ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► So, a couple of days ago, I got afflicted by my iMac's newest virus, which is to say

00:00:06 ◼   ► that although it no longer shuts down willy-nilly, it will occasionally decide to not play video,

00:00:15 ◼   ► and it will instead show a perfectly green screen. I've never understood why this is.

00:00:20 ◼   ► I have never found anything I can kill or force quit or anything to kind of, you know,

00:00:26 ◼   ► get the engine sputtering again, if you will.

00:00:28 ◼   ► - No, wait, if you'll permit me for a second, is it only DRM like iTunes video, or is it

00:00:32 ◼   ► any video? - No, no, no, no, any video. Like stuff I've

00:00:34 ◼   ► taken with my GoPro, for example. - I wonder if it's like the MPEG decoder

00:00:39 ◼   ► failing somehow. - Yeah.

00:00:40 ◼   ► - 'Cause like, if you're just seeing green, it's like, this is like a placeholder that's

00:00:43 ◼   ► put here, and like, the GPU is told to render something here, right? But like, it's just

00:00:48 ◼   ► not doing it. So like, I would say you have a GPU issue in all likelihood, but possibly,

00:00:53 ◼   ► this might be software, maybe. - It could be either/or. I was also of the

00:00:57 ◼   ► impression that it might be a GPU issue, and what'll eventually happen is I'll be the first

00:01:00 ◼   ► one to get a Mac Pro of the three of us, and that'll really screw everything up. But anyway.

00:01:05 ◼   ► So I had whined about this on Twitter, as one is off to do, and somebody who I don't

00:01:10 ◼   ► have in front of me said, "Hey, have you looked into audio plugins?" Huh? And so apparently

00:01:17 ◼   ► some random stranger on the internet had said, another random stranger on the internet had

00:01:22 ◼   ► had a similar issue, but when they removed some audio plugins, it went away. And so the

00:01:28 ◼   ► only audio plugins I'm aware of that I had installed are Soundflower, which I was using

00:01:33 ◼   ► to try to capture a live Mutemath concert that I couldn't figure out how to download

00:01:37 ◼   ► using YouTube DL, which we'll talk about later, actually.

00:01:39 ◼   ► - Soundflower's a mess, go ahead. - It is a mess. It's an absolute mess. And

00:01:44 ◼   ► I also had the Audio Hijack, what is it, ACE or something, Audio Capture Engine, something

00:01:49 ◼   ► like that. So I uninstalled ACE, and more importantly, I uninstalled Soundflower. And

00:01:54 ◼   ► I'm just trying to shotgun approach, figure out if uninstalling any of these audio bits

00:01:59 ◼   ► and bobs will fix my green screen issue. - I gotta say, Tiff's iMac Pro is having a

00:02:04 ◼   ► weird issue that I don't know whether it's software or not, it seems like it probably

00:02:11 ◼   ► is when she plays Netflix video sometimes. And sometimes Logic is running, 'cause she's

00:02:17 ◼   ► now a podcast editor, and sometimes it isn't. But Logic is installed. As far as I know,

00:02:21 ◼   ► there's no weird plugins or anything. Sometimes the video playback in Netflix in the web browser

00:02:28 ◼   ► will basically run through the entire episode that she's watching in a split second, as

00:02:33 ◼   ► if it has no time restraint. So it just flies through and there's all the frames at once

00:02:37 ◼   ► and it's done instantly. Sometimes this problem has been fixed by quitting Logic. So it does

00:02:42 ◼   ► seem like maybe it's using the sound subsystem as the timing device for the video playback,

00:02:48 ◼   ► and something is wrong with the sound subsystem. And this applies whether she's using the built-in

00:02:54 ◼   ► audio or not. When it's in this mode, switching audio outputs does fix the problem for whatever

00:03:02 ◼   ► she switches it to, but when she switches it back to the built-in headphone jack, the

00:03:06 ◼   ► problem resumes. And sometimes it has happened without Logic running. So something's up,

00:03:13 ◼   ► and I have the exact same computer across the exact same room with many of the same

00:03:18 ◼   ► things plugged in, and I've never had that problem. But I also never watch Netflix in

00:03:22 ◼   ► my browser, so maybe there's something with browser video where it's doing something.

00:03:25 ◼   ► But I watch YouTube sometimes, and that never has a problem.

00:03:28 ◼   ► - Has she tried Chrome instead of Safari?

00:03:29 ◼   ► - Why would I do that?

00:03:31 ◼   ► - To see if it's the browser.

00:03:33 ◼   ► - But Chrome is gross. - You're just watching video. It's gonna

00:03:36 ◼   ► be a video window. It's like the first thing I would try is a different browser.

00:03:41 ◼   ► - I think we actually did try Chrome, and I think it didn't happen there. But that's

00:03:45 ◼   ► probably because Chrome is doing everything using the most CPU possible and ignoring all

00:03:49 ◼   ► the hardware. That's my best guess.

00:03:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, it's plugged into the wall. What do you care?

00:03:52 ◼   ► - I mean, I care a little bit about fan noise, performance, efficiency. I mean, there's some

00:03:57 ◼   ► caring. Also, Chrome is just gross.

00:04:00 ◼   ► - That's the truth. I hope that part doesn't make the show, because we're gonna get so

00:04:04 ◼   ► much email, even though you're right.

00:04:08 ◼   ► - I do have some video follow-up. I lost my first video today.

00:04:13 ◼   ► - Did you go to try to find it?

00:04:15 ◼   ► - So I wanted to do a quick video on how I roast coffee. Just quick, like, here's how

00:04:19 ◼   ► I do it. You can do it if you want. And I set up my Sony. So I don't know if I mentioned

00:04:25 ◼   ► I got a Sony A7 III to be like my video camera.

00:04:30 ◼   ► - Of course you did.

00:04:31 ◼   ► - But anyway, well, it's good. But anyway, so I set it up, and I was all ready to go.

00:04:36 ◼   ► And roasting coffee takes about 25 minutes, but I kept having to, like, pause and set

00:04:41 ◼   ► up again and everything. So anyway, so I was recording for probably about 40 minutes or

00:04:45 ◼   ► so. And I get to the end. Okay, fine. I go look at the camera to stop the recording,

00:04:52 ◼   ► and it doesn't look like it's recording.

00:04:54 ◼   ► - Whoops.

00:04:55 ◼   ► - And I was like, oh, no. I forgot to hit record that whole time, 40 minutes later,

00:05:01 ◼   ► after doing an entire coffee roast. So you gotta be kidding me. Like, how could I have

00:05:06 ◼   ► made that mistake? I decided, you know what, let me pull the card out and see if anything's

00:05:11 ◼   ► there anyway. I mean, can I save this video? Like, so I plug in the card, and there is

00:05:17 ◼   ► a 12 gig file.

00:05:18 ◼   ► - Oh, god.

00:05:19 ◼   ► - That is a few seconds less than 30 minutes exactly. And I thought, hmm. So I looked up,

00:05:26 ◼   ► is there a video length limit on Sony A7 series cameras? Turns out, yes there is. It's 30

00:05:34 ◼   ► minutes long.

00:05:35 ◼   ► - What?

00:05:36 ◼   ► - I did indeed press record, thank you very much. I had the first 30 minutes, but since

00:05:41 ◼   ► it was like a 40-something minute video, and, you know, like, the last 12 minutes of it

00:05:45 ◼   ► are like the end of a coffee roast, I can't really do that over again very easily without

00:05:49 ◼   ► doing a whole thing over again, and I didn't have time for that today, then I have to redo

00:05:54 ◼   ► this whole video. Because Sony cameras have this fairly poorly documented limit of 30

00:06:00 ◼   ► minutes for a video clip, and then it just stops. Doesn't, like, start a new one, maybe.

00:06:06 ◼   ► Like, it wasn't hitting, like, a file system limit, like the way old ones would, like with

00:06:10 ◼   ► the 4 gig limit. It wasn't hitting that, like, it's just 30 minutes and it just stops

00:06:14 ◼   ► without warning. So, I'm annoyed. I know, like, some people in chat are saying, like,

00:06:21 ◼   ► for heat reasons on the sensor. We've had full-frame sensors for a very long time. We've

00:06:27 ◼   ► had 4K video now for a pretty long time, like it's not, this isn't like the first camera

00:06:32 ◼   ► that can shoot 4K 30, like this is not a very new thing. I don't think we should have limits

00:06:39 ◼   ► like this for heat reasons anymore, that seems unreasonable to me. But anyway, I'm annoyed

00:06:44 ◼   ► but in the future, I guess I'll get one of those, like, large kitchen timers that you

00:06:51 ◼   ► see stuck to the wall behind people's stoves and just set it to 30 minutes and put it on

00:06:55 ◼   ► the front of the camera, like facing me. So, just every time I hit record, hit that so

00:07:00 ◼   ► I can see and make sure, like, I'm not actually, you know, accidentally hitting that buffer.

00:07:04 ◼   ► But it's very annoying.

00:07:05 ◼   ► I suppose I'll find this out eventually, but what exactly are you recording for 30 minutes

00:07:12 ◼   ► while coffee beans roast? I mean, are you in front of the camera during those 30 minutes

00:07:16 ◼   ► or are you literally pointing your camera at coffee beans inside a contraption that

00:07:20 ◼   ► is making them hot for 30 minutes?

00:07:22 ◼   ► It was a frame of me, me next to the coffee roaster as it's running. And my idea was,

00:07:28 ◼   ► I was shooting a bunch of b-roll with my iPhone and my idea was I would use that track as

00:07:34 ◼   ► the master track to sync everything to. But I wouldn't actually include all 40 minutes

00:07:39 ◼   ► in the finished video. The finished video would be like 10 or 12 minutes probably and

00:07:42 ◼   ► I'd just edit out chunks of it when not much was happening.

00:07:45 ◼   ► Not much is happening the entire time coffee beans are roasting as far as I'm concerned.

00:07:49 ◼   ► Yep, they're still roasting. Let me check again. Roasting.

00:07:52 ◼   ► I use the rest of the time to explain things like why I roast, why you might want to consider

00:07:58 ◼   ► roasting, you know, what's going on and what you need to consider, like, stuff like that.

00:08:02 ◼   ► Like, I use the time wisely, thank you very much.

00:08:04 ◼   ► All right, I mean, I'm sure I'll see you in the edited video and just, I'm just thinking,

00:08:08 ◼   ► you know, roll that beautiful bean footage. Nice. What is that recipe anyway? Does Duke

00:08:15 ◼   ► still have it? Anyway, you know, it's funny to me hearing you talk about your Sony cameras

00:08:20 ◼   ► because having only held one of these beloved Sony cameras for like five minutes in my life,

00:08:27 ◼   ► it seems to me like, and I can't think of an analogy that's just right for this, but

00:08:31 ◼   ► it seems to me like the Sony cameras are wonderful as long as you can get past the asterisk,

00:08:40 ◼   ► the double asterisk, the dagger, double dagger, and the seven other things that make them

00:08:44 ◼   ► freaking terrible. What are all the asterisks?

00:08:47 ◼   ► Honestly, I have found very few things to complain about, and that's saying a lot, but

00:08:52 ◼   ► this 30-minute limit just bit me in the butt today. But, like, you know, honestly, of my

00:08:56 ◼   ► time using Sony cameras, like, there have been some that have flaws, like the A7R II

00:09:02 ◼   ► that I had was incredibly sluggish to render its files and to be able to preview what it

00:09:08 ◼   ► shot. The RX1, the first generation RX1 that I had, had an absolutely terrible autofocus

00:09:15 ◼   ► engine that was very, very slow because it was contrast only and everything. So, you

00:09:19 ◼   ► know, there were some issues here and there, but the modern ones, like the, basically like

00:09:23 ◼   ► the three generation, the A7 III and the A7R III, got rid of all the previous issues that

00:09:28 ◼   ► the other ones had and pretty much brought no new ones as far as I'm aware. So they're

00:09:32 ◼   ► just awesome.

00:09:33 ◼   ► Wasn't one of them, like, you had four shots before the battery ran out or something like

00:09:38 ◼   ► that? I mean, I'm obviously exaggerating.

00:09:39 ◼   ► That was the A7R II and actually the RX1. Yeah, those, I forgot, those had awful battery

00:09:43 ◼   ► life, but the three series fixed that pretty well, too.

00:09:47 ◼   ► I guess my info's out of date. I feel like I've heard both you and, to a lesser degree,

00:09:52 ◼   ► been saying, "Oh, I love this camera so much," except this, that, and the other thing, but

00:09:56 ◼   ► I must be making it up.

00:09:58 ◼   ► Well, look, I mean, if you don't know the shortcomings of your camera, you're not using

00:10:00 ◼   ► your camera enough. Like, every camera has some kind of shortcoming or thing you wish

00:10:04 ◼   ► was different. You know, that's just the reality of complex products like this that have complex

00:10:11 ◼   ► interfaces, complex needs, where no two customers' needs or preferences are the same. You know,

00:10:16 ◼   ► you're never going to be, it's like to-do lists. You're never going to be satisfied

00:10:19 ◼   ► with whatever you're using.

00:10:20 ◼   ► Sure. I can't believe Casey didn't read the manual for you and find out there was

00:10:24 ◼   ► a 30-minute video recording limit.

00:10:29 ◼   ► The difference is is that I was going to drive the M5 for at least a small stretch of time,

00:10:34 ◼   ► and the likelihood that I'm going to be taking more than maybe three pictures with any of

00:10:37 ◼   ► Marco's 16 cameras is extremely unlikely.

00:10:40 ◼   ► You can just buy, underscore, as the same camera. So you either buy his or Marco's

00:10:44 ◼   ► when the first one gets bored with it.

00:10:46 ◼   ► You know, it's funny you bring that up. I thought a lot about should I go like full

00:10:51 ◼   ► frame or something, and the immediate answer to my question is no, because I'm too cheap.

00:10:57 ◼   ► But I wondered exactly that, like when Marco inevitably sells off all of these via Twitter,

00:11:03 ◼   ► you know, for reasonable prices.

00:11:05 ◼   ► Or underscore. He's closer.

00:11:06 ◼   ► Or underscore. But the problem is, even if I can get a body for, you know, $500,000,

00:11:13 ◼   ► whatever the crap these bodies, I knew they were a lot more than that.

00:11:16 ◼   ► I'm saying, you know, if I can get a secondhand one from Marco or underscore for, you know,

00:11:20 ◼   ► several hundred to a thousand dollars, I'm still going to have to spend thousands of

00:11:23 ◼   ► dollars on lenses.

00:11:24 ◼   ► Even if I, and I only have two lenses.

00:11:26 ◼   ► Nah, I would.

00:11:27 ◼   ► One thousand dollars in lenses. It'd be fine.

00:11:29 ◼   ► Yeah, so I actually got with the A7 III, so I have, I still have my Sony lenses, my 35

00:11:36 ◼   ► f/2.8 and the 55 1.8. Those are both amazing primes.

00:11:41 ◼   ► I didn't put either of those on the video camera because I didn't want to have to

00:11:44 ◼   ► like detach them and I wanted to use them with my still camera.

00:11:46 ◼   ► So the video camera, they had a deal.

00:11:48 ◼   ► It was something like $1,900 if it was body only, but it was like $2,150 or $2,200 if

00:11:57 ◼   ► you got it with the kit zoom.

00:11:58 ◼   ► And I was like, that's a pretty cheap price.

00:12:00 ◼   ► And the kit zoom actually reviewed pretty well.

00:12:02 ◼   ► It's not bad.

00:12:03 ◼   ► Like, it's not, you know, it isn't going to be the sharpest lens in the world for

00:12:06 ◼   ► like tack sharp photos, but for video, it's totally fine.

00:12:09 ◼   ► And you know, so for what you'd be doing, which would be mostly video with it, you know,

00:12:14 ◼   ► the cheap kit zoom is fine.

00:12:16 ◼   ► And you know, I wouldn't say that, you know, easily or lightly, but yeah, it's totally

00:12:21 ◼   ► fine.

00:12:22 ◼   ► Like again, if you're shooting like, you know, photos, I would suggest a better lens.

00:12:26 ◼   ► Well, right.

00:12:27 ◼   ► I wouldn't even say you need to spend thousands.

00:12:29 ◼   ► Like each of the primes I mentioned is I think a little bit under a thousand and I wouldn't

00:12:35 ◼   ► say you necessarily need both of them.

00:12:37 ◼   ► Well, so for my Micro Four Thirds camera, I actually just upgraded the body, but I kept

00:12:41 ◼   ► the same lenses and I have, I don't remember what they are, but I have a prime and a zoom.

00:12:46 ◼   ► I can't remember the details off the top of my head, but each of them was like seven,

00:12:50 ◼   ► between 700 and a thousand dollars.

00:12:52 ◼   ► Yeah, it's about right for a good prime.

00:12:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:54 ◼   ► So I'm like two grand into lenses on this thing.

00:12:56 ◼   ► And granted I've had it for four years.

00:12:58 ◼   ► Well, the, the Micro Four Thirds system I've had for four years now.

00:13:02 ◼   ► So I shouldn't really complain about the money I've spent on these lenses, but if I

00:13:05 ◼   ► were to go and get one of these Sonys, it would, I presumably would want it to be my

00:13:10 ◼   ► everything camera in the same way that the Olympus is my everything camera.

00:13:14 ◼   ► So I would not only be using it for video, but also for stills of the family.

00:13:17 ◼   ► And one of the places that the Olympus falls down, or at least the prior version, I haven't

00:13:20 ◼   ► really tried the new version in this situation yet, but it's low light.

00:13:24 ◼   ► Low light on my Micro Four Thirds, it's okay, but it is by no means anywhere near the like

00:13:31 ◼   ► synthetic light that the Sony just invents somehow by being full frame, I guess.

00:13:36 ◼   ► And so one of the, one of the reasons, one of the things I've been thinking about is

00:13:39 ◼   ► if I were to really just go all in on a whole new camera setup, should I do, you know, should

00:13:44 ◼   ► I pull a Marco slash Steven slash underscore and just follow in your footsteps.

00:13:48 ◼   ► But I'm too darn cheap for the body to begin with.

00:13:50 ◼   ► And even if I got the body, I don't want to spend another two grand on lenses when I have

00:13:53 ◼   ► two perfectly good lenses that are for a completely different camera system already here.

00:13:58 ◼   ► And I know that that's just the way this game is played and I'll either need to get over

00:14:01 ◼   ► it or not, but that's, that's one of the things that's hanging me up.

00:14:05 ◼   ► Hey, so I'd like to do a little bit more follow up.

00:14:08 ◼   ► I have a product review mostly from Arco.

00:14:11 ◼   ► I have tried your other most favorite product in the whole wide world.

00:14:16 ◼   ► I'm trying to think of what that might be.

00:14:19 ◼   ► AeroPress?

00:14:20 ◼   ► No, not an AeroPress.

00:14:21 ◼   ► Don't be ridiculous.

00:14:22 ◼   ► Yeah, right.

00:14:23 ◼   ► Let's not get too crazy.

00:14:24 ◼   ► That's his other favorite product though.

00:14:25 ◼   ► That's probably accurate.

00:14:26 ◼   ► It is not technology related, but it is, but an AeroPress is close-ish to what I'm thinking of.

00:14:32 ◼   ► The Patagonia Micro Puff Hoodie?

00:14:34 ◼   ► No.

00:14:35 ◼   ► I'm telling you, those things are amazing.

00:14:37 ◼   ► It's a consumable as in not...

00:14:38 ◼   ► I mean, eventually it will be consumed.

00:14:41 ◼   ► Fair.

00:14:42 ◼   ► By the earth.

00:14:43 ◼   ► It is something that I put inside of my body.

00:14:46 ◼   ► Huh.

00:14:47 ◼   ► That's not coffee.

00:14:48 ◼   ► No.

00:14:49 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:14:50 ◼   ► Beamster cheese?

00:14:52 ◼   ► That's real good.

00:14:53 ◼   ► No, it is not something...

00:14:54 ◼   ► One of those weird skunky beers Marco likes?

00:14:56 ◼   ► No, it is not something I wanted to put in my body.

00:14:58 ◼   ► It was because of necessity, my friends.

00:15:00 ◼   ► Allergy shots?

00:15:01 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:15:02 ◼   ► Oh, Fisherman's Friend.

00:15:03 ◼   ► Fisherman's Friend.

00:15:04 ◼   ► I have finally tried Fisherman's Friend, and I would like to provide a review for you right

00:15:09 ◼   ► now.

00:15:10 ◼   ► I wouldn't say that's Marco's favorite thing.

00:15:12 ◼   ► He turns to it in his time of need.

00:15:14 ◼   ► I think if he wasn't congested, it's not like he'd be like, "You know what I want?

00:15:18 ◼   ► Some Fisherman's Friend."

00:15:19 ◼   ► Are we doing some foley work?

00:15:20 ◼   ► I can do that too.

00:15:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:22 ◼   ► So I've got my Fisherman's Friend.

00:15:24 ◼   ► I have to tell you, these taste like shit.

00:15:26 ◼   ► Yep.

00:15:27 ◼   ► Agreed.

00:15:28 ◼   ► And the mouthfeel is even worse.

00:15:31 ◼   ► And part of the problem is...

00:15:32 ◼   ► I don't know about that.

00:15:33 ◼   ► Part of the problem is I grew up on Luden's cough candy, which tastes delicious, but does

00:15:39 ◼   ► absolutely nothing to help a sore throat.

00:15:41 ◼   ► But Declan has brought home something that has now infected the entire family, and below,

00:15:45 ◼   ► I needed to do something to fix a sore throat.

00:15:49 ◼   ► And I thought to myself, "Self, several months ago, you got Fisherman's Friend because not

00:15:53 ◼   ► only did Marco insist that it's great, but my real life...

00:15:57 ◼   ► Well, not that you're my real life friend, but you know what I mean?

00:15:59 ◼   ► My outside of podcasting friend, Stee, had recommended it as well.

00:16:03 ◼   ► And so I thought, "Oh, I should try Fisherman's Friend."

00:16:06 ◼   ► They do work.

00:16:08 ◼   ► They do work, but I am miserable while I'm consuming it.

00:16:12 ◼   ► It is not.

00:16:13 ◼   ► Do they work by distracting you from your sore throat with a disgusting taste?

00:16:16 ◼   ► Maybe that's what it is.

00:16:19 ◼   ► I'm not sure.

00:16:21 ◼   ► But I just thought I'd provide the quick product review for you, Marco, that they get the Casey

00:16:26 ◼   ► stamp of approval in the sense that they do what they say they are setting out to do,

00:16:31 ◼   ► which is to make your throat not feel like it's on fire, but not an enjoyable experience

00:16:36 ◼   ► to get to that point.

00:16:37 ◼   ► Yes.

00:16:38 ◼   ► I mean, first of all, I agree with you.

00:16:40 ◼   ► When you first try these, they do indeed taste horrendous, which I believe I said in my initial

00:16:46 ◼   ► review.

00:16:47 ◼   ► You probably did.

00:16:48 ◼   ► But I'm not used to it.

00:16:49 ◼   ► Now that I've probably consumed like 400 of these things over the last three winters of

00:16:53 ◼   ► sick children, it does taste horrible the first 200 or 300 that you try.

00:16:58 ◼   ► But after that, you'll get there.

00:17:00 ◼   ► After that, then it's fine.

00:17:01 ◼   ► It's totally fine.

00:17:02 ◼   ► You barely even notice.

00:17:03 ◼   ► It just tastes like a mint.

00:17:04 ◼   ► It's not like fish.

00:17:05 ◼   ► Yeah, right.

00:17:06 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:17:07 ◼   ► All right.

00:17:08 ◼   ► And while we're doing the Casey and Marco corner, can you give me an update on your

00:17:12 ◼   ► car?

00:17:13 ◼   ► Is there an update on your car?

00:17:14 ◼   ► What's going on there?

00:17:15 ◼   ► There is an update.

00:17:16 ◼   ► It's not done yet, but things have happened.

00:17:19 ◼   ► So I had two problems that we mentioned last week's After Show.

00:17:24 ◼   ► Number one was that Tesla had not canceled my lease when they offered to renew it early.

00:17:28 ◼   ► They left the old one going.

00:17:29 ◼   ► And so I was being billed for a car I no longer had.

00:17:33 ◼   ► That was fun.

00:17:34 ◼   ► That has been partly resolved.

00:17:37 ◼   ► They did indeed send a check that, well, it hasn't cleared yet, but they did indeed send

00:17:42 ◼   ► a check that I deposited yesterday for the parts of the payment that I have paid already,

00:17:48 ◼   ► but not for the $5,000 bill that I got.

00:17:52 ◼   ► I asked, and allegedly they have cleared that bill with the bank, and the bank should process

00:17:55 ◼   ► it within a week.

00:17:56 ◼   ► So ask me again next week.

00:17:58 ◼   ► I called the bank yesterday, and they hadn't yet seen this, but oh well.

00:18:02 ◼   ► Secondly, they sent a mobile tech out to my house, which is literally what it sounds like.

00:18:06 ◼   ► It is a person who can service the car in a van.

00:18:09 ◼   ► And so they drive to your house and service it at your house instead of at the very, very

00:18:13 ◼   ► crowded Tesla service center.

00:18:15 ◼   ► Mobile services existed for a while.

00:18:17 ◼   ► I know our friend Underscore has used it before.

00:18:19 ◼   ► I had never been offered it, but for this problem, I was offered it.

00:18:23 ◼   ► So that was really nice.

00:18:24 ◼   ► They sent a tech out to replace my yellow ring screen, and it is now replaced.

00:18:29 ◼   ► It is fixed.

00:18:30 ◼   ► The guy was super nice.

00:18:32 ◼   ► And that problem is gone.

00:18:34 ◼   ► So I really, I could tell based on some comments that the various people made that part of

00:18:43 ◼   ► the reason that this was being fast tracked was because of me complaining on the podcast

00:18:48 ◼   ► and on Twitter.

00:18:49 ◼   ► - Nice.

00:18:50 ◼   ► - And I feel a little mixed about that.

00:18:55 ◼   ► Normally I'm fortunate enough to have a large following in these places, and so I kind of

00:19:01 ◼   ► knew that I was increasing my chances of getting it fixed by going public with it.

00:19:06 ◼   ► And so normally I wouldn't do that kind of thing lightly.

00:19:10 ◼   ► Like I don't like to just complain to companies in public in that way.

00:19:14 ◼   ► But because I had gone through the official channels for like two months and gotten nowhere,

00:19:19 ◼   ► I felt like I was at the end of my rope.

00:19:21 ◼   ► And so I was like, all right, fine.

00:19:22 ◼   ► I'm gonna go public.

00:19:23 ◼   ► I'm gonna push that button.

00:19:24 ◼   ► I'm gonna use it.

00:19:26 ◼   ► And I don't feel great that that's why it is getting fixed.

00:19:32 ◼   ► But the reality is it is getting fixed, and I'm happy about that.

00:19:35 ◼   ► And I just, I hope they're right.

00:19:37 ◼   ► I hope the bank thing is done.

00:19:39 ◼   ► And when I call the bank in five or six days, I really hope they say this is resolved.

00:19:45 ◼   ► Because then I can finally complete this project.

00:19:48 ◼   ► Like I hate having things hanging over me.

00:19:50 ◼   ► You know, like undone projects.

00:19:52 ◼   ► I have this paper on my desk that's been on my desk for three months.

00:19:56 ◼   ► I'm just like, I want to get this done.

00:19:58 ◼   ► I just want to close this out and be done with it so I can get back to not only enjoying

00:20:04 ◼   ► this car that I love, but literally anything else in my life.

00:20:09 ◼   ► - That is something else.

00:20:10 ◼   ► I understand what you're saying about not wanting to go nuclear and leverage both Twitter

00:20:15 ◼   ► and the podcast.

00:20:16 ◼   ► But I think you did right by them and gave them more than enough time to resolve these

00:20:22 ◼   ► issues as expediently as possible.

00:20:25 ◼   ► And they did not take you up on any of your offers to do that.

00:20:29 ◼   ► So I think it's a good sign that you feel guilty, but you should not feel guilty.

00:20:35 ◼   ► I think you're fine on this.

00:20:37 ◼   ► - I would feel even angrier if this is the only way a problem got resolved.

00:20:42 ◼   ► Because it's almost like, I would prefer it if the status quo of just like slowly over

00:20:48 ◼   ► the course of six months to a year the problem was fixed and I would complain that this company

00:20:52 ◼   ► is terrible and has bad service.

00:20:53 ◼   ► But it's almost worse to me than like, oh, oh well, there's some bad PR.

00:20:57 ◼   ► Oh, now we'll fix it.

00:20:58 ◼   ► Because that shows that they had the ability to fix it before, but didn't care enough to.

00:21:02 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:21:03 ◼   ► It's like worse.

00:21:04 ◼   ► The whole time I'd be saying, what about people who don't have podcasts?

00:21:08 ◼   ► Like this doesn't help you be a better company.

00:21:11 ◼   ► You think this does, you're like, we're addressing the PR problem.

00:21:14 ◼   ► We're a good service company.

00:21:15 ◼   ► See, no, this is the exact opposite.

00:21:17 ◼   ► A good service company does not need you to complain about it on a podcast.

00:21:20 ◼   ► It just makes me angry.

00:21:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, like I shouldn't have had to do any of this.

00:21:25 ◼   ► - And they shouldn't be able to quickly solve your problem because you're on a podcast.

00:21:29 ◼   ► It shows that the problem was just like, this could have happened at any point.

00:21:34 ◼   ► Obviously there's not tremendous costs to them.

00:21:36 ◼   ► Just do it.

00:21:37 ◼   ► Just do it when you were asked two months ago.

00:21:39 ◼   ► How long can we let this go until we absolutely have to do it?

00:21:42 ◼   ► Let's continue to do nothing and be incompetent.

00:21:44 ◼   ► Let's go for a little bit longer.

00:21:46 ◼   ► - Ay yay yay.

00:21:47 ◼   ► All right, and then we also have feedback, since we're in the Tesla section now, we had

00:21:50 ◼   ► feedback from David Griffin about your mystery box in your, is it your frunk or your trunk?

00:21:56 ◼   ► It's your frunk, right?

00:21:57 ◼   ► - It's in the trunk.

00:21:58 ◼   ► It's like, normally the trunk has, it has like these two kind of support beams that

00:22:02 ◼   ► come straight back and then on either side of them, between them and the actual outer

00:22:07 ◼   ► edge of the car, on the left and right, they're like these little cubbies and that you can

00:22:10 ◼   ► put stuff in.

00:22:11 ◼   ► Well, on the new car, one of those cubbies, the right one, is just gone.

00:22:15 ◼   ► It's replaced by this giant enclosure that seems to have no openings and it's just space

00:22:19 ◼   ► that is used by the car for car things.

00:22:22 ◼   ► And I had speculated, I had asked last time during that big Tesla rant, I'm like, hey,

00:22:25 ◼   ► by the way, my new car has this thing, the old car didn't.

00:22:28 ◼   ► I can't figure out what it is.

00:22:30 ◼   ► I've searched the internet.

00:22:31 ◼   ► No one seems to know.

00:22:32 ◼   ► If anyone knows out there what this thing is taking up space in my trunk for, I'm just

00:22:37 ◼   ► curious.

00:22:38 ◼   ► Like, I just, I really just want to know.

00:22:39 ◼   ► Like I have about like, you know, three square feet less of trunk space.

00:22:43 ◼   ► I just kind of want to know why.

00:22:45 ◼   ► And yeah, so apparently it is a subwoofer or a bass box, whatever that means.

00:22:51 ◼   ► Thanks to a listener, Dave Griffin, who has given us lots of good Tesla info over the

00:22:55 ◼   ► years.

00:22:56 ◼   ► So yeah, basically like I, I mentioned one of the reasons that the new ones are more

00:23:00 ◼   ► expensive is that premium sound is now required.

00:23:04 ◼   ► It's just now bundled in before it was an option and I didn't take the option before,

00:23:10 ◼   ► which is weird for me, but I mostly listen to podcasts and so I didn't think it was worth

00:23:13 ◼   ► the, you know, a couple thousand dollar upgrade on the last car.

00:23:16 ◼   ► But this car, you're forced to get it because they wanted to drive the prices up, kind of

00:23:20 ◼   ► very Apple-like.

00:23:22 ◼   ► And so apparently I'm forced to both pay more and have a little bit less trunk space with

00:23:26 ◼   ► the new car.

00:23:27 ◼   ► Neat.

00:23:28 ◼   ► Still love the car, but if that was an option, I would have unchecked it.

00:23:31 ◼   ► Yeah, it's fair.

00:23:32 ◼   ► Speaking of frunks, we got a little bit of a follow-up from i3 owners and I'm sure Marker

00:23:38 ◼   ► read through all of it about his potential purchase on i3, but I read through most of

00:23:42 ◼   ► it and the one thing that struck me, the one tidbit that struck me, and I don't know if

00:23:45 ◼   ► this is true because you just heard it from one person, is that this person mentioned

00:23:49 ◼   ► offhand, "By the way, the frunk on the i3 is not watertight."

00:23:53 ◼   ► Yeah, I actually, I saw that in a couple of the video reviews that it basically, it's

00:23:58 ◼   ► more like a hood in like, you know, like if you open up your hood of your regular car,

00:24:04 ◼   ► you might see like leaves and crap stuck in there and it's because most hoods are not

00:24:08 ◼   ► watertight either.

00:24:09 ◼   ► You know, in extreme cases, stuff can get in there.

00:24:13 ◼   ► And so yeah, apparently the frunk of the i3 works the same way.

00:24:16 ◼   ► That it's basically like a car hood and so you can keep stuff in it, but there's not

00:24:21 ◼   ► a lot of things you can keep in there because they can get wet or...

00:24:26 ◼   ► If you live in California and it never rains or something.

00:24:28 ◼   ► Well, I mean you could keep like, I don't know, like a first aid kit if it's in like

00:24:33 ◼   ► a waterproof box or something.

00:24:35 ◼   ► I don't know, there's stuff you can keep in there.

00:24:37 ◼   ► It just seems terrible.

00:24:38 ◼   ► Like yeah, the hood of a car, yeah, that's where the engine is.

00:24:41 ◼   ► Like lots of air needs to get in there and stuff to cool the engine.

00:24:43 ◼   ► If you have a frunk, make it watertight.

00:24:45 ◼   ► Like I don't understand that at all.

00:24:47 ◼   ► Yeah, it definitely seems like an odd choice, especially because like this wasn't a retrofit

00:24:52 ◼   ► of an old gas car that they just kind of made electric.

00:24:56 ◼   ► They made the whole thing from scratch, right?

00:24:58 ◼   ► Yeah, like it's a whole new design.

00:25:00 ◼   ► So it is kind of weird that they chose that.

00:25:03 ◼   ► I'm sure they had a good reason.

00:25:04 ◼   ► Maybe it was for like, the weight would seal it up all weird.

00:25:09 ◼   ► Who knows what the reason is?

00:25:11 ◼   ► But it is an odd omission to have a frunk in a designed from scratch electric car that

00:25:16 ◼   ► lets water in so you can't really actually keep a lot of things in there.

00:25:20 ◼   ► Yeah, it's not a choice.

00:25:22 ◼   ► Speaking of trunks, we have more trunk-related follow-up, it just occurred to me.

00:25:25 ◼   ► Accidental Trunk Podcast.

00:25:26 ◼   ► Yeah, John, I really enjoyed your tear, I think it was over the weekend, going through

00:25:32 ◼   ► the differences between your Accord and the brand new Accord.

00:25:36 ◼   ► And one of the things you lamented was the way in which the Accord trunk, the machinery

00:25:42 ◼   ► if you will, the mounts that let the trunk open and close, intrude upon the space within

00:25:48 ◼   ► the trunk cavity.

00:25:50 ◼   ► And there are terms for this which I've already forgotten, don't really care, doesn't matter.

00:25:52 ◼   ► But I had pointed out to you that both of my cars are superior in that we have shocks

00:26:00 ◼   ► on both of our tailgates and they do not impede any of the interior space.

00:26:04 ◼   ► So I would like you, John, to acknowledge that my cars are superior to your piece of

00:26:10 ◼   ► crap.

00:26:11 ◼   ► You can't have a gooseneck on a hatchback, like it physically doesn't work.

00:26:15 ◼   ► Doesn't matter, doesn't matter.

00:26:16 ◼   ► Doesn't make any sense.

00:26:17 ◼   ► Yeah, it's going to be hinged to your roof.

00:26:20 ◼   ► No, you do not get any extra points because they're hatchbacks.

00:26:23 ◼   ► Come on, dad!

00:26:24 ◼   ► This is about trunks, you don't even have trunks because you don't own cars.

00:26:29 ◼   ► You know, I try so hard, ladies and gentlemen.

00:26:31 ◼   ► Has anyone ever done a gooseneck on a hatchback?

00:26:33 ◼   ► I don't think I've ever seen one.

00:26:35 ◼   ► All kidding aside, that would be monstrous and in a not good way.

00:26:39 ◼   ► Physically, maybe you could pull it off.

00:26:41 ◼   ► I don't think the roof is like structural enough to, I don't know.

00:26:45 ◼   ► It would be madness.

00:26:46 ◼   ► I got to say, I'm a hatchback convert.

00:26:49 ◼   ► Now that I've had the S for a couple years, man, I love it.

00:26:54 ◼   ► When I was all mad at Tesla, I was thinking, what if I just drive this car back up to the

00:26:57 ◼   ► lot and say, screw you, I'm out.

00:26:59 ◼   ► Fix us yourself and just leave.

00:27:02 ◼   ► What would I get instead of this?

00:27:05 ◼   ► And I was thinking, I was looking through the options and I'm like, I don't want, in

00:27:08 ◼   ► John Prolinz, I want a car-shaped car.

00:27:10 ◼   ► That eliminates everything now.

00:27:12 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:27:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:14 ◼   ► I don't want a mini SUV, I don't want a regular SUV, I don't want a hatch, like a hot hatch-shaped

00:27:20 ◼   ► car like Casey's, and I don't want a wagon.

00:27:22 ◼   ► And so I want basically like a sedan that works like a hatchback.

00:27:27 ◼   ► And there are a few.

00:27:28 ◼   ► A Panamera.

00:27:29 ◼   ► Yeah, there's the Panamera, there's the A7.

00:27:30 ◼   ► A7.

00:27:31 ◼   ► But that's about it.

00:27:32 ◼   ► Like, there's not a lot of other ones.

00:27:34 ◼   ► And so I did think, I was like, I guess I would probably look at the A7 first.

00:27:39 ◼   ► But it's not nearly as big.

00:27:41 ◼   ► Like, it doesn't have nearly as much space.

00:27:43 ◼   ► I have seen one before.

00:27:44 ◼   ► I haven't driven one, but I have seen them in a showroom.

00:27:46 ◼   ► And I'm like, man, I just, everything else, like going back to a regular trunk would feel

00:27:52 ◼   ► like going back in time.

00:27:53 ◼   ► It would feel like a step back.

00:27:54 ◼   ► Like I'm so spoiled by how awesome my giant hatchback is with all of its cargo capacity

00:28:01 ◼   ► without looking like a shaped vehicle I don't want, that I'm kind of spoiled by it.

00:28:06 ◼   ► You know, we're going to get feedback about people who are grumpy, from people who are

00:28:10 ◼   ► grumpy that this is not in the after show.

00:28:12 ◼   ► But you know what?

00:28:13 ◼   ► I love that CMF just pointed out in the chat, the BMW GT series, which literally Tif owns

00:28:20 ◼   ► one.

00:28:21 ◼   ► It's parked next to my car every day.

00:28:22 ◼   ► And I didn't think about that in the list of cars.

00:28:25 ◼   ► And it's her second one.

00:28:26 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's her second one.

00:28:28 ◼   ► And for some reason, I didn't think of that in the list of car-shaped cars that have hatchbacks.

00:28:32 ◼   ► Well, as big as his ugly as Sin, that's why.

00:28:34 ◼   ► It's not that bad.

00:28:35 ◼   ► Although I think the Tesla's a lot nicer.

00:28:37 ◼   ► Yes.

00:28:38 ◼   ► It's not great.

00:28:39 ◼   ► Oh, man, that is funny.

00:28:41 ◼   ► The five is way worse than the three.

00:28:42 ◼   ► Yes, that's true.

00:28:43 ◼   ► Goodness.

00:28:44 ◼   ► What's really nice about the three GT is that it's based on the three long wheelbase platform.

00:28:50 ◼   ► And so you get this massive amount of rear leg room.

00:28:52 ◼   ► You get, I think, even a little bit more rear leg room than you do in a five series, but

00:28:57 ◼   ► without having the width of the five series.

00:28:59 ◼   ► So it still feels like the narrow three series width.

00:29:03 ◼   ► But you have a surprising amount of space back there.

00:29:05 ◼   ► So honestly, it's a pretty nice car.

00:29:07 ◼   ► It's not for me.

00:29:08 ◼   ► And it doesn't come in any transmission I would tolerate.

00:29:11 ◼   ► But it is a nice car.

00:29:12 ◼   ► Actually, neither does the seven.

00:29:14 ◼   ► So there goes that.

00:29:15 ◼   ► Whoops.

00:29:16 ◼   ► I don't know what we're talking about anyway.

00:29:18 ◼   ► I know these are electric, so it's like Mark is going to buy them.

00:29:20 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm spoiled because now I want a car shaped hatchback that is also fully electric.

00:29:27 ◼   ► Are there any others?

00:29:28 ◼   ► I guess the Porsche, not the e-tron.

00:29:31 ◼   ► What's the Porsche?

00:29:33 ◼   ► The Tamarack?

00:29:34 ◼   ► The electric panamera.

00:29:35 ◼   ► Chief lenses.

00:29:36 ◼   ► The electric panamera.

00:29:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:29:38 ◼   ► Take hand.

00:29:39 ◼   ► Take hand.

00:29:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:29:41 ◼   ► So I've heard from people who-- I was having my problems with Tesla and their administration.

00:29:46 ◼   ► We heard from a few people who tried to order the Porsche Taycan, formerly the Mission E.

00:29:52 ◼   ► And it sounds like it is a total crap show of trying to place a deposit, trying to place

00:29:57 ◼   ► an order.

00:29:58 ◼   ► You have to go through dealers to get them.

00:30:00 ◼   ► And it sounds like it's a way bigger mess than my dealings with Tesla have been.

00:30:05 ◼   ► So I'm not sure that would actually be an improvement.

00:30:07 ◼   ► But that car doesn't exist yet.

00:30:09 ◼   ► I mean, it's all just people trying to get in line to get the first of a car that is

00:30:11 ◼   ► even out.

00:30:12 ◼   ► Those aren't anywhere yet.

00:30:13 ◼   ► No, but they're placing deposits to place orders.

00:30:16 ◼   ► And they're saying it's basically impossible.

00:30:18 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:30:19 ◼   ► But it's like the Model 3 thing, where they'll take a bunch of money for cars that haven't

00:30:22 ◼   ► been built yet.

00:30:23 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, basically.

00:30:24 ◼   ► But yeah, so it sounds like if you want a car shaped hatchback electric car, the Tesla

00:30:30 ◼   ► Model S is actually the least hassle option to get it, even if Tesla screws up the way

00:30:35 ◼   ► they did with me.

00:30:36 ◼   ► It seems like it's better than what's going on with Porsche right now with the Taycan.

00:30:39 ◼   ► The Tesla story that stood out the most to me was someone saying that there was an accident

00:30:43 ◼   ► at a Tesla dealership, where one car scraped into five other cars.

00:30:47 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:30:48 ◼   ► And that all of them were off the road for six months and counting, because none of them

00:30:51 ◼   ► can be repaired.

00:30:52 ◼   ► Yeah, because the part to repair them all was backordered.

00:30:57 ◼   ► That was painful.

00:30:58 ◼   ► And so they all have loaner cars while they wait.

00:31:01 ◼   ► And speaking of loaner cars, I know we're stuck in a lot of pre-show nutri-hill, but

00:31:05 ◼   ► another bit of i3 feedback was that if there's some sort of deal where if you get an i3,

00:31:11 ◼   ► they'll also give you a deal where if you ever need to go somewhere where the i3 doesn't

00:31:16 ◼   ► have the range or you don't want to deal with the range issues, they'll give you a loaner

00:31:21 ◼   ► gas car for free anytime you want it.

00:31:23 ◼   ► Yeah, that was really interesting.

00:31:25 ◼   ► Which is kind of an admission that maybe your electric car doesn't have enough range, because

00:31:30 ◼   ► the i3 is not like the Model S. I don't know what the range is, but I think it's like half,

00:31:33 ◼   ► maybe less.

00:31:34 ◼   ► Yeah, but anytime you want a gasoline car, you know, BMW makes those too, and they'll

00:31:39 ◼   ► loan you one and you can use it for your trip.

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00:33:26 ◼   ► What can you tell me about multi-output MIDI devices?

00:33:29 ◼   ► This is about Marco on the plane trying to watch a single laptop with two people with

00:33:34 ◼   ► Bluetooth headphones.

00:33:35 ◼   ► He couldn't get the Mac to output to Bluetooth to two different sources.

00:33:38 ◼   ► And apparently, I haven't tried this, but many readers or listeners are going to tell

00:33:42 ◼   ► us, if you go to the Mac's audio MIDI control panel, which is probably someplace that people

00:33:47 ◼   ► who don't do anything with musical instruments ever go, you can apparently make a new output

00:33:52 ◼   ► device and make it multi-output and let two people with Bluetooth headphones watch the

00:33:57 ◼   ► same video.

00:33:58 ◼   ► That's what we were told.

00:33:59 ◼   ► I haven't actually tried it, but if I was stuck on a plane and trying to pull this off,

00:34:03 ◼   ► I'd open that control panel.

00:34:05 ◼   ► I'd open that preference pane and give it a go.

00:34:08 ◼   ► And there was a thing where you have to have one of them be the drift master.

00:34:13 ◼   ► You have to correct the drift somehow, and one of them gets to be the master.

00:34:18 ◼   ► So yeah, there are a lot of issues that don't come up when you're using an analog headphone

00:34:21 ◼   ► cable splitter.

00:34:23 ◼   ► It sounds like it might work, but it's so much more complicated than just a headphone

00:34:28 ◼   ► splitter that I worry that it might not.

00:34:31 ◼   ► Make the new audio device and then just select it as one of your output sources.

00:34:33 ◼   ► The main thing I thought about when I read it was this is yet another place where the

00:34:38 ◼   ► iOS devices have a long way to go to catch up with the Mac.

00:34:42 ◼   ► With the Mac, no, it doesn't do everything, but the chances of you being able to find

00:34:46 ◼   ► some kind of weird hacky solution are much greater.

00:34:48 ◼   ► If iOS doesn't support this, guess what?

00:34:50 ◼   ► It doesn't support it.

00:34:51 ◼   ► You either jailbreak and hack something in or you're out of luck.

00:34:53 ◼   ► And in the Mac, there is a chance that there's some weird actual GUI buried somewhere that

00:34:59 ◼   ► you haven't seen or a command line utility or something that will let you do this.

00:35:03 ◼   ► Kind of like the stuff with disk images and disk repair.

00:35:06 ◼   ► Another example of the flexibility of the Mac.

00:35:08 ◼   ► There's functionality you probably don't even know about, and you can add to it pretty easily.

00:35:12 ◼   ► And the command line stuff.

00:35:13 ◼   ► So lots of times the GUIs that Apple gives you, like their utility folders GUIs, will

00:35:17 ◼   ► do stuff that you've never thought of doing, but also if the GUI app doesn't do anything,

00:35:22 ◼   ► a lot of them are just built on frameworks that are also fronted by command line equivalents

00:35:26 ◼   ► that will do even more stuff.

00:35:27 ◼   ► I don't know how much I use TMutil or HDIutil for disk images and stuff.

00:35:33 ◼   ► Some of it is working around Apple's utility applications that they don't update very frequently,

00:35:37 ◼   ► but the actual capability of the systems are much greater and you have access to those

00:35:41 ◼   ► capabilities if you know where to look and can take the time.

00:35:44 ◼   ► Yeah, that's one thing, as the iPad gains in popularity and as we all try to use it

00:35:50 ◼   ► for more things because the hardware is so cool, that is one thing I run into a lot of.

00:35:55 ◼   ► There's this one behavior that I do on the Mac or that I depend on or this feature I

00:35:58 ◼   ► want or this functionality that I need that on the Mac it relies on the existence of one

00:36:04 ◼   ► of the Mac's many advanced features.

00:36:08 ◼   ► There's so much advanced functionality built into macOS of things you can tweak, things

00:36:12 ◼   ► you can do that on the iPad either are very cumbersome or very roundabout ways that you

00:36:20 ◼   ► need to do them or are just simply not possible.

00:36:23 ◼   ► I do find I hit those a lot on iOS.

00:36:28 ◼   ► A simple thing, for instance, on the Mac I remap a couple of keyboard shortcuts that

00:36:33 ◼   ► are pretty common to be more comfortable keyboard commands for me to use with my actual hands.

00:36:39 ◼   ► One of those is the screenshot, the Command+Shift+4.

00:36:42 ◼   ► I put it on Command+Shift+1 because that's what I use the most and it's just faster that

00:36:46 ◼   ► way.

00:36:47 ◼   ► The other one is I archive my mail messages using a different shortcut for archive than

00:36:51 ◼   ► what the system one is.

00:36:53 ◼   ► Again, just common action, I want it to be more easily done.

00:36:58 ◼   ► And on iOS you can't do that.

00:37:01 ◼   ► You have to just do whatever keyboard shortcuts there are and there aren't enough, you can't

00:37:06 ◼   ► remap them.

00:37:07 ◼   ► You have to just take whatever they are.

00:37:09 ◼   ► Everyone has a feature like this, there's no services menu, there's no scriptability,

00:37:14 ◼   ► there's no terminal to do a lot of terminal stuff.

00:37:18 ◼   ► This is why I don't think, if you're a real Mac power user, I don't see the iPad replacing

00:37:28 ◼   ► the Mac for you.

00:37:30 ◼   ► Whereas if you're just a regular Mac user, a more typical one, and you leave most things

00:37:35 ◼   ► at the defaults and you don't really get into those areas of deep customization of the OS

00:37:41 ◼   ► and its behavior, it's an easier transition for those people.

00:37:44 ◼   ► But I'm unfortunately not one of those people.

00:37:46 ◼   ► And so I think the iPad will remain for me a secondary platform that I do some stuff

00:37:53 ◼   ► on and I enjoy it.

00:37:54 ◼   ► But I don't see it taking over, even if it adds things like Xcode and everything else.

00:38:00 ◼   ► There's so much amazing flexibility in Mac OS that I would simply miss too much.

00:38:06 ◼   ► Real time follow up, I think I referred to the MIDI thing as a preference pane.

00:38:10 ◼   ► First I was going to refer to it as a control panel because I'm old and then I said preference

00:38:13 ◼   ► pane, neither one of those is correct.

00:38:15 ◼   ► It's in application/utility/audio MIDI setup.

00:38:18 ◼   ► So if you're looking for it, that's where it is.

00:38:20 ◼   ► And then as for the keyboard shortcut, that's not comfortable.

00:38:24 ◼   ► Command shift four, you change it to command shift one.

00:38:26 ◼   ► And you said that it made me remember the-- and I hope I'm right about this-- the origins

00:38:31 ◼   ► of those.

00:38:32 ◼   ► Why the hell is it command shift four?

00:38:33 ◼   ► Well, it used to be command shift three, which still does screen, the screenshot.

00:38:38 ◼   ► When they added the capabilities of being able to do the crosshairs and the space bar

00:38:41 ◼   ► to capture the whole window, they said, well, command shift three is already taken with

00:38:44 ◼   ► the just take a screenshot of the screen.

00:38:46 ◼   ► So let's do four, which is the next one up.

00:38:47 ◼   ► Why didn't they use one and two, you may ask?

00:38:50 ◼   ► One and two, command shift one ejects the first floppy disk.

00:38:53 ◼   ► Command shift two ejects your second floppy disk.

00:38:56 ◼   ► And they've never come back and taken those commands.

00:38:59 ◼   ► Because those are very important commands.

00:39:01 ◼   ► And I always thought it was cool that command shift one would eject the floppy, but if you

00:39:04 ◼   ► connected your $450 1980-something money, external 800K floppy disk that you paid for half of

00:39:11 ◼   ► as your combination Christmas and birthday present, it would eject the second floppy

00:39:15 ◼   ► disk.

00:39:16 ◼   ► That is fantastic.

00:39:17 ◼   ► While we're going down this nostalgia trip-- this episode is all over the place-- hearing

00:39:22 ◼   ► the talk of Driftmaster reminded me of when I was young.

00:39:28 ◼   ► We had a-- I think I've told you the story once before, but it was years ago.

00:39:31 ◼   ► We had a Thrustmaster joystick.

00:39:33 ◼   ► I couldn't tell you what model it was.

00:39:35 ◼   ► That was the best brand name of anything ever.

00:39:37 ◼   ► So good.

00:39:38 ◼   ► But my dad would buy video game stuff periodically just for fun and then never ever use it, which

00:39:46 ◼   ► was great for me.

00:39:47 ◼   ► But I don't know what possessed him to do this.

00:39:48 ◼   ► But anyway--

00:39:49 ◼   ► I buy a whole bunch of iOS games and never ever play them.

00:39:52 ◼   ► Well, there you go.

00:39:54 ◼   ► So in any case, he bought this Thrustmaster.

00:39:56 ◼   ► And I remember it was during the time of the PS/2 keyboard connection.

00:40:01 ◼   ► So I don't know what that makes us, like mid-90s or something like that.

00:40:05 ◼   ► But the Thrustmaster needed the old, like, humongous keyboard connection that were from

00:40:10 ◼   ► like the original IBM PCs and what I'm talking about.

00:40:12 ◼   ► Nice.

00:40:13 ◼   ► Yeah, like the big DIN something.

00:40:14 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:40:15 ◼   ► So what happened was the Thrustmaster, you would plug the keyboard into the Thrustmaster

00:40:19 ◼   ► joystick, then using a converter to go from PS/2 to whatever the hell this other thing

00:40:23 ◼   ► was called, then you would plug the Thrustmaster in not only the special joystick ports, which

00:40:29 ◼   ► might have been on your sound card actually if memory serves, but nevertheless--

00:40:32 ◼   ► Yes, it was.

00:40:34 ◼   ► You would also plug it in to the keyboard on your computer because the Thrustmaster had

00:40:39 ◼   ► a little app, or well, program, that you could do, like, have it do key combinations or mimic

00:40:47 ◼   ► keyboard presses with all of these different buttons on the joystick.

00:40:51 ◼   ► And the joystick had like 8,000 buttons on it.

00:40:53 ◼   ► And so this never really seemed like that useful to me until I started playing Descent,

00:40:59 ◼   ► which is one of the many games that Jon could never play because he had a Mac.

00:41:02 ◼   ► And--

00:41:03 ◼   ► I played Descent.

00:41:04 ◼   ► There was a Mac version.

00:41:05 ◼   ► What are you talking about?

00:41:06 ◼   ► Oh, I was hoping.

00:41:07 ◼   ► I had a 50/50 shot in a T-shirt.

00:41:08 ◼   ► I also played it on PC before there was a Mac version, but--

00:41:09 ◼   ► Oh, man, that's disappointing.

00:41:10 ◼   ► I was going out on a limb there, but that's right.

00:41:12 ◼   ► So anyways, so I was playing Descent.

00:41:14 ◼   ► I would play Descent, and when I gripped the joystick, like, your thumb was on a-- I don't

00:41:18 ◼   ► know what the technical term for it is, but like a little four-way thing, so you could

00:41:21 ◼   ► go up, down, left, right.

00:41:22 ◼   ► And so I remember that I had had the keyboard mapping so that when I pushed my little thumb

00:41:27 ◼   ► thing forward, it would go-- the ship would fly forward.

00:41:30 ◼   ► When I pushed back, the ship would fly back.

00:41:32 ◼   ► And I believe I used left and right for strafe.

00:41:34 ◼   ► And oh, my word, was that amazing with Descent.

00:41:37 ◼   ► I mean, Descent in general was amazing.

00:41:39 ◼   ► And if you're not familiar with it, you should look up the Wikipedia article or whatever,

00:41:42 ◼   ► because it was a truly phenomenal game.

00:41:43 ◼   ► But using the Thrustmaster joystick with this ridiculous, like, not really daisy chain,

00:41:48 ◼   ► but almost like daisy chain, like-- that was Dongle Town before Dongle Town to some degree,

00:41:53 ◼   ► because you needed to get all these little stupid converters.

00:41:55 ◼   ► It was the predecessor to Dongle Town.

00:41:57 ◼   ► But so I guess that makes it Dongle Town, England, and now we're in New Dongle Town,

00:42:02 ◼   ► America?

00:42:03 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:42:04 ◼   ► Whatever.

00:42:05 ◼   ► Anyway, the point is is that it was this most ridiculous setup in the world with clearly,

00:42:08 ◼   ► like, mid-'90s technology, and it was phenomenal.

00:42:11 ◼   ► I kind of miss it.

00:42:13 ◼   ► Descent was like an old-school QWOP.

00:42:17 ◼   ► You know that game?

00:42:18 ◼   ► What?

00:42:19 ◼   ► QWOP?

00:42:20 ◼   ► No.

00:42:21 ◼   ► Q-W-O-P?

00:42:22 ◼   ► Am I getting the name right?

00:42:23 ◼   ► Nope.

00:42:24 ◼   ► Well, you might be getting the name right, but it means zero to me.

00:42:25 ◼   ► The game where it's like the side view of a runner, and you use the keys on the keyboard

00:42:30 ◼   ► Q-W-O-P to control the runner's, like, leg joints?

00:42:34 ◼   ► Like all independently of each other?

00:42:36 ◼   ► And the goal is just to be able to run, right?

00:42:38 ◼   ► So you have to carefully orchestrate the limbs, and, you know, basically the person just falls

00:42:42 ◼   ► to the ground.

00:42:43 ◼   ► Descent was the true six degrees of freedom.

00:42:46 ◼   ► Like, that was the gimmick of the game.

00:42:47 ◼   ► There's no up, no down, no left, no right.

00:42:49 ◼   ► You're floating in free space.

00:42:50 ◼   ► And so without a Thrustmaster setup, you had lots of keys on the keyboard to control all

00:42:54 ◼   ► the different axes of rotation and thrust, and it was very difficult to get a handle

00:42:58 ◼   ► on.

00:42:59 ◼   ► You may be used to, like, first-person shooters.

00:43:00 ◼   ► "Oh, I can do this great.

00:43:01 ◼   ► I'm really good at Doom," but that, like, constrained you to a plane, and then you would

00:43:04 ◼   ► just, you know, left and right and strafe.

00:43:06 ◼   ► Well, imagine you had left, right, strafe, but in, like, two more axes.

00:43:10 ◼   ► It was really fun.

00:43:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:43:12 ◼   ► Doom was actually an interesting case of it.

00:43:13 ◼   ► Doom was, like, Doom was actually a 2D game.

00:43:17 ◼   ► Like--

00:43:18 ◼   ► 2.5D, they call it.

00:43:19 ◼   ► Yeah, like, it was-- everything was rendered in 3D.

00:43:22 ◼   ► Like, it looked 3D, but every-- like, the maps were 2D.

00:43:27 ◼   ► The projectiles all moved only in 2D.

00:43:30 ◼   ► Like, basically, like, the Z axis, the up and down axis, was only visual.

00:43:35 ◼   ► You could never be, like-- there was never a room above another room on the map.

00:43:39 ◼   ► There was, like-- there were enemies that were above you, but you wouldn't aim up or

00:43:43 ◼   ► down.

00:43:44 ◼   ► You would just shoot straight ahead, and your thing would hit the ones that are up above

00:43:46 ◼   ► you, and they were shooting down at you.

00:43:48 ◼   ► It was a very, very clever use of, you know, not quite being ready for 3D-- for full 3D

00:43:53 ◼   ► yet until Quake, I think.

00:43:54 ◼   ► The colony had shooting vertically.

00:43:56 ◼   ► The colony was also ray-casting, but you did shoot with the mouse.

00:43:59 ◼   ► This was when mice had mice and PCs didn't.

00:44:02 ◼   ► You did shoot with the mouse, and because you could shoot anywhere on the screen, you

00:44:04 ◼   ► could actually aim above and below the dead center axis.

00:44:08 ◼   ► But you've never heard of the colony, but it was a good game.

00:44:10 ◼   ► It was a Mac game.

00:44:11 ◼   ► It was.

00:44:12 ◼   ► It totally was.

00:44:13 ◼   ► It might have been on Mars.

00:44:15 ◼   ► There's an awesome video of, like, the person who made the colony-- like, one person, because

00:44:19 ◼   ► this is back when single people made games-- a YouTube video of him going through the colony,

00:44:25 ◼   ► explaining what he was thinking when he made the game.

00:44:27 ◼   ► It's, you know, it's amazing.

00:44:28 ◼   ► Normally, you can't even find, like, "Has anyone even heard of this game?

00:44:31 ◼   ► Can I even find a screenshot?"

00:44:32 ◼   ► You can go on YouTube and watch the creator of the game walk through the game with you.

00:44:36 ◼   ► It's really cool.

00:44:37 ◼   ► Let's see if I can find that video for the show notes for the five other people listening

00:44:39 ◼   ► to this who remember the colony.

00:44:41 ◼   ► Guess who made the colony, by the way?

00:44:43 ◼   ► The guy who you saw on YouTube or whatever?

00:44:45 ◼   ► What was it?

00:44:46 ◼   ► David Smith.

00:44:47 ◼   ► Nice.

00:44:48 ◼   ► That's funny.

00:44:49 ◼   ► I mean, it is kind of a common name.

00:44:53 ◼   ► Fair enough.

00:44:54 ◼   ► I don't see any punctuation in his, though, so it's clearly inferior.

00:44:57 ◼   ► Yeah, and he goes by David A. Smith.

00:44:59 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:45:00 ◼   ► It's a little pretentious.

00:45:01 ◼   ► He's an imitation David Smith.

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00:47:06 ◼   ► [music]

00:47:07 ◼   ► Do you want to talk about, Marco, what's going on with Overcast these days?

00:47:12 ◼   ► Because it sounds like you had a really, really, really crummy bug, and crummy in the sense

00:47:19 ◼   ► that it would be hard to reproduce and kind of figure out what's going on.

00:47:22 ◼   ► So maybe this is not that interesting, but I'd love to kind of hear you walk us through

00:47:28 ◼   ► what was the bug report, and how did you go about trying to figure this out?

00:47:33 ◼   ► So I've had reports for a little while now that they would be playing a podcast, and

00:47:38 ◼   ► a few minutes into playing it, it would just get killed in the background if we're using

00:47:42 ◼   ► too much CPU usage.

00:47:43 ◼   ► I couldn't figure it out for a while.

00:47:45 ◼   ► I thought it was Watch Transcodes, and so I adjusted the throttling of the Watch Transcode

00:47:49 ◼   ► engine to make sure it definitely wouldn't go past the limit of, if you're in the background,

00:47:55 ◼   ► the limit is something like 80% over 60 seconds, something like that.

00:48:00 ◼   ► I forget the exact number, but it's in that ballpark.

00:48:02 ◼   ► I kept having these crash logs, these reports, and when you get killed for energy usage,

00:48:07 ◼   ► or one of those resource limits, the crash logs you get are not very useful.

00:48:12 ◼   ► There's not a lot of info in them.

00:48:13 ◼   ► You kind of have to blindly figure out why might you have used that much CPU usage, because

00:48:18 ◼   ► the logs you get usually won't tell you.

00:48:21 ◼   ► So I was trying to figure this out, and again, I blamed the watch thing for a while.

00:48:25 ◼   ► I throttled that back, but I was still getting some reports of this.

00:48:28 ◼   ► I was at my wits, and I could not figure it out.

00:48:30 ◼   ► I poured through the reports, couldn't get any useful information out of the reports

00:48:33 ◼   ► I had.

00:48:34 ◼   ► So I finally went to Twitter with the Overcast account.

00:48:36 ◼   ► I'm like, "Hey, I'm getting these reports of crashing in the background during playback.

00:48:41 ◼   ► I cannot figure this out.

00:48:43 ◼   ► Can anybody tell me steps that reproduce the problem, that do it every time?"

00:48:48 ◼   ► A few people actually did, and by the way, I should clarify right up front, I don't know

00:48:56 ◼   ► if this is the only reason Overcast gets killed in the background for too much CPU usage, but

00:49:01 ◼   ► one of the reasons it could do this, I have now identified and fixed.

00:49:05 ◼   ► And it's in the TestFlight beta as of today.

00:49:08 ◼   ► I'm hoping to see if that does fix it after a few days of crash logs from TestFlight, but

00:49:13 ◼   ► I don't know yet.

00:49:14 ◼   ► Anyway, so the problem was, all right, let me, I'm trying to think how much explanation

00:49:19 ◼   ► should I give here, because it could get really long and boring.

00:49:21 ◼   ► So I'm going to try to pair it back and summarize it.

00:49:24 ◼   ► Basically, one of the conditions that could cause this was if you are in a streaming mode,

00:49:31 ◼   ► where you are downloading the podcast as it's playing, and it's not fully downloaded yet,

00:49:38 ◼   ► and the app is in the background.

00:49:39 ◼   ► So suppose you hit play, it starts playing.

00:49:41 ◼   ► You put the phone in your pocket, so the app's in the background.

00:49:43 ◼   ► If you pause playback, iOS will suspend the app in the background after a few seconds

00:49:49 ◼   ► of no audio playing from it.

00:49:51 ◼   ► So as the download was happening, if you paused it, and the download wasn't going to finish

00:49:56 ◼   ► in that time, iOS killed the app, which kills the download.

00:50:00 ◼   ► It stops the network transfer.

00:50:02 ◼   ► When you would go to press play after that, it would resume playback, but the part of

00:50:09 ◼   ► the file that wasn't downloaded, Overcast would basically get into an infinite loop

00:50:14 ◼   ► in a background thread, trying really, really hard as a busy wait, saying, "Are you done

00:50:19 ◼   ► yet?

00:50:20 ◼   ► Are you done yet?

00:50:21 ◼   ► Are you done yet?"

00:50:22 ◼   ► And it was looping over and over and over again, rather than doing a throttled, "Check

00:50:24 ◼   ► now," and "Check back later" kind of approach.

00:50:27 ◼   ► And so there was basically a way for it to, after a failed transfer in the background,

00:50:34 ◼   ► it was not properly interpreting that failure, and was instead doing this infinite loop thing,

00:50:39 ◼   ► which was making one thread max out.

00:50:41 ◼   ► So the symptom would be, if you resumed a podcast under these conditions, if you resumed

00:50:46 ◼   ► playback, about 48 seconds in, the app would get killed, and playback would stop.

00:50:51 ◼   ► And if you hit play again, it would relaunch in the background and start playing again.

00:50:54 ◼   ► So it seemed to you, the user, as if it just stops playing after a minute or two for some

00:51:01 ◼   ► reason, but that was the actual cause that I could finally reproduce.

00:51:05 ◼   ► Thank you very much to the people who reported that.

00:51:08 ◼   ► Again, I don't know if there's any other ones.

00:51:10 ◼   ► I don't know if this topic is even interesting enough to keep in the show, but that's what

00:51:14 ◼   ► happened.

00:51:15 ◼   ► Well, so hold on.

00:51:16 ◼   ► So how did you figure out the technical bits that were going on?

00:51:20 ◼   ► Because all you really had to go on was just that, "Oh, I backgrounded the app, I was

00:51:25 ◼   ► streaming and then bad things happened."

00:51:26 ◼   ► So how did you dive into finding the actual problem?

00:51:31 ◼   ► It never showed up for me in my own usage of the app.

00:51:35 ◼   ► And there's a number of reasons for that.

00:51:37 ◼   ► One is which I don't use streaming.

00:51:38 ◼   ► I download everything.

00:51:39 ◼   ► So the only time I ever stream a podcast in normal use, unless I'm testing some streaming

00:51:44 ◼   ► feature, the only time I ever stream a podcast is if I want to start playing something immediately

00:51:50 ◼   ► that I hadn't yet downloaded.

00:51:51 ◼   ► Like if I heard of a new episode of a new show, I just want to start playing it right

00:51:55 ◼   ► now.

00:51:56 ◼   ► I'll start playing it, I'll stream it.

00:51:57 ◼   ► The other thing is usually I have pretty good connectivity.

00:51:59 ◼   ► Usually at home I have really fast Wi-Fi.

00:52:01 ◼   ► When I'm out, I live in a nice suburban area, so there's usually strong cell signal

00:52:07 ◼   ► and everything.

00:52:08 ◼   ► So normally I wouldn't even hit the problem where the partial download hasn't completed

00:52:13 ◼   ► yet when you pause it for a little while.

00:52:15 ◼   ► And so I wasn't seeing this problem at all.

00:52:18 ◼   ► When I finally got these reproduction steps, it allowed me to...

00:52:22 ◼   ► So first of all, I tried it and I realized, oh, this is not happening when I do it on

00:52:27 ◼   ► my regular Wi-Fi.

00:52:29 ◼   ► But there's this wonderful utility that used to be just on the Mac and now is also in the

00:52:33 ◼   ► iOS developer menu called Network Link Conditioner.

00:52:37 ◼   ► Apple supplies this.

00:52:38 ◼   ► It's a pref pane on Mac OS, although honestly I couldn't get the Mac OS version to work

00:52:41 ◼   ► under Mojave.

00:52:42 ◼   ► Maybe I have to update it, I don't know.

00:52:44 ◼   ► But on iOS, if you go into the developer menu in settings, there's a Network Link Conditioner,

00:52:48 ◼   ► and you can basically artificially throttle your own network connection for all apps on

00:52:52 ◼   ► the device in order to test how your app behaves under slow networks or intermittent connectivity

00:52:59 ◼   ► or heavy packet loss or other kind of crappy network connectivity.

00:53:03 ◼   ► It's a wonderful tool, and without that I would have had a much harder time testing

00:53:07 ◼   ► this.

00:53:08 ◼   ► I would have had to do some kind of router hack maybe or throttle it in the app somehow.

00:53:11 ◼   ► It would have been much harder.

00:53:12 ◼   ► So anyway, thank you very much, random Apple employee who makes Network Link Conditioner.

00:53:16 ◼   ► Anyway, I was able to slow down my connection to like 3G speeds, which would give it enough

00:53:22 ◼   ► time to get the app suspended into the background without the file being fully downloaded.

00:53:29 ◼   ► Then I was able to relaunch it, and then I saw finally I could see this happening on

00:53:34 ◼   ► my own phone, where I saw the CPU spike to 100% and then eventually get killed.

00:53:40 ◼   ► Now once you can, this is why developers always love a reproducible list of steps that like

00:53:46 ◼   ► do this, this, and this, and it will make the problem happen every time.

00:53:50 ◼   ► Because then we can plug in our developer tools and we can profile the app.

00:53:55 ◼   ► And so I ran it in Instruments, which is a tool that comes with the Xcode bundle, and

00:54:00 ◼   ► Instruments can tell you if you run a session of your app under Instruments, it will tell

00:54:07 ◼   ► you what parts of the app are using the most CPU usage.

00:54:09 ◼   ► And this is for any developers who use it.

00:54:12 ◼   ► I know this is a gross oversimplification.

00:54:14 ◼   ► It can actually do a lot more than that, but the most common thing that I do with Instruments

00:54:18 ◼   ► is measure where in my app is using the most CPU time, what is using the most processor

00:54:24 ◼   ► resources.

00:54:25 ◼   ► And so when I was able to run this finally in a reproducible way, I could run it with

00:54:30 ◼   ► Instruments running.

00:54:32 ◼   ► And so I saw when the CPU spiked to 100%, I was able to profile what it was actually

00:54:37 ◼   ► doing in that, and that's when I saw, oh, it's calling this render method over and over

00:54:43 ◼   ► and over again.

00:54:44 ◼   ► It definitely should not be calling this this much what's going on.

00:54:49 ◼   ► Basically the root issue was that at some point I'm returning zero audio samples when

00:54:56 ◼   ► the rest of the audio engine expects there to be some, whether it's a block of silence

00:55:00 ◼   ► or not.

00:55:01 ◼   ► But I was returning zero audio samples, so it would just call it again until it had enough

00:55:06 ◼   ► to fill its buffer, which it never did.

00:55:08 ◼   ► The reason why I was so surprised when I found this out, when I found out why it was doing

00:55:12 ◼   ► this, is it's been that way for a while.

00:55:18 ◼   ► And I wondered, why is this only a problem now?

00:55:21 ◼   ► Looking at this code, this should never have worked.

00:55:25 ◼   ► And while I was in there, I also decided to fix a couple of other things.

00:55:28 ◼   ► Basically the fix was the app needed better detection of whether it was in a buffering

00:55:35 ◼   ► kind of state or not.

00:55:37 ◼   ► Is it waiting for more data or is it not waiting for more data?

00:55:40 ◼   ► And fixing that required a whole bunch of actually surprisingly deep changes, which

00:55:43 ◼   ► is why I'm going to do a big beta of this before I release it.

00:55:47 ◼   ► But it's one of those things where it's like, how did this ever work?

00:55:51 ◼   ► And the UI for buffering was totally broken before.

00:55:55 ◼   ► It would show an activity spinner beneath the pause button, partially overlapped by

00:56:00 ◼   ► the pause button.

00:56:02 ◼   ► I'm embarrassed that I ever shipped that, honestly.

00:56:07 ◼   ► But anyway, so the app had pretty poor detection before of whether it was buffering or not.

00:56:14 ◼   ► So I fixed that as well, which was kind of required to fix the real issue.

00:56:19 ◼   ► So anyway, I think I have fixed it.

00:56:23 ◼   ► It was all because I finally had reproduction steps.

00:56:26 ◼   ► And so for anybody out there who's filing bug reports, if you can come up with reproducible

00:56:30 ◼   ► steps, and I know it's hard and I know it's impossible to do for bugs that just seem to

00:56:34 ◼   ► happen intermittently, but man, if you have reproduction steps that reproduce the problem

00:56:38 ◼   ► every single time, that is invaluable for a developer.

00:56:42 ◼   ► And that can help get a problem solved way faster.

00:56:45 ◼   ► I find this really fascinating.

00:56:48 ◼   ► Out of curiosity, and I've been messing around with something that I don't think I'm ever

00:56:53 ◼   ► going to release, but I wrote myself an iPad app since actually we last spoke, in order

00:56:58 ◼   ► to help with...

00:56:59 ◼   ► Wait, what?

00:57:00 ◼   ► Backup.

00:57:01 ◼   ► So I, when I do what I call the edit for analog, which is not actually an edit at all, and it's

00:57:08 ◼   ► what I used to do for ATP in the first couple of years of ATP, and then Marco kind of took

00:57:12 ◼   ► over in a good way, and so I don't have to do it for ATP anymore, but for analog...

00:57:16 ◼   ► I stole the edit from you.

00:57:19 ◼   ► I appreciate what you're saying, but I don't think that's the case at all.

00:57:22 ◼   ► I think it was better for everyone this way, and you were able to dedicate the extra time

00:57:26 ◼   ► to do it.

00:57:27 ◼   ► But be all that aside...

00:57:28 ◼   ► It's not you, it's me.

00:57:31 ◼   ► So the flow with analog is we record, and then I listen to the recorded version straight

00:57:37 ◼   ► off the mics, and I say, "Oh, at 15 seconds I coughed, at 5 minutes and 42 seconds, we

00:57:45 ◼   ► cross-talked real bad," and so on and so forth.

00:57:47 ◼   ► And I generate this list of edit points that Mike is the one who does the actual work.

00:57:52 ◼   ► I used to do this by just having a text edit window open on my Mac and listening to the

00:57:57 ◼   ► show, and when I heard something I would not have the window open because I'm usually multitasking,

00:58:04 ◼   ► and so then I would have to find the space that has the player window and then back up

00:58:08 ◼   ► a few seconds to get the correct timestamp and so on and so forth.

00:58:11 ◼   ► And I thought to myself, "There's got to be a better way to do this, and it would be kind

00:58:14 ◼   ► of neat to be able to do this on the iPad."

00:58:16 ◼   ► And so I built this little app that will let me ingest a file from, say, the Files app,

00:58:24 ◼   ► which really means Dropbox or iCloud Drive, load it up, and let me play it, and then I

00:58:31 ◼   ► have a humongous, literally a quarter of the screen is a button that reads "New Edit,"

00:58:36 ◼   ► and when I tap that button it'll pause playback, take note of the timestamp, and throw up a

00:58:41 ◼   ► little popover where I can say, "Oh, I want there to be a chapter start here," or "I want

00:58:45 ◼   ► there to be a sponsor read here," or "There is a sponsor read here," or "I coughed,"

00:58:50 ◼   ► or whatever the case may be.

00:58:51 ◼   ► I bring all this up to ask, I'm curious, Marco, what do you do—and I feel like I've asked

00:58:57 ◼   ► this before, but I don't remember your answer—what do you do for, like, bug tracking, issue management,

00:59:01 ◼   ► stuff like that?

00:59:02 ◼   ► Because I have this right now in a private—I'm trying to be gentle, John.

00:59:05 ◼   ► You're asking the person who doesn't run any tests what he uses for bug tracking.

00:59:09 ◼   ► Okay.

00:59:10 ◼   ► Well, I'm trying to be gentle here, and before you answer, Marco, the reason I ask

00:59:12 ◼   ► is because I've been using GitHub issues, which are not perfect, but it's just me,

00:59:17 ◼   ► and it's not something that's actually that serious.

00:59:19 ◼   ► But I find that I often have a thought of something I would like to do, but I'm not

00:59:25 ◼   ► in a position to actually code it, even if it's something very quick.

00:59:28 ◼   ► And so I'll make myself a little GitHub issue to just remind myself later on that I

00:59:32 ◼   ► want to do that thing.

00:59:34 ◼   ► And I haven't actually used this app for an analog edit, because this is an off week,

00:59:38 ◼   ► and I literally wrote the guts of it in about two mornings, two consecutive mornings, and

00:59:44 ◼   ► we won't record analog again until this upcoming week, and then we'll see if it works and

00:59:48 ◼   ► what'll happen.

00:59:49 ◼   ► But Marco, do you use any sort, I think you had said you use some text file or Todoist,

00:59:55 ◼   ► no, not Todoist, like task paper or something like that.

00:59:58 ◼   ► What do you do to manage bugs and planning and that sort of thing?

01:00:01 ◼   ► Yeah, for a while I used task paper as my master to-do list for Overcast.

01:00:06 ◼   ► When I had my to-do list renaissance about a year ago, and I switched to Things for all

01:00:12 ◼   ► my management on all devices, now I just have a Things project that is Overcast.

01:00:18 ◼   ► And under it I have all these headings for different versions, milestones I want to do.

01:00:22 ◼   ► I know I'm not using it right, but I don't care.

01:00:25 ◼   ► And I have a list in there of bugs to fix for the next version.

01:00:30 ◼   ► And whenever something comes up, I put it in there and then I try to fix it.

01:00:34 ◼   ► So you wrote an iPad app, and the app you wrote isn't a thin wrapper on YouTube DL?

01:00:41 ◼   ► With shortcut support or something?

01:00:42 ◼   ► No, no, no.

01:00:43 ◼   ► So you could just say, "Hey, Dingus, download this video."

01:00:46 ◼   ► No, and actually I should bring up, this actually probably should have been a follow-up, but

01:00:51 ◼   ► a lot of people wrote in and said in various degrees of politeness, "Why don't you use

01:00:55 ◼   ► shortcuts to do this?"

01:00:56 ◼   ► And it's a fair question.

01:00:58 ◼   ► And there are two answers, neither of which will be satisfying to the people who have

01:01:01 ◼   ► suggested this.

01:01:02 ◼   ► Number one, it is not only YouTube that I do this sort of thing for.

01:01:06 ◼   ► As an example, if you have a particular show on terrestrial television that you enjoy,

01:01:13 ◼   ► and you would like to persist a copy of them for the future, you can very easily use YouTube

01:01:18 ◼   ► Download to grab an NBC show or CBS or whatever the case may be.

01:01:23 ◼   ► As another example, we like to play a lot of holiday specials, holiday music specials,

01:01:29 ◼   ► on endless repeat throughout the List household for the month of December, which is why nobody

01:01:34 ◼   ► ever visits us in the month of December.

01:01:35 ◼   ► But anyway, as an example, just a night or two ago, Pentatonix, who is an a capella group,

01:01:42 ◼   ► did an extremely cheesy yet delightful Christmas special that was aired on NBC, and I wanted

01:01:46 ◼   ► to keep it so I could watch it in the future.

01:01:48 ◼   ► And so I YouTube-DL'd it, and it worked no problem.

01:01:52 ◼   ► And maybe shortcuts would work with these sorts of things too, I'm not sure.

01:01:55 ◼   ► And given what shortcuts it's capable of, I'm sure there is a way that it could be done.

01:02:00 ◼   ► But I use YouTube-DL for a lot more than just YouTube.

01:02:03 ◼   ► And additionally, the real honest answer to the question of why not use shortcuts or SSH

01:02:08 ◼   ► or something like that, or torrent them, why torrent them when I can go to the actual source.

01:02:14 ◼   ► But anyways, why not just do something, anything else other than this ridiculous ISH thing,

01:02:21 ◼   ► is because I'm used to doing this on the command line.

01:02:23 ◼   ► It's just momentum, man.

01:02:24 ◼   ► I'm used to doing this on the command line.

01:02:25 ◼   ► I know YouTube-DL and FFmpeg alarmingly well now, which is not something I probably should

01:02:30 ◼   ► be proud of.

01:02:32 ◼   ► But it's just what I'm used to, and it's what I'm quickest with.

01:02:35 ◼   ► And I like when I can use the tools I'm used to because I'm quick with them.

01:02:38 ◼   ► And so that's why.

01:02:41 ◼   ► - One of the reasons why, going back to my iPad advanced options from the Mac thing earlier,

01:02:47 ◼   ► one of the reasons why I find it difficult to become an iOS power user with shortcuts

01:02:53 ◼   ► and formerly workflow, is the things you can do with it.

01:02:58 ◼   ► Really it's this whole layer of power and advanced features and automation that you

01:03:03 ◼   ► can achieve.

01:03:04 ◼   ► Well, we've had that for a while on other platforms, and for many of us, a lot of people

01:03:11 ◼   ► going back decades, it's the terminal.

01:03:14 ◼   ► It's a shell like Bash, and it's shell scripting, and tools like this, command line tools.

01:03:21 ◼   ► And one of the great things about learning the terminal is that once you know one of

01:03:27 ◼   ► the common things like Bash and basic command line usage, first of all, you can use it on

01:03:33 ◼   ► a whole bunch of different platforms.

01:03:35 ◼   ► Mac OS, even Windows now with the WSL thing, you can use it on Linux servers, and it doesn't

01:03:42 ◼   ► really change that much over time.

01:03:45 ◼   ► You can learn a lot of these skills once, and then you can use those skills for literally

01:03:51 ◼   ► decades, like 20, 30 years easily, and a lot of the stuff doesn't change.

01:03:55 ◼   ► Or at least the foundation you built 30 years ago can still be used today.

01:03:59 ◼   ► Honestly, I think workflow and shortcuts, I think these actually are very much like

01:04:04 ◼   ► the command line in the sense that they enable advanced users to learn some more complex

01:04:11 ◼   ► things if they're willing to learn in order to get a lot of power, in order to get new

01:04:16 ◼   ► things done, get things done faster, have more customized behavior, more advanced behavior.

01:04:21 ◼   ► The difference though is that workflow and, or sorry, shortcuts, is not the command line.

01:04:25 ◼   ► It's totally different.

01:04:27 ◼   ► And that's fine.

01:04:28 ◼   ► I would say shortcuts is not that much easier to use than learning the command line is,

01:04:36 ◼   ► in the sense that you still need to learn how it works, what it expects, what it does

01:04:41 ◼   ► and doesn't do.

01:04:42 ◼   ► You still need to learn its limitations, how it expects you to talk to it and use it, and

01:04:49 ◼   ► you still need to learn the library of things it can do.

01:04:53 ◼   ► So there's a learning curve to both things.

01:04:56 ◼   ► And the reason why people like me and Casey want so badly a terminal on the iPad is because

01:05:01 ◼   ► we've already done that learning curve, like 20 years ago or whatever, and we just want

01:05:05 ◼   ► to be able to use it now because we can use it everywhere else.

01:05:09 ◼   ► That's why it's so awesome that the Mac is under the hood, like this Unix subsystem.

01:05:14 ◼   ► That's why Microsoft was so pressured to create the Windows Subsystem for Linux thing.

01:05:19 ◼   ► Because once you're in that system, it's great because you can have this long, long

01:05:26 ◼   ► running expertise in this different language of how you can make your computer do amazing

01:05:30 ◼   ► things.

01:05:31 ◼   ► And you know the syntax and you know the tools that you have at your disposal, and you can

01:05:34 ◼   ► use the same knowledge and expertise and tools even on all the different platforms you use.

01:05:40 ◼   ► And that's really awesome.

01:05:42 ◼   ► So as awesome as shortcuts is for the people who use it, that doesn't apply to shortcuts.

01:05:48 ◼   ► You can't use shortcuts anywhere except iOS.

01:05:52 ◼   ► And so while it is awesome, it's not the same kind of thing, and it doesn't have the

01:05:56 ◼   ► same long term value of investing your expertise in and investing your tools and your script

01:06:00 ◼   ► and your time into as learning shell scripting does on any other platform.

01:06:05 ◼   ► And so I kind of wish there was something like, some kind of power user layer like this,

01:06:11 ◼   ► whether it's something like shortcuts or something like a terminal, that you can use

01:06:15 ◼   ► on all of your devices.

01:06:17 ◼   ► And right now there isn't.

01:06:19 ◼   ► And if you could get a terminal on the iPad that was pretty good, you would have that

01:06:23 ◼   ► if you were a terminal person.

01:06:24 ◼   ► And so that's why we want this.

01:06:26 ◼   ► Additionally, you know it used to be, I don't know if this is still the case, but it used

01:06:29 ◼   ► to be years ago that you could jailbreak your phone and get like SSH access or even straight

01:06:33 ◼   ► up terminal access and all sorts of stuff.

01:06:35 ◼   ► So it feels as though this is just a completely synthetic like gate that Apple won't let us

01:06:41 ◼   ► walk through.

01:06:42 ◼   ► And I don't want to speak for you, but that really chaps my hindquarters that it's all

01:06:48 ◼   ► there waiting for us.

01:06:49 ◼   ► We just aren't allowed.

01:06:51 ◼   ► And that's so frustrating.

01:06:52 ◼   ► - Well, and like, and I'm not even saying that I want to be able to go in and edit system

01:06:57 ◼   ► config files.

01:06:58 ◼   ► Like I don't care about that.

01:07:00 ◼   ► Make me a sandbox.

01:07:01 ◼   ► Like the apps run in sandboxes literally like let me run, and this is actually what ISH

01:07:06 ◼   ► kind of does.

01:07:07 ◼   ► Like let me run a terminal where I can install packages from like a package manager, like

01:07:12 ◼   ► whatever it might be, brew, yum, swifts thing, whatever it is, I don't care.

01:07:15 ◼   ► Some package manager, let me install things like FFmpeg and any other tool I might want

01:07:20 ◼   ► that might be in a repository like that and compile stuff from source if I have to.

01:07:24 ◼   ► Like give me the tools to do that and give me a sandbox that I can put files in and then

01:07:29 ◼   ► I can open them in other apps.

01:07:32 ◼   ► So like I think the reason, well I think one of the reasons why we don't have terminal

01:07:37 ◼   ► for iPads yet is that nothing on the iPad really works that way with like a common file

01:07:44 ◼   ► area.

01:07:45 ◼   ► It's a files app, but as our iPad power user friends always talk about, it's very limited.

01:07:52 ◼   ► It's hard to get to those files from a lot of apps.

01:07:56 ◼   ► It's very limited in what you can and can't do there.

01:07:58 ◼   ► You don't really live in the files the way you do like on a Mac where like your files

01:08:03 ◼   ► are like all over your desktop and you're like living in your files all the time.

01:08:06 ◼   ► On the iPad it's this buried kind of like little back zone that they don't really want

01:08:11 ◼   ► you going near and not a lot of stuff supports.

01:08:14 ◼   ► So like that I think, I think they need to address that first and make like the local

01:08:19 ◼   ► file system more of a thing in iOS before they would go into something like considering

01:08:25 ◼   ► a terminal.

01:08:26 ◼   ► - There are some more fundamental issues they have to address in the core of iOS.

01:08:29 ◼   ► I'm not aware of all the details, but I'm pretty sure the way the processes are managed

01:08:33 ◼   ► is like it's one of the reasons you don't have multiple users for iOS devices already

01:08:37 ◼   ► is that it's not like it's not a multi-user system because it is, but it's not, it's not

01:08:42 ◼   ► as cleanly separated as a Mac is, which is, you know, based on the next operating system,

01:08:47 ◼   ► which was multi-user from day one where the entire file system is cordoned off into sections

01:08:52 ◼   ► for each user's stuff and processes run as the logged in user with the exception of system

01:08:58 ◼   ► processes.

01:08:59 ◼   ► I think iOS has always paid a little, played a little fast and loose with all that stuff.

01:09:04 ◼   ► But I think if iOS continues along its current trajectory, especially if iPads keep getting

01:09:09 ◼   ► bigger and more powerful and Apple eventually does like a Surface Studio type thing, it's

01:09:13 ◼   ► inevitable that it will have a terminal and you can get around the whole file sandboxing

01:09:18 ◼   ► thing.

01:09:19 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, of course it would be sandbox, but you can basically mount in, you know,

01:09:22 ◼   ► using not, not mounting, but you know, a similar technology where from within your sandbox,

01:09:27 ◼   ► you have visibility into the same sort of sections of the iCloud file system and the

01:09:33 ◼   ► local file system that you own only through like a, you know, there's lots of existing

01:09:39 ◼   ► Unix security features that act like this.

01:09:41 ◼   ► There's lots of existing iOS features that would help them implement this.

01:09:43 ◼   ► Like it's, it's technically possible, but I think, you know, that there are, the iOS

01:09:49 ◼   ► wasn't designed to do this from day one.

01:09:50 ◼   ► So there's a lot of rejiggering they would have to do, and they're not going to disturb

01:09:55 ◼   ► their flagship operating system for such an esoteric feature for until they really gotten

01:10:01 ◼   ► down to the bottom of the barrel in terms of features they need to get.

01:10:03 ◼   ► Cause if it was easy to add multi-user, I think they would have done it already for,

01:10:06 ◼   ► for iPads.

01:10:07 ◼   ► Like what they did with the, uh, the iPad for school thing with the multi-user support

01:10:12 ◼   ► that basically like reboots the entire user space.

01:10:14 ◼   ► It's they didn't do that for the hell of it.

01:10:15 ◼   ► It's like that was their best option at the time because it's just not set up for a log

01:10:19 ◼   ► in log out, uh, like our Macs are.

01:10:22 ◼   ► So you might be waiting a little while for that.

01:10:24 ◼   ► Um, I'm on the command line and shortcuts issue.

01:10:26 ◼   ► This is a good time for me to hoist up a topic that I had in the notes forever, which is

01:10:30 ◼   ► related to this.

01:10:31 ◼   ► I was thinking when I wrote this, I noticed I was thinking about shortcuts and how we

01:10:35 ◼   ► all know a bunch of people are super into them.

01:10:36 ◼   ► They're doing really cool things with them.

01:10:38 ◼   ► And I've been downloading shortcuts and messing with them.

01:10:40 ◼   ► Um, but uh, like you guys, I haven't really gotten that into them and I know why I haven't

01:10:46 ◼   ► gotten that into them because I feel like I've, you know, been down this road before

01:10:50 ◼   ► with these types of things.

01:10:51 ◼   ► Like it's, and it doesn't mean that they're bad.

01:10:54 ◼   ► I think they're great.

01:10:55 ◼   ► I think the people are using them or, you know, excited to use them.

01:10:57 ◼   ► But if you are a programmer, it's far, far less appealing.

01:11:01 ◼   ► And in fact, it's kind of a turnoff to be asked to essentially write a little program

01:11:08 ◼   ► with a bunch of gooey bubbles in a big, long linear list from top to bottom with a limited

01:11:14 ◼   ► level of indenting with no functions or libraries, like with no debugger.

01:11:19 ◼   ► I mean, it's like, yeah, I could do it, but why would I put myself through that?

01:11:24 ◼   ► So when you're describing like the things you can do with the terminal, one of the most

01:11:27 ◼   ► important things that you can, you can do with the terminal is write programs.

01:11:30 ◼   ► And most of the programs that you can write in the terminal are in some kind of language

01:11:34 ◼   ► that has a debugger and like just the basics of programming.

01:11:36 ◼   ► Right?

01:11:37 ◼   ► So if you're a programmer, none of that scares you.

01:11:39 ◼   ► You want to program.

01:11:40 ◼   ► And that's what I was thinking about.

01:11:41 ◼   ► Shortcuts is like the different levels of essentially programming on computers.

01:11:45 ◼   ► Right?

01:11:46 ◼   ► So you've got applications that just do what they do, that someone else wrote them, but

01:11:50 ◼   ► you don't, you're just the user.

01:11:51 ◼   ► Right?

01:11:52 ◼   ► So that's like the bottom level.

01:11:53 ◼   ► You're not doing any program.

01:11:54 ◼   ► You're just using an application, tapping around, blah, blah, blah.

01:11:56 ◼   ► Right.

01:11:57 ◼   ► You've got something like shortcuts where now you have a series of things that it can

01:11:59 ◼   ► do and you've got conditionals and you've got loops and it's like go crazy, but you're

01:12:03 ◼   ► not actually writing any code.

01:12:04 ◼   ► And I saw a lot of people asking for in shortcuts.

01:12:07 ◼   ► I don't know if this already exists.

01:12:09 ◼   ► Um, and maybe it does, but I've seen this in a lot of similar applications where there's

01:12:13 ◼   ► one particular thing that you can do in this gooey sort of programming environment is do

01:12:18 ◼   ► a thing here.

01:12:19 ◼   ► And one of the, one of the ways you parameterize this thing is, Oh, here's a text box in the

01:12:23 ◼   ► text box.

01:12:24 ◼   ► You then finally get to write some kind of code.

01:12:26 ◼   ► Right?

01:12:27 ◼   ► So you get operation conditional loop, whatever, and then operation.

01:12:33 ◼   ► Oh, and arbitrary codes.

01:12:35 ◼   ► Like finally within this application where you're dragging blocks of stuff around, you

01:12:38 ◼   ► get a text box and you get to finally write code just for this little tiny corner of your

01:12:43 ◼   ► application.

01:12:44 ◼   ► Right.

01:12:45 ◼   ► But for programmers, we want the whole thing to just be the code that we write.

01:12:49 ◼   ► And like, it amazes me.

01:12:51 ◼   ► I was messing with this today with the, some friends were talking on Slack about some Apple

01:12:54 ◼   ► script thing and they're using like JavaScript and Apple script.

01:12:57 ◼   ► I opened up script debugger and not script debugger.

01:12:59 ◼   ► They've sort of a jump to the end there.

01:13:01 ◼   ► I opened up script editor and I'm like, Oh yeah, people write Apple script and there's

01:13:05 ◼   ► no debugger.

01:13:06 ◼   ► That's why an application called script debugger exists.

01:13:08 ◼   ► How do you write any code without a debugger?

01:13:10 ◼   ► Like I don't like, it's just like you can be a PHP programmer.

01:13:13 ◼   ► It's like everyone's caught in the stone age, right?

01:13:16 ◼   ► The JavaScript way was you debug it in Safari, right?

01:13:18 ◼   ► So you can write the JavaScript that actually translates to the same stuff as Apple script

01:13:22 ◼   ► does and you debug it in Safari.

01:13:24 ◼   ► It's just, it's not attractive to, you know, all the things that you guys said about shortcuts

01:13:29 ◼   ► is true and you know, limited to single platform and not general, whatever, but also it is

01:13:34 ◼   ► a total turnoff to anyone who's actually a programmer, which granted that's not what

01:13:38 ◼   ► this is for.

01:13:39 ◼   ► If you're a programmer, fine, write programs.

01:13:40 ◼   ► But this is for people who aren't programmers to give them the ability to do things that

01:13:42 ◼   ► programmers can do.

01:13:44 ◼   ► But it is kind of like a ladder that you climb.

01:13:46 ◼   ► I look at these giant things that Viticius put in together.

01:13:48 ◼   ► I'm like, well, he's essentially graduated now.

01:13:50 ◼   ► I think he's graduated out of shortcuts.

01:13:53 ◼   ► He's ready now more or less to start writing actual programs because I mean, really like

01:13:57 ◼   ► some of these shortcuts are like, I think he saw one of those in the hundreds of commands.

01:14:02 ◼   ► Maybe one was up into the thousands.

01:14:03 ◼   ► And this is just one giant linear list from top to bottom with everything just inlined.

01:14:07 ◼   ► And it's like how you write programs before you know how to write programs.

01:14:11 ◼   ► And you didn't write any of it.

01:14:12 ◼   ► It's just a bunch of blocks.

01:14:13 ◼   ► And then how do you debug it?

01:14:14 ◼   ► And just, I don't, it's not attractive to me at all.

01:14:19 ◼   ► And there's an analog to this having to do with the eternal debate that we are all having

01:14:26 ◼   ► collectively in the Apple community about iOS versus the Mac.

01:14:32 ◼   ► Just the operating systems in terms of how they deal with doing more than one thing at

01:14:37 ◼   ► the same time.

01:14:40 ◼   ► Multitasking is a simple way to put it, but Windows is another way to put it, and the

01:14:42 ◼   ► menu bar and all that stuff is the discussion we have.

01:14:44 ◼   ► I think there is a direct analog to the way we've been discussing the way the Unix command

01:14:52 ◼   ► line works and the building blocks that it's based on and contrasting that with shortcuts,

01:14:58 ◼   ► which is this very regimented, simplified environment.

01:15:04 ◼   ► Very similar to the way the Mac GUI works versus the way the iOS GUI works.

01:15:09 ◼   ► But I haven't, I keep, it's one of those things, you know on this show where I make up stupid

01:15:12 ◼   ► analogies on the fly, I keep making up stupid analogies in my head on the fly about how

01:15:18 ◼   ► to correctly articulate the difference between these two things and they're all really bad.

01:15:22 ◼   ► So I'm holding it in for now, we'll save it for another podcast, for another episode.

01:15:27 ◼   ► If I ever come up with a good analogy, I have a bunch of ones that sound good, but then

01:15:31 ◼   ► you think about them a little bit more and they're not really that great.

01:15:33 ◼   ► But I'm just going to leave it for now.

01:15:35 ◼   ► But I think it is very similar to the idea of like, if you learn the basics of the Unix

01:15:42 ◼   ► shell and the way processes work in Unix and the basics of input/output redirection and

01:15:49 ◼   ► the basics of one or two simple programming languages, you can use those building blocks

01:15:53 ◼   ► to do whatever you want, more or less, and be comfortable and efficient.

01:15:58 ◼   ► If you learn Apple shortcuts, best case scenario, you pull a Vitechy and you very quickly graduate

01:16:04 ◼   ► from the shortcuts program.

01:16:05 ◼   ► Which is great, like again, I'm not slamming shortcuts or saying everything should be programmed

01:16:09 ◼   ► right, it shouldn't.

01:16:10 ◼   ► But it's absolutely a place for shortcuts and it's great that it exists and most people

01:16:12 ◼   ► will never graduate from it.

01:16:14 ◼   ► Most people will find shortcuts itself too inscrutable to use.

01:16:16 ◼   ► We have a long way to go to make that kind of power accessible to people, but if you

01:16:20 ◼   ► do actually climb all the way up that ladder, we need there to be a next step on iOS, and

01:16:25 ◼   ► right now there isn't.

01:16:26 ◼   ► The next step is basically get out Xcode and you can write your own app, that's it.

01:16:29 ◼   ► A lot of times people will, a lot of times it's the developers who will say, "We need

01:16:34 ◼   ► something easy for everyone to use."

01:16:36 ◼   ► But there's an inherent level of complexity in shortcuts that, 'cause it is kind of like

01:16:42 ◼   ► a programming environment, no matter what the syntax is, no matter whether you're typing

01:16:46 ◼   ► code or dragging together blocks, the fact is it requires logic and staffing together

01:16:52 ◼   ► different pieces of functionality to do different things, and that itself is complexity that

01:16:57 ◼   ► is beyond a lot of people.

01:16:59 ◼   ► And so whenever programmers try to simplify things for other people who aren't them,

01:17:04 ◼   ► we've been trying to do that for like 40 years, and we largely haven't succeeded very

01:17:09 ◼   ► well.

01:17:10 ◼   ► Certain things break through, but for the most part they haven't.

01:17:13 ◼   ► I would also say that Apple has said on a number of occasions recently that developers

01:17:18 ◼   ► are their largest segment of pro users.

01:17:22 ◼   ► So when you're pushing the iPad into pro territory, marketing-wise and hardware-wise,

01:17:28 ◼   ► it does make sense to have it be a little bit more suitable for developers to use, and

01:17:32 ◼   ► to consider features that maybe only developers would ever use.

01:17:36 ◼   ► But that's not a bad thing.

01:17:38 ◼   ► Developers is not a bad word.

01:17:40 ◼   ► We are users too.

01:17:41 ◼   ► We buy a lot of Apple products that end in the word pro.

01:17:45 ◼   ► It is not unreasonable to say like, "You know what?

01:17:47 ◼   ► This environment that I'm asking for, like basically a terminal app for the iPad, like

01:17:51 ◼   ► that isn't that crazy of an idea for Apple to actually prioritize for their new pro platform

01:17:55 ◼   ► that they want to jack up the prices for and charge as much as a laptop."

01:17:59 ◼   ► And secondly, I know I said this already.

01:18:02 ◼   ► I just really want to reiterate how awesome it is to teach yourself the command line because

01:18:07 ◼   ► of the incredible breadth and longevity of that skill.

01:18:13 ◼   ► Like even today, you know, you hear about somebody like Federico saying how awesome

01:18:16 ◼   ► Homebridge is on a Raspberry Pi.

01:18:19 ◼   ► You can run Homebridge on a Raspberry Pi.

01:18:21 ◼   ► That's great.

01:18:22 ◼   ► Raspberry Pis cost like between $10 and $30.

01:18:24 ◼   ► They're amazing little computers.

01:18:26 ◼   ► They are Linux computers.

01:18:27 ◼   ► And if you know command line basics, you can very easily run a Raspberry Pi and have it

01:18:33 ◼   ► do all sorts of fun things.

01:18:34 ◼   ► You can run, and this episode we are sponsored by Linode.

01:18:36 ◼   ► You can get five bucks a month.

01:18:37 ◼   ► You can go buy a Linode server and have a server in the cloud that runs YouTube DL for

01:18:42 ◼   ► you.

01:18:43 ◼   ► And you can do all sorts of other stuff.

01:18:45 ◼   ► All it takes is a little bit of command line knowledge.

01:18:48 ◼   ► And the command line knowledge that I have, I learned in college in like 2001.

01:18:55 ◼   ► And I used it for my very first job in 2004 through the present day and probably well

01:19:00 ◼   ► into the future.

01:19:02 ◼   ► There are very few things that programmers can say that they learned in college that

01:19:05 ◼   ► they still use.

01:19:06 ◼   ► Usually, you know, languages change, technologies change, the whole market changes.

01:19:11 ◼   ► But that's something.

01:19:12 ◼   ► We know that.

01:19:13 ◼   ► Like shell scripting and basic command line usage and some of the, you know, Unix simple

01:19:18 ◼   ► command line tools that are available, when you learn that, it has such long-term value,

01:19:24 ◼   ► not only as a programmer, but even just as like a power user of a computer.

01:19:28 ◼   ► The value of having that on a platform you use is very, very high.

01:19:32 ◼   ► And the selling proposition of a platform that you use a lot but that doesn't support

01:19:37 ◼   ► that entire world of things, it's a really tough sell to make that a high-end or a high-work

01:19:45 ◼   ► getting done platform.

01:19:47 ◼   ► I think it's worth noting though that we are three old dudes who are lamenting the fact

01:19:54 ◼   ► that our old technologies aren't available to us on this unbelievably cool new platform.

01:19:59 ◼   ► And I stand by everything I've said, don't get me wrong.

01:20:01 ◼   ► But it is a bunch of old dudes whining about old stuff not being there.

01:20:06 ◼   ► No, it's not about old things because like everything old is new.

01:20:08 ◼   ► Again, like the shortcuts thing is not old.

01:20:10 ◼   ► Like I did HyperTalk and HyperCard and I've done FileMaker databases and I've done all

01:20:14 ◼   ► sorts of GUI type environments for sort of simplifying programming.

01:20:18 ◼   ► And like I said, there's definitely a place for them and in fact there should be more

01:20:22 ◼   ► and even easier solutions because even shortcuts I think as Marco pointed out is too complicated

01:20:26 ◼   ► for most people.

01:20:28 ◼   ► But none of those things, like at a certain point those things are harder than actually

01:20:32 ◼   ► writing a program.

01:20:33 ◼   ► Like I would much rather debug a page or two of actual code than a 2000 instruction shortcut

01:20:41 ◼   ► because a page or two of regular code I would get to use a code editor and an actual debugger

01:20:48 ◼   ► and it would make sense and I would be able to understand what the language can do and

01:20:54 ◼   ► also it would be documented.

01:20:57 ◼   ► Shortcuts is an application that you use and it's like a little game you can play inside

01:20:59 ◼   ► shortcuts and you're going to do amazing stuff.

01:21:01 ◼   ► But at a certain point I don't want to, it's harder to hold a 2000 quote unquote instruction

01:21:06 ◼   ► shortcut in your mind and reason about it and debug it and work on it and repeatedly

01:21:11 ◼   ► run it and test it and just, it's not, that's not the way, it's harder to do that than to

01:21:17 ◼   ► write an actual program.

01:21:19 ◼   ► And that's true whether it's new or old, that's true whether you're trying to write a game

01:21:26 ◼   ► in HyperTalk or whether you're trying to make an Excel spreadsheet, play Tetris.

01:21:30 ◼   ► Like lots of things are possible and you're like wow, the Excel spreadsheet can play Tetris,

01:21:34 ◼   ► that's amazing.

01:21:35 ◼   ► But if you want to write Tetris, don't use Excel, right?

01:21:38 ◼   ► So some of these things I see that the shortcuts are doing, it's not because we're old and

01:21:41 ◼   ► it's not because we like Unix or whatever, they're just, their utility is in their ease

01:21:48 ◼   ► of use and the ability to do simple things fairly easily but hard things are barely possible

01:21:57 ◼   ► and if you are super into it, you will quickly reach the limit of where you should not be

01:22:03 ◼   ► using shortcuts anymore and there is a huge chasm between shortcuts and Xcode and so that's

01:22:09 ◼   ► the place where the command line might come in where you're not ready to dive in to write

01:22:12 ◼   ► an app in Xcode but maybe you're ready to learn some basic command line stuff, download

01:22:16 ◼   ► some open source packages in a safe sandbox type environment and say run YouTube DL to

01:22:21 ◼   ► download something.

01:22:22 ◼   ► - And you can have a programming environment there, you can run things like PHP and Python

01:22:26 ◼   ► and Ruby, like you can have all that running locally.

01:22:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's a good place to learn, you know, I mean they have that now with the Xcode

01:22:32 ◼   ► Playgrounds and stuff like that but yeah, they could, Playgrounds is actually getting

01:22:36 ◼   ► close to that type of environment but it's not, it's still, you're still kind of in,

01:22:40 ◼   ► contained in the walls of the application.

01:22:41 ◼   ► In this topic, I just hoisted up to the top of the show notes, I had a bunch of other

01:22:45 ◼   ► stuff in there with like apps versus apps that have loadable bundles versus code as

01:22:49 ◼   ► data which is the part where like, well, you're not writing code but at some point, this application

01:22:54 ◼   ► will present you with a text box and you can paste code into that text box so it's like

01:22:58 ◼   ► a little escape hatch from the thing you're doing and then shortcuts and then writing

01:23:02 ◼   ► actual code.

01:23:03 ◼   ► So yeah, if you have, obviously if you have a Unix environment, you could run Node right

01:23:06 ◼   ► in there and just be off to the races and start, you know, running and debugging stuff

01:23:10 ◼   ► but there are quote unquote, IDEs, command line IDEs and command line debuggers, like

01:23:17 ◼   ► I'm very comfortable using those things and that's more of an old man thing but stuff

01:23:20 ◼   ► like shortcuts, that type of GUI programming environment, it has its limits regardless

01:23:26 ◼   ► of whether it's new technology, old technology, it's not because we're old men, it's because

01:23:32 ◼   ► A, it's because we're programmers and B, it's because there is a huge gap between a GUI

01:23:39 ◼   ► thing where you can make programs and programming in Xcode and I don't think it's up to Apple

01:23:44 ◼   ► to bridge that gap, that was the old 70s view of technology, eventually everyone who uses

01:23:47 ◼   ► a computer will be a programmer, that's not true, like everyone who drives a car won't

01:23:50 ◼   ► be a mechanic, everyone who uses a computer won't be a programmer, that will never happen,

01:23:54 ◼   ► that was a wrong headed way to think about things, the reason I think people thought

01:23:58 ◼   ► that in the 70s is because the people saying that were programmers and they realized the

01:24:03 ◼   ► incredible power of being a programmer, it's like if you're a programmer and you have easy

01:24:07 ◼   ► access to a computer essentially, a computer of your very own in your own house, you can

01:24:12 ◼   ► do amazing things and they're like, wouldn't it be great if everybody had this power?

01:24:16 ◼   ► Yeah, it would but they're not going to, like it's not a thing that everyone will do, like

01:24:19 ◼   ► it would be great if everyone had the ability to fashion their own furniture out of wood

01:24:23 ◼   ► but they don't and they won't and it will never ever happen, it's as cool as you might

01:24:27 ◼   ► think it would be, so that dream has definitely died but what we're talking about is I can

01:24:34 ◼   ► think of a thing that my device can do, I just need to, like it's capable of doing it,

01:24:41 ◼   ► it just, I want it to do it like all at once, like I want to give it a series of instructions

01:24:46 ◼   ► and maybe with some conditions and I want to do that so I don't have to manually do

01:24:50 ◼   ► it, like you know, sort of my first program, can you give me a way to do that, that's why

01:24:56 ◼   ► they call it automation, like I'm not actually programming, I'm just telling the computer

01:24:59 ◼   ► a series of things to do maybe with some conditionals in there, so it's automation that's not programmed

01:25:03 ◼   ► but it's the exact same thing, it's just a continuum from I don't do anything except

01:25:08 ◼   ► press buttons that a program someone else wrote to I write my program and in that continuum

01:25:12 ◼   ► there are huge gaps, there's the gap way at the beginning between nothing and shortcuts,

01:25:16 ◼   ► then there's this little island of shortcuts and then that peters off into the ocean and

01:25:20 ◼   ► there's a giant ocean and then there's Xcode way out on the right hand side and even in

01:25:24 ◼   ► Xcode you're like well but it's not jailbroken and the other side of Xcode is like jailbroken

01:25:29 ◼   ► iPhone and now you're writing the operating system and stuff like that, so I'm still working

01:25:35 ◼   ► on the analogy/metaphor for my gooey thoughts, I really hope someone doesn't write like a

01:25:39 ◼   ► blog post that says exactly what I've been wanting to say for like six months but I probably

01:25:44 ◼   ► inevitably will as I ruminate on the perfect analogy.

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01:26:50 ◼   ► Betterment, out smart average.

01:26:56 ◼   ► Drew Shannon writes, "Hey for most quote unquote normal Mac OS usage what are the pros and

01:27:01 ◼   ► cons of using something like Dropbox or Google Drive as a primary storage solution so nothing

01:27:05 ◼   ► is exclusively saved locally?

01:27:08 ◼   ► Seems like a no brainer for portability and backups but what am I missing?"

01:27:12 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:27:13 ◼   ► That just seems like it wouldn't be wise because it would be so chatty over the network.

01:27:18 ◼   ► Maybe?

01:27:19 ◼   ► I mean I guess on the surface there's nothing that strikes me as oh this is a terrible decision

01:27:24 ◼   ► but it is not something I've ever thought to myself, ooh I want this in my life.

01:27:28 ◼   ► So I don't know.

01:27:30 ◼   ► Let's leave John, Mr. File Systems for the end.

01:27:33 ◼   ► Marco any thoughts on this?

01:27:35 ◼   ► I mean I would say one of the obvious ones is privacy of that data.

01:27:38 ◼   ► I mean that's that's a big thing.

01:27:42 ◼   ► And as John will probably point out like certain jobs and professions you actually either shouldn't

01:27:48 ◼   ► or like legally can't store your primary documents or a lot of your documents in public storage

01:27:54 ◼   ► places like this.

01:27:55 ◼   ► You also are stressing that process that like the sync process, the system for doing it,

01:28:01 ◼   ► you are going to have probably poor performance of that process if you have a whole lot of

01:28:06 ◼   ► files there.

01:28:07 ◼   ► And then finally you are you're basically having a giant single point of failure.

01:28:12 ◼   ► Now I don't think it matters that much in if you have other systems in place.

01:28:19 ◼   ► So for instance Dropbox, I don't know how Google Drive works, Dropbox is just a folder

01:28:25 ◼   ► on your file system and there's a background process that syncs to and from it basically

01:28:31 ◼   ► into their cloud thing.

01:28:32 ◼   ► So you can do things like run time machine or run internet backup like back plays or

01:28:38 ◼   ► things like that that will that will include those files because they're just files sitting

01:28:43 ◼   ► there on your disk.

01:28:44 ◼   ► So you can have like different levels of backup and you definitely should if that's like your

01:28:49 ◼   ► primary storage because yes Dropbox is wonderful and yes it has like version support but what

01:28:54 ◼   ► if it breaks?

01:28:55 ◼   ► What if your account gets suspended?

01:28:57 ◼   ► What if they have a problem?

01:28:58 ◼   ► What if you go to restore a file and it just says oh sorry server error can't do it?

01:29:03 ◼   ► It's always nice to have your own backups in some other form in addition to whatever

01:29:07 ◼   ► they're doing.

01:29:08 ◼   ► So I would say like it can be a single point of failure that you want to avoid but it doesn't

01:29:13 ◼   ► need to be.

01:29:14 ◼   ► In addition to that having your primary thing be something that is synced introduces the

01:29:19 ◼   ► potential for sync bugs to wipe it out.

01:29:23 ◼   ► So you could log in one day and as soon as you connect to the Wi-Fi Dropbox starts deleting

01:29:28 ◼   ► all the files in your Dropbox because some sync problem has happened or maybe your account

01:29:33 ◼   ► was hacked but chances are you know I think a bug is more likely you know something has

01:29:37 ◼   ► happened and it's blowing away all your files and you might notice you might not notice

01:29:43 ◼   ► in time it might blow away some of your files and then you don't notice until it is too

01:29:49 ◼   ► late and it's and then the things that were blown away are no longer in any of your backups

01:29:53 ◼   ► or their version control system.

01:29:55 ◼   ► So like it's it's kind of shaky in a few areas but if it's like a secondary computer like

01:30:02 ◼   ► a laptop then the calculus changes.

01:30:05 ◼   ► Like if you have like a primary desktop or something at home and you're you have like

01:30:09 ◼   ► you know a MacBook one or something and you're trying to like just have a few things on this

01:30:13 ◼   ► and just have that thing be expendable that's a different story.

01:30:17 ◼   ► So it depends on how you're how you're using it but there are definitely some pitfalls

01:30:21 ◼   ► that you might want to consider and try to avoid.

01:30:23 ◼   ► John?

01:30:24 ◼   ► You guys covered most of it.

01:30:28 ◼   ► The philosophical problems with it is starting to think that because you use one of these

01:30:34 ◼   ► cloud drive services that that that you don't need a backup that this constitutes your backup.

01:30:38 ◼   ► Oh a Dropbox saves old versions.

01:30:41 ◼   ► Even if I suddenly delete the file I can get it back.

01:30:43 ◼   ► None of these things are backup solutions.

01:30:45 ◼   ► Don't don't trust them for that.

01:30:48 ◼   ► The main difference between a backup solution these things like Mark pointed out these things

01:30:50 ◼   ► are not you do stuff in a local file system and it puts them into the cloud.

01:30:56 ◼   ► It's bi-directional.

01:30:57 ◼   ► It's sync right which has bugs and problems but the main difference between it and a cloud

01:31:03 ◼   ► backup services that cloud backup service never deletes anything off your drive.

01:31:07 ◼   ► It just takes things off your drive and puts them into the cloud.

01:31:10 ◼   ► At no point does you know backblaze frequent sponsor of the show decide see that file on

01:31:15 ◼   ► your on your hard drive that shouldn't be there let me delete it.

01:31:18 ◼   ► That will never happen.

01:31:19 ◼   ► It's not the job of Dropbox to delete stuff.

01:31:21 ◼   ► It's the job of Dropbox to see what's there and stick it up in the cloud.

01:31:25 ◼   ► One direction only.

01:31:26 ◼   ► If you want to do a restore from Dropbox it's a whole other process that you have to manually

01:31:30 ◼   ► initiate it's not going to randomly happen.

01:31:33 ◼   ► And then practically speaking depending on what you're doing and Mark pointed out the

01:31:38 ◼   ► performance things like if you you know I wouldn't put a git repository on Dropbox or

01:31:43 ◼   ► Google Drive.

01:31:44 ◼   ► I know from experience that if you do npm install on Dropbox or Google Drive you're doing node

01:31:48 ◼   ► development.

01:31:49 ◼   ► It will just I mean it will catch up eventually with what you're doing but it becomes so far

01:31:55 ◼   ► from real time and just slaughters your computer that you end up having to say well let me

01:31:59 ◼   ► turn off Dropbox or Google Drive if you can you can't turn off iCloud drive.

01:32:04 ◼   ► Let me turn it off do my development and then turn it back on later and let it sync and

01:32:08 ◼   ► at that point you're now doing this manual system you're going to forget to turn it back

01:32:11 ◼   ► on or you're going to accidentally delete something you don't realize it was synced

01:32:14 ◼   ► and it's like you are eliminating the benefits.

01:32:16 ◼   ► You really given the technological limitations there is no sort of automatic transparent

01:32:21 ◼   ► oh I do stuff locally and it just magically goes up to the cloud.

01:32:24 ◼   ► The best we have is sort of an asynchronous way to make that happen eventually and the

01:32:28 ◼   ► safest way to do that is to just do your development locally.

01:32:32 ◼   ► You can put some things in Dropbox or Google Drive but have a backup system that takes

01:32:35 ◼   ► your entire drive and puts it one direction from your Mac up into the cloud and have that

01:32:40 ◼   ► be your safety net.

01:32:41 ◼   ► So we're stuck saying some files have to be local some files can be in Google Drive or

01:32:46 ◼   ► Dropbox and you have to run a backup utility and you have to be conscious of which things

01:32:50 ◼   ► are in which locations.

01:32:51 ◼   ► It's cruddy but that's life.

01:32:54 ◼   ► Justin Winchester writes I've just over 5,000 movies and TV show episodes all stored on

01:32:59 ◼   ► a Drobo.

01:33:00 ◼   ► I run Plex on a 5k iMac that sounds familiar but I'm looking at getting a dedicated computer

01:33:05 ◼   ► to just run my Plex server.

01:33:06 ◼   ► I thought an old Mac Mini would be good for this and I found several on Craigslist but

01:33:09 ◼   ► I've also found some 2010 era Mac Pros.

01:33:12 ◼   ► Would it be beneficial to get a Pro over a Mini for basically the same price?

01:33:17 ◼   ► Then there's some details that he provides about his Drobo and then he continues.

01:33:21 ◼   ► So should I even consider the older Macs?

01:33:23 ◼   ► All my videos are MKV or M4V so I don't believe the Mac has to do any transcoding as I believe

01:33:28 ◼   ► my devices can play those files natively.

01:33:31 ◼   ► So what should I do?

01:33:34 ◼   ► Well I actually exchanged a couple emails with Justin and I was not the one who put

01:33:39 ◼   ► this on the show notes so I presume one of you has some thoughts on this.

01:33:41 ◼   ► But what I had initially recommended was actually an NVIDIA Shield and to be fair I don't know

01:33:47 ◼   ► very much about this at all.

01:33:49 ◼   ► But a friend of the show Bradley Chambers has used these in the past and says that they're

01:33:54 ◼   ► really really good and you can actually to the best of my knowledge, check my math on

01:33:58 ◼   ► this, you can actually run a Plex server on the NVIDIA Shield.

01:34:02 ◼   ► And as far as I understand Justin actually did some research on this and according to

01:34:06 ◼   ► him it can only do like two or three simultaneous streams either because of the constraints

01:34:12 ◼   ► of the processor or because of some sort of artificial limitation.

01:34:16 ◼   ► Again check my math on this.

01:34:18 ◼   ► But I guess Justin, he said privately to me, often has many people all streaming from him

01:34:24 ◼   ► simultaneously.

01:34:26 ◼   ► So that probably wouldn't work for him and if that's the case I would say just get a

01:34:29 ◼   ► new Mac Mini, you'd be surprised what else you can do with it.

01:34:32 ◼   ► And I have not spoken to him much but I understand that other friend of the show, Mike Hurley,

01:34:37 ◼   ► has just gotten himself a Mac Mini.

01:34:39 ◼   ► So I'm basically one step away from flying to London and installing Plex on that Mini

01:34:43 ◼   ► for him.

01:34:44 ◼   ► So I would say if you have light uses take a look at NVIDIA Shield.

01:34:48 ◼   ► If you're more like Justin and running a Mini Netflix out of your house then something like

01:34:52 ◼   ► a Mac Mini.

01:34:54 ◼   ► Either of you guys, other thoughts?

01:34:55 ◼   ► Justin may be the only person cross shopping a Mac Pro tower and a Mac Mini.

01:35:03 ◼   ► They seem so similar I can't decide.

01:35:05 ◼   ► They're the same price.

01:35:06 ◼   ► One of them is the size of a house.

01:35:07 ◼   ► You could fit like 20 Mac Minis inside a Mac Pro case, stacked on top of each other.

01:35:13 ◼   ► They're not comparable in any way.

01:35:15 ◼   ► I guess he's got some place where he can tuck them away but the power that the Mac Pro would

01:35:18 ◼   ► use, please don't buy a 2010 Mac Pro to be your Plex server.

01:35:21 ◼   ► That is the rule.

01:35:22 ◼   ► I'm not even going to say it's overkill because it's slower than the Mac Mini.

01:35:26 ◼   ► It's just giant and it's ridiculous.

01:35:28 ◼   ► Don't do it.

01:35:29 ◼   ► The other question that we've lost over in the middle and one of the reasons I put this

01:35:31 ◼   ► in here was worried about like, "Oh, I have a Drobo and it has USB 3 but if I got a 2010

01:35:36 ◼   ► Mac Pro it wouldn't have USB 3."

01:35:37 ◼   ► Again, don't get a Mac Pro tower.

01:35:39 ◼   ► It's ridiculous.

01:35:40 ◼   ► But for the transfer speeds, I don't think any modern computer, it doesn't really matter

01:35:46 ◼   ► how many streams, sequential data reading especially from SSDs but even from spinning

01:35:50 ◼   ► disks especially for compressed media files, should be adequate to serve tons of streams

01:35:55 ◼   ► of almost anything.

01:35:57 ◼   ► It shouldn't worry too much about the IO.

01:35:59 ◼   ► I suppose if you have a 2010 machine maybe worry a little bit.

01:36:02 ◼   ► Don't get a 2010 machine.

01:36:03 ◼   ► Get a recent thing whether it's a Mac Mini or I don't know what the Nvidia Shield's IO

01:36:07 ◼   ► is like or whatever but unless you are serving like an entire town streaming from your thing

01:36:11 ◼   ► which you probably shouldn't be anyway, even if it's your entire media and extended family

01:36:15 ◼   ► streaming from your Plex, any modern small computer will do just fine so please don't

01:36:20 ◼   ► buy a Mac Pro.

01:36:22 ◼   ► The Shield thing, I don't know.

01:36:24 ◼   ► You can check it out.

01:36:25 ◼   ► It's cheap.

01:36:26 ◼   ► It might be fun to get into but a Mac Mini would totally crush this task and would be

01:36:28 ◼   ► awesome if I had $800 to spend on a Plex server and wanted to get a Mac.

01:36:33 ◼   ► That's what I would get.

01:36:34 ◼   ► Same.

01:36:35 ◼   ► Marco, any other thoughts?

01:36:36 ◼   ► Yeah, pretty much.

01:36:37 ◼   ► I was going to point out the power usage difference if John didn't.

01:36:39 ◼   ► They're the same buy-in price now but for a computer that you run 24/7, power consumption

01:36:45 ◼   ► will actually probably add up to real money and so the Mac Pro will definitely use more

01:36:51 ◼   ► power.

01:36:52 ◼   ► I would also remind everybody as you touched on that you'd be getting USB 2.0 only, people

01:36:59 ◼   ► don't realize how old the Tower Mac Pros are until you point out the fastest IO they have

01:37:05 ◼   ► is FireWire 800.

01:37:08 ◼   ► My word.

01:37:09 ◼   ► They are pre-USB 3 and pre-Thunderbolt.

01:37:11 ◼   ► Thunderbolt 1.

01:37:13 ◼   ► They don't have Thunderbolt 1 or USB 3.

01:37:16 ◼   ► I would also say that regarding the NVIDIA Shield, I know Federico Vatici, if we didn't

01:37:21 ◼   ► make his head explode enough with all the iPad and shortcuts talk, I'm pretty sure he

01:37:27 ◼   ► had an NVIDIA Shield, I think.

01:37:29 ◼   ► I know he had something like that.

01:37:30 ◼   ► I think that was it to do exactly this, to be a Plex server and he has since moved on

01:37:34 ◼   ► to a different setup because it didn't work out and I forget the details of why it didn't

01:37:38 ◼   ► work out but I'm pretty sure it was not a favorable review of that setup.

01:37:42 ◼   ► So I wouldn't recommend that.

01:37:49 ◼   ► If you're considering two Macs, just get a Mac and the Mac to get for this purpose is

01:37:54 ◼   ► definitely the Mac Mini.

01:37:56 ◼   ► You don't even need to spec it up.

01:37:58 ◼   ► If you're using external storage for all your stuff, you can get the base model.

01:38:02 ◼   ► You don't need more than the i3 is likely to deliver processor wise.

01:38:08 ◼   ► The GPU is going to be the same awful GPU in all of them so there's no upgrade to have

01:38:13 ◼   ► there.

01:38:14 ◼   ► I don't think this is a very RAM heavy workload so you don't need to upgrade the RAM either.

01:38:18 ◼   ► I think get the base model Mac Mini and enjoy the energy savings and much smaller size and

01:38:24 ◼   ► the ability to use IO that was invented in this decade.

01:38:28 ◼   ► And actually real time follow up from XMN in the chat, there's apparently a Plex equivalent

01:38:33 ◼   ► of a KBase article specifically enumerating some of the limitations of running a Plex

01:38:37 ◼   ► server on the shield.

01:38:39 ◼   ► So again, it's probably the cheapest and easiest way to fix this problem if you don't have

01:38:45 ◼   ► the needs that Justin appears to have.

01:38:47 ◼   ► But it's worth checking out.

01:38:48 ◼   ► We'll put a link in the show notes.

01:38:50 ◼   ► All right, and then finally Eric Wagner writes, "I was wondering if you guys ever had an issue

01:38:55 ◼   ► balancing work and play.

01:38:56 ◼   ► If so, what do you do to solve this issue?

01:38:58 ◼   ► For example, I'm a computer science major and a lot of my work is on the computer but

01:39:02 ◼   ► I also enjoy playing video games on said computer."

01:39:06 ◼   ► And then there's video game talk, whatever.

01:39:07 ◼   ► "I've been playing this type of war with should I do homework or should I do my daily missions?

01:39:12 ◼   ► Unfortunately the latter has been winning out more often than it probably should be.

01:39:15 ◼   ► How do you suggest I resist this relentless urge?"

01:39:19 ◼   ► Daily missions and what Casey?

01:39:21 ◼   ► I don't care.

01:39:22 ◼   ► What does that mean daily missions?

01:39:23 ◼   ► I don't care.

01:39:24 ◼   ► It's in some stupid case.

01:39:25 ◼   ► I was going to ask about this.

01:39:26 ◼   ► Like this is definitely like, you know, when I was a kid in college learning computer science

01:39:31 ◼   ► with a computer full of games and trying to balance it.

01:39:35 ◼   ► Games were so much less exploitive and addictive and constantly online.

01:39:40 ◼   ► Total annihilation?

01:39:41 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:39:42 ◼   ► Network play.

01:39:43 ◼   ► Network play is the ultimate time sink.

01:39:44 ◼   ► Yep.

01:39:45 ◼   ► That was Counter Strike for me.

01:39:46 ◼   ► I didn't have any daily missions.

01:39:49 ◼   ► It was TA, it was Counter Strike, it was later Return to Castle Wolfenstein, stuff like that.

01:39:54 ◼   ► But like I never had that big of a problem in part because my college had awful internet

01:39:59 ◼   ► connectivity and so the ping times were too high to play most of those games reasonably.

01:40:04 ◼   ► But I think the games now, they're so much more addictive and immersive and they like

01:40:11 ◼   ► take over your life to a greater degree for more people than they did back then.

01:40:16 ◼   ► So it's a little hard to answer.

01:40:17 ◼   ► But my actual answer to this really is get a Mac.

01:40:20 ◼   ► Because you want to be able to play any games.

01:40:22 ◼   ► Gaming on a Mac is so painful and punitive you won't want to do it.

01:40:25 ◼   ► And you can still do all your computer science work on it.

01:40:27 ◼   ► That's interesting.

01:40:28 ◼   ► Interesting answer I did not expect to be honest with you.

01:40:31 ◼   ► I don't have good advice on this and it's definitely do as I say not as I do because

01:40:34 ◼   ► I was a terrible student in college.

01:40:37 ◼   ► It wasn't specifically because of video games although it was part of it.

01:40:40 ◼   ► We were also, Marco and I were in school when EverQuest was a thing and I remember there

01:40:46 ◼   ► were literally many kids who dropped out of college because they spent so much time on

01:40:50 ◼   ► EverQuest which was one of the earlier massively multiplayer online games.

01:40:54 ◼   ► I'm sure it wasn't the first but it was one of the first ones that was popular enough

01:40:58 ◼   ► that I had heard about it.

01:40:59 ◼   ► And this is to my knowledge before World of Warcraft was a thing and so yeah there were

01:41:03 ◼   ► a lot of kids that lost their college career at EverQuest.

01:41:06 ◼   ► But the best advice I can give is that look, hopefully this is four years of your life.

01:41:12 ◼   ► Which seems like a heck of a long time especially if you're 18.

01:41:16 ◼   ► But in actuality it's not that long.

01:41:19 ◼   ► And if you can just build the skill by force, by reward, by punishment, any way you can

01:41:26 ◼   ► of doing what you need to do and getting that over with as quickly as possible so you can

01:41:30 ◼   ► go and play games until you keel over.

01:41:33 ◼   ► That is a skill that will be useful forever.

01:41:35 ◼   ► And if you can do it at least for these four years then hopefully you will find a decent

01:41:39 ◼   ► enough paying job that you can basically slack off anytime you're not at work for pretty

01:41:45 ◼   ► much the rest of your life.

01:41:46 ◼   ► And that's a pretty good trade.

01:41:48 ◼   ► Four years for the rest of your life I would make that trade.

01:41:50 ◼   ► And so I know that's not really the most concrete advice or actionable advice but just suck

01:41:57 ◼   ► it up for four years man.

01:41:58 ◼   ► You can do it.

01:41:59 ◼   ► I have faith in you.

01:42:00 ◼   ► I do love your philosophy of just work now so you can be a slacker forever.

01:42:04 ◼   ► Yeah seriously.

01:42:05 ◼   ► That's the idea.

01:42:06 ◼   ► That's fantastic.

01:42:07 ◼   ► If we could only all be so lucky.

01:42:10 ◼   ► John what's some actually useful advice?

01:42:11 ◼   ► Well this is just to get a Mac isn't really going to help because there are network games

01:42:15 ◼   ► in the Mac too.

01:42:16 ◼   ► And even though there aren't that many of them and they're not as good in general there

01:42:20 ◼   ► you just takes one.

01:42:21 ◼   ► That's the problem.

01:42:22 ◼   ► It only takes one.

01:42:23 ◼   ► All right.

01:42:24 ◼   ► Modified statement.

01:42:25 ◼   ► Get a MacBook Air.

01:42:26 ◼   ► The GPU is so bad that it's fast enough.

01:42:32 ◼   ► Actually no even better idea.

01:42:34 ◼   ► Get one of the new Mac Minis because it's the worst GPU in the lineup.

01:42:38 ◼   ► But it's totally a great system for development.

01:42:41 ◼   ► So you can do your homework.

01:42:44 ◼   ► You know whatever you need you can do it on the Mac Mini but the GPU is so awful that

01:42:47 ◼   ► probably every game would be nearly unplayable.

01:42:51 ◼   ► So yeah get a Mac Mini and get the biggest monitor you can so that GPU is really working

01:42:55 ◼   ► hard.

01:42:56 ◼   ► You're forgetting about streaming games.

01:42:58 ◼   ► Is that a thing?

01:42:59 ◼   ► Or it doesn't run locally.

01:43:00 ◼   ► It runs in the cloud and you can play your MMO because you don't care about lag because

01:43:04 ◼   ► it's not like a real time combat game.

01:43:05 ◼   ► Like there's no escape.

01:43:06 ◼   ► That's the thing about it.

01:43:07 ◼   ► Wait no there is.

01:43:08 ◼   ► I got it.

01:43:09 ◼   ► Mac Mini plus the aforementioned network link conditioner.

01:43:12 ◼   ► The new Mac Mini plus the unconditioned network link conditioner.

01:43:15 ◼   ► Simulate my college connection.

01:43:17 ◼   ► You'll have no problem at all.

01:43:18 ◼   ► I mean there's no escape from this.

01:43:20 ◼   ► This is the thing you're going to have to deal with for your whole life of things that

01:43:23 ◼   ► you have to do versus things you want to do.

01:43:25 ◼   ► Often in college it's when people are first faced with that because before college like

01:43:30 ◼   ► if you're living at home with some authority figure who tells you what you have to do versus

01:43:34 ◼   ► what you want to do and then when you're off in college it's just you telling yourself

01:43:38 ◼   ► that.

01:43:39 ◼   ► This is a life skill you're just going to have to figure out.

01:43:42 ◼   ► So if you have to go cold turkey off something.

01:43:47 ◼   ► I know some people who got into MMOs or muds or mushes or other things that predate that

01:43:54 ◼   ► like basically anything with network effects, the network based game.

01:43:58 ◼   ► If you have to go cold turkey off it to get yourself to do what you have to do then that's

01:44:01 ◼   ► what you have to do.

01:44:02 ◼   ► If you can learn to moderate it fine but it's not going to go away.

01:44:06 ◼   ► Your parents aren't going to come back and start running your life again.

01:44:09 ◼   ► You're going to go off on your own.

01:44:10 ◼   ► You're going to be faced with the same problem.

01:44:12 ◼   ► Do what I have to do.

01:44:13 ◼   ► Do I go shopping and do my laundry or do I play video games?

01:44:17 ◼   ► It doesn't work out well if you can't get this balance.

01:44:19 ◼   ► So take this time in college to figure out how to get that balance for yourself.

01:44:24 ◼   ► Hopefully you don't have to go cold turkey and everything but if that's what it takes

01:44:27 ◼   ► don't be one of those people Casey described that actually fails out of college before

01:44:31 ◼   ► it because it doesn't get easier after that.

01:44:32 ◼   ► It's not like well my college experiment failed but it's smooth sailing from here.

01:44:36 ◼   ► Nope, you'll still have to get a job and support yourself and do your laundry and make yourself

01:44:43 ◼   ► food and bathe and find some way to support yourself.

01:44:47 ◼   ► It doesn't go away.

01:44:48 ◼   ► So I guess I don't have any great advice on how to do it.

01:44:51 ◼   ► Just that it's not a problem that's unique to college and you better learn how to deal

01:44:56 ◼   ► with it.

01:44:57 ◼   ► And also just to conclude philosophically as one slacker to another I can tell you that

01:45:05 ◼   ► if you're having these issues like this you know you're probably a slacker like me.

01:45:09 ◼   ► You're probably never going to have an amazing work ethic but what you do need to learn and

01:45:15 ◼   ► college is pretty good for this is learning how to tell what you do and don't have to

01:45:20 ◼   ► really do because in most college curricula curriculums I don't know in most plural college

01:45:27 ◼   ► curriculum it's pretty much impossible for one person in a single day to do all of the

01:45:35 ◼   ► work that was assigned or recommended to them in all their classes.

01:45:39 ◼   ► So you kind of have to develop these skills for knowing how to tell what you don't have

01:45:44 ◼   ► to do and prioritizing things and as John was saying like you know figuring out how

01:45:48 ◼   ► to balance things you want to do versus things you have to do.

01:45:52 ◼   ► But learning how to tell what you don't have to do is possibly the most valuable skill

01:45:58 ◼   ► you can possibly learn in your entire academic career.

01:46:02 ◼   ► It's a skill that not everybody does learn but it's you know for everybody not just slackers

01:46:07 ◼   ► like us but for everybody that's a very very important skill to learn because again there

01:46:12 ◼   ► isn't enough time in the day to do everything but you also can't do nothing and just play

01:46:18 ◼   ► games all day like you have to get somewhere in the middle there and that is a skill that

01:46:22 ◼   ► as John has said much better than this college is a pretty opportune time to learn that skill.

01:46:28 ◼   ► And for Destiny that's the game by the way obviously he was talking about Destiny specifically

01:46:32 ◼   ► as someone who can't play Destiny all the time because there's stuff I have to do it

01:46:37 ◼   ► is possible to play and enjoy Destiny at a slower pace.

01:46:43 ◼   ► You can play one night a week and still make reasonable progress in the game.

01:46:47 ◼   ► Bungie has done a pretty good job of making a game that you can play obsessively all day

01:46:51 ◼   ► every day if you're a professional Twitch streamer and you can also play once a week

01:46:56 ◼   ► and the once a week people will progress more slowly but you can still play and enjoy the

01:47:00 ◼   ► game at a reasonable pace.

01:47:01 ◼   ► Usually by the time a season is over in Destiny I have just hit the light level cap and I've

01:47:08 ◼   ► more or less done all the major things that were in that content.

01:47:11 ◼   ► What everybody did who was a Twitch streamer the first week it came out the first week

01:47:15 ◼   ► the expansion came out it takes me an entire season to do it but I do get to all the content

01:47:19 ◼   ► so don't feel like you're going to miss it so if you have to make a schedule say look

01:47:22 ◼   ► I get four and a half hours to play Destiny on Saturday and that's all the only time I

01:47:27 ◼   ► ever play Destiny and you will not miss out any content you'll just progress more slowly.

01:47:31 ◼   ► Alright thanks to our sponsors this week Casper, Betterment and Linode and we will talk to

01:47:36 ◼   ► you next week.

01:47:37 ◼   ► Now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin cause it was accidental, oh it was

01:47:47 ◼   ► accidental.

01:47:50 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him cause it was accidental,

01:47:56 ◼   ► oh it was accidental.

01:48:01 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM and if you're into Twitter you can follow

01:48:09 ◼   ► them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S so that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T Marco Arment S-I-R-A-C

01:48:24 ◼   ► U-S-A Syracuse it's accidental, they didn't mean to accidental, tech podcast so long.

01:48:39 ◼   ► I have this e-tron GT concept which shows that Audi is really committed to this e-tron

01:48:47 ◼   ► brand but it also shows that potentially they're going to make something other than a squashed

01:48:50 ◼   ► SUV so maybe Marco's lease is up.

01:48:52 ◼   ► This looks good.

01:48:53 ◼   ► I mean this is a coupe obviously but what it means is that this is probably the same

01:48:56 ◼   ► platform and so obviously the squished SUV is the first one cause that's the car that

01:49:00 ◼   ► everybody's going to buy because people only buy SUVs but it seems like they might actually

01:49:04 ◼   ► make a sedan and this coupe thing eventually.

01:49:07 ◼   ► This is pretty.

01:49:08 ◼   ► I feel like they're definitely taking a lot of cues from the BMW i-series like they're

01:49:13 ◼   ► using the sustainable interior, everything's vegan, they're using a vowel as their branding

01:49:20 ◼   ► thing.

01:49:21 ◼   ► I do think the BMW i-series is way better branding than e-tron.

01:49:24 ◼   ► Yeah, no e-tron's not a good name.

01:49:27 ◼   ► E-tron sounds like one of the Lego sets I would have played with in the 90s and 80s,

01:49:32 ◼   ► not like a car in 2018 that's supposed to be like a forward looking thing, like it sounds

01:49:37 ◼   ► so old.

01:49:39 ◼   ► I think Volvo has one too.

01:49:40 ◼   ► I keep wanting to say Polaris but I'm thinking of Polaris Lance from Destiny because I just

01:49:44 ◼   ► talked about it.

01:49:45 ◼   ► I thought they had, they have like a premium brand and I thought they're premium Polestar

01:49:50 ◼   ► maybe.

01:49:51 ◼   ► That's their performance stuff.

01:49:52 ◼   ► That's hybrid, oh never mind.

01:49:54 ◼   ► Anyway Volvo's styling has always really been on a tear with the styling lately so if they

01:49:59 ◼   ► ever make a full electric car I bet it'll look nice.

01:50:03 ◼   ► I think this Audi GT looks really nice but it's just a concept car so like who the hell

01:50:07 ◼   ► knows what they're actually going to make.

01:50:08 ◼   ► It actually does look nice, I mean I don't have a lot of use for a two-seater.

01:50:13 ◼   ► It's the same platform, I'm sure this is all in the look of whatever their mid-sized electric

01:50:17 ◼   ► car platform is, like it's exactly what's underneath the e-tron.

01:50:19 ◼   ► Just imagine a four-door version of that with reasonable proportions because Audis all tend

01:50:23 ◼   ► to look the same anyway so you can very quickly visualize, oh I can see what a four-door version

01:50:27 ◼   ► of that would look like with reasonable wheels on it.

01:50:30 ◼   ► Why is there e-tron on the front gaping mouth?

01:50:34 ◼   ► Because as Margot pointed out they're very bad at printing.

01:50:37 ◼   ► The worst thing about e-tron is that it highlights the fact that it's their electric car which

01:50:41 ◼   ► is going to look more and more ridiculous as every car is electric.

01:50:45 ◼   ► It's like naming your gasoline car like the cylinder masher or the fuel injector.

01:50:54 ◼   ► The piston pumper, what is his name supposed to highlight to me that it has an internal

01:51:02 ◼   ► combustion engine?

01:51:03 ◼   ► Okay great, good.

01:51:07 ◼   ► I feel like these car companies like Audi and to some degree BMW and definitely Honda

01:51:12 ◼   ► and Toyota, that kind of company, I feel like relegating the electric efforts to a sub-brand

01:51:20 ◼   ► is probably a bad idea.

01:51:22 ◼   ► They already have these amazing successful long-running car platforms and models and

01:51:28 ◼   ► brands.

01:51:31 ◼   ► What everybody wants is just make those electric.

01:51:37 ◼   ► Make an electric Accord option, make an electric Camry.

01:51:39 ◼   ► Well that's what everyone's going to do eventually but this is like the dipping the toe in the

01:51:43 ◼   ► water.

01:51:44 ◼   ► Volkswagen just came out and said they're not going to make internal combustion engines

01:51:46 ◼   ► anymore after the upcoming generation of platforms that they build on.

01:51:53 ◼   ► So it's still a slightly longer timeline but yeah they're going to convert everything.

01:51:55 ◼   ► Even Honda I think has mostly learned the lesson of don't make dedicated models.

01:52:00 ◼   ► Honda doesn't do any EV because like I said they're really slow.

01:52:03 ◼   ► Just take hybrids.

01:52:04 ◼   ► Don't have dedicated models for hybrids and also don't make your hybrids look weird.

01:52:09 ◼   ► Like that was the thing in the beginning, oh your hybrid has to look like a Prius, it

01:52:12 ◼   ► has to look like a little snail turd or whatever.

01:52:14 ◼   ► If you look at what they did with the new Insight, the Insight just looks like a Honda.

01:52:18 ◼   ► They stopped for the most part, they're still hanging on a little bit but they stopped making

01:52:21 ◼   ► them all look weird and Nissan leafy or whatever.

01:52:24 ◼   ► Just make a normal Honda car and then have a discrete little hybrid badge.