ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Well, speaking of your tiny binks in your house, I saw in one of your Instagram stories,

00:00:05 ◼   ► you had a bowl of food for hops.

00:00:08 ◼   ► I think, when was it?

00:00:09 ◼   ► You were like, "Oh, I got to give hops as breakfast first."

00:00:11 ◼   ► Do you remember that one?

00:00:12 ◼   ► And this was before you said you were out of dog food.

00:00:15 ◼   ► So I wasn't aware that you had run out of dog food.

00:00:17 ◼   ► But the bowl that you put down to hops, like it's on camera for two seconds, and it looked

00:00:21 ◼   ► to me like oversized chocolate chips, coconut shavings, and carrots.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Tell me that's not what was actually in the bowl.

00:00:32 ◼   ► Coconut shavings?

00:00:33 ◼   ► No.

00:00:34 ◼   ► Oversized chocolate chips, coconut shavings, and carrots.

00:00:36 ◼   ► Obviously, it's not chocolate because that's poison for dogs.

00:00:38 ◼   ► But it looked like, I'm just saying, as it goes by the camera real fast, it looked like

00:00:41 ◼   ► big chocolate chips.

00:00:42 ◼   ► Those were chunks of dry dog food.

00:00:44 ◼   ► Wow, they look really big.

00:00:45 ◼   ► They look like they were the size of like nickels.

00:00:47 ◼   ► No.

00:00:48 ◼   ► They're coconut shavings.

00:00:50 ◼   ► No.

00:00:51 ◼   ► No?

00:00:52 ◼   ► Oh, I know what you mean.

00:00:53 ◼   ► Okay.

00:00:54 ◼   ► Are you talking about the omelet breakfast or whatever you made them on dog day?

00:00:55 ◼   ► Yes, there was one segment of that.

00:00:57 ◼   ► You can see, I saved it as a highlight of my store, you can go see.

00:01:00 ◼   ► So what I feed hops, what I've been feeding him most mornings is some dog kibble from

00:01:06 ◼   ► a reputable brand.

00:01:07 ◼   ► I have been chopping up some carrots in there.

00:01:10 ◼   ► I take four baby carrots and chop them up and put them in because he likes carrots and

00:01:15 ◼   ► keeps his stuff working regularly.

00:01:17 ◼   ► And then the other little bit you saw was a torn up slice of deli turkey, like boar's

00:01:25 ◼   ► head, oven roast turkey.

00:01:27 ◼   ► I know there's too much salt in it and that's why I don't give him a lot.

00:01:30 ◼   ► Looked like kind of a lot.

00:01:31 ◼   ► It was, it's like, it wasn't even a full slice.

00:01:33 ◼   ► What does it look like?

00:01:34 ◼   ► A big bowl of food for a small dog.

00:01:36 ◼   ► It was very close to the camera.

00:01:38 ◼   ► It's actually like a cat food bowl.

00:01:42 ◼   ► Hoffs is not a big dog.

00:01:44 ◼   ► Put that food in, mold it into the shape of a dog, it would be about the same size as

00:01:47 ◼   ► him.

00:01:48 ◼   ► No, not only is he not a big dog, but I don't even, it doesn't even fill the bowl and it's

00:01:53 ◼   ► a cat bowl.

00:01:54 ◼   ► Like the bowl is, it wouldn't even hold the amount of water he would need to be a water

00:01:59 ◼   ► bowl.

00:02:00 ◼   ► That's how small it is.

00:02:01 ◼   ► All right.

00:02:02 ◼   ► Anyway, you got bad planning on the dog foods now here.

00:02:06 ◼   ► Making people food for the dog.

00:02:07 ◼   ► Yeah, well because like I bought, like you know, so the brand I get is like, it's one

00:02:12 ◼   ► of like the fancier brands that is not available in like your typical grocery store.

00:02:16 ◼   ► You have to go to like, you know, a nice pet food store to get it.

00:02:20 ◼   ► And so like there are grocery stores here, they do sell a very small selection of dog

00:02:25 ◼   ► food.

00:02:26 ◼   ► And I looked at it all today and I was like, it was all like total garbage.

00:02:30 ◼   ► Like the, you know, the ingredients are like, you know, water, sawdust, compressed meat

00:02:36 ◼   ► byproducts.

00:02:37 ◼   ► Like it's like, it's all like the worst garbage you can possibly imagine.

00:02:40 ◼   ► I'm like, I don't, I don't feel right feeding that to him because you know, I know he wouldn't

00:02:45 ◼   ► care, but I care.

00:02:46 ◼   ► Like it's, it's, it's about standards and I don't want to, you know, put a bunch of crap

00:02:51 ◼   ► in my dog.

00:02:52 ◼   ► So I'd rather just, you can't see him cold cuts.

00:02:55 ◼   ► That's not really very small amount.

00:02:57 ◼   ► And the reason why the human, that's the human equivalent of that dog food you rejected, agreed,

00:03:01 ◼   ► but it's, yeah, but it's like, it's, that's in very small quantity and it's mostly because

00:03:05 ◼   ► I wrap up the pill after he takes thyroid pills cause he's old.

00:03:09 ◼   ► And so I wrap up the thyroid pills in the, in like a little bit of deli Turkey because

00:03:12 ◼   ► it makes it easy to give it to him and it's relatively low bulk.

00:03:14 ◼   ► So it's not like I'm not adding that much, you know, stuff to him.

00:03:18 ◼   ► And I just put like, I tear up a few little extra strips of the Turkey and put it in there

00:03:21 ◼   ► so that he inhales his dog pellets.

00:03:23 ◼   ► But it turns out when you make food that actually like you don't need to taint it with deli Turkey.

00:03:28 ◼   ► I did.

00:03:29 ◼   ► However, I must say whenever I've had to make him like chicken for like if he, if he like

00:03:33 ◼   ► gets sick and I have to make him chicken cause he's like, he won't eat anything else.

00:03:35 ◼   ► Like I've had to do it a couple of times here and there throughout this dog.

00:03:38 ◼   ► And whenever I do it, I always feel bad for him.

00:03:42 ◼   ► Like, you know, the vets tell you like just boiled chicken.

00:03:45 ◼   ► I've done it for my dog multiple times as well.

00:03:48 ◼   ► Boiled chicken is terrible.

00:03:50 ◼   ► Like it's so flavorless and you can't give them onion or anything else that could flavor

00:03:56 ◼   ► it.

00:03:57 ◼   ► And so I always do a little tiny pinch of salt in the chicken water.

00:04:00 ◼   ► They don't need salt.

00:04:02 ◼   ► And I always do, I always do a little dash of Rosemary.

00:04:06 ◼   ► I feel he doesn't care probably, but I care.

00:04:10 ◼   ► I don't want to give him such incredibly bland chicken.

00:04:12 ◼   ► So today I did the same thing.

00:04:13 ◼   ► And I was like baking.

00:04:15 ◼   ► I baked a couple of chicken breasts and three chicken thighs to make this big dog food mixture

00:04:19 ◼   ► tonight.

00:04:20 ◼   ► And, uh, and I, I put a little dash of Rosemary on top because I, it just felt so bland without

00:04:25 ◼   ► it.

00:04:26 ◼   ► His sense of smell is 10,000 times more powerful than yours.

00:04:28 ◼   ► It's probably overwhelming him with Rosemary, which dogs do not seek out or like in any

00:04:33 ◼   ► way.

00:04:34 ◼   ► It's not food for you.

00:04:35 ◼   ► It's food for the dog empathize, but you need empathy for the dog.

00:04:38 ◼   ► Believe me, all the work I put into this food, it's like 10,000 Rosemary's in his face.

00:04:42 ◼   ► Well, it's pretty good.

00:04:43 ◼   ► So I feel like it allowed me to feel good about feeding him the meal that he seemed

00:04:48 ◼   ► to really love.

00:04:50 ◼   ► You're supposed to be empathizing with the dog, not you.

00:04:52 ◼   ► You know, you, you, the only downside is I have no idea how much of this mixture I've

00:04:57 ◼   ► made to feed him.

00:04:59 ◼   ► And he certainly won't tell me cause he'll just inhale as much as I get him because it's

00:05:01 ◼   ► really good.

00:05:02 ◼   ► So I, I don't know if I'm feeding him enough or too much.

00:05:06 ◼   ► I guess I'll find out after you do it by volume that you have like a scoop.

00:05:10 ◼   ► It's like this is the scoop for hops.

00:05:12 ◼   ► Like whatever fits in this scoop is a meal assuming is reasonably packed.

00:05:15 ◼   ► I would give him like a third of a cup each meal of like the dry kibble, but you know,

00:05:21 ◼   ► it's, this is totally different.

00:05:22 ◼   ► This is like, you know, freshly made, like, you know, baked things with actual meat and

00:05:27 ◼   ► actual vegetables and a little bit of rice.

00:05:29 ◼   ► So it's like, I don't even like, I'm sure the volumes are not comparable because the

00:05:33 ◼   ► kibble is probably so much more calorie dense.

00:05:36 ◼   ► You can just tell them that it comes at the other end when it becomes a uniform density

00:05:40 ◼   ► and you can say how much poop is there and how often.

00:05:41 ◼   ► I guess then you'll know you're putting, you're putting, you're putting in the right amount

00:05:45 ◼   ► when the normal amount comes out the back.

00:05:47 ◼   ► All right, we should start with follow up as always.

00:05:51 ◼   ► Andrew Bement writes, a way in which you can disable auto boot.

00:05:55 ◼   ► So I was lamenting that, you know, I like to take a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to my computers

00:06:00 ◼   ► when they're powered off in order to get the finger grease and other bits off of them.

00:06:05 ◼   ► And if I were to do that with the newer Macs, from what I'm told, they will turn themselves

00:06:09 ◼   ► on as soon as you press any button on the keyboard.

00:06:11 ◼   ► And some people wrote in with some like software tools to do this when the, when the computer's

00:06:15 ◼   ► on, which I'm not entirely keen on.

00:06:18 ◼   ► But Andrew wrote in and said, the command you need, and we will put this in the show

00:06:22 ◼   ► notes, is sudo nvram autoboot equals percent 00 and auto and autoboot is Pascal case, do

00:06:29 ◼   ► I have that right?

00:06:30 ◼   ► Capital A, capital B. Like I said, you'll see it in the show notes.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Considering our segment of reading out command line things and source code.

00:06:38 ◼   ► We put them in the show notes too.

00:06:40 ◼   ► It's a useful thing.

00:06:41 ◼   ► Although I think I missed the last time you mentioned this, that you're using magic erasers

00:06:44 ◼   ► on your computer.

00:06:45 ◼   ► I don't really recommend that because don't they have like a mild amount of bleach in

00:06:50 ◼   ► them and I know they're kind of abrasive.

00:06:52 ◼   ► So both of those things combined to make me think those are both kind of incomplete.

00:06:55 ◼   ► So what magic erasers are is melamine foam and it's actually a really interesting material.

00:07:00 ◼   ► It's basically a super fine abrasive formed into a sponge and there's no other, at least

00:07:07 ◼   ► in the regular kind, it's probably like different flavors now, but like in the regular kind,

00:07:12 ◼   ► it's just a block of foam and you make it a little bit wet to make it effective, but

00:07:17 ◼   ► then you're basically, it's basically a super fine abrasive.

00:07:20 ◼   ► So they actually are really useful things to clean off a lot of different kinds of things.

00:07:23 ◼   ► The problem with cleaning computers with them, they work fantastically on cleaning keys on

00:07:28 ◼   ► keyboards like on laptop keyboards.

00:07:30 ◼   ► The downside is that because you have to put a little bit of water in them to activate

00:07:34 ◼   ► them and kind of make them work, if you're scrubbing on a keyboard, there's a very good

00:07:38 ◼   ► chance you're going to leak a drop or two of water into it.

00:07:42 ◼   ► And I've actually seen this happen and I've seen this cause problems.

00:07:46 ◼   ► So that is the biggest reason not to use them.

00:07:50 ◼   ► It's not about the block of melamine foam itself.

00:07:54 ◼   ► It's about the water that you need to use with it causing problems for the device that

00:07:58 ◼   ► you're cleaning.

00:07:59 ◼   ► I still don't like the idea of using abrasive and I think some of them do have a mild bleach

00:08:03 ◼   ► on them.

00:08:04 ◼   ► And the other thing is if you're doing it on the keys, especially with these current

00:08:06 ◼   ► ones, even if you get it wet, little bits can shed from the magic eraser.

00:08:11 ◼   ► That's true.

00:08:12 ◼   ► That's tiny little things and I don't want the other thing that our keyboards are vulnerable

00:08:14 ◼   ► to is any little speck of anything.

00:08:16 ◼   ► I don't want a tiny little speck of abrasive working its way into there.

00:08:19 ◼   ► So all I'm saying is Casey, like follow the instructions on Apple's website, 75 degrees

00:08:23 ◼   ► for the air.

00:08:24 ◼   ► And they always say like a clean, like damp cloth with just water.

00:08:30 ◼   ► So you have finger grease on there, right?

00:08:32 ◼   ► It's not as good as like a degreaser to get off finger grease, but it will eventually

00:08:38 ◼   ► get off the grease.

00:08:39 ◼   ► It is the universal solvent.

00:08:40 ◼   ► It will eventually get rid of the grease unless you have some serious like motor oil situations

00:08:44 ◼   ► going on there.

00:08:45 ◼   ► But I don't endorse the magic eraser.

00:08:48 ◼   ► That is noted and I will promptly ignore you henceforth.

00:08:52 ◼   ► Tell me about your Apple card.

00:08:54 ◼   ► I hear there's some trouble in paradise there.

00:08:57 ◼   ► I applied for the Apple card because now it's open to everybody and I did the little thingy

00:09:01 ◼   ► and on the phone where you apply and you enter some small amount of information was very

00:09:06 ◼   ► painless.

00:09:08 ◼   ► My first sad realization was that my limit on the card was going to be $10,000, which

00:09:15 ◼   ► is very low and not enough probably for the Mac Pro system I plan to buy.

00:09:19 ◼   ► It's probably not that big of a deal practically speaking because my wife got a card too and

00:09:24 ◼   ► so I could buy like the monitor and her card and the computer on mine or something like

00:09:29 ◼   ► that.

00:09:30 ◼   ► So you think the computer will fit on one?

00:09:33 ◼   ► Yeah, I hope better.

00:09:36 ◼   ► But like $10,000 is not a high limit for a credit card in general.

00:09:41 ◼   ► It's lower than any of the limits on any of my actual credit cards and what I've heard

00:09:44 ◼   ► since then of people complaining about the limits that they're being conservative because

00:09:49 ◼   ► it's like the first consumer credit card, Goldman Sachs is done, yada, yada, yada, yada,

00:09:53 ◼   ► excuses, excuses.

00:09:54 ◼   ► Anyway, I immediately went to customer service and in addition to going to the text chat

00:09:58 ◼   ► to say get me out of arbitration, I also said, "And by the way, can you increase my limit?"

00:10:02 ◼   ► Because my experience has been if you ask a credit card company to increase your limit,

00:10:05 ◼   ► they will if you have good credit and all this other stuff.

00:10:09 ◼   ► I have good credit.

00:10:10 ◼   ► I have lots of credit cards with high limits.

00:10:12 ◼   ► I figured they would do it.

00:10:13 ◼   ► But their response was, "At this time, we are not evaluating credit limit increase requests

00:10:17 ◼   ► from customers who have had an account open for less than six months."

00:10:20 ◼   ► So basically no one's getting an increase for six months, which is kind of cruddy.

00:10:25 ◼   ► By then it will be too late.

00:10:26 ◼   ► So anyway, that's my card situation.

00:10:29 ◼   ► The other thing is I did get the physical card because everybody should just even if

00:10:33 ◼   ► you're never going to use it because it's cool.

00:10:36 ◼   ► And I was impressed about a couple of things.

00:10:39 ◼   ► One, the Apple card, which is a normal sized credit card, actually comes in packaging.

00:10:44 ◼   ► I just assumed it would just be like, I don't know, like stuck to a piece of paper like

00:10:47 ◼   ► other credit cards.

00:10:48 ◼   ► But no, of course, Apple has to have packaging for its card.

00:10:51 ◼   ► And as you would expect, the packaging is interesting in the details.

00:10:55 ◼   ► It just looks like a folding piece of paper with a card inside it.

00:10:58 ◼   ► But if you look at it closely, it's actually very clever and interesting and cool.

00:11:01 ◼   ► And the second thing is you open it up and there's your little Apple card.

00:11:05 ◼   ► And it's in this little slot.

00:11:07 ◼   ► And at the bottom of the little slot, mine says, "Activate your card."

00:11:11 ◼   ► What is the text here?

00:11:13 ◼   ► "Wake iPhone and hold here."

00:11:15 ◼   ► That's it.

00:11:16 ◼   ► You know when you get a credit card and it says, "To activate your card, call this number."

00:11:19 ◼   ► And you got to go through some phone tree and you press a bunch of buttons and you enter

00:11:21 ◼   ► a bunch of things to identify yourself and you activate your card and blah, blah, blah.

00:11:24 ◼   ► It used to be more painful when you had to speak to a human, but even the phone tree

00:11:28 ◼   ► stuff is annoying.

00:11:29 ◼   ► To activate this card, it says, "Wake phone and hold here."

00:11:33 ◼   ► It doesn't say, "Activate Apple Play."

00:11:34 ◼   ► It doesn't say, "Launch the wallet Apple," and all that stuff.

00:11:36 ◼   ► It just says, "Wake phone and hold here."

00:11:39 ◼   ► And that baffled me for a second because I'm like, "Just wake the phone?"

00:11:44 ◼   ► Do they mean like, do I have to unlock it?

00:11:46 ◼   ► Or can I just tap the screen to turn it on?

00:11:48 ◼   ► Anyway, I held my phone close to the thing and I thought for a little bit and it went,

00:11:52 ◼   ► "Bloop."

00:11:53 ◼   ► And it said, "You want to activate your card?"

00:11:54 ◼   ► And it activated.

00:11:55 ◼   ► So it was the best credit card activation experience I've ever had.

00:11:57 ◼   ► That said, my wife got her card and I was waiting for her to do the same thing.

00:12:01 ◼   ► I wanted her to experience the joy of activating a card without having to call somebody on

00:12:04 ◼   ► the phone.

00:12:06 ◼   ► But hers didn't say, "Wake phone and hold here."

00:12:09 ◼   ► Hers said, "Launch the wallet app and do something or other."

00:12:13 ◼   ► It had her doing a bunch of other stuff.

00:12:15 ◼   ► It had different text instructions printed on the bottom of the thing.

00:12:18 ◼   ► And just holding her phone next to it didn't activate it.

00:12:20 ◼   ► She had to actually follow those instructions.

00:12:22 ◼   ► I think maybe it's because she didn't actually do any transactions with the card before she

00:12:26 ◼   ► got the physical one because I had already paid for iCloud storage or whatever the heck

00:12:29 ◼   ► I had it set for.

00:12:30 ◼   ► >> Wait, does she happen to have a super old phone that doesn't have NFC?

00:12:34 ◼   ► >> iPhone X.

00:12:35 ◼   ► >> Okay, so that isn't it then.

00:12:37 ◼   ► >> Yeah, it's very confusing.

00:12:38 ◼   ► But anyway, just to let people know what kind of activation experience they might get.

00:12:41 ◼   ► They might get the really cool activation experience or the slightly less cool one.

00:12:44 ◼   ► But both of them are better than using the phone.

00:12:46 ◼   ► >> I wonder why it's different.

00:12:47 ◼   ► Why have two different ones going on?

00:12:49 ◼   ► >> I looked it up before.

00:12:50 ◼   ► I know maybe there's some additional feature of NFC that allows it to be more passively.

00:12:56 ◼   ► But I Google all this stuff and it's like, no, this has been a feature of iPhones forever.

00:13:01 ◼   ► So you'd have to really have an old phone.

00:13:03 ◼   ► It would know what phone she was using because she had put it in her wallet on her phone.

00:13:07 ◼   ► You have to do that to even order the physical card.

00:13:09 ◼   ► So that was all set up so they know what kind of phone she has.

00:13:12 ◼   ► >> Right.

00:13:13 ◼   ► >> Anyway, that was good.

00:13:14 ◼   ► And the card itself, which we'll get to in the next item.

00:13:16 ◼   ► It's cool.

00:13:17 ◼   ► It's white.

00:13:18 ◼   ► I can't actually use the physical card at all.

00:13:21 ◼   ► >> I've held one briefly when I was in San Francisco.

00:13:24 ◼   ► I met up with a friend of mine who had one.

00:13:26 ◼   ► And they are very fancy.

00:13:27 ◼   ► They are very fancy.

00:13:28 ◼   ► I kind of want one, but I don't know.

00:13:32 ◼   ► I just don't feel like going through the whole rigmarole of unfreezing my credit and applying

00:13:37 ◼   ► and getting it and freezing my credit again and blah, blah, blah.

00:13:40 ◼   ► And I don't buy Apple stuff enough that I really think that 3% is going to make that

00:13:45 ◼   ► much of an empirical difference in my world.

00:13:47 ◼   ► Plus, I don't plan on buying a Mac Pro because I'm not a maniac.

00:13:50 ◼   ► So I don't need to worry about these things.

00:13:51 ◼   ► See how stress-free your life can be if you don't need to worry about the Mac Pro.

00:13:55 ◼   ► >> I also just like, just as a credit card user, I hate this new trend of nice credit

00:14:01 ◼   ► cards being like heavy, thick metal.

00:14:04 ◼   ► Why do you want your wallet to be unnecessarily heavier?

00:14:08 ◼   ► Like plastic was fine for decades of using credit cards.

00:14:13 ◼   ► Why are we changing this?

00:14:15 ◼   ► This makes no sense.

00:14:16 ◼   ► I want the benefits that the high-end cards give you, but I don't get like, can I opt

00:14:21 ◼   ► for a plastic one?

00:14:25 ◼   ► Come on Marco, treat yourself.

00:14:26 ◼   ► >> Well, someone was saying that like they were doing like market research on credit

00:14:30 ◼   ► cards or some company was doing market research on various premium credit card designs.

00:14:34 ◼   ► And the number one factor by far in all focus groups was the thing that everybody liked

00:14:39 ◼   ► about cards was the heavier equals better.

00:14:41 ◼   ► Everything else varied, color, shape, texture, designs on it, but heavier equals better was

00:14:47 ◼   ► like number one with a bullet.

00:14:48 ◼   ► So you might not like it, but apparently in the market of credit cards, heavier is more

00:14:54 ◼   ► impressive is better.

00:14:55 ◼   ► I feel the same way.

00:14:56 ◼   ► >> The market is wrong.

00:14:57 ◼   ► >> I'm not going to carry it around because I already have a MasterCard, so I don't need

00:15:01 ◼   ► to have a second one.

00:15:02 ◼   ► And I'm certainly not going to put a heavier one in there.

00:15:04 ◼   ► And then the next thing we're going to get to is another reason I'm not going to include

00:15:06 ◼   ► in there.

00:15:07 ◼   ► EH in the chat room says the iPhone X doesn't have background NFC scanning.

00:15:12 ◼   ► Only the XS and the XR have it.

00:15:13 ◼   ► So I have a XS.

00:15:14 ◼   ► That was my guess, but I kept trying.

00:15:16 ◼   ► I didn't know what I was Googling for.

00:15:18 ◼   ► I was Googling for like Transit Pass or some other NFC stuff, but everything I saw was

00:15:22 ◼   ► supported everywhere.

00:15:23 ◼   ► Maybe background NFC scanning.

00:15:25 ◼   ► Background meaning I guess if you're not in an app, like you know, because I was in an

00:15:29 ◼   ► app.

00:15:30 ◼   ► >> Yeah, like that it can scan without being activated.

00:15:31 ◼   ► Maybe that's really interesting.

00:15:32 ◼   ► That makes sense.

00:15:33 ◼   ► >> So there you go.

00:15:34 ◼   ► You can only get the super cool experience if you have a XS or a XR.

00:15:38 ◼   ► >> That's also true of the shortcuts stuff, right?

00:15:41 ◼   ► Come to think of it, didn't they say that if you have a lowly iPhone X like I do, that

00:15:47 ◼   ► I wouldn't be able to use the like tap to activate shortcut thing, you know?

00:15:52 ◼   ► Do you know what I'm talking about?

00:15:53 ◼   ► Because like you can get like an NFC.

00:15:54 ◼   ► >> Yeah, yeah.

00:15:55 ◼   ► That's what I was trying to remember, but I apparently didn't know the right words to

00:15:56 ◼   ► Google that there was some new feature in the XS that had to do with like sniping your

00:16:00 ◼   ► phone against something without launching an app.

00:16:02 ◼   ► And this was it.

00:16:03 ◼   ► It was just something for I guess background NFC.

00:16:05 ◼   ► >> Interesting.

00:16:06 ◼   ► >> All right, question answered.

00:16:08 ◼   ► There you go.

00:16:09 ◼   ► >> All right, John, tell me about how you keep your Apple Card feeling healthy, wealthy,

00:16:13 ◼   ► and strong.

00:16:14 ◼   ► >> Yeah, this is one of those micro controversies, which I don't think there's anything particularly

00:16:20 ◼   ► controversial about it, but it's an opportunity to talk about Apple's design decisions again.

00:16:24 ◼   ► So Apple has a tech note or support article or whatever that is entitled, "How to Clean

00:16:28 ◼   ► Your Apple Card.

00:16:29 ◼   ► See How to Protect and Maintain the Condition of Your Titanium Apple Card."

00:16:33 ◼   ► So it is a very nice object.

00:16:36 ◼   ► If you want to keep it looking nice, they have all these instructions about what to

00:16:38 ◼   ► do, about gently wiping it, damp cloth, lint-free microfiber, all the things they tell you about

00:16:44 ◼   ► everything.

00:16:45 ◼   ► Although they do mention isopropyl alcohol, which they usually don't mention for anything

00:16:49 ◼   ► else.

00:16:50 ◼   ► Don't use household cleaners.

00:16:51 ◼   ► Don't use compressed air.

00:16:52 ◼   ► That's just for our laptops.

00:16:54 ◼   ► Don't use any aerosol sprays, solvent, ammonia, blah, blah, blah.

00:16:58 ◼   ► So that's all fine.

00:16:59 ◼   ► It's like they have those instructions for basically any Apple product.

00:17:01 ◼   ► Like how do I clean my whatever?

00:17:03 ◼   ► You can probably find an Apple support article, which is good.

00:17:05 ◼   ► You should look at it because it'll tell you what not to use.

00:17:08 ◼   ► But the part that got everyone up in arms was how to safely store and carry your titanium

00:17:13 ◼   ► Apple card.

00:17:14 ◼   ► In particular, the passage that says, where is it?

00:17:19 ◼   ► If the credit cards are placed in the same slot, your card could become scratched.

00:17:23 ◼   ► So don't put it next to another credit card.

00:17:25 ◼   ► The Apple card needs to be by itself.

00:17:27 ◼   ► And then the next bit, some fabrics like leather and denim might cause permanent discoloration

00:17:33 ◼   ► that will not wash off.

00:17:35 ◼   ► So don't put it near other credit cards.

00:17:38 ◼   ► Don't put it in denim and don't put it in leather because you might permanently discolor

00:17:42 ◼   ► your card.

00:17:44 ◼   ► I think that's probably true of every credit card in our wallet.

00:17:48 ◼   ► If you put it in denim or leather, they could be permanently discolored.

00:17:51 ◼   ► Nobody cares because who cares with your plastic credit cards, whether they get discolored.

00:17:57 ◼   ► But Apple made this beautiful thing that they have instructions on how to keep beautiful.

00:18:01 ◼   ► And part of the instructions are, try not to use it like a regular credit card by putting

00:18:05 ◼   ► it in your leather wallet or in a wallet like on those iPhone cases where it's exposed and

00:18:10 ◼   ► then you put it in your back pocket of your jeans.

00:18:12 ◼   ► It's not, I mean, it's not ridiculous.

00:18:16 ◼   ► Who cares?

00:18:17 ◼   ► Like if you care about it, then care for it this way.

00:18:18 ◼   ► If you don't care about it, just use it like a regular card.

00:18:20 ◼   ► It'll be fine.

00:18:21 ◼   ► It's not like it stops operating.

00:18:22 ◼   ► This is all about how to keep it pristine.

00:18:23 ◼   ► But this gets back to the discussion that I think we had maybe on this program or maybe

00:18:27 ◼   ► on maybe those hypercritical days.

00:18:29 ◼   ► There was a big thing going around, I guess it goes around every few years, let's send

00:18:33 ◼   ► it around again, about products that look, if not better, at least look good, wear their

00:18:41 ◼   ► age well, like they wear well.

00:18:44 ◼   ► The example of people always putting it on there was like a cast iron pan or like leather

00:18:47 ◼   ► goods very often wear in a way that makes them attractive as they get used.

00:18:51 ◼   ► It doesn't look the same as when they're brand new and maybe they might look worse than when

00:18:55 ◼   ► they're brand new, but they still look nice.

00:18:56 ◼   ► They get a patina versus getting gross looking, right?

00:19:02 ◼   ► For a credit card, honestly, who really cares?

00:19:04 ◼   ► It's not actually a big deal.

00:19:05 ◼   ► But if you were tasked with designing an Apple credit card and you had to go on the whiteboard

00:19:10 ◼   ► and let's list the attributes, the favorable attributes that a credit card could have and

00:19:15 ◼   ► the use cases, right?

00:19:17 ◼   ► The use cases would have to include being put into a leather wallet and being subjected

00:19:21 ◼   ► to denim.

00:19:22 ◼   ► Those would have to be on the list.

00:19:23 ◼   ► The attributes would be, maybe you could say looks good as an attribute.

00:19:27 ◼   ► I think you'd have to put, for this product and every Apple product, either stays looking

00:19:32 ◼   ► good or wears its age well.

00:19:35 ◼   ► Those items are very often not on the list of things for Apple products.

00:19:41 ◼   ► I think they are sometimes, like the unibody aluminum and glass laptops, for example, I

00:19:46 ◼   ► think they wear pretty well.

00:19:48 ◼   ► Part of the criteria is they look good when they come out of the box and I think they

00:19:51 ◼   ► wear well.

00:19:52 ◼   ► They don't stain easily, they don't chip, they don't scratch as easily as many of the

00:19:56 ◼   ► alternatives.

00:19:57 ◼   ► They don't discolor like the plastic ones did or whatever.

00:20:00 ◼   ► But it's hit or miss.

00:20:01 ◼   ► Some products age well and some products don't.

00:20:02 ◼   ► A lot of the iPods did not age well and they just look beat up and gross and not in a good

00:20:07 ◼   ► way.

00:20:08 ◼   ► But some of them did age well.

00:20:09 ◼   ► Some of the iPhones aged well, some of them didn't.

00:20:10 ◼   ► This card seems like it's not going to age well because the design is this beautiful

00:20:14 ◼   ► white, sleek thing.

00:20:16 ◼   ► And if it gets like streaked with blue, not really a great look.

00:20:21 ◼   ► So I don't think this is a big deal but it does scratch that itch in my head of like,

00:20:25 ◼   ► you know Apple, your things don't just have to look good in the product shots and when

00:20:30 ◼   ► you take it out of the box, especially if you're going to use and handle it every day

00:20:33 ◼   ► for years on end, it would be good if they aged gracefully.

00:20:37 ◼   ► They can't be impervious, they can't be magic and not get damaged.

00:20:39 ◼   ► But like try to make them age in a way, age evenly or get a patina on them.

00:20:46 ◼   ► Don't say, oh well here's your brand new card, don't stick it in your leather wallet because

00:20:49 ◼   ► that's silly and it makes it sound like what's going to happen if you don't do that is going

00:20:55 ◼   ► to be an aesthetically unpleasing experience.

00:20:58 ◼   ► I understand why they had to publish this support document, even though it is ridiculous.

00:21:05 ◼   ► Everyone's always looking for ways to call fail on Apple.

00:21:09 ◼   ► They're in a very high profile position and if there's any flaw with any new product they

00:21:14 ◼   ► launch, the press will jump all over them for it.

00:21:17 ◼   ► I understand that's the reality that they're in.

00:21:20 ◼   ► And so if they didn't post this document, there would be people whose Apple cards would

00:21:24 ◼   ► get beaten up as all credit cards do after what a few weeks of being in a wallet at most

00:21:31 ◼   ► and they would take pictures and they would start a Reddit thread saying, look my Apple

00:21:34 ◼   ► card is defective and it would be a big story and Apple would have to deal with a PR crap

00:21:40 ◼   ► storm that day about why the Apple card is badly designed because it was defective, because

00:21:47 ◼   ► it got banged up in a wallet because all credit cards always do that.

00:21:51 ◼   ► Instead they designed it to be so sensitive to damage that they moved up the PR crap storm

00:22:00 ◼   ► of dealing with this.

00:22:02 ◼   ► They just called it on themselves in advance by publishing this support document saying,

00:22:05 ◼   ► look, here's, you know, if you keep your Apple card in pretty much any way that anybody ever

00:22:11 ◼   ► keeps credit cards, it's going to probably get banged up at, you know, I kind of see

00:22:17 ◼   ► why they had to do that because of the scrutiny they're under with anything new they launch,

00:22:22 ◼   ► but it's still kind of sad that they had to do that.

00:22:25 ◼   ► It is ridiculous.

00:22:26 ◼   ► It is a hilarious document to read, even though yes, they probably had to do it, but it is

00:22:30 ◼   ► still funny.

00:22:32 ◼   ► It does indeed happen to every credit card and also as John said, they also did design

00:22:37 ◼   ► this one in a way that seems even more completely distant from reality than it was necessary.

00:22:45 ◼   ► Nobody was forcing them to create a white credit card for one.

00:22:49 ◼   ► It just happened to them.

00:22:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:52 ◼   ► It happened to be white.

00:22:55 ◼   ► Oh nice.

00:22:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:57 ◼   ► The thing is, I can't tell though, like you mentioned that like they made a card that is

00:23:03 ◼   ► more susceptible to damage.

00:23:05 ◼   ► At this point, nobody knows whether this card is any more susceptible to damage than any

00:23:08 ◼   ► other credit card.

00:23:09 ◼   ► Maybe it's less susceptible to damage.

00:23:10 ◼   ► We just don't know because we almost got them and they're all brand new, right?

00:23:13 ◼   ► But the article doesn't say, and by the way, unlike your other credit cards, this one will

00:23:18 ◼   ► be discolored.

00:23:19 ◼   ► Like it could be worse.

00:23:20 ◼   ► It could be better.

00:23:21 ◼   ► It's hard to tell because the article is very sort of matter of fact and gives the most

00:23:25 ◼   ► cautious advice.

00:23:26 ◼   ► If you read the instruction manual for anything you own in your life, it's hilarious how they

00:23:29 ◼   ► tell you not to use it in a way.

00:23:31 ◼   ► It's like Q-tips instructions telling you not to put them in your ears.

00:23:34 ◼   ► There's the instructions that come with the product and then there's how everybody uses

00:23:37 ◼   ► them.

00:23:38 ◼   ► And with the Apple Card, people are going to put it in their wallets.

00:23:42 ◼   ► And I think we still will see, here's what my titanium Apple Card looks like after six

00:23:45 ◼   ► months in my wallet.

00:23:47 ◼   ► Will it be better than if you had stuck a plastic card in there?

00:23:50 ◼   ► Worse or the same?

00:23:51 ◼   ► This article gives us no clue.

00:23:53 ◼   ► But yes, the choice to make it white.

00:23:54 ◼   ► To give an example, I have other metal-ish cards or cards that don't feel like plastic

00:23:58 ◼   ► to me.

00:23:59 ◼   ► And a lot of them are either black or very dark blue.

00:24:03 ◼   ► And those might be getting all scuffed up from my leather wallet, but I would never

00:24:06 ◼   ► see it because it's harder to see on a dark material.

00:24:08 ◼   ► And it's not like that color scheme is foreign to Apple.

00:24:13 ◼   ► Like they make space gray and dark colored computer stuff.

00:24:19 ◼   ► Like the Apple TV, for example.

00:24:21 ◼   ► And also, dark colors and black cards have been like a premium thing.

00:24:26 ◼   ► So they could have actually gone in that direction.

00:24:27 ◼   ► Maybe they would have made the card feel too out of reach for regular people and they're

00:24:30 ◼   ► going for the mass market to make it white.

00:24:32 ◼   ► But they could make a black version of it.

00:24:34 ◼   ► Maybe they still will make a black version of it or a gold one for the Apple Card edition.

00:24:39 ◼   ► Actually DLC would prevent a lot of the problems that they're carding against here.

00:24:43 ◼   ► That's true.

00:24:46 ◼   ► It's kind of like if you make something beautiful and it really is more delicate than other

00:24:50 ◼   ► cards, you ruin the beauty of it by having to stick it in some kind of protective sleeve

00:24:55 ◼   ► or something.

00:24:56 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think also like the timing of this was pretty poor optics of like, you know,

00:25:03 ◼   ► right now like after, right before what is hopefully the end of the butterfly keyboard

00:25:08 ◼   ► era, right as you know, Johnny Ive has exited and I think we've had kind of like the peak

00:25:15 ◼   ► of the worst of Johnny Ive style designs in a lot of ways over the last few years.

00:25:20 ◼   ► I feel like Apple commentators and press are very like hypersensitive to anything where

00:25:25 ◼   ► Apple is designing something for purely visual appeal in a way that will make it less practical

00:25:31 ◼   ► or less reliable in the real world.

00:25:34 ◼   ► And so to have this come out now when everyone's very sensitive to that kind of thing and it

00:25:39 ◼   ► seems to be exactly that.

00:25:41 ◼   ► It seems to be like something that Apple designed in a vacuum that you know designed it to look

00:25:44 ◼   ► good but to be fairly incompatible with the real world.

00:25:48 ◼   ► And whether it ends up that way or not, that is what this document makes it sound like.

00:25:52 ◼   ► This document makes it sound like this thing is not at all designed to be used the way

00:25:56 ◼   ► anybody ever uses credit cards.

00:25:58 ◼   ► And so that I think it kind of like it hit a nerve in the Apple community and press of

00:26:04 ◼   ► like yet again they're doing something that is form over function.

00:26:09 ◼   ► And hopefully we're at the end of that but we'll see how that turns out.

00:26:13 ◼   ► So you're going to have a special sleeve for your Apple card that matches your special

00:26:16 ◼   ► sleeve for your iPhone, John?

00:26:18 ◼   ► So interestingly when my bank sends me my debit card, they always send it in a sleeve.

00:26:25 ◼   ► So I just always put it in my wallet in the sleeve.

00:26:28 ◼   ► So like all my credit cards are just in these little pockets but my debit card is in the

00:26:31 ◼   ► sleeve that it came in.

00:26:32 ◼   ► Oh my God, John.

00:26:33 ◼   ► Have you ever seen those little...

00:26:34 ◼   ► I've seen the size of your wallet.

00:26:35 ◼   ► You've seen like tear resistant material sleeves.

00:26:39 ◼   ► Yeah, like I mean you've seen my wallet.

00:26:41 ◼   ► It's not, it's basically it ends up being like a pocket liner because it doesn't, it's

00:26:44 ◼   ► not as tall as the card and when I pull the card out the pouch stays in the wallet kind

00:26:49 ◼   ► of.

00:26:50 ◼   ► But yeah, it's one of those little sleeves.

00:26:51 ◼   ► Some of your cards might come in them.

00:26:52 ◼   ► People just throw them away.

00:26:53 ◼   ► You already have protective sleeves for a credit card in your wallet?

00:26:57 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:26:58 ◼   ► I do.

00:26:59 ◼   ► Just for my debit card, not for any of my credit cards.

00:27:00 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:27:01 ◼   ► But it is nice.

00:27:02 ◼   ► It does actually keep the cards nicer because if you compare it to the cards that are just

00:27:04 ◼   ► in the lower slots, it's a little bit nicer.

00:27:05 ◼   ► But why, John?

00:27:06 ◼   ► Anyway, I'm not going to, I do have sleeves.

00:27:10 ◼   ► I do have sleeves for this card but I'm not actually going to put it in my wallet so it

00:27:13 ◼   ► doesn't matter.

00:27:14 ◼   ► Oh my God, John.

00:27:15 ◼   ► This is, so you're talking about like the thing that your global entry card comes in

00:27:17 ◼   ► or comes with?

00:27:18 ◼   ► I don't have a global entry card so I couldn't tell you, but yeah, it's a little sleeve,

00:27:21 ◼   ► exactly the same size as the credit card.

00:27:23 ◼   ► Often credit cards come in them.

00:27:24 ◼   ► Oh God.

00:27:25 ◼   ► You know, everyone's going to be so excited.

00:27:26 ◼   ► I don't know why you're so oh God about that.

00:27:28 ◼   ► It's exactly like having a pocket.

00:27:30 ◼   ► The sleeve doesn't come, unlike the phone where the phone comes out with a sleeve on

00:27:33 ◼   ► it and it has to be removed.

00:27:34 ◼   ► It's just like putting it in a pocket except for my pocket is lined with mylar.

00:27:37 ◼   ► I think that's what they're made out of.

00:27:38 ◼   ► It's no wonder it's, I cannot believe you don't have severe back problems worse than

00:27:42 ◼   ► a bike, given that you sit on a four foot tall wallet every single day.

00:27:45 ◼   ► I've been thinning it out lately.

00:27:46 ◼   ► It's getting thinner.

00:27:47 ◼   ► Okay, three foot tall wallet every day because of all your stupid sleeves.

00:27:51 ◼   ► Why would I be sitting on it?

00:27:52 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:27:53 ◼   ► It's in your back pocket.

00:27:54 ◼   ► No, it's not.

00:27:55 ◼   ► You're a monster.

00:27:56 ◼   ► We've gone through this multiple times.

00:27:57 ◼   ► I forgot.

00:27:58 ◼   ► I forgot how much of a monster you are.

00:27:59 ◼   ► Anyway, can we move on?

00:28:00 ◼   ► I'm getting so stressed out just thinking about your wallet.

00:28:03 ◼   ► We were written by a lot of the internet, a sizable portion of the internet to tell us

00:28:09 ◼   ► that most modern cars actually have USB-C and typically USB-A ports as well.

00:28:14 ◼   ► I don't know of most, but certainly a lot of them.

00:28:17 ◼   ► We never got percentages.

00:28:19 ◼   ► People would say, "My car is X and it has some USB-C, whereas my car is Y."

00:28:23 ◼   ► We saw lots of car models, but we didn't see enough of them to say that most new cars have

00:28:27 ◼   ► it, but it seems like it was much more prevalent than we thought it was.

00:28:30 ◼   ► Indeed.

00:28:31 ◼   ► The other thing is that they didn't get rid of the A's.

00:28:34 ◼   ► Almost all the cars, I think every single car that someone told us about had USB-C,

00:28:38 ◼   ► but also still had A. Sometimes the C was only in the back seat, but it only had A in

00:28:42 ◼   ► the front seat, so we're in some weird transitional period.

00:28:45 ◼   ► And tell me about your forthcoming camera.

00:28:49 ◼   ► Since you're not spending enough money on your Mac Pro, you're going to buy a new camera

00:28:52 ◼   ► as well?

00:28:53 ◼   ► Well, whether I buy it or not, Sony did release the new cameras that we were talking about,

00:28:57 ◼   ► new APS-C cameras.

00:28:58 ◼   ► The numbers, I guess, were wrong on the numbers.

00:29:01 ◼   ► In addition to the 6000, 6300, 6400, and 65, now they have the 61 and 66.

00:29:08 ◼   ► Of course.

00:29:09 ◼   ► And I think they revised the 64, but the good thing is the 66 actually is the best one in

00:29:14 ◼   ► almost all ways.

00:29:15 ◼   ► The 66 is basically like the 64.

00:29:17 ◼   ► It's got the advanced motion tracking and the new color chip and all the other stuff

00:29:21 ◼   ► or whatever, and it has in-body stabilization, which the 6400 doesn't have, and it has the

00:29:26 ◼   ► gigantic battery from the A7 series.

00:29:28 ◼   ► So the battery was fine in those things to begin with, but now the battery is like twice

00:29:32 ◼   ► as big.

00:29:33 ◼   ► It's rated for like 800 shots or something, and that's a conservative estimate.

00:29:37 ◼   ► So no problem with the battery.

00:29:39 ◼   ► And they made the handle bigger, both to accommodate the larger battery but also because people

00:29:43 ◼   ► have been complaining that the handle was small.

00:29:44 ◼   ► I thought the old one was fine.

00:29:45 ◼   ► But anyway, a bigger handle is not, whatever you call it, a bigger grip, is not a bad idea.

00:29:50 ◼   ► So it's about what everyone expected it to be.

00:29:53 ◼   ► The only surprises/downsides as far as I can tell are that it still isn't USB-C. It's just

00:30:00 ◼   ► like all the other of the Alpha 6 whatever series.

00:30:03 ◼   ► It's that stupid mini USB, which is terrible.

00:30:07 ◼   ► This feels like the final best revision of this generation of camera, and I hope the

00:30:12 ◼   ► next one will be a different number and it'll have USB-C on it or something.

00:30:17 ◼   ► Anyway, no USB-C. Also no USB-3, so it's still USB-2 with remaining USB, which is not great.

00:30:23 ◼   ► That's weird for something released now.

00:30:25 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

00:30:27 ◼   ► I mean, it makes sense if you look at the line.

00:30:28 ◼   ► They're all exactly like that, but they revised all this other stuff and they're like, "Eh,

00:30:32 ◼   ► USB-2 is fine."

00:30:33 ◼   ► And honestly, it is fine.

00:30:34 ◼   ► It's only a 24-megapixel sensor, and if you're not shooting RAWs, it's not a big deal.

00:30:38 ◼   ► And you can just take the SD card out and yada, yada, yada.

00:30:40 ◼   ► But the A7 line went USB-3 like two years ago.

00:30:43 ◼   ► Yeah, this is the cheap line.

00:30:47 ◼   ► And the other weird thing about the 6600 is no flash, which sounds like, well, who cares?

00:30:51 ◼   ► And most people probably don't even know these cameras have flash anyway, but it does.

00:30:55 ◼   ► It's very cleverly hidden.

00:30:56 ◼   ► It's a terrible little, very tiny pop-up flash.

00:30:59 ◼   ► Honestly, I'm pretty sure I've literally never used a flash on my camera, but all the other

00:31:04 ◼   ► ones have it and it doesn't make up any room and it's very unobtrusive and you feel like,

00:31:08 ◼   ► "Eh, you could have put the flash there."

00:31:09 ◼   ► But maybe they make up for it with more weatherproofing or maybe they need more room inside for the

00:31:13 ◼   ► chips or whatever, so it's not a big deal.

00:31:14 ◼   ► So anyway, 6600 looks like a really nice camera.

00:31:18 ◼   ► The more exciting news for me, I think, because I'm still not sure about if I'm going to step

00:31:23 ◼   ► up to the 6600, is they introduced a couple of new lenses and the one I'm interested in

00:31:28 ◼   ► is a new 70-350 zoom lens, which is better quality than my zoom and has a longer reach.

00:31:34 ◼   ► And yes, it's twice as heavy and slightly larger, but I think depending on what the

00:31:39 ◼   ► reviews say about it, it seems like it is the best option if I want a zoom lens that

00:31:44 ◼   ► is not tremendously bigger and has better image quality and has a longer reach.

00:31:48 ◼   ► It's not a F4 through the whole range, it's the same 4.5 to 6.5, but it does have a longer

00:31:55 ◼   ► reach and presumably has better optical quality, so I'm going to take a look at that and it's

00:31:59 ◼   ► not super expensive.

00:32:01 ◼   ► So mostly good news on the camera front.

00:32:03 ◼   ► I'm still debating, waiting.

00:32:06 ◼   ► Anyway, I'm not going to be looking at cameras for a while, but come summer next year, I

00:32:13 ◼   ► might just get the new lens and use it on my existing camera or I might be looking to

00:32:17 ◼   ► step up to full frame depending on what they come out with there, but it's still good news.

00:32:22 ◼   ► I would say given your proclivity towards super zoom style lenses, you probably don't

00:32:27 ◼   ► want to go full frame because you get so many more better zoom lens options, super zoom

00:32:32 ◼   ► lens options with the crop sensor because making it full frame would be prohibitively

00:32:37 ◼   ► massive and expensive and everything.

00:32:40 ◼   ► Yeah, but I still have full frame FOMO.

00:32:48 ◼   ► I want more light in the camera.

00:32:50 ◼   ► I want more pixels on the picture.

00:32:51 ◼   ► I want the ability to crop things out.

00:32:54 ◼   ► I want all of that.

00:32:55 ◼   ► I haven't had that.

00:32:56 ◼   ► Mostly the light thing because I hate when I'm, like I said, I do never use the flash

00:32:59 ◼   ► and in certain environments it's so dark that even with my "good camera" I'm not going to

00:33:04 ◼   ► get usable pictures without a flash and I'm not going to use a flash, so I basically get

00:33:08 ◼   ► grainy bad pictures, especially if people are in a dimly lit indoor room and they're

00:33:12 ◼   ► moving like weddings, like on the dance floor on a wedding at night.

00:33:19 ◼   ► I'm not getting good pictures with my fancy camera and I'm like if I had a full frame

00:33:22 ◼   ► I'd have a better fighting chance.

00:33:24 ◼   ► There'd be less noise that have more of a chance of capturing the motion without ever

00:33:28 ◼   ► being a blurry streak.

00:33:30 ◼   ► So I feel like maybe I'll regret it.

00:33:33 ◼   ► Maybe I'll get full frame and say it's way too big and I don't care and everything you

00:33:36 ◼   ► said about the zoom is true, but I feel like I at least want to entertain the options.

00:33:41 ◼   ► Like we said a couple shows ago, the A7 just with no letter 4, if something like that comes

00:33:49 ◼   ► out I might look at it.

00:33:52 ◼   ► Anyway, I don't know, Mac Pro is before that.

00:33:55 ◼   ► Lots of money to be spent, lots of years to wait, plus the TV is in the mix somewhere

00:33:58 ◼   ► there, so it's a long road to all these fancy things.

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00:36:19 ◼   ► [Music]

00:36:23 ◼   ► Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:36:24 ◼   ► All right.

00:36:25 ◼   ► I think it was the episode before last we were talking about whether or not Tesla was

00:36:27 ◼   ► a joke.

00:36:28 ◼   ► And one of the things I conceded was that Tesla's supercharger network seems to be

00:36:34 ◼   ► beyond compare.

00:36:35 ◼   ► And a friend of the show, Sam Welsimit of the Wheel Bearings podcast, which is neutral

00:36:39 ◼   ► but with people who actually know what they're talking about, he wrote me to point out that

00:36:43 ◼   ► according to energy.gov in the United States, I am not making any claims about anywhere

00:36:48 ◼   ► else in the world, just the United States.

00:36:51 ◼   ► He sent me a couple of screenshots that he took and I will try to remember to put them

00:36:55 ◼   ► in the show notes, but suffice to say, according to the US government, Tesla has 737 stations

00:37:02 ◼   ► in the US and Canada actually for a total of just shy of 7,000 outlets.

00:37:07 ◼   ► Meanwhile, if you combine all the other kinds of electric charging together, the number

00:37:13 ◼   ► jumps from 737 stations to 2,407 stations and actually a little bit fewer actual outlets.

00:37:23 ◼   ► So there's more stations with fewer outlets, 4,191 outlets as opposed to Tesla's almost

00:37:28 ◼   ► 7,000.

00:37:30 ◼   ► But the point is there's actually a pretty good parody from the looks of it with the

00:37:35 ◼   ► exception of like the area of the country that's, I don't know, like the Northwest and

00:37:39 ◼   ► Midwest.

00:37:40 ◼   ► I don't even know what states these are.

00:37:41 ◼   ► I'm so terrible.

00:37:42 ◼   ► I'm so bad at thereabouts.

00:37:45 ◼   ► Not so great coverage there, but just about everywhere else, it looks almost, you know,

00:37:49 ◼   ► toe to toe with what Tesla has.

00:37:51 ◼   ► And that was news to me.

00:37:52 ◼   ► I assumed that if you were to buy anything but a Tesla, the charging story is basically

00:37:57 ◼   ► good luck.

00:37:58 ◼   ► As it turns out, I think my dad might be within 24 hours of buying himself a Chevy Bolt.

00:38:03 ◼   ► So we'll see how that whole experience goes if he actually pulls the trigger.

00:38:06 ◼   ► But as it turns out, there are more options for non-Tesla's than I had expected.

00:38:12 ◼   ► It shouldn't be news to you because I brought up this exact same point the last time we

00:38:15 ◼   ► were arguing about Tesla like six months to a year ago.

00:38:17 ◼   ► I think I went to the exact same website and looked up the info.

00:38:21 ◼   ► A couple of key things about the screenshots he sent on his website.

00:38:24 ◼   ► He actually sent screenshots of U.S. and Canada.

00:38:26 ◼   ► If you've limited to U.S., it changes slightly, but the main story is about the same.

00:38:31 ◼   ► Also, he applied the filter that only looks at, you know, DC fast charging, like the highest

00:38:36 ◼   ► level of charge rate.

00:38:37 ◼   ► There's a bunch of filters that you can apply that's like, you just want any kind of electric

00:38:41 ◼   ► car charger, or do you want the fastest, fastest one?

00:38:44 ◼   ► Because the superchargers are all, I think, the fastest, fastest ones.

00:38:46 ◼   ► So to be a fair comparison, you have to limit the non-Tesla ones to also be the super fast,

00:38:52 ◼   ► fast chargers.

00:38:53 ◼   ► And by the way, there are some super fast, fast chargers in the non-Tesla world that

00:38:56 ◼   ► are actually faster than Tesla's ones, probably mostly in Europe.

00:38:59 ◼   ► But like the new Porsche Taycan or whatever the hell it's called, that actually has like

00:39:05 ◼   ► some 800 volt, that's just the power inside.

00:39:08 ◼   ► Anyway, it has some even faster charging.

00:39:10 ◼   ► But this is trying to be apples to apples.

00:39:12 ◼   ► So you can play with this, we'll put the link in the show notes for the website, you can

00:39:15 ◼   ► play with it and look at it.

00:39:16 ◼   ► But if you say, "Okay, set aside the super fast chargers.

00:39:20 ◼   ► What about just chargers, period?"

00:39:21 ◼   ► The numbers tip even more in favor of the non-Tesla things.

00:39:25 ◼   ► There is still the option of like, "Well, what kind of connector do you want?"

00:39:28 ◼   ► Because there are a couple of different connectors, right?

00:39:30 ◼   ► So you can figure out, based on where you live and the car you're going to buy, like

00:39:33 ◼   ► look at what connector the Bolt has, and how fast charging the Bolt can even accept.

00:39:39 ◼   ► This is, I think, is a useful website for figuring out what your charging options are.

00:39:43 ◼   ► But Tesla has the advantage of like, all superchargers, as far as I'm aware, are more or less uniform?

00:39:49 ◼   ► - Pretty much.

00:39:50 ◼   ► I mean, there is variety between them, but it's very, it doesn't really matter.

00:39:55 ◼   ► Like it's a variety in ways that most people don't care about.

00:39:58 ◼   ► - But are they all fast?

00:39:59 ◼   ► - They're all fast, yeah.

00:40:00 ◼   ► Like, forgive me, I forget like exactly like the specs for like certain, you know, DC fast

00:40:05 ◼   ► charging SAE standards kind of thing, but all superchargers are considered like the

00:40:09 ◼   ► fast kind.

00:40:10 ◼   ► I think like the level three, I think it is, or whatever it is.

00:40:14 ◼   ► But I think one major advantage that the superchargers have is they appeal to you in the same way

00:40:20 ◼   ► that like fast food restaurants in highway rest stops appeal to you.

00:40:25 ◼   ► When you're on a road trip, you know exactly what you're going to get.

00:40:29 ◼   ► You know that if you are driving a Tesla, you know that you can drive pretty much anywhere

00:40:35 ◼   ► at least in the countries that they cover, and they cover the US very well, and they're

00:40:39 ◼   ► getting pretty good in Europe and Canada too, but you know that if you drive somewhere,

00:40:44 ◼   ► you don't have to look up in advance like, wait, what is the supercharger?

00:40:48 ◼   ► Is it actually, like, is it somewhere nice?

00:40:50 ◼   ► Is it going to actually be there?

00:40:51 ◼   ► Is it going to work?

00:40:53 ◼   ► Is it going to be enabled?

00:40:54 ◼   ► Am I going to be able to pay for it?

00:40:55 ◼   ► Is it going to have the right adapters or whatever for my car to plug into it?

00:40:59 ◼   ► Like there's a whole bunch of question marks around a lot of this stuff because the, you

00:41:02 ◼   ► know, the charging infrastructure in general is still in its early days, you know, in the

00:41:07 ◼   ► whole world.

00:41:08 ◼   ► And so with a supercharger, you know, if you drive a Tesla, you know that you can go to

00:41:13 ◼   ► a supercharger X, Y, or Z.

00:41:14 ◼   ► You can even tap on the map in your car, and it will tell you whether they're full or not

00:41:18 ◼   ► and how many bays they have and how fast of a charging rate they support, and they're

00:41:21 ◼   ► all fast, and you know exactly what you're going to get.

00:41:25 ◼   ► So there's a level of, like, predictability that for the same reason people choose to

00:41:29 ◼   ► eat fast food on road trips because they know exactly what they're going to get, and they

00:41:32 ◼   ► don't have to take any risks.

00:41:34 ◼   ► Same reason, and oftentimes in the same places, you get Tesla supercharging.

00:41:38 ◼   ► If you go outside of the Tesla world, you just have to do a bit more legwork.

00:41:43 ◼   ► You have to do a bit more research.

00:41:44 ◼   ► Like if you're going somewhere, you should probably look up ahead of time.

00:41:47 ◼   ► Like, you know, not just looking at like a point in the map of where a charger is, but

00:41:51 ◼   ► look in more detail of like, has someone posted photos of this charger?

00:41:54 ◼   ► Where exactly is it?

00:41:56 ◼   ► Will it work?

00:41:57 ◼   ► You know, all these little things you have to additionally check.

00:41:59 ◼   ► So by going Tesla, you actually do have this kind of peace of mind that you know exactly

00:42:03 ◼   ► what to expect.

00:42:04 ◼   ► You know it'll be there.

00:42:05 ◼   ► You know it'll work.

00:42:07 ◼   ► And in most cases, you know it'll be free, and so you don't have to worry about like,

00:42:11 ◼   ► how do I pay for this and everything?

00:42:12 ◼   ► So it's just kind of a nicer system, and I'm not saying that we can't ever get there.

00:42:16 ◼   ► Like, you know, we got there with gas stations.

00:42:18 ◼   ► It probably took a while when gas stations first came out.

00:42:21 ◼   ► Like, gas stations probably had similar issues, but now you know that you can drive anywhere

00:42:25 ◼   ► in America and most of the world, you can drive anywhere and you can stop almost anywhere

00:42:31 ◼   ► you would possibly need a gas station, and there will probably be one.

00:42:35 ◼   ► You can probably find one that is open at all times of the day, and it will work with

00:42:39 ◼   ► your car, and it will take your payment, and you kind of know the infrastructure is mature

00:42:43 ◼   ► enough that you know that's there.

00:42:45 ◼   ► With electric, we aren't quite there yet outside of the Tesla world.

00:42:47 ◼   ► It's still very young, and there's still a lot of questions that you need to answer,

00:42:52 ◼   ► but with Tesla, you can be sure, and that's actually a really nice thing.

00:42:55 ◼   ► I think there is a fast food aspect of the non-Tesla things in that there's so many

00:43:00 ◼   ► more of them, and not all of them are like the full-service fancy McDonald's.

00:43:03 ◼   ► Some of them are just like the quick McDonald's.

00:43:05 ◼   ► Some of them are just drive-throughs.

00:43:06 ◼   ► Like, some of them, the equivalent is like some of them are not the super fast charging.

00:43:09 ◼   ► Some of them are slower charging, but there are so many more of them that the odds are

00:43:13 ◼   ► if you throw a rock in some direction, like what is the closest charger, the supercharger,

00:43:17 ◼   ► there's maybe one or two around you, but there's like 75 of these other dinky things,

00:43:21 ◼   ► only one or two of which are the fast chargers, but the whole rest of them are all around.

00:43:25 ◼   ► It's like the ubiquity is, I feel like, starting to become a factor with these other charging

00:43:30 ◼   ► things, and there's more variety, and they're not all fast, and so on and so forth.

00:43:33 ◼   ► That's why the comparison here is fast to fast, and I think fast to fast, there's

00:43:37 ◼   ► more or less parity, albeit with the variety that you mentioned of like, well, how are

00:43:41 ◼   ► they and how nice are they?

00:43:43 ◼   ► The second advantage is if and when Tesla goes out of business and/or is acquired, these

00:43:47 ◼   ► independent charging stations will still exist because as far as I'm aware, they're not

00:43:50 ◼   ► affiliated with any individual car manufacturers, but are just like, we charge you money for

00:43:54 ◼   ► electricity stations, or like they're third-party companies whose only job is selling electricity

00:43:59 ◼   ► to people with electric cars or whatever.

00:44:02 ◼   ► I don't think they're like a Volkswagen station and a Porsche station or whatever.

00:44:06 ◼   ► So I'm not sure what will happen to all that supercharging infrastructure if Tesla

00:44:10 ◼   ► decides to get out of that business or gets acquired or goes out of business or something,

00:44:14 ◼   ► but the idea that you would have to go to a specific gas station for your specific brand

00:44:20 ◼   ► of car is not tenable long-term and I feel like is just an anomaly here at the beginning

00:44:24 ◼   ► of the electric car era.

00:44:27 ◼   ► And you know, Teslas will be fine.

00:44:28 ◼   ► They can use the other chargers too, right, with adapters or whatever, so it's not a

00:44:31 ◼   ► big deal for the cars, but it seems like something they can't hold forever.

00:44:35 ◼   ► You know, I have to ask, and I'm looking mostly at you, Jon, are Tesla fans today better

00:44:44 ◼   ► or worse than the dark era of being an Apple fanboy?

00:44:50 ◼   ► What I mean by that is if you say anything that's even mildly negative about Tesla anywhere

00:44:57 ◼   ► on the internet, there are a lot of very, very angry people that will come out of the

00:45:03 ◼   ► woodwork to tell you that anything other than a Tesla is a waste of money and is a terrible

00:45:08 ◼   ► decision.

00:45:09 ◼   ► And by the way, you're murdering the planet.

00:45:10 ◼   ► You personally are murdering the planet.

00:45:12 ◼   ► Nobody else is, just you by besmirching Tesla.

00:45:15 ◼   ► And I feel like this is...

00:45:16 ◼   ► They're kind of right.

00:45:18 ◼   ► It's just proving my point.

00:45:22 ◼   ► Anyway, what I can't help but wonder is like, were our people, were like the Mac people

00:45:28 ◼   ► and the Apple people just as bad in the heyday?

00:45:31 ◼   ► I surely hope not because the Tesla fans are just intolerable.

00:45:36 ◼   ► It's gotten to the point that like, even if I wanted a Tesla, I don't know if I want to

00:45:41 ◼   ► be associated with Tesla.

00:45:42 ◼   ► Now I got over that for the BMW for sure.

00:45:44 ◼   ► Yeah, you got a BMW.

00:45:45 ◼   ► No, exactly.

00:45:46 ◼   ► I will be the first to tell you I got right over it when push came to shove.

00:45:49 ◼   ► But oh my word, the fans are so obnoxious.

00:45:53 ◼   ► And Elon occasionally can do wrong, but Tesla as a corporation can do no wrong.

00:45:58 ◼   ► There's nothing wrong with anything Tesla does ever.

00:46:00 ◼   ► I think the Apple fans probably were just as bad, but they had the advantage of the

00:46:08 ◼   ► internet not existing in its current form.

00:46:10 ◼   ► They just had to be bad in isolation.

00:46:12 ◼   ► Their badness was not allowed to – the way their badness filtered to people was like

00:46:17 ◼   ► actual physical letters that they would write to like op-ed columnists who said bad things

00:46:20 ◼   ► about Apple or Macs or something.

00:46:24 ◼   ► So it was – they may have been as bad, but it's not – the exposure wasn't as bad.

00:46:28 ◼   ► Like the experience of being around them wasn't as bad because there wasn't a means for them

00:46:32 ◼   ► all to communicate to you or anyone else.

00:46:34 ◼   ► And in fact, they wouldn't communicate to you or any person.

00:46:36 ◼   ► Like they would only communicate to you if you were a columnist and then buy letters

00:46:40 ◼   ► or whatever, which were much nicer than tweets and far less numerous.

00:46:45 ◼   ► Second thing is as obnoxious as Steve Jobs was and as clueless as the various Apple CEOs

00:46:51 ◼   ► were who were there at Apple before he came back, Elon Musk is worse.

00:46:58 ◼   ► And he is allowed – his message and his self is allowed to transmit to many, many

00:47:03 ◼   ► people.

00:47:04 ◼   ► So I think that adds an extra spice of awfulness to the situation.

00:47:09 ◼   ► It's hard to say if Apple fans were in the current environment with Elon Musk as the

00:47:15 ◼   ► CEO of Apple.

00:47:16 ◼   ► I think it would be about the same because Apple fans were probably, I'm going to say,

00:47:22 ◼   ► more justifiably angry because it wasn't like – I don't know.

00:47:29 ◼   ► I'm not going to say anything about – I feel like the –

00:47:34 ◼   ► The Apple stuff and Macs were less justly maligned than the complaints people have against

00:47:40 ◼   ► Tesla.

00:47:41 ◼   ► Let's put it that way because Tesla does have problems.

00:47:44 ◼   ► Like Macs were not arriving missing screws or with paint sprayed onto the tires.

00:47:50 ◼   ► In general, even in Apple's worst days, it was still a nice product, right?

00:47:55 ◼   ► Whereas some of the complaints about Tesla are not in keeping with the supposed stature

00:48:00 ◼   ► of the company.

00:48:01 ◼   ► And then when people complain about them, they get defended.

00:48:03 ◼   ► And I feel like there was not much defending shoddy workmanship on the part of Apple mostly

00:48:08 ◼   ► because there wasn't as much shoddy workmanship.

00:48:11 ◼   ► It's frustrating to me when I try to take a reasonable – or I try to make a reasonable

00:48:17 ◼   ► point.

00:48:18 ◼   ► And I had said on Twitter – I forget how I phrased it.

00:48:20 ◼   ► But basically, I think it was actually Sam Balsamit as well that had pointed out that

00:48:25 ◼   ► the Roadster is basically abandoned by Tesla 10 years on.

00:48:32 ◼   ► And I said, "That just seems kind of crappy, right?"

00:48:34 ◼   ► So is my Mac.

00:48:36 ◼   ► I know.

00:48:37 ◼   ► I know it's not the same thing.

00:48:39 ◼   ► Fair.

00:48:40 ◼   ► And actually, somebody said to me, "Well, what about iPhones and Macs and so on?"

00:48:45 ◼   ► And I think there's a big difference there because a car is sometimes the most – or

00:48:49 ◼   ► maybe the second most expensive thing that any regular person would buy.

00:48:53 ◼   ► Whereas a Mac, unless you're John Syracuse or buying a $100,000 Mac Pro, is not the second

00:48:58 ◼   ► most expensive thing you'll buy in your life.

00:49:01 ◼   ► And I know you were saying that to be silly.

00:49:02 ◼   ► I don't even know what it has to do with the expense.

00:49:04 ◼   ► It's more like just tradition.

00:49:05 ◼   ► Like traditionally, cars are supported for a long time.

00:49:09 ◼   ► Why?

00:49:10 ◼   ► They just are, right?

00:49:11 ◼   ► And in some ways, Tesla not doing that is treating its cars more like electronics, like

00:49:15 ◼   ► phones, which it does in many aspects of its cars that are favorable.

00:49:18 ◼   ► And here's one unfavorable one.

00:49:20 ◼   ► I agree that it's bad because we're used to a world where that doesn't happen.

00:49:24 ◼   ► But it does kind of fit with the idea of Tesla being a different kind of car company.

00:49:28 ◼   ► Yeah, but I mean, look at all these Roadsters.

00:49:31 ◼   ► What happens to those batteries?

00:49:32 ◼   ► What happens to all the metal in those cars?

00:49:36 ◼   ► Nobody's recycling them, are they?

00:49:37 ◼   ► And a lot of these owners, they want to keep these cars longer than 10 years.

00:49:41 ◼   ► I mean, God knows how those batteries are working, if they're working anymore.

00:49:44 ◼   ► But they want to keep them longer, and they're basically out of luck.

00:49:46 ◼   ► And so there's a video that Sam had tweeted and I had retweeted with comments saying,

00:49:51 ◼   ► you know, there's a single guy, I think in Seattle or something like that, that has basically

00:49:56 ◼   ► become the Tesla Roadster expert.

00:50:00 ◼   ► And he will service them to the best he can, sometimes to the point of like, having new

00:50:05 ◼   ► hoods machine printed, I don't know the terminology, but you know, created based on a mold from

00:50:12 ◼   ► an existing hood that he had made himself because he can't get parts from Tesla.

00:50:16 ◼   ► And, you know, we have stories of like, a friend of the show, Arik, who he waited what,

00:50:20 ◼   ► like four months for a windshield for his Model 3.

00:50:23 ◼   ► And so I pointed out like, this just seems crappy to me.

00:50:27 ◼   ► And so many people came out of the woodwork.

00:50:28 ◼   ► Well, they're disruptive and oh, they're pushing the car manufacturers in the right direction.

00:50:32 ◼   ► Yeah, but I don't want a car that I can't get a friggin windshield in four months.

00:50:36 ◼   ► Like, and I would presume that that's gotten better since, you know, Arik had his problems.

00:50:41 ◼   ► But I don't want to, it probably hasn't.

00:50:44 ◼   ► Well, and that's the thing.

00:50:45 ◼   ► I don't want any part of that.

00:50:47 ◼   ► And I don't think that's an unreasonable take to have.

00:50:49 ◼   ► But oh, the Tesla fans were not happy with me.

00:50:52 ◼   ► Oh, no, they were not.

00:50:53 ◼   ► I mean, you're both correct.

00:50:56 ◼   ► Like, one is not a counterargument for the other.

00:51:00 ◼   ► Like, you are correct that Tesla has had tons of problems.

00:51:04 ◼   ► I've seen problems with just like operations, service, that kind of stuff.

00:51:08 ◼   ► They do have tons of problems with that.

00:51:09 ◼   ► Those other people are correct that Tesla is really disruptive and it's very helpful

00:51:15 ◼   ► to, you know, all of humanity to push all this stuff forward as aggressively as they

00:51:20 ◼   ► have.

00:51:21 ◼   ► And they really have made the industry move in a pretty big way.

00:51:25 ◼   ► So that is all correct.

00:51:27 ◼   ► However, that doesn't excuse all their problems.

00:51:30 ◼   ► And I think people on the internet are just bad at arguing and they see any attack on

00:51:35 ◼   ► Tesla as an attack on all that good stuff when in fact, you know, these can be separately

00:51:41 ◼   ► discussed issues and you can both be correct that Tesla is doing amazing things and also

00:51:47 ◼   ► they have tons of operational problems.

00:51:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:51:50 ◼   ► I think it is an interesting experiment, though, to see if one of the, you know, traditions

00:51:55 ◼   ► of the audio industry that Tesla can break is the idea that you can continue to get parts

00:51:58 ◼   ► for your car a decade later, which is absolutely standard.

00:52:01 ◼   ► Like for any, quote unquote, real car company, if you have a 10 year old car, you know, Chevy,

00:52:07 ◼   ► a Ford, a Honda, whatever, of course you can get parts for it.

00:52:10 ◼   ► Like especially if it's like, you know, a common car.

00:52:13 ◼   ► I mean, Tesla only makes a few models anyway, but it's not like if it's not like a rare

00:52:16 ◼   ► exotic one off thing that they made.

00:52:18 ◼   ► But even then, like, I don't know, like what the standards are for how long parts are in

00:52:23 ◼   ► inventory.

00:52:24 ◼   ► I don't know how the audio industry can tell us, but it's a really long time.

00:52:26 ◼   ► And the only real reason for it is like tradition, essentially.

00:52:29 ◼   ► Like, I mean, I'm sure there are reasons way back when, but like it does make you it is

00:52:33 ◼   ► a way these car companies earn trust and last a long time, because if you, you know, once

00:52:41 ◼   ► one car company does that, it's like, well, I have my, you know, Model T and 30 years

00:52:46 ◼   ► later I can still get parts for the Model T because Ford still makes them.

00:52:49 ◼   ► It makes you have a certain level of affection and trust in Ford that like they stand behind

00:52:55 ◼   ► their product or yada yada.

00:52:56 ◼   ► Again, assuming the car company doesn't go out of business or whatever.

00:52:59 ◼   ► And now they all do it because once one does it, it's like, well, we want that trust from

00:53:03 ◼   ► our customers too.

00:53:04 ◼   ► And it just becomes part of the industry.

00:53:05 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, we keep parts on hand for X number of years when we excess manufacture

00:53:08 ◼   ► this many and we have this math that says this is how many parts we need to have in

00:53:12 ◼   ► inventory to satisfy the need because cars do go away at a certain point and all that

00:53:16 ◼   ► stuff.

00:53:17 ◼   ► And I've been in the city of my cars long after they were 10 years old and it never

00:53:20 ◼   ► occurred to me that I could bring it in and they would say, you know, like I dented the

00:53:24 ◼   ► oil pan on my Civic on this, you know, very steep apron because, you know, there's this

00:53:28 ◼   ► low ground clearance on these exotic cars like the Civic, very steep apron on a gas

00:53:32 ◼   ► station in Georgia.

00:53:34 ◼   ► And that car was more than 10 years old when I dented it.

00:53:36 ◼   ► And I hadn't, it didn't enter my head that I would go there and they'd say, yeah, we

00:53:39 ◼   ► can't get an oil pan for your car.

00:53:40 ◼   ► Like, what do you mean you can't get an oil pan for my car?

00:53:42 ◼   ► It's a Honda Civic.

00:53:43 ◼   ► It's like, oh, it's more than 10 years old.

00:53:44 ◼   ► They don't make those parts anymore.

00:53:45 ◼   ► Maybe we can custom design you on if we can mold it from and stamp it from another thing

00:53:51 ◼   ► that you can get from a junkyard.

00:53:52 ◼   ► Or we just assume the parts will be in inventory, but there's no reason to assume that.

00:53:56 ◼   ► We don't assume that a 10 year old Mac will be able to run the latest software or will

00:53:59 ◼   ► be supported in any way.

00:54:00 ◼   ► Although, when I think of it, can I get parts for this?

00:54:04 ◼   ► I think not.

00:54:05 ◼   ► I think Apple won't sell new parts anymore for this.

00:54:07 ◼   ► I would have to buy used, but different industries have different standards for that.

00:54:12 ◼   ► I think probably at this point, the auto industry, the consumers in the auto industry wouldn't

00:54:17 ◼   ► accept the idea that this different kind of car company says, no, you can't get parts

00:54:21 ◼   ► after 10 years.

00:54:23 ◼   ► But who knows?

00:54:24 ◼   ► Just strange things have happened.

00:54:25 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:54:28 ◼   ► I really want the traditional car manufacturers who understand how to do service and how to

00:54:34 ◼   ► do parts and things like that to kind of get a grip and start going electric.

00:54:40 ◼   ► And they've all pledged it to some degree or another.

00:54:43 ◼   ► But I really want an e-Golf to be more interesting than it currently is, even though it is very

00:54:49 ◼   ► interesting.

00:54:50 ◼   ► I want the Polestar to come out, the Polestar sedan.

00:54:52 ◼   ► Now granted, these are all probably way too expensive for me.

00:54:56 ◼   ► It's still early, but I can't imagine that Volkswagen or Polestar/Volvo will have the

00:55:04 ◼   ► kind of rookie mistakes that Tesla has.

00:55:08 ◼   ► And yeah, I understand that electric cars have fewer moving parts, but they still get

00:55:12 ◼   ► bumped into from time to time.

00:55:14 ◼   ► You still have rocks that hit windshields from time to time.

00:55:18 ◼   ► So I don't think that just saying, a lot of times when I complain about this sort of thing,

00:55:23 ◼   ► people go, "You're not going to need to get a service as much because there's just less

00:55:26 ◼   ► stuff to go wrong."

00:55:27 ◼   ► Well, yeah, true, especially compared to my BMW, which tried to explode its engine on

00:55:32 ◼   ► the hour, every hour on the hour.

00:55:34 ◼   ► But still, you need brakes from time to time.

00:55:37 ◼   ► "No, you don't need brakes as often because regenerative braking."

00:55:40 ◼   ► Okay, yes, but you still will eventually need brakes.

00:55:43 ◼   ► You will eventually need a windshield.

00:55:46 ◼   ► You will eventually bump something and need a fender.

00:55:48 ◼   ► These are all things that happen to cars.

00:55:51 ◼   ► It can just happen to you, Jon, I'm telling you.

00:55:54 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:55:56 ◼   ► I want everyone to be happy, and I want Tesla fans to be less obnoxious.

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00:57:46 ◼   ► Apple just today has come out with a statement about the Siri kerfuffle from a week or two

00:57:51 ◼   ► ago entitled Improving Siri's Privacy Protections.

00:57:56 ◼   ► And there's a bunch of stuff in there where it talks, you know, where Apple talks about,

00:58:00 ◼   ► you know, what does or does not happen on Siri, what does or does not leave your phone.

00:58:04 ◼   ► But I think most interesting to me are the passages with regard to what they call grading.

00:58:10 ◼   ► And they say, "Before we suspended grading, our process involved reviewing a small sample

00:58:13 ◼   ► of audio from Siri requests, less than 0.2%, and their computer-generated transcripts to

00:58:19 ◼   ► measure how well Siri was responding to and improving its reliability.

00:58:24 ◼   ► So for example, did the user intend to wake Siri?

00:58:26 ◼   ► Did Siri hear the request accurately?

00:58:27 ◼   ► And did Siri respond appropriately to the request?

00:58:31 ◼   ► Siri uses a random identifier, a long string of letters and numbers associated with a single

00:58:34 ◼   ► device to keep track of data while it's being processed rather than tying it to your identity

00:58:38 ◼   ► through your Apple ID or phone number."

00:58:41 ◼   ► And you know, they pat themselves on the back for that being unique.

00:58:43 ◼   ► And so they move on and say, "Okay, so that's what was happening.

00:58:48 ◼   ► Here's what's going to happen.

00:58:49 ◼   ► First, by default, we will no longer retain audio recordings of Siri interactions.

00:58:53 ◼   ► We will continue to use computer-generated transcripts to help Siri improve.

00:58:57 ◼   ► Second, users will be able to opt in to help Siri improve by learning from the audio samples

00:59:02 ◼   ► of their requests.

00:59:03 ◼   ► We hope that many people will choose to help Siri get better knowing that Apple respects

00:59:06 ◼   ► their data and has strong privacy controls in place.

00:59:10 ◼   ► Those who choose to participate will be able to opt out at any time.

00:59:12 ◼   ► And third, when customers opt in, only Apple employees, as in not contractors, will be

00:59:17 ◼   ► allowed to listen to audio samples of the Siri interactions.

00:59:19 ◼   ► Our team will work to delete any recording which is determined to be an inadvertent trigger

00:59:23 ◼   ► of Siri."

00:59:25 ◼   ► I think there's some things to quibble about in here, but by and large, it was written

00:59:30 ◼   ► for human beings, not for lawyers, and I think it solves most, but not all, of our problems.

00:59:37 ◼   ► So starting with Marco, how do you feel about this?

00:59:40 ◼   ► That's a pretty good summary, actually.

00:59:43 ◼   ► First of all, of these three action points, the main three takeaways from this piece,

00:59:48 ◼   ► the third one about them now being employees as opposed to contractors, it's kind of nothing.

00:59:53 ◼   ► That's not really a meaningful change.

00:59:56 ◼   ► Apple always said they had the same standards for contractors that they would have for employees,

01:00:01 ◼   ► for privacy-sensitive things like this.

01:00:03 ◼   ► The fact that they're now going to be only employees and not contractors, I think, is

01:00:06 ◼   ► a technicality.

01:00:07 ◼   ► That doesn't mean much in practice.

01:00:10 ◼   ► So let's focus on the other two.

01:00:11 ◼   ► The second one, that use of audio will now be opt-in, is fantastic.

01:00:18 ◼   ► That's great.

01:00:19 ◼   ► I think that that is the way it should have been all this time.

01:00:22 ◼   ► I think maybe Apple now thinks that as well.

01:00:24 ◼   ► That's great news.

01:00:25 ◼   ► That is the right decision.

01:00:26 ◼   ► The only thing I really have to quibble about is point number one, where they basically

01:00:30 ◼   ► say that the use of transcripts is not only, not only is it not opt-in, you can't opt-out.

01:00:40 ◼   ► The only way to not have transcripts used is to not use Siri at all.

01:00:45 ◼   ► And so all these employees now will still be able to review the text transcripts of

01:00:53 ◼   ► what you told Siri, basically as long as they want.

01:00:58 ◼   ► And all of them.

01:01:00 ◼   ► You can't go in and delete one where you accidentally said something that was caught by Siri that

01:01:04 ◼   ► might have been sensitive information.

01:01:06 ◼   ► You have no control over it.

01:01:08 ◼   ► Basically, the transcribed text of what you said has no privacy.

01:01:14 ◼   ► And I don't think that's good enough.

01:01:16 ◼   ► I think Apple can do better in that area.

01:01:18 ◼   ► And I understand they probably do want a lot of data to train models and to have human

01:01:25 ◼   ► review for making stuff better and everything.

01:01:27 ◼   ► They do need a source of data.

01:01:30 ◼   ► If they were really only looking at 0.2%, clearly they have enough data.

01:01:35 ◼   ► They don't necessarily need all of it.

01:01:37 ◼   ► There might be other ways to get it.

01:01:38 ◼   ► So one example, maybe they should make the opt-in apply to both things.

01:01:45 ◼   ► Make the opt-in apply to both the audio and the text.

01:01:48 ◼   ► That honestly sounds to me like the right move.

01:01:51 ◼   ► If people choose not to, if they see the option somewhere, maybe it's during the setup wizard,

01:01:55 ◼   ► and they choose not to opt-in to the audio, do you think they really are going to know

01:02:01 ◼   ► that their text is going to be reviewed anyway?

01:02:05 ◼   ► It's almost misleading.

01:02:06 ◼   ► I think it goes against people's expectations, and it goes against common sense.

01:02:09 ◼   ► If you say no, you can't analyze what I told Siri in audio form, I think I would assume

01:02:14 ◼   ► it would apply to text form as well.

01:02:17 ◼   ► So now you're left with a situation where if you are concerned about humans seeing what

01:02:24 ◼   ► you told Siri or hearing what you told Siri, still your option is don't use Siri, which

01:02:29 ◼   ► is an increasingly obtuse answer to that concern.

01:02:34 ◼   ► So I think this does solve some of the problem, but it doesn't go far enough.

01:02:38 ◼   ► I would like to see them go further and make the opt-in also apply to text.

01:02:43 ◼   ► And if they really need more data, one thing I saw suggested by a few different people

01:02:48 ◼   ► today was have some kind of report a problem button on the Siri screen when it gives you

01:02:55 ◼   ► a response, the same way you see it on the voicemail transcripts.

01:03:00 ◼   ► I don't see why they can't do that.

01:03:02 ◼   ► Maybe pride is one answer.

01:03:04 ◼   ► They don't want to appear as though there might be a problem with Siri.

01:03:06 ◼   ► But look, the jig is up.

01:03:08 ◼   ► Everyone knows Siri has problems all the time.

01:03:10 ◼   ► No one is fooled by that button not being there.

01:03:13 ◼   ► No one is giving the impression, "Oh, this thing is perfect.

01:03:17 ◼   ► It works every time.

01:03:18 ◼   ► It never mishears me.

01:03:19 ◼   ► It never says something dumb in response."

01:03:23 ◼   ► That jig is up.

01:03:24 ◼   ► We all know Siri is kind of unreliable and not as smart as we always want it to be.

01:03:29 ◼   ► A little report a problem button on the Siri response UI would give them an easy way to

01:03:36 ◼   ► get lots of data that is handpicked by the crowd sourced everything to be exactly the

01:03:43 ◼   ► kind of things that cause problems that, "Here is a specific example where Siri didn't

01:03:48 ◼   ► do what I wanted."

01:03:49 ◼   ► Perfect.

01:03:50 ◼   ► That's exactly what you want.

01:03:51 ◼   ► You want people to be able to send that in, which is why they put it on the voicemail transcripts.

01:03:57 ◼   ► So this seems like an obvious solution that they probably should do instead of all this

01:04:04 ◼   ► garbage or in addition to all this garbage.

01:04:06 ◼   ► But in the meantime, if they are not going to do that, I don't see why audio recordings

01:04:13 ◼   ► were deemed private enough to have this opt-out behavior now or this opt-in behavior now.

01:04:19 ◼   ► But the text transcriptions of those was deemed not important enough to have that privacy.

01:04:26 ◼   ► I have some explanations for some of this stuff.

01:04:29 ◼   ► So first of all, I think the reason that they didn't announce the thing that I originally

01:04:35 ◼   ► suggested when you talked about this, like I think you just said as well, like the just

01:04:39 ◼   ► in time reporting of a problem when people are the most primed to report it because they're

01:04:42 ◼   ► angry that Siri did something dumb, is simply because that requires implementation and time

01:04:49 ◼   ► and they're struggling to get iOS 13 out and they just don't have it.

01:04:52 ◼   ► They're not going to announce it when they don't have it.

01:04:54 ◼   ► I wouldn't be surprised if that appears, but I mean this announcement took long enough

01:04:57 ◼   ► as it was.

01:04:58 ◼   ► They're not exactly nimble here.

01:04:59 ◼   ► They can't announce, here's what we're going to do.

01:05:01 ◼   ► We're going to do this, we're going to do that, we're going to do that because they

01:05:03 ◼   ► can't do that yet.

01:05:05 ◼   ► They could put that in development and plan it for iOS 13.3 or something or maybe it'll

01:05:10 ◼   ► be pushed to iOS 14, but they have to make an announcement now.

01:05:13 ◼   ► So I think that explains why they don't have the UI solution that we all think is what

01:05:17 ◼   ► they should obviously do, just because they're not ready with it.

01:05:20 ◼   ► So in the meantime, the second question, why is audio treated differently than transcripts?

01:05:24 ◼   ► There's a couple of angles on this.

01:05:27 ◼   ► The first is, and this is silly but is actually true, there is some protection for the transcriptions

01:05:37 ◼   ► based on how bad transcriptions are.

01:05:39 ◼   ► Like if we all assumed that the transcriptions were accurate, it would be like, "Well, they

01:05:45 ◼   ► can have the transcription, but that's just garbage anyway.

01:05:46 ◼   ► It always gets it wrong, what I'm saying.

01:05:48 ◼   ► That sounds terrible, but it's actually true."

01:05:49 ◼   ► I think in our mind, no one assumes that the transcriptions are the same as the audio in

01:05:54 ◼   ► terms of fidelity, because the audio, a human can listen to and have a good chance of understanding,

01:05:58 ◼   ► but the transcription may be just gibberish, especially in cases where it gets it wrong

01:06:03 ◼   ► because maybe there's noise in the room or whatever.

01:06:06 ◼   ► The second thing is, in the Morgan Freeman problem, as I described when we first discussed

01:06:10 ◼   ► this, part of the Morgan Freeman problem is solved by transcriptions, because if you hear

01:06:16 ◼   ► Morgan Freeman's voice and you know who it is, suddenly you're much more interested in

01:06:20 ◼   ► what they're saying.

01:06:22 ◼   ► But part of the problem isn't solved.

01:06:23 ◼   ► If Morgan Freeman references the name of the new movie he's doing with Steven Spielberg,

01:06:28 ◼   ► that would be in the transcription, and now you know to be interested because you're looking

01:06:31 ◼   ► for keywords, like whatever movie title is or Disney or whatever, even if you don't hear

01:06:36 ◼   ► Morgan Freeman's voice.

01:06:37 ◼   ► And speaking of Morgan Freeman's voice, this gets back to something that I think was clarified

01:06:41 ◼   ► in this, that Gruber wrote about in his post about it, in case you just read before.

01:06:46 ◼   ► The original stories were saying that the information was mapped to your Apple ID for

01:06:53 ◼   ► like a really long period of time, but what Apple says and what is apparently true about

01:06:56 ◼   ► it is it's never mapped to your Apple ID.

01:06:59 ◼   ► When they get this information, it is associated with a random number that Apple cannot map

01:07:03 ◼   ► back to you, your phone, your Apple ID, anything from the get-go.

01:07:08 ◼   ► As soon as Apple stores this, it is stored "anonymized."

01:07:12 ◼   ► Now obviously, if they have your voice and you're Morgan Freeman, they can figure out

01:07:15 ◼   ► who you are.

01:07:16 ◼   ► Obviously, if you say something that identifies yourself, if you reference your home address

01:07:23 ◼   ► or the first and last name of somebody in your family, it's not unidentifiable, but

01:07:31 ◼   ► it is de-identified.

01:07:32 ◼   ► And we originally had thought when we were discussing this that not only was it mapped

01:07:35 ◼   ► to your Apple ID, but it stayed that way for a really long time.

01:07:38 ◼   ► So I'm glad to hear that that's not actually true.

01:07:41 ◼   ► They do anonymize it to the extent possible in terms of the metadata.

01:07:45 ◼   ► The data itself, that might be used to identify you because you may be saying things or whatever.

01:07:50 ◼   ► Again, the transcript, I feel like being slightly better than the voice because you do like

01:07:54 ◼   ► voice print analysis or something behind somebody down or whatever.

01:07:58 ◼   ► So I feel like the situation was not quite as bad as we thought it was.

01:08:03 ◼   ► This is an announcement of saying, "Here's what we can do right now essentially without

01:08:07 ◼   ► changing our software in any radical way," which we hope they do do eventually, but for

01:08:11 ◼   ► now they have to say, "Here's what we're doing."

01:08:13 ◼   ► I'm also baffled by the transcript thing because we were discussing this in a couple

01:08:20 ◼   ► of Slack in the past few days.

01:08:22 ◼   ► What can you do with just the transcripts in terms of getting things better?

01:08:27 ◼   ► Maybe, sometimes if you do it when you talk to Siri and it makes a reminder and you're

01:08:31 ◼   ► like, "What did I say that produced this word?"

01:08:35 ◼   ► Sometimes you can puzzle it out.

01:08:36 ◼   ► So maybe a human could puzzle that out, but it's really helpful to be able to hear the

01:08:42 ◼   ► audio.

01:08:43 ◼   ► So with just the transcription, what's so important about just the transcription that

01:08:46 ◼   ► it has to be for everybody is, as Marco pointed out, 0.02 percent doesn't sound like a lot,

01:08:54 ◼   ► but when you have 500 million users, it's like a million people.

01:08:58 ◼   ► So if you just left it to the opt-inners, if everything was opt-in, probably more than

01:09:02 ◼   ► enough people would opt-in.

01:09:04 ◼   ► You just need a tiny sliver of people to opt-in.

01:09:06 ◼   ► I think a fraction of a single percent take rate for opting-in is apparently adequate

01:09:12 ◼   ► because that's what they're choosing to do now.

01:09:14 ◼   ► Right, exactly.

01:09:16 ◼   ► So it is kind of baffling why the transcripts are global, and that's a thing they could

01:09:22 ◼   ► have done now, just like they're going to make the thing opt-in, which I feel like is

01:09:25 ◼   ► just one screen and a preference thing.

01:09:28 ◼   ► If they had made transcripts opt-in, it would have been a cleaner win.

01:09:32 ◼   ► So I would love to know what the decision-making process was and why.

01:09:40 ◼   ► Maybe the calculus is that people actually won't care about the transcripts.

01:09:44 ◼   ► Again, I can understand the thing because the recording sounds more personal and people

01:09:48 ◼   ► know the transcription is garbage anyway, but it does seem weird and it's like the tiny

01:09:53 ◼   ► blemish on what would otherwise be a fairly clean PR win, especially with the part about

01:09:58 ◼   ► clarifying about the identification, because I feel like that was the worst part of it.

01:10:01 ◼   ► They would have audio recordings of you that if you didn't read all the fine print, you

01:10:06 ◼   ► didn't know were happening.

01:10:07 ◼   ► That's something, by the way, that people have been pointing out since the story came

01:10:09 ◼   ► out.

01:10:10 ◼   ► They're like, "Well, Apple told you this was happening."

01:10:11 ◼   ► Of course they did.

01:10:12 ◼   ► It's always in the fine print, but the whole point was it's not what we expected.

01:10:16 ◼   ► No one reads that.

01:10:17 ◼   ► We all know nobody reads it.

01:10:19 ◼   ► Yes, it's always in the fine print, but nobody reads it and we're basically going by what

01:10:23 ◼   ► we expect from Apple.

01:10:26 ◼   ► To Apple's credit, Apple didn't come back and say, "Well, just so you know, we told

01:10:30 ◼   ► you about this two years ago and everyone was fine with it."

01:10:33 ◼   ► That's not a defense because Apple knows nobody reads that stuff.

01:10:37 ◼   ► Apple understood that the actual problem was here, expectations versus reality, and they

01:10:41 ◼   ► weren't matching up, so they're trying to get them realigned.

01:10:43 ◼   ► I am glad to hear that it was de-identified from the beginning and then they just have

01:10:49 ◼   ► to address the identified stuff, which is the data, which should all be obtained.

01:10:53 ◼   ► In the last 24 hours, 48 hours, we've gotten an iOS 13.1 beta, which is different since

01:11:01 ◼   ► iOS 13.0 isn't out yet.

01:11:05 ◼   ► I haven't seen a lot about what the differences are other than that some things that were

01:11:11 ◼   ► taken out seem to be added back.

01:11:13 ◼   ► I know Federico was very excited about some shortcuts-related things that were added back

01:11:17 ◼   ► in.

01:11:19 ◼   ► What's going on?

01:11:20 ◼   ► Trouble in paradise for Apple these days?

01:11:22 ◼   ► It sure seems like 13.0 has been way more of a cluster than anyone expected, especially

01:11:27 ◼   ► since we all thought that they had so much time to work on a lot of these features last

01:11:32 ◼   ► year, in theory, although it's never quite that simple.

01:11:36 ◼   ► What's going on?

01:11:37 ◼   ► And lucky 13.

01:11:39 ◼   ► I think the situation is not particularly unexpected and also not that different.

01:11:44 ◼   ► So the unexpected part is like, "Well, iOS 12, they pulled stuff out of it.

01:11:47 ◼   ► Shouldn't they have had more time to work on the 13 stuff?"

01:11:49 ◼   ► Well, it's not like there's a relatively fixed number of people working.

01:11:54 ◼   ► So the whole point was bump those features and get all the people to continue to work

01:12:00 ◼   ► on 12, which they did.

01:12:01 ◼   ► I think 12 was a good release and it was very stable and it felt like it accomplished their

01:12:04 ◼   ► goals and made your old devices faster.

01:12:06 ◼   ► The reason it did that is because all those people who would have been working on those

01:12:09 ◼   ► features that got pushed to 13 weren't working on those features.

01:12:13 ◼   ► So it's not like those features got such a long time to be worked on.

01:12:16 ◼   ► Those features were put aside.

01:12:17 ◼   ► No one working on them, like frozen in time and then more or less, and all those people

01:12:23 ◼   ► were working on 12.

01:12:24 ◼   ► And then when all the 12 work was done, they resumed work on the 13 stuff.

01:12:28 ◼   ► So it's not true that those 13 features got twice the amount of time.

01:12:33 ◼   ► They got 1.5 the amount of time.

01:12:35 ◼   ► And obviously they were challenging features because they're the ones that got bumped out

01:12:38 ◼   ► of 12.

01:12:39 ◼   ► They didn't bump the easy stuff out of 12.

01:12:40 ◼   ► So it doesn't particularly surprise me that there might be problems.

01:12:43 ◼   ► What does surprise me is exactly how many there are and how severe they seem to be.

01:12:48 ◼   ► Sometimes that happens, right?

01:12:49 ◼   ► And we've heard stories about not just features that they're having trouble with, but features

01:12:54 ◼   ► that have been rolled back to say like, "We were working on a new version of this subsystem

01:12:59 ◼   ► and it's not going to make it.

01:13:02 ◼   ► So bring back the old subsystem and remove all the features that relied on the new subsystem."

01:13:07 ◼   ► Presumably so that those things can come back in 13.1 and 13.2 or whatever, right?

01:13:12 ◼   ► But if that happens, it's usually a big deal.

01:13:15 ◼   ► And that seemingly happening on multiple fronts in 13 doesn't bode well.

01:13:19 ◼   ► Now as for the iOS 13.1 beta, this kind of overlap where people are working on 13.1 and

01:13:26 ◼   ► 13.0 at the same time pretty much always happens.

01:13:29 ◼   ► What normally doesn't happen is the 13.1 beta is distributed to developers before the 13.0

01:13:34 ◼   ► happens.

01:13:35 ◼   ► So 13.0 comes out on the same day the 13.1 beta comes out.

01:13:39 ◼   ► So it's not weird inside Apple for them to be overlapped.

01:13:42 ◼   ► It's weird for them to be overlapping externally.

01:13:44 ◼   ► And I think the explanation for that is rumors say that 13 was given some extra time to bake,

01:13:55 ◼   ► but they have to commit to a shipping version of 13 to be on the iPhones that they're going

01:13:59 ◼   ► to announce in a week or two.

01:14:01 ◼   ► So they basically had to say freeze a version of 13 for the new hardware, set that aside,

01:14:10 ◼   ► continue working on the "real 13" for everybody else, and also get going on what we know is

01:14:16 ◼   ► going to be 13.1.

01:14:18 ◼   ► And they have to do all of that, not at the same time, but overlapping in many ways.

01:14:23 ◼   ► Because as much as they can give 13 more time to bake and more time to develop or whatever,

01:14:29 ◼   ► this is the question we were all asking ourselves back when they were doing this.

01:14:31 ◼   ► Would they bump the iPhone date?

01:14:32 ◼   ► The answer is no.

01:14:33 ◼   ► The iPhone is coming out when it's coming out.

01:14:35 ◼   ► It has to have 13 on it.

01:14:37 ◼   ► So job one was get something that will work on the new iPhones and be relatively stable

01:14:43 ◼   ► ready in time for the iPhones because that is not moving.

01:14:46 ◼   ► And if it means just abandoning everything and rolling back subsystems to previous versions,

01:14:49 ◼   ► just get it done.

01:14:50 ◼   ► And then even the 13.0 is going to have stuff missing from it.

01:14:52 ◼   ► And then 13.1 hopefully looks more like what 13.0 was supposed to be.

01:14:57 ◼   ► So this seems like typical software project management.

01:15:00 ◼   ► And I think for the most part, despite it not going well over there at Apple, these

01:15:06 ◼   ► are the kind of decisions you want them to make.

01:15:08 ◼   ► If it's not working and it's crappy, delay or boot it out.

01:15:13 ◼   ► Don't ship it like that.

01:15:15 ◼   ► We're hoping that's what they're doing.

01:15:16 ◼   ► It's disappointing when a feature that was advertised and shown isn't in the .0.

01:15:20 ◼   ► But honestly, we'd all rather have the .0 with the old subsystems working and wait for

01:15:24 ◼   ► the .1 or .2 or .3 for the feature.

01:15:26 ◼   ► These are all the correct decisions.

01:15:28 ◼   ► We're all software developers.

01:15:29 ◼   ► We know how it goes.

01:15:31 ◼   ► Especially can you imagine if you had something like an iPhone launched that was literally

01:15:33 ◼   ► apparently unmovable?

01:15:36 ◼   ► These iPhones are being made.

01:15:37 ◼   ► They're going to ship.

01:15:38 ◼   ► We need to put software on them.

01:15:39 ◼   ► We need to literally start making them and putting them in boxes now.

01:15:43 ◼   ► So they need to have some software that we can put on them.

01:15:45 ◼   ► Because if we put them in a box without software, it's not good.

01:15:47 ◼   ► So a date like that that you have, I feel bad for the people at Apple.

01:15:52 ◼   ► And let's just throw everything overboard until the thing works enough to ship on a

01:15:56 ◼   ► phone.

01:15:57 ◼   ► And that's not an ideal place to be, but if they pull it off, that's how the sausage gets

01:16:02 ◼   ► made.

01:16:03 ◼   ► If you've ever worked on any big software project, you would be lucky to have a project

01:16:08 ◼   ► that is as successful as iOS 13.

01:16:10 ◼   ► Most of them are way bigger disasters.

01:16:12 ◼   ► So I'm kind of glad I'm not working at Apple right now.

01:16:16 ◼   ► I'm a little bit afraid of the software.

01:16:18 ◼   ► But in general, from a distance, I think they're doing all the right things.

01:16:22 ◼   ► I say until they actually ship something, then we see what they actually ship.

01:16:25 ◼   ► But assuming what they ship works okay, thumbs up.

01:16:30 ◼   ► I don't have much to add to that.

01:16:33 ◼   ► Obviously iOS 13 has been way rougher than previous versions have been.

01:16:40 ◼   ► And we got some rumblings that there might have been this Craig Federighi email, what,

01:16:44 ◼   ► back in July, I think, that basically they were trying to find ways to buy time and move

01:16:51 ◼   ► stuff around because quality wasn't good enough.

01:16:53 ◼   ► It wasn't where it had to be.

01:16:56 ◼   ► And so we're just seeing some tiny little part of that.

01:16:59 ◼   ► We're not really seeing all the details about what was done or why or what their intentions

01:17:04 ◼   ► are.

01:17:05 ◼   ► But what we are seeing looks like a reasonable result of that leadership decision, which

01:17:13 ◼   ► was probably the right decision.

01:17:14 ◼   ► So it's weird.

01:17:16 ◼   ► As a developer, I really don't like it because now I have two beta trees to worry about,

01:17:21 ◼   ► neither of which are stable yet.

01:17:24 ◼   ► As a user, I still don't think what, you know, whatever was beta 8 of iOS 13.0, which is

01:17:30 ◼   ► the last beta that was called iOS 13.0, I was using that until this afternoon.

01:17:35 ◼   ► And day to day use, it's stable enough, but I'm still having annoying bugs like mail still

01:17:42 ◼   ► isn't loading new messages in my all inboxes view until I go back to the home screen and

01:17:48 ◼   ► back into all inboxes.

01:17:51 ◼   ► These have been problems since the very first beta that still aren't fixed.

01:17:55 ◼   ► So I think 13.0 is still a disaster, but they seem to be doing what they have to do to let

01:18:02 ◼   ► the iPhone ship on time.

01:18:04 ◼   ► And I'm guessing, you know, if iPads wait, you know, then maybe the 13.1 can be the first

01:18:12 ◼   ► version that's on iPads and 13.0 is only an iPhone release just to get to the new hardware.

01:18:17 ◼   ► Who knows?

01:18:18 ◼   ► They can do stuff like that and whatever that ends up being, it's probably the right move.

01:18:24 ◼   ► If it means getting a little bit more time for the quality to get worked out.

01:18:29 ◼   ► I'm going to guess that the build that is on the phones that they're manufacturing right

01:18:33 ◼   ► now is not a build that ever shipped to developers.

01:18:36 ◼   ► Both because it's got all the special libraries that they presumably strip out for like the

01:18:40 ◼   ► triple camera and whatever other weird new features, you know what I mean?

01:18:43 ◼   ► But also because it seems clear that they would have to have dedicated a team and a

01:18:49 ◼   ► build and a target just for the hardware.

01:18:52 ◼   ► And it didn't have to have anything in common with the betas they're shipping to developers

01:18:55 ◼   ► for 13.0.

01:18:56 ◼   ► Never mind how far behind the betas they're shipping to developers are.

01:18:59 ◼   ► It just seems like that's a whole different branch.

01:19:01 ◼   ► So my hope is that when people open up their new iPhone whatever pros, that they have a

01:19:08 ◼   ► build that no developer has ever been subjected to, that it works okay, that mail isn't a

01:19:13 ◼   ► disaster like you described.

01:19:15 ◼   ► And that basically the day they open it up or a couple days later they'll be able to

01:19:19 ◼   ► update to 13.1.

01:19:20 ◼   ► Because the thing is they need to get the software so it can be put onto the phone,

01:19:23 ◼   ► so it can be put in boxes.

01:19:25 ◼   ► But they don't need to send those boxes to customers as early as possible.

01:19:30 ◼   ► They could try to make it so that you can order your phones on launch day because that's

01:19:35 ◼   ► what they care about is get your money and everything.

01:19:37 ◼   ► But they won't arrive until whatever weeks later.

01:19:41 ◼   ► And that's their target date for 13.1.

01:19:42 ◼   ► So you take it out of the box and the first thing it does is check for updates.

01:19:45 ◼   ► It finds 13.1 and you get 13.1 and nobody ever has to use whatever shambling beast of

01:19:50 ◼   ► 13.0 build they put on those things.

01:19:53 ◼   ► That's an optimistic scenario, but I feel like it's plausible.

01:19:56 ◼   ► How many times does that happen that you'd get a brand new iPhone and you would have

01:19:59 ◼   ► at the very least a point release waiting for you?

01:20:03 ◼   ► All the time in the old days if you didn't buy on day one.

01:20:05 ◼   ► If you bought like a normal person, you'd get it and it would be some version that's

01:20:10 ◼   ► like a point or two back.

01:20:11 ◼   ► I remember that for a lot of my iOS devices.

01:20:13 ◼   ► I think it's less so now maybe because there's a lot of turnover or maybe because they're

01:20:16 ◼   ► better about inventory.

01:20:17 ◼   ► But day one, I feel like you usually have to wait at least a couple of days for the

01:20:22 ◼   ► point release.

01:20:23 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:20:24 ◼   ► I feel like that's happened to me in the past for sure.

01:20:27 ◼   ► I just also feel like it's been a long time.

01:20:29 ◼   ► But maybe that coincides with me just starting to buy iPhones on day one because I'm an

01:20:34 ◼   ► impatient jerk.

01:20:39 ◼   ► The idea of that does not sound delightful to me.

01:20:42 ◼   ► I haven't had the experience of opening a console on Christmas morning only to have

01:20:47 ◼   ► it go through 13 hours of updates, but that's just not fun.

01:20:50 ◼   ► I have had the experience of getting an iPhone and having several hours of trying to get

01:20:54 ◼   ► it activated under AT&T.

01:20:57 ◼   ► That I do not miss at all.

01:20:58 ◼   ► But I haven't had a software update cycle that I can remember.

01:21:04 ◼   ► I'm sure it's happened, but not that I can remember in years.

01:21:08 ◼   ► And that just does not sound fun.

01:21:09 ◼   ► Hopefully that doesn't happen that much anymore, but I feel like the most significant experience

01:21:14 ◼   ► that it may be in both of your futures is not so much when you get the new toy and you

01:21:19 ◼   ► take it out of the box and it needs a software update but the server's down or something,

01:21:22 ◼   ► but when you get a gift for your child and they want to use the thing and the server's

01:21:28 ◼   ► down.

01:21:29 ◼   ► I very clearly remember when we got, I think it was the original PlayStation 4 and PSN was

01:21:33 ◼   ► down for like two days and my son did not, didn't and still doesn't understand how the

01:21:39 ◼   ► internet works.

01:21:40 ◼   ► All I knew is why is it that I cannot use this PlayStation that we just, PSN is down.

01:21:45 ◼   ► I was like, what is PSN and why is it down and why can't you fix it?

01:21:49 ◼   ► Please dad, please.

01:21:51 ◼   ► Yeah, dad, fix it.

01:21:53 ◼   ► Why did you even get this thing?

01:21:55 ◼   ► It obviously doesn't work.

01:21:57 ◼   ► PSN, why PSN?

01:21:59 ◼   ► I will remember that Christmas for a long time.

01:22:03 ◼   ► I was sad too, to be clear, but when it's your kid, it's a whole other level.

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01:22:24 ◼   ► running like one little virtual instance somewhere or whether you're running a whole bunch of

01:22:28 ◼   ► dedicated CPU instances or GPU instances or other specialized things, Linode has you covered

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01:22:38 ◼   ► I've seen a lot of different hosts, I've seen a lot of different quality levels, a lot of

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01:23:11 ◼   ► They have great support.

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01:23:20 ◼   ► needs.

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01:23:25 ◼   ► I made in my app and so I doubled the size of all my web servers instantly.

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01:23:35 ◼   ► Super easy to do and now when the storm has calmed down, I know I'm going to be able to

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01:23:40 ◼   ► And the only difference I'm going to pay is the hourly difference of the couple of days

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01:24:13 ◼   ► All right, let's do some Ask ATP and let's start with James Gates who writes, "In this

01:24:22 ◼   ► world with everyone taking pictures, when would you, as in you specifically, hire a

01:24:26 ◼   ► professional photographer?

01:24:27 ◼   ► Full disclosure, I'm an amateur photographer thinking about going into the business full

01:24:31 ◼   ► time, but I still think there's potential to make a living even in this seemingly saturated

01:24:35 ◼   ► industry."

01:24:36 ◼   ► So this is one of the Ask ATP's which I think I lamented in a prior show that I answered

01:24:42 ◼   ► via email only to find it to show up in the show notes.

01:24:45 ◼   ► But my answer to James was basically like a wedding, of course, but the only thing I

01:24:50 ◼   ► could really think of is times that I felt it was really important to have all four of

01:24:54 ◼   ► us in front of the camera.

01:24:57 ◼   ► You know, if I'm at a birthday party for one of my kids, I don't mind not only taking a

01:25:01 ◼   ► bunch of pictures but also handing the camera off to like my dad or, you know, or to Aaron

01:25:05 ◼   ► on occasion or whomever to take a few as well.

01:25:10 ◼   ► I can't think of anything else offhand where I would be, where I would really, really,

01:25:16 ◼   ► really want pictures that are professionally done.

01:25:20 ◼   ► And I guess maybe pregnancy shots, like we had a friend of ours who is a professional

01:25:26 ◼   ► photographer do them, you know, but we could have had my parents, it wouldn't have come

01:25:32 ◼   ► out as nice by any means, but it would have been okay.

01:25:34 ◼   ► I don't know, John, when would you, as the fellow cheapskate, pay someone to take pictures

01:25:40 ◼   ► of you and your family?

01:25:41 ◼   ► We pay someone to take pictures of me and my family every year.

01:25:46 ◼   ► We take yearly family photos, yearly photos of all the kids or whatever.

01:25:51 ◼   ► Obviously, as you pointed out, like the easy answer to this and it's totally true is if

01:25:54 ◼   ► you want everyone to be in the picture and you don't want to do the tripod and run type

01:25:58 ◼   ► thing, you have to hire somebody.

01:25:59 ◼   ► Otherwise you're not in the picture or whoever the photographer is not in the picture.

01:26:02 ◼   ► And so that applies to family photos.

01:26:04 ◼   ► But also in general, like first of all, I'm not a professional photographer, presumably,

01:26:09 ◼   ► and this is absolutely true, professional photographers can and will take better pictures

01:26:13 ◼   ► than I will.

01:26:14 ◼   ► So there's a reason you pay somebody.

01:26:16 ◼   ► Second thing is, presumably, and this is also actually true, they have better cameras than

01:26:19 ◼   ► I do.

01:26:20 ◼   ► So there's that, right?

01:26:21 ◼   ► And they have places where you can go to pose your family in front of some kind of nice

01:26:27 ◼   ► backdrop or whatever.

01:26:29 ◼   ► So anyway, we do that every single year.

01:26:30 ◼   ► It's just a place in the mall.

01:26:31 ◼   ► It's nice.

01:26:32 ◼   ► They give us all the digital files.

01:26:34 ◼   ► We used to have this actual one specific photographer that we went to, who we went to for, I think,

01:26:38 ◼   ► our children's lives from infancy until they were like 10 or 11.

01:26:42 ◼   ► And then she went off to either be freelance or work somewhere else and we were all sad.

01:26:46 ◼   ► But yeah, so that's the obvious one.

01:26:48 ◼   ► The less obvious one is every once in a while, mostly on my wife's whim, we had someone come

01:26:54 ◼   ► and take pictures of us just outdoors in a park or in some scenic thing or when the fall

01:27:01 ◼   ► leaves, or whatever.

01:27:02 ◼   ► And those people do more sort of artsy things and have us do stuff.

01:27:06 ◼   ► And it's something, first of all, if you did it yourself, if someone in your family is

01:27:13 ◼   ► doing it, that's just one person and then one person's taste in ideas.

01:27:16 ◼   ► Getting someone else in who has their own ideas and has way more experience than you

01:27:19 ◼   ► ever will taking pictures of people and their families because that's what they do for their

01:27:22 ◼   ► living, they'll have ideas about how you can pose and what might look good and what would

01:27:26 ◼   ► be cute and what angles to take and what part of the park to take you to or whatever.

01:27:32 ◼   ► So we did that a couple of times too.

01:27:34 ◼   ► And it depends on the person, how good they came out, but that's the answer to why might

01:27:39 ◼   ► you think of doing it.

01:27:42 ◼   ► If you are, or whoever the photographer is in your family, the only person who ever takes

01:27:45 ◼   ► your pictures, there's a sameness to it.

01:27:47 ◼   ► And sometimes it's nice to get someone else's eye in the mix and someone who is, one would

01:27:52 ◼   ► hope, going to be a much better photographer than you.

01:27:55 ◼   ► - Marco?

01:27:56 ◼   ► - I think that that very last part is what's key to me.

01:28:02 ◼   ► It used to be back in the bad old days that to be a photographer, you needed to have a

01:28:08 ◼   ► nice camera and access to printing resources and things like that.

01:28:14 ◼   ► And people would pay you because you had a nice camera and they didn't.

01:28:18 ◼   ► And so when some important event would happen, you would take your nice camera, and you may

01:28:23 ◼   ► or may not have artistic abilities or much training, but if you had a nice camera, you

01:28:29 ◼   ► could be a professional photographer.

01:28:31 ◼   ► And what has changed, obviously, is that in recent decades and especially recent years,

01:28:37 ◼   ► everybody has a nice camera now.

01:28:40 ◼   ► So that is no longer a differentiating factor.

01:28:43 ◼   ► Most people, like your wedding photos from 20 years ago, you could take photos that good

01:28:51 ◼   ► almost on a smartphone today.

01:28:54 ◼   ► And at least if the light is good enough, you might not be able to even tell if you

01:28:56 ◼   ► took it with a smartphone.

01:28:57 ◼   ► And if the light isn't good enough, even a very, very entry level mirrorless camera

01:29:04 ◼   ► would be able to do that kind of quality today.

01:29:07 ◼   ► So the technology is now widely democratized, available to way more people.

01:29:16 ◼   ► Almost everything is digital now, so there's a lot more simplicity there than there used

01:29:20 ◼   ► to be.

01:29:21 ◼   ► Printing is now available to almost everybody in great quality for very little money from

01:29:26 ◼   ► various online services and photo books, like what John got.

01:29:30 ◼   ► And so the stuff, the gear, the technology, that is now available to everyone.

01:29:37 ◼   ► You no longer need to hire a photographer to get somebody who has a good camera, because

01:29:43 ◼   ► chances are if you care at all, you probably have a good camera already.

01:29:47 ◼   ► But what you can't replicate is not only having another set of hands and an eye to look through

01:29:57 ◼   ► a viewfinder and click a button when everyone is actually in the frame, that it's hard for

01:30:03 ◼   ► you to take your own family photo, because if you need to be in the family photo, yeah,

01:30:08 ◼   ► you can do the whole timer on a tripod thing, as John said, but that's limited in what it

01:30:13 ◼   ► can do and not easy and everything else.

01:30:17 ◼   ► So there's the physical part, like you do need another person to operate a camera sometimes

01:30:21 ◼   ► for practicality reasons, but also a good photographer, which they aren't all, but a

01:30:27 ◼   ► good photographer has a better eye than you at taking pictures.

01:30:33 ◼   ► So it isn't just about the tech, it isn't just about having nice cameras.

01:30:37 ◼   ► A good photographer is able to capture pictures that you wouldn't have captured even if you

01:30:42 ◼   ► had all the gear in the world.

01:30:45 ◼   ► That's what a good photographer can do.

01:30:46 ◼   ► They have the eye for composition and lighting and operating the technical details in ways

01:30:53 ◼   ► you might not have thought of.

01:30:55 ◼   ► That's why really good photographers can take amazing pictures that you and I could never

01:31:01 ◼   ► take with a three-year-old iPhone.

01:31:04 ◼   ► Meanwhile, we have all these fancy cameras and better phones and we don't take pictures

01:31:10 ◼   ► that are that good.

01:31:11 ◼   ► They are, like a good photographer, not somebody who happens to own a good camera, but a good

01:31:16 ◼   ► photographer has a better eye than what most of us have.

01:31:21 ◼   ► And so you hire a good photographer when that's something that you value, whether it's for

01:31:28 ◼   ► an important occasion like a wedding or family photos, new baby, whatever else, that is when

01:31:36 ◼   ► you hire a professional.

01:31:38 ◼   ► And there is still plenty of value for that, even now that we're all carrying pretty good

01:31:43 ◼   ► cameras all the time in our pockets.

01:31:45 ◼   ► And even now when you can get, even better than that, you can get a really awesome camera

01:31:50 ◼   ► for like 600 bucks that is like a really nice, you know, you can get all that, but you still

01:31:55 ◼   ► need photographers because they know which photos to take and how to take them.

01:32:00 ◼   ► And that is something that no amount of technology will ever do for us.

01:32:03 ◼   ► I think the good camera thing is still an issue though because we all have phone cameras,

01:32:08 ◼   ► but in particular as we've discussed when, you know, talking about the fake background

01:32:12 ◼   ► blur or whatever, because nobody has standalone cameras unless you're into photography, nobody

01:32:17 ◼   ► has a camera that can actually blur the background and have a shallow depth of field on it.

01:32:21 ◼   ► So if that's the only reason you're hiring somebody, obviously you want them to also

01:32:24 ◼   ► be a good photographer, but the fact is who has, you know, a camera anywhere in their

01:32:31 ◼   ► life who's not into photography that can take a good shallow depth of field portrait

01:32:35 ◼   ► of their kid.

01:32:36 ◼   ► Most people don't.

01:32:37 ◼   ► Most people have pictures of their kids and there's pin sharp background with all their

01:32:40 ◼   ► junkie toys laying on the ground.

01:32:42 ◼   ► And so, you know, even if you had someone who wasn't a good photographer, their pictures

01:32:46 ◼   ► will at least look different than yours and like, "Ooh, well maybe not because maybe

01:32:50 ◼   ► people can't tell about the fake blur, but I can tell."

01:32:53 ◼   ► And so for me that would be a reason to hire someone with a better camera than me because

01:32:57 ◼   ► they can, you know, take pictures in more challenging conditions that will look good.

01:33:02 ◼   ► I mean, with my current camera, you're right, the difference especially if you're in a

01:33:05 ◼   ► well-lit studio or isn't that big, but I think fewer people now have good cameras than

01:33:09 ◼   ► they used to.

01:33:10 ◼   ► It used to be that, you know, smartphones didn't exist and I feel like more families

01:33:15 ◼   ► would have like a random 35 millimeter Pentax as the family camera, you know, even if they

01:33:20 ◼   ► weren't into photography just because what were the options.

01:33:23 ◼   ► And it was only, well, this is way before your time, but it was only kind of in the

01:33:25 ◼   ► eighties when, you know, these instamatic Kodak cameras with these tiny little negatives

01:33:32 ◼   ► started becoming more popular.

01:33:33 ◼   ► But before that, you know, in the sixties and seventies, you'd have a family camera

01:33:38 ◼   ► and that camera was way better than, you know, the Kodak disc camera.

01:33:43 ◼   ► Like there was a dark time for a long period and today that camera is probably about as

01:33:47 ◼   ► good, you're right, as an iPhone.

01:33:49 ◼   ► But depending on what kind of lens you had, you might have actually been able to get a

01:33:52 ◼   ► shallow depth of field picture out of one of those family Pentaxes from 1975.

01:33:56 ◼   ► And today, you know, that's not true.

01:33:58 ◼   ► Nobody has those cameras anymore except for photography nerds.

01:34:01 ◼   ► All right.

01:34:03 ◼   ► Marco Silva writes, what do you think about message apps or services for communities?

01:34:07 ◼   ► Which do you use?

01:34:08 ◼   ► Which do you like using and which grind your gears?

01:34:10 ◼   ► I'm assuming this is like discord and slack.

01:34:14 ◼   ► Is that what we're talking about here?

01:34:15 ◼   ► This is not what Marco is referring to is things like next door.

01:34:20 ◼   ► Oh, messaging app services for communities.

01:34:25 ◼   ► That's code for next door and other similar services.

01:34:30 ◼   ► Next door is a complete waste of time.

01:34:31 ◼   ► I'm on it.

01:34:32 ◼   ► It's stupid.

01:34:33 ◼   ► I didn't realize I wasn't aware of any others that are equivalent.

01:34:37 ◼   ► So that's all I got.

01:34:38 ◼   ► I am not on any of these things and I feel like I'm missing nothing of value.

01:34:44 ◼   ► That is correct.

01:34:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:34:46 ◼   ► I wish I could name the competitors, but there are multiple services that are like this.

01:34:49 ◼   ► I'm not on them either.

01:34:51 ◼   ► Here's why I'm not.

01:34:52 ◼   ► Here's why.

01:34:53 ◼   ► It's not that they all grind my gears.

01:34:54 ◼   ► I think they're all misguided in a particular way.

01:34:58 ◼   ► So people don't know what this is.

01:34:59 ◼   ► Nextdoor is like a place where you could exchange messages based on your geographic locality.

01:35:05 ◼   ► So you're not interested in what somebody in two states over has to say.

01:35:08 ◼   ► You're only interested in what's happening in your neighborhood.

01:35:11 ◼   ► And so people can post things like lost dog, rabid raccoon on the loose, construction here,

01:35:18 ◼   ► trees down on this road, whatever.

01:35:20 ◼   ► And it's all local to you.

01:35:22 ◼   ► And honestly, you can say whatever you want.

01:35:23 ◼   ► The problem with these services is I think it silos a particular set of concerns.

01:35:30 ◼   ► Nextdoor is not like Slack where it's like, "We're just a messaging thing.

01:35:32 ◼   ► You can talk about whatever the heck you want."

01:35:34 ◼   ► It's like, "No, everyone should talk about stuff that has to do with our neighborhood."

01:35:38 ◼   ► It narrows the scope to things that are happening in our neighborhood, which seems like it would

01:35:42 ◼   ► make sense.

01:35:43 ◼   ► Isn't that good to have a purpose-built channel for that?

01:35:45 ◼   ► The problem is if that's the only thing that is expected to be discussed there, it attracts

01:35:52 ◼   ► the kind of people who are unhealthily obsessed with things happening in that neighborhood.

01:35:57 ◼   ► Now, this includes all the people who are racist.

01:35:59 ◼   ► And every time someone who walks by their house whose skin tone is two shades darker

01:36:03 ◼   ► than theirs flips out about it.

01:36:05 ◼   ► So there is that whole venue.

01:36:06 ◼   ► But also the people who think the police are watching them or they're constantly worried

01:36:12 ◼   ► that someone is trying to rob their house or just general gossip.

01:36:17 ◼   ► Because the only thing that you can discuss there is stuff going on in your communities

01:36:20 ◼   ► — again, not technically.

01:36:21 ◼   ► You can probably type anything you want, but socially, that's what the thing is supposed

01:36:24 ◼   ► to be used for — the people who are the most active are the people who are the most

01:36:31 ◼   ► likely to be overly concerned, let's say, with things that are happening in their neighborhood.

01:36:37 ◼   ► So it just becomes a cesspool of all the worst instincts surrounding this, as opposed to

01:36:41 ◼   ► — and I'm going to say something nice about Facebook here — as opposed to something

01:36:44 ◼   ► like Facebook, which is like people can write about whatever they want.

01:36:47 ◼   ► They can talk about the TV show they just saw.

01:36:49 ◼   ► They can talk about the vacation they're just on.

01:36:51 ◼   ► They can argue with each other about politics.

01:36:52 ◼   ► But there's no specific topic that is expected to be discussed on Facebook or on Slack or

01:37:00 ◼   ► on Twitter, for that matter.

01:37:02 ◼   ► These sort of more open messaging platforms, those don't necessarily devolve into only

01:37:07 ◼   ► the people who are paranoid about the raccoons coming in and stealing their medicine.

01:37:12 ◼   ► That's the only thing you can talk about in Nextdoor.

01:37:14 ◼   ► So if you participate in Nextdoor, either you become one of those people or you realize

01:37:18 ◼   ► you are surrounded by those people, neither of them is a good scenario.

01:37:23 ◼   ► It's fine to be engaged with your community, but engaging with your community is a full

01:37:27 ◼   ► bandwidth type of thing.

01:37:29 ◼   ► It is not a narrow bandwidth, "Let's talk about the dark-skinned people who are walking

01:37:32 ◼   ► by my house and how they're trying to steal my packages."

01:37:35 ◼   ► It's not healthy for anybody.

01:37:37 ◼   ► I wish those services would just go away.

01:37:38 ◼   ► I think they're doing more harm than good.

01:37:40 ◼   ► Fair enough.

01:37:41 ◼   ► Finally, Mike Taffet writes, "What are your preferred themes or color schemes for Terminal?"

01:37:48 ◼   ► And I've got to look this up because I don't remember.

01:37:51 ◼   ► Pro, of course it is, because it's the most professional.

01:37:55 ◼   ► That is my preferred scheme.

01:37:57 ◼   ► When I get a new Mac, if I don't migrate, which I don't think I ever have actually migrated

01:38:02 ◼   ► from an old Mac, I will open Terminal for the first time.

01:38:05 ◼   ► It'll be blindingly white.

01:38:07 ◼   ► I will go to Preferences, click on Pro, and then I won't look at it again for years, which

01:38:11 ◼   ► is exactly what this is.

01:38:12 ◼   ► Can you describe Pro?

01:38:13 ◼   ► I don't know what that looks like.

01:38:14 ◼   ► It's black background white text.

01:38:19 ◼   ► It's one of the defaults that come with Terminal.

01:38:22 ◼   ► What color is the cursor?

01:38:23 ◼   ► Gray.

01:38:25 ◼   ► The fact that you're...

01:38:26 ◼   ► I don't even pay enough attention to "no."

01:38:29 ◼   ► I can tell as per usual I am not hypercritical.

01:38:31 ◼   ► Oh, and there's transparency in the background too.

01:38:34 ◼   ► Hmm.

01:38:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:38:36 ◼   ► If I just open the Pro window, it's mostly black, but it's mildly transparent.

01:38:41 ◼   ► Yikes.

01:38:42 ◼   ► All right, so what is the correct answer, gentlemen?

01:38:47 ◼   ► Well, in a shocking twist, I feel like you and I, Casey, should have the reversed options

01:38:54 ◼   ► here.

01:38:55 ◼   ► Mine is basic.

01:38:57 ◼   ► I am really.

01:38:58 ◼   ► I thought it was going to be Dave Matthews.

01:39:01 ◼   ► Mine is just the default.

01:39:05 ◼   ► It is the white background with black text and no transparency or anything.

01:39:11 ◼   ► I like regular white Terminal windows.

01:39:14 ◼   ► I know this is very unusual for nerds.

01:39:16 ◼   ► Usually, nerds want everything black, you know, black everywhere.

01:39:19 ◼   ► I like white.

01:39:21 ◼   ► I used to use black back in the day when I worked on Linux servers and stuff, but now

01:39:26 ◼   ► I just use white everywhere, and it's fine.

01:39:28 ◼   ► Most of my windows are light-colored backgrounds.

01:39:30 ◼   ► You know, I'm in like, I don't use dark mode in the OS.

01:39:33 ◼   ► I'm in, you know, mail and messages and Safari all the time, Xcode, all these other apps.

01:39:40 ◼   ► TextMate, I also use light background, dark text.

01:39:43 ◼   ► So I'm just, I don't get the like blindingly white thing that you said.

01:39:48 ◼   ► I don't see it that way, and it's fine.

01:39:51 ◼   ► And I will say on the font side, I was a Monaco holdout for a very long time.

01:39:57 ◼   ► I would even do the little tricks, whatever was required to make it so that even when

01:40:02 ◼   ► there was anti-aliasing in the rest of the system, that my Terminal windows and Xcode

01:40:09 ◼   ► and TextMate would never use anti-aliasing.

01:40:12 ◼   ► It would use Monaco, like pixel font.

01:40:14 ◼   ► What eventually killed that for me was retina.

01:40:18 ◼   ► When everything started going retina, there was no good way to have Monaco on a retina

01:40:23 ◼   ► screen.

01:40:24 ◼   ► So having like the fixed pixel bitmap font just never looked good on retina.

01:40:28 ◼   ► Even if you like doubled it, it just, it still didn't look good.

01:40:30 ◼   ► So I am now reluctantly a Menlo regular 11 point person in my Terminal and Xcode and everything.

01:40:38 ◼   ► - Before we move on to John, so forgive me if you said this and I just totally missed

01:40:43 ◼   ► it, but is Xcode white background as well?

01:40:46 ◼   ► Because curiously, my Xcode is, you know, whatever the default background is.

01:40:50 ◼   ► I do use Fira code, I think is the name of the font, which I quite like.

01:40:56 ◼   ► That's like a programming specific font.

01:40:58 ◼   ► Fira code, F-I-R-A code.

01:41:01 ◼   ► But my Xcode windows are white and I'm totally fine with that.

01:41:03 ◼   ► But something about Terminal windows, I need to have black.

01:41:06 ◼   ► I think because of all the time I spent on DOS, where it was, you know, a black screen

01:41:10 ◼   ► with white text, so on and so forth, well, sometimes green.

01:41:12 ◼   ► But anyway, and sometimes orange if memory serves.

01:41:16 ◼   ► But having a dark background for something that vaguely resembles DOS to my lizard brain

01:41:21 ◼   ► is I think a requirement.

01:41:22 ◼   ► Which is funny because I agree with you.

01:41:23 ◼   ► It seems like you and I would be the reverse here.

01:41:26 ◼   ► But you know, we're both conundrums.

01:41:29 ◼   ► John, what is the--

01:41:30 ◼   ► - And by the way, my Xcode is also white.

01:41:32 ◼   ► The only thing is I don't use Menlo and Xcode.

01:41:35 ◼   ► When Xcode introduced San Francisco Mono, I just went with that.

01:41:39 ◼   ► And so I just checked and I'm using SF Mono regular 12 in Xcode.

01:41:43 ◼   ► So I use Menlo regular 11 in Terminal and SF Mono 12 in Xcode.

01:41:48 ◼   ► - John, what is the actual correct answer?

01:41:52 ◼   ► - So I customize my color schemes.

01:41:54 ◼   ► I enjoy the Terminal. - Of course you do.

01:41:55 ◼   ► - It's customized.

01:41:56 ◼   ► My color scheme is creatively named John.

01:41:59 ◼   ► And I've ported that from all,

01:42:02 ◼   ► I have a bunch of schemes actually.

01:42:04 ◼   ► But John is my default one.

01:42:05 ◼   ► I've ported that from probably from, you know,

01:42:08 ◼   ► developer preview two, whenever the first time

01:42:10 ◼   ► you're allowed to make settings.

01:42:12 ◼   ► It is white background.

01:42:13 ◼   ► I think I talked about this at length on several podcasts,

01:42:16 ◼   ► but most recently on the episode of the talk show I was on,

01:42:19 ◼   ► my whole thing with the Mac is white background,

01:42:21 ◼   ► black text, because that's what printed,

01:42:24 ◼   ► the printed word looks like.

01:42:25 ◼   ► And that's what I always wanted.

01:42:26 ◼   ► All my windows, including my Terminal windows.

01:42:29 ◼   ► Monaco 9, because I am not retina,

01:42:31 ◼   ► I'm still rocking the non-NBLA as Monaco 9.

01:42:34 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:42:35 ◼   ► Or trying to.

01:42:36 ◼   ► I think I'm actually, yeah, I'm still, it's still working.

01:42:39 ◼   ► I just sent a screenshot of it.

01:42:41 ◼   ► Obviously when I go retina, just like Marco,

01:42:43 ◼   ► I will have to bail, 'cause it doesn't,

01:42:46 ◼   ► you know, the time is over.

01:42:47 ◼   ► But hey, I'm staring at a non-retina screen

01:42:49 ◼   ► and it still works for me.

01:42:50 ◼   ► The only twist I have, and it's all opaque, right,

01:42:54 ◼   ► the only twist I have in this in terms of the color scheme

01:42:57 ◼   ► is 100% red cursor.

01:42:59 ◼   ► Just 255, zero, zero.

01:43:01 ◼   ► - Why?

01:43:02 ◼   ► That's interesting.

01:43:03 ◼   ► - represent red block cursor.

01:43:03 ◼   ► I put a screenshot of my Terminal in the,

01:43:06 ◼   ► yeah, all right, so he's got his screenshot, yeah.

01:43:09 ◼   ► I don't know why I did that.

01:43:10 ◼   ► I think when I was coming up with my color scheme,

01:43:13 ◼   ► I just couldn't decide and I made it 100% red.

01:43:15 ◼   ► And like why is it a block instead of the, like the I-beam?

01:43:18 ◼   ► That's like my equivalent of Casey's DOS thing.

01:43:21 ◼   ► I think it's because the block cursors in the VT220s

01:43:25 ◼   ► in like the, in college, were block cursors.

01:43:28 ◼   ► And so I associate Terminal with Unix.

01:43:31 ◼   ► And so I'm imitating the VT cursor.

01:43:33 ◼   ► I would never make it a block cursor

01:43:34 ◼   ► in like BB edit or something.

01:43:35 ◼   ► But in Terminal, it was a block cursor

01:43:37 ◼   ► and I make it bright red and I think it looks nice.

01:43:40 ◼   ► So I do use a block cursor

01:43:42 ◼   ► because I believe it's the default.

01:43:43 ◼   ► Until this moment, I never even thought you could change it

01:43:45 ◼   ► and I don't think I will change it.

01:43:47 ◼   ► But I gotta say, I actually kind of understand the red.

01:43:50 ◼   ► Like because it does make it highly visible

01:43:53 ◼   ► so you can always spot where it is very easily on screen.

01:43:56 ◼   ► So that actually isn't that crazy of an idea.

01:43:58 ◼   ► - And I mean, why is it 100% red?

01:43:59 ◼   ► Probably 'cause I just put, you know,

01:44:01 ◼   ► hit the R slider all the way to the right at one point

01:44:03 ◼   ► and that's just what I stick with.

01:44:05 ◼   ► And the nice thing is if I ever need to like recreate it

01:44:07 ◼   ► on a new system, it's easy to get that color again.

01:44:08 ◼   ► It's not some weird like shade of taupe or something.

01:44:12 ◼   ► Anyway, that's what I do.

01:44:13 ◼   ► I'm kind of in a bind when I go full retina

01:44:16 ◼   ► of what font I'm gonna pick.

01:44:17 ◼   ► Menlo isn't a contender.

01:44:19 ◼   ► There's a bunch of, you know, SF Mono and Consolata,

01:44:22 ◼   ► Consolus, there's a million monospace fonts

01:44:24 ◼   ► that I'll have to sort of have a bake off

01:44:26 ◼   ► and see what I pick.

01:44:27 ◼   ► But on the retina computers,

01:44:29 ◼   ► - A monospace bake off.

01:44:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't even know like,

01:44:33 ◼   ► is Menlo the default in Terminal?

01:44:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think so.

01:44:36 ◼   ► - Like on my wife's computer that's retina,

01:44:38 ◼   ► like on my laptop at work, like I don't even care.

01:44:40 ◼   ► The other important thing is I do tweak the Terminal

01:44:43 ◼   ► in lots of other ways.

01:44:43 ◼   ► Like I turn off those stupid marks

01:44:45 ◼   ► and you know the marking thing?

01:44:46 ◼   ► - No. - I don't know

01:44:48 ◼   ► if you know about that.

01:44:49 ◼   ► Let me look at Casey's screenshot

01:44:50 ◼   ► to see if you have it turned on.

01:44:51 ◼   ► You probably do, like they have a thing

01:44:53 ◼   ► that's on by default, believe it or not,

01:44:55 ◼   ► in Terminal if you don't have any custom settings

01:44:57 ◼   ► that every time you type a command,

01:44:58 ◼   ► it puts a mark and the scrollbacks,

01:45:00 ◼   ► you can jump back by command at a time,

01:45:02 ◼   ► which is a cool feature.

01:45:03 ◼   ► But it puts like these little turds in the window.

01:45:05 ◼   ► - That's what all those things are.

01:45:07 ◼   ► - Oh, I know what you're thinking of.

01:45:08 ◼   ► I don't think I have that on. - Those little brackets?

01:45:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, you gotta turn those off.

01:45:11 ◼   ► That's an option.

01:45:12 ◼   ► And a bunch of other stuff,

01:45:13 ◼   ► I have like infinite scrollback.

01:45:14 ◼   ► Like I have the preferences changed a lot,

01:45:16 ◼   ► but in terms of the appearance,

01:45:17 ◼   ► those little turds are another thing

01:45:19 ◼   ► that I was sure to turn off the second they arrived.

01:45:21 ◼   ► They came like, I don't know, a couple years ago.

01:45:23 ◼   ► - Where is that setting?

01:45:26 ◼   ► - I hate the settings in Terminal.

01:45:27 ◼   ► Like if anyone who writes, who works in Terminal,

01:45:30 ◼   ► I know it's like a one person,

01:45:31 ◼   ► half of one person works in Terminal,

01:45:32 ◼   ► but if you're listening to this program,

01:45:34 ◼   ► please rethink the model of how the properties

01:45:39 ◼   ► of Terminal windows are determined

01:45:42 ◼   ► when a window is created,

01:45:44 ◼   ► and how the properties of a window are modified

01:45:48 ◼   ► once the window exists,

01:45:50 ◼   ► as contrasted with how the settings that could be used

01:45:54 ◼   ► to spawn future windows are modified.

01:45:55 ◼   ► It is such a muddled mess in Terminal.

01:45:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, it is.

01:45:58 ◼   ► - If I just see a single window,

01:45:59 ◼   ► and I wanna change just the attributes of that window,

01:46:01 ◼   ► but not the attributes of the preset

01:46:02 ◼   ► that we used to create that window,

01:46:04 ◼   ► it drives me mad.

01:46:05 ◼   ► Plus there's a bunch of other options that are in the menu.

01:46:06 ◼   ► Someone just needs to rethink that UI,

01:46:08 ◼   ► but that's never gonna happen