PodSearch

ATP

483: The Faceless Knob

 

00:00:00 ◼   ► - Are we recording everyone?

00:00:02 ◼   ► - I am.

00:00:03 ◼   ► Is your computer?

00:00:04 ◼   ► Maybe that's what we should be asking.

00:00:06 ◼   ► - Oh, yeah, so.

00:00:07 ◼   ► - What is the latest with that actually?

00:00:09 ◼   ► 'Cause you were kicking around doing some sort of

00:00:11 ◼   ► like external recording as well, weren't you?

00:00:13 ◼   ► Or am I making this up?

00:00:14 ◼   ► - I am actually doing that right now.

00:00:16 ◼   ► So I learned through some experimentation

00:00:18 ◼   ► that the latency that I hear with using something

00:00:23 ◼   ► like the Sound Devices MixPre line,

00:00:26 ◼   ► I measured it to be something like 3.2 milliseconds

00:00:29 ◼   ► of input latency to the headphone jack,

00:00:32 ◼   ► that is relative to the sample rate, which makes sense.

00:00:37 ◼   ► Whatever the ADC that's going on there,

00:00:41 ◼   ► and then back through the DAC after the routing and stuff,

00:00:44 ◼   ► whatever is happening inside there,

00:00:47 ◼   ► it takes some number of samples of the sampled audio.

00:00:51 ◼   ► And if you run at a higher sample rate,

00:00:52 ◼   ► so I usually run my stuff at 44.1 kilohertz,

00:00:56 ◼   ► but if you run it at 192,

00:00:58 ◼   ► it shrinks it down quite a bit.

00:01:00 ◼   ► Like it could be because it seems to be

00:01:02 ◼   ► a fixed number of samples.

00:01:03 ◼   ► So if you just run the sample rate really high,

00:01:05 ◼   ► then it will take less time.

00:01:07 ◼   ► So I did learn that I am fine with the way

00:01:11 ◼   ► all these things sound at 192.

00:01:15 ◼   ► Unfortunately, I don't wanna run my interface at 192

00:01:18 ◼   ► because that involves like making absolutely massive files

00:01:23 ◼   ► and my entire processing pipeline afterwards,

00:01:26 ◼   ► all my templates for logic and everything,

00:01:28 ◼   ► the final output file, it's 44.1.

00:01:31 ◼   ► So that's not a great solution.

00:01:34 ◼   ► So what I've come upon is, you know what,

00:01:37 ◼   ► I love the way I sound from a USB pre 2,

00:01:40 ◼   ► I'm gonna keep using it.

00:01:41 ◼   ► What I have is this little Zoom F3,

00:01:44 ◼   ► which is a little tiny recorder.

00:01:46 ◼   ► Right now I am running through it

00:01:49 ◼   ► and using my headphones through it at 192 kilohertz.

00:01:53 ◼   ► So it sounds like almost no latency

00:01:55 ◼   ► or if there is audible latency at 192,

00:01:58 ◼   ► I can't hear it through this Zoom F3,

00:01:59 ◼   ► whereas I could hear it at 44.1.

00:02:02 ◼   ► So anyway, so I'm running the output of the USB-free,

00:02:06 ◼   ► which is what my computer's recording from.

00:02:08 ◼   ► So my computer's getting 44.1,

00:02:10 ◼   ► and I'm running the output of that into the Zoom

00:02:14 ◼   ► and using the headphone monitoring on the Zoom.

00:02:16 ◼   ► That's a temporary solution until I get

00:02:19 ◼   ► my full-time solution, which is going to be either

00:02:23 ◼   ► using the headphone outs on the USB-free to down,

00:02:27 ◼   ► Currently I'm in separated left and right mode

00:02:29 ◼   ► so that I'm on track one and you are on track two.

00:02:33 ◼   ► But my eventual goal here is gonna be to

00:02:36 ◼   ► either split my microphone into two

00:02:39 ◼   ► before it even goes into the input

00:02:41 ◼   ► and run one of my microphone's input branches

00:02:43 ◼   ► into a recorder and the other one into the USB Pre 2

00:02:47 ◼   ► and then just listen to that straight.

00:02:48 ◼   ► Or I'm going to take the output of the USB Pre 2

00:02:51 ◼   ► which is separated left and right for recording,

00:02:53 ◼   ► split that, put the separated version into the recorder

00:02:57 ◼   ► and take the other branch, run it into a mono summer

00:03:00 ◼   ► to re-mono-ize it (laughs)

00:03:04 ◼   ► and then listen to that through my headphone amp.

00:03:06 ◼   ► So these things are in progress,

00:03:08 ◼   ► I'm waiting on some of these parts to arrive from Amazon

00:03:11 ◼   ► over the next couple days,

00:03:12 ◼   ► but that's what I'm doing right now.

00:03:14 ◼   ► - Can I give you an alternative approach?

00:03:16 ◼   ► You could just learn to get used

00:03:17 ◼   ► to the mix pre-three latency, which is what I did,

00:03:19 ◼   ► because I did notice, like this is one of those times

00:03:22 ◼   ► where I really wanna say, oh, Marco, you are so silly,

00:03:25 ◼   ► This is not a thing, it's not real.

00:03:28 ◼   ► No, it's real, it definitely is a thing.

00:03:30 ◼   ► - I'm so happy to hear you say that, honestly.

00:03:32 ◼   ► No one else has ever admitted this.

00:03:34 ◼   ► Everyone else is like, "You can't possibly hear

00:03:36 ◼   ► "three milliseconds of latency."

00:03:38 ◼   ► I hear it, it sounds different, trust me.

00:03:40 ◼   ► - No, it's just barely noticeable,

00:03:43 ◼   ► but it's enough that it's annoying.

00:03:44 ◼   ► And eventually, over literally months,

00:03:47 ◼   ► 'cause it took a while, I did get used to it.

00:03:49 ◼   ► Now I'm sure it would come roaring back

00:03:51 ◼   ► if I plugged the MixPre 2 in again,

00:03:53 ◼   ► but since I'm used to it,

00:03:54 ◼   ► I've got like two years of the pre-3 in,

00:03:56 ◼   ► I don't really notice it anymore.

00:03:59 ◼   ► And that would be a much simpler solution to your problem,

00:04:01 ◼   ► is to just get used to this latency.

00:04:03 ◼   ► - By far and away, you are correct.

00:04:05 ◼   ► That is the absolute right answer,

00:04:07 ◼   ► is for me to just suck it up,

00:04:09 ◼   ► and just use one of these modern interfaces

00:04:11 ◼   ► that has built-in recording,

00:04:13 ◼   ► like the sound devices MixPreline,

00:04:14 ◼   ► or like the Zoom F3 that I literally just bought.

00:04:17 ◼   ► It's sitting, like it is also an interface,

00:04:19 ◼   ► I could totally do that with that.

00:04:21 ◼   ► That is the right answer.

00:04:22 ◼   ► I don't wanna do it.

00:04:23 ◼   ► I want to use my USB Pre 2, I like the USB Pre 2,

00:04:27 ◼   ► both for its totally analogness of the input path

00:04:31 ◼   ► to the headphones, I also like the way its limiters sound

00:04:34 ◼   ► and work better than any other limiters that I've found.

00:04:38 ◼   ► So I just like it better and because I have the ability

00:04:42 ◼   ► to be a picky jerk with this, I'm going to be.

00:04:45 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:04:47 ◼   ► - That's all right, in just a few moments during follow up,

00:04:50 ◼   ► I will be telling you all the dumb ideas I have

00:04:52 ◼   ► that are genuinely the incorrect answer,

00:04:54 ◼   ► but I don't care, it's what I think I wanna do.

00:04:55 ◼   ► We'll talk about that in a minute.

00:04:57 ◼   ► (electronic beeping)

00:04:58 ◼   ► But before we get there,

00:04:59 ◼   ► we should start with some other follow-up,

00:05:01 ◼   ► including cleaning apps and quote-unquote launch services.

00:05:05 ◼   ► Tell me about this, Jon.

00:05:06 ◼   ► - This is just me misspeaking on the past episode.

00:05:09 ◼   ► We had a, I think it was an Ask ATP question

00:05:11 ◼   ► about tools that clean your Mac,

00:05:13 ◼   ► and do I need one of those tools?

00:05:15 ◼   ► We were talking about uninstalling applications

00:05:18 ◼   ► and how on the Mac applications may put things

00:05:21 ◼   ► on your disk in places other than inside their little bundle

00:05:25 ◼   ► in the application folder or whatever and what I said was the only

00:05:28 ◼   ► thing you really have to you know potentially worry about for

00:05:32 ◼   ► residue that's left by apps are I kept saying things that are in

00:05:37 ◼   ► launch services but I think I had launch services on the brain because it'd been

00:05:41 ◼   ► mentioned earlier in the episode and I said it a bunch of times and I just

00:05:43 ◼   ► wanted to clarify what you're looking for are things that

00:05:47 ◼   ► are run by launch d launch d is if you're familiar with

00:05:50 ◼   ► Unix is kind of like a replacement for the init process and for it's kind of like xi net d if

00:05:56 ◼   ► you're an old school unix user if you don't know any of those things are basically it it also

00:06:00 ◼   ► replaces cron kind of but not really because cron is still there um it will run programs for you

00:06:07 ◼   ► either according to a schedule or on demand um and so applications can add their own things to launch

00:06:15 ◼   ► d you can make a launch agent or launch daemon these distinctions don't really matter that much

00:06:19 ◼   ► but like it's a thing they it's basically like a p-list that they put in there that has rules to say hey

00:06:23 ◼   ► When someone connects to port one two three launch my program or like it at 12 a.m. Every day

00:06:30 ◼   ► Run this script or whatever. You can really put anything you want there. It's very flexible

00:06:35 ◼   ► I think you can even run things in response to devices being connected or maybe you in volume is being mounted launched

00:06:41 ◼   ► He does tons of stuff, right?

00:06:42 ◼   ► But the point is if you if an application has an installer or if it prompts you to install something or whatever

00:06:48 ◼   ► it's possible that an application may add something to, like a job, or multiple jobs,

00:06:53 ◼   ► to launch to you.

00:06:54 ◼   ► Lots of applications do this.

00:06:56 ◼   ► So when you throw your application in the trash, you don't care about like, "Oh, it

00:07:00 ◼   ► left a preferences file around.

00:07:01 ◼   ► I don't want that preference file."

00:07:03 ◼   ► Even if your MarCO can't stand the two kilobytes that's taking in your disk, or four because

00:07:07 ◼   ► it's the minimum block size or whatever, it's not that big a deal.

00:07:10 ◼   ► And by the way, I would argue that it's good to leave the preferences file around because

00:07:13 ◼   ► if you ever reinstall that program, it will remember your preferences from the last time

00:07:16 ◼   ► you had it installed and if assuming you can still read that preference file format it's nice to not lose your preferences right so stuff like

00:07:22 ◼   ► that you don't really care too much about or if cache files those will get cleaned out eventually too

00:07:25 ◼   ► But if the application left a job like a job is run by launchd around lots of weird things could happen

00:07:32 ◼   ► so first it could be that that launchd job referenced a

00:07:35 ◼   ► you know an executable inside the app bundle

00:07:38 ◼   ► But you threw out the app bundle

00:07:39 ◼   ► But the launchd job is still there and every once in a while launchd is like oh I got to run this thing and tries

00:07:45 ◼   ► to run and it's like, oh, I couldn't run it,

00:07:47 ◼   ► I couldn't find the executable 'cause it's looking

00:07:48 ◼   ► for like slash application slash my cool app

00:07:51 ◼   ► dot app slash whatever blah blah blah,

00:07:52 ◼   ► and it's not there.

00:07:54 ◼   ► It's not that big of a deal, but like every single day

00:07:56 ◼   ► or every 10 minutes or every one hour

00:07:58 ◼   ► or every time something tries to connect

00:08:00 ◼   ► to a particular port, this job is trying to run

00:08:02 ◼   ► and getting an error, that's kind of silly.

00:08:04 ◼   ► The other thing you could do is it could put

00:08:06 ◼   ► an executable somewhere, it could have like

00:08:08 ◼   ► on first launch, ask you to authenticate

00:08:09 ◼   ► and it shoved a file into user local bin

00:08:12 ◼   ► and that's some daemon processor or whatever

00:08:13 ◼   ► and then it has a launchd job that runs

00:08:15 ◼   ► that daemon process in response to something happening,

00:08:17 ◼   ► or maybe just runs it on a schedule,

00:08:18 ◼   ► or maybe just tries to keep it running all the time.

00:08:21 ◼   ► And you uninstall the application,

00:08:22 ◼   ► but now a piece of that application

00:08:24 ◼   ► is still running somewhere.

00:08:26 ◼   ► And hopefully that piece of the application running

00:08:27 ◼   ► isn't that big of a deal,

00:08:29 ◼   ► but if you were to look in Activity Monitor,

00:08:31 ◼   ► or look in one of these tools

00:08:32 ◼   ► that lets you look at launchd jobs,

00:08:33 ◼   ► you'd be like, what is this?

00:08:34 ◼   ► I deleted this application,

00:08:36 ◼   ► and yet some piece of this application

00:08:37 ◼   ► is still either running or trying to run on my computer.

00:08:40 ◼   ► And as harmless as it might be,

00:08:42 ◼   ► If you don't ever, if that happens too much,

00:08:46 ◼   ► you could end up with like, you know,

00:08:47 ◼   ► dozens of these things sort of running in the background

00:08:49 ◼   ► on your computer doing nothing.

00:08:51 ◼   ► And I can tell you from practice of having done this,

00:08:53 ◼   ► 'cause I install a lot of software

00:08:54 ◼   ► and I delete a lot of software,

00:08:56 ◼   ► it's not usually the cause of any problems.

00:08:58 ◼   ► Usually they just try to run and fail

00:09:00 ◼   ► or run and just do nothing.

00:09:01 ◼   ► They don't usually take up a lot of memory.

00:09:03 ◼   ► Failing to run is not that big of a deal.

00:09:05 ◼   ► You probably won't notice it.

00:09:07 ◼   ► But if there's any category of cruft

00:09:09 ◼   ► that you might want to look into,

00:09:10 ◼   ► would be things run by launchd because that can be an actual real running thing on your computer

00:09:16 ◼   ► that serves no purpose after the application has gone. few applications do this. the ones that do

00:09:23 ◼   ► it are probably big names that you already know and they have their own uninstallers. for example

00:09:27 ◼   ► adobe runs tons of crap like that. microsoft runs tons of crap. but adobe has its own installer and

00:09:33 ◼   ► uninstaller. and microsoft i think they have a good uninstaller that gets rid of stuff like that. so

00:09:38 ◼   ► I wouldn't go around saying like,

00:09:40 ◼   ► I'm gonna delete all the,

00:09:41 ◼   ► I know Marco probably does this,

00:09:42 ◼   ► but I'm gonna delete all the processes

00:09:44 ◼   ► that I don't like from Adobe.

00:09:46 ◼   ► - I sure do. - I'm sure there'll be

00:09:47 ◼   ► no negative consequences for that,

00:09:49 ◼   ► and then their Adobe programs crash

00:09:51 ◼   ► or do something weird, and it's like, well.

00:09:52 ◼   ► - Wait, in my defense, Adobe programs

00:09:54 ◼   ► always crash into something weird.

00:09:56 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:09:57 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, what I'm saying is like,

00:09:58 ◼   ► if you're gonna use an Adobe program,

00:10:00 ◼   ► just let it run what it wants to run.

00:10:01 ◼   ► And if you're not gonna use it, uninstall it.

00:10:03 ◼   ► And especially with Adobe's subscription model,

00:10:04 ◼   ► they make it pretty easy to be like,

00:10:06 ◼   ► If you just, you know, if an Adobe program is annoying to you,

00:10:09 ◼   ► install it, use it for a week, uninstall it.

00:10:12 ◼   ► You can pay for it for a month or whatever for $30

00:10:15 ◼   ► and then uninstall it when you're done with it.

00:10:17 ◼   ► It's one of the advantages of the subscription model.

00:10:19 ◼   ► You don't have to sort of keep a copy of the program around

00:10:21 ◼   ► or keep it installed.

00:10:23 ◼   ► And you can even--

00:10:24 ◼   ► Creative Cloud always wants to run.

00:10:25 ◼   ► You don't have to let that run.

00:10:26 ◼   ► Take it out of your startup items.

00:10:28 ◼   ► Quit it.

00:10:28 ◼   ► They don't make it easy to do this.

00:10:29 ◼   ► But if you launch Creative Cloud and hit Command-Q,

00:10:31 ◼   ► it'll be like, are you sure you want to quit Creative Cloud?

00:10:34 ◼   ► Yes, you're sure.

00:10:35 ◼   ► But how will you collaborate with all of your be-hancements?

00:10:39 ◼   ► It's not like their auto-optators don't run.

00:10:41 ◼   ► I think that stuff still runs in the background.

00:10:43 ◼   ► It doesn't on my computer.

00:10:46 ◼   ► I guess it's a good place to recommend a LaunchD.

00:10:49 ◼   ► I said I don't use these cleaner apps,

00:10:51 ◼   ► but I do have an application that

00:10:53 ◼   ► lets me look at jobs that are running in LaunchD.

00:10:55 ◼   ► And every once in a while, I would look at that list of jobs

00:10:58 ◼   ► and be like, is there anything here

00:10:59 ◼   ► that I know is associated with an application

00:11:02 ◼   ► that I no longer use that I can delete?

00:11:04 ◼   ► And the good thing about the LaunchD tools is you can just disable the job.

00:11:07 ◼   ► You don't have to delete it.

00:11:08 ◼   ► You can just say, let me just turn it off and see if anything breaks.

00:11:11 ◼   ► And if you turn it off and nothing breaks and you're sure it's associated

00:11:14 ◼   ► with something that you uninstalled, then you can delete the job.

00:11:17 ◼   ► So I'll find a link for the show notes for Launch Control,

00:11:20 ◼   ► which is my preferred application for doing stuff like that.

00:11:22 ◼   ► Warning, if you use Launch Control, you can totally screw up your computer.

00:11:25 ◼   ► Sometimes things that are run as launch agents and launch demons

00:11:28 ◼   ► are important for the operation of your system.

00:11:30 ◼   ► If you don't know what it is, don't blindly delete it. You'll be sad.

00:11:33 ◼   ► Moving right along, I have a few quick notes about my Ethernet project. There's been no real motion.

00:11:38 ◼   ► There's been a lot of thinking about it, and we might talk about that a little bit later,

00:11:43 ◼   ► but there's been no real motion. However, I did get a lot of feedback that I wanted to quickly

00:11:47 ◼   ► point out. First of all, a lot of people, a lot, a lot of people recommended the Monoprice Slim

00:11:53 ◼   ► Cat6a patch cables. I don't have much to say about this other than if you're looking for an Ethernet

00:11:58 ◼   ► patch cable, apparently this is where you need to go because a lot, a lot of people recommended it.

00:12:02 ◼   ► Secondly, Jonathan Litt reminded me that fire stops may be a thing. So if you're going down a wall on the interior,

00:12:11 ◼   ► I don't recall exactly when this happened. It doesn't really matter, but at least here in the States, at some point

00:12:16 ◼   ► 10-20 years ago,

00:12:18 ◼   ► they started putting horizontal pieces of wood in between the vertical studs in your wall. And my very limited

00:12:25 ◼   ► understanding about this is that it's in order to prevent fires from spreading or something along those lines.

00:12:30 ◼   ► Honestly, it's okay if I've got that slightly wrong, but nevertheless

00:12:33 ◼   ► That can be a thing

00:12:34 ◼   ► So if you're coming up from the floor

00:12:36 ◼   ► You know going up or maybe not the floor but going up from like a box toward the ceiling or perhaps down from the ceiling

00:12:42 ◼   ► to

00:12:43 ◼   ► Toward the bottom of the wall where the box will be that your Ethernet drop will be a lot of times

00:12:47 ◼   ► What you'll need is like a four foot long drill bit

00:12:50 ◼   ► That's bendy so you can drill a hole through this fire stop now what nobody ever mentions is

00:12:55 ◼   ► whether you should plug that hole

00:12:57 ◼   ► or try to put like caulk in that hole or anything.

00:13:00 ◼   ► - Inside a wall?

00:13:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I guess not.

00:13:02 ◼   ► I guess people just say, well,

00:13:03 ◼   ► I guess this is where the fire's gonna go to.

00:13:05 ◼   ► - An interior wall's usually not even any insulation anyway,

00:13:07 ◼   ► so it's just an empty cavity.

00:13:09 ◼   ► - That's true, that's true.

00:13:10 ◼   ► - I will point out that regardless of what this code is

00:13:13 ◼   ► for the firestop things, if you have an older house,

00:13:16 ◼   ► what you may have, like many stud bays in my house,

00:13:18 ◼   ► is sort of like a little X, like cross-bracing

00:13:21 ◼   ► of two smaller pieces of wood in little Xs up the wall.

00:13:25 ◼   ► I'm not sure what the purpose was, I guess maybe for stability or like structural stability,

00:13:29 ◼   ► but they don't.

00:13:30 ◼   ► It's like they're thinner than an entire stud, so it's not, you know, you could in theory

00:13:34 ◼   ► fish the thing around the little x, but it's gonna mess you up.

00:13:38 ◼   ► Like there is a way to get the wire around and through the little x, but since you can't

00:13:42 ◼   ► see it and it's way down in the middle of the wall, if you have a very old house, you

00:13:45 ◼   ► may also find interesting things inside the stud base.

00:13:49 ◼   ► Or razors, you never know.

00:13:50 ◼   ► But anyways, so fire stops might be a thing.

00:13:52 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure that my house built in the late 90s, it does not have fire stops.

00:13:57 ◼   ► I'm not 100% sure about this, but I will say that in the neighborhood, there's a really

00:14:03 ◼   ► genuinely crummy thing about a year and a half ago, something like that, a house got

00:14:07 ◼   ► struck by lightning and almost burnt down.

00:14:11 ◼   ► In car terms, it was pretty well totaled and the top floor was absolutely destroyed and

00:14:15 ◼   ► the bottom floor was not in good shape.

00:14:17 ◼   ► And they've been rebuilding it over the last year and a half, very slowly, much to my surprise.

00:14:21 ◼   ► Thankfully the family was not in the house when it caught on fire.

00:14:25 ◼   ► They were actually on vacation, which is a crummy way to come home, but it's better than the alternative, I suppose.

00:14:29 ◼   ► Anyways, I was looking as I was occasionally, you know, going a long walk for exercise and as I was walking by recently,

00:14:35 ◼   ► I thought, "Wait, I should see if that house has fire stops."

00:14:37 ◼   ► Which obviously isn't apples to apples, but you would think if it doesn't have fire stops,

00:14:41 ◼   ► then mine certainly shouldn't either. And it did not have fire stops from what I could tell,

00:14:45 ◼   ► so I don't think that'll be a problem for me, but famous last words. We'll never know.

00:14:50 ◼   ► Maybe we'll find out.

00:14:52 ◼   ► Also, this is only tangentially related,

00:14:54 ◼   ► but shoot, I think it was Daniel Nelson

00:14:57 ◼   ► that pointed this out to me.

00:14:58 ◼   ► I might have that attribution wrong, I'm sorry.

00:15:00 ◼   ► But somebody pointed out that there are

00:15:02 ◼   ► what I'm gonna call power over ethernet Medusa cables.

00:15:04 ◼   ► That is not a technical term.

00:15:06 ◼   ► But what these things can do is,

00:15:08 ◼   ► let's say you have power over ethernet.

00:15:11 ◼   ► So you have an ethernet line that also carries power.

00:15:14 ◼   ► Well, there's these little dongles

00:15:16 ◼   ► that you plug your ethernet cord,

00:15:19 ◼   ► or your RJ45 jack into this little dongle and then out of the dongle comes not only Ethernet

00:15:26 ◼   ► but now only data but power in a different form. So for example you could get one that has Ethernet

00:15:33 ◼   ► and USB-C coming out the other end. So you plug Ethernet, power over Ethernet, you know, powered

00:15:38 ◼   ► Ethernet, you know what I mean, into the dongle. Coming out of the dongle is regular Ethernet RJ45

00:15:43 ◼   ► and an empowered USB-C connection. So for like an Eero for example, even though Eero's don't support

00:15:50 ◼   ► power over ethernet, you can get one of these $15 dongles and then plug power over ethernet into the

00:15:56 ◼   ► dongle, dongle into the Eero in both the RJ45 slot and the USB-C slot, and suddenly you've got a PoE

00:16:01 ◼   ► Eero. Obviously there's a lot of complications here that I'm kind of glossing over, but I had no

00:16:05 ◼   ► idea these were a thing and I think this is super cool. And they have it for USB-C connections,

00:16:09 ◼   ► for barrel pins or whatever they're called.

00:16:12 ◼   ► You know, the not coaxial,

00:16:13 ◼   ► but kind of coaxial looking things.

00:16:15 ◼   ► - DC barrel plugs.

00:16:16 ◼   ► - There you go, thank you.

00:16:17 ◼   ► There are apparently lots of these.

00:16:18 ◼   ► I had no idea this was a thing.

00:16:19 ◼   ► I don't have PoE in the house right now.

00:16:21 ◼   ► Maybe we will, maybe we won't.

00:16:23 ◼   ► But I thought this was super neat

00:16:26 ◼   ► and something I kind of wish I was aware of

00:16:27 ◼   ► just in principle.

00:16:28 ◼   ► So I don't know, maybe you two knew about this.

00:16:30 ◼   ► - For whatever, not only did I know about it,

00:16:32 ◼   ► I actually almost bought these last summer

00:16:34 ◼   ► because they're very commonly used

00:16:36 ◼   ► to do things like power security cameras.

00:16:39 ◼   ► If you have a camera that's not PoE,

00:16:41 ◼   ► but you happen to have ethernet running around

00:16:43 ◼   ► in various places, you can branch off one of these

00:16:46 ◼   ► power plugs and plug in a USB camera or something like that.

00:16:50 ◼   ► So yeah, actually I think I might have even bought one.

00:16:53 ◼   ► I might have it behind me.

00:16:54 ◼   ► I'm not gonna look now, but yeah,

00:16:57 ◼   ► I actually might already own one of these.

00:16:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, again, nothing that really helps me

00:17:02 ◼   ► right now, but if I were in the listener's shoes,

00:17:04 ◼   ► I would wanna know that this is a thing,

00:17:05 ◼   ► 'cause I didn't know, so now you know.

00:17:07 ◼   ► And then finally, if we have interest in this,

00:17:09 ◼   ► let's leave it for the after show,

00:17:10 ◼   ► but my scope creep is a creepin'.

00:17:13 ◼   ► And I've started to convince myself

00:17:16 ◼   ► that maybe I should put fiber in the walls.

00:17:18 ◼   ► And--

00:17:19 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

00:17:20 ◼   ► - No, but there's reasons behind it.

00:17:22 ◼   ► There's reasons behind it.

00:17:23 ◼   ► - If he never actually does this project,

00:17:25 ◼   ► in his head it can be as complicated as he wants.

00:17:27 ◼   ► - Exactly. - Yeah, right.

00:17:28 ◼   ► - This is exactly right.

00:17:29 ◼   ► So anyway, I genuinely, I have no problem talking about this.

00:17:33 ◼   ► I don't think now is the right moment to talk about it.

00:17:35 ◼   ► So if you too have interest,

00:17:37 ◼   ► I am happy to bring this up in the after show.

00:17:39 ◼   ► But if you have run fiber in any capacity

00:17:43 ◼   ► and have experience with it

00:17:44 ◼   ► and would like to reach out to me,

00:17:46 ◼   ► please let me know.

00:17:46 ◼   ► I would love to hear your experience.

00:17:48 ◼   ► - So you were complaining about the cost and complexity

00:17:51 ◼   ► of running ethernet in the wall.

00:17:53 ◼   ► Now imagine something that's, I would assume,

00:17:56 ◼   ► probably more expensive per foot.

00:17:58 ◼   ► - And no, not really.

00:18:00 ◼   ► - Oh really?

00:18:01 ◼   ► Well anyway, it's at least-- - It's surprisingly cheap.

00:18:02 ◼   ► It's at least most likely more delicate

00:18:05 ◼   ► and harder to work with.

00:18:06 ◼   ► - Definitely.

00:18:07 ◼   ► - You know, you probably can't just like cut it

00:18:09 ◼   ► to whatever length you need, I bet there's a process there.

00:18:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, the bend radius limits.

00:18:13 ◼   ► - Yep, yep.

00:18:14 ◼   ► So, you know, I would imagine this is not going

00:18:17 ◼   ► to make your project simpler.

00:18:19 ◼   ► - Well, you're probably right.

00:18:21 ◼   ► - And also, why?

00:18:23 ◼   ► - Well, and again, I'm happy to talk about this.

00:18:25 ◼   ► Let's leave it for, let's put it in the parking lot, Marco.

00:18:26 ◼   ► - Okay, all right.

00:18:27 ◼   ► - Because I think, I have reasons,

00:18:31 ◼   ► and they may or may not make sense but I've convinced myself they do and we can

00:18:34 ◼   ► talk about it in the after show if we remember

00:18:36 ◼   ► but nevertheless I am having bad thoughts

00:18:40 ◼   ► yes you are. We also had Andrew Larson write in which I thought was very

00:18:45 ◼   ► interesting I'm gonna read most of Andrew's email

00:18:47 ◼   ► being the T-Mobile fanboy that I am, this is Andrew

00:18:51 ◼   ► I use T-Mobile's home internet solution for fifty dollars a month it's not

00:18:53 ◼   ► millimeter wave but mid band and yet another user on the 2.4 gigahertz band

00:18:58 ◼   ► Speeds are fantastic for the price, I think.

00:19:00 ◼   ► Speeds are up to 650 megabits down and consistently 120

00:19:03 ◼   ► megabits up.

00:19:04 ◼   ► Let me just interject my favorite story in the world,

00:19:06 ◼   ► which I've told on this podcast 100 times.

00:19:08 ◼   ► When we bought the house in 2008, I was overjoyed to

00:19:11 ◼   ► switch from Comcast to Fios.

00:19:13 ◼   ► And at the time, I was overjoyed to have 15 megabits

00:19:17 ◼   ► symmetric service.

00:19:18 ◼   ► This was blazing fast at the time, or at

00:19:20 ◼   ► least for home internet.

00:19:22 ◼   ► Andrew was talking about getting 650 megabits down and

00:19:25 ◼   ► and 125 megabits up from the freaking air.

00:19:29 ◼   ► Like, technology is so cool.

00:19:32 ◼   ► I can't believe that this is a thing.

00:19:33 ◼   ► It's bananas.

00:19:34 ◼   ► Anyway, carrying on with what Andrew had said.

00:19:36 ◼   ► You might think that since my internet comes from the air,

00:19:39 ◼   ► it wouldn't make much of a difference

00:19:40 ◼   ► to put everything on Wi-Fi.

00:19:41 ◼   ► I found this to be an incorrect assumption.

00:19:42 ◼   ► As it turns out, the spectrum licenses

00:19:44 ◼   ► that the big wireless companies spend billions of dollars on

00:19:47 ◼   ► are superior to Wi-Fi.

00:19:48 ◼   ► I have an Eero 6 Pro

00:19:49 ◼   ► and still run all the big bandwidth devices

00:19:51 ◼   ► and the things that don't move off of a wired gigabit switch.

00:19:54 ◼   ► Why?

00:19:54 ◼   ► of congestion of Wi-Fi in my apartment complex.

00:19:57 ◼   ► Even over wireless, wired still has its place.

00:20:00 ◼   ► So I mean, everyone's mileage may vary obviously,

00:20:03 ◼   ► but I thought this was a really good summary

00:20:05 ◼   ► of where you would think that wired Ethernet would be silly,

00:20:08 ◼   ► but actually it ended up,

00:20:10 ◼   ► is specifically in Andrew's circumstance

00:20:12 ◼   ► to be really, really powerful and worthwhile.

00:20:14 ◼   ► So I just thought it was a neat counterpoint.

00:20:16 ◼   ► - The wireless Internet future that we want

00:20:18 ◼   ► is still a little bit out of our reach.

00:20:21 ◼   ► The scenario we were spinning up last time

00:20:23 ◼   ► I was like, what if you were near one of those

00:20:24 ◼   ► like 5G millimeter wave things?

00:20:26 ◼   ► 'Cause you know the speeds you get from those are ridiculous.

00:20:28 ◼   ► Like what if it's outside the window

00:20:29 ◼   ► of your apartment complex?

00:20:30 ◼   ► Wouldn't that be great, right?

00:20:31 ◼   ► But that's only great if you also throw in another

00:20:35 ◼   ► piece of technology that exists but is not,

00:20:38 ◼   ► like kind of like 5G, it exists,

00:20:39 ◼   ► but is not particularly widespread, and that's IPv6.

00:20:42 ◼   ► Because with IPv6, you don't have to run Wi-Fi

00:20:44 ◼   ► in your apartment 'cause literally every device you own

00:20:46 ◼   ► could have its own IP address,

00:20:47 ◼   ► since you don't need to do any NAT stuff,

00:20:49 ◼   ► and you know, I guess you still might wanna do

00:20:51 ◼   ► some kind of filtering or whatever,

00:20:52 ◼   ► But in theory, with the magic of IPv6, the average person might, and a good ISP that

00:20:58 ◼   ► uses millimeter wave 5G technology, everything could be wireless and you wouldn't have to

00:21:04 ◼   ► have Wi-Fi in your house.

00:21:06 ◼   ► And if it actually had those millimeter wave speeds and you didn't have deeply nested rooms

00:21:09 ◼   ► that the millimeter waves couldn't get to, you'd get amazing speeds having literally

00:21:13 ◼   ► no equipment in your house to deal with.

00:21:16 ◼   ► Kind of like you don't have any equipment in your house, probably, to be able to make

00:21:20 ◼   ► cell phone calls or use cell data because it's just magically in the air, but we're

00:21:24 ◼   ► obviously not there yet.

00:21:26 ◼   ► And in addition to the problems of being in an apartment complex and everybody having

00:21:29 ◼   ► a Wi-Fi network and it also being 2.4 gigahertz, which apparently the steam mobile thing is

00:21:33 ◼   ► as well, it would be better if people could just use the wireless stuff that comes over

00:21:42 ◼   ► the air without having to... without having to... everyone run their own network.

00:21:47 ◼   ► It kind of reminds me of the WDC, was it WDC?

00:21:49 ◼   ► Or, Macworld keynote where everyone was using

00:21:52 ◼   ► the MiFis in the room.

00:21:53 ◼   ► - Oh yes, yes, yes.

00:21:55 ◼   ► - And like everyone just wants wireless.

00:21:57 ◼   ► And if one, this is another tragedy

00:21:59 ◼   ► of the commons thing I guess.

00:22:00 ◼   ► All right, well I have a MiFi

00:22:01 ◼   ► and this is a great solution for me,

00:22:02 ◼   ► but when everybody has a MiFi,

00:22:04 ◼   ► it's not that great for anybody, so.

00:22:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, and IPv6, we haven't really talked about this

00:22:10 ◼   ► on the show, but I think if most people are aware of IPv6,

00:22:13 ◼   ► it's only because they were like probably

00:22:15 ◼   ► were asked to disable it at some point

00:22:17 ◼   ► while debugging their network issues.

00:22:20 ◼   ► It's another promise from many years ago

00:22:23 ◼   ► that hasn't come to pass for lots of complicated technical

00:22:26 ◼   ► and political reasons, so it's kind of sad.

00:22:28 ◼   ► - So can I ask the two of you and possibly all the listeners

00:22:31 ◼   ► a question about that?

00:22:32 ◼   ► As you know, I run servers.

00:22:35 ◼   ► I'm also a member of the internet.

00:22:39 ◼   ► Do I need to understand IPv6?

00:22:41 ◼   ► Because I don't.

00:22:44 ◼   ► and I'm kind of, I don't do anything to set it up

00:22:48 ◼   ► or to use it or to enable it or to disable it.

00:22:52 ◼   ► I just kind of pretend like it's not there.

00:22:54 ◼   ► I don't have DNS records for IPv6 for any of the sites

00:22:57 ◼   ► I run, I don't, as far as I know, listen on IPv6,

00:23:00 ◼   ► whatever that would even mean.

00:23:02 ◼   ► Because when they were designing IPv6,

00:23:04 ◼   ► what they probably should have done is just take

00:23:08 ◼   ► the IP address that we know and love

00:23:09 ◼   ► and just make them longer, and what they did instead

00:23:11 ◼   ► was make it way more complicated

00:23:13 ◼   ► and not just do that.

00:23:14 ◼   ► And so as a result, you can't just start using more bits.

00:23:18 ◼   ► You have to change the way things are done completely.

00:23:20 ◼   ► And I never bothered to fully learn it.

00:23:23 ◼   ► Do I have to?

00:23:25 ◼   ► - You're not running a service like Google.com

00:23:28 ◼   ► or Amazon.com.

00:23:30 ◼   ► Those companies probably do need to understand IPv6

00:23:33 ◼   ► because there are efficiencies of IPv6

00:23:36 ◼   ► that they might want to take advantage of

00:23:38 ◼   ► and customers might want to connect to them.

00:23:40 ◼   ► But your customers for your server

00:23:42 ◼   ► is the client software that you write.

00:23:44 ◼   ► And as long as you're OK, as long as your overcast on iOS

00:23:48 ◼   ► doesn't expect to connect through IPv6,

00:23:50 ◼   ► I think you're probably fine.

00:23:52 ◼   ► That's the problem.

00:23:53 ◼   ► Like, IPv4, the backwards compatibility of IPv4

00:23:56 ◼   ► and the ability to connect with IPv4

00:23:58 ◼   ► is just so pervasive that so many servers just

00:24:00 ◼   ► don't support IPv6 at all.

00:24:02 ◼   ► And it doesn't cause a problem, because they know,

00:24:05 ◼   ► well, if anyone tries to connect with IPv6,

00:24:07 ◼   ► anyone living in that world trying to do that probably

00:24:09 ◼   ► has an expectation of, well, if it fails,

00:24:11 ◼   ► to connect through IPv4, or if there's no DNS for it,

00:24:14 ◼   ► I'll connect through IPv4.

00:24:16 ◼   ► But there are advantages to IPv6.

00:24:17 ◼   ► So if you are a big network provider trying

00:24:19 ◼   ► to provide the best service possible to a world of clients

00:24:22 ◼   ► that you don't control, yeah, you'd have to support it,

00:24:25 ◼   ► or you should support it.

00:24:26 ◼   ► And right now, you may support it whether you know it or not,

00:24:29 ◼   ► because it could be that Linode or something is running an IPv6

00:24:31 ◼   ► gateway that gnats everything down to IPv4 for you,

00:24:34 ◼   ► and you don't even know it.

00:24:35 ◼   ► There's all sorts of stuff that could

00:24:36 ◼   ► be happening in the network layer that--

00:24:38 ◼   ► unbeknownst to you that allows this to work?

00:24:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, maybe, I don't know.

00:24:43 ◼   ► - The only time that I've found that I really needed

00:24:45 ◼   ► to figure out IPv6, this is another story

00:24:48 ◼   ► I may have told on the podcast before,

00:24:51 ◼   ► when I was running a piehole on Docker on the Synology,

00:24:54 ◼   ► if I remember right, that was my first real foray

00:24:56 ◼   ► into Docker, and I noticed that all of a sudden,

00:25:01 ◼   ► all of the ads were coming back on Google stuff,

00:25:04 ◼   ► and particularly like AdWords and whatnot,

00:25:06 ◼   ► and I'm not 100% sure, but I believe what happened was

00:25:10 ◼   ► Google had started to support IPv6

00:25:12 ◼   ► for all their ad paraphernalia.

00:25:15 ◼   ► And because I don't really know what I'm doing

00:25:18 ◼   ► when it comes to Docker,

00:25:19 ◼   ► I didn't have my Docker container instance,

00:25:21 ◼   ► whatever, configured for IPv6.

00:25:24 ◼   ► And I think there was a real struggle

00:25:26 ◼   ► to get it configured for IPv6 on the Synology

00:25:30 ◼   ► as the host in any case.

00:25:32 ◼   ► And so that was the original,

00:25:34 ◼   ► That was the original impetus for me getting a Raspberry Pi.

00:25:38 ◼   ► We probably need a different musical instrument

00:25:40 ◼   ► for that too.

00:25:42 ◼   ► - A Raspberry Pi triangle.

00:25:44 ◼   ► - We could have a whole orchestra over there soon.

00:25:46 ◼   ► We need Plex, we need vinyl, it's a mess.

00:25:48 ◼   ► But anyways, so that was the impetus

00:25:51 ◼   ► for getting the original Raspberry Pi

00:25:52 ◼   ► was moving into a dedicated device

00:25:55 ◼   ► such that I could use IPv6.

00:25:58 ◼   ► And once I did that, I noticed that I wasn't seeing

00:26:01 ◼   ► nearly as many ads anymore.

00:26:02 ◼   ► I think that's because all of these IPv6 lookups were now failing as design.

00:26:07 ◼   ► That's the whole point of Piehole. All of them were failing and so it was working as I wanted it to.

00:26:11 ◼   ► That's never going to stop being a funny name to me.

00:26:13 ◼   ► It's so great. It's so great. It really is. I don't care what anyone says. It's so great.

00:26:16 ◼   ► So anyway, so that's the only time I really had to interact with IPv6. It certainly sounds great

00:26:22 ◼   ► in the sense that if I understand things properly, and I think this is what you were saying, John,

00:26:25 ◼   ► anything can be addressed from anywhere to anywhere. But that also of course scares me

00:26:30 ◼   ► because how do you protect things,

00:26:33 ◼   ► and does everything need to run its own firewall?

00:26:34 ◼   ► - It's not that they can be addresses.

00:26:35 ◼   ► There's enough addresses to go around.

00:26:37 ◼   ► So we're used to the idea that the things inside our houses

00:26:40 ◼   ► have private IP addresses that are not publicly routable,

00:26:42 ◼   ► and we feel like that is an extra layer of security,

00:26:45 ◼   ► but that's not why it's like that.

00:26:47 ◼   ► It's like that because there aren't enough

00:26:48 ◼   ► IPv4 addresses to go around, and it has to be this way,

00:26:51 ◼   ► and it doesn't actually provide

00:26:53 ◼   ► any particular additional security

00:26:54 ◼   ► if your router is configured wrong.

00:26:58 ◼   ► It feels good to us.

00:26:59 ◼   ► "aha this IP address doesn't exist to the outside world but we're all connected to some sort of like

00:27:02 ◼   ► you know pnp router thing that gnats stuff to that anyway" and it's like are you sure about that

00:27:07 ◼   ► because you know anyway i i if i know it feels scary to be like what do you mean like

00:27:11 ◼   ► my random light bulb would have a publicly routable address that's the ipv6 world and it

00:27:17 ◼   ► seems scary because it seems like it's less secure but i don't think it's any less secure and it is

00:27:22 ◼   ► certainly more straightforward like that just you know again we're in the very early days of the

00:27:28 ◼   ► internet before it was clear that there weren't going to be enough IPv4 addresses, before

00:27:33 ◼   ► NAT was literally everywhere, everything had an IP address and you know it's well not everything

00:27:38 ◼   ► because NAT existed for a long time but like the expectation that a device would have a publicly

00:27:43 ◼   ► routable IP address wasn't ridiculous you'd sit at something at a university and you'd look at

00:27:47 ◼   ► what its IP address was and it would have like an actual publicly routable IP address it wouldn't be

00:27:53 ◼   ► 192.168, it wouldn't be 10 dot whatever,

00:27:55 ◼   ► it would be somewhere under the class C

00:27:58 ◼   ► that your university owned.

00:28:00 ◼   ► And that doesn't mean from outside the university

00:28:03 ◼   ► you could just connect to it, because you probably couldn't,

00:28:05 ◼   ► 'cause there's so many layers of networking between,

00:28:06 ◼   ► but it did mean that it had,

00:28:07 ◼   ► and it doesn't even mean that it was a static IP,

00:28:09 ◼   ► it could have been DHCP,

00:28:10 ◼   ► and it gets a different IP every time or whatever,

00:28:13 ◼   ► but it was a regular real IP,

00:28:16 ◼   ► and it just simplified everything,

00:28:17 ◼   ► and now with all the NAT stuff,

00:28:18 ◼   ► I mean, with modern technology

00:28:20 ◼   ► and with good routers and everything,

00:28:21 ◼   ► it's not that big of a deal,

00:28:22 ◼   ► but it is an additional complication that I'm sure,

00:28:26 ◼   ► you know, I shouldn't be frustrated at this

00:28:28 ◼   ► 'cause I know so little about networking,

00:28:29 ◼   ► but like network administrators,

00:28:31 ◼   ► especially the people who were brought up

00:28:33 ◼   ► as network admins in the days that IPv6

00:28:35 ◼   ► was being rolled out, to think,

00:28:36 ◼   ► soon this will be so much simpler,

00:28:37 ◼   ► and then 20 years later in their careers,

00:28:39 ◼   ► like nope, still not simpler.

00:28:41 ◼   ► - We are sponsored this week by Linode,

00:28:45 ◼   ► my favorite place to run servers.

00:28:47 ◼   ► Visit linode.com/atp to see for yourself.

00:28:50 ◼   ► Linode is an amazing web host to run servers.

00:28:54 ◼   ► I run a lot of servers myself, and they are all at Linode.

00:28:57 ◼   ► I've slowly moved there over the years

00:29:00 ◼   ► because it's just a great host.

00:29:02 ◼   ► So first of all, they have amazing capabilities.

00:29:05 ◼   ► This is whatever kind of cloud service you're looking to start,

00:29:08 ◼   ► they probably support it there.

00:29:10 ◼   ► They have, of course, the compute instances,

00:29:13 ◼   ► what used to be called VPSs.

00:29:14 ◼   ► They're not called cloud compute instances.

00:29:16 ◼   ► They have special GPU accelerator plans.

00:29:19 ◼   ► They have a block storage product they can offer there.

00:29:22 ◼   ► Kubernetes, upcoming bare metal release.

00:29:25 ◼   ► They have an amazing API that you can script things with.

00:29:28 ◼   ► I actually have a few scripts myself to do things

00:29:30 ◼   ► like set up a new server, and it's super easy

00:29:32 ◼   ► to write against their API, it's just fantastic.

00:29:34 ◼   ► They have a one click app marketplace.

00:29:36 ◼   ► They support tools like Terraform.

00:29:38 ◼   ► It's just everything you want capability wise, they have it.

00:29:41 ◼   ► And they back this up with incredible support.

00:29:45 ◼   ► It's award winning, it's offered 24/7, 365,

00:29:48 ◼   ► And you get that same amazing support,

00:29:50 ◼   ► whether you're paying them five bucks a month

00:29:52 ◼   ► or 5,000 bucks a month, everyone gets the same support.

00:29:55 ◼   ► It's really, really great.

00:29:56 ◼   ► And there's no like, let me elevate you

00:29:58 ◼   ► to a different person, like none of that.

00:30:00 ◼   ► People who answer your tickets know

00:30:01 ◼   ► what they're talking about, and that's it.

00:30:02 ◼   ► You don't get passed around.

00:30:03 ◼   ► It's great.

00:30:05 ◼   ► And finally, the reason why I love Linode so much,

00:30:07 ◼   ► besides their great capabilities,

00:30:09 ◼   ► their good control panel, their great support,

00:30:12 ◼   ► is it is an incredible value.

00:30:14 ◼   ► If you look at around the industry,

00:30:16 ◼   ► look at what you're getting for your money,

00:30:18 ◼   ► Linode, it beats them all, it's great.

00:30:21 ◼   ► I don't know how they do it,

00:30:21 ◼   ► but they've done it consistently

00:30:23 ◼   ► for almost a decade that I've been there.

00:30:25 ◼   ► So visit linode.com/atp, create a free account there,

00:30:29 ◼   ► and you get $100 in credit to explore

00:30:32 ◼   ► this amazing host for yourself.

00:30:33 ◼   ► Once again, linode.com/atp, create a free account

00:30:37 ◼   ► to get $100 in credit.

00:30:39 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Linode for hosting all my servers

00:30:41 ◼   ► and sponsoring our show.

00:30:42 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:30:47 ◼   ► Moving right along, we got some really interesting feedback

00:30:49 ◼   ► from Alex with regard to USB-C KVMs

00:30:52 ◼   ► and the studio display specifically.

00:30:54 ◼   ► So Alex writes that on the show,

00:30:56 ◼   ► you called out a bi-directional USB-C switch

00:30:59 ◼   ► as a way to share the studio display between two Macs.

00:31:02 ◼   ► I'd like to have two displays shared by three computers,

00:31:04 ◼   ► two Macs and one PC.

00:31:06 ◼   ► So this didn't cover my use case.

00:31:08 ◼   ► After much searching, I finally found a single cable

00:31:11 ◼   ► that takes, get this, takes DisplayPort 1.4 and USB-A

00:31:16 ◼   ► and that goes into a single USB-C on the other end.

00:31:19 ◼   ► This was the missing link in my prior email.

00:31:21 ◼   ► With this, you can run a studio display

00:31:23 ◼   ► with webcam speakers and microphone all working.

00:31:26 ◼   ► This is great for using the display with PCs,

00:31:28 ◼   ► but more importantly, with KVMs.

00:31:30 ◼   ► Unfortunately, this does not appear

00:31:31 ◼   ► to be sold in North America,

00:31:32 ◼   ► but I was able to find listings for it

00:31:34 ◼   ► on eBay, AliExpress, et cetera,

00:31:36 ◼   ► and I've ordered it for my setup, says Alex.

00:31:38 ◼   ► So this is, I think it's like a VR systems cable

00:31:42 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:31:43 ◼   ► It's a Belkin, what is this?

00:31:45 ◼   ► getting to know the Belkin charge and sync cable for the Huawei VR glass. And so again,

00:31:51 ◼   ► on one end it's USB-C, on the other end it's DisplayPort in two USB-A. So if I understand

00:31:58 ◼   ► right, Alex is saying plug the USB-C into the Studio Display, plug the two USB-A and

00:32:04 ◼   ► the DisplayPort into your KVM or switch or what have you, and then suddenly you've got

00:32:09 ◼   ► the equivalent of your one cable going between the Studio Display and your Mac, but instead

00:32:14 ◼   ► it's one cable with three ends on the other side.

00:32:17 ◼   ► This is so weird and kind of confusing,

00:32:19 ◼   ► but apparently it works.

00:32:20 ◼   ► And Alex actually provided a YouTube timestamp link,

00:32:23 ◼   ► which we'll put in the show notes,

00:32:25 ◼   ► with video evidence of some other fellow trying this,

00:32:27 ◼   ► and it clearly working unless it's movie magic.

00:32:30 ◼   ► So I just thought this was super neat

00:32:31 ◼   ► and kind of fascinating.

00:32:33 ◼   ► - I would not want to debug this setup.

00:32:35 ◼   ► I can tell you that.

00:32:35 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:32:37 ◼   ► - Certainly not.

00:32:38 ◼   ► But cool that it exists.

00:32:39 ◼   ► Another one on the list of things that if I were a listener,

00:32:41 ◼   ► I'd want to know it exists even if I didn't need it.

00:32:44 ◼   ► A lot of people wanted me to comment on

00:32:47 ◼   ► what's going on with Google today.

00:32:50 ◼   ► And yesterday, I think as we record,

00:32:53 ◼   ► Google came to us hat in hand and said,

00:32:55 ◼   ► "Oh, oh, no, we were just kidding.

00:32:57 ◼   ► "If you're using Google Apps for your domain,"

00:33:00 ◼   ► whatever it's called now, G Suite or what have you,

00:33:02 ◼   ► "if you're using it for personal use,

00:33:05 ◼   ► "then we'll let you keep it for no cost,

00:33:08 ◼   ► "maybe forever until we change our minds again."

00:33:11 ◼   ► - You get another 16 years.

00:33:12 ◼   ► How long was it before?

00:33:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, right.

00:33:14 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:33:15 ◼   ► So, yeah, so that is apparently a thing,

00:33:18 ◼   ► which is good for me because I didn't want to lose

00:33:21 ◼   ► like Google Docs, for example,

00:33:23 ◼   ► not because I rely heavily on it other than show notes,

00:33:26 ◼   ► but it would be a pain in the butt if I had to like,

00:33:28 ◼   ► you know, move all this to a Gmail account

00:33:30 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:33:31 ◼   ► And so I'm happy and I did sign up for keeping this forever,

00:33:34 ◼   ► but I have already long since moved Fast Mail

00:33:37 ◼   ► and I'm super happy at Fast Mail.

00:33:38 ◼   ► So if this had been the case originally,

00:33:41 ◼   ► Like if they had split off the business people and said,

00:33:44 ◼   ► oh, business people, you gotta pay,

00:33:45 ◼   ► personal people, we're cool.

00:33:47 ◼   ► Then I don't think I would have moved to FastMail

00:33:48 ◼   ► and I would have been just fine staying there.

00:33:50 ◼   ► But now that I've done the work of moving to FastMail,

00:33:52 ◼   ► which if you recall was almost no work at all,

00:33:55 ◼   ► it was stunningly simple.

00:33:56 ◼   ► Now I'm super happy with it

00:33:59 ◼   ► and I don't think I wanna change anything up.

00:34:01 ◼   ► I'm not planning on going back to Gmail

00:34:02 ◼   ► or anything like that.

00:34:03 ◼   ► I like the fact that I have a direct relationship

00:34:06 ◼   ► with FastMail.

00:34:07 ◼   ► I give FastMail a little bit of money each month

00:34:09 ◼   ► and they give me email.

00:34:10 ◼   ► That's the way it works.

00:34:12 ◼   ► I'm happy with that.

00:34:13 ◼   ► And I'm not saying anyone else has to feel this way.

00:34:16 ◼   ► In fact, Jon, I know your primary email address is still

00:34:18 ◼   ► a Gmail address.

00:34:20 ◼   ► But for me, I like that I have divorced myself a little bit,

00:34:25 ◼   ► just a little bit more from Google.

00:34:27 ◼   ► And obviously, I'm hypocritical in a bunch of ways.

00:34:29 ◼   ► I still have an Alexa in the house,

00:34:30 ◼   ► even though we barely use it.

00:34:31 ◼   ► So I'm not perfect, but I am satisfied

00:34:34 ◼   ► with where this has ended up.

00:34:35 ◼   ► And I'm kind of happy with where this has ended up

00:34:38 ◼   ► because Fast Mail has been super great so far.

00:34:41 ◼   ► I've only been on it like a month,

00:34:42 ◼   ► but it's incredibly good.

00:34:44 ◼   ► The iOS apps are actually surprisingly good too.

00:34:47 ◼   ► They're a little busy for my tastes,

00:34:48 ◼   ► but you can do basically everything,

00:34:51 ◼   ► including a bunch of like rule setting

00:34:53 ◼   ► and other things that I would expect to be only on the web.

00:34:56 ◼   ► You can do like everything in the Fast Mail iOS apps,

00:34:59 ◼   ► which is super cool.

00:35:00 ◼   ► And again, the website is blazing fast.

00:35:04 ◼   ► They have easy push email,

00:35:06 ◼   ► which when you don't have work email anymore,

00:35:08 ◼   ► and getting push email isn't necessarily a bad thing.

00:35:11 ◼   ► And logging into FastMail on an iOS device is super easy

00:35:15 ◼   ► because they just have you scan a QR code

00:35:17 ◼   ► and then it's a profile that you download and you're in.

00:35:20 ◼   ► So I am super happy with FastMail.

00:35:22 ◼   ► I'll put my referral link in the show notes one more time

00:35:24 ◼   ► just to be safe.

00:35:25 ◼   ► - That's why this is coming up.

00:35:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, there we go.

00:35:28 ◼   ► But they are prior and probably future sponsor

00:35:31 ◼   ► to be honest with you,

00:35:31 ◼   ► but they didn't pay me to say any of that,

00:35:34 ◼   ► not this episode anyway.

00:35:35 ◼   ► So, it really is true, hand to God, it really is true.

00:35:39 ◼   ► I really am enjoying it.

00:35:40 ◼   ► So, it's worked out fine for me,

00:35:45 ◼   ► but if you're in this boat

00:35:46 ◼   ► and you were kicking the can down the road

00:35:47 ◼   ► as long as possible,

00:35:48 ◼   ► that's what I thought I was doing, to be honest,

00:35:49 ◼   ► but turns out I didn't wait quite long enough.

00:35:51 ◼   ► This is why I didn't follow Marco's lead

00:35:53 ◼   ► of procrastinating until the last possible moment.

00:35:55 ◼   ► - Procrastination pays off again.

00:35:57 ◼   ► - Exactly, I procrastinated a lot,

00:36:00 ◼   ► but I didn't procrastinate enough.

00:36:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm glad to hear that you're doing so

00:36:04 ◼   ► with the Fast Mail, 'cause like, this is how I've been for,

00:36:06 ◼   ► I mean, God, 10 years, or whatever it's been

00:36:08 ◼   ► that I've been on Fast Mail.

00:36:10 ◼   ► You know, I figured out email hosting once a long time ago,

00:36:12 ◼   ► and then I just haven't touched it,

00:36:13 ◼   ► because I haven't had to, because email is boring,

00:36:15 ◼   ► it doesn't deserve that much thought.

00:36:17 ◼   ► Like, it's just one of those things that just works.

00:36:19 ◼   ► You know, in the same way, like, you know,

00:36:20 ◼   ► I haven't revisited my home ISP journey anytime recently,

00:36:25 ◼   ► because we got files, and it's great, and it works,

00:36:27 ◼   ► and I don't wanna touch it, you know?

00:36:29 ◼   ► Like, I have my wonderful USB pre-2

00:36:31 ◼   ► for my microphone interface,

00:36:33 ◼   ► and there might be better ones out there now, I don't know,

00:36:36 ◼   ► but I have it now and I don't wanna touch it,

00:36:38 ◼   ► it works great, and that's a great place for things to get.

00:36:41 ◼   ► And things that are really boring

00:36:43 ◼   ► and don't really move forward that frequently, if at all,

00:36:47 ◼   ► it's not worth investing tons of your time

00:36:49 ◼   ► in trying out all the different options

00:36:52 ◼   ► and constantly being on the lookout for different things.

00:36:54 ◼   ► No, you find something that works

00:36:55 ◼   ► that's something boring like email,

00:36:57 ◼   ► you stick with it and move on to more interesting things.

00:36:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, a couple of pieces of real-time follow-up

00:37:01 ◼   ► based on the chat room.

00:37:02 ◼   ► CMF asks, "You don't set the rules on the website and just use mail.app. Odd." No, that

00:37:06 ◼   ► is generally speaking what I do.

00:37:08 ◼   ► That's what I do. I've never installed their apps before in my life.

00:37:10 ◼   ► Oh, no, and I did just on a lark, just because I was curious, and I generally speaking do

00:37:14 ◼   ► not use the FastMail apps. Generally speaking, I use mail.app. Well, I absolutely use mail.app

00:37:20 ◼   ► on my computer, but on iOS, my primary and almost effectively only app is mail.app. The

00:37:27 ◼   ► thing that I really like about FastMail's app, other than being able to tweak settings,

00:37:31 ◼   ► that it's really really fast if you want to delete versus archive. Like with iOS

00:37:35 ◼   ► you have to hold down on the archive button and you can swipe up to delete.

00:37:38 ◼   ► And if I'm just like trying to triage email really quickly, Fastmail's app

00:37:42 ◼   ► makes it really really nice to just because there's a button for archive and

00:37:45 ◼   ► a button for delete right there in the bottom which is super great. And then

00:37:48 ◼   ► Jared H asked how does Fastmail handle multiple tags per message so are there

00:37:52 ◼   ► like n duplicate copies of the message in IMAP folders? It can be like that. So

00:37:57 ◼   ► So if you recall, if you're not a Gmail user, I should say, the way Gmail works is it only

00:38:03 ◼   ► works with labels. It doesn't really have a concept of folders. I'm sure there's a gotcha

00:38:06 ◼   ► there, but for the purposes of this conversation, it only works with labels. And so if you translate

00:38:12 ◼   ► that to an IMAP world, then basically every place that a message or every label that a

00:38:19 ◼   ► message has, that message will be copied into that folder. So let's say, for example, I

00:38:24 ◼   ► tagged something as limitless, which is my business and masquerade. Well then there would be two copies.

00:38:30 ◼   ► There would be a limitless folder that has a copy of that message and a masquerade folder that had

00:38:34 ◼   ► a second copy of that message. That's the way Fastmail works by default and the way IMAP works

00:38:40 ◼   ► by default. The way almost every mail server works by default. But Fastmail, being Fastmail and being

00:38:45 ◼   ► super awesome, they optionally let you switch into a label mode, which is basically, if by all

00:38:51 ◼   ► for all intents and purposes, a Gmail mode. And then it works like Gmail where everything is a

00:38:55 ◼   ► label and so on and so forth. Now if you're working with a mail app like mail.app that

00:39:00 ◼   ► only speaks IMAP, then yeah you'll see duplicates everywhere. But as far as the one source of truth

00:39:05 ◼   ► on FastMail's side, it's labels just like it would be. It's the same experience as Gmail. Like with

00:39:11 ◼   ► Gmail, if you're using mail.app, it's the same exact thing. So you certainly can go that route.

00:39:17 ◼   ► And I tried going back to folders for like a week or two when I first jumped on fast mail

00:39:21 ◼   ► And then I realized for better or worse. I am so invested in this whole label lifestyle title

00:39:26 ◼   ► That I decided to just switch fast mail over to labels and I haven't looked back

00:39:31 ◼   ► We are sponsored this week by trade coffee now most of you know, I'm a huge coffee nerd and people always ask me

00:39:38 ◼   ► Hey, what kind of coffee maker should I get to make great coffee?

00:39:42 ◼   ► And I always tell them like look you're asking the wrong question

00:39:45 ◼   ► What you need to make great coffee is freshly roasted beans.

00:39:49 ◼   ► And almost everything you can buy in a grocery store

00:39:51 ◼   ► was roasted like three months ago.

00:39:53 ◼   ► That's not fresh.

00:39:53 ◼   ► You need it to be roasted like in the last two weeks, really.

00:39:56 ◼   ► And what you can get is trade coffee

00:39:59 ◼   ► to mail you freshly roasted beans.

00:40:02 ◼   ► And they have such a selection.

00:40:05 ◼   ► They have over 60 of the country's best craft roasters

00:40:08 ◼   ► that they buy from.

00:40:09 ◼   ► And these are small businesses.

00:40:11 ◼   ► They pay farmers fair prices.

00:40:12 ◼   ► They sustainably source the greatest beans

00:40:14 ◼   ► around the world. These are amazing quality coffee beans from all these

00:40:18 ◼   ► roasters. Over 450 varieties to choose from and then they have a test and these

00:40:23 ◼   ► real coffee experts to personally match their coffee to your taste. So you tell

00:40:29 ◼   ► them what you like in coffee and they will match you and they are so confident

00:40:33 ◼   ► that they'll match you right the first time that if they don't they'll take

00:40:36 ◼   ► your feedback and an actual coffee expert will work with you to send you a

00:40:39 ◼   ► brand new bag for free that you will like. And it's so great to have freshly

00:40:43 ◼   ► freshly roasted coffee mailed to you on a regular basis so you don't have to think about

00:40:47 ◼   ► it.

00:40:48 ◼   ► You can change it up if you want to try different varieties if you want to.

00:40:52 ◼   ► And it is just so much better than anything you can buy in a store.

00:40:55 ◼   ► They have over 5 million bags of fresh coffee they deliver to their customers or more than

00:40:59 ◼   ► 750,000 positive reviews.

00:41:02 ◼   ► It's just a great service.

00:41:03 ◼   ► Right now trade is offering new subscribers a total of $30 off your first order plus free

00:41:08 ◼   ► shipping when you go to www.drinktrade.com/ATP. That's more than 40 cups of coffee for free.

00:41:15 ◼   ► Get started by taking their quiz at www.drinktrade.com/ATP and let trade find you a coffee you'll love.

00:41:22 ◼   ► That's www.drinktrade.com/ATP for $30 off. Thanks to Trade for sponsoring our show.

00:41:32 ◼   ► I wanted to quickly talk about something I noticed over the last few days.

00:41:37 ◼   ► I noticed that iJustine, who is a very, very famous and popular YouTuber, had an Apple

00:41:43 ◼   ► Fitness Plus Studio Tour.

00:41:45 ◼   ► Now I am not presently in the midst of doing Apple Fitness Plus workouts, but I am probably

00:41:50 ◼   ► going to go back to that soon.

00:41:51 ◼   ► I was going through a different program for a little while.

00:41:54 ◼   ► And for the longest time, I've really, really wanted to know, just out of curiosity's sake,

00:41:59 ◼   ► where, well not where, is the studio. It sounds like I'm trying to visit or

00:42:03 ◼   ► something. And plus I tell you it's in Santa Monica like every exercise. But

00:42:07 ◼   ► like what makes the studio tick, and I know nothing about you know

00:42:10 ◼   ► production or making videos as Casey on Cars can show you, but I just find it

00:42:15 ◼   ► interesting like how do they do this and what are they doing and what does it

00:42:18 ◼   ► look like. And especially what does it look like from the trainer's perspective.

00:42:21 ◼   ► Like if you're, we see the view that a consumer would see, but I'd love to

00:42:28 ◼   ► a behind-the-scenes tour and look at the flip side, you know, look at the cameras and look at what they see.

00:42:33 ◼   ► And so iJustine, whose work is generally very good, did this 10-minute, you know, Fitness Plus press

00:42:39 ◼   ► studio tour, and I watched it and it was fine. So then I go looking and I thought, well,

00:42:45 ◼   ► you know, knowing Apple, this is probably some sort of press tour that they're doing, and sure enough,

00:42:49 ◼   ► it is. So some other channel, eTalk, which I think might be Canadian, they talk...

00:42:55 ◼   ► - It's pronounced a talk then.

00:42:56 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:42:57 ◼   ► - Nicely done.

00:42:58 ◼   ► So on a talk, they spoke to a couple

00:43:02 ◼   ► of the Canadian trainers, one of whom is actually

00:43:04 ◼   ► one of my favorite trainers, but it was the same thing.

00:43:06 ◼   ► It was like a five to 10 minute puff piece and nothing else.

00:43:10 ◼   ► Then I also noticed that KCAU TV from Sioux City,

00:43:14 ◼   ► apparently, got access to this as well.

00:43:17 ◼   ► I have no idea how or why.

00:43:18 ◼   ► As I am recording this, their video of behind the scenes

00:43:22 ◼   ► Apple Fitness from May 6, 2022 has 38 views. So we're gonna give them a big bump potentially,

00:43:28 ◼   ► but nevertheless, all of these though, they were total puff pieces. It was so silly. Like

00:43:33 ◼   ► we didn't get any view of what it looks like from the trainer's perspective. They all seem

00:43:37 ◼   ► to be fed the same like five second pan shot of, of the control room. Like they were all

00:43:44 ◼   ► dumb. Like, and I'm not trying to make fun of the, the creators. Like I'm sure I just

00:43:48 ◼   ► and all these other people did the best they could with what they were allowed to do.

00:43:53 ◼   ► But like, if you're gonna do this, do it properly! Like, let us see some stuff.

00:43:58 ◼   ► And it was just so frustrating that we didn't get to see squat.

00:44:00 ◼   ► It's so... it's just so Apple. Like, let's put Jay Blahnik or whatever his name is

00:44:04 ◼   ► and some of these trainers in front of somebody, usually a YouTuber,

00:44:08 ◼   ► and they can cheer and rah rah rah about what Apple Fitness Plus is doing for people,

00:44:12 ◼   ► which is all admirable and worth celebrating, I guess.

00:44:15 ◼   ► But, you know, if you could have called a studio tour, the tour's a freaking studio! Like, come on!

00:44:19 ◼   ► What were you hoping to see? I mean, like, it's a bunch of cameras pointed at people, right?

00:44:24 ◼   ► I mean, like, yes. Are there secrets?

00:44:28 ◼   ► It's a TV studio plus some sweat.

00:44:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:44:30 ◼   ► That's true, but, like, when you're recording one of these programs, you know, a lot of times

00:44:37 ◼   ► they will start an exercise, like, when the music beat drops. Which, granted, you can change the

00:44:44 ◼   ► the music a little bit to time it against the video,

00:44:47 ◼   ► but it's not often the case.

00:44:49 ◼   ► It seems like they just organically,

00:44:52 ◼   ► that's the way they make it,

00:44:53 ◼   ► I guess they're doing their job right

00:44:54 ◼   ► because they make it seem that way.

00:44:55 ◼   ► I'm sure it probably isn't that way,

00:44:57 ◼   ► but they make it seem like they organically

00:44:58 ◼   ► happen to be saying, okay, three, two, one, go.

00:45:00 ◼   ► Boom, you know, in the pin, beat drops, whatever.

00:45:03 ◼   ► And it's just like, how does that work?

00:45:04 ◼   ► How do they know how many reps they're doing

00:45:06 ◼   ► or how much time is left?

00:45:08 ◼   ► And yes, I'm sure this could just be as simple

00:45:09 ◼   ► as an iPad with a countdown timer,

00:45:11 ◼   ► but like, I wanna see it.

00:45:12 ◼   ► If you're calling it a studio tour,

00:45:14 ◼   ► let me tour the damn studio.

00:45:16 ◼   ► Like I just wanna see,

00:45:17 ◼   ► I just think that stuff is fascinating.

00:45:19 ◼   ► - I think you're infusing a marketing video

00:45:21 ◼   ► with like a behind the scenes,

00:45:23 ◼   ► like sort of informative education thing.

00:45:25 ◼   ► They're two very different things.

00:45:27 ◼   ► - I know, but that's what I wanted though.

00:45:29 ◼   ► I wanted the studio tour.

00:45:30 ◼   ► - There's a little bit of like in the 38 view KCAU TV one,

00:45:35 ◼   ► they show like the control room

00:45:37 ◼   ► that shows all the different views in the thing.

00:45:38 ◼   ► And I don't know enough about Apple Fitness Plus

00:45:40 ◼   ► or television production to know if this is custom for Apple,

00:45:43 ◼   ► but a couple of the monitors have outlines on them.

00:45:46 ◼   ► And then I'm assuming they're, I mean, in the old days,

00:45:48 ◼   ► they'd be showing you whatever it was called,

00:45:50 ◼   ► like the title safe area, basically,

00:45:52 ◼   ► that wasn't covered by the, you know,

00:45:54 ◼   ► back in the days of standard edition television and CRTs,

00:45:56 ◼   ► there was an area around the edge of the CRT

00:45:59 ◼   ► that all video production assumed

00:46:01 ◼   ► was potentially not visible to people

00:46:03 ◼   ► because of like the plastic bezel

00:46:05 ◼   ► that was surrounding televisions.

00:46:06 ◼   ► Or even when they didn't have plastic there,

00:46:08 ◼   ► it was just like, look, don't put anything in this area.

00:46:10 ◼   ► So the quote unquote title safe area or whatever is,

00:46:13 ◼   ► here's where you can actually put content.

00:46:15 ◼   ► Yes, the picture will go to the edge,

00:46:17 ◼   ► but don't put anything you want people to see there.

00:46:19 ◼   ► So for example, don't put text that high or that low

00:46:22 ◼   ► or that far to the right or that far to the left.

00:46:24 ◼   ► Well, and so many cameras would have the title safe area

00:46:27 ◼   ► with a little outline.

00:46:28 ◼   ► So if you're in production, you could say,

00:46:29 ◼   ► okay, I got to make, even though this is what the camera

00:46:32 ◼   ► sees, make sure that anything I care about

00:46:34 ◼   ► is inside this white box.

00:46:35 ◼   ► Well, in this behind the scenes thing,

00:46:37 ◼   ► they have a white box, which doesn't make that much sense

00:46:39 ◼   ► for HGTV and I've ranted about this on past shows

00:46:41 ◼   ► where the first round or the first several rounds

00:46:43 ◼   ► of high definition televisions also assumed

00:46:45 ◼   ► you had overscan and they would take the 1080p signal

00:46:48 ◼   ► and they would stretch it slightly,

00:46:49 ◼   ► making it basically non-native and cutting off the edges

00:46:51 ◼   ► because anyway, most TVs don't do that anymore, I think.

00:46:55 ◼   ► But so it's got an outline like that,

00:46:57 ◼   ► but it also has gutters on the left and the right side

00:46:59 ◼   ► and I'm wondering if that is the area

00:47:01 ◼   ► that they're reserving for the little heart rate

00:47:03 ◼   ► monitor things or stuff.

00:47:05 ◼   ► Is there stuff that appears there, Casey?

00:47:07 ◼   ► - There is, yes.

00:47:08 ◼   ► Now that you say that, I wouldn't have picked it out

00:47:10 ◼   ► until you said something, but yes, I bet you're right.

00:47:11 ◼   ► In the upper left and upper right-hand corners,

00:47:13 ◼   ► on the upper right, it shows your rings,

00:47:15 ◼   ► in the upper left, it shows the time in that particular set,

00:47:20 ◼   ► the time in the entire workout, if I recall correctly,

00:47:23 ◼   ► and then your current heart rate.

00:47:24 ◼   ► I haven't done one of these in a couple of weeks,

00:47:26 ◼   ► so that's all off the top of my head,

00:47:27 ◼   ► but I think that's right.

00:47:28 ◼   ► - I mean, it's got gutters down the hall right and left,

00:47:30 ◼   ► so maybe that's just a standard part of TV production,

00:47:32 ◼   ► I don't know what it is, but what it made me think

00:47:33 ◼   ► is maybe they have custom things that are saying,

00:47:35 ◼   ► "Hey, when you're filming Apple Fitness or whatever,

00:47:37 ◼   ► be aware these parts of the screen should be reserved for HUD and, you know, for future

00:47:42 ◼   ► HUD stuff. Maybe if they're going to put more stuff in.

00:47:44 ◼   ► Well, and also, as I'm looking at this KCAU video once again, and I'm looking at 40 seconds

00:47:50 ◼   ► in of the minute and 50 second video, but sure enough, I didn't notice this the first

00:47:55 ◼   ► time I watched before we recorded, but sure enough, in the upper right hand corner, the

00:48:00 ◼   ► video of the control room, courtesy colon Apple. So they didn't even let them in the

00:48:04 ◼   ► in the control room, which makes sense.

00:48:06 ◼   ► I'm not surprised.

00:48:07 ◼   ► - It's a marketing, they're just trying

00:48:09 ◼   ► to advertise Apple Fitness.

00:48:10 ◼   ► - I know.

00:48:11 ◼   ► - This is basically an ad.

00:48:12 ◼   ► - I know it is, but I wanted more, I wanted more.

00:48:15 ◼   ► - Well, Casey, what we've learned today

00:48:17 ◼   ► is that Casey has a burning desire

00:48:18 ◼   ► to see the internal workings

00:48:20 ◼   ► of the production of Apple Fitness.

00:48:21 ◼   ► - I do, I really do.

00:48:23 ◼   ► I find this fascinating.

00:48:24 ◼   ► I had a listener write in who does work

00:48:28 ◼   ► for the company that I do other exercise videos with,

00:48:31 ◼   ► and they didn't provide me any particular state secrets,

00:48:34 ◼   ► but I found what little they could and did provide

00:48:37 ◼   ► utterly fascinating.

00:48:38 ◼   ► So I don't know, it just, it bums me out.

00:48:40 ◼   ► Like if you're gonna call it a studio tour,

00:48:41 ◼   ► give me a tour of the studio.

00:48:42 ◼   ► Otherwise just call it the Apple Fitness Plus.

00:48:44 ◼   ► They invited me in and nobody else gets to go, so I went.

00:48:47 ◼   ► That's what they should have called it.

00:48:48 ◼   ► That's all right though.

00:48:49 ◼   ► All right, moving right along.

00:48:51 ◼   ► Tell me about the Rivian and how it sucks.

00:48:54 ◼   ► - All right, so the Rivian, the embargo on Rivian reviews

00:48:59 ◼   ► dropped like what this past week I think.

00:49:01 ◼   ► So everyone who got their Rivian,

00:49:03 ◼   ► and people know it's a big electric pickup truck.

00:49:05 ◼   ► And they're delivered to people now,

00:49:07 ◼   ► and you know people are reviewing them,

00:49:08 ◼   ► and you can see tons of videos about them.

00:49:10 ◼   ► And one of the videos I was watching was a very long,

00:49:14 ◼   ► I don't know what it's called,

00:49:14 ◼   ► it's an Instagram story, Instagram reel, whatever.

00:49:16 ◼   ► The thing where you do a very long vertical video

00:49:19 ◼   ► on Instagram.

00:49:20 ◼   ► And Quinn Nelson of the Snazzy Labs YouTube channel

00:49:23 ◼   ► got a Rivian, he's super excited about it.

00:49:27 ◼   ► And he did a really long video of him

00:49:28 ◼   ► just taking his phone around the truck

00:49:30 ◼   ► and looking at all the different things.

00:49:32 ◼   ► And at one point he was showing how the controls work

00:49:35 ◼   ► around the steering wheel,

00:49:36 ◼   ► like the stock controls or whatever.

00:49:37 ◼   ► And I was watching it and something occurred to me

00:49:40 ◼   ► that should have occurred to me a lot sooner.

00:49:43 ◼   ► And I was like, huh, that explains so much

00:49:45 ◼   ► and I'm gonna definitely think about that

00:49:46 ◼   ► as I think about more car stuff in the future.

00:49:50 ◼   ► And then I didn't think about it much anymore.

00:49:53 ◼   ► And then later that same week, somebody was,

00:49:55 ◼   ► Jason I think, Jason Snell in one of our slacks, posted a video of something that made me think

00:50:00 ◼   ► like this is an issue worth sharing so I'm going to share this thing that occurred to

00:50:06 ◼   ► me which is not, you know, it's obvious and maybe it occurred to everyone else but it's

00:50:11 ◼   ► the first time I thought of it as an actionable thing that should be added to the bucket of

00:50:15 ◼   ► things that car manufacturers think about when designing interior.

00:50:19 ◼   ► So the focus is on the left hand stock.

00:50:22 ◼   ► The Rivian does have stalks in the steering wheel.

00:50:25 ◼   ► And the one on the left has controls

00:50:27 ◼   ► for your lights and wipers

00:50:28 ◼   ► and windshield wiper squirter thing, right?

00:50:31 ◼   ► And Quinn was showing off it in his video.

00:50:33 ◼   ► If you wanna look at it, you can see it starts at

00:50:35 ◼   ► one hour, 10 minutes and 47 seconds into the video.

00:50:38 ◼   ► I don't know how to do a timestamp link,

00:50:39 ◼   ► but we'll provide you the link

00:50:41 ◼   ► and the timestamps you can scrub to it.

00:50:44 ◼   ► And it is a physical stalk

00:50:46 ◼   ► and on it are physical controls.

00:50:48 ◼   ► And he was demonstrating how the wipers work.

00:50:51 ◼   ► Like most wipers and cars, they have different speeds,

00:50:53 ◼   ► slow, fast, whatever, depending on how heavily it's raining.

00:50:56 ◼   ► And he was praising these, because he's like,

00:50:58 ◼   ► "It's not a touch control,

00:50:59 ◼   ► "it's not all on the touchscreen or whatever.

00:51:01 ◼   ► "There is a stalk, and on the stalk,

00:51:03 ◼   ► "there is a physical thing that you press."

00:51:06 ◼   ► The thing that you press, though,

00:51:07 ◼   ► I don't know how to describe it,

00:51:08 ◼   ► it's like a little toggle switch

00:51:12 ◼   ► that goes up and down on the stalk,

00:51:14 ◼   ► but when you press it, if you press it up

00:51:16 ◼   ► and take your finger off of it,

00:51:18 ◼   ► it springs back to the center position.

00:51:20 ◼   ► So it's not like a light switch where it goes on

00:51:21 ◼   ► and it stays on and it goes off and it stays off.

00:51:23 ◼   ► This thing you can either press up or press down,

00:51:25 ◼   ► but whichever direction you press it, it's spring loaded

00:51:27 ◼   ► and as soon as you take your finger off of it,

00:51:28 ◼   ► it just springs back to the middle, right?

00:51:30 ◼   ► And the way it works is,

00:51:32 ◼   ► if you do that on the one that's wiper

00:51:34 ◼   ► and you press like up, up, up or whatever,

00:51:36 ◼   ► on the touch, not the touch screen,

00:51:38 ◼   ► on the LCD display that is the instrument cluster

00:51:41 ◼   ► that's right in front of the steering wheel,

00:51:43 ◼   ► you will see a little display on the left side

00:51:45 ◼   ► that shows one raindrop, two raindrops, three raindrops.

00:51:48 ◼   ► And as you hit up, up, up, the selection state will go,

00:51:52 ◼   ► okay, you've selected one raindrop.

00:51:54 ◼   ► Now you've selected two raindrops.

00:51:55 ◼   ► Now you've selected three raindrops.

00:51:56 ◼   ► So you can go up, up, up, down, down, down

00:51:57 ◼   ► with this little thing.

00:51:58 ◼   ► It might as well be a D-pad, but it's not.

00:51:59 ◼   ► It's a little toggle switch.

00:52:00 ◼   ► But either way, and that's how you pick

00:52:03 ◼   ► how fast you want the wipers to be going.

00:52:06 ◼   ► And I was looking at that and, you know,

00:52:07 ◼   ► and Quinn's praising it because it's like,

00:52:09 ◼   ► he doesn't like, he's had many electric cars,

00:52:11 ◼   ► including Tesla, and he doesn't like the fact

00:52:13 ◼   ► that to change the wipers,

00:52:14 ◼   ► you'd have to go through a touchscreen.

00:52:15 ◼   ► He loves having it on the stock

00:52:16 ◼   ► 'cause it's near your hands and you can mess with it.

00:52:18 ◼   ► But I was like, boy, but it's such a shame,

00:52:20 ◼   ► like why wouldn't they just do a regular wiper control

00:52:23 ◼   ► instead of having this up, up, up, down, down, down

00:52:25 ◼   ► with a touchscreen display, like what a fumble there.

00:52:28 ◼   ► And then it immediately occurred to me,

00:52:29 ◼   ► like no, of course, they have to do it this way.

00:52:31 ◼   ► Like no car from decades ago would ever put

00:52:35 ◼   ► a wiper control like this intentionally.

00:52:36 ◼   ► And in fact, if you think about a car

00:52:38 ◼   ► that you have that's decades old or whatever,

00:52:40 ◼   ► the wipers are usually like,

00:52:41 ◼   ► either you twist something on the knob

00:52:43 ◼   ► or you press the stock up or down.

00:52:45 ◼   ► But the difference is in all those type of things,

00:52:48 ◼   ► If it's a twist thing, it's like you twist it a little bit

00:52:50 ◼   ► and that's position one, twist it a little bit more,

00:52:53 ◼   ► position two, twist a little bit more, position three,

00:52:54 ◼   ► whatever position you twist it to,

00:52:57 ◼   ► there's probably like on the knob there's like a marking

00:53:00 ◼   ► and on the other part of the knob

00:53:01 ◼   ► there's like the one and two and three raindrops

00:53:03 ◼   ► or whatever, it stays there, right?

00:53:05 ◼   ► Or if you have a knob where like if I press down,

00:53:08 ◼   ► that's the wipers on slow,

00:53:09 ◼   ► I push down a little bit more, that's faster,

00:53:11 ◼   ► push down a little bit more, it's faster still

00:53:12 ◼   ► and there's like three different places where it can stop.

00:53:15 ◼   ► And if you press it down to the middle place,

00:53:17 ◼   ► It stays there, the stock stays there, right?

00:53:19 ◼   ► But that's not how these work at all.

00:53:21 ◼   ► This is just a little toggle switch,

00:53:22 ◼   ► it always re-centers.

00:53:23 ◼   ► And the reason it does that,

00:53:25 ◼   ► and the reason this whole,

00:53:25 ◼   ► because it seems like a worse experience,

00:53:27 ◼   ► now I gotta look to see what settings it on,

00:53:28 ◼   ► I can't just feel where it is,

00:53:30 ◼   ► I can't look at my stock and tell what position it's in,

00:53:32 ◼   ► I have to like flick the whole thing.

00:53:33 ◼   ► But the reason it does it is obvious,

00:53:35 ◼   ► is that wipers are potentially controllable.

00:53:39 ◼   ► Anything that is potentially controllable

00:53:41 ◼   ► through a touchscreen can have a physical control

00:53:44 ◼   ► in the old style.

00:53:46 ◼   ► Because think of what would happen

00:53:47 ◼   ► if you had a twisty physical control where it's like,

00:53:49 ◼   ► oh, I twist to the two raindrops setting, right?

00:53:51 ◼   ► Then what if you went to the touchscreen

00:53:52 ◼   ► and changed it to three raindrops setting?

00:53:54 ◼   ► Now there's a conflict between what the wipers

00:53:56 ◼   ► are actually doing and what your little twisty thing

00:53:58 ◼   ► is doing.

00:53:59 ◼   ► So any physical control in a car with a touchscreen

00:54:03 ◼   ► where that same functionality is controlled

00:54:05 ◼   ► by the touchscreen, which basically includes

00:54:06 ◼   ► every kind of control, can't be a control

00:54:10 ◼   ► that moves to a position and stays there.

00:54:12 ◼   ► And that's bad for a physical control

00:54:14 ◼   ► because for a physical control,

00:54:15 ◼   ► moving to a position and staying there

00:54:16 ◼   ► provides information.

00:54:18 ◼   ► I can tell that my blinker is on because the stalk is down.

00:54:22 ◼   ► And yes, it's a blinking light and a noise or whatever.

00:54:24 ◼   ► I can tell how fast the wipers are

00:54:25 ◼   ► based on the position of the stalk.

00:54:27 ◼   ► I can tell if my lights are on or off

00:54:28 ◼   ► based on the position of the twisty thing,

00:54:29 ◼   ► which has a flat spot on it.

00:54:31 ◼   ► I could tell by feel, I can tell by glancing at it.

00:54:34 ◼   ► The physical state of a regular physical control

00:54:37 ◼   ► conveys useful information.

00:54:39 ◼   ► But in a car with touch screens,

00:54:41 ◼   ► you can't do that because it has to always

00:54:43 ◼   ► sort of return to center.

00:54:45 ◼   ► You can't look at this wiper stock

00:54:48 ◼   ► and know if your wipers are even on.

00:54:49 ◼   ► If you look at it, you just see a bunch of switches

00:54:51 ◼   ► that are in the middle position,

00:54:52 ◼   ► and they don't tell you anything

00:54:54 ◼   ► about the state of the wipers.

00:54:55 ◼   ► They don't tell you what they're on,

00:54:56 ◼   ► what speed they're on, nothing.

00:54:57 ◼   ► It might as well just be another interface

00:54:59 ◼   ► to the touchscreen, again, because of that conflict.

00:55:02 ◼   ► And I was thinking, well, it's such a shame,

00:55:04 ◼   ► that explains why so many, first of all, explains partially

00:55:07 ◼   ► why so many of these electronic cars

00:55:09 ◼   ► don't have physical controls.

00:55:10 ◼   ► Part of it is obviously cost savings,

00:55:11 ◼   ► where once you have a screen and some software,

00:55:13 ◼   ► why not just put everything on it?

00:55:14 ◼   ► Tesla loves to do that. But the other thing is that if you make a physical

00:55:17 ◼   ► control it's got to be a crappier physical control because you can't have

00:55:22 ◼   ► that physical control be like manifest state in its physical state. You can't

00:55:27 ◼   ► have its position or anything about it convey information because now you have

00:55:31 ◼   ► a potential conflict with what someone would do with the touchscreen. And what

00:55:35 ◼   ► Jason brought up was like a video of a Buick from 2001 and this Buick had

00:55:42 ◼   ► volume controls on the steering wheel, which is something I think we, you know, most people are familiar with in

00:55:46 ◼   ► Vaguely modern cars up and down volume on the steering wheel super convenient, right?

00:55:50 ◼   ► And you have you think about that doesn't that run counter what you say like normally you hop down volume a steering wheel

00:55:57 ◼   ► But the days for touch screens you also had a volume knob and the way they got around this

00:56:01 ◼   ► and you know once you once you think to look for this you'll see it everywhere is

00:56:06 ◼   ► Sometime, I don't know a decade or two ago all of the knobs on electronics

00:56:12 ◼   ► lost the little marking that would tell you where it's pointing, right?

00:56:16 ◼   ► There used to be like a little black knob and they used to have a little notch on it

00:56:20 ◼   ► and if the notch was pointing down that was off and if the notch was all the way

00:56:23 ◼   ► you'd rotate it around if it was up at 12 o'clock it would be halfway, right?

00:56:27 ◼   ► Not all of them, Jon, not all of them because remember that I have volume

00:56:30 ◼   ► controls on my steering wheel and yet my stupid volume button on my car which I

00:56:36 ◼   ► I genuinely am happy to have, it has little line on it.

00:56:41 ◼   ► Well no, but it has the stupid vertical line on it.

00:56:43 ◼   ► So I have to keep it centered and never touch it.

00:56:45 ◼   ► Otherwise it drives me bananas.

00:56:47 ◼   ► I need to get one of those little black stickers

00:56:48 ◼   ► to stick over it so I don't ever look at it again.

00:56:51 ◼   ► - All right, well I'll ask you more about that

00:56:53 ◼   ► 'cause I'm interested to know how that works

00:56:55 ◼   ► and how that doesn't end up causing conflicts.

00:56:56 ◼   ► But the way they dealt with, to get back to what I was saying

00:56:59 ◼   ► like the reason you don't see that notch anymore

00:57:01 ◼   ► in lots of things is because there's some other way

00:57:04 ◼   ► to change the volume.

00:57:04 ◼   ► So for example, a remote control.

00:57:06 ◼   ► like a receiver, once receivers got remote controls,

00:57:09 ◼   ► and maybe if you're old enough, you remember,

00:57:11 ◼   ► receivers didn't always have remote controls.

00:57:13 ◼   ► You'd have to go up to them and turn the knob

00:57:14 ◼   ► to change the volume on your record player receiver thing.

00:57:17 ◼   ► Once you got a remote control,

00:57:20 ◼   ► now you have a way to change the volume,

00:57:22 ◼   ► but it's different than the knob.

00:57:24 ◼   ► And so if the knob had a marking on it

00:57:26 ◼   ► and you changed the volume,

00:57:27 ◼   ► now there's a conflict between where the knob is

00:57:30 ◼   ► on the thing and what the volume is actually outputting.

00:57:33 ◼   ► And so what they did was they made the knobs

00:57:34 ◼   ► essentially spin forever with no markings.

00:57:36 ◼   ► So you could rotate the knob,

00:57:37 ◼   ► but you could just rotate it forever and ever and ever.

00:57:39 ◼   ► And there was no marking anywhere on it.

00:57:41 ◼   ► So if you did it clockwise, it would get louder,

00:57:43 ◼   ► and counterclockwise, it would get quieter,

00:57:44 ◼   ► but there was no notch to say,

00:57:46 ◼   ► here's maximum, here's minimum, here's one through 10.

00:57:48 ◼   ► And that lets you have the remote

00:57:50 ◼   ► and go volume up, up, up, down, down, down,

00:57:52 ◼   ► and not have any sort of physical conflict

00:57:55 ◼   ► because the knob was just faceless and just a sphere

00:57:57 ◼   ► and you never knew which way it was pointing.

00:57:59 ◼   ► - The faceless knob.

00:58:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, the Buick, and also many fancy AV receivers

00:58:03 ◼   ► did the same thing and probably still do.

00:58:06 ◼   ► What the Buick did was when you hit the volume controls

00:58:08 ◼   ► on the steering wheel, up, up, up volume,

00:58:10 ◼   ► it would make the knob with a marking on it.

00:58:12 ◼   ► On the dashboard, on the radio, turn.

00:58:15 ◼   ► So you'd press up button on the steering wheel

00:58:17 ◼   ► and you'd see the little knob turn

00:58:18 ◼   ► like a ghost was turning it, right?

00:58:20 ◼   ► And in that way they could keep the knob

00:58:22 ◼   ► in sync with the actual volume as inputted in the button.

00:58:25 ◼   ► Basically making physical controls

00:58:27 ◼   ► whose state conveyed information

00:58:28 ◼   ► because there's a little notch on it,

00:58:30 ◼   ► but also having an alternative way to do it

00:58:33 ◼   ► on the steering wheel and you know,

00:58:34 ◼   ► stereos did the same thing.

00:58:36 ◼   ► For the ones that kept a marking on their volume knob,

00:58:38 ◼   ► you'd hit volume up, up, up on your remote

00:58:41 ◼   ► and you'd see the volume knob on the AV receiver

00:58:44 ◼   ► move on its own.

00:58:45 ◼   ► I'm not necessarily saying this is the solution

00:58:49 ◼   ► to having good physical controls in cars

00:58:51 ◼   ► 'cause as you can imagine, doing that is expensive,

00:58:54 ◼   ► delicate, finicky, like it's way more complicated

00:58:57 ◼   ► than just having like a wiper stock

00:58:59 ◼   ► that you move up and down through various positions, right?

00:59:02 ◼   ► But as cars increasingly have touch screens,

00:59:04 ◼   ► this is part of the thing that's causing car interiors

00:59:08 ◼   ► to get so much worse.

00:59:09 ◼   ► Because you want functionality to be accessible

00:59:12 ◼   ► on a touch screen, but every single thing you put

00:59:14 ◼   ► on that touch screen basically makes the physical control

00:59:19 ◼   ► alternative to it worse or nonexistent.

00:59:22 ◼   ► Non-existent is easiest, 'cause then you don't have

00:59:23 ◼   ► to worry about any conflict, but if there is

00:59:25 ◼   ► a physical control, I don't think people are gonna wanna

00:59:28 ◼   ► put little motors in there to sort of motorize

00:59:30 ◼   ► every other part of the thing.

00:59:31 ◼   ► I mean, it's neat that this Buick did it

00:59:32 ◼   ► for the volume knob and some fancy

00:59:34 ◼   ► Nakamichi stereo receiver probably does the same thing.

00:59:37 ◼   ► I don't know, is Nakamichi still a brand?

00:59:38 ◼   ► It was fancy in the '80s.

00:59:40 ◼   ► - It was very fancy in the '80s.

00:59:41 ◼   ► I don't think it's still a brand.

00:59:42 ◼   ► - Bang and Olufsen, I don't know.

00:59:43 ◼   ► I don't know what fancy AV brands are.

00:59:45 ◼   ► - I mean, I've seen the motorized volume knob

00:59:47 ◼   ► on receivers before and earlier in my life

00:59:51 ◼   ► and at that time, there'd be no reason for me

00:59:53 ◼   ► to ever see a very expensive piece of equipment.

00:59:55 ◼   ► And so, chances are, I think it made it down

00:59:57 ◼   ► to more reasonably priced options.

01:00:00 ◼   ► I mean, the Buick is--

01:00:01 ◼   ► I don't know what Buick model is.

01:00:02 ◼   ► This is what they don't say.

01:00:03 ◼   ► But it doesn't look like that fancy of your car.

01:00:04 ◼   ► It looks pretty darn plasticy.

01:00:06 ◼   ► So obviously, the technology--

01:00:07 ◼   ► It's a Buick.

01:00:07 ◼   ► It's not that fancy.

01:00:09 ◼   ► Yeah, the technology is within reach.

01:00:10 ◼   ► But it is probably more finicky and delicate,

01:00:12 ◼   ► especially if you're thinking of putting

01:00:13 ◼   ► little motors in stocks and everything like that.

01:00:15 ◼   ► And it would be weird to do something on the touchscreen

01:00:18 ◼   ► and have one of the stocks next to the steering wheel

01:00:19 ◼   ► move, also potentially dangerous to have

01:00:21 ◼   ► parts of the car near the steering wheel

01:00:23 ◼   ► move without you touching them.

01:00:24 ◼   ► So I understand why this is not a great idea.

01:00:27 ◼   ► But when I saw this video, it's the first time

01:00:31 ◼   ► that it occurred to me that there is like a real concrete

01:00:35 ◼   ► reason why car interiors are getting worse

01:00:37 ◼   ► with the advent of touch screens,

01:00:39 ◼   ► and it's not just cost savings,

01:00:40 ◼   ► and it's not just ill-advised, leaning too heavily into tech.

01:00:44 ◼   ► There is actually an issue here,

01:00:46 ◼   ► an unresolvable, not unresolvable,

01:00:49 ◼   ► but a not easily resolvable issue between functionality

01:00:53 ◼   ► on screens and functionality in physical controls,

01:00:57 ◼   ► And it's the same issue that has faced us

01:00:59 ◼   ► in all these other devices that have knobs in them

01:01:01 ◼   ► like AV receivers and other things that are out.

01:01:04 ◼   ► It's probably not as big a deal with AV receivers

01:01:05 ◼   ► 'cause honestly the remote is better.

01:01:06 ◼   ► We don't wanna have to get up off the couch, right?

01:01:08 ◼   ► But when you're driving the car,

01:01:09 ◼   ► your hands are already on the steering wheel.

01:01:10 ◼   ► Physical controls and stalks are great.

01:01:12 ◼   ► They are superior in terms of ergonomics and efficiency

01:01:15 ◼   ► to having to go to the touchscreen for something.

01:01:17 ◼   ► But if it's also on the touchscreen,

01:01:19 ◼   ► suddenly your stalks are crappy

01:01:20 ◼   ► and you're going up, up, up

01:01:21 ◼   ► and looking at a little graphic change on the screen.

01:01:23 ◼   ► - See, but the thing that I find so distasteful about this,

01:01:26 ◼   ► even though the Rivian looks so freaking cool

01:01:27 ◼   ► and I really don't like pickups.

01:01:28 ◼   ► But the thing that I find so distasteful about this

01:01:30 ◼   ► is why do we need to control the wipers

01:01:33 ◼   ► via the touchscreen?

01:01:34 ◼   ► Why do we need a second control surface

01:01:36 ◼   ► for windshield wipers?

01:01:38 ◼   ► What's the purpose?

01:01:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, that's what I was saying.

01:01:40 ◼   ► Like, it's so irresistible to put the control

01:01:43 ◼   ► on the touchscreen, and once you do, you have that problem.

01:01:45 ◼   ► But like, for someone to come into the meeting

01:01:47 ◼   ► and say exactly what you said is like,

01:01:48 ◼   ► how about we just not have that control on the touchscreen?

01:01:50 ◼   ► Like, what?

01:01:51 ◼   ► You mean our comprehensive whole car control system?

01:01:54 ◼   ► Why would we not have the touch screen?

01:01:56 ◼   ► It's the best thing.

01:01:57 ◼   ► It's the most flexible.

01:01:58 ◼   ► We can put ads under it if we want.

01:01:59 ◼   ► Sometime in the future we need to make money.

01:02:01 ◼   ► Just the resistance to,

01:02:04 ◼   ► and I kind of understand the philosophy.

01:02:05 ◼   ► Shouldn't the touch screen be able to do everything?

01:02:07 ◼   ► Like it's software.

01:02:08 ◼   ► Why should we limit certain things to only physical controls?

01:02:11 ◼   ► But I don't agree with that,

01:02:13 ◼   ► but I can imagine someone saying that,

01:02:14 ◼   ► and if I had to throw something back in their face,

01:02:16 ◼   ► and it's like, well, why don't we let them steer

01:02:17 ◼   ► on the touch screen as well?

01:02:19 ◼   ► Shouldn't everything be on the touch screen?

01:02:20 ◼   ► Why do I have to use the wheel to steer?

01:02:22 ◼   ► But obviously, I lose.

01:02:23 ◼   ► - Apparently Apple's gonna ship a car with no windows

01:02:25 ◼   ► and no steering wheel and so on and so forth.

01:02:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think Johnny Iov doesn't quite understand

01:02:28 ◼   ► computers, but anyway.

01:02:29 ◼   ► - Well, and so another thing I wanted to bring up

01:02:31 ◼   ► is my dad, as I've mentioned several times in the past,

01:02:33 ◼   ► has some very fancy stereo equipment,

01:02:34 ◼   ► and a tonal denim in the chat reminded me

01:02:38 ◼   ► that his equipment, like his preamp and,

01:02:42 ◼   ► well, I guess preamp and stuff like that,

01:02:44 ◼   ► it does have a massive physical volume control,

01:02:47 ◼   ► and it has a remote control,

01:02:48 ◼   ► but what it does is it has a series of LEDs

01:02:50 ◼   ► encircling the spinner such that as you spin,

01:02:55 ◼   ► you know, as they say you're increasing the volume,

01:02:57 ◼   ► they'll be more and more and more

01:02:59 ◼   ► of these LEDs lit clockwise.

01:03:00 ◼   ► And as you decrease the volume,

01:03:01 ◼   ► then fewer and fewer of them are lit

01:03:03 ◼   ► or it'll look like it's falling counterclockwise.

01:03:05 ◼   ► And so that's another mechanism

01:03:07 ◼   ► by which you can solve this problem.

01:03:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like another screen.

01:03:10 ◼   ► Or you can imagine doing with ink

01:03:11 ◼   ► if you wanted to get fancy and stuff like that.

01:03:13 ◼   ► You can even imagine little electronic stops in the wheel.

01:03:15 ◼   ► But like as what we've seen is just, you know,

01:03:18 ◼   ► If you have a modern car, your volume knob spins forever.

01:03:21 ◼   ► That's the way they've been for so long.

01:03:22 ◼   ► Even before touch screens, they were like that,

01:03:24 ◼   ► just because it allows you to have basically

01:03:26 ◼   ► the steering wheel volume controls.

01:03:27 ◼   ► Like, steering wheel volume controls have been around

01:03:30 ◼   ► for probably a decade before any car had a touch screen in.

01:03:34 ◼   ► But once they put those steering wheel volume controls,

01:03:36 ◼   ► everybody's stereo volume knobs just spin forever

01:03:38 ◼   ► and don't have marks on them.

01:03:39 ◼   ► And we all just get used to it, and it's fine.

01:03:40 ◼   ► And probably people don't much think about it,

01:03:43 ◼   ► but that's, and I think that's reasonable,

01:03:46 ◼   ► 'cause it's not like you're glancing at the volume

01:03:48 ◼   ► not to know what volume level you're at,

01:03:49 ◼   ► but for things like wipers or whatever,

01:03:51 ◼   ► it is nice to be able to feel

01:03:52 ◼   ► like how fast the wipers are going

01:03:54 ◼   ► and do I need to go one more level up

01:03:56 ◼   ► or one more level down or whatever.

01:03:58 ◼   ► Again, probably not that big deal for wipers,

01:04:00 ◼   ► but just the Rivian's controls

01:04:03 ◼   ► really brought this home for me

01:04:04 ◼   ► because it's clear that Rivian is trying

01:04:07 ◼   ► to not be like Tesla in this way,

01:04:08 ◼   ► trying to have everything be as physical control,

01:04:11 ◼   ► but they can't, they haven't gone whole hog

01:04:13 ◼   ► and said we're gonna put tiny little motors in our stocks

01:04:15 ◼   ► I don't blame them. We're gonna put tiny little motors in our stocks to make it like it's a Honda stock and it will rotate

01:04:20 ◼   ► The stock for you or whatever

01:04:22 ◼   ► Moving right along Apple has pre announced some accessibility enhancements and they did this

01:04:28 ◼   ► It was either yesterday today as we record

01:04:30 ◼   ► There was a post in the newsroom and I'm gonna read just a handful of excerpts

01:04:34 ◼   ► People who are blind or low vision can use their iPhone or and iPad to navigate the last few feet to their destination with door detection

01:04:42 ◼   ► Door detection can help users locate a door upon arriving at a new destination,

01:04:45 ◼   ► understand how far they are from it, and describe the door attributes, including if it is open or closed, and when it's closed whether it

01:04:51 ◼   ► can be opened by pushing, turning a knob, or pulling a handle.

01:04:53 ◼   ► Door detection can also read signs and symbols around the door, like the room number at an office or the presence of an accessible entrance

01:04:59 ◼   ► symbol. They have on their newsroom page a bunch of like very very short like videos or gifs or something,

01:05:06 ◼   ► I guess they're videos, which demonstrate this nearly only 15-20 seconds.

01:05:10 ◼   ► And the door detection one in particular was super cool because it's a woman that appears to be blind

01:05:16 ◼   ► walking up to a door and it says, you know, there's a closed door eight feet away

01:05:20 ◼   ► Text and meaning there's text written on it text muffin to write home about bakery, which by the way is a very good name

01:05:26 ◼   ► Muffin to write home about bakery and then you know

01:05:29 ◼   ► And so it's helping her figure out exactly where she needs to go in order to enter the bakery

01:05:34 ◼   ► I just think that's super neat

01:05:35 ◼   ► continuing right along

01:05:37 ◼   ► Users with physical motor disabilities who may rely on assistive features like voice control and switch control

01:05:42 ◼   ► Can fully control Apple watch from their iPhone with Apple watch mirroring

01:05:45 ◼   ► Apple watch mirroring uses hardware and software integration including advances built on airplay to help ensure users who rely on these mobility features can benefit from

01:05:53 ◼   ► Unique Apple watch apps like blood oxygen heart rate mindfulness and more so that kind of answers the question

01:05:58 ◼   ► Wait, what why would you wear an Apple watch if you can't really operate the Apple watch?

01:06:02 ◼   ► So yeah, apparently it's so you can get you know detection of

01:06:06 ◼   ► of workouts and exercise and your rings

01:06:10 ◼   ► and blood oxygen and things like that.

01:06:12 ◼   ► So that's pretty neat.

01:06:13 ◼   ► - This kind of reminds me of when you could use iTunes

01:06:15 ◼   ► to rearrange the icons on your home screen.

01:06:17 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:06:18 ◼   ► - Why would I ever use a desktop app

01:06:19 ◼   ► to rearrange icons on my home screen?

01:06:21 ◼   ► But we all know the answer to that.

01:06:22 ◼   ► 'Cause it's a super pain to do it on your phone.

01:06:24 ◼   ► So for like this quote unquote disability feature,

01:06:28 ◼   ► being able to control your watch on a phone

01:06:31 ◼   ► with a bigger screen, I would like to use that.

01:06:33 ◼   ► 'Cause I don't, sometimes you wanna do something

01:06:35 ◼   ► on the watch or with the watch,

01:06:36 ◼   ► but you don't want to use the tiny little screen.

01:06:38 ◼   ► If you've got your phone,

01:06:39 ◼   ► why not let me use my phone to essentially VNC control,

01:06:43 ◼   ► like it's a bigger screen, it's a better input device.

01:06:46 ◼   ► I don't necessarily have to,

01:06:47 ◼   ► and it's important, you know, to your point,

01:06:48 ◼   ► it has to be on your wrist to get like your pulse

01:06:50 ◼   ► and your blood ox, like it's still serving its purpose,

01:06:54 ◼   ► but I very often would not want to use

01:06:56 ◼   ► the tiniest little screen that I have,

01:06:58 ◼   ► and you know, hold my wrist up

01:06:59 ◼   ► and try to use my fat little fingers and the things.

01:07:02 ◼   ► Please, let, this is, you know,

01:07:03 ◼   ► again, accessibility is for everybody.

01:07:05 ◼   ► And I would like a feature like this,

01:07:07 ◼   ► 'cause I think this type of thing

01:07:09 ◼   ► where you have something that's difficult to use,

01:07:11 ◼   ► whether it be rearranging icons on the springboard,

01:07:13 ◼   ► which Apple doesn't have to be this hard,

01:07:15 ◼   ► please improve this, or using a very tiny screen,

01:07:18 ◼   ► which has to be tiny 'cause it's on your wrist,

01:07:20 ◼   ► let me do it in a larger interface,

01:07:22 ◼   ► whether that be changing springboard around

01:07:24 ◼   ► on a desktop Mac, which I still wish you had a way to do,

01:07:27 ◼   ► or using your watch from your phone.

01:07:30 ◼   ► - Deaf and hard of hearing community

01:07:32 ◼   ► can follow live captions on iPhone, iPad, and Mac,

01:07:35 ◼   ► So that doesn't sound like much at first, but then here again, you look at the demo video

01:07:38 ◼   ► and it's two people talking over FaceTime, and as the woman on the other end of the call is talking,

01:07:44 ◼   ► there's a little overlay with exactly what she's saying on the screen, which is super duper cool.

01:07:49 ◼   ► And I can imagine how that would be super useful.

01:07:53 ◼   ► I mean, imagine, here's an example of accessibility for everyone,

01:07:56 ◼   ► what if you want to receive a FaceTime call, but you're in a place where having the audio play is unwise?

01:08:02 ◼   ► You just want to hear somebody talk to you and you don't have to contribute much.

01:08:05 ◼   ► You can just shake your head yes or no or whatever.

01:08:07 ◼   ► You can turn the volume all the way down and then just read what they're saying.

01:08:10 ◼   ► I know this is a little bit of a contrived example, but it is a thing that could happen.

01:08:14 ◼   ► As another example, I will sometimes watch video in bed when Aaron is either asleep or

01:08:20 ◼   ► nearly asleep and maybe I'm watching something short so I don't want to pop in an AirPod.

01:08:25 ◼   ► If I can't turn on closed captions or if it doesn't have closed captions on it, then I'm

01:08:29 ◼   ► I'm missing most of the video.

01:08:31 ◼   ► Or I'll just not watch the video at all.

01:08:34 ◼   ► That's part of the reason why when I was doing

01:08:35 ◼   ► KC on Cars, I always put in the closed captions.

01:08:37 ◼   ► And they weren't perfect, but I at least tried

01:08:39 ◼   ► to make them just about right.

01:08:41 ◼   ► So yeah, accessibility's for everyone,

01:08:42 ◼   ► just like you said, Jon.

01:08:44 ◼   ► - YouTube has auto captions.

01:08:46 ◼   ► And this is kind of catch up for Apple,

01:08:48 ◼   ► because most streaming services have some

01:08:49 ◼   ► for auto captions, and auto captions aren't always great,

01:08:51 ◼   ► and it's kind of funny to watch how they try to

01:08:54 ◼   ► take proper nouns and turn them into,

01:08:56 ◼   ► like the example that's going around

01:08:57 ◼   ► for all the television review channels that I watch

01:09:00 ◼   ► is they very often say C-U-T-I-E,

01:09:03 ◼   ► like something that is very cute, cutie, they say cutie OLED.

01:09:06 ◼   ► Right, they get OLED, right, 'cause I guess it's been added

01:09:08 ◼   ► to the dictionary, so it says O-L-E-D for organic,

01:09:11 ◼   ► light-emitting diode, right?

01:09:12 ◼   ► But it's such a cutie OLED.

01:09:14 ◼   ► Yeah, but it's, you know, this Apple playing catch-up here

01:09:18 ◼   ► is important and related to this.

01:09:20 ◼   ► We didn't cover this, we usually don't,

01:09:21 ◼   ► but Google had its I/O conference thing,

01:09:23 ◼   ► and one of the demos in Google I/O was another

01:09:26 ◼   ► easy to criticize as vaporware, but still interesting

01:09:29 ◼   ► technology, where it was showing glasses or whatever.

01:09:33 ◼   ► But the glasses aren't really the point

01:09:34 ◼   ► of doing real-time translation.

01:09:36 ◼   ► So rather than just we're going to transcribe

01:09:39 ◼   ► what the person is saying in the form of text,

01:09:40 ◼   ► which is super useful and is coming to all of our devices

01:09:45 ◼   ► and I think we're all going to enjoy it,

01:09:47 ◼   ► but what if you could talk to somebody who didn't speak

01:09:50 ◼   ► your language and see text of what they were saying

01:09:53 ◼   ► in your language below their face?

01:09:55 ◼   ► And again, the glasses are like, well,

01:09:56 ◼   ► I can just look right at them.

01:09:57 ◼   ► But in the glasses, I see what they're saying.

01:09:59 ◼   ► But even if you had to hold up your phone or whatever,

01:10:01 ◼   ► again, live translation apps have existed for years.

01:10:03 ◼   ► This is the type of thing that Google is usually very good at.

01:10:06 ◼   ► Like translate.google.com is extremely impressive.

01:10:09 ◼   ► And Google's been working on it for years and years.

01:10:11 ◼   ► And obviously, they're well positioned

01:10:13 ◼   ► to integrate this technology.

01:10:17 ◼   ► A lot of this supposed accessibility features are--

01:10:23 ◼   ► I guess they are accessibility features.

01:10:24 ◼   ► but not like every single one of them people look at it and say that's that's for AR VR because

01:10:30 ◼   ► a lot of the things that make our regular devices accessible are needed when your interface to it is

01:10:37 ◼   ► i'm looking through glasses or a headset or whatever because you don't really have a way

01:10:40 ◼   ► to get this information you don't have a mouse you're not touching a screen you need like you

01:10:45 ◼   ► know maybe not door detection but the ability for the AR VR thing to understand the world around it

01:10:51 ◼   ► to augment it.

01:10:52 ◼   ► Augmented reality needs to first know what reality is before it can augment it.

01:10:55 ◼   ► So before it can put the name of the person underneath their face so you remember their

01:10:59 ◼   ► name, it needs to identify where the person is, personal detection, which is an accessibility

01:11:02 ◼   ► feature they introduced a while ago, and it needs to know who they are, face recognition,

01:11:06 ◼   ► something they added ages ago in photos, right?

01:11:09 ◼   ► And putting them all together, plus a magic pair of glasses, now as I walk around in either

01:11:14 ◼   ► a family reunion or a work meeting or whatever it is, I can see people's names above their

01:11:18 ◼   ► heads and so I won't forget people's names or maybe I'll just have a different form of

01:11:22 ◼   ► embarrassing mistake depending on how good the technology is.

01:11:25 ◼   ► And the door detection as far as what I read uses LIDAR sensors so it works on the iPads

01:11:30 ◼   ► with LIDAR sensors and works on the iPhones with LIDAR sensors.

01:11:34 ◼   ► You would imagine that a fancy future AR headset would also maybe have LIDAR on it so it could

01:11:40 ◼   ► make sense of the world and you know be able to augment it.

01:11:44 ◼   ► So these accessibility features are like oh I don't care about accessibility I'm young

01:11:48 ◼   ► and healthy and everything's awesome for me.

01:11:49 ◼   ► Like every one of these technologies

01:11:51 ◼   ► is a future amazing technology that everyone

01:11:54 ◼   ► is going to love and use.

01:11:55 ◼   ► And I think the live captions are one of them because, again,

01:11:58 ◼   ► from what I've read about this, there

01:12:00 ◼   ► was a write up in six colors about it

01:12:02 ◼   ► that if I remember correctly, it was saying basically

01:12:04 ◼   ► any audio that plays in iOS in any app, you can tell iOS,

01:12:09 ◼   ► hey, if audio is playing, try to do that auto captions thing.

01:12:12 ◼   ► And so it's not like the app has to support auto captions,

01:12:14 ◼   ► as far as I'm aware.

01:12:15 ◼   ► It's kind of like a system level service.

01:12:17 ◼   ► I'm not sure how this would work.

01:12:17 ◼   ► Is it a control center thing or whatever?

01:12:20 ◼   ► But it's exciting because it's the type of thing

01:12:21 ◼   ► you usually don't get in iOS.

01:12:22 ◼   ► On the Mac, we're used to having system level things

01:12:24 ◼   ► like, oh, install this, install TextSniper

01:12:27 ◼   ► and you can extract text from images anywhere.

01:12:29 ◼   ► Obviously, Apple added that as a system service.

01:12:32 ◼   ► But before Apple added it, TextSniper had it.

01:12:34 ◼   ► And you could have been using that

01:12:35 ◼   ► and your app didn't need to support it.

01:12:37 ◼   ► TextSniper would just snipe that text from anywhere.

01:12:40 ◼   ► I would love to be able to do auto captions

01:12:42 ◼   ► on any app that plays video,

01:12:45 ◼   ► for exactly the reasons that Katie said.

01:12:46 ◼   ► Sometimes you're in an environment,

01:12:47 ◼   ► you don't wanna take out the headphones and put them on,

01:12:49 ◼   ► or you're someplace that's super noisy

01:12:52 ◼   ► and you can't understand what they're saying

01:12:53 ◼   ► even with AirPods in,

01:12:54 ◼   ► even with AirPods with noise canceling in

01:12:56 ◼   ► 'cause it's super noisy or whatever,

01:12:58 ◼   ► try the captions, right?

01:13:01 ◼   ► Like, especially if you're talking to somebody,

01:13:02 ◼   ► if they say something weird,

01:13:03 ◼   ► you can ask them to say it again or whatever,

01:13:05 ◼   ► eventually the auto captions will be good enough

01:13:07 ◼   ► that you'll be able to understand what they're saying.

01:13:08 ◼   ► So I'm actually very excited about these features.

01:13:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's a couple of this real quickly.

01:13:13 ◼   ► Apple's also expanding support

01:13:14 ◼   ► for its industry-leading screen reader voiceover

01:13:17 ◼   ► with over 20 new languages and locales.

01:13:19 ◼   ► And this might be interesting for you, Jon.

01:13:21 ◼   ► With Buddy Controller, users can ask a care provider

01:13:23 ◼   ► or friend to help them play a game.

01:13:25 ◼   ► Buddy Controller combines any two game controllers into one,

01:13:28 ◼   ► so multiple controllers can drive the input

01:13:30 ◼   ► for a single player.

01:13:31 ◼   ► - It's kind of like, this is the thing we used to do

01:13:33 ◼   ► when Apple desktop bus came out, ADB.

01:13:36 ◼   ► It was the thing that Macs used to connect keyboards

01:13:39 ◼   ► and mice before USB existed.

01:13:42 ◼   ► And ADB was Apple Desktop Bus, and it was a cool, fancy thing

01:13:47 ◼   ► where you could chain multiple devices.

01:13:49 ◼   ► You'd have one ADB port, but then you'd

01:13:50 ◼   ► go from that ADB board into your big Apple Extended keyboard.

01:13:54 ◼   ► And then your Apple Extended keyboard

01:13:55 ◼   ► would have another ADB port, and then you

01:13:57 ◼   ► can connect the mouse to that.

01:13:58 ◼   ► So you didn't have to connect everything together.

01:13:59 ◼   ► I know this doesn't sound exciting to people

01:14:01 ◼   ► who live in the world of USB, but at the time,

01:14:03 ◼   ► this was exciting and novel because the alternative

01:14:05 ◼   ► was your mouse would connect to the back of your computer,

01:14:07 ◼   ► and your keyboard would connect to the back of your computer,

01:14:09 ◼   ► but not with Apple Desktop Bus.

01:14:11 ◼   ► And the neat thing about it was you could connect two mice

01:14:14 ◼   ► to your Mac.

01:14:15 ◼   ► And they both worked at the same time.

01:14:18 ◼   ► And so this is what this sounds like.

01:14:20 ◼   ► Buddy controller, the two game controllers

01:14:22 ◼   ► can drive the input for a single player.

01:14:24 ◼   ► You could have, like in a school computer,

01:14:26 ◼   ► you'd have a mouse on the left and a mouse on the right.

01:14:28 ◼   ► And each person would be trying to drive the mouse

01:14:30 ◼   ► at the same time.

01:14:31 ◼   ► Sort of-- I mean, we didn't have many games back in the day.

01:14:34 ◼   ► This is what we used to use ourselves.

01:14:36 ◼   ► It was like mouse wars, right?

01:14:37 ◼   ► Because if you were fast with the mouse,

01:14:40 ◼   ► When the person would hit the edge of the mouse pad

01:14:41 ◼   ► and then have to pick it up to move it or whatever,

01:14:43 ◼   ► you could quickly go and do and click on the thing

01:14:45 ◼   ► that you wanted.

01:14:46 ◼   ► Yeah, PlayStation and I think Nintendo also have

01:14:51 ◼   ► a sort of like share play type thing

01:14:52 ◼   ► where people can help you through difficult parts of games.

01:14:54 ◼   ► But the idea of both inputs playing at the same time,

01:14:58 ◼   ► I think it could work, but it's also ripe for conflict.

01:15:03 ◼   ► That's my experience of connecting to ADB mice.

01:15:06 ◼   ► If you have two kids trying to do this,

01:15:08 ◼   ► Even if one is supposedly trying to help the other,

01:15:11 ◼   ► there is the potential for sort of,

01:15:12 ◼   ► I guess, kind of like if you're trying to steer a ship

01:15:15 ◼   ► either to the left or the right of a fork,

01:15:17 ◼   ► having the ship go straight into the middle of it

01:15:19 ◼   ► and everyone dies because the left and the right

01:15:21 ◼   ► were both pressing at the same time

01:15:22 ◼   ► and the net force is balanced.

01:15:26 ◼   ► - This is all good stuff from Apple.

01:15:27 ◼   ► And I can't stress enough that the longer,

01:15:31 ◼   ► the more time you spend on the planet,

01:15:33 ◼   ► the more likely that one of these accessibility features

01:15:35 ◼   ► will end up being useful for you

01:15:36 ◼   ► in some way, shape, or form.

01:15:38 ◼   ► And not necessarily because something changes

01:15:40 ◼   ► about your body, it's just like Jean and I have said,

01:15:42 ◼   ► it could be a situation that you're in

01:15:43 ◼   ► that it just leads itself to.

01:15:46 ◼   ► - Or a situation where you didn't realize

01:15:47 ◼   ► this would be handy.

01:15:48 ◼   ► I think once live captions appear

01:15:50 ◼   ► and people, if they're implemented in a way

01:15:52 ◼   ► that people can find them,

01:15:53 ◼   ► so many people are gonna use them.

01:15:54 ◼   ► Because in contexts where computers have allowed

01:15:58 ◼   ► more people to discover captions,

01:16:00 ◼   ► I think captions are being used so much more now

01:16:03 ◼   ► than they were decades ago,

01:16:04 ◼   ► just because people like them.

01:16:07 ◼   ► How many people do you know who always watch,

01:16:09 ◼   ► this is like a secret weird things people do,

01:16:10 ◼   ► but it's not even that weird.

01:16:11 ◼   ► How many people do you know who watch television

01:16:13 ◼   ► with captions all the time?

01:16:14 ◼   ► Not because they're hard of hearing or anything like that,

01:16:16 ◼   ► they just like it because, oh, characters whisper too much,

01:16:20 ◼   ► or it's hard to tell with the sound mixer,

01:16:21 ◼   ► it's just easier for me to glance at,

01:16:23 ◼   ► or I can read faster than I can listen.

01:16:24 ◼   ► Some people just do this all the time,

01:16:27 ◼   ► and having the ability to essentially caption

01:16:29 ◼   ► any audio that plays on your device,

01:16:31 ◼   ► again, if it's implemented in a way that's discoverable,

01:16:33 ◼   ► I think a lot of people are gonna use that.

01:16:36 ◼   ► - This is the kind of stuff that Apple does,

01:16:39 ◼   ► not because, with Tim Cook's famous quote here,

01:16:42 ◼   ► not because there is a good return on investment here,

01:16:45 ◼   ► like monetarily, they don't do this for cynical business

01:16:49 ◼   ► or financial reasons.

01:16:51 ◼   ► They lead the world, I think, the technology world,

01:16:55 ◼   ► I think they lead the world on accessibility features

01:16:57 ◼   ► because they truly believe it's the right thing to do

01:17:01 ◼   ► And I think they get immense satisfaction

01:17:06 ◼   ► out of the ways they can help.

01:17:08 ◼   ► Because it's amazing, like, you know,

01:17:09 ◼   ► if you have some kind of need for any of these features,

01:17:14 ◼   ► and you go from not having that need served

01:17:16 ◼   ► by any technology to all of a sudden this existing,

01:17:19 ◼   ► that's a massive difference in your life.

01:17:22 ◼   ► And to help people that much, you know,

01:17:25 ◼   ► for like, you know, the normally abled people out there,

01:17:29 ◼   ► whether you buy an Apple product or not,

01:17:32 ◼   ► probably, it's not gonna make

01:17:34 ◼   ► a life-changing difference to you.

01:17:36 ◼   ► It's not gonna be like, wow, before,

01:17:38 ◼   ► I couldn't speak to anybody in any way,

01:17:41 ◼   ► and now that I bought this Apple product, I can.

01:17:43 ◼   ► No, because you could have bought an Android phone,

01:17:46 ◼   ► or you had other options, whereas,

01:17:49 ◼   ► if you have a certain type of disability or special need,

01:17:52 ◼   ► in many cases, if Apple didn't do this,

01:17:55 ◼   ► there literally wouldn't be anything else out there for you

01:17:57 ◼   ► to be able to do the same kind of things,

01:17:58 ◼   ► or you would have had to get different sorts

01:18:01 ◼   ► of assistive technology or different methods

01:18:03 ◼   ► of getting assistance.

01:18:04 ◼   ► So this, it really is like,

01:18:07 ◼   ► it's not a large number of people in the world

01:18:10 ◼   ► that this will benefit, but it benefits them

01:18:13 ◼   ► in an outsized way to them.

01:18:15 ◼   ► And Apple really cares about that.

01:18:19 ◼   ► And you can tell, I've talked to some of the people

01:18:20 ◼   ► in the company who work on accessibility stuff,

01:18:22 ◼   ► like they really do care a lot

01:18:25 ◼   ► because they believe it's the right thing to do.

01:18:26 ◼   ► And you know we will call out Apple

01:18:30 ◼   ► on any of their cynical BS when it's present.

01:18:33 ◼   ► We see right through all their cynical BS

01:18:37 ◼   ► when they're doing something for cynical reasons.

01:18:40 ◼   ► But their accessibility efforts

01:18:42 ◼   ► are not that kind of thing at all.

01:18:44 ◼   ► They really do an amazing job

01:18:47 ◼   ► and they do it really for the right reasons,

01:18:50 ◼   ► really to help people.

01:18:52 ◼   ► And yeah, sure, those people are gonna buy their products

01:18:54 ◼   ► and they're gonna make money from them,

01:18:55 ◼   ► but that they're not doing it just for that reason alone.

01:18:59 ◼   ► If it was a purely financial decision,

01:19:03 ◼   ► they would probably decide,

01:19:04 ◼   ► oh, it's not worth investing all this money

01:19:05 ◼   ► in this kind of stuff.

01:19:06 ◼   ► But they do because it's the right thing to do,

01:19:08 ◼   ► and that's really admirable.

01:19:10 ◼   ► And for a company that,

01:19:12 ◼   ► they rightly get criticized a lot

01:19:13 ◼   ► for not having a ton of those areas anymore

01:19:17 ◼   ► where they're just kind of doing it

01:19:18 ◼   ► for the good of everything,

01:19:20 ◼   ► this is one area that they always have done that,

01:19:23 ◼   ► and they deserve a lot of credit for that.

01:19:25 ◼   ► And like a lot of sort of pure science research,

01:19:29 ◼   ► science types of things, like doing things like this--

01:19:32 ◼   ► or the space program is the example you see trotted out.

01:19:35 ◼   ► Doing things like this, it seemed like,

01:19:37 ◼   ► it's like, OK, well, that's one good.

01:19:38 ◼   ► But what if I don't care about space?

01:19:39 ◼   ► What if I don't care about accessibility?

01:19:41 ◼   ► There are dividends from doing this,

01:19:44 ◼   ► because this work drives basic technology and research that

01:19:49 ◼   ► is useful more broadly.

01:19:50 ◼   ► From the space program, you get Velcro and the microwave oven

01:19:53 ◼   ► and all sorts of stuff.

01:19:55 ◼   ► And it's because someone was faced with a problem

01:19:57 ◼   ► where this ended up being the solution.

01:19:59 ◼   ► And oh, it turns out the solution is applicable

01:20:02 ◼   ► outside the space program, right?

01:20:03 ◼   ► So I'm not sure which part of Apple is driving which,

01:20:08 ◼   ► whether it's the accessibility team

01:20:10 ◼   ► driving the creation of the live captioning,

01:20:12 ◼   ► or whether it's live captioning being created elsewhere

01:20:13 ◼   ► and the accessibility team adopting it.

01:20:15 ◼   ► But I have to imagine there's sort of a virtuous cycle

01:20:17 ◼   ► of the need to do better in accessibility

01:20:22 ◼   ► drives technology forward in a way

01:20:24 ◼   ► that benefits all of Apple.

01:20:25 ◼   ► And I don't think that's why they're doing it.

01:20:27 ◼   ► But having an accessibility team is like having a space--

01:20:31 ◼   ► a well-funded space program in your country.

01:20:33 ◼   ► It's huge dividends that you may not realize.

01:20:35 ◼   ► And it's not why you have a space program,

01:20:37 ◼   ► but it sure is a nice side effect.

01:20:39 ◼   ► And for the people who are like, why are we putting all this

01:20:41 ◼   ► money into the space program?

01:20:42 ◼   ► What's the point?

01:20:43 ◼   ► You at least have something to say to them and say, look,

01:20:46 ◼   ► aside from all the awesome things

01:20:47 ◼   ► the space program does having to do with space,

01:20:50 ◼   ► how do you like your microwave oven?

01:20:53 ◼   ► We are brought to you this week by Squarespace,

01:20:55 ◼   ► the all-in-one platform for building your brand

01:20:58 ◼   ► and growing your business online.

01:21:00 ◼   ► You can stand out with all Squarespace's tools.

01:21:02 ◼   ► You start with a beautiful website.

01:21:04 ◼   ► So no matter what you wanna build,

01:21:06 ◼   ► whether it's a simple site, couple of pages of info maybe,

01:21:09 ◼   ► or your personal portfolio, or something more advanced,

01:21:12 ◼   ► like a business site, like a storefront,

01:21:14 ◼   ► you can do all of that with Squarespace.

01:21:16 ◼   ► You can engage with your audience,

01:21:18 ◼   ► you can sell anything, products, your content,

01:21:20 ◼   ► even your time.

01:21:22 ◼   ► All of this is built into Squarespace,

01:21:23 ◼   ► and no matter what your skill level is,

01:21:26 ◼   ► you can do it on Squarespace.

01:21:27 ◼   ► And if you're making a site for maybe someone else

01:21:29 ◼   ► who's less technical, who doesn't listen

01:21:31 ◼   ► to this kind of show, you can do that on Squarespace too,

01:21:33 ◼   ► and you can direct them to go to Squarespace

01:21:35 ◼   ► and do it themselves, and you can set them up

01:21:36 ◼   ► and then have them just take over,

01:21:38 ◼   ► and it's super easy at Squarespace.

01:21:41 ◼   ► So of course, regular sites with info about a hobby

01:21:44 ◼   ► or something you created or a blog or a podcast,

01:21:48 ◼   ► you can do all that on Squarespace,

01:21:49 ◼   ► and of course you can run a business now too.

01:21:51 ◼   ► They have these amazing shops on Squarespace,

01:21:53 ◼   ► not only for selling products,

01:21:55 ◼   ► which itself is very impressive,

01:21:56 ◼   ► but you can even do things like have member areas,

01:21:59 ◼   ► private memberships that you sell to people

01:22:01 ◼   ► that maybe have gated access to things like videos

01:22:03 ◼   ► or online courses or newsletters.

01:22:06 ◼   ► You can of course have email campaigns with Squarespace.

01:22:09 ◼   ► You can collect email subscribers,

01:22:10 ◼   ► convert them into loyal customers.

01:22:12 ◼   ► They have wonderful templates to start with.

01:22:14 ◼   ► You can customize them by applying your brand ingredients,

01:22:17 ◼   ► like your colors and your logo.

01:22:18 ◼   ► Built-in analytics will measure the impact of every send

01:22:21 ◼   ► and you can use insights from analytics

01:22:23 ◼   ► to grow your business, figure out where your site visits

01:22:26 ◼   ► are coming from, where your sales are coming from,

01:22:28 ◼   ► analyze which channels are most effective.

01:22:29 ◼   ► It's just great building sites on Squarespace.

01:22:32 ◼   ► There's so much there.

01:22:33 ◼   ► Go to squarespace.com/atp for a free trial

01:22:37 ◼   ► and when you're ready to launch,

01:22:37 ◼   ► use offer code ATP to save 10% off your first purchase

01:22:40 ◼   ► of your website or domain.

01:22:42 ◼   ► Once again, squarespace.com/atp to start that free trial

01:22:45 ◼   ► and use offer code ATP at purchase

01:22:47 ◼   ► to save 10% off your first purchase.

01:22:49 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Squarespace for sponsoring our show.

01:22:52 ◼   ► - All right, let's do some Ask ATP.

01:22:57 ◼   ► And let's start with Bill Steinbach who writes,

01:23:01 ◼   ► are there any iOS apps that you use

01:23:03 ◼   ► to listen to concert albums like this or Dave Matthews Band?

01:23:06 ◼   ► You know, jam bands.

01:23:08 ◼   ► With little kids at home, I keep getting interrupted

01:23:10 ◼   ► and having to switch my listening from DMB

01:23:11 ◼   ► to Baby Shark or Doc McStuffins.

01:23:14 ◼   ► There must be an app that treats concert albums

01:23:16 ◼   ► almost like audio books.

01:23:17 ◼   ► Here would be my suggested requirements.

01:23:19 ◼   ► It keeps track of your placement in the album,

01:23:21 ◼   ► it shows only albums that I deem as a concert,

01:23:23 ◼   ► some smart filter or something,

01:23:25 ◼   ► and it has to be compatible with Apple Music.

01:23:28 ◼   ► This is a great idea.

01:23:29 ◼   ► I have precisely zero recommendations,

01:23:31 ◼   ► so start learning Swift, I guess.

01:23:34 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:23:35 ◼   ► I mean, that's Marco.

01:23:36 ◼   ► Marco, you might know something that would fix this,

01:23:38 ◼   ► but I have no idea.

01:23:41 ◼   ► - I don't actually.

01:23:42 ◼   ► There are a lot of Apple Music playing apps out there.

01:23:46 ◼   ► Most of them, as far as I know,

01:23:49 ◼   ► don't have a Mac and iPhone version,

01:23:51 ◼   ► which is, every time we've talked about this in the past,

01:23:53 ◼   ► that's been kind of my holdup,

01:23:54 ◼   ► is I wanna use the same app on the Mac and on iOS

01:23:58 ◼   ► because I do a lot of music listening

01:24:00 ◼   ► in both of those places.

01:24:02 ◼   ► And so that's been one problem for me.

01:24:04 ◼   ► But ultimately, this is the kind of thing

01:24:08 ◼   ► I would love to do this, I would love to build one of these

01:24:12 ◼   ► because I don't know if I would ever really find one

01:24:17 ◼   ► that fit me right.

01:24:19 ◼   ► But the problem is whatever I would build,

01:24:21 ◼   ► it kinda has the to-do list problem,

01:24:22 ◼   ► whatever I would build,

01:24:23 ◼   ► if I build it really to fit my needs and wants,

01:24:27 ◼   ► it wouldn't really satisfy a lot of other people.

01:24:29 ◼   ► So the market for it I think would be very, very small.

01:24:32 ◼   ► But that's what I would actually want

01:24:34 ◼   ► would be something like this.

01:24:36 ◼   ► But I wouldn't want it to just play concerts.

01:24:39 ◼   ► I would just want it to be my new music player.

01:24:42 ◼   ► And so now we have Casey's Ethernet problem,

01:24:45 ◼   ► we have Scope Creep.

01:24:46 ◼   ► I'm not gonna just run cat five through my music player,

01:24:50 ◼   ► I wanna run fiber.

01:24:51 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:24:53 ◼   ► I would want to just basically rebuild iTunes,

01:24:57 ◼   ► but the good version, when it was just music,

01:24:59 ◼   ► rebuild iTunes for the modern day,

01:25:05 ◼   ► but then you get into questions of what's feeding it,

01:25:08 ◼   ► is it compatible with your streaming service of choice?

01:25:10 ◼   ► And then if it is, then that limits what you can do

01:25:13 ◼   ► with the audio, 'cause you generally can't get

01:25:15 ◼   ► raw sample access if you're playing DRM music files

01:25:19 ◼   ► through any of the supported APIs and things like that.

01:25:21 ◼   ► So there's all sorts of considerations here,

01:25:24 ◼   ► and the result is there's definitely demand

01:25:29 ◼   ► for lots of different music players,

01:25:30 ◼   ► but I don't think that demand is consolidated

01:25:36 ◼   ► on anything that, it's like these features

01:25:39 ◼   ► are what we have demand for.

01:25:40 ◼   ► No, everybody demands 60% of the possible features out there

01:25:45 ◼   ► and it's a different 60% for each person.

01:25:47 ◼   ► So this kind of thing I think would be very, very difficult

01:25:50 ◼   ► to ever build for anyone or to sell

01:25:54 ◼   ► in any context other than a passion project

01:25:57 ◼   ► you're making just for yourself

01:25:59 ◼   ► that would be exactly what you want

01:26:03 ◼   ► and it would be a labor of love

01:26:05 ◼   ► because you'd never make any money on it.

01:26:07 ◼   ► So that being said, I literally have thought about doing this,

01:26:10 ◼   ► and maybe someday I will, but I don't think it's very likely.

01:26:14 ◼   ► I mean, it should be a web app, because that saves you

01:26:16 ◼   ► from having to make it all the different platforms that all

01:26:19 ◼   ► people want to listen to it on and dealing

01:26:20 ◼   ► with the conventions of the different platforms,

01:26:22 ◼   ► whereas if you just make it a web app,

01:26:23 ◼   ► you can implement it once.

01:26:24 ◼   ► Everybody can use it.

01:26:25 ◼   ► Audio is well within the realm of dealing with web apps.

01:26:27 ◼   ► And yeah, it would still be a pain,

01:26:29 ◼   ► but you can imagine a band with a lot of money

01:26:31 ◼   ► would say, I'm going to make an awesome, let's say, fish,

01:26:33 ◼   ► where concerts are their big thing.

01:26:37 ◼   ► We're gonna hire somebody to make an awesome web-based

01:26:40 ◼   ► concert listening experience that we think

01:26:42 ◼   ► fish fans will like and it will be the fish concert

01:26:45 ◼   ► listening thing 'cause they don't need any other music

01:26:47 ◼   ► 'cause they just listen to fish.

01:26:48 ◼   ► - Well, that actually already exists and I don't like it.

01:26:51 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:26:52 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, you have to make a good one.

01:26:53 ◼   ► - Fish is a great example because it is a band

01:26:56 ◼   ► that produces a large volume of concerts,

01:26:58 ◼   ► has a large fan base, many of whom are young

01:27:02 ◼   ► and want modern ways to play music and stuff.

01:27:04 ◼   ► So you would think it would be a perfect market for that.

01:27:07 ◼   ► And there is an app called Live Fish

01:27:10 ◼   ► through their officially sanctioned service

01:27:11 ◼   ► to sell all the concerts.

01:27:13 ◼   ► That's where I buy all the concerts from.

01:27:14 ◼   ► And you can pay for their streaming subscription

01:27:18 ◼   ► to be able to stream the whole catalog whenever you want.

01:27:21 ◼   ► And they have an app to do it.

01:27:22 ◼   ► And it's frankly not very good.

01:27:25 ◼   ► I've used it before and it's not something

01:27:28 ◼   ► that I want to use again. (laughs)

01:27:31 ◼   ► But if it was good, people would use it,

01:27:33 ◼   ► and it would be accessible to everybody.

01:27:34 ◼   ► And you wouldn't have to have seven people implement

01:27:37 ◼   ► their own passion project-- one for Windows, one for Mac,

01:27:39 ◼   ► one for iPad, one for the phone.

01:27:41 ◼   ► All this-- just use the web version.

01:27:43 ◼   ► But it doesn't surprise me that it's not good,

01:27:45 ◼   ► because as you know, making good software

01:27:47 ◼   ► takes a lot of money and time and dedication.

01:27:49 ◼   ► And I imagine a band is not in a position

01:27:51 ◼   ► to do much more than to throw a bunch of money to someone

01:27:53 ◼   ► to make a thing, and then once it works, they go away.

01:27:55 ◼   ► Right.

01:27:55 ◼   ► And it's clearly mostly a web view.

01:27:57 ◼   ► The app is very much not super native.

01:28:00 ◼   ► it's all web crap and it's not super reliable

01:28:04 ◼   ► and it's kind of clunky.

01:28:06 ◼   ► So yeah, but you're right.

01:28:08 ◼   ► The money is not in it to have a team of people

01:28:13 ◼   ► making really good native apps for this

01:28:15 ◼   ► for any particular band, even one as large as them.

01:28:18 ◼   ► But the problem is, the money's not really in it

01:28:21 ◼   ► for people to make one in general.

01:28:22 ◼   ► Even if it plays every band's concerts.

01:28:24 ◼   ► I mean, look at the market, look at how many

01:28:27 ◼   ► iTunes alternatives/Apple Music alternatives there are.

01:28:31 ◼   ► Again, as we talked about, they exist,

01:28:33 ◼   ► but they're not numerous and there's not a lot of must haves.

01:28:38 ◼   ► - I would agree there's not a lot of must haves,

01:28:40 ◼   ► but the chat room has brought up, who is this, Barrowclift?

01:28:45 ◼   ► I don't know who this is, John Barrowclift,

01:28:46 ◼   ► something like that, somebody Barrowclift.

01:28:47 ◼   ► Anyway, they go through and every year

01:28:50 ◼   ► they do a music player showcase.

01:28:52 ◼   ► It's a very interesting post,

01:28:54 ◼   ► and I at least glance at it every year.

01:28:56 ◼   ► And maybe one of these would do what Bill wants,

01:28:59 ◼   ► I don't think so, but there's a fairly robust

01:29:03 ◼   ► third party music player ecosystem,

01:29:05 ◼   ► particularly against Apple Music.

01:29:07 ◼   ► There's more than one would expect.

01:29:10 ◼   ► - Ultimately, I mean, if anything,

01:29:11 ◼   ► I think the odds of it being reasonable

01:29:16 ◼   ► to create one of these are actually better now than ever,

01:29:18 ◼   ► because you now have the advent of Swift UI

01:29:24 ◼   ► and Catalyst, making it easier to make the same code

01:29:27 ◼   ► run on Mac and iOS.

01:29:30 ◼   ► That being said, these never make for great Mac apps,

01:29:34 ◼   ► but that being said, the Apple Music app on the Mac

01:29:38 ◼   ► is not a great app. (laughs)

01:29:41 ◼   ► For so many, in so many ways.

01:29:42 ◼   ► - Apple Music app is piss poor on every platform,

01:29:44 ◼   ► as far as I'm concerned.

01:29:45 ◼   ► - But even the part of it that used to be iTunes,

01:29:48 ◼   ► like the part that just plays your local collection,

01:29:49 ◼   ► if you still maintain one of those,

01:29:50 ◼   ► like an old person like me,

01:29:52 ◼   ► Even that part is so poor.

01:29:55 ◼   ► Every time I launch the app,

01:29:58 ◼   ► it acts as though it's never been launched before.

01:30:00 ◼   ► It instantly loses your place.

01:30:02 ◼   ► There's no state restoration of where you were,

01:30:06 ◼   ► what artist you were in, what song you were playing.

01:30:11 ◼   ► There's constant bugs where now,

01:30:13 ◼   ► I think the bug is still there,

01:30:14 ◼   ► where if you change the star rating of a track,

01:30:18 ◼   ► about a second and a half later,

01:30:20 ◼   ► it jumps to the bottom of the scroll view for some reason.

01:30:22 ◼   ► Like there's just so many little bugs

01:30:24 ◼   ► and it just gets worse. (laughs)

01:30:27 ◼   ► So Apple's clearly not paying attention much

01:30:30 ◼   ► to this market either.

01:30:31 ◼   ► I think this market exists, but it's very, very, very small.

01:30:38 ◼   ► And so that's going to result only in passion projects

01:30:42 ◼   ► and kind of half-assed things.

01:30:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a bummer.

01:30:46 ◼   ► Robert Batto writes, "What Safari extensions

01:30:49 ◼   ► are you running or recommend?

01:30:52 ◼   ► I haven't pulled this up yet, so I will stall by asking,

01:30:55 ◼   ► John, what do you do?

01:30:57 ◼   ► What do you recommend?

01:30:59 ◼   ► - Of course, my most important Safari extension

01:31:00 ◼   ► is the one I wrote, the ever important reload button.

01:31:04 ◼   ► - Of course.

01:31:05 ◼   ► - Reloads web pages, high tech, very sophisticated,

01:31:08 ◼   ► available for free at my website.

01:31:10 ◼   ► We will provide a link and I will not go over

01:31:12 ◼   ► the silly story of why I have it, but it exists.

01:31:15 ◼   ► And I do run that.

01:31:17 ◼   ► I also-- the other one that is kind of indispensable to me

01:31:20 ◼   ► is it's come under various names.

01:31:22 ◼   ► There have been various iterations.

01:31:23 ◼   ► But the current one is keyword search, Safari keyword search.

01:31:27 ◼   ► It's just an extension that lets you

01:31:28 ◼   ► define sets of characters that you can write.

01:31:31 ◼   ► So if you write, you know, whatever, like W space a word,

01:31:34 ◼   ► it'll do a Wikipedia search for that word.

01:31:36 ◼   ► It comes with a bunch of predefined ones,

01:31:38 ◼   ► like G space a word, and it'll search for that in Google.

01:31:40 ◼   ► And that may seem silly.

01:31:41 ◼   ► You could just like, hey, if you type any word in there,

01:31:42 ◼   ► it'll search Google for it if you have Google as your default

01:31:45 ◼   ► search engine.

01:31:45 ◼   ► but you can add any search engine you want.

01:31:47 ◼   ► You can search any website that has a way to run a search.

01:31:50 ◼   ► You can put a little keyboard shortcut in there,

01:31:52 ◼   ► and it's just a convenient way to do that.

01:31:53 ◼   ► I know lots of people use, like,

01:31:55 ◼   ► Launch Bar or Quicksilver.

01:31:56 ◼   ► There's tons of different ways to do it,

01:31:57 ◼   ► but I kind of like to do it in the address bar

01:31:59 ◼   ► of the browser, and so Keyword Search provides that.

01:32:02 ◼   ► I use the Instapaper extension.

01:32:03 ◼   ► It just lets me add things to Instapaper,

01:32:05 ◼   ► not too complicated, and then I just looked at my list here.

01:32:07 ◼   ► I'm kind of surprised.

01:32:08 ◼   ► I have a bunch of extensions that I mostly leave disabled,

01:32:10 ◼   ► but when I want them, I enable them.

01:32:12 ◼   ► So, for example,

01:32:15 ◼   ► And it's not that--

01:32:16 ◼   ► these are things that are part of app bundles, right?

01:32:18 ◼   ► So the way Safari extensions work these days

01:32:20 ◼   ► is you get a Mac app.

01:32:22 ◼   ► And inside the Mac app bundle, there's

01:32:24 ◼   ► a little nested Safari extension.

01:32:25 ◼   ► And Safari-- Mac OS finds that and tells Safari about it,

01:32:29 ◼   ► right?

01:32:30 ◼   ► So I have here in my Safari extensions list

01:32:32 ◼   ► the Downey Safari extension.

01:32:34 ◼   ► Downey's a thing that downloads video from YouTube

01:32:36 ◼   ► and lots of other places.

01:32:38 ◼   ► And inside the Downey app, I'm assuming,

01:32:40 ◼   ► is this Downey Safari extension.

01:32:41 ◼   ► And so that's in the list.

01:32:42 ◼   ► And if I want--

01:32:43 ◼   ► I have it disabled, but if I want to download something

01:32:46 ◼   ► and I'm in Safari, all I have to do is enable it,

01:32:48 ◼   ► download it, and then disable it.

01:32:49 ◼   ► And the main reason I leave a lot of stuff disabled

01:32:51 ◼   ► is because I just don't want stuff cluttering up

01:32:53 ◼   ► like my toolbar or any of my menus.

01:32:55 ◼   ► Sometimes they have scary security things

01:32:57 ◼   ► where they need to see every single webpage you visit

01:32:58 ◼   ► or whatever, and I don't wanna deal with that, right?

01:33:01 ◼   ► Let's see, what else do I have?

01:33:02 ◼   ► I have Hush installed, but I don't have it active

01:33:06 ◼   ► that blocks cookie notices and crap like that.

01:33:10 ◼   ► I have Fixerific installed,

01:33:11 ◼   ► which is an icon factor extension that

01:33:13 ◼   ► makes the Twitter website less obnoxious

01:33:16 ◼   ► in a few interesting ways.

01:33:17 ◼   ► I have the netnewswire subscribe to feed thing installed.

01:33:20 ◼   ► I think it's just part of netnewswire.

01:33:22 ◼   ► Netnewswire lets you do a thing that browsers

01:33:24 ◼   ► used to do natively, browsers used to, back in the day,

01:33:26 ◼   ► be able to find the RSS feed for a website

01:33:28 ◼   ► and feed it to your RSS reader or whatever.

01:33:32 ◼   ► And now there's an extension to do that for you.

01:33:35 ◼   ► You'll notice that nowhere on this list

01:33:37 ◼   ► do I have ad blockers, which may surprise you.

01:33:41 ◼   ► I run blockers on iOS in Safari.

01:33:45 ◼   ► And I don't think that's what this question

01:33:48 ◼   ► is asking about because I don't know if the people,

01:33:50 ◼   ► I guess they call it Safari on their phone.

01:33:52 ◼   ► So I always wonder if when people say Safari,

01:33:54 ◼   ► do they just mean the Mac version

01:33:55 ◼   ► or do they just think of like,

01:33:56 ◼   ► and my phone has a web browser too,

01:33:57 ◼   ► but what does it even call, who knows?

01:34:00 ◼   ► But on the phone, I think it's much more important

01:34:02 ◼   ► to run an ad blocker just because bandwidth is limited

01:34:04 ◼   ► and screen space and CPU and battery

01:34:06 ◼   ► and all those things are limited on the Mac.

01:34:09 ◼   ► For the most part, I'm more annoyed when some web app is

01:34:14 ◼   ► failing, and I realize it's failing because of some kind

01:34:16 ◼   ► of content blocker.

01:34:17 ◼   ► And so my Mac's plugged into the wall, and it's big and

01:34:20 ◼   ► powerful and has lots of memory.

01:34:22 ◼   ► And so, no, insofar as I don't run any ad blockers, so if a

01:34:25 ◼   ► website doesn't work, I know it's not because some ad

01:34:27 ◼   ► blocker's screwing it up.

01:34:29 ◼   ► And that's a trade-off we all have to choose.

01:34:30 ◼   ► Are you more annoyed by ads bothering you, or are you more

01:34:33 ◼   ► annoyed by the five minutes you spend trying to get

01:34:35 ◼   ► something to work on a website when the reason it's not

01:34:37 ◼   ► is because of a content blocker that you just realized

01:34:40 ◼   ► you need to disable.

01:34:41 ◼   ► - Marco.

01:34:43 ◼   ► - The only extension I run in Safari,

01:34:48 ◼   ► well I guess I run two, I run one password,

01:34:51 ◼   ► and I'm still running both one password

01:34:56 ◼   ► and Apple password stuff,

01:34:58 ◼   ► but I just turned off the one password thing

01:35:00 ◼   ► where it automatically pops itself up,

01:35:02 ◼   ► so that way I'm only having one pop itself up,

01:35:04 ◼   ► which is the Apple one, and that has,

01:35:05 ◼   ► I think, mostly solved my problem.

01:35:07 ◼   ► And then the ad blocker, OneBlocker.

01:35:11 ◼   ► And OneBlocker actually is like seven extensions

01:35:15 ◼   ► for various categories of things that it's blocking.

01:35:18 ◼   ► Now, it is really frustrating

01:35:21 ◼   ► when something breaks in Safari.

01:35:23 ◼   ► I have however found that Safari's own built-in weirdness

01:35:28 ◼   ► and privacy protection features seem to break sites

01:35:32 ◼   ► about as often as OneBlocker does.

01:35:35 ◼   ► So if I'm doing something in Safari

01:35:38 ◼   ► and it's not working for some reason,

01:35:40 ◼   ► something weird about it is not working,

01:35:42 ◼   ► I will just launch a different browser.

01:35:44 ◼   ► On my desktop laptop, it's Brave.

01:35:46 ◼   ► On my laptop laptop, it's Firefox.

01:35:49 ◼   ► I don't know why it's different.

01:35:50 ◼   ► I just tried different browsers

01:35:52 ◼   ► and neither one of them makes me care enough

01:35:55 ◼   ► to change the other one over to that one.

01:35:58 ◼   ► - If you're having a compatibility problem

01:35:59 ◼   ► with a website, by the way, I would suggest,

01:36:01 ◼   ► I know, Marcos and I always just use Chrome,

01:36:03 ◼   ► Because Chrome is the new IE in a couple of interesting ways.

01:36:06 ◼   ► And one of those ways is if a website works anywhere,

01:36:09 ◼   ► it probably works in Chrome.

01:36:10 ◼   ► So if I have a site that doesn't work in Safari,

01:36:12 ◼   ► even though I'm not running any blockers,

01:36:13 ◼   ► I just go right to Chrome.

01:36:14 ◼   ► Well, and to me, that's where Brave is a good choice.

01:36:18 ◼   ► Because Brave is one of those browsers that's

01:36:20 ◼   ► like based on Chromium open source project.

01:36:22 ◼   ► So without any of Google's crap in it.

01:36:25 ◼   ► And then, but it's kind of Chrome, but not--

01:36:28 ◼   ► But not quite, though.

01:36:29 ◼   ► That's the thing.

01:36:30 ◼   ► Yeah, well anyway.

01:36:32 ◼   ► So all I do is ad blocker stuff and it's fine.

01:36:36 ◼   ► And really, you know, judgments aside,

01:36:39 ◼   ► I mean I think we're probably past the point

01:36:41 ◼   ► where anybody cares if you're in an ad blocker or not,

01:36:43 ◼   ► but just in case you're not, I mean,

01:36:45 ◼   ► browsing the web is a battle these days.

01:36:48 ◼   ► It's not what it used to be.

01:36:51 ◼   ► It's not like, oh, I'm not supporting, you know,

01:36:54 ◼   ► John Gruber by visiting his site with an ad blocker.

01:36:57 ◼   ► Like, it's not like that anymore.

01:36:58 ◼   ► Now browsing the web, it's literally,

01:37:00 ◼   ► it's like you versus the world.

01:37:02 ◼   ► And the entire web is constantly trying to attack you

01:37:06 ◼   ► at all times and sell all your crap and track all your crap

01:37:10 ◼   ► and burn all your resources.

01:37:11 ◼   ► And it's so incredibly offensive and full of garbage now

01:37:16 ◼   ► that I think, you know, Safari's built-in protection

01:37:21 ◼   ► is very good with the tracking prevention and stuff,

01:37:24 ◼   ► but I think you need to go further in most cases.

01:37:27 ◼   ► And so my default browser in its default state

01:37:30 ◼   ► has fairly aggressive ad blocking settings

01:37:32 ◼   ► and I'm happier for it.

01:37:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, don't blame you.

01:37:35 ◼   ► I run apparently way more than either of you guys,

01:37:38 ◼   ► which is not that many in the grand scheme of things,

01:37:41 ◼   ► but certainly more.

01:37:42 ◼   ► So of course I have one password.

01:37:44 ◼   ► I also have, and I think a lot of these

01:37:46 ◼   ► are actually recommendations from Gruber.

01:37:47 ◼   ► I have Noire, which basically lets you force

01:37:52 ◼   ► a kind of computed dark mode.

01:37:54 ◼   ► I'm a believer that when it's nighttime, you use dark mode,

01:37:56 ◼   ► when it's daytime, you use date.

01:37:58 ◼   ► What is it?

01:37:59 ◼   ► What's light mode, I guess?

01:38:00 ◼   ► - It's called mode.

01:38:01 ◼   ► - It's just mode, mode or dark mode.

01:38:04 ◼   ► So when I'm in dark mode, then Noire will do its best

01:38:09 ◼   ► to try to figure out a dark mode

01:38:12 ◼   ► for whatever I'm looking at, which I quite like.

01:38:15 ◼   ► I run that on pretty much all my devices.

01:38:17 ◼   ► - Does it know when a site has a dark mode?

01:38:19 ◼   ► Does it do the detection and then it leaves it alone?

01:38:21 ◼   ► - Correct, that's correct.

01:38:23 ◼   ► Stop the madness, which basically stops

01:38:27 ◼   ► some really annoying JavaScript stuff.

01:38:29 ◼   ► I mean, it does other things too,

01:38:30 ◼   ► but it stops really annoying JavaScript stuff.

01:38:32 ◼   ► So as an example, there's a service

01:38:35 ◼   ► that Michaela's Preschool uses in order to let the teachers

01:38:40 ◼   ► send like pictures to the class or the parents of the class

01:38:43 ◼   ► and send messages back and forth and stuff.

01:38:46 ◼   ► And when they send pictures to all the parents,

01:38:50 ◼   ► I'd like to save a copy of those pictures,

01:38:52 ◼   ► but the website disables right clicks.

01:38:55 ◼   ► So you'd have to dive into the inspector

01:38:57 ◼   ► and do all this other junk

01:38:58 ◼   ► and it's a real big pain in the butt.

01:39:00 ◼   ► Well, Stop the Madness stops that website

01:39:03 ◼   ► from blocking right clicks.

01:39:04 ◼   ► So it just allows a right click, just like it should.

01:39:07 ◼   ► And it does a bunch of other stuff too.

01:39:09 ◼   ► That's just an illustrative example.

01:39:11 ◼   ► Super Agent for Safari, which is,

01:39:13 ◼   ► I think you mentioned one, John, that does this thing,

01:39:15 ◼   ► Hush, basically just shuts up cookie consent forms

01:39:18 ◼   ► because the EU, well-meaning, often screws things up

01:39:21 ◼   ► for all of us, particularly Americans.

01:39:23 ◼   ► And so that's an example of that.

01:39:25 ◼   ► And then finally, Vinegar, which I really love.

01:39:28 ◼   ► This does an incredibly good job

01:39:30 ◼   ► of replacing the totally proprietary YouTube player

01:39:32 ◼   ► with just a regular HTML video tag,

01:39:35 ◼   ► which among other things makes it super easy

01:39:37 ◼   ► to put it into picture-in-picture mode, which I really dig.

01:39:40 ◼   ► - Does that kill the chapter support though?

01:39:42 ◼   ► - I understand the question.

01:39:45 ◼   ► It might actually.

01:39:46 ◼   ► I never pay close attention to chapters in YouTube.

01:39:49 ◼   ► I think it might kill chapter support.

01:39:52 ◼   ► I'd have to look again though.

01:39:53 ◼   ► I'm not 100% sure.

01:39:54 ◼   ► - As much as I like the idea of those extensions,

01:39:57 ◼   ► and I think I just saw them the other day,

01:39:58 ◼   ► I was like, "Oh, I should get that."

01:39:59 ◼   ► But then I realized like, no,

01:40:00 ◼   ► 'cause I watch so much YouTube,

01:40:01 ◼   ► and like as YouTube enhances its, you know,

01:40:04 ◼   ► its HDMI 5 player or whatever,

01:40:06 ◼   ► like it's got its own media player that it built itself.

01:40:10 ◼   ► As it enhances that with features, I like the features.

01:40:12 ◼   ► So they recently added chapter support,

01:40:14 ◼   ► and then they added chapter support to the timeline,

01:40:16 ◼   ► so you could see where the chapters begin,

01:40:17 ◼   ► and then with little breaks in the bar,

01:40:19 ◼   ► and it's, when you watch like, you know,

01:40:21 ◼   ► hour and a half car rebuilding videos.

01:40:23 ◼   ► It's nice to be able to know where the different markers

01:40:26 ◼   ► and chapters are and everything like that.

01:40:27 ◼   ► Or the auto captions that we mentioned earlier

01:40:29 ◼   ► that came however many years ago.

01:40:31 ◼   ► And so yeah, and Apple's native player

01:40:35 ◼   ► doesn't have those features

01:40:36 ◼   ► 'cause it doesn't understand YouTube, right?

01:40:38 ◼   ► It just thinks it's a video.

01:40:39 ◼   ► And so I understand the appeal of it,

01:40:41 ◼   ► especially if the YouTube one has poor performance

01:40:44 ◼   ► on your Mac, but I don't run one of those extensions

01:40:47 ◼   ► 'cause I want all the neat features that YouTube has.

01:40:49 ◼   ► - Yep, that's fair.

01:40:51 ◼   ► Finally, Brian Hamilton writes, "How do you remember if you've used email Sign In with

01:40:53 ◼   ► Apple, Google, or probably not Facebook when you log into a service?"

01:40:58 ◼   ► For me, I extremely rarely use Sign In with Apple.

01:41:03 ◼   ► I know I've done it, and I can't even think of a good example of one I've used Sign In

01:41:07 ◼   ► with Apple for.

01:41:08 ◼   ► If it's something that I consider to be vaguely ephemeral, like, "Oh, I just want to try something

01:41:12 ◼   ► real quick, and I doubt I will ever spend meaningful time here," then I might use Sign

01:41:16 ◼   ► In with Apple.

01:41:17 ◼   ► I never use Google and I absolutely never use Facebook.

01:41:21 ◼   ► So it's pretty much email password

01:41:25 ◼   ► with a couple of very rare examples.

01:41:28 ◼   ► Marco, how do you handle this,

01:41:29 ◼   ► particularly in this weird new world

01:41:31 ◼   ► where you're constantly switching up your password manager?

01:41:34 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:41:36 ◼   ► - Pretty much the same way you do.

01:41:37 ◼   ► I really don't use anything besides email and password.

01:41:41 ◼   ► If it offers sign in with Apple or Google or Facebook,

01:41:46 ◼   ► I never use any of those options.

01:41:47 ◼   ► If it has an email-based login, I always use that.

01:41:51 ◼   ► - Jon.

01:41:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's my instinct as well.

01:41:53 ◼   ► Not that I am against the platform logins,

01:41:55 ◼   ► but when you use a platform login,

01:41:57 ◼   ► you are now tying yourself to that platform.

01:42:00 ◼   ► And all the people who use like, you know,

01:42:02 ◼   ► sign in with Facebook everywhere

01:42:04 ◼   ► and then came to hate Facebook,

01:42:05 ◼   ► now you're kind of in a situation

01:42:07 ◼   ► where you're a little bit stuck

01:42:08 ◼   ► and it's annoying to deal with.

01:42:10 ◼   ► It's not that I think these platforms

01:42:11 ◼   ► are gonna go away or anything

01:42:12 ◼   ► or that I'm gonna lose allegiance to them.

01:42:14 ◼   ► It's just that it's the most flexible to use your own email

01:42:18 ◼   ► address that you control for your sign-in

01:42:20 ◼   ► and not tie it to any other platform.

01:42:22 ◼   ► So that's my default. So I don't have to remember,

01:42:23 ◼   ► because like 99.999% of the time it's email and password.

01:42:28 ◼   ► I do use sign-in with Apple occasionally,

01:42:30 ◼   ► like Casey said, for like essentially throw away stuff,

01:42:32 ◼   ► where this is not important.

01:42:34 ◼   ► It's not even important enough for me to like

01:42:36 ◼   ► generate a password for it.

01:42:38 ◼   ► Or like, it's just like, I just, you know,

01:42:40 ◼   ► I want to try this thing.

01:42:41 ◼   ► And if I'm actually serious about it,

01:42:43 ◼   ► I will then make a real account using whatever,

01:42:46 ◼   ► but it's really nice to be able to use

01:42:47 ◼   ► Sign In With Apple for that.

01:42:48 ◼   ► Obviously I never use Sign In With Facebook or anything.

01:42:51 ◼   ► And even Sign In With Google,

01:42:53 ◼   ► I don't use that either just because I don't,

01:42:55 ◼   ► like Google's got enough information on me,

01:42:57 ◼   ► I don't need even more ties to Google.

01:43:02 ◼   ► The other reason I would say we're from Sign In With Apple

01:43:04 ◼   ► occasionally is because my Apple ID,

01:43:05 ◼   ► or I have multiple Apple IDs,

01:43:07 ◼   ► but my main email address is not any one

01:43:10 ◼   ► of my multiple Apple IDs,

01:43:11 ◼   ► So there is kind of a disconnect there.

01:43:13 ◼   ► And so it would be weird for me to sign in with Apple

01:43:16 ◼   ► using an Apple ID that's an email address

01:43:18 ◼   ► that is different than the email address I use

01:43:20 ◼   ► as my main email address.

01:43:21 ◼   ► So there's a little bit of legacy stuff there.

01:43:23 ◼   ► But yeah, having a default and that default

01:43:26 ◼   ► being email address and password

01:43:28 ◼   ► has served me well over the decades.

01:43:30 ◼   ► And I think I'm gonna be sticking with that.

01:43:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, this is like, you know,

01:43:33 ◼   ► in all the different online platforms that I've worked on,

01:43:36 ◼   ► you know, the topic often comes up of like,

01:43:38 ◼   ► oh, should we offer sign an option XYZ?

01:43:41 ◼   ► Signing with Apple is obviously the newest one

01:43:43 ◼   ► and when we launched the ATP membership thing

01:43:45 ◼   ► and that whole CMS we talked about,

01:43:48 ◼   ► should we offer Signing with Apple?

01:43:50 ◼   ► Because we're all Appley here,

01:43:51 ◼   ► we have Apple Pay, should we do that?

01:43:53 ◼   ► But the problem is when you offer any of these services,

01:43:56 ◼   ► as long as you have any other thing,

01:44:00 ◼   ► if it's not your only way to log in,

01:44:02 ◼   ► now you're asking people to remember two things.

01:44:04 ◼   ► Now you have to remember which service you logged in with

01:44:07 ◼   ► and then also secondarily, your password or whatever,

01:44:10 ◼   ► if the answer there was email.

01:44:12 ◼   ► And so you think you're making it easier,

01:44:14 ◼   ► if you give people these options of like,

01:44:17 ◼   ► oh you can just breeze right through

01:44:18 ◼   ► with your Facebook or your Google login.

01:44:21 ◼   ► You think you're making something easier for people,

01:44:22 ◼   ► but you're actually causing problems down the road

01:44:25 ◼   ► because when they come back to that in six months or a year,

01:44:28 ◼   ► are they gonna remember which option they picked?

01:44:31 ◼   ► And the answer from support email,

01:44:32 ◼   ► if you ever see one of these, is no they don't.

01:44:35 ◼   ► Because what'll happen is they'll possibly guess wrong

01:44:40 ◼   ► And then they'll say, wait a minute,

01:44:41 ◼   ► I don't have an account here.

01:44:42 ◼   ► Or they'll inadvertently create a new account

01:44:44 ◼   ► and then they'll wonder where all their stuff went.

01:44:47 ◼   ► So there's so many problems

01:44:48 ◼   ► when you have multiple login options.

01:44:51 ◼   ► It's better just to offer one.

01:44:52 ◼   ► And the one that everybody can use is the email and password.

01:44:56 ◼   ► So that's always the best one to do,

01:44:58 ◼   ► even though the other ones offer certain benefits,

01:45:00 ◼   ► I know, I know, but it just causes more problems

01:45:03 ◼   ► and confusion when you're actually doing it.

01:45:05 ◼   ► - If you're a big service,

01:45:07 ◼   ► I think it's a good idea to offer all of them

01:45:09 ◼   ► because you can afford a big support staff

01:45:10 ◼   ► to deal with the uneviled support things,

01:45:12 ◼   ► and especially if you're a free service,

01:45:14 ◼   ► 'cause dealing with billing is the worst.

01:45:15 ◼   ► Oh, I created a second account

01:45:16 ◼   ► and now I'm being double-billed,

01:45:18 ◼   ► and those are all the complications.

01:45:20 ◼   ► And you could, if you are a small site,

01:45:22 ◼   ► one thing you can choose,

01:45:23 ◼   ► if it's appropriate for your small site,

01:45:24 ◼   ► is you can just have one thing,

01:45:25 ◼   ► and that one thing could be, say,

01:45:27 ◼   ► signing with Apple, right?

01:45:28 ◼   ► Like, if that's appropriate for your audience,

01:45:30 ◼   ► that would be simplifying,

01:45:31 ◼   ► and it would be a pretty good system.

01:45:33 ◼   ► But most even small sites can't do that

01:45:36 ◼   ► because email is the default.

01:45:38 ◼   ► and it occurred to me like the changes in the environment

01:45:42 ◼   ► of creating accounts on things,

01:45:44 ◼   ► because I've been dealing with lots of accounts

01:45:46 ◼   ► and live stuff lately, and I'm shocked,

01:45:49 ◼   ► I shouldn't be shocked, at these websites

01:45:53 ◼   ► for let's say slower moving industries,

01:45:57 ◼   ► like healthcare and insurance, you know,

01:46:00 ◼   ► and I go to them and I have to set up an account

01:46:04 ◼   ► or whatever, and they want me to pick a username.

01:46:06 ◼   ► I'm like, are you kidding me?

01:46:08 ◼   ► I'm picking a username in 2022.

01:46:10 ◼   ► And of course, Syracuse is taken, Jay Syracuse is taken.

01:46:14 ◼   ► You just go there, not only you're making me pick a username

01:46:17 ◼   ► but also still all the good usernames are taken.

01:46:20 ◼   ► It's like, I don't, that used to be the problem

01:46:22 ◼   ► for kids who don't remember.

01:46:24 ◼   ► Every website you had an account on,

01:46:26 ◼   ► they made you make a username

01:46:27 ◼   ► and you had to remember what the username was.

01:46:30 ◼   ► And if you're lucky on website,

01:46:32 ◼   ► you got J Smith or whatever, or you got Smith on a website.

01:46:34 ◼   ► And the other one you had to be Smith123, right?

01:46:37 ◼   ► And then other people were just like,

01:46:39 ◼   ► shiny diamond 97854 go bulls, right?

01:46:45 ◼   ► But they were that everywhere.

01:46:46 ◼   ► Because the username would be the same everywhere.

01:46:48 ◼   ► It was so hard to remember.

01:46:50 ◼   ► If you can't remember, what was my,

01:46:51 ◼   ► you wouldn't even remember your username.

01:46:53 ◼   ► And then those sites had to implement flows

01:46:55 ◼   ► that were like, forgot my password,

01:46:58 ◼   ► but also forgot my username was a flow they had to support.

01:47:01 ◼   ► This was the bad old days of the web

01:47:03 ◼   ► before everyone finally decided.

01:47:05 ◼   ► First they had this medium, bad old days

01:47:07 ◼   ► where they decided, oh, your username is your email address.

01:47:10 ◼   ► It's like, please stop, you're confusing people.

01:47:12 ◼   ► Email address, password, and we all figured that out.

01:47:15 ◼   ► I don't know how many decades ago,

01:47:16 ◼   ► except for healthcare, insurance,

01:47:18 ◼   ► and other backwards facing industries,

01:47:20 ◼   ► like, come on, don't make me,

01:47:22 ◼   ► and they make you enter your email address anyway,

01:47:24 ◼   ► but they make you pick a username.

01:47:26 ◼   ► And so the real question should be,

01:47:28 ◼   ► how do you remember your username on sites

01:47:30 ◼   ► that still remember your username?

01:47:31 ◼   ► And the answer is it's in Keychain, I really hope,

01:47:33 ◼   ► because otherwise I have no freaking idea what it is.

01:47:37 ◼   ► - Comically, I was not the person who put this

01:47:38 ◼   ► in the show notes, I don't think,

01:47:40 ◼   ► but Ashley Bischoff wrote,

01:47:41 ◼   ► "When I've used a platform-level login,

01:47:44 ◼   ► "the approach that I take is to create a stub entry

01:47:47 ◼   ► "within one password, just to let future me know."

01:47:50 ◼   ► That's a very good idea.

01:47:51 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, that's a good idea. - I take that.

01:47:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, I do that occasionally too,

01:47:53 ◼   ► of entering a secure note in iCloud Keychain or whatever,

01:47:57 ◼   ► saying, "Just remember, for this stupid website,

01:47:59 ◼   ► "here's a bunch of information about it."

01:48:00 ◼   ► And so when I, in desperation, try to search for something

01:48:04 ◼   ► later in Keychain, I will find that.

01:48:06 ◼   ► - Thanks to our sponsors this week,

01:48:08 ◼   ► Trade Coffee, Linode, and Squarespace.

01:48:11 ◼   ► Thanks for our members who support us directly.

01:48:12 ◼   ► You can join atp.fm/join.

01:48:15 ◼   ► And we will talk to you next week.

01:48:18 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:48:21 ◼   ► ♪ Now the show is over ♪

01:48:23 ◼   ► ♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪

01:48:25 ◼   ► ♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

01:48:27 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

01:48:28 ◼   ► ♪ Oh, it was accidental ♪

01:48:30 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn't let him

01:48:36 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental, it was accidental

01:48:41 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM

01:48:46 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:48:51 ◼   ► [music]

01:49:20 ◼   ► That was another one of those episodes where I laid a little trap for people.

01:49:23 ◼   ► If you sent an email or a tweet during the episode telling me that NASA didn't really

01:49:28 ◼   ► invent Velcro or microwave oven, you can resend that email.

01:49:33 ◼   ► If you use the undo feature in Gmail, maybe you see if you can pull that one back, because

01:49:37 ◼   ► yes, technically those things were invented either outside of NASA or maybe sometimes

01:49:42 ◼   ► decades earlier, but NASA did use them in its space flight work, and that helped advance

01:49:48 ◼   ► It's the technology to the point where it was easier to commercialize, whether it is

01:49:51 ◼   ► the government paying Raytheon to make something or somebody making something in some other

01:49:54 ◼   ► country and then NASA adopting it, you know, whatever.

01:49:58 ◼   ► So yes, I do know that we don't need that follow-up for next week.

01:50:02 ◼   ► It's real-time follow-up in the program with a little nerd snipe trap.

01:50:07 ◼   ► Someone says, "NASA didn't invent the microwave.

01:50:09 ◼   ► I'm going to write it into ATP and tell them this."

01:50:11 ◼   ► We know it's just, you know, kind of simplifying for the sake of the story.

01:50:15 ◼   ► I wasn't wrong.

01:50:16 ◼   ► You were wrong.

01:50:17 ◼   ► No, it's just that it's about it's about a nuance and a detail that doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things and the

01:50:22 ◼   ► Main point was like hey putting money into NASA made it so that

01:50:26 ◼   ► Microwave ovens could be in our houses sooner and better and that is true

01:50:29 ◼   ► And that was the point not that oh, but NASA didn't invent the microwave

01:50:33 ◼   ► No

01:50:33 ◼   ► But if we didn't put money into NASA and having microwaves on skylab or whatever

01:50:37 ◼   ► It would have taken much longer for the microwave to appear in people's kitchens

01:50:40 ◼   ► Also, please feel free not to email an apology about falling into the trap. Just let it go. It's not really a trap

01:50:46 ◼   ► Well, just saying that's not what nerd sniping is either by the way

01:50:49 ◼   ► Nerd sniping is when you pose a problem and then you get people are so excited to solve the problem that they solve it for you

01:50:54 ◼   ► So it's a slightly different thing. That is also true. We're talking about your fiber trunk

01:50:57 ◼   ► Do we really want to go there? I'm gonna get so much email. Alright, so I was thinking which is dangerous

01:51:04 ◼   ► It I wonder if

01:51:09 ◼   ► doing some sort of

01:51:13 ◼   ► hybrid approach where some but not all or maybe all of my maybe forthcoming Ethernet

01:51:20 ◼   ► Situation should be fiber now before you jump all over me. Let me let me let me make an opening statement

01:51:27 ◼   ► I

01:51:29 ◼   ► Recognize that this is probably overkill. I see that I

01:51:34 ◼   ► Understand that and yet I'm going to potentially march forward anyway

01:51:38 ◼   ► Because it intrigues me because I think it's interesting because it's something to learn because I know very little about it

01:51:43 ◼   ► And because I'm telling myself, perhaps wrongly,

01:51:47 ◼   ► that this may help future-proof things even more.

01:51:52 ◼   ► So maybe. - What future?

01:51:54 ◼   ► Tell me of this future.

01:51:55 ◼   ► - A future where maybe I want more

01:51:57 ◼   ► than 10 gigabit ethernet.

01:51:59 ◼   ► Maybe I want-- - I think ethernet goes up to,

01:52:02 ◼   ► what's the fastest ethernet over copper?

01:52:04 ◼   ► Someone looked at some. - I honestly don't know.

01:52:05 ◼   ► - I think it's 10 gig.

01:52:07 ◼   ► - See, I thought it was 10. - You sure?

01:52:08 ◼   ► Thought 40 you could do over copper, let me see.

01:52:11 ◼   ► Maybe. - I don't know.

01:52:12 ◼   ► But my thought was, it seems to me, and here again, maybe my fundamentals are all wrong here,

01:52:19 ◼   ► but it seems to me that fiber seems to be the most likely physical medium,

01:52:30 ◼   ► even though it's not really a physical medium, but you know what I mean,

01:52:32 ◼   ► to last the longest and be able to be current, because it's just a tube with light in it,

01:52:40 ◼   ► and then I can change the ends,

01:52:42 ◼   ► or I can change what that light tube is plugged into

01:52:45 ◼   ► to make it better and faster and stronger and so on.

01:52:47 ◼   ► Maybe that's not how it works, but that's my assumption.

01:52:49 ◼   ► - How is it not physical?

01:52:50 ◼   ► You said it was not physical.

01:52:51 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, it's just, it's not like wires or anything.

01:52:54 ◼   ► It's just an empty tube with light going through it, right?

01:52:57 ◼   ► I mean, isn't that-- - That's a wire kind of.

01:52:58 ◼   ► Anyway, all right.

01:52:59 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:53:00 ◼   ► But here's the thing, though.

01:53:01 ◼   ► What you're proposing is,

01:53:02 ◼   ► I'm gonna have like fiber on a trunk

01:53:04 ◼   ► and then it will branch out to be regular,

01:53:06 ◼   ► like copper-ethereate, is that what you're saying?

01:53:07 ◼   ► - Well, okay, so hold on.

01:53:08 ◼   ► So I've got a couple of different things

01:53:09 ◼   ► around in my head. So the hybrid approach is exactly that. So if we take the garage to be

01:53:15 ◼   ► the new hub of the network, which it is not today, but if it would be, then maybe what I do is I go

01:53:21 ◼   ► fiber into the attic and fiber into the crawl space, you know, maybe even at 10 gigabit. And

01:53:28 ◼   ► then if I spider many single gigabit lines off of that 10 gigabit trunk, then I have got oodles and

01:53:36 ◼   ► the noodles of bandwidth and it should be pretty much future proof, right? Because...

01:53:42 ◼   ► It's present proof. You presently can't use it. Or do it.

01:53:45 ◼   ► Yes and no. I mean, I can't use... I wouldn't use 10 gigabit on any individual device, but

01:53:53 ◼   ► having the trunk at 10 gigabit seems like it may not be a terrible idea. And then, so

01:53:58 ◼   ► yeah, so I would go into the attic, into the crawlspace with fiber, potentially, have,

01:54:02 ◼   ► like a small fiber to ethernet hub, or switch I should say,

01:54:05 ◼   ► in either of those locations,

01:54:07 ◼   ► and then spider off of that switch into whatever rooms

01:54:11 ◼   ► I think is pertinent to receive an ethernet connection.

01:54:15 ◼   ► - But you can do 10 gig with a copper trunk.

01:54:17 ◼   ► Like why does fiber have to enter this?

01:54:18 ◼   ► - Because what if I want more than 10 gig?

01:54:20 ◼   ► Because what if-- - Can you use front two?

01:54:22 ◼   ► I mean, like-- - Well, fair.

01:54:24 ◼   ► - The amount of effort and cost and error proneness

01:54:29 ◼   ► and fragility-- - And debugging,

01:54:31 ◼   ► like trying to debug your copper to optical transition

01:54:35 ◼   ► at all the various points.

01:54:36 ◼   ► Like I can imagine you doing this big expensive thing

01:54:38 ◼   ► and then getting worse than one gigabit

01:54:39 ◼   ► because of some weird thing you've never encountered before

01:54:42 ◼   ► because you don't know how to set a fiber in.

01:54:44 ◼   ► Neither does anybody you know

01:54:45 ◼   ► 'cause like it's not a thing for people's homes.

01:54:47 ◼   ► - Well, and that's fair,

01:54:49 ◼   ► but it also comes with,

01:54:51 ◼   ► it comes with some potentially reduced complexity

01:54:54 ◼   ► and it's certainly also increased complexity.

01:54:56 ◼   ► So I'm trading complexities, I guess, in the end.

01:54:59 ◼   ► But it also may be considerably cheaper,

01:55:02 ◼   ► well maybe not considerably cheaper,

01:55:03 ◼   ► but cheaper or equivalent money.

01:55:05 ◼   ► Because if you think about it,

01:55:07 ◼   ► I'm in for, and there's debate over whether or not

01:55:10 ◼   ► I should use the path I wanna use to get into the attic.

01:55:13 ◼   ► But if I commit to doing that, it seems clear to me

01:55:17 ◼   ► that the most prudent thing to do

01:55:19 ◼   ► is to use plenum-rated Cat 6a,

01:55:23 ◼   ► which as we discussed I think last episode,

01:55:26 ◼   ► is it seems like the best happy medium,

01:55:30 ◼   ► and it is not cheap to get,

01:55:32 ◼   ► I forget if I can get 500 feet or 1,000 feet of it,

01:55:34 ◼   ► but it's like $300 or $400 just for the cable.

01:55:38 ◼   ► - But the wire is not the major cost center here.

01:55:41 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe the fiber wire would be cheaper,

01:55:44 ◼   ► but the things you plug the fiber wires into

01:55:46 ◼   ► are not going to be cheaper.

01:55:47 ◼   ► - Well, why do you say that?

01:55:49 ◼   ► Because like I found--

01:55:50 ◼   ► - Because the only people who buy there

01:55:50 ◼   ► are people who do stuff in data centers,

01:55:52 ◼   ► and they charge a lot of money for that stuff.

01:55:54 ◼   ► So there is, I'm gonna get the details wrong

01:55:56 ◼   ► 'cause I don't have it pulled up in front of me,

01:55:58 ◼   ► but I've been looking into this quite a bit.

01:55:59 ◼   ► And the switch that I would use to go from optical,

01:56:04 ◼   ► from fiber to ethernet is like 120 bucks.

01:56:06 ◼   ► And I would need potentially two of them.

01:56:08 ◼   ► And then somebody also, I didn't mention actually,

01:56:11 ◼   ► somebody who has a listener, very kind listener

01:56:13 ◼   ► whose name I don't have in front of me,

01:56:15 ◼   ► has offered to send me for the cost of shipping

01:56:18 ◼   ► an old Hewlett Packard switch that they have,

01:56:21 ◼   ► like a rack mount switch that they have,

01:56:23 ◼   ► that has something like five or 10 fiber connections

01:56:26 ◼   ► and then a whole buttload of ethernet connections.

01:56:29 ◼   ► So I could get that for almost no money.

01:56:30 ◼   ► I can get a couple of the switches,

01:56:32 ◼   ► one for the attic, one for the crawl space

01:56:34 ◼   ► for a couple hundred bucks total.

01:56:37 ◼   ► And I'm still probably, at this point,

01:56:40 ◼   ► I've spent not that much money

01:56:42 ◼   ► and it wouldn't be that different necessarily than,

01:56:45 ◼   ► I guess it's a little bit more than getting ethernet,

01:56:48 ◼   ► but it's not that much more.

01:56:50 ◼   ► - Buying an eight port ethernet switch

01:56:51 ◼   ► does not cost a hundred dollars.

01:56:53 ◼   ► That's true, but I would need something

01:56:57 ◼   ► for the command center in the garage.

01:56:58 ◼   ► And I would probably want something

01:57:01 ◼   ► that is bigger than this unremarkable 16 port switch

01:57:05 ◼   ► I have in the office right now.

01:57:06 ◼   ► I mean, I guess I could continue to use this,

01:57:08 ◼   ► but I want something like rack-mounted, for example.

01:57:10 ◼   ► And so, and additionally,

01:57:12 ◼   ► one of the things that also appeals to me about fiber

01:57:14 ◼   ► is that I wouldn't be terminating anything,

01:57:16 ◼   ► 'cause that's a recipe for disaster.

01:57:17 ◼   ► So I would just get the,

01:57:20 ◼   ► I would measure and get the appropriate sized fiber,

01:57:23 ◼   ► and that would be that.

01:57:24 ◼   ► I'm not gonna be doing any of my own crimping

01:57:26 ◼   ► or terminating or anything like that.

01:57:28 ◼   ► - You can do that with ethernet cables though,

01:57:30 ◼   ► much more cheaply and easily.

01:57:32 ◼   ► - Well, but can you get like 300 foot ethernet cables?

01:57:35 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Not 300,

01:57:36 ◼   ► but like 100 or 200.

01:57:38 ◼   ► - I've got 100 foot one,

01:57:39 ◼   ► so I know you can do that at least.

01:57:41 ◼   ► - No, fair, maybe I should look into that a little more.

01:57:43 ◼   ► But, and the other thing that scares me a little bit

01:57:46 ◼   ► is that I've heard several people say to me like,

01:57:49 ◼   ► "Oh, Cat 6A is the worst."

01:57:51 ◼   ► not as bad as seven, but it's almost as bad as seven, it's so difficult, it's so bad.

01:57:56 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly right. So I feel like honestly the right-est answer, and maybe

01:58:04 ◼   ► that's what I'm really backing myself into, is just not touch anything. Like why

01:58:07 ◼   ► fix what ain't broken, just figure out a new outlet for this information,

01:58:10 ◼   ► for this nervous energy. But I don't know, it just it seems like fiber is not that

01:58:18 ◼   ► unapproachable these days either financially or from just a regular

01:58:22 ◼   ► shmo. I don't think it's necessary but I don't think it's that unapproachable and

01:58:26 ◼   ► and potentially you know I don't think if especially if I go a hybrid route

01:58:32 ◼   ► like I don't think it would be that many fiber runs like it would be one to the

01:58:38 ◼   ► attic one to the crawlspace maybe maybe I could go into like the office in the

01:58:44 ◼   ► future office with additional runs maybe but that wouldn't be absolutely

01:58:47 ◼   ► necessary so I don't know I feel like there's there's nothing that is clear to

01:58:54 ◼   ► me that makes it utterly an utterly terrible idea other than not a lot of

01:58:58 ◼   ► people have done it yet do you have two devices that would be on wired Ethernet

01:59:02 ◼   ► they could take advantage of your greater than one gigabit per second trunk

01:59:06 ◼   ► like they communicate with each other you know what I mean like are you doing

01:59:10 ◼   ► a file transfer from a plugged in Ethernet Mac to a plugged in Ethernet

01:59:13 ◼   ► device somewhere else in the house yeah from this is from the Mac to the

01:59:16 ◼   ► - They're not using the Synology constantly, or vice versa.

01:59:18 ◼   ► - Isn't the Synology and the Mac in the same room?

01:59:20 ◼   ► - Well, right now they are, but hopefully they wouldn't be.

01:59:22 ◼   ► Hopefully, the Synology would be potentially in the garage.

01:59:26 ◼   ► - But that's just two devices, so you're still,

01:59:28 ◼   ► say you're maxing out one gigabit, so fine,

01:59:30 ◼   ► but now you need something else that also wants

01:59:33 ◼   ► to do a gigabit over the trunk between it

01:59:35 ◼   ► and some other device for you to need more

01:59:37 ◼   ► than a gigabit on your trunk, right?

01:59:39 ◼   ► - Potentially, yeah, and no, to answer your question,

01:59:42 ◼   ► I don't think I have that, not today.

01:59:44 ◼   ► - I don't think you have enough wired devices.

01:59:46 ◼   ► Like everyone else is going to be sipping through the Wi-Fi straw to get to that.

01:59:48 ◼   ► Well, I have enough.

01:59:50 ◼   ► I have enough wired devices for sure.

01:59:51 ◼   ► I mean, I have a Mac Mini, but wired devices that need to talk to each other over a gigabit.

01:59:55 ◼   ► I mean, you're watching video from this analogy.

01:59:57 ◼   ► It's like 10 gigabits.

01:59:58 ◼   ► It's not, you know, 10 megabits rather.

02:00:00 ◼   ► It's not like 100 gigabits or one gigabit.

02:00:03 ◼   ► Sorry, I'm getting my gigs in.

02:00:04 ◼   ► You know what I mean? Yeah.

02:00:06 ◼   ► But like it's surprisingly difficult unless you're doing literal file transfers to saturate

02:00:11 ◼   ► a one gigabit trunk in your house, unless you actually have a lot of devices that are on

02:00:15 ◼   ► wired ethernet or on very fast Wi-Fi that need to do these big transfers to each other

02:00:20 ◼   ► at the same time and are running the traffic jams.

02:00:22 ◼   ► And to Marco's point, if that's really the case, run three more ethernet cables.

02:00:27 ◼   ► And now you've solved that problem, right?

02:00:28 ◼   ► Because then they can have their own dedicated cables going to wherever they want to go.

02:00:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

02:00:33 ◼   ► I mean, the more you waffle about this, the more you waffle about things like the cost

02:00:38 ◼   ► of a spool of cable, the more I think the better approach here is to just buy some premade

02:00:43 ◼   ► cables that are the right lengths and just shove them through the walls as whatever way

02:00:46 ◼   ► you can and just call it a day.

02:00:49 ◼   ► Well, and to be clear, it's not that I necessarily have a problem with like, you know, using

02:00:55 ◼   ► Keystone jacks or anything or crimping if the need arises, although it sounds like it

02:00:59 ◼   ► probably wouldn't if I went the if I went the pure Ethernet route. It's not that I'm

02:01:04 ◼   ► trying to avoid the work of it. It's just I don't I need in part of the thing is I tried

02:01:10 ◼   ► to make time to do this tonight or earlier today and I just didn't have the

02:01:13 ◼   ► time to do it but I need to properly sit down so to speak and figure out okay how

02:01:17 ◼   ► much cable do I really need because I have this vision that I need like a

02:01:20 ◼   ► couple hundred feet of Ethernet cable and it may be that I need you know in

02:01:24 ◼   ► 900 feet or something like I doubt it but you never know like maybe I need 900

02:01:28 ◼   ► feet and a thousand foot spool wouldn't be so bad but I have this gut feeling

02:01:32 ◼   ► that I need many many hundreds of feet less than a thousand and probably and so

02:01:36 ◼   ► And so it seems silly to me to buy a thousand foot spool,

02:01:41 ◼   ► which is almost the only thing I can find.

02:01:44 ◼   ► - Do not buy a thousand foot spool.

02:01:46 ◼   ► Where do you think you live?

02:01:47 ◼   ► - No, that's what I'm saying.

02:01:48 ◼   ► - Do the actual measurements.

02:01:49 ◼   ► Do it like the actual route the wires would take.

02:01:51 ◼   ► It's way fewer feet than you think it is.

02:01:53 ◼   ► - We agree, and that's why I think I need to stop

02:01:58 ◼   ► hand-waving and start actually putting numbers down.

02:02:01 ◼   ► I started to do this a little bit,

02:02:02 ◼   ► but I haven't done it properly.

02:02:04 ◼   ► But the other thing to think about, though,

02:02:06 ◼   ► is again, if I'm petulantly insisting on plenum-rated cable

02:02:09 ◼   ► for better or worse, I mean, I don't think it's for worse,

02:02:12 ◼   ► but if I'm petulantly insisting on plenum-rated cable,

02:02:14 ◼   ► it's a taller order to find Cat6a plenum-rated

02:02:18 ◼   ► at exactly 100 feet, you know, already pre-cooked,

02:02:20 ◼   ► if you will, than it is just riser-rated Cat6a,

02:02:23 ◼   ► which is what everyone else in the entire world wants.

02:02:26 ◼   ► - Have you considered the fact that perhaps

02:02:29 ◼   ► researching this project is in fact the project

02:02:32 ◼   ► that keeps you busy? - Call me Merlin.

02:02:34 ◼   ► Like you just wanted to find something to keep you busy.

02:02:36 ◼   ► You don't actually, and this will make Aaron happy,

02:02:39 ◼   ► you don't actually have to do anything to your house.

02:02:41 ◼   ► Your hobby could simply be exhaustively researching

02:02:44 ◼   ► and modeling a potential house spanning fiber optic network.

02:02:48 ◼   ► You can get a 3D program and make CAD files

02:02:51 ◼   ► and really model it out and do a fly through.

02:02:53 ◼   ► We could fly through the plenum

02:02:55 ◼   ► and watch the plenum rating table and everything.

02:02:57 ◼   ► - Modeling you say, I'm putting something in Slack right now.

02:03:00 ◼   ► - This is a thing to do.

02:03:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, so I did this earlier today,

02:03:05 ◼   ► I think it was, I put this in Slack.

02:03:06 ◼   ► I don't have it easily accessible for the live people,

02:03:08 ◼   ► I'm sorry, but I used Monodraw to diagram out.

02:03:11 ◼   ► This is not the hybrid approach,

02:03:13 ◼   ► this would be the full fiber approach,

02:03:14 ◼   ► but I diagrammed this out for myself.

02:03:16 ◼   ► - See, I think this is the project.

02:03:19 ◼   ► You are succeeding in finding something to occupy your time.

02:03:22 ◼   ► It's just that the project isn't what you thought it was.

02:03:24 ◼   ► You thought the project was wire my house for ethernet.

02:03:26 ◼   ► The project is really plan to wire my house for ethernet.

02:03:29 ◼   ► Why don't you make a new iOS app full of emoji and lots of text that's all about letting

02:03:34 ◼   ► people plan out their network upgrades for their house?

02:03:37 ◼   ► [BEEPING]