ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I am ever so slightly sick.

00:00:02 ◼   ► I have a little bit of a cold.

00:00:03 ◼   ► I did an at-home test this morning.

00:00:05 ◼   ► - Wait, you realize you have Omicron, right?

00:00:07 ◼   ► - So I did an at-home test this morning and said no.

00:00:11 ◼   ► - All right, so here's a couple things to know.

00:00:13 ◼   ► Number one, the symptom profile for Omicron

00:00:16 ◼   ► is different than previous variants.

00:00:17 ◼   ► It is much more common to get cold-like symptoms

00:00:19 ◼   ► like stuffy nose than previous variants were.

00:00:22 ◼   ► Number two, it's the at-home rapid tests that we all have,

00:00:27 ◼   ► hopefully, are less sensitive to Omicron

00:00:30 ◼   ► than previous variants.

00:00:31 ◼   ► So, basically, I know so many people who,

00:00:36 ◼   ► in the last couple of weeks,

00:00:38 ◼   ► have gotten minor cold symptoms,

00:00:40 ◼   ► and then later got a PCR test,

00:00:41 ◼   ► and it turned out it was COVID.

00:00:44 ◼   ► Basically, if you have a minor cold in the US right now,

00:00:46 ◼   ► you probably have Omicron.

00:00:48 ◼   ► That's much more likely than not.

00:00:50 ◼   ► Even vaccinated and boosted,

00:00:52 ◼   ► the vaccine and boost basically means

00:00:54 ◼   ► that you're far less likely to die or go to the hospital,

00:00:57 ◼   ► and you're probably gonna have mild cold symptoms

00:00:58 ◼   ► for a few days.

00:00:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, and the thought, so it's funny you say this

00:01:02 ◼   ► because I was talking to Erin about it,

00:01:03 ◼   ► and I was like, do you think this is the real thing?

00:01:05 ◼   ► And she's like, nah, I don't think so.

00:01:06 ◼   ► And then I was like, well, I don't know.

00:01:07 ◼   ► - No, it is.

00:01:08 ◼   ► Trust me, it is.

00:01:09 ◼   ► - So I took it at home test. - Assume that it is.

00:01:12 ◼   ► Take the precautions as if it is that

00:01:13 ◼   ► because it probably is.

00:01:15 ◼   ► - Well, so I took my at home test just to see,

00:01:17 ◼   ► and that said no, I understand, I understand.

00:01:20 ◼   ► You don't have to email me.

00:01:20 ◼   ► I understand, that doesn't guarantee it's not

00:01:22 ◼   ► by any stretch of the imagination.

00:01:24 ◼   ► But anyway, I say, I bring all this up to say

00:01:26 ◼   ► I'm a little snotty and a little, in every sense of the word,

00:01:29 ◼   ► and a little nasally, so I apologize

00:01:32 ◼   ► if I sound a little funky.

00:01:33 ◼   ► It's not anything wrong with what Marco did,

00:01:35 ◼   ► 'cause I know people, anytime any of us sound weird,

00:01:37 ◼   ► it's a testament to how good a job you do, Marco,

00:01:39 ◼   ► that people immediately pounce on it,

00:01:40 ◼   ► and they're like, "Wait, what happened?

00:01:42 ◼   ► "Why is this wrong?"

00:01:43 ◼   ► And so, it's not Marco, it's me.

00:01:45 ◼   ► I've got a little bit of snots, so I apologize.

00:01:48 ◼   ► - I have a mild cold all winter, every winter,

00:01:50 ◼   ► for my entire life, so I don't know what that means.

00:01:53 ◼   ► - You've had, you're typhoid-married.

00:01:55 ◼   ► - I don't know, yeah.

00:01:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, all right, what else is going on?

00:01:58 ◼   ► - I'm still, I'm so tired from my baking adventure yesterday

00:02:02 ◼   ► 'cause like, I'm not a, okay, so,

00:02:04 ◼   ► I make Tiff's birthday cake every year.

00:02:06 ◼   ► She, it's our tradition that like,

00:02:08 ◼   ► I make whatever she wants and she sometimes asks

00:02:11 ◼   ► for simple things, sometimes complex things,

00:02:13 ◼   ► sometimes she asks for something simple

00:02:14 ◼   ► and I make it complex and I wanna make it fancy.

00:02:16 ◼   ► That's what happened this year.

00:02:18 ◼   ► I made it like a fancy pistachio cake

00:02:19 ◼   ► that was kind of a hybrid of a bunch of recipes

00:02:21 ◼   ► I found online and it was a good deal of work.

00:02:26 ◼   ► I would imagine if you are a professional cakeologists,

00:02:29 ◼   ► it probably would have taken you the morning at most,

00:02:33 ◼   ► but because I am not and I bake once a year,

00:02:37 ◼   ► everything takes me longer 'cause I'm being extra careful.

00:02:40 ◼   ► I don't, like certain, sometimes I have to remake

00:02:42 ◼   ► the frosting 'cause it doesn't come together or something,

00:02:44 ◼   ► so it was a lot and I am still a day later.

00:02:50 ◼   ► I feel like, so keep in mind, I went to bed on time,

00:02:55 ◼   ► a little after 10, woke up at like 6.30,

00:02:58 ◼   ► like my regular bedtime amount.

00:03:01 ◼   ► I didn't have any alcohol yesterday,

00:03:03 ◼   ► and I had the regular amount of caffeine,

00:03:04 ◼   ► which is like one cup of coffee in the morning

00:03:06 ◼   ► and a small green tea in the afternoon.

00:03:08 ◼   ► And today, I still feel hungover.

00:03:11 ◼   ► Like some-- (laughing)

00:03:14 ◼   ► I don't know, I think it's just from doing

00:03:17 ◼   ► a lot of stuff yesterday.

00:03:18 ◼   ► - You have a baking hangover, you baked one cake.

00:03:21 ◼   ► - I know.

00:03:22 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:03:23 ◼   ► - You got a baking hangover, maybe it's not the baking,

00:03:25 ◼   ► maybe it's like the stress of like,

00:03:26 ◼   ► I hope this comes out well, like the pressure of,

00:03:28 ◼   ► you know, your once a year baking performance.

00:03:31 ◼   ► - I mean, I think it could also be that,

00:03:34 ◼   ► like we don't have a ton of like strong sugar

00:03:37 ◼   ► most of the time, and all day I'm like,

00:03:39 ◼   ► oh let me taste a little bit of this,

00:03:40 ◼   ► make sure it's right, so all day I'm having little tiny bits

00:03:43 ◼   ► of very strong sugary things, culminating at the end

00:03:46 ◼   ► with a slice of this cake right after dinner,

00:03:50 ◼   ► so that's a lot of sugar right there.

00:03:52 ◼   ► - Did you have it for breakfast the next morning

00:03:53 ◼   ► as is tradition?

00:03:54 ◼   ► - I sure did, I had it for breakfast this morning

00:03:56 ◼   ► and felt awful all morning. (laughs)

00:03:58 ◼   ► - I was gonna say, if you're already feeling bad

00:03:59 ◼   ► and you feel like I had too much sugar,

00:04:01 ◼   ► having it for breakfast the next morning is probably nuts.

00:04:03 ◼   ► The hair of the cake that bit you.

00:04:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, we all, all three of us, including Adam,

00:04:08 ◼   ► all three of us this morning afterwards were like,

00:04:10 ◼   ► maybe this wasn't a good idea

00:04:11 ◼   ► to have all this sugar for breakfast.

00:04:14 ◼   ► - I think Adam's probably fine, though.

00:04:15 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:04:16 ◼   ► I bet he rallied fast.

00:04:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, kids can definitely do it more than we can,

00:04:20 ◼   ► that's for sure.

00:04:21 ◼   ► But yeah, it's like now, you know,

00:04:23 ◼   ► I'm turning 40 this year,

00:04:24 ◼   ► and I'm not feeling great about that fact.

00:04:28 ◼   ► One of the areas in which this is becoming real to me

00:04:36 ◼   ► is just how many things that I can't or shouldn't

00:04:39 ◼   ► eat or drink anymore.

00:04:41 ◼   ► Like that list keeps getting larger.

00:04:43 ◼   ► And it seems to have happened fairly quickly.

00:04:46 ◼   ► I feel like at 35, I could eat and drink almost anything.

00:04:51 ◼   ► And between 35 and now I'm like 39 and a half,

00:04:55 ◼   ► that's gotten cut way back.

00:04:57 ◼   ► Just because like, oh, if I eat or drink this thing,

00:04:59 ◼   ► I'm gonna have a terrible night or morning or whatever.

00:05:03 ◼   ► Oh man, they don't tell you this kind of stuff.

00:05:06 ◼   ► This is gonna happen. - No.

00:05:08 ◼   ► But as the joke is, the alternative is much worse.

00:05:12 ◼   ► not being around anymore is much worse than getting old and not being able to eat like you used to.

00:05:16 ◼   ► Yes.

00:05:17 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:05:18 ◼   ► Well, you know what is good news though? And we can start with some follow-up.

00:05:23 ◼   ► I'm back and better than ever, baby! Because guess what showed up this week?

00:05:27 ◼   ► The 5K?

00:05:28 ◼   ► It's back, baby.

00:05:29 ◼   ► Did they even tell you it was coming back? Did it just arrive at your doorstep unannounced?

00:05:33 ◼   ► Or did they say, "Hey, we finished your repair. It's on its way," or whatever?

00:05:36 ◼   ► Did you have to ask me that question, John?

00:05:37 ◼   ► Oh no.

00:05:38 ◼   ► Yes, do you have to ask me this?

00:05:40 ◼   ► So a certain somebody, I have,

00:05:44 ◼   ► I have many wonderful qualities and I have a couple of not as wonderful

00:05:49 ◼   ► qualities.

00:05:50 ◼   ► One of my less desirable qualities is that I may not be the most patient human

00:05:58 ◼   ► in the entire world.

00:05:59 ◼   ► I in a rare case of me deleting a tweet when I was waiting for my Mac book pro

00:06:05 ◼   ► to show up just a couple of months back,

00:06:09 ◼   ► I was getting increasingly impatient and increasingly petulant about the fact that my beloved computer

00:06:17 ◼   ► hadn't shown up when I wanted it to in the middle of a pandemic when shipping is a mess

00:06:21 ◼   ► and everything around the world is a mess, but damn it, it's my computer and I want it

00:06:25 ◼   ► now.

00:06:26 ◼   ► So I whined about it on Twitter, which is what people do when they're whiny.

00:06:31 ◼   ► And a few people in various ways said, "Stop being an idiot."

00:06:35 ◼   ► And so I was like, "You know what?

00:06:36 ◼   ► I am being an idiot."

00:06:37 ◼   ► And I deleted that tweet.

00:06:38 ◼   ► I found out that, or I realized that I had dispatched the monitor just a few days before Christmas.

00:06:47 ◼   ► And this, I think I shipped it on the 20th of December or maybe the 21st.

00:06:50 ◼   ► And it was now the 20th or 21st of January.

00:06:54 ◼   ► And so I thought, okay, it is about time for me to start poking about trying to figure out where this thing is.

00:07:00 ◼   ► Now, I have had a tab open, John-style, for a month now

00:07:04 ◼   ► with the LG Track Your Repair status page thing,

00:07:09 ◼   ► and it's told me for a month that it's pending.

00:07:12 ◼   ► Well, that's not fair.

00:07:13 ◼   ► I think before they acknowledged its arrival,

00:07:15 ◼   ► they said, "We're waiting on it,"

00:07:16 ◼   ► and then after a few days of it

00:07:19 ◼   ► having been in City of Industry, California,

00:07:21 ◼   ► they eventually said, "Okay, we're gonna get to it

00:07:23 ◼   ► "at some point."

00:07:23 ◼   ► - Does City of Industry sound like a parody place name

00:07:26 ◼   ► from The Simpsons to anyone else?

00:07:28 ◼   ► - It absolutely does.

00:07:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, it sounds like something from a Disney movie,

00:07:32 ◼   ► "City of Industry."

00:07:33 ◼   ► - It very much does.

00:07:35 ◼   ► It has a big Epcot feel to it, right?

00:07:37 ◼   ► Experimental prototype community of tomorrow.

00:07:39 ◼   ► Well, anyways.

00:07:40 ◼   ► - Sorry, go on.

00:07:41 ◼   ► - During the process of me begging LG,

00:07:43 ◼   ► I don't remember how much we got into this,

00:07:45 ◼   ► but during the process of me begging LG

00:07:47 ◼   ► to take 150 or whatever dollars of my money

00:07:49 ◼   ► so they would repair it, I eventually,

00:07:53 ◼   ► and now I kind of regret having gone down this whole road.

00:07:55 ◼   ► This is all your fault, John, you had to ask.

00:07:57 ◼   ► I eventually used the "email the president" form on the LG website.

00:08:01 ◼   ► Oh no.

00:08:02 ◼   ► This was weeks ago.

00:08:03 ◼   ► Did you say, "Do you know who I am?"

00:08:04 ◼   ► No, no.

00:08:05 ◼   ► It's so tempting.

00:08:06 ◼   ► No, you can't, no, please never do that.

00:08:08 ◼   ► Because nobody cares who I am.

00:08:09 ◼   ► You will regret it.

00:08:10 ◼   ► Nobody cares who I am.

00:08:11 ◼   ► Take heed from Merlin's bad experience.

00:08:13 ◼   ► You will regret this.

00:08:14 ◼   ► That's right.

00:08:15 ◼   ► Right.

00:08:16 ◼   ► So I sent that and then actually, to their credit, within a few hours, I believe I got

00:08:21 ◼   ► a phone call from like one of the president's peons and this very very kind woman was like

00:08:27 ◼   ► all right I'm gonna get you squared away and she followed up via phone like a couple of

00:08:31 ◼   ► times over over the span of like a week this is you know when I was trying to just get

00:08:35 ◼   ► the thing to to them in the first place she was awesome she was like the only ray of sunshine

00:08:40 ◼   ► in this entire repair process was was this woman at the at the president's office and

00:08:44 ◼   ► so I emailed her because we had exchanged a couple of emails because she had actually

00:08:47 ◼   ► asked me for something at some point. And so I said, "Hey," and I was very kind. I truly

00:08:51 ◼   ► was very kind. I'm not going to dig up the email because I'm too lazy, but I was kind.

00:08:54 ◼   ► I was like, "Hey, it's been a month. Can we figure out what's going on here?" And I sent

00:09:00 ◼   ► that, I think it was like Tuesday morning or something like that. And we exchanged a

00:09:04 ◼   ► couple emails back and forth and she was like, "Look, I'm going on vacation next week, but

00:09:07 ◼   ► I super promise that when I get back, I'll check in." I was like, "No, no, no, that's

00:09:09 ◼   ► fine. That's fine. That's fine. I'll talk to you after you get back from your vacation.

00:09:13 ◼   ► worries. And I, you know, had raised a little bit of a stink about it, again, very politely,

00:09:19 ◼   ► and then I went out to go for a walk that afternoon and there was a large box on my front porch. A

00:09:25 ◼   ► large box on my front porch that I did not expect to see. And on the side of that front, of that box

00:09:31 ◼   ► on the front porch, it said "repair okay" and it was an LG box. And I was like, "Oh my god, it's

00:09:37 ◼   ► here!" So here it was, literally the day that I'm blowing up this poor woman at the president of

00:09:42 ◼   ► LG Electronics office or whatever they are, saying please can you find my monitor?

00:09:45 ◼   ► I'm a very needy, very spoiled white boy in Virginia. Please find my monitor. And

00:09:50 ◼   ► sure enough it showed up. So that's how talented she is, is that she made it show

00:09:54 ◼   ► up immediately. - Yeah exactly. How do you know that she didn't somehow make that happen?

00:09:59 ◼   ► - Yeah exactly. - Like she flew her own personal helicopter to your house to drop it off.

00:10:04 ◼   ► - They droned the 30 pound or whatever LG display. So anyway, so it showed up and

00:10:10 ◼   ► there was absolutely zero documentation. There was a packing slip that had, you know, my address and

00:10:14 ◼   ► whatnot, but that was it. No documentation, nothing that indicated that they had done anything other

00:10:20 ◼   ► than the sticker on the outside that said "repair okay." But I had faith, and I plugged it in, and

00:10:26 ◼   ► I've unplugged it on the computer side a couple times. I haven't unplugged it on the other side

00:10:31 ◼   ► yet, but so far so good, baby. I'm back better than ever! So I am excited, and all jokes aside,

00:10:37 ◼   ► you know, so I'd been rocking two 4K LG displays.

00:10:41 ◼   ► Well, no, I actually didn't mind it.

00:10:43 ◼   ► I kind of liked it.

00:10:44 ◼   ► And now having the 5K display back,

00:10:48 ◼   ► leaving aside, like I know we all, including me

00:10:51 ◼   ► to some degree, kind of hate this particular 5K display,

00:10:53 ◼   ► but having a large monitor in front of you

00:10:58 ◼   ► is particularly delightful.

00:11:00 ◼   ► And I can only fathom how delightful

00:11:02 ◼   ► an additional K would be.

00:11:04 ◼   ► Like I'm sure it would be quite nice.

00:11:06 ◼   ► But I am all ready to go.

00:11:11 ◼   ► I'm looking at the 5K right now.

00:11:13 ◼   ► Ethernet is plugged into the 5K,

00:11:15 ◼   ► and that hasn't died yet, so that's good.

00:11:17 ◼   ► And then I'm using my, whatever this breakout box is,

00:11:20 ◼   ► I already forgot who makes it,

00:11:22 ◼   ► but I'm using the breakout box for,

00:11:25 ◼   ► actually, I think they sponsored today.

00:11:26 ◼   ► Iodine sent me a unit of theirs,

00:11:29 ◼   ► which was very kind of them, which is very cool.

00:11:31 ◼   ► This thing is extremely fast, it is super neat,

00:11:33 ◼   ► and Marco will talk about that later.

00:11:36 ◼   ► and I have that connected to the breakout box.

00:11:37 ◼   ► I've got the USB pre connected to the,

00:11:40 ◼   ► I'm sorry, the mix pre connected to the breakout box.

00:11:41 ◼   ► So basically everything about this setup

00:11:44 ◼   ► has changed since last week.

00:11:46 ◼   ► And it'll be anyone's guess which one of these 74 components

00:11:49 ◼   ► causes problems if problems happen later.

00:11:52 ◼   ► And this is when Marco gets real angry at me.

00:11:54 ◼   ► But hopefully it'll work out all right.

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00:13:53 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:13:58 ◼   ► I have to say, sitting here now

00:13:59 ◼   ► before everything collapses on me during,

00:14:01 ◼   ► shortly during the recording of this very episode.

00:14:04 ◼   ► Once you're willing to basically turn your life upside down

00:14:09 ◼   ► and spend heinous amounts of money

00:14:10 ◼   ► on things you probably shouldn't need to buy,

00:14:13 ◼   ► the USB-C lifestyle is pretty good.

00:14:15 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:14:16 ◼   ► Being able to plug in the MixPre-3,

00:14:20 ◼   ► two Thunderbolt cables to this iodine box,

00:14:23 ◼   ► Thunderbolt to, let's see,

00:14:25 ◼   ► oh, I've got a stand, a 12 south or whatever it is stand

00:14:29 ◼   ► for my iPhone that's plugged in, I've got Ethernet plugged in, I've got all sorts of

00:14:34 ◼   ► different things, probably like four or five different connections to this computer that

00:14:38 ◼   ► are all riding through two USB-C connections. One of them is to the breakout box, the USB-C

00:14:45 ◼   ► Thunderbolt hub, and one of them to the LG 5K. And, you know, if I were to plug all of

00:14:51 ◼   ► these things individually, first of all, I couldn't because I'd run out of ports, but

00:14:53 ◼   ► Second of all, it would be quite a few more cables.

00:14:57 ◼   ► So I didn't mention, oh, I've kept the LG 4K

00:15:01 ◼   ► that I purchased, and remember I had borrowed one

00:15:03 ◼   ► from my last job, and I'm keeping the other one,

00:15:06 ◼   ► the other LG 4K that I purchased,

00:15:08 ◼   ► and that's currently off to my right-hand side.

00:15:10 ◼   ► My laptop display is off to my left-hand side,

00:15:12 ◼   ► so I've got a triumvirate, a trio of monitors,

00:15:15 ◼   ► and it is extremely overkill, and I'm kind of loving it.

00:15:18 ◼   ► But the 4K is also hooked into the breakout box.

00:15:21 ◼   ► So I've got all this different stuff

00:15:23 ◼   ► hooked into all these different places, but as long as they can find a way back to my

00:15:28 ◼   ► computer, it's pretty great. And so if I want to go into like full-on business mode or whatever,

00:15:33 ◼   ► then I plug in the breakout box and that gives me the second monitor, that gives me the Mixpre

00:15:38 ◼   ► and all that jazz. But if I'm just rolling simple, I only have to plug in the LG 5K and

00:15:43 ◼   ► I still have Ethernet on there and the one 5K monitor and I can go clamshell or whatever

00:15:47 ◼   ► and it's fine. And so it stinks that I needed to get like a bunch of different cables and

00:15:52 ◼   ► gosh do I ever hate the ambiguity around what USB-C cable handles, what bandwidth, and so on and so forth.

00:15:59 ◼   ► But once you get yourself squared away with the right cables and the right $300 breakout box and

00:16:05 ◼   ► and so on and so forth and the right $1500 monitor plus $150 for repair, once you get it all

00:16:11 ◼   ► once you get it all squared away it actually is pretty nice. But gosh did this if this didn't take

00:16:18 ◼   ► like two months to get this situation squared away

00:16:21 ◼   ► to the point I like it.

00:16:22 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, if you trade two months

00:16:23 ◼   ► for about 4,000 more dollars,

00:16:25 ◼   ► that's basically the Pro Display XDR story.

00:16:28 ◼   ► It's a ton of money, but if you're willing and able

00:16:31 ◼   ► to drop that, then this lifestyle can be very nice.

00:16:35 ◼   ► Like, this is why I love the XDR.

00:16:39 ◼   ► It's not because I needed a reference grade display

00:16:42 ◼   ► for whatever, whatever.

00:16:43 ◼   ► You know, having the slightly dim edge problem

00:16:46 ◼   ► that it has still does bother me a little bit.

00:16:49 ◼   ► But it's a really giant monitor,

00:16:52 ◼   ► which hits upon Casey Happiness Factor number one

00:16:54 ◼   ► at the beginning of the episode.

00:16:56 ◼   ► And it's my main USB-C hub.

00:16:58 ◼   ► At my desk, I don't need a USB-C hub

00:17:01 ◼   ► because the monitor itself has downstream ports,

00:17:05 ◼   ► the computer has downstream ports,

00:17:06 ◼   ► and I have my old USB-A devices plugged into a different hub

00:17:10 ◼   ► that I already had, just a USB hub.

00:17:12 ◼   ► It's not like a USB-C or Thunderbolt hub.

00:17:14 ◼   ► And so it's great.

00:17:15 ◼   ► Once you have this set up, it's awesome.

00:17:18 ◼   ► It costs a ridiculous amount of money,

00:17:21 ◼   ► but it is fantastic if you can swing it.

00:17:25 ◼   ► And this is why this really does make me

00:17:28 ◼   ► very, very happy to use.

00:17:29 ◼   ► This still remains by far my favorite computer setup

00:17:33 ◼   ► I've ever used.

00:17:34 ◼   ► I love the desktop laptop lifestyle still.

00:17:37 ◼   ► It's just fantastic.

00:17:40 ◼   ► And USB-C is part of that.

00:17:42 ◼   ► because the thing with USB, it's still,

00:17:45 ◼   ► it's kind of like your audio setup, not you, Casey,

00:17:49 ◼   ► but it's kind of like one's audio setup.

00:17:52 ◼   ► The golden rule of audio setups is like,

00:17:53 ◼   ► once you get it working, never touch anything,

00:17:55 ◼   ► because if you touch anything, you'll change it in some way,

00:17:59 ◼   ► it'll be in a world of hell for weeks

00:18:01 ◼   ► and you won't know why.

00:18:02 ◼   ► USB-C and all this, and Thunderbolt and everything

00:18:05 ◼   ► is like that.

00:18:06 ◼   ► So I have so many weird conditions that I've had in the past

00:18:09 ◼   ► or different setups in the present

00:18:10 ◼   ► where I'll plug something in that should work,

00:18:13 ◼   ► some setup that I have that should work,

00:18:15 ◼   ► and it just randomly doesn't.

00:18:16 ◼   ► Like I have this problem with our game streaming setup

00:18:19 ◼   ► where I'm running all of these USB capture devices

00:18:23 ◼   ► and USB webcams through the CalDigit Thunderbolt hub

00:18:27 ◼   ► and into my MacBook Pro, but for some reason,

00:18:31 ◼   ► like one of the capture things,

00:18:33 ◼   ► we have three computers that we capture,

00:18:34 ◼   ► so we have three little legato USB thingies to capture them,

00:18:38 ◼   ► and one of them for some reason,

00:18:41 ◼   ► won't work through the Thunderbolt hub sometimes.

00:18:45 ◼   ► And if I plug it into my computer directly,

00:18:49 ◼   ► but like into a different port, it works fine.

00:18:52 ◼   ► Now, if I disconnect the computer that's plugged into it,

00:18:57 ◼   ► like the input gaming PC,

00:19:00 ◼   ► if I put this one particular gaming PC

00:19:02 ◼   ► on a different USB capture device,

00:19:04 ◼   ► then that capture device will start having the same problem.

00:19:06 ◼   ► So it seems to be like whatever PC,

00:19:10 ◼   ► or whatever capture device is connected to this particular

00:19:12 ◼   ► PC can't work all the time from the USB port

00:19:17 ◼   ► in the Thunderbolt hub, but will work every time

00:19:20 ◼   ► directly through it.

00:19:21 ◼   ► And like weird stuff, like I have a sound device,

00:19:25 ◼   ► this MixPre that powers the audio for that setup,

00:19:27 ◼   ► so that's also plugged into the USB hub.

00:19:29 ◼   ► And that works all the time, asterisk,

00:19:32 ◼   ► well most of the time.

00:19:35 ◼   ► Occasionally, very occasionally,

00:19:37 ◼   ► it'll blip out for a second and blip back in.

00:19:39 ◼   ► Why?

00:19:40 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:19:41 ◼   ► But this is like, this is the promise of like,

00:19:43 ◼   ► so much of technology that we have today.

00:19:47 ◼   ► It'll advertise like, oh, you can plug in X number

00:19:50 ◼   ► of devices, it'll have X number of ports,

00:19:51 ◼   ► and you can support all these things,

00:19:52 ◼   ► and you'll see pictures all over the manufacturer websites

00:19:56 ◼   ► of all these things.

00:19:57 ◼   ► The devices, the computer manufacturers,

00:19:59 ◼   ► the Thunderbolt hub manufacturers,

00:20:01 ◼   ► and you'll see these wonderful pictures

00:20:03 ◼   ► of some laptop surrounded by a million different peripherals

00:20:07 ◼   ► all plugged into this one magical box and everything.

00:20:09 ◼   ► And in practice, in real life, if you do that,

00:20:12 ◼   ► you have maybe a 50/50 shot of it actually working.

00:20:16 ◼   ► And when it actually does work,

00:20:20 ◼   ► that's why I'm saying never touch it again.

00:20:23 ◼   ► And right now, Casey, you have a setup

00:20:25 ◼   ► that right now seems to probably maybe work.

00:20:28 ◼   ► - Potentially, yes, Casey. - I've been using

00:20:29 ◼   ► such a setup and it's glorious.

00:20:32 ◼   ► And so I hope, I hope that this works for you

00:20:34 ◼   ► because having been on the other side of it so often,

00:20:37 ◼   ► having tried to actually use the equipment

00:20:41 ◼   ► in the way that it claims to be able to be used

00:20:43 ◼   ► and something just doesn't work so often,

00:20:46 ◼   ► that when it does work, it is so, so glorious.

00:20:50 ◼   ► - Right, and that's where I am.

00:20:51 ◼   ► And to be clear, like you don't need a $1500 LG 5K,

00:20:54 ◼   ► you don't need a $6000 Pro Display XDR,

00:20:58 ◼   ► you can get one of the couple of hundred dollar

00:21:00 ◼   ► USB Thunderbolt hubs or whatever they are.

00:21:03 ◼   ► It's still ridiculously expensive,

00:21:05 ◼   ► a couple hundred dollars for what is basically four ports.

00:21:08 ◼   ► Like that is absurd. - Oh yeah.

00:21:10 ◼   ► - But, but when it does work, like you said,

00:21:13 ◼   ► when it does work, it is pretty great that, you know,

00:21:15 ◼   ► with two cables, I've got power, I've got ethernet,

00:21:19 ◼   ► I've got a USB mic interface,

00:21:22 ◼   ► I've got two different displays,

00:21:24 ◼   ► I've got two connections, two parallel connections

00:21:28 ◼   ► to this 12 terabyte iodine thing.

00:21:30 ◼   ► That's seven, eight, seven, eight,

00:21:34 ◼   ► I don't know, I can't count, something like that,

00:21:35 ◼   ► off of just two cables connected to my computer,

00:21:37 ◼   ► which is pretty excellent.

00:21:39 ◼   ► And so when it does work, when you are a HDMI CEC Unicorn,

00:21:42 ◼   ► when you are a USB-C Thunderbolt 4 Unicorn,

00:21:45 ◼   ► it is pretty excellent.

00:21:46 ◼   ► John, I think we kind of railroaded you there.

00:21:48 ◼   ► It sounded like you were gonna say something.

00:21:50 ◼   ► - Nope, I'm fine to hear about your exciting USB-C life,

00:21:53 ◼   ► although I still think the ultimate move

00:21:56 ◼   ► is the desktop life,

00:21:57 ◼   ► because no matter how weird ass your setup is,

00:21:59 ◼   ► if you have a desk, you can spend the time

00:22:01 ◼   ► to get it set up the way you want it

00:22:02 ◼   ► and then just never change it

00:22:03 ◼   ► 'cause it never goes anywhere.

00:22:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, but that's the thing, it never goes anywhere.

00:22:05 ◼   ► So if you wanna move your butt or work somewhere else,

00:22:10 ◼   ► you can't.

00:22:11 ◼   ► - I would never leave in my comfy chair,

00:22:12 ◼   ► my giant screen and my keyboard tray and my nice mouse.

00:22:15 ◼   ► Why would it go anywhere else?

00:22:16 ◼   ► - A nice mouse, your $10 40 year old mouse?

00:22:18 ◼   ► - No, I guess we've gone through this.

00:22:20 ◼   ► This is my second replacement Microsoft mouse thing,

00:22:25 ◼   ► you remember?

00:22:26 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm.

00:22:27 ◼   ► All right, we should move on.

00:22:28 ◼   ► I apologize for kind of railroading

00:22:30 ◼   ► follow-up copyright 2011 John Syracuse.

00:22:32 ◼   ► So speaking of John Syracuse,

00:22:34 ◼   ► tell me about QD OLED and blue LEDs, please.

00:22:36 ◼   ► - This is, there's actually two things about the blue LEDs.

00:22:40 ◼   ► I gave myself a correction on the past show

00:22:42 ◼   ► where I talked about QD OLED,

00:22:44 ◼   ► and QD OLED is the one with the blue backlight.

00:22:46 ◼   ► And I said it, I wasn't sure why it was blue,

00:22:48 ◼   ► but I do know it's easier to make them

00:22:50 ◼   ► like bright and high power or whatever.

00:22:52 ◼   ► But there is another reason specifically for QD OLEDs

00:22:55 ◼   ► have blue LEDs in them producing the light.

00:23:00 ◼   ► That's from Simon Webster.

00:23:01 ◼   ► He says the reason blue LEDs are using QD OLEDs is that blue photons have the highest

00:23:06 ◼   ► energy.

00:23:07 ◼   ► A single blue photon can make a red photon, but energetically you need multiple red photons

00:23:11 ◼   ► to make a single blue photon.

00:23:13 ◼   ► Again this has to do with the way quantum dots work.

00:23:15 ◼   ► See that video that we linked in a couple shows back that it's the photons coming out

00:23:20 ◼   ► of the LED.

00:23:21 ◼   ► It's not a backlight because it's behind every pixel, right?

00:23:23 ◼   ► out of the little LED goes into the quantum dot layer and knocks a bunch of electrons

00:23:28 ◼   ► around at different energy levels. And if you send in a blue one, it's got the most

00:23:31 ◼   ► energy so you can make all the other colors from the blue one. Again, this is not filtering

00:23:36 ◼   ► or canceling out wavelengths. This is converting the blue. It's not converting. Anyway, it's

00:23:41 ◼   ► complicated. It's quantum whatever. But yeah, blue, they're easy to make. They can be really

00:23:46 ◼   ► bright and also they have the highest energy so you can get the other colors from them.

00:23:51 ◼   ► right along, John Mason writes, "Apparently Sony Interactive Entertainment, without the

00:23:56 ◼   ► rest of Sony, is still much higher revenue than Activision Blizzard." This is because

00:24:00 ◼   ► we were talking about how big is Sony, really.

00:24:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, we got some guff for saying like, oh, Microsoft will be the third biggest company,

00:24:06 ◼   ► but Sony was number one. I'm like, oh, well, Sony makes tons of stuff. They don't just

00:24:09 ◼   ► do video games, but apparently just the video game part. And this was in terms of revenue.

00:24:13 ◼   ► So obviously, Sony sells consoles as well as getting margins on the games, but then

00:24:17 ◼   ► again, so does Microsoft. So I guess it was more of a fair comparison than I had thought,

00:24:21 ◼   ► and Sony Interactive Entertainment

00:24:22 ◼   ► is actually really, really big.

00:24:24 ◼   ► - Turns out.

00:24:25 ◼   ► We got a lot of feedback, which I thought was reasonable

00:24:27 ◼   ► from what little I know about this world,

00:24:29 ◼   ► with regard to Xbox Game Pass and the Series S.

00:24:33 ◼   ► Can you explain this to me, please?

00:24:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, this should have been factored into,

00:24:36 ◼   ► I think we touched on it a little bit,

00:24:37 ◼   ► the Activision Blizzard thing,

00:24:40 ◼   ► with Microsoft buying them, what do they get from that?

00:24:41 ◼   ► - Well, and also this came from an Ask ATP, I think,

00:24:44 ◼   ► with regard to which system should somebody buy.

00:24:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, but it was tied into

00:24:48 ◼   ► the Activision Blizzard discussion

00:24:50 ◼   ► because it's like why does Microsoft want to buy

00:24:54 ◼   ► all these games and everything?

00:24:55 ◼   ► Obviously you can get a platform exclusives

00:24:57 ◼   ► to sell more of your Xbox consoles,

00:24:59 ◼   ► but also Microsoft has been pushing heavily into selling,

00:25:03 ◼   ► instead of selling people a console box

00:25:06 ◼   ► and then selling people games for 60 bucks each,

00:25:08 ◼   ► instead trying to get them on a subscription

00:25:11 ◼   ► to say every month you pay a certain amount of money

00:25:13 ◼   ► and in exchange for that, you get access to many, many games

00:25:17 ◼   ► sort of a Netflix style thing or whatever.

00:25:19 ◼   ► It's much more like Netflix than it is like Spotify

00:25:21 ◼   ► or Apple Music because I think with music streaming services,

00:25:24 ◼   ► the assumption is that if you pay a monthly fee,

00:25:27 ◼   ► you get access to essentially all music.

00:25:29 ◼   ► Not entirely true, like if you want Neil Young,

00:25:30 ◼   ► you can't get it in Spotify anymore.

00:25:32 ◼   ► But like for the most part,

00:25:34 ◼   ► you expect every music streaming service to have like,

00:25:38 ◼   ► the most popular music,

00:25:41 ◼   ► almost all music will be there or whatever.

00:25:43 ◼   ► But Netflix or a streaming service like, you know,

00:25:46 ◼   ► HBO Max or Amazon or Apple TV Plus or whatever,

00:25:51 ◼   ► you know they're not gonna have everything,

00:25:53 ◼   ► but they have a lot of stuff.

00:25:55 ◼   ► And if you had to buy every movie

00:25:57 ◼   ► that you can watch on Netflix or whatever,

00:25:59 ◼   ► it would cost you a ton,

00:26:00 ◼   ► but if you pay a small amount per month,

00:26:01 ◼   ► Netflix will give you access to all its original content

00:26:03 ◼   ► plus any other stuff they have or whatever.

00:26:04 ◼   ► So that's the idea behind these Xbox Game Pass things

00:26:08 ◼   ► is you pay a fee per month

00:26:10 ◼   ► and you get access to a lot of games.

00:26:13 ◼   ► And you can get many, many more people paying that fee

00:26:15 ◼   ► if you add lots of popular games to the Game Pass.

00:26:19 ◼   ► Now, that flies in the face a little bit

00:26:21 ◼   ► of business models like World of Warcraft,

00:26:23 ◼   ► where people are already paying every month

00:26:25 ◼   ► for World of Warcraft, so I'm not sure

00:26:26 ◼   ► how they could put that into Game Pass,

00:26:27 ◼   ► because Game Pass alone costs about the same or less,

00:26:30 ◼   ► I think, as World of Warcraft does per month.

00:26:32 ◼   ► But still, it's a different way to run that business.

00:26:37 ◼   ► PlayStation's winning this generation,

00:26:38 ◼   ► and so they're, you know,

00:26:40 ◼   ► Microsoft trying different things,

00:26:41 ◼   ► because they wanna find the best way they can

00:26:43 ◼   ► get a steady revenue stream from you.

00:26:46 ◼   ► In fact, Microsoft will go as far as to, you know, we talked about renting game consoles

00:26:50 ◼   ► from Blockbuster, Microsoft will rent you a game console.

00:26:53 ◼   ► For no money down, you just pay them X number of dollars a month, and part of that X number

00:26:58 ◼   ► of dollars a month is they will give you a lesser Xbox without you having to pay, you

00:27:04 ◼   ► know, you pay the first month's 30 bucks or whatever, and you get an Xbox and you get

00:27:08 ◼   ► access to a whole bunch of games, and then you just keep paying that over and over.

00:27:11 ◼   ► I'm not sure if that business model is going to win or not,

00:27:14 ◼   ► but it is definitely attractive.

00:27:16 ◼   ► And the reason that goes into the Ask ATP thing

00:27:17 ◼   ► is a lot of people were saying,

00:27:19 ◼   ► look at this great deal you get.

00:27:20 ◼   ► You can find the lesser Xboxes, the Xbox Series S.

00:27:23 ◼   ► You can actually find them

00:27:24 ◼   ► because they don't use as fancy parts as the other ones.

00:27:26 ◼   ► You can go to a store right now, go into a Target

00:27:28 ◼   ► and buy one off the shelf, easy to find, right?

00:27:31 ◼   ► You don't even have to put down money up front

00:27:33 ◼   ► if you don't want to, if you sign up for the Game Pass.

00:27:34 ◼   ► And then once you're signed up for the Game Pass,

00:27:36 ◼   ► you have access to this big catalog of games

00:27:39 ◼   ► and you didn't have to buy any of them.

00:27:41 ◼   ► So the financial risk to find out

00:27:42 ◼   ► what kind of game you like is low.

00:27:44 ◼   ► Unfortunately, like I said,

00:27:47 ◼   ► with the streaming service versus game service,

00:27:49 ◼   ► Game Pass does not give you access

00:27:51 ◼   ► to all the games in the world.

00:27:53 ◼   ► It doesn't even give you access to a very big subset of them.

00:27:56 ◼   ► The types of games that are on Game Pass

00:27:59 ◼   ► may not actually even be representative

00:28:01 ◼   ► of the world of games that's available,

00:28:03 ◼   ► even just across PC games and Xbox games.

00:28:05 ◼   ► Because as you can imagine, the very, very best games

00:28:09 ◼   ► have some motivation to be $60 individual purchases

00:28:13 ◼   ► for the length of time that they can do that

00:28:15 ◼   ► before sort of being relegated to Game Pass.

00:28:17 ◼   ► Of course, if Microsoft owns them,

00:28:19 ◼   ► they can choose to take the hit quote unquote, not really,

00:28:23 ◼   ► because Microsoft would much rather have you pay $30 a month

00:28:27 ◼   ► for five years than to buy one $60 game.

00:28:29 ◼   ► Like the math is very easy to do there,

00:28:30 ◼   ► but Microsoft owns the game,

00:28:32 ◼   ► they can put it into Game Pass

00:28:33 ◼   ► and crank up that services revenue.

00:28:35 ◼   ► So I think it was worth mentioning if people didn't know

00:28:38 ◼   ► how console gaming has changed.

00:28:39 ◼   ► You do have options now, other than just buying a console

00:28:42 ◼   ► for a couple hundred bucks and then buying $60,

00:28:44 ◼   ► paying for each game for $60.

00:28:47 ◼   ► Sony is also rumored to be working

00:28:48 ◼   ► on a Game Pass style subscription.

00:28:50 ◼   ► So this may be the future of console gaming.

00:28:53 ◼   ► Kinda sucks for me because I don't wanna do that at all.

00:28:56 ◼   ► I'd much rather buy the console, buy Destiny,

00:28:58 ◼   ► and then just use it for five years

00:28:59 ◼   ► without having to pay again.

00:29:01 ◼   ► Well, that's not really true

00:29:01 ◼   ► because Destiny sells you expansions every year

00:29:04 ◼   ► for probably another 60 bucks.

00:29:06 ◼   ► And I always get the fancy version

00:29:07 ◼   ► and then I buy horse armor in the game

00:29:09 ◼   ► and you know how it goes.

00:29:11 ◼   ► - Horse armor?

00:29:12 ◼   ► Like armor for--

00:29:12 ◼   ► - That's a gamer joke.

00:29:14 ◼   ► People will get it who are not you.

00:29:15 ◼   ► - Is it armor for horses or armor made for or of horses?

00:29:19 ◼   ► - It's armor for horses.

00:29:21 ◼   ► You don't know that from back in the day?

00:29:22 ◼   ► - No.

00:29:23 ◼   ► - This is a big thing in the gaming world.

00:29:25 ◼   ► When the first game company decided,

00:29:29 ◼   ► you know what, we can sell things inside the game

00:29:33 ◼   ► but for real money.

00:29:34 ◼   ► And people are like, what are you talking about?

00:29:35 ◼   ► You can't do that.

00:29:36 ◼   ► "No, but Boyd, what if we found a way

00:29:39 ◼   ► "to take people's credit card?"

00:29:40 ◼   ► And then they would give us money,

00:29:42 ◼   ► and then in exchange we'd be like,

00:29:44 ◼   ► voila, your character has this item.

00:29:46 ◼   ► And the first thing they sold was armor for your horse.

00:29:50 ◼   ► It was horse armor, and people paid real money for it.

00:29:52 ◼   ► And they're like, "You paid real money

00:29:53 ◼   ► "for thinking a video game,

00:29:54 ◼   ► "and now that's what video games are."

00:29:57 ◼   ► Like, that's all video games are.

00:29:58 ◼   ► Like, mobile gaming is paying real money

00:30:01 ◼   ► for things inside a video game.

00:30:02 ◼   ► Often the thing you're paying for

00:30:03 ◼   ► is just a chance to play the game again sooner.

00:30:05 ◼   ► you're not even getting horse armor.

00:30:07 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:30:08 ◼   ► The first ever DLC, downloadable content,

00:30:11 ◼   ► but downloadable is one word, so why is it DL?

00:30:14 ◼   ► It's so terrible.

00:30:15 ◼   ► - Oh my gosh, all right, let's move on.

00:30:16 ◼   ► - Wait, but before the game,

00:30:17 ◼   ► so this actually does change my recommendation.

00:30:21 ◼   ► So this came up as cases from the AskATP question

00:30:24 ◼   ► from a person who had said,

00:30:25 ◼   ► hey, I'm just getting back into gaming

00:30:26 ◼   ► after a long time away, I don't really know where to start,

00:30:29 ◼   ► what system should I get?

00:30:30 ◼   ► I didn't really know what kind of games they wanted.

00:30:33 ◼   ► And I had said get a Switch because I have a Switch

00:30:36 ◼   ► and I came to it from a similar point

00:30:39 ◼   ► and I really enjoy it and my family really enjoys it.

00:30:42 ◼   ► But I will say I have bought a lot of games

00:30:45 ◼   ► that were a lot of money that I ended up playing

00:30:48 ◼   ► for a few minutes and realizing,

00:30:50 ◼   ► oh actually I don't really like this after all.

00:30:54 ◼   ► But it's all just download purchases

00:30:56 ◼   ► that I made on the Switch and you can't really,

00:30:58 ◼   ► some of them have demos but a lot of them don't.

00:31:00 ◼   ► Most, I would say most don't.

00:31:02 ◼   ► And so the idea of like try before you buy

00:31:05 ◼   ► in that kind of context doesn't really exist

00:31:07 ◼   ► very much on the Switch.

00:31:08 ◼   ► And so to know that the Xbox Series S,

00:31:13 ◼   ► and like you know for a casual person like me

00:31:15 ◼   ► and probably this person writing in,

00:31:17 ◼   ► the difference between the Series S and the Series 10X,

00:31:21 ◼   ► whatever the impossible one is to get,

00:31:23 ◼   ► probably doesn't matter to us so much.

00:31:26 ◼   ► But like the idea of being able to pay zero to $300

00:31:30 ◼   ► for the system and then just pay some reasonable monthly fee

00:31:34 ◼   ► to have access to lots of games,

00:31:36 ◼   ► even if they're like kind of old or second tier,

00:31:39 ◼   ► Netflix quality kind of games.

00:31:40 ◼   ► Like that's fine because that's kind of what we need.

00:31:45 ◼   ► Like people who are not into the cutting edge of everything,

00:31:49 ◼   ► that's great actually.

00:31:51 ◼   ► And so this changed my recommendation.

00:31:53 ◼   ► I had no idea this even existed

00:31:55 ◼   ► and we got such an overwhelming number of people

00:31:58 ◼   ► writing in to say how great it was

00:32:00 ◼   ► that yeah, so now I now recommend to this person,

00:32:03 ◼   ► anybody in a similar situation,

00:32:05 ◼   ► that's probably what you should try first

00:32:07 ◼   ► because the idea of being able to try

00:32:09 ◼   ► a whole bunch of like, you know,

00:32:10 ◼   ► really good quality games, even if it's not everything,

00:32:13 ◼   ► a whole bunch of really good quality games

00:32:15 ◼   ► for a flat fee every month, you know,

00:32:17 ◼   ► that's very attractive compared to

00:32:20 ◼   ► buy this game for 60 bucks that you might like

00:32:23 ◼   ► and you have no recourse if you don't.

00:32:25 ◼   ► - Doesn't change my recommendation

00:32:26 ◼   ► because like I said, it's not that these aren't

00:32:27 ◼   ► top tier games, there are absolutely top tier games in Game Pass, like super duper top tier

00:32:32 ◼   ► the best of the best, but it's just not every kind of game.

00:32:37 ◼   ► If you don't know what kind of game you're into, if you're into games that are only on

00:32:40 ◼   ► PC, Game Pass is going to do nothing for you because you're not going to like any of the

00:32:43 ◼   ► games, and you're going to have a crappy console on top of that.

00:32:46 ◼   ► So I feel like it is important to know what you like first.

00:32:48 ◼   ► Now that leads to the question, okay, how the hell am I supposed to know what I like?

00:32:51 ◼   ► Unless I'm going to be plunking down 60 bucks for games.

00:32:54 ◼   ► is the hard part. My suggestion last time was like find a game you think you like, play

00:32:58 ◼   ► it over a friend's house, see if you do like it. A lot of people mentioned the person

00:33:00 ◼   ► played Halo and liked it, so hey, if you've decided that Halo is the game for you, then

00:33:04 ◼   ► actually this is the solution because you can buy an Xbox and play Halo on it, it'll

00:33:07 ◼   ► work great. But if you don't know, like I was trying to like not fence people out of

00:33:11 ◼   ► essentially PC games because there are a lot of games that are really only on PC or best

00:33:15 ◼   ► on PC. Like if you want to use, I'm trying to think of an example, like a tank simulator,

00:33:20 ◼   ► like World of Tanks. World of Tanks on Xbox maybe.

00:33:23 ◼   ► How about Scorched Earth?

00:33:24 ◼   ► Is that still...

00:33:25 ◼   ► I was thinking of all the franchises.

00:33:26 ◼   ► I was going to say Flight Simulator, but I think that's not even a franchise.

00:33:30 ◼   ► It's one game from DOS from forever ago.

00:33:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:33:34 ◼   ► Anyway, like, if it turns out that you're super into games that are only on PC and you

00:33:38 ◼   ► have any console, you're going to be sad.

00:33:40 ◼   ► And if it turns out that the game you like best is Super Mario Brothers, you're going

00:33:43 ◼   ► to be really sad on Xbox.

00:33:44 ◼   ► So you know, like, if possible, find out what you like.

00:33:48 ◼   ► But if you really don't know and you're desperate now, this seems like a good deal.

00:33:51 ◼   ► I'm just not big on the Xbox series S. I kind of wish that they did Game Pass with the better

00:33:57 ◼   ► console and just charged you a little bit more per month.

00:33:59 ◼   ► I don't know, but maybe they'd make you send it back if you didn't go through.

00:34:04 ◼   ► I don't even know how that works.

00:34:05 ◼   ► Can you pay for one month and say, "I've changed my mind.

00:34:07 ◼   ► I canceled the service," and send it back to them, or do they make you buy out the rest

00:34:10 ◼   ► of the console?

00:34:11 ◼   ► Not sure what the deal is.

00:34:12 ◼   ► But anyway, like I said, Sony is almost certainly going to come up with a similar program, so

00:34:16 ◼   ► this may be the future of consoles for everybody.

00:34:18 ◼   ► Well, and honestly, I don't think that's that bad of a thing, because I look at the games

00:34:22 ◼   ► I play, and there are certain games like Minecraft or Stardew Valley that I paid 20 or 30 bucks

00:34:30 ◼   ► for once, like five years ago or something, and I've gotten hours and hours and hours

00:34:35 ◼   ► out of those games, I love them so much, and then other games that I paid 60 bucks for

00:34:41 ◼   ► and played very little.

00:34:42 ◼   ► If there was some way for me to more easily reward the games I'm actually playing over

00:34:47 ◼   ► time in a more direct way and not be out the 60 bucks for something I played for five minutes,

00:34:54 ◼   ► I think that would be more, not only more, I think, fair, but it would also be a little

00:35:00 ◼   ► more consumer friendly in a lot of ways.

00:35:02 ◼   ► I should buy some horse armor in Stardew.

00:35:05 ◼   ► Yeah, and the game developers, I actually have a horse, it's adorable.

00:35:09 ◼   ► You would buy armor for it, I bet.

00:35:11 ◼   ► Nothing ever attacks it, and that would just make it slower, get rid of the point of the

00:35:15 ◼   ► horse but anyway like I feel like you know obviously there's this kind of

00:35:20 ◼   ► business model has its ups and downs as well but if something was based more on

00:35:25 ◼   ► the time that you spent on something or if you just paid a flat rate and then

00:35:29 ◼   ► you know the service behind the scenes dealt out the money based on what people

00:35:32 ◼   ► were playing over time like that I think is probably a better way to go long term

00:35:37 ◼   ► Olivier Rui writes you mentioned SMS interoperability bugs as a key problem

00:35:43 ◼   ► with iMessage, but it's a question only Apple gets asked

00:35:45 ◼   ► because they've merged their own messaging system

00:35:47 ◼   ► with the SMS app.

00:35:48 ◼   ► I've never heard of a WhatsApp or Signal user complaining

00:35:51 ◼   ► that they can't interact with SMS.

00:35:52 ◼   ► Everyone just assumes it's a separate world.

00:35:54 ◼   ► This merge with SMS was a great way

00:35:56 ◼   ► to jumpstart the iMessage platform,

00:35:57 ◼   ► but the downside becomes increasingly difficult to hide

00:36:00 ◼   ► as the two systems diverge.

00:36:02 ◼   ► - I mean, yeah, Apple does get the benefit of that merge.

00:36:05 ◼   ► I mean, obviously the iPhone launched without iMessage,

00:36:07 ◼   ► so it only had SMS.

00:36:09 ◼   ► And when rolling out iMessage, since it was from Apple,

00:36:12 ◼   ► I think it would have been kind of weird to say,

00:36:15 ◼   ► the SMS app is still there, but now it's also an iMessage app.

00:36:18 ◼   ► And the interoperability was a feature,

00:36:21 ◼   ► and it still is a feature.

00:36:23 ◼   ► It should work better.

00:36:24 ◼   ► And then as SMS--

00:36:26 ◼   ► I'm not going to say as SMS ages,

00:36:27 ◼   ► but obviously SMS is not getting--

00:36:29 ◼   ► is staying the same.

00:36:30 ◼   ► What's happening is that as iMessage evolves

00:36:33 ◼   ► and as the competitive services evolve,

00:36:36 ◼   ► the distance between SMS, which is essentially unchanging,

00:36:39 ◼   ► and these modern messages service becomes greater

00:36:41 ◼   ► and greater and then you get sort of these disparities between them.

00:36:44 ◼   ► So yes, Apple did sort of sign up for this by merging them, but I think the merge was

00:36:48 ◼   ► a good idea and I don't think we would prefer to be bouncing back and forth between two

00:36:52 ◼   ► separate apps if we could help it, although at a certain point Casey probably would have

00:36:56 ◼   ► done that out of frustration alone, just because like, "Look, does it work in the SMS only

00:37:01 ◼   ► app?

00:37:02 ◼   ► Then I will do that for when I'm communicating with my family."

00:37:04 ◼   ► That's something a lot of people have sent feedback.

00:37:05 ◼   ► They're like, "I have seven messaging apps and I just jump between them."

00:37:09 ◼   ► And I guess that works, but it's not ideal.

00:37:12 ◼   ► They're like keeping track of like work people

00:37:14 ◼   ► are in this app and you know,

00:37:15 ◼   ► and it's, but we do all do that for various things.

00:37:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, I have to use Slack, Discord, Teams.

00:37:21 ◼   ► - But like one hopes that with the exception

00:37:25 ◼   ► of what you are forced to do with work,

00:37:26 ◼   ► you don't have like five different apps of the same type,

00:37:30 ◼   ► like five different email apps,

00:37:31 ◼   ► unless you're Mike Hurley or something.

00:37:33 ◼   ► Five different instant message apps.

00:37:34 ◼   ► Like are you in Slack, Teams and Discord

00:37:38 ◼   ► all at the same time for three different sets of people,

00:37:39 ◼   ► maybe because of the Discord gaming angle or whatever,

00:37:41 ◼   ► but that's less ideal than saying, okay,

00:37:44 ◼   ► sometimes I'm in Slack, sometimes I'm in Messages,

00:37:46 ◼   ► sometimes I'm in email, right?

00:37:47 ◼   ► Sometimes I'm in Twitter.

00:37:49 ◼   ► Those are all slightly different.

00:37:50 ◼   ► The idea of having five apps

00:37:53 ◼   ► that are all just essentially instant messaging

00:37:55 ◼   ► as we used to call it back in the day is not what I prefer.

00:37:58 ◼   ► That's why apps like Adium were created, right?

00:38:01 ◼   ► Where it was all the instant messaging,

00:38:03 ◼   ► people don't remember, but there used to be tons and tons

00:38:06 ◼   ► of instant messaging services, all of which

00:38:08 ◼   ► had lots of users.

00:38:11 ◼   ► And they made one meta app that could speak to them all.

00:38:13 ◼   ► So you could do Google Talk, ICQ, AIM, I think IRC.

00:38:18 ◼   ► Didn't ADM do IRC as well?

00:38:20 ◼   ► I thought it did.

00:38:21 ◼   ► Yeah, it did everything you could possibly

00:38:24 ◼   ► imagine in a single app, because all the protocols were

00:38:27 ◼   ► more or less open and/or packed.

00:38:29 ◼   ► Those were the days.

00:38:29 ◼   ► But anyway, the reason that app exists

00:38:31 ◼   ► is because who wants to run all those separate apps?

00:38:32 ◼   ► But if you can put them on one app and do a decent job of it,

00:38:36 ◼   ► that's preferable.

00:38:37 ◼   ► Everything now is its own little garden

00:38:39 ◼   ► and everybody wants their own garden

00:38:40 ◼   ► for everyone to join.

00:38:41 ◼   ► Like TV apps are like this,

00:38:44 ◼   ► the streaming services are all like this.

00:38:46 ◼   ► We are trying very hard to make podcasts not like this,

00:38:49 ◼   ► but the reality is they are becoming like this.

00:38:51 ◼   ► This is just how everybody wants,

00:38:54 ◼   ► nobody wants to work on open standards anymore,

00:38:56 ◼   ► nobody wants to interoperate anymore.

00:38:59 ◼   ► Everybody is making their own gardens

00:39:00 ◼   ► and everybody wants it to be all theirs,

00:39:03 ◼   ► only theirs, owned by them, controlled by them,

00:39:05 ◼   ► owning the whole stack, cutting up distribution,

00:39:07 ◼   ► taking all the money.

00:39:08 ◼   ► That's the modern way to do business in the tech world.

00:39:10 ◼   ► So I feel like this is just kind of a reality

00:39:12 ◼   ► that we're stuck with in many areas.

00:39:14 ◼   ► Like yeah, you're gonna have five different apps

00:39:16 ◼   ► to watch TV.

00:39:17 ◼   ► You're gonna have at least two or three different apps

00:39:19 ◼   ► to listen to your podcast or whatever,

00:39:20 ◼   ► audiobooks, whatever else.

00:39:21 ◼   ► You're gonna have 10 different chat apps,

00:39:23 ◼   ► 10 different collaboration apps,

00:39:24 ◼   ► 10 different messaging apps.

00:39:26 ◼   ► That's just how it goes.

00:39:27 ◼   ► - I mean, it's not like the instant messaging platforms

00:39:29 ◼   ► were magnanimous back in the day.

00:39:31 ◼   ► It's just that apps like Adium were able to figure out

00:39:34 ◼   ► how to make it work.

00:39:35 ◼   ► Like, there were third-party Slack clients, for example, too, because Slack technically

00:39:38 ◼   ► has an API, but these days, an individual or small group of developers trying to ride

00:39:44 ◼   ► that bear in a Steve Ballmer parlance is just so much harder.

00:39:49 ◼   ► The degree of difficulty has gone up.

00:39:50 ◼   ► If you tried to make a meta-messaging app that worked, especially when encryption is

00:39:54 ◼   ► involved, you probably can't do it with iMessage through the end-to-end encryption stuff and

00:39:58 ◼   ► the integration.

00:39:59 ◼   ► It was just easier to do back.

00:40:01 ◼   ► It was plausible to do back in the day that a small dev team could make an app like Adium,

00:40:06 ◼   ► but it wasn't because AOL was super into people making their own clients, right?

00:40:11 ◼   ► Or ICQ or, you know, I guess IRC doesn't care.

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00:42:08 ◼   ► - I made a off-handed comment last week about how,

00:42:16 ◼   ► I was wondering how episodes or movies

00:42:21 ◼   ► that are released only to Netflix or only to Disney Plus,

00:42:25 ◼   ► How do they end up falling off the back of trucks and what was the story there?

00:42:28 ◼   ► And we got we touched the three of us touched on it very very briefly and one of the things

00:42:33 ◼   ► I think John brought up was industry screener DVDs that so what'll happen is

00:42:38 ◼   ► people in the industry will get you know pre-release copies of movies on DVD or perhaps blu-ray and

00:42:45 ◼   ► You know somebody could rip that and then upload it and then it'll start falling off the back of trucks

00:42:50 ◼   ► Well, Matt Rigby writes, "Industry screener DVDs are still very much a thing. I've gotten dozens this year alone.

00:42:56 ◼   ► Not Blu-rays, traditional standard definition DVDs. All but one of them for content available in streaming platforms that I pay for in beautiful 4k resolution."

00:43:04 ◼   ► It is, and I'm still quoting, "It is freaking annoying and wasteful, and I wish they'd go away. Just email me a code."

00:43:10 ◼   ► So I thought that was kind of funny.

00:43:13 ◼   ► Additionally, a handful of people sent in, but I first saw it through Colin Weir.

00:43:17 ◼   ► This is an article from 2019 The Scene, Pirates Ripping Content from Amazon and Netflix. And it's a really really good article.

00:43:24 ◼   ► It's not terribly long and it'll be in the show notes.

00:43:25 ◼   ► But I'd like to read just a few excerpts from it, from the article. Whenever you stream a video online,

00:43:31 ◼   ► you are downloading chunks of a video file to your computer. Screeners simply save that content and

00:43:36 ◼   ► attempt to decrypt it for non DRM playback later, an informant tells the author of the article.

00:43:41 ◼   ► When accessing the content, legitimate premium accounts are used, often paid for using prepaid credit cards supported by bogus

00:43:47 ◼   ► identities. It takes just a few minutes to download a video file since they're

00:43:50 ◼   ► served by CDNs with gigabits of bandwidth. "Once the files are

00:43:54 ◼   ► downloaded from the streaming platform, however, they are encrypted in the MP4

00:43:57 ◼   ► container. Attempting to view such video will usually result in a blank screen.

00:44:00 ◼   ► Nothing else. Streams from these sites are protected by DRM. The most common and

00:44:04 ◼   ► hard to crack DRM is called Widevine. The way the scene handles web releases is by

00:44:09 ◼   ► using specialized tools coded by the scene for the scene. These tools are

00:44:13 ◼   ► extremely private and only a handful of people in the world have access to the

00:44:15 ◼   ► latest version, the source notes. Continuing, "Without these tools, releasing

00:44:19 ◼   ► Widevine content is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for most.

00:44:23 ◼   ► These tools work by downloading the encrypted video stream from the

00:44:26 ◼   ► streaming site and reverse engineering the encryption. Our contact says that the

00:44:29 ◼   ► decryption is a surprisingly quick process, taking just a few minutes." I did

00:44:34 ◼   ► not know about Widevine before now. Apparently it is very much a thing, and I

00:44:38 ◼   ► probably should have known about it. But nevertheless, I found this entire article

00:44:42 ◼   ► fascinating and I've kind of given you the the TLDR just now but they cracked the encryption like I said

00:44:47 ◼   ► this is from the movies if you break the DRM the world is yours yep it's kind of it's kind of amazing to me that like

00:44:54 ◼   ► the the crack is not as apparently as of 2019 not like not widely distributed like yeah I agree yeah

00:45:00 ◼   ► I don't quite understand there's probably some motivation for keeping that private right like well

00:45:05 ◼   ► so they talk about in the article that so the scene is kind of to the best I understand I might

00:45:11 ◼   ► get the particulars wrong. The scene is like the broad kind of name for all of

00:45:15 ◼   ► these different subgroups that are all like trying to compete to be the first

00:45:20 ◼   ► one to release a particular thing. So I know about the scene. Well okay so I'm

00:45:24 ◼   ► just saying so if you're one of these if you're one of these groups you're gonna

00:45:29 ◼   ► want to have your own proprietary software that gets you it gets the DRM

00:45:33 ◼   ► cracked so you can upload stuff in pre-release before anyone else and you

00:45:37 ◼   ► don't want any other knuckleheads having your software that you worked in

00:45:40 ◼   ► and you'll put blood, sweat, and tears into,

00:45:42 ◼   ► you're gonna hoard that for yourself.

00:45:44 ◼   ► - Right, but I feel like this type of thing,

00:45:48 ◼   ► it's hard to keep a secret.

00:45:49 ◼   ► You don't wanna tell everybody,

00:45:51 ◼   ► and then once it gets out, shouldn't it just be everywhere?

00:45:53 ◼   ► Not maybe the specific software,

00:45:55 ◼   ► but very least, here's how we cracked it.

00:45:57 ◼   ► Here are the secret keys that we extracted

00:45:58 ◼   ► from some hardware device or whatever,

00:46:00 ◼   ► or some insider in Netflix leaked this private key.

00:46:03 ◼   ► And maybe the motivation is if Netflix finds out

00:46:05 ◼   ► what thing has been leaked,

00:46:07 ◼   ► they can do some kind of key rotation or something.

00:46:09 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:46:10 ◼   ► The whole point is DRM, it prevents things from being pirated, so that's why you can't

00:46:13 ◼   ► take screenshots.

00:46:14 ◼   ► Yep.

00:46:15 ◼   ► All right, then this is, we're kind of getting into the gray area between follow-up and topic.

00:46:20 ◼   ► The Netherlands has told Apple, "Haha, nope."

00:46:25 ◼   ► So what has happened is the Netherlands has said that for dating apps, users in the Netherlands

00:46:32 ◼   ► need to be able to provide payment via alternate mechanisms, you know, not going through the

00:46:37 ◼   ► App Store.

00:46:38 ◼   ► And so Apple came up with a scheme to satisfy that, and their official group, the ACM, I

00:46:45 ◼   ► forget what that stands for now, shoot, ACM has said, "No, that's not enough."

00:46:49 ◼   ► In fact, they said, "Apple has failed to satisfy the requirements on several points.

00:46:53 ◼   ► The most important one is that Apple has failed to adjust its conditions as a result of which

00:46:57 ◼   ► dating app providers are still unable to use other payment systems.

00:47:01 ◼   ► At the moment, dating app providers can merely express their 'interest.'"

00:47:05 ◼   ► And so this is the authority for consumers and markets from the Netherlands.

00:47:09 ◼   ► That's such an Apple move.

00:47:10 ◼   ► They're like, okay, all right, well, you know, you dinky little country with a population

00:47:14 ◼   ► the size of two big U S cities has decided the dating app specifically have to be allowed

00:47:18 ◼   ► to use third party payment methods.

00:47:20 ◼   ► So we'll begin exploring a program which, which may allow you to use a special as yet

00:47:26 ◼   ► unreleased Apple API through which we will extract our percentage to allow you to use

00:47:30 ◼   ► third party payment systems.

00:47:31 ◼   ► Please fill out this form to express your permission and participating in this program

00:47:34 ◼   ► at our discretion.

00:47:35 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:47:36 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:47:37 ◼   ► - And the Dutch authorities said,

00:47:40 ◼   ► "Okay, well, time's up and you're not complying,

00:47:43 ◼   ► "so it's time for you to, the penalty has been initiated,

00:47:46 ◼   ► "and the penalty is five million dollars a day."

00:47:48 ◼   ► Not five million dollars a day, what is it?

00:47:49 ◼   ► Five million dollars?

00:47:50 ◼   ► - Five million euros a week, I believe.

00:47:52 ◼   ► - Five million, yeah, not dollars.

00:47:53 ◼   ► Five million euros a week,

00:47:54 ◼   ► but it's up to a maximum of 50 million euros,

00:47:56 ◼   ► and I think Gruber snarked, it's like,

00:47:59 ◼   ► "Well, Apple could just find that,

00:48:01 ◼   ► "why doesn't Apple just send them the 50 million now

00:48:03 ◼   ► "that they could find and then lose change

00:48:04 ◼   ► in their couch cushions and then just not have to think about it again because as the

00:48:08 ◼   ► old saying goes, for the very wealthy, a fine is just a fee.

00:48:13 ◼   ► If you can do something illegal and all you have to do is pay 50 million euros, if you're

00:48:17 ◼   ► a multi-trillion dollar company, okay, apparently the price of us doing whatever we want on

00:48:23 ◼   ► the Appstar is 50 million euros.

00:48:25 ◼   ► Done and done.

00:48:26 ◼   ► That's the easiest 50 million euros I've ever spent.

00:48:27 ◼   ► Now I don't have to follow your law anymore.

00:48:29 ◼   ► That's the difficulty of trying to find what is an appropriate penalty for violating a

00:48:33 ◼   ► a law like you're living in a country, you have your own laws, you pass laws and you

00:48:36 ◼   ► say okay well if you do business in this country you have to follow these laws.

00:48:39 ◼   ► And it's like okay well what if I don't?

00:48:41 ◼   ► What happens to me then?

00:48:42 ◼   ► And it's like well, we're not going to send you to jail because your company is based

00:48:47 ◼   ► in another country.

00:48:49 ◼   ► And we're probably not going to ban your products because people do like Apple products in our

00:48:53 ◼   ► country.

00:48:54 ◼   ► So I guess we'll fine you?

00:48:56 ◼   ► What's an appropriate fine for not following this law?

00:48:59 ◼   ► Five million euros a week for a maximum of 50 million?

00:49:03 ◼   ► I mean, if you're a dinking company,

00:49:04 ◼   ► that puts you out of business.

00:49:05 ◼   ► If you're Apple, you might not notice.

00:49:07 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:49:09 ◼   ► - Well, I don't know.

00:49:09 ◼   ► I mean, weekly subscription billing can be very misleading.

00:49:12 ◼   ► I don't know if Apple is familiar with this problem.

00:49:13 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:49:14 ◼   ► - But it caps out at 50 million.

00:49:17 ◼   ► Weekly subscriptions don't cap out.

00:49:18 ◼   ► That's the whole thing.

00:49:19 ◼   ► They just keep getting charged.

00:49:20 ◼   ► So anyway, this is difficult because the Netherlands

00:49:24 ◼   ► does not have a lot of weight here.

00:49:27 ◼   ► Like Apple can just say,

00:49:28 ◼   ► "Okay, no more App Store in the Netherlands.

00:49:30 ◼   ► "How do you like me now?"

00:49:31 ◼   ► Like Apple kind of holds a lot of the cards here.

00:49:34 ◼   ► But it's interesting to see a country not dealing

00:49:38 ◼   ► with Apple's BS, not giving them seven years to comply,

00:49:41 ◼   ► not waiting for the appeals court to go through

00:49:43 ◼   ► and blah, blah, blah, and just saying,

00:49:44 ◼   ► just playing this little game of chicken with Apple,

00:49:46 ◼   ► which they're going to lose because Netherlands, right?

00:49:49 ◼   ► Sorry, but--

00:49:51 ◼   ► - Wow.

00:49:52 ◼   ► - I mean, like Apple just, fine,

00:49:53 ◼   ► no more Apple products in the Netherlands.

00:49:55 ◼   ► Is that gonna show up on Apple's, I mean,

00:49:57 ◼   ► I guess it would probably be bad for them,

00:49:58 ◼   ► but like no more dating apps in the app store in Netherlands.

00:50:01 ◼   ► There's many solutions that Apple can do

00:50:03 ◼   ► that hurt people in this country way more

00:50:06 ◼   ► than it hurts Apple just because they're small.

00:50:08 ◼   ► It's not easy being small.

00:50:10 ◼   ► - But John, Apple I'm sure has the greatest respect

00:50:12 ◼   ► for the laws of the Netherlands.

00:50:13 ◼   ► - No, they didn't say that.

00:50:15 ◼   ► They have the greatest respect for the laws of South Korea

00:50:17 ◼   ► which has way more people and spends way more money.

00:50:20 ◼   ► They do not have the greatest respect

00:50:21 ◼   ► for the laws of the Netherlands.

00:50:23 ◼   ► My goodness.

00:50:25 ◼   ► - No, I mean as I said, we're gonna see this play out

00:50:27 ◼   ► over and over again as various places

00:50:30 ◼   ► regulate Apple to various degrees,

00:50:32 ◼   ► Apple is going to drag their feet like crazy

00:50:36 ◼   ► and they're gonna do the bare minimum they need to do

00:50:40 ◼   ► to comply with any of these regulations.

00:50:42 ◼   ► - Or not comply.

00:50:43 ◼   ► - Right, and in this case, not complying

00:50:45 ◼   ► is so relatively inexpensive and problem-free for them

00:50:49 ◼   ► that it's probably better for them not to comply

00:50:52 ◼   ► unless the Dutch authorities are gonna somehow

00:50:55 ◼   ► get some more teeth, but as John was saying,

00:50:57 ◼   ► their bargaining position is not great.

00:51:00 ◼   ► Whereas Apple can kinda just do whatever it wants here

00:51:04 ◼   ► because what Dutch lawmaker is gonna say,

00:51:08 ◼   ► no more iPhones for our people.

00:51:11 ◼   ► That's gonna be a pretty unpopular decision

00:51:13 ◼   ► among their voters.

00:51:14 ◼   ► So this is gonna be, Apple's gonna just walk right

00:51:19 ◼   ► through this and pretty much nothing's going to happen.

00:51:23 ◼   ► And it sucks that Apple can do that.

00:51:26 ◼   ► from the point of view of consumer welfare

00:51:30 ◼   ► and respecting the sovereignty of nations

00:51:33 ◼   ► and things like that, it's not a good thing

00:51:36 ◼   ► that Apple can do this, but the reality is

00:51:38 ◼   ► they have way more leverage in this relationship

00:51:41 ◼   ► and they know they don't have to do much

00:51:44 ◼   ► and so they won't do it.

00:51:46 ◼   ► Apple will do absolutely nothing optional in this area.

00:51:51 ◼   ► They will only do what is 100% required

00:51:55 ◼   ► And in this case, it's not.

00:51:57 ◼   ► Now, China passes some new law,

00:52:00 ◼   ► you can bet Apple's gonna bend over backwards

00:52:04 ◼   ► to do everything possible,

00:52:05 ◼   ► throwing all morals and ethics and strategy out the window

00:52:10 ◼   ► to bend over backwards for China.

00:52:12 ◼   ► But the Netherlands just don't hold

00:52:13 ◼   ► that kind of sway for them.

00:52:15 ◼   ► - I do wanna point out, Francisco Tlomaski wrote,

00:52:19 ◼   ► or tweeted, which I thought was very, very well done,

00:52:22 ◼   ► they wrote, "It must be really frustrating

00:52:25 ◼   ► to roll out an entire plan, only to be completely at the whim of a regulator to find out whether

00:52:31 ◼   ► it sufficiently meets a set of vague criteria. Well done. Well done.

00:52:36 ◼   ► Although, the thing is, I don't think they are particularly annoyed. The thing is, Apple

00:52:39 ◼   ► did something, and they did like, "Maybe this will satisfy them or whatever, but is this

00:52:44 ◼   ► good enough?" And the answer was, "No, it wasn't good enough." And even just banning

00:52:49 ◼   ► dating apps, saying, "Okay, no more dating apps in the Netherlands," even that is probably

00:52:53 ◼   ► not going to be popular because presumably people in the Netherlands have iPhones and

00:52:57 ◼   ► use dating apps and if the next day they said all the dating apps are gone that would be

00:53:01 ◼   ► bad.

00:53:02 ◼   ► It's like well you still have your iPhone, you still have access to all sorts of Apple

00:53:04 ◼   ► stuff but no dating apps?

00:53:05 ◼   ► It doesn't seem like it's the end of the world but it's kind of crappy.

00:53:08 ◼   ► People in the chat room are saying okay well no one cares if the Netherlands does it because

00:53:11 ◼   ► they have like 18 million people but what if every country does it?

00:53:14 ◼   ► Well you know things like this are happening in each country but it's like they're not

00:53:19 ◼   ► coordinated this is not some global effort.

00:53:21 ◼   ► It's more kind of like a building storm of regulation and stuff, but as Margo said, Apple

00:53:28 ◼   ► is dragging their feet every step of the way.

00:53:31 ◼   ► So it's if and when this gets to critical mass, yes, Apple will have to do something,

00:53:34 ◼   ► but for now they're just crossing their arms and saying, "We will fight this as much as

00:53:40 ◼   ► we possibly can."

00:53:41 ◼   ► And they just better hope that China doesn't do anything, because I'm not going to go as

00:53:45 ◼   ► far as Margo to say that they will throw all their morals and principles, but certainly

00:53:51 ◼   ► Not all of them.

00:53:52 ◼   ► They try as hard as they can.

00:53:53 ◼   ► It's the thing we talked about in the past shows

00:53:55 ◼   ► of like, what's the correct strategy to deal with China?

00:53:58 ◼   ► One is to just say, "F you China, we're outta here."

00:54:01 ◼   ► But the other one is to say, you know,

00:54:02 ◼   ► engagement with China is better than isolating them

00:54:05 ◼   ► for the world, not just for Apple.

00:54:07 ◼   ► And in engaging with them, Apple is using all the power

00:54:10 ◼   ► that it has available to it to try to get its way

00:54:13 ◼   ► versus China, but that is a much more even match

00:54:16 ◼   ► than the Netherlands versus Apple.

00:54:17 ◼   ► So the way it ends up is,

00:54:19 ◼   ► China ends up getting more of what they want than Apple because in the end China has the

00:54:23 ◼   ► people with the money and Apple wants to sell them the stuff.

00:54:26 ◼   ► And by the way, China makes all of Apple's stuff.

00:54:27 ◼   ► So Apple is kind of over a barrel a little bit in the whole China situation, which is

00:54:32 ◼   ► why they should get all their manufacturing out of China.

00:54:34 ◼   ► But that is way easier said than done.

00:54:36 ◼   ► So it's a difficult situation.

00:54:37 ◼   ► Apple fights to do the best they can, but the best they can is not great in China.

00:54:41 ◼   ► I still maintain that the reliance that Apple still has on China and the lack of movement

00:54:48 ◼   ► in that area away from the status quo will be looked back upon as Tim Cook's largest

00:54:54 ◼   ► strategic error in his career.

00:54:55 ◼   ► I mean, it's also going to be his greatest victory because all of the growth and amazing

00:54:59 ◼   ► things that he's done has been because of how heavily they invested in China.

00:55:03 ◼   ► All the things Apple is able to do is because of the massive investment in China manufacturing.

00:55:07 ◼   ► I would say some.

00:55:09 ◼   ► Some of their growth and some of their success is from that.

00:55:13 ◼   ► And that's not a small amount, but it's far from all.

00:55:17 ◼   ► I mean, but who else could have done the manufacturing

00:55:20 ◼   ► of the scale that Apple needed?

00:55:21 ◼   ► Building up anyone else, including the US,

00:55:23 ◼   ► to do what China does for the amount of money

00:55:26 ◼   ► that they do it with the precision that they do it?

00:55:28 ◼   ► I'm not sure what the second choice would have even been,

00:55:32 ◼   ► because China was well on its way.

00:55:33 ◼   ► It's not like that China came out of nowhere with Tim Cook.

00:55:35 ◼   ► Like, he chose to invest heavily in China

00:55:37 ◼   ► because they were already in the lead, right?

00:55:39 ◼   ► So we'll see how this goes.

00:55:40 ◼   ► Like, Tim Cook is not gonna live long enough to see,

00:55:43 ◼   ► not because he's gonna be a satan or anything,

00:55:46 ◼   ► which is like he will die of old age,

00:55:47 ◼   ► the ripe old age of 111,

00:55:49 ◼   ► before Apple's able to move all their manufacturing

00:55:52 ◼   ► out of China and into some other country

00:55:54 ◼   ► and like say now China doesn't have that,

00:55:56 ◼   ► because it's just, you don't turn that ship that quick.

00:55:59 ◼   ► This is decades and decades and decades of development

00:56:01 ◼   ► and huge amounts of money from the Chinese government

00:56:03 ◼   ► and everything being invested into exactly

00:56:05 ◼   ► the kind of manufacturing that Apple wants done.

00:56:07 ◼   ► So moving that manufacturing anywhere else,

00:56:10 ◼   ► you know, yeah, it will,

00:56:12 ◼   ► especially if it comes to a crisis,

00:56:14 ◼   ► it'll be like, oh, Tim Cook's folly,

00:56:15 ◼   ► He got us so invested in China, now we're stuck

00:56:17 ◼   ► and we can't get out and it half destroyed the company.

00:56:20 ◼   ► But also, it is impossible for Tim Cook to get out now

00:56:23 ◼   ► because he doesn't have enough time left on this earth

00:56:26 ◼   ► to turn that around.

00:56:27 ◼   ► - Well, but he hasn't even started turning the wheel.

00:56:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, he might be.

00:56:30 ◼   ► We don't know how, if you're going to start

00:56:33 ◼   ► getting out of China, it's probably good for China

00:56:35 ◼   ► not to know that you're doing that.

00:56:37 ◼   ► So we don't know how that's going,

00:56:40 ◼   ► and what the second or third choice might be

00:56:42 ◼   ► and how that's all working out.

00:56:43 ◼   ► but I don't think it's something that Apple would announce.

00:56:46 ◼   ► Hey, by the way, we're investing in a 50 year plan

00:56:48 ◼   ► to get out of China.

00:56:49 ◼   ► By the way, China, let's negotiate something now.

00:56:51 ◼   ► I don't think it's a thing you announce,

00:56:54 ◼   ► but I'm hoping that he's got an envelope

00:56:58 ◼   ► that he's gonna give to his successor

00:56:59 ◼   ► that says step one, get out of China.

00:57:01 ◼   ► - My bad for that one, but you should fix my mistake.

00:57:06 ◼   ► All right, so moving right along.

00:57:10 ◼   ► So this is gonna get a little bit confusing

00:57:12 ◼   ► 'cause even as I was reading the show notes,

00:57:13 ◼   ► was getting myself confused. So as we record today on Thursday, what is it, the 27th, today

00:57:20 ◼   ► macOS Monterey 12.2 was released and I have installed it and so far so good. And also the

00:57:29 ◼   ► new betas have come out for both macOS and iOS. So the current shipping version again of macOS

00:57:37 ◼   ► is 12.2, the current shipping version of iOS is 15.3. So that's unfortunately not the same,

00:57:46 ◼   ► you know, tense place, but we'll make it work. So with that in mind, Dropbox and OneDrive kernel

00:57:51 ◼   ► extensions, or Keks, are no longer supported in macOS 12.3. So to recap, that's the beta,

00:57:59 ◼   ► not the one that came out today, but the beta. So the Dropbox and OneDrive kernel extensions that

00:58:04 ◼   ► let them do all sorts of fancy,

00:58:05 ◼   ► well, for varying definition of fancy,

00:58:07 ◼   ► things are no longer supported in 12.3.

00:58:11 ◼   ► - I'm kind of surprised these were still supported

00:58:13 ◼   ► up until this point.

00:58:14 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:58:15 ◼   ► - Like, it seems like, you know,

00:58:17 ◼   ► with the transition to Apple Silicon

00:58:19 ◼   ► and with the ever further securing of the OS

00:58:24 ◼   ► in the last few years,

00:58:26 ◼   ► I'm kind of surprised these kects still worked at all.

00:58:30 ◼   ► And to clarify, and I'm sure Jon has much more,

00:58:33 ◼   ► much better information on this than I do,

00:58:34 ◼   ► but to clarify, I believe the problem area

00:58:37 ◼   ► is not just the files that sync.

00:58:40 ◼   ► The problem area is things like their layer

00:58:44 ◼   ► where you can have a file that's not downloaded

00:58:46 ◼   ► all the time, but kind of gets downloaded

00:58:48 ◼   ► and edited upon request, so you can like partially sync

00:58:51 ◼   ► your Dropbox and WinDrive contents,

00:58:52 ◼   ► but not have everything on your computer all the time,

00:58:54 ◼   ► but still have it still show up in the file system

00:58:58 ◼   ► and be editable like locally just through

00:59:00 ◼   ► this translation layer of being network based.

00:59:02 ◼   ► So I think that specifically is the part that's

00:59:04 ◼   ► being targeted here.

00:59:05 ◼   ► Is that right?

00:59:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, no, you basically got it.

00:59:08 ◼   ► But the whole idea is that kernel extensions,

00:59:11 ◼   ► like the concept that third parties can write code

00:59:14 ◼   ► that runs inside the kernel on your Mac,

00:59:17 ◼   ► have been going away for a very, very long time.

00:59:19 ◼   ► For years and years at every WWDC,

00:59:21 ◼   ► every session you went through with kernel extensions

00:59:23 ◼   ► was explaining to you how things that you used

00:59:24 ◼   ► to be able to do, you're going to have to jump through

00:59:26 ◼   ► more hoops to do, and they would eventually start saying,

00:59:29 ◼   ► and by the way, kernel extensions themselves are going away.

00:59:31 ◼   ► And why is that?

00:59:33 ◼   ► - Well, because code that runs inside the kernel

00:59:35 ◼   ► can do terrible things,

00:59:36 ◼   ► including obviously very trivially crash your computer,

00:59:39 ◼   ► 'cause hey, if you have a bug in your kernel code

00:59:41 ◼   ► and you segfault and you're inside the kernel,

00:59:42 ◼   ► it's bye-bye, right?

00:59:43 ◼   ► And there's no protection against that.

00:59:45 ◼   ► And then obviously you have, for security reasons,

00:59:47 ◼   ► if you're inside the kernel,

00:59:48 ◼   ► you have access to more types of things.

00:59:50 ◼   ► So they don't want any non-Apple code

00:59:52 ◼   ► running inside the kernel if they can possibly help it.

00:59:54 ◼   ► But-- - Right, to build on that,

00:59:56 ◼   ► the kernel is kind of the core of the operating system.

00:59:59 ◼   ► And so if you're running around in there,

01:00:01 ◼   ► you can do, this is like what you said,

01:00:03 ◼   ► you can do whatever you want,

01:00:04 ◼   ► kind of whenever you want to some degree.

01:00:06 ◼   ► And so what Apple's been doing is trying to provide

01:00:09 ◼   ► new APIs that move, so like Dropbox doesn't need

01:00:13 ◼   ► to get all the way down deep, deep, deep into the kernel,

01:00:15 ◼   ► into kind of the foundation of the OS.

01:00:17 ◼   ► They can stay up in the regular living areas

01:00:20 ◼   ► of the house, if you will, and not have to go digging

01:00:24 ◼   ► into the basement in order to do what they need to do.

01:00:26 ◼   ► And so Apple, like you've said, Jon,

01:00:28 ◼   ► has been trying to push people, push companies

01:00:30 ◼   ► away from kernel extensions because it is less secure

01:00:33 ◼   ► when random other people's code can run inside the kernel.

01:00:38 ◼   ► Because when you're in the kernel,

01:00:39 ◼   ► you can, kind of all bets are off.

01:00:41 ◼   ► - And Apple's been doing that itself with Apple's own code.

01:00:43 ◼   ► Apple used to have stuff that used to be inside the kernel

01:00:46 ◼   ► that Apple has moved to user space, as they call it.

01:00:48 ◼   ► And user space has its own memory protection.

01:00:50 ◼   ► If you crash in user space, your program crashes,

01:00:52 ◼   ► but the computer keeps running

01:00:53 ◼   ► because the kernel is still running or whatever.

01:00:55 ◼   ► Now, obviously, some things like the Windows server crashes,

01:00:58 ◼   ► your computer is still running

01:00:59 ◼   ► you don't have to reboot, but everything you're doing is gone

01:01:01 ◼   ► because the Windows server runs all the UI and everything.

01:01:03 ◼   ► So there's a limit to that, but still,

01:01:05 ◼   ► user space is better than kernel space.

01:01:08 ◼   ► And so, you know, and Apple's been dog fooding.

01:01:10 ◼   ► Same thing with sandboxing.

01:01:11 ◼   ► Apple has sandboxed a lot of its stuff.

01:01:13 ◼   ► Apple is moving stuff out of the kernel into user space,

01:01:15 ◼   ► and it's been doing that for third parties as well.

01:01:17 ◼   ► And to Apple's credit, what they've done

01:01:19 ◼   ► is that they've looked at what popular applications

01:01:22 ◼   ► do our users run on the Mac

01:01:23 ◼   ► that currently have kernel extensions,

01:01:25 ◼   ► and how can we provide a facility for those applications

01:01:30 ◼   ► to keep doing what it is they do,

01:01:31 ◼   ► but to get out of the kernel,

01:01:32 ◼   ► like Dropbox and OneDrive or whatever.

01:01:34 ◼   ► And even in the case of things like Dropbox,

01:01:36 ◼   ► where Dropbox was doing not a kernel extension,

01:01:38 ◼   ► but a thing where they would sort of invade

01:01:40 ◼   ► the memory space of the Finder,

01:01:42 ◼   ► or otherwise hack the Finder to put the little badges

01:01:46 ◼   ► on the Finder icons, so they would show a little green badge

01:01:49 ◼   ► with a check mark when the file is synced to Dropbox

01:01:51 ◼   ► or whatever, the original implementation or two of that

01:01:53 ◼   ► and Dropbox was very hacky and sort of screwed with the finder at a root level.

01:01:58 ◼   ► And Apple, you know, getting enough clout to be a popular application means that Apple

01:02:02 ◼   ► didn't just like ban Dropbox or like cause it to stop running.

01:02:06 ◼   ► What Apple did instead is saw the need for some way for third party applications to put

01:02:12 ◼   ► little badges on icons in the finder.

01:02:14 ◼   ► And they made a public API that any third party can use to put little badges on icons

01:02:20 ◼   ► in the finder and then tried to convince Dropbox to convert their code to use it.

01:02:24 ◼   ► I think Dropbox did convert to that.

01:02:27 ◼   ► It's difficult because these companies will say, "Well, we already have a way that works.

01:02:30 ◼   ► We just hacked the finder and it works fine.

01:02:31 ◼   ► I don't want to use your stupid third-party API because now I get to change my app."

01:02:34 ◼   ► But eventually Apple, I think, has been able to negotiate with these people and say, "Please

01:02:38 ◼   ► use our official supported public API for badding icons and then you won't have to have

01:02:43 ◼   ► weird hacks and we promise we'll support it better even though it's a little bit buggier

01:02:46 ◼   ► in the beginning."

01:02:47 ◼   ► Same thing with the API they provided to say the file might not be on your Mac but it totally

01:02:55 ◼   ► looks like it's on your Mac and we will transparently make it seem like it's on your Mac even though

01:02:59 ◼   ► when things try to open it we pull it from the network just like you were doing behind

01:03:02 ◼   ► the scenes and you don't need your kernel extension anymore.

01:03:04 ◼   ► We'll do it all for you.

01:03:05 ◼   ► Just use our public API and Dropbox and OneDrive.

01:03:10 ◼   ► Both have had a long time to know that this day was coming and now they have that like

01:03:14 ◼   ► It's kind of amazing that you're able to announce

01:03:17 ◼   ► in like a press release, you know, as of Mac OS 12.3.

01:03:21 ◼   ► If you mention Mac OS 12.3 in your Mac App Store app,

01:03:25 ◼   ► you'll get rejected because you can't talk

01:03:26 ◼   ► about future offerings.

01:03:27 ◼   ► Who says there will ever be a Mac OS 12.3?

01:03:29 ◼   ► How dare you?

01:03:30 ◼   ► How dare you even mention that name?

01:03:32 ◼   ► But they're able to say, it almost got me confused

01:03:33 ◼   ► for a second, wait a second.

01:03:34 ◼   ► I was like, is 12.3 out?

01:03:36 ◼   ► Like, no, 12.3 is not out.

01:03:37 ◼   ► 12.2 just came out.

01:03:39 ◼   ► 12.3 will eventually come out and when it does,

01:03:42 ◼   ► that Dropbox stuff will stop working.

01:03:44 ◼   ► Unfortunately, Dropbox being the very agile company it is,

01:03:48 ◼   ► well, it doesn't look like they'll be ready on day one

01:03:51 ◼   ► when 12.3 comes out.

01:03:52 ◼   ► So they just said, yeah, Dropbox might work a little funny

01:03:54 ◼   ► until we figure this out,

01:03:56 ◼   ► but we do plan to support the new public API.

01:03:59 ◼   ► Because guess what?

01:04:00 ◼   ► We have no choice because our kernel extension,

01:04:02 ◼   ► we're literally not running anymore.

01:04:04 ◼   ► So no, look forward to that.

01:04:06 ◼   ► - Does anybody still work on the Dropbox Mac app?

01:04:09 ◼   ► - I mean, yeah, they gotta put all those reminders in

01:04:11 ◼   ► to tell you how to upgrade.

01:04:13 ◼   ► and all those little hacks to try to integrate

01:04:15 ◼   ► and get you to give you their accessibility password

01:04:18 ◼   ► and your root password.

01:04:20 ◼   ► Hey, you just plugged in a device.

01:04:21 ◼   ► You want us to back this up and take the photos off of it

01:04:23 ◼   ► all the time?

01:04:24 ◼   ► Should we keep asking?

01:04:25 ◼   ► - That's right.

01:04:25 ◼   ► When you take screenshots, do you

01:04:26 ◼   ► want them to go into Dropbox?

01:04:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, you should give us full access to your entire system

01:04:30 ◼   ► just so you can post everything that you want to Dropbox.

01:04:32 ◼   ► And we can start taking more and more of your system resources.

01:04:35 ◼   ► And yeah, it'll be fine.

01:04:36 ◼   ► But oh, we're going to do all this through Rosetta

01:04:38 ◼   ► because we're not going to actually make

01:04:39 ◼   ► an Apple Silicon client.

01:04:40 ◼   ► Why would we do that?

01:04:42 ◼   ► - I feel like the Apple Silicon version

01:04:43 ◼   ► probably got tied up in whatever branch

01:04:45 ◼   ► they've been working on to not use the kernel extension

01:04:48 ◼   ► and maybe they became inseparable

01:04:50 ◼   ► and they can't ship one without the other

01:04:52 ◼   ► and they thought they would be done sooner but they're not.

01:04:55 ◼   ► Anyway, software's hard.

01:04:56 ◼   ► - Given their engineering priorities,

01:04:57 ◼   ► it would not surprise me if an Apple Silicon version

01:05:00 ◼   ► hasn't actually been started yet.

01:05:02 ◼   ► - No, no, no, it's in beta.

01:05:03 ◼   ► Where have you been, man, it's in beta.

01:05:04 ◼   ► - Oh, yeah, okay.

01:05:05 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:05:07 ◼   ► There's a lot of good reasons why big companies

01:05:12 ◼   ► have been dragging their feet with supporting

01:05:14 ◼   ► Mac native apps in many ways.

01:05:16 ◼   ► We've had the Electron discussions in the past

01:05:18 ◼   ► and everything, but so much of that mentality, I feel like,

01:05:21 ◼   ► could lead to the conclusion like,

01:05:23 ◼   ► why don't we just keep building for Intel

01:05:25 ◼   ► 'cause it runs fine if we do this

01:05:27 ◼   ► and then that's like one less support thing

01:05:30 ◼   ► to have to think about.

01:05:31 ◼   ► It wouldn't surprise, all these same development teams

01:05:36 ◼   ► and companies who are deciding, you know what,

01:05:38 ◼   ► it's not worth writing good code,

01:05:39 ◼   ► let's just write Electron code and we'll bloat up our apps

01:05:41 ◼   ► on everyone's system and take up hundreds of megs

01:05:43 ◼   ► in every single copy of our app that's installed

01:05:45 ◼   ► because it benefits us and it's more convenient for us.

01:05:48 ◼   ► Well, that same logic could also apply,

01:05:49 ◼   ► like hey, why don't we just keep doing Intel only?

01:05:51 ◼   ► 'Cause that's also more convenient for us

01:05:53 ◼   ► and it benefits us and it does cost our users

01:05:55 ◼   ► in terms of their system efficiencies

01:05:57 ◼   ► and everything like that, but we don't care about them.

01:06:00 ◼   ► - They were always gonna do an M1 version.

01:06:01 ◼   ► It's just taking them longer than they thought, geez.

01:06:04 ◼   ► - I feel like you're the Dropbox apologist

01:06:06 ◼   ► of the three of us, Jon.

01:06:07 ◼   ► - I mean, as far as I'm aware,

01:06:09 ◼   ► I've never done whatever you do to enable the thing

01:06:14 ◼   ► that makes the files look like they're on your Mac

01:06:16 ◼   ► but aren't really on your Mac.

01:06:17 ◼   ► Like I'm still using it in the old style

01:06:19 ◼   ► where all the files are literally on my Mac

01:06:22 ◼   ► even though they're also in Dropbox.

01:06:24 ◼   ► So that if I just turn off Dropbox

01:06:25 ◼   ► everything is still just there.

01:06:27 ◼   ► I don't know if that means I'm not running

01:06:28 ◼   ► the kernel extension but if I am running it

01:06:30 ◼   ► it has never caused me any problems.

01:06:31 ◼   ► And you know, I'm not really an apologist

01:06:34 ◼   ► because I do quit Dropbox when I know

01:06:36 ◼   ► I'm gonna be doing something that hits the file system

01:06:38 ◼   ► because it's just like this low level drag on the system

01:06:41 ◼   ► that I have to deal with.

01:06:42 ◼   ► Like if I'm doing a time machine backup

01:06:43 ◼   ► and it's taking too long,

01:06:45 ◼   ► you know, I quit Dropbox just sort of as a

01:06:48 ◼   ► just in case type of thing.

01:06:49 ◼   ► So I don't think it's wonderful,

01:06:51 ◼   ► but I do like the ability to quit it when I wanna quit it

01:06:54 ◼   ► and know that it's not running.

01:06:55 ◼   ► And when I launch it, it always syncs things.

01:06:57 ◼   ► And so, you know, I have other things to worry about.

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01:08:55 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:08:58 ◼   ► - All right, so speaking of betas,

01:09:00 ◼   ► in 12.3 beta and 15.4 beta,

01:09:03 ◼   ► you can finally try out universal control

01:09:06 ◼   ► between Macs and iPads.

01:09:07 ◼   ► And initial impressions are this is pretty cool.

01:09:10 ◼   ► I haven't tried it myself, I'm just saying basically.

01:09:13 ◼   ► - I was hoping you would try it.

01:09:14 ◼   ► - No, sorry, sorry.

01:09:16 ◼   ► I oversold a little bit there.

01:09:17 ◼   ► No, I haven't tried it myself,

01:09:19 ◼   ► but I've seen, like, Vittiti had a video,

01:09:21 ◼   ► I'll try to dig up the tweet and put it in the show notes,

01:09:23 ◼   ► but he had a video of it and it looked pretty slick.

01:09:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm not sure when I would have occasion to use this.

01:09:28 ◼   ► Like the times I've had my iPad next to my Mac,

01:09:32 ◼   ► I've been using it as a second monitor with Sidecar

01:09:34 ◼   ► and that's not what this is about.

01:09:35 ◼   ► This is bringing your cursor over to the iPad,

01:09:38 ◼   ► but I do wonder like having a mouse cursor on my iPad

01:09:43 ◼   ► and having it still be iPad, running iPad things

01:09:45 ◼   ► might be useful if there was ever an iPad thing

01:09:47 ◼   ► that I needed to have.

01:09:48 ◼   ► But yeah, I'm not sure I'm ergonomically set up for it.

01:09:51 ◼   ► I'm still, I'm so firmly in the one big monitor camp,

01:09:54 ◼   ► I don't really like the idea of having to look elsewhere

01:09:56 ◼   ► at a different monitor.

01:09:58 ◼   ► But it's cool that they're finally shipping

01:09:59 ◼   ► this feature at least.

01:10:00 ◼   ► And as we've said many times in the past,

01:10:02 ◼   ► it's annoying when features are late,

01:10:04 ◼   ► but it's better than shipping buggy.

01:10:05 ◼   ► So kudos on knowing when it's not ready.

01:10:08 ◼   ► And hopefully when it comes out, it will actually be ready.

01:10:11 ◼   ► - I actually, I've been using not the continuity feature,

01:10:14 ◼   ► which just apparently started existing.

01:10:15 ◼   ► I've been using the iPad as a monitor feature on the Mac.

01:10:20 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

01:10:20 ◼   ► Not as, not on my main desktop laptop setup,

01:10:23 ◼   ► but in the game streaming setup where basically I use it

01:10:27 ◼   ► as to mirror my laptop screens.

01:10:29 ◼   ► My laptop is running the OBS capture software

01:10:33 ◼   ► and it's running all the webcams and everything

01:10:34 ◼   ► and then I use it, I use my iPad as a second screen

01:10:38 ◼   ► so that Tiff and Adam can see themselves in the webcam view

01:10:42 ◼   ► and see like the stream view like in front of them

01:10:45 ◼   ► and then my laptop's in front of me

01:10:46 ◼   ► and so that way we can all see the same screen.

01:10:49 ◼   ► And it's the kind of thing like any cheap screen

01:10:53 ◼   ► could do this, but I didn't have to buy one,

01:10:55 ◼   ► 'cause I already had an iPad that was sitting around

01:10:57 ◼   ► doing relatively little, and so it works,

01:11:00 ◼   ► and just like every other part of both Apple's

01:11:03 ◼   ► modern software and USB stuff, it works most of the time.

01:11:07 ◼   ► Not all the time, but most of the time it works,

01:11:10 ◼   ► and when it works, it's great.

01:11:11 ◼   ► - So are you running OBS on a Mac then,

01:11:14 ◼   ► am I understanding that right? - Yes.

01:11:16 ◼   ► I run OBS on the 14-inch MacBook Pro,

01:11:19 ◼   ► and all the USB things plug into that,

01:11:21 ◼   ► so all the capture devices look into that.

01:11:23 ◼   ► The gaming PCs are only outputting HDMI and sound

01:11:27 ◼   ► into the capture thingies.

01:11:29 ◼   ► So the gaming PCs are not running

01:11:31 ◼   ► any capture software themselves.

01:11:32 ◼   ► And I'm not using their built-in webcams,

01:11:35 ◼   ► 'cause it's just easier not to.

01:11:36 ◼   ► We just have these little clip-on Logitech cheapo ones

01:11:39 ◼   ► that go on each one, and then those are all plugged in

01:11:42 ◼   ► via USB to the Mac and running OBS.

01:11:46 ◼   ► So that way the gaming PCs don't have to think

01:11:48 ◼   ► about capture software.

01:11:50 ◼   ► I ask because earlier today, actually, it was brought to my attention that there's a

01:11:55 ◼   ► GitHub user developer-ecosystem-engineering, which I had not heard of.

01:12:01 ◼   ► But apparently this is Apple's open source contribution pseudo-person, like GitHub account

01:12:10 ◼   ► for issuing pull requests and things.

01:12:12 ◼   ► And I presume that in the past, they would just throw a patch over the wall and say,

01:12:18 ◼   ► hey, we fixed this, have fun.

01:12:19 ◼   ► But now it looks like they're starting to maybe do it in the

01:12:24 ◼   ► open, and I was looking at this earlier.

01:12:27 ◼   ► And the most recent pull request that they made is to

01:12:30 ◼   ► OBS Studio, and they made a 274 changed file pull request

01:12:36 ◼   ► where they basically said, hey, the way in which you're

01:12:39 ◼   ► doing capture in Mac OS sucks, but we fixed it for you.

01:12:42 ◼   ► Here you go.

01:12:43 ◼   ► And if you click through onto this pull request, they

01:12:46 ◼   ► actually have in the PR videos showing memory and CPU

01:12:52 ◼   ► utilization as they're doing a capture, specifically

01:12:56 ◼   ► on a particular window versus generally capturing

01:12:58 ◼   ► the whole screen or something along those lines.

01:13:00 ◼   ► I'm getting a little out of my depth because I never used OBS.

01:13:03 ◼   ► But my point is, it's just funny you bring that up,

01:13:05 ◼   ► because Apple is apparently going and trying

01:13:07 ◼   ► to make it better for OBS, and I guess for you, Marco.

01:13:11 ◼   ► Yeah, and this particular thing won't affect me,

01:13:13 ◼   ► because this is only about screen capture.

01:13:15 ◼   ► where I'm not doing any screen capture.

01:13:17 ◼   ► - That's true, that's true.

01:13:18 ◼   ► Yep, yep, yep, you're right.

01:13:19 ◼   ► - But that is still a really cool thing.

01:13:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, I had no idea that this account was a thing,

01:13:22 ◼   ► so it was news to me.

01:13:24 ◼   ► Moving right along, so in the 15.4 beta of iOS,

01:13:29 ◼   ► you can unlock using Face ID with your mask on,

01:13:34 ◼   ► and this is where everyone starts firing up their email

01:13:36 ◼   ► and saying, "Oh, contrary, you can do that already

01:13:37 ◼   ► "with the watch."

01:13:38 ◼   ► Well, now in 15.4, you don't have to have a watch.

01:13:41 ◼   ► You can just do it with the phone and nothing else.

01:13:44 ◼   ► I guess it does much more specific inspection of the area around your eyes in order to confirm

01:13:51 ◼   ► that it's you. I haven't tried this. I wear a watch pretty much always, so this isn't a big deal

01:13:57 ◼   ► for me, I don't think. But it is cool. I think the one thing that is different about this, though,

01:14:02 ◼   ► is that with the watch-based unlock, the phone is a little bit cavalier about unlocking for basically

01:14:09 ◼   ► any face it sees in front of it, and it taps your watch saying, "Okay, I just unlocked myself." And

01:14:13 ◼   ► And on the watch, there's a button that you can use to relock your phone to the point

01:14:18 ◼   ► that you would have to enter the password physically on the phone.

01:14:22 ◼   ► But with this, it appears that it will be much more specific about unlocking only for

01:14:28 ◼   ► your face, which is kind of cool.

01:14:30 ◼   ► This is interesting because obviously if you're covering up half your face, the security of

01:14:33 ◼   ► it seems like it would be less than seeing your whole face because you just have less

01:14:37 ◼   ► data points to confirm a match.

01:14:39 ◼   ► It's kind of revealing a little bit of the way Face ID may work,

01:14:45 ◼   ► because Apple doesn't really talk about this too much,

01:14:47 ◼   ► probably for security reasons, probably for competition reasons.

01:14:50 ◼   ► But when you choose to do this, when you say,

01:14:53 ◼   ► yeah, I want it to work with the mask,

01:14:55 ◼   ► you have to opt into it.

01:14:56 ◼   ► It gives you the choice.

01:14:57 ◼   ► Do you want to use it with the mask or not with the mask?

01:15:00 ◼   ► Because it is kind of a security choice.

01:15:02 ◼   ► And then when you do it, you also

01:15:05 ◼   ► have the option to add glasses.

01:15:07 ◼   ► You're like, what do you mean, add glasses?

01:15:09 ◼   ► Face ID works with and without my glasses now.

01:15:11 ◼   ► Why is there some separate step for me to teach Face ID

01:15:15 ◼   ► about my glasses?

01:15:17 ◼   ► And so the text that I have on the screen here is,

01:15:20 ◼   ► "Using Face ID while wearing a mask works best

01:15:22 ◼   ► when it's set up to recognize each pair

01:15:23 ◼   ► of glasses you wear regularly."

01:15:25 ◼   ► Face ID with a mask doesn't support sunglasses, right?

01:15:28 ◼   ► So because sunglasses, like it uses IR dots or whatever,

01:15:30 ◼   ► so sunglasses can block them and screw it up.

01:15:32 ◼   ► But it's like, well, I don't have to register

01:15:34 ◼   ► multiple glasses now.

01:15:35 ◼   ► I myself have two pair of glasses, one for close up

01:15:37 ◼   ► and one for like driving.

01:15:38 ◼   ► and I never needed to register those glasses separately.

01:15:41 ◼   ► Why would I need to do that now?

01:15:42 ◼   ► And the best I can come up with is that

01:15:44 ◼   ► when you do face ID on your full face, no mask or anything,

01:15:47 ◼   ► and you're wearing glasses,

01:15:49 ◼   ► especially if you trained face ID without your glasses,

01:15:51 ◼   ► what it says is, okay,

01:15:53 ◼   ► for the top part of the face around the eyes,

01:15:55 ◼   ► I can more or less get a read,

01:15:56 ◼   ► but there's a bunch of crap there

01:15:57 ◼   ► that looks to me like glasses,

01:15:58 ◼   ► and I can't really confirm one way or the other

01:16:00 ◼   ► whether this is the same person,

01:16:01 ◼   ► because maybe it's the person

01:16:02 ◼   ► with different glasses or whatever.

01:16:04 ◼   ► But thankfully I have the whole rest of the person's face

01:16:06 ◼   ► to confirm and so I can say, yeah,

01:16:09 ◼   ► it looks like it's probably matched, so thumbs up.

01:16:11 ◼   ► But if you take away the bottom of the face

01:16:13 ◼   ► because they're wearing a mask

01:16:14 ◼   ► and the mask's all lumpen and different or whatever,

01:16:16 ◼   ► if you take away the bottom of the face

01:16:17 ◼   ► and they just look at the top of the face

01:16:19 ◼   ► and they're like, I can kinda see the shape

01:16:21 ◼   ► of this person's face around their eyes,

01:16:22 ◼   ► but the glasses are screwing it up for me.

01:16:25 ◼   ► And so you don't have anything to fall back on.

01:16:27 ◼   ► So maybe what this is saying is that we didn't know it,

01:16:30 ◼   ► but everyone who wears glasses

01:16:31 ◼   ► is getting slightly less security

01:16:32 ◼   ► and it's relying heavily on the bottom part of our face

01:16:35 ◼   ► to make up for it.

01:16:36 ◼   ► And now with that taken away, now we have to register the glasses to say, "I'm going

01:16:40 ◼   ► to train you that these are my glasses.

01:16:41 ◼   ► I have two pairs of them.

01:16:42 ◼   ► One looks like this and one looks like that."

01:16:43 ◼   ► So when you check me with my glasses on, the glasses aren't interfering.

01:16:47 ◼   ► The glasses are actually new data points.

01:16:49 ◼   ► And this would explain why it takes like two years into the pandemic for us to get this

01:16:52 ◼   ► feature, because this stuff's complicated and maybe more complicated than we think it

01:16:56 ◼   ► is.

01:16:57 ◼   ► We just think it's magic.

01:16:58 ◼   ► We look at our phone and it opens for us.

01:16:59 ◼   ► But in order for the security to be good and not able to be fooled, as they emphasized

01:17:03 ◼   ► by like a picture of you or a fake model of your face.

01:17:07 ◼   ► That's not easy to do.

01:17:10 ◼   ► But anyway, I look forward to this because I am sick of paying with passcode.

01:17:15 ◼   ► As they say, every time I go to a store, of course, I've been wearing masks for a long

01:17:19 ◼   ► time now, and it's annoying typing that in.

01:17:22 ◼   ► And honestly, it's not that it's like, "Oh, I'm hassled to do it."

01:17:27 ◼   ► It feels less secure to me because it's a giant light-up screen that other people can

01:17:30 ◼   ► see and it's really easy to shoulder-sharp someone's like passcode and I don't have like

01:17:35 ◼   ► a 75-digit alphanumeric code to type in because I'd never be able to buy anything. So I don't

01:17:40 ◼   ► like, you know, the idea of people seeing me type in unlock code in public. Face ID,

01:17:45 ◼   ► it would be great to use Face ID. I will very quickly enable this feature so I can do it

01:17:50 ◼   ► with a mask on.

01:17:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm very much looking forward to this because, you know, not only does it cover

01:17:54 ◼   ► people who don't have an Apple Watch, which is, you know, nerds like to think that, oh,

01:18:00 ◼   ► I assure you it's far from it.

01:18:03 ◼   ► A lot of people have it.

01:18:04 ◼   ► It's a very successful and widespread product.

01:18:07 ◼   ► But to give you some,

01:18:09 ◼   ► I pulled up my analytics here for Overcast.

01:18:11 ◼   ► Overcast is an app used by a lot of nerds.

01:18:13 ◼   ► I mean, not all nerds, but a lot of nerds.

01:18:16 ◼   ► And I have about 35% of Overcast users

01:18:21 ◼   ► have a watch paired to their phone.

01:18:24 ◼   ► And that's among nerds.

01:18:26 ◼   ► The number among the average people is probably lower.

01:18:29 ◼   ► And so that's, you know, think about at least 70%

01:18:32 ◼   ► of iPhone owners don't have an Apple Watch.

01:18:35 ◼   ► So this brings the convenience that we, you know,

01:18:39 ◼   ► watch people have all been enjoying for the last,

01:18:42 ◼   ► whatever, 10 months or so that we've had

01:18:44 ◼   ► the watch unlock with mask feature.

01:18:47 ◼   ► This brings that to way more people.

01:18:50 ◼   ► And in a better way, like as John was just saying,

01:18:52 ◼   ► even now, you know, or the feature we've had for,

01:18:55 ◼   ► you know, most of the last year,

01:18:56 ◼   ► if you have a mask on, it'll unlock your phone,

01:18:58 ◼   ► but it doesn't work with Apple Pay.

01:19:00 ◼   ► So if you're paying at a pay terminal,

01:19:03 ◼   ► you still have to type in the passcode.

01:19:04 ◼   ► And I do that when I go to the grocery store,

01:19:06 ◼   ► and it sucks.

01:19:07 ◼   ► And so to have this work this way is very, very nice.

01:19:12 ◼   ► I haven't tried it yet,

01:19:13 ◼   ► 'cause it just came out a few hours ago,

01:19:15 ◼   ► I haven't had a chance to install it yet,

01:19:16 ◼   ► but I'm looking forward to this.

01:19:18 ◼   ► 'Cause Apple is very, very sensitive

01:19:22 ◼   ► to anything that would potentially reduce

01:19:25 ◼   ► the security of their phones,

01:19:26 ◼   ► especially in this area.

01:19:28 ◼   ► Yeah, we make fun of various security holes

01:19:30 ◼   ► they have sometimes, like in the software,

01:19:31 ◼   ► but when it comes to this kind of thing,

01:19:33 ◼   ► the phone unlock process, they do a really good job,

01:19:37 ◼   ► and they are extremely secure compared

01:19:39 ◼   ► to the rest of the industry.

01:19:41 ◼   ► Whenever there's a new Samsung gadget feature,

01:19:47 ◼   ► it usually has abysmal security,

01:19:50 ◼   ► and no one ever talks about it.

01:19:52 ◼   ► Whenever somebody, some Android person,

01:19:55 ◼   ► and it's like, here, here's a new,

01:19:57 ◼   ► you just hover your palm over the phone

01:19:59 ◼   ► and it unlocks it or some BS like that.

01:20:02 ◼   ► Inevitably, once the reviews come out,

01:20:04 ◼   ► everyone realizes A, it doesn't work most of the time

01:20:06 ◼   ► and B, it's very easily fooled and can be cracked easily.

01:20:10 ◼   ► That kind of stuff never happens to Touch ID and Face ID.

01:20:13 ◼   ► Never.

01:20:13 ◼   ► We've never had, as far as I know,

01:20:16 ◼   ► major security problems with Touch ID and Face ID.

01:20:19 ◼   ► So Apple takes this, oh and watch unlock

01:20:22 ◼   ► and all the other things.

01:20:23 ◼   ► So Apple takes this stuff very, very seriously

01:20:24 ◼   ► and they do a very good job of it.

01:20:26 ◼   ► So to have something like this where they are

01:20:29 ◼   ► effectively reducing the security of Face ID in some way

01:20:33 ◼   ► for this massive practical benefit that we're all demanding,

01:20:36 ◼   ► that is, as John said, not only a large undertaking,

01:20:39 ◼   ► but I also trust them to have done it pretty well,

01:20:42 ◼   ► and I trust that in my life,

01:20:46 ◼   ► I don't need even half the security that Face ID offers.

01:20:54 ◼   ► No one ever has my phone.

01:20:56 ◼   ► Just in my life, I never lose physical access to my phone.

01:21:02 ◼   ► It just doesn't happen.

01:21:04 ◼   ► I'm very lucky, I live in a place and environment

01:21:06 ◼   ► in a situation where that doesn't really happen.

01:21:09 ◼   ► Like until--

01:21:10 ◼   ► - It's not like it's your bike, I mean.

01:21:12 ◼   ► - Right. (laughs)

01:21:13 ◼   ► Like until Touch ID came out,

01:21:16 ◼   ► I didn't use passcodes on my phone.

01:21:19 ◼   ► Like at all, I just didn't use one

01:21:20 ◼   ► because I didn't need one.

01:21:22 ◼   ► And that was when I worked in Manhattan.

01:21:23 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:21:25 ◼   ► But it's like I still, like I just never,

01:21:27 ◼   ► like so, I am happy to make the trade-off to enable this.

01:21:32 ◼   ► Because even if it is reduced security

01:21:34 ◼   ► by only judging the shape around my eyes and stuff,

01:21:37 ◼   ► I am totally happy to make that trade-off

01:21:39 ◼   ► because I so often have like had to type the passcode in,

01:21:44 ◼   ► 'cause either the mask unlock thing with the watch

01:21:46 ◼   ► either didn't work or I hadn't done it recently,

01:21:49 ◼   ► So it relocked or it tried a few times too many

01:21:52 ◼   ► and then it totally locked down.

01:21:54 ◼   ► Or as John was saying, having to pay

01:21:56 ◼   ► at the credit card terminal and having to type

01:21:58 ◼   ► in the passcode for that every time.

01:22:00 ◼   ► So I am happy to take the slightly reduced security

01:22:04 ◼   ► because knowing Apple, this is probably still

01:22:07 ◼   ► a ridiculous level of security for most people.

01:22:10 ◼   ► And I can certainly say it's way more than I probably need.

01:22:14 ◼   ► - In this week's episode of Funny Things Casey Finds

01:22:16 ◼   ► in the show notes, it says the following,

01:22:19 ◼   ► Marco's mini segment, USB garbage from Amazon.

01:22:23 ◼   ► And I am very excited to hear what this is about.

01:22:26 ◼   ► - So this is about two product categories

01:22:30 ◼   ► that I have discovered on Amazon.

01:22:31 ◼   ► One of them has turned out pretty well,

01:22:33 ◼   ► the other one not as well.

01:22:36 ◼   ► But there's this massive world of cheap USB crap on Amazon,

01:22:41 ◼   ► that some of which is very useful, much of which is not.

01:22:45 ◼   ► but it does kind of amaze me as just a broad category,

01:22:49 ◼   ► like quite how much really inexpensive stuff

01:22:54 ◼   ► that is vaguely USB related there is on Amazon.

01:22:59 ◼   ► And it's all from these like no-name companies that,

01:23:03 ◼   ► it's just like some random manufacturer probably in China

01:23:08 ◼   ► had some random person on Amazon set up an account,

01:23:11 ◼   ► and you could tell there's 17 different companies

01:23:13 ◼   ► all selling the same manufacturer's products.

01:23:16 ◼   ► All the names of the companies are all capitals

01:23:19 ◼   ► that contain way more vowels than consonants.

01:23:22 ◼   ► The product names and company names change so often

01:23:27 ◼   ► that you can't even ever usually buy the same thing twice

01:23:30 ◼   ► if you wanted to, if it's separated by more than a few weeks.

01:23:34 ◼   ► But there's this whole world, and some of this stuff

01:23:36 ◼   ► is actually pretty useful, and some of it is not.

01:23:39 ◼   ► So I have these two products I'm gonna talk about now,

01:23:41 ◼   ► 'cause I've just been using them recently.

01:23:43 ◼   ► Because of the nature of this market,

01:23:46 ◼   ► I'm not even gonna name them or link to them.

01:23:48 ◼   ► I'll just tell you what they are and you can find your own

01:23:51 ◼   ► because by the time you hear this,

01:23:52 ◼   ► the ones I bought won't even be available anymore.

01:23:54 ◼   ► So. - Oh, cool.

01:23:56 ◼   ► - Probably.

01:23:57 ◼   ► So anyway, so the first one,

01:24:01 ◼   ► so as you know, my kid uses an iPad Mini.

01:24:05 ◼   ► He's now on his, I think third one?

01:24:09 ◼   ► Some second or third one?

01:24:10 ◼   ► Anyway, it isn't the current iPad Mini,

01:24:14 ◼   ► it's the previous generation with the home button.

01:24:16 ◼   ► And the lightning port.

01:24:17 ◼   ► And this iPad Mini has already been replaced

01:24:21 ◼   ► once under warranty, the warranty hasn't expired.

01:24:23 ◼   ► The original time it was replaced was because

01:24:25 ◼   ► the charging port was basically wearing out.

01:24:27 ◼   ► And when I first tweeted about this forever ago

01:24:30 ◼   ► asking for suggestions, I got a number of people

01:24:32 ◼   ► explaining to me that basically,

01:24:34 ◼   ► that what happens when, especially when kids

01:24:36 ◼   ► use iPads very heavily, that when you use an iPad

01:24:39 ◼   ► as heavily as a typical kid does,

01:24:42 ◼   ► especially with typical kid charging discipline,

01:24:46 ◼   ► it tends to basically be a 5% battery all the time.

01:24:49 ◼   ► So they're often using it with the power cable plugged in,

01:24:54 ◼   ► charging while they're using it,

01:24:55 ◼   ► because out of necessity or whatever.

01:24:58 ◼   ► And kids also wiggle a lot,

01:25:01 ◼   ► so they're constantly in slight motion and bending around.

01:25:06 ◼   ► - It's not the wiggling,

01:25:07 ◼   ► it's the kids have zero empathy for the machine.

01:25:10 ◼   ► They do not care that that cable is constantly under pressure.

01:25:14 ◼   ► Strain relief is made because they are like the strain,

01:25:16 ◼   ► what is the opposite of relief?

01:25:18 ◼   ► They're the strain provider.

01:25:20 ◼   ► They do not care how much they're kinking

01:25:22 ◼   ► the end of that cable.

01:25:23 ◼   ► Have you ever, have you seen this?

01:25:24 ◼   ► I bet you've seen it if you're watching.

01:25:26 ◼   ► People have kids know this.

01:25:27 ◼   ► So take any iOS device, plug a lightning cable

01:25:29 ◼   ► or whatever into the bottom of it,

01:25:31 ◼   ► then they rest it on the lightning cable.

01:25:33 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

01:25:34 ◼   ► - Like vertically, like using that one cable

01:25:36 ◼   ► So the cable comes down and then it turns at 90 degrees

01:25:39 ◼   ► and they rest it on that.

01:25:40 ◼   ► It's like, how much more strain can I provide?

01:25:42 ◼   ► Well, I could just pull on it at a weird angle,

01:25:44 ◼   ► but how about I rest the entire iPad's weight

01:25:46 ◼   ► on top of the lightning connector?

01:25:49 ◼   ► It's terrible.

01:25:50 ◼   ► No empathy for the machine.

01:25:51 ◼   ► - No.

01:25:52 ◼   ► But anyway, so, you know, kids are hard on devices,

01:25:57 ◼   ► especially in this area of just like, you know,

01:25:59 ◼   ► constantly like, operating an iPad or an iPhone,

01:26:04 ◼   ► but in this case an iPad,

01:26:05 ◼   ► Operating it when it's plugged in

01:26:06 ◼   ► is not something Apple seems to really design for.

01:26:10 ◼   ► The charging port, if you hold the iPad in landscape,

01:26:13 ◼   ► the charging port is right where your hand goes.

01:26:16 ◼   ► So I understand why, it's not kids' fault

01:26:19 ◼   ► if they're holding near the cable,

01:26:21 ◼   ► 'cause that's where they put it.

01:26:23 ◼   ► That's where Apple designed it.

01:26:24 ◼   ► So it's not in a great spot for that already.

01:26:28 ◼   ► So already we have a problem.

01:26:29 ◼   ► So anyway, over time, this tends to wear out the ports

01:26:32 ◼   ► in various ways, 'cause it's hard on the ports.

01:26:35 ◼   ► And so, as this is happening again to this iPad

01:26:39 ◼   ► that was just replaced by Apple,

01:26:41 ◼   ► I think about a year ago for this problem,

01:26:44 ◼   ► it's happening again, we're now out of warranty,

01:26:46 ◼   ► and we don't want the new iPad Mini.

01:26:49 ◼   ► I'm waiting for the next iPad Air

01:26:50 ◼   ► to upgrade into that instead.

01:26:52 ◼   ► But in the meantime, we need this iPad

01:26:54 ◼   ► to last a little bit longer, and it's just not.

01:26:56 ◼   ► It's dying quickly.

01:26:58 ◼   ► So instead, I temporarily gave him my iPad,

01:27:02 ◼   ► 'cause I'm probably using it anymore, as I said.

01:27:04 ◼   ► So he now has my 2018 11 inch iPad Pro

01:27:09 ◼   ► until we figure out what the heck to get him

01:27:11 ◼   ► when a good option comes along.

01:27:13 ◼   ► So anyway, as I'm giving him this, my iPad,

01:27:18 ◼   ► I kinda want it back at the end

01:27:19 ◼   ► of whatever this time period is.

01:27:22 ◼   ► I want it to still work.