ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Well, I sound like this now.

00:00:03 ◼   ► That's a thing.

00:00:04 ◼   ► Got COVID again.

00:00:05 ◼   ► Yay, that's fun.

00:00:07 ◼   ► You know, and I thought I had managed to escape it.

00:00:10 ◼   ► So the rest of my family got it a few weeks ago.

00:00:13 ◼   ► I'm like super boosted.

00:00:14 ◼   ► I've had four vaccinations total.

00:00:18 ◼   ► Last one was in May, so pretty recent.

00:00:20 ◼   ► But of course, you know, the new variants are not as well protected by the vaccines

00:00:25 ◼   ► as the as the original variants were.

00:00:28 ◼   ► So anyway, my whole family got it,

00:00:31 ◼   ► and I thought I had escaped.

00:00:33 ◼   ► Like as soon as they got it,

00:00:35 ◼   ► we all started like, you know,

00:00:36 ◼   ► staying far apart from each other.

00:00:37 ◼   ► We would like eat, you know,

00:00:39 ◼   ► and our house here is very breezy,

00:00:40 ◼   ► so we keep all the windows open,

00:00:42 ◼   ► eat all the meals outside,

00:00:43 ◼   ► with like opposite ends of the long table,

00:00:45 ◼   ► like Dr. Evil's lair, you know, like super long, you know?

00:00:49 ◼   ► And like we were sleeping in separate rooms,

00:00:51 ◼   ► like everything, just to hope that, you know,

00:00:54 ◼   ► like Adam had it for like an hour,

00:00:56 ◼   ► Tiff had it for like three or four days and I was like, "Okay, maybe I think I dodged

00:01:01 ◼   ► it." And sure enough, I did dodge it from them. If you look at the timing, there's

00:01:06 ◼   ► pretty much no way I got it from that. But whatever, it's going around the island and

00:01:12 ◼   ► there were a lot of like big community events, all of which were outdoors in the last weekend.

00:01:17 ◼   ► But at some point, I got unlucky and here we are. So I dodged it when it was in my house

00:01:23 ◼   ► but was not able to dodge it

00:01:25 ◼   ► for the following weeks afterwards.

00:01:27 ◼   ► - I blame the test drives.

00:01:29 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:30 ◼   ► - Even that was too long ago.

00:01:31 ◼   ► - Right, no, it's like a three day incubation,

00:01:33 ◼   ► how long ago were the test drives?

00:01:34 ◼   ► - No, it would have had to be this past weekend.

00:01:37 ◼   ► You know, over the last couple of days

00:01:38 ◼   ► I had a bit of a scratchy throat, and I thought, oh no.

00:01:41 ◼   ► But I had no other symptoms.

00:01:43 ◼   ► It is, there's like a lot of flowers, you know,

00:01:45 ◼   ► blowing around outside, but I thought maybe,

00:01:48 ◼   ► maybe it's allergies, and I kept taking tests every morning

00:01:51 ◼   ► 'cause I was scared I might have it.

00:01:53 ◼   ► and negative, negative, negative.

00:01:55 ◼   ► So I thought, great, okay, well, hey, this is weird,

00:01:58 ◼   ► but oh well, let's keep hoping that it's just allergies

00:02:02 ◼   ► and a weird August timeline, which never happens.

00:02:05 ◼   ► But okay, denial is very powerful.

00:02:08 ◼   ► So sure enough, this morning, I take one more test

00:02:12 ◼   ► 'cause my throat's still scratchy and my voice is going

00:02:15 ◼   ► and it turned positive.

00:02:17 ◼   ► So I would say I reiterate my statement

00:02:21 ◼   ► if anybody out there is getting a weird sniffly cold this summer, you know, summer is not

00:02:27 ◼   ► typically cold season, and if you have a weird sniffly cold this summer or a scratchy throat,

00:02:31 ◼   ► you know, odds are it's probably this. Even if you test negative once or twice, like,

00:02:37 ◼   ► it's probably this.

00:02:39 ◼   ► So we'll all see whether or not the, what does it speak or say, what's the command line

00:02:43 ◼   ► thing if you have the computer talk. We'll see if we end up going back to that like we

00:02:47 ◼   ► did a few years a few years ago hopefully not but we shall see but if the episode is

00:02:51 ◼   ► a little bit shorter it's because we have sympathy for Marco's destroyed vocal chords

00:02:56 ◼   ► and that that would be why.

00:02:57 ◼   ► I mean you guys could just talk about like you know TVs and and you know sonologies and

00:03:01 ◼   ► stuff and I don't have much to say there.

00:03:03 ◼   ► Spoiler alert we're getting there we're getting there.

00:03:07 ◼   ► Hey John where do you boogie board and surf and whatnot if you're down under in Straya?

00:03:12 ◼   ► It's kind of weird that we mentioned stuff about the lifeguards and the flags they put

00:03:18 ◼   ► on the beach and where you're allowed to swim and where you're allowed to use boogie boards

00:03:21 ◼   ► in the context of my Long Island vacation and like 90-something percent of the feedback

00:03:26 ◼   ► was from Australians.

00:03:27 ◼   ► I don't know why.

00:03:28 ◼   ► I mean, the beach is everywhere.

00:03:30 ◼   ► We don't have a particularly big listenership in Australia, but everybody from Australia

00:03:35 ◼   ► wanted us to know how it works down there.

00:03:38 ◼   ► So here's Ross Polton with one bit of follow up on that.

00:03:42 ◼   ► He says "I used to be a lifeguard here in Australia.

00:03:44 ◼   ► Boards are not permitted "between the flags" i.e. in the safe swimming area as they're

00:03:49 ◼   ► often dangerous to other swimmers.

00:03:50 ◼   ► You wouldn't believe how many people lose control of them."

00:03:52 ◼   ► So that was the predominant suggestion from the Australians is basically people get hit

00:03:57 ◼   ► with boards.

00:03:58 ◼   ► So you don't let surfers be where the swimmers are, you know the boogie bars be where the

00:04:01 ◼   ► swimmers are because both of those things can bonk people in the head and that's dangerous.

00:04:06 ◼   ► Some of the Australians said that boogie boards are allowed, like if you just use them like

00:04:11 ◼   ► little kids in the surf, you know, in the little, just after the waves have crashed,

00:04:14 ◼   ► just little kids tooling around on them. On Long Island, it's no boogie boards anywhere,

00:04:17 ◼   ► period. They don't have this nuance of like, "Oh, it's okay if you're just in the edge

00:04:21 ◼   ► of the surf, but not bad when you're out farther."

00:04:23 ◼   ► I mean, Long Islanders are not known for their appreciation of nuance. They're very blunt

00:04:27 ◼   ► people.

00:04:28 ◼   ► Lifeguards would have to be making a judgment call of like, "Is that boogie board too far

00:04:32 ◼   ► out or too far in?" It would just be constant whistling and yelling at people to bring their

00:04:34 ◼   ► boogie boards in so it can make some sense. The other thing is the Australians were telling

00:04:39 ◼   ► us that the flag placement, that what they would do is they would, the lifeguards in

00:04:42 ◼   ► Australia would put the flags where the safest area to swim was. Even this follow-up says

00:04:46 ◼   ► the safe swimming area. And you know, like the lifeguards would understand the various

00:04:52 ◼   ► rip currents and everything and know like, oh today this is the safe place to swim and

00:04:56 ◼   ► today this is right now this is the safe place to swim. In my experience on Long Island,

00:05:00 ◼   ► both in my childhood and in my adult life

00:05:03 ◼   ► going on vacation, that's not,

00:05:05 ◼   ► mostly not how it works on Long Island beaches I go to.

00:05:09 ◼   ► The flags are basically placed like where,

00:05:10 ◼   ► you know, the entrance to the beach,

00:05:12 ◼   ► the flags are centered on the entrance to the beach.

00:05:15 ◼   ► They will close it and say you can't swim

00:05:17 ◼   ► if there's a rip tide, or you know,

00:05:19 ◼   ► or I'll advise against you depending on the conditions.

00:05:22 ◼   ► They, you know, so the lifeguards

00:05:23 ◼   ► aren't performing that function,

00:05:24 ◼   ► but it's not as if they will take the flags

00:05:26 ◼   ► and move 300 yards, move the flags 300 yards down the beach

00:05:29 ◼   ► because of the rip current.

00:05:30 ◼   ► No, they won't because the lifeguard chairs,

00:05:33 ◼   ► again, they could pick up and move them,

00:05:34 ◼   ► but in practice they don't

00:05:35 ◼   ► because there's the big pile of sand in front of them

00:05:37 ◼   ► that they would have to re-dig

00:05:38 ◼   ► and they don't wanna carry the things.

00:05:40 ◼   ► It's different on different beaches.

00:05:41 ◼   ► Like some beaches have multiple fields

00:05:44 ◼   ► that have their own sour parking lots

00:05:45 ◼   ► and their own sets of chairs.

00:05:46 ◼   ► And I think that's probably different,

00:05:48 ◼   ► but for the smaller South Shore beaches that I'm going to

00:05:51 ◼   ► on the East end of Long Island, they don't move the flags.

00:05:54 ◼   ► They just close and keep it open.

00:05:57 ◼   ► I'm not sure the way it is on where you are,

00:05:59 ◼   ► Mark, or do they ever move the flags,

00:06:01 ◼   ► or do they just, the flags are just fixed,

00:06:02 ◼   ► and it's yes, no, you can go in the water?

00:06:04 ◼   ► - They move the flags daily,

00:06:07 ◼   ► but they always are the same center point.

00:06:09 ◼   ► So the width of the space between the flags

00:06:12 ◼   ► changes with conditions.

00:06:13 ◼   ► So if it's a green flag day where the water is calm,

00:06:17 ◼   ► they'll have them pretty far spaced out.

00:06:19 ◼   ► If it's a yellow or red flag day,

00:06:21 ◼   ► they'll move them, they'll scoot them in

00:06:22 ◼   ► and make a narrower area.

00:06:24 ◼   ► So I think it's less about where in particular

00:06:27 ◼   ► the riptide might be, if they can tell that somehow, and more about just how wide of an

00:06:32 ◼   ► area do we want to be covering. And that's based on conditions.

00:06:35 ◼   ► It's based on staffing as well. So there's usually multiple lifeguard stands, but sometimes they

00:06:40 ◼   ► don't have the staff for all of them, so the ones that aren't occupied will be pushed over or just

00:06:44 ◼   ► unoccupied, and they will narrow the flags based on staffing, because if they don't have enough

00:06:48 ◼   ► lifeguards to populate all the little lifeguard chairs, they can't watch those parts, and so they

00:06:52 ◼   ► will definitely move the flags in and out like that, but they'll never do like, "Oh, there's

00:06:56 ◼   ► is the rip current over here.

00:06:57 ◼   ► We're gonna go half a mile down the beach

00:06:59 ◼   ► where there's no rip current.

00:06:59 ◼   ► I've never seen that done,

00:07:01 ◼   ► at least on the smaller beaches that I'm going to.

00:07:03 ◼   ► So there you go.

00:07:04 ◼   ► All you want to know about beaches and boogie boards

00:07:07 ◼   ► and rip currents and flags.

00:07:09 ◼   ► - So the follow-up I've been waiting for is,

00:07:12 ◼   ► have you tried channels and is this the moment

00:07:14 ◼   ► in which you tell me how right I am?

00:07:16 ◼   ► - Well, so I listened back to last week's episode

00:07:20 ◼   ► and it's still not entirely clear to me what your pitch is.

00:07:23 ◼   ► So could you just briefly re-summarize

00:07:26 ◼   ► what your pitch to me is on this topic?

00:07:29 ◼   ► - I think if you're looking to get rid of your TiVo,

00:07:33 ◼   ► which I know you're actually not,

00:07:34 ◼   ► but in this hypothetical world,

00:07:35 ◼   ► which I know is your favorite thing,

00:07:37 ◼   ► if you're looking to get rid of the TiVo,

00:07:38 ◼   ► I would argue that channels is a,

00:07:40 ◼   ► maybe not, I was gonna say better,

00:07:42 ◼   ► that's probably a bit dramatic or a bit over the top

00:07:44 ◼   ► given how much I know you're obsessed with your TiVo,

00:07:46 ◼   ► but it is quote unquote a better TiVo than TiVo

00:07:50 ◼   ► insofar as you can have, it can have effectively

00:07:53 ◼   ► infinite storage, 'cause you can just have it store things

00:07:55 ◼   ► onto your Synology.

00:07:56 ◼   ► It's very responsive because it's running on a, you know,

00:07:59 ◼   ► proper computer, hypothetically, unless you put it

00:08:01 ◼   ► on something really underpowered.

00:08:02 ◼   ► And you can watch your stuff anywhere.

00:08:05 ◼   ► Now maybe that's true of TiVo, I'm not sure,

00:08:06 ◼   ► but certainly it's true of channels.

00:08:08 ◼   ► So you can be somewhere else and you can watch live TV,

00:08:10 ◼   ► you can watch your recordings, whatever you wanna do.

00:08:13 ◼   ► And what's nice about channels is it's really,

00:08:16 ◼   ► you are better set up for channels even than I am

00:08:18 ◼   ► because I don't have a cable card in the house.

00:08:20 ◼   ► You do connect it to your TiVo,

00:08:22 ◼   ► and I know that it would be a big ask

00:08:23 ◼   ► to take your beloved TiVo and make it,

00:08:25 ◼   ► and neuter it for a little while,

00:08:27 ◼   ► but it is possible for you to just get a new box,

00:08:30 ◼   ► which is still being produced,

00:08:32 ◼   ► whether or not it's because they found chips, who knows?

00:08:34 ◼   ► But there are boxes still being made,

00:08:36 ◼   ► or at least still available for sale.

00:08:38 ◼   ► And you could buy one of those $150 boxes,

00:08:40 ◼   ► you could stick it on your network,

00:08:41 ◼   ► put your cable card in it, connect it to coax,

00:08:44 ◼   ► and you can have what is arguably

00:08:46 ◼   ► the best possible setup for channels,

00:08:48 ◼   ► which is to say you're pulling in almost every Fios TV channel that you have access to.

00:08:53 ◼   ► I think some of them are DRM encumbered and channels can't get to them, but almost all

00:08:56 ◼   ► of them are not.

00:08:57 ◼   ► So you can pull in all of your Fios TV and you can pull in, I think you can pull in Hulu.

00:09:02 ◼   ► I know you can pull in TV Everywhere, which among other things, YouTube TV supports.

00:09:06 ◼   ► Fios supports it as well.

00:09:08 ◼   ► And you can get all these things and you can aggregate them all into one spot.

00:09:11 ◼   ► Plus if you want to, if you have a robust TV library, you can do fun things like make

00:09:14 ◼   ► a 24/7 Letterkenny channel or a 24/7 Studio Ghibli channel or whatever the case you might

00:09:21 ◼   ► want.

00:09:22 ◼   ► So one way...

00:09:23 ◼   ► >> Ghibli!

00:09:24 ◼   ► >> Sorry, I've never seen any of them, so what do I know?

00:09:26 ◼   ► So anyways...

00:09:27 ◼   ► >> I watched the first 15 minutes of all of them.

00:09:29 ◼   ► >> All right, Merlin.

00:09:30 ◼   ► >> You're both giving me ideas here, no spoilers.

00:09:32 ◼   ► >> I know, I know we are, I know we are.

00:09:35 ◼   ► So anyway, so I think it could fit your needs pretty well, and the only downside to it as

00:09:42 ◼   ► compared to TiVo, is that it, like TiVo, is largely reliant on a dead technology in order

00:09:49 ◼   ► to work insofar as it relies on cable card.

00:09:51 ◼   ► Now we could get into an argument whether or not the cable card box, the HD HomeRun

00:09:55 ◼   ► thing, was it HD HomeRun Prime?

00:09:58 ◼   ► We can make an argument or get into an argument whether or not the HD HomeRun has any shelf

00:10:01 ◼   ► life or longevity, but we can all agree that cable card does not.

00:10:06 ◼   ► So there will come a time that cable card is just not supported, but that'll kill your

00:10:09 ◼   ► TiVo just as much as it'll kill channels.

00:10:11 ◼   ► So I just think it's one of those things where I feel like it's really something I would

00:10:16 ◼   ► like you to try, especially because the guide and the user interface is really, really well

00:10:19 ◼   ► done.

00:10:20 ◼   ► And what's nice about Channels is it does pretty well in ways that Swift aims to, but

00:10:24 ◼   ► does not, with progressive disclosure.

00:10:26 ◼   ► So it can be fairly straightforward.

00:10:28 ◼   ► It's still fiddly, you know, for sure.

00:10:29 ◼   ► It's a lot more fiddly than a TiVo.

00:10:31 ◼   ► But at first glance, it can be fairly straightforward.

00:10:34 ◼   ► And then as you wish, you can dig deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper, and just tweak

00:10:39 ◼   ► it till your heart's content.

00:10:40 ◼   ► Now you may not have interest in that, which is totally fine, but that's something you could do.

00:10:43 ◼   ► So I don't know, it feels like something I want you to try, and if you told me,

00:10:47 ◼   ► "Hey, I gave it an honest shake, it's not for me," that's fine.

00:10:50 ◼   ► Like Marco did with the Wrangler. Like, that's fine.

00:10:52 ◼   ► But I feel like it's something you should at least give it a shot.

00:10:55 ◼   ► - I think you were much more emphatic last week that you needed me to get rid of my TiVo's because they were bad.

00:11:01 ◼   ► It's not just hypothetical if you were getting rid of your TiVo's,

00:11:03 ◼   ► it was more like you have to get rid of your TiVo's for your bad. Because they're bad.

00:11:07 ◼   ► - Well, because they're dead! They're dead technology walking.

00:11:10 ◼   ► They are absolutely dead technology walking.

00:11:11 ◼   ► I can't believe anything works in those TiVo's.

00:11:14 ◼   ► - But are they more dead than the HD Homerun Prime

00:11:18 ◼   ► that they just found new chips for?

00:11:19 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:11:20 ◼   ► - And that's a fair question.

00:11:22 ◼   ► And I feel like they are--

00:11:23 ◼   ► - And that's what I kept saying last week,

00:11:24 ◼   ► that you can buy a brand new TiVo right now

00:11:27 ◼   ► if they sell multiple models.

00:11:29 ◼   ► - I personally think that they are more dead

00:11:32 ◼   ► because I just don't see how TiVo's got any,

00:11:35 ◼   ► has any longevity, I really don't.

00:11:37 ◼   ► Whereas you will always find nerds

00:11:39 ◼   ► that are interested in doing nerdy things,

00:11:41 ◼   ► which I guess maybe that applies to TiVo too,

00:11:42 ◼   ► now that I say that out loud.

00:11:43 ◼   ► But I don't know, I personally think that it is silly

00:11:46 ◼   ► for you to continue to harp on TiVo

00:11:48 ◼   ► as the one true savior of television,

00:11:51 ◼   ► when I think there are other options that may work better.

00:11:54 ◼   ► But I'll be the first to tell you there are some caveats.

00:11:55 ◼   ► So as an example, one of the caveats to channels

00:11:58 ◼   ► is that TV Everywhere, which is what channels use

00:12:00 ◼   ► to kind of, I don't know if scrape is the right word,

00:12:03 ◼   ► record, I guess, but to get access

00:12:05 ◼   ► to traditional terrestrial television,

00:12:08 ◼   ► that is limited at 720p and that's not channels as well.

00:12:11 ◼   ► - No, it's not.

00:12:13 ◼   ► - Oh, is it not?

00:12:14 ◼   ► I thought it was.

00:12:15 ◼   ► - It is not.

00:12:16 ◼   ► It's not limited to 720p.

00:12:16 ◼   ► All right, so let me tell you,

00:12:18 ◼   ► well, let me start by saying

00:12:20 ◼   ► that your pitch remains unconvincing

00:12:22 ◼   ► because I already own Devos

00:12:24 ◼   ► and I'm not looking to get rid of them.

00:12:25 ◼   ► - Well, that's fair, that's fair.

00:12:27 ◼   ► - But I think you're also losing sight of,

00:12:28 ◼   ► and I realize I didn't,

00:12:30 ◼   ► you'd have to rewind two episodes to figure this out.

00:12:32 ◼   ► What is my goal in messing with stuff?

00:12:34 ◼   ► Why am I even looking to this?

00:12:35 ◼   ► Do you remember the origin

00:12:36 ◼   ► of like why I'm looking at this stuff at all,

00:12:39 ◼   ► it's because I got a fancy new TV.

00:12:41 ◼   ► My fancy new TV is 4K and HDR.

00:12:43 ◼   ► That's why I started down the road of saying,

00:12:45 ◼   ► let me reconsider all the things that are giving input

00:12:47 ◼   ► to my television to make sure I'm getting

00:12:49 ◼   ► the highest quality because now my television

00:12:51 ◼   ► can display better, so now when I just see

00:12:54 ◼   ► standard definition 1080, which used to be the limit

00:12:56 ◼   ► of my previous television, now I feel like,

00:12:58 ◼   ► oh, if I can get that content in a better format

00:13:02 ◼   ► in 4K and HDR and both, that would be good, right?

00:13:06 ◼   ► and television is a big source of a lot of the stuff that I get.

00:13:08 ◼   ► So that's why I was looking into, for example, YouTube TV,

00:13:10 ◼   ► because people had told me before I got my new television

00:13:12 ◼   ► that, hey, YouTube TV has some regular channels that

00:13:17 ◼   ► are in 4K or HDR or both.

00:13:18 ◼   ► So check that out.

00:13:19 ◼   ► And that's why I looked into that, and the guide was crappy,

00:13:21 ◼   ► and I was like, oh, this is bad.

00:13:22 ◼   ► And that's kind of how we got into channels,

00:13:24 ◼   ► because the people said, oh, well, yeah,

00:13:26 ◼   ► the YouTube TV interface and apps aren't great.

00:13:29 ◼   ► But if you use channels, you can use the channels UI

00:13:32 ◼   ► to get a YouTube TV.

00:13:34 ◼   ► and as you described through the TV Everywhere interface.

00:13:36 ◼   ► So that's why I started going into channels, right?

00:13:38 ◼   ► But everything you just said about channels,

00:13:41 ◼   ► is it's like what I said last week.

00:13:43 ◼   ► It's like TiVo, but instead of it being an all-in-one box,

00:13:45 ◼   ► it's distributed into pieces.

00:13:48 ◼   ► And that's more fiddly, but it's also more flexible,

00:13:50 ◼   ► because then you can decide, for this piece,

00:13:52 ◼   ► I'm gonna use this, for that piece, I'm gonna use that.

00:13:54 ◼   ► It's componentized, right?

00:13:56 ◼   ► And to answer your question about watching TiVo stuff

00:13:59 ◼   ► elsewhere, yes you can, you can watch TiVo stuff,

00:14:01 ◼   ► and they've had that feature for years, right?

00:14:03 ◼   ► So channels is really just a different TiVo

00:14:07 ◼   ► with a different set of trade-offs.

00:14:09 ◼   ► It doesn't, unfortunately, help me at all

00:14:12 ◼   ► with my question of how do I get better content

00:14:15 ◼   ► into my television?

00:14:16 ◼   ► Because although TV Everywhere isn't limited to 720,

00:14:20 ◼   ► you're still limited by what kind of content

00:14:23 ◼   ► will be on TV Everywhere for your particular channel.

00:14:26 ◼   ► So let me tell you what I've done in this regard

00:14:28 ◼   ► since last week.

00:14:29 ◼   ► So first off, anonymous listener Ben, no last name,

00:14:34 ◼   ► or listener Ben, last name with help,

00:14:35 ◼   ► sent me an HD Home Run Prime.

00:14:38 ◼   ► - Oh man, good for Ben.

00:14:40 ◼   ► - Great, and that arrived pretty quickly.

00:14:42 ◼   ► And by the way, speaking of dead technologies

00:14:45 ◼   ► and TiVo feeling old or whatever,

00:14:47 ◼   ► the HD Home Run Prime as a product

00:14:49 ◼   ► is two years older than my oldest TiVo.

00:14:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:14:54 ◼   ► And yes, they are still making and selling them

00:14:56 ◼   ► because they found chips,

00:14:57 ◼   ► but they canceled the six tuner one.

00:14:58 ◼   ► There was supposed to be a 6 tuner HD Homerun Prime,

00:15:00 ◼   ► HD Homerun Prime 6, and they canceled that project

00:15:03 ◼   ► back in like 2020 or whenever the FCC said,

00:15:05 ◼   ► yeah, cable card's not gonna be a thing anymore.

00:15:08 ◼   ► So this whole product line seemed super dead

00:15:12 ◼   ► because they had planned to make a 6 tuner one,

00:15:13 ◼   ► which I would probably buy, by the way.

00:15:16 ◼   ► They just canceled that whole thing.

00:15:18 ◼   ► They say they are going to make another cable card product,

00:15:20 ◼   ► but I can't find anything concrete on that.

00:15:22 ◼   ► So, and they had stopped making HD Homerun Prime

00:15:25 ◼   ► for a long time, but then they found your chips

00:15:26 ◼   ► and are making them again.

00:15:27 ◼   ► But anyway, this is not relevant to me because I got one.

00:15:30 ◼   ► Listener sent it to me, thank you very much listener Ben,

00:15:32 ◼   ► very nice of you, right?

00:15:34 ◼   ► So I took a cable card out of one of my lesser TiVos

00:15:38 ◼   ► and shoved it into the HDHomer on Prime and hooked it up.

00:15:43 ◼   ► So here's where I learned the limits of this stuff

00:15:46 ◼   ► based on what I'm trying to do.

00:15:48 ◼   ► And again, to reiterate, what I'm trying to do

00:15:50 ◼   ► is to get better quality versions

00:15:52 ◼   ► of the television shows that I pay for, right?

00:15:56 ◼   ► So, Fios is good, Fios especially in Massachusetts is good

00:16:00 ◼   ► in that they don't flip whatever bit that you flip

00:16:03 ◼   ► to make it so like the channels are DRM protected.

00:16:06 ◼   ► They don't flip that anywhere except on the channels

00:16:08 ◼   ► that force them to do it.

00:16:09 ◼   ► So I think it's only like HBO or maybe one or two other ones

00:16:13 ◼   ► that force Fios to say you have to put on the DRM bit.

00:16:18 ◼   ► When you put that bit on, it means that channels

00:16:21 ◼   ► can't get those channels through the HD Home Run Prime.

00:16:24 ◼   ► They're just like, it doesn't even see them.

00:16:26 ◼   ► My TiVo can get them, so another notch in the column for TiVo.

00:16:29 ◼   ► - No, that's totally fair, totally fair.

00:16:31 ◼   ► - But it's just like one channel who cares,

00:16:32 ◼   ► and I have HBO screen, so that would not stop me,

00:16:34 ◼   ► but just FYI, lots of other cable providers

00:16:36 ◼   ► aren't as nice as Verizon.

00:16:38 ◼   ► They like check in on every single channel,

00:16:40 ◼   ► and then it makes the thing useless, which is really crappy.

00:16:42 ◼   ► But then the next limitation is

00:16:45 ◼   ► when Fios sends its television channels to my house,

00:16:48 ◼   ► regardless, forget about the equipment that's in my house,

00:16:50 ◼   ► just as they come into my house,

00:16:52 ◼   ► even if you have like the Fios first-party equipment,

00:16:54 ◼   ► if you have a cable card, if you have any other stuff,

00:16:57 ◼   ► almost all the channels are not 4K.

00:16:59 ◼   ► Fios in Massachusetts has like four or five 4K channels,

00:17:03 ◼   ► and they're just like holding bin channels,

00:17:06 ◼   ► where there's nothing on them

00:17:08 ◼   ► except when there's special events.

00:17:09 ◼   ► So for example, apparently the Olympics,

00:17:11 ◼   ► the past whatever, one or two times,

00:17:13 ◼   ► they would put 4K versions of the Olympics

00:17:16 ◼   ► into one or two of those channels.

00:17:19 ◼   ► There's one for like Red Sox games

00:17:21 ◼   ► or other sports events, special events,

00:17:23 ◼   ► But most of the day if you go to those channels, there's nothing on them except for a standby

00:17:26 ◼   ► or off-air or just a static graphic.

00:17:30 ◼   ► That's the extent of 4K content as traditional television channels coming into your house

00:17:36 ◼   ► from Fios.

00:17:38 ◼   ► There is apparently a Fios TV streaming thing that you can do where there's a Fios TV app

00:17:43 ◼   ► for Apple TV and it's just like, "We'll use the internet to get you the television that

00:17:47 ◼   ► you pay for."

00:17:49 ◼   ► But cable companies or whatever typically being annoying.

00:17:52 ◼   ► I can't even use that app unless I have in my home

00:17:55 ◼   ► some of their first party cable box things

00:17:58 ◼   ► and also use their stupid first party router thing.

00:18:01 ◼   ► So I'm never doing that because I don't allow

00:18:03 ◼   ► any cable company equipment in my house

00:18:05 ◼   ► if I can help it except for the cable cards, right?

00:18:08 ◼   ► Now the cable cards, the other channels that are not 4K,

00:18:11 ◼   ► some of them are 1080.

00:18:12 ◼   ► Most of them are not, but some of them are.

00:18:13 ◼   ► I was going through the channels

00:18:15 ◼   ► and using the little info thing on channels to see

00:18:17 ◼   ► and you will find 1080 ones.

00:18:19 ◼   ► But that's like, that's exactly the same

00:18:21 ◼   ► that is on my TiVo, if I go through the thing,

00:18:23 ◼   ► channels is more flexible in this manner.

00:18:26 ◼   ► TiVo I think will just run at whatever resolution

00:18:31 ◼   ► that you set it to and then it just upscales everything.

00:18:34 ◼   ► Channels you can set it to like match content,

00:18:37 ◼   ► which is kind of annoying 'cause then it like

00:18:38 ◼   ► blacks out the TV when it goes between channels,

00:18:40 ◼   ► but you can go between the 1080 channel and the 720 channel

00:18:42 ◼   ► and it'll like change modes and everything.

00:18:46 ◼   ► So anyway, there are 1080 channels, there are 720 channels,

00:18:50 ◼   ► but you're not getting any increase in quality.

00:18:52 ◼   ► All you're doing with channels is the same thing

00:18:55 ◼   ► you could do on TiVo minus the VRM predicted channels,

00:18:58 ◼   ► but with the addition of the ability to match content,

00:19:01 ◼   ► which I don't think you would ever do,

00:19:02 ◼   ► especially on my setup.

00:19:03 ◼   ► The delay of like, you know, switching modes

00:19:05 ◼   ► from like 720 to 1080 is not worth it.

00:19:07 ◼   ► It's better to just keep it in, especially for live TV.

00:19:10 ◼   ► Maybe for recorded things, it's fine.

00:19:12 ◼   ► And channels lets you change that on like a per source basis

00:19:14 ◼   ► which is convenient.

00:19:16 ◼   ► In terms of the channel setup,

00:19:19 ◼   ► I'm running it on my wife's computer,

00:19:20 ◼   ► which she strongly objected to.

00:19:22 ◼   ► In fact, just before we started recording,

00:19:23 ◼   ► she told me to reiterate to you in particular, Casey,

00:19:26 ◼   ► that she does not want this running on her computer.

00:19:28 ◼   ► - On account of what? - The only reason I was

00:19:29 ◼   ► allowed to do it is because it's for the show,

00:19:32 ◼   ► I told her it was temporary.

00:19:34 ◼   ► - Wait, but is Plex still running on that computer?

00:19:36 ◼   ► - It is, but as I said on the last show,

00:19:39 ◼   ► there's no contradiction in this.

00:19:40 ◼   ► It is exactly the explanation I gave,

00:19:42 ◼   ► which is nobody cares about Plex.

00:19:43 ◼   ► If Plex is down, nobody cares.

00:19:44 ◼   ► I am the only person who uses it,

00:19:46 ◼   ► and I can manage dealing with the thing

00:19:48 ◼   ► being up or down. It is not an essential part.

00:19:51 ◼   ► That's a different issue though. What is her gripe with channels?

00:19:54 ◼   ► She doesn't want things running on her computer that affect her television is

00:19:57 ◼   ► exactly what I said last week. She just like, it doesn't, you know,

00:19:59 ◼   ► my ideal matches her ideal,

00:20:01 ◼   ► which is things related to watching television should have no connection to the

00:20:05 ◼   ► computers that are in her office.

00:20:06 ◼   ► They can have connection to things that are in the basement that no one ever

00:20:10 ◼   ► touches, but not to the stuff that's in their office.

00:20:12 ◼   ► I mean, if that's the way she feels, who am I to tell her that she's wrong,

00:20:16 ◼   ► but she's wrong.

00:20:17 ◼   ► Like, I don't understand what difference it makes

00:20:20 ◼   ► where within the house this mythical device

00:20:23 ◼   ► is connected to the network.

00:20:24 ◼   ► - Because she wants the flexibility to be able

00:20:25 ◼   ► to restart her computer or do anything with it,

00:20:28 ◼   ► put it to sleep or shut it down or whatever

00:20:29 ◼   ► without worrying that she's messing up something

00:20:31 ◼   ► really to tell.

00:20:32 ◼   ► In particular, doing things like, you know,

00:20:34 ◼   ► if you're using this DVR, maybe it's recording shows

00:20:36 ◼   ► while you sleep, you know, like it's just something,

00:20:39 ◼   ► it's not, she doesn't want that entanglement.

00:20:41 ◼   ► And I don't blame her.

00:20:42 ◼   ► I don't want that entanglement either.

00:20:43 ◼   ► So even if it wasn't her opinion,

00:20:44 ◼   ► it would also be my opinion.

00:20:45 ◼   ► So we are unified as a family in this

00:20:47 ◼   ► and there is no contradiction in Plex running on it.

00:20:49 ◼   ► Because like I said,

00:20:50 ◼   ► if you really are desperate to run Plex,

00:20:51 ◼   ► it's also on the Synology

00:20:52 ◼   ► and that's always up because it's in the basement.

00:20:55 ◼   ► - I mean, I guess again, I can't, as much as I joke,

00:20:58 ◼   ► I can't tell you that either of you are wrong,

00:21:00 ◼   ► but that whole line of reasoning does not compute to me.

00:21:03 ◼   ► Because-- - Either way,

00:21:04 ◼   ► like the point is channels can run almost anywhere.

00:21:06 ◼   ► Like it's very flexible.

00:21:07 ◼   ► Like the whole point of this being flexible

00:21:08 ◼   ► is I could run it on my Synology,

00:21:10 ◼   ► I could buy a little computer to run it.

00:21:11 ◼   ► If I was serious about the setup,

00:21:12 ◼   ► I would in fact get another little computer to run.

00:21:14 ◼   ► And it's not difficult, this is not a dig against channels.

00:21:17 ◼   ► Channels is very flexible in this regard.

00:21:18 ◼   ► In fact, that's the reason you'd want to use channels

00:21:20 ◼   ► because of its flexibility.

00:21:21 ◼   ► So when I, but anyway, I'm just doing this temporarily.

00:21:24 ◼   ► Same thing with the cable card.

00:21:26 ◼   ► That's going back into the TiVo.

00:21:28 ◼   ► I got her permission to take it out of her TiVo.

00:21:30 ◼   ► And when I took it out, like what I was trying to do

00:21:33 ◼   ► is like, okay, I need to exercise it to get it to do things.

00:21:37 ◼   ► So what I did was I looked at her season pass list

00:21:39 ◼   ► on her TiVo that I was taking it out of,

00:21:41 ◼   ► and I said, let me try to reproduce

00:21:42 ◼   ► these season passes in channels.

00:21:44 ◼   ► just A, to build up shows, and B, just to see

00:21:46 ◼   ► what the experience is like.

00:21:47 ◼   ► Channels copies a lot of the TiVo interface

00:21:50 ◼   ► in terms of the terminology and the way things are,

00:21:53 ◼   ► mostly just terminology.

00:21:54 ◼   ► The way things are arranged is a little bit different.

00:21:57 ◼   ► So I went and tried to add the season passes

00:22:00 ◼   ► and found the first limitation of channels

00:22:05 ◼   ► as compared to TiVo if you're just used to

00:22:08 ◼   ► the TiVo way of doing things, which is,

00:22:09 ◼   ► on TiVo, if you set up a season pass

00:22:12 ◼   ► and you go like search for it or whatever,

00:22:14 ◼   ► you can find the show even if it's not currently airing.

00:22:18 ◼   ► One example is Survivor.

00:22:19 ◼   ► Survivor comes in seasons and like each season

00:22:21 ◼   ► is basically treated as an independent show

00:22:23 ◼   ► as like Survivor colon some subtitle or whatever.

00:22:26 ◼   ► Even though Survivor's not on right now,

00:22:28 ◼   ► you can find it and set up a season pass for it.

00:22:30 ◼   ► Same thing for, you know, so the first thing I did

00:22:32 ◼   ► was one of her shows was something she watches on,

00:22:35 ◼   ► I forget what channel this is, anyway,

00:22:36 ◼   ► I did a search for it and it doesn't come up in channels

00:22:39 ◼   ► because it's not currently airing at all.

00:22:41 ◼   ► So I can't add the season pass.

00:22:42 ◼   ► And just to confirm, it's like, well, maybe that's not fair.

00:22:44 ◼   ► Maybe it's not visible on TiVo either.

00:22:46 ◼   ► I did a search on TiVo, like on my other TiVo,

00:22:48 ◼   ► the downstairs one, where that show doesn't have

00:22:49 ◼   ► a season pass, and TiVo does find it.

00:22:51 ◼   ► So TiVo's depth of understanding which shows

00:22:54 ◼   ► may be airing in the future is vastly better than channels.

00:22:57 ◼   ► I think it's mostly because channels

00:22:58 ◼   ► get this guide info from like--

00:23:00 ◼   ► - You beat me to it.

00:23:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, 14 days worth of guide info from the cable thing.

00:23:04 ◼   ► You can tell me, Casey, is there some other way

00:23:06 ◼   ► to tell channels, hey, get additional info

00:23:10 ◼   ► about television shows from his other source,

00:23:12 ◼   ► so you know about shows that might be airing in six months?

00:23:14 ◼   ► - There is.

00:23:15 ◼   ► Now, I am talking way outside my comfort zone,

00:23:18 ◼   ► so I might be telling you some lies by accident,

00:23:21 ◼   ► but my limited understanding is you absolutely can

00:23:25 ◼   ► tell it to go and get more guide data.

00:23:29 ◼   ► And additionally, I believe that there are some

00:23:32 ◼   ► like guide data providers that explicitly give you

00:23:38 ◼   ► considerably more guide data. As an example, a friend of mine, Justin Williams, is really into professional wrestling that, you know,

00:23:44 ◼   ► hey, you like what you like.

00:23:45 ◼   ► But I guess that he subscribes, I believe he subscribes to a particular service that gives,

00:23:51 ◼   ► what is it, EPG or something like that? I forget the acronym, but it's something like that, that gives guide data that is hyper accurate for

00:23:57 ◼   ► professional wrestling shows, because, you know, what little I know professional wrestling is, you have different fights or bouts or what have you. And so,

00:24:04 ◼   ► you know, maybe the regular guide data says,

00:24:08 ◼   ► WWE Raw and that's all it says whereas this you know phantom whatever thing that he subscribes to and pays money for says WWE Raw

00:24:15 ◼   ► It's you know, The Rock versus so-and-so and this versus that and this versus that and you know featuring the deathmatch of doom or whatever

00:24:22 ◼   ► They do in professional wrestling and so I think there is there is a way not only to pay for that data

00:24:28 ◼   ► But I'm 99% sure he is doing he's using channels to suck in that data as well off the top of my head

00:24:34 ◼   ► I'm not specifically sure where to do that, but I am pretty sure that it is possible

00:24:40 ◼   ► That's another example of things that TiVo rolls in for the fee that you pay for TiVo and you could pay TiVo monthly

00:24:46 ◼   ► I think annually but also what I tend to do is

00:24:48 ◼   ► Such a long time you buy the lifetime thing where you just pay one amount and that's it

00:24:52 ◼   ► Forever and TiVo of course gives you wherever TiVo gets its guide data from probably from one of these services or something

00:24:58 ◼   ► That's all bundled with the service. Another thing that I noticed about TiVo versus channels

00:25:04 ◼   ► I mean, well, it depends on what mode you're doing things.

00:25:07 ◼   ► So I did try the TV Everywhere without the cable card first,

00:25:09 ◼   ► because before I had this cable card, I was using channels.

00:25:12 ◼   ► Even last week, I was using channels by itself.

00:25:14 ◼   ► And TV Everywhere, it's a web API.

00:25:16 ◼   ► It's not really web scraping.

00:25:17 ◼   ► It's an officially supported API.

00:25:19 ◼   ► And if your services support it, you can view the stuff with it.

00:25:22 ◼   ► And as far as I can tell, it's the same quality

00:25:24 ◼   ► as I'm getting with the cable card.

00:25:26 ◼   ► So I compared, like, let me look at Discovery on TV Everywhere.

00:25:28 ◼   ► Let me look at Discovery through my HD Homer on Prime, right?

00:25:32 ◼   ► I think it's exactly the same, at least in my case.

00:25:34 ◼   ► I think it varies by channel and maybe varies by service

00:25:37 ◼   ► that you're sucking this stuff from, but it may be lesser

00:25:40 ◼   ► quality, but in my case, it didn't look like it was.

00:25:42 ◼   ► It was 1080 in both places, and I

00:25:44 ◼   ► don't think there's 4K available in any of these things anyway.

00:25:48 ◼   ► So that's reasonable.

00:25:51 ◼   ► But when you're using TV Everywhere,

00:25:53 ◼   ► because it's a web thing, it starts slower.

00:25:58 ◼   ► It starts slower than tuning to something

00:26:00 ◼   ► on the tuner, one of the three tuners that's

00:26:02 ◼   ► in the HD Homer and Prime.

00:26:04 ◼   ► Part of that is buffering.

00:26:05 ◼   ► You can set a configurable buffer size

00:26:07 ◼   ► of how much you want to buffer,

00:26:08 ◼   ► but like, and I played with that a little bit,

00:26:10 ◼   ► but you're going to wait a little bit longer

00:26:12 ◼   ► when quote unquote changing channels

00:26:14 ◼   ► with the TV everywhere.

00:26:15 ◼   ► You might see a spinner before it spools up

00:26:17 ◼   ► and there might be one or two hitches.

00:26:19 ◼   ► Hitches like that never happened with TiVo.

00:26:22 ◼   ► Never, like it's just like cable.

00:26:24 ◼   ► That's one of the advantages of TiVo

00:26:26 ◼   ► and the HD Homer and Prime also no hitches

00:26:28 ◼   ► because it's just, it's like a tuner.

00:26:29 ◼   ► Like the video is just there and ready.

00:26:32 ◼   ► as instantly as you can switch between tuners,

00:26:36 ◼   ► or switch one tuner to a different channel.

00:26:38 ◼   ► So that is a big advantage of cable card

00:26:40 ◼   ► over the TV everywhere.

00:26:42 ◼   ► And again, I feel like I'm in an ideal scenario.

00:26:44 ◼   ► Everything is on gigabit ethernet.

00:26:45 ◼   ► I have symmetric gigabit up and down.

00:26:48 ◼   ► I don't think there's anything more I could do.

00:26:49 ◼   ► It's just the nature of the beast.

00:26:51 ◼   ► The coaxial cable that's sending the quote unquote

00:26:54 ◼   ► television to my house is just blasting everything

00:26:57 ◼   ► all the time.

00:26:58 ◼   ► It is a shame that there's only three tuners.

00:27:00 ◼   ► I did exhaust the three tuners pretty quickly with recording shows and then when the three

00:27:05 ◼   ► tuners are used up you can't even go watch another show because it says all tuners are

00:27:08 ◼   ► in use.

00:27:09 ◼   ► So if you want to watch another show you have to stop one of the recordings and go to it.

00:27:13 ◼   ► So again I think for my purposes three is probably a little low, six is probably overkill

00:27:17 ◼   ► but six is certainly nice and I have two TiVos with six tuners each so I can do 12 at once.

00:27:23 ◼   ► We've never run out of tuners on the TiVos.

00:27:25 ◼   ► It is possible to pretty easily run out of them on three which is why I wish there was

00:27:28 ◼   ► There was an HD Home Run Prime 6, but they canceled that.

00:27:30 ◼   ► But again, they say they're, the Silicon Dust says

00:27:32 ◼   ► they are going to make another cable card product,

00:27:34 ◼   ► and I wonder what that will be.

00:27:36 ◼   ► - Well, but you could, one of the things

00:27:37 ◼   ► to speak about flexibility, as you had said earlier,

00:27:40 ◼   ► one of the things you could do is you could get

00:27:42 ◼   ► a second HD Home Run box and put a second cable card in it,

00:27:46 ◼   ► and now you have six tuners.

00:27:47 ◼   ► You're not gonna do that because A, you're giving up on it,

00:27:49 ◼   ► and B, I'm gonna make you ship me that one

00:27:51 ◼   ► that Ben shipped to you, but that's neither here nor there.

00:27:54 ◼   ► But it is something that you could--

00:27:56 ◼   ► - I'm not shipping it to you.

00:27:57 ◼   ► Like I might still use it, but here's the problem.

00:28:00 ◼   ► I mean, that's the problem with cable card, right?

00:28:02 ◼   ► If you get another one, chances are good,

00:28:05 ◼   ► and it's definitely true in the case of Verizon Fios,

00:28:08 ◼   ► that you will have to pay per month per cable card.

00:28:11 ◼   ► I do.

00:28:12 ◼   ► Each cable card I have in my house,

00:28:13 ◼   ► they make you pay for.

00:28:14 ◼   ► 'Cause I'm not paying them for any of their cable box crap

00:28:17 ◼   ► 'cause they don't have any of that.

00:28:18 ◼   ► I don't use their router or use any of that.

00:28:19 ◼   ► But for each cable card, it's like five bucks a month

00:28:21 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:28:22 ◼   ► So I'd have to pay an additional five months a month

00:28:24 ◼   ► just to get the cable card.

00:28:25 ◼   ► The hardware itself is cheap.

00:28:26 ◼   ► I think the HDHorn Prime, again, this is a product

00:28:29 ◼   ► introduced in 2011.

00:28:32 ◼   ► It's like 100 and something bucks.

00:28:33 ◼   ► - It's 150 bucks, I believe.

00:28:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, if you can find one new and use it,

00:28:37 ◼   ► probably even less than that.

00:28:38 ◼   ► But it's a very simple device.

00:28:39 ◼   ► To understand what this device is,

00:28:40 ◼   ► in fact, it's a little bit too simple.

00:28:42 ◼   ► It's a plastic box that you plug a coaxial cable into,

00:28:45 ◼   ► a cable card into, ethernet and power.

00:28:47 ◼   ► And it doesn't do anything.

00:28:49 ◼   ► It doesn't decode any video.

00:28:51 ◼   ► It doesn't, like, it just accepts what's coming in

00:28:53 ◼   ► on the coax, uses the cable card to tune

00:28:56 ◼   ► to one of three possible channels,

00:28:58 ◼   ► it supports three tuners,

00:28:59 ◼   ► and makes that content available through ethernet.

00:29:02 ◼   ► And then, you know, it has power, I think.

00:29:04 ◼   ► And it's so light, and the coaxial cables are so thick,

00:29:07 ◼   ► it's hard to make it lay on a flat surface

00:29:11 ◼   ► 'cause it always tilts up, 'cause the cables,

00:29:13 ◼   ► that was another problem, I had to go buy a cable splitter.

00:29:15 ◼   ► When's the last time anyone's done that?

00:29:16 ◼   ► I had to buy a two-way cable splitter,

00:29:18 ◼   ► because I realized when I was gonna hook it up,

00:29:20 ◼   ► The back of my television area just has one coax

00:29:24 ◼   ► that goes to the TiVo.

00:29:25 ◼   ► I don't have another one, so I had to buy a splitter

00:29:27 ◼   ► and two very short cables to split that

00:29:29 ◼   ► into one going to my TiVo and one going to the HDO.

00:29:32 ◼   ► It is small box, but it doesn't really lay flat.

00:29:36 ◼   ► And dealing with cable cards,

00:29:37 ◼   ► if you've never dealt with them before, is a pain.

00:29:39 ◼   ► Not because of anything having to do with HDO and Prime,

00:29:41 ◼   ► but just having to do with cable cards being a pain.

00:29:42 ◼   ► Like I don't endorse cable cards,

00:29:44 ◼   ► but it'll be sad when they go away,

00:29:46 ◼   ► because this same cable card works with a six tuner TiVo.

00:29:49 ◼   ► I don't know what the limit is,

00:29:50 ◼   ► but the number of tuners is not in the card.

00:29:52 ◼   ► It's a multi-stream card.

00:29:53 ◼   ► It's like inherent in the box itself.

00:29:55 ◼   ► So that's kind of a shame.

00:29:56 ◼   ► So yeah, like using the interface,

00:30:01 ◼   ► my main complaint is that it's less information dense

00:30:03 ◼   ► than TiVo.

00:30:04 ◼   ► TiVo is an older interface where it's, you know,

00:30:06 ◼   ► it's kind of like Gmail where you can go to the compact

00:30:07 ◼   ► view, which is the view I use where you just have like

00:30:09 ◼   ► line items, whereas channels is more modern.

00:30:12 ◼   ► It looks more like Plex.

00:30:12 ◼   ► Like they want to show you a large poster images

00:30:16 ◼   ► of the things that you're watching, right?

00:30:18 ◼   ► But when you record the amount of content I do,

00:30:21 ◼   ► having the list of things that you've recorded

00:30:24 ◼   ► be more information dense and just like a list view

00:30:26 ◼   ► instead of an icon view really helps.

00:30:28 ◼   ► And there is a list view in channels,

00:30:29 ◼   ► but even the list view is tall

00:30:31 ◼   ► because they show the thumbnail images

00:30:32 ◼   ► and a bunch of other stuff about it.

00:30:33 ◼   ► There's other things where it's like trickier

00:30:35 ◼   ► to get it to the feature that you want

00:30:37 ◼   ► from the screen that you're on,

00:30:38 ◼   ► so you have to go back or whatever,

00:30:39 ◼   ► but mostly it's just what you're used to.

00:30:41 ◼   ► I'm definitely used to TiVo,

00:30:43 ◼   ► and I have both TiVo interfaces, both the old one,

00:30:46 ◼   ► which in my opinion was better, but of course looks old,

00:30:48 ◼   ► and the new one, which is worse but looks more modern.

00:30:52 ◼   ► Both of those interfaces, I think, are a little bit better,

00:30:55 ◼   ► especially in the recording list than Channels.

00:30:56 ◼   ► Channels has an enhanced library view

00:30:58 ◼   ► that lets you sort things if you have lots of content,

00:31:00 ◼   ► but that's more for like if you point it

00:31:04 ◼   ► to your Plex library, which is the thing

00:31:05 ◼   ► that you can do as well.

00:31:06 ◼   ► You can just say, hey, by the way, Channels,

00:31:08 ◼   ► this is the advantage of Channels.

00:31:09 ◼   ► Not only do I have an HTML1 Prime,

00:31:11 ◼   ► but also you can get these channels in my over the air thing

00:31:13 ◼   ► and also I have a bunch of crap in my,

00:31:16 ◼   ► you know, Synology over here,

00:31:17 ◼   ► and it will just merge it into one giant thing

00:31:19 ◼   ► and just eat it all up, right?

00:31:20 ◼   ► And if you have that much content,

00:31:22 ◼   ► things like the enhanced library view

00:31:23 ◼   ► and virtual channels and everything

00:31:24 ◼   ► help you organize things.

00:31:25 ◼   ► But like I said in the beginning,

00:31:27 ◼   ► my goal is to get better quality television content,

00:31:31 ◼   ► and channels is not helping with that

00:31:33 ◼   ► because Fios only gives me a certain quality.

00:31:34 ◼   ► So it seems like the result of all my experimentation here

00:31:37 ◼   ► is almost nobody gives you any of those channels

00:31:42 ◼   ► in better than 1080 content.

00:31:44 ◼   ► My quote-unquote cable provider does not,

00:31:47 ◼   ► like except for those few 4K channels.

00:31:50 ◼   ► YouTube TV is the only thing that does,

00:31:52 ◼   ► and even YouTube TV does not have a lot of 4K channels.

00:31:56 ◼   ► I found one or two of them and they were like HGTV

00:31:59 ◼   ► or Discovery or something,

00:32:00 ◼   ► like stuff that I mostly don't watch.

00:32:02 ◼   ► I was just looking at them to see the 4K content,

00:32:04 ◼   ► but I would have to go through every single channel

00:32:06 ◼   ► on YouTube TV and see like what fraction of a percent

00:32:10 ◼   ► actually provide 4K content.

00:32:12 ◼   ► And I think if I did TV Everywhere to YouTube TV,

00:32:15 ◼   ► if I had subscribed to it, it would not be 4K.

00:32:19 ◼   ► Now, I say I think because I foolishly used up

00:32:22 ◼   ► my free trial of YouTube TV last time when I tried it,

00:32:26 ◼   ► 'cause it said, oh, sign up for a free trial.

00:32:28 ◼   ► And I did, and I played with it,

00:32:29 ◼   ► and I didn't like the interface and whatever

00:32:31 ◼   ► I talked about on the show, and I canceled the free trial,

00:32:32 ◼   ► 'cause it's really expensive.

00:32:33 ◼   ► It was like $84, 'cause it's like 60 bucks

00:32:36 ◼   ► plus 11 bucks for the 4K thing or whatever.

00:32:39 ◼   ► It would have been 80-something dollars

00:32:41 ◼   ► if I had paid for even just one month of it.

00:32:43 ◼   ► And that's too much for an experiment,

00:32:45 ◼   ► so I canceled it, right?

00:32:46 ◼   ► But now it won't let me, or apparently anyone

00:32:49 ◼   ► in my household, sign up for the free trial again.

00:32:51 ◼   ► I can do the free for 20 minutes thing,

00:32:54 ◼   ► like you can always do the free for 20 minutes thing

00:32:55 ◼   ► if you go into the web UI, it says try it free

00:32:57 ◼   ► for 20 minutes, but that just lets you use the web UI.

00:32:59 ◼   ► To use it with channels, you have to have a login that works

00:33:02 ◼   ► and by the way, no limitation of channels,

00:33:04 ◼   ► if you have two factor, you can't use TV everywhere

00:33:07 ◼   ► with YouTube TV, so the suggestion is to make

00:33:10 ◼   ► family group and then make a new account in the family group that doesn't have two factor

00:33:13 ◼   ► turned down and use that to authenticate them.

00:33:14 ◼   ► But anyway, I couldn't do any of that because I just can't sign up for YouTube TV unless

00:33:19 ◼   ► I pay 80 something bucks.

00:33:20 ◼   ► Or I can't sign up for YouTube TV with 4k unless I pay 80 something bucks and I wasn't

00:33:24 ◼   ► willing to do that.

00:33:25 ◼   ► But from everything that I've heard, even though YouTube TV does have channels in 4k,

00:33:29 ◼   ► it doesn't have a lot of those channels and channels can't get those channels in 4k through

00:33:37 ◼   ► the TV ever interface due to the limitations of what is vended by YouTube TV.

00:33:42 ◼   ► So I still haven't hooked up to my TV.

00:33:44 ◼   ► I still did a couple season passes with it.

00:33:46 ◼   ► The reason I still have hooked up is because one of the advantages that channels has over

00:33:51 ◼   ► TiVo is it has commercial auto skip.

00:33:55 ◼   ► TiVo still makes you hit a button, a single button granted, but a button to skip over

00:33:59 ◼   ► all the channels.

00:34:00 ◼   ► And I think TiVo has like, I don't know what they have doing this, they have something

00:34:03 ◼   ► server side on their end marking the beginning and the end of the channels.

00:34:07 ◼   ► But with channels, I should call it get channels

00:34:09 ◼   ► 'cause that's what I don't like Googling.

00:34:10 ◼   ► I always have Google for get channels,

00:34:12 ◼   ► otherwise you don't find anything

00:34:13 ◼   ► 'cause getchannels.com is a website.

00:34:14 ◼   ► Anyway, with channels, the service,

00:34:18 ◼   ► the TV, the commercial skipping happens

00:34:20 ◼   ► because they run a little command line thing

00:34:22 ◼   ► on your server to find the channels for you.

00:34:24 ◼   ► It's called commskip and I ran it from the command line

00:34:25 ◼   ► a few times to see what it's like.

00:34:27 ◼   ► - You keep conflating channels and commercials.

00:34:29 ◼   ► You keep saying, they had to skip the channels for you.

00:34:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, to skip the commercials, sorry, yes.

00:34:34 ◼   ► Commskip for skipping commercials.

00:34:36 ◼   ► And that's handy because you're not then dependent on,

00:34:40 ◼   ► you know, TiVo to find the commercials for you.

00:34:42 ◼   ► Now TiVo does a really good job of finding the commercials,

00:34:44 ◼   ► but if they didn't do a good job,

00:34:45 ◼   ► or if you're watching some really obscure thing

00:34:46 ◼   ► that they didn't mark the channels in,

00:34:48 ◼   ► or the commercials in, you're out of luck.

00:34:52 ◼   ► Whereas again, the flexibility of channels,

00:34:54 ◼   ► it just runs that command on everything.

00:34:57 ◼   ► And if it doesn't find the commercials for you,

00:34:59 ◼   ► you can tweak the parameters, tweak the any file

00:35:01 ◼   ► to find the commercials or whatever.

00:35:03 ◼   ► And then when you're watching,

00:35:04 ◼   ► you can configure it to auto skip the commercials for you

00:35:06 ◼   ► instead of having you hit a button.

00:35:07 ◼   ► You can also configure it to hit a button or whatever.

00:35:09 ◼   ► So anyway, I threw some season passes into channels

00:35:12 ◼   ► for some shows that I would normally watch on my TiVo.

00:35:15 ◼   ► And it is kind of annoying to have to remember

00:35:17 ◼   ► to skip the channels with the remote.

00:35:19 ◼   ► It's nicer to just sit there and have it skip over them.

00:35:21 ◼   ► So I'm gonna leave it connected for a while

00:35:23 ◼   ► and try that out.

00:35:24 ◼   ► I've already paid for one month of channels,

00:35:25 ◼   ► which is like eight bucks or something.

00:35:27 ◼   ► So it's not a big commitment.

00:35:29 ◼   ► You can get a savings if you pay for the annual thing

00:35:30 ◼   ► but I didn't.

00:35:31 ◼   ► So that's what I'm doing so far.

00:35:33 ◼   ► I'm gonna play with channels for as long as I can

00:35:38 ◼   ► until my wife demands that her cable card

00:35:41 ◼   ► goes back into her TiVo,

00:35:43 ◼   ► or demands that I get the server off of her device.

00:35:45 ◼   ► But my quest continues for superior quality content

00:35:51 ◼   ► for my television.

00:35:52 ◼   ► I'm assuming that what will happen

00:35:54 ◼   ► as all these cable card things slowly fade away

00:35:57 ◼   ► is that someday I will be able to stop paying

00:35:59 ◼   ► for cable television,

00:36:01 ◼   ► which may not lower my bill as much as you would think,

00:36:04 ◼   ► because I get one of those big packages

00:36:05 ◼   ► that does telephone, television, and my internet.

00:36:08 ◼   ► And I love my internet,

00:36:09 ◼   ► I'm never gonna stop paying for that.

00:36:11 ◼   ► But they really want you to buy

00:36:12 ◼   ► the other stuff from them as well.

00:36:15 ◼   ► So maybe someday it will no longer be worth it to me

00:36:19 ◼   ► to buy the big television package,

00:36:20 ◼   ► but it's gonna be a while I think,

00:36:21 ◼   ► because if I downgraded my TV service to the minimum

00:36:26 ◼   ► or discontinued it entirely,

00:36:29 ◼   ► and then individually paid for,

00:36:31 ◼   ► Showtime, AMC, HBO, like all that stuff

00:36:36 ◼   ► with their individual service plans,

00:36:39 ◼   ► I think it would still end up being more expensive

00:36:41 ◼   ► than the current bundle that I pay for

00:36:43 ◼   ► due to all of the bundling discounts, but we'll see.

00:36:45 ◼   ► But anyway, when that happens,

00:36:47 ◼   ► presumably the streaming services

00:36:49 ◼   ► will start sending 4K content to me.

00:36:51 ◼   ► And then in terms of DVR solutions, I don't know,

00:36:55 ◼   ► 'cause channels reliant on that TV Everywhere thing,

00:36:57 ◼   ► that just seems like an API kind of like cable card

00:36:59 ◼   ► that these companies don't want to keep supporting

00:37:03 ◼   ► if they don't have to.

00:37:05 ◼   ► So I'm not sure what the future of DVRing stuff is

00:37:07 ◼   ► in the streaming only world.

00:37:10 ◼   ► If it's streaming, you don't need to DVR most of the time,

00:37:12 ◼   ► but I don't know, maybe for live content or local channels

00:37:16 ◼   ► that will, you know, anyway,

00:37:17 ◼   ► as always TV is a big giant mess,

00:37:19 ◼   ► but now I have one more potential tool in my arsenal

00:37:21 ◼   ► if and when my TiVo's every die.

00:37:23 ◼   ► Oh, and as part of this whole experience,

00:37:25 ◼   ► I was looking again, taking a harder look

00:37:27 ◼   ► at the current crop of TiVos.

00:37:31 ◼   ► And they're still-- my ancient TiVo still

00:37:35 ◼   ► holds more stuff in it.

00:37:36 ◼   ► And I kind of still like the fact

00:37:38 ◼   ► that it's running the old UI instead of the new one,

00:37:40 ◼   ► because I don't like the new UI as much.

00:37:43 ◼   ► I would like it if TiVo continued to survive.

00:37:45 ◼   ► And I would like it if they introduced a new TiVo device

00:37:47 ◼   ► that is better than the one I have.

00:37:49 ◼   ► But so far, if I was to buy the brand new one now,

00:37:51 ◼   ► it has one terabyte less storage,

00:37:53 ◼   ► which is annoying to expand.

00:37:55 ◼   ► You can expand it.

00:37:56 ◼   ► but it's annoying to expand internally

00:37:59 ◼   ► and externally it's big and clunky to expand.

00:38:02 ◼   ► And they use 2.5 inch drives now,

00:38:04 ◼   ► whereas my current one uses a 3.5 inch,

00:38:05 ◼   ► which sounds old and clunky to you,

00:38:07 ◼   ► but reliability wise the 3.5 inches are,

00:38:09 ◼   ► in my experience have been better than a 2.5.

00:38:11 ◼   ► I have a TiVo bolt with a 2.5,

00:38:13 ◼   ► the drive already died once,

00:38:15 ◼   ► I've never lost a 3.5 inch drive in any of my TiVos.

00:38:18 ◼   ► So I'm not sure what I'm gonna do there.

00:38:20 ◼   ► But anyway, it was a fun experiment.

00:38:21 ◼   ► The experiment is still running.

00:38:23 ◼   ► I will update you on how things go,

00:38:25 ◼   ► but it is tend to be slightly disappointed that I can't find that not only that I can't

00:38:30 ◼   ► find but basically it doesn't exist higher quality versions of most of the regular television

00:38:35 ◼   ► channels oh and I'll add that the 720 and 1080 ones are just always so massively compressed

00:38:40 ◼   ► and gross looking that's another reason people recommend a YouTube TV they said even if you

00:38:43 ◼   ► just looking at stuff in 720 or 1080 it's less compressed than it is on Fios because

00:38:48 ◼   ► in Fios they have to jam all the channels into these little slivers of their bandwidth

00:38:51 ◼   ► to your house.

00:38:52 ◼   ► - God, I am just so happy that I don't care

00:38:55 ◼   ► nearly as much as you do about TV

00:38:58 ◼   ► and the fidelity of the TV shows that you're watching on TV

00:39:01 ◼   ► because to me, this entire setup,

00:39:04 ◼   ► it sounds like, it's like, I wanna read a lot of articles.

00:39:07 ◼   ► So what I do is I have every magazine ever published

00:39:10 ◼   ► mailed to my house.

00:39:11 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:39:11 ◼   ► And then I have an array of six scanners.

00:39:14 ◼   ► Oh wait, you want me to go down to three scanners?

00:39:15 ◼   ► That's not gonna be enough.

00:39:16 ◼   ► I need six scanners running in parallel

00:39:17 ◼   ► to scan all these magazines coming into my house

00:39:19 ◼   ► all the time so I can digitize them

00:39:21 ◼   ► to put them on my computer so I can read them where I want to read them and how I want to

00:39:24 ◼   ► read them. But I can't just go to their websites because it's slightly different in some way.

00:39:28 ◼   ► Well, I mean, that's the nature of broadcast. But yeah, it is annoying. Like I said, if

00:39:32 ◼   ► we go all streaming, everything is available on demand and at higher quality whenever you

00:39:36 ◼   ► want, that's ideal. Very often, like when I watch HBO, we usually just go to the app

00:39:41 ◼   ► on Apple TV rather than the TiVo, which may have also recorded the show, just because

00:39:45 ◼   ► it's more convenient, faster, and often seems like it's in higher quality than what you

00:39:49 ◼   ► I don't know if it is, but it seems like it is, whether it's bitrate or if it's 4K or

00:39:55 ◼   ► HDR, I would prefer to use the app over that.

00:39:58 ◼   ► But not everything has an app.

00:40:00 ◼   ► And especially for local things, and this is not relevant to me, but especially for

00:40:04 ◼   ► things like local sports and stuff, we'll get there eventually.

00:40:07 ◼   ► But again, I think this is another potential advantage for channels if they can ever cross

00:40:12 ◼   ► this divide, which is it will take input from anywhere that it can get it in the best quality

00:40:17 ◼   ► that it can get it.

00:40:18 ◼   ► The question is the last part in the best quality they can get it.

00:40:22 ◼   ► Will channels and other third-party things be able to get content in good quality or

00:40:26 ◼   ► will we be forced to use this giant constellation of streaming apps to get stuff?

00:40:35 ◼   ► Christina Warren had a good tweet where she was quoting Jim Barksdale, I think, the guy

00:40:40 ◼   ► from Netscape or maybe Sun, saying that there are only two business models, bundling and

00:40:44 ◼   ► unbundling.

00:40:45 ◼   ► And we are currently in the process of going out of unbundling and back into bundling.

00:40:50 ◼   ► When we paid for cable and it was like, "Oh, I gotta pay for this dual-bundle of channels,

00:40:53 ◼   ► I don't care about ESPN but it adds $15 to my monthly fee or whatever," that was a giant

00:40:58 ◼   ► bundle.

00:40:59 ◼   ► It's like, "It's great if I could just pick and choose the services that I wanted."

00:41:00 ◼   ► I think we had that discussion on this very show many years ago.

00:41:03 ◼   ► Now I can just pay for what I want.

00:41:04 ◼   ► Well, I want HBO and I want Showtime.

00:41:05 ◼   ► That was the unbundling, right?

00:41:08 ◼   ► You'd pay for a streaming service.

00:41:09 ◼   ► You'd pay for HBO Now or HBO Go or whatever the hell one it is, and you'd pay for Showtime

00:41:14 ◼   ► anywhere or whatever the hell that thing is called and so you didn't have to pay

00:41:18 ◼   ► for the big package but the individual bundles ended up being really expensive

00:41:22 ◼   ► and now those individual bundle companies are consolidating so it was

00:41:25 ◼   ► like Warner Brothers, HBO, Discovery are combining into one app and you got

00:41:29 ◼   ► Paramount Plus or whatever so now we're in the it seems like we're going towards

00:41:32 ◼   ► unbundling where we're gonna end up with a series of larger packages and so

00:41:37 ◼   ► instead of paying for a bunch of individual quote-unquote channels you'll

00:41:40 ◼   ► play for Disney+, Apple TV+, Discovery/HBO+, Paramount+, and each one of those things will

00:41:47 ◼   ► have tons of content not equivalent to just one channel in it.

00:41:51 ◼   ► Will they ever go into a super bundle where Fios will sell you a package where you pay

00:41:56 ◼   ► a monthly fee to Verizon and then you get access to the HBO app, the Showtime app, the

00:42:01 ◼   ► Discovery app, or whatever?

00:42:02 ◼   ► Who knows?

00:42:03 ◼   ► But it seems like that's what phase we're in.

00:42:04 ◼   ► Eventually when we get over that hump, then we can use the power of the internet to get

00:42:09 ◼   ► 4k versions of all this stuff and no one will ever need to "DVR" anything because everything

00:42:13 ◼   ► will be available on demand with a smattering of live streams maybe over the air in 4k.

00:42:18 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:42:19 ◼   ► That's another thing I didn't try.

00:42:20 ◼   ► I didn't try over the air.

00:42:21 ◼   ► I think over the air content does have more 4k stuff, but I really don't want to deal

00:42:24 ◼   ► with antennas and I mostly don't care about live sports or anything like that.

00:42:28 ◼   ► Dealing with antennas is not bad.

00:42:30 ◼   ► You just get a different HD home run box, which this would be irrelevant for you because

00:42:33 ◼   ► you've got the cable card one.

00:42:35 ◼   ► I'm saying if this was something you or a listener wants to explore, this is what I

00:42:39 ◼   ► I have done actually is I have a

00:42:41 ◼   ► HD home run box that is not with a cable card. It just has coax Ethernet and power

00:42:47 ◼   ► And by the way, I you couldn't hear me because I was muted

00:42:50 ◼   ► But I was laughing when you said it is impossible to get this thing to sit on sit flush because mine is

00:42:55 ◼   ► Also is tilted at like a 45 degree angle for the exact same reasons very lightweight box. Yes, but anyways

00:43:00 ◼   ► the over-the-air antennas are

00:43:04 ◼   ► Really inexpensive they're well under $100 unless you want to get one that's super fancy

00:43:08 ◼   ► And I don't remember how much I paid for this HD Home Run box, but I think it was also like $100 or less.

00:43:13 ◼   ► And then that would give you over-the-air stuff. Again, in your situation, John, I don't think that's useful at all because the...

00:43:18 ◼   ► Well, I think the over-the-air might be higher quality than those same channels that I'm getting through Fios, though.

00:43:23 ◼   ► Like, that is a possibility.

00:43:24 ◼   ► Ah, it's possible.

00:43:25 ◼   ► I mean, I don't actually care about those channels, so it's not really relevant to me because I just don't watch those channels.

00:43:30 ◼   ► But I think over-the-air might actually be higher quality than the sliver of the coax that they give those channels on Fios.

00:43:36 ◼   ► Yeah, that's fair.

00:43:37 ◼   ► Also, I would love it if you could try,

00:43:40 ◼   ► or maybe you mentioned this

00:43:41 ◼   ► and I just blacked out for a second,

00:43:42 ◼   ► but I would love it if you could try to record

00:43:45 ◼   ► any of the 4K Fios channels using the cable card

00:43:48 ◼   ► and the HTML.

00:43:49 ◼   ► - I would have tried, but there's nothing airing on them.

00:43:52 ◼   ► - No, I hear you, but is there even a 4K sized,

00:43:57 ◼   ► not right now screen, you know what I mean?

00:43:58 ◼   ► 'Cause you could see if what channels saved.

00:44:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, I could try that.

00:44:02 ◼   ► I think one of the,

00:44:03 ◼   ► I think the one with the little Red Sox logo,

00:44:05 ◼   ► first of all, it had a day and a time

00:44:07 ◼   ► that the Red Sox game was gonna be on,

00:44:08 ◼   ► but I don't remember what day that was,

00:44:09 ◼   ► but I could wait for that.

00:44:10 ◼   ► And second, I think that might be 4K.

00:44:12 ◼   ► I'll double check on it to see what it produces.

00:44:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would love to know

00:44:16 ◼   ► if channels would successfully record in 4K.

00:44:19 ◼   ► I genuinely have no idea if it would or not,

00:44:21 ◼   ► but I think it's a fun experiment

00:44:23 ◼   ► that you should definitely try.

00:44:24 ◼   ► - I mean, I think it should.

00:44:25 ◼   ► Like, it doesn't care about it.

00:44:26 ◼   ► It's just files and streams.

00:44:28 ◼   ► - Agreed, and I think that the,

00:44:30 ◼   ► and what this, I think, more boils down to

00:44:32 ◼   ► is HD Home Run more than it does channels.

00:44:35 ◼   ► I would assume the HD home run is just basically using the cable card, and again, I'm outside

00:44:40 ◼   ► my comfort zone now, using the cable card to decrypt, decode, whatever the stuff that's

00:44:44 ◼   ► coming in over coax and then just basically dump those bits right to the network.

00:44:49 ◼   ► Yeah, it has no idea what the content is.

00:44:52 ◼   ► So I think that is true.

00:44:53 ◼   ► And I believe my cable cards, from the research I did, the cable card itself is capable of

00:44:58 ◼   ► handling 4K content.

00:45:00 ◼   ► I think that's how the Verizon channels work.

00:45:02 ◼   ► It's just a question of what downstream of that can handle it.

00:45:04 ◼   ► So for example, my TiVo can't handle 4K content.

00:45:08 ◼   ► It's just too old.

00:45:08 ◼   ► It predates 4K.

00:45:09 ◼   ► So even though my cable card could put that out,

00:45:11 ◼   ► the TiVo is just going to show you 1080 no matter what.

00:45:14 ◼   ► If you've got one of the newer TiVos,

00:45:15 ◼   ► the newer TiVos say they are 4K capable,

00:45:18 ◼   ► but I'm pretty sure what they mean is we support streaming

00:45:22 ◼   ► apps.

00:45:22 ◼   ► If your streaming service supports 4K,

00:45:25 ◼   ► our apps can show it.

00:45:26 ◼   ► So you could use the Netflix app on the TiVo

00:45:28 ◼   ► to show 4K content, and it would work.

00:45:31 ◼   ► I don't think it means that we can show 4K content

00:45:34 ◼   ► your cable car but I'm not going to buy one of those to find out.

00:45:38 ◼   ► We are sponsored this week by Collide. IT admins often feel like they have to choose

00:45:42 ◼   ► between their commitment to cybersecurity and their duty to protect their employees'

00:45:46 ◼   ► privacy. Naturally, you need to safeguard company data against hacks and breaches, but

00:45:50 ◼   ► you don't want to turn your workplace into 1984. Traditional MDMs give the IT team complete

00:45:55 ◼   ► access and control over company devices, but since employees are inevitably going to use

00:45:59 ◼   ► their work laptops for personal activities, these tools can saddle you with surveillance

00:46:03 ◼   ► capabilities you never wanted, like access to photos and browser history.

00:46:08 ◼   ► Before you know it, your end users are complaining about all the security agents slowing down

00:46:10 ◼   ► their laptops, developers are frustrated by the lack of autonomy, and people start secretly

00:46:15 ◼   ► working on their personal devices just to get things done.

00:46:18 ◼   ► It's easy to fall into the trap of top-down security, but it's not the only option.

00:46:22 ◼   ► Collide is an endpoint security solution built around honest security.

00:46:26 ◼   ► Their philosophy is that employees aren't your biggest security risk, they're your

00:46:29 ◼   ► biggest allies, and your relationship with them should be based on transparency and informed

00:46:34 ◼   ► consent.

00:46:35 ◼   ► Collide works by notifying your employees of security issues via Slack, educating them

00:46:38 ◼   ► on why they're important, and giving them step-by-step instructions on how to resolve

00:46:41 ◼   ► them themselves.

00:46:43 ◼   ► For IT and security teams, Collide provides the right level of visibility for Mac, Windows,

00:46:47 ◼   ► and Linux devices, and it addresses high-risk issues that can't be solved through brute

00:46:51 ◼   ► force or automation.

00:46:53 ◼   ► And your end users can see exactly why and how every piece of data is being collected

00:46:57 ◼   ► by Collide's User Privacy Center and their open source code base.

00:47:01 ◼   ► You can meet your security goals without compromising your values.

00:47:05 ◼   ► Visit collide.com/ATP to find out how.

00:47:09 ◼   ► If you follow that link, they will hook you up with a goodie bag just for activating a

00:47:12 ◼   ► free trial.

00:47:14 ◼   ► That's Collide, that's K-O-L-I-D-E.

00:47:17 ◼   ► Collide.com/ATP.

00:47:20 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Collide for sponsoring our show.

00:47:23 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:47:26 ◼   ► One final thing on televisions,

00:47:29 ◼   ► another TV setup thing that I was doing recently

00:47:31 ◼   ► is audio sync and audio delay.

00:47:35 ◼   ► Maybe I did this on my past TV,

00:47:37 ◼   ► but I don't remember it being quite as painful, right?

00:47:40 ◼   ► So to get an idea of what I'm talking about,

00:47:43 ◼   ► have you ever watched something on television

00:47:45 ◼   ► and it seems like the person's lips are not in sync

00:47:48 ◼   ► with what they're saying?

00:47:49 ◼   ► And no, not because it's dubbed into a different length.

00:47:51 ◼   ► That's the situation I was feeling

00:47:53 ◼   ► when I was watching television on some things.

00:47:56 ◼   ► I'm like, oh, I should set the audio sync up.

00:47:59 ◼   ► Because I'm using a receiver,

00:48:00 ◼   ► pretty much every receiver has a setting

00:48:03 ◼   ► where you can adjust the audio delay to match the video.

00:48:07 ◼   ► And I don't remember how I did this last time.

00:48:09 ◼   ► Maybe last time I just did it by eyeball,

00:48:12 ◼   ► but I find it incredibly difficult to use a setting

00:48:16 ◼   ► to go to increase and decrease the delay

00:48:19 ◼   ► to get the audio to match someone's lips.

00:48:23 ◼   ► It's way harder than you think it is.

00:48:25 ◼   ► So I'm gonna give some tips for what I am doing.

00:48:27 ◼   ► So my first tip is, use a documentary.

00:48:31 ◼   ► You cannot use a movie or a television show to do this

00:48:34 ◼   ► because there's so much ADR,

00:48:36 ◼   ► additional dialogue recording or whatever,

00:48:37 ◼   ► so much of the time,

00:48:38 ◼   ► the audio you hear coming out of someone's mouth

00:48:40 ◼   ► is not what the actor said in that moment

00:48:43 ◼   ► that they are being recorded on video.

00:48:44 ◼   ► It is later they came in and re-recorded the audio.

00:48:47 ◼   ► So use a documentary, because they tend not

00:48:49 ◼   ► to do ADR in documentaries.

00:48:51 ◼   ► At least I really hope they don't,

00:48:52 ◼   ► have the people come in later and try to match

00:48:54 ◼   ► what they said earlier.

00:48:56 ◼   ► So what I was using was the--

00:48:59 ◼   ► what was it called--

00:48:59 ◼   ► Light and Magic, the ILM documentaries on Disney+.

00:49:03 ◼   ► There's lots of interviews with talking heads and people

00:49:06 ◼   ► sitting there, and I figured that's

00:49:07 ◼   ► got to be like live audio, because it's all just

00:49:09 ◼   ► interviewing people.

00:49:12 ◼   ► But then I tried to do it by eye, and I just can't do it.

00:49:16 ◼   ► Sometimes I can't even tell which direction

00:49:18 ◼   ► should I be going.

00:49:19 ◼   ► Should I be going negative delay or positive delay?

00:49:22 ◼   ► I can tell when it looks wrong, but I can't convince myself

00:49:25 ◼   ► that it looks right.

00:49:26 ◼   ► I needed a better tool for this.

00:49:28 ◼   ► I was hoping there'd be some automated tool that would do it,

00:49:31 ◼   ► but I didn't find any.

00:49:33 ◼   ► So if you Google for this, you will find various applications

00:49:37 ◼   ► that will--

00:49:38 ◼   ► not applications, videos that will help you with this.

00:49:41 ◼   ► So here's the one I used.

00:49:42 ◼   ► I will put this link in the show notes.

00:49:44 ◼   ► maybe Margo can make it the chapter art.

00:49:47 ◼   ► This is a video available on YouTube.

00:49:50 ◼   ► There is a bunch of ones like this.

00:49:52 ◼   ► And it just shows an animation with like a bar

00:49:56 ◼   ► across the screen with a little highlight

00:49:58 ◼   ► that goes from left to right.

00:50:00 ◼   ► It goes, "Zoop, zoop, zoop," left and right.

00:50:01 ◼   ► And when the little highlight hits exactly in the middle,

00:50:04 ◼   ► there's a beep.

00:50:05 ◼   ► And it's got a bunch of things.

00:50:07 ◼   ► It's got four circles that appear on the lower left.

00:50:10 ◼   ► It's got a bar graph that hits the top.

00:50:12 ◼   ► But the main important thing is the little white highlight

00:50:15 ◼   ► and the bar that hits the zero point when the beep goes.

00:50:19 ◼   ► And it's got little millisecond markings.

00:50:21 ◼   ► And what you're supposed to do

00:50:23 ◼   ► is just play this looping video.

00:50:25 ◼   ► They think they want you to eyeball it.

00:50:27 ◼   ► They say, "You should hear the beep

00:50:29 ◼   ► "when the highlight is in the middle."

00:50:30 ◼   ► Even this I found so hard to do

00:50:33 ◼   ► 'cause it goes by so fast and I'm staring at it

00:50:35 ◼   ► and I'm like, "Is it beeping when it's in the middle?"

00:50:38 ◼   ► You can convince yourself

00:50:39 ◼   ► that it is beeping when it's in the middle.

00:50:42 ◼   ► But then when I did it, okay, like, I was like,

00:50:44 ◼   ► okay, I think it's in the middle.

00:50:45 ◼   ► But then I would look at a bar that's like five bars

00:50:47 ◼   ► to the left, and I can convince myself that it's beeping

00:50:49 ◼   ► when it hits the fifth bar to the left.

00:50:51 ◼   ► And I can also convince myself that it's beeping

00:50:53 ◼   ► when it hits the fifth bar to the right.

00:50:54 ◼   ► It's just too fast for my eyeballs to handle.

00:50:56 ◼   ► Maybe we need a young person or a Jedi, I don't know.

00:50:59 ◼   ► I could not do it.

00:51:01 ◼   ► So this screenshot that I just put in the chat

00:51:04 ◼   ► and then we'll put in the show notes,

00:51:06 ◼   ► here's what I actually did.

00:51:07 ◼   ► I used the 240 frames per second slow-mo video recording

00:51:10 ◼   ► on my iPhone to record a video of the video playing

00:51:15 ◼   ► on my TV, and then I brought it into iMovie

00:51:18 ◼   ► so I could see the waveform of the audio,

00:51:21 ◼   ► and if you see in the screenshot,

00:51:22 ◼   ► what I would do is I would say,

00:51:24 ◼   ► "I'm not gonna trust my ears to tell me

00:51:25 ◼   ► "when the beep is going.

00:51:27 ◼   ► "I want the highlight to be on zero when the beep,

00:51:31 ◼   ► "when the beep is playing."

00:51:33 ◼   ► And then I had to make a judgment call,

00:51:34 ◼   ► because if you see a beep in an audio waveform,

00:51:37 ◼   ► it's not just a single spike,

00:51:38 ◼   ► especially at 240 frames per second.

00:51:40 ◼   ► It's like a plateau.

00:51:42 ◼   ► So if you look at the waveform, it's like it has an attack

00:51:44 ◼   ► and then like, what is it called?

00:51:46 ◼   ► - Decay. - Decay.

00:51:47 ◼   ► I had to decide at what point do I want to align the zero.

00:51:51 ◼   ► I could have aligned the zero the first time

00:51:54 ◼   ► the waveform comes off silence,

00:51:57 ◼   ► like the second the beep begins,

00:51:59 ◼   ► but I'm like, that's probably not how this video is done.

00:52:01 ◼   ► They probably have the beep time to trigger at zero

00:52:05 ◼   ► for it to peak at zero maybe.

00:52:07 ◼   ► So I kind of split the difference.

00:52:08 ◼   ► So if you look at the screenshot,

00:52:09 ◼   ► this is what I decided to do.

00:52:10 ◼   ► I said, I want the highlight to be on zero

00:52:14 ◼   ► when the sound has sort of just began

00:52:18 ◼   ► and is near its peak before it starts to decay.

00:52:21 ◼   ► And you would think it wouldn't make

00:52:23 ◼   ► that much of a difference,

00:52:23 ◼   ► but if you adjust the delay by a tiny amount,

00:52:26 ◼   ► you can target the beginning of the waveform,

00:52:28 ◼   ► the middle of the waveform, the end of the waveform.

00:52:30 ◼   ► Again, this is naturally stretched out

00:52:31 ◼   ► 'cause it's 240 frames per second,

00:52:33 ◼   ► but I got it as close as I could.

00:52:34 ◼   ► And also in this screenshot,

00:52:35 ◼   ► you'll see the interface I was talking about last time

00:52:37 ◼   ► where it blacks out the screen

00:52:38 ◼   ► and shows this like ugly text.

00:52:39 ◼   ► That's my receiver's sound delay input thing.

00:52:43 ◼   ► And of course, you have to configure this per input

00:52:45 ◼   ► because it varies.

00:52:46 ◼   ► The good thing is that every single thing in my stack

00:52:49 ◼   ► has a YouTube app.

00:52:50 ◼   ► So I can play this YouTube video on all of them.

00:52:52 ◼   ► What I'm hoping is that the YouTube app has the same delay

00:52:56 ◼   ► as anything else, which I think it probably does

00:52:58 ◼   ► because in the end, the receiver doesn't know

00:53:00 ◼   ► what app you're running.

00:53:01 ◼   ► The receiver is just receiving audio

00:53:02 ◼   ► and the thing is just showing video.

00:53:05 ◼   ► So I did individual delays for all of my things.

00:53:09 ◼   ► They all had slightly different delays.

00:53:11 ◼   ► And I did it graphically,

00:53:13 ◼   ► by taking lots and lots of high resolution videos,

00:53:16 ◼   ► high speed videos and lining them up.

00:53:18 ◼   ► And then I would go back and adjust the delay

00:53:20 ◼   ► and then pull the stuff into iMovie and look at it again,

00:53:22 ◼   ► adjust the delay and go on and on and on.

00:53:24 ◼   ► And eventually I got them all lined up to my satisfaction.

00:53:28 ◼   ► And then I watched, you know, a documentary again.

00:53:30 ◼   ► And you can get so inside your head about this,

00:53:33 ◼   ► you can be like, are their lips matching?

00:53:35 ◼   ► How do people's lips move when they talk?

00:53:37 ◼   ► Some people's lips move differently than others

00:53:39 ◼   ► when saying the same words.

00:53:40 ◼   ► Some people don't move their lips a lot when they talk.

00:53:42 ◼   ► Some people do.

00:53:43 ◼   ► So I'd look for plosives,

00:53:45 ◼   ► 'cause you'd know when lips would come together

00:53:47 ◼   ► and then pop out with a P sound.

00:53:49 ◼   ► Anyway, I think I've got it dialed in

00:53:53 ◼   ► to be as close as humanly possible

00:53:56 ◼   ► using all the tools available to me.

00:53:57 ◼   ► But boy, would I love it if there wasn't a tool

00:54:00 ◼   ► that would do this for you.

00:54:01 ◼   ► If you have wireless speakers,

00:54:03 ◼   ► Apple TV has a speaker that says,

00:54:05 ◼   ► I will do audio sync for your wireless speakers.

00:54:08 ◼   ► And they want you to hold your phone up and do whatever,

00:54:09 ◼   ► but it only does it for wireless speakers

00:54:11 ◼   ► as far as I can tell.

00:54:12 ◼   ► And the other advice I'll give to anyone

00:54:14 ◼   ► who is going down this road is,

00:54:16 ◼   ► sound travels not that fast.

00:54:18 ◼   ► If you try to do this calibration

00:54:21 ◼   ► right next to your television,

00:54:22 ◼   ► it'll be wrong on your couch.

00:54:23 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:54:24 ◼   ► - If your couch like mine is 10 feet away.

00:54:25 ◼   ► Because like every foot is like,

00:54:27 ◼   ► I didn't do the math on this,

00:54:27 ◼   ► but every foot is like a millisecond or something like it's--

00:54:29 ◼   ► - I think it's about every meter.

00:54:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, or anyway, if your couch is 10 feet away

00:54:34 ◼   ► from your television like mine,

00:54:36 ◼   ► sit on the couch when you do it,

00:54:37 ◼   ► because you get different numbers

00:54:39 ◼   ► than if you were like an inch from the television, right?

00:54:41 ◼   ► And I found that out the hard way,

00:54:44 ◼   ► 'cause I did the first one really close to it,

00:54:46 ◼   ► and then I did the second one back,

00:54:47 ◼   ► and I'm like, wait a second,

00:54:48 ◼   ► these numbers are all different,

00:54:49 ◼   ► and so I had to read them all from the couch position.

00:54:52 ◼   ► Again, I don't remember going through all this pain

00:54:56 ◼   ► with my television earlier,

00:54:57 ◼   ► but that was so many years ago, maybe I did.

00:54:59 ◼   ► Maybe I'm just more sensitive to it,

00:55:00 ◼   ► because I was watching documentaries

00:55:03 ◼   ► where the lip sync should have been perfect,

00:55:04 ◼   ► but now as far as I can tell it is perfect

00:55:06 ◼   ► and hopefully it won't drift over time.

00:55:09 ◼   ► - This is one reason why I'm so happy

00:55:11 ◼   ► that I work with audio and not video.

00:55:14 ◼   ► There's just so many more things that can break you in video

00:55:17 ◼   ► or things you have to worry about.

00:55:18 ◼   ► Just audio only is so nice.

00:55:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:55:22 ◼   ► I wish the television or the receiver

00:55:25 ◼   ► had a way to do this visually because expecting humans,

00:55:27 ◼   ► people should play this game on like on your own.

00:55:30 ◼   ► If you don't have receiver,

00:55:31 ◼   ► you probably won't be able to play it.

00:55:31 ◼   ► - No, no, people should not play this.

00:55:33 ◼   ► Ignorance is bliss, no, no.

00:55:36 ◼   ► - If you don't have a receiver,

00:55:37 ◼   ► everything should be in sync anyway.

00:55:38 ◼   ► 'Cause remember, the delay I'm adjusting

00:55:40 ◼   ► is on the receiver itself.

00:55:41 ◼   ► Oh yeah, one other thing.

00:55:43 ◼   ► HDMI 2.1 supposedly has auto latency adjustment

00:55:46 ◼   ► built into the protocol,

00:55:48 ◼   ► and there is a setting on my receiver that says,

00:55:50 ◼   ► do you want me to adjust the latency automatically?

00:55:52 ◼   ► But it's on, it's on by default, right?

00:55:54 ◼   ► So it thinks it's doing that,

00:55:56 ◼   ► and then I had to decide, should I leave that setting on

00:55:59 ◼   ► and also do the auto delay,

00:56:00 ◼   ► or should I turn it off and do the auto delay?

00:56:02 ◼   ► In the end, I left it on and did the audio delay.

00:56:04 ◼   ► But I can tell you with that feature on,

00:56:05 ◼   ► that doesn't fix the delay.

00:56:07 ◼   ► Maybe it's getting closer or maybe it's screwing it up.

00:56:09 ◼   ► Either way, I left it on and dialed in the audio delay

00:56:12 ◼   ► on top of that.

00:56:13 ◼   ► So I don't know the deal with that feature is,

00:56:16 ◼   ► maybe it varies by receiver,

00:56:17 ◼   ► but just be aware that that is a thing.

00:56:19 ◼   ► And in theory, maybe it's not necessary in your setup.

00:56:21 ◼   ► But even if you just have something as simple as a soundbar

00:56:24 ◼   ► or any kind of receiver that is sort of decoding signals

00:56:27 ◼   ► or doing anything like that, you could experience this.

00:56:30 ◼   ► And all of my delays were positive.

00:56:34 ◼   ► So I think that's basically adding a delay to say,

00:56:37 ◼   ► yes, I didn't run out of receiver, you got the audio

00:56:39 ◼   ► and you're ready to play it right now,

00:56:41 ◼   ► but just hold back 120 milliseconds

00:56:43 ◼   ► and then play that audio

00:56:44 ◼   ► because then you'll be in sync with the television.

00:56:46 ◼   ► And it also may be related to the delays in the television.

00:56:49 ◼   ► So if you're doing lots of processing on the television

00:56:51 ◼   ► and it's slow, that may be inducing a delay.

00:56:53 ◼   ► So dial in your TV settings before you do this.

00:56:56 ◼   ► Make sure it's configured the way you want

00:56:58 ◼   ► with whatever features you're going to use

00:57:00 ◼   ► on your television and then do the audio delay

00:57:02 ◼   ► with whatever those video processing things are.

00:57:05 ◼   ► - And wait, it's 120 milliseconds?

00:57:06 ◼   ► That's a lot.

00:57:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I don't, again, I couldn't even tell

00:57:10 ◼   ► whether it was positive or negative doing it by hand,

00:57:12 ◼   ► but doing it graphically, there's no lying

00:57:14 ◼   ► about the waveforms, like there it is,

00:57:16 ◼   ► 240 frames per second, they were all positive.

00:57:18 ◼   ► They were positive somewhere around

00:57:21 ◼   ► the low hundred milliseconds.

00:57:23 ◼   ► - Wow.

00:57:23 ◼   ► We are sponsored this week by Linode,

00:57:27 ◼   ► my favorite place to run servers.

00:57:29 ◼   ► visit linode.com/atp and see why so many developers like me choose to run our servers at Linode.

00:57:37 ◼   ► I have run a lot of servers in my career and I've used a lot of different web hosts and

00:57:42 ◼   ► I am by far the happiest with Linode. I've been with them for the longest and I have

00:57:47 ◼   ► no reason to get up and leave because they are just the best. So first of all, they have

00:57:52 ◼   ► virtual servers. This is what you want if you need, you know, root access to install

00:57:55 ◼   ► whatever you want, configure whatever you want. You need a virtual server, also called

00:57:59 ◼   ► compute instance or cloud instance in a lot of places, that's what Linode is best in.

00:58:02 ◼   ► That's what they're known for.

00:58:03 ◼   ► They've had that forever.

00:58:04 ◼   ► And I use tons of those.

00:58:06 ◼   ► I think I have something like 25 servers at Linode, and I use those all the time.

00:58:10 ◼   ► They have great performance, great capabilities, and most of all, great pricing.

00:58:14 ◼   ► I love that they've been such a great value.

00:58:18 ◼   ► I've saved thousands of dollars every month on Linode compared to any other solution.

00:58:24 ◼   ► And I recently started using their new object storage,

00:58:27 ◼   ► which is an S3 compatible object storage system.

00:58:29 ◼   ► And it is remarkably good and remarkably good value.

00:58:34 ◼   ► Frankly, I can't believe how cheaply they're

00:58:37 ◼   ► delivering this to me.

00:58:38 ◼   ► And it's really great.

00:58:40 ◼   ► I don't want to ask too many questions

00:58:42 ◼   ► because it's almost suspiciously inexpensive.

00:58:45 ◼   ► I love it so, so much.

00:58:46 ◼   ► They also have a managed database product

00:58:48 ◼   ► they recently launched.

00:58:49 ◼   ► And all this is backed by incredible support.

00:58:52 ◼   ► If you ever need any kind of technical support or a question or anything like that, their

00:58:56 ◼   ► support is just amazing.

00:58:58 ◼   ► See for yourself at linode.com/atp.

00:59:02 ◼   ► Create a free account there and you get $100 in credit.

00:59:06 ◼   ► Once again, linode.com/atp.

00:59:09 ◼   ► See why they're such an amazing web host.

00:59:11 ◼   ► Let Linode take care of you so you can focus on your projects, not your infrastructure.

00:59:15 ◼   ► Thanks so much to Linode for sponsoring our show.

00:59:19 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:59:23 ◼   ► One more piece of follow-up.

00:59:24 ◼   ► This has been fascinating, but it's gone on longer

00:59:27 ◼   ► than I expected.

00:59:28 ◼   ► This has been going around a little while--

00:59:30 ◼   ► you're welcome, Marco.

00:59:31 ◼   ► This tweet or Twitter thread has been going around

00:59:33 ◼   ► for a little while.

00:59:34 ◼   ► This is by Nicky Tonski.

00:59:35 ◼   ► And it starts with, OK thread of weird stuff found

00:59:38 ◼   ► in the redesigned macOS Ventura system settings app.

00:59:41 ◼   ► And it's a series of images and videos and screen captures

00:59:46 ◼   ► and whatnot about how freaking broken

00:59:49 ◼   ► the system setting app is in Ventura,

00:59:51 ◼   ► and, ooh, it's rough, y'all, it's not good.

00:59:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, I was going to,

00:59:57 ◼   ► I wanted to see if this actually changed in beta,

01:00:00 ◼   ► I think it was beta five that was just released,

01:00:01 ◼   ► so I updated my MappleCare to that earlier today,

01:00:03 ◼   ► and I was poking around settings,

01:00:04 ◼   ► and I had that little thing that says,

01:00:07 ◼   ► you have 27 days left or whatever to add AppleCare,

01:00:10 ◼   ► and so I clicked on that,

01:00:11 ◼   ► and took a very long time to load,

01:00:13 ◼   ► it loaded a different screen in the meantime,

01:00:14 ◼   ► and then it eventually popped in,

01:00:16 ◼   ► and I clicked the like, Remind Me Later button,

01:00:19 ◼   ► and that has now frozen the system settings app

01:00:21 ◼   ► in such a way that I cannot quit it.

01:00:23 ◼   ► The whole thing is dimmed,

01:00:25 ◼   ► and it's dimmed as if it's showing a modal,

01:00:27 ◼   ► but it's no longer showing a modal,

01:00:28 ◼   ► and it's dimmed, and I'm stuck on the WiFi pane forever,

01:00:31 ◼   ► and I can't quit it.

01:00:32 ◼   ► So that's the state we're in. - Cool.

01:00:33 ◼   ► - I mean, this is just one of so many tiny ways

01:00:36 ◼   ► this is broken.

01:00:37 ◼   ► This app, I mean, look, this is the one that, you know,

01:00:40 ◼   ► people are complaining a lot about the design,

01:00:42 ◼   ► which is, I think, a very valid complaint to make.

01:00:45 ◼   ► It is all based on SwiftUI,

01:00:48 ◼   ► and people are blaming SwiftUI,

01:00:50 ◼   ► and I think that is partly responsible,

01:00:52 ◼   ► but not entirely responsible.

01:00:54 ◼   ► I think it is very possible to make great designs

01:00:57 ◼   ► and great apps with SwiftUI.

01:00:59 ◼   ► This is just not one of them.

01:01:00 ◼   ► But ultimately, this app, it feels really sloppy.

01:01:05 ◼   ► It feels half-baked and incomplete and buggy,

01:01:09 ◼   ► and the layouts are oftentimes very difficult

01:01:12 ◼   ► who understand, they oftentimes are very unattractive,

01:01:15 ◼   ► they look unpolished, this is not what you expect from Apple

01:01:19 ◼   ► this is something that you expect from Windows,

01:01:22 ◼   ► or worse, Windows has actually gotten better

01:01:24 ◼   ► than this recently, like this is not to Apple standards

01:01:29 ◼   ► and quite frankly, this in beta five might be acceptable

01:01:35 ◼   ► if it was beta one, but it's not,

01:01:39 ◼   ► like we're too far along now, I really don't think

01:01:42 ◼   ► this is salvageable.

01:01:42 ◼   ► And I think the only way Apple should go forward with this

01:01:47 ◼   ► is to, for this release for Ventura,

01:01:52 ◼   ► revert back to the old settings app

01:01:54 ◼   ► and work on this for the next year or two

01:01:56 ◼   ► and then ship it when it's ready.

01:01:57 ◼   ► This is not ready yet.

01:01:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's unclear what they're gonna do about this

01:02:02 ◼   ► because by the time we get a beta inside Apple,

01:02:05 ◼   ► it's gone much farther forward.

01:02:07 ◼   ► But like you said, it's like this is beta five,

01:02:09 ◼   ► it's not beta one.

01:02:10 ◼   ► People always complain like, stop, what are you talking about?

01:02:11 ◼   ► it's a beta, of course things are broken or whatever.

01:02:13 ◼   ► There is a cadence to betas.

01:02:16 ◼   ► Things are most broken in the first beta,

01:02:18 ◼   ► and then they're supposed to get better over time.

01:02:19 ◼   ► And there's a time horizon.

01:02:20 ◼   ► You can't leave something in a super-duper broken state,

01:02:23 ◼   ► and then it'll be all fixed in the very last beta.

01:02:26 ◼   ► Maybe if it's some minor thing or whatever,

01:02:27 ◼   ► but this is, there's a lot of things having to do

01:02:30 ◼   ► with opinion and usability and stuff,

01:02:32 ◼   ► but there are things that are just not opinion-based.

01:02:34 ◼   ► Like, for example, the confirmation button on a screen

01:02:38 ◼   ► being cut off so you can't read the text,

01:02:40 ◼   ► and there's no way you can change that,

01:02:41 ◼   ► That's not an opinion based thing.

01:02:43 ◼   ► And that's just not finished software.

01:02:44 ◼   ► And if that's in beta one, fine.

01:02:46 ◼   ► But if five betas go by and it still looks like that,

01:02:48 ◼   ► it's like, what's the holdup

01:02:50 ◼   ► on making the confirmation button visible on this screen?

01:02:53 ◼   ► Have they just not gotten to it yet?

01:02:56 ◼   ► I think it's salvageable in that you can look at this

01:02:58 ◼   ► and say, okay, setting aside the usability thing,

01:03:01 ◼   ► setting aside appearance, aesthetics,

01:03:03 ◼   ► setting all that aside, can we just fix the things

01:03:05 ◼   ► where things are just plain broken,

01:03:07 ◼   ► where you can't click or see a button

01:03:09 ◼   ► where a label overlaps with another thing,

01:03:11 ◼   ► that's not opinion, that is just something you need to fix.

01:03:14 ◼   ► All those are fixable, you can look at them and say,

01:03:17 ◼   ► I'm gonna make a punch list,

01:03:18 ◼   ► here are all the things we need to do.

01:03:19 ◼   ► Can't see this button, this label overlaps this thing,

01:03:21 ◼   ► this window is too short, this window is too tall,

01:03:24 ◼   ► just fix 'em, right?

01:03:25 ◼   ► Those are all fixable,

01:03:27 ◼   ► but you start to ask questions on the outside,

01:03:30 ◼   ► why haven't they been fixed in five betas?

01:03:32 ◼   ► Are they saving all that for the end,

01:03:34 ◼   ► 'cause it's just so easy for them to fix,

01:03:35 ◼   ► that oh, we'll just go through in the end

01:03:36 ◼   ► to make sure all the buttons are visible, right?

01:03:38 ◼   ► Why would they save it?

01:03:40 ◼   ► Or is there something about the framework they're using

01:03:43 ◼   ► or something that makes it difficult to change that?

01:03:45 ◼   ► They're trying to fix it,

01:03:46 ◼   ► but they haven't come up with a good way to do it.

01:03:48 ◼   ► Or maybe it's like, it's not our fix to make,

01:03:50 ◼   ► we're doing the right thing,

01:03:51 ◼   ► but this SwiftUI widget, the team needs to fix it

01:03:55 ◼   ► and we're waiting for them to ship us to fix.

01:03:56 ◼   ► So we here on the system setting team,

01:03:57 ◼   ► there's nothing we can do.

01:03:58 ◼   ► We just got to sit around and wait.

01:03:59 ◼   ► And when the SwiftUI team gets around

01:04:01 ◼   ► to fixing that control or fixing their metrics

01:04:03 ◼   ► on this particular thing,

01:04:04 ◼   ► our stuff will just magically work.

01:04:06 ◼   ► And that will come in the final beta

01:04:07 ◼   ► and fix everything, right?

01:04:09 ◼   ► So we can't know from the outside

01:04:10 ◼   ► which of those things is true.

01:04:12 ◼   ► But what we can know from the outside is,

01:04:14 ◼   ► this is unshippable.

01:04:16 ◼   ► And plenty of betas are unshippable.

01:04:17 ◼   ► That's why you don't ship the beta.

01:04:18 ◼   ► They're by definition unshippable,

01:04:20 ◼   ► but this is unshippable for reasons like,

01:04:22 ◼   ► not like, oh, this is buggy or slow or is ugly or something.

01:04:26 ◼   ► Like, they literally can't ship this

01:04:29 ◼   ► because people won't be able to read the text on the button

01:04:31 ◼   ► that they have to click to dismiss a window, right?

01:04:34 ◼   ► You just can't ship that.

01:04:36 ◼   ► So if they don't fix that before the release version,

01:04:40 ◼   ► they have to decide what to do.

01:04:43 ◼   ► They could DiscoveryD this and say,

01:04:44 ◼   ► well, we couldn't fix it in time.

01:04:46 ◼   ► We don't know why they couldn't fix it.

01:04:48 ◼   ► We couldn't fix it because, again,

01:04:49 ◼   ► maybe the framework is broken or whatever.

01:04:51 ◼   ► We don't have time.

01:04:52 ◼   ► So we're just going to revert.

01:04:53 ◼   ► But if they revert, are there any new preferences in Ventura

01:04:56 ◼   ► that they would then have to re-implement in the old version?

01:04:58 ◼   ► Because this shares no UI with the old one.

01:05:01 ◼   ► So I feel kind of like how they ship DiscoveryD.

01:05:04 ◼   ► this may not be that easy to revert.

01:05:06 ◼   ► If they added any new preferences,

01:05:08 ◼   ► I don't think they're going to spend any time

01:05:10 ◼   ► adding those new preferences back to the old preference panes

01:05:14 ◼   ► It could be that there are no new preferences,

01:05:16 ◼   ► so this is an issue, but I think,

01:05:18 ◼   ► I mean, to give one example, someone was,

01:05:20 ◼   ► I think it was Jason Stell wrote up something about this,

01:05:22 ◼   ► network locations are gone in Ventura,

01:05:24 ◼   ► and someone filed a bug against it,

01:05:26 ◼   ► and the bug was closed as works correctly.

01:05:28 ◼   ► Now in theory, you could, you know,

01:05:32 ◼   ► because you could see that and say,

01:05:33 ◼   ► oh, well that means Apple is telling me

01:05:35 ◼   ► that they're not going to support network locations anymore.

01:05:37 ◼   ► But I don't trust the close reason for bugs long enough

01:05:40 ◼   ► to say that definitively,

01:05:42 ◼   ► but based on the information that we have,

01:05:44 ◼   ► it seems like Apple is saying network locations

01:05:46 ◼   ► are not a thing in Ventura.

01:05:48 ◼   ► But if you revert to the old system settings app,

01:05:51 ◼   ► it'll have network locations again.

01:05:53 ◼   ► So will that UI not work,

01:05:54 ◼   ► 'cause it's not connected to anything,

01:05:55 ◼   ► or will it just work

01:05:56 ◼   ► because they didn't actually remove the functionality,

01:05:58 ◼   ► they're just removing the UI?

01:05:59 ◼   ► Too many questions,

01:06:00 ◼   ► But for it to be this far along

01:06:04 ◼   ► and still have these kind of fundamental errors

01:06:06 ◼   ► is not reassuring.

01:06:07 ◼   ► Now granted, it's only August,

01:06:08 ◼   ► this thing is gonna ship in the fall,

01:06:09 ◼   ► maybe in October or November.

01:06:11 ◼   ► So there's still, calendar-wise,

01:06:13 ◼   ► lots of time for them to fix this.

01:06:15 ◼   ► But from the outside,

01:06:17 ◼   ► it's starting to look a little bit concerning

01:06:18 ◼   ► that really, really basic functional stuff is not working.

01:06:22 ◼   ► And I would encourage everyone who thinks we're overreacting

01:06:25 ◼   ► to look at the thread.

01:06:26 ◼   ► They're not hard to fix.

01:06:28 ◼   ► Oh, just make the window bigger,

01:06:29 ◼   ► just move the button up,

01:06:30 ◼   ► Just move the label.

01:06:31 ◼   ► They seem like they're not hard to fix.

01:06:33 ◼   ► And if you're having that reaction,

01:06:34 ◼   ► you're like, why is everyone overreaction?

01:06:35 ◼   ► These are all easy to fix.

01:06:36 ◼   ► Ask yourself why they're not fixed yet then.

01:06:38 ◼   ► That's what we don't understand on the outside.

01:06:40 ◼   ► Again, there's lots of plausible reasons for it,

01:06:42 ◼   ► but Apple's not gonna tell us what the real reasons are.

01:06:44 ◼   ► So we're just out here waiting patiently,

01:06:46 ◼   ► hoping one day a beta will come,

01:06:48 ◼   ► all these layout issues will be fixed,

01:06:49 ◼   ► and then we'll be back to our earlier complaints,

01:06:51 ◼   ► which is even though everything works,

01:06:53 ◼   ► we still don't like it for reasons X, Y, and Z

01:06:55 ◼   ► that are more opinion-based

01:06:56 ◼   ► and less your UI is truncated-based.

01:07:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, but see, it seems, using this feels like

01:07:04 ◼   ► this has been a failure of the process

01:07:07 ◼   ► somewhere along the way.

01:07:08 ◼   ► When you see what the settings app is and how it works,

01:07:10 ◼   ► it feels like an early demo that you might have brought

01:07:14 ◼   ► to a design meeting inside Apple and said,

01:07:15 ◼   ► "Hey, we should do something like this

01:07:17 ◼   ► "for the next version of macOS."

01:07:19 ◼   ► And then the team would have evaluated it,

01:07:21 ◼   ► scheduled it, and we would have seen it

01:07:23 ◼   ► after it was done and polished,

01:07:25 ◼   ► and beta one would have had very few issues.

01:07:28 ◼   ► That's how Apple usually does most of their features.

01:07:31 ◼   ► Beta 1 of almost anything is never as broken as this app is,

01:07:35 ◼   ► let alone Beta 5.

01:07:37 ◼   ► And so it seems like somehow this design,

01:07:41 ◼   ► which is pretty rough, got approved or shoved through.

01:07:46 ◼   ► And then the implementation, which is also really rough,

01:07:51 ◼   ► got scheduled for a release that it can't make.

01:07:56 ◼   ► Look, we know how this is gonna go.

01:07:58 ◼   ► We know that Apple's current design team

01:08:01 ◼   ► does not take feedback well.

01:08:04 ◼   ► And look, Apple as a company culture

01:08:08 ◼   ► is extremely thin-skinned.

01:08:12 ◼   ► They cannot take criticism,

01:08:14 ◼   ► and they think they are right all of the time.

01:08:17 ◼   ► - They did roll back the Safari changes though,

01:08:19 ◼   ► let's be fair.

01:08:20 ◼   ► That's very recent history.

01:08:21 ◼   ► - That was kind of at the last minute,

01:08:23 ◼   ► and I think that was kind of reluctantly, but--

01:08:26 ◼   ► - I mean that gets me back to the question

01:08:27 ◼   ► of how easy is it to roll back?

01:08:28 ◼   ► Apparently Safari was pretty easy to roll back.

01:08:30 ◼   ► How easy is this to roll back?

01:08:31 ◼   ► - Well and also, the Safari changes mostly happened

01:08:34 ◼   ► on the iPhone, where there were a lot of,

01:08:36 ◼   ► there was a large outcry among iPhone beta users,

01:08:39 ◼   ► even non-developers, 'cause a lot of people

01:08:41 ◼   ► use the iPhone betas.

01:08:42 ◼   ► On the Mac, they seem to take feedback even less so

01:08:47 ◼   ► and even slower and even worse.

01:08:48 ◼   ► I mean look, look at how bad the notifications

01:08:50 ◼   ► have been messed up since Big Sur

01:08:52 ◼   ► and they're still that messed up.

01:08:53 ◼   ► Like they haven't fixed them or tweaked them at all

01:08:55 ◼   ► as far as we can tell, and it's a very broken design.

01:08:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, okay, notifications is a good example

01:09:00 ◼   ► because there's both kinds of feedback.

01:09:03 ◼   ► Oh, I don't like it because it's harder to get at features

01:09:05 ◼   ► or there's less information available

01:09:07 ◼   ► or things only appear in mouseover.

01:09:08 ◼   ► That's sort of more design-based, right?

01:09:12 ◼   ► But there are also things like,

01:09:13 ◼   ► I think we posted a video a while back,

01:09:16 ◼   ► functional features where when you go to click the button,

01:09:18 ◼   ► it disappears from under your cursor.

01:09:19 ◼   ► That's not opinion-based.

01:09:20 ◼   ► That's just plain a bug.

01:09:22 ◼   ► It's just not supposed to work that way.

01:09:24 ◼   ► Now granted, there's a workaround in that case,

01:09:26 ◼   ► whereas in some of these cases in systems,

01:09:27 ◼   ► I think there's no workaround,

01:09:28 ◼   ► but if I can't mouse over the button

01:09:31 ◼   ► that I'm supposed to click and click it,

01:09:33 ◼   ► there's no opinion about that.

01:09:34 ◼   ► That's just plain broken.

01:09:35 ◼   ► And there are features like that in notifications

01:09:38 ◼   ► that haven't gotten fixed.

01:09:39 ◼   ► But they didn't roll back the notification design

01:09:41 ◼   ► 'cause I think they like the design, to your point, Marco.

01:09:43 ◼   ► They think the design is better.

01:09:45 ◼   ► They disagree with us about that.

01:09:46 ◼   ► But also the bugs, which are not opinion-based,

01:09:49 ◼   ► they still haven't fixed.

01:09:50 ◼   ► Maybe that's a framework thing.

01:09:51 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure the notification is a Swift UI too.

01:09:53 ◼   ► Maybe that's a framework thing as well,

01:09:54 ◼   ► and the notification team can't fix that

01:09:56 ◼   ► because it's not their bug, it's a SwiftUI bug,

01:09:58 ◼   ► but either way, lots of things are falling down

01:10:01 ◼   ► in macOS these days.

01:10:03 ◼   ► - Right, and it seems like the feedback loop

01:10:05 ◼   ► is broken in some way.

01:10:06 ◼   ► Like these things should not be getting out here

01:10:08 ◼   ► in the state that they are in,

01:10:10 ◼   ► and what will probably happen here,

01:10:13 ◼   ► we've seen what happens with Mac efforts recently.

01:10:17 ◼   ► The hardware is amazing, the software is kinda half-assed,

01:10:20 ◼   ► and when things are a little bit buggy

01:10:21 ◼   ► a little bit broken, they basically never get fixed.

01:10:24 ◼   ► Like when this ships, and this will ship,

01:10:27 ◼   ► when this ships in October, November, whenever,

01:10:30 ◼   ► whatever problems and shortcomings it has,

01:10:33 ◼   ► it's probably gonna have for a long time,

01:10:35 ◼   ► because Apple does not give themselves enough time

01:10:38 ◼   ► or bandwidth or priority to fix macOS bugs very often.

01:10:41 ◼   ► macOS bugs tend to stick around,

01:10:43 ◼   ► and macOS design shortcomings stick around even longer.

01:10:46 ◼   ► So that's why this is so disheartening to see,

01:10:49 ◼   ► because I know they're gonna just half-ass this out there

01:10:54 ◼   ► and then just never touch it again.

01:10:56 ◼   ► - I don't know, I think if they can't get

01:10:59 ◼   ► the basic layout features fixed in time

01:11:02 ◼   ► for their target ship date in the fall,

01:11:04 ◼   ► then they will roll this back.

01:11:06 ◼   ► Because they literally can't ship a thing

01:11:08 ◼   ► where you bring up a screen and you can't click the button.

01:11:10 ◼   ► Like they just, they will not ship that.

01:11:12 ◼   ► I've never, they will not ship a thing

01:11:14 ◼   ► where you'd have to know that there's a button

01:11:16 ◼   ► that you can't see and you have to hit return

01:11:17 ◼   ► to activate it or something,

01:11:18 ◼   ► they're just not gonna ship that period, right?

01:11:20 ◼   ► So if they can't get just that one screen

01:11:23 ◼   ► on that one thing, like there's a tweet

01:11:24 ◼   ► for one of those things where it says the button,

01:11:28 ◼   ► the confirm button is not visible.

01:11:30 ◼   ► They won't ship that, they just won't, right?

01:11:32 ◼   ► And so if they can't, that one screen

01:11:34 ◼   ► could hold up the entire design.

01:11:36 ◼   ► Because it's not like they can revert one preference pane

01:11:38 ◼   ► to the old one as far as I know.

01:11:40 ◼   ► I think it's like all or nothing.

01:11:41 ◼   ► So if they get to October and this one screen,

01:11:45 ◼   ► just to give one example,

01:11:47 ◼   ► They can't find a way to fix it, they literally can't do it.

01:11:49 ◼   ► They have to roll the whole thing back.

01:11:52 ◼   ► And I'm not entirely convinced that they

01:11:55 ◼   ► won't be faced with that decision.

01:11:56 ◼   ► Now granted, it's only August, October's a long way away.

01:11:59 ◼   ► Like we don't need to be paranoid about it or whatever,

01:12:02 ◼   ► but as the months wear on, watch these things.

01:12:05 ◼   ► See how they go, 'cause it only takes one of them

01:12:08 ◼   ► to make it unshippable, right?

01:12:10 ◼   ► 'Cause some people want, whatever this screen is,

01:12:13 ◼   ► some people want to use it, and if you can't dismiss

01:12:16 ◼   ► the window because the button isn't anywhere

01:12:18 ◼   ► visible for you to click on.

01:12:19 ◼   ► You can't ship that.

01:12:20 ◼   ► Like, what do you do, just quit the app at that point?

01:12:23 ◼   ► Well, there's a modal dialogue up

01:12:25 ◼   ► that I can't dismiss because I can't see the button.

01:12:27 ◼   ► So game over.

01:12:29 ◼   ► So I will continue to watch the betas.

01:12:31 ◼   ► I hope there will be a future beta where the basic layout

01:12:34 ◼   ► bugs are all fixed.

01:12:35 ◼   ► And then we can go back to complaining

01:12:37 ◼   ► about the more nuanced things.

01:12:38 ◼   ► I hope you're right.

01:12:39 ◼   ► But frankly, I don't trust them to make that call.

01:12:43 ◼   ► Like if you look at the clear and persistent quality

01:12:49 ◼   ► problems that Apple allows to ship in Mac OS,

01:12:53 ◼   ► I don't trust them to make that call the way you say they will.

01:12:57 ◼   ► I hope we get an email from Apple saying, as I said,

01:12:59 ◼   ► that inside Apple, we were using a build from like a month ago,

01:13:03 ◼   ► right?

01:13:03 ◼   ► Maybe all this is fixed already inside Apple.

01:13:05 ◼   ► And so Apple people who are working on system settings

01:13:07 ◼   ► or know about it, please send us an email and say,

01:13:09 ◼   ► oh, don't worry.

01:13:10 ◼   ► That stuff that you're looking at, that

01:13:11 ◼   ► was fixed three weeks ago.

01:13:12 ◼   ► and it's all gonna be good in the next beta.

01:13:14 ◼   ► I would love for that to be true.

01:13:15 ◼   ► - Here's what I think might happen instead.

01:13:18 ◼   ► So Mac OS is going to be holding back

01:13:21 ◼   ► the release of some hardware.

01:13:23 ◼   ► Whatever Macs are gonna be released

01:13:24 ◼   ► at that October or November or whatever event,

01:13:27 ◼   ► those are gonna require the newest version of Mac OS.

01:13:29 ◼   ► And so they're gonna declare the ship date of Mac OS

01:13:32 ◼   ► to coincide with that hardware launch.

01:13:35 ◼   ► And so whatever they have at this point,

01:13:38 ◼   ► they're gonna ship it then.

01:13:40 ◼   ► That's it.

01:13:41 ◼   ► I think they will tolerate a lot of bugs

01:13:44 ◼   ► to hit that hardware ship date.

01:13:45 ◼   ► And then they'll say, oh, we'll fix it in 0.1.

01:13:48 ◼   ► Yep.

01:13:50 ◼   ► We are sponsored this week by Squarespace,

01:13:52 ◼   ► the all-in-one platform for building your brand

01:13:54 ◼   ► and growing your business online.

01:13:56 ◼   ► Stand out with a beautiful website,

01:13:58 ◼   ► engage with your audience, and sell anything--

01:14:00 ◼   ► your products, your content, even your time--

01:14:03 ◼   ► all with Squarespace.

01:14:04 ◼   ► Of course, they just make it super easy.

01:14:06 ◼   ► Making a website used to be pretty difficult,

01:14:08 ◼   ► and especially if you wanted this kind of

01:14:10 ◼   ► advanced functionality like storefronts

01:14:13 ◼   ► or podcast hosting or membership areas,

01:14:16 ◼   ► all that stuff, Squarespace now offers all of that

01:14:19 ◼   ► and so, so much more.

01:14:21 ◼   ► And your sites look great, there's no coding anywhere,

01:14:24 ◼   ► everything is very visual

01:14:25 ◼   ► when you're configuring everything.

01:14:26 ◼   ► They have amazing support if you need it

01:14:28 ◼   ► and they have everything you need

01:14:29 ◼   ► to help set up your business.

01:14:31 ◼   ► So whether it's analytics and SEO and email campaigns

01:14:35 ◼   ► to things like the member areas,

01:14:37 ◼   ► You can sell newsletters, sell videos, online courses.

01:14:40 ◼   ► You can use a storefront to sell physical or digital products.

01:14:43 ◼   ► They have things like shipping integration and tax

01:14:45 ◼   ► integration and all this stuff all built in to Squarespace.

01:14:48 ◼   ► This is all, again, things that you don't really

01:14:51 ◼   ► want to be dealing with yourself.

01:14:52 ◼   ► Like if you're setting up your own solution somewhere else

01:14:55 ◼   ► or trying to write your own thing,

01:14:56 ◼   ► this stuff is all kind of pain in the butt kind of stuff.

01:14:59 ◼   ► And you don't want to be done with it.

01:15:00 ◼   ► Squarespace does a really good job of it.

01:15:02 ◼   ► I personally have used it and recommended it so many times.

01:15:04 ◼   ► And people love this because you don't

01:15:06 ◼   ► have to be a nerd to use it or to set it up.

01:15:08 ◼   ► There's so many problems that are just out of your hands.

01:15:10 ◼   ► You don't have to deal with servers or software updates,

01:15:12 ◼   ► anything like that.

01:15:13 ◼   ► So once again, Squarespace, by far, the best way

01:15:17 ◼   ► to build almost any kind of website.

01:15:20 ◼   ► So see for yourself at squarespace.com/atp.

01:15:23 ◼   ► You can start a free trial there,

01:15:24 ◼   ► and you can build the whole site in free trial mode.

01:15:26 ◼   ► Build everything.

01:15:27 ◼   ► You can see all the functionality

01:15:28 ◼   ► they have to offer.

01:15:29 ◼   ► When you're ready to launch, use offer code ATP to save 10%

01:15:32 ◼   ► off your first purchase of a website or domain.

01:15:34 ◼   ► Once again, squarespace.com/ATP for a free trial

01:15:38 ◼   ► and use offer code ATP when you decide to purchase

01:15:40 ◼   ► to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

01:15:43 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Squarespace for sponsoring our show.

01:15:46 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:15:48 ◼   ► - If you'll permit me to change subject ever so slightly,

01:15:51 ◼   ► can we talk about feedback with Apple?

01:15:53 ◼   ► - Oh God, I'm so mad right now.

01:15:54 ◼   ► - I'm grumpy, fellas.

01:15:56 ◼   ► I'm grumpy again.

01:15:57 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:15:58 ◼   ► I'm grumpy.

01:15:59 ◼   ► So I did what third party developers are told to do

01:16:04 ◼   ► and I filed bugs, let me rephrase that,

01:16:07 ◼   ► I wasted my time, I'm sorry, no, I'm being too cruel,

01:16:10 ◼   ► I filed bugs and I filed a few bugs

01:16:13 ◼   ► against various SwiftUI things, both old and new,

01:16:15 ◼   ► mostly new, and those bugs went into /dev/null

01:16:20 ◼   ► as they always do, but because I'm a turd

01:16:23 ◼   ► and because I know people on the inside,

01:16:25 ◼   ► I asked a friend on the inside,

01:16:27 ◼   ► hey, for this feedback number,

01:16:28 ◼   ► can you tell me what the hell's going on?

01:16:31 ◼   ► And this friend said,

01:16:34 ◼   ► "Oh, you filed that really late, didn't you?"

01:16:37 ◼   ► I'm sorry, what now?

01:16:38 ◼   ► I filed this like a month or two ago.

01:16:40 ◼   ► Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's way too late.

01:16:42 ◼   ► - What?

01:16:43 ◼   ► - I'm sorry, what now?

01:16:45 ◼   ► I thought, and we were always told,

01:16:48 ◼   ► and I'm not sure what the genesis of this really was,

01:16:50 ◼   ► but we were always told as third-party developers,

01:16:53 ◼   ► you gotta file these bugs early

01:16:55 ◼   ► when the new betas come out so we have time to fix them.

01:16:58 ◼   ► Okay, that's a little bit crummy

01:17:00 ◼   ► that our world has to stop in order to serve

01:17:03 ◼   ► as your external QA, but fine, okay, fine, fine.

01:17:06 ◼   ► That's what I'll do.

01:17:07 ◼   ► Again, maybe this is my misunderstanding.

01:17:09 ◼   ► I don't wanna say that this is like fact,

01:17:11 ◼   ► Casey List reports, you know, or anything like that.

01:17:13 ◼   ► I'm just telling you a casual conversation I had.

01:17:16 ◼   ► But apparently filing things in July, mid-July,

01:17:20 ◼   ► or even early August is not really leaving enough time.

01:17:23 ◼   ► And that's just not cool to begin with.

01:17:26 ◼   ► But leaving that aside for a minute,

01:17:28 ◼   ► I said, "Okay, well, is there any action on this?"

01:17:30 ◼   ► A couple of these.

01:17:31 ◼   ► He said, "Oh, yeah, this one's been duped to such and such.

01:17:34 ◼   ► "It won't land for a while.

01:17:35 ◼   ► "This one's been duped to that,

01:17:37 ◼   ► "and that won't land for a while."

01:17:38 ◼   ► And they said, "Oh, but there's a workaround for this one."

01:17:43 ◼   ► Sorry, what?

01:17:43 ◼   ► "Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a workaround."

01:17:45 ◼   ► And this individual pasted the text

01:17:47 ◼   ► that was clearly written for me to see.

01:17:50 ◼   ► It was absolutely clear that it was written for me to see.

01:17:53 ◼   ► And said, "Yeah, this is what it says

01:17:54 ◼   ► "at the bottom of that feedback."

01:17:57 ◼   ► Huh.

01:17:58 ◼   ► So I open up Feedback Assistant, and I'll give you one guess what is not at the bottom

01:18:01 ◼   ► of my feedback.

01:18:02 ◼   ► Any of that f***ing text, because it just never made it to me.

01:18:07 ◼   ► So let's play this back.

01:18:09 ◼   ► What Apple wants is for me to spend a not insignificant amount of my time generating

01:18:14 ◼   ► a sample project for all of these bugs that I'm calling to their attention.

01:18:20 ◼   ► Then I need to include them in a bug report that's clear and succinct, explaining exactly

01:18:25 ◼   ► what I expected and what actually happened.

01:18:27 ◼   ► Then I need to throw it across the wall.

01:18:28 ◼   ► I need to do this really, really, really soon after WWDC

01:18:32 ◼   ► if I wanna have even a prayer of getting a fix in.

01:18:36 ◼   ► And then what I need to do is talk to somebody

01:18:39 ◼   ► on the inside to get the feedback on my feedback.

01:18:41 ◼   ► How (beep) broken is this?

01:18:45 ◼   ► How broken is this?

01:18:46 ◼   ► This is not okay.

01:18:48 ◼   ► Well, you know what, actually, I take that back.

01:18:51 ◼   ► It's okay 'cause documentation is flawless

01:18:54 ◼   ► and tells me everything I need to know

01:18:56 ◼   ► about all of these different pieces and bits and bobs.

01:18:58 ◼   ► This is not okay.

01:19:01 ◼   ► It makes me so angry.

01:19:03 ◼   ► It is not okay that this is what Apple expects

01:19:06 ◼   ► the third-party developers to deal with.

01:19:08 ◼   ► This is broken, and it's broken from top to bottom.

01:19:12 ◼   ► I am so friggin' angry about this.

01:19:15 ◼   ► It is not okay, Apple.

01:19:17 ◼   ► I know that nobody is gonna listen to this,

01:19:19 ◼   ► because apparently providing feedback to Apple

01:19:22 ◼   ► never works if you do it in audio form.

01:19:25 ◼   ► So I'm probably gonna have to write a friggin' blog post

01:19:27 ◼   ► about this, which I also don't wanna have to do.

01:19:29 ◼   ► - No, you gotta make a YouTube video.

01:19:31 ◼   ► - Oh, you're right, actually, that is what I should do.

01:19:32 ◼   ► You know what, I should just set up in my backyard

01:19:36 ◼   ► and just rant about this, because then it may actually work.

01:19:39 ◼   ► It makes me so angry that I have put in all of this work.

01:19:43 ◼   ► I have put in a not insignificant amount of time

01:19:50 ◼   ► putting this together.

01:19:51 ◼   ► Let's say, I don't even know what an hourly rate is

01:19:54 ◼   ► for an iOS developer these days,

01:19:55 ◼   ► but several years ago it was like 150, 200 bucks an hour.

01:19:58 ◼   ► So let's charitably call it 150 bucks an hour.

01:20:01 ◼   ► I'm gonna send a (bleep) build Apple

01:20:03 ◼   ► for the like 300, 500, $600,000 of time