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231: I Am Not a Salad Power User

 

00:00:00   I'm never buying a car ever again.

00:00:01   - I bet that's not true.

00:00:04   That's like me saying,

00:00:04   "I'm perfectly happy with my computer setup.

00:00:06   "I'm never changing anything."

00:00:07   (laughing)

00:00:10   I mean, come on, we know each other.

00:00:12   And we know ourselves.

00:00:13   (laughing)

00:00:14   - This is entirely accurate.

00:00:17   Well done, sir.

00:00:18   (electronic beeping)

00:00:19   We're traveling and, well, two-thirds of us are traveling

00:00:24   over the next three or four weeks.

00:00:26   And as it turns out, as with all things,

00:00:30   we accidentally scheduled our vacations

00:00:32   in a not terribly convenient way.

00:00:35   - Basically in sequence.

00:00:36   - Yeah, basically we are doing vacationing

00:00:39   in serial and not parallel.

00:00:41   This is a single core, single threaded vacation operation

00:00:44   here at the Accidental Tech Podcast.

00:00:46   And so we're going to have to squeeze in like 17 weeks

00:00:49   worth of shows in the span of like three weeks.

00:00:51   Not literally of course, but that's what it feels like.

00:00:54   And because of Gary the privacy clown,

00:00:56   I'm not gonna disclose any more than that,

00:00:58   but suffice to say, yeah, we did not plan well.

00:01:01   Whoops.

00:01:02   - It's almost like Adobe wrote our schedule.

00:01:04   (laughing)

00:01:05   - How do you figure that?

00:01:07   - Well, 'cause nothing Adobe writes is parallel.

00:01:09   - Hey-o!

00:01:10   We'll be here all week, except not really,

00:01:12   'cause like I just said, we're going on vacation.

00:01:14   Anyway, how are you guys?

00:01:17   - Totally fine.

00:01:18   - Oh, yeah, yeah, how's the dog, John?

00:01:21   - Hanging in there, doing dog things.

00:01:24   How much of your house remains both intact and not covered in pee?

00:01:28   Oh, it's entirely covered in pee.

00:01:30   It's mostly intact.

00:01:31   She mostly goes for the soft items.

00:01:34   She's got a little bit of chewing on the stairs and cabinets and furniture, but really

00:01:41   mostly goes for the toilet paper and stuff like that.

00:01:44   High value targets?

00:01:46   Soft targets.

00:01:47   Just shred that toilet paper and make a giant mess in a matter of seconds.

00:01:50   You almost want to take some pictures or video, but then you do have to actually clean up

00:01:54   and not encourage the dog to do this, but it's kind of cute.

00:01:59   So that's the thing that puppies have.

00:02:00   Puppies and babies, their cuteness is their defense.

00:02:03   That's absolutely accurate.

00:02:04   All right, let's start with some follow-up.

00:02:07   And it starts with Andrew Burwell, who writes in to say, "I found this website to be particularly

00:02:12   good for best TV settings."

00:02:15   And this is artings.com/tv.

00:02:18   We'll put a link in the show notes.

00:02:20   They use calibration tools on the TV and adjust each brand and model of TV to its best settings

00:02:25   possible.

00:02:26   Given that they're all manufactured the same way, you can expect reasonable calibration

00:02:28   using this method.

00:02:29   They give you screenshots of your particular TV menus with the settings you need to use.

00:02:32   I have an ancient TV that is 1080, but it is ancient, and I have never bothered, I'm

00:02:39   sorry Todd and John, I've never bothered setting it up properly and I need to dig into this

00:02:44   website and see if they have settings for my TV, because I have never cared enough to

00:02:49   to really make it work, as we discussed last episode.

00:02:52   And this sounds pretty great that I need to check this out.

00:02:55   - Yeah, actually, so after last episode

00:02:57   and after Jon scolded me into thinking I needed

00:03:00   to calibrate my TV, the first thing I did

00:03:02   was not to download an app to try to do it.

00:03:04   The first thing I did was search the web

00:03:06   for other people's calibration settings for this TV,

00:03:09   because it's a current model TV,

00:03:11   and there's a lot of nerds out there

00:03:12   who would do this kind of stuff and publish their results.

00:03:15   This was the first thing that came up,

00:03:16   And so a few hours before the whole world started telling me

00:03:20   to go to this site, I had actually already done it

00:03:22   and had tried their settings

00:03:24   with very minor modifications.

00:03:26   All I did was make it a little bit brighter

00:03:28   and make it slightly closer to neutral white balance.

00:03:31   And it's great.

00:03:33   And so I haven't changed it since.

00:03:34   It's been wonderful.

00:03:36   - So that's better than nothing,

00:03:37   but I would still encourage people

00:03:39   to actually use the calibration app

00:03:40   because they say, "Oh yeah, all TVs, they're all the same."

00:03:43   Like, you know, there's no variance in manufacturing

00:03:46   or age or anything you have, or setting like,

00:03:48   it's just not true.

00:03:49   Like this will get you in the ballpark

00:03:51   to actually find out if your TV is calibrated correctly,

00:03:53   you have to go through a calibration of some kind.

00:03:55   And these probably get really, really close, right?

00:03:58   But even just based on like how bright your room is

00:04:01   and where the windows are,

00:04:02   and if you mostly watch TV during the day or the night,

00:04:04   whether you wanna have one sort of in the middle setting

00:04:07   or have a daytime and a nighttime setting.

00:04:09   And by the way, look at this website is way better

00:04:11   than things used to be when I calibrated.

00:04:13   When I last calibrated my TV,

00:04:14   it was still more of the wild west.

00:04:15   This is so nice with like the pictures of the menus and easy to find your TV.

00:04:20   You don't have to go through forums and download these text files with the listings of all

00:04:24   the settings and stuff like that.

00:04:25   But looking at the settings for Marcos TV on this website, it shows the TVs still suck

00:04:30   where it's like, well, if you put this setting on, these settings go from a menu to a slider

00:04:35   and you can't use this setting with that thing.

00:04:38   And again, the words don't make any sense in the menus.

00:04:41   And I don't understand why they have like these smart TVs have little computers in there,

00:04:46   right?

00:04:47   They're running entire operating systems.

00:04:48   And yet the settings are all like, well, only the setting called PC can have these settings.

00:04:52   And when you put on game mode, only these things are available.

00:04:55   And like, I mean, sometimes it makes sense where they're turning things off, but this

00:04:58   should all be downloadable, standardized, like even just not across all manufacturers,

00:05:05   obviously, but just like there shouldn't be no dumb limitations that don't like only the

00:05:09   the PC input can support a particular color space or stuff like that.

00:05:12   Nothing should have weird code words.

00:05:14   Everything should be in like normal tech terms, not branding terms.

00:05:19   It shouldn't be like warm two, warm three, size one.

00:05:23   Because it doesn't help anybody.

00:05:25   And the weird limitations of like, oh, only in the ISF expert mode can you change this

00:05:29   setting, but if you do the standard setting, these three things aren't available.

00:05:31   But in this one, like, you don't get to pick the gammas.

00:05:34   Like, just make them all the same.

00:05:36   And you only have like five different settings.

00:05:38   Like, "Oh, I've used up all my settings," and actually, sometimes you only get one setting

00:05:40   that lets you change everything, but that one setting doesn't let you enable game mode.

00:05:44   It's like, there should be an unlimited number of settings.

00:05:47   It's not like a game where you're trying to make it so they can only have two save slots

00:05:51   to make the game harder.

00:05:52   Like, how is it that we have these complete webOS operating system on there, and yet you

00:05:56   still only have, you know, five sets of settings, and they all, and they're all slightly different

00:06:00   from each other.

00:06:01   So...

00:06:02   Well, let me provide a counterpoint here.

00:06:03   Have you ever gone to a, one of these places, like, Chopped?

00:06:06   It's basically like a salad assembly thing.

00:06:09   It's like a subway for salads.

00:06:11   - I have not.

00:06:12   - I knew Casey would have.

00:06:13   I knew John would have.

00:06:15   Not surprisingly.

00:06:15   - I've never even heard of this thing.

00:06:17   - Okay, so basically, when I go to a place like this,

00:06:20   you can do the thing where you just create your own salad

00:06:25   from bare parts.

00:06:28   Or you can have one of the preset salads that's on the wall.

00:06:32   If the only option was here is an array

00:06:36   of 40 different ingredients and you tell me

00:06:39   what kind of salad you want and I make it for you,

00:06:41   if I went to that restaurant,

00:06:43   I would have no idea what to make.

00:06:45   I would make a crap salad.

00:06:46   It would just be terrible.

00:06:47   It would be bland or uncreative

00:06:49   or would have weird ratios or whatever else.

00:06:51   I always order off the presets.

00:06:54   And I might adjust things slightly within one of the presets.

00:06:57   I like some guidance because I am not a salad power user.

00:07:01   And so I don't really, like I need some starting points,

00:07:04   some presets.

00:07:05   - But that's not what I'm asking for at all though.

00:07:07   I'm not asking for there not to be presets.

00:07:09   I'm asking for there to be like,

00:07:10   say there's like a thousand things

00:07:11   you could change in the TV.

00:07:12   By all means, ship 17 presets.

00:07:14   In fact, I would like an app store for presets even,

00:07:16   like where these websites wouldn't have to exist

00:07:18   and you could just upload stuff.

00:07:19   But the whole point is, if you decide,

00:07:21   hey, I wanna make a new setting called, you know,

00:07:23   Marco's setting, there should be no limitations.

00:07:26   Like, oops, sorry, you only get five settings

00:07:28   and they're the presets.

00:07:29   And if you change one of them,

00:07:30   then you change one of the presets.

00:07:30   The only way to get it back is a factory default.

00:07:32   It should be like new thing.

00:07:33   And you could start like,

00:07:35   would you like this new setting

00:07:36   to start from one of the standard ones?

00:07:37   Sure, start from the whatever setting.

00:07:38   And then when you go in there,

00:07:40   all thousand switches should be available to you.

00:07:42   Preset to whatever they were

00:07:44   from the setting you inherited from.

00:07:45   There should be no limitations.

00:07:46   Like, oh, you have to name his input capital T and capital C.

00:07:49   And it's the only one that can show the entire,

00:07:51   you know, this is the old world.

00:07:53   Like the only one that doesn't do overscan.

00:07:55   You have to call the input PC

00:07:56   and you only get one of those, sorry.

00:07:58   and it has to be this particular input or whatever, right?

00:08:01   They should be uniform,

00:08:03   and you should be able to make as many new ones as you want,

00:08:06   and you shouldn't lose the presets.

00:08:08   And in fact, it's such an easy opportunity

00:08:10   to make presets something like downloadable,

00:08:13   syncable, shareable with friends.

00:08:14   Like they should cultivate these forums.

00:08:16   Say if someone wants to run some fancy calibration app

00:08:18   and make a branded setting and make it downloadable,

00:08:21   you should be able to go to that URL

00:08:22   and pull down the settings for whatever.

00:08:23   There should be no dumb arbitrary limitations

00:08:26   that don't make any sense.

00:08:27   That's what I'm saying.

00:08:28   Not that you shouldn't have presets.

00:08:30   - Well, but I respect the idea of what is exposed

00:08:34   most of the time to me, the user, is here's some presets,

00:08:38   and if you go into them, there are a few, not even a lot,

00:08:41   there are a few things you can tweak under each one.

00:08:44   And then only in the expert ones, buried like three levels

00:08:47   deep even within those, are all the different options

00:08:50   that you want.

00:08:51   But I actually don't want most of them,

00:08:53   because I know that most of those options,

00:08:55   I shouldn't touch those, 'cause A, I don't really care,

00:08:59   and B, anything I would adjust there,

00:09:01   I would probably be making things worse,

00:09:03   because I don't know what I'm doing.

00:09:04   - You can hide them under an advanced option,

00:09:05   just like they do in app preferences.

00:09:06   You don't expose all the preferences.

00:09:07   Like you have nitpicky settings.

00:09:09   Like they're not there, it's just that you don't see them

00:09:11   unless you really dig for them, right?

00:09:12   So you put the top, and really honestly,

00:09:14   the number of things you need to adjust on a television,

00:09:17   aside from turning off stuff,

00:09:19   which is kind of annoying

00:09:20   that you would have to dig through it, right?

00:09:21   I mean, just look at the settings we recommend.

00:09:24   It's like every single feature that television has off off off off off. No sharpness enhancement. No vibrancy. No edge, whatever

00:09:30   No motion anything just off off off everything, right? It's annoying that you have to do that. All right, but that aside

00:09:36   You really just need to change two or three settings brightness contrast

00:09:41   Different color balance things and that's it. It's not like there's a hundred things you can do for picture quality

00:09:45   Mostly you're just turning crap off

00:09:46   so yeah by all means have a have a hierarchy of settings have here are the three or four things you probably might want to

00:09:51   change and

00:09:53   Advanced picture advanced motion advanced whatever and you dig down and down if you want to make it a hierarchy of the menus

00:09:58   That's fine

00:09:58   But I don't like it when options aren't available to you or like well in this mode you get three settings

00:10:03   For this thing, but in this mode you get a slider that has you know 500 settings for it

00:10:08   Why we just decided that's what it is

00:10:10   You know we got a two other interesting pieces of feedback around this Malcolm Hall wrote in to tell us that

00:10:16   some people have been buying

00:10:18   Samsung has a product called smart signage, which is basically a TV sized monitor and that's it. So the idea is you take a

00:10:26   Monitor that's you know, 40 50 60 70 inches, but it doesn't have anything smart in it

00:10:32   Presumably it just has like HDMI or equivalent and nothing else. There's no speakers. There's no smartness

00:10:37   It's just a dumb display and if you're hooking this up like a sound bar or or a stereo system

00:10:44   I mean, I guess some of you could go crazy enough to do surround sound

00:10:47   But anyway, if you if you hook it up to some other external speaker system, then you don't have to fight all the silly

00:10:54   Smartness, which isn't exactly what you two were talking about because you two were just talking about calibrating the screen

00:10:58   but but that's kind of neat and

00:11:00   And additionally safe Khan wrote in to say that Samsung is also trying to do a frame TV

00:11:09   Which is designed to look like nothing at all or not a TV at all until you want it to be a TV

00:11:15   and then it will go from like a still picture to a regular traditional TV and

00:11:20   That probably isn't the best word picture that I've just painted, but we'll put links to both these in the show notes

00:11:26   Yeah, I saw that video but like it's so it's hard to tell from video

00:11:29   But like is it is it still like a light emitting display when it's in like the frame mode?

00:11:35   Yeah

00:11:35   That that's entirely like a marketing BS because there's no way you wouldn't know that's a TV like they always put it in lighting

00:11:42   It's like oh, it looks just like the painting

00:11:43   Because they put it in like a picture frame like oh, it's like a painting right, but you know

00:11:46   It's not especially if it's an LCD TV with terrible black levels like that. We know

00:11:50   Right sunlight shining on your wall on an actual painting of a sailboat next to like a sailboat picture on your television

00:11:58   It's I don't know who they think they're fooling with that

00:12:01   But I mean, I guess it looks nice if you have decor things

00:12:03   There's a lot of a lot of televisions that you buy look like, you know, whatever they look like technology products

00:12:09   They look like computer equipment or whatever

00:12:11   And if you don't want that look,

00:12:12   if you want it to look more like a piece of furniture

00:12:13   that some people do,

00:12:14   this is a good look for your television,

00:12:16   but don't fool yourself into thinking

00:12:17   that people are gonna believe it's a painting,

00:12:19   because they will not, because it does not look like a TV.

00:12:21   Maybe if it was color E ink, that would work,

00:12:22   but we don't have that tech.

00:12:24   - I feel like any technology that tries to hide a TV,

00:12:28   that's solving the wrong problem.

00:12:30   Like, remember when computers first came out,

00:12:33   when we were all children,

00:12:34   well, when Casey and I were children, and--

00:12:36   (laughing)

00:12:38   And a lot of times our parents would make the computer

00:12:42   live in some kind of giant cabinet

00:12:44   that would close with big wooden doors.

00:12:47   Sometimes they'd put TVs in there too,

00:12:48   but usually the computer was what was hidden

00:12:50   in this giant wooden cabinet by the wall.

00:12:54   And that was a certain generation,

00:12:56   like the default mode was to hide technology,

00:12:59   oftentimes like our parent generation.

00:13:02   And then now it's like, well no, you have to use that.

00:13:07   That's just normal to see in a house.

00:13:09   It would be weird if you saw a house

00:13:11   that didn't have a TV in it now.

00:13:13   And so I feel like trying to hide a TV,

00:13:16   you're just kind of fighting a losing battle.

00:13:18   You're gonna either have a really strange-looking picture

00:13:20   on the wall, or you're gonna have some kind of

00:13:22   crazy complex thing, like one of those

00:13:25   raising and lowering things where the TV slides up

00:13:27   out of a dresser, you know, see that?

00:13:29   That's just doomed to break and fail.

00:13:32   That's no good either.

00:13:35   have a TV that you don't mind the look of and if you don't want a TV in a room

00:13:39   don't put a TV in that room it like anything else besides just trying to own

00:13:43   it is is not gonna go well for you same deal with baldness by the way

00:13:50   People still hide TVs but lest you think that's an old thing people still totally do that and

00:13:53   the most recent this old house house I recall they had the television that they

00:13:56   were a putting over their fireplace which is way too high for TV and B

00:14:00   wanted to hide with the set of folding doors that like had a painting integrated

00:14:04   into them so when it was closed it just looked like a painting, like an actual painting or

00:14:07   whatever.

00:14:08   Eventually they just used wood panel doors because I guess someone talked them out of

00:14:10   the painting idea.

00:14:12   But yes, people still want to hide their televisions.

00:14:15   I guess people don't like it, like decor-wise it doesn't look nice to have a big black rectangle.

00:14:20   And I think even these picture frame ones, to have a big monitor turned on to a picture

00:14:24   of a sunset or something, we just don't have the tech.

00:14:27   It's just not going to look right.

00:14:28   People in the chat room are pointing me to color e-ink displays.

00:14:30   Yes, we have color e-ink, not televisions.

00:14:32   don't show motion. They did have that hybrid one. Remember that one that was like color

00:14:36   ink but also LCD for motion so it was like this weird, I don't know, obviously it didn't

00:14:41   catch on. Eventually we could have some kind of display technology that does reflective

00:14:46   sort of like in the off mode where you could put a picture on there that would look just

00:14:50   like a, you know, a picture on the wall or at least it would look like a poster at the

00:14:53   very least maybe or a very large photograph but that could also do the motion of television

00:14:58   but we don't have that yet. But people still want to have their TVs and I totally agree

00:15:01   you, Margaret, I think it's ridiculous to hide your television. Like, part of it is almost like,

00:15:06   you know, not just the decor of a big black rectangle, but also the idea that people don't

00:15:13   want to think of their lives as centering around television. Like, that's somehow a shameful thing,

00:15:19   because of all, like, the television shaming from, I think, both of our childhoods, of, like,

00:15:24   your TV rots your brain and don't watch TV, and people, you know, you don't want people to know

00:15:28   how much television you watch, but if you don't watch that much television, maybe you

00:15:32   don't have a 70-inch television.

00:15:33   I mean, it seems like the budget and wall space reflected by your television choices

00:15:39   are not in line with the image you want to project to the outside world.

00:15:41   They're like, "We don't even own a television.

00:15:43   We don't even watch television.

00:15:44   We just have the 70-inch rectangle here because we were forced to have it by the neighbors."

00:15:50   I don't know.

00:15:51   Anyway, I would never want my television to be in there.

00:15:53   And by the way, those little cabinets where you put your computers, one of the things

00:15:57   that I think helped kill those is the fact that our computers are so hot now that putting

00:16:01   them inside an enclosed cabinet would destroy everything.

00:16:04   No, they were hotter then, because back then they were CRTs.

00:16:06   Yeah, but the computers themselves were cooler. Some of them didn't even have fans over the

00:16:11   heat sinks for the CPUs back in the early days.

00:16:14   That's true.

00:16:15   Yeah, CRTs were hot too. But the entertainment center for television used to be like that

00:16:19   too. Remember the entertainment centers for your VCR and your game consoles? Those were

00:16:25   entirely enclosed too, maybe they had holes punched out in the back for the wires to go

00:16:28   through, and most things didn't get that hot, like you didn't have your Xbox 360 in there,

00:16:33   NES was not getting that hot compared to modern consoles, but those things were not a great

00:16:38   environment for electronics, and today it's mostly worse, because our DVRs, maybe not

00:16:44   our Blu-ray players, but certainly our game consoles are hotter, but the TVs, like Vargos,

00:16:48   are way cooler temperature-wise than a CRT or a Plasma or anything like that, so those

00:16:54   Those actually could go in cabinets.

00:16:56   It's just that now that they're the thickness of a piece of paper, cabinets don't make any

00:16:59   sense anymore.

00:17:00   - I always love too, like the entertainment centers that our parents would have, that

00:17:04   was mostly during the era of CRT TVs.

00:17:08   So they were giant.

00:17:10   They made the decision that this tremendous wooden monolith thing in the living room,

00:17:17   that was somehow better than just having a TV.

00:17:22   That was fooling nobody.

00:17:23   Yeah, and it was and they were huge like they were often way bigger than the television like they were big enough that you could

00:17:27   Like shelve rows and rows of VHS tapes and stuff and then the other great thing my parents have this too

00:17:32   They have one in their house right now

00:17:34   You you would buy one and they're expensive like especially the ones that filled an entire wall

00:17:38   That's a substantial piece of furniture

00:17:39   If you got a nice one

00:17:40   Not an inexpensive piece of furniture because it was literally massive right and if you got one you were deciding how big your television

00:17:48   Was going to be

00:17:50   Until you know unless you want to replace that huge expensive piece of furniture or you know unless it was built into your house

00:17:55   Right and so if you bought one before HDTV you had a 4x3 hole for television

00:18:00   And then you had to put a 16x9 TV in there

00:18:02   And so you got shrunk down and if you bought before television got really big and you could just barely fit like a 40 inch

00:18:08   HDTV in there now you can't get a good TV

00:18:11   Or you feel like you can get a big TV my parents have to buy based on which TV will fit inside their

00:18:16   slightly dated piece of furniture where they fit their television some so

00:18:20   Putting your electronics inside a box of any kind is just not a particularly future-proof idea and not good for cooling

00:18:28   It's so true. My brother-in-law has a house that was built probably in the late 90s. I think and he has

00:18:34   In his family room or living room or whatever he has like I guess he could call it a built-in

00:18:39   but basically in the wall is like sunk in and it's about the size of maybe a

00:18:44   40 or 50 inch TV these days and I'm sure left to his own devices he would have like a

00:18:48   9,000 inch monstrosity, but because it's in a built-in that's in his wall

00:18:53   There's not really a lot he can do like to make it bigger. He would have to cut into his wall

00:18:58   Also, John you are officially uninvited from ever coming to my house because I have a TV that is not calibrated is mounted above the fireplace

00:19:05   Probably I don't know two or three feet off the ceiling which is like a seven or eight foot ceiling

00:19:10   I guess eight foot ceiling I have

00:19:13   0.1 sound I have a turntable like this is pretty much

00:19:17   Your hell is my family room and I like it quite a lot

00:19:21   But you're never coming over because I don't want it. I don't want to never hear the end of this

00:19:24   It's too high. I just don't understand people have a television. Is that high we have no option

00:19:28   So so our family room I wasn't trying to make this an actual conversation

00:19:31   But hey, here we are our family room and Marco can vouch for this

00:19:34   It's very very wide and very shallow if that makes sense

00:19:38   And so because of that there's no real convenient way

00:19:43   to have a TV in the room unless you put it in the corner and like twist the

00:19:47   furniture in the room to be in the corner, but it's a very shallow room.

00:19:51   So the best place for it in terms of room and furniture flow is above the fireplace

00:19:58   and that's where it is. But I understand and I recognize that for the optimum TV viewing

00:20:04   experience that is probably not the right place for it.

00:20:06   It's okay though.

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00:21:51   (upbeat music)

00:21:55   - Speaking of calibration,

00:21:56   which we were talking about about 45 minutes ago,

00:21:58   THX has a tune-up app, THX Tune-Up.

00:22:02   that is, I guess, pretty well regarded.

00:22:04   It's for Android and iOS.

00:22:06   Unfortunately, not for the Apple TV, however.

00:22:09   People were asking for calibration apps,

00:22:12   and I suggested this to Marco.

00:22:13   I assumed, like, oh, there must be a bunch

00:22:14   of good ones for Apple TV.

00:22:15   It turns out, no.

00:22:16   The Apple TV app store is not looking too good.

00:22:20   If there's a good one for Apple TV,

00:22:21   I couldn't find it, put it that way.

00:22:23   I think I downloaded or purchased every Apple TV app

00:22:28   that has anything to do with calibration,

00:22:29   and they are all pretty terrible.

00:22:32   THX TuneUp I used years ago and it's still out there.

00:22:37   It's not an Apple TV app, which bothers me in a couple of ways because it's like, well,

00:22:42   you know, what's the point?

00:22:44   Like, why do I have to also have a phone or an iPad and then somehow a way to project

00:22:50   that to the TV, either Chromecast or an Apple TV?

00:22:53   But if you have, the one combination I know works, you have an iOS device like an iPad

00:22:58   an iPhone and you also have an Apple TV, you run the THX tune up app on your iOS device

00:23:03   in your hand and then you AirPlay it to the TV and the reason I don't like that is because

00:23:07   as far as I know AirPlay is lossy compressed over the air.

00:23:11   Is that correct Marco you might know?

00:23:13   Video is lossy compressed, audio is lossless.

00:23:16   Alright so, but we care about video in this case and so like, well, you really want to

00:23:22   run a calibration app compressed across, I mean some parts of it work like the geometry

00:23:26   stuff and making sure you can see all the pixels and stuff like that.

00:23:31   But anyway, the app itself is actually decent.

00:23:33   It does the important things of saying, "Here's the screen.

00:23:36   Here's what it's supposed to look like in words, adjusted until you can see all six

00:23:41   boxes or until you can barely make out the number seven over here."

00:23:48   They tell you what you're looking for and then it's up to you to mess with your television

00:23:52   and do it.

00:23:53   It's a great way to test your calibration things because if you download those settings

00:23:56   from that website, who knows, maybe it's dead on for your TV, run through the calibration

00:24:00   screens and it'll be like, "You should see six boxes."

00:24:02   You'll be like, "Yep, I see six boxes.

00:24:03   Go to the next one.

00:24:04   You should see the number nine, family visible, and you shouldn't see ten.

00:24:06   Yep, I see it.

00:24:07   Go to that."

00:24:08   It'll take you 30 seconds, right?

00:24:09   But if you go through it and it's off, then you get into the hole.

00:24:13   It's time to actually calibrate your TV or make a daytime and a nighttime setting or

00:24:17   whatever.

00:24:18   So I was going to bring up in "Well, actually you" and say, "Well, actually, why don't you

00:24:22   use..."

00:24:23   Or I guess, let me do this right.

00:24:24   Now actually you should use the lightning digital AV adapter, but doesn't that use Airplay

00:24:28   behind the scenes anyway?

00:24:29   Yeah, doesn't that have like the little H.264 decoder/encoder thing there and a tiny iOS

00:24:34   device or something?

00:24:35   Yeah, Panic wrote the whole blog post about it.

00:24:37   Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:24:38   So obviously iOS is not the ideal thing.

00:24:40   And this is the next bit of follow-up here from John Duffin, and a lot of people are

00:24:45   giving us tips about this.

00:24:46   I forget who it was, maybe someone on Twitter was saying, I was saying Lucasfilm DVDs and

00:24:50   Blu-rays have calibration things on them.

00:24:52   if you go to their menus like deep in the extras section.

00:24:56   Someone was telling me that most Pixar Blu-rays and DVDs have calibration apps.

00:25:01   Again some were buried in their extras menu on them.

00:25:03   John Duffin wrote in to tell us that if you have a Sony Pictures Blu-ray and you type

00:25:08   Sony on the title screen like 7669 like telephone dialing Sony I suppose, it will open the calibration

00:25:17   screen which seems pretty sneaky because who the heck knows how to do that.

00:25:19   They should actually put it in the menu.

00:25:21   These are all ways to get a better source for calibration, especially from a blu-ray

00:25:27   player because that's directly connected to your television and is not lossy compressed

00:25:32   H.264 over the air through AirPlay.

00:25:35   The quality of these calibration apps varies, but at the very least you can do geometry

00:25:39   and grayscale levels and brightness and stuff like that and do a reasonable job with it.

00:25:45   So there's really no excuse for people not to have access to a calibration thing of some

00:25:51   kind. It's not you have to buy some expensive piece of hardware or software or do anything

00:25:58   fancier. Surely everyone who's listening to this who has a fancy television that's worth

00:26:03   calibrating has a DVD or a Blu-ray or access to the iOS app store to get a, I think THX

00:26:10   is free but if not, it's the price of a cup of coffee. Just download it and give it a

00:26:15   go.

00:26:16   argument. The RTINGS ratings are pretty good and nothing can make me want to boot up the

00:26:22   PS4 and play a Blu-ray disc somehow in that monstrosity and then get to the monstrosity

00:26:27   that is Blu-ray discs themselves and then navigate that and do all this when the RTINGS

00:26:33   things were good enough.

00:26:34   You've got an Apple TV. You see it check stuff. It's fun. Calibrating your TV can be fun.

00:26:38   Or you can just not care. That is an officially ATP blessed option.

00:26:42   Casey, we just want to make sure that you're...

00:26:44   Didn't we go through this for you with the size?

00:26:45   That's all I care about in your TV,

00:26:47   is that it's not an overscan mode.

00:26:48   - Oh, it is. It still is.

00:26:50   No, it still is.

00:26:51   - Wait, what? Really?

00:26:52   - I don't want it to be.

00:26:53   I've tried everything I knew how to do to fix it.

00:26:56   I'm not proud of this.

00:26:57   I mean, I sound proud. I'm not.

00:26:59   I don't like it.

00:27:00   - Forget about the car buying.

00:27:01   Get rid of that TV.

00:27:03   - But the mount that we have in our wall,

00:27:06   I think only supports up to like 14 TVs.

00:27:08   - You're so obsessed with these, you know,

00:27:09   pristine 1080 versions of a show,

00:27:11   and then it's stretched to non-native res,

00:27:13   and you're flipping all the edges

00:27:14   when you watch it on your television.

00:27:16   - Absolutely accurate, absolutely accurate.

00:27:18   I'm not proud of this.

00:27:18   I know I sound all smug and proud.

00:27:19   I'm not.

00:27:20   It's just, I have spent what I consider to be

00:27:23   an inordinate amount of time trying to fix this,

00:27:25   which is to say like five or 10 minutes,

00:27:27   and I couldn't figure it out,

00:27:29   and I just don't care enough.

00:27:30   I just don't.

00:27:31   I want it to be fixed.

00:27:32   It's not that I don't want it to be fixed.

00:27:33   I just don't care enough.

00:27:34   So I would invite you down, Jon, to fix it,

00:27:38   but A, you would never travel that far unless under duress,

00:27:40   and B, you would hate everything you saw

00:27:44   and potentially firebomb my house.

00:27:45   - If only Marco had purchased his television

00:27:48   two years earlier, because right about now

00:27:50   he would be buying another television

00:27:51   and you can take his old one. - That's true.

00:27:52   That's very true. - But I don't think

00:27:53   he's gonna need to replace this one anytime soon.

00:27:55   Hey, maybe you can get his old plasma.

00:27:57   Did you offload that yet?

00:27:58   - No, it's sitting behind my chair

00:27:59   in my living room, you want it?

00:28:00   - I know, it probably weighs a ton, yeah.

00:28:02   - It's true. - Well, yeah, I mean,

00:28:03   yeah, Casey, if you wanna come pick it up, you can have it.

00:28:06   - Oh, well, we'll talk about that later.

00:28:08   All right, tell me about your small speaker amp, Marco.

00:28:12   - Oh yeah, a million people ask,

00:28:14   I mentioned very quickly in passing last episode

00:28:16   that my preferred setup was just this tiny little

00:28:18   Class D amp that was like the size of a few packs of cards

00:28:22   driving just two speakers without a subwoofer,

00:28:23   without surround, anything like that.

00:28:25   And a million people have asked me since then

00:28:27   which amp it is.

00:28:29   And the reason I didn't say is because

00:28:31   it is the NuForce Dia, or Dia, I don't know, D-I-A.

00:28:34   And it was discontinued like three years ago.

00:28:37   and the entire company of NuForce was bought

00:28:40   by this other company that apparently all the fans

00:28:43   of NuForce hate and they say they've ruined

00:28:45   all their products since then.

00:28:46   So I didn't feel comfortable recommending it

00:28:48   because not only can you not get it anymore,

00:28:51   but the things that you can get now

00:28:52   have pretty crappy reviews from people

00:28:54   who used to like the old stuff.

00:28:56   So there's this giant class of small class D amplifiers

00:29:01   and when I get into the details of what class A

00:29:05   and Class A, B, and all these different amplifier topologies

00:29:09   are, Class D basically allows you to make an amp very, very

00:29:13   small and low heat and low power.

00:29:15   And audio files don't like it as much as the other kinds,

00:29:18   but for the purposes of like, you know, speakers on a TV,

00:29:20   it's totally fine.

00:29:21   And so Class D amps are great.

00:29:24   There's lots of them.

00:29:25   If you search Amazon for a Class D amp,

00:29:27   there's a ton that are roughly between $1 and $400

00:29:33   that are approximately 25 to 50 watts per channel,

00:29:38   and many of them support remote controls.

00:29:40   And so for my little NuForce one,

00:29:41   it has this little generic remote,

00:29:43   and I was very easily able to have the Apple TV

00:29:46   learn that up and down volume control, and that's it.

00:29:49   So that's what I'm using now.

00:29:50   If I had to buy new today,

00:29:52   I would probably want a little bit more power

00:29:55   for driving floor standers,

00:29:57   but if you're just driving bookshelves,

00:29:59   then those little 20-watt ones are fine.

00:30:01   On Amazon, again, there's a lot,

00:30:03   So just look for class D amps with remotes,

00:30:05   and there's a lot out there.

00:30:07   - All right, now I didn't get a chance to read this,

00:30:09   but Jonathan Dietz Jr. writes in about Type-C personality.

00:30:13   So can one of you take me through this, if you don't mind?

00:30:15   - Is it like a regular personality

00:30:16   that you can insert in either direction?

00:30:18   - It's a pun, it's a post, it's a title pun.

00:30:21   So he's been emailing back and forth with me

00:30:24   about USB Type-C stuff since the show that we talked about,

00:30:27   and he had, remember we had the big long email that we read?

00:30:29   He wrote an even longer email after,

00:30:31   and I'm like, you should make this a blog post,

00:30:32   because there's no way we can even summarize a feedback email that's complicated.

00:30:38   And you should just really make it a blog post.

00:30:39   Like, don't just email your insights and ideas to a single or a couple of people.

00:30:47   Put it up on the web for everybody to see, because then we can just link to it in the

00:30:50   show notes, which we will do, and then anyone who's interested can read it.

00:30:53   So if you want to hear even more about the nitty-gritty details of USB Type-C and all

00:31:00   different alternate modes and what you would take to get hubs of different kinds of stuff.

00:31:04   Take a look at this very long detailed post. I think the most salient point and a couple

00:31:09   other people have brought this up as well is the idea that it's still early enough in the USB 3.1

00:31:15   spec and the type-c spec and all that other stuff that there aren't a lot of chipsets that support

00:31:22   all the different protocols and are certified by all the standards bodies and so on and so forth,

00:31:26   and that most companies that make hubs just buy like chips from somebody else or like a reference

00:31:32   design from somebody else that has already done all the work to make sure, you know, the thing

00:31:38   actually works and is certified according to all the standards bodies or whatever, and they just

00:31:42   package it in a box and slap on a crappy power supply that's going to break in six months or

00:31:46   whatever. But that's what they do. They don't make the chips. They want the chips to already be made.

00:31:51   And a bunch of companies are going to be making these types of chips for the new USB specs,

00:31:58   and they're just coming online now. So it could be that you wait another year,

00:32:00   there could be many more options for USB Type-C hubs to do fan-out on them and more complicated

00:32:08   Thunderbolt hubs and stuff like that. So we'll see. It could also end up being like FireWire,

00:32:13   where you end up even many, many years into it, then only a few companies make a set of chips and

00:32:17   and everything still costs a million dollars.

00:32:20   And so we'll see.

00:32:20   But anyway, I recommend the post.

00:32:23   He took the time to write a blog post.

00:32:26   And so now the entire world can share in his knowledge.

00:32:30   Excellent.

00:32:31   Brian Rossi writes in to say, are the rumored OLED iPhones

00:32:35   going to have issues with image retention?

00:32:36   If so, what measures should we take to prevent it?

00:32:40   The question is, are they going to have more issues with image

00:32:43   retention than LCDs?

00:32:46   Do you know that your current iOS device, if it has image retention?

00:32:49   Because I can tell you that many iOS devices over many, many years have had

00:32:52   image retention issues.

00:32:53   In fact, maybe yours does now.

00:32:55   And me telling you this is going to make you look at it and realize, Oh God, I

00:32:58   have image retention on my iPad.

00:32:59   You probably do.

00:33:00   Um, people don't like to think about it.

00:33:02   Uh, but it is there.

00:33:04   If you look for it, it can get really bad on some devices after some time and

00:33:09   other devices hardly show it at all.

00:33:11   I suppose if you wanted like ignorance is bliss, so you probably shouldn't do this

00:33:14   kind of like in the old days when you'd look for dead pixels. But Marco has a handy web

00:33:19   page that will put a checkerboard pattern on your screen, and you'll leave it there

00:33:24   for a while. And then you go anywhere else, and if you can still see the checkerboard,

00:33:30   guess what? You've got image retention to some degree.

00:33:32   No, you don't have to anywhere else. It'll switch over to gray for you.

00:33:35   That's right. You click and it switches to gray after you stare at it for a little bit.

00:33:38   But the whole point is to convince yourself that Marco's not just trolling you. You just

00:33:41   launch another app or go to springboard or whatever and you'll still see it there.

00:33:46   I've never owned an OLED, the only OLED I have is my Apple watch right like that's the

00:33:50   only thing I have that's an OLED.

00:33:52   I have heard that OLED have image retention issues and I've heard it talked about because

00:33:57   it's like the successor to plasma like you know because LCD was never really the successor

00:34:00   to plasma because the image quality was worse and now here's OLED with image quality that's

00:34:03   actually better and the old slam against plasma in addition to all the heat and expense and

00:34:09   power use and everything was that it had image retention.

00:34:12   And of course LCD has image retention as well, but the whole idea is, "Oh yeah, but plasma

00:34:16   has bad image retention."

00:34:17   So OLED I've heard talked about as if it's almost as bad as plasma, and so thinking that

00:34:23   it's worse than LCD in terms of image retention.

00:34:25   But having it never own one, I have no idea.

00:34:27   I guess Marco will tell us if the menus are burned into his OLED TV.

00:34:32   So I would suspect that yes, OLED iPhones are going to have image retention issues the

00:34:36   same exact way as the LCD iPhones at the very least. If OLED had less image retention issues

00:34:42   than LCD, it seems like something that you'd be hearing about instead, but I hear the opposite

00:34:48   that OLED watch out image retention. So no matter how well whoever manufactures these

00:34:53   screens does, surely it will have the same image retention on average as all the other

00:34:59   iPhones. Now I don't know from year to year, device to device, manufacturer to manufacturer,

00:35:05   the image retention has varied on iOS devices, I try not to look for it.

00:35:10   I see it occasionally still, mostly on my iPad.

00:35:12   I don't know if that's because I use my iPad more or because the screen is bigger and it's

00:35:17   easier to pick up on these things.

00:35:19   But I think most people don't know that LCDs have image retention on their iOS devices

00:35:24   and so therefore probably won't notice it on their OLEDs.

00:35:27   Oh, and what measure should we take to prevent it?

00:35:31   Don't use your device, you won't notice any image retention.

00:35:33   Wow.

00:35:34   I mean like what can you do like it's not you know

00:35:37   What can you do to prevent like if you put an image on your screen and you leave it there for a real long time?

00:35:41   But like that's often what we do with our phones is leave an image there for a long time whether you're

00:35:46   Reading a big page in an e-book and it takes you a certain amount of time to read a page or you're looking at a video

00:35:52   And like my children you refuse to put the video in full screen the surrounding frame of the YouTube

00:35:57   That's not video is static the whole time you're watching a 20-minute video

00:36:02   Know like with my television I could tell you as a longtime plasma TV owner

00:36:07   I don't play video games with a static HUD if I can help it on my big television

00:36:11   I don't leave the television pause like I don't hit the pause button on a TV or whatever and then leave the room for five

00:36:17   minutes

00:36:17   If I'm going to leave like Apple TV has a screensaver that will turn on which is actually a useful thing for me because it's actually

00:36:23   saving my screen

00:36:25   But if I'm gonna leave the room for more than you know

00:36:28   Two minutes I turn off the television. You know, I have to turn everything else off

00:36:32   Just turn the power off on the television then turn it back on when you come in

00:36:34   But that doesn't apply to iOS devices because it's not like you're leaving it paused

00:36:39   You're leaving the room and the screen will turn off in a minute anyway to save your battery

00:36:43   So I don't think there's anything anybody can do about it

00:36:45   We just have to cross our fingers and hope that the first batch of these things don't end up having a weird

00:36:50   discoloration or image retention issues and hope that you get the one from the good screen manufacturer if there is such a thing this

00:36:56   Time around and I'll just deal with it

00:36:58   Okay, and finally, tell me about Apple's silence on net neutrality.

00:37:05   The post on OSnews.com asking where is Apple on this whole net neutrality thing.

00:37:11   We talked about it, I think, last show.

00:37:14   And unlike lots of other issues, Apple is not a particularly loud cheerleader in favor

00:37:20   of net neutrality, to the point where the question was, "So where does Apple stand on

00:37:25   this?"

00:37:26   heard them say anything of substance about net neutrality at all. Again, unlike

00:37:32   many other issues. Then this post goes on to speculate why that might be. That

00:37:37   Apple, as it incumbent with the potential, you know, lots of money and lots of

00:37:43   digital goods that they want to send over the wires, that the lack of neutrality

00:37:45   would favor them because they do have the money to pay anybody and they can

00:37:48   get an edge on their competitors and blah blah blah, all sorts of sort of conspiracy

00:37:50   theories or whatever. But as the biggest tech company in the world, I feel like

00:37:55   they should be much more vocal than they are. I shouldn't be here thinking, "Where

00:38:00   does Apple stand in neutrality?" I should already know because they should already have

00:38:04   blacked out their web pages and done all the other things or whatever. Now, who knows?

00:38:08   Maybe they did that and I'm just missing it. I don't know. Do you guys recall anything

00:38:14   from Apple about neutrality ever?

00:38:15   No.

00:38:16   No.

00:38:17   Yeah. I don't know. That's disappointing.

00:38:19   Well, I mean, I don't fault them for not making their pages black and stuff on certain

00:38:24   days. Because Apple does not respond well to social pressure to make them change their

00:38:29   stuff for the sake of someone else's terms. Apple's not going to play a ball with that.

00:38:35   But it's not someone else doing it. They changed the whole page when George Harrison died.

00:38:40   It should be intrinsic, not extrinsic. It should be them deciding that net neutrality

00:38:44   is important, therefore they are going to do this. Not that they feel peer pressure

00:38:49   to put George Harrison on. No, it's just something they decided to do as a company. And I hope

00:38:52   that that still is within the company, that these important causes and important days

00:38:57   make the token effort, express the values of your company.

00:39:01   And Tim Cook's Apple has been doing that again.

00:39:03   We've talked about this more than Steve Jobs's Apple, like expressing the values of the company

00:39:08   externally in a more bold way that seems to be more about Tim Cook's values.

00:39:13   Maybe Tim Cook doesn't value net neutrality.

00:39:14   I don't know.

00:39:15   If you've never heard him talk about it, it's hard to say.

00:39:17   There's a quote from him in this article that just is a bunch of nothings.

00:39:20   It doesn't tell you anything.

00:39:21   We are sponsored this week by Aftershokz Bone Conduction Headphones.

00:39:26   Go to ATP.aftershokz.com to learn more.

00:39:30   Aftershokz headphones work by bone conduction.

00:39:33   So small transducers rest in front of your ears, not inside or around your ears like

00:39:37   most headphones.

00:39:38   And they send mini vibrations through your cheekbones directly to your inner ear bypassing

00:39:44   your ears and eardrums completely.

00:39:45   So unlike every other kind of headphone, bone conduction leaves your ears completely open

00:39:50   with nothing in them.

00:39:52   So this brings some major benefits in practice.

00:39:54   So first of all, a lot of people, like me,

00:39:56   can't wear earbuds or in-ear monitors

00:39:58   because they actually hurt.

00:39:59   They physically hurt our ears over time.

00:40:02   Aftershocks headphones don't have this problem

00:40:04   because nothing is in your ear.

00:40:06   They're also awesome for exercise and hot weather.

00:40:08   They stay in place very easily with movement,

00:40:11   unlike earbuds for me.

00:40:12   And because they don't cover your ear up,

00:40:14   I actually find them far less sweaty than regular headphones.

00:40:18   And if I do sweat or if it starts raining,

00:40:20   I don't need to care because they are IP55 certified

00:40:23   for water resistance.

00:40:24   And the biggest difference for me with Aftershocks

00:40:26   is that, and this is the big factor

00:40:27   that should determine whether they are right for you at all,

00:40:30   is that because nothing is blocking your ears,

00:40:32   you hear all of the sound of the world around you.

00:40:36   So they're not great in very loud surroundings,

00:40:38   but they are awesome if you wanna listen to a podcast

00:40:40   or take a phone call while you're doing something

00:40:42   like walking or running or cycling

00:40:45   where you really need to hear the world around you

00:40:47   for your own safety or convenience.

00:40:49   And they also work great if you need to listen

00:40:51   for something outside, at home, or at work,

00:40:53   while you wanna listen to a podcast,

00:40:55   maybe while you're taking a phone call.

00:40:57   Maybe your kids are asleep upstairs

00:40:58   and you wanna hear if they need anything.

00:41:00   Or maybe you're expecting a package

00:41:01   and you don't wanna miss a knock on the door.

00:41:03   Bone conduction headphones are incredibly useful tools

00:41:06   for, I would say, listening to podcasts

00:41:09   and taking phone calls when you don't want

00:41:11   to block out the world around you.

00:41:13   So check out the flagship model in the AfterSocks lineup.

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00:41:18   and I find myself using it more

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00:41:23   And they are so good at minimizing sweatiness

00:41:25   and letting me hear what's going on in the world around me.

00:41:28   Battery life is quoted at six hours of playback,

00:41:30   10 days of standby, that sounds right to me

00:41:32   and with my experience, I charge them every few days

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00:41:50   That's ATP.aftershocks.com.

00:41:52   Thanks to Aftershocks for sponsoring our show.

00:41:55   (upbeat music)

00:41:58   - So we are recording on Monday the 17th, which is unusual.

00:42:02   We usually record on Wednesdays,

00:42:04   and we'll be recording again, I think, on Thursday.

00:42:07   Yes, on Thursday the 20th.

00:42:08   And this is because of some vacation stuff.

00:42:11   And since we have all these vacations

00:42:13   that are kind of inconvenient for the purposes

00:42:16   recording this show, we thought we would do our possibly annual, don't really call it

00:42:23   a tradition but it's sort of becoming a tradition, Ask ATP and do a Q&A with listeners.

00:42:28   So rather than asking us, or asking you guys rather, to inundate us with email, we are

00:42:34   taking a page out of the Mike Hurley playbook and instead we would like you to use Twitter,

00:42:39   at all possible if you please and tweet with the #askATP, A-S-K-A-T-P, and if you tweet

00:42:49   into the ether with #askATP, then it will be added to a nice little document and we

00:42:55   will go through it and hopefully read and answer your question sometime.

00:42:59   Is it next episode that we're doing this?

00:43:01   Is that right?

00:43:02   So we had planned it for next episode.

00:43:04   However, I would like to say, with all, with the greatest apologies to the Upgrade Podcast

00:43:08   before totally ripping them off.

00:43:10   I would like to make this a regular segment.

00:43:12   I think we should have Ask ATP in every show.

00:43:15   People ask us questions all the time.

00:43:17   - Yeah, but isn't the joy not having to answer them?

00:43:19   I love when people ask us questions,

00:43:21   and I go, okay, archive that email.

00:43:23   Okay, I mean, not to be mean or anything,

00:43:25   but you're right, people do ask us questions all the time,

00:43:28   but you don't understand how often people ask us questions.

00:43:30   It would be a full-time job for multiple people

00:43:32   to try to answer all the questions that are asked of us.

00:43:34   It's just not possible.

00:43:35   - Well, we don't have to answer all of them, but--

00:43:37   - Right, right, right.

00:43:38   So don't think this is gonna suddenly make it

00:43:40   so that we're gonna answer all your questions.

00:43:41   But all that I mean will answer like,

00:43:43   will answer .001% instead of .000%.

00:43:47   - Right, yeah, like every week we could answer

00:43:50   one or two questions,

00:43:51   like depending on how long the answers are.

00:43:53   'Cause I feel like that would help prevent us

00:43:55   from getting too much in our own selves

00:44:00   about our topic selection,

00:44:02   and would prevent us from getting too far

00:44:05   into just endless cycles of follow-up every episode.

00:44:08   Like, just have a segment that is just,

00:44:10   that is guaranteed to be something fresh,

00:44:12   even in a very slow news period like the summertime.

00:44:16   - By the way, we're not going to answer these shows

00:44:18   on the next episode.

00:44:19   We're actually gonna answer these questions on August 4th,

00:44:24   the recording on August 4th.

00:44:26   - Can we answer one next episode?

00:44:28   Maybe two? - Nope.

00:44:29   - I don't know.

00:44:29   - I'm just kidding, I don't care.

00:44:30   - If you want to, sure.

00:44:31   (laughing)

00:44:32   But anyway, the whole point is you've got,

00:44:34   It's like three weeks to send questions, so go nuts.

00:44:38   - Yeah, and I mean, the truth of the matter is

00:44:41   whether Marco or John wins this civil war

00:44:45   as to whether or not this becomes a regular thing--

00:44:47   - No, I'm totally for it being a regular segment.

00:44:50   I'm just saying like, don't expect,

00:44:52   I'm saying to the listeners,

00:44:53   don't have unrealistic expectations

00:44:54   that your questions are gonna get answered

00:44:56   'cause we get so many questions

00:44:57   that it's just not possible to answer them all,

00:44:58   or even any reasonable portion of it.

00:45:01   - That is true, but either way,

00:45:04   We will have a Google document, a Google sheet, I guess I should say, that will track all

00:45:08   of these for us.

00:45:10   So please go to Twitter, if at all possible, and use the hashtag #AskATP.

00:45:16   If you don't have access to Twitter, then now's a good time to sign up.

00:45:19   Follow Casey List, C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S, and also tweet #AskATP.

00:45:24   But really, if you can't and won't suffer through Twitter, yes, you can email us, but

00:45:28   now you are dodging the official list, and it is extraordinarily unlikely, unless your

00:45:33   question is perfect in every way that we will answer your questions. The pressure's on.

00:45:38   That's cold, man.

00:45:39   I just, I don't want to get a bazillion emails. Please, no.

00:45:42   Well, and the great thing about, about your subject to Twitter is that it, it forces you

00:45:45   to be brief, you know, because we don't like, we already have a segment of the show where

00:45:49   we read multi-paragraph emails to you. We don't need to add more of that. So instead,

00:45:54   the, the, an ideal question should probably be about one sentence and Twitter is great

00:45:59   for that. So we look forward to your questions with all apologies to the upgrade podcast

00:46:04   for ripping off the segment from them.

00:46:06   You can use more than one tweet though because I feel like there are sometimes two or three

00:46:11   tweets.

00:46:12   No, we're going to get tweet storms now.

00:46:13   Stop, stop.

00:46:14   I mean, it doesn't need a tweet storm, but 140 is—that's the challenge. You're taking

00:46:17   away with the hashtag already. Sometimes you just need—last time we did Q&A, I thought

00:46:21   we had some really good questions that were like two sentences long that wouldn't fit

00:46:24   in a tweet, and I don't want to exclude those.

00:46:26   John, that's the challenge. That's the price you pay to getting your stuff mentioned on

00:46:31   air. So that's the challenge, listeners. 140 characters minus 7. So what is that, 133 characters?

00:46:38   You have to put a space before the hashtag or I won't read it.

00:46:41   That's true. 132 characters. Make it happen.

00:46:44   Formatting counts.

00:46:45   And make sure you get your casing right. Because let me tell you, you don't want John Siracusa

00:46:48   on your case about casing, especially if you're Casey. Anyway.

00:46:51   You use like the letter U instead of Y-O-U? Forget it. It's not right.

00:46:55   Okay, let's talk briefly about 1Password, because there seems to be a bit of a kerfuffle that's

00:47:02   happened over the last week or two, and I don't get it, and it kind of makes me angry.

00:47:06   So my understanding, having not read deeply into this, is that 1Password's Windows version,

00:47:16   the latest Windows version, no longer supports writing to local vaults.

00:47:22   And I should probably take a half step back, actually.

00:47:24   So 1Password is a password manager.

00:47:25   It's the one that I use.

00:47:26   It's probably the one that my two co-hosts use.

00:47:29   I don't want to say that for certainty.

00:47:31   Oh yeah, Jon, you're using Keychain like an animal,

00:47:33   aren't you?

00:47:34   - I declined to comment.

00:47:36   - Off-sect, or whatever. - Really?

00:47:38   - Whichever sec it is.

00:47:39   - Oh no. - Oh God.

00:47:40   Gary, the privacy clown is so proud of you right now.

00:47:42   - That's right, yeah.

00:47:43   - Anyway, all right, well, some of us on this show

00:47:46   who will remain nameless,

00:47:48   definitely not Schmarco or Schmasy,

00:47:51   definitely use 1Password.

00:47:52   And one of the things that 1Password has started offering,

00:47:56   which I think we've talked about in the past,

00:47:58   is family plans and business plans.

00:48:01   And so the idea here is that the way 1Password works

00:48:04   is that they call kind of a group of passwords

00:48:09   and other things as well, a vault.

00:48:11   That's, you could think of that kind of like a database.

00:48:13   And you can pay them money on a recurring basis

00:48:17   as a employer or as just a family member.

00:48:21   And you can have one or more of these vaults or databases

00:48:25   stored on one password servers.

00:48:27   And then you can have users that are added to your account.

00:48:30   And then you can share passwords.

00:48:31   So as an example, Shmacy and Shmaren might have a one

00:48:35   password for family account where, hypothetically, they/we

00:48:40   would have individual vaults for our own individual

00:48:43   passwords that we don't wish to share, and one family vault

00:48:45   for passwords that we do wish to share.

00:48:47   And in my opinion, it has worked extremely well.

00:48:51   I think the 1Password apps on all the platforms are very well designed.

00:48:54   I think they're super great.

00:48:56   The AgileBits folks seem to be really good.

00:48:58   I think they deserve recurring revenue from me, and that's why I am a paying subscriber

00:49:03   to 1Password for Families.

00:49:05   My employer pays for 1Password for Teams, basically on my recommendation.

00:49:09   I really like it.

00:49:11   I really think it's great.

00:49:12   And among other things, and I don't know the specifics about the mechanism here, but one

00:49:17   One of the things they've said is that in broad strokes they use a very similar encryption

00:49:21   scheme as iCloud does.

00:49:24   So even if 1Password as a company, or AgileBits as a company, wanted to get into your passwords

00:49:29   that are stored on their servers, there is nothing they can do to do that without your,

00:49:34   guess what, 1Password.

00:49:36   So they've come out with a new version for Windows.

00:49:38   They have stated publicly that this version will not let you write to vaults or databases

00:49:44   that are stored locally.

00:49:47   And you have to understand that 1Password kind of came up by being able to store its password

00:49:52   database, its vault, in Dropbox.

00:49:53   So you could have your password synced everywhere, even without their services.

00:49:57   So a bunch of angry nerds, some of whom are cheap and some of whom are not, are getting

00:50:02   very angry about the fact that you can't have local vaults on 1Password for Windows, and

00:50:07   thus it's clear, without a shadow of a doubt, that tomorrow or soon thereafter you won't

00:50:12   be able to save to local vaults on any of the other platforms.

00:50:16   Now my read on this is that yes, there will probably come a time that you will not be

00:50:22   able to use local Valtom on password, because if you're AgileBits, you probably want recurring

00:50:25   revenue to continue to make really world-class apps, and thus you're probably going to want

00:50:30   to compel your users to pay you on a regular basis.

00:50:33   And you know what?

00:50:34   I'm cool with that, because they do really great work, they take it very seriously, and

00:50:40   they deserve a little bit of my money every year as far as I'm concerned.

00:50:43   But oh man, the nerds are very upset.

00:50:46   So let me start with Marco as a hypothetical

00:50:51   one password user, Gary the privacy clown,

00:50:54   I would never disclose whether or not Marco is publicly.

00:50:57   Marco, what do you think?

00:50:58   - You know, a similar issue came up when TextExpander

00:51:01   went subscription, I believe about a year ago.

00:51:03   - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:51:04   - And it was met with similar anger,

00:51:06   and we talked about it on the show too.

00:51:08   But I think it's increasingly clear that

00:51:11   are very few models for software to sustain itself economically because the reality is,

00:51:17   we've talked about this before so I'll be brief, software requires ongoing maintenance.

00:51:24   People have this idea that I'm just going to buy this app and I'll pay you upfront and

00:51:28   I don't want to pay a subscription, I want to just pay you once and then I own it. And

00:51:32   that's a wonderful idea and for a long time in computing that was somewhat reasonable.

00:51:37   But today, those same people who only want to pay once upfront and then quote "own it"

00:51:42   also expect the manufacturer of said software to constantly issue updates whenever the environment

00:51:49   changes.

00:51:50   So, a new OS version comes out, they expect a free upgrade.

00:51:54   A new, you know, new features come out, you know, they expect that on a regular basis.

00:51:58   Any kind of service-based component that has to change with the times, they expect all

00:52:02   that to be built in.

00:52:03   Ongoing bug fixes, of course.

00:52:05   people expect ongoing work for an upfront one-time price

00:52:10   indefinitely, and that's just not sustainable.

00:52:14   It's simple as that.

00:52:15   No matter what people say, they might say,

00:52:18   I just wanna buy it known at once.

00:52:19   A lot of people do say that, but what they want,

00:52:22   what they demand is ongoing maintenance of that product.

00:52:27   So the only way to make this work, really,

00:52:30   is either to just have so many paid installs and upgrades

00:52:35   that you can just last on that for a while

00:52:37   and just accept that you're gonna make 40 bucks

00:52:40   from some customers up front

00:52:42   and then they won't bother you again

00:52:43   and some customers will be using your product

00:52:45   for eight years and never give you another dime

00:52:47   and expect constant free updates

00:52:48   and you'll just have to kind of average it out

00:52:49   and hope the average works out.

00:52:51   And that works more often than not

00:52:54   in the growth phase of a product.

00:52:56   So in the beginning, for a new app

00:52:59   or just a very successful app,

00:53:02   that can work for a long time.

00:53:04   Like when I had Instapaper, that worked for a long time

00:53:06   because it was just growing like crazy

00:53:08   as the iOS platform was growing like crazy.

00:53:10   So the pay once and get free updates forever model

00:53:13   worked for a long time.

00:53:15   And 1Password probably has a similar curve here

00:53:17   where for a while 1Password has been growing, I think,

00:53:21   because I just keep seeing it everywhere.

00:53:23   So I assume it's been doing really well for a few years.

00:53:26   But these markets are saturating.

00:53:29   Mac sales are flat.

00:53:31   iOS sales are leveling off pretty significantly

00:53:34   over the last few years, these markets are saturating.

00:53:38   And so everyone who was depending on that constant growth

00:53:43   of the platform to just drive new licenses

00:53:45   for a pay once business model,

00:53:47   I think a lot of those companies are gonna now face

00:53:49   this problem of, hey, you know what,

00:53:51   we're seeing this curve flatten out now.

00:53:53   Our income might be dropping or leveling off,

00:53:57   and we are still having to support this software

00:53:59   with a staff and with costs and with ongoing maintenance.

00:54:04   there has to be some way to fund that.

00:54:06   And if you're not being able to fund it

00:54:07   through the new users coming in

00:54:10   that you didn't have before,

00:54:11   giving you these 30, 40 bucks at a time

00:54:13   for the one-time license,

00:54:15   then subscriptions really are the best way to do it.

00:54:19   Now, there is an alternative.

00:54:20   You can do paid upgrades,

00:54:22   which 1Password has done for a while.

00:54:25   And most of these companies that,

00:54:26   like on iOS it's less common,

00:54:28   but on the Mac, that's how things have worked for a while.

00:54:31   But paid upgrades have their own problems too.

00:54:34   For instance, you have this weird feature batching incentive

00:54:37   where you as the software developer are incentivized

00:54:40   not to really improve the existing version of the app

00:54:43   in meaningful ways if you can save those up

00:54:46   for the next paid upgrade.

00:54:48   Then you have to batch up your releases

00:54:51   and possibly not put out anything for two years

00:54:53   then all of a sudden you have this boom, big drop

00:54:55   where you drop a whole bunch of features.

00:54:57   Then you have other problems like feature bloat.

00:54:59   Then you look at what happened with Microsoft and Adobe apps

00:55:02   over the last 20 years.

00:55:04   Lots of companies have gone through this.

00:55:07   And what you end up coming, oh, and also,

00:55:09   users who hate subscriptions,

00:55:10   who say they never wanna pay that,

00:55:12   users have similar problems with upgrade pricing,

00:55:15   'cause there's problems with that too.

00:55:16   Neither of these things is perfect for what users expect.

00:55:21   Like upgrade pricing has the problem of,

00:55:23   what if you buy it, and then the next version comes out

00:55:26   six months later?

00:55:27   should you get more of a discount

00:55:29   than someone who bought it five years ago?

00:55:32   'Cause you just bought it.

00:55:34   You might be really mad if the upgrade comes out

00:55:36   soon after you bought it.

00:55:37   You might expect that your ancient version

00:55:40   running on OS X Tiger should still work today

00:55:43   on the newest version of OS X,

00:55:45   but they might say, sorry, you have to pay an upgrade

00:55:48   for the new one, sorry.

00:55:50   There's problems with that too.

00:55:53   What it really boils down to is

00:55:56   When you make people pay, they'll grumble about it.

00:55:59   No matter how you make people pay,

00:56:00   they're going to grumble about it.

00:56:02   And the one thing they'll grumble about the most

00:56:04   and get really mad about is when you change

00:56:06   the way you make them pay.

00:56:08   But once you can get past that problem of,

00:56:12   hey, people are all mad right now during this transition,

00:56:16   once you get past that and you're on the other side

00:56:18   of the transition, if you are moving to subscriptions,

00:56:21   yeah, people will be mad.

00:56:23   And some people will never buy it again.

00:56:26   They'll be so mad, they'll hold that grudge forever.

00:56:28   I mean, look, Adobe has this problem, right,

00:56:30   with Creative Cloud stuff.

00:56:33   But Adobe's doing great right now,

00:56:35   because they made this transition,

00:56:36   they're doing fantastically.

00:56:37   They are better off on the other side of it,

00:56:40   even though some people are still mad

00:56:42   and will be mad forever about subscriptions,

00:56:44   some people will never use it as a result,

00:56:47   but the people who are left,

00:56:50   they're making Adobe more money,

00:56:52   and Adobe is in a healthier place now.

00:56:54   Same thing with Microsoft, I think,

00:56:55   with Office and that kind of stuff.

00:56:58   And so, honestly, I haven't been paying attention

00:57:01   to this entire kerfuffle,

00:57:03   or to whatever happened with TextExpander.

00:57:06   I don't know if Smile ever released numbers

00:57:08   or gave any indication on whether they're doing better now

00:57:11   with the new subscription model as they were before.

00:57:14   But if 1Password or Smile,

00:57:18   if these companies can get to the other side

00:57:20   of this transition,

00:57:21   and even if they lose customers along the way,

00:57:25   they will probably be in a better place financially

00:57:29   and they'll be more stable than they were before

00:57:31   with the old pay, maybe every few years

00:57:35   for a paid upgrade model.

00:57:36   And so even if this loses them customers,

00:57:40   it still might be the best approach to take.

00:57:42   Now that being said, there are complicating factors

00:57:44   with this particular arrangement.

00:57:46   One password, because of the nature of it,

00:57:47   is dealing with this extremely sensitive data

00:57:51   that a lot of customers have either requirements

00:57:53   or requests that the vault that is being,

00:57:58   the database of your passwords not leave their network.

00:58:02   And they've had forever this local vaults feature

00:58:05   where you can literally not use a sync service at all.

00:58:09   You can have basically like your Mac sync its local vault

00:58:14   over the local wifi to your iOS devices.

00:58:17   Or you can just not use sync at all

00:58:19   and just not use it on iOS or whatever.

00:58:22   And a lot of companies, that's the method they have to use.

00:58:24   I've heard here and there that some groups within Apple

00:58:27   use 1Password, and they depend on that feature being there,

00:58:31   because Apple, I don't think, would permit its employees

00:58:34   to have passwords stored on some external service

00:58:37   or synced via Dropbox or anything like that.

00:58:40   So I do think 1Password moving to a subscription pricing

00:58:45   model is totally fine.

00:58:48   And yeah, people are gonna get mad,

00:58:51   but that's probably fine.

00:58:53   And by the way, they haven't said they're doing that.

00:58:56   All they've, they basically just like

00:58:58   laid some groundwork and some commentary

00:59:00   that suggests that they're considering that in the future.

00:59:03   But they're not, they haven't actually said that yet.

00:59:06   But anyway, I do think a move to subscription pricing

00:59:10   is probably fine and probably the right move

00:59:13   for a lot of software companies that require

00:59:16   ongoing work for their products to work.

00:59:17   And by the way, you might say,

00:59:19   person listening who hates subscriptions,

00:59:21   You might say, well, it's just a password manager,

00:59:22   why do I have to pay every month for this?

00:59:25   Well, what happens when the new version of Chrome comes out

00:59:28   and their extension breaks?

00:59:29   They have to fix their extension.

00:59:31   What happens when new, when like,

00:59:33   people find websites the extension doesn't work on

00:59:35   and they have to fix that?

00:59:36   New versions of iOS come out

00:59:37   and they have to update to 64-bit or whatever.

00:59:39   Like, there's constantly ongoing work here.

00:59:42   1Password is a very complicated app

00:59:44   with lots of different components.

00:59:46   It runs on many different operating systems

00:59:48   and it runs in every web browser

00:59:50   and it runs in iOS extensions,

00:59:52   and it's on all these different platforms

00:59:54   and all these different parts of it

00:59:55   that are all interdependent and have to interact

00:59:59   with the web, which is a constantly changing environment.

01:00:03   So they have to put constant effort into that.

01:00:05   Whether you realize it or not, if they stopped,

01:00:08   or if your version stopped getting updates,

01:00:10   you'd be mad, because it wouldn't work as well.

01:00:13   So subscription pricing, I'm on board with that.

01:00:16   And by the way, I do pay for this subscription.

01:00:19   I started paying for it about six months ago.

01:00:22   When I started reducing my dependence on Dropbox,

01:00:25   I switched to their sync system,

01:00:26   and it's been totally fine.

01:00:28   However, the removal of local vaults,

01:00:31   if that is the plan, I think that's a mistake for this app,

01:00:35   because that will probably cost them a lot of customers

01:00:39   that can never come back, even if they change their mind

01:00:41   about how they wanna pay.

01:00:43   So I do think they should probably,

01:00:45   I mean, they know better than I do what their customers want,

01:00:48   but me sitting over here as an armchair observer,

01:00:51   I think removing local vaults is probably a bad idea.

01:00:54   But subscription pricing is fine.

01:00:56   - I think the reason they might be tempted

01:00:59   to entangle these two things,

01:01:01   the subscription pricing and the whole cloud sync

01:01:03   or whatever, is that companies still feel,

01:01:05   for a lot of the reasons that you just mentioned,

01:01:08   that they want to have a story

01:01:11   about why you're paying every month,

01:01:12   and any kind of cloud sync thing

01:01:14   where they store your data on their servers that they run,

01:01:18   like, "Oh, well, you're paying us every month because we're taking your data and we're storing

01:01:21   it in our servers and we have to pay money to run those servers." And it's something that you can

01:01:25   have a better chance of explaining to people, like, "Why am I paying for this every month?"

01:01:29   But in reality, the reason they need you to pay for every month is everything that Marco just said.

01:01:34   It has nothing to do with, "Oh, we have to run servers." Even if there's no servers involved

01:01:38   whatsoever and it's entirely local vaults and direct device-to-device sync and they didn't run

01:01:42   any servers, you should still pay them monthly in the same way that you would for Photoshop or

01:01:47   or whatever, because that's the business model that allows them to continue to support their

01:01:51   software. And it's kind of one of the goals I feel like of modern software applications is to become

01:01:58   valuable enough that people will pay you monthly. Obviously artists who make their living,

01:02:03   you know, in Photoshop or Illustrator or whatever, it's a no-brainer as a business expense

01:02:09   that they make more money, you know, if they're experts in Photoshop and they're like, "Well,

01:02:13   I'm going to learn an entirely new graphics program or find something else that I can do

01:02:16   to be working because I don't want no you'll totally pay the monthly fee because that's

01:02:20   how valuable Photoshop is for your work and for things like password managers or I don't

01:02:26   know maybe text editors in some cases or whatever some sort of integral tool that's like it's

01:02:32   not just a frivolous thing that you have on your Mac that you kind of like it's like no

01:02:36   I can't get my work done without this even something like slack where if your whole company

01:02:40   starts using slack and like your company runs on slack you realize is slack valuable enough

01:02:45   to our company for us to pay whatever Slack is charging for it.

01:02:49   And there's a limited number of those type of applications.

01:02:51   You can't look in your applications folder and say, "Oh, I'm going to pay a subscription

01:02:54   for every single one of those apps."

01:02:55   You won't.

01:02:56   They're not all that valuable to you.

01:02:57   So if you're making software, in these days, it should be your goal to be one of those

01:03:03   applications that's valuable enough for people to pay a subscription fee for it.

01:03:07   And a password manager, I think, is definitely in that category of things because we all

01:03:12   have lots of passwords and we want to store them securely and we want it to be convenient but also

01:03:17   not vulnerable and don't want to have to think about the security. We want an application that

01:03:24   has a long life, a company that has a reputation for security that's not owned by an advertising

01:03:30   company or something like that. And so I feel like 1Password will eventually do well if they can get

01:03:35   through this transition because people are motivated to pay them money on a recurring basis

01:03:41   just so they don't get bought out by some evil corporation or aren't tempted to sell their

01:03:45   personal information or do something dumb. And like a lot of the stuff with the, you know,

01:03:48   the cloud sync and, you know, I don't want to type my one password into a webpage because who knows

01:03:52   what could be happening. Like in the end, you have to trust the company that makes one password

01:03:58   because they control the field that you're typing your one password into. And you don't know what

01:04:02   they're doing with that. They could be grabbing all your keystrokes and sending it off to someone

01:04:05   for, you know, but they're not like, that's why you buy from them because, you know, this is a

01:04:08   a company that's good, I trust their reputation, right? So I think their customer base would be,

01:04:14   enough of their customer base would be willing to pay them a recurring subscription even if there

01:04:20   was no server involved. Like you don't need to convince them, "Oh, we'll run servers for you."

01:04:25   And do it like local vault only. In fact, maybe they're willing to pay more for the one with

01:04:30   fewer features. So this is an interesting case because, like Marco was saying, they're not just

01:04:35   any random application there, a specific kind of application with specific privacy concerns

01:04:40   that makes it so that cloud sync or cloud storage is almost a demerit against them in

01:04:46   terms of privacy. And it should not be tied in any way to their recurring revenue.

01:04:52   So yeah, it's easy for us to say, for us computer nerds who love to pay for software,

01:04:59   or who are software developers ourselves who make our livings from other people paying for

01:05:03   our software. But when I talk to non-computer enthusiasts, people who just, you know, they're

01:05:11   not into computers at all, they have a phone obviously, they have, maybe they have a computer

01:05:16   or whatever, the idea of paying anything at all ever for software still seems alien to

01:05:21   a lot of people. So again, the strategy is to both become valuable enough that people

01:05:29   are willing to pay and probably to make an application that appeals to people who are

01:05:36   acquainted with the concept of paying money for software.

01:05:39   So don't make an application that appeals greatly to people who have never paid for

01:05:44   software and think it's ridiculous to do so.

01:05:47   Because even if you make an application that they all love, they'll never pay you for it.

01:05:50   It's bad.

01:05:51   Make an application for people who are willing to pay for software and make your application

01:05:57   valuable enough for them that they're willing to pay on a recurring basis.

01:06:00   And it's just a question of finding the right price.

01:06:02   Obviously, they're not going to pay $700 a month for a password manager unless maybe

01:06:08   it's some super-duper secure one that has some sort of legal indemnity that goes with

01:06:12   their self-heal, though it probably costs them more than $700 a month, right?

01:06:16   But they'd pay one cent a month, so find the right number between one cent and $700, and

01:06:22   you'll be happy.

01:06:23   (laughs)

01:06:24   - Yeah, I mean, that's part of how Adobe has managed

01:06:26   their pricing, where Creative Suite is something like

01:06:30   50 bucks a month if you buy the whole thing,

01:06:31   and it goes down from there if you only need parts of it.

01:06:34   But if you were buying it before,

01:06:37   they have priced it such that it actually is fairly

01:06:42   comparable to if you were actually just buying it

01:06:46   every version or two before.

01:06:49   Now, a lot of the customers weren't buying it at all,

01:06:51   a lot of them were pirating it,

01:06:52   and a lot of them were also not buying every version.

01:06:56   Like, they would skip versions,

01:06:58   or they would buy one and use it for six years

01:07:00   because they just didn't care about the stuff

01:07:01   in the new versions,

01:07:03   or they didn't want to spend the money,

01:07:04   or they couldn't spend the money, or whatever else.

01:07:06   But for the most part, they set the pricing

01:07:08   of the subscription such that if you were buying it already,

01:07:12   it actually is a sensible price.

01:07:14   And that's why I subscribed to Adobe Creative Suite,

01:07:16   because I was buying them already,

01:07:18   And so it ends up like, yeah, this is actually totally fine.

01:07:22   And yeah, for them, I think they can set a price that makes sense here.

01:07:26   I honestly don't even remember what I'm paying them because...

01:07:30   It's too much for me to pay for, I can tell you that, because I have CS6, the last non-cloud

01:07:35   version.

01:07:36   No, no, no, I'm talking about, sorry, 1Password is what I'm talking about.

01:07:38   Oh, right.

01:07:39   Oh, it's $5 a month for the family plan, $3 a month for the individuals.

01:07:44   That's okay.

01:07:45   That's totally fine.

01:07:46   I think there might be a discount if you go a year at a time.

01:07:49   I'm not positive about that, so I might be wrong.

01:07:51   But I mean, $5 a month, a soda at a regular restaurant,

01:07:56   like when John is feeling really, really saucy

01:07:59   and wants to get himself a Sprite at a restaurant,

01:08:01   that's probably $2.50.

01:08:03   And he's literally pissing that away a few hours later.

01:08:06   This is $5.

01:08:07   I mean, this is not a lot of money.

01:08:09   - Yeah, but that isn't how people think about it.

01:08:12   - I know, I know.

01:08:12   - You know as well as I do, you're an iOS developer now.

01:08:15   you know, like this is not how people think about this

01:08:17   at all, but yeah, I mean, yeah, one password being

01:08:20   three or five dollars a month, that's totally fine

01:08:24   because it is a power user productivity security tool

01:08:29   that is often used by businesses.

01:08:32   Like all of those words are things that can make

01:08:36   paying for software valuable and reasonable.

01:08:40   And yeah, this is no brainer to me.

01:08:43   to ensure that this app is financially healthy

01:08:47   and here for the long haul,

01:08:49   $3 a month is totally fine.

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01:11:15   - Hi Marco, tell me about what's going on

01:11:20   with Overcast these days,

01:11:21   'cause I feel like I haven't heard much,

01:11:23   which means either you're not working

01:11:24   or more likely you're working a lot

01:11:26   and you're just keeping it all quiet.

01:11:28   - I'm mostly not working, 'cause you know, summer.

01:11:31   However, when I am working, I have a dilemma,

01:11:35   and I talked about it on Under the Radar recently,

01:11:38   but in case, the listener base of that

01:11:40   is not the listener base of this,

01:11:41   so there are people who haven't heard it,

01:11:43   and I haven't heard what you, who probably won't care,

01:11:46   and especially what Jon, who probably has an opinion

01:11:48   about this, think about this.

01:11:50   So my main dilemma with updating Overcast to iOS 11

01:11:55   is iOS 11 adds drag and drop stuff

01:11:59   to the standard system widgets.

01:12:01   - Oh, I have opinions about this.

01:12:02   I definitely have opinions.

01:12:04   - You can now full-time reorder table views

01:12:08   and collection views in iOS if the app supports it,

01:12:11   and supporting it is very easy.

01:12:13   I already built my own full-time reordering system

01:12:16   to reorder items in Playlist and Overcast,

01:12:20   so you can drag around episodes

01:12:21   and you can reorder them right there

01:12:22   with the little drag handles on the right side.

01:12:24   Doing this in my way was an incredibly complex pile of hacks

01:12:29   that works most of the time, but has a few weird

01:12:32   little random bugs that I just cannot solve

01:12:36   and will probably never solve.

01:12:38   But for the most part it does work, and it's fast,

01:12:40   and it's very clear and discoverable right there.

01:12:43   I also have a problem with Overcast 3.0.

01:12:47   The method that I chose of tapping the episode cells

01:12:52   to expand a little menu, like Tweetbot style,

01:12:55   and that the play button is one of the items in that menu,

01:12:58   as opposed to the previous behavior where just tapping on an episode row would just

01:13:02   immediately start playing it no matter what. A lot of people still do not like this. And

01:13:07   the user base seems, this seems like a very polarizing decision among the user base and

01:13:13   it has not stopped being polarizing. People have not gotten used to it. That, you know,

01:13:16   I am used to it and I like it, but a lot of people still don't and they seem to not be

01:13:20   changing. So it doesn't seem like this is the kind of thing where, oh, you'll just get

01:13:25   used to having to tap twice to play,

01:13:27   no like a lot of people really hate

01:13:28   having to tap twice to play.

01:13:30   So my idea is what if I replace the drag handle

01:13:34   on the right side of the cells with a one tap play button,

01:13:37   move the info button that's there in selection mode

01:13:40   down to where the play button was in the middle

01:13:42   of that little bar menu that comes up,

01:13:44   and then use the system's full time drag rotor and control

01:13:49   replacing my giant pile of hacks.

01:13:51   I think this is a good idea.

01:13:53   There's lots of advantages of doing this.

01:13:56   However, one of the big disadvantages of doing this,

01:14:00   first of all, it's another change.

01:14:01   People hate change.

01:14:02   So I'm now moving the play button again,

01:14:05   which will, even though people have been

01:14:08   screaming their heads off for one tap play to come back,

01:14:12   if I give that to them, a different group of people

01:14:14   will scream their heads off that I moved it.

01:14:16   And then the other problem is that the system

01:14:19   drag and drop implementation has a small delay

01:14:23   where you have to hold the cell down

01:14:25   before it pops up to be draggable.

01:14:27   And mine, before my hack job, was instant.

01:14:31   You can just immediately drag that handle

01:14:32   and you wouldn't have to wait.

01:14:34   So the system version of it is

01:14:36   a little bit slower to activate,

01:14:38   however the system version will also allow me

01:14:41   to put the play button on the side of the cell.

01:14:44   So I would bring back one tap playing,

01:14:46   at least in like the right quarter of the cell.

01:14:48   It wouldn't be the full width of the cell,

01:14:50   'cause I'd still have the little pop-up menu

01:14:51   if you tap the rest of the cell.

01:14:53   But if you tap the little right side thing,

01:14:55   that could be a play button,

01:14:56   and I could make the touch target pretty tall

01:14:59   and wide on that so people could get

01:15:01   their one touch playback.

01:15:03   Also I could get rid of my giant hack,

01:15:05   which barely works now and is likely to break

01:15:08   in future OS updates.

01:15:10   So I think I should do this.

01:15:14   But how big of a problem is it

01:15:16   that the new standard reordering method

01:15:19   has a small delay before you activate it?

01:15:21   This is not a question, and I really, really love Under the Radar, but there are episodes

01:15:28   where I switch from loving and listening to Under the Radar to hate listening to Under

01:15:33   the Radar, because I so deeply disagree with one or both of you.

01:15:37   And I started this particular episode, which I believe is number 87, I'll have a link in

01:15:42   the show notes, it's never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.

01:15:45   Anyway, this episode I started hate listening and then ended up just listening and enjoying,

01:15:51   Because my opinion, spoiler alert, is that you talked yourself into implementing this

01:15:57   using the new APIs by the end of the episode.

01:15:59   Now it sounds like maybe that isn't quite so cut and dry, since you're talking about

01:16:02   it with us now.

01:16:03   But to me, this is not even a question.

01:16:06   This is absolutely use new API, end of meeting.

01:16:10   And there's a couple reasons for that.

01:16:11   Number one, it may feel weird now that you have a little bit of a delay and whatnot,

01:16:17   but I don't think it will feel weird soon.

01:16:20   Now in your defense, drag and drop I suspect is going to be a lot less prevalent on the

01:16:24   iPhone than it is on the iPad.

01:16:26   So those of us who perhaps only use overcast on the iPhone and maybe don't use iPads that

01:16:31   often, it may feel a little weird at first.

01:16:33   And like you said, moving the UI around is always going to tick somebody off.

01:16:37   But...

01:16:38   More than somebody.

01:16:39   Well, you know what I mean.

01:16:40   You have many somebodies off.

01:16:43   But as someone who really, really, really dislikes third-party libraries, because you

01:16:48   feel like you have no control over them, and oftentimes they are a pile of hacks, and really

01:16:52   it's kind of a dangerous position to put yourself in to have a third-party library, especially

01:16:58   one that's like really, really, I can't think of a way to phrase it, but like it's wide-reaching

01:17:04   and it's taking a system thing and it's totally rejiggering it and you are like wed to this

01:17:10   library.

01:17:11   You have created your own first-party equivalent of that, and you must burn it with fire as

01:17:15   soon as you possibly can.

01:17:17   This is not a question, you must get rid of it, you must use new APIs, end a meeting.

01:17:22   Jon, what do you think?

01:17:23   I have a question.

01:17:25   If you use the native dragging thing, can you do a thing where you like, whatever, tap

01:17:31   and hold so it like it pops up and now you've grabbed it.

01:17:34   Can you, with another finger, flick scroll the stuff behind it?

01:17:39   Yes, and it's amazing.

01:17:40   So it solves your problem of like this of the bump bump bump bump bump scrolling speed.

01:17:44   Yes, you have to do it then.

01:17:46   you can pick up multiple items. Well yeah I don't think I'd be doing that too much

01:17:50   but maybe on the iPad but yeah you totally need to do the native thing. I

01:17:53   think the native native dragging yes all right the second question is okay so I

01:17:59   do native drag now I have these options I don't need the drag handles anymore or

01:18:02   whatever what do I do with that space and for that I think I'll have to use it

01:18:06   to see what it's like I understood what you're getting at what the pay button

01:18:09   play button will be over here the info button will be in a little you know

01:18:11   expandy bar thing maybe that'll be fine maybe it'll be weird I don't know I

01:18:15   I think it's worth separating, like determining exactly what to do with this newfound space

01:18:20   and freedom, and gesture freedom.

01:18:22   Because I'm not entirely sure, but Native Dragon Drop seems like a no-brainer.

01:18:26   Like Casey said, you get rid of your hacks.

01:18:29   It's a better interface, and as Dragon Drop in theory becomes more prevalent, it's what

01:18:33   people will expect, so just do it.

01:18:35   And I also forgot to mention that I am one of those people who is still grumbly about

01:18:38   the fact that there's a two-tap play scheme.

01:18:43   And so bringing back the play button on the right will make me very happy.

01:18:46   And we all know that Overcast is written specifically to make Casey happy.

01:18:50   So yeah, I think you're going to have to do it, Marco.

01:18:53   If I do that, can you stop asking me for a Mac app?

01:18:57   When's the last time I've asked you for one?

01:18:58   Because I'll tell you.

01:18:59   Yeah, I'll tell you when the last time I asked for a Mac app was probably about a day or

01:19:04   two before I got my AirPods.

01:19:06   Because now, the reason I wanted a Mac app so badly was because the Bluetooth headphones

01:19:11   that I was using previously were such a pain to switch between my Mac and my iPhone.

01:19:16   But now with the AirPods, it takes two seconds to switch between them.

01:19:19   So when I'm listening to Overcast, I'm connected to my phone, and when I'm listening to anything

01:19:23   else in the world, I'm connected to my Mac.

01:19:26   And it's no worries.

01:19:27   Speaking of apps that Marco doesn't want to develop and/or maintain, I have a feature

01:19:31   request/bug report for the Mac version, or not the Mac version, the web version of Overcast.

01:19:36   Oh, God.

01:19:37   Alright, so frequently people will tweet overcast links with offsets, which is cool.

01:19:42   It's like, "That's exactly what you want.

01:19:43   I'm going to tap this link and it's going to take me right to the second in the podcast

01:19:47   that they're trying to refer me to."

01:19:49   As long as it isn't a major NPR podcast.

01:19:51   Yes.

01:19:52   Yeah.

01:19:53   But if it is a podcast that I subscribe to and am in the middle of listening to, is it

01:19:59   just my imagination or does that throw off my offset?

01:20:02   Because I'm logged into my overcast account and it sent me to an offset and I play it.

01:20:07   - It sinks that offset and now I've lost where I was

01:20:10   because I was earlier or later in the thing.

01:20:12   Is that a thing or is it just my imagination?

01:20:13   - That is indeed what happens.

01:20:15   And I've thought about this before,

01:20:16   like whether that should be what happens or not.

01:20:18   And it's hard 'cause it's like,

01:20:21   when you put it this way, yeah, that shouldn't happen,

01:20:23   you're right.

01:20:25   But what would the alternative be?

01:20:27   And once you start thinking, okay, well what should happen?

01:20:29   Like if you're logged in and if you have this podcast

01:20:33   in your list so it's not unplayed,

01:20:36   or rather it's not played, like it's an active item

01:20:38   in your list and you have a position in it,

01:20:41   then you get sent a timestamp link

01:20:43   for a different time in that, then should it play that,

01:20:47   but then not ever update your synced position?

01:20:50   What if you play past your synced position?

01:20:52   Should it update it then?

01:20:54   Like it's fairly complex as to what it should do,

01:20:57   and so I haven't really addressed it yet.

01:20:59   What do you think it should do?

01:21:00   - I think it should, I'm pretty sure it should

01:21:02   just not update the synced position.

01:21:05   only if you go to a link with an offset in it.

01:21:08   But I can't think of a scenario where I would,

01:21:10   I would, the play head would be at some non-zero position

01:21:13   in the podcast, right?

01:21:15   I think the tricky bit that you were talking about

01:21:18   is like, I haven't started playing it.

01:21:20   Then I'm not quite sure what to do.

01:21:21   But if I have started to play it,

01:21:23   I think it's pretty clear that you,

01:21:27   and I go to an offset,

01:21:29   I want to play from that offset in the web player

01:21:32   and have it not affect my other offset.

01:21:33   'Cause I can't think of a scenario

01:21:34   I would want it to affect it. Why would I formulate an overcast web link for myself

01:21:39   to jump to an offset with the intention of me going for it? Now, if the thing is at the

01:21:44   zero position, I haven't started playing it and I go to an offset to listen to a thing,

01:21:48   I personally would also like it not to update the thing because very often what happens

01:21:53   is it does update it and then I will go to that episode and it will start playing it

01:21:57   and be like, "I guess I listened to the beginning of this one, huh? Because here I am in the

01:22:01   middle of it, like I'll forget. I don't realize, no, I just missed the entire beginning because

01:22:05   of that offset link that I followed like, you know, three days ago or whatever. So my

01:22:10   solution obviously is just if you just run your web browser in incognito mode or whatever,

01:22:16   when you tap that link, you know, you won't be logged into Overcast or log yourself out

01:22:19   of Overcast or whatever.

01:22:20   That's a terrible solution.

01:22:21   I know. But anyway, if you're just looking for the quick fix, quick fix is offset in

01:22:27   in URL equals never sync playhead position,

01:22:30   and then just make a different set of people angry.

01:22:32   - I think that's right, actually.

01:22:34   That actually sounds like a really good solution.

01:22:36   Yeah, 'cause if there's an offset in the URL,

01:22:38   'cause the regular web interface

01:22:39   does not put those offsets there,

01:22:42   so if there's an offset in the URL,

01:22:43   just don't touch the synced position at all.

01:22:47   - Yeah, I think that makes sense to me, too.

01:22:48   - Yeah, so it's kinda like the one tap to play.

01:22:52   Like, for a few years, make one set of people angry,

01:22:55   and then you switch it back,

01:22:56   and then for a few more years make Go set people angry

01:22:58   and then we'll see how it goes.

01:22:59   - Yeah, tell me about it.

01:23:00   - I think, you know, so really,

01:23:01   how many people use the web interface, right?

01:23:03   - Honestly, very few.

01:23:04   It's a very, like--

01:23:05   - Just get all of us in the chat room and we'll vote.

01:23:08   (laughing)

01:23:09   All seven.

01:23:09   - That actually might be possible.

01:23:10   Like, it's very few people.

01:23:13   And every time somebody tweets a web link with Overcast,

01:23:18   there are responses that are like,

01:23:20   oh my God, I didn't know it had a web interface.

01:23:22   No one knows it's there.

01:23:24   And even the people who do know it's there,

01:23:25   no one uses it. And yes, part of that is because it's pretty bare bones and I could make it

01:23:30   a lot better or more full featured if I put a lot of work into it. But it's kind of a

01:23:36   chicken and egg thing. Like part of the reason I don't put a lot of work into it is that

01:23:38   nobody uses it.

01:23:39   I'm also glad you don't chuck me into the app because that's the other option that most

01:23:43   people would do.

01:23:44   Oh yeah, that's true.

01:23:45   It's like, oh, there's a web interface but it immediately knows whether you have the

01:23:48   app installed and chucks you to the app because I certainly don't want you to go into the

01:23:51   app. Again, if you're playing, if it's an episode that I haven't started playing yet

01:23:55   or one that I'm in the middle of,

01:23:56   I don't want it to go into my app

01:23:57   and change my play head position, like inside the app.

01:24:00   If you did send to the app, I would say,

01:24:02   go to the app, but open a totally alternate one time,

01:24:07   like you just saw it in offset link player interface

01:24:09   that is disconnected entirely

01:24:11   with the actual listening interface.

01:24:12   Because when you follow a link with an offset,

01:24:15   someone's trying to show you something in an episode,

01:24:18   it is clearly not the same as I am listening to the episode.

01:24:20   They're trying to say,

01:24:21   here's this little snippet right here,

01:24:23   listen to this bit, right?

01:24:25   And that I feel like is a different activity than I'm going to now listen to the next episode of my favorite podcast.

01:24:30   All right, thanks to our three sponsors this week, Hover, Fracture, and Aftershocks. We will see you next week.

01:24:36   Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

01:24:43   Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:24:49   John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:24:54   Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:25:00   And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:25:05   If you're into Twitter, you can follow them @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:25:14   So that's Kasey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:25:18   A-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

01:25:26   It's accidental (It's accidental)

01:25:29   They didn't mean to accidental (Accidental)

01:25:34   ♫ Tech podcast so long

01:25:37   - So I felt left out with you having your impulse purchases.

01:25:44   - Uh oh.

01:25:45   - And so Aaron and I bought a car tonight.

01:25:47   - Whoa!

01:25:48   Wait, like during the show?

01:25:51   - Well, not a car, right?

01:25:53   - Well, okay, so I would call it a truck,

01:25:56   but Aaron would correct me and say,

01:25:58   "No, it's not a truck, it's an SUV."

01:26:00   - It's like a big sneaker, really.

01:26:01   Sorry, tennis shoes.

01:26:02   - Oh, that's so cruel.

01:26:05   - I don't really get why people--

01:26:06   - Boot, army boot?

01:26:07   - Like people who call SUVs trucks,

01:26:08   I feel like that's unearned.

01:26:11   Like, a truck is a truck.

01:26:12   Like, if it doesn't have like a bed on it,

01:26:15   like that's not a truck.

01:26:17   - Yeah, and that's exactly what Aaron would say.

01:26:18   Probably verbatim.

01:26:20   To me, anything that is taller than a car is a truck.

01:26:22   I'm not saying I'm right.

01:26:23   Like, I'm not trying to convince the listeners

01:26:26   or anyone, or you two.

01:26:27   I'm not saying I'm right.

01:26:28   It's just the way I've always thought of it,

01:26:29   which is probably bananas.

01:26:32   But, yeah, we a few hours ago bought Erin a brand new Volvo XC90 and it's very nice.

01:26:41   And we're very happy.

01:26:43   And Erin is sad that she's left her Mazda 6 behind.

01:26:48   We bought her a Mazda 6 a couple months after we got married.

01:26:54   And so that car has been in the family from new, the Mazda 6 that is, for almost exactly

01:27:01   ten years. We brought it home at the end of August of 2007 and we let it go today.

01:27:06   And it's sad. It's weird, right? Because a car is just a thing, right? It's just a machine.

01:27:10   But it kind of makes you sad when you see one go. Especially, well, Marco, you

01:27:14   wouldn't know about this because you don't keep cars for more than two

01:27:16   minutes, but for those of us who keep cars for a while like John and me, it's

01:27:21   sad to see one go because it's been a part of the family for so

01:27:25   darn long. No, I totally get it. I have felt that as well and yeah, I mean, I

01:27:29   I almost cried when I gave up the M5.

01:27:32   Like, I liked it so much.

01:27:34   - Well, and you had a very unique experience,

01:27:36   I mean, we actually had a very unique experience

01:27:38   in that car, so yeah, I mean, she was weepy,

01:27:41   I was on the verge of weepy, and it's funny

01:27:43   because I mean, I liked her Mazda, don't get me wrong.

01:27:45   It was a very nice car, and more than anything else,

01:27:49   it has given us, or had, oh, it had given us

01:27:53   no problems in its 10 years.

01:27:55   I mean, I think we had to do an alternator once,

01:27:59   But everything else was routine maintenance.

01:28:01   I mean, it was bulletproof,

01:28:03   which is probably a Japanese thing

01:28:06   in that most Hondas I've heard about are bulletproof.

01:28:08   Most Toyotas seem to be bulletproof.

01:28:12   And this Mazda was certainly bulletproof.

01:28:15   This one individual Mazda 6 was bulletproof.

01:28:17   And so, yeah, so I was sad to see it go,

01:28:21   but we're really excited to have the new car.

01:28:23   - I only have one question, and you know what it is.

01:28:25   - It is not white.

01:28:26   It is not white. - Is it white?

01:28:28   - It is not white.

01:28:29   There was a brief window of time where, as I've described and as you do not like to agree,

01:28:34   but I was backed into white on my most recent car, not the prior ones.

01:28:40   The prior ones were more deliberate than not.

01:28:42   But, well, really it was only the Subaru that was deliberate.

01:28:44   Anyway, go listen to neutral and you'll get the story.

01:28:47   But happens to be white.

01:28:49   Yeah, the BMW happened to be white.

01:28:51   And a couple of the other cars happened to be white.

01:28:53   The Subaru was a deliberate choice.

01:28:55   But anyway, this one is silver.

01:28:57   We wanted, well, maybe more me than her.

01:28:59   I don't think she cared that much.

01:29:01   I wanted a deeper gray,

01:29:02   which happens to be what her Mazda was.

01:29:04   But for this one, we ended up,

01:29:09   can I complain for a moment?

01:29:12   - Please.

01:29:13   - Can I whine about--

01:29:14   - That's what this show is about.

01:29:15   - Yeah, really.

01:29:16   Can I whine for a minute about how awful it is to buy a car?

01:29:21   Although I hear Tesla, it's just,

01:29:23   you go online and you price,

01:29:24   and you pick it out and that's that.

01:29:25   I don't wanna hear about it,

01:29:26   because it just makes me--

01:29:27   from Tesla is like ordering from Amazon.

01:29:29   Like, it's literally like add to cart, buy.

01:29:33   - Makes me so sad.

01:29:34   It makes me so sad.

01:29:34   So, when we bought Aaron's Mazda,

01:29:37   we started the process in,

01:29:39   I think it was like August of 2016, give or take a month,

01:29:44   and we bought in August of 2017.

01:29:47   And we literally haggled with the dealer for a year

01:29:51   to get her car, because we just refused to budge

01:29:54   on the price that we wanted.

01:29:56   So we walked into the local Volvo dealer at the end of December last year.

01:30:01   I can't recall an exact day, it doesn't really matter, but the very end of December.

01:30:05   I believe it was between Christmas and New Year's, I think.

01:30:08   And today, on the 17th of July, we brought the car home.

01:30:12   I have spent the last, since Thursday or Friday, I have spent all day, every f***ing day, emailing

01:30:22   every dealer between Philadelphia and Greensboro, North Carolina, trying to get a good deal

01:30:29   on this car. Now, before anyone complains, yes, I did this to myself. But what ended

01:30:34   up happening was I emailed all these dealers saying, "Look, what's your best out-the-door

01:30:39   price? I don't even worry about a trade-in. Just tell me with tax, with everything, what

01:30:45   is your best out-the-door price?" And you would think that that would be easy, but of

01:30:48   Of course it's not, because their job is to not give me their best out-the-door price.

01:30:53   Their job is to give me their crappiest out-the-door price and hope that I agree to it.

01:30:59   So what ended up happening, long story short, is I got our Richmond dealer in a bidding

01:31:06   war with a couple other dealers, and we were mostly victors.

01:31:10   And so eventually we got this car at an extreme, well, I think of an extreme discount.

01:31:15   And I'm really pleased with that.

01:31:17   And you have to understand that Erin has never been a particular fan of my car.

01:31:22   She thinks it's fine, but she hates BMW drivers because, well, we're all jerks.

01:31:27   And so she's never really been a tremendous fan of my car.

01:31:31   Guess what car saved her several thousand dollars because of a Volvo promotion that's

01:31:35   going on right now?

01:31:37   My BMW.

01:31:38   If you happen to own a BMW, Lexus, Audi, etc., you can get a multi-thousand dollar discount

01:31:43   on a brand new Volvo.

01:31:45   So how about them apples?

01:31:47   - Wait, do you have to trade it in?

01:31:48   Or just by you owning it?

01:31:50   - Just by owning it because they're trying to,

01:31:53   they're trying to get owners of other luxury marquees,

01:31:57   marques, marquees, whatever, those things,

01:32:00   get luxury owners to come to Volvo.

01:32:03   And so just by having one in the family,

01:32:05   we got, I think it was $3,000 off, which is pretty awesome.

01:32:08   - Wow.

01:32:09   - So that was pretty cool.

01:32:10   But yeah, buying a car is terrible.

01:32:12   It's terrible.

01:32:14   It's just a friggin' nightmare from start to finish.

01:32:17   I mean, if I didn't care about the cost of the car,

01:32:20   it'd be great, no worries.

01:32:21   But it's terrible, because not unlike buying a house,

01:32:25   the dealer's one and only job is to get as,

01:32:28   to extract all of the money from you.

01:32:31   And your one and only position is to try to extract

01:32:34   as little as possible from your own wallet.

01:32:39   So, you know, like, Miss The Baron in the chat is saying,

01:32:43   "Well, could I have just paid MSRP?"

01:32:44   Sure, I could have, but that would have been

01:32:47   almost $10,000 more than we paid.

01:32:49   Like, no, that's no.

01:32:52   I'm not made of money, so no, I'm not going to do that.

01:32:55   Oh my God, I hate, I hate buying a car.

01:32:59   I just, I don't wanna do it for a long time.

01:33:01   And that's why I think that in part of the reason,

01:33:03   I mean, Erin loved her Mazda, as I said,

01:33:04   but part of the reason that she didn't want a new car

01:33:07   was because she didn't wanna go through this.

01:33:08   And it's just, it's a fricking nightmare.

01:33:10   I hate it.

01:33:11   So what color silver did you get?

01:33:13   I think it's just silver-silver.

01:33:14   I forget what the official--

01:33:15   Bright silver metallic?

01:33:16   Osmium gray metallic?

01:33:18   No, Osmium gray is what I really thought would be good.

01:33:21   Oh, the color options on this car are friggin' terrible,

01:33:23   unless you get into the super expensive--

01:33:25   Seville gray metallic?

01:33:26   No, I believe it was just silver.

01:33:29   The Osmium is what I thought looked the best

01:33:31   of the available options.

01:33:32   So it's a XC90 Momentum, which is the cheapest XC90 they make.

01:33:36   However, within XC90 Momentums, you

01:33:39   can get five-seat or seven-seat, and we got the seven-seat one with the bright silver

01:33:45   metallic.

01:33:47   Like I was starting to say, I thought the Osmium Gray actually looked better, but we

01:33:51   ended up with silver because that's the one that the dealer could get their hands on and

01:33:54   make a good deal on.

01:33:56   What engine did you get?

01:33:57   Did you get T5 or T6?

01:33:59   So it's a T6, which is—because as soon as you go third row, that means you're getting

01:34:03   a T6.

01:34:04   So it's a T6 all-wheel drive.

01:34:07   So it's both—

01:34:08   You had to get the fast engine.

01:34:09   Well, not exactly. So here's the thing, the XT90 ranges from $40,000 or $45,000 to $110,000

01:34:17   or something like that. I saw that. It's like a Porsche. You could just double the price of the

01:34:21   car with options. That's it. Yeah, because, well, what it is is they make a version,

01:34:25   I forget the name of it. It doesn't have a hybrid thing. Yeah, well, but not only is it a V8 hybrid,

01:34:29   but beyond that, it's actually a four seater. So the back is just blocked off and it's clearly like

01:34:34   an executive's "I'm going to be chauffeured in the SUV" sort of thing. But anyway, so yeah, so ours was,

01:34:41   ours, we started as cheap as you could go in terms of the trim and then made it seven-seat, so that

01:34:48   makes it slightly fancier, and then it's actually pretty darn well optioned, which is great. So it

01:34:54   has pretty much all of the the bits and bobs that we could possibly want. But it's pretty cool. I

01:34:59   mean, I haven't driven this one yet. We did do an overnight test drive several months ago of

01:35:04   of a less loaded one.

01:35:06   And it does have carplay, which I played with very briefly

01:35:10   when we test drove it, and it was really nice.

01:35:12   There are definitely problems with it,

01:35:14   but it was really nice.

01:35:15   It has the bird's eye view, it has a heads up display.

01:35:17   So a lot of it is very similar to the M5 actually,

01:35:21   or reminds me of the M5.

01:35:23   But I'm really looking forward to it.

01:35:25   It has a heated steering wheel,

01:35:27   which we've never had before.

01:35:28   It parks itself, which is something we've never had before.

01:35:30   - It's got an automatic, just like the new M5.

01:35:32   (laughing)

01:35:33   - That's true.

01:35:34   - I haven't been watching that, but that makes me sad.

01:35:37   (laughs)

01:35:38   What they've done to the M5 is sad.

01:35:41   - Indeed.

01:35:42   Oh, and it's both supercharged and turbocharged.

01:35:45   How about that?

01:35:46   - That's possible?

01:35:47   - Yeah, so I haven't read into this much,

01:35:50   but I think the idea is that the supercharger,

01:35:53   which is belt-driven, is good for low RPM,

01:35:56   like when you're just taking off,

01:35:57   and then the turbocharger's better

01:35:59   once you've got some motion going

01:36:01   and once you have some RPMs going.

01:36:02   Yes, you can do both because turbocharger is exhaust driven, so you have no competition

01:36:06   for things that are driving the things that are blowing air into your engine.

01:36:09   Indeed.

01:36:10   But Aaron and I, we got next to each other one week.

01:36:13   So I drove to the Volvo dealer, and she drove separately to the Volvo dealer, and then we

01:36:17   were going to grab a late dinner afterwards.

01:36:20   And I got next door at a stoplight, and she took off with not any particular quickness,

01:36:25   but I could hear that supercharger whine.

01:36:27   Coming from a Volvo, again, I would call it a truck.

01:36:30   I know it's not a truck but coming from a Volvo SUV and it's just like what why is that noise coming from?

01:36:36   It's just that's so weird

01:36:38   But anyway, so yeah, so so far so good. I mean we didn't really get a chance to play with it

01:36:44   Since we you know, we got home we got home put Declan to bed

01:36:48   I had to do a little homework for analog which we're recording tomorrow. I played in the car for two minutes

01:36:53   Realized they screwed up the registration on the car, which is going to be delightful to work out

01:36:58   And then came upstairs to record this so at a glance super nice. We're really excited

01:37:04   But I hate I hate buying cars you guys. It's the worst well

01:37:09   I think you know what you have to come to peace with in order to buy cars without having this just massive

01:37:16   You know anxiety and negativity about the whole thing is that there's no way to buy a car and not

01:37:21   Lose a bunch of money like you're losing it somewhere

01:37:24   You know, somehow you're losing a bunch of money

01:37:27   because a car is not an investment,

01:37:30   it's a giant depreciating, usable,

01:37:33   disposable eventually asset.

01:37:35   So there's no way to own a car

01:37:38   and have it not cost you a lot of money in some way.

01:37:42   And so, and all the different ways you can buy it,

01:37:45   you know, different financing options,

01:37:46   leasing versus buying, they're all just,

01:37:49   you're gonna lose a lot of money somewhere.

01:37:52   And when you go into the dealer, you know that,

01:37:55   for a dealer that has negotiable prices,

01:37:57   which is most of them, you know that they're gonna

01:38:01   make a profit somewhere off of you.

01:38:03   And you can look at it two ways.

01:38:06   You can look at it as well, they gotta make money too,

01:38:07   they have people to pay, whatever else.

01:38:09   You can also look at it as every cent I give them

01:38:12   is me losing money unnecessarily,

01:38:14   'cause I don't care about them, I just want this vehicle.

01:38:16   - Yeah, and I feel both of those things as it turns out.

01:38:19   - Right.

01:38:20   And when you're talking about large amounts of money,

01:38:23   like you are with car margins,

01:38:25   it's hard to feel a lot of sympathy

01:38:27   for the person that you spent 15 minutes talking to

01:38:30   to think that they suddenly deserve $6,000.

01:38:32   You know, so like, you might, you know,

01:38:34   actually, no, I think, I'll give you 100 bucks

01:38:38   of this margin and I want the car for invoice.

01:38:40   Like, yeah, that's, and so you're right.

01:38:43   There's this constant pressure between like

01:38:45   what you want and what they want,

01:38:46   but I feel like at some point,

01:38:48   in order to go through this and not feel horrible

01:38:52   like you do right now, like you just bought a new car.

01:38:55   Well, your wife just bought a new car

01:38:57   and so you have a new car in the family

01:38:59   and that's really cool for both of you.

01:39:00   And this should be an unquestioned celebration,

01:39:05   especially given how rarely you guys buy new cars

01:39:08   and how much you love cars.

01:39:10   This should be a celebration time

01:39:13   and instead you're being mad about this part of it

01:39:16   or you're grumbly about it because you know that somewhere

01:39:21   you probably got screwed for some amount of money

01:39:23   along the way.

01:39:24   - Oh yeah.

01:39:25   - Or at least a lot of time.

01:39:27   - That's exactly what I was gonna say.

01:39:29   - Well, so you can also think of it this way,

01:39:31   that dealerships don't necessarily make all

01:39:34   or even most of their money from selling you cars.

01:39:36   So it could be that you happened upon a dealership

01:39:39   in a situation in a particular car

01:39:41   where the dealership didn't make any money off the sale

01:39:43   or even lost money and they helped to make it up

01:39:45   in the service department or they screwed you on your trade in or whatever. They have

01:39:50   ways to make money other than just profit margins on cars they sell you. And in certain

01:39:56   situations you can get a car where the dealer gets little or no profit from the car, but

01:40:02   they will find some other way that they hope to get the money from you. And so if you can

01:40:05   convince yourself that you are in one of those situations that they let this go out the door

01:40:10   for no profit in the hopes of making it up by charging you an arm and a leg for service,

01:40:15   then maybe you'll feel better about the purchase.

01:40:17   - Yeah, but I think the reality is you got a new car,

01:40:22   it costs a lot of money, but you have a new car, enjoy it.

01:40:26   And no matter how you did this,

01:40:28   it was gonna cost you a lot of money.

01:40:30   You know, whether it cost you,

01:40:31   I don't know what this cost, so let's say,

01:40:33   whether it cost you like $45,000 or $46,000,

01:40:37   like that's not going to, you know,

01:40:40   if you look at it in absolute terms,

01:40:41   like oh, I might have been able to save $1,000,

01:40:43   that's a lot of money.

01:40:45   But if you look at it in relative terms

01:40:46   of what you're paying for this car,

01:40:47   it's like, okay, that's a small difference.

01:40:49   It's not going to make me angry for a month over this.

01:40:54   Like, let's just enjoy it, right?

01:40:55   And I feel like that's the only emotionally healthy way

01:40:58   to look at car purchases,

01:40:59   and believe me, I've been on both sides of those.

01:41:01   Like, I've had a lot of angry car investments over time,

01:41:05   but mostly before this show happened.

01:41:08   I've had a lot of cars, and not always have gone well

01:41:12   or have been financially prudent.

01:41:13   But the enjoyment you get out of this,

01:41:17   that should be untarnished as much as possible.

01:41:21   And it's hard when it's this much money.

01:41:23   'Cause it's hard to spend this much money

01:41:24   and just be flippin' about it.

01:41:26   But you love cars, you've been waiting for a long time

01:41:30   and talking and debating about which car to get

01:41:32   for this role for Aaron for a very long time.

01:41:35   Enjoy it, just enjoy it.

01:41:37   And it's kinda like the same philosophy of John.

01:41:41   Was it you, Jon, or Merlin, talking about

01:41:44   when you go to Disney to just kind of like know

01:41:46   that it's gonna cost you a fortune

01:41:47   and just plan for that ahead of time

01:41:49   and then when you're there just enjoy it?

01:41:51   - That was me.

01:41:52   - Yeah, I figured it was you.

01:41:53   See, you kind of have to do that, Casey,

01:41:54   with car purchases.

01:41:56   You know it's gonna cost you a fortune somehow.

01:42:00   At the end of it, you're gonna have something that you love.

01:42:02   It's gonna be really nice.

01:42:03   So just accept it.

01:42:05   Know you're gonna get screwed somewhere

01:42:08   and then try to move on from that

01:42:10   or don't let it get to you so much,

01:42:12   and just enjoy the thing.

01:42:14   - Yeah, it's funny you say that because,

01:42:16   so this, you know, the process started with, you know,

01:42:18   me going to the dealer just cold and being like,

01:42:21   okay, you know, what do you have?

01:42:23   Roughly, what does that cost?

01:42:23   Blah, blah, blah.

01:42:24   It was way out of our price range.

01:42:26   So then we tried the Costco thing

01:42:28   because Costco supposedly says,

01:42:30   okay, we have pre-negotiated, you know,

01:42:32   certain cars with certain options.

01:42:34   - Yeah, I did that the past two cars I bought too.

01:42:36   I was not impressed with their price both times.

01:42:38   - Yeah, same.

01:42:39   And when we went to the local dealer and said, "Oh, by the way, we didn't tell you before,

01:42:42   we're Costco people," and they basically said, "Okay, whatever, that means you get a couple

01:42:46   hundred dollars off.

01:42:47   Woo."

01:42:48   And then we tried TrueCar, and all that did, all that is is—in my experience, I shouldn't

01:42:53   say this as though it's factual, but in my experience, all TrueCar is is a sales funnel

01:42:57   for car dealerships.

01:42:58   So then you get blown up via email and phone with people who are not interested in making

01:43:03   a deal, they're just interested in having somebody new to chase.

01:43:06   Whatever.

01:43:07   So what I ended up doing, like I think I said earlier, is I just had two or three dealers

01:43:11   bidding against each other.

01:43:12   But it got to the point that once I got Richmond to a price point that I thought was fair,

01:43:18   which only happened because I had gotten other dealers to make pretty aggressive opening

01:43:23   offers, then at that point I'm going back and forth about $100 here, $200 there, $100

01:43:29   here, $200 there.

01:43:30   And it occurred to me, to your point Marco, what am I doing here?

01:43:35   At this point, I'm there, right?

01:43:38   I mean, I don't want to talk about exactly how much the car was, but you know, a hundred

01:43:43   or two hundred dollars in the grand scheme of things on a car that's, you know, of this

01:43:47   price is nothing.

01:43:49   Well, that's how they get you, though.

01:43:51   That's how they get you when you start talking about things that cost thousands and thousands

01:43:55   of dollars.

01:43:56   You're like, well, when I'm spending these tens of thousands, when I'm spending five

01:43:59   figures anyway, a couple hundred bucks is nothing.

01:44:02   Whereas if you were spending 100 bucks,

01:44:05   a couple hundred bucks on top of that,

01:44:07   you'd be like, whoa, whoa, I'm not--

01:44:08   - You're exactly right.

01:44:09   - Right, but it's the same amount of money in both cases.

01:44:11   You have to be really careful with large purchases

01:44:14   that you don't slip into that.

01:44:15   Sure, I'll get the body colored key fob for 500 bucks.

01:44:19   It's nothing compared to the price of the payments.

01:44:20   Like don't do it.

01:44:21   Just think you were doing the right thing.

01:44:23   Although you sent us a link to a picture.

01:44:25   Is this your actual car?

01:44:27   - The link I put in the chat,

01:44:29   which I will not be putting in the show notes

01:44:30   is the actual car, yes.

01:44:32   - So it looks white, that's all I'm gonna say about it.

01:44:33   - It does look white, no you're right, it does.

01:44:35   - This is a very light silver.

01:44:37   - It is, to be honest.

01:44:38   - Seems like you bought a really big white tennis shoe

01:44:41   or sneaker.

01:44:42   - Oh, you're so mean.

01:44:42   - No, I don't think it looks bad.

01:44:44   I mean, I don't know anything about SUVs really,

01:44:47   like they don't appeal to me,

01:44:48   so I have a hard time judging them,

01:44:50   but as they go, this looks pretty nice.

01:44:53   - Yeah, I mean, I'm looking forward to it.

01:44:55   Well, I'm saying that as though it's not here.

01:44:57   - That's a very light silver.

01:44:59   - Without question, without question,

01:45:00   - Maybe, I mean, you know what I'll do is I'll put

01:45:02   one of the pictures in the show notes,

01:45:03   so I'm not gonna put the link to like the listing,

01:45:05   and it's probably gonna disappear any minute anyway,

01:45:07   but I'll put a link to the picture in the show notes.

01:45:08   - Then people can reverse image structure,

01:45:10   it's not gonna do what you want.

01:45:11   - Yeah, don't worry.

01:45:12   I think it might just be overexposed.

01:45:14   There are a couple angles where it starts to look silver.

01:45:15   - It does look that way, yeah.

01:45:16   But follow Jon's advice of that,

01:45:19   I love like after telling you to like try to reduce anxiety

01:45:22   about this purchase, the fact that Jon led with

01:45:24   that's how they get ya is amazing.

01:45:26   (laughing)

01:45:28   - As a TM at the end of that phrase.

01:45:30   (laughing)

01:45:31   But I feel like that's how they getcha rationale

01:45:36   is good when considering extras and options.

01:45:39   However, when just agonizing over the bulk of this price

01:45:43   and the purchase price, the asking price,

01:45:47   the profit margin, the invoice price, all this stuff,

01:45:48   like this is where it's a good time to just say,

01:45:52   you know what, I'm gonna be spending a lot of money on this.

01:45:55   I'll try to be responsible, but it's not worth

01:45:58   agonizing about it forever.

01:45:59   Because keep in mind too, and this is one area

01:46:01   where a lot of people get caught up,

01:46:04   there is a value that, it might be hard to quantify,

01:46:08   but there is a value to your own mental health

01:46:13   regarding the surrounding this.

01:46:14   So you are not only spending a lot of time

01:46:17   trying to extract negotiations out of the dealers,

01:46:20   so the first half of the time that you spend on that

01:46:23   is probably worth it, but then you get diminishing returns

01:46:26   after that, and so-- - That's, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:46:27   So there's that issue of just the time spent

01:46:29   that it's worth keeping that in check.

01:46:32   And then also, if you're gonna get all mad

01:46:36   about something that's $100, it's like,

01:46:38   okay, well, is that gonna ruin an evening for you?

01:46:40   Is it gonna ruin a few evenings?

01:46:43   Is it gonna ruin a week for you?

01:46:44   Are you gonna be mad for a week over $100?

01:46:46   Is that worth it to you?

01:46:47   Are you gonna get mad in front of your kid

01:46:50   about something like this?

01:46:51   How is that gonna make him feel?

01:46:53   Is that worth $100 to you?

01:46:55   there's a cost to you and to your health

01:46:58   and to your family and to the mood around you,

01:47:02   the people around you, when things bother you too much.

01:47:06   And so sometimes it's actually worth just saying,

01:47:09   you know what, fine, I'll get screwed for the 100 bucks

01:47:11   because I don't wanna deal with it for the next week.

01:47:15   And so, and I don't know if you did any of that

01:47:17   'cause I wasn't there, which is probably a good thing,

01:47:20   but (laughs)

01:47:21   But a lot of people have trouble seeing the perspective

01:47:26   on that and finding that balance.

01:47:29   And I've had trouble with this a lot before too.

01:47:31   This is something I've only more recently

01:47:33   started thinking more about.

01:47:36   And there's a lot of value to yourself being able

01:47:40   to just move on from something.

01:47:45   - Yeah, I oftentimes think that you can be

01:47:48   a little cavalier about, or maybe a little fast and loose

01:47:51   how you spend your money given that you impulse bought some, you know, this really expensive TV

01:47:56   and all that jazz. But I absolutely 100% agree with you that the key here is to get the purchase

01:48:05   down to a place where you think you're not getting screwed to where you think you're doing okay.

01:48:11   And then at that point, when you're nickel and diming the dealer or yourself, I mean, is it

01:48:18   really really worth it anymore. You know, it got to the point that I was just stressing my myself out over

01:48:24   You know this little bit of money that yes $100 like I don't mean to say that $100 isn't a lot of money

01:48:31   I'm not trying to say that at all

01:48:33   $100 is absolutely a lot of money. What I'm saying is there comes a time where you have to say to yourself

01:48:38   You know what? This just ain't worth it

01:48:40   It's just not worth continuing to do this to yourself and that's that's where I eventually got is just it's

01:48:47   It's not worth it for me to continue to stress about this.

01:48:51   And so, in the end, I am super happy about the purchase.

01:48:55   I think it's going to be really great for the family.

01:48:58   I think I'm really looking forward to the car.

01:49:01   We've never had a Volvo.

01:49:02   I don't think anyone in our extended families have had a Volvo.

01:49:04   I've certainly been around them in the past.

01:49:06   But I'm really looking forward to it.

01:49:10   And at a glance, it seems super nice.

01:49:11   It has so many bits and bobs from the technology point of view.

01:49:15   I mean, it's its own. Apparently, one of the things we did, unbeknownst to us, was the dealer signed us up for like a three-month trial on AT&T, because the thing is its own Wi-Fi hotspot.

01:49:25   It's got CarPlay, as I mentioned before. It's got the, I think I said, it's got the bird's-eye view.

01:49:31   So when you park, you know, although I don't think it's quite as good as the M5's was, but anyway, as you park, it'll show you everything around you, and it has, of course, a backup camera and all that jazz.

01:49:39   It has the three-row seating, which to answer somebody in the chat,

01:49:43   the reason we got the third row seating is because we want the option of putting like

01:49:48   friends or many adults or really in a lot of cases just having plenty of storage space in the back.

01:49:54   Because you look at your average X5's trunk, and it's not that big

01:49:59   given how big the car is. And I think part of the problem here is that

01:50:03   Aaron's

01:50:06   Mazda was not a terribly large car,

01:50:08   but had a cavern of a trunk. It was just preposterously large.

01:50:13   And so she didn't really--if she's gonna get this big, you know, SUV,

01:50:18   she's not gonna want to give up on that tremendous trunk, and I don't think that's unreasonable.

01:50:22   So yeah, so it's super nice. It theoretically will parallel park itself.

01:50:29   It theoretically will perpendicularly park itself, I think, by backing in, although I'm not 100% sure.

01:50:35   Wow, I didn't even think about that. Man, if it doesn't back in, I'm gonna be furious. We're gonna have to return it.

01:50:39   My car backs in.

01:50:43   Exactly. So, yeah, so it's

01:50:45   I'm really looking forward to it. I say looking forward to it only because like I haven't driven it yet

01:50:50   And we haven't really played with all the technology stuff yet

01:50:53   But it's it's tough because here it is

01:50:56   It's like such a monumental day and moment in our lives

01:50:59   And it was slightly miserable because I was sad to see the monster go and Erin was devastated to see the monster go

01:51:05   She wanted the new car. It's not like I'm compelling her to get a new car, but she was devastated to see that car go

01:51:10   But you know it's also it's all it's like that oh

01:51:14   Thank God that's over with because I don't want to ever want to do that crap again

01:51:19   you know it's that that that release that just

01:51:22   finally and so

01:51:25   Yeah, I'm not sure if I'm going to do any sort of formal review for either the website or my quote unquote YouTube channel

01:51:32   I mean I have a channel that has a single video on it

01:51:34   You can just call it your vlog, it's okay.

01:51:36   Yeah, totally.

01:51:38   But yeah, so far so good. It seems really nice.

01:51:41   And I'm really looking forward to spending more time in it and getting to check out all the bits and bobs and whatnot.

01:51:47   You should have thought about moving to a different state so you wouldn't have to have that stupid registration sticker in the middle of your windshield.

01:51:52   Here we go.

01:51:54   I know.

01:51:55   Although I might want to point out that it's not actually...

01:51:57   Is the one in Aaron's off-center?

01:51:59   Yeah, that's what I'm going to say.

01:52:01   Is it a little bit?

01:52:02   Yeah, it looks like it's a little bit to the left.

01:52:03   - It almost doesn't matter because it being anywhere near

01:52:07   the middle of your windshield is so awful

01:52:09   that the fact that it's off center is like

01:52:11   a secondary concern.

01:52:12   - Well, but if I was gonna move, I would probably move

01:52:14   to like Pennsylvania or North Carolina where,

01:52:16   I don't recall where the stickers are there,

01:52:17   but at least you don't need a front damn license plate.

01:52:20   Drives me insane that we have to have those on our cars.

01:52:24   - By the way, seeing this picture of your gloriously

01:52:26   white car next to Aaron's new allegedly silver car,

01:52:30   that is really light silver.

01:52:32   It is, it is, to be fair.

01:52:34   That is not very different looking cars.

01:52:37   Now I miss Aaron's car.

01:52:38   Aaron's car, look at that.

01:52:40   What a great '90s car that was.

01:52:42   Look at that silly wing on the back.

01:52:44   I know, it's got '90s styling.

01:52:46   Yeah, that's totally a '90s car, yeah.

01:52:49   It is not a--

01:52:50   oh, I was so happy, and now I'm so angry at the two of you.

01:52:54   Hey, put us like a good wing.

01:52:56   Look how it's all car shaped and everything.

01:52:57   Yeah, it's awesome.

01:52:58   It doesn't look that different from my very well-loved '96

01:53:01   Maxima that I had. It's a 2007 Mazda 6 you guys. Why you gotta do this? It doesn't mean it was designed in 2007.

01:53:08   (sighs)

01:53:10   Why are you so mean to me?

01:53:12   [Door closes]

01:53:14   [BLANK_AUDIO]