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497: The Hotness Has to Go Somewhere

 

00:00:00 ◼   ► God, I hate this freaking LG monitor.

00:00:01 ◼   ► It's been crooked all night.

00:00:03 ◼   ► I can't fix it.

00:00:03 ◼   ► It's the--

00:00:04 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

00:00:05 ◼   ► It's like one degree off.

00:00:07 ◼   ► Like, I just-- but I can't figure out-- it's like John's audio

00:00:09 ◼   ► sync.

00:00:09 ◼   ► I can't, like, straight--

00:00:11 ◼   ► [GROANS]

00:00:11 ◼   ► Freaking LG.

00:00:12 ◼   ► So fine.

00:00:13 ◼   ► I was in Costco the other day going through, like,

00:00:15 ◼   ► the monitor section.

00:00:16 ◼   ► I was saying, like, LG always makes bad stands.

00:00:18 ◼   ► And I just go there, and I hit them with my finger.

00:00:19 ◼   ► And you just go online, tap, tap, tap.

00:00:21 ◼   ► And the LG ones would just, like,

00:00:22 ◼   ► shake like little spinning plates, little bobbleheads,

00:00:24 ◼   ► you know?

00:00:25 ◼   ► Because they would just keep shaking as you went.

00:00:27 ◼   ► It's just so hilarious.

00:00:28 ◼   ► Like the Alienware Asus one would just move once

00:00:31 ◼   ► and come right back.

00:00:32 ◼   ► It's like bad shocks on your car.

00:00:33 ◼   ► You just go, "Wobble, wobble, wobble."

00:00:35 ◼   ► It's so bad.

00:00:36 ◼   ► (electronic beeping)

00:00:40 ◼   ► - I've been doing a lot of driving today in the Defender.

00:00:44 ◼   ► - Oh, and?

00:00:45 ◼   ► - It's interesting.

00:00:47 ◼   ► There's a lot about it I like.

00:00:48 ◼   ► There's a lot about it that is going back to the past.

00:00:52 ◼   ► Like I had to get gassed today.

00:00:54 ◼   ► - Oh, I'm so sorry.

00:00:57 ◼   ► - Well, and I, so I got the gas at the pump,

00:01:00 ◼   ► and it was all, you know, gross,

00:01:01 ◼   ► and I'm like relearning, like, oh,

00:01:03 ◼   ► do pumps take wireless payments now?

00:01:05 ◼   ► No.

00:01:06 ◼   ► At least this one.

00:01:07 ◼   ► - Oh, Costco does.

00:01:08 ◼   ► Costco does, baby. - This one didn't.

00:01:09 ◼   ► I mean, this is, you know, some random one upstate, right?

00:01:12 ◼   ► This one, at least this one wasn't advanced enough

00:01:14 ◼   ► to have ads playing at me while I was standing there

00:01:16 ◼   ► pumping my dinosaurs into my car,

00:01:18 ◼   ► but I also, like, I'm so out of practice that,

00:01:21 ◼   ► like, you know, I pumped the gas,

00:01:22 ◼   ► and then I, like, drove over to one of the parking spots

00:01:24 ◼   ► to go inside to the soda factory,

00:01:27 ◼   ► and I had totally left the gas cap totally off.

00:01:31 ◼   ► Like, not just the metal door.

00:01:33 ◼   ► Like, the cap wasn't even screwed back on.

00:01:36 ◼   ► Like, I just totally forgot.

00:01:38 ◼   ► - Normally the car will have a warning light for that,

00:01:40 ◼   ► 'cause it'll, like, the pressure in the gas tank

00:01:42 ◼   ► will be weird and it'll put on a light.

00:01:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, and maybe, you know,

00:01:45 ◼   ► had I driven more than 30 feet,

00:01:47 ◼   ► maybe it would've told me that,

00:01:48 ◼   ► but I just, like, drove, like, 30 feet and parked.

00:01:50 ◼   ► - At least you disconnected the, you know,

00:01:52 ◼   ► - Took the nozzle out, didn't just drive away

00:01:54 ◼   ► with it attached to the car.

00:01:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's true, that's true.

00:01:56 ◼   ► - Right, right, right.

00:01:57 ◼   ► Yeah, so it's, yeah, but anyway.

00:01:59 ◼   ► So one thing I realized, so you know, I did,

00:02:03 ◼   ► I mean, jeez, a lot of driving today,

00:02:04 ◼   ► probably six hours of driving today.

00:02:07 ◼   ► You know, got finally a lot of carplay use in.

00:02:10 ◼   ► And one thing I noticed--

00:02:11 ◼   ► - Ooh, I've been waiting for this,

00:02:12 ◼   ► I've been waiting for this.

00:02:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh, and first of all, before I forget,

00:02:15 ◼   ► the key fob is ridiculous.

00:02:17 ◼   ► Like, this thing, let me, I have it in my pocket here.

00:02:20 ◼   ► This is bigger than an AirPods Pro case.

00:02:22 ◼   ► - It should be, to punish you,

00:02:23 ◼   ► it should be shaped like the Defender.

00:02:25 ◼   ► It should be like the Tesla one,

00:02:27 ◼   ► so it should be really tall and boxy

00:02:29 ◼   ► and have huge wheels on it and lots of ground clearance.

00:02:31 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:02:33 ◼   ► - This thing, I mean, I don't think it's that much bigger

00:02:37 ◼   ► than a lot of modern car key fobs.

00:02:38 ◼   ► I've just been spoiled by Tesla's nice little

00:02:40 ◼   ► like tiny mini Tesla thing, so there's that.

00:02:43 ◼   ► Anyway, oh, and another funny thing.

00:02:45 ◼   ► So, you know, the Defender, it's a very tall vehicle,

00:02:48 ◼   ► as discussed, lots of headroom for John's hair.

00:02:51 ◼   ► but yeah, very tall vehicle, and I've also,

00:02:55 ◼   ► I've attached a roof box to the top of it for reasons.

00:02:58 ◼   ► And I've never done this before,

00:02:59 ◼   ► I've never used one of these boxes before,

00:03:01 ◼   ► but as part of my beach preparedness,

00:03:05 ◼   ► I wanted to carry with me recovery gear if I get stuck.

00:03:09 ◼   ► So that includes things like I have MaxTrax traction boards,

00:03:13 ◼   ► I have a giant, one of those elastic tow ropes,

00:03:16 ◼   ► and some soft shackles and other towing equipment,

00:03:20 ◼   ► basically in case I need to be towed out

00:03:21 ◼   ► or tow someone else out.

00:03:23 ◼   ► And that's all pretty bulky, big stuff.

00:03:26 ◼   ► And so I figured, let me get the smallest roof box I can

00:03:31 ◼   ► and put it all in there, that way I can load the back,

00:03:34 ◼   ► 'cause you know, when I'm actually using this vehicle,

00:03:37 ◼   ► the trunk is usually full of something,

00:03:39 ◼   ► whether it's groceries or whether it's like our luggage

00:03:41 ◼   ► coming to and from upstate or whatever,

00:03:43 ◼   ► like the trunk is usually full.

00:03:44 ◼   ► So I didn't wanna spend trunk space

00:03:46 ◼   ► on all this recovery gear, 'cause frankly,

00:03:48 ◼   ► the turning space is not that generous in the vehicle.

00:03:51 ◼   ► - Okay, so I gotta pause you again.

00:03:52 ◼   ► Gotta pause you again.

00:03:54 ◼   ► You bought this probably not inexpensive toy for yourself

00:03:59 ◼   ► on the promise that it would be excellent on the sand,

00:04:04 ◼   ► and then immediately just thumbs your nose at it

00:04:08 ◼   ► by putting a bunch of sand recovery junk on top of it

00:04:12 ◼   ► because you assume that it will inevitably

00:04:14 ◼   ► and eventually get stuck.

00:04:15 ◼   ► - Well, he already had that sand recovery stuff.

00:04:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, I had it all in the FJ taking up its entire trunk.

00:04:19 ◼   ► - That's right, all right, all right,

00:04:21 ◼   ► I'll begrudgingly allow it.

00:04:22 ◼   ► And just to be clear, you're talking about

00:04:24 ◼   ► like a tule or equivalent that you put on the top,

00:04:25 ◼   ► is that right?

00:04:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's this ino thing.

00:04:27 ◼   ► I looked at the, is it thule?

00:04:30 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:04:31 ◼   ► - I thought it was tule.

00:04:32 ◼   ► I might be, I very well have that,

00:04:34 ◼   ► I might have that dead wrong, I'm not sure.

00:04:36 ◼   ► - Why would you pronounce, anyway, maybe they do,

00:04:38 ◼   ► I mean that's certainly not a charitable way

00:04:39 ◼   ► to pronounce that, but anyway.

00:04:41 ◼   ► So I got this ino thing because I looked at the tule

00:04:44 ◼   ► or thule, I looked at their offerings

00:04:46 ◼   ► and this N01 was lower than what they offered

00:04:51 ◼   ► without going to their really long, super long ski one.

00:04:55 ◼   ► 'Cause I don't need a lot of height,

00:04:56 ◼   ► I just need some storage volume.

00:04:59 ◼   ► This one's only nine cubic feet.

00:05:01 ◼   ► 'Cause I didn't want to be sticking up

00:05:02 ◼   ► even further into the sky than I already am.

00:05:04 ◼   ► - This is gonna make your car even more aerodynamic.

00:05:07 ◼   ► - Right. (laughs)

00:05:09 ◼   ► But anyway, so I attached this box

00:05:11 ◼   ► and so now the vehicle's even taller.

00:05:13 ◼   ► So even without this box,

00:05:15 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure it would not fit in my Westchester garage.

00:05:18 ◼   ► Like I think my garage is too short.

00:05:20 ◼   ► You know, it's an old house.

00:05:21 ◼   ► The garage is probably from somewhere around the 1960s.

00:05:24 ◼   ► So, you know, there's no way this vehicle's

00:05:26 ◼   ► fitting in the garage, even just with like

00:05:27 ◼   ► the roof rails on it.

00:05:29 ◼   ► And then when I add another, you know,

00:05:31 ◼   ► whatever this is, like 10 inches on top of that, forget it.

00:05:34 ◼   ► And it was so high that I even, I took it around today,

00:05:37 ◼   ► like I'm trying to drive it as much as possible,

00:05:39 ◼   ► even when I'm in Westchester where I could just drive,

00:05:42 ◼   ► you know, the Tesla, but I wanted to like just get a feel

00:05:45 ◼   ► for the vehicle, like get a feel for how big is this thing?

00:05:48 ◼   ► Get used to the visibility and the handling and everything

00:05:51 ◼   ► just so I can drive it better,

00:05:53 ◼   ► 'cause I've never driven a vehicle this big, really.

00:05:55 ◼   ► And so, I drive it so carefully.

00:05:58 ◼   ► I drive it like when I rented that RV.

00:06:00 ◼   ► Like I drive it like that.

00:06:01 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:06:03 ◼   ► But anyway, so I'm driving around town

00:06:04 ◼   ► getting groceries and everything,

00:06:06 ◼   ► and I'm like, can I fit under these parking garage gates?

00:06:10 ◼   ► Like I don't even know.

00:06:11 ◼   ► And like one of them, I was pulled into the Whole Foods

00:06:14 ◼   ► garage and it says like, you know, clearance eight foot two.

00:06:17 ◼   ► And I'm like, hmm, that doesn't sound that high.

00:06:20 ◼   ► It doesn't look that high.

00:06:21 ◼   ► Let me, you know, I go under it really slowly.

00:06:24 ◼   ► I'm watching through the sunroof,

00:06:25 ◼   ► like watching the roof box and like I cleared it,

00:06:29 ◼   ► but I didn't look like I had a lot of free space.

00:06:32 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:06:33 ◼   ► It didn't seem that generous.

00:06:34 ◼   ► I'm like, okay, I'll make it under like bridges and stuff,

00:06:38 ◼   ► but maybe not low parking garages.

00:06:40 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:06:42 ◼   ► I'm getting used to having the larger vehicle.

00:06:43 ◼   ► But anyway, CarPlay.

00:06:45 ◼   ► So for the first half of today, I'm using CarPlay,

00:06:48 ◼   ► and this is wireless CarPlay, great, super nice.

00:06:52 ◼   ► And it's fine, the only thing is that everything is laggy.

00:06:56 ◼   ► Like you hit pause on the steering wheel

00:06:58 ◼   ► or you tap pause on the screen or whatever,

00:07:00 ◼   ► and it takes like a half a second to a second

00:07:03 ◼   ► to actually respond, and that's to almost everything.

00:07:07 ◼   ► So play pause, seek back, seek forward,

00:07:10 ◼   ► the Siri button, and even when a navigation prompt

00:07:15 ◼   ► would interrupt the audio, the audio would keep playing

00:07:19 ◼   ► in the podcast app for an extra half second to second

00:07:23 ◼   ► before it actually, while it's being ducked,

00:07:26 ◼   ► it would get ducked, but you'd still hear

00:07:28 ◼   ► what the person was saying for another half second,

00:07:31 ◼   ► and then it would take another half second lag

00:07:33 ◼   ► on the way out.

00:07:34 ◼   ► And I remember, I have a couple of these little tiny,

00:07:38 ◼   ► They almost look like crappy little Android GPS units.

00:07:41 ◼   ► They have little mounts for cars

00:07:43 ◼   ► that are CarPlay test rigs for me.

00:07:45 ◼   ► They're like 200 bucks from Amazon,

00:07:46 ◼   ► way better than my old test rig

00:07:48 ◼   ► where I have to actually have a head unit and everything.

00:07:50 ◼   ► And they're literally just cheap Android tablets, basically,

00:07:53 ◼   ► in a car enclosure with a DC in.

00:07:57 ◼   ► And one of those that I have,

00:07:59 ◼   ► the first one I got was wired CarPlay.

00:08:00 ◼   ► I later got one that had wireless support,

00:08:02 ◼   ► which makes debugging way easier,

00:08:04 ◼   ► 'cause you can have a USB port on the phone.

00:08:06 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:08:07 ◼   ► So I noticed with those that wireless carplay on those

00:08:12 ◼   ► is very laggy and so I ended up really hating

00:08:14 ◼   ► using the wireless one because again,

00:08:16 ◼   ► you'd hit play/pause and it would be wait

00:08:19 ◼   ► and then it would go.

00:08:20 ◼   ► And if you plug in wired, it's like no lag at all.

00:08:24 ◼   ► I seem to have that same lag doing wireless carplay

00:08:27 ◼   ► in this and I'm wondering,

00:08:28 ◼   ► is every wireless carplay vehicle like this?

00:08:31 ◼   ► Like is this just a thing with wireless carplay?

00:08:33 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:08:34 ◼   ► Well, I shouldn't say that with such authority.

00:08:37 ◼   ► in my experience with admittedly a third party dongle bridging between the wired only CarPlay

00:08:44 ◼   ► and my phone. So, you know, this is maybe not the best example, but I noticed that my little dongle,

00:08:50 ◼   ► which I do like, and if I remember I'll put a link in the show notes, actually in their newer

00:08:55 ◼   ► versions than what I have. But anyways, my dongle, there is definitely a lag as compared to when I'm

00:09:02 ◼   ► I'm directly connected.

00:09:03 ◼   ► I personally don't find the lag to be egregious,

00:09:06 ◼   ► or perhaps I've just gotten used to it,

00:09:07 ◼   ► but as we all know, of the three of us,

00:09:09 ◼   ► I am the least discerning by a mile.

00:09:11 ◼   ► So consider your source here.

00:09:13 ◼   ► But yes, I've noticed with my car,

00:09:16 ◼   ► there is a dramatic difference between when I am,

00:09:19 ◼   ► on the rare occasions when I physically plug in

00:09:21 ◼   ► if I'm gonna be in the car for multiple hours at a time,

00:09:24 ◼   ► or 99% of my use when I'm just using that dongle thing.

00:09:27 ◼   ► Yeah, there's definitely a noticeable lag.

00:09:29 ◼   ► Now I have updated the software on that dongle

00:09:32 ◼   ► which is an adventure because it clearly is right out of China and not everything has been translated and the things have been translated have been

00:09:37 ◼   ► air-quote

00:09:39 ◼   ► Translated but nevertheless I have been able to successfully update software a few times and it's gotten better, but it's still

00:09:46 ◼   ► laggier for sure and

00:09:49 ◼   ► For my for me

00:09:51 ◼   ► I will take that trade-off for not having to plug in because my trips generally speaking this might not be true for you Marco

00:09:58 ◼   ► But for me, my trips are like anywhere between five and twenty minutes tops

00:10:02 ◼   ► 99% of the time and so it's not long enough usually to bother plugging in my phone

00:10:09 ◼   ► But long enough that hey, it would be nice if CarPlay came on and so this dongle that I bought which at the time

00:10:14 ◼   ► It was a gift actually, but I think it's like 130 bucks or something like that

00:10:17 ◼   ► well worth the money to me even considering the lag because it's just convenient to keep your phone in your pocket and

00:10:23 ◼   ► Be able to do all the CarPlay stuff and not have to worry about plugging and unplugging

00:10:27 ◼   ► This is probably the first worldiest of first world problems,

00:10:29 ◼   ► I acknowledge that, but I think that juice

00:10:32 ◼   ► is worth the squeeze, but yes,

00:10:34 ◼   ► there is definitely a noticeable lag,

00:10:35 ◼   ► and it's stinky, but you get used to it.

00:10:38 ◼   ► - Because I noticed, like, when, so, you know,

00:10:40 ◼   ► there was a period today where Tiff and Adam

00:10:43 ◼   ► were going into a store, and I had,

00:10:44 ◼   ► I got to wait in the car and play with all the settings

00:10:46 ◼   ► and everything, really for the first time

00:10:48 ◼   ► that I actually had a good amount of time with it,

00:10:50 ◼   ► and I went through all the menus and played all the settings

00:10:51 ◼   ► and I actually found there was a setting

00:10:53 ◼   ► to turn off wireless carplay,

00:10:55 ◼   ► and to then force it to be wired.

00:10:56 ◼   ► So I love that that setting is there,

00:10:59 ◼   ► so I got to try it back to back,

00:11:01 ◼   ► and it's night and day difference.

00:11:03 ◼   ► Like when I turn it off, when I'm wired CarPlay,

00:11:07 ◼   ► it responds much more quickly

00:11:10 ◼   ► than even Bluetooth in other cars.

00:11:11 ◼   ► Like Bluetooth in the Tesla, which was in support CarPlay,

00:11:15 ◼   ► Bluetooth there is kind of in between these two

00:11:18 ◼   ► in terms of lag, and then just wired CarPlay,

00:11:23 ◼   ► it was extremely delightfully fast.

00:11:27 ◼   ► I was so pleased.

00:11:28 ◼   ► I was giddy how quickly it was responding

00:11:31 ◼   ► to everything when wired.

00:11:33 ◼   ► And then sure enough, go back to wireless

00:11:35 ◼   ► and it's very laggy and frustrating.

00:11:37 ◼   ► And so I think I'm actually gonna keep it wired for a while

00:11:39 ◼   ► 'cause again, as you mentioned,

00:11:40 ◼   ► my usage pattern's a little bit different.

00:11:42 ◼   ► I tend to go on a small number of long trips

00:11:46 ◼   ► rather than a high number of short ones.

00:11:48 ◼   ► So for my usage pattern,

00:11:51 ◼   ► I think it's probably worth the hassle to plug in.

00:11:53 ◼   ► to get that satisfaction of having it be really nice

00:11:56 ◼   ► as I'm using it, you know?

00:11:58 ◼   ► - Plus having a charge while you drive, right?

00:12:00 ◼   ► - Yep, yeah, exactly.

00:12:01 ◼   ► So yeah, I'm gonna play with that back and forth

00:12:04 ◼   ► a little bit here and there and maybe report back later,

00:12:06 ◼   ► but I was kind of surprised.

00:12:08 ◼   ► I would expect wireless CarPlay,

00:12:10 ◼   ► CarPlay didn't exist with wireless at first.

00:12:13 ◼   ► I would imagine down the road when they added it,

00:12:15 ◼   ► I would expect that one of the design requirements

00:12:18 ◼   ► if they're going to add it would be no major downsides

00:12:21 ◼   ► in the experience compared to wired.

00:12:23 ◼   ► And I'd say it's a pretty major downside.

00:12:25 ◼   ► Like it's very, it's laggy enough that it's weird.

00:12:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, again, maybe I've gotten used to it

00:12:30 ◼   ► 'cause I've had this dongle since around the time

00:12:33 ◼   ► I got my first vaccination.

00:12:34 ◼   ► So I guess it was like a little over a year now.

00:12:36 ◼   ► And I definitely have gotten used to it

00:12:38 ◼   ► and it's gotten better, like I said.

00:12:41 ◼   ► If I was in your shoes, I would probably plug in

00:12:44 ◼   ► just like you said.

00:12:45 ◼   ► But seriously, if you set your expectations appropriately

00:12:49 ◼   ► and if you're not quite as discerning as Marco or John,

00:12:51 ◼   ► And I think you'll find wireless carplay to be well within the realm of acceptable.

00:12:56 ◼   ► But as much as I'm giving you a hard time, I don't disagree with anything you've said.

00:13:01 ◼   ► And even I can notice that there's definitely more latency when you're wireless.

00:13:06 ◼   ► Well, keep in mind, the hardware in cars is pretty universally awful, like extremely behind

00:13:11 ◼   ► the times.

00:13:12 ◼   ► Very old, very slow stuff.

00:13:13 ◼   ► And Apple doesn't control both ends of this.

00:13:15 ◼   ► If you want to know how fast Apple can do a wireless display thing, just use Sidecar

00:13:21 ◼   ► on a Mac and an iPad.

00:13:22 ◼   ► And it's incredibly responsive, right?

00:13:24 ◼   ► Because Apple controls both sides of that.

00:13:26 ◼   ► They control the hardware and the software on both ends.

00:13:28 ◼   ► Here, they can require that the car makers support such and such a protocol on these

00:13:32 ◼   ► ports with this thing and so on, but they can't control what hardware car makers use.

00:13:37 ◼   ► And I continue to be amazed at no matter how expensive the car is, they're seemingly using

00:13:42 ◼   ► like 386s inside there with like no memory, extremely slow, like Tesla probably has the

00:13:47 ◼   ► most powerful hardware of any car because they use semi-modern components, Nvidia GPU,

00:13:52 ◼   ► so on and so forth.

00:13:53 ◼   ► And even in that case it could sometimes feel less responsive than an iPad, right?

00:13:57 ◼   ► If Apple wants to do something for the car industry instead of making a car instead of

00:14:01 ◼   ► trying to figure out self-driving, they could just donate a bunch of old A-whatever chips

00:14:06 ◼   ► to car makers because like they're just so much faster and more capable than what is

00:14:11 ◼   ► and put it in this car.

00:14:12 ◼   ► And I don't think your brand of car

00:14:14 ◼   ► has a particular reputation for having

00:14:17 ◼   ► a very good infotainment hardware in it.

00:14:21 ◼   ► Some brands are better than others,

00:14:22 ◼   ► but it's grim out there.

00:14:25 ◼   ► So I'm glad that the wired one works better,

00:14:28 ◼   ► but I'm not shocked that the wireless one

00:14:30 ◼   ► is pretty terrible.

00:14:31 ◼   ► - Well, and there are some other considerations.

00:14:33 ◼   ► It's like when we send computers to space,

00:14:35 ◼   ► they have to be extremely rugged and extremely reliable

00:14:39 ◼   ► and be able to tolerate--

00:14:40 ◼   ► - That's what the car makers say.

00:14:41 ◼   ► That's why we're using 42 nanometer.

00:14:43 ◼   ► - But yeah, and cars like you have to tolerate

00:14:45 ◼   ► huge temperature extremes.

00:14:47 ◼   ► It has to work in the freezing cold and the super hot.

00:14:50 ◼   ► It has to work in direct sun.

00:14:52 ◼   ► Good luck getting your iPhone to work in direct sun

00:14:54 ◼   ► for very long.

00:14:55 ◼   ► There are different requirements there,

00:14:57 ◼   ► and so I understand why it would be more conservative there.

00:15:01 ◼   ► - I'm apparently the king of tangents today,

00:15:03 ◼   ► and this is the show of the trios of the kings of tangents,

00:15:06 ◼   ► but here we are.

00:15:07 ◼   ► I have noticed, I don't know if this is something

00:15:09 ◼   ► that's happened recently or I'm just noticing it

00:15:11 ◼   ► more recently, do you guys find that when you are outside,

00:15:16 ◼   ► particularly in the summer, your phone or your iPad,

00:15:20 ◼   ► I've had this happen on my 2018 iPad Pro

00:15:21 ◼   ► and my iPhone 13 Pro, all of a sudden the brightness

00:15:25 ◼   ► will like collapse and it'll be considerably less bright.

00:15:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's thermal overloading.

00:15:30 ◼   ► - That's what I was gonna say, I assume it cools down a bit

00:15:33 ◼   ► and then it gets bright for like half a second

00:15:35 ◼   ► and then it gets back dim again.

00:15:36 ◼   ► I don't feel like this is something that's been going on

00:15:39 ◼   ► for long, I feel like this has happened

00:15:40 ◼   ► in a semi-recent software update.

00:15:42 ◼   ► Again, might be bananas, I might have this all wrong.

00:15:44 ◼   ► - No, it's just 'cause it's August.

00:15:45 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:15:46 ◼   ► - That's what I was gonna say,

00:15:47 ◼   ► like maybe it's the time of year.

00:15:48 ◼   ► - This happens every summer because, yeah,

00:15:50 ◼   ► that is the phone going into thermal protection mode,

00:15:53 ◼   ► basically, there's a couple of levels to it.

00:15:55 ◼   ► One of the levels is, oh crap, I'm getting too hot,

00:15:58 ◼   ► turn the screen brightness down,

00:16:00 ◼   ► and then if it still gets too hot,

00:16:01 ◼   ► then you'll actually see it go into thermal shutdown,

00:16:02 ◼   ► where it'll show that little alert message saying,

00:16:04 ◼   ► sorry, you can't use me right now.

00:16:06 ◼   ► - Okay, so I'm glad it's not just me, I appreciate it.

00:16:08 ◼   ► Thank you. Okay, so going back to what you were saying, what do you think of the CarPlay

00:16:12 ◼   ► experience? And I don't mean that flippantly. I know you've used CarPlay on occasion, certainly

00:16:16 ◼   ► during testing, but this is, to the best of my knowledge, the first, or one of the first,

00:16:21 ◼   ► like real honest to goodness, genuine uses out in the quote-unquote "wild." Do you like

00:16:26 ◼   ► it? Do you think it's good? Are you somehow yearning for your Tesla for some reason? Well,

00:16:30 ◼   ► specifically with regard to infotainment for some reason. What do you think of CarPlay

00:16:34 ◼   ► as an idea?

00:16:35 ◼   ► - So, when I, you know, using the Tesla for the last

00:16:40 ◼   ► five, six years, so, almost seven, seven years, wow,

00:16:45 ◼   ► using the Tesla for all that time,

00:16:47 ◼   ► my solution not having CarPlay has been,

00:16:50 ◼   ► I just got a ProClip USA phone mount

00:16:53 ◼   ► and just mounted the phone, you know,

00:16:54 ◼   ► next to the steering wheel on the dash,

00:16:56 ◼   ► and so it's, you know, just outside of my field of view,

00:16:58 ◼   ► like, you know, diagonally down to the right a little bit,

00:17:00 ◼   ► and I just, and I plug it in so it's charging all the time,

00:17:03 ◼   ► It communicates with the car over Bluetooth,

00:17:05 ◼   ► so I have all that integration.

00:17:07 ◼   ► So I just use Waze, my mapping app, on the phone

00:17:11 ◼   ► as a regular phone app.

00:17:13 ◼   ► And so if I have to bounce over to music or overcast,

00:17:17 ◼   ► I can do that, but it's not safe to be doing

00:17:20 ◼   ► a lot of interaction with the phone.

00:17:22 ◼   ► So the idea of CarPlay would be,

00:17:23 ◼   ► hey, let's restrict what can be done

00:17:27 ◼   ► and optimize it for a larger screen

00:17:31 ◼   ► with larger tap or wheel targets

00:17:34 ◼   ► and fewer interactions possible.

00:17:37 ◼   ► Don't show any kind of messages

00:17:38 ◼   ► that could be distracting with text.

00:17:40 ◼   ► So all of those benefits with CarPlay

00:17:42 ◼   ► are there and are real.

00:17:45 ◼   ► I do find though that it is a little frustrating

00:17:49 ◼   ► how limiting it is, but in a way, that's good for me.

00:17:53 ◼   ► I don't want all the capabilities of the full phone

00:17:56 ◼   ► when I am driving.

00:17:57 ◼   ► It's unsafe to use all those capabilities.

00:17:59 ◼   ► I don't want those available to me

00:18:00 ◼   ► and I don't wanna have to use them.

00:18:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's unsafe at any speed.

00:18:04 ◼   ► - Right, but at the same time,

00:18:05 ◼   ► if doing something in CarPlay is clunky,

00:18:09 ◼   ► then that will result in my eyes being distracted

00:18:11 ◼   ► from the road for a longer period of time.

00:18:13 ◼   ► So I don't know if it's,

00:18:16 ◼   ► I'm sure it's safer overall probably,

00:18:19 ◼   ► but self-control with what you're doing

00:18:23 ◼   ► is way more important than the type of screen

00:18:26 ◼   ► that you're looking at for the actions that you're doing.

00:18:29 ◼   ► And if CarPlay, by being so limited,

00:18:33 ◼   ► I'm not sure if it's actually gonna be that much of a gain

00:18:38 ◼   ► over what I was doing before,

00:18:39 ◼   ► just having the phone in a mount.

00:18:40 ◼   ► Again, having the phone in a mount

00:18:41 ◼   ► and just practicing reasonable self-control

00:18:43 ◼   ► and not like texting or anything.

00:18:45 ◼   ► Like that, I've driven that way for almost seven years

00:18:49 ◼   ► or whatever and it's been fine, it's been great.

00:18:51 ◼   ► And I've had all the abilities of the mapping apps.

00:18:54 ◼   ► Yeah, so for the first part of this morning,

00:18:57 ◼   ► I tried using Waze for the first leg of the trip,

00:19:01 ◼   ► and its CarPlay view just was buggy

00:19:03 ◼   ► and just was displaying an empty map

00:19:05 ◼   ► and just wouldn't load the map.

00:19:06 ◼   ► And I tried force quitting Waze,

00:19:07 ◼   ► I tried restarting CarPlay,

00:19:09 ◼   ► it just didn't work for whatever reason.

00:19:10 ◼   ► I'm on the beta, it could be that, who knows.

00:19:12 ◼   ► It's beta life, welcome to summertime,

00:19:14 ◼   ► being an iPhone developer.

00:19:15 ◼   ► But I just couldn't use Waze,

00:19:18 ◼   ► I had to switch over to Apple Maps.

00:19:20 ◼   ► And it was frustrating that I couldn't use

00:19:21 ◼   ► my preferred mapping app.

00:19:23 ◼   ► I tried it again later in the day, it worked fine.

00:19:25 ◼   ► But all that time, like Waze, like the iPhone app

00:19:28 ◼   ► would have worked fine.

00:19:28 ◼   ► It's just their CarPlay view that was buggy.

00:19:30 ◼   ► So I had to deal with the fact that, well,

00:19:32 ◼   ► I'm using it through the special view mode

00:19:34 ◼   ► and I have to use it through this mode.

00:19:36 ◼   ► I don't have a cell phone mount for this car yet.

00:19:39 ◼   ► And so it was kind of annoying that I had to deal

00:19:42 ◼   ► with this buggier side of Apple's software

00:19:45 ◼   ► or Waze's software, one of them.

00:19:47 ◼   ► Whoever was responsible for this not showing a map,

00:19:49 ◼   ► you know, I had to deal with that.

00:19:51 ◼   ► And I know from Overcast development,

00:19:53 ◼   ► CarPlay is buggy and it doesn't get a lot of attention.

00:19:56 ◼   ► And so when there are weird little CarPlay quirks,

00:20:00 ◼   ► as a developer you kinda just have to deal with them.

00:20:02 ◼   ► And you have relatively little control

00:20:05 ◼   ► over what is shown on a CarPlay screen.

00:20:06 ◼   ► Like you have some control, you're kinda working

00:20:09 ◼   ► with these pre-made template styles and everything,

00:20:11 ◼   ► but certain little behavioral details you can't control.

00:20:14 ◼   ► So anyway, so it is kind of a mixed bag

00:20:18 ◼   ► compared to just having the phone help you in a mount.

00:20:21 ◼   ► I do intend to just live with it this way for a long time

00:20:24 ◼   ► just so I can experience more of it

00:20:26 ◼   ► and so I can be a better carplay developer for my app.

00:20:29 ◼   ► Actually having used it more,

00:20:31 ◼   ► that's fairly important to me for my app.

00:20:33 ◼   ► So I'm gonna keep using it this way.

00:20:36 ◼   ► I'm not gonna switch over to a phone mount quite yet,

00:20:38 ◼   ► but it wouldn't surprise me if long term

00:20:42 ◼   ► I stick a phone mount in this car, but I don't know.

00:20:44 ◼   ► We'll see.

00:20:45 ◼   ► - I'm sure people will send us this link,

00:20:47 ◼   ► which I'm sure all of us have already seen by now,

00:20:49 ◼   ► but we'll put it in the show notes just so people know.

00:20:50 ◼   ► There was this Swedish study on touch screens versus physical controls that has been going

00:20:55 ◼   ► around the internet for the past week or two.

00:20:58 ◼   ► Surprise surprise they found that physical controls have an advantage over touch screens

00:21:01 ◼   ► in terms of distraction.

00:21:02 ◼   ► I have to say though, I'm not convinced by the rigor of this study.

00:21:08 ◼   ► It seems like they did a small number of perhaps not entirely representative tests and the

00:21:12 ◼   ► results are not particularly as dramatic as the distribution of this magazine would lead

00:21:18 ◼   ► you to believe if you actually look at them.

00:21:21 ◼   ► So I don't think this is a great study.

00:21:25 ◼   ► But I do think that the biggest factor in terms of distraction is kind of what Marco

00:21:31 ◼   ► is getting at in terms of, not so much self control, but what you actually use the touchscreen

00:21:38 ◼   ► for.

00:21:39 ◼   ► So in all the cases, whether Marco has his phone mounted or he's using CarPlay, he's

00:21:43 ◼   ► He's not using the touch screen to adjust where the airflow is going or to turn the

00:21:48 ◼   ► fan up or to turn the seat heaters on or to adjust the side mirrors or anything like that

00:21:53 ◼   ► in the Land Rover.

00:21:56 ◼   ► There are no car controls there.

00:21:57 ◼   ► They're just the map and whatever phone things he might be doing.

00:22:01 ◼   ► The self control is okay if you have access to the full phone, don't use all the features

00:22:05 ◼   ► of the phone, but there's no amount of self control he needs to not use a touch screen

00:22:08 ◼   ► to turn on the seat heaters.

00:22:10 ◼   ► That's just not on the touch screen.

00:22:11 ◼   ► It's not on.

00:22:12 ◼   ► In the defense of both this comparison

00:22:16 ◼   ► and of your example here, first of all,

00:22:18 ◼   ► I think the tasks that the comparison thing had them do,

00:22:21 ◼   ► I'm not sure were super realistic

00:22:23 ◼   ► for actually making this judgment.

00:22:25 ◼   ► There are some esoteric stuff in there.

00:22:27 ◼   ► And secondly, when you have, like right now,

00:22:30 ◼   ► I'm learning a new car, 'cause I just got this car,

00:22:33 ◼   ► I'm still learning, I've never had this brand before,

00:22:35 ◼   ► so I don't know their conventions.

00:22:36 ◼   ► As I'm learning this car, even the physical controls

00:22:39 ◼   ► have a learning curve.

00:22:40 ◼   ► I have to figure out where they are and how they work.

00:22:43 ◼   ► - That's one of the things the study did well though.

00:22:44 ◼   ► It let people sort of study ahead of time

00:22:48 ◼   ► so they weren't doing a learning process.

00:22:50 ◼   ► So everybody who was being tested had,

00:22:53 ◼   ► you were able to sort of figure out the controls

00:22:55 ◼   ► in a stationary car and get it down pat.

00:22:58 ◼   ► - Oh, okay, all right.

00:22:59 ◼   ► - That's what they were trying to test.

00:23:00 ◼   ► I still don't think it's a particularly representative test

00:23:02 ◼   ► because the things they had them do

00:23:03 ◼   ► are not particularly representative.

00:23:04 ◼   ► If you look at the results,

00:23:05 ◼   ► it's not like the touch screens

00:23:07 ◼   ► all lose to all physical controls.

00:23:09 ◼   ► It's more of a mixed bag.

00:23:11 ◼   ► You'd have to study this more to,

00:23:13 ◼   ► it'd have to be more rigorous than a magazine article,

00:23:15 ◼   ► but they did at the very least do that and say,

00:23:18 ◼   ► look, we know it's hard to figure stuff out.

00:23:20 ◼   ► And like I said, physical controls can be stuff to figure out

00:23:22 ◼   ► but just study ahead of time, take two hours.

00:23:25 ◼   ► And basically what they were trying to do is like,

00:23:26 ◼   ► okay, you know exactly how it works, now speed run it.

00:23:29 ◼   ► Now you're not looking for any buttons,

00:23:31 ◼   ► you know where the buttons are,

00:23:32 ◼   ► you know where they are on the menus.

00:23:33 ◼   ► You've done it 100 times before,

00:23:35 ◼   ► but now do it as fast as you can

00:23:36 ◼   ► because this test was like, you know, how quickly can you do it?

00:23:39 ◼   ► How much ground does the car cover when you're distracted and they tracked where

00:23:42 ◼   ► their eyeballs were and where they were looking.

00:23:43 ◼   ► Another big factor in this is how low down on the dash is the screen versus how

00:23:47 ◼   ► high up is your phone mounted and stuff like that. Again,

00:23:49 ◼   ► I don't think this is a great study,

00:23:51 ◼   ► but I personally believe that a smart mix of physical controls and

00:23:55 ◼   ► screen is the best solution.

00:23:57 ◼   ► And anything that goes all in one direction or the other is probably leaving

00:24:00 ◼   ► money on the table in terms of using the interface for what it's best for.

00:24:03 ◼   ► Yeah. But also, you know, just to, you know,

00:24:05 ◼   ► to finish my argument also,

00:24:08 ◼   ► when I learned the touchscreen in the Tesla

00:24:10 ◼   ► over six years or whatever, I became very fast with it.

00:24:14 ◼   ► The downside though, and right now I'm very slow

00:24:17 ◼   ► with the Lamborghini because again, it's unfamiliar to me,

00:24:20 ◼   ► the downside though is when you learn those touchscreen,

00:24:23 ◼   ► then after six months they got a new frickin' designer

00:24:25 ◼   ► and they move everything around.

00:24:26 ◼   ► And so it's like you're forced all of a sudden unexpectedly

00:24:29 ◼   ► to have a new car in the morning.

00:24:30 ◼   ► In a bad way, it's like wait a minute,

00:24:32 ◼   ► where do my controls go?

00:24:33 ◼   ► Now everything looks different

00:24:34 ◼   ► has been moved around and reorganized,

00:24:36 ◼   ► because some designer from Facebook got into Tesla

00:24:39 ◼   ► and just decided to have fun with it.

00:24:40 ◼   ► Like, that kind of stuff, that drove me nuts with Tesla.

00:24:44 ◼   ► And that's gonna happen with many touchscreen things

00:24:47 ◼   ► that are run by these more tech-forward companies.

00:24:49 ◼   ► That's unlikely to happen with BMW, Toyota.

00:24:53 ◼   ► They're not gonna be changing their interfaces

00:24:54 ◼   ► through software updates, probably, I hope.

00:24:56 ◼   ► That's gonna be less of a thing

00:24:57 ◼   ► with these traditional companies.

00:24:59 ◼   ► With somebody like Tesla or Rivian,

00:25:01 ◼   ► these very techy companies,

00:25:03 ◼   ► I think it's gonna keep being a problem

00:25:05 ◼   ► where you get used to all the controls

00:25:07 ◼   ► and then, and again, I think once you're used to it,

00:25:09 ◼   ► I think this is the kind of thing that,

00:25:11 ◼   ► I bet in a few years they're gonna do more studies like this

00:25:15 ◼   ► and over time, there's gonna end up being no difference

00:25:18 ◼   ► between touch screens and physical controls for most people

00:25:21 ◼   ► when they are familiar with them.

00:25:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know about that.

00:25:24 ◼   ► - I don't know about that because the big barrier,

00:25:26 ◼   ► well first of all, there are things that touch screens

00:25:27 ◼   ► are just plain worse for, but even for the things

00:25:29 ◼   ► where they might be as good, once you thoroughly understand

00:25:32 ◼   ► where everything is, the problem they have

00:25:34 ◼   ► is what I just talked about before.

00:25:35 ◼   ► Touch screens make you wait between steps

00:25:38 ◼   ► due to slower hardware.

00:25:39 ◼   ► Physical controls don't make you wait.

00:25:40 ◼   ► You can press the button, press the button,

00:25:41 ◼   ► press the button, press the button.

00:25:42 ◼   ► The buttons, you know, there's no lag, there's no waiting.

00:25:45 ◼   ► It's a physical interface, right?

00:25:46 ◼   ► It's not like you need to push the button in six inches

00:25:48 ◼   ► and hold it for two seconds, right?

00:25:49 ◼   ► Whereas if you know it's two menus deep

00:25:51 ◼   ► and you know exactly where it is,

00:25:52 ◼   ► you don't even need to look at the screen,

00:25:53 ◼   ► you still need to wait for the next screen to load.

00:25:55 ◼   ► And right now, there is no car interface

00:25:57 ◼   ► where there is no screen waiting.

00:25:58 ◼   ► And I would imagine that even an Apple one

00:26:00 ◼   ► on a fancy A-whatever chip in a fantasy Apple car

00:26:02 ◼   ► would also make you wait so they could play

00:26:04 ◼   ► some stupid 120 frames per second animation

00:26:06 ◼   ► that takes 0.25 seconds, right?

00:26:08 ◼   ► - But you're also, this argument is presuming

00:26:11 ◼   ► that things are in like sub screens or sub panels.

00:26:13 ◼   ► And this is why, when people criticize Tesla's design

00:26:17 ◼   ► for being all touchscreen, that applies much more

00:26:20 ◼   ► to their current vehicles than to the one I have,

00:26:23 ◼   ► which was before they cut the steering wheel in half

00:26:25 ◼   ► and got rid of the shifter and everything.

00:26:27 ◼   ► And so the one I have, and pretty much all the,

00:26:31 ◼   ► every Model S before like 2020 or whenever

00:26:33 ◼   ► that change happened, every Model S, every Model X

00:26:36 ◼   ► before that time, they had a small number

00:26:40 ◼   ► of levers and buttons, and then a lot of stuff

00:26:43 ◼   ► on the touchscreen, but then the touchscreen,

00:26:44 ◼   ► first of all, was giant, and it would have a lot

00:26:47 ◼   ► of controls along that, especially along that bottom strip

00:26:50 ◼   ► that you didn't have to bring up a sub-screen.

00:26:53 ◼   ► And so it was kind of like having a physical control array

00:26:56 ◼   ► in the sense that you could always count on

00:26:58 ◼   ► this certain array of very common controls,

00:27:01 ◼   ► like the fan speed and the defroster and everything,

00:27:04 ◼   ► that was all on the bottom row

00:27:06 ◼   ► in this kind of constant toolbar that was down there.

00:27:09 ◼   ► And so when touch screens are done well,

00:27:12 ◼   ► like that one generally was

00:27:14 ◼   ► before this stupid new designer came in,

00:27:16 ◼   ► when these things are done well,

00:27:18 ◼   ► and I also had a few physical controls

00:27:21 ◼   ► for the most common stuff.

00:27:23 ◼   ► So, you know, the shifter, you know,

00:27:25 ◼   ► the drive direction shifter, you know,

00:27:27 ◼   ► obviously things like turn signals, windshield wipers,

00:27:30 ◼   ► you know, the--

00:27:31 ◼   ► - You say obviously, but they basically got rid of

00:27:34 ◼   ► a physical physical control for that,

00:27:35 ◼   ► and now it's a capacitive button on the steering wheel.

00:27:37 ◼   ► - I know.

00:27:38 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:27:40 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:27:40 ◼   ► - Also, I love that you think that you had

00:27:42 ◼   ► physical controls for all the most obvious things.

00:27:45 ◼   ► So, I have a Volkswagen Golf, and I have a Volvo SUV.

00:27:49 ◼   ► and I can tell you in Aaron's Volvo,

00:27:53 ◼   ► the HVAC controls are on the touchscreen

00:27:55 ◼   ► and mine have a physical dial that you twist.

00:27:59 ◼   ► And only one of those cars can I adjust the temperature

00:28:02 ◼   ► without looking down and it's my car.

00:28:04 ◼   ► And those one of those--

00:28:05 ◼   ► - In the Tesla, before the stupid software update

00:28:08 ◼   ► last winter, in the Tesla you could have done that

00:28:11 ◼   ► because the controls-- - You're just saying

00:28:13 ◼   ► the controls are always visible.

00:28:14 ◼   ► - It was in the corner, it's right there.

00:28:16 ◼   ► You could literally just reach down and boot.

00:28:18 ◼   ► I'm telling you, after driving one of these for many years,

00:28:21 ◼   ► I was just as fast with that as I ever was

00:28:23 ◼   ► with physical controls in any of my other vehicles.

00:28:24 ◼   ► - I call foul.

00:28:25 ◼   ► - I think that's the type of thing you need to test,

00:28:27 ◼   ► but I can tell you in car reviews,

00:28:28 ◼   ► everybody hates it when the HVAC controls are touched.

00:28:31 ◼   ► Yes, almost all the car manufacturers

00:28:33 ◼   ► make them visible all the time.

00:28:34 ◼   ► They dedicate a part of the screen to it,

00:28:35 ◼   ► it never changes, it's got,

00:28:36 ◼   ► and they even lay them out like physical controls.

00:28:38 ◼   ► They're always there, they have the temperature things,

00:28:42 ◼   ► they have the different,

00:28:43 ◼   ► it's almost like they took a picture

00:28:45 ◼   ► of the physical controls and just made it on the touchscreen.

00:28:47 ◼   ► Some of them even have haptics,

00:28:49 ◼   ► so you can actually tell when you push the button

00:28:50 ◼   ► so you don't have to look down to see the button highlight,

00:28:52 ◼   ► and yet they are universally reviled

00:28:54 ◼   ► in favor of actual physical buttons for those controls.

00:28:57 ◼   ► Is that just old phogism?

00:28:59 ◼   ► Maybe, but these are car reviewers

00:29:01 ◼   ► and they spend a lot of times in these cars,

00:29:02 ◼   ► they don't just drive them for five minutes, right?

00:29:04 ◼   ► So I'd have to think that there's something to the idea

00:29:08 ◼   ► that even with no nesting,

00:29:10 ◼   ► even with entirely visible controls,

00:29:12 ◼   ► even with years spent in knowing exactly where it is,

00:29:14 ◼   ► that it's still ever so slightly more distracting,

00:29:17 ◼   ► slower to do the touch screens.

00:29:19 ◼   ► That may have to do with responsiveness.

00:29:21 ◼   ► It could be if we get good haptic feedback on screens

00:29:23 ◼   ► and they're very responsive and people have the confidence

00:29:26 ◼   ► that when the same confidence they have

00:29:27 ◼   ► of pressing a button, 'cause when you press a button

00:29:29 ◼   ► or turn a dial, there's that physical feedback

00:29:32 ◼   ► through your body that gives you the confidence

00:29:33 ◼   ► that you're doing the thing you thought you were doing.

00:29:35 ◼   ► If you can get a touch screen that is that responsive

00:29:38 ◼   ► and that communicative, then yes, I agree,

00:29:39 ◼   ► a fixed set of functions that never goes away

00:29:41 ◼   ► that is that communicative will be equivalent to physical,

00:29:44 ◼   ► but we're definitely not there yet with current cars.

00:29:47 ◼   ► Most of them don't even have any sort of haptic feedback

00:29:49 ◼   ► and let alone haptic feedback that is as reliable

00:29:52 ◼   ► and reassuring as turning a knob

00:29:54 ◼   ► or pressing a physical button.

00:29:56 ◼   ► That's why the Fords have a big giant plastic knob

00:29:58 ◼   ► poking out of the middle of their touch screen

00:30:00 ◼   ► for a bunch of functions.

00:30:01 ◼   ► You know, I don't know why that's why they have it,

00:30:04 ◼   ► but they do have that and I think people like it

00:30:06 ◼   ► and car reviewers like it as well.

00:30:08 ◼   ► I think that's a silly solution.

00:30:09 ◼   ► I think it's better if you're gonna have physical controls,

00:30:11 ◼   ► just don't shove them in the center of your screen,

00:30:13 ◼   ► But whatever, I do think that the trend of putting more

00:30:19 ◼   ► and more stuff on touch screens, part of it is fads and fashions

00:30:22 ◼   ► and looking high tech, and part of it is cost savings.

00:30:24 ◼   ► And both of those reasons are not the right reason

00:30:27 ◼   ► to be doing that.

00:30:27 ◼   ► The only reason to be moving things to the touch screen

00:30:29 ◼   ► is because they're better in measurable ways,

00:30:33 ◼   ► in enough measurable ways than the physical equivalent.

00:30:35 ◼   ► And right now, that is not the motivating factor

00:30:37 ◼   ► for touch screens in cars.

00:30:38 ◼   ► It's the other two things 90% of the time.

00:30:41 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, and I agree.

00:30:42 ◼   ► like physical controls, I would rather have them,

00:30:44 ◼   ► and they are the nicer and probably better option

00:30:47 ◼   ► in many ways, but I think the difference between

00:30:51 ◼   ► a control that has a physical knob or button

00:30:54 ◼   ► versus a touchscreen that is well-designed

00:30:57 ◼   ► where things are always unpredictable spots

00:30:58 ◼   ► that you can learn, I don't think that's that big

00:31:01 ◼   ► of a difference, as much as you guys are saying.

00:31:02 ◼   ► - Oh, I disagree so much.

00:31:04 ◼   ► I disagree so much, 'cause I put it--

00:31:06 ◼   ► - And what would I know, I've only used these cars

00:31:08 ◼   ► for years. (laughs)

00:31:09 ◼   ► - Well, but here's the thing, though,

00:31:11 ◼   ► But you're getting myopic because you're used to the Tesla

00:31:14 ◼   ► and nothing else.

00:31:16 ◼   ► So I put a link to a picture--

00:31:18 ◼   ► - That's like saying like when the iPhone first came out,

00:31:20 ◼   ► oh, touch screens are crappy

00:31:22 ◼   ► because all the other touch screens on the market suck.

00:31:24 ◼   ► - No, no, that's not what I'm saying.

00:31:25 ◼   ► - Like you could make a good one.

00:31:27 ◼   ► - No, no, no, no, no, you're missing my point.

00:31:28 ◼   ► So I put a link in the show notes,

00:31:29 ◼   ► and this is not my picture,

00:31:30 ◼   ► but this is a picture of Aaron's Volvo.

00:31:33 ◼   ► I'm sorry, an equivalent to Aaron's Volvo.

00:31:35 ◼   ► And you can see in a huge font in the two bottom corners

00:31:38 ◼   ► are the temperature,

00:31:39 ◼   ► which just so happens to be 69 degrees, nice.

00:31:41 ◼   ► So those numbers never leave the screen.

00:31:46 ◼   ► They are always there, always.

00:31:48 ◼   ► They are always there.

00:31:50 ◼   ► And I find it so much easier

00:31:52 ◼   ► to adjust the temperature on my car

00:31:54 ◼   ► where I can blindly reach down and twist

00:31:57 ◼   ► than having to tap that number

00:32:00 ◼   ► and then reach up to the plus button

00:32:03 ◼   ► that I know is roughly, I know roughly where it is,

00:32:05 ◼   ► but I have to plus, plus, plus, plus,

00:32:07 ◼   ► or minus, minus, minus, minus.

00:32:08 ◼   ► - That's a nested control.

00:32:09 ◼   ► That's not what Margo was talking about.

00:32:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, like the old Tesla design,

00:32:11 ◼   ► it had the up and down arrows right on the number.

00:32:14 ◼   ► - They're always there.

00:32:15 ◼   ► And that's what I was saying,

00:32:16 ◼   ► the car reviewers really hate that.

00:32:18 ◼   ► They really hate it when the supposedly new Ferrari

00:32:20 ◼   ► has touchscreen controls for climate.

00:32:22 ◼   ► And they're the Tesla style, always visible,

00:32:25 ◼   ► no nesting, no pop-up menu.

00:32:27 ◼   ► Like it's, again, just like you took a picture

00:32:29 ◼   ► of the physical controls and painted it onto the screen.

00:32:32 ◼   ► - All right, I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but I--

00:32:35 ◼   ► - The Volvo interface is bad

00:32:36 ◼   ► because it's making you do a sub-menu, that's terrible.

00:32:38 ◼   ► Oh, no, agree. I'm not trying to defend the Volvo interface.

00:32:40 ◼   ► What I'm trying to say is I live this, I go back and forth several times a week.

00:32:45 ◼   ► I'll be either driving Aaron's car or in Aaron's car, and then other days I'll be in my car.

00:32:50 ◼   ► So I am going back and forth weekly, and I see and live the differences between the two.

00:32:55 ◼   ► And for something like HVAC, oh my gosh, give me a physical control, please, and thank you.

00:33:00 ◼   ► - We are sponsored this week by Snap AR.

00:33:07 ◼   ► Snap AR is an ecosystem of products, programs, and people

00:33:11 ◼   ► supporting development, distribution, and discovery

00:33:13 ◼   ► of augmented reality.

00:33:15 ◼   ► Snap AR is built by, yes, that Snap Inc., the same company

00:33:19 ◼   ► that creates Snapchat.

00:33:20 ◼   ► Many people think of Snapchat.

00:33:21 ◼   ► The first thing that comes to mind

00:33:22 ◼   ► is the social platform for Gen Z.

00:33:25 ◼   ► People can puke rainbows and grow dog ears

00:33:27 ◼   ► and turn your expressions into cry faces using AR

00:33:30 ◼   ► and share these fun moments with your friends.

00:33:32 ◼   ► But Snapchat's parent company, Snap Inc.,

00:33:34 ◼   ► has also invested more than 10 years

00:33:36 ◼   ► into the underlying AR technology that powers Snapchat.

00:33:40 ◼   ► Over 250 million Snapchaters engage with AR moments

00:33:43 ◼   ► over six billion times on the platform every day.

00:33:47 ◼   ► And Snap has taken all the learning

00:33:49 ◼   ► from building the Snapchat platform to create Snap AR,

00:33:52 ◼   ► an ecosystem that gives developers access

00:33:54 ◼   ► to the underlying AR tech that powers Snapchat

00:33:57 ◼   ► so you can use it in your own mobile apps.

00:33:59 ◼   ► They have Lens Studio, an IDE designed to create

00:34:02 ◼   ► best-in-class AR experiences for Snapchat,

00:34:04 ◼   ► spectacles, and mobile developers apps.

00:34:07 ◼   ► They have something called Camera Kit, an AR SDK

00:34:09 ◼   ► that brings the power of Snap's AR camera to your app.

00:34:12 ◼   ► Creative Kit, which enables one-tap visual sharing

00:34:15 ◼   ► from a developer's app or website to Snapchat,

00:34:17 ◼   ► and so much more.

00:34:19 ◼   ► Snap AR powers experiences built by big brands

00:34:22 ◼   ► like Puma, Live Nation, and Vogue

00:34:23 ◼   ► to change how we shop, play, and connect with each other

00:34:26 ◼   ► digitally and in real life.

00:34:28 ◼   ► And they can also bring tons of value to various industries,

00:34:30 ◼   ► including AR fashion, gaming, art, retail,

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00:34:40 ◼   ► AR use cases are as endless as your creativity can imagine.

00:34:43 ◼   ► Learn how you can bring the power of Snap's AR platform

00:34:46 ◼   ► into your mobile apps.

00:34:48 ◼   ► Join the community and download Lens Studio,

00:34:50 ◼   ► an IDE built from the ground up

00:34:51 ◼   ► for developing AR experiences.

00:34:53 ◼   ► All of this at SnapAR.com.

00:34:56 ◼   ► That's SnapAR.com.

00:34:58 ◼   ► Thank you so much to SnapAR for sponsoring our show.

00:35:02 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:35:05 ◼   ► - Let's do some feedback.

00:35:07 ◼   ► I don't necessarily want to attribute this feedback.

00:35:10 ◼   ► Do we want to attribute this feedback?

00:35:11 ◼   ► - There's no request for anonymity,

00:35:12 ◼   ► but you can provide it.

00:35:14 ◼   ► Optional anonymity.

00:35:15 ◼   ► - Okay, I am going to executively declare anonymity

00:35:18 ◼   ► for this individual who provided the following feedback.

00:35:21 ◼   ► I worked on the S3 team in the earlier years.

00:35:24 ◼   ► We specifically changed the licensing for our docs

00:35:26 ◼   ► to make it unambiguous that other products,

00:35:28 ◼   ► even competitors, could clone the API.

00:35:30 ◼   ► I think this was maybe 2009.

00:35:32 ◼   ► our director realized we had an opportunity to define the de facto standard API, as John

00:35:36 ◼   ► articulated well, I think it was like two episodes ago. We knew it was a win for us

00:35:41 ◼   ► when other products advertised an S3 compatible API. Not long after Google Cloud launched,

00:35:47 ◼   ► they not only copied our API, but also error codes in parts of our documentation. This

00:35:50 ◼   ► was all back before AWS even provided a supposed client library. The executive team didn't

00:35:55 ◼   ► want to have to deal with version updates, library compatibility, et cetera. It took

00:35:58 ◼   ► a long time to convince them that AWS should provide a client library with a dedicated

00:36:01 ◼   ► team to support it. So thank you, Anonymous.

00:36:04 ◼   ► >> And when they did, it was 19,000 lines of PHP or whatever the hell it was.

00:36:10 ◼   ► >> Oh, goodness. All right. So let's talk about CarPlay navigation voice volume. And

00:36:15 ◼   ► I'm not really sure what to make of this or particularly the second half of this, but

00:36:19 ◼   ► the first half makes sense. Daniel Finley writes, "There used to be a setting in maps

00:36:23 ◼   ► to adjust the volume, but this has since been removed in iOS 15." And there's an old 9to5

00:36:28 ◼   ► Mac link that we'll put in the show notes about that. But John, tell me about the second

00:36:30 ◼   ► half of this which I'm a little confused about.

00:36:31 ◼   ► - Actually for the first one it's fun because like the setting that used to be in Maps,

00:36:35 ◼   ► apparently you can still search for it in settings and the match will come up.

00:36:38 ◼   ► - Nice.

00:36:39 ◼   ► - But when you tap the search results it doesn't take you anywhere.

00:36:42 ◼   ► - Solid.

00:36:43 ◼   ► - The setting has been removed, right.

00:36:44 ◼   ► All right, so this, Josh Biggs has this feedback.

00:36:47 ◼   ► Series volume on CarPlay can only be adjusted while Siri is speaking from the driver's side

00:36:52 ◼   ► volume control on the steering wheel.

00:36:53 ◼   ► So they're saying like, "Well, all the things that we tried."

00:36:55 ◼   ► No, no, no, not only do you have to change it while it's speaking, not only do you have

00:36:58 ◼   ► - Well, we told you that.

00:36:59 ◼   ► You can't change it on the phone,

00:37:01 ◼   ► and you can't change it on the console,

00:37:03 ◼   ► you can only change it with the steering wheel control.

00:37:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, see that's new to me.

00:37:06 ◼   ► - Which I'm not entirely sure I tried that,

00:37:08 ◼   ► I'm not entirely sure I believe that.

00:37:10 ◼   ► Lots of people sent me, like we saw last week,

00:37:11 ◼   ► you know, pictures of all my Toyota

00:37:13 ◼   ► has a thing called voice and it has this option for,

00:37:15 ◼   ► no, this Toyota did not have that option.

00:37:17 ◼   ► Now this was a fleet car, it was a rental,

00:37:19 ◼   ► it's different than other things.

00:37:20 ◼   ► People ask me why I didn't use the built-in nav.

00:37:21 ◼   ► There was no built-in nav.

00:37:23 ◼   ► When you went to the built-in nav thing,

00:37:24 ◼   ► it's like, you should option navigation,

00:37:26 ◼   ► contact Toyota or whatever.

00:37:27 ◼   ► So fleet cars are different or whatever,

00:37:29 ◼   ► but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't have worked either.

00:37:32 ◼   ► - That is really, really weird.

00:37:34 ◼   ► - But just FYI, if you happen to have a car

00:37:36 ◼   ► and you tried all the things we listed before,

00:37:38 ◼   ► here's one more to try.

00:37:40 ◼   ► Law series-speaking, steering wheel control only.

00:37:42 ◼   ► Seems unlikely, but try it.

00:37:44 ◼   ► - If somebody can independently verify this

00:37:47 ◼   ► one way or the other, I'd love to know,

00:37:48 ◼   ► because I'm not trying to say that Josh Biggs is wrong,

00:37:51 ◼   ► but that's the person who wrote in,

00:37:53 ◼   ► but this strikes me as extraordinarily unusual.

00:37:56 ◼   ► So Josh very well may be right,

00:37:59 ◼   ► but I would love to have some independent--

00:38:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, it'd be totally dumb if it was true,

00:38:02 ◼   ► 'cause what sense does that make?

00:38:03 ◼   ► None.

00:38:04 ◼   ► - Right, exactly.

00:38:05 ◼   ► It's not Josh that I have a problem with, it's Toyota.

00:38:08 ◼   ► Matt Rigby writes, and actually,

00:38:10 ◼   ► before I get to Matt Rigby's feedback,

00:38:12 ◼   ► I would like to thank everyone for the kind notes

00:38:15 ◼   ► about our baby, how do you get ready for a baby discussion.

00:38:19 ◼   ► There were a lot of people that said

00:38:20 ◼   ► some very, very kind things,

00:38:21 ◼   ► and I will speak for all three of us

00:38:23 ◼   ► in saying we really appreciate that,

00:38:24 ◼   ► and that was very kind of you.

00:38:25 ◼   ► Now, specifically with Matt Rigby's feedback,

00:38:27 ◼   ► I'm writing on behalf of my partner, who is a postpartum doula, to say that postpartum

00:38:31 ◼   ► doulas are a thing. They can fulfill a ton of the needs you touched on, especially for

00:38:35 ◼   ► new parents who have recently moved and are without social connections or far away from

00:38:38 ◼   ► family. Or just for new parents who have trouble letting in someone they'd otherwise be asking

00:38:43 ◼   ► in favor of. Unlike a birth doula, postpartum doulas work mostly with families once they're

00:38:47 ◼   ► home from the hospital or have had the baby. They can assist with things like recommendations

00:38:51 ◼   ► of medical specialists and local groups while you're too overwhelmed to look, basic coaching

00:38:55 ◼   ► for new parents, coming over and running a load of laundry,

00:38:57 ◼   ► watching a new baby for 30 minutes,

00:38:58 ◼   ► bringing over snacks, prepared meals, et cetera.

00:39:01 ◼   ► They usually work on a sliding scale that's,

00:39:02 ◼   ► shall we say, cheaper than software developers.

00:39:05 ◼   ► You can read more at donut.org,

00:39:07 ◼   ► and we'll put a link in the show notes.

00:39:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, I can strongly, I didn't do a postpartum doula

00:39:12 ◼   ► over here because I didn't frankly know those existed,

00:39:14 ◼   ► but we did have a regular doula for the birth process

00:39:18 ◼   ► and the lead up to it, and she proved

00:39:21 ◼   ► to be extremely helpful, and they're basically

00:39:24 ◼   ► like kind of birth coaches and they can teach you

00:39:29 ◼   ► through the process, they can answer a lot of questions

00:39:30 ◼   ► beforehand and then during the process they can

00:39:34 ◼   ► not only help you through it and coach you through it

00:39:35 ◼   ► but also kind of be an advocate for you

00:39:38 ◼   ► in terms of what's going on medically and stuff

00:39:41 ◼   ► and that's also extremely valuable.

00:39:43 ◼   ► So I can recommend looking into that if you can

00:39:45 ◼   ► and if you can find somebody good.

00:39:47 ◼   ► - It's kind of like getting a lawyer to represent you

00:39:49 ◼   ► or when you're doing real estate, what is it called?

00:39:51 ◼   ► Like a buyer's agent?

00:39:52 ◼   ► like someone involved in the process who actually has your needs, who's actually representing you.

00:39:57 ◼   ► And you would think, "Oh, my doctor has my needs in mind," but actually having a doula to advocate

00:40:01 ◼   ► for you during labor and delivery is incredibly useful because they know what they're doing,

00:40:06 ◼   ► they have experience with it, and you may not be—neither one of you may be in the best position to

00:40:11 ◼   ► advocate for what you want and need in the strongest way. It's good to have someone with

00:40:17 ◼   ► experience. And then a postpartum doula, I also didn't know it was a thing. I'm sure my wife

00:40:22 ◼   ► did, but that's why we put this feedback in there. Now you listener know as well.

00:40:25 ◼   ► So I think we might,

00:40:28 ◼   ► might be able to avoid a 45 minute discussion about the app channels this week,

00:40:32 ◼   ► but I would like to know, no promises, Marco.

00:40:35 ◼   ► I would like to know how,

00:40:38 ◼   ► how your test went of recording the 4k Fios channel,

00:40:43 ◼   ► uh, standby banner to, to recap.

00:40:46 ◼   ► We were unsure whether or not if you set channels to record the channels app,

00:40:51 ◼   ► to record the Fios channel that broadcasts in 4K,

00:40:54 ◼   ► to record they're like,

00:40:55 ◼   ► "Hey, we're not airing anything right now."

00:40:57 ◼   ► Would that come through as 4K, yes or no?

00:41:00 ◼   ► And you said you would give it a shot,

00:41:01 ◼   ► and apparently you have.

00:41:02 ◼   ► - I did, and it's not, it's 1080.

00:41:04 ◼   ► Now, it wasn't a broadcast, it was just a banner thing.

00:41:07 ◼   ► So, and if you look at the banner,

00:41:08 ◼   ► it lists a broadcast that is in the past.

00:41:11 ◼   ► So I'm not sure what the deal is, but no, 1080, so far.

00:41:14 ◼   ► I'll try it if I ever catch it in a broadcast.

00:41:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would like to,

00:41:17 ◼   ► I would not be surprised necessarily

00:41:19 ◼   ► if it did not record in 4K,

00:41:21 ◼   ► but I did ask my buddy John about it,

00:41:23 ◼   ► and I'm pretty sure he said

00:41:24 ◼   ► that it should come through as 4K, but no promises.

00:41:27 ◼   ► And then, so we got some really good feedback

00:41:29 ◼   ► from Colin Weir that had a map attached to it

00:41:34 ◼   ► that it makes my skin crawl.

00:41:36 ◼   ► I'm offended by how awful this map is,

00:41:39 ◼   ► but let me talk about the feedback.

00:41:40 ◼   ► So Colin Weir writes, "To get 4K over the air,

00:41:42 ◼   ► "you need to live in a market

00:41:43 ◼   ► "where your local channels have upgraded to ATSC 3.0.

00:41:47 ◼   ► "These deployments are few and far between,

00:41:48 ◼   ► and much like cable, the content is not widely available.

00:41:50 ◼   ► Even if your local network is broadcasting ATSC 3.0,

00:41:53 ◼   ► most of the content is probably still 720p.

00:41:56 ◼   ► And so Colin provides a link to a website

00:41:59 ◼   ► where this god-awful map exists.

00:42:02 ◼   ► And if you're not American,

00:42:03 ◼   ► this probably won't be quite as offensive to you,

00:42:05 ◼   ► but this map doesn't have any intelligible boundaries

00:42:09 ◼   ► for the purposes of locating yourself.

00:42:11 ◼   ► Like, I understand these boundaries.

00:42:13 ◼   ► - Can you not find yourself on a map of the US?

00:42:16 ◼   ► I mean, roughly, but my state is not a wee little state

00:42:20 ◼   ► like yours is, mine is relatively large,

00:42:22 ◼   ► and I don't live in a extreme--

00:42:23 ◼   ► - You don't know where you are in that state?

00:42:24 ◼   ► You're just somewhere in there?

00:42:25 ◼   ► - Looking at this map, no, I don't know where I am

00:42:27 ◼   ► in this state, I think I'm in the northern section, but--

00:42:29 ◼   ► - I think you need to brush up on your geography.

00:42:30 ◼   ► Maybe you get one of those map of the United States puzzles

00:42:32 ◼   ► where you have little wooden pieces shaped by each state.

00:42:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, we have it, we have it.

00:42:35 ◼   ► - Like, I don't know where you are in this state,

00:42:36 ◼   ► but that's, you know, I'm allowed to not know.

00:42:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause we don't live there.

00:42:39 ◼   ► - Ah, well anyway, I don't know, I hate this map.

00:42:41 ◼   ► I viscerally hate this map, but be that as it may,

00:42:44 ◼   ► this is useful feedback and I do appreciate it.

00:42:46 ◼   ► So do you live in one of these areas?

00:42:47 ◼   ► 'Cause I'm not even gonna try to guess for you.

00:42:49 ◼   ► - No, so the three categories in a legend are

00:42:51 ◼   ► on the air with ATSC 3.0, I guess that's the good one.

00:42:54 ◼   ► It's like, you've got it, you've got ATSC 3.0,

00:42:56 ◼   ► good for you, that's orange.

00:42:57 ◼   ► Then readying broadcast is blue

00:43:00 ◼   ► and then announced target market is blackish or dark blue.

00:43:04 ◼   ► Both of those colors mean you don't got it.

00:43:06 ◼   ► And it's just a question of when will it come, who knows?

00:43:08 ◼   ► And then there's gray areas, which is like,

00:43:10 ◼   ► Not even on anyone's radar.

00:43:11 ◼   ► No timeline announced, tough luck to you.

00:43:14 ◼   ► - My island is gray.

00:43:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, where I live is blue,

00:43:18 ◼   ► which means readying broadcast.

00:43:20 ◼   ► So I don't know how long they're gonna be readying,

00:43:21 ◼   ► but who knows.

00:43:24 ◼   ► Colin continues, the best way to get high quality

00:43:25 ◼   ► 4K content is to have it fall off a truck.

00:43:27 ◼   ► Yes, we all know that.

00:43:29 ◼   ► Most non-4K over cables, probably three to four megabits.

00:43:31 ◼   ► Netflix 4K stream is 25 megabits,

00:43:33 ◼   ► and Blu-ray is around 60 megabits.

00:43:35 ◼   ► I'm assuming that's per second,

00:43:37 ◼   ► to just give you idea of the relative qualities.

00:43:39 ◼   ► So Mike C. Wells in the chat has given me a link

00:43:43 ◼   ► to a different part of ATSC.org where it says,

00:43:47 ◼   ► "All seven of Richmond-Petersburg's

00:43:49 ◼   ► full power local television stations

00:43:51 ◼   ► have begun broadcasting with the next gen,

00:43:53 ◼   ► AKA ATSC 3.0 signals."

00:43:55 ◼   ► So apparently such a thing exists here in town.

00:43:57 ◼   ► I had no idea, but that does indicate to me

00:43:59 ◼   ► that I was able to read the map

00:44:00 ◼   ► and say that I was in the orange section.

00:44:01 ◼   ► So, ha!

00:44:02 ◼   ► - You were in one of the orange things.

00:44:04 ◼   ► Good for you.

00:44:05 ◼   ► - All right.

00:44:05 ◼   ► So I guess I would need a new antenna

00:44:08 ◼   ► Maybe a new HD home run?

00:44:10 ◼   ► I don't even know, actually, what I would need

00:44:11 ◼   ► in order to get this.

00:44:13 ◼   ► Somebody tell me.

00:44:14 ◼   ► Reach out via Twitter.

00:44:15 ◼   ► All right, moving along.

00:44:17 ◼   ► Let's see here.

00:44:19 ◼   ► Okay, so audio and video sync.

00:44:20 ◼   ► We got a lot of feedback about this,

00:44:22 ◼   ► including from former feedbacker Matt Rigby

00:44:25 ◼   ► from just a few minutes ago.

00:44:27 ◼   ► He apparently is a dialogue and ADR editor

00:44:30 ◼   ► and has his own page on IMDB,

00:44:33 ◼   ► which I just think is the coolest thing in the world.

00:44:36 ◼   ► But anyways, Matt Rigby writes,

00:44:38 ◼   ► "Your friendly neighborhood dialogue and ADR editor here

00:44:40 ◼   ► writing in again to say when it comes to syncing audio

00:44:42 ◼   ► and video playback delay, there's an app for that."

00:44:45 ◼   ► And Matt was far from the only person who recommended

00:44:47 ◼   ► Catch and Sync.

00:44:49 ◼   ► And so I've not used this, but apparently it's an app

00:44:52 ◼   ► that helps with this sort of thing.

00:44:54 ◼   ► So Matt continues, "This was introduced to me

00:44:56 ◼   ► by our chief engineer here at PostWorks New York

00:44:58 ◼   ► and has been used to calibrate mixed rooms

00:44:59 ◼   ► where we've done multiple Apple, HBO, Netflix,

00:45:01 ◼   ► A24, et cetera, shows and movies.

00:45:03 ◼   ► John's instinct to align the attack of your beep was correct.

00:45:07 ◼   ► I usually do the first fully white frames since projectors and TVs are running

00:45:11 ◼   ► slower than 120 frames per second when you get a half frame or two first and

00:45:15 ◼   ► with the very peak of the wave form. Oh, and Fred,

00:45:17 ◼   ► your edification it took me two to three years of doing this full time

00:45:20 ◼   ► professionally to be able to reliably tell which direction something was out of

00:45:23 ◼   ► sync and move it correctly and still about one third or so at the time I'm wrong

00:45:26 ◼   ► in the first try. Yeah. So catch and sink. I think that's a kitchen sink pun.

00:45:31 ◼   ► That's my best guess.

00:45:32 ◼   ► - Oh, I get it, I get it.

00:45:34 ◼   ► - 'Cause I don't think it's a term, an industry term.

00:45:36 ◼   ► It's just someone, whatever.

00:45:38 ◼   ► I don't know why you're catching this anchor or whatever.

00:45:40 ◼   ► So I use this app.

00:45:42 ◼   ► We should read the next item

00:45:45 ◼   ► and then I'll tell you my experiences with it.

00:45:46 ◼   ► - So Andrew Gibbons writes, John asks,

00:45:48 ◼   ► at what point do I want to align to the zero?

00:45:51 ◼   ► Look at the source.

00:45:52 ◼   ► Download the YouTube video and open it in iMovie

00:45:54 ◼   ► or Final Cut Pro.

00:45:55 ◼   ► Where did they align the zero?

00:45:58 ◼   ► That is the same place you want to align it.

00:45:59 ◼   ► - So this is the question I had last time.

00:46:01 ◼   ► It's like I've got a video timeline and I've got an audio timeline and the audio timeline has like a lump

00:46:06 ◼   ► Where are the you know, you've got the tack and decay of the beep noise, you know

00:46:09 ◼   ► This is all stretched out and elongated because it's 240 frames per second me recording my television screen, right?

00:46:14 ◼   ► And what I'm trying to do is line up the video where it shows like, you know

00:46:20 ◼   ► The white bar in the middle of the line with and make the audio waveform line up

00:46:24 ◼   ► But the audio waveform was like an inch wide

00:46:26 ◼   ► And I've got you know that one frame of video

00:46:28 ◼   ► Where do I align the audio waveform and Andrews answer was look at the source video that you're playing like the thing that's playing on

00:46:35 ◼   ► Your TV put that video into your editor and look at what where they aligned it

00:46:41 ◼   ► So you'll see the audio waveform in the source video and then you'll see you know

00:46:45 ◼   ► Where what part of the waveform did they line it up with now? Here's where things start getting awful. So first, let's let's take a look at this

00:46:52 ◼   ► You just pull up that image

00:46:55 ◼   ► This is the source audio file

00:46:58 ◼   ► with no adjustments to it whatsoever.

00:47:02 ◼   ► I have moved the play head,

00:47:04 ◼   ► first of all look at the audio wave forms,

00:47:05 ◼   ► look how beautiful they are.

00:47:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's very good.

00:47:08 ◼   ► - They are vertical lines, they don't have any attack,

00:47:10 ◼   ► it's just like instant loudest volume

00:47:12 ◼   ► and then there's like a little parabolic decay, right?

00:47:14 ◼   ► And this is with the play head lined up

00:47:16 ◼   ► exactly at the beginning of that noise.

00:47:18 ◼   ► Would you look at the video above it please?

00:47:20 ◼   ► - It's not lined up.

00:47:21 ◼   ► - Not even close.

00:47:22 ◼   ► - The mark is not on the zero.

00:47:24 ◼   ► - Oh my gosh.

00:47:25 ◼   ► - The mark, so I have it lined up exactly the beginning

00:47:28 ◼   ► but the mark is like at 35 milliseconds past the zero.

00:47:32 ◼   ► So I'm like, all right, what the heck is going on here?

00:47:34 ◼   ► Maybe that's what they built into that.

00:47:35 ◼   ► Basically again, this is a YouTube video.

00:47:37 ◼   ► Maybe they're telling you to eyeball it,

00:47:39 ◼   ► so maybe they did this because they know people

00:47:40 ◼   ► are always a little bit late or whatever.

00:47:42 ◼   ► Like maybe that's just something they did on purpose, right?

00:47:45 ◼   ► But then I'm like, aha, but wait a second.

00:47:46 ◼   ► I downloaded this off YouTube with like YouTube DL,

00:47:50 ◼   ► and I think I did like a, you know, H.265 recording.

00:47:53 ◼   ► I need to get like the source thing.

00:47:54 ◼   ► The source thing is WebM.

00:47:56 ◼   ► So I'm like, let me just look at the WebM.

00:47:57 ◼   ► I don't want to convert it.

00:47:58 ◼   ► Maybe the conversion does something weird

00:48:00 ◼   ► because we're talking about minor, minor things here.

00:48:02 ◼   ► So I downloaded the WebM and then I had to find something

00:48:04 ◼   ► that can show the WebM with a timeline.

00:48:06 ◼   ► So here is the WebM file.

00:48:08 ◼   ► Now look at the waveform now.

00:48:10 ◼   ► It looks very different because this is a different editor.

00:48:12 ◼   ► It's not an iMovie, but it's an editor

00:48:13 ◼   ► that natively understands WebM.

00:48:15 ◼   ► And again, it's got similar shape

00:48:17 ◼   ► and you can line up with exactly the frame

00:48:18 ◼   ► before the sound is.

00:48:19 ◼   ► - That's closer.

00:48:20 ◼   ► - It's closer, but it's still not on the zero.

00:48:22 ◼   ► I'm like, God damn it, what?

00:48:24 ◼   ► What?

00:48:25 ◼   ► And so I'm like, okay, but this is just some,

00:48:27 ◼   ► I had to find an editor that understands WebM.

00:48:30 ◼   ► I don't know if this editor is any good or better,

00:48:32 ◼   ► so I found a second editor that understands WebM.

00:48:35 ◼   ► And here is what that looked like.

00:48:38 ◼   ► - Oh.

00:48:39 ◼   ► - Now it's in the other direction

00:48:41 ◼   ► at negative 100 milliseconds.

00:48:43 ◼   ► - That's a big difference.

00:48:44 ◼   ► - Oh my word. - This is the same file.

00:48:46 ◼   ► This is the source WebM file

00:48:49 ◼   ► downloaded directly from YouTube,

00:48:50 ◼   ► and I'm putting the same file in two different editors.

00:48:52 ◼   ► And these are not small differences.

00:48:53 ◼   ► When the total delay that I'm putting in

00:48:55 ◼   ► is in the range of 100 milliseconds,

00:48:57 ◼   ► a delta of like plus 35 and minus 100 milliseconds,

00:49:02 ◼   ► just everything is out the window, right?

00:49:04 ◼   ► So, catch and sync.

00:49:06 ◼   ► Originally I didn't plan to mess with it,

00:49:08 ◼   ► 'cause I'm like, I don't need that,

00:49:09 ◼   ► I did my own way and it's fine.

00:49:10 ◼   ► And it's also like 20 bucks or something, right?

00:49:12 ◼   ► And I did launch it and you can try to demo it,

00:49:14 ◼   ► I'm like, ah, this app seems a little bit janky.

00:49:16 ◼   ► But after this experience, I'm like, all right,

00:49:18 ◼   ► catch and sync, you're up.

00:49:19 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:49:22 ◼   ► And they give you a bunch of test videos

00:49:24 ◼   ► that you can download as files

00:49:25 ◼   ► at different frame rates and stuff.

00:49:27 ◼   ► They don't put any of those videos on YouTube or something.

00:49:29 ◼   ► In theory, I could upload one to YouTube,

00:49:31 ◼   ► but that would go through all sorts of processing steps

00:49:33 ◼   ► or whatever, so instead I just put these video files

00:49:36 ◼   ► in my Synology and I played them with Infuse,

00:49:38 ◼   ► which is the thing that does the decoding on your device.

00:49:40 ◼   ► Anyway, they have them in ProRes and H.264.

00:49:43 ◼   ► I tried a whole bunch of different things.

00:49:44 ◼   ► I played them, I used Catch and Sync.

00:49:46 ◼   ► This app has one of the most frustrating interfaces

00:49:49 ◼   ► I've ever used on an iOS app in my life.

00:49:51 ◼   ► Right, so it forces you into landscape mode.

00:49:55 ◼   ► A lot of the things you need to do involve using controls

00:49:58 ◼   ► that overlap with the gripper bar in iOS 15.

00:50:02 ◼   ► You know that thing on the bottom, like the horizontal bar?

00:50:04 ◼   ► If you take that bar and you swipe it sideways,

00:50:06 ◼   ► you'll go to another app like that.

00:50:09 ◼   ► But you have to swipe sideways to mess with the timeline.

00:50:11 ◼   ► So it doesn't seem to understand that bar is there.

00:50:13 ◼   ► And then it's got frame advance,

00:50:15 ◼   ► forward back buttons on the left side of the UI

00:50:18 ◼   ► with touch targets that are so small that when you sit there,

00:50:21 ◼   ► speaking of trying to use touch targets to do things,

00:50:23 ◼   ► when you're using a touch target going frame,

00:50:24 ◼   ► frame, frame, frame, frame,

00:50:25 ◼   ► Inevitably, when you're getting close to lining things up

00:50:28 ◼   ► the way you want them, you will miss tap by like a millimeter

00:50:31 ◼   ► and tapping anywhere outside those buttons

00:50:33 ◼   ► will tell the video to play.

00:50:34 ◼   ► And then it will just play and mess up your position.

00:50:36 ◼   ► Then you have to try to scroll it back to the right position.

00:50:37 ◼   ► Oh, you switched out of the app again accidentally.

00:50:39 ◼   ► Switch back to the app in the multitasking squisher,

00:50:42 ◼   ► get the thing lined up carefully,

00:50:43 ◼   ► avoiding the little bar at the bottom,

00:50:45 ◼   ► tap frame, tap, tap, tap, tap, one more.

00:50:47 ◼   ► Oh, no, it started playing again.

00:50:49 ◼   ► I hate this app with a fiery patch.

00:50:51 ◼   ► I don't know if anybody uses it.

00:50:53 ◼   ► It's like it has one job.

00:50:54 ◼   ► Make the touch targets like half the freaking screen,

00:50:57 ◼   ► frame forward, frame advance.

00:50:58 ◼   ► I should not be able to, anyway, ignoring all of that,

00:51:02 ◼   ► this app, one of the things this app has on its page

00:51:06 ◼   ► is per device offsets, it says, by the way,

00:51:11 ◼   ► we've measured somehow and determined that

00:51:14 ◼   ► for these hardware devices and this OS,

00:51:17 ◼   ► there is an inherent delta for the phone itself

00:51:21 ◼   ► in terms of when you, because remember,

00:51:22 ◼   ► you're holding the phone up

00:51:23 ◼   ► and recording your television screen in a movie,

00:51:25 ◼   ► there is an inherent delay in the phone itself.

00:51:28 ◼   ► And it tells you, find your phone,

00:51:30 ◼   ► so mine is iPhone 11 Pro, iOS 15,

00:51:33 ◼   ► and the delta is plus 15 milliseconds.

00:51:35 ◼   ► And you can go to settings in the app

00:51:36 ◼   ► and add the plus 15 milliseconds.

00:51:37 ◼   ► I'm not sure where they're getting a number, but whatever.

00:51:39 ◼   ► So I did that, and then I used this app

00:51:42 ◼   ► to try to line up the timings of everything.

00:51:45 ◼   ► And you will not be shocked to learn

00:51:46 ◼   ► that it had a different number

00:51:47 ◼   ► than every other thing that I've tried.

00:51:49 ◼   ► Right?

00:51:50 ◼   ► Now, it was in the ballpark.

00:51:53 ◼   ► Like if I did it with my current settings,

00:51:55 ◼   ► the delta was 10 or 20 milliseconds.

00:52:00 ◼   ► And so what I ended up doing is I used catch and--

00:52:02 ◼   ► Previously, for example, I just did one input, Apple TV.

00:52:04 ◼   ► My Apple TV input, as measured by my previous technique

00:52:07 ◼   ► with the iMovie, was 120 milliseconds.

00:52:10 ◼   ► According to catch and sync, catch and sync, whatever,

00:52:12 ◼   ► according to catch and sync, after I fought with it

00:52:14 ◼   ► and cursed at it for a while,

00:52:16 ◼   ► it thinks the delta should be about 150 milliseconds.

00:52:20 ◼   ► So I changed it to 150.

00:52:21 ◼   ► I'm gonna live with it for a week

00:52:23 ◼   ► see if I notice a difference.

00:52:24 ◼   ► 'Cause it didn't tell me you're off by 100

00:52:26 ◼   ► in either direction, it told me you're close.

00:52:28 ◼   ► But, you know, and again, this is with the 15 milliseconds

00:52:31 ◼   ► like inbuilt delay that I did according to this webpage

00:52:33 ◼   ► that tells me you should do that for an iPhone 11 Pro.

00:52:36 ◼   ► All of this just is very frustrating

00:52:39 ◼   ► because there are so many pieces of hardware and software

00:52:41 ◼   ► in the chain and the, like, what you're doing

00:52:44 ◼   ► is such a fine adjustment, right,

00:52:48 ◼   ► that any kind of thing that adds a little bit

00:52:51 ◼   ► moves a little bit or is a little bit off just throws the whole thing off because like the margin

00:52:55 ◼   ► of error is equal to the size of the adjustment you're making practically which is one way of

00:52:59 ◼   ► telling me don't worry about this it's probably not that big a deal but you know i did notice

00:53:03 ◼   ► when it was off and i did notice when i improved it uh more updates next week oh my gosh all right

00:53:11 ◼   ► continuing joshua shoal writes uh executive summary for lip sync try to error on the side

00:53:16 ◼   ► of audio slightly behind the video, preferably 10 to 20 milliseconds. Joshua writes, "I work in

00:53:21 ◼   ► the cabin automation industry. We design and build computerized systems that go in aircraft and

00:53:25 ◼   ► attempt to marry up modern technology features like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, HDMI, etc. with the Byzantine

00:53:30 ◼   ► FAA certification process so that billionaires can have surround sound and watch Netflix on their

00:53:33 ◼   ► private airplanes." This sounds like the most fascinating and infuriating job in the world.

00:53:39 ◼   ► But anyway, Joshua continues, "Your brain is much faster at receiving inputs from sight than sound.

00:53:44 ◼   ► When you stop and think about it, the mechanisms make a certain amount of sense.

00:53:47 ◼   ► Sight is pretty much all electromagnetism. Hearing involves some mechanical interfaces in your ear.

00:53:51 ◼   ► As a result, brains are used to sound slightly lagging sight. I know this is based on some

00:53:55 ◼   ► actual research, but I'd have to dig that up. Industry received wisdom, and our requirements

00:54:00 ◼   ► lead to settings for that sound no more than 10 milliseconds ahead of video,

00:54:05 ◼   ► but easily as much as 40 milliseconds behind. Having sound slightly behind is far more ideal

00:54:11 ◼   ► than a head.

00:54:12 ◼   ► So this is interesting advice in terms of, hey, if there's going to be a margin of error,

00:54:17 ◼   ► try to err on the side of the sound lagging.

00:54:19 ◼   ► I'm not sure entirely by the reasoning here, though.

00:54:23 ◼   ► The thing about, okay, well, you've got air pressure waves have to move your eardrum,

00:54:28 ◼   ► which moves little hairs inside your ears.

00:54:29 ◼   ► That's all true, and the electromagnetism interface for eyes in theory could potentially

00:54:34 ◼   ► be faster.

00:54:35 ◼   ► But here's the thing.

00:54:36 ◼   ► When a human is talking to you from across the room, the sound comes out of their mouth

00:54:41 ◼   ► in sync with their lip movements.

00:54:43 ◼   ► It doesn't reach you in sync

00:54:45 ◼   ► because you see their lips before,

00:54:47 ◼   ► assuming your interface was equally whatever.

00:54:50 ◼   ► But the thing making the sound,

00:54:53 ◼   ► your lips, that P, that plosive comes out

00:54:55 ◼   ► when your lips do the P thing.

00:54:56 ◼   ► Like there's no question about that.

00:54:58 ◼   ► So one way to think of this,

00:54:59 ◼   ► and I think it is a reasonable way,

00:55:01 ◼   ► is to say your television should act like a person.

00:55:03 ◼   ► When the person on the television

00:55:05 ◼   ► makes a plosive with their mouth,

00:55:07 ◼   ► that's when the P sound should come out of the television.

00:55:10 ◼   ► And if you're seated really, really far away

00:55:12 ◼   ► from the television, yes, the sound will get to you later

00:55:14 ◼   ► than the light does, right, because of the speed difference.

00:55:17 ◼   ► But that's exactly the same as it would be

00:55:18 ◼   ► if a person was over there.

00:55:20 ◼   ► That being said, I think what most of us are used to

00:55:24 ◼   ► may not be that, because when we watch someone on television,

00:55:27 ◼   ► first of all, half of it's ADR,

00:55:28 ◼   ► so there's not even a connection

00:55:29 ◼   ► between the person's lips and what they're saying.

00:55:31 ◼   ► But second of all, that's why I was saying

00:55:33 ◼   ► adjust it when you're on your couch.

00:55:35 ◼   ► You might want it to be in sync

00:55:37 ◼   ► as if you were sitting as close to the person

00:55:39 ◼   ► as you visibly are, 'cause when you see a headshot on a TV,

00:55:41 ◼   ► that person's head on a 65-inch TV is like three feet high.

00:55:45 ◼   ► So it's like you are sitting close,

00:55:47 ◼   ► it's like that person is not 10 feet from you.

00:55:49 ◼   ► They're whatever distance they would be for their head

00:55:51 ◼   ► to be three feet high in your field of vision,

00:55:53 ◼   ► and that's why I'm adjusting it

00:55:54 ◼   ► from the seating position on my couch

00:55:56 ◼   ► and not adjusting it as if it was a person

00:55:58 ◼   ► who was standing where my television is,

00:55:59 ◼   ► because their head would be much smaller in that case.

00:56:01 ◼   ► Anyway, this is a very complicated topic.

00:56:03 ◼   ► I'm glad to know the wisdom that, hey,

00:56:06 ◼   ► if you are on one side or the other, make the sound lag,

00:56:08 ◼   ► And that's kind of why I'm trying the 150,

00:56:10 ◼   ► because that's a little bit more delay in the sound,

00:56:12 ◼   ► and I'm gonna see if that feels better.

00:56:14 ◼   ► - All right, tell me about TiVo ad skipping, if you please.

00:56:17 ◼   ► - I wasn't giving a being fair to TiVo.

00:56:19 ◼   ► My wife informed me that if you have the new interface,

00:56:21 ◼   ► which I don't like, TiVo will auto skip ads.

00:56:24 ◼   ► It still won't do it in the iPad app, which is annoying,

00:56:26 ◼   ► but only my old downstairs TiVo won't do auto skipping,

00:56:28 ◼   ► but the new interface will.

00:56:30 ◼   ► - If I had known this was more TiVo love,

00:56:32 ◼   ► I wouldn't have admitted it in the show notes.

00:56:34 ◼   ► Speaking of, I am not kidding you,

00:56:36 ◼   ► I refuse to read the following feedback.

00:56:38 ◼   ► I will not because I disagree with it so much.

00:56:41 ◼   ► - I will read it just because I feel like this is--

00:56:44 ◼   ► - This is amazing.

00:56:45 ◼   ► - It's just one person's opinion,

00:56:47 ◼   ► but it is very strong opinion.

00:56:49 ◼   ► - I disagree with this so much.

00:56:51 ◼   ► I will not read it.

00:56:53 ◼   ► - Here we go, this is from Jason Smith.

00:56:54 ◼   ► "For over 10 years, I ran an HD home run for tuner setup

00:56:59 ◼   ► to record over the air TV using antenna in my attic.

00:57:01 ◼   ► I use a product called Sage TV and later a channel setup.

00:57:04 ◼   ► There is not a human being on earth

00:57:06 ◼   ► I would recommend this to.

00:57:07 ◼   ► Walton Brown is famous for his hate of unitaskers in the kitchen, but a TiVo or god forbid a

00:57:12 ◼   ► cable company DVR is always a better option than this.

00:57:15 ◼   ► Do you like people in your house asking why can't we watch TV like normal people?

00:57:19 ◼   ► Do you like troubleshooting some insane issue where the fragile Faberge egg of your home

00:57:22 ◼   ► set up you created needs troubleshooting and robs all of your free time from you on the

00:57:26 ◼   ► weekend?

00:57:27 ◼   ► Do you like doing tech support over the phone when you're out of the house and explaining

00:57:30 ◼   ► to your significant other, "Okay, the TV will work again soon, but you need to restart the

00:57:34 ◼   ► the sonology. Hopefully they will buy a Vibra Slap and randomly at three in the morning

00:57:38 ◼   ► play it loudly in your ear to wake you up to remind you that you chose the worst option

00:57:41 ◼   ► for managing TV. Don't get me started on managing files. John's wife is 100% correct in her

00:57:46 ◼   ► desire to not have the channel server running on her computer. Her computer should not be

00:57:49 ◼   ► the source of entertainment for the family that has to be up all the time in order for

00:57:52 ◼   ► the rest of them to watch TV. Every iteration of a home-based DVR setup is bad and always

00:57:56 ◼   ► will be. This is a job for an appliance."

00:57:59 ◼   ► - Jason has very strong opinions.

00:58:01 ◼   ► I mean, he has 10 years experience with it,

00:58:04 ◼   ► and you can say, "Well, you used the bad software.

00:58:06 ◼   ► "It's much better now," or whatever,

00:58:08 ◼   ► but it sounds like this is not something

00:58:09 ◼   ► he tried on a weekend.

00:58:11 ◼   ► - No, this is incredible.

00:58:13 ◼   ► I mean, look, haven't we all been guilty

00:58:15 ◼   ► of setting up complicated technical solutions

00:58:19 ◼   ► in our houses that really--

00:58:21 ◼   ► - Mark Casey, he's never done that.

00:58:22 ◼   ► What are you talking about?

00:58:23 ◼   ► - Marco, I'm still thinking about fiber.

00:58:24 ◼   ► I'm still thinking about fiber.

00:58:26 ◼   ► No, I'm not guilty of this at all.

00:58:27 ◼   ► But no, I genuinely, like of all the things

00:58:31 ◼   ► that have gone wrong with my setup,

00:58:33 ◼   ► all of which were self-created,

00:58:34 ◼   ► about the only thing that I don't think

00:58:36 ◼   ► is ever broken is channels.

00:58:38 ◼   ► And I'm not trying to say Jason's lying,

00:58:39 ◼   ► I'm not trying to say he's even wrong necessarily,

00:58:42 ◼   ► but his lived experience is so the polar opposite of mine

00:58:46 ◼   ► that I just, I can't wrap my head around it.

00:58:49 ◼   ► - Well, people have different experiences with tech

00:58:51 ◼   ► and I could definitely feel where he's come from.

00:58:54 ◼   ► One thing I didn't mention last time,

00:58:56 ◼   ► which is, I feel like a reasonably big advantage of TiVo

00:59:01 ◼   ► and other kind of all-in-one things is,

00:59:03 ◼   ► I mean, it's right in the thing I did say many times,

00:59:07 ◼   ► channels and setups like that have modular components, right?

00:59:09 ◼   ► So you get to pick and choose which they are,

00:59:10 ◼   ► you have a lot of flexibility,

00:59:12 ◼   ► you can be more cost-effective that way,

00:59:14 ◼   ► has lots of advantages,

00:59:15 ◼   ► but one of the disadvantages,

00:59:17 ◼   ► that because the components are modular,

00:59:19 ◼   ► that means they're separate,

00:59:20 ◼   ► and that means you need to communicate between them.

00:59:21 ◼   ► With TiVo, the cable goes into the TiVo box,

00:59:24 ◼   ► And in that same box is the hard drive

00:59:27 ◼   ► that will record it and the thing that will decode it.

00:59:28 ◼   ► So there's no network traffic throughout your house

00:59:31 ◼   ► of whatever that signal is.

00:59:32 ◼   ► The network traffic is entirely within the TiVo

00:59:35 ◼   ► because the video goes in there,

00:59:36 ◼   ► and other than if you're watching on your iPad

00:59:38 ◼   ► or something upstairs, but the video goes in there

00:59:40 ◼   ► and the hard drive is right in the same box.

00:59:42 ◼   ► So you do not need to send X number of megabits of video

00:59:46 ◼   ► wandering across your house.

00:59:47 ◼   ► Whereas if you do the channels method

00:59:48 ◼   ► and you have things spread out,

00:59:50 ◼   ► the cable goes into my HD home run

00:59:53 ◼   ► and there's an ethernet port,

00:59:54 ◼   ► but then I need to send that video downstairs

00:59:56 ◼   ► through my network to the Synology where it gets recorded

00:59:58 ◼   ► and then when I play it back on my TV,

00:59:59 ◼   ► I've gotta send it back from the Synology

01:00:01 ◼   ► through the network to the thing.

01:00:02 ◼   ► Not an issue for me in my house

01:00:04 ◼   ► and my network bandwidth the way it is,

01:00:05 ◼   ► but it's just one more thing to think about.

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01:01:58 ◼   ► - All right, let me briefly talk about feedbacks.

01:02:05 ◼   ► Do you know what, gentlemen?

01:02:06 ◼   ► Suddenly I started getting responses to my feedbacks.

01:02:09 ◼   ► - I don't know why, why would that be?

01:02:10 ◼   ► Why are people rewarding you for your tantrums?

01:02:12 ◼   ► That's my question.

01:02:13 ◼   ► - Running to the press never helps.

01:02:14 ◼   ► - Running to the press never helps.

01:02:15 ◼   ► - I mean, he was running to the press.

01:02:16 ◼   ► I mean, is he the press?

01:02:17 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:02:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, probably.

01:02:19 ◼   ► He ran to himself and he stomped his feet real loud.

01:02:22 ◼   ► - I did, and I stand by it, darn it.

01:02:24 ◼   ► I listen to it again and I stand by it.

01:02:25 ◼   ► But anyways, I had a couple of different feedbacks

01:02:28 ◼   ► actually get a response.

01:02:29 ◼   ► There were two out of the, what, seven or so

01:02:31 ◼   ► that I cited last time.

01:02:33 ◼   ► I'll put the feedback numbers in the show notes,

01:02:35 ◼   ► but one of them was about manual transferable

01:02:38 ◼   ► implementations with regards to the new photo picking API.

01:02:41 ◼   ► That is fixed, legitimately fixed.

01:02:43 ◼   ► And the update I got was,

01:02:44 ◼   ► thanks for submitting this report and for your patience.

01:02:46 ◼   ► We believe this issue has been addressed

01:02:48 ◼   ► in updates to iOS Mac OS.

01:02:49 ◼   ► Please test with latest Mac OS 13 beta 5

01:02:51 ◼   ► and iOS 16 beta 6, of which I did.

01:02:53 ◼   ► Thumbs up, all good.

01:02:55 ◼   ► The bigger one was the toolbar regression.

01:02:58 ◼   ► This is when I'm swapping views in Swift UI

01:03:00 ◼   ► and one of them has a toolbar at bottom bar,

01:03:02 ◼   ► one of them does not,

01:03:03 ◼   ► and it never honors the new views bottom toolbar,

01:03:07 ◼   ► never shows it.

01:03:08 ◼   ► And so I got the following feedback.

01:03:10 ◼   ► Hi Casey, thanks for filing this feedback.

01:03:12 ◼   ► If you're running into issues with bottom bar not showing

01:03:13 ◼   ► or showing when it's not supposed to,

01:03:15 ◼   ► You can try using the toolbar, either visible or I think hidden for, and then your toolbar

01:03:20 ◼   ► location.

01:03:21 ◼   ► I'm trying to read you an API, which is why it sounds a little funny.

01:03:23 ◼   ► Modifier to work around this issue.

01:03:25 ◼   ► That was extremely useful feedback, full stop.

01:03:28 ◼   ► That was exactly what I wish I had seen long ago.

01:03:31 ◼   ► That would have been great.

01:03:33 ◼   ► However, I tried this this morning and maybe this is something wrong with my code.

01:03:37 ◼   ► I haven't had the chance to break this out into a demo app to see if it's me or not,

01:03:41 ◼   ► But what ended up happening was, when I use this modifier, it shows the toolbar that's

01:03:47 ◼   ► up in the navigation bar.

01:03:49 ◼   ► And it does indeed show the bottom bar, which it was hiding previously.

01:03:52 ◼   ► So far, so good.

01:03:54 ◼   ► Except one of the two bars always looks disabled.

01:03:59 ◼   ► They're not disabled, mind you, but they're grayed out and are not showing the app's tint

01:04:02 ◼   ► color as though they're disabled.

01:04:04 ◼   ► If you tap on them, they work, and then it'll flip to the other one being disabled.

01:04:10 ◼   ► So one of the toolbars is always disabled.

01:04:13 ◼   ► I don't know what I'm gonna do about this before I ship.

01:04:15 ◼   ► I have no idea.

01:04:16 ◼   ► I have a week or so, maybe two weeks until I was 16 ships.

01:04:20 ◼   ► I have no idea what I'm gonna do about this.

01:04:21 ◼   ► I really don't have the faintest idea.

01:04:23 ◼   ► So I have written a response saying

01:04:25 ◼   ► that this seems like it's still broken.

01:04:27 ◼   ► I still need to do my due diligence

01:04:29 ◼   ► and break it out in a sample app

01:04:30 ◼   ► and see if it's really broken there

01:04:33 ◼   ► or maybe I'm doing something wrong.

01:04:35 ◼   ► But I got feedback.

01:04:38 ◼   ► - Hey, that's-- - Yay.

01:04:39 ◼   ► look, compared to where we were

01:04:41 ◼   ► and where most of our bugs are,

01:04:43 ◼   ► I mean look, and I have great news too.

01:04:45 ◼   ► My, the one, like the one bug I was really tracking

01:04:48 ◼   ► all summer that actually, you know,

01:04:49 ◼   ► I filed a couple of like enhancement requests

01:04:52 ◼   ► that I know those just go right in the trash,

01:04:54 ◼   ► but I figured like, at least let me,

01:04:56 ◼   ► there's this one that's actually a bug

01:04:58 ◼   ► that I talked about last week about, you know,

01:05:00 ◼   ► the tint color not applying to the navigation

01:05:01 ◼   ► split view buttons, and sure enough,

01:05:04 ◼   ► in beta seven, it's just fixed.

01:05:07 ◼   ► I didn't get a response on the bug, but I don't care.

01:05:09 ◼   ► They fixed the bug.

01:05:10 ◼   ► Like that's-- I did my due diligence.

01:05:14 ◼   ► When beta 7 came out, I opened up Xcode.

01:05:16 ◼   ► I installed a new beta on my phone.

01:05:17 ◼   ► The new Xcode update, it's actually beta 6.

01:05:20 ◼   ► Thanks a lot.

01:05:20 ◼   ► It's off by one now.

01:05:21 ◼   ► And so I've ran everything, and it just worked.

01:05:25 ◼   ► And I dutifully closed the bug saying, hey, thanks.

01:05:29 ◼   ► You fixed it.

01:05:30 ◼   ► So last time, when we last left this bug,

01:05:32 ◼   ► if I'm remembering the right bug, what they were telling you

01:05:35 ◼   ► is the deprecated API does what you want,

01:05:36 ◼   ► but it's deprecated, and the new API is functioning correctly

01:05:39 ◼   ► and doesn't do what you want.

01:05:41 ◼   ► So what did they do to fix it?

01:05:42 ◼   ► They made it function correctly.

01:05:44 ◼   ► Now, they didn't comment on-- the bug screeners comment to me

01:05:50 ◼   ► was basically like, hey, you're using it wrong slash this

01:05:54 ◼   ► is broken by design in more words than that.

01:05:57 ◼   ► But the gist of it is, yeah, this is just broken,

01:05:59 ◼   ► and sorry, it's your fault for expecting it to work.

01:06:02 ◼   ► And I responded with an argument that that's

01:06:06 ◼   ► crappy, they never said anything,

01:06:09 ◼   ► but they just fixed the bug.

01:06:10 ◼   ► And that's it, so it's done.

01:06:11 ◼   ► - I wonder if that was intentional,

01:06:14 ◼   ► or it's just backsliding,

01:06:15 ◼   ► 'cause the communication you have is,

01:06:16 ◼   ► this API isn't supposed to do the thing you want,

01:06:18 ◼   ► but then in the new beta, it does do the thing you want,

01:06:20 ◼   ► but they didn't say, by the way, we changed our mind,

01:06:23 ◼   ► and now we agree with you, Marco,

01:06:25 ◼   ► it should do the thing you want.

01:06:26 ◼   ► It does do it, good for you, but--

01:06:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I think the reason why

01:06:30 ◼   ► somebody thought this was worth fixing is that

01:06:33 ◼   ► it's not like it was behaving a different way intentionally.

01:06:38 ◼   ► They were basically, their response to me was basically,

01:06:40 ◼   ► you know, paraphrasing,

01:06:42 ◼   ► "You shouldn't expect this to work this way."

01:06:45 ◼   ► But like, it's the most obvious way for it to work.

01:06:48 ◼   ► - It makes it sound like it was intentional

01:06:50 ◼   ► that they didn't intend it to work that way,

01:06:52 ◼   ► and so it not working that way isn't a bug,

01:06:53 ◼   ► it's what they always meant.

01:06:54 ◼   ► Well anyway, we'll find out if anyone communicates,

01:06:56 ◼   ► "Hey, did you intentionally change your mind about this?

01:06:58 ◼   ► "Was that person mistaken about

01:07:00 ◼   ► "how the API is supposed to work?"

01:07:02 ◼   ► So you're good in beta seven, but if beta eight

01:07:04 ◼   ► it goes back to the other way, it's not as if

01:07:06 ◼   ► you've had any subsequent communication

01:07:07 ◼   ► that lets you know whether beta seven was a mistake.

01:07:10 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

01:07:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm definitely not gonna be deleting

01:07:12 ◼   ► my UI kit workaround anytime soon, just in case.

01:07:16 ◼   ► Anyway, hey, running to the press helped.

01:07:19 ◼   ► Surprise, that's how it always does with Apple,

01:07:21 ◼   ► unfortunately, I wish it didn't work this way.

01:07:24 ◼   ► I wish that, first of all, I wish that everybody

01:07:28 ◼   ► had access to get their bugs fixed,

01:07:30 ◼   ► and that more bugs got fixed.

01:07:31 ◼   ► And second of all, I wish that for those of us

01:07:34 ◼   ► who are fortunate enough to have a loud enough megaphone

01:07:37 ◼   ► that we can actually get our stuff fixed

01:07:38 ◼   ► when we complain about it,

01:07:40 ◼   ► I wish we didn't have to complain about it to get it fixed

01:07:42 ◼   ► because the last thing we wanna be doing

01:07:44 ◼   ► is complaining constantly

01:07:45 ◼   ► and that's not really what we wanna be doing here

01:07:47 ◼   ► or what anybody wants to hear.

01:07:49 ◼   ► And so I wish the system was just better

01:07:51 ◼   ► and that these kind of workarounds were not necessary.

01:07:55 ◼   ► And long term, I hope they can actually do a better job

01:07:58 ◼   ► of achieving that.

01:08:00 ◼   ► Obviously, like, you know, in the rush

01:08:02 ◼   ► right before all this stuff is about to ship,

01:08:04 ◼   ► this is a bad time to be telling them this,

01:08:06 ◼   ► but this is the reality that, like, look,

01:08:08 ◼   ► things have to change here long term

01:08:10 ◼   ► because what they're doing seems,

01:08:12 ◼   ► it just does not produce quality software

01:08:16 ◼   ► at the rate they're pushing it.

01:08:19 ◼   ► - And it doesn't produce quality software

01:08:20 ◼   ► for them or for us.

01:08:22 ◼   ► Like, our software is now crummier on account of them

01:08:25 ◼   ► not being able to respond with the quickness

01:08:27 ◼   ► that we want them to.

01:08:29 ◼   ► Now with regards to running to the press never helping,

01:08:32 ◼   ► Martin Pilkington writes,

01:08:33 ◼   ► "I found one needs to treat radar like the App Store.

01:08:35 ◼   ► "Putting an app on the App Store

01:08:36 ◼   ► "won't ensure anyone finds it.

01:08:38 ◼   ► "You need to market it externally.

01:08:39 ◼   ► "Similarly, radars are only really found

01:08:41 ◼   ► "if you rant about them online

01:08:42 ◼   ► "and someone at Apple sees that rant."

01:08:44 ◼   ► This is so frickin' frustrating,

01:08:47 ◼   ► but it is a perfect distillation of what I've been saying

01:08:50 ◼   ► over the last couple of weeks/couple of months.

01:08:51 ◼   ► It is 100% accurate.

01:08:53 ◼   ► - Yep, you gotta market your bug.

01:08:54 ◼   ► - It is 100% accurate, and it's BS that that's the case,

01:08:57 ◼   ► I'm trying to keep myself reined in so I don't go on another rant and then Bjorn scoggling writes

01:09:02 ◼   ► Sounds like an opportunity for ad revenue for Apple if I ever heard

01:09:05 ◼   ► You'll be able to pay it'll be like paying for indulgences of the church

01:09:10 ◼   ► You could be able to pay money to get someone to look at your bug in and honestly like it's kind of like one of

01:09:14 ◼   ► Those things and you know, there's a lot of things in video games

01:09:17 ◼   ► Especially video games that have subscription where they'll they be quality of life improvements

01:09:20 ◼   ► We're like, oh you don't have to put this button an extra time or you get more space in your vault in destiny or whatever

01:09:25 ◼   ► And those things seem silly and trivial and I just hope that you know no one ever well this game designers

01:09:32 ◼   ► You think about this?

01:09:33 ◼   ► But like the amount of money that people would be willing to play

01:09:36 ◼   ► To pay to for example get more room in their vault and destiny is obscene and so if they ever did say hey

01:09:41 ◼   ► Do you if you want your radar looked at just pay us some money or let's have a bidding war or let's have an auction

01:09:46 ◼   ► For it they would make so much money because developers are desperate to have their bugs looked at because it could mean the different

01:09:53 ◼   ► I mean maybe not for you know

01:09:55 ◼   ► Dinky app like I make or whatever but like because I don't really care one with the other but like

01:09:59 ◼   ► What if your app is the basis of your entire company and you have your VC funded company?

01:10:04 ◼   ► You've got to make money and your app is broken and you can't figure it out

01:10:06 ◼   ► How much money would you be willing to pay to actually get Apple to look at and respond to you your feedback or radar an?

01:10:12 ◼   ► Awful lot. Well, what kind of response are you getting? Like are you getting the kind of BS responses that I often get

01:10:18 ◼   ► I'm not endorsing this

01:10:19 ◼   ► I'm just saying that's how much people want it

01:10:21 ◼   ► Like they'd be willing to pay obscene amounts,

01:10:23 ◼   ► which is why Apple should never do it.

01:10:24 ◼   ► And there are DTS support incidents,

01:10:26 ◼   ► which is kind of what that's for.

01:10:28 ◼   ► Hey, you get a certain number of those

01:10:29 ◼   ► with your DevOps subscription.

01:10:31 ◼   ► I think you can pay for more of them, can you?

01:10:32 ◼   ► - I believe, you get two.

01:10:34 ◼   ► I've never used one, because I'm always afraid to use them,

01:10:37 ◼   ► because we only get two.

01:10:38 ◼   ► And I've literally, you know, been a developer

01:10:41 ◼   ► for like 14 years, I've never used one.

01:10:43 ◼   ► - You're saving your super for the big boss,

01:10:44 ◼   ► and you defeat the boss, and you never use it,

01:10:46 ◼   ► 'cause you were just saving it the whole time.

01:10:47 ◼   ► - Right, yeah.

01:10:48 ◼   ► - Anyway, so there are ways to do this through money.

01:10:51 ◼   ► But all I'm saying is how desperate developers are,

01:10:55 ◼   ► how desperate rank and file developers are

01:10:57 ◼   ► to get any response to their feedback.

01:10:59 ◼   ► It's part of the reason why people go to the UC.

01:11:01 ◼   ► I can talk to a human being who, you know,

01:11:03 ◼   ► like it would kind of be fun if the human beings

01:11:06 ◼   ► that we ever see treated you the way feedback does.

01:11:08 ◼   ► You'd sit down, you'd show them your sample project,

01:11:09 ◼   ► you'd explain it, and they'd just sit there silently

01:11:11 ◼   ► looking at you.

01:11:12 ◼   ► And you'd be waiting.

01:11:14 ◼   ► And then like 10 years later, they'd come to your house,

01:11:16 ◼   ► knock on your door and say,

01:11:17 ◼   ► "Oh, you just need to put this line at the bottom."

01:11:19 ◼   ► All right, there's been an announcement that, as has been foretold, the first iPadOS release

01:11:27 ◼   ► on 16 will actually be 16.1, which is coming "this fall."

01:11:32 ◼   ► Apple writes, "This is an especially big year for iPadOS as its own platform with features

01:11:36 ◼   ► specifically designed for iPad.

01:11:37 ◼   ► We have the flexibility to deliver iPadOS on its own schedule.

01:11:41 ◼   ► This fall, iPadOS will ship after iOS as version 16.1 in a free software update."

01:11:45 ◼   ► Let me translate that from corporate speak.

01:11:48 ◼   ► is on fire and we're not gonna fix it in time.

01:11:49 ◼   ► So we'll get to it eventually.

01:11:51 ◼   ► - Yes, there won't be an iPad OS 16.0.

01:11:53 ◼   ► They're gonna skip 16.0 and just keep it on 15 point

01:11:56 ◼   ► whatever as iOS moves to 16 until 16.1

01:12:00 ◼   ► is ready with iPad OS.

01:12:02 ◼   ► - So the flexibility as they say,

01:12:04 ◼   ► well it's not the same OS.

01:12:05 ◼   ► So we're not stuck in the situation

01:12:06 ◼   ► we would have been years ago where it's like,

01:12:07 ◼   ► oh but iOS 16 needs to go out 'cause that's what you need

01:12:10 ◼   ► for the new phones and the phones are gonna ship

01:12:12 ◼   ► and come hell or high water.

01:12:13 ◼   ► So what do we do?

01:12:14 ◼   ► Do we rip these features out of iPad?

01:12:16 ◼   ► But ah, but now we don't have that problem

01:12:17 ◼   ► because iPadOS is a separate OS,

01:12:18 ◼   ► and we have the flexibility to ship it later when it's ready.

01:12:21 ◼   ► I understand where they're coming from,

01:12:23 ◼   ► but from a user's perspective, especially

01:12:27 ◼   ► in the past several years, Apple has been leaning on very

01:12:30 ◼   ► heavily, and I think to good effect,

01:12:32 ◼   ► the synergy between its platforms.

01:12:34 ◼   ► That when they add a feature, they don't just

01:12:36 ◼   ► add it to one platform.

01:12:37 ◼   ► It's added to all of them and works together with them.

01:12:41 ◼   ► And when one platform ships substantially before the others,

01:12:44 ◼   ► that often leaves its users in a weird situation

01:12:46 ◼   ► where my phone is on iOS 16 and has, for example,

01:12:49 ◼   ► the family shared photo library thing,

01:12:52 ◼   ► but my iPad and my Mac are not.

01:12:54 ◼   ► And so how does that work?

01:12:56 ◼   ► Sometimes you just miss out on the features.

01:12:57 ◼   ► It's like, well, the point of this feature is sharing,

01:12:59 ◼   ► but if I can't use it on my Mac, I can't use it on my iPad.

01:13:03 ◼   ► Yes, it's good that the shared library works

01:13:05 ◼   ► between me and my spouse on my phone,

01:13:07 ◼   ► but I can't do any editing on my Mac,

01:13:09 ◼   ► and do I even wanna do the shared library like that?

01:13:11 ◼   ► And then you have situations like,

01:13:12 ◼   ► I don't remember if it was Notes or Reminders

01:13:14 ◼   ► or one of the others,

01:13:14 ◼   ► where there's like a one-time, one-direction upgrade

01:13:17 ◼   ► of your database backing for your thing,

01:13:20 ◼   ► I say, you know, this OS has a new backend for notes.

01:13:25 ◼   ► If you upgrade this, you won't be able to see these notes

01:13:28 ◼   ► on old devices.

01:13:29 ◼   ► Do you wanna upgrade now?

01:13:31 ◼   ► And if you say yes, now you've got this split-brain scenario

01:13:35 ◼   ► where some of your devices see one set of data

01:13:36 ◼   ► and some of your devices see the other.

01:13:38 ◼   ► So although I endorse not releasing the OS

01:13:40 ◼   ► when it doesn't work and Stage Manager is a big mess,

01:13:43 ◼   ► that's better than nothing.

01:13:45 ◼   ► I'm sad that the one feature that I'm looking forward to,

01:13:49 ◼   ► I can't even use on my phone on my iPad,

01:13:51 ◼   ► let alone my phone on my iPad on the Mac,

01:13:53 ◼   ► because the phone's gonna get the update

01:13:55 ◼   ► and then the Mac and the iPad potentially months later.

01:13:58 ◼   ► And that's not a fun experience for me.

01:14:00 ◼   ► And obviously Apple's not doing this on purpose.

01:14:02 ◼   ► Just feel like there are still more kinks to be worked out

01:14:05 ◼   ► in terms of Apple correctly sizing their releases

01:14:09 ◼   ► based on what they think they can actually achieve.

01:14:11 ◼   ► And it seems like they were overambitious

01:14:13 ◼   ► with their expectation that Stage Manager

01:14:14 ◼   ► would be in a shippable state in time.

01:14:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, honestly, based on everyone's reviews

01:14:20 ◼   ► who are using it heavily, like all the iPad power users

01:14:22 ◼   ► and stuff who are really giving it a good try,

01:14:24 ◼   ► it seems almost similar to the problem

01:14:26 ◼   ► with the Mac Settings app in the sense that

01:14:29 ◼   ► they demoed this at W2C, they made this

01:14:32 ◼   ► a headlining thing, but it really seems like

01:14:35 ◼   ► Stage Manager is really not ready to ship.

01:14:37 ◼   ► And frankly, I don't know if it's gonna be ready

01:14:40 ◼   ► another month or two later.

01:14:42 ◼   ► It seems like this is possibly another year before

01:14:45 ◼   ► this really probably should have been released.

01:14:48 ◼   ► Again, see also System Settings app.

01:14:50 ◼   ► By the way, we haven't heard yet anything about macOS,

01:14:56 ◼   ► but I think it seems very likely that macOS

01:14:59 ◼   ► will probably have the exact same delay

01:15:01 ◼   ► for many reasons, including--

01:15:03 ◼   ► - But macOS was always targeted to October.

01:15:05 ◼   ► It's always been.

01:15:06 ◼   ► macOS hasn't been released at the same time

01:15:09 ◼   ► the iPhone OS for iOS for what, five years, six years?

01:15:13 ◼   ► It's been a while.

01:15:14 ◼   ► - Oh, okay.

01:15:15 ◼   ► But yeah, so anyway, it does seem like this year's releases,

01:15:20 ◼   ► there's a lot in them that probably needed more time,

01:15:24 ◼   ► like probably needed another year.

01:15:26 ◼   ► And I don't know what that says about what's going on there.

01:15:29 ◼   ► I mean, you know, maybe, I think it's,

01:15:33 ◼   ► I said this before, but I think we really need to remember

01:15:36 ◼   ► that during the last few years,

01:15:39 ◼   ► there's been massive disruption to their workforce

01:15:42 ◼   ► with the pandemic and with work at home

01:15:44 ◼   ► and some of the turmoil going on

01:15:47 ◼   ► with certain internal issues and internal conflicts

01:15:50 ◼   ► and scandals and stuff.

01:15:54 ◼   ► So there's been so much disruption

01:15:57 ◼   ► and they've done a really good job overall

01:15:59 ◼   ► of hiding that from us, but this disruption has happened

01:16:03 ◼   ► and their work has been affected.

01:16:06 ◼   ► And so I think this is that finally coming home to Roost

01:16:10 ◼   ► that this year's releases,

01:16:12 ◼   ► like the core of them seems fine.

01:16:16 ◼   ► I've been using the beta on my phone all summer

01:16:18 ◼   ► and it's not crashing or anything.

01:16:21 ◼   ► The battery life is mostly recovered.

01:16:23 ◼   ► Like it's fine, everything, the core stuff is fine,

01:16:27 ◼   ► but the list of new features this year was pretty small.

01:16:30 ◼   ► And you look at something like Stage Manager

01:16:33 ◼   ► or the system settings app and like, wow,

01:16:35 ◼   ► like the big feature that they demoed,

01:16:37 ◼   ► it's kinda not ready and looks like it won't be ready

01:16:41 ◼   ► in the near future.

01:16:43 ◼   ► And I think that we're just seeing like,

01:16:45 ◼   ► you know, they're human too and this cycle,

01:16:49 ◼   ► you know, through all the pandemic stuff and everything

01:16:50 ◼   ► has been tough on them and they haven't gotten done

01:16:54 ◼   ► everything they probably wanted to get done.

01:16:55 ◼   ► That being said, if things are in this bad of a state,

01:17:00 ◼   ► somebody should have made the call this spring

01:17:03 ◼   ► to say this is not gonna hit in time for this year,

01:17:06 ◼   ► this is not gonna be good enough in time for this year,

01:17:08 ◼   ► so let's punt it 'til next year.

01:17:10 ◼   ► And they didn't do that, and I think that's gonna bite them

01:17:14 ◼   ► really hard this fall as these features, you know,

01:17:17 ◼   ► ship in some form and just are really rough.

01:17:21 ◼   ► And I don't see any evidence that stage manager

01:17:26 ◼   ► or system settings on the Mac is gonna be really great

01:17:30 ◼   ► even if they ship it on, you know,

01:17:32 ◼   ► the day before Christmas, like fall goes until,

01:17:34 ◼   ► what, December 22nd or something?

01:17:36 ◼   ► They could ship this right before Christmas.

01:17:39 ◼   ► I still don't think that's gonna be enough time.

01:17:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, the interesting thing about Stage Manager,

01:17:42 ◼   ► from what I've read about it, I mean,

01:17:43 ◼   ► I have iPad OS 16 on my iPad,

01:17:46 ◼   ► so I've been using it a little bit,

01:17:48 ◼   ► but most of the complaints that I've seen

01:17:50 ◼   ► from the people who are just really diving

01:17:52 ◼   ► into Stage Manager and the iPad power users

01:17:54 ◼   ► are not that Stage Manager is crashing or is buggy.

01:17:58 ◼   ► It's that they don't like how it works,

01:18:00 ◼   ► And the changes, such as they are from beta to beta

01:18:03 ◼   ► and just the way that Apple's designed it,

01:18:05 ◼   ► it makes me seem like the main problem with stage manager

01:18:07 ◼   ► is they've made the wrong decisions

01:18:09 ◼   ► about how it should work, right?

01:18:11 ◼   ► Like when you do this, this happens.

01:18:13 ◼   ► And Apple would say, yeah,

01:18:13 ◼   ► that's exactly how we meant it to work.

01:18:14 ◼   ► It's working great.

01:18:15 ◼   ► And people say, no, like,

01:18:17 ◼   ► I know you meant it to work that way, but it's terrible.

01:18:19 ◼   ► Right?

01:18:19 ◼   ► That they had the wrong idea about when you launch an app,

01:18:22 ◼   ► what should it do?

01:18:23 ◼   ► When you close an app, what should it do?

01:18:24 ◼   ► When you want to add another app, what should it do?

01:18:26 ◼   ► When you want to try to move a window, what should it do?

01:18:28 ◼   ► And it's like at every turn Apple has made choices

01:18:30 ◼   ► in stage manager that iPad power users don't like.

01:18:33 ◼   ► And that is a different kind of problem

01:18:35 ◼   ► than like they may have thought,

01:18:36 ◼   ► oh, it'll be ready in time.

01:18:37 ◼   ► It would be ready in time, I think,

01:18:39 ◼   ► if the choices they had made were pleasing to their users,

01:18:42 ◼   ► but the users all hate it.

01:18:43 ◼   ► And so it's like, well, it works and it's not buggy,

01:18:46 ◼   ► but everyone hates it, so we can't really ship it like that.

01:18:48 ◼   ► So I hope what they're doing is saying,

01:18:50 ◼   ► we need to rethink, like we made the wrong policy decisions.

01:18:53 ◼   ► The design of this feature is wrong.

01:18:55 ◼   ► And that is a tough place to be.

01:18:56 ◼   ► It's kind of like where they were,

01:18:57 ◼   ► Well, not quite the same with the Safari thing.

01:19:00 ◼   ► I guess the design decision of address bar

01:19:01 ◼   ► optionally on the bottom, that was okay,

01:19:03 ◼   ► but every other part of that design was the wrong decision.

01:19:06 ◼   ► And it's not like it was buggy.

01:19:07 ◼   ► They're saying, this is just a bad design.

01:19:09 ◼   ► It makes it harder for web designers.

01:19:11 ◼   ► It's not pleasing to look at.

01:19:12 ◼   ► It's not easy to use.

01:19:14 ◼   ► You know, start over.

01:19:16 ◼   ► Address bar on the bottom, fine.

01:19:17 ◼   ► Everything else, forget about it.

01:19:19 ◼   ► And that's what they did.

01:19:20 ◼   ► They said, okay, how about,

01:19:20 ◼   ► how about we do the address on the part on the bottom,

01:19:22 ◼   ► but it's like the address bar on the top.

01:19:23 ◼   ► So like, see, was that that hard?

01:19:25 ◼   ► They can't do that with stage manager.

01:19:26 ◼   ► There's no super obvious way they can change things,

01:19:29 ◼   ► but I think the struggle they're having is,

01:19:31 ◼   ► it's not like we just need to burn down those bugs

01:19:35 ◼   ► and we'll be ready, it's we need to rethink this feature

01:19:37 ◼   ► because what we thought would be pleasing

01:19:39 ◼   ► to our users is not.

01:19:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that's not something that happens quickly.

01:19:43 ◼   ► That's not something that happens

01:19:44 ◼   ► during a few months in a beta period.

01:19:46 ◼   ► That's something that happens over a year or two

01:19:48 ◼   ► of hold this feature back from the public

01:19:51 ◼   ► and we'll ship it maybe in a future software update

01:19:53 ◼   ► after we've rethought and reevaluated it.

01:19:56 ◼   ► - Do you think this is gonna be the next AirPower?

01:19:58 ◼   ► - You think they're actually gonna pull it?

01:20:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I don't think so,

01:20:01 ◼   ► but it sounds like it's real.

01:20:02 ◼   ► I have not used it, my iPad's too old and busted,

01:20:05 ◼   ► but I don't know, from what I've heard,

01:20:07 ◼   ► it's not in a good spot, like you were saying.

01:20:10 ◼   ► - I've used it, and again, I'm not a heavy iPad user,

01:20:13 ◼   ► so my usage of it doesn't matter much,

01:20:15 ◼   ► but I've used it and it's fine.

01:20:18 ◼   ► I don't prefer it.

01:20:19 ◼   ► The way it works, even for my very simplistic cases

01:20:22 ◼   ► of having like three apps that I'm switching between

01:20:25 ◼   ► and maybe have two on the screen at once,

01:20:27 ◼   ► I don't like it very much, and I frequently turn it off

01:20:30 ◼   ► and just do a split view or something.

01:20:33 ◼   ► But again, I'm not a heavy iPad user.

01:20:34 ◼   ► Frankly, I would be surprised if,

01:20:39 ◼   ► well, I guess I was gonna say I'd be surprised

01:20:41 ◼   ► if they pulled it.

01:20:43 ◼   ► - It's easy to pull.

01:20:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, it's easy to pull technically.

01:20:47 ◼   ► It's not easy to pull ego-wise.

01:20:50 ◼   ► It would take a lot of swallowing egos

01:20:53 ◼   ► and a lot of like facing the music for people

01:20:56 ◼   ► if they actually did pull this before release.

01:20:58 ◼   ► That being said, if it's really,

01:21:02 ◼   ► given how the iPad power users are receiving this

01:21:06 ◼   ► over the summer, and as you mentioned,

01:21:08 ◼   ► things that aren't just bugs that are actually

01:21:10 ◼   ► just like design choices that people aren't liking

01:21:13 ◼   ► and that aren't working for people,

01:21:15 ◼   ► and behavioral choices that aren't working for people,

01:21:18 ◼   ► that's a hard thing to fix in a short time under pressure.

01:21:22 ◼   ► when you're facing that kind of thing,

01:21:24 ◼   ► pulling it and possibly bringing it back in the future

01:21:26 ◼   ► is what you should do.

01:21:28 ◼   ► And so I think they really, and again,

01:21:30 ◼   ► and I would say all of this exact same thing

01:21:32 ◼   ► about the Ventura System Settings app,

01:21:35 ◼   ► I think the right move is to pull that

01:21:38 ◼   ► and just ship the old app

01:21:39 ◼   ► and whatever very few differences there are.

01:21:42 ◼   ► - Network location, you gotta fix at least one thing.

01:21:45 ◼   ► - Well, just delete it.

01:21:46 ◼   ► I mean, that's what they did in the new one, right?

01:21:47 ◼   ► They just left it out.

01:21:48 ◼   ► - Maybe.

01:21:49 ◼   ► - But yeah, so anyway,

01:21:50 ◼   ► I think it would be less work and result in a better outcome

01:21:55 ◼   ► if they pulled both of these things for this fall

01:21:58 ◼   ► and just put them back in the works,

01:22:02 ◼   ► polish them up, decide whether to ship them later,

01:22:05 ◼   ► for next year's releases, but in neither case

01:22:08 ◼   ► do I think these things are gonna be shippable

01:22:09 ◼   ► by November or December.

01:22:11 ◼   ► - Well, so if I had in my magic envelope,

01:22:13 ◼   ► here is the correct policy decisions

01:22:15 ◼   ► for all of the interactions in the stage manager

01:22:17 ◼   ► and I threw that to Apple,

01:22:18 ◼   ► they could implement those decisions in time

01:22:20 ◼   ► because they have the functionality.

01:22:21 ◼   ► It's just like a question of when I do X, what should happen?

01:22:24 ◼   ► And it's a menu of possible things that could happen,

01:22:26 ◼   ► all of which the feature already does.

01:22:28 ◼   ► It's just a question of which one of the things that you do.

01:22:31 ◼   ► Problem is, I don't think they know,

01:22:32 ◼   ► they don't know what's in that envelope.

01:22:33 ◼   ► They don't know, well, how should it work?

01:22:35 ◼   ► And that is, this is not a good place to be.

01:22:37 ◼   ► It's like, we don't even know how it should work,

01:22:38 ◼   ► let alone getting it to work the way.

01:22:40 ◼   ► But I'm mostly stage manager.

01:22:43 ◼   ► Again, I've used it on my iPad and played with it

01:22:44 ◼   ► or whatever, but I'm also not a big iPad power user.

01:22:46 ◼   ► But I've used it on the Mac a lot.

01:22:48 ◼   ► And remember, according to that rumor/inside story,

01:22:52 ◼   ► this is a feature that grew on the Mac originally.

01:22:55 ◼   ► And I have to say, on the Mac, it fulfills its role

01:22:57 ◼   ► in such a superior, more straightforward way

01:23:01 ◼   ► by giving you essentially spaces without spaces,

01:23:04 ◼   ► little subgroups of windows.

01:23:06 ◼   ► And the reason I think it works so much better on the Mac

01:23:08 ◼   ► for that purpose, if that's what you want,

01:23:10 ◼   ► is because, well, two things.

01:23:11 ◼   ► One, it is solving a problem that the Mac has,

01:23:14 ◼   ► which is if you don't wanna manually manage

01:23:16 ◼   ► a bunch of windows, it doesn't have a lot of tools for you to sort of manage subgroups

01:23:20 ◼   ► of windows other than spaces, which is intimidating to a lot of people and is kind of a heavyweight

01:23:25 ◼   ► solution and has its own set of problems in terms of not, kind of similar to the space

01:23:28 ◼   ► manager, kind of determining like, well when I click on this dock icon, where does this

01:23:31 ◼   ► new window open, is it going to switch me to another space or whatever?

01:23:35 ◼   ► Stage manager on the Mac does a little bit better in that.

01:23:37 ◼   ► And the second thing is, it doesn't, it fits in well with the basic Mac model of there

01:23:44 ◼   ► There are windows that are rectangles.

01:23:46 ◼   ► You can resize them from all the edges.

01:23:47 ◼   ► You can move them wherever you want.

01:23:49 ◼   ► Stage Manager says, yep,

01:23:51 ◼   ► you can do that with Stage Manager too.

01:23:52 ◼   ► All we're doing is essentially taking subsets of windows

01:23:55 ◼   ► and shuffling them in and out in front of you.

01:23:56 ◼   ► And you can see the little subsets

01:23:57 ◼   ► so you can hide that thing

01:23:59 ◼   ► and you can move windows between them.

01:24:00 ◼   ► But there's nothing else weird you have to learn.

01:24:02 ◼   ► The windows are the same as the regular windows.

01:24:04 ◼   ► They have window widgets on top of them.

01:24:05 ◼   ► You can move them and resize them

01:24:06 ◼   ► exactly as you do all the time.

01:24:08 ◼   ► If what you want are subgroups of windows

01:24:10 ◼   ► that you can shuffle in and out,

01:24:11 ◼   ► Stage Manager more or less provides that for you.

01:24:13 ◼   ► iPad OS is like they took the Mac feature and said well

01:24:16 ◼   ► We can't just bring that to the iPad because the iPads got its own way of doing things

01:24:19 ◼   ► We can't just let people move windows wherever they want. We have to snap them to both different certain sizes and certain positions

01:24:25 ◼   ► So now we have to implement a policy to say, you know, because iPad apps don't expect to be all sorts of random sizes

01:24:29 ◼   ► They just expect to be these three different size classes and we can't even let people

01:24:32 ◼   ► iPad users move windows because what if they move them and only a sliver is visible and they can't grab that sliver with their

01:24:37 ◼   ► Fat meat fingers

01:24:38 ◼   ► So we have to make it so that the windows carefully arrange themselves into a pleasing arrangement and we can't have too many windows

01:24:43 ◼   ► because we don't have a lot of memory,

01:24:44 ◼   ► even though we implemented virtual memory,

01:24:46 ◼   ► but never mind, you can only have four windows at a time.

01:24:48 ◼   ► And so what happens when you add another window?

01:24:51 ◼   ► And it's like the team that has,

01:24:53 ◼   ► the instincts of how an iPad interface should work,

01:24:58 ◼   ► the positive example of that is how they did cursor support.

01:25:01 ◼   ► They took cursor support and they iPad-ified it,

01:25:03 ◼   ► and I think they did an awesome job.

01:25:05 ◼   ► But those same instincts and maybe even that same team

01:25:08 ◼   ► said we have the stage render feature on the Mac,

01:25:10 ◼   ► I think just the allergy to making window widgets or making it like the Mac or allowing

01:25:16 ◼   ► iPad users to arbitrarily resize their apps or arbitrarily move them has made them so

01:25:21 ◼   ► compromised this feature, on top of the apparently inherent limitations of how many windows you

01:25:26 ◼   ► can have at a time, which in theory have a technical foundation that's causing them not

01:25:29 ◼   ► to allow you to go hog wild with Windows, has made the feature very limiting, very frustrating,

01:25:36 ◼   ► And then within those limits, when you take an action

01:25:40 ◼   ► where you expected something to happen like,

01:25:42 ◼   ► hey, this new Safari link that I,

01:25:44 ◼   ► this link that I tapped in my note

01:25:45 ◼   ► should open a Safari window

01:25:46 ◼   ► in my current stage manager thing,

01:25:48 ◼   ► not chuck me to another one,

01:25:49 ◼   ► when that doesn't happen for technical reasons or whatever,

01:25:52 ◼   ► or when you try to arrange windows so they're pleasing

01:25:54 ◼   ► and you move a window with your finger

01:25:56 ◼   ► and it snaps back three inches,

01:25:57 ◼   ► but says, no, don't you like it better like this?

01:25:59 ◼   ► And you go, no, I didn't like it better like that.

01:26:01 ◼   ► I moved it there 'cause I wanted it to be there.

01:26:03 ◼   ► Don't move it back on me.

01:26:04 ◼   ► All of that has poisoned this feature that I think,

01:26:08 ◼   ► not that it's better suited to the Mac,

01:26:09 ◼   ► 'cause the Mac doesn't need this as much as the iPad does.

01:26:12 ◼   ► The Mac already has a way to arrange Windows.

01:26:14 ◼   ► This is a additional boon to the Mac

01:26:18 ◼   ► for people who didn't have this feature before,

01:26:19 ◼   ► whereas I feel like it's almost like a life preserver

01:26:21 ◼   ► to the iPad power users who desperately need something

01:26:24 ◼   ► that lets them do this, something that lets,

01:26:26 ◼   ► you know, Vitice talked about how when he went back

01:26:29 ◼   ► to using like the old thing, slide over and all that,

01:26:31 ◼   ► so that set of very limiting rules

01:26:32 ◼   ► that iPad users railed against for many years.

01:26:35 ◼   ► It's like that felt like relaxing to go back to that

01:26:38 ◼   ► because at least it was a set of rules he understood

01:26:40 ◼   ► and at least he could manipulate it to get what he wanted.

01:26:43 ◼   ► Whereas with stage manager,

01:26:43 ◼   ► it felt like no matter how much fighting with it,

01:26:45 ◼   ► he couldn't get it to do what he wanted.

01:26:46 ◼   ► And that's a damning assessment

01:26:50 ◼   ► because the whole point of stage managers

01:26:52 ◼   ► is supposed to feel like now you have more flexibility

01:26:54 ◼   ► than that very limited slide over.

01:26:56 ◼   ► When slide over feels like the relief from stage manager,

01:26:58 ◼   ► things have gone terribly wrong.

01:27:01 ◼   ► So is it going to get pulled forever or no?

01:27:02 ◼   ► - I don't know.

01:27:04 ◼   ► - I think it can be saved

01:27:05 ◼   ► if they figure out the right policy decisions

01:27:07 ◼   ► of how it should work on the iPad.

01:27:08 ◼   ► And I think that the only real technical barrier is,

01:27:12 ◼   ► should we, someone eventually going to say,

01:27:14 ◼   ► hey, apps that are on the iPad

01:27:16 ◼   ► have to handle being resized in arbitrary windows.

01:27:18 ◼   ► That may be a big ask and that may take years to come around

01:27:21 ◼   ► but I think it's inevitable

01:27:23 ◼   ► that if you really want the iPad

01:27:25 ◼   ► to be able to do what it deserves to do,

01:27:27 ◼   ► you can't constrain every single iPad, OS app window

01:27:31 ◼   ► to the size classes that we've known.

01:27:33 ◼   ► - I think that's fair.

01:27:34 ◼   ► I don't know, we'll see what happens, but it's interesting.

01:27:35 ◼   ► It's interesting for sure.

01:27:37 ◼   ► All right, one other quick thing I wanted to briefly

01:27:39 ◼   ► take mention of or make mention of,

01:27:41 ◼   ► and then we can move on.

01:27:43 ◼   ► There was a hack that Plex announced this morning

01:27:46 ◼   ► as we record.

01:27:47 ◼   ► Apparently this was reported in a bunch of places,

01:27:51 ◼   ► including 9to5Mac.

01:27:52 ◼   ► Plex wrote, "We want you to be aware of an incident

01:27:54 ◼   ► involving your Plex account information yesterday.

01:27:56 ◼   ► While we believe the actual impact of this incident

01:27:58 ◼   ► is limited, we want to ensure you have

01:27:59 ◼   ► the right information tools to keep your account secure.

01:28:02 ◼   ► Yesterday, we discovered suspicious activity

01:28:03 ◼   ► on one of our databases.

01:28:04 ◼   ► We immediately began an investigation,

01:28:06 ◼   ► and it does appear that a third party

01:28:07 ◼   ► was able to access a limited subset of data

01:28:10 ◼   ► that includes emails, usernames, and encrypted passwords.

01:28:15 ◼   ► Even though all account passwords

01:28:18 ◼   ► that could have been accessed were hashed and secured

01:28:19 ◼   ► in accordance with best practices,

01:28:20 ◼   ► out of an abundance of caution,

01:28:22 ◼   ► we are requiring all Plex accounts

01:28:24 ◼   ► to have their passwords reset.

01:28:25 ◼   ► Rest assured that credit card

01:28:26 ◼   ► and other important payment data

01:28:28 ◼   ► are not stored in our servers at all,

01:28:30 ◼   ► and we're not vulnerable in this instance.

01:28:31 ◼   ► So granted, it was at least the hash,

01:28:33 ◼   ► if I'm reading this right,

01:28:34 ◼   ► not the actual plain text password, but still.

01:28:37 ◼   ► Ugh.

01:28:38 ◼   ► So on the grand scheme of things, do I care?

01:28:40 ◼   ► Not really.

01:28:41 ◼   ► You know why?

01:28:42 ◼   ► Because I use 1Password and Plex had its own unique password.

01:28:45 ◼   ► So what did I do?

01:28:46 ◼   ► I changed it.

01:28:47 ◼   ► And then the problem, unless I'm misunderstanding,

01:28:50 ◼   ► goes away and it's no big deal.

01:28:52 ◼   ► I have many problems with 1Password these days

01:28:54 ◼   ► because I really don't like 1Password 8 at all.

01:28:57 ◼   ► But that's a discussion for another day.

01:29:00 ◼   ► But yeah, this is why 1Password is great,

01:29:01 ◼   ► because I changed that password

01:29:03 ◼   ► and I moved on with my life.

01:29:05 ◼   ► - Did you have to reclaim your Plex servers?

01:29:07 ◼   ► - No, and actually I did not receive the C-mail.

01:29:09 ◼   ► You know, the chat room is asking,

01:29:10 ◼   ► did you guys get this, did you get this?

01:29:11 ◼   ► I didn't actually receive the C-mail myself.

01:29:13 ◼   ► I'm reading from 9to5Mac,

01:29:15 ◼   ► which is a little bit alarming,

01:29:16 ◼   ► but nevertheless, no, I reset my password this morning.

01:29:19 ◼   ► I didn't see any of the like,

01:29:21 ◼   ► self-issued DDoS that people were getting.

01:29:23 ◼   ► You know, apparently everyone was trying

01:29:24 ◼   ► to reset their passwords at the same moment.

01:29:26 ◼   ► I had no problem with that.

01:29:28 ◼   ► I didn't have to reclaim my Plex server.

01:29:29 ◼   ► Like, was it you, John, that said you had to do that?

01:29:31 ◼   ► Like, I had no--

01:29:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, like when I, when I, I got this email arrived

01:29:34 ◼   ► at 1.43 a.m., which obviously I didn't see it,

01:29:36 ◼   ► but then when I woke up this morning, I saw it,

01:29:37 ◼   ► I changed my password, and then I went to, yeah,

01:29:39 ◼   ► I knew I'd have to re-sign in to all my Plex stuff,

01:29:41 ◼   ► 'cause I did the option, when you change your password,

01:29:43 ◼   ► you can say, oh, and by the way, also sign me

01:29:44 ◼   ► out of all my devices, and that's what they

01:29:46 ◼   ► recommended you do, so I did it.

01:29:47 ◼   ► And then I went to my Plex server,

01:29:48 ◼   ► pulled up the web UI, I'm like, yeah,

01:29:49 ◼   ► "Okay, I'm gonna have to sign in again."

01:29:50 ◼   ► And I signed in, and then it listed all of my servers.

01:29:53 ◼   ► And then when I went to one of them, it says,

01:29:55 ◼   ► "This server is unclaimed.

01:29:56 ◼   ► "You have to claim it again,

01:29:57 ◼   ► "and we'll associate it with your account."

01:29:58 ◼   ► I'm like, "All right, well."

01:29:59 ◼   ► So I did that.

01:30:00 ◼   ► I mean, it was just a button press,

01:30:01 ◼   ► but it did take a surprisingly long time.

01:30:03 ◼   ► Maybe their servers were starting

01:30:04 ◼   ► to be hammered at that point.

01:30:05 ◼   ► I don't even know what claiming the server is.

01:30:06 ◼   ► I don't believe I've ever done it before,

01:30:08 ◼   ► but it wanted me to do it again, so I did.

01:30:09 ◼   ► - So it's what happens when you, like,

01:30:11 ◼   ► move it to a different computer.

01:30:13 ◼   ► It's just saying that this server belongs

01:30:15 ◼   ► to this Plex account.

01:30:17 ◼   ► Otherwise, anyone else could swoop in hypothetically

01:30:19 ◼   ► and say, "Oh, that's my server."

01:30:21 ◼   ► And then you get, that other person

01:30:22 ◼   ► would have got access to your server.

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01:32:14 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:32:18 ◼   ► All right, let's do some Ask ATP.

01:32:20 ◼   ► Bart Kowalski writes, why do some app updates weigh in at

01:32:23 ◼   ► multiple hundred megabytes in size, whereas updates from

01:32:25 ◼   ► smaller teams weigh in at dozens of megabytes in size?

01:32:28 ◼   ► Anecdotally, it seems that larger companies' app updates

01:32:30 ◼   ► tend to be larger, while smaller companies' updates

01:32:32 ◼   ► tend to usually be much smaller.

01:32:34 ◼   ► I mean, I don't think my garage door opener app needs a

01:32:38 ◼   ► 200-megabyte update every few weeks, right?

01:32:40 ◼   ► How many changes could they squeeze into a garage opening

01:32:42 ◼   ► app each time?

01:32:43 ◼   ► Because of this, I'm super selective

01:32:45 ◼   ► about what I manually update and when.

01:32:46 ◼   ► Is it just a case of laziness where Dev simply re-uploads

01:32:49 ◼   ► the whole app instead of some small part of the code base?

01:32:52 ◼   ► Is there something going on on Apple's end?

01:32:53 ◼   ► Is there something else going on that I have no idea about?

01:32:55 ◼   ► Please enlighten me.

01:32:56 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know what the best way to approach this is.

01:32:59 ◼   ► First of all, there isn't any sort of incremental update

01:33:02 ◼   ► in the App Store, right, or am I missing something?

01:33:04 ◼   ► - There wasn't, like, back in the early, early days,

01:33:06 ◼   ► but they added that probably at least five or six years ago.

01:33:09 ◼   ► It's been a while.

01:33:10 ◼   ► So we have, when they introduced something

01:33:12 ◼   ► called app thinning, remember that?

01:33:14 ◼   ► - I thought that was less about incremental updates

01:33:16 ◼   ► and more about rather than shipping you like a fat binary

01:33:19 ◼   ► with everything that every device will need,

01:33:22 ◼   ► I thought app thinning was, let me just give you the junk

01:33:24 ◼   ► for your particular device.

01:33:26 ◼   ► - That's what it started out as, but I think it later,

01:33:29 ◼   ► it came to also encompass like actually doing more

01:33:32 ◼   ► like a diff style for the app as well for updates.

01:33:35 ◼   ► - Oh, all right, then that's my mistake.

01:33:36 ◼   ► - I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that includes that.

01:33:38 ◼   ► But anyway, no, yeah, the app store is doing this for you,

01:33:41 ◼   ► And it isn't an issue of the developer not updating a diff

01:33:45 ◼   ► and just uploading the whole app.

01:33:47 ◼   ► That isn't on the developer.

01:33:48 ◼   ► The developer updates the whole app to Apple every time,

01:33:50 ◼   ► and then Apple chooses how to send that to each device.

01:33:53 ◼   ► So that's out of our hands.

01:33:55 ◼   ► What makes apps big can be a lot of things.

01:33:58 ◼   ► And some of it is stuff that small developers

01:34:01 ◼   ► and indie developers like me tend not to use as much,

01:34:04 ◼   ► if at all, or we tend to have less.

01:34:06 ◼   ► So one of the biggest sources of app bloat

01:34:09 ◼   ► is stuff like image and video assets.

01:34:12 ◼   ► So if your app has a bunch of graphics

01:34:15 ◼   ► and parts of the design,

01:34:17 ◼   ► each one of those is gonna be stored as

01:34:19 ◼   ► a relatively loosely compressed image.

01:34:23 ◼   ► It's gonna be a PNG somewhere,

01:34:24 ◼   ► it's gonna be massive in the bundle.

01:34:26 ◼   ► And apps that have a whole bunch of screens

01:34:30 ◼   ► and designers and everything,

01:34:32 ◼   ► something like Instagram,

01:34:34 ◼   ► there's so many different screens in that app

01:34:37 ◼   ► to do all sorts of different things,

01:34:39 ◼   ► and all those buttons and toolbar icons and everything,

01:34:42 ◼   ► those are all stored as images somewhere in the bundle.

01:34:44 ◼   ► So images alone are a huge part of a lot of these apps

01:34:48 ◼   ► by big companies, just because they have just so many

01:34:52 ◼   ► of them and so many screens that you don't even realize

01:34:55 ◼   ► are there if you're a more casual user.

01:34:58 ◼   ► So that's part of it, just tons and tons of images.

01:35:01 ◼   ► Also, if there's any kind of animation where they're

01:35:05 ◼   ► showing you, some kind of instructional animation,

01:35:07 ◼   ► do this, then do this, that's gonna be rendered as a video.

01:35:10 ◼   ► And that's gonna be, again, very, very large files.

01:35:13 ◼   ► So that's part of it.

01:35:14 ◼   ► And I would say that's probably a large part of it,

01:35:17 ◼   ► maybe even the majority for most apps.

01:35:20 ◼   ► But also, there's actual code bloat.

01:35:24 ◼   ► And this, I mean, it takes a lot of code to hit 200 megs,

01:35:28 ◼   ► but it can be done.

01:35:29 ◼   ► And this is often the result of cross-platform frameworks.

01:35:34 ◼   ► Things like Electron, or any kind of web technology

01:35:37 ◼   ► based thing, they have to embed huge amounts of both,

01:35:42 ◼   ► you know, resources like images and stuff,

01:35:44 ◼   ► and also just huge amounts of code

01:35:46 ◼   ► to be their giant runtime layer for whatever kind

01:35:50 ◼   ► of fancy framework they are trying to do

01:35:52 ◼   ► in the name of efficiency in other areas,

01:35:55 ◼   ► which is hilarious.

01:35:56 ◼   ► So, you know, Overcast is a little under 10 megs,

01:36:00 ◼   ► because I don't use any of these giant third party

01:36:04 ◼   ► frameworks or middleware layers or cross-platform layers,

01:36:09 ◼   ► 'cause I don't have to, because I'm one person

01:36:11 ◼   ► making an app for one OS, and that's it.

01:36:13 ◼   ► If you're doing something as a big company,

01:36:16 ◼   ► you're required to have big company bloat.

01:36:18 ◼   ► And the reason you need big company bloat

01:36:20 ◼   ► is so you avoid wasting money.

01:36:22 ◼   ► And so instead you have to hire thousands of developers

01:36:25 ◼   ► and other support staff to make these massive apps

01:36:29 ◼   ► in the name of efficiency and making sure

01:36:31 ◼   ► you don't accidentally have anything

01:36:33 ◼   ► that is inefficient or wrong.

01:36:36 ◼   ► So anyway, most of this is the result of like,

01:36:39 ◼   ► your standard big company needs.

01:36:43 ◼   ► So more developers writing larger amounts of crappier code

01:36:47 ◼   ► with larger amounts of supporting code around them

01:36:50 ◼   ► on top of many, many, many layers of other people's code

01:36:55 ◼   ► and libraries and everything.

01:36:56 ◼   ► And there is no incentive at any part of that

01:36:59 ◼   ► to make things smaller.

01:37:01 ◼   ► Like, usually, for many of the people involved in the stack,

01:37:05 ◼   ► there's no ability for them to make it smaller.

01:37:07 ◼   ► But, you know, at the larger level,

01:37:09 ◼   ► there's just no incentive for them to make it smaller,

01:37:11 ◼   ► because Apple doesn't care,

01:37:14 ◼   ► most users don't notice or care,

01:37:16 ◼   ► and so you kind of have no incentive

01:37:19 ◼   ► to fight against the current.

01:37:20 ◼   ► And where the current takes you

01:37:22 ◼   ► when you're working in a big company

01:37:23 ◼   ► is just massive amounts of bloat.

01:37:26 ◼   ► - Hmm, overcast is 10 megs,

01:37:27 ◼   ► the Switch glass is only three and a half,

01:37:29 ◼   ► that's interesting.

01:37:30 ◼   ► Oh, still burning.

01:37:31 ◼   ► I'm actually going down.

01:37:33 ◼   ► It always irritates me whenever some part of the APIs

01:37:37 ◼   ► requires an image.

01:37:39 ◼   ► 'Cause I'm like, I can just render this

01:37:43 ◼   ► with a few polygons in code,

01:37:46 ◼   ► or I can give you an SVG or a PDF

01:37:48 ◼   ► so it's just a vector that's like a kilobyte.

01:37:51 ◼   ► Why do I have to render a 1024 x 1024 PNG image

01:37:56 ◼   ► and also give you this image in 14 different sizes?

01:37:59 ◼   ► And fortunately, over time,

01:38:02 ◼   ► they seem to be moving away from that.

01:38:03 ◼   ► And every new OS update that comes out,

01:38:06 ◼   ► usually there's a way for me to decrease

01:38:08 ◼   ► the amount of those assets that I have to have in the app.

01:38:11 ◼   ► And this summer there are a few of those

01:38:14 ◼   ► little niceties as well, so I'm happy about that.

01:38:16 ◼   ► But yeah, where most of my size comes from

01:38:19 ◼   ► is stuff like the watch extension

01:38:23 ◼   ► or previously having to embed Swift runtime stuff,

01:38:28 ◼   ► although the need for that is going down over time as well.

01:38:31 ◼   ► But yeah, it's mostly that kind of overhead.

01:38:34 ◼   ► The actual overcast code is a few megs at most.

01:38:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, the Mac API is pretty much one bit maps

01:38:39 ◼   ► for things too, and it's annoying,

01:38:41 ◼   ► especially when, for example, the menu bar icons,

01:38:43 ◼   ► those are template images that treat you

01:38:45 ◼   ► as template images.

01:38:46 ◼   ► There are ways that you can use a PDF for them,

01:38:48 ◼   ► but a lot of the APIs do ask you for PNGs,

01:38:50 ◼   ► and like the Mac icons, where they wanted 100 size,

01:38:53 ◼   ► now there's a way where you can just give it one size,

01:38:54 ◼   ► say like, I'm just gonna give you one size,

01:38:56 ◼   ► just use this everywhere,

01:38:56 ◼   ► which is not best practice on the Mac,

01:38:58 ◼   ► because you really should be tweaking your icons

01:39:00 ◼   ► to read better at smaller sizes and stuff.

01:39:01 ◼   ► But yeah, there's a lot of bitmaps.

01:39:03 ◼   ► I mean, something that programmers might not realize,

01:39:05 ◼   ► but like everything should just be vectors.

01:39:07 ◼   ► It's like in the end, something is turning that into a bitmap

01:39:09 ◼   ► to put it on your screen.

01:39:11 ◼   ► And so you can see how it's more convenient to just start

01:39:13 ◼   ► with a bitmap disk, and you can like memory

01:39:15 ◼   ► map it and do all sorts of stuff.

01:39:16 ◼   ► But the new APIs are doing that for us behind the scenes.

01:39:19 ◼   ► Something-- there's another thing

01:39:21 ◼   ► people don't realize about-- you've talked about this, Marco,

01:39:23 ◼   ► about that people who are a little bit technical,

01:39:26 ◼   ► but don't really think about the consequences.

01:39:28 ◼   ► Oh, JPEGs, those are compressed images.

01:39:30 ◼   ► They're really small and must be very efficient.

01:39:32 ◼   ► Yeah, it is an efficient way to store images,

01:39:34 ◼   ► but when you display that image on the screen,

01:39:37 ◼   ► something's gotta decompress it

01:39:38 ◼   ► and it needs to exist somewhere in decompressed form

01:39:41 ◼   ► so it can be put into a window buffer

01:39:43 ◼   ► that takes up memory somewhere.

01:39:44 ◼   ► And yes, the window backing stores are compressed on macOS

01:39:46 ◼   ► and probably on iOS as well,

01:39:48 ◼   ► but that compression is not as good as JPEG compression

01:39:50 ◼   ► 'cause it needs to be really fast, right?

01:39:52 ◼   ► So yeah, things get big real fast,

01:39:55 ◼   ► whether they're big in memory or big on disk or big both.

01:39:59 ◼   ► And as for the incremental updates,

01:40:01 ◼   ► I have vague recollections of what you're talking about

01:40:03 ◼   ► too, Marco, but I would love for someone who Apple too,

01:40:05 ◼   ► or anyone who knows Pointless to the WWDC or whatever,

01:40:09 ◼   ► does app update do byte range diff deltas for updates,

01:40:14 ◼   ► or is it on a per file basis?

01:40:15 ◼   ► Because I can imagine updates being really big

01:40:19 ◼   ► if they're doing it per file,

01:40:21 ◼   ► because if you change like one,

01:40:22 ◼   ► if you change one little bit of metadata

01:40:23 ◼   ► on that 150 meg QuickTime movie that's your opening,

01:40:27 ◼   ► QuickTime movie, whatever,

01:40:28 ◼   ► that's your opening tutorial animation.

01:40:30 ◼   ► Like maybe all you just changed,

01:40:32 ◼   ► you removed GPS data that you didn't need to be there.

01:40:34 ◼   ► It's just metadata.

01:40:35 ◼   ► Like 99% of the bytes are the same.

01:40:37 ◼   ► Does it do byte diffs or does it say,

01:40:39 ◼   ► "Oh, this file has changed.

01:40:40 ◼   ► "Here's a new 150 megabytes."

01:40:42 ◼   ► If you know the answer to that question definitively,

01:40:44 ◼   ► please let us know.

01:40:46 ◼   ► - Indeed.

01:40:47 ◼   ► Another thing that I feel like I've seen in the past

01:40:50 ◼   ► is massive, but I can't cite a source

01:40:53 ◼   ► that confirms or denies it.

01:40:55 ◼   ► I thought a lot of these analytics and ad SDKs

01:40:58 ◼   ► tended to be just freaking huge.

01:41:00 ◼   ► Like I thought Firebase was massive as an example.

01:41:03 ◼   ► Again, I very well may be wrong about that,

01:41:05 ◼   ► but I thought some of these things were big.

01:41:06 ◼   ► - I mean, they're big, but not relative

01:41:08 ◼   ► to like 500 megabyte video file.

01:41:11 ◼   ► - Oh, sure, sure.

01:41:12 ◼   ► - They're bigger than they should be.

01:41:13 ◼   ► And I think Marco hit on the main one,

01:41:14 ◼   ► which is frameworks.

01:41:16 ◼   ► 'Cause if you have some kind of framework

01:41:18 ◼   ► that has a widget library or whatever,

01:41:21 ◼   ► especially if it's a young framework,

01:41:24 ◼   ► they'll give you the whole framework.

01:41:25 ◼   ► You may never use that control in your app,

01:41:28 ◼   ► but you ship with the whole,

01:41:29 ◼   ► it's kind of like when the Swift runtime

01:41:30 ◼   ► shipped with everything,

01:41:31 ◼   ► they didn't really pare down the Swift runtime

01:41:33 ◼   ► as far as I know to just use the features

01:41:34 ◼   ► that your app use, you just get the whole thing.

01:41:36 ◼   ► And so if you're using, you know, React Native,

01:41:39 ◼   ► I'm not trying to blame or whatever,

01:41:40 ◼   ► like, you know, or the Mono back in the days,

01:41:43 ◼   ► I don't know if anyone still uses Xamarin.

01:41:44 ◼   ► Yeah, Xamarin stuff.

01:41:46 ◼   ► You just get the whole framework with your app

01:41:47 ◼   ► because it's very difficult to figure out

01:41:49 ◼   ► the exact features your app is using

01:41:50 ◼   ► and pare down the library so it just has those features

01:41:52 ◼   ► 'cause everything is so interlinked.

01:41:54 ◼   ► And so, yeah, if you looked at your app

01:41:55 ◼   ► and just cracked it open and you'd be like,

01:41:57 ◼   ► "Look at all this image data, I'm not using any of this."

01:41:59 ◼   ► So like, that just comes as part of the framework.

01:42:00 ◼   ► I think that's probably the biggest source of bloat

01:42:02 ◼   ► but maybe SDKs are like that 'cause maybe the SDK itself

01:42:05 ◼   ► uses some cross-platform library that includes

01:42:07 ◼   ► a whole bunch of things that it doesn't use all of.

01:42:09 ◼   ► It adds up but I do feel like that

01:42:12 ◼   ► it is actually pretty difficult to outrun video files

01:42:17 ◼   ► or even just audio files if you have like,

01:42:19 ◼   ► long amounts of audio, video files, images,

01:42:21 ◼   ► and stuff like that can outrun your code load size

01:42:23 ◼   ► pretty quickly if you have any substantial number of them.

01:42:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, and also like on framework problems,

01:42:31 ◼   ► the number of frameworks and the size of them

01:42:33 ◼   ► that you add to your app is oftentimes done,

01:42:36 ◼   ► either you don't have much say in the matter,

01:42:38 ◼   ► or you do it without actually really investigating this.

01:42:41 ◼   ► So for instance, if your app is ad funded,

01:42:43 ◼   ► like for most ad packages, you have to add in

01:42:47 ◼   ► whatever the Google one or whatever,

01:42:49 ◼   ► But if your app is ad-based, you may have to add

01:42:53 ◼   ► three or five or 10 different ad platforms SDKs

01:42:57 ◼   ► just so you have the ability to maybe show their ads.

01:43:00 ◼   ► And oftentimes there's logic in some of these SDKs

01:43:03 ◼   ► where they bid for the spot and whoever is gonna pay you

01:43:07 ◼   ► the most, you can show the ad from that provider.

01:43:09 ◼   ► But that means that every provider you might show the ad

01:43:12 ◼   ► from, you gotta build on their SDK.

01:43:14 ◼   ► And so, and there's, I mean fortunately,

01:43:16 ◼   ► there's been so much ridiculous consolidation

01:43:18 ◼   ► in this business if there aren't that many of them left,

01:43:20 ◼   ► but that is still a thing that people do.

01:43:22 ◼   ► And so, you end up with, if an app is ad supported,

01:43:26 ◼   ► you end up with huge amounts of bloat there.

01:43:28 ◼   ► But also just in general, the style of development

01:43:33 ◼   ► that so many developers these days

01:43:35 ◼   ► across multiple platforms, not just iOS apps,

01:43:38 ◼   ► the style of development these days is

01:43:41 ◼   ► if there's a need that you have,

01:43:43 ◼   ► the first thing you do is look for a package

01:43:45 ◼   ► or a framework that offers it

01:43:47 ◼   ► and just blindly add it to your project

01:43:50 ◼   ► and don't even care how big it is

01:43:52 ◼   ► or what it's adding or what it needs.

01:43:54 ◼   ► You know, like Node is famous for this

01:43:56 ◼   ► where they go totally overboard

01:43:57 ◼   ► and there's that example of like the, you know,

01:43:59 ◼   ► the is even thing that required is odd to know, you know.

01:44:02 ◼   ► And that was, I mean, that seemed like it was almost a parody

01:44:04 ◼   ► but that culture is so deep in developers these days

01:44:07 ◼   ► that it just, you know, we as an industry

01:44:09 ◼   ► have like framework-itis where you're so quick to jump

01:44:13 ◼   ► to add a framework for a very simple need

01:44:16 ◼   ► and there's so relatively little scrutiny put on

01:44:20 ◼   ► what that means and what that's going to cost your app

01:44:23 ◼   ► in terms of size and bloat and complexity

01:44:25 ◼   ► and impossible security issues down the road.

01:44:27 ◼   ► And that's just how, that's like the best practice

01:44:30 ◼   ► these days and people make fun of me for not doing this.

01:44:33 ◼   ► You know, you make fun of me for writing my own S3 class

01:44:35 ◼   ► or whatever but like, yeah but my class is 200 lines

01:44:38 ◼   ► and the real one's 100,000 or whatever.

01:44:41 ◼   ► Like that stuff adds up.

01:44:42 ◼   ► That's how everyone programs these days.

01:44:44 ◼   ► everyone programs by just jumping to a whole bunch

01:44:47 ◼   ► of frameworks.

01:44:48 ◼   ► Oh, I need to do this relatively simple calculation

01:44:51 ◼   ► or show this relatively simple kind of widget.

01:44:52 ◼   ► How about I add this entire framework over here

01:44:55 ◼   ► just to have this one simple thing

01:44:56 ◼   ► that I could have written myself in an hour.

01:44:58 ◼   ► - I wouldn't say it's the best practice

01:45:00 ◼   ► to do what you're describing.

01:45:01 ◼   ► To give an example--

01:45:02 ◼   ► - Oh, it's what happens.

01:45:03 ◼   ► - This is very close to your example,

01:45:05 ◼   ► but this is a real example from my previous job.

01:45:08 ◼   ► When we started to do much more stuff with AWS,

01:45:10 ◼   ► We, of course, wanted to be able to use the AWS APIs.

01:45:15 ◼   ► We had already had our own S3 library,

01:45:16 ◼   ► because that's a simple thing to do, as Marco found out.

01:45:19 ◼   ► But we needed to do more stuff.

01:45:20 ◼   ► There's more things you can do with AWS.

01:45:22 ◼   ► They have APIs for everything.

01:45:24 ◼   ► And so, of course, we're using Perl, which is weird,

01:45:25 ◼   ► and we have limited choices.

01:45:27 ◼   ► But anyway, someone-- some developer and some other team--

01:45:30 ◼   ► decided, I'm going to go to CPAN, which

01:45:32 ◼   ► is where you get Perl modules from,

01:45:33 ◼   ► and I'm going to find a good AWS library.

01:45:35 ◼   ► And they found one.

01:45:35 ◼   ► They said, oh, yeah, I want this thing that gives access

01:45:39 ◼   ► to the AWS API for services.

01:45:42 ◼   ► I'm going to add this, and I added it to their task,

01:45:44 ◼   ► and they're sending their tasks through the process

01:45:46 ◼   ► of approvals and stuff like that,

01:45:48 ◼   ► and I was somewhere in the approval chain

01:45:50 ◼   ► as one of the higher-up sign-offs on things or whatever,

01:45:54 ◼   ► and I had to give that a big red X and say, "Eh-eh."

01:45:57 ◼   ► And they said, "Why? What's wrong with this?

01:45:58 ◼   ► Why can't I have this thing?"

01:45:59 ◼   ► I'm like, "Well, you included this dependency,

01:46:01 ◼   ► this new dependency on this new library."

01:46:03 ◼   ► I was sort of the keeper of the CPAN libraries

01:46:05 ◼   ► and the tools that we used to install them.

01:46:07 ◼   ► Like, yeah, I need that for the AWS API.

01:46:09 ◼   ► Like, did you look at that dependency at all?

01:46:13 ◼   ► I think I have the numbers close here.

01:46:14 ◼   ► I'll try to put a link in the show notes if I'm right about it.

01:46:17 ◼   ► But this is from memory.

01:46:18 ◼   ► So we had C-band modules installed across the company.

01:46:21 ◼   ► And these are the modules that we use.

01:46:23 ◼   ► And we used version control to track them.

01:46:25 ◼   ► If you added another one that had to go through approvals,

01:46:27 ◼   ► everything was all checked in, like all that stuff, right?

01:46:29 ◼   ► Not like Nodeware.

01:46:30 ◼   ► It was pulled down in the build process.

01:46:32 ◼   ► It was very sort of baked in.

01:46:34 ◼   ► And this, including this one new dependency,

01:46:38 ◼   ► would increase the number of files by like 50%.

01:46:43 ◼   ► I believe there were 32,000 files.

01:46:46 ◼   ► - Oh my gosh. - 32,000 files

01:46:50 ◼   ► as part of this distribution.

01:46:52 ◼   ► I'm doing that from memory.

01:46:53 ◼   ► If you would like to download this tarball and untar it

01:46:56 ◼   ► and then just do a find WC-L to find out how many files

01:46:59 ◼   ► are in this thing, I'm like, yeah,

01:47:02 ◼   ► This task that you're doing is not worth increasing.

01:47:06 ◼   ► Over the course of the 20 years this company has existed,

01:47:08 ◼   ► we've added like 65,000 files in our company

01:47:13 ◼   ► sort of CPAN module repository.

01:47:16 ◼   ► You're not gonna add 32,000 as part of this one task.

01:47:19 ◼   ► Find the AWS APIs that you wanna use,

01:47:22 ◼   ► write your own functions to do them,

01:47:25 ◼   ► and you'll fit it in a page of code.

01:47:27 ◼   ► Please do not add this library.

01:47:29 ◼   ► And hopefully, this didn't happen when I was there.

01:47:31 ◼   ► we should also put a corporate rule.

01:47:32 ◼   ► So the next person who says,

01:47:34 ◼   ► hey, I wanna use this API for my API,

01:47:35 ◼   ► oh great, there's a library that gives me access

01:47:37 ◼   ► to the entire AWS API.

01:47:38 ◼   ► And obviously this is auto-generated,

01:47:39 ◼   ► like that's a lot of problem with these things.

01:47:41 ◼   ► They're auto-generated.

01:47:41 ◼   ► If there's a spec for the API,

01:47:43 ◼   ► there's some like, you know, JSON schema

01:47:45 ◼   ► or some kind of, what is that spec case you might know?

01:47:48 ◼   ► - XSLT?

01:47:49 ◼   ► - No, that's old.

01:47:51 ◼   ► - The standard for describing web APIs

01:47:53 ◼   ► where you can auto-generate an interface to it

01:47:55 ◼   ► and everything like that.

01:47:56 ◼   ► Anyway. - Wait, so we're

01:47:57 ◼   ► auto-generating all of our spam now?

01:47:58 ◼   ► Like that's even better.

01:48:00 ◼   ► - No, it's a, Swagger, thank you.

01:48:02 ◼   ► Gordon Freeman had a Swagger.

01:48:05 ◼   ► It's a way to describe API.

01:48:06 ◼   ► So if you have your API described in Swagger,

01:48:08 ◼   ► there's lots of tools that can, you know,

01:48:10 ◼   ► just let you play with the API in that way.

01:48:13 ◼   ► But anyway, it's so clear that this,

01:48:14 ◼   ► no human wrote 32,000 files.

01:48:16 ◼   ► It was auto-generated based on the API spec,

01:48:18 ◼   ► which is cool until you have 32,000 new files

01:48:21 ◼   ► in your source code repo.

01:48:23 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, no.

01:48:24 ◼   ► So that is not best practice,

01:48:26 ◼   ► and that's kind of the role of more senior people

01:48:28 ◼   ► to sanity check that because you're right, Marko,

01:48:31 ◼   ► people will, if they're not experienced, say,

01:48:32 ◼   ► "I found a thing that solves my problem,

01:48:34 ◼   ► "let me just add it."

01:48:35 ◼   ► But you should look at what you're adding.

01:48:39 ◼   ► And that's the thing with modern computers being so fast,

01:48:41 ◼   ► oh, it's just real easy, like, you know,

01:48:43 ◼   ► everything's fast, everyone's using SSDs or whatever.

01:48:46 ◼   ► If I had you to guess, how many files do you think

01:48:47 ◼   ► you added in that task?

01:48:48 ◼   ► I don't know, it was probably like a couple hundred,

01:48:50 ◼   ► nope, 32,000.

01:48:51 ◼   ► - Well, and the thing is, like, you know,

01:48:54 ◼   ► if you think to look for it, that's one thing.

01:48:57 ◼   ► But when you involve working with companies,

01:49:00 ◼   ► even if that one developer is like,

01:49:03 ◼   ► hey, I probably don't wanna do this

01:49:05 ◼   ► because it adds this thing,

01:49:07 ◼   ► if their boss is like, just do it,

01:49:08 ◼   ► like we need to hit this ship date

01:49:11 ◼   ► or we need to solve this need

01:49:13 ◼   ► or have this requirement met,

01:49:14 ◼   ► you just have to do this and that's it.

01:49:16 ◼   ► Because the way that bloat on your users' devices

01:49:21 ◼   ► is treated by almost every software publisher of any type,

01:49:25 ◼   ► it's treated like you're spending someone else's money.

01:49:28 ◼   ► Like they don't think, they don't consider at all,

01:49:31 ◼   ► hey, maybe we shouldn't be taking up hundreds of megs

01:49:35 ◼   ► for our very relatively simple app need

01:49:38 ◼   ► on every person's device who has to use this.

01:49:41 ◼   ► And that adds up, like first of all,

01:49:44 ◼   ► that's eating into your storage.

01:49:45 ◼   ► Then you gotta like buy more expensive phones or whatever

01:49:48 ◼   ► to have bigger storage needs.

01:49:51 ◼   ► That also, all that code at some point's gonna be loaded

01:49:54 ◼   ► into memory, or at least a large part of it

01:49:55 ◼   ► is gonna be loaded into memory.

01:49:57 ◼   ► And so then you're eating into people's memory

01:49:58 ◼   ► on their devices, you're making their batteries

01:50:00 ◼   ► not last as long, you're making other apps

01:50:02 ◼   ► get kicked out of memory more often,

01:50:03 ◼   ► therefore making everything slower

01:50:05 ◼   ► when it has to switch apps and reload stuff.

01:50:07 ◼   ► Those are all real costs.

01:50:10 ◼   ► We had this discussion a lot back, a few months back

01:50:12 ◼   ► when OnePass switched over to Electron

01:50:14 ◼   ► and we all complained about that.

01:50:16 ◼   ► This kind of stuff matters.

01:50:17 ◼   ► These companies and these developers,

01:50:20 ◼   ► whatever processes or sloppiness are leading

01:50:22 ◼   ► to this massive bloat, they're spending everyone else's

01:50:25 ◼   ► money, but they're not spending their own.

01:50:26 ◼   ► They don't consider it as like, this is gonna cost us

01:50:29 ◼   ► in our app being big and bloated.

01:50:31 ◼   ► No, they don't care.

01:50:32 ◼   ► Or the people who are making the decisions can't care

01:50:35 ◼   ► 'cause some other decisions being made above their head

01:50:37 ◼   ► that's forced them to do things a certain way.

01:50:38 ◼   ► And that's, when you're an indie, you can care

01:50:41 ◼   ► about things that big companies might not care about.

01:50:44 ◼   ► Because you can just do things the way you want to

01:50:46 ◼   ► and with your own priorities and your own sensibilities.

01:50:49 ◼   ► And there's no one else telling you from above

01:50:51 ◼   ► of like, hey, we really gotta hit the ship date

01:50:54 ◼   ► and make this quota or fulfill this requirement

01:50:57 ◼   ► or comply with this regulation or something.

01:51:00 ◼   ► Like, you don't have the needs of big companies.

01:51:02 ◼   ► So that's why our apps are able to be so much nicer

01:51:05 ◼   ► in certain ways, because we're able to make decisions

01:51:07 ◼   ► just for us.

01:51:08 ◼   ► - I was unfair to this AWS module.

01:51:10 ◼   ► I will put a link to it in the show notes.

01:51:11 ◼   ► It only has 30,165 files.

01:51:15 ◼   ► - Oh, you are such a meanie.

01:51:17 ◼   ► You are so mean.

01:51:18 ◼   ► - Which I now just untarred onto my desktop,

01:51:21 ◼   ► So I will never move that.

01:51:21 ◼   ► You know, if you're in the business of selling

01:51:23 ◼   ► computing resources, maybe making your libraries really

01:51:26 ◼   ► bloated might be a very profitable move.

01:51:28 ◼   ► No, this is-- to be clear, this is not an Amazon library.

01:51:31 ◼   ► This is a library that just some random person,

01:51:33 ◼   ► the goodness of their heart, auto-generated and uploaded

01:51:35 ◼   ► to CPAN based on some AWS API definition.

01:51:38 ◼   ► So I'm not faulting the person who made this.

01:51:41 ◼   ► It provides comprehensive coverage

01:51:42 ◼   ► for apparently the entire AWS API at the time

01:51:45 ◼   ► they generated this file.

01:51:46 ◼   ► It's just too big to include if you need one or two functions.

01:51:50 ◼   ► Alright, then finally for today, Robert Campbell writes, "Are you familiar with SV-ALT or Svalt?"

01:51:55 ◼   ► I'm not sure how I'm supposed to pronounce this.

01:51:57 ◼   ► Anyway, "They make outboard cooling accessories for laptops.

01:51:59 ◼   ► I'm getting ready to upgrade and considering a move from desktop Mac to MacBook Pro if

01:52:04 ◼   ► I could get sustained performance for large photography processing tasks.

01:52:08 ◼   ► Assuming even an M1 Mac's MacBook Pro will eventually throttle under sustained processing

01:52:11 ◼   ► loads, do you think an outboard cooling booster like the Svalt might move the needle?

01:52:16 ◼   ► I'd love to make this thing as fast as possible when docked at my home office.

01:52:19 ◼   ► Maybe I'm overly sensitive to heat-induced performance issues having been burned in the

01:52:22 ◼   ► past?"

01:52:24 ◼   ► Background info.

01:52:25 ◼   ► I run a photography, retouching, and graphic design business and am thinking about replacing

01:52:28 ◼   ► 2 Macs, an Office 2017 iMac, which is having trouble keeping up, and a similar aged on-site

01:52:33 ◼   ► MacBook Pro that's even slower, with a single top-spec 14-inch MacBook Pro Max dropping

01:52:38 ◼   ► the desktop Mac.

01:52:39 ◼   ► The new MacBook Pro will spend 80% of its time docked to my office and 20% on-site.

01:52:43 ◼   ► I've maintained the two-machine workflow as previous MacBook Pros have trouble staying

01:52:46 ◼   ► cool and slow down dramatically during long production drops.

01:52:50 ◼   ► For many of the reasons you guys have discussed at length, I'd love to reduce my two machines

01:52:53 ◼   ► to one.

01:52:54 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:52:55 ◼   ► I don't know anything about this.

01:52:57 ◼   ► Do you guys have thoughts?

01:52:58 ◼   ► So I have never used this one particular company's things, but I looked at them when this email

01:53:03 ◼   ► came in and it looks like, basically like a laptop, like a clamshell mode laptop stand

01:53:09 ◼   ► that is itself a giant block of metal that has some fins carved out.

01:53:12 ◼   ► So like it looks cool.

01:53:13 ◼   ► I will say it looks cool.

01:53:17 ◼   ► Some of them have optional fans

01:53:18 ◼   ► that you could mount on them and everything.

01:53:19 ◼   ► But I can tell you, as somebody who,

01:53:22 ◼   ► I drive my MacBook pretty hard.

01:53:24 ◼   ► Now granted, I don't have a photo retouching workflow.

01:53:27 ◼   ► That's a very different type of load

01:53:29 ◼   ► than what I'm doing to mine.

01:53:30 ◼   ► But that being said, I would suggest get the 16 inch,

01:53:35 ◼   ► put it in whatever clamshell stand you already use,

01:53:39 ◼   ► or whatever you can find, and just try it first.

01:53:43 ◼   ► I think you will be surprised how much it takes

01:53:47 ◼   ► to make it slow down.

01:53:48 ◼   ► Because, you know, like, so what Robert said

01:53:51 ◼   ► right in the middle here is assuming even an M1 max MBP

01:53:56 ◼   ► will eventually throttle under sustained processing loads,

01:53:58 ◼   ► comma, that's not a safe assumption, actually.

01:54:02 ◼   ► Like, I would suggest, like, try it and see if it actually

01:54:06 ◼   ► does throttle under sustained loads of your type.

01:54:09 ◼   ► because I can tell you I have never seen mine throttle.

01:54:14 ◼   ► When I'm, if I'm destroying the CPUs,

01:54:18 ◼   ► not only does it not throttle

01:54:20 ◼   ► and it stays the same speed the whole time,

01:54:22 ◼   ► but I don't even hear the fans.

01:54:24 ◼   ► Like you're lucky if you can even hear the fan spin up

01:54:27 ◼   ► with these new ones, they're that good.

01:54:29 ◼   ► As you know, throttling is a different story.

01:54:32 ◼   ► Like to make a throttle it has to both be at its max,

01:54:36 ◼   ► you know, cooling abilities,

01:54:38 ◼   ► so the fan running at whatever its max speed is,

01:54:41 ◼   ► and still not be able to keep up.

01:54:42 ◼   ► That's when it will actually throttle.

01:54:44 ◼   ► I've never seen the M1 Max 16-inch even come close.

01:54:48 ◼   ► The 14-inch might, because it's smaller,

01:54:51 ◼   ► has presumably a little bit less thermal mass in there,

01:54:54 ◼   ► but if you get the 16,

01:54:56 ◼   ► I think you'd be very hard-pressed

01:54:58 ◼   ► to make it throttle at all.

01:54:59 ◼   ► The only time I've ever even heard the fans been up on mine

01:55:01 ◼   ► is when I was doing a multi-hour-long ML training model

01:55:07 ◼   ► that was totally saturating the CPUs and the GPUs

01:55:12 ◼   ► for multiple hours straight.

01:55:14 ◼   ► Then the fan spun up a little bit

01:55:16 ◼   ► and it was a little bit audible.

01:55:18 ◼   ► That being said, if you're looking at something like this,

01:55:24 ◼   ► one of the reasons, I looked at it 'cause I was like,

01:55:27 ◼   ► hey, I keep my MacBook in clampstone mode all the time,

01:55:29 ◼   ► maybe I should look at this.

01:55:30 ◼   ► I didn't end up going with it and part of the reason why

01:55:33 ◼   ► is that for these things to work, just physically speaking,

01:55:37 ◼   ► the hot part of the laptop has to be on the bottom,

01:55:40 ◼   ► the way you orient it in clamshell mode.

01:55:43 ◼   ► The hot part is the part basically between

01:55:45 ◼   ► the screen hinge and the keyboard.

01:55:47 ◼   ► That's like where all the heat sinks

01:55:49 ◼   ► and main processors and everything are.

01:55:51 ◼   ► I flip mine over so that the hinge of the screen is up.

01:55:58 ◼   ► And the reason I do that is to give it a little bit

01:56:00 ◼   ► of boost in convection cooling.

01:56:02 ◼   ► Because that way it is sucking air in

01:56:04 ◼   ► from those little side slot vents,

01:56:06 ◼   ► sucking them in on the bottom and shooting hot air

01:56:09 ◼   ► out of the top through the screen hinge vent.

01:56:12 ◼   ► And I don't know if this makes a big difference

01:56:15 ◼   ► or a small difference, but it probably makes a difference.

01:56:18 ◼   ► And so even just running it in any stand that way

01:56:21 ◼   ► with the screen hinge up instead of down,

01:56:24 ◼   ► I think you'll be totally fine.

01:56:26 ◼   ► I don't think you need anything else.

01:56:28 ◼   ► And if you actually are stressing both the GPU and CPU

01:56:32 ◼   ► for sustained periods, you might hear the fan.

01:56:35 ◼   ► That's a very different thing from throttling.

01:56:37 ◼   ► And again, I've said it before, I'll say it again,

01:56:41 ◼   ► the assumptions that you've made about how Macs behave,

01:56:46 ◼   ► performance-wise, noise-wise, thermally,

01:56:49 ◼   ► if you've made those assumptions only with Intel machines,

01:56:54 ◼   ► drop all those assumptions when you're moving

01:56:56 ◼   ► into the M1 and M2 era,

01:56:58 ◼   ► because those assumptions no longer hold the way they did,

01:57:02 ◼   ► and the performance characteristics

01:57:04 ◼   ► and thermal characteristics of these things

01:57:05 ◼   ► are very, very different than what you are used to,

01:57:08 ◼   ► and they're way better.

01:57:10 ◼   ► And so, try, you know, if you're gonna do this,

01:57:13 ◼   ► you don't need a heat sink probably for almost any,

01:57:15 ◼   ► like unless you're working in a very hot environment

01:57:18 ◼   ► doing, you know, video rendering 24/7,

01:57:21 ◼   ► maybe, even then, probably not.

01:57:24 ◼   ► But just get the 16 inch and run it

01:57:26 ◼   ► in regular clamshell mode with the screen hinge up

01:57:28 ◼   ► on any stand, and I would be shocked

01:57:31 ◼   ► if you could actually make that thing thermally throttle.

01:57:34 ◼   ► Well, so the thing is, when he gets new Macs,

01:57:36 ◼   ► it's gonna be so much faster than his old Macs,

01:57:38 ◼   ► no matter what, even if it was throttled to 50% speed,

01:57:41 ◼   ► like there's that, so you won't mind that.

01:57:43 ◼   ► And the other thing is, you won't notice if it throttles.

01:57:46 ◼   ► It doesn't mean that it's not throttling.

01:57:48 ◼   ► If you look at the people doing these really picky

01:57:49 ◼   ► benchmarks where they're getting the clock speeds

01:57:52 ◼   ► of the sub-execution units inside the SOC, right?

01:57:56 ◼   ► You can see that parts of it do throttle,

01:57:58 ◼   ► even when the fans aren't running in an audible way,

01:58:00 ◼   ► just because you get hotspots, but you won't notice

01:58:02 ◼   ► unless you're running like a benchmark

01:58:04 ◼   ► and comparing fractional percentages

01:58:07 ◼   ► of performance difference.

01:58:08 ◼   ► The reason they're noticing is because they wanted to see,

01:58:10 ◼   ► with the M2 MacBook Air, which we know does thermally

01:58:12 ◼   ► throttle in a way that you might actually notice,

01:58:14 ◼   ► the Pros also have subcomponents that sometimes

01:58:17 ◼   ► thermally throttle even when the fans are low,

01:58:19 ◼   ► but by such a fraction of a percent,

01:58:21 ◼   ► you would never notice unless you're running a benchmark.

01:58:23 ◼   ► And again, keep in mind that this new computer

01:58:25 ◼   ► you're gonna buy is gonna be so much faster

01:58:26 ◼   ► than your old computers,

01:58:27 ◼   ► you will never miss that fraction or percent,

01:58:29 ◼   ► so don't worry about it.

01:58:30 ◼   ► But related to this thing, with the M2 MacBook Air,

01:58:33 ◼   ► people have been experimenting with it,

01:58:34 ◼   ► and you have thermal throttles, and I've said on past shows,

01:58:36 ◼   ► I think that's the right call for that machine,

01:58:38 ◼   ► because fanlessness is itself a feature,

01:58:40 ◼   ► and Apple should ship a computer that is fanless,

01:58:42 ◼   ► and this is the one, and thermal throttling is,

01:58:45 ◼   ► you know, a perfectly good price to pay,

01:58:47 ◼   ► because even with the thermal throttling,

01:58:48 ◼   ► it's still faster than the machine it replaces,

01:58:50 ◼   ► and it is exactly as silent,

01:58:51 ◼   ► because neither one has a fan, right?

01:58:53 ◼   ► But people wanna tinker, and one of the things

01:58:56 ◼   ► they did with tinkering was they took the M2 MacBook Air,

01:58:58 ◼   ► and they just put thermal pads inside it,

01:59:00 ◼   ► like they replaced the little black vinyl stickery thing

01:59:04 ◼   ► that is itself a heat transfer

01:59:05 ◼   ► and just use the thermal pads that you would put in

01:59:08 ◼   ► for removing heat in a PC build or whatever.

01:59:11 ◼   ► And then it made a huge difference.

01:59:13 ◼   ► But it made a huge difference in a way

01:59:14 ◼   ► that we've discussed on past things.

01:59:17 ◼   ► Those thermal pads were taking heat

01:59:19 ◼   ► away from the SOC and the other components

01:59:22 ◼   ► and dumping it to the case of the computer,

01:59:24 ◼   ► which makes the computer feel hotter.

01:59:27 ◼   ► And there are rules about how hot the computer can get

01:59:31 ◼   ► and still be allowed to be on people's laps.

01:59:33 ◼   ► And so I think the M2 MacBook Air is calibrated

01:59:36 ◼   ► to not even come close to getting too hot to comply

01:59:39 ◼   ► with whatever different countries rules are about,

01:59:42 ◼   ► hey, here's how hot your laptop can get

01:59:44 ◼   ► and still be a consumer product, right?

01:59:46 ◼   ► 'Cause you don't want it to burn people.

01:59:47 ◼   ► And I think the consumer rules governing that

01:59:49 ◼   ► are way far back from burning people.

01:59:52 ◼   ► Although it's hard to believe if you think about

01:59:53 ◼   ► some of the Mac laptops of the past

01:59:55 ◼   ► and just how hot they got in certain areas.

01:59:57 ◼   ► But that's kind of the trade off with laptops.

02:00:01 ◼   ► A lot of them have like quote unquote,

02:00:02 ◼   ► not very good cooling,

02:00:04 ◼   ► because the hotness has to go somewhere.

02:00:06 ◼   ► It's like, why don't you just dump it to the case?

02:00:08 ◼   ► Well, now your case is hot.

02:00:09 ◼   ► And even if it's not so hot,

02:00:10 ◼   ► that's gonna burn you or whatever, it's uncomfortable.

02:00:12 ◼   ► No one wants a hot computer on their lap.

02:00:14 ◼   ► So a lot of these times,

02:00:15 ◼   ► especially with the M2 MacBook Air,

02:00:16 ◼   ► I feel like the computer is choking down heat on your behalf

02:00:20 ◼   ► rather than dumping it to the top of your legs.

02:00:22 ◼   ► And you should thank it for that.

02:00:23 ◼   ► Because like I said,

02:00:24 ◼   ► Even when it's thermally throttling,

02:00:25 ◼   ► it's still faster than the M1 version in most tasks.

02:00:28 ◼   ► But yeah, for Robert's question,

02:00:31 ◼   ► just get an M1 Macs MacBook Pro.

02:00:34 ◼   ► It will rock your world, it'll be great.

02:00:37 ◼   ► - Yeah.

02:00:38 ◼   ► Thanks to our sponsors this week,

02:00:39 ◼   ► Snap AR, Memberful, and Collide.

02:00:42 ◼   ► And thanks to our members who support us directly.

02:00:44 ◼   ► You can join at atp.fm/join.

02:00:47 ◼   ► We will talk to you next week.

02:00:49 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

02:00:52 ◼   ► Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

02:00:57 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental (accidental)

02:00:59 ◼   ► Oh, it was accidental (accidental)

02:01:02 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

02:01:07 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental (accidental)

02:01:10 ◼   ► Oh, it was accidental (accidental)

02:01:13 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

02:01:18 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

02:01:22 ◼   ► @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

02:01:27 ◼   ► So that's Kasey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

02:01:31 ◼   ► Auntie Marco Arment S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A

02:01:39 ◼   ► It's accidental (it's accidental)

02:01:42 ◼   ► They didn't mean to accidental (it's accidental)

02:01:47 ◼   ► ♪ Tech, podcast, so long ♪

02:01:50 ◼   ► - So a couple of weeks ago I did something

02:01:54 ◼   ► I have never done before.

02:01:56 ◼   ► And because we haven't had enough car talk on this show,

02:01:59 ◼   ► I thought I'd talk about my car for a minute.

02:02:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, let's do it.

02:02:02 ◼   ► - I replaced the wheels on my car.

02:02:05 ◼   ► And I now have different wheels than what it came with.

02:02:08 ◼   ► I have never had the occasion to do that before.

02:02:09 ◼   ► - Now wait, when you say I replaced the wheels on my car--

02:02:12 ◼   ► - Oh, I didn't do it.

02:02:13 ◼   ► - He doesn't have one of those machines

02:02:15 ◼   ► that takes the wheels off the rim.

02:02:17 ◼   ► - Yeah.

02:02:18 ◼   ► - Well, no, no, no, I could,

02:02:19 ◼   ► well, you mean the tire off the wheel?

02:02:21 ◼   ► No, I do not have that machine.

02:02:23 ◼   ► No, my car came with summer tires,

02:02:26 ◼   ► which means that under like 55 degrees,

02:02:29 ◼   ► I really shouldn't be driving the car.

02:02:31 ◼   ► I did.

02:02:32 ◼   ► I never drove it in snow because that's just suicidal,

02:02:35 ◼   ► but I did occasionally drive the car

02:02:36 ◼   ► at less than 55 degrees.

02:02:38 ◼   ► And despite what you two think,

02:02:39 ◼   ► I know you think I live in some tropical wasteland,

02:02:41 ◼   ► but well, I guess right now at this time of year I do,

02:02:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, bad time example.

02:02:47 ◼   ► - Not all year though.

02:02:48 ◼   ► And so, in the winter time it does get relatively cold.

02:02:52 ◼   ► And so I found myself not really driving my car

02:02:55 ◼   ► very much in the winter, which was a bummer.

02:02:57 ◼   ► And I finally got to the point in my stock tires

02:03:00 ◼   ► after what, three years, four years, something like that.

02:03:03 ◼   ► When did I get the car?

02:03:04 ◼   ► 2018, so four years.

02:03:05 ◼   ► I finally blew through the tires,

02:03:07 ◼   ► which is impressive 'cause I forget what was on them stock,

02:03:10 ◼   ► but whatever it was, it was soft enough

02:03:12 ◼   ► that they shouldn't have lasted four years,

02:03:13 ◼   ► But they did, because I never drive anywhere.

02:03:15 ◼   ► So I was hemming and hawing about what to do.

02:03:19 ◼   ► And I decided what I wanted to do was replace the Volkswagen

02:03:23 ◼   ► English Town wheels, which is what it came with.

02:03:26 ◼   ► And it was the only thing that the car came with, the only

02:03:29 ◼   ► option I had for the car when it was new.

02:03:32 ◼   ► And even though years before and after had different

02:03:35 ◼   ► options, I wanted to replace the Volkswagen English Town

02:03:38 ◼   ► wheels, which I friggin' hate, and I have always hated, with

02:03:42 ◼   ► the Volkswagen Pretoria wheels, which are the ones that I--

02:03:46 ◼   ► - Wait a second.

02:03:47 ◼   ► You just got good on explaining how you had summer tires

02:03:49 ◼   ► and you didn't want summer tires,

02:03:50 ◼   ► and suddenly now we were replacing the wheels?

02:03:52 ◼   ► Is replacing the tires a prerequisite

02:03:54 ◼   ► to replacing the wheels?

02:03:55 ◼   ► - Yes, because why would I get rid of,

02:03:57 ◼   ► why would I stop using the stock wheels

02:04:01 ◼   ► that had the stock tires on them

02:04:03 ◼   ► when the tires still had a bunch of tread left in them?

02:04:05 ◼   ► I'm a frugal man, or something's frugal.

02:04:07 ◼   ► - Oh, so you're gonna switch back to the summer tires

02:04:09 ◼   ► in the summer? - No, no, no, no, no.

02:04:11 ◼   ► I want a permanent switch from what I had to something new.

02:04:15 ◼   ► - So why didn't you just get new tires for your car?

02:04:17 ◼   ► - Because I hate the wheels.

02:04:18 ◼   ► I want new wheels.

02:04:19 ◼   ► - They're not connected.

02:04:21 ◼   ► This is two separate things.

02:04:21 ◼   ► One, you don't like the wheels and want new wheels.

02:04:23 ◼   ► Two, you wanna have tires so you can drive it in the winter.

02:04:26 ◼   ► But those seem like two separate tasks.

02:04:27 ◼   ► You just combine them into one as if they're connected,

02:04:29 ◼   ► but it's just aesthetic annoyance,

02:04:32 ◼   ► and then I'm not able to drive my car in the winter,

02:04:34 ◼   ► and so I need new tires.

02:04:35 ◼   ► - Right.

02:04:36 ◼   ► Well, and I also need to do tires because the summer tires,

02:04:38 ◼   ► like I said, were shot at this point.

02:04:39 ◼   ► Like, not only did I hate that they were summer only,

02:04:42 ◼   ► but they were, they were--

02:04:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's the thing you have to do

02:04:45 ◼   ► to, like, the practical thing.

02:04:46 ◼   ► I can't drive my car as much,

02:04:48 ◼   ► both because the tires are worn out,

02:04:49 ◼   ► and even when they weren't worn out,

02:04:50 ◼   ► I can't wear them in the winter, so I need new tires.

02:04:52 ◼   ► But then the wheel thing is just like,

02:04:53 ◼   ► while I'm in there, I found a way to spend more money,

02:04:55 ◼   ► which is, I don't like these wheels.

02:04:56 ◼   ► - That's exactly right.

02:04:58 ◼   ► So, I decided to get Pretoria wheels,

02:05:00 ◼   ► and then my buddy that I talk about often,

02:05:03 ◼   ► who is one of the ones that convinced me

02:05:04 ◼   ► to get this car in the first place,

02:05:06 ◼   ► kept nagging me and saying, "You should go down an inch. You should go down an inch.

02:05:11 ◼   ► You should go down an inch. I'm telling you, you should go down an inch." It comes with

02:05:14 ◼   ► 19-inch wheels. He kept beating me up saying, "Go 18. Go 18. Go 18." If he had hitched his

02:05:21 ◼   ► druthers, I would have gone 17 inches. But he said, "No, I know you'll never go 17 inches.

02:05:27 ◼   ► Go 18 inches." So what I did was I bought--Volkswagen actually makes an 18-inch version of the Pretoria,

02:05:33 ◼   ► is my beloved wheel, I will put links in the show notes, and I went and bought 18-inch

02:05:38 ◼   ► Pretoria's and had and got new tires mounted on there. And now I have my beloved wheel,

02:05:46 ◼   ► the Pretoria, with 18-inch tires, 18-inch wheel and tire combination. And I gotta tell you,

02:05:52 ◼   ► I think he was right about going down an inch, because now I don't feel every pebble in the road,

02:05:59 ◼   ► even in race mode, because I have the, you know, magnetic suspension where it actually gets stiffer

02:06:03 ◼   ► as you move through different modes.

02:06:05 ◼   ► And in race mode, I needed new kidneys

02:06:09 ◼   ► by the time I drove a mile or two.

02:06:11 ◼   ► And now, I only need a new back, not new kidneys.

02:06:14 ◼   ► So that's a marked improvement.

02:06:16 ◼   ► - No, I mean, as far as I'm concerned,

02:06:17 ◼   ► there is no benefit to bigger wheels

02:06:21 ◼   ► except if you like the way they look.

02:06:24 ◼   ► Everything else is better when you get smaller ones

02:06:27 ◼   ► and just get bigger tires.

02:06:28 ◼   ► - There is sometimes also a performance advantage

02:06:31 ◼   ► depending on the setup,

02:06:32 ◼   ► But this is the ever increasing size of wheels on cars

02:06:36 ◼   ► is a great example of customers voting with their wallet

02:06:39 ◼   ► for a thing that is on paper worse for everybody involved.

02:06:43 ◼   ► But people really like how it looks.

02:06:44 ◼   ► Like that's why whenever you see like a concept car

02:06:46 ◼   ► or even more, forget about concept car,

02:06:48 ◼   ► when you see somewhat a sketch of a concept car,

02:06:50 ◼   ► you know they show you like the designer sketch.

02:06:52 ◼   ► In the designer sketch the wheels,

02:06:54 ◼   ► like they don't even have tires on.

02:06:55 ◼   ► They don't even have rubber bands around them.

02:06:56 ◼   ► They're just like massive discs that are huge

02:06:59 ◼   ► 'cause it looks cool.

02:07:01 ◼   ► And people have been paying for that.

02:07:03 ◼   ► They say we want bigger wheels.

02:07:05 ◼   ► The wheels have just been going up and up.

02:07:06 ◼   ► Even my Honda Accord, I think my first Honda Accord

02:07:07 ◼   ► had like 15 inch wheels.

02:07:09 ◼   ► Now my Honda Accord I think has either 18 inch

02:07:11 ◼   ► or 19 inch wheels on it.

02:07:12 ◼   ► It's just wheel inflation is everywhere.

02:07:14 ◼   ► And people don't care that the ride is worse.

02:07:16 ◼   ► And so this is my recommendation for anybody

02:07:18 ◼   ► who is about to spend six figures on a fancy luxury car

02:07:21 ◼   ► and you're listening to our show,

02:07:22 ◼   ► A, join up at ATP.M/join, please.

02:07:25 ◼   ► But B, do not go for the 22 inches.

02:07:28 ◼   ► Do not go for the 23 inch wheels.

02:07:30 ◼   ► Yes, I know they look the coolest,

02:07:32 ◼   ► but if you want to get your money's worth

02:07:34 ◼   ► out of your $300,000 fancy car that you're getting,

02:07:37 ◼   ► pick the smallest, the smallest wheel's gonna be

02:07:39 ◼   ► like 20 freaking inches anyway.

02:07:41 ◼   ► Just get the smallest wheel you can get

02:07:43 ◼   ► if you value your spine at all.

02:07:46 ◼   ► - Yep, yeah, and so this has been really good.

02:07:49 ◼   ► I really don't personally, this is just for me,

02:07:53 ◼   ► I personally don't care for the look of most cars

02:07:58 ◼   ► with non-OEM wheels, with wheels that did not come with the car.

02:08:02 ◼   ► In this case, I'm cheating a little bit because in the year before my car was made, the year

02:08:06 ◼   ► after, the car was offered with this exact wheel in 19 inches, and so I'm kind of still

02:08:13 ◼   ► within my own rule set.

02:08:17 ◼   ► But I think these ones look so much better.

02:08:21 ◼   ► And the other advantage of going from 19 inches to 18 inches, and I'm not 100% sure of these

02:08:25 ◼   ► numbers off the top of my head, but I believe the 19-inch wheel is something like $800 a

02:08:30 ◼   ► wheel, and that's without any rubber around it. It's $800 a wheel for the 19 inches, and

02:08:35 ◼   ► the 18-inch was like $400 a wheel or something like that.

02:08:39 ◼   ► Such a bargain.

02:08:40 ◼   ► Well, yeah, it's still a pile of money, don't get me wrong.

02:08:42 ◼   ► You mentioned wanting the essentially first-party wheels, and I mostly feel that way as well,

02:08:46 ◼   ► but I have to say, someone in my neighborhood has a Honda Accord of my generation with third-party

02:08:51 ◼   ► wheels on it that are not Honda wheels that look really good and I look at them

02:08:56 ◼   ► and I like well I have two things here one my wheels are super duper curbed yes

02:09:00 ◼   ► some of that oh a lot of it is other people live in this house but yeah I

02:09:04 ◼   ► don't like having my wheels but they call curb rash they've been hit into

02:09:08 ◼   ► pieces of cement that has caused damage to them and it is not attractive but the

02:09:13 ◼   ► other thing is I think these wheels I see in the neighborhood I thought they

02:09:17 ◼   ► look really good now they look boy racery they actually kind of look like

02:09:20 ◼   ► like these Pretoria wheels, but even more boy racery,

02:09:23 ◼   ► and they're kind of like inappropriate,

02:09:24 ◼   ► and people would probably laugh at them,

02:09:26 ◼   ► because why should a Honda Accord

02:09:27 ◼   ► have such sporty wheels on it, but they looked really good.

02:09:29 ◼   ► Next time I see it, I'm gonna take a picture of it

02:09:30 ◼   ► and show you, and you can tell me

02:09:32 ◼   ► if I should never ever do this.

02:09:33 ◼   ► Like maybe this is like my version of like the Civic Type R,

02:09:35 ◼   ► like should I get a giant wing on my Accord,

02:09:37 ◼   ► and just say no, don't do it,

02:09:38 ◼   ► but boy, I liked how these wheels look.

02:09:40 ◼   ► So I fantasize about changing my wheels,

02:09:42 ◼   ► but the wheels that are on my car are $650 each

02:09:46 ◼   ► on a Honda Accord.

02:09:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's bananas, they're so expensive.

02:09:50 ◼   ► But yeah, I would be very interested to see specifically what you're talking about.

02:09:54 ◼   ► So please do send a picture along.

02:09:55 ◼   ► They're like this.

02:09:56 ◼   ► They're like six spoke or, no, how many is this?

02:09:59 ◼   ► Five times ten spoke.

02:10:00 ◼   ► I think they're either ten spoke or six spoke and they just have kind of like wire.

02:10:04 ◼   ► They make it look like a little race car and I thought they looked really good.

02:10:07 ◼   ► They'd probably get curbed even worse than my current wheels because they kind of stick

02:10:10 ◼   ► out a little bit, but I was like, wow, that actually looks good on an Accord.

02:10:13 ◼   ► Anyway, I shouldn't and probably never will buy new wheels for my car, but it is a fun

02:10:19 ◼   ► to fantasize about. Can I tell you though, one of the disadvantages of being the

02:10:23 ◼   ► only person in the house that is capable of driving your car, because again Erin

02:10:26 ◼   ► doesn't think she can drive a stick even though I, well it's been years since

02:10:30 ◼   ► she's tried, but I bet you she could. Nevertheless, when I curbed the snot out

02:10:36 ◼   ► of one of my wheels, which was 100% my fault, I couldn't even be like, "Well maybe

02:10:41 ◼   ► that was the time Erin took the car." No, no. She's driven the car maybe once and it

02:10:46 ◼   ► was around the neighborhood, I think.

02:10:48 ◼   ► It was my fault, and I curbed the piss out of it.

02:10:51 ◼   ► Oh, if she had done that to one of her wheels,

02:10:53 ◼   ► I would be still beating her up years later.

02:10:54 ◼   ► - And so this is a, so fancy modern cars

02:10:57 ◼   ► with hilariously expensive wheels also these days

02:11:01 ◼   ► have the cool cameras that will show you

02:11:02 ◼   ► like the vertical view of how far your wheel

02:11:04 ◼   ► is from the curb, and I'm saying car makers

02:11:06 ◼   ► should go one better.

02:11:08 ◼   ► Forget about auto lane assist.

02:11:10 ◼   ► It should be literally impossible to drive a Ferrari's wheels

02:11:12 ◼   ► into the curb at two miles an hour.

02:11:14 ◼   ► Like the wheel should not let you do it.

02:11:17 ◼   ► They should have LIDAR sensors dedicated to knowing,

02:11:20 ◼   ► like put them in the wheels.

02:11:21 ◼   ► I don't care, like this is slow speed.

02:11:23 ◼   ► It just, I should not be able to turn the wheel

02:11:26 ◼   ► and curve the wheels on a car that expensive

02:11:28 ◼   ► 'cause those wheels cost as much as my car,

02:11:30 ◼   ► individually probably,

02:11:31 ◼   ► 'cause they're made of carbon fiber or whatever.

02:11:33 ◼   ► Just like I know the cameras are there

02:11:35 ◼   ► and you got the beeping

02:11:36 ◼   ► and you got all the different sensors and all the things,

02:11:38 ◼   ► but it's like, we need to just,

02:11:39 ◼   ► it needs to be an impossibility

02:11:41 ◼   ► to curve the wheels in these cars.

02:11:43 ◼   ► I see it all the time.

02:11:43 ◼   ► I look at fancy cars all the time.

02:11:45 ◼   ► I always look at their wheels, and you look at them,

02:11:47 ◼   ► and you're like, ooh.

02:11:48 ◼   ► You can just see that one or two bad days

02:11:52 ◼   ► that they had where they scraped the wheels, especially

02:11:54 ◼   ► in the Boston area where the roads are so narrow.

02:11:56 ◼   ► Everyone's got to get really close to the curb.

02:11:58 ◼   ► Everyone's in a hurry.

02:12:00 ◼   ► It's really easy to scrape a wheel.

02:12:02 ◼   ► You think you're never going to do it.

02:12:03 ◼   ► You're three years into owning a car.

02:12:05 ◼   ► You don't pay attention for one second.

02:12:07 ◼   ► It's like, well, you're either going to live with that,

02:12:09 ◼   ► or you're going to pay $700 for a new wheel.

02:12:12 ◼   ► I found the not caring option is really great in this case.

02:12:15 ◼   ► Like I decided like back when I got the Tesla,

02:12:19 ◼   ► I decided at that point, you know what,

02:12:21 ◼   ► I'm just gonna let the car get used.

02:12:24 ◼   ► And I'm gonna let it get worn,

02:12:26 ◼   ► and I'm just not gonna care about small stuff.

02:12:29 ◼   ► Now, when a plow hit it, I got that fixed.

02:12:32 ◼   ► But like, you know, I have like my winter rims

02:12:35 ◼   ► that I cut the snow tires on,

02:12:36 ◼   ► one of those is scratched up pretty badly

02:12:39 ◼   ► from a pretty bad curb incident.

02:12:40 ◼   ► And I just, I don't care.

02:12:41 ◼   ► I just, it's fine.

02:12:43 ◼   ► - This is the way to do it.

02:12:45 ◼   ► - 'Cause it's gonna, I use my car.

02:12:47 ◼   ► My car is a tool for me to use.

02:12:49 ◼   ► Like when I open up the trunk now,

02:12:53 ◼   ► there is so much dust and crap

02:12:55 ◼   ► that I can't even vacuum out anymore.

02:12:56 ◼   ► It's so buried in whatever the carpet stuff

02:12:58 ◼   ► in the bottom of the trunk.

02:13:00 ◼   ► I don't care, it's fine.

02:13:01 ◼   ► It's there to be used, right?

02:13:03 ◼   ► Like now, on The Defender,

02:13:05 ◼   ► now that I put that roof box on it,

02:13:07 ◼   ► I can't even go through a car wash with that thing anymore.

02:13:09 ◼   ► So therefore, it's never going to get washed.

02:13:12 ◼   ► - Oh my God, Marco.

02:13:13 ◼   ► - It's just never gonna happen,

02:13:15 ◼   ► 'cause I'm not gonna do it.

02:13:16 ◼   ► (groans)

02:13:17 ◼   ► You know how much that matters?

02:13:18 ◼   ► Not at all.

02:13:19 ◼   ► - You could've had a trunk liner.

02:13:21 ◼   ► We have a rubberized truck liner,

02:13:22 ◼   ► so you can just take that out and hose it down,

02:13:24 ◼   ► and it's convenient.

02:13:26 ◼   ► But you should clean your car occasionally.

02:13:28 ◼   ► - Well, even for the Tesla,

02:13:29 ◼   ► I got rubber floor mats to try to,

02:13:32 ◼   ► you know how much good that did?

02:13:33 ◼   ► Now I have too many floor mats,

02:13:35 ◼   ► and who cares if I got dirt on the rugs?

02:13:38 ◼   ► That's what they're for.

02:13:39 ◼   ► They're designed to be used.

02:13:42 ◼   ► - Vacuuming is not too much of an ask.

02:13:43 ◼   ► You can do that.

02:13:44 ◼   ► I mean, you should get on my schedule.

02:13:46 ◼   ► I clean my car once a year whether it needs it or not.

02:13:48 ◼   ► - Oh my God, oh my God.

02:13:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, once a year I'll take the box off

02:13:52 ◼   ► and I'll go through an automatic car wash.

02:13:54 ◼   ► - But when I clean it, I take all the floor mats out,

02:13:56 ◼   ► I vacuum them, I take the trunk liner out,

02:13:58 ◼   ► I clean that out, I vacuum the whole inside of the car,

02:14:00 ◼   ► I wash the outside.

02:14:01 ◼   ► It's not like I'm detailing the car,

02:14:02 ◼   ► but you gotta get the, as Merleman said,

02:14:05 ◼   ► you gotta get the big stuff.

02:14:06 ◼   ► - All right, once a year I'll drive to Casey's house

02:14:07 ◼   ► and he can wash it for me.

02:14:09 ◼   ► Yes, please, for the love of God, please.

02:14:12 ◼   ► - You should watch, start watching some car detailing

02:14:14 ◼   ► channels to see what like actual fancy car detailers do.

02:14:17 ◼   ► I love watching those things like someone will bring

02:14:19 ◼   ► their McLaren F1 and you see how,

02:14:20 ◼   ► see what car detailing in the McLaren F1.

02:14:22 ◼   ► First of all, again, the detailing job on the McLaren F1

02:14:25 ◼   ► costs as much as my car, but they do a really good job.

02:14:28 ◼   ► They do a really, really good job.

02:14:29 ◼   ► The part where they're cleaning the brake calipers

02:14:31 ◼   ► with like Q-tips, you're like, okay,

02:14:33 ◼   ► they're getting the money's worth.

02:14:34 ◼   ► - Oh my God, I cannot, no.

02:14:36 ◼   ► I just, I can't make myself care that much.

02:14:38 ◼   ► It's just so much work.

02:14:40 ◼   ► - Ugh, I feel like I understand and agree

02:14:43 ◼   ► with the principle of what you're saying, Marco,

02:14:47 ◼   ► but I can't let go that much.

02:14:49 ◼   ► Like, my paint is awful because I've gone through

02:14:53 ◼   ► road debris that's left chips everywhere,

02:14:55 ◼   ► and it's just like, I've used the car, to your point.

02:14:58 ◼   ► And I am mostly okay with that.

02:15:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's what it's for, use it.

02:15:02 ◼   ► - Agreed, but I need to wash the car at least once a month.

02:15:07 ◼   ► - And curbing wheels is, that's like actual damage.

02:15:10 ◼   ► It's not like, oh, it's cosmetic.

02:15:12 ◼   ► Like, at a certain point, you're taking chunks of metal

02:15:14 ◼   ► off your wheels and it's, you know,

02:15:15 ◼   ► it's more than cosmetic.

02:15:16 ◼   ► - It is, but it's also like, it's such a common thing.

02:15:20 ◼   ► Like, you know, for instance, like, you know,

02:15:21 ◼   ► on the Tesla, last time I went to go get it,

02:15:24 ◼   ► when I moved out of the parking lot last time,

02:15:26 ◼   ► I noticed that I now have a very small scuff on the corner

02:15:29 ◼   ► where somebody parked next to it

02:15:30 ◼   ► and scuffed it on the way in.

02:15:31 ◼   ► It's way too small to get fixed by anybody.

02:15:35 ◼   ► This is a car that lives in parking lots most of its life.

02:15:37 ◼   ► Scuffs on the plastic bumpers are gonna happen to everybody.

02:15:40 ◼   ► You just have to wait for them to accumulate

02:15:41 ◼   ► to the point where you do it.

02:15:42 ◼   ► But curb wheels really hurt a lot 'cause it's metal

02:15:44 ◼   ► and it's like, there's no occasion.

02:15:46 ◼   ► Like bumpers are kind of,

02:15:48 ◼   ► you don't have control over that, but like,

02:15:50 ◼   ► you're not gonna, no one is going to accidentally

02:15:54 ◼   ► scrape by you and curb your wheels.

02:15:55 ◼   ► They're gonna hit your bumpers,

02:15:57 ◼   ► they're gonna leave some paint on your doors,

02:15:58 ◼   ► but the wheels will probably be fine.

02:16:00 ◼   ► So if the wheels are screwed up, it's because you did it.

02:16:02 ◼   ► And that's why it hurts.

02:16:03 ◼   ► [door closes]

02:16:05 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]