.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And Cat 6 can only go something like 100 meters, which is like 300 feet or something like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, without having real problems at 10 gigabit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey speed. But Cat 6A, to your point, can go something like 500 meters. And although I agree,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think any single run would be a hundred plus meters. That makes me wonder if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I should go 6A, but I’ve heard rumblings having never handled, or having never had to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey crimp or anything with Cat6 versus Cat6A. I’ve understood that 6A is kind of a pain in the rear
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to deal with as compared to 6, I am talking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco way outside. Not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as 7. Well, so I hear Mr. Cat7 everywhere. What’s the difference between 6A
⏹️ ▶️ John and 6 in terms of crimping? We know why 7 is a mess. It’s totally different like end connector.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco solid core, which is the worst. Yeah, the solid core is the worst because it pulls out of everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John And also that has the conductor sheath thing that has to be like grounded. The 7
⏹️ ▶️ John is a big pain, but 6 and 6A should be the same, right? Like what’s even the difference? Maybe a little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think the wires are thicker. And I thought that there was some sort of like sheath around all the twisted pairs,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco more than normal or something. I think that’s 7 you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey 7 definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John has that. Maybe, maybe.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Regardless, oh, RPLMac or RLPMac in the chat says 6A also has metallic shielding.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So maybe it’s just metallic shielding, but not solid core cables. But either way, that’s a minor difference. But one thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you want is, first of all, future-proofing, et cetera, but also, you have to account for the fact
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that your installation’s going to be imperfect. And so, if you can get 6A instead
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of six, maybe the metal shielding is a little bit of a pain, but that might get you a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more protection against this one cable that has a bend in it that goes in a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way it shouldn’t, or that got a little bit scraped along the way into the connector or something. You get a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bit more forgiveness buffer there for when things don’t go exactly perfectly according to spec with your actual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco installation. So that’s why it’s nice to have some kind of headroom. But again, there’s a balance here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If it’s going to make every single termination point much more likely to have problems or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fail or to not be in spec at all, then obviously, you know, that’s not maybe, that might be going too
⏹️ ▶️ Marco far. But I would say, you know, Cat6 is totally fine. If you want to just run
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cat6 and be done with it, that’s totally fine. I would look into 6a just because,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, it is the higher standard and you can get, if it’s not going to be too much more trouble to run 6a,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you might as well have that additional flexibility and possible speed down the road.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I agree with you. So who did this? Neil underscore underscore put in the chat an image that they found
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s a really good visual, if this is accurate, and I have no reason to believe it isn’t, a really good visual representation of what this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey looks like in the difference between 6 and 6a. And that looks to me like it’s kind of a pain in the butt. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey again, I don’t know what I’m talking about. I did help my dad run, God knows what version of, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was probably cat one, if such a thing even exists, ethernet through our house back
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the late 90s. But this was, you know, what, almost 30 years ago now. So I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey barely remember any of that effort. But yeah, 6a looks like it’s a minor pain in the butt.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but maybe I’m getting myself worked up over nothing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Plus then you’d be future-proof for when your Macs finally get the stuff that my Mac Pro already has, 10 gig ethernet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Ah, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’ll trickle down to lesser Macs eventually.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And in the chat says, it’s really not that bad to go 6A and I should just stop being a baby.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would also put forth the idea that you don’t necessarily need to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do this entire job yourself. I know this is foreign, But like, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for instance, it might be worth hiring someone to maybe do the patch panel for you. You know, maybe you run the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cable if you insist on running the cables, but like wiring up a patch panel sucks. And if you can have somebody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do that who is an expert in that field and who doesn’t think it sucks or is being paid to ignore the fact that it sucks, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is potentially a huge headache saver for you while you still get to have the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rest of it be a Casey project.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is a fair point. You’re also not considering the fact that-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, jacks too. Oh, jacks and patch panels. That sucks, you don’t wanna do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, from what I saw, I watched a friend of the show, Quinn Nelson’s video on when he wired his house,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it didn’t look like jacks were that terribly bad, but again, I haven’t done this in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a long, long time, so maybe I’m dead wrong, maybe it’s a nightmare.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the good thing is you don’t have to do a lot, that’s what I’m saying, you don’t have to do a lot of them. You’re gonna have like what, like
⏹️ ▶️ John five jacks, right? And so you do it 10 times, each one you do twice. Like you’re gonna screw it up a whole bunch of times,
⏹️ ▶️ John but eventually on the third or fourth try, you’ll get it right and then you’re done. It’s not like you’re trying to wire an entire office building.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s going to be trial and error. Maybe you even have to buy twice as much cable as you had to because you
⏹️ ▶️ John screwed up. But in the end, it is a tractable problem because you are not doing a wiring
⏹️ ▶️ Casey beyond that, with regard to a patch panel,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey also consider that if this does go in the garage, which I think makes the most sense, I’m not necessarily above
⏹️ ▶️ Casey having a bunch of ethernet cables just appear out of this plenum or whatever it is, this hole
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the ceiling and then just come into a switch. Like I am not above that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Look, I have that with my stupid Cat 7 setup and it sucks because that’s why, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one time I had to replace the switch so I had to unplug all the cables and plug them into a new switch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then three of them, like some pin pulled out somewhere and they stopped working. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s why you don’t go Cat 7.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the point is, if you’re gonna have, even if you’re gonna go 6A, every time you have to unplug
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those root cables you know, whatever, whatever you refer to those as like the main backbone cables to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your house, you don’t want to have to be unplugging those ever. Like you want, you want those to terminate into something that is fixed in position,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a patch panel and like wall jacks. Like you don’t want anything to ever have to flex those. Yeah. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get it working and then you don’t touch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. And again, I mean, consider, I think you’re right that the right is dancers to pay somebody to do the whole
⏹️ ▶️ Casey damn thing. But the whole point is to keep me from or to keep me from going bananas
⏹️ ▶️ Casey while I’m still not quite out in the world. Although supposedly, Michaela is going to get her shot in the next couple of months. Oh, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey crossed. I mean, this is still, they’re talking about it next month. They should have been talking about it already, but that’s neither here
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nor there, but they’re going to talk about it in June. So maybe July, it might be a 4th of July
⏹️ ▶️ Casey miracle or something like that. But anyways since I’m not back in the world quite yet in any meaningful way,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I need something to do with my time and I’ve gotten masquerade over the line. I actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have a peak of view update, a very minor Peak of View update waiting to be released, which I’m excited about.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco come to Tesla, it kind of made me smile. Like, oh yeah, Peak of View. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s still a thing, who knew? But anyways, so yeah, so I need something to occupy my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time. And it also is worth noting, I should have said this at the beginning,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have no need for this, like zero need for this. Because remember, I am a humongous
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fan and a cheerleader for Mocha Bridges. So thanks to the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey coaxial cable that’s in the house, the place, the main place that I really want to have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ethernet other than in my office is downstairs in the living room because that’s where the Apple TV is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that’s also where the porch, the porch, the screened in porch has an ethernet jack in it and that’s connected via
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the living room. I can get like 600 megabits through,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, ethernet to Mocha Bridge to coax to Mocha Bridge to ethernet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can already do that today. There is no point in me doing this other than I need something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to occupy my hands and my brain and my time. So I just
⏹️ ▶️ John You get three to 400 more megabits.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s the thing, I could get more. I could get more of the bits, man. I want the bits. You got the moths, I got
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the moths. So anyway, that’s a reference, John.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, why do you want all those different bridges and everything, that’s just more things that can go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wrong. Like the simpler you can make it, the better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is true, but A, how many wires are in Cat 6, 8? How many things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can I make go wrong? Fair. And B, these Mocha bridges have been freaking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bulletproof. They have been some of the most bulletproof hardware I’ve ever owned, as I knock furiously on wood. But they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are just preposterously reliable, especially since the coaxial
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cable was an afterthought in this house and must have been run in the late 90s, early 2000s.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I’m still getting almost a gigabit through it. So this is entirely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey useless, but that is basically the definition of my life. So here we are.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But anyway, so if you had genuinely, all kidding aside, if you have done this yourself
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and have tips other than hire somebody, which is the correct answer, please reach out via Twitter or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey email if you must. If you’ve been here, lived it, done it. If you have a YouTube video that you suggest
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me to watch, I’m all ears because I would really love. I’d really love pointers because I’m probably going to screw
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something up doing this. but that’s part of the fun.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will say too, this is one of those areas where if you’re gonna do this, figure out what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the really good tools are and just buy the absolute best tools, the best crimp things. Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Marco found a way for you to spend money on this.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Surprise, surprise. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they aren’t that expensive. It’s maybe 100 bucks at most for the combination of things you’re gonna need here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But just get, there’s certain things that you can do stuff without crimping, or crimpless kind of things,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or these weird passive things, I don’t know. Every time I’ve tried to do this, I’ve failed, so maybe I’m not the best person to take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco advice from. But having the right tools for this job can make a very big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco difference in how much work it is, what your failure rate is for your punchdowns or your connectors,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s very much, definitely figure out what the right tools are and get them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Get a tester, all this stuff. I’ll probably just mail you mine, because I can’t use it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Ask Quinn what
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey apparently we all can’t use ours.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, and actually Quinn’s video, if you look at the description, he includes almost
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everything, like Amazon links, presumably affiliate links, because that’s what I do, links to almost
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everything he used and suggested in the video, and including a couple of things that he actively suggests
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not to use. So I’ve gotten a lot of the tool recommendations from his video. I haven’t actually spoken to Quinn about this. I should at some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey point, but yeah, if you have personal experience with it and have pointers, I’d
⏹️ ▶️ Casey love to hear, or if you need to, maybe the right answer is all of you just tell me, don’t do it, don’t do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it, which maybe is the best answer. But I need a project, y’all, I need a project.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, and honestly, it’s fun. Like, dealing with Ethernet stuff, like, it’s kind of old school, you know?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s very, like, physically satisfying. Like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to physically, like, punch these wires into these things, and then all of a sudden, your stuff is fast and reliable.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, it’s very cool, and having Ethernet in your house is a very good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco idea, like, for all the mentioned reasons I just mentioned. Like, you don’t want to have to deal with bridges and weird other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco broadcast standards, and you wanna be hardwired directly from your computer through a switch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to your Fios box. You want all of that to be hardwired ethernet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Exactly, as fast as it can be. You don’t wanna have to deal with, oh, I can only get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco three to 600 megabits. No, get your gigabit. Don’t you have gigabit ethernet service
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from Fios? Yeah, so get your full gigabit. You should have that. You’re a computer professional.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If it takes running like one $15 span of wire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco between your computer and the garage to make it happen, make it happen, you know?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and it’s actually, one of the things I looked at that’s giving me a little bit of pause because I’m cheap,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the cheapest spool of Cat6 or Cat6a maybe I was looking at, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like $200 for a spool of like a couple hundred feet of ethernet cable, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is probably reasonable, but I did not realize it was that expensive. So I’m like, holy God, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey better be really sure that I accomplish this if I’m going to spend a couple hundred dollars on cable alone. But this all started, the funny thing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is, this all started with, you know, I kept going to Monoprice, which I do love, and buying like a one-foot Ethernet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cable here, three feet there, two feet there, for like one-off little uses all around the house.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it occurred to me, none of these, I always, even if I measure, I always get it wrong. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey either buy something too short or too long. I could fix this. Like I have crimped Ethernet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cable in the past. Granted, I was like 16, but I’ve done it. And it’s easier now with like the pass-through stuff, like you mentioned, Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So like, why don’t I just buy a spool of ethernet and just make my own little one foot, two foot, three foot cables.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then it’s a small jump from there to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco screw it, let’s wire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco house. You don’t wanna do that. Because like, first of all, like getting really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good ethernet cables pre-made is actually not that expensive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John No, but when you’re doing it-
⏹️ ▶️ John The pre-made short ones use stranded wire too, which is way more sort of supple and flexible for short runs,
⏹️ ▶️ John Whereas the spools you’re gonna get are all gonna be stiffer and gnarlier and you’re not gonna wanna
⏹️ ▶️ John use them for your two-foot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, because if you’re gonna get a spool, presumably you’re gonna want some kind that’s rated to be in walls. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a somewhat important factor here. So, that’s gonna be thicker, yeah, John said.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But also just, that’s not worth the time to like crimp on an end. When you can get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a really good ethernet cable for a few dollars, yeah, just buy them. And one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco option you may want to consider, I don’t know if you should consider this off the top of my head, especially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in regards to things like in-wall ratings that I literally just mentioned. But another option you could get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is just buy a few 100 foot ethernet cables pre-made and just fish them through
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the walls. That is an option. I don’t think it’s a very good option, but it would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco avoid a lot of problems.
⏹️ ▶️ John So like it is- That’s what I did in my house right now is I bought a couple hundred feet of
⏹️ ▶️ John cable with it is, well, not exactly the right thing, but that is long enough to reach everywhere that I get
⏹️ ▶️ John all with pre-made ends on them, and so far so good for 10 years or whatever I’ve been running
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, like that is a totally valid option. You could totally do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John that. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John I only have to go to like, I go to the computer room and I go to the television. What do I go anywhere else? No,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s it, computer room and television. And so that covers my PlayStation, all the computers in the house,
⏹️ ▶️ John and anything ever connected to the TV, all directly connected to the ethernet, which by the way, your kids will appreciate because they will
⏹️ ▶️ John have lower latency when playing online games.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, and there is an ethernet drop via Mocha, via coax in the living room, but I hear
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you. Now, so somebody in the chat room suggested trucable.com. Trucable.com’s Cat6
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Plenum unshielded, $200 for 500 feet. I almost, what’s 1,000 feet? Shoot, that’s not fair. So it’s $289 for 1,000 feet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Cat6. Do you need 1,000 feet? Probably not, but it’s almost $300.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The smallest amount of Cat6a I can get that’s Plenum rated is 1,000 feet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey $513! Holy jamolis, I don’t need that. Well, wait
⏹️ ▶️ John till you see how much it would cost to have someone else do it for you.