ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► My favorite has to be Jazzercise Bootcamp.

00:00:02 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:03 ◼   ► - I was gonna go with Aerobics Bootcamp,

00:00:05 ◼   ► but I'm like, no, let me try something more relevant,

00:00:07 ◼   ► and Jazzercise came out, which is not, it's the same error.

00:00:10 ◼   ► - That's more relevant?

00:00:11 ◼   ► - Well, you know, in the moment,

00:00:12 ◼   ► I've come up with something better than Aerobics.

00:00:14 ◼   ► Aerobics is so 80s, and Jazzercise, like, nope, didn't do it.

00:00:18 ◼   ► - Is Jazzercise a real thing that people do or have done?

00:00:22 ◼   ► - Oh, Jazzercise was real as a heart attack, yes.

00:00:25 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:26 ◼   ► - Is it still, like--

00:00:27 ◼   ► - Yes, it's still.

00:00:28 ◼   ► What is it? Is it just exercising to jazz music?

00:00:31 ◼   ► What actually is it? I have no idea.

00:00:33 ◼   ► - I didn't know it was still going on.

00:00:34 ◼   ► I remember it in the 80s.

00:00:35 ◼   ► I haven't seen it in years and years.

00:00:37 ◼   ► - I am almost sure there's a Jazzercise clinic

00:00:40 ◼   ► or whatever you would call it near us.

00:00:41 ◼   ► - A clinic?

00:00:42 ◼   ► - Well, it's still real in the South, obviously,

00:00:44 ◼   ► where they live decades behind us,

00:00:46 ◼   ► culturally and intellectually.

00:00:48 ◼   ► - Oh, god damn it, Jon.

00:00:49 ◼   ► Why do you have to be such a--

00:00:49 ◼   ► - I bet.

00:00:50 ◼   ► - Original workout 80s video.

00:00:53 ◼   ► Oh my god.

00:00:54 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:00:55 ◼   ► - Oh, wow.

00:00:56 ◼   ► - Jazzercise.com is still a thing.

00:00:58 ◼   ► And I will add that there is a Jazzercise clinic, whatever you call it, in Richmond.

00:01:03 ◼   ► Is this like what Richard Simmons did, basically?

00:01:05 ◼   ► No, Jazzercise is a specific thing. It involves jazz. Or size.

00:01:11 ◼   ► We have a St. Jude fundraiser update. At the time in which we recorded, if memory serves,

00:01:18 ◼   ► we were challenging everyone to see if we could get to $20,000, I believe was the total we wanted.

00:01:23 ◼   ► What was it currently at when we said that? It was like 16 or 17, something like that, right?

00:01:27 ◼   ► Yeah, it was like between 17 and 19, I think. So 20 was, I think, closer to 17. And 20 was certainly attainable.

00:01:33 ◼   ► But I mean, $3,000 is a pretty fair bit of money. So we had challenged everyone, "Hey, can we get to 20?"

00:01:38 ◼   ► And within, I think, 24 hours, probably 12 hours of you releasing the final version of the show,

00:01:44 ◼   ► we blew past 20, which is an excellent problem to have. So then I got on Twitter, and I believe one or both of you had chimed in on this,

00:01:52 ◼   ► And I just said, "Okay, let's see if we can do 25."

00:01:55 ◼   ► And I felt like 25 is a pretty good reach goal when you're just now hitting 20.

00:02:00 ◼   ► And we blew past 25.

00:02:01 ◼   ► At this point, I felt like I didn't want to be obnoxious about it, so I kind of cooled

00:02:06 ◼   ► off on my solicitations.

00:02:09 ◼   ► And it might have been for the best, because without any solicitations on my part, as we

00:02:13 ◼   ► record, $33,258.

00:02:18 ◼   ► Holy monkey, that's amazing.

00:02:20 ◼   ► And I am so, I am genuinely so proud and excited.

00:02:24 ◼   ► Obviously this is not strictly ATP listeners,

00:02:26 ◼   ► not by a long shot, but there certainly seemed

00:02:29 ◼   ► to be a pretty heavy upswing in activity

00:02:33 ◼   ► after the episode released.

00:02:35 ◼   ► And that makes, that genuinely makes me extremely happy.

00:02:37 ◼   ► The Hackett family is very dear friends of ours.

00:02:40 ◼   ► And more importantly, this is going to help

00:02:42 ◼   ► all kinds of kids with cancer.

00:02:44 ◼   ► And you don't have to stop the donations

00:02:48 ◼   ► at the end of the month.

00:02:49 ◼   ► This episode should be released right at the end of the month.

00:02:52 ◼   ► And that's when Steven concentrates on it,

00:02:54 ◼   ► but there is no reason you can't donate again or more,

00:02:57 ◼   ► or if you haven't donated yet, do a little now.

00:03:00 ◼   ► So I would love to see this get even higher,

00:03:02 ◼   ► but $33,258, that is not all ATP,

00:03:05 ◼   ► but it is at least in part ATP.

00:03:07 ◼   ► So thank you everyone who threw a little bit of your money

00:03:10 ◼   ► toward trying to get rid of childhood cancer.

00:03:12 ◼   ► That's super awesome.

00:03:14 ◼   ► - Are we not reminding people that if we said

00:03:17 ◼   ► if they passed 20k, we would try to come up with a word to describe ATP fans.

00:03:21 ◼   ► The best answer we got there was tabs, because there are thousands of them.

00:03:26 ◼   ► No.

00:03:27 ◼   ► No.

00:03:28 ◼   ► No.

00:03:29 ◼   ► That's the best answer?

00:03:30 ◼   ► Definitely not.

00:03:31 ◼   ► I'm not saying we should use it, but it was definitely the funniest answer.

00:03:33 ◼   ► Better than ATPons and ATPeeps, both of which are worse than tabs, but tabs is also pretty

00:03:37 ◼   ► bad.

00:03:38 ◼   ► I'm still thinking about it.

00:03:40 ◼   ► I feel like we should fulfill this promise, but I'm not going to settle.

00:03:43 ◼   ► I'm not going to be like, "Well, it's the best we can come up with."

00:03:45 ◼   ► Nope.

00:03:46 ◼   ► Marco and I are already prepared to settle. I don't like tabs at all, but I could settle on ATPons or ATPeeps.

00:03:53 ◼   ► No, no. ATPons is insulting and ATPeeps has too many gross things. The only one I've come up with so far...

00:04:00 ◼   ► Oh yeah, that's like forced touch.

00:04:02 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. So here's what I've come up with so far, and I'm not saying this is good, but this is the best I've got so far in my processing.

00:04:09 ◼   ► Sheila's.

00:04:10 ◼   ► Why?

00:04:13 ◼   ► What? Is this a reference that I'm missing?

00:04:15 ◼   ► So Sheila's is the generic word. I believe some Australian can tell me for for women in Australia for a woman in Australia

00:04:22 ◼   ► Sheila Sheila a woman or a girl, right?

00:04:25 ◼   ► and

00:04:27 ◼   ► Sheila's we could just out. Well, it doesn't mean that you're a female listener. It's just a generic term. It's gender-neutral

00:04:32 ◼   ► Also the tank in red versus blue

00:04:35 ◼   ► Isn't mm-hmm

00:04:38 ◼   ► Remember that series is a long time ago anyway, but that's not a great one

00:04:42 ◼   ► But it's the best I've come up with so far and it's mostly just it's mostly just me

00:04:46 ◼   ► Me being angry about Tim's on hello internet

00:04:49 ◼   ► It's 100% what it is

00:04:50 ◼   ► But I also think it's fun exercise to allow a group of what we consider to be almost entirely men who listen to the show

00:04:56 ◼   ► Just stewing the idea of being referred to

00:04:59 ◼   ► By a you know a word that implies a gender that doesn't match yours and that you're just supposed to eat it and say well

00:05:06 ◼   ► It's a gender neutral term. It's fine. I

00:05:08 ◼   ► I respect the effort.

00:05:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, same here.

00:05:10 ◼   ► - And I agree with you on principle.

00:05:12 ◼   ► However, it's also terrible.

00:05:14 ◼   ► - Agreed.

00:05:15 ◼   ► - It's not a good name for listeners, unfortunately.

00:05:16 ◼   ► - So far, all of the options that we have seen so far

00:05:19 ◼   ► are terrible, so I think it's probably safe to say

00:05:21 ◼   ► we probably just won't be naming our listeners

00:05:23 ◼   ► anything generic like this,

00:05:24 ◼   ► because every option people suggest it was awful.

00:05:26 ◼   ► - No, I know, anyway,

00:05:28 ◼   ► we can come up with a good one, we will.

00:05:29 ◼   ► - If we wanted a name that really is gender agnostic,

00:05:33 ◼   ► we could call all the listeners Casey's.

00:05:35 ◼   ► - That's true.

00:05:36 ◼   ► I know cases of both genders.

00:05:38 ◼   ► No, because I think Casey has a connotation. Besides, they're not all Casey's. What

00:05:42 ◼   ► if they identify as a Marco? What if they're not a Miranda? What if they're a Samantha?

00:05:46 ◼   ► Oh my god, I understood that reference.

00:05:48 ◼   ► Casey represents everybody. Casey is—we've been told on a number of occasions that Casey

00:05:53 ◼   ► represents—well, they use a gender term usually for this, but they say Casey represents

00:05:58 ◼   ► the everyman.

00:05:59 ◼   ► They usually say the everywoman, don't they? Everywoman is a gender intro term.

00:06:04 ◼   ► knows, but I understand the point you're driving at Marco, which is that most people will say,

00:06:08 ◼   ► "I wish I was Marco," or "I wish I was John," but in actuality I'm Casey, which is both flattering

00:06:14 ◼   ► and kind of depressing all at once. People wish they were Casey now too, because he's got a fancy

00:06:19 ◼   ► SUV and a BMW that works sometimes. That's so harsh. That is so harsh, John. It is too soon.

00:06:26 ◼   ► Does it currently work? What's the current state? I have driven it only once in the last week,

00:06:30 ◼   ► and that is going to be discussed. No, yeah, we have aftershow stuff to discuss about that.

00:06:35 ◼   ► Yes. Okay. Yes. If you looked at the show notes, Marco, there's some aftershow things to discuss.

00:06:41 ◼   ► Anyway, so we should continue with our follow-up. I am—it's funny, this episode of this show is

00:06:49 ◼   ► really a rollercoaster, kids, because I was on the highest of highs with regard to the

00:06:53 ◼   ► the St. Jude donations. However, now I'm at the lowest of lows. Because I was hoping that

00:06:59 ◼   ► nobody would discover, which I understand this is preposterous. Just hold on. I was

00:07:05 ◼   ► hoping no one would discover that the Apple TV 4K does indeed have a fan. And of course

00:07:10 ◼   ► it was going to be discovered. I understand that. But like in my fantasy world, I was

00:07:15 ◼   ► hoping that nobody would know or that Jon would never find out. He would go on the Todd

00:07:18 ◼   ► Visserie full media blackout with regard to the Apple TV 4K fan.

00:07:22 ◼   ► Why would I do that?

00:07:23 ◼   ► Because I bet you it is so damn quiet that you'll never hear it.

00:07:28 ◼   ► But now that you know it's there, oh, you're going to hear it because you know.

00:07:32 ◼   ► No, I will be honest about it and we'll see.

00:07:35 ◼   ► So this is far from last week, last week where I said the Apple TV 4K has no fan.

00:07:39 ◼   ► Why did I say that?

00:07:40 ◼   ► Because I asked on the show before that, I asked, "Hey, can anybody answer these questions

00:07:43 ◼   ► for me?"

00:07:44 ◼   ► Because I had asked around and no one had been able to answer me.

00:07:46 ◼   ► The person who sent me this answer claimed to work at Apple, and I believe this person,

00:07:51 ◼   ► because we get a lot of emails from people who work at Apple, and they said,

00:07:53 ◼   ► "Apple TV 4K has no fan." They also said this stuff about 24 frames per second. It happened

00:07:58 ◼   ► to be correct. And so I wrote the person back. I'm like, "Well, oops. Looks like you were wrong

00:08:03 ◼   ► on that one." And this person didn't say, "Ha, just kidding. I don't really work at Apple. I

00:08:08 ◼   ► was just pulling your leg." What they said and said was the same thing that Marco and Jason Snell

00:08:15 ◼   ► said when I asked them about it. They both had Apple TV 4Ks in their possession and I

00:08:19 ◼   ► asked them, "Hey guys, does it have a fan?"

00:08:22 ◼   ► And this was also, this was before iFixit did the teardown. So like, I searched online

00:08:26 ◼   ► to try to answer your question just to make sure, like, has anyone done a teardown to

00:08:29 ◼   ► just verify this? And there hadn't been one yet. So the best they could do is, like, I'm

00:08:33 ◼   ► not going to open mine up, so I'm like, "Alright, let me just guess. Let me look at it." You

00:08:37 ◼   ► know? Or listen to it. Anyway, I was, Casey, to your point, I've been checking the iFixit

00:08:41 ◼   ► site since like, the time it had.

00:08:42 ◼   ► Oh, I know you have.

00:08:44 ◼   ► after it right after the keynote because I'm like maybe someone got review units maybe

00:08:47 ◼   ► iFixit is tearing them apart you know because I was actually actively looking at iFixit

00:08:51 ◼   ► like every day to see for a tear down but I knew two people who had this thing so I

00:08:55 ◼   ► asked them to confirm and they both either said I don't think so I can't tell or it just

00:09:01 ◼   ► doesn't seem like there's a fan and so when I had the Apple employees say definitively

00:09:04 ◼   ► there's no fan I believe and this Apple employees excuse was that they couldn't tell that they

00:09:10 ◼   ► couldn't they thought there was no fan because they couldn't hear anything because it was

00:09:13 ◼   ► totally silent. So they're like, "Yeah, my bad." So anyway.

00:09:15 ◼   ► It's suspicious because when you look at the bottom of it, it has a round pattern of air

00:09:21 ◼   ► holes. The previous one had a solid bottom. It seemed to have no ventilation at all.

00:09:26 ◼   ► That's why this came up, by the way, because I was tipped off either during or right after

00:09:30 ◼   ► the keynote of a public document on Apple site that showed the line art view of the

00:09:35 ◼   ► thing showing the measurements and stuff. And it showed the holes. And it's like, "Uh-oh,

00:09:39 ◼   ► holes. Mm, what does that mean?"

00:09:41 ◼   ► I was like I was I was using the Apple TV like letting it play content and I lifted up and I I

00:09:46 ◼   ► Hear nothing. I like I mean I muted the sound so I so it'd be a quiet room lift it up. I hear nothing

00:09:52 ◼   ► I put my hand under the vents to try to see if I could feel air movement

00:09:56 ◼   ► I felt nothing and I was like, well, what are these holes for me?

00:10:00 ◼   ► Maybe it's just passively cooling by convection using these holes like with a big heat sink inside who knows but I'm like

00:10:06 ◼   ► I'm like, I really don't think there's a fan here, but it is weird

00:10:09 ◼   ► there's these holes in a circular pattern here that would be perfect if you had a fan

00:10:12 ◼   ► behind it. But I could feel or hear nothing.

00:10:15 ◼   ► Yeah, and I'm not quite sure, even after seeing the teardown, like, you know, a convection

00:10:20 ◼   ► or a passive cooling with holes, like, that makes perfect sense, a lot of things that

00:10:23 ◼   ► we don't like that, but there's no holes in the top of this, right? Only holes in the

00:10:26 ◼   ► bottom?

00:10:27 ◼   ► Yeah, it seems like there's no intake holes. But, so, my theory here, like, if you've ever

00:10:31 ◼   ► done any kind of, like, you know, PC building with heat sink design, you know that, or if

00:10:36 ◼   ► if you have better grasp on science than me,

00:10:38 ◼   ► you probably already know this as well.

00:10:39 ◼   ► But you know that like, you know, a passive,

00:10:41 ◼   ► just a heat sink with no fan on it,

00:10:44 ◼   ► when you compare the cooling power of that

00:10:46 ◼   ► to a heat sink that has even a little slight bit

00:10:50 ◼   ► of air movement being pushed over it,

00:10:52 ◼   ► it's a huge difference.

00:10:53 ◼   ► Like you can have a fan running at incredibly low speed

00:10:58 ◼   ► and that will make a big difference

00:11:00 ◼   ► from having no fan at all.

00:11:01 ◼   ► So I'm guessing this fan is probably

00:11:04 ◼   ► dynamically controlled, first of all.

00:11:05 ◼   ► So I bet when I felt nothing under there,

00:11:07 ◼   ► I bet it actually wasn't spinning

00:11:08 ◼   ► or it was spinning at a ridiculously low speed.

00:11:11 ◼   ► And maybe only if you're like really pushing it hard,

00:11:13 ◼   ► like using 3D stuff in a game,

00:11:15 ◼   ► maybe that's when it spins up.

00:11:17 ◼   ► But like playing 4K video,

00:11:19 ◼   ► it was not doing anything noticeable.

00:11:21 ◼   ► So I'm guessing it's just a very low speed fan

00:11:24 ◼   ► that might've even not been spinning at all

00:11:25 ◼   ► during video playback.

00:11:27 ◼   ► - I bet it's always spinning, but that's just a guess.

00:11:29 ◼   ► But anyway, when I get this thing,

00:11:30 ◼   ► I will tell you if I can hear it.

00:11:32 ◼   ► And the reason you should believe me,

00:11:33 ◼   ► that I'll be honest is because--

00:11:34 ◼   ► - There's no way you're gonna hear it.

00:11:35 ◼   ► No, it's because Marco sent me an airport router

00:11:39 ◼   ► that he didn't want anymore that has a fan in it.

00:11:41 ◼   ► And I was like, oh, fan, I knew it had a fan in it.

00:11:43 ◼   ► I'm like, I don't know if I want this thing with the fan.

00:11:45 ◼   ► And he sent it to me.

00:11:46 ◼   ► And as I think I said on the show when I got it,

00:11:48 ◼   ► it has a fan, but the only way I can hear it

00:11:52 ◼   ► is if I literally shove my ear like,

00:11:54 ◼   ► so it is touching the bottom of the device.

00:11:56 ◼   ► That is the only, and I can hear it when I do that.

00:11:58 ◼   ► I can hear that it's turning,

00:12:00 ◼   ► but in every other scenario, I cannot hear it.

00:12:02 ◼   ► Not like, oh, I can hear it faintly.

00:12:03 ◼   ► You can turn off every device in my house,

00:12:05 ◼   ► close all the windows, make sure everything is dead silent,

00:12:07 ◼   ► and I can be two feet away from it,

00:12:09 ◼   ► and I can't hear a damn thing.

00:12:10 ◼   ► So if the Apple TV is even remotely as quiet

00:12:14 ◼   ► because it is like 10 feet away from me

00:12:16 ◼   ► in my TV entertainment center, it'll be fine.

00:12:19 ◼   ► That said, if I put it up to my ear

00:12:21 ◼   ► and actually physically touch it in my ear,

00:12:23 ◼   ► I expect to be able to hear it if the fan is moving.

00:12:25 ◼   ► So we'll see.

00:12:25 ◼   ► I'm gonna get mine.

00:12:26 ◼   ► Mine's delivering next week.

00:12:27 ◼   ► So next show, I will be able to give you an answer.

00:12:30 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm, I'm skeptical.

00:12:32 ◼   ► I feel like you've been

00:12:33 ◼   ► The thing is like what I'm getting at is I won't care if I can hear it when I put up to me ear because I

00:12:37 ◼   ► Can't hear what if I can't hear it the same thing. I don't care about my airport thing

00:12:40 ◼   ► I don't care that I can I don't use it shove that to my ear

00:12:43 ◼   ► It's not you know it's not a communicator that I have to jam into my ear

00:12:47 ◼   ► It's way over there, so I'm perfectly happy to have fans that I literally can't hear we'll see

00:12:52 ◼   ► I expect the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth

00:12:55 ◼   ► I will give it to you. I was suggesting to Jason and Marco like stick a toothpick in there and if something hits it

00:13:01 ◼   ► it.

00:13:02 ◼   ► Wow.

00:13:03 ◼   ► That's not a bad idea.

00:13:04 ◼   ► That's a great idea.

00:13:05 ◼   ► This is before they had the teardown.

00:13:06 ◼   ► I'm like, "Look, is there a fan or is there no fan?

00:13:07 ◼   ► Is there a fan that you can't hear or is there literally no fan?"

00:13:09 ◼   ► And now we know the answer.

00:13:10 ◼   ► There's actually a fan in there.

00:13:11 ◼   ► We just don't know whether it's spinning all the time, yada, yada.

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00:14:46 ◼   ► with no credit card required and no obligation, no risk,

00:14:49 ◼   ► at backblaze.com/atp.

00:14:52 ◼   ► Once again, backblaze.com/atp.

00:14:55 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Backblaze for sponsoring our show.

00:14:57 ◼   ► [Music]

00:15:01 ◼   ► So tell me about downloading movies from iTunes.

00:15:03 ◼   ► Is that a thing on this box?

00:15:06 ◼   ► Not 4K ones, apparently.

00:15:07 ◼   ► This is from Apple Support Document.

00:15:08 ◼   ► You can download a local copy of an HD movie.

00:15:11 ◼   ► By the way, I hate the fact that HD doesn't refer to 4K, because what is 4K if not high

00:15:15 ◼   ► definition or even higher definition, anyway?

00:15:17 ◼   ► Well, it is HiFi.

00:15:19 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:15:20 ◼   ► And you might be able to download—this is the direct quote—you can download a local

00:15:24 ◼   ► copy of HD movie, and you might be able to download HDR and Dolby Vision versions. What

00:15:30 ◼   ► do you mean I might? Like, maybe you'll let me, maybe you won't?

00:15:33 ◼   ► That's from Apple's support document? It says you might be able to do this?

00:15:36 ◼   ► Yes. Maybe some are downloaded, right? And it says, and then finally the last clause,

00:15:40 ◼   ► but you can't download a 4K version. Now, why can't I download a 4K version? I have

00:15:45 ◼   ► some theories on this. The one theory that people have put forward is like, oh, the 4K

00:15:49 ◼   ► versions are too big, and the as previously discussed and lamented theoretical fixed size

00:15:53 ◼   ► where you can download stuff that's not big enough to fit a single 4K movie or it would

00:15:57 ◼   ► take up all the space, right?

00:15:58 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, they're just too big to download."

00:16:00 ◼   ► I don't think that's the case, especially if they're HEVC, they shouldn't be that much,

00:16:05 ◼   ► you know, they shouldn't be like 50 gigabytes versus five.

00:16:07 ◼   ► They should be bigger than the HD ones, but not like so big that you can't download a

00:16:11 ◼   ► single one of them.

00:16:12 ◼   ► Although maybe they just say, "Look, one of them is so big, it would take up all your

00:16:15 ◼   ► space and we don't want to do that," right?

00:16:19 ◼   ► Another possibility is that, as is always, you got to always have this as a possibility,

00:16:22 ◼   ► that content owners are stupid and are like, "No, we can't let them download the 4K version

00:16:27 ◼   ► because then people might be able to pirate our movies.

00:16:29 ◼   ► And as long as we stop them from downloading the 4K DRM-encumbered version of our movies

00:16:34 ◼   ► to their Apple TVs, there's no way anyone will ever pirate this movie and we'll be safe

00:16:38 ◼   ► from piracy.

00:16:39 ◼   ► So please don't let anybody download the 4K."

00:16:41 ◼   ► That's definitely it.

00:16:43 ◼   ► That's definitely the answer.

00:16:44 ◼   ► It's such a dumb thing.

00:16:45 ◼   ► I still, in this day and age where people...

00:16:48 ◼   ► Anyway, we don't know why, but the bottom line is if you were thinking that you were

00:16:51 ◼   ► going to be able to get to buy the big Apple TV so that you could download a 4k movie and

00:16:57 ◼   ► then watch it offline on your Apple TV, you will not be able to because the Apple TV will

00:17:01 ◼   ► not download the 4k versions of movies to local storage. It will only stream it. That's

00:17:06 ◼   ► dumb. I don't like it.

00:17:07 ◼   ► So once again, why is the 64 gig version there? Like what?

00:17:12 ◼   ► Well, you know, games. They upped the limits, by the way, on games. It used to be like you

00:17:16 ◼   ► could download like 200 megabytes and then you could download chunks of on-demand content.

00:17:20 ◼   ► They upped it way more so now you can download like a gigabyte or more or something.

00:17:24 ◼   ► Anyway, in theory you could make very large games in Apple's fantasy world of the Apple

00:17:29 ◼   ► TV as an actual gaming console.

00:17:31 ◼   ► You could fill the whole thing with games.

00:17:33 ◼   ► So tell me about boot camp because Randy Garcia has written in to point out to us that as

00:17:38 ◼   ► we, I guess it was John I think, brought up air power as a kind of military term that's

00:17:45 ◼   ► being used by Apple as a product name, which by the way, somebody, did we talk about this

00:17:50 ◼   ► last episode?

00:17:51 ◼   ► Somebody said it should have been called Apple Juice.

00:17:54 ◼   ► Somebody on Twitter said this like right when it was announced, and I think that would have

00:17:56 ◼   ► been a terrible but much better name at the same time.

00:17:59 ◼   ► That would have been hilarious.

00:18:00 ◼   ► But anyway, so Randy Garcia has written in to say that boot camp is another military

00:18:06 ◼   ► term that Apple has used.

00:18:07 ◼   ► And somebody, maybe Randy, has provided a deeply troubling video of Steve Jobs many

00:18:14 ◼   ► years ago trying to act. Do you want to tell us about this, John?

00:18:17 ◼   ► Yeah, so boot camp is the one I hadn't thought of. It's a good thing, a good call, because

00:18:21 ◼   ► I couldn't recall a single Apple product that had a military terminal. Although I would

00:18:25 ◼   ► say the boot camp has got to have been co-opted and made secular, or secular, sort of non-military,

00:18:31 ◼   ► not secular, civilian, yeah, made civilian in a way that AirPower has not, because now

00:18:36 ◼   ► you have like, you know, they have jazzercise boot camps and programming boot camps and

00:18:42 ◼   ► Everything's a boot camp like it's basically just a training place and I guess they're still riffing on the military one

00:18:47 ◼   ► but anyway, the other thing is I

00:18:49 ◼   ► disqualified because

00:18:52 ◼   ► It is internal only company communication and I don't know if you've if you work at a big company, you've probably experienced

00:18:59 ◼   ► communication targeted made by corporations targeted at their own employees and

00:19:04 ◼   ► They're usually pretty awful and you may think that Apple is an exception

00:19:08 ◼   ► But I can tell you that Apple in the 80s and 90s definitely was not an exception

00:19:11 ◼   ► There is a vast collection of internal audio and video content created by Apple for Apple's

00:19:19 ◼   ► employees only that is cringe-worthy and hilarious and some of it's good fun too, right?

00:19:26 ◼   ► It's usually just a bunch of engineers or a bunch of people in HR making a video with

00:19:30 ◼   ► like 80s video technology.

00:19:32 ◼   ► Like they didn't have an iMac with iMovie on it.

00:19:34 ◼   ► They had like, you know, Betamax and VHS and probably fancier professional video stuff.

00:19:40 ◼   ► They didn't have actors.

00:19:41 ◼   ► They had just like their employees.

00:19:44 ◼   ► And I think the one in question is Steve Jobs pretending to be, who is it, is it FDR or

00:19:49 ◼   ► Roosevelt?

00:19:50 ◼   ► I believe that's right.

00:19:51 ◼   ► I think it was FDR.

00:19:52 ◼   ► Anyway, you can watch on YouTube if you want to be sad about internal corporate communications,

00:19:54 ◼   ► but rest assured, Apple was no exception and probably continues to be no exception.

00:19:59 ◼   ► They can make cool things externally, but their internal facing corporate videos are

00:20:06 ◼   ► not quite at the same standard.

00:20:08 ◼   ► Our final piece of follow-up today is from a friend of the show, Sam Butwelsamid, who

00:20:13 ◼   ► is of the Wheel Bearings podcast.

00:20:14 ◼   ► This is all going to come up again later in the after show.

00:20:17 ◼   ► This was with regard to our comments about the Acura TLX that I had driven, or excuse

00:20:22 ◼   ► me, had ridden in.

00:20:23 ◼   ► He wrote to us to say, "With regard to the comments about the DCT, the torque converter

00:20:28 ◼   ► is mounted between the flywheel and the dual clutch pack and is intended to provide some

00:20:32 ◼   ► torque multiplication and smooth out the shifts a bit.

00:20:35 ◼   ► It's work, but it's nothing to get worked up about."

00:20:37 ◼   ► and he provided a link to some more info.

00:20:39 ◼   ► That strikes me as super freaking weird.

00:20:42 ◼   ► Like the whole reason I tend to hate automatics

00:20:44 ◼   ► is because of that like, that mushy feeling

00:20:47 ◼   ► that a torque converter brings,

00:20:48 ◼   ► and I understand the motivation here.

00:20:49 ◼   ► The motivation makes sense, but it's just,

00:20:51 ◼   ► you're taking away the one thing I love about a DCT,

00:20:54 ◼   ► which is that I feel, it feels more direct to me

00:20:56 ◼   ► than a traditional automatic.

00:20:58 ◼   ► - The one thing I could see here is that

00:21:00 ◼   ► when you're driving a DCT,

00:21:01 ◼   ► the shifting between like first and second,

00:21:04 ◼   ► like when you're going at low speeds,

00:21:06 ◼   ► and you're using first and second gear,

00:21:08 ◼   ► that can be very jerky, just like if you do it in a stick.

00:21:11 ◼   ► You know, if you're selling into a market

00:21:12 ◼   ► that is accustomed to automatics,

00:21:14 ◼   ► that might feel too jerky to them.

00:21:15 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:21:16 ◼   ► - If you're selling to stick people,

00:21:17 ◼   ► it's gonna feel perfectly awesome and normal,

00:21:19 ◼   ► but if you're selling to automatic people,

00:21:21 ◼   ► I see why they would do that.

00:21:23 ◼   ► I agree with you, though, that at that point,

00:21:25 ◼   ► why not just use a really good eight or nine speed auto?

00:21:28 ◼   ► And maybe that's why their premium option

00:21:30 ◼   ► is just a nine or eight speed auto.

00:21:33 ◼   ► So again, I would prefer a DCT that's just a DCT

00:21:38 ◼   ► without anything in front of it,

00:21:39 ◼   ► but I do see for the market they're selling

00:21:42 ◼   ► why they do that, but it just doesn't make sense to me

00:21:44 ◼   ► that they would bother with a DCT at all at that point.

00:21:46 ◼   ► - I think there's a limitation of current DCTs

00:21:49 ◼   ► that they can't be that smooth down at low speeds, right?

00:21:52 ◼   ► Because if someone using a manual can be, right?

00:21:55 ◼   ► They just slip the clutch more.

00:21:56 ◼   ► You could start and stop as smooth as you want

00:21:58 ◼   ► and apparently that's not within the realm of,

00:22:02 ◼   ► within the functional envelope of modern DCTs, most of which are tuned to shift very fast,

00:22:06 ◼   ► like at the higher speeds, but not so much tuned for creeping out of a parking lot and rounding the

00:22:13 ◼   ► corner on a residential road and you get a little bit of a bump. And the TLX, again, trying to split

00:22:17 ◼   ► the difference between the TSX and the TL and erring on the side of being boring, as always,

00:22:22 ◼   ► like the most important thing is not to jostle the occupants. So they took a sporty transmission and

00:22:31 ◼   ► put a little bit of slush in between it and the wheels to smooth things out at low speeds.

00:22:37 ◼   ► Maybe it would be better if the torque converter wasn't a factor at higher speeds or anything,

00:22:41 ◼   ► but either way it's such a sort of Frankenstein setup that it does seem much cleaner to either

00:22:48 ◼   ► have an automatic or you got a stick or a DCT and they all have their own behaviors

00:22:53 ◼   ► and trying to combine them into sort of a hybrid suspension with the best of all worlds

00:22:56 ◼   ► is just kind of papering over the flaws.

00:22:59 ◼   ► Like it used to be when we had single clutch automated manuals that they were super rough,

00:23:03 ◼   ► right?

00:23:04 ◼   ► And there was slow shifting and very jerky, and a dual clutch really helped because you

00:23:07 ◼   ► could have the other gear set ready to go and swap very quickly without the harshness,

00:23:12 ◼   ► right?

00:23:13 ◼   ► But apparently there's still problems at low speed.

00:23:15 ◼   ► And so I feel like in another five, ten years they work out the details on DCTs, they'd

00:23:21 ◼   ► be the one who needed a hack like this.

00:23:22 ◼   ► But anyway, TLX is not a great car anyway.

00:23:24 ◼   ► There are a lot of better choices in that price range.

00:23:27 ◼   ► Fair enough. We've now lost all of the listeners who don't really care about cars. So sorry,

00:23:32 ◼   ► everyone. You can come back now. We're back, and we're going to talk Ask ATP.

00:23:37 ◼   ► So let's begin with Colin Weir, who writes, "John's rant about tech people forgetting

00:23:44 ◼   ► that betas are betas reminded me of a question I have. A lot of the times on iOS betas I

00:23:48 ◼   ► will find bugs in apps that I report to developers to say, 'Hey, this doesn't work on the iOS

00:23:53 ◼   ► and beta. I usually get a response along the lines of, "Yes, this is a beta. Betas aren't

00:23:57 ◼   ► supported." And then I'll often see rants from people like Tapots Paul complaining about

00:24:01 ◼   ► people saying things are broken on betas. But an inherent part of the beta experience

00:24:06 ◼   ► is reporting bugs. In fact, that's the reason betas exist. So if I want to be a good citizen

00:24:10 ◼   ► and beta user and report issues I find, how can I do it without annoying developers?

00:24:13 ◼   ► >> This is pretty simple, really. So, you know, when you're on a beta, keep in mind

00:24:18 ◼   ► that in some cases the developer has not had time

00:24:22 ◼   ► to fix the bug that you are reporting,

00:24:23 ◼   ► 'cause like the beta just came out

00:24:25 ◼   ► and they got it the same time you did.

00:24:26 ◼   ► In a lot of cases, the developer can't fix the bug

00:24:29 ◼   ► that you're reporting until the GM SDK comes out,

00:24:32 ◼   ► which could be months later, right before the GM,

00:24:34 ◼   ► right before the version is released to the public.

00:24:37 ◼   ► So mainly because we can't submit builds to the app store

00:24:42 ◼   ► that use the beta SDK until the GM is out.

00:24:45 ◼   ► The app store won't accept them.

00:24:46 ◼   ► So, if you're telling someone that this is broken

00:24:50 ◼   ► in the form of like a complaint,

00:24:52 ◼   ► like I demand that you fix this quickly, dammit,

00:24:55 ◼   ► that's really frustrating for developers to hear

00:24:57 ◼   ► because they probably know about that already

00:25:01 ◼   ► and they probably can't fix it yet

00:25:03 ◼   ► or haven't had a chance to fix it yet

00:25:04 ◼   ► and it doesn't really matter 'cause it's still a beta.

00:25:07 ◼   ► If you are trying to leave an AST review in some ways,

00:25:10 ◼   ► fortunately iOS has prevented this in recent versions.

00:25:14 ◼   ► Like usually you aren't able to leave reviews

00:25:16 ◼   ► from betas anymore, from beta OSs anymore, which is nice.

00:25:19 ◼   ► That would also be a thing not to do.

00:25:21 ◼   ► But if you're just telling somebody in a civil way,

00:25:23 ◼   ► like, hey, there's this bug,

00:25:24 ◼   ► I thought you might wanna know about it,

00:25:25 ◼   ► that's totally fine, and we, as developers,

00:25:28 ◼   ► need that and appreciate that, that's good.

00:25:30 ◼   ► So as long as it's not a one-star review

00:25:33 ◼   ► or using the tone or phrasing of a complaint

00:25:36 ◼   ► that you expected to be fixed, all of a sudden, it's fine.

00:25:40 ◼   ► - Well, I think the key part here is

00:25:42 ◼   ► how do I be a good beta user?

00:25:43 ◼   ► What are you a beta user of?

00:25:45 ◼   ► If you're a beta user of the operating system,

00:25:47 ◼   ► you should be reporting bugs to Apple,

00:25:49 ◼   ► not to third-party developers.

00:25:50 ◼   ► The only way you should be reporting bugs

00:25:51 ◼   ► to third-party developers is if you are on

00:25:53 ◼   ► like the overcast beta and Marco wants to know,

00:25:57 ◼   ► here's a beta of overcast, how does it work?

00:25:59 ◼   ► And in that case, Marco would probably tell you,

00:26:01 ◼   ► I want you to test this beta on a released version

00:26:04 ◼   ► of the operating system, right?

00:26:06 ◼   ► Because no third-party developers are going to support

00:26:09 ◼   ► their applications on unreleased versions

00:26:11 ◼   ► of the operating system.

00:26:12 ◼   ► They may ask, they may use it themselves

00:26:14 ◼   ► and ask their beta testers to use it,

00:26:15 ◼   ► but they inevitably want to know

00:26:18 ◼   ► how is this going to work on the real release version.

00:26:20 ◼   ► So if you're not a beta tester

00:26:22 ◼   ► of the application you're reporting bugs on,

00:26:24 ◼   ► you don't have to feel like you have to be

00:26:25 ◼   ► a good beta citizen because you're not on that beta.

00:26:28 ◼   ► If you're beta testing iOS,

00:26:30 ◼   ► the way to be a good citizen

00:26:31 ◼   ► is report bugs you find in the OS.

00:26:34 ◼   ► Now, does Apple want to know

00:26:36 ◼   ► that some third-party application you have

00:26:38 ◼   ► doesn't work on it?

00:26:40 ◼   ► Probably not, but you know,

00:26:43 ◼   ► it's a giant black hole.

00:26:44 ◼   ► Throw over whatever bug reports you want,

00:26:46 ◼   ► let them do with what they want.

00:26:48 ◼   ► But I would say what Apple is looking for

00:26:50 ◼   ► are bugs in the operating system itself,

00:26:52 ◼   ► of which there are usually plenty.

00:26:54 ◼   ► And if you want to be a good beta system

00:26:55 ◼   ► and you want to report bugs, do that, right?

00:26:59 ◼   ► And if you want to report bugs on third-party iOS apps,

00:27:02 ◼   ► talk to the developer and say,

00:27:03 ◼   ► hey, can I be on your beta program?

00:27:05 ◼   ► The next time you have a beta, ready, send it to me,

00:27:07 ◼   ► and I will try it and report bugs,

00:27:09 ◼   ► and they would appreciate that.

00:27:10 ◼   ► - Everything John just said is wrong.

00:27:12 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:27:13 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:27:15 ◼   ► Wow.

00:27:16 ◼   ► - What are you trying to say?

00:27:17 ◼   ► You don't want people to report bugs in Overcast?

00:27:18 ◼   ► Or you want them to report bugs about

00:27:20 ◼   ► how your application doesn't work on beta OSs?

00:27:23 ◼   ► - The idea that I would only want bug reports

00:27:26 ◼   ► from Overcast beta users is completely wrong.

00:27:28 ◼   ► - Well no, but like I'm saying,

00:27:29 ◼   ► if you want to be a good beta citizen,

00:27:32 ◼   ► like they're not a beta citizen if they're not using,

00:27:34 ◼   ► like how would they even get to Overcast beta

00:27:36 ◼   ► if they're not on your beta, you see what I'm saying?

00:27:37 ◼   ► - No, but if you're using my app on a beta OS

00:27:40 ◼   ► and you run into a bug, I would like to know about that.

00:27:43 ◼   ► Chances are I probably already know about it,

00:27:45 ◼   ► but what if I don't?

00:27:47 ◼   ► My beta groups are really small,

00:27:49 ◼   ► and most of the time I don't have a current beta running.

00:27:51 ◼   ► So I wanna know about that stuff.

00:27:53 ◼   ► And the idea that you should only report bugs on the OS

00:27:57 ◼   ► if you're testing an OS beta is totally wrong.

00:28:00 ◼   ► I don't know any developer who wouldn't want those reports.

00:28:02 ◼   ► - Well that's how you'd be a good beta citizen,

00:28:05 ◼   ► because you're testing a beta of the OS.

00:28:07 ◼   ► Tapbot's Paul apparently doesn't wanna hear

00:28:09 ◼   ► your complaints about their broken things,

00:28:10 ◼   ► because they know they're broken on the beta iOS.

00:28:12 ◼   ► - Well no, but again, I think it's a difference of tone.

00:28:14 ◼   ► It's a difference of like, hey, just so you know,

00:28:16 ◼   ► this is broken, versus I demand that you fix this.

00:28:19 ◼   ► You know, that's a very different tone,

00:28:21 ◼   ► and one of them is helpful and one of them is not.

00:28:25 ◼   ► - I think even just reporting, especially if it's

00:28:27 ◼   ► a well-known bug, or reporting it,

00:28:29 ◼   ► like, there's almost no way to say it

00:28:31 ◼   ► if you were the 900th person telling somebody

00:28:34 ◼   ► that their app crashes on launch in the iOS 11 beta.

00:28:37 ◼   ► Like, there's almost no way you can say that.

00:28:39 ◼   ► that's not going to eventually drive people crazy.

00:28:40 ◼   ► And I feel like, I don't think that's a particularly useful

00:28:44 ◼   ► thing to be doing, especially if it's something

00:28:46 ◼   ► like crashes on launch.

00:28:47 ◼   ► If the developer doesn't know that,

00:28:48 ◼   ► they don't care about the app anymore,

00:28:50 ◼   ► and it's hopeless, right?

00:28:52 ◼   ► Chances are good they know it crashes on launch,

00:28:55 ◼   ► and they're addressing it.

00:28:56 ◼   ► - Well, what if it only crashes on launch

00:28:58 ◼   ► on a phone you don't use?

00:28:59 ◼   ► - I don't know.

00:29:00 ◼   ► - That's why I can't think of a situation

00:29:04 ◼   ► where I would not want those reports,

00:29:05 ◼   ► even if I'm getting 100 of them.

00:29:06 ◼   ► Then I'll tweet from the account saying,

00:29:08 ◼   ► "Hey, just so you know I know about this,

00:29:09 ◼   ► "thanks for your reports."

00:29:10 ◼   ► Then you could not report the same thing again.

00:29:12 ◼   ► But if something like that happens, I wanna know.

00:29:16 ◼   ► To be a good citizen, don't expect a response.

00:29:19 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:29:21 ◼   ► If the developer's getting tons of them,

00:29:23 ◼   ► then they won't be able to respond to all of them.

00:29:24 ◼   ► But yeah, by all means, please tell us.

00:29:28 ◼   ► That's the point of betas,

00:29:30 ◼   ► even if they aren't our software in beta,

00:29:32 ◼   ► even if it's the OS software in beta,

00:29:34 ◼   ► we still need to know that kind of stuff.

00:29:36 ◼   ► I think we need to survey more developers to ask them if they really want people testing

00:29:40 ◼   ► their applications on beta OSes and giving them bug reports because I have almost always

00:29:44 ◼   ► heard the opposite.

00:29:45 ◼   ► That please do not send me reports of how my application doesn't work on a beta version

00:29:50 ◼   ► of the OS because it's not like, it's almost like a support function.

00:29:54 ◼   ► Don't contact me through support channels if you're not on my beta to tell me that my

00:29:58 ◼   ► application doesn't work on a beta OS.

00:30:00 ◼   ► Like they just don't want to hear it.

00:30:01 ◼   ► And maybe they're just frustrated, maybe you're right it's just about tone and all I ever

00:30:04 ◼   ► here is the frustrated complaint, and really it's super valuable for them, and they just

00:30:07 ◼   ► eventually reach their limit and snap. But I've always heard the opposite. Not that

00:30:12 ◼   ► I'm sending these reports, by the way. You just gave them for the podcast. I'm being

00:30:17 ◼   ► a good beta citizen. I don't even send Apple the bug reports.

00:30:22 ◼   ► Mike Paul writes to ask, "Do you think APFS will be supported on Fusion drives in future

00:30:26 ◼   ► builds of High Sierra?" So, Chief Summarizer and Chief, summary, APFS was supported on

00:30:31 ◼   ► Fusion Drives, which are these kind of weirdo scenarios where you have a spinning disk and

00:30:36 ◼   ► a SSD that is kind of melded to be one volume.

00:30:41 ◼   ► I'm sure that's not going to satisfy Jon, but for the purposes of this conversation,

00:30:45 ◼   ► that's all you need to know.

00:30:47 ◼   ► And so they were supported in betas of High Sierra, and then when the GM happened, oh,

00:30:52 ◼   ► just kidding, there is no Fusion Drive support for you, so you're going to have to reformat

00:30:57 ◼   ► to HFS+ if you want to go to High Sierra.

00:31:00 ◼   ► So the question is, do you think, I guess John, do you think that this will be supported

00:31:05 ◼   ► in future builds?

00:31:06 ◼   ► Yes, I do, because Apple has shipped a lot of Fusion drives, and I think they don't want

00:31:10 ◼   ► AWS Plus hanging around, and they almost had it working, so they'll eventually get it working.

00:31:17 ◼   ► I expect it.

00:31:18 ◼   ► What is future?

00:31:19 ◼   ► How many points do we have to go through?

00:31:21 ◼   ► How difficult is it?

00:31:22 ◼   ► I don't know, but I do expect it.

00:31:23 ◼   ► I'll be surprised if it's not supported.

00:31:26 ◼   ► Also, Craig Federighi sent an email to somebody allegedly saying, yes, it's coming in a future

00:31:30 ◼   ► version basically.

00:31:31 ◼   ► There you go.

00:31:32 ◼   ► Oh, fair enough.

00:31:33 ◼   ► All right, well that's it for Ask ATP.

00:31:35 ◼   ► As always, you can tweet your questions with the hashtag #AskATP and our magic spreadsheet

00:31:41 ◼   ► will find them and pick them up and then we will answer them if we think they're good

00:31:46 ◼   ► enough.

00:31:47 ◼   ► No pressure.

00:31:48 ◼   ► With continued apologies to the Upgrade Podcast, where we stole this from.

00:31:49 ◼   ► We don't need to apologize.

00:31:51 ◼   ► They've been amply credited.

00:31:55 ◼   ► We are sponsored this week by Jamf Now.

00:31:58 ◼   ► Jamf now helps you manage your Apple devices from anywhere.

00:32:02 ◼   ► When you first start a business,

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00:32:10 ◼   ► for your employees and you start to have more employees,

00:32:13 ◼   ► it gets really hard to keep track and manage

00:32:15 ◼   ► everyone's Macs, iPhones, and iPads.

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00:32:21 ◼   ► that a salesperson just lost can be pretty hard,

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00:33:05 ◼   ► That's J-A-M-F.com/atp.

00:33:09 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Jamf now

00:33:10 ◼   ► for sponsoring our show once again.

00:33:12 ◼   ► - All right, so it sounds like all three households

00:33:19 ◼   ► have received new toys in the last week,

00:33:21 ◼   ► although not all three hosts.

00:33:23 ◼   ► So the Apple Watch Series 3 is out.

00:33:27 ◼   ► They have been received as of this past Friday

00:33:31 ◼   ► by those who had pre-ordered basically

00:33:33 ◼   ► at the obscene hour of three in the morning

00:33:35 ◼   ► if you live on the East Coast like all three of us do.

00:33:37 ◼   ► So all three households have received them.

00:33:40 ◼   ► Marco, you and or Tiff have one?

00:33:43 ◼   ► How many did you get for the two of you all?

00:33:45 ◼   ► - Just one.

00:33:46 ◼   ► Tiff decided she didn't want one.

00:33:47 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:33:48 ◼   ► And then I got one for myself

00:33:50 ◼   ► and actually Erin got a non-cell one for her.

00:33:53 ◼   ► Although for Erin and Tiff, by the way, what were their reasons for saying they don't want

00:33:57 ◼   ► Cell?

00:33:58 ◼   ► Well, Tiff decided she didn't want the watch at all.

00:34:01 ◼   ► Okay, well that settles that.

00:34:04 ◼   ► For Erin, there's never a time she expects to be that far away from her phone to justify

00:34:08 ◼   ► spending the extra money each month.

00:34:10 ◼   ► And Erin likes her watch, I think it's fair to say, but doesn't love her watch.

00:34:18 ◼   ► She views it mostly as a second screen in terms of notifications and very little else.

00:34:24 ◼   ► And so because of that she didn't seem to think it was worth the extra money each month.

00:34:28 ◼   ► And if she wasn't, and if she knew she was never ever ever going to pay for cell service,

00:34:33 ◼   ► then why bother paying the extra money for the cell radio?

00:34:36 ◼   ► But she did want a new watch then.

00:34:37 ◼   ► She's got a new one just because her current watch is slow or you thought she should just

00:34:41 ◼   ► get one so you feel less bad about getting an expensive new watch?

00:34:44 ◼   ► All of the above.

00:34:45 ◼   ► Her current watch, her previous now watch, was a Series Zero, as was mine, and it was

00:34:50 ◼   ► slow, and she has the 38 millimeters, the battery life was getting to be comically bad

00:34:54 ◼   ► after the course of two years, which is to some degrees to be expected.

00:34:59 ◼   ► And I was spending a whole bunch of money on my fancy new watch, and I figured, you

00:35:02 ◼   ► know, if I'm going to get a fancy new watch, then she should get a fancy new watch.

00:35:06 ◼   ► But the solution to spending money and feeling guilty about it is just spend more money.

00:35:09 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:35:10 ◼   ► Well, yeah.

00:35:11 ◼   ► This is the Marco approach, and now the Casey approach, it seems.

00:35:14 ◼   ► - Have I taught you nothing?

00:35:15 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:35:17 ◼   ► - And so anyway, so yeah, so your wife has

00:35:20 ◼   ► or has not received hers yet.

00:35:22 ◼   ► - She has not received it, it's a birthday gift.

00:35:23 ◼   ► - Okay, so I won't be able to ask you

00:35:26 ◼   ► about your experience then, but I will start

00:35:29 ◼   ► by asking Marco, 'cause I suspect you will not have

00:35:32 ◼   ► too much to say about this, famous last words.

00:35:34 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:35:35 ◼   ► What has your experience been

00:35:36 ◼   ► with your Apple Watch Series 3 with LTE?

00:35:39 ◼   ► - I have not really used the LTE yet,

00:35:42 ◼   ► because I mainly got the LTE so I could build

00:35:45 ◼   ► Overcast with it when the API lets me do that.

00:35:48 ◼   ► And I hope that is soon.

00:35:50 ◼   ► But that is the main reason I got it,

00:35:51 ◼   ► because I know, because all of my customers

00:35:53 ◼   ► were asking for it, so I figured I should,

00:35:55 ◼   ► I need that for testing.

00:35:56 ◼   ► - Hello.

00:35:57 ◼   ► - But the, for the rest of the series three,

00:36:00 ◼   ► it's fantastic.

00:36:02 ◼   ► I mean, it's, the way that the keynote phrased

00:36:05 ◼   ► the speed improvements, it didn't sound like

00:36:07 ◼   ► it was that big of a difference,

00:36:08 ◼   ► it sounded like it was like an incremental speed update.

00:36:11 ◼   ► It's not, it's a massive speed upgrade

00:36:14 ◼   ► from even the Series 2, which itself,

00:36:16 ◼   ► you know, and Series 1, which themselves were

00:36:19 ◼   ► massive speed upgrades from the original Series 0.

00:36:22 ◼   ► If you still have a Series 0 and you are at all

00:36:25 ◼   ► thinking about upgrading, upgrade.

00:36:27 ◼   ► It is an incredibly fast device now.

00:36:30 ◼   ► Not like phone speed, like, it's not that you're

00:36:33 ◼   ► never waiting for anything, but compared to where it was,

00:36:38 ◼   ► it's a huge speed upgrade.

00:36:41 ◼   ► I would agree with that and I'd also like to quickly double down and say that the battery life improvement for me anyway has also been

00:36:49 ◼   ► Tremendous, so I completely agree with you if you're listening to this and you have a series zero watch

00:36:56 ◼   ► And that's the only one I have experience with I can't speak for series one or series two if you have a series zero watch

00:37:01 ◼   ► And you're thinking yeah, maybe it's time. It's time because this is way better both speed wise as Marco said and in my experience

00:37:09 ◼   ► experience so far in battery life as well.

00:37:11 ◼   ► - Keep in mind also with battery life,

00:37:12 ◼   ► I was thinking about this the other day,

00:37:13 ◼   ► like the Apple Watch is so dependent

00:37:16 ◼   ► on having adequate battery life,

00:37:18 ◼   ► like if your watch dies in the middle of the day,

00:37:22 ◼   ► that really makes it a lot less useful to you.

00:37:24 ◼   ► Like if it can't make it the whole,

00:37:25 ◼   ► and this is one of the reasons why Apple's so conservative

00:37:27 ◼   ► about how it spends its power budget,

00:37:29 ◼   ► and it's one of the reasons why the OS is so limited,

00:37:31 ◼   ► why apps are so limited,

00:37:32 ◼   ► because if your phone dies three quarters of the way

00:37:36 ◼   ► through a day, you can plug it in somewhere

00:37:38 ◼   ► for a few minutes and then get back to using it again.

00:37:41 ◼   ► With your watch, that's really inconvenient.

00:37:42 ◼   ► You have to take it off, put it somewhere.

00:37:45 ◼   ► You probably don't even have a lot of extra chargers for it

00:37:47 ◼   ► 'cause they're this separate thing.

00:37:48 ◼   ► It's kind of a pain.

00:37:49 ◼   ► It's this giant magnetic disk thing.

00:37:51 ◼   ► So most people are gonna have one charger.

00:37:54 ◼   ► It's gonna be next to their bed at night.

00:37:56 ◼   ► So if your battery life sinks down to the point

00:37:58 ◼   ► where it can't make it a full day,

00:38:01 ◼   ► that dramatically reduces your happiness

00:38:04 ◼   ► and the usefulness of that device.

00:38:06 ◼   ► So because these batteries degrade over time,

00:38:10 ◼   ► I suspect that a lot of people are gonna be replacing them

00:38:13 ◼   ► about every two to three years,

00:38:15 ◼   ► even if they're totally happy with them,

00:38:16 ◼   ► just because the battery will start fading

00:38:19 ◼   ► and it'll cross the point where it's no longer

00:38:21 ◼   ► making it through a full day for them,

00:38:22 ◼   ► and that's gonna suck.

00:38:23 ◼   ► So if you have a Series Zero, and this describes you,

00:38:26 ◼   ► which I've heard this is roughly the time

00:38:28 ◼   ► that that's really starting to happen

00:38:30 ◼   ► with a lot of the Series Zeros,

00:38:31 ◼   ► where the battery's not making it anymore,

00:38:33 ◼   ► if you have a Series Zero and you are at all thinking

00:38:36 ◼   ► upgrading this is a good time to do that and these are great I'm incredibly happy with

00:38:41 ◼   ► it.

00:38:42 ◼   ► Yep agreed.

00:38:43 ◼   ► I'm probably going to have to upgrade eventually too because even though I don't wear my Apple

00:38:45 ◼   ► Watch except for a few weeks a year I do wear it a few weeks a year and my Series 0 it's

00:38:50 ◼   ► I mean the battery is okay but it is it's it's in rough shape like it's so angry at

00:38:55 ◼   ► me because I don't wear it I just leave it on its charger sitting on my you know dresser

00:38:58 ◼   ► or whatever I tried to upgrade to watch OS 4 which took me like three days to complete

00:39:02 ◼   ► because my phone wouldn't connect to it or it would tell me it's downloading or it would

00:39:07 ◼   ► say download or resume when you're connected to Wi-Fi when I was totally on Wi-Fi I'm like

00:39:11 ◼   ► a foot from the Wi-Fi router and everything is connected to Wi-Fi or it said I can't connect

00:39:14 ◼   ► to the phone but the the watch could ping the phone and say it was connected I rebooted

00:39:18 ◼   ► both devices in the end what I had to do was wipe the entire watch and start over and restore

00:39:23 ◼   ► from a backup that's the only way and then I'm restoring from a watch OS 3 backup and

00:39:27 ◼   ► then once that got on then finally I could upgrade to 4 which still takes a year and

00:39:31 ◼   ► day to actually run. but I was I was glad to see that's that big circular

00:39:35 ◼   ► progress bar and the four-hour wait for it to upgrade. so anyway now my series zero

00:39:39 ◼   ► Apple watch is running the new OS but I think I will actually buy a new one I

00:39:42 ◼   ► just I'm I really don't want to because I really like the stainless steel one and

00:39:47 ◼   ► it costs a tremendous amount of money and I rarely wear it. in the end I

00:39:51 ◼   ► probably will get a new one not this year but like next year or the year

00:39:54 ◼   ► after. what will happen is I'll go to WWDC or go on vacation one year and my

00:39:59 ◼   ► my watch won't make it through the day, like Marco said,

00:40:00 ◼   ► and I'll be like, well that's it.

00:40:02 ◼   ► Either I don't have a Baba watch anymore,

00:40:04 ◼   ► I have to buy a new one,

00:40:05 ◼   ► and in the end I'll probably buy a new one.

00:40:06 ◼   ► But not this year.

00:40:08 ◼   ► Although who knows, maybe seeing my wife use her

00:40:10 ◼   ► cool cellular Dick Tracy watch,

00:40:12 ◼   ► it'll convince me that I should get one, but I doubt it.

00:40:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, hey, if you get one,

00:40:17 ◼   ► you can switch back to your flip phone.

00:40:19 ◼   ► - Oh, God.

00:40:19 ◼   ► - I don't think that's gonna happen.

00:40:21 ◼   ► I think I still have my flip phone somewhere,

00:40:23 ◼   ► but I can't go back.

00:40:24 ◼   ► - Oh, my word.

00:40:25 ◼   ► - And one other thing on the speed, too,

00:40:26 ◼   ► I would say, again, it doesn't make it

00:40:29 ◼   ► like a super fast device, but this is, I think,

00:40:32 ◼   ► this is the first Apple Watch that's not too slow.

00:40:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree with all of that.

00:40:38 ◼   ► So I got my Apple Watch Series 3 late-ish Friday.

00:40:42 ◼   ► I typically go and I do my exercise on Monday, Tuesday,

00:40:47 ◼   ► and Friday, generally speaking,

00:40:48 ◼   ► so it wasn't until this past Monday and Tuesday

00:40:50 ◼   ► that I was able to try going for a run without my phone,

00:40:53 ◼   ► which is kinda weird.

00:40:55 ◼   ► I mean, I've only been running semi-consistently

00:40:57 ◼   ► for a few months.

00:40:58 ◼   ► It's not like I'm some expert, you know,

00:41:00 ◼   ► forever long runner.

00:41:01 ◼   ► And even in just a few months,

00:41:03 ◼   ► I've gotten used to having my phone either in my hand,

00:41:06 ◼   ► careening out of my bum bag

00:41:08 ◼   ► as I'm trying to put it in said bag,

00:41:10 ◼   ► which is why my screen broke,

00:41:11 ◼   ► or bouncing around on my tailbone

00:41:13 ◼   ► as it's in my sort of kind of fanny pack.

00:41:17 ◼   ► Hello, the UK.

00:41:18 ◼   ► - You mean your sit bone?

00:41:19 ◼   ► - Yes, yes, that's totally it, except not at all.

00:41:21 ◼   ► But anyway, the point is,

00:41:24 ◼   ► It was very weird, but immediately very freeing not to have to carry my phone, which is super

00:41:30 ◼   ► cool.

00:41:31 ◼   ► So I put in my AirPods, I had previously downloaded some music onto my watch, connected my AirPods

00:41:40 ◼   ► to my watch, and I started listening to music, started a run in RunKeeper, and went on my

00:41:46 ◼   ► run.

00:41:47 ◼   ► And it was really, really awesome.

00:41:49 ◼   ► There are some problems with this, though.

00:41:51 ◼   ► Number one, I don't want to listen to music, I want to listen to podcasts.

00:41:55 ◼   ► I can barely keep up with all my podcasts as it is, and running is a really great time

00:41:59 ◼   ► for me to plow through, you know, maybe one episode or an episode and a half or whatever

00:42:03 ◼   ► of some of my favorite shows.

00:42:05 ◼   ► And if I don't bring my phone, then I'm not listening to podcasts.

00:42:09 ◼   ► And that's a bummer.

00:42:10 ◼   ► So if only I knew the guy that uses my, that writes my podcast client app, whatever, of

00:42:16 ◼   ► choice, maybe I could put in a good word with him about how I'd really love some overcast

00:42:22 ◼   ► watch support.

00:42:23 ◼   ► And I understand what the problems are, and you wrote a really, really great post about

00:42:26 ◼   ► it, and then this week's Under the Radar, you talked about kind of the same thing, so

00:42:30 ◼   ► as much as I joke, I'm not actually beating you up about it, because I know your hands

00:42:34 ◼   ► are tied.

00:42:35 ◼   ► But please, please Apple, give Marco the tools, give Marco the tools so we can have this nice

00:42:39 ◼   ► thing.

00:42:40 ◼   ► We just want nice things.

00:42:42 ◼   ► But anyway, we've already talked about the battery life.

00:42:45 ◼   ► life is tremendous as compared to previous. I have gone on not only a couple of runs with

00:42:51 ◼   ► the watch, but also I have taken Declan to the little park that's within our neighborhood

00:42:55 ◼   ► a few times. And generally speaking, in the past I brought my phone, which means I'm often

00:43:00 ◼   ► tempted to look at like Twitter or Instagram or whatever instead of playing with Declan

00:43:03 ◼   ► because I'm a terrible father. And not having my phone with me makes it much harder to look

00:43:08 ◼   ► at Twitter or Instagram or what have you because I don't have those apps on my watch. And that's

00:43:13 ◼   ► That's been really awesome.

00:43:15 ◼   ► What has been less awesome is replying to text messages and things like that, because

00:43:18 ◼   ► it seems that about one time in three, the text message just doesn't send.

00:43:26 ◼   ► And when I say text message, I mean both iMessage and text message.

00:43:29 ◼   ► So that's kind of a bummer, kind of a big bummer.

00:43:33 ◼   ► I don't know if that's a software problem.

00:43:34 ◼   ► I don't know if it's a hardware problem.

00:43:36 ◼   ► I'm guessing it's a software thing.

00:43:38 ◼   ► But that really bums me out.

00:43:40 ◼   ► The other thing that's been a little bit troubling is I have seen a very small version of the

00:43:48 ◼   ► bug that about half of the reviewers hit, insofar as, as I run, I'm running in my neighborhood,

00:43:55 ◼   ► and at one point or another, I will pass the house, because I start, you know, a little

00:44:00 ◼   ► bit past the house, I run for a while, pass the house again, and that's where I end.

00:44:04 ◼   ► I end where I started.

00:44:06 ◼   ► And I realized as I was coming to the end of my run, which is close to the house but

00:44:10 ◼   ► past the house, I was attempting to do something, I don't recall exactly what it was, maybe

00:44:14 ◼   ► I was just seeing if what the status was because this is all new to me and I'm trying to figure

00:44:18 ◼   ► out okay how long does it take to get on the cell radio and when does it fall off the cell

00:44:21 ◼   ► radio etc etc.

00:44:23 ◼   ► I noticed as I ran past the house it picked up my Wi-Fi but then it tried to cling to

00:44:31 ◼   ► it longer than it really should have, which I don't really blame the device because it's

00:44:36 ◼   ► of course going to try to power off the cell radio, and it's of course going to try to

00:44:41 ◼   ► hang on to the Wi-Fi because that radio is far less power expensive to keep on.

00:44:47 ◼   ► But what ended up happening was for the last, I don't know, 300 yards of my run, I had no

00:44:53 ◼   ► connectivity because it was still trying to find the Wi-Fi that I had already run past.

00:44:58 ◼   ► So that was kind of a bummer.

00:45:00 ◼   ► In general though, I don't have that problem.

00:45:02 ◼   ► I leave the cell, I leave the software for the cell radio enabled.

00:45:06 ◼   ► And what I mean by that is it can go on cellular anytime it wants.

00:45:10 ◼   ► I have not paid any attention to like turning that off or anything like that.

00:45:13 ◼   ► And 99% of the time my phone is right there, so it wouldn't power the cell radio on anyway.

00:45:19 ◼   ► But it's been maintenance free in that regard, which is really nice.

00:45:24 ◼   ► And so far I really, really, really like it.

00:45:27 ◼   ► I'm glad that I have the cell service for the runs and even more importantly for when I'm out with Declan and I don't want to

00:45:34 ◼   ► be

00:45:35 ◼   ► Attracted to my phone. This is absolutely a first-world problem

00:45:38 ◼   ► It is absolutely a KC problem in that I should just have the self-control not to check Twitter every four seconds or Instagram or what?

00:45:44 ◼   ► Have you but I know myself enough to know that I don't have a tremendous overabundance of self-control

00:45:50 ◼   ► and so removing this problem by removing my phone from the equation is a pretty good way to fix it and

00:45:56 ◼   ► And I almost put Tweetbot on my watch for instances where I'm, say, DMing with somebody

00:46:01 ◼   ► or something like that, and it occurred to me by putting Tweetbot on my watch, I will

00:46:04 ◼   ► be defeating the purpose that I've set out for my watch, which is to say being able to

00:46:10 ◼   ► be distraction-free.

00:46:11 ◼   ► Another couple things I've noticed, once I upgraded to High Sierra and I could use unlock

00:46:15 ◼   ► with my watch again, because apparently there's something that causes issues with the cellular

00:46:20 ◼   ► watch and Sierra in below, so you have to be on High Sierra for your cellular watch

00:46:25 ◼   ► to do watch unlock. Once I upgraded two of my three computers to High Sierra, that has

00:46:31 ◼   ► come back and that seems to be faster than my Series 0 by, generally speaking, a pretty

00:46:35 ◼   ► comfortable margin. Apple Pay is way faster. In the last couple of months that I had my

00:46:40 ◼   ► Series 0, I'd kind of abandoned using Apple Pay on the watch because it was just so much

00:46:44 ◼   ► slower than my phone. And it is a fair bit faster on the Series 3, which I really like.

00:46:51 ◼   ► All in all, the combination of the Apple Watch Series 3 with LTE with AirPods is pretty darn

00:46:59 ◼   ► fantastic.

00:47:00 ◼   ► The only things that I'm really longing for are an update to Runkeeper so it will take

00:47:07 ◼   ► a note of the map of what I ran, because if you use the exercise app that's built into

00:47:11 ◼   ► the watch, it will save a map to your health app.

00:47:14 ◼   ► But Runkeeper hasn't built in support for that API yet, which is a real bummer.

00:47:18 ◼   ► And again, I want podcasts on my watch.

00:47:21 ◼   ► Pretty, please, Apple, please look at Marco's post

00:47:23 ◼   ► and give me podcasts on my watch.

00:47:25 ◼   ► That's all I want, please, please.

00:47:27 ◼   ► - And a volume widget, please, for the love of God.

00:47:31 ◼   ► No one cared about a volume widget on the watch

00:47:33 ◼   ► until AirPods.

00:47:34 ◼   ► And now, because AirPods don't have a good way

00:47:36 ◼   ► to control volume physically on them,

00:47:38 ◼   ► everybody is demanding that, with good reason.

00:47:41 ◼   ► And yeah, I can't offer it.

00:47:42 ◼   ► Like, there is no API for me to offer them a volume widget

00:47:45 ◼   ► for either phone or watch audio levels.

00:47:47 ◼   ► and I just, it kills me.

00:47:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, so those are my thoughts.

00:47:53 ◼   ► I definitely recommend it.

00:47:55 ◼   ► I definitely think it's good.

00:47:56 ◼   ► I definitely am glad I spent the money

00:47:58 ◼   ► on both it and the cellular service on top.

00:48:01 ◼   ► I'm giving it two thumbs up so far.

00:48:04 ◼   ► Really, really love this device.

00:48:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, the only thing I would add is

00:48:08 ◼   ► it seems like what we're seeing with the cellular

00:48:11 ◼   ► holding onto WiFi and everything else,

00:48:14 ◼   ► This is clearly a device that, for power reasons,

00:48:18 ◼   ► has to use the LTE as little as possible.

00:48:21 ◼   ► I would say it's a good device to get,

00:48:25 ◼   ► if you have a specific use case in mind,

00:48:27 ◼   ► like Casey at the park, or running without a phone,

00:48:30 ◼   ► that makes a ton of sense.

00:48:32 ◼   ► I would say don't assume this device

00:48:35 ◼   ► is just gonna be always happily using its LTE

00:48:37 ◼   ► the way an iPad would.

00:48:38 ◼   ► It's going to minimize LTE so aggressively

00:48:42 ◼   ► that it's more useful to think of the LTE thing

00:48:45 ◼   ► as a just in case I need it kind of thing,

00:48:48 ◼   ► like if you're on a run and you don't want to be

00:48:50 ◼   ► without a way to make a phone call in case of an emergency

00:48:52 ◼   ► or you want to be reachable by people,

00:48:54 ◼   ► it makes sense for that, but I wouldn't necessarily say

00:48:58 ◼   ► that it makes sense to buy the LTE version

00:49:01 ◼   ► with the assumption that you'll be using it

00:49:03 ◼   ► just like a tiny phone, because not only is it

00:49:05 ◼   ► very, very conservative with when it uses the LTE at all,

00:49:09 ◼   ► but also app-wise, the apps are not really ready

00:49:12 ◼   ► for that yet.

00:49:13 ◼   ► There were good segments about app readiness

00:49:15 ◼   ► on other podcasts this week.

00:49:16 ◼   ► I know there was a great one on upgrade especially,

00:49:18 ◼   ► and I think a little more on connected.

00:49:20 ◼   ► But basically, yeah, it was connected.

00:49:23 ◼   ► But basically, the apps for Apple Watch

00:49:27 ◼   ► have been written to date with the assumption

00:49:30 ◼   ► that they were using the phone and their corresponding app

00:49:33 ◼   ► on the phone for all their communication.

00:49:36 ◼   ► And the watch really couldn't do much until fairly recently

00:49:40 ◼   ► with its own communication and until last week

00:49:43 ◼   ► that was only on Wi-Fi and because nobody really went

00:49:46 ◼   ► with the watch without their phone and did much with it,

00:49:48 ◼   ► there wasn't much reason to really write the apps for that.

00:49:51 ◼   ► So Apple Watch third party apps still have a,

00:49:54 ◼   ► and even first party apps frankly,

00:49:55 ◼   ► still have a long way to go before they can really make

00:49:59 ◼   ► good use of independent connectivity on the watch

00:50:03 ◼   ► and the hardware probably needs a couple more generations

00:50:05 ◼   ► before it's really able to use the LTE radio

00:50:07 ◼   ► more than occasionally anyway.

00:50:09 ◼   ► So buy it if you want to be reachable

00:50:13 ◼   ► and to have a lifeline, you know,

00:50:14 ◼   ► like that kind of use when you are out without a phone.

00:50:18 ◼   ► But I wouldn't necessarily say buy it

00:50:20 ◼   ► just for like entertainment to go phoneless

00:50:22 ◼   ► like Casey at the park,

00:50:24 ◼   ► because that's not ultimately what it's for

00:50:26 ◼   ► and it's not what it's optimized to do.

00:50:28 ◼   ► - I would agree with that.

00:50:30 ◼   ► - Also, you can bring your phone to the park, man.

00:50:31 ◼   ► Like kids at the park, like, you know, we love our kids,

00:50:34 ◼   ► but like they're there a lot.

00:50:35 ◼   ► It's okay to bring your phone and to look at Instagram

00:50:38 ◼   ► while they're climbing the monkey bars and everything,

00:50:40 ◼   ► when they're not interacting with you,

00:50:42 ◼   ► when they're just running around,

00:50:43 ◼   ► you can look at your phone, it's okay.

00:50:45 ◼   ► I give you permission to do it.

00:50:46 ◼   ► - I mean, you look up and they're gone,

00:50:47 ◼   ► you don't have to blame yourself.

00:50:48 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:50:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know.

00:50:52 ◼   ► I think part of the problem is that this particular park,

00:50:54 ◼   ► it's just in the neighborhood,

00:50:55 ◼   ► so it's usual that it's only Declan and I that are there.

00:50:59 ◼   ► And beyond that, he's still in the phase

00:51:00 ◼   ► where everything is daddy this or really mommy this,

00:51:03 ◼   ► and then if mommy isn't there, daddy this.

00:51:06 ◼   ► And so, it's better if I am not distracted

00:51:11 ◼   ► by something else and better

00:51:12 ◼   ► if I'm paying more attention to him.

00:51:13 ◼   ► - Actually, Hamilton Orr in the chat

00:51:15 ◼   ► points out a very good thing.

00:51:16 ◼   ► Bring your phone to take pictures.

00:51:19 ◼   ► Like, as people are realizing they can now go out

00:51:21 ◼   ► into the world with just their watch,

00:51:23 ◼   ► many of them I've seen are also realizing,

00:51:25 ◼   ► oh, crap, I don't have a camera when I do that,

00:51:28 ◼   ► and I'm used to always having a camera.

00:51:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, the thing is, and actually,

00:51:32 ◼   ► Mike and I talked about this very briefly

00:51:34 ◼   ► on the forthcoming episode of Analog,

00:51:36 ◼   ► but if I was going to bring a camera to the park,

00:51:40 ◼   ► I would probably bring the big camera

00:51:42 ◼   ► because I think the pictures are much, much, much better

00:51:46 ◼   ► coming off of that.

00:51:47 ◼   ► Now, once I get my fancy iPhone 10 in 2020

00:51:50 ◼   ► when it's finally available,

00:51:51 ◼   ► then that might change when I have my fancy,

00:51:53 ◼   ► you know, two lens camera system.

00:51:55 ◼   ► But for now, I would be more apt to bring watch

00:52:00 ◼   ► and big camera than I would be watch and phone.

00:52:04 ◼   ► That's actually a reasonable plan. I like that.

00:52:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, but I mean, obviously this is kind of a unique

00:52:08 ◼   ► to Casey use case, and that may not be the case

00:52:10 ◼   ► for everyone else.

00:52:11 ◼   ► But I would agree with what you said a minute ago.

00:52:14 ◼   ► Like if you have, if you the listener have a particular

00:52:17 ◼   ► set of times that you think this would be useful to you,

00:52:20 ◼   ► for example, exercise, particularly in a situation

00:52:24 ◼   ► where you don't have access to wifi or anything else.

00:52:27 ◼   ► So often, but not always outdoor exercise.

00:52:29 ◼   ► Or if you just are like me

00:52:32 ◼   ► don't have very good self-control, then I think having a watch with LTE makes sense.

00:52:37 ◼   ► And certainly one of the nice things is, if you wanted to just see what you thought, you

00:52:42 ◼   ► could get a watch with LTE and just choose not to enable it.

00:52:45 ◼   ► So yes, it's I think 70 extra dollars up front, but you don't have to incur that monthly fee

00:52:50 ◼   ► until you feel like you might want it.

00:52:54 ◼   ► But if you don't really have a particular use like that in mind, I agree with Marco

00:52:59 ◼   ► that may not really be worth the money.

00:53:03 ◼   ► What do you think of the red dot now that you have it?

00:53:06 ◼   ► - I wish the red dot wasn't there.

00:53:09 ◼   ► - Agreed.

00:53:10 ◼   ► - I have yet to see any model except the white ceramic

00:53:14 ◼   ► where I think it looks good.

00:53:16 ◼   ► I think it looks okay or passable on the steel ones

00:53:20 ◼   ► and maybe okay on the gold aluminum one,

00:53:23 ◼   ► but that's about the best I could say about it.

00:53:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, fair enough.

00:53:29 ◼   ► I think I feel the same way.

00:53:31 ◼   ► I wish it wasn't there.

00:53:33 ◼   ► I wish I had an option to not have it there.

00:53:36 ◼   ► - There's always watch dots.

00:53:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know, but I don't trust myself to apply it

00:53:43 ◼   ► in such a way that it won't look like garbage,

00:53:45 ◼   ► the watch dot that is.

00:53:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I'd be afraid of that too.

00:53:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, if I could, I do believe if I could pay

00:53:53 ◼   ► a little bit of extra money to have a version

00:53:57 ◼   ► without the Dot, I probably would have.

00:53:59 ◼   ► - You gotta find somebody who paints miniatures

00:54:02 ◼   ► and go in there with some enamel and very carefully paint.

00:54:05 ◼   ► You'll never notice it, it'll be practically perfect.

00:54:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, something like that.

00:54:09 ◼   ► I don't know, but overall, I was expecting to like the watch.

00:54:13 ◼   ► You know, I am a pretty big fan

00:54:15 ◼   ► of the Apple Watch as a platform,

00:54:17 ◼   ► and I was expecting to like this new one a fair bit.

00:54:20 ◼   ► And it turns out I really like this new watch a lot.

00:54:23 ◼   ► So it is a very worthwhile upgrade.

00:54:26 ◼   ► The cell, like we just discussed, maybe, maybe not.

00:54:29 ◼   ► For me, absolutely.

00:54:31 ◼   ► Marco, I suspect if and when you get overcast working

00:54:34 ◼   ► and if and when you decide to ditch your phone

00:54:37 ◼   ► for bike rides, I think you'll be more enthusiastic

00:54:39 ◼   ► about the cellular radio.

00:54:41 ◼   ► But in general, I can see that one going either way.

00:54:44 ◼   ► But yeah, I definitely say this is a worthwhile upgrade

00:54:47 ◼   ► and I'm super duper happy with my purchase.

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00:56:30 ◼   ► [Music]

00:56:34 ◼   ► All right, Jon.

00:56:36 ◼   ► So tell me about High Sierra and tell me, I have upgraded my MacBook Adorable.

00:56:41 ◼   ► I have upgraded my work computer.

00:56:43 ◼   ► Am I allowed to upgrade my iMac that I'm recording on as we speak?

00:56:46 ◼   ► Not to say that I'm going to upgrade as we're recording, of course,

00:56:50 ◼   ► but am I allowed to upgrade my iMac, Jon?

00:56:53 ◼   ► What's the deal?

00:56:54 ◼   ► - You can do what you want.

00:56:55 ◼   ► It's your iMac.

00:56:56 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:56:57 ◼   ► All right, so what is the official Jon Siracusa review

00:57:01 ◼   ► of macOS High Sierra?

00:57:03 ◼   ► - Review is I still haven't used it.

00:57:06 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:57:07 ◼   ► - Oh my word, Jon.

00:57:08 ◼   ► - I have literally never used it

00:57:10 ◼   ► 'cause I didn't install any of the betas

00:57:12 ◼   ► and I don't have it on any of my Macs.

00:57:14 ◼   ► Now why don't I have it on any of my Macs?

00:57:15 ◼   ► Well, obviously, the Mac Pro that I'm talking to right now

00:57:17 ◼   ► can't run it.

00:57:18 ◼   ► I never did do the whatever, you know, firmware upgrade

00:57:22 ◼   ► trickery to make it run Sierra

00:57:23 ◼   ► and therefore also run High Sierra.

00:57:25 ◼   ► I probably never will.

00:57:26 ◼   ► So that's that.

00:57:28 ◼   ► My work computer, we are not allowed to install it

00:57:31 ◼   ► at work yet because of some active directory bugs

00:57:33 ◼   ► that are supposedly fixed in the 1013.1 beta.

00:57:36 ◼   ► But right now, if you try to install it,

00:57:38 ◼   ► one of our works incredibly invasive,

00:57:41 ◼   ► please don't let me know how this actually works.

00:57:45 ◼   ► Hackery things is when you double click

00:57:46 ◼   ► the sierra installer a dialogue pops up with a message written by our corporate it that

00:57:51 ◼   ► says you can't install it.

00:57:53 ◼   ► i'm hoping they didn't patch the binary of the installer but whatever mechanism they

00:57:57 ◼   ► have to intercept the launch of a particular application and throw up an arbitrary message

00:58:00 ◼   ► in a dialogue, god i don't even want to know.

00:58:03 ◼   ► so anyway i can upgrade the work one that would be the one i would be most likely to

00:58:07 ◼   ► upgrade because i would have some faith that the it team that i was just complaining about

00:58:11 ◼   ► had tested it and made sure all our stuff works on it.

00:58:14 ◼   ► And it's like practically brand new, like it's all fresh and like I haven't done anything

00:58:17 ◼   ► weird to it so if any computer is gonna work okay with it it's gonna be that one.

00:58:22 ◼   ► And then finally my wife's computer which I thought I was gonna upgrade on day one,

00:58:25 ◼   ► I found myself with cold feet.

00:58:28 ◼   ► Not so much about APFS, although there are some issues with that, like SuperDuper that

00:58:33 ◼   ► I used to clone just now has like beta support for cloning from it.

00:58:37 ◼   ► But really I'm getting cold feet about the point zero.

00:58:40 ◼   ► And in a way I didn't with Sierra, I just, I don't know, maybe it's the combination,

00:58:45 ◼   ► like just the .0 is not enough to scare me away, and just the APFS is not enough to scare

00:58:49 ◼   ► me away with both of them.

00:58:50 ◼   ► I'm hedging.

00:58:51 ◼   ► So I've downloaded the installer and I've done like a fresh round of backups and clones

00:58:55 ◼   ► and made sure all my backups are good and you know, I've done all this stuff, I'm all

00:58:58 ◼   ► ready to install, but I thought I would pull the trigger and it's just like I'm not pulling

00:59:03 ◼   ► the trigger.

00:59:04 ◼   ► Mostly what I would be upgrading for is the new version of photos, not for APFS, because

00:59:08 ◼   ► Obviously, I like that and I want it and I'll get it eventually, but I want to try the new version of photos

00:59:12 ◼   ► But that has me a little bit scared too

00:59:13 ◼   ► So I may turn out that I just wait for the point one, especially if the point one is due out soon

00:59:20 ◼   ► But right now I've been too much of a wimp to try it

00:59:23 ◼   ► So I'm just I'm just in a holding pattern

00:59:25 ◼   ► waiting to see other things a lot other people go first and see what kind of

00:59:29 ◼   ► Disasters befall them and this is kind of weird for me because I upgraded almost all the other ones

00:59:33 ◼   ► I always upgraded my wife's computer like as soon as it comes out just you know

00:59:36 ◼   ► Why not everything's fine, but this time I don't know it's just me

00:59:40 ◼   ► I don't think there's anything particular about high Sierra because again, I haven't used any of the beta

00:59:43 ◼   ► so I have nothing to base my fears on but I think

00:59:46 ◼   ► The combo of APFS and the point zero is keeping me away

00:59:50 ◼   ► Hmm. I am surprised by that me too. So Marco have you have you upgraded anything yet Marco only my laptop

00:59:57 ◼   ► I I would like to upgrade my desktop mostly for the media format support

01:00:02 ◼   ► But I really that's pretty much the only thing that is really compelling for me right now. And and the thing is like

01:00:09 ◼   ► You know, I've really been burned a lot it by the last few Mac OS releases, you know

01:00:13 ◼   ► Like ever since like the discovery D fiasco

01:00:16 ◼   ► pretty much every almost every major version of Mac OS in the last few years has

01:00:22 ◼   ► Broken some subsystem that I rely on for a little while, you know

01:00:26 ◼   ► Sometimes for the entire release cycle like I'm pretty sure Sierra

01:00:31 ◼   ► still messes up Bluetooth input devices.

01:00:34 ◼   ► Like I still think Bluetooth is messed up in Sierra.

01:00:37 ◼   ► And you know, some people have reported,

01:00:40 ◼   ► were reporting USB audio bugs earlier on

01:00:43 ◼   ► in Sierra's life cycle and stuff.

01:00:44 ◼   ► And like, you know, this is my work machine.

01:00:46 ◼   ► I can't afford downtime of my Mac, of my main Mac here.

01:00:51 ◼   ► I do my entire job here.

01:00:53 ◼   ► The idea of taking a risk on High Sierra

01:00:57 ◼   ► in, you know, early on in its life cycle,

01:00:59 ◼   ► With Sierra, I kinda know, it's kinda like the devil you know,

01:01:02 ◼   ► it's like I know Sierra is buggy

01:01:05 ◼   ► with Bluetooth pointing devices,

01:01:06 ◼   ► so it's like I'm used to my mouse and trackpad

01:01:09 ◼   ► just occasionally just disconnecting for no reason

01:01:11 ◼   ► and then reconnecting.

01:01:12 ◼   ► I've gotten used to that now.

01:01:15 ◼   ► With Hi Sierra, I don't know what

01:01:16 ◼   ► this year's Discovery D is yet.

01:01:18 ◼   ► I've heard lots of reports

01:01:19 ◼   ► that it's the Windows Server rewrite.

01:01:21 ◼   ► And I don't know, when I ask people on Twitter,

01:01:25 ◼   ► like hey, is Hi Sierra okay or not?

01:01:27 ◼   ► what have been your experiences,

01:01:30 ◼   ► the responses were pretty evenly split between

01:01:33 ◼   ► it's totally perfect, I've had no problems,

01:01:35 ◼   ► and oh my god, it's been a disaster for,

01:01:38 ◼   ► mostly for the Windows Server things.

01:01:40 ◼   ► So I assume that it mostly works

01:01:44 ◼   ► if you're doing things the way Apple wants you to do,

01:01:45 ◼   ► but if you have some kind of workflow or setup

01:01:50 ◼   ► that puts a strain on edge cases of the Windows Server,

01:01:54 ◼   ► so for instance, if you are frequently connecting

01:01:56 ◼   ► or disconnecting monitors or using clamshell mode maybe.

01:01:59 ◼   ► Like that kind of thing, I bet,

01:02:01 ◼   ► it's probably more likely to have bugs

01:02:04 ◼   ► related to the Windows Server stuff than--

01:02:06 ◼   ► - Or if you have a particular GPU,

01:02:07 ◼   ► like some particular NVIDIA GPU of a particular,

01:02:10 ◼   ► isn't Steve Trout and Smith have some computer

01:02:12 ◼   ► with some particular GPU that just kernel panics

01:02:15 ◼   ► based on a clock, like he can just time it

01:02:17 ◼   ► and 30 minutes in and kernel panics.

01:02:20 ◼   ► That's the thing about a lot of these

01:02:22 ◼   ► graphics subsystem things in the Windows Server

01:02:24 ◼   ► that deal with GPU drivers.

01:02:25 ◼   ► it could be perfectly fine for you

01:02:27 ◼   ► because your GPU driver has no problems.

01:02:30 ◼   ► And for someone else, it doesn't matter how lightly

01:02:32 ◼   ► or heavily you use it if you're disconnecting

01:02:33 ◼   ► or turning them on, it's just that your GPU,

01:02:35 ◼   ► the driver for it has some bug that gets tripped

01:02:37 ◼   ► on average after every 30 minutes.

01:02:38 ◼   ► So I've heard that as well.

01:02:41 ◼   ► I don't know if that's making me wear it

01:02:44 ◼   ► 'cause I assume I don't have one of those weird GPUs,

01:02:46 ◼   ► but who knows?

01:02:47 ◼   ► - You know, that kind of thing,

01:02:49 ◼   ► I'm just not willing to take the risk on my main computer

01:02:52 ◼   ► when there are still widespread reports

01:02:54 ◼   ► of problems of that magnitude.

01:02:56 ◼   ► The advantages of High Sierra are just not very compelling

01:02:59 ◼   ► for me to take that risk right now.

01:03:02 ◼   ► Over time, that calculus will change.

01:03:04 ◼   ► Over time, it will start to become more annoying

01:03:07 ◼   ► that I don't have the latest version,

01:03:08 ◼   ► 'cause lots of things around the Apple ecosystem

01:03:10 ◼   ► these days will assume that you have the latest version,

01:03:12 ◼   ► it will only work correctly or fully with the latest version,

01:03:15 ◼   ► especially with features that are shared between iOS

01:03:17 ◼   ► and the Mac, things like continuity and handoff,

01:03:20 ◼   ► even simple things like Notes.

01:03:22 ◼   ► Notes has new features now.

01:03:23 ◼   ► the HGVC and Heif stuff,

01:03:25 ◼   ► like that's gonna become more annoying over time

01:03:27 ◼   ► as my photos app can't edit the photos that are in it.

01:03:31 ◼   ► Things like that, like that's gonna eventually push me over

01:03:33 ◼   ► probably within the next few weeks.

01:03:35 ◼   ► Like I'm probably just gonna install the point one

01:03:37 ◼   ► and hope that it fixes everything, if not the point two.

01:03:41 ◼   ► But basically right now, why should I install it?

01:03:43 ◼   ► Like there's not much reason to install it.

01:03:46 ◼   ► And there's just a lot of potential for

01:03:49 ◼   ► there still be pretty serious problems with it

01:03:51 ◼   ► that I just don't need to be the one to fix.

01:03:53 ◼   ► You know, like when I was at Tumblr,

01:03:56 ◼   ► one of my rules was that, you know,

01:03:58 ◼   ► when I was choosing software or infrastructure

01:04:03 ◼   ► that we were going to build upon,

01:04:05 ◼   ► one of my rules was to never be the biggest user of anything.

01:04:08 ◼   ► You know, you wanna use stuff that like Facebook uses,

01:04:11 ◼   ► or Twitter uses, because you know, like,

01:04:13 ◼   ► if there's any kind of bug at scale,

01:04:16 ◼   ► they will have already hit it,

01:04:18 ◼   ► and probably will have submitted and fixed,

01:04:20 ◼   ► you know, fixes for it.

01:04:21 ◼   ► It'll be fixed by them long before

01:04:23 ◼   ► it's ever a problem for you.

01:04:25 ◼   ► And similarly with like macro S betas,

01:04:27 ◼   ► like why install the point zero?

01:04:29 ◼   ► Like why not let the entire rest of the world use it first,

01:04:32 ◼   ► report all the bugs, get Apple to fix them,

01:04:35 ◼   ► and then install the point one or the point two?

01:04:37 ◼   ► Like it's selfish, like you should as like a social good,

01:04:42 ◼   ► try to contribute with everybody.

01:04:43 ◼   ► But no, screw that, I need my computer to work,

01:04:45 ◼   ► and so I'll let everyone else do that,

01:04:46 ◼   ► and I'll sit back and collect the fixes.

01:04:49 ◼   ► Speaking of computer reliability, my shiny new Space Gray 2017 MacBook Pro has already

01:04:57 ◼   ► proven to not be as reliable as my outgoing 8 year old 2009 Mac Pro at work.

01:05:04 ◼   ► Because I've had it for what, like 2 weeks now or something?

01:05:07 ◼   ► And I came in one day this week and it was just off.

01:05:10 ◼   ► And I booted up and sure enough it had kernel panicked in the middle of the night at like

01:05:14 ◼   ► 3am.

01:05:15 ◼   ► It was just sitting there, nobody's using it, who knows what was going on, I didn't

01:05:19 ◼   ► get anything good. I did do the send report to Apple. I looked at the thing. I couldn't

01:05:23 ◼   ► make heads or tails of it. Nothing obvious jumped. It didn't even look like a full crash

01:05:28 ◼   ► report. Whatever it had saved in NVRAM, it was just information about my system but didn't

01:05:32 ◼   ► tell me about what had crashed or show me any symbols or anything like that. If it wants

01:05:37 ◼   ► to match my 2009 Mac Pro's performance, it needs to not kernel panic again for another

01:05:44 ◼   ► seven years because my 2009 micro did kernel panic a couple of times when they first installed

01:05:52 ◼   ► the terrible antivirus software that they were forcing us all to use because it apparently

01:05:56 ◼   ► had an incompatibility with like xeons or something. That was the story like oh you're

01:06:01 ◼   ► the only computer in the entire company with a xeon in it and the antivirus software kernel

01:06:05 ◼   ► panics reliably kernel panic xeons and we changed to a different antivirus thing and

01:06:11 ◼   ► so that solved that problem.

01:06:12 ◼   ► So those were the only panics I had and those were explicable and I could tell what was

01:06:15 ◼   ► doing it.

01:06:16 ◼   ► Let me see, did we have any other kernel panics on that one?

01:06:20 ◼   ► Maybe.

01:06:21 ◼   ► When I gave away, what gave away, when I returned my 2009 Mac Pro at work, I also like returned

01:06:27 ◼   ► you know all the stuff that came with it and you know what came with it?

01:06:31 ◼   ► Snow levered on a plastic disk.

01:06:32 ◼   ► Nice.

01:06:33 ◼   ► That's what came with this computer.

01:06:34 ◼   ► Vintage.

01:06:35 ◼   ► So maybe I had some kernel panics back on it but like but in general it's just I don't

01:06:39 ◼   ► It's not a thing that I expect to happen.

01:06:41 ◼   ► Like, it just, and so, within the first few weeks

01:06:43 ◼   ► of it, and remember, this is running Sierra,

01:06:45 ◼   ► not High Sierra, but like, 10.12.6,

01:06:47 ◼   ► the latest version of Sierra.

01:06:49 ◼   ► Not off to an auspicious start, but oh well.

01:06:52 ◼   ► At least the boot's fast.

01:06:54 ◼   ► - I mean, the thing to remember too is like,

01:06:56 ◼   ► you know, these Mac OS releases on a schedule,

01:07:00 ◼   ► not when it's done.

01:07:01 ◼   ► Apple is, you know, Apple usually ships high quality stuff.

01:07:04 ◼   ► You know, like, we complain, but like,

01:07:06 ◼   ► their track record's pretty good.

01:07:08 ◼   ► but there's also a hierarchy.

01:07:09 ◼   ► You could be pretty sure that when a new iPhone comes out,

01:07:12 ◼   ► that's usually pretty solid,

01:07:14 ◼   ► 'cause they care a lot about that

01:07:15 ◼   ► and they work really hard on that to make that rock solid.

01:07:19 ◼   ► But everything else beneath the iPhone

01:07:23 ◼   ► gets less and less reliable in that way.

01:07:27 ◼   ► You can't be sure that a lower priority release

01:07:30 ◼   ► is going to be as solid as iPhone hardware,

01:07:34 ◼   ► 'cause everything else has to basically ship on a schedule

01:07:37 ◼   ► whenever it's ready.

01:07:39 ◼   ► And again, usually that works out okay.

01:07:43 ◼   ► But they were gonna ship High Sierra when they did,

01:07:46 ◼   ► regardless of whether it was done.

01:07:49 ◼   ► So we got it and it's probably close to done.

01:07:53 ◼   ► There probably aren't a lot of bugs,

01:07:55 ◼   ► but that was shipped on a schedule,

01:07:58 ◼   ► not after hitting a certain quality threshold.

01:08:01 ◼   ► - It's right that they do it on a schedule,

01:08:03 ◼   ► but they control scope.

01:08:05 ◼   ► Even on iOS they do it, they control scope.

01:08:06 ◼   ► So they have, it's either you can change the schedule

01:08:10 ◼   ► by saying we're gonna push this out

01:08:11 ◼   ► or you can narrow the scope

01:08:12 ◼   ► so you can ship what is shippable.

01:08:14 ◼   ► And they did it in iOS too.

01:08:15 ◼   ► They didn't ship that one feature I wanted the most,

01:08:17 ◼   ► which is the iMessage syncing.

01:08:18 ◼   ► That fell out of the release, right?

01:08:21 ◼   ► Because you're right, they are shipping on a schedule.

01:08:23 ◼   ► Look, we gotta ship this

01:08:24 ◼   ► 'cause we gotta sell some phones here

01:08:25 ◼   ► and we gotta ship iOS 11

01:08:27 ◼   ► and whatever it was like a month before,

01:08:29 ◼   ► that fell out because it's like,

01:08:31 ◼   ► this is not gonna be ready.

01:08:32 ◼   ► In High Sierra, APFS on Fusion drives

01:08:36 ◼   ► and automatically converting spinning disks all fell out of it and the fusion drives coming

01:08:39 ◼   ► back, right?

01:08:40 ◼   ► So that's what they're trying to do is say, "We do want to ship on a schedule, but we

01:08:44 ◼   ► want to ship quality software, so we have to make a call at a certain point.

01:08:48 ◼   ► You're not going to be ready in time for the schedule.

01:08:50 ◼   ► So guess what feature?

01:08:51 ◼   ► You get booted out of the OS."

01:08:52 ◼   ► And that's easy to do in theory, but in practice, pulling features out is not a harm-free process.

01:09:01 ◼   ► You are left with a code base that is different than it was before that may have new interactions

01:09:05 ◼   ► that you didn't anticipate, and so now you have to test that new combination of stuff.

01:09:10 ◼   ► And so it is difficult, and I see what Apple's trying to do, and in general, that's how modern

01:09:14 ◼   ► software development works.

01:09:16 ◼   ► Usually you want to have a reasonably fixed schedule, especially for something that's

01:09:21 ◼   ► like a marketing type thing, where every year you want to have a new version of iOS or whatever,

01:09:25 ◼   ► and you just control scope.

01:09:27 ◼   ► And it's easier said than done, and that's what Apple's trying to do.

01:09:30 ◼   ► But as you said, Marco, even though they're doing the same strategy in both OSes, they're

01:09:35 ◼   ► The big show is iOS and then everything else in the company gets slightly less of everything slightly less

01:09:41 ◼   ► time money people

01:09:44 ◼   ► Everything about it is less. How much is it less is it like partially less?

01:09:48 ◼   ► You don't you know this is it has fewer users, right? It is also a more mature product

01:09:53 ◼   ► But it is also a product that makes less money and like so

01:09:57 ◼   ► I don't know we Mac users have been feeling neglected for a while because iOS is it gets all the glory and stuff like that

01:10:02 ◼   ► but uh in

01:10:04 ◼   ► In theory, there's a lot of articles.

01:10:05 ◼   ► There was a good one, Stephen Hackett had two articles

01:10:07 ◼   ► about this, about High Sierra being like Snow Leopard, right?

01:10:11 ◼   ► But Snow Leopard was back in the days

01:10:13 ◼   ► when Mac OS X was still pretty firmly in,

01:10:18 ◼   ► maybe not, in the glory position, right?

01:10:23 ◼   ► And it was an important product.

01:10:25 ◼   ► It was a very important product to Apple.

01:10:26 ◼   ► So when they did the no new features release,

01:10:28 ◼   ► A, that was a lie, and B,

01:10:31 ◼   ► they kind of meant it a little bit more.

01:10:33 ◼   ► I mean, Grand Settle Desprache was released in Snow Leopard,

01:10:36 ◼   ► if I recall correctly.

01:10:37 ◼   ► That's a pretty big feature to say no new features.

01:10:40 ◼   ► But these days it does feel like,

01:10:46 ◼   ► like if this is supposed to be a Snow Leopard,

01:10:48 ◼   ► it doesn't feel very Snow Leopard.

01:10:49 ◼   ► It doesn't feel like they took Sierra and just polished it.

01:10:51 ◼   ► Because you said Marco, Sierra still has some rough edges

01:10:54 ◼   ► that just seem to have never been resolved.

01:10:55 ◼   ► And now you're adding more stuff

01:10:57 ◼   ► and it's not just like taking Sierra

01:10:59 ◼   ► and making it more reliable and faster.

01:11:02 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:11:02 ◼   ► Like I said, I haven't installed that.

01:11:06 ◼   ► My spidey sense is tingling.

01:11:08 ◼   ► - Wow, great.

01:11:11 ◼   ► I mean, I have, like I said,

01:11:14 ◼   ► put this on the adorable in my work computer,

01:11:17 ◼   ► and so far the only thing that I've really noticed

01:11:20 ◼   ► is that I can now use my unlock

01:11:23 ◼   ► with my cellular Apple Watch again,

01:11:24 ◼   ► like I discussed earlier.

01:11:25 ◼   ► Like otherwise, it doesn't really seem any different to me.

01:11:29 ◼   ► And in fact, it seems so similar to me

01:11:31 ◼   ► that I intend to go through Steven's review,

01:11:36 ◼   ► not only because I want to read it in general,

01:11:38 ◼   ► but to tell me what it is that's different.

01:11:40 ◼   ► Because it seems like a lot of the big differences

01:11:42 ◼   ► are Safari, which I had previously put on my Sierra builds,

01:11:46 ◼   ► and photos, which I don't use.

01:11:48 ◼   ► So once you take those away, it's kinda like,

01:11:51 ◼   ► eh, I'm sure there's other good stuff there,

01:11:54 ◼   ► but eh, whatever.

01:11:55 ◼   ► - Well, and I hope that, like I mentioned

01:11:58 ◼   ► how Sierra still has these Bluetooth issues

01:12:00 ◼   ► that don't seem to be fixed.

01:12:02 ◼   ► With High Sierra, have they fixed them,

01:12:04 ◼   ► or did they just move on

01:12:05 ◼   ► and now they're breaking other things?

01:12:06 ◼   ► I don't know, I hope they fixed them,

01:12:09 ◼   ► but you never know with these kind of releases.

01:12:11 ◼   ► That's one of the reasons why I haven't installed it yet.

01:12:12 ◼   ► But what you said, Casey,

01:12:14 ◼   ► that you could barely even really tell

01:12:16 ◼   ► that you had upgraded,

01:12:17 ◼   ► that's, for a release like this

01:12:20 ◼   ► where there really weren't user-facing changes,

01:12:23 ◼   ► that's what you want.

01:12:24 ◼   ► That is the ideal case.

01:12:26 ◼   ► Now we'll see.

01:12:27 ◼   ► Your track record of reporting problems to us

01:12:29 ◼   ► with your computer is pretty poor.

01:12:31 ◼   ► Like, you might tell us in six months,

01:12:32 ◼   ► oh yeah, by the way, it's been rebooting every day at noon,

01:12:34 ◼   ► and I don't know why.

01:12:35 ◼   ► - Wait, that's a problem?

01:12:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's just been fun, I haven't wanted to take it in.

01:12:39 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:12:41 ◼   ► But you know, I hope when I install it, I don't notice.

01:12:45 ◼   ► And that maybe my trackpad and mouse stay connected.

01:12:48 ◼   ► Like, that's what I want to have in there.

01:12:51 ◼   ► I don't want any excitement there, because,

01:12:53 ◼   ► and there's a lot about Mac OS that I hope Apple

01:12:58 ◼   ► working on and I hope they do improve long term.

01:13:00 ◼   ► Like Steven's review had this great paragraph

01:13:02 ◼   ► towards the end that basically was listing

01:13:05 ◼   ► like a whole bunch of areas in Mac OS

01:13:08 ◼   ► that are still big problems and could really

01:13:10 ◼   ► use improvements, big and small.

01:13:12 ◼   ► If you think Mac OS is done and that it's perfected

01:13:16 ◼   ► and that there's nothing more to do,

01:13:18 ◼   ► you aren't thinking about the problem enough.

01:13:20 ◼   ► Mac OS still has tons of places it can go

01:13:26 ◼   ► and could use lots of improvements, big and small.

01:13:29 ◼   ► Right now, it looks like Apple's not really

01:13:31 ◼   ► doing much of that.

01:13:32 ◼   ► I hope that's just because we're in the middle stages

01:13:36 ◼   ► of those efforts and there's nothing to show yet.

01:13:38 ◼   ► Because there's still tons of things to make Macs awesome

01:13:42 ◼   ► and to make them better and to modernize them

01:13:44 ◼   ► that appear to not be happening.

01:13:46 ◼   ► So again, I hope they really are happening

01:13:49 ◼   ► and they're just not ready yet.

01:13:50 ◼   ► And I think what we've seen from Apple in the last few years

01:13:54 ◼   ► is that it does seem like there was a period

01:13:57 ◼   ► a few years ago where they really were not working

01:13:59 ◼   ► on the Mac much at all.

01:14:01 ◼   ► But it also seems like a few years ago

01:14:03 ◼   ► they kind of had a change of heart on that front

01:14:05 ◼   ► and that they began reinvesting a lot in the Mac again.

01:14:10 ◼   ► And that resulted in things like the touch bar

01:14:13 ◼   ► and things like that.

01:14:14 ◼   ► I hope that that progress continues.

01:14:18 ◼   ► Even though I haven't personally enjoyed the touch bar,

01:14:21 ◼   ► I honestly think it was a pretty big miss

01:14:23 ◼   ► and I think the lack of any touch bar changes in High Sierra

01:14:27 ◼   ► might indicate that Apple realizes that too, I don't know.

01:14:32 ◼   ► But the fact that they're investing in the Mac

01:14:35 ◼   ► is really, really good.

01:14:36 ◼   ► I hope they continue to invest not just in

01:14:39 ◼   ► cool hardware tricks like the touch bar,

01:14:42 ◼   ► but also in fundamentally moving the software forward.

01:14:46 ◼   ► With High Sierra, they laid some new groundwork

01:14:48 ◼   ► with the Windows Server.

01:14:49 ◼   ► I hope that was a big deal for moving everything forward.

01:14:52 ◼   ► I hope it succeeds and I hope they maintain it properly

01:14:55 ◼   ► to iron out the bugs and to fix all these subsystems

01:14:58 ◼   ► that might have been broken and move the platform forward.

01:15:01 ◼   ► We haven't seen that yet, but I hope that's in progress.

01:15:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, agreed.

01:15:06 ◼   ► - Thanks to our three sponsors this week,

01:15:08 ◼   ► Squarespace, Backblaze, and Jamf Now,

01:15:11 ◼   ► and we will see you next week.

01:15:13 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:15:15 ◼   ► ♪ Now the show is over ♪

01:15:17 ◼   ► ♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪

01:15:20 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:15:26 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:15:30 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:15:36 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:15:41 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:15:46 ◼   ► C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S, so that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,

01:15:54 ◼   ► N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A, it's accidental.

01:16:05 ◼   ► They didn't mean to, accidental.

01:16:10 ◼   ► Tech, podcast, so long.

01:16:15 ◼   ► So, you know how there was a time when Marco really enjoyed adding just kind of random

01:16:21 ◼   ► things to his Twitter bio?

01:16:24 ◼   ► And you know, he would be coffee enthusiast, and then he would be analyst, and then there

01:16:28 ◼   ► were a couple other ones after that.

01:16:30 ◼   ► I don't remember that time.

01:16:31 ◼   ► When do you look at Twitter bios?

01:16:33 ◼   ► Yellow Fence in the Room, that was my favorite one.

01:16:35 ◼   ► I remember that, but it wasn't adding things.

01:16:37 ◼   ► That was one thing, right?

01:16:41 ◼   ► Changing things in the bio.

01:16:43 ◼   ► The point is that I am now changing my Twitter bio to carjournalist.

01:16:48 ◼   ► Reason being, for the last week, I have had a loaner car from Fiat Chrysler of America.

01:16:56 ◼   ► Really?

01:16:57 ◼   ► That loaner car is not what I hoped it would be, and it is not the thing that I was promised,

01:17:05 ◼   ► and I will explain.

01:17:06 ◼   ► A friend of the show, Sam Abuel-Smid, who we discussed earlier of the Wheel Bearings

01:17:11 ◼   ► podcast, which you should listen to if, and I've mentioned this a few times in the past,

01:17:14 ◼   ► but if you ever wanted neutral but by someone who doesn't, who actually knows what they're

01:17:18 ◼   ► talking about, unlike us three idiots, you would like wheel bearings.

01:17:22 ◼   ► Anyway, Sam wrote me, I want to say it was in May or June, and said, "Hey, if you wanted

01:17:30 ◼   ► to take a spin with that car," and I'm not going to tell you which car it is, "I could

01:17:35 ◼   ► probably arrange that."

01:17:38 ◼   ► And in June, I think I told this tale of woe already once, in June I was told, it was I

01:17:42 ◼   ► think the week after WWDC, "We will give you this car as a loaner."

01:17:46 ◼   ► And then right before it was my turn, then the tire exploded apparently or some such,

01:17:52 ◼   ► and then they needed to get a new tire shipped in, because apparently this was not an off-the-shelf

01:17:57 ◼   ► tire.

01:17:58 ◼   ► A month or so later, they were going to give me the same car again, and then as it was

01:18:04 ◼   ► coming down 95 from Washington DC to me, apparently picked up a chip in the windshield or like

01:18:09 ◼   ► a shatter in the windshield and so they turned around and went back to DC.

01:18:12 ◼   ► So as an apology tour, Fiat Chrysler of America has loaned me a Jeep Grand Cherokee 4x4 Limited,

01:18:22 ◼   ► if I'm not mistaken.

01:18:23 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure that's what it was.

01:18:24 ◼   ► I do have the sticker in front of me, well not in front of me, but I do have the sticker,

01:18:28 ◼   ► yes, Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited 4x4.

01:18:32 ◼   ► It has about 5,000 miles on the clock, and it is,

01:18:37 ◼   ► it's a thing, it's a thing.

01:18:39 ◼   ► - Is that your review?

01:18:40 ◼   ► - That's my whole review.

01:18:41 ◼   ► - That's what happens when you get that big Volvo SUV.

01:18:44 ◼   ► They get this big Volvo and they're like,

01:18:46 ◼   ► "He likes giant shopping carts.

01:18:47 ◼   ► "Let's send him a big G-G."

01:18:49 ◼   ► - That's what it is, that's exactly it.

01:18:52 ◼   ► - Big tippy shopping cart.

01:18:53 ◼   ► - A big tippy shopping cart.

01:18:54 ◼   ► Well, so, (sighs)

01:18:57 ◼   ► so here's the problem.

01:18:59 ◼   ► If I hadn't had the Volvo in the family,

01:19:02 ◼   ► I think I would have been fairly impressed by this car.

01:19:05 ◼   ► But having the Volvo in the family,

01:19:08 ◼   ► this car is the American version of a luxury SUV,

01:19:13 ◼   ► which is to say, it's not that luxurious

01:19:19 ◼   ► and it's kind of a piece of garbage.

01:19:20 ◼   ► - It's got big cup holders though, doesn't it?

01:19:23 ◼   ► - It does have big cup holders.

01:19:26 ◼   ► So it does have a lot of really good things going for it.

01:19:28 ◼   ► It does have a fairly robust Bluetooth setup that has some really neat features.

01:19:35 ◼   ► It does--and that's Uconnect, the letter Uconnect.

01:19:38 ◼   ► And it's been around in Chrysler cars for a while now.

01:19:41 ◼   ► It does some neat things, like it'll read you your text messages.

01:19:43 ◼   ► You can even put on a do not disturb mode on the, like, infotainment, so it will no

01:19:48 ◼   ► longer offer to read you your text messages.

01:19:50 ◼   ► The Bluetooth connectivity for media worked reasonably well.

01:19:54 ◼   ► All that is decent.

01:19:55 ◼   ► It has a backup camera.

01:19:56 ◼   ► It does not have a 360 camera. It has an auto raising and lowering liftgate. It actually has a AC plug.

01:20:03 ◼   ► So a not a DC plug like a cigarette lighter.

01:20:06 ◼   ► I'm talking a full-on like the same kind of outlet you would find in your house plug

01:20:11 ◼   ► in the back of the center console so for the rear seats, which is super cool.

01:20:16 ◼   ► I knew that they had put these in cars before but though, you know, to get a

01:20:19 ◼   ► decent one of those as an aftermarket thing, it's like a couple hundred bucks and this is just in the car.

01:20:25 ◼   ► Overall, it was a nice car.

01:20:28 ◼   ► You know, it did a lot of things reasonably well.

01:20:31 ◼   ► This particular model was the V6.

01:20:33 ◼   ► The V6 is not fast.

01:20:34 ◼   ► It does do the stop start thing.

01:20:36 ◼   ► It actually, I think, was a little bit smoother

01:20:39 ◼   ► on the stop start than Aaron's Volvo, believe it or not.

01:20:42 ◼   ► So, so far, things are looking good.

01:20:44 ◼   ► But then everything takes a turn.

01:20:47 ◼   ► - Wait, as I'm building and pricing this thing

01:20:49 ◼   ► to match what you're saying,

01:20:50 ◼   ► the next step that I have to choose is the color.

01:20:53 ◼   ► And you know I only have one question.

01:20:55 ◼   ► It is not white, you jackass.

01:20:57 ◼   ► - Yes! (laughs)

01:20:58 ◼   ► - It is.

01:20:59 ◼   ► It is a dark, dark, dark gray.

01:21:00 ◼   ► What is the official color?

01:21:01 ◼   ► Where does it say it on the sticker?

01:21:02 ◼   ► - It looks like it comes in about 16 different grays.

01:21:05 ◼   ► - The exterior color is granite crystal,

01:21:07 ◼   ► metallic clear coat exterior paint.

01:21:09 ◼   ► - What, this thing is almost the same price

01:21:13 ◼   ► as your Volvo's.

01:21:14 ◼   ► I'm, you get--

01:21:14 ◼   ► - No, the base price was 40 according to the sticker.

01:21:18 ◼   ► - Are you a four by four?

01:21:19 ◼   ► - It is a four by four.

01:21:19 ◼   ► - Limited trim, right?

01:21:21 ◼   ► - Correct.

01:21:22 ◼   ► Grand Cherokee limited four by four.

01:21:23 ◼   ► This is a 2017 model.

01:21:25 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, sorry, I'm at $39,900.

01:21:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's the base price.

01:21:28 ◼   ► Optional equipment includes the customer preferred

01:21:32 ◼   ► package 23H, which is apparently luxury group two,

01:21:36 ◼   ► which is a $4,300 option that includes a 506 watt amplifier,

01:21:40 ◼   ► an 8.4 inch touchscreen display.

01:21:42 ◼   ► Leather trim seats with perforated inserts.

01:21:46 ◼   ► Ooh, we need to talk about heated and cooled seats actually,

01:21:50 ◼   ► because that's a thing.

01:21:51 ◼   ► Lane sense lane departure warning plus

01:21:54 ◼   ► Parallel and perpendicular park assist.

01:21:57 ◼   ► Have you tried auto parking in the Tesla?

01:21:59 ◼   ► - I have.

01:22:00 ◼   ► - Does it work?

01:22:01 ◼   ► - It works mostly, but it's so slow,

01:22:04 ◼   ► I usually just do it myself.

01:22:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:22:06 ◼   ► It's, I tried it once with perpendicular parking

01:22:09 ◼   ► and it was garbage.

01:22:10 ◼   ► And actually to be fair, so was Aaron's Volvo.

01:22:12 ◼   ► (jazz music)

01:22:15 ◼   ► Finally, finally, a $595 blind spot and cross path detection

01:22:20 ◼   ► and a destination charge of $1,000.

01:22:22 ◼   ► total sticker price ladies and gentlemen $48,230 which is quite a bit less than we paid for

01:22:27 ◼   ► Aaron's Volvo. So it feels like the American take on a luxury SUV. A lot of the stuff is

01:22:33 ◼   ► nice and it does have a lot of the bits and bobs like the you know radar cruise control.

01:22:38 ◼   ► But so much of it gets wrong like this Uconnect thing and this is gonna this isn't that interesting

01:22:43 ◼   ► without a visual aid and so you just have to go on faith until I eventually write my

01:22:47 ◼   ► my blog post, but the Uconnect thing is an assault on my eyeballs. It is a billion buttons,

01:22:55 ◼   ► everything is gray, everything blends together. There are neat features about it. So as an

01:23:01 ◼   ► example when you're in the Bluetooth media screen, there's a little teeny tiny button

01:23:06 ◼   ► that says "map" and then it will do a popover of the current map. So you can look at where

01:23:10 ◼   ► you are without leaving the context of the Bluetooth screen. That's a kind of cool idea.

01:23:15 ◼   ► But it isn't pinch to zoom, or whatever the case may be, which Aaron's car is.

01:23:21 ◼   ► The resolution of the screen was not very good.

01:23:25 ◼   ► Aaron's car, I wouldn't call it retina, but it's of that kind of caliber, right?

01:23:31 ◼   ► It's a decently high-res screen.

01:23:33 ◼   ► This thing looked like it was five years old, and this is a 2017 model.

01:23:39 ◼   ► And here again, as I was starting to say at the beginning, it's so frustrating, because

01:23:45 ◼   ► without Erin's car as a comparison, as a benchmark, I actually think I would have liked this car

01:23:50 ◼   ► a lot more.

01:23:51 ◼   ► And when I met Erin, way back when, she had said her fantasy car in a lot of ways was

01:23:56 ◼   ► a Grand Cherokee.

01:23:57 ◼   ► She just always really liked them.

01:23:58 ◼   ► And you know what?

01:23:59 ◼   ► I always really liked them.

01:24:00 ◼   ► I always thought they were really nice trucks, I should say.

01:24:04 ◼   ► But as compared to the Volvo, which does all of the things this does and more and does

01:24:09 ◼   ► every single one of them better except of course going off-road, I would choose the

01:24:14 ◼   ► Volvo any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

01:24:17 ◼   ► Knob feel, it was maybe a seven or eight.

01:24:20 ◼   ► It's a nice, it feels nice but it's not—

01:24:23 ◼   ► I love this as a category for us.

01:24:24 ◼   ► It is, it really is.

01:24:26 ◼   ► But it's not, you can tell it's just, it's just not all there.

01:24:31 ◼   ► And the things that really drove me nuts about it were things where they just didn't think

01:24:37 ◼   ► it through.

01:24:39 ◼   ► So as an example, most of you listeners probably live in an area where at a stoplight, and

01:24:46 ◼   ► for Americans it's a left, for those crazies that drive on the wrong side of the road it

01:24:50 ◼   ► would be making a right.

01:24:51 ◼   ► But for Americans, if you're trying to make a left, let's say that there are two lanes

01:24:55 ◼   ► to make a left-hand turn.

01:24:56 ◼   ► So you're on presumably like a multi-lane road, and you're at a stoplight, you're going

01:25:00 ◼   ► make a left-hand turn, which is the difficult turn for an American to make.

01:25:04 ◼   ► So you stop the car, and the stop-start probably kicks in, so the car feels like it's stalled,

01:25:10 ◼   ► but it's actually fine.

01:25:12 ◼   ► You go to take off once the light turns green.

01:25:14 ◼   ► The car starts right up.

01:25:15 ◼   ► That actually works really well, and like I said, it's actually a little smoother than

01:25:18 ◼   ► Aaron's car, surprisingly, especially since it's two more cylinders.

01:25:22 ◼   ► And immediately, "Whee!

01:25:24 ◼   ► Whee!

01:25:25 ◼   ► Whee!"

01:25:26 ◼   ► happening is it thinks, perhaps because I'm an idiot and I'm the only American that ever

01:25:31 ◼   ► uses my turn signal, it thinks that you're signaling to make a lane change. And it's

01:25:37 ◼   ► trying to tell you there's somebody next to you, which on the highway at like 70 miles

01:25:42 ◼   ► an hour or what have you, that is a useful thing. But when you're on a surface street

01:25:48 ◼   ► accelerating from zero miles an hour to 15 or 20 or 30 or 40, the moment you leave zero

01:25:54 ◼   ► miles an hour and all of a sudden you hear "wwee, wwee, wwee, wwee." Oh my word, is it

01:26:00 ◼   ► frustrating. And a lot of the roads in the area in which I live are multi-lane roads

01:26:03 ◼   ► in each direction, so there are a lot of times when I'll be making a left adjacent to another

01:26:09 ◼   ► car, and all the time "wwee, wwee, wwee," it is unbelievably frustrating. So here's

01:26:14 ◼   ► an example of where it's a great idea in principle, but it's just poorly executed. The Uconnect

01:26:22 ◼   ► with like all the Bluetooth bits and bobs and all of that. Great idea in principle, not a good execution.

01:26:28 ◼   ► And furthermore, where's my damn car play? It's just infuriating. And so so much of this car,

01:26:34 ◼   ► and I know I say this about so many things, but it was death by a thousand paper cuts.

01:26:38 ◼   ► In a lot of ways I really liked it, but god it was terrible. Any thoughts about the car and then I'd

01:26:44 ◼   ► like to do a little inside baseball about what the delivery process was like?

01:26:48 ◼   ► Can you disable stop-start?

01:26:50 ◼   ► Yes, and it's actually a physical button right there on the dashboard.

01:26:54 ◼   ► I've never had a car with that, but I would so desperately, I think I would not buy one

01:26:58 ◼   ► if I couldn't turn it off and have it remember the setting.

01:27:00 ◼   ► You know, it's really not that bad in the grand scheme of things.

01:27:03 ◼   ► I know, I know, you won't even notice, blah blah blah blah blah blah, save energy, blah

01:27:07 ◼   ► blah blah, nope.

01:27:08 ◼   ► Oh no no no, you would notice, I noticed, you would absolutely notice, but you do get

01:27:14 ◼   ► used to it, and especially if you drive a car with three pedals.

01:27:18 ◼   ► I mean, I understand the theory and like I think I would I might leave it on on something big like a minivan or an SUV

01:27:24 ◼   ► Or some other thing that I that I didn't consider a real car like you know

01:27:28 ◼   ► I mean, but I just don't want that I mean the the true chops stop start is what Marco has when he's at a stoplight

01:27:35 ◼   ► Nothing is moving. Nothing is moving

01:27:38 ◼   ► It is stopped, but then when he goes again, he doesn't have to wait for the engine to start

01:27:44 ◼   ► I know there's not waiting. I know they start really fast. The starter motors are fine

01:27:47 ◼   ► They're built to be to be started. You'll you know, maybe you'll notice but you'll they'll never be any lag

01:27:52 ◼   ► It's I don't I don't want that. I don't want it at all. It still sucks

01:27:55 ◼   ► No, I mean like to me like all like start-stop

01:27:59 ◼   ► CVT's all these new autos that have like a million different gears in them to me. It's kind of like when

01:28:06 ◼   ► LCD came out for TVs and LCDs were

01:28:10 ◼   ► Okay, but they and they were fairly simple

01:28:13 ◼   ► But then towards the middle and end of the LCD era in TVs,

01:28:18 ◼   ► they started adding all these crazy hacks

01:28:22 ◼   ► to try to boost their specs.

01:28:23 ◼   ► So that's when you started getting

01:28:24 ◼   ► like the weird dynamic backlighting

01:28:26 ◼   ► and all sorts of weird hacks that really were just

01:28:30 ◼   ► like piles upon piles of hacks

01:28:32 ◼   ► that made certain things worse,

01:28:34 ◼   ► all in an effort to try to boost specs

01:28:36 ◼   ► towards the end of their life

01:28:38 ◼   ► before we switched to a superior technology of OLED.

01:28:41 ◼   ► And that to me is what gas engine cars are going through

01:28:46 ◼   ► for like the last 10 years or so.

01:28:48 ◼   ► They're trying so hard to eke out every single last mile

01:28:52 ◼   ► per gallon to meet new spec requirements

01:28:54 ◼   ► and to be more competitive and everything.

01:28:57 ◼   ► But they're just adding all these crazy hacks

01:29:00 ◼   ► that add up to being a lot less fun to drive

01:29:02 ◼   ► or a lot less nice of a drive in certain ways

01:29:04 ◼   ► and to certain people who care about such things.

01:29:07 ◼   ► And really these are just all temporary hacks

01:29:10 ◼   ► on the way to the next thing, which is electric,

01:29:13 ◼   ► but in cars, things move more slowly.

01:29:16 ◼   ► And so we're gonna be in this transition for a while,

01:29:19 ◼   ► but ultimately we're gonna look back

01:29:21 ◼   ► at all these crazy gas engine hacks

01:29:23 ◼   ► as just these awful relics of a transitional time.

01:29:26 ◼   ► - And also the sensor stuff.

01:29:29 ◼   ► This is kind of the, I think we're in the

01:29:30 ◼   ► mouse motor seatbelt era.

01:29:32 ◼   ► I don't know if mouse, I'm not getting it right,

01:29:34 ◼   ► but do you remember the seatbelts?

01:29:36 ◼   ► There was a requirement, I think it was like

01:29:39 ◼   ► a government requirement in the US,

01:29:42 ◼   ► that you either had to have airbags

01:29:44 ◼   ► or automatic motorized seat belts.

01:29:47 ◼   ► Do you remember the seat belts that go along

01:29:48 ◼   ► a little track along like the A-pillar?

01:29:50 ◼   ► - Is that what those were for?

01:29:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause it was like before,

01:29:53 ◼   ► car makers weren't ready to put airbags in yet.

01:29:56 ◼   ► So like, well, we've got this bottle of car

01:29:58 ◼   ► and we haven't figured out the whole airbag thing yet

01:30:00 ◼   ► or we don't have a supplier or we haven't certified it

01:30:02 ◼   ► or the car's almost done or whatever.

01:30:04 ◼   ► So they would put in the motorized seat belt.

01:30:05 ◼   ► So when you open the door, this little motorized thing

01:30:07 ◼   ► would go down your a-pillar with the shoulder harness attached to it and then you'd get

01:30:12 ◼   ► in the car and close the door and it would go and motor back up to like over your shoulder.

01:30:16 ◼   ► That's what my Saturn had. And though first of all those are an abomination and I never

01:30:20 ◼   ► would have bought a car with them and they're terrible. But it was like oh from now on safety

01:30:25 ◼   ► features will just be more and more invasive. But no like we figured that out. Eventually

01:30:29 ◼   ► we got the airbag thing figured out the motorized seatbelts went away. So I feel like sensors

01:30:33 ◼   ► are in the little motorized seatbelt there where it's like sensors are good. We want

01:30:37 ◼   ► for safety, governments are going to require certain things or whatever, but a lot of them

01:30:41 ◼   ► are poorly implemented, like Casey's, you know, lane detection thing that is telling them he's

01:30:46 ◼   ► going to go into a lane where somebody is there and really he's just making a left along with a

01:30:49 ◼   ► bunch of other people, right? Sensors are good. We should have more of them, we should have more

01:30:53 ◼   ► cameras, you know, all the stuff that like makes it easy to park and, you know, the backup cameras

01:30:57 ◼   ► are mandated in 2017 models and later in the US, I think, like, those are all good, but a lot of

01:31:02 ◼   ► the early implementations are not good. And so we get angry like, oh, the safety equipment sucks,

01:31:07 ◼   ► I don't want to have all these electronic sensors blooping at me. I want the sensors. I don't want them blooping at me. So I'm hoping

01:31:13 ◼   ► that these the

01:31:15 ◼   ► incredibly annoying blooping sensors

01:31:18 ◼   ► We get this figured out and it settles down into the current state of like safety equipment like airbags where you don't notice them

01:31:24 ◼   ► They're small. The steering wheels aren't gigantic because of them anymore

01:31:27 ◼   ► And we just all you know, except the the safety benefits of them

01:31:31 ◼   ► But I don't know it's been a while with the sensors and almost every reviewer still reads like mentions

01:31:36 ◼   ► "Hey, can you turn that stuff off?"

01:31:39 ◼   ► In some ways I'm almost kind of glad that I didn't get that more expensive option on

01:31:42 ◼   ► my cord for the Honda Sensing Packet and stuff, because I have the backup camera, which is

01:31:46 ◼   ► the most important thing.

01:31:47 ◼   ► But all the other Sensing stuff for lane change and whatever, I guess it would be easier than

01:31:52 ◼   ► turning my head, but I would probably still turn my head anyway.

01:31:55 ◼   ► For whatever it's worth, both the BMW and the Tesla systems for these things have not

01:32:00 ◼   ► been annoying.

01:32:01 ◼   ► They have not annoyed me at times where they shouldn't.

01:32:04 ◼   ► They've been great.

01:32:05 ◼   ► Yeah, the Volvos is very good as well.

01:32:06 ◼   ► The only problem I have with the Volvo is there's been a couple of times when it's done

01:32:10 ◼   ► a panic stop on behalf of the driver when really it wasn't necessary, which is very

01:32:15 ◼   ► startling.

01:32:16 ◼   ► But that's only been a couple of times where, by comparison with the Jeep, you know, half

01:32:22 ◼   ► the time I was driving it, a couple other thoughts actually before we do a little inside

01:32:27 ◼   ► baseball.

01:32:28 ◼   ► Remote start on a car that you can only cool once the car is started.

01:32:33 ◼   ► That is awesome.

01:32:34 ◼   ► car can be remote started, curiously enough, from the Volvo app, but cannot be remote started

01:32:39 ◼   ► from the key fob, which is kind of backwards from what I would expect. But this thing had

01:32:43 ◼   ► a remote start right on the key fob, and that was super nice. Ventilated seats, they're

01:32:47 ◼   ► cool, I guess, and I don't mean that to be punny, but it didn't make that big of a difference.

01:32:51 ◼   ► I certainly liked it, and if it was like a one or two hundred dollar option on a Phantom

01:32:55 ◼   ► car I was about to buy, I would probably tick that checkbox, but if it was like a five hundred

01:32:59 ◼   ► or thousand dollar option, no way.

01:33:02 ◼   ► - Cooled seats, heated seats are a different beast.

01:33:04 ◼   ► Heated seats are easy.

01:33:05 ◼   ► - Oh, very much, yeah, yeah.

01:33:06 ◼   ► - Cooled seats, I've had a number of different ones.

01:33:09 ◼   ► My current card is not having them,

01:33:10 ◼   ► 'cause at the time I bought it, Tesla didn't offer them.

01:33:12 ◼   ► I think it still doesn't.

01:33:14 ◼   ► The way cooled seats are implemented

01:33:16 ◼   ► makes a huge difference in how useful

01:33:18 ◼   ► or non-useful they are.

01:33:19 ◼   ► What is cooling them?

01:33:20 ◼   ► Are they just taking an offshoot of a vent

01:33:22 ◼   ► from the main system and cooling you that way?

01:33:24 ◼   ► Are they just blowing air with their own little fan?

01:33:27 ◼   ► Do they have their own compressor even?

01:33:29 ◼   ► There are different degrees of cooled seats

01:33:32 ◼   ► and it makes a big difference.

01:33:34 ◼   ► Also, one issue I had with the, the M5 had it,

01:33:37 ◼   ► but I almost never used it because the cut of the fabric

01:33:41 ◼   ► on the sport seats didn't have a lot of room

01:33:45 ◼   ► for the big areas with the holes that would ventilate.

01:33:49 ◼   ► So it would cool part of my thighs,

01:33:53 ◼   ► but not the whole area that needed to be cooled.

01:33:56 ◼   ► And there wasn't a lot of airflow.

01:33:58 ◼   ► the way you'd sit on it would just kinda like block it shut.

01:34:01 ◼   ► The best I have felt yet,

01:34:04 ◼   ► a while back Tif had a Lexus IS 250,

01:34:07 ◼   ► and that one had really nice air conditioned seats.

01:34:10 ◼   ► It was like sitting on a glorious air conditioned

01:34:13 ◼   ► air hockey table.

01:34:14 ◼   ► Like you would feel it, it cooled really strongly

01:34:18 ◼   ► to the point where eventually your legs would get cold

01:34:20 ◼   ► and you'd just turn it down.

01:34:21 ◼   ► And I never had to turn it down in the M5.

01:34:24 ◼   ► Like the M5 was always like, I was just dying for more.

01:34:27 ◼   ► But from what I understand, there are a lot of different

01:34:30 ◼   ► levels of how good these things can be.

01:34:34 ◼   ► So I'm not familiar with the one that was in your

01:34:38 ◼   ► big Jeep monstrosity, but maybe it was just not

01:34:41 ◼   ► one of the good ones.

01:34:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, very well could be.

01:34:44 ◼   ► And I think that's mostly it.

01:34:46 ◼   ► Obviously I will write some amount of review

01:34:48 ◼   ► for my website about this.

01:34:50 ◼   ► What was interesting about it was, apparently,

01:34:54 ◼   ► Fiat and all the other car manufacturers have

01:34:56 ◼   ► fleets of vehicles. And there's, you know, presumably one on the East Coast, one in the

01:34:59 ◼   ► Midwest, and one in the West Coast. And so when this was being arranged, you know, I

01:35:04 ◼   ► had come to find out that the car was in, I actually thought at the time, DC, it turns

01:35:10 ◼   ► out it was actually in Baltimore, which is about a three-hour drive from where I am.

01:35:14 ◼   ► And so when we were arranging it, I had assumed that that meant I would have to like meet

01:35:18 ◼   ► the driver halfway somehow and like pick the car up and then drive it the rest of the way.

01:35:23 ◼   ► But as it turns out, no, when you're press, oh, they come to you.

01:35:27 ◼   ► They drove the car all the way to me.

01:35:29 ◼   ► We spoke for about two minutes.