00:00:00 ◼ ► So Casey, are you recording? Yes, I am recording. It's sad, it is truly and utterly sad that you
00:00:06 ◼ ► kind of genuinely need to ask that six years on. God, I'm such a disaster. I just need my computing
00:00:12 ◼ ► life to be better. I feel like that's all I need. So we had three and a half minutes of flawless
00:00:19 ◼ ► content, absolutely perfect content that is lost forever because I forgot to start recording.
00:00:27 ◼ ► My room is so bright right now. Oh God, here we go. What have you done? Do you have like the studio,
00:00:34 ◼ ► like the LED packs where it's like, you know, 10 LEDs wide and 10 LEDs tall and you're just
00:00:40 ◼ ► blinding yourself? So not yet. So actually one thing, you know, oh man, we've had so many
00:00:45 ◼ ► recommendations. Thank you everybody for all the lighting recommendations. So many recommendations,
00:00:49 ◼ ► many of which were actually very good, many of which kind of like follow the same general themes
00:00:55 ◼ ► of basically install LED panels on the ceiling. And that would be a good idea if I was in an office
00:01:04 ◼ ► with a drop ceiling or you know, like where like it's made for that. That's what those are made
00:01:08 ◼ ► for. But I'm in a regular room in my house with like a regular solid white ceiling. And so any
00:01:14 ◼ ► kind of like, you know, thing made for offices where you just put a few big rectangles in the
00:01:18 ◼ ► ceiling is not going to fly. I also didn't mention last episode that my office is like a prominent
00:01:24 ◼ ► room in my house. Like it's, it's visible from the front. Like it's one of the first rooms you see
00:01:28 ◼ ► when you walk into the house. And so any solution for my lighting also has to look pretty good to
00:01:34 ◼ ► satisfy our desire for our house to look nice. And you know, we live here and we have people over and
00:01:39 ◼ ► you know, we want things to be nice. So many of the options for insanely bright lighting would not
00:01:45 ◼ ► pass the aesthetic requirement that I forgot to mention last episode. So I respectfully declined
00:01:50 ◼ ► many of the options. A number of people were, there was a guy who wrote a blog post about his
00:01:55 ◼ ► giant you know, corn light that he put in his room and how bright it makes it. And that like, that's,
00:02:00 ◼ ► that's great. And for those of you who know, the corn bulb is a style where it looks like corn on
00:02:06 ◼ ► the cob made of LEDs. Like I just bought one of those like two days ago. Yeah. I have one in my
00:02:10 ◼ ► garage. It's amazing. Yeah. They're wonderful for garages because garages, you don't care how it
00:02:14 ◼ ► looks like in a garage. Like you just want a ton of light. And usually you have like a one or two
00:02:19 ◼ ► like old light sockets stuck to the ceiling and you can just screw anything in there. And so you
00:02:23 ◼ ► put these things in the garage and they are just like cylinders covered with LEDs that you can get
00:02:29 ◼ ► insane brightness out of. As long as you don't care how they look. And those are wonderful for
00:02:35 ◼ ► garages. Those that's not going to fly in my office. So that, that option is out. One thing I
00:02:39 ◼ ► am a little bit curious about though, does anybody make a fixture that encloses a corn style bulb
00:02:48 ◼ ► in some kind of like fogged dome? Some kind of Dyson sphere to capture all the energy. Well,
00:02:54 ◼ ► no, like seriously, like just some kind of like, you know, translucent, like, you know, fogged dome
00:03:01 ◼ ► around one of those bulbs would be great. I have not been able to find such a fixture. I think the
00:03:07 ◼ ► fact that corn bulbs themselves usually aren't even like the bulbs aren't even covered, like the
00:03:11 ◼ ► little LED thing. That makes me think that the cooling requirements are such that a use in an
00:03:16 ◼ ► enclosed fixture is a no go. Well, leave the top open. Just have it be like, like the way corn grows.
00:03:21 ◼ ► You know, just like have like a cylinder and have the top be open and have it be a pole lamp.
00:03:29 ◼ ► Speaking of your LED things, like not all LED panel things require a drop ceiling. They make
00:03:35 ◼ ► a whole bunch of ones for residential use that just go right on top of your ceiling and just
00:03:38 ◼ ► screw into it. They don't help with your aesthetic requirements though, but just so you don't get
00:03:43 ◼ ► to many emails telling you that you can find LED panel lighting for your ceiling that doesn't require
00:03:48 ◼ ► a drop ceiling. I am actually very happy so far. So I have slightly brighter bulbs in my two IKEA
00:03:55 ◼ ► knot lamps next to my desk now. I bought but have not yet installed. It's funny, a lot of people
00:03:59 ◼ ► recommended, they're like, just paint the room white. I'm like, you know, I, I'm not going to do
00:04:06 ◼ ► that because I like my red office, but directly in front of me behind my computer, the entire wall
00:04:12 ◼ ► that's there, the section of wall directly in front of me that these two lights are up against
00:04:23 ◼ ► white acoustic foam because it doesn't need to be gray and they make it because it's foam in
00:04:27 ◼ ► pretty much every color. So I bought new acoustic foam to stick behind my desk. I was going to do
00:04:30 ◼ ► it today if I didn't get, didn't get to it in time. I wanted to like have an update for the show.
00:04:34 ◼ ► So maybe for next week I'll have that done. Uh, but yeah, it's just like increasing the amount
00:04:38 ◼ ► of light that can reflect off the wall behind my desk is probably also a very good option.
00:04:44 ◼ ► It already has. Well, the, the, the idea of it has, we'll see how it goes in, in practice.
00:04:50 ◼ ► Cause like white, like, Oh, white, fine. White goes with red. That's no problem. And it's bright,
00:04:54 ◼ ► but is it white or is it like whitish? And does it change color over time? We'll see how this goes.
00:05:00 ◼ ► Yeah, that's always a risk with whites. So I guess we'll find out. Um, and then my final bit of light
00:05:04 ◼ ► follow up for the, for this week, at least part of the problem was that my, the two fixtures on
00:05:10 ◼ ► the ceiling in this room are enclosed and you put led bulbs in there and they die. Like they,
00:05:15 ◼ ► it just, it goes through bulbs like crazy. And so even though each fixture on my ceiling can hold
00:05:20 ◼ ► three bulbs and I can put super bright ones in there, realistically, they only last a few months
00:05:25 ◼ ► before I have to take them all out again. And I mean, one option could be, I might just replace
00:05:29 ◼ ► six led bulbs every, every three months and just deal with it. Um, but a friend of the show,
00:05:36 ◼ ► Marina Eppleman, uh, tweeted the other day about a new kind of X led I a X Lydia. I don't know how
00:05:42 ◼ ► that's pronounced. Uh, it's a, it's a new kind of led bulb that is officially certified to work in
00:05:48 ◼ ► enclosed fixtures. And it's like the only one in the market that claims this. They're really
00:05:54 ◼ ► expensive, like 50 bucks each. I took the risk. I put six of them in there. We'll see if they die.
00:05:59 ◼ ► The, the reviews on them on Amazon, many of them were great glowing reviews. And then some of them
00:06:03 ◼ ► were like, yeah, they died anyway. So we'll see what happens. Uh, but I do now have 600 watt
00:06:10 ◼ ► equivalent, 5,000 cables. It was the closest that came to 4,000, uh, in my, in my ceiling fixtures.
00:06:15 ◼ ► And that helps as well. So I'm sitting in right now, a very bright office late at night, and
00:06:21 ◼ ► I'm actually kind of happy with the slight level. I don't, I don't think I need much more than this.
00:06:25 ◼ ► So, so far so good. We'll see what happens when I put the white foam up and I will provide an
00:06:28 ◼ ► update next week on this exciting segment of Marco's light globe. Yeah. I forgot last week,
00:06:33 ◼ ► I should have written it down because I thought of it and then forgot to bring it up. Um, and a lot of,
00:06:37 ◼ ► uh, listeners, uh, uh, wrote in with the same idea, those seasonal effective disorder lights.
00:06:42 ◼ ► So they're just like this big, bright light that you're supposed to shine as your own face to make
00:06:46 ◼ ► you feel better about the fact that the sun isn't there. And I forget if you had one of those or
00:06:51 ◼ ► not. I don't think they're not meant to light up the room, but they do help. Yeah. So, so the,
00:06:55 ◼ ► I actually made the chapter art last week, a shot of my desk with these two IKEA knot lamps next to
00:07:00 ◼ ► it. And keen observers would have noticed that I actually had one of those on my desk pointed
00:07:04 ◼ ► directly at my face, sitting on top of my left speaker. And I actually just took it down today
00:07:08 ◼ ► as I was preparing to move my desk out of the way to put up the new foam. And, uh, I, I, I started
00:07:13 ◼ ► using that last year for the first time and it's fine, but I don't love having bright light shining
00:07:21 ◼ ► in my face directly. Like it actually is fairly intense and it's, it was fine a little bit. I
00:07:26 ◼ ► don't think it made as much of a difference as just having a super bright office in the first
00:07:30 ◼ ► place. Uh, so I'm, I'm, that's why I'm trying this right off at this time. And if I really
00:07:39 ◼ ► it, for the most part, I don't, I didn't get as much out of it last year as, as I, as I hoped I
00:07:44 ◼ ► would. And meanwhile, I think solving that, solving the better problem is just making the room
00:07:48 ◼ ► insanely bright. Do you need, it's like an Apple style solution where your entire ceiling just
00:07:53 ◼ ► looks like a normal ceiling, but there are actually tiny little pin size holes, millions of them. And
00:07:59 ◼ ► behind them is a full, uh, you know, field of RGB LEDs covering the entire ceiling. And then there's
00:08:05 ◼ ► software that controls it to the color temperature and the brightness. And it's like the sun rises and
00:08:09 ◼ ► the sun sets and the color changes. And when you turn it off, it just looks like a normal ceiling.
00:08:13 ◼ ► That would actually be kind of awesome. And very affordable, I'm sure. Well, you wouldn't need a
00:08:18 ◼ ► stand for it, so maybe it would be affordable. Uh, yeah, yeah. Well, I hope you get your, your
00:08:24 ◼ ► light situation squared away as soon as possible because nobody likes a sad Marco. You just got
00:08:29 ◼ ► your keyboard. Finally. We don't want you to get sad again. It's funny. I'm like, I'm adding up,
00:08:32 ◼ ► like the, the wattage of brightness that is in this room right now. I got 600 on the ceiling plus
00:08:47 ◼ ► I was going to say that's equivalent, right? Yeah. I was going to, it's going to be more and
00:08:50 ◼ ► more difficult to explain to younger and younger people why we keep talking about light in terms
00:08:54 ◼ ► of wattage as if it's a measure of light output. Well, cause I really hope you don't have 1600 watts
00:09:06 ◼ ► there are a hundred percent LEDs and they use like a tent of that. Yep. That's the great thing about
00:09:10 ◼ ► LEDs. Like if I leave one on overnight, which I don't do often, I come downstairs and I'm like,
00:09:13 ◼ ► eh, Oh well. Whereas if I had, you know, the 300 watt equivalent light bulb in the garage,
00:09:19 ◼ ► you know, if I, or if I, I should say, you know, if I actually had a 300 watt light light on in
00:09:23 ◼ ► the garage all night, that would make a dent. See, and if you don't, if you like garage,
00:09:27 ◼ ► like if you don't care how, how bad something looks, garages have all sorts of options. Like,
00:09:31 ◼ ► you know, so they have the corn lights. Then they also, I discovered all these things when I was
00:09:34 ◼ ► looking at various bulbs, I could put in my knot lamps. They also have these things that look almost
00:09:38 ◼ ► like little fans. They have like three, like three or four or five like little panels that like fan
00:09:44 ◼ ► out from the center that are all just covered in LEDs. Like there's all sorts of crazy options out
00:09:49 ◼ ► there. And as long as you guys, as long as they can look hideous and be very harsh to look directly
00:09:54 ◼ ► at, uh, then it's, it's totally fine for garages and everything. So yeah, now I'm thinking like,
00:10:00 ◼ ► Oh, I could put more fixtures in my garage and have an even brighter garage for all the work you
00:10:05 ◼ ► do on your electric car. That sounds like me. We are sponsored this week by Squarespace. Start
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00:12:14 ◼ ► All right, so I am still on the broken iMac that I have been using for far too long now.
00:12:22 ◼ ► And the funny thing is, after I had done my desperation install of Catalina, which I have
00:12:29 ◼ ► a little bit of follow-up about that in just a moment, but after I did my desperation install
00:12:32 ◼ ► of Catalina, everything was actually working really, really well for like a week and a half.
00:12:38 ◼ ► And I did order a computer on Black Friday, and we will talk about that in a moment. But when I
00:12:44 ◼ ► ordered the computer, things were actually still working pretty well on the iMac. And I couldn't
00:12:47 ◼ ► help but wonder, why did I just spend thousands of dollars? But in an absolutely wonderful turn
00:12:56 ◼ ► of events, the Sunday after I ordered the computer, so this past Sunday, I was using my iMac. And sure
00:13:03 ◼ ► enough, all of a sudden, the mouse just decided to not listen to me. And the cursor was delayed,
00:13:09 ◼ ► like it was walking through sludge. And the clicks were ignored until suddenly I had the machine gun
00:13:16 ◼ ► again. And in a way, I was almost relieved, because that meant, yes, this thing is still a piece of
00:13:22 ◼ ► garbage that still needs to go away. My quick follow-up with regard to the Mojave install,
00:13:27 ◼ ► if you recall, I intended to put Mojave on my computer because it seemed like everything still
00:13:32 ◼ ► worked on Mojave. And then when I went to install it from my USB key that I'd made way back when,
00:13:38 ◼ ► I clicked the continue button on one of the very first prompts in the installation process and just
00:13:43 ◼ ► hung. And there was no error messaging of any sort. We had discussed how I should have looked
00:13:47 ◼ ► at the console and didn't. And I had no idea what had happened. Well, several people, many people,
00:13:51 ◼ ► in fact, wrote in to remind me, which I did know but completely forgot, that the installer
00:13:56 ◼ ► certificate, if I understand correctly, had been expired. And so the installer that I built on this
00:14:04 ◼ ► USB key, you know, right when Mojave was new, surely that was one of the installers that had
00:14:08 ◼ ► the broken and expired certificate. And that's probably why the install didn't work. And so if I
00:14:13 ◼ ► really cared, I could build a new USB key and do the installation all over again and it would
00:14:18 ◼ ► probably work. But I appreciate people writing in. I had completely and utterly forgotten about that.
00:14:29 ◼ ► well, I'm probably crazy, but at least not for that reason. So on Friday, I decided it is time.
00:14:37 ◼ ► I'm going to order myself a computer. And I am an easily influenced person. Sometimes I listen to
00:14:46 ◼ ► friends or people on the internet a little too much. And I decided I'm going to do that again
00:14:53 ◼ ► this time I bought an iMac Pro. So that is what I've done indeed. So through a series of events
00:15:01 ◼ ► that I'm not going to share, I was able to get a pretty solid discount on this iMac Pro from
00:15:07 ◼ ► a friend of mine. - You're friends with Tim Cook, aren't you? - Yeah, I spoke to Tim. I spoke to
00:15:11 ◼ ► Tim Apple and said, "Hey, Tim, can you hook me up on this?" And he said, "No problem." No, I got a
00:15:15 ◼ ► pretty good discount on it, which meant that I could afford to get a much nicer build than I
00:15:20 ◼ ► would have otherwise been able to do. Because up until knowing that I could get the discount,
00:15:25 ◼ ► I probably would have gotten that refurb that you had pointed out, Marco, which is genuinely
00:15:28 ◼ ► an extremely good setup. And I don't know if it's still available at this point. - Yeah. There were
00:15:33 ◼ ► a couple of good Black Friday deals too from various people giving at least the base model
00:15:38 ◼ ► was down I think to like 3400 on some sites. There were some good deals on that base model.
00:15:44 ◼ ► - Yeah. But what I ended up doing, because again, I got a very, very, very steep discount. It is new.
00:15:51 ◼ ► I got one with the 10 core processor. I went very back and forth on this, but I figured if I'm going
00:15:58 ◼ ► to be spending 5,000-ish dollars on a computer, I might as well do it right. So I got the 10 core
00:16:02 ◼ ► processor, 64 gigs RAM, and in no small part because of Marco Arment, as always, convincing
00:16:08 ◼ ► me to spend more money than I want to. This is how our friendship works. - You're welcome.
00:16:12 ◼ ► - This is how our friendship works, and I am usually thankful for it. I ended up getting the
00:16:16 ◼ ► four terabyte drive as well. I almost said hard drive. I'm trying to break myself in that habit.
00:16:33 ◼ ► - Oh man, that's funny. But yeah, so that's what I've done, and it was a lot of money, and I am not
00:16:44 ◼ ► overjoyed at having spent that much money, but I am overjoyed to receive it. In fact, earlier today,
00:16:50 ◼ ► I got the notification that it went from processing to preparing for shipment. One of the,
00:17:00 ◼ ► one of life's great joys is being able to tick the Express shipping box on a custom built order
00:17:07 ◼ ► computer, because on this $5,000 plus computer, the Express, and it's a heavy computer, by the way,
00:17:13 ◼ ► I don't know how much they weigh off hand, but it's not light. I mean, ask Marco. He carries his,
00:17:16 ◼ ► the peach every year. But anyway, on this Express computer, or on this large S-off computer,
00:17:22 ◼ ► Express shipping was a totally unaffordable $8. So I absolutely ticked that box. I think it saves you
00:17:30 ◼ ► like two or three days or something like that on the delivery time. - And the Express shipping from
00:17:35 ◼ ► Apple is always ridiculously cheap. Obviously, they're subsidizing most of the cost of it.
00:17:39 ◼ ► And I figure at that point, if it's like $8 or $9 on a $5,000 computer, why don't they just always
00:17:45 ◼ ► include Express shipping? Like why isn't it even an option? - I don't even know. But anyway, so I
00:17:50 ◼ ► have a new iMac Pro, a new two-year-old iMac Pro coming my way, and I am genuinely very excited.
00:17:57 ◼ ► Now the question, however, the question is two questions, and one really. One, is it going to
00:18:03 ◼ ► come with Mojave? I believe Mike's did, and he bought his just like a month or so ago. And if it
00:18:08 ◼ ► does come with Mojave, am I going to be a moron and put Catalina on it, only to create more of
00:18:14 ◼ ► the same problems for myself? So we'll see how my willpower goes. But I'm very excited. I appreciate
00:18:21 ◼ ► you and the listeners for putting up with my waffling and indecision over all this. But hopefully
00:18:26 ◼ ► this story is coming to an end sometime in the next seven to 10 days. - Well, and also, even if it
00:18:32 ◼ ► comes with Catalina, that machine is compatible with Mojave, because it came out before Catalina
00:18:37 ◼ ► did, and it is originally shipped with Mojave. So you can always download a Mojave installer
00:18:41 ◼ ► and wipe it and put that on there if you wanted to. - Yeah, that's true. I don't know. We'll see
00:18:49 ◼ ► with whatever's on it. That's such a burden. You know what I mean, though. I'm just going to stick
00:18:53 ◼ ► with whatever's on it, and we'll see how all that works out. There's, outside of dark mode,
00:18:58 ◼ ► which I actually have come to like, and is that unique? No, that's not unique to Catalina, is it,
00:19:03 ◼ ► come to think of it? Okay, nevermind. 'Cause dark mode is the one thing that I'm really,
00:19:07 ◼ ► really enjoying on this iMac right now that I thought was Catalina only until two seconds ago.
00:19:12 ◼ ► So I might not even bother for a while. We'll see. But I am super excited. I appreciate all
00:19:17 ◼ ► the help and tutelage from the two of you and the listeners in getting this squared away.
00:19:21 ◼ ► A couple of quick things that a lot of people have said. You know, why not a 16-inch Macbook Pro?
00:19:31 ◼ ► 'cause it's always John. I don't really want a 16-inch computer. I don't want a 16-inch laptop,
00:19:36 ◼ ► and I'm not discounting the fact that it's amazing. Not at all. I'm just saying that's not
00:19:46 ◼ ► compromise. And it would have been a beautiful compromise. An incredibly easy and great, and I'm
00:19:51 ◼ ► very lucky to have it compromised, but a compromise nonetheless. And so I decided not to do that.
00:19:56 ◼ ► A lot of people wrote in to ask about a Mac Mini, and it's a fair question, but in a lot of ways,
00:20:03 ◼ ► I felt like the Mac Mini half-solved all of my problems, but didn't completely and utterly
00:20:08 ◼ ► solve all of them. As silly as I would then need to get a monitor. And yes, there are monitors on
00:20:13 ◼ ► the market, but the one I would get would probably be the LG, and that's another $1,500 or something
00:20:19 ◼ ► like that. Or $1,300, I think. And so, and this was another thing I ran into with the 16-inch.
00:20:25 ◼ ► I would want to get a monitor. I would want the 5K LG, etc., etc. And the 16-inch Macbook Pro,
00:20:30 ◼ ► when specced the way I wanted it, and with the monitor I wanted, was effectively iMac Pro money
00:20:36 ◼ ► anyway. Now, yes, to be fair, I can't pick up the iMac Pro and take it to my local grocery store,
00:20:42 ◼ ► unless I have Marco's fancy carrying case. But nevertheless, it just seemed like the 16 was just
00:20:48 ◼ ► a compromise, and a Mac Mini just half-solves many problems. A lot of problems, but only half-solves
00:20:56 ◼ ► them. And the iMac Pro, it really effectively and efficiently, well, except financially anyway,
00:21:02 ◼ ► efficiently solves every one of my problems with the exception of portability. And hopefully,
00:21:09 ◼ ► sometime next year, I can scrounge up enough money to get myself like a base model 13-inch Macbook
00:21:15 ◼ ► Pro with a refresh keyboard. Yeah, now you've got something to look forward to, because now you,
00:21:19 ◼ ► instead of being saddled with that 16-inch that you didn't really want, and by the way,
00:21:22 ◼ ► I think both Marco and I said that multiple times, because it's true. You'll be able to anticipate
00:21:28 ◼ ► the small laptop that you actually wanted, and be able to buy one that is not, you know,
00:21:34 ◼ ► stuffed with all the most expensive stuff you can put in it, because you don't need it for that,
00:21:37 ◼ ► because you've got your desktop. Exactly. One thing you didn't mention is what GPU you got.
00:21:41 ◼ ► Whatever the stock standard one is, I don't even remember off the top of my head. I did not tick
00:21:46 ◼ ► any upgrades other than processor RAM and disk space, however we're facing. What input peripherals
00:21:54 ◼ ► did you get? I already had purchased Underscore's black keyboard and trackpad and mouse off of him
00:22:01 ◼ ► when he got his iMac Pro, so I just left the defaults, because even though I am... You left
00:22:06 ◼ ► the defaults? Yeah, well, it's default, I guess, because the keyboard is the keyboard, but yes,
00:22:11 ◼ ► exactly. Aren't they going to give you the tiny keyboard with the terrible half-size arrow keys?
00:22:16 ◼ ► No, the one I have has faults. I don't know. I understand your question. I don't know. I'm
00:22:21 ◼ ► nervous for you now. But it doesn't matter. I'm not going to use it. I think they gave you the
00:22:24 ◼ ► big one with the iMac Pro. I think it's the big one as well. Yep, I can confirm. I guess we'll
00:22:28 ◼ ► cross the room at Tofs because she uses it. It's the one with the full numpad. Yeah, okay,
00:22:31 ◼ ► then that's one I'm using. Dodge that bullet. I remember a couple years ago they changed the
00:22:44 ◼ ► I actually, I really like that keyboard if you're willing to. Not only do they have the same
00:22:48 ◼ ► keyboard on their 12-inch and 15-inch and 16-inch laptops, but also on your expansive desk,
00:22:53 ◼ ► same keyboard. It's not a good plan. Well, in any case, I just left the defaults because I'm not
00:23:07 ◼ ► much to my own surprise as we've talked about in the past, it didn't seem worth the 50 or 70 bucks,
00:23:12 ◼ ► whatever it was, to upgrade to a second Magic trackpad since we already got one. And a black
00:23:17 ◼ ► one, no less. Or a space gray or whatever. So yeah, so I'm excited. And I mean, if either of
00:23:23 ◼ ► you have questions, I'm happy to talk about it, but otherwise we can just move right along.
00:23:25 ◼ ► One more thing on the Apple keyboards. Now that we're talking about the keyboards Apple offers
00:23:30 ◼ ► for their desktop computers, which we don't talk about too much, mostly because Marco doesn't use
00:23:35 ◼ ► one, so we don't have to hear him complain about it. There have been issues with the current line
00:23:41 ◼ ► of Apple's desktop keyboards, which are very thin and very small. And the current, like,
00:23:54 ◼ ► fingers, "tapity tapity tapity," you slowly bend it. And it's very close to the ground anyway,
00:24:00 ◼ ► but apparently originally only had like feet at the four corners. And so you'd bend it down just
00:24:05 ◼ ► so it curved a little bit because it was so thin that your tapping would bend it. And then it would
00:24:09 ◼ ► kind of like spin on the part where it hits in the middle. And that's no good. So no one wants
00:24:14 ◼ ► a bent keyboard. I don't know if they've addressed that at all, but I've heard, I mean, obviously you
00:24:17 ◼ ► can address it yourself by putting your own little feet in the middle. Maybe the new ones come with
00:24:20 ◼ ► the feet in the middle. I don't know. I always liked it when the, I mentioned this before,
00:24:27 ◼ ► there's lots of room on my desk slash keyboard tray. I don't need the function keys jammed right
00:24:32 ◼ ► up against the number keys, even though it looks nicer. I don't care. Move them a half a centimeter
00:24:38 ◼ ► up, please. I can afford the desk space. And then as many people are running on the chat,
00:24:42 ◼ ► lots of people don't like the numpad. Righties don't like the numpad because it puts your mouse
00:24:46 ◼ ► farther away from your keyboard, which is one of the many reasons that Marco doesn't use a keyboard
00:24:49 ◼ ► like this. It would be nice if Apple offered a, what they call 10 keyless or whatever, that has,
00:24:54 ◼ ► it's like the same as the Apple extended thing, but just cut the numpad right off. So you still
00:24:58 ◼ ► get page up, page down, home end, and your full-size arrow keys and their own little area,
00:25:02 ◼ ► but you don't have the numpad. I don't like the numpad either, but I do actually use it occasionally.
00:25:07 ◼ ► Like I use it to enter numbers. I don't know. Maybe I'm from growing up with pieces or whatever,
00:25:14 ◼ ► Yeah. The, my, my preferred keyboard, the Microsoft sculpt ergonomic comes with a separate
00:25:20 ◼ ► wireless numpad that you can put anywhere. I mean, I think I've thrown away six of those things so
00:25:25 ◼ ► far. Nice. I forgot to mention earlier, by the way, Friday morning, I forget when it was, I think
00:25:35 ◼ ► I was not at the computer when it happened, but I came back to the computer sometime after I had
00:25:41 ◼ ► ordered the iMac Pro and I come back to my iMac and it had rebooted itself and there was something,
00:25:47 ◼ ► I forget the exact file name, but there was like an EFI check dump file or something like that,
00:25:52 ◼ ► which I had never seen before in my life and doing just a spot of Googling made me think that
00:25:58 ◼ ► apparently there is some periodic task that will check the EFI, the bios, so to speak. I know it's
00:26:05 ◼ ► not actually bios, but for the sake of discussion, it'll check the EFI and make sure it's like valid
00:26:11 ◼ ► and I don't know, checksums are right and maybe certificates or what have you. And I guess my
00:26:15 ◼ ► iMac failed that check at some point, which is super concerning in a billion different ways.
00:26:21 ◼ ► So here again, it is time for this thing to go away. I honestly don't know what I'm going to
00:26:26 ◼ ► do with it. I haven't figured that out. I feel like throwing it away is not the right answer,
00:26:31 ◼ ► but at the same time, I don't feel like I necessarily want to give it to anyone or even
00:26:36 ◼ ► If you've listened to Casey complain about this computer for a month and a half and you would
00:26:42 ◼ ► Yeah, let me know if you want it, but I don't think you do. So anyway, I don't know what I'm
00:27:03 ◼ ► Don't check the haunted checkbox when you see the numbers. By the way, is this Mac haunted?
00:27:10 ◼ ► But the thing is, I would need to buy a new Mac in order to get the trade in money back.
00:27:16 ◼ ► No, no, no. They just give you a gift card. They literally just give you a gift card. You
00:27:20 ◼ ► don't need to be buying it at the same time. Go to the link in the chat. Google for Apple
00:28:16 ◼ ► "Which model do you have?" I gave you the serial number. Surely from that you can tell.
00:28:25 ◼ ► So I'm going down the Mac Pro alley and it says, "What year is it? Guess what the options are for
00:28:50 ◼ ► Based on what you've told us, your Mac is not even worth recycling. The aluminum has broken down.
00:28:58 ◼ ► We are happy to recycle it into one Coke can. All right, I did get a dollar amount. Would you
00:29:18 ◼ ► 1 terabyte drive. This is a, like, you know, this is a few-year-old iMac that at the time
00:29:39 ◼ ► I absolutely will take that deal without question. I didn't even know this was a thing. I thought
00:30:01 ◼ ► I know that when you sell things privately, you can get more money, but it's also a pain
00:30:12 ◼ ► Exactly. Like by doing this, like, this is going to go into like, you know, refurbishment
00:30:26 ◼ ► Right. Now I am really, really genuinely happy about this option. I did not even know that
00:30:32 ◼ ► So yeah, so cases computer corner. I'm sure we'll do a small update when this thing arrives,
00:30:50 ◼ ► or whatever dollar AppleCare+ box when I ordered it, thinking to myself, well, given the
00:31:11 ◼ ► Exactly. I'm happy to report that my computer is still a piece of garbage. Don't worry.
00:31:16 ◼ ► Yeah, it's just passive aggressively leaving like a little notes on his desktop telling
00:31:35 ◼ ► iMac, even though it's a $5,000 and up computer. And so it's like $160 or something for AppleCare.
00:31:40 ◼ ► No matter how much you can spec it up to like a $10,000 configuration, it's still $160 or
00:31:51 ◼ ► Even I got it for my iMac Pro because it was so cheap relative to the cost of any repair
00:32:01 ◼ ► And then finally, I also wanted to mention that over this past week, being Thanksgiving
00:32:27 ◼ ► laptops 2015 and earlier. They were just good. I never had like, yeah, I had like little
00:32:36 ◼ ► it. But there was there were never like fundamental problems of things I really hated with these
00:32:50 ◼ ► I never felt like it was too big. It was just a really nice I got serious work done on it
00:32:55 ◼ ► and a bunch of you know, slacking off and shopping like it was a combination of everything
00:32:59 ◼ ► I do on computers like all done over a few days while traveling and it was just fantastic.
00:33:14 ◼ ► core speed, but there's also eight of them. So it can make up the difference pretty well.
00:33:19 ◼ ► And meanwhile, again, with turbo boost off, it had amazing battery life. It actually would
00:33:24 ◼ ► last like six or seven hours of programming or like 10 hours of web crap. It was it was
00:33:30 ◼ ► never hot. I never heard the fan. It never like made my hands sweaty. It was just great.
00:33:35 ◼ ► I just really am really enjoying this computer. I have no problems with it. Some people reported
00:33:40 ◼ ► there's a problem with the speakers popping during certain transitions and I haven't had
00:33:47 ◼ ► bug. So that's I expect them to fix that with the firmware update probably pretty soon.
00:33:52 ◼ ► But otherwise, yeah, that doesn't that hasn't affected me. And I just I love this thing.
00:33:56 ◼ ► It's finally a laptop that I really love again. And I can get back to not thinking about
00:34:03 ◼ ► That genuinely makes me very happy. Now hearing you say, oh, it was sufficient for Xcode.
00:34:12 ◼ ► I almost wonder if I should send you my adorable whenever I'm done with it. So you can occasionally
00:34:24 ◼ ► oh, man, I love this adorable. I really do. But doing any real work on it is so friggin
00:34:35 ◼ ► I should blog about it again. I will again make the argument for a true Mac OS low power mode.
00:34:42 ◼ ► Because using these these amazing fast high core count laptops with turbo boost disabled
00:34:48 ◼ ► when you want it to be disabled is really nice because not only do you get really nice battery
00:34:53 ◼ ► life, but again, it's also it keeps the laptop cooler and quieter. Like I hate when I'm using
00:34:58 ◼ ► my laptop and my and it's getting so hot that it makes my hands sweaty. Like that's a gross
00:35:02 ◼ ► feeling. Nobody wants that. Right? Like if you can avoid that if you can keep it cool enough,
00:35:06 ◼ ► and that makes a difference between your hands being sweaty or not. That's a huge like just
00:35:10 ◼ ► kind of quality of life improvement, right? Not to mention the fact that like sometimes you do need
00:35:14 ◼ ► maximum battery life and sometimes you don't care that much about performance. And so it really to
00:35:19 ◼ ► have a proper low power mode. I really I'm going to keep campaigning Apple until until they do this,
00:35:24 ◼ ► because there's there's significant value to be had there. And it could be as simple as
00:35:35 ◼ ► literally could be it. And that has a big impact right there. Would you choose but if you had to,
00:35:41 ◼ ► if you could only have one, would you choose low power or low data, you know, like tethering mode
00:35:45 ◼ ► for your for a MacBook? I would choose low power mode. No question. The reason why is because
00:35:49 ◼ ► tethering mode you can accomplish with third party apps in ways that seem Catalina friendly,
00:35:54 ◼ ► like trip mode is I think the most popular one. It's great for that turbo boost switcher pro has
00:35:58 ◼ ► this kernel extension to make itself work. And as far as I know, it's signed in such a way that it's
00:36:05 ◼ ► one of those things that like it says it works in Catalina, but it probably won't work in the next
00:36:09 ◼ ► version of the OS as they keep locking down kernel extensions further and further. So I'm guessing
00:36:14 ◼ ► that is probably not long for this world. And so probably a year from now, whenever the next Mac
00:36:20 ◼ ► OS comes out, I'm guessing there has to either be an Apple provided solution or there won't be
00:36:25 ◼ ► a solution. And I will be sad when that happens because that will mean that my laptop will get
00:36:30 ◼ ► significantly worse to use when I, when I'm in certain conditions that are actually pretty common
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00:38:43 ◼ ► so you actually proved cyber Monday to be a thing? Well, except I went to a retail store and walked
00:38:48 ◼ ► out with a box, but yeah, you're doing it wrong. He's also proving that people are spending their
00:38:54 ◼ ► time buying themselves things instead of buying gifts for other people. Oh yes, yes. That's also
00:38:58 ◼ ► true. Actually. Yeah. I bought a whole bunch of crap over the weekend and I would say only about
00:39:04 ◼ ► a third of it was for other people. Well, how many thousands of dollars in lights did you spend over
00:39:10 ◼ ► the whole last week? That's rhetorical. It's rhetorical. I don't even want to know. So on
00:39:15 ◼ ► Monday, it wasn't thousand on Monday. It was $999 Bob. On Monday, one dollar. I went to the local
00:39:26 ◼ ► Costco and I bought myself and by that I mean the family, a brand new LG C9 55 inch TV, which is
00:39:34 ◼ ► there, which is their OLED. It is the first 4k TV that has entered our house. It is actually the first
00:39:40 ◼ ► TV that Aaron and I have purchased possibly ever. So we got a 720p TV, which at the time was pretty
00:39:50 ◼ ► nice. Like I think 1080 was just starting to be a thing when this thing was new. This was '07
00:39:54 ◼ ► because it was when we got married. And then a few years later, I think it was in like 2011 or
00:39:59 ◼ ► thereabouts, we were gifted a 1080 TV, a 40 inch 1080 TV. That was our TV up until Monday. And now
00:40:08 ◼ ► we have this 55 inch monstrosity that is up above our fireplace, which yes, I know is a terrible
00:40:13 ◼ ► place for TV. But if you've seen the way our living room is set up, it's really the only place
00:40:17 ◼ ► for it. Marco can vouch. And so anyway, so we got this new 4k TV and it's lovely and I really like
00:40:23 ◼ ► it. The problem is I have no way to feed it 4k content at the moment because I have a 1080 Apple
00:40:28 ◼ ► TV. So it does have an internal YouTube app, which I've used briefly and was good. It has an internal
00:40:36 ◼ ► Netflix app, which I haven't tried yet. I want to see if there's like a, internal isn't the right
00:40:40 ◼ ► word for it, but you know what I mean, if there's a Plex app for it. So I wouldn't potentially,
00:40:45 ◼ ► may not even need an Apple TV anymore at all. Who knows? I don't know that there is a Plex app for
00:40:49 ◼ ► it, but I haven't had a chance to look yet. But it seems really nice. It has HomeKit support,
00:40:53 ◼ ► which really only means like power and inputs on this particular TV. But it's still kind of neat.
00:41:02 ◼ ► HomeKit support for your television and the whole time I'm thinking, what do you do with a TV with
00:41:09 ◼ ► HomeKit integration? Like, can you explain like what you're, what you're looking to automate or
00:41:19 ◼ ► Well, so really what it came down to is I viewed it as a similar thing as I did CarPlay. And just
00:41:26 ◼ ► hear me out for a second. When we got our two most recent cars, I was insistent that we get CarPlay
00:41:32 ◼ ► because I felt like, and I do still feel like, it was kind of future-proofing. Because at some point
00:41:38 ◼ ► I'm going to be disgusted by the onboard navigation in either car, or I'm going to want functionality
00:41:43 ◼ ► that, that either car didn't come with that's available via CarPlay. And so I wanted to make
00:41:46 ◼ ► sure that both of these cars had CarPlay because it will, to me it helps them, you know, unlike
00:41:52 ◼ ► Teslas, you don't usually get updates to your car's infotainment. And so I felt like it would keep
00:41:57 ◼ ► them more modern even as the cars themselves get older. And with HomeKit on the TV, it was a similar
00:42:02 ◼ ► thing in spirit in that I don't know why I need it. And to be honest, it's kind of whatever. But
00:42:08 ◼ ► I just felt like since I know it's a thing, why wouldn't I try to get a TV where it has HomeKit
00:42:16 ◼ ► support? And actually went through a really frustrating several hours. I know life is terrible
00:42:21 ◼ ► for me around these days. But I couldn't get HomeKit to work on my brand new TV. You guys,
00:42:30 ◼ ► - Let's just disclaim that most of the things we talk about on this show are incredible first world
00:42:37 ◼ ► - Exactly. So anyway, so I couldn't get it to work. And I don't have the gentleman's name,
00:42:43 ◼ ► there are actually two different people that wrote in, but the first person was a gentleman that had
00:42:47 ◼ ► said to me, "Hey, if you get the TV hooked up with your cable box," and remember, I'm a Fios TV
00:42:53 ◼ ► subscriber as well, "If you have it hooked up to your cable box such that it can control the cable
00:42:58 ◼ ► box," which I had done, "It won't let you add the TV to HomeKit." And this was extremely frustrating
00:43:06 ◼ ► to me because when I went to pair, not pair, but add this accessory to HomeKit, it put up
00:43:12 ◼ ► a QR code on the TV, I scanned the QR code with my phone, and my phone says, "Nope, didn't work."
00:43:18 ◼ ► And the TV was like, "Yes, we're good to go." Okay, so as far as I was concerned, the TV was happy
00:43:26 ◼ ► and it was Apple that was the problem. And Apple put up a tremendously useful error screen, and
00:43:32 ◼ ► I'll put a link to my tweet about it in the show notes where I was whining about it. But basically,
00:43:40 ◼ ► the dialogue said something like, "I think I could go back, dismiss, or hit OK," or something like
00:43:46 ◼ ► that. And it basically just said, "Couldn't add accessory. Back, dismiss, or OK." Like,
00:43:51 ◼ ► guys, can I have some amount of feedback here? Please? Anything? Anything would be lovely.
00:43:56 ◼ ► But it turns out it was not an Apple problem, and it was actually an LG problem. And there's
00:44:01 ◼ ► something about when the LG is hooked up to the cable box that it will not allow or will not work
00:44:06 ◼ ► with HomeKit. Something that people theorize that's something related to Bluetooth, I don't
00:44:09 ◼ ► know. But once I disconnected the cable box in a figurative sense, so it's still connected via
00:44:14 ◼ ► HDMI but it's not doing any of the fancy channel surfing and so on and so forth, then I was able
00:44:19 ◼ ► to add it to HomeKit no problem. And in this particular setup, the only thing it lets me do
00:44:23 ◼ ► is turn it on or off or set an input. And since I am an HDMI CEC unicorn, I don't really need that
00:44:32 ◼ ► often, because if I want to watch the Apple TV, I just turn on the Apple TV and it turns on the TV
00:44:36 ◼ ► and it makes it jump directly to the correct input. So that is many, many words to say,
00:44:41 ◼ ► Jon, there is no damn point to me having HomeKit on this TV. But I knew it was a thing,
00:44:46 ◼ ► and so I wanted to have it. A real-time follow-up, you can indeed get Plex for your television.
00:44:50 ◼ ► Oh, excellent. LG has like a whole app store, basically. It's a content store. The name of it
00:44:56 ◼ ► is LG Content Store, which is not a good name. No. I suppose they can't use App Store because,
00:45:01 ◼ ► you know, Apple and lawyers or whatever, but. Whatever. I don't know if it has an Apple TV app.
00:45:06 ◼ ► I need to look into that. Oh, and I will say that in theory, sometime in the next two or three
00:45:12 ◼ ► weeks, I will get a voucher for a year of Disney+. I was dragging my feet on subscribing because there
00:45:17 ◼ ► was nothing that I personally was like dying to watch. Yes, I know the Mandalorian is a thing. Yes,
00:45:22 ◼ ► I should probably be excited about it, but whatever. The thing I was actually most and am
00:45:25 ◼ ► most excited to watch is there's apparently an Imagineering documentary series or something
00:45:30 ◼ ► like that, which I'm super amped to see. Well, anyways, apparently there's a promotion where if
00:45:34 ◼ ► you get an LG OLED TV, of which this is, then you can get a year of Disney+. So you had to upload a
00:45:42 ◼ ► scan of your receipt and so on and so forth, which I've done. And I guess sometime in the next month,
00:45:47 ◼ ► they're going to email me a code so I can get a year of Disney+. I'm pretty amped about that.
00:45:50 ◼ ► I know there is a Disney+ app on their home screen, App Store, whatever you call it. I didn't
00:45:56 ◼ ► look for Plex, but the chat room is saying, "Yes, Plex is the thing that I can install." So I'll be
00:46:07 ◼ ► So by John's definition, no. By my definition, yes. So when I got this TV, John immediately said,
00:46:16 ◼ ► "You must use the THX tune-up or whatever it's called app in order to get it calibrated." I did
00:46:22 ◼ ► not do that. I might. But what I did do was the other thing you suggested, which is use, what is
00:46:27 ◼ ► it, Artings or something? And use their calibration guide to just get it close. And that is what I've
00:46:34 ◼ ► done. Did you see here, but the thing about Artings settings, they have settings on their
00:46:38 ◼ ► website, rtings.com, and you find your model TV and you can look at what their settings that they
00:46:49 ◼ ► will tell you to turn down the motion smoothing or to pick a particular option in the motion
00:46:53 ◼ ► smoothing. So I would say, get your settings from rtings.com and then disable all of the motion
00:46:59 ◼ ► things. Anything that inserts frames of video that did not exist in the source, you want to turn that
00:47:03 ◼ ► off. I know it's hard to tell what those things are because they all have lots of weird names, but
00:47:07 ◼ ► the Artings site will usually explain to you, this is the thing that does motion interpolation,
00:47:11 ◼ ► frame interpolation, whatever. Turn them off, not low, not medium, off, off, off. So I would
00:47:18 ◼ ► suggest you do that. I think I have, but knowing me, maybe I didn't, so who knows. But anyway,
00:47:24 ◼ ► but I am, I'm really pleased with this. It's really neat to have a very pretty and big TV and,
00:47:29 ◼ ► and it, you know, it seems to have taken place on my other TV really well. I have a very odd
00:47:34 ◼ ► home theater setup, which the details are not particularly interesting, but this was basically
00:47:38 ◼ ► able to slide into place in using all of the connectors that were already there. I didn't
00:47:43 ◼ ► need to like get rid of component cables for the sake of argument and like put in HDMI or anything
00:47:48 ◼ ► like that. Everything worked out just like I wanted, which is super great. And I'm so far
00:47:52 ◼ ► really, really pleased with it. And webOS is first time I've used webOS and I mean, it's fine.
00:48:10 ◼ ► Well, not only do I have terrible vision, but remember, I'm not really, I've only watched
00:48:14 ◼ ► one or two things in 4k. Like I quickly played a Casey on cars for like 30 seconds just to see it.
00:48:18 ◼ ► You would notice when you turn on the television at night, at night, if I don't know what the splash
00:48:23 ◼ ► screen is for when you turn on the TV, but often the splash screen is black with like a logo or
00:48:29 ◼ ► That's true. That's true. I don't, I see the problem is I'm not as discerning as either of
00:48:33 ◼ ► you. And so like, yes, I can recognize when I pay attention that the blacks are the blackest black,
00:48:38 ◼ ► but in general, I don't think about that that much and I'm fairly easily impressed. So I do like it
00:48:44 ◼ ► very much. I'm not saying it's not great and it definitely does look beautiful, especially in the
00:48:48 ◼ ► blacks, even when I'm looking at 1080 content. But I really, I really want to just properly set it up
00:48:54 ◼ ► with like, well, I was going to say Plex, but honestly that's all 1080 anyway. But, you know,
00:48:58 ◼ ► get a Apple TV plus app if there's, if there is such a thing or alternatively get a 4k Apple TV
00:49:12 ◼ ► Something that concerns me is I put HDMI or had HDMI put through the walls or through the wall
00:49:16 ◼ ► in order to go from where the receiver and cable box and whatnot are to behind the TV, which is
00:49:22 ◼ ► again, mounted up on the wall. And I'm deeply concerned that whatever HDMI cable that I put
00:49:26 ◼ ► in there literally 10 ish years ago, isn't going to have support for all the new fancy stuff. And
00:49:36 ◼ ► So then I'm gonna have to go through the walls myself or get somebody to go through the walls
00:49:40 ◼ ► and replace it. Well, you don't, if you don't use that fancy stuff, if you don't use enhanced
00:49:44 ◼ ► audio return channel and you don't use like the latest ethernet or power tunneling things,
00:49:49 ◼ ► like if you don't use any of those features, it should be okay. But what about like HDR and all
00:49:54 ◼ ► that other fancy stuff? Yeah, that's might be okay. What you really have to worry about is HDCP, the
00:50:01 ◼ ► copy protection crap, depending on what you connect to it, try it. It will be clear when it doesn't
00:50:06 ◼ ► work. HDR is a whole other realm of calibration and settings and stuff that I haven't actually
00:50:12 ◼ ► dealt with, but it should also be obvious if you run any sort of test things, whether HDR is
00:50:17 ◼ ► quote unquote working or not. But I think like most cases, HDMI, you either get a picture or you don't.
00:50:24 ◼ ► And when you don't, something is wrong. You won't be able to do high frame rate. You won't be able
00:50:28 ◼ ► to do the wide color gamut stuff, like lots of stuff you won't be able to do over that 10 year
00:50:32 ◼ ► old cable. Well, and that's the thing that I'm worried about is that it will show me a picture,
00:50:35 ◼ ► but I, but it won't be as fancy and nice a picture as it could have been like it will be
00:50:40 ◼ ► non HDR for the sake of discussion. There should be some, I don't, I don't know this particular TV,
00:50:44 ◼ ► but it's usually some way that you can put an overlay where it shows information like what is
00:50:48 ◼ ► the frame rate I'm currently getting? What is the color space? What, you know, and then you can look
00:50:51 ◼ ► at that information and figure out what's broken about it. But yeah, that's unfortunately HDMI,
00:51:02 ◼ ► I think the most support for the latest HDMI spec, HDMI 2.1 includes lots of features. This TV
00:51:08 ◼ ► doesn't support all of them, but it supports more of them than the other, it's other contemporary
00:51:16 ◼ ► - Yep. So that's the thing, which I mean, it's a self created problem, but, uh, I'm gonna probably
00:51:22 ◼ ► need to work that out at some point, but sitting here now, I it's a very nice TV. Who'd have thunk
00:51:26 ◼ ► it? I'm really pleased about that. - So you can have an, you can have an empty tree this year.
00:51:32 ◼ ► It's just going to be Christmas morning and you got a lump of coal. It's like, well, Casey,
00:51:36 ◼ ► you already bought yourself every present you could possibly want. So yeah, you don't get
00:51:40 ◼ ► anything. - That's very true. Uh, John, you apparently had a new experience sometime recently.
00:51:44 ◼ ► You want to tell us about that? - Got to try out a new gaming system without buying anything,
00:51:49 ◼ ► which is always the best way to do it. Uh, Stadia launched Google Stadia. We talked about it many
00:51:53 ◼ ► shows ago. Uh, I talked mostly about the, this idea of streaming gaming services, why people
00:51:59 ◼ ► keep trying to do it and why people will keep trying to do it. And we didn't know if Stadia
00:52:03 ◼ ► would finally succeed where all those other services have, uh, have failed. Uh, it's from
00:52:09 ◼ ► Google. They have a lot of money. They talk a lot about their cool technology, whatever. Anyway,
00:52:13 ◼ ► they launched their service and because it's basically a service and not a game console,
00:52:18 ◼ ► they don't technically need to launch any kind of hardware because you can play Stadia games.
00:52:24 ◼ ► Uh, on any device that's supported as sort of a client, including your computer with a web browser.
00:52:30 ◼ ► So on your Mac launch Chrome and go to whatever it is. It's like Stadia.google.com or stadia.com.
00:52:36 ◼ ► I don't know, whatever it is, stadia.tv. I forget this. - Stadia.google.com. - There you go.
00:52:40 ◼ ► Anyway, go to that in your, in your web browser. Yes. Your web browser on your Mac and boom,
00:52:46 ◼ ► you're playing a console game that's running in Google's data centers. You can play it on,
00:52:50 ◼ ► I think your iPad and iPhone or maybe just pixel phones. Eventually it'll be on your iPad and
00:52:55 ◼ ► iPhone. Um, you can play it on your television if you have a Chromecast, but then you need a
00:53:00 ◼ ► controller. And the one hardware thing they do sell you is there's like a Google Stadia controller
00:53:05 ◼ ► that is basically everything you need. Like it, it connects to wifi. It does, it does all the stuff
00:53:10 ◼ ► that you can, your Mac would be doing in its web browser or whatever. It does all the connection
00:53:14 ◼ ► stuff. And then it sends to a Chromecast on your television. So if you want it, you can buy that.
00:53:19 ◼ ► And in fact, that's the only way, or was the only way at launch where you could play Stadia is if
00:53:24 ◼ ► you gave them like 130 bucks for the controller. And I think maybe it came with a Chromecast,
00:53:29 ◼ ► I forget. Um, and you would get this little box and you would, you know, they had all the YouTube
00:53:34 ◼ ► people opening up their box of their Stadia controller and trying it out and so on and so
00:53:37 ◼ ► forth that Google sponsored a bunch of those videos, but I didn't do that. I'm not going to
00:53:41 ◼ ► pay $130 for a controller. I probably won't like for a gaming thing. And it probably won't like,
00:53:52 ◼ ► I think they call them like the founder's box. Like if you were, if you gave them money ahead
00:53:57 ◼ ► of time or pre-ordered for it or whatever, uh, you got that, but you also got invite codes. So
00:54:01 ◼ ► somebody sent me an invite code and I was able to join Stadia and go through sort of the account
00:54:11 ◼ ► this is the part, this is the part that made me dislike Stadia the most and has nothing to do with
00:54:16 ◼ ► playing games on it. Surprisingly, you go through the setup process, like, Oh, welcome to Stadia,
00:54:22 ◼ ► blah, blah, blah, enter a bunch of information, uh, inevitably like as you would imagine for
00:54:40 ◼ ► I have a gamer tag, uh, that I've been using since college and I have it on PSN and I have it on
00:54:47 ◼ ► X-Box and I have, I have a different one on steam. Um, and I typed that in and it went to the next
00:54:53 ◼ ► screen. Like, great. I must've gotten in early enough because none of the, none of the small
00:54:56 ◼ ► group of founders took my preferred gamer tag, which is a weird word and not, you know, any part
00:55:01 ◼ ► of my name or whatever. Um, and so I'm glad I got my name and then the next screen said, okay,
00:55:08 ◼ ► here you go. And by the way, it showed at the bottom, a like a number sign and then four hyphens
00:55:14 ◼ ► and said, and by the way, to distinguish your name, uh, a number may appear after it to, uh,
00:55:22 ◼ ► differentiate it from anyone else who may have the same name. I'm like, Oh my, that's weird. Well,
00:55:26 ◼ ► I suppose if someone else picks the same name as me, I guess we're both going to get numbers.
00:55:34 ◼ ► I just sailed through because, you know, whatever. And then I started playing something and my name
00:55:41 ◼ ► had a number after it had a hash mark and a number after a four digit number. Like, okay,
00:55:46 ◼ ► there are not, you know, 9,999 other people pick this name. There's 500 people on the service total
00:55:53 ◼ ► at this point. Like no one is using this. Why do I have a number after my name? With a little bit
00:55:59 ◼ ► of research, I mostly figured out that the only way you're ever going to see your name without
00:56:06 ◼ ► a number at the launch of this service is if you are one of those founder people, everybody else,
00:56:11 ◼ ► no matter what name you pick, we'll get a number after your name. This is apparently a thing that
00:56:16 ◼ ► lots of services are doing to try to avoid, I guess, names, place pollution, and let people
00:56:21 ◼ ► be happier to get their names. But let me tell you, this is the wrong choice from a human factors
00:56:26 ◼ ► perspective, right? Not being able to get your name is bad and makes people sad. I understand that.
00:56:31 ◼ ► But saying that everybody is going to have numbers after the name is worse. And even worse than that
00:56:37 ◼ ► is saying a tiny elite set of people won't have numbers and everyone else will have numbers,
00:56:42 ◼ ► even if the name you picked, nobody else picked that name. This you think wouldn't make any
00:56:48 ◼ ► difference. Who cares what your name is online? Who cares if you have numbers after that? That's
00:56:56 ◼ ► I would have picked a different name. It turns out it doesn't matter what name I picked,
00:56:59 ◼ ► I would always have numbers after it. That's bad. I don't want to have numbers after my name.
00:57:02 ◼ ► I try to teach my children that. I think it's a lesson for everybody. If the name you want is not
00:57:08 ◼ ► available in the service that you're using, find a different name. Don't put the year of your birth
00:57:18 ◼ ► digit number. Don't put 420. Don't put 69. Don't put 1138. Don't put 42. Don't put 360.
00:57:24 ◼ ► Do not put those numbers. Don't add numbers. Don't put two. Don't put three. Don't put seven.
00:57:29 ◼ ► The only thing I allow for young people only basically is ASCII art based on little letters
00:57:39 ◼ ► feel free to use as many underscores as you want, but no numbers. So I'm unreasonably upset
00:57:48 ◼ ► about the fact that my gamertag has a hash mark or whatever, you know, and a four digit number
00:57:56 ◼ ► after it every time you see the name and it's like an animal. And then it's alongside sometimes
00:58:03 ◼ ► people who don't have numbers. The haves and have nots in Stadia. Oh, John, I'm so sorry.
00:58:14 ◼ ► these amazing terms in the industry for incomplete features. What you would expect is if Destiny is
00:58:22 ◼ ► supported on multiple platforms and it's an online game where, you know, go and play online,
00:58:27 ◼ ► everyone be able to play with everyone because, hey, it's the Internet. That is not the case.
00:58:34 ◼ ► Xbox, you play with other people on Xbox. Back in Destiny one, if you are on PlayStation three,
00:58:38 ◼ ► you can only play with PlayStation three players. If you're on PlayStation four, you can only play
00:58:41 ◼ ► with PlayStation four players and on and on. If you're on PC, you can only play with PC players.
00:58:49 ◼ ► which means you can only play with people on the same platform as you. But anything you do on any
00:58:55 ◼ ► platform shows up on all the other platforms. So if I play Destiny on my PlayStation and then I
00:59:00 ◼ ► quit my PlayStation, turn it off, and then I go over and play in Stadia, I see that same player,
00:59:06 ◼ ► all my same stuff, everything is the same over there. So cross save is better than nothing,
00:59:15 ◼ ► all that is to say I was able to play Destiny with my actual characters, with a mouse and a keyboard,
00:59:20 ◼ ► on my Mac and Chrome, a 5K Mac and Chrome, like zoom to full screen. And I've done this before
00:59:28 ◼ ► with the GeForce Now service, which is a Nvidia streaming gaming thing. They also had PCs and you
00:59:34 ◼ ► could play the PC version of Destiny over the internet. And Stadia, it's better than GeForce
00:59:42 ◼ ► Now in particular. I think there were fewer huge hitches in frame rate and the image quality seemed
00:59:48 ◼ ► a little bit better and the launch time and everything about it seemed a little bit faster.
00:59:53 ◼ ► And it's like a technical miracle that it works at all. But for games like Destiny, first person
01:00:00 ◼ ► shooters against other human beings, the technology is still not quite there. I have gigabit fiber to
01:00:06 ◼ ► my house. I'm in an area that's not too far away from major switches on the internet. Maybe all of
01:00:12 ◼ ► the Stadia servers are on the West Coast and that's what's killing me, but it was not good. So if
01:00:16 ◼ ► you're wondering, has streaming gaming arrived for the hardest of hardcore games against other human
01:00:22 ◼ ► beings? The answer is no. But if you're looking for a way to play games that don't require Twitch
01:00:28 ◼ ► reflexes and you want the cheapest way to do it and you want to be able to play from any one of
01:00:33 ◼ ► your devices, including your phone, your iPad, your television, or just bring a controller with
01:00:37 ◼ ► you to a hotel and be able to play there, it's technically impressive and is probably the best
01:00:42 ◼ ► one of these services that I've ever tried. And I think I've tried most of them. So yeah, we're
01:00:49 ◼ ► still waiting for that technical breakthrough. And I guess we're still waiting for that marketing
01:00:54 ◼ ► breakthrough where someone can convince people who are not hardcore gamers that don't worry about it
01:00:59 ◼ ► if you can't play Destiny. Destiny is a weird complicated game anyway and you're never going
01:01:03 ◼ ► to get into it, but this is the best, cheapest, most convenient way to play all those other games
01:01:08 ◼ ► that don't require millisecond precision. So yeah, I guess that's sort of a thumb sideways on Stadia.
01:01:16 ◼ ► And everyone complained about the launch because they had very few games available. Most of the
01:01:20 ◼ ► games are already available on other platforms and there's all sorts of complaining about the launch.
01:01:24 ◼ ► It doesn't seem like the service is off to a really great start and it doesn't seem like any
01:01:29 ◼ ► of the technical aspects have surprised anybody with how good they are. They're not way worse
01:01:34 ◼ ► than people thought, but they're not way better either. So I feel like Stadia is kind of landing
01:01:38 ◼ ► with a thud at this point. A glowing review. But hey, for something that I paid zero for,
01:01:45 ◼ ► I got to add a reminder. I did have to sign myself up for a monthly thing, but I think you get a one
01:01:53 ◼ ► month free trial. I need to cancel this because I'm never going to use Stadia. Although, speaking
01:01:58 ◼ ► of Destiny, which I just was, someone was asking me today, "Hey, when you get your new Mac Pro,
01:02:03 ◼ ► are you going to play Destiny on it?" And you know, I hadn't really thought about that, but I
01:02:08 ◼ ► think I probably will try it. Obviously, Destiny doesn't run on the Mac, but assuming bootcamp is
01:02:14 ◼ ► still supported, which Apple people continue to tell me that it is, despite all evidence to the
01:02:18 ◼ ► contrary, as far as I can tell, that bootcamp is still a thing. If I can run bootcamp on my Mac Pro,
01:02:23 ◼ ► I will indeed install some weird version of Windows and install Destiny for the PC, and I suppose buy
01:02:28 ◼ ► Destiny for the PC if I don't already own it. I think I did buy Destiny for the PC once, but I
01:02:37 ◼ ► try Destiny on my Mac and see how that goes. The advantage, by the way, is like, why would you
01:02:42 ◼ ► want to do that? For some people, it's mouse and keyboard to be able to use the mouse keyboard. I
01:02:46 ◼ ► can't do that for RSI reasons, so I would probably still be using a controller when I played it on my
01:02:51 ◼ ► Mac. But on the PlayStation 4, the frame rate is capped at 30 frames per second, and the frame rate
01:02:57 ◼ ► is uncapped when you play on a PC or a Mac Pro. And of course, the resolution is better and all
01:03:03 ◼ ► that other stuff, so I'd really love to see Destiny at higher resolution and much higher frame rates,
01:03:07 ◼ ► just to see what that's like. But you don't need to buy a Mac Pro, John. That's what Jason told me.
01:03:12 ◼ ► I don't. To run Destiny, again, as someone pointed out to me, if I put like a modern NVIDIA GPU in my
01:03:20 ◼ ► 2008 Mac Pro, it would run Destiny at 60 frames per second. It doesn't take much to be faster
01:03:27 ◼ ► than PlayStation 4. Even my Mac Pro could do it if given a $600 GPU. But you still are buying that
01:03:34 ◼ ► Mac Pro, huh? Sure am. You don't need it, though. I don't. Absolutely do not. He has to buy it at
01:03:41 ◼ ► this point. Oh, no argument. No argument at all. I want to buy it. That's the word that keeps me
01:03:45 ◼ ► laughing. I want to buy it. You also have to buy it. I mean, let's be honest. I don't have to.
01:03:50 ◼ ► My computer is the one that works, but I want to buy it. And as we've talked about before,
01:03:57 ◼ ► I do occasionally dread that I'm going to get this insanely expensive new computer that's going
01:04:01 ◼ ► to be obsolete in two years when Apple switches to ARM, and it's going to be flaky, and I'm going to
01:04:05 ◼ ► have nothing but problems with it, and I'm not going to be able to record podcasts. We'll see
01:04:09 ◼ ► how it goes. Hey, I've been there, John. You can make it through. Trust me on this. I'll get the
01:04:13 ◼ ► Apple care. Don't worry. Yeah, I recommend it. And you're still not getting one, Marco?
01:04:18 ◼ ► I don't have any plans to. I'm extremely happy with my iMac Pro. You're so adorable. What if it
01:04:25 ◼ ► comes with an LED light? I mean, how bright is it? That's right. It comes out of all the holes.
01:04:31 ◼ ► Those holes were there for airflow, but it's also for light. It's a billion nits. That's the thing.
01:04:36 ◼ ► You don't even need that. Imagine how crazy it would be if Marco buys the Pro Display XDR
01:04:43 ◼ ► because of the bazillion nits, but doesn't bother connecting it to the Mac Pro. Can the iMac Pro
01:04:49 ◼ ► drive the 6K? I don't think it can, right? I think so. They have not said, I don't think. All they
01:04:55 ◼ ► have said is that the 16-inch MacBook Pro can drive two of them, but I don't think they've
01:05:00 ◼ ► actually documented or said anywhere what else can drive them and how many. Yeah, I'm guessing
01:05:06 ◼ ► no based on the age of the computer, but who knows? You're making me feel real great about
01:05:10 ◼ ► my purchase, John. You're not going to buy an XDR. Yeah, are you going to put the 6K monitor next to
01:05:16 ◼ ► your iMac Pro? Nobody wants to buy that except for a very small group of people. Even I don't
01:05:20 ◼ ► want to buy it. But you will. You could almost buy two of your iMac Pros for the price of the XDR.
01:05:25 ◼ ► Yeah, instead of dual monitors, just do dual iMac Pros and two totally different computers and just
01:05:30 ◼ ► use a KVM to con-slate. Oh, what was that software that let you do like a fake software KVM over the
01:05:37 ◼ ► internet? I can't remember the name. Oh, God, I can't remember it either now. It's not Hammerspoon,
01:05:42 ◼ ► that's the config one. Oh, it's going to drive me nuts now. Knifey Spoonie? Spoonie Knifey?
01:05:48 ◼ ► Synergy! There we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it, that's it, that's it. Oh, man, I am so excited for
01:05:54 ◼ ► Marco to cave on this and buy himself a Mac Pro. Look, you'll be the first ones to know.
01:05:59 ◼ ► No, we won't. Well, the business rep at the Apple store might be the first one to know.
01:06:07 ◼ ► We need to get there and say, if Marco just quietly leaves the house and ask him where he's
01:06:12 ◼ ► going, are you going to buy a Mac? No, I'm not buying a Mac. I'm coming to the store, I'm getting
01:06:16 ◼ ► milk, not buying a Mac Pro at all. The best, the best will be if the way I find out that Marco's
01:06:24 ◼ ► bought a Mac Pro is suddenly out of nowhere. Someone freezes his credit because the purchase
01:06:29 ◼ ► is too big. No, I think even better would be out of nowhere. You know, I come home in the afternoon
01:06:33 ◼ ► from wherever and I see there's a big package on my front porch and I think, oh, that's weird. I
01:06:37 ◼ ► wasn't expecting anything. And I bring it in and I see it's from the town in which Marco lives. And
01:06:41 ◼ ► I think, well, what would Marco have sent me? I wasn't expecting that at all. And I open it up and
01:06:45 ◼ ► I realize, oh, it's an iMac carrying case. Oh my God, I know what he's done. He would never give
01:06:52 ◼ ► up the iMac Pro. That would be, that would be his portable desktop. The stationary desktop and the
01:06:57 ◼ ► portable desktop. Yeah, my travel computer. Oh my gosh, that is funny. We are sponsored this week by
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01:08:55 ◼ ► sponsoring our show. All right, let's do some Ask ATP. And someone, probably Joel, wrote in,
01:09:04 ◼ ► "Hey, what do you think of developers trying to be fun in Apple Store update notes?" I, generally
01:09:09 ◼ ► speaking, don't like it, but there are exceptions where it's really good. If you are lucky enough to
01:09:15 ◼ ► be on the GIF-wrapped beta, on the TestFlight beta, I think Jelly does this for the actual
01:09:20 ◼ ► release notes too, but the GIF-wrapped beta is worth the figurative price of admission for the
01:09:27 ◼ ► release notes alone because I don't even, I don't have any in front of me, but Jelly's release notes
01:09:32 ◼ ► for the GIF-wrapped beta are phenomenal. It's like a story in and of themselves and they're so good.
01:09:38 ◼ ► When like big companies try to be cutesy and funny, I think it almost always fails and is
01:09:42 ◼ ► garbage and I hate it, but when smaller independent developers try it, usually they are still connected
01:09:48 ◼ ► enough with reality that it can work and work well. But that's just my two cents. Let me ask
01:09:53 ◼ ► the old and stodgy ones, starting with Marco, what do you think? I think it used to matter what you
01:09:59 ◼ ► put in those release notes. Oh, that's true too. That's a very good point. But nowadays, like with
01:10:04 ◼ ► AutoUpdate being on by default and with the updates being buried, further and further buried in the
01:10:10 ◼ ► App Store app with every time they change anything about it, I don't think it matters anymore,
01:10:15 ◼ ► honestly. I think this fight is long lost and now it's just irrelevant. Yeah, and you're not wrong.
01:10:23 ◼ ► Jon, what do you think? I think like any sort of content exercise, whether that's the text in your
01:10:29 ◼ ► dialogue box or your menu item names or help text or anything where you have to write something or
01:10:37 ◼ ► create graphics or whatever in your application, it is an opportunity to do a good job and make
01:10:42 ◼ ► your product feel better. And that includes release notes. Very few people will ever look at them,
01:10:49 ◼ ► fewer now, like Marco pointed out, than ever before because of the changes Apple has made.
01:10:53 ◼ ► But the people who do look at them are looking at them because they feel better about knowing what
01:10:58 ◼ ► the changes are, whether they need to know what the changes are or not. They want to know what
01:11:02 ◼ ► the changes are. And when you have well-written release notes, content that is informative,
01:11:09 ◼ ► concise, but also fun to read, it makes the person reading them feel better about your application.
01:11:14 ◼ ► And those people tend to be the sort of most loyal, hardcore customers. Depending on the
01:11:19 ◼ ► type of application you make, that customer group may actually be important to you. They may be the
01:11:25 ◼ ► people who are keeping you in business year after year because you have a niche application that
01:11:29 ◼ ► caters to enthusiasts, and they're going to seek out those release notes. And so I think it is an
01:11:34 ◼ ► opportunity for you to excel and for you to make your application, make your customers happier and
01:11:40 ◼ ► make your application more valuable to them and increase their affection for it. You just have to
01:11:45 ◼ ► know, am I making that type of application? Does literally anybody look at my release notes? Or am
01:11:49 ◼ ► I making a mass market application that is not the type of thing where release notes matter at all,
01:11:53 ◼ ► in which case I don't have to care about that. But what do I think about trying to be fun?
01:11:56 ◼ ► I think it's perfectly fine and could possibly be beneficial. And then the final thing is,
01:12:01 ◼ ► even if nobody reads them, if it makes you happy to do it as like sort of celebrating like a cherry
01:12:07 ◼ ► on top of you getting a release out, and you just do it because it's a fun thing that you enjoy
01:12:11 ◼ ► because you like writing, and maybe like you and five-year friends ever look at them and get
01:12:14 ◼ ► amused by them, that can be a perfectly valid thing to do. It's not like we're asking, you know,
01:12:18 ◼ ► the act of writing release notes is not writing a novel. It's like hopefully a very small amount
01:12:23 ◼ ► of text. And if it makes you feel good to do it, then do it. But as Casey pointed out, try to
01:12:29 ◼ ► ask a trusted friend whether you're actually making amusing release notes or whether you are
01:12:40 ◼ ► Mike Bullock Ziegler writes, "I am getting iPads for out-of-state grandparents to make it easy to
01:12:45 ◼ ► share photos of my son and FaceTime with us. Neither are tech savvy. Neither of them use as
01:12:50 ◼ ► much tech outside of a TV remote. Any setup tips or suggestions outside of accessibility settings
01:12:55 ◼ ► for elder-proofing it?" You know, I don't have any great answers for this, so I'm really curious
01:13:05 ◼ ► grandparents over the last decade or so. It's hard, you know, obviously do what you can,
01:13:09 ◼ ► you get all the updates on, bury all the apps that they won't use and we'll just confuse them
01:13:14 ◼ ► in a folder, like, you know, an Apple folder, bury as much as you can so that they can just have one
01:13:20 ◼ ► page of springboard. They don't have to like swipe to different pages, like, have everything on one
01:13:24 ◼ ► page, show them, obviously, you know, the best thing you can do is like be there with them when
01:13:28 ◼ ► they first get it, show them how to use it, you know, show them the basics. And then one thing
01:13:33 ◼ ► that, you know, depending on what your budget will allow for this use, get them the cellular ones and
01:13:40 ◼ ► activate the plan with something that you pay for and you control because then they never have to
01:13:45 ◼ ► worry about Wi-Fi or connectivity. They're just always online. You know, like, I don't know what,
01:13:52 ◼ ► what, you know, this person's grandparents' situation is at home, but like my grandparents,
01:13:56 ◼ ► when I, when I did this for them a few years back, they didn't have an internet connection at their
01:14:00 ◼ ► house yet because they didn't have a computer. So I decided, let me just avoid this problem entirely
01:14:06 ◼ ► because like, once you involve an internet connection, then they know they have to call
01:14:09 ◼ ► the cable company or whatever and have them bring out their stupid Wi-Fi router and deal with all
01:14:13 ◼ ► that crap. And like, that's, that's a whole other level of complexity and costs for them to deal
01:14:17 ◼ ► with. And if you're trying to minimize that impact on them, if you can spare the money, just set it
01:14:22 ◼ ► up with cellular and on your own plan that you pay for that, they don't even need to think about it.
01:14:31 ◼ ► The only thing I'd add is, uh, so Apple's devices and their iOS devices have tons of accessibility
01:14:39 ◼ ► settings, but the only way you're going to know which one should be enabled and what they should
01:14:44 ◼ ► be said to is to sit down with the person who's going to be using the person or persons who are
01:14:48 ◼ ► going to be using the device and try each one. Do you like this better? Do you like that better?
01:14:53 ◼ ► What do you think of this? What do you think of that? And then when you, when you, uh, change the
01:14:57 ◼ ► accessibility settings, in particular things having to do with font size and weight, also then
01:15:02 ◼ ► try the applications that they think they're going to be using, because despite all of Apple's WRC
01:15:07 ◼ ► session is trying to tell you how to make your layout still work when the dynamic text changes
01:15:12 ◼ ► and everything, even Apple's own applications can have serious layout problems when you really crank
01:15:16 ◼ ► up the text, uh, especially on smaller devices. So like, just run, you know, go through the whole
01:15:23 ◼ ► accessibility screen, sit there and try to get something that, you know, is, you know, works well
01:15:29 ◼ ► for the people who are going to use it and go through the applications, show them how to use
01:15:33 ◼ ► them, show, you know, send test emails, they know how to get it, send test FaceTime calls, show them
01:15:37 ◼ ► how to call things, set up their contacts, put little, you know, images on all their contacts,
01:15:42 ◼ ► get everything pruned down, like Margo said, to adjust the things that they care about.
01:15:45 ◼ ► You can now quote unquote delete lots of built-in applications where it just hides them or whatever,
01:15:51 ◼ ► do that, um, and then just go through the entire settings screen and set up everything in a
01:15:55 ◼ ► reasonable way. It's going to take a long time, um, but that's the way to do it. The only part
01:16:00 ◼ ► where I have some trepidation is I still find, and maybe it's because I'm just not in the loop
01:16:04 ◼ ► on this, maybe someone who's more hardcore into iOS can tell me, but I still find that the ultimate
01:16:09 ◼ ► out that I talked about on the past, uh, episode of taking control of someone's screen remotely,
01:16:20 ◼ ► I don't think so. I don't think it is, but man, I, I have wished for that. Like, there have been
01:16:26 ◼ ► times when one of my grandparents would call with a question and I'd have to talk them through
01:16:30 ◼ ► something over the phone and it, you know, it's hard because you know, like if, you know,
01:16:34 ◼ ► I don't know, depending on what your grandparents like, you know, exposure to computers before this
01:16:39 ◼ ► has been, my grandparents were starting from zero. And so it's hard to even try to get each other to
01:16:45 ◼ ► explain with, with clear terminology, like what's going on, what to do, what, you know, have them
01:16:50 ◼ ► explain what it's, what's happening on the screen. And then you tell them what to do on screen. Like
01:16:54 ◼ ► when they lack basic terminology, cause they don't have any experience with the computer before this,
01:16:58 ◼ ► even that part becomes very difficult. Like, and so obviously if you can be in person, that's great.
01:17:03 ◼ ► In my case, at the time I was doing all this, I lived in New York and they lived in Phoenix.
01:17:10 ◼ ► So I just had to do it, do tech support over the phone and it was really hard. And there were a
01:17:14 ◼ ► couple of times where I had to say, I'm sorry, I don't know what to do. Next time you're in the
01:17:19 ◼ ► mall, bring it to the Apple store and they'll help you. Cause like, cause I just couldn't,
01:17:22 ◼ ► we couldn't figure out communication wise, like how to work it out over the phone. It was really hard.
01:17:27 ◼ ► And so I would have loved some kind of like remote screen control thing in that kind of situation.
01:17:36 ◼ ► but not control it. But anyway, that's the, that's my only trepidation. Macs by far way harder for
01:17:41 ◼ ► people who, who aren't into computers to be able to deal with, but they do have that one advantage.
01:17:46 ◼ ► The hack way that I've done in the past, even before the screen sharing days, I used to actually
01:17:53 ◼ ► use VPN to do it, but it was hard keeping third party VPN stuff going. And then I chat came and
01:17:57 ◼ ► allowed to screen. Anyway, the hack way is if they have a phone, they can do video chatting,
01:18:04 ◼ ► or at least just have the camera and they know how to text you pictures. You can, you know,
01:18:07 ◼ ► you get the, someone can hold the phone up to another computer screen and say, this is what
01:18:11 ◼ ► I'm seeing, which helps a lot. Or they can take pictures of a screen and send them to you. But
01:18:29 ◼ ► Yeah. So that's, that's the only sort of caveat. I would say that iPads are the best thing to give
01:18:36 ◼ ► to, you know, non-techie grandparents to see pictures and stuff. They're way better than a
01:18:41 ◼ ► Mac. I just wish they had a way for you to take control of the screen. So then you wouldn't have
01:18:45 ◼ ► to do this back and forth and you wouldn't have to look at the screen and direct them to do things.
01:18:48 ◼ ► You could just say, just sit back and I'll fix it. And you can explain it to them while you fix it,
01:18:53 ◼ ► if you want or not. And they don't care about that stuff. They just, they just make it work again.
01:18:56 ◼ ► That's the suggestion for Apple, but yeah, sitting down, my suggestion is sitting down with them and
01:19:09 ◼ ► the teacher could like snoop, for lack of a better word, on all of the students, but could
01:19:29 ◼ ► Greg would like to know, Marco, I'm sure you've been asked before, but is there any chance you
01:19:32 ◼ ► would port Overcast to the Amazon talking tube ecosystem? Also would be curious as to the
01:19:42 ◼ ► For me, the biggest challenge, it's not something that I, that I have strong feelings on. It's
01:19:48 ◼ ► something that people have occasionally asked for. Not as much as when the Echo first came out.
01:20:00 ◼ ► like when they first get these devices and so they request it, but then after a few months,
01:20:05 ◼ ► like people mostly stop asking for it because they realize that they use these devices in
01:20:08 ◼ ► different ways that maybe this wouldn't actually be that useful for. So for the most part, demand
01:20:13 ◼ ► has been fairly weak, it seems. And so I largely haven't looked into it much because there's always
01:20:20 ◼ ► something else more pressing. You know, with podcast apps, and there's at least one of my
01:20:25 ◼ ► competitors I know of that is on the Alexa family of devices, and I don't hear about it that often.
01:20:32 ◼ ► Like I'm not seeing reports from people constantly saying, you know, I was gonna go with you, but I
01:20:37 ◼ ► went with them because they have this. Or I'm leaving you because they have this. Like I hardly
01:20:41 ◼ ► ever hear anybody even mention it. So I think it's one of those things that's just not super
01:20:45 ◼ ► important. The thing is, and I say this as somebody who spent quite a lot of time building this,
01:20:51 ◼ ► you know, massive sync engine to sync between iPad and iPhone and web for Overcast, most people
01:20:58 ◼ ► only listen to podcasts from their phone. Almost none of my user base uses anything besides a phone.
01:21:03 ◼ ► I use the iPad app every day myself and that's why I maintain it. But otherwise, like, the vast
01:21:10 ◼ ► majority of Overcast users use it on one device, their phone, and that's it. Because most people
01:21:17 ◼ ► listen to podcasts, first of all, most people only have a phone. That's problem number one. But even
01:21:22 ◼ ► for the people who have multiple gadgets, most people just listen to podcasts by themselves
01:21:27 ◼ ► in situations where they are on the go. They're going to work, they're taking a walk, whatever it
01:21:33 ◼ ► is. That is by far the majority of podcasts listening, you know, commuting or exercising,
01:21:38 ◼ ► whatever else. And so they're not even at home necessarily. And if they are at home, many, many
01:21:44 ◼ ► people simply just play the podcast out of their phone's speaker, like the built-in speaker on the
01:21:49 ◼ ► phone. They crank it up, they just play it on the countertop or whatever, and it's fine. So any
01:21:55 ◼ ► feature that I have to invest a lot of time in that is about like multi-platform or multi-device
01:22:00 ◼ ► support, not only is there a low demand for it, but it's also usually so complicated and so costly
01:22:08 ◼ ► that it's not even worth doing. Because any time I would spend making the phone app better,
01:22:15 ◼ ► addressing people's wishes for features in the phone app, that is almost always time better
01:22:21 ◼ ► spent. So it isn't that I am never going to do this. It's just a much lower priority than most
01:22:28 ◼ ► people would want it to be, of the few people who do want this feature. It's a low priority,
01:22:32 ◼ ► and it might never get done, because there's just always more important stuff that's more pressing.
01:22:42 ◼ ► Alexa, no, just kidding, Away, Squarespace, and Handy, and we will talk to you next week.
01:23:00 ◼ ► John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him, cause it was accidental,
01:23:50 ◼ ► Oh man, I had to go appliance shopping, our washer died, we had to get a new clothes washer.
01:24:03 ◼ ► in case it's the laundry machine that does your, that washes your clothes. If it doesn't
01:24:14 ◼ ► we have these giant places that we can fit two huge machines. I think the combo machines
01:24:19 ◼ ► are more common like in Japan and Europe where they actually have space issues. But anyway,
01:24:24 ◼ ► so yeah, so had to replace our washing machine and that was a whole thing. Because like we
01:24:30 ◼ ► had a front loader, because when we moved into our house and we had to get a new washing
01:24:35 ◼ ► machine, the one that came with the house was broken and so we had to get a new washing
01:24:38 ◼ ► machine and everyone was getting front loaded. This was 10 years ago, 9 years ago. Everybody
01:24:42 ◼ ► was getting front loaded, so alright, fine, we got a front loader. And we heard, hey they
01:24:46 ◼ ► stink after a while because water basically sits in the bottom of them when they're not
01:24:55 ◼ ► mold problems or whatever. So we did all the precautions. We always left the door a little
01:25:00 ◼ ► bit open. We would always pull out the detergent drawer thing when it was not in use so like
01:25:06 ◼ ► everything could dry out. Everything was open to the air and could dry out all the time
01:25:09 ◼ ► when it wasn't in use. We would run the cleaning cycles. We tried the special afresh things
01:25:22 ◼ ► for this thing perfectly and it's still slowly starting to stink. Granted, it was 9 years
01:25:27 ◼ ► old. Slowly starting to stink. That still didn't get us to replace it eventually. Because
01:25:32 ◼ ► we learned like, oh, just run the first wash. Like if we were gone for like, if we were
01:25:36 ◼ ► out of town for a week, run the first wash empty maybe and it'll squirt out all the stinky
01:25:42 ◼ ► water and then we can run our wash after that. That would be, you know, normal-ish. But finally
01:25:48 ◼ ► it died. Finally it started throwing error codes that when looked up on Google were things
01:25:58 ◼ ► finally we have a motivating reason. Let's get a new washer but let's get a top loader.
01:26:03 ◼ ► And it turns out, according to the appliance salesman and the installers who came to install
01:26:08 ◼ ► the thing, turns out lots of people have made this exact same move from the front loaders
01:26:14 ◼ ► that seem really nice and are super efficient but really have stink problems moving back
01:26:20 ◼ ► to the old top loaders. So we'll see how that goes. The reason I wanted to mention all this
01:26:24 ◼ ► is that we also really hate our fridge. This is not for any, you know, incredibly major
01:27:08 ◼ ► we drink a lot of water. So this happens all the time. And we're like, okay, this is stupid.
01:27:18 ◼ ► incredibly inefficient to be losing all this cold air as we're sitting here with the door
01:27:26 ◼ ► That's not the only reason that's stupid. I think I talked about this on my big refrigerator
01:27:30 ◼ ► episode, but I would suggest to people, and I know lots of people have some sort of conditioning
01:27:35 ◼ ► against this. And sometimes there's a reason for it, but I would suggest to you, because
01:27:41 ◼ ► I know where you live, that during the winter half of the year at least, you can get cold
01:27:48 ◼ ► water from your tap that tastes good to drink. You do not need to get water through some
01:27:52 ◼ ► weird filter thing, through a bunch of plastic tubes sitting stagnant in your refrigerator.
01:27:57 ◼ ► It's plenty cold out of the tap in the winter, and your water is not chlorinated and doesn't
01:28:02 ◼ ► No, our water tastes delicious. That's actually not a bad idea. Maybe I'll start doing that.
01:28:06 ◼ ► During the summer, you have to let it run for a while for it to get cold, which is wasteful,
01:28:09 ◼ ► so maybe you shouldn't do that. But people from my childhood, nobody drank bottled water.
01:28:16 ◼ ► Bottled water was not a big thing in my childhood. But then eventually as it became into adulthood,
01:28:32 ◼ ► in it, and you don't want to drink it and it tastes bad, or maybe it's filled with lead,
01:28:38 ◼ ► these terrible bottles of water. But everybody loves those refrigerator things, and as far
01:28:44 ◼ ► as I'm concerned, they taste like a filter. I can't stand the Brita things. I can't stand
01:28:48 ◼ ► water on the door. I want water out of the faucet. That's my preferred drink, and I would
01:28:52 ◼ ► suggest to everyone that if you are mindlessly getting water out of the little plastic tubes
01:29:00 ◼ ► That's, you know, you might have convinced me to try that because our tap water is fine.
01:29:05 ◼ ► Maybe I, yeah, because you know, because I'll tell you what, so we ran into issues with
01:29:16 ◼ ► Yeah, so, so again, anybody who has not listened, you have to go listen to Jon's episode of
01:29:22 ◼ ► Reconciliable Differences where he gets a new fridge from a few months back because it is
01:29:27 ◼ ► amazing. It is a masterpiece. It is a Syracuse masterpiece. It is, if you're a fan of anything,
01:29:35 ◼ ► Jon, which if you've made it this far listening to our podcast, I assume you are, you must
01:29:48 ◼ ► It's not. It's just an episode, but here's my pitch. You'll learn stuff about refrigerators
01:29:52 ◼ ► and buying them. If you're in the market for a refrigerator and you have similar tastes
01:30:00 ◼ ► plastic straw filter water from your fridge, this will tell you what the landscape of refrigerators
01:30:09 ◼ ► Yes. Anyway, so our current fridge is a 36-inch wide, 70-inch tall, counter-depth which you
01:30:24 ◼ ► Right. It is built into a cabinet-style enclosure. There's a cabinet above it. There's a wall
01:30:36 ◼ ► door when it swings open, can't extend very far past the left edge of the fridge. We only
01:30:45 ◼ ► Single door, and we only have about an inch on the left of a gap before it hits the wall.
01:30:55 ◼ ► to the left of the fridge's bounds. And so we thought, let's look at everything available.
01:31:02 ◼ ► And if we can find a good fridge, we're buying a washer too, we'll get some kind of combo
01:31:06 ◼ ► deal on it, we'll discount both things, we're buying two at once, we'll save on installation,
01:31:10 ◼ ► so let's just replace the fridge that we hate. And there's other issues with it too, like
01:31:18 ◼ ► of other issues with it. So we figure like, while we're getting one appliance, let's see
01:31:22 ◼ ► what they can do for two. I don't think there's a single fridge on the market today that would
01:31:28 ◼ ► fit in our fridge hole that we would actually like more than the one we have, let alone
01:31:39 ◼ ► find one that's as good as what we have, because this style of fridge that we have, which is
01:31:52 ◼ ► - Yes, so we have, counter depth is one problem, which I didn't even realize, like I just measured
01:31:57 ◼ ► three dimensions of our fridge and I went to the store, I'm like, "Alright, what do you
01:32:04 ◼ ► - You don't realize how big everyone else's fridges are, yours is so shallow, you can barely
01:32:09 ◼ ► - Yeah, so not only, so most of the fridges are like eight inches deeper than ours, and
01:32:29 ◼ ► only built, this kitchen I think is about 12 years old. Like we didn't do it, the previous
01:32:34 ◼ ► owners did it, but they did it pretty recently, you know, before we bought it. So like it's
01:32:38 ◼ ► about a 12 year old design, the fridge is probably about that age as well, and I assume
01:32:52 ◼ ► 2000, I don't know, 2007, eight-ish, anything that was done around that time, they all had
01:33:00 ◼ ► these same fridges, these like Whirlpool/Gen Air, it's all the same company, these like
01:33:05 ◼ ► you know, these stainless steel drawer fridges on the bottom, single door on top, water dispenser
01:33:09 ◼ ► on the stupid hinge, like, we've seen the same fridge in many people's houses that were
01:33:15 ◼ ► - Yeah, and cabinet depth is still popular, like people like it because it doesn't stick
01:33:22 ◼ ► become like oppressive and make your kitchen smaller, and it's just nicer, you get less
01:33:26 ◼ ► storage, but you know, counter depth is still popular, but it's popular, kind of like my
01:33:31 ◼ ► problem with trying to find one without a water feature, on the quote unquote high end,
01:33:34 ◼ ► like the cheap fridges, the ones that don't follow the fads, the ones that have a single
01:33:43 ◼ ► where you have no water feature and a single door and it's not counter depth, you don't
01:33:51 ◼ ► depth, and the nicer ones always follow the fads, and as you know, the fad is not currently
01:33:56 ◼ ► - Yeah, the fad is, so, as far as I can tell, and like we talked to the appliance guy, we
01:34:01 ◼ ► looked at all the things that were in this store, I looked then later at Home Depot and
01:34:17 ◼ ► Most of them now are Frank's doors, where you have two doors on top and a drawer freezer
01:34:36 ◼ ► - Yeah, it won't work in our fridge hole anyway, because the left door can't open, basically,
01:34:46 ◼ ► main reason that that came out is if you have a small kitchen, it's great to have a smaller
01:35:00 ◼ ► kid, it was freezer on top instead of freezer on bottom, but when I was a kid, they also
01:35:05 ◼ ► had some that were freezer on bottom, but the drawer is superior to both of those arrangements,
01:35:26 ◼ ► French doors seem weird, I think if you got them and they could fit, you would get used
01:35:40 ◼ ► are designed that way and why the other ones aren't, but for whatever reason, that's how
01:35:48 ◼ ► The only options we seem to have are to either get a fridge that is skinnier than our fridge
01:35:52 ◼ ► hole, that is not 36 inches wide, that's more like 30, which is a pretty significant capacity
01:36:01 ◼ ► - Or to remove the cabinet above our fridge and get one of these new like eight feet tall
01:36:11 ◼ ► - All the Marco fridges now, like all the fridges that are nice now cost $6,000, oh gosh.
01:36:25 ◼ ► Like we have, we have like a little like step stool thing for our seven year old son to
01:36:38 ◼ ► the, you know, the fridges go all the way to the floor, but the compressors on the fancy
01:36:49 ◼ ► - See, I wouldn't even mind having the compressor on top, because that, 'cause like the compressor
01:36:57 ◼ ► in these days it's usually the freezer, like, so you got this super tiny freezer or this
01:37:05 ◼ ► So putting the compressor on top makes total sense if you're gonna make the fridge super
01:37:24 ◼ ► - It's the arrangement of the doors that's not made, a counter depth single door on top,
01:37:28 ◼ ► I mean, maybe you could find one of them, but they're all the French doors, 'cause that's
01:37:32 ◼ ► Now, I would blame the people who remodeled your kitchen not thinking that like, oh, there's
01:37:35 ◼ ► never gonna be a problem because we'll just make the hinge open on the other side, that's
01:37:48 ◼ ► a long expansive wall or are you right near a door opening, like could you widen a door
01:38:07 ◼ ► - But you can't like make a door opening six inches bigger and make it, it's like how far
01:38:13 ◼ ► - The way the kitchen is arranged, there is no other option of where to put this fridge
01:38:17 ◼ ► or how to widen its space without literally knocking down a wall that we're not even sure
01:38:23 ◼ ► - That's what I'm getting at, the wall that it's up against, how far does that wall extend
01:38:44 ◼ ► have the same problem, like I, in many ways, as you know from listening to the program--
01:38:48 ◼ ► - Yeah, like we've gone from, like we've gone from us hating this fridge and we're like,
01:38:54 ◼ ► we would joke because it's the only appliance that came with the house that still works.
01:39:19 ◼ ► - Yeah, or you can replace it, but it's much more complicated than the fridge part of it.
01:39:24 ◼ ► - Yeah, we can replace it only after a cabinet remodel and buying one of these giant ones
01:39:32 ◼ ► - Yeah, and you know, the other thing with the Margot fridges is the trend in that sort
01:39:39 ◼ ► They make those counter-depth so your kitchen can look nice and sleek and everything, but
01:39:43 ◼ ► incredibly wide, like not as big as two fridges side by side, but close to it, and then they
01:39:54 ◼ ► refrigerator, and then a second one that's just freezer and then a thing for wine, like
01:40:05 ◼ ► which by the way, kind of like Viking stoves as you've experienced, is not any guarantee
01:40:10 ◼ ► In theory, they keep the temperature more even inside there, and they're more powerful,
01:40:14 ◼ ► and they have multiple compressors, which a lot of the consumer ones too and everything,
01:40:18 ◼ ► but like it's one of those things where you don't actually get what you pay for always,
01:40:22 ◼ ► so I would be leery of the super expensive fridges, even if they did solve your problem.
01:40:30 ◼ ► - Also, like there are surprisingly few fridges that actually have the water, the ice and
01:40:42 ◼ ► My entire life, I've never had a fridge that had a freaking water dispenser on the front,
01:40:57 ◼ ► Not double door, did you see the ones that I talked about on the rectives episode where
01:41:05 ◼ ► Whenever I go over there and take them out of their fridge, I always pull the wrong button,
01:41:22 ◼ ► - I mean, I see the advantage, I see the potential savings, I see the convenience angle, but
01:41:31 ◼ ► If you ever got a non-counter depth one, you'd never be able to go back to counter depth
01:41:39 ◼ ► - I see what looks to be a more modern version of our refrigerator that includes Wi-Fi on
01:42:01 ◼ ► So this is not our fridge, we bought ours several years ago, but this is a rough equivalent
01:42:31 ◼ ► - And so the thing is, as I talked about on the Rec Diff episode, eventually if you did
01:42:37 ◼ ► find one that fit your dimensions and features, you'd open it up and look inside and you'd
01:43:00 ◼ ► And the thing is, I meant to talk about this when you were talking about your washing machine,
01:43:04 ◼ ► there is a good subculture, if you want to check it out on YouTube, of people essentially
01:43:17 ◼ ► In some ways, good, because the new ones use less energy and less water and do a better
01:43:21 ◼ ► job and yada, yada, but in many ways, very bad in terms of quality of materials and durability
01:43:26 ◼ ► and expected lifetime, which is why you may have some relative or your parents or whatever
01:43:35 ◼ ► And if you buy a modern one at great expense, there's no way in hell it's going to last
01:43:43 ◼ ► to last that long, because they just don't build them with materials that are even designed
01:43:59 ◼ ► it to be there probably as long as this one was, because they're all made of cheaper materials
01:44:07 ◼ ► Except for, I suppose, the Marco ones, which will be exactly as unreliable as the Marco
01:44:23 ◼ ► And if you look at the reviews for every single new washer, with one exception, the reviews
01:44:51 ◼ ► And there's one type of machine that exists out there that seems to still be the old kind.
01:45:05 ◼ ► Have you looked at the controversy on YouTube of the new Speed Queens aren't as good as
01:45:27 ◼ ► But yeah, so Speed Queen, there was this big controversy that they changed everything to
01:45:47 ◼ ► That was my vote for which one we should buy, but ultimately Tiff got final say because
01:45:59 ◼ ► And this problem with the Speed Queen is that they only made them a fairly small capacity,
01:46:15 ◼ ► But it's tricky because all the reviews for all these machines are basically like, yeah,
01:46:23 ◼ ► Well, it should last a little bit longer than three to five years, but yeah, you should
01:46:50 ◼ ► I think they washed the clothes better, certainly with less water, and in particular the spin
01:47:06 ◼ ► So now I'm just basically resigned that every decade or so we're going to have to get a
01:47:29 ◼ ► Did you encounter this, by the way, when you were shopping, that they will sell you basically
01:47:47 ◼ ► It only works on a front loader because obviously if you do that on a top loader, you won't
01:47:55 ◼ ► But anyway, we actually have, we spent the stupid money on the previous machines because
01:48:13 ◼ ► It's also like $300 for a metal box, which is just galling compared, and since the washer
01:48:29 ◼ ► We just needed to get it a little bit higher so it would clear our laundry basket because
01:48:32 ◼ ► nothing worse than putting the laundry basket in front of your dryer, opening the door and
01:48:40 ◼ ► But yeah, I'm sure ours are going to die in about three or four more years and then we'll
01:48:47 ◼ ► Well the reality is, the one we got, the one that we're replacing, we got it, we got it
01:48:51 ◼ ► nine years ago and it was, I forget exactly, but it was somewhere around $1,100, $1,200,
01:49:26 ◼ ► Like yeah, you know what, if it sucks, I don't feel so bad about it because like, yeah, things
01:49:45 ◼ ► I don't want to spend a $6,000 on a fridge because I know it's going to be the same garbage
01:49:53 ◼ ► Well, if a classic more aggressive wash action is your preferred way of washing, Speed Queen's
01:50:20 ◼ ► You look at the reviews and you're like these people are like my house in my entire house
01:50:28 ◼ ► It's all the positive reviews like I'm sure people do have problems with the Speed Queen's
01:50:33 ◼ ► and like they're, you know, in some respects don't do something as well as the modern ones,