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179: Free-to-Play Dogs

 

00:00:00   You know what those are? Those are free-to-play dogs.

00:00:03   [Laughter]

00:00:05   [Music]

00:00:07   We got some feedback with regard to my maybe, maybe not, no I guess it is definitely ailing, but we don't know why, iMac.

00:00:15   An anonymous Apple Genius wrote in, and I'd like to read, this is pretty much their entire email, they said,

00:00:21   "I see failure is exactly like the one you were describing, the hanging after waking from sleep, after swapping the stock RAM back in,

00:00:27   not the reboots, the reboots were almost certainly OWC RAM,

00:00:30   that do track back to the GPU for sure,

00:00:33   but much more frequently it is just Apple

00:00:35   not having its stuff together software-wise.

00:00:37   Also nothing makes me sadder

00:00:39   than someone dropping off a machine

00:00:40   that's experiencing an intermittent issue

00:00:42   and it just sits there for a week

00:00:43   running stress testing or diagnostics,

00:00:45   and we have to give it back with a shrug

00:00:47   when we find nothing.

00:00:48   Or worse, when people are so utterly convinced as Marco

00:00:51   that a problem is quote, "definitely hardware," quote,

00:00:54   that we get bullied into replacing parts

00:00:56   Anyway for customer appeasement slash theater for a failure that can't be replicated and then have that person pick up the machine

00:01:03   And it's still having the same issue because that issue is never the hardware in the first place

00:01:07   Don't jump the gun be sure it's hardware before you come in and we'll be able to get it right the first time

00:01:12   Signed Apple genius best of luck

00:01:14   And don't listen to Marco

00:01:17   Sunglasses emoji that is actually part of the email which made me laugh. So yeah, so this particular genius said it could I

00:01:25   may, may not be crazy. And I have gotten a lot of feedback about the iMac and I am happy

00:01:32   to report that it was split about right down the middle. Half the people said I was insane

00:01:36   for not bringing it in and half the people said I totally feel you and you're doing the

00:01:40   right thing.

00:01:41   Oh, we should clarify, you know this because you made a pie chart.

00:01:44   I did. I went full business on this because I was curious how this was going to play out

00:01:51   because...

00:01:52   Can I share this pie chart?

00:01:53   Yeah, if you want. I mean, you can like dropler it or something.

00:01:56   Yeah, it was a spreadsheet, right? You just made it. It's a spreadsheet, and then the graph is from

00:01:59   the spreadsheet. Is it a Google Sheets thing or whatever it's called?

00:02:02   It is a Google Sheet, yeah. So I probably could drop this sheet in if I really felt like it,

00:02:06   but I probably won't because it's mostly irrelevant. But suffice to say,

00:02:11   I have tracked just line items, or I've tracked feedback as line items. I've split it into four

00:02:19   categories. ProCasey, AntiCasey, Jokes, which at the beginning I thought were going to be

00:02:24   far more frequent than they were. It ended up being only three of them. But like, "Oh,

00:02:28   did you spill water on it again? Haha!" And that was basically all three of them. And

00:02:32   then Neutral Posts, which were sometimes people saying like, "Oh, I can understand you not

00:02:38   wanting to bring it in, but maybe you should." Or, "Oh, have you tried using this memory

00:02:42   testing tool, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

00:02:47   And so it has been 49.5 percent, as per my fancy little spreadsheet, that have been in

00:02:53   the ProCasey camp.

00:02:55   And between the anti-Casey and neutral posts, that's another 47.7 percent.

00:03:05   So there you go.

00:03:06   So I have to ask the obvious question, which is, has your RMAc had any problems since

00:03:12   a week ago. It has indeed, but I can explain these away as well, don't you worry. So as it turns out,

00:03:18   it has rebooted itself twice, but I am... hold on, hold on. With the stock RAM in it? Yes,

00:03:23   hold on though. That is because... hold on. That's because I've had power failures both times,

00:03:29   and that is... and the iMac is not connected to my UPS. All right, well that's not rebooting itself.

00:03:33   That's a different thing. Yeah, that doesn't count. That's why I said it's... it's not... it's... it has

00:03:38   had an issue but it's not its fault so that's not an issue well I mean I don't

00:03:42   want it to reboot itself but I mean when the powers are yanked there's nothing

00:03:45   you can do so perhaps the best reason for you to bring this in for what may be

00:03:50   one of several frustrating visits to the Apple Store is that if you don't every

00:03:54   single week on the show we're gonna ask you how is the you know any new issues

00:04:00   because it's been on kind of like a week interval right so every week there's a

00:04:04   potential that something can happen that's correct although like these power

00:04:07   routers are really messing with whatever the interval was.

00:04:10   Oh, I know. It's the worst. Okay, so a follow-up question, because this

00:04:15   is the follow-up section of the show. You have a $3,000 high-end computer that uses

00:04:20   your primary computer at home. You have a UPS. Why is this computer not plugged into

00:04:26   the UPS? Well, so it's plugged into the non-battery

00:04:29   portion of the UPS because the priority is the Synology and associated paraphernalia

00:04:36   like my ERO and my router and all that other stuff. And it's not that big a deal to me

00:04:42   if this thing just croaks while it's on, as we've already demonstrated.

00:04:46   HFS Plus, it's a big deal.

00:04:49   Hmm, touche. I actually do intend, it's funny you bring this up because I had intended to

00:04:53   move it over to the battery side, I just haven't had the chance yet. And we almost never lose

00:04:57   lose power here, we've just had a couple of really, really crummy summer thunderstorms

00:05:03   and it's just so happened that we've lost power long enough for, you know, it's been

00:05:06   more than just a flash, it's been long enough for this thing to get upset.

00:05:10   Yeah, so it's on my to-do list to move it to the other side of the power strip thing.

00:05:16   Do you have enough power left in your thingy? Like whatever size the UPS is?

00:05:20   Yeah, you know, that was the reason why I wasn't there already is because I wanted to

00:05:24   give as much time as possible to the Synology because my hypothetical here is that I'm going

00:05:29   to be in a situation where I don't have the ability to turn the Synology off.

00:05:33   And this actually came up when we were in San Francisco together.

00:05:36   We were all Jason Snell's and my watch started going berserk because I was getting push notifications

00:05:41   from the Synology that the power was going on and off and on and off and on and off and

00:05:45   on and off.

00:05:46   And I actually asked Jason if he wouldn't mind if I used his 5K iMac to log into the

00:05:52   the Synology and shut itself down, because I didn't want it to, you know, violently die

00:05:58   if the power had stayed off long enough.

00:06:01   And so that's why I have the Synology on the UPS, but I kept the iMac off of it because

00:06:08   I wanted all available power to go to the Synology so it can hang on as long as possible

00:06:12   in the event of a power outage.

00:06:13   And like I said, this has been very peculiar, because generally we don't have any issues

00:06:17   with power here.

00:06:18   I mean, we used to have them relatively frequently,

00:06:22   but there was a tree branch on the lines

00:06:25   right outside my neighborhood,

00:06:26   and everything's in ground in the neighborhood.

00:06:28   And that tree branch was cut back by the power company

00:06:31   a year or two ago for exactly this reason,

00:06:33   to prevent this from happening.

00:06:34   It's just been peculiar lately that I've lost power a lot.

00:06:37   So on my to-do list, just to move the iMac over

00:06:39   to the battery side of the UPS,

00:06:41   I just haven't had the chance yet.

00:06:42   - Why don't I just unplug it right now,

00:06:44   'cause it doesn't seem to matter.

00:06:46   - What are you worried about with the violent death?

00:06:48   The thing was that the Synology will shut itself down when the UPS battery gets closer.

00:06:51   That's true.

00:06:52   Actually, I'm glad you brought that up because you're absolutely right.

00:06:54   I've never actually tested that, and so I don't know, I'm just scared.

00:06:58   I've tested it, unintentionally.

00:07:00   And also, instead of getting push notifications, I get emails.

00:07:03   Every time we vacuum in the basement, the Synology sends me email about going to UPS

00:07:09   and then going back to power because it's like a flicker when you fire up the vacuum

00:07:14   on the same circuit as the...

00:07:17   My house is under, the panel on my house is undersized for the things we have in it.

00:07:21   But anyway, I've tested it many times where we've lost power for long enough and it sends

00:07:26   me the emails, then I think it also sends you the email, it's like, "Well, I'm shutting

00:07:29   down, bye," and then when it comes back on, I forget if you get the goodbye email, but

00:07:33   you certainly get the turning back on one, and yeah, there's a setting in the thing where

00:07:36   you can tell it what percentage shut down or whatever.

00:07:39   Yeah, and I have that turned on.

00:07:40   Like I said, I was just scared of it.

00:07:42   And I should add, just for interest sake, that the way I got push notifications was

00:07:47   by an app called PushOver, which—I'm sure there's other ones like this—but basically

00:07:51   I get a unique email from the PushOver company that I have the Synology send emails to, and

00:07:58   then that gets forwarded—actually, if this and that probably does something like this—that

00:08:03   email gets forwarded to my iPhone and then to my watch.

00:08:08   So the push notification I'm getting is really just that same email that you're getting.

00:08:12   I'm having it forwarded on to a service

00:08:14   that will send the push notification.

00:08:16   So just pro tip.

00:08:18   But yeah, I should definitely move this over

00:08:20   to the battery side for sure.

00:08:23   I wanted to talk a little bit more about Pokemon.

00:08:26   After we recorded last week,

00:08:28   there were a couple of interest,

00:08:29   or well, there was one trend I noticed,

00:08:32   which I just thought was fascinating.

00:08:33   And I noticed two local,

00:08:36   well, one's a museum, one's a park.

00:08:39   The Science Museum of Virginia, which is here in Richmond,

00:08:42   had posted on their Facebook page,

00:08:45   I feel like such an old person when I say that,

00:08:46   but I think that is the proper vernacular.

00:08:49   Looking to catch some rare Pokemon

00:08:50   while seeing some pretty incredible #science.

00:08:53   This weekend, the museum's PokeStops

00:08:55   will have #lure modules planted to attract wild #Pokemon

00:08:59   while our exhibits are filled with yada yada yada.

00:09:02   So I'm so surprised to say the museum,

00:09:05   the Science Museum of Virginia had taken it upon themselves

00:09:08   install lures in the PokeStops that are one or more PokeStops that's at the

00:09:14   Science Museum to try to attract people to come visit, which I thought was really

00:09:19   interesting. And then Maymont Park, which is a park also here in Richmond and

00:09:23   that's actually where where Aaron and I got engaged. Pokemon Go! Catch 'em all at

00:09:29   Maymont! And there's a clearly photoshopped picture of a family

00:09:35   looking at one of the Pokemon, um, Pokemen, Pokemans, etc. Whatever it's called. Anyway,

00:09:41   the point being, they did an After Hours exclusive event where for $10 a person, you can go to

00:09:50   Maymont Park, which is beautiful, and it's free generally, but it's absolutely worth going to.

00:09:54   Join us for an exclusive After Hours Pokemon Go event as we activate Lores in the app and

00:10:00   explore the grounds in search of mysterious creatures that only come out at night. $10

00:10:04   a person, five if you're a member, adults must accompany children ages 15 and under.

00:10:08   Tickets are limited to the first 300 registrants.

00:10:10   Oh, actually that's happening a week from tomorrow, as it turns out.

00:10:14   So I just thought that this was really interesting that these local businesses and, you know,

00:10:21   museums and parks, which I don't know, I have the perception of being slightly stodgy to

00:10:24   me, even the science museum, have gotten on this bandwagon of getting people to spend

00:10:29   actual money playing this game.

00:10:32   But the money they're spending isn't on the game, it's with these venues.

00:10:35   I just thought it was a really, really clever idea.

00:10:37   Not unique to Richmond, but it just popped up on my radar because these are local places.

00:10:42   I thought it was cool.

00:10:43   What do you think the chances are that the game's servers will actually, you know, number

00:10:47   one, hold up in that area, and number two, work properly, so like everybody would actually

00:10:51   see the lures and everything?

00:10:53   A week from now, who knows.

00:10:55   Right now, the frustration in my household is the servers are always down.

00:11:00   My wife and children have taken up the game, by the way.

00:11:02   Ah, and what do you think having been in the proximity of the game now?

00:11:06   I mean, I went on walks with them.

00:11:08   I used my wife's phone to catch some for her.

00:11:11   She's into it, they're into it, it's a good excuse to walk around.

00:11:13   In fact, I think they're probably still out now, even though it's, like, dark, because

00:11:16   the servers were down.

00:11:17   They were all going to go on a walk to catch Pokémon, but the servers have been down until

00:11:21   very recently tonight, so they're basically down anytime you'd want to do it.

00:11:24   "Hey, everyone's home from work, the kids are home from camp or whatever, let's go hunting

00:11:28   for Pokemon and that's exactly when the servers are down.

00:11:31   And I guess enough kids went to bed that the servers are back up.

00:11:34   Anyway, it's frustrating.

00:11:35   The most heartwarming story I read about Pokemon, which is on the internet so it must be true,

00:11:41   is that an animal shelter had a posting that says basically if you want to play Pokemon

00:11:46   but you're embarrassed to let people see you playing, which you shouldn't be, but you know,

00:11:50   if you're embarrassed to see people playing Pokemon, come to our dog shelter and for $5

00:11:56   an hour you can rent one of our dogs and walk it. So it will look like you're walking a

00:12:02   dog when really you're hunting for Pokémon. So here are the results of this. They now

00:12:06   have a waiting list of people who want to pay for the privilege of walking a dog. They've

00:12:10   made so much money on rental fees for the dogs that they've waived the adoption fees.

00:12:14   When people renting dogs are out walking, they post pictures of themselves playing the

00:12:17   game on Facebook and Instagram. People are then coming to the shelter asking to adopt

00:12:21   the specific dogs they saw in the pictures. On at least two occasions people have called

00:12:24   the shelter and said, "Hey, I didn't think I really wanted a dog, but me and this dog

00:12:28   get along really well, so I'm not bringing them back." And this shelter currently has

00:12:31   no dogs available to rent, and there's a waiting list, because all the dogs have been adopted.

00:12:35   They're bringing in dogs from other shelters.

00:12:37   That's amazing.

00:12:38   Oh, that's great. Even if that's only half true, that's still great. And I hope it's

00:12:42   all true.

00:12:43   Yeah, I completely agree.

00:12:44   Like, the idea—the best part of that, again, if it's true, is that instead of paying people

00:12:48   to walk—like, the shelter's like, "We have all these dogs, and we don't have enough staff

00:12:51   members to walk them, maybe we give people a couple bucks to walk them, reversing the

00:12:55   cash flow. Come to us, pay us to walk our dog. It's like...

00:12:59   Like usually like begging for volunteers to come do it for free.

00:13:02   Right, and then all the dogs get adopted away because of the magic of social media. The

00:13:07   dog shelter is empty, they have to pull from other dog shelters.

00:13:10   Well it's also like, you know, so often people come up with the idea, "Oh, wouldn't it be

00:13:13   great if you could rent puppies?" And puppy rental is a really cool sounding idea for

00:13:18   for about four seconds until you think about the reality

00:13:22   of what that business would actually be like

00:13:23   and you're like, "Oh, that's horrible."

00:13:26   But grown dog rental from a shelter

00:13:31   where these dogs have nobody else and really need people,

00:13:35   that flips it around completely.

00:13:37   That takes this great sounding for a second

00:13:40   but ultimately terrible idea and makes it

00:13:43   into something endearing and positive and overall pleasant.

00:13:46   I honestly really hope it was real.

00:13:49   I have my doubts, but I really hope it's real.

00:13:51   - You know what those are?

00:13:52   Those are free-to-play dogs.

00:13:54   (laughing)

00:13:56   You can get the dog for free 'cause they're like,

00:13:58   you know what, I really like this dog.

00:13:59   I want it without them.

00:14:01   And then you've essentially done an in-app purchase

00:14:03   for a dozen years of paying for vet bills and dog food

00:14:07   and all the other things you have to pay for.

00:14:09   It's free to play, it's free to walk the dog,

00:14:11   but it's a trap because they know, based on human nature,

00:14:14   the dogs are adorable and people are going to fall in love with them and then they get

00:14:18   the big bucks. Yeah, and the final delightful thing is that apparently this bubble has boosted

00:14:24   Nintendo's stock price so much that their market cap is now bigger than Sony.

00:14:31   So I do wonder, do you guys think that Pokémon Go is actually going to still be relevant

00:14:36   even in a week? You know, basically to what degree do you think this is just like a big

00:14:40   spike followed by a big crash that's just a fad or do you think it's going to actually

00:14:44   stick around as like a game people play for a pretty long time.

00:14:47   Well that was my question last week, it was like net new trainers.

00:14:50   Because Pokemon has always been popular.

00:14:52   Every time a new Pokemon game comes out, all the people who are rabid Pokemon fans who

00:14:55   buy every single game buy it.

00:14:57   The question is, how many more of those people does this make?

00:15:00   Because yeah, there's gonna be a drop off of like, "Oh I played this when it was really

00:15:03   popular but I wasn't into it enough to become a dedicated fan of the franchise."

00:15:08   So when the next game comes out, you see how many of those people come back.

00:15:11   And I think it it has to add more fans like just because it's got so much exposure to people who've never played

00:15:16   Pokemon games before it has to add more. I'm not sure how much more certainly

00:15:20   This spike is an aberration and I don't expect

00:15:25   An intent to keep every single one of the people who are playing now as long-term

00:15:30   Dedicated players of the franchise, you know to put things in perspective

00:15:36   It I think as recently as a couple of weeks ago

00:15:39   I was visiting with my parents and they were still playing Words with Friends

00:15:43   So they mean these things can be sticky and I think this is going to be at least in part a flash in the pan

00:15:51   Flash in the pan, but I think it given the Pokemon

00:15:55   You know the backstory and and how many people have enjoyed it so much in the past

00:16:00   I think it'll be a lot stickier than most of these other things like for example

00:16:05   Draw something which was oh, this is amazing. Okay. Nobody cares. Yeah

00:16:09   Draw something is a higher bar to enter like your parents still playing that same game

00:16:13   It's not really helping the words

00:16:14   It's not really helping Zingo or whatever unless they're dumping more money into it, right?

00:16:17   The whole question for the games like Pokemon is when we come out with the inevitable improved sequel

00:16:23   Will you do that one too? And also like I said last week

00:16:26   All right. Have you ever put any money into this or is all your money going to rent dogs to walk?

00:16:33   Like where is the money going? Like obviously there are people who are putting money into this game

00:16:36   It's gonna make money for all the people involved

00:16:39   But it's the money is coming from a small number of people who spend a lot and almost everybody else

00:16:45   It seems like you're spending nothing so far. No one in my family has spent anything either

00:16:48   Yep, I just I'm really fascinated by

00:16:53   The way in which the the real world and the you know

00:16:59   this electronic, this entertainment world have collided.

00:17:02   And I've been, I mean, there's been some crummy stories

00:17:05   coming out of it because humans are terrible.

00:17:07   But I've just been, I thought it was so neat

00:17:10   and I still think it's so neat and such an interesting,

00:17:13   an interesting investigation into how these things

00:17:16   kind of come together and an interesting case study,

00:17:19   if you'll permit me to use that terrible business term.

00:17:21   It's just been fascinating to watch.

00:17:23   So very cool stuff.

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00:18:41   - SoftBank, which is a Japanese company,

00:18:48   are they a cell phone carrier,

00:18:49   or I don't know much about them.

00:18:51   - They're like a holding company, I think.

00:18:52   They do have a, they're a telecommunication company, they do have like a cell phone wing.

00:18:56   Okay, well, regardless, they have bought ARM for $32 billion.

00:19:02   Haven't bought, want to buy, or are in the process of trying to buy.

00:19:06   I think the deal is not yet finalized.

00:19:08   What do we think about this?

00:19:10   This is, I'm not so much interested in the details of like ARM or the history of ARM,

00:19:15   especially, you know, like you can read a lot of stories about its origins with the

00:19:19   Newton and where this whole effort came from and all that other business. I'm mostly interested in

00:19:24   terms of thinking about how Apple implements its famous "we want to own and control the major

00:19:33   technologies" and I forget whatever that Tim Cook quote is. Like they want to own and control the

00:19:37   technologies that go into their products, right? They do that selectively. Like they do it according

00:19:45   to their own definition. So I was thinking of an example. They don't own the companies

00:19:53   that make the really tough glass that goes on top of iPhones. They don't own Dow Corning

00:19:58   or whoever makes the Gorilla Glass or the variants or whatever. They don't own Foxconn

00:20:03   or the companies that assemble their products. Are those the core technologies or whatever

00:20:11   the specific wording that was used in that quote? I guess not, right? They do own the

00:20:17   operating system, they do own like the hardware designs and you know the whole like the product

00:20:23   and all the other stuff, but some parts of it they always consider to be like "oh we'll

00:20:29   pay somebody else to do that" and it doesn't really matter that much because if we can't

00:20:35   get this glass from this company we'll try to get it from this other one or if this company

00:20:38   won't assemble our phones, like we'll pit suppliers against each other, like they end

00:20:41   up being just being a supplier. So the question for ARM, ARM which makes the, doesn't make

00:20:46   the chips, but ARM which owns the intellectual property to the instruction set and some of

00:20:51   the architectural details and many many patents and so on and so forth for the CPUs that are

00:20:55   in all of Apple's iOS devices, is that just another supplier or is that something that

00:21:02   Apple needs to own and control? And the reason that comes up is, again as far as I'm aware

00:21:05   as we record this, this deal is not finalized, should Apple be concerned that some company

00:21:12   that's not them and is not whoever, you know, the current ARM, people who are running ARM,

00:21:18   is going to buy the company that I feel like not that they rely on, but that is an integral

00:21:25   part of their most important products.

00:21:28   Should they care?

00:21:29   Are they like, "Oh, well, whatever, you guys do whatever you want as long as you continue

00:21:32   to give us the ARM architecture license that lets us essentially build and design our own

00:21:37   CPUs with your intellectual property as core, we're fine.

00:21:40   I don't really care who owns ARM.

00:21:42   Or should they be like, "Someone get out the checkbook.

00:21:45   We've got $32 billion between couch cushions.

00:21:47   We should just outbid them."

00:21:49   It's hard to say without the details of the deal that they have with ARM, but this intellectual

00:21:53   property is super, super important.

00:21:55   I mean, this is what all the A-series chips run on, right?

00:21:57   So I'm so torn.

00:22:00   I would say it is not important for them to own ARM

00:22:03   as long as they have, as close as they can get

00:22:07   to an in perpetuity license

00:22:09   for whatever IP they currently have.

00:22:12   - I mean, and there's also, like there's,

00:22:13   if you look at what Apple buys and what they don't buy,

00:22:17   they tend not to buy component manufacturers

00:22:20   that also supply the entire rest

00:22:22   of the computing industry with parts.

00:22:24   So like, they don't buy Intel,

00:22:26   you don't see them buying AMD or Nvidia,

00:22:28   they don't buy like a flash ram manufacturer

00:22:30   or attempt to buy Samsung,

00:22:32   'cause half their components come from Samsung.

00:22:33   Like, there are lots of these component suppliers

00:22:37   that make all sorts of parts that go in multiple kinds

00:22:42   of computers or phones or whatever else, not just Apples.

00:22:46   And Apple, you could make an argument that Apple

00:22:48   should maybe buy Intel or something like that.

00:22:51   You know, if we ever talk about the Mac lineup

00:22:54   being so stale, again, this episode,

00:22:56   'cause we talk about it every episode

00:22:57   because it's a really big problem.

00:22:59   You know, you could look at that and be like,

00:23:00   well maybe Apple should just buy Intel

00:23:01   and run that company in their own interest.

00:23:04   But, you know, there's a reason why they don't,

00:23:06   there's lots of reasons why they don't.

00:23:08   First of all, Apple tends to not buy companies at that large

00:23:11   because they tend not to need to.

00:23:14   I would imagine they have some kind of deal

00:23:17   with the ARM license that they have,

00:23:19   'cause they have a special license

00:23:20   to be able to do their own chip designs with that.

00:23:23   I don't know the details of that,

00:23:24   we'll probably hear about it from our readers,

00:23:26   but basically I would imagine they have ways

00:23:29   to not get locked out of that forever,

00:23:31   so they kinda don't need to buy ARM.

00:23:32   And if they did ever try to buy one of these companies

00:23:34   that also supplies the rest of the industry

00:23:36   with major important parts, like Intel or ARM,

00:23:40   there would probably be regulatory issues with that.

00:23:43   That would probably not be great for them

00:23:45   with the Justice Department and with the FTC maybe,

00:23:48   or whoever does that kind of regulatory management.

00:23:51   There'd be political problems with that,

00:23:53   there might be justice problems, antitrust problems.

00:23:55   So there's lots of reasons for them not to buy these companies that also supply everybody

00:23:59   else with stuff.

00:24:00   What I think about is not so much who the companies supply, but could Apple get that

00:24:06   same thing from somewhere else?

00:24:08   And most things I can think of, like Intel, it's like, "Oh, you can't get x86 CPUs anywhere

00:24:12   else."

00:24:13   Well, you can't.

00:24:14   You can get them from AMD.

00:24:15   It's not a lot of choices, but there is at least one other choice out there.

00:24:18   For flash RAM, other things like that, even the glass stuff, you could argue that no one

00:24:24   has the specific kind of glass that they want except for corning or whatever but like you

00:24:29   can get glass from somewhere else but because what Arm supplies Arm doesn't make anything

00:24:35   what all Arm supplies is intellectual property essentially licensing like they don't you

00:24:39   know they license out designs and the right to use this instruction set and all that stuff

00:24:45   I don't think you can get that anywhere else there is no alternate supplier for that so

00:24:49   if for example Softbank buys Arm and slowly transitions the company away not that they're

00:24:54   going to do this, but like decides that Arm is going to become a company that does augmented

00:24:58   reality games where you collect monsters because it seems like a more lucrative future.

00:25:01   Apple can't, I don't think Apple, no matter what contracts they have, the best they could hope for

00:25:07   is like you can continue to make chips according to the designs that you've already licensed,

00:25:11   but there will be no new designs, and by the way, you can't make your own designs without licensing

00:25:16   these patents from us or without otherwise buying the intellectual property that underlies that.

00:25:20   Like because of the weird accidents of history that x86 and AMD being able to make x86 compatible chips

00:25:26   I don't think there's any equivalent for that arm

00:25:28   And I'm sure people will send it in send us in corrections if that's not the case

00:25:32   I'm off follow up on the next show, but I I keep thinking about it in terms of

00:25:38   Is there an alternate supplier like how how important is armed Apple and what are their alternatives if something?

00:25:45   Weird starts to happen there and I also think about this and speaking of Macs a lot of questions

00:25:49   we've gotten about this with the ARM deals, like, does this make it more or less likely

00:25:53   that ARM Macs are going to come out?

00:25:55   Did WWC, like, do any of these announcements indicate ARM Macs?

00:25:59   Why haven't we already seen ARM Macs?

00:26:00   And me thinking about ARM Macs for a while again, I thought, like, x86 Macs, again, worst

00:26:07   case scenario, you have two suppliers that you could convince to make you x86 CPUs.

00:26:14   I guess if you have enough money, anything's possible.

00:26:16   You're like, all right. Well, someone will license us the ability to make our own arm check

00:26:20   Someone will license us the ability to make our own XA like we'll just buy the intellectual property like we're never stuck

00:26:24   Because huge piles of money is a get out of jail free card

00:26:27   So it doesn't really matter what happens over there until there are problems. Don't worry about it. But like for the arm max like

00:26:34   Is it Apple spends a lot of money?

00:26:37   Making the a you know, I'm gonna say X or whatever the the a followed by a digit system on a chip things that are in

00:26:45   all their devices. They hired a lot of people, they bought a lot of companies, they do a

00:26:49   lot of work on their own, their chips are not like, "Oh, we'll just license a design

00:26:53   from Arm and pay someone to manufacture it." They do their own chip design, their own integration.

00:26:59   It's very expensive, very complicated. It's a part of Apple's competitive advantage.

00:27:03   Is the Mac line, which we're about to talk about the ongoing stagnation, is the Mac line

00:27:08   worth doing an equal or possibly even greater investment in chip design to essentially do

00:27:16   what Intel and AMD and NVIDIA or whoever, you know, all the parts that make up the parts that

00:27:22   go into a Mac, they're not simple parts. They're complicated. They're higher performance things

00:27:27   that go into phones. They are generally bigger. They have more transistors. If you are going to

00:27:33   sign up, say, we're going to do our Macs because we can own and control the CPUs that go into them

00:27:36   and we can make them just the way we want them.

00:27:38   That is a big investment,

00:27:40   probably equal to the investment they're putting

00:27:42   into the iPhone system on chips for a line of business

00:27:45   that is nowhere near the size of the iOS line.

00:27:48   So maybe the thing that's keeping our Macs away

00:27:49   is not that Apple would like to get away from Intel,

00:27:52   who's delaying their products and it's kind of annoying,

00:27:54   but just because it would cost so much money

00:27:56   for Apple to make a,

00:27:58   like we spent a lot of past shows talking about,

00:28:00   can Apple make an ARM chip that's competitive Intel?

00:28:02   Yeah, maybe, but it would cost a lot of money.

00:28:06   It's not easy to do that.

00:28:07   What Intel does is not simple,

00:28:08   and I'm not quite sure that Apple thinks

00:28:11   the Mac hardware line is worth it, is worth the investment.

00:28:14   - And you could also argue that things with Intel

00:28:18   aren't bad enough yet.

00:28:19   This is gonna bleed into our next topic a lot,

00:28:22   but in order for Apple to switch from PowerPC to Intel,

00:28:27   things had to get pretty bad with PowerPC for a while,

00:28:31   and Intel was way better.

00:28:35   there had to be this massive delta between the status quo of them using PowerPC and being,

00:28:40   you know, really having a problematic roadmap and pretty bad neglect and becoming very much

00:28:45   uncompetitive with the other side, and then having the other side being Intel be really

00:28:50   compelling and have very few downsides to switching to it, and just these massive upsides.

00:28:56   And I think right now if you look at like, you know, what they have with Intel versus

00:28:59   what a possible future with ARM Macs would be, I don't think the delta between those

00:29:03   those two was nearly as large as it used to be,

00:29:06   between PowerPC and Intel.

00:29:08   The delta now is like, well Intel,

00:29:10   yeah Intel is really slow to make new chips,

00:29:13   but their chips that they do release, mostly,

00:29:16   are really good.

00:29:17   Like there are occasional problems,

00:29:19   but for the most part, they are very competitive.

00:29:22   That's one of the reasons why Apple doesn't use AMD CPUs.

00:29:25   As you know, they could use,

00:29:27   what are AMD CPUs even called these days?

00:29:30   Are they still Opterons and stuff or?

00:29:32   I don't even know.

00:29:33   What, you know, AMD CPUs aren't very competitive

00:29:36   with Intel CPUs and haven't been for some time

00:29:38   in most markets that Apple would ship computers in.

00:29:41   Intel CPUs are just really good.

00:29:43   Yeah, they have dramatically slowed down

00:29:46   their rate of improvement and new releases

00:29:48   and all these new releases always keep getting delayed

00:29:50   and everything, but they still use them

00:29:52   because for the most part they're really good.

00:29:55   And it's using all these proven platforms,

00:29:57   you know, as John said, like all the parts

00:29:59   that go into a full computer, I mean, yeah,

00:30:01   they do some degree of it on the phones

00:30:04   and on the A-series system on chips there,

00:30:07   but computers have all these different ports

00:30:09   and standards they have to do and everything.

00:30:11   On a phone, Apple can't delete ports fast enough.

00:30:13   Like, they're just, "Oh yeah, we started out with two,

00:30:15   "we're gonna have one now."

00:30:17   Like, "Oh, and it'll be ours that we design."

00:30:18   Like, computers have to have like four USB ports

00:30:21   and have all these video out standards and all this.

00:30:24   Computers have to have, I mean, well, most computers,

00:30:26   I guess the MacBook One doesn't, but most computers,

00:30:29   you have to have all these standards

00:30:30   that the computing industry uses.

00:30:31   all these disk interfaces and IO interfaces

00:30:36   and all this stuff that you don't really have to think

00:30:39   about much when you're just designing iPhones and iPads

00:30:41   because they don't use them or they don't need

00:30:43   to interoperate with most of these devices.

00:30:46   So there's all this stuff that a computer needs

00:30:49   and all this competitiveness that Intel offers

00:30:51   that the difference between Intel now

00:30:55   having a slow release cycle but providing quite a lot

00:30:59   when they do finally release it,

00:31:01   versus what you'd have to do

00:31:03   to build up an entire computer line using ARM CPUs.

00:31:08   The amount of work on the other side is so tremendous,

00:31:11   and the gain probably wouldn't be that big.

00:31:14   - Yeah, and on top of that,

00:31:15   I feel like Apple and Intel have

00:31:17   at least an okay relationship, right?

00:31:19   Because it wasn't that long ago

00:31:21   that I think it was the first MacBook Air

00:31:24   Intel created this completely one-off chip,

00:31:27   the CPU for the MacBook Air.

00:31:29   Am I crazy in thinking that?

00:31:30   Do you remember this?

00:31:31   - Well, it was a one-off packaging.

00:31:34   They didn't create a whole custom chip design,

00:31:36   but they created a custom socket and package for the chips

00:31:41   to make the whole socket small.

00:31:43   - Sure, I still count it.

00:31:44   My point is just that they were able to ask Intel

00:31:48   or tell Intel, whatever the situation may be,

00:31:51   "Hey, we need this thing completely custom to us.

00:31:54   "We're cool, right?"

00:31:55   And turns out they're cool, and Intel did it.

00:31:58   and everyone was happy except the people who bought

00:32:01   that MacBook Air because it was a total turd.

00:32:02   Hi Marco.

00:32:03   I don't know.

00:32:06   The question is, as we've been dancing around,

00:32:11   is this hardware stagnation that we really need

00:32:14   to talk about again, because we do need to talk about it,

00:32:17   is this hardware stagnation really Intel's fault

00:32:19   or is it Apple's fault?

00:32:20   - Before we move on to that,

00:32:22   a few more points on ARM versus Intel.

00:32:24   We've talked before about the performance delta

00:32:26   and how it needs to be big enough to be worthwhile

00:32:28   And then in past conversations, it also brought up this point, which I'll bring up again,

00:32:31   which is really it's not about the performance delta.

00:32:33   The reason Apple will be doing it is for increased control.

00:32:37   So I think the real question to ask, other than the cost thing, which I just brought

00:32:39   up for ARM versus Intel, is how much more control does moving Macs to ARM give Apple

00:32:47   than it currently has with Intel?

00:32:48   And as Casey just pointed out, it's a pretty high bar because it's like, well, if Apple

00:32:54   did their own chips, they could control everything.

00:32:56   They would control the schedule.

00:32:57   They would control the features.

00:32:58   control, everything that they possibly do. But it seemed like for the past many years,

00:33:02   Apple controls an awful lot about what Intel does in terms of, I don't know, forcing them,

00:33:07   but really strongly suggesting that they improve the embedded GPUs in their CPUs and making

00:33:12   like this whole line of products, the ones that Apple buys with the Iris graphics and

00:33:16   everything, that whole product line just smells like Apple saying, "Intel, for the next several

00:33:21   generations of chips, here's what we want out of your chips." And then Intel essentially

00:33:23   doing it because Apple is, I would imagine, the biggest and in some cases perhaps the

00:33:28   only customer for these weird chips because all the cheaper x86 windows laptop type things

00:33:35   or whatever are just like, well, maybe we'll have a top of the line thing, but our bread

00:33:39   and butter will be those middle of the road ones, which is another reason that Apple has

00:33:42   to wait a lot.

00:33:43   So certainly Apple would have more control with ARM, but it would cost them a ton of

00:33:47   money to make ARM chips for the Mac.

00:33:49   And Intel thus far seems pretty willing to do essentially whatever Apple wants with the

00:33:53   chips it's just a question of delivery and Apple could say well the increased control we would have

00:33:58   is even though Intel is pretty nice to us and we have a good relationship and they're pretty much

00:34:02   willing to do the kinds of things we asked for they take a long time and sometimes they screw up

00:34:06   and we feel like if we did it ourselves we would do a better job and the second aspect of this is

00:34:12   like for the performance delta and waiting for things to catch up another possible strategy again

00:34:18   possibly mentioned on past shows is you don't have to worry about it costing so much money to make an

00:34:23   an ARM chip for your Mac, all you gotta do is wait until the iPad Pro is faster than

00:34:28   all the existing Macs, and then just use that chip that you've already made for your bread

00:34:32   and butter iOS devices, use that in Macs too. Because at that point, like if those lines

00:34:38   ever cross and it's like, well, and they're getting close, like the top end iPad Pro and

00:34:43   the bottom end MacBook, we looked at those numbers in the past, like eventually if things,

00:34:50   the rate of change keeps going the way they are, and the system-mounted chips that are

00:34:55   in iOS devices keep adding more power with a similar power envelope, assuming battery

00:35:01   technology is only increasing like 5 or 10 percent per year or whatever, and that the

00:35:05   Mac ones, their rate of performance increase is not going up that fast, those lines can

00:35:12   end up crossing, and it's like, "Oh, finally, we don't have to do some weird extra investment

00:35:16   to end up with ARM chips that we can use in our laptop Macs.

00:35:19   We already do that investment for our phones

00:35:21   and iPads and whatever.

00:35:23   And it's kind of the same way that the iPads

00:35:25   have these chips.

00:35:25   Like the only reason they have those chips

00:35:26   is because they need them for the phones.

00:35:27   'Cause certainly on the iPad

00:35:28   is not making the iPhone kind of money.

00:35:30   So the rising tide of the iPhone

00:35:33   is like anything developed for the iPhone

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00:37:53   Never lose anything again.

00:37:54   - So MacRumors has a really lovely buyer's guide

00:38:02   where they go through the hardware

00:38:05   in all the different hardware lines, product lines,

00:38:07   and they say, "Hey, you probably shouldn't get this

00:38:09   "right now because they're probably gonna release,

00:38:12   "Apple's probably gonna release a new one soon."

00:38:14   And so, you know, coming up on the fall, as we are,

00:38:18   the iPhone, for example, is labeled as caution.

00:38:21   The iPad Pro, neutral, yeah, it's probably okay.

00:38:24   - We should clarify, this is based on actual, like,

00:38:26   data from past generations, I mean, this,

00:38:29   the MacRumors buying guide has been running,

00:38:31   it's, you know how, like, you know,

00:38:33   in whatever the biggest, well-known,

00:38:36   oldest steak restaurant in your town,

00:38:38   and people say, "Oh, that place is an institution."

00:38:41   The MacRumors buying guide is an institution

00:38:44   in the MacNurdery circles.

00:38:46   - All right, all right, noobs, all right.

00:38:48   - Okay, yeah.

00:38:49   All right, grandpa. - Yes, oh, man.

00:38:51   Yes, how would you like to correct us?

00:38:52   - Let me tell you about Mac in touch, okay?

00:38:54   No, go on. (laughs)

00:38:55   - And so this is based on,

00:38:58   they look at how often these products are updated,

00:39:01   And so they know, okay, well the MacBook Pro, say,

00:39:04   is updated on average every 400 days or whatever it is.

00:39:08   They look back on history and they know

00:39:10   for every product line, what is the average interval

00:39:12   between updates?

00:39:13   And that's how they can tell you with a reasonable degree

00:39:16   of approximate surety that like, okay, well,

00:39:21   the Mac Mini is usually updated every,

00:39:25   what is it, like 800 days or whatever.

00:39:27   I don't even know what the average is for the Mac Mini.

00:39:29   and it's been 700 days since the last one,

00:39:32   so you probably shouldn't buy one now.

00:39:33   It's that kind of thing.

00:39:34   - Yep, the average for the Mac mini, 438 days.

00:39:37   We are currently running at 643.

00:39:39   - There you go.

00:39:40   - So, yeah, there you go.

00:39:41   - That's lower than I would have guessed, honestly.

00:39:43   - Well, so this website, this webpage, by the way,

00:39:45   which I encourage everyone to go to,

00:39:47   and let me put it in the notes,

00:39:48   must be the most infuriating webpage

00:39:52   to Apple executives and probably Phil Schiller in particular,

00:39:55   because, look at that, because at the top of this page,

00:39:58   especially when you hit the Mac tab,

00:40:00   which we'll give you the link to.

00:40:01   It shows the picture of all Apple's current Mac products,

00:40:03   the name of them, and underneath it, like you said,

00:40:06   they have these things like,

00:40:07   "Oh, you should buy Neutral or don't buy."

00:40:08   And the Mac thing shows their products right next to it

00:40:11   with a red button saying, "Don't buy, don't buy, don't buy."

00:40:14   This is exactly the opposite message

00:40:16   that Apple wants anywhere on the internet.

00:40:18   All of its products are arrayed in a big line

00:40:20   with red things that say, "Don't buy."

00:40:22   Can you imagine a more sort of viscerally upsetting web page

00:40:27   people whose job it is to sell Macs and I guess you got the green one on the

00:40:30   MacBook that says buy now but it's just it's such a weird thing to see Apple's

00:40:34   product photography next to huge red buttons that say don't buy it's harsh but

00:40:40   harsh but fair it's a good time for the Mac bone so there's that yeah this is

00:40:46   really sad so everything they everything except the MacBook one the air the pro

00:40:51   the MacBook Pro the retina MacBook Pro god I forgot that there's a distinction

00:40:54   there. The iMac, the Mac Mini, the Mac Pro. That's 945 days since the last release, December 2013.

00:41:03   And you guys were so excited. Remember those days? Anyway, all of this says don't buy. And it's

00:41:08   getting, I don't know, it's getting a little bit ridiculous, right? On the one side, why does one

00:41:16   need a brand new computer? Like, let's suppose that the CPU was modern, which it's not really

00:41:23   these days. But I mean the industrial design, it's this unibody setup has been around for

00:41:28   a few years. Like Stephen Hackett's video review of the kind of history of modern Apple

00:41:35   laptops goes through this. And you know, they don't look that different than they have ever

00:41:39   used to. They've, you know, upgraded the internals, made it a little thinner, you know, improved

00:41:43   battery life actually. Wouldn't be nice to get that on the iOS side. But, you know, what

00:41:48   do you really need from a brand new computer? Like if it wasn't for the fact that these

00:41:52   chips are all getting a little bit long in the tooth, I don't think this would be that egregious.

00:41:56   I'm not looking for a brand new form factor in my work MacBook Pro. Now, remind me of that when they

00:42:01   do something amazing and I must have it. But... In like two months. Yeah, exactly. But I tell you

00:42:07   what, man, this is sad times. And it's just, it's gotten to the point, I mean, looking at these

00:42:13   numbers, 281 days, 428 days, 499 days, 643 days, 945 days, like these, we're measuring in years.

00:42:21   It's unreal. Like what are they doing? How is this okay?

00:42:26   You know to some degree this isn't just like Santa Claus like, you know, Santa/Apple

00:42:31   We we just deserve new things because it's time, you know

00:42:34   There has to be something that they update the internals to like, you know that and so you have to again

00:42:39   Look at that supply chain. Look at Intel especially because that's that's where a lot of this is based. You have to say alright

00:42:44   well, is there something else that they could be updating to that they're just not like Apple doesn't just

00:42:50   arbitrarily decide, you know what, next month,

00:42:54   we're gonna give them a MacBook Pro update.

00:42:56   You know, like it's based on the schedules

00:42:58   of the components that go into it

00:42:59   and what they could update the components to.

00:43:02   In recent years, Intel has had a lot of problems

00:43:05   and delays getting their new stuff out

00:43:08   and so much of this is based on that.

00:43:09   And we've talked about this before,

00:43:11   so I'm gonna try not to repeat too much ground here.

00:43:13   So a lot of these things are just,

00:43:15   the newest Intel chips are what's holding this up

00:43:17   and they aren't available yet

00:43:18   or they're not available in quantity yet

00:43:20   or the ones that Apple would use aren't available

00:43:22   even though the rest of the family might be.

00:43:24   And that's the case with a lot of these.

00:43:26   The products that tend to sell in very high volumes,

00:43:29   the new MacBook, the Retina MacBook Pro, and the iMac,

00:43:33   tend to be kept up to date fairly responsibly.

00:43:36   If Intel has released a new generation of CPUs

00:43:40   that is the appropriate size and cost

00:43:43   and heat and power needs for these certain lines,

00:43:47   Apple tends to update to them in a reasonable amount of time.

00:43:50   So if you're buying like an iMac,

00:43:53   I mean the iMac has not been neglected at all.

00:43:55   The iMac has really been very solidly updated

00:43:58   I think for a long time now.

00:44:00   It's been pretty competitive.

00:44:01   The MacBook Pro usually has been.

00:44:03   We've had some problems recently but usually has been.

00:44:06   And again those problems are often Intel's fault.

00:44:09   Where it really becomes a problem

00:44:11   is when Apple gets neglectful of the lines

00:44:15   that are more specialized,

00:44:16   that presumably don't sell in very high volumes.

00:44:19   And that's things like the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro.

00:44:22   And it also becomes a problem on the lines

00:44:24   that Apple is kind of slowly phasing out

00:44:26   because they've made better lines.

00:44:28   That includes things like the MacBook Air

00:44:29   and the non-retina MacBook Pro.

00:44:31   In these kind of areas, Apple doesn't use every generation

00:44:35   of new stuff that becomes available from Intel.

00:44:38   This is what I think frustrates a lot of people is,

00:44:40   you know, in the case of the Mac Pro,

00:44:42   which is one of the more egregious examples of this,

00:44:45   new Xeons that are appropriate for use in the Mac Pro

00:44:48   only come out about every 18 months.

00:44:51   The problem comes that if Apple decides

00:44:53   to skip a generation of those,

00:44:54   if a new generation of Xeons comes out

00:44:56   and Apple decides for whatever reason,

00:44:59   you know, it's not worth us updating the Mac Pro

00:45:02   to this new generation.

00:45:03   Not only has it probably already been like 18 months

00:45:05   since the last update,

00:45:06   but now they're signing themselves up

00:45:08   for another 18 months with no update, basically.

00:45:11   And it could be longer if there's any delay in Intel side,

00:45:13   which again, has been happening with increasing frequency

00:45:15   in recent years.

00:45:17   When they choose to just say, you know,

00:45:18   it's not worth updating to this,

00:45:19   that is really a position of hubris

00:45:22   and of arrogance and neglect of these products

00:45:25   and that is what irritates me about it.

00:45:27   If Intel has a problem and it holds up the release

00:45:29   of something that has the last generation chips in it,

00:45:32   like the iMac, it doesn't really bother me as much

00:45:34   because I know it's not really Apple's fault.

00:45:36   But when it comes to things like the Mac Mini

00:45:37   and the Mac Pro, where Apple could be updating these things,

00:45:40   there were chips they could have used

00:45:42   and they just skipped them because they just don't care.

00:45:45   That is infuriating and it really shows a level of disdain for your customers.

00:45:50   It takes a certain degree of shamelessness and of arrogance and hubris to be still selling

00:45:57   the same Mac Pro today.

00:45:59   If you walk into the Apple store you can still buy the same Mac Pro today that you could

00:46:03   order in December of 2013.

00:46:05   The price is exactly the same.

00:46:07   The configurations are exactly the same.

00:46:09   There have been no new options for this.

00:46:10   this computer that you said, we're betting the future

00:46:13   on high GPU power, and then we're not gonna update

00:46:18   the GPUs for three years, or make them upgradeable

00:46:21   aftermarket?

00:46:21   - You finally got to my pet issue.

00:46:23   You keep saying, oh, there's no new CPUs.

00:46:25   Who cares about the CPU?

00:46:26   There are new GPUs every single year.

00:46:28   There are new GPUs.

00:46:29   So you're gonna like, well, you would update it,

00:46:31   but there's no new Intel CPUs.

00:46:33   First of all, you can upgrade to higher clock speeds.

00:46:36   Even though there's no CPU designs,

00:46:37   maybe it's easier to get the ones that are binned

00:46:38   for higher clock speeds.

00:46:39   all, every year, almost every year, you can upgrade GPUs. But that doesn't even count.

00:46:44   Like, it's not even a consideration. And like, you're right, it's the most absurd on the

00:46:47   GPU festooned Mac Pro machine. I think it's also absurd on just every other line of computers.

00:46:54   Like, even if there is absolutely no new CPU, either lower the price or put a new GPU in

00:46:59   it or update the chipset from, you know, in the olden days, USB 2 to 3 or 3 to 3.1. Or

00:47:05   like, there are things that you can do. I mean, if you want to see the things that you

00:47:07   do you do? What can you do to update a computer that often? Just look at every single PC manufacturer.

00:47:12   They always find some way to bump the specs little by little. I'm not saying Apple should

00:47:16   do it like what Dell does, but the idea that there's nothing you can improve in the hardware

00:47:20   if Intel doesn't release a brand new CPU design, either a shrink or a new architecture, I don't

00:47:25   even buy that. But I'm willing to say, I'm willing to accept that cadence if the CPU

00:47:30   cadence is reasonable. But once the CPU cadence starts going on 18 months, like I said for

00:47:33   the Mac Pro, not only should you not skip generations, you shouldn't even wait for the

00:47:37   the next generation to give it bumps.

00:47:39   - Exactly, and especially, again, for a machine

00:47:41   where you're gonna say, this is all about GPU power,

00:47:44   and you're gonna design it to always have two GPUs,

00:47:46   you're not even going to allow people to buy one GPU,

00:47:49   and you're gonna put in these kind of half-covered

00:47:51   on Asterisk workstation class GPUs on them,

00:47:53   and then to not update the GPUs for three years

00:47:57   and still be selling them at the same price,

00:47:59   and to not make them upgradable.

00:48:01   If you're really gonna say, the Mac Pro

00:48:04   is all about GPU power.

00:48:06   They have to be upgradable aftermarket, period.

00:48:10   And if for some reason you really insist

00:48:13   on making them not upgradable,

00:48:15   you have to be updating them on a regular basis.

00:48:17   Every nine to 12 months, there has to be a GPU,

00:48:20   'cause that's what's competitive in the GPU world.

00:48:23   And for that not to be happening on the Mac Pro,

00:48:26   Phil Schiller stood up there

00:48:27   and told us about his ass innovation.

00:48:29   - Can't innovate anymore, my ass.

00:48:31   - Now there's just been nothing, it's embarrassing.

00:48:33   And it really, again, I can't understate how much this,

00:48:37   it looks like Apple just giving a middle finger

00:48:39   to its customers on these things.

00:48:41   If you're a Mac Pro buyer, if you're a Mac Mini buyer,

00:48:44   if you're a MacBook Air buyer,

00:48:46   Apple is just giving us the giant finger on these things

00:48:49   for the last few years.

00:48:50   And the Mac Mini is, as I mentioned last time,

00:48:53   the Mac Mini is also especially bad

00:48:55   because the previous update, which itself was very late,

00:48:59   in many ways made the product worse.

00:49:01   And so like if you actually measure by days

00:49:03   since the Mac Mini has gotten universally better,

00:49:06   it's a much longer number.

00:49:09   But it really is a problem here.

00:49:11   And John, I think you're right.

00:49:13   They have to find ways that they can update the computers

00:49:16   without waiting for Intel

00:49:18   if they're gonna be skipping generations.

00:49:19   And honestly, they have to just stop skipping generations.

00:49:23   Because the Mac Mini, yeah, it's a low-end computer for them

00:49:28   but it isn't a low-end computer for the people who buy it.

00:49:30   It's like $1,000 at least for a well-configured one.

00:49:33   Generally, if you're buying the Mac Mini,

00:49:35   unless you have some kind of special role for it,

00:49:38   like buying it to be a server or something else,

00:49:40   but if you're buying it to be your Mac,

00:49:42   that is a low-end Mac, you're probably buying it

00:49:44   because you need that value,

00:49:47   the money matters a lot to you

00:49:48   and you're kind of stretching to buy it.

00:49:50   To have the customer experience of wanting to get into a Mac

00:49:54   and just barely being able to afford one

00:49:56   and having to choose the Mac Mini

00:49:57   or wanting to choose the Mac Mini for your needs

00:49:59   and then to have this neglected insulting machine

00:50:04   be the one that Apple will sell you,

00:50:06   that is not a way to get more people to buy Macs.

00:50:08   That is not a way to get people to be happy about buying Macs.

00:50:10   That's going to hurt customer sat,

00:50:11   Tim's wonderful customer sat.

00:50:13   It's a position of arrogance that plays

00:50:16   into all the negative stereotypes about Apple

00:50:18   that people have had since the '90s

00:50:20   that we keep trying to convince the world,

00:50:23   as Mac owners, no, it's not like that,

00:50:25   these really are great computers,

00:50:26   they're great values, they're not overpriced.

00:50:28   Apple's not helping us at all here

00:50:29   because they're showing this incredible neglect

00:50:32   and selling these ancient computers

00:50:35   that they could have updated.

00:50:36   Like, again, I'm not talking about the ones

00:50:37   where they're waiting on Intel.

00:50:38   I'm talking about the ones

00:50:39   that they've skipped generations forever.

00:50:41   They just, they have to stop skipping these generations

00:50:44   for every product line, because you know what?

00:50:46   If it isn't worth updating the Mac Pro

00:50:49   for a Xeon generation that comes out every 18 months,

00:50:52   this is like a 3,000 plus dollar computer,

00:50:56   if it isn't worth updating that,

00:50:57   then discontinue the thing.

00:50:59   You know, don't even, don't sell computers that you are not willing to maintain to a

00:51:04   basic level of maintenance here.

00:51:06   That is just insulting.

00:51:07   And by the way, one more quick thing before I forget.

00:51:10   Right now, there's a whole bunch of very high-end buyers that are building high-end computers

00:51:16   with lots of GPU power because they want to use VR.

00:51:21   When was the last time that people really wanted to buy, in large numbers, very high-end

00:51:27   desktop computers with lots of GPU power.

00:51:29   I mean, yes, there's always been PC gamers,

00:51:31   but that's always been a pretty narrow market

00:51:34   relative to the entire PC market as a whole.

00:51:36   Right now, there is a surge of people

00:51:40   who want to buy high-end desktop-class hardware

00:51:43   and big GPUs, and Apple is completely missing out on this.

00:51:47   Some of those people might have bought Mac Pros

00:51:49   if they were competitive, but they're not.

00:51:51   Apple's totally missing out on this wave of people

00:51:53   buying high-end stuff, and yeah,

00:51:55   their numbers might not be very big,

00:51:56   but they're very, very profitable.

00:51:58   This market is extremely profitable.

00:52:00   And Apple's just completely blowing it.

00:52:01   They have blown this opportunity

00:52:03   that only comes around maybe every 10 years.

00:52:05   Or there's a lot of people who actually need

00:52:07   high-end hardware.

00:52:09   You know, for years we keep saying like,

00:52:10   oh well, you know, I can get away just fine

00:52:12   with my four-year-old, you know, 13 inch MacBook Pro,

00:52:15   because most needs on your computer

00:52:17   are pretty basic these days with modern hardware.

00:52:20   VR needs every bit of power it can get.

00:52:23   And again, these opportunities don't come very often

00:52:25   in the market where people actually need high-end hardware

00:52:28   and are willing to buy it in substantial numbers,

00:52:32   and Apple just missed it.

00:52:34   'Cause they just don't care, and that's really unfortunate.

00:52:36   And it pains me, as a fan of this company,

00:52:39   and as a fan of high-end hardware,

00:52:40   it really pains me to see the level of neglect

00:52:44   and arrogance here that Apple has shown its pro customers,

00:52:48   and all of its customers, honestly.

00:52:51   - So let's assume for a second,

00:52:53   I know you've talked a lot about how a lot of these are not Intel's fault.

00:52:59   And I agree with you there.

00:53:00   But let's assume for a second that some of these are.

00:53:03   Don't you think—let me change how I phrase that.

00:53:08   Isn't there a way that Apple could kind of hint subversively, could kind of, you know,

00:53:13   do one of their—people familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal that this

00:53:16   is all Intel's fault?

00:53:17   Like why has—why isn't Apple some way somehow blamed Intel for this?

00:53:23   even quietly, if that makes any sense.

00:53:25   - That's not something that Apple does.

00:53:26   It's not an Apple move in general.

00:53:28   Like if they have problems with suppliers,

00:53:30   which they have all the time,

00:53:31   they find alternate suppliers,

00:53:32   but they don't,

00:53:33   they're not gonna throw the suppliers under the bus.

00:53:34   They don't even want us to know the suppliers exist.

00:53:36   And yes, we all know Intel exists,

00:53:37   but I, if it was Steve Jobs, maybe,

00:53:41   and especially if they had a new supplier lined up,

00:53:43   like as soon as they switched to Intel,

00:53:44   then it was all about throw PowerPC, IBM under the bus.

00:53:48   But right up until that point,

00:53:51   It was like IBM, G5, everything is great and they're going to have it in 3 GHz in 12 months

00:53:58   or whatever that promise was that he made on stage.

00:54:01   I really don't think it's an Apple-style move to shift the blame.

00:54:06   Apple accepts responsibility.

00:54:07   They're the ones that control their product lines.

00:54:09   They're not going to blame a manufacturer.

00:54:12   Remember whatever that Quartz plant was that was supposed to make them Quartz things for

00:54:15   some reason and that whole thing imploded and went bankrupt or whatever?

00:54:19   Yeah, Sapphire, whatever.

00:54:22   That happened, and we know about it because it was public news, but it's not as if Apple

00:54:26   is putting out — it's not an Apple move to put out a press release that blames other

00:54:31   companies for Apple's failure to deliver its products.

00:54:34   The closest you'll get is thoughts on Flash, where it's like, "Well, we ship products.

00:54:40   This isn't stopping us from shipping our products or changing our products, but we think this

00:54:43   technology is crappy for everybody."

00:54:45   I think that's the closest I've seen in the modern Apple era.

00:54:49   - And also, Apple is not going to want to admit

00:54:53   in any kind of public way,

00:54:54   even if it's through unofficial channels like that,

00:54:56   they're not going to even suggest the possibility

00:55:00   that the Mac line is old and stale and it's a problem.

00:55:03   - Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.

00:55:04   - They don't have those status bars on their website.

00:55:06   That's the best thing.

00:55:07   How long has this, and that's the worst.

00:55:09   We know it's a smart move, it's an Apple move

00:55:11   to not drop the price on your products

00:55:13   because it's all about perceived value.

00:55:15   Not driving the price for the whole year,

00:55:18   That's what separates Apple from Dell.

00:55:20   Dell, if they're making the same thing

00:55:22   and there are costs of goods savings,

00:55:23   they will lower the price to get more enterprise sales

00:55:25   and whatever, blah, blah, blah, and Apple won't, right?

00:55:28   Not dropping the price for three years,

00:55:30   like who are you kidding now?

00:55:31   Like that stops being, we're preserving value

00:55:34   and it starts being just like Margo said,

00:55:36   punitive to your customers and you're not fooling anybody.

00:55:39   No one who knows anything thinks that 2013 Mac Pro

00:55:42   that they're still selling for the same price

00:55:44   is worth anything close to that price.

00:55:46   It is ridiculous.

00:55:47   I'm very curious to see what happens this fall, because all signs are pointing to this

00:55:53   fall being when they write these wrongs.

00:55:57   I can't imagine the complete meltdown that all of us are going to have.

00:56:02   I would say the pundits, but I think we will all melt down, the three of us will, if there's

00:56:08   either nothing new or extremely underwhelming things this fall.

00:56:13   On the flip side, is all forgiven if something at least moderately exciting happens this

00:56:19   fall?

00:56:20   I mean, we all have very, very short memories and even shorter attention spans.

00:56:23   If they do this fancy function row OLED screen thing that was talked about a couple of months

00:56:30   back or something else that's new and fancy, are they forgiven?

00:56:35   Is that it?

00:56:36   We're done?

00:56:37   We're good here?

00:56:38   Yeah, it depends on the product line that they do it to and whether that's the one you've

00:56:41   been waiting for as a customer or not.

00:56:43   By making a major upgrade to the MacBook Pro,

00:56:47   that's good, they should be doing that.

00:56:49   The MacBook Pro is probably one of their

00:56:52   most commonly selling models.

00:56:54   Certainly it's probably their highest profile model,

00:56:56   or the most common model among high profile buyers.

00:56:59   You know, the MacBook Pro is a very important product

00:57:01   and that's great and they should be on that.

00:57:03   They really should.

00:57:05   But if you're one of the people who's been sitting around

00:57:07   waiting for a Mac Pro or Mac Mini or MacBook Air update,

00:57:10   then that's not gonna be very satisfying to you.

00:57:12   Because it's like, well, okay, that's nice.

00:57:15   MacBook Air, maybe not as much,

00:57:16   'cause the new one is probably gonna be closer to it

00:57:18   in size and weight, but if you're a desktop user,

00:57:20   you're sitting around waiting for a Mac Mini or a Mac Pro,

00:57:23   whether they update the MacBook Pro or not

00:57:24   is not incredibly relevant to you

00:57:26   and how happy you are with the lineup.

00:57:28   And by the way, I would expect neither a Mac Mini

00:57:31   nor a Mac Pro this fall.

00:57:33   Mac Mini simply because they don't care

00:57:35   and they hate their customers.

00:57:36   Mac Pro because it's falling inconveniently

00:57:38   between Broadwell-E and Skylake-E,

00:57:40   and I think they've waited this long,

00:57:41   they're probably gonna go straight to Skylake,

00:57:43   which is not a bad plan.

00:57:45   If there's not a Mac Pro out now,

00:57:48   with Broadwell-E, then you might as well

00:57:50   wait for Skylake-E, because it's a major upgrade,

00:57:52   and you already missed the Broadwell wave,

00:57:54   and what they should be doing

00:57:57   is releasing them every generation,

00:57:58   but if you find yourself in late 2016,

00:58:03   and you still haven't made a Mac Pro update,

00:58:05   don't make one now with Broadwell,

00:58:07   make one with Skylake.

00:58:08   I wouldn't give that advice, because like you're talking about, in case you're saying

00:58:10   it's all forgiven, I think it's more about regaining trust.

00:58:12   And what would bring some trust back is not just saying, "Oh, hey, we finally updated

00:58:18   the MacBooks," because you know they're going to, right?

00:58:20   And it's going to be good, and people are going to buy a lot of them, and everyone's

00:58:23   going to be happy.

00:58:24   You know they're going to do that.

00:58:25   But that doesn't regain any trust, because what you're looking for is a new pattern of

00:58:30   behavior, not merely, "Oh, we didn't update these computers for a really long time, and

00:58:34   everyone was sad, but hey, here's a new update.

00:58:35   Everything's great."

00:58:36   What you want to see is a new update followed by another new timely update, maybe followed

00:58:41   by another one, and then you would have your faith restored.

00:58:44   And to restore faith in something of the Mac Pro situation, I think what you'd have to

00:58:47   do is, at the very least, put out a new Mac Pro with the same CPUs but better GPUs, or

00:58:52   put out a Broadwell eMac Pro that you already spent time developing internally, even though

00:58:57   you know you're going to replace it with a Skylake, and also in the Broadwell you want

00:59:00   to have a new GPU.

00:59:01   It's like, and it's like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, that's such a big change."

00:59:03   you can regain that trust as quickly as possible by saying,

00:59:06   "Broadwell Mac Pro with new GPUs,

00:59:09   "Skylike Mac Pro with new GPUs."

00:59:11   Those two releases would be like,

00:59:13   "Oh, hey, I guess Apple's updating this computer again

00:59:15   "and now it's safe to buy and it's no longer embarrassing."

00:59:17   And that's such a turn from the current thing

00:59:20   of like skip a generation, maybe skip one more

00:59:23   'cause by this point, the new ones are gonna come out.

00:59:25   It's like, you can always say it's like,

00:59:26   "We've waited so long."

00:59:27   - That's a good point. - The new ones

00:59:28   are gonna come out too and it's like,

00:59:29   "Well, the Skylike ones, we're not really ready

00:59:31   "to do that now, let's work on those."

00:59:33   and then you're working on the Skylake one,

00:59:34   it's like, well, maybe wait another year

00:59:36   for Thunderbolt 4 to come out.

00:59:37   It's like, you can always wait.

00:59:38   You have to release new versions of the product.

00:59:41   And the way to regain trust is to show

00:59:44   a new pattern of behavior.

00:59:46   And one data point does not make a line.

00:59:48   You need to have multiple data points to say,

00:59:50   not only have they revised this computer again,

00:59:52   but because if you were to tell them,

00:59:54   new Mac Pros are gonna come out

00:59:55   at the beginning of next year,

00:59:56   and there won't be another new Mac Pro for three years,

00:59:59   would you invest in this line of computers?

01:00:01   It's like I don't I don't want that cadence

01:00:04   I don't like that even if I buy all my computers now

01:00:06   Like if I get a new employee in a year do I have to buy them a year old Mac Pro if I get

01:00:11   A new employee in two years do I have to buy them a two year old Mac Pro like the three year cadence is not acceptable

01:00:15   So they have to establish a new pattern of behavior and the way to most quickly establish a new pattern behaviors rapid-fire releases and for

01:00:22   The Mac Pro it's right in front of them new GPUs Broadwell then Skylake

01:00:26   And new GPUs and all those things you could do three new revisions of the Mac Pro between now and the skylight one and that

01:00:32   Would go a long way to show I mean that's kind of ridiculous

01:00:34   But that would go a long way although Dell would do it to showing that you are

01:00:37   Dedicated to this product line again and for the other ones because they are kind of like on an annual cycle

01:00:43   Like the Mac Mini has never had the trust so you're not losing the trust there other than the crappy revision that took away the cores

01:00:48   Right, but it was never really there, but for the Mac books and stuffs like really that your your laptops

01:00:54   Those are your most portable Macs and even those are getting long in the tooth. This it's not a not a good look

01:00:59   So I it's I wish they showed on that page not just the gaps and everything but like a graphs where you could see

01:01:05   That they were kind of in a steady kind of pattern then here's this new aberration from the pattern and you have to

01:01:10   Restore that pattern to restore the faith in the product line

01:01:14   Well, if you scroll down to each of the individual like details

01:01:17   It shows recent releases and there's individual like bar charts for each release

01:01:23   So you can get you can get a sort of

01:01:26   Hint as to what what the normal is so you can see for the iMac for example the May 2011 update

01:01:34   was

01:01:35   577 days since the prior one

01:01:37   But every other one looks like it was about

01:01:41   200 to 300 days you see what I mean so yeah you can get you can get a rough guess

01:01:46   Just by looking at these graphs yeah

01:01:49   - Yeah, and a lot of these, I mean, it's kind of sad

01:01:51   how much seemed to stop in 2012.

01:01:54   This makes me so sad.

01:01:57   Honestly, I know it's kind of improper

01:02:01   to talk this simply and broadly,

01:02:04   but it looks like Tim Cook just doesn't like

01:02:05   the Mac very much.

01:02:07   And I hope that's not it.

01:02:08   I hope that's not the reason for all this,

01:02:10   and I hope that's not true.

01:02:11   But that's how it looks.

01:02:12   It looks like Tim Cook doesn't care about the Mac.

01:02:15   - He does use an iPad to do his work.

01:02:16   - I know.

01:02:17   - The iPad is the future of computing.

01:02:19   But like, not as if that's what he's making decisions based on, or even that's his decisions.

01:02:23   If he was making decisions based on this, it would be purely based on how much money

01:02:26   they cost to developers, how much money they bring in for the company, and how much potential

01:02:29   future revenue and blah blah blah.

01:02:30   I really don't think he's making decisions based on what computers he likes, because

01:02:33   that just doesn't seem like his role in the company.

01:02:36   But bottom line number stuff was his bag before he became CEO, and I would imagine that any

01:02:43   influence he does have in this would be related to that.

01:02:45   but more likely these decisions are made

01:02:49   down at a level below him and he just gives an okay on it.

01:02:52   - Yeah, but it is kind of like the Tim Cook way

01:02:56   to just keep old stuff around, just keep selling it,

01:02:59   you know, 'cause that still makes good enough money,

01:03:02   and that's how the whole Mac lineup looks right now.

01:03:04   And again, some of these families, that's Intel's fault,

01:03:08   but a lot of them it's not.

01:03:09   It looks like Apple has made the calculus to say,

01:03:11   you know, we don't really need to update the Mac very often,

01:03:14   They still sell anyway, and so we just won't.

01:03:17   We'll just let it sit there.

01:03:19   But he knows that's not true.

01:03:21   This last quarter of MaxAils was dismal, and he knew that was happening before it was happening.

01:03:24   This is—that's not true.

01:03:26   Did he?

01:03:28   He knows it's not true.

01:03:29   Yeah.

01:03:30   They know the numbers before they announce them to us.

01:03:31   That's the whole thing is they do projections, they have estimations, they see they're

01:03:35   not going to hit their numbers.

01:03:36   We find out in their earnings calls what they know well before that, and that is the point

01:03:39   where maybe they have strategic planning or replanting meetings and saying, "Look,

01:03:43   We're not going to even come close to hitting our expected numbers for Macs.

01:03:46   It's going to look bad.

01:03:47   What do we want to do?"

01:03:48   And that's where they say, "Can this product line revise this one, move this project up,

01:03:51   add more funding to that?"

01:03:52   I don't know.

01:03:53   I'm fantasizing about how things are done inside Apple, but the idea that anyone in

01:04:00   the company thinks that you can just neglect these lines and nothing will happen, we all

01:04:03   know that's not true by now, and Apple knew it way before we did.

01:04:07   Do you think they knew it 18 months ago and they decided to skip a generation of these

01:04:10   various CPUs and stuff?

01:04:11   The lead time is so huge that yeah, like there's you know, it's a it's a trailing indicator her whether yeah

01:04:17   I'm using it right

01:04:17   I think where you find out long after the decisions that led to it have been made and the new decisions you make now aren't

01:04:23   going to manifest for a while, so

01:04:25   That's just the nature of the beast here. But yeah, I mean I guess about regaining

01:04:30   Trust we know that even if they made the decision a year ago

01:04:35   We're not going to see the results of those decisions for a long time

01:04:37   So now we just sit back and wait and you know show us with your actions that you know

01:04:42   Which product lines you care about which ones are quote-unquote safe to buy safe to invest in

01:04:47   For individual users is less important because for individual users

01:04:50   It's like you just buy as soon as they're revised like you wait a little bit to make sure they're not lemons

01:04:54   And there's no systemic problems with the things and then you buy it and as far as an individual is concerned

01:04:59   You're fine as long as

01:05:01   When you decide to buy a new computer that actually is a new one for you to buy that is different than the one you already

01:05:06   bought. But for institutions or people that buy a lot of them, like I said, with a company

01:05:10   with a bunch of people doing like Maya on their Mac Pros, and they staff up for a big project,

01:05:16   they have an occasion to buy new computers and they will be sad if they're buying the same

01:05:22   computers they bought a year or two years or three years ago for the same price.

01:05:26   It just doesn't seem right technologically speaking. It's like, oh, well, you know,

01:05:30   it's been three years since I bought my computer. You new employee will have such a fancy computer,

01:05:35   it'll be great, like we can't afford to revise

01:05:37   all of our computers every year,

01:05:38   but when we bring in new employees, they get a new one.

01:05:40   Oh, you got the same exact computer I did.

01:05:42   That's great.

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01:07:53   (upbeat music)

01:07:56   I have a question specifically for Marco.

01:08:00   You had written probably like a year ago,

01:08:03   a tool that will take several audio files,

01:08:07   say from your co-host and your own,

01:08:09   and stitch them together, or not stitch them together,

01:08:11   but line them up so we're not on different parts

01:08:14   of the episode at the same moment, right?

01:08:16   So-- - Yeah, they're synced up.

01:08:18   Sync them up time-wise.

01:08:19   - I was thinking about this a week or two ago.

01:08:22   How the hell are you doing that?

01:08:24   because we don't all hit the record button

01:08:27   at the same moment.

01:08:29   And I was debating with myself,

01:08:31   okay, well, how is he doing it?

01:08:33   Is he just looking for, and it's all algorithmic,

01:08:36   and so is he just looking for some peak in one

01:08:39   and then trying to find the same peak in the other?

01:08:41   And I wasn't sure how this worked.

01:08:43   And so what is this tool, and how the hell did you do it?

01:08:47   - Before Marco explains, we should also say

01:08:49   that we don't do that embarrassing clap thing

01:08:50   that some other podcasts do.

01:08:52   (laughing)

01:08:53   I'm not naming any names here, but...

01:08:55   Yeah, so for what it's worth, a lot of shows, when you're on the show, they'll count down

01:09:01   and say, "Okay, we're all going to clap one, two, three," and then everyone claps, and

01:09:04   that's their peak that the editor uses to line up the two or more sides.

01:09:09   Which is bogus because of audio drift, which Marco will explain soon.

01:09:11   Yeah.

01:09:12   So I just—I was really curious, because this is a fascinating technical problem, and

01:09:16   yeah, it's a little inside baseball, but it's a fascinating technical problem to solve,

01:09:20   regardless of the fact that it happens to relate to podcasting.

01:09:23   So how'd you solve it?

01:09:24   - I should clarify before I start here

01:09:26   that I didn't do any research, of course.

01:09:29   ♪ How does it matter ♪

01:09:31   (laughing)

01:09:32   I didn't do any research beforehand

01:09:33   on how this problem should be solved,

01:09:36   how other things solve this problem.

01:09:38   There are very few audio tools that do solve this problem,

01:09:41   but it's pretty common on high-end video recording apps,

01:09:44   'cause the idea is if you're on a video shoot,

01:09:48   you probably are recording audio off-camera.

01:09:51   You're probably recording audio

01:09:52   through some other device, an audio recorder or a mixer,

01:09:55   whatever else, so you need to then sync up the audio

01:09:57   with the video, or you need to sync multiple cameras video

01:10:01   in editing so you can switch between the cameras

01:10:03   and sync it all up to the master audio track.

01:10:05   So video apps have had, like Final Cut does this,

01:10:09   I'm pretty sure, I don't know that much about video,

01:10:10   but video apps have had ways to do this for a long time

01:10:13   where they will take in, they will use audio

01:10:15   and they will be able to sync audio and video

01:10:17   between multiple tracks and everything.

01:10:19   What I wanted was a very basic command line tool

01:10:21   to do this so that I could put it in as part of my shell

01:10:25   script to process all your files through FFmpeg

01:10:27   and whatever else to normalize the formats

01:10:28   and get them all and basically take your

01:10:30   inconvenient call recorder files and whatever else

01:10:34   and output a set of fully synced and undrifted WAV files

01:10:39   that I can just import into Logic and edit.

01:10:42   This is something that podcasters,

01:10:44   if you're just recording Skype from your computer

01:10:47   and that's it and you use those as the tracks,

01:10:50   you don't really need to do this

01:10:51   'cause everything is all synced up.

01:10:52   But if you're doing what's called a double ender method,

01:10:56   where each end of the, each person on the call

01:11:00   records their own track locally like we do,

01:11:02   it sounds way better and it affords you

01:11:05   a great deal of flexibility in editing

01:11:06   for shows that have more than two people on them.

01:11:08   But this is a problem you have,

01:11:09   where then you have to sync up everybody's files, okay.

01:11:11   Drift is another problem.

01:11:13   This is really down in the weeds,

01:11:15   and I'm sorry if this is boring to anybody,

01:11:16   so I'll try to be quick.

01:11:17   Basically, your audio interface,

01:11:19   whatever's recording you, whether it's the mic

01:11:21   or sound card or whatever, your audio interface

01:11:24   records a certain number of samples per second.

01:11:27   So you might have seen the numbers, 44 kilohertz,

01:11:30   44.1 kilohertz, that's the number of samples per second

01:11:33   that it's recording into your WAV file.

01:11:35   The problem is that computers are not perfect.

01:11:38   These all come down to these little analog

01:11:41   electronic components and nothing is perfect

01:11:44   because everything has to be cheap and amazing

01:11:46   and work all the time.

01:11:47   And so what the computer thinks is x times per second

01:11:52   will actually vary very slightly between different devices,

01:11:56   between different computers,

01:11:58   whatever's generated in that clock signal to say,

01:12:01   I'm taking 44,100 samples per second.

01:12:04   Every computer's clock is gonna be very slightly different.

01:12:07   And it might be like .001% off of yours,

01:12:12   but over the course of a two-hour podcast,

01:12:15   you could be off by like a full second by the end.

01:12:19   And so if you sync up the tracks at the beginning,

01:12:22   if you say, all right, everyone clap,

01:12:24   and then we'll sync up those claps,

01:12:26   go an hour later in the podcast,

01:12:28   and you will hear that people

01:12:31   are no longer lined up properly.

01:12:32   They'll be like a second off or something.

01:12:34   And that's because of this difference in clocks,

01:12:37   in the actual analog hardware,

01:12:39   like the thing that is generating that clock signal,

01:12:42   times per second is just .001% off of what yours was.

01:12:47   My tool was designed to solve both of these problems.

01:12:51   Make something that fixes drift,

01:12:55   that basically syncs the file throughout the whole file.

01:12:58   It syncs everything up and then just outputs

01:13:00   these WAV files I can just import into my editor

01:13:02   and then do nothing else to in that way

01:13:05   and move on to the content editing.

01:13:08   Because I want the podcasts that I produce

01:13:10   to sound as great as they possibly can sound.

01:13:13   I want them to have incredible high production values

01:13:15   because basically I value the listeners,

01:13:18   I value your time, I value your attention,

01:13:21   and I wanna make sure the show sounds good

01:13:22   so it's easiest as possible

01:13:24   and most pleasant for you to listen to.

01:13:26   Making this double ender recording method work well

01:13:30   and quickly for me was very important.

01:13:32   So I set out to make this thing

01:13:33   that would line up all the tracks.

01:13:35   It slices up the file into,

01:13:38   it looks at a whole bunch of points throughout the file,

01:13:39   but it first starts out just in the middle,

01:13:41   and it tries to line up the middles,

01:13:43   so it can just get an approximate line up

01:13:44   for the whole file.

01:13:46   And it does this not by finding peaks necessarily,

01:13:49   but it's a little more involved than that.

01:13:51   It uses the Fast Fourier Transform, FFT,

01:13:55   to break the audio into frequencies,

01:13:58   rather than just like the up and down wave

01:14:00   that you see like in a wave editor.

01:14:01   It breaks it down into frequencies for each segment,

01:14:03   so it'll take like a certain number of milliseconds

01:14:05   and say, "What is the frequency breakdown of this?" For every little slice it takes,

01:14:12   it makes a little hash of this chunk of the file to say, "For this little millisecond

01:14:18   slice, what is the dominant frequency?" And if you think about, suppose it translates

01:14:26   into ASCII for simplicity's sake. You can say, "Alright, well, this second of audio

01:14:32   had the frequency like A, F, G,

01:14:35   for every little slice it takes in that second,

01:14:39   it can basically build like a string and say,

01:14:41   "All right, well this is the dominant frequency

01:14:44   "of this slice of audio."

01:14:45   And then if you can imagine just sliding that up and down

01:14:49   across a window of time, so if you can say

01:14:51   these files are probably lined up within 15 minutes,

01:14:55   like did we probably hit record

01:14:57   within 15 minutes of each other?

01:14:58   Yes.

01:15:00   it defines a window and it says,

01:15:02   "Alright, well within this window,

01:15:04   "just literally slide this around,

01:15:06   "slide this hash that I've made

01:15:07   "of this little bit of audio here,

01:15:10   "slide this around until you find

01:15:12   "the point in this range that it is the least different

01:15:17   "from a reference track."

01:15:19   And the reference track is simply,

01:15:22   it's the Skype recording basically.

01:15:23   It is the recording of all of us talking.

01:15:26   So the reference track,

01:15:27   so rather than trying to take these random files

01:15:29   and say, you know, sync this to your ear,

01:15:31   just figure out what sounds right.

01:15:33   All of this is, it's based on,

01:15:36   take all these input files from each of our microphones

01:15:39   and sync them to the reference track that contains all of us

01:15:42   and then just delete the reference track

01:15:44   because then you'll have the pristine, awesome version

01:15:46   of all of us from our microphones

01:15:48   instead of the crappy Skype version of all of us.

01:15:50   And that's, so it basically uses this FFT

01:15:54   to just like slide around, build these little hashes

01:15:57   of each segment of audio and find out where they line up.

01:16:00   So first it lines up the middle

01:16:02   with very, very high precision.

01:16:04   And then it goes throughout the whole rest of the file.

01:16:07   And it goes, I think right now I have it doing it

01:16:10   in like 10, just like 10% increments,

01:16:12   like you know, there's like, so there's nine other ones.

01:16:14   After the middle is lined up, go to the beginning

01:16:17   and go to the end and go to the steps in the middle.

01:16:19   How far off is the synchronization at those points?

01:16:23   Because the thing about drift

01:16:25   is it tends to be fairly constant.

01:16:27   Your clock variation in how fast your computer's clock

01:16:32   measures that time slice, that tends to be fixed

01:16:35   or close enough to fix during a two hour podcast.

01:16:38   It then, it goes to the ends of this scale.

01:16:41   And it says, all right, well in the middle

01:16:42   we're perfectly lined up now.

01:16:43   At the beginning, we are like .5 seconds off,

01:16:47   negative, you know, negative .5 seconds.

01:16:49   At the end, we are .5 seconds ahead.

01:16:53   So that means that in this time span,

01:16:55   We've gone from negative five to plus,

01:16:56   or negative .5 to plus .5,

01:16:58   so that it basically builds,

01:17:00   based on looking at the whole file,

01:17:02   looking at these averages of this rate,

01:17:04   it interpolates an average drift for the whole file,

01:17:07   and it says, all right, well,

01:17:08   this looks like we are gaining .1 seconds of drift per hour,

01:17:13   or whatever the rate is,

01:17:15   based on looking at all those different points in the file

01:17:17   once the middle is aligned.

01:17:19   So then it just goes to the beginning,

01:17:20   it says, all right, well, at the beginning, we'll fix that,

01:17:22   and then throughout the file,

01:17:24   So we know how many seconds per hour or whatever

01:17:28   we have to insert or remove to sync this up properly.

01:17:32   So it uses basic audio stuff to find periods of silence

01:17:36   and use, I'm pretty good at dealing with silence now,

01:17:41   use the silence to insert or remove padding

01:17:44   at opportune times where you won't notice.

01:17:48   And that is how it undrifts the files.

01:17:51   - That's smart as hell.

01:17:52   and the vast majority of the time it works.

01:17:55   And because it is using dominant frequencies

01:17:59   as the way to tell whether things are similar,

01:18:01   it is fairly immune to the volume differences,

01:18:05   'cause the Skype track is gonna have

01:18:06   a very different volume level

01:18:07   than whatever microphone file you give me.

01:18:09   It's also gonna be way lower fidelity.

01:18:12   It's gonna be weird and possibly distorted

01:18:16   in some subtle ways, but dominant frequencies

01:18:18   tend to be the same, regardless of how

01:18:22   because that's what you're hearing.

01:18:23   Like if it sounds roughly the same,

01:18:24   it's gonna match up pretty closely in the file,

01:18:29   in the frequency hashing thing.

01:18:31   And because it's like,

01:18:35   I'm not necessarily looking for that exact match,

01:18:37   you give me a window and I'm likely to find this

01:18:39   and I will find the closest match,

01:18:41   and then I use confidence ratings and all this stuff.

01:18:45   So that's how it works.

01:18:46   I wrote this, I don't know, two years ago maybe?

01:18:49   I did it a while ago,

01:18:51   and I've basically not touched it.

01:18:53   And a few friends of ours,

01:18:55   it's kind of in like a private alpha,

01:18:57   a few friends of ours use it to edit their shows,

01:18:59   and I have almost never had to touch the algorithm

01:19:02   since writing it.

01:19:02   The only, the main reasons I have not released this yet

01:19:06   are that there are a few bugs,

01:19:08   but it's not usually bugs in finding, in lining it up.

01:19:12   In fact, the rate at which it properly lines things up

01:19:16   is shockingly good.

01:19:18   The main bugs are around things like,

01:19:20   well if one file is like 30 minutes shorter

01:19:23   than the other one, it might not line it up,

01:19:26   or it might not un-drift properly,

01:19:27   'cause it tries to interpolate a value

01:19:29   from part of the file that doesn't need to.

01:19:30   So there's some cleanup work needed to be done

01:19:33   to make this a general usefulness releasable tool.

01:19:37   It would also be nice if it had a GUI,

01:19:40   because most people want a graphical interface

01:19:42   for their applications, most people don't wanna have

01:19:45   binaries that you can use from a shell script.

01:19:47   So that's why this is not out yet.

01:19:51   And the market for such a thing is extremely small

01:19:54   because it's a tool for podcasters

01:19:56   and so it's hard to charge money

01:19:57   and make any money from that.

01:19:59   So I don't know how that'll go.

01:20:01   We'll figure that out later, I guess.

01:20:03   But I do eventually plan to release this

01:20:05   because it is an incredibly useful tool

01:20:08   for anybody who does double-ending podcasting

01:20:11   where you're recording local tracks from people.

01:20:14   And I think the world of podcasting

01:20:15   would be better off if more people did that.

01:20:18   And making that easier is therefore working

01:20:20   towards that goal.

01:20:21   Because one thing I really don't like as a podcast listener

01:20:26   is I should never know that your podcast

01:20:31   is recorded with Skype.

01:20:33   And what that means is I should never hear you

01:20:35   talking about Skype.

01:20:36   I should never hear a Skype dropout.

01:20:38   If there's a Skype dropout and you have to work through it,

01:20:40   that needs to be cut from the show.

01:20:42   All discussion of Skype should be cut from the show.

01:20:44   I should never know as a listener that you use Skype.

01:20:47   And I also shouldn't be hearing Skype artifacts

01:20:50   when somebody's connection is going a little wonky

01:20:53   or Skype's going a little wonky

01:20:54   and they start degrading the bit rate down,

01:20:56   they start sounding a little bit worse,

01:20:57   a little more telephonic,

01:20:58   they start going worse and worse and worse

01:21:00   and then you hear upgrading get better and better and better.

01:21:03   That was fine five years ago.

01:21:05   Now we've moved on, we know how to do things better now.

01:21:08   So podcasting should now be,

01:21:12   I want to raise the bar.

01:21:13   Like, the local recording should be the norm now in most cases.

01:21:18   And yes, there are some cases where you need to use Skype for more practical reasons.

01:21:22   Things like if you have a guest call-in show where you're having a different guest every

01:21:25   week, like getting people microphones is already a big pain and it's hard enough dealing

01:21:29   with that.

01:21:30   So, you know, there's certain exceptions to this, but for the most part, if you're

01:21:35   doing the same show every week with the same people, I should never, ever know that you

01:21:39   use Skype.

01:21:40   So, that's why I made this tool.

01:21:41   why I made it to save myself time. Hopefully it'll save more people time in the future,

01:21:45   make podcasting better, which is kind of my overall goal for everything I do these days.

01:21:50   But it's going to be a lot of work before this is in a releasable state.

01:21:53   You know, it's funny what you said about never knowing that Skype was used, because I feel

01:21:58   like we do a really good job of that. Unless my iMac that I swear isn't broken breaks,

01:22:03   in which case that's exactly why we had to use, I guess it was your recording of me for

01:22:11   for the first half of that show.

01:22:13   - Exactly.

01:22:14   - And people justifiably were fairly either confused

01:22:17   or perturbed by it, and I don't blame them.

01:22:19   It sounded like garbage,

01:22:20   and I still feel terribly guilty about that.

01:22:23   And that is exactly what we're trying to avoid.

01:22:25   - It's all your fault, Casey.

01:22:27   - Well, I do feel bad about it.

01:22:29   - No, it's fine.

01:22:30   It was like the first 20 minutes.

01:22:32   If it happened every week, I'd be mad,

01:22:34   but if it happens once in a three-year run of a show,

01:22:37   it's not that ridiculous.

01:22:39   - No, that's really, really interesting.

01:22:41   What was this written in, is this C or?

01:22:44   - Yeah, it uses Objective-C, it's an Objective-C binary

01:22:49   that you access via terminal, so it has access

01:22:51   to Foundation and everything, but all the core logic,

01:22:56   and it uses the Accelerate framework,

01:22:57   it uses all the cool VDSP functions for FFTs and everything,

01:23:02   and of course, it runs in parallel,

01:23:04   so this is one of the reasons I like using computers

01:23:07   with lots of cores, because a lot of tools

01:23:09   that I either use or make and use,

01:23:11   use Grand Central Dispatch to work in parallel

01:23:14   very, very effectively.

01:23:15   And this is the perfect problem to parallelize,

01:23:18   'cause it's like, all right, well,

01:23:19   take this one input file and just analyze

01:23:21   all these different chunks, and then at the end,

01:23:23   figure out which one had the best score.

01:23:25   That's so easy to parallelize.

01:23:27   So of course it does, and it makes all my fans run up,

01:23:30   and it's just awesome.

01:23:32   - No, this is really, really cool.

01:23:33   And as someone who works on

01:23:38   kind of regular software, both in past jobs

01:23:41   and in my current job, I definitely get to solve

01:23:44   cool problems, but not this kind of cool.

01:23:46   That's super, super interesting and super neat.

01:23:48   So your long-term plan, you're still kicking the tires

01:23:53   on releasing, I mean, I know you said you want to release it,

01:23:56   but is that like, is that in the next month,

01:23:59   in the next six months, in the next six years,

01:24:01   what do you think?

01:24:02   - It is incredibly unlikely to be in the next month.

01:24:05   I would say six months, maybe.

01:24:08   year more likely, but I don't know.

01:24:10   It depends on what else I'm doing really.

01:24:13   I'm already working on my other, my production tool

01:24:17   for putting in chapters and stuff.

01:24:19   That's a different, this is not that app,

01:24:20   this is a different app.

01:24:22   So there's that and I have this collection of shell scripts

01:24:26   that does all sorts of other useful things

01:24:27   like compress and decompress logic projects.

01:24:30   There's all sorts of crazy stuff that I have

01:24:32   for making podcasting easier.

01:24:34   And so there's always this kind of debate of like,

01:24:36   which of these things could I or should I make

01:24:38   into a product and which of these things

01:24:40   should just stay a shell script that I use

01:24:42   and maybe give a couple of friends.

01:24:44   'Cause there's a lot of work involved

01:24:46   to make something a product and it probably isn't worth it

01:24:48   for a lot of these.

01:24:49   So, you know, time will tell,

01:24:51   but I'll probably release this thing someday.

01:24:54   - You should release like the Marco Arment podcast kit.

01:24:57   - Honestly, that's kind of what I was thinking

01:24:59   that I might do someday, but, you know,

01:25:01   'cause like you could argue maybe, you know,

01:25:04   I can just make one grand app that incorporates

01:25:08   all this stuff and I don't think that's right

01:25:12   or at least that one grand app would have to also

01:25:14   be the editor and while someday that might be cool,

01:25:18   I'm certainly nowhere near ready to tackle

01:25:20   that kind of problem right now.

01:25:22   So eventually there might be one grand app

01:25:26   that it is the editor and the encoder and the recorder

01:25:30   and all this stuff, that'd be fine.

01:25:33   but we are not there today.

01:25:34   So it would probably be a collection of small apps

01:25:37   maybe sold as a pack or something, I don't even know.

01:25:40   But we'll see.

01:25:42   This whole iOS app thing,

01:25:43   it's kinda hard to make money these days,

01:25:44   so maybe I'll switch over to this kind of stuff.

01:25:46   (laughing)

01:25:48   - Good luck, my friend.

01:25:49   - Thank you.

01:25:50   - I think we're good.

01:25:51   - All right, thanks to our sponsors this week,

01:25:52   Betterment, Tracker, and Indochino,

01:25:55   and we will see you next week.

01:25:57   (upbeat music)

01:26:00   ♪ Now the show is over ♪

01:26:02   They didn't even mean to begin, 'cause it was accidental.

01:26:06   (Accidental)

01:26:07   Oh, it was accidental.

01:26:09   (Accidental)

01:26:10   John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him, 'cause it was accidental.

01:26:16   (Accidental)

01:26:17   Oh, it was accidental.

01:26:19   (Accidental)

01:26:20   And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm.

01:26:25   And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:26:30   @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:26:34   So that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:26:39   Auntie Marco Arment S-I-R-A-C

01:26:44   USA, Syracuse, it's accidental

01:26:48   It's accidental

01:26:50   They didn't mean to

01:26:52   Accidental

01:26:53   Accidental

01:26:54   So long.

01:26:55   What we should talk about now is the whole "there's nothing new happening in the news"

01:27:04   and why you guys are cranky about it.

01:27:06   All right.

01:27:07   So, to recap, a couple of weeks ago or last week, whenever it was, I made a flippant remark,

01:27:13   I think it was me, saying, "There's no other news this week," or something like

01:27:17   that.

01:27:18   And this was during a week where there was a lot of world news and political news and

01:27:24   you know, the news, you know, things like police shootings,

01:27:27   and there was a lot of, like, you know, news,

01:27:32   but I was really just saying there wasn't tech news,

01:27:35   but I said it was a slow news week.

01:27:36   I didn't say it was a slow tech news week.

01:27:38   So, you know, a few people were understandably,

01:27:40   you know, concerned about that or disagreed

01:27:42   or were offended by that, and I think this is first

01:27:45   and foremost a tech show, and there's all sorts

01:27:48   of horrible things that happen in the world,

01:27:50   and sometimes we do cover things that are not,

01:27:53   directly like what Apple has released this week

01:27:57   or whatever else.

01:27:58   We've covered subjects such as women in technology

01:28:02   and online harassment, things like this

01:28:04   that are partly tech issues,

01:28:06   but also are partly societal issues or other issues.

01:28:10   In general, though, we do focus mostly on the geeky stuff.

01:28:15   In a world where there is so much horribleness

01:28:18   that happens in the real world,

01:28:21   And this stuff gets to me in real life.

01:28:24   And the world of tech is a vacation from that.

01:28:28   It's a break from that.

01:28:30   It is this nice little world where we can pretend

01:28:33   like all that matters in the world is how long it's been

01:28:37   since the Mac Pro was updated.

01:28:39   And if we don't cover other things,

01:28:41   like horrible things that are going on in the world,

01:28:44   I consider that a feature, not a bug,

01:28:46   for the most part, most of the time.

01:28:48   Because not only do I need that,

01:28:51   and you guys, you can speak for yourselves in a minute here.

01:28:53   - Oh definitely.

01:28:54   - Not only do I need that as a human being,

01:28:58   but I feel like it's important that our listeners

01:29:00   also get a break from that too if they want to,

01:29:02   because there's so many other places

01:29:03   that you can get coverage of major world news

01:29:06   and political news and horrible tragedies

01:29:08   and everything else, and I think it's important

01:29:10   that people have something that's not that,

01:29:14   when all this stuff is going on in the world,

01:29:16   that there has to be some relief from that,

01:29:19   some break from that, some safe place

01:29:21   can go and not hear horrible news every week.

01:29:24   >> BRIAN KARDELL Alright, I'm going to give the flip side of that, which, although I agree

01:29:27   with some of the things you said, I'm going to present the opposing argument and then

01:29:32   explain the meta issue of why it's difficult to address this period.

01:29:36   So, like you said, we know what the show is about.

01:29:39   Just look at the past history of topics.

01:29:41   I think everyone would agree.

01:29:42   To figure out how this works, you just go to extremes and see what the endpoints are.

01:29:46   One extreme would be a nuclear bomb goes off in Manhattan.

01:29:49   If we had a show that week, assuming Marco's still alive, which he probably wouldn't be.

01:29:54   That problem would solve itself.

01:29:55   Yeah.

01:29:56   But anyway, if we had a show that week and didn't mention it, it would seem really weird.

01:30:00   Right?

01:30:01   Like that's one extreme, right?

01:30:02   It's like, "Oh yeah, I know this is a tech podcast and that's why we're not going to

01:30:04   mention a nuclear bomb, though.

01:30:05   One of them in Manhattan, because it's not a tech topic, right?

01:30:08   And so we won't talk about it."

01:30:10   Everybody, including us, would find that super weird and nonsensical and it would stand out

01:30:15   like a sore thumb.

01:30:16   So there's one extreme.

01:30:17   Extreme is like, you know, bunch of people spray painted

01:30:22   swastikas on the elementary school in my hometown, right?

01:30:25   Most of the listeners probably don't care about that.

01:30:28   It is not a tech issue, but you know,

01:30:32   I would care about it deeply, right?

01:30:34   So here's an issue that I would care about deeply

01:30:36   'cause my kids go to that school

01:30:37   and I'm super concerned about it

01:30:38   and I'm up at night thinking about it

01:30:39   and it's really concerning, right?

01:30:42   But it still doesn't pass muster to be on the podcast

01:30:45   'cause lots of other people.

01:30:46   those are the two ends of the chain. Things that we, you know, both of them are things we care

01:30:51   deeply about, because we would all care deeply about nuking Manhattan, and I would care deeply

01:30:55   about people spray painting swastikas on my kid's elementary school, right? But one of those things,

01:31:01   I think we would all agree, it's like, well, that's not fodder for ADP. And the other one,

01:31:05   I think everyone listening would agree that it would be super weird if we didn't mention it,

01:31:10   right? And so the trick about this thing is figuring out that along this spectrum

01:31:15   between the nuke and like the local issue that you know whatever along the spectrum of issues that

01:31:20   we're going to presume that like you know like marco said it and i'm assuming casing as well

01:31:23   that we all really do personally care about and think about a lot or whatever there are many

01:31:27   issues along the spectrum and the question is when does it become weird that we don't say anything

01:31:33   all right the secondary question is all right we have not saying anything and everyone can pick

01:31:38   their line along that spectrum like oh i feel like it's weird you didn't say anything about the nuke

01:31:41   but i don't i don't even care about your local elementary school because i got my own issues

01:31:44   right? Second thing is, what if you don't just not say anything, but in fact you say, as Marco did,

01:31:51   you know, because he's spoken in tech, you say, you assert that this thing doesn't exist,

01:31:58   where you say, "Oh, well, there is no news this week." Right now, obviously that's not what Marco

01:32:01   went, meant. In context, I think it's very clear what he meant, but you could hear it and interpret

01:32:07   it the other way, right? You know, we all misspeak on podcasts all the time, and sometimes it's not

01:32:10   even misspeaking, it's just like assuming a context that is not shared with the audience, right?

01:32:13   But positively asserting the absence of something gets into the realm of what everyone calls erasure,

01:32:21   where you're intentionally—most of the time erasure is like intentionally,

01:32:27   but intentionally or unintentionally creating an environment where people sort of soaking in it,

01:32:32   it supports a worldview where this thing is not an issue or is not a problem or doesn't exist.

01:32:40   So by positively asserting that nothing was going on,

01:32:43   it is a form of erasing the struggle

01:32:46   of like Black Lives Matter or whatever things

01:32:48   that we may care deeply about.

01:32:50   But like for the people listening,

01:32:51   it's like I'm providing a safe space for you to pretend

01:32:54   that Black Lives Matter doesn't exist, right?

01:32:56   And there's a flip side to that is what Marco says.

01:32:58   Like, well, sometimes you don't wanna hear

01:32:59   about the crappy things in the world.

01:33:00   You just wanna hear us talk about Casey's Mac or whatever.

01:33:03   Like there is a flip side to that.

01:33:04   But erasure is a real thing and it happens all the time.

01:33:07   And so when the combination of like not being clear enough about this, like there's no new

01:33:14   tech news and really saying there's no news that reads exactly like erasure.

01:33:18   And I think for a lot of people, although Black Lives Matter and police shootings and

01:33:23   stuff is not a nuke on Manhattan, it is close enough to the threshold of things that should

01:33:28   be important enough that that should come up on ATP for people to think, oh, I think it

01:33:32   should have been included. Now, that judgment, I feel like is, you know, that that's

01:33:36   definitely a judgment call whether you think it's appropriate to add, but once you start

01:33:39   positively asserting it starts looking like erasure, that's a problem as well. And then

01:33:44   the meta problem, like I said, is say this happens, say all three of us who I presume

01:33:48   all care deeply about these issues that we didn't mention on the show, as we do about

01:33:52   many issues that we don't mention on the show for a variety of reasons, and all of us basically

01:33:54   made the judgment that this is not going to be a topic we were going to discuss on ATP,

01:33:59   just like there are so many topics that we all care about that we don't discuss on ATP

01:34:02   various reasons that Marco outlined. When we end up with a show that some people hear

01:34:08   and it's like, "Oh, you're not only not discussing this, but you're making it seem like it doesn't

01:34:12   happen and that's bad because it happens all the time," and complains to us about it, the

01:34:18   natural reaction is to say, "But it sounds like they're impugning our motivations." "Oh,

01:34:22   but we have to say, 'But we do care about that. In fact, not only do we care about that,

01:34:26   but we're on the same side as you and it's an important issue to us and here are the

01:34:30   reasons I didn't want to talk about it and so on and so forth you get defensive essentially.

01:34:34   And so to have a show where you come back on and have to talk about it in any way, it's

01:34:38   very difficult not to feel like you're under attack.

01:34:40   When you feel like you're defending yourself for something you didn't do because you totally

01:34:43   agree with them but at the same time there's no way to like, you can't go back and add

01:34:48   the words that you didn't put there and you can't control how people interpret things

01:34:51   because it does read like erasure to many people and some people you're just going to

01:34:55   disagree with about what meets the threshold from the spray paint on the school and the

01:35:00   New King of Manhattan, you might have disagreements on where that line is. But the debate becomes

01:35:04   about are you a good person who cares about the issues that I care about? Don't you care

01:35:07   about this or are you actively trying to erase this? And so it's really difficult to come

01:35:11   on the show on a follow-up type thing and talk about it in a way that isn't immediately

01:35:17   defensive regardless of how everyone falls on the various issues. And so I think rather

01:35:22   than delving into the specifics of the issue, which, you know, we have new news with another

01:35:26   topic that we didn't talk about and don't plan to like the Republican National Convention

01:35:29   all that stuff, rather than actually delving into those topics, but I still feel like are

01:35:32   not appropriate for the show. I think it was more important to talk about the meta issue

01:35:38   of being aware that even though you may agree and may think things are important, there

01:35:44   are things you can do either accidentally or on purpose that can create an environment

01:35:48   that makes it seem like those issues are less important than they are or gives people sort

01:35:52   of a place where they can, a safe haven away from those things in a bad way. Marco talked

01:35:57   about the good way. It's like we all care about them. We all know about them. It makes

01:36:00   us sad. But sometimes I just want to have, you know, escape and play Pokemon Go. Like

01:36:05   that's definitely a role things should play. But the other aspect of it is that I don't

01:36:10   think those are actually important. And it's a shame that they're even on the news and

01:36:14   It's not even newsworthy and those people should just stop complaining and thank goodness

01:36:18   I can listen to a podcast that agrees with me that those things are beneath concern because nothing interesting is happening in the news

01:36:24   Right, which is obviously not what any of us meant, but it can read like that from the outside. So

01:36:28   It all you know, what what should we do differently? What should we do better?

01:36:32   If you're just aware of that issue like the next time, you know, someone you know

01:36:37   One of us says something like that add the context. I think that's all that's needed

01:36:40   and

01:36:42   And then I guess the secondary thing is,

01:36:46   even though it feels terrible to think and talk about it

01:36:48   on the next show, do it anyway,

01:36:50   because it's better than,

01:36:51   if we were to just not say anything on this show about it,

01:36:54   I think that would be worse,

01:36:55   'cause that would be like doubling down.

01:36:57   That would be like, well, I didn't know what erasure was

01:36:59   and definitely wasn't doing it on purpose,

01:37:01   but now that you mentioned it, I'm gonna do it.

01:37:03   Like I'm gonna pretend that nobody complained,

01:37:05   like just being spiteful about it.

01:37:07   And so, that's what we do in ATP,

01:37:09   is the most painful thing possible,

01:37:12   and then we screw it up, but that's our way.

01:37:14   (laughing)

01:37:15   - Yeah, I mean, I naturally agree

01:37:17   with pretty much everything both of you guys said.

01:37:19   I don't know, I absolutely felt attacked

01:37:22   when I saw this feedback,

01:37:24   and it was from somebody I feel like I know,

01:37:27   and definitely respect, and that almost made it worse,

01:37:30   because I felt like it was coming from a person,

01:37:34   an individual that I felt should have known the context,

01:37:39   and I felt the context was pretty obvious.

01:37:41   I actually thought for a long time I was the one who had said it, and I think you might

01:37:44   be right, Marco.

01:37:45   I think it might have been you, but…

01:37:46   It was Marco, and also Tiff, and she also got defensive about it.

01:37:49   Like, it's totally natural to get defensive about it, but you're getting defensive about

01:37:52   the wrong thing.

01:37:53   Like, the person is not impugning your motivations.

01:37:55   Like, everybody involved knows that they care about things.

01:37:58   It's all about, like, "All right, your motivations are one thing."

01:38:00   It's the whole, you know, we judge ourselves by our motivations, but others by their actions.

01:38:03   You're being judged by your actions, even your unintentional actions, or even Marco's

01:38:06   unintentional actions.

01:38:07   It's like, it doesn't matter what you were thinking.

01:38:08   It only matters what you said and how it might be interpreted by people who are predisposed

01:38:13   to look for a place where someone is positively asserting that these people don't matter.

01:38:20   And that is a tough way to be judged, and it has nothing to do with motivations, and

01:38:24   it can totally feel like you're being attacked.

01:38:26   But if you're not aware that that's even a thing, it's hard to understand what's

01:38:30   the big deal.

01:38:31   You know, and I know, and we all know together that we care about this isn't caring enough.

01:38:36   And you know I didn't do this on purpose, and you know the context, and it should be

01:38:39   clear to people listening, all that is, we can all agree on that and still say, "Yeah,

01:38:44   but not everyone is on that same page, and not everyone understands your motivations

01:38:50   and knows you as well as I do, and all we're left with is your actions, and your actions

01:38:54   can have a small harmful effect, and just letting you know, like, maybe that's something

01:39:00   to be careful about or think about or at least talk about on a following show, which I feel

01:39:03   like we're doing and that's the right thing to do despite the fact that we all feel like

01:39:08   defensive and immediately about it. It's just human nature.

01:39:11   Oh yeah, I was extremely ragey when this was flying by on Twitter. It was the angriest

01:39:16   I've gotten at something I've seen on Twitter that affected me personally in a long time.

01:39:24   Really? You thought people were saying you were a bad person, basically.

01:39:27   And just like you've said, Jon, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, no, no, no, no, no, no, whoa, whoa,

01:39:30   Just because I didn't bring it up doesn't mean I don't care.

01:39:34   And I think it's abundantly obvious to anyone who has ever listened to the show

01:39:38   that the assumed context for Marco's statement was in technology.

01:39:43   And I think it's unfair of me to assume that anyone else is coming from the same point.

01:39:50   But I was deeply bothered by it, and I still am pretty fired up about it.

01:39:55   I feel—

01:39:55   - All my big explanation didn't help you get a handle

01:39:59   on this, 'cause you should totally like--

01:40:00   - No, I mean, I think your explanation was very good,

01:40:03   and it made a lot of sense to me also,

01:40:05   and I agree with you.

01:40:07   The thing about it being a spectrum of like,

01:40:09   to say, if you said, like John said,

01:40:12   if you said, "Oh, nothing happened this week,"

01:40:14   and you meant in tech, but a nuke had gone off

01:40:17   in Manhattan that week, that would be really outrageous.

01:40:20   - And it'd be more outrageous, 'cause there's no

01:40:22   historical issue of erasure of nuclear bombs going off

01:40:25   the United States. There is a long, there is a context for specific issues of like,

01:40:31   not caring about it when when black people get shot by police officers, like and the idea that,

01:40:35   you know, that that's that it's a systemic issue that there is specific context to this,

01:40:40   and that doing it in this context, even accidentally is so much more worse,

01:40:44   so much worse than doing it in the context of a nuke going off, because it would just seem super

01:40:48   weird. I was using that as an extreme, but there's no history of erasure. There's no systemic

01:40:52   prejudice against talking about that. There's no history of devaluing that and saying it's not as

01:40:57   important as other stories. You know what I mean? Like, there's so much baggage and weight behind

01:41:02   this. And I think all of us are just, you know, I mean, at least I know I was following all this

01:41:06   stuff on Twitter and reading about it and it is depressing and it is upsetting. And that could be

01:41:10   a conscious decision not to talk about it. But like, if you accidentally end up saying something

01:41:14   that could be read as erasure, I understand why people will be like, even if they personally know

01:41:18   that you didn't mean it as erasure, it doesn't matter what you mean. All that matters is what

01:41:22   you ended up saying and how it might be interpreted, and then you were adding a tiny

01:41:25   pebble to this gigantic wall in the context of this issue. And it's very difficult when

01:41:31   you do something that could have negative consequences, none of which you intended or

01:41:35   might not even understand, right? And so you totally would feel attacked because like,

01:41:39   how can I have done something wrong when I didn't mean to do anything wrong and I don't even

01:41:44   understand the wrongness that I did? It's still possible. It's still totally possible to do

01:41:47   something ever so slightly wrong, but not have meant anything wrong, be totally in agreement

01:41:52   with the people who are identifying the wrong thing that you did. And that is possible. It's

01:41:56   hard to square that. And so I think Casey, you're still holding on to the idea that someone is

01:41:59   calling you a bad person. Nobody is, right? Nobody is saying that. They're just disappointed that we

01:42:04   fumbled and made a mistake, and maybe they're being more harsh on us than you think they should.

01:42:10   But if you spend your time trying to defend your motivations, you're never going to think about

01:42:14   about your actions in a broader context,

01:42:16   and it's counterproductive.

01:42:18   You're only gonna go more distant that way

01:42:21   rather than trying to figure out

01:42:23   how to come closer together or whatever.

01:42:26   And people are gonna be upset,

01:42:28   they have the right to be upset,

01:42:30   but there's no reason to say,

01:42:31   well, now I'm going to double down

01:42:34   on my unintentional mistake

01:42:35   by trying to make intentional ones.

01:42:37   - Right, it's like if you learned

01:42:40   that a word that you used was actually racist,

01:42:44   and you didn't know that.

01:42:45   - Oh yeah, totally, same thing.

01:42:46   - Yeah, it's worth knowing that, it's worth learning that,

01:42:50   it's worth somebody telling you that,

01:42:52   and even though you didn't mean to be racist

01:42:54   or you don't have those feelings--

01:42:56   - 'Cause you didn't even know the origins,

01:42:57   'cause it was just, right?

01:42:59   But it's still, you still shouldn't use it,

01:43:01   and so it's like, the most well-adjusted thing

01:43:04   is to thank the person for telling you,

01:43:06   but the human thing is to be like,

01:43:07   are you saying I'm a racist?

01:43:09   Like that's how everyone feels,

01:43:10   like you should know I'm not, you know me,

01:43:11   That's absurd and now, you know, like, yeah.

01:43:14   - Yeah, and the ultimate example of this is the word spaz,

01:43:17   which in American English is not,

01:43:19   or to any circle I've ever traveled in anyway,

01:43:22   it's not derogatory, whereas in British English,

01:43:24   it's hugely derogatory.

01:43:27   - Yeah, it's derogatory and ableist in English, yeah.

01:43:29   - Well, okay, fair. - Yeah, it's a problematic,

01:43:31   you know, it's like when I was mentioning a few episodes ago,

01:43:33   like Lame or GIMP, like these--

01:43:35   - Sure, sure, sure. - Horribly named

01:43:36   open source projects.

01:43:37   - Things that many people have never thought about,

01:43:39   including me until fairly recently,

01:43:41   It's like, you just didn't know.

01:43:44   But someone pointing it out to you, depending on how they do it or whatever, it's not

01:43:50   on them to break it to you gently.

01:43:51   It's on you to figure out how to separate your feelings about, are you saying I hate

01:43:57   disabled people from the idea that this thing that you've been doing unintentionally has

01:44:01   an effect on other people that you might not have realized.

01:44:04   So incorporate that into your decisions about whether you're going to do that going forward.

01:44:07   Right, and that's why I've tried to remove that word from my vernacular because I don't want to be offensive

01:44:13   It's real and it's really hard to do like

01:44:15   Try to remove things from our vehicle. I just hear myself doing them all the time

01:44:19   Oh, yeah, you know trying like we know we're trying but all people know is what we say

01:44:23   So it's kind of be like when someone says you accidentally let something slip be like, well, I'm trying man. I mean, that's true

01:44:28   But well, but also like you'd like if if you're trying it's still right for somebody to call you out every time you mess up

01:44:35   Exactly. You just have to separate. Constructive criticism is a two-way street. People can

01:44:42   criticize you in an unconstructive way and you can take constructive things from it,

01:44:46   and people can criticize you in a constructive way and you can not handle it well and not take

01:44:52   it in a constructive manner. It helps if it's constructive coming in, but either way, you can

01:44:59   can mess it up on your end by deciding that your hurt feelings are more important than

01:45:06   whatever the issue is that's being highlighted.

01:45:08   And I think that's exactly the pit I fell into is I personally don't think that the

01:45:14   complaint that was lodged terribly constructively, but I absolutely agree with you that I did

01:45:22   and to some degree still am letting my emotions get in the way of the bigger picture, which

01:45:26   is we should have phrased things better and/or corrected each other after having misphrased

01:45:33   them. And the reason I didn't notice was because I have that assumed context that not everyone

01:45:37   does. But what also made it even worse was this was someone I feel like I know and I

01:45:43   felt like a bazooka was used when it wasn't absolutely necessary, which here again is

01:45:50   feelings.

01:45:51   - No, I mean, to me, the fact that a friend of ours said it

01:45:56   is almost irrelevant.

01:45:58   If anything--

01:46:00   - That's what friends are for, start singing the song.

01:46:02   - Yeah, if anything, if a random person who I didn't know

01:46:06   had called us out on it, I might not have taken it

01:46:08   as seriously as I did.

01:46:10   But I didn't take it in a hurtful way.

01:46:12   I was surprised, but it was more just like,

01:46:15   huh, I didn't think about it that way at all.

01:46:19   It's like when you're called on unintentional racism or something. It's like I wasn't thinking along those lines at all

01:46:25   But now that you mention it. Yeah, I didn't really say that very well

01:46:29   And and so again, it's it's worth being told in a way that you will notice and it's worth correcting it

01:46:35   And that's why you should do this to your friends because like we do take it more seriously from their friends

01:46:39   The bad side of that is that many people when a friend does it like that's the end of the friendship and we're at war

01:46:44   Now and I hate that person. I'm never speaking to them again. That is not taking constructive like those people

01:46:48   - Well, if you can deliver that badly on one end,

01:46:51   and it can be taken badly on the other,

01:46:53   and you can do one,

01:46:54   or it can end badly in many different ways.

01:46:56   But it's difficult,

01:46:58   but this is what you want your friends to do.

01:47:00   Because again, if a stranger,

01:47:01   lots of things that strangers say,

01:47:03   you just let it roll off your back,

01:47:04   'cause that's especially,

01:47:05   that's just a skill you have to have,

01:47:06   because strangers will say all sorts of awful things to you.

01:47:09   But this is what your friends are there to do for you.

01:47:12   And if you don't have that kind of relationship

01:47:14   with your friends in either direction,

01:47:15   if you hang out with your friends,

01:47:16   and your friends are constantly making racist jokes,

01:47:18   you do a fake laugh, but you don't believe any of that.

01:47:21   Like it's not on the same,

01:47:22   you're not on the same page with that,

01:47:23   but you feel like you can't call them on it.

01:47:25   Like, I don't know, I feel like that's a bad situation

01:47:28   to be in, you know, it's like, express yourself,

01:47:33   explain how it makes you feel when your friend

01:47:36   makes racist jokes and that's the end of the friendship.

01:47:38   Like, I feel like that's the appropriate course of events

01:47:41   rather than to just, you know, eat that down.

01:47:43   Because if you soak in that environment long enough,

01:47:45   you will become normalized and you'll be like,

01:47:46   oh, it's not a big deal.

01:47:47   have this person who's a great person, loves his kids, and yeah, he makes racist jokes

01:47:51   sometimes, but who cares? It's like, that's how we end up where we are. You can't end

01:47:55   up with that stuff being normalized.

01:47:57   Yeah, and, you know, several years ago now, I watched this thing that ended up becoming

01:48:04   very popular. It was Randy Pausch's last lecture, and I've probably brought it up in the past.

01:48:09   And it was a professor from Carnegie Mellon, and actually I believe had been an instructor

01:48:16   at UVA as well. And he did this, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and did this thing that

01:48:23   was supposed to be a last lecture really for his kids. He talked about in that last lecture,

01:48:30   to your point, that when people stop correcting you, that's a really crummy place to be. And

01:48:36   as ragey as I was over this entire exchange, I do agree with what you said. And I am thankful

01:48:42   for the correction even if I wish it had been delivered differently and I wish I had responded

01:48:47   differently.

01:48:48   Yeah, me too.

01:48:49   Although I had less of a problem with how it was delivered and I didn't respond.

01:48:53   So in other words, you handled it a lot better than I did.

01:48:55   Well, you responded now.

01:48:56   Yeah, I didn't respond in the moment either, also because I missed the moment when it happened.

01:49:01   Me too, actually, yeah.

01:49:02   I was like, I didn't even have Twitter open while all this was going on and then I caught

01:49:05   up like an hour later and I'm like, "Oh, all this happened."

01:49:08   Yeah.

01:49:09   Yeah.

01:49:10   sometimes not responding in the moment is the right thing to do to give yourself time to digest

01:49:13   and get distance before you say things that you'll regret, more things that you'll regret, you know what I mean?

01:49:16   Anyway.

01:49:17   Oh yeah, I highly recommend using an app on your Mac to automatically quit Twitter on a frequent basis.

01:49:22   It really does help quite a lot in a lot of ways in life.

01:49:25   I'm waiting for it to be available in the Mac App Store.

01:49:28   [BEEP]