ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Real-time follow-up, as of approximately 10 or so minutes ago, I am now an uncle.

00:00:05 ◼   ► Hey, congratulations!

00:00:06 ◼   ► Hey!

00:00:06 ◼   ► Do you intend to be a creepy uncle or a fun uncle or some other kind of uncle?

00:00:12 ◼   ► I hadn't even thought about it, but uh...

00:00:14 ◼   ► I mean, you gotta think about these things.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Casey's gonna try to be the cool uncle, we already know that.

00:00:18 ◼   ► The question is, the question is, what is he going to be?

00:00:20 ◼   ► Oh, that is, that's true.

00:00:21 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:00:24 ◼   ► That is 100 percent, that is 100 percent accurate.

00:00:28 ◼   ► I wish I could deny it, but that is absolutely accurate.

00:00:34 ◼   ► So I wanted to spend a moment and talk about the somewhat political section of our last

00:00:40 ◼   ► episode.

00:00:42 ◼   ► And we got a lot of feedback.

00:00:44 ◼   ► We got a lot of good feedback.

00:00:45 ◼   ► We got a lot of bad feedback.

00:00:48 ◼   ► But one thing that was common that I think was on me that I wanted to apologize to listeners

00:00:52 ◼   ► for is, at one point in the heat of getting fired up, or in the midst of getting fired

00:00:58 ◼   ► up, I had said in so many words, you know, "If you disagree with me, you're a monster."

00:01:03 ◼   ► And name calling is not really a constructive way to have a reasoned debate. Not to say

00:01:08 ◼   ► that that debate was terribly reasoned anyway, but name calling does not really help the

00:01:12 ◼   ► scenario. And, you know, if I'm going to be grumpy about other people name calling, then

00:01:17 ◼   ► I should be grumpy about me doing it. And so, no snark intended. I really do apologize

00:01:22 ◼   ► for name calling. I stand by the general premise of what I said, which is to say I think that some

00:01:26 ◼   ► of the behaviors of those who want to take away healthcare, that is a monstrous behavior, but that

00:01:31 ◼   ► does not by necessity make somebody a monster. So I don't know, you guys can either confirm or deny

00:01:38 ◼   ► everything I've just said, but for what it's worth, I feel bad about that, and I wish I had

00:01:43 ◼   ► handled that a little bit better, despite by and large sticking by pretty much everything I said,

00:01:47 ◼   ► but the name calling doesn't help. I think you undercut yourself with the monstrous behaviors

00:01:51 ◼   ► thing because I'm not sure that distinction is particularly important, but we don't usually

00:01:56 ◼   ► talk about politics in the show, and I think we kind of accidentally talked about it,

00:01:59 ◼   ► which is fitting, because it was not on the topic list. It sort of slid right into it from

00:02:03 ◼   ► WikiTribune, which was on the topic list, and it ended up staying in the show unlike many other

00:02:08 ◼   ► similar discussions. But one of the main problems with any time that we get into

00:02:12 ◼   ► politics is that for the most part, the three of us are coming from the same place. Like,

00:02:18 ◼   ► we agree on the issues. And it's actually surprisingly difficult to talk about a controversial

00:02:26 ◼   ► political issue amongst three people who all agree with each other. And it's why we get the

00:02:31 ◼   ► complaints of like, you know, echo chamber, so on and so forth. The good thing and the bad thing

00:02:35 ◼   ► about podcasts is even though it's just the three of us talking about it, and we all agree,

00:02:39 ◼   ► in aggregate, it's not an echo chamber, because believe me, the opposing opinions are presented

00:02:45 ◼   ► to us, right? So we just don't get them in real time. It is delayed. But that's not, you know,

00:02:51 ◼   ► we're not doing a political debate show. But yeah, so when we're all talking about it, and we all

00:02:55 ◼   ► more or less agree, we're just like saying things that each one of us agrees about. There's not even

00:02:59 ◼   ► that much nuance to our disagreement. And it just kind of spirals off from there. And I don't,

00:03:03 ◼   ► I don't, it's difficult to, it's difficult to clarify our thinking on it when there's

00:03:08 ◼   ► essentially no opposition on the podcast itself. So that's a difficulty I always feel when,

00:03:13 ◼   ► when engaging those and when listening to them, always trying to look for an angle that is

00:03:17 ◼   ► illuminating rather than just the three of us venting, which occasionally happens. Occasionally

00:03:21 ◼   ► we got to vent and occasionally we're feeling bad about things. I'm surprised after the presidential

00:03:26 ◼   ► election, we didn't have a similar show. Somehow we avoided it, but it came out last week.

00:03:29 ◼   ► I have no regrets. I had a feeling, but like In an Outland says in the chat,

00:03:36 ◼   ► saying that people are monsters is counterproductive and makes the argument sound dumb.

00:03:39 ◼   ► and I would agree with that.

00:03:40 ◼   ► So I am sorry for that portion of the discussion.

00:03:43 ◼   ► The rest of it, I pretty much stick by.

00:03:44 ◼   ► - I think one thing that is really badly missing

00:03:49 ◼   ► in our culture is the ability to agree on some

00:03:55 ◼   ► cause and effect norms or being able to talk

00:03:59 ◼   ► about cause and effect without it being assumed to be,

00:04:03 ◼   ► or without it being politicized.

00:04:05 ◼   ► 'Cause if we, the healthcare debate,

00:04:07 ◼   ► It's like when I was saying last week

00:04:09 ◼   ► about how I want people to actually think

00:04:12 ◼   ► through their arguments of,

00:04:13 ◼   ► well, how do we think people in society should be treated?

00:04:18 ◼   ► And how do we think the government should take care

00:04:20 ◼   ► of people or not take care of people?

00:04:22 ◼   ► I wish we could talk about that in, we as a society,

00:04:25 ◼   ► I wish we could talk about that

00:04:27 ◼   ► without it being so politically charged

00:04:29 ◼   ► and people immediately jumping down each other's throats

00:04:31 ◼   ► about their identities.

00:04:34 ◼   ► Because what we need to instead be able to talk about

00:04:37 ◼   ► like, you know, how do we want to treat people in our society who need some kind of help?

00:04:45 ◼   ► Do we want the standard of that to be that we should just let people fail and die and

00:04:51 ◼   ► starve or not? And if the answer is not, then how do we allocate these resources? How do

00:04:58 ◼   ► we pay for them? And I wish we could actually talk about that, but the second you give an

00:05:04 ◼   ► opinion either way on that. Whether you say, "I think society should help those less

00:05:10 ◼   ► fortunate," whether you think, you know, "We should provide for people and we should

00:05:14 ◼   ► like not let people fail too badly or starve or die," or whether you think that we should

00:05:21 ◼   ► just let people do all those things. That shouldn't be a U.S. Republican versus Democrat

00:05:29 ◼   ► thing, but it is. And so it's hard to say like, "Oh, we should stay away from political

00:05:35 ◼   ► topics or that every view is valid," when some of these views, people on both sides

00:05:43 ◼   ► think that it's not just politics, that it's like the basics of their identity or of human

00:05:49 ◼   ► standards of decency and obligations to each other. And it's not just political. It's

00:05:55 ◼   ► It's not like I think we should vote for the person

00:05:58 ◼   ► in the red versus the person in the blue or whatever else.

00:06:01 ◼   ► It's like I want people who aren't like me to die

00:06:05 ◼   ► or I want to help people.

00:06:08 ◼   ► And those shouldn't be political opinions.

00:06:10 ◼   ► Those should be like this is the one that we teach ourselves

00:06:13 ◼   ► and that we value because we're good people

00:06:16 ◼   ► and this is the other one.

00:06:17 ◼   ► But apparently that's not what these things are.

00:06:19 ◼   ► - But nobody wants people to die.

00:06:21 ◼   ► That's what people are just gonna say.

00:06:22 ◼   ► - No, no.

00:06:23 ◼   ► They very much do.

00:06:25 ◼   ► I mean, so that's the, I don't want to get into it again

00:06:27 ◼   ► 'cause this is what it's supposed to be,

00:06:29 ◼   ► touching on this topic, but that's,

00:06:30 ◼   ► I feel like I can argue the other side pretty decently

00:06:34 ◼   ► to like the old other side, again,

00:06:36 ◼   ► I alluded to like the '80s when they used to make arguments

00:06:39 ◼   ► to say that actually we all agree

00:06:40 ◼   ► on what we want to accomplish,

00:06:41 ◼   ► it's just a difference of opinion

00:06:42 ◼   ► on how to best accomplish it.

00:06:43 ◼   ► - Right.

00:06:44 ◼   ► - That debate is a lot easier to have.

00:06:46 ◼   ► What you're getting at is it doesn't feel like

00:06:47 ◼   ► we're even unified on the goal.

00:06:49 ◼   ► But even though the consequences of these decisions

00:06:52 ◼   ► may be real, it's not connected in a straight line

00:06:55 ◼   ► in terms of I want people who aren't like me to die.

00:06:59 ◼   ► Like, I don't think you will get anybody

00:07:02 ◼   ► to own that opinion anywhere, right?

00:07:04 ◼   ► - Well, that's true, but the problem is

00:07:07 ◼   ► that people will very strongly own opinions

00:07:11 ◼   ► that precede that, but if you actually follow them

00:07:13 ◼   ► through the conclusions, then that is a penalty.

00:07:15 ◼   ► So, suppose somebody has a life-threatening illness

00:07:19 ◼   ► that is treatable, but they can't afford the treatment.

00:07:22 ◼   ► What should happen in this case?

00:07:24 ◼   ► Should our society find a way to pay for people

00:07:28 ◼   ► in these kinds of conditions to get treatment,

00:07:30 ◼   ► or should we let them die?

00:07:32 ◼   ► That is a fundamental argument that we have

00:07:37 ◼   ► seemingly about every 10 years.

00:07:39 ◼   ► And if you're on the side of we should help people,

00:07:42 ◼   ► it seems like you'd be a total monster,

00:07:45 ◼   ► to use Casey's word, right?

00:07:46 ◼   ► It seems like you'd be a total monster

00:07:48 ◼   ► to argue the other side of that,

00:07:49 ◼   ► to say like, you know, actually,

00:07:50 ◼   ► no, we should let people die.

00:07:52 ◼   ► Like, no, that's—but that actually—

00:07:53 ◼   ► But they don't want them to die.

00:07:55 ◼   ► They don't want them.

00:07:56 ◼   ► They're not wishing them ill.

00:07:57 ◼   ► They wish that if they could snap their fingers and cure them, they would say, "Yes, you're

00:08:00 ◼   ► cured.

00:08:01 ◼   ► We should totally do that."

00:08:02 ◼   ► It's just an unfortunate situation, and there's just, you know, debating the best

00:08:06 ◼   ► way to allocate scarce resources and to incentivize the right behaviorist and blah, blah, blah.

00:08:10 ◼   ► Like, we start shifting to the more intellectual argument towards it.

00:08:13 ◼   ► But when you connect it up to, like, malice, like, to say that people have malice towards

00:08:17 ◼   ► like it's not... and get it, ignoring the specifics of this thing more generally, the other general

00:08:23 ◼   ► topic on the political stuff is, this happens to me, this happens to everybody when you're

00:08:27 ◼   ► listening to someone talk about something, whether it's political or technological or anything on a

00:08:31 ◼   ► podcast, they will, especially things with two sides, red/blue, Mac PC, whatever it may be,

00:08:38 ◼   ► you know, the two-sided debate, they will address a thing like, "people who support x are wrong

00:08:46 ◼   ► because blah blah blah blah blah. And if people that support X are on a particular team and

00:08:52 ◼   ► you are also on that team but you don't support X, they'll say people who support X, here's

00:08:58 ◼   ► what I don't like about it. And people will get offended to say, well, I don't support

00:09:01 ◼   ► X, but I'm on the same team as the people who support X. And because you're yelling

00:09:05 ◼   ► at that person, I feel you're yelling at me. And it's very difficult to hold on to the

00:09:09 ◼   ► thread that says, look, if they are complaining about something that you don't believe, they're

00:09:14 ◼   ► not talking to you. You know what I mean? But when there are two teams, it's like, if

00:09:18 ◼   ► they're saying anything about my team, even though I agree with them on this specific

00:09:22 ◼   ► point, it's like they're attacking my team and I feel attacked. Like, are you trying

00:09:25 ◼   ► to say that I believe X? It's like, well, if you don't believe X, we're not talking

00:09:27 ◼   ► to you. And so, like, this is not addressed with you. But when there's two teams, and

00:09:33 ◼   ► it's on your team, you can't help but get pulled into it. And again, that happens with

00:09:37 ◼   ► everybody, especially with two-sided debates or, you know, actual sports teams, as the

00:09:41 ◼   ► case may be, where you can't wrap your mind around a player on your favorite sports team

00:09:45 ◼   ► maybe did something bad, but you really do love the sports team and you try to square

00:09:49 ◼   ► that circle so when someone says, "Hey, that person on that sports team did a bad thing,"

00:09:53 ◼   ► you say, "You be quiet!

00:09:54 ◼   ► He didn't do a bad thing!"

00:09:55 ◼   ► And really, in your heart of hearts, you also agree he did a bad thing, but you love the

00:09:58 ◼   ► sports team.

00:09:59 ◼   ► Right?

00:10:00 ◼   ► So, anyway, that's a difficulty, and when I'm listening to people talk about, you know,

00:10:06 ◼   ► it's to like or dislike a particular movie or a director or a TV show or, you know, Mac versus

00:10:13 ◼   ► PC things, it's very easy to think that they're talking about you or to you, ascribing to you

00:10:18 ◼   ► beliefs that you don't have, when you have to realize it's a broadcast medium and no one is

00:10:22 ◼   ► saying you specifically there believe these things. And if you don't, then don't take on the burden of

00:10:28 ◼   ► thinking that you're being reprimanded for something that you don't believe.

00:10:32 ◼   ► The good news, though, is that there are some universal truths in the world.

00:10:36 ◼   ► And speaking of sports, there are universal truths like Bill Belichick is a cheater and

00:10:41 ◼   ► Tom Brady really should not be playing football.

00:10:42 ◼   ► So anyway, let's talk about the back of the iPhone.

00:10:45 ◼   ► Adam Mork writes in to say, "My take on that rumor image with Touch ID on the back is that

00:10:52 ◼   ► it's a real schematic for a real prototype, but it's only for testing.

00:10:57 ◼   ► There have been more leaked schematics with no Touch ID on the back, and I'm surprised

00:11:00 ◼   ► that this has been debated in two episodes as an inevitability. In my opinion, this is

00:11:04 ◼   ► Adam, there is zero chance Apple releases a phone with such idea in the back. It's too

00:11:08 ◼   ► big of a paradigm shift in form and function. Apple has done more work for far less in the

00:11:12 ◼   ► past. I'd bet a lot of money it's under the screen at launch. It really feels like a deal-breaking

00:11:17 ◼   ► feature they would wait for. So I think to be clear, none of us were saying

00:11:21 ◼   ► that was inevitability merely that this was a supposed leak thing and that we could all

00:11:26 ◼   ► conceive of Apple releasing such a thing.

00:11:29 ◼   ► Obviously it would not be ideal, and obviously, you know, plan A is the thing under the screen.

00:11:34 ◼   ► But we were discussing it, because like, what if they did?

00:11:35 ◼   ► What if they couldn't get it under the screen?

00:11:37 ◼   ► Would they put it on the back?

00:11:38 ◼   ► Like, obviously, Apple doesn't want to if they want to do that thing on the screen.

00:11:41 ◼   ► It's totally cool, right?

00:11:43 ◼   ► But I, you know, as I said when we first started talking about this, I believe it is a thing

00:11:47 ◼   ► that Apple would do, because if the choice is between doing that and not having a new

00:11:53 ◼   ► phone form factor at all, they would totally do that.

00:11:57 ◼   ► But I also totally buy this, you know, this is not a slam dunk, this is just a random

00:12:00 ◼   ► drawing that could be totally fake and as I said we'll find out when the real phone

00:12:03 ◼   ► is released and we look at the millimeter sizing and if they got it down to three decimal

00:12:06 ◼   ► points, chances are that it was at the very least a real leak or something manufactured

00:12:12 ◼   ► based on the knowledge of what the phone would be like.

00:12:14 ◼   ► But yeah, could be a prototype, could be just a testing thing, it's hard to think of it

00:12:17 ◼   ► as being a prototype like that because it would take a lot of stuff to move around the

00:12:22 ◼   ► the touch ID to the back even just for testing because there's a bunch of other crap there

00:12:24 ◼   ► on the phone.

00:12:26 ◼   ► But anyway, for my part, I'm not tied to any one of these particular rumors and obviously

00:12:32 ◼   ► the plan A in both terms of rumors and in terms of what Apple would want to do is a

00:12:37 ◼   ► thing in the screen.

00:12:38 ◼   ► And so that's what I'm certainly hoping for, but if it doesn't arrive and the thing is

00:12:42 ◼   ► on the back, we won't all be flipping out because I feel like we will be acclimated

00:12:47 ◼   ► to that idea through these leaks.

00:12:49 ◼   ► All right.

00:12:50 ◼   ► Let's talk about dirty fabric on laptops

00:12:52 ◼   ► Sure, let's

00:12:55 ◼   ► This this is this is a little bit of an odd more than a little bit of an odd thing. So

00:13:02 ◼   ► to set some context the surface laptop has

00:13:07 ◼   ► Alkintara, is that how you pronounce it? I just just avoid it. Just just avoid it

00:13:12 ◼   ► Like we avoid all the words we can't pronounce just avoid it

00:13:14 ◼   ► And and so it has some sort of fabric II leathery something or other on it and that is to my understanding

00:13:20 ◼   ► including where your wrists sit. And that seems to me to be a really poor

00:13:26 ◼   ► choice for any human being of any kind. Because I remember having a poly book,

00:13:31 ◼   ► hi Steven Hackett, which is to say a white polycarbonate MacBook, and I had to

00:13:36 ◼   ► take a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to that thing like once every couple weeks, or

00:13:40 ◼   ► deal with all of my wrist gunk and sweat and whatever and oils turning that thing

00:13:46 ◼   ► brown and it was gross. And that's plastic. Imagine fabric! And so there's a link to...

00:13:52 ◼   ► what is this? Boy Genius Report or something like that? I don't remember what BGR stands

00:13:56 ◼   ► for.

00:13:57 ◼   ► >> It's Brown's Booger.

00:13:58 ◼   ► >> Oh, fair enough. So we have a link to something. And they show an example of a surface with...

00:14:05 ◼   ► it appears to be a surface keyboard with some really gross wrist oils all over it because

00:14:09 ◼   ► clearly it's been used a lot. And that just strikes me as a poor choice. But I don't know,

00:14:13 ◼   ► maybe I'm missing something. What do you guys think?

00:14:15 ◼   ► When we talked about the fabric on the Surface laptop's last show, I was concerned about

00:14:22 ◼   ► the edges fraying and the difficulty of mating that material.

00:14:26 ◼   ► But more broadly, as this dirty fabric issue brings up, a laptop is something that gets

00:14:35 ◼   ► a lot of contact, even though you're not supposed to rest your wrists when you're typing.

00:14:39 ◼   ► People do.

00:14:41 ◼   ► And people's hands and wrists are going to be in contact with this thing very very frequently

00:14:46 ◼   ► during use.

00:14:48 ◼   ► And for anything like that, it's a good idea to make it out of a material that is durable

00:14:54 ◼   ► or washable or ideally both.

00:14:57 ◼   ► Because there is gunk on our hands.

00:14:59 ◼   ► And it is going to come off and go onto the thing that we're touching and there needs

00:15:03 ◼   ► to be some plan for that.

00:15:05 ◼   ► So on the iPhone screens, A, they're made of glass which is very hard material and easy

00:15:10 ◼   ► clean and B) they have that coating that tries to repel oil so that when you do try to wipe

00:15:13 ◼   ► all your gunk off it will come off easily.

00:15:16 ◼   ► And that's a good plan for the front of a cell phone that you're going to be touching

00:15:19 ◼   ► all the time.

00:15:20 ◼   ► Similarly for the track pads on Macs, I think we all remember the original track pads before

00:15:25 ◼   ► they were glass, they were, you know, various kinds of plastic, and over time the track

00:15:30 ◼   ► pads would get kind of shiny and slippery and worn down and discolored on the particular

00:15:34 ◼   ► parts that you touch them.

00:15:36 ◼   ► Moving to the glass track pad really helps solve that problem to keep it sort of uniformly

00:15:39 ◼   ► color colored and textured easy to clean because it is a part that you're

00:15:44 ◼   ► touching all the time. same thing with keycaps making them out of hard plastic

00:15:48 ◼   ► figuring out how to make keycaps so that the letters and numbers don't come off

00:15:51 ◼   ► I'm sure we have all met somebody who is some strain of X person which means that

00:15:56 ◼   ► they secrete oils from their bodies that wear the letters off of the keycaps

00:15:59 ◼   ► right some people just have I don't know it's if it's acidic or otherwise solvent

00:16:06 ◼   ► based secretions from their fingertips that will defeat almost any keyboard and leave

00:16:11 ◼   ► their keycaps perfectly smooth and featureless. But it's a challenge to...

00:16:15 ◼   ► Wait, people have acid fingers? That's awesome! I don't know if it's actually acid. All I

00:16:19 ◼   ► know is that some people, you know, if you look at some people's keyboards, they will

00:16:22 ◼   ► have the exact same keyboard as you and all the letters will be gone from like the home

00:16:25 ◼   ► row or like the E key and the return and stuff. And you're like, "Look, I'm using the same

00:16:29 ◼   ► keyboard as you for the same period of time. There's obviously some difference in our body

00:16:32 ◼   ► chemistry that is causing this to happen." Which is fine, like whatever, but the job

00:16:35 ◼   ► of making a keyboard is to make it easy to clean and make the little, you know, letters

00:16:40 ◼   ► resist wearing off. For a laptop, to cover it in fabric, fabric falls down in almost

00:16:46 ◼   ► all these categories. It is not easy to clean because anything that gets in there gets down

00:16:53 ◼   ► to the weave or whatever, and to really wash fabric, you put it in the washing machine,

00:16:57 ◼   ► and if you're lucky, that does a good job, but you're not putting your laptop in the

00:16:59 ◼   ► washing machine, so you've got a problem already.

00:17:02 ◼   ► To wash fabric you need moisture.

00:17:04 ◼   ► You need liquid, which unless you're Casey,

00:17:07 ◼   ► that's not going anywhere near your laptop.

00:17:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it still needs to pass through it.

00:17:11 ◼   ► Like it's not just gonna go on the surface.

00:17:13 ◼   ► And you wanna make it so that whatever does get on it

00:17:17 ◼   ► comes off easily, you know?

00:17:19 ◼   ► And the surface stays the same

00:17:22 ◼   ► if you have it from year to year.

00:17:23 ◼   ► And the fabric, fabric wears down and frays

00:17:25 ◼   ► and can get thin and rub through in spots

00:17:28 ◼   ► and so on and so forth.

00:17:29 ◼   ► So it is not a great solution for anything

00:17:31 ◼   ► you're gonna handle that much.

00:17:33 ◼   ► I mean, even clothes wear out,

00:17:35 ◼   ► 'cause they're made of cloth, we put it on our body,

00:17:36 ◼   ► eventually you get holes in the knees

00:17:38 ◼   ► and holes in the pockets and they just fray.

00:17:41 ◼   ► So it is definitely a material

00:17:45 ◼   ► that you can't treat the same way you would treat

00:17:47 ◼   ► even Casey's plastic eye book.

00:17:49 ◼   ► And one of the problems with the plastic eye books

00:17:52 ◼   ► was they were white and they had some discoloration issues

00:17:56 ◼   ► that may not have been noticeable

00:17:57 ◼   ► if they were like a boring gray

00:18:00 ◼   ► or if the plastic could be formulated differently

00:18:03 ◼   ► if it was a different color,

00:18:04 ◼   ► but they were like very white and translucent

00:18:06 ◼   ► and that was a problem.

00:18:07 ◼   ► I think they probably could be cleaned pretty easily.

00:18:09 ◼   ► I don't know if they were porous or what,

00:18:10 ◼   ► but and even for the very, what,

00:18:13 ◼   ► the Blackbook also had similar problems

00:18:14 ◼   ► with the surface texture going.

00:18:16 ◼   ► Eventually Apple settled on materials

00:18:18 ◼   ► that are pretty darn resilient.

00:18:20 ◼   ► The aluminum and the finish they put on the aluminum,

00:18:22 ◼   ► it's not super glossy.

00:18:23 ◼   ► You know, it's like,

00:18:25 ◼   ► it's a finish that will stay looking the same

00:18:27 ◼   ► for pretty much the life of the thing

00:18:28 ◼   ► and combined with the glass trackpad and good keycaps and the glass screens,

00:18:32 ◼   ► you can have a Apple laptop that looks more or less the same,

00:18:36 ◼   ► plus or minus dense and maybe scratches, but in terms of color,

00:18:41 ◼   ► discoloration and finish many, many years later,

00:18:44 ◼   ► one of these fabric covered things, I think no matter how careful you are,

00:18:48 ◼   ► depending on your personal body chemistry and amount of crap on your hands,

00:18:53 ◼   ► not literally, but maybe literally, uh, it's going to be very difficult.

00:18:58 ◼   ► Very, very difficult to keep this thing looking like new with unwashable fabric coating the

00:19:03 ◼   ► surface where your hands are going to be.

00:19:06 ◼   ► So perhaps not a wise choice.

00:19:08 ◼   ► It is a differentiator.

00:19:09 ◼   ► It is a style difference.

00:19:11 ◼   ► As I mentioned last show, I think it's a style difference that doesn't go far enough because

00:19:14 ◼   ► it essentially looks like an Apple laptop that someone put a bunch of felt on top of,

00:19:18 ◼   ► which A, I think is not a good look and B, I think is APES Apple's design cues still too

00:19:23 ◼   ► strongly despite the fabric.

00:19:26 ◼   ► Anyway, be careful out there with your fabric-covered laptops.

00:19:30 ◼   ► One thing I will also point out, I was thinking about this earlier today, and as Casey's

00:19:33 ◼   ► talking about the plastic MacBook, it kind of reminded me of this, that it wasn't that

00:19:37 ◼   ► long ago that most of Apple's lower-end or consumer-grade products were plastic, and

00:19:44 ◼   ► you had to pay more to get the premium Pro ones that were metal.

00:19:49 ◼   ► And for all the complaining I do about some of Apple's product decisions or apathy or

00:19:53 ◼   ► there are various things nearby there.

00:19:57 ◼   ► The move to pretty much everything being made

00:20:00 ◼   ► out of premium materials is appreciated.

00:20:03 ◼   ► That is something that not every brand does,

00:20:05 ◼   ► in fact no other brand does it as far as I know

00:20:07 ◼   ► in computing.

00:20:08 ◼   ► Every laptop, every Mac that Apple sells

00:20:12 ◼   ► is now made of metal.

00:20:14 ◼   ► Every phone now is made of decent metal

00:20:17 ◼   ► and has a decent industrial design.

00:20:19 ◼   ► There are no more cheap plastic options,

00:20:21 ◼   ► unless I'm forgetting something big,

00:20:22 ◼   ► as far as you can tell, there aren't any.

00:20:25 ◼   ► Everything now is made of the nice materials

00:20:28 ◼   ► that, for the most part, that age well

00:20:31 ◼   ► and things like that.

00:20:32 ◼   ► - Apple TV is plastic, right?

00:20:34 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, but you don't touch that or move it anywhere.

00:20:37 ◼   ► - It's nice looking plastic,

00:20:38 ◼   ► and you totally don't touch it.

00:20:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, same deal with time capsule.

00:20:41 ◼   ► Thanks, Tipster.

00:20:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I forgot about the time capsule.

00:20:43 ◼   ► Everybody forgot about the time capsule.

00:20:45 ◼   ► Apple forgot about the time capsule.

00:20:47 ◼   ► - But they don't sell it.

00:20:48 ◼   ► They're out of the router business.

00:20:49 ◼   ► - I think they still are for sale.

00:20:50 ◼   ► I think they just weren't going to make more of them.

00:20:52 ◼   ► - Really?

00:20:53 ◼   ► - Anyway, it doesn't matter.

00:20:55 ◼   ► Anyway, so yeah, just nice little note

00:20:57 ◼   ► that it's nice that now everything

00:20:58 ◼   ► is made of good materials.

00:21:00 ◼   ► - Someone in the chat mentioned the iPhone 5C,

00:21:02 ◼   ► which is my immediate thought with plastic.

00:21:03 ◼   ► I think the iPhone 5C shows that plastic

00:21:06 ◼   ► can look and feel premium,

00:21:08 ◼   ► because I think the 5C was a great design,

00:21:11 ◼   ► a great external design for a phone.

00:21:13 ◼   ► Every time I see them in public,

00:21:14 ◼   ► they look like they're brand new.

00:21:16 ◼   ► Like, you know, it's just a very hard, durable,

00:21:20 ◼   ► shiny, probably really easy to clean plastic that doesn't get dirty, right?

00:21:25 ◼   ► So it can be done.

00:21:27 ◼   ► And you know, you mentioned the Apple TV, it's a similar type of thing that even if

00:21:30 ◼   ► people were handling that I think it would be very resistant.

00:21:32 ◼   ► Because if you just make it out of, like plastic is not just one material, it's a million different

00:21:35 ◼   ► formulations.

00:21:36 ◼   ► And Apple sort of learned the hard way which formulations do and don't work from the soft

00:21:41 ◼   ► plastic on the screen of the first iPod Nano, you know, to the discoloring Macbooks and

00:21:47 ◼   ► other materials they tried like the titanium power book that had problems with the paint

00:21:52 ◼   ► staying on.

00:21:53 ◼   ► They eventually set it on a solution that works well and they spread it throughout their

00:21:56 ◼   ► line which is a good idea but I'm not going to count out plastic entirely but I think

00:22:00 ◼   ► I'm going to kind of count out fabric entirely as something that you want to put on the "wrist

00:22:07 ◼   ► rest area" of a laptop.

00:22:08 ◼   ► Like no matter how you go to the furniture store and they say "we've got the magic coating

00:22:14 ◼   ► that repels water and you can throw like jello pudding on this couch and nothing will happen

00:22:18 ◼   ► and that's true until that coating wears away and then you know then you know it's anything

00:22:25 ◼   ► that you're going to rub something up against it's just it's not going to last so I suppose

00:22:30 ◼   ► they could work on was that Simon izing or whatever all sorts of super duper waterproofing

00:22:36 ◼   ► coating for fabrics but a that they make the fabric feel more like plastic at that point

00:22:41 ◼   ► and B, even those wear off eventually.

00:22:43 ◼   ► - Can I pay the extra 50 cents at the car wash

00:22:45 ◼   ► to get it re-simonized?

00:22:47 ◼   ► - I don't know what that, I'm just pulling that

00:22:49 ◼   ► word out of my head.

00:22:50 ◼   ► I don't know where that came from.

00:22:51 ◼   ► - I believe that's wax at the car wash,

00:22:53 ◼   ► but I'm not positive.

00:22:54 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:22:56 ◼   ► Yes, I go through drive-through car washes.

00:22:58 ◼   ► You know, don't at me, bro, or whatever.

00:23:00 ◼   ► - I can't believe you'd do that.

00:23:01 ◼   ► I wouldn't do that.

00:23:02 ◼   ► I'm sure Casey wouldn't.

00:23:03 ◼   ► - I decided a few years ago, after first doing it

00:23:07 ◼   ► for cars where I didn't know better or didn't care,

00:23:10 ◼   ► And then I started getting nicer cars

00:23:12 ◼   ► and people like you guys scared me

00:23:14 ◼   ► into not going through automatic car washes

00:23:16 ◼   ► and I didn't want to get my clear cut all swirly or whatever.

00:23:19 ◼   ► And the result of that was I had really nice cars

00:23:21 ◼   ► that were always incredibly embarrassingly dirty.

00:23:24 ◼   ► - You live in upstate New York,

00:23:25 ◼   ► that's what you're supposed to have.

00:23:26 ◼   ► - So instead, I decided, starting with my current car,

00:23:31 ◼   ► I decided I'm not going to care anymore,

00:23:33 ◼   ► I'm just gonna go through the car wash when I feel like it.

00:23:35 ◼   ► And my car has been way cleaner as a result.

00:23:38 ◼   ► And I don't care.

00:23:39 ◼   ► - It's just a lease.

00:23:40 ◼   ► care all the scratches that are getting from little bits of grit that are on those flabby

00:23:43 ◼   ► things scratching your car all over the place. It's not yours.

00:23:46 ◼   ► And honestly I don't really notice. Like I know what to look for. It is a little bit

00:23:50 ◼   ► different now that my car is red. Like it's way more noticeable on black. On the red it's

00:23:55 ◼   ► a lot less noticeable or it's noticeable at fewer angles I guess. So I don't care. And

00:24:00 ◼   ► most of the time from almost every angle my car looks better now that I'm going through

00:24:05 ◼   ► car washes whenever I feel like it,

00:24:07 ◼   ► rather than when I would go like five months

00:24:10 ◼   ► without getting a car wash, 'cause I had to wait

00:24:12 ◼   ► until I could go to the place that took an hour,

00:24:14 ◼   ► or when Casey visited.

00:24:16 ◼   ► - Pretty much.

00:24:17 ◼   ► Oh, to be blissfully ignorant again.

00:24:19 ◼   ► And you know, it turns out maybe the black cars

00:24:21 ◼   ► weren't such a good idea.

00:24:22 ◼   ► Moving on.

00:24:23 ◼   ► - Oh! - Oh, man.

00:24:25 ◼   ► Amartya Banerjee, and I'm sorry if I pronounced that wrong,

00:24:28 ◼   ► asks, "Do you folks think that the popularity

00:24:30 ◼   ► "of touch input on Windows laptops

00:24:32 ◼   ► "could just be attributed to the terrible trackpads?

00:24:34 ◼   ► that given a good trackpad, having a fridge toaster OS in a laptop form factor is unnecessary.

00:24:41 ◼   ► It's very hard for me to say because I've never had a touchscreen laptop, and I've only

00:24:45 ◼   ► ever used them a couple times, and I found them very frustrating because I wasn't used

00:24:49 ◼   ► to being able to touch the screen, and maybe I grazed it accidentally and all of a sudden

00:24:54 ◼   ► my cursor moved, or maybe I was stabbing at it like a monster, who knows.

00:24:58 ◼   ► But anyway, because I've never really understood the appeal of it, I don't think that it's

00:25:04 ◼   ► a trackpad problem, although I do know that Windows computers have just woefully terrible

00:25:10 ◼   ► trackpads.

00:25:11 ◼   ► I think that people just genuinely do like having touchscreen laptops.

00:25:15 ◼   ► Like anyone who I've ever spoken to who has a touchscreen Windows laptop, pretty much

00:25:20 ◼   ► every single one of them enjoys it and likes having the option of stabbing at the screen.

00:25:24 ◼   ► I don't get that.

00:25:25 ◼   ► It seems kind of kooky to me, but that's pretty universally my anecdotal experience.

00:25:31 ◼   ► What do you guys think?

00:25:32 ◼   ► - I mean, we've all been around computers for a long time now.

00:25:34 ◼   ► We know that there are screen textures and non-screen textures.

00:25:38 ◼   ► So maybe the screen texture is finally just one.

00:25:40 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:25:41 ◼   ► - As long as they don't touch my screen.

00:25:43 ◼   ► I know.

00:25:44 ◼   ► I agree with Casey that, yes, they have travel track pads, but this is a separate issue.

00:25:48 ◼   ► People like to touch the screen.

00:25:49 ◼   ► And I don't think they do it super duper often.

00:25:51 ◼   ► They just like the option of being able to do it because, I mean, just think of the generation

00:25:54 ◼   ► is going to grow up with the expectation that every screen is touchable. To have one that's

00:25:57 ◼   ► not just seems broken, it doesn't mean that you're going to spend the vast majority of your time on

00:26:02 ◼   ► your traditionally laptop-shaped piece of hardware stabbing at the screen. I mean, you're going to be

00:26:07 ◼   ► typing on the keyboard, you're going to be using the trackpad, and every once in a while you're

00:26:09 ◼   ► going to stab at the screen, and it's just all of a piece. And I think it mostly comes down to

00:26:14 ◼   ► software. Like, if the touch targets are frustratingly small, as I think they would be if you

00:26:19 ◼   ► just slap the touchscreen on a Mac, that won't be a good experience. But if you're using something

00:26:24 ◼   ► like a modern version of Windows where a lot of the applications and parts of the OS make an

00:26:29 ◼   ► effort to have touchable targets, whatever, I think it's fine. And I don't think it has to do

00:26:34 ◼   ► with the bad trackpads. Because honestly, we trackpad connoisseurs, Marco in particular,

00:26:41 ◼   ► with his hatred of the ForceTrust trackpad, may be picky about these things. Regular people cannot

00:26:46 ◼   ► distinguish between the worst Windows trackpad and the best Apple one.

00:26:52 ◼   ► Because I mean I think most people have trackpad skills that are

00:26:58 ◼   ► more in line with mine. I am not a tactical wizard. I am not particularly

00:27:03 ◼   ► graceful with the trackpad. I think I'm closer to the average and being a closer

00:27:08 ◼   ► to the average trackpad person I know how clumsy it feels and that is the

00:27:14 ◼   ► overwhelming factor in trackpad use, not the quality of the trackpad, or the mouse tracking,

00:27:19 ◼   ► or the size of the trackpad, or how sensitive it is, or whatever. No matter how good the

00:27:23 ◼   ► trackpad is, I feel clumsy. So I think that's how most people feel, and that's why if you

00:27:26 ◼   ► were trying to put the two trackpads, maybe they would notice the Apple one is bigger,

00:27:29 ◼   ► but other than that, they're like, "Yeah, whatever, they're both trackpads." So no,

00:27:33 ◼   ► that's not the reason they like touch screens.

00:27:37 ◼   ► I think that's a little bit aggressive. I think that certainly not everyone notices

00:27:41 ◼   ► how far improved the Apple trackpads are,

00:27:43 ◼   ► but I think a lot of quote unquote normal people do notice.

00:27:48 ◼   ► Certainly they notice the size, just like you said,

00:27:50 ◼   ► but I think that it's noticed more often than most.

00:27:52 ◼   ► I've heard people that are not like super nerds say to me,

00:27:55 ◼   ► "Oh, you know, I got this Mac,

00:27:56 ◼   ► "and man, that trackpad's much better."

00:27:58 ◼   ► It doesn't happen a lot, to your point,

00:28:00 ◼   ► but it does happen for sure.

00:28:01 ◼   ► - It's kind of one of those things

00:28:02 ◼   ► where if they haven't tried the better one,

00:28:04 ◼   ► they're not sitting there using their Windows laptop

00:28:05 ◼   ► and you come up to them, "Man, how can you use that trackpad?"

00:28:07 ◼   ► They're like, "What? It's fine."

00:28:08 ◼   ► Now, if you were to give them an Apple laptop

00:28:10 ◼   ► for a week and they had to go back,

00:28:11 ◼   ► Maybe they could tell the difference,

00:28:12 ◼   ► but I don't hear it as a pain point.

00:28:14 ◼   ► I don't hear it as a reason

00:28:15 ◼   ► people don't like their computers.

00:28:17 ◼   ► Or if I go to have to use someone's Windows computer at work

00:28:19 ◼   ► and I say to the person,

00:28:21 ◼   ► "I don't know how you work on this trackpad,"

00:28:23 ◼   ► they'll be like, "What, what's wrong with it? It's fine."

00:28:24 ◼   ► 'Cause they don't have anything to compare it to

00:28:26 ◼   ► and it is the same awkward little thing

00:28:29 ◼   ► that they're just used to using.

00:28:30 ◼   ► Or they just use the keyboard all the time.

00:28:32 ◼   ► - Don't forget the culture of being a Windows user,

00:28:34 ◼   ► which is like everything kind of doesn't work.

00:28:38 ◼   ► And so you just, that's what you expect as normal.

00:28:40 ◼   ► you don't even realize how much better things can be

00:28:43 ◼   ► when things work and are thoughtfully designed.

00:28:45 ◼   ► Because on Windows, you're just constantly

00:28:47 ◼   ► lying on a bed of nails,

00:28:49 ◼   ► and you don't even notice it after a while.

00:28:52 ◼   ► - Sometimes I go to use someone's Windows laptop at work

00:28:54 ◼   ► and they have four buttons,

00:28:56 ◼   ► two above and two below the track pad,

00:28:58 ◼   ► or some other weird arrangement

00:28:59 ◼   ► where there's basically redundant left and right

00:29:00 ◼   ► mouse buttons on the surface of the laptop,

00:29:03 ◼   ► and I'll try to do it and nothing will happen.

00:29:05 ◼   ► Like, oh yeah, that set of buttons doesn't work,

00:29:07 ◼   ► use these ones.

00:29:08 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:29:09 ◼   ► continue to tolerate and use this thing, you consider it not broken when some of the buttons

00:29:14 ◼   ► and some of the major buttons on the front of it don't work. You just get around. You

00:29:17 ◼   ► just have to use that button. Well, no, no, no. What probably is happening

00:29:20 ◼   ► there is it probably has both an inferior trackpad pointing device and the unequivocally

00:29:26 ◼   ► superior trackpoint style pointing device. And the buttons above the trackpad are for

00:29:32 ◼   ► the trackpoint, the weapon mouse. Yeah, that's probably it.

00:29:35 ◼   ► And oftentimes that'll get turned off because people are wrong and they use the trackpad

00:29:39 ◼   ► instead. Before the entire world, well actually it's me, remember that I'm basing this opinion

00:29:44 ◼   ► on a pre-gesture time. Now the gestures are a thing, and trackpads honestly are the better

00:29:49 ◼   ► approach. But before gestures were a thing, I tell you, all you people who laugh at that

00:29:55 ◼   ► little nubbin mouse, you're wrong. It was way better. Anyway, Cory Floyd wrote in to

00:30:00 ◼   ► say that they work at Wikimedia and heard our latest show discussing the Wicked Tribune

00:30:06 ◼   ► Project and they wanted to kind of, not necessarily correct, but bring up a few things.

00:30:12 ◼   ► WikiTribune isn't affiliated with Wikipedia or Wikimedia in any way, which has been causing

00:30:17 ◼   ► some confusion in the media.

00:30:18 ◼   ► This is Corey still.

00:30:19 ◼   ► I think this mostly came across in your episode, but I also wanted to include a few other interesting

00:30:23 ◼   ► specifics below.

00:30:25 ◼   ► WikiTribune is based on WordPress, not MediaWiki, like Wikipedia and its sister projects.

00:30:31 ◼   ► Additionally, it is not actually developed or otherwise maintained by existing Wikimedia

00:30:36 ◼   ► or Wikipedia community.

00:30:37 ◼   ► And finally, Wikimedia also has an existing, albeit unsuccessful, project called Wikineews,

00:30:43 ◼   ► which is in some ways a competitor to Wikitribune in the first place.

00:30:46 ◼   ► And that's it.

00:30:47 ◼   ► Wikineews.org.

00:30:48 ◼   ► We'll put all these links in the show notes.

00:30:49 ◼   ► So I've got Jimmy Wales.

00:30:51 ◼   ► That is the connecting thread.

00:30:52 ◼   ► But don't be confused about the fact that this is a Wikipedia spinoff, because it's

00:30:56 ◼   ► not.

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00:32:58 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:33:00 ◼   ► - So another Amazon cylinder that isn't a cylinder thing

00:33:05 ◼   ► came out and I really don't care.

00:33:09 ◼   ► So does somebody who actually gives a crap

00:33:10 ◼   ► wanna talk about this, Marco?

00:33:11 ◼   ► - And this is more of a three-dimensional trapezoid.

00:33:14 ◼   ► - Ah, fair enough, yeah, good point.

00:33:15 ◼   ► - This is what Marco said.

00:33:16 ◼   ► We've got a quote from someone named Marco

00:33:18 ◼   ► who wrote into the show to say,

00:33:20 ◼   ► "I'd upgrade our kitchen echo to this in a heartbeat," he says, looking at a then-rumored

00:33:24 ◼   ► picture of the actual Echo show.

00:33:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:33:28 ◼   ► So, Marco, have you upgraded your kitchen echo to this now that your heart has beaten?

00:33:32 ◼   ► No, I haven't, because it isn't out yet.

00:33:34 ◼   ► But I did place a pre-order, and it will be here on, allegedly, June 28th.

00:33:38 ◼   ► So we will see when that comes.

00:33:41 ◼   ► Basically the gist of it is, you know, the Amazon Echo is quite wonderful to many people,

00:33:47 ◼   ► myself included.

00:33:49 ◼   ► And my family has really gotten into it.

00:33:51 ◼   ► We use it all the time.

00:33:52 ◼   ► And it lives in our kitchen, and it is wonderful

00:33:56 ◼   ► for playing music around the house,

00:33:58 ◼   ► for setting timers, especially while cooking.

00:34:02 ◼   ► Tiff uses it all the time for things like checking

00:34:04 ◼   ► the weather in the morning when running around

00:34:06 ◼   ► and getting Adam ready for school.

00:34:08 ◼   ► So there are a number of use cases during the day

00:34:12 ◼   ► where it would be nice to have a screen.

00:34:15 ◼   ► For instance, the timers that I just mentioned,

00:34:18 ◼   ► it would be nice to see how much time is left

00:34:20 ◼   ► to see them counting down.

00:34:22 ◼   ► If there ever becomes a way to set multiple named timers,

00:34:25 ◼   ► right now you can set multiple timers

00:34:26 ◼   ► but you can't name them.

00:34:27 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure the Google Home you can name them

00:34:30 ◼   ► but the Echo does not support that at the moment.

00:34:32 ◼   ► But again, like when you have multiple timers going

00:34:34 ◼   ► it would be nice to see them visually

00:34:36 ◼   ► and maybe to have little touch buttons

00:34:37 ◼   ► to pause or cancel them individually

00:34:39 ◼   ► 'cause right now it's kind of,

00:34:40 ◼   ► you kind of can't do it very well via voice

00:34:43 ◼   ► if you have multiple ones going.

00:34:45 ◼   ► When Tiff checks the weather in the morning.

00:34:47 ◼   ► First of all, these pictures show it kind of always

00:34:50 ◼   ► having this home screen that has the clock

00:34:52 ◼   ► and the current weather conditions

00:34:54 ◼   ► on the screen all the time.

00:34:55 ◼   ► So that would be nice too, to just not even have to

00:34:58 ◼   ► ask at certain things.

00:34:59 ◼   ► If you're just walking by, you can glance at it

00:35:01 ◼   ► and see the weather.

00:35:02 ◼   ► So there's all sorts of wonderful things like that

00:35:04 ◼   ► where many of the uses that we currently use the Echo for

00:35:08 ◼   ► would be nicer sometimes or all the time with a screen.

00:35:12 ◼   ► Now, there is a fair argument to be made.

00:35:15 ◼   ► "Why don't you just put an iPad right there

00:35:18 ◼   ► "and just use an iPad all the time

00:35:20 ◼   ► "and enable the Hey Dingus feature on it

00:35:22 ◼   ► "and just use that?"

00:35:24 ◼   ► And that is a fair argument.

00:35:26 ◼   ► I have an iPad that sits right next to it

00:35:27 ◼   ► that I take around the first floor

00:35:29 ◼   ► and play some podcasts while we do things.

00:35:31 ◼   ► But we really enjoy the Amazon Echo ecosystem.

00:35:36 ◼   ► We enjoy the way the product works.

00:35:37 ◼   ► It works very well for us.

00:35:39 ◼   ► To have another Echo come out that has a screen,

00:35:43 ◼   ► I am willing to give Amazon the benefit of the doubt on this.

00:35:45 ◼   ► When the first Echo came out, we all made fun of it

00:35:47 ◼   ► because they released this horrible video

00:35:49 ◼   ► and it seemed so weird and creepy.

00:35:50 ◼   ► Not that different as we mentioned last week

00:35:52 ◼   ► from the new Echo Look,

00:35:54 ◼   ► the weird dressing room camera thing.

00:35:56 ◼   ► But I will give them the benefit of the doubt

00:35:59 ◼   ► because as weird as the first Echo seemed

00:36:01 ◼   ► because they were very bad at selling it

00:36:03 ◼   ► or promoting it and giving us an idea

00:36:05 ◼   ► of what it would be like,

00:36:07 ◼   ► it turned out to be pretty great for a lot of people,

00:36:08 ◼   ► myself included and my family included.

00:36:11 ◼   ► Also to point out too, so there have been increasing rumors

00:36:14 ◼   ► and increasing rumblings that Apple is probably

00:36:17 ◼   ► going to release something similar to this.

00:36:20 ◼   ► Rumors are that it might even come as soon as

00:36:22 ◼   ► like next month at WBC.

00:36:24 ◼   ► Keep in mind that if Apple does something like this,

00:36:26 ◼   ► which would be like a premium speaker

00:36:28 ◼   ► with some kind of screen and some kind of built in

00:36:31 ◼   ► you know, Siri thing, how much is that gonna cost?

00:36:35 ◼   ► 'Cause this Amazon thing is 230 bucks.

00:36:38 ◼   ► And if you buy two of them you get $100 off of it.

00:36:40 ◼   ► That's what I did, I ordered two.

00:36:42 ◼   ► I figure, we'll have a use for the second one,

00:36:45 ◼   ► maybe we'll give it to our parents or whatever else.

00:36:49 ◼   ► There is no way that Apple is going to release

00:36:53 ◼   ► a standalone speaker with a screen that is very iPad-like,

00:36:56 ◼   ► possibly for $200.

00:36:59 ◼   ► That's not going to happen.

00:37:00 ◼   ► So this will be interesting to see

00:37:03 ◼   ► how Apple plays in this market.

00:37:04 ◼   ► And also, again, going back to previous discussions

00:37:08 ◼   ► about it, a lot of what makes the Echo so good

00:37:12 ◼   ► are things that Apple's not historically been so great at,

00:37:14 ◼   ► things like having a really easy to use open ecosystem

00:37:18 ◼   ► to integrate really well with it,

00:37:20 ◼   ► things like having a really reliable voice service

00:37:23 ◼   ► that is fast, that is very consistent,

00:37:25 ◼   ► that works the same way every single time,

00:37:28 ◼   ► and hears you very, very well every single time.

00:37:31 ◼   ► These are things that Apple so far has struggled with.

00:37:33 ◼   ► So we'll see how that goes,

00:37:34 ◼   ► but I am optimistic about this Amazon thing,

00:37:38 ◼   ► and to have this only be like 50 bucks more

00:37:42 ◼   ► than the one without the screen is pretty impressive.

00:37:45 ◼   ► And yeah, so I'm looking forward to when it arrives in June.

00:37:48 ◼   ► And look, it might be terrible, we don't know yet.

00:37:49 ◼   ► Nobody has a review of it yet.

00:37:51 ◼   ► No one outside of Amazon, as far as I know,

00:37:53 ◼   ► has gotten a chance to use one yet.

00:37:54 ◼   ► But again, I think Amazon's track record

00:37:57 ◼   ► in this particular area has actually been proven

00:37:59 ◼   ► to be pretty good, so we'll see what happens.

00:38:01 ◼   ► - So you mentioned before that you thought

00:38:03 ◼   ► it was a fair argument that why don't you just have

00:38:04 ◼   ► an iPad in your kitchen instead of this.

00:38:06 ◼   ► I don't think that's a particularly good argument

00:38:09 ◼   ► because the iPad, even setting aside software issues

00:38:14 ◼   ► in terms of how well Siri understands

00:38:18 ◼   ► and can respond to what you can do

00:38:19 ◼   ► and how open the ecosystem is for adding, you know,

00:38:22 ◼   ► various skills and actions

00:38:23 ◼   ► that connect other devices in your house,

00:38:25 ◼   ► even just setting that aside,

00:38:26 ◼   ► just in terms of the hardware.

00:38:29 ◼   ► An iPad can't compete with this type of device

00:38:34 ◼   ► in two of the three areas that are most important.

00:38:39 ◼   ► One, speakers.

00:38:40 ◼   ► iPad, the new iPads have very good speakers,

00:38:44 ◼   ► but this device is dedicating way more room for speakers.

00:38:47 ◼   ► So in theory, again, we haven't seen one of these,

00:38:49 ◼   ► in theory, you can put way, way, way better speakers

00:38:52 ◼   ► in this thing, 'cause there's just so much more room

00:38:54 ◼   ► for quote unquote real speakers

00:38:56 ◼   ► instead of very clever little cavities

00:38:57 ◼   ► in your skinny little thing.

00:38:59 ◼   ► And playing audio to fill the whole kitchen or whatever

00:39:02 ◼   ► is an important function of these types of devices.

00:39:06 ◼   ► And the second one is microphones.

00:39:08 ◼   ► The iPad has, I think it has multiple likes probably for noise cancellation, but I think

00:39:13 ◼   ► it has two.

00:39:14 ◼   ► The strength of the Echo is whatever weird five-microphone beamforming BS it does to

00:39:20 ◼   ► be able to...

00:39:21 ◼   ► Eight microphones.

00:39:22 ◼   ► How many?

00:39:23 ◼   ► Eight?

00:39:24 ◼   ► Eight.

00:39:25 ◼   ► I know.

00:39:26 ◼   ► Anyway, there's way more room for more microphones in this type of thing, and again, we don't

00:39:28 ◼   ► know how many microphones this thing has, but based on the Echos they have put out,

00:39:33 ◼   ► this is one of the most important functions of this thing, is to be able to hear you no

00:39:37 ◼   ► no matter where you are. And the iPad, current iPads, just don't dedicate that much hardware

00:39:41 ◼   ► for that. The third area where I think it can match it is in the camera, because you

00:39:44 ◼   ► didn't mention this, but this doesn't just have a screen, it has a camera. And they're

00:39:47 ◼   ► selling the kind of video conferencing thing, who knows how that will go. That's a whole

00:39:50 ◼   ► sort of network effect ecosystem type thing. We may just still end up, end up FaceTiming

00:39:55 ◼   ► each other on our phones.

00:39:56 ◼   ► I do see why they added this, and I think people will use it, just not me.

00:40:01 ◼   ► Yeah, you can go on to grandma, who doesn't have an iPhone, doesn't know how iPhones work,

00:40:04 ◼   ► and if she can just come in front of this, especially the drop-in feature, like where

00:40:07 ◼   ► you don't actually, where there's a certain time where your thing is open to just suddenly

00:40:10 ◼   ► seeing these people on the screen, you know? Like if you set this up with relatives who

00:40:16 ◼   ► are not tech-savvy, just to be able to do video conferencing, where you could never

00:40:20 ◼   ► get them to use an iPad, even if that was too much for them, if you just plop this down

00:40:23 ◼   ► on their counter, like I think that could be effective for that particular purpose.

00:40:27 ◼   ► But for regular people, I don't know. But the camera, again, getting back to the, what

00:40:30 ◼   ► what I call the look or the echo look over,

00:40:33 ◼   ► what the hell is it called?

00:40:33 ◼   ► - The Echo Screen, what's it called?

00:40:35 ◼   ► Echo-- - Echo Look.

00:40:36 ◼   ► - Echo Show. - Echo Look, yeah.

00:40:37 ◼   ► - Echo Show.

00:40:38 ◼   ► That's because everyone thinks it's a podcast,

00:40:39 ◼   ► but it's not. - No, no, the other one,

00:40:40 ◼   ► I'm talking about the look, the fashion camera thing.

00:40:42 ◼   ► - These are the worst names.

00:40:43 ◼   ► Okay, yeah, that's called the look.

00:40:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I was saying last week

00:40:48 ◼   ► that this device category of computing devices

00:40:52 ◼   ► in your home that have cameras that can see you has legs,

00:40:55 ◼   ► and here we have within the next week

00:40:57 ◼   ► another device of granite from the same company

00:40:58 ◼   ► that puts a camera in your house that can see you,

00:41:00 ◼   ► and does something with it.

00:41:02 ◼   ► Both of them look like they have tiny little tablet type

00:41:06 ◼   ► cameras.

00:41:07 ◼   ► So I think that's a wash in terms of the iPad

00:41:09 ◼   ► competing with this.

00:41:11 ◼   ► But I would be looking for these type of devices,

00:41:16 ◼   ► the Look and the Show and other things like this,

00:41:19 ◼   ► to get increasingly sophisticated cameras that

00:41:21 ◼   ► can follow you, that made multiple cameras to synthesize

00:41:25 ◼   ► an image with depth sensors and stuff like that.

00:41:27 ◼   ► Because that's where these things are going,

00:41:29 ◼   ► to have more sort of awareness of what's going on.

00:41:31 ◼   ► They can project sound and video to you,

00:41:34 ◼   ► and they can be aware of where you,

00:41:35 ◼   ► they can hear you no matter where you are,

00:41:37 ◼   ► and they can see you no matter where you are.

00:41:38 ◼   ► As far as I can tell from this one,

00:41:40 ◼   ► it only sees you when you're in front of it.

00:41:41 ◼   ► And that leads me to all the things I don't like

00:41:44 ◼   ► about this particular hardware product.

00:41:46 ◼   ► Like, if it is a fixed camera, that's kind of crappy.

00:41:49 ◼   ► You'd hope it'd be smarter, but again,

00:41:51 ◼   ► cost, you know, whatever, this is the first version.

00:41:53 ◼   ► We'll wait.

00:41:53 ◼   ► This thing is homely.

00:41:54 ◼   ► It's not an attractive device.

00:41:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, I will agree with you on that.

00:41:58 ◼   ► I mean, but to be fair, like, the Echo Cylinder is also not very attractive.

00:42:03 ◼   ► I think that's pretty sleek, and I think the Cylinder has a thing going for it where it's

00:42:06 ◼   ► to be unobtrusive and you can put it off to the side.

00:42:07 ◼   ► Although I do, that's another reason why I like the Google Home, now that I think about

00:42:11 ◼   ► it, because I was thinking about, you know, if we got an Echo, where would I put it?

00:42:14 ◼   ► The Home is smaller than the Echo, and it is less obtrusive in the place where I have

00:42:18 ◼   ► it.

00:42:19 ◼   ► But this, you can't make this unobtrusive because it has to be a place where you can

00:42:21 ◼   ► see the screen.

00:42:22 ◼   ► And it's not particularly attractive.

00:42:25 ◼   ► or white, it looks kind of like a sort of retro 70s piece of hardware. It's very strange.

00:42:32 ◼   ► It certainly doesn't look elegant. It doesn't look like an Apple device anyway, and it doesn't

00:42:36 ◼   ► -- it has kind of sort of -- it's kind of like a brutalism, kind of like a rugged, you

00:42:40 ◼   ► know, 80s Soviet-era hardware. I mean, I guess it has a certain appeal. And then finally,

00:42:47 ◼   ► this thing is -- I can't really tell from the pictures, but it's slanted back in all

00:42:51 ◼   ► the pictures I see. It's tilted backwards, like the shape dictates the tilt. It doesn't

00:42:55 ◼   ► to have an adjustable tilt and for something that you're going to be looking at that's

00:42:59 ◼   ► going to be looking back at you, that seems just ergonomically and practically speaking

00:43:04 ◼   ► very limiting. Because the Echo you can put literally anywhere that it can hear you like

00:43:08 ◼   ► high, low, left, right, just whatever, it's fine. This thing, you need sight lines and

00:43:13 ◼   ► you need to be able to see it and it needs to be able to see you and depending on how

00:43:17 ◼   ► tall you are or how tall most of the people are, even just being able to see kids and

00:43:21 ◼   ► adults, like how would you get that thing in a position where it can both, where grandma

00:43:23 ◼   ► can both see your kids that are half your height and you.

00:43:28 ◼   ► And even just if you're just living by yourself, you have to put it on a surface where the

00:43:33 ◼   ► camera can see you and you can see the screen.

00:43:36 ◼   ► It seems like that it would have been better to design this to have a little bit more flexibility

00:43:43 ◼   ► about angle and stuff.

00:43:45 ◼   ► Again, costs, I understand you can't have an adjustable stand or any kind of tilt thing

00:43:49 ◼   ► that is any reasonable quality for this price point.

00:43:51 ◼   ► So like I'm willing to give a lot of leeway there, but this definitely, it kind of reminds

00:43:57 ◼   ► me of the first Kindle.

00:43:58 ◼   ► Remember what a monster the first Kindle was?

00:43:59 ◼   ► Oh, that was something.

00:44:01 ◼   ► Weird angular white thing with the weird terrible hardware keyboard on it.

00:44:05 ◼   ► It's like they took a lot of shots of that until they kind of settled down onto like

00:44:10 ◼   ► the paper white, which is kind of the epitome of the old style Kindle.

00:44:12 ◼   ► And now they've gone with that weird thing.

00:44:13 ◼   ► It's like thick on one edge and thin on the other.

00:44:16 ◼   ► They need to iterate on this one.

00:44:17 ◼   ► I'm sure they will.

00:44:18 ◼   ► Although I say I'm sure they will, but what have they done to the Amazon Echo?

00:44:20 ◼   ► it's still the same black cylinder it always was maybe they just nailed that one on the first try but

00:44:23 ◼   ► I worry about their software ecosystem too because once they start getting into the realm of like

00:44:28 ◼   ► video calling and stuff like that I think it's going to be difficult for them to compete with

00:44:32 ◼   ► facetime because that's basically what they've got here they've got their own little version of

00:44:35 ◼   ► facetime and facetime for all of the wonkiness of like the weird patent thing that caused them to

00:44:41 ◼   ► have to restructure the way it's done and the fact that steve jobs impulsively said it was going to

00:44:45 ◼   ► going to be opened up to the world and it never was and all those other things.

00:44:50 ◼   ► I use it for its intended purpose frequently and it works.

00:44:53 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:44:54 ◼   ► I can successfully send video and audio to people.

00:44:57 ◼   ► The only limiting factor is ever crappy internet connections, which is really nothing you can

00:45:01 ◼   ► do about it, right?

00:45:02 ◼   ► Because if you're trying to communicate with somebody who has a crappy internet connection

00:45:04 ◼   ► or you have a crappy internet connection, it's not great, but it will gracefully degrade

00:45:09 ◼   ► to a black screen with just audio and also other things.

00:45:13 ◼   ► It basically works.

00:45:14 ◼   ► And Amazon, as far as I'm aware, this is kind of their first foray into this.

00:45:19 ◼   ► I think did they do like kind of video support for one of the color Fire tablets maybe?

00:45:24 ◼   ► So maybe it's not their very first thing?

00:45:26 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:45:27 ◼   ► Yeah, they had some kind of thing where it was like a screen sharing thing where you

00:45:30 ◼   ► could, where like their support rep could like log into your tablet and show you how

00:45:34 ◼   ► to do things or do things for you.

00:45:35 ◼   ► - Did you see them or did they see you?

00:45:38 ◼   ► - I don't know.

00:45:39 ◼   ► I never, I don't think I ever heard of anybody actually using this feature, but they did

00:45:42 ◼   ► have that kind of thing.

00:45:43 ◼   ► And again, I think this is one of those things like,

00:45:45 ◼   ► Amazon, you know, similar to the drop-in thing,

00:45:49 ◼   ► was that what they call on this?

00:45:50 ◼   ► Where you can kind of force call someone.

00:45:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's the same as the Google knock-knock thing

00:45:54 ◼   ► that we thought was a dangerous sort of thing for abuse,

00:45:58 ◼   ► but this is opt-in.

00:45:58 ◼   ► - But at least the way they're doing it,

00:46:00 ◼   ► yeah, it's like it's opt-in, it's whitelist only,

00:46:02 ◼   ► and it seems like it's pretty well controlled.

00:46:03 ◼   ► But I do give Amazon credit.

00:46:06 ◼   ► They have for years on their tablets and other products,

00:46:10 ◼   ► other mainstream consumer products,

00:46:12 ◼   ► for years they have been adding features like that

00:46:16 ◼   ► or like very good parental controls

00:46:19 ◼   ► and like kid scheduling and everything else.

00:46:22 ◼   ► Features that you really would expect

00:46:24 ◼   ► a company like Apple to do.

00:46:26 ◼   ► 'Cause Apple's so considerate and innovative

00:46:28 ◼   ► and cares a lot about the customer experience and everything.

00:46:31 ◼   ► Amazon has really made a lot of these features

00:46:32 ◼   ► over the years and they can kind of get away with it

00:46:34 ◼   ► because their scale is so much smaller.

00:46:37 ◼   ► Imagine the staffing required if Apple were to

00:46:41 ◼   ► one of those things where they will log into your computer

00:46:43 ◼   ► with you and show you how to do things,

00:46:44 ◼   ► like they would never in a million years be able to

00:46:47 ◼   ► handle that on any kind of scale.

00:46:50 ◼   ► But Amazon can do it 'cause they're really at a much

00:46:53 ◼   ► smaller scale for most of these products.

00:46:54 ◼   ► - As far as we're aware.

00:46:56 ◼   ► - Well, that's true.

00:46:57 ◼   ► - There's no labels on the waxes.

00:46:59 ◼   ► - They make a bunch of weird stuff,

00:47:01 ◼   ► and not all of it works, but it does seem like,

00:47:04 ◼   ► I think they have earned the benefit of the doubt

00:47:07 ◼   ► in that some of their weird stuff is actually really good.

00:47:11 ◼   ► - It's also weird that like, I mean,

00:47:13 ◼   ► it's setting aside Apple, which has a strange history

00:47:16 ◼   ► with these type of devices and just like,

00:47:19 ◼   ► being almost like stubbornly unwilling to enter markets

00:47:22 ◼   ► even after it's proven they're viable

00:47:25 ◼   ► just because it doesn't seem big enough for Apple

00:47:26 ◼   ► or they have different plans

00:47:27 ◼   ► or they're pursuing other strategies

00:47:29 ◼   ► and just in the meantime we get nothing

00:47:30 ◼   ► and now maybe they're finally gonna come out with one.

00:47:32 ◼   ► But like an Apple that was doing the opposite

00:47:35 ◼   ► of what it's actually doing.

00:47:36 ◼   ► Apple is reducing the number of things that it's made, getting rid of the, you know, the routers

00:47:41 ◼   ► and reducing, trying to simplify its computer and phone lines and, you know, it's going the other

00:47:46 ◼   ► direction. But if it wasn't going in that direction and it was expanding, there's a lot of categories

00:47:50 ◼   ► of devices that you feel like Apple could make a good one of. And also Google. Both of these

00:47:53 ◼   ► companies have the, have all the pieces to be able to make a really good Bluetooth speaker,

00:48:00 ◼   ► a really good thing that listens to you. I would argue that I don't think we have seen

00:48:06 ◼   ► great hardware from Google.

00:48:08 ◼   ► - I mean, Google Home is fine.

00:48:10 ◼   ► - We've seen lots of things that come kind of close

00:48:13 ◼   ► and they always kind of fall down on the support

00:48:16 ◼   ► or they don't follow through or the products

00:48:19 ◼   ► end up being delayed and not shipping

00:48:20 ◼   ► or they have weird shortcomings

00:48:22 ◼   ► or they only get an OS for like six months.

00:48:25 ◼   ► I think Google has shown that they are really not set up

00:48:29 ◼   ► to be a company that sells and supports their own hardware.

00:48:33 ◼   ► - They don't follow through

00:48:35 ◼   ► but they have all the pieces to make it.

00:48:37 ◼   ► They have the server side component,

00:48:38 ◼   ► they can make reasonable hardware,

00:48:39 ◼   ► even if it's just a broken apart Chromecast

00:48:41 ◼   ► shoved in a cylinder, which is the Google Home.

00:48:43 ◼   ► And the Chromecast for that matter,

00:48:45 ◼   ► like that little dongly thing.

00:48:46 ◼   ► I agree with you that the follow through isn't there,

00:48:49 ◼   ► but they have the pieces to make it happen.

00:48:52 ◼   ► Like any company can make a Bluetooth speaker,

00:48:53 ◼   ► but once you start connecting it up to services,

00:48:55 ◼   ► not everybody has services.

00:48:56 ◼   ► Google has tons of services.

00:48:57 ◼   ► Apple has enough services that, you know,

00:48:59 ◼   ► you get Siri and Google Now and stuff like,

00:49:01 ◼   ► what's on the other end of this making it work, right?

00:49:03 ◼   ► And so those simple categories of like,

00:49:05 ◼   ► Wouldn't we have all loved if Apple made a good Bluetooth speaker and had been revising it over the years?

00:49:10 ◼   ► We would all give them an extra 50 bucks for the Apple one because it would be nice in some way, if it was actually nice.

00:49:15 ◼   ► And the same thing for, you know, essentially a Bluetooth speaker with a screen with Siri that you can ask the weather that, you know, like the cheapest possible iPad shoved into a Bluetooth speaker thing with much better, like Apple could have made this is what I'm saying.

00:49:28 ◼   ► Apple could make the exact Echo Show and who knows if WWC may announce the thing they've made that is like this but better.

00:49:33 ◼   ► and as Marco said, twice as expensive, whatever.

00:49:36 ◼   ► But they haven't been participating in this market at all,

00:49:39 ◼   ► leaving other people to try all sorts of things

00:49:41 ◼   ► and I suppose to gain loyalty and to build their ecosystems

00:49:45 ◼   ► and so on and so forth, to the point where I feel like

00:49:47 ◼   ► Google saw it happening and they're like,

00:49:49 ◼   ► oh, we should have a cylinder and so they do.

00:49:51 ◼   ► And maybe Google will try to come out

00:49:53 ◼   ► with something like this too.

00:49:54 ◼   ► And just to see Apple sit on the sidelines,

00:49:56 ◼   ► it's fine if they are working on the next big thing,

00:49:59 ◼   ► but it may turn out that these little things

00:50:01 ◼   ► build up to the next big thing, and if Apple's gonna sit it out for much longer, I think

00:50:05 ◼   ► it's a mistake.

00:50:06 ◼   ► I'm curious to see what happens, and I'll use me as an example, if it, let's say at

00:50:13 ◼   ► WWDC they announce the Apple equivalent of this tube thing. I'm stumbling because I

00:50:22 ◼   ► don't want to say any of the trigger words and have to have you bleep them later, but

00:50:25 ◼   ► anyway.

00:50:26 ◼   ► It's called the Apple Alexa Hey Siri.

00:50:27 ◼   ► Yeah, well, you did this to yourself. So anyway, if Apple releases a lady in a canister equivalent,

00:50:35 ◼   ► I'm curious to see what my reaction will be. Because sitting here now, like, again, I don't

00:50:39 ◼   ► doubt that the Echo is very nice and that it serves a purpose for a lot of people and

00:50:43 ◼   ► that, you know, I have no doubt, Marco, that you guys use it constantly and love it. Like,

00:50:47 ◼   ► there's nothing wrong with that. Me, I don't feel like this is solving a problem that I

00:50:51 ◼   ► have in my life. I've said that many times before. I'm curious as kind of a litmus test

00:50:55 ◼   ► to how susceptible I am to whatever Apple tells me to do.

00:51:00 ◼   ► I'm curious to see what happens

00:51:02 ◼   ► if Apple releases their own lady in a canister

00:51:04 ◼   ► and what my reaction is to that.

00:51:07 ◼   ► Because if I'm like, "Well, holy crap,

00:51:08 ◼   ► "I've got to have one of these.

00:51:10 ◼   ► "How could I have lived without it?"

00:51:11 ◼   ► And it's really just a Echo but Apple-branded,

00:51:14 ◼   ► then apparently I really am a lemming

00:51:16 ◼   ► and it's all downhill from here.

00:51:19 ◼   ► - In reality, it would most likely be $300

00:51:22 ◼   ► and you would say, "Oh, I don't wanna buy this one.

00:51:23 ◼   ► "I'll get the next one maybe."

00:51:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, and then inevitably I'll buy it anyway.

00:51:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, right, six months later you'll have three of them.

00:51:30 ◼   ► - Speaking of a Google Home, a minor Google Home update,

00:51:32 ◼   ► they added a thing that lets you distinguish people by voice

00:51:35 ◼   ► and so they can ask for, you know,

00:51:36 ◼   ► tell me what my day is like

00:51:37 ◼   ► and it will tell you your calendar

00:51:39 ◼   ► by recognizing who you are.

00:51:41 ◼   ► So it's basic multi-user functionality.

00:51:43 ◼   ► Unfortunately, no one ever asks Google Home

00:51:46 ◼   ► what's on their calendar

00:51:48 ◼   ► because it's just not a thing that we do

00:51:49 ◼   ► and so distinguishing us by voice is not particularly useful.

00:51:52 ◼   ► I think the only two voices that knows

00:51:53 ◼   ► to distinguish is mine and my daughter's

00:51:54 ◼   ► we are like the most frequent users. But all that said, I continue to be impressed by,

00:51:59 ◼   ► I mean it's basically just Google search behind the scenes, because I'm always impressed by Google

00:52:03 ◼   ► search when you do, when you type in something in that search box and it somehow figures out

00:52:07 ◼   ► what you mean and gives you relevant results. That's the magic of Google. Most recent one is

00:52:14 ◼   ► we were talking about something at the dinner table and we were talking about a movie and,

00:52:19 ◼   ► and we're like, was that released then? Or, you know, what year was that released?

00:52:23 ◼   ► we could ask the Google Home, "What year was the movie blah blah blah released?"

00:52:28 ◼   ► And I didn't have to think about how do I have to phrase this in a way they can understand. I

00:52:33 ◼   ► don't even remember how I phrased it. I just asked it the same way I would ask a person with

00:52:38 ◼   ► encyclopedic knowledge of movie releases who's sitting in the corner of the room,

00:52:40 ◼   ► and the thing spoke out, "The movie blah blah blah was released in March blah blah blah blah blah."

00:52:48 ◼   ► That to me is still magic because it's exactly like Google search.

00:52:54 ◼   ► Like I probably just turned it into text and typed into Google search and then read me the top hit

00:52:58 ◼   ► or something like that. But the bottom line is it answered my question. It wasn't just like a

00:53:01 ◼   ► general purpose, like what's the weather? What does my day look like? I had a specific question

00:53:07 ◼   ► about a movie about the release date. And it just didn't just tell me the movie and then list off

00:53:10 ◼   ► like all the metadata. Let me tell you everything about this movie starring this person, directed by

00:53:14 ◼   ► this person, released it and I had to wait for the... It just told me the release date of the movie.

00:53:17 ◼   ► And that I love that right and that's something that I feel like you can't do if you aren't backed by Google

00:53:24 ◼   ► Because the hard part is not hearing me and translating as a text the hard part is figuring out

00:53:28 ◼   ► What did you say and what did you mean and how do I answer you know for all I know that's a can thing that?

00:53:32 ◼   ► They expect people to ask or whatever

00:53:33 ◼   ► But the more of those I have the less I think I'm just getting lucky and happening to hit upon something they anticipated

00:53:39 ◼   ► And especially coded support for and there's just like the magic of Google. So what was the movie despite?

00:53:44 ◼   ► I don't remember. It was too long ago. But despite Google Home, I feel like it's still

00:53:51 ◼   ► not being revised as quickly as I would have hoped, and its capability is not expanding

00:53:56 ◼   ► in the way that I hoped. But just for the basic functionality of answering my questions,

00:54:00 ◼   ► we have the dinner table and quickly settling arguments is money well spent.

00:54:05 ◼   ► All right, name a movie.

00:54:07 ◼   ► Hunt for Red October.

00:54:08 ◼   ► There you go.

00:54:10 ◼   ► Alexa, what year was the Hunt for Red October released?

00:54:12 ◼   ► The movie The Hunt for Red October was released in 1989.

00:54:16 ◼   ► It's magic.

00:54:18 ◼   ► There's been a lot of these queries where I will ask the Echo one of the, you know, a question like this,

00:54:24 ◼   ► and things that I will say will, that I think there's no way that it's going to be able to help me with this.

00:54:30 ◼   ► Well it didn't because it's wrong. It's the 2nd of March 1990.

00:54:33 ◼   ► Really?

00:54:34 ◼   ► Minor points. Minor points.

00:54:37 ◼   ► According to IMDb, that was the American release.

00:54:40 ◼   ► Is that international versus US release?

00:54:42 ◼   ► Okay, well hold on though.

00:54:43 ◼   ► I thought to myself, that didn't sound right to me.

00:54:47 ◼   ► You can ask similar questions about albums and songs and artists or who sings the song,

00:54:52 ◼   ► whatever, and all the lyrics are where you can name any lyrics in the song and it will

00:54:56 ◼   ► figure it out. I mean, there's a lot of overlap between these things, but that I think is amazing.

00:55:01 ◼   ► And ask the same question. Say, "What is the release date for? What year was it released?

00:55:07 ◼   ► when was it put out?

00:55:09 ◼   ► Like, just try different phrasings and see, like,

00:55:11 ◼   ► eventually if you can stump it, but it's pretty good.

00:55:13 ◼   ► - Well, basically, so my point is,

00:55:15 ◼   ► I have asked it questions like this a number of times,

00:55:18 ◼   ► thinking that it would get it wrong,

00:55:19 ◼   ► thinking that there would be no chance

00:55:21 ◼   ► that it'll get it right.

00:55:22 ◼   ► And it gets it right about maybe 2/3 to 3/4 of the time

00:55:26 ◼   ► when I ask a weird question like that,

00:55:28 ◼   ► which is not only better than I expect,

00:55:31 ◼   ► but is probably fairly similar to most of these things.

00:55:34 ◼   ► It's probably even fairly similar

00:55:36 ◼   ► how often Google gets it right.

00:55:38 ◼   ► In my experience, the accuracy of search results

00:55:42 ◼   ► between different search engines,

00:55:44 ◼   ► I still use DuckDuckGo as my primary search engine

00:55:47 ◼   ► instead of Google.

00:55:49 ◼   ► It turns out this kind of stuff is actually not that rare

00:55:54 ◼   ► to be decent at.

00:55:55 ◼   ► It is not just Google that can do these things.

00:55:58 ◼   ► It is possible for other companies,

00:56:01 ◼   ► and in the case of DuckDuckGo, way smaller companies,

00:56:04 ◼   ► be able to be competent at search, just not Apple most of the time unfortunately, but

00:56:11 ◼   ► it is very possible for other companies.

00:56:12 ◼   ► Remember when Amazon had its own search?

00:56:14 ◼   ► What was that called?

00:56:15 ◼   ► A3?

00:56:16 ◼   ► It was called Alexa, no, Alexa was the rank, right?

00:56:19 ◼   ► A3, right?

00:56:20 ◼   ► A9 was their search engine.

00:56:23 ◼   ► But it was...

00:56:24 ◼   ► Anyway, there's not a lot of them.

00:56:25 ◼   ► There's Bing, there's DuckDuckGo, there's Google, there's A9 which we all know still

00:56:28 ◼   ► exist.

00:56:29 ◼   ► Apple has never dipped its toe into this field.

00:56:31 ◼   ► I don't think there need to be that many people, especially if it's like...

00:56:33 ◼   ► - The App Store.

00:56:35 ◼   ► - God, yeah, Apple can't search a domain

00:56:37 ◼   ► way smaller than the web in an efficient manner.

00:56:40 ◼   ► - Well, look, Siri searches things, right?

00:56:42 ◼   ► Especially in contexts like Apple TV or Apple Music.

00:56:45 ◼   ► - Well, that's like Wolfram Alfora.

00:56:47 ◼   ► - No, but Apple TV, Apple Music,

00:56:48 ◼   ► it's searching libraries of content,

00:56:51 ◼   ► and the App Store is really just a really big version

00:56:53 ◼   ► of that that should be way better than it is.

00:56:55 ◼   ► - (laughs) But it's not, yes.

00:56:57 ◼   ► - No, it's so, is it?

00:56:58 ◼   ► - You know what just occurred to me?

00:56:59 ◼   ► Doesn't Amazon own IMDb now?

00:57:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, they sure do. - Yeah, they do.

00:57:04 ◼   ► - So how could they have gotten this wrong

00:57:05 ◼   ► if IMDb says it's 1990?

00:57:08 ◼   ► - You can't find anything on the IMDb website

00:57:10 ◼   ► with your own eyes and hands.

00:57:12 ◼   ► So it's like whatever, IMDb is now at work,

00:57:16 ◼   ► hard at work obscuring the information

00:57:18 ◼   ► you wanna know about movies.

00:57:19 ◼   ► 'Cause I go to that website page and I'm like,

00:57:21 ◼   ► "Just who played the main character?"

00:57:23 ◼   ► And I'm just scanning and thinking

00:57:24 ◼   ► I have to disclose something or click on something

00:57:26 ◼   ► and it was just tons of sound and fury signifying nothing.

00:57:32 ◼   ► - I miss the old IMDb.

00:57:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, chances are like the Alexa was trying

00:57:35 ◼   ► to find the answer on his page

00:57:36 ◼   ► and just got blocked by all the ads.

00:57:38 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:57:39 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, one more thing on the Echo Show.

00:57:41 ◼   ► Marco is lucky because he has a fairly long kitchen.

00:57:46 ◼   ► I would have no room for this thing in my kitchen.

00:57:48 ◼   ► As much as I would like to have a thing like this,

00:57:50 ◼   ► that is I think another limitation for a device.

00:57:53 ◼   ► I can't really tell how big it is from the pictures,

00:57:54 ◼   ► but certainly it is both wider than the Echo

00:57:57 ◼   ► and you can't like put it behind

00:57:59 ◼   ► or nestled into a corner or whatever.

00:58:01 ◼   ► has to be somewhere where you can see it.

00:58:03 ◼   ► - Well, I think it actually might be fairly small

00:58:05 ◼   ► 'cause didn't people say it's a seven inch screen?

00:58:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, maybe it's, I mean, it's hard to tell.

00:58:09 ◼   ► Maybe it's smaller than it looks like.

00:58:11 ◼   ► But anyway, you can't nestle it in a corner

00:58:13 ◼   ► or hide it somewhere.

00:58:14 ◼   ► You do need the space and the line of sight for the thing,

00:58:16 ◼   ► which makes me think that it could replace like a kitchen TV

00:58:19 ◼   ► so if this thing started getting live TV,

00:58:21 ◼   ► if Amazon wanted to pull a YouTube,

00:58:24 ◼   ► what is the YouTube one?

00:58:25 ◼   ► YouTube TV and Hulu has a live TV.

00:58:28 ◼   ► Everyone at Apple has a skinny bundle

00:58:31 ◼   ► on a live TV offering.

00:58:32 ◼   ► That would be a great thing to incorporate this.

00:58:34 ◼   ► 'Cause people do like little TVs in their kitchen

00:58:36 ◼   ► to like watch cooking shows or whatever

00:58:38 ◼   ► with like voice activated DVR functionality.

00:58:40 ◼   ► They already showed it like cooking up to your like,

00:58:42 ◼   ► you know, baby cam to show your baby in your crib and stuff.

00:58:45 ◼   ► The potential for a smart screen with good speakers

00:58:49 ◼   ► and a camera that's internet connected

00:58:51 ◼   ► with good software in your kitchen.

00:58:54 ◼   ► That feels like a fruitful, like it's a device

00:58:56 ◼   ► that has been made a million times over.

00:58:58 ◼   ► if you're old and remember all of like the Audrey

00:59:01 ◼   ► or the three com, maybe that's the Audrey

00:59:04 ◼   ► that I'm thinking of, but Sony has made,

00:59:06 ◼   ► Sony was it the E-Villa, I don't know.

00:59:08 ◼   ► There's been tons of like things like this.

00:59:11 ◼   ► And they were just, they were gonna say

00:59:13 ◼   ► they were ahead of their time,

00:59:14 ◼   ► they were ahead of the tech.

00:59:15 ◼   ► They weren't ready, there was no ecosystem,

00:59:17 ◼   ► there wasn't a smart search behind it,

00:59:18 ◼   ► there wasn't a speech recognition,

00:59:19 ◼   ► there wasn't, so often there wasn't the internet

00:59:21 ◼   ► for the really old ones.

00:59:23 ◼   ► I feel like the time is now.

00:59:25 ◼   ► And I really hope that we see more of these devices

00:59:29 ◼   ► from the big three or four, however many,

00:59:32 ◼   ► however you wanna count it, Apple, Amazon, Google,

00:59:35 ◼   ► and whoever else, not fewer.

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01:01:28 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:01:31 ◼   ► - All right, so somebody has put something

01:01:33 ◼   ► that I find actually somewhat terrifying in the show notes.

01:01:37 ◼   ► The show notes reads, "Brief quiz."

01:01:40 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:01:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, I saw that earlier too

01:01:43 ◼   ► and got a little bit scared of what,

01:01:44 ◼   ► I knew immediately that it was Jon.

01:01:46 ◼   ► I mean, come on.

01:01:47 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:01:49 ◼   ► There was an article going around that hopefully you two were too busy this evening to read

01:01:53 ◼   ► and follow the link for that involves a brief quiz that I think we should all take.

01:01:58 ◼   ► I have already taken it.

01:01:59 ◼   ► It takes two seconds.

01:02:02 ◼   ► And so I will paste the URL into the chat room now.

01:02:06 ◼   ► It is a thing that asks you to make a bunch of selections.

01:02:10 ◼   ► So just don't read the whole article.

01:02:11 ◼   ► Don't scroll down.

01:02:12 ◼   ► Just go to the part where you make the selections and make the selections.

01:02:15 ◼   ► Do not share your comments.

01:02:16 ◼   ► And then when we have all done it, come back and we will discuss our choices.

01:02:20 ◼   ► So here you go.

01:02:21 ◼   ► It's in the chat room.

01:02:22 ◼   ► Okay, so…

01:02:23 ◼   ► What the hell is Alphabet?

01:02:24 ◼   ► That's Google, right?

01:02:25 ◼   ► It's Google's parent company.

01:02:26 ◼   ► Google, that's Google.

01:02:27 ◼   ► So if an evil monarch forced you to choose, in which order would you give up these inescapable

01:02:33 ◼   ► giants of tech?

01:02:34 ◼   ► So…

01:02:35 ◼   ► Okay, I'm done.

01:02:36 ◼   ► Well, I got to think about this for a second.

01:02:38 ◼   ► Jeezy peasy people.

01:02:39 ◼   ► Okay, he's got to mull it over.

01:02:40 ◼   ► Just a little.

01:02:41 ◼   ► You all done?

01:02:42 ◼   ► Yes.

01:02:43 ◼   ► All right.

01:02:44 ◼   ► Yes.

01:02:45 ◼   ► All right, so now I will explain the premise.

01:02:48 ◼   ► They list the big tech companies, Alphabet, basically Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook,

01:02:52 ◼   ► and Amazon.

01:02:53 ◼   ► And it asks you in what order would you be willing to give them up.

01:02:56 ◼   ► So if there's one company that you're like, "I don't care if that company goes away tomorrow,"

01:02:59 ◼   ► that's obviously your number one pick.

01:03:00 ◼   ► You'd pick that one and you keep working your way down.

01:03:03 ◼   ► At the end, you'll be left with the company you would least like to see depart this earth,

01:03:06 ◼   ► like if they just disappeared or whatever.

01:03:08 ◼   ► So who wants to go first?

01:03:11 ◼   ► Well, let's just go through our – let's do a top four style.

01:03:14 ◼   ► - Oh, God.

01:03:15 ◼   ► - First of all, the question of like,

01:03:16 ◼   ► how many people do you think arrived at this article

01:03:19 ◼   ► and knew what Alphabet was?

01:03:21 ◼   ► And then every time they mention it,

01:03:24 ◼   ► they have to say the parent company of Google

01:03:26 ◼   ► because nobody knows what that is

01:03:28 ◼   ► because Google is so bad at everything branding-wise,

01:03:32 ◼   ► everything human, they can't do.

01:03:35 ◼   ► - I would have just called it Google

01:03:36 ◼   ► because Google uses the Google brand.

01:03:38 ◼   ► And I don't think, can you think of something

01:03:40 ◼   ► that is in Alphabet but not in Google that you care about,

01:03:42 ◼   ► like AS&S stuff or something?

01:03:44 ◼   ► Anyway, let's now do our number one choice,

01:03:47 ◼   ► sort of backwards top four,

01:03:48 ◼   ► the company that we would all be willing to get rid of first.

01:03:51 ◼   ► - I'm willing to bet we all have the same one for this one.

01:03:53 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:03:54 ◼   ► - Facebook?

01:03:55 ◼   ► - Facebook.

01:03:56 ◼   ► - Nope.

01:03:56 ◼   ► - Whoa. - No.

01:03:58 ◼   ► All right, what did you pick?

01:03:59 ◼   ► - Microsoft.

01:04:00 ◼   ► - Microsoft, hmm.

01:04:01 ◼   ► - What has Microsoft done for me lately?

01:04:03 ◼   ► And by lately I mean in the last year, no more than that.

01:04:05 ◼   ► - Well, they did provide your livelihood for many years.

01:04:09 ◼   ► - Right, no, but yeah, that's why I said,

01:04:11 ◼   ► only in the last year.

01:04:12 ◼   ► And you're absolutely right.

01:04:13 ◼   ► - Now you have a grudge in the style of my Microsoft grudge.

01:04:18 ◼   ► - No, no, no, I will never be a grudge.

01:04:20 ◼   ► It will never be a grudge like you.

01:04:21 ◼   ► But what has Microsoft done for me lately?

01:04:24 ◼   ► Nothing really.

01:04:25 ◼   ► I mean, I do love Visual Studio Code.

01:04:27 ◼   ► Yes, people are mentioning Visual Studio for the Mac,

01:04:29 ◼   ► but that's just a rebranded Xamarin development,

01:04:32 ◼   ► monodevelop, whatever it's called.

01:04:33 ◼   ► I don't think that there's anything

01:04:35 ◼   ► that Microsoft has given me in the last 12 to 18 months

01:04:40 ◼   ► that really affects me day to day.

01:04:43 ◼   ► and maybe I'm just missing something,

01:04:45 ◼   ► but I do get some value out of Facebook, believe it or not,

01:04:49 ◼   ► whereas I don't think I actively get any value

01:04:51 ◼   ► out of Microsoft today.

01:04:52 ◼   ► - What value do you get out of Facebook?

01:04:54 ◼   ► - Oh, (beep)

01:04:55 ◼   ► Instagram.

01:04:56 ◼   ► - Oh, shoot, I didn't even think about that at all.

01:04:59 ◼   ► Oh, that might change my tune then.

01:05:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, I just realized, but see,

01:05:02 ◼   ► I can't throw Microsoft under the bus either

01:05:04 ◼   ► because I use their keyboard.

01:05:05 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:05:06 ◼   ► And also, they own Skype, which we don't love,

01:05:10 ◼   ► but we use it every week,

01:05:11 ◼   ► and there's nothing good to replace it.

01:05:13 ◼   ► These are all hard choices.

01:05:14 ◼   ► I factor this into my choice for Facebook as number one,

01:05:17 ◼   ► despite Oculus, which you also forgot about,

01:05:19 ◼   ► and Instagram or whatever,

01:05:21 ◼   ► that Facebook is the one I get rid of.

01:05:23 ◼   ► And, bring it, this evil monarch,

01:05:26 ◼   ► it doesn't necessarily say which one of these affects you.

01:05:28 ◼   ► That's the framing device that you're bringing to it.

01:05:30 ◼   ► Casey's decided the way he's gonna pick this

01:05:32 ◼   ► is like which one affects his life.

01:05:34 ◼   ► But there are many other factors that you could use

01:05:35 ◼   ► in determining which one do you want

01:05:36 ◼   ► to depart this Earth magically.

01:05:38 ◼   ► And Facebook I want to depart for so many reasons,

01:05:40 ◼   ► despite Instagram, which I enjoy,

01:05:42 ◼   ► and despite Oculus, which may or may not be

01:05:44 ◼   ► an interesting thing that I use someday,

01:05:47 ◼   ► almost everything else they do I don't like.

01:05:51 ◼   ► And I believe that the need they fill

01:05:53 ◼   ► could be filled equally or better by some other company

01:05:58 ◼   ► if they were to just poof out of existence.

01:05:59 ◼   ► So Facebook is my number one, I don't like them.

01:06:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm gonna stick with that too.

01:06:03 ◼   ► As much as I love Instagram,

01:06:05 ◼   ► the other things on this list are more important to me.

01:06:11 ◼   ► And the omission of Facebook from the world,

01:06:14 ◼   ► I think, I agree with you,

01:06:15 ◼   ► I think would have a better effect on the world,

01:06:17 ◼   ► not just me, than the removal of any other ones here.

01:06:22 ◼   ► - Flickr could rise again to fill the Instagram.

01:06:24 ◼   ► If Instagram didn't exist, I feel like something else

01:06:25 ◼   ► would have done a similar thing,

01:06:26 ◼   ► 'cause what it does is not as revolutionary

01:06:29 ◼   ► as the fact that it was able to do it

01:06:31 ◼   ► and gather this network of people and so on and so forth.

01:06:33 ◼   ► - I mean, honestly, it's kind of amazing

01:06:34 ◼   ► that Tumblr didn't do that.

01:06:36 ◼   ► I know I'm biased here, but it was,

01:06:39 ◼   ► Looking back on it, I think that Tumblr had a big opportunity

01:06:42 ◼   ► to be what Instagram was, but their timing to mobile

01:06:46 ◼   ► was all wrong because it was similar cases,

01:06:48 ◼   ► what almost made Facebook pretty irrelevant

01:06:52 ◼   ► in the mobile age is that when you have a big

01:06:55 ◼   ► desktop browser web service, it's hard when mobile

01:06:58 ◼   ► comes around to realize that you have to change everything

01:07:01 ◼   ► and be mobile first.

01:07:02 ◼   ► Facebook realized it almost too late.

01:07:05 ◼   ► Tumblr got in on it eventually too, but by that point,

01:07:08 ◼   ► a lot of the ground was already taken,

01:07:10 ◼   ► and including things like Instagram.

01:07:12 ◼   ► - Alright, so number two, Facebook.

01:07:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, for me it's Microsoft, obviously.

01:07:17 ◼   ► - Microsoft for me as well.

01:07:19 ◼   ► - And you know, like we said,

01:07:21 ◼   ► they haven't done a lot for me recently,

01:07:22 ◼   ► however, again, these companies are all really big.

01:07:24 ◼   ► They do own a lot of stuff.

01:07:26 ◼   ► Like, you know, none of us had anything nice,

01:07:28 ◼   ► except for Casey, had anything nice to say

01:07:30 ◼   ► about the Facebook product itself,

01:07:32 ◼   ► but Instagram is owned by it,

01:07:34 ◼   ► so we have to consider that, Oculus and things like that.

01:07:36 ◼   ► With Microsoft, they own a lot of stuff too.

01:07:38 ◼   ► As I mentioned, they own Skype.

01:07:40 ◼   ► We're all using Skype right now,

01:07:41 ◼   ► and as much as we hate it,

01:07:42 ◼   ► there's no clear, better thing for podcasters to use,

01:07:47 ◼   ► except whatever the Germans are using

01:07:48 ◼   ► with that Studio Link thing.

01:07:49 ◼   ► But I don't know anything about that.

01:07:50 ◼   ► I can't read German, I can't understand the page,

01:07:52 ◼   ► and it looks like it's some kind of weird plugin

01:07:54 ◼   ► for another app I don't use, so, oh well.

01:07:56 ◼   ► Well, I guess I'll figure out some other time, I hope.

01:07:58 ◼   ► - So far, you can still use Google Translate,

01:08:01 ◼   ► because you haven't gotten rid of Google yet, so.

01:08:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, right. (laughs)

01:08:05 ◼   ► I actually did use that to read the,

01:08:07 ◼   ► I opened the page in Chrome so I could use

01:08:08 ◼   ► the built-in translate thing.

01:08:10 ◼   ► But yeah, ultimately Microsoft doesn't have a large role

01:08:16 ◼   ► in my life, so that would be my number two.

01:08:19 ◼   ► And it's not, I don't really dislike Microsoft.

01:08:23 ◼   ► I kind of feel bad for them these days

01:08:25 ◼   ► 'cause they're playing catch-up on so many

01:08:27 ◼   ► major important fronts in the industry.

01:08:29 ◼   ► But they just don't provide a lot of value for me

01:08:33 ◼   ► compared to the other ones above it on this list?

01:08:35 ◼   ► >> Yeah, I picked Microsoft for a bunch of reasons, most of which are not evil grudges.

01:08:41 ◼   ► There's the evil grudge in the back of my mind.

01:08:43 ◼   ► But I can think of a lot of reasons why I actually wouldn't want them to go away, which

01:08:47 ◼   ► is why they're not number one.

01:08:48 ◼   ► Xbox, even though I don't like it, is an important counterbalance to PlayStation.

01:08:53 ◼   ► It's only a real competitor in the same sort of level playing field, because Nintendo is

01:08:56 ◼   ► always off doing its own weird thing.

01:08:57 ◼   ► So I think it's good that it exists.

01:09:00 ◼   ► They did buy Bungie, which we'll hate them for forever, but on the other hand, we would

01:09:04 ◼   ► not have the Bungie that we have today if it was not for Microsoft, right?

01:09:08 ◼   ► So there's some credit there.

01:09:10 ◼   ► The cloud stuff they're doing I think is interesting and again is a counterbalance to both Amazon

01:09:15 ◼   ► and Google and so I'd like to see more competition there.

01:09:18 ◼   ► But I don't like Word or Excel or Office.

01:09:21 ◼   ► I think all those programs, the world will be better if those programs disappeared and

01:09:25 ◼   ► we should, you know, come up with modern alternatives.

01:09:27 ◼   ► They're dinosaurs, we can't get rid of them

01:09:29 ◼   ► because they've always been here

01:09:30 ◼   ► and it's a self-perpetuating cycle.

01:09:32 ◼   ► And all those products that I listed,

01:09:37 ◼   ► I either don't use them or would love to use something else.

01:09:40 ◼   ► So I don't say goodbye to them with a grudge,

01:09:42 ◼   ► but out of this group, they are my number two.

01:09:44 ◼   ► - All right, so number three.

01:09:48 ◼   ► - Google for me.

01:09:49 ◼   ► - Yep, ditto.

01:09:50 ◼   ► - Or excuse me, I selected Alphabet, whatever that means,

01:09:53 ◼   ► but I'm gonna say it means Google.

01:09:54 ◼   ► And this is, again, tricky

01:09:57 ◼   ► because this includes things like YouTube,

01:09:58 ◼   ► which is, you know, that's a major--

01:10:00 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, didn't consider that.

01:10:01 ◼   ► I think I stick by it, but, hmm.

01:10:04 ◼   ► - That's the thing, all of these companies,

01:10:06 ◼   ► they have major acquisitions and major properties

01:10:08 ◼   ► that you don't think of necessarily,

01:10:10 ◼   ► but yeah, Google owns YouTube, and that's a major thing.

01:10:15 ◼   ► So that's hard to give up in a lot of ways

01:10:20 ◼   ► for a lot of people, but there are other ways

01:10:25 ◼   ► to find videos online, just none of them are very big,

01:10:28 ◼   ► I guess, but that doesn't mean somebody else

01:10:30 ◼   ► couldn't make one, I don't know.

01:10:32 ◼   ► It's a weird calculus, but I don't use Google's web apps

01:10:36 ◼   ► for anything other than the show notes for this show,

01:10:39 ◼   ► which we could, again, we've decided that's the best

01:10:43 ◼   ► for us to just use Google Docs for our shared notes

01:10:46 ◼   ► for the show, but there are other options.

01:10:49 ◼   ► We've all decided they aren't as good,

01:10:52 ◼   ► but we could go to one of them.

01:10:53 ◼   ► And I don't use Google web search the vast majority of the time.

01:10:57 ◼   ► I'm almost always using DuckDuckGo.

01:10:59 ◼   ► I only occasionally jump into Google when I'm not finding the answer I want.

01:11:02 ◼   ► So that would be fairly easy for me.

01:11:04 ◼   ► But for a lot of other people, that would be really hard because they have a lot of

01:11:07 ◼   ► tie-ins to things like Gmail that are really important to them.

01:11:10 ◼   ► So it's kind of an easy one for me to say Google, but I wouldn't think that would be

01:11:13 ◼   ► very common.

01:11:14 ◼   ► Steven: I did not say Google.

01:11:16 ◼   ► I said Amazon.

01:11:17 ◼   ► Steven (01h00m

01:11:17 ◼   ► Interesting. You know, as we were talking, I started to wonder if me choosing Google

01:11:23 ◼   ► for number three was a poor choice, because specifically of YouTube. I don't contribute

01:11:28 ◼   ► to YouTube very often, although I have once. But I feel like I am on YouTube almost every

01:11:36 ◼   ► day to look at something or look up something or something like that. So my answer was to

01:11:41 ◼   ► to put Google as number three,

01:11:44 ◼   ► but I wonder if maybe I should have swapped that with Amazon.

01:11:48 ◼   ► So how did you land on Amazon as the next one to go, Jon?

01:11:52 ◼   ► - Well, Google, stuff that Google does is,

01:11:55 ◼   ► going back to the KC framing of like just the things

01:11:59 ◼   ► that are important to your life that you use,

01:12:00 ◼   ► I use it for my email.

01:12:01 ◼   ► There is no alternative for Gmail

01:12:04 ◼   ► that has the same properties.

01:12:05 ◼   ► Like I don't like, using my own server,

01:12:08 ◼   ► using IMAP is not the same as Gmail.

01:12:09 ◼   ► I am a Gmail user at this point, not an email user.

01:12:12 ◼   ► I use Google search all the time.

01:12:14 ◼   ► And the alternatives are differently able to do things,

01:12:19 ◼   ► but I'm used to the way Google works

01:12:22 ◼   ► and I just use it so extensively

01:12:23 ◼   ► that I wouldn't want to have to try

01:12:25 ◼   ► to get used to something else.

01:12:26 ◼   ► YouTube was a big factor in my decision as well.

01:12:28 ◼   ► I spend a lot of time watching YouTube videos

01:12:31 ◼   ► and I believe that it's not a matter of

01:12:34 ◼   ► if they went away, someone else can make a video service

01:12:36 ◼   ► because even before Google owned YouTube,

01:12:39 ◼   ► YouTube is very good at what it does in terms of making video that plays when you hit the

01:12:44 ◼   ► play button, the recommendation engine to figure out things you might be interested

01:12:48 ◼   ► in.

01:12:49 ◼   ► And there's all sorts of terrible things about YouTube as well, inevitably as the big dominant

01:12:53 ◼   ► player in a field, but I think they do a good job at what they do.

01:12:56 ◼   ► And if Google went away tomorrow, it would take a long time for those ecosystems to reform

01:13:04 ◼   ► around another set of services.

01:13:06 ◼   ► So I wouldn't want to say goodbye to that as well.

01:13:08 ◼   ► And then all the other stuff that Google does, all the wacky things that it does, for the

01:13:12 ◼   ► most part, I like them.

01:13:14 ◼   ► The translation engine that was translating that German webpage for you.

01:13:17 ◼   ► Google has really good translation and it gets better all the time.

01:13:21 ◼   ► All their weird projects with hot air balloons and Wi-Fi and self-driving cars and like,

01:13:25 ◼   ► I love all that stuff about Google and I think the world would be lesser for them not to

01:13:30 ◼   ► be there.

01:13:31 ◼   ► So that's why.

01:13:32 ◼   ► And Amazon, why did I pick Amazon as my number three?

01:13:37 ◼   ► Amazon is great.

01:13:38 ◼   ► it like crazy like that's what I was thinking about like if Amazon went away

01:13:42 ◼   ► where would I order all my stuff because I order so much stuff from there right

01:13:45 ◼   ► but I've used other places that sell you stuff over the internet and they're not

01:13:52 ◼   ► that much worse than Amazon now maybe they don't have as much selection and

01:13:56 ◼   ► maybe they don't have as cheap shipping and so on and so forth but I feel like

01:13:59 ◼   ► beg to differ here I've used enough of them to know I mean even just like

01:14:04 ◼   ► simple as like when I you know camera stuff I can buy it from Amazon or I can

01:14:08 ◼   ► buy it from B&H Photo, and B&H Photo is not a titan of the internet industry, but it's

01:14:13 ◼   ► fine. Lensrentals.com is not Amazon, but it was fine. I bought enough stuff online from

01:14:19 ◼   ► non-Amazon places that I feel like I could live with that. And often the defaulting of

01:14:25 ◼   ► Amazon that we all do, like, "Oh, we gotta buy something, let's go to Amazon," that defaulting

01:14:28 ◼   ► runs me into trouble more often these days, because I will accept Amazon selection as,

01:14:35 ◼   ► well if Amazon doesn't have it it must not exist which is not true or if Amazon

01:14:39 ◼   ► has a price it must be a reasonable price which is not true because sometimes

01:14:42 ◼   ► something on Amazon is insanely highly priced and you need to do some

01:14:45 ◼   ► comparisons elsewhere for a variety of weird reasons so I do use it I do value

01:14:50 ◼   ► and rely on the service but I believe that it is not as impressive and

01:14:55 ◼   ► because I don't have an echo and don't do I'm not in that ecosystem either and

01:14:59 ◼   ► also I believe that other people can do similar things it was my number three

01:15:02 ◼   ► This was probably my most difficult choice

01:15:04 ◼   ► between these two, Amazon and Apple Vet/Google,

01:15:08 ◼   ► but I came down on Amazon.

01:15:11 ◼   ► - Interesting.

01:15:12 ◼   ► All right, so that makes number four next, is that right?

01:15:15 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm.

01:15:16 ◼   ► You see, this is where I picked Amazon for my number four.

01:15:19 ◼   ► I saved it for this.

01:15:20 ◼   ► - Same here.

01:15:21 ◼   ► - You know, my reasoning for saving it for so long

01:15:24 ◼   ► throughout this elimination is basically that,

01:15:27 ◼   ► you know, there are lots of places,

01:15:29 ◼   ► like, you know, you mentioned B&H.

01:15:31 ◼   ► There are lots of other online retailers for the,

01:15:33 ◼   ► and by the way, again, Amazon owns a lot of stuff,

01:15:36 ◼   ► including, if you're a programmer, AWS,

01:15:38 ◼   ► which is kind of important for a lot of stacks,

01:15:42 ◼   ► and not always easy to replace the components you're using,

01:15:45 ◼   ► depending on what you're using.

01:15:46 ◼   ► But anyway, for retail alone,

01:15:50 ◼   ► whenever I buy anything from other places,

01:15:52 ◼   ► I very often wish I would have bought it from Amazon

01:15:55 ◼   ► for various reasons.

01:15:57 ◼   ► There's a lot of parts of it

01:15:59 ◼   ► that other people can do reasonably well sometimes,

01:16:02 ◼   ► but it's rare that you get any other vendor

01:16:04 ◼   ► anywhere else online that has the combination

01:16:08 ◼   ► of everything Amazon offers.

01:16:09 ◼   ► And this is not only like the kind of fundamentals

01:16:13 ◼   ► of buying stuff online, which is get it for a good price.

01:16:17 ◼   ► I mean, now a lot of places offer the same price

01:16:19 ◼   ► on things as Amazon, or similar price, close enough pricing.

01:16:22 ◼   ► But also be able to ship to you quickly

01:16:25 ◼   ► and for not that much money.

01:16:27 ◼   ► and be able to accept returns really easily

01:16:30 ◼   ► if it doesn't work out for you, if it arrives broken.

01:16:34 ◼   ► Be able to provide basic order tracking and things like that.

01:16:39 ◼   ► Many of the other online retail things that are good,

01:16:44 ◼   ► Amazon actually owns them, things like Zappos

01:16:47 ◼   ► and Soap.com which is now merged into Amazon,

01:16:51 ◼   ► Diapers.com, all this stuff, a lot of those things,

01:16:54 ◼   ► Amazon actually owns them all.

01:16:56 ◼   ► so it would rule out a bunch of that stuff.

01:16:58 ◼   ► And it's also just really nice to have somewhere

01:17:00 ◼   ► where I've been buying large quantities of things

01:17:03 ◼   ► from Amazon for so many years now,

01:17:06 ◼   ► for well over a decade now,

01:17:09 ◼   ► that I can go back and search my order history

01:17:11 ◼   ► whenever I need to know what was that thing I bought

01:17:14 ◼   ► or when did I buy this thing that might be about to break

01:17:17 ◼   ► and I wanna know how long its warranty is.

01:17:19 ◼   ► When did I buy this?

01:17:20 ◼   ► How much should I pay for it back then?

01:17:22 ◼   ► If I wanna get another one of these things,

01:17:25 ◼   ► 'cause the one I have just wore out or broke

01:17:27 ◼   ► or ran out or whatever.

01:17:28 ◼   ► What exactly was that so I can just go buy

01:17:30 ◼   ► the same thing again?

01:17:31 ◼   ► Amazon's great when you have a big history like that.

01:17:34 ◼   ► And so there are other vendors or other retailers

01:17:37 ◼   ► that provide some of these parts,

01:17:39 ◼   ► but to have it all in one place like Amazon

01:17:41 ◼   ► is really very, very convenient.

01:17:44 ◼   ► There are lots of things about Amazon retail

01:17:45 ◼   ► that are bad, things like the conditions

01:17:48 ◼   ► in their warehouses for some of the workers.

01:17:51 ◼   ► There have been various reports over time

01:17:53 ◼   ► about how those are less than great.

01:17:55 ◼   ► So it's not wonderful in all ways.

01:17:59 ◼   ► Being a seller on Amazon apparently has a lot of issues

01:18:03 ◼   ► because of things like their incredibly overly generous

01:18:06 ◼   ► return policy for the customer,

01:18:08 ◼   ► which is very problematic for a lot of the sellers.

01:18:10 ◼   ► But for the most part, as a user of Amazon,

01:18:14 ◼   ► I really, really greatly, greatly enjoy it.

01:18:17 ◼   ► Again, it isn't perfect.

01:18:19 ◼   ► Like for example, I recently got a,

01:18:21 ◼   ► I needed to get a SanDisk memory card,

01:18:24 ◼   ► a fairly fast, decent one that was like 60 bucks.

01:18:27 ◼   ► And any memory card is kind of a risk to buy from Amazon

01:18:31 ◼   ► 'cause they have such a problem with counterfeit products

01:18:33 ◼   ► being in their stock.

01:18:35 ◼   ► And memory cards are very commonly counterfeited.

01:18:37 ◼   ► So anything like that I'll buy from B&H

01:18:39 ◼   ► because they're much more reliable in that way.

01:18:43 ◼   ► And things like Pro Audio Gear I'll buy from B&H

01:18:45 ◼   ► most of the time too.

01:18:46 ◼   ► But like, with those few exceptions,

01:18:50 ◼   ► Anything I can buy from Amazon, I usually will buy from Amazon.

01:18:54 ◼   ► I just should also remember AWS S3, EC2, and all the other services that Amazon, that's

01:19:00 ◼   ► powering tons of startups.

01:19:02 ◼   ► I know there are equivalent cloud offerings from Microsoft and Google, but if they were

01:19:06 ◼   ► to disappear the next day, it would probably kill like half the internet startups and a

01:19:09 ◼   ► bunch of other companies.

01:19:10 ◼   ► It's like when S3 goes down, you find out how many companies are relying on it.

01:19:14 ◼   ► So it is a tough one.

01:19:16 ◼   ► But yeah, I had a number three instead of number four, and you never were.

01:19:19 ◼   ► I had Google in number four, but I already talked about that.

01:19:21 ◼   ► Fair enough.

01:19:22 ◼   ► So we all chose Apple last?

01:19:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, surprise.

01:19:26 ◼   ► Like obviously we're going to do that.

01:19:28 ◼   ► But I suppose this is a good litmus test.

01:19:30 ◼   ► This quiz doesn't give you much guidance.

01:19:35 ◼   ► You could use any criteria you want to remove it, and we're all talking about the different

01:19:38 ◼   ► things we thought about.

01:19:39 ◼   ► But I would guess that for the reason we kept Apple until last is mostly based on the fact

01:19:46 ◼   ► that we use Macs and iOS devices.

01:19:48 ◼   ► So it's suddenly a very personal decision.

01:19:51 ◼   ► That factored in like, oh, I use Gmail or I order lots of stuff from Amazon or, you

01:19:55 ◼   ► know, I get some value from Facebook and not from Microsoft because I don't use their stuff.

01:19:58 ◼   ► But for Apple, I think it would actually be harder to argue about like if Apple is gone,

01:20:06 ◼   ► no one will be able to do X, right?

01:20:09 ◼   ► I think, at least for me, more comes down to I use and like the Mac and there is no

01:20:14 ◼   ► alternative that I would want to use and I use and like iOS devices and there's probably

01:20:18 ◼   ► no alternative that I would want to use, and so I don't want those things to go away.

01:20:23 ◼   ► For me, it is less about, "If Apple is gone, they'll never be self-driving cars," because

01:20:28 ◼   ► that's not true.

01:20:29 ◼   ► "If Apple is gone, GNOME will ever make VR or AR," not true.

01:20:32 ◼   ► Like, "If Apple is gone, GNOME will ever make a handheld touch operating system again,"

01:20:36 ◼   ► actually, we have those now.

01:20:37 ◼   ► You know, so it's not based on future stuff.

01:20:40 ◼   ► Like I think in the past, if we were sort of in the beginning phases, like just after

01:20:45 ◼   ► the iPod and when Apple was making a series of computers that were really impressive and

01:20:50 ◼   ► weird and setting the world on fire, and then the iPod, the surprise success, the surprise

01:20:55 ◼   ► overnight five-year success.

01:20:58 ◼   ► I think I would have said at that time, "I'm saving Apple for last because I want to see

01:21:02 ◼   ► what they do next because they're just doing hit after hit after hit and even the duds

01:21:06 ◼   ► like the Cube are still awesome, right?

01:21:09 ◼   ► What is that Apple going to do next?"

01:21:11 ◼   ► These days I have less of what is an Apple going to do next thing and it's more just

01:21:14 ◼   ► like, "Please, Apple, you make many products that I like and enjoy that are an important

01:21:17 ◼   ► part of my life and I wouldn't like the alternatives. Please keep making them and improving them,"

01:21:22 ◼   ► which is a lesser thing, but I did save it for last, and for me it's for very selfish

01:21:26 ◼   ► reasons.

01:21:27 ◼   ► I mean, I make my living off of Apple. No matter how useless it would be, this show

01:21:31 ◼   ► or my jobby job, it's all because of Apple at this point. So I would be pretty sad and

01:21:38 ◼   ► broke if they disappeared.

01:21:41 ◼   ► - For me it's all about Beats.

01:21:42 ◼   ► I just don't wanna give up my Beats,

01:21:44 ◼   ► my Beats Solo 2 Studio X headphones.

01:21:49 ◼   ► - And Apple Music Connect, right?

01:21:50 ◼   ► Is that really a big part of your life?

01:21:52 ◼   ► - Yes, yes, definitely.

01:21:53 ◼   ► I really love connecting with my engaged,

01:21:57 ◼   ► I don't even know what it does.

01:21:58 ◼   ► - It's a big part of finding the setting

01:22:00 ◼   ► to remove that from your toolbar in iOS.

01:22:02 ◼   ► That's the best part.

01:22:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I mean, so like Casey,

01:22:06 ◼   ► I also make my living off of Apple stuff.

01:22:10 ◼   ► whether it's through my iOS app,

01:22:12 ◼   ► which could not exist anymore if Apple went away.

01:22:15 ◼   ► And yes, Overcast does have a web player,

01:22:19 ◼   ► which is used by something like 1% of the user base.

01:22:23 ◼   ► So that's probably not much of a business there.

01:22:26 ◼   ► Granted, it does suck,

01:22:27 ◼   ► but it's still not much usage there.

01:22:30 ◼   ► So my living would go away, or most of it at least.

01:22:35 ◼   ► We could theoretically keep podcasting

01:22:38 ◼   ► and we could make money that way,

01:22:39 ◼   ► but a large part of what we talk about would go away,

01:22:42 ◼   ► especially if we eliminated the other five companies

01:22:44 ◼   ► or the other four companies here also.

01:22:46 ◼   ► - We'd all be using Windows or Linux and Android,

01:22:48 ◼   ► so I think we'd have a lot of things to talk about.

01:22:50 ◼   ► - That's true.

01:22:51 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:22:51 ◼   ► That's true.

01:22:52 ◼   ► So that would be a problem.

01:22:54 ◼   ► And also, I will go one step further,

01:22:55 ◼   ► speaking of that, Jon,

01:22:57 ◼   ► that you mentioned that without Apple,

01:23:02 ◼   ► you couldn't really say like,

01:23:03 ◼   ► oh, without Apple, nobody would ever do X

01:23:05 ◼   ► or this thing would never exist.

01:23:07 ◼   ► I would say that there are many of those things in practice,

01:23:12 ◼   ► but the one that I will point out here

01:23:14 ◼   ► is I think without Apple, nobody would ever make

01:23:18 ◼   ► a great personal computing platform again.

01:23:21 ◼   ► And there's lots of reasons why,

01:23:23 ◼   ► and this could be a bigger discussion, I don't know.

01:23:26 ◼   ► But this is part of the reason why I'm so defensive

01:23:28 ◼   ► of Apple continuing to make pro hardware

01:23:32 ◼   ► and keeping the Mac healthy.

01:23:35 ◼   ► Because without that, many slices of people

01:23:39 ◼   ► have to go to Windows or Linux

01:23:41 ◼   ► or whatever future options might come about.

01:23:44 ◼   ► And I honestly do not believe that anyone else,

01:23:48 ◼   ► any other company will ever make a good general purpose

01:23:52 ◼   ► computer operating system as we know it today, besides Apple.

01:23:56 ◼   ► - Well, you put a lot of qualifiers on that

01:23:57 ◼   ► because you're saying as we know it.

01:23:59 ◼   ► I think that if Apple was to go away

01:24:01 ◼   ► and you're waiting for the next great one of those things,

01:24:03 ◼   ► It would be an OS that is not, quote unquote, "as we know it" today.

01:24:07 ◼   ► Like, to give an example from the past that didn't quite do it but I feel like could have,

01:24:11 ◼   ► WebOS.

01:24:12 ◼   ► I don't remember WebOS.

01:24:13 ◼   ► It was a little bit of a mess.

01:24:14 ◼   ► It had some bad ideas, but it's not a desktop operating system or general purpose operating

01:24:18 ◼   ► system as we know it, right?

01:24:20 ◼   ► And you could even argue Android.

01:24:21 ◼   ► Like, I feel like the next -- what you'd be waiting for is the next great computing platform

01:24:25 ◼   ► after Android, essentially, because we've already got Android and iOS.

01:24:28 ◼   ► We've already erased Google, so Android is gone.

01:24:30 ◼   ► And then we erased Apple, so Apple is gone.

01:24:32 ◼   ► So we're left side of this void, right?

01:24:34 ◼   ► And I feel like the next thing to emerge would be more like webOS, iOS, and Android.

01:24:39 ◼   ► You're right that there would never be, with all your qualifiers, a great personal computing,

01:24:44 ◼   ► general personal computing platform as we know it, because I feel like that time has

01:24:48 ◼   ► passed.

01:24:49 ◼   ► And so it is true that we'd be losing a category of things, right?

01:24:53 ◼   ► And that would be sad for us because we're old, but there would indeed be a new great

01:24:59 ◼   ► computing platform.

01:25:00 ◼   ► it just wouldn't be recognizable to us as like a general purpose computing platform.

01:25:04 ◼   ► I mean, surely in this day and age, it would be entirely like locked down and filled with

01:25:07 ◼   ► an app store and all sorts of other stuff.

01:25:09 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:25:10 ◼   ► And probably be touch based or VR based or whatever.

01:25:12 ◼   ► And like...

01:25:13 ◼   ► And ad based.

01:25:14 ◼   ► You know.

01:25:15 ◼   ► Well, we'll see.

01:25:16 ◼   ► I mean, I thought you were going to say privacy.

01:25:17 ◼   ► That's what I thought you were going to say.

01:25:18 ◼   ► Because if you look at all these companies, which one of these even makes like...

01:25:23 ◼   ► Most of them don't even make faints in the direction of privacy, right?

01:25:26 ◼   ► I mean, Google, I feel like is kind of good on the security of its own data, but that's

01:25:30 ◼   ► just so it can data mine it for itself. It doesn't want to lend to the outside world,

01:25:34 ◼   ► right? But Apple is by far the strongest on data privacy for, you know, and even things

01:25:41 ◼   ► like energy, sustainability, and stuff like that. Apple's core values, under Tim Cook

01:25:54 ◼   ► or otherwise, these other companies don't express in the same strong way.

01:25:59 ◼   ► And so data privacy could be without Apple, how long would it take for another company

01:26:02 ◼   ► of that size to actually care about the privacy and security of your data to the point where

01:26:07 ◼   ► it's fighting the government to prevent it from turning stuff over?

01:26:10 ◼   ► That is not a value that is spread very far and wide in tech, so it would be a shame to

01:26:14 ◼   ► lose that as well.

01:26:15 ◼   ► It's an interesting quiz, for sure.

01:26:19 ◼   ► So now we can scroll down on the thing and see what everyone else picked.

01:26:21 ◼   ► So 57% pick Facebook as number one, which I think is interesting.

01:26:24 ◼   ► I mean, who knows?

01:26:25 ◼   ► Like, this is a self-selected thing.

01:26:26 ◼   ► Who's gonna click on these things?

01:26:27 ◼   ► Probably a bunch of tech nerds.

01:26:28 ◼   ► And I know there's a lot of hatred of Facebook

01:26:29 ◼   ► among tech nerds, but this is the New York Times,

01:26:32 ◼   ► by the way, it's on its thing.

01:26:33 ◼   ► So I'm thinking that maybe the audience is broader

01:26:36 ◼   ► than I might imagine.

01:26:37 ◼   ► Maybe it's not entirely tech nerds.

01:26:39 ◼   ► And what I want to believe is that it shows

01:26:44 ◼   ► that Facebook is popular because Facebook is popular,

01:26:47 ◼   ► but people don't really have that much love for it, right?

01:26:50 ◼   ► They're like, you have to be on Facebook

01:26:51 ◼   ► 'cause everyone's on Facebook,

01:26:52 ◼   ► and everyone's on Facebook

01:26:53 ◼   ► everyone's on Facebook, but not universally beloved for whatever reason, whether it's

01:27:00 ◼   ► the software platform itself or the things people associate with it or they resent the

01:27:03 ◼   ► fact that they have to be there or whatever.

01:27:07 ◼   ► Microsoft and second, Microsoft is not on the way up.

01:27:14 ◼   ► I'm not saying it's on the way down, but it is in transition, so it doesn't surprise me.

01:27:18 ◼   ► Transition down.

01:27:19 ◼   ► Amazon third.

01:27:20 ◼   ► Amazon Third kind of surprises me because I would think more people would frame this

01:27:25 ◼   ► as here's a service that I use all the time and if I couldn't order from Amazon, but maybe

01:27:29 ◼   ► only tech nerds with more money than time order everything on Amazon.

01:27:35 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:27:36 ◼   ► Alphabet, assuming people knew what the hell Alphabet was.

01:27:38 ◼   ► Alphabet is third.

01:27:40 ◼   ► I think people like Google.

01:27:41 ◼   ► I think people like YouTube, especially YouTube.

01:27:43 ◼   ► I think people, you know, the general population don't want to, they just think of Google as

01:27:48 ◼   ► the way you search things, they don't know what the DuckDuckGo exists, they maybe heard

01:27:51 ◼   ► the word Bing once, Google's an essential thing, everything is Googling, and then YouTube,

01:27:56 ◼   ► if they're even aware that YouTube was part of it, they're gonna be like, "I'm not giving

01:27:59 ◼   ► up YouTube, YouTube is basically my TV." And then Apple, most people wanted to drop that

01:28:05 ◼   ► last because, I don't know, like, Apple customer sat and brand recognition and good feelings,

01:28:13 ◼   ► you know, people have a lot of good feelings about it. This is not a strict ranking, because

01:28:17 ◼   ► It really just tells you 32% chose to drop it last and 26% chose to drop Alphabet first.

01:28:23 ◼   ► So to slice and dice this data it would be difficult.

01:28:26 ◼   ► But anyway if you look at the little bar graphs at the bottom, Facebook dropped first.

01:28:30 ◼   ► It's just the runaway winner.

01:28:31 ◼   ► And then drop last.

01:28:32 ◼   ► Oh actually no, Google had a higher percentage of drop last.

01:28:36 ◼   ► So there you go, 40% for Google and 32% for Apple.

01:28:39 ◼   ► So two companies with a recognizable brand that people really, really like and Facebook,

01:28:45 ◼   ► Somebody likes them.

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01:30:31 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:30:34 ◼   ► - Marco, you wanna talk to us about how you don't believe

01:30:38 ◼   ► in Dropbox anymore, and that would have been

01:30:40 ◼   ► your first one to go if you had the option?

01:30:42 ◼   ► (Marco laughs)

01:30:43 ◼   ► Yeah, so maybe about a month or two ago now,

01:30:47 ◼   ► I forget exactly when it was, about a month ago maybe,

01:30:50 ◼   ► I decided to try a life without Dropbox, basically.

01:30:54 ◼   ► I still have my account, but I uninstalled it

01:30:57 ◼   ► from all of my computers, and I stopped using it

01:31:01 ◼   ► for anything except I logged onto the website

01:31:04 ◼   ► to download the audio files that you guys give me

01:31:06 ◼   ► every week for this podcast.

01:31:07 ◼   ► And there were a number of reasons

01:31:11 ◼   ► why I wanted to drop Dropbox.

01:31:13 ◼   ► Their software on the Mac has gotten increasingly

01:31:17 ◼   ► invasive of the system.

01:31:20 ◼   ► It does creepy things like trying to hack

01:31:22 ◼   ► the accessibility database and installing

01:31:24 ◼   ► kernel extensions and things, all in the name

01:31:27 ◼   ► of features that I don't want.

01:31:30 ◼   ► The accessibility thing I think was about

01:31:34 ◼   ► sucking in photos or something,

01:31:36 ◼   ► and the kernel extensions are for things like

01:31:39 ◼   ► their project infinite file system thing

01:31:41 ◼   ► that I don't need or want.

01:31:43 ◼   ► And there's no good options to just say,

01:31:46 ◼   ► no, please don't do this, thanks,

01:31:47 ◼   ► just give me the basic thing that uses

01:31:49 ◼   ► the supported API in Mac OS to do this,

01:31:53 ◼   ► the stuff that you're doing for syncing a folder.

01:31:55 ◼   ► All I really want is a synced folder.

01:31:57 ◼   ► That's all I really want out of this thing.

01:32:00 ◼   ► Basically the thing it used to be.

01:32:01 ◼   ► And so all these features I figure,

01:32:03 ◼   ► all this stuff that I don't want or use

01:32:05 ◼   ► that are part of Dropbox now,

01:32:07 ◼   ► let's see what else I can get away with.

01:32:09 ◼   ► And what I've settled on at the moment

01:32:13 ◼   ► is I just moved everything to iCloud Drive.

01:32:15 ◼   ► Because I already pay for iCloud storage for all my photos.

01:32:18 ◼   ► I already have all Apple devices that I'm running this on,

01:32:21 ◼   ► with one important exception,

01:32:23 ◼   ► which is my server that runs my blog engine,

01:32:25 ◼   ► which I'll get to.

01:32:26 ◼   ► But for the most part,

01:32:28 ◼   ► iCloud Drive should work fine for me.

01:32:30 ◼   ► So let's see how this goes.

01:32:32 ◼   ► So far, it's mostly fine.

01:32:37 ◼   ► But I think I'm gonna go back anyway.

01:32:39 ◼   ► In everyday use, everything's fine with iCloud Drive.

01:32:42 ◼   ► I even, to make the transition easier

01:32:44 ◼   ► with some of my muscle memory of running shell scripts

01:32:46 ◼   ► in my Dropbox folder, I sim-linked home/Dropbox

01:32:51 ◼   ► to whatever the crazy path is, like mobile documents,

01:32:56 ◼   ► whatever the path is to the actual iCloud Drive folder

01:33:00 ◼   ► on your Mac, I sim-linked home/Dropbox to that.

01:33:03 ◼   ► So I at least start, you know, everything is kind of

01:33:06 ◼   ► where I expect it to be if I get into like a muscle memory

01:33:10 ◼   ► of like, you know, going to the Dropbox folder