ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► - We were all over the place.

00:00:01 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:00:02 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:03 ◼   ► - Even for us, we were all over the place.

00:00:04 ◼   ► - Covering a lot of important ground,

00:00:06 ◼   ► involving dogs and leather and television.

00:00:10 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:00:10 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:11 ◼   ► (electronic music)

00:00:13 ◼   ► - All right, let's start with some follow up.

00:00:14 ◼   ► Stuart Hay had a lot of information on chroma sub-sampling

00:00:17 ◼   ► and I can try to make my way through this, John,

00:00:20 ◼   ► but I have a feeling you're better suited for this one.

00:00:22 ◼   ► - No, you gotta do it.

00:00:23 ◼   ► You can do it.

00:00:24 ◼   ► This was about the name you were saying.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Why is it called 422444?

00:00:28 ◼   ► Like the explanation in the RTINGS thing

00:00:30 ◼   ► didn't make any sense, so Stuart Hay explained it,

00:00:32 ◼   ► but you can read through it.

00:00:33 ◼   ► - Oh, it's just super.

00:00:35 ◼   ► Okay, well here we go. - I believe in you.

00:00:36 ◼   ► - Thanks, Ben.

00:00:37 ◼   ► - I cut it down to what I think are the essentials.

00:00:40 ◼   ► - I have my doubts.

00:00:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, seriously.

00:00:42 ◼   ► All right, well anyway, here we go.

00:00:42 ◼   ► So, and by the way,

00:00:43 ◼   ► all this snark has nothing to do with you, Stuart.

00:00:45 ◼   ► Your feedback was excellent.

00:00:46 ◼   ► It's all with me dreading having to make my way

00:00:48 ◼   ► through all of this terminology.

00:00:50 ◼   ► So here we go, buckle up.

00:00:51 ◼   ► Stuart writes, "I've enjoyed a little trip down memory lane

00:00:53 ◼   ► "to my training as a broadcast engineer

00:00:55 ◼   ► "while listening to your discussion

00:00:56 ◼   ► "around chroma subsampling

00:00:57 ◼   ► and felt the article you linked to, although informative,

00:00:59 ◼   ► was missing the reference back to the original ITU-R-BT.601

00:01:04 ◼   ► standard, which may answer why we ended up

00:01:06 ◼   ► with the 4 colon 4 colon 4 terminology used

00:01:08 ◼   ► to describe chroma subsampling.

00:01:10 ◼   ► - I'm gonna say, you just say 4 4 4 for that one.

00:01:12 ◼   ► - Well, I'm just trying to establish--

00:01:13 ◼   ► - Please. (laughs)

00:01:14 ◼   ► - Can you give me, play in the space, people,

00:01:16 ◼   ► play in the space, just give me a chance.

00:01:17 ◼   ► - Well, we did YCBCR last time, right?

00:01:19 ◼   ► I think it's like 4 4 4, 4 2 2, 4 1 1,

00:01:22 ◼   ► I think that's the nomenclature.

00:01:23 ◼   ► - Do you wanna do this?

00:01:24 ◼   ► - And I think for the other ones,

00:01:25 ◼   ► you can just do Y and C B and C R,

00:01:26 ◼   ► don't worry about the primes.

00:01:28 ◼   ► - I feel like a married couple.

00:01:29 ◼   ► Is this my story or yours, Jon?

00:01:30 ◼   ► - Keep going.

00:01:31 ◼   ► Did you watch "En Canto" as well?

00:01:32 ◼   ► I feel like they-- - I did, actually.

00:01:34 ◼   ► - I feel like they shouldn't have used that joke

00:01:35 ◼   ► twice in the song, yes.

00:01:36 ◼   ► I understand the end of the song.

00:01:37 ◼   ► They're just re-summarizing all the things

00:01:39 ◼   ► they said earlier, but I still feel like

00:01:40 ◼   ► it would've been stronger to just use it once.

00:01:41 ◼   ► Anyway, go on.

00:01:42 ◼   ► - It was very good, by the way.

00:01:43 ◼   ► I extracted the below from the Tektronix glossary,

00:01:46 ◼   ► which I have found useful throughout my career.

00:01:48 ◼   ► 422, the number's 422, denote the ratio

00:01:51 ◼   ► of sampling frequencies of the single luminance channel

00:01:55 ◼   ► to the two color difference channels.

00:01:57 ◼   ► For every four luminance samples,

00:01:59 ◼   ► there are two samples of each color difference channel,

00:02:00 ◼   ► hence four, two, two.

00:02:02 ◼   ► - All right, so before you go on,

00:02:03 ◼   ► like this is a piece of historic information

00:02:05 ◼   ► that I think we were missing.

00:02:06 ◼   ► This nomenclature comes from the pre-digital days

00:02:09 ◼   ► and that based on the sentence here,

00:02:11 ◼   ► the way they did things in the analog world

00:02:14 ◼   ► was to have a luminance channel

00:02:15 ◼   ► and then two color difference channels.

00:02:17 ◼   ► I'm assuming that they split up the color signal

00:02:20 ◼   ► and made two things that when you combine them,

00:02:21 ◼   ► you get the color back out.

00:02:22 ◼   ► I don't know the exact details,

00:02:23 ◼   ► So the point is that there was two color difference channels

00:02:26 ◼   ► and one luminance channel.

00:02:27 ◼   ► That's why you end up with the three numbers

00:02:29 ◼   ► despite what we're talking about is luminance and chroma,

00:02:31 ◼   ► which is just two things.

00:02:32 ◼   ► So that was enlightening for me

00:02:34 ◼   ► and that starts to make a lot more sense.

00:02:35 ◼   ► How that relates to digital is a little bit weird,

00:02:37 ◼   ► but it's, you know, for broadcast stuff, I can imagine,

00:02:39 ◼   ► it's like for historical reasons, back in the day,

00:02:42 ◼   ► we transmitted the information over analog wires

00:02:45 ◼   ► in this way and that's why it's three numbers.

00:02:48 ◼   ► - Four one one, four one one indicates

00:02:49 ◼   ► that Y has been sampled at 13.5 megahertz

00:02:52 ◼   ► while CB and CR were each sampled at 3.375 megahertz.

00:02:57 ◼   ► Thus for every four samples of Y,

00:02:59 ◼   ► there is one sample each of CB and CR.

00:03:02 ◼   ► 4-2-0, a sampling system used to digitize the luminance

00:03:05 ◼   ► and color difference components Y, RY, and BY

00:03:08 ◼   ► of a video signal.

00:03:09 ◼   ► The four represents the 13.5 megahertz sampling frequency

00:03:12 ◼   ► of Y, while the RY and BY are sampled at 6.75 megahertz,

00:03:17 ◼   ► effectively between every other line only.

00:03:20 ◼   ► - So what we learned is that analog ruins everything

00:03:22 ◼   ► by making it weird and complicated.

00:03:23 ◼   ► And then we went to digital,

00:03:24 ◼   ► we got saddled with a lot of the same terminology.

00:03:26 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:03:28 ◼   ► - Yep, so that's a fair, pretty fair summary actually.

00:03:30 ◼   ► - About right.

00:03:31 ◼   ► - All right, moving right along.

00:03:34 ◼   ► Thank you, by the way, to Stuart Hay for that feedback.

00:03:37 ◼   ► Moving right along, Hyper has released

00:03:40 ◼   ► a new Thunderbolt 4 hub,

00:03:44 ◼   ► additionally a turntable dock,

00:03:45 ◼   ► which I thought was quite funny,

00:03:46 ◼   ► but that's actually not what we're trying to talk about.

00:03:48 ◼   ► The turntable dock is designed

00:03:49 ◼   ► so you can put a new iMac on it

00:03:50 ◼   ► you can then spin the iMac left and right

00:03:53 ◼   ► in order to show like a coworker or what have you.

00:03:55 ◼   ► But anyway, but what we're interested in

00:03:57 ◼   ► is their Thunderbolt dock and reading from MacRumors.

00:04:01 ◼   ► It's CES, Hyper announced what it claims

00:04:03 ◼   ► is the first Thunderbolt 4 hub with an integrated 100 watt,

00:04:07 ◼   ► how do you pronounce this?

00:04:08 ◼   ► Is it GAN, what is it?

00:04:09 ◼   ► - I go with GAN, that's how I read it in my head.

00:04:11 ◼   ► That's how the anchor CEO pronounced it

00:04:14 ◼   ► on a podcast interview.

00:04:15 ◼   ► - What is it like gallium?

00:04:17 ◼   ► - Gallium nitride or something like that.

00:04:18 ◼   ► - Thank you.

00:04:19 ◼   ► Power supply, the hub features one Thunderbolt 4

00:04:21 ◼   ► upstream port and three Thunderbolt 4 downstream ports.

00:04:25 ◼   ► This is very similar to the dock that I have

00:04:27 ◼   ► that I'm using that I've already forgotten the name of,

00:04:29 ◼   ► which I like, however, I am really into, no sarcasm,

00:04:32 ◼   ► the 100 watt power supply thing,

00:04:34 ◼   ► because what does the 14 inch take?

00:04:37 ◼   ► It takes like 60, 70 watts, something like that?

00:04:39 ◼   ► - 65, something like that, and then, yeah,

00:04:41 ◼   ► then the 16 takes, I think, 95 or 100.

00:04:44 ◼   ► - I think that's right, somewhere in that neck of the woods.

00:04:45 ◼   ► So, this would be able to power, you know,

00:04:47 ◼   ► one of these new MacBook Pros much more effectively,

00:04:50 ◼   ► which is super neat.

00:04:51 ◼   ► - That's not the big selling point.

00:04:51 ◼   ► The big selling point is no giant power brick.

00:04:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's why it's a giant dock.

00:04:55 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:04:56 ◼   ► But yeah, this is, so yeah, 'cause as far as I can tell,

00:04:58 ◼   ► this is basically the same guts,

00:05:02 ◼   ► like the same functionality, the same ports

00:05:04 ◼   ► and how they are split up,

00:05:05 ◼   ► as many of these other docks that we've mentioned recently

00:05:08 ◼   ► that many companies are making

00:05:09 ◼   ► for around the same price point,

00:05:10 ◼   ► but this is nice because it is, first of all,

00:05:13 ◼   ► providing 100 watts of power, which many of them don't.

00:05:16 ◼   ► I believe the CalDigit one I think is 60 watts.

00:05:19 ◼   ► The OWC one I think is 85 or 90, something like that.

00:05:23 ◼   ► So this might be the highest power

00:05:25 ◼   ► that's being provided by this whole category of products.

00:05:28 ◼   ► So if you happen to be plugging in a 16 inch MacBook Pro

00:05:32 ◼   ► and you actually run it hard enough

00:05:34 ◼   ► to need that kind of power all the time,

00:05:37 ◼   ► which I actually, I run mine with the XDR's power

00:05:40 ◼   ► and I believe the XDR only powers up to

00:05:42 ◼   ► something like 85 watts.

00:05:43 ◼   ► And it's never been an issue

00:05:45 ◼   ► because I'm not like encoding video 24/7.

00:05:47 ◼   ► But if you need that, or if you prefer the internal power

00:05:52 ◼   ► supply and not having some giant power brick,

00:05:54 ◼   ► like I would definitely prefer, this looks pretty good.

00:05:58 ◼   ► So good for them.

00:05:59 ◼   ► I'm glad that somebody got the memo that, hey,

00:06:02 ◼   ► not everything has to be a tiny little box for product

00:06:05 ◼   ► marketing shots and this giant black power

00:06:07 ◼   ► brick somewhere on the cable to outsource the problem so

00:06:10 ◼   ► that they don't show up in your marketing shots.

00:06:12 ◼   ► Look at this thing I just put in the chat.

00:06:14 ◼   ► I was going to head to Hyper's website

00:06:15 ◼   ► and they have this other product,

00:06:16 ◼   ► which looks a lot like the,

00:06:17 ◼   ► kind of like the things we got for laptops at work.

00:06:20 ◼   ► It's got an HDMI on the side of it

00:06:21 ◼   ► and then USB stuff or whatever,

00:06:23 ◼   ► but look what it's got on top.

00:06:25 ◼   ► - Whoa.

00:06:26 ◼   ► - Play, pause,

00:06:27 ◼   ► - It's media keys. - back and forth, yeah.

00:06:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, play, seek back and seek forth.

00:06:30 ◼   ► That's, and this is only for iPads?

00:06:32 ◼   ► - No, this is like for,

00:06:34 ◼   ► well yeah, I guess it's-- - For iPad it says.

00:06:36 ◼   ► - Does it not work on laptops?

00:06:37 ◼   ► I mean, obviously on laptops

00:06:38 ◼   ► you have these keys on your keyboard.

00:06:40 ◼   ► Now they're actual real physical keys too, right?

00:06:42 ◼   ► The side of it that the USB-C connector is on

00:06:44 ◼   ► is molded to fit a modern iPad,

00:06:46 ◼   ► but if you look at the one, two, three, fourth image down,

00:06:49 ◼   ► it says extension cable for universal compatibility.

00:06:52 ◼   ► So in case you don't wanna plug it in directly to an iPad,

00:06:55 ◼   ► then you can use this little two or three inch

00:06:58 ◼   ► little jumper cable, if you will,

00:06:59 ◼   ► in order to plug it into a regular computer.

00:07:01 ◼   ► - So I guess it probably just simulates keyboard commands

00:07:04 ◼   ► for the media controls?

00:07:05 ◼   ► - I guess. - Yeah, I imagine.

00:07:06 ◼   ► But when you have it on the side of an iPad,

00:07:08 ◼   ► the play button points upwards,

00:07:11 ◼   ► and then they left the back and previous are up and down.

00:07:14 ◼   ► - I mean, in all fairness, almost any iPad accessory

00:07:17 ◼   ► makes it or itself look sideways at some point.

00:07:21 ◼   ► There's just no getting around that.

00:07:23 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Yeah.

00:07:24 ◼   ► - Anyway, I thought it was interesting.

00:07:25 ◼   ► - That is neat.

00:07:26 ◼   ► - I will say it is quite an ugly setup.

00:07:28 ◼   ► When you scroll down and you see the one

00:07:29 ◼   ► where the iPad has the cable sticking out,

00:07:32 ◼   ► what is now the top port on this thing,

00:07:35 ◼   ► it says get phenomenal 4K video.

00:07:37 ◼   ► You see like-- - Yeah, that's weird.

00:07:38 ◼   ► - Can you, oh man.

00:07:40 ◼   ► This is like part of the problem with any kind of bolt-on accessory or dongle kind of

00:07:47 ◼   ► thing.

00:07:48 ◼   ► You get these great computing devices like an iPad or an iPhone and okay, well now I

00:07:53 ◼   ► want to add this functionality to it and then you have to have this giant clunky thing and

00:07:58 ◼   ► there's wires everywhere all of a sudden.

00:08:01 ◼   ► You start to, again, it's just like the power supply thing.

00:08:03 ◼   ► You start to lose the appeal of the marketing photos very quickly.

00:08:07 ◼   ► And spoilers for 6 colors like Apple yearly report thing that I just filled out and sent

00:08:13 ◼   ► to Jason today, but one of my comments about the iPad was like basically now that the MacBook

00:08:19 ◼   ► Pros got their ports back, maybe it's time to reconsider whether the iPad Pro should

00:08:24 ◼   ► have more than one port on it.

00:08:26 ◼   ► Because hey, it is Pro and they're pretty big and the one port they have is like a Thunderbolt-y

00:08:30 ◼   ► USB-C type thing, but really just one on the Pro product.

00:08:33 ◼   ► room for more and that could save you from at least some of this mess.

00:08:36 ◼   ► Yeah, although I mean honestly like having a Thunderbolt on there on the most recent

00:08:40 ◼   ► ones is great because then you can just use one of these hubs if you need to. But yeah,

00:08:44 ◼   ► definitely obviously you know it's much better to have you know built-in ports as I've always

00:08:49 ◼   ► argued because first of all they're free. You know it's you know a lot of people will

00:08:54 ◼   ► excuse the lack of some kind of port by saying oh it's fine just buy a dongle but like you

00:08:58 ◼   ► you don't consider the cost of dongles.

00:09:00 ◼   ► Like these Thunderbolt expansion dongles are $200.

00:09:04 ◼   ► And for a lot of people, that's a significant investment

00:09:07 ◼   ► for something that they think should probably be built in

00:09:11 ◼   ► to the product.

00:09:12 ◼   ► But then you also have to carry it.

00:09:13 ◼   ► You gotta plug it in somehow.

00:09:15 ◼   ► Like you gotta power them.

00:09:16 ◼   ► It's a big thing to have them built in.

00:09:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, obviously they're not free,

00:09:20 ◼   ► free when they're on the iPad

00:09:21 ◼   ► and then it costs more to manufacture them

00:09:23 ◼   ► and so on and so forth.

00:09:24 ◼   ► But we're not saying like,

00:09:25 ◼   ► hey, you should have HDMI and SD card slot

00:09:27 ◼   ► and five USB-A or whatever, we're just saying,

00:09:29 ◼   ► maybe how about two Thunderbolt ports?

00:09:31 ◼   ► One, maybe three, on all three sides.

00:09:34 ◼   ► Just rethinking whether one is the right number,

00:09:38 ◼   ► especially for the really gigantic 13-inch

00:09:41 ◼   ► or whatever it is, iPad Pro.

00:09:44 ◼   ► Maybe one or two also very small Thunderbolt ports

00:09:49 ◼   ► would be appropriate for a device

00:09:50 ◼   ► at that price and capability.

00:09:52 ◼   ► - Do you think, though, I mean,

00:09:54 ◼   ► I don't wanna start a thing with the iPad people,

00:09:56 ◼   ► but do you think anybody's using the port for more--

00:10:00 ◼   ► - Well, that gets into your story from the previous week

00:10:03 ◼   ► about how terrible iPad OS is at taking advantage

00:10:07 ◼   ► of the stuff that's in there.

00:10:08 ◼   ► So it's got the same M1 chip as the Max, right?

00:10:11 ◼   ► But the Max are just so much more capable

00:10:13 ◼   ► and it's not because the hardware is less capable.

00:10:14 ◼   ► The hardware on the iPad is great.

00:10:16 ◼   ► It's because the OS is cranky about just doing

00:10:19 ◼   ► what you would expect a computer to do

00:10:21 ◼   ► when you plug in a storage peripheral.

00:10:23 ◼   ► And again, it's not like Apple doesn't have an OS

00:10:24 ◼   ► that understands how to deal with external storage.

00:10:28 ◼   ► The hardware is limiting it a little bit

00:10:29 ◼   ► and then you only got the one port

00:10:30 ◼   ► acting like it's an iPad from, you know,

00:10:33 ◼   ► what year did the iPad come out?

00:10:34 ◼   ► - 2010. - 2010, yeah.

00:10:35 ◼   ► It's not 2010 anymore.

00:10:36 ◼   ► The iPad is so much more powerful and capable.

00:10:39 ◼   ► It's an amazing machine.

00:10:40 ◼   ► Still just got the one little, thinky little port on it.

00:10:42 ◼   ► And then on top of that, the OS,

00:10:43 ◼   ► even though it's making moves in the right direction,

00:10:45 ◼   ► is so slow to just sort of let us do

00:10:47 ◼   ► what we know the hardware can do.

00:10:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

00:10:50 ◼   ► I still, I mean, again, I don't wanna get into a thing,

00:10:53 ◼   ► but I think Apple really still hasn't found

00:10:58 ◼   ► like where the iPad Pro is supposed to be,

00:11:02 ◼   ► what it's supposed to really be able to do software wise.

00:11:06 ◼   ► Hardware wise, it's very capable

00:11:08 ◼   ► and we've been saying this for years,

00:11:10 ◼   ► everyone's been saying this for years,

00:11:11 ◼   ► like the iPad hardware seems to be way over provisioned

00:11:15 ◼   ► for the software's actual needs

00:11:18 ◼   ► and actual use of gen limitations.

00:11:20 ◼   ► And that iPad power users for years have said,

00:11:23 ◼   ► hey this hardware is great, please make the software

00:11:26 ◼   ► allow us to do more things,

00:11:27 ◼   ► or make it more pro-friendly in some way.

00:11:30 ◼   ► And it just seems like that whole dream

00:11:35 ◼   ► really kind of fizzled out a lot

00:11:38 ◼   ► over the last couple years with the massive improvement

00:11:41 ◼   ► happening in the MacBook line with the switch to the M1.

00:11:44 ◼   ► And I know a lot of iPad people have recently switched back

00:11:49 ◼   ► to MacBook Airs or something and are very happy there.

00:11:52 ◼   ► And I wonder if the whole iPad Pro project, maybe,

00:11:57 ◼   ► or initiative, maybe is not panning out.

00:12:03 ◼   ► - I mean, I think it's working fine.

00:12:04 ◼   ► They're just going slowly.

00:12:05 ◼   ► But I think the matching hardware,

00:12:06 ◼   ► now that it's M1 just like the Macs,

00:12:08 ◼   ► just really highlights, like,

00:12:11 ◼   ► we don't, like, iPad OS doesn't need all that baggage

00:12:14 ◼   ► it used to have, that it used to have

00:12:16 ◼   ► because iPads were obviously less than Macs.

00:12:18 ◼   ► Like, all the stuff about, like, oh,

00:12:19 ◼   ► we can't have too many background processes

00:12:21 ◼   ► and we're gonna kill your thing

00:12:22 ◼   ► as soon as you add a memory and don't use too much CPU

00:12:24 ◼   ► and don't do this.

00:12:25 ◼   ► It's like, you could,

00:12:26 ◼   ► I know they're not exact matches now,

00:12:28 ◼   ► but you could introduce an iPad Pro

00:12:30 ◼   ► that has the same amount of RAM

00:12:32 ◼   ► and the same system on a chip as a MacBook Air

00:12:35 ◼   ► or even a low-end MacBook Pro

00:12:37 ◼   ► in the case of the big thing, right?

00:12:39 ◼   ► And then what's your excuse?

00:12:41 ◼   ► Why are all those limitations there in iOS?

00:12:43 ◼   ► And some of the limitations are there for safety,

00:12:45 ◼   ► sandboxing and having APIs that can't do weird things

00:12:48 ◼   ► and security, like I understand all that.

00:12:49 ◼   ► Keep all the good stuff,

00:12:51 ◼   ► but all the rest of the things about,

00:12:53 ◼   ► we don't want you to see too many apps on the screen at once

00:12:55 ◼   ► 'cause it could be too confusing,

00:12:57 ◼   ► and that we have really limited multitasking,

00:12:59 ◼   ► and we don't want you to be able to arbitrarily place thing

00:13:01 ◼   ► and not don't have too many floating things,

00:13:03 ◼   ► and don't have many programs running at once,

00:13:05 ◼   ► and only give yourself limited time in the background,

00:13:08 ◼   ► and the OS will kill your app.

00:13:09 ◼   ► Those type of limitations make less and less sense

00:13:12 ◼   ► when you could have essentially identical hardware

00:13:15 ◼   ► in a low-end to mid-range Mac and the high-end iPad.

00:13:19 ◼   ► And that's before we get to the stuff of like,

00:13:22 ◼   ► why is the files app so cranky, right?

00:13:24 ◼   ► Like why did it not read Marco's card, but the Mac did.

00:13:26 ◼   ► There's nothing about that,

00:13:27 ◼   ► that reading external storage in a sane way,

00:13:31 ◼   ► no feature that we like about the iPad,

00:13:34 ◼   ► the simplicity, the security, the sandboxing or whatever,

00:13:37 ◼   ► none of that precludes doing a better job

00:13:39 ◼   ► at what Marco was trying to do with external storage

00:13:41 ◼   ► on these pro products.

00:13:42 ◼   ► And none of it precludes having one or two more ports either.

00:13:44 ◼   ► Like you can do all of that.

00:13:46 ◼   ► It's just the OS has not,

00:13:47 ◼   ► it doesn't seem like it's caught up.

00:13:48 ◼   ► It's like when a teenager grows real fast

00:13:52 ◼   ► and their brain doesn't keep up with the new size

00:13:56 ◼   ► of their body and they become awkward and bump into things.

00:13:59 ◼   ► That's like what the iPad Pro is.

00:14:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's wonderfully capable.

00:14:03 ◼   ► Like, again, the hardware is amazing,

00:14:05 ◼   ► and the software can be amazing for certain use profiles,

00:14:10 ◼   ► but it just seems like they have had a lot of trouble

00:14:15 ◼   ► expanding what those use profiles are,

00:14:18 ◼   ► Like expanding the number of people who can and are willing

00:14:22 ◼   ► to easily get their work done on iPads.

00:14:24 ◼   ► It seems like that, like if you're one of the people

00:14:26 ◼   ► who fits into it, it's great.

00:14:28 ◼   ► But that number of people seems to have

00:14:30 ◼   ► a lot of trouble expanding.

00:14:32 ◼   ► - Like think about the use case that we always hear about

00:14:34 ◼   ► 'cause we're podcasters and we know a bunch of podcasters.

00:14:36 ◼   ► Doing podcast recording on an iPad, you can do it,

00:14:40 ◼   ► but it's way more difficult than it should be.

00:14:42 ◼   ► And there's nothing about podcast recording

00:14:46 ◼   ► that should be a challenge to iPad Pro hardware

00:14:50 ◼   ► in the slightest.

00:14:50 ◼   ► It is all software limitations.

00:14:53 ◼   ► Apple could address that use case.

00:14:55 ◼   ► That should be one of their test cases.

00:14:57 ◼   ► Can you do audio production, both the editing of it,

00:15:00 ◼   ► which is getting much better with the new apps

00:15:02 ◼   ► that are out now, but also the recording of it?

00:15:03 ◼   ► The limitations of the iPad are it doesn't have

00:15:05 ◼   ► great ports for that.

00:15:06 ◼   ► There's no way at the OS level to have the kind of control

00:15:09 ◼   ► over streams of audio from different apps that the Mac has,

00:15:12 ◼   ► and there's no way for third parties to introduce that.

00:15:14 ◼   ► So basically people are stuck.

00:15:16 ◼   ► It's like why do you have to use a Mac

00:15:17 ◼   ► to record your podcast?

00:15:19 ◼   ► 'Cause it's just so much more of a pain on the iPad.

00:15:22 ◼   ► It's so much more limiting on the iPad

00:15:23 ◼   ► and it doesn't have to be.

00:15:25 ◼   ► But so far Apple has not addressed that use case

00:15:27 ◼   ► at the OS level or the hardware level.

00:15:29 ◼   ► And it's a shame 'cause the hardware,

00:15:30 ◼   ► in terms of how strenuous would it be

00:15:33 ◼   ► to stream something over Zoom at the same time

00:15:36 ◼   ► as you're recording it into two different files

00:15:38 ◼   ► and formats that you care about at the same time

00:15:40 ◼   ► as you have a soundboard hooked in or whatever,

00:15:42 ◼   ► the iPad hardware can do that no problem.

00:15:43 ◼   ► It's not just gonna choke on the audio streams.

00:15:45 ◼   ► It would barely break a sweat.

00:15:47 ◼   ► But software support just isn't there.

00:15:50 ◼   ► - I think your analogy of a teenager growing too quickly

00:15:53 ◼   ► is really apt because I feel like,

00:15:56 ◼   ► all of us have said this many times,

00:15:59 ◼   ► so I'm trying not to repeat myself too much here,

00:16:00 ◼   ► but I feel like the foundations of iPadOS,

00:16:03 ◼   ► well, not bad by any stretch of the imagination.

00:16:05 ◼   ► I think the foundation's getting a little creaky

00:16:08 ◼   ► 'cause so many things have been bolted onto the side of it.

00:16:12 ◼   ► I cannot tell you the amount of times that I'm browsing in Safari and I go to do a right-to-left

00:16:17 ◼   ► swipe.

00:16:18 ◼   ► What is that, going forward again?

00:16:20 ◼   ► I was going to be going forward on Safari.

00:16:22 ◼   ► And next thing I know, I have a slide-over app coming in from the right-hand side of

00:16:25 ◼   ► the screen, which is arguably the gesture that the iPad thinks I want, but it is certainly

00:16:31 ◼   ► not the gesture I actually want.

00:16:34 ◼   ► And because there's no real equivalent for a mouse, you know, again, the trackpad on

00:16:39 ◼   ► the magic keyboard notwithstanding, you can't assume that there's always a mouse connected.

00:16:43 ◼   ► And so all these things have to be done with gestures, but there's only so many ways to

00:16:47 ◼   ► gesture on a single rectangular screen.

00:16:49 ◼   ► And I just feel like I hear what you're saying, and I agree with you about doing audio production

00:16:55 ◼   ► on an iPad, but thinking about how to manage microphones and connectivity and the thought

00:17:02 ◼   ► of doing something like with loopback, which presumably wouldn't be possible where you're

00:17:06 ◼   ► creating virtual microphones and things like that. The thought of managing all that in

00:17:10 ◼   ► iPadOS makes me want to cry, whereas managing that macOS is mostly okay. And it makes me

00:17:16 ◼   ► want to cry both as a user and a developer. Like, putting myself in Apple shoes, like,

00:17:20 ◼   ► how do you manage that? Like, what is a not-crummy user interface for that? Especially since

00:17:25 ◼   ► an iPad is supposed to go from a completely casual user to a completely casual user, like

00:17:31 ◼   ► my grandmother to Federico Vittucci. You know, like it's supposed to span that whole range.

00:17:37 ◼   ► And it's actually in some ways the same problem that Swift is running into. And that Swift

00:17:41 ◼   ► fancies itself being able to be a learning language and being able to be like a firmware

00:17:46 ◼   ► low level language. But that is such a wide swath of problems to solve. And there's so

00:17:52 ◼   ► many trade-offs involved that someone's getting screwed no matter how you slice it. There's

00:17:56 ◼   ► really a tweet that you retweeted from not underscore David Smith, the Apple employee

00:18:00 ◼   ► David Smith that talks about this, if I can find it,

00:18:02 ◼   ► I'll put it in the show notes.

00:18:03 ◼   ► But anyway, it's just so much to ask the iPad to do,

00:18:05 ◼   ► and I agree, like hardware-wise, it's not a problem,

00:18:08 ◼   ► but software-wise, it is so much that I don't,

00:18:11 ◼   ► I just, I can't fathom, this is why I don't work at Apple,

00:18:13 ◼   ► I can't fathom how to make that livable.

00:18:17 ◼   ► - Well, and I think it covers the, like,

00:18:18 ◼   ► the simpler end of the spectrum of needs.

00:18:21 ◼   ► Like, you know, like our, the old example of like,

00:18:23 ◼   ► oh, I have this non-technical friend or relative,

00:18:25 ◼   ► and they have an iPad, and they love it,

00:18:27 ◼   ► and it's their only computer,

00:18:28 ◼   ► and it's freeing them to do whatever, like,

00:18:30 ◼   ► That's real and that's big.

00:18:32 ◼   ► And I would say that's probably the majority of the iPad usage

00:18:36 ◼   ► that I see in the, quote, "real world."

00:18:39 ◼   ► Anecdotally, when I see who's using iPads around me

00:18:42 ◼   ► or outside of my immediate tech bubble.

00:18:45 ◼   ► And it's not nerds.

00:18:48 ◼   ► It's usually people for whom that

00:18:50 ◼   ► is their primary computing device, maybe

00:18:52 ◼   ► secondary to their phone.

00:18:54 ◼   ► But it's people who don't use a laptop or desktop computer

00:18:59 ◼   ► routinely.

00:19:00 ◼   ► that is their laptop or desktop computer.

00:19:02 ◼   ► And for that role, it does very, very well,

00:19:05 ◼   ► and it has for a decade.

00:19:07 ◼   ► That's great.

00:19:08 ◼   ► It's how you get the higher end of usage.

00:19:12 ◼   ► Most iPad Pros that I see were bought

00:19:16 ◼   ► because at the time they were sold,

00:19:19 ◼   ► they were the biggest iPad.

00:19:21 ◼   ► They still are.

00:19:22 ◼   ► So it was bought more for size or for one

00:19:25 ◼   ► of their hardware capabilities like the pencil support

00:19:29 ◼   ► or something like that, rather than I need this

00:19:32 ◼   ► to be really fast and to have a Thunderbolt port

00:19:34 ◼   ► and plug in my mixer or whatever, I see that way less.

00:19:38 ◼   ► And maybe that's just the people I'm hanging out with,

00:19:40 ◼   ► or the people that I hear from or whatever.

00:19:42 ◼   ► But it seems like, I mean the iPad, even for me,

00:19:45 ◼   ► its entire existence, the iPad has always covered

00:19:48 ◼   ► the simpler end of needs very, very well,

00:19:52 ◼   ► in many ways better than desktop and laptop computers do.

00:19:57 ◼   ► But it's like how do you broaden that

00:20:00 ◼   ► to cover more productivity needs, high end needs,

00:20:04 ◼   ► and they've tried a bunch of different things

00:20:06 ◼   ► I think with mixed success.

00:20:08 ◼   ► Some of the areas that they have gone in the pro direction

00:20:12 ◼   ► they've done very well in, but it seems like there's,

00:20:16 ◼   ► if I can characterize it, it always kind of feels like

00:20:18 ◼   ► in my mind kind of like a city of very tall skyscrapers.

00:20:21 ◼   ► And it's like you have all these,

00:20:24 ◼   ► A skyscraper is basically like a very tall walled garden.

00:20:28 ◼   ► If you're in one of these use cases,

00:20:30 ◼   ► the sky's the limit, you can go great,

00:20:32 ◼   ► but as soon as you try to step out of it a little bit,

00:20:34 ◼   ► or if your needs are not quite in the square peg hole

00:20:38 ◼   ► or whatever, I know I'm mixing a lot of metaphors here,

00:20:41 ◼   ► forgive me, I'm tired, but if your needs fall

00:20:46 ◼   ► a little bit out of the norm, or out of what Apple considered

00:20:50 ◼   ► or designed for, you hit a wall.

00:20:52 ◼   ► You just can't do that on the iPad.

00:20:55 ◼   ► Or jumping over that wall is a ridiculous amount of effort

00:20:59 ◼   ► that really would take a Federico or somebody on that level

00:21:04 ◼   ► to actually overcome.

00:21:06 ◼   ► And it's that characteristic of the kinds of barriers

00:21:11 ◼   ► you run into on iPad OS and how hard you hit them

00:21:16 ◼   ► and how few options you often have to go around them.

00:21:19 ◼   ► That, I think, is where people run into so much trouble

00:21:23 ◼   ► and frustration trying to get it to do

00:21:26 ◼   ► slightly out of bounds things.

00:21:29 ◼   ► - I think Apple's close though.

00:21:31 ◼   ► They're creeping up on it.

00:21:32 ◼   ► They haven't found it yet,

00:21:33 ◼   ► mostly because they're resisting the urge

00:21:34 ◼   ► to just put Windows on it, not like,

00:21:36 ◼   ► mess off Windows, but like,

00:21:38 ◼   ► the actual interface element of Windows.

00:21:39 ◼   ► But just to give people an example of like,

00:21:41 ◼   ► what we're all doing on our Macs as we speak here now,

00:21:44 ◼   ► like when we never record a podcast,

00:21:47 ◼   ► We've got our show notes open.

00:21:49 ◼   ► It's a Google Doc, so it's in a web browser, and it's in a tab.

00:21:52 ◼   ► We've got something recording our audio.

00:21:54 ◼   ► For me, it's Audio Hijack, which is recording my audio.

00:21:57 ◼   ► And it's sometimes into multiple files,

00:21:59 ◼   ► depending on how we care.

00:22:00 ◼   ► It lets you either record a single file or multiple files

00:22:02 ◼   ► with different tracks or all sorts of stuff like that.

00:22:04 ◼   ► Of course, we're running Zoom.

00:22:05 ◼   ► It's what we're using for the live--

00:22:07 ◼   ► not live stream, but that's what goes on to the live stream,

00:22:09 ◼   ► is our Zoom conversation, because it has a higher

00:22:11 ◼   ► quality than Skype.

00:22:14 ◼   ► We're also in the chat room that we refer to.

00:22:16 ◼   ► it's an IRC channel and we have an IRC client

00:22:19 ◼   ► that we're running on our screens.

00:22:21 ◼   ► And then if we ever go to a link or something,

00:22:23 ◼   ► we say, hey, check out this link,

00:22:24 ◼   ► and we'll open another browser tab or another browser window

00:22:26 ◼   ► to look at the link we're discussing.

00:22:28 ◼   ► Or if I say I put something into Slack,

00:22:30 ◼   ► then we hop over to Slack and see that.

00:22:31 ◼   ► But in general, on the screen at the same time,

00:22:33 ◼   ► we're able to see audio recording, our show notes,

00:22:35 ◼   ► maybe a webpage, an IRC.

00:22:37 ◼   ► Already, we've pushed past the limits

00:22:39 ◼   ► of what you can reasonably do on even the biggest iPad,

00:22:41 ◼   ► not because of the hardware limitations.

00:22:43 ◼   ► It's a 13-inch screen,

00:22:44 ◼   ► the power of the system on a chip is entirely there.

00:22:46 ◼   ► all those capabilities are there.

00:22:48 ◼   ► But just because the iPad is like, no, you can't,

00:22:50 ◼   ► I'm sorry, you can't do that many things at once.

00:22:52 ◼   ► And honestly, it's not that many things, right?

00:22:55 ◼   ► It's a webpage, a tiny window with an IRC channel,

00:22:58 ◼   ► and we can look at our levels in the little recorder.

00:23:00 ◼   ► I don't even really need to look at the Zoom window,

00:23:01 ◼   ► although I do like to have it there,

00:23:02 ◼   ► but I can hit the little mute button

00:23:03 ◼   ► that's on the Zoom thing when I call for whatever, right?

00:23:06 ◼   ► This is not like, oh, I need system hacks and extensions,

00:23:10 ◼   ► and like loopback is not involved.

00:23:13 ◼   ► Now granted, AudioHijack that we're using to record

00:23:15 ◼   ► does have a system extension thing that lets it do that,

00:23:17 ◼   ► but this is why Apple should build this into the US.

00:23:19 ◼   ► What does Apple need to do this on the iPad?

00:23:20 ◼   ► They need a system level service where it says,

00:23:22 ◼   ► "Hey, do you want raw access to the audio streams

00:23:24 ◼   ► "flying through iOS?

00:23:26 ◼   ► "Here is a public API for you to use."

00:23:28 ◼   ► You know, maybe rogue amoeba wouldn't jump on it

00:23:30 ◼   ► because they really hate Apple's usual limitations,

00:23:33 ◼   ► but if they just made the thing for that,

00:23:34 ◼   ► third parties will fill that gap.

00:23:36 ◼   ► We have a choice of IRC client.

00:23:38 ◼   ► We have a choice of what we wanna use for our communication.

00:23:40 ◼   ► We use Skype, now we're using Zoom.

00:23:43 ◼   ► Choice of web browser, Google Docs,

00:23:44 ◼   ► other type of document, those choices exist

00:23:47 ◼   ► on iPad OS and on iOS.

00:23:49 ◼   ► The only thing that doesn't exist is,

00:23:50 ◼   ► hey, hardware that's totally capable of doing this,

00:23:53 ◼   ► can I sort of do all those things at once?

00:23:55 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, I hope you like swiping.

00:23:57 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:23:59 ◼   ► It's not, they're so close, right?

00:24:02 ◼   ► And again, we're not asking for,

00:24:04 ◼   ► I need command line access and no sandboxing

00:24:06 ◼   ► and total free for all.

00:24:07 ◼   ► No, you didn't, like, to do what we're doing now,

00:24:10 ◼   ► the iPad is very close to allowing that,

00:24:12 ◼   ► but it's far enough away that it's really annoying

00:24:15 ◼   ► to do that, so much so that when any of our podcaster

00:24:18 ◼   ► friends need to record a podcast,

00:24:20 ◼   ► they usually turn to a Mac to do it.

00:24:22 ◼   ► - I'm not sure we're as close as you think we are,

00:24:25 ◼   ► because on the Mac, you just mentioned,

00:24:29 ◼   ► many of us use AudioHijack.

00:24:31 ◼   ► AudioHijack relies on a system extension, as you said,

00:24:35 ◼   ► and you just can't do that on iOS.

00:24:38 ◼   ► There's lots of security and policy,

00:24:41 ◼   ► App Store policy reasons why you just can't do anything

00:24:44 ◼   ► like that on iOS.

00:24:45 ◼   ► And that's the kind of thing, like I can't see Apple

00:24:48 ◼   ► ever adding that on iOS.

00:24:49 ◼   ► 'Cause if you think about, not only would you need

00:24:52 ◼   ► some kind of, again, Apple approved method of controlling

00:24:56 ◼   ► and intercepting the audio of other apps,

00:25:00 ◼   ► which I know they have Audio Bus,

00:25:02 ◼   ► that's a very different thing.

00:25:03 ◼   ► This is like, apps that have not opted into this system

00:25:07 ◼   ► can have their audio captured or rerouted by this program.

00:25:11 ◼   ► there's no way Apple would ever allow that on iOS.

00:25:14 ◼   ► If Apple made any new system,

00:25:15 ◼   ► any new platform Apple makes from now and in the future,

00:25:18 ◼   ► we'll never allow something like that to be done by apps.

00:25:21 ◼   ► - I don't know that they would never do it,

00:25:22 ◼   ► because I feel like if it's a sort of opt-in dual handshake,

00:25:26 ◼   ► you know, the two applications have to mutually agree

00:25:29 ◼   ► that they allow it to happen.

00:25:30 ◼   ► Like, the only way you can do this right

00:25:32 ◼   ► is at the OS level, 'cause you're never gonna allow

00:25:34 ◼   ► it a system extension like they do on the Mac,

00:25:36 ◼   ► so Apple has to do it,

00:25:37 ◼   ► and Apple can do it in a way that's secure.

00:25:40 ◼   ► - Oh, they could, yeah.

00:25:41 ◼   ► I mean, it could be very similar to,

00:25:43 ◼   ► like, you know, the Mac permission dialogues that say,

00:25:45 ◼   ► like, do you wanna allow this app to control your screen?

00:25:47 ◼   ► - Please, make it better than that.

00:25:49 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, that's true.

00:25:51 ◼   ► - We can do so much better.

00:25:52 ◼   ► But I'm saying, like, make it have dual handshake.

00:25:53 ◼   ► Not only does one app have to request it,

00:25:55 ◼   ► but then the other have to receive it,

00:25:56 ◼   ► just make a better UI to that.

00:25:58 ◼   ► Like, by all means, it can be as sort of,

00:26:01 ◼   ► it can be, technically, it can be as cumbersome as you want.

00:26:03 ◼   ► I'm just arguing for less cumbersome.

00:26:04 ◼   ► But the number of steps required can be the same.

00:26:07 ◼   ► you know, two way handshake, double confirmation,

00:26:10 ◼   ► explicit connection between two apps,

00:26:12 ◼   ► because for our situation,

00:26:13 ◼   ► it's not like we need arbitrary apps every week.

00:26:15 ◼   ► We know the apps that are gonna be involved,

00:26:17 ◼   ► and if we change our mind and use a different thing,

00:26:19 ◼   ► we'll just re-handshake those.

00:26:20 ◼   ► Like, this is all possible.

00:26:23 ◼   ► And the main thing I was trying to get at is,

00:26:25 ◼   ► it's nice to be able to see all these things at once.

00:26:27 ◼   ► And even on a 13-inch screen,

00:26:28 ◼   ► even if you have to make the windows small,

00:26:29 ◼   ► just talking to Jason in Slack

00:26:31 ◼   ► 'cause he's listening to this thing live,

00:26:33 ◼   ► my IRC window for looking at the chat room is tiny.

00:26:36 ◼   ► Even on my XDR, I could make it a lot bigger, but I don't.

00:26:38 ◼   ► Like, I don't need to see thousands of lines of everything.

00:26:41 ◼   ► Same thing with the show notes.

00:26:42 ◼   ► I don't need to see the entire document.

00:26:44 ◼   ► It's way too long for that.

00:26:45 ◼   ► I just need to see a little bit.

00:26:46 ◼   ► And for the audio hijack,

00:26:48 ◼   ► I make the window as small as I can.

00:26:49 ◼   ► I wish I could make it smaller.

00:26:50 ◼   ► I think I complained to Paul about that one,

00:26:52 ◼   ► but I wish I could make my audio hijack window smaller

00:26:54 ◼   ► 'cause I just want to see the levels meter

00:26:56 ◼   ► and see that it's recording

00:26:57 ◼   ► and maybe see the time, right?

00:26:59 ◼   ► This fits on a 13-inch screen,

00:27:01 ◼   ► provided you can use the amazing technology

00:27:04 ◼   ► that we call lowercase w windows, iPad OS isn't there yet.

00:27:08 ◼   ► I'm not saying it necessarily needs to go there,

00:27:10 ◼   ► but the current system of slidey things

00:27:13 ◼   ► plus maybe a floater here and there

00:27:15 ◼   ► is not adequate for being able to do this.

00:27:18 ◼   ► And then, like I said, and then there's a thing of like,

00:27:19 ◼   ► oh, I wanna look at a webpage.

00:27:21 ◼   ► Now do I lose everything?

00:27:22 ◼   ► How do I get back to it?

00:27:23 ◼   ► I don't know how close we are,

00:27:25 ◼   ► 'cause like Casey said, you know, what is the solution?

00:27:27 ◼   ► It's not super obvious.

00:27:28 ◼   ► I'm like, you should do exactly this thing.

00:27:29 ◼   ► You'll make everybody happy.

00:27:30 ◼   ► That's not clear, because unless your answer

00:27:32 ◼   ► is just make it like a Mac,

00:27:33 ◼   ► in which case, why even have the iPad exist?

00:27:35 ◼   ► I don't say, just make it like a Mac.

00:27:37 ◼   ► We've got Macs for that.

00:27:38 ◼   ► But I think there is a way to get from where we are now

00:27:41 ◼   ► to something closer to the capabilities

00:27:44 ◼   ► of a low-end small Mac.

00:27:45 ◼   ► Well, I don't know.

00:27:46 ◼   ► I mean, maybe the way it is now with all these limitations

00:27:49 ◼   ► is the best balance.

00:27:51 ◼   ► Because the answer to many of these things

00:27:53 ◼   ► is, well, if you need to do that,

00:27:54 ◼   ► I guess you should just get a Mac.

00:27:55 ◼   ► You're right.

00:27:56 ◼   ► That is kind of a crappy answer to give somebody.

00:27:58 ◼   ► But what if that's true?

00:28:01 ◼   ► All of the reasons why people love iPads,

00:28:05 ◼   ► many of those depend on the extreme software limitations

00:28:10 ◼   ► that it has.

00:28:11 ◼   ► I think what we've seen with iPad multitasking

00:28:15 ◼   ► over the years is it's been a really bumpy road,

00:28:20 ◼   ► trying to expand the iPad software capabilities

00:28:24 ◼   ► into something that works more like a laptop

00:28:26 ◼   ► in those kind of more power usury ways.

00:28:30 ◼   ► We're trying to keep the iPad exactly as great as it is.

00:28:34 ◼   ► We're trying to lose none of the greatness,

00:28:35 ◼   ► none of the simplicity, but add, somehow, add complexity

00:28:39 ◼   ► without losing any of the simplicity.

00:28:41 ◼   ► And I think what we've seen over the history

00:28:43 ◼   ► of multitasking so far is that it basically

00:28:45 ◼   ► has failed at doing that.

00:28:46 ◼   ► That iPad multitasking, I think, has largely been a failure

00:28:50 ◼   ► in the sense that it hasn't been very easy

00:28:54 ◼   ► for people to figure out, and it has made the simplicity

00:28:58 ◼   ► of the iPad less so and less successful.

00:29:01 ◼   ► Because many people accidentally invoke multitasking gestures

00:29:04 ◼   ► and they can't figure out how to fix them

00:29:06 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:29:07 ◼   ► So right before the iPad came out,

00:29:10 ◼   ► there were heavy rumors that Apple was doing a tablet.

00:29:13 ◼   ► Tablets were like the cool thing at that moment.

00:29:15 ◼   ► That was like the hot thing and everyone

00:29:16 ◼   ► took a tablet to the future.

00:29:18 ◼   ► But nerds like us were writing blog posts and stuff saying,

00:29:21 ◼   ► OK, tablets are interesting maybe,

00:29:22 ◼   ► but how are we going to solve the text input problem?

00:29:26 ◼   ► Tablets historically, the few that had come out before that,

00:29:29 ◼   ► they always kind of had weird, not very good text input.

00:29:33 ◼   ► And there's not really a good way

00:29:35 ◼   ► to have a physical keyboard with a tablet

00:29:37 ◼   ► and just make some giant flip around thing.

00:29:39 ◼   ► And well, onscreen keyboards or handwriting recognition

00:29:43 ◼   ► or voice control or something, those are all possibilities,

00:29:45 ◼   ► but they all have very strong limitations.

00:29:47 ◼   ► And when Apple was rumored to be making a tablet,

00:29:49 ◼   ► everyone's like, oh, this is going to be great.

00:29:51 ◼   ► And everyone kind of thought that somehow they

00:29:53 ◼   ► They would have some idea that would somehow

00:29:56 ◼   ► break through that input, that text input barrier,

00:29:59 ◼   ► and would somehow be amazing.

00:30:02 ◼   ► And the iPad came out and it just didn't.

00:30:05 ◼   ► It didn't break through the text input barrier.

00:30:07 ◼   ► It just supported whatever awkward method you wanted to use

00:30:10 ◼   ► and figure, well, we'll kick this can down the road

00:30:13 ◼   ► and see if we ever come up with anything better,

00:30:14 ◼   ► but for now we're just gonna stick with the weird balance

00:30:17 ◼   ► of options we have and you're gonna find ways

00:30:19 ◼   ► that you love this thing anyway.

00:30:21 ◼   ► Maybe that's what multitasking is,

00:30:22 ◼   ► And maybe that's what a lot of this pro feature wanting

00:30:25 ◼   ► will end up being, where we keep thinking,

00:30:28 ◼   ► oh, they have to somehow figure out a way

00:30:29 ◼   ► to keep every bit of the simplicity and security

00:30:34 ◼   ► and all that stuff, and yet somehow add all this power

00:30:37 ◼   ► to it.

00:30:38 ◼   ► And maybe the answer is they can't do that,

00:30:40 ◼   ► and they shouldn't do that.

00:30:42 ◼   ► Maybe the answer is if you actually

00:30:44 ◼   ► want to do those more powerful things,

00:30:47 ◼   ► the Mac is probably what you should be using.

00:30:50 ◼   ► - I think it's definitely possible.

00:30:52 ◼   ► because they're so close.

00:30:52 ◼   ► Like I agree with you that they screwed it up.

00:30:54 ◼   ► Like I think they tried too hard to be different and simple

00:30:58 ◼   ► and in the end made something

00:30:59 ◼   ► that's actually more complicated in terms of the multitasking.

00:31:01 ◼   ► We've discussed this a lot in the past.

00:31:03 ◼   ► It's mostly because they didn't want

00:31:04 ◼   ► to just do the obvious thing.

00:31:06 ◼   ► But I think, speaking of text input,

00:31:09 ◼   ► sometimes the obvious thing is pointing you

00:31:11 ◼   ► in the right direction.

00:31:12 ◼   ► Eventually they did just make a flippy keyboard

00:31:14 ◼   ► and you know what, people loved it.

00:31:15 ◼   ► Like that's the obvious solution.

00:31:16 ◼   ► Hey, how did we deal with text input?

00:31:17 ◼   ► What if I had a keyboard attached?

00:31:18 ◼   ► Oh, I don't want a keyboard attached

00:31:19 ◼   ► that makes it more like a laptop, a weird floppy,

00:31:21 ◼   ► People love it, right?

00:31:23 ◼   ► Cursor support, how long did they fight against,

00:31:25 ◼   ► no, there's no cursor on the iPad,

00:31:26 ◼   ► what are you talking about?

00:31:27 ◼   ► It's direct manipulation,

00:31:28 ◼   ► as discussed on previous episodes, right?

00:31:31 ◼   ► That touched on my finger, there's no cursor.

00:31:32 ◼   ► They added cursor support.

00:31:33 ◼   ► They did it in an iPad-y way, and people love it.

00:31:36 ◼   ► And cursor support and keyboard support

00:31:38 ◼   ► does not take away from the simplicity of the iPad.

00:31:41 ◼   ► If you give someone an iPad without a keyboard,

00:31:43 ◼   ► they'll never need to know about cursor support,

00:31:45 ◼   ► they'll never need to deal with a floppy keyboard,

00:31:46 ◼   ► they'll just use the onscreen thing.

00:31:48 ◼   ► Like, I think it is possible.

00:31:49 ◼   ► Again, we're not saying you have to be able

00:31:51 ◼   ► to do everything you do on a Mac Pro, on an iPad.

00:31:53 ◼   ► We're just saying, can we get close to the use cases

00:31:56 ◼   ► that would fit on like a MacBook Air?

00:31:58 ◼   ► And I think we can, Apple just hasn't yet.

00:32:01 ◼   ► And there are lots of barriers,

00:32:02 ◼   ► as Jason's pointing out in the chat room here,

00:32:04 ◼   ► he's the fourth member of the show this week.

00:32:07 ◼   ► Some of the stuff that Apple is doing,

00:32:08 ◼   ► like with the quick notes and the floating windows, right?

00:32:11 ◼   ► It's like, oh, those might be useful elements,

00:32:14 ◼   ► but they're only Apple and third parties can't add them,

00:32:16 ◼   ► or they're very limited,

00:32:18 ◼   ► or Apple only wants you to float certain things.

00:32:19 ◼   ► I saw it recently, somebody had like,

00:32:21 ◼   ► they turned sort of basically the now playing widget

00:32:23 ◼   ► into a floating thing.

00:32:24 ◼   ► Like they made like a video player app

00:32:26 ◼   ► that shows a now playing interface on it or whatever.

00:32:28 ◼   ► Because they just wanted to have a floating thing

00:32:30 ◼   ► that showed the currently playing music

00:32:31 ◼   ► so they could have like a window on screen all the time

00:32:33 ◼   ► with their music controls on it.

00:32:35 ◼   ► I'm surprised they didn't get rejected from the app store

00:32:37 ◼   ► saying no, uh-uh, that's only supposed to be

00:32:39 ◼   ► for playing video.

00:32:40 ◼   ► I don't want you cheating with the playing videos.

00:32:41 ◼   ► You can show useful thing like music controls.

00:32:44 ◼   ► I guess you gotta get one of those dongles.

00:32:46 ◼   ► - I'm shocked that was allowed by the way.

00:32:47 ◼   ► It's totally fine.

00:32:48 ◼   ► It's probably torn down from the store by the time

00:32:50 ◼   ► this episode's released, but what Apple wants you to do,

00:32:52 ◼   ► I guess, is buy that dongle from Hyper

00:32:54 ◼   ► with the physical media buttons on it or something.

00:32:57 ◼   ► Like, I think we're close,

00:32:59 ◼   ► and I don't think it's unplausible.

00:33:01 ◼   ► I think you can add this functionality

00:33:02 ◼   ► without making the iPad more complicated.

00:33:04 ◼   ► Again, we're not saying you need command line,

00:33:06 ◼   ► root access, kernel extensions, complete,

00:33:09 ◼   ► like, you know, any of that.

00:33:10 ◼   ► - Wait, hold on, by the way, you do need command line.

00:33:12 ◼   ► It can just be in its own little sandbox,

00:33:14 ◼   ► but command line is actually really nice

00:33:16 ◼   ► and really important to lots of people.

00:33:18 ◼   ► You know what I mean, like non-CH rooted, like sandbox,

00:33:21 ◼   ► you know, complete, like you don't need all that stuff.

00:33:23 ◼   ► You can, to get back to the Perl thing

00:33:25 ◼   ► that I think I quoted last week,

00:33:26 ◼   ► make easy things easy and make hard things possible, right?

00:33:29 ◼   ► And we're not saying make hard things

00:33:30 ◼   ► like as easy as they are on the Mac.

00:33:32 ◼   ► The Mac makes lots of easy things kind of hard

00:33:35 ◼   ► and it makes really hard things possible.

00:33:37 ◼   ► I don't know, like if you draw a little overlapping thing,

00:33:39 ◼   ► the iPad expands from very, very simple

00:33:42 ◼   ► up to about the amount of complexity

00:33:44 ◼   ► that you'd have managed to tackle on a small Mac laptop.

00:33:47 ◼   ► This is setting aside my continued hobby horse

00:33:50 ◼   ► of like the drafting table iPad that's the size of an XDR

00:33:53 ◼   ► but lays down on your table, in which case at that point

00:33:55 ◼   ► maybe you should make hard things not just possible

00:33:58 ◼   ► but extremely, extremely possible.

00:34:00 ◼   ► Anyway, this is supposed to be followed by it

00:34:02 ◼   ► and we went off on a long iPad tangent.

00:34:04 ◼   ► But I think we are, I think Apple is traveling down

00:34:07 ◼   ► this road, they're just going more slowly than we'd all like.

00:34:09 ◼   ► - All right, two things, that drafting table thing

00:34:11 ◼   ► would ruin your neck and back.

00:34:12 ◼   ► And secondly, is there a way to disable quick note

00:34:15 ◼   ► on the Mac?

00:34:15 ◼   ► Why would it ruin your neck and back drafting tables are not a new technology?

00:34:19 ◼   ► They've existed for like literally centuries, and I don't think they're ergonomically perfect

00:34:24 ◼   ► But they're not so terrible or at least not any more

00:34:26 ◼   ► Terrible than using a mouse and a keyboard centuries of humans did tons of work for hours and hours monks are illuminating

00:34:32 ◼   ► Manuscripts at drafting table type things. I don't think they're ergonomically that terrible you can have a bad one

00:34:37 ◼   ► You can have a good one, but mice and keyboards probably cause more widespread RSI than

00:34:42 ◼   ► monks at drafting tables ever experienced I

00:34:45 ◼   ► I... buy maybe like cumulative total but I don't think per capita.

00:34:50 ◼   ► Per capita? I don't know.

00:34:52 ◼   ► All I'm saying is it's not ridiculous. You can have a drafting table type setup that is really...

00:34:56 ◼   ► especially if you're doing like fine art types things.

00:34:58 ◼   ► Like the artists choose to work on, you know, an easel and not like, you know, direct manipulation of what's on their canvas.

00:35:05 ◼   ► You know, easel is kind of slanted. Like the whole point of a drafting table type setup, kind of like the Microsoft one,

00:35:09 ◼   ► is you can sort of choose the angle and position you have to find a setup that works for you.

00:35:12 ◼   ► you could be standing or sitting.

00:35:13 ◼   ► It's not-- again, it can--

00:35:16 ◼   ► if you just chucked it on someone's computer desk,

00:35:19 ◼   ► maybe it wouldn't fit right.

00:35:20 ◼   ► But like any new sort of ergonomic setup,

00:35:24 ◼   ► you'll have to adjust to it, just like people

00:35:26 ◼   ► had to adjust to standing desks.

00:35:28 ◼   ► How should they work?

00:35:28 ◼   ► Where should the keyboard and mouse be?

00:35:30 ◼   ► Where should the monitor be when I'm at my standing desk

00:35:32 ◼   ► versus my sitting desk?

00:35:33 ◼   ► I think it could work.

00:35:34 ◼   ► By the way, quick real-time follow-up from nonrevguy

00:35:37 ◼   ► in the chat.

00:35:37 ◼   ► You can disable Quick Note on the Mac.

00:35:39 ◼   ► It's apparently just implemented as a hot corner.

00:35:42 ◼   ► If you go into System Preferences, Desktop,

00:35:43 ◼   ► and Screensaver, go to Hot Corners,

00:35:45 ◼   ► it just pre-set as the bottom right corner.

00:35:48 ◼   ► And so you can just turn that off.

00:35:49 ◼   ► - I've forgotten it was on the Mac,

00:35:51 ◼   ► because I have never seen it.

00:35:52 ◼   ► I would have disabled it immediately if it did.

00:35:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, it keeps popping up whenever I hit that corner

00:35:57 ◼   ► with the mouse.

00:35:57 ◼   ► - Which corner is it by default?

00:35:59 ◼   ► - Bottom right, yeah.

00:36:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I've already got that set to something.

00:36:01 ◼   ► - Yep, same.

00:36:02 ◼   ► - Oh, okay, yeah, see mine was just nothing,

00:36:03 ◼   ► so maybe it overwrote it if it was nothing.

00:36:06 ◼   ► But yeah, I'm very happy to lose that feature.

00:36:09 ◼   ► - Lower right should be Show Desktop.

00:36:10 ◼   ► It's really handy, everybody, try it.

00:36:13 ◼   ► - No, it's not your desktop, it's turn your monitors off.

00:36:15 ◼   ► - No, it's upper right because any old school Mac user

00:36:18 ◼   ► knows upper right is activated after dark

00:36:20 ◼   ► or whatever your screen saver is.

00:36:21 ◼   ► - We are sponsored this week by Linode,

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00:38:11 ◼   ► - Very quickly before we leave the iPad topic,

00:38:17 ◼   ► I would like to say, 'cause I feel like this may come

00:38:21 ◼   ► across negative if you're not really listening

00:38:23 ◼   ► to what we're saying, but all three of us

00:38:25 ◼   ► are really enthusiastic about the future of the iPad

00:38:27 ◼   ► and how it could end up so much better,

00:38:31 ◼   ► I think the two of us at least,

00:38:33 ◼   ► in that it could be a really phenomenal computing platform.

00:38:37 ◼   ► I mean, it is already a phenomenal computing platform.

00:38:39 ◼   ► And I would hope and I would encourage the listener

00:38:42 ◼   ► to realize that we're not,

00:38:44 ◼   ► I mean, it may sound like we're complaining,

00:38:46 ◼   ► but I actually don't think we are.

00:38:47 ◼   ► We're trying to figure out a way to make it better

00:38:50 ◼   ► because it's so great and it has so much potential.

00:38:53 ◼   ► And I'd also like to quickly point out

00:38:55 ◼   ► that I have not bought an iPad

00:38:57 ◼   ► since when Michaela was barely like six or seven months old.

00:39:01 ◼   ► 'Cause the last iPad I bought was the iPad Pro

00:39:06 ◼   ► from 2018 with the new form Apple Pencil at the time

00:39:10 ◼   ► and so on and so forth.

00:39:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, the first 11 inch with USB-C.

00:39:14 ◼   ► That's the same one I'm using still.

00:39:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it still runs great.

00:39:18 ◼   ► It's running better three years on

00:39:19 ◼   ► than I think any other iPad I've ever owned.

00:39:22 ◼   ► And although in a perfect world I'd love to upgrade it,

00:39:26 ◼   ► I don't have any pressing need to upgrade it.

00:39:28 ◼   ► And a lot of people, particularly those

00:39:30 ◼   ► who don't particularly care for Apple,

00:39:32 ◼   ► really like to say that Apple believes

00:39:34 ◼   ► in planned obsolescence and they deliberately

00:39:35 ◼   ► make everything run like crap so you get new stuff and who knows maybe that's

00:39:39 ◼   ► true but I don't think it is and this you know three almost four-year-old iPad

00:39:43 ◼   ► is running great to this day I still use it all the time well yeah me too and

00:39:47 ◼   ► well I don't I don't use it much anymore ever since I did the upstairs laptop but

00:39:50 ◼   ► it's I really enjoyed for many many years having that just always in the

00:39:57 ◼   ► kitchen and ready to go and the problem is like you know as we talked about like

00:40:01 ◼   ► The hardware is so over provisioned.

00:40:04 ◼   ► The reason I bought the iPad Pro was I wanted

00:40:09 ◼   ► the pencil support for doodling and stuff

00:40:11 ◼   ► and diagramming for quick things.

00:40:13 ◼   ► And I wanted a really good four speaker system.

00:40:16 ◼   ► I couldn't care less how fast it is

00:40:18 ◼   ► because what I do on the iPad Pro is play podcasts

00:40:22 ◼   ► and type into Apple Notes when I remember

00:40:24 ◼   ► I need something on my shopping list.

00:40:26 ◼   ► Like oh, next time I go to the store,

00:40:27 ◼   ► better get more milk, I'll go to my iPad,

00:40:29 ◼   ► type that in and add it to my list.

00:40:31 ◼   ► Like that's the kind of usage I have.

00:40:33 ◼   ► And that's why I can use one from 2018

00:40:36 ◼   ► and it doesn't even feel slow.

00:40:38 ◼   ► The battery's not what it used to be anymore,

00:40:40 ◼   ► but I can plug it in frequently anyway and that's fine.

00:40:43 ◼   ► And frankly though, my usage of it has gone down so much

00:40:47 ◼   ► since I decided to just have a laptop in that role

00:40:50 ◼   ► that I don't know if I would replace it if it broke.

00:40:55 ◼   ► Or I certainly, if I were to replace it,

00:40:59 ◼   ► I would replace it with probably an iPad Air,

00:41:02 ◼   ► maybe even the base model if it uses USB-C by then.

00:41:06 ◼   ► I don't need that advancement.

00:41:07 ◼   ► And I think that's been a problem for the iPad

00:41:09 ◼   ► since day one of like what most people do with it

00:41:13 ◼   ► is pretty computationally easy.

00:41:16 ◼   ► And so there really hasn't been a lot of drive

00:41:19 ◼   ► for people to upgrade their iPads unless it changed

00:41:21 ◼   ► some other factor or unless their old one broke.

00:41:24 ◼   ► I think the, I'm very optimistic that the iPad

00:41:27 ◼   ► has a clear future, but I think the iPad's future

00:41:32 ◼   ► is largely going to be what the present is.

00:41:35 ◼   ► I don't see it expanding significantly from where it is now

00:41:39 ◼   ► because I don't see that as being the right tool

00:41:42 ◼   ► for the job, for the jobs that it currently, today,

00:41:45 ◼   ► doesn't do well or doesn't do easily.

00:41:48 ◼   ► That's where, like I see it being a very good product line

00:41:53 ◼   ► for the indefinite future,

00:41:55 ◼   ► but not a particularly expanding one.

00:41:58 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:41:59 ◼   ► All right, so let's go back to follow up.

00:42:02 ◼   ► How long is that?

00:42:03 ◼   ► - 40 minutes later.

00:42:04 ◼   ► - Good grief.

00:42:06 ◼   ► All right, moving right along or something like that.

00:42:09 ◼   ► We were talking about,

00:42:10 ◼   ► I think this was in the context of John, your son,

00:42:13 ◼   ► doing a development in writing his own apps.

00:42:16 ◼   ► We were talking about setting up an Apple Watch

00:42:18 ◼   ► for development, which is everyone's favorite thing

00:42:20 ◼   ► to see in Xcode.

00:42:21 ◼   ► Marco and I immediately said, "Oh, reboot everything."

00:42:24 ◼   ► But Andy Norman pointed out,

00:42:25 ◼   ► make sure you've looked at the watch

00:42:27 ◼   ► and noticed if it's asking to trust the Mac.

00:42:30 ◼   ► It took me a couple of attempts before I noticed that.

00:42:32 ◼   ► I didn't realize that was something

00:42:33 ◼   ► that could interrupt this whole process.

00:42:34 ◼   ► I'm gonna have to pay close attention now.

00:42:36 ◼   ► - Oh, that's the worst.

00:42:38 ◼   ► Because if you, okay, so when the first time

00:42:40 ◼   ► that you connect a watch to,

00:42:42 ◼   ► or the first time you plug in your phone

00:42:45 ◼   ► in development mode with a watch paired to it,

00:42:48 ◼   ► and I think it resets every major OS version,

00:42:50 ◼   ► and of course, if you restore either device,

00:42:53 ◼   ► the first time on the phone it will say trust this computer

00:42:56 ◼   ► and you gotta hit trust and enter your passcode.

00:42:58 ◼   ► It'll do the same thing on the watch

00:43:01 ◼   ► if there's a watch paired to that phone.

00:43:03 ◼   ► And if you either miss that or if you dismiss that dialogue,

00:43:08 ◼   ► it won't show again until I think you reboot

00:43:11 ◼   ► at least the watch, if not both devices.

00:43:14 ◼   ► And if you miss that, this is correct.

00:43:17 ◼   ► Everything will just not work

00:43:19 ◼   ► and it's kind of hard to figure out why.

00:43:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, it'll just spin and it will not tell you

00:43:26 ◼   ► why it's failing.

00:43:27 ◼   ► In the case of my son's thing,

00:43:28 ◼   ► it stopped him from deploying to his iPhone.

00:43:31 ◼   ► He couldn't deploy his app to his iPhone.

00:43:33 ◼   ► He said, "Oh, I'll deploy it to your iPhone

00:43:34 ◼   ► just as soon as I get his watch set up."

00:43:36 ◼   ► And it would just never finish.

00:43:37 ◼   ► And so yeah, we had the process of rebooting

00:43:39 ◼   ► and trying everything again.

00:43:39 ◼   ► Eventually we saw that dialogue.

00:43:41 ◼   ► I forgot to mention last week.

00:43:42 ◼   ► I just didn't want people to get stuck

00:43:43 ◼   ► and not understand why they couldn't progress.

00:43:45 ◼   ► Reboot everything, try again, make sure you watch.

00:43:48 ◼   ► Make sure the watch is close by, that it's charged.

00:43:51 ◼   ► I had him put the watch on his wrist

00:43:52 ◼   ► just because I'm like, maybe it doesn't like

00:43:53 ◼   ► being on the charger.

00:43:54 ◼   ► I was trying to do everything to say,

00:43:56 ◼   ► everybody's cool, we're all near each other,

00:43:58 ◼   ► we're starting this whole thing over,

00:44:00 ◼   ► and then you have to watch for that little thing to pop up

00:44:02 ◼   ► and then make sure you tap the right thing on it.

00:44:05 ◼   ► - Indeed.

00:44:06 ◼   ► We got some recommendations for slideshow apps

00:44:09 ◼   ► to fix Marco's problems.

00:44:10 ◼   ► All of them will go away if you just use the right app.

00:44:12 ◼   ► Right, Marco?

00:44:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I've been keeping track of them

00:44:16 ◼   ► and of what people have said.

00:44:17 ◼   ► I've shown Tiff a few of the options.

00:44:19 ◼   ► So basically, by far the most recommended option is an app called PhotoMagico, which

00:44:26 ◼   ► you're probably going to try out when we make the next slideshow.

00:44:29 ◼   ► A few other people recommended that we just use iMovie or Final Cut Pro.

00:44:34 ◼   ► The reason why I think we didn't jump to that, and I should let Tiff talk about this

00:44:37 ◼   ► at some point, but the reason why we didn't jump to that is because iMovie had really

00:44:43 ◼   ► good, or not iMovie, well back in the day maybe, but Photos, you know, previously iPhoto,

00:44:48 ◼   ► has really good templates where you can just kinda

00:44:50 ◼   ► select a whole bunch of photos and just say,

00:44:52 ◼   ► here, just make something using these

00:44:55 ◼   ► and then I'll adjust if I want to.

00:44:57 ◼   ► And it will do things like multiple photos on screen at once

00:45:01 ◼   ► and have them like flip around in custom ways

00:45:03 ◼   ► and blend into each other but like in like a tile arrangement

00:45:07 ◼   ► or have them appear as though they're in like

00:45:09 ◼   ► one of those flipping photo album books.

00:45:11 ◼   ► So it's that kind of like that kind of wonderful,

00:45:14 ◼   ► friendly consumer template for photo slideshows

00:45:18 ◼   ► that shows more than one photo on screen at once,

00:45:20 ◼   ► that's the kind of thing that's hard to find a replacement

00:45:22 ◼   ► for, at least a good replacement for.

00:45:24 ◼   ► And Photomagico isn't even, I don't even think

00:45:26 ◼   ► does that necessarily, but that seems to be

00:45:28 ◼   ► the highest recommended thing for this.

00:45:31 ◼   ► A few other options people also recommended,

00:45:32 ◼   ► something called Adobe Premiere Rush,

00:45:34 ◼   ► which I haven't tried yet, but we do have the Adobe,

00:45:37 ◼   ► all the crap subscription that we pay absurdly for it,

00:45:41 ◼   ► because it actually makes sense for us to do that

00:45:44 ◼   ► barely for other reasons.

00:45:46 ◼   ► So I will probably try that as well.

00:45:47 ◼   ► So we'll see.

00:45:49 ◼   ► I will follow up next time we have to make one of these.

00:45:51 ◼   ► - I think what you want is what they call motion graphics.

00:45:53 ◼   ► Another, I think, term that comes from the analog age

00:45:55 ◼   ► that is weird, you know, it's like,

00:45:57 ◼   ► oh, you want things to move?

00:45:58 ◼   ► You need motion.

00:45:58 ◼   ► That's why Apple's app was called Motion,

00:46:00 ◼   ► it did motion graphics.

00:46:01 ◼   ► Anyway, I think PhotoMagico does multiple images,

00:46:04 ◼   ► but it maybe doesn't do all the themes and stuff.

00:46:06 ◼   ► When you were saying the images,

00:46:07 ◼   ► looking around it was making me think of two things.

00:46:09 ◼   ► One, iDVD had menus that were like that.

00:46:13 ◼   ► Like, I remember doing a baby thing

00:46:15 ◼   ► where Alex was a baby,

00:46:16 ◼   ► but it was like a mobile, like you put over a baby's crib,

00:46:21 ◼   ► and that was like the menu, but then in the mobile,

00:46:23 ◼   ► you'd have little thumbnails of movies playing.

00:46:26 ◼   ► Like it was a template that you threw in there.

00:46:27 ◼   ► It's basically motion graphics

00:46:29 ◼   ► that look really cool and professional.

00:46:30 ◼   ► The only thing you add to it is your movies

00:46:32 ◼   ► get displayed here and it'll play a little music or whatever.

00:46:34 ◼   ► Same things for slide shows.

00:46:35 ◼   ► And the second thing I made me think of is that

00:46:38 ◼   ► the screen server I use on all of our computers is,

00:46:41 ◼   ► it's called, what is it called, floating?

00:46:43 ◼   ► It's a theme for Apple's show photos from my photos app thing.

00:46:47 ◼   ► I'm going to just pull it up here.

00:46:50 ◼   ► Screensaver, it's a top left screensaver.

00:46:52 ◼   ► It's called floating.

00:46:53 ◼   ► And it shows just a bunch of floating images.

00:46:55 ◼   ► And you can tell it to pull images

00:46:57 ◼   ► from a folder full of images.

00:46:59 ◼   ► Or you can tell it to pick an album from your photo library.

00:47:02 ◼   ► It gets angry when you have hundreds of thousands

00:47:04 ◼   ► of photos in your photo library.

00:47:05 ◼   ► But you can eventually hook it up.

00:47:08 ◼   ► Of course, because Apple doesn't understand families,

00:47:11 ◼   ► the only person who can use that screensaver

00:47:13 ◼   ► connected to the actual photos library is my wife

00:47:16 ◼   ► because she owns the photos library.

00:47:18 ◼   ► But what I've done to work around that is periodically

00:47:20 ◼   ► I just go to the photos library and I do a full export

00:47:23 ◼   ► of all of my favorites into a folder,

00:47:26 ◼   ► redundantly storing them as just a bunch of JPEGs

00:47:28 ◼   ► in a folder and then I point the screensaver at the folder

00:47:31 ◼   ► instead of the library.

00:47:32 ◼   ► But anyway, the reason I bring this up is

00:47:34 ◼   ► this whole screensaver,

00:47:35 ◼   ► the one that shows a bunch of your images,

00:47:37 ◼   ► totally broke in Monterey.

00:47:39 ◼   ► Like Monterey, the original version that was released

00:47:41 ◼   ► 12.0 and 12.0.1, this would just show a black screen

00:47:44 ◼   ► and never show an image.

00:47:45 ◼   ► But it was fixed in 12.1, so I'm happy

00:47:47 ◼   ► to have my screens ever back.

00:47:48 ◼   ► It took me, I didn't notice until I read about it

00:47:50 ◼   ► on the internet because I also have my screen

00:47:52 ◼   ► like go to sleep sleep.

00:47:53 ◼   ► It's like, you know, if you leave my computer idle

00:47:55 ◼   ► or you lock the screen by chucking your cursor

00:47:57 ◼   ► to the upper right corner, it's supposed to turn

00:47:59 ◼   ► on the screensaver, but then shortly afterward

00:48:01 ◼   ► it will go totally black and turn off the monitor.

00:48:03 ◼   ► So I never even noticed it was broken.

00:48:06 ◼   ► I should have thought, you know, you haven't seen

00:48:08 ◼   ► the screensaver run in a while, 'cause normally

00:48:09 ◼   ► you chuck the cursor and you just leave

00:48:11 ◼   ► and by the time I come back the screen's black,

00:48:12 ◼   ► I'm like oh it probably went to sleep, right?

00:48:14 ◼   ► But no, it was just totally broken.

00:48:15 ◼   ► It was some, maybe some weird OpenGL thing,

00:48:17 ◼   ► I don't even know.

00:48:18 ◼   ► Anyway, it's fixed now.

00:48:20 ◼   ► And that reminded me of what you were thinking of,

00:48:21 ◼   ► which is like, I have a bunch of images,

00:48:23 ◼   ► and I wanna show them in some cool way

00:48:26 ◼   ► as like a bunch of photographs that are being thrown

00:48:27 ◼   ► onto like a virtual table or as tiles that flip around

00:48:31 ◼   ► or as floating things, and the screen server

00:48:33 ◼   ► has many different versions of that.

00:48:35 ◼   ► I wonder if these are all like Quartz Composer things,

00:48:37 ◼   ► that's why they can't port them,

00:48:38 ◼   ► but it seems like Apple somewhere--

00:48:40 ◼   ► - Oh, interesting.

00:48:40 ◼   ► the very least has a lot of these themes already done it's just they may be in

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00:50:44 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:50:47 ◼   ► - Canon's flagship DSLR line will end with the EOS 1D X, 10,

00:50:53 ◼   ► Mark 3, eventually, maybe.

00:50:57 ◼   ► - I'm gonna say EOS, not EOS.

00:50:59 ◼   ► - Sorry, this is not my world.

00:51:01 ◼   ► - You don't know about Canon EOS?

00:51:02 ◼   ► They had a big marketing campaign when you were a teenager.

00:51:04 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:51:05 ◼   ► - Because obviously we would have been paying attention

00:51:07 ◼   ► to that then.

00:51:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:51:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, totally were a canios.

00:51:09 ◼   ► Anyway, I just brought this up just because I think

00:51:11 ◼   ► we talked about it on a past show of like,

00:51:12 ◼   ► and I think a lot of people are confused.

00:51:14 ◼   ► I think I pointed this out once before.

00:51:16 ◼   ► I think when we were talking about like,

00:51:17 ◼   ► oh, Casey was told the story about being in Disneyland

00:51:20 ◼   ► and all the photographers have a fancy DSLR

00:51:23 ◼   ► they take your pictures of and I was like,

00:51:24 ◼   ► well, they have a fancy camera,

00:51:26 ◼   ► maybe not necessarily a DSLR

00:51:27 ◼   ► because DSLRs are kind of old and creaky.

00:51:30 ◼   ► And I think when people hear DSLR,

00:51:31 ◼   ► they think big digital camera,

00:51:34 ◼   ► but that's not what they should think.

00:51:36 ◼   ► SLR doesn't just mean big digital camera.

00:51:39 ◼   ► It means single-end reflex, is that what SLR stands for,

00:51:41 ◼   ► Mark? - Yes.

00:51:42 ◼   ► It is a type of camera.

00:51:44 ◼   ► - Right, and it's got a flappy mirror inside it,

00:51:46 ◼   ► then when you take a picture,

00:51:47 ◼   ► a mirror physically moves out of the way

00:51:49 ◼   ► to allow light to hit the sensor,

00:51:51 ◼   ► and then the mirror flaps back down.

00:51:53 ◼   ► And it is a setup that has mostly been supplanted

00:51:57 ◼   ► by what they call mirrorless cameras,

00:51:59 ◼   ► which are so weird, they're defined by the thing

00:52:00 ◼   ► that they don't have.

00:52:01 ◼   ► mirrorless cameras work like you would imagine

00:52:03 ◼   ► if you just started in the digital ages.

00:52:05 ◼   ► There's a sensor and there's a thing that opens

00:52:08 ◼   ► to let the light hit the sensor

00:52:09 ◼   ► and a thing that closes that stops light.

00:52:10 ◼   ► And by the way, they even have ones

00:52:12 ◼   ► that you can use electronic shutter

00:52:13 ◼   ► where it just stays open all the time

00:52:14 ◼   ► and just use electronics to record the image.

00:52:17 ◼   ► But no more flappy mirror, which has pros and cons,

00:52:21 ◼   ► but in general, the market and the world

00:52:22 ◼   ► has decided that the advantages of mirrorless

00:52:25 ◼   ► far outweigh any disadvantages of you not being able

00:52:28 ◼   ► to look through the lens of your camera

00:52:29 ◼   ► with a prism and all this other crap

00:52:30 ◼   ► that you can do with an SLR, right?

00:52:32 ◼   ► So mirrorless is one, even the standard bearers

00:52:37 ◼   ► for SLRs and DSLRs, Canon and I imagine Nikon will follow,

00:52:42 ◼   ► and I don't think Sony has any SLRs right now,

00:52:45 ◼   ► or if they do, they're very obscure.

00:52:47 ◼   ► The DSLRs are going away,

00:52:50 ◼   ► but that does not mean big digital cameras are going away.

00:52:53 ◼   ► They're just all going to be quote unquote

00:52:54 ◼   ► mirrorless cameras.

00:52:55 ◼   ► So nobody freak out.

00:52:57 ◼   ► It's not as if we're all gonna have to use iPhones

00:52:58 ◼   ► from now on.

00:52:59 ◼   ► interchangeable lens fancy digital cameras rest assured there will be still

00:53:03 ◼   ► be a couple companies willing to sell you some for the price of a car. Well and

00:53:06 ◼   ► keep in mind also like what this item like what this news item actually is

00:53:10 ◼   ► many many people interpreted this to mean Canon is not going to make DSLRs

00:53:15 ◼   ► anymore that's not what this is Canon makes many lines of DSLRs the very very

00:53:22 ◼   ► very top of the line one is the 1DX series that is what they are saying

00:53:28 ◼   ► they're not going to make any more of after this current one.

00:53:31 ◼   ► I think the writing's on the wall for the rest of them, though, too.

00:53:34 ◼   ► It just starts from the top. You can read the quote from the CEO.

00:53:38 ◼   ► "Market needs are rapidly moving towards mirrorless cameras,

00:53:42 ◼   ► so accordingly we're increasingly moving people in that direction."

00:53:45 ◼   ► You're right, it's not a definitive statement, but this is the way the world's going.

00:53:48 ◼   ► And just to describe why mirrorless is winning,

00:53:51 ◼   ► the big giant mirror that flaps up takes up a lot of room.

00:53:55 ◼   ► It's like a little periscope type thing where the light has to go in,

00:53:57 ◼   ► then it has to bounce off the mirror,

00:53:58 ◼   ► then it goes up to the little prism,

00:53:59 ◼   ► then it comes out the little eyepiece,

00:54:01 ◼   ► which lets you essentially look with your eyeball

00:54:02 ◼   ► optically through the lens that is going to take the picture

00:54:05 ◼   ► which has lots of cool advantages to it.

00:54:07 ◼   ► But it takes up a lot of room.

00:54:08 ◼   ► Mirrorless cameras are just smaller

00:54:10 ◼   ► because you don't need room for the mirror.

00:54:12 ◼   ► You don't need to flap the mirror up and down.

00:54:14 ◼   ► You can do shutters, you can do mechanical shutters

00:54:17 ◼   ► much faster and then you can do electronic shutters.

00:54:19 ◼   ► You can't do an electronic shutter

00:54:20 ◼   ► if the mirror's in the way because when the mirror's there

00:54:22 ◼   ► and you're looking through the eyepiece,

00:54:24 ◼   ► the sensor can't see anything

00:54:26 ◼   ► 'cause the mirror is blocking it.

00:54:27 ◼   ► And when the mirror flaps up, now your eye can't see

00:54:30 ◼   ► anything, so it's blacked out briefly.

00:54:31 ◼   ► So the mirrorless mode is just this sort of more

00:54:35 ◼   ► straightforward way to get light directly onto the sensor

00:54:39 ◼   ► and it's like, well how do they do the eyepiece?

00:54:41 ◼   ► Well they have a digital thing where you're seeing

00:54:43 ◼   ► a readout from the lens.

00:54:44 ◼   ► Like it's taken a long time for digital cameras

00:54:47 ◼   ► to get close to the performance of DSLR,

00:54:49 ◼   ► but now they're getting in the ballpark,

00:54:51 ◼   ► so the DSLRs are slowly being phased out

00:54:53 ◼   ► just because mirrorless are smaller.

00:54:54 ◼   ► So this doesn't mean they can blink the end of all of them

00:54:58 ◼   ► tomorrow, but it seems this is sort of the company signaling

00:55:02 ◼   ► we're going in the-- kind of like all car makers are going

00:55:04 ◼   ► in the direction of electric.

00:55:05 ◼   ► It's going to be years and years before the internal combustion

00:55:08 ◼   ► cars are gone, but every single car maker has said,

00:55:10 ◼   ► we're kind of planning to go all electric

00:55:12 ◼   ► and they put all these fancy dates.

00:55:13 ◼   ► We'll be all electric by 2030, 2035, 2040.

00:55:16 ◼   ► We'll see if they hit those dates,

00:55:17 ◼   ► but they've all announced plans.

00:55:19 ◼   ► And this is essentially a canon saying, yeah,

00:55:21 ◼   ► the SLRs are probably going away.

00:55:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, and this, because they're acting

00:55:27 ◼   ► like their highest end one,

00:55:29 ◼   ► I mean I'm sure there's many reasons for that.

00:55:31 ◼   ► First of all, I don't think the 1DX series

00:55:34 ◼   ► has been selling in great volume recently.

00:55:36 ◼   ► But also, I'm sure there's much stronger competition

00:55:42 ◼   ► from mirrorless cameras at that segment as well.

00:55:44 ◼   ► But also, the reason this is significant,

00:55:47 ◼   ► even though they didn't mention, for instance,

00:55:51 ◼   ► The 5D series, which is still extremely popular,

00:55:54 ◼   ► although I think that is also,

00:55:56 ◼   ► the writing's on the wall, I think, for that as well.

00:55:59 ◼   ► But that's very popular in different markets.

00:56:00 ◼   ► But the reason this is big news

00:56:03 ◼   ► is that even though Canon's not saying

00:56:06 ◼   ► we're getting rid of all of our DSLRs,

00:56:08 ◼   ► to ax the flagship one and from Canon of all companies,

00:56:12 ◼   ► Canon has probably been the most successful DSLR company

00:56:16 ◼   ► by probably a pretty big margin,

00:56:19 ◼   ► especially at the higher end.

00:56:21 ◼   ► So for them to access is as significant as like,

00:56:25 ◼   ► if BMW said, all M cars from now on

00:56:27 ◼   ► are gonna be all electric.

00:56:29 ◼   ► - Or Ford said they're no longer making cars,

00:56:31 ◼   ► which they said several years ago.

00:56:32 ◼   ► And by that I mean they're just making trucks and SUVs,

00:56:35 ◼   ► which by the way, in case you didn't know,

00:56:36 ◼   ► Ford hasn't made a quote unquote car in what,

00:56:38 ◼   ► three years now?

00:56:39 ◼   ► - Did anybody notice?

00:56:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

00:56:41 ◼   ► Most people don't realize it.

00:56:42 ◼   ► Hey, Ford, they make like pickup trucks and SUVs, right?

00:56:45 ◼   ► They make cars too, right?

00:56:47 ◼   ► And most people would say yes, and I'd say,

00:56:48 ◼   ► okay, name a 2022 model Ford that's not an SUV or truck.

00:56:52 ◼   ► And you can't because they don't make Mustang.

00:56:55 ◼   ► No, it's not a car.

00:56:56 ◼   ► If you looked at it, it's the Mach-E.

00:56:58 ◼   ► - Isn't that an SUV now?

00:56:59 ◼   ► - No, it's the Mustang Mach-E.

00:57:01 ◼   ► - Isn't it like a crossover?

00:57:02 ◼   ► - I mean, he's talking about like the GT3.

00:57:05 ◼   ► - I'm just being a turd

00:57:06 ◼   ► because your point is completely fair.

00:57:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know.

00:57:09 ◼   ► I mean, I think that,

00:57:10 ◼   ► what is the latest model year of the Mustang?

00:57:11 ◼   ► - I think that they're still making them as far as I know.

00:57:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, they make the flat plane crank one.

00:57:15 ◼   ► But the point is that's not a new car

00:57:17 ◼   ► that it was developed for 2022.

00:57:19 ◼   ► It's a car that they developed and they continue to sell.

00:57:21 ◼   ► And I guess they make new model years each year

00:57:23 ◼   ► with different trim levels and stuff like that.

00:57:25 ◼   ► But yeah.

00:57:26 ◼   ► - To go back a step, you know,

00:57:27 ◼   ► I don't think of it as a car, Jon.

00:57:29 ◼   ► I think of it as a horseless carriage.

00:57:31 ◼   ► You know, it's not a, it's a mirrorless camera

00:57:34 ◼   ► and a horseless carriage. - It's a crossover.

00:57:35 ◼   ► They're not station wagons, they're crossovers.

00:57:38 ◼   ► - Indeed.

00:57:39 ◼   ► Also, I would like to slightly real-time follow up

00:57:41 ◼   ► and correct you.

00:57:42 ◼   ► I would not talk about going to Disneyland.

00:57:44 ◼   ► I go to the one real Disney park.

00:57:47 ◼   ► - I know, Disney World, I'm sorry, yes.

00:57:49 ◼   ► I agree with you on this 100%,

00:57:51 ◼   ► even though I've never actually been to Disneyland,

00:57:53 ◼   ► but come on, just look at the maps, people.

00:57:54 ◼   ► - Right?

00:57:55 ◼   ► Disneyland is like 1/100th of Disney World.

00:57:58 ◼   ► I understand it's the OG, it doesn't matter.

00:58:00 ◼   ► - No Epcot, Epcot is unsurprisingly my favorite park.

00:58:04 ◼   ► - Of course, well, I mean, most people,

00:58:06 ◼   ► it's a lot of people's favorite park.

00:58:07 ◼   ► - It's the nerdiest park.

00:58:07 ◼   ► - That's for without doubt.

00:58:09 ◼   ► Anyway, all right, so we should probably try

00:58:12 ◼   ► to squeeze in a topic or two before we jump to Ask ATP.

00:58:15 ◼   ► So, uh, John, you would like to get on your soapbox about new TV stuff at CES.

00:58:19 ◼   ► That soapbox is just exciting news. Um,

00:58:22 ◼   ► I just want to talk too much about this on the show other than me hemming and

00:58:25 ◼   ► hawing about what TV I'm not going to buy. Uh, so I feel bad.

00:58:28 ◼   ► I feel bad that we hadn't talked about this years and years ago.

00:58:32 ◼   ► Cause the story is always podcasting.

00:58:33 ◼   ► This is not like a new, a new technology. Like when I was going,

00:58:38 ◼   ► I was looking for like explainer videos,

00:58:40 ◼   ► figure out I'd have links to the show notes to explain some of this stuff.

00:58:43 ◼   ► and all the explainer videos I've found

00:58:44 ◼   ► were like six years old.

00:58:46 ◼   ► So this is not new technology,

00:58:47 ◼   ► but the news at CES related to television

00:58:49 ◼   ► is that someone has actually shipped the television

00:58:53 ◼   ► with this technology in it,

00:58:54 ◼   ► which we thought was coming

00:58:55 ◼   ► and there's some interesting stuff about who is shipping it.

00:58:57 ◼   ► But anyway, the technology is QD-OLED,

00:59:02 ◼   ► which stands for Quantum Dot OLED,

00:59:05 ◼   ► a brief review of television technologies.

00:59:09 ◼   ► So most people probably have at this point

00:59:11 ◼   ► flat panel LCD televisions which use a technology similar to what is in most of our Mac screens

00:59:17 ◼   ► or computer monitors.

00:59:18 ◼   ► There's a backlight that shines light, usually white light out.

00:59:21 ◼   ► And then there's a bunch of little pixels in front using liquid crystals that have red,

00:59:24 ◼   ► green, and blue sub pixels that turn on and off and allow varying amounts of light through.

00:59:29 ◼   ► So when they're all open, you get red, green, and blue filters with the white backlight

00:59:33 ◼   ► shining through them.

00:59:34 ◼   ► And red, green, and blue combined to your eyes make one white pixel.

00:59:37 ◼   ► you turn the shutters all the way off it tries to block all the backlight light.

00:59:40 ◼   ► The ones in fancier screens like the ones on the Mac on the Pro display XDR and

00:59:46 ◼   ► MacBook Pros and the fancy iPad are called mini LED and what they do is

00:59:50 ◼   ► instead of having one giant white backlight they have a bunch of smaller

00:59:54 ◼   ► white backlights like 2,000 of them and instead of the white backlight being on

00:59:58 ◼   ► all the time it's only on behind the pixels that need to light up so if

01:00:02 ◼   ► you make the screen all black they just turn off all the black lights that gets

01:00:05 ◼   ► you better blacks and if you have some part of the screen that's light and some

01:00:08 ◼   ► part of the screen that's dark they just turn on some of the back lights.

01:00:10 ◼   ► Obviously there's a problem called blooming where the back lights are not

01:00:13 ◼   ► the same size as the pixels so if you have like say a starry night where it's

01:00:17 ◼   ► a black sky with a pinprick of light there's no pinprick backlight so they

01:00:21 ◼   ► have to turn on like a you know one centimeter by one centimeter backlight

01:00:24 ◼   ► behind the pinprick star and that may end the LCD shutters are not that great

01:00:29 ◼   ► at blocking the light so you'll see a little bit of a halo glow around the

01:00:33 ◼   ► light when really you should just see one pinprick of light. But anyway that's

01:00:36 ◼   ► LCD technology. You often see it's described as an LED TV that's just

01:00:40 ◼   ► referring to the backlight. The backlights of these televisions are LEDs

01:00:43 ◼   ► instead of being the cold cathodes of whatever they were before. But it's still

01:00:48 ◼   ► a liquid crystal display on the front controlling the shutters right. So the

01:00:52 ◼   ► best TV technology for many years has been OLED which stands for organic

01:00:55 ◼   ► light emitting diode where there's no backlight. There is no big white light

01:00:59 ◼   ► behind a series of filters instead every single pixel emits its own light and so

01:01:05 ◼   ► you can turn on and off individual pixels our iPhones have OLED screens

01:01:09 ◼   ► right so when you do an iPhone you know and you want to make it a starry night

01:01:13 ◼   ► on the iPhone where it's all black with pinpricks of light all it does is turn

01:01:16 ◼   ► on the individual pixels that are the stars so there's no halo effect on

01:01:19 ◼   ► whatever problems OLED is they can't get as bright because LED backlights can get

01:01:24 ◼   ► super duper bright and then OLEDs have burn-in problems if you do make them

01:01:28 ◼   ► super bright and OLEDs also wear out. It's a bunch of limits of OLEDs but in

01:01:32 ◼   ► general for televisions the best TVs you can get are OLED because it is much much

01:01:36 ◼   ► better on a television to be able to control the individual pixels. It's just

01:01:39 ◼   ► a shame they can't get quite as bright. Televisions is another problem with the

01:01:43 ◼   ► brightness thing is you know if you're looking at it in a well lit room or

01:01:46 ◼   ► whatever you know it has to be brighter than you know a little phone screen or

01:01:51 ◼   ► whatever. So most modern OLED televisions are actually WRGB which is they have RGB

01:01:56 ◼   ► sub-pixels and then they have a big honking white sub-pixel and that's just

01:02:00 ◼   ► to boost the brightness right so they mix in white like an actual white light

01:02:04 ◼   ► with the colors and as you can imagine they can wash them out a lot of it is

01:02:08 ◼   ► there like if you want to make the screen entirely white to use mostly the

01:02:11 ◼   ► white sub pixels but that's called a WRGB OLED and all the best televisions

01:02:15 ◼   ► use that right now the only company in the world that makes a WRGB OLED for

01:02:19 ◼   ► television is LG and they make it for everybody anybody who has an OLED

01:02:22 ◼   ► television as of before CES 2022, that's an LG panel in there. So Sony's television, Panasonic's

01:02:29 ◼   ► television, Philips, like Sharp, they're all LG OLEDs in there. But OLED is the best in town

01:02:37 ◼   ► because you can control the individual pixels but it doesn't get as bright. So finally, QD OLEDs is

01:02:42 ◼   ► let's take OLED TVs, which is the best available thing, and let's fix some of their problems.

01:02:46 ◼   ► Their main problem is they can't get as bright, right? So what can we do to help with that? The

01:02:51 ◼   ► The way OLEDs actually work is they don't have,

01:02:55 ◼   ► you can do this with OLEDs,

01:02:56 ◼   ► but they don't do it for expense reasons.

01:02:57 ◼   ► They don't have a red, green, and a blue sub pixel,

01:03:02 ◼   ► or even a white sub pixel.

01:03:03 ◼   ► What they have are individual pixels that are bigger than,

01:03:08 ◼   ► I think they're bigger than the three red, green, and blues.

01:03:09 ◼   ► But anyway, they have individual pixels

01:03:10 ◼   ► that just emit blue light.

01:03:12 ◼   ► That's what, they're still individually controlled,

01:03:14 ◼   ► but every individual pixel is just blue.

01:03:17 ◼   ► And so how do you get all the colors?

01:03:18 ◼   ► Well, they put filters in front of every pixel.

01:03:22 ◼   ► There's a little green filter, a little red filter,

01:03:23 ◼   ► a little blue filter, and a filter that turns it white,

01:03:25 ◼   ► I guess, I think, yeah,

01:03:27 ◼   ► I think that's basically how they work.

01:03:29 ◼   ► I'm not sure about the white sub-pixel and WRGB,

01:03:30 ◼   ► but anyway, there's filters.

01:03:32 ◼   ► But of course, filters lose you some of the light, right?

01:03:36 ◼   ► You're taking a blue backlight

01:03:37 ◼   ► and you're trying to like, you know,

01:03:39 ◼   ► change it to red, green, and blue.

01:03:41 ◼   ► You end up losing the wavelengths

01:03:43 ◼   ► that are not the color you want them to,

01:03:44 ◼   ► and that reduces the brightness,

01:03:46 ◼   ► which is one of the problems that OLEDs have.

01:03:48 ◼   ► So the reason I'm talking about all of this

01:03:50 ◼   ► is because quantum dot OLED sounds like a sci-fi thing

01:03:54 ◼   ► and I put some link in the show notes

01:03:55 ◼   ► that explain how it works.

01:03:57 ◼   ► Again, quantum dots are many, many years old

01:03:59 ◼   ► but they're finally to the point

01:04:01 ◼   ► where they can put them into television,

01:04:02 ◼   ► hopefully in an economic way.

01:04:04 ◼   ► We'll talk about that in a second.

01:04:06 ◼   ► What they do is they have the same blue backlight

01:04:08 ◼   ► because that's like the cheapest way to make it.

01:04:10 ◼   ► It's not a backlight, I'm sorry I can't say that.

01:04:12 ◼   ► Every individual pixel is a tiny blue pixel, right?

01:04:15 ◼   ► every individually controlled pixel on an OLED

01:04:17 ◼   ► is a tiny blue individually controlled OLED.

01:04:19 ◼   ► The quantum dot sits in front of each one

01:04:22 ◼   ► of the individual pixels and changes the light

01:04:27 ◼   ► to be the wavelength they want.

01:04:29 ◼   ► One of them changes it to--

01:04:30 ◼   ► - Why?

01:04:31 ◼   ► - One of them changes it to green,

01:04:32 ◼   ► one of them changes to red,

01:04:33 ◼   ► and they just let the blue one straight through.

01:04:34 ◼   ► And the quantum dot thing does it,

01:04:36 ◼   ► using some physics stuff that's explained in these videos,

01:04:39 ◼   ► in a way that loses you almost none of the light.

01:04:42 ◼   ► It like changes the wavelength of the light

01:04:44 ◼   ► without like blocking it or filtering it,

01:04:45 ◼   ► it just changed, it's quantum physics,

01:04:47 ◼   ► it's literally quantum physics.

01:04:49 ◼   ► The bottom line is,

01:04:50 ◼   ► now you have individually controlled pixels

01:04:53 ◼   ► where you don't lose as much of the light

01:04:55 ◼   ► through the stupid red, green and blue filter thing,

01:04:56 ◼   ► there are red, green filters in this case.

01:04:58 ◼   ► You don't need the W sub pixel anymore,

01:05:00 ◼   ► you don't need the big honking white sub pixels,

01:05:02 ◼   ► you can have red, green and blue sub pixels

01:05:05 ◼   ► and you get almost 100% of the light

01:05:07 ◼   ► from the blue OLED that's behind it.

01:05:09 ◼   ► You do get 100% in the blue case

01:05:11 ◼   ► 'cause there's not even any quantum dot in front of that,

01:05:12 ◼   ► I think it just comes through as blue because it's blue, you know, LED.

01:05:16 ◼   ► And what that means is OLED televisions with way better brightness without the white subpixels

01:05:22 ◼   ► to wash out the images so they have better color reproduction and all the same advantages

01:05:26 ◼   ► of OLED.

01:05:27 ◼   ► So this is super cool.

01:05:28 ◼   ► In theory, maybe also less burn in because you don't have to drive the pixels as hard

01:05:32 ◼   ► because you're not losing as much light to the filtering.

01:05:35 ◼   ► And the harder you drive the pixels, the more they wear out because they have organic compounds

01:05:38 ◼   ► and then crap.

01:05:39 ◼   ► We'll see.

01:05:40 ◼   ► All right.

01:05:41 ◼   ► the only company that makes QD OLED panels is not LG,

01:05:45 ◼   ► but Samsung.

01:05:46 ◼   ► - Oh.

01:05:47 ◼   ► - Samsung also makes televisions,

01:05:49 ◼   ► but Samsung is not shipping QD OLED TV.

01:05:53 ◼   ► I think it's the same kind of deal with like LG display

01:05:56 ◼   ► and LG electronics.

01:05:57 ◼   ► There's like this adversarial relationship

01:05:59 ◼   ► between the people who make the panels

01:06:00 ◼   ► and the people who make the TVs.

01:06:02 ◼   ► So the only company, as far as I'm aware,

01:06:05 ◼   ► in 2022 that's selling a QD OLED TV is Sony,

01:06:08 ◼   ► is selling a QD OLED containing a Samsung QD OLED panel.

01:06:12 ◼   ► No pricing has been announced yet

01:06:15 ◼   ► and there's some scary things about it

01:06:16 ◼   ► that say it might be like $8,000,

01:06:18 ◼   ► in which case I'm not getting one.

01:06:19 ◼   ► But that's the situation now

01:06:22 ◼   ► and I find it really exciting

01:06:23 ◼   ► if you've never heard of QDL

01:06:25 ◼   ► and you might've heard of QD quantum dot stuff for Q LEDs

01:06:29 ◼   ► because quantum dot LCD televisions also exist

01:06:31 ◼   ► where they use quantum dots instead of filters

01:06:33 ◼   ► but with an LCD backlight.

01:06:35 ◼   ► But those have all the same problems with the backlight thing

01:06:37 ◼   ► If the backlight is across the whole thing, that's bad.

01:06:39 ◼   ► And if the backlight has 2000 regions for 4 million pixels,

01:06:42 ◼   ► that's also bad, right?

01:06:43 ◼   ► So quantum dots are not new,

01:06:45 ◼   ► but quantum dots plus OLED is new.

01:06:47 ◼   ► And I'm super excited about it.

01:06:49 ◼   ► I'll probably talk more about the Sony television

01:06:52 ◼   ► on rectiffs because that's where I get to complain

01:06:54 ◼   ► about the stands people put on televisions,

01:06:55 ◼   ► but that's the TV news for 2022.

01:06:59 ◼   ► And the reason it's related to,

01:07:03 ◼   ► yeah, I mean, it's a tech stuff too,

01:07:04 ◼   ► but also in terms of Apple stuff,

01:07:06 ◼   ► If you're looking for what is the sort of next step in,

01:07:11 ◼   ► I guess iPad, but also even like Pro Display XDR type stuff,

01:07:16 ◼   ► it's either quantum.OLED,

01:07:18 ◼   ► which I can imagine them maybe using on an iPad someday,

01:07:21 ◼   ► or micro LED, which is where instead of having a blue LED

01:07:27 ◼   ► with three filters in front of it,

01:07:29 ◼   ► every individual sub pixel is its own colored LED.

01:07:33 ◼   ► Those are insanely expensive

01:07:35 ◼   ► and not within the realm of commercial viability

01:07:38 ◼   ► or size viability for Apple's devices yet.

01:07:41 ◼   ► But we'll keep your eye on that,

01:07:44 ◼   ► meet back here in five to 10 years.

01:07:46 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:07:48 ◼   ► Are you ever really going to buy a new,

01:07:52 ◼   ► I almost said new computer, I'm so used to saying that,

01:07:55 ◼   ► a new television, like is this ever really going to happen?

01:07:57 ◼   ► - I mean, I was waiting to see

01:07:59 ◼   ► what they were gonna say at CES

01:08:00 ◼   ► 'cause the rumors ahead of time

01:08:01 ◼   ► thought somebody was gonna ship a QD OLED TV,

01:08:04 ◼   ► I just assumed it would be Samsung because they're making the panels but now it's Sony and that makes me wanted more because I hate

01:08:09 ◼   ► Like their TVs are more scummy. But before CES I was like I should buy

01:08:14 ◼   ► Sony a90j when they get cheap like as soon as the new TVs come out

01:08:18 ◼   ► Like I should buy the last of someone's inventory of Sony a90j

01:08:22 ◼   ► Which is like the one of the better one of the best OLED

01:08:24 ◼   ► televisions from last year in particular

01:08:27 ◼   ► I like it because they have a heatsink in it and the heatsink in theory helps with image retention

01:08:33 ◼   ► It just seems like a good idea for me.

01:08:35 ◼   ► All of the new top-end OLED TVs have at least one or two

01:08:39 ◼   ► models with heat sinks in them,

01:08:40 ◼   ► so I feel like Sony was ahead of the game

01:08:41 ◼   ► by introducing one last year.

01:08:43 ◼   ► But I figured, you know, like, I know QD OLEDs coming out.

01:08:46 ◼   ► If QD OLEDs are eight grand or something,

01:08:48 ◼   ► then maybe I'll get an A90J for, you know, under $2,000.

01:08:52 ◼   ► But I haven't seen the pricing for the Sony yet,

01:08:55 ◼   ► so we'll see.

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01:10:57 ◼   ► So there was a very interesting article that came out,

01:11:00 ◼   ► or that I was made aware of sometime last week,

01:11:03 ◼   ► and it was on whathi-fi.com.

01:11:06 ◼   ► It's a pretty funny name for a online magazine.

01:11:09 ◼   ► And it's an interview with Gary Geeves,

01:11:11 ◼   ► I hope I pronounced that right,

01:11:13 ◼   ► who is the vice president of acoustics at Apple.

01:11:16 ◼   ► And you know, some of this is exactly what you would expect

01:11:18 ◼   ► from this sort of thing,

01:11:19 ◼   ► but some of it was really, really good.

01:11:21 ◼   ► And there's a few quotes that I think John and I

01:11:22 ◼   ► have pulled from the article that I'd like to read you.

01:11:25 ◼   ► Gary says, "So from the analytic

01:11:27 ◼   ► to, oh sorry, let me give you some more context. So this is about, you know, creating new AirPods 3

01:11:31 ◼   ► and to some degree the other AirPods as well. And Gary is very much in charge, maybe not in charge

01:11:36 ◼   ► of, but very integral to creating these, particularly with regard to doing the mathematics

01:11:42 ◼   ► and science behind acoustics, right? Is that fair summary? Sure. So a couple of quotes from the

01:11:49 ◼   ► article. So from the analytic tuning, we work closely with an expert team of critical listeners

01:11:53 ◼   ► and tuners. Many of these are folks from the pro audio industry and really what they try

01:11:57 ◼   ► to do is intentionally refine the sound signature for each product. AirPods in this case so

01:12:01 ◼   ► that it's accurate but it's also exciting and moving. So they're trying to work with

01:12:06 ◼   ► people who are actually doing this sort of thing for a living and trying to make it sound

01:12:09 ◼   ► good, which is pretty excellent. Moving a lot, this is further down in the article.

01:12:15 ◼   ► When watching a movie on Apple TV, oh I just thought this was fascinating, using spatial

01:12:18 ◼   ► audio the virtual speakers are placed further away from you than when you're watching on

01:12:23 ◼   ► an iPhone. So let me kind of repeat that and change how it's phrased. So if you're doing

01:12:27 ◼   ► that spatial audio thing, which is like the fake surround sound, like the computational

01:12:30 ◼   ► surround sound, if you're doing that with an iPhone, the virtual center, if you will,

01:12:36 ◼   ► of all of that audio is, and I'm making the numbers up, but it's like, you know, a foot

01:12:39 ◼   ► in front of your face. Whereas if you do that with an Apple TV, they place the virtual center

01:12:44 ◼   ► of all that audio like six feet in front of your face. So it seems to be commensurate

01:12:49 ◼   ► with the screen you're watching, which is obvious once you hear that. But I don't know,

01:12:52 ◼   ► I just think that's really cool. And then a final quote from this.

01:12:55 ◼   ► Obviously the wireless - oh, this was kind of the money quote of the whole article -

01:12:59 ◼   ► "Obviously the wireless technology is critical for content delivery,

01:13:02 ◼   ► but also for things like the amount of latency you get when you move your head. If that's too long between you moving your head

01:13:07 ◼   ► and the sound changing or remaining static, it will make you feel quite ill.

01:13:10 ◼   ► So we have to concentrate very hard on squeezing the most that we can out of Bluetooth technology.

01:13:15 ◼   ► There's a number of tricks we can play to maximize or get around some of the limits of Bluetooth,

01:13:19 ◼   ► But it's fair to say that we would like more bandwidth in I'll stop right there

01:13:23 ◼   ► We would like more bandwidth and then apparently he smiled so

01:13:26 ◼   ► This everyone is taking this and I think reasonably so to mean hey guess what Apple's gonna do some custom thing

01:13:34 ◼   ► Instead of Bluetooth or you know some like custom overlay perhaps of Bluetooth in order to get more

01:13:41 ◼   ► bandwidth and less latency from from their wireless, you know headphones and well, I think I think the

01:13:48 ◼   ► more reasonable interpretation is when someone says that and we've seen a lot of Apple people on stage saying this type of thing is they

01:13:54 ◼   ► they talk about it, I think a limitation in the abstract and then what they'd like to tell you is and

01:13:58 ◼   ► Future products will will fix that in some way, but then they stop themselves and say well of course

01:14:03 ◼   ► They're not gonna tell you about future products

01:14:05 ◼   ► But the only thing they're saying is here we would like more bandwidth and our future products will have more bandwidth

01:14:10 ◼   ► But there's lots of ways future products can have more bandwidth. Maybe it's a new bluetooth standard

01:14:15 ◼   ► Maybe they use wires for everything, probably not likely.

01:14:18 ◼   ► Maybe it's a totally custom thing.

01:14:20 ◼   ► And so that's the mystery of like,

01:14:22 ◼   ► all this is an Apple person saying is yes,

01:14:24 ◼   ► Bluetooth is bandwidth constrained, we don't like it,

01:14:26 ◼   ► and it's a thing we're going to fix.

01:14:28 ◼   ► So that's sort of like confirmed,

01:14:29 ◼   ► Apple says future audio products will have more bandwidth,

01:14:31 ◼   ► but just like, duh, they have all this loss of audio

01:14:33 ◼   ► that they can't play over their headphones.

01:14:34 ◼   ► That's not a situation that's gonna stay

01:14:36 ◼   ► for a very long time.

01:14:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, so wait, so let's pause right there.

01:14:38 ◼   ► This is what I was about to get to,

01:14:40 ◼   ► and it's an important point.

01:14:41 ◼   ► So Apple's been working really hard

01:14:43 ◼   ► to get their entire catalog, if I'm not mistaken,

01:14:46 ◼   ► I might have the particulars wrong,

01:14:47 ◼   ► it doesn't really matter,

01:14:48 ◼   ► to get a lot of their stuff to be lossless.

01:14:49 ◼   ► So typically when you compress audio,

01:14:52 ◼   ► we've talked about this on ATP a bajillion times,

01:14:54 ◼   ► when you compress audio, you arguably lose data

01:14:58 ◼   ► that arguably nobody can hear anyway,

01:15:00 ◼   ► but one way or another, another approach you can take

01:15:03 ◼   ► is to compress it in such a way

01:15:04 ◼   ► that you are not losing any data, hence lossless.

01:15:08 ◼   ► - Basically zip for audio.

01:15:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, actually it's a good way of looking at it.

01:15:11 ◼   ► You're exactly right.

01:15:12 ◼   ► - It works slightly differently,

01:15:13 ◼   ► although not that much differently.

01:15:14 ◼   ► And it's the same, similar effect.

01:15:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, so a lot of people are really into lossless audio.

01:15:21 ◼   ► I will let you decide, listener, if it's snake oil or not.

01:15:24 ◼   ► But one way or another, I kind of think it is too,

01:15:27 ◼   ► but that's neither here nor there.

01:15:29 ◼   ► One way or another, in order to send lossless audio

01:15:32 ◼   ► to a set of AirPods, you need a lot of bandwidth

01:15:37 ◼   ► in order to do that, or at least compared

01:15:39 ◼   ► to the Bluetooth standards of today.

01:15:41 ◼   ► And so if Apple wants to be able to say,

01:15:43 ◼   ► "Oh, our fancy schmancy new AirPods 2 support lossless audio,"

01:15:46 ◼   ► which we conveniently have in our entire Apple Music library,

01:15:50 ◼   ► then hey, guess what?

01:15:51 ◼   ► They're going to need to have a different method

01:15:52 ◼   ► of communicating between your phone or computer

01:15:54 ◼   ► or what have you and the AirPods.

01:15:57 ◼   ► And so that's kind of what everyone's putting together,

01:15:59 ◼   ► and this is what Jon was just starting to say,

01:16:01 ◼   ► is that, hey, Apple's saying they want more bandwidth.

01:16:03 ◼   ► They probably want it because of this big push

01:16:05 ◼   ► for lossless audio, snake oil be damned.

01:16:07 ◼   ► And so this is all starting to fall into place.

01:16:10 ◼   ► Yeah, so the way the next step in the story is a good,

01:16:14 ◼   ► I talked to Max Tech, his YouTube channel

01:16:15 ◼   ► that tries to sort of summarize and gather up

01:16:17 ◼   ► all of the rumors kind of the way we do on this podcast.

01:16:21 ◼   ► Max Tech had a good video collecting this info

01:16:24 ◼   ► and here is the rumor that I think makes a lot of sense.

01:16:29 ◼   ► And I'll be kind of, now that I've sort of read all about it

01:16:32 ◼   ► and everything, I'll be kind of disappointed

01:16:33 ◼   ► that this ends up not being true.

01:16:35 ◼   ► Again, all the Apple person said was, you know,

01:16:38 ◼   ► more bandwidth would be good and dot, dot, dot,

01:16:41 ◼   ► Apple is probably gonna do a thing with more bandwidth.

01:16:43 ◼   ► One way that Apple can get more bandwidth

01:16:45 ◼   ► and other stuff that is useful to Apple

01:16:48 ◼   ► in many different ways is to use ultra wideband,

01:16:50 ◼   ► which is something you should have heard of

01:16:52 ◼   ► if you listen to this program or if you watch Apple keynotes

01:16:55 ◼   ► because Apple has been shipping the U1 chip

01:16:57 ◼   ► in many of its devices and that is an ultra wideband chip.

01:17:00 ◼   ► Right now Apple uses it to help you find your air tags

01:17:03 ◼   ► and unlock your car and what was the thing they showed?

01:17:07 ◼   ► - AirDrop, it lets you do AirDrop slightly cooler.

01:17:11 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:17:13 ◼   ► It's a very minor difference.

01:17:15 ◼   ► - But for the, as it's relevant to audio,

01:17:18 ◼   ► here are some stats about it.

01:17:20 ◼   ► So first, bandwidth, so we were just talking about that.

01:17:22 ◼   ► Gary Eves says they want more of.

01:17:23 ◼   ► Ultra wideband apparently goes up to 675 megabits.

01:17:28 ◼   ► That's as compared to 2.1 megabits for Bluetooth 5.0

01:17:33 ◼   ► and 9.2 megabits for Apple's high res lossless audio.

01:17:35 ◼   ► So plenty of headroom there.

01:17:37 ◼   ► Like the Apple's audio is 9.2 megabits,

01:17:40 ◼   ► and that can't fit in the 2.1 megabits of Bluetooth,

01:17:44 ◼   ► but 675, you're fine, right?

01:17:47 ◼   ► Power consumption, another thing that's important to Apple.

01:17:49 ◼   ► Apparently ultra wide band uses 10 times less power

01:17:52 ◼   ► than BTLE, Bluetooth Low Energy.

01:17:54 ◼   ► So that's great.

01:17:55 ◼   ► It's looking really good.

01:17:58 ◼   ► Range, this is the one that seems iffy.

01:18:00 ◼   ► I put citation needed in the docs,

01:18:01 ◼   ► but actually there is a citation in the video.

01:18:03 ◼   ► Lots of different things you can find

01:18:05 ◼   ► about the range of ultra wideband.

01:18:07 ◼   ► It varies widely, but this video cites a paper that says,

01:18:10 ◼   ► in their testing of file transfer using ultra wideband,

01:18:13 ◼   ► they were getting 25 meters versus 10 meters for Bluetooth.

01:18:16 ◼   ► In practice, as I walk around my house,

01:18:19 ◼   ► I have extensively tested the range of Bluetooth

01:18:22 ◼   ► as I leave my phone in the kitchen and go up to the attic

01:18:26 ◼   ► while listening to a podcast.

01:18:28 ◼   ► I know how to move quickly throughout the house

01:18:29 ◼   ► to not run out the audio buffer

01:18:32 ◼   ► and to get back into the range of it,

01:18:33 ◼   ► But Bluetooth goes much farther than you think it does.

01:18:36 ◼   ► And so if ultra wide band is anything close

01:18:39 ◼   ► to twice the range, I think it's great.

01:18:41 ◼   ► The next one is latency.

01:18:43 ◼   ► You might think this doesn't matter too much

01:18:45 ◼   ► when you're playing a song or something,

01:18:47 ◼   ► but latency is super important to things like AR.

01:18:49 ◼   ► That's what Gary was talking about in this thing here

01:18:52 ◼   ► of like turning your head and the audio

01:18:54 ◼   ► and not lagging behind it or whatever.

01:18:56 ◼   ► The latency of Bluetooth is not great in this article

01:19:00 ◼   ► that we'll put a link to in the show notes.

01:19:02 ◼   ► they measured it to be 20 to 30 milliseconds at best.

01:19:05 ◼   ► An ultra wide band that this company called Spark

01:19:08 ◼   ► has demonstrated a sub 0.2 millisecond latency.

01:19:12 ◼   ► So from 30 milliseconds to 0.2 milliseconds,

01:19:15 ◼   ► possibly down to 0.1 if they really pushed it.

01:19:17 ◼   ► So way lower latency.

01:19:19 ◼   ► - And that, by the way, that would allow it to be

01:19:22 ◼   ► probably used as a live monitoring headphone,

01:19:24 ◼   ► which current Bluetooth headphones just cannot do

01:19:27 ◼   ► because of, among other problems, latency.

01:19:30 ◼   ► But if you wanted to, say, have that be your live monitoring

01:19:32 ◼   ► headphone while you're podcasting or playing music

01:19:35 ◼   ► or recording video or something, right now we

01:19:37 ◼   ► all have to use wired headphones to do that.

01:19:40 ◼   ► That kind of latency, if it can be that low, end to end,

01:19:44 ◼   ► that would allow live monitoring.

01:19:46 ◼   ► And that would be great.

01:19:47 ◼   ► I was thinking of that when I--

01:19:48 ◼   ► I was just thinking I heard a discussion between some people

01:19:51 ◼   ► about this, but I realized I didn't hear a discussion.

01:19:52 ◼   ► It was actually a Twitter conversation

01:19:54 ◼   ► that shows how I sort of like reify things in my brain

01:19:57 ◼   ► when I'm reading Twitter.

01:19:58 ◼   ► I actually hear the voices of the people talking,

01:19:59 ◼   ► especially if I know them,

01:20:00 ◼   ► and it was someone responding to someone else that I know,

01:20:03 ◼   ► that like, oh, Apple keeps removing these headphone ports,

01:20:05 ◼   ► and it's terrible, 'cause if you're doing

01:20:07 ◼   ► live audio monitoring,

01:20:08 ◼   ► you need that zero latency connection.

01:20:10 ◼   ► I was like, A, nothing is zero latency,

01:20:11 ◼   ► and B, you don't need it to be zero,

01:20:13 ◼   ► it just needs to be low enough that you don't notice.

01:20:17 ◼   ► This first one was talking about editing video,