ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I have a pre-show.

00:00:02 ◼   ► - All right and then if we don't have a better post-show,

00:00:04 ◼   ► I did have a Synology adventure a week or two back

00:00:07 ◼   ► that the both of you will find quite humorous

00:00:10 ◼   ► because I almost died again.

00:00:12 ◼   ► But we don't have to do that

00:00:14 ◼   ► if we end up on something better.

00:00:16 ◼   ► - I think we might leave there a little bit earlier.

00:00:18 ◼   ► - Oh no, that scares me.

00:00:20 ◼   ► I don't know, I don't like where this is going at all.

00:00:22 ◼   ► - How long is your pre-show gonna be?

00:00:23 ◼   ► If your pre-show's gonna be an hour long,

00:00:24 ◼   ► maybe think of it as a topic.

00:00:26 ◼   ► - We'll see.

00:00:29 ◼   ► - Oh God, I'm very scared.

00:00:31 ◼   ► - You're gonna be like, what is that movie?

00:00:33 ◼   ► I mean, I think the Fugitive does it a few other ones.

00:00:35 ◼   ► Todd tweets about it sometimes where like,

00:00:37 ◼   ► the title card for the movie comes up 40 minutes in.

00:00:40 ◼   ► - Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

00:00:41 ◼   ► - Or the other one is like,

00:00:43 ◼   ► when does the last credit appear on the screen?

00:00:45 ◼   ► Some of those are like 40, 50 minutes into the movie.

00:00:47 ◼   ► The last, it's as directed by whatever,

00:00:50 ◼   ► like 50 minutes of the movie is ridiculous.

00:00:52 ◼   ► - It's gonna be one of those days.

00:00:54 ◼   ► - Oh wait, I need to open IRC, shoot.

00:00:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, I didn't have it open either.

00:00:57 ◼   ► - I kinda dislike Textual,

00:00:59 ◼   ► 'cause Textual is taking over like the T-E-X like shortcut,

00:01:04 ◼   ► you know what I mean?

00:01:04 ◼   ► 'Cause I don't wanna launch TextEdit.

00:01:06 ◼   ► - Okay, wait, you launch TextEdit?

00:01:08 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:01:09 ◼   ► - That, for what?

00:01:11 ◼   ► - Sometimes I need styled text.

00:01:13 ◼   ► - For what?

00:01:15 ◼   ► - Sometimes you need fonts, you know?

00:01:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, but if you're, I mean,

00:01:20 ◼   ► anything I would use rich text for,

00:01:22 ◼   ► I would do in pages,

00:01:23 ◼   ► 'cause it's probably something I'm making,

00:01:25 ◼   ► I'm printing out.

00:01:25 ◼   ► - Pages, come on.

00:01:28 ◼   ► - Why else would I use rich text?

00:01:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, I kind of agree with Markle on this one,

00:01:31 ◼   ► to be honest with you.

00:01:32 ◼   ► - Like all plain text documents open up in TextMate,

00:01:35 ◼   ► and for you I'm sure it's BB Edit,

00:01:36 ◼   ► and for Casey I'm sure it's some kind of garbage thing

00:01:38 ◼   ► made by Microsoft.

00:01:39 ◼   ► - Oh, stop.

00:01:40 ◼   ► - It's not some non-native app.

00:01:43 ◼   ► - I've never actually used it,

00:01:43 ◼   ► I don't even know how good it is,

00:01:45 ◼   ► I'm sure it's fine.

00:01:47 ◼   ► - TextEdit launches real fast,

00:01:48 ◼   ► and if you just wanna do some style text,

00:01:50 ◼   ► like, you know, say you wanna print like a label

00:01:52 ◼   ► or something, I just wanna launch an app

00:01:54 ◼   ► that launches real quick and print some style text.

00:01:56 ◼   ► No way I would launch pages, you kidding?

00:01:58 ◼   ► - I guess I would just use pages for that.

00:02:00 ◼   ► - Oh, TextEdit launches instantly.

00:02:02 ◼   ► - Maybe you're so accustomed to using

00:02:04 ◼   ► a 12 year old computer that like now

00:02:05 ◼   ► that you have a fast one, you don't realize like,

00:02:08 ◼   ► oh, pages also launches instantly.

00:02:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, right, let's see, let's see how long pages takes.

00:02:12 ◼   ► Three, four, five, six, six bounces, six bounces,

00:02:16 ◼   ► all right, now the text came up, all right.

00:02:18 ◼   ► Now let's see TextEdit.

00:02:19 ◼   ► TextEdit, one, done.

00:02:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, six times faster, as counted in bounces.

00:02:26 ◼   ► - All right, fair enough.

00:02:28 ◼   ► - Before the show, John has instituted over the last,

00:02:33 ◼   ► I don't know, six months, maybe a year,

00:02:35 ◼   ► something that he likes to call pre-flight,

00:02:37 ◼   ► where we kinda run through what we're gonna talk about,

00:02:39 ◼   ► and it's actually very helpful,

00:02:40 ◼   ► as much as I give him grief for it.

00:02:41 ◼   ► And Marco just kinda slid in in the midst of pre-flight.

00:02:44 ◼   ► I have a pre-show, which is fine,

00:02:46 ◼   ► that's not entirely unusual.

00:02:48 ◼   ► And then as we keep talking, I said,

00:02:49 ◼   ► oh, you know, I have an after show

00:02:50 ◼   ► about how I had a heart attack about my sonology,

00:02:52 ◼   ► and Marco said, well, that might come up

00:02:54 ◼   ► before the after show.

00:02:56 ◼   ► I'm getting really nervous,

00:02:58 ◼   ► and I would like to end my misery as quickly as possible.

00:03:01 ◼   ► So what's going on, Marco?

00:03:04 ◼   ► - Well, let me start by saying

00:03:07 ◼   ► that my Mac Mini flooded my closet.

00:03:09 ◼   ► - What?

00:03:12 ◼   ► What are you talking about?

00:03:14 ◼   ► - I'm trying to think, what kind of things involving water

00:03:16 ◼   ► does the Mac Mini control?

00:03:18 ◼   ► The ice machine, no.

00:03:20 ◼   ► So here's what happened, listeners.

00:03:24 ◼   ► When I moved away from the Mac Mini as my desktop,

00:03:29 ◼   ► when the Pro laptops came out,

00:03:30 ◼   ► I switched, as you know, to my desktop laptop,

00:03:32 ◼   ► which I'm still extremely happy with.

00:03:34 ◼   ► And in fact, the Mac Mini and TIFF's old Intel MacBook Pro

00:03:39 ◼   ► are both, as we speak, sitting in their trade-in boxes,

00:03:42 ◼   ► waiting to be shipped out.

00:03:43 ◼   ► The Mac Mini is no longer gonna be used as a home server,

00:03:47 ◼   ► because what I was using it for,

00:03:49 ◼   ► so here, backing up a little bit,

00:03:51 ◼   ► when I got the new laptop,

00:03:53 ◼   ► I figured I have some uses for a home server here and there,

00:03:56 ◼   ► pretty light uses, if I'm honest,

00:03:58 ◼   ► but I could use one here and there.

00:03:59 ◼   ► Network storage is probably the biggest use case.

00:04:03 ◼   ► And then I was thinking, in the past,

00:04:05 ◼   ► I've used my Mac Mini back at Nether House.

00:04:08 ◼   ► I used an old Intel Mac Mini to run the crappy software

00:04:12 ◼   ► for my scanner and stuff like that

00:04:14 ◼   ► that I didn't want cluttering up my main Mac.

00:04:16 ◼   ► Or when I had the Synology back at home,

00:04:20 ◼   ► I would run the iSCSI terminator on that Mac Mini,

00:04:24 ◼   ► because iSCSI is such a garbage fire on Mac OS.

00:04:27 ◼   ► But I was using iSCSI so the back please

00:04:28 ◼   ► could back it up, remember that whole thing.

00:04:30 ◼   ► So anyway, so I thought, I have some uses for a home server.

00:04:34 ◼   ► That was the idea.

00:04:36 ◼   ► And I had two eight terabyte external SSDs

00:04:40 ◼   ► that were serving as massive storage for both me and TIFF.

00:04:44 ◼   ► They were serving as time machine hosting,

00:04:47 ◼   ► as well as archive storage.

00:04:49 ◼   ► And because they were mounted on a Mac,

00:04:51 ◼   ► the archive storage was also being backed up to back please.

00:04:54 ◼   ► So I figured that was a really good solution overall.

00:04:56 ◼   ► And I had originally got the SSDs

00:04:58 ◼   ► so that it could live in my office

00:05:00 ◼   ► because they don't make any noise

00:05:01 ◼   ► and I don't allow fans in my office.

00:05:04 ◼   ► So it was fine in my office,

00:05:05 ◼   ► but my office here is kind of small

00:05:07 ◼   ► and I wanted to get it out of my office

00:05:09 ◼   ► because once it's operating as a server,

00:05:12 ◼   ► a Mac Mini doesn't really need to be next to you.

00:05:14 ◼   ► It can be anywhere in your network

00:05:15 ◼   ► and it serves the same purpose.

00:05:17 ◼   ► So I happened to have a closet nearby

00:05:21 ◼   ► that hosts the router and the switch.

00:05:23 ◼   ► I figured I can put the Mac Mini in this closet.

00:05:25 ◼   ► It's perfect actually.

00:05:26 ◼   ► There's plenty of room for it on this high up shelf.

00:05:29 ◼   ► All the networking gear is right there.

00:05:31 ◼   ► So I brought the Mac Mini in there about a month ago

00:05:34 ◼   ► and I also brought with it

00:05:35 ◼   ► the two eight terabyte external SSDs.

00:05:39 ◼   ► And each one of those are just in like a $15 cable matters

00:05:44 ◼   ► enclosure from Amazon where like one side is metal

00:05:47 ◼   ► and the bottom plate is plastic

00:05:48 ◼   ► and just like a basic USB-C external enclosure.

00:05:52 ◼   ► I did run into a couple of issues there.

00:05:55 ◼   ► The M1 Mac Mini is actually kind of a crappy server.

00:06:00 ◼   ► It seems to require a keyboard

00:06:03 ◼   ► to be connected to it to boot.

00:06:05 ◼   ► I tried from previous Mac Minions,

00:06:07 ◼   ► I knew that if you were gonna run a Mac Mini headless

00:06:10 ◼   ► that you would want one of those little

00:06:11 ◼   ► HDMI dummy port dongle things.

00:06:14 ◼   ► That way it thinks there's a hardware monitor plugged in.

00:06:17 ◼   ► That was the first thing I got.

00:06:19 ◼   ► But the M1 series of Mac Minis is more complicated

00:06:22 ◼   ► than that to run headless.

00:06:23 ◼   ► You actually need a keyboard connected

00:06:25 ◼   ► otherwise it will not boot headless.

00:06:27 ◼   ► And I had mixed luck getting it to boot

00:06:30 ◼   ► or not boot with a password.

00:06:31 ◼   ► It ended up being complicated.

00:06:33 ◼   ► So that was kind of crappy and I didn't love that.

00:06:36 ◼   ► Other than that it seemed to work okay.

00:06:38 ◼   ► But I did notice that every so often

00:06:42 ◼   ► I would open up that closet

00:06:43 ◼   ► and it would be really warm in there.

00:06:45 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:06:47 ◼   ► - So I'm thinking like is,

00:06:49 ◼   ► all I've changed recently is I put this Mac Mini there.

00:06:51 ◼   ► Well I reached up and I felt and I noticed that

00:06:54 ◼   ► those SSDs run pretty hot actually.

00:06:57 ◼   ► Like for some reason an SSD that is idle most of the time

00:07:02 ◼   ► for whatever reason these things run really hot.

00:07:06 ◼   ► I imagine not all SSDs are like this

00:07:07 ◼   ► but these big eight terabyte cheapo micron ones

00:07:12 ◼   ► were definitely like this.

00:07:13 ◼   ► - That's why Sony requires a heat sink on SSDs.

00:07:16 ◼   ► If you buy like a third party M.2 SSD

00:07:18 ◼   ► for your PlayStation 5 you must use a heat sink with it.

00:07:22 ◼   ► - Interesting, yeah I mean I never really thought about

00:07:24 ◼   ► whether SSDs run hot 'cause I always assumed they wouldn't.

00:07:28 ◼   ► But no, I mean I'm sure it depends a lot on what they are

00:07:31 ◼   ► and how they're controlled and everything

00:07:33 ◼   ► but these definitely run pretty hot.

00:07:35 ◼   ► I also noticed that the surface of the Mac Mini itself

00:07:37 ◼   ► was like once it's in a warm closet

00:07:40 ◼   ► it actually was kind of warm as well.

00:07:42 ◼   ► I kind of made a mental note like I should probably

00:07:44 ◼   ► move these somewhere else sometime.

00:07:47 ◼   ► Well the other day I was working in that closet a little bit

00:07:51 ◼   ► we have a printer in there too

00:07:52 ◼   ► and I was trying to feed some stuff into the printer

00:07:54 ◼   ► and I noticed that the shelf was wet.

00:07:58 ◼   ► - What?

00:07:58 ◼   ► - Because one other thing I keep in that closet,

00:08:01 ◼   ► it well kept in that closet.

00:08:03 ◼   ► - Oh no, blocks of ice?

00:08:06 ◼   ► - Is a gallon of distilled water

00:08:09 ◼   ► for putting into my rowing machine.

00:08:11 ◼   ► - Oh this is distilled water so then that shouldn't

00:08:13 ◼   ► conduct electricity as easily right?

00:08:15 ◼   ► - Theoretically I hope, yeah.

00:08:17 ◼   ► So I noticed that the gallon of distilled water

00:08:19 ◼   ► that was back there was about half filled

00:08:23 ◼   ► and kind of imploded slightly like as if

00:08:26 ◼   ► there had been some thermal contraction.

00:08:28 ◼   ► - Oh no.

00:08:29 ◼   ► - Is the gallon of whatever water,

00:08:31 ◼   ► that's on the floor right?

00:08:33 ◼   ► - No it's up on the shelf along with everything else.

00:08:35 ◼   ► - Oh imagine that.

00:08:37 ◼   ► - You put a thing of water high up on a shelf.

00:08:39 ◼   ► - Imagine that, imagine.

00:08:42 ◼   ► It could just happen to you.

00:08:43 ◼   ► It could just happen to you John, it happens.

00:08:45 ◼   ► - Like it's heavy, like don't you want it on the ground?

00:08:48 ◼   ► You don't want to reach up to a high shelf

00:08:50 ◼   ► and pull down a big thing of water.

00:08:51 ◼   ► - It's a big shelf, I mean the weight wasn't a problem.

00:08:55 ◼   ► A gallon of water weighs what like seven pounds?

00:08:57 ◼   ► - Can we just learn putting water up high

00:09:00 ◼   ► is called a water tower and it's to get water pressure

00:09:02 ◼   ► in some places, some places in the Midwest right?

00:09:05 ◼   ► Don't do that in your house unless you're trying

00:09:07 ◼   ► to create a miniature water tower for a tiny Lego village

00:09:10 ◼   ► that you have on the floor.

00:09:11 ◼   ► - Well anyway, most of the water,

00:09:16 ◼   ► well about half of that gallon of water

00:09:18 ◼   ► had leaked out over some time period.

00:09:21 ◼   ► It sure looks like it was due to some thermal issues

00:09:25 ◼   ► that were happening nearby.

00:09:27 ◼   ► - So it got so hot that it melted or weakened

00:09:30 ◼   ► the wall of a plastic container containing water?

00:09:33 ◼   ► - It seemed to have weakened the wall of it enough

00:09:35 ◼   ► to make a tiny little hole somewhere on one of the seams.

00:09:38 ◼   ► - What kind of container is this coming?

00:09:40 ◼   ► Can you describe, like what is it?

00:09:41 ◼   ► - Like a gallon of milk, that big plastic.

00:09:44 ◼   ► - Exactly like a gallon of milk?

00:09:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, like the big plastic thing with the handle.

00:09:47 ◼   ► - Oh okay.

00:09:48 ◼   ► - Yeah no, do not put jugs full of milk high up

00:09:51 ◼   ► on shelves near electronics, what are you doing?

00:09:53 ◼   ► - It was distilled water, it's not conducting.

00:09:56 ◼   ► Anyway, I'd never seen this happen before.

00:09:59 ◼   ► - It's right next to the mineral oil.

00:10:01 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:10:03 ◼   ► - So anyway, fortunately nothing was damaged

00:10:05 ◼   ► and the water didn't escape the shelf

00:10:07 ◼   ► and stain the floor or anything, so that's good.

00:10:08 ◼   ► And didn't even seem to stain the shelf somehow.

00:10:11 ◼   ► I guess it's a good shelf.

00:10:12 ◼   ► So anyway, besides a couple of sheets of printer paper

00:10:17 ◼   ► that got wet and got ruined and a few cardboard boxes

00:10:19 ◼   ► for things that didn't need anymore,

00:10:20 ◼   ► including this Mac Mini, nothing else seemed

00:10:23 ◼   ► to have been damaged by this, so fortunately that's good.

00:10:26 ◼   ► - Wait, are you gonna trade in this Mac Mini now

00:10:28 ◼   ► that's been in the water?

00:10:29 ◼   ► - The Mac Mini was not in the water.

00:10:30 ◼   ► It was one shelf above.

00:10:33 ◼   ► - All right.

00:10:34 ◼   ► - Same closet, one shelf above.

00:10:36 ◼   ► Anyway, so I realized I need to get rid

00:10:41 ◼   ► of the situation now.

00:10:42 ◼   ► I mean also I need to stop collecting water in my closet,

00:10:45 ◼   ► but that problem just solved itself.

00:10:47 ◼   ► There is now no more water left in my closet.

00:10:49 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:10:51 ◼   ► - My closet has good drainage that it just leak

00:10:53 ◼   ► out of your house.

00:10:54 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:10:55 ◼   ► - No, it just sat on the shelf.

00:10:56 ◼   ► It didn't have enough surface tension,

00:10:59 ◼   ► or there wasn't enough volume of water

00:11:01 ◼   ► to overcome the surface tension, make it go over the edge.

00:11:04 ◼   ► So it was just like a shallow layer of water on the shelf,

00:11:08 ◼   ► but I don't know.

00:11:09 ◼   ► Anyway, that's not the point of the story.

00:11:11 ◼   ► - Do you have photo, even if you don't post them,

00:11:13 ◼   ► we need some private photos of--

00:11:15 ◼   ► - Yes, concur.

00:11:16 ◼   ► - I didn't take them.

00:11:17 ◼   ► I was busy freaking out and getting paper towels.

00:11:19 ◼   ► - I know.

00:11:20 ◼   ► I'm just gonna say to the listeners, in general,

00:11:23 ◼   ► I know you hear the idea of like a server closet

00:11:25 ◼   ► or whatever, but closets are terrible places

00:11:27 ◼   ► for anything that produces heat.

00:11:29 ◼   ► Unless you have a ventilated closet,

00:11:31 ◼   ► a closet that has air flow going into and out of it,

00:11:34 ◼   ► don't put things in closets or media cabinets

00:11:36 ◼   ► for that matter, if they're entirely enclosed.

00:11:38 ◼   ► You need some source of fresh, cool air

00:11:41 ◼   ► for your electronics to be healthy.

00:11:43 ◼   ► - Turns out.

00:11:44 ◼   ► So anyway, and yeah, this is not a ventilated closet.

00:11:49 ◼   ► Although the networking gear does fine in there.

00:11:50 ◼   ► You know, it's the Ubiquiti Dream Machine,

00:11:52 ◼   ► a big switch, like, you know, it's fine.

00:11:54 ◼   ► I'm sure it does fine 'cause it's more tolerant,

00:11:57 ◼   ► but it's not great for that either.

00:11:59 ◼   ► - Well, but I've literally, like, with the exception

00:12:02 ◼   ► of since I moved the Mac Mini in there,

00:12:03 ◼   ► I've never opened up that closet

00:12:05 ◼   ► and felt it noticeably warm.

00:12:06 ◼   ► And it's an interior closet to the house,

00:12:08 ◼   ► so it doesn't get too hot in the summer

00:12:09 ◼   ► or too cold in the winter either, so anyway.

00:12:11 ◼   ► I have to adjust my Mac Mini setup.

00:12:14 ◼   ► So I have a couple other places around the house

00:12:17 ◼   ► I could put it that are like somewhat enclosed,

00:12:19 ◼   ► but better thermally controlled.

00:12:21 ◼   ► Like there's a utility closet on the outside

00:12:23 ◼   ► that has electrical stuff in it and that's fairly controlled,

00:12:26 ◼   ► so I'm like, all right, I could put it in there.

00:12:28 ◼   ► But I realized I was doing all this, you know,

00:12:32 ◼   ► this Mac Mini, I looked up the trade-in price,

00:12:35 ◼   ► and the trade-in price was like $800.

00:12:38 ◼   ► - With Apple or with someone else?

00:12:39 ◼   ► - With Apple. - Okay.

00:12:40 ◼   ► - So I was like, all right, I could trade this in.

00:12:44 ◼   ► What do I actually need this for?

00:12:45 ◼   ► Could I get away with less?

00:12:47 ◼   ► Is there something else that I could spend the $800 on

00:12:49 ◼   ► that might solve my needs in a better way

00:12:53 ◼   ► and or, you know, something like,

00:12:55 ◼   ► this is not a great solution that I have here.

00:12:57 ◼   ► It seems like both a waste of a perfectly good

00:12:59 ◼   ► M1 workstation computer that could be used in other ways

00:13:04 ◼   ► and also, you know, this is not a great storage solution

00:13:08 ◼   ► physically or logically, like as I mentioned,

00:13:11 ◼   ► it's kind of a crappy home server.

00:13:13 ◼   ► So I thought, all right, let me think about

00:13:15 ◼   ► some other options here.

00:13:16 ◼   ► As much as I hated to admit this,

00:13:20 ◼   ► I thought maybe some kind of network-attached storage

00:13:24 ◼   ► would probably solve this need better.

00:13:27 ◼   ► The main thing I needed it for is Time Machine.

00:13:30 ◼   ► Tiff and I now both have large laptop internal storage,

00:13:34 ◼   ► and we can fit almost all of our archive files

00:13:37 ◼   ► on our laptops.

00:13:38 ◼   ► All we really need something else for is Time Machine.

00:13:41 ◼   ► The Time Machine does have to be fairly large, though.

00:13:44 ◼   ► Tiff's laptop is eight terabytes minus four.

00:13:46 ◼   ► I need a lot of terabytes of Time Machine,

00:13:48 ◼   ► and not much else.

00:13:50 ◼   ► So I basically just need like, what were those,

00:13:53 ◼   ► time capsule, I need a time capsule,

00:13:54 ◼   ► but like for the modern age.

00:13:56 ◼   ► So I decided this would be best solved

00:14:02 ◼   ► by a network-attached storage device.

00:14:04 ◼   ► - Indeed, putting storage on the network

00:14:06 ◼   ► would indeed be best solved

00:14:09 ◼   ► by a network-attached storage device, I agree.

00:14:11 ◼   ► - Preferably that you do not store in a closet.

00:14:13 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:14:16 ◼   ► - So what did you buy?

00:14:17 ◼   ► - Take a guess.

00:14:19 ◼   ► - Did you buy a Synology?

00:14:21 ◼   ► (buzzing)

00:14:22 ◼   ► - I got a Synology, I got another one.

00:14:25 ◼   ► - Attaboy, which ones you get?

00:14:27 ◼   ► - So here, I'm not even sure I should tell you.

00:14:29 ◼   ► - Why?

00:14:31 ◼   ► Honestly, I'm not up to date on the newest Synology stuff.

00:14:33 ◼   ► In fact, I was just discussing this with a friend

00:14:35 ◼   ► via text the other day.

00:14:37 ◼   ► My Synology, my primary Synology that I use

00:14:39 ◼   ► probably more heavily than either of you guys

00:14:41 ◼   ► is still the original one that Synology sent us in like 2013.

00:14:45 ◼   ► It's almost 10 years old.

00:14:46 ◼   ► Now granted, it's a ship of Theseus.

00:14:48 ◼   ► - The 1813 Plus, right?

00:14:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yep, yep, the 1813 Plus.

00:14:51 ◼   ► - I upgraded the RAM on mine, did I tell you that?

00:14:53 ◼   ► - No, you didn't, was that easy?

00:14:54 ◼   ► - 'Cause when Synology's like OS 7 came out,

00:14:57 ◼   ► they said, oh, you know, you can get by with as much RAM

00:15:00 ◼   ► or you recommend that much, and I'm like, huh,

00:15:01 ◼   ► I wonder how hard it is to upgrade the RAM on Synology.

00:15:04 ◼   ► Turns out it's not hard at all.

00:15:05 ◼   ► It's super cheap, I bought a little RAM expansion thing,

00:15:08 ◼   ► opened it up, shoved it on while I was in there,

00:15:09 ◼   ► I sprayed out some of the dust, slapped it back together,

00:15:11 ◼   ► it's got like double the RAM that it had before.

00:15:14 ◼   ► Still going strong.

00:15:15 ◼   ► - Can we put that in the parking lot

00:15:16 ◼   ► and talk about it later, please?

00:15:18 ◼   ► 'Cause I genuinely would like to know about that,

00:15:20 ◼   ► but we can take that offline.

00:15:21 ◼   ► So yeah, so anyway, very briefly,

00:15:24 ◼   ► so I have this 1813 Plus that's sitting here now,

00:15:27 ◼   ► despite my tale of woe that I'll hopefully get to later,

00:15:30 ◼   ► is running really well, but I know the clock is ticking,

00:15:34 ◼   ► and as you, as listeners have really found out

00:15:38 ◼   ► in the last couple of weeks,

00:15:39 ◼   ► I am a little bit on the frugal side,

00:15:40 ◼   ► and I really don't want to buy another 8-base Synology,

00:15:43 ◼   ► and then the proper answer's probably to fill it

00:15:46 ◼   ► with all new hard drives, rather than to just extract

00:15:49 ◼   ► the ones in the current Synology

00:15:51 ◼   ► and pump them over to the new one.

00:15:52 ◼   ► So that's like a several thousand dollar expenditure

00:15:55 ◼   ► that I really don't feel like doing right now.

00:15:58 ◼   ► - Wait, wait, how much space are you using?

00:16:00 ◼   ► - I think I'm using around 11 terabytes at the moment.

00:16:03 ◼   ► - Okay, I can tell you exactly how much it would cost

00:16:05 ◼   ► to replace that, because I just did that.

00:16:07 ◼   ► - Good, okay, well tell me more.

00:16:08 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:16:09 ◼   ► - But then Marco gave the one that's all SSDs.

00:16:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's the thing.

00:16:12 ◼   ► - Well, I thought about it.

00:16:13 ◼   ► So first I thought, all right, if I get,

00:16:15 ◼   ► they made a few years ago, I don't think any of them

00:16:19 ◼   ► were still made, but they made some that only took

00:16:21 ◼   ► two and a half inch disks.

00:16:23 ◼   ► - Oh, I didn't know that.

00:16:24 ◼   ► - Oh, no, you don't want that, that's gross.

00:16:25 ◼   ► - There was a little tiny 6 bay.

00:16:27 ◼   ► - Oh, I bet that was adorable.

00:16:28 ◼   ► - It was, yeah, there's a 6 bay, it's called the DS620 Slim.

00:16:32 ◼   ► It doesn't seem like it's currently made,

00:16:34 ◼   ► but you can still find a couple of them

00:16:35 ◼   ► for sale here and there.

00:16:36 ◼   ► But it's like a little tiny 6 bay SSD only one,

00:16:40 ◼   ► which I thought was kind of cool.

00:16:42 ◼   ► But I realized, okay, for my actual needs here,

00:16:45 ◼   ► A, I don't have six SSD sized disks.

00:16:49 ◼   ► I don't really need to or want to have those.

00:16:52 ◼   ► And also, I want this to be very large storage.

00:16:56 ◼   ► And it can be very large, very cheap.

00:16:59 ◼   ► And so I'm looking at three and a half inch drives.

00:17:01 ◼   ► But I also realized, I also don't want,

00:17:03 ◼   ► my needs here, while they are large, they are also simple.

00:17:07 ◼   ► I'm not running Plex on this thing.

00:17:09 ◼   ► I'm not gonna get into the Docker fest and running apps

00:17:14 ◼   ► and having it download pirated movies for me and everything.

00:17:16 ◼   ► I'm not gonna do any of that stuff.

00:17:18 ◼   ► It just needs to host Time Machine.

00:17:20 ◼   ► A Raspberry Pi could possibly have done this

00:17:24 ◼   ► with more work. (laughs)

00:17:25 ◼   ► So it's really, it's fine.

00:17:28 ◼   ► Anyway, so I decided I'm just gonna get a small one.

00:17:32 ◼   ► Now I know Merlin would kill me if I got a 2 bay.

00:17:36 ◼   ► - And that is correct, by the way.

00:17:38 ◼   ► - But I really only want two disks.

00:17:40 ◼   ► If all I'm doing is Time Machine,

00:17:42 ◼   ► theoretically I could get a one bay one.

00:17:44 ◼   ► Because I can just get a single 16 terabyte hard drive

00:17:47 ◼   ► and be fine.

00:17:48 ◼   ► Like that's all I would really need.

00:17:50 ◼   ► - And in your defense, when we had first gotten

00:17:52 ◼   ► these technologies almost a decade ago,

00:17:55 ◼   ► you and I were talking, maybe it was all three of us,

00:17:57 ◼   ► but I remember particularly you and I, Marco,

00:17:58 ◼   ► were talking about how to allocate these eight drives.

00:18:02 ◼   ► And what you had said you were gonna do,

00:18:03 ◼   ► and I agreed with it, and still am doing to this day,

00:18:05 ◼   ► is you said you were gonna, what is it,

00:18:07 ◼   ► RAID 0, two of the physical drives,

00:18:09 ◼   ► which is to say make it as though

00:18:11 ◼   ► it's virtually one large drive.

00:18:14 ◼   ► But the only thing that gets put on that drive

00:18:17 ◼   ► is Time Machine.

00:18:18 ◼   ► Because that's redundant, and yes,

00:18:20 ◼   ► I'm sure Jon is fuming right now,

00:18:22 ◼   ► but I concur with you, Marco,

00:18:23 ◼   ► that for something that is already redundant,

00:18:26 ◼   ► it is not the end of the earth if it poops the bed.

00:18:28 ◼   ► - Right, it's like if you have Time Machine and Backblaze,

00:18:31 ◼   ► you're pretty well covered,

00:18:33 ◼   ► and you can put that Time Machine on a single disk

00:18:35 ◼   ► or a RAID 0 or whatever, it's fine.

00:18:37 ◼   ► - If you like to live dangerously,

00:18:38 ◼   ► I'll cross that bridge when I eventually run out of storage,

00:18:41 ◼   ► 'cause that's like the last bridge,

00:18:42 ◼   ► like how do I get more storage back?

00:18:44 ◼   ► Well, I'll break that RAID array,

00:18:46 ◼   ► break that RAID 5 array and put it into RAID 0,

00:18:48 ◼   ► and voila, you've like doubled your,

00:18:50 ◼   ► and that's where I'm gonna run out of storage,

00:18:52 ◼   ► 'cause we back up everything to Time Machine,

00:18:54 ◼   ► to that all the laptops in the house,

00:18:55 ◼   ► all the desktops, everything,

00:18:57 ◼   ► and that adds up after a while.

00:18:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, so anyway, I realized my actual storage needs are,

00:19:04 ◼   ► they're large in the sense of,

00:19:06 ◼   ► we have roughly 12 terabytes, maybe 13,

00:19:10 ◼   ► of Time Machine data that I wanna back up.

00:19:13 ◼   ► - That's a lot.

00:19:14 ◼   ► - But also, modern hard drives go up to 18 terabytes.

00:19:18 ◼   ► So in a sense, it is a lot, like in absolute terms,

00:19:23 ◼   ► but relative to modern hard drives,

00:19:25 ◼   ► if you're buying new equipment, it kind of isn't a lot.

00:19:28 ◼   ► That's why I said I could get away with a one or two bay one

00:19:32 ◼   ► because really, I just need like one drive worth of storage.

00:19:37 ◼   ► So I looked at my options.

00:19:39 ◼   ► I ended up going with one called the DS420J.

00:19:44 ◼   ► It's four bays, and it has otherwise

00:19:47 ◼   ► pretty minimal features.

00:19:49 ◼   ► Nothing is hot-swappable on it.

00:19:51 ◼   ► It doesn't have, I don't think it has any of the like

00:19:54 ◼   ► fancy media encoding features or anything like that,

00:19:57 ◼   ► but what's nice about the 420J is that it is compact

00:20:02 ◼   ► and quiet and low-powered.

00:20:05 ◼   ► And so if you're going to put it in a closet or something,

00:20:08 ◼   ► those are pretty attractive qualities,

00:20:10 ◼   ► and it's not that expensive.

00:20:13 ◼   ► It's $300 empty.

00:20:14 ◼   ► - That's really not bad.

00:20:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, for a four bay Synology, that's pretty good.

00:20:18 ◼   ► - And by the way, looking at the official site

00:20:21 ◼   ► for this device, DS420J is a four bay desktop NAS

00:20:25 ◼   ► designed for home data backup, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:20:28 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:20:29 ◼   ► You're barking up the correct tree, I would say.

00:20:31 ◼   ► - But is it rated for outdoor use?

00:20:32 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:20:33 ◼   ► - Oh, gosh.

00:20:35 ◼   ► - As long as there's a roof over it, it'll be fine, right?

00:20:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, theoretically.

00:20:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, totally, totally.

00:20:38 ◼   ► - The rain doesn't get to that area.

00:20:40 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:20:42 ◼   ► So I got it, I set it up today, and I put into it

00:20:48 ◼   ► only two drives so far.

00:20:49 ◼   ► I figure if I really need expansion later,

00:20:51 ◼   ► I can expand later.

00:20:52 ◼   ► I probably never will.

00:20:55 ◼   ► But it's good to have the four bays for flexibility

00:20:57 ◼   ► in the future if need be, given that the price

00:20:59 ◼   ► was so good on this.

00:21:00 ◼   ► And the drives I got were two Seagate whatever, whatever,

00:21:04 ◼   ► 18 terabyte drives that for some reason are on sale

00:21:08 ◼   ► right now for like $350 each.

00:21:10 ◼   ► - Where, how do you get the drives in this thing?

00:21:14 ◼   ► - You actually unscrew the butt.

00:21:16 ◼   ► It's like those old overalls where you unbutton things

00:21:20 ◼   ► for the butt access panel.

00:21:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, I saw in the back panel, I see two big openings

00:21:24 ◼   ► for fans, so you open that up.

00:21:26 ◼   ► - You see those giant black thumb screws on the corners

00:21:29 ◼   ► of those fan panel, you unscrew all those,

00:21:31 ◼   ► and the whole back hinges down.

00:21:33 ◼   ► - And then does it flap down like a door?

00:21:35 ◼   ► Yeah, I see it.

00:21:36 ◼   ► Do the fans come with it when it hinges down?

00:21:37 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:21:38 ◼   ► - And then it's just four vertically stacked.

00:21:40 ◼   ► - And then, yeah, it is.

00:21:41 ◼   ► You have these four trays you pull out

00:21:43 ◼   ► and stick the hard drives in.

00:21:44 ◼   ► Yeah, so it's fine.

00:21:46 ◼   ► I did the new setup, I mean, the last time I set up

00:21:50 ◼   ► a Synology was 2013, they've come a long way since then.

00:21:54 ◼   ► I did it all from an iPhone app to start,

00:21:56 ◼   ► like the whole finding your IP and setting up

00:21:57 ◼   ► your admin password and stuff.

00:21:59 ◼   ► And I did the rest of the setup via the web interface,

00:22:02 ◼   ► when I had to enable time machine shares.

00:22:04 ◼   ► It's been totally fine to set up,

00:22:06 ◼   ► it was a very quick and easy process.

00:22:09 ◼   ► It was really nice.

00:22:11 ◼   ► So overall, I'm satisfied so far, we'll see how it goes,

00:22:14 ◼   ► but I think this will be a really good solution.

00:22:18 ◼   ► And I've decided here, in the past I have had issues,

00:22:23 ◼   ► as talked on the show, about how the heck do you back up

00:22:27 ◼   ► a Synology?

00:22:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, tell me about it.

00:22:29 ◼   ► - You can't use Backblaze or any good cloud backup for it.

00:22:33 ◼   ► - You can use B2.

00:22:35 ◼   ► - Well, right, but you can't have unlimited capacity.

00:22:38 ◼   ► You gotta pay per gig, and you can use various services

00:22:41 ◼   ► to pay per gig.

00:22:42 ◼   ► Backblaze B2 is one of those services,

00:22:43 ◼   ► or you could do S3 or whatever else.

00:22:45 ◼   ► So those options exist, I don't love those options.

00:22:48 ◼   ► What I decided to do with this is,

00:22:51 ◼   ► because we now both have these large laptops,

00:22:54 ◼   ► and because the Synology, we mostly just need it

00:22:56 ◼   ► for Time Machine, I decided to only use it

00:22:59 ◼   ► for Time Machine, effectively.

00:23:01 ◼   ► Maybe I'll, if I have some kind of weird app I wanna run on,

00:23:04 ◼   ► maybe I'll do that in the future.

00:23:05 ◼   ► Again, I don't think it's very likely,

00:23:07 ◼   ► but what I really want here is for the computers themselves

00:23:10 ◼   ► that we're using to be the primary storage,

00:23:14 ◼   ► and to have the network attacks thing only be for backup.

00:23:18 ◼   ► And that way, I never have to worry about how the heck

00:23:20 ◼   ► I back up the Synology.

00:23:22 ◼   ► - I recommend eventually, it's hard for me to believe

00:23:25 ◼   ► that you're gonna have this four-bay Synology

00:23:26 ◼   ► that you only have two bays filled on,

00:23:28 ◼   ► that you're only ever gonna use it for Time Machine.

00:23:29 ◼   ► Eventually, inevitably, you're gonna fill

00:23:31 ◼   ► those other two bays, then you're gonna have more storage

00:23:33 ◼   ► than you need, then you're gonna put files on it,

00:23:34 ◼   ► and then you're gonna think about backing it up.

00:23:36 ◼   ► And when you do that, several years from now,

00:23:38 ◼   ► I'm here to tell you, using the native, or whatever,

00:23:41 ◼   ► the Synology B2 backup thing, and just pointing it,

00:23:44 ◼   ► not at your Time Machine volume, but at your other volume,

00:23:46 ◼   ► it's really simple, it's pretty darn cheap.

00:23:48 ◼   ► It's not as cheap as the $5 flat rate per month,

00:23:51 ◼   ► whatever Backblaze is now.

00:23:53 ◼   ► You pay per byte that you store, but to give an example,

00:23:57 ◼   ► you know what I back up from my Synology?

00:24:00 ◼   ► Yes, there's a smattering of files

00:24:01 ◼   ► that are only on the Synology for storage, or whatever,

00:24:03 ◼   ► and of course, they get backed up through B2.

00:24:06 ◼   ► I back up my media library, which I don't need any of that.

00:24:09 ◼   ► I can reconstitute that at any time from other sources,

00:24:11 ◼   ► but I don't want to, so I pay to back it up to B2.

00:24:15 ◼   ► - You're talking about things like blue-rays and stuff?

00:24:17 ◼   ► - Yeah. - That's gotta be a fortune.

00:24:19 ◼   ► - It's not, it's like $8 a month.

00:24:21 ◼   ► - No, B2's really cheap. (laughs)

00:24:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's what I'm saying, it's not that much money.

00:24:24 ◼   ► - I looked at this, and for 10 terabytes,

00:24:26 ◼   ► it was not cheap at all.

00:24:28 ◼   ► - Well, I also have two Synologies,

00:24:31 ◼   ► and I back up one Synology to the other Synology,

00:24:34 ◼   ► a subset of it, right?

00:24:35 ◼   ► So I've got the big Synology,

00:24:36 ◼   ► and then a subset of the big Synology syncs,

00:24:39 ◼   ► again, through built-in software

00:24:40 ◼   ► that comes with the Synology,

00:24:42 ◼   ► I can sync a subset of it to the other Synology.

00:24:45 ◼   ► It's very convenient.

00:24:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's $5 per terabyte per month,

00:24:49 ◼   ► so that's 50 bucks a month for me.

00:24:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't have a giant media library.

00:24:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, see, that's the problem

00:24:55 ◼   ► with having a giant media library.

00:24:57 ◼   ► - See, I've decided for that,

00:24:59 ◼   ► I mean, look, I ripped a lot of blue-rays and DVDs

00:25:02 ◼   ► in my time, but I decided,

00:25:04 ◼   ► I have all those sitting on my other Synology,

00:25:06 ◼   ► I have all those sitting there, and I never watch them.

00:25:08 ◼   ► Most of the movies that I've bought on physical media,

00:25:13 ◼   ► either I never watch, or when I want to watch them,

00:25:16 ◼   ► I can watch them on whatever iTunes is called now,

00:25:20 ◼   ► because I hooked up that Movies Anywhere thing years back,

00:25:23 ◼   ► and so all those purchases,

00:25:25 ◼   ► I redeemed all the blue-ray codes for all the discs I had,

00:25:28 ◼   ► and so almost every movie I own on physical media,

00:25:31 ◼   ► in any modern format like blue-ray,

00:25:33 ◼   ► I have access to that for free,

00:25:35 ◼   ► or for no additional cost, through iTunes.

00:25:38 ◼   ► So I can always just go and watch those whenever I want,

00:25:41 ◼   ► and yeah, the quality is not gonna be as good

00:25:44 ◼   ► streaming, playing off of the Apple Store

00:25:46 ◼   ► compared to a much higher bit-rate blue-ray,

00:25:49 ◼   ► but I also just don't care anymore,

00:25:51 ◼   ► and I've decided the simplicity of that setup

00:25:54 ◼   ► is so much nicer than having to maintain

00:25:58 ◼   ► my own physical copy, or whatever,

00:26:01 ◼   ► physical or digital copy of this thing,

00:26:03 ◼   ► like sitting on a disc I own somewhere,

00:26:05 ◼   ► and having to worry about things like file management

00:26:08 ◼   ► and backups and data integrity, all that stuff.

00:26:11 ◼   ► I've just decided, there's so much in my life

00:26:14 ◼   ► that I care so deeply about and that I nerd out about,

00:26:17 ◼   ► I had to get rid of some stuff,

00:26:18 ◼   ► and that's one of the things I got rid of.

00:26:20 ◼   ► - You know, and that makes sense,

00:26:22 ◼   ► especially if you're only consuming media

00:26:24 ◼   ► that's easily findable, replaceable, buyable, whatever.

00:26:26 ◼   ► - Fair point.

00:26:27 ◼   ► - As we've talked about a lot,

00:26:28 ◼   ► and I don't need to belabor the point,

00:26:30 ◼   ► that I tend to track down, and I don't necessarily,

00:26:33 ◼   ► that's not like a tongue-in-cheek way of saying pirate,

00:26:35 ◼   ► although occasionally that might happen,

00:26:37 ◼   ► but generally speaking, I'm able to track down,

00:26:39 ◼   ► or YouTube DL or something,

00:26:41 ◼   ► something that doesn't exist anywhere else,

00:26:43 ◼   ► or doesn't exist in a way that's easily replaceable,

00:26:46 ◼   ► and so on and so forth.

00:26:46 ◼   ► So I think for your purposes,

00:26:49 ◼   ► and I don't mean to sound dismissive, I apologize if I do,

00:26:51 ◼   ► but for your purposes, I agree with you.

00:26:53 ◼   ► What you're doing is the right approach.

00:26:54 ◼   ► For me, it's not quite so simple,

00:26:56 ◼   ► because not only do I have a lot of media

00:26:59 ◼   ► that's not easily, not easy to replace,

00:27:01 ◼   ► but I'm often tweaking that media,

00:27:03 ◼   ► so I'm adding chapters or doing this or doing that,

00:27:05 ◼   ► and so that's part of the reason why I am going through

00:27:08 ◼   ► this ridiculous amount of administrate and headache

00:27:12 ◼   ► to maintain my Plex library,

00:27:13 ◼   ► because as ridiculous as it probably seems and maybe is,

00:27:17 ◼   ► it does provide me an immense amount of joy,

00:27:19 ◼   ► and it is not easy for me to just replace.

00:27:21 ◼   ► Like Jon, you said a minute ago,

00:27:22 ◼   ► "Oh, I can just get this stuff back from other sources."

00:27:24 ◼   ► A lot of the stuff I have in Plex I could,

00:27:26 ◼   ► but not all of it,

00:27:27 ◼   ► and I would be devastated if I lost it.

00:27:29 ◼   ► - It's not so much that I can't get this stuff back.

00:27:31 ◼   ► It's that I do tend my Plex library a little bit.

00:27:34 ◼   ► Like, I put custom artwork on some things,

00:27:35 ◼   ► 'cause I didn't like the default ones.

00:27:37 ◼   ► I messed with the metadata.

00:27:38 ◼   ► I have 17 versions of Star Wars

00:27:39 ◼   ► that I kinda have to hand roll,

00:27:41 ◼   ► because Plex just knows about Star Wars,

00:27:43 ◼   ► but then I got all the different versions,

00:27:45 ◼   ► and I want them labeled, and you know, like,

00:27:46 ◼   ► and if it went away and I lost that,

00:27:50 ◼   ► it's like, "Oh, well, you can get those things back,"

00:27:52 ◼   ► but now I have to go and re-tend that garden.

00:27:54 ◼   ► I have to remember where did I find that good artwork

00:27:58 ◼   ► that I liked for this?

00:27:58 ◼   ► Did I save a little subfolder of like Synology custom artwork

00:28:02 ◼   ► on my Mac, or did I not do that?

00:28:04 ◼   ► How did I set up the metadata

00:28:05 ◼   ► for these different versions of Star Wars

00:28:07 ◼   ► so they're all set up correctly?

00:28:08 ◼   ► Just how do I recreate the folder structure the right way?

00:28:11 ◼   ► Like, it's not just the data.

00:28:12 ◼   ► It's the tending to it.

00:28:13 ◼   ► It's the same thing with my photo library.

00:28:15 ◼   ► Worst case scenario, like, I have my photos backed up

00:28:17 ◼   ► a million times, including to Google Photos again,

00:28:19 ◼   ► but Google Photos doesn't have any of my metadata about it,

00:28:22 ◼   ► and I would be devastated to lose all that metadata,

00:28:24 ◼   ► so part of me backing up my iCloud photo library

00:28:27 ◼   ► a thousand times is because I never wanna lose

00:28:30 ◼   ► all of the work that I have poured into tending

00:28:32 ◼   ► that particular garden of, you know, tagging photos

00:28:35 ◼   ► and editing them and cropping them

00:28:37 ◼   ► and putting them into albums and sub-albums

00:28:39 ◼   ► and the smart folders and, like, you know, keywords,

00:28:43 ◼   ► and, like, that's time I've invested into this library.

00:28:46 ◼   ► It's not a lot of data.

00:28:46 ◼   ► That metadata is probably, like, you know,

00:28:48 ◼   ► less than 100 megabytes or something,

00:28:50 ◼   ► but that is the most important part of it.

00:28:52 ◼   ► Yes, obviously you want the photos themselves,

00:28:53 ◼   ► which is why in the end my backstop against my backstop

00:28:57 ◼   ► against my backstop is, you know,

00:28:59 ◼   ► oh, at least I still have the photos,

00:29:00 ◼   ► and that's better than, you know,

00:29:01 ◼   ► that's what you really want,

00:29:03 ◼   ► but the real thing that would devastate me

00:29:05 ◼   ► if I still had the photos is if I lost all that metadata.

00:29:07 ◼   ► I do less tweaking to Plex.

00:29:08 ◼   ► There's probably enough customization

00:29:09 ◼   ► that one day worth of banging my head against it

00:29:11 ◼   ► I could get it back to the way I wanted it,

00:29:13 ◼   ► but I don't want to spend that day, so, yeah,

00:29:15 ◼   ► I just back it all up, and the good thing

00:29:18 ◼   ► about Network Attack Storage is, for me anyway,

00:29:20 ◼   ► it's a big noisy thing, but it's in my basement.

00:29:22 ◼   ► I never hear it.

00:29:23 ◼   ► I never see it.

00:29:24 ◼   ► It backs up the B2 with me not having to do anything,

00:29:26 ◼   ► and it just runs, and it's been running

00:29:27 ◼   ► for 10 years with no problems.

00:29:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, I cannot say enough good things about Synology,

00:29:32 ◼   ► and that's why, as cheap as I am,

00:29:34 ◼   ► I will at some point either because I'll be forced to

00:29:37 ◼   ► or because I'm finally being proactive,

00:29:39 ◼   ► I will be buying another one.

00:29:40 ◼   ► Now, maybe it won't be eight bay.

00:29:41 ◼   ► Maybe it'll be six, 'cause drives are getting bigger,

00:29:43 ◼   ► blah, blah, blah.

00:29:44 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:29:45 ◼   ► I haven't really looked into it, but I will be getting--

00:29:46 ◼   ► - Here's the thing I'm telling you.

00:29:48 ◼   ► My setup here was about $1,000 total

00:29:50 ◼   ► for 18 terabytes of RAID 1.

00:29:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:29:53 ◼   ► - That's pretty good, and I have two extra bays

00:29:55 ◼   ► for the future if I really need that,

00:29:57 ◼   ► but the drives are so big.

00:30:00 ◼   ► The days of any of the three of us

00:30:02 ◼   ► needing a six bay NAS are over.

00:30:06 ◼   ► - Well-- - I don't know.

00:30:07 ◼   ► When I look at them, I also look at new Synologies,

00:30:09 ◼   ► and I think because storage is so cheap,

00:30:12 ◼   ► I think both Casey and I are of the mind

00:30:14 ◼   ► that if we had 10 times more space,

00:30:18 ◼   ► we can think of things to use it for.

00:30:19 ◼   ► - Oh, heck yes.

00:30:20 ◼   ► - That's the thing, I really can't.

00:30:21 ◼   ► That's why I went this direction.

00:30:23 ◼   ► I looked at what is my personal slice of the archive drive.

00:30:29 ◼   ► Tiff's is a little bit bigger.

00:30:30 ◼   ► She has more of the family photos from big events and stuff,

00:30:34 ◼   ► but my slice of the archive drive is 1 1/2 terabytes.

00:30:37 ◼   ► So I just copied those files onto my laptop

00:30:41 ◼   ► in a folder called Archive, and it fit.

00:30:44 ◼   ► I have less pre-space now, but it still fit just fine.

00:30:48 ◼   ► And so now that's, okay, this is just primary storage now.

00:30:51 ◼   ► Archive is simply a filing system as opposed to,

00:30:55 ◼   ► not a file system, a filing system concept

00:30:57 ◼   ► as opposed to a physical distinction of how it is stored.

00:31:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, again, I don't mean to sound dismissive.

00:31:05 ◼   ► I think for the purposes that you are talking about,

00:31:07 ◼   ► I think you made the exact right choice.

00:31:09 ◼   ► And I'm glad that #CaseyWasRight

00:31:12 ◼   ► and that you should have and did eventually

00:31:15 ◼   ► end up with Synology.

00:31:16 ◼   ► So what we're learning over the last month or so on ETP

00:31:18 ◼   ► is that I need to listen to you more,

00:31:21 ◼   ► you need to listen to me more,

00:31:22 ◼   ► and probably neither of those things

00:31:24 ◼   ► is going to end up happening.

00:31:26 ◼   ► That's okay.

00:31:27 ◼   ► All right, so now that we're 40 minutes in,

00:31:28 ◼   ► you wanna start the show?

00:31:30 ◼   ► - Directed by Margot Arment.

00:31:32 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:31:33 ◼   ► - We are sponsored this week by Linode,

00:31:36 ◼   ► my favorite place to run my servers.

00:31:38 ◼   ► Visit linode.com/ATP, see why Linode has been voted

00:31:42 ◼   ► the top infrastructure as a service provider

00:31:44 ◼   ► by both G2 and TrustRadius.

00:31:46 ◼   ► I run all of my servers at Linode.

00:31:50 ◼   ► These are wonderful virtual cloud servers that, frankly,

00:31:53 ◼   ► it offers every feature you can possibly imagine.

00:31:55 ◼   ► So obviously there's all the benefits of virtual servers.

00:31:58 ◼   ► You can move them around to different hardware,

00:32:00 ◼   ► you can resize them up and down in resource needs,

00:32:02 ◼   ► all sorts of protections and conveniences available there.

00:32:06 ◼   ► But what it comes down to for me for Linode

00:32:07 ◼   ► is first of all, amazing performance.

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00:32:15 ◼   ► and they just are always leading the way

00:32:17 ◼   ► in terms of performance of what you get

00:32:19 ◼   ► on those cloud instances.

00:32:20 ◼   ► And they also just have a really great

00:32:23 ◼   ► infrastructure around it.

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00:32:53 ◼   ► It's just great being a Linode customer.

00:32:55 ◼   ► I run a lot of servers, all of my servers that I run

00:32:57 ◼   ► are run on Linode, and I think I have something

00:32:59 ◼   ► like 35 instances total so far,

00:33:02 ◼   ► and it's just a wonderful web host.

00:33:04 ◼   ► I strongly, strongly recommend,

00:33:06 ◼   ► if you need to run a server somewhere, go to Linode.

00:33:08 ◼   ► They will probably have what you need,

00:33:10 ◼   ► and they'll do a really great job of it.

00:33:12 ◼   ► So go to linode.com/atp, create a free account,

00:33:16 ◼   ► and you get $100 in credit.

00:33:19 ◼   ► Once again, linode.com/atp, make a free account today

00:33:23 ◼   ► to get $100 in credit.

00:33:25 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Linode for being an awesome host

00:33:28 ◼   ► and for sponsoring our show.

00:33:29 ◼   ► Do you have the XDR yet?

00:33:35 ◼   ► - No, no.

00:33:36 ◼   ► I do have a new desk setup though, which we can talk about,

00:33:38 ◼   ► and will talk about in just a few minutes.

00:33:40 ◼   ► But no, I do not have an XDR yet.

00:33:43 ◼   ► I have not purchased an XDR yet.

00:33:44 ◼   ► My desk setup is ever-changing, but no, nothing yet.

00:33:47 ◼   ► But we have to start with a little bit of housekeeping,

00:33:51 ◼   ► I suppose, and one of you would like to talk

00:33:53 ◼   ► about lithium batteries and smoke detectors.

00:33:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, Andrew on Twitter pointed us

00:33:57 ◼   ► to a Consumer Reports article,

00:33:59 ◼   ► counteracting our advice from past shows that say

00:34:02 ◼   ► you can use these really cheap lithium nine-volt batteries,

00:34:05 ◼   ► really long-lasting nine-volt batteries

00:34:07 ◼   ► in your smoke detectors,

00:34:08 ◼   ► because they last much longer than alkalines,

00:34:11 ◼   ► and you don't have to change them as often.

00:34:12 ◼   ► Here's what Consumer Reports has to say.

00:34:14 ◼   ► Lithium nine-volts aren't recommended for smoke detectors

00:34:16 ◼   ► unless you follow a strict battery replacement schedule.

00:34:19 ◼   ► Those batteries maintain a high voltage

00:34:21 ◼   ► until the end of their usable life,

00:34:22 ◼   ► so they provide a much shorter low battery warning

00:34:24 ◼   ► to alert you that it's time to swap in a fresh one.

00:34:27 ◼   ► Alkaline batteries, by comparison,

00:34:29 ◼   ► have a more gradual voltage drop-off,

00:34:31 ◼   ► prolonging the low battery alert

00:34:32 ◼   ► and greatly increasing the odds

00:34:34 ◼   ► that you'll be nearby to get the alert.

00:34:36 ◼   ► So here's Consumer Reports doing a very bad job

00:34:38 ◼   ► of what is their basic job, right?

00:34:40 ◼   ► So this is their advice.

00:34:41 ◼   ► Hey, just don't use lithium nine-volts, all right?

00:34:43 ◼   ► And here's why, right?

00:34:45 ◼   ► But there is no sort of quantifiable information.

00:34:49 ◼   ► Okay, so you'll have less time to hear the beeping.

00:34:52 ◼   ► The whole idea is that the smoke alarms beep

00:34:54 ◼   ► when the voltage gets too low, right?

00:34:56 ◼   ► So if you can graph the voltage of a battery over time,

00:34:58 ◼   ► there's some threshold after which

00:34:59 ◼   ► the smoke detector starts beeping,

00:35:01 ◼   ► and you can imagine lots of differently shaped curves.

00:35:03 ◼   ► The question is, like, how long,

00:35:06 ◼   ► if you ignore an alkaline battery, you know,

00:35:08 ◼   ► in your smoke detector and it starts beeping,

00:35:10 ◼   ► how long would it beep?

00:35:12 ◼   ► Say you're on vacation for a month.

00:35:14 ◼   ► It starts beeping the second you walk out the door.

00:35:16 ◼   ► When you come back a month from now, is it still beeping?

00:35:18 ◼   ► How long does an alkaline battery beep

00:35:20 ◼   ► in your smoke detector?

00:35:21 ◼   ► A day, a week, a month, two months?

00:35:23 ◼   ► We don't know.

00:35:24 ◼   ► And also, how long does a lithium beep

00:35:27 ◼   ► in your smoke detector?

00:35:28 ◼   ► 30 seconds, one minute?

00:35:30 ◼   ► Does it beep once and never again?

00:35:32 ◼   ► Or does it beep for one week instead of two?

00:35:35 ◼   ► I can't make an informed decision about whether or not

00:35:37 ◼   ► I should use lithium nine-volt batteries

00:35:38 ◼   ► in my smoke detector without knowing

00:35:39 ◼   ► how short is the low battery warning.

00:35:41 ◼   ► Yes, you might be out of the house when it beeps,

00:35:43 ◼   ► but I would like to know, does it beep for 30 seconds?

00:35:46 ◼   ► Or does it beep for three days instead of two days?

00:35:48 ◼   ► Or instead of two weeks or whatever?

00:35:51 ◼   ► That's an important question.

00:35:52 ◼   ► And they do touch on, okay,

00:35:53 ◼   ► if you have a battery replacement schedule

00:35:55 ◼   ► and you just put a reminder for every year,

00:35:57 ◼   ► replace all the smoke detector batteries on,

00:36:00 ◼   ► whenever we set the clocks back or whatever,

00:36:03 ◼   ► you won't have a problem with this.

00:36:04 ◼   ► But this advice, I wanted to put on the show

00:36:06 ◼   ► because we did recommend the use of lithium nine-volts.

00:36:08 ◼   ► We want you to know that apparently

00:36:09 ◼   ► there is a potential problem,

00:36:11 ◼   ► but I can't quantify that problem

00:36:13 ◼   ► or know how seriously to take it.

00:36:15 ◼   ► Because A, it's Consumer Reports

00:36:16 ◼   ► and they have weird opinions on stuff.

00:36:17 ◼   ► And B, they don't tell me how much shorter it's going to be.

00:36:20 ◼   ► Because that is the most important fact

00:36:22 ◼   ► in deciding whether this is important advice

00:36:24 ◼   ► that I should definitely follow or advice that I can ignore.

00:36:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause there's an obvious trade-off.

00:36:29 ◼   ► Like if a lithium battery lasts two or three times longer

00:36:35 ◼   ► than an alkaline battery, if you're optimizing for time

00:36:39 ◼   ► the smoke alarm is working,

00:36:41 ◼   ► then that's a pretty big benefit.

00:36:43 ◼   ► And then so you have to weigh that.

00:36:45 ◼   ► Depending on how, as I was saying,

00:36:47 ◼   ► we don't know how much shorter is the beeping window.

00:36:49 ◼   ► Who knows?

00:36:51 ◼   ► There's no data here.

00:36:52 ◼   ► So this sounds like the kind of thing that like,

00:36:55 ◼   ► sometimes established people with established mindsets

00:37:01 ◼   ► have a hard time adjusting to new things

00:37:03 ◼   ► and try to immediately disregard or discredit

00:37:07 ◼   ► some kind of new option as, ah, you can't do that.

00:37:09 ◼   ► It's not safe.

00:37:10 ◼   ► It's not the way we used to do it.

00:37:13 ◼   ► And that kind of attitude often is the cause of myths

00:37:17 ◼   ► and quote wisdom that is not true, spreading around.

00:37:21 ◼   ► And this sounds a lot like that kind of thing to me.

00:37:25 ◼   ► There is actual science that in the sense that

00:37:27 ◼   ► lithium-based batteries do have higher

00:37:31 ◼   ► nominal voltages than alkalines.

00:37:33 ◼   ► I think, I think they're slightly above 1.5.

00:37:36 ◼   ► And things that try to detect their battery level

00:37:39 ◼   ► based on the assumptions of alkaline battery voltages

00:37:41 ◼   ► will often not detect it correctly in either lithiums

00:37:44 ◼   ► or going the other direction if you put in rechargeables.

00:37:47 ◼   ► Like the rechargeable nickel metal hydride batteries

00:37:49 ◼   ► that everybody uses in most things,

00:37:50 ◼   ► like rechargeable double A's and everything,

00:37:52 ◼   ► those have a lower nominal voltage than double A's.

00:37:54 ◼   ► When you put those in something,

00:37:56 ◼   ► I think those are 1.2 or 1.3 volts instead of 1.5.

00:37:59 ◼   ► Off the top of my head, I could be wrong,

00:38:01 ◼   ► but it's lower.

00:38:02 ◼   ► And so when you put those in something,

00:38:05 ◼   ► oftentimes it will think that you have a low battery

00:38:08 ◼   ► even when you don't.

00:38:09 ◼   ► And then those also have a different kind of curve

00:38:11 ◼   ► of like when they fall off.

00:38:13 ◼   ► Like alkaline batteries fall off kind of gradually.

00:38:16 ◼   ► Nickel metal hydride I think has a little bit flatter

00:38:18 ◼   ► of a curve and then lithium has a much flatter curve

00:38:20 ◼   ► where lithium will stay at a high voltage level

00:38:22 ◼   ► until pretty close to the end,

00:38:23 ◼   ► which is the problem they're citing here.

00:38:25 ◼   ► But anyway, this claim about a safety issue with lithiums

00:38:29 ◼   ► I think needs more information to be backed up here.

00:38:32 ◼   ► But if you're actually that concerned

00:38:33 ◼   ► about your smoke alarm safety,

00:38:35 ◼   ► you should get the ones that have the new

00:38:38 ◼   ► like permanent built-in 10-year lithium batteries

00:38:42 ◼   ► and then when they die, and they're designed for lithiums,

00:38:45 ◼   ► so they probably have the correct voltage curve

00:38:48 ◼   ► adjusted for in their beepiness,

00:38:50 ◼   ► when they die, you replace the whole thing.

00:38:54 ◼   ► Like that's the currently best recommended practice

00:38:57 ◼   ► for smoke alarms in your house

00:38:58 ◼   ► and that way you get all new sensors and everything

00:39:01 ◼   ► in addition to a new battery when you get a new unit.

00:39:03 ◼   ► So if you're really that concerned about safety, do that.

00:39:06 ◼   ► And otherwise, if you're gonna replace your nine volts

00:39:08 ◼   ► in your existing smoke alarms,

00:39:10 ◼   ► I still think lithiums are fine.

00:39:12 ◼   ► - And honestly, you should probably replace

00:39:14 ◼   ► the whole smoke detector,

00:39:15 ◼   ► especially if it's in like an area like near the kitchen

00:39:17 ◼   ► where like greasy smoke and stuff can accumulate.

00:39:19 ◼   ► After 10 years, even if the battery's not dead,

00:39:21 ◼   ► it's probably a good idea to get a new one.

00:39:23 ◼   ► - We are sponsored this week by Mack Weldon,

00:39:27 ◼   ► my favorite and most worn brand of clothing.

00:39:30 ◼   ► The holiday season is here

00:39:32 ◼   ► and with it come the yearly questions,

00:39:33 ◼   ► what do I wear to non-ugly sweater parties?

00:39:35 ◼   ► How do I maximize my time savoring holiday moments

00:39:38 ◼   ► and minimize my time shopping for gifts?

00:39:40 ◼   ► So fear not, Mack Weldon has your answers.

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00:40:01 ◼   ► Mack Weldon's stuff frankly is amazing.

00:40:04 ◼   ► I have been wearing their stuff heavily for years.

00:40:07 ◼   ► I wear their underwear every single day.

00:40:09 ◼   ► I wear their t-shirts most days.

00:40:11 ◼   ► I have one of almost everything they make

00:40:13 ◼   ► and I have way more than one of my favorite things.

00:40:16 ◼   ► I have something like 20 pairs of underwear.

00:40:18 ◼   ► I have their socks, they make wonderful boot knit socks.

00:40:22 ◼   ► For the winter they're really nice.

00:40:23 ◼   ► Their warm knit long sleeve tees and other items

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00:40:28 ◼   ► I always love their silver line.

00:40:30 ◼   ► I'm wearing one of their silver t-shirts right now.

00:40:33 ◼   ► This morning when I was working out,

00:40:34 ◼   ► I was wearing their ace sweat pants,

00:40:36 ◼   ► which are, or their ace sweat shorts rather,

00:40:37 ◼   ► 'cause it was a very heavy workout today.

00:40:39 ◼   ► And I was wearing another one of their shirts for workouts.

00:40:41 ◼   ► And it is just a fantastic system.

00:40:44 ◼   ► I love Mack Weldon's stuff.

00:40:45 ◼   ► It's all really great quality.

00:40:48 ◼   ► It holds up over the years and it fits great

00:40:50 ◼   ► from day one to year five.

00:40:52 ◼   ► And it's just fantastic.

00:40:53 ◼   ► So see for yourself at mackweldon.com/atppodcast.

00:41:00 ◼   ► And you can get 20% off your first order

00:41:03 ◼   ► with promo code ATPPODCAST.

00:41:06 ◼   ► That's mackweldon.com/atppodcast,

00:41:09 ◼   ► promo code ATPPODCAST for 20% off your first order.

00:41:14 ◼   ► Mack Weldon, get it right this holiday season.

00:41:17 ◼   ► - All right, let's go to Casey's Corner.

00:41:22 ◼   ► And I'm not talking about the restaurant

00:41:24 ◼   ► at Walt Disney World.

00:41:25 ◼   ► I have a whole bunch of hopefully quick follow up.

00:41:27 ◼   ► - Wait, there's a restaurant at Disney

00:41:28 ◼   ► called Casey's Corner?

00:41:30 ◼   ► - There sure is.

00:41:31 ◼   ► They serve hot dogs and other things of the like.

00:41:32 ◼   ► It's delicious.

00:41:33 ◼   ► - They serve like Velveeta?

00:41:35 ◼   ► - Boar's Head American cheese, white American, yeah.

00:41:37 ◼   ► - And now, you know.

00:41:38 ◼   ► - That would be incredible.

00:41:40 ◼   ► - Velveeta shells and cheese.

00:41:41 ◼   ► - I actually have several pictures of me in front of it,

00:41:44 ◼   ► which if I remember, which I won't,

00:41:45 ◼   ► I will give you one for this chapter of the show notes,

00:41:48 ◼   ► but I will surely forget.

00:41:49 ◼   ► Nevertheless.

00:41:49 ◼   ► - You inspired my wife to get Boar's Head

00:41:51 ◼   ► white American cheese at the store the other week.

00:41:54 ◼   ► - It's good.

00:41:55 ◼   ► - I always liked it.

00:41:56 ◼   ► I've liked it my whole life.

00:41:57 ◼   ► It's good, I ate it.

00:41:58 ◼   ► - Good, see, I'm telling you.

00:41:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm still a yellow American person,

00:42:01 ◼   ► but otherwise, I admit the white American

00:42:04 ◼   ► is very good as well.

00:42:05 ◼   ► - There you go.

00:42:06 ◼   ► See, now that is useful followup.

00:42:07 ◼   ► That is what I like to hear.

00:42:08 ◼   ► All right, so let's talk about--

00:42:10 ◼   ► - Is this the only food and drink opinion

00:42:12 ◼   ► that the three of us share?

00:42:14 ◼   ► - That might be, actually.

00:42:16 ◼   ► - We all find Boar's Head American cheese acceptable.

00:42:19 ◼   ► Thumbs up.

00:42:20 ◼   ► - No, actually, really and truly,

00:42:22 ◼   ► I think you might be onto something.

00:42:23 ◼   ► This might be--

00:42:24 ◼   ► - Do we all like water too?

00:42:25 ◼   ► Not distilled, Mark Allen.

00:42:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, too soon.

00:42:29 ◼   ► - Too soon.

00:42:29 ◼   ► - Two of you have a fraught relationship with water.

00:42:32 ◼   ► - We do, me more so than Marco, but both of us now.

00:42:35 ◼   ► All right, so hey, the LG Screen Manager app,

00:42:38 ◼   ► which is this piece of garbage app

00:42:41 ◼   ► that you can install on a Mac

00:42:43 ◼   ► in order to update the firmware on your LG Ultrafine 5K,

00:42:47 ◼   ► as we discussed a show or two ago,

00:42:49 ◼   ► that only successfully worked on Intel Macs,

00:42:52 ◼   ► and as of the last day or two,

00:42:54 ◼   ► it now works on M1 Macs, which is great,

00:42:56 ◼   ► and that was via Dave Stachowiak via Twitter,

00:43:00 ◼   ► so we'll put that link into the show notes.

00:43:02 ◼   ► If you have an LG 5K or presumably 4K,

00:43:04 ◼   ► you can check that out if you have an M1 Mac.

00:43:07 ◼   ► Now, let's talk about my LG.

00:43:09 ◼   ► It is no longer in the house.

00:43:11 ◼   ► - Oh?

00:43:12 ◼   ► - After nine days of pestering LG,

00:43:16 ◼   ► I have finally gotten a RMA,

00:43:19 ◼   ► and it is finally on its way back to LG.

00:43:21 ◼   ► Thankfully, the repair center is super close.

00:43:24 ◼   ► Let me see where it is.

00:43:25 ◼   ► Oh, City of Industry, California.

00:43:27 ◼   ► So now this thing is going to probably go on a truck

00:43:31 ◼   ► all the way to California to probably sit for three weeks

00:43:33 ◼   ► until someone's available to look at it,

00:43:35 ◼   ► only to probably tell me that the thing is back ordered,

00:43:38 ◼   ► and then eventually, in a month or two or seven,

00:43:41 ◼   ► I might have my Ultrafine 5K back.

00:43:45 ◼   ► - And it might even work then.

00:43:46 ◼   ► - And it might even work then.

00:43:48 ◼   ► So that'll be the test.

00:43:49 ◼   ► What will be over first, my monitor drama or the pandemic?

00:43:52 ◼   ► I'm probably gonna go in favor of the pandemic at this point

00:43:55 ◼   ► and I realize how bold that is.

00:43:56 ◼   ► Nevertheless--

00:43:57 ◼   ► - You can end your monitor drama tomorrow.

00:43:59 ◼   ► - Oh, stop, stop.

00:44:00 ◼   ► Well, I sort of have, and we'll get there in a second.

00:44:02 ◼   ► So just to show you how great LG's service is,

00:44:06 ◼   ► I had an online chat with them on Monday the 6th,

00:44:09 ◼   ► which actually was fairly easy and delightful.

00:44:11 ◼   ► I didn't get a lot of flack about what I wanted.

00:44:13 ◼   ► I didn't have to like, you know,

00:44:15 ◼   ► assure them that I've plugged it in and blah, blah, blah.

00:44:18 ◼   ► Like, it was pretty straightforward.

00:44:19 ◼   ► - Did you take a video of your monitor now?

00:44:21 ◼   ► - No, no, no, didn't have to take a video of my monitor.

00:44:22 ◼   ► Nothing like that.

00:44:24 ◼   ► But they said, hey, here's the deal,

00:44:25 ◼   ► and I think I spoke about this last week.

00:44:27 ◼   ► We need $150 from you in order to do the repair

00:44:31 ◼   ► and we're not gonna collect that by an online chat.

00:44:33 ◼   ► So in order to do the repair, they wanted 150 bucks upfront.

00:44:36 ◼   ► I think I said this last week.

00:44:37 ◼   ► - See, you're spending even more money on the LG now.

00:44:39 ◼   ► - Correct, yes.

00:44:40 ◼   ► - You might as well buy a boat.

00:44:41 ◼   ► It's like just throwing more money.

00:44:43 ◼   ► - You're not wrong.

00:44:45 ◼   ► But no, I really, I have faith.

00:44:46 ◼   ► I truly honestly have faith that sometime between now

00:44:49 ◼   ► and when I'm dead, this thing will come back to me

00:44:52 ◼   ► and work properly, but nevertheless.

00:44:54 ◼   ► - I will agree that it will most likely come back to you.

00:44:56 ◼   ► - Oh gosh.

00:44:57 ◼   ► So I'm gonna be so furious.

00:44:59 ◼   ► In fact, if I'm smart, I won't bring it up

00:45:01 ◼   ► if it comes back and it's not working.

00:45:02 ◼   ► Please, future Casey, don't say anything to Marco.

00:45:04 ◼   ► - Now listen, I'm telling you,

00:45:06 ◼   ► the LG 5K is like the butterfly keyboard.

00:45:09 ◼   ► They can maybe repair it and send it back to you,

00:45:12 ◼   ► but it's not gonna be flawless in a reliable way

00:45:15 ◼   ► for an indefinite amount of time.

00:45:17 ◼   ► Like there's a high chance that something about it

00:45:20 ◼   ► will flake out again.

00:45:22 ◼   ► - We'll see, hopefully not.

00:45:23 ◼   ► But nevertheless, so very quickly,

00:45:24 ◼   ► on Monday the 6th, I have an online chat.

00:45:26 ◼   ► They say, okay, we're gonna call you in two to three days

00:45:27 ◼   ► so we can take your money.

00:45:28 ◼   ► I say, great.

00:45:29 ◼   ► On Friday the 10th, they haven't called yet,

00:45:31 ◼   ► so I had another online chat.

00:45:32 ◼   ► Oh yes, yes, yes, we will absolutely call you

00:45:34 ◼   ► as soon as possible to take your money.

00:45:36 ◼   ► Great.

00:45:37 ◼   ► On Tuesday the 14th, I said, guys, please,

00:45:39 ◼   ► can we please call me and take my money?

00:45:42 ◼   ► All I want in the world is for you to take my money.

00:45:44 ◼   ► - Please end this.

00:45:45 ◼   ► - Please and thank you.

00:45:46 ◼   ► - Can we all buy you an XDR so we can stop talking about it?

00:45:49 ◼   ► - Yes, yes, if you wanna buy me an XDR,

00:45:51 ◼   ► I will gladly accept it.

00:45:52 ◼   ► I am not buying that.

00:45:53 ◼   ► - I am not volunteering for this.

00:45:54 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:45:56 ◼   ► - If Marco would like to volunteer his tribute, so be it.

00:45:58 ◼   ► So anyway, so on the 14th, I get on the online chat again.

00:46:02 ◼   ► (jazzy music)

00:46:04 ◼   ► So finally, I speak to the last person

00:46:06 ◼   ► that I end up speaking to,

00:46:08 ◼   ► and that individual who's very kind,

00:46:10 ◼   ► said in so many words, I'm the person that's in charge

00:46:14 ◼   ► of scheduling refrigerator and TV repairs.

00:46:19 ◼   ► There is no chance I'm going to be taking $150

00:46:22 ◼   ► of your money over the phone

00:46:23 ◼   ► in order to get a monitor repaired.

00:46:25 ◼   ► I don't even know why they sent me to you,

00:46:27 ◼   ► or sent you to me, but anyways.

00:46:29 ◼   ► So I was like, okay.

00:46:31 ◼   ► - Why, why are you putting yourself through this?

00:46:34 ◼   ► - Because now I have to see it through.

00:46:36 ◼   ► I'm not a goddamn quitter, Marco.

00:46:37 ◼   ► - Quit this monitor, you have to quit this monitor.

00:46:40 ◼   ► This is sunk cost fallacy, come on,

00:46:43 ◼   ► just get out of the situation.

00:46:45 ◼   ► - No, no, it's gonna be okay.

00:46:46 ◼   ► - Run from this monitor, it's not worth it.

00:46:48 ◼   ► It's so not worth it.

00:46:50 ◼   ► - So, but it was so nice when it was worth it.

00:46:52 ◼   ► - Isn't your time worth anything?

00:46:54 ◼   ► - Well, apparently not.

00:46:56 ◼   ► So eventually I do get a call back

00:46:57 ◼   ► from a very delightful lady who said,

00:46:59 ◼   ► "I will take $150 of your money, please."

00:47:01 ◼   ► I said, "Yes, absolutely."

00:47:03 ◼   ► And so she immediately sent me a shipping label,

00:47:05 ◼   ► and I dropped the LG 5K off at FedEx this morning

00:47:09 ◼   ► to go to City of Industry to hopefully get repaired.

00:47:12 ◼   ► So she said, "In a best case scenario,

00:47:16 ◼   ► "it's probably gonna be like a week to get there,

00:47:18 ◼   ► "a week or so getting repaired and a week back."

00:47:20 ◼   ► Which, I didn't even look to the calendar,

00:47:22 ◼   ► but that's like what, the first half of January?

00:47:25 ◼   ► I will bet that there is a 50/50 shot

00:47:27 ◼   ► I see this thing before Valentine's Day,

00:47:29 ◼   ► and even that I'm not particularly confident in, obviously.

00:47:31 ◼   ► So we'll see what happens.

00:47:33 ◼   ► - So just for the record, I know the XDR is expensive.

00:47:38 ◼   ► I know, I've said it.

00:47:40 ◼   ► No, it looks back at expensive and says,

00:47:42 ◼   ► "Huh, remember how cheap expensive was?

00:47:44 ◼   ► "I'm ludicrous."

00:47:45 ◼   ► - Fair enough, however, LG's service is awful.

00:47:50 ◼   ► It has always been awful.

00:47:52 ◼   ► And one of the things you get

00:47:54 ◼   ► when you buy something nice from Apple

00:47:56 ◼   ► is most of the time, and they're not perfect all the time,

00:47:59 ◼   ► but most of the time, a way better service experience

00:48:03 ◼   ► if you need it.

00:48:04 ◼   ► This is ridiculous.

00:48:06 ◼   ► Like, the hoops that you're jumping through

00:48:08 ◼   ► to try to get what is, in absolute terms,

00:48:13 ◼   ► still a pretty premium priced monitor

00:48:16 ◼   ► to get warranty serviced.

00:48:17 ◼   ► - Oh no, it's out of warranty, which is part of the problem.

00:48:19 ◼   ► But go ahead.

00:48:20 ◼   ► - Well, to get serviced by its manufacturer.

00:48:22 ◼   ► - Yep, yep, yep.

00:48:22 ◼   ► - That's still a ridiculous amount of hoops to jump through

00:48:26 ◼   ► and a huge amount of time to be without it.

00:48:28 ◼   ► People buy tools for their work,

00:48:30 ◼   ► and they need them to work.

00:48:32 ◼   ► And this is one of the things,

00:48:33 ◼   ► when I was younger and didn't have money,

00:48:38 ◼   ► I thought I was a hotshot who knew everything,

00:48:42 ◼   ► and everything I didn't understand was stupid.

00:48:43 ◼   ► - Wait, you thought that?

00:48:45 ◼   ► That that stopped?

00:48:46 ◼   ► - That's called being smart and 20.

00:48:50 ◼   ► That's what that feeling is.

00:48:52 ◼   ► And so, I would look at things like enterprise-grade servers

00:48:57 ◼   ► and stuff like that, and I'd be like,

00:48:59 ◼   ► "My God, those computers are so expensive.

00:49:01 ◼   ► "What idiot would pay that premium price

00:49:04 ◼   ► "for that Dell workstation when I could build

00:49:08 ◼   ► "a very similar or identically performing computer

00:49:11 ◼   ► "for less money?"

00:49:12 ◼   ► And so I did.

00:49:14 ◼   ► And God, I spent and wasted so much time building

00:49:19 ◼   ► and then repairing and fixing and trying to get to work

00:49:22 ◼   ► custom-built computers for me and my friends,

00:49:24 ◼   ► like throughout all of high school and college.

00:49:26 ◼   ► So many hours down the drain.

00:49:29 ◼   ► But we didn't have much money,

00:49:30 ◼   ► and so that trade-off made sense.

00:49:32 ◼   ► But I never understood why people would buy

00:49:34 ◼   ► the expensive things.

00:49:35 ◼   ► Now that I'm a business and an adult, it makes sense.

00:49:40 ◼   ► If I'm using this thing as a tool for all of my income,

00:49:45 ◼   ► I can spend a little bit more,

00:49:47 ◼   ► this is where the phrase,

00:49:48 ◼   ► throw money at the problem to make it go away.

00:49:51 ◼   ► If I can throw money at this problem

00:49:52 ◼   ► and make it totally go away, that is often worth doing,

00:49:56 ◼   ► because these problems are not worth

00:49:58 ◼   ► the massive amount of time and hassle and potential risk

00:50:04 ◼   ► of this thing might just die one day

00:50:06 ◼   ► when you really need it to be working.

00:50:08 ◼   ► If you're working on something really important,

00:50:10 ◼   ► this thing might just die and you're just screwed.

00:50:12 ◼   ► And if when something does die,

00:50:14 ◼   ► it takes you a week of effort to even get them

00:50:18 ◼   ► to start the repair,

00:50:19 ◼   ► and then you might see it back again in a month,

00:50:22 ◼   ► that is not suitable for professional use.

00:50:26 ◼   ► Simple as that.

00:50:27 ◼   ► And that's why professionals in professional environments,

00:50:30 ◼   ► when they can afford it,

00:50:31 ◼   ► get nicer gear that has better support,

00:50:35 ◼   ► better reliability and better service when you need it.

00:50:38 ◼   ► And in this case, you're just making the case for the XDR

00:50:41 ◼   ► over and over again, every single week.

00:50:43 ◼   ► - He's making the case against the LG 5K,

00:50:46 ◼   ► not necessarily for a $6,000 monitor

00:50:50 ◼   ► that's been surpassed by the laptop monitors.

00:50:53 ◼   ► - It pained me so much to order

00:50:55 ◼   ► this goddamn expensive monitor, it really did.

00:50:58 ◼   ► But my monitor problem has been totally gone since then.

00:51:03 ◼   ► Zero issues, I'm totally happy with it.

00:51:06 ◼   ► Regardless of what Jon says,

00:51:08 ◼   ► and we'll talk about the rumors in a second,

00:51:10 ◼   ► I am not at all feeling FOMO about like,

00:51:13 ◼   ► oh God, what if I'm gonna miss the new thing?

00:51:14 ◼   ► - No, we bought ours at the right time.

00:51:17 ◼   ► We bought them when their price

00:51:20 ◼   ► made the most possible sense.

00:51:22 ◼   ► - Well, it never made that much sense,

00:51:23 ◼   ► but you bought yours at the best time when it was brand new.

00:51:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, if you look at the slope of how much sense

00:51:29 ◼   ► does this monitor make at this price,

00:51:30 ◼   ► it's going down real fast now.

00:51:33 ◼   ► - Maybe, I wouldn't say fast, but anyway.

00:51:35 ◼   ► So the point is, one of the reasons it's so expensive,

00:51:37 ◼   ► yeah, it is a ridiculous price and it is a ridiculous thing,

00:51:40 ◼   ► but you do get a lot for that.

00:51:42 ◼   ► Whether it's worth it to you or not,

00:51:44 ◼   ► that's up to you and everyone else.

00:51:45 ◼   ► But for me, if my LG monitor

00:51:49 ◼   ► that I was depending on every day,

00:51:51 ◼   ► if it died one day, I wouldn't even bother contacting them.

00:51:54 ◼   ► 'Cause I've dealt with LG warranty support in the past.

00:51:57 ◼   ► It's always been terrible.

00:51:58 ◼   ► As far as I'm concerned, if the LG monitor dies,

00:52:00 ◼   ► I would just put it in a closet, forget about it forever,

00:52:02 ◼   ► and just get it, I would overnight myself a replacement

00:52:04 ◼   ► and keep working.

00:52:05 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:52:06 ◼   ► - Well, I understand what you're saying.

00:52:07 ◼   ► And that's the other thing, actually,

00:52:08 ◼   ► is even if I wanted a brand new LG,

00:52:10 ◼   ► they're back ordered for like a month or two.

00:52:12 ◼   ► Why?

00:52:13 ◼   ► Because there's no other options.

00:52:16 ◼   ► - Oh, there's one. - Nevertheless.

00:52:17 ◼   ► Well, there's one.

00:52:18 ◼   ► So I have settled on a new desk setup,

00:52:21 ◼   ► which will hopefully persist until and when

00:52:26 ◼   ► and if I ever get that 5K back.

00:52:28 ◼   ► And so I have the 24 inch 4K, not ultra fine LG monitor

00:52:33 ◼   ► that I was using literally four years ago,

00:52:36 ◼   ► or no, three years ago at work,

00:52:38 ◼   ► that I had borrowed from my good friend at my old job.

00:52:41 ◼   ► And then I don't know if I mentioned it on the air or not,

00:52:43 ◼   ► but I actually ordered one of those as well

00:52:46 ◼   ► before I even spoke to the friend,

00:52:47 ◼   ► because I figured, oh, there's no way

00:52:48 ◼   ► he's just gonna let me buy

00:52:50 ◼   ► or much less borrow one of these monitors.

00:52:53 ◼   ► So I'm just gonna order one and I'll use,

00:52:54 ◼   ► one of these 24 inch 4Ks and the onboard laptop screen.

00:52:58 ◼   ► - Speaking of orders, didn't you order a new LG 5K?

00:53:01 ◼   ► And you're like, oh, I don't think

00:53:02 ◼   ► I'm gonna cancel that order yet.

00:53:03 ◼   ► That's the last we heard of it.

00:53:04 ◼   ► Did you cancel that order?

00:53:05 ◼   ► - I did cancel it.

00:53:06 ◼   ► I think around the time that the LG, the one that I had--

00:53:09 ◼   ► - Do you regret canceling it now?

00:53:11 ◼   ► - A little bit, yes, but that's neither here nor there.

00:53:14 ◼   ► So anyway, so I have--

00:53:16 ◼   ► - You know what's better than one mediocre finicky monitor?

00:53:19 ◼   ► Two of them.

00:53:19 ◼   ► - So it would be a brand new one

00:53:21 ◼   ► that maybe would be less finicky, but he goes,

00:53:23 ◼   ► who knows why?

00:53:24 ◼   ► And by the way, you're talking about it.

00:53:24 ◼   ► Here's my new desk setup.

00:53:25 ◼   ► Again, I would petition for a photo

00:53:28 ◼   ► to be shoved into the Slack so at least we can see it.

00:53:31 ◼   ► And so I can also point at all the liquids

00:53:33 ◼   ► that are threatening your setup.

00:53:36 ◼   ► - All right, you know what?

00:53:37 ◼   ► I will do it right now.

00:53:38 ◼   ► So now you're gonna have to vamp

00:53:40 ◼   ► because I will do it right now

00:53:41 ◼   ► and I will not touch the water.

00:53:43 ◼   ► I will show you exactly where my situation is.

00:53:44 ◼   ► So hold on, you two vamp for a second.

00:53:45 ◼   ► - All right, got it, yep, yep, plenty of time.

00:53:46 ◼   ► Marco will edit this out and then we can,

00:53:48 ◼   ► while you do that, we can discuss which part

00:53:50 ◼   ► of Marco's adult businessman brain decided

00:53:53 ◼   ► I'm gonna store a jug of water next to the computers

00:53:55 ◼   ► in my closet.

00:53:56 ◼   ► - In my defense, those were stored there

00:53:58 ◼   ► at very different times.

00:53:59 ◼   ► - When you're an important businessman,

00:54:01 ◼   ► you realize don't do risky things

00:54:03 ◼   ► like make your own computer, it could cause problems.

00:54:05 ◼   ► I have a jug of water, what should I do with it?

00:54:08 ◼   ► How about up high in the electronics closet?

00:54:11 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:54:12 ◼   ► You need some adult supervision over there.

00:54:14 ◼   ► I don't know what you're doing in that office.

00:54:15 ◼   ► You're probably on wifi right now.

00:54:17 ◼   ► - I did this with the wide angle lens,

00:54:21 ◼   ► so it's probably not the crispest or brightest,

00:54:23 ◼   ► but it should be going through.

00:54:24 ◼   ► - I forgot you sit in darkness.

00:54:26 ◼   ► - No, actually the overhead light is on.

00:54:28 ◼   ► - It's a great thing with your glass desk

00:54:30 ◼   ► that we can see the cable mess right through it.

00:54:32 ◼   ► Like every time you look at the desk,

00:54:33 ◼   ► you're like, oh, there's my bad cable management.

00:54:35 ◼   ► Yep, still there.

00:54:36 ◼   ► - It's an absolute disaster, I'll be the first to tell you.

00:54:38 ◼   ► But so yeah, so what I have now--

00:54:40 ◼   ► - Wait, hold on, okay.

00:54:41 ◼   ► - And he does have a water, what are you doing?

00:54:43 ◼   ► - You have its way over to the side.

00:54:45 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:54:46 ◼   ► - So it was mine.

00:54:47 ◼   ► - Mine was in the corner.

00:54:47 ◼   ► - It was in the corner, nothing.

00:54:49 ◼   ► - All right, so--

00:54:50 ◼   ► - You have an on air sign, but it's off

00:54:52 ◼   ► and we're on the air.

00:54:53 ◼   ► - If that spills, like the USB pre-2 is right there,

00:54:56 ◼   ► which is like a $700 box that does not like water.

00:54:58 ◼   ► The keyboard is there, whatever,

00:54:59 ◼   ► but you already said there's like 100 and something, right?

00:55:01 ◼   ► The laptop is up on a little stand,

00:55:03 ◼   ► but it's learned its lesson.

00:55:05 ◼   ► It's afraid of the word.

00:55:06 ◼   ► - It's on an IMAX stand, isn't that an IMAX stand?

00:55:07 ◼   ► - Yes it is, it is actually.

00:55:08 ◼   ► - At least it's on something.

00:55:10 ◼   ► It's like someone scared of a mouse in a kitchen

00:55:12 ◼   ► going up on a stool, that's what I think.

00:55:14 ◼   ► - But it's hanging over the side by like four inches.

00:55:17 ◼   ► - Yes, well, all right, nobody's perfect.

00:55:18 ◼   ► So here's the thing, so what I've got,

00:55:20 ◼   ► I do have my glass desk, which eventually I will replace,

00:55:23 ◼   ► but have we mentioned I'm cheap?

00:55:24 ◼   ► So directly in front of me--

00:55:25 ◼   ► - Wait, where is the iPad that this Apple Pencil belongs to?

00:55:27 ◼   ► It's nowhere.

00:55:29 ◼   ► - Charging behind me.

00:55:30 ◼   ► I think one of the kids removed the pencil

00:55:32 ◼   ► and dropped it on my desk

00:55:33 ◼   ► and I haven't had a chance to put it back on the iPad.

00:55:35 ◼   ► All right, so let me describe this picture that I took

00:55:37 ◼   ► that you will probably not see

00:55:38 ◼   ► because my whole situation is a mess,

00:55:40 ◼   ► but I'll describe it to you.

00:55:42 ◼   ► So I have my glass desk centered directly in front of me

00:55:45 ◼   ► is one of these LG 24-inch 4K monitors.

00:55:48 ◼   ► This is the one that I actually bought

00:55:50 ◼   ► and I told myself I was going to return.

00:55:51 ◼   ► Like I'd never opened it for a week and a half

00:55:53 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:55:54 ◼   ► And I said, you know, I'll just return it

00:55:56 ◼   ► because I'll just live off of the borrowed monitor

00:55:59 ◼   ► until the LG comes in.

00:56:01 ◼   ► This thing was like 300 bucks,

00:56:03 ◼   ► which is not a small amounts of money,

00:56:05 ◼   ► but it's really not that much money

00:56:07 ◼   ► in the grand scheme of things.

00:56:08 ◼   ► - And it's 27 inches at 4K?

00:56:09 ◼   ► - 24 inches at 4K, which strictly speaking isn't retina,

00:56:13 ◼   ► if you look at the number, like the PPI numbers,

00:56:16 ◼   ► but for my crap eyes, it is absolutely retina,

00:56:19 ◼   ► without question.

00:56:19 ◼   ► - I would say that is like the upper edge.

00:56:22 ◼   ► Because back in the olden days,

00:56:25 ◼   ► 24-inch monitors when they first came out

00:56:28 ◼   ► were 1920 by 1200.

00:56:32 ◼   ► And 4K is roughly, depending on some details,

00:56:36 ◼   ► but roughly double that.

00:56:37 ◼   ► It's the roughly retina version of that.

00:56:39 ◼   ► So later on, towards the tail end of 1X monitors

00:56:42 ◼   ► being normal in Mac land, they did get more dense

00:56:45 ◼   ► and that 1920 across resolution shrunk down

00:56:48 ◼   ► to like 21 and a half inches for the iMac,

00:56:51 ◼   ► in the same way that like the 2560 across

00:56:54 ◼   ► was first in the 30-inch Apple monitor,

00:56:57 ◼   ► and then later on was put in 27s.

00:56:59 ◼   ► So I would say, going quote back to the 1920 point

00:57:04 ◼   ► across monitor at 24 inches,

00:57:09 ◼   ► while it is not today's version of retina,

00:57:12 ◼   ► it is like close enough.

00:57:14 ◼   ► It's within the realm of what we expect as Mac users.

00:57:17 ◼   ► - Absolutely, so that's centered in front of me.

00:57:18 ◼   ► And then to my right, at like a 45-degree angle,

00:57:21 ◼   ► is the borrowed equivalent.

00:57:23 ◼   ► It's the exact same monitor, just the borrowed version.

00:57:26 ◼   ► And that's off to the right.

00:57:27 ◼   ► And then to my left, on a riser that was designed

00:57:30 ◼   ► for the base of the iMac, and is obviously,

00:57:33 ◼   ► and thus a little too small for the MacBook Pro,

00:57:35 ◼   ► but nonetheless, here it is.

00:57:36 ◼   ► On the riser is my MacBook Pro in clamshell at the moment.

00:57:39 ◼   ► And so I've got two identical 4K monitors

00:57:43 ◼   ► basically directly in front of me.

00:57:45 ◼   ► For the record, my water is all the way to the right,

00:57:47 ◼   ► as far away from my hand as it can possibly be.

00:57:51 ◼   ► - You know what water can do across a flat surface,

00:57:53 ◼   ► especially one made of glass?

00:57:54 ◼   ► It can travel, 'cause it's all the same level.

00:57:56 ◼   ► - But it's an Aquafina bottle that's been recycled

00:58:00 ◼   ► in the sense that it doesn't have Aquafina water in it,

00:58:02 ◼   ► it has tap water in it now, but it has a lid on it.

00:58:04 ◼   ► And the lid always stays on it,

00:58:06 ◼   ► unless I'm actively drinking.

00:58:06 ◼   ► So I'm doing the best I can here, fellas.

00:58:09 ◼   ► - But I wonder if maybe the solution

00:58:11 ◼   ► to Jon's water anxiety is sloped desks.

00:58:13 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:58:15 ◼   ► - That's gonna cause more problems.

00:58:17 ◼   ► - Or what if you use an air hockey table as a desk?

00:58:19 ◼   ► - Now you got stuff sliding out.

00:58:20 ◼   ► It's not that difficult.

00:58:21 ◼   ► - No, but you have all the holes, all the drain holes.

00:58:23 ◼   ► - You just need a surface around that same place

00:58:26 ◼   ► that is like three inches lower.

00:58:28 ◼   ► - My next desk is gonna be an air hockey table.

00:58:30 ◼   ► - By the way, your laptop being on the iMac stand,

00:58:34 ◼   ► none of the feet of that laptop

00:58:36 ◼   ► are in contact with the stand, right?

00:58:38 ◼   ► - Correct.

00:58:39 ◼   ► - So it's just metal on metal.

00:58:40 ◼   ► - Oh, no!

00:58:41 ◼   ► - No, there's a little, no, no, no, no, no.

00:58:42 ◼   ► The stand has like a little pad on it.

00:58:44 ◼   ► There's some metal on metal,

00:58:45 ◼   ► but the stand does have a little pad on the top.

00:58:46 ◼   ► - Oh, God.

00:58:47 ◼   ► You can get you like a tray table.

00:58:48 ◼   ► You have tray tables in your house,

00:58:49 ◼   ► just put a tray table next to your computer.

00:58:52 ◼   ► - All right, I'll get right on that.

00:58:52 ◼   ► - Then you can put like a whole meal on that tray table

00:58:54 ◼   ► and when it spills, it just goes to the floor

00:58:56 ◼   ► and nothing on your desk gets any of the liquid.

00:58:58 ◼   ► - Well, you can't really see in this picture

00:59:00 ◼   ► 'cause it's terrible, but there's a filing cabinet

00:59:01 ◼   ► directly to the left of the--

00:59:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, just roll that out a little.

00:59:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, I could, but I always put junk on there.

00:59:07 ◼   ► That's like my landing area.

00:59:08 ◼   ► As you can tell in this picture,

00:59:09 ◼   ► it's my landing area for the office.

00:59:10 ◼   ► Nevertheless--

00:59:11 ◼   ► - I get some lights in this room next time.

00:59:14 ◼   ► - So anyway, I bring all this up to say,

00:59:16 ◼   ► right now, my setup is two of these identical,

00:59:19 ◼   ► I'll put the model number in the show notes.

00:59:21 ◼   ► I forget what it is offhand,

00:59:21 ◼   ► but two of these identical 4K monitors.

00:59:23 ◼   ► Each of them is $300 on Amazon,

00:59:25 ◼   ► which again is not cheap, but given what you're getting,

00:59:27 ◼   ► is actually really not that bad.

00:59:29 ◼   ► The monitors are not great.

00:59:31 ◼   ► They are fine.

00:59:33 ◼   ► They're too low on this desk.

00:59:34 ◼   ► I'll be the first to tell you they're too low.

00:59:35 ◼   ► I was thinking about that earlier today.

00:59:36 ◼   ► I need to figure out a way to raise them up

00:59:38 ◼   ► because in typical LG fashion, the stand sucks,

00:59:41 ◼   ► but it's fine.

00:59:42 ◼   ► And the thing is, and the reason I bring all this up

00:59:45 ◼   ► is because to my eyes and to my wallet,

00:59:48 ◼   ► 600, like even if I bought both of these,

00:59:50 ◼   ► $600 for two 4K monitors, it is not what I would prefer,

00:59:55 ◼   ► but it is absolutely not 10 times worse

00:59:59 ◼   ► than the 10 times more expensive Pro Display XDR.

01:00:03 ◼   ► Like I just can't get, I don't think I would get 10X the,

01:00:07 ◼   ► I can't think of the word I'm looking for,

01:00:09 ◼   ► Joy, the return out of a $6,000 Pro Display XDR

01:00:14 ◼   ► that I am off of this not perfect,

01:00:17 ◼   ► but ultimately pretty serviceable $600 setup.

01:00:20 ◼   ► And that's why I keep digging my heels

01:00:22 ◼   ► because it just, I can't justify 10X what I've got right now.

01:00:25 ◼   ► I just can't.

01:00:26 ◼   ► Now, if somebody else wants to literally buy me one,

01:00:28 ◼   ► I will absolutely accept your Pro Display XDR.

01:00:31 ◼   ► But I, and if it was like a couple thousand dollars,

01:00:34 ◼   ► I probably would, but at four or five or $6,000,

01:00:38 ◼   ► I just can't bring myself to do it.

01:00:39 ◼   ► And I actually don't disagree with you, Marco.

01:00:42 ◼   ► I really truly don't.

01:00:42 ◼   ► Like everything you said, logically,

01:00:45 ◼   ► I 1,000% agree with you.

01:00:47 ◼   ► I just cannot bring myself to open my wallet for $6,000.

01:00:51 ◼   ► I just can't do it.

01:00:52 ◼   ► So that is my new desk setup.

01:00:54 ◼   ► And related to that, one of the things I've noticed

01:00:57 ◼   ► is that now I'm running out of ports on this computer,

01:01:00 ◼   ► which I actually have a dock coming from someone

01:01:03 ◼   ► coming my way in the next few days.

01:01:05 ◼   ► But with that said, I currently have plugged in

01:01:08 ◼   ► one of the monitors via HDMI,

01:01:11 ◼   ► one via USB-C to DisplayPort.

01:01:13 ◼   ► I have the MixPre 3.

01:01:15 ◼   ► I have a Ethernet adapter and I have MagSafe.

01:01:18 ◼   ► So I am using every one of the ports

01:01:21 ◼   ► on this computer right now,

01:01:23 ◼   ► which I'm glad that this computer

01:01:24 ◼   ► has as many ports as it does.

01:01:26 ◼   ► And that brings me to a tip.

01:01:27 ◼   ► I forget who it was that wrote in,

01:01:29 ◼   ► but I had read a few nights ago,

01:01:30 ◼   ► and then somebody wrote in the next morning,

01:01:33 ◼   ► that you can actually do 60 hertz via HDMI,

01:01:37 ◼   ► which I previously erroneously said

01:01:39 ◼   ► was not possible on these monitors.

01:01:42 ◼   ► The thing is you have to engage HDMI Ultra HD Deep Color,

01:01:46 ◼   ► because when I think of refresh rate, I think Deep Color.

01:01:49 ◼   ► - Does that screw with their color reproduction?

01:01:51 ◼   ► 'Cause a lot of displays--

01:01:52 ◼   ► - You think I notice?

01:01:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, televisions and some displays

01:01:56 ◼   ► have a mode in which they can accept your signal and say,

01:02:00 ◼   ► but actually, the color gamut of the monitor

01:02:03 ◼   ► is wider in some areas than the color gamut

01:02:05 ◼   ► of whatever this thing is supposed to be displayed.

01:02:07 ◼   ► It's more important for TVs,

01:02:08 ◼   ► 'cause TVs, things are mastered in a certain color space.

01:02:11 ◼   ► And for accurate reproduction,

01:02:12 ◼   ► that color space should be shown on the TV

01:02:15 ◼   ► within the color space that the thing is mastered at.

01:02:17 ◼   ► But the TV is like,

01:02:18 ◼   ► but actually I've got more colors in that.

01:02:20 ◼   ► Don't you want me to just take that image

01:02:21 ◼   ► and expand it to fill the whole color space?

01:02:23 ◼   ► And it makes everything look all candy colored

01:02:26 ◼   ► when it shouldn't be.

01:02:27 ◼   ► And the only reason that's relevant to your computer is,

01:02:30 ◼   ► if you're looking at pictures

01:02:31 ◼   ► and you're trying to adjust them

01:02:32 ◼   ► and everything looks all candy colored,

01:02:34 ◼   ► and you're like, oh, I gotta try to dim it down.

01:02:36 ◼   ► But then you look at it on an actual device

01:02:38 ◼   ► that shows it within whatever color space that photo,

01:02:41 ◼   ► like an sRGB or Adobe, whatever RGB,

01:02:45 ◼   ► if you see it accurate,

01:02:46 ◼   ► you just realize you've changed your picture

01:02:48 ◼   ► in a way that you don't like.

01:02:49 ◼   ► So it's not that you care super duper professional,

01:02:52 ◼   ► but if you're ever doing anything with photos on it,

01:02:54 ◼   ► you want what you see on the screen to reflect the reality

01:02:57 ◼   ► and not to be some ultra HD deep color thing

01:03:02 ◼   ► where the monitor is disregarding the color space

01:03:04 ◼   ► or expanding the color space for you.

01:03:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, I can't say I've noticed one way or the other,

01:03:09 ◼   ► but again, I do have a discerning eye about some things

01:03:13 ◼   ► and clearly a discerning ear,

01:03:14 ◼   ► because I can tell you all about how great vinyl is.

01:03:16 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:03:18 ◼   ► But this is not one of those things.

01:03:19 ◼   ► And so if you happen to have one of these monitors,

01:03:21 ◼   ► for what it's worth,

01:03:22 ◼   ► you can do picture, picture adjust, HDMI ultra deep color.

01:03:25 ◼   ► And if you do that,

01:03:26 ◼   ► you can use an HDMI cable and do 60 Hertz at 4K.

01:03:30 ◼   ► I will say not about color, but I could swear,

01:03:32 ◼   ► like something about the anti-aliasing is different.

01:03:35 ◼   ► I couldn't tell you what, and this is again.

01:03:38 ◼   ► - You're running at a native resolution,

01:03:40 ◼   ► so there wouldn't be any.

01:03:42 ◼   ► - I agree.

01:03:43 ◼   ► Something felt different to me,

01:03:45 ◼   ► but I can't put my finger on it.

01:03:46 ◼   ► I'm probably bananas.

01:03:47 ◼   ► - Is the sub pixel arrangement different on these monitors?

01:03:50 ◼   ► - I mean, possibly, but I wouldn't know,

01:03:52 ◼   ► because what I was doing was I was switching

01:03:54 ◼   ► between DisplayPort and HDMI in the same actual monitor.

01:03:57 ◼   ► And I felt like it looked different,

01:03:58 ◼   ► but there was enough delay

01:03:59 ◼   ► between the switching of the two that.

01:04:01 ◼   ► - I think the signaling,

01:04:04 ◼   ► someone just wrote in about this,

01:04:05 ◼   ► they were saying how you were complaining

01:04:07 ◼   ► that using DisplayPort

01:04:08 ◼   ► and it made you feel like it was a gross and ancient,

01:04:10 ◼   ► but I think what you meant is you were using

01:04:11 ◼   ► an older DisplayPort connector and that felt old,

01:04:13 ◼   ► but the DisplayPort protocol is more modern

01:04:16 ◼   ► and more computer focused than HDMI for,

01:04:20 ◼   ► can you find that email so I don't just make this up?

01:04:21 ◼   ► It's talking about HDMI, mixing chroma and luminance

01:04:24 ◼   ► in the thing would DisplayPort has them

01:04:26 ◼   ► more cleanly separated, I don't know.

01:04:28 ◼   ► Anyway, that could explain the difference

01:04:30 ◼   ► in that you're getting worse picture quality

01:04:32 ◼   ► because of some HDMI thing.

01:04:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I mean, it's certainly within the realm

01:04:36 ◼   ► of acceptable, it's not bad

01:04:38 ◼   ► by any stretch of the imagination,

01:04:40 ◼   ► but I felt like I was noticing something,

01:04:44 ◼   ► although I couldn't really put my finger on

01:04:45 ◼   ► exactly what it was.

01:04:47 ◼   ► And nevertheless, this is workable,

01:04:49 ◼   ► this is what I think I'm gonna stick with

01:04:51 ◼   ► at least until the 5K comes back

01:04:53 ◼   ► or until somebody literally donates a fixed DR to me,

01:04:57 ◼   ► which I'm not actually advocating for the love

01:04:59 ◼   ► of all that is good and holy.

01:05:00 ◼   ► I can afford one if I really wanted to,

01:05:02 ◼   ► I just really, really, really don't want to.

01:05:05 ◼   ► And for the record, this is an LG 24UD58-B,

01:05:09 ◼   ► 24 inch 4K UHD IPS monitor with FreeSync, black,

01:05:13 ◼   ► as per Amazon.

01:05:15 ◼   ► So, and there's only 16 left in stock, so go fast.

01:05:19 ◼   ► But anyways, so that's what I'm doing.

01:05:21 ◼   ► And also one other quick bit of follow up.

01:05:25 ◼   ► I'd been complaining a little while ago

01:05:27 ◼   ► about my Magic Mouse, my brand new Magic Mouse

01:05:29 ◼   ► feeling weird with my brand new M1 Macs MacBook Pro.

01:05:34 ◼   ► And it felt like, I think I said a week or two ago,

01:05:36 ◼   ► it felt like almost as though the Bluetooth connection

01:05:40 ◼   ► was sleeping too soon, I have no evidence

01:05:42 ◼   ► to prove my theory, but it felt like it was going

01:05:46 ◼   ► into some sort of like low power mode too quickly.

01:05:48 ◼   ► And Monterey 12.1 has come out since I last spoke about it.

01:05:51 ◼   ► And I think it has made it mostly better.

01:05:54 ◼   ► There's also been, I forget who pointed this out to me,

01:05:56 ◼   ► but somebody pointed out a tweet from Charity Majors

01:05:59 ◼   ► who has a default's right that you can try

01:06:02 ◼   ► that apparently disables mouse acceleration.

01:06:05 ◼   ► I have not tried this yet because I think it's workable

01:06:09 ◼   ► for me now that I don't have to plug in the mouse

01:06:11 ◼   ► to make it feel like it's okay.

01:06:12 ◼   ► But it is something that I might try

01:06:15 ◼   ► if I feel like it gets worse.

01:06:16 ◼   ► So we'll put a link to that in the show notes.

01:06:18 ◼   ► - I found the tweet, it doesn't have much more detail,

01:06:20 ◼   ► but Andreas Hartl says about you talking about

01:06:23 ◼   ► DisplayPort versus HDMI, he says,

01:06:25 ◼   ► "HDMI is based on DVI and mushes together all data

01:06:28 ◼   ► "in a stream that still has the concept

01:06:31 ◼   ► "of blanking intervals.

01:06:32 ◼   ► "DisplayPort is more modern and packet-based.

01:06:34 ◼   ► "Video over Thunderbolt uses the DisplayPort protocol."

01:06:37 ◼   ► So that doesn't have much more information, sorry,

01:06:38 ◼   ► but that's what I was trying to remember.

01:06:41 ◼   ► - All right, well, I appreciate the try.

01:06:44 ◼   ► All right, that's all for follow-up now for SKTP.

01:06:46 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:06:47 ◼   ► - My goodness, this went a little longer than we thought.

01:06:49 ◼   ► - We've got one more monitor item,

01:06:50 ◼   ► and now it's ostensibly a topic, but sure.

01:06:53 ◼   ► - Oh, yes, that's right, we do have

01:06:54 ◼   ► that one more monitor item, how could I forget?

01:06:56 ◼   ► So you are welcome, all of you, every single one of you.

01:07:00 ◼   ► What can I say, but you're welcome,

01:07:02 ◼   ► because we heard a rumor today,

01:07:04 ◼   ► which was a short tweet thread,

01:07:06 ◼   ► and then we'll put in a MacRumors post about it,

01:07:08 ◼   ► that says, as per Twitter user Dylan something or other,

01:07:13 ◼   ► I don't know that they really have a last name,

01:07:15 ◼   ► but nevertheless, there are three LG made displays,

01:07:18 ◼   ► right, Dylan, encased in unbranded enclosures

01:07:21 ◼   ► for usage as external monitors

01:07:22 ◼   ► that are in early development,

01:07:24 ◼   ► two of which have the same specifications

01:07:25 ◼   ► as the upcoming 27-inch and current 24-inch iMac displays.

01:07:30 ◼   ► The other display seems to be

01:07:31 ◼   ► an improved 32-inch Pro Display XDR.

01:07:33 ◼   ► Despite the lack of branding, it can be assumed

01:07:35 ◼   ► at the very least that this display will be Apple branded.

01:07:38 ◼   ► Okay, I mean, it's a little bit bold, but I'll go with it.

01:07:41 ◼   ► Dylan continues, "Interestinglyingly enough,

01:07:43 ◼   ► "there seems to be a reference to custom silicon

01:07:45 ◼   ► "powering the 32-inch display.

01:07:47 ◼   ► "Sadly, no such references were found

01:07:48 ◼   ► "for the 27-inch or 24-inch displays

01:07:50 ◼   ► "with regards to custom silicon."

01:07:52 ◼   ► And Dylan continues, "Finally, this of course

01:07:55 ◼   ► "does not rule out the possibility

01:07:56 ◼   ► "of custom silicon for these displays.

01:07:57 ◼   ► "It simply means that there's not sufficient data

01:07:59 ◼   ► "proofing otherwise.

01:07:59 ◼   ► "Finally, the 32-inch and 27-inch monitors

01:08:01 ◼   ► "seem to have many LED displays

01:08:03 ◼   ► "and 120 hertz variable refresh rate."

01:08:06 ◼   ► This is very exciting, except for one key word.

01:08:10 ◼   ► Did you catch the key word that is making me very sad?

01:08:13 ◼   ► Early development.

01:08:14 ◼   ► - Early, that does not make me happy at all.

01:08:18 ◼   ► - Isn't it weird that like, according to this rumor,

01:08:21 ◼   ► again, this is just, I don't think there's much more

01:08:23 ◼   ► in these rumors than we've seen in the past,

01:08:25 ◼   ► 'cause we've seen rumors for months now

01:08:26 ◼   ► about Apple making them on an external display

01:08:28 ◼   ► with like a system on a chip in it,

01:08:31 ◼   ► it's an A something inside there, whatever.

01:08:33 ◼   ► But the idea that one of these displays

01:08:36 ◼   ► is the same as the one in the current 24-inch iMac,

01:08:40 ◼   ► correct me if I'm wrong,

01:08:41 ◼   ► but the current 24-inch iMac screen is not high refresh

01:08:44 ◼   ► and is not HDR, right?

01:08:47 ◼   ► - I don't know about HDR,

01:08:48 ◼   ► but it's definitely not high refresh.

01:08:50 ◼   ► - It probably is HDR, at least in the old way,

01:08:53 ◼   ► like before the micro LED things

01:08:54 ◼   ► that all the previous MacBook Pros and stuff had,

01:08:57 ◼   ► where like they would just kind of overdrive

01:08:59 ◼   ► the screen brightness.

01:09:00 ◼   ► - Is it not mini LED as well?

01:09:02 ◼   ► - No, as far as I know, the current M1 iMac

01:09:06 ◼   ► is not mini LED.

01:09:07 ◼   ► - It's 500 nits, yeah, just looked it up.

01:09:09 ◼   ► - 24-inch iMacs or 500 nits, that is not HDR.

01:09:11 ◼   ► - Right, so all this being said,

01:09:15 ◼   ► if this information is correct about the products

01:09:17 ◼   ► that are in development, that sounds perfectly great.

01:09:21 ◼   ► I'm actually kind of surprised

01:09:22 ◼   ► they would sell a smaller monitor,

01:09:25 ◼   ► but certainly the 27-inch,

01:09:28 ◼   ► assuming that whatever the updated HDR is

01:09:33 ◼   ► is probably gonna be similarly priced.

01:09:35 ◼   ► And we talked before about the 27-inch,

01:09:39 ◼   ► if they do 27-inch 120 hertz and mini LED,

01:09:43 ◼   ► that's gonna be probably a fairly expensive display.

01:09:46 ◼   ► And so it would be nice then

01:09:48 ◼   ► to also have that 24-inch option,

01:09:50 ◼   ► although honestly I would want it to be bigger.

01:09:51 ◼   ► I'd rather have, I'd rather have a 27-inch

01:09:53 ◼   ► that doesn't have 120 hertz and mini LED

01:09:56 ◼   ► in the lineup, but anyway.

01:09:59 ◼   ► I see why they would do all three of these things,

01:10:01 ◼   ► although I would also see why they would only choose

01:10:03 ◼   ► to do the top two.

01:10:05 ◼   ► But this is also, this is a random person on Twitter,

01:10:10 ◼   ► and random people on Twitter who tweet Apple rumors

01:10:14 ◼   ► don't have a strong track record.

01:10:17 ◼   ► I'm not familiar with this particular person's track record,

01:10:20 ◼   ► but I would not read this as gospel.

01:10:24 ◼   ► Like until we have somebody who is reliable

01:10:27 ◼   ► with this kind of thing,

01:10:29 ◼   ► somebody like Ming-Chi Kuo, Mark Gurman,

01:10:32 ◼   ► when they start claiming specifics and timelines,

01:10:35 ◼   ► those are way more reliable than Twitter leakers

01:10:38 ◼   ► and YouTube leakers have been so far.

01:10:40 ◼   ► - I think both of those people did have a external display

01:10:43 ◼   ► with some kind of chip inside it,

01:10:44 ◼   ► rumor from many months ago.

01:10:45 ◼   ► - Right, so, and having the chip inside of it,

01:10:50 ◼   ► they don't necessarily say what kind of chip it is,

01:10:52 ◼   ► it's just a custom Apple chip.

01:10:53 ◼   ► That could be a lot of things.

01:10:54 ◼   ► That could be a timing controller.

01:10:55 ◼   ► That could be a display controller.

01:10:58 ◼   ► That could be a lot of things that is not like

01:11:00 ◼   ► an M1 Pro running in the display.

01:11:03 ◼   ► It could be a lot of things.

01:11:04 ◼   ► So I don't think that necessarily means much

01:11:07 ◼   ► with the information or lack thereof that we have.

01:11:09 ◼   ► But the part about it being early development,

01:11:13 ◼   ► that again, that could be true.

01:11:15 ◼   ► Gurman said a display was in early development

01:11:17 ◼   ► like a year ago.

01:11:19 ◼   ► Well, when did they receive the information?

01:11:21 ◼   ► Where did this information come from?

01:11:22 ◼   ► Maybe they received old information

01:11:24 ◼   ► or maybe they only saw evidence of early development

01:11:29 ◼   ► because the evidence of the current development

01:11:30 ◼   ► didn't leak out in that same way through the same channel.

01:11:33 ◼   ► Getting any kind of timeline argument from this,

01:11:36 ◼   ► I think is weak and unreliable.

01:11:40 ◼   ► It sounds like a lot of this information

01:11:43 ◼   ► is being derived from software support somewhere

01:11:46 ◼   ► or references that are in a library somewhere

01:11:48 ◼   ► to different displays.

01:11:50 ◼   ► So I wouldn't read too much into this.

01:11:53 ◼   ► We have heard from multiple places for about a year

01:11:55 ◼   ► that Apple is working on an external display.

01:11:58 ◼   ► At least one that is going to sit below the XDR

01:12:01 ◼   ► in the lineup.

01:12:02 ◼   ► There is a lot of smoke to that fire.

01:12:04 ◼   ► That's probably going to happen.

01:12:07 ◼   ► I don't think this information from this person today

01:12:09 ◼   ► gives us anything really concrete to work with

01:12:12 ◼   ► that we didn't already have.

01:12:14 ◼   ► I wouldn't assume that the 24 inch proves to be a thing.

01:12:19 ◼   ► I wouldn't assume that anything this person said

01:12:22 ◼   ► that wasn't backed up by other sources over the last year

01:12:24 ◼   ► would be a sure thing.

01:12:26 ◼   ► It's all maybe.

01:12:28 ◼   ► If this is true, that'd be great.

01:12:31 ◼   ► The timeline is not going to be what Casey wants,

01:12:33 ◼   ► but that would be a great.

01:12:35 ◼   ► Again, typical Apple fashion.

01:12:37 ◼   ► They basically stopped working on the Mac

01:12:40 ◼   ► from 2016 until about 2018.

01:12:43 ◼   ► They really did almost nothing for the Mac in that time.

01:12:49 ◼   ► For whatever reason, history will eventually maybe tell us

01:12:53 ◼   ► and some tell all books sometime.

01:12:54 ◼   ► But it certainly seems like they basically

01:12:57 ◼   ► turned off Mac development hardware wise for that time.

01:13:01 ◼   ► There was this giant hole in the lineup

01:13:03 ◼   ► and they decided to fill it sometime in the last

01:13:05 ◼   ► couple of years I think, from what we can derive so far.

01:13:09 ◼   ► And it takes some time to make stuff.

01:13:11 ◼   ► And an external display is going to be way lower priority

01:13:14 ◼   ► than things like fixing the Mac Pro fire

01:13:16 ◼   ► they made for themselves and fixing the laptop fire

01:13:18 ◼   ► they made for themselves.

01:13:20 ◼   ► These things are all more important.

01:13:22 ◼   ► And so if you only have a certain amount of engineering

01:13:24 ◼   ► resources that you're willing to devote to the Mac

01:13:26 ◼   ► and certain teams you're going to move around to do it,

01:13:29 ◼   ► the monitor is going to be last priority.

01:13:31 ◼   ► - Well, you say that, but all the other fires are out

01:13:33 ◼   ► at this point, right?

01:13:34 ◼   ► Like, yes, yes, yes, Mac Pro.

01:13:36 ◼   ► And actually legitimately the 27-inch iMac.

01:13:38 ◼   ► But other than those two, which I would argue

01:13:41 ◼   ► the Mac Pro is a smaller fire, what else is left, right?

01:13:44 ◼   ► Like in terms of Mac stuff, this is it.

01:13:47 ◼   ► This is what they gotta fix.

01:13:48 ◼   ► - Agreed, and I think that this is very likely to be

01:13:52 ◼   ► a problem that Apple has decided to solve.

01:13:55 ◼   ► When they decided to solve it is, you know,

01:13:57 ◼   ► that's a question mark.

01:13:59 ◼   ► And how quickly the result of that will come onto the market

01:14:03 ◼   ► is another question mark.

01:14:04 ◼   ► Whether the result will solve it is a third question mark.

01:14:09 ◼   ► But it does seem like they are making an extra monitor,

01:14:12 ◼   ► at least one that is going to be lower than the XDR

01:14:15 ◼   ► in the product line.

01:14:17 ◼   ► But other than that, I don't think this gives us

01:14:18 ◼   ► any new information at all.

01:14:21 ◼   ► - One quibble with what you had said earlier.

01:14:22 ◼   ► I personally am not familiar with Dylan, what is this,

01:14:26 ◼   ► DylanDKT is the Twitter user.

01:14:29 ◼   ► I have never seen this person before.

01:14:30 ◼   ► But as per the summary on MacRumors, they write,

01:14:33 ◼   ► "According to Twitter account, DylanDKT,

01:14:37 ◼   ► "who has a mostly accurate track record

01:14:39 ◼   ► "with Apple-related rumors."

01:14:40 ◼   ► I have no earthly idea what that track record is based on,

01:14:43 ◼   ► what rumors this person has leaked.

01:14:45 ◼   ► But according to MacRumors, they seem to think

01:14:48 ◼   ► that this person is not a complete dope.

01:14:50 ◼   ► So take that for what you will.

01:14:52 ◼   ► - But the problem with this rumor, it says,

01:14:53 ◼   ► "We found three displays."

01:14:54 ◼   ► And you can explain the use of those displays all

01:14:58 ◼   ► in a context other than a new external display.

01:15:00 ◼   ► Because the 24 inch, he already says it's the one

01:15:02 ◼   ► they use in 24-inch iMac.

01:15:03 ◼   ► Great, well, so why do we care about that?