549: Unauthorized Trash Can
24 Aug 2023Ubiquiti security cameras, driving a box truck, and some surprise “gifts”.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show:
- Marco’s box truck
- 🗣️ New ATP Membership Survey 🗣️
(This is for everyone, not just members) - 🗣️ New member special: ATP Tier List: Every iMac 🗣️
- Follow-up:
- iMac Tier List
- Intel Core vs. Core 2 ∆s (via Michael Gabriel)
- Marco claims vindication
- Core Duo Geekbench 32-bit: 2,327
- Core 2 Duo Geekbench 32-bit: 2,423 (4% faster), 64-bit: 2,739 (17% faster)
- How much faster is “2 Duo” than “Duo”?
- 21” was (eventually) Retina, writes Max Wilkie
- More text editors
- Pronouncing “Niléane” (and more)
- Apple can’t design for humans
- Photo editing on the Mac (via Ezekiel Elin)
- (•••)
- ⌘ ⏎
- Dumb TV workarounds (also via Ezekiel Elin)
- Apple, TV+, Disney+, and Games (via Aaron Thomas)
- iMac Tier List
- Marco’s review of Ubiquiti Security Cameras
#askatp:- How do we handle kid e-mail addresses? (via Greg)
- What are our expectations for subscription apps? (via Michael)
- How do we prevent losing access to our password managers? (via Denis Čapkovič)
- Post-show:
- Marco’s latest gift shipment to Casey
- Marco’s latest gift shipment to John
Sponsored by:
- Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code ATP.
Become a member for ad-free episodes and our early-release, unedited “bootleg” feed!
Chapters
- Visual Preflight
- Driving a box truck
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- Membership survey
- Membership survey follow-up
- iMac Tier List
- iMac Tier List follow-up (yup)
- CotEditor & Chime
- Pronouncing names (Niléane)
- Apple Park trash cans
- External Photos.app editors
- Aggressively-smart TVs
- TV+, Disney+, and games
- Become a member
- Ubiquiti cameras, UniFi Protect
- Become a member (again!)
- #askatp: Kid email addresses
- #askatp: Subscription expectations
- #askatp: Password-mgr. recovery
- Ending theme
- Casey’s gift 🖼️
- John’s gift 🖼️
Visual Preflight
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now everything is suspect at this point. I don’t even know what’s
⏹️ ▶️ John You know what else is suspect? We went live before we did pre-flight. So now we’re going to do a visual pre-flight for the bootleg members. Are you ready?
⏹️ ▶️ John A visual pre-flight? Why can’t we do an audio pre-flight? Everyone, please look at the document.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Oh my god. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know if I have you. Okay. Yes, carry on. All right. So
⏹️ ▶️ John first we’re going to do this part.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Why can’t we do this verbally?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Why is this a problem?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because the pre-flight is secret. Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John that this part is not going to take a long time, and I hope so. He’s full of it. Because I want this part to be very close to
⏹️ ▶️ John the front of the program, and I would like Casey to throw to me for this part so I can try to get it in and out quick.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey our regular… Wait,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stop. Why don’t we reverse those? Why are we not reversing these?
⏹️ ▶️ John this, because this leads into this.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey No, no, no, slow down.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m saying, why don’t we do the… I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John say it. Oh, I asked Marco about that while you were off rebooting. That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does not belong before the modem sound.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and Marco thinks this order is better and he said he’ll be short. Okay. Anyway, we had this discussion without you, Casey.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you just got to be here for the whole meeting, you’ll get it. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey kiss my ass, John. God bless.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right. So then we got all this stuff here. Our usual stuff. Notice
⏹️ ▶️ John there is a next week divider. So we’re not actually going to do all of it. Then all the way down here.
⏹️ ▶️ John We have this. This is the worst content we ever made. So here we have this from
⏹️ ▶️ John Marco. All right. And he can take all the time he wants with that because the only thing you have after it is this for me, which
⏹️ ▶️ John actually isn’t that along. And if we want to skip it again, it’s fine. And then we have this.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Where’s the this?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, we went back north.
⏹️ ▶️ John scrolled up. I scrolled
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey up. We went back north.
⏹️ ▶️ John If we have to skip this thing for me again, it’s fine, because again, it’ll keep. And then we scroll up, and then we have this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Holy crap. I think I have whiplash. Oh, gosh.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Alright, this is what the people tune in for. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that is just the
⏹️ ▶️ John main part was just the beginning part and sorting this stuff out or whatever. And actually, I would have done more pre-flight stuff if we were
⏹️ ▶️ John actually off the air, but we aren’t so.
Driving a box truck
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I drove a box truck.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Cool. Was it a cardboard box that you fashioned into a truck, or was it actually a truck
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the shape of a box?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was not that interesting. It was a budget moving truck.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Excellent. And the excuse for that was to relocate belongings, I presume?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes. Typically you use moving trucks to move objects. And that was indeed the use here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are moving. We are selling a house. So we’re moving out of it and moving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco our stuff to a new house and it is a big ordeal that I’ll be going through
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for some time. This was stage one. This wasn’t like, you know, everything because apparently—this is the first time we are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco selling a house. The process of selling a house first involves you taking like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco three-quarters of your stuff out of it to stage it to make it look like a total superhuman lives
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there who doesn’t live the way anybody lives. So stage one is like, get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rid of much of your stuff. And we’ll get to more of that later in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco show, I think. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey anyway. Yes, yes we will.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But the gist of it is, we rented a budget truck to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco move a whole bunch of stuff into a storage unit temporarily. And this is all, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve never used a storage unit before. That’s new to me. The last time I drove a rental truck like this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I drove a U-Haul when I moved to Pittsburgh in 2004, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not since then, as far as I know. I can tell you that the rental truck industry
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has actually not seemingly changed that much since 2004. The truck
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back then, just a regular U-Haul, like a 10 or 12 foot truck, not like a separate
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trailer or anything, just regular 12 foot box truck. Back then, it was very difficult
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because not only was the truck itself, horrendous thing that barely moved but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back then this was this was in the summer it didn’t have air conditioning it didn’t even have any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of input for the radio so what I did to amuse myself on and I had to drive it on like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a four-hour drive so what I what I did to amuse myself was I put my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco powerbook g4 on the passenger seat just open
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and just blasted music for my tunes as loud as it would go from those high quality speakers yeah on the built-in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco speakers on the PowerBook G4. Although to be honest, I, man, so when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was done with that computer, I had to sell it to fund my Core Duo MacBook, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I wish I didn’t sell it because it, I had it, it was in pristine condition, it was my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first Mac, I wish I still had it today. I mean, it couldn’t have worked.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, maybe I should send you some junk from my house because I have that same Mac and it’s in pristine condition. Well, kind of pristine.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I upgraded the hard drive on it myself, so there may be a little bit of entry damage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco damage. I want to go shit that later, but anyway, so the new moving truck
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I that I rented this week. It is significantly upgraded in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sense that they now come with air conditioning. They still lack power
⏹️ ▶️ Marco locks and power windows, which basically means well, you just you just can’t roll down the right side window
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because you can’t reach it, you know, and the power lack of power locks is is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is certainly interesting. Like when you have to like, you know, go in and get gas like better remember to lock it you know then you gotta
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like lock it by putting a key in it and turning it there’s not even like a key fob like with a remote you have to actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco insert the key into the door and turn it to lock it um which is not difficult it’s just something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco i haven’t had to do in a very long time because you know key fobs have been a thing for quite some time now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my favorite thing about driving this box truck is that it had a rear view mirror
⏹️ ▶️ Marco i don’t entirely know why because it was looking at the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yes it’s just looking at the back of of the passenger compartment, the solid wall behind me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I don’t know why it had a rear view mirror, but it did. The radio,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still today, had no inputs, no cassette deck, it was just a radio.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It had like a menu button, but I went into the, like there’s no, I was like, oh, maybe they snuck some Bluetooth in here. Nope, no Bluetooth,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nothing. There was a USB port in the dash, but it was dead. only entertainment
⏹️ ▶️ Marco methods I wasn’t, I didn’t, I wasn’t prepared. Like, you know, if I, if I had advanced notice that I was gonna be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing this by a long way and I actually planned for it, I would have gotten like a vent mount for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my phone and maybe an FM transmitter for the radio. Um, I had neither of those things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I just put the phone in the cup holder and, you know, had, you know, the, the wonderful experience of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the trying to like echo the sound out of the cup holder. So it amplifies, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ve all done this, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Why not use like a single air pod or something?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve always been told that like you shouldn’t wear headphones while driving and some people even say it’s illegal. I’m not sure if that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco true or where that might be true but you know I didn’t want you know what I’m driving this giant vehicle I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco familiar with I didn’t want to like have any risk of not hearing a horn or something like that you know as I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco accidentally merge into somebody. The reason I brought this to the show is briefly, you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first of all just to mention you know trucks are turns out trucks are hard. Driving
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a truck is hard it was no easier than it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back in 2004 it just had air conditioning this time it also smelled no better of course
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s like the smell of this it was it’s it’s you’ve all smelled this before it’s a smell of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a really old car that hasn’t been cleaned that well throughout its life
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a car it’s hard to describe it’s it’s like the smell like old car upholstery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s kind of a combination it’s like it’s not smoke per se but it’s like fast food
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and farts like I don’t know it’s weird it but you and like I just stunk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that the rest of the day like I did watch all those clothes like everything is right up when I was done
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway driving a truck is hard and and one of the things that makes driving a truck hard is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that there’s a lot of roads that trucks aren’t allowed on or won’t fit on and in New York
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around here there’s tons of parkways and New York parkways don’t allow trucks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the way to get almost anywhere involves a parkway at some point.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I was searching before, you know, one of the key advances that I’ve had since 2004 is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now we have cell phones. You know, instead of having my power book on the seat now I have my phone in the cup holder
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to play music that way, which sounds about as good. But now we have GPS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps and that’s great because to try to get from anywhere in the New York metro area to anywhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else to New York metro area without GPS apps that are somewhat traffic aware is not fun.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I knew from experience driving the RV a couple years ago, I talked about it on the show,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I knew I can’t just use Waze or Apple Maps or Google Maps because they don’t have any options as far
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as I can tell to only ride on roads that trucks are allowed on. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not to ride on any New York parkways and things like that. GPS apps seem to not cover this well. At
⏹️ ▶️ Marco least all the mainstream apps. I looked in Google Maps, I looked in Apple Maps, loads and ways. None of them seem, unless,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if anybody knows, please write in. I couldn’t find any options to give me like a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco truck allowed route in any of the mainstream apps.
⏹️ ▶️ John You should find out what apps the truckers use because surely it’s useful knowledge to them, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, so I asked, I guess, Mr. Budget, the guy at the budget pickup place,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I asked Mr. Budget, do you know of any GPS apps on the phone that will give me a truck
⏹️ ▶️ Marco route? And he suggested this app called truck map great so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I download truck map this these between truck map and the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other app I try which you get you in a second this was a series of total failures of app review
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the point where if you’ve ever been rejected by app review this is gonna make you mad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey oh great I’m so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco excited so so truck map and you know it seemed to have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of use a lot of ratings for no reason that I could that I could tell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it requires your phone number just to just to use the app at all. I don’t know why I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had to give my phone number to do anything. There is no obvious functionality that seems to justify
⏹️ ▶️ Marco needing a phone number but I had to give it a verified like it verified it with the SMS and everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco verified a phone number. Okay so they’re gonna spam me forever. Great thanks a lot. So I drove from the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the the budget pickup place back to house number one using truck map
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and this was a wonderful app in terms of it did pick truck safe routes except
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it would say for instance you know turn right onto whatever in four miles
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then never say it again nice so as you’re approaching
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the turn that it told you about five minutes ago it doesn’t tell you turn right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it does it will never tell you that direction again. So you just have to be watching it, I guess,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is not super safe, especially in a truck that you’ve never driven and you aren’t a
⏹️ ▶️ John truck driver. I’ve recently switched to not having the voice on, like this past year I haven’t had the voice on on my GPS,
⏹️ ▶️ John and obviously that doesn’t tell you ever to turn and it’s a different style of driving, but it’s the same type
⏹️ ▶️ John of thing. You say, okay, I have to turn right coming up in like three miles and you mostly just like, I glanced back
⏹️ ▶️ John at it to see that I am at where I think I’m at, but it never speaks to you. Did it not show you like the road
⏹️ ▶️ John and like where you are relative to it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did but it was in a cup holder way down
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John there not in my field of view anywhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of need the voice to think so
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway well I mean you what you need to know is the name of the road and you know back in the day we didn’t have GPS and we just drive by
⏹️ ▶️ John looking at a hagstrom and then you get in the car and go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know but now I’m spoiled okay so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey exactly so wait so really quick since we’re since we’ve distracted you from this story that you promised was going to be short and is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nothing of the matter what so what are the parkways nearby so it’s sawmill the Hutch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what other ones are in your northern
⏹️ ▶️ Marco state Southern State. Yeah, the Cross County, the Cross Island.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So none of those are permissible for your budget
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Basically, there are, like to get from Westchester to Long Island, I would normally go on at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco least two and possibly up to four parkways. So anyway, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco truck map that require my phone number, bad. Very, very bad. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then I was, so when I was, after I had loaded the truck and I was about to do like the big drive, the big like, you know, two and a half hour
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I thought, alright, before I start this giant drive, let me get a better app. So I looked around the App Store
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the one that seemed like the more popular one was called Trucker Path.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I thought, great. This didn’t tell me, you know, before downloading that, oh, it says it does truck
⏹️ ▶️ Marco GPS, but what it actually does is regular GPS and only does truck paths
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you have an in-app purchase. Okay, well, fine, whatever. The purchase
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get the truck route- Is hundreds of dollars. Yeah, it prominently advertised it was $20
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a month. The UI had the big $20 a month price So you go hit subscribe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you start the free trial. Thank God Check the free trial and if you don’t look too closely you might miss the fact
⏹️ ▶️ Marco build annually. Yes build annually It’s actually a $250 annual subscription
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that would start in one week
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thank God so I’d say I did finally I did cancel it before the week was up Thank God. I made it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as soon as I saw that. I’m like, Oh, add a note to reminders right now. Like this. And anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that my, my favorite part. So we have misleading pricing in the purchase screen. Then after
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the in-app purchase is completed. So after you have either purchased it or sign up for the trial. So you’re in now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it puts up a modal screen that you cannot pass until you give them an email address that it verifies.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Where is app review on this app review gives us so much crap for such little things in like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the apps. Meanwhile, here’s this app that’s used by what appear to be hundreds of thousands of people. It has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a misleading IAP pricing screen, pretty severely misleading. And then after the IAP, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forces you to give an email address with no way to proceed until you do. So and by that point, you’re committed. You’ve already purchased
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. But you can’t actually use your purchase until you give them an email address. Where is App
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Review? Is anybody at App Review? Does anybody work there?
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway. Those screens don’t appear when it’s in App Review.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That wouldn’t surprise me
⏹️ ▶️ John actually. Yeah. It’s common practice, Marco. I don’t know why you don’t do it. And load this SDK into your app and it will detect when it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John in an app review testing center and it will disable all those screens.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So anyway, this is the app that I was taking the big drive with. So I think I’m like, I can’t be worse than truck map, you know, cause
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I need, I need these voice directions to work cause I can’t look at my phone constantly in a cup holder. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I get on the road with this app. Now it had told me the first direction was whatever direction the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco truck was currently pointed in, you know, turn right on the next street. Well, when I left my
⏹️ ▶️ Marco driveway, I went the other way because the way it was telling me to go would have been down a very steep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hill that I was not gonna take an unknown old truck on. So I went the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco other direction out the block. It’s like half a block out of the way. I’m getting on the road, you know, I saw what highway it was taking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me to, so I was kind of just navigating myself to the highway and I realized it hasn’t told me anything recently. Huh, what’s going on? And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I looked down at the cup holder phone and it is still showing the first direction
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I didn’t take. Oh gosh. It never rerouted? It never rerouted and never moved on.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cool. So it’s saying turn right on street that’s like that’s now at this point like 10 miles behind me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m on the highway at this point and I’m like, oh my god, I don’t know where to go unless I just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keep following the line, which I can’t keep looking at in the cup holder. I’m stuck. So I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco eventually had to like pull off into one of those gas station things that’s like attached to the highway. Not a rest stop. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, in New York you don’t have room for that. It’s like these basically a gas station where the driveways just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are the highway. It’s right, you know, a little bit off the highway by about 10 feet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I had to pull into one of those where the truck would actually fit and, uh, and, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reset the app to, you know, take it out, force, quit it, go back in. There’s a whole thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Eventually at once I did that and then I followed its directions perfectly, then trucker path
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worked. So in case you want to pay $250 a year that’s the quality app that you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get and so for this in many reasons driving a truck is hard so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and even like the truck safe routes that you have to take are the worst
⏹️ ▶️ Marco routes to get to anywhere you want to be because you can only like because you know when you are in here like a third
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or half of the highways you aren’t allowed to take so you’re only on like the most crowded
⏹️ ▶️ Marco highways that are full of trucks if you’re a truck driver in the New York metro area I salute you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was it’s not easy and you know people are like zipping all around me like being real jerks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it was You have to take all these like indirect routes detour you got to take
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of course You know merging is really hard There’s all these like right side merges you have to do which is super not easy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in especially in these crappy trucks with no visibility There are so many places like I really had to go to the bathroom
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But a lot of like a lot of the places that you are That’s that it’s easy to stop like these little like side rest
⏹️ ▶️ Marco area things a lot of them in this area are too small for trucks and therefore don’t allow trucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like I passed the Long Island welcome center, which is funny. Cause it’s in like the middle of Long Island. Um, and there’s no trucks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, cause it’s like a little tiny lot. Like, so yeah, driving a truck is hard. If you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are driving, please, first of all, be nice to truck drivers, give them a break, let them in,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco et cetera. Like be, be nice. Driving a truck is difficult. Um, and second of all,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you see a U-Haul or a budget or other kind like rental truck on the road
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stay far away from it because chances are they can’t see you also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those people have probably never driven a truck before anyway this is this is a right market for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco disruption make this easier with with GPS apps or like Apple Maps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Google Maps Waze add a truck option I frankly I’m shocked I figured at least Waze
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would but I couldn’t find anything like that in any of these apps.
⏹️ ▶️ John If Apple was based in New York it would know about about the parkways, but they’re not. So it doesn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not sure that they would. I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t know if that’s really true because
⏹️ ▶️ John they have avoid tolls like they are. Every app has avoid tolls. Yeah, but that’s table stakes. That’s why I know. Well, is it because
⏹️ ▶️ John they have toll roads in California?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John you’re right.
⏹️ ▶️ John Actually, I don’t even know if they have toll roads in California. If you live in California, please don’t tell me you don’t have toll roads.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t want to know. Have fun paying your $800 a year for your LLC as opposed to the bargain $500 that I pay. Yeah, right.
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Membership survey
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, you’ve been doing a bunch of homework, which I think is okay now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We really never renegotiated that, but you’ve been doing a bunch of homework. Tell me about this, please.
⏹️ ▶️ John So last episode, we talked in the after show about membership and the ad landscape and
⏹️ ▶️ John podcasts and we asked for feedback. We got tons of feedback thanks to everybody who sent us feedback. But as we mentioned
⏹️ ▶️ John on the last episode, we also wanted to try to get like more structured feedback and hopefully for many more people
⏹️ ▶️ John because we got a lot of feedback, But you know, people who choose to email us or to data or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John are small in number compared to the vast number of listeners. So as we said, we would we have a survey
⏹️ ▶️ John for people to fill out the survey is for every single person who can hear my voice doesn’t matter what your membership
⏹️ ▶️ John status is, or was or anything. If you’re a listener to this program, we want you to fill out the survey, try to make it short.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s a couple different paths through it depending on what your answers are. But I don’t think the longest path I think
⏹️ ▶️ John is 10 questions or fewer, maybe they’re all multiple choice except for the optional one. So if you
⏹️ ▶️ John just want to click a bunch of buttons and don’t want to fill in any text fields, that’s fine. If you do want to enter stuff in text fields, there are a couple of questions like
⏹️ ▶️ John that. The URL is the same as always, atp.fm slash survey.
⏹️ ▶️ John And we will link it in the show notes. That’s where you want to go. Hopefully we’ll get enough responses
⏹️ ▶️ John that this is the only time we’ll need to mention it. But if not enough people respond for us to feel like we have a significant
⏹️ ▶️ John sample, we’ll mention it next week.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed. So yeah, just to repeat, whether or not you’re a member, if you’re a current member, a lapsed member,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a Never member, all of you are welcome to please check it out. It would help us to understand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what you folks want from us and what’s best for membership and so on. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is very quick. I have taken every permutation of this, both in the sense of every draft and also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have clicked my way, choose your own adventure style, to every permutation of the final version. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really, it should only take you a couple of minutes. It’s very, very quick. So please check it out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, the key things that are really worth hearing about, And we got a lot of this from the email, but this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a larger, more structured way to get it. The key thing that we wanna know is, basically, what’s important to you and what’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not? That’s really the major conclusions here. Like, as we can guess, we can say, oh, maybe we should do more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco X, or maybe we should adjust Y, but it’s hard for us to know what’s important to a lot of people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and what’s not important to a lot of people, so anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s dangerous to rely on the people who message us, because their opinions are certainly valid, but we don’t know if they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John representative, you know what I mean? Because the people who respond to us on the show depends a lot on what we say on the show.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if we say something on the show, we’ll get responses that are related to what we said, but don’t necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ John reflect what everyone is thinking. You know, like if we talk a lot about like white miso paste,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re not gonna get a lot of responses about garlic because people are gonna be like, oh, here’s what’s good about miso paste. Here’s what’s bad about miso
⏹️ ▶️ John paste, right? It’s like, I guess our audience loves miso paste and hates garlic. You can’t make that conclusion because we talked about white miso paste.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why am I thinking of this? Because I was cleaning out the fridge. Anyway, so that’s why we want to do a survey. We hope just everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John takes a survey, like whoever you are, click, click, click, click, click, 10 questions, you’ll be done. Please take it.
Membership survey follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ John Can we do some follow up about the survey, please? Right now? Yes. The one we just announced. Hasn’t people
⏹️ ▶️ John haven’t even filled it out yet?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, some people in the chat room are filling it out and somebody who shall remain nameless had the same complaint
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that Marco and I did. Would you like to address this? This person said the none of these options,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey none of these options option should be at the bottom.
⏹️ ▶️ John I believe in will HBR in the chat room. I believe that person can figure it out on his own while I say
⏹️ ▶️ John something else about the survey. So the clock starts seven seconds from now. So will HBR. Tell me
⏹️ ▶️ John why it’s not at the bottom. OK, the one thing I will say about the survey is there is one question that
⏹️ ▶️ John says, which one of these things on its own would make you become an ATP member? Obviously, you don’t see this if
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re already a member. But people who aren’t members, they get this question presented. And I tried to bold and italic
⏹️ ▶️ John the important part, which is, which one of these things on its own? And they’re check boxes, so you can select multiple.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s like, if we give you a million dollars, if we show you a cute puppy, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Are those options on the table?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well, so you check the box if one of those line items all
⏹️ ▶️ John by itself with nothing else would convince you to become a member. So don’t check three of them and say, yeah, if you did these three,
⏹️ ▶️ John I would become a member. I tried to word it as clearly as I could. We’re trying to condense it so there aren’t a million questions. So there’s just that
⏹️ ▶️ John one question, but the part that’s in bold and italic, which part on its own would
⏹️ ▶️ John make you become a member? Anyway, checking back in with Will HBR from the chat
⏹️ ▶️ John room, could not work it out on his own. Anyone else in the chat room? Going once, going twice,
⏹️ ▶️ John the options are randomized because we don’t want people to be influenced by the
⏹️ ▶️ John order that we put the multiple options. Google Forms has a way that says, hey, do you want me to randomize these options?
⏹️ ▶️ John But of course, it also randomizes the none of the above. So I apologize for none of the above being mixed in, but I felt it was more
⏹️ ▶️ John important to randomize the options so we didn’t bias people. So every time you get one of those questions with multiple options,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re in a random order for you. I apologize for none of the above sometimes being in the middle.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, thank you for that.
iMac Tier List
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then finally, in our announcement section, we have a new member special.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we had an incredible, uh, fortuitous bit of timing wherein
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we totally decided on purpose, and it definitely was not accidental, uh, to rank, or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do a tier list of every iMac. And, uh, we have this member special that was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey released, I think, yesterday as we record. It is available to any, any current member. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey any future member. That’s true. Thank you. Thank you for that clarification. So yeah, I encourage you to check it out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It started with John and I getting in a fight, so you know it’ll be good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s shocking that, you know, the three of us don’t always agree on everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing. Mm-hmm. All right.
iMac Tier List follow-up (yup)
⏹️ ▶️ Casey With that in mind, let’s start with some follow-up and let me check my notes. Flip, flip, flip. Oh, we have notes and follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about the iMac tier list. Spoiler alert if you haven’t listened yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So the key thing here is that there was a point in the iMac tier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco list where we had to discuss the 2006 when they first went to Intel. The first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco batch of Intel Macs had the Core Duo CPUs. And then within a fairly short time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think like seven or eight months, they upgraded to the Core 2 Duo. In this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part of the show, I’ll spoil it for people here briefly, in this part of the show,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco John expressed feelings that the Core 2 Duo was significantly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better than the Core Duo and Casey and I had basically said it was a little better, it wasn’t a ton better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so we have some follow-up to that effect.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. So Michael Gabriel writes, The Core used the 32-bit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mobile-only Yona CPUs, which is a descendant of the Pentium N. Pentium
⏹️ ▶️ Marco M! Yeah, M! That’s the important one! The Pentium M totally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco flipped Intel on its head. It was way better than the dumb NetBurst stuff they were making before
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, and that’s basically what saved their CPU business.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then the Core 2 marked the transition of Intel desktop from NetBurst, as you mentioned, which is a Pentium 4 in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey D, scaling up Yona for desktops and adding 64-bit to it. The x86-64 migration meant more than,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey greater than four gigs of memory. AMD used 64-bit to add registers, improve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey floating point and vector processing, et cetera. Intel was forced to follow. Big performance boost was available
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to 64-bit software on x86, all unavailable to Core 1 Max, the only non-64-bit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes, and that all sounds really good. Yes, Core 2 was 64-bit and Core was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not. But see, to me, this was a kind of marketing jujitsu here. A lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of people thought, a lot of people kind of missed the word Duo, and they thought Core
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Duo after Core 2 Duo came out, they assumed Core Duo only had one core, and the Core 2
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Duos were dual core, and that was not the case. Core 2 Duo sounds like it could be twice as good as Core
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Duo. It wasn’t. And in fact, you can go, fortunately, the wonderful site EveryMac, which I’m sure all of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco us are familiar with Apple nerds. Every Mac has benchmark histories for all these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Macs they list. And so we can see now modern version of Geekbench, modern versions of Geekbench are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 64-bit only, so they were never run on this computer. But you can go look at like the old Geekbench 2
⏹️ ▶️ Marco 32-bit scores and you can see actually the Core
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Duo versus Core 2 Duo at the same clock speed, the Core 2
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Duo is only about 4% faster in Geekbench. They both have the same max
⏹️ ▶️ Marco RAM of 2 gigs, because you know this is back when when the standard amount of RAM was like 512,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so the idea that they would support more than 4 gigs of memory in theory, that’s great but they didn’t need it yet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the motherboards couldn’t support that anyway. So EveryMac actually published a whole article, how much faster
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the Core 2 Duo than the Core Duo, and they said quote, the Core 2 Duo processor design
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is modestly more efficient than the core duo processor that it replaced. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they even quoted a section of a Macworld review that has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco since now at 404s, it’s because it’s an ancient URL. Macworld ran their speed benchmark
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they said the core duo scored 210, the core 2 duo scored 232,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so 10% faster, but that was at an 8% faster clock speed too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So when you actually compare the Core 2 Duo to the Core Duo, yes, 64-bit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco software compatibility mattered way, way, way down the line, but at the time they were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco released, this was not a huge difference. It was like a spec bump, basically.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was between 5 and 10% faster on most things, and much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the speed increase was due to the fact that the Core 2 Duo, because it was newer, it was available
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in higher clock speeds you know, eventually. So that was more relevant
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the performance gains than the actual core design. In other words,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was right. Your complaint
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco complaint was that, I was
⏹️ ▶️ John saying like the core two duo is way better because you’d feel so bad getting the core duo, the only 32
⏹️ ▶️ John bit Intel max, if less than a year later you get a core two duo which is 64 bit. I think that’s a big deal.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not because Mac OS X or something is suddenly gonna drop 32 bit support because that happened way later. But because,
⏹️ ▶️ John as Michael Rodan just told us, software that’s recompiled in 64-bit goes way faster.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t even know if these benchmarks were compiled for 64-bit for the Core 2 Duo. That’s the whole point,
⏹️ ▶️ John that it’s not just like, oh, it’s 64-bit so you can get bigger integers or whatever. It’s substantially changed architecture.
⏹️ ▶️ John x86-64 is different, more registers. Oh yeah. Better vector things, right? But I don’t know if the benchmarks you’re citing
⏹️ ▶️ John are even in 64-bit. But even if they are, comparing clock for clock, who cares? The whole point is you feel bad because you
⏹️ ▶️ John got the iMac with the bad processor. when you get the Core 2 Duo, you don’t care that the other one is,
⏹️ ▶️ John even if it was equally fast clock for clock, if yours is clock tire, the whole point is you bought a loser machine, less than
⏹️ ▶️ John a year later, a much better one came out for basically the same price. And you were, you’re stuck in this little
⏹️ ▶️ John area all by yourself with 32 bit. I still say the Core Duo is much worse.
⏹️ ▶️ John I even forgotten about the 64 bit things. Oh, and by the way, that same article you cited from every Mac,
⏹️ ▶️ John the very last line of the article is ultimately 10 to 20% faster may not be quite as high as Apple’s grandiose
⏹️ ▶️ John claims, but still substantial nevertheless. So you just quoted the line that said, modestly more efficient,
⏹️ ▶️ John and they say substantial nevertheless, 10 to 20%. Core 2 Duo, you wanted that one, not the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, but see to me, it’s a similar level of performance increase as going from M1 to M2. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fact is like the M1 is really, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John using the M1 now.
⏹️ ▶️ John But we don’t know it’s the same performance increase because we don’t know if these benchmarks were running 64-bit on the Core 2 Duo. If they weren’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not a fair or representative comparison because things went 64-bit pretty fast. You know why? Literally
⏹️ ▶️ John the only 32-bit Intel’s ever made everything else was 64-bit Intel and so software was recomposing
⏹️ ▶️ John So it in bit Intel and it got faster. I bet this benchmark did too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah Anyway, I would say that my point stands and Casey I believe agrees like the core
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do. Oh, yes, it was better But it wasn’t massively better.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, but I my point still stands if you got the core duo and then seven months later Your friend got the core to
⏹️ ▶️ John do. Oh, you felt like you got the loser Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, nobody cared except you know
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know. I know people who live through it. Marco says he loved his corduroy and thought it was great but maybe he’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John like he really loved it really loved his Saturn too so and his Sega.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What was your memoir John? And no not everyone cares but me but I really care something like that I butchered
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it but it’s something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco close you’re close nobody else cares about me but I do care
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey there it is. I don’t think it was
⏹️ ▶️ John a was it a memoir or was it like an autobiography? I didn’t make up the joke
⏹️ ▶️ John art so I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah we need Merlin, but that’s all right.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, Core 2 Duo forever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, all right. Can we move on? Max Wilke writes, the 21 inch iMac definitely did
⏹️ ▶️ Casey come in Retina. I still own one. That’s only a few feet away from me. It’s even got an SSD as configured, though I did have to order it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as custom. I don’t think they ever came standard. So we were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco debating- Yeah, this was my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I was right there with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John you. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John that the reason we remembered is because they kept selling the non-Retina one for so long. Not that it was the only thing that you could get,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I think they sold it for way longer than we thought.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, the 21 inch iMac line was the home of like, let’s keep around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the old cheap stuff as long as possible to keep this computer cheap. So they kept around retina
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way longer, or sorry, they kept around non-retina way longer than everything else, including the MacBook Air, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco believe. I’m not positive on that, but it was either the last or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the second to last non-retina Mac by a long margin too from the others.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then they kept around the spinning hard drive in that computer longer than every other computer they sell as far
⏹️ ▶️ John And by the way, this whole not that we’re spoiling the whole tier list thing, but the like the meta commentary on things like this and
⏹️ ▶️ John the tier list for youngsters who are listening to the program. Um, we got a lot of feedback about stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, and even on the program, I was trying to remember various things that I won’t spoil this point. I’m like, wasn’t there some issue with this thing
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever? And anyway, people wrote in to tell us what it actually was. Um, these are all things I knew,
⏹️ ▶️ John like the back of my hand when I was like writing for RS Technica. So at the time I
⏹️ ▶️ John knew all this stuff, every detail, every minute thing. but now do I know them? No. And I know when
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re young, you think it’s weird. How did you know a thing at some time in the past? It’s like, you know, it’s your hobby and you’re super
⏹️ ▶️ John into it and you know all sorts of stats about like your favorite computer, your favorite sports team, or your favorite car,
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever things you’re into. And, but then later in life, you don’t know them. That’s what getting old is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John kids. Just want to tell you about that. You think that if you know
⏹️ ▶️ John something now, you’ll always know it. You’ll never forget like, you know, the exact gear ratios of your favorite
⏹️ ▶️ John RC car when you’re a kid, but eventually you’ll forget what company made that car.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s true. Yeah, as someone with major memory issues, I can tell you you’re right. Who are you again?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Alrighty, so that is the end of our spoiling our own member special.
CotEditor & Chime
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s see, Tahir Rangwala writes, I went on a long search, I’m sorry, this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is text editor corner. I went on a long search for Mac text editor a few years back and landed on Cut Editor.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s open source, fully Mac native, lightweight, very performant and rather tasteful in its UI. Also, it’s being actively maintained.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we can put that on the list.
⏹️ ▶️ John I hadn’t heard of this one. And if you take a look at it, it’s like, oh, it looks like a Mac text editor. I’ve heard it described as like a sort of
⏹️ ▶️ John a love child, indie, new wave clone of text made in BB edit.
⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, it’s a native Mac app, and it adds text. You might want to check it out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There you go. And also, we have Chime, which from the website is apparently designed to be a model citizen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the Mac. It blends modern features with a minimalist UI and supports language server protocol and extensions.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey LSP is the thing that lets you plug in a Swift parser into it or something like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John right? No, it’s a protocol for talking to a language server, saying, tell me about this language. Lumpy space princess? Yeah, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, tell me. It’s another process that runs that your editor communicates and it tells you about the
⏹️ ▶️ John structure, like where are the keywords and,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you know. Right, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re basically saying the same thing. Anyway, this one, Chime, is kind of like a tiny indie Mac version
⏹️ ▶️ John of VS Code in terms of what the UI looks like. But they’re obviously, this is the bad description of both of them. You should
⏹️ ▶️ John check them both out because they’re both, you know, small and new and interesting, and I hadn’t heard of either one.
Pronouncing names (Niléane)
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then, uh, apparently we didn’t want me to suffer just once. Nay, let me suffer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey twice. Uh, John put in followup with regard to Nelian, Nelian,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Nelian. Yeah. Did
⏹️ ▶️ John you listen to the MP3 that I put in there?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I did, but it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John was hours ago. And you’d forgotten what it sounded like, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly. Have you? Who are you again?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, so anyway, Nelian, uh, wrote the trans- I’m going to say Nelian. Nelian. Okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, that wonderful person writes, the transcription I usually give to English English speakers is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey N-E-E-L-A-Y-A-N-A-N-N, Nielan. I think that’s right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyways, also I found a French text-to-speech website that does a pretty good job. And we will link that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the show notes, because apparently I am inept.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so lots of people send us, oh, here’s a website that has name pronunciations. My point with the whole, like, this is a space
⏹️ ▶️ John ripe for disruption was not that there are not lots of these sites, it’s that all these sites are bad. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John every time someone sent me a site, whether I knew about the site or not, I went to it, looked up this person’s name and then sent them a screenshot
⏹️ ▶️ John showing that this site does not know this person’s name. But if it did know it probably had a weird pronunciation. And in terms
⏹️ ▶️ John of pronunciation, I think is an interesting feature of French, I think where
⏹️ ▶️ John where the pronunciation here is any la why and we would say lay. But if you listen to the
⏹️ ▶️ John mp3, it’s more like Lee, you know, it’s anyway, well, maybe we’ll put the mp3 in the show notes, or maybe I
⏹️ ▶️ John guess maybe a link to the toot in the show notes, which has like a little video to hear the name. But million we I think
⏹️ ▶️ John we figured out kind sort of finally at the end. And it’s a criminal that these websites that supposedly
⏹️ ▶️ John are all about pronouncing people’s names don’t have your name because I have a feeling Your name is not super duper rare.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Did you know it’s called Philly?
Apple Park trash cans
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Anonymous writes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the subject of Apple, Disney, trash cans, and Apple’s inability to design places
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for humans the way that Disney can. When building Apple Park, the designers, for whatever reason, neglected to put trash
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cans in each office. Instead, each hallway was given a few large bins, which are, of course, beautifully integrated into the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey design. With the apparent intention that people would get up from their desk and walk over to the nearest receptacle
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whenever they had something to throw away. I’m sure this will shock you, but this is not what ended up happening. Employees got so frustrated,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in fact, that they eventually started just leaving their trash in piles outside their doors, which disrupted the beautiful design
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the space somewhat. Eventually, the facilities team came to put a small, ugly, gray, plastic, rubber-made-looking trash
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can outside every office where they remain to this day. Can we go back to how unbelievably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey upset I am that people, people who are presumably intelligent to have gotten a job
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at Apple, are thinking it is okay to throw trash on the ground because you can’t be bothered…
⏹️ ▶️ John blame the people. It’s a failure of design.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey No, what kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey asshole decides to not get up and put their trash in the trash? Oh, we have janitors
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for that. Screw you! That’s not their job to pick up your trash. It’s their job to move the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey trash receptacles to other trash receptacles. It’s not there to pick up after you, you big whiner. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John not endorsing throwing trash on the garbage, but I will say
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that I had no
⏹️ ▶️ John idea about this story when I used trash cans as an example of how Apple might not be as good at designing
⏹️ ▶️ John spaces for real humans as Disney is. But in fact, it was not just like, here’s an analogy. No,
⏹️ ▶️ John literally trash cans at Apple Park. I mean, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco find this, first of all, totally unsurprising. That this was not properly accounted for. But second
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of all, see, what I would do is I would never throw trash on the ground. That’s not me at all. But I would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sneak in an unauthorized trash can. That
⏹️ ▶️ John was gonna say, the supposed solution to having the Rubbermaid trash cans outside every office, how does that help? It’s still not near
⏹️ ▶️ John you. You still gotta get up and go over there and put the, anyway. That’s exactly the type of things that they talk about
⏹️ ▶️ John in these parks where you make this beautiful space and you think this is the way it should be, but then people enter it and people act like
⏹️ ▶️ John people, and you’re like, no people, act differently. And really you need to design the space to account for
⏹️ ▶️ John the people, even the bad people who put trash on the ground.
External Photos.app editors
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Ezekiel Ellen writes with regard to Mac Photos editing, when you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in Photos, you can edit in an external program one of two ways. As mentioned on the show, on edit mode, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dot dot dot button has a list of apps that support editing in Photos. But you can also right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey click the photo and choose edit with, which has a shortcut command return for last used
⏹️ ▶️ Casey app. This will open the photo, usually in TIFF format in that app and save the edited
⏹️ ▶️ Casey photo back to your library when you’re done. Any app that can open photos can be used this way.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In all cases, you can never modify or lose the original. Photos always retains the original image.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey On the show, you referred to the flatten option in Pixelmator Pro. If you choose flatten, then the resulting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey image is flattened and saved back to your library as the current edit. If you choose to preserve edits, then Photos retains
⏹️ ▶️ Casey additional metadata so that it can restore the editing session if you bring Pixelmator Pro’s extension back up within Photos.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Whether you have the ability to finally adjust edits or not, the revert to original button is always present in the editing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey session if the current photo has ever been modified.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that was the distinction I missed that, that is, there’s no way to lose the original, but the preserve edits preserves
⏹️ ▶️ John them. So if you go back to the editor, like your, I guess your layers or whatever the hell you did in the editor that
⏹️ ▶️ John is preserved, I always do the preserve thing, so I didn’t actually know what the flattened it and what the distinction was, but it’s good to know that
⏹️ ▶️ John no matter what I pick, uh, it’s never gonna mess with my original photo.
Aggressively-smart TVs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then also from Ezekiel Ellen with regard to Ellen, Ellen, I don’t know, with regard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to dumb TVs, I have a TCL Roku TV and I keep it disconnected from the Internet. When you do this,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an LED flashes forever until it’s reconnected. I used a pair of pliers to remove
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the LED from the circuit board. It’s a perfectly good, cheap 4K TV.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I thought this was going to go. I put a piece of tape over it, but your pliers like this is I put this in here
⏹️ ▶️ John just to show how how aggressive these companies are getting about insisting you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John on the internet, like a hardware thing with a light flashing your face that you can’t disable
⏹️ ▶️ John is pretty severe. I mean, I guess the next phase is like some giant dialogue in the middle
⏹️ ▶️ John of your television that doesn’t go away until you connect to the internet. But I suppose if someone’s like watching
⏹️ ▶️ John something on broadcast television over the air or watching a plastic disc spinning somewhere and they lose
⏹️ ▶️ John internet connection and they can’t watch they’re going to be pretty angry. Yep.
TV+, Disney+, and games
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then finally Apple TV does Apple TV Plus excuse me Disney Plus in games
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I mean, let me
⏹️ ▶️ John tackle this one before you go into it because this is something that we We talked about on the show where we talked about
⏹️ ▶️ John Disney and I I put it in there Specifically to remind myself to make a particular point now. I didn’t make
⏹️ ▶️ John it I made a bunch of other points, which I also wanted to make but I missed this one This was the Aaron Thomas question.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was like, you know, Sony and Nintendo have good relationships with game developers What can Apple and Google learn from them?
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s related to the Disney thing in a bunch of ways But the final way that I want to mention is we’re talking about like Apple keeping
⏹️ ▶️ John its hands off stuff like Apple keeping its hands off beats and whether or not they’re doing that Apple keeping
⏹️ ▶️ John its hands off The people who make the Apple TV Plus shows and not telling them that they can’t have nudity or
⏹️ ▶️ John violence and stuff like that despite the rumors so I Think there is something
⏹️ ▶️ John to the idea that Apple’s ability to keep its hands off And this sounds so weird because obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John these things are part of Apple like Apple TV Plus the studio is part of Apple and beats is part of Apple. But like
⏹️ ▶️ John when I say Apple, I’m talking about like the Apple that acquired those companies. So
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple, the core Apple, the Apple that does computer products,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Apple core. Yeah, there you
⏹️ ▶️ John Like that part. Can it keep its hands off when it acquires a business that
⏹️ ▶️ John does something that it previously didn’t have expertise in? Or even when it grows one organically, we’re going to start our own
⏹️ ▶️ John television and movie studios. We have no expertise in this. We’ve never done it before. But we’re going to hire a bunch of people. They’re gonna be part
⏹️ ▶️ John of Apple, but we’re gonna let them do what they know how to do Because we know
⏹️ ▶️ John that we don’t know how to do it and we shouldn’t mess with them and we’ll give them guidance and some direction But mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John let them do what they want versus buying something like beats where it’s like, well, we make headphones We’ll talk to them a little bit or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think Apple is much better able to keep its hands off stuff When it
⏹️ ▶️ John is far away from things that it does and I think that’s part of its big problem with games getting to Aaron’s
⏹️ ▶️ John question Why are they so bad at games? Why did Nintendo and Sony have good relationships with developers? Why does Apple and Google
⏹️ ▶️ John not? I can’t speak to Google right now, but Apple, I think, the reason Apple and games
⏹️ ▶️ John gets messed up is because Apple and gaming impacts directly in all of
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s core businesses. The Mac, the phone, the Apple TV. It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s like, well, we know about that stuff. We’re Apple. Of course we know about making Macs. And
⏹️ ▶️ John we know about making operating systems. And we know about GPUs and all that stuff. and
⏹️ ▶️ John they feel like they have expertise in that area. So to the extent that there is any overlap between
⏹️ ▶️ John what you need to do to be good at games and existing Apple business and technologies that Apple thinks it already knows, there is conflict.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that I think is a big reason why Apple has such problems with games because games touch so many parts of their business.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Apple says, now don’t tell us what to do. We know how to do this. Don’t tell us that we should
⏹️ ▶️ John have Nvidia GPUs or external GPUs at all. We know what we’re doing. We know what’s right for
⏹️ ▶️ John this business. Don’t tell us that we need open GL and operating system Vulcan, we don’t need that, we’re going to do metal, like, there
⏹️ ▶️ John is so much entrenched expertise and knowledge and experience related to gaming
⏹️ ▶️ John related stuff inside Apple, that it’s very difficult for Apple to grow organically
⏹️ ▶️ John or allowed to come in from the outside people who have different ideas and say, well, you know, here’s how Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ John does it and how they interface with game developers. And it seems to work better for them because look at all the games on their platforms, and
⏹️ ▶️ John they have a console and so on and so forth. And here’s how you know, other companies interface with Sony. And
⏹️ ▶️ John we brought in these people from Activision or whatever, and they’re telling us, well, if you want to do well in the game industry, you
⏹️ ▶️ John got X, Y and Z. And that runs right up against Apple folks saying, I’ve been, you know, working on
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mac for 25 years and you’re not going to tell me what I need to do to my hardware or software
⏹️ ▶️ John platform to do better for gaming. And that’s why I think that’s related to this question. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John part of the reason that Apple has such trouble with games. It just overlaps too much. Whereas Disney, I would imagine theme parks
⏹️ ▶️ John does not overlap too much. Although if Apple might say, we know how to make spaces for humans. Just look at Apple Park,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s perfect, Except for the Rubbermaid garbage cans.
Become a member
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Consider becoming an ATP member today. ATP membership
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gets all sorts of fun little goodies, but the big two are the ad-free feed and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bonus content. So here’s what you get, the ad-free version of the show. You don’t hear messages
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this or other sponsorships, and instead you get an ad-free feed that you can add to whatever podcast player
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you wanna use. It’s a URL unique to you, so you can just do whatever you want with it. Listen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anywhere you want. Of course, I have my opinion, You can listen to any player you want that supports URLs,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is most of them. So anyway, that’s the big one. You get an ad-free version of the show. You also get whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of member special content we decide to release. Usually, this is about maybe once a month
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or so, we’ll do some kind of member special. And so we’ve done things like movie reviews,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ve taste tested food on the air. We’ve most recently, we did two tier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lists, a tier list ranking every iPhone to date, and just this week, a tier list ranking every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iMac to date. So there’s member exclusive content and the ad free feed. Those are the big ones. And it’s just a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great way to support the show. There are other smaller perks as well. I’ll get to those later in the show, but basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s what you’re mostly paying to support the show and you get the ad free feed and member exclusive content.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s a bunch of fun. So see for yourself, it’s just eight bucks a month. The atp.fm slash join.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you so much for considering being a member today. And we really hope you check it out. atp.fm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash join. Thank you so much.
Ubiquiti cameras, UniFi Protect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We talked a few episodes ago, I don’t recall exactly when, about Marco’s quest to get better
⏹️ ▶️ Casey security cameras. And I guess the quick summary was you had, what did you have that was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey constantly failing, Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had the Logitech CircleView HomeKit Secure Video Cameras. Thank you. And I’ve used them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for about two years. They would just constantly fall off the network and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco were constantly not connected or would have long delays and then fail to connect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever else. So since talking about this, we got a ton of recommendations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for Ubiquiti cameras and also a ton of people saying,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I also have Logitech Circle View and it has the same problem for me. So that was very vindicating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it isn’t just me, that everyone’s Logitech Circle Views kind of suck. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was kind of the story with almost every consumer grade Wi-Fi
⏹️ ▶️ Marco camera that we heard about. Everyone basically said the same thing. The eufy cameras
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seem to be a little more reliable in people’s reports but still not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco super reliable. And everyone kept telling me the exact same thing. First of all, I had asked about Ubiquiti stuff. I already
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have Ubiquiti networking gear and I like it a lot. And so I had asked, you know, I knew they had cameras. I asked people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they were any good. Everyone said yes. And everyone also wrote in to basically say
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pretty much any power over Ethernet wired camera is very good compared
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to Wi-Fi cameras and so you don’t have to necessarily go Ubiquiti there’s all sorts of PoE cameras
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that you as long as you can run Ethernet wiring to where you have to be and you have a PoE
⏹️ ▶️ Marco supplying switch or injectors you know of some kind then that’s the way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to go everyone told me that so of course I bought a a bunch of Ubiquiti stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s my standard operating procedure. Quick review of how this went.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In short, extremely well. I’ve been using the Ubiquiti and Unify
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Protect setup now for I think about three weeks. It has been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco awesome. So first of all, a couple of drawbacks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This whole thing is super expensive. This is the pro level thing. You know, a while ago I was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trying to help out my town with their meetings. I talked about it very briefly on the show with the microphone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco equipment they should use for meetings. I was recommending, based on my limited experience with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wireless mics, I was recommending a pro-grade Shure, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco SLXD wireless system. Because I had used some of the lower end consumery kind of stuff before,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would always have static or dropouts. It was using 2.4 gigahertz instead of some of the UHF frequencies.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so, and I’d run into like all the limitations of consumer grade gear in wireless mics.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You get the better stuff, it will not drop out, it will not have static, it will just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco work. And it has just worked, it has been perfect. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has been flawless. There has not been a single dropout, there is not even a blip
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of static ever, they just work. That’s what you pay for when you get pro gear.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Pro gear, you know, when you’re using a microphone camera or whatever when using this stuff professionally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco similar with computer gear to when using the stuff professionally you can’t afford to have it not work you like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it doesn’t work bad stuff happens like you have to reshoot a scene or you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some some you know high-stakes thing gets ruined or gets messed up or you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know or you look bad because it’s you know you’re trying to be professional and then you show up with amateur gear whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you need to work a hundred percent of the time in the camera business
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wi-Fi cameras are the consumer level gear. They are inexpensive.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If you don’t have super high needs, and especially if you’re price sensitive, they’re a great option.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But they kinda suck. And you kinda get what you pay for. And now that I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used POE cameras, no question, this is the pro gear.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s why the setup costs more. And that’s why it has a little bit higher startup requirements.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s the pro system. And when you want it to work 100% of the time, or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very, very close to that, that’s what you go for. You go for wired ethernet supplying power
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and data over a cable, no wifi, and these are like heavy duty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco materials and enclosures and everything. It’s ProGear. To get started with a Ubiquiti
⏹️ ▶️ Marco camera system, you need something that acts as the video recorder.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They have a few pieces of equipment you can do this with. I went with the small
⏹️ ▶️ Marco version of their NVR, the network video recorder. They have one that has like a whole bunch of bays. I went with the one that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only has four bays because it was a lot cheaper and I don’t need any more than that. Couple little drawbacks here. It’s a few hundred bucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Couple little drawbacks. It has four hard drive bays, but it does not, as far as you can tell, does not let you configure the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco RAID. It just automatically does it. So I bought two hard drives thinking I would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco run them in RAID zero basically because this data is not super important
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I’m worried about a hard drive crash. like erasing last week’s footage, like it isn’t that important that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need to keep it. So I was thinking just to maximize space and retention time, I’d put two disks in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. Little did I know that two disks in the Ubiquiti MVR
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will always and only be configured as RAID 1. So I only had the space of one of them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So they’re only redundant. And there’s no way to make it use two disks as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all their space. If you only have two disks in there, it does RAID 1. If you add any more, it does RAID 5.
⏹️ ▶️ John How did you not immediately buy a third disc?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Because you’re Marco. I decided, all right,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know what, this is fine. Like, whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right, well, set the clock on that third hard drive, everybody.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Secondly, when you get into Ubiquiti stuff, they have all these like Unify
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps. And my main router is the original Unify Dream Machine,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which doesn’t support network video functionality directly. I thought that by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco adding an NVR to my network here, I thought that it would integrate better into the Dream
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Machine, so I would have all my like unify apps in one screen. It doesn’t. You just have to access
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the NVR via its IP address. Like that’s how you access its web interface. Just the IP, you know, the 192.whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What I probably should have done is, I discussed that for the new house,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I got the UDM SE, the Dream Machine SE that has like, that has the hard drive bay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in it integrates this functionality into the router. I probably should have gotten that for here too. I didn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh well. Because that would have actually integrated all into one interface. But I already had the Dream Machine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here and so this was cheaper, easier, etc. Anyway, it’s been working fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So moving on from from the NVR. But if you are doing a new setup, I would get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Dream Machine router that has built-in storage. The new ones either have like little SSDs or the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big hard drive bay. I would just do that. Anyway, the cameras I got were mostly the G5
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bullet. This seemed somewhat comparable in like you know price and quality to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco circle view. Some downsides of the G5 bullet camera compared to the circle view
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it has a much narrower field of view. So the circle view has an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s officially a 180 degree view that’s why they call it circle view or at least it’s very close to 180
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a circle though. Well that’s true yeah well the cameras round at least.
⏹️ ▶️ John Speaking of the G5 camera, I know a lot of people wrote in and said, Oh, even though the G5 is new, you should get the G4. And I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John remember the reason was like less glare or was it also a field of view thing?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, the reason why the reason people cited was that apparently the G5 were mostly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a response to covid supply chain shortages where they kind of simplified the camera and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they they actually made it cheaper. They downgraded some things like from metal to plastic. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t know too many details because I decided, know what for my purposes, I’d rather get the cheaper
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ones and because I it’s not like you live in a harsh environment. We’ll be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, yeah. So I went for the new the newer cheaper models because for my purposes like I wanted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have a few of them and it started to add up if I went to the old
⏹️ ▶️ John ones. This is Margo’s kink is putting electronic devices outside that aren’t equipped to deal aren’t equipped to deal
⏹️ ▶️ John with the weather and if he can’t put indoor stuff outdoor, he’s gonna buy the cheapest outdoor stuff he can. Yeah, sounds
⏹️ ▶️ John right. G5 versus G4. One of them says it’s built more sturdily and the other one is decontented. Ooh, I get a
⏹️ ▶️ John thrill from putting the decontent into one out there. Oh
⏹️ ▶️ John I really want to see the picture of what the G5s look like after a year. Okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ask me to set one of your long term reminders. Ask me in a year.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway. All right. So compared to the Logitech, narrower field of view on the G5
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bullet, which is it depends where you’re putting it that could be a plus or minus I have found with the Logitech
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the ultra wide view of the Logitech’s you do see more area but it’s kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the problem with the center stage cameras in the in the you know the the recent cinema display and recent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPads you can have ultra wide lens and just kind of crop in when you need to see something further in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that comes at a pretty significant loss in detail and so it’s a trade-off
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I had one spot where I kind of missed the wider angle in all the other spots I put them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I enjoyed the increased detail better. So anyway it’s a trade-off. The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ubiquiti cameras are also substantially larger and I would say uglier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that also makes them more visible. You know one of the problems that the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the most important roles that one of these cameras serves is to be visible so that people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who are trying to walk under my house to pee under it see the camera and maybe get deterred from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco peeing there. I found the Logitech circle views are so small and discreet that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of times people would walk right past it at eye level and not see it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Marcos house is on stilts by the way I could just really do wonder what people are thinking like people walk under your house to
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco me what oh yeah it’s very high up in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yes it’s it’s you know near near the water so it’s on these it’s on piles anyway the ubiquity cameras are much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco more visible and so for my purposes actually that’s good like if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want it to be discreet I don’t don’t go with these, but if you want them to actually be visible to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some kind of deterrent to people or whatever, it’s actually an upgrade.
⏹️ ▶️ John You could have a big googly eyes on them. You can get those real cheap to hold up to the salt weather. Just giant googly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco eyes. Oh, yeah. Cheap adhesives on the back of something made of paper. That’ll do great. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John you got to tie it there with a rusty piece of wire.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. Anyway, I would say the image quality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quality is very good. A little bit better than the circle view. And of course, you know, the narrower field of view helps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco certain things as well. But mostly, what I have loved about the G5,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and all the Ubiquiti cameras, is that they are far more customizable and tweakable for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things like activity zones. Like the way you, so you can like draw out, you can look at the, you can load
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up the image in the app, and then you can draw out, alright, only report person detection
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this area, and you draw like a polygon of what part of the picture you want to report. and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can define multiple zones. You can set their sensitivity as a percentage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So if you find you’re getting too many false positives because your bike seat looks like a person in certain lighting,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yes, that happened to me, you can just turn that down a little bit, like turn sensitivity down to like, oh, default’s 50%, make
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it 30%. And you can tweak a lot about it. And I’ve found with HomeKit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Secure Video, I have found those settings oftentimes don’t stick
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or after a while they reset themselves. I don’t know why it’s infuriating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because like one of these cameras I have pointing basically you know the street in front of my house is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the field of view of one of these cameras where the circle view used to be and I and I want person detection
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the part that’s like close to my house but sometimes the Logitech would just forget
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that setting and would start reporting every single person that walked by on the street which is not helpful. This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a problem with so many settings for the Logitech’s. I would tell them for instance, stop notifying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me every time you disconnect and go offline. And it would remember that for a few days and then forget. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then I would start notifying me every time it went offline. Like that was the constant battle
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the home kit cameras. It just keeps forgetting my settings or resetting my settings for no apparent reason.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The, so far the ubiquity system has never forgotten a setting. You set it and forget it. Hey,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you said it. And it just remembers like, like it’s sure. Like, why is that? Why is that not even table stakes? I don’t know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And to run a bit of a test on the smarts of these cameras and the speed of these cameras,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve kept one circle view camera in use. The one by the bikes. Because this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the one, every time we leave or come back, we’re usually on a bike because it’s a bike town, and every time we leave or come
⏹️ ▶️ Marco back, this camera alerts me so I get a tap tap on my watch when I or anyone else pulls into the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bike area. And it’s like, oh hey, Tiff’s home, you know, it’s great. That circle view, because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s right next to a wireless access point, that circle view has been the most reliable and it’s been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the most useful because I love that utility. So I wanted to see, you know, one of the advantages of HomeKit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that almost everything about it runs locally on your network. So notifications and responses
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to things tend to be very fast with HomeKit. Again, that’s one of the best things about it. This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should in theory be as fast because it is also mostly on my network, but I figured, well, to send a notification
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have to like upload the picture to some service somewhere so that the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco notification can have access to that image from Apple’s notification service to show it on the watch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or on the phone or whatever so I figured maybe it’ll be slower and I wanted to also test how smart is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the object and person recognition. Is it smarter than Logitech? Is it dumber? Is it slower? Is it faster?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So for these three weeks I’ve been running both the Logitech and Ubiquiti G5 Bullet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the bike area. The speed has been nearly identical. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always within, you know, like occasionally one will come in before the other or the other one or it’ll flip
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around the order that they come in but they’re basically exactly as fast. So that’s great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They also are about as smart or smarter. Occasionally the Logitech will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco report a spiderweb moving in front of it as a person. So far
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Ubiquiti cameras have never done stupid stuff like that. It did, again, it did think my bike seat was a person for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a while so I just adjusted that sensitivity and that fixed that problem. Neither one has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever like missed a person. Like when I lowered the sensitivity for the bike area to get rid of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the bike seat issue, it didn’t start missing people. It’s recognizing us every single time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s exactly as good for that, if not better. All the detection, the person
⏹️ ▶️ Marco detection, it’s all wonderful. One thing it does not have, the HomeKit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco notifications, if you long press them on the phone screen or whatever, it would actually play
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the video clip. These don’t do that. These you have to tap and load the app. Like they’ll show you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the picture, but you have to tap and actually view it in their app to see the actual video clip.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But with HomeKit, that was not only unreliable, but slow. A lot of times
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’d be waiting a long time for that clip to load or it would never load. With the Ubiquiti cameras, those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clips load immediately every single time, whether you are on your network or not. So there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have been times during this time where we’ve been out of town driving box trucks, and I was able
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to see the notifications and load the video clips and see the guys peeing on my house exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as quickly, or in most cases, way faster, even though this was then streaming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from my own network to the internet, rather than coming from HomeKit’s secure video
⏹️ ▶️ Marco servers or anything like that. So the speed of everything is great. And then trying to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco skim through the timeline using the Unified Protect app is so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much faster and more reliable than trying to skim through the timeline of HomeKit stuff. And of course, as I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mentioned last time, this has the advantage of 24-7 recording if you want it to. Which,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for some of these I do. HomeKit Secure Video is only ever motion event based.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There is no option in HomeKit for continuous recording. With this, you have that option.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I have a few of the cameras doing continuous recording. And it is just so fast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so easy and so reliable. It’s awesome. As for the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco physical setup of them, Power over Ethernet is awesome. You know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is something I already knew from Wi-Fi access points and stuff, but it continues to be awesome. Running
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Logitech cameras, I had to have some kind of power outlet situation for them to supply them with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their USB power somewhere within like 15 feet of each camera. And because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re all outside, that involved some, you know, logistics, like running extension cords in weird
⏹️ ▶️ Marco places, having those outdoor closed up ceiling boxes around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a power strip or something to keep the weather out, John. So there was a whole bunch of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just kind of cruft that when I went to POE for these cameras, I could just get rid of all that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff. Because I could just have these all going into my utility closet and then just run a long cable,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a long ethernet cable, and that carries power and data for these. So I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got to get rid of all those power adapters, all those extension cords, all those USB power bricks,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all those outdoor weather enclosures, got rid of all of them. So it’s a way nicer and cleaner
⏹️ ▶️ Marco setup. How are you
⏹️ ▶️ John feeling about the weather sealing on where it plugs into the cameras?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco For these to be perfectly weather sealed, you have to either use like a mounting box
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that itself is sealed, or you can use the mounts they come with, but they have like a little rubber
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gasket in the mount. and it is not wide enough to fit an ethernet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cable end through. I think the idea is you’re supposed to just run bare wire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then splice your own end on, you know? That’s right, yeah. Professionals don’t buy pre-made cables.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, but I do, because I’ve tried making my own cables and I can’t do it. Believe me, I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John So what did you do? You just plugged it in without the ceiling thing?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I just popped the ceiling thing out. And then I used dielectric grease around some of the main connectors.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right, I was gonna ask, because a lot of people send us things like, oh, here’s what you do for outdoor connections. it’s like you pack the thing with gel
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco other that’s another thing to keep
⏹️ ▶️ John the air out essentially yeah that’s what I did I did put that long-term reminder in for a year from now by the way because I can’t wait
⏹️ ▶️ John to see what these ethernet connections look like RJ 44 plus dielectric grease plus ocean air yeah
⏹️ ▶️ John exactly RJ 45 sorry
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and otherwise the only other thing I would say is this did require me to buy a couple more switches
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a couple more PoE switches ubiquity has this one called the switch flex which seems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be basically made for this purpose. It’s an indoor-outdoor compatible switch and it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has PoE kind of passed through on all the ports. I did have to buy some of the really big 60
⏹️ ▶️ Marco watt PoE injectors at the other end of those so that the switches could have enough power to spread around.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The cameras use a few watts each so you know if you’re looking into this, budget
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and plan for possibly some switch upgrades or some power injectors somewhere along the way. Otherwise
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m super happy with with this setup, it is so nerdy, and it is 100% reliable so far.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I, just like, look, again, because we’re in the middle of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like moving, selling a house, we have a lot going on in our life right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s fine, you know, we’re good, but it’s just, it’s very, very busy. And to take something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is super unreliable and irritating and full of paper cuts, and to just make it super reliable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and just take all those problems away from your life is incredibly satisfying and incredibly valuable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco depending on what your life has in it right now. And this is one thing where like I had
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this unreliable system that was driving me nuts and now it’s gone. And in place of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is something that just works super well. Did you end up using Scripted?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I’m not actually. So Scripted was the app that everyone recommended that allows you to basically bridge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any other camera system including POE cameras, including Ubiquiti stuff. it allows you to bridge those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into HomeKit Secure Video. I thought I would set that up on something, but first of all, I don’t have any
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spare hardware to run it on right now, and I was looking like, oh, should I buy the low-end Mac Mini or some kind of high-end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Raspberry Pi or Intel NUC thing? And I realized, first of all, as previously
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spoken, I don’t have time for this crap right now. And second of all, I don’t wanna run one of these things just for this, and then third
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of all, I realized I don’t think I actually need it for anything. The only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco major advantage that would provide me is integrations with features that I don’t really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use. Like, you know, yes, it turns your other camera system into something that can, for instance,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco show the person at the door on your Apple TV. Well, I don’t do that. I don’t use that feature.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I don’t really need that. The other thing is it would allow you to have an off-site record
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of motion events. That is valuable, and at some point, I might look into it for that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so that way, like, you know, in case a hurricane destroys my house, I’ll be able to see the video clips up to that point
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that contain motion. Okay, I mean, I don’t know how actionable that is, but it might be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco worth having at some point. But for now, the value is just not there. I’m just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not having these cameras in HomeKit and it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You couldn’t just put a Docker container on your Synology? I know this is like this anathema to you or however you pronounce
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there we go, sorry. It’s one of those ones like Bazelle that I’ve only ever read and never pronounced. Anyways,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the point is, I know that you are like allergic, how about that, to Docker
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and anything like it. But this really is the sort of thing that if you were to accept help from another human being,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hello, I’m that person, I could get you set up with this, assuming there is a Docker container for scripted, which I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would assume there is, then it would be minutes to get this squared away. Like I cannot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey speak highly enough how quickly you could get that running on say your Synology, leaving aside
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like surveillance station or any of that. you could get that running so fast if you were willing to accept 10 minutes
⏹️ ▶️ John help. Getting the Docker container isn’t the hard part. I think it’s setting up scripted with the cameras the way
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey That’s fair. Making
⏹️ ▶️ John sure it doesn’t anger them. And you know, I under, I understand his desire not to overcomplicate it if things are finally working.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well also like, you know, look, there’s all sorts of things. There’s, you know, stuff like home bridge, like there’s all these, all these,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these wonderful, you know, apps that are made to connect different smartphone smart home things to different systems.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s great. I’m not in a point in my life where I want to add complexity like that to my setup.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco For me, I’d rather just use the products directly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And to add something like that to my setup, it’s a very optimistic thing, thinking, I’ll just set
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this up and then these things will be bridged forever. And that’s never how it really works. Always in practice,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have some kind of hack or bridge like that. Every few months you’ve got to reset it or reconfigure it or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco figure out why something’s not working. and then you have a whole other thing to debug or run or operate. Those Docker
⏹️ ▶️ Marco containers will eventually need to be updated or will eventually break or something like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey that. And it just… Yes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but that’s incredibly easy. But I do agree with what you’re saying in principle, but it is so easy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but that’s it just that adds more stuff to my plate. And I’m like, I don’t, you know, is this additional
⏹️ ▶️ Marco integration or feature really worth that level of tinkering and maintenance?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And to me, oftentimes the answer is no.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I mean, you’re allowed. It doesn’t make you wrong. I just I cannot overstate how easy this could potentially
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be if you were interested in it and the sound it sounds like you’re just plain not interested and that’s okay.
⏹️ ▶️ John I remember how excited you are about the Logitech CircleView camera so this may be in the honeymoon period and related to that we got one
⏹️ ▶️ John a bit of very adamant feedback from John McMichael who said ubiquity video cameras
⏹️ ▶️ John is hot garbage ubiquity video camera singular is hot garbage uh get yourself some lorex
⏹️ ▶️ John cameras l-o-r-e-x and tied them into Security Spy, and I believe I found the
⏹️ ▶️ John correct link for Security Spy. Security Spy looks like the type, if you have like an apartment building
⏹️ ▶️ John and you want to have like a station where there’s a security guard looking at a bunch of cameras, that’s what it looks like, but it’s for the Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ John Looks like an impressive piece of software, but I’m guessing this is not what Marco wants.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, and that too, like I didn’t want to run a Mac server, because again, like, you know, what I have now, I have, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have this Ubiquiti appliance, basically the NVR doing like the recording and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know Ubiquiti gear. I know I know I can just let that run for years and never touch it, never update
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, never have to worry about like is something gonna break You know something never falls out of configuration
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I right now. I don’t run a Mac server at home for any reason
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I’m okay with that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Where is the NVR is the NVR on the water closet?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay the water is on the floor It
⏹️ ▶️ John is far it’s Well, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco it’s like five
⏹️ ▶️ John I do have a server closet as a term of art, but like literal closets and houses tend not to have great ventilation.
⏹️ ▶️ John I do have some concern about the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that no, it’s a utility closet. So it is ventilated like that’s it’s where I it’s where I have other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco networking gear. It’s it’s fine. All right.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, so when you open the door, you don’t feel a blast of hot air come out at you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, no, it’s actually partially conditioned the way the house is. Okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so like, you know, right? Like when the air conditioning is on, you open the door and you get a blast of cold air. Uh, so
⏹️ ▶️ John we know water closet is a term for bathroom.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That’s not what we were aware of
⏹️ ▶️ John past episodes. It’s complicated. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really not. Yeah. So anyway, this system, look, if you’re a nerd, this is awesome. If you are,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you, if you’re looking for like a basic, easy to set up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inexpensive, compact home security camera system, this is not that. But if you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want something that’s really good, like high end needs, or just you want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something that works really well, and you’re willing to probably spend more than you reasonably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco responsibly should, and have all this gear somewhere in your closet somewhere,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then this is awesome. doesn’t make sense for most people, but if it makes sense for you, it’s
Become a member (again!)
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Please consider becoming an ATP member today. So I told you earlier
⏹️ ▶️ Marco membership gets you the ad-free version of the show and occasional member exclusive bonus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco content. Those are great reasons to support the show. Also the most popular possibly thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we give with membership, a very popular option among our members, is the bootleg feed. People love
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this thing. So the bootleg is the unedited live broadcast of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco show. We publish it right after the live broadcast finishes. So what this means is it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco totally raw, totally unedited. You hear all the bad jokes that didn’t land, you hear
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Casey swearing, you hear me, you know, missing the timing of the Viber slap that I later move up and post.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, you hear all that stuff. You hear our little kind of bumper discussions, the beginning and end of the show,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where that might be cut off from the release version because it doesn’t really, you know, make sense or fit in the time that I want.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you get all sorts of little bonus stuff and it’s very raw and it’s released right after the recording ends.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So this is usually about 12 to 18 hours before the actual official release of the show.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you get an earlier release and all the unedited glory of the show, that’s the bootleg. That joins
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the ad-free feed, the member bonus content here and there,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you occasionally get little perks as well, things like discounts on merchandise whenever we have our merchandise sales,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and occasional little test flight links to our various app betas if we have those, or things like that. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those are the big ones. You can join us at atp.fm slash join. It is just eight
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bucks a month. We have a few different currencies available. If it’s more convenient for you to be charged in a different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco currency, we have a few options there. We have monthly or annual plans depending on how you want to be charged that way. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we got you covered atp.fm slash join. Please consider becoming a member today.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you so much.
#askatp: Kid email addresses
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, let’s do some Ask ATP. And Greg writes, how do you handle getting your kids their first email address?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What do you plan to do or did you do about setting them up? Did you use junior at smithfamily.com or from your custom
⏹️ ▶️ Casey domain? Did you sit them down in front of Gmail and let them choose their own laser blaster 4567 at gmail.com?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wait until their school assigns them student1234 at school.org. When did you decide to do it? Did
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you reserve them a Gmail address as soon as you had a name picked out? As tech savvy parents, it feels like we we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey likely to have our own opinions about the right answer based on our own experiences and values, i.e. avoiding something that you’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey likely feel differently about when applying for jobs, or relying on a student or ISP
⏹️ ▶️ Casey email address that is more fragile than iCloud or Gmail. But I’m curious how you approached it in partnership with your youngsters, given that ultimately,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they’re the ones that own this address and it will come to represent them, not you. I think I signed Declan
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up for a Gmail account because at the time it seemed like a good idea, but I don’t think I needed to,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and neither of my children have an email address at the moment. Moving on, Marco, you are the next oldest child.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do? Our kid has a Google ID, mainly so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we could share the YouTube no ads thing, like the family plan for YouTube
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no ads, whatever that’s called this year. Once he was watching YouTube,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we wanted to get him that because we didn’t want him wasting time watching all these BS ads on YouTube. So anyway, so we had to get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco him a Google ID for that. We had to later create a second one because we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco accidentally put in his real age on that one. And it wouldn’t let him,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because he was under age 13, it wouldn’t let him watch anything on YouTube basically.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so we had to then create a fake second child with a fake second Google ID
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who is older. And he stays logged in as that most of the time. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he doesn’t really use email for anything. So he has these email addresses that are both Gmail addresses,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but he doesn’t, I mean, what does he use email for? He is, you know, 11. Like he’s, he’s fine. He’s not,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he’s not, you know, dealing with got to go through my inbox every morning from my boss. Like, you know, it’s not like that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Um, at school, he does have an email address for school,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I don’t see him using that for anything but school related things. And I think that’s the way to do, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco school email addresses are like work email addresses. Just, that’s the kid’s job
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when they’re in school. If you have a job, you probably have a work email address, but that’s probably not the one you give
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your friends. That’s probably not the one that you plan to have forever. And I consider school to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same way. A school email address is something that you have as a functional purpose that you’re required
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to have when you are in school to do things like submit papers to your teacher in school.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But that is not a permanent email address. For a permanent email address, I say, if your kid is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco young, don’t worry about it. you know, maybe reserve a good name for them at Gmail
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or reserve a good domain name or ideally both because domain names are cheap and Gmail accounts are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco free. So yeah, reserve their name or some good version of it before someone else takes it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But don’t make any assumptions that your kid is gonna want, first of all, an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco email address at all. But second of all, don’t make any assumptions that your kid is gonna want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this particular email address. Let them be a kid, let them goof around with whatever they wanna goof around with anywhere else.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco down the road when they’re 60, if they don’t have the emails they sent when they were nine,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who cares? Let them be kids, let them mess around with stuff that doesn’t matter now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And down the road, when it comes time to make things more permanent, do what parents are supposed to do.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Guide them, but let them make the decision ultimately. You can tell them, you can give them wisdom that they will ignore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can say, you probably shouldn’t have BonerChamp69 in your email address
⏹️ ▶️ Marco forever. You can guide them, but ultimately, they’re gonna do their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco own thing once they’re old enough to do it, and you can’t have too much control over it or too much say in it, so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t put too much thought into it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey, do your kids not watch YouTube? Nope, not yet. Wow, you’re really holding the line
⏹️ ▶️ John on that. Well, anyway, when they do, you’re gonna have to get them Google IDs, just like Marco and you, and then you’ll have to figure out how to pay for the ad-free
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, which I believe I use an Android emulator to do. Wait, what?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco What? An Android
⏹️ ▶️ John emulator on my Mac, because at the time I got it, it was the only way you could pay for family, plan, YouTube,
⏹️ ▶️ John no ads, was from an Android device. So I think I still had like BlueStacks or something. It was like an Android
⏹️ ▶️ John tablet emulator that I ran on my Mac so I could log into my existing Google ID to be able to get to the screen
⏹️ ▶️ John where it would let me pay for this. Anyway, they continued to bill me monthly for that. So it worked. I used to do it on the website.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m sure it’s easier now, but remember this, I’m doing this back in the past. And I also don’t remember what that program
⏹️ ▶️ John was called then or is called now. I just know that they bill me every month keeps getting more expensive, but it’s worth every penny because
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t want to see YouTube ads. Yeah, that’s true. So here’s the complexity about this thing. So
⏹️ ▶️ John what I actually did is I tried to get all my kids reasonable Gmail addresses,
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly, again, like Marco was saying, because I didn’t want them to ever see any ads on YouTube.
⏹️ ▶️ John But even before that, I think I might’ve even gotten the things before that, I wanted to reserve them a name. Now here’s the deal, we always say on this
⏹️ ▶️ John program that it’s best to have your own domain, buy
⏹️ ▶️ John a domain for yourself and keep it for your whole life and have your email address be something at the domain that you own and
⏹️ ▶️ John control. You can have that backed by all sorts of things. You could change
⏹️ ▶️ John services that back it, you can use Fastmail, you could have it forwarding to Gmail, you could do all sorts of stuff, but having
⏹️ ▶️ John a non-embarrassing email address for yourself that you control that’s on your own domain is definitely
⏹️ ▶️ John the way you wanna go. But I’m saying that to you as a listener of a tech podcast. The problem with doing that for
⏹️ ▶️ John your kid is, what if they don’t wanna maintain a domain? Someday you’re gonna die
⏹️ ▶️ John and then they’re gonna be like, oh, who the heck controls smithfamily.com? Oh, that was dad,
⏹️ ▶️ John he was doing that. Uh-oh, every account I’ve ever made in every service for my entire life is my name
⏹️ ▶️ John at smithfamily.com and I have no idea how the heck smithfamily.com works and now dad is dead.
⏹️ ▶️ John If your kids want to make their own domain for themselves and have bonerchamp69.com
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco have their email address
⏹️ ▶️ John like that, let them do that. But you can’t make a family domain that you control
⏹️ ▶️ John and force your kids to have an email address at it because then you’re gonna die and what if they don’t wanna deal
⏹️ ▶️ John with domains? You’d be like, oh, it’s easy. Dealing with domains is easy. It’s really easy to control and fast mail setup is really, like, you
⏹️ ▶️ John say that because you’re listening to ATP, but your kid might not wanna have anything to do with computers. So you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John actually, you know, oh, I’m just gonna have a family domain because there’s like, there’s no continuity plan. Unless you have like
⏹️ ▶️ John a chain of younger relations who agree to continue to maintain smithfamily.com
⏹️ ▶️ John in perpetuity, don’t give your kids email addresses on that, don’t make them use it. And as for what kids need email for,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think for the foreseeable future, when you sign up for anything, it wants you to sign up with an email
⏹️ ▶️ John address. And right now it’s email address and password. Maybe when our kids grow up, it’ll be email address and passkey.
⏹️ ▶️ John But email address is the key to so much stuff. So I think it actually is important for your
⏹️ ▶️ John kids to have a canonical email address. So given that I say, you should have it
⏹️ ▶️ John on your own domain, but you shouldn’t force your kids to have one, but they’re gonna need an email address and they’re probably gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John need a Google ID, my advice is get a reasonable name at Gmail and have them use it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not with the expectation that it’s gonna be their email address for life, because like Marco said, they’ll pick their own email when they want. And even
⏹️ ▶️ John if you give them like your kid’s name at gmail.com and like,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco this is your
⏹️ ▶️ John official email address. When they get to the age when they can pick, just like they’ll make a Finsta or like a, you know, phantom account,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’ll make their own secret stuff that you don’t know about with their own names. And that’s just what kids do. And that’s perfectly fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John But they’re gonna need an email address. And I think it’s a nice thing to do as a parent to basically, as soon as you have the name picked
⏹️ ▶️ John out, reserve the name of Gmail and use that for all their stuff. And even before they can even talk, sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John you need to have an email address that’s convenient to be theirs and not yours or whatever. Just don’t expect they’re gonna use that email address
⏹️ ▶️ John their whole life, because eventually they’ll go off and do their own thing. But they are gonna need the email address. If like me, you
⏹️ ▶️ John never want your children to have like digits in their name, if you can help it, get the name
⏹️ ▶️ John early. I bet a lot of the Gmail ones are taken, which is rough, but you can probably, if you combine their first and last name
⏹️ ▶️ John or first and middle name or initials or whatever, you can probably find something. Just don’t use numbers. If they want to use numbers,
⏹️ ▶️ John they can, you can’t stop them. But at least when you make their email addresses, you can do that. So, and it’s kind of a shame
⏹️ ▶️ John that I have to say this, that like, oh, the best thing to do is to have your own domain that you control, but you can’t do that for your kids because you
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know whether they’re going to be into computers. I wish it wasn’t something that you needed to be even a little
⏹️ ▶️ John bit interested in computers to deal with. Again, it’s not complicated. We all can do it really easily, right? Oh, fast mail is
⏹️ ▶️ John so easy or forwarding to Gmail is so easy, but mail delivery is more complicated than you think. And
⏹️ ▶️ John even the simplest things, Even just maintaining and continuing to pay for a domain name, which is nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John for people like us who amass them like candy and just have way too many domain names. If someone’s not into
⏹️ ▶️ John computers in their future life, that’s a burden to them and they’re gonna mess it up and it’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John cause problems if they’re still using that email address.
#askatp: Subscription expectations
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Michael writes, what is your expectation towards subscription apps? Do you expect new features and active development or should
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it just not break? I don’t know if Marco or I is qualified, well not qualified, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John genuinely answer. You have a subscription app, both
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco of you. I know, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know, but I have my opinions. I mean, I’m not…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John That’s what people are asking.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, I feel like I’m deeply biased from the developer perspective, which is, hey, it hasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey broken, you should be happy. But from a user perspective, I’m not so sure that’s quite so fair.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it’s tough, right? I think from a user perspective, I think something new
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at least once a year is a reasonable expectation. But again, it’s hard. And from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a developer’s perspective, is the thing that I sold you, is that still working? Yes or no?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If yes, then we have satisfied the contract.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s basically it. But it doesn’t matter to me whether something is adding new stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all the time, what matters to me is am I getting continued value from it? Now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that can mean a lot of things. As long as it is working for the reasons I went to pay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for in the first place, as long as that continues to function, I’m fine with it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even if they don’t add any more features. You know, if it’s just like, if I’m paying for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco working software and it continues to work, that’s fine. Certainly, ideally,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it would at least keep up with the environment around it. So for instance, if it’s an iOS app,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple announces some new feature for the next OS. And I would expect within a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reasonable amount of time after that feature launches, you know, after that OS launches, I would hope that the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app would be updated to support it if it made a lot of sense for the app. So those that’s a lot of conditions. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of qualifiers, you know, but but you know, for instance, this this year, iOS 17,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big thing is interactive widgets. I would hope that a an app that I’m paying a active
⏹️ ▶️ Marco subscription for, I would hope if it has a lot of value in widgets,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and if there’s a lot of value in those widgets becoming interactive for that app for the actual role that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it serves in my life, I would hope they would update to that within maybe six months of iOS coming out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ideally sooner, but you know, but meanwhile, like if it’s an app where widget doesn’t really make a lot of sense,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t need them to do that. So it all depends like what’s going on in the environment around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. I don’t need new features just for the sake of new features. But if the expectation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like software in this area, you know, is moving this direction,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like you know, for instance, if they, if the OS gets redesigned, you know, apps look totally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out of place and totally wrong until they update. That’s a shorter timeline expectation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for that. If, for instance, when they launched dark mode, if your app doesn’t support dark mode for a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco year after they launched dark mode like that. That kind of sucks. But for most apps,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as long as what I originally paid for continues to work and they seem to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reasonably fit into the surrounding ecosystem still, I’m fine with that.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I think when people if you ask people this question, especially tech nerdy type people like academically,
⏹️ ▶️ John they might say, well, kind of what Marco said, like, you know, I don’t expect too much,
⏹️ ▶️ John but you should add new features every once in a while and keep up with what the OS and the platform is doing. But it’s one of those
⏹️ ▶️ John monkey paw wishes in that if you actually had an app that kept adding stuff, eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John it craps up your app. Like there is a certain point where an app is has not achieved perfection,
⏹️ ▶️ John but found the right middle point between having way too many features and way too few features. And that point is
⏹️ ▶️ John different for everybody, but you really don’t want an app that just like pursues everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like for example, the thing was talking, Mark was talking about the interactive widgets. Oh, my app doesn’t even have widgets,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I wanna use interactive widgets, so I’m gonna throw it in. And there’s some new feature with ML, I’m gonna throw that in, I’m gonna throw it in. Eventually,
⏹️ ▶️ John it makes the app worse, not better. So if you happen to subscribe to an app that’s been out for many years
⏹️ ▶️ John and kind of hit maturity, I don’t think you should expect, nor should you want constant
⏹️ ▶️ John new feature additions, because maybe the feature set is pretty close to like the right balance.
⏹️ ▶️ John And maybe you can adjust it. I wish that you had this feature and didn’t have this one, and it can be sort of like oscillation
⏹️ ▶️ John around the center point, but constant addition of feature makes apps that are too crapped up.
⏹️ ▶️ John The flip side of that is if you get an app that feels like it’s gotten to that stable
⏹️ ▶️ John point, but then never revisits that, eventually you may be perfectly satisfied
⏹️ ▶️ John with the app and keep paying for it, but eventually say it’s like five or 10 years in and your friend
⏹️ ▶️ John has an app that does a similar job, but it like looks totally different or does a whole bunch of different stuff, you may
⏹️ ▶️ John not realize that the competitive market has moved up around that thing. And even though you were perfectly satisfied paying a subscription
⏹️ ▶️ John to that, you didn’t realize, oh, actually there’s a new way to do this type of app that is better and this app hasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John kept up and it’s time for me to jump ship and go elsewhere. And those are all like personal decisions, but like
⏹️ ▶️ John I definitely did not expect nor want an app to constantly add new features to justify
⏹️ ▶️ John a subscription. What justifies a subscription is what Margo said. Does it still do the thing I wanted to do in the way I wanted
⏹️ ▶️ John to do it? And some people like eventually get to the point where they hate change so much that even if the
⏹️ ▶️ John entire competitive landscape around your app has moved on and they’re all much better, you still wanna use the old one that works
⏹️ ▶️ John the way it did five years ago because that’s what you’re comfortable with. And that’s fine too. So that’s why it’s different for every single
⏹️ ▶️ John person. But yeah, what I want from the app is continues working, fixes
⏹️ ▶️ John any bugs, and I continue to like it for the reasons I like it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s kind of the fear we have about an update. Oh, my favorite app just got updated. of people get filled with dread
⏹️ ▶️ John because like did they just change the whole interface? Did they remove a feature that I love? Did they add a new feature that they think
⏹️ ▶️ John is better but is worse for me, updates are not always a positive, so I absolutely do not expect or
⏹️ ▶️ John want them to constantly add new features.
#askatp: Password-mgr. recovery
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then finally, Dennis Chapovich writes, I’ve listened to multiple segments from you regarding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey backup strategies and password managers, but I never heard you talk about your approach to not losing access to your password manager.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m asking this because I was recently on a trip in which my phone almost died, which would have caused me to lose access to all my passwords until I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey returned home. Do you have any specific strategy for having access to services which may be needed when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you are not home? The first option is carry more than one device, or travel with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more than one device. With that being said, I don’t really have a good answer for this. I use one password,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey somewhat begrudgingly now. And so all of that stuff is synced with one password.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I can get to it via the web if necessary. But I don’t have the super secret, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s not a GWID, but it’s sort of kind of like a GWID. I don’t have that memorized or anything like that. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have that in easily accessible place if I was, you know, overseas or something like that. So I really don’t have a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good answer for this. I believe we’ve started with Marco the last couple times. So, John, what’s your answer?
⏹️ ▶️ John right, like redundancy, you know, like if you really need to have access to it on the road, don’t just bring one phone
⏹️ ▶️ John or you know, because what if you want to drop it in a car runs over it or whatever, have have multiple devices for it. And the broader
⏹️ ▶️ John sense, not losing access means all those things that people click through to
⏹️ ▶️ John get to what they wanted to do that says, Oh, print out these backup codes and put them in a safe place. Like, yeah, yeah, I’ll do that
⏹️ ▶️ John later. And you don’t do it. That’s a mistake. Do that. Print the backup codes, put them in a safety deposit box in a bank,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Like, do like, especially for like the things that are the keys to the kingdom, like the
⏹️ ▶️ John the things to access your main email account, which is what you register at all your accounts and all your other services, but so you can use
⏹️ ▶️ John the forgot my password thing or whatever. What if you lose all access to that? All your devices get wiped, your house burns
⏹️ ▶️ John down. You don’t have any devices with one password or iCloud key chain. It’s just, you know, again, the cloud sync
⏹️ ▶️ John ones you should still be able to get back by sending your Apple ID. But whatever disaster strikes, physical backup.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s why those backup codes exist for for for your key accounts. Obviously not for everything, but for like your key
⏹️ ▶️ John accounts. Make sure you actually do the thing they tell you to do, which is to print out the backup codes and don’t pin them to your refrigerator.
⏹️ ▶️ John But, you know, put them in an actual safe place somewhere. Have them off site if possible.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you have a safety deposit box at a bank, that’s good. You could have them over a relative’s house and they’re safe or something, something like
⏹️ ▶️ John that. But that’s that’s broader than just travel travel. I think Casey nailed it. You know, redundancy
⏹️ ▶️ John more than one device.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, I also use one password. I mean, I use one password and Apple. ICloud
⏹️ ▶️ Marco keychain, which is still exactly as messy as it sounds. I still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have not resolved that. Anyway, my one password, they have these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recovery code things, and I have those in a physically secure place. I have them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on paper in a physically secure place.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say, whether that’s a safe somewhere, a lockbox, a bank safety deposit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco box, whatever it is for you, I would suggest doing that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco humans are pretty good at guarding physical important things. You know, we have important documents that we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to keep as people on Earth and things like that. And so, you know, we’ve gotten good at like guard this physical
⏹️ ▶️ Marco piece of paper as if it’s very important to you. And so whatever mechanism you have in place for that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say do that. The risk to somebody like, you know, most of us is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not super high because most risk of like, you know, losing access or having hackers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gain access to our accounts would usually happen remotely. it would usually be internet based, you know, not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somebody breaking into your house and finding your lockbox and stuff like that. So yeah, use those recovery codes. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use those for everything. Like a lot of those I will just store in 1Password
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or Apple Keychain or both in some weird messy way. But you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use the backup codes, store them somewhere. But for the really important stuff like 1Password itself,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or maybe Dropbox, you know, depending on like, you know, how you’re using these different services, maybe your Apple ID, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really important stuff that you would need to like bootstrap a new device or a new access setup,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have actually the physical codes for those things so that you can, you know, if all of your hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is gone, whether it gets stolen or maybe it gets destroyed in a flood or a fire or whatever, if all your hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is gone, how do you get back into your digital life? If you can just, if you like, you buy a new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptop or iPhone, how do you get back in? Have a plan for that in some way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that does not rely on you just having access to another device. That’s it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, thank you to our sponsor this week, Squarespace, and thank you to our members who support us directly. You can join
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and hear all our fun new stuff at atp.fm slash join, I mean, we’ll talk to you next
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause
⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause
⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John 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,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and T. Marco Armin,
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, they didn’t mean to
⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental, tech podcast so long.
Casey’s gift
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, I don’t even know what to do. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am subscribed to UPS My Choice is what it used to be called. I don’t know what it’s called now. Where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what that lets you do is say, okay, I am the resident at such and such an address. Whenever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something is shipped to me via UPS, you know, let me know and give me a tracking number and let me know some information
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about it. So, a day or two ago, I got an email saying that something was coming to me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and was arriving, I guess, that day or whatever. I was like, well, that’s odd. I have no idea what this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is. And so I signed into UPS My Choice and it said that there was a 36
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pound package coming to me, which was a little bit confusing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to say the least. And- Dog food? No, no. I didn’t have anything that I knew about that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was coming that was heavy. And it is relatively unusual that we get shipments
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for anything but chewy if it’s dog food time, which it’s almost, but not yet, and Amazon.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we do get UPS shipments and occasionally FedEx shipments, but it’s fairly unusual. And usually Aaron
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I will be aware of what’s forthcoming. So I see there’s a 36-pound
⏹️ ▶️ Casey shipment. And I was able to log into MyChoice and get information about where it was shipped from.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I genuinely don’t remember the town, but it was quickly apparent to me that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco has been taking care of things within his house. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what’s funny is I think it was literally the day before that we had recorded
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the IMAC tier list. So I guess this was Monday because we were, yeah, because we recorded Sunday nights. I guess this was Monday, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tuesday. So it was like a day within 48 hours of recording the IMAC tier list where I had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thoughts about a couple of IMACs. And mostly, IMACs didn’t care. A couple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of them, though, I had some real big thoughts. And one of them that, and I won’t name
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what it is. Well, I guess I have to name what it is. I will say that I have really big thoughts about the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iMac Pro. And I went to the front door after this package
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was delivered and it was one of those, not trapezoidal, but one of those like pizza wedge shaped
⏹️ ▶️ Casey boxes. And I knew immediately, well, actually my first thought was, oh, he sent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me the LG 5K, which actually I wouldn’t mind having another. You know, it would be kind of fun to have that as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a porch monitor rather than my beloved, but not very remarkable 4K monitor.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then it occurred to me, oh no, no, no, no. This is not a rectangle. This is a pie. Oh God, he sent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me an iMac. And I opened it up and sure enough, I am now the reluctant owner
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of your old iMac Pro. So thanks, bud. What the hell
⏹️ ▶️ Casey am I supposed to do with this?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I saw that there was an iMac, what appeared to be an iMac in there. I didn’t look closely at it. Oh God.
⏹️ ▶️ John no. You’re such an amateur about getting junk from Argo. You have to look in the box. What are you doing?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is it nearby? It’s downstairs, but I am happy to go get it. Oh, Jesus. All right, do I need to go
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco downstairs? There could
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John be a live animal in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey upstairs and open it up. All right, hold on. I’m gonna disappear for a minute, so God only knows what you’re gonna say while I’m gone. But all right,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will let you know when I’m back. I am disappearing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Keep the box closed and carry it upstairs closed. No, you have to pause. We’re gonna have to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey edit this out. Vamp for a minute, because I want to hear about John’s stuff. So, vamp. I’m leaving, I’m leaving, I’m leaving. All right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I want you to open it up on the air.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, okay, hold on. So what I’m gonna try to do here, because I don’t have the slack on my microphone, so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hold on, bear with me. Hold on, I gotta undo, I’m gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John regret undoing this. Just use the microphone on the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Too soon. Alright, hold on, I gotta take all this god darn velcro off. This is, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gonna have so many regrets when I try to put this together tomorrow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s not funny. It’s a 37 pound puppy.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m saying this, we have to always, do you get a box like that and not actually look what’s in it? I thought I peeked at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I’m- You gotta take everything out. Come on.
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t know what he’s hiding in there. It could all be packed with Kindles.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It better not be. Oh my God.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I ran out. I sent them all to you. All right,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can’t. My microphone, okay. I can’t do this very well. I only got
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some slack, but I’ve got enough. Oh Jesus, this weighs a ton.
⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t drop the iMac and don’t put it anywhere near the windshield of any of your cars Very concerned
⏹️ ▶️ John you imagine if he shatters his glass desk by touching it with the corner of the iMac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, that’d be amazing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, she’s helping me lift it because I am I am chained to the desk here.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh There’s actually there’s Tom bins in here. Oh, I like that In the keyboard slot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the iMac box. All right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Did you not send in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the peripherals because you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John using them? No,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I just, I did not look closely enough, clearly. Alright, there’s the box that once had, thank
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you Aaron, that once had a power supply in it. Hold on, let me put this back on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John power supply? What are you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey talking about? The cord. Oh, there’s cords in here. Oh, yeah, the power cord. Oh, mother of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey God, this looks like the connector for an LG. Alright, hold on. How do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we get this out? Oh, God. I just lifted the goddamn thing and I can tell from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the stupid lifting mechanism, this is the LG 5K. You’re finally rid of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It fits perfectly in an iMac Pro box.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So actually, I need to take a picture of this because it is flawless. Hold on.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The live listeners won’t be able to see this. And my office is a freaking mess right now. Hold on. I got to take a picture
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of this because it fits flawlessly in the box. Oh my god, this is perfect. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hey now I can tell you I am that I am NOT the reluctant owner of your old iMac Pro I’m the happy owner
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of a second LG 5k that’s super delightful
⏹️ ▶️ John So you’ve looked in the box and you couldn’t tell a difference between an LG 5k and an iMac Pro I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco only glanced at it. I had like that that big like white Like kind of foamy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wrapper that goes around the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly. That’s all I saw and it looked right to me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still had that so I put that around the LG because it fits
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m gonna put it in slack and then maybe Marco, this is not a great picture because it’s dark in here, blah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey blah, blah, but maybe Marco, you can… I
⏹️ ▶️ John mean, you can turn the lights on, it’s okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, because the, no, well, first of all, I want to remain sleepy in my sleepy clothes and my sleepy shirt, but beyond
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco that… You just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lived in a 40 pound box.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know, tell me about it. But beyond that, the more important thing is that there’s a piddly little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey teeny tiny light bulb in the overhead fan, which I’ve now been forbidden to turn on during recording.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And even if I did turn it on, the light bulb is currently blown because I never use it. So there is no light in this
⏹️ ▶️ John It was like a scene from Blair Witch. It’s the lighting that
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you’ve got going on in this room.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyway, so I’ve just put it in Slack for you two and maybe we can make it the chapter art for this
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah, what’s
⏹️ ▶️ John missing there is a gigantic silver, dark silver space gray foot of an iMac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, at a glance, it looked like it, especially because you can see more of the foot now, but Marco had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey intelligently put the box, the cardboard box that slots in that spot. So I saw
⏹️ ▶️ Casey something that was dark, that was the shape of an iMac, that was in an iMac Pro box. It’s clearly an iMac Pro.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I gotta be honest with you, I was not happy about this, about receiving this iMac Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because what the f**k am I supposed to do with an iMac Pro today? Are you happy
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re getting a second 5K?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, I actually am. I genuinely am. Which is,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s gonna be great. Even after the start of recording today, when your 5K may have been to
⏹️ ▶️ John blame. That’s true,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually. Now I have a redundant 5K. See, it’s perfect. Flawless victory. Thanks, bud.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I appreciate it. There’s a house in our town that every summer as decoration, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco set up a big row of bobbleheads on their front retaining wall. That’s gonna be your desk. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just gonna be like this row of bobblehead monitors, just wobble,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey wobble, wobble. The series
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey all shaking back and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The funny thing is, hand to God, I was trying to lift this thing out of the cardboard shell that it rests in,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I went to lift it because it’s sitting upright, and I went to lift up from the base
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the screen and that bastard just came flying up, just like that piece of crap LG
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stand loves to do. And I was pretty damn sure that was the LG 5K, but the moment that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing came flying almost out of the box when I lifted it up, oh, nope, that’s 5K, I’d know that piece of crap stand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anywhere. Thanks, bud, I feel much better now. And a couple of Tom Bins too. You love me,
⏹️ ▶️ John me. So when you say Tom Bins, what are they? Like little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pouches? Yeah, yeah, like little like cable organizer pouches.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I had some. So yeah, so I was, you know, cleaning out the house to sell it. And you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when, when you are getting ready to move. As you’re packing things, you’re like, do I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really want to pay to move this and then have this in the new place? Like, do I like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this thing enough that I want to actually move it? And that can make you make some,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some real honest decisions and it can be really difficult to make some of those decisions.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This was not a difficult one. And this one was like, as I’m, you know, this is what I was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using last week when we recorded, and I edited the show last week, and as we’re doing all that, I’m like, do I want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to move this thing that I hate? I hate this monitor so much.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So instead, I had to pack it into something. So instead of packing it into a box
⏹️ ▶️ Marco onto the box truck and having to haul it back and forth and take up space and move it into the new place eventually and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco deal with it, I’m like, you know what? I’m just going to pack this into whatever box I can find in my attic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it fits in and mail it to Virginia. So there you go.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Thanks bud. So now I’m happy to report as of minutes ago, well actually as of days ago, I just didn’t realize it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey As of minutes ago, if I go to work on the porch, which I actually intended to do today because it was gorgeous
⏹️ ▶️ Casey here and then never got around to it. Now I can do so by using an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey LG 5K, which is a much better experience than my LG 4K. So this is delightful.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It can be your outdoor rated monitor.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, exactly right. Now it’s my kink too. Look at that.
John’s gift
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, John, since you apparently did a better job of investigating and interrogating
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your gift shipment, can you tell me what you learned about what Marco shipped you? So I
⏹️ ▶️ John was going to say that if he actually had sent you the iMac Pro, then maybe he sent the wrong shipments to the wrong
⏹️ ▶️ John people. But now that I see it’s the 5K, he sent the right thing, because I sure as hell don’t want that thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It might have been a better troll to send it to you.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I have to say, to start, Marco occasionally does this, and it’s a very nice thing that he does. He’s sending us things, and as he makes
⏹️ ▶️ John it sound like, oh, I’m getting rid of my junk. But But honestly, there’s these are things that have value. And it’s nice that he takes the time and
⏹️ ▶️ John spends the money to ship them to his friends instead of just like free cycling them or trying to
⏹️ ▶️ John sell them or whatever. So I just want to say thank you to Marco. It’s a very nice thing that you do when you get rid of your old tech stuff and you send
⏹️ ▶️ John it to us. We appreciate it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, especially now that I know what’s in there. And it’s not just a an iMac pro that I was planning to just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bring to Apple and get store credit for because I don’t know what the hell else to do with it. But no, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even want to think about how much it was to ship this damn thing to me. So thank
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco you. It was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was like 50 bucks. It was the best 50 bucks I ever spent. I think like that was worth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John it. But still, it’s a nice thing. But
⏹️ ▶️ John that said, the things that Marco says aren’t always are sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John puzzling. And I think this is the the biggest stumper that I’ve gotten. Oh, no. Never. Oh, no.
⏹️ ▶️ John First, when Marco is in this mode and he’s like, I’m getting rid of my stuff and I’m going to be nice and pay to ship
⏹️ ▶️ John it to my friends. One thing that isn’t in his mind is, let me find out how I can pack this safely.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s why he uses Kindle’s, for example.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco as packing material.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, there’s a gap between this tech product and the edge of the box. What if I just wedge three or four Kindles in there? There
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it doesn’t move around
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s about the extent of his packing abilities. So I have to say the contents of this box, it was in a cardboard
⏹️ ▶️ John box and there was no padding whatsoever on anything. It
⏹️ ▶️ John piece of corrugated cardboard you can possibly imagine. And then stuff. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it was packed in to try to say, well, I think he was actually looking in the house. What kind of things do I have that I could wedge in
⏹️ ▶️ John here so things don’t move around too much? But that’s, again, the extent of the package. That is correct. Yeah, because it looks like it looks
⏹️ ▶️ John like I need something that’s skinny that will fit here, that will fill the space. So what he found,
⏹️ ▶️ John let’s start. He there is something that it’s a it’s a Blu-ray reader and writer. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the Buffalo, that popular one that everyone was saying. You should get this one if you want to rip and write Blu-ray
⏹️ ▶️ John optical disks. It’s got, you know, a USB connected DC power connector So
⏹️ ▶️ John that the cables are in there and the things in there. I already have a blu-ray reader I think I have a samsung but I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John actually have a writer So it’s nice to have this assuming the writer still works and it wasn’t just packing material So that one it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, okay, I don’t think I really need this I’ve never actually written a blu-ray, but I you know, I do
⏹️ ▶️ John read them occasionally if my other one dies now I have a second one and it’s small so whatever though, you know, it’s like micro
⏹️ ▶️ John usb if you remember with that connector It looks like it’s gross. But anyway So there’s that then
⏹️ ▶️ John There is a plastic spindle, if you remember those from back in the day, of writable Blu-ray
⏹️ ▶️ John discs. Hey, convenient. I don’t know, I still don’t quite know why I would ever want to write anything to a Blu-ray disc, but if
⏹️ ▶️ John I did, I don’t have to buy them. Oh, it’s thrilling. Yeah, assuming the discs in there aren’t all bad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, they won’t be, because did you see what kind they are?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I didn’t. Let’s see, what does it say?
⏹️ ▶️ John M discs. Permanent storage solutions. Designed to last up to a thousand years.
⏹️ ▶️ John to, it says, though, So that could be like 30 seconds, right? Well, yeah, technically, 30 seconds is also up to 1000 years. So
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe I’ll try that. Maybe I’ll try writing some stuff, but that’s not the main concept of this box. That was packing material
⏹️ ▶️ John to be wedged against the main contents of this box.
⏹️ ▶️ John were spacers. Yeah. Given that I’ve described these spacers, Casey, can you think of what might be a similar
⏹️ ▶️ John dimensions to a spindle of optical disks and a Blu-ray writer? How many optical
⏹️ ▶️ John disks was it? It’s like a stack. It’s like an inch high stack. And then the the the Blu-ray writer is like, you know, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a square about the size of a Blu-ray.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh God, I don’t know. A Kindles? I have no idea. USB Pre?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Wow, I would never get rid of one of those.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, fair. What is in this box? I’ll put the picture in of this amazing packing job
⏹️ ▶️ John on our Slack so you can look at it. It’s two full-size HomePods. No!
⏹️ ▶️ John Look at this, just look at this packing job, Casey. Look at the piece of cardboard between them. Who
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco is he kidding with that piece of cardboard?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey separating material.
⏹️ ▶️ John See, it’s like padding. I’m amazed that these things came to. I’m not going to say unscathed because the home
⏹️ ▶️ John pods are a little worse for wear, but honestly, I can’t tell if that’s damage. If that’s damage incurred during
⏹️ ▶️ John shipment or damage incurred when they were at Marco’s house. I don’t, I can’t tell. Oh my God. So now here’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the conundrum. All right, so I already have a full-size home pod. I’ve got one when they were released, right? And it’s in my
⏹️ ▶️ John living room doing its thing. I’ve got these two things. I’m like, oh, two home pods. Oh, well, it was like, first
⏹️ ▶️ John I thought, are these the ones that were flaking out at Marco? Yeah, they’re kind of all flaking
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco out. They all flake out, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. I mean, so far mine hasn’t been mostly, but I barely use it. But I’m like, okay, well, I’m sure I’ll be able to find
⏹️ ▶️ John a place for these in the house. And since I’ve got them, I’ve been puzzling it over, and I cannot figure
⏹️ ▶️ John out what the hell I’m gonna do with these things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Neither could I, that’s why I sent them to you.
⏹️ ▶️ John I even, I went into my daughter’s room the other day, and she was listening to music on her HomePod, not her HomePod, her Google Home
⏹️ ▶️ John Mini, the really, really tiny puck thing. And she’s listening to music on it, and I’m like, oh, this is it. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I immediately go, boom. Perfect. Would you like me to replace that Google Home Mini with a HomePod? It’ll sound
⏹️ ▶️ John way better. and you know, you have a HomePod in your room. Isn’t that cool? You could even have a stereo pair. And before I could get the words out, she’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, nope, nope, nope, nope. Can you guess why she didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey want it? Because she likes the Google stuff, because Siri sucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I’ll go with Siri sucks. You’re not thinking like teenager.
⏹️ ▶️ John Too big. It’s too big. The Google Home Mini is tiny and unobtrusive.
⏹️ ▶️ John And this thing is just, here’s the thing. We talk about this with like the iMac. Like why does it have to be so thin and who cares about that or whatever?
⏹️ ▶️ John Non-tech people, people who aren’t into tech things this is like a hobby, do not want technology
⏹️ ▶️ John products to be dominant in their space. The HomePod
⏹️ ▶️ John is too big for a teenage girl’s bedroom if she doesn’t care about
⏹️ ▶️ John HomePods or like any of that tech stuff or whatever. It takes up too much volume, it is too prominent,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s too ugly, it draws too much attention to itself. Whereas the tiny little puck of the Google Home Mini is practically
⏹️ ▶️ John buried under the other stuff that’s there. It’s like so unobtrusive. And then secondarily, she’s happy and she never wants
⏹️ ▶️ John to do anything that I tell her to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John she’s self-aware, but it’s totally true.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, she is a teenager, that’s their job.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m like, okay, what am I gonna do with these? I briefly thought about replacing the speakers
⏹️ ▶️ John that are on my desk for my Mac.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, you can’t do that, it’s too laggy. Exactly,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I remember when we talked
⏹️ ▶️ John about it, I’m like, no, I don’t wanna deal with the lag. Not only laggy, but do I want flakiness involving audio
⏹️ ▶️ John on my computer? No, I do not. My speakers are cheap, cruddy speakers, but they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John connected directly with an analog audio cable to the back of my Mac and there’s no latency and they work every
⏹️ ▶️ John single time. You know, so that’s out. I’m looking around the house like, well, I’ve got one HomePod
⏹️ ▶️ John in here. If I put the other HomePod, I’m gonna get a stereo pair, but I have surround speakers in that room
⏹️ ▶️ John or the fancy speakers that I bought, see past episodes. There’s not really any home place for like,
⏹️ ▶️ John even just to do stereo music. And my one big HomePod is like buried in the corner behind everything as a punishment for being bad.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Like it’s got like photos
⏹️ ▶️ John in front of it. And it’s like, we use it to play Christmas carols when we’re decorating the tree. And
⏹️ ▶️ John when we’re decorating trees, it’s actually relocated to the other side of the room, but that’s it. But like, if I’m gonna play stereo music, I have
⏹️ ▶️ John much better, like full surround stereo speaker system that I could run. And I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have a place to put two home pods if I wanted to do like, let them do their home potty thing. Like I don’t know where
⏹️ ▶️ John they would go. And plus I have two extra ones, not just one. I thought about putting them as the TV speakers
⏹️ ▶️ John to the upstairs TV that was next to me. My wife said, I barely use that TV and I don’t want two giant home pods in our bedroom.
⏹️ ▶️ John and honestly, there’s not really a place for them there either. The kitchen,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, like there’s not a lot of place that we, no one really listens to music out loud in the house, so I’m still puzzling
⏹️ ▶️ John it over. Right now, they’re just sitting on the desk behind me, looking very sad, but their cords is angling off the end of the desk,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I don’t know what I’m gonna do with them, but I’ll figure something out. I mean, worst case scenario, I could like, I should
⏹️ ▶️ John have offered them to my son, we just took him to college the other day. Do you want these for your dorm room? He almost certainly
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t, But maybe he would say, sure, why not? Or something like that. But we have to,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re driving a mini fridge out to him in a little bit because we’re taking separate trips for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey various reasons. Oh, because your car isn’t big enough to hold it all? Mr. Sedan is all
⏹️ ▶️ John No, it is absolutely big enough to hold it all, but I didn’t want to pack it all in.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And also you have to remember, so
⏹️ ▶️ John when your kid goes to school close to where you live, the phenomenon
⏹️ ▶️ John of, oh, I don’t have to make sure I have everything because I’ll just remember what I don’t have and ask
⏹️ ▶️ John for a second trip. That is absolutely in effect. Just like by the time we got home, I had text messages. Oh, can you bring
⏹️ ▶️ John me this and this and this? And we and we legit forgot at least one thing. We forgot
⏹️ ▶️ John like his mattress topper thing, which we meant to bring with us because it was in the basement. So we’re going out there a second time no matter what.
⏹️ ▶️ John So anyway, maybe these will come with me and I’ll say, hey, you want these? And he’ll probably say no for the same variety of reasons.
⏹️ ▶️ John And, you know, anyway, I’m puzzling it over. But yeah, now I’ve got
⏹️ ▶️ John two sad looking big home pods and a bunch of optical disks.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fun. Yeah, at least they’re not that big.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mean, they are the full-size
⏹️ ▶️ John ones. I mean, just like the box. I didn’t get a gigantic box arriving at my house or whatever. And I honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ John as soon as I saw the package coming, I kind of had a notion of what they might be, but the second I saw it sitting on my
⏹️ ▶️ John porch, I’m like, oh, it’s HomePods. Just tell from the weight and the dimensionality,
⏹️ ▶️ John I know what a big HomePod’s like. That’s what’s in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here. Yeah, because the big HomePods are very heavy. Like they’re very dense objects.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You pick one up, you’re like, whoa.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco So do you have any
⏹️ ▶️ John suggestions for what I should do with these? Because it’s really stumping me. Like I’m not against them. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re good speakers. It’s two good speakers and I can AirPlay to them. Like they should have a function somewhere in my life.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would strongly advise not using them in a stereo pair if that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco changes things. So. Why? Stereo pair HomePods are so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buggy. Standalone HomePods are bad enough. So standalone HomePods are themselves quite buggy,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the bugginess goes up dramatically with stereo pairs, which is a shame because so does the sound quality.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so it sucks that you can’t really use them in the way they sound the best if you want them to be reliable
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, I thought of a use, I thought of a use, go on, continue.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say like anywhere that you might be able to, anywhere that you might put a single home pod that maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could use an improvement in volume or quality, put this there. Or mail them to Casey.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey No, I don’t want them.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t wanna, you know, keep sending these like the sisterhood of the traveling HomePods.
⏹️ ▶️ John But now here’s the thought. So when COVID started, we made my wife a little home office
⏹️ ▶️ John downstairs. I think we talked about this. We got her a nice, fancy standing desk motorized thing. And her
⏹️ ▶️ John work gave her a bunch of work at home equipment, including a gigantic 32-inch
⏹️ ▶️ John Dell monitor or something or other. It’s not Retina, but it’s huge. Anyway, she’s got her office down there.
⏹️ ▶️ John And at some point, I got the Sonos Toblerone thing. What is that called, the Roam?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the Rome, the Rome is the one that looks like a little Toblerone, right? The triangle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John she’s got that down there, but that’s not a good speaker. No. So that that means she wanted that.
⏹️ ▶️ John But she said, you know, she had like a little mini Bluetooth speaker and she saw that I had my room that I use in the shower. She’s like, oh, I want one
⏹️ ▶️ John of those. I got her one. So she does listen to music out loud. And so I should bring both home pods down there
⏹️ ▶️ John because there’s plenty of the room down there. Like it’s just her office area. There’s not a lot of junk down there. The only
⏹️ ▶️ John downside is if they are flaky, I’m going to hear immediately. just give me back my sonos thing. Because at least it
⏹️ ▶️ John plays music when I wanted to play. I mean, it’s worth a try. Yeah, I’m definitely I’m definitely going to try that.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, she knows I got them and she didn’t immediately say can I have them in my office? So I think she might be kind of wary of them too, but she
⏹️ ▶️ John does listen to the program, so I’ll make a second attempt at pitching her on having these in her office. But she might also say
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re kind of big and you know. Whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, they sound amazing for their size to like that’s what’s what’s so frustrating me about the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco home pods is that I love the way they sound. They sound great. they’re just really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hard to use because they’re because you know they lack any kind of input and so like I can’t I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bypass their flaky smarts because I you know you have to still use AirPlay to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco connect to them so like that so that’s that’s no good there’s no line in there’s no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s no input method at all besides the flakiness but once you can actually get them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to connect and use them they sound incredible but it that’s just such
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a huge asterisk and such a huge downside that it makes it really hard to use them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You could have just gotten a bunch more Sonos stuff and that would have been fine. I guess Marco isn’t sending it to you for free though.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, again, I didn’t have a need for this, but yeah, I’m just gonna put them down there and not tell her and just like get them set up somehow
⏹️ ▶️ John and just like next time she goes down there, I’ll start playing music to them and she’ll be like, whoa, where’s this great music coming
⏹️ ▶️ John from? That’s optimistic. That’s how we imagine it will work, but it’s not how it’s gonna actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think it’ll be more like you’ll be like standing on the stairs trying to make your phone connect to them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you’ll be like, hold on, hold on, Just wait, just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey hold on. One more second.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One second. Just let me
⏹️ ▶️ John More likely she’s going to go down there and she’s going to say, why did you put your junk by my desk? Get that off of there. She’s
⏹️ ▶️ John going to think I put them down there to store them, not that I’m trying to do a nice thing. And it’s like, you can listen to the music. It’s like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff that Marco sent you is your problem. Don’t get it near my office.