522: I’ll Just Keep You for Ten Years
16 Feb 2023Apple’s design-management change, the future of the Mac Studio, and why everything about our TV-audio setups is wrong.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Marco is living the true Land Rover experience
- Follow-up:
- The foibles of a 2.1 setup (via Samuel Polay)
- Sony HT-A9 & SA-SW5
- What’s the ∆ between Apple TVs? (via Andy Galletly)
- Current vs. Previous-Gen Apple TV 4K
imessage-exporter(via Christopher Sardegna)
- Apple dropping Product Design Chief role
- Mac Studio is one-and-done?
#askatp:- Does subscribing to a dead show cause burden on Overcast? (via Scott Wright)
- Would a 8 × 64 GB MacBook read data 8× faster than a single 512 GB MacBook? (via John Susek)
- How do we handle unknown callers? (via b4rt0s1k)
- Post-show: The Liss family has finally fallen (but are okay though)
Sponsored by:
- Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code atp for 10% off your first order.
- Mercury Weather: Gorgeous weather forecasts.
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Chapters
- Broken cars
- Follow-up: Home-theater audio
- Adaptive surround systems
- Sponsor: Mercury Weather 🖼️
- Apple TV speed upgrades
- Latest Apple TV 4K changes
- iMessage backup tool
- Apple dropping design role
- Mac Studio not getting updated?
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- #askatp: Keeping old feeds in Overcast
- #askatp: Many vs. few SSD chips
- #askatp: Unknown callers
- Ending theme
- An un-fun week at the Liss house
Broken cars
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It took this long for something to break on the Land Rover.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh Hooray, it’s finally happened
⏹️ ▶️ John This car I mean, I know you bought it used but it was like how many miles and how many years old was it when? You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got it. It’s it was like a year and a half old and something like 15,000 or 20,000 miles something like that
⏹️ ▶️ John things shouldn’t be breaking yet. But anyway, go on. It’s the sunroof Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you know how much I love sunroofs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, don’t tell him. Can you not? I will give you infinite money to not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey talk about this anymore because the last thing I need is more of the anti-sunroof
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mafia to have ammunition to be against sunroofs. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey love a sunroof. Me too. One of the only problems I have with my car is that it does not have a sunroof.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am in a group chat that I’m sure I’ve brought up many times on this show with a couple of friends of mine who are car nuts,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not not you two different friends of mine that are car nuts and the two of them are parts of the anti sunroof propaganda
⏹️ ▶️ Casey machine and I hate it. So I don’t even want to know. I don’t want to know. Let’s move on.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean look and and look the problem is really stupid. It just doesn’t like yesterday.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We we drove off the island yesterday and on the way there I could open the sunroof just fine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the way home try to open it. Nothing happens.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s kind of better than the alternative where it’s open and you can’t close it right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of that. I told him I’m like, you know, it’s Good thing it’s stuck closed and not stuck open.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, so I’m sure I have to go get it looked at. And maybe it’s gonna be a simple reboot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something or fix a fuse, maybe it’s probably gonna be a pain. And this is a minor thing in the grand scheme of things. But,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, and I know there’s that YouTube channel, is it TFL?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s like the off-roaders on YouTube, they do pretty good videos. And they got a Defender and their son would have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco died really fast on it too. So it’s something like that. I’m sure it’s a thing,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but yeah, I love a sunroof. And this is one of the great regrets
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have is that whatever car I get next almost certainly won’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one because I really want to go back to electric as soon as I can. And all of the good electric options
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like, you know, either off-road capable things, which is basically just Rivian at this point,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or, you know, things that are at least like a little bit higher seating position so I can fix my leg sciatic things and keep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them fixed. they all are like, oh, we’re going to have this big, expansive glass fixed ceiling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco panel. Oh, you can thank Tesla for that. Yep. I have had a sunroof on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost every car I’ve owned, and I love a sunroof. I use it all the time in the winter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t use it at all in the summer because I don’t have enough hair. And so I mostly just keep it closed. Or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I do open it, I have to wear a hat, and that sucks. So in the summer, I don’t use it at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all. In the winter, I use it all the time Because, you know, it’s nice enough out that I want to get like some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fresh air blowing in, but if I opened up the side windows, it would be too harsh, and like, would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be too cold on my face or whatever, and… Eh… So, you know, I-I know that my… my…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the days of me having a sunroof are probably limited, and I want to enjoy them while I have them. Uh, but…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway, that’s… there goes that.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think they’re that limited, because it’s like next to impossible… This is why Casey’s Friends, I’m sure, is playing. It’s next to impossible
⏹️ ▶️ John to find a car that doesn’t require you to have a sunroof, Except for EVs
⏹️ ▶️ John that do this to the glass roof thing But I don’t think they’re going anywhere like if anything the ability to find
⏹️ ▶️ John a car without them is disappearing faster It’s just that in the weird corner of the market that is EVs
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to copy Tesla They all want to do the stupid panoramic glass thing, which I’ve never had a car with that
⏹️ ▶️ John But like it always seems to me that I mean, maybe it maybe it’s cheaper or something I don’t quite understand the motivation
⏹️ ▶️ John I know it seems cool and everything but all of them have to do something pretty drastic to prevent the car from
⏹️ ▶️ John becoming a giant boiling fishbowl. So they need to like super
⏹️ ▶️ Marco duper tinted. Yeah, they’re heavily tinted usually. So like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more like you’re watching a screen of the sky, you know, it’s not, you’re not really feeling like you’re out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the open. Like now there is one area where it helps a little bit. Well, there’s two areas where it helps.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One that doesn’t matter to me, which is headroom. Which
⏹️ ▶️ John something I need. Yeah, I mean that, and to be clear, that is one of the reasons I dislike sunroofs because once you put
⏹️ ▶️ John one on a car, I can no longer fit in it without my hair hitting the headliner right? You have very tall hair.
⏹️ ▶️ John I wish not anymore so much.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It happens man. But yeah, and the other thing is like, you know, I do like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you have more visibility as as the like if the windshield goes higher up and then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, you know, if you’re like stopped if you’re the very first car at a traffic light, sometimes you can’t see the traffic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John light because your own try
⏹️ ▶️ John being tall. It makes it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much worse. Right? And so, you know, the sunroofless designs that use more glass
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oftentimes improve that.
⏹️ ▶️ John But they put so much dark tinting though. Like the ones that have like glass, like the Model X where the windshield
⏹️ ▶️ John basically continues all the way up to the roof, it’s so dark tinted, it might as well be like a metal beam
⏹️ ▶️ John across there. I don’t think you could see a traffic light through the amount of dark they tinted that. The other thing they do in the fancy ones is they have like
⏹️ ▶️ John the LCD type liquid crystal thing that you can darken it electronically, right? But like you can’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John the bottom line is you can’t just have it clear glass open all the time because you’ll boil in the car and no one wants sun
⏹️ ▶️ John in their face. So there has to be some way to either darken it electronically or it has to be pretty darn dark
⏹️ ▶️ John all the time. And at that point, like why bother? It almost makes the, like the 80s version of like, I don’t know what the correct
⏹️ ▶️ John words for this are, but like it would have a glass, a clear glass pane that slides in and out. Then
⏹️ ▶️ John it would also sometimes have a tilted thing that you could slide underneath the clear glass pane to darken it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then it would have a carpeted thing that you would slide over it that makes it just roof. Right, you know what I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean? Inside the car. choice of, you know, completely open to the outside, clear glass to the outside,
⏹️ ▶️ John tinted glass to the outside, no visibility to the outside. And that is very passé. They don’t make ones like that anymore
⏹️ ▶️ John because it’s just, I don’t know, 280s. And also the other thing, like with your, you know, oh, it doesn’t open
⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes and other Land Rover people had problems. This is like the, uh, the adolescent acne
⏹️ ▶️ John of sunroofs. The real ailment that you’ll get of course is they will start leaking water into your car
⏹️ ▶️ John eventually. And that’s, that’s the real joy of the sunroof. As your car gets older, if you still
⏹️ ▶️ John own it, eventually the sunroof does not keep the weather out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like I’m in that group chat all over again. I’m so happy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco But I love the sunroof.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And usually, with this one exception, I’ve never had a problem with any of them before. I’ve never had one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fail. I’ve never had one leak. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John don’t keep a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them to leak. Well, the Model S is, at this point, almost six years old,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey five years old, something like that. And you know, I know it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not like super old, but it’s younger than your Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But still, I don’t know. I’m gonna miss, when I inevitably get whatever electric
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing I go with next, I am going to miss the sunroof. But if it causes me to have to be in repair
⏹️ ▶️ Marco constantly, maybe I’ll miss it less, I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So in summary, a British car has electrical problems, you don’t say?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I love everything else about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m not super loving the gas-osity of it, but… And great mileage
⏹️ ▶️ John driving around a giant rectangle. Yeah, right. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m a little surprised you’re not driving to Jersey so they can pump it for you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, because I forgot how. Yeah, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jersey’s so weird. Anyway, I’m sad to hear that your sunroof is broken, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I hope that the repair, whatever it may be, is gentle, easy, and under warranty.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John will be under
⏹️ ▶️ Casey warranty, but it may not be gentle or easy, so we’ll see what happens.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I still, you know, I have to like go do it. You know, that’s the biggest pain in the butt. You know, even when you have warranty, that’s nice and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all, but you still have to like schedule the thing, take a day to like go get it done. Like that’s, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the pain in the butt part of it. It’s like, you know, it doesn’t just happen for free. It’s like whenever people, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, whenever there’s some flaw with an Apple product and they eventually, very reluctantly, very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slowly, after way too long, do some kind of repair program. Everyone’s like, oh, problem solved. It’s like, well, no, it’s not. I still have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to send it in and go without it for a while and arrange things around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my life to make that happen. Just because a company has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a way to service a problem doesn’t mean the problem is gone. It just means that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it might cost you less than it otherwise would if you had to either replace the whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing or pay for the repair yourself. But it’s still an annoying problem that’s going to cost you time out of your
⏹️ ▶️ John I remember on the recent episodes of your Daily Lex, Lex Freedman’s podcast, no, not
⏹️ ▶️ John that one, the good one. He was complaining that he had something like
⏹️ ▶️ John repaired under warranty on his car, needed a new part or whatever, and he had to drive it there. He drove
⏹️ ▶️ John it to the dealer three times, and three times he got there and said, oh, we don’t have the part. It was after the
⏹️ ▶️ John first time, of course, after the first time he would confirm, okay, so you have the part now, right? Because last time I took my car
⏹️ ▶️ John there and I came and you said you didn’t have the part. You have the part? No, we totally have the part. Come on in. He comes in to go, we don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John the part. That happened three times.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it’s a Tesla dealer.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well, surprise.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yes, it is a Tesla
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dealer. Tesla with some kind of logistical thing where the dealers don’t know what they’re doing or don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John Cause like you never know who you’re talking to on the phone or who you’re texting to like, oh yeah, no, we totally have the
⏹️ ▶️ John part, come right in. But that’s not the person who’s at the dealer staring at the part. Who knows where that person is or what, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, it’s all electronic. Yeah, not fun.
Follow-up: Home-theater audio
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s talk about how wrong you are about audio stuff, Marco. That’s fun for me. Samuel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Poehler writes, Atmos and 7.1 channel sound is often the priority
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mix for sound mixers today. For a brand new movie, the audio team is taking multi channel and spatial audio into
⏹️ ▶️ Casey account first and then down mixing to everything else. Even a 5.1 system can suffer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from loss of detail in down mixing depending what movie you’re watching. Since Marco insists on a 2.1
⏹️ ▶️ Casey setup, he’s losing detail more when he watches a new movie or show than basically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anyone. It’s a good thing that never happens
⏹️ ▶️ John that Marco watches a new movie or show. Well done.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we got I mean we got a lot of feedback on this and this is basically this has been John’s argument for a long time that like that because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially in particular because the center channel is so important for things like dialogue and you know that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I’m apparently missing everything out but like first of all my speakers are not the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only situation in in which a movie consumer might need a stereo mix. It turns out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of people watch movies on tablets, phones, headphones. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco turns out many people
⏹️ ▶️ John use stereo mixes. Well, but spatial audio covers those. Because if they have spatial audio on their headphones,
⏹️ ▶️ John which you do if you have an Apple device, then I know it’s only two things in your ears, but my understanding is
⏹️ ▶️ John that what you’re getting there is not a down-mixed process thing, but the spatial audio
⏹️ ▶️ John track for that thing plays in spatial audio. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it is, there is a separate processing step.
⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, Apple advertises spatial audio from movies, which I hate by the way. I don’t like spatial audio on movies.
⏹️ ▶️ John But you know, down mixing is a fact of life. But we’re saying that if you have a, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John a setup where you’re sitting in front of your big TV to watch a fancy movie, which again, Marco doesn’t do that often,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, you are, something in the system is trying to down mix and make sense out of it.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s kind of the opposite of the way it used to be. When quote unquote surround sound first came out, all the movies
⏹️ ▶️ John were mastered in stereo and you had all these weird standards and
⏹️ ▶️ John techniques to take a stereo mix and try to turn it into surround sound and they’re all so bad.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because I mean, what are they gonna do? They have to figure out this sound, this portion of this sound, we
⏹️ ▶️ John should make sound like it’s more behind you. And it’s just all guesswork, right? Whereas now,
⏹️ ▶️ John when we say they’re mixed for 5.1, if people think of like a big stew where they’re throwing ingredients together and mixing
⏹️ ▶️ John it, no, what we mean is they have soundtracks for every individual speaker, they say this
⏹️ ▶️ John is the sound that plays on this speaker, and then this sound plays on this speaker, and like individual sounds that play
⏹️ ▶️ John on individual speakers. Obviously they all come together to make the sound of the soundtrack, but it’s not like there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John something doling out the sound in little pieces, it’s multiple tracks. And so when you have
⏹️ ▶️ John the number of tracks equal to the number of speakers, like if there’s a 5.1 mix on your Blu-ray and you have 5.1
⏹️ ▶️ John speakers, it says, okay, this speaker gets this track, this speaker gets this track, and just doles out straight
⏹️ ▶️ John sound directly to those speakers and that there’s much less guesswork than, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s a stereo mix, try to put it out on seven speakers, good luck.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but also like, and I know like, you know, more modern systems like Atmos are even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more complicated and actually, you know, are kind of more abstracted in certain ways, but, you know, ultimately
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a 2.1 setup, if the main way it’s gonna fail, look, I don’t care if it doesn’t sound like it’s coming from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco behind me, I don’t care. But if the main way it fails is in central channel mixing, Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that to me doesn’t hold a ton of water because it’s really easy to downmix
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a center channel into stereo. You just send it equally to both channels. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fine. It’s super easy. That’s why, like, most podcasts are generally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco issued in mono. Does that mean that you have to have a speaker on your forehead to hear most podcasts?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, you hear them in your ears because we just send the same data to both channels and it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John So for the lack of center channel, the complaint that we got in an email is that if you have stereo speakers and you get the virtual
⏹️ ▶️ John center from the stereo speakers, it sounds great as long as you are sitting in the sweet spot between the speakers. But if you have a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ John of couches and somebody’s way on the left or way on the right, the center channel doesn’t work for them anymore because they’re way
⏹️ ▶️ John closer to the left speaker than the right speaker. Whereas if there was an actual center channel, no matter where they sit, it would sound
⏹️ ▶️ John like the dialogue is coming out of the television, where the people’s pictures are, but the mouth’s moving, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John If you’re way to the left and the TV is to your right, like the sound, basically the sound always sounds like it’s coming from the TV.
⏹️ ▶️ John Whereas if they’re trying to do virtual surround and you’re sitting way to the left, it doesn’t sound like the sound is coming out of the TV
⏹️ ▶️ John anymore. It sounds like it’s coming from the left speaker more because it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say if that is a problem for you, you’re either sitting way too far off to the side or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your speakers have too little spread in their coverage. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s not a fault of it being a 2.1 setup. That’s just a bad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco situation in the room or a bad speaker.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, it is a fault of it being a 2.1 because the sound is not coming from the TV and the only way to make it sound like it’s coming from
⏹️ ▶️ John the TV is for you to be equally distant from the two side speakers, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco not the end of the world. It’s not like.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, there’s a lot of like, you know, squish in that argument. Like you could be like, you know, if there’s two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people sitting on a couch, well, they can’t both be perfectly centered, but you know, it’s gonna be, you’re gonna be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco close enough for at most distances from a TV, you’ll be fine, right? Like, you know, and if you’re sitting all the way off to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one side, like, you know, if there’s like, you know, couch in the middle like you know a side chair off to one side like a lot of living room setups.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well if you’re sitting in that side chair nothing’s gonna be positioned correctly for you anyway you can barely even see the TV.
⏹️ ▶️ John No but if you have a center channel if you’re in that side chair the sound of people talking will still sound
⏹️ ▶️ John like it’s coming from the pictures of their faces because the center channel speaker is directly under or over the TV.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway this I if I haven’t lost anybody everybody yet I might
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lose you with this that this might might all be somewhat moot because I listen to processed versions of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco movie sound anyway, because I keep my Apple TV setting on where it has the,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the basically dynamic range compression setting, let’s call it something like reduced loud sounds. I keep that on all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the time on my Apple TV. I watch everything with that setting on, because I find the dynamic range of most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things to be far too much for my home, you know, where I’m like, you know, we have oftentimes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a sleeping child, you know, downstairs while we’re trying to watch something, or I just don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want, I want the volume on the dialogue to be as loud as everything else because that is what I’m trying to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hear and it’s not because I’m missing a stereo mix, it’s because I don’t want the soundtrack
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be bum-ba-dum-ba-da, this big loud thing and then people are whispering in the middle of it, hey, what, did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you hear about this thing that we did? And it’s like, oh my God, what, what are you saying? And that’s not the fault of the mix, that’s the fault
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of, or rather that’s not the fault of me not having a center channel, that’s just the fault of the way things are mastered these days.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco If you had a center
⏹️ ▶️ John channel, you could just crank up the center channel. But anyway, all receivers have that same mode of, you know, dynamic range
⏹️ ▶️ John compression and stuff like that. That’s not an Apple TV exclusive feature. So your stereo speakers aren’t the
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that’s giving you that. It’s just having basic AV equipment.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. It was talking to somebody. I don’t remember who it was now that was saying, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I this person was saying, I am in full support of the principle of of John saying, oh, get a receiver
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and get a bunch of speakers and so on and so forth. but I just don’t have space in my life for a receiver
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and wiring everything and so on and so forth. And I, now Casey, I feel the same way. That I just,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t argue that John’s setup surely sounds better
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John than my- You have plenty of
⏹️ ▶️ John room, Casey, that’s not why.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, no, it’s not the lack of room. I just don’t want to deal with it. I don’t want to wire it, I don’t want to deal with it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would argue that dealing with your Sono stuff is pretty close, but-
⏹️ ▶️ Casey How so? All I have to do is plug it into the wall.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because they’re little computers, they’re pretty complicated.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, but I never have to think about it. So here’s the thing, there are companies that make things just work.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We used to know of one and then they stopped doing that. I can’t remember the name of it. It was like banana or something. But anyways,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but Sonos, Sonos stuff really does just work or at least it has so far in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey three or four months that I’ve had it. So I take your point, John, but it really was plug it in and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then never think about it again.
⏹️ ▶️ John So speaking of that,
⏹️ ▶️ John This next item here is about.
Adaptive surround systems
⏹️ ▶️ John this. So this is something that didn’t bring up in the last show. And there’s, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a reason which we’ll get to pretty soon of why I didn’t go this route. But this would actually be an ideal
⏹️ ▶️ John setup for my scenario. So my scenario is, I have a room that is not arranged any
⏹️ ▶️ John sane way that any person would arrange it. So my speakers and my television position and my seating positions are just
⏹️ ▶️ John messed up there. Nothing is aligned the way you would want it to be in one of those home theater setup situations. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John challenging, Right? And so my sound and everything about it, ergonomically sound wise, it’s never
⏹️ ▶️ John going to be right. There’s nothing I can do about it because it’s just the way my house is or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this system I’m gonna describe is a Sony HT-A9 home theater system,
⏹️ ▶️ John solves that problem in a way that I kind of wish HomePods did. So HomePods we all like, we talked about it last
⏹️ ▶️ John time. They’re radially symmetrical. You just plop it wherever the hell you want in the room. It doesn’t matter where you
⏹️ ▶️ John are relative to the HomePod because it has speakers facing in all directions, right? and the
⏹️ ▶️ John subwoofer faces either up or down, I still don’t know. So, and then it has microphones
⏹️ ▶️ John and it adjusts itself based on where you’ve placed it. When it has accelerometers to know, okay, if we put me in a new
⏹️ ▶️ John position, it will adjust its sound as best it can to make the best of wherever the heck you put it.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s exactly what I need in my weird cattywampus room where everything’s on angles, my TV’s
⏹️ ▶️ John in the corner and the couch is on the other wall on an angle from it. And there’s just no way
⏹️ ▶️ John to get things in the right position. So I would love, let’s say, four HomePods plus a
⏹️ ▶️ John subwoofer without audio delay to plop these little things in the places where
⏹️ ▶️ John I can fit them in my room. But I can’t fit them in any sane position. It’s like, well, this is the only place I have for the speaker and this is the only, and
⏹️ ▶️ John HomePods are good for that. They’re small. I mean, my problem is I don’t have power to a lot of the places, which as I said, is why I
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of appreciate being able to just run speaker wire to my back because I don’t have a place to plug in a HomePod. But
⏹️ ▶️ John set that aside. Put a smallish thing wherever you can fit them and just say computers,
⏹️ ▶️ John you figure it out, right? It’s another reason that I use the D-Rack
⏹️ ▶️ John Live thing on my receiver. I put the little microphone where my head is on my couch and I say, I know the speaker’s
⏹️ ▶️ John in the wrong place, D-Rack, but do your best to make it reasonable. And then you put the microphone in 20
⏹️ ▶️ John other places and it’s not great, right? The Sony HT9 system
⏹️ ▶️ John does that thing. You buy this, you get a bunch of these Sony speakers, which look kind of like tall, bigger
⏹️ ▶️ John HomePods that are less fuzzy. You put them wherever the hell you feel like in your room, you get four of them,
⏹️ ▶️ John which sounds like a weird number. It’s like, I get four for a home theater set up? Okay, and you just put
⏹️ ▶️ John the four, kind of one in each kind of corner of the room.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then you have to get a subwoofer for this if you want decent sound, because these small speakers have no bass because they’re small-ish,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And then what they come with, kind of like the Sonos is,
⏹️ ▶️ John you come with these four speakers and a little black box that looks like an Apple TV, but bigger, right? and you plug
⏹️ ▶️ John HDMI into that and ethernet into that. So you don’t need a receiver. It’s just these four speakers,
⏹️ ▶️ John this Apple TV type box, and then the subwoofer, right? And it just figures it out. It runs
⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of sound tests. It bounces sound around. All the speakers have microphones in them, and it just figures
⏹️ ▶️ John out how to make surround. And this is the type of thing that you would think, oh, that’s great for people who are in a compromised situation, but this is always
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna sound like garbage, right? And I mostly dismiss these things for two reasons. One, it sounds kind of janky,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s like, that can’t possibly be good. And two, the cost of the system I just described to you is $2,700.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not saving any money. It’s like, what? I’m just going to buy
⏹️ ▶️ John a real receiver and individual speakers once I’m spending that much money. But I have to
⏹️ ▶️ John say that I watched one of my preferred audio review channels on YouTube,
⏹️ ▶️ John Andrew Robinson’s channel. Am I getting his name right? We’ll put a link in the show notes. And he listens
⏹️ ▶️ John to all sorts of the fancy high end systems that nobody can afford or whatever. and he was
⏹️ ▶️ John mightily impressed by the system. I watched a bunch of others reviews too. This Sony setup,
⏹️ ▶️ John yes, it costs $2,700, but according to this review, it sounds almost as good as systems
⏹️ ▶️ John that would cost you like $4,000 if you bought them with individual components. And it doesn’t make you have to have a receiver,
⏹️ ▶️ John which Casey doesn’t want in his life. I already have a receiver, so it’s not great for me.
⏹️ ▶️ John But they say that the, you know, again, with four things, no center, right? But with four, how does it do it?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s all computational photography of audio. It’s all doing what the HomePod is going to do. And he
⏹️ ▶️ John was just absolutely amazed that it can make the sounds sound like they’re coming from all directions, including the center and the sides
⏹️ ▶️ John and height things. And each one of these speaker things has, I don’t know if it has speakers,
⏹️ ▶️ John speaker cones facing in all directions, but it’s got speakers facing in a bunch of different directions and apparently is incredibly convincing.
⏹️ ▶️ John The other reason I wouldn’t find this appealing for me, aside from the price, which is a lot, is that
⏹️ ▶️ John it does what they call in the video the smile curve, where it super boosts the base and also
⏹️ ▶️ John boosts the treble, which sounds exciting and dramatic for movies, but
⏹️ ▶️ John even for movies, that’s not what I prefer. I prefer something flatter than that. It sounds impressive in
⏹️ ▶️ John showrooms, and it’s kind of what people like, and I bet it’s what a lot of movie theaters do, because
⏹️ ▶️ John boomy bass and real high treble, but it cuts out the middle of, it makes everything in the middle kind of sound murky.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, people, if people like that curve, get this system because if you have,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s, it’s cheaper. You can’t get into something that sounds better for less money if what
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re interested in is watching movies. But if you wanted to play music, you really don’t want your music going through an EQ like that, right? I
⏹️ ▶️ John would imagine, even though some people find that quote unquote exciting, I think it just sounds wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It can be fun, but it’s yeah, it usually typically if you’re boosting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the bass and treble that much in processing, usually you’re doing it because the speaker’s natural
⏹️ ▶️ Marco responses in those areas are not very good. If you have a really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nicely engineered speaker, if it produces enough bass, if it’s big enough to produce enough bass,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if the tweeter is refined and well-designed enough to not have a whole bunch of weird distortion and be able to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reproduce really good high frequencies, you don’t need those tricks. Or you can greatly reduce them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But that’s not how most people design things.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think these speakers are reasonable quality, but for movies in particular like what people
⏹️ ▶️ John Consider to be exciting movie experience is the bass is very boomy and the the
⏹️ ▶️ John highs are very, you know sparkly and especially with this system the whole the whole trick of this system is
⏹️ ▶️ John it will really make it sound like the sound is Coming from all around you like they but you know Immersive
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever you want to call it, but just we’ll get to in a second the Sonos product that has that right in the name That’s what you
⏹️ ▶️ John feel in a movie theater where they have 17 speakers and you know The sound is really coming from all around you and
⏹️ ▶️ John you can watch the review The person was reviewing it was saying even with their expensive multi many many thousand
⏹️ ▶️ John dollar setups They were hearing things They never heard before in the mixes of movies that they were watching Probably because they’re being
⏹️ ▶️ John cranked up artificially by the curve that this thing puts out the other thing that’s bad about the Sony HD 9 a 9 is that
⏹️ ▶️ John You can’t really mess with the audio too much if you don’t like what the Sony thing is doing with it You have like
⏹️ ▶️ John minor control over how much bass you want so you could turn down the bass But you can’t really like say can you
⏹️ ▶️ John give me a more flat? Response curve and not over boost the treble that much
⏹️ ▶️ John and not you know It’s you basically have a bass up and down thing and a couple of different modes and only
⏹️ ▶️ John one of the modes is any good Anyway, but I was impressed at this audio reviewer that I’ve been watching for a long time
⏹️ ▶️ John Was impressed with this Sony thing that seems like it should be garbage but is actually kind of ideal
⏹️ ▶️ John if you don’t want to deal with a receiver and and have a room that is weird and you can’t put the
⏹️ ▶️ John speakers in the right places, this thing will figure it out. It makes me wish I could just get that at my house and try it, because I think
⏹️ ▶️ John watching a movie with it would be kind of fun, but I don’t know if I’d want to watch a TV show of
⏹️ ▶️ John people talking with that type of setup, with that type of curve, because that’s just too weird.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I need something more neutral. So anyway, the reason I’m watching this is I’ve been shopping around for speakers to see if I could
⏹️ ▶️ John upgrade my cruddy speakers to be slightly less cruddy, but as always, my constraint is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John how much space do I have to put these? And I don’t wanna spend tons and tons of money on it because they’re not gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John be in the right place anyway. And that’s kind of like limiting me because I look at the speaker, I’m like, oh, this speaker gets good reviews, but that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John for a room where the speaker is facing the right direction at the right height. And I can’t do that. So I don’t know,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe I’ll end up coming back to the Sony thing. If I did, it would basically have to bypass my receiver, which would be a giant
⏹️ ▶️ John waste of money, but I’m still thinking about it. Anyway, the Sonos Premium Immersive is the link that Casey put
⏹️ ▶️ John in here, which is a similar type thing where you buy this thing from Sonos and it gives you all the things you need
⏹️ ▶️ John for home theater. It gives you a soundbar for the front instead of having a center, rear, and right. And it has the back channels and it has
⏹️ ▶️ John the Sonos Arc subwoofer, which is pretty good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, the Sonos Sub Gen 3, the Arc is the soundbar.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, that’s right. No, what is, yeah, it’s just called Sonos Sub. It’s the big one, looks like a big Cheerio. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is a very good subwoofer in my opinion. Like it’s force canceling and there are almost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no home theater force canceling subwoofers that exist on the market. And the one, as far
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I know, it’s by far the cheapest one.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this setup I would imagine, I’ve seen reviews of this setup, not on this exact channel,
⏹️ ▶️ John but other things. The Sony one, obviously it’s like, you know, $800 more than this, so
⏹️ ▶️ John it better sound better. But I think it does just because the speakers themselves, certainly
⏹️ ▶️ John the speakers are all the same size in the Sony, but all of them are bigger than the bar
⏹️ ▶️ John or the back surrounds on this thing. So they have, you know, bigger cones in them, more speaker drivers in them.
⏹️ ▶️ John And obviously you can get better separation when you can put those four things in the corners of your room instead of having a soundbar right under the TV.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I feel like the Sony thing is the better choice if what you want is movies, but if you want to listen to music, probably
⏹️ ▶️ John the Sonos is better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, and that’s the thing is for us, it was more than just a home theater. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think now I’m starting to come back into HomePod territory, but to finish my thought,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, we do use the home theater, the Sonos premium immersive set or whatever it’s called.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We do use that to watch TV to watch movies, but it is probably just as often, if not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more often, that it’s just playing music ambiently in the house and where Sonos does
⏹️ ▶️ Casey extremely well is being able to consistently, and here’s a word you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t hear from Apple recently, reliably move sound between
⏹️ ▶️ Casey speakers and have it playing in different places and so on and so forth. And if I wanted to, I could do this using AirPlay 2,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which all the Sonos stuff supports, But I find it’s just as easy and in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey most cases I prefer to use the Sonos app to look up whatever it is I want to play
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then have it take over. So my phone is none the wiser as to what’s going on.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s not serving in any capacity, you know, the playlist that I’m listening
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to. My phone is completely ignorant of it and the Sonos is just taking care of everything on its own.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And again, adding or removing speakers. These are all things that can be done with HomePods and can be done with AirPlay. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not saying it’s unique to Sonos, but it works 100% of the time,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey every time, which in my experience with AirPlay is not the case. Now, I don’t have HomePods. I’ve never had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, they don’t work 100% of the time. Don’t worry. Okay, never mind. You are not over-speaking here. Trust me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Okay, well, I was willing to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey give the HomePod the benefit of the doubt. Nope. There you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, again, I’m not saying the Sonos stuff is for everyone. All I’m saying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is for my needs. I didn’t want to have a receiver. I wanted to not have to string wires across
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the room. I wanted it to be able to play nicely with other speakers because, you know, we effectively
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have three zones. We have the main living room, we have the porch, and then we also have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a little portable, little, it’s the Sonos Roam, the littler of their
⏹️ ▶️ Casey portable speakers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The little Toblerone bar? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, yeah, exactly. Which, by the way, sounds phenomenal for a speaker of that size.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like, you know, I’m grading on a tremendous curve here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It sounds very good. Now, in the grand scheme of things, is it a particularly great speaker? Well, not really. But given
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how small it is, I’ve been quite surprised how good it sounds to my ears. But that’s neither here nor there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The point I’m driving at is, for my setup, the Sonos stuff was really, really nice. But that being
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said, if I cared more about TV and almost none about music, which is what John was saying a moment ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I watched that video that we’ll link in the show notes by that Andrew whatever’s name is. And if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this fella seemed like he knew what he was talking about, I was not familiar with his work at all. It seemed like he knew what he was talking about.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And again, to reiterate what John said, seemed really impressed by the Sony
⏹️ ▶️ Casey setup. So if I was in a position that I didn’t really care that much about music, which I think is of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey three of us, probably more John than anyone, and forgive me if I’m unfairly putting words in your mouth,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then I think the Sony setup, again, you know, not worrying about where you’re getting power for those rear
⏹️ ▶️ Casey speakers and whatnot, it does sound damn compelling.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the video is even more compelling if you know this guy because he does, he’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John like a high-end audiophile like Magic Gold Cables kind of person, but he does test speakers that cost
⏹️ ▶️ John like as much as a car and everything. So like he’s heard it all. He’s not coming from like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I just test consumer electronics and these things sound pretty good to me. Like he’s heard all the good fancy speakers
⏹️ ▶️ John and he has particular tastes and his wife is also in the videos with her opinion of these things.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the fact that he was impressed by these things at the price, which is not a low price, you know, $27, not
⏹️ ▶️ John a lower price, really shocked me because most of the time when he reviews stuff like this, he’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John buy real speakers, like this is not it, right? So, you know, I came away
⏹️ ▶️ John with a newfound respect for a system that I had previously dismissed. And honestly, at $2,700, I think I would,
⏹️ ▶️ John because my setup does not cost that much, right? I don’t think I’d be able to choke down that price
⏹️ ▶️ John unless I was pretty sure I was gonna like it. And like I said, I would not buy this. I don’t really listen to music,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I don’t like that smile type curve, even for movies, and especially not for TV shows
⏹️ ▶️ John that are not movies. Like, I’m sure it makes for an impressive demo, and if you only watch action movies,
⏹️ ▶️ John this is the setup to get for $2,700, because you can’t beat it, but I watch things other than action movies.
⏹️ ▶️ John I watch television shows, and I don’t want boosted bass and boosted treble in an unadjustable
⏹️ ▶️ John fashion on all the stuff that I watch. I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I should just get this and try it in my house. I don’t know, if Sony wants to send
⏹️ ▶️ John me a review unit, I will gladly test it out. But Sony is not listening. That’s never going to happen.
Sponsor: Mercury Weather
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Mercury weather, a really great weather
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app for iOS. I’ve personally been using this for a while now and it’s I love it. I’ll tell you why in a little bit.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But of course, it’s a weather app, you want your weather app to have all the weather features and they have all the information,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the weather details you’d expect from a weather app. They have it they even actually use two different data sources, Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weather and open weather. And because since different data providers are more accurate or have more details
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in different regions, the app can switch depending on the forecast location so that you are always getting the best for your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco region to get things like minute by minute forecasts and other useful details through different parts of the world. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of course, if you prefer one or the other, you can just manually say always use this one or always use that one. But really, what makes Mercury
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weather the best in my opinion is the delightful design. This is super carefully crafted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco high touch design. So the colors and interface are adaptive based on the current weather outside.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it has a really nice chart layout to present the hourly and daily forecast information in an intuitive way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And all of this what got me into into Mercury weather personally, is their amazing widgets. They have beautiful
⏹️ ▶️ Marco customizable home screen widgets that you keep track of the weather at your current and favorite locations.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is intuitive hour by hour and day by day forecast charts. And of course, all of this is available home screen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco widgets, lock screen widgets, and Apple Watch complications. And I think I think they have the best widgets
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the weather business. Honestly, I have not found nicer, more useful widgets for weather apps on iOS than there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mercury where there’s gorgeous interface makes it a delight to check the weather every day even on gray and rainy days.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The apps business model is super simple. No ads, no selling of your data, you download it, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can use the standard features for free. And then you can upgrade to Mercury premium to unlock all features things like the home
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen lock screen widgets, trust me very much worth it, weather averages and much much more. So go check
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco Once again, that’s mercury weather.app slash ATP. Thank you so much to Mercury weather
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for sponsoring our show.
Apple TV speed upgrades
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, so Andy Galetly writes, your HomePod reviews got me thinking about the age of the chip in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey our Apple TV fourth gen from 2017. Would I notice a difference if I upgrade to a new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 4K Apple TV? We don’t have a 4K TV and I don’t really mind the old remote. Maybe we’re missing out on a decent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey speed bump. I, maybe, I don’t know. I don’t feel like for me and the things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I have done with the Apple TV, I don’t feel like I’ve ever longed for processing power, but am I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey am I missing the boat? What’s the right answer here?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When going from the HD family to the 4K family, I did notice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a pretty significant upgrade in just general, you know, menu performance,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, stuff like that, just like going in and out of stuff, opening apps, you know, going between menus. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did notice a faster, faster performance there. I have noticed less and less of those gains as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ve progressed past the four, the initial 4K version. So I think they are still to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had, but you might notice them less.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so the thing about these TV boxes, we’ve said for years that the Apple TV is just
⏹️ ▶️ John overpowered for a thing that watches streaming stuff, because streaming apps are built into
⏹️ ▶️ John your TVs and the processors in the TVs are garbage compared to what’s been in even the last five
⏹️ ▶️ John years of Apple TVs, because they don’t have to be particularly fancy and Apple’s chips are really good.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the reality of any television connected box is you spend
⏹️ ▶️ John most of your time watching video and not interacting with the app. Like you have to go through a
⏹️ ▶️ John bunch of things, navigate, navigate, navigate, find the thing you wanna watch, then you hit play. And then you’re just watching it for 30
⏹️ ▶️ John minutes, an hour, two hours, like however long. Most of your time is spent, like
⏹️ ▶️ John the performance of that stuff that happened in the hopefully one minute to two and a
⏹️ ▶️ John half minutes, doesn’t really factor in that much. So that’s why it always seems like it’s overpowered.
⏹️ ▶️ John Do I need a amazing low power processor to get me to the point where I
⏹️ ▶️ John press one button and then watch something for an hour? No, it’s kind of silly, right? That said, there’s two
⏹️ ▶️ John things to say. Like menus being faster is a thing, and I think you will notice it
⏹️ ▶️ John if you upgrade from a HD one to the newest Apple TV 4K, you’d be like, oh, look, the menus are a little bit
⏹️ ▶️ John faster and apps launch faster. Maybe you’ll notice that, right? But here’s the thing that really kills me with the,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, cause I have, I always get the newest Apple TV. I have the newest one on my TV. Even though that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John faster, depending on the app, this is not Apple’s fault, it is the fault mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John of the people who make these apps, but depending on the app, they are often so terrible that
⏹️ ▶️ John basic functionality simply does not work and is maddening. Let’s give some
⏹️ ▶️ John examples. I want to watch something on a streaming app. You launch the streaming app. Setting aside all the stuff I’ve complained
⏹️ ▶️ John about where you can’t even find the thing you were watching before because that’s just like, you know, intentional design to make you see
⏹️ ▶️ John new stuff. because you know, see past episodes where we talked about go to hypercritical.co or read about it, whatever, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Setting that aside, you find the thing you want to watch, you hit play, okay? So first of all,
⏹️ ▶️ John very often in major streaming services, there’ll be some kind of bug where you hit play
⏹️ ▶️ John and it will just spin for a while and not play anything and you’ll have to like force quit the app and come back and play, right? And
⏹️ ▶️ John when I say very often, I don’t mean like one out of 10 times or whatever, but if that ever happens to someone who grew
⏹️ ▶️ John up with television that always worked, it is incredibly frustrating. You know, Prime Video, I hit play
⏹️ ▶️ John on the show, you’re showing me a spinner, is it ever gonna play? Double tap the thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John flick up, force quit the Amazon Prime Video app, relaunch it, hit play, oh, now it’s working. That should
⏹️ ▶️ John never happen, and it does. A fancier Apple, he doesn’t stop that from happening. Next one, oh, a little
⏹️ ▶️ John button comes up, it says skip intro. Oh, I’ve seen this intro many times, I wanna hit skip intro. All
⏹️ ▶️ John right, what do I do? Like the button that comes in the lower right part of the screen, it says skip intro, it’s a big white button,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? You would think, and this is, This makes me hate the Apple TV remote. All I have to do
⏹️ ▶️ John is press the action button on the Apple TV remote, which on the current one is like the little
⏹️ ▶️ John touch paddy thing that’s inside of the thing. Every time I do this, it makes me think, should I go into settings and turn
⏹️ ▶️ John off the touch pad entirely? Because I just wanna press that button. I wanna press that button so I can do a skip intro.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if you press that button and your thumb moves a little bit when you press it because you’re not perfectly up and down, it’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, I think you’re swiping. And does some crazy thing that you didn’t want it to do. But say I’m successful.
⏹️ ▶️ John I have it on a flat level surface. I come in from above like a robot and go, okay, I’m gonna press the center button. This
⏹️ ▶️ John is not a swipe, I swear. I’m just trying to press. And I press it, the skip intro button. What I want it to do
⏹️ ▶️ John is start playing the show after the intro. But sometimes it’ll freak out and start playing the show in the middle or stop playing
⏹️ ▶️ John the show entirely and show a spinner. Again, that should never happen, but it happens enough for me to
⏹️ ▶️ John like get angry about it. Like does skip intro not work anymore? All right, frequently,
⏹️ ▶️ John like my whole family now, when I go to do skip intro on certain streaming apps, and say, no, don’t do it, we know it won’t work,
⏹️ ▶️ John just try to skip past it. Like don’t use skip intro, but skip past it with 30 seconds skip. How do you
⏹️ ▶️ John do that on the Apple TV remote? Oh, you hit the right side of the circular pad. Click, click, be careful you
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t swipe because that’s the jog dial, be careful you don’t touch the touch dial in the middle. Click, click, click, 30 seconds
⏹️ ▶️ John skip, up, spinner blacked out, now it’s not showing anything anymore, force quit the app.
⏹️ ▶️ John The faster Apple TV doesn’t help at all with any of this. It is not a performance
⏹️ ▶️ John problem. they’re just plain buggy and crappy and don’t work. And you know, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes it’s the Hulu app. Sometimes it’s the the the Amazon Prime app. I just
⏹️ ▶️ John figured with the other one that was having a bit of this like, I don’t even notice half the time which apps I’m watching things on, especially if you go through
⏹️ ▶️ John the ball if you go through the up next thing uses the outplay, which is a little bit different. But anyway, those problems
⏹️ ▶️ John will happen to you on your old Apple TV, and on your new one. And no matter how good Apple makes this hardware,
⏹️ ▶️ John it will keep happening until these app makers fix their stupid applications and make them perform
⏹️ ▶️ John the basic functionality correctly. It shouldn’t be acceptable that my entire family yells at me not to ever
⏹️ ▶️ John hit skip intro because
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey they know from bitter
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey that what that means is
⏹️ ▶️ John another 15 minutes of watching me futz around with the thing to get it to play again. Like literally, you have to force quit the app, come back
⏹️ ▶️ John in, go back to your profile, find the program again, find the episode number. It never freaking remembers what episodes are on, of course.
⏹️ ▶️ John And find the correct episode, hit play on it again. Don’t touch skip intro. We’ll just sit through the intro because they’re so
⏹️ ▶️ John sick of me trying it twice thinking skip intro should work right it’s not a complicated feature but
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s maddening anyway this is all to say if you’re comfortable with
⏹️ ▶️ John your you know fourth gen 2017 Apple TV there’s not much reason for you to upgrade unless you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John playing games on your TV it will be faster it will be better eventually you should probably upgrade but the
⏹️ ▶️ John most of the frustrations about this product had nothing to do with the performance of the hardware and everything to do with the quality
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yep no argument here.
Latest Apple TV 4K changes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Then tell me John about the differences between the previous generation Apple TV 4k and the current
⏹️ ▶️ John speaking of hardware now that I’ve said that it doesn’t matter It is interesting from an academic perspective
⏹️ ▶️ John to consider what’s inside these little Apple TV puck thingies We’ve talked
⏹️ ▶️ John in the past about how the Apple TV was kind of expensive and yes, it was higher performance than everything else But geez,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s so much money and these things come built into your television and you can get like one of those little You know streaming
⏹️ ▶️ John sticks for so much less from a tons of other companies Why would anybody ever want an Apple TV? It’s not a great buy
⏹️ ▶️ John the new ones as we said came out And they are cheaper they made an even cheaper one without Ethernet and without
⏹️ ▶️ John a thread radio Which is probably not the right one to buy but still even the other one is cheaper and doesn’t have a fan
⏹️ ▶️ John So, you know thumbs up Apple you’re getting closer to a reasonable price But this YouTube video that will put in the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes shows what it looks like on the insides of these things It’s comparing the second
⏹️ ▶️ John generation Apple TV 4k which I think is the one that just got replaced, and then the current generation, the third
⏹️ ▶️ John generation Apple TV 4K, what do they look like on the inside? And when you look in
⏹️ ▶️ John the previous one, the previous Apple TV 4K, you can see
⏹️ ▶️ John how over-engineered it is inside there. Like it was more expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John and you can see the money inside it. It wasn’t just like, oh, they just charge you, it has higher margins. This
⏹️ ▶️ John thing has like giant solid metal plates Sandwiching all the innards
⏹️ ▶️ John and they have like the little raised metal things around the sets of chips So they’re like RF sealed into
⏹️ ▶️ John these little metal cages because the that the the solid metal sandwich plates machined
⏹️ ▶️ John metal sandwich plates clamp the motherboard and Press down on the little metal things
⏹️ ▶️ John surrounding each thing So every every set of chips and analog electronics is isolated from the connectors
⏹️ ▶️ John is isolated from the HDMI and everything It is so over engineered and by the way, this one has the fan
⏹️ ▶️ John underneath it is so incredibly over engineered It’s like not if you gave someone an unlimited budget,
⏹️ ▶️ John but if you basically said You have way more money than you need to do this. What can you
⏹️ ▶️ John do with it? It’s like I’m gonna machine some metal plates. I am gonna radio isolate these things like nobody’s
⏹️ ▶️ John seen I know you do this cheaper, but I’m not I’m gonna do it the most expensive way possible Incredibly over engineered
⏹️ ▶️ John and actually really cool and fascinating then if you look at the current one, it is like a piece of electronics It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John got a motherboard. It’s hanging out in there It’s got a little RF shielding made with like a little you know metal
⏹️ ▶️ John foil thing that covers stuff up like a sticker with a plastic thing. It looks like every other piece of electronics you’ve seen.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can see where the money came from. Where did, how did they save money on this? It is obvious. Like this is way cheaper
⏹️ ▶️ John to make. There are no more machine metal plates. The RF shielding is the minimum needed to to
⏹️ ▶️ John pass you know FCC whatever things. The person who was measuring it says hey on the new one you can see
⏹️ ▶️ John like the signal from the various chips and power supply showing up on the HDMI output. It
⏹️ ▶️ John It doesn’t mean that it’s bad or broken or wrong or incorrect or it’s not going to work. It is within
⏹️ ▶️ John spec of what is required to send an HDMI signal and to pass all
⏹️ ▶️ John the RF shielding stuff like it’s fine, but it is not over-engineered
⏹️ ▶️ John like the other one used to be. So you wanted an Apple TV that costs less money, You got one that is
⏹️ ▶️ John cheaper in both senses of the word.
iMessage backup tool
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then Christopher Sardinia brings to our attention by writing, in episode 520,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you discussed an iCloud Photos backup solution. It worked great. On that topic, I built an open source tool to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do something similar for iMessage. Now this came across my transom at some point in the last few weeks,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I haven’t had a chance to play with it myself, but this looks really, really slick at a glance.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Have either of you had a chance to play with this?
⏹️ ▶️ John I was trying to think of why I would want to export my messages, aside from like not trusting Apple to keep them safe and
⏹️ ▶️ John someday they get corrupted and I wanted to save them because it’s like an archive of fun stuff. And this is an area where,
⏹️ ▶️ John another area involving online stuff where Google stomps all over Apple because Google makes it
⏹️ ▶️ John so easy to get any of your data out of Google in a reasonable-ish format
⏹️ ▶️ John whenever you want. They even make it so you can schedule it to come to do exports on a regular interval.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like if you go to, what is it, takeout.google.com, Google Takeout is the branded name for it. You can get everything you want out
⏹️ ▶️ John of Google. And that’s, we’ve talked about in the past, I export my Gmail on a regular basis, just in case
⏹️ ▶️ John my Google account ever dies or I lose everything, I will have all my email messages. And the stuff that’s in Gmail,
⏹️ ▶️ John half of that is stuff that I imported into Gmail when I signed up for it, so I’ve got email and Gmail going back to the 90s.
⏹️ ▶️ John But Apple is not so great in that. The Notes application, I would love to export that to backup,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a bunch of apps we’ve talked about on the show, of like, here’s how you can export your notes. Why is that not built in Apple? Like, why is there not
⏹️ ▶️ John a way for every Apple repository of data for me to export it
⏹️ ▶️ John somewhere else offline to have my own copy of it. The Apple way is you should never have to worry
⏹️ ▶️ John about that. That’s a techie concern. Don’t worry your little head about it. We’ll take care of your data. Exporting
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff like that is a techie thing that we think people should not have to worry about. But we all know, some of us from bitter experience,
⏹️ ▶️ John it is a thing you kind of have to worry about it. So if you’re paranoid and you really, really want to preserve all those messages,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple doesn’t help you there. You’ve got your iCloud backup where in theory, everything is stored, but if something goes wrong, it gets corrupted,
⏹️ ▶️ John or you lose your Apple ID, like there’s so many things can go wrong where the Apple copy of your data
⏹️ ▶️ John is inaccessible. So if you really want those messages, you need some way to export it and Apple is not forthcoming with
⏹️ ▶️ John the way. So all these people make these things that just use the official API to get your data out and put it in some format.
⏹️ ▶️ John I haven’t used it because I don’t consider my messages to be particularly precious. I don’t do that
⏹️ ▶️ John much tech messaging. They’re kind of ephemeral to me. But if you feel differently, you can try this out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I haven’t tried it either. But if I had a need for this kind of thing, I absolutely would. But yeah, you know, I’m mostly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with john like I, I wish these formats were easily exportable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and importable back into their apps. I wish there were some there were some like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better, more usable file system representation of them so that they could take take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part easily and other backup formats and other file management schemes that we might need and need some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time or want to use. But that’s not the world we live in right now. Unfortunately, with these things.
⏹️ ▶️ John I vaguely remember, didn’t ADM have like an HTML based format where you could like export your conversations
⏹️ ▶️ John and it would show like little, I think maybe it used HTML tables or something or maybe it was CSS, but it would show like little speech bubbles,
⏹️ ▶️ John but that was all HTML, like the speech bubbles were HTML. It was so overwrought and silly, but
⏹️ ▶️ John you could open these HTML files and you’d be like, oh, this is just like a big long scrolling thing. It looks just
⏹️ ▶️ John like my conversation did in ADM. Those days are long gone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and that was even, I mean, I think even iChat might’ve done that Because like, and it wasn’t something you had to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco choose to do. You could just find those files on disk. Like they were just in a folder somewhere under library
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you could just find them and copy them and read them and do whatever you wanted with them. And now everything is more complicated and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco based on databases and it’s based on cloud syncing stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s encrypted and all the, you know, vast improvement over having all your messages in plain text
⏹️ ▶️ John in like a library application support folder on your Mac.
Apple dropping design role
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We had some breaking news a week ago or so, so I guess it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really breaking anymore, is it?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Anyway. Broken news.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Broken news, some broken news. The plate was broken. Apple, this is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on Mac Rumors, Apple dropping product design chief role team to report to chief operating
⏹️ ▶️ Casey officer Jeff Williams. Reading from the article, Apple does not plan to name a replacement for vice president
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of industrial design Evans Henke when she departs the company in the coming months, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Instead,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the report claims that Apple’s product design chief, oh, excuse me, product design team, will report
⏹️ ▶️ Casey directly to the company’s operations chief, Jeff Williams. So there is no longer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a king or queen of the design group. They are all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mere serfs to Jeff Williams or something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, it’s always very difficult to try to analyze Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco executive and higher up staff shakeups like this, because we don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really have a good idea from the outside of the details of what everybody does. You know, we have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of this, you know, the public version of this, which is incomplete, oftentimes wrong,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but at least, you know, very incomplete. And so we don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really know what’s going on here. We, you know, big things that we don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really are, you know, how, first of all, I I think I’m upset
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about this because since Evans-Hanke took over, I’ve been very satisfied
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the better balance of functionality versus good design that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s products have had. HomePod accepted. And that goes right to, I’m sure, at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco least part of Evans-Hanke’s work. So I am kind of upset to lose
⏹️ ▶️ Marco her. But when we look at what they’re doing here, there’s two big unknowns to me, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how How good was everyone else who was directly under her who is now just going to have one less level of management between them? Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think she reported to Jeff Williams before, I think. So this is just going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to take away one level of that management. So big unknown number one is what do all those next
⏹️ ▶️ Marco level people, like how good are they and how much of the work was theirs versus hers, etc.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then the second question, which I think is one of the biggest unknowns to the outside world at least, is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what the heck is Jeff Williams about? What is he good at? What is his personality?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What kind of product sensibility does he have? I don’t think any of us really know from the outside. He
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shows himself like a brick wall of drab boringness to the rest of the world. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we can’t really tell, does he have good product sense? I mean, first of all, I hope so,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because Tim Cook keeps giving him more product responsibilities, and he’s clearly, as we’ve mentioned before, the Tim
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cook hot spare. So he’s clearly the next
⏹️ ▶️ Marco CEO in line unless something major changes. So I wish I knew more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about Jeff Williams. I wish I had a better idea of the kind of things he’s good at, the kind of things he’s not good at.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We have some of that visibility with Tim Cook, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Jeff Williams has been placed in quite a significant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco role in leading product development. And I just,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think we know enough about whether that’s a good thing or not.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the replacement for Johnny Ive, right? Pretty much, yeah. Like not quite in title, but I think in role, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John But on the hardware only, right? Because…
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes. Yeah. Software is still our wonderful friend, Allen Dye.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. So here’s the thing with this change, right? I don’t know the details of this as
⏹️ ▶️ John well, but a couple of things. If you have people high up in a
⏹️ ▶️ John company like this, it’s very easy to fall into the trap
⏹️ ▶️ John of having figureheads for things, right, from the outside. You have to do it. It’s based from a PR perspective.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can’t – you need a human face that represents a larger whole. So very often
⏹️ ▶️ John people like Johnny Ive or the head of any department or a big vice president, they become the face of whatever it is.
⏹️ ▶️ John And people will – the backlash against it will be like, well, that person doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do everything. They’re just the public face of it. They’re just the figurehead, right? And in many
⏹️ ▶️ John respects, of course, that’s true. They can’t, you know, they, once you reach that level, you’re no longer actually doing the work really
⏹️ ▶️ John anymore. You have people under you who are doing the work. And sometimes you have people under you and the people under them who are doing the actual work. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John hierarchy, but you need someone to be the face of that department. And in many respects, Johnny Ive was the face of
⏹️ ▶️ John that, you know, the whole industrial design group and eventually all of user interface at Apple, long
⏹️ ▶️ John after he had stopped, you know, individually designing any particular thing himself, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But the flip side of that is, even if you never literally design anything, like if you
⏹️ ▶️ John never come up with an idea, you never make, you know, you don’t design anything, you as the
⏹️ ▶️ John head of Apple’s hardware design can have, and almost inevitably will have
⏹️ ▶️ John a tremendous influence over what happens beneath you, simply because in any company,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re always trying to sort of please the boss to get a good promotion, to do well in your job. It’s one of the ways you measure
⏹️ ▶️ John your progress. And if you know your boss has a particular taste, like Johnny, I doesn’t like a lot of ports or buttons
⏹️ ▶️ John and like simplicity, you know, don’t come up with a design that
⏹️ ▶️ John your boss isn’t going to like. And even if the boss never does anything,
⏹️ ▶️ John once you show it to them, you present it to the wider group or you have a review with them or whatever, they’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John have opinions on it. They’re gonna say, even if it’s just, I like that, I don’t like that, thumbs up, thumbs down,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s going to influence what everybody does underneath them because it’s impossible, especially in a field of opinionated
⏹️ ▶️ John design, not to know what does Evans Hankey like and what does Evans Hankey not like? What does Johnny like and what does Johnny
⏹️ ▶️ John not like? And without lifting a pen and without designing a single thing, without drawing a single curve, without
⏹️ ▶️ John even coming up with any ideas of like, I think the next iPhone should look like an Oreo cookie, without even that level of high level
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff where you just say that and leave for two months and come back and expect the iPhone 4 to be there, right? And not that I’m saying
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s what Johnny Ive did at that point, I think he was much more involved then, but like what I’m saying is, even though you don’t do any
⏹️ ▶️ John work, who’s in charge has a tremendous influence. And that’s why I think this change,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I don’t know anything about Evans-Hanke and whether I like what she’s done or not or whatever, but I think
⏹️ ▶️ John changes like this can potentially be
⏹️ ▶️ John a good kick in the pants because no longer having a single person
⏹️ ▶️ John as the head of all of this frees up all the people who used to report
⏹️ ▶️ John to Evans-Hanke to come up with designs that
⏹️ ▶️ John Evans Hankey might not have liked, but there are still good. The wild card here is what Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John was saying. OK, but is Jeff Williams the type of person who’s going to swoop in and be like, I’m the new Evans Hankey and
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m going to give thumbs up and thumbs down? Or what I think probably more likely is Jeff Williams, kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John like Tim Cook and kind of knows this is not my strength. I’m not an industrial designer, so
⏹️ ▶️ John I should mostly take a hands off attitude and more or less trust the people who report to me in the design
⏹️ ▶️ John department that they know what they’re doing. So when they come and present to Jeff Williams, if
⏹️ ▶️ John they ever even do that, here’s the design of the new Apple, whatever, as long as he doesn’t visually
⏹️ ▶️ John hate it, as long as they make a convincing argument, he doesn’t have as many not preconceived
⏹️ ▶️ John notions, but he doesn’t have like the taste that a designer like Evans and he would have to say,
⏹️ ▶️ John I would prefer it be like this. And I’m not saying the boss always imposes their taste on all their subordinates and just makes everything
⏹️ ▶️ John a monoculture like that. No good boss does that. But inevitably, that is a factor. So my feeling is that
⏹️ ▶️ John Jeff Williams is going to be going to have way less a strong design opinions that have been tanky because he’s not literally
⏹️ ▶️ John not a designer, right? No matter what product depends he has, hoping that he will realize these are not his strengths
⏹️ ▶️ John and be more hands off. And what that will that allowed to happen is people with good ideas who
⏹️ ▶️ John previously could, you know, people with good ideas that couldn’t get past Johnny and maybe still couldn’t get past Evans. If
⏹️ ▶️ John they can just make a convincing case to Jeff Williams that it’s a good idea, then that will give
⏹️ ▶️ John us new products that we previously couldn’t get. Now, that’s not sustainable long-term. It is good to have someone who’s in charge
⏹️ ▶️ John of the whole department and have that person sort of be an actual designer who, you know, and not Jeff Williams,
⏹️ ▶️ John not the COO, right? This is not, I’m not in favor of the org chart where your industrial design group has five
⏹️ ▶️ John people who report to the COO, that’s not great. But this little break here, until they can,
⏹️ ▶️ John until someone rises from the ranks to become the new Evans hangy or until they hire someone from the outside or whatever, I
⏹️ ▶️ John think this is an opportunity for us to get designs that we wouldn’t otherwise
⏹️ ▶️ John see because I still feel like there are designers inside Apple who would
⏹️ ▶️ John like to make products that are better in the ways that we can plan about all these shows. I mean, example of like, hey, if you put ports in
⏹️ ▶️ John your laptops, people will like them. We had to scream that for like eight years before personnel changes essentially
⏹️ ▶️ John allowed that to happen, right? Maybe that’s also true of the HomePod or, you know, we’re
⏹️ ▶️ John just talking about that Sony setup with all the different speakers. HomePod could be that product if
⏹️ ▶️ John the people designing it wanted it to go in that direction and weren’t obsessed with, oh, it just
⏹️ ▶️ John has to have one power cord and it can’t be a piece of AV equipment and it has to be, you know, standalone software powered Siri,
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever, blah, blah, like that. Some of that is product design and, uh, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, what product are we making? Not how is that product designed, but that is all kind of combined together to some degree.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, so what I’m hoping is that we will see in the, what I hope is a
⏹️ ▶️ John not too long break, maybe a few years here, we will see some new and more interesting designs be able to come
⏹️ ▶️ John out of the second tier of designers because I know there’s got to be good ideas in there
⏹️ ▶️ John that were definitely not getting past Johnny and maybe not even getting past Evan. So I am
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly not upset about this. Of course, the caveat there is, but I don’t have any idea what’s going
⏹️ ▶️ John on in the company. Maybe Evans Hankey was the best designer they had and now all they have are a bunch of people who are not not as
⏹️ ▶️ John confident in their abilities And the next time they’re asked to do something big, they’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ John be put in a situation where they’re over their heads and they could, they would benefit from having someone more experienced like Evans Hanke
⏹️ ▶️ John to sort of guide the ship. That can definitely happen too, but I literally couldn’t name a single person
⏹️ ▶️ John other than Johnny Ivan Evan Hanke in the industrial design group. So I have no idea what the second level, third
⏹️ ▶️ John level or fourth level that staff looks like. I just hope it’s a bunch of good people. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think the other thing that, that gives me pause about this is what are the political
⏹️ ▶️ Casey implications of it. You know, because like you were saying a minute ago, if I’m one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of 20 or whatever designers and I want to be the new king,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m going to do, maybe not, you know, maybe I’m not going to stab people in the back cause I’m not a jerk, but I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to do whatever I can to be the star to Jeff and look like, oh, I’m the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one that’s indispensable. I’m the one with all the clever ideas. And that can create,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that can, that can be used for good or evil, right? Like, it can be used to really try to get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some incredible work out of this group of 20, let’s say. But it can also be kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of a poison pill. And it can really sour these relationships that, from everything
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we’ve read, at least when Johnny was still around, allegedly these designers were all super-duper tight
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with each other. And I don’t know. I worry a little bit that it’s going to get a little bit figuratively
⏹️ ▶️ Casey violent as the situation tries to figure out who’s going to be the new king or queen.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I don’t know, like Marco, I think, had said originally, it’s hard for us to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know from the outside what the political sphere and what really day-to-day
⏹️ ▶️ Casey looks like on the inside, especially with industrial design, which seems to be one of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the most tight-lipped groups within Apple as it is. So it’s tough for me to say.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think I love this. I think maybe I’m too traditional, and I like having one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey directly responsible individual to use an Apple as a one DRI in charge of everything. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t love the idea of Jeff Williams having to split his time. I mean, just look at, I mean, John, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the only one who’s been a people manager amongst the three of us, but having 10 or 20 direct reports
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when you’re anyone is not easy from what I understand. And when you’re already as busy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as the chief operating officer of one of the biggest, most profitable companies in the world, I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey imagine that he has an overabundance of free time to be doing day-to-day people management sort of things. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. I don’t love this, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a problem right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now. I just I think it would give me a lot of worry if it remained this way in a year or two. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we’ll see what happens.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s why I have to think that CEO is just a placeholder. Because this happens a lot in org charts. If someone important leaves and they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John having trouble replacing them, there’s a placeholder person who, for a while, has too many direct reports. And that’s why
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to imagine that Jeff Williams is going to be necessarily more hands-off. Because he just doesn’t have the expertise. He
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t have the time to be dealing with it. I don’t know how many new reports he’s getting, but his fan out is probably
⏹️ ▶️ John not appropriately balanced at this point, and so they’re probably gonna rebalance. So they could rebalance it by putting two
⏹️ ▶️ John or three lieutenants in charge. And maybe, for all we know, again, we don’t know what the org chart, for all we know, he only has two or three lieutenants, and
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not even that bad, right? But if he has an extra 10 people reporting to him, that’s too
⏹️ ▶️ John many, and so they’re gonna want the fan out to be one or two or three. In terms of the infighting
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, I have to feel like the Evans, Hankey, and Johnny Ive job is exactly the type
⏹️ ▶️ John of job that no designers want. Like when you reach that
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey level, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John in a company like Apple, it takes a certain kind of person to actually want that job. More often it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, I’d rather just be a designer. I mean, part of it becomes the glory of like, and now you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John the figurehead. And now when the new Apple car comes out and everybody loves it, you can say, that was my thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m the head of design and let me talk about the design in the video. There is
⏹️ ▶️ John some glory that comes with that, but boy, it’s just like so much, It’s so difficult to
⏹️ ▶️ John operate at that level of a company. So much politics is involved, so much complexity
⏹️ ▶️ John in terms of, how do I tell whether I’m doing a good job or not? If there are products
⏹️ ▶️ John that succeed or fail in the market, how much of that is attributable to design? In many ways,
⏹️ ▶️ John Johnny Ive was protected by his accomplishments. I’m the iPod, iMac.
⏹️ ▶️ John You may have heard of my work.
⏹️ ▶️ John well-known. I did a pretty good job. These products are pretty successful. And that protected him
⏹️ ▶️ John for a long time, probably too long, from taking
⏹️ ▶️ John his fair share of the blame for products that didn’t succeed as well in the market because he’s Johnny freaking Ive.
⏹️ ▶️ John Evans Hankey did not have that much protection, but I think made better products towards the end there than Johnny,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is great. But a new person, like who wants to raise their hand and say, I’ll be the person who takes
⏹️ ▶️ John all the blame, even though I have very little to do with the products that come out just because I’m the head of the design and they come out with
⏹️ ▶️ John a stinker product. Like, you know, how even like the HomePod, which I was just saying, that’s an example
⏹️ ▶️ John of older thinking. Maybe Evan’s hangy had nothing to do with that. And that design was
⏹️ ▶️ John already in the can before she took over. Right. That happens. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ John products come out later than you expect or whatever. But if everyone hated the new HomePod or something, we’d
⏹️ ▶️ John blame her because she’s the head, right? Or she would be the face of that that product. And, you know, the same way we would be like, oh, the Johnny
⏹️ ▶️ John Ive design, despite the fact, again, that it’s not him designing it. He was probably coming in for a meeting once a month towards the end there,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? But he was the face and he was the name. And when we complained about something about an Apple product
⏹️ ▶️ John and it had to do with hardware design, his name would be in our mouths. Right. Who wants that? That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s a it’s a tough, you know, gig. In my experience in big companies,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve seen more times than I can count, not just myself, but other people like where there’s a position like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, who wants to be to go up to the next level to be, you know, whatever or the senior, senior, whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John who wants to go to the VP level. And you would see all the best people, the people who are the
⏹️ ▶️ John best at the jobs that they had, they did not wanna become a vice president of whatever they’re doing, because they
⏹️ ▶️ John wanted to continue to do their job. Sometimes they get frustrated and be like, oh, this vice president’s a jerk.
⏹️ ▶️ John If I need to be in charge so I can stop people from being a jerk. And sometimes they would get that job and say, I hate being a vice president.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, it is so different. It’s so different to be that high in such a
⏹️ ▶️ John big company than it is to do the actual work, Even just one level below,
⏹️ ▶️ John still you can kind of define your own job and do the work. But once you’re at the Johnny Ive level,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t be there like machining stuff and sketching things. If you are, your boss is gonna tell you
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re not using your time appropriately. That’s not what we’re paying you for anymore, right? It’s a different set of skills.
⏹️ ▶️ John You need to lead this entire organization. And leading them doesn’t just mean looking
⏹️ ▶️ John at what they do and giving thumbs up and thumbs down. That’s not leadership, right? You need to lead them. And it’s like, how do I do that? I’m a designer.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s why people don’t want that job. And why is Evan Tankey leaving? Maybe because she’s got enough money and wants to do
⏹️ ▶️ John different things or whatever, who knows. That’s always, at the top level of a company like Apple, that’s always the thing I’m thinking
⏹️ ▶️ John is, oh, someone left who was a senior executive at Apple for a while, they probably don’t have to work anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, not that I’m counting other people’s money, but if you’re a long-tenured Apple employee, or even
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re not long-tenured, these jobs pay a lot of money. And setting aside RSUs or whatever people are getting,
⏹️ ▶️ John they make a lot of money when you work for Apple and you report to somebody who reports to Tim Cook,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s a good salary, right? Setting aside all the other benefits you get. So when someone’s leaving, I’m like, good for them. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John who says you have to be, from all the things we’ve heard, working inside Apple is a tough gig. It’s a high
⏹️ ▶️ John pressure situation. A lot of eyes are on you. People work hard, they work long hours. If someone
⏹️ ▶️ John wants to take a job that is less stressful or just not work anymore after putting in many years at Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John I say good for them. And I don’t read anything into it like they’ve lost faith in Apple or are leaving
⏹️ ▶️ John or they got kicked out of the company or whatever, even though that happens occasionally. But in this case,
⏹️ ▶️ John like I said, I’m looking forward to a, like, you know, when the cat’s away, the mice will play for
⏹️ ▶️ John a little while until they can fix their org chart somehow get things back into a
Mac Studio not getting updated?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, do you need me for this next part or should I just take a nap? I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John we do need you for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. There’s a report, Apple is unlikely to launch a new Mac Studio as it instead focuses
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the Mac Pro. That means that hypothetically the Mac Studio might be one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and done just like the iMac Pro, which makes me sad because I really dig the idea of the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Studio, even though I don’t have one. But anyway, this is reported on 9to5Mac. They’re quoting Mark Gurman
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who wrote, I wouldn’t anticipate the introduction of a Mac Studio in the near future. Mac Pro is very similar in functionality
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the Mac Studio and adds the M2 Ultra chip rather than the M1 Ultra. So it wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey make sense for Apple to offer an M2 Ultra Mac Studio and an M2 Ultra Mac Pro at the same time. It’s more likely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that Apple either never updates the Mac Studio or holds off until the M3 or M4 generation. At that point, the company may
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be able to better differentiate the Mac Studio from the Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I don’t know what to think about this yet because, you know, it’s hard to really say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether the Mac Studio needs to continue to exist before we know pretty much anything about the Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is very possible that this product was basically just a bridge product to get to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Mac Pro age, which wasn’t ready yet, but this seems like it fits a pretty good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slot in the lineup. The only thing that I think would make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this report make more sense is if you also take to account German’s previous reporting that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically the really big processor Mac Pro was canceled or delayed more and so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe Apple’s original plan was that the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro would be able to have a higher ceiling or have more capabilities
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than what they’re gonna end up being able to ship with it and so maybe when they originally you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were you know designing this lineup and planning it all out maybe the Mac Studio made sense
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a permanent member of the lineup because the Mac Pro was going to be even higher above it. And then as they were developing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Mac Pro, maybe they realized or decided it’s not worth going that high or we can’t easily go that high or there’s some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco major downsides or whatever. And so then once the Mac Pro is released closer to what the Mac studio does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and capabilities, then I could see the next studio not being as necessary anymore. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also possible Mark Gurman’s info is just wrong. And that’s, you know, like whenever we get rumors like this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco um, you know, we, there’s definitely some confirmation bias or, or whatever it is. like when you remember all the correct
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things that the psychic says and you disregard all the incorrect things. You know, when you look back in retrospect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at what the rumor mill predicts versus what actually comes out or what actually happens, oftentimes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s pretty large mismatches there. So it’s really hard to tell. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think if the Mac Pro ends up being fairly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco accessible at its low end, and that’s a pretty big if, I think,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But again, we don’t know any of those product yet. So if the Mac Pro basically ends up being a Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Studio in a larger case with card slots, well, that’s not gonna be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that different. It will be substantially larger probably and it will be somewhat more expensive,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the Mac Studio is already pretty expensive. Without seeing the Mac Pro though, it’s really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hard to know whether the Mac Studio will be necessary anymore once the Pro comes
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of reminded of the iPad Pros that recently got updated but not really updated.
⏹️ ▶️ John And all the gnashing of teeth about that and the various people from inside Apple, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John conveying what it’s like, kind of gave a lot of support to the
⏹️ ▶️ John theory that it just takes a lot of money to revise hardware products.
⏹️ ▶️ John And there wasn’t enough time, money and resources, not just money, but like time, money, resources, people, like all
⏹️ ▶️ John the things that would go into making all new iPad Pro. It just wasn’t in the cards for it to happen
⏹️ ▶️ John this year so soon after they were previously revised. And that gets into
⏹️ ▶️ John what I think is the kernel of truth in this rumor guest speculation or whatever is
⏹️ ▶️ John that the amount of resources Apple is going to put into a product line are proportional
⏹️ ▶️ John to how many they sell and how much money they make. And once you get into desktop Macs as this article that
⏹️ ▶️ John will link in the show notes from Jason Sell reiterates, you’re a fraction of a fraction of a fraction. The Mac is
⏹️ ▶️ John like less than Apple gets in services. Think of the Mac as like less than the iPad or maybe it’s close to it. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re already in a fraction of the pie. And then like 75% of those are laptops. So now
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re into a fraction of that fraction. And then of the desktops, how many people are getting the Mac Studio? It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John so few machines, right? And it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t make them. But what it does mean is when
⏹️ ▶️ John it comes time to allocate resources, whether that be people, time, our money. Can does
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple want to allocate the resources to update the Mac Studio every single year like you do the MacBook Pros
⏹️ ▶️ John or like that we think they should in the macro crows? No, it doesn’t really like if you have to prioritize,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re going to put that money into the new line of MacBook Pros, right? Or the new line of 24 inch iMacs
⏹️ ▶️ John for that matter, the ones that they sell more of that are more popular products that that fill more people’s
⏹️ ▶️ John needs. So the idea that the Mac Studio would skip the M two and come out with the
⏹️ ▶️ John the M3 makes perfect sense to me, not because that’s what I prefer to happen or not because Apple couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John put an M2 in it, but just because when they’re allocating the resources to do that, whether it’s manufacturing
⏹️ ▶️ John resources, design resources, or just plain money to, you know, make an all new design,
⏹️ ▶️ John because again, when you make the all new design, you got, it takes a while for that to become cheaper to manufacture. It takes a while for you to like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, get all the kinks worked out of it or whatever. You can’t like, it’s more difficult
⏹️ ▶️ John to do that for a narrow interest computer like the Mac Studio. So yeah, if it skips the M2 and
⏹️ ▶️ John goes to the M3, I think that will be reasonable. Obviously the most extreme case of that is the Mac Pro, which it seems
⏹️ ▶️ John like, and again, this is the article linked from Jason Stahel on Mac, no, it’s Six Colors, or is it
⏹️ ▶️ John a Macworld article? It just looks like Six Colors. I thought it was Macworld. Anyway, his title is, Is Apple Making a Mac Pro Nobody
⏹️ ▶️ John Wants? And he sort of goes through the recent history of the Mac Pro, which is, there’s a big problem with the Mac Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ John but don’t worry, Apple’s gonna fix it. Wait a long time, wait a long time, wait a long time. Yay, Apple fixed
⏹️ ▶️ John it. There’s a big problem with the Mac Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey but don’t worry, Apple says they’re gonna fix
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Wait a long time. Wait, like the gap between the updates to the Mac Pro is huge. And
⏹️ ▶️ John it is, you know, that gap is proportional to how few people are buying a Mac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John Back in the heyday of the Mac Pro, or the power Mac G5, way more people
⏹️ ▶️ John were buying that computer because the laptops couldn’t touch it in performance. All the quote unquote pros,
⏹️ ▶️ John anyone who’s uses Xcode all day, anybody who does anything remotely strenuous with their computer back in the day,
⏹️ ▶️ John you had to get a desktop if you want a decent performance because laptops could not come close to the
⏹️ ▶️ John performance of the desktops. And so if you looked at that, what is the the you know, the Mac sales pie
⏹️ ▶️ John wedge look like back at the time of the power Mac g five, it was still mostly laptops probably are
⏹️ ▶️ John becoming mostly laptops, but it’s nothing like it is today. And there was a perceivable difference. All the
⏹️ ▶️ John people who wanted this form has got desktops. That’s not true anymore. And so The number of people who need the biggest
⏹️ ▶️ John computer that Apple makes has gotta be so small. And then to top it off, Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John tends to invest huge amounts of money in the Mac Pro, even the trash
⏹️ ▶️ John can. No other computer that may have looked like that. It was totally different from manufacturing technique to
⏹️ ▶️ John construction, to shape, like everything about it was like, this is not a warmed over
⏹️ ▶️ John existing desktop Mac. It is a totally new thing, right? And that turned out not to be a great design.
⏹️ ▶️ John but look at the original cheese grater, the Power Mac G5. Was it the first one that came out with that case?
⏹️ ▶️ John I think. Yes. Looked like a big heat exchanger, right? They made that case
⏹️ ▶️ John and they put the money into manufacturing the case and they used that case for years. It survived a processor
⏹️ ▶️ John transition. Why? Because it costs so much money to design and manufacture that case. And yeah, they changed
⏹️ ▶️ John it so like the fans, all the insides were different and the fan holes in the back were different and where the ports were were different.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was gonna say like the Mac Pro, like the Intel version was like radically different inside than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John version. And
⏹️ ▶️ John even within Intel, if you just look at the back of the machines, you can identify them like, where are the fans? How big are the fans? How are
⏹️ ▶️ John they positioned? The ports in the front, but in general, they didn’t say clean sheet, we’re making a new tower computer. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John like, we’re gonna ride, we put the money into this thing, we’re gonna ride this tower design because they had to make their money back.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’re not selling that many of these things, eventually selling fewer and fewer. We don’t, it’s not in,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not in when we’re allocating resources, we can’t say, okay, design team, you get to design an all new Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro because it’s a new year. It’s like, no, you get to take the existing Mac Pro and give it a facelift. And
⏹️ ▶️ John even if all the insides have to change, we’re still not giving you the time of resources to design an entirely new external
⏹️ ▶️ John case. This happened again when the 2019 Mac Pro came out. We talked about when we first saw this machine,
⏹️ ▶️ John we said, look at this case. This is a complicated, weird, fancy, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the fanciest Mac Pro case I think they’ve ever made. In terms of how much does this stupid piece of weird,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, machined out aluminum cost to make versus the tube, versus the cheese grater, This has got to be the most expensive, most complicated
⏹️ ▶️ John case they’ve ever made. This is not a one-off.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, I think if you include unnecessary internal complexity,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think you have a hard sell between the liquid-cooled G5 and the
⏹️ ▶️ John That liquid cooling was farmed out, and it was not very good. I’m saying
⏹️ ▶️ John the case, just like the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey actual physical shell
⏹️ ▶️ John case thing. It has to be the most expensive. It’s certainly the most machining steps. It’s the most complicated.
⏹️ ▶️ John And like, you know, so they made this computer. They’re not going to make a new full-size
⏹️ ▶️ John tower case, I don’t think. If they do, I will just fall off my chair because, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, we said when this thing came out, this is gonna be the case design for full-size tower computers from Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John until they stop making them or until many years pass, right? Because that’s just the way they do things, especially this
⏹️ ▶️ John is such an expensive case, right? So this gets into the MacStudio question.
⏹️ ▶️ John If it is a tower computer, this is the case they’re gonna use
⏹️ ▶️ John because this is the one they have. Like they can’t justify the resources to redesign the
⏹️ ▶️ John iPad Pro, which sells way more copies than the Mac Pro. There is no way a 2019 full-size
⏹️ ▶️ John tower is going to be followed by a 2024 full-size tower that is all new. That’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John not gonna happen. If it’s a full-size tower, this is the case. Although I think it would be cool
⏹️ ▶️ John if they made it like space gary or black or whatever. And yeah, you can move the ports and yeah, you can tweak it or whatever, but this is the case,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? But maybe they don’t make a full-size tower. Maybe it’s just a bigger Mac studio,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And this gets to what Jason was talking about or we’ve talked about many, many times in the past. If it’s just a Mac studio
⏹️ ▶️ John with slots, like as they said in the movie, “‘Contact’ seems like an awful waste of space.”
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, can you take the guts of a Mac studio, put it inside this massive case and
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like hiding in the corner basically. And then you have slots, I guess, on a giant motherboard
⏹️ ▶️ John that you’re gonna put what in? And that’s that question about the GPUs. We don’t wanna rehash all that, right? It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John weird and mysterious. If the high-end one is canceled, but the four things, because you’d need the cooling for that in here,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s really just an M2 Ultra, but with slots, I don’t understand what the,
⏹️ ▶️ John like the case is too big. It’s like the M1 Mac mini was, where it looks like the insides are too small for
⏹️ ▶️ John the case you’re putting them in. And so if that’s the case, there’s room, still room
⏹️ ▶️ John for the Mac Studio, because no one is cross shopping a Mac Studio and this stupid
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just physically space alone. Like it’s not like, well I could have this little thing that sits on my desk
⏹️ ▶️ John that looks like a tall Mac Mini or I could have something the size of a truck that I don’t even know where the hell I’m gonna put
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it. They’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John cross, it’s just too, it’s huge. It’s gigantic and what you’d have to be saying, okay it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John gigantic but in exchange for that gigantic thing I get what? And if it’s just like a Mac Studio inside
⏹️ ▶️ John there, I don’t, that’s a product that nobody wants. That’s what Jason’s talking about. I don’t understand it, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John So if the Mac Pro is in this case, they have to keep making, they
⏹️ ▶️ John either have to keep making that Mac Studio or they have to bring back the iMac Pro because there is that hole in the lineup and the Mac Studio
⏹️ ▶️ John now fills it. The Mac Studio and the Apple Studio display is the deconstructed iMac, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John the high-end big screen iMac. If they don’t wanna make that, they can bring back a big screen iMac,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they can’t go Mac Mini, nothing in the lineup, thing the size of a truck.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just, that’s too much of a gap, right? That doesn’t mean the Mac Studio is gonna get updated constantly.
⏹️ ▶️ John If the Mac Studio skips a couple generations, that is, you know, it’s more appropriate because the Mac Pro skips like seven generations.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like the whole rest of the Mac line comes and goes like in one of those time lapses where you see seasons pass and the Mac Pro is just
⏹️ ▶️ John sitting there unchanged, right? That, you know, and so the Mac Studio will be like that but with fewer
⏹️ ▶️ John seasons passing in the montage. And I think that is, even though I’m disappointed by it, I
⏹️ ▶️ John think it is not surprising and probably an appropriate use of Apple’s resources.
⏹️ ▶️ John And this is the kind of thing with Apple. They’re so secretive, they never tell us what’s happening, blah, blah, blah. It was nice that they told us they’re fixing the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro so let people hold on and not, you know, not spend all those years screaming. We just spent those years waiting,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? At least we knew it was happening. If they had a cadence and told us the cadence, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, they could spin it however they want. The Mac Studio, since it’s a high-end machine and blah, blah, blah,
⏹️ ▶️ John will be updated every two years. Just tell us that ahead of time So we’re not wondering if they’re canceling the
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Studio or they’re gonna make an M3 one, blah, blah, blah. Just let us know. Like if you just tell us the
⏹️ ▶️ John cadence, you should expect a new Mac Pro every five years. Just let us know, don’t make a Mac Pro and then have a
⏹️ ▶️ John saying, are they ever gonna make another one? We don’t know. Like, cause they never want to tell us. And they, especially with
⏹️ ▶️ John the high end desktop Macs, they haven’t had long enough to establish any kind of pattern because they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John too erratic. It’s always, it’s perpetually in crisis. So it’s not like they can say, well, we won’t tell you the
⏹️ ▶️ John pattern cause we can’t promise that far in advance, but you can surmise it by looking. No, we can’t, it’s chaos. Like we have
⏹️ ▶️ John no idea what’s going on over there. The Mac Studio came out of nowhere. Why is there no big iMac? Where the hell is the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro? We don’t know. So you have to tell us, especially for high-end people wanna know, should we buy?
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, we love the Mac Studio. It’s perfect for our environment. The Mac Mini is a little bit too slow. We like the extra
⏹️ ▶️ John RAM we can put in the Mac Studio. We wanna buy them, you know, and when a new one comes out, we wanna refresh our whole studio with
⏹️ ▶️ John them. Apple, tell us when you’re gonna come out with them. Okay, we’re gonna come out with them every other year. So it’s going to be M1, M3,
⏹️ ▶️ John M5, you know, like just tell us and that would be fine. But Apple does not and probably
⏹️ ▶️ John cannot make those kind of promises that far in advance. So we’re, we’re kind of left wondering and that’s why you get stories like
⏹️ ▶️ John this one where German’s like, you know what? I think the Mac studio just like they’re not going to update it anymore. It’s going to be
⏹️ ▶️ John a really long time and it’s, it makes people afraid for like, Oh, it’s my favorite computer. I love the Mac studio.
⏹️ ▶️ John I hope they make another one. It’s like the mini iPhone. They don’t tell us and people have various fears and
⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes those fears are founded. But in this case, you know, a little bit, something from
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple would help either put out the M3 one and then there’ll be some relief or tell us
⏹️ ▶️ John that, I mean, I don’t know how they say this, vocalize the idea that high end computers
⏹️ ▶️ John that don’t sell a lot get updated less frequency. We all kind of know that in the abstract, but without
⏹️ ▶️ John any communication, it makes everybody who buys those computers fear that as soon as they buy
⏹️ ▶️ John one, like the thing they just bought is now an evolutionary dead end and there’s not going to be any more of them. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John never a good feeling.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’re just ready to buy a new computer, aren’t you?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. I mean, if they put an M2 Ultra in a case the size of my thing, I’m going to be like,
⏹️ ▶️ John pfft. Especially if there’s no third-party GPU support, like why would I buy that?
⏹️ ▶️ John I would start looking at studios and minis and then I would look back at my computer and I’d say, I’ll just keep you for 10 years. We’ll see how it happens.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, once they stop supporting, once Intel doesn’t, once the latest Mac OS doesn’t run on Intel, it’s really going to
⏹️ ▶️ John put the pressure on me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, that’s going to be the end of it. Because you won’t be able to just hack a driver here or there and make it work.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s going to be a pretty hard stop, I think. So
⏹️ ▶️ John what will actually happen is, so that’ll be a problem for me because I do have my dinky little apps,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I do need to be able to build them and run the latest OS. And I’ll probably want to do that. And then I’ll start
⏹️ ▶️ John using other people’s computers in the family, which will already be armed. They already are armed. I’ll use my wife’s Mac Studio. I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John use one of my kids’ armed laptops. And they’ll be like, hey, get off my computer. You’ve been using Xcode on my computer. And that’s what’s going
⏹️ ▶️ John to force me to do it. Not the fact that I can’t run the latest OS on my Intel one, but the fact that I’m hogging other
⏹️ ▶️ John people’s ARM-based computers and they don’t like it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if only there were some other ARM-based Mac you could get that was not just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the absolute top of the line one.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, if they fix the fans in the Mac Studio, it would be a lot more attractive to me, I have to say.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, it’s funny. Like, you know, the fan thing is odd. And I wonder if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you think back to what I was saying earlier, why the Mac Studio existed. Was it always intended to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a temporary, like, you know, holding spot in the lineup waiting for the big Mac Pro? Was it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or was it intended to always be there and to have the Mac Pro go, you know, substantially above it? I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wonder if it was maybe designed in a rush. Like maybe the Mac Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was not, was not hitting their schedule that they originally planned. And so they kind of made this like as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a rush job. And maybe that’s one of the reasons why it has like such weird engineering in certain ways, like the fans.
⏹️ ▶️ John So thinking back to what we talked about before about the Apple TV 4K and watching the old versus
⏹️ ▶️ John the new. If you’ve seen the inside of the Mac Studio, that does not look like a rush job. Like that
⏹️ ▶️ John is so, it is much more towards the over-engineered custom beautiful on the inside design.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is not a rush, right? Combined with the fact that the quote unquote half-size
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pro rumors have been around forever. Now, was that referring to the Mac Studio? We don’t know, because these rumors
⏹️ ▶️ John are so old. But like, remember, like, even while we were, you know, I guess as soon as the 2019 one
⏹️ ▶️ John came out and the ARM transition happened, the rumor was, hey, the next Mac Pro is gonna, they’re gonna have two
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac Pros. One’s gonna be a half-size one and one’s gonna be full-size. And it has never been clear to me
⏹️ ▶️ John whether the Mac Studio is the half-size one or the half-size rumor is totally false or they really had a half-size
⏹️ ▶️ John one. But when I look at the Mac Studio, if it was the half-size one, that rumor
⏹️ ▶️ John is super old and that means the product wasn’t rushed. And then I look at the inside of it and I’m like, this doesn’t look like a rush job. This looks
⏹️ ▶️ John like a computer that somebody sweat it over every detail. Like it’s too good looking on the inside
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s too perfect. And the fact that the cooler has, you know, low
⏹️ ▶️ John diameter fans that spin too fast and make a weird droning noise, just seems like a design
⏹️ ▶️ John miss. Like I think they made the computer they wanted to make and they just didn’t think about the idea that all
⏹️ ▶️ John their other computers are so damn silent that now this is the noisy one. Again, it’s dead silent when it’s bolted under
⏹️ ▶️ John my desk but it’s noisy enough and annoying enough. Like it’s not just the volume, if you
⏹️ ▶️ John put like a decibel meter by it, it’s the nature of the sound, the frequency of the sound. It is annoying enough
⏹️ ▶️ John that people don’t want it on their desk and so it got banished. And banished under the desk, it’s totally silent
⏹️ ▶️ John and fine, which is why I would consider getting one. But I think it’s a miss when all your other computers either have
⏹️ ▶️ John no fan or are dead silent, including the Mac mini, which you think would be a more thermally challenging situation,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially when it’s got the same processor. Like the M1 Max Mac mini, which we now
⏹️ ▶️ John have, compared to the M1 Max, Max Studio, from all the reviews I’ve seen,
⏹️ ▶️ John cause I haven’t seen M1 Max, Max Mini, but from all the reviews, the M1 Max, Max Mini is quiet.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s practically silent. And the Max Studio, they got that same drone that they all have,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is just, I think it’s just a design miss. So I feel like, you know, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not, I mean, maybe the cooler was rushed, but like everything else about it, the motherboard, the case, everything about
⏹️ ▶️ John it looks just not as over-engineered as Apple TV, but pretty close if you looked at the teardown.
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#askatp: Keeping old feeds in Overcast
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s do some Ask ATP. Scott Wright writes, Hey, Marco, to people like me who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey remain subscribed to podcasts no longer release new episodes like just the tip and hello internet. Does that create much
⏹️ ▶️ Casey overhead for your feed crawlers? My guess is no, but I’m always surprised when I get glimpses of your data models. So I wonder.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the way overcast currently sinks things and this has actually changed over time. It used
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be and I think I forget whether the watch still is this way it might be. It used to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be that the Overcast app would only sync information
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to like from the servers about episodes that were not yet deleted. So if you had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a podcast that you’d like listened all the way through to and you went to its screen and there were no episodes in the unplayed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or now current tab, if you tapped over to the all tab it would have to do a network fetch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to populate the all list because that was not stored on your device. A while ago I changed that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that now any Any podcast that you have in your subscriptions at all, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app always downloads all information about all episodes about it. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that enables things like search on the app. That’s, I believe, the reason I made that change.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it no longer only gets the current ones, it now gets all. So, on some level, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app, you’re syncing data about all of those old dead
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feeds to my servers all the time. But that being said, my server, you know, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco protocol is a little bit efficient, and I’m actually working on making it more efficient. I talked about it a little bit under the radar
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this week. But the current protocol, it won’t sync data,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it won’t even check before first checking, like, basically like a change version number.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if the feed is not really changing on a regular basis, it’s not gonna be downloading much of anything,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or loading much of anything. So it’s not much of a load. but the number of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feeds that you have in Overcast is the important factor there and how often
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they change their data like on their end in their feed. Like the heaviest feeds for Overcast to deal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with are Patreon feeds. Because Patreon feeds, there’s a lot of them because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you subscribe to a Patreon member podcast, every user gets a individual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feed, just like the ATV member feeds. Every user gets individual feeds and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything is like hashed to that user. The problem with Patreon feeds is that they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also have these giant long hashes that are like built into different content areas of the feed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that change over time. They’re like expiring signatures for S3 or whatever else. And so Patreon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feeds are huge and they change constantly. They also tend, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco believe they tend to have the full text of all their posts in their feeds as well. So if you have a podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like John Roderick’s Patreon, where there’s like these giant like walls of text as like essays that were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also posted as the show notes, that’s being downloaded every single time anything in that feed changes, and Patreon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco changes their feeds constantly because they have these expiring URLs. So there are feeds like that, that are pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco heavy loads on my server just because they on their end are changing those constantly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there’s a huge volume of them. Like I have to have special handling on my crawlers to kind of back off
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little bit on Patreon feeds and to not save every revision they make. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if I sense that they’ve only changed the signatures on the URLs, I actually will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco delay and not save every one of those. I’ll only save it like once a day or something like that. I forget what it’s currently set to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because I can’t, I have no idea how long those URLs last. I haven’t tested like how long they take before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they expire, but it’s at least a day. So anyway, and if anybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out there works at Patreon and works on their feeds, please get in touch. I would love to talk about this. and maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco save us both a ton of bandwidth at some point, because this is hurting them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even more than it’s hurting me because they have to serve these to everybody. So anyway, but yeah, so for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the most part, having a feed and overcast that is subscribed at all, like that is in your list, whether
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have the little follow every episode or not, if it’s in your app, if it’s listed in your list,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco having that has a small amount of overhead to overcast, but it doesn’t matter what the status of your episodes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco within it is, It doesn’t matter how many you have unplayed or how many you have marked as played or deleted or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco None of that matters. It just matters how many episodes are in the feed, because that’s being stored as database rows on both sides.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then it matters how much that feed changes. And for these old shows that are not having these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time-bombed URLs, those feeds pretty much never change, so it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John Scott’s question was specifically about how much overhead does it create for your feed crawlers. And the whole reason you
⏹️ ▶️ John have feed crawlers is so you don’t have to have, it’s not like every individual user is
⏹️ ▶️ John doing the same job. Your feed crawlers are running your server, you can crawl that feed once and
⏹️ ▶️ John everybody who subscribes that for non-changing normal feeds like regular podcasts,
⏹️ ▶️ John like it doesn’t matter if a thousand people subscribe to it or one person subscribes to it, your feed crawler crawls
⏹️ ▶️ John it and it doesn’t have to crawl it n times for n number of people. So, you know, Hello Internet, for example,
⏹️ ▶️ John regular feed, nothing weird going on with it, hasn’t released new episodes in a long time. It doesn’t really
⏹️ ▶️ John matter how many people have this. If Scott keeps Hello Internet in his subscription list or doesn’t keep it, your feed
⏹️ ▶️ John crawler is crawling the Hello Internet feed more or less the same amount of time. I’m sure you have adjustments for when it becomes more
⏹️ ▶️ John popular or whatever and back off on it, but it’s like, what I’m saying to Scott is, don’t worry,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re not hurting Marco’s feed crawler by keeping Hello Internet in your thing. It’s fine, his feed crawler is crawling
⏹️ ▶️ John it the amount of times appropriate for a feed that has not updated in years, and you
⏹️ ▶️ John staying subscribed to it isn’t changing that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, yeah, and it’s funny, it’s kind of like computer science, like there’s only three numbers, like zero,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one, and N. Or some people are even just zero and N, depending on what versions you’ve heard.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But that’s kind of how my feed throttling works. It’s like, if I have a feed that has no subscribers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and is not listed in Apple Podcasts, Overcast will automatically delete it after a while. If it has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no subscribers but is listed in Apple Podcasts, I don’t think it’ll ever automatically get deleted, but I will crawl
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a zero subscriber feed much less often than a feed that has any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco subscribers at all. And then there’s also a big difference between one subscriber and anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more than one. Because again, that’s all those Patreon feeds, or any kind of membership,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the ATP membership feeds, almost all of those are gonna have at most one person in Overcast who has those feeds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in their account. So I’m gonna crawl those at a different interval as well. And there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco certain ones where I’ve worked with the hosts to say certain hosts of membership
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff, like I think memberful, I think I might special case them. I special case the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Strategory Empire of Strategory, Strategory
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ditherings. I work with Ben Thompson on like, you know, what kind of rate do you want me to crawl you? And is this too much or is this too little?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I have a few special cases in there, but for the most part, I just crawl based on frequency, based on popularity.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, you know, if you have no subscribers or one subscriber or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of subscribers, that matters, but no other distinction really does.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Do you have particular special cases for ATP membership? Because I know we’re going to get asked.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got to check. I actually think I don’t. So the other thing is, I have a thing in place.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have a ping API where hosts, if they want to in their CMS, can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco send a ping request to Overcast that says, crawl these feeds with this prefix as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco soon as you can, like now or whatever. And a few hosts have done this. And I’ve actually run into issues Overcast is too fast,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that a lot of times they will put this in some part in like, you know, the kind of like, you know, the after save method of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their CMS, or whatever the equivalent there is. But a lot of times, their own CDN hasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco updated the feed contents yet at that point. And so Overcast will say, All right, I’ll crawl it right now. And it goes and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco crawls it right now and gets old data. But because I have the ping API
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on ATP, and I implement caching correctly, it’s funny, actually, I actually like, I think I artificially delay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the ping crawls now by a few seconds, to try to avoid that problem. Anyway, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I developed the CMS, I implemented ping support. So I don’t even think, I don’t think I have special case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco handling for our crawl intervals because whenever we publish a new episode, the CMS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just sends a request to Overcast, hey, ping these feeds. And over the following few
⏹️ ▶️ Marco minutes, Overcast pings them all and refers to them all. So if you have, if you’re telling me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when your feed is being updated, I don’t have to be pulling it as frequently. So I don’t think I have any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco special case handling for us.
#askatp: Many vs. few SSD chips
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John Susack writes, would a MacBook with eight 64 gig NAND chips read
⏹️ ▶️ Casey data about eight times faster than a single 512 gig chip? Would that drive be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about eight times less reliable? Is this conceptually something like RAID 0 at the chipset level?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, I feel like you should probably handle this.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think it’s a good question for people who don’t, haven’t looked into like hardware
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff that often because of the story we talked about, you know, a few times now with Apple putting
⏹️ ▶️ John one SSD chip that has all the storage versus two chips of half the size,
⏹️ ▶️ John and the two chips of half the size get you twice the speed. And so it’s an obvious question if you haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ John looked into this, is like, well, does that just work? Does that scale linearly? Can I just
⏹️ ▶️ John keep chopping up my SSD into smaller and smaller pieces and get twice the speed, four times the speed?
⏹️ ▶️ John Obviously if you think about it for a second, it’s like, well, if that worked, someone would be doing it, right? In some respects that is
⏹️ ▶️ John true, if you parallelize access you can get more bandwidth and everything, but the dollar
⏹️ ▶️ John sign comes in here. You can make bus widths wider and wider.
⏹️ ▶️ John As you do that, especially with high speed-ish things like memory or
⏹️ ▶️ John SSDs, they’re not as fast as memory obviously, but still faster than hard drives, it gets real expensive
⏹️ ▶️ John real fast. Especially when you’re talking about something that interfaces into the CPU or
⏹️ ▶️ John into an SoC or into some large part of the system that lots of things have access to,
⏹️ ▶️ John wider and wider buses are more expensive. It’s part of the reason that the VRAM that they put on high-end
⏹️ ▶️ John GPUs, it’s like, why does it cost so much money to have 16 gigs
⏹️ ▶️ John of VRAM? 16 gigs of RAM costs nothing. Well, the VRAM on a high-end GPU
⏹️ ▶️ John has a hugely wide interface to the GPU itself on the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John First of all, it’s physically close to it, which means the signals don’t have to travel far. and I forget the bus widths, but I
⏹️ ▶️ John think they’re like, over 512, I don’t know, they’re really, really wide.
⏹️ ▶️ John Back in the day, in my youth with memory interfaces, it was like, everything was like sipping through
⏹️ ▶️ John a straw, right? It was just these tiny, narrow interfaces, and when they got a little bit wider, we’d get really excited.
⏹️ ▶️ John But money has always been the limiting factor. So for like a laptop, for example,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you made the bus eight times wider, well, at that point, you’d be like, okay, but the SOC can’t even handle that. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John the SoC itself does not have enough, you know, the bus width going to the SoC
⏹️ ▶️ John for this data is not wide enough. So it doesn’t matter how big you make it, like there’s no more bridge chips anymore, but it doesn’t matter
⏹️ ▶️ John how wide you make it, eventually it’s got to funnel into what the SoC can handle, right? And I feel like probably
⏹️ ▶️ John on the ones where they have two or four chips, they’re probably maxing out the number of, the
⏹️ ▶️ John width of the, you know, IO system that reads SSDs on those
⏹️ ▶️ John SoCs, and adding more of them, you would get nothing for it, because you’re already using up all the lines.
⏹️ ▶️ John Back in the PCI Express days and the various bridges, we talk about the PCI Express lanes
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything, or the Thunderbolt we talk about the bus with, but it’s the same thing with names that I just
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know for the SoC and the SSD interface. So, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John the answer is you can make it wider, but it’ll cost way more money, it’ll take more power, it’ll produce more heat.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so I think, and someone from Apple, or someone who knows better can correct me if I’m wrong, I
⏹️ ▶️ John think the fastest SSDs in Apple’s laptops are using all of the available
⏹️ ▶️ John bandwidth to those SOCs, and you’re not gonna get
⏹️ ▶️ John any more speed by doubling the number of chips or whatever. And the ones that are half,
⏹️ ▶️ John quote unquote, half speed, are using half the width, because they just have one chip and the other one
⏹️ ▶️ John would use the rest of them. In terms of reliability, yeah, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John making two chips, two chips don’t fail twice as often as one chip usually
⏹️ ▶️ John because, it really depends on how you’re pushing the envelope.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s kind of like, should I get the one biggest hard drive I can get or two smaller ones? What does that do for reliability?
⏹️ ▶️ John If they just came out with like, I don’t know what size hard drives are. If they just came out with a new 28 terabyte
⏹️ ▶️ John hard drive and it’s the only one in the market and it’s cutting edge, maybe don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John go with that one, go with two 14 terabyte ones, right? But if it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John common size that’s been around for a long time, having, you know, two
⏹️ ▶️ John 256s and a single 512, I imagine the reliability of all those things is pretty good.
⏹️ ▶️ John Your main factor is gonna be wear leveling and wearing out the NAND and all that other stuff that is more of a factor
⏹️ ▶️ John than somehow the chip going bad or whatever. So, you know, it’s a good question, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the answer is no, Apple is not. Computer manufacturers in general are not being silly
⏹️ ▶️ John by not having tons of little SSD chips. they’re more or less doing everything they can to get the most performance
⏹️ ▶️ John at a reasonable cost power budget for their given computer.
#askatp: Unknown callers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Bartoszko writes, how do you handle unknown callers? I’m in a situation now where I get a lot of calls
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I just do not have the time to take unknown calls. In Sweden, we have websites that are quite good at resolving
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who the caller was, but it takes a few taps and holds a copy of the phone number from recent lists, and sometimes I fail
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the phone calls the number instead. What do you guys do? I don’t have this happen very often,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so for me, I typically just ignore them and let them roll the voicemail, and I’d say about eight times
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out of ten, I end up deleting the voicemail that they leave leave about the my car’s warranty running out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But that’s just me. Marco, I feel like you’ve done a lot of, or in the past you had done a lot of research
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on like anti-spam apps
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco and things of that nature. Yeah, call blockers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and stuff. Yeah, yeah. So what is the current state of the world for you?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, you know, it’s different because, you know, everybody has different needs about, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what is your risk tolerance for inadvertently missing a valuable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco call, or a call that you actually might want. So everyone has to set this differently. Some people, if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they give their phone number out as part of their job, and they might have strangers calling them all the time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that’s new customers for them, they have to be pretty careful what they block.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you wanna go fully nuclear, the nuclear option, which I have done, I don’t currently do it, but I did it for a while,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a few years ago, Apple added an option called Silence Unknown Callers. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is just a setting somewhere, I think it’s in the phone app, or in the phone app settings, in the settings
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app. It’s somewhere in the settings app. And Silence Unknown Caller does exactly what it says. Any caller that’s not in your contacts,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it just gets sent to voicemail. And that is the nuclear option, and it does work.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It works really, really well if you don’t wanna be bothered by unknown calls. The downside is, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will miss things that you would’ve wanted, because if somebody’s not in your contacts.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it tries to be a little bit smarter. Like, if there’s a phone number in one of your recent email messages,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or a phone number that you’ve recently dialed, it won’t silence those trying to call you. So it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a little smarter than just your contacts, but you will miss a lot if you use that option.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But again, I used it for like a year and it was fine. I have a bit of a different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco situation in that I got my cell phone when I lived
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somewhere else than I currently live. And I pretty much know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the good thing is, you know, most US spam callers, not all, but most of them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco try to call from your local exchange. So it’ll have the same, you know, first,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually six digits of your phone number, or at least it’ll be like from the same area of your phone number,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because they are trying to trick you into thinking it’s a local call. Well, if you don’t live there, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know that it’s probably spam. You know, so I’ll have, you know, random calls like from White Plains. I know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I have no reason for any strangers white planes to be calling me. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what I do is I send, if I see a call that’s from one of these areas that I know is going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be like, you know, trick spam trying to trick me into thinking it’s a local call, I will send those to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco voicemail, decline the call, and sure enough in the voicemail I’ll have a message that says the exact same thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’ll be three seconds long, it’ll say, hello dot dot dot in the transcript. And it’s the exact,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I’ll have, you know, I’ll get maybe five of those in a day. But then, and here’s Here’s the trick,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will block every single one of those numbers, because it’s just two taps. You hit the info on the missed call record on the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco voicemail, you hit block contact, I’ll block every one of those numbers. And I did that for a few weeks,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where every time I would get these dud things that were sent to voicemail, or something I would pick up and it would end up being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spam, I would block the contact. And so I ended up having something like 30, 40 blocked numbers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But that actually has dramatically reduced the amount of spam calls I’ve gotten. it turns out,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, most of these calls are coming from the same, you know, banks of numbers, like the same relatively, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, countable, knowable sets of, you know, spammable numbers. So, so that actually had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a huge reduction. Um, but, but that is, that is, again, that’s kind of a trick that I know. And I even, I even found
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a call blocker app. Like there was, there, there, there’s an area in Westchester where I’ve never done any kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of business with anybody and I was getting tons of spam calls from their numbers. And so I just blocked the entire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco town. Like I downloaded, I forget what it is. there’s like some kind of like simple call blocker app where you can just block
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ranges of numbers. So I just block like, you know, the first six digits and then anything in the last four.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So like those 10,000 numbers, I just blocked them all. And that also had a nice, a nice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big effect. You know, so that’s, but then, you know, that’s one of the luxuries you get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you know that if that like local calling trick doesn’t work on you because you don’t live
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the same area code as that number anymore. So, you know, for me, it’s like, you know, if somebody calls from Long
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Island, I’m gonna pick it up. but I’ve never had a Long Island phone number. So I don’t get spam from Long Island.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s actually kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John nice. And yeah, that’s another fun thing that I assume is uniquely bad in the US because USA, USA,
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t you think there should be laws stopping people from making automated spam calls pretending to be from places they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not? No, because the spammers who do this lobby our
⏹️ ▶️ John lawmakers and put money into their campaigns.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think there are laws.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John They just aren’t, you know, following them or
⏹️ ▶️ John forcing them. Toothless laws that have ways to get around them, because those people
⏹️ ▶️ John spend a lot of money. It’s terrible. Anyway, our system is stupid. That’s why we have this stupidity. But given
⏹️ ▶️ John that we have this stupidity, the way I deal with it, so I do like the
⏹️ ▶️ John call blocking apps. I’ve tried a bunch of them. I never had the guts to try the one that I think
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco tried, but it’s just like, hey, actually, we’ll intercept your calls, and your calls won’t come to you. Your calls will
⏹️ ▶️ John go to us, and then we’ll forward them to you. What was that one called?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I forget. It was terrible. I undid that within like a week. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John it’s too scary for me. I’ve tried a lot of those apps. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t want to damage delivery of my, phone calls are too important for me to allow it to actually go through
⏹️ ▶️ John like a third party location and they get my number and whatever. Anyway, but the call
⏹️ ▶️ John blocking ones that just run on your phone and just have like a list of known spam numbers, I run one of those.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re better than nothing. The one I do is like, it’s like $20 a year. I think it’s Nomo Robo,
⏹️ ▶️ John which means N-O-M-O-R-O-B-O, no more robocalls,
⏹️ ▶️ John it catches a bunch of stuff. It catches enough stuff that $20 a year makes it worth it for me. It does
⏹️ ▶️ John not catch all of it, not even close, right? So then I’m left with, you know, what gets through. I am also
⏹️ ▶️ John a serial blocker. If I get any call from anybody ever, if it’s a voicemail about my car
⏹️ ▶️ John warranty, if it’s a voicemail that’s in a language that I don’t understand, like literally anything, block,
⏹️ ▶️ John block, block, block, block, just block like crazy. And it’s frustrating because you’re like, I
⏹️ ▶️ John feel like I should get that app that Marco had. I’ve blocked the same looking numbers a million times. How many of these do they
⏹️ ▶️ John have? I guess they have 10,000 because that same six inches is the same. They’re just gonna cycle through them to
⏹️ ▶️ John put this message in Chinese that I don’t understand and they keep sending it to me, right? So that’s frustrating,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you do sort of like start to win that war of attrition because there aren’t
⏹️ ▶️ John that many numbers, right? I do have a one weird factor that factors
⏹️ ▶️ John into this. This is why, you know, I don’t really block unknown callers because I just, I, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, it’s kind of like ad blocking on my Mac. It’s more frustrating for me when a site
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t work because of an ad blocker than it is for me to deal with the ads. So that’s why I’m less inclined
⏹️ ▶️ John to block as aggressively on my Mac as I do on my phone. I don’t want to miss calls,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, if it’s just the car dealer calling or someone you have working on the house or the
⏹️ ▶️ John food delivery person. It’s frustrating for me when they go to voicemail, especially if I don’t know, you know, so I don’t do
⏹️ ▶️ John the nuclear option of like block all unknown callers, right? That means a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff does come through. And the reason I can’t 100% ignore every single
⏹️ ▶️ John unknown call which is my inclination by the way, if a call comes into my phone and I don’t recognize the number, I just, you know, tap the power button
⏹️ ▶️ John and you know, ignore it, right? That is what I do 100% of the time. So I’m basically implementing
⏹️ ▶️ John block unknown callers myself unless I know that food is being delivered or I know my car is at a dealership.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like those are the situations. Although I do try to put those people in my contacts so I get a good name for them. But the one weird thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that I have is my telephone number is one digit off from a telephone number in a local
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey no. Right? And so
⏹️ ▶️ John I get calls on that number and they leave voicemails about like patient
⏹️ ▶️ John X is coming in on Y or whatever. Oh God. And I feel bad about that. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John what I do with those people is I answer, right? because I can tell, because they’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John spammers, their caller ID will come up and it will say such
⏹️ ▶️ John and such hospital, because they’re always calling from inside the hospital to another department in the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco hospital talking about you. The call is coming from inside
⏹️ ▶️ John the hospital. Right, right. And so when I see that hospital number, first of all, when it started happening, I’m like, oh my God, my wife
⏹️ ▶️ John is dead in a car accident. But eventually I learned, I figured this out after maybe a year or two by getting someone on
⏹️ ▶️ John the phone and say, what number did you dial? And figure, oh, it’s one digit off. People are just typoing
⏹️ ▶️ John it. So now when I get those calls, they’re trying to talk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to a hospital and you’re trying to interview them.
⏹️ ▶️ John Wait, before you go, it’s just administrative stuff. It’s because it’s like this department
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey saying, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John this person’s coming down or this is coming up or do you have this or whatever, you know, it’s like, it’s not always like
⏹️ ▶️ John life or death emergency, but I do feel bad because they leave voicemail and they think they’re leaving voicemail at the whatever department,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And they’re not like, it’s never gonna happen. You’re never gonna connect. It’s on my phone, right? So I pick
⏹️ ▶️ John up every single one of those calls and just say, you’ve got the wrong number, right? And they say, oh, sorry. And they,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, and they don’t call back, right? Because they’re legitimate people, right? I don’t even remember what the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John is. I don’t interview them anymore to say what number did you dial? Because very often they don’t know because they just punched a button on one of those like
⏹️ ▶️ John million button phones that’s inside a hospital or whatever. So that’s why in my special case,
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t actually ignore every single call. If it says the hospital
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s near me as the caller ID, I pick it up and I get to talk to a person in the healthcare
⏹️ ▶️ John industry and tell them that they have the wrong number. They keep you company during the day. Right? It’s not that
⏹️ ▶️ John frequent. It’s surprisingly infrequent because I think people don’t type. How often do you type a phone number on a keypad?
⏹️ ▶️ John But somebody’s doing it because they’re off by one digit.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey These are your coworkers now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Around the water cooler, you ask them, like, hey, did you see the latest episode of the TV show last night? How about that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sports team? Thanks to our sponsors this week, Squarespace
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Mercury Weather. And thank you to our members who support us directly. You can join at atp.fm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash join. We will talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they didn’t even mean to begin Cause it was accidental, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental John didn’t do any research, Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t let him Cause it was accidental, oh it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental And you can find the show notes at atp.fm
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you’re 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-E-N-T
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s accidental, they didn’t mean to
⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental, check podcast so
An un-fun week at the Liss house
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So the cloud has stopped over the List family,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or three quarters of the List family. And this past weekend we had a bunch of plans,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right? We were going to hang out with some friends on Friday at their house. And then on Saturday
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we were supposed to have a double date, you know, with another, a different couple, friends
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of ours. And we were going to ship the kids off to my parents, which is a very rare treat.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I convinced my parents, which actually didn’t take too much convincing, but I had convinced them, hey, why don’t you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey insist on taking the dog too? So this way, Erin and I would be alone. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this way, I could treat her to a little one-night staycation in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey downtown Richmond. And so I had booked a room for the two of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us at some bougie hotel that I’ve never been to that sounded pretty cool. And, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we were going to go do dinner. and then you go to White Castle. I got to go to White Castle. I wish there’s none anywhere
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco probably for the best.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, probably. We were going to go to a local Mexican restaurant or well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know if it’s strictly speaking Mexican. It’s in that neck of the woods, so to speak. But anyways, we’re going to do that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then we were, you know, stay overnight and and you know, it live like, you know, care. What is it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey childless and carefree carefree and I don’t know. I can’t think of the term phrase turn a phrase I’m looking for but we’re gonna do all that and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then we would go to mom and dad’s on Sunday and pick up the kids. And then I don’t think we had any particular plans
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sunday. And Erin woke up Friday morning and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she had a little bit of a sniffle. And I had gone to lunch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with a friend on Friday midday. And then shortly after lunch, I had a smidgen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of a sniffle. And then at about like 3.30, Erin says to me, you know, my throat kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of hurts. What? Uh-oh. My throat kind of hurts a little bit.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I said, does it now? She’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we look at each other and we both kind of say to each other at the same time,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we should probably test, shouldn’t we? And we were both like, but I don’t want to because I don’t want to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey scuttle our entire weekend that we have all these plans. And so sure enough, Aaron tests
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and she has COVID. I run upstairs to try to cancel the hotel room. That actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ends up was I had booked as non-refundable, but I threw myself at the mercy of the court and was like, look, my wife
⏹️ ▶️ Casey literally two minutes ago just realized she had COVID. I don’t think you want me parading around your hotel.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is there anything you can do? And as far as I know, they did indeed cancel it. By the time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I came back downstairs, Declan had tested positive. Michaela had somehow tested negative, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not entirely clear how, and then I tested and I tested positive. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we avoided it. This was February 10. We had gone on, you know, what we had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey called our lockdown. I don’t know if you, by many standards, it was not a lockdown, but, you know, for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey us, it was a lockdown. We had done that on March 13 of 2020.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we had made it a month and three days shy of three years before
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we finally got zapped. You would think that this was Disney related, but Disney was like three weeks ago. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know how we survived the state of Florida without coming
⏹️ ▶️ Casey home with a souvenir. By that I mean COVID.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Lyle Troxell Or a gunshot wound or an alligator bite. Steven Connelly Exactly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hurricane that just randomly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco came through. Lyle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Troxell Florida is just a very high risk area for lots of problems.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, it’s our Australia or something like that. But anyways, I think Australia is safer. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably Certainly, the people are better. But anyway point being yeah, so we survived
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Disney World and again, you know We had masked religiously on the way there and back once we were there was like whoo, who cares?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so we survived Disney. We did blow up all of our plans, you know immediately and we immediately
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cancelled everything Yes, as you should and as you know, we felt like we needed to do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that was a bummer, but all that said, I would much rather
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cancel the plans with friends here, even if the hotel room was non-refundable.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’d still rather have that go wrong than Disney World. But that being said, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fine. I had a moderate cold. Aaron had a fairly severe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Declan has been boinging off the walls the entire time. Mikaela
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doesn’t seem to be any worse in any way, shape, or form. So, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this has been a surprising bit of a nothing burger for us, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you never know, right? And I’ll make another call back to your daily Lex. You know, our mutual friend Lex Friedman
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had just gotten over COVID, and he had a real rough go of it. And, you know, the List family is vaccinated.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey To the best of my knowledge, Lex was vaccinated as well. You know, the list family I can tell you for fact is boosted
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I wonder although I think this is a very biologically shaky But I wonder if the reason Michaela never
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and we’ve tested her a couple times now has never tested positive and has only a sniffle At worst. I wonder
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if that’s because she got her most recent booster literally like two to two or three days before we left for Disney
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so that’s still maybe coursing through her blood again. That’s probably biologically shaky, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the best theory I’ve got I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco she got a most recent booster like, you know within a like three weeks ago ago, I think that’s a pretty—she’s at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco peak resistance at that point.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey So I think that’s actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty reasonable of an assumption to make.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I mean, who knows? It doesn’t really matter. I don’t know where it came from. I don’t really know who Patient Zero was.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The other theory we have is maybe Michaela brought it home and we were just none the wiser, and she already got over it by the time the rest
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of us started to fall. But it’s funny because— It’s very possible. The only reason we even tested in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey first place—well, slightly, it was Aaron saying, oh, I have a sore throat. But most of it was just because we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t want to be turds and spread this to all our friends if it ended up that it was COVID. And at the time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that we tested, none of us felt bad. Again, it was a sniffle for everyone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at worst. And then just a touch, just a tiniest little kiss of a sore throat for Erin. Now, it turns out that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey night, she had a terrible night’s sleep, had a real bad sinus headache or something along those lines. The next day,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she had a real bad cough. I had a bit of a cough for a day or two. I’ve been stuffy and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not stuffy and stuffy and not stuffy. So again, for me, it’s a moderate cold, for her, severe cold. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s been not that bad. And hey, you know, yay science, because I’m going to assume
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that the reason it hasn’t been that bad for really any of us is because we are indeed vaccinated. So, you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, I’m very happy for that. And I’m very thankful that, you know, we were able to last damn near three years
⏹️ ▶️ Casey before it happening. We’ll probably talk a little bit more about this in analog at the beginning of next month, and I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably get into more gory details about the whole thing. But I’m both a little sad that we finally fell,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But also in a way, I mean, not that we had been really limiting ourselves in any particular
⏹️ ▶️ Casey way for the most part, but we still weren’t sure. Were we going to have crummy luck like Lex, where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he was knocked the F out for a week from what I could tell? Or was it going to be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of a nothing burger? And it turns out it’s been mostly a nothing burger. And so now
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the specter of COVID, I mean, granted, you don’t want to get it again. I still don’t know if I’m going to have some
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sort of long COVID symptom, but given that I don’t have any particularly bad symptoms right now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I assume not. So I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that specter is now fizzling, which that’s not a word, is it? But you know what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean? It’s not as strong as it once was. It’s kind of fizzled. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s what I’m looking for. And so, hey, COVID brain, right? Oh, God.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But all kidding aside, I don’t want to get it again. I’m not going to be a complete moron and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just be like, well, I’m now invincible. But it is nice to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know that because of science and because we tried to do what we could to wait as long as we could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey before we put ourselves in a position to get it, I like to think, knock on wood, that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hopefully we’re just a few days away from being in the clear. So John, it’s your turn, baby. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John matter of time.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I’ll pass. I’ve listened to Lex’s podcast as well and hearing him, how bad it was for him. And also how,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, obviously it hasn’t been that long since he had it, it was a couple of weeks now, but like still feeling
⏹️ ▶️ John winded and like that kind of recovery. No, thanks. I don’t want any of that.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Pass on that
⏹️ ▶️ John entirely. And you know, and because of the new variants and everything like that, you know, it’s not as if
⏹️ ▶️ John getting it, like it’s like getting chicken pox and you’re, you know, you’re fine now. Nope. And I think COVID
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of like measles, but not to the same degree. like attacks your immune system
⏹️ ▶️ John so that after you get COVID, like subsequent infections, even with the same strain can be worse
⏹️ ▶️ John because it messes with your immunities, you know, instead of being
⏹️ ▶️ John like, okay, well now your body has seen it and you’re fine. And I, you know, again, no thanks. Don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ John have mild symptoms, I don’t want that thing running around. So, I mean, here’s the thing with it. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John like in the case of Michaela, maybe Michaela had it and you didn’t even notice. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey very much so. As far
⏹️ ▶️ John as I know, I have never had COVID, but I can’t be sure. I’m not testing every single day. Like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John I haven’t felt sick. And when I have felt sick, I have taken COVID tests. Like, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John my daughter is having the same thing. Oh, I’ve got a sore throat. I’ve got this, I’ve got that. We’ve used so many tests. She never has it.
⏹️ ▶️ John We’re just like, we have to use them anyway. We got all the free tests from the post officer, whatever. All right, so,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it’s annoying to every time you get a regular cold or a regular sniffle to test, but
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the only time I’ve ever been testing is when I have symptoms and they’ve all been negative. Maybe I got it and I was
⏹️ ▶️ John asymptomatic. Maybe I got it a year ago, but as far as I know, I haven’t had it. And I would like to avoid
⏹️ ▶️ John it because it is so like just random. Like it’s not, you know, it’s not like Lex is decrepit
⏹️ ▶️ John and aged, right? He’s similar age to you. He’s fit. He’s on his Peloton all the time. He’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a young fit person in good health and it knocked him on his butt and he’s still recovering from
⏹️ ▶️ John it. And Casey’s in the same situation and it hasn’t been that bad. And you just never know, right? And again,
⏹️ ▶️ John I also believe Lex has had all his vaccines, everything like that. And so I prefer not to play that lottery and I will
⏹️ ▶️ John just continue to hope that my luck, and that’s all it is, is luck holds out. I mean, I do, I mask everywhere,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the only place I go is the supermarket, the school. Any
⏹️ ▶️ John time I go to those places, I am wearing a mask, but come on, it’s just dumb
⏹️ ▶️ John luck. My mask is not fitted that well. I’m wearing KN95 instead of N95s,
⏹️ ▶️ John And I try to get them to seal around my gigantic nose, but it’s really
⏹️ ▶️ John difficult. And I try to not be in enclosed places for a long period of time, but it’s just,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, when I had friends over recently, we did that podcast, everybody tested before they came over and it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John the courteous thing to do. It’s like, if you’re having a big get together, you know, we didn’t mask when we were here, we all came together
⏹️ ▶️ John and had fun or whatever, but it’s like, hey, just take a test in the morning. And it’s, you know, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John better safe than sorry. And that’s the most frustrating thing about it now, now that so few people are masking, fewer and fewer
⏹️ ▶️ John as you get farther into certain geographic areas. It’s so hard to know where it even came
⏹️ ▶️ John from. Or if you wanna like say, did I do something, did I put myself at more risk
⏹️ ▶️ John than I thought I was putting? And like in Casey’s case, you just have no idea. You don’t have any idea. It’s not,
⏹️ ▶️ John again, it’s not even connectable to your Disney vacation. Like it’s just, this stuff is so contagious that it could have been
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you standing in line at the drugstore for an extra five minutes and the person next to you had it
⏹️ ▶️ John and you were wearing a mask, but it seeped through anyway. And it’s just, you never know, but like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John we all, we all have our own risk profiles and we decided to do or not do whatever we want. But
⏹️ ▶️ John these people have had COVID multiple times and it’s like worse than each subsequent time. I, that is like the type of
⏹️ ▶️ John thing I want to avoid, right? You know, there’s no way to entirely avoid getting in unless you never have
⏹️ ▶️ John contact with anybody. Uh, and I’m not living that way, but I still prefer not
⏹️ ▶️ John to get it. So, uh, and this is, this is not a contest, uh, and I’m not winning by not getting
⏹️ ▶️ John it because for all I know I already had it, but I’m gonna continue to try to not get it. As I assume both of
⏹️ ▶️ John you will too, because it sucks. Yeah, no,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey absolutely. No, I 1000% agree. And the chat room is pointing out, and to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the best of my knowledge, they’re correct, that with each subsequent infection, you have more and more and more of a risk for long
⏹️ ▶️ Casey COVID. And so that in and of itself is reason to avoid doing anything
⏹️ ▶️ Casey particularly stupid or risky. So yeah, I mean, I don’t plan to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be even dumber than maybe I was or wasn’t, who knows, but I don’t plan
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be even more, I don’t know, aggressive for lack of a better word.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I am glad because I mean, and maybe this was just a Casey thing, maybe not, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey particularly before Michaela could get her vaccination, and if you recall, she just turned five
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a few weeks ago, and up until what, like six months ago,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was not possible for an under five-year-old to get vaccinated. And so for the longest
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time, you know, we felt like there was nothing we could do. And it was out of our hands. Like there was nothing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we could do to get her vaccinated. There was no vaccine to give her. And I lived in this just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey abject fear of, oh my gosh, what if this virus somehow gets into the family before
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she has had any modicum of protection and how terrible
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that could be. Now, granted, you know, generally speaking, the younger you are, the easier it is for you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And certainly in our family, that seems to be the case for the most part. But what if it entered
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the house and Michaela had not yet been vaccinated? And what if he had just knocked her out? And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey again, I lived in this abject fear of it. And so I am relieved to know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it has run through the house. And at least this time,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey none of us in the grand scheme of things seemed too worse for wear. You know, it seemed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like it was mostly just a really crappy cold. Now, who knows if there’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time two or three or four, which I would assume that this isn’t just going to go away suddenly,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that there will probably at some point be a time two for each of us and so on and so forth. You know, hopefully it won’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be worse. Hopefully it won’t lead to long COVID. But I don’t know, in a way it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey weird relief that this thing that I cowered in fear over, for better or for worse,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it has finally arrived and we seem okay. And I think that’s, or at least the way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m attributing this, whether it’s right or not, who really knows, there’s no way to tell, but the way I’m attributing this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is because we did what we thought we should and could, and we got ourselves as vaccinated as we possibly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey could. And I stand by that decision. I’m glad I made that decision. I encourage listeners to do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that. If you haven’t gotten your most recent booster or what have you, please go ahead and do so.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cause how can it hurt? How could it hurt? And so, yep, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the situation around here. But I’m hopeful that in the next few days, I mean, I already feel like, and again, this was just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this past Friday, I’m recording on a Wednesday. It started, I feel at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this point that I’m at like 90% and it’s been less than a week. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we’ve been very, very lucky with it. and hopefully by a week’s time,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whether or not we’re testing positive or negative, I’m just saying the way I feel, hopefully after a week
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ll be basically right as rain. And again, this is in stark comparison to Lex, who seemed to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be wrecked for three or four days, lost his taste after like day four or five for a couple of days.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey He seemed to have a real bad go of it. And just like you said, John, I believe Lex is a year older than Marco and me, if memory
⏹️ ▶️ Casey serves, but he exercises constantly and you know, it is of good health, like you had said, it’s just you can have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey crappy luck. And Lex unfortunately had crappy luck. And his team also lost in the Super Bowl,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so he’s had a double dose of crappy luck, but that’s neither here nor there.
⏹️ ▶️ John He did finally test negative in time for his Super Bowl party though, because he got like two weeks before,
⏹️ ▶️ John a week and a half before the Super Bowl, and he was worried that he wasn’t gonna be able to have a Super Bowl party, as if he was still testing positive,
⏹️ ▶️ John but he was tested negative a few days before,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey and then had everybody over.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s kind of disappointing that it doesn’t work like chickenpox does, you’re like, oh, this thing I was dreading and now I
⏹️ ▶️ John finally got it over with. But you haven’t really. Like it is, in fact, it has put you in a slightly worse situation than you were
⏹️ ▶️ John before for subsequent infections. So it’s not like, oh, that’s a relief. I got it over with and it was okay. Not really
⏹️ ▶️ John much really. I mean, it’s glad that it wasn’t bad. But it’s not as if now you don’t have to worry about it anymore. In fact,
⏹️ ▶️ John you have to worry about it now ever so slightly more than you did before, because subsequent infections are worse. So it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just really sucks. And you know, presumably, there’ll be new vaccines for whatever the new variants are. I just,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, the vaccines are just lagging behind the variants by a substantial amount. When when I got the latest vaccine,
⏹️ ▶️ John the variant that protected against was was was prominent. So it’s great thumbs up. But
⏹️ ▶️ John since that vaccine, there’s that that variant is gone. And like five new ones have come and gone and
⏹️ ▶️ John the vaccine is not as helpful against those. And so it’s almost like you wish there was a new vaccine every
⏹️ ▶️ John month, but that would be a little bit much and science can’t do that. So I’m still holding out hope for, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, superior vaccine research that can protect against future variants in a